The Coronavirus Pandemic in Japanese Literature and Popular Culture

This book is the first collection of English literature on Japanese responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, exploring how the pandemic has disrupted a post-industrial society and revived memories of past disasters. It will interest researchers and students in Japanese culture, literature, and pandemic studies.

Format: Hardback
Length: 170 pages
Publication date: 01 September 2023
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

This comprehensive collection is the first book-length exploration of Japanese literary and popular cultural responses to the coronavirus pandemic in English. By challenging the notion that COVID-19 represents an unprecedented catastrophe, this book situates the global public health crisis and the ensuing social and political turmoil within a post-industrial society that has weathered numerous significant disruptions and disasters. Spanning a range of media, from published fiction by renowned authors to anonymous accounts on social media, from network TV shows to content by Virtual YouTubers (VTubers), this volume offers timely representations of the coronavirus and its impact on individual and social lives across high and low cultural landscapes. Whether personal or top-down, these narratives strive to comprehend the unexpected disruption of modern linear progress. Through a collective examination of the paradoxes underlying the new normal of Japanese society, this book demonstrates how the narratives surrounding coronavirus are not merely neo- but rather re-turning to the past, revealing existing problems, and reclaiming memories lost and lessons forgotten.

This edited volume will appeal to scholars and students specializing in Japanese culture and society, Japanese literature, and pandemic studies.

Weight: 490g
Dimension: 234 x 156 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9781032376356