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Paper short abstract

The presentation explores Yoko Tawada’s ecopoetics after 3.11. Focusing on The Emissary and the poem "Hamlet not See", I argue that the language crisis mirrors the crisis of the environment. Tawada renders radiation legible, shifting the literary imagination to meet the reality of the Anthropocene.

Paper long abstract

The triple catastrophe of March 11, 2011, in Japan marked a tectonic shift not only in the thematic concerns of Japanese writers but also in the hermeneutics of reading "after the disaster." Yoko Tawada stands as a pivotal figure who seeks to articulate the ineffable and challenge the anthropocentric failures that precipitated the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, as well as the practices of exploitation driving ecological decay.

In Tawada’s works, language becomes a critical site of struggle: it must render the invisible reality of radiation and pollution into a legible vocabulary, while simultaneously preserving cultural heritage beyond the vanishing borders of a "motherland." For Tawada, linguistic production is inextricably linked to the "overseas"—a concept reflected in her title Überseezungen (a play on "overseas tongues" and "translation"). Consequently, the ecological crisis that isolates the Japanese archipelago is mirrored by a crisis of language, where the only viable path toward representation appears to come from an exophonic perspective.

The new reality of the Anthropocene poses radical questions regarding representability that can only be addressed through a reconfigured vocabulary and international collaboration.

This presentation investigates the symbolism of marine pollution and radioactive landscapes in several of Tawada’s post-disaster works, most notably the poem “Hamlet no See” and her dystopian novel The Emissary. By analyzing these texts, I argue that Tawada’s ecopoetics functions as a necessary expansion of the literary imagination in a world fundamentally altered by ecological collapse.