Genealogy of disaster: the relation of disaster to fiction to politics in Postwar Japan

This thesis examines the relationship of disaster to fiction to politics in postwar Japan by using two works of fiction and two disasters as case studies. The first work of fiction is Ishimure Michiko's Paradise in the Sea of Sorrow: Our Minamata Disease. The second work is Ōe Kenzaburō's Somersault. The two works of fiction are analyzed for their relationship to the historical memory of their two corresponding disasters, Minamata Disease and the Subway Sarin Incident. By looking at these two works, I argue that fiction plays an important political role in postwar Japan by contesting dominant state and news media control of the narrative of the two disasters and thereby repoliticize the event. The literary analysis of the novels is supplemented with historical considerations of the change they played a role in creating. I demonstrate that this is critical in a postwar Japanese news media environment that provides little challenge to state narratives on disasters. Analysis of the novels is supplemented with considerations of the historical circumstances which both enabled and prevented the novels from provoking political change.