When the Tsunami Came to Shore

Roy Starrs, Ph.D. (1986), University of British Columbia, teaches at University of Otago, New Zealand. His recent publications include Modernism and Japanese Culture (Palgrave, 2011) and, as editor, Politics and Religion in Modern Japan (Palgrave, 2011) and Rethinking Japanese Modernism (Brill, 2012).

"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. Summing Up: Recommended. Best for advanced students of intellectual and cultural history." - E. L. Hirsch, Providence College [This review appeared in the March 2015 issue of CHOICE. Copyright 2015 American Library Association]

• List of IllustrationsIntroduction: Cultural Responses to Disaster in JapanRoy Starrs, University of OtagoPART ONE: CULTURAL RESPONSES TO THE TRIPLE DISASTER OF MARCH 20111 Nature’s Blessing, Nature’s Wrath: Shinto Responses to the Disasters of 2011Aike P. Rots, University of Oslo2 Gods, Dragons, Catfish, and Godzilla: Fragments for a History of Religious Views on Natural Disasters in JapanFabio Rambelli, University of California, Santa Barbara3 Buddhism: The Perfect Religion for Disasters?Brian Victoria, International Research Center for Japanese Studies4 Post-3/11 Literature in JapanRoman Rosenbaum, University of Sydney5 These Things Here and Now: Poetry in the Wake of 3/11Jeffrey Matthew Angles, Western Michigan University6 ‘Shake, Rattle and Roll’: Responses to 3/11 – Constructing Community Through Music and the Music IndustryHenry Johnson, University of Otago7 Learning that Emerges in Times of Trouble: a Few Cases from JapanJoy Hendry, Professor Emerita, Oxford Brookes University8 Observations on Geomentality in Japan and New ZealandKen Henshall, University of CanterburyPART 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 quakeJonathan Dil, Chuo University 10 Disaster and National Identity: The Textual Transformations of Japan SinksRebecca Suter, University of Sydney11 Belated Arrival in Political Transition: 1950s Films on Hiroshima and NagasakiYuko Shibata, University of Otago 12 Hiroshima Rages, Nagasaki Prays: Nagai Takashi’s Catholic Response to the Atomic BombingKevin M. Doak, Georgetown University13 The Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923 and PoetryLeith Morton, Tokyo Institute of Technology14 Proletarian Writers and the Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923Mats Karlsson, University of Sydney 15 The ‘Silenced Nexus’: Female Mediation in Modern Japanese Literature of DisasterJanice Brown, University of Colorado Boulder