Description: Some leading Japan scholars present new research and thinking on the profound relationship between culture and disaster in Japan, focusing on the triple disasters of March 2011, the great quakes of 1995 and 1923, and the atomic bombings of 1945.
Brief description: Roy Starrs, Ph.D. (1986), University of British Columbia, teaches at University of Otago, New Zealand. His recent publications include Modernism and Japanese Culture (Palgrave, 2011) and, as editor, Politics and Religion in Modern Japan (Palgrave, 2011) and Rethinking Japanese Modernism (Brill, 2012).
Review Quotes: "Editor Starrs has put together a comprehensive look at the Japanese cultural response to the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima nuclear disasters. The book includes contributions from a diverse array of international scholars of Japanese religion, anthropology, intellectual history, literature, and popular music. The chapters cover a variety of themes, including the idea in many religions that disaster is "heaven's punishment," or tembatsu; responses to past disasters, including major earthquakes and the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and the importance of the use of Twitter by some of the most important post-3/11 poets. Summing Up: Recommended. Best for advanced students of intellectual and cultural history." - E. L. Hirsch, Providence College [This review appeared in the March 2015 issue of CHOICE. Copyright 2015 American Library Association]