Eco-Disasters in Japanese Cinema

Eco-Disasters in Japanese Cinema explores disaster as a powerful means for addressing environmental crises. It is the first volume dedicated to a multi-genre analysis of environmental themes in Japanese cinema. The films examined cover 1954-2020 and include documentaries, monster films, cult films, studio blockbusters, and activist cinema. The chapters highlight important moments in disaster ecocinema, introduce films not well known outside of Japan, and analyze films not previously read through an environmental lens. Chapters are organized under intersecting themes that address the slow and fast violence of local and planetary environmental destruction: toxicscapes, contaminated futures and childhoods, nuclear anxiety and violence, and ruined and apocalyptic landscapes. This volume showcases a range of directors, eras, audiences, and genres and illustrates the profound diversity of Japanese films that feature systemic assaults on the environment.

Rachel DiNitto is a Professor of Japanese literary and cultural studies at University of Oregon, with a focus on the nuclear environmental humanities. She researches contemporary cultural production (literature, film, manga) about the 2011 triple disaster in Japan. Her book, Fukushima Fiction: The Literary Landscape of Japan’s Triple Disaster won the Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Title in 2020. She has published on the films of this disaster and postwar Japan. See her work in The Asia-Pacific Journal, Japan Forum, and her chapter ＂Toxic Interdependencies: 3/11 Cinema＂ in The Japanese Cinema Book. She is working on a new environmental humanities monograph titled ＂Environmental Echoes and Nuclear Traces＂ that pairs post-Fukushima fiction with novels and short stories from earlier eras of environmental and nuclear harm.