Jie Zou

Jie Zou

December 31, 2025

Post-3.11 literature, Literary themes, Artistic characteristics.

Following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, the Japanese literary world witnessed a significant emergence of literary works set against the backdrop of the massive disaster, a body of work now often referred to as "Post-3.11 Literature." This corpus is not only substantial in volume but also thematically diverse, generally divisible into four major thematic categories: trauma and healing from the disaster, the nuclear catastrophe and ecological crisis, critique of social realities, and procreative anxiety. While each of these thematic expressions has its distinct focus, they collectively reflect the social characteristics of post-3.11 Japan and the psychological state of its people in the aftermath. Ultimately, Post-3.11 Literature gives voice to the psychological trauma experienced by the Japanese populace, mirrors the new social dynamics of the "Post-3.11 Era," and has made a valuable contribution to the global corpus of disaster literature.

© 2025, the Authors. Published by ISCCAC

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