Grotesque representations of catastrophe: interpreting cultural narratives in disaster postcards of the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake

This article examines how grotesque shaped cultural representations of disasters, by analysing 627 postcards depicting the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake. Conducted in 2025, this study employed comparative-historical and semiotic methodologies to guide a connotative analysis. The sampling represents a small fraction of an extensive production, allowing meaningful insights to be drawn by focusing on the significant. The purpose is to investigate how disasters are visually and narratively processed through grotesque forms within distinct cultural frameworks, contributing to Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) studies by highlighting interpretive dimensions of risk perception. Findings reveal divergent tendencies: San Francisco postcards often employed satire and humour, reflecting individualism, accountability, and a blame-oriented risk culture; while Japanese postcards depicted macabre imagery of mass death, embedded in collective notions of danger, shame, and no-fault. This contrast illustrates how the grotesque functions as a cultural mechanism for resilience, with satire serving as critique, and the macabre providing a means of confronting social order. By situating these visual narratives within cultural contexts, this study shows that disaster postcards are vehicles for processing trauma. The research concludes by proposing DRR policies to integrate cultural perspectives into its strategies, to align with community values. • Disaster postcards as records of cultural inheritance and disaster imagery. • Disaster preparedness, awareness and response shaped by social imagination. • Interdisciplinary disaster research and the multiple interpretations.