Residenza del Palmerino

One distinctive feature of societies since very ancient times has been the capacity for individuals, objects, ideas and concepts to travel across great distances. Catastrophic events could be read around the world as a disruption of the ordered universe, or alternatively as a sign of divine intervention, as pure contingency or else as a moment of transition, transformation or rebirth. This raises the question of the degree to which such responses were determined by transcultural entanglements, or whether, instead, they have been shaped by culture-specific patterns arising from layered collective memories of mythical disasters. By focussing on a late 18th-century Japanese scroll, this paper investigates a further related sub-theme: how commensurable were the ways in which different cultures responded to disaster emotionally?

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