Le déluge sans le Japon : aléa naturel et catastrophe dans la culture japonaise

Abstract

There is no philosophical notion of catastrophic events due to natural causes that structures Japanese culture. The “sinking of Japan” described in contemporary science fiction literature and movies has more to do with the cathartic process stemming from military defeat and atomic bombings in 1945. There is no Flood myth in Shintō mythology. The legend of Kōraijima (Gotō islands, Nagasaki prefecture), which relates the sinking of a small island and its inhabitants, mixes beliefs adopted from China and Shintō, but in particular incorporates Biblical accounts read by the region’s Christians who went into hiding during the Tokugawa period.

Keywords

• Nature
• Natural Disaster
• Submersion
• Flood
• Apocalypse
• Mythology