Inquiry into social anxieties erupted through encounters with natural or man-made 'disasters.' Examine defining disasters of modern Japan - the encounter with the West, the imperialist war and subsequent defeat, nuclear bomb and the recent Fukushima meltdowns, earthquakes and tsunami, recession and its associated social malady. Reading through literature, films and popular culture as sites where fantasy and desire are materialized and projected in coping with these ineluctable catastrophes.
