Furukawa Hideo's novel-length Umatachi yo, sore demo hikari wa muku de (Horses, Horses, In the Innocence of Light) is compelling and important for all the reasons that it can be exasperating and demanding. It is driven by the triple disasters of 3.11-the earthquake, tsunami, and then nuclear meltdown in northeast Japan, of March 11, 2011. Horses, Horses first appeared in the journal Shinchō in July 2011 and in book form shortly thereafter; it captures the shock and disorientation of that time. It is many things, but it is primarily a 3.11 document. It is hard to overstate the effect of 3.11 in Japanese society; its resonances to 9/11 are multilayered: it is a Japanese disaster and also a world event; many, many things are now measured as “before” or “after;” it is a semiotic event comprised of endless, horrific, film loops and digital images. In that context, Horses, Horses has become one of the most important touchstones for the disasters: raw, sometimes confused, multilayered, overwhelmed and overwhelming, forceful, personal; just like, that is, the disasters and the responses of those caught up by it. It captures the sense that all the important things of a day before-all the major novels to be written, for example-were suddenly meaningless, ephemeral, and, somehow, devoid of life. And each aftershock is a reminder; as this narrator relates, with each new jolt manuscript pages are destined for the trash.