The natural and man-made cataclysmic events of the 11th March 2011 have dramatically altered the status quo of contemporary Japanese society. While much has been written about social, political, economic, and technical aspects of the disaster, this volume represents the first in-depth exploration of cultural responses to the devastating tsunami, and in particular the ongoing nuclear disaster of Fukushima. It analyses examples from literature, poetry, manga, theatre, art photography, documentary and fiction film, and popular music. By scrutinizing various media narratives and taking into account national and local perspectives, it sheds light on cultural texts of power, politics, and space.

Barbara Geilhorn is a JSPS-postdoctoral fellow based at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. Her publications include Enacting Culture: Japanese Theater in Historical and Modern Contexts, co-edited with Eike Grossmann (iudicium, 2012).

Kristina Iwata-Weickgenannt is an Associate Professor of Japanese modern literature at Nagoya University, Japan. Her recent publications include Visions of Precarity in Japanese Popular Culture and Literature, co-edited with Roman Rosenbaum (Routledge 2015).

1. Negotiating Nuclear Disaster: an Introduction
2. Literature Maps Disaster: The Contending Narratives of 3.11 Fiction
3. Summertime Blues: Musical Critique in the Aftermaths of Japan's 'Dark Spring'
4. Subversion and Nostalgia in Art Photography of the Fukushima Disaster
5. Uncanny Anxiety: Literature after Fukushima
6. Problematizing Life: Documentary Films on the 3.11 Nuclear Catastrophe
7. Gendering 'Fukushima': Resistance, Self-responsibility, and Female Hysteria in Sono Sion's Land of Hope
8. Antigone in Japan: Life and Death in 'Fukushima'
9. Poetry in an Era of Nuclear Power: Three Poetic Responses to Fukushima
10. Challenging Reality with Fiction: Imagining Alternative Readings of Japanese Society in Post-Fukushima Theatre
11. Oishinbo's Fukushima Elegy: Grasping for the truth about radioactivity in a food manga
12. The Politics of the Senses: Takayama Akira's Atomized Theatre after Fukushima