Panel 1. Religion and Spirituality in Times of Crisis
-
What Determines When a Disaster Ends? Ways 3.11 is Articulated by Religious Activists
Levi McLaughlin, North Carolina State University
After the compound earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disasters that afflicted northeast Japan in March 2011—calamities best known as 3.11—religious activists were among the first to mobilize as aid providers. Some of these activists still provide material and spiritual relief in the region today. Long after government agencies and NGOs determined that their aid and reconstruction missions were complete, clerical and lay affiliates from Buddhist, Christian, Shintō, so-called “new religions” and other faith-based organizations continue transformingcaregiving initiatives that began ad hoc into dynamic institutional practices.
This presentation centers on one prominent example of 3.11 civic activism that exemplifies tensions that underlie the spiritual and religious, the public and political, and the personal and the institutional. I will discuss transformations of the Ganbarō Ishinomaki (Don’t Give Up, Ishinomaki) site in the neighborhood of Minamihama, coastal Miyagi Prefecture. The site began as a signboard with an encouraging message erected by a member of the controversial lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai on the ruins of his home. A community of religious and civic activists have transformed the site since 2011 into a shared pilgrimage destination, a center for neighborhood revitalization, and a means for local residents and participants from across the world to perpetuate awareness of the 3.11 tragedy through innovative educational and memorial practices. Ganbarō Ishinomaki exemplifies ways activists articulate themselves against the inexorable erasure of the tragic as they navigate competing temporalities constructed by disaster.
About the speaker
Levi McLaughlin is Professor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, North Carolina State University. He is co-author of Kōmeitō: Politics and Religion in Japan (IEAS Berkeley, 2014) and author of Soka Gakkai’s Human Revolution: The Rise of a Mimetic Nation in Modern Japan (University of Hawai`i Press, 2019; in Japanese from Kodansha, 2024), as well as numerous book chapters and articles on disaster, religion, politics, and other topics.
-
Temporalities of Ritualized Prayer in Post-Disaster Japan
Tim Graf, The University of Manchester
This paper explores temporalities of crisis and fear through the lens of Buddhist prayer rituals (kitō) for disaster prevention and crisis management in contemporary Japan. I will begin by presenting perspectives on the role of prayer rituals in response to the March 2011 disasters and COVID-19 in Japan. The second part contextualizes these findings beyond an isolated discussion of specific crisis moments, by showing that kitō is mostly practiced in times of peace and prosperity. A sense of urgency may emerge within the ritualized circuits of worship, even when there is no crisis to speak of. Disaster and recovery, as shall be shown, draw our attention to the diverse functions of prayer rituals as a means of crisis evocation and post-disaster care. The final part explores deep-seated institutional fears of kitō that continue to challenge sectarian identities in Sōtō Zen Buddhism, where kitō is neither prohibited nor fully accepted.
About the speaker
Tim Graf is a researcher of contemporary Japanese Buddhism. He holds a PhD in religious studies and an MA in Japanese studies from the University of Heidelberg. Since 2022, he has been teaching as a Lecturer in Japanese Studies at the University of Manchester, but he is expected to start a new position in Japan this spring. He previously served as the Associate Editor of the Japanese Journal of Religious Studies. Tim’s research interests focus on the interplay of religious practice and modern social change. He published articles and films on Buddhist disaster responses, mortuary practices, and prayer rituals in Japan.
-
Whose crisis? Response networks, calamities, and enduring precarities
Erica Baffelli, The University of Manchester
Religious mobilization—both by organizations and individual priests—following the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake has been extensively documented and analysed (Graf and Montrasio 2012; McLaughlin 2013). This paper examines how the networks and connections formed during the post-March 11 response have endured over time and how they have been mobilized in response to subsequent emergencies, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Specifically, it explores relationships between farmers in Tōhoku, the area of northeast Japan afflicted by the 2011 disasters, and a temple in a historically impoverished area of the Tokyo neighbourhood San’ya, whose priest had previously participated in disaster relief activities. Connections forged in the aftermath of disaster now facilitate the donation of rice from Tōhoku to be redistributed to low-income families in Tokyo. Rather than focusing solely on donations, however, the head priest and the organization of volunteers he has established emphasizes the concept of shared vulnerability and the creation of reciprocal relationships between volunteers and aid recipients.
This paper highlights persistent precarities inherent in these interdependent relationships as well as new conditions of marginalization and precarity brought about by emerging crises—ones that blur lines between those in need of help and those providing it.
About the speaker
Erica Baffelli is Professor of Japanese Studies at The University of Manchester (UK). Her research focuses on religion in contemporary Japan, particularly groups founded from the 1970s onwards. She has worked on topics including religion and media, new and minority religions, religion, gender and violence, Buddhism and emotions, Buddhism and social engagement. She currently the Principal Investigator on a Leverhulme Research Project on “Fear and Belonging in Minority Buddhist Communities” (2023-2027). She is also co-editor, with Michael Stausberg and Alexander Van Der Haven, of the open access publication Religious Minorities Online (De Gruyter).
Panel 2. Representing Environmental and Human Impact in Documentaries and Films
-
From the “Tohoku Trilogy” to the “Ecocriticism Trilogy”: the environmental and human impact in Hamaguchi’s cinema
Élise Domenach (Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis-Lumière)
By looking at excerpts of Hamaguchi and Sakai’s documentary films shot in Tohoku after 311 (in 2012-2013) and at three films Hamaguchi Ryusuke shot ten years later, in 2022-2023 (Walden / Evil Does Not Exist / Gift) my paper will discuss his continuous interest in the power of film to transform our perceptions of what binds us to others and to our world. Many movie fans where surprised with Evil Does Not Exist, when the film was released. They considered the film as an “ecocological fable”, a film with thesis, and that no one could expect such a film from Hamaguchi on the basis of his previous urban moral fictions. On the contrary, I intend to argue that Hamaguchi’s interest in filming human conversations (Happy Hour, Drive my Car), in creating a space of “listening and speaking (kiki-gatari)” within his films (in The Sound of the Waves, Voices from the Waves, Storytellers), was part of a long term reflexion on cinema’s power of recognition of our “environmental scepticism” and of our daily responses to it.
About the speaker
Élise Domenach is professor in film studies at Ecole Nationale Supérieure Louis-Lumière. She holds a PhD and Agregation in Philosophy. She participated in the edition and translation of Stanley Cavell’s philosophy in French by editing Stanley Cavell’s collection of essays Le cinéma nous rend-il meilleurs ? (Bayard, 2010) and co-translating A Pitch of Philosophy (Un ton pour la philosophie, with S. Laugier, Bayard, 2003) Le cinéma nous rend-il meilleurs ? (with Christian Fournier), Cities of Words (Philosophie des salles obscures, with Nathalie Ferron and Mathias Girel, Flammarion, 2011). As a film critic, she has been a member of the editorial board and contributor at Esprit and Positif for almost twenty years. Her researches are in the field of philosophy of film, environmental cinema and japanese ecocinema. She is the author of Stanley Cavell, le cinéma et le scepticisme (Presses Universitaires de France, 2011), Fukushima in Film. Voices from the Japanese Cinema (UTCP Booklet, Univ. Tokyo, 2015), Le Paradigme Fukushima au cinéma. Ce que voir veut dire (2011-2013) (Mimesis, 2022).
-
Echoes Resounding through Closed and Open Doors: Time, Place and Sound in Mokoto Shinkai’s Disaster Trilogy
Rayna Denison, Department of Film and Television, University of Bristol
When Makoto Shinkai’s anime feature film Your Name (Kimi no na wa, 2016) broke all box-office records in Japan, many remarked upon the unusual way the director combined body-swap comedy with a disaster narrative. In his subsequent films, Weathering with You (Tenki no ko, 2019) and Suzume (Suzume no tojimari, 2022), Shinkai has slowly revealed a trilogy of disaster-centred anime films whose purpose has been to reflect, refract and slowly critique aspects of Japan’s responses to the triple disaster that the country on 11 March 2011. In this paper, I examine how Shinkai has played with sound, time and real locations in Japan to prompt questions about the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster. Using a mixture of eco-film theory, textual analysis and reception studies, I examine Shinkai’s varying thematic treatment of disaster and how he has built towards overt discussion of 3/11 over time and across his recent trilogy of animated films.
About the speaker
Rayna Denison is Professor of Film and Digital Arts and Head of Department for Film and Television at the Unversity of Bristol. She is an expert in animation studies and contemporary Japanese cinema. He books include Anime: A Critical Introduction(Bloomsbury Academic 2015) and Studio Ghibli: An Industrial History (2023). Rayna has also edited academic collections including Princess Mononoke: Understanding Studio Ghibli’s Monster Princess (Bloomsbury Academic 2018) and co-edited the Eisner Award nominated collected Superheroes on World Screens (University of Mississippi Press 2015). Rayna’s academic articles can be found in journals like the Journal of Cinema and Media Studies, Velvet Light Trap, Japan Forum and the International Journal of Cultural Studies.
-
Beyond Fukushima/3.11. Documentary as an Art of Healing
Keiko Courdy (Independent Artist and Filmmaker)
On March 11, 2011, as I watched the tsunami devastate the Tohoku coast from Paris, I felt an urgent, inexplicable need to be there. Japan is my second home, and I could not simply remain a distant observer. With a camera in hand, I traveled alone to north-eastern Japan, seeking to understand, to bear witness, and perhaps, to help in the only way I knew—write and film. What I encountered was beyond comprehension. Debris everywhere, towns totally erased from the map, cars and boats smashed in trees, cats turning wild around abandoned homes, survivors walking their dogs amid the debris, and on top of that, the fear of invisible radioactivity. Volunteers from the entire country were helping around the schools turned into shelters. Traumas could be felt everywhere in the silence of this new normality of destroyed homes and nuclear accident. They were told nuclear energy was safe. Filming became my way of listening, of honoring these stories, that official narratives often erased. A mother torn between safety and home, whispered the impossible question, *”If you were me, would you leave Fukushima? I made first a webdocumentary with 20 short films online, text, photos and interactive EMA (wooden plaques in Shrines to write a wish or prayer) allowing audiences worldwide to connect, to leave messages of support. This journey evolved into two feature documentary films « Beyond the Cloud*Yonaoshi 3.11″ and « The Invisible Island ». Fourteen years later, Fukushima is still not under control, black bags of contaminated soil pile up, and traumas persist. The release of contaminated water, the slow process of decommissioning, and the long-term health effects continue to shape lives. But I have also witnessed transformation—people reimagining their connection to energy, nature, and resilience itself. Documentary filmmaking is not just about recording history; it is an act of healing. Cinema creates a space where trauma can be acknowledged, where silence can break, where stories can be heard. It invites us to witness, to remember, and ultimately, to heal—together.
About the speaker
Keïko Courdy is a French filmmaker and media artist. She writes, directs and produces films, and new media installations, in France and Japan.
Doctor of the University of Tokyo, after studying film and theater at the University of Paris Sorbonne Nouvelle, she taught media performances for 3 years at Kyoto University of Arts and Design and led Onomatopia company in Tokyo and KI transdisciplinary creative structure in Paris.
Overwhelmed by the Fukushima disaster, she directed the film and webdocumentary BEYOND THE CLOUD ° Yonaoshi 3.11. She is currently preparing a new documentary on the power plant and its workers, as well as a fiction film happening also in Fukushima.
For over 15 years, she regularly worked as a freelance for Japanese TV NHK and FUJI. She also staged events for major brands with Japanese communications companies Hakuhodo and Asatsu DK.
Panel 3. The Role of the Arts in Healing and Memory
-
Reweaving the Visible and Invisible After the Disaster: Post-Fukushima Artists
Clélia Zernik (Beaux-arts de Paris, PSL)
The triple disaster of 11 March 2011 profoundly altered the landscape of the Tohoku coast and the lives of its inhabitants, introducing an unbridgeable gap between the before and after of the territory. The nuclear disaster also added a metaphysical rift between the visible and the invisible. On this coast facing the Pacific Ocean, the inversion of appearances in the Plato’s cave is re-enacted. What we see is only an illusion, and we have to ‘rise up’, not so much to a sky of Ideas, but to the invisible radioactive layer, to gain access to the true reality.
Faced with the catastrophe, visual artists are initially overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness. Many artists were stunned into paralysis. Others left to help the refugees, to clear away and clean up the rubble left by the tsunami, in a show of solidarity with no specific link to artistic creation. The urgent need is to sew up and reweave what has been broken and torn. In their artistic works, we find the same gesture of repair, of reweaving. More precisely, it is a matter of reweaving the past and the present, the visible and the invisible, the province of Tohoku and the capital Tokyo, humans and non-humans, surface and depth, here and elsewhere.
The artists are attempting to reweave and stitch together this scratched, flayed, raw world, to reconstruct its triple fabric – environmental, social and personal – with art as the care applied to this scar. This therapy through works of art presupposes the specific practice of surveying, beauty and double vision.
About the speaker
Clélia Zernik was a student at the Ecole Normale Supérieure. She holds an agrégation and a PhD in Aesthetics. She teaches Philosophy of art at the Beaux-Arts de Paris since 2011. Her first field of research was the relationship between art and science, as it is formulated by perception psychologists and phenomenologists (Perception-cinéma, Paris : Vrin, 2012; L’Œil et l’objectif, Paris : Vrin, 2014). Her research now focuses on film (Les Sept samouraïs d’Akira Kurosawa, Louvain : Yellow Now, 2013 ; L’Attrait du café, Louvain : Yellow Now, 2017, L’Attrait des fantômes, Louvain : Yellow Now, 2019) and Japanese contemporary art, which was made possible by research residencies at Waseda, Tokyo University and au Kokusai Nihon bunka kenkyū sentā, Kyoto.
-
Biographical Landscapes
Naoya HATAKEYAMA (Photographer)
Abstract coming soon
About the speaker
Naoya Hatakeyama studied under Kiyoji Otsuji at the University of Tsukuba’s School of Art and Design, and completed his postgraduate studies at the same university in 1984. Since then, he has been based in Tokyo and has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions in Japan and abroad. In 1997, he won the 22nd Kimura Ihei Award for his photobook Lime Works (Synergy Geometry, 1996), which depicts limestone mines, lime factories and cement plants scattered throughout Japan, and the exhibition “Maquettes” at Gallery NW House. Hatakeyama participated in the 49th Venice Biennale in 2001 and received the 42nd Mainichi Art Prize. In 2012, he received the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s Art Encouragement Prize for his large-scale solo exhibition “Natural Stories” (Tokyo Photographic Art Museum), which looked back on his career from his early works to Rikuzentakata, a portrait of his hometown after the Great East Japan Earthquake. At Venice Biennale’s 13th International Architecture Exhibition, he was awarded the Golden Lion for his participation in the Japanese Pavilion. His publications include BLAST (Shogakukan, 2013), Kesengawa (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2012), and Rikuzentakata 2011-2014 (Kawade Shobo Shinsha, 2015). His works are included in the collections of Tate, London; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; La Maison Européenne de la Photographie, Paris; Swiss Foundation for Photography, Winterthur; National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; Tokyo Photographic Art Museum; and the National Museum of Art, Osaka.
-
Stone, Balloon, or the Homeless Archive
Takeuchi Kota (Artist)
After the earthquake and nuclear accident in 2011, there are people who speak about the memories of the disaster and its long-term effects with a sense of responsibility and mission. In many cases the disaster victims themselves become storytellers as volunteers and also serve as guides for the affected areas. However, there are some people who find it difficult to continue with such activities due to the mental burden or so. I think that those with a strong sense of responsibility and who do not overlook various considerations are internalizing the conflict and division in society too much.
And numerous memorial halls, museums, disaster ruins, and memorial facilities were built in the north east coastal areas of Japan, under the slogan like ‘We never forget that.’ Permanent public facilities maintained by the governments can be seen as a social memory collection which is outsourced from each individual’s memories. I basically believe that such facilities are necessary. Because it is too heavy for each individual to bear all the memories.
However, sometimes I hear the voices of discomfort regarding their contents. It might meant public power is required to sustain the facilities, and it’s apart from individual’s realities.
Therefore, if art that has just been born exists in the intermediate realm between the individual and society, I expect it to play a role in complementing memories that cannot be fully held by either. It may be something out of individual memory and also outside the archive, which could be seen as like external memory or houseless archive.
With this in mind, I would like to talk about the stone monument visitings in the coastal area of Fukushima Prefecture, and the linkages I rediscovered between Fukushima coastal area and Hanford, US through balloon bombs in war history.
About the speaker
Kota Takeuchi is an interdisciplinary artist based in Japan. He is known as the representative agent of the “Finger Pointing Worker” who stood in front of the live camera at the TEPCO Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in disaster. He also has created installations based on traces of local history as stone monuments and a movie theater. In recent years, he has developed a series of works from archival and field research in the US/Japan of the history relates the balloon bombs that flew across the Pacific during World War II.
He and Finger Pointing Worker’s recent exhibition include “Waiting for the Wind “, Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo(2023; Tokyo), “JAPAN. BODY_PERFORM_LIVE: Resistance and Resilience in Japanese Contemporary Art”, Padiglione di Arte Contemporanea, (2022; Milan, Italy), “Splitting Atom”, CAC/SMK Centre for Contemporary Art and Energy & Technology Museum, (2020; Vilnius, Lithuania) . Takeuchi received the Tokyo Contemporary Art Award 2021-2023. Their works are included in the collections of Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, Kadist Foundation.