Paper short abstract:

Asai Inio's manga Dead Dead Demons creates an alternate world where a UFO over Tokyo sends out waves of "invaders." However, associations between the alien invaders and WWII-era Japan hint that the invasion to be feared the most is that of lingering ideology from Japan's colonial past.

Paper long abstract:

Asai Inio, of Oyasumi Punpun fame, is known for experimental and off-beat manga. In his current serialization Deddo Deddo Dēmonzu De De De De Desutorakushon (Dead Dead Demons De De De De Destruction), he moves to a more realistic visual style, but the story remains experimental and off-beat. The manga creates an alternate-present world where a UFO hovers over Tokyo (after a disastrous failed invasion that killed tens of thousands) and sends out waves of "invaders." However, this ongoing invasion and the military response to it have already become routinized, mere background noise to the lives of the characters. I argue that this text metaphorically summons many present-day anxieties: the 3-11 triple disasters, conservative politics and remilitarization, immigration and anti-immigration sentiment, the dehumanizing effects of technology and social media, the increasing power and reach of large corporations, etc. However, the metaphors are not one-dimensional and straightforward, and the text mixes them for interesting effects. Most importantly, it pointedly creates associations between the alien "invaders" and WWII-era Japan and the Japanese imperial project. It therefore summons anxieties about immigration, but uses those anxieties to propose that the invasion to be feared the most is the invasive persistence of unexamined or lingering ideology from Japan's colonial past in peaceful present-day Japan. Ironically, since this past is unexamined, in reacting against it Japan risks sliding back into the very militarism and xenophobia that characterized it.

Paper short abstract:

This presentation analyses a series of 19 criticisms by Abe Kazushige, which appeared after 9:11. Their narrative experiments problematize the critic's quest for finding a voice after trauma through infinitely delaying speaking about the tragedy and, ultimately, not speaking about it all.

Paper long abstract:

Few people outside of Japan know that multiple award-winning fiction writer Abe Kazushige is also a prolific film critic. At the same time, research has not paid any attention to the author's criticisms at all. This presentation closes this gap by analysing 19 film criticisms published serially from 2002-2004 in the wake of 9:11. Instead of being an orthodox analysis of films, the series calls itself an 'experiment in narrating'. The presentation examines how the criticisms incorporate characteristic narrative techniques from the author's fiction in order to problematize linguistic expression after the trauma of 9:11 as a global watershed. By invoking the figure of a first person unreliable narrator and by using repetition, the series delays its own plot, which is to critique current films. Instead, an undecided subject 'Abe Kazushige' tells us about his listlessness and questions the relevance of film criticism at all. In doing so, the presentation argues that, rather than actually finding a voice, the series makes a problem of the quest for it by delaying speaking about the tragedy and, ultimately, not speaking about it all.

The presentation locates the criticisms' formal experiments within the literary theory of French theorist Roland Barthes. Barthes rejects limiting the language of criticism to one genre. This speaks to how the series' formal complications destabilize the boundary between criticism and literature and perform a general experimental 'writing', which Barthes calls écriture. Against this backdrop, the presentation suggests to move beyond restrictions of genre in literary scholarship generally, which tends to treat the non-fictional production of Japanese authors as secondary. Including an author's criticisms into an analysis of her/his fiction, and the other way round, will allow for a better understanding of either side and of her/his oeuvre in total.

Paper short abstract:

A paradigm shift from ‘victimhood’ to ‘survivor’ enables a new perspective on disaster literature. Investigating modes of survival in In the Zone challenges the understanding of disaster as a paralyzing event to frame it as a starting point for recovery from previous traumas.

Paper long abstract:

Victimhood is an idea often entrenched in several discourses about environmental disaster and its afterward effects on people and nature alike. Disaster stricken communities are shifted, by the media and social responses, to the realm of victimhood. Yet, the term and concept of victimhood bear negative connotations, confining those who are affected to a role of passivity, stillness, and inactivity. Hence, shifting the focus from the paralyzing character of victimhood to a more positive and affirming paradigm could both empower communities affected by disasters and provide a new analytical tool for ecocritical studies. Smith (2017) suggested a transition from the idea of victim to the concept of survivor ‘in terms of moving from a state of paralysis, hopelessness, and quiet desperation to one of agency, enablement, and willful resistance’ (2017). Thus, this paper investigates modes of surviving through the narrative voices for personal recovery, change, and compassion that are engendered by an environmental disaster. By way of an analysis of Taguchi Randy’s In the Zone 『ゾーンにて』this paper will challenge the understanding of disaster only as a victimizing event and will broaden the understanding of the idea of ‘survivor’ in this context. The characters in the four stories in In the Zone have, all in different ways, witnessed or have been affected by the 3.11 disaster. The nuclear disaster, however, rather than being a paralyzing experience, becomes a starting point to recover from - or as a way of reckoning with - previous traumas. The characters, who move in and out of the exclusion zone, despite being affected by the 3.11 events in different ways, are all survivors of some sort of traumatic experience, and the environmental disaster morphs into a force enabling them to find the strength to face their traumas. Highlighting that, in the end: ‘we are all survivors’ (Lindahl 2017).