This volume is the first book-length collection on Japanese literary and popular cultural responses to the coronavirus pandemic in English.

Disrupting the narrative of COVID-19 as a catastrophe without precedent, this book contextualizes the COVID-19 global public health crisis and pandemic-induced social and political turbulence in a post-industrial society that has withstood multiple major destructions and disasters. From published fiction by major authors to anonymous accounts on social media, from network TV shows to contents by Virtual YouTubers (VTubers), in both "high" and "low" culturescapes, timely representations of coronavirus and individual and social livings under its impact emerge. These narratives, either personal or top-down, all endeavor to fathom this unexpected disruption of modern linear progress. Exploring the paradoxes underlying the "new normal" of Japanese society of the present day, the book collectively demonstrates how the narratives of coronavirus are not "neo-" but "re-": returning to the past, revealing existing problems and reclaiming memories lost and lessons forgotten.

This edited volume will be of interest to researchers and students in the fields of Japanese culture and society, Japanese literature, and pandemic studies.

Author: Mina Qiao
Binding Type: Hardcover
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 09/01/2023
Series: Routledge Contemporary Japan
Pages: 170
Weight: 0.95lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.44d
ISBN: 9781032376356

About the Author

Mina Qiao teaches Japanese literature at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Her recent publications include Into the Fantastical Spaces of Contemporary Japanese Literature (2022, Lexington).