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Genital cutting is a well-researched bodily practice in anthropology, often associated with the formation of gender, personhood and self in different cosmologies. Early anthropology focused on male initiation rituals, blood sacrifices, and masculinity. As more women anthropologists conducted fieldwork on reproductive health, practices that were previously precluded to male anthropologists, the attention moved progressively to female genital cutting and modifications. Diverging ethical discussions on human rights and health, as well as a range of religious, political and medical stances invest the two practices, which should be considered together. They are also at the centre of opposite global health strategies and interventions by international health organizations, for example the WHO. Recent developments highlight the issue of bodily integrity also for male children. The topic becomes politicized in relation to migration health, gendered violence, and worldviews in the new country of residence. Circumcision calls into question our ability to claim cultural relativism.

Gunung Merapi (Mountain of Fire) is the guardian of a cosmogonic-sacred landscape, and one of the most dangerous volcanoes in the world. Its eruptions are well studied, however, the relationships among ritual, science, protection and grassroots disaster management arising after the 2006 and 2010 eruptions are mostly overlooked. This paper fills this gap in the literature, through qualitative research that explores local perceptions and places respiratory protection in a larger ecology of protective practices during, and after, volcanic crises. In a previous study, 99% of respondents in Yogyakarta used masks to protect from inhaling volcanic ash. In order to understand the respiratory protective practices developed, in the last decade, to cope with Merapi’s eruptions, we need to engage with the emergence of the local volunteer-led grassroots monitoring systems. Although these networks were formalised by agencies, they were originally set-up in a bottom-up fashion to respond to pyroclastic flows and other life-threatening volcanic hazards. Our research found that they play a key role in the distribution of masks and respiratory health narratives, thus influencing the wide adoption of certain types of respiratory protection. Disaster management agencies, village heads, ritual experts and volunteers participating in these monitoring networks share spiritual signals (dreams) and scientific ones (seismic data, health narratives) and masks as part of their response to volcanic crises. Our findings about these Merapi networks challenge dominant assumptions in the Disaster Risk Reduction literature that tend to equate building resilience with the substitution of problematic ‘cultural beliefs’ for ‘scientific facts’.

The years 2020–2022 engraved our existence with epidemiological and political monstrosities that will not be forgotten for quite some time. The COVID-19 pandemic dragged us to contemplating the possibilities of a plague that, rather than being confined to the global south’s ‘invisible’ territories of diseases, heavily affected the global north and with the prospect of wiping out a large number of the world’s population in a similar manner to that of the 1918 influenza epidemic. Governments were caught between choices to either privilege lives or economies and eugenics reared its head as a spectre from the historical past. A benign marine monster, the Amabie, a prophetic yōkai from Japanese folklore, became popular, initially in Japan and, rather rapidly on a global scale, assumed a prominent position, becoming an icon for the COVID-19 pandemic. I interrogate how people resorted to this chimeric creature from marine and historical depths to deal with existential uncertainty and abnormal lives, rendering it a chronotope that connects times and spaces. Such aquapelagic creatures frame the ambiguity of a world where political, environmental and health disasters merge.

This article explores how the resurgence of a forgotten chimeric figure from the Japanese history of disasters and epidemics intersects with some central ecological and political discourses in the context of the Covid‐19 pandemic, especially those associated with culinary practices, human rights and relations with other historical epidemics. Presented as a mascot but viewed as an icon of protection, this uncanny little yōkai from southern Japan in the pre‐modern Edo period addresses our lives as they are caught in a suspension of our usual temporal and spatial dimensions. A monster, a hyperobject and an art effigy of our pandemic present.

Whilst, globally, volcanic eruptions are unusual and cause anxiety in affected communities, people living near Sakurajima volcano, Japan are exposed to frequent ashfall with little-to-no official intervention. As part of a wider project, this study assessed how this apparently normalised experience affects residents’ perceptions of health impacts, and whether it is important to protect themselves from ash inhalation. A survey of 749 residents found little evidence of normalisation. Respondents identified a range of symptoms (including eye irritation, low mood, sore throat, cough) perceived to be associated with ash exposure, with 67% experiencing at least one symptom. Only 6% of respondents thought it was not important to protect themselves, and path analysis showed that protection was particularly important to older people and those with existing respiratory disease, who were more likely to rate ash as harmful or associate symptoms with exposures. Therefore, some of the most vulnerable sectors of this community are adversely impacted by ash. However, despite the local government recommending protective measures, most respondents said they had not received advice, but would like to. They took actions that they thought were effective (keeping windows/doors closed) or were easily available (wearing surgical masks). Other research has shown that industry-certified (e.g., N95) masks are more effective than surgical masks. Here, respondents recognised this, but high-efficiency masks were rarely used, probably due to unavailability. The results demonstrate a need to provide ash-affected communities with targeted, evidence-based information on options for effective protection, coupled with ensuring that communities have access to suggested interventions.