Visual Representations and Disaster Narratives As Social Practices

Visual media play a crucial role in shaping how disasters are remembered, interpreted, and communicated across generations. From children's picture books and kamishibai (Japanese paper theatre) to manga and anime, visual narratives offer powerful means of representing experiences difficult to express through words alone. Beyond documenting loss and destruction, they convey emotions, foster empathy, preserve local knowledge, and contribute to recovery and resilience processes.

Focusing on visual disaster narratives in Japan, this panel explores how different forms of visual storytelling shape public understandings of disasters, influence memory formation, and contribute to disaster education and risk reduction. Highlighting stories of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster, particular attention is paid to ways visual narratives make complex and traumatic experiences accessible, creating spaces for dialogue, reflection, and learning.

The panel considers the production of visual narratives as a social and emotional practice, including how the creation, reading and sharing of picture books and kamishibai can support coping, meaning-making, and community rebuilding among disaster survivors. Analysis of disaster representations in manga and anime highlights how difficult topics such as disaster preparedness can be made accessible. Examining both the content and creation of visual media, the panel highlights their significance as tools for memory work, emotional recovery, and public engagement.

Synthesizing perspectives from disaster studies, anthropology, history, education, and psychology, this panel advances interdisciplinary discourse on the role of visual culture in shaping disaster narratives, collective memory, and cultures of preparedness and resilience in contemporary societies.