Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses the messages of the TV drama and the eponymous children's book. They will also be compared on a text-linguistic level in terms of their intertexuality.

Paper long abstract:

Although it is characteristic of Japanese television dramas to tackle current social problems, there are very few dramas dealing directly with the 3.11 catastrophe, and most of them focus on the flood disaster. An exception to this pattern is the two-hour drama "Hula gâru to inu no Choko", broadcast by TV Tokyo on the fourth anniversary of the disaster. The drama is based on the eponymous children's book published in 2012 and tells the true story of a young Japanese hula dancer employed at the "Hawaiians" amusement park in the Fukushima prefecture. After the nuclear catastrophe, her family is evacuated from the exclusion zone and forced to leave their dog behind. The dancers perform hula dances in the refugee camps as a consolation to the victims of the disaster, and consequently embark on a nationwide tour to raise awareness about Fukushima. In the end, as a kind of a reward for the hula dancer, her dog Choco is rescued.

The viewers follow the story mainly from the perspective of the protagonist, however, the disparate stances of both victims and outsiders are also presented. The analysis aims to examine the messages that might be conveyed by the television drama and the children's book - and thus explicate the potential of the respective texts.

The television drama and the children's book, both of which are to be treated as "texts" in a wider sense, will also be compared on a text-linguistic level in terms of their intertextuality. The analysis will not only consider the linguistic aspects of the texts, but also the layout and photographs.

The question to be posed is: How can texts of this sort contribute to preserving memories of the catastrophe, as well as to presenting diverse strategies and ways to cope with it? The analysis of both case studies allows for a discussion about the possibilities and boundaries of treating politically charged topics within popular culture.