Before the Quake: Disaster Anxiety in Television Adaptations of Murakami Haruki’s Fiction

Television has mediated the Japanese experience with disaster over the last century. Despite the widespread adoption of social media, terrestrial television remains a primary way for the country to receive news concerning earthquakes, tsunamis, and other natural and man-made catastrophes. Serialized on the Japan Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), in April 2025, the recent series After the quake (Jishin no ato de) addresses the impact of television on the Japanese perception of disaster. This series adapts four stories from All God’s children can dance (Kami no kodomo-tachi wa mina odoru [2000]), a collection of six stories Murakami penned in response to the Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995, which resulted in 6,433 fatalities and over $100 billion in damages in the Kobe area. Commemorating the thirtieth anniversary of the 1995 quake, the television series looks back on the Hanshin disaster along with another catastrophe that struck Japan during that period, the Tōhoku Earthquake and tsunami of 11 March 2011, which resulted in over 20,000 casualties in northern seaside areas of the country. In confronting the enduring trauma of these monumental disasters, After the quake primarily explores how television coverage of disaster has shaped the collective consciousness as it prepares for the next one.