WAGŌ RYŌICHI’S NET-POETRY: TRADITION AND INNOVATION

Wagō Ryōichi is a Japanese poet who met with success after publishing his poetical works on Twitter: real time testimony of the aftershocks in the devastated Tōhoku area that spread worldwide after 11th March 2011. The term net-poetry embraces the double nature of (social) «network» and «poetry», combining poetical verses with images and photographs. Nevertheless, despite the outstanding innovation of this literary production, Wagō’s poems frequently pay homages to the Japanese literary tradition especially the genbau bungaku genre (A-bomb literature). The aim of this article is to underline the role of Wagō’s net-poetry as a literary hub between tradition (especially referring to Hara Tamiki and Tōge Sankichi’s literary production) and innovation under the keywords of “catastrophe” and “nuclear power”, digging up a possible connection between Japanese genbaku experience and the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi Power Plant nuclear fallout.