Reading response 2 Oh No, There Goes Tokyo: Recreational Apocalypse and the City in Postwar Japanese Popular Culture
Zhao Meijing
3036126991
This article mainly discusses the reasons and functions of the disaster culture in Japan from post-World War II to today.
Tokyo has been permanently destroyed in many artworks. It mirrored Tokyo’s historical vulnerability to catastrophe, especially the trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the post-World War II period, the Japanese regarded life as complete insecurity. The successful resistance to monsters was the escape from failure in history. However, repeating the catastrophe made audiences less concerned about the reality. On the one hand, it erased anxiety; on the other hand, it entertained severe crises.
After the war, the apocalypse tracked Japan’s anxieties. During the 1950s to the 1970s, the developing economy made people confident about the future. The rapidly developing city would renew itself automatically, showing it was powerful and could always survive in extreme disasters. After the bubble economy, the giant monsters/disasters destroyed the inflating economy’s landmarks (i.e., skyscrapers and new construction projects). At the same time, artists missed the rapidly developing Japan, but they still believed the future was bright. After facing real-life disasters, they treated the disaster culture as a recovery for the citizens.
From my point of view, disaster culture is a materialistic expression of negative culture. Instead of submerging in the city and becoming part of the urban machine, people can look down on the city and ravage it. Is this apathy indicative of a growing indifference between the individual and the city? In the wake of today’s global-scale disaster movies, how do people vent stronger emotions?