ABSTRACT
Religious scholar Shimazono Susumu touches upon 3/11 as he analyzes grief care and emphasizes the importance of providing grief care not only individually but collectively as well. This chapter examines Genyu Sokyu’s post-3/11 novel “Hikari no Yama” from the perspectives of individual and collective grieving. The narrator focuses his story on an old man, who does not evacuate but continues to live in Fukushima, and who later turns out to be his father. The first half of the novel pays special attention to the several years following 3/11, leading up to two apocalyptic events: the Great Tokyo Earthquake and Mt. Fuji’s eruption. The two events force people out of Tokyo to faraway prefectures, including Fukushima, which reversed the region’s depopulation and aging issues. It is of interest that both Genyu and Hashimoto reference Buddhist ideas in thinking through waste and hence about human-nonhuman relationships.
