Reviews
Editor Starrs has put together a comprehensive look at the Japanese cultural response to the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear disasters. The book includes contributions from a diverse array of international scholars of Japanese religion, anthropology, intellectual history, literature, and popular music. The chapters cover a variety of themes, including the idea in many religions that disaster is "heaven's punishment," or tembatsu; responses to past disasters, including major earthquakes and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the importance of the use of Twitter by some of the most important post-3/11 poets.--E. L. Hirsch, Providence CollegeSumming Up: Recommended. Best for advanced students of intellectual and cultural history.[This review appeared in the March 2015 issue of CHOICE ]Copyright 2015 American Library Association
Table of Content
List of Illustrations Introduction: Cultural Responses to Disaster in Japan Roy Starrs, University of Otago PART ONE: CULTURAL RESPONSES TO THE TRIPLE DISASTER OF MARCH 2011 1 Nature's Blessing, Nature's Wrath: Shinto Responses to the Disasters of 2011 Aike P. Rots, University of Oslo 2 Gods, Dragons, Catfish, and Godzilla: Fragments for a History of Religious Views on Natural Disasters in Japan Fabio Rambelli, University of California, Santa Barbara 3 Buddhism: The Perfect Religion for Disasters? Brian Victoria, International Research Center for Japanese Studies 4 Post-3/11 Literature in Japan Roman Rosenbaum, University of Sydney 5 These Things Here and Now: Poetry in the Wake of 3/11 Jeffrey Matthew Angles, Western Michigan University 6 'Shake, Rattle and Roll': Responses to 3/11 - Constructing Community Through Music and the Music Industry Henry Johnson, University of Otago 7 Learning that Emerges in Times of Trouble: a Few Cases from Japan Joy Hendry, Professor Emerita, Oxford Brookes University 8 Observations on Geomentality in Japan and New Zealand Ken Henshall, University of Canterbury PART TWO: TOWARDS A WIDER PERSPECTIVE - JAPANESE CULTURAL RESPONSES TO EARLIER DISASTERS 9 'All Shook Up': Post-religious Responses to Disaster in Murakami Haruki's after the quake Jonathan Dil, Chuo University 10 Disaster and National Identity: The Textual Transformations of Japan Sinks Rebecca Suter, University of Sydney 11 Belated Arrival in Political Transition: 1950s Films on Hiroshima and Nagasaki Yuko Shibata, University of Otago 12 Hiroshima Rages, Nagasaki Prays: Nagai Takashi's Catholic Response to the Atomic Bombing Kevin M. Doak, Georgetown University 13 The Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923 and Poetry Leith Morton, Tokyo Institute of Technology 14 Proletarian Writers and the Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923 Mats Karlsson, University of Sydney 15 The 'Silenced Nexus': Female Mediation in Modern Japanese Literature of Disaster Janice Brown, University of Colorado Boulder
