Dickinson College Dickinson Scholar Faculty and Staff Publications By Year Faculty and Staff Publications 2017 Nature and Disaster in Murakami Haruki's after the quake Alex Bates Dickinson College Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.dickinson.edu/faculty_publications Part of the Japanese Studies Commons Recommended Citation Bates, Alex. "Nature and Disaster in Murakami Haruki's after the quake." In Ecocriticism in Japan, edited by Hisaaki Wake, Keijiro Suga, and Yuki Masami, 139-155. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2017. This article is brought to you for free and open access by Dickinson Scholar. It has been accepted for inclusion by an authorized administrator. For more information, please contact
[email protected]. Chapter 7 Nature and Disaster in Murakami Haruki' s after the quake Alex Bates Ishigami Genichiro was at his apartment in the Kobe foothills when the Great Hanshin Awaji earthquake struck on January 17, 1995.1 Like most people, he was awakened by the early-morning shaking and rushed outside. From the appearance of his neighborhood, at first he judged that it was not a major disaster. But that initial assessment changed as he ventured downtown. Passing the Japan Railways line that runs through the city, he began to see more damage: telephone poles broken in half, buildings collapsed, and an apartment building whose first floor had been crushed. Ishigami, a postwar author of Dazai Osamu's generation, recounted this experience in the April 1995 issue of the magazine Shincho, mere months after the disaster. The first part of the essay is replete with detailed descriptions of the crescendo of destruction as he moved through the city.