Thousand cranes: Representations of nuclear impact on the life and death of Japanese people

Abstract

It is clearly assessed that stressful life events have influence on human illness. It is essential to know the impact these events had on the representation of health/illness and life/death dichotomies in the collective memory and their importance in the setting in motion strategies of health promotion. The study of these representations might help us to understand the impact on the idea of health/illness. The aim of this paper is to analyse the representations of the process of falling ill or dying caused by two stressful life events occurred in Japan: The atomic bombings in Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the nuclear accident occurred in Fukushima. With a lapse of 60 years between them, both episodes are characterized by the nuclear impact on human health and social life. We propose a comparison of the representations of the concept of falling ill/dying through literary texts written by both Japanese and foreign authors. We will assess the cultural differences that exist in the fear of suffering: In the representations from Japanese people we find open-minded expressions of suffering as a path to acquire social knowledge, while in those from other countries, much of the focus is given to the heroism of others‘ suffering.