Beyond Kizuna: Murakami Haruki on Disaster and Social Crisis

Abstract

The question of whether or not literature should focus on social and political commentary has been a particularly sensitive one in Japan since the early twentieth century; over the past hundred years, heated debates have unfolded over the relationship between junbungaku (“pure literature”), critical thinking, and social and political activism. In the aftermath of the Tohoku (Northeastern Japan) disaster of 11 March 2011, the issue was further complicated by the challenge posed to the role of literature as social commentary with the emergence of a number of other media that performed a similar function, particularly online social media. Japanese literary authors and critics found themselves engaged in the production of, and reflection on, a newly forming “literature of disaster” at a time in which the conceptual boundaries of “literature” itself were being questioned by new forms of expression that in many ways overlapped with traditional ones.