Secessionist movements such as those found in Scotland and Catalonia are gaining momentum on the back of increases in the number of local referendums. As a de facto ethnically homogenous nation governed under a strong central authority, the island nation of Japan currently has no realistic secessionist movements. However, we can find many works of fiction (novels, manga, etc.) in which secession from Japan occurs. Why do Japanese people find stories on this topic so interesting?

Juko Nishimura’s novel Sobo-no Daichi, Horobu (The Fall of the Land of the Grand Blue) is a political panic novel in which the Tohoku region, the center of rice production in Japan and a supplier of agricultural products to major cities, attempts to secede after being abandoned by the government. A motif of this work is the historical possibility that Japan could have been split into two states, one to the East and one to the West.