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Managing The Days: Personal Responsibility and the Fukushima Nuclear Disaster

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

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Abstract

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The recently released eight-part Japanese docudrama THE DAYS (Netflix 2023) ostensibly concerns the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami, nuclear reactor explosions and subsequent meltdowns at Fukushima. We highlight the problematic rendering of this particular Fukushima screen history by analysing THE DAYS' narrative veracity and reliance on ‘heroic’ disaster tropes, absent-presences, the glossing over of the radiological legacy, and the context of related nuclear accident teledramas and docudrama re-enactments.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2023

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