Customer Reviews

Japan Sinks: A Novel about Earthquakes

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It's a classic convention of literature - and perhaps life - that people reach their clearest insight only when death is at hand. By creating a model of Japan's death, Komatsu deftly exposes the how the Japanese see themselves, how they believe the world sees them, and who they are. As a foreigner in Japan for nine years who has read copiously on this country, this novel is among the most penetrating I've read. For those who aren't interested in dissecting the Japanese, they'll still be thrilled by this compelling tale of an entire nation's doom.

I first spotted this book in the late 1990s. I recently got it because of my interest in the release of the recent film version from 2006 called "Nihon Chinbotsu".

Is this book worth it? Yes. It is not only a fantastic work of Japanese science-fiction--which is very rarely translated and brought to the US--but as a disaster novel, it manages to capture the confusion and outright terror brought about by the sinking of Japan. This event, brought about by a major shift of the tectonic plates, causes a series of devastating earthquakes and volcanic eruptions, including the eruption of Mt. Fuji. The book is a fast read, with the last few pages being the equivalent of a punch in the gut as the Japanese struggle to deal with the inevitable outcome. Other issues are brought up, such as, what will the Japanese be without their home country? How will the world react to such an unprecedented disaster? And how does one go about evacuating over 110 million people?

Ironically, I finished the book right before a major quake struck Japan recently. To say that I got one hell of a chill down my spine is an understatement. Strangely enough, this 1995 translation has an introduction written by Sakyo Komatsu that spoke about the tragic Kobe earthquake which had occurred earlier that year.

In the end, I highly recommend this book.

I read this book a couple of months back with pleasure and excitement. It's extremely well written and translated, and its scenarios of disaster are only excelled by what we watched yesterday on the television as the tsunami generated by a real version of this book's events took place. Wikipedia wrote that the novel "represented the growing discontent in the minds of many Japanese people during the 1970s, as their cultural, economic, and political identity and stability had become under attack from international pressures" -- now, perhaps, we can see that the author was instead engaging with predicting the impact of a literal geological event.

As most of you have already known, Mr. Sakyo KOMATSU has been a leader of the very best of those Japanese Science Fiction writers for the last fifty years and is still going strong. This particular master piece has probably been the most wellknown novel of his to Japanese fans. It has sold more than four million, thus 4,000,000 copies in not only in his native country of Japan but also in eleven other nations and languages, including this English translated version, in the world. What amazing things about this novel are: This entier novel of Japan's geological, topo-
graphical, social, and historical fate was writen almost fourty years ago, when nobody knew about the real geophysical phenomenon of highly scientific subjects of plate-techtonics and geophyics; in fact, becasue of this science fiction by Sakyo Komatsu every single layman here in Japan know what the mantle crrents or the theory of the continental drifts by Weggener. These ideas were not mentioned or discussed about even in highschool textbooks then. This novel is just that much important to Japanese people's real concerns and knowledge on its erthquekes and tidal waves: The warnings raised herein the novel are still alive and they all seem so real. I do recomend to read this novel and feel how Japanese people felt in 1972 and then how hopeless or helpless we are in front of the great power of the mother nature, yet there are still some selected individuals, who are wise enough and good enough to forseen the changes and movements, would try to save their people and to survive through all these difficlulties their were placed. Just one another interesting, or in a sense, spine-chilling sensation about this novel is that much of its content are still readable and significat after all those years when we try to look at Japan's recent tsunami and nuclear desasters: Unfortunately what Mr.Komastu had wanted Japanese government to know and act on the natural national desasters were not followed or at least those early warnnings were not utelized fully by the real Japanese government. I believe there are only limited or few copies left on the market, so please get one while you can and see and experiance for yourself what they must have gone through for the past few months. I strongly recomend this novel to everyone who likes good and meaningful sciense fiction. Thank you.