While Japan has had a long history of disaster movies, there was a period during the late twentieth century, at a time when the genre had regained popularity in Hollywood, that few were being made. However, from the start of the twenty-first century there has been a new wave of disaster movies. Building upon my previous study (‘Disaster Narratives by Design: Is Japan Different?‘) that compares the contents of Japanese and English-language disaster narratives, this article provides in-depth analysis of fourteen Japanese disaster narratives and considers the degree to which they include ‘continuity’ and ‘change’. In terms of ‘continuity’ and ‘change’, the paper will be concerned first with the way in which conventions found in disaster narratives are used and second with issues such as the portrayal of the protagonists, women, and the way in which some of the narratives handle actual historical events.
The article was originally published in French in Ebisu Études japonaises as « Les récits de catastrophe japonais du début du XXIe siècle : continuité et changement », Ebisu, 59 | 2022, p. 95-123. URL: http://journals.openedition.org/ebisu/6809 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/ebisu.6809
For further information about the article, see the page: Japanese Disaster Narratives of the Early Twenty-First Century: Continuity and Change
Christopher P. Hood 