Towards a culture of responsibility – relating Fukushima, Chernobyl, and the atomic bombings in Setoyama Misaki’s theatre

Abstract Through a close reading of two post-Fukushima plays by Setoyama Misaki, this article examines the potential of theatre to shape cultural memory and raise critical awareness. The playwright-director is known for exploring contentious issues in Japanese society based on in-depth interviews conducted with the people concerned. Among the various art works addressing the Fukushima nuclear disaster, her plays are rare in exposing how intricately the roles of victim and perpetrator are entangled. Setoyama’s plays raise the question of responsibility so crucial to processing cultural trauma and to triggering traumatogenic change. Relating the Fukushima nuclear disaster to the atomic bombings and the Chernobyl disaster, Setoyama opposes national discourses of a spatially and temporally limited disaster to construct 3.11 as a disaster on a global scale. Almost ten years after the calamity, a broad public debate to attribute responsibility for the nuclear disaster has not yet begun. And with the shift of national attention to the Tokyo Olympics and the global coronavirus pandemic, a rare window of opportunity for transformation in Japanese society is closed. Setoyama’s plays go far beyond the criticism of nuclear power and touch upon essential problems in Japanese society, such as the lack of an open culture of discussion and the strong suppression of dissenting voices, as my analysis will show.