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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines surrealism and symbolism in Ishizawa Mai’s Kai ni tsuzuku basho nite (2021), set in Europe after the Covid-19 lockdowns and a “return” to a pre-pandemic sense of normality. It employs post-apocalyptic theories to explore the novel’s portrayal of a post-catastrophe sense of time.

Paper long abstract:

Ishizawa Mai’s 2021 Akutagawa prize-winning novel Kai ni tsuzuku basho nite (In a place following the seashells) is set in Europe after the lifting of Covid-19 lockdown regulations, as much of the world attempts a return to a pre-pandemic sense of normality. The pandemic serves as an opportunity for reflection on memories of the 3.11 disaster and its aftermath ten years after it occurred. Moreover, it highlights the challenges—or perhaps impossibility—of such “returns” in the wake of traumatic events. A palimpsestic work of fiction characterised by the fragmentation of time and a convoluted narrative arc, Kai ni tsuzuku basho nite simultaneously engages and frustrates the reader, whose natural inclination is to weave together the disparate pieces of the story. Ishizawa’s novel employs surrealism (“ghosts”) as well as symbolism (for example, the eponymous seashells in the title). Figures from the past—including those believed to have died in the tsunami—appear, merging with the narrator’s present, such that it becomes increasingly difficult to disentangle fantasy from reality. The novel’s presentation of “presence” and “absence”, and the worlds of the “real” and the “unreal” provoke discussions of how, in the wake of historical trauma, we navigate the critical spaces between traumatic events and these uneasy “returns” to the quotidian. Ishizawa’s Kai ni tsuzuku basho nite portrays the period following a catastrophe as a void that is both muddled and discontinuous, ultimately illustrating the impossibility of fully participating in “normal” life after trauma. The novel suggests, as James Berger has argued in his analysis of post-apocalyptic events, that even after the initial traumatic event, there are still profound lingering effects, so-called “aftermaths and remainders” (1999). This paper explores these representations of the surreal and the symbolic in Ishizawa’s novel as “remainders” and examines their impact on a post-catastrophe sense of time, especially given the critical distance between the narrative and the traumatic events of March 11, 2011, and its European post-Covid lockdown setting.