The 1995 Kobe earthquake was a catastrophe that disturbed the very foundations of modern Japan. In inspired, as many natural disasters do, great works of art, music, and literature, including Haruki Murakami’s sparse and enigmatic short story collection After the Quake.

After the Quake (2000) comprises six tales that alternate between emotional turmoil and flights of whimsy. The collection responds to the national tragedy that unfolded in the wake of the earthquake – families were divided, homes were destroyed and infrastructure was decimated.

This film first had life as a TV series for Japanese station NHK. The original episodes have been stitched together and repackaged as an anthology film for Netflix’s global audience. The film features four of the collection’s six stories and director Tsuyoushi Inoue confidently reconfigures Murakami’s tales so that they speak directly to other tragedies in chronological order.

The first story, UFO in Kushiro, takes place during the aftermath of the 1995 Kobe earthquake. The shoreline setting of Landscape With Flatiron ominously foreshadows the March 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami, which triggered the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear crisis and still remains the most powerful earthquake ever recorded in Japan. All God’s Children can Dance is set during COVID, while the final story, Super-Frog Saves Tokyo is a modern-day fable that aims to tie all these disparate strands together.

Actor Masaki Okada and screenwriter Takamasa Ōe reunite after having previously worked together on the 2022 Academy Award-winning Murakami adaptation Drive My Car. Their expertise in........

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