Jeremiah L. Alberg (editor) - Apocalypse Deferred: Girard and Japan

APOCALYPSE DEFERRED

APOCALYPSE DEFERRED

Girard and Japan

EDITED BY

JEREMIAH L. ALBERG

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana

University of Notre Dame Press

Notre Dame, Indiana 46556

undpress.nd.edu

Copyright 2017 by the University of Notre Dame

All Rights Reserved

Published in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Alberg, Jeremiah, 1957 editor.

Title: Apocalypse deferred : Girard and Japan / edited by Jeremiah L. Alberg.

Description: Notre Dame : University of Notre Dame Press, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017001228 (print) | LCCN 2017009532 (ebook) | ISBN 9780268100162 (hardcover : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268100160 (hardcover : alk.paper) | ISBN 9780268100179 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 0268100179 (pbk. : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780268100186 (pdf) | ISBN 9780268100193 (epub)

Subjects: LCSH: Girard, Rene, 1923-2015Influence. | ViolenceReligious aspects. | Eschatology. | Japan. | DisastersJapan.

Classification: LCC B2430.G494 A66 2017 (print) | LCC B2430.G494 (ebook) | DDC 205/.697dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017001228

ISBN 9780268100193

This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).

This e-Book was converted from the original source file by a third-party vendor. Readers who notice any formatting, textual, or readability issues are encouraged to contact the publisher at .

This book is dedicated to the memory of Ren Girard.

CONTENTS

Jeremiah L. Alberg

Jean-Pierre Dupuy

Eric Gans

Anthony D. Traylor

Yoko Irie Fayolle

Shoichiro Iwakiri

Mizuho Kawasaki

Kunio Nakahata

Andreas Oberprantacher

Matthew Taylor

Sandor Goodhart

Thomas Ryba

Richard Schenk

Mario Roberto Solarte Rodrguez and Mery Edith Rodrguez Arias

All of the essays in this collection, save one, were originally offered as oral presentations at a conference titled, Apocalypse Revisited: Japan, Hiroshima, and the Place of Mimesis. While the introduction provides more background about this conference and the reason for the difference in the title of the conference and this volume, here is the place to acknowledge that without that event this particular book would never have come into being. Thus, our thanks must go, first of all, to those who made the conference possible.

International Christian University, through the office and the person of the vice president for academic affairs (at the time Professor Junko Hibiya, who is now president of the university), contributed much to the realization of this gathering of people interested in revisiting the theme of the apocalypse in a Japanese setting. Also, the staff of the Institute for the Study of Christianity and Culture contributed many hours of hard work both in preparing for and in ensuring the smooth running of the conference itself. Our thanks go out to these people.

Many others contributed in a variety of ways, but two people must be explicitly named. Ms. Naoko Wakatake labored long and hard, coordinating many different facets of the organization. Without her the conference simply would not have taken place. Ms. Nozomi Uematsu directed the student workers so that all the various venues operated smoothly. Without her the conference might have taken place, but it would not have been the success that it was. I am personally very grateful to both of them.

Financially, both the nonprofit organization Imitatio and the Raven Foundation were very generous in their support for a meeting of this sort to be held in Asia, the first time such a conference was held outside of North America or Europe.

I thank William Johnsen, the editor of Contagion, for permission to reprint Richard Schenks contribution, which originally appeared in its pages. I thank Eric Gans for his permission to use his contribution, which can also be found on the Generative Anthropology website. Finally, I thank Sandor Goodhart for permission to print his essay, an earlier version of which appeared in his 2014 volume of essays, The Prophetic Law.

JEREMIAH L. ALBERG

When a book has multiple authors, and when these authors come from several different continents with diverse training and expertise, and when they are addressing such dramatically diverse topics as Japanese anime and typology in the Bibleall of which are true of this volumethen readers can have a difficult time finding their way. To aid readers in their quest, I offer two perspectives in this introduction. First, I will provide some background as to how this particular collection of essays came into existence, or the story of this collection. Second, I will give an account of my own rationale for the structure of the book, or the story this collection tells.

The Story of This Collection

Many of these essays, as can be seen in even a brief perusal, have been deeply affected not only by the place in which the meeting was held, Tokyo, Japan, but also the time at which it was held, the summer of 2012, when memories of the devastating earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster of Eastern Japan which had occurred in March 2011, nearly a year and a half earlier, were still very fresh in everyones mind. There was a period in preparing for the conference when we worried whether it could take place in the planned venue at all. It is not surprising, then, that several of the contributors, both Japanese and non-Japanese, touch upon this disaster in their reflections and use it as a touchstone for thinking about apocalyptic realities.

At the time that the conference was first being planned by the Colloquium on Violence and Religion (COV&R), we obviously had no idea of the disasters that Japan would go through. Instead, the desire was to break out of the tradition of always holding the conferences either in Europe or North America. There was a hope to hear new voices and to see things from a different perspective. The association of Japan with the apocalyptic through the events of World War II in general and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in particular were very much at the forefront of our minds. The events of March 2011 put it all in a much stronger light.

Some more remote background contributed to making Japan an appropriate place for holding a conference that treated such things as the thought of Ren Girard, mimetic theory, apocalyptic catastrophes, and possible salvation. Although Girard has never been to Japan, his thought has exerted a steady influence in that country through his writings, both in their original languages and in translation.

With a few exceptions, Girards works were translated into Japanese here in the order of their publication. At first there was a ten-year lag between the appearance of a work in French and its translation into Japanese.