The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 12 | Issue 40 | Number 3 | Oct 02, 2014

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Literature and The Trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 文学と広島・長崎のトラウマ

Daniela Tan

Trauma is a site that does not exist. No roadleads there. No path leads around it. Trauma is.Inaccessible. Access through words seems tobe blocked. How on earth can one speak aboutsomething that is impossible to express? Whatwords could one use for a horror that is beyondthe possibilities of language? How speak aboutsomething that cannot be spoken of–yet "theabundance of real suffering permits noforgetting"1?

When on August 6 of 1945 shortly after eight,the morning of a steaming hot summer day inwestern Japan like the day before and the daybefore that, a uranium bomb exploded 600meters over the center of Hiroshima city, theworld knew nothing about nuclear violence andthe destructive power of the atomic bomb.Pikadon, the onomatopoetic term for thedazzling flash of light and the thunder thatfollowed, was one of the first names for whathappened on this August morning. About80,000 people lost their lives in that split-second, and other tens of thousands died laterfrom the after-effects of radiation. The poetHara Tamiki 原民喜 (1905-1951), who was onlya mile from the epicenter, wrote that it was “asif the skin of the world around me was peeledoff in an instant.”2

Hara Tamiki

A bit more than three weeks later, a youngwriter`s record of her personal experience waspublished in the Asahi shimbun. In the firstliterary treatment of the atomic bomb, ŌtaYōko 大田洋子 (1906-1963) describes thedropping of the atomic bomb and theimmediate consequences for the people ofHiroshima.3 The young woman asked herrelatives in the countryside, where she had fledlightly injured, for a pencil stub and scraps ofpaper and wrote down her impressions. Shewas awakened by the atomic flash, and she sawthe images of her dream mix with the greenishblue light, a “light as on the bottom of the sea.”Her brutal awakening is followed by thenightmare, the chaos of the burned andconfused streams of people, the fragmentaryinformation, snippets of conversations aboutrumors of the unknown weapon, medicalinformation and depictions of the stoic andheroic people who were still using theultranationalist war rhetoric: all this the authorputs together like a collage. The word

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gembaku–atomic bomb–doesn`t appear yet. Thebrief text saw the light of day for one reasononly: in the short time between the Japanesesurrender on August 15 and the enactment ofthe press law of the American occupiers onSeptember 19, there was no censorship. Alllater literary texts dealing with the atomicbomb could see print only long after the fact.

Ōta Yōko’s handwritten notes

The genre of atomic bomb literature (gembakubungaku 原爆文学) within Japanese literatureof the twentieth century is unique, yet one candiscern clear parallels to the literature ofcatastrophe in a wider sense. Atomic bombliterature understands the existence of nuclearweapons as a central problem of society andhuman civilization.

It can be divided roughly into four groups. Thefirst is the works of authors who were directlyaffected, who witnessed the dropping of thebomb themselves and wrote about it in detail,like Hara Tamiki, Ōta Yōko or Agawa Hiroyuki阿川弘之 (*1920). In the second group belongthe works of authors who witnessed thedroppings of the atomic bomb as children butwhose autobiographical narratives often havethe character of a requiem for victims ofradiation sickness—family, neighbors, such asNagasaki born Hayashi Kyōko 林京子 (*1930)

and manga artist Nakazawa Keiji 中沢啓治(1939-2012), who documented what hewitnessed in Hadashi no Gen はだしのゲン.

Urashimasō

Ōba Minako's 大庭みな子 (1930-2007) novelUrashimasō 浦島草4 (1977) lets the readerparticipate in this search to back-track thewitnessed horror. The third group includestexts whose authors didn`t witness thedroppings of the bomb themselves but whowork with the aid of data and interviewmaterial from victims of the atomic bomb, likefor example Shi no kage 死の影 (1968) by theauthor Nakayama Shirō 中山士郎 (*1930).These texts were often published muchlater—for example, Ibuse Masuji’s 井伏鱒二(1898-1993) Kuroi ame 黒い雨 (Black Rain)5, in1966. Ibuse structures the narrative through

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the fictional figure of Shigematsu Shizuma,who copies passages from the diary of his nieceYasuko to send them to a marriage broker. Asrumors circulate about Yasuko’s infection withradiation sickness, it is almost impossible toarrange a marriage for her. Shigematsu is keento give a most authentic account of theeveryday life of those affected by the atomicbomb. For this reason, he inserts passagesfrom his wife`s diary as well, who mainlyrecords her sadness about the daily search forfood. In basing his narrative on variousaccounts and diary entries, Ibuse Masujicreates a polyphonic piece of work where theshock and uncertainty of the atomic bombaffect life in the weeks afterward. Within theframe of the story, these events are reflectedand modified, and the result is a thematicaccentuation and compression. In Japan atvarious times Black Rain and with it all atomicbomb literature have been heavily criticized:that these accounts lack literary qualities andserve as a cheap means for the authors todistinguish themselves, that they aredescriptions mainly of political events.

Ōe Kenzaburō

Even Ōe Kenzaburō 大江健三郎 (*1935), winnerof the Nobel Prize for literature in 1994, wasconfronted with a similar critique for hisHiroshima nōto 広島ノート (Hiroshima notes)6,published in 1965. Ōe had spent the war farfrom everything in rural Shikoku, but withHiroshima nōto, he created an idiosyncraticpolitical manifesto of pacifist humanism. Hisfocus lies clearly on consequences of apsychological and political nature, for example,the problematic struggle to prove one sufferedthe after-effects of radiation sickness. Anatomic bomb victim ID entitled the bearer toreduced fees on medical care. Aftereffects ofradiation, such as leukemia, could be provenonly after a long period of latency, which meantthat those concerned had to run a long andpainful bureaucratic obstacle course. Ōeexemplified an existentialist saint in his use of

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the survivors of Hiroshima. For example, hedescribed a survivor in Hiroshima, alreadymarked by illness, who perseveres heroically ina demonstration in the summer heat. Sometook this moment of exaggeration anddistortion as manipulative appropriation andcriticized it harshly. But by interlacingaccounts of patients, extracts from whitepapers, and eye-witness reports, Ōe makes abroad variety of Hiroshima voices heard by agreater audience.

Eventually there are non-witness authors whouse Hiroshima as a historical backgroundscenario or stage for their novels, such as TsujiHitonari's 辻仁成 (*1959) 2001 novel Taiyōmachi 太陽待ち (Waiting for the sun). InMurakami Ryū's 村上龍 (*1952) SF-likeGofungo no sekai 五分後の世界 (The world fiveminutes after) of 1994, a world is delineatedthat could have been after Japan didn'tsurrender and the droppings of the bombs wenton, until finally a big part of the populationescapes the contaminated surface of the worldand moves to the underground.

Illustrated book cover Ōta Yōko

Ōta Yōko`s sister asked, “You’re really lookingat them—how can you? I can’t stand and look atcorpses. Can you write—about something likethis?” She answered: “I’m looking with two setsof eyes—the eyes of a human being and theeyes of a writer.”7 The motives of seeing andwitnessing are central in the first texts ofatomic bomb literature. But what may seemdocumentary on first sight proves to be nothingmore than an accumulation of splinters ofreality, as these impressions are written downoften in a shock-like state of the aftermath. Asoften caught by a single narrators perspective,the insertion of rumours and fragmentaricknowledge about what happened hereenhances the v iew by add ing o therperspectives as well. Following the impulse tosurvive, the narrators—surrounded by theinjured and the stench of the fires—try to make

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their own what they went through and give anaccount of it to those who come after them.

Ōta Yōko youthful portrait

They give priority to witnessing. Hence the I-perspective of eye-witnesses. Their mereexistence bears witness to what happened. Forexample, Hara Tamiki wrote Natsu no hana 夏の花 (Summer flowers, 1945)8 while sufferingradiation sickness. The short novel should havebeen published in January 1946 under the title“The Atomic Bomb,” but censorship blocked it.It deals with the time immediately after thedropping of the bomb on August 6 in Hiroshimaand the I-narrator’s flight from the approachingflames. His way down to the river leads himamong the injured: “At first sight, rather thanpity, I felt my hair stand on end.” Encounterswith bleeding and injured friends and relativesgive him only brief hope for their survival; hisanxiety increases with every line. The I-narrator reflects, “Here everything human hadbeen obliterated.” The text ends with the reportof a certain N., who returns to the devastatedcity to search in vain for his wife.9

Hara Tamiki committed suicide in 1951 as a

reaction to the threat that the U. S. would usethe atomic bomb in the Korean War.

In his memoir Oboegaki 覚書 (1945), TōgeSankichi 峠三吉 (1917-1953) left a kaleidoscopeof horrors. He depicted impressions from manyperspectives that occurred in the brief periodbetween August 6 and Japan’s surrender. Herecounts in a fragmentary manner visits of theI-narrator to a camp for the injured, visits todying acquaintance, and impressions of thirdparties. It is difficult at first for the reader toorient himself, for too many unstructuredimpressions overwhelm him. Certain imagesrecur in the writings of other authors, forexample, the description of a box of onionsupset on the river bank, or a draft horse. Thewriters do not give priority to ordering theevents; the only thing that counts is theattempt to hold the horror at arm’s length andfix it within what the writers thought up to thatpoint was reality. The act of witnessing isfollowed by the expression of solidarity with thevictims and with the movement against war. Inthe intervening years, the data about theprocess of radiation sickness has grown andproduces more and more Japanese victims whohave to fight for acceptance.

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Ōta Yōko later photograph

These days one can observe a similar processwhen watching the consequences of the triplecatastrophe of Fukushima. Life goes on, peoplestart to forget, and the initial solidarity andengagement decrease, at the worst making wayfor the stigmatization of the victims, leadinginto a state of dissociation. The often-invokedJapanese stoic calmness in the face ofcatastrophes may be nothing other than auniversal human reaction to trauma.

Hara Tamiki notebooks

In sum, writing about the unspeakable meansto speak out and by doing so to fall short – aparadox that authors of atomic bomb literatureconfront. Memory is not linear. Occasionally,the separation into the I-who-tells and the I-who-experiences, both aspects of the same selfbut located at different points along thespatiotemporal continuum, disturbs theorientation. This phenomenon prevailsespecially among the authors who describeevents that took place in their childhood. Thereis no path that leads to this space of memory,the place where trauma is located deeply inone's mind. Much is inchoate, and approachthrough language seems impossible. With theaid of narrative techniques such as overlap andconsolidation, witnesses can shape theexperience into a verbal form that is broadenough and does not implode or freeze.Overlapping impressions result in a semanticaccumulation, a condensation that creates theambivalence that is significant for the authenticnarration of trauma. On a lexical levele x p r e s s i o n s o f i n c h o a t e n e s s a n damorphousness serve the depiction of things

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that are hard to verbalize. The fragmentarycharacter of many texts of atomic bombliterature indicates a state of dissociation,where events can no longer be integrated.Apparent calm mirrors the psychic numbnessthat follows immediately on the trauma—andthe realization that one has survived. Later thisstate can develop into deep apathy. Theghostly, haunted experience of reading atomicbomb literature comes from an associativeapproach, wherein the reader opens the door tomemory and enters a place that does not exist.

Daniela Tan is a lecturer and research fellowat Zurich University, Switzerland. She hasstudied at Kyoto University of Foreign Studies,Osaka University and Zurich University. HerPh.D. is from Zurich University. Herdissertation on Ōba Minako in the context ofthe naikō no sedai (Introverted generation) willbe published in winter 2014. Written in Germanfor a general audience, this essay, published inthe journal magazin Die Zeitschrift derUniversität Zürich in May 2013 (p. 46-47), ispart of her research project on atomic bombliterature. This translation is her own; shethanks Richard H. Minear for editorial help.

Recommended citation: Daniela Tan,"Literature and The Trauma of Hiroshima andNagasaki," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 12,Issue 40, No. 3, October 6, 2014.

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Notes

1 Adorno, Theodor, Notes to Literature III,Berlin 1965, S. 125-126.

2 Hara, Tamiki quoted in Itō Narihiko, SigfriedSchaarschmidt and Wolfgang Schamoni (eds.):Seit jenem Tag. Hiroshima und Nagasaki in derjapanischen Literatur. Frankfurt am Main:Fischer, 1984, p. 201.

3 Ōta Yōko 大田洋子. Kaitei no yō na hikari.Genshi bakudan no kūshū ni atte 海底のような光。原子爆弾の空襲に遭って, 1945. (In: ŌtaYōko zenshū 2, Nihon tosho sentā, 2001, p.275-280)

4 English translation by Yu Oba: Urashimaso.

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Saitama-ken: Josai University. Center for Inter-Cultural Studies and Education,1995.

5 An english translation by John Besterappeared in 2012 at Kodansha America underthe title Black Rain.

6 English translation by David L. Swain andToshi Yonezawa appeared 1995 at Grove Pressunder the title Hiroshima notes.

7 Translation in Minear, Hiroshima: ThreeWitnesses, p. 4.

8 An english translation by Richard Minear ofthe whole text is available in the volumeHiroshima. Three witnesses, edited by RichardMinear. Princeton University Press, 1990.

9 Translation in Minear, Hiroshima, pp. 52, 57.“Natsu no hana” is the title both of the firstsection of the book, which appeared Haracompleted in 1945 (it appeared in 1947), and ofthe book as a whole, which appeared in Mitabungaku, June 1947.