Paper short abstract:

Drawing on media accounts and from a cultural studies approach, this paper seeks to shed light upon the role of script in new media communication. The focus is given to the occurrence of the katakana script in the net-poetry produced by Wagō Ryōichi after the Fukushima triple disaster.

Paper long abstract:

Drawing on media accounts and from a cultural studies approach, this paper seeks to shed light upon the role of script in new media communication. The focus is given to the occurrence of the katakana script in the net-poetry produced by Wagō Ryōichi and shared on the social networks in the aftermath of the Fukushima disaster. Katakana experimentations were actually one of the solutions adopted by hibakusha poets who tried to find a way to describe the atomic bombing experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In their works, katakana syllabary contributes to reproduce the alienation felt by atomic bombing survivors and their struggles to transpose into words the horror they witnessed. In the social media era the so called net-poetry by Wagō Ryōichi seems to follow a similar approach in trying to depict the three-fold catastrophe of earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown that shocked Japan on 11 March 2011. This Fukushima-born poet started his poetical production on the theme of the Daishinsai as soon as 16 March by updating his twitter profile in the form of poetical tweets. Astonishment, fear, anger, mourning, discouragement, and sorrow: Wagō's poetry is a perfect blend of poetical lyricism and reporting news from the stricken areas, using social network as a vehicle to cross time and country boundaries. The positive feedback manifested by web users was so favourable to the extent that Wagō's poetry was then properly published in several poetic collections. Among the different stylistic and linguistic techniques adopted by the poet, katakana syllabary comes to the fore as a poetical means to narrate the unimaginable: the attempt to deal with 3.11 trauma daily. This paper aims to investigate katakana occurrence in Wagō Ryōichi's net-poetry in order to stress a possible red thread to connect Hiroshima and Nagasaki genbaku experience to the one of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant fallout. Ultimately, the goal of the paper is to explore the role of social media in mediating disaster, along with its potential to transform a personal traumatic experience into a collective memory of 3.11 catastrophe.