Earthquake Nationalism in the Land of Catfish: Earthquakes, People, and Popular Culture in Japan.

This paper is based on my ongoing research that was inspired by Japan's recent catastrophes. Now that the 2011 disasters have added another dimension to Japanese society, it is essential to rethink Japan as an earthquake nation and to pay close attention to the effect of earthquakes on various aspects of Japanese culture and society. I explore modern Japanese culture in terms of its relation to earthquakes and discuss the formation of earthquake nationalism through an examination of the history of earthquakes, myths, and legends, as well as media and literary representations of earthquakes. I also discuss nuclear issues in relation to the Fukushima nuclear meltdown accident. Postwar Japan's nuclear development involves not only its international politics but also center-periphery power dynamics between Tokyo and the local host towns of nuclear power plants in which I see the friction (or literally, the "power" struggle) between Japan's earthquake nationalism and the formation of a nuclear empire. The purpose of this paper is to offer a new aspect of modern Japan's cultural formation and to introduce a new dimension of Japanese cultural studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]