Michiyo Miyake, Green Metal: Life in Tokyo during the Nuclear Catastrophe (2nd edition)｜Fiction.

Green Metal is semi-autobiographical fiction based on the author’s experience of living in Tokyo during the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake and the subsequent nuclear accident which occurred in 2011. Protagonist M, a bilingual writer who later moved to Sydney, is motivated by an article she found online and decides to write a story about what she witnessed in those days. The story consists of diary entries, emails, personal notes and news bulletins, and offers a social documentary of Japanese society at the time of the crisis.

In this novella, the female perspective serves as the lens through which the catastrophe unfolds. Intertwined with the narrative are themes including the loss of trust in her first language, her compulsion to document everything, her rejection of societal expectations of motherhood, and her diagnosis of myoma, all against the backdrop of a nuclear disaster. Through these threads, the story offers a portrayal of female positionality within Japanese society.

”If I say I’m not afraid of the radiation, it would be a lie. But the reason why I decided to leave Tokyo is actually more to do with rejecting the distortions of official announcements.” (p.48)

This second edition features a new preface written for the fifteenth anniversary of the 2011 nuclear power plant disaster, in which the author reflects on the origins of the book and her decision to write the story in English.

Michiyo Miyake is a writer and translator, born in Japan and based in Australia. She hosts the translation duo UGUISU with Nicholas Marshall and the publishing label UGUISU BOOKS.

Cover design and typesetting by Aphrodite D.

2026｜132 x 197x 8mm｜90pp｜English.

ISBN：9780648604631