Oppenheim, R. (2021). [Commentary] Digital Catfish and Technological Ritual: Experimental Rites through Earthquake Early Warning in Japan, by Lee Kangwon Here Fishy Fishy!. Korean Anthropology Review, 5, 153-155.
https://s-space.snu.ac.kr/bitstream/103 ... 000069.pdf
In this playful article, Lee Kangwon invites us to follow “catfish” through Japanese social seismology. Edo-period popular belief that the activity of catfish could reveal when earthquakes might occur gave rise to Japanese scientific attempts to test and operationalize this proposition. Experiments tested the hypothesis that observation of the behavior of catfish in laboratory aquariums might predict seismic activity in the following days. Far more lasting and successful than those attempts has been the catfish as icon of earthquake foreknowledge, in the form of Yurerun, the mascot of the Japanese Earthquake Early Warning System, and the personal digital devices—the “digital catfish” of Lee’s title—through which Japanese citizens potentially receive some seconds’ notice of earthquakes to occur. Ultimately, then, Lee’s sojourn through and with catfish is an investigation of the condition of “life surrounded by devices” that in turn mediate human attunement to the environment.