Hiruko

Gabrakova reads Tawada Yoko&s;s post-Fukushima trilogy through the mythological figures of Hiruko and Susanoo, reimagined as exiled, migrant beings whose fractured identities echo both environmental catastrophe and displacement. Tawada&s;s estranging use of myth names activates a substratum of exclusion, impurity, and exile in Japan&s;s foundational narratives, while linking these to questions of language, trauma, and nuclear silence. Situating Hiruko as a ‘global citizen’, the chapter traces how Tawada transforms myth into a metalanguage for postnational belonging. Her trilogy articulates a transnational ethics of community amid planetary risk, reframing Japanese myth as part of wider global networks of survival.