日本的凄惶与轻松

IS IT OVER?

2010年3月11日，万里之外的纽约，我在半睡半醒中从收音机里听到日本发生了里氏九级的地震。在接下来的一周，地震、海啸和核事故成了国际新闻的主要内容，其他的消息相较之下慢慢淡去。

In his reflections on Japan after the 3/11 earthquake,Jonathan Bach notes visceral and imaginary continuities between the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant meltdown and the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.At the level of everyday life,some Tokyo residents evacuated their city,others began to use Geiger counters;these activities clearly reiternated those of postwar reconstruction.At the level of the cultural imaginary,the diaster has entered into dialogue with the memory of the war,especially the bombings,evoking and provoking,reshaping and reliving key junctures of national and personal trauma.Thus,in the aftermath of the collapse of high tech and super-modern Tokyo,Bach suggests that the preparedness ethos that had characterized postwar Japanese society has become more dominant,hegemonic in the sense that the residents of Japan's most important mega-city are hunkering down in preparation for the next catastrophe.