Log 3

Proposing a Project

working title

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Translating Disaster, Tweet by Tweet:

Post-3/11 World(re-)building in Pebbles of Poetry/Shi no Tsubute

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introduction

Wago Ryoichi’s Pebbles of Poetry is a collection of his Tweets that documented his experience in the aftermath of the March 11, 2011 (referred to as 3/11) Triple Disaster in Japan, which involved an earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis.

地震

earthquake

じしん

source: Encyclopedia Britannica

source: National Centers for Environmental Information (NOAA)

source: International Recovery Platform

source: Science Magazine

津波

tsunami

つなみ

source: Brookings Institution

source: Nature

source: National Geographic

source: Electrochemical Society

原子力発電所事故

nuclear disaster

げんしりょくはつでんしょじこ

source: BBC

source: Climate Action

source: NPR

source: Financial Times

In his short, yet poetically resonant tweets, Wago details the physical rebuilding of the world around him post-disaster, but also chronicles his personal reflections, emotions, and pain in real time. Not only does this work serve as an intimate study of how humans and human communities respond to natural disasters, but it also highlights the evolution of thoughts and feelings over time as they shift, fade, and cement.

compiled book form

preserved original Twitter stream

I aim to explore how disaster poetry as a genre functions as a form of worldbuilding, of making sense of a destroyed world, and rebuilding it back up again. I want to look at how the lines of poetry aim to reconstruct human relationships (both through Wago’s anecdotes with his neighbors, but also through his ever-growing Twitter followership) and how conventions of Japanese language are manipulated to reimagine daily life in the aftermath of disaster.

Comparing Translations

In order to build on other scholars, I would like to introduce comparative literature analysis that has been absent from the scholarly discourse, bringing a bilingual perspective that reshapes the meaning of the text, and how translation itself is a method in worldbuilding, of allowing a new world to understand another one.

Another underexplored element of Wago Ryoichi’s poetry is the Twitter format itself, as Wago’s poetry is unique in its being timestamped, fragmented, and spatially constrained by 140-character limits. I would like to analyze the medium of Twitter and social media as a form of disaster poetry in and of itself, encapsulating thematically crisis, uncertainty, and immediacy.

Twitter Medium

humanistic research questions and methods

The Question:

My question is twofold, revolving around the human experience in the aftermath of disaster. First, I ask: How does Wago Ryoichi’s disaster poetry, Pebbles of Poetry, document the individual and collective responses toward rebuilding their destroyed world? Second, I explore: In what ways does his work reflect on the reconstruction of human relationships, community, and daily life post-crisis?

These questions are rooted in the field of humanities. There is a tradition in the humanities of exploring how people make meaning from suffering, and how art and literature specifically become vehicles for not only emotional and social recordkeeping, but reflection. The humanities aim to uncover the values, beliefs, and shared experiences that shape cultures and humankind over time, and Wago’s poetry inr response to the 3/11 Disaster serves as a model for this process. Through a close reading of his poetry, I want to interpret how the text showcases both pain and resilience following disaster, and how interpersonal relationships are exemplified both in Wago’s anecdotes and in his larger Twitter community. Using this methodology, I believe this will uncover how disaster writing functions as a mode of rebuilding the human spirit and imagining a new future.

What methods of disciplinary analysis will you apply in your analysis?

I would like to primarily apply literary (specifically, poetic) analysis of the text. I also intend to incorporate comparative analysis between the original Japanese and the English translation to examine how meaning, tone, and emotion shift across languages. If there is space, I think my paper would also benefit from a cultural analysis, specifically in the concepts of kizuna (social bonds) and nichijō (everyday life) as there was abundant dialogue in post-disaster Japan that are also echoed in Pebbles of Poetry.

How can you give others an idea about what other scholars have said and how your project combines, expands upon, differs from, or fills a gap in existing scholarly interpretations?

From conducting an initial survey of the scholarly discourse surrounding Pebbles of Poetry, these were my findings about the current scholarly landscape:

How Disaster Literature Captures Trauma

Linda Flores’s “Matrices of Time, Space, and Text: Intertextuality and Trauma in Two 3.11 Narratives,”

Tong King Lee’s “Semiotics of Disaster: Writing in the Aftermath of Japan’s 3/11."

How Poetic Style Influences Social Praxis

Takushi Odagiri’s “The End of Literature and the Beginning of Praxis: Wagō Ryōichi’s Pebbles of Poetry”

Exploring the Cultural Concept of Kizuna

(Authentic or Constructed in Post-3/11 Japan?)

Tamaki Tokita’s “The Post-3/11 Quest for True Kizuna - Shi No Tsubute by Wagō Ryōichi and Kamisama 2011 by Kawakami Hiromi.”

As I construct my project, I want to combine, expand upon, differ from, or fill a gap in existing scholarly interpretations. These are my initial ideas on how to approach this:

Translation

(a gap in the scholarly discourse)

From my research, it seems that no one has yet analyzed how translation itself functions as part of the worldbuilding of this disaster narrative. I could utilize a comparative analysis on how meaning and tone shift between Wago Ryoichi’s original Japanese poetry and Jeffrey Angles’s English translation.

Social Media Form

(an addition to discussions of poetic form)

A very underexplored element is the Twitter format of Wago’s poetry. His unique medium makes the lines of his poetry confined to a character limit, and they are precisely timestamped, and often present fragmented thoughts. These are not only literary techniques, but also necessities that arise from a digital platform. I could formulate an argument about how social media and Twitter function themselves as embodying the disaster literature genre in its immediacy and fragmentedness.

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interpretation

My tentative interpretative argument is that Pebbles of Poetry is a disaster narrative that depicts a raw, unfiltered, and broken world after disaster and is effective in doing so through its social media form. The fact that Wago Ryoichi wrote these poems live on Twitter, with time-stamps, line breaks, and character limitations retained when compiled into a collection, means that the form mirrors the disorientedness and urgency of a stunted daily life after experiencing disaster. This format also allows audiences to live through the disaster in real time, allowing for an extra layer of human connection and empathy throughout times of disaster. The Twitter format also uniquely situates Wago’s work as a dynamic, breathing, living work, distinct from the polished, retrospective disaster narratives that followed.

When the poem is translated into English, the medium of language changes the way that Wago’s poem is interpreted. While Wago’s original Japanese implicity communicates a hidden, suppressed anger, the English syntax and word forms seem to smooth over and lose a form of anger. Additionally, Wago’s manipulation of the Japanese language— use of katakana instead of kanji, play on words using homonyms, and nuanced conjunctive particles—do not carry over when translated into English. As a result, the English translation reads more composed and reflexive, not due to any failure of the translator, but because the affordances of each language shape meaning differently. Translation does not simply make literature accessible internationally, but also builds a new world of meaning. I argue that Pebbles of Poetry posits that worldbuilding is not only shaped by what is said (the poetic themes and forms) but also how it is said, whether that be in different mediums (Twitter, social media) or in different languages. Both medium and language are active in worldbuilding, and shaping how disaster is lived, processed, and shared by humankind.

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