Our Fukushima, Our Earth: Nuclear Protest Poetry Following Fukushima

After the 2011 disasters, virtually every major poet in Japan, especially those close to Fukushima, felt the need to respond to the disasters through poetry. In fact, because of the brevity and ease of publishing poetry, it was the first major artistic genre to respond to the disasters. This chapter addresses the exponential growth of published poetry about 3.11 and offers a rigorous reexamination of the ways poets are discussing and thinking about Fukushima. It focuses especially on the recent work of two Fukushima-born poets, Wagō Ryōichi and Wakamatsu Jōtarō, both of whom emerged as central figures in the protest poetry movement and used their position as poets to speak about Fukushima on the world stage.