Semiotics of Disaster: Writing in the Aftermath of Japan's 3/11

Hideo Furukawa's Horses, Horses, in the End the Light Remains Pure is among the first literary responses to Fukushima's 3/11 triple disaster—Japan's worst catastrophe in decades. This article reflects on the formal characteristics of disaster writing by analyzing Furukawa's work with respect to its genre, temporal–spatial structure, and rhetorical style. It argues that the work's generic ambiguity, nonlinear narrative structure, and fractured, minimalist prose are paradoxically resonant with the gravity of the crisis that gave rise to the writing. The article also highlights the metatextuality of Horses, which is as much about writing disaster as it is about writing about writing disaster, and argues that this metatextuality affords Horses a self-reflexiveness that distinguishes it as a unique piece of ecocritical literature.