Visualising Nuclear Futurism and Narrating Queer Futurity in Yanobe Kenji's The Sun Child and Tawada Yōko's The Emissary. Issue 3 (3rd July 2022)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Otsuki, Tomoe
• Is Part Of: Asian studies review. Volume 46:Issue 3(2022)
• Page Start: 455
• Page End: 472
• Publication Date: 2022-07-03
• Subjects: Fukushima -- post-3/11 literature -- Yanobe Kenji -- The Sun Child -- Tawada Yōko -- The Emissary -- developmentalist idea of futurity -- reproductive futurism -- queer futurity; Asia -- Study and teaching -- Australia -- Periodicals; 950.05
• DOI: 10.1080/10357823.2020.1849027
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1035-7823

Abstract

ABSTRACT: This article takes up the notion of the "child redeemer" to explore how the future in contemporary Japan has been depicted or represented in post-3/11 art and literature via the deployment of the figure of the child. In particular, it focusses on the statue called The Sun Child created by Yanobe Kenji in 2012, and the novel The Emissary [ Kentōshi ] written by Tawada Yōko in 2014. Both Yanobe and Tawada respond to the Fukushima nuclear disaster by using the figure of the child as a means of imagining and representing a future for Japan in the aftermath of environmental crisis. However, these two texts (visual and literary) imagine starkly different kinds of futurity as they extrapolate both foreseeable and unforeseeable futures through this child figure. I draw upon Lee Edelman's queer theory of "reproductive futurism" and José E. Muñoz's notion of "queer futurity" to analyse how Yanobe and Tawada attempt to translate the precarious future emerging in the aftermath of the Fukushima nuclear catastrophe into their visual and literary works. I argue that The Sun Child reiterates a developmentalist ideology of futurity, whereas The Emissary portrays an alternative futurity, imagining new ways of living in the Anthropocene.