Fukushima Devil Fish

A collection of manga examining Japan's fascination with nuclear power and its dangers and possibilities. FUKUSHIMA DEVIL FISH: ANTI-NUCLEAR MANGA, the fifth volume in the Breakdown Press manga line, collects Katsumata Susumu's nuclear energy related work from the '80s and '90s, produced in the wake of investigative news reports about unreported accidents and dangerous working conditions at Japan's nuclear power plants. Two outstanding works in the collection, "Deep Sea Fish" (1984) and "Devil Fish" (1989), are poetic stories treating the daily trials of maintenance and janitorial workers at Japan's nuclear plants. Due to poor pay, hazardous working conditions, and migrant status, these workers were commonly known as "nuclear gypsies" and "irradiated labourers." As explained in an accompanying essay by translator and historian Ryan Holmberg, these "gypsies" became politicized symbols in the late 1970s and '80s, embodying as they did the fact that all was not sound in an industry that vigorously promoted itself as perfectly "clean and safe."