Recent natural as well as man-made cataclysmic events have dramatically changed the status quo of contemporary Japanese society, and following the Asia-Pacific war's never-ending 'postwar' period, Japan has been dramatically forced into a zeitgeist of saigo or 'post-disaster.' This radically new worldview has significantly altered the socio-political as well as literary perception of one of the world's potential superpowers, and in this book the contributors closely examine how Japan's new paradigm of precarious existence is expressed through a variety of pop-cultural as well as literary media. Addressing the transition from post-war to post-disaster literature, this book examines the rise of precarity consciousness in Japanese socio-cultural discourse. The chapters investigate the extent to which we can talk about the emergence of a new literary paradigm of precarity in the world of Japanese popular culture. Through careful examination of a variety of contemporary texts ranging from literature, manga, anime, television drama and film this study offers an interpretation of the many dissonant voices in Japanese society. The contributors also outline the related social issues in Japanese society and culture, providing a comprehensive overview of the global trends that link Japan with the rest of the world. Visions of Precarity in Japanese Popular Culture and Literature will be of great interest to students and scholars of contemporary Japan, Japanese culture and society, popular culture and social and cultural history.

Recent natural as well as man-made cataclysmic events have dramatically changed the status quo of contemporary Japanese society, and following the Asia-Pacific war's never-ending 'postwar' period, Japan has been dramatically forced into a zeitgeist of saigo or 'post-disaster.' This radically new worldview has significantly altered the socio-political as well as literary perception of one of the world's potential superpowers, and in this book the contributors closely examine how Japan's new paradigm of precarious existence is expressed through a variety of pop-cultural as well as literary media. Addressing the transition from post-war to post-disaster literature, this book examines the rise of precarity consciousness in Japanese socio-cultural discourse. The chapters investigate the extent to which we can talk about the emergence of a new literary paradigm of precarity in the world of Japanese popular culture. Through careful examination of a variety of contemporary texts ranging from literature, manga, anime, television drama and film this study offers an interpretation of the many dissonant voices in Japanese society. The contributors also outline the related social issues in Japanese society and culture, providing a comprehensive overview of the global trends that link Japan with the rest of the world. Visions of Precarity in Japanese Popular Culture and Literature will be of great interest to students and scholars of contemporary Japan, Japanese culture and society, popular culture and social and cultural history.

The natural and man-made cataclysmic events of the 11 March 2011 disaster, or 3.11, have dramatically altered the status quo of contemporary Japanese society. While much has been written about the social, political, economic, and technical aspects of the disaster, this volume represents one of the first in-depth explorations of the cultural responses to the devastating tsunami, and in particular the ongoing nuclear disaster of Fukushima. This book explores a wide range of cultural responses to the Fukushima nuclear calamity by analyzing examples from literature, poetry, manga, theatre, art photography, documentary and fiction film, and popular music. Individual chapters examine the changing positionality of post-3.11 northeastern Japan and the fear-driven conflation of time and space in near-but-far urban centers; explore the political subversion and nostalgia surrounding the Fukushima disaster; expose the ambiguous effects of highly gendered representations of fear of nuclear threat; analyze the musical and poetic responses to disaster; and explore the political potentialities of theatrical performances. By scrutinizing various media narratives and taking into account national and local perspectives, the book sheds light on cultural texts of power, politics, and space. Providing an insight into the post-disaster Zeitgeist as expressed through a variety of media genres, this book will be of interest to students and scholars of Japanese Studies, Japanese Culture, Popular Culture, and Literature Studies.

Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City is a collection of eight essays that explore Tokyo urban space from the perspective of memory in works of the imagination—novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and films. Written by scholars of Japanese studies based in England, Germany, Japan, and the United States, the book focuses on texts produced in Japan since the 1980s. The closing years of the Shōwa period (1926-1989) were a watershed decade of spatial transformation in Tokyo. It was also a time (in Japan, as elsewhere) when conversations about the nature of memory—historical, cultural, collective, and individual—intensified. The contributors to the volume share the view that works of the imagination are constitutive elements of how cities are experienced and perceived. Each of the essays responds to the growing interest in studies on Tokyo with a literary-cultural orientation.

Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City is a collection of eight essays that explore Tokyo urban space from the perspective of memory in works of the imagination-novels, short stories, poetry, essays, and films. Written by scholars of Japanese studies based in England, Germany, Japan, and the United States, the book focuses on texts produced in Japan since the 1980s. The closing years of the Showa period (1926-1989) were a watershed decade of spatial transformation in Tokyo. It was also a time (in Japan, as elsewhere) when conversations about the nature of memory-historical, cultural, collective, and individual-intensified. The contributors to the volume share the view that works of the imagination are constitutive elements of how cities are experienced and perceived. Each of the essays responds to the growing interest in studies on Tokyo with a literary-cultural orientation.