Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age: Exploring the Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 1032340673, 9781032340678

Citation preview

Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age

This book explores the contemporary legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki following the passage of three quarters of a century, and the role of art and activism in maintaining a critical perspective on the dangers of the nuclear age. It closely interrogates the political and cultural shifts that have accompanied the transition to a nuclearised world. Beginning with the contemporary socio-political and cultural interpretations of the impact and legacy of the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the chapters examine the challenges posed by committed opponents in the cultural and activist fields to the ongoing development of nuclear weapons and the expanding industrial uses of nuclear power. It explores how the aphorism that “all art is political” is borne out in the close relation between art and activism. This multi-disciplinary approach to the socio-political and cultural exploration of nuclear energy in relation to Hiroshima/Nagasaki via the arts will be of interest to students and scholars of peace and conflict studies, social political and cultural studies, fine arts, and art and aesthetic studies. Roman Rosenbaum, PhD is an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney, Australia. He specialises in Postwar Japanese Literature, Popular Cultural Studies and translation. His latest research publication includes The Representation of Japanese Politics in Manga: The Visual Literacy of Statecraft (Routledge, 2020). Yasuko Claremont, PhD in Japanese literature, Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney, was curator for the exhibition, Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age, April/May 2022 at the Tin Sheds Gallery. Her forthcoming book, The Asia Pacific War: Impact, Legacy, and Reconciliation, will be published by Routledge.

Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age Exploring the Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki Edited by Roman Rosenbaum and Yasuko Claremont

First published 2023 by Routledge 4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 605 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10158 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2023 selection and editorial matter, Roman Rosenbaum and Yasuko Claremont; individual chapters, the contributors The right of Roman Rosenbaum and Yasuko Claremont to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-1-032-34067-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-032-34068-5 (pbk) ISBN: 978-1-003-32039-5 (ebk) DOI: 10.4324/9781003320395 Typeset in Times New Roman by codeMantra

Contents

List of figures List of contributors Acknowledgements 1 Introduction: The Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World

vii xi xv 1

ROM A N RO SE N BAU M

2 Anti-Nuclear Movements and Education for Peace and Human Rights

25

K A Z U YO YA M A N E

3 Interrogating the Nuclear Industry, Local and Global: Tsushima Yūko’s Post-3.11 Writing

45

BA R BA R A H A RT L E Y

4 Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World, Seventy-Five Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Manga as Nuclear Art

65

ROM A N RO SE N BAU M

5 Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan

90

YA S U KO C L A R E MON T

6 Hiroshima Museums: Atomic Artefacts on the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary

118

A N N SH E R I F

7 Silence and Resilience: Commemorating Nagasaki Alongside the “Extraordinary Noise” of the Olympics and Under the Covid-19 “Mushroom Cloud” GW Y N M c C L E L L A N D A N D Y U K I M I YA MO T O

154

vi Contents 8 An Apocalypse through Australian Eyes: The Art and Objets Trouvés of Occupied Hiroshima

180

T E S SA MOR R I S - SU Z U K I

9 Genbaku Legacy in Post-3.11 Japan: Ōta Yōko and Yoshida Chia

198

V E RON ICA DE PI E R I

10 The Unquiet Legacy of Nuclear Testing in French Polynesia

216

E L I Z A BE T H R E C H N I E WSK I

11 Scientific Activism in the Nuclear Age: Atuhiro Sibatini and the Ranger Uranium Mine

231

A L E X A N DE R BROW N

12 Epilogue: Celebrating Nuclear Activism and the Power of the Individual

250

YA SU KO C L A R E MON T

Index

263

Figures

0.1 Artists from Yalata, Ceduna and Oak Valley. Front row (L-R): Cindy Watson, Mima Smart OAM, Roslyn Peters. Back row (L-R): Glenda Ken, Pam Diment xviii 1.1 ‘Nuclear War?!... There Goes My Career!’ by Mark Vallen 1980 3 1.2 ‘I told that Warramunga mob not to tinker around with uranium,’ by Eric Joliffe (1954) 10 1.3 Sun Child statue by Kenji Yanobe 11 2.1 Dengonkan Peace Museum in the precincts of Hokyoji Temple, photo by Ikuro Anzai 38 2.2 An exhibition room on Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in 2011, photo by Ikuro Anzai 38 4.1 The Australian version of Captain Atom Cover no. 2, Atlas Publications, from the 1948–1954 series 68 4.2 Ambassador Atom (アトム大使, atomu taishi), by Tezuka Osamu (1951–52) 70 4.3 Taiheiyo X pointo (X Point in the Pacific), Tezuka Osamu, 1953 71 4.4 Superman, number 34, 1945 73 4.5 Atom Bomb!, Wally Wood, 1953 74 4.6 I Saw It, Nakazawa Keiji, 1982. © Educomics 76 4.7 Fumiyo Kōno, Yūnagi no machi, sakura no kuni 夕凪の 街 桜の国 (Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms), 2003, 22. © Fumiyo Kōno/Coamix 78 4.8 Front cover (Hiroshima no fukkō) Hiroshima Revival. ©Tezuka Productions, Scenario by Takeo Aoki, RCC Broadcasting Co., Ltd 81 4.9 ‘Nothing will grow for seventy-five years,’ in Hiroshima Revival, 2016, 13. (広島の復興; Hiroshima no fukkō). ©Tezuka Productions, Scenario by Takeo Aoki, RCC Broadcasting Co., Ltd 82 5.1 Maruki Suma’s Painting, Pika no toki (Atomic bomb dropped), 1950, courtesy Maruki Gallery for Hiroshima Panels 95 5.2  Kiyō no arashi, Nagasaki monogatari (Storm over Kiyō— Tale of Nagasaki), detail of a section of the scroll, 1946, 97 courtesy of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum

viii Figures 5.3 All cast and team members of the 2017 Kawa performance. Playwright/actress, Tsuchiya Tokiko in the first row, 5th from right. Producer Ikeda Masahiko in the first row, 2nd from right 111 6.1 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum—black wall with text on right and large B/W photos of swimming pool and students on left, August 6, 1945, photo by Ann Sherif 128 6.2 Peace Museum clothing display, photo by Ann Sherif 130 132 6.3 Peace Museum survivors’ drawings, photo by Ann Sherif 6.4 One of the Memorial Hall’s cylindrical forms evoking historical time, the 8:15 clock sculpture in the rubble on the ground-level roof, photo with permission of 136 Hashimoto Isao 6.5 Slice of substratum of ground beneath the hypocentre, 137 Memorial Hall, photo with permission of Hashimoto Isao 6.6 Mosaic walls form the circular space around the water feature in the Hall of Remembrance, National Memorial 138 Hall, photo with permission of Hashimoto Isao 6.7 Curved stairway from ground level to main entrance of Memorial Hall, photo permission of Hiroshima National 138 Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims 6.8 Visitors watching film in Special Gallery in Memorial Hall, photo permission of Hiroshima National Peace 140 Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims 6.9 Former army clothing depot in Hiroshima © Architecture 146 Walk Hiroshima 6.10 Aerial photo and map of location of former Army Clothing Depot, with permission © Architecture Walk Hiroshima 147 Tokyo Olympic Games Symbol, photograph by Alex Smith 7.1  157 on Unsplash.com, public domain Sakamoto, Nagasaki, bombed Torii gate, photograph by 7.2  161 Dominic Galeon, Unsplash.com, public domain 7.3 Covid-19 pandemic, photograph by Shawn Ang, Unsplash. 165 com, public domain 7.4 Abe Shinzō tweet, August 9, 2020. Abe Shinzō twitter ­c omment, August 9, 2020, screenshot, https://twitter.com/ AbeShinzo/status/1292325885849137157?s=20 168 7.5 Fukahori Shigemi, Urakami Cathedral, 2016, photograph 170 by Gwyn McClelland 7.6 Yamaguchi Hibiki presenting the virtual tour at the 172 Nagasaki Museum, organised by ICAN, Japan, 2020 Rebuilding Hiroshima by Reginald Rowed, July 1946, 8.1  181 Australian War Memorial

Figures  ix  8.2  Hiroshima, by Reginald Rowed, August 1946, Australian War Memorial 186  8.3  Hiroshima Snow, Reginald Rowed, January 1947, Australian War Memorial 186   8.4 The Survivors, Allan Waite, 1946, Australian War Memorial © Cynthia Waite (aka Ferguson) 188  8.5  Hiroshima, May 1946, Allan Waite, c. 1950–1959, Australian War Memorial © Cynthia Waite (aka Ferguson) 189   8.6 The melted uranium glass clock donated to the Australian War Memorial by Kenneth Carruthers © Cynthia Waite (aka Ferguson) 192   8.7 Left, ruins of Urakami Cathedral, Nagasaki, photographed by Brian McMullan and Cecelia Mary McMullan, c. 1947–1952, Australian War Memorial; right, ruins of the Shimomura Clock Shop, Hiroshima, photographer unknown, c. 1945, Australian War Memorial 193 12.1 ICAN members show the balloon/missile at Martin Place in Sydney to urge the Australian government to ratify the United Nations Nuclear Weapon Ban Treaty, photo courtesy of ICAN 253 12.2 “Daihatsu” taken away by Australian Army, Wikimedia Commons 256 12.3 Memorial Mound (Kuyōtō), Hiroshima Peace Park. Courtesy Kawaguchi Yūsuke 258 12.4 Article 9 monument, 2022, courtesy Takeuchi Yoshio 260

Contributors

Alexander Brown is an Honorary Associate at the University of Technology Sydney. He recently completed a post-doctoral research fellowship funded by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at Japan Women’s University, where he conducted research on the transnational history of anti-nuclear movements in Australia and Japan. He is the author of AntiNuclear Protest in Post-Fukushima Tokyo: Power Struggles (Routledge 2018). Yasuko Claremont  holds an MA in Australian Literature and a PhD in Japanese Literature, both from the University of Sydney. She is an honorary senior lecturer in the Department of Japanese Studies at the University of Sydney. She was curator for the exhibition entitled Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age at the Tin Sheds Gallery, April–May 2022 on campus. She is the author of the 2017 bi-lingual book (English and Japanese), Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation, which casts light on grassroots peace activism. Her forthcoming Routledge publication is The Asia Pacific War: Impact, Legacy, and Reconciliation, which explores what the Asia-Pacific War means to generations with no experience of war and its aftermath. Veronica De Pieri, PhD is a Post-Doc Fellow at the University of Bologna researching female journalism related to collective trauma and catastrophe on a big scale. She received her PhD in Japanese studies at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her interests have focused on testimonial narratives, trauma studies and the ethics of memory since 2011, from a comparative literature perspective (Shoah literature, atomic bombing literature, 3.11 literature). De Pieri has been collaborating with Kyoto University for the translation of atomic bomb testimonies (NET-GTAS) for the Hiroshima and Peace Museum since 2013. She is currently a translator for the atomic bombing and Fukushima literary testimonies. Barbara Hartley publishes on issues related to girls and women in modern Japan and on modern Japanese literary studies. She also researches representations of Asia and Asian women in modern Japanese narrative and

xii Contributors visual productions. A recent publication is “The Fantastical Space of Exile in Tawada Yōko’s Memoirs of a Polar Bear” in a 2022 collection entitled Into the Fantastical Space of Contemporary Japanese Literature, edited by Mina Qiao. She is currently an honorary researcher with the University of Queensland in Australia. Gwyn McClelland  is Senior Lecturer in Japanese at the University of New England, Anaiwan Country, Australia. He is an oral historian, with interests in trauma in history, postmemory, and religious studies. Graduating with a PhD from Monash University, his thesis won the 2019 John Legge Prize for best thesis in Asian Studies from the Asian Studies Association of Australia and his monograph, Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki (Routledge), was published in 2019 in Mark Selden’s book series, Asia’s Transformations. McClelland travelled to Japan on a 2022 long-term Japan Foundation fellowship where he interviewed 18 people as a part of a new oral history of the Gotō Archipelago. He is a current National Library of Australia Fellow. Recent articles include “Catholics at Ground Zero: Negotiating (Post) Memory” in the History Workshop Journal (2021) and “From Pure Land to Hell: Introducing Four Culturally Hybrid UNESCO World Heritage Sites in the Gotō Archipelago” (2021) in the journal Shima. Yuki Miyamoto is a professor of ethics in the Department of Religious Studies at DePaul University, and the director of DePaul Humanities Center. She offers courses on nuclear and environmental ethics, while leads biannual study abroad program to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Miyamoto’s monograph includes Beyond the Mushroom Cloud: Commemoration, Religion, and Responsibility after Hiroshima (2011), Naze genbaku ga aku dewa nainoka: Amerika no kakuishiki (2020), and A World Otherwise: Environmental Praxis in Minamata  (2021) and several articles (ex. “In the Light of Hiroshima” and “Gendered Bodies in Tokusatsu”). Miyamoto’s current work is on the postwar nuclear discourse, surrounding discrimination. Tessa Morris-Suzuki is Professor Emerita of Japanese History in the College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University, and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. Her publications include The Past Within Us: Memory, Media History (Verso, 2005), Borderline Japan: Foreign and Frontier Controls in the Postwar Period (Cambridge University Press, 2010) and Japan’s Living Politics: Grassroots Action and the Crises of Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2020). Elizabeth Rechniewski (PhD)  is an Honorary Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney in the School of Languages and Cultures. She has a long-standing research interest in the political uses of the national past and has published widely on remembrance of twentieth-century war in Australia, France and New Caledonia, including on the commemoration

Contributors  xiii of the role of Indigenous soldiers in these countries. Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery project on the post-Cold War world (2013–2016), she published articles on the impact of Cold War ideology on decolonisation in the French empire and, with Judith Keene, Seeking Meaning, Seeking Justice in a Post-Cold War World (Brill 2018). Current projects include research into the tensions between France and Australia over control of the South Pacific in the late nineteenth-twentieth century and on the early period of the Anglo-French condominium in the New Hebrides (Vanuatu). Roman Rosenbaum, PhD  is an Honorary Associate at the University of Sydney, Australia. He specialises in postwar Japanese literature, Popular Cultural Studies and translation. He received his PhD in Japanese Literature at the University of Sydney. In 2008 he received the Inoue Yasushi Award for best refereed journal article on Japanese literature in Australia. In 2010/2011, he spent one year as a Visiting Research Professor at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken). His latest publication includes: “Introduction: Representation, Recognition and Resistance,” in Art & Activism in the Nuclear Age, exhibition catalogue for the Tin Shed Gallery, 2022. Ann Sherif  is Professor of Japanese and East Asian Studies at Oberlin College, Ohio, U.S. Her research specialisations are postwar Japanese literature and environmental humanities. She is co-editor with Albert Park of the book series Environments of East Asia, Cornell University Press. Her publications include Japan’s Cold War: Media, Literature, and the Law (Columbia University Press) and “Popular Protest in Postwar Japan: The Antiwar Art of Shikoku Gorō,” Oberlin College Libraries, 2020. Kazuyo Yamane  is visiting researcher and expert adviser to the Kyoto Museum for World Peace at Ritsumeikan University. She is the Editorial member of Muse: Newsletter of the Japanese Citizens’ Network of Museums for Peace. She is the author of Grassroots Museums for Peace in Japan: Unknown Efforts for Peace and Reconciliation (2009), and co-editor of Museums for Peace Worldwide in 2008, 2017 and 2020. Her publications include contributed chapters in The Oxford International Encyclopedia of Peace: Japanese Peace Museums (2010); Peace Studies in the Chinese Century: Japanese Peace Museums (2006); and Museums for Peace: Remembrance, Reconciliation, Art and Peacebuilding: Characteristics of Peace Museums in Japan (2005). She is one of the authors of the forthcoming book on Museums for Peace: In Search of History, Memory, and Change which will be published by Routledge.

Acknowledgements

We truly live in uncertain times, but rather than bemoan the endless repetition of past mistakes and the world’s apparent ignorance of history, we can do something about it. Such is the raison d’être of this volume. Several key events shaped the creation of this volume—in particular, the quiet passing of the seventy-fifth commemoration of the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are usually commemorated vociferously, and the heavily debated dramatic end of the Asia-Pacific War, which year after year continues to reveal more questions and obstinately refuses closure. These events were overshadowed and subdued by the Covid pandemic that began to sweep the globe in 2020. Yet, following a considerable hiatus, we would like to take this opportunity to caution the global community, once again mired in the potentially catastrophic pursuit of nuclear technology and weapons, to reconsider their actions at a time when brinkmanship is on the rise the world over. Several contemporary examples suffice to warrant this volume on Art and Activism: Iran’s nuclear agenda, North Korea’s missile launches, China’s rise in the Pacific, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and perhaps the long-­forgotten war in Syria. Conflict, it appears, is on the rise! With the world’s politicians and leaders busy negotiating diplomatic ends we ask what can supposedly benign art bring to the existential crisis of a globally warming nuclear world. Sydney University’s involvement with grassroots pacificism, antiwar and denuclearisation projects has had a long trajectory and after over a decade of activism this book provides an opportunity to take stock once again. From the beginning there has been a small cadre of regular collaborators and co-producers who have been most closely involved in every single event—Yasuko Claremont, Judith Keene, Elizabeth Rechniewski and myself. I would like to thank them for their many years of dedication and continuing unwavering support which hopefully will continue for a long time hence, until the baton inevitably must be passed on. As we emerge from the isolation period of the global Covid pandemic, this book marks another milestone in the continuation of our grassroots activism campaign to engender pacificism and support antiwar efforts as well as denuclearisation campaigns in order to counter-balance populist

xvi Acknowledgements socio-political agendas in our precarious global environment. The solutions are now closer than ever, but the world is still at war with itself. Art and Activism thus marks the continuation in a long list of activities that started over a decade ago, with the hope that we shall make a small but significant difference. A brief outline of the trajectory leading to this book is below: 2011: An initial one-day International Symposium was held at the University of Sydney on September 30, 2011, entitled The Asia-Pacific War: Return, Representation, Reconciliation. The symposium was subsequently developed into a research monograph: Roman Rosenbaum, Yasuko Claremont (eds), Legacies of the Asia-Pacific War: The Yakeato Generation, published by Routledge in 2011. 2012: A second International Symposium was held at the University of Sydney on November 5, 2012, and its theme was Looking Back on the Asia-Pacific War: Art, Cinema and Media. The results of these proceedings were published in a special issue of the Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia (JOSA), volume 44, 2012, entitled Memorial Diplomacy and the Asia-Pacific War. 2014: A joint third International Conference was held in Seongnam (South Korea) at the Academy of Korean Studies, from April 23 to April 25, 2014, and its title was Initiatives towards Peace and Reconciliation in the Asia-Pacific Basin. The research from this bilateral conference was later published as History Wars and Reconciliation in Japan and Korea: The Roles of Historians, Artists and Activists, edited by Michael Lewis, and published by Palgrave Macmillan (2017). Also in 2014, our fourth conference was held at Ritsumeikan University (Kyoto, Japan) from December 6 to December 7, 2014. Its theme was Kizuato to iyashi: sengo shimin shakai e no kakuritsu to taiheiyō shokoku to no wakai (傷跡と癒し: 戦後市民社会への確立と太平洋 諸国との和解, Wounds, Scars, and Healing: Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation. 2015: Our fifth conference was held at the University of Sydney from September 30 to October 2, 2015, to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the end of the Asia-Pacific War. One of the highlights of this conference was the collaborative project by Allan Marett, who produced the new English Noh play Oppenheimer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music on September 30 and October 1, 2015. The conference theme was Wounds, Scars and Healing: Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation. This event was supported by the University of Sydney Law School and included a photographic exhibition displayed at the University of Sydney library. Photographs and research relating to the exhibition were later published by Yasuko Claremont (ed.) as a bilingual book entitled Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation—the book was published by the Oriental Society of Australia and distributed by Sydney University Press (2017). The conference theme was also published in book form: Yasuko Claremont (ed.) Civil Society and Postwar Pacific Basin Reconciliation (Routledge, 2018). An account of the public symposium from the conference was subsequently published

Acknowledgements  xvii as “Postwar Australian-Japanese Grassroots Reconciliation Movements: Grassroots Presentations at the International Conference to Commemorate the Seventieth Anniversary of the End of the Asia–Pacific Conflict,” in the Journal of the Oriental Society of Australia (JOSA) 47 (2015): 19–60. The significance of the above events surrounding the seventieth anniversary commemorations also led to the translation of the seminal text Ishibumi: A Memorial to the Atomic Annihilation of 321 Students at Hiroshima Second Middle School, translated by Yasuko Claremont and Roman Rosenbaum (Tokyo: Poplar Publishing Co., 2016). Our latest project in exploring the socio-political potential of grassroots activism via the arts was planned for 2020. However, the world had other plans and the outbreak of the global Covid pandemic delayed our exhibition “Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age” for some two years. The event was finally held from April 7 to May 14, 2022, at the Tin Shed Gallery, University of Sydney, and resulted in the exhibition catalogue Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age.1 The exhibition was accompanied by a public symposium on May 7, 2022, to exchange ideas and perspectives between artists, activists and academics. We all met to consider methods for engaging the public in our continuing search for peace and nuclear disarmament. We would like to thank the symposium participants—Okamura Yukinori, curator of the Maruki Gallery, Maralinga; Indigenous artists from Yalata, Ceduna and Oak Valley; ICAN Australian Director Gem Romuld and ICAN founders Tilman Ruff and Dimity Hawkins; Allan Marett, who, combining his expertise in classical Japanese music and culture and Japanese Noh Theatre, has produced a modern Noh performance on atomic art; and peace activist and author Yuki Tanaka from Melbourne. Feedback from the symposium and the gallery exhibition, in combination with research from some of the leading experts in the fields of artistic activism and nuclear art, has been combined to produce this volume. We would like to thank the contributors to this edited collection, Art and Activism, who have worked under unprecedented, complex restraints to produce research that has never been more relevant than today. Our research was generously supported by The Japan Foundation, The Australia-Japan Foundation, The Chancellor’s Committee Grant as well as the Faculty of Arts at the University of Sydney, the Japanese Studies Association of Australia, the Tin Sheds Gallery and the Australian Society for Asian Humanities (ASAH). Elaine Lewis tirelessly copy-edited and proofread this volume. None of this would have been possible without the professionalism of our colleagues at the University of Sydney whose sponsorship, facilities and research expertise are world-class. But the final thank you must go to our families who have devoted so much of their time to keeping us safe, sound and stable through one of the most difficult periods in all of our lives. It is customary in Australian society to acknowledge Country—usually at the opening of ceremonies but with the topic at hand being our nuclear

xviii Acknowledgements legacy and its representation in the arts it is probably more suitable for them to have the final word. We would like to humbly acknowledge the participation and contribution of a group of Elders, in a symbiosis of the ancient and the new, via a Zoom round-table discussion from Ceduna, Western Australia, where the story of nuclear testing and its legacy continues to be told for future generations (Figure 0.1). Memento vivere.

Figure 0.1  A  rtists from Yalata, Ceduna and Oak Valley. Front row (L-R): Cindy Watson, Mima Smart OAM, Roslyn Peters. Back row (L-R): Glenda Ken, Pam Diment.

Note 1 See the exhibition “Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age” online with a link to the full symposium recording at https://www.sydney.edu.au/architecture/about/ tin-sheds-gallery/past-exhibitions/art-and-activism-in-the-nuclear-age.html. The exhibition catalogue is available at https://www.sydney.edu.au/content/ dam/corporate/images/sydney-school-of-architecture-design-and-planning/ about-the-school/tin-sheds-gallery/2022-program/tin-sheds-gallery-art-andactivism-in-the-nuclear-age-exhibition-catalogue.pdf.

1 Introduction The Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World Roman Rosenbaum

Towards an Introduction In 1995, when John Whittier Treat wrote the shocking words: “this concept of the potential hibakusha now has to extend to everyone alive today in any region of the planet,” he did not realise how accurate his prophecy would become.1 While he was looking back to Chernobyl and further to Hiroshima and Nagasaki, he could scarcely have imagined Fukushima and the nuclear threats of North Korea and Iraq, followed by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. In a world awash with “the omnipresent nuclear shadow,” we must ask ourselves what can art bring to activism?2 Should art be political at all? The notion of art for the pursuit of pleasure and entertainment, or perhaps to soothe our souls from the angst-ridden fast-paced societies we live in, is still deeply entrenched in modern capitalist consumer cultures. Yet, nowadays art can be so much more. Nietzsche presaged the contemporary political motives behind art when he remarked that “we have art in order not to die of the truth.” Reality is bleak and art can make it more palatable to our stressed busy lives. But there is so much more, says Toni Morrison when she suggests that “all good art is political! There is none that isn’t.”3 Closely related to this politicisation of art is Andy Warhol’s capitalisation of art when he facetiously remarked that “making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art.”4 Heavily deliberated ever since, these maxims nevertheless attest to the fact that art, it appears, can be anything we choose it to be, and the main undercurrent of this book focuses on the investigation of art as a methodology of activism.

Historical Overview of Anti-Nuclear Activism Of course, nuclear issues were not new in the 1980s. What was new was the insistence with which they imposed themselves on the public imagination. The whole topography of the decade, comprising cultural, social, geopolitical, domestic political, economic, technological and scientific features, was both shaped by and shaped nuclear preoccupations.5

DOI: 10.4324/9781003320395-1

2  Roman Rosenbaum Following the catastrophic usage of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, a long period of censorship ensued and this was followed by extensive nuclear testing in the Pacific.6 What became known as the Pacific Proving Ground began on June 30, 1946, when the United States tested a nuclear weapon on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.7 Until 1958, a total of twenty-three nuclear weapons were detonated and as a result other nations like France joined and conducted a total of 193 nuclear tests in Polynesia from 1966 to 1996. This new era of radioactive fallout from nuclear weapons testing was first drawn to public attention in 1954 when a hydrogen bomb test in the Pacific contaminated the crew of the Japanese fishing boat known as Lucky Dragon. One of the fishermen succumbed to radiation sickness seven months later and the incident caused global concerns and “provided a decisive impetus for the emergence of the anti-nuclear weapons movement in many countries.”8 It was during this initial phase of global awareness that Gerald Holtom sketched what is now widely known as “the peace logo” in pop-culture for the first London to Aldermaston march in 1958. This 8,000-strong anti-nuclear protest walk covered fifty-two miles, from Trafalgar Square to Berkshire’s Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, and created global headlines. The internationally recognisable symbol is one of the first graphic emblems adopted for instilling a global grassroots consciousness of anti-nuclear activism.9 Throughout the 1960s the global anti-nuclear movement grew dramatically due to elevated fears of a nuclear attack sparked by the Cold War. In 1961, following further escalation of nuclear arms development at the height of the Cold War, about 50,000 members of the Women Strike for Peace activist group marched in sixty cities across the United States to demonstrate against the testing of nuclear weapons. Following the doomsday brinkmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, many countries ratified the Partial Nuclear Test Ban Treaty in 1963, which prohibited atmospheric nuclear tests with the exception of those conducted underground. As early as 1964, Wolfgang Rüdig suggested “that the dangers and costs of the necessary final disposal of nuclear waste could possibly make it necessary to forego the development of nuclear energy,” a powerful statement that still rings true today.10 This first wave of nuclear activism subsided when in 1968 the United States, the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom signed the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and agreed not to assist other states in obtaining or producing nuclear weapons. Other pressing social issues like the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movements took centre stage and it was not until the energy crisis of the early 1970s that anti-nuclear movements re-emerged. This second wave continued throughout the 1970s with the rapid development of nuclear power across the globe. Anti-nuclear activism culminated in 1979 after the world’s first major nuclear power plant disaster when the Three Mile Island accident occurred at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. Shortly after, in the early 1980s, the recrudescence of the global nuclear arms race resulted in large anti-nuclear weapons protests,

Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World  3 especially following the discovery of a higher-than-normal number of deaths of children from leukaemia being reported from residents near several types of nuclear facilities. A resurgence of global interest in the anti-nuclear movement began in the mid-1980s, with artists like Mark Vallen who, in early 1981, created the well-known political poster “Nuclear War?!… There Goes my Career” (Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1  ‘Nuclear War?!... There Goes My Career!’ by Mark Vallen 1980.

Vallen modelled his female character after the pop-cultural icon Wonder Women to intertextually link nuclear art with pop-culture. The largest ever anti-nuclear protest was held on June 12, 1982, when one million people demonstrated in New York City, during a time when people seriously considered the possibility of an outbreak of a nuclear war between the Soviet

4  Roman Rosenbaum Union and the United States.11 Vallen’s poster was intended as a critique against capitalism and individuals who thought of themselves as too busy with their work or careers to notice they were in part responsible for the state of the world. It offered a grim view of American complacency in the face of the nuclear threat.12 This third wave of anti-nuclear activism culminated in 1986 with the nuclear power plant accident at the Chernobyl plant in Ukraine. The world’s worst nuclear accident had serious global socio-political repercussions that pitted energy conglomerates against grassroots activists who urged the development of alternative sustainable energy production. Despite improvements in technology, the Fukushima incident in 2011 provided credible ­evidence for the unsurmountable susceptibility of power plants to terrorism or acts of nature.13 The cold hard truth of nuclear energy production or its national phaseout in our post-Fukushima global society is that each country has its own unique tendency to either embrace or detach themselves from the c­ himera that is the nuclear. Germany, for instance, has embraced the notion of Energiewende or “energy shift” to transition the nation to a low-carbon renewable energy framework. Germany is one of a handful of nations that have aimed at phasing out their fleets of nuclear reactors completely by 2022, with the aim of reaching a 100% renewable energy system. In comparison Australia holds 31% of the world’s supply of uranium but has always found it cheaper to rely on an ocean of local coal, gas and oil for power. Even though the nuclear debate periodically resurfaces in Australia in order to combat the current climate collapse and our reliance on fossil fuels, a royal commission in 2015 found mixed results and concluded that nuclear power was financially out of reach for Australia.14

The Literary Genre of the Anti-Nuclear The consciousness of the 80s is being shaped by the threat of nuclear war.15 Well before nuclear art developed into a methodology for activism, writers like John Hersey’s searing eponymous account Hiroshima marked the first official record of the bomb’s devastating human cost and became a bestseller in 1946. Hersey adopted literature as a means of focusing global consciousness onto the inhumane power of the atomic bombs.16 Several decades later in 1982, some thirty-seven years after the atomic bombs were dropped, Yōtarō Konaka participated in the compilation and publication of a fifteen-volume collection entitled Nihon no genbaku bungaku, now officially known as Japanese Atomic-Bomb Literature and thus a new literary genre was inaugurated. He wrote that the creation of this literary genre was inspired by a gathering of 500 Japanese writers in 1982, who jointly issued a “writer’s declaration on the danger of Nuclear War,” with some writers at

Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World  5 the time still feeling that it was an inappropriate activity for writers.17 Reiko Tachibana commented later about the genre as rising “promptly from the ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” but due to censorship rules and because it was contrary to the existing literary traditions it was ignored initially and hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors) were excluded from representing their trauma via literary tropes.18 Even today the subject of atomic bombings is divisive and textbooks in the United States focus specifically on how many American lives the bomb saved.19 While this specific genre focusing on the atomic bomb droppings is unique to the Japanese experience it has recently been extended to all hibakusha communities around the world, stressing the cross-national implications of this global event. Oda Makoto for instance specifically addressed this dimension of Hiroshima in his long novel entitled The Bomb (1984)—the story includes the disenfranchisement of the native American Indian population in the United States during testings of the atomic bomb.20 Other countries involved in the same Asia-Pacific Conflict or in World War II have similar genres, such as the specific German Trümmerliteratur (literature of ruins) which ranges from 1945 to 1950 and focuses on the post-war life of the German population in the ruined cities following the devastation of the war. The genre focuses both on the physical ruins of the cities as well as the ruined lives as psychological scars of the European conflict. Like Germany, Japan had experienced allied fire-bombings of its major cities which gave birth to the yakeato generation of writers in Japan with slightly different connotations. While Trümmerliteratur was written by older writers with war experience trying to come to terms with their complicity and how to deal with it, in Japan the yakeato literature was written much later by older writers who were too young to participate actively in the war but whose psyche was traumatised by the war during childhood.

A Short History of Nuclear Art as Activism The motivational power of art, and in particular “nuclear art,” to find creative solutions to our most pressing dilemmas today is highly subjective and fiercely contested. Yet, art has the power to move individuals to social action, manipulate and influence, entertain and educate where sociopolitical movements have failed. From the first World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs held in Hiroshima in 1955 to the recent thinly veiled threats of a nuclear attack in Ukraine, art has always been a powerful way of inspiring activism and raising awareness of global nuclear concerns. Anna Volkmar has demonstrated how nuclear art may empower viewers to see and think laterally, thereby enabling creative solutions for societal change. The transformative potential of artistry may challenge and upset viewers’ expectations surrounding a work of art as we consider the redistribution of power relations with reference to the complexity of making art within nuclear landscapes and catastrophes at a

6  Roman Rosenbaum time when the primary focus of industry is the marketing and promotion of nuclear energy through the commercialisation of arts.21 Arguably the first “art” produced out of the ashes of Hiroshima was the collection of paintings referred to as The Hiroshima Panels (原爆の図, Genbaku no zu), which include a series of fifteen painted folding panels by the collaborative husband and wife artists, Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi. Iri left for Hiroshima on the first train from Tokyo, three days after the bomb was dropped. Toshi followed a few days later. Just over two kilometres from the centre of the explosion, the family home was still standing.22 Three years would pass before they began work on painting The Hiroshima Panels. They created an early trilogy as part of a series called The Hiroshima Panels. These works, 1. Ghost, 2. Fire and 3. Water, based on the artists’ own experiences and stories recounted by family members, were first shown in 1950. When the works travelled around Japan in the early 1950s, at a time when press restraints were still in effect, the pictures, some of the earliest visual documents of the horrors of the bombing, came to be a symbol of anti-nuclear and anti-war sentiment. Along with the series’ tremendous social significance, the works are unusual in that they combine Toshi’s delicate Western-style depictions of human figures with Iri’s bold Japanesestyle ink-painting techniques. The entire collection grew to fifteen works completed over a span of thirty-two years (1950–1982). Visiting his family in Hiroshima, Maruki Iri travelled with his wife and stayed in Hiroshima for a month in the aftermath of the atomic bomb. Following their eye-witness experience in Hiroshima, the Panels initially depicted the consequences of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki—other nuclear disasters of the twentieth century were later added. The Marukis’ collaboration continued, and the trajectory of their work reflected global nuclear issues in relation to Japan’s ethical and political responsibilities in the world through their paintings that highlighted specific nuclear issues. In the aftermath of the 1954 Bikini Atoll U.S. nuclear test, which spread radioactive fallout across the South Seas, ­contaminating a Japanese fishing boat (Lucky Dragon Number Five) and its crew, the Marukis painted the murals Yaizu (焼津, the name of the town where the fishing boat docked) which depicted local people in a defiant stance. In the 1970s, the Marukis exhibited their paintings in the United States for the first time, and the experience shaped their future drawings in a profound way. Having focused primarily on the victim-consciousness of the Japanese, after an American viewer asked why they only painted Hiroshima and not incidents in World War II in which Japan was the aggressor, the Marukis began to include the perpetrator perspective into their drawings which led to two significant paintings on the moral complexity of the global atomic bomb experience itself. Their 1972 painting, Crows (karasu 1972), refers to the severe discrimination Koreans faced in Japan, before and after the atomic bombings. The second painting expanded their subject directly to the horrors of war and was entitled Nanking Massacre (Nankin daigyakusatsu no zu 1975)—

Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World  7 it depicted terrible acts that Japanese former soldiers had described to them. They began to push for a repudiation of these and other wartime actions by their compatriots and the Japanese government.23 Thus, The Hiroshima Panels have presented an artistic way of keeping nuclear issues in the public consciousness over the past three-quarters of a century. As well as the personal experience of individuals there is the activism inspired by world-shattering events such as the intensity of the Cuban Missile Crisis or the world’s worst nuclear accident in Chernobyl in 1986, the sense of angst and precarity quickly began to find abstract expression in the arts. Nina Felshin’s Disarming Images: Art for Nuclear Disarmament was one of the first public collections of anti-nuclear art published before the catastrophe took place in Chernobyl. It was organised by the New York City’s National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees through their cultural project Bread and Roses, which organised a series of exhibitions shown across the United States. The purpose of this example of art as social activism, with its specific aim to “heighten public awareness of our nuclear predicament,” was described as follows: Because we believe that art can express in a special way our common concern that the “ultimate epidemic” must never be allowed to occur, this exhibition represents a logical extension of our daily work.24 Felshin’s exhibition catalogue assembled forty-four works by forty-six artists who were vitally concerned with the increasing threat of nuclear annihilation and who addressed this issue in their work that stands as a powerful testimony to the nuclear angst of the 1980s. Later Robert Jacobs’ study of the response of art and popular culture in relation to the history of the bombs and our nuclear future suggests that for many of us without direct experience, it is the representation in art that shapes our experience of nuclear issues in the contemporary world. This becomes more important as many of the signature events recede into history. While political and social forces are often limited and appear paralysed as far as thinking beyond the local implications of this apocalyptic technology, art and popular culture are uniquely suited to grapple with the abstract global and human implications of the bomb’s legacy, nuclear energy in general, and are relevant to the meaning of humanity in the nuclear age.25

Hiroshima/Nagasaki: Contemporary Consideration of a Nuclear Legacy As the potential cause of all contemporary nuclear debates, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the cities and their artistic commemorations, have become emblematic of our contemporary global nuclear culture. They heralded in the new atomic age, drove nuclear disarmament and advocated for denuclearisation. If we juxtapose this with the potential positive considerations

8  Roman Rosenbaum of nuclear energy production to combat climate change and medical innovations, we are reminded of what Pablo Picasso referred to as a paradox in the arts by suggesting that “every positive value has its price in negative terms… the genius of Einstein leads to Hiroshima.”26 Remarkably, even some seventy-five years after the atomic bombings, every year new perspectives of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are published. For instance, Naoko Wake’s American Survivors: Trans-Pacific Memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki refocuses the atomic bombings from the vantage point of the cross-national history of the Asia-Pacific War and was published as late as 2021. The year before, Alison Fields’s Discordant Memories: Atomic Age Narratives and Visual Culture investigated the layered ­complexities of nuclear remembrance through an in-depth analysis of photography, film and artworks while tracing site visits to atomic museums in New Mexico and Japan to illuminate the contemporary significance of such distant traumatic events. As the continuing research into the world’s first nuclear catastrophe illustrates, the plethora of vantage points of the totemic Hiroshima and Nagasaki mythologies are still highly significant today. This dichotomy is often exemplified by the often-quoted phrase, Ikari no Hiroshima, inori no Nagasaki (怒りの広島 祈りの長崎)—Hiroshima rages, Nakasaki prays—which demonstrates the complex binary distinction that bisects the atomic bomb response of the two cities along stereotypical fault lines and exemplifies the potential multifaceted dialectics of one responding with anger and the other by praying (due to the strong history of Catholic survivors in Nagasaki). More recently several studies have begun to delve deeper into the politics of commemorations surrounding Hiroshima and Nagasaki anniversaries in order to articulate a critique of the hegemonic victim memory discourse emanating from these sites, which has led to the denial, or at least, obfuscation, of Japan’s Imperial perpetrator past by exclusively remembering Japanese victims. This is not a new tendency and the victim versus perpetrator dichotomy has a long and acrimonious socio-political history that haunts Japan to this present day. Recent works such as Ran Zwigenberg’s Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture (2014) unearth the complex history of the sites’ sanctification through “discourses of trauma” and the comparison to 9/11 in the United States, and later 3/11 Fukushima. This has led to the “near complete absence of the perpetrator”—in great contrast to Holocaust memory—and is, indeed, the most conspicuous element in its commemoration.27 Other studies like Masaya Nemoto’s Hiroshima Paradox (2018) similarly investigate the various “side-effects” hidden in the humanism and universality of Hiroshima’s peace movements. Nemoto argues that as a result of emphasising “humanity” as the overarching focal point, issues of Japan’s war responsibilities and American accountability for the dropping of the atomic bombs on civilian populations have been whitewashed and anti-nuclear movements have become depoliticised. Hiroshima as a sacred site that stands above

Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World  9 politics has become a shibboleth for inoriba (a praying site) that is excluded from political movements. Nemoto argues that this failure to embrace Hiroshima as a universal site destroyed by nuclear technology is symbolised by the Japanese government’s attitude—refusing to sign the “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons” and, instead, publicly maintaining the fallacy of nuclear deterrence in disregard of the wishes of the hibakusha community.28

The Politics of Nuclear Art Accompanying these commemorative appeals of cataclysmic events, the size of which the world has arguably never seen before—and hopefully never will again—has been the notion of what service, if any, art can perform in the rendition, remembrance and preservation of the memory, legacy and continuity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is not a new question and artistic representation of disasters has always been a double-edged sword with Theodor Adorno’s famous suggestion that “after Auschwitz, to write a poem is barbaric” still ringing true today.29 Artistic representation can be challenging—in 1976 Charles Reznikoff’s objet trouvé attempted to rewrite the Holocaust as a poem based on the court records of post-war Nuremberg trials. Reznikoff took up the challenge implicit in Adorno’s much debated aphorism and responded, “by doing what artists have always done and finding the appropriate technical means.”30 The resulting great polemical long poem in English stands as a testament to the recovery of the human spirit after major cataclysmic events. Similar challenges about the relevance of commemorating Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the wake of a nascent Zeitgeist of A-bomb fatigue have been quickly dispelled by the devastation wreaked following the triple catastrophe of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami; the Fukushima reactor nuclear meltdown; and, later, the invasion of Ukraine. With the renewed momentum generated by contemporary nuclear disasters it is paramount to review how the representation of these nuclear disasters has been played out through representation in the arts. An early example of the controversial rendition of nuclear incidents through the arts can be seen in the cartoons of the Australian illustrator Eric Joliffe. His well-published portrayal of Australian Aboriginal ­people enjoyed great success throughout his career for almost fifty years. Nowadays, almost forgotten, his cartoons are very confrontational and reflect the attention generated by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the resulting catastrophic arms race that led to the disenfranchisement of many Indigenous populations the world over. These ranged from the Marshall Islands in the South Pacific, during the U.S. nuclear testing between 1946 and 1962; France’s testing in Polynesia; and British tests extending from Maralinga in South Australia, the Montebello Islands and Western Australia to Emu Field in South Australia from 1952 to 1963.

10  Roman Rosenbaum While there are many examples that could be deemed grotesque representations of such barbaric events, the Australian nuclear tests inflicted untold horrors on the Indigenous populations, including displacement and contamination. This sense of precariousness and displacement was rendered pop-culturally in a rare, long-forgotten grotesque cartoon by Eric Joliffe whose raw humour may upset today’s audiences (Figure 1.2).31

Figure 1.2 ‘I told that Warramunga mob not to tinker around with uranium,’ by Eric Joliffe (1954).

Many other and more contemporary examples of controversial nuclear art exhibits can be found the world over. In Japan, following the devastation wreaked by the 3/11 triple catastrophe in Eastern Japan, Kenji Yanobe erected a six-metre-tall “Sun Child” statue near Fukushima railway station in 2018, depicting a child clad in a protective radiation suit looking towards the heavens. Despite the artist’s purpose of expressing hope for the reconstruction of areas affected by the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, and the ensuing nuclear accident, it sparked instant controversy. The statue metaphorically suggests recovery since the boy has taken off his helmet to demonstrate that the air in Fukushima is now clean and the radiation counter on his chest shows zero to symbolise a world without nuclear disasters.32 Yet disagreements quickly followed among local residents, with many demanding its removal and others saying the statue could trigger “reputational damage” following the meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plant. Despite Yanobe’s defence that the statue depicted a child braving a difficult situation and that his aim was to cheer people up in the wake of the disaster, the controversy grew, and the statue had to be dismantled in

Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World  11 33

September 2018. While relatively benign in nature, the Sun Child statue incident highlights the inherent sense of angst expressed by the representation of the nuclear issue through the arts (Figure 1.3).

Figure 1.3  Sun Child statue by Kenji Yanobe.

Arguably one of the most famous cases of the complex politics of artistic representation of traumatic nuclear incidents surrounded the exhibition

12  Roman Rosenbaum of the Enola Gay. In 1995 the National Air and Space Museum (NASM) proposed an exhibition at the Smithsonian Institution that would include displaying the Enola Gay—the Boeing B-29 Superfortress bomber that was used to drop the world’s first atomic bomb on Hiroshima—in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II. Entitled The Crossroads: The End of World War II, the Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War, the exhibit was curated by Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum staff and was arranged around the restored Enola Gay.34 The fiery controversy that ensued demonstrated the competing historical narratives regarding the decision to drop the bomb. Critics of the planned exhibition complained about the unilateral focus on Japanese casualties and the sense of Japanese victimhood inculcated by the atomic bomb detonation, saying that it did not demonstrate the broader history of Japanese aggression as well as the larger issues surrounding the reasoning for the dropping of the bomb.35 Nevertheless, the exhibit broke many taboos and brought to national attention the long-standing academic and politically dormant issues related to retrospective views of the bombings and their political legacy in American society. Martin O. Harwit, Director of the National Air and Space Museum, expressed his hopes that the exhibit could offer a partial resolution of the “unarticulated issues” that had long haunted JapaneseAmerican relations, and that it could make August 6—traditionally a day of “protest and recrimination”—into a day for reflection.36 After several attempts to revise the exhibit and to placate and unite several of the competing interest groups, the exhibit was initially cancelled in 1995, causing the resignation of Martin O. Harwit. Harwit wrote an extensive review of the controversy, concluding that the planned exhibit focused national attention on many long-standing unresolved academic and political issues related to retrospective views of the bombings. These included challenging the myth that the bombings saved Japanese as well as American lives and that a revisionism of the decision would dishonour the wartime service to the nation.37 Despite all the controversy, the forward fuselage went on display anyway from June 1995 till 1998. Following extensive restoration, the aircraft was shipped to the National Air and Space Museum’s Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia, by 2003, with the fuselage and wings reunited for the first time since 1960. Regrettably, as a result of the earlier controversy, the signage around the aircraft provided mere technical data without any discussion of the controversial issues surrounding its deployment and the development of nuclear weapons. This severely limited display of the Enola Gay, without reference to the historical context of World War II, the Cold War or the development and deployment of nuclear weapons, initiated further controversy. A petition from the Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy described the displaying of the Enola Gay as a “technological achievement,” reflecting “extraordinary callousness

Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World  13 toward the victims, indifference to the deep divisions among American citizens about the propriety of these actions, and disregard for the feelings of most of the world’s peoples.”38 The petition ran its course and attracted signatures from notable figures including historian Gar Alperovitz, social critic Noam Chomsky, whistle-blower Daniel Ellsberg, physicist Joseph Rotblat, writer Kurt Vonnegut, producer Norman Lear, actor Martin Sheen and filmmaker Oliver Stone.39 While the display issue has lain dormant for several years now, its academic repercussions continue. Several publications focused specifically on this event, including Steven Dubin’s Displays of Power: Controversy in the American Museum from the Enola Gay to Sensation, where he argued that the modern globalised museums are crucibles for transformation where complex interpretations clash ferociously, often to their own detriment, but thereby expand the public’s consciousness about a world that is increasingly multicultural and multinational.40 What these controversies surrounding the atomic bomb-related exhibits and representations exemplify collectively is that historical interpretations are constantly in flux and never remain stable. As new generations of readers and viewers attempt to comprehend events in the distant past that directly affect us all in our daily lives, it is the arts that instantiate how our future lies in the past.

By Way of Conclusion The subject of nuclear representation is very topical and links directly to the recent establishment of AUKUS—a trilateral security pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States, announced on September 15, 2021, for the Indo-Pacific region. Under the pact, the United States and the United Kingdom will help Australia acquire nuclear-­ powered submarines. This security alliance comes in addition to the already ­existing  Quad alliances between Australia, India, Japan and the United States in relation to the security of the Asia-Pacific region. All of these global ­security treaties are actively developing and seek to redress the rise of China in the region. With Australia on the cusp of acquiring nuclear-­powered submarines, active participation in anti-nuclear activism, denuclearisation and citizen engagement have never been more important. There were global jubilations in 2017 when ICAN (The International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its work in drawing attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts at achieving a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.41 In addition, for the highly significant commemoration of the seventy-fifth anniversary of Hiroshima/Nagasaki in 2020, this book was conceived as a companion for an exhibition on nuclear art at the Tin Shed Gallery of the University of Sydney, Australia. At this event ICAN was one of the main presenters of a one-day online symposium, which also invited Aboriginal elders from

14  Roman Rosenbaum a community in Australia with direct experience of the nuclear testing in Maralinga.42 Alas, shortly after the emergency of the global pandemic in 2019 campuses around the world were swiftly closed and the arts fell into a global silence with the world’s priorities shifting towards self-preservation. The planned exhibition and the visit of the elders had to be cancelled for two years. The world over, people were isolated and gatherings in public spaces became scarce. The exhibition of Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age, however, both in its literary form and in terms of preparation for the gallery exhibition continued throughout its dormant phase until finally reopening in 2022.43 Just when the world was about to breathe a collective sigh of relief, following a second variant and many epidemic waves later, Russia invaded Ukraine. Suddenly our exhibition’s main focus of “nuclear art as activism” was back in the international limelight, when Vladimir Putin suggested that Russia has nuclear weapons available if anyone dares to use military means to try to stop its takeover of Ukraine.44 This renewed spectre of nuclear armament, already dormant in Iraq and North Korea, became centre stage once again. To add insult to injury, the pretext of a conspiracy theory that Ukraine is on a path to develop nuclear weapons was adopted to justify the invasion.45 The legacies of Hiroshima/Nagasaki will stay with us forever, not unlike the dormant Covid virus variants that may resurface at any moment when our guard is down. It is this book’s primary intent to pursue the power of the arts to unite people in the common goal of denuclearisation and the peaceful adoption of limited nuclear medicine and also to debunk the mythological illusions apparent in contradictions such as “nuclear deterrent” and “clean nuclear energy” with its by-product of unmanageable “nuclear waste disposal.”

List of Chapters with Content In Chapter 2 Kazuyo Yamane focuses on the history of Japanese people’s experience of atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and that of the Japanese fishermen who later experienced U.S. nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands in 1954. She also explores the lives of those who faced nuclear disaster again in Fukushima in 2011. These people are still suffering from the effects of radiation. The danger of nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants is not well-known because of the lack of education in schools and poor reporting in the media. Many people don’t know about the reality of hibakusha, those affected by atomic bombs and victims of the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. They suffered from the immediate effects of the blasts, the effects of radiation sickness, loss of family and friends and discrimination against them in terms of employment and marriage. In spite of their difficulties, many hibakusha have made great contributions to the fight for peace and human rights. Anti-nuclear movements,

Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World  15 peace education at universities and museums for peace are investigated as movements towards a non-nuclear future. In Chapter 3 Barabara Hartley's interrogation of the nuclear industry focuses on the literature of Tsushima Yūko (1946–2016) who, as a literary identity responding to the Fukushima Dai-ichi disaster, produced both non-fiction and fiction that probed the nature of her country’s nuclear obsession. She gave a particular edge to her work by demonstrating how Japan’s nuclear industry was part of a “massive global economy” (Sensō no jikan ga nagarete—The Time of War Flows By, 2016). Awareness of the nexus between that which occurs both inside and outside Japan was an ever-present feature of Tsushima’s later work. This chapter also discusses the post-3/11 essay by Tsushima Yūko, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”—From “Dreamsongs”—which examines post-war Japan’s complicity with nuclear industry discourses. Such complicity is attributed by Tsushima to everyone in Japan, including herself. A focus of the essay is the writer’s concern at the nuclear industry’s exploitation of First Nations and Indigenous peoples already subject to the impact of colonisation. In this context, the essay references an April 2011 statement made by Senior Elder Yvonne Margarula of the Mirarr people, the traditional owners of Country on which Australia’s Ranger uranium mine was located. In her statement, Senior Elder Margarula apologised for the fact that ore forcibly extracted from Mirarr lands contributed to the operation of the Dai-ichi plant. In Chapter 4, Roman Rosenbaum traces the earliest manifestation of the atom bomb in comics—from censored Superman comics to their Australian antipodean counterpart, Captain Atom. This investigation traces the lineage of graphic representation of the nuclear age from Nakazawa Keiji’s countercultural classic Barefoot Gen, to the appearance of the transgenerational drawings in Kōno Fumiyo’s In This Corner of the World. Through the ever-changing pop-cultural re-interpretations of the Hiroshima/ Nagasaki symbolism in world culture, beginning with the “faithful days” some ­seventy-five years ago, graphic art reveals an intriguing portrait of the global collective consciousness regarding the atomic and nuclear in our cultures. The Hiroshima/Nagasaki sites have been reimagined globally through every conceivable pop-cultural media and this chapter will focus on the re-imaginings of arguably one of the world’s most grotesque cultural icons by subsequent generations of graphic artists. The significance of Hiroshima/Nagasaki in relation to the contemporary global discourse of disarmament and denuclearisation will be explored in its latest pop-cultural representations to define what Hiroshima has become after three-quarters of a century of interrogation. In Chapter 5, Yasuko Claremont examines how the concept of post-war reconciliation is represented in the arts. Her chapter portrays the ways in which concerned Japanese people, such as poets, writers, artists, students, hibakusha and teachers, have been determined to support a mission for peace without nuclear weapons. The year 2020 commemorated the

16  Roman Rosenbaum seventy-fifth anniversary of the end of the Asia-Pacific War together with the first atomic bombing on Hiroshima and the second on Nagasaki. In the past seventy-five years the campaigns of nuclear disarmament have continued from generation to generation, not only in Japan but also all over the world. One such example is the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017. Yet at the same time the world superpowers and their supporters insist on military superiority. In Chapter 6, Ann Sherif investigates the roles of museums in relation to the categorisations of hibakusha and non-hibakusha. Setsuko Thurlow, in her 2017 Nobel Lecture after ICAN was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, said, “We hibakusha became convinced that we must warn the world about these apocalyptic weapons. Time and again, we shared our testimonies.” Building on the work of Yoneyama and Zwigenberg, this chapter considers the initiatives of two Hiroshima institutions designed to sustain the practice of witnessing at a time when the average age of a hibakusha is over eighty. The major renovation of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (completed 2019) was predicated on the assumption that the museum must simulate the function of witnessing against “the horrors and inhumane nature” of nuclear weapons. The design of the new permanent exhibition and the increased presence of “A-bomb Legacy Successors” who “have taken over the A-bomb survivor’s experience and given testimony on behalf of them”46 are heavily informed by anxiety over the future lack of experiential authority that is considered key to the act of witnessing. The nearby Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for Atomic Bomb Victims mounted a special exhibition “A Tale of Two Brothers Across Time—Hiroshima Artist Gorō SHIKOKU and the Diary of Naoto on His Deathbed” that models a relationship between an empathetic non-hibakusha, a hibakusha and the dead (January–December 2020). What moral and political considerations steer the museum’s emphasis on witnessing? How will the non-hibakusha’s capacity to protest world nuclear weapons be changed when there is no one to “relive the painful past”? How do the museums employ artefacts and art in their efforts to act as witnesses to the bomb? In Chapter 7, Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto join to discuss the pandemic’s implications for the commemorations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki events. Covid-19 in 2020 produced a “mushroom cloud” which threatened to obscure and suppress the seventy-fifth commemorations of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Official narratives simultaneously attempted to proclaim an end to past difficulties and hibakusha (sufferers of the atomic bombings) and their supporters stood up to all of these challenges. The authors discuss how the Japanese government used the Olympics to promote and showcase recovery or transcendence over nuclear disaster, focusing especially on Fukushima, but also on the past atomic bombings. In 1964, after all, an Olympic torch runner born in Hiroshima

Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World  17 Prefecture lit the Olympic torch, while in 2020 the closing ceremony was slated for Nagasaki Day. How then would a Nagasaki perspective understand, make sense of and respond to the Covid-19 “mushroom cloud” as well as the above intentions for the Olympic event? Drawing on surveys of a number of citizens during the year, including a Nagasaki-based novelist, educationalists, nuclear activists and researchers, the authors detail in this chapter the resilience of memory, which undercuts the official narrative that Japan is no longer troubled by its past. There is an evident connection between the production and consumption of nuclear energy, war and the normalisation of collateral violence. On the other hand, a resilient memory of the aftermath of both nuclear accidents and the bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima rejects and recalls their impacts, especially on sufferers represented by the hibakusha. In Chapter 8, Tessa Morris-Suzuki details the history of Australian art representing Hiroshima. In the immediate aftermath of the August 1945 atomic bombings, stringent censorship restricted access to images of the destruction wrought by the bombs. Some of the first foreigners to witness that destruction were Australian troops who arrived at bases close to Hiroshima to take part in the allied occupation of Japan. Among them were war artists who recorded their visual impressions of the devastated city. This chapter looks at the experiences and artworks of three Australian war artists—Albert Tucker (1914–1999), Reginald Rowed (1916–1990) and Allan Waite (1924–2010)—and places their paintings of Hiroshima in the wider context of Australian responses to the atomic bombings. How did the artists’ encounters with the bombed city of Hiroshima shape their perceptions of war and of atomic weapons? How did their artworks convey the devastation they had witnessed to a wider audience? And how do these paintings speak to us today? In Chapter 9, Veronica De Pieri turns her attention to Japanese female journalism in the wake of post-3/11 journalistic representation. The author explores Japanese female journalism in the catastrophic aftermath through a literary comparison between Ōta Yōko’s Shikabane no machi and Yoshida Chia’s Sono ato no Fukushima. Despite seventy years having passed since the first publication of these nonfictional works, they are a full-fledged part of the testimonial narratives of Hiroshima’s atomic bombing and the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear meltdown. Both journalists were at the forefront in reporting hibakushas’ testimonies and underlined the sense of discrimination survivors experienced soon after the catastrophes. They acknowledged the burdensome fear of the A-bomb disease as well as the radiation sickness, thus considering with extreme sensitivity the peculiar condition of women in the aftermath. Their writings reflect the compelling struggle to commit themselves as female witnesses and reporters to convey, at the same time, victims’ suffering and a harsh criticism of the Japanese government’s responsibility in the disaster. After a brief overview of authorial profiles, the

18  Roman Rosenbaum chapter delves into a thematic comparison between the literary works on the basis of anti-nuclear activist and denuclearisation issues, to conclude with a final remark on the role of female journalism in the broader perspective of the testimonial narrative, with a particular emphasis on trauma and memory representations in the nonfictional style. In Chapter 10, Elisabeth Rechniewski scrutinises the “Political and Environmental Aftermath of French Nuclear Testing in the Pacific.” She states that between 1966 and 1996 the atolls of Moruroa and Fangataufa in French Polynesia—a “territoire d’outremer” (an overseas territory)—were the sites for 193 French nuclear tests, at first above-ground (1966–1974) and later underground. The release of previously classified documents in 2013 revealed that the populations of the nearby islands and the land and sea environment had been subjected to much higher levels of radiation than previously acknowledged. In 2010 a law was passed, the “loi Morin,” under which those who believed they had suffered health consequences from the testing could apply for compensation. The workings of this law and subsequent amendments to it have been controversial and contested by victims’ associations, including Association 193 and the Polynesia nuclear workers’ association, Mururoa e Tatou, with many claims rejected. A project to build an Institut de Mémoire et de Documentation du Nucléaire in Papeete (first announced by François Hollande) has become similarly contentious. This chapter examines the latest developments in the fifty-year controversy over the justification for holding the tests, their long-term impact on the surrounding region, compensation for those affected and the politics of memory. In the penultimate chapter, Alexander Brown focuses his critical gaze on “Scientific Activism in the Nuclear Age via the Japanese biologist Atuhiro Sibatani and the Ranger Uranium Mine.” This chapter explores the development of anti-nuclear sentiment within the transnational scientific community and its influence on the debate on uranium mining in Australia in the 1970s. Nuclear scientists, including some who had worked on the development of nuclear weapons, were among the first to sound a warning about the dangers of both nuclear weapons and nuclear energy generation. In the 1950s and 1960s they developed a movement, sometimes under the banner of “Science for the People,” that questioned the uses to which science was put. They demanded greater democratic control over science and technology. One scientist who was influenced by this movement was the Australia-based Japanese biologist, Atuhiro Sibatani (1920–2011). As Australia debated the development of a uranium export industry, Sibatani felt a responsibility as a citizen and as a scientist to lend his voice to the movement against uranium mining. He drew on his links with critical scientists in Japan to share information about the anti-nuclear power movement there. His stance ultimately led him to take the stand at the Ranger Uranium Inquiry. In the early days of the anti-nuclear movement, individuals like Sibatani with existing ties to a transnational scientific community helped to bridge the geographical and

Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World  19 linguistic gap between distinct national anti-nuclear movements. This chapter explores Sibatani’s activism against uranium mining in the context of his beliefs about the need to ensure greater democratic control over science and technology. In the final chapter Yasuko Claremont summarises the content of this book as the culmination of a decade of citizen activism that has brought to life the notion of art as accomplishing a type of socio-political activism via a series of conferences, exhibitions and international symposia. Art has lost its innocence a long time ago and may be as politically or socially charged as any other media in the global amphitheatre of culture. In a world where hegemonies of power pervade every aspect of our daily lives at both discernible and subconscious levels, through modern marketing campaigns and our smart phones, it is only fair to use every available means to redress the balance. Art is perhaps our most powerful weapon. Claremont carefully outlines the history of our modern-day grassroots resistance by artistic means, which however innocuous at first glance are able to implant powerful ideas that motivate us by unearthing “inconvenient truths” often deeply hidden and long forgotten in the knowledge overload of our modern world. At the very apex of all the historical lessons we choose to ignore, still after more than three-quarters of a century, stand the heroic legacies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Forever etched in our global consciousness, Claremont discerns that their impact is still felt powerfully today and is given expression through the arts to help pave our way towards a better future. Beyond these legacies, Claremont carefully describes the state of nuclear activism in Japan today and outlines the continuity of contemporary research such as Horikawa Keiko’s book about the role of individuals in Hiroshima and transgenerational projects like Sasebo Nishi High School’s documentary films.

Notes 1 John W. Treat, Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), x–xi. See also Shoko Itoh, “American Nuclear Literature on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Oxford Research Encyclopedias, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098.013.165. 2 Ferenc Morton Szasz, Atomic Comics: Cartoonists Confront the Nuclear World (Nevada: University of Nevada Press, 2012), xvii. 3 Kevin Nance, “The Spirit and the Strength: A Profile of Toni Morrison,” Poets and Writers, January 11, 2008, https://www.pw.org/content/the_ spirit_and_the_strength_a_profile_of_toni_morrison. 4 Blake Gopnik, “Andy Warhol Offered to Sign Cigarettes, Food, Even Money to Make Money,” ARTnews, April 21, 2020, https://www.artnews.com/art-news/ market/andy-warhol-business-art-blake-gopnik-biography-excerpt-1202684403/. 5 Daniel Cordle, Late Cold War Literature and Culture: The Nuclear 1980s (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 2–3. 6 Very few exceptions such as the Japanese photojournalist Yoshito Matsushige survived the atomic bombing and took the only photographs of Hiroshima survivors that day, only to have them confiscated until 1952. Similarly, photographer Yōsuke Yamahata began taking photographs of Nagasaki on August 10,

20  Roman Rosenbaum 1945 (the day after the bombing)—however, his photographs were not released to the public until 1952 when the magazine Asahi Gurafu published them. 7 For a detailed history of nuclear testing in the Marshall Islands see for example: Greg Dvorak, Coral and Concrete, Remembering Kwajalein Atoll between Japan, America, and the Marshall Islands (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2018), 1–9. 8 Wolfgang Rüdig, Anti-nuclear Movements: A World Survey of Opposition to Nuclear Energy (Harlow: Longman 1990), 54–55. 9 Alice Primrose, “Protest Power: 11 Artworks That Spilled into the Street,” Royal Academy, March 24, 2017, https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/ protest-power-artwork-politics. 10 Wolfgang Rüdig, Anti-Nuclear Movements, 63. 11 David Cortright, Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 145. 12 Michelle Moravec, “Make Art Not War: Topographies of Anti-Nuclear Art in Late Cold War Los Angeles,” International Journal of Regional and Local Studies 6, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 58–71, http://michellemoravec.com/wp-content/ uploads/2016/03/topographies.pdf. 2013. 13 Susan L. Rothwell, “Antinuclear movement,” Encyclopedia Britannica, November 5, 2014, https://www.britannica.com/topic/anti-nuclear-movement. 14 Royce Kurmelovs, “Should Australia Build Nuclear Power Plants to Combat the Climate Crisis?,” Guardian, October 13, 2021, https://www.theguardian. com/environment/2021/oct/13/explainer-should-australia-build-nuclear-powerplants-to-combat-the-climate-crisis. 15 Nina Felshin, Disarming Images (New York: Adama Books 1984), 15. 16 See, for example, Michael S. Rosenwald, “The U.S. Hid Hiroshima’s Human Suffering. Then John Hersey Went to Japan,” Washington Post, August 6, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2020/08/06/john-hersey-hiroshimaanniversary-japanese-suffering/. 17 Yōtarō Konaka and Winifred Olsen, “Japanese Atomic-Bomb Literature,” World Literature Today 62, no. 3 (Summer, 1988): 420–424. 18 Reiko Tachibana, Narrative as Counter-Memory: A Half-Century of Postwar Writing in Germany and Japan (New York: Suny Press, 1998), 33. 19 For a detailed analysis of the American textbook controversy see Keith Crawford, “Re-visiting Hiroshima: The Role of US and Japanese History Textbooks in the Construction of National Memory,” Asia Pacific Education Review 4 (February 2003): 108–117. 20 Originally published with the Japanese title Hiroshima in 1981, the novel features a cross-cultural pantheon of characters including an American POW, Korean residents, hyphenated Japanese-American identities and many other incidental characters all affected by the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. 21 Anna Volkmar, Art and Nuclear Power: The Role of Culture in the Environmental Debate (London: Lexington Books, 2022). 22 Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki, The Hiroshima Panels, Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels, 1999–2022, https://marukigallery.jp/en/hiroshimapanels/. 23 For details see Ann Sherif, “Art as Activism: Tomiyama Taeko and the Marukis,” Imagination without Borders: Feminist Artist Tomiyama Taeko and Social Responsibility, ed. Laura Hein and Rebecca Jennison (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2010), 29–50. 24 Nina Felshin, Disarming Images: Art for Nuclear Disarmament, 9. 25 Robert Jacobs ed., Filling the Hole in the Nuclear Future: Art and Popular Culture Respond to the Bomb (New York: Lexington Books, 2010), 1.

Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World  21 26 Françoise Gilot and Carlton Lake, Life with Picasso (New York: The New York Review of Books, Inc., 1964), 2. 27 Ran Zwigenberg, Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 8. 28 See Nemoto Masaya, Hiroshima Paradox (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2018). 29 Often misunderstood, Adorno’s Nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben ist barbarisch. (It Is Barbaric to Write a Poem after Auschwitz), See Theodor W. Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society,” Prisms, trans. Samuel Weber and Shierry Weber Nicholsen (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1967), 19. 30 Billy Mills, “How Poetry Can Be Written after Auschwitz,” Guardian, January 12, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jan/11/ poetry-after-auschwitz. 31 Anna Haebich, Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950–1970 (North Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Press, 2008), 32. 32 Watanabe Shin, “Controversy Blocks out Sun Child Statue in Fukushima,” SBS, August 29, 2018, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/fukushima-to-­ removecontroversial-statue-of-a-child-in-a-radiation-suit/7zqe1ning. 33 “Fukushima to Remove Controversial Statue of a Child in a Radiation Suit,” SBS, 2018. 34 Edward J. Gallagher, “The Enola Gay Controversy,” History on Trial, https:// history-on-trial.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/enola/about/. 35 See “Controversy over the Enola Gay Exhibition,” Atomic Heritage Foundation, October 17, 2016, https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/controversy-overenola-gay-exhibition. 36 Tom Engelhardt and Edward T. Linethal, History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 1996), 9. 37 Martin Harwit, An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay (New York: Copernicus New York, 1996), 426–429. 38 Debbie Ann Doyle, “Historians Protest New Enola Gay Exhibit,” Perspectives on History, December 1, 2003, https://www.historians.org/publications-anddirectories/perspectives-on-history/december-2003/historians-protest-newenola-gay-exhibit. 39 Debbie Ann Doyle, “Historians Protest New Enola Gay exhibit.” 40 Steven C. Dubin, Displays of Power (New York: New York University Press, 2001). See also Fujita Satoshi, Amerika ni okeru Hiroshima-Nagasaki kan (Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the United States: Enola Gay Controversy and History Education) (Tokyo: Sairyūsha, 2019). 41 “International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons,” Nobel Peace Prize, 2017, https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2017/ican/facts/. 42 Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age: Online Symposium, https://youtu.be/ BQpgJPkHZcU, (2:43:46–4:07:12). 43 Yasuko Claremont, Judith Keene, Elizabeth Rechniewski and Roman Rosenbaum, Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age (Sydney: The Tin Shed Gallery, 2022), https://www.sydney.edu.au/architecture/about/tin-sheds-gallery/ past- ­exhibitions/art-and-activism-in-the-nuclear-age.html. 44 Mark Gollom, “Putin Implies Nuclear Attack if West Interferes in Ukraine. Why It’s Not Just an Empty Threat,” CBC NEWS, February 25, 2022, https:// www.cbc.ca/news/world/putin-ukraine-nato-nuclear-weapons-1.6362890. 45 David E. Sangers, “Putin Spins a Conspiracy Theory That Ukraine Is on a Path to Nuclear Weapons,” New York Times, February 23, 2022, https://www. nytimes.com/2022/02/23/us/politics/putin-ukraine-nuclear-weapons.html. 46 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, https://hpmmuseum.jp/?lang=eng.

22  Roman Rosenbaum

Bibliography Claremont, Yasuko, Judith Keene, Elizabeth Rechniewski and Roman Rosenbaum. Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age. Sydney: The Tin Shed Gallery, 2022. https:// www.sydney.edu.au/architecture/about/tin-sheds-gallery/past-exhibitions/artand-activism-in-the-nuclear-age.html. “Controversy over the Enola Gay Exhibition.” Atomic Heritage Foundation. October 17, 2016. https://www.atomicheritage.org/history/controversy-over-enola-gayexhibition. Cordle, Daniel. Late Cold War Literature and Culture: The Nuclear 1980s. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Cortright, David. Peace: A History of Movements and Ideas. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Crawford, Keith, “Re-visiting Hiroshima: The Role of US and Japanese History Textbooks in the Construction of National Memory.” Asia Pacific Education Review 4, no. 1 (2003): 108–117. Doyle, Ann Debbie. “Historians Protest New Enola Gay Exhibit.” Perspectives on History 1, (December 2003). https://www.historians.org/publications-and-­ directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2003/historians-protest-newenola-gay-exhibit. Dubin, Steven C. Displays of Power: Controversy in the American Museum from the Enola Gay to Sensation. New York: NYU Press, 2001. Dvorak, Greg. Coral and Concrete: Remembering Kwajalein Atoll between Japan, America, and the Marshall Islands. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2018. Felshin, Nina, and National Union of Hospital and Health Care Employees, Physicians for Social Responsibility (U.S.), Art Museum Association of America. Disarming Images: Art for Nuclear Disarmament. New York: Adama Books, 1985. Fujita, Satoshi (藤田怜史). Amerika ni okeru Hiroshima-Nagasaki kan: Enora Gei ronsō to rekishi kyoiku (アメリカにおけるヒロシマ·ナガサキ観 : エノラ·ゲイ論争と歴史 教育. Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the United States: the Enola Gay Controversy and History Education). Tokyo: Sairyusha, 2019. “Fukushima to Remove Controversial Statue of a Child in a Radiation Suit.” SBS News, August 29, 2018. https://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/fukushima-to-­ remove-controversial-statue-of-a-child-in-a-radiation-suit/7zqe1ning. Gallagher, Edward J. “The Enola Gay Controversy.” History on Trial. https://­ history-on-trial.lib.lehigh.edu/trial/enola/about/. Gollom, Mark. “Putin implies nuclear attack if West interferes in Ukraine. Why It’s Not Just an Empty Threat.” CBC NEWS, February 25, 2022. https://www.cbc.ca/ news/world/putin-ukraine-nato-nuclear-weapons-1.6362890/. Gopnik, Blake. “Andy Warhol Offered to Sign Cigarettes, Food, Even Money to Make Money.” ARTnews, April 21, 2020. https://www.artnews.com/art-news/ market/andy-warhol-business-art-blake-gopnik-biography-excerpt-1202684403/. Haebich, Anna. Spinning the Dream: Assimilation in Australia 1950–1970. North Fremantle, WA: Fremantle Press, 2008. “International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons.” Nobel Peace Prize, 2017. https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2017/ican/facts/. Itoh, Shoko. “American Nuclear Literature on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Oxford Research Encyclopedias, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780190201098. 013.165.

Raison D’être of the Arts in the Nuclear World  23 Jacobs, Robert, ed. Filling the Hole in the Nuclear Future Art and Popular Culture Respond to the Bomb. New York: Lexington Books, 2010. Joliffe, Eric. Witchetty’s Tribe 4, Pix, February 6, 1954. https://nla.gov.au/nla.obj473075666/view?sectionId=nla.obj-484172343&partId=nla.obj-473233877#page/ n1/mode/1up. Konaka, Yōtarō and Winifred Olsen. “Japanese Atomic-Bomb Literature.” World Literature Today 62, no. 3 (Summer, 1988): 420–424. Kurmelovs, Royce. “Should Australia Build Nuclear Power Plants to Combat the Climate Crisis?” Guardian, October 13, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/­ environment/2021/oct/13/explainer-should-australia-build-nuclear-power-plantsto-combat-the-climate-crisis. Linenthal, Edward T. and Tom Engelhardt. History Wars: The Enola Gay and Other Battles for the American Past. New York: Henry Holt and Co, 1996. Mahaffey, Jim. Atomic Accidents: A History of Nuclear Meltdowns and Disasters: From the Ozark Mountains to Fukushima. New York: Pegasus Books, 2021. Maruki, Iri and Toshi Maruki. The Hiroshima Panels. Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels. 1999–2022. https://marukigallery.jp/en/hiroshimapanels/. Mills, Billy. “How Poetry Can Be Written after Auschwitz.” Guardian, January 12, 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/jan/11/poetry-after-auschwitz. Moravec, Michelle. “Make Art Not War: Topographies of Anti-nuclear Art in Late Cold War Los Angeles.” International Journal of Regional and Local Studies 6, no. 1 (Spring 2010): 58–71. http://michellemoravec.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/ 03/topographies.pdf. Moravec, Michelle. “Topographies of Anti-nuclear Art in Late Cold War Los Angeles.” The International Journal of Regional and Local Studies 6, no. 1 (2010): 58–71. Nance, Kevin. “The Spirit and the Strength: A Profile of Toni Morrison.” Poets and Writers, January 11, 2008. https://www.pw.org/content/the_spirit_and_ the_strength_a_profile_of_toni_morrison. Nemoto, Masaya (根本雅也). Hiroshima paradokusu: sengo Nihon no hankaku to jindō ishiki (ヒロシマ·パラドクス : 戦後日本の反核と人道意識; The Hiroshima Paradox: the Anti-nuclear and Humanitarian Consciousness of Japan). Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2018. Prime Minister, Minister for Defence, Minister for Foreign Affairs, Minister for Women (Australian Government Media Statement). “Australia to Pursue NuclearPowered Submarines through New Trilateral Enhanced Security Partnership.” September 16, 2021. https://web.archive.org/web/20210927191633/https://www. pm.gov.au/media/australia-pursue-nuclear-powered-­submarines-through-newtrilateral-enhanced-security. Primrose, Alice. “Protest Power: 11 Artworks that Spilled into the Street.” Royal Academy, March 24, 2017. https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/protestpower-artwork-politics. Rosenwald, Michael S. “The U.S. Hid Hiroshima’s Human Suffering. Then John Hersey Went to Japan.” Washington Post, August 6, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost. com/history/2020/08/06/john-hersey-hiroshima-anniversary-japanese-suffering/. Rothwell, Susan L. “Antinuclear movement.” Encyclopedia Britannica. November 5, 2014. https://www.britannica.com/topic/anti-nuclear-movement. Rüdig, Wolfgang. Anti-nuclear Movements: A World Survey of Opposition to Nuclear Energy. Harlow: Longman Current Affairs, 1990.

24  Roman Rosenbaum Sangers, David E. “Putin Spins a Conspiracy Theory That Ukraine Is on a Path to Nuclear Weapons.” New York Times, February 23, 2022. https://www.nytimes. com/2022/02/23/us/politics/putin-ukraine-nuclear-weapons.html. Sherif, Ann. “Art as Activism: Tomiyama Taeko and the Marukis.” In Imagination without Borders: Feminist Artist Tomiyama Taeko and Social Responsibility, edited by Laura Hein and Rebecca Jennison, 29–50. Ann Arbor MI: University of Michigan Press, 2010. https://www.fulcrum.org/epubs/6969z273f?locale=en#/6/ 20[nav_09]!/4/2/2/2[page_29]/1:0. Shin, Watanabe. “Controversy Blocks Out Sun Child Statue in Fukushima.” NHK World-Japan, October 5, 2018. https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/ backstories/259/. Szasz, Ferenc Morton. Atomic Comics: Cartoonists Confront the Nuclear World. Reno and Las Vegas: University of Nevada Press, 2012. Tachibana, Reiko. Narrative as Counter-Memory: A Half-Century of Postwar Writing in Germany and Japan. New York: State University of New York Press, 1998. Treat, John Whittier. Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1995. Volkmar, Anna. Art and Nuclear Power: The Role of Culture in the Environmental Debate. London: Lexington Books, 2022. Walker, J. Samuel. Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004. Zwigenberg, Ran. Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

2 Anti-Nuclear Movements and Education for Peace and Human Rights Kazuyo Yamane

Introduction Japan experienced atomic bombing on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 and Japanese fishermen were exposed to US hydrogen bomb tests on Bikini Atoll on the Marshall Islands in 1954. Then more people faced nuclear accidents in Fukushima in 2011. Japanese people have been exposed to radiation three times in history and they are still suffering from the effects of radiation not only physically but also socially, economically and mentally. The danger of nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants is not well known generally because of the lack of education in schools and poor reporting in the media. Many people don’t know much about the reality of the h ­ ibakusha—the survivors of the atomic bombings, and the victims of the nuclear disasters in Fukushima. Atomic bomb survivors have suffered from the immediate effects of the blast, the ferocious flash of heat, the radiation sickness, loss of family and friends, and discrimination against them in terms of employment and marriage. At the end of the Fiscal Year 2019, according to the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, the number of atomic bomb survivors was about 136,000 and their average age was over eighty-three years.1 In spite of their difficulties, many hibakushas have fought hard for peace and human rights. Such anti-nuclear movements as theirs led to the foundation of peace museums in Japan in the 1990s. What is the situation of education for peace through schools and museums for peace? What are some of the challenges to building a non-nuclear world? This chapter is based on the author’s experience teaching Peace Studies at Ritsumeikan University, Japan, and her long involvement with peace education through peace museums, from 1992 when the first International Conference of Peace Museums was held at the University of Bradford in England. Nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants threaten human rights to life and peaceful existence. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the US nuclear tests which resulted in the exposure to radiation of many people, including Japanese fishermen, led to the start of the peace movement in Japan. The movement against nuclear power has grown internationally and has sought to eliminate nuclear power plants since the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island in the United States, the 1986 nuclear accident DOI: 10.4324/9781003320395-2

26  Kazuyo Yamane at Chernobyl in Ukraine and the 2011 nuclear accidents in Fukushima in Japan. The following shows a glimpse of the history of the movement to abolish nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants.

Campaign for the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons After the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, the race to develop nuclear weapons intensified, and the fear of nuclear war sparked a worldwide movement against nuclear weapons and nuclear war. In March 1950, the international movement of defenders of peace founded the World Peace Council and, in view of the threat of a repetition of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki horrors, launched the Stockholm Appeal to promote nuclear disarmament under strict international control, denouncing atomic weapons as instruments of intimidation and mass murder of people.2 By the end of the year nearly 500 million people—a quarter of the world’s population— had signed the appeal.3 As mentioned previously, Japanese fishing boats were exposed to radiation by the US hydrogen bomb tests in March 1954 near Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. One of the boats, the Daigo Fukuryū Maru (F/V Lucky Dragon 5), was well known in Japan and this prompted a group of housewives in Suginami Ward, Tokyo, to call for a ban on atomic and hydrogen bombs in May 1954. It was the workers in fish shops who started the signature campaign. This was because fish were not selling well—people stopped buying them because they were afraid of contamination with ­radiation.4 They garnered thirty million signatures, which led to the first World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, held in Hiroshima on August 6, 1955. Since the founding of the organisation of Gensuikyou (Japan Council against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs) in the same year, the World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs has been held every August in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the early 1980s, the decision to deploy intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe and the dangers of limited nuclear war led to the creation of the CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) in the UK, the IKV (the Dutch Interchurch Peace Council) in the Netherlands, the Greens in West Germany and other groups which conducted active anti-nuclear activities. As a result, the signing of the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) Treaty was achieved in 1987. In the 1980s, a plan to deploy ninety-six US cruise missiles in the UK was abandoned due to opposition from the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp and other groups. However, the United States formally withdrew from the key nuclear treaty with Russia, raising fears of a new arms race in August 2019.5 In 2017, the United Nations adopted the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty—a historic and political victory for the peace movement. Atomic bomb survivors played important roles in disseminating the horror of nuclear weapons based on their experiences. However, the five nuclear powers, their

Anti-Nuclear Movements and Education for Peace and Human Rights  27 allies and four other nuclear-armed states continue to oppose the ban. Japan, the only country to have suffered from the use of nuclear weapons, remains among them. The late Mr. Mikiso Iwasa, an adviser to Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Sufferers Organisations), said, I am glad that the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty has been adopted and that the feelings of the hibakusha have been accepted. The honor of the deceased will be restored when we rid ourselves of the threat of nuclear weapons. I would like to call for a change in national policy so that no more hibakusha will be created.6 Mr. Iwasa’s testimony of his atomic bomb experiences will be discussed later. It was also reported extensively when the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017 “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons”.7 An international treaty banning nuclear weapons has been ratified by a fiftieth country, Honduras. It was among the original fifty states party to the treaty when it entered into force on January 22, 2021.8 This means that production, use and stockpiling of nuclear weapons by the parties to the treaty became illegal from January 22, 2021, although nuclear-armed states have not yet signed the treaty.9 Hibakushas who had been working hard for the abolition of nuclear weapons for a long time were very encouraged by this event. In a poll conducted by the Japan Public Opinion Research Committee in June and July 2020, 72% of respondents said that “Japan should join the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty”.10

Peace Movement against Nuclear Power Generation The movement against nuclear power generation is also an anti-nuclear movement. This is because it is possible to manufacture nuclear weapons with reactor-grade plutonium by using reduced-mass plutonium cores.11 Originally, the promotion of nuclear power was born out of military use in the production of plutonium for nuclear weapons and reactors for nuclear submarines. The risk of nuclear power generation stands alongside the danger of proliferation of nuclear weapons. In 2018 The New York Times reported that “Japan has enough plutonium for 6,000 nuclear bombs”.12 Both nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation of electricity can produce radiation which is very dangerous for human beings and its effects on health and the environment may last for a long time. It is said that about 150,000 people were forced to live away from home after the Fukushima disaster and innumerable people left Fukushima.13

28  Kazuyo Yamane Water was contaminated with radiation, and the radiation dose in the air was measured at monitoring posts in various places in Japan. Environmental radioactivity levels are measured at monitoring posts (one metre high) in forty-seven prefectures all over Japan and the information is available on the website of the Nuclear Regulation Authority. For example, the reading between 9 am and 10 am by the monitoring post in Fukushima on November 11, 2020, was 0.13 μSv/h while in Tokyo it was 0.036.14 It is said that it would take over forty years for the government to dismantle the nuclear reactors in Fukushima but it is doubtful if it is even possible. While the peace movement against nuclear armament has a long history of working towards the abolition of nuclear weapons, the sense of urgency about nuclear power has not always been widely shared. It is said that 80% of people supported nuclear power generation before the nuclear accidents in Fukushima.15 However, there were anti-nuclear power movements before the nuclear accident in 2011. For example, in 1975, in the town of Kubokawa in the Kochi Prefecture, it was planned to build a nuclear power plant. The government, the Liberal Democratic Party and an electric power company actively campaigned to introduce it to the town. In 1974 the Three Power Sources Act was enacted, promising large subsidies to the town. The town was in turmoil over whether to support or oppose the idea, but the town’s citizens, especially women and mothers, studied and shared information on the dangers of nuclear power and, instead, proposed the idea of building a village that would not rely on nuclear power. In 1988, after ten years of campaigning, the town’s citizens succeeded in having the plan withdrawn. It was dubbed a “great victory for a small town”. It is said that the victory was reported abroad, but not so much in Japan, with the exception of in Kochi itself. After the Fukushima nuclear disaster in March 2011, it became clear that the “peaceful” use of nuclear power could lead to catastrophic radiation leakage, and the anti-nuclear power movement by Fukushima citizens’ groups became active for the first time. People expressed their opposition to the use of nuclear power through a demonstration of about 15,000 people on April 10, 2011, one month after the nuclear accident. Participants were not only people of peace and environmental organisations but also ordinary citizens influenced by social media such as Facebook and Twitter. A woman in her thirties said, In the process of researching how radiation affects the human body, I made more connections with others online. I didn’t know if participating in demonstrations would change anything, but I thought it was important for me to express my intentions.16 Huge demonstrations of about 200,000 were held every week in July 2012.17 In Germany about 250,000 participated in anti-nuclear power demonstration two weeks after the nuclear accident in Fukushima on March 11, 2011.18

Anti-Nuclear Movements and Education for Peace and Human Rights  29 This is because Germany—which was hit by fallout from the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster—has long had a large body of public opposition to nuclear power.19 The media did not report the outcomes of the Fukushima nuclear accidents in much detail and, in Japan, people started forgetting it. However, it should be pointed out that there has been an ongoing anti-nuclear movement in Japan. In response to the weekly Friday protests in front of the Prime Minister’s Office in Tokyo, more than one hundred Friday demonstrations are currently being held across the country. Information is available on the website of the Metropolitan Coalition Against Nukes.20 Another example is a signature campaign called “Goodbye Nuclear Power Plants”—this group aims to collect ten million signatures. It has exceeded 8.889 million according to the Gensuikin Peace Forum E-Newsletter.21

Peace Education through Peace Studies at Ritsumeikan University There is a problem that the danger of nuclear weapons and nuclear power is not being properly addressed in school education and in the media. Peace education is important, but what is the current situation? What is the situation of exhibitions on nuclear weapons and nuclear power issues, especially at peace museums in Japan and abroad? Problems of School Education and the Media 1  School Textbooks One of the reasons people do not know much about the realities of the atomic bombings and the nuclear disaster in Fukushima is that it is not well covered in school textbooks. School textbooks for elementary to high schools are exhibited for a certain period every year in Japan so the author has been able to check some points, such as the description of the atomic bombings and the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. The description of the atomic bombings in high school textbooks does not convey to students what really happened to people. It is common to see a photograph of a mushroom cloud, but it is not possible to learn from this that atomic bomb survivors have suffered from the effects of radiation and from discrimination, in terms of employment and marriage. Such discrimination has also been shown towards people from Fukushima, especially after they evacuated to other prefectures because of the nuclear disaster. The nuclear accident in Chernobyl is described in many school textbooks, but the nuclear disaster in Fukushima is not well explained. Emphasis is placed on the Great East Japan Earthquake, especially the huge tsunami. It would not be possible, from these descriptions, for students to learn about the dangers of radiation caused by the nuclear disaster in Fukushima.

30  Kazuyo Yamane The background of this situation is that the government has controlled school textbooks through a textbook screening system and some issues tend to be deleted from textbooks—for example, the Nanjing Massacre and the fact that Korean women were forced to work as sex slaves to the Japanese military during World War II. The Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform was established in 1997 by Nobukatsu Fujioka and others. “Nationalistic” textbooks began to be published by Ikuhosha Publishing in 2011. The “nationalistic” history textbook adoption rate was 3.7% in 2011, but it had decreased to 1% as of August 27, 2020.22 This is because teachers, parents and citizens protested against the present system in which teachers have no right to choose school textbooks. They criticised the fact that school boards chose textbooks on their own initiative. Toshio Suzuki is the Executive Director of the National Network 21 of Children and Textbooks. This organisation aims to guarantee the rights and freedoms of children, parents, teachers and citizens in relation to education and textbooks, and aims to recreate educational books and textbooks that are appropriate for the twenty-first century.23 Suzuki criticises the fact that Japan is the only OECD country that does not systematically reflect the views of teachers in the adoption of textbooks.24 It should be pointed out that former Prime Minster Shinzo Abe’s government increased its intervention in children’s education with the aim of changing the nation’s values and perception of history. This is evident also in the introduction of nationalistic moral education as an academic subject and the strengthening of textbook screening. Citizens’ movements such as “The National Network 21 of Children and Textbooks” are expected to increase their activities. Of course, it is necessary to promote education for peace and human rights not only in schools but also in communities, through such activities as “museums for peace”. 2  A Media Oppressed by Government Media reporting may be full of information, but it tends to convey lots of information without criticism of various important issues. The government should inform the people of the truth, but government officials tend to hide it and exclude those journalists who ask sharp questions. Akira Minami, a journalist of Asahi Newspaper, was chairman of the Central Executive Committee of the Newspaper Workers’ Federation from September 2018 to September 2020. He analysed the present situation, concluding that journalism is not trusted by people and suggested, in his magazine article, “Recommendations for restoring trust in journalism”,25 that the press set itself apart from power and unite to call upon all public institutions to make more information available to the public. This was because the government had limited the number of questions journalists could ask at a press

Anti-Nuclear Movements and Education for Peace and Human Rights  31 conference at the Prime Minister’s Office. Minami asks questions such as “In trying to get information behind closed doors, journalists have fallen into line with power. Isn’t this rolling back the healthy power-monitoring function of journalism and shaking the foundations of democracy?”26 The present situation has led to a lack of critical reports of important issues such as nuclear weapons and nuclear power. Keeping this in mind, the author has given lectures in Peace Studies classes at Ritsumeikan University for several years, since 2011. The following sections propose education on the issues of nuclear weapons and nuclear power delivered as though they are just a part of the curriculum. Education on Nuclear Weapons in Peace Studies Classes Students from Hiroshima and Nagasaki have been well taught about the atomic bombings, from elementary school onwards, but students from other prefectures have little knowledge of the subject. Issues of nuclear weapons and nuclear power generation were dealt with in Peace Studies classes at Ritsumeikan University. Lectures were given and students were also encouraged to research issues that interested them most. An independent study by an individual was done and also students formed groups when they had common topics to share. They gave their presentations in class, which was interesting, and students learned much about various current issues. However, it was found that only researching books and websites was not enough because students did not relate nuclear issues to their own lives and futures. One solution to this problem was to give students a chance to listen to the oral testimony of an atomic bomb survivor and also from a victim of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The details of students’ responses to these initiatives will be shown after the following discussion of students’ opinions on the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty. Students’ Opinions on the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty It is sometimes said that Japanese college students have become relatively conservative these days. When the author offered students a certain article about the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty and asked them what they thought about it, they were generally divided into two schools of thought. One student who had studied International Relations and was not critical of the media coverage wrote, Nuclear weapons are useful militarily, and they can also be argued to be a necessary evil and a deterrent because of their enormous destructive power. Once they are used, everything would be over. But treating nuclear weapons as an absolute evil and banning them is a bit too

32  Kazuyo Yamane idealistic. The two atomic bombings and the damage they caused are a thing of the past. This student supports the nuclear deterrence theory without mentioning the results of the atomic bombings—such as the hibakusha’s suffering even today—and doesn’t relate the issue to his own life. On the other hand, a student who knows the horror of atomic bombs wrote: I was very disappointed that Japan did not ratify the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty. Japan is the only country to have suffered from atomic bombing, and our predecessors felt the horror of war and nuclear weapons firsthand. Despite this, I wonder why the Japanese government refused to agree on a ban on nuclear weapons. Agreeing to ban nuclear weapons is Japan’s responsibility to honour its ancestors in the past and to protect peace in the future. Comparing these two students, it seems important for students to learn about the consequences of the use of nuclear weapons, especially through the testimonies of hibakushas. The Importance of Oral Testimonies in Peace Studies There are students and citizens who are not interested in issues on peace and human rights though such issues are deeply related to their lives and future. What can be done to raise their awareness and encourage them to think what they can do for peace? It seems clear that oral testimonies play an important role in education for peace and human rights. Two examples will be given showing testimonies by Mr. Mikiso Iwasa, who talked about his atomic bombing experiences and a second testimony by a woman named Ms. Naomi Tanaka (an anonymous name to protect her privacy) who talked about her experiences in the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Education, through school and university teaching as well as through peace museums, can play an important role in conveying historical truth through oral testimonies. Many audiences tend to change their ideas and behaviour after listening to oral testimonies or watching videos by witnesses. Testimony of an Atomic Bomb Survivor Students were asked to watch a video of the testimony of an atomic bomb survivor, Mikiso Iwasa (1929–2020). He was the president of the No More Hibakusha Center for the Preservation of the Legacy of Memory and passed away in September 2020. A video of his atomic bomb experience is available in both Japanese and English on the website of the No More Hibakusha

Anti-Nuclear Movements and Education for Peace and Human Rights  33 Center.27 The following is a part of Mikiso Iwasa’s testimony—he was sixteen years old and was in the garden of his house when an atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima in 1945. It was about 1.2 km away from the hypocentre. He talked about his experiences as follows: In an instant, the town in Hiroshima collapsed. Mom was trapped under a collapsed house. “Mom!” I shouted, and heard “Here I am,” a voice from under the roof on the ground. I was so glad that she was alive. I felt a pang of relief at that moment, but the joy was short-lived. I peeled off the shingles and … in front of me, large beams were stacked on top of the house’s concrete foundation, blocking my way. Through the small gap, I could see my mother lying on her back about a meter away. “I can’t get in there anymore,” I said. When I asked her if she was stuck over there, she replied, “I can’t move unless you move the thing over my left shoulder.” I dug out from the other side, but I could not approach her much. In the meantime, a fire storm by a blast was coming at us with tremendous speed. Fire sparks were sprinkling on us. I was in a daze. “Mom, it’s already hopeless,” I said. “The fire is getting closer, and I can’t get to the side of the house anymore,” I screamed. Even I, who was outside, didn’t know what was going on, and much less what to expect when she was trapped under the house in the dark. But my mother told me, “Well then, leave here immediately.” … Mom began to chant the Wisdom Sutras, as if she was preparing to die. I fled with an aching heart leaving my mother to be burned alive in the fires of the atomic bomb. A few days later, when I searched through the ashes of our house, I found what appeared to be mom’s body in the area where she had fallen, and that was her. It was my mom. But it wasn’t a human form. She was a small woman. It was as if a child’s mannequin doll had been coated with coal tar and burned, an object covered with oil. Mom was killed in that way. She was killed not as a human being, but as an “object”. It’s so frustrating. Really frustrating. I will always feel guilty about my mother for the rest of my life. A student wrote his response, commenting especially on the inhumanity of nuclear weapons as follows: Mr. Iwasa’s testimony made me realise that the atomic bomb was a much more inhumane weapon than I had ever thought before. I thought it was inhumane in the sense that ordinary people, children and other innocent people were killed. However, Mr. Iwasa’s testimony revealed that even his neighbors and family members were unable to help his mother as a human being, as the situation had gotten to the point where they were unable to do so. Mr. Iwasa’s words, “My mother was killed as an object, not as a human being,” left a deep impression on me.

34  Kazuyo Yamane The student also pointed out the psychological effects of the atomic bomb on Mr. Iwasa: Mr. Iwasa said that he often had dreams of the atomic bombing and cried out that he had to save his mother. I believe that the atomic bomb experience left such deep scars on the minds of those who experienced it. The student wrote of the importance of the hibakusha’s testimony in peace education: The power of the testimonies of the atomic bomb survivors is so great that it is necessary to spread their words both at home and abroad. Testimony by a Victim of Nuclear Disaster in Fukushima The author invited a woman who had been evacuated from Fukushima to Osaka as a guest speaker to her “Peace Studies” class in June 2018. With her one-year-old son, Ms. Naomi Tanaka was evacuated to Tokyo first and then to Osaka because she was afraid of the effects of radiation. She talked to us about her experiences in Fukushima—they were never reported in the media. A big problem was that the information that was broadcast on television in Fukushima was incorrect and this caused people to flee to places with higher radiation doses and to be exposed to large amounts of radiation. Ms. Tanaka was one of these people and she said that she could not receive a stable iodine tablet for her son, to protect his thyroid gland from radiation injury. This is because she did not have a certificate of residence in the area where she had fled in search of safety. The students were surprised to hear her story and imagined how anxious and distressed she was as a mother. Most of the students were shocked to hear Ms. Tanaka’s story because there was no longer any media coverage of the aftermath of the nuclear accident. A student said, Even though there are dangerous places in Tokyo, and we haven’t been able to deal with the nuclear accident yet, I wonder why Japan is still planning to host the Tokyo Olympics and restarting nuclear power plants. I think that we should listen more to the stories of people like Ms. Tanaka who were affected by the nuclear accident and recognise the horror of nuclear power. After listening to the testimonies most students began to say that nuclear power plants should not be reopened and Japan should use renewable energy sources that take advantage of the natural environment. The students’ impressions indicate that they have begun to question the actions of the government and the media. One of the students, who had been in favour of restarting nuclear power plants due to media reports, changed her mind.

Anti-Nuclear Movements and Education for Peace and Human Rights  35 She wrote, “I realised that we must seriously tackle nuclear power issues, which can cause people to suffer for years just because of a single nuclear accident. This was a good opportunity to rethink the issue.” It seems that when students learn the truth and reality of nuclear disaster, those who are in favour of nuclear power will start to reconsider the issues. It is possible to present oral testimonies at schools and universities, and testimonies are often given at museums for peace. How are nuclear issues exhibited and dealt with at museums for peace?

Exhibition of Issues of Nuclear Weapons and Nuclear Power at Peace Museums 1  Exhibitions Related to Issues of Nuclear Weapons The author has been able to visit various museums for peace in different countries because she belongs to the International Peace Research Association (IPRA). Whenever attending a conference, she has tried to visit museums for peace, but discovered it was easier to find war museums and military museums. It seems that there are different ways of exhibiting the effects of atomic bombing in war museums and peace museums. War museums tend to show only a photograph of a mushroom cloud without displaying any effects of the atomic bombing—how the environment was destroyed, how many people were killed and injured and how much people have suffered from the effects of radiation up to the present day. In 1993 it was not easy to find an exhibition on nuclear weapons at the Musée de l’Armée (Army Museum)28 which is a national military museum in Paris. The museum was full of weapons and its message seemed to glorify war. It was not easy to find a photo panel of the atomic bombing and it was necessary to search for it, eventually finding a simple panel with basic information. In the Imperial War Museum in London there is an exhibition of the atomic bombing with the number of casualties. However, there was no exhibition of the effects of the atomic bombing, including people’s suffering. The National War Memorial in Australia (Canberra) had a map of Japan to show where Hiroshima and Nagasaki were located, but there was no exhibit showing what happened to people as a result of the atomic bombing. The same thing can be said in the National Museum of the US Air Force29 in Dayton, Ohio. A model of the plutonium “Fat Man” atomic bomb that was dropped on Nagasaki is exhibited there, but there was no display of people’s suffering. On the other hand, there is criticism of atomic bombing and nuclear weapons at peace museums. For example, the Anti-War Museum (AntiKriegs-Museum) in Germany (Berlin) has an exhibition of atomic bomb survivors which includes photographs and paintings by Japanese children.30 The Peace Museum in Bradford, England, has an exhibition on the anti-­ nuclear movement. The collection is a diverse mix of banners, historic campaign materials, personal items, artwork, photography and much more.31 For example, a tapestry used for the women’s peace camp at Greenham

36  Kazuyo Yamane Common is exhibited. Women’s protests led to the removal of the Cruise Missiles from Greenham Common. Under the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, the missiles were flown back to the United States along with the US Air Force personnel in 1991/1992. The history of this peace movement against nuclear weapons is exhibited at Bradford. The roles of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the Atomic Bomb Museum in Nagasaki and the Oka Masaharu Memorial Nagasaki Peace Museum are described in the author’s article published by Ritsumeikan University.32 Peace museums can play important roles in promoting a better understanding of history and of education for peace and reconciliation. What Has Been Done to Bridge the Gap between Japan and Nuclear-Powered Nations? Exchanges of exhibits against nuclear armament have been promoted among museums for peace. For example, the Sword Into Plowshares Peace Center and Gallery in Detroit in the United States was donated photo panels of hibakushas from a peace museum called Grassroots House in Kochi, Japan. It was done after the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. refused to show an exhibit on the reality of the atomic bombings and the hibakushas’ suffering in 1995. The author was personally involved in this exchange. Another example is the Dayton International Peace Museum in Ohio where photo panels on atomic bomb survivors were sent to be displayed by the Confederation of Atomic Bomb Survivors in February 2018. Many people visited there to see the panels.33 Now the photo panels are at the Peace Resource Center at Wilmington College so that they can be used as a travelling exhibit. Artworks also play important roles in peace education. For example, the Peace Mask Project is a nonprofit organisation based in Kyoto, Japan, that uses art as a platform for dialogue and conflict transformation through workshops and exhibitions. The Hibakusha Peace Mask Project brought together one hundred individuals (first to fourth generations) who had survived the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This is a valuable work of art for the anti-nuclear movement.34 The influence of literature such as novels, poems (including haiku, a ­seventeen-syllable verse form) and plays related to the atomic bombing is also great. Barefoot Gen, an autobiographical comic by Kenji Nakazawa, has had a great impact on children and it has been translated into ­twenty-four languages, including English. Hibakushas’ paintings based on their atomic bombing experiences are also powerful and they are exhibited at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.35 Among the books and pamphlets collected and organised by the No More Hibakusha Center for the Preservation of the Legacy of Memory, a catalogue of literature and art-related documents is available on the website of the centre and Nihon Hidankyo though most of them are in Japanese.36

Anti-Nuclear Movements and Education for Peace and Human Rights  37 2  Exhibitions Relating to Nuclear Power Plant Issues How are nuclear power issues exhibited at museums? There are exhibitions in three museums in Fukushima—the Great East Japan Earthquake and Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Museum opened on September 20, 2020.37 However, a manual says that the storytellers there were unable to criticise certain groups such as the Japanese government and TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company).38 There is growing criticism, such as “How can you tell the truth without mentioning the government or TEPCO—who were responsible for the nuclear accidents?” The total construction cost of 5.3 billion yen was borne entirely by the government. There is also a Nuclear Power Plant Disaster Information Center next to the Auschwitz Museum39 in the Fukushima Prefecture. Its aim is to educate people about the Fukushima nuclear disaster and the centre was established by donations from citizens and volunteers in 2013.40 It is a participatory facility, open to everyone, including elementary school children. It was shocking for the author to see a message on a blackboard by a man who had lost everything through the nuclear accident and had committed suicide. This was something that had not been reported in the media. The two museums are in stark contrast. Another private peace museum was opened in the precincts of Hokyoji Temple in Ohya, Naraha Town, Fukushima Prefecture, on March 11, 2021. Its aim is to convey the lessons of the nuclear power plant accident, and it is called the “Fukushima Museum for No Nukes (Dengonkan)”. The late Mr. Tokuho Hayakawa, a priest, built it with his own private funds, including compensation from TEPCO. He has been working with Professor Ikuro Anzai, the honorary director of the Kyoto Museum for World Peace, Ritsumeikan University, for about half a century, criticising Japan’s nuclear power policy. This peace museum deals with issues of nuclear weapons and nuclear power (Figures 2.1 and 2.2). Other peace museums also have exhibitions on the Fukushima nuclear disaster. For example, the Kyoto Museum for World Peace at Ritsumeikan University hosted an exhibition entitled “Autoradiograph: Visualizing Radiation”41 from September 19 to November 7, 2020. This exhibition used technology to “visualise” radiation. One of the visitors wrote their impressions on the exhibition: “I feel like I was confronted with something I pretended not to see”. Another visitor wrote, I was very shocked to see the evidence of radioactivity in the filters of the air cleaners in the Tokyo area. Perhaps it was because the media had not reported much about the contamination by radiation in Tokyo and Yokohama after the nuclear accident much. It made visitors think that if all the radiation had been visible, the residents of Tokyo would probably have been evacuated to other places.

38  Kazuyo Yamane

Figure 2.1 Dengonkan Peace Museum in the precincts of Hokyoji Temple, photo by Ikuro Anzai.

Figure 2.2 An exhibition room on Fukushima nuclear power plant accident in 2011, photo by Ikuro Anzai.

Anti-Nuclear Movements and Education for Peace and Human Rights  39

Peace Movements and Peace Education Peace movements are effective in raising awareness in people who do not think seriously about nuclear issues. They are also effective in applying pressure on governments which tend to ignore important and sensitive nuclear issues. The more peace movements become active, the more people will be interested in these issues. Since education at school and the media cannot be relied upon to educate children and citizens about nuclear issues, museums for peace have played important roles. Such peace education should help to activate peace movements. In April 2016 the hibakushas started the Hibakusha International Signature campaign with the hope of realising a world free of nuclear weapons while they are still alive so that future generations will not experience a “living hell”. With momentum building towards the entry into force of the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty, the Hibakusha International Signatory Contact Group announced on October 6, 2020, that 12,612,798 signatures had been submitted to the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs.42 Peace movements like this are also important in influencing ordinary people, governments and the United Nations. There are peace museums all around the world, including in Japan, and it is important to make more use of them for peace education. Once people learn the truth, they should be able to act for peace. The challenge is to teach people that we have a right to live in peace and that it is possible and necessary to abolish nuclear weapons and nuclear power plants if the citizens of the world work together in solidarity. It should be pointed out that the fights for the abolition of slavery and women’s suffrage, previously thought to be difficult to solve, have been achieved. The International Network of Museums for Peace held an international conference online in September 2020, and its website has information about museums with anti-nuclear exhibitions and other issues. The Museums for Peace Worldwide was published then and it has 303 museums for peace in the world including eighty-four peace museums in Japan.43 Most of the presentations at the INMP Conference in 2020 are available on its website and they are full of activities for peace education through museums for peace.44

Conclusion Oral testimonies are powerful in the sense that children and adults can learn firsthand about the danger of nuclear weapons and nuclear power. The hibakushas are getting very old and it is time to think how to convey their experiences to future generations. Raphael Behr said, “Memory is the vaccine, preserved in memorials, transmitted down generations in the hope of reaching herd immunity. But if it is not taken up, and witnesses fall silent, the antibody count in the cultural blood stream declines”.45 It is not coincidental that the theme of the tenth INMP Conference in 2020 was “The Role of Museums for Peace in Conveying Memories for Generations to Come”.

40  Kazuyo Yamane Citizens’ anti-nuclear movements are important, and it seems to be necessary to create an international network of hibakushas to work in solidarity. There was the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima in November 2015, seventy years after the atomic bombings by the United States. The definition of nuclear victims was defined as follows: We define nuclear victims in the narrow sense of not distinguishing between victims of military and industrial nuclear use, including victims of the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and of nuclear testing, as well as victims of exposure to radiation and radioactive contamination created by the entire process including uranium mining and milling, and nuclear development, use and waste. In the broad sense, we confirm that until we end the nuclear age, any person anywhere could at any time become a victim—a potential Hibakusha—and that nuclear weapons, nuclear power and humanity cannot coexist.46 The UN First Committee (Disarmament and International Security) adopted a resolution on the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, by a recorded vote of 130 in favour (more than two-thirds of UN member states) on December 7, 2020.47 Japan was against the resolution again. The challenge is to educate people to understand that we have “a right to live in peace”—this is written in the preamble of the Constitution of Japan,48 —and that the abolition of nuclear weapons and nuclear power could be possible through solidarity among the citizens of the world. And perhaps it could be possible to transfer the costs of nuclear weapons and nuclear power to pay for medicine for people suffering from the COVID-19 pandemic, for example. The question is, can we continue to raise people’s awareness of these issues by promoting education for peace and human rights—in order to change the status quo?

Notes 1 “Lowest number of A-bomb survivors at 136,000 and average age over eightythree years old,” Mainichi Newspaper, July 2, 2020, https://mainichi.jp. 2 “65th Anniversary of Stockholm’s Appeal,” World Peace Council, March 20, 2015, https://www.wpc-in.org/statements/65th-anniversary-stockholm% E2%80%99s-appeal. 3 Stephen A. Smith, The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 327. 4 “The Declaration of a City for Peace and the Campaign to Ban the Hydrogen Bomb” (in Japanese), Suginami Ward Office, 1988, https://www.city.suginami. tokyo.jp/_res/projects/default_project/_page_/001/022/256/07_7682.pdf. 5 “INF Nuclear Treaty: US Pulls out of Cold War-Era Pact with Russia,” BBC News, August 2, 2019, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49198565. 6 “The UN Adopted the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty on July 7, 2017,” Hidankyo Newspaper, August 2017, http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hidankyo/nihon/about/about5– 201708.html.

Anti-Nuclear Movements and Education for Peace and Human Rights  41 7 The Nobel Peace Prize for 2017, Norwegian Nobel Committee, 2017, https:// www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2017/press-release/. 8 https://www.icanw.org/honduras. 9 “Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons Made Official with 50th UN Signatory,” Guardian, October 25, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/25/ treaty-banning-nuclear-weapons-made-official-with-50th-un-signatory#:~: text=Treaty%20to%20ban%20nuclear%20weapons%20made%20official%20 with%2050th%20UN%20signatory,Production%2C%20use%20and&text =An%20international%20treaty%20banning%20nuclear,into%20force%20 after%2090%20days. 10 “Prime Minister Gives Zero Answer to the Question of Joining the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty for the Fourth Year in a Row, without Facing the Will of the People,” Tokyo Newspaper. August 7, 2020, https://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/ article/47472. 11 Gregory S. Jones, “Reactor-Grade Plutonium and Nuclear Weapons: Ending the Debate,” The Nonproliferation Review 26 (2019): 1–2, 61–81, https://www. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10736700.2019.1603497?journalCode=rnpr20. 12 The New York Times reported that “Japan Has Enough Plutonium for 6,000 Nuclear Bombs,” Pars Today, 2018, https://parstoday.com/ja/news/japan-i48069 (in Japanese). 13 Naoto Higuchi and Mitsuru Matsutani, 3.11 gono Shakai Undo (Social Movement after 3.11) (Tokyo: Tsukuba Shobo, 2020), 22. 14 Air dose at a height of one metre above the ground in the vicinity of monitoring posts in each prefecture, Nuclear Regulation Authority, https://radioactivity.nsr. go.jp/en/contents/15000/14540/24/192_20201111_20201113.pdf. 15 Higuchi and Matsutani, 24. 16 Higuchi and Matsutani, 33. 17 Higuchi and Matsutani, 13. 18 Higuchi and Matsutani, 15. 19 “Germany Stages Anti-Nuclear Marches after Fukushima,” BBC News, March 26, 2011, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-12872339. 20 “National Friday Action List,” The Metropolitan Coalition against Nukes, 2020, http://coalitionagainstnukes.jp/?page_id=1567. 21 “Goodbye Nuclear Power Plant 10 Million Signatures has exceeded 8.889 million signatures.” Gensuikin Peace Forum E-Newsletter 304, November 26, 2020. 22 Toshio Suzuki, “The Demise of the Textbooks by the ‘Association for the Creation of a New History Textbook,’” Sekai (World), Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, October 2020, 19–20. 23 “Protocol,” National Network 21 of Children and Textbooks, 1988, https://kyokashonet21.jimdofree.com/%E5%BD%93%E4%BC%9A%E3% 81%AE%E7%B4%B9%E4%BB%8B/. 24 Suzuki, “The Demise of the Textbooks,” 22. 25 Akira Minami, “Recommendations for Restoring Trust in Journalism,” Sekai (World), Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, October 2020. 26 Minami, “Recommendations,” 70. 27 https://www.nomore-hibakusha.org/. 28 Army Museum (Musée de l’Armée), accessed November 19, 2020, https://www. musee-armee.fr/en/english-version.html. 29 The National Museum of the US Air Force. The author visited there in 2016. 30 “Hiroshima: 75 Years after the Atomic Bomb!” Anti-War Museum (Anti-KriegsMuseum), Berlin, accessed November 19, 2020, http://www.anti-kriegs-museum. de/english/start1.html. 31 Peace Museum Collection, The Peace Museum, Bradford, 2020, https://www. peacemuseum.org.uk/our-collection.

42  Kazuyo Yamane 32 Kazuyo Yamane, “Contemporary Peace Education in Peace Museums: Students’ Visits to Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Ritsumeikan Annual Review of International Studies 27 (2014): 117–128, http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/ir/isaru/assets/file/journal/27-1_06_Yamane.pdf. 33 “Toward Making a Network,” No More Hibakusha Center for the Preservation of the Legacy of Memory, 2018, http://kiokuisan.com/%E3%83%8D%E3%83%8 3%E3%83%88%E3%83%AF%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AF%E3%82%92%E3%82% 81%E3%81%96%E3%81%97%E3%81%A6/. 34 Robert Kowalczyk, Peace Mask Project, Transcend Media Service, August 10, 2020, https://www.transcend.org/tms/2020/08/peace-mask-project. 35 “The Painting of the Atomic Bomb Painted by Citizens,” Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, https://hpmmuseum.jp/modules/exhibition/index. php?action=DocumentView&document_id=165&lang=eng. 36 “On the Release of Literature and Arts Bibliography Collected by No More Hibakusha Center,” Hidankyo, 2020, http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hidankyo/nihon/ librarycatalog/mokuroku20200902.html. 37 Higashinihon Daishinsai Genshiryoku Saigai Denshokan (The Great East Japan Earthquake and Nuclear Disaster Museum), accessed November 15, 2020, https://www.fipo.or.jp/lore/about. 38 “Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Museum: Unspeakable Storytellers,” Akahata, October 9, 2020, https://www.jcp.or.jp/akahata/aik20/2020-1009/2020100915_01_1.html. 39 Auschwitz Museum Japan, accessed November 22, 2020, http://am-j.or.jp/. 40 Nuclear Power Plant Disaster Information Center (Genpatsu Saigai Joho Center), accessed November 19, 2020, http://genpatusaigai.web.fc2.com/english/ index.html. 41 https://www.autoradiograph.org/en. 42 “Activities to Date,” Hibakusha International Signatory Council, 2020, https:// hibakusha-appeal.net/activities/cumulative/. 43 Ikuro Anzai and Kazuyo Yamane, Museums for Peace Worldwide (Kyoto: Kyoto Museum for World Peace, 2020), https://sites.google.com/view/inmp-2020/ museums-for-peace-worldwide?authuser=0. 44 “Conference Proceedings,” INMP, 2020, https://sites.google.com/view/inmp 2020/home#h.rm7g0j46er03. 45 Raphael Behr, “It Was Always Lost on Brexiteers—But the EU Is Fundamentally about Peace,” The Guardian, November 18, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/nov/18/1945-europe-brexiteers-nurembergtrials-brexit-fantasy. 46 Declaration of the World Nuclear Victims Forum in Hiroshima (Draft Elements of a Charter of World Nuclear Victims’ Rights), November 23, 2015, https://www. fwrs.info/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/WNVF_HiroshimaDeclaration.pdf. 47 “General Assembly, Adopting 66 First Committee Texts, Calls on States to Revitalize Stalled Disarmament Machinery, Tackle Chronic, Emerging Security Threats,” United Nations, December 7, 2020, https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/ ga12296.doc.htm. 48 “We Recognize That All Peoples of the World Have the Right to Live in Peace, Free from Fear and Want,” Preamble, The Constitution of Japan, accessed December 11, 2020, https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_ of_japan/constitution_e.html.

Bibliography “65th anniversary of Stockholm’s Appeal.” World Peace Council, 2015. https://www. wpc-in.org/statements/65th-anniversary-stockholm%E2%80%99s-appeal.

Anti-Nuclear Movements and Education for Peace and Human Rights  43 “Activities to date.” Hibakusha International Signatory Council. 2020. https://­ hibakusha-appeal.net/activities/cumulative/. “Air Dose at a Height of 1 Meter Above the Ground in the Vicinity of Monitoring Posts in Each Prefecture.” Nuclear Regulation Authority. Accessed November 16, 2020. https://radioactivity.nsr.go.jp/en/­contents/15000/14540/24/192_20201111_20201113. pdf. Anzai, Ikuro and Kazuyo Yamane. Museums for Peace Worldwide. Kyoto: Kyoto Museum for World Peace, 2020. https://sites.google.com/view/inmp-2020/ museums-for-peace-worldwide?authuser=0. Army Museum (Musée de l’Armée). Accessed November 19, 2020. https://www. musee-armee.fr/en/english-version.html. Auschwitz Museum Japan. Accessed November 22, 2020. http://am-j.or.jp/. Behr, Raphael. “It was always lost on Brexiteers – But the EU Is Fundamentally about Peace.” The Guardian, November 18, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com /com mentisfree/2020/nov/18/1945-europe-brexiteers-nurembergtrials-brexit-fantasy. “Conference Proceedings.” INMP, 2020. https://sites.google.com/view/inmp-2020/ home#h.rm7g0j46er03. “Fukushima Nuclear Disaster Museum: Unspeakable Storytellers.” Akahata, October 9, 2020. https://www.jcp.or.jp/akahata/aik20/2020-10-09/2020100915_ 01_1.html. “General Assembly, Adopting 66 First Committee Texts, Calls on States to Revitalize Stalled Disarmament Machinery, Tackle Chronic, Emerging Security Threats.” United Nations, December 7, 2020. https://www.un.org/press/en/2020/ ga12296.doc.htm. “Germany stages anti-nuclear marches after Fukushima.” BBC News, March 26, 2011. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-12872339. “Goodbye Nuclear Power Plant 10 Million Signatures Has Exceeded 8.889 Million Signatures.” The Gensuikin Peace Forum E-Newsletter 304, November 26, 2020. Higuchi, Naoto and Mitsuru Matsutani. 3.11 gono Shakai Undo (Social Movement after 3.11). Tokyo: Tsukuba Shobo, 2020. “Hiroshima: 75 Years after the Atomic Bomb!” Anti-War Museum (Anti-KriegsMuseum), Accessed November 19, 2020. http://www.anti-kriegs-museum.de/­ english/start1.html. “INF Nuclear Treaty: US Pulls Out of Cold War-Era Pact with Russia.” BBC News, August 2, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-49198565. Iwasa, Mikiso. “Let’s Talk about Hiroshima-Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Experiences and Pass It On.” October 19 2013, http://kiokuisan.com/wp-content/uploads/2014 /05/2013.10.19%E5%B2%A9%E4%BD%90%E5%B9%B9%E4%B8%89%E3%81%9 5%E3%82%93web%E6%8E%B2%E8%BC%89%E7%89%88.pdf. Jones, Gregory S. “Reactor-Grade Plutonium and Nuclear Weapons: Ending the Debate.” Journal of the Nonproliferation Review 26 (2019): 1–2, 61–81. https://www. tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10736700.2019.1603497?journalCode=rnpr20. Kowalczyk, Robert. “Peace Mask Project.” Transcend Media Service, August 10, 2020. “Lowest Number of A-bomb Survivors at 136,000 & Average Age over 83 years.” Mainichi Newspaper, July 2, 2020. https://mainichi.jp. Minami, Akira. “Recommendations for Restoring Trust in Journalism.” Sekai (World). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, October, 2020. “National Friday Action List”. The Metropolitan Coalition against Nukes, 2020. http://coalitionagainstnukes.jp/?page_id=1567.

44  Kazuyo Yamane Nuclear Power Plant Disaster Information Center (Genpatsu Saigai Joho Center). Accessed November 19, 2020. http://genpatusaigai.web.fc2.com/english/index. html. On the release of literature and arts bibliography collected by No More Hibakusha Center. Nihon Hidankyo, 2020. http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hidankyo/nihon/librarycatalog/mokuroku20200902.html. Preamble: The Constitution of Japan, 1947. The Prime Minister of Japan and his Cabinet. Accessed November 15, 2020. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_ japan/constitution_e.html. “Prime Minister Gives Zero Answer to the Question of Joining the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty for the Fourth Year in a Row, without Facing the Will of the People.” Tokyo Newspaper, August 7, 2020. https://www.tokyo-np.co.jp/article/47472. “Protocol.” National Network 21 of Children and Textbooks, 1988. https://­ kyokashonet21.jimdofree.com/%E5%BD%93%E4%BC%9A%E3%81%AE%E7% B4%B9%E4%BB%8B/. Smith, Stephen A. The Oxford Handbook of the History of Communism. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014. Suzuki, Toshio. “The demise of the Textbooks by the ‘Association for the Creation of a New History Textbook.”’ Sekai (World). Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, October 2020. “The Declaration of a City for Peace and the Campaign to Ban the Hydrogen Bomb (in Japanese)”. Suginami Ward Office. 1988. Accessed November 15, 2020. https://www.city.suginami.tokyo.jp/_res/projects/default_project/_page_/ 001/022/256/07_7682.pdf. “The New York Times reported that “Japan Has Enough Plutonium for 6,000 Nuclear Bombs”. Pars Today, 2018. https://parstoday.com/ja/news/japan-i48069 (in Japanese). “The Nobel Peace Prize for 2017.” Norwegian Nobel Committee, 2017. https://www. nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/2017/press-release/. “The Painting of the Atomic Bomb Painted by Citizens.” Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Accessed November 21, 2020. https://hpmmuseum.jp/modules/­ exhibition/index.php?action=DocumentView&document_id=165&lang=eng. “The Peace Museum Collection.” The Peace Museum, Bradford, UK, 2000. https:// www.peacemuseum.org.uk/our-collection. “The UN Adopted the Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty on July 7, 2017.” Nihon Hidankyo. August 2017. http://www.ne.jp/asahi/hidankyo/nihon/about/about5-201708.html. “Toward Making a Network.” No More Hibakusha Center for the Preservation of the Legacy of Memory. 2018. https://www.nomore-hibakusha.org/. “Treaty to Ban Nuclear Weapons Made Official with 50th UN Signatory.” Guardian, October 25, 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/25/treatybanning-nuclear-weapons-made-official-with-50th-un-signatory; https://www. icanw.org/tpnw_full_text. “Video Works: The Atomic Bomb Did Not Allow us to Die or Live as Human Beings.” No More Hibakusha Center for the Preservation of the Legacy of Memory. July 20 2014. https://www.nomore-hibakusha.org/voice. Yamane, Kazuyo. “Contemporary Peace Education in Peace Museums: Students’ Visits to Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Ritsumeikan Annual Review of International Studies 27 (2014): 117–128. http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/ir/isaru/assets/file/­journal/27-1_06_ Yamane.pdf.

3 Interrogating the Nuclear Industry, Local and Global Tsushima Yūko’s Post-3.11 Writing Barbara Hartley Introduction Tsushima Yūko (1947–2016) was a woman of extraordinary intellect and imagination, and a towering figure in the Japanese literary community for the three or four decades before her death in February 2016. As a senior member of that community, it was predictable that Tsushima would be one of many identities to respond passionately in writing to the March 3, 2011, Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami (hereafter 3.11). Her post-3.11 work confirms that the writer was particularly disturbed by the Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear disaster that followed the calamitous events of that ­afternoon in early spring. To many in Japan, 3.11 was, in fact, two disasters. The first was the natural event of a magnitude 9+ earthquake with its epicentre a mere seventy kilometres east of the Tohoku Region Sanriku coast. The second was the gross mismanagement of the collapse, in the face of this elemental fury, of the elder of two nuclear power plants near Okuma and Futaba (towns in Fukushima Prefecture) and the ensuing cover-up of that mismanagement by the plant operator, the Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO). Even the committee of inquiry appointed by the Japanese government in the wake of the disaster concluded that the March 2011 nuclear disaster was “the result of collusion between the government, the regulators and TEPCO, and the lack of governance by said parties”.1 As the following chapter will demonstrate, the events at Fukushima motivated Tsushima to reflect profoundly on the nature of the global nuclear industry and the negative effect that this industry has had and continues to have on everyday lives around the world. She was particularly concerned with the impact on the communities and lifestyles of Indigenous peoples. While Tsushima expressed her ideas in both fiction and non-fiction genres, the current chapter profiles an essay entitled “‘Yume no uta’ kara” (From “Dream-songs”). This piece does not merely focus on the 3.11 Japanese disaster and the impact on Japan and that country’s so-called “nuclear village”, a cosy term redolent with a Heimlich sense of security that adroitly elides the on-going and often irreparable damage wrought by the enterprise concerned.2 Rather, Tsushima uses a broad-angled lens to point out how

DOI: 10.4324/9781003320395-3

46  Barbara Hartley Japan’s nuclear project is aligned with a global industry that has effectively obliterated the lifestyles and cultural norms of local people in various putatively “remote” locations around the world. While the people involved inevitably fought back, limited resources have made it difficult to mount effective challenges against the multi-trillion-dollar industry involved. The result was therefore often displacement and declining health. As Tsushima notes,3 with respect to the damaging impact of uranium mining on the way of life of the Mirarr people from Australia, a group whose traditional lands encompassed the Ranger uranium mine that supplied material for the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant, this was all so that individuals such as herself could “reside in the Tokyo metropolis and use TEPCO electricity whether I want[ed] to or not”.4 This close reading of the “‘Yume no uta’ kara” essay will accordingly profile Tsushima Yūko’s long-standing interest in Indigenous cultures including those of both Japanese Ainu and people living outside Japan.5 These are generally groups that exist beyond the parameters regarded as significant by mainstream hyper-capitalist global flows and the media outlets that serve these flows. The enthusiasm of officials in the dying days of the Trump regime to transfer the Oak Flat lands in Arizona that are sacred to First Nations Americans to a subsidiary of Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton confirms the lack of respect shown by capital to the rightful owners of the land. Theorising a Trumpian inability to acknowledge the deaths that have resulted in the United States from the COVID pandemic, Judith Butler6 writes of the “cruel sense” of the outgoing president making “a deal in his final days in office that destroys sacred sites in Arizona to boost the production of copper at the very time that the failure of public policy has surely increased the death toll for those communities”. Rio Tinto’s wanton annihilation in May 2020 of the Juukan Gorge, an Australian Indigenous site located in Western Australia, also fits this template of sociopathic disrespect. Tsushima’s essay demonstrates the writer’s deep knowledge of the ways in which Indigenous groups have been exploited with impunity by the global nuclear industry. Three decades have elapsed since James Clifford noted how knowledge of non-western people has been shaped by a perverse “will to power” on the part of people in the west.7 Nevertheless, in certain spheres, people who reside in non-industrialised environments continue to be rendered invisible and denied a voice. Or it may be that they are given a confected voice that accords with that of power elites. Thus, when Indigenous peoples are forcibly relocated from their lands so that a superpower is able to conduct nuclear testing far removed from its own sphere of activity, acknowledgement of the harm done to the community in question is minimal and compensation criminally limited. Tsushima concludes her essay by returning to the Japanese sphere. Prior to this, however, she painstakingly sets out the circumstances of people from widely differing backgrounds such as Australian Aboriginal Mirarr people, Navaho people of New Mexico and the residents of various Pacific Island communities. She also examines the

Interrogating the Nuclear Industry, Local and Global  47 impact on local people of the myriad Soviet-era Semipalatinsk tests conducted between 1949 and 1989 on the “uninhabited” Steppes of northeast Kazakhstan. In this way Tsushima provides a largely unique overview of the scale and persistence of nuclear industry disruption on those whom this industry assesses as dispensable. She also suggests the culpability of individuals who—like herself—use nuclear power, the generation of which is too often the end point of a cycle that commences with Indigenous dispossession. Before discussing the “‘Yume no uta’ kara” text, background information is provided on the writer herself.

Tsushima Yūko Tsushima Yūko was born in 1947, the second daughter and youngest of the three children of school-teacher mother, Tsushima (Ishihara) Michiko (1912–1997), and her famed writer husband, Dazai Osamu (given name Tsushima Shūji, 1909–1948). The eldest of Michiko and Osamu’s children was a daughter, while the middle child was a son with Down’s syndrome. Various commentators regard Tsushima’s success as a writer as somehow a function of her being the child of a famous literary figure father. Anne McKnight and Michael Bourdaghs (2018),8 for example, note that “the critical placement of Tsushima” often situates her as “an inheritor of Dazai’s legacy”. While this may or may not be the case, I would argue that the daughter quickly outshone the parent in terms of literary excellence. Much of the writer’s early work contested hegemonic interpretations of motherhood in patriarchal Japanese society. This trend was evident as early as 1972 in her Akutagawa Prize-nominated narrative Kitsune o haramu (Pregnant with a Fox), a title that also confirmed Tsushima’s interest in the relationship between the human and animal worlds. English language readers of Tsushima have been given access to her writing through the brilliant work of translator Geraldine Harcourt. However, Harcourt’s published work, which includes two very recent translations, often draws on material produced before Tsushima began engaging with the narratives of those located beyond Japan’s mainstream. Many English language translations of her work, therefore, give accounts of Tsushima’s contestation of motherhood as prescribed by variants of the notorious ryōsai kenbo (good wife, wise mother) norm that have impinged on generations of Japanese women. Tsushima’s father took his own life when the writer was barely one year of age. The young Tsushima lost a second close family member when her Down’s syndrome brother died in adolescence. Tsushima herself defied contemporaneous social conventions by becoming a single mother raising two children, an experience that informed the setting of various fictional works. The writer’s early magnus opus, Women Running in the Mountains (1980, Yama o hashiru onna), for example, depicts a young woman protagonist determined to give birth to her child in spite of the best efforts of her mother to ensure the troublesome foetus is aborted. The writer was confronted with

48  Barbara Hartley further tragedy when the younger of her two children, a son, died suddenly at the age of eight. In a deeply moving tribute to her mother, Tsushima’s daughter, Ishihara Nen,9 relates how “[b]ack then I simply found my mother incomprehensibly frightening”. Yet it may have been the powerful emotions that consumed Tsushima at the loss of her child that led her to hear—in the true sense of the word—voices beyond the then mainstream, including those of Indigenous people. Ishihara explains that her unconventional mother refused to accept the social role of the “mother who’s lost a child” or to “acced[e] to the ready-made answers of society about the nature of death and the meaning of loss”.10 Instead, Tsushima sought out the “voices of people who had gone beyond tears or accepting consolation”.11 These voices, explains Ishihara, “naturally came to include [those] from minority groups”. She continues: When she first heard the songs of the Ainu, [my mother] was surprised to find that the songs were written from the perspective of gods looking detachedly at humans, and she wondered how they could attain such a point of view. Through contact with the world of the epic poem of Manas in Kyrgyzstan, she came to sense that songs act as a foundation for people to rebuild their worlds even when they’ve lost their homelands. My mother’s world was woven from and broadened by song.12 I reproduce these words in order to demonstrate how Tsushima’s writing around 3.11 and associated nuclear issues is motivated by a deep-seated sense of connection, forged through profound personal loss, with the people whose lives have been ravaged by the global nuclear network. Ishikawa’s words also confirm that Tsushima refuses the viewpoint of industrialised privilege that sets out in a one-way direction only to save or rescue those impacted upon by nuclear chicanery. Rather, the writer acknowledges the constant re-building undertaken by the groups of people affected and their resilience and determination to move forward in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles created by the intransigence of the industry and its general refusal to accept responsibility for the destruction it wreaks. As the “‘Yume no uta’ kara” essay confirms, this destruction took manifold forms and exercised an impact over decades. During those years, communities were taken on roller-coaster rides of false hope and despair that pushed collective energy reserves to extremes. Tsushima’s essay opens with two questions. The first is general, while the second has intimate specific meaning for herself as a woman in Japan and, by extension, for every individual on the Japanese archipelago: Why on earth is it that, largely without exception throughout the world, the mineral they call uranium lies underground [in sites] upon which those known as “Indigenous peoples” have resided since long ago? How should I understand this ironic reality?13

Interrogating the Nuclear Industry, Local and Global  49 Having established the direction of the essay and profiled her belief in the link between the political and the personal, Tsushima refers to a letter sent one month after the Fukushima disaster to the United Nations by Senior Elder Yvonne Margarula, a representative of the Mirarr people of northern Australia. As noted on the website of the Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation (GAC), an organisation established in 1995 to represent the rights and interests of the Mirarr people,14 the “Mirarr estate […] includes the Ranger uranium mine, the Jabiluka mineral lease and the mining town of Jabiru”. Following the Fukushima meltdown, Senior Elder Margarula wrote to the then United Nations General Secretary Ban Ki-moon (b. 1944), apologising for the fact that her estate had perhaps provided some of the uranium that fuelled the Dai-ichi plant. It is clear from her essay that Tsushima had read Senior Elder Margarula’s letter closely and had perhaps also read about the Mirarr people’s o ­ n-going battle against the extraction of uranium from their country. In the letter, Margarula notes European Commission research on an issue that has come to the attention of a growing number of scholars in the past decade,15 namely, the relationship between uranium mining and Indigenous lands. Margarula also reflects on that research in terms of the impact on her own community. In 2009 the European Commission found that approximately 70% of uranium used in nuclear reactors is sourced from the homelands of Indigenous minorities worldwide. We Mirarr believe that this constitutes an unfair impact on Indigenous people now and into the future. We suffer the dangers and long-term impacts of the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle so that others overseas may continue to enjoy lives without the awareness of the impacts this has on the lives of others.16 There appears to be little doubt that the direction of Tsushima’s article was influenced by these words. For it is precisely the “unfair impact on Indigenous people now and into the future” that results from being at “the front end” and at other points in “the nuclear fuel cycle” that is the theme of Tsushima’s discussion. Furthermore, the Japanese writer was overcome by the “grace and dignity”17 that characterised the Mirarr Elder’s letter and the latter’s sense of shared responsibility for the catastrophe that had afflicted Japan. The letter to Ban Ki-moon reveals a strong and almost uncanny connection between the Mirarr people and Japan. Senior Elder Margarula points out that the Australian government’s early 1970 commitment to uranium export came about in order to send ore “from our land at Ranger to Japan”. This commitment resulted from “the [Australian Government’s] negotiations with [then] Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka”.18 We might note a bitter irony here. Known as a political “fixer”, Tanaka Kakuei (1918–1993) led the Japanese government for only two years between 1972 and 1974, when he resigned as prime minister in the face of an inquiry into what enemies in

50  Barbara Hartley his own Liberal Democrat Party regarded as corrupt dealings. Although still making legal challenges to the decision at the time of his 1993 death, Tanaka was later found guilty of corruption charges related to the Lockheed scandal.19 Involving the US aerospace and aircraft maker’s distribution of monies to individuals in elected office as a means of ensuring sales, during the 1970s and into the 1980s this incident took the scalps of prominent political figures across the industrialised world. Of the agreement between Australia and the Tanaka administration, Senior Elder Margarula declared: “We were not consulted about this. We opposed Ranger’s development”. Expressing her sadness at the possibility, she goes on to note that the “long history between Japanese nuclear companies and Australian uranium miners” makes it “likely that the radiation problems at Fukushima are, at least in part, fuelled by uranium derived from our traditional lands”.20 In April 2011, one month after the disaster in Japan when the letter was despatched, the possibility of Ranger uranium fuelling the Fukushima ­ ­Dai-ichi plant was informed speculation. Importantly, this possibility was eventually endorsed as fact. The GAC website21 notes that Dr Robert Floyd, Director General of the Australian Safeguards and Non-Proliferation Office of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, later confirmed that, “Australia obligated nuclear material was at the Fukushima Daiichi site”. Writing for Nuclear Free Campaign, Friends of the Earth Australia, Dave Sweeney (2012) gives the date of this “admission” by Floyd as October 2011. The Margarula letter also noted that just one month prior to the Fukushima disaster, a Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation delegation had visited Japan as part of the seventy-second Global Peace Voyage of the Peace Boat. There, delegation members met hibakusha, individuals exposed to atomic bomb radiation, and “people and organisations associated with nuclear and peace issues”. This visit, wrote Senior Elder Margarula, “heightens the sense of solidarity we feel for the people of Japan in their suffering and reinforces the Mirarr people’s position against further uranium mining in Kakadu”.22 This affinity with Japan’s atomic experience operated as late as 2020. In a statement posted on the GAC website commemorating the seventy-fifth anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, GAC CEO Justin O’Brien declared as follows: Mirarr send a message of solidarity to all hibakusha […] in recognition of the strong links between Mirarr country and Japan and the great damage that the nuclear industry has inflicted on people and country over these 75 years.23 In that same statement, O’Brien24 reiterated the links between Mirarr country and Japan, observing that, “[m]ining began at Ranger—against the wishes of the Mirarr—in large part because of agreements between the Australian and Japanese governments”. Both the Australian and Japanese governments acted with impunity towards the Mirarr people when negotiating the

Interrogating the Nuclear Industry, Local and Global  51 opening of uranium operations at Ranger. The possible influence of Senior Elder Yvonne Margarula’s letter on the direction of Tsushima Yūko’s writing in the essay under discussion, however, introduces a much more productive and positive element to the intimate bonds that exist between Japan and Mirarr people and their lands. Certain points made in Tsushima’s essay are slightly at odds with, or go beyond the parameters of, Senior Elder Margarula’s letter. Tsushima, for example, appears to attribute to the Mirarr people a decision to forgo royalties. She states that the community had decided to “return”—the Japanese term is henjō which can be translated as return or relinquish—“the huge sum of money they had received until that point as a fee for the use of the mine”.25 In Tsushima’s telling, this decision was made because of the impact on the community of alcoholism and conflict over the use of the money. Although these specifics do not appear in Senior Elder Margarula’s letter, her document does point out that: Ranger has operated since 1980 and has brought much hardship to local Aboriginal people and environmental damage to our country. For over 30 years we have experienced and lived with the “front end” reality of uranium mining and we are opposed to any further mining at the Jabiluka site [which is also on Mirarr land].26 While no information could be found relating to a decision to relinquish or return monies received, several GAC publications articulate the impact on the Mirarr estate of the presence of the mine. Regarding the community response to proposals by mine owners and Rio Tinto subsidiary, Energy Resources of Australia (ERA), to expand its mining operations on Mirarr nation country, for example, the 2010 GAC Annual Report notes: The Corporation has vigorously opposed all of these actions, which collectively represent a general expansion of mining activity on the RPA [Ranger Project Area], a significant increase in the number of mine workers in Jabiru, a likely exacerbation of social problems related to alcohol, further degradation of the environment, and which require serial extensions of the authority to mine at Ranger.27 The 2010 Report, in other words, establishes a link between mining and various issues faced by the community to which Tsushima refers. Similarly, while only general information relating to “environmental damage” is referenced in Senior Elder Margarula’s letter, Tsushima’s article declares that, in addition to leading to a collapse of the “traditional life-style and culture”, mining resulted in some land in the community being “covered with holes which had become filled with the rocks and mud that were polluted by radiation”.28 Although these specifics do not appear in the letter, the GAC website expresses general concern about “the potential negative impacts

52  Barbara Hartley on human health and the environment from the operations of the Ranger uranium mine”.29 The site further provides an account of how “over 200 spills, leaks and breaches of licence conditions occurred in the four decades of the mine’s existence”.30 These included the December 2013 collapse of a leach tank at the Ranger mine which led to a spill of “over one million litres of radioactive slurry across the site”.31 Although the source of Tsushima’s account is unclear, GAC website information suggests that the Japanese writer’s narrative is based on fact. In their discussion of Linda Tuhiwai’ Smith’s Decolonizing Methodologies,32 sociologists Maggie Walter and Michele Suina33 explain how the ground-breaking nature of this research inspired Indigenous methodological scholarship generally. Walter and Suina lament that, in spite of the fact that Indigenous groups have highly sophisticated numeric skills through experience in fields such as “cropping, hunting and navigation”,34 Indigenous researchers have tended to favour qualitative over quantitative methods. This, they observe, is the understandable result of “longstanding (and largely justified) suspicions around research”: Our countries are linked by the ocean, our peoples are linked by a history of surviving the impact of nuclear explosions, and we are linked through a shared hope for a nuclear free future.35 As discussed in further detail below, the expression of a hope for a ­nuclear-free future is precisely the call that concludes Tsushima’s own essay. With reference to the title of Tsushima’s essay, rendered in English as “From ‘Dream-songs’”, the writer identifies herself as one who is “entranced by the ‘Dreaming Narratives’ of Aboriginal people”.36 To Tsushima, songs from dreams are left as tracks that become a “map” and ultimately a “memory” for those who are descended from—and here Tsushima uses the term that appears in the Confucian expression, “ancestor worship”—the “ancestors”.37 Apparently unfamiliar with discussions by writers such as Bruce Pascoe38 and Tyson Yunkaporta39 of millennia-long traditions among Indigenous Australian communities of activities undertaken by people of fixed abode such as agriculture and architecture, Tsushima assumes a nomadic Australian Aboriginal lifestyle. This lifestyle, she argues, led to a rejection of the private ownership of land in favour of mutuality and shared use of country. She also suggests that since “memory of the wide earth” was “written into bodies”, letters and writing systems were superfluous to the lives of Indigenous Australians. In this sense “memory” became a song, “a living memory connected to the fate of the people”.40 Tsushima explains to her readers that she had previously encountered this form of “song” in her interactions with people from Inner Eurasia and with the Indigenous Ainu people of Japan. It nevertheless took the Fukushima disaster for her to become aware of “my connection to the world of Australian Aboriginal people”.41 The electricity that she used had been extracted from “the

Interrogating the Nuclear Industry, Local and Global  53 Aboriginal dreaming world”, taken to the United States for enrichment and then shipped to Japan. While expressing strong sympathy for Japan, Senior Elder Margarula also took the opportunity in her letter to impress upon Ban Ki-moon, as a representative of the United Nations, the perpetual dangers of unearthing uranium and the destructive processes this ore unleashed. The final paragraph of her letter reads: For many thousands of years we Aboriginal people of Kakadu have respected sacred sites where special and dangerous power resides. We call these places and this power Ojang. There is Ojang associated with both the Ranger mine area and the site of the proposed Jabiluka mine. We believe and have always believed that when this Ojang is disturbed a great and dangerous power is unleased upon the entire world. My father warned the Australian Government about this in the 1970s, but no-one in a position of power listened to him. We hope that people such as yourself will listen, and act, today.42 With some inconsistencies, Tsushima draws on Senior Elder Margarula’s concluding words—and perhaps other sources as well—to provide the following interpretation for her readers: Among the Dreaming Stories is one narrative telling of how a fatal power known as “Jan” is unleashed when the land is devastated. When the uranium mines began operating in the 1970s, an elder of the time warned the Australian Government, which was promoting uranium export, that this awakening of “Jan” would lead to death the world over. Nevertheless, delivered as it was by an “Indigenous person”, the warning was ignored.43 Tsushima is not a researcher and we cannot be certain of the translation of the letter that she consulted. She has nonetheless overlooked the fact that the Elder who issued the warning was, in fact, Senior Traditional Owner Toby Gangale, the father of current Senior Elder Margarula. The GAC website explains how Senior Traditional Owner Gangale “opposed plans for uranium exploration and mining on his country in the 1970s”.44 The website further notes how this opposition, “along with that of other local Aboriginal people, was overruled by the Federal Government when it legislated for the development of the Ranger Uranium Mine in 1976” (GAC 2021).45 The fact that Tsushima may have exercised licence with some aspects of Senior Elder Margarula’s letter in no way diminishes the critical importance of her essay. In the final sentence of the extract cited above, although not referring to the Senior Traditional Owner by name, Tsushima states that Toby Gangale’s prophecy was ignored because it was delivered by an “Indigenous person”. It is this insight that serves as a platform for the remainder of the

54  Barbara Hartley essay. A recurrent theme is the manner in which the nuclear industry, and the industrialised world that benefits from that industry, dismisses as disposable the people whose lives it violates. Tsushima’s essay recalls the work of Australian sociologist Raewyn Connell,46 especially Connell’s call to acknowledge and incorporate “southern theory”, that is, the use of “southern and postcolonial perspectives”47 into applied social science. Rejecting notions of southern theory as “a fixed set of propositions”,48 Connell argues that it is rather “a challenge to develop new knowledge projects and new ways of learning with globally expanded resources”.49 Drawing on thinkers who include French-West Indian psychiatrist and political philosopher Franz Fanon (1925–1961), Brazilian sociologist Heleieth Saffioti (1934–2010), Egyptian-French Marxist-economist Samir Amin (1931–2018) and Indian social theorist Ashis Nandy (b. 1937), Connell further notes that any analysis of colonialism must lead to an acceptance of “problems about knowledge itself”.50 Connell’s argument acknowledges the challenges facing the scholar who seeks to incorporate “southern theory” into their endeavours in a way that is not merely a “prop”, borrowing a favourite expression from the great subaltern studies theorist, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. In spite of difficulties, clearly articulated by Spivak,51 of amplifying that voice, Connell is adamant that “the subaltern does speak”. Her article commences by referencing the global ranking system that obsesses tertiary sector managers in the age of the neo-liberal university. This system, she notes, “reduces culture and knowledge to a tightly packaged blancmange”, and “is itself proof of what it seeks to suppress: the tremendous lurid diversity, the erupting multiplicity, of possible projects of knowledge”.52 It is undoubtedly Tsushima’s intention also to insert into the mainstream and circulate information about these “erupting” multiple knowledges, including the mid-1970s warning delivered by Traditional Senior Mirarr Owner Toby Gangale. In other words, Tsushima seeks to ensure that the ideas of those whom the mainstream would sideline are amplified so they can be heard widely and acted upon. Invoking Gangale’s prediction, which she notes parallels stories told by Navaho First Nation people in the United States, Tsushima directly poses the question: “Which is superior—the ancient knowledge embedded in ‘Dream-songs’ or the knowledge of the nuclear age that is fascinated by the huge energy forces ­generated through the fission and fusion of uranium nuclei”?53 For Tsushima, it is undoubtedly the former. Concluding her discussion of the Indigenous Australian experience, Tsushima then details the nuclear industry impact on the lives of a number of other groups of Indigenous peoples residing in various places around the world. In doing so, she laments that, in spite of their ancient traditions and deep connection to country and land, “Dream-songs” were powerless “in the face of modern civilisation”.54 Given that “civilisation” has led to the irreparable destruction of natural ecosystems and the lives that these sustain, surely the writer’s use of that term is ironic. Further, if government

Interrogating the Nuclear Industry, Local and Global  55 policy rode roughshod over the decisions made by Indigenous Australians, this was the experience of Indigenous people in other places also. As Tsushima notes, being patronised and marginalised was something shared by the “nomad hunter people of Central Eurasia” and “Ainu people” as well. As noted by Tsushima Yūko’s daughter, Ishihara Nen, following the death of her eight-year-old son Tsushima sought solace in works such as the epic Kyrgyzstan poem, Manas. In an introduction to a partial 2005 translation of Manas, then University of Washington doctoral candidate Elmira Köçümkulkïzï explains that this epic has for centuries been “composed and sung entirely in oral form”.55 Citing Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov (1928– 2008), Köçümkulkïzï argues that while other cultures used media such as script, architecture or theatre to display their pasts, it was the epic genre that expressed Kyrgyz’s “worldview, pride, dignity, battles and their hope for the future”.56 Köçümkulkïzï goes on to point out that, for Kyrgyz people, “traditional poetry and epic songs” replaced the written word. Drawn to this material in her time of loss, Tsushima established links with Eurasia and gradually learnt how the nuclear industry had impacted on the lives of the people of the west Asian region. In the Semipalantinsk area of north-east Kazakhstan, uranium lay beneath “the great Savannah plain that extends across the Eurasian continental inland”.57 Tsushima speculates that the Soviet Union undoubtedly decided to mine there because “the ‘civilised’ eye” saw the area as “unproductive land” on which grew only “a few meagre blades of grass”,58 and where only a few Indigenous peoples made their homes. The latter, however, was far from the case. In an October 2011 Independent article, discussing the Semipalantinsk test site, entitled “The world’s worst radiation hotspot”, Jerome Taylor explains that the area was home to around 700,000 people. Seemingly oblivious to this fact, Lavrentiy Beria (1899–1953), the feared head of Stalin’s secret police who also led the development of atomic weapons for the Soviet Union, designated the area as “uninhabited”.59 If the words of Senior Traditional Mirarr Elder Toby Gangale were dismissed by Australian authorities as those of an Indigenous man, Beria’s use of the word “uninhabited” denied the very existence of the Indigenous Kyrgyz people in the Semipalantinsk region. (In terms of nomenclature, while contemporary geo-political discourse designates the region as Kazakhstan, Tsushima notes that this is a new concept and that residents of the area are in fact “a mix of various ethnic backgrounds”60 whom Europeans have ­collectively referred to as Kyrgyz people.) Citing Japanese anti-nuclear activist Morizumi Takashi, Tsushima writes that the more than 450 nuclear tests conducted around Semipalatinsk have created a store of nuclear waste materials with a radioactivity level that is more than 5,000 times that released during the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.61 Thus, although the last test was held in 1989, residents “even now suffer various medical illnesses and disorders”. The lifestyle of these Kyrgyz “standard bearers of the quintessential nomad way of life” collapses once their land is “contaminated by nuclear radiation”.62

56  Barbara Hartley Nevertheless, in the same way that Australian authorities insisted on the sale of uranium against the will of those responsible for the Mirarr estate, local Kazakhstan authorities promote the mining of uranium and its sale to places such as Japan and Russia against the will of many local people. Tsushima accordingly argues that, “in one way”, the generation of nuclear power “tramples the Indigenous person’s world”.63 Occasionally, Indigenous voices do prevail. Tsushima explains how in 1957 the US Atomic Energy Commission designated land belonging to local Inuit people around Cape Thompson in Alaska as a future nuclear test site. Happily, she notes, a five-year campaign eventually forced the United States to abandon this “dangerous plan”. In discussing the reaction of the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands to a proposal by Japan to dispose of huge drums of nuclear waste in the ocean near the Mariana’s maritime zone, Tsushima details the resistance tactics adopted by Felipe Mendiola, the then mayor of Tinian City, one of the four Northern Marianas municipalities. The experience of the Northern Marianas suggests that, with sufficient leverage, the Indigenous voice can be heard loud and clear. Until the US Armed Forces took over the Marianas in 1944 as one step in the Allied military campaign against Japanese imperial expansion, Japan administered the islands as a League of Nations-mandated territory. Tinian was the site of a particularly ferocious late-July 1944 battle during which an 8,000-man Japanese unit was wiped out. In the aftermath, the remains of many deceased Imperial Army personnel were never recovered, making Tinian a focus location for the post-war Japanese war-era tourism boom that saw surviving family members visit Pacific War battle sites to, if not retrieve the remains of their loved ones, at least pay respects to the dead. With the Japanese authorities announcing their intention in 1979 to dump nuclear waste into the maritime zone of the Marianas,64 Felipe Mediola visited Japan. Here, Tsushima explains, he held a press conference at which he took no prisoners. According to Tsushima’s account, the Tinian mayor declared that if Japan dumped contaminated radioactive material into the seas adjacent to the Marianas, Tinian people would tear down the island’s Japanese cenotaph and throw it into the sea. Tinian, he observed, would also withdraw support to groups searching for wartime remains.65 In addition, Japanese fishing fleets would be prohibited from entering Northern Marianas waters. Mendiola concluded by declaring that while Tinian welcomed Japan “using large quantities of electricity and becoming a prosperous nation”, its residents could not support a Japanese government plan that “foists dangerous substances upon our region”.66 Presented with this ultimatum, Japan reconsidered and the dumping of nuclear waste in the Northern Marianas’ maritime zone did not proceed. Bikini Atoll residents, however, had nothing substantive to bargain. It should therefore be unsurprising that this collection of tiny islands encircling a central lagoon became one of the most oppressed nuclear test sites on

Interrogating the Nuclear Industry, Local and Global  57 the planet. While this may be one reason that Tsushima devotes considerable space in her essay to the experience of Bikini Atoll residents, her interest may also relate to the Lucky Dragon incident. This occurred on March 1, 1954, when a Japanese fishing boat—the Dai-go Fukuryū-maru (Lucky Dragon No 5)—strayed into Bikini Atoll waters as the first of the notorious Castle Bravo thermonuclear weapons tests took place. As a result, Lucky Dragon crew members were irradiated. This direct connection to Japan, and widespread knowledge of the incident among people in Japan even today, could also have been a factor in Tsushima’s decision to examine the Bikini Atoll situation in some detail. Tsushima’s essay notes how, when plans for nuclear tests were first announced in 1946, around the same time that Beria in the Soviet Union was declaring the Semipalantinsk region “uninhabited”, residents were forcibly moved to other remote islands. Western authorities seemed to assume that one island was the same as another and that Bikini Atoll people would face inconsequential difficulties adjusting to their new home. This was not the case, however, and Tushima notes how, after the initial relocation, the people found themselves in an area that was completely different from their home island. As a result, malnutrition became widespread. Later, food supply issues would be addressed by offering the people canned foods imported from the United States.67 This, of course, led to a different although equally serious set of problems. In 1968, more than two decades after the proposal to test, the atoll was finally declared habitable and some former residents returned. This decision was reversed ten years later, however, resulting in further dislocation. By 1996, the area was designated a tourist site and temporary private accommodation constructed. Having obliterated the cultural heritage of the area, the United States magnanimously granted former residents the dubious privilege of being able, like other private visitors, to pay to return to their homeland for a brief stay if they wished.68 Reference above was made to the notoriety of the Castle Bravo tests with some commentators arguing that the evacuation of residents, who were subject to fallout when the first of these tests was conducted on March 1, 1954, was deliberately delayed to enable the collection of data by the United States from the people affected.69 Predictably, US authorities reject that claim. Nevertheless, as Aimee Bahng notes, US officials [knew] in advance about the shift in winds that would cause the fallout to reach Ron̄ ļap [the Bikini Atoll island closest to the Castle Bravo tests], and despite the fact that US servicemen were evacuated from the area in time, the Indigenous denizens of Ron̄ ļap were left to suffer the effects of this acute exposure to radiation, including bonedeep radiation burns, extreme nausea, and hair loss.70 It is also an indisputable fact that, as with hibakusha who were affected by the atomic bombs that fell on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, those evacuees

58  Barbara Hartley were subject to extensive testing and data collection by the United States. As was the case with Hiroshima and Nagasaki hibakusha, also, no US medical assistance was ever forthcoming. As Tsushima considers the specifics of the nuclear test experience imposed on successive groups of Indigenous people, she realises that incontrovertible patterns emerge. These patterns are grounded in disregard by the nuclear industry, and its operatives and/or collaborators in both the public and private sectors, for those upon whom the industry leaves its mark. As mentioned at the outset, however, Tsushima does not merely condemn the industry itself. She also highlights the culpability of all who mindlessly use nuclear power and fail to question its impact upon those who live at what Senior Mirarr Elder Yvonne Margarula has labelled “the front end of the nuclear fuel cycle”. Seventy percent of these, we might recall, are Indigenous peoples. Towards the end of her essay, Tsushima returns to the local context. She catalogues a few of the more notable among the litany of errors, cover-ups and barefaced lies performed by the Japanese nuclear industry. Nuclear power was initially sold to the Japanese people in the 1950s as “atoms for peace” by an industry looking to profit from nuclear technology. Aggressive lobbying from this industry ensured that nuclear power was embraced with gusto by political “fixers” such as Tanaka Kakuei who contracted for Japan to purchase Mirarr estate uranium. A paucity of fossil-fuel resources had made modern Japan historically dependent on imported resources. Thus, particularly after the 1973 oil crisis, nuclear energy appeared to offer independence in terms of the generation of electricity for consumption by both the industrial and domestic sectors. Throughout her essay, Tsushima provides information about the dire health threats posed by aspects of nuclear waste. She goes into detail regarding the half-life of substances such as plutonium. She also makes it clear that since there are no foolproof nuclear facilities, we can never totally guard against an accident that will have devastating results. Nuclear power was pitched to the Japanese electorate as a service provided by authorities looking to solve problems for the people. At its height, the industry boasted fifty-four active reactors located on some of the most seismically unstable coastlines on the planet. These coastline precincts are comprised of only “fragile ground built up of mud and dirt” rather than the “solid bedrock” required for secure construction.71 Tsushima argues that the ascendency of the industry in Japan is a function of the fact that “nuclear power generation is a massive international business supported by vested interests”.72 These interests were clearly active in Japan following the March 2011 disaster. Two months later, in May 2011, then Prime Minister Kan Naoto requested that reactors at the Hamaoka Nuclear Power Plant in Shizuoka west of Tokyo be turned off. This plant, built over the convergence of two tectonic plates, was once said to be the “most dangerous” power plant in Japan.73 In response to Prime Minister Kan’s request and with the support of the mainstream

Interrogating the Nuclear Industry, Local and Global  59 media in Japan, Tsushima notes how the CEO of the Central Japan Power Company that ran the plant expostulated angrily. “Have we lost all reason?” he asked. “It will cause problems for our investors if we stop generating power”.74 Demands for profit clearly trumped the risk of nuclear disaster for this individual who held ultimate responsibility for the operation of the Hamaoka plant. Tsushima rejects profit and has a clear understanding of the serious contamination risks posed by nuclear power plants. Nevertheless, her principal objection to nuclear power is a function of her renewed understanding after reading Senior Mirarr Elder Yvonne Margarula’s letter to Ban Ki-moon of the way in which that industry undermines the rights and lives of Indigenous peoples. It was earlier noted how the theme of Tsushima’s discussion is precisely the “unfair impact on Indigenous people now and into the future” that results from being at “the front end of” and at other points in “the nuclear fuel cycle” referred to in Senior Elder Margarula’s letter. The Japanese writer’s essay accordingly concludes: From uranium mining to nuclear testing, to the provision of land for nuclear electricity plants, to those who labour in the nuclear power generation industry, to the proposed sites for nuclear waste disposal plants: no matter where you look the nuclear power industry gained its footholds by sacrificing Indigenous people or those in a weak social position. From this point alone, as a member of humanity, I find it hard to condone the nuclear power industry.75 It is only after making this point that Tsushima canvasses the safety issues forwarded by more conventional activists as a reason for rejecting nuclear power. That point, too, is nonetheless powerfully made. Since no country has as yet devised a method of finally storing spent nuclear fuel, it would seem to be “common sense” that domestic nuclear electricity generation in Japan, which has been the cause of nuclear accidents, should be made to cease immediately so that not one more rod of spent nuclear fuel is produced over and above that which currently exists.76 Castigating her homeland for exporting nuclear energy to places such as Vietnam, she calls on Japan to have the insight to “interrogate the fact that modern civilization continues endlessly and rapaciously to demand more and more energy and economic development”.77 The final lines of Tsushima’s essay confirm her solidarity with those affected by an industry overseen by “a dank and moldy tribe, who never think of the safety of the public”.78 Noting that—like the people of the Marshall Islands—the residents of post-earthquake and post-nuclear disaster Japan face a difficult future, Tsushima argues that, for that very reason,

60  Barbara Hartley “we should join hands with the peoples of the Pacific Ocean and, step by step, move towards a nuclear free future”.79 She points out that “nuclear reactors create the artificial radiation that presents so much danger to all life on earth, here on this planet (chijō)”, a planet that overflows with the “infinite life of plants, animals and insects”.80 Therefore, rather than “bowing down before a nuclear reactor as some ominous object of worship”, Tsushima declares her intention to “listen to the wisdom of ‘Dreamsongs’”.81 Surely, she concludes, the lesson for Japan from the Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami is the need for humans “to live as part of the natural world”.82

Notes 1 National Diet of Japan, Executive Summary of the National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Committee (Tokyo: The National Diet of Japan), 2012, https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/ resources/NAIIC_report_lo_res2.pdf. 2 Hiroshi Kainuma, “Fukushima” ron: genshiryoku-mura wa naze umareta no ka (On Fukushima: Why Did the Nuclear Village Come into Being?) (Tokyo: Seidosha, 2011). 3 Yūko Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara” (From “Dream-Songs”), Yume no uta kara (From Dream-songs) (Tokyo: Insukuriputo, 2016), 19–38. 4 Yūko Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”. 5 Yūko Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 23. 6 Judith Butler, “Why Donald Trump Will Never Admit Defeat,” Guardian, Wednesday January 20, 2021, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/ jan/20/donald-trump-election-defeat-covid-19-deaths. 7 James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 8 Anne McKnight and Michael Bourdaghs, “Memento Libri: New Writings and Translations from the World of Tsushima Yūko (1947–2016),” Asia-Pacific Journal/Japan Focus 16, no. 12, (June 2018), https://apjjf.org/2018/12/McKnight. html. 9 Nen Ishihara, “People’s Voices, Mother’s Song,” Asia-Pacific Journal/Japan Focus 16, no. 12 (June 2018), https://apjjf.org/2018/12/Ishihara.html. 10 Nen Ishihara, “People’s Voices, Mother’s Song.” 11 Nen Ishihara, “People’s Voices, Mother’s Song.” 12 Nen Ishihara, “People’s Voices, Mother’s Song.” 13 Yūko Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 19. 14 Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, “Uranium Mining: Uranium Has Long Caused Controversy in the Kakadu Region,” Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation Website, 2021, https://www.mirarr.net/pages/uranium-mining. 15 See, for example, Aimee Bahng, “The Pacific Proving Grounds and the Proliferation of Settler Environmentalism,” Journal of Transnational American Studies 11, no. 2 (2020): 45–73. 16 Yvonne Margarula, “Yvonne Margarula’s Letter to the UN Expressing Solidarity with the People of Fukushima,” Saturday April 16, 2011, http://static1.1.sqspcdn. c o m /s t at i c /f /356 0 82 /11963 02 0 /13 03983838710 / Yvo n n e +M a r g a r u l a+ Fukushima+Letter.pdf?token=zySLrkET63D6fbPa00LhG6wGrXE%3D. 17 Yūko Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 23. 18 Yvonne Margarula, “Yvonne Margarula’s Letter to the UN”.

Interrogating the Nuclear Industry, Local and Global  61 19 Eric Johnston, “Power Politics: Japan’s Most Popular Political Platforms,” Japan Times, April 29, 2017, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/04/29/national/ history/power-politics-japans-popular-political-platforms/. 20 Yvonne Margarula, “Yvonne Margarula’s Letter to the UN”. 21 Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, “Uranium Mining”. 22 Yvonne Margarula, “Yvonne Margarula’s Letter to the UN”. 23 Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, “Uranium Mining”. 24 Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, “Uranium Mining”. 25 Yūko Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 19–20. 26 Yvonne Margarula, “Yvonne Margarula’s Letter to the UN”. 27 Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation 2010 Annual Report, “The Mirarr: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. A Socioeconomic Update,” https://www. m irar r.net/search?utf 8=3&search=“The+Mirar r%3A+Yesterday%2C+ today+and+tomorrow.+A+socioeconomic+update%2C”+&button=. 28 Yūko Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 20. 29 Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, “Uranium Mining”. 30 Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, “Uranium Mining”. 31 Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, “Uranium Mining”. 32 Linda Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples (London: Zed Books Ltd/University of Otago Press, 1999). 33 Maggie Walter and Michele Suina, “Indigenous Data, Indigenous Methodologies and Indigenous Data Sovereignty,” International Journal of Social Research Methodology 22, no. 3 (2019): 233–243. 34 Maggie Walter and Michele Suina, “Indigenous Data, Indigenous Methodologies,” 233. 35 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 20; WA Nuclear Free Alliance Conference Statement, “We Can’t Close the Gap by Digging a Deeper Hole,” April 2011, https://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/publications/tabledpapers.nsf/display paper/3813251cfa5b5b30692d7e3a482578730011a6f3/$file/3251-14.04.11.pdf. 36 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 21. 37 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 21. 38 Bruce Pascoe, Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture (Broome, Western Australia: Magabala Books, 2018). 39 Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2019). 40 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 21. 41 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 22. 42 Margarula, “Yvonne Margarula’s Letter to the UN”. 43 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 20–21. 44 Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, “Uranium Mining”. 45 Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, “Uranium Mining”. 46 Raewyn Connell, “Using Southern Theory: Decolonizing Social thought in Theory, Research and Application,” Planning Theory 12, no. 2 (2014). 47 Connell, “Using Southern Theory, 210. 48 Connell, “Using Southern Theory, 210. 49 Connell, “Using Southern Theory, 210. 50 Connell’s Italics; Connell, “Using Southern Theory,” 214–215. 51 Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?,” Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, eds. Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988), 271–313. 52 Connell, “Using Southern Theory,” 216. 53 Tsushima, Yūko. “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 23. 54 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 22.

62  Barbara Hartley 55 Elmira Köçümkulkïzï (translator), “The Kyrgyz Epic Manas,” 2005, http://www. silkroadfoundation.org/folklore/manas/manasintro.html. 56 Köçümkulkïzï, “The Kyrgyz Epic Manas”. 57 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 24. 58 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 24. 59 Jerome Taylor, “The World’s Worst Radiation Hotspot,” Independent, Saturday October 22, 2011, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-worlds-worst-radiation-hotspot-1784502.html. 60 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 26. 61 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 26. 62 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 26. 63 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 26. 64 James B. Branch, “The Waste Bin: Nuclear Waste Dumping and Storage in the Pacific,” The South Pacific 13, nos. 5–6 (1984): 327–330. 65 Henry Kamm, “Islanders Fight Japan’s Plan to Dump Atom Waste,” New York Times, March 18, 1981, 7, https://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/18/world/islandersfight-japan-s-plan-to-dump-atom-waste.html. 66 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 27. 67 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 31. 68 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 29. 69 Walter and Suina, “Indigenous Data, Indigenous Methodologies”. 70 Aimee Bahng, "The Pacific Proving Grounds and the Proliferation of Settler Environmentalism", 55–53. 71 Takashi Hirose, Fukushima Meltdown: The World’s First Earthquake-TsunamiNuclear Disaster (Los Angeles, CA: Takashi Hirose, 2011), 84. 72 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 35. 73 Anonymous, “Japan Closes Hamaoka Nuclear Reactor,” New Civil Engineer, May 10, 2011, https://www.newcivilengineer.com/archive/japan-closes-hamaokanuclear-reactor-10-05-2011/. 74 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 35–36. 75 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 37. 76 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 37. 77 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 37. 78 Hirose, Fukushima Meltdown, 103. 79 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara,” 37–38. 80 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 38. 81 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 38. 82 Tsushima, “‘Yume no uta’ kara”, 38.

Bibliography Anonymous. “Japan Closes Hamaoka Nuclear Reactor”. New Civil Engineer, May 10, 2011. https://www.newcivilengineer.com/archive/japan-closes-hamaoka-nuclearreactor-10-05-2011/. Bahng, Aimee. “The Pacific Proving Grounds and the Proliferation of Settler Environmentalism”. Journal of Transnational American Studies 11, no. 2 (2020): 45–73. https://doi.org/10.5070/T8112049580. Branch, James B. “The Waste Bin: Nuclear Waste Dumping and Storage in the Pacific”. The South Pacific 13, nos. 5–6 (1984): 327–330. https://www.jstor.org/ stable/4313067. Butler, Judith. “Why Donald Trump Will Never Admit Defeat”. Guardian, Wednesday January 20, 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/ jan/20/donald-trump-election-defeat-covid-19-deaths.

Interrogating the Nuclear Industry, Local and Global  63 Clifford James. The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. Connell, Raewyn. “Using Southern Theory: Decolonizing Social Thought in Theory, Research and Application”. Planning Theory 12, no. 2 (2014): 210–223. https://doi.org/10.1177/1473095213499216. Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation. “The Mirarr: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow. A Socioeconomic Update”. Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation 2010 Annual Report. https://www.mirarr.net/search?utf8=3&search=“The+Mirarr%3A+­Yest erday%2C+today+and+tomorrow.+A+socioeconomic+update%2C”+&button=. Gundheihmi Aboriginal Corporation. “Mirarr Recognise 75 Years Since Nuclear Bombs Destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki”. Media Statement, August 6, 2020. https://www.mirarr.net/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMjAvMDgvMDUvNHc0bHo0MX FmcF8yMDIwXzA4XzA2X0dBQ19IaXJvc2hpbWFf TmFnYXNha2lf NzVfe WVhcnNfZmluYWwucGRmIl1d/2020-08-06%20GAC%20Hiroshima%20 Nagasaki%2075%20years%20final.pdf. Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation. “Uranium Mining: Uranium Has Long Caused Controversy in the Kakadu Region”. Gundjeihmi Aboriginal Corporation, 2021. https://www.mirarr.net/pages/uranium-mining. Hirose, Takashi. Fukushima Meltdown: The World’s First Earthquake-TsunamiNuclear Disaster. Los Angeles: Takashi Hirose, 2011. Ishihara, Nen. “People’s Voices, Mother’s Song”. Asia-Pacific Journal/Japan Focus 16, no. 12 (June 2018). https://apjjf.org/2018/12/Ishihara.html. Japanese version: https://www.mirarr.net/media/W1siZiIsIjIwMjAvMDgvMD g vMnE1bGw5cTBweV8yMDIwX zA4X zA2X0dBQ19IaXJvc2hpbWFf Tm FnYXNha2lf NzVfeWVhcnNf ZmluYWxf SlAucGRmIl1d/2020- 08- 06%20 GAC%20Hiroshima%20Nagasaki%2075%20years%20final%20JP.pdf. Johnston, Eric. “Power Politics: Japan’s Most Popular Political Platforms.” Japan Times, April 29, 2017. https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/04/29/national/ history/power-politics-japans-popular-political-platforms/. Kainuma Hiroshi. Fukushima ron: genshiryoku-mura wa naze umareta no ka (On Fukushima: Why Did the Nuclear Village Come into Being?). Tokyo: Seido-sha, 2011. Kamm, Henry. “Islanders Fight Japan’s Plan to Dump Atom Waste”. New York Times, March 18, 1981 (Section A): 7. https://www.nytimes.com/1981/03/18/world/ islanders-fight-japan-s-plan-to-dump-atom-waste.html. Köçümkulkïzï, Elmira. “The Kyrgyz Epic Manas,” 2005. http://www.silkroadfoundation.org/folklore/manas/manasintro.html. Kurokawa Kiyoshi. “Message from the Chairman”. In The Official Report of the National Diet of Japan Official Report of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission (Executive Summary). Tokyo: The National Diet of Japan, 2012. https://www.nirs.org/wp-content/uploads/­fukushima/naiic_report.pdf. Linda Tuhiwai Smith. Decolonizing Methodologies: Research and Indigenous Peoples. London: Zed Books Ltd/University of Otago Press, 1999. Margarula, Yvonne. “Yvonne Margarula’s Letter to the UN Expressing Solidarity with the People of Fukushima”. Saturday 16 April, 2011. http://static1.1.sqspcdn. com/static/f/356082/11963020/1303983838710/Yvonne+Margarula+Fukushima+ Letter.pdf?token=zySLrkET63D6fbPa00LhG6wGrXE%3D. McKnight, Anne and Michael Bourdaghs. “Memento Libri: New Writings and Translations from the World of Tsushima Yūko (1947–2016)”. Asia-Pacific Journal/ Japan Focus 16, no. 12 (7 June 15, 2018). https://apjjf.org/2018/12/McKnight.html.

64  Barbara Hartley National Diet of Japan. The National Diet of Japan Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Committee (Executive Summary). Tokyo: The National Diet of Japan, 2012. https://reliefweb.int/sites/reliefweb.int/files/resources/ NAIIC_report_lo_res2.pdf. Pascoe, Bruce. Dark Emu: Aboriginal Australia and the Birth of Agriculture. Broome, Western Australia: Magabala Books, 2018. Spivak, Gayatry Chakravorty. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” In Marxism and the Interpretation of Culture, edited by Cary Nelson and Lawrence Grossberg, 271– 313. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1988. Sweeney, Dave. “Australia’s Role in the Fukushima Disaster: Uranium’s Long and Shameful Journey to Fukushima”. Nuclear Free Campaign, Friends of the Earth Australia, April 1, 2012. https://nuclear.foe.org.au/australias-role-inthe-fukushima-disaster/. Taylor, Jerome. “The World’s Worst Radiation Hotspot”. Independent, Saturday October 22, 2011. https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/the-worlds-worst-radiation-hotspot-1784502.html. Tsushima, Yūko. Kitsune o haramu (Pregnant with a Fox). Tokyo: Kawade shobō, 1973. Tsushima Yūko. Yama o hashiru onna, Tokyo: Kodansha, 1984. Tsushima Yūko. Woman Running Through the Mountains. Translated by Geraldine Harcourt. New York: NYRB Classics, 2022. Tsushima, Yūko. “’Yume no uta’ kara” (From “Dream-songs”). In Yume no uta kara (From Dream-songs). Tokyo: Insukuriputo, 2016: 19–38. Walker, Sean. “Castle Bravo: Marking the 65th Anniversary of the US Nuclear Disaster”. Australian Institute of International Affairs, February 27, 2019. https://www.internationalaffairs.org.au/australianoutlook/castle-bravo65th-anniversary/. Walter, Maggie and Michele Suina. “Indigenous Data, Indigenous Methodologies and Indigenous Data Sovereignty”. International Journal of Social Research Methodology 22, no. 3 (2019): 233–243. Western Australia Nuclear Free Alliance (WANFA). “We Can’t Close the Gap by Digging a Deeper Hole.” WANFA Conference Statement, April 4, 2011. https://www.parliament.wa.gov.au/publications/tabledpapers.nsf/­d isplaypaper/ 3813251cfa5b5b30692d7e3a482578730011a6f3/$file/3251-14.04.11.pdf. Yunkaporta, Tyson. Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2019.

4 Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World, Seventy-Five Years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki Manga as Nuclear Art Roman Rosenbaum Introduction: Representing the Nuclear in Graphic Art Most of us primarily encounter nuclear weapons through story, with art and culture being always at the centre of our experience of nuclear weaponry, and our sense of agency in response to the disruptions they have created in our lives.1 The general downscaling of nuclear reactors, as is the case in Germany, is unlikely, and globally an upscaling trend is observable despite the high risks. Recent new developments in transportable nuclear reactors by Russia create increasing risks of international contamination via floating nuclear power stations across the Arctic and dramatically increase the risk of serious contamination.2 According to Sven Saaler and Wolfgang Schwentker in Japan, the subject of “memory” in relation to the Asia-Pacific conflict has undergone dramatic reengineering and continues to be debated at many levels of Japan’s political, social, economic and cultural life.3 Graphic art like manga, due to their symbolic and iconographic meanings, have a heightened potential to express the “collective memory” that constitutes the mental topography of a culture/society and they make a powerful contribution to its cultural, political and social identity. As such, the graphical representation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not necessarily “long” in comparison to other historical events across the ­pantheon of world history. Yet even though their history is limited to a mere three-quarters of a century, the fluctuations, transformations and reimaginings via the humanities can tell us a lot about the continuing significance of this “big history” event.4 In Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Yuko Shibata observes that “the scarcity of Japanese films on Hiroshima and Nagasaki stands in distinct contrast to other visual culture genres”, and manga are a prime example of a canvass where the politics of the nuclear art are debated ferociously.5 The paradigm “shifts” in the plurality of resignification are the focus of this chapter—it should also provide an insight into the future of what is to come via the repercussions of this tidal wave harking back to one of the darkest chapters in human history. Just when we thought that historical amnesia and A-bomb fatigue had relegated those traumatic chapters into history, the recent ten-year anniversary

DOI: 10.4324/9781003320395-4

66  Roman Rosenbaum of Fukushima, in combination with the seventy-sixth anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, has reinvigorated nuclear art into becoming an integral part of our modern existence. Japan has a long history of recovery from major disasters—both man-made and natural—with an equality impressive trajectory of rebirths from the ashes of metaphorical phoenixes. The ethos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s mythical rebirths is in perpetual rivalry with their equally powerful counter-symbolism: the evocative fragility of lives like “morning dew” or “cherry blossoms”, which is one of the nation’s most recalcitrant archetypal tropes suffusing all Japanese art traditions. Equally, the repeated usage of atomic bomb images is a powerful stereotype adopted for political revisionist agendas by the likes of Kobayashi Yoshinori and other right-wing manga artists like Isayama Hajime and Toshiko Hasumi.6 Throughout Kobayashi’s controversial Neo Gōmanism Manifesto Special—On War, pictures of the atomic mushroom cloud images are used repeatedly and randomly to substantiate right-wing rhetoric and ultranationalist points of view.7 And I took the cowardly way out. I said to myself, “Why don’t I just say they’re mutants? They were born that way”. (Stan Lee, 2004)8 This sensationalism is not unique to Japan, but rather symbolic of what has become nuclear art and atomic pop-culture as evidenced in many American comics, nowadays a mainstay of our contemporary cultural experience and displayed in ubiquitous works such as Marvel’s X-Men created by Stan Lee in 1963—shortly after the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. This is only one of the many comic legacies arising from the atomic age that have led us in the world of nuclear art. Just as the avatar of Superman in the United States has become an allegory for the alienation of the American immigration experience, similarly Japanese manga characters have been created as an atavistic expression of the communal public consciousness of the Japanese populace. The symbolic representation of the dualism of angst, as well as hope, triggered by the benefits and tragedy of atomic energy, is no more succinctly represented than in the emblems of Astro Boy versus the abomination of Godzilla. Nowadays atomic bomb imagery has become an enigmatic modern-day sortilege whereby random depictions in graphic art may lead to sudden unexpected outcomes through estrangement and defamiliarisation of the text. Manga depictions of the atomic bombings represent a focal point for the unconscious imagination of a people who suffered and paradoxically were liberated by the atomic energy revolution. All this makes symbolic representation of the nuclear in manga a pivotal moment in Japanese art where a pop-cultural media was used to give visceral iconography to a people’s imagination—with the sense of angst and the zeitgeist of precarity we all live in today.

Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World  67

Australian Comic Representations of Nuclear Power—1948 to 1954 A recurrent theme at the time was that such a weapon would come to be “like gas” in the First World War—impossible to deploy from fear of retaliation in kind. No one I knew had yet envisaged the immensely more destructive hydrogen bomb, or the stockpiling of thousands of such devices. In other words, we had not then recognised that self-destructive tendencies in world leadership—and, by extension, in mankind—would prove stronger than rational fear or instincts of self-preservation.9 This epigraph by the Australian novelist Shirley Hazzard illustrates the falsehood of the atomic myth at the time, with Japan being by no means the only nation to fundamentally change its representation of the new atomic age. Even supposedly non-nuclear societies like Australia have their own controversial and vexing history of deliberating the pros and cons of nuclear energy and the development of reactors in a country where fossil fuel production, mining and raw material exports—like coal and uranium—weigh heavily on the consciousness of ordinary citizens. Combined with the controversial Maralinga test site history and its legacy of the disenfranchisement of the local Aboriginal communities we can easily imagine the debate can get a little ferocious from time to time. This is not at all that dissimilar to the Japanese status quo, where we need to add a long heritage of nuclear discontent echoing heavily from the annals of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, several nuclear disasters and the climax of the Fukushima catastrophe, known euphemistically as “3.11”. Despite the magnitudes of difference between our nuclear histories, the way forward is equally complicated. Japan can become a great guide for the implementation/rejection of nuclear power in Australia.10 Such was the fascination with the development of atomic bombs and nuclear energy that well before Tezuka Osamu acquainted Japan with the potential positive power of atomic energy via his robotic avatar Atomu Taishi (アトム大使, Ambassador Atom), many countries exploited people’s fascination with the new energy—which was able to defeat a country as powerful as Japan and end the Asia-Pacific conflict in a short amount of time and far faster than five years of protracted conflict could.11 This ignominious “success” of atomic energy sparked a revolution in graphic representation the world over. Following in the footsteps of its early American graphic discourse on atoms via the hugely popular Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers comics,12 a little-known Australian publishing company, Atlas Publications, published the phenomenally successful Captain Atom. The Australian publishing company operated from 1948 until 1958 and produced one of the antipodean’s most successful Golden Age-era comics. Captain Atom was an Australian comic book series created and written by Jack Bellew with illustrations by Arthur Mather and it ran from 1948 to 1954.13

68  Roman Rosenbaum

Figure 4.1 The Australian version of Captain Atom Cover no. 2, Atlas Publications, from the 1948–1954 series.

Atlas company directors included all prominent Australians in the field of journalism—they decided to try to cash in on the superhero trend disseminating from the United States and by January 1948 the first issue of Captain Atom appeared in lavish full colour.14 Drawn in a crude but fascinating style by Arthur Mather, the character combined the “magic word” (Exenor!)—a gimmick adapted from Captain Marvel (Shazam!)—with the twin brothers’ ploy from Murray’s Captain Triumph, and shrouded it with the mystique of

Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World  69 the atom bomb test explosions on the Bikini Atoll (1946–1958), which was still vivid in people’s minds. While the initial scripts were written by Jack Ballieu, who used the nom de plume “John Welles”, he later passed on the writing chores to Mather. Captain Atom was published in colour for less than two dozen issues, but it was long enough to establish the loyalty of readers so that when it became a black and white comic it remained a viable proposition. During the 1950s the Captain Atom Club boasted “over 75,000 members” and for one shilling they received their official membership badge—a Captain Atom Ring that glowed in the dark! At the height of its popularity the publisher claimed that “One Million Copies Sold in Eleven Months!”15 During its heyday it was one of the most successful comic series ever produced in Australia, only surpassed in longevity by The Phantom, also first published in 1948. Yet, with the introduction of television in Australia in September 1956, the popularity of the series declined rapidly; its decline was assisted by the global success of Ishirō Honda’s Godzilla, released in Japan in 1954 and followed by a heavily re-edited Americanised version in 1956. Notions about the atomic age and, more importantly, people’s civic consciousness were guided heavily by the rise of pop-culture and modern media technologies.

Tezuka Osamu’s Reimagining of Atomic Power as a Force of Good—1951 In comparison with American and Australian atomic superheroes, arguably Japan’s own first superhero that emerged out of the ashes of the Greater East Asian conflict was Tezuka Osamu’s Mighty Atom—a pseudonym for the very power that devasted Japan. As a powerful android, created by the head of the Ministry of Science, his appearance signalled the embrace of the atomic age in Japan, the popularisation of the nuclear development of the nation as well as the use of atomic energy as a key energy source for the rebuilding of the nation. In a sense Mighty Atom became the avatar of postwar atomic revival. Created by Tezuka in 1951, Atom or Astro Boy, as he became known the world over, developed into the most popular and enduring post-war Japanese heroic pop-cultural icon. Astro Boy initially began in a short story entitled Ambassador Atom (atomu taishi).16 The work was serialised in the popular boys’ magazine Shōnen, beginning in April 1951 and ending in March the year after (Figure 4.2). In a sense, Ambassador Atom was a direct product of the prevailing postwar socio-political environment: in the story, the allegorical aliens (US) visiting earth (Japan) eventually turned out to be not real “enemies”, but simply externalised mirror images of the inner selves of other human beings. Thus, in a strange sense, the Atom was assigned the role of ambassador of peace and goodwill between the two nations.17 Popular culture critic Eiji Ōtsuka has argued that the name “Ambassador” was directly related to the fact that the Japanese had recently signed a peace treaty with the United States, which

70  Roman Rosenbaum

Figure 4.2  Ambassador Atom (アトム大使, atomu taishi), by Tezuka Osamu (1951–52).

also signified the beginning of a military alliance. Astro Boy was thus forged in the crucible of Japan’s defeat, demonstrating both the good and evil potential of nuclear power—it could be used for both peace and war. Tezuka focused his character on the light shining through the dark valley period of Japanese history and hinted at the prospect of this light soon being powered by atomic energy. As such, the nuclear power of this “ambassador” was a force for good that enabled humankind to harness the potential of nuclear energy to eradicate evil and potentially create a better world. Unlike the enlisting of the power of an alien trope like Superman, Astro Boy was “man-made” and had no unpleasant connotations of “migrants, outsiders or the alterity of tasha (others)” since it was a technological innovation made in Japan. Furthermore, frozen in his robotic childlike form, the saviour was cute (kawaii), and infantile, meaning that he had not yet been corrupted by the contaminants of the adult world. As a public art display Astro Boy became a global pop-cultural graphic icon that conquered the world. Equally important, during the occupation, from 1945 to 1951, strict American censorship dictated what could be presented to the Japanese public. Due to the prevailing censorship paradigm of the early post-war period,

Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World  71 Tezuka had to express his thematic heavily disguised in allegory.18 Astro Boy and his various namesakes were not the only allegories created by Osamu Tezuka. The father of modern narrative Japanese comics also wrote X Point in the Pacific (太平洋Xポイント) in 1953, a story about an old man’s attempt to stop the use of the South Sea islands to test a new, fictional weapon called the “Oxygen Bomb”. Tezuka’s comic was rooted in concerns about the 1946 nuclear tests at the Bikini Atoll. Thirteen months after his story appeared in the Bōken Ō (冒険王, Adventure King) magazine, the Castle Bravo test of February 28, 1954, shook the atoll with a fifteen-megaton explosion that was double the yield anticipated by the bomb’s designers (Figure 4.3).19

Figure 4.3  Taiheiyo X pointo (X Point in the Pacific), Tezuka Osamu, 1953.

72  Roman Rosenbaum

American Graphic Depiction of Atomic Bomb—1953 Needless to say, the development of the atomic bomb in the United States was a top-secret affair and any mention of the new weapon was strictly forbidden. Most superheroes in the American comic tradition had to deal with “atomic energy” at some point in their lives. Even Superman himself—­ created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster in 1938—was censored in 1945 for the mere mention of “atomic experiments”. Comic books were no exception, and the war department censored several Superman issues that merely hinted at “the bomb”. In a title story promoted as “Battle of the Atoms”, which was set to be released in an early 1945 issue of Superman (number 34), censorship by the war department did not allow print until eight months later, well after the United States had dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, despite the story being completely unrelated to the Asia-Pacific war theatre. The title page of the comic revealed the reason for the censorship to its readership (Figure 4.4): Well before public debate was officially sanctioned by American political institutions, Byron Price, who was the executive news editor of the Associated Press, had accepted Roosevelt’s Director of Censorship position in 1941 where he implemented his motto for convincing the media to comply with: “Least said, soonest mended”.20 It was not until the hall of fame war comic book artist, Wallace Allan Wood (Wally Wood), drew one of his most renowned stories on the subject of the atomic bomb that the grotesque reality of atomic bombs was revealed to the public via the pop-cultural press. It was commissioned by one of the most influential cartoonists of the twentieth century Harvey Kurtzman for his classic War Comic Series, Two-Fisted Tales. The story, released with issue thirty-three, was a mere seven-page narrative entitled Atom Bomb! (Entertaining Comics, 1953), and it introduced the devastating tragedy of the atomic bombing to American popular culture during a time when all other media were still prohibited from showing graphic images of the attack. In this unusually tense, short depiction of the events surrounding the atomic bomb blasts, the story focuses on the second atomic bomb that flattened the Japanese city of Nagasaki and ended World War II. Wood’s use of solid blacks to indicate the blinding light of the blast is very effective, and his detailed artwork in panels showing the city in ruins is simply astounding (Figure 4.5). Surprisingly for the time, Wood focuses the narrative solely on the thematic of citizen “victimisation”, which previously had been unique to Japan and was seldom depicted in other international comic genres.21 It is a rare, prime example of American society glimpsing behind the facade of domestic censorship at the home front and is perhaps the first pop-cultural ­representation of counter-cultural empathy in graphic art.

Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World  73

Figure 4.4  Superman, number 34, 1945.

Graphic Disobedience: The Masochistic and Anti-Establishment Representation of Nakazawa Keiji 1972—1973 to 1987 Following several decades of silence in graphic art, the discourse about juvenile manga on the depiction of the atomic bombs was redirected, following the socio-political upheaval of the sixties, to suit a more adult-­oriented world through the appearance of the gekiga (劇画, literally dramatic pictures)

74  Roman Rosenbaum

Figure 4.5  Atom Bomb!, Wally Wood, 1953.

tradition with its emphasis on citizens’ engagement, civil disobedience and grassroots graphic protest. Nakazawa Keiji was a pioneer in adopting manga as a tool in civil disobedience through his breaking of representational as well as political taboos. As a heavily autobiographical first-person account of the atomic bombing Ore wa Mita (おれは見た (I saw it)) appeared

Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World  75 first in 1972 as a single forty-eight-page feature in the magazine Monthly Shōnen Jump. The narrative of I Saw It follows the life of Nakazawa from his youngest days in post-war Hiroshima up to his adulthood when his publications became the forerunners of the world-famous manga series Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen, 1973 to 1987). Gen was not only the chief protagonist of the manga, but the word Gen is also a synonym for Gen-Baku (the atomic bomb). The volume was eventually released in North American in 1982 as a coloured, English-translated volume, by Educomics under the title I Saw It: The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima: A Survivor’s True Story. Initially a volunteer pacifist organisation, Project Gen was formed in Tokyo in 1976 to produce the first English translations of the work. Leonard Rifas published it that same year as Gen of Hiroshima—the first full-length translation of a manga from Japanese into English to be published in the West. Due to its controversial, often gut-wrenching, realistic depictions, it was unpopular and was cancelled after a mere two volumes (Figure 4.6). Nakazawa’s graphic narrative broke with tradition and suddenly nothing was sacred anymore: the inhumane act of the bombing was counter-poised by the abysmal failure of local politics and the racism of the Japanese with US nihilism, in a savage graphic tour de force of unrivalled ferocity. Nothing was sacred, not even the emperor. This mid-way point of the atomic bomb graphic representation set the standard of grotesque realism and the folk-cultural carnivalesque gallows humour of the apocalyptical Hiroshima and Nagasaki events as the de facto mode of representation for decades to come. Many artists followed in this tradition of self-flagellation although most focused on victim consciousness rather than Nakazawa’s all-encompassing masochistic view of Japanese history. Conspicuously, while Barefoot Gen depicts the cruelty of the atomic bomb, it also provides an ethnography of the Japanese people and focuses at length on the cruelty, parochialism and deceitfulness of the population in many episodes ranging from bullying of young adolescents and children to the racism of police and the mendacity of old people. Nakazawa calculatedly depicts the twisted nature of every Japanese generation. His exposure of the ugly underbelly of the Japanese personality stands in contrast with the punishment delivered by the atomic bomb. Yet, even though the crux of Nakazawa’s manga is a yakeato youth’s experience of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, the “American as perpetrator” image is conspicuous only by its absence.22 Quite rarely in Barefoot Gen are fingers directed at the United States as perpetrator of nuclear atrocities. There is no complete exoneration either and in chapter six, for instance, we find a rape scene by American GIs, but ultimately Nakazawa suggests that it took the atomic bomb to end the war because the Japanese war council and the emperor would have kept fighting.23 This narrative controversially coalesces with the general view of the bomb as saviour of American and Japanese lives by ending the war quickly. Representing the trauma of Hiroshima/Nagasaki and the suffering of the Japanese people via Japanese manga, artists raised difficult questions of the well-established victim-perpetrator dichotomy. Self-censorship and social

76  Roman Rosenbaum

Figure 4.6  I Saw It, Nakazawa Keiji, 1982.  © Educomics.

taboos are brought out into the open in an uncomfortable display of Japan’s hidden prejudices and faults. This inwardly directed graphic social criticism is rare and makes the work stand apart from the customary victimisation discourse. It is similar to what Mizuki Shigeru attempted through the exposure of his military experience as a private on the South Pacific front.

Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World  77 The enemy here is not the United Stated but Japan itself. Works like this led to the ultraconservative criticism of a masochistic view of history. Nowadays Barefoot Gen has become a mainstay in global counter-­ cultural graphic discourse and Japan’s NHK (Japan Broadcasting Corporation) proudly reported in August 2013 on the use of Barefoot Gen throughout the United States as a teaching material in more than 2,000 schools from primary to collegial levels.24 Nakazawa’s overarching importance lies in his portrayal of Japanese history from a local point of view that is neither mainstream nor counter-cultural in its essence. Second is its relevance as an anti-war and also anti-nuclear manifesto displaying the devastation of an atomic attack and nuclear fallout on the population; it also breaks the long-standing taboo on grotesque representation of the event in the United States and Japan.

Twenty-First Century Recontextualisations of Hiroshima/ Nagasaki—2003, 2007, 2016 To repeat the error by exhibiting, through the construction of nuclear reactors, the same disrespect for human life is the worst possible betrayal of the memory of Hiroshima’s victims. (Ōe Kenzaburō, 2011)25 Following in Nakazawa’s footsteps, a new generation of artists seeks to encapsulate the twin-tragedies of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, from a transgenerational perspective. No longer affected directly they are often indirect victims affected by the suffering and trauma of their parents or relatives. New artists are attempting to come to terms with the inter-generational trauma and discrimination that they can only begin to comprehend through their own research and attempts to proactively engage with an event that took place before their birth. Barefoot Gen is a famous manga, but since it was published extremely few manga have dealt with the atomic bomb. I think this is because there are extremely strong restrictions on expressions that are considered discriminative, so manga artists no longer bring up such themes. This tendency for self-censorship before anyone complains or objects has been ongoing for a long time. I tried to produce a manga that would not get caught up in these restrictions, and one that you would not understand until you had read it.26 This statement by Hiroshima-born Kōno Fumiyo (1968) broke a long period of silence in atom bomb rhetoric and her manga have made her the most famous and arguably globally known representative of this post-survivor representation. As is evident by the above quotation, Kōno’s manga on the war time atomic bombings on Japan from a transgenerational perspective are a direct response to as well as a continuation of the atomic bomb discourse

78  Roman Rosenbaum in graphic art. Her generation is often referred to as shinjinrui sedai 新人類 世代 (1961–1970), who no longer have recourse to any war memory.27 They are the consumers of survivor stories and are charged with putting a positive spin on the Hiroshima legacy. Kōno also seems to harbour no ill-feelings towards the United States and avoids much of the violence and depiction of the enemy that we can see, for example, in Barefoot Gen (Figure 4.7).

Figure 4.7 Fumiyo Kōno, Yūnagi no machi, sakura no kuni 夕凪の街 桜の国 (Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms), 2003, 22.  © Fumiyo Kōno/Coamix.

This is how Kōno explains her intentions and it follows that a long silence surrounds the tacit representational taboo of Hiroshima/Nagasaki, which was finally broken in 2003 when Kōno began to serialise Yūnagi no machi, sakura no kuni 夕凪の街 桜の国 (Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms). The manga was a watershed moment in the revitalisation of atomic bomb memory, written by a female artist and following a female

Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World  79 protagonist from an entirely different generation. Born in 1968, Kōno has no actual war experience and her story is based on her research and interviews with eye-witnesses and survivors. Set in Hiroshima in 1955, ten years after the atomic bomb was dropped, the first part of the story, entitled Town of Evening Calm, relates the story of Minami Hirano, a young woman who survived the atomic bomb blast when she was in her early teens. The narrative depicts the developing relationship between her co-workers, Yutaka Uchikoshi and protagonist Minami. In a key scene from the manga, seen above, when he tries to kiss her near a bridge, the artist depicts the scene from a bird’s-eye view, Minami’s mental landscape is depicted in a powerful flashback, where she imagines the victims of the bombing where they now stand, and she suddenly pushes him away. Running away she experiences a powerful post-traumatic stress disorder episode, reliving the horrors of the attack, including finding her little sister’s blackened body and watching her older sister die of radiation poisoning two months later. The next day at the office, she apologises to Uchikoshi, saying she wants to somehow put the past behind her. Yet, the story ends when on the next day she becomes bedridden from the long-term effects of radiation poisoning. As Minami’s condition worsens, she is visited by Uchikoshi and other co-workers, and dies just as her brother and aunt arrive. Kōno’s first work is a testament to the difficulties of covering the atomic bomb in the present age. Even though Hiroshima after the A-bomb is the setting for her manga there are no depictions of cruelty or any political statements such as found in Barefoot Gen. We only find a trace of despair at the end of the story when her consciousness is fading: Ten years have passed. And the people who have dropped the bomb look at me and probably think “Yay, we have killed another one”.28 Kōno is able to successfully shift the perspective from the political war-­ centric narrative tendency of Hiroshima to the shomin’s (ordinary townsfolk’s) perspective and displays the aftereffects of the bombing on the civilian population of Japan. While she has been accused of drawing yet another victim account of Hiroshima, her later stories focus on the resilience of the Japanese people amidst adversity. Her story brought the Hiroshima taboo to an end and renegotiated a new history of the people of Hiroshima, devoid of negative war connotations. In so doing she opened the doors to another reconceptualisation of Hiroshima for the twenty-first century.

Another Milestone: Takeo Aoki’s Hiroshima’s Revival: Remembering How People Overcame Destruction and Despair—2016 Resident Japanese ambassador to Afghanistan Takahashi Hiroshi (髙橋 博史), took the Afghan leaders involved in the task of restoring

80  Roman Rosenbaum their country on a tour through Hiroshima city. Takahashi encouraged them by suggesting “Hiroshima was completely destroyed by the atomic bomb. But it has recovered amazingly and you can also achieve this.” As a country that has recovered from its scars and damage of the war, Hiroshima is a city of hope.29 The above introduction, from the manga Hiroshima Revival, paints a picture of a “city of hope”, a popular phrase that has resonated strongly within the Japanese populace as a cultural catch-phrase ever since Murakami Ryū (村上龍) published his controversial Kibō no kuni no ekusodasu (希望の国の エクソダス (The Exodus of a Country of Hope, 1999–2000)). In it he wrote that “Japan has everything, except hope (kibō)”.30 This was followed in 2012 by director and provocateur Sion Sono’s film The Land of Hope (希望の国, Kibō no kuni), with its fictional retelling of an earthquake that hits Japan, causing a nuclear power plant to explode. Thus contemporary social discourse in Japan seems to suggest that the country in general is in dire need of a sense of hope and, somewhat paradoxically, Hiroshima’s superlative survival narrative has been deemed as the most suitable site to fulfil this prophecy. Following Kōno Fumiyo’s reinstatement of the Hiroshima discourse as a still worthwhile topic in pop-culture and one that straddles the turn of the millennium, her transgenerational narrative was able to reinvigorate the continuing debate in Japan surrounding such contemporary issues as nuclear disarmament, denuclearisation and atomic energy, well before the looming catastrophe of 3.11 eventuated. Several years later the Hiroshima Peace Museum followed in the author’s footsteps and produced a manga that also refocused the debate on revival, metaphorically, through the myth of Hiroshima rising phoenix-like from the contaminated ashes to prosper against adversity—if Hiroshima can survive and flourish, following the world’s most cataclysmic event, every other kind of hardship pales into insignificance. The impetus for the Hiroshima Peace Museum’s manga publication was the somewhat unexpected visit, on May 27, 2016, of a president of the United States to Hiroshima for the first time, some seventy-one years after the fateful event. It ushered in an urgent need for reimagining a city besieged by its own inescapable lieu de mémoire. Hiroshima was in desperate need not so much of a proverbial facelift for a stagnating city of war remembrance, but rather a much-needed memory-lift, and it was through manga that these re-drawings of the memory of Hiroshima, from destruction to revival, first began (Figure 4.8) Hiroshima’s Revival: Remembering How People Overcame Destruction and Despair is a manga anthology commissioned by local Hiroshima broadcaster RCC (株式会社中国放送; Kabushiki Gaisha Chugoku Hōsō), in 2015 to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the bombing. This revisionist history of Hiroshima was based on a scenario by Aoki Takeo (青木健生) and

Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World  81

Figure 4.8 Front cover (Hiroshima no fukkō) Hiroshima Revival. ©Tezuka Productions, Scenario by Takeo Aoki, RCC Broadcasting Co., Ltd.

translated by Pauline Baldwin into English for the purpose of presenting a copy to Barack Obama, during his pivotal visit to the city on May 27, 2016, as the first sitting president in history to visit Japan.31 The narrative focuses specifically on the miraculous revival of Hiroshima and the local heroes that rebuilt the city. Aimed at portraying the revival of Hiroshima in a positive

82  Roman Rosenbaum

Figure 4.9 ‘Nothing will grow for seventy-five years,’ in Hiroshima Revival, 2016,  13. (広島の復興; Hiroshima no fukkō). ©Tezuka Productions, Scenario by Takeo Aoki, RCC Broadcasting Co., Ltd.

uncontentious framework, it is conspicuously devoid of controversial historical and political commentary. The media agency RCC conducted the local historical research and then partnered with Tezuka Productions to produce the anti-war manga.32 One of the most striking elements of this manga anthology is its triumphalist narrative of progress and the depiction of the

Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World  83 heroic self-sacrifice of the local population. This dramatic manga depicts the struggle for the revival of the fatally wounded city introducing a cadre of highly motivated individuals whose self-sacrifice saves the city. Importantly, Hiroshima’s Revival displays a sense of pop-cultural agency that is particularly suitable for conveying ecocentric appeal to the reader, due to its ethical, moral and political anti-nuclear and anti-war approach. According to Richard Kerridge, for many of today’s readers “texts are evaluated in terms of their environmentally harmful or helpful effects. Beliefs and ideologies are assessed for their environmental implications.”33 The manga focuses specifically on the prediction by scientists at the time: “Genbaku wo otosareta Hiroshima ni wa ‘nanjugo nen ha kusaki mo haenu’ to iwareta”. (It was said that “nothing will grow for seventy-five years” in Hiroshima where the atomic bomb was dropped (Figure 4.9).)34 Despite this ominous projection Hiroshima blossoms again and seventy years later the city has become a vibrant centre for the world’s denuclearisation movement—a healthy green city—and even Fukushima survivors have remarked that if Hiroshima can do it so can they. The same was said in 2020 during the global Covid pandemic when the city commemorated its seventy-fifth anniversary. When it comes to the main thread of Hiroshima’s Revival, the catastrophic dropping of the atomic bomb is framed as a mere brief and ­g rotesque “foreword” in the long history of Hiroshima. The narrative strategy of Hiroshima’s Revival is driven by an upbeat theme of triumph over adversity, and amounts to what Hillary Chute has termed the documentary and eye-witness properties of comics, which lend a folkloric vantage point to the portrayal of history through graphic art.35 In Hiroshima’s Revival the main theme is one of renewal through the optimism of the human spirit, but in this case hope and optimism are portrayed as a collective virtue, grounded in renewal of the civic establishment. There are acts of individual heroism, but they are often depicted as a sublimation of the individual to society (some of the comic’s heroes end up martyrs, sacrificing their lives for the maintenance and revival of order and civic health). Barefoot Gen is a tale chock full of heroism as well, but martyrdom for the nation is not part of its heroic lexicon. Rather, that sentiment is denigrated with all the fury of Nakazawa’s pent-up anti-militarist wrath.

Conclusion In a sense the political and cultural shifts that have accompanied the gradual transition to a nuclear world, from its climactic development in the 1940s to the contemporary geopolitical confrontations over the proliferation of nuclear weapons and the global denuclearisation efforts, have had ample representation in the world’s press. Even though nuclear disarmament, atomic energy, nuclear missiles and the annual remembrance of atomic bomb droppings are hardly topics that were traditionally considered fit for comics or manga, dramatic popular cultural representations have nevertheless kept

84  Roman Rosenbaum these contemporary topics in the public consciousness far better than academic textbooks could ever hope to accomplish. Graphic art in general and more specifically manga have, due to their ability to influence the most impressionable younger generations, become an important media for displaying memorial diplomacy as well as engaging memory politics in contemporary Japanese society still at odds with its unresolved issues hailing from a conflict some seventy-five years ago. The climactic and ever-changing graphic representation of the final cataclysmic events that ended the war have been the focal point of this textual analysis. That said, what rose out of the ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was not the proverbial phoenix in all its youthful splendour and glory—although some may say that Japan’s economic miracle spawned by the baby-boomer generation was just that—but rather a plethora of pop-cultural icons as metaphors and allegories for the unfathomable good and evil that came out of the atomic bombings. These antitheses have been immortalised by the pop-­cultural avatars of Astro Boy and Godzilla. Yet, they also gave us the Hiroshima Maiden, a plethora of nuclear power generators and, ultimately, Fukushima. With consensus politics a prerogative in Japan, it was up to the pop-­ cultural press to “show” what conventional media could not and thus the images of the atomic bombings never really left the public consciousness of Japan. Embracing the technological advantages of nuclear energy, Japan faces a self-fulfilling prophecy of contested memories that would forever hark back from the shadows of its dark valley history. This contradiction is reiterated in the success of the haunting nuclear explosion in downtown Tokyo as portrayed in Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira, as well as the popular uncanny prognostication in the manga Coppelion (2008) with its description of a 2016 nuclear catastrophe where genetically engineered humans survive in contaminated wastelands.36 Manga’s superflat surfaces have become a counter-cultural métissage, where serious socio-political and historical issues are treated through the use of symbolic and often allegorical representations that teach each subsequent generation “lest we forget”.

Notes 1 Robert Jacobs et  al., Filling the Hole in the Nuclear Future (Washington, DC: Lexington Books, 2010), 7. 2 “Russia floating nuclear power station sets sail across Arctic,” Reuters, August 23, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-nuclear-floatingplant-idUSKCN1VD164. 3 Sven Saaler and Wolfgang Schwentker eds, The Power of Memory in Modern Japan (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2008).

Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World  85 4 The term “big history” is used in David Christian’s sense of the word, signifying the investigation of a long time frame that adopts an interdisciplinary approach based on combining numerous fields from science and the humanities. 5 Yuko Shibata, Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Literature, Film, and Transnational Politics (Hawai’i: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018). 6 Mike Wendling, “Is This Manga Cartoon of a Six-Year-Old Syrian Girl Racist?,” BBC, October 8, 2015, https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending-34460325. 7 Kobayashi Yoshinori, Neo Gōmanism Manifesto Special: On War (新·ゴーマニ ズム宣言SPECIAL 戦争論, Shin Gōmanism Sengen Supeshar: Sensō Ron, 1998), see for example pp. 32, 44, 117, 141, 283, 331–336, 338. 8 Lisa Terrada, “Stan Lee,” Television Academy Foundation: The Interviews, 2004. 9 Shirley Hazzard, “A Writer’s Reflection on the Nuclear Age,” We Need Silence to Find out What We Think, ed. Brigitta Olubas (New York: Columbia University Press, 2016), 143. 10 In 2013, the Australia-Japan Dialogue was hosted by the Griffith Asia Institute in Brisbane on November 12–13 and featured a dialogue between Japanese and Australian energy experts from both public and private sectors to raise awareness of the future opportunities and respective challenges facing both countries in terms of energy security. See Griffith University, “The Australia-Japan Dialogue,” 2013; Deanne K. Bird et al., “Nuclear power in Australia,” Energy Policy 65 (2014): 644–653. 11 I am referring here to the more widely accepted notion that the Pacific War itself began on December 7/8, 1941, when the Japanese invaded Thailand and attacked the British colonies of Malaya, Singapore and Hong Kong as well as the US military and naval bases in Hawaii, Wake Island, Guam and the Philippines. 12 David Ropeik, “The Rise of Nuclear Fear—How We Learned to Fear the Radiation,” 2012, https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/ the-rise-of-nuclear-fear-how-we-learned-to-fear-the-bomb/. 13 With sixty-four issues, and also appearing as strips in a number of Australian newspapers, Captain Atom marks the first appearance of this comic character. It later appeared as the American superhero, Captain Atom, in a comic published by Charlton Comics in 1965 and subsequently by DC Comics in 1987. 14 Directors included George Warnecke, Clive Turnbull and Jack Ballieu. The coloured issues of this comic were very popular with sales approaching 100,000 copies per issue and Mather was paid £6 per page and £10 per cover. Back-up stories were supplied by Michael Trueman, who drew Crackajack, and Stanley Pitt with Jim Atlas and Dr. Peril. See Nat Karmichael, “COMICOZ! Sharing Australian Comics with the World,” accessed April 4, 2021, https://www.­ comicoz.com/part-two.html. 15 “The First Million, Atlas Publications,” 1948, https://ausreprints.net/article/32. 16 Originally published in the Shōnen series, 1951–1952, and developed as a type of twenty-first-century reverse-Pinocchio, a nearly perfect robot who strove to become more human and emotive and to serve as an interface between man and machine but who was ultimately doomed to failure. 17 Cited in Ferenc M. Szasz and Issei Takechi, “Atomic Heroes and Atomic Monsters: American and Japanese Cartoonists Confront the Onset of the Nuclear Age, 1945–80,” Historian 69, no. 4 (2007): 738. Originally from Ōtsuka Eiji, Atomu no meidai: Tezuka Asamu to sengo manga no shudai, 2003. See also Tom Gill, “Transformational Magic: Some Japanese Super-Heroes and Monsters,” The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures, ed. D. P. Martinez, 33–55. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009.

86  Roman Rosenbaum 18 Tom Gill, “Transformational Magic,” 45. 19 Jonathan Clements, “Manga and the Bomb,” American Al Jazeera, August 8, 2015, america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/8/8/manga-and-the-bomb.html Jazeera. 20 Michael S. Sweeney, Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), 8. 21 First appeared in Two-Fisted Tales no. 33, May–June 1953. Anthologised in Harvey Kurtzman, Atom Bomb and Other Stories, 2020, 163. 22 Yakeato or “burnt-out ruins” refers to the Japanese generation of children who grew up during the war but were too young to actively partake in it. 23 Nakazawa Keiji, Barefoot Gen 6, Japanese edition, 16–17. 24 Mizuno Norihito, “The Dispute over Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen) and Its Implications in Japan,” International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 5, no. 11 (2015), http://www.ijssh.org/papers/586-B302.pdf. 25 Ōe Kenzaburō, “History Repeats,” New Yorker, March 28, 2011. 26 Akihiro Yamamoto, “Experiences of Abandonment and Repeating Faces of the Dead,” Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies 6, nos. 1–2 (2017): 174. 27 Kristie Wong, “Gen X? Millennials? A Quick Guide to Japan’s Generation Cohorts,” September 28, 2019, Blog, https://blog.btrax.com/ gen-x-millennials-a-quick-guide-to-japans-generation-cohorts/. 28 Kristie Wong, “Gen X? Millennials?,” 33. 29 Takeo Aoki, Hiroshima’s Revival: Remembering How People Overcame Destruction and Despair, trans. Pauline Baldwin (Japan: Shogakukan Creative, 2016), 4. 30 Janet Ashby, “‘Exodus’ to a Country of Hope?,” The Japan Times, October 6, 2000. 31 Even though Obama was the first president in office to visit Japan, Jimmy Carter visited after his presidency in 1984 and Richard Nixon in 1964 before he won the presidential election. See, Miho Kuwajima, “Building Bridges Pauline Baldwin, 59, Canadian interpreter and translator,” The Chugoku Shimbun, September 11, 2018. http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=88483. 32 Tezuka is well known in Japan for his anti-war graphic discourse and his oeuvre includes several works like Chikyū no Akuma (The Devil of the Earth, 1954) drawn at a time when the nuclear arms race between the United States and Soviet Union was escalating dramatically. 33 Richard Kerridge, “Environmentalism and Ecocriticism,” Literature Worms, October 2013, https://www.literatureworms.com/2013/10/environmentalism-andecocriticism-by.html. 34 Aoki Takeo, Ikuo Miyazoe and Toshio Ban, Hiroshima no Fukko, 2015, 12. 35 Hillary Chute, Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics and Documentary Form (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016), 5–7. 36 Maja Vodopivec, “How Do the Past, Present and Future Interact with Post-3.11 Japan?,” Urban Utopias: Memory, Rights & Speculations, ed. Barnita Bagchi (Kolkata: Jadavpur University Press, 2020), 211–234.

Bibliography Akimoto, Daisuke. Japan’s Nuclear Identity and Its Implications for Nuclear Abolition. Singapore: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Aoki, Takeo. Hiroshima’s Revival: Remembering How People Overcame Destruction and Despair (まんがで語りつぐ広島の復興: 原爆の悲劇を乗り越えた人びと). Translated by Pauline Baldwin. Tokyo: Shogakukan Creative Inc., 2016.

Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World  87 Ashby Janet, “Exodus’ to a Country of Hope?” Japan Times, October 6, 2000. https:// www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2000/10/06/books/exodus-to-a-country-of-hope/. Berndt Jaqueline. “The Intercultural Challenge of the ‘Mangaesque’: Reorienting Manga Studies after 3/11.” In Manga’s Cultural Crossroads, edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, 65–84. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Bird, Deanne K., Katharine Haynes, Rob van den Honert, John McAneney and Wouter Poortinga. “Nuclear Power in Australia: A Comparative Analysis of Public Opinion Regarding Climate Change and the Fukushima Disaster.” Energy Policy 65 (February 2014): 644–653. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/ article/pii/S0301421513009713. Buchanan, Elizabeth. “Are We Ready for Floating Chernobyl?” Australian, September 13, 2019. Chute, Hillary L. Disaster Drawn: Visual Witness, Comics, and Documentary Form. London: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 2016. Clements, Jonathan. “Manga and the Bomb.” Al Jazeera America, August 8, 2015. http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/8/8/manga-and-the-bomb.html. ‘Fukushima Child Statue: Residents Complain about Radiation Suit.’ BBC News, August 14, 2018. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-45179095. Gibson, Alicia. “Out of Death, an Atomic Consecration to Life: Astro Boy and Hiroshima’s Long Shadow.” Mechademia 8 (2013): 313–320. Griffith University. “The Australia-Japan Dialogue—Energy Security: Challenges and Opportunities.” Regional Outlook Paper, no. 46 (2014). https://www.griffith.edu.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0027/118908/Regional-Outlook-Paper-46Australia-Japan-Dialogue-web.pdf. Hazzard, Shirley, “A Writer’s Reflection on the Nuclear Age.” In We Need Silence to Find out What We Think, edited by Brigitta Olubas. New York: Columbia University Press, 2016. Originally published in Boston Review, December 1981. http://bostonreview.net/archives/BR06.6/hazzard.html. Holmberg, Ryan. “Pro-Nuclear Manga: The Seventies and Eighties.” The Comic Journal 26 (February 2016). http://www.tcj.com/pro-nuclear-manga-the-seventiesand-eighties/. Hutchinson, Rachael. “Fukasaku Kinji and Kojima Hideo Replay Hiroshima: Atomic Imagery and Cross-Media Memory.” Japanese Studies 39 (2019): 169–189. Jacobs, Robert A. Filling the Hole in the Nuclear Future: Art and Popular Culture Respond to the Bomb. New York: Lexington Books, 2010. Karmichael, Nat. “COMICOZ! Sharing Australian Comics with the World.” https:// www.comicoz.com/part-two.html. Accessed: April 4, 2021. Kerridge, Richard. “Environmentalism and Ecocriticism.” Literature Worms, October 2013. https://www.literatureworms.com/2013/10/environmentalism-andecocriticism-by.html. Kōno, Fumiyo. Yūnagi no machi: Sakura no kuni (Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms). Tokyo: Futabasha, 2004. Kurtzman, Harvey and Wallace Wood. Atom Bomb and Other Stories. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2019. Kuwajima, Miho. “Building Bridges: Pauline Baldwin, 59, Canadian Interpreter and Translator.” The Chugoku Shimbun, September 11, 2018. http://www.hiro shimapeacemedia.jp/?p=88483.

88  Roman Rosenbaum Low, Morris. Visualizing Nuclear Power in Japan: A Trip to the Reactor. London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. Martinez, Dolorez ed. The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries and Global Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Norihito, Mizuno. “The Dispute over Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen) and Its Implications in Japan.” International Journal of Social Science and Humanity 5, no. 11 (November 2015). http://www.ijssh.org/papers/586-B302.pdf. Ōe, Kenzaburō, “History Repeats.” The New Yorker, March 28, 2011. http://www. newyorker.com/talk/2011/03/28/110328ta_talk_oe. Olubas, Brigitta. “The Event of Hiroshima in Australian Literature.” Antipodes 30, no. 2 (December 2016): 256–270. Ōtsuka, Eiju. Atomu no meidai: Tezuka Asamu to sengo manga no shudai (アトムの命 題 : 手塚治虫と戦後まんがの主題 Atom’s Proposition: Tezuka Osamu and the Subject of the Postwar Manga). Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 2003. Patrick, Kevin. “Atlas Publications Pty. Ltd. ‘The First Million’,” Newspaper News, November 1, 1948. http://comicsdownunder.blogspot.com/2012/. Rollmann, Rhea. “Nakazawa and Aoki’s Atom Bomb Manga Could Educate World Leaders.” PopMatters, August 9, 2019. https://www.popmatters.com/­ barefootgen-and-hiroshimas-revival-2639741989.html. Ropeik David, “The Rise of Nuclear Fear-How We Learned to Fear the Radiation,” in Scientific American,” June 15, 2012. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guestblog/the-rise-of-nuclear-fear-how-we-learned-to-fear-the-bomb/. “Russia Floating Nuclear Power Station Sets Sail across Arctic.” BBC News, August 23, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-49446235. Saaler, Sven and Schwentker Wolfgang eds. The Power of Memory in Modern Japan. London: Global Oriental, 2008. Shibata, Yuko. Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Literature, Film, and Transnational Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018. Sone, Yuji. Japanese Robot Culture: Performance, Imagination, and Modernity. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Sweeney, S. Michael, Secrets of Victory: The Office of Censorship and the American Press and Radio in World War II—Central Intelligence Agency. London: University of North Carolina Press, 2001. Szasz, Ferenc Morton. Atomic Comics: Cartoonists Confront the Nuclear World. Reno: University of Nevada Press, 2012. Szasz, Ferenc Morton and Takechi, Issei. “Atomic Heroes and Atomic Monsters: American and Japanese Cartoonists Confront the Onset of the Nuclear Age 1945–80.” Historian 69, no. 4 (2007): 728–752. Terrada, Lisa, “Stan Lee.” Television Academy Foundation: The Interviews, March 22, 2004. https://interviews.televisionacademy.com/interviews/stan-lee#. Vodopivec, Maja. “How do the Past, Present and Future Interact with post-3.11 Japan? Examining Urban Utopia in the SF Manga Coppelion.” In Urban Utopias: Memory, Rights and Speculation, edited by Barnita Bagchi, 211–234. Kolkata: Jadavpur University Press, 2020. Wendling, Mike. “Is this Manga Cartoon of a Six-Year-Old Syrian Girl Racist?” BBC News, October 8, 2015. https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-trending34460325.

Contemporary Perspectives on the Nuclear World  89 Wong, Kristie. “Gen X? Millennials? A Quick Guide to Japan’s Generation Cohorts.” Blog. September 28, 2019. https://blog.btrax.com/gen-x-millennialsa-quick-guide-to-japans-generation-cohorts/. Yamamoto, Akihiro. “Experiences of Abandonment and Repeating Faces of the Dead: Modern Japanese Society and Traumatic Memories in Keiji Nakazawa’s Barefoot Gen.” Journal of Literature and Trauma Studies 6 (2017): 160–177. Zubek, Izadora Ení. “ATOMIC SILENCE: Contrasting Narratives of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” PhD. diss, Pontifical Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, 2016.

5 Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan Yasuko Claremont

This is a human being This is a human being Look carefully at the changes made by the atomic bomb A body ghastly and bulging Men and women all in one shape Oh, out of a scorched blackened festered ruined face A voice escapes from swollen lips “Help me, please” A faint, quiet voice The voice of a human being The face of a human being1

Introduction August 1945 was a month of terror, hunger, bewilderment and social upheaval for the Japanese people. On August 6 Hiroshima was torn apart by an atomic bomb. On August 9 a second atomic bomb devastated Nagasaki, and on the same day the Soviet Union declared war on Japan. Did the Americans have more atom bombs? Would the Soviet army invade Japan from the north? These fears were silenced on August 15 with Emperor Hirohito’s sudden and dramatic announcement that the war had ended. On August 30 General Douglas MacArthur arrived in Japan as Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), supported by American troops. For months the people of Japan had been exhorted by their military government to prepare for an invasion and fight to the death, even with sharpened bamboo canes. Suddenly the truth was brought home to them—the Japanese empire had collapsed and Japan was experiencing full occupation with the enemy in complete control. Although relieved that there would be no more warfare, this new state of affairs was hard to accept for most of the Japanese people. A sense of humiliation had cut deeply into the public consciousness—morally, they were at loss, as if black had suddenly become white, widely accepted beliefs exposed as massive lies. It was particularly the young who took it as a betrayal of trust.

DOI: 10.4324/9781003320395-5

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  91 When the war ended the novelist Ōe Kenzaburō2 was ten and the dramatist Inoue Hisashi3 was eleven. Educated as model imperial children at national primary schools (kokumin gakkō),4 both documented how they had not known what to believe or on whom to rely. Ōe’s schoolteachers had said “the Americans and British are devils” (kichiku beiei) during wartime; after the defeat the teachers had told the same students that the English and Americans were friends and they (the students) should say “Haroo” (hello) to them. Children are harsh critics of adult self-deception and pragmatic (and hypocritical) compromise. The subsequent socio-political reforms undertaken by MacArthur instantly rendered all legislation related to wartime propaganda and regulations irrelevant and invalid, along with the tattered imperial belief of kokutai (the sacred tradition of national polity which ensured the mythical authority of the Emperor). The Soviet Union, China, Britain and Australia had called for Hirohito’s indictment as a war criminal, which undoubtedly would have led to his execution. MacArthur resisted and set out his reasons for protecting Emperor Shōwa [Hirohito’s formal designation]. He wanted to avert “a tremendous convulsion among the Japanese people, the repercussions of which cannot be overestimated” and the rise of “some form of intense regimentation probably along communistic line [sic]” after the occupation ceased.5 The rebuilding of Japan was designed to be a shield against the communism of the Soviet Union. The priority of the Allied Occupied Forces had been the demilitarisation and the democratic transformation of Japan. Pacifism was written into Article 9 of the country’s new Constitution, where the Japanese people pledged “forever to renounce war”. At its promulgation in 1946, the Japanese had genuinely welcomed Article 9 as they had been forced to bear extreme hardship, admit that they had engaged in a war that was wrong and accept responsibility for the atrocities committed by their army. Very soon after the promulgation of this “Peace” Constitution in 1946, Japan had to be rearmed—despite Article 9—in order to support the United States in the Korean War (1951–1953). Part of a process that the Americans themselves refer to as “Reverse Course”,6 the economic and political stability of Japan became the priority and “the idea of a re-armed and militant Japan no longer alarmed U.S. officials”.7 This marked the start of interference in the demilitarisation of Japan and attempts (particularly by successive Japanese conservative governments) to revise Article 9. Article 9 epitomises Japan’s divided and ambiguous self—the tensions between those who support war or peace, right or left, conservative or liberal, atonement for war crimes or revisionist views about Japan’s actions in the Asia Pacific War8 clash quietly in contemporary Japanese society. There is a clear link between those who wish to protect Article 9 from revision and anti-nuclear weapons and peace activism.9 Hibakusha10 (atomic bomb survivors) have been adamant supporters of Article 9. They and their descendants have been among the grassroots

92  Yasuko Claremont groups and individuals whose activities, including artists’ works, have effectively promoted a vision of world peace without nuclear arms. Hiroshima and Nagasaki citizens support such efforts, which include memorialising the disaster using means such as building the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and the National Peace Memorial Hall for the atomic bomb victims at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as collecting resources for public use. Invoking the word “peace” in its truest sense, Japan’s civil movements began in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. These movements have been all the more important given the policies of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) governments that have dominated Japanese politics since the end of the Occupation in 1952. The Japanese public’s lack of awareness of the atrocities committed by its army during the Asia Pacific War is a deliberate strategy. In his book Freedom of Expression in Japan, Lawrence Beer has detailed examples of government intrusion into high school education: In preparation for the high school textbook triennium, the Ministry of Education in July 1981 asked that high school text book writers and publishers soften their approach to Japan’s excesses during World War II, the horrors of atom bombs, the serious damage to health and the environment caused by factory pollution, political corruption, rights as distinct from duties, and the pacifist requirements of the Constitution (Article 9)11. The role of artists is thus crucial to publicly convey a critical understanding of war and its consequences. Encouraging the general public to engage with their creations, particularly those conveying themes of compassion and reconciliation, is a complex undertaking, since there are also countless people who believe in nationalism. An example is a revisionist comic artist, Kobayashi Yoshinori (b. 1953), who affirms the value of the Asia Pacific War by celebrating the vision and efforts of the Imperial Japanese Army to “rescue” Asian countries from Western colonialism.12 When they respond to, and share their predecessors’ memories and efforts, generations who have no first-hand knowledge of the war are still able to produce pertinent stories and images. Paintings, poetry, works for the theatre and comics that make reference to the atomic bombings have revealed not only the impact of these events but also the profound sense of remorse felt towards victims on the part of the artists and the necessity for reconciliation. The works drive further actions, such as exhibitions and overseas performances, translation into other languages and adaptation into animated films and feature films. This multiplicity of cultural expressions has the power to foster a greater consensus towards understanding reconciliation and peace.

Visual Responses to the Atomic Bombings Paintings Maruki Iri was born in Hiroshima in 1901. Shortly after hearing about the dropping of the atomic bomb, he and his wife Toshi saw the aftermath of

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  93 the disaster after hurrying to Hiroshima to find out whether Iri’s family was safe. Since children were destined to live in a world with atomic weapons, they published a children’s picture book Pika don in 1950. Pika don is a Japanese onomatopoeia for the dropping of the atomic bomb in a flash of light (pika), with a roaring sound (don). They added a few descriptions to each drawing. One drawing, “A man of ash”, is captioned “When I touch the shoulder of my soldier friend, ‘hey’, he crumbled all together into ash” (as he had been incinerated while standing). The Maruki’s Atomic bomb panels13 (Genbaku-no-zu) (Hiroshima Panels)—particularly the first three works—resemble Pablo Picasso’s Guernica (1937). Measuring 1.8 metres by 7.2 metres, these impressive panels also remind us of the horrors and madness of war depicted in Goya’s The Disasters of War (1808–1814). Later renamed “Ghosts”, the first was exhibited in 1950 at the Tokyo Art Gallery with the title “6th August”, since the phrase “atomic bomb” was unacceptable under the American General Head Quarters’ (GHQ) censorship regime. In the period between 1950 and 1982, the “Hiroshima Panels” series grew to fifteen. Each has a thematic title: 1 Ghost; 2 Fire; 3 Water; 4 Rainbow; 5 Boys and Girls; 6 Atomic Desert; 7 Bamboo Thicket; 8 Rescue; 9 Yaizu; 10 Petition; 11 Mother and Child; 12 Floating Lanterns; 13 Death of American Prisoners of War; 14 Crows; and 15 Nagasaki. Their use of two separate artistic skills—one derived from Iri’s traditional Japanese style of ink painting and the other from Toshi’s modern Western style of oil painting—has assisted them to keep historical memories of the atomic horror alive. The interaction can be seen in the way the human bodies are depicted. The ink painting is abstract, showing time, movements and space in various shades of black (sumi) in different tones and shades, with the colour red as fire, whereas Toshi’s painting of the bodies is realistic and figurative. The limited range of colours makes the panels more dynamic. The attackers are not depicted in the atomic bomb panels, instead the invisibility of the enemy creates the effect of eerie, undefinable feelings. How can we fight or accuse someone who is invisible? This unknown enemy may be within ourselves, because this is the world that we have managed to create on this earth. Mankind has arrived at the edge of its own extinction by its own hand. Panels 9 Yaizu (1955) and 10 Petition (Shomei, 1955) depict citizen protests against nuclear bomb testing in the Pacific. The tuna fishing port of Yaizu is in Shizuoka prefecture. Panel 9 shows fishermen and their families standing firm and looking straight ahead in condemnation of the disaster arising from the fallout from U.S. nuclear testing on the Bikini Atoll, which had contaminated their fishing boat and killed one of the crew. Panel 10 Petition shows ordinary Japanese people expressing their anger and condemnation against the U.S. tests in the Pacific by signing a petition that began in the Suginami Ward in Tokyo in 1954. Within two months 54% of the residents of Suginami Ward had signed the petition. It was soon circulated throughout Japan and beyond, a strong expression of Japan’s assertive wish for “no nuclear experiments”. This led to the First World Congress Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs in

94  Yasuko Claremont Hiroshima in 1955. The campaign sprang from the efforts of local fishmonger Sugawara Tomiko, out of concern for her business and the dietary danger to everyone’s health. Because of the strong involvement of women, this campaign has been often called the “housewives peace movement”.14 This activity of collecting signatures had its origin in the Stockholm Court of Appeal in 1950, when a petition attracted a large number of signatures to oppose the U.S. threat to use the atomic bomb during the Korean War. Because of massive civil opposition, the atomic bomb was not used. Similarly, since 1998 Hirano Nobuto has organised a nationwide project that has grown stronger each year. Called “Peace Ambassador: Japanese High School students”,15 the students collect signatures for nuclear disarmament on the roadside. In 2015 students visited the UN assembly to hand in the petition. They became known internationally as the “Peace Messengers” and were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in 2018. It is here that one can see a firm link between events that began with the artists’ determination to promote peace and the development of an ongoing citizens’ peace campaign. When the Hiroshima panels were exhibited in 1970 in California, the Marukis realised that nuclear threats conveyed only part of the war narrative and widened their horizons further. After their large-scale “Nanjing Massacre” (1975), depicting atrocities committed by the Imperial Japanese Army, they created Panels 13 (Death of American Prisoners of War, 1971) and 14 (Crows, 1972), showing American and Korean victims of Japanese aggression. Their painting of Auschwitz (1977), produced in a bilingual Japanese and English print edition in 1988, included Iri’s calligraphy and their poem “Auschwitz”. In the poem they asserted that individuals were responsible for the holocaust because, whatever organisations were formed, it was always individuals who were responsible for making them happen. Okamura Yukinori is curator of the gallery16 established in Saitama in 1967 to exhibit the panels and host peace activities. Okamura noted that the artists had to use their artistic imaginations and the testimonies of survivors to recreate the scenes of devastation in their work, because they had not witnessed what actually happened—the dead had no words to tell them.17 Iri’s mother Suma was a survivor who had learned to paint when aged in her seventies. Suma’s untrained naive images of sufferers fleeing from the hypocentre by crossing the Ōta river under the gaze of a black bird (Figure 5.1) were reimagined in the Hiroshima panel no 14, Crows (1972). Suma enjoyed popularity as an artist in her own right, because of her use of bright colours and strong designs, mostly depicting the fullness of life in flowers, animals and people. Citizens’ Art Works: Hiroshima Citizens’ memories of the atomic bomb disaster are recorded in the works at the Hiroshima Peace Museum. The paintings and simple drawings are

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  95

Figure 5.1 Maruki Suma’s Painting, Pika no toki (Atomic bomb dropped), 1950, courtesy Maruki Gallery for Hiroshima Panels.

not by artists and are surprisingly impressive in their straightforwardness. The collection began when seventy-six-year-old Kobayashi Iwakichi watched a TV drama series Hatoko no umi (Hatoko’s Sea),18 in which a heroine, Hatoko, had lost her memory because of the shock of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima. This motivated him to draw his unforgettable memory of Hiroshima immediately after the bombing. Kobayashi wanted to keep a record to ensure that the people who had died from the atomic bomb—and who were depicted in his drawing—would be remembered. One old Korean victim and two South Asian students were featured, with descriptions of who they were in his notes. He took his work to the NHK Hiroshima office in May 1974.19 They took up the idea of broadcasting citizens’ paintings and asked local artist Shikoku Gorō for advice. A former Imperial Japanese Army soldier who had fought in China, Shikoku had been taken to Siberia and put to hard labour when the war ended. On returning to Hiroshima in 1948, he found out his younger brother had died ­twenty-two days after the atomic bombing, at the age of twenty-one. The two had been close and both had wished to become artists. Shikoku’s sadness and anger were irreconcilable. From then on, he was determined to use his artistic skills as an expression of opposition to nuclear war. On radio and on a TV show, Shikoku persuaded citizens of Hiroshima to draw their impressions in any way they could—with pencils, crayons, pens or brushes. Between 1974 and 1975, a total of 2225 paintings and drawings

96  Yasuko Claremont were ­collected.20 Following the example set by Kobayashi, the citizens of Hiroshima wanted to keep visible records of their experiences for future generations. Citizens’ Art Works: Nagasaki Similarly, in 1995 the President of the Nagasaki Society for Atomic Bomb Medical Card Holders, Fukahori Katsuichi, felt uneasy about the NHK Special Documentary featuring the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. It was based on footage taken by Yamahata Yōsuke,21 a well-known Imperial Japanese Army cameraman. Fukahori knew the severest impact of the bombing had been felt in the first twenty hours and because Nagasaki was a city of munitions factories photography had been prohibited—Yamahata had entered the hypocentre one day after the bombing. To fill the vacuum of the first twenty hours, Fukahori invited the members of the Society to draw what they had seen in that time. Sixty-four paintings—eye-witness accounts—were collected and published in a book.22 Like the Hiroshima pictures, these works represent the vivid memories of hibakusha in Nagasaki. By their nature they stand as a visual history of the citizens, with their added notes also serving as records. In the summer of 1946, Fukami Noritaka23 (1919–1952) made Kiyō no arashi, Nagasaki monogatari (Storm over Kiyō—Tale of Nagasaki), scroll paintings that included his diary entries, the devastation of the victims and also a firestorm that engulfed the city. He had seen the mushroom clouds and gone into the hypocentre three hours later to rescue victims. Because the U.S. Press code suppressed all information about the atomic bomb, these images were not available for the public to see until 1982.24 Beginning with the description of his intent in creating the scroll about the disaster—for all the people never to be forgotten—Fukami’s daily record traces what happened around him in the days from August 3 to August 15, 1945, and ends with notes. He writes of the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, “we were indifferent and paid little attention to it”. He had not given any consideration to the possibility of Nagasaki being subjected to atomic bombing. A graduate of the Hitoyoshi Middle School, Kumamoto, Fukami later became a teacher there. He suicided at the age of thirty-one because of his radiation sickness and trauma. In 2003 Hitoyoshi High School students collectively translated his diary into English and published it online.25 It is moving that Fukami’s creative endeavour has been commemorated in such a useful way by students of his own school. His modern-day picture scroll uses an authentic traditional Japanese emaki (picture scroll) style to accompany his narratives. Although different in style, it is just as important as the Maruki’s Hiroshima panels—both have had an unparalleled impact on Japanese aesthetics. Fukami’s deliberate use

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  97

Figure 5.2 Kiyō no arashi, Nagasaki monogatari (Storm over Kiyō—Tale of Nagasaki), detail of a section of the scroll, 1946, courtesy of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum.

of literary language (bungo) instead of everyday language (kōgo) heightened his depiction of the unimaginable catastrophe as he described “a city of destruction and carnage that was unbearable to see” (Figure 5.2).

Poets and Writers Respond to the Atomic Bombings The writers of Hiroshima, particularly poets and novelists such as Tōge Sankichi, Hara Tamiki, Kurihara Sadako and Ōta Yōko, represented the first generation of post-atomic bomb activists. Having witnessed the horror, their first tasks were to record the scenes of the disaster in writing. These hibakusha poets and writers were able to share the pain, discrimination and fear of radiation sickness with other hibakusha, and also with those who had no direct knowledge of the atomic bombing. Tōge Sankichi (1917–1953) Tōge Sankichi was the first to organise literary circles among the young, such as the Hiroshima seinen bunka renmei (League of Hiroshima Youth Culture) and Jidō bunka kenkyūkai (Association of Children’s Culture Research). In doing so, he helped support the great wish that people had for peace immediately after the end of the war. He and Yamashiro Tomoe26 founded the Genbaku hibakusha no kai (Association for Atomic Bomb Survivors) in 1952. Their determination to keep the atom bomb experience alive formed the foundation for the publication of the witness essays

98  Yasuko Claremont of  twenty-seven hibakusha, Genbaku ni ikite (Living Through the Atomic Bomb Disaster, 1953).27 These citizens’ movements preceded the Suginami Ward peace campaign. Tōge was instrumental in starting the early hibakusha peace movements, which were not politically motivated and their approach towards atomic bomb victims, including Korean victims, was far from the right-wing self-protectionist approach of the governments, particularly under the GHQ censorship. Tōge had been at his home, within three kilometres of the hypocentre. His new-found writings, “Memo-oboegaki-kansō” (“Notes-memorandumimpressions”, dated 1945) and the diary he kept from January 1, 1945, to November 19, 1945, vividly described what he witnessed on that day.28 Tōge’s Genbaku shishū (Atomic Bomb Poems, 1951) also reveals that the sources of incidents had been already recorded in these memoranda and diary entries. This humble anthology of twenty poems, B6 size, seventy-four pages, was printed by stencil with a cover drawn by his artist friend Shikoku Gorō. Even after more than seventy years, the red, white and grey cover is still evocative, conveying the sheer agony of the atomic bomb victims walking in line. The anthology was commercially published with an additional four poems in 1952.29 In the postscript Tōge wrote that the book was a warning for everyone who feared a new war. Obviously, he was referring to the war in Korea, and President Truman, who threatened to use the atomic bomb again if necessary.30 His horrific experience caused a drastic change in his poetry—once symbolic, lyrical and close to romanticism, it had now changed to realism. A selfless caregiver, Tōge visited neighbours in hospitals and medical aid stations, even though he suffered from lung necrosis throughout his life, as well as illness caused by the bomb. He was twenty-eight years old at the end of the war and died on an operating table at thirty-six. “Preface” is one of his well-known poems and can be found in Genbaku shishū (Atomic Bomb Poems, 1952). Preface Give back Dad, give back Mum Give back older people Give back children Give back me, give back human beings who Belong to me Give back peace that never Crumbles as long as Human society exists In the original Japanese the words are all written in hiragana (“flowing” kana), giving the powerful impression of primitive syllabic cries from the human heart. The refrain “give back” in its imperative form heightens the anguish of a loss that could never be recovered.

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  99 Tōge knew the ongoing suffering of the hibakusha, who fell into poverty while enduring their physical injuries, particularly women affected with keloids. His poem “Aru fujin e” (“To a woman”) describes such a women in stanzas 2, 3 and the last: You live in hiding at the deep end of the lane with its drainage One year since that summer Hiding under an umbrella Commuting to hospital The transparent shadow of a B29 Fell suddenly onto your face Frozen from your eyelids to your nose The scars made by that flash You say that You will not look again at anybody until you die ... I will speak out Making a time when my anger and your curse Will bear a more beautiful complexion! As we hear new explosive sounds The time he is referring to in the last line is the outbreak of the Korean War. In the poem, “Bohyō” (“The Grave Post”), Tōge applauded the Korean children who were collecting signatures denouncing war at Hiroshima railway station. The poem is poignant in telling a story about the deaths of 150 Saibi primary school children, who all perished without trace in the atomic bombing. Tōge’s later poems became more socially motivated than his earlier works and included tanka. In a last sequence of his tanka titled the “Tatakai” (“Battle”, 1945) he remained as an onlooker among the crowds. For example, when Yokohama was destroyed by fire after an air raid on May 29, 1945, Tōge was there: “among the public mass who jammed around an enemy hostage in hatred”. And yet the next tanka describes his compassion: “In silence the enemy hostage tightened his lips and suddenly I could not bring out a single word of hate”. He stopped writing tanka after this sequence. Perhaps, the short tanka form became restrictive. After the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, and despite his ill health, he showed himself as a fighter for peace. Tōge recorded a few lines from the French Resistance poet Louis Aragon’s poem, “Marche militaire française”, in his notebook, which was discovered after his death: “Live like the wind that ruffles the hair / Die like a flame that burns itself out”. Hence, he is associated with the expression of “Live like the wind and die like a flame”, an apt description for his own life. Tōge and Shikoku Gorō jointly produced some 100 tsuji-shi (street poem posters half the size of a newspaper broadsheet) consisting of a painting by Shikoku and a poem by Tōge, promoting social awareness of the dangers

100  Yasuko Claremont of nuclear war, and the need to help atomic bomb victims living in poverty. Each sheet was posted on the street walls—publicly and illegally under the U.S. censorship regulations. Only eight posters have been preserved. They still convey how courageous Tōge and Shikoku were in defying U.S. censorship of all information about the atomic bomb. In the centre of one memorable poster titled “Naze ni” (“Why”) a worn-out young woman crouches against a background collage of newspapers and fragments of evocative words such as “fired…” and “reinforcing labour…”, portraying the last moments of a prostitute who committed suicide as a result of her poverty and hopelessness. Tōge depicts the misery and desperation of a woman asking why she has ended up in the lowest levels of society—a prostitute, commonly called a “pan pan girl”.31 The poet has added “I, too, a pan pan” to the poem, presumably meaning that he was one of the Japanese people who sold the nation out to a suppressive authority. The poem and painting were equally poignant, each showing the unbroken spirit of the poor woman facing the death that had trapped her. Hara Tamiki (1905–1951) In contrast to Tōge Sankichi’s “Preface”, written completely in the circular, soft lines of hiragana, Hara’s use of katakana and kanji in his poems is objective and deliberately emotionally detached from the subject of the atomic bomb ordeal—katakana strokes are straight, hard lines. In Tōge’s poem, the cry for the loss of family members—father, mother, elder people and children—is intensely personal. Hara’s poem “This is a human being” (see the beginning of this chapter) evokes the poet’s realistic gaze, observing the hopeless disaster. By emphasising the anonymity of all human beings, Hara was able to demonstrate the inhumanity of the violence of the atomic bomb attack. Hara had been at home, 1.2 kilometres away from the hypocentre. Although he survived the atomic bombing, he committed suicide on a railway in 1951. While it was said that he had become depressed on hearing the possibility of the atomic bomb being used in the Korean War, Hara’s writings suggest that his sense of absolute loneliness became unbearable after he had lost his wife five years earlier. The first entry in Hara’s notebook Genbaku hisai-ji no Techō (A Notebook at the Time of the Atomic Calamity) is dated August 6, 1945: By a miracle, I was not hurt. It must be my destiny to survive and tell what happened here.32 Detailed descriptions of his family’s movements, city scenes and victims became the basis of his later masterpieces, such as his sequence of three short stories Natsu no hana (Summer Flowers, 1947–1949). The language

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  101 use is translucent, detached and descriptive, yet it evokes the magnitude of the disaster. Summer Flowers uses the Japanese “I-novel” style (autobiographical novel structure, narrating the stories of his family life through a first-person perspective). In the first story, “Prelude of the decimation”, the first-person narrator describes his brothers’ and sisters’ family life in wartime Hiroshima as he returned home from Tokyo to visit the grave of his wife, who had died in 1944. His family owned a military uniform factory in the centre of Hiroshima. It is remarkable because with his detached, precise method of description, all characters become vividly alive in their daily activities. In the second “Summer Flowers” story, the narrator becomes reflective after surviving immediate danger: I always thought that my survival would be half and half, but just now, my life and its meaning have suddenly joined together and become a snapshot of me. I whispered to myself that this must be written down.33 He had witnessed the hellish scenes while riding in a one-horse carriage with his brother’s family and his sister. His brother saw his son’s body still dressed in his yellow shorts on the roadside. It was such an unexpected encounter, yet his tears were utterly dried out. The scenes unfolding continuously on the journey were like a “new hell” and “in the midst of nothingness”. The narrator went on with his description in katakana form as it fitted well in describing such scenes of violence: Rubble glittering Grey white ashes Spread panoramically everywhere Strange rhythm of human bodies burnt red Did this all happen or was it all possible to happen … or could it even be a possible happening? Instantly snatched away the world of afterlife Beside an overthrown tram The torso of a horse Its swollen body smells Like smoke burning from live electric wires34 “From the ruins”, the third and final story, tells how the narrator and many other atomic bomb survivors endured, not only with little food and medicine but also with the haunting memories of so many ghastly deaths that were visible everywhere. The narrator stayed at his relatives’ home in the countryside, where he heard the Emperor’s declaration of surrender. For so many victims the announcement came too late. Hara’s story featured the daily life of common people after the bombing so realistically that the readers felt at once the truth of his descriptions. One such scene is his awareness

102  Yasuko Claremont of a baby’s crying in the jet-black burnt-out ruins, amidst the smell of death and innumerable maggots.35 Kurihara Sadako (1913–2005) Hiroshima-born Kurihara Sadako was a hibakusha who recorded her creative draft notes in a private notebook, Akekure no uta (Songs of Day and Night, 1945). It contains a draft of her famous poem “Umashimen kana” (“Let us be midwives!”, 1946),36 where a baby is born in an underground room in the midst of fatally wounded atomic bomb victims; the event takes place on the evening of the day that the bomb was dropped. Written in free style, the poem celebrates the enduring power of life.37 Kurihara also wrote a series of tanka-style descriptions of chaos and horror inflicted on the people of Hiroshima on the day of the atomic bombing. The tanka poem consists of thirty-one syllables. Within such a short form Kurihara was able to unfold, in scene after scene, the emergency, intensity and pain of the time. The distinctive dual perspectives of the poems focus on real-life situations where we, as readers, find ourselves indirectly playing the role of both victim and aggressor. For example, in “Hiroshima to iu toki” (“When you talk about Hiroshima”, 1972) Kurihara references the sudden attack on Pearl Harbor, the Nanjing Massacre and other atrocities that the Imperial Japanese Army committed. Her husband Tadaichi admired the well-known anarchist Ōsugi Sakae,38 and Kurihara was also influenced by anarchism. While “Let us be midwives!” remains respected, she was at times alienated from the mainstream of poetry because of her outspoken criticisms of the authorities and the imperial system, and her background in anarchism. Kurihara remained a staunch peace activist with uncompromising views, using poetry as a weapon to fight against discrimination, ignorance and social indifference to the plight endured by surviving atom bomb victims. Her mission as a pacifist was sustained by her belief in human rights, but anarchism still lies at the heart of her themes. Ōta Yōko In her memoir Shikabane no machi (City of Corpses, 1948),39 Ōta Yōko (1906– 1963) argued that writing about the day when the atomic bomb was dropped was a responsibility for any literate person, like her, who had witnessed the disaster: “I am a writer. I am looking at them [the corpses] through two sets of eyes: the eyes of human beings and those of a writer…”. Because Ōta had published works in support of Japan’s colonialism and militarism during the war, for example, People and the Town of Evening Calm and The Country of Cherry Blossoms, she was criticised by the literary establishment and accused of not taking responsibility for what she had previously written, as

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  103 Kurihara Sadako pointed out in her explanatory note in Ōta Yōko shū (The Collections of Ōta Yōko, 1982).40

Citizens’ Narratives Compiled and published by Tōge Sankichi and Yamashiro Tomoe in 1952, Genshi-gumo no shita yori (Under the Atomic-Clouds, 1952)41 is an anthology of 120 poems—101 were written by students from schools or universities, while nineteen were sourced from the general public. Its subtitle is “Voices from Hiroshima seeking peace”. Most of the poems centred on the horror of the atomic bombing disaster and the loss of family members and others.42 This little-known grassroots campaign had no funding or prestige. Despite this, young university students, particularly Kawade Takeshi,43 volunteered to collect poems to make citizens’ voices known and powerful enough to attract people’s attention, while supporting the campaign to ban the use of nuclear weapons. The adults’ poems conveyed utter sadness in losing family members and friends in such a horrific way. Hayashi Sachiko (1929–2011) was twenty-three years old when she lost her parents and brother to the atomic bomb. She lived at Shōwa machi in Hiroshima, two kilometres from the hypocentre of the bomb. Tōge encouraged her to write a poem about the experience. This took a great deal of courage since her posthumously discovered notes revealed that she had been silent, even with her own family,44 because they were such painful memories. In stanza ten of “Hiroshima no sora” (“The Sky Over Hiroshima”)45 she shares her father’s agony for his inability to rescue his wife and son, while hearing their cries for help: I Filled a cracked cup with water and Placed it in front of my brother’s internal organs Dad Pulled out some dried rationed biscuits I closed my eyes tight Dad couldn’t do anything While hearing the cries of his wife and son Buried alive And then, for a while Spots began spreading All over Dad’s body but showed no injury46 In a later stanza, amidst the domestic details of juicing cucumber with sugar to make a rudimentary breakfast for her father Casually, Dad Stared at the empty air and

104  Yasuko Claremont Said The wind is strong A storm is coming…a storm He was breathing deeply And then just as he was He collapsed and Moved no more In less than one month I became all alone “Survivor guilt” has been identified clinically as well in literary works, such as this poem and Inoue Hisashi’s play, Chichi to kuraseba (The Face of Jizō, 1994), which is discussed later in this chapter. Hayashi’s trauma remained all through her life, although her poem ends on a consoling note: The blue sky of Hiroshima Beautifully clear Manga Narratives in Reconciling War History Representations of the atomic bomb catastrophe in manga, a powerful medium because of its combination of visual and narrative forms, have been effective in reaching a wider readership. Advanced technology has enhanced the versatility of manga adaptations into animated films and computer games, attracting an even larger audience and encouraging manga artists to be innovative in creating their own individual worlds. This is seen in the works of Tezuka Osamu, Mizuki Shigeru and Hasegawa Machiko. One series of the distinctive graphic atomic bomb manga is Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen, 1973–1985). Nakazawa Keiji (1939–2012) based it on his own experiences as a survivor. Its impact has been so great that it has been translated into ten foreign languages by young international volunteers through Project Gen, which began in 1976. Ten volumes in English had been completed by 2004. This anti-nuclear war story uncompromisingly describes the sufferings of Hiroshima hibakusha in horrible scenes, including the stoning of an American prisoner of war. Gen is the name of the boy hero in the story. While the story is tragic, he is active, masculine and humorous. Nakazawa was an outspoken critic of the Emperor’s role in the war and the crimes committed by the Imperial Army. Another manga artist, Kōno Fumiyo (b. 1968) of Hiroshima, had no personal connection with the atomic bombing disaster. In her manga series she focuses on the daily life of a young woman. There are no harsh criticisms of the war and the atomic bombing in Yūnagi no machi Sakura no kuni (Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, 2004)47 and a wartime story Kono sekai no katasumi ni (In This Corner of the World, 2008–2009).48

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  105 Kōno’s manga works contain a wealth of intertextuality, making her works comparative, but also linking the significance of history to what is happening in the present and hinting at the future. In her book Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, she specified two major sources used in the construction of her own war manga: Ōta Yōko’s book Yūnagi no machi to hito to (The People and Town of Evening Calm, 1955) and Yamashiro Tomoe’s Genbaku ni ikite (Living after the Atomic Bomb Disaster, 1953). Ōta’s book is pure fiction, based on all she had heard from poverty-stricken hibakusha living in the slums. One of the women is filled with anger against America, not just for its devastation of Hiroshima but also for the fear of the deadly radiation illness. She was evicted from the slum by the Council because of the construction of the Peace Memorial Park. Kōno’s Town of Evening Calm depicts the heroine’s symptoms of post-­ traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), in this case derived from being haunted by the horrors at the site of the atomic bombing. The story ends ten years after the bombing, with the death of the heroine, who had been full of liveliness and humour; this can be seen when her lover visits her at home. Minami could not let him come inside her slum because her mother was almost naked, as all her clothing had been taken away for laundering: We just escaped a crisis, Mum! You would have been found naked in bed because all your clothes were out on the washing line. That would be terrible! I would have been mistaken for Marilyn Monroe! Minami’s spirit of defiance is shown in the delirious words she utters before her death: Are you happy? It’s been ten years now since you dropped your bomb. I wonder if you would be really pleased looking at me. Done it! One more person killed! This poignant story and the squalid description of a slum resembles what is described in Yamashiro’s book, Kono sekai no katasumi de (In a Corner of This World, 1965), except that there was no mention of Korean and buraku survivors in Kōno’s story. Although Kōno acknowledges Yamashiro’s Living through the Atomic Bomb Disaster: Atomic Bomb Survivors’ Notes, no direct references are made to it, apart from the heroine’s unusual name, Minami, which is the name of a local area near the hypocentre in the city of Hiroshima. The story of Minami’s family continues into the next story—The Country of Cherry Blossoms—which has two parts. Fifty years have gone by since Minami’s death. Two young adult children of Minami’s brother, Akira, have faced up to the predicament of discrimination because they are hibaku-nisei (the second generation of hibakusha). The title is the same as Ōta Yōko’s

106  Yasuko Claremont novel, Sakura no kuni (The Country of Cherry Blossoms, 1940).49 Apart from that, there is no connection between Ōta’s and Kōno’s stories. Ōta’s novel deals with the pride Japanese women took in Japan’s wartime military achievements in China, describing them through the national symbol of cherry blossoms. Where Ōta used them as a symbol of Imperial Japan, in Kōno’s work they are a symbol of the continuity of human life. Towards the end of Kōno’s version, a two-page spread shows a scene full of cherry tree blossoms and a young couple watching them from the bridge. One of them is Nanami—the niece of Minami in the story of The Town of Evening Calm. In this conclusion Kōno has been compensated for Minami’s tragic death with the birth of her niece Nanami. Kōno’s Kono sekai no katasumi ni (In this Corner of the World, 2008–2009) was successful and popular. The total circulation of this manga approached one million and by 2018 the animated film version, made by Katabuchi Sunao in 2015, had been seen by two million people. It was made into a novella by Maita Yōhei in 2016. Kōno again references the same title used by Yamashiro Tomoe, Kono sekai no katasumi de (In this Corner of the World, 1965). However, Kōno uses the ending postposition ni, instead of de. These are Japanese particles: ni indicating no action to follow (but just being there) whereas de indicates some action verb to follow. In an interview by the Chūgoku Shinbun, September 5, 2012, Kōno herself explains that “katasumi de” expresses a strong mind living firmly in Hiroshima whereas “katasumi ni” expresses light-heartedness in this story of finding her own living space. The title has the connotation of humility, referring to the heroine Suzu in Kōno’s manga; Yamashiro’s work is serious reportage delineating how hibakusha, Koreans and buraku people ended up either huddling together in a slum called Genbaku suramu or living in the Aioi dōri along the riverbank. Where Yamashiro focused on investigating the situations of the inhabitants of those places in order to make recommendations to the city, Kōno develops a narrative about Suzu’s experience as an almost stereotypical woman of wartime Japan, who is confronted by the brutality of war only when her niece is killed and she loses her right hand in an air raid attack. Daily life, however, continued no matter what happened around her. While Kōno’s manga has little connection with the older works she references, her deliberate use of these well-known titles may suggest that she pays respect to these literary predecessors. Manga is instantaneous, without complication, but its simplicity expresses the power of emotions.

Dramatic Narratives on Reconciliation One feature of dramatic art is its power to bring to life issues that have an enduring relevance in society—an example of art as advocacy is the relationship between Ibsen’s A Doll’s House (1879) and women’s equal rights movements. A current example of the same kind is Chichi to kuraseba,50

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  107 written by the playwright Inoue Hisashi (1934–2010) and first performed in 1994. The title literally means “while living with Dad”. When it was published in English in 2004, the translator Roger Pulvers renamed the play The Face of Jizō. It deals with the condition caused by survivors’ feelings of guilt because they have been spared while others have died. This play went further by introducing the theme of reconciliation, in this case within the heart of the protagonist who represents common humanity. It conveys the humanist perspective that honoured and distinguished Inoue’s works. Hannah Arendt stated that “… politically, the modern world, in which we live today, was born with the first atomic explosions”.51 In the same vein, Inoue contends that “the atomic bombing was not just dropped in Hiroshima and Nagasaki but on mankind”.52 The ultimate danger of the atomic bomb hangs like a shadow over the lives of all human beings. In this play, a girl’s father was burnt to death during the atomic bombing of Hiroshima as he could not free himself from under the heavy rubble of his house. His daughter, Mitsue, was present but could not rescue him. After that traumatic event she found a jizō near the place where her father died. A jizō is the statue of a deity who is honoured as a guardian of children, including those stillborn. Burnt on one side, the jizō’s face reminded Mitsue of her father’s face in the moments before his death. Mitsue’s best friend was also killed by the atomic bomb, and the girl’s mother abused Mitsue, demanding to know why her daughter had been killed while Mitsue was saved. The guilt Mitsue felt made her determined not to seek her own happiness, because of what those she knew had been denied. In the play, the ghost of Mitsue’s father (Takezō) appears on stage, giving her advice in humorous exchanges of father-daughter conversation. His appearance was regarded as an embodiment of Mitsue’s mental condition. Without outright political criticism of America’s atomic bombing, Inoue was able to show the agony common people suffered in coming to terms with traumatic death and its aftermath. Takezō concludes that Mitsue is suffering from what he calls “guilt-ridden survivoritis”. In the end he is able to persuade her to go on living because of him: … so that the world will remember that tens of thousands of people have had to say goodbye like that and it’s inhuman. Isn’t that what that library where your work is for? To tell people those things? Takezō helps Mitsue to overcome her sadness and convinces her to have a positive mindset for her future. The performance culture of both commercial and non-commercial theatre was well established in Japan, even during the war. The “Sakura tai” (Sakura troop), headed by a famous actor, Maruyama Sadao, had the misfortune to be in Hiroshima on the morning the atomic bomb was dropped. (To be able to perform they had to be part of the Japanese military, which is why they were known as a troop, rather than a troupe.) Within a few days

108  Yasuko Claremont all eight members of the troop had died from atomic radiation. This tragedy inspired playwrights, actors and actresses to fulfil the hopes that had been denied to the Sakura troop. Inoue Hisashi wrote Kamiya-chō Sakura Hotel, a play that was the premiere performance for the opening of the New National Theatre in Tokyo in 1997. The play celebrates the magical power of art as performed by the Sakura troop. Two spies and one of the kenpei (military police) were recruited to take part in the Sakura performance in Hiroshima. One spy had been the Emperor’s secret agent and was sent to investigate the readiness of the army to fight on the mainland of Japan (hondo kessen). While preparing for the performance, the spies and the kenpei were gradually influenced by their interactions with the members of the troop. After associating with them, the Emperor’s spy acted instead on behalf of all Japanese whose lives had been cut short because of their leaders’ inability to make the decision to ­surrender—a decision that was only made later by the Emperor. The audience was fully aware of the fate that awaited all of the characters, that they would be killed by the atomic bombing and the Emperor’s decision would come too late for them to survive.

Civic Theatre in Hiroshima Hiroshima, middle-sized Japanese city, was a powerful military capital (gunto) since Meiji to 1945. Hiroshima-born playwright and director Osanai Kaoru (1881–1928) played a major role in establishing Japan’s new theatre movement, Shingeki, in which Western dramas were staged in Japanese. Prominent in the movement were the famous actresses Sugimura Haruko (1906–1997), Okada Yoshiko (1902–1992) and the actor Kawarazaki Kunitarō (1909–1990). All three were born and raised in Hiroshima. As the bombed ruins were being restored, the assertiveness of the people of Hiroshima also began to strengthen, restoring their confidence in life, first among the writers mentioned earlier and then among the repatriated soldiers from Japan’s former colonies and the POW camps in Siberia. Susukida Tarō (1902–1967) is an example of this. While working as an announcer on NHK Hiroshima after his repatriation from the Pacific Islands in 1946, he wrote Gansu yokochō (Gansu-lanes, 1949–1961),53 a series of essays recording the local histories of public entertainments and theatres, such as Miyajima Kabuki, performed in three successive periods, Meiji, Taisho and Shōwa. The Hiroshima Civic Theatre was established in 1959, providing a venue for performance and publicity for established theatre groups and also small theatre groups, such as those organised by workers, union members, teachers’ federation members, university students and interested civil members. The history of these civil cultural movements had developed from the 1920s proletarian literary movements, where communists and anarchists encouraged workers to engage with cultural movements to spread their ideologies.

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  109 All these movements were suppressed during wartime. Immediately after the Asia Pacific War ended, Japanese communists were released from jail and welcomed into society. When the 1950s Red Purge began under MacArthur and the Korean War started, Japanese citizens once again experienced the despairing reality of politics. Performing artists in Hiroshima, in particular, focused on the denunciation of nuclear weapons as a major theme to be expressed in their dramatic art. The reality of this universal theme affects all humanity and goes far beyond political activism. The play Kawa (The Rivers),54 written by Tsuchiya Kiyoshi (1930–1987), was first performed in 1963 at the Civic Theatre in Hiroshima. It is still being performed in major cities in Japan by local theatre groups, as well as notable theatre groups, such as Mingei, Kansai Geijutsuza and Tokyo Engeki Ansanburu. The play’s main character is modelled on a real person, “Tōge Sankichi”, and its themes relate to his resistance to America’s censorship, its Red Purge, the unlawful dismissal of workers (Japan Steel Co.), the prohibition of industrial disputes and the threat to use atomic bombs in the Korean War. During his life, Tōge encouraged young people to join him in the poetry circle, Warera no uta no kai (Our Poetry Association) with its flagship journal Warera no uta (1949–1953). As indicated in its subtitle “A group of youths in Hiroshima”, the play Kawa focused on these young people. Kawa opens with the sound of a river boat carrying sand upstream. The main character (Tōge) asks his artist friend whether that is the sound of a river boat and adds: Only the sound of the river boat hasn’t changed at all from the past, has it? [The friend agrees, saying:] Nothing has changed. Even the atomic bomb has made no change. It flashed and left burnt out ruins, so I thought the world could completely change. That’s fantasy. The Japanese will always be Japanese. We have only changed our master. This play is concerned with Hiroshima in the 1950s, when people were struggling with poverty—particularly hibakusha facing the threat of dismissal from their employers because of their radiation sickness—as well as censorship by America’s GHQ and Japanese authorities. The play features clashes between two opposing sides. Following are just two examples of these clashes: 1 Young people, particularly young communists, were treated suspiciously at work and in society. This “Reverse Course” period of the 1950s contrasted with the time immediately after the surrender, when the communists and socialists were released from jail and the people were delighted to welcome democracy and freedom of speech. Coinciding with the outbreak of the Korean War, a National Police Reserve was established in

110  Yasuko Claremont July 1950, focusing particularly on the actions of communists. Japan allied itself to the United States and became a rightist nation again. 2 During the 1950s Tōge changed his style of poetry from symbolism to social realism. In June 1949, when he read his poem, “Ikari no uta” (“Song of Anger”), it brought the common factory workers of the Japan Steel factory labour union to tears. They had gathered at a meeting calling for industrial action. In the play, Kawa, Tōge was criticised for making his poetry a part of social processes. These clashes make the play tense, generating dynamism among the characters. Nonetheless, towards the end of the play they are fully aware of being betrayed by political power: … we were under the impression that the occupation army was the liberation army. We dreamt that if we formed a democratic government we would be accepted. The play ends with the whole cast reciting Tōge’s poem, “Sono hi wa itsuka” (“When will that day come?” 1952). “That day” refers to “the day of explosion made by the anger of peace-loving mothers, children and sisters of the people who were driven into a war by the intimidation of an ugly ambitious will”. Tōge knew that “if freedom is chained / this country is enslaved indefinitely”. Kawa was performed on December 23 and December 24, 2017, at the Yokokawa Cinema, Hiroshima. The cast of twenty and the production team members gave all their available time to the production of the play. Their backgrounds varied from housewives, teachers and artists to council workers, yet the professionalism of the production values clearly showed along with their commitment. Taking advantage of today’s technology, a cinema screen was used as the backdrop. The sound effects matched the visual images of newsreels and paintings. The four performances were sold out and spare plastic chairs filled the aisles at each performance. Tōge’s poems were effectively used to describe the tension between the police and the demonstrators on the commemorative day for peace, August 6, 1950. A re-enactment of a real event where anti-war bills flew around from the top of the Fukuya Department Store55 was performed while the cast recited Tōge’s poem, “August 6, 1950” as below: At once they looked up at the department store From the fifth-floor windows, the sixth-floor windows Scattering

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  111 Scattering Against a backdrop of summer clouds Uncountable handbills flying In shade and in light Falling slowly Above upturned faces Into outstretched hands And into the bottom of starved hearts… Hayashi Sachiko’s poem “Hiroshima no sora”56 (“The Sky over Hiroshima”) was also recited by Nakayama Ryōko, Hayashi’s granddaughter and a journalist by profession, who volunteered to participate in the play. The performance was directed by Tsuchiya Tokiko (the widow of Tsuchiya Kiyoshi) and produced by Ikeda Masahiko (artist) (Figure 5.3).

Figure 5.3 All cast and team members of the 2017 Kawa performance. Playwright/ actress, Tsuchiya Tokiko in the first row, 5th from right. Producer Ikeda Masahiko in the first row, 2nd from right.

Tsuchiya was a librarian at the Hiroshima Jogakuin University. Since her retirement in 2007 she has been involved in acting in two other plays: a solo performance in Hana Ichimonme in 2007, and a two-player performance, Barakku (Barracks, 2011). The former was about the tragic story of a Manchurian pioneer group and the latter was a tragic-comedy story about a slum eviction in Hiroshima. Barracks was performed by Tsuchiya Tokiko and Cho Baku (a zainichi Korean). Here, in this interconnection, lies the strength of citizen performances.

112  Yasuko Claremont

Summation The above representations of art works are so diverse that any simple summary would be inadequate. However, the compassion shown in the works of these artists and civilians compels us to reflect on the consequences of warfare in general and nuclear warfare in particular. Obviously, art works may have no immediate political power, but in the long run, they sustain people’s interest in important issues because they are concrete and generate an immediate response from people who view them. They transcend politics because of their impact on people’s emotions and their ability to foster an ongoing culture of peace everywhere. It is no accident that Amnesty International launched “Art for Amnesty” in 2018. Aimed at the protection of human rights, this campaign demonstrates the power of art to connect people globally.57 Even though most of us do not know the reality of war, each of us is responsible for maintaining peace in our society and one of the key elements in achieving reconciliation lies in acknowledging historical facts and truths, which can often be interpreted and reinterpreted in different ways—a ­process that creates a sense of distrust and controversy, involving as it does both the media and politics. With passing time, all iconic events fade into history. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki no longer has the same impact in the social consciousness of Japan that they once had. Yet, a chain of nuclear disasters, including mishaps during nuclear testing and nuclear accidents, has occurred, reminding us of the dangers of the nuclear age in which we live. The dangerous attacks on Ukrainian nuclear power stations that have occurred during the current Russian invasion have created a major security concern for everyone. Nuclear disarmament movements were started in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by citizens groups and continue to this day. In these movements, artists play a significant role, particularly as the hibakusha population is dwindling. Art activists must speak for them.

Notes 1 Hara Tamiki, “This Is a Human Being,” translated by Yasuko Claremont from the Japanese version, in Ōhara Miyao, Kinoshita Junji and Hotta Yoshie, eds., Nihon genbaku shishū (Anthology of Atomic Bomb Poems of Japan) (Tokyo: Taihei shuppansha, 1978), 36. (Printing no. 10 of the original 1970 edition). 2 Ōe Kenzaburō (b. 1935) is a prolific fiction writer of Japan and a Nobel Prize winner for literature (1994). He is a staunch pacifist and his writings criticise the right-wing elements of Japanese politics. 3 Inoue Hisashi (1934–2010) was a well-known dramatist whose sense of satire, humour and meaningful themes contained in his dramas earned him accolades as one of the great dramatists in post-war Japan. His dramas are characterised by using plays on language, such as puns, as well as the use of music. 4 Kokumin gakkō (National Primary School) was established in 1941 to deliver education based on the Imperial Rescript on Education (1890) with a strong notion of nationalism.

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  113 5 “General of the Army Douglas MacArthur to the Chief of Staff United States Army (Eisenhower),” January 25, 1946, Government of the United States, Department of State, Office of the Historian, https://history.state.gov/ historicaldocuments/frus1946v08/d308. 6 “Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan, 1945–1952,” Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations [series], Government of the United States, Department of State, Office of the Historian, accessed 11 October 2022, https:// history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/japan-reconstruction. 7 “Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan, 1945–1952.” 8 The timespan of the Asia Pacific War (1931–1945) is derived from the date of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria to the end of World War II. Japan’s Pearl Harbor attack in 1941 was part of the Asia Pacific War. 9 A more comprehensive exploration of Japan during the Asia Pacific War, the Allied Occupation and beyond is outlined in a forthcoming book by Yasuko Claremont, The Asia Pacific War: Impact, Legacy, and Reconciliation’ to be published in 2023. 10 Hibakusha were often subject to discrimination in Japanese society, as their medical symptoms, such as fatigue and PTSD, prevented them from working and living normally. 11 Lawrence Ward Beer, Freedom of Expression in Japan: A Study in Comparative Law, Politics, and Society (Tokyo: New York, Kodansha International, 1984), 271, note 117. 12 Kobayashi Yoshinori (b. 1951) is an active revisionist of Japanese history, yet maintains his support for anti-nuclear causes after the Fukushima disaster of March 11, 2011. This is usually a leftist stance. Such a contradiction can be justifiable as he acts on what he believes in. On the Asia Pacific War in particular, he places value on the loyalty and courage shown by Japanese soldiers, instead of attacking the misguidance of the political leaders. 13 According to Toshi’s memoir of Iri, Iri used a sumi wash all over Toshi’s paintings of the human bodies on canvas, as he regarded them too realistic. When dry, the colour and the drawings were shaded and deepened. NHK Archives, accessed September 1, 2022, https://www2.nhk.or.jp/archives/jinbutsu/detail. cgi?das_id=D0009250067_00000. 14 The success of this Suginami Appeal lies in its discipline, that is, it stands for no political movement but for the sake of the peace and security of mankind. The final number of signatures was 32,590,907 (January 1955). https://www.­ suginamigaku.org/2014/10/h-gensuibaku.html. 15 An article in the Asahi Digital Newspaper from June 28, 2018, features Hirano Nobuto, a hibaku-nisei, as a recipient of the Akitsuki Heiwashô (Akitsuki Peace Prize). He was praised for his many years’ support for the “High School Peace Ambassadors” programme, https://www.asahi.com/articles/ ASL6W41V6L6WTOLB002.html. 16 The Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels is located in Higashi Matsuyama, Saitama Prefecture, https://marukigallery.jp/about/maruki/. 17 Okamura Yukinori (b. 1974), curator at the Maruki Art Gallery since 2001, has organised many important exhibitions and published catalogues. This comment refers to Toshi Maruki’s words “There was no one who could tell the story of the epicentre”. The quote is from Hikaku geijutsu annai (An Introduction to AntiNuclear Art), Iwanami Booklet No. 887 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2013), 6. 18 The popular NHK drama series, Hatoko no Umi (Hatoko’s Sea), 1974–1975, was shown for fifteen minutes each morning throughout the year. It was a story of a girl who lost her memory due to the shock of the atomic bomb disaster in Hiroshima. 19 This event was described in Nagata Kōji, Hiroshima wo tsutaeru: Shigajin Shikoku Gorō to genbaku no hyōgensha-tachi (Transmitting Hiroshima: A Poet

114  Yasuko Claremont and Painter, Shikoku Gorō and the Expressionists of the Atomic Bomb) (Tokyo: WAVE shuppan, 2016), 10. 20 Nagata Kōji, Hiroshima wo tsutaeru: Shigajin Shikoku Gorō to genbaku no ­hyōgensha-tachi, 12–21. 21 Yamahata Yōsuke (1917–1966) was a imperial Japanese army photographer best known for his Nagasaki photographs. 22 Kūhaku no 20 jikan: Genbaku hibaku sanjōzu (The 20 Hours Vacuum: Pictures of the Atomic Bomb Disaster) (Nagasaki: Nagasaki hibakusha techō tomo no kai [Friends of the Nagasaki atomic bomb victims medical cards] 1997), 1. 23 Fukami Noritaka, 1919–1952, a imperial Japanese army clerk, was in Nagasaki, 4.4 kilometres away from the epicentre. His scroll measures 30 centimetres × 11 metres. 24 “Kiyō No Arashi/Storm Over Nagasaki” by Fukami Noritaka is the subject of a YouTube clip uploaded by Aloysius Kuo, “Prayer of Nagasaki: Mozart Symphony Jupiter: I & II,” accessed March 11, 2022, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=FO2ePkHkpFo. 25 View Fukami Noritaka’s diary in Japanese and English at “Kiyō No Arashi/ Storm Over Nagasaki, Part II,” clip uploaded by Aloysius Kuo, “Prayer of Nagasaki: Mozart Symphony: Jupiter: III & IV”, accessed 11 March 2022, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gQOWLz8y5qs. 26 Yamashiro Tomoe (1912–2004), born in Hiroshima. A Marxist writer and an activist for better labour conditions in factories and villages, her reportage in Kono sekai no katasumi ni (1965) describes how the underclass and poor people were forced to live in the so-called “Genbaku suramu” (“Atomic bomb slum”) in Hiroshima. 27 Yamashiro Tomoe, Genbaku ni ikite (Living Through the Atomic Bomb Disaster) (Tokyo: Kei Shobō, 1991). 28 These two new materials by Tōge were copied in Mirai e no dengon (A Message to the Future), A Record of the Symposium on Atomic Bomb Literature Written by Hibaku Writers (Kurihara, Hara, Tōge) to be Registered in the World of Memory Program of the UN and a Collection of Resources (Hiroshima: The Association for Preservation of Literary Materials of Hiroshima), 50–54. 29 Tōge Sankichi, Genbaku shishū (Atomic Bomb Poems) (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952, reprinted 1982). 30 Carl A. Posey, “How the Korean War Nearly Went Nuclear,” Smithsonian Magazine, July 2015. The article also refers to Truman a­ uthorising the deployment of “­atomic-capable B-29s” to Okinawa during the Korean War, https:// www.smithsonianmag.com/air-space-magazine/how-korean-war-almostwent-nuclear-180955324/. 31 “Pan pan girls” were street prostitutes for American soldiers in the late 1940s. 32 This notebook by Hara Tamiki was entrusted for safe keeping to the Hiroshima Peace Museum by his nephew in 2015. The scanned images were published in Mirai e no dengon (A Message to Our Future) (Hiroshima: Hiroshima bungaku shiryō hozen no kai, 2016), 45. 33 Hara Tamiki, Natsu no Hana, 128. 34 Hara Tamiki, Natsu no Hana, 139–140. 35 Hara Tamiki, Natsu no Hana, 161. 36 First published in March 1946 in the first issue of Chūgoku bunka, which was published by Kurihara Tadaichi and Sadako. 37 See Yasuko Claremont’s English translation of the poem, Yasuko Claremont et  al., Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation (Sydney: Oriental Society of Australia, 2017), 30–31. 38 Ōsugi Sakae (1885–1923) was an anarchist and activist in the Meiji-Taisho period (1868–1925). He, his wife Ito Noe (feminist and author) and his young

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  115 nephew were murdered by military police in 1923 at the time of the Great Kantō Earthquake. 39 Ōta Yōko, Shikabane no machi (City of Corpses) (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1948). 40 See Kaisetsu (Commentary) in Ōta Yōko shū, vol. 4 (Tokyo: San-ichi Shobō, 1982), 13. 41 Tōge Sankichi and Yamashiro Tomoe [Also Attributed as Committee for the Compilation of Atomic Bomb Poetry] eds. Genshigumo no shita yori (Under the Atomic Clouds) (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952). 42 Hiroshima-born Yamashiro (1912–2004) was a writer and activist for anti-­ nuclear wars. She founded the Atomic Bomb Survivors Association and helped Korean hibakusha (atomic bomb victims) by recording details of how they lived. 43 According to Yamashiro, Kawade Takashi was a student of French at Hiroshima University. Both were members of the Association of New Japanese literature. Kawade was passionate about the publication of this anthology and collected poems, especially from school students and those active in working for the first world conference on banning atomic and hydrogen weapons. He worked hard to help atomic victims. In doing so he was labelled as a Red, making it difficult for him to find jobs. He despaired and killed himself in 1960. Yamashiro said she would dedicate the proceeds from the sale of the reprint edition of the anthology to cover the publication costs of the posthumous works of Kawade Takashi. 44 “The Memoirs of the Author of the A-Bomb Poem ‘Hiroshima no Sora’ Discovered,” Nikkei (electronic version), February 3, 2021, accessed September 5, 2022, https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQODG29DUS0Z20C21A1000000. 45 Hayashi Sachiko’s poem “The Sky Over Hiroshima” first appeared in a coterie magazine, Warera no Uta (Our Poems), vol. 10, December 1950 and later in Tōge Sankichi and Yamashiro Tomoe, eds. Genshigumo no shita yori (Under the Atomic Clouds) (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952), 155–162. 46 Tōge Sankichi and Yamashiro Tomoe, eds., Genshigumo no shita yori (Under the Atomic Clouds) (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952), 155–162. 47 Kōno Fumiyo, Yūnagi no machi: Sakura no kuni (Town of Evening Calm: Country of Cherry Blossoms (Tokyo: Futabasha, 2004) was first serialised in Weekly Manga Akushon before being published in book form in 2004. It has been adapted into a film, a novel and a radio drama and is now available in many languages. 48 Kono sekai no katasumi ni (In This Corner of the World) (Tokyo: Futubash, 2008– 2009). An edition of three volumes, this work was originally serialised in Manga Akushon from 2007 to 2009. 49 Ōta Yōko, Sakura no kuni (The Country of Cherry Blossoms) (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 1940). 50 Inoue Hisashi, Chichi to Kuraseba (While Living with My Father) (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2001). 51 Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958), 6. 52 Inoue Hisashi, The Face of Jizo, trans. by Roger Pulvers (Tokyo: Komatsuza, 2004), 9. 53 Susukida Tarō, Gansu yokochō (Gansu-lanes), 4 volumes, edited by his son Susukida Jun’ichirō (Hiroshima: Takumi Publishing, 1973). Susukida Jun’ichirō was a Hiroshima TV producer. His production of Ishibumi became one of the classics in Hiroshima documentaries. 54 Tsuchiya Tokiko and Yagi Yoshihiro, eds. Hiroshima no kawa: gekisakka, Tsuchiya Kiyoshi no seishun gunzō geki (“The Rivers” of Hiroshima: Playwright, Tsuchiya Kiyoshi’s Drama of a Group of Youths) (Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten, 2019). 55 This refers to a peace meeting that was held at the store on August 6, 1950, at the time when assemblies were banned by GHQ. Tōge and others distributed leaflets promoting peace and opposing war.

116  Yasuko Claremont 56 Sachiko Hayashi, “Hiroshima Sky” (“The Sky Over Hiroshima”), Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall, available in Japanese or English, accessed September 5, 2022, https://www.hiro-tsuitokinenkan.go.jp/project/readers/ sachiko-hayashi.html. Sachiko Hayashi, “Hiroshima Sky” (“The Sky Over Hiroshima”), in Tōge Sankichi and Yamashiro Tomoe, eds. Genshigumo no shita yori (Under the Atomic Clouds) (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952). 57 Amnesty International, “Art for Amnesty: Art Is Our Artillery” [campaign], August 29, 2016, accessed March 11, 2022, https://www.amnesty.org.au/ art-is-our-artillery/.

Bibliography Amnesty International. “Art for Amnesty: Art is our Artillery” [campaign], August 29, 2016, https://www.amnesty.org.au/art-is-our-artillery/. Beer, Lawrence Ward. Freedom of Expression in Japan: a Study in Comparative Law, Politics, and Society. Tokyo, New York: Kodansha International, 1984. Chūgoku bunka, facsimile (1946), Kurihara Sadako ed. Hiroshima: Chūgoku bunka fukkoku kankō no kai, 1981. Claremont, Yasuko. Citizen Power: Postwar Reconciliation, Bilingual Edition in English and Japanese. Sydney: Oriental Society of Australia, 2017. Fukami, Noritaka, “Kiyō no Arashi: Nagasaki Monogatari” (Storm Over Nagasaki: The Tale of Nagasaki), 1946. This Scroll Has Been Exhibited in the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum. Hannah Arendt. The Human Condition. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1958. Hara Tamiki. Natsu no Hana Shingan no Kuni. Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 1973. Hara Tamiki, in Ōhara Miyao, Kinoshita Junji and Hotta Yoshie, eds. Nihon genbaku shishū (Anthology of Atomic Bomb Poems of Japan). Tokyo: Taihei ­shuppan-sha, 1978. Hirano, Nobuto, won the Akizuki Peace Prize 1965, Asahi Digital Newspaper. https:// www.asahi.com/articles/ASL6W41V6L6WTOLB002.html. Hayashi, Sachiko. “Hiroshima Sky.” (“The Sky Over Hiroshima”). In Genshigumo no shita yori (Under the Atomic Clouds), edited by Tōge Sankichi and Yamashiro Tomoe, 155–162. Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952. Inoue, Hisashi. Chichi to Kuraseba (While Living with My Father). Tokyo: Shinchosha, 2001. Inoue, Hisashi. The Face of Jizo, trans. by Roger Pulvers. Tokyo: Komatsuza, 2004. Kōno, Fumiyo. Yūnagi no machi: Sakura no kuni (Town of Evening Calm: Country of Cherry Blossoms). Tokyo: Futabasha, 2004. Kōno, Fumiyo. Kono sekai no katasumi ni (In This Corner of the World). Tokyo: Futuba-sha, 2008–2009. Kūhaku no 20 jikan: Genbaku hibaku sanjōzu (The 20 hours vacuum: Pictures of the Atomic Bomb Disaster). Nagasaki: Nagasaki hibakusha techō tomo no kai [Friends of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Victims Medical Cards], 1997. “The Memoirs of the Author of the A-Bomb Poem ‘Hiroshima no Sora’ Discovered,” Nikkei (Electronic Version). Accessed February 3, 2021. https://www.nikkei.com/ article/DGXZQODG29DUS0Z20C21A1000000. Maruki, Toshi’s memoir of Iri. NHK Archives. Accessed September 1, 2022, https:// www2.nhk.or.jp/archives/jinbutsu/detail.cgi?das_id=D0009250067_00000.

Anti-Nuclear Activism through the Arts in Japan  117 The Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels is located in Higashi Matsuyama, Saitama Prefecture. https://marukigallery.jp/about/maruki/. Mirai e no dengon (A Message to Our Future), A Record of the Symposium on Atomic Bomb Literature Written by Hibaku Writers (Kurihara, Hara, Tōge) and a Collection of Resources to be Registered in the World of Memory Program of the UN and a Collection of Resources. Hiroshima: The Association for Preservation of Literary Materials of Hiroshima, 2017. Nagata, Kōji, Hiroshima wo tsutaeru: Shigajin Shikoku Gorō to genbaku no ­hyōgensha-tachi (Transmitting Hiroshima: A Poet and Painter, Shikoku Gorō and the Expressionists of the Atomic Bomb). Tokyo: WAVE shuppan, 2016. Okamura, Yukinori, Hikaku geijutsu annai (An Introduction to Anti-Nuclear Art). Iwanami Booklet No. 887. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2013. “Occupation and Reconstruction of Japan, 1945–1952,” Milestones in the History of U.S. Foreign Relations [series], Government of the United States, Department of State, Office of the Historian. Accessed 11 October 2022, https://history.state. gov/milestones/1945-1952/japan-reconstruction. Ōta, Yōko. Sakura no kuni (The Country of Cherry Blossoms). Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun-sha, 1940. Ōta Yōko. Shikabane no machi (City of Corpses). Tokyo: Chūō, kōron-sha, 1948. Ōta Yōko shū, vol. 4. Tokyo: San-ichi Shobō, 1982. Posey, Carl A. “How the Korean War Nearly Went Nuclear.” Smithsonian Magazine, July 2015. Suginami Appeal: https://www.suginamigaku.org/2014/10/h-gensuibaku.html. Susukida, Tarō. Gansu yokochō (Gansu-lanes), 4 volumes, edited by his son Susukida Jun’ichirō. Hiroshima: Takumi Publishing, 1973. Tōge, Sankichi and Yamashiro, Tomoe [also Attributed as Committee for the Compilation of Atomic Bomb Poetry] eds., Genshigumo no shita yori (Under the Atomic Clouds). Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952. Tōge, Sankichi. Genbaku shishū (Atomic Bomb Poems). Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952, reprinted 1982. Tsuchiya, Tokiko and Yagi, Yoshihiro, eds, Hiroshima no kawa: gekisakka, Tsuchiya Kiyoshi no seishun gunzō geki (“The Rivers” of Hiroshima: Playwright, Tsuchiya Kiyoshi’s Drama of a Group of Youths). Tokyo: Fujiwara Shoten, 2019. Yamashiro, Tomoe, eds. Genshigumo no shita yori (Under the Atomic Clouds). Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1952. Yamashiro, Tomoe. Kono sekai no katasumi de (In This Corner of the World). Tokyo: Iwanami shinsho, 1965, 1912–2004). Yamashiro, Tomoe, Genbaku ni ikite (Living Through the Atomic Bomb Disaster). Tokyo: Kei Shobō, 1991.

6 Hiroshima Museums Atomic Artefacts on the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Ann Sherif

Culture In his play “Chichi to kuraseba” (Face of Jizo, 1994) renowned author Inoue Hisashi dramatises the complex dynamic among atomic bomb artefacts, hibakusha, non-hibakusha, and spirits of the dead.1 The play is set in 1948 Hiroshima. Mitsue, a young librarian in mourning for her father who perished in the bombing, struggles with her own traumatic memories of the bomb. She finds comfort in her friendship with Kinoshita, a researcher who recently moved to Hiroshima, but is convinced that she should focus on honouring the memories of the bomb dead, given their agonised deaths and unknown sorrows, rather than acting on her affection for Kinoshita. Mitsue is also repelled by Kinoshita’s fervent project of collecting broken roof tiles and other atomic bomb artefacts from around the still ruined city. For him, the things are evidence of an unprecedented historical event and of scientific interest but, for Mitsue, the shards and melted metal bring back terrifying memories of the pain and destruction of the bombing. When Kinoshita turns to Mitsue for help with storing and preserving the growing collection of artefacts, she refuses. Through a series of conversations with the ghost of her father—and an encounter with a half-melted face of a bronze Jizo statue in the collection—Mitsue realises that the artefacts might be used to serve a greater good, and that the best way for her to honour her father’s memory is to move on with her own life, both personally and as someone who can offer a first-person account of nuclear weapons as testimony, efficacious in the protest against nuclear weapons and war. Since the seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 2020, two authoritative Hiroshima museums have shifted their approach to interpreting the meanings of the things that constitute the bulk of their collections—the diverse categories of atomic bomb materials (genbaku shiryō) and bombed materials (hibaku shiryō). Over the decades, the museums have interpreted in myriad ways the meanings of things left behind as relics of the dead—the tangible evidence of the existence of ­people vaporised on August 6, 1945—the things that were around these people, such as melted glass bottles, diaries, fused ceramic bowls, damaged

DOI: 10.4324/9781003320395-6

Hiroshima Museums  119 buildings, and charred trees. More complex are the meanings of the artefacts connected with the people who survived the bombing. The survivors, the hibakusha, saw with their own eyes the horrific aftermath of the bomb, and lived for years after, burdened by medical, psychological, and social effects. Those who survived know not only August 6, 1945, but also the complex history of war and empire that warns them against claims of victimhood. Many hibakusha still testified in their own voices on the seventy-fifth anniversary about what it was like to be present at the start of our nuclear age; they presented evidence that nations should stigmatise, rather than love, our nuclear stockpiles. Their testimony is a mediated form of remembrance. The prospect of losing these voices heavily informs anxiety over the future lack of experiential authority considered key to the act of witnessing.2 Antiwar activist Setsuko Thurlow, in her 2017 Nobel Lecture with ICAN, said, “we hibakusha became convinced that we must warn the world about these apocalyptic weapons. Time and again, we shared our testimonies”. The broader message of many hibakusha contributes to the work of knowing a more comprehensive history of war, imperialism, and militarism, while also understanding the value of reconciliation and peace defined by striving for justice, and not only the absence of conflict. Hundreds of thousands of things reside in two institutions in Hiroshima’s Peace Park, both of which take as central to their missions the collection, preservation, and interpretation of meanings of the atomic bomb material. In 2019—in the months leading up to the seventy-fifth anniversary—the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (hereafter, Peace Museum, 1955) reopened after a major renovation.3 The new installations approach the atomic bomb materials differently from past exhibits, in anticipation of the day when the hibakusha are no longer here. The nearby Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for Atomic Bomb Victims (hereafter, National Memorial Hall, 2002), as a relative newcomer to Hiroshima’s Peace Park, has also used this seventy-fifth anniversary to articulate more productive ways for hibakusha and non-hibakusha to utilise the artefacts in its collection to advocate for peace and to honour the memories of the dead. The meanings of these myriad bombed artefacts change over time. Even the identity of the Peace Memorial Museum was the subject of debate in the formative decades. Exhibits promoting nuclear power were mounted right next to the damaged artefact displays from the museum’s opening year. From the 1950s through to the 1970s, stakeholders proposed entirely different purposes for the Peace Museum, such as an art, history, or science museum, rather than an archive of atomic bomb materials. Some suggested that the artefacts should be moved to a new structure in a less conspicuous part of the park. This willingness to redefine the central building in the Peace Park in a way that would decentre the atomic bomb materials illustrates just how fraught and fluid the meanings of these objects have been. The museums are

120  Ann Sherif one cohort among many stakeholders faced with the challenging project of ongoing interpretation through which objects accrue meaning.4 This chapter examines the ways the staggering volume of tangible, physical things held by the two Hiroshima museums have accrued meaning and value in the context of changing hibakusha testimonial practices, local community engagement, the global nuclear regime, geopolitical changes, and memory discourses. The status of these more than 300,000 artefacts, combined between the two institutions, has changed over the past ­seventy-five years even as they, for the most part, remain firmly in the space of the Peace Park, near the hypocentre.5 This chapter employs the concepts of evidence, ­visible damage, museum practice, nuclear history, and chronological history to explore the ways that the shifting values of artefacts are linked to the ­m issions and museum practices of those institutions. The seventy-fifth anniversary has also seen a grassroots movement advocating for a reinterpretation of museum artefacts in relation to atomic bomb buildings (hibaku tatemono) in Hiroshima. This research draws on historical studies of Hiroshima museums and memory culture; interviews with curator Hashimoto Isao and former director Kanō Masaki of the Memorial Hall and local residents; and primary documents such as museum websites, first-person written accounts of museums by former directors such as Shiga Kenji of the Peace Museum, written and digital accounts by survivors, and the author’s observations of the Peace Museum and the National Memorial Hall on multiple visits.

Chronology Over the past seventy-five years, museum policy and exhibition practices and technology have evolved dramatically, as have audiences and geopolitical circumstances. The Peace Museum and the Memorial Hall have both played central economic roles in Hiroshima, a city that has assumed tourism as a key element in its economic base since 1949, only a few years after the bombings. The Hiroshima museums are often identified in relation to the complex formula of peace/nuclear allergy and victim/perpetrator binarism employed in the context of the US-Japan Alliance and the nuclear umbrella, not to speak of regional geopolitics.6 The seventy-fifth anniversary provided an opportunity to ascertain just how extensively these two institutions have changed over time, and thus their relative influence on discourses of war, peace, and Japan’s role in the world. The continued centrality and vibrancy of these two institutions, along with the Peace Park where they are situated “demonstrates the resilience of the narrative that the city of Hiroshima initiated in the immediate post-war period”.7 In contrast to the architectural fame and Tange Kenzō’s bold modernist concept communicated in black-and-white photos, as Carola Hein has noted, “The [Peace] museum is no longer a raw structure of remembrance in a destroyed

Hiroshima Museums  121 landscape. It has become an established site of education in a vital city”.8 What is being taught? Although they sit in close proximity inside the Peace Park, the respective affiliations of the two museums—one local (aligned with the locally based Hiroshima Peace Memorial Foundation) and the other a national museum— exhibit the contrast between the local and national projects of fashioning the story of Hiroshima, the world’s first atomic-bombed city. The contrasting objectives of the two museums seem clear: Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is, at its core and in its name, a shiryōkan (archives, resource centre, museum), a “memorial” (記念); Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for Atomic Bomb Victims includes a word for “prayer” (祈念).9 In 1949, under the watchful eyes of the Allied Occupation Forces, atomic bomb artefacts such as disfigured glass and tiles collected by local geologist Nagaoka Shogo and others were simply set out on tables in a newly built community centre room, designated the A-Bomb Reference Material Display Room, and open to the public. When the Peace Museum first opened in 1955, exhibits featured mostly artefacts in glass cases with simple object labels, along with matted photographs set on easels. The wide-open galleries of Tange Kenzō’s modernist building also accommodated more elaborate displays about the marvels of atomic power—atoms for peace— set up within a year of its opening, just as US and Japanese authorities and industry were advancing the nuclear power industry on both sides of the Pacific. In 1958, a major “Recovery Exposition” opened in the building to much fanfare. During that long first decade after the bombing—a time of recovery and rebuilding after the war—most people who visited the museums had themselves experienced the bombing or had immediate knowledge of the ruined city. But what happens to those things in the museum when audiences broaden from local to national and international? As museum practices change and the museums take up identity within national projects of collective memory and values? And—in the case of Hiroshima and Nagasaki— as the Cold War world order leads to a nuclear arms race and apocalyptic threat that add new, unimagined global meanings to these formerly local war-damaged goods. In the 1970s, the city of Hiroshima undertook the first major renovation of the Peace Museum building with many of these questions in mind. Subsequently, the Peace Museum made numerous changes to existing exhibits, installations of new and different kinds of materials and information, renovations of the original building, and construction of a new wing and connective walkways. The scope of this chapter allows for consideration of changes that affected the status of a-bomb materials by change in exhibition policy and technique, and by the relative emphasis placed on a-bomb materials. Eventually, conservation of the increasingly fragile and valued objects also became a priority, as the museum enlisted experts from the Ministry

122  Ann Sherif of Culture in Tokyo and an international conservation agency and the first HVAC10 system was installed. A new library was established and collections of written accounts and histories of the bombing were catalogued. The museum even displayed art objects, including a massive Atomic Bomb Mural created by the well-known painters Toshi and Iri Maruki for the museum.11 With the number of domestic and foreign visitors skyrocketing and the need to modernise, the city hired the museum’s first professional curator in 1974. From the late 1960s the museum started offering audio guides and brochures in different languages—English, Spanish, Chinese, to Korean and so on. The staff continued to do minor alterations to exhibits throughout the 1980s. From the early 1990s, the Peace Museum undertook a thorough renovation that aimed to provide a more thorough historical contextualisation for the artefacts, and expand the variety of displays to include both authentic objects and models of a-bombed architecture and technological innovations such as the use of videos in the galleries. These innovations in installation were accompanied by further professionalisation and expansion of the curatorial staff, who also took on new projects such as developing a catalogue and establishing a database of museum artefacts and object holdings. The late 1990s also saw a significant shift in museum administration: the city of Hiroshima “consigned administrative operation of the museum to the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, an extra-governmental organization, in 1998”.12 The future National Memorial Hall (2002) also falls under the administrative umbrella of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. In addition to providing a more dramatic experience in the galleries through cutting-edge exhibition techniques, the Peace Museum saw, as an integral part of change, the construction of a new East Building designed for a historical exhibit and as gateway to the museum. Anticipating local and national reaction to the changes, the city saw fit to explain the principles that guided the new 1990s installation, and especially the emphasis on history. First, the exhibits highlight the “inhumanity of war and value of peace” by explaining and reflecting on the lessons of the modern history of the city of Hiroshima and the city’s role in Imperial Japan’s road to war and the experience and “reality” of that war. Second, the museum in the “first atom-bombed city” conveys the instantaneous and long-lived effects of the atomic bomb as a weapon of mass destruction, and advocates for abolition of nuclear weapons. Finally, the museum explores various efforts to build and preserve peace, based on the lessons of history, and proactively advocates for peace.13 The East Building historical exhibits were balanced in their presentation and installed according to the highest contemporary museum standards. So intent was the museum on maintaining a fair and thorough narration of the broader contexts and reasons for the atomic bombing that curators, in response to concerns expressed by visitors and the media, expanded the section on the Manhattan Project and US President Truman’s decision to

Hiroshima Museums  123 authorise the dropping of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs.14 The East Building exhibits, with their historical grounding and historical video clips, counter the narratives of victimisation and historical amnesia that had been one of the current atomic discourses in Japan. Visitors could watch videos of hibakusha talking about their experiences. Referring to the 1990s historical exhibit, scholar Yuki Miyamoto concluded that the use of personal memories of the bomb, and the continuing testimony of the hibakusha, are a large part of the public’s ability to understand a contextualized and nuanced history of World War II rather than one that hides a history of aggression with progress and victimization.15 Having thoroughly studied the history of Hiroshima and the bombing, visitors then proceeded to the second floor to the exhibits about the effects of the bomb that featured a-bomb artefacts and explanations of the science of the bomb, and a diorama with wax figures representing horribly injured people groping through the city’s ruins. A small display about nuclear weapons in the contemporary world was sandwiched oddly between these two major sections of the exhibit. It was around this time in the 1990s, when the Hiroshima Peace Museum had mounted its most thoroughly historicised and balanced exhibition to date, that in the US a highly politicised controversy raged about the Smithsonian Institution’s fiftieth anniversary of World War II proposal to exhibit artefacts from the Hiroshima Peace Museum along with the Enola Gay, the B-29 Bomber that dropped the first atomic bomb in a war. In Japan, there had already been public controversies over Japan’s status as perpetrator of militarism and colonialism, war responsibility, and the contradictory claims of pacifist Japan that sat under the US nuclear umbrella. With these debates came, to many, “a more complex perception that innocence, guilt, and responsibility may coexist at both individual and collective levels”.16 Indeed, the thorough historicisation in the Peace Museum’s East Building and the three principles articulated by the city were a direct outcome of these widespread debates in Japan. What the Smithsonian controversy revealed to the world was just how entrenched in the US was the “triumphal narrative” of World War II that tolerated only the orthodox view that the use of nuclear weapons—and aerial bombing in general—was ethically and militarily unambiguous. Some American stakeholders insisted that display of the Enola Gay’s fuselage alone was enough to tell the story of the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombing because the artefact “speaks for itself”. However, as John Dower noted, “artifacts do not in fact speak for themselves”.17 For critics of the Smithsonian’s original script which included things that represented the human cost of weapons of mass destruction, a charred bento box belonging to a high school student was the artefact that “obsessed and alarmed critics of the exhibition” most. Dower explains, “the little lunchbox far outweighed

124  Ann Sherif the glistening Superfortress in the preceding room. It would linger longer in most visitors’ memories”.18 Evident in the contrast between the Smithsonian approach and that of the Peace Museum to the same artefacts in the 1990s is a conceptual gap. The US fiftieth anniversary discourse depended on museums contributing to celebration of what was understood as a “good war” because the US played such a key role in the victory over fascism and militarism. For the Hiroshima museum, the ordinary and intimate atom bomb artefacts were offered as evidence of the inhumanity of war in general and nuclear weapons in particular. This use of the atomic bomb artefacts as part (but not the entirety) of the meanings of the bombing represented prominent aspirational discourses that it would be possible for Japan, having confronted its own militarist and imperial history, to embrace a humanist national identity and to contribute to international stability by testifying to the horrors of nuclear weapons and war.

Artefacts and History in the Peace Museum’s 2019 Renovation To visitors familiar with the Peace Museum’s previous iteration, one of the most striking changes in the 2019 installation is the omission of a prominent linear history chronology narrative necessary to frame and explain the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. The opening main gallery of the previous 1990s exhibition presented a thorough and engrossing history of pre-1945 Hiroshima: a coastal military and industrial city (gunto) contributing to Imperial Japan’s empire building and modern wars that also distinguished itself as a centre of education in Western Japan. The success of the former opening gallery in interesting visitors in a complex history also turned out to be its downfall. Visitors were spending so much time poring over the historical photos, watching video clips, and reading text in this historical gallery that many had to rush through the exhibits that graphically displayed the horrific damage caused by the bomb. School and tour groups were limited by the departure time of their tour buses, so visitors could not linger on the representation of the bombed. This was the conclusion reached by the curatorial staff as it was conducting an initial study to determine usage patterns in the museum as part of planning commenced in 2003 for the major renovation to open in 2019.19 As a result, the decision was made to radically alter the Peace Museum’s exhibits. Because few visitors are aware how frequently and extensively the Hiroshima Memorial Museum has recast its message—and treatment of artefacts in particular—in response to changing historical conditions, critics of the supposed “Japanese” lack of remorse for its past militarism and imperialism often accuse the Peace Museum as being a primary agent of enforcing the victimisation narrative.20 The chronology detailed above, however, reveals the responsiveness of the museum to geopolitical contexts

Hiroshima Museums  125 and ethical dimensions of the bombing. It would not be an exaggeration to say that, although the building remains much the same, visitors in each decade experienced a very different Peace Museum because of the shifting curatorial approaches, especially to objects. Between its founding in 1955 and the fiftieth anniversary of the bombing, the Peace Museum transformed its treatment of a-bomb materials numerous times in response to museum practice changes, community involvement, and historical change. Although the National Memorial Hall was a latecomer to Hiroshima’s Peace Park, its holdings of a distinct type of artefact and its ongoing struggle for acceptance in the community contributed to increasingly innovative approaches. Let us now consider the ways the two institutions have approached artefacts and a-bomb material in the years leading up to the seventy-fifth anniversary.

Objects at the Peace Memorial Museum on the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Some of the 2019 Peace Museum’s use of objects adheres to past practices, while in other ways the framing of artefacts is novel, reflecting changes in museum practice, politics, and visitors. What kinds of artefacts are in the museum’s vast holdings? In what ways has the Peace Museum changed its approach to bombed objects and what is at stake in this transformation? A variety of physical objects fall under the category of shiryō (materials). Among these artefacts, curators differentiate between the personal effects (ihin) of people who died in the bombing or of hibakusha, on the one hand, and architectural relics retrieved from the ruins and rubble (“A-bombed artefacts”), on the other. For exhibit, the artefacts preferably display evidence of the effects of the bombing. Labels function to animate the material objects, and to suggest meanings to visitors. For some object labels, the museum emphasises the fact that personal effects provide evidence the persons existed (ikita akashi). Is this because in some cases no physical evidence of the corpse remained? The words of survivors offer more nuanced meanings. For example, elder hibakusha Mr. Hosokawa Koji (aged 92) aims to provide contextualisation of artefacts belonging to his sister (and donated to the museum by his family) by volunteering as a docent at the Peace Museum: Mr. Hosokawa wavered between lingering affection for the belongings of his sister and hope that the items would be useful to others through the donation. Along with his enduring efforts to testify to the public about his A-bombing experience, he continued to serve as a Hiroshima Peace Volunteer, a role that involves introducing details of the museum’s exhibits to visitors. “The actual A-bombed materials urge the viewers to consider the devastation of the atomic bombing as something that

126  Ann Sherif happened to them”, he said. “Each of the artifacts in particular serves as proof that the victims once lived. The items have a power of persuasion that is different from that of survivors’ testimonies”.21 Certain personal effects, such as the iconic carbonised lunchbox, a burned tricycle, and a watch that stopped at 8:15 (the time of the bombing), have been the object of extensive contemplation and even controversy. These images gain symbolic power as they “come to stand metonymically for the event as a whole”. While efficient, such iconic images may “have problematic consequences” as “they give the observer the illusion of a facile grasp of complicated events, which in turn leads to an elision of the past in favor of easily accessible symbols”.22 The museum currently features in considerable volume other intimate items of daily use, such as charred clothing, clothing stained with dried blood, and diaries. The Peace Museum website refers to the ihin as “belongings left by the victims”. Finally, exhibits on the effects of the bomb (blast, heat, radiation) include objects such as keloid scarring samples, discoloured roof tiles, fused, misshapen glass bottles, among others.

Soliciting Donations of Personal Effects In collaboration with the National Hall, NHK local affiliates, and local newspapers, both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki peace museums have actively solicited donations of personal effects, memoirs, and photos, with the guarantee that the objects will be preserved and used in a manner aligning with the museums’ mission “to convey the atomic bomb experience and wish for eternal peace”. The success of these campaigns in soliciting personal effects for preservation and public display indicates the high level of trust and acceptance by bereaved families. These entities have conducted several solicitation campaigns nationwide and in a manner that departed from decades of governmental and legal wrangling about who qualified as a hibakusha. A publicity brochure for the sixtieth anniversary (2005) solicitation noted that bereaved families who donate photographs will “not be asked for the date of death or whether their relative was in possession of a hibakusha kenkō techō” (a government-issued booklet certifying that one is a hibakusha eligible for medical benefits). The solicitation for donations of genbaku shiryō also articulate to the families a frame for the potential meanings and value of the objects: “Please send written accounts of the bombing that will relate to memorialisation of the deceased” (shibotsusha no tsuito ni tsunagaru mono o oyose kudasai). The authenticity of bombed material (hibaku shiryō)—personal effects such as clothing and watches that people were wearing when exposed to the bomb—will “directly communicate the reality of the bombing” (hibaku no jijitsu o chokusetsu monogataru). The flyer asking for donations suggests a possible grouping in a museum display, with a life-size photo of a bento box with its charred contents and a smaller photo of the thirteen-year-old

Hiroshima Museums  127 boy who perished clutching the lunchbox. The adjacent text describes the mix of the ordinary, the bizarre wartime, and the horrific bomb elements of the morning of August 6: his mother discovered his remains 600 m from the hypocentre; at the sight of the lunchbox, her memory of her son’s happiness earlier that morning when she handed him the bento containing a dish she had prepared with the first harvest of potatoes from their garden, meagre though it was. Instead of school, the boy was going out to join his classmates in pulling down buildings to make fire breaks, in preparation for incendiary bombings. Reflecting on the established practice of soliciting donations from bereaved families, the museum’s first director, Nagaoka Shogo, asserted the importance of viewing the objects not only as historical relics, but also in honouring them as things imbued with the intentions (kokoro) of the donor families. The 2020 museum website promises to potential donors that ­artefacts will facilitate “the voices of their souls” to “serve to convey the reality of the A bombings and to emphasize the importance of peace”.23 In these ways, the meanings of objects narrated by the museums have shifted over time. Whether in enthusiastic compliance or silent, exhausted resistance of the mobilisation for total war, Hiroshima people woke on August 6 amidst the myriad things that are now artefacts in the museum. In no time at all, the Hiroshima atom bomb rendered a city of such quotidian objects and urban structures into rubble and damaged goods; it killed most of the people who owned and used these things, who dwelt and worked and moved through the city’s spaces. Visitors to the Peace Museum in 2020 have intimate encounters with a subset of these iconic objects and their personal histories, but will have to search harder to find the broader historical context.

Concepts of History in the Museum Even as visitors move through the space of the museum, they “also traverse the historical time represented within the exhibit”.24 The Peace Museum’s 2019 exhibit conceives of historical time as that of nuclear history. August 6, 1945, is conflated with the day of one’s visit to the Peace Museum (Figure 6.1). Historical time, in other words, is framed by the emergence of the bomb and its continued grip on the world. The historical time traversed in the August 6 corridor renders a past day as the present, eliding everything that led up to that day as well as the complex history that transpired in between the day of the atomic bombing and now. The terror of nuclear weapons was visited on the world on August 6, 1945, and persists today, your day in the Peace Museum. It is not the case that the 2019 Peace Museum totally erases the complex history of the Asia-Pacific War/World War II from view. Indeed, there is a small gallery near the end of the route—as if an afterthought—with a standard historiographical chronology of the bombing as part of a linear, sequential

128  Ann Sherif

Figure 6.1 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum—black wall with text on right and large B/W photos of swimming pool and students on left, August 6, 1945, photo by Ann Sherif.

narrative of twentieth-century wars. Moreover, the primary goal of the 2019 exhibit is not the presentation of a historical narrative that explains the why and when of the people and city of Hiroshima and the atomic bomb in 1945. Rather, the exhibit is designed to create a multi-­sensory, affective experience of the a-bomb artefacts that stimulates the imagination of individuals, relating to the objects and feeling a sense of empathy. In multiple ways, the museum narrative enforces the message that the atomic bombing of Hiroshima was an event that transpired outside of history. Wall labels, and the website present this sentence without context: “A single atomic bomb indiscriminately killed tens of thousands of people, profoundly disrupting and altering the lives of the survivors”.25 The exhibition design itself reinforces this message of as-if-everyday-life “Hiroshima before the bombing”, by quickly moving the visitor from an introductory exhibit consisting of a corridor/walkway with large-scale photographs and few labels (floor) directly into an extensive substantive gallery titled “Hiroshima on August 6”. The exhibit aims to evoke an experience of simultaneity (contemporaneity) of the visitor’s present moment with August 6, 1945, and not of linear

Hiroshima Museums  129 history. The long entrance corridor ending in the wall label “August 6, 1945” is the type of transitional space that takes the visitor from quotidian realm to a memorial space—a long space that “ritually symbolises passage from one realm into another as visitors enter the sacred space of memorialisation”.26 These introductory exhibits leading to “August 6, 1945” are designed to keep the visitor walking: floor-to-ceiling black-and-white photographs of a shopping street in Hiroshima (ca. 1935) titled “Hiroshima before the bombing” followed by “A lost way of life”, another large and long photographic representation of the ruined city, composites of US military photographs taken during the months after the bombing, which coincide with the start of the Allied Occupation (October to November). The corridor also features a larger-than-life black-and-white portrait photograph of an injured girl and a wall label “The Reality of the Bombing”. The lighting and flooring changes as one moves from the corridor to a set of galleries with dimmer lighting and intense sensory stimulation by means of spotlighted atom bomb artefacts, backlit wall panels, intimately clustered groupings of a photo, object, and object label. The elements of design of the exhibits include short object labels that emphasise universal categories of experience (wearing clothing, carrying a lunchbox, writing in a diary). Aesthetic techniques, representational strategies, and spatial design and materials contribute to creating the sensory and affective experience and, in turn, invoke feelings of empathy for the people in the photos. The 2019 reinstallation features a compelling, detail-driven exhibit “Hibakusha” section that follows “Hiroshima on August 6/Devastation on August 6”. The Hibakusha theme is divided into two parts: “Cries of the Soul”, centring on personal effects of people who died in the bombing, and “To Live”, which offers mostly photographs about the challenges survivors faced. A dominant layout is the grouping of a personal effect, a photograph of its owner, and a label that identifies the person and object. One display case, for example, brings together a government-issued khaki jacket, a photo of a man “Isao Kawamura” (“then 29”) wearing that jacket, a short text explaining what he was doing at the time of the bombing (working on building demolition), and the injuries from the bombing (injured leg and radiation poisoning) and his death. Many of the labels also include stories about family members caring for the injured and their emotional reactions to loss. Such exhibits impart meaning to these otherwise ubiquitous objects, by conveying that each has a unique story. A striking exhibit titled “Children Killed in the Bombing” features more than twenty items of children’s clothing, bags, and hats laid out carefully on a large horizontal surface, their damaged condition accentuated by a black background and dramatic spotlighting (Figure 6.2). The horizontal presentation of the clothing, as well as the focus on them, is reminiscent of artist Ishiuchi Miyako’s work (intense colour photos of Hiroshima clothing artefacts in clear relief on brightly lit white backgrounds)27 featured in Linda Hoagland’s documentary film. Ishiuchi’s

130  Ann Sherif

Figure 6.2  Peace Museum clothing display, photo by Ann Sherif.

collection of photographs promotes a specific, ahistoric interaction between viewer and image. Makeda Best describes Ishiuchi’s approach and concept this way: “Instead of providing specific contextual information, Ishiuchi forces viewers to imagine the lives of their owners, while insisting that they had lives prior to the events of August 1945. Trauma is not the only feeling registered by these objects”.28 In contrast to Ishiuchi’s photographs that represent individual items of clothing in bright colours like purple, pink and lively patterned—mostly women and girl’s clothing and other personal effects such as dolls and shoes—as they were when she photographed them, the Peace Museum exhibit offers the visitor a pallet mostly of actual objects “left behind” by Hiroshima’s children who died in the bombing: caps, jackets (androgynous), rucksacks, khaki, olive green, browns and blues scattered with the tops in different directions across the surface. The unique histories of some of these damaged and stained clothing are presented, while the variety and number on the horizontal surface serve to emphasise the scale of the number of people who were affected by the bombing. As Makeda Best has proposed, Ishiuchi’s work engages “the objects as communicative material presences rather than as mute or self-evident artifacts”, with the “role of the viewer” transformed “from distant observer to immediate witness and participant

Hiroshima Museums  131 in this encounter, which elicits an imaginative dialogue with the unknown [the original owner] and the reckoning of known facts”. In this way, displays of clothing in the museum—like Ishiuchi’s photographs of the other items of a-bombed clothing—make “space for the past and present to coexist—as living memorials”.29 As in other contemporary museums focusing on war and mass violence, the intimacy and immediacy of the exhibits in the Peace Museum is one means by which the museum enforces identity with “larger collectivities” who “feel personally connected to a traumatic event they have not personally experienced”.30 That collective identity may be with Japan as the “only atom bombed nation”, or with nuclear age citizens who feel threatened by nuclear warheads, even as they may not understand how nuclear stockpiles came into existence or why they dominate world politics. Because of its goal of taking visitors directly to a horrific day of nuclear war and encouraging them to identify with collective trauma, the 2019 Hiroshima Peace Museum exhibit willingly sets aside the task of a thorough telling of the complex history of the Asia-Pacific War. Narration and interpretation of that complex history in any level of detail would have required the museum to grapple with the ethical questions of economic, technological, and anti-democratic social structures of oppression and injustice that go beyond even the binarism of perpetrator and victim. Another approach contributing to the erasure of history in the 2019 Peace  Memorial Museum exhibits is the use of labels that describe as ­matter-of-fact the many extraordinary things that people were required to do in wartime Hiroshima (and indeed in most other cities in Japan). In order to conflate the visitor’s moment and that of those who experience the 1945 bombing, the museum and other discourses forefront the notion of everyday life: the people who experienced the extraordinary bombing had ordinary, everyday lives, just like those of the visitors. Daily life in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945—just one day in the many days of Total War—was not the ordinary daily life that many enjoy more than s­eventy-five years later. Willingly or not, people in Hiroshima were challenged each day with the extreme scarcity and precarity demanded as sacrifice by the authoritarian and militarist regime of the last days of Imperial Japan. Everyone in Hiroshima was only too aware that the horrific technological and human violence of the global war lurked just outside the city. Even in these arduous circumstances, people that morning rose and got dressed in monpei trousers or khaki uniforms; children carried their meagre lunch in aluminium bento boxes to their wartime work sites; women peered through their eyeglasses as they stitched the seams of soldiers’ boots at the Army Depot factory; young men wrote in their diaries before they left their barracks for guard duty at a city bridge. Crowds of people were on the street car on their way to work at the munitions factory or radio station, their labour dedicated to waging war in Asia and the South Pacific and maintaining and expanding the colonised lands Japan had occupied.

132  Ann Sherif Of course, residents of Hiroshima did ordinary things like eating and working. The 2019 exhibit encourages the visitor to view as normal the many bizarre tasks of wartime daily life.31 Middle school students were not at school. No. Instead they were mobilised by the state to tear down buildings in order to create firebreaks in preparation for fire bombings of the city. Oddly, the exhibit does not emphasise the thoroughgoing Total War mobilisation policies as the context for stories of thirteen- to fourteen-yearold children, their school days disrupted by a state that mobilised them to prepare the city for fire raining from the sky, children whose calorie intake is barely adequate because of wartime scarcity. Just how fortuitous survival in the bombing was—and the mobilisation resulted in the cruel coincidence that it was younger people who were concentrated near the hypocentre of the city—was emphasised by former Memorial Hall Director Kanō. He recalled that his parents survived the bombing with relatively minor injuries partly because they were both sixteen at the time, and therefore not mobilised in the centre of the city for labour (fire breaks) like the thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds were. The hypocentre was in the middle of Hiroshima’s business district, but also in proximity to multiple military facilities, such as the headquarters and training grounds at Hiroshima Castle. The flattened sense of historical time is compounded by the curatorial choice of displaying “a-bomb pictures” drawn by hibakusha as a way to convey life in Hiroshima on August 6 (Figure 6.3).

Figure 6.3  Peace Museum survivors’ drawings, photo by Ann Sherif.

Hiroshima Museums  133 This curatorial decision suggests a shift in the perceived value of assigned authentic artefacts over constructed objects. Long public debates ensued when the museum introduced a diorama of wax figures of badly injured survivors walking through the ruins. When the museum announced the decision to exclude them from the 2019 installation, public comment ran high. The rationale behind the removal was reports that some visitors said they felt frightened of the sight of the wax figures; other community stakeholders strenuously argued that visitors came to Hiroshima to see real things from the time of the bombing, and not models. Real artefacts are valorised in the 2019 exhibit. Nonetheless, one of the main galleries narrates “Devastation on August 6” with a mix of the a-bomb pictures with black-and-white historic photographs of horribly injured survivors arranged across large backlit wall panels.32 These hand-drawn a-bomb drawings and paintings (genbaku no e) were selected from thousands that were submitted to the local NHK affiliate in 1974 to solicit testimonies from hibakusha in the form of pictures and pictures with text, and again in a follow-up project in 2002. The 1970s project to encourage hibakusha to create visual representations of their experience of nuclear warfare from the ground was, according to historian John Dower, at the time “an entirely new window on the atomic-bomb experience” that commenced as part of annual practices of “intensified reflection on the atomic bombs and agitation for nuclear disarmament” and was, furthermore, part and parcel of a vigorous anti-nuclear movement and national discourse of peace that evolved in the decades after the bombing.33 The intimate images by hibakusha, in other words, differ in perspective and historical context from the diaries and accounts produced during the war or in the days just after, as well as from photographs. The museum thus implicitly endorses the representational authenticity of drawings by hibakusha, done decades after the events, of what they remember of their experiences and scenes they saw on the day of and after the bombing. Although a small selection of matted pictures from the same large set of a-bomb drawings from the Museum’s holdings (from 1974 and 2002 projects) do reappear later in the “Hibakusha” gallery, in a display called “Emotion Carried by the Brush”, the gap in time between the bombing and the drawing is explained in the thematic label, not in relation to specific years or points in history, but in relation to the individual hibakusha’s life: “years later the memories did not fade”. The object labels explain the hibakusha’s age at the time of the bombing and at the time of drawing. The point of the labels is thus that the individuals were haunted by memories of the traumatic event for decades, and not how they and the world around them may have changed over that period of time. Several visitors have noted that the 2019 revision toned down the largescale graphic representations of human suffering. The Washington Post reported that Howard [Kakita, an American hibakusha and his spouse]… Irene visited Hiroshima and its Peace Museum. It was either his fourth or fifth

134  Ann Sherif trip back, and he noted that the exhibitions had become less graphic and less likely to shock visitors.34 Anecdotally, Memorial Hall curator Hashimoto Isao recalls that, for his adult daughter, it was precisely those shocking displays such as the wax figures that left such a powerful impression of the message of the museum on her: destructive nuclear weapons should be delegitimised and shunned. The value of such graphic elements struck her when she returned to Hiroshima as a young adult and discovered that the wax figures were not part of the 2019 renovation.35

Curators and Visitors: Shaping Experiences in the 2019 Peace Museum The 2019 exhibition reveals another facet of the ways the displays seek to shape visitor experience in the museum. In contrast to cohorts who visit the museum to learn about military World War II, history of mass violence, or wartime society, former director Shiga Kenji identifies other potential visitors for whom the artefact exhibits provide an affective and empathetic experience with individuals of the past. Shiga reports his surprise at the reaction of some university students to his guest lecture on the role of artefacts in the Peace Museum’s mission of conveying the atom bomb experience. His talk centred on a black-and-white photograph of artefacts from the Peace Museum’s collection—specifically a set of instruments used by an injured midwife to deliver a baby only hours after the bombing—and also introduced some of artist Ishiuchi Miyako’s vivid colour photographs of personal effects held by the museum. Students’ enthusiastic engagement with the images suggested to director Shiga the “power of artifacts to evoke [in each visitor] a very personal experience of empathy and being there (tōjisha kankaku)”. It was specifically the individuality of experience evoked by imaginative engagement with the image/artefact that the college students found compelling and novel. This intimate framing of photo/image with a short, personal vignette contrasts with the museum’s ongoing use of artefacts to demonstrate the extreme power of the bomb or past practice of situating the things in broader historical narratives that are inevitably laden with ethical and political complexity.36 In 2002, Lisa Yoneyama concluded that “Hiroshima’s memorial icons have, for the most part, fruitfully allowed space and occasions for… differences to be aired and for difficult issues to be debated openly”, and that they do not suppress “the differences that inevitably arise around any site of commemoration”.37 The pre-2019 Peace Museum’s thorough historicisation of the complexity of Hiroshima’s history and the bombing—and in particular the fact that “the museum’s references to the city’s military history and involvement in colonial expansion have triggered debates”—contributed to Yoneyama’s conclusion. As Akiko Takenaka and Laura Hein have noted,

Hiroshima Museums  135 the Smithsonian Enola Gay controversy was a turning point for historical museums: “The essential point is that museum professionals rethought their relationship with their audiences as one in which curators and visitors collaborate in creating the narratives they use to understand the world around them”.38 However, history is not a prominent part of visitors’ experiences of the 2019 installation. Former director Shiga reframes the debate over the museum through a well-established dichotomy in museum functions: museum as temple versus museum as forum. By advancing the Hiroshima museum as the forum, Shiga refuses the mission advanced by some members of the museum staff: exhibits that are easy to understand, straightforward, accurate. Instead he argues that the Peace Museum should play the role of the forum, informing visitors and promoting careful reflection and debate, rather than serving as site for collection and preservation of sacralised objects to be worshipped.39 He quotes Oliver Stone’s reaction to his visit to Peace Memorial Museum: he described the museum as a “question”.

National Memorial Hall on the Seventy-Fifth Anniversary The second significant institution in the Peace Park is the National Memorial Hall. As part of its commemorative and educational missions, the Memorial Hall has in its archives another type of genbaku shiryō: 140,000 a-bomb accounts—from testimonials to letters and diaries and videos. Although the Hall does not house personal effects or material artefacts, the architectural form of the building itself refers to a-bomb artefacts. The building’s design, in turn, underscores the bombing as part of history. The structure features circular spaces in order to echo the iconic clock stopped at 8:15 am, the time when the atom bomb exploded (Figure 6.4). The cylindrical form repeats in several forms: the 8:15 clock sculpture in the rubble on the ground-level roof; the water feature at the centre poses the question of time stopping in the midst of destruction. The visitor’s time is separated by historical time from the moment of destruction and death. A window reveals a slice of substratum of the ground as tangible evidence that the event happened in proximity to where the visitor stands (Figure 6.5). In these ways, the Memorial Hall does communicate a concept of historical time, of cause and effect, rather than flattened time. Although rubble (garakuta) is incorporated into the outermost architecture and landscaping, the Memorial Hall itself allows two focuses: reverence for the atomic bomb dead and an interplay of spatial design and textual narratives aimed at creating a linear narrative of the bombing (and their deaths) as having happened in the past and in the context of historical events.40 The circular walkway slopes down into the memorial space (as if walking back in time), where visitors can read labels about the history of the bombing. Arriving in the circular space of the Hall of Remembrance, the visitor finds “a place for paying respect to the bomb dead”. The visitor turns around to

136  Ann Sherif

Figure 6.4 One of the Memorial Hall’s cylindrical forms evoking historical time, the 8:15 clock sculpture in the rubble on the ground-level roof, photo with permission of Hashimoto Isao.

view the tiled walls showing a 360-degree panoramic photograph of bombed Hiroshima as seen from the hypocentre (Figure 6.6). The mosaic is made of 140,000 tiles (the number of dead by the end of 1945). In this space, visitors are encouraged to “realise/feel deeply that the city was destroyed in a moment, think of the dead, and pray”. The National Memorial Hall is a latecomer to the Peace Park and, as such, is controversial. Not coincidentally, the Hall’s location is off to one side of the commanding north-south axis that links the Peace Museum, Cenotaph, and Atomic Bomb Dome integral to Tange Kenzō’s original Peace Park design. While made discreet by trees and a low profile, the National Memorial Hall was built insistently close to its competitor, the Cenotaph (irei hi), which had been the sole—and central—memorial space for the bomb dead (Figure 6.7). The Peace Park includes numerous memorial steles and structures to memorialise specific groups of people, but the Cenotaph is designed for all of the dead. Not surprisingly, some local residents questioned the national government’s motives in building such a costly memorial structure more than fifty years after the bombing. Advocacy for financial compensation and

Hiroshima Museums  137

Figure 6.5 Slice of substratum of ground beneath the hypocentre, Memorial Hall, photo with permission of Hashimoto Isao.

medical support for the hibakusha dragged out over decades. For years, advocacy and activist group Nihon Hidankyo (Japan Confederation of Aand H-Bomb Sufferers Organisations) pressed for financial compensation for each hibakusha from the national government, but instead the Atomic Bomb Survivors’ Assistance Act (1994–1995) promised only “We shall keep a record of the precious lives lost to the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki” (Article 41).41 Notably Hidankyo also actively engaged

138  Ann Sherif

Figure 6.6 Mosaic walls form the circular space around the water feature in the Hall of Remembrance, National Memorial Hall, photo with permission of Hashimoto Isao.

Figure 6.7 Curved stairway from ground level to main entrance of Memorial Hall, photo permission of Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims.

Hiroshima Museums  139 with the national government in shaping the narrative told in the National Memorial Hall, both in how the a-bomb dead were memorialised and how the bombing that killed them was historically contextualised. Although the government did not acquiesce to every demand, Hidankyo did succeed in adding to the historical narrative that Japan’s pursuit of war—and the atomic ­bombings—was a result of “mistaken national policy” (ayamatta kokusaku).42 The National Memorial Hall states its mission as follows: Mourning the lives lost in the atomic bombing, we pledge to convey the truth of this tragedy throughout Japan and the world, pass it on to the future, learn the lessons of history, and build a peaceful world free from nuclear weapons.43 In addition to the memorial space, the national museum offers access to its archives, as well as interpretive readings aimed at school groups engaging in “peace education” and thematic multimedia exhibitions. By reading and hearing these stories, the museum proposes that visitors can “experience the hearts and words of atomic bomb survivors”. The materials accepted by the museums include photograph (portraits) of atom bomb dead (genbaku shibotsusha no iei), accounts written by people who experienced the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (hibaku taikenki), in the forms of letters, diaries, and notes (shuki), obituaries and accounts of the dead “written by family and friends”. Atomic Bomb Victims registers the names and photographs of victims of the atomic bombing to mourn their passing and to convey the reality of the tremendous loss of life. Because the hibaku materials in its holdings are written and filmed accounts of the bombing, along with photographs, the Memorial Hall has evolved in its approach to employing these text- and image-bearing artefacts in keeping with its mission. The following sections consider the Memorial Hall’s distinctive methods of programming and facilitating engagement with its voluminous collection of accounts through live and recorded programming, as well as its approach to exhibition and display of materials in a limited space on a rotating basis. The Memorial Hall’s collection of oral and written accounts of the bombing build on more than seventy years of testimonial practices by Hiroshima and Nagasaki hibakusha, as scholars Lisa Yoneyama, Chad Diehl, Robert Jacobs and others have described. The Memorial Hall’s accounts are linked to the Peace Museum’s programme of “A-bomb Legacy Successors”, described on the Museum’s website as learning about “the A-bomb survivor’s experience and give testimony on behalf of them”. The local Chugoku Shinbun newspaper and its English website Hiroshima Peace Media Center are among a number of local and national media outlets with long-term features on hibakusha testimonials and interviews.44

140  Ann Sherif

Diaries in the National Hall’s Special Gallery In contrast to the open spaces used to encourage contemplation and memorialisation of the atomic bomb dead in the Memorial Hall and Gallery on the lower floor, the exhibit gallery on the entrance level allows the museum to mount small thematic special exhibits about the history of people’s experiences related to the bombings. The gallery has adopted a distinct approach to the display of these artefacts. The special exhibits may include personal effects such as diaries, touch screen monitors to read, and a thirty-minute video on a flat-screen panel viewed within the gallery. Curator Hashimoto Isao described the goals of special exhibits and other tools of museum education: We use trial and error to discover what kinds of exhibits and efforts are effective in promoting visitors’ understanding of the current situation surrounding nuclear weapons and to make them feel a sense of crisis about it (kikikan o idaite morau tame ni).45 For the seventy-fifth anniversary of the bombing, the National Memorial Hall used the gallery for a special exhibit to explore themes related to the lives of those memorialised and, in particular, the diaries they left behind. The hibakusha’s diary, as presented in this exhibit, is a means of documentation of the experiences of wartime and the bombing, and also has a ­transformative effect on the non-hibakusha, spurring her to action.

Figure 6.8 Visitors watching film in Special Gallery in Memorial Hall, photo permission of Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims.

Hiroshima Museums  141 In anticipation of the seventy-fifth anniversary, the Hall mounted a special exhibition, “A Tale of Two Brothers Across Time: Hiroshima Artist Gorō Shikoku and the Diary of Naoto on His Deathbed”, that models a relationship between an empathetic non-hibakusha, a hibakusha and the dead (January 2019–February 2020) (Figure 6.8). The seventy-fifth anniversary special exhibit “A Tale of Two Brothers” also included paintings and drawings by local artist and activist Shikoku Gorō, about his brother Naoto’s diary and his own art art activism. Shikoku Gorōs’ activism was sparked by reading Naoto’s diary that he kept, even after being injured in the bombing, until the day he died. The film for this exhibit includes powerful readings of Naoto’s diary by well-known actress Kiuchi Midori, and voice-over by renowned actor and director Tsukamoto Shinya. The film relates the transformative effect of reading his late brother’s diary on the elder brother. He commits to using his art to speak out against war. As curator Hashimoto Isao explained, “Representing the horrific destruction of the atomic bomb is important, but what I think is more important is to tell the story of what happened next, what the people who survived made of their lives”.46

Text-Bearing Objects and Method in the Memorial Hall The Memorial Hall employs programming and audiovisual materials for the purpose of enhancing engagement of visitors with the materials in its holdings. After participating in the filming of hibakusha witnessing for several years when he was Director of the National Memorial Hall, Kanō Masaki concluded that knowledge of the “reality of the atomic bombing” (genbaku tōka no jissō) comes from cumulative exposures to multiple hibakusha stories, stories that tell of the complex social, personal, and historical dimensions and implications of exposure to the bomb: The reality of the atom bomb is not just the destruction that the bomb wrought on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 am. The reality of the bomb also resides in the stories of what people were doing during the war, in the time leading up to the bombing, and the stories of how they and their families managed to make it through each day after the bombing, how radioactivity affected them, in sometimes similar, sometimes very different ways. We can learn a great deal from those stories.47 Kanō encourages visitors to the Memorial Hall to learn about Hiroshima’s encounter with the bomb historically, socially, even politically, and not only emotionally. The Memorial Hall’s central artefact collection is an archive of testimonials in a variety of media. The textual accounts include printed books and leaflets donated or purchased. The Hall has prioritised making video/­digital film oral testimonies of the ageing cohort of survivors. The individuals who

142  Ann Sherif agree to be filmed are aware that their video is made publicly available through the Memorial Hall; many have previously spoken publicly or written about their bomb experiences. In contrast to his predecessors, Kanō decided that he himself would participate in the research, planning and filming of each and every hibakusha spoken testimonial, in collaboration with a professional film company. Kanō’s approach to the Memorial Hall’s project of filming hibakusha testimonials serves as a model of the intellectual and ethical effort necessary to understand “the reality of the bomb” in a way that transcends affective identification. Drawing on the methods of oral history, Kanō and his staff would prepare meticulously for each filming by reading relevant written accounts, tracing on a map the person’s whereabouts at the time of bombing and the hours and days that followed. Kanō explained, “Given the cameras and equipment you have to set up, the filming has to be done in a single ­session. That’s why we made sure to be well prepared and knowledgeable”. The COVID pandemic complicated the increasingly urgent project of capturing oral testimonials on film at a time when the average age of the hibakusha is over eighty years old. Kanō explained that a number of the hibakusha they contacted during the pandemic wanted to postpone until the pandemic was over, or just do the filming on Zoom. The courage required to retell such painful and complex memories stems from the conviction that their story will contribute to preventing future use of nuclear weapons by heightening awareness and understanding of nuclear warfare. Many of those who offered their filmed testimonies to the Memorial Hall, furthermore, narrate their personal stories as part of a larger story of Hiroshima as a city and Imperial Japan’s war. In describing daily life during wartime, many speakers acknowledge fully the historical conditions that gave rise to the Asia-Pacific War and an acute awareness of the injustice and oppression inherent in Japan’s imperial history of colonialism and militarism in Asia. Still others may focus on the context of the nuclear arms race and their solidarity with other peoples exposed to radiation due to nuclear testing and nuclear power plant accidents. For former director Kanō’s part, an effective account of the bombing should, among other things, evoke emotion and empathy in the listener. However, emotion is not an end in itself, but a means of prompting engagement and willingness to learn about history, injustice, and weapons of mass destruction, and—in turn—to take well-informed, fact-based action at a civic level. The crucial question is, having heard those stories from the hibakusha, how do audiences respond? How will they use that knowledge and understanding? On the Memorial Hall’s tenth anniversary, the local media decried its failure to thrive. As if in response, the Hall geared up its focus on innovative ways to employ the bulk of things in its holdings—the hibakusha’s written accounts. The building design precludes extensive display of artefacts, except in the small gallery. Because even text-bearing objects do not speak for themselves, the Memorial Hall at first encouraged visitors to sit in the

Hiroshima Museums  143 library and read testimonies on their own (in a short introductory film). Over time, however, the staff increasingly have emphasised oral readings (rōdoku) of diaries, written testimonies, and poems written by hibakusha in order to create attractive ways for groups of people to engage with the texts. Method is a crucial element behind the success of this approach to this particular written variety of genbaku shiryō. In the recruiting of volunteer readers, the Hall emphasised the fact that it was looking for people with professional experience in presenting to the public, such as announcers or actors, to be selected by auditions. The volunteers then are required to participate in training sessions (kenshū) before they present narrated accounts to visitors. Volunteers commit to more than oral recitation, but also to being conveyers of the atomic bomb experience (hibaku taiken denshōsha). Readers hold the text in their hands as they read to the audience who, in turn, experience the text communally, rather than as a solitarily, silent reader. This approach builds on long-standing community practices of readings at local peace events, and oral testimonials by hibakusha in communities and at the Peace Museum. At the Memorial Hall, one of the aims of the oral presentations is facilitating the audience’s affective engagement with the text, by sparking imagination and empathy with the horror of August 6. Former Director Kanō recalls that, “Even if the reader standing before them is a young person who is reading from a text, and clearly not a hibakusha, audience members often close their eyes and listen intently”, apparently picturing the scene and experiences in their own imaginations. It is not unusual for visitors to shed tears. The staff also encourages visitors to take copies of the testimonies home to try reading the text aloud themselves. The staff selects for public readings testimonies and diaries that are written in straightforward language and accessible to a broad audience. They also chose poetry by adolescent hibakusha as a type of text more relatable—in its directness and emotional intensity—to middle and high school student groups.

Serving Hiroshima, Serving the World On the seventy-fifth anniversary, both the Peace Museum and the National Memorial Hall were global in their aspirational reach and significance, while also profoundly local in their grounding in Hiroshima communities. Out and about in the city on a recent August 6, Shiga Kenji, former director of the Peace Museum, was chagrined that many people around him did not pause at 8:15 am for a moment of silence as had been the custom for over half a century. Noticing the apparent lack of awareness in the everyday about the significance of August 6, Shiga was struck with the anxious thought that, with fewer and fewer people with first-hand knowledge of the bombing, memories of Hiroshima will eventually reside only in “things” (mono) and in the Hiroshima Peace Museum whose role it is to “convey those things and the story of that day”.48 Shiga refers here to the passing of

144  Ann Sherif the hibakusha—and of older generations—for whom wartime and the early postwar were lived experience. On a more broadly social level, he also points to the groups and networks of stakeholders who have been deeply committed to debating and constructing knowledge around the range of complex issues, local, national, and global that have weighed on—and enlivened—Hiroshima as a city and as a culture. These were the individuals like Nagaoka, who picked up atomic artefacts from the ruins, but also the local groups who articulated and contested the meanings of those things. Those were not only the school children who wrote poems about what they saw and felt on August 6, 1945, but also the community groups who organised to preserve the paper anthologies of those poems and, year in and year out, practised the most effective ways of bringing those printed words alive by reading them aloud. Those were the poets and painters who combined their artistic expression with antiwar activism, and the local newspaper that featured the literary debates about what a-bomb literature could be. It is these deep structures and flows of community all around Hiroshima that Shiga also had in mind. The Hiroshima Peace Museum has not only anticipated a time in the foreseeable future when there are no hibakusha to witness, but also has confronted the reality of a changed cohort of domestic and international visitors, school groups, and tour groups. As Franziska Seraphim has noted, “intergenerational transmission of war memories” is a long-established key concept and goal among antibomb and antiwar social movements, as well as hibakusha, and other wartime generation organisations.49 Therefore, the seventy-fifth anniversary also confronted the Hiroshima museums with the prospect of an entire community and nation of people detached from such generational transmission of the living witnesses whose first-hand accounts hold such authority. For elders passing along their stories, the broader goals of the peace movement also served to make sense of the deaths and losses during wartime. Since the founding of the museums, hibakusha have made up not only a significant cohort among visitors and guest participants in museum programming (such as presentations to visiting groups), they have also staffed the museums. Not coincidentally, the Peace Museum found its origins in the collecting activities of atomic bomb material on the part of Nagaoka Shogo, a survivor who would later serve as the first director of the Peace Museum. Nagaoka started gathering “atomic bomb materials” not long after the bombing in late 1945, both by picking through the city’s ruins with his own hands and asking community members for objects. Former Directors Shiga Kenji of the Peace Museum and Kanō Masaaki of the National Memorial Hall, both born and raised in Hiroshima, possess a strong personal and professional dedication to the importance of carrying on the message of the hibakusha. Nonetheless, part of the work of generational transmission has been entrusting to local non-hibakusha, such as local younger people who volunteer to transcribe and translate hibakusha’s stories. Some of the

Hiroshima Museums  145 professional staff hail from other parts of Japan, such as curator Hashimoto Isao, who grew up in Kumamoto, Kyushu. From his experiences visiting nearby Nagasaki on school trips as a boy, he was strongly conscious of the danger of nuclear weapons from a young age. As an arts college student in Tokyo, the shock of 9–11 violence shook him out of a complacency and spurred him to make a video work about nuclear testing for his senior project, a digital work that would later earn international fame. With his fresh approach, Hashimoto’s special exhibit “A Tale of Two Brothers Across Time” in the National Memorial Hall’s gallery (mentioned above) attracted record numbers of domestic and foreign visitors.50 The extensive networking efforts of the Peace Museum over the past decade speak to globalisation and monetisation in the tourist industry worldwide. With global communication shifts to instant access to sites online and high competitiveness for global tourists, historical entities such as the Peace Museum have been compelled to respond to the demands of the virtual information network and the concomitant development of new audiences such as those interested in “dark tourism” or “thanotourism”.51 Before the pandemic, about 8% to 10% of visitors to the two institutions were from outside of Japan. On a broader scale, the single-issue focus of the Hiroshima museums and of the city itself raises the question of their capacity to remain socially relevant, considering the complex contexts of nuclear weapons for twenty-first-century museum visitors. The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum states its official goal is to convey to the world the horrors and inhumane nature of nuclear weapons and to spread the message of “No More Hiroshimas”. The narrowly circumscribed anti-nuclear goal of the Hiroshima museums stands in striking contrast to other museums documenting historical events of mass violence. The Seattle Holocaust Center for Humanity, for example, “engages visitors in the history of the holocaust” and furthermore “challenges them to consider how each person’s actions make a difference”.52 The Kyoto Museum for World Peace at Ritsumeikan University “promotes the idea that peace is not just the absence of military conflict but also the absence of structural violence”.53

Former Army Clothing Building as Historical Site Partly in response to the flattening or condensing of contemporary time with August 6, 1945, evident in the 2019 renovation of the Peace Museum, local grassroots groups are vigorously advocating for the conservation and use of yet another kind of a-bomb material: the four historical atomic bombing buildings (four warehouses belonging to the former Army Clothing Depot, kyūrikugun hifuku shishō) (Figure 6.9). A grassroots campaign contributed to reversal of a plan for demolition by Hiroshima Prefecture and the national government. The Peace Museum’s minimalising of historical narrative that includes chronology

146  Ann Sherif

Figure 6.9 Former army clothing depot in Hiroshima © Architecture Walk Hiroshima.

of public, local, and national events and processes, and explains cause and effect, has created a gap that needs to be filled elsewhere. The massive brick buildings of the clothing depot could fulfil that need for historicisation of August 6, 1945. Scholar Yasuko Claremont notes that when she heard the voices of grassroots advocates for preservation, many themselves hibakusha, “I understood that the buildings are a chrono-topos packed with living memories of Hiroshima. And the remaining complex of four buildings represents not just the army history of Hiroshima but symbolises mankind’s history as both aggressor and victim”.54 With commemoration and museums so concentrated in the Peace Park, another merit of restoring the Army Clothing Depot would be the broadening of the spatial scope of historical sites in the city of Hiroshima (Figure 6.10). A section of the Army Depot’s brick wall segment is displayed in the Peace Museum. Nonetheless, visitors who venture out of the Peace Park to the Former Army Depot—or take a walking tour to meet atomic bomb survivor trees (hibaku jumoku)—see Hiroshima’s past and present, from perspectives distinct from those presented in the Peace Park.55 Kanō, who participated in the filming of many hibakusha testimonials in his capacity as Director of Memorial Hall, pointed out that the Army Clothing Depot was a site in Hiroshima prominent in Memorial Hall stories. As one of the several major facilities to manufacture munitions and

Hiroshima Museums  147

Figure 6.10 Aerial photo and map of location of former Army Clothing Depot, with permission © Architecture Walk Hiroshima.

war goods, which were then shipped from Hiroshima’s port at Ujina to the war front, the Clothing Depot employed many mobilised citizens, some as young as fourteen. On August 6, the buildings sustained some damage from the bomb, but were sufficiently intact to serve as shelters for many wounded people immediately after the bombing.56 Many recorded and written testimonies by hibakusha therefore describe in detail time spent in the cavernous space of the Depot buildings, whether at work during wartime or recovering from injuries after the bombing. Many injured people died there. Former Memorial Hall Director Kanō hopes that stakeholders locally and nationally will work together to propose uses for the Army Depot buildings, rather than focusing only on cost of renovation.57 The giant brick buildings have stood in a state of limbo for seventy-five years. Surrounded by a residential neighbourhood and a school, they were not regarded as of potential historical value by the city, as proven by the city’s failure to take them into account when building a major thoroughfare close by, thus hemming them in even more. Yet the giant Army Depot buildings were also not demolished, as so many other hibaku buildings were over the past seventy-five years.58 Through effective use of social media and in-person events, Hiroshima area residents in their teens, twenties and thirties, like Seto Mayu, partnered with elders such as actor and activist Tsuchiya Tokiko to successfully advocate for the preservation of the Army Depot and to advance public debate about the importance of these architectural artefacts and how they should be used.59

148  Ann Sherif

Conclusion In the annual Peace Declaration of 2019, Mayor Matsui Kazumi extended an invitation to world leaders: “I urge them to visit the atomic-bombed cities, listen to the hibakusha, and tour the Peace Memorial Museum and the National Peace Memorial Hall to face what actually happened in the lives of individual victims and their loved ones”.60 The war in Ukraine compelled Nagasaki Mayor Taue Tomihisa in his 2022 Peace Declaration to emphasise that the use of atomic bombs on both Hiroshima and Nagasaki was due to war… Instead of a “culture of war”… let us make untiring efforts to ingrain in civil society a “culture of peace” that spreads trust, respects others and seeks resolution through dialogue.61 Following the seventy-fifth anniversary, the a-bomb materials will continue to be key components of Hiroshima’s global mission—and perhaps part of a broader and deeper understanding of the history of the world and its ­twentieth-century wars.

Notes 1 Face of Jizo, the film adaptation of Inoue’s play, was directed by Kuroki Kazuo (2004). 2 Ran Zwigenberg, Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014). Zwigenberg highlights the global nature of the notion of the moral authority of witnessing in relation to the Holocaust and the atomic bombings in the late twentieth century. He argues “the bombing was thought to have bequeathed to Hiroshima’s victims a global mission and ­importance”. This was synchronous with and influenced by a similar view of the place of the victim/witness in Holocaust discourse. In both discourses, the survivor was eventually elevated as the ultimate bearer of moral authority: what Avishai Margalit called “a moral witness” (3). Zwigenberg disparages the lack of 1970s transnational exchanges of Holocaust and atomic bomb relics and artefacts by peace groups precisely because these remains were universalized and robbed of any personal or other i­dentity. In order to become the quintessential symbol of an alliance of victims, they had to be abstracted and taken out of any context. This left no place for the uniqueness of the Jewish tragedy…. (204–205) 3 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, http://hpmmuseum.jp/modules/info/ index.php?action=PageView&page_id=171&lang=eng. 4 See also Akiko Takenaka, “Collecting for Peace: Memories and Objects of the Asia-Pacific War,” Verge: Studies in Global Asia 1, no. 2 (2015): 136–157. 5 It would take decades, however, before the US government returned to Hiroshima similar types of atom bomb materials it had selected to ship to Washington for research purposes. 6 Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999). An oft-repeated evaluation that

Hiroshima Museums  149 ignores the evolution of the museum is that the “Hiroshima Peace Museum has maintained a consistent stance of bearing the mantel of ‘global harmony and reconciliation’ while ‘skimming over the violence of war and military industrial complex’”. Rather it leans towards the approach of holocaust museums that emphasise “remembrance and pilgrimage”: Gillen, Jamie, “Tourism and Nation Building at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104, no. 6 (2014): 1131. 7 Carola Hein, “Scales and Perspectives of Resilience: The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Tange’s Peace Memorial,” Architectural Histories 7, no.1 (2019):10, http://doi.org/10.5334/ah.304. 8 Hein, Carola. “Scales and Perspectives of Resilience,” 11. 9 The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Japanese (hereafter Peace Museum) is 広島平和記念資料館. Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims (hereafter National Memorial Hall) is 国立広島原爆死没者追悼平 和祈念館. 10 HVAC, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning. 11 This mural by the Marukis is now in the holdings of the Hiroshima Museum of Modern Art. Yukinori Okamura, Genbaku no zu: Zenkoku junkai (Tokyo: Shinjuku Shobō, 2015); Setsuko Kozawa, Genbaku no zu: egakareta ‘kioku’, katarareta ‘kaiga’ (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002); Shiga Kenji, Hiroshima heiwa shiryōkan wa toikakeru (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2020), 151. 12 Yuji Yamamoto and Masaya Nishida, “Chugoku Shimbun and Nishinippon Shimbun Partner on Project Detailing the Current State and Challenges of A-bombed Material Preservation and Display,” Hiroshima Peace Media Center, November 23, 2020, http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=102675. The significance of the shift in administrative control to the Peace Memorial Foundation is outside the scope of this chapter. 13 Shiga, Hiroshima heiwa shiryōkan, 199. 14 Shiga, Hiroshima heiwa shiryōkan, 205. 15 Miyamoto quoted in Stefanie Fishel, “Nuclear Memory,” Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the Post-Cold War, eds. N. A. J. Taylor and Robert Jacobs (New York: Routledge, 2018), 80. 16 John W. Dower, “Triumphal and Tragic Narratives of the War in East Asia,” Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflict in the Nuclear Age, eds. Laura E. Hein and Mark Selden (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 44. 17 Dower, “Triumphal and Tragic Narratives…,” 38. 18 Dower, “Triumphal and Tragic Narratives…,” 47. 19 Author’s interview with Mr. Hironobu Ochiba, Curatorial Division, Hiroshima Peace Museum, October 31, 2009. See also Shiga, Hiroshima heiwa shiryōkan, 36. 20 Carola Hein, “Scales and Perspectives of Resilience,” 10. Carola Hein commented that in its earlier version the exhibition focused primarily on the horrific results of war, without addressing the actions of the perpetrators. She noted, “It remains to be seen what new perspectives will be incorporated into the exhibition, and how these will modify or enrich the existing resilience narrative.” 21 Yamamoto and Nishida, “Chugoku Shimbun and Nishinippon Shimbun Partner on Project,” http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=102675. 22 Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich describes this effect of iconic images in relation to representations of the holocaust and the danger of loss of “referential efficacy”. Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich, Holocaust Memory Reframed: Museums and the Challenges of Representation (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014), 12–13, 119–148. 23 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum website, September 5, 2022. 24 Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich, Holocaust Memory Reframed, 21.

150  Ann Sherif 25 http://hpmmuseum.jp/modules/exhibition/index.php?action=CornerView &corner_id=20&lang=eng. 26 Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich, Holocaust Memory Reframed, 18. 27 Ishiuchi aimed in her photographs of clothing to create a contrast between the “cruel, sad, and heavy” of the black-and-white photograph of Hiroshima with which she had been familiar and the “smart, beautiful, and pretty” 1945 clothing artefacts that she saw with her own eyes at the Peace Museum. To Ishiuchi, the objects and photographs “the things in front of us” contain the passage of time, “I can’t photograph the past. The things in front of me are an extension of the past…It [the artifacts] are here now, and that is what I photograph”. (「今あるものは、時間が溜まっている.過去は撮れなくても、ずっと過去の延長として現 在今も遺品たちはそこにある」) Her photographs aim to “make you think about the meaning of time gone by,” embodied in the objects. She charges her viewers with coming up with their own interpretation, and asserts that she includes no caption because she has no “message” that she wishes to convey. “I don’t want to impose myself” (押し付けたくないんです。). Mette Holm, “Ishiuchi Miyako Interview: Photography Making History,” Louisiana Channel. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, 2020, https://youtu.be/8qdCNE0dHGQ. Filmmaker Linda Hoagland documents an exhibit of Ishiuchi’s photographs in her 2013 documentary film Things Left Behind, http://lhoaglund.com/things-left-behind. 28 Makeda Best, “Memory and Survival in Everyday Textures: Ishiuchi Miyako’s Hiroshima,” Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the Post-Cold War World, eds. N. A. J. Taylor and Robert Jacobs (New York: Routledge, 2018), 34. 29 Makeda Best, “Memory and Survival,” 34–35. 30 Anna Shipilova, “From Local to National Experience: Has Hiroshima Become a ‘Trauma for Everybody’?,” Japanese Studies 34, no.2 (2014): 34–32, 193–211. 31 Author’s interview with Sharalyn Orbaugh, March 2018. 32 The “Destruction of August 6” display, http://hpmmuseum.jp/modules/­ exhibition/index.php?action=ItemView&item_id=77&lang=jpn. 33 John W. Dower, “Ground Zero 1945: Pictures by Atomic Bomb Survivors,” https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/groundzero1945/gz_essay01.html. 34 Ted Gup, “He Was an American Child in Hiroshima on the Day the Atomic Bomb Dropped,” Washington Post, August 4, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost. com/graphics/2020/history/howard-kakita-hiroshima-atomic-bomb-survivor/. 35 Hashimoto Isao, Interview with author, December 23, 2020. 36 Shiga, Hiroshima heiwa shiryōkan, 9–10. 37 Lisa Yoneyama, “Remembering and Imagining the Nuclear Annihilation in Hiroshima,” The Getty Conservation Institute, accessed 2002, https://www.getty. edu/conservation/publications_resources/newsletters/17_2/news_in_cons1. html. 38 Takenaka and Hein, “Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States,” Asia Pacific Journal 5, no.7 (2007), https://apjjf.org/-Laura-Hein/2477/article. html. 39 Throughout his book, Shiga refers to the “museum as the forum” versus “museum as temple” debate dating to the early 1970s and Duncan Cameron’s influential “The Museum, a Temple or the Forum?,” Shiga, Hiroshima heiwa shiryōkan. 40 The National Memorial Hall was built “pursuant to the Atomic Bomb Survivors’ Assistance Act (July 1995)”—article 41 of the act stipulates We shall keep a record of the precious lives lost to the atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and, in the hopes of lasting peace, work to deepen national understanding of the horrors nuclear weapons, pass down the

Hiroshima Museums  151 experiences of the bombing to our future generations, and memorialize those lost to the bombings. Significantly, the “Supplementary resolution from the Committee on Health and Welfare” states the following requirement: “Together with planning for a swift establishment of a facility to console the victims of the atomic bombings, we will work to make the facility one which the Hibakusha and the bereaved families of the victims will approve,” https://www.hiro-tsuitokinenkan.go.jp/en/ about/index.html. See also Hyunjung Cho, “Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and the Making of Japanese Postwar Architecture,” Journal of Architectural Education 66, no.1 (2012): 72–83, https://doi:10.1080/10464883.2012.720915. 41 The Memorial Hall website offers details of the Act: https://www.hiro-­ tsuitokinenkan.go.jp/en/about/. See Akiko Naono, Genbaku taiken to sengo nihon: kioku no keisei to keishō (Experience with the Atomic Bombings and Postwar Japan: Formations and Transmission of Memories) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2015). 42 https://t-hibaku.jp/toyu/2002/0214/0214_20020801kine.html. 43 National Memorial Hall, https://www.hiro-tsuitokinenkan.go.jp/en/about/. 44 The New York-based “Hibakusha Stories” project builds on these testimonial practices, making them available to English-speaking audiences outside of Japan. 45 Hashimoto Isao, Interview with author, December 2020. 46 Author’s interview with Hashimoto Isao, December 2020. 47 Kanō Masaki, Interview with author, December 2020. 48 Author’s interview with Kanō Masaki, December, 2020. 49 Franziska Seraphim, War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945–2005 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2006), 167, 194. 50 Interview with Hashimoto Isao, December 20, 2020. 51 Scholars who situate Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and war-related sites in Japan in relation to the global tourism industry include Philip Seaton, “Islands of ‘Dark’ and ‘Light/Lite’ Tourism: War-Related Contents Tourism around the Seto Inland Sea,” Japan Review, no. 33 (2019): 299–328; Stefanie Schäfer, “From Geisha Girls to the Atomic Bomb Dome: Dark Tourism and the Formation of Hiroshima Memory,” Tourist Studies 16, no. 4 (2016): 351–366. 52 https://www.holocaustcenterseattle.org/visit/finding-light-in-the-darkness. 53 http://www.ritsumei.ac.jp/mng/er/wp-museum/english/director.html. 54 Yasuko Claremont, “On Utilizing the Former Army Clothing Factory Buildings,” Hiroshima Peace Media Center, December 3, 2020. 55 Nonprofit Green Greetings made a “Hibakuju Museum” app with a walking tour of a-bomb survivor trees throughout Hiroshima, https://www.greengreet ings.com/en/index.php. 56 Kanō Masaki, Interview with author, December 23, 2020. 57 Kanō Masaki, Interview with author, December 23, 2020. 58 Yamashita Kazuya, Ide Michiyo and Kanō Masaki, Genbaku o mita tatemono (Tokyo: Heibunsha, 2006), 140–165. 59 Kono Yo, “Japan Government Announces Seismic Reinforcement of Former Clothing Depot Building as A-bomb Survivors, Citizens Welcome Preservation of All Depot Buildings,” May 20, 2022, Hiroshima Peace Media Center, https:// www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=120231&query=Army+depot. Singer, activist, and local small business owner Seto Mayu was among the core members of the social media and live “campaign” to preserve the Former Army Depot buildings. Local activist Tsuchiya Tokiko created an invaluable archive of the histories of the Depot buildings and diverse views, research, and experiences surrounding them in her YouTube radio interview program Hihuku shishō rajio, On the Army Depot, https://www.oa-hiroshima.org/buildings/buildings05.html.

152  Ann Sherif 60 Matsui Kazumi, “The City of Hiroshima: Peace Declaration,” http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=99932&query=Peace+Declaration. 61 “Full text of Nagasaki Peace Declaration on 77th Anniversary of Atomic Bombing,” The Mainichi, August 9, 2022, https://mainichi.jp/english/ articles/20220805/p2a/00m/0na/029000c.

Bibliography Best, Makeda. “Memory and Survival in Everyday Textures: Ishiuchi Miyako’s Hiroshima.” In Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the Post-Cold War World, edited by N. A. J. Taylor and Robert Jacobs. New York: Routledge, 2018. Claremont, Yasuko. “On Utilizing the Former Army Clothing Factory Buildings.” Hiroshima Peace Media Center. December 3, 2020. Dower, John W., “Ground Zero 1945: Pictures by Atomic Bomb Survivors,” MIT Visualizing Cultures. https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/groundzero1945/gz_ essay01.html Dower, John W. “Triumphal and Tragic Narratives of the War in East Asia,” In Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflict in the Nuclear Age, edited by. Laura E. Hein and Mark Selden, 37–51. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1996. Fishel, Stefanie. “Nuclear Memory.” In Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the Post-Cold War, edited by N. A. J. Taylor and Robert Jacobs. New York: Routledge, 2018. Gillen, Jamie. “Tourism and Nation Building at the War Remnants Museum in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.” Annals of the Association of American Geographers 104, no. 6 (2014): 1307–1321. http://www.jstor.org/stable/24537616. Gup, Ted. “He Was an American Child in Hiroshima on the Day the Atomic Bomb Dropped.” Washington Post, August 4, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/ graphics/2020/history/howard-kakita-hiroshima-atomic-bomb-survivor/. Hansen-Glucklich, Jennifer. Holocaust Memory Reframed: Museums and the Challenges of Representation. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2014: 119–148. Hein, Carola. “Scales and Perspectives of Resilience: The Atomic Bombing of Hiroshima and Tange’s Peace Memorial.” Architectural Histories 7, no.1 (2019):10, http://doi.org/10.5334/ah.304. Hein, Laura and Akiko Takenaka. “Exhibiting World War II in Japan and the United States Since 1995.” Pacific Historical Review 76, no. 1 (2007): 61–94. Hoagland, Linda. Things Left Behind. Documentary film. (2013). http://lhoaglund. com/things-left-behind. Holm, Mette. “Ishiuchi Miyako Interview: Photography Making History.” Louisiana Channel. Louisiana Museum of Modern Art (2020). https://youtu. be/8qdCNE0dHGQ. Kozawa, Setsuko. Genbaku no zu: egakareta “kioku”, katarareta “kaiga.” Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002. Low, Morris. Visualizing Nuclear Power in Japan. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2020. Miyamoto, Yuki. Beyond the Mushroom Cloud: Commemoration, Religion, and Responsibility after Hiroshima. New York: Fordham University Press, 2012.

Hiroshima Museums  153 Murakami, Yoko. “Pain of the Memory, Power of the Story: On Hisashi Inoue’s Chichi to Kuraseba.” Review of Pacific and Asian Studies, no. 40, (11/2015): 1–10. Naono, Akiko. Genbaku taiken to sengo nihon: kioku no keisei to keishō. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2015. Naono Akiko. “Hiroshima’ as a Contested Memorial Site: Analysis of the Making of the Peace Museum.” Hiroshima Journal of International Studies 11 (2005), 229–244. Okamura, Yukinori. Genbaku no zu: Zenkoku junkai. Tokyo: Shinjuku Shobō, 2015. Schäfer, Stefanie. “From Geisha Girls to the Atomic Bomb Dome: Dark Tourism and the Formation of Hiroshima Memory.” Tourist Studies 16, no. 4 (2016): 351– 366. Accessed January 18, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/1468797615618122. Seaton, Philip. “Islands of “Dark” and “Light/Lite” Tourism: War-Related Contents Tourism around the Seto Inland Sea.” Japan Review, no. 33 (2019): 299–328. Shiga Kenji. Hiroshima heiwa shiryōkan wa toikakeru. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2020. Shipilova, Anna. “From Local to National Experience: Has Hiroshima Become a ‘Trauma for Everybody’?.” Japanese Studies 34, no.2 (2014): 34–32, 193–211. Takenaka, Akiko. “Collecting for Peace: Memories and Objects of the Asia-Pacific War.” Verge: Studies in Global Asia 1, no. 2 (2015): 136–157. Taylor, N.A.J. and Robert Jacobs, eds. Reimagining Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Nuclear Humanities in the Post-Cold War. New York: Routledge, 2018. Yamamoto, Yuji and Masaya Nishida. “Chugoku Shimbun and Nishinippon Shimbun Partner on Project Detailing the Current State and Challenges of A-bombed Material Preservation and Display.” Hiroshima Peace Media Center, November 23, 2020. http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=102675. Yamashita Kazuya, Ide Michiyo, and Kanō Masaki. Hiroshima o sagasoo: Genbaku o mita tatemono. Tokyo: Heibunsha, 2006, 140–165. Yoneyama, Lisa. “Remembering and Imagining the Nuclear Annihilation in Hiroshima.” The Getty Conservation Institute. Accessed 2002. https://www. getty.edu/conservation/publications_resources/newsletters/17_2/news_in_cons1. html. Yoneyama, Lisa. Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space, and the Dialectics of Memory. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Zwigenberg, Ran. Hiroshima: The Origins of Global Memory Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014.

7 Silence and Resilience Commemorating Nagasaki Alongside the “Extraordinary Noise” of the Olympics and Under the Covid-19 “Mushroom Cloud” Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto Introduction For Coronavirus to occur like this at the 75th juncture [of the remembrance of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] should be ringing alarm bells. SH, Peace Baton Member, Nagasaki, 2020 The year 2020 was a memorable year in Japan; Tokyo was expected to host the Olympics and Paralympics for the second time since 1964. However, Covid-19 spread swiftly worldwide forcing changes in people’s lives—­ cities were locked down, stay-at-home orders were mandated, along with masks and face shields, and online classes and meetings became ubiquitous. Subsequently, the Olympics were postponed for a year. The pandemic clouded celebrations of not only the global event of the Olympics, but the seventy-fifth anniversaries of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In the meantime, the anniversary year coincided with the achievement of fifty nation-state ratifications of the United Nations Treaty Prohibiting Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), a cause for much rejoicing among hibakusha who had suffered the bombing, conscious that this would signal the acceptance of this treaty into law in early 2021. In this chapter we narrate, on the one hand, ongoing Japanese governmental attempts to construct a national narrative on the atomic bombings, which downplays, if not suppresses, and silences the serious consequences of radiation exposure at the time of the tenth anniversary of the Fukushima accident. On the other hand, we explore evident resilience and resistance against such silence among those who continue to tell stories about their atomic bombing experiences and subsequent radiation effects, despite the national government’s attempts to sway their efforts and to downplay a life-threatening global pandemic. The attainment of a United Nations Treaty to ban nuclear weapons is one concrete outcome of this resilience. There are “very real dangers for scholars who overlook taboo, denial and the ‘sound of silence’”, and in a recent article by David Chapman and

DOI: 10.4324/9781003320395-7

Silence and Resilience  155 myself (McClelland) we posed this question, regarding the Fukushima Daiichi disaster, “what has been left unsaid… and what can be revealed by moving away from the loud places of its history to focus on the silent and the hidden?”.1 This chapter, therefore, begins to consider what has been left unsaid alongside the anniversary of the atomic bombings. A tension between “knowledge and acknowledgement, personal awareness and public discourse” may exist as a conspiracy of silence.2 When a wider culture tends to silence those who have suffered past violence, naming the past experiences themselves is a form of resistance, a “taking action against the forces of silence”.3 We will argue here that the scheduling of the 2020 Olympics attempted to distract attention from Japan’s past radiation suffering as well as the ongoing legacies of that suffering, and thereby attempted to silence the voices of sufferers (and any scrutiny of their problems). The original orchestration of the closing of the Olympics on Nagasaki Day, August 9, 2020, appeared to intend a final nail in the coffin of post-war nuclear discourse, including public clamour in Japan for the elimination of nuclear weapons, and fears about radiation exposure. Unexpectedly though, the “mushroom cloud” of Covid19 disrupted (and disrupts, as we write) many events around the world, including the Tokyo Olympics, as its impacts also threatened repercussions for those who have suffered from irradiation over many years in Japan. For this reason, we particularly focus on the voices of Nagasaki. We investigate the reactions and responses of some of the inheritors of the legacy of past impacts of the governmental downplaying of health concerns. In the light of contemporary implications of the atomic bombing memories and Japan’s relationship with the US, our chapter also addresses the following question: how may we understand a modern Japanese government’s acceptance of America’s nuclear policy? Through the sixty-eighth ratification of the TPNW by the Dominican Republic (September 22, 2022), the world has stepped closer to the banning of these weapons, despite nuclear nations’ discouragement. The Japanese government itself has promoted, if not morally elevated, its country as the “first” nation to suffer nuclear attacks in wartime, yet has adamantly refused to sit at the UN’s negotiation table to discuss the treaty, and eschews ratifying it to this day. Through claims supported by documents and surveys, we propose that narrating experiences and voicing respondents’ thoughts themselves is a form of resistance against imposed silences when actors or circumstance—the governmental n ­ arrative, peer pressure and confinement by the pandemic— inflict them upon us in the present time. The epigraph written by SH (Peace Baton Member) and printed at the top of this chapter represents a proclamation of resistance—as a Nagasaki citizen writing to our survey, foregrounding memory and history as essential in understanding the present and the future. As proposed, the emergence of the coronavirus in the seventy-fifth anniversary year of the atomic bombing rang alarm bells, distracting attention from the voices of sufferers,

156  Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto while the global pandemic impacted and disproportionately excluded the underprivileged. For example, the campaign for the Olympics promoted a certain narrative, and the virtual “mushroom cloud” of the coronavirus illuminated the Japanese governmental tendency to avoid listening to health experts in favour of economic and defence-based imperatives. Covid-19, we suggest, reprises earlier mushroom clouds which obscured the reality of the destruction and health concerns u ­ nderneath—as though the disease itself represents the US narrative of power and ­dominion—distracting attention from deserving sufferers. In our efforts to listen to the voices and narratives of those impacted most closely, we conducted a short survey, addressing silences and resilience in the 2020 memorial year, which thus served as our methodology in this chapter. Through the survey we intended to pay attention to memory’s determination and to the voices of people on the ground as we discussed the silences, commemorations, memories and resilience primarily of the communities of Nagasaki, after seventy-five years. In six questions, in both English and Japanese, we asked citizens about the impacts of the coronavirus crisis, the 2020 memorial of the atomic bombings, religious and spiritual commemorations and the political aspects of the Olympics, including the political tendency to wish to move on from past disasters, and raised the Fukushima nuclear accident. The majority of respondents answered in Japanese, although Yamaguchi Hibiki and Kawasaki Akira answered in English. We have taken the liberty of translating the Japanese responses into English for the purpose of writing this chapter. Nagasaki has often been neglected in the literature, and we take this opportunity to raise their voices as a corrective to the frequently secondary nature of knowledge out of this city. Our respondents were for the most part residents of Nagasaki. The local voices might be expected to resist the national narrative, that the damages were in the past. Six female and five male interviewees responded to our survey, seven of whom agreed to the use of their names, while four preferred initials only. Those named include Nagai Tokusaburō, the grandson of well-known hibakusha, Nagai Takashi; today he manages the Nagai Takashi Memorial Museum; Seirai Yūichi, novelist and previous Director of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum; Kawasaki Akira, International Steering Group member of ICAN and Executive Committee member of Peace Boat, an NGO that organises cruises where passengers learn about the consequences of using nuclear weapons by ­listening to hibakusha; Okuyama Shinobu, a teacher at Kwassui Senior High School, Nagasaki; Kunitake Masako, a lecturer at the Junshin Catholic University in Nagasaki; Osajima Aoi, a member of the Nagasaki Youth Delegation; Yamaguchi Hibiki, managing editor of the Journal of Peace and Nuclear Disarmament; SC, an atomic bomb researcher and expert; AF, a researcher originally from Nagasaki; SH, Peace Baton Member; and MI, a Nagasaki citizen.

Silence and Resilience  157

The Original Plan for the Olympics The Tokyo Olympics (Figure 7.1) were explicitly pursued to demonstrate that Japan, and in particular, Fukushima, had overcome the aftermath of the 2011 disasters, so the closing event on Nagasaki Day, August 9, may have been expected to bring closure to the hardships brought about by the disasters. That is to say, still palpable scars from the violence resulting from the disasters needed to be swept under the Olympic banner, and any other

Figure 7.1 Tokyo Olympic Games Symbol, photograph by Alex Smith on Unsplash. com, public domain.

158  Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto abnormality would be presented as normal.4 The Olympics strategically distracted attention from—if not concealed—the aftermath of the triple disasters of 2011 and subsequent radiation exposure. By scheduling the closing date of the Olympics on August 9 the Prime Minister of Japan would not be present at the seventy-fifth anniversary memorial ceremony in Nagasaki. This plan was more than the symbolic gesture of the absence of the political leader from the commemoration—it surely planned to divert media attention from this historical event. According to Norma Field’s introduction to an article by Muto Ruiko, the head of the plaintiffs against TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings) executives in the criminal case against them, it was only a few months after the nuclear accident in Fukushima that the idea emerged—to host the Olympic Games and to use it to “restore” Fukushima, more accurately, to restore the reputation of Fukushima, rather than to compensate the lost lives and lifestyles of people. Ironically, the pursuit of the restoration of Fukushima made the Tokyo Olympic candidacy far stronger than it had been in the previous bidding process.5 However, the permitted radiation level in Fukushima prefecture after the spread of radioactive nuclides spewed from the Fukushima Daichi reactors remained at a level twenty times as high in this region as in the rest of Japan. It will remain so, as long as the government’s emergency edict is not rescinded.6 Yet, Fukushima eventually hosted the baseball and softball games. Koide Hiroaki, radiation and nuclear scientist and critic of the Japanese nuclear industry, stated, “The Tokyo Olympics will take place in a state of nuclear emergency. Those countries and the people who participate will, on the one hand, themselves risk exposure and, on the other, become accomplices to the crimes of this nation”.7 He made these claims in view of the suppression of medical data, the ignoring of collateral sufferers in Fukushima and an overarching greed for profit evident in the Olympic plan. Furthermore, choosing the Olympic Games as a venue to demonstrate the recovery and at once a closure to the nuclear disaster was hardly novel. The athlete selected as a torch runner for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics was a nineteen-year-old male, Sakai Yoshinori, born two hours after the bombing of Miyoshi city in Hiroshima Prefecture, sixty kilometres from Hiroshima city—far enough away not to receive the direct impact, thanks to the mountainous topography.8 As a New York Times article suggests, until 1964 the annual commemoration of the atomic bombing had been considered as a “lefty” exploitation of a historical event, but the selection of Sakai with his relationship to the atomic bombing was seen as “an expression of the national will for peace, divorced from ideology”.9 In other words, the annual commemoration in which the affected victims often appeared was shunned as “political exploitation”, but the glorified performance by a healthy young man from Hiroshima, bearing the signifiers of August 6, 1945, was widely welcomed. This episode crystallises the evidence that the Olympics in 1964 were a powerful venue for representing Japan as a restored country to

Silence and Resilience  159 the international community while obscuring the problems resulting from the atomic bombings. In 2013, then Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, at the International Olympic Committee session, presented Fukushima’s situation as “under control”. He claimed that Tokyo is “one of the safest cities in the world now… and in 2020”. He continued: “Some may have concerns about Fukushima. Let me assure you, the situation is under control. It has never done and will never do any damage to Tokyo”.10 This downplaying of the Fukushima accident was similarly repeated by Takeda Tsunetake, the president of the Japanese Olympic Committee, who had said to reporters prior to Abe’s speech, “Now, Tokyo is very safe”. In fact, “the water, the seafood, and also the radiation are absolutely safe”.11 These public statements exhibited utter incongruence from the reality where 152,113 people had been evacuated in 2013,12 337 km2 (130 square miles) of Fukushima were designated as a “Difficult-to-Return” zone at the time,13 and negotiations to import food continued after fifty-four countries banned imported produce and seafood from Japan after 2011.14

Resilient Memory In the surveys we circulated, comments made by participants representing localised memory contrasted sharply with the suggestion that past problems had been expurgated. Kawasaki Akira of Peaceboat Japan wrote, “Fukushima is not over, it is ongoing. Politicians saying everything is now okay does not reflect the reality”. In The national narrative of nuclear disaster and its nuclear policy are inextricably linked in varied forums by glossing over damages, the US-Japan alliance developed in the post-war, new fears about the looming power of China and the resistant surfacing of memory. Past war memory invokes a fear of future war and the Fukushima accident bred scepticism about the production of nuclear power in the public imagination. Our privileging of the voices of Nagasaki citizens and those who remember these past irradiation events presents an alternative view. The 2020 Olympics were drawn into this nexus of related political, historical and environmental, or health-related issues, by virtue of being designated the “recovery Olympics”—to assist in “getting over” Fukushima. Yet our respondents considered in particular the continuing irruption of memories of Nagasaki as of ongoing significance, and were sceptical about the original plan for the Olympics. The theatrical spectacle of the planned 2020 Olympics was conceived to begin with its torch relay from Fukushima,15 and would have finished on Nagasaki Day, but Nagai Tokusaburō wrote to us before the anniversary: People prefer fun festivals. In the midst of that, it is a shame that the opportunity to draw the whole world’s eyes to the Nagasaki atomic bombing was lost.16

160  Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto Nagasaki-based managing director of the Journal of Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, Yamaguchi Hibiki, wrote that the Olympic Games would “bury the memories of other events in the extraordinary noise they create”. Yamaguchi too believed the Olympics were pursued by the government in their attempts to downplay the Fukushima nuclear accident and its longstanding destruction due to radiation; and to overshadow the seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic bombings, alongside a recent trial on exposure to nuclear fallout from the “Black Rain”.17 In his response to our survey Yamaguchi continued by questioning the significance of the Olympics: If the Olympics had been held this summer as planned, less attention would have been paid to the atomic bombings.… The Olympics are just a commercial event and not a forum to promote a message of peace. Seirai Yūichi (pen-name) recalled the history of nuclear accidents and nuclear weapons and their insertion into fiction writing. As well as writing fiction, Seirai is also the outgoing Director of the Atomic Bomb Museum of Nagasaki. Confident of memory’s persistence, he wrote [authors’ emphases]: Although I do not know the intention of the Japanese government, I could not see the immersion in Olympic memories as in any way eclipsing memories of Fukushima, nor the Three Mile incident nor the Chernobyl memories [of nuclear disasters] … since nuclear power plants are being operated all over the world, and we are unable to reduce the risk of an accident to zero. … Memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the same, as long as nuclear weapons are still today required or needed in the name of [national] security.… So these memories will constantly return, I believe…while many wars have been fought, memories of previous wars have persisted.… As an author, in my novels, I point to the dangers of nuclear weapons, and thereby awaken memories of Fukushima, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki in peoples’ hearts, which is my contribution to handing down war memories. Seirai points not only to the power of the memories in upsetting narratives which elide them, but also to his own efforts in supporting these memories through fiction. He alludes to a connection between attitudes to nuclear energy use and memory of war. Nagai made similar suggestions in his response, “No matter what you do, we cannot get away from the ‘inheritance and transmission of memories’ (kioku no keishō to denshō)”. Using these comments as a springboard, let us examine the origin story of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics. Norma Field and Muto Ruiko explained that the Olympics, combined with Fukushima’s “restoration”, resulted in an atmosphere of politics which excluded anyone who raised concerns against the Olympics.18 In an essay, Field informs us that the choice of Tokyo as host city was made on July

Silence and Resilience  161 16, 2011, only four months after Fukushima’s triple disaster and one month after the announcement by the International Atomic Energy Agency that the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daichi nuclear power plant was not a technical meltdown, but a melt-through. Fuel rods not only melted, but they breached the vessels which contained them as material gathered in “outer steel containment vessels”.19 In the midst of the ongoing disaster, the project to make use of this disaster to invite the Olympics was underway, and the Olympics was dubbed as the “Recovery Olympics” ( fukkō) to exhibit Japan’s resilience. However, aforementioned discrepancies between official statements and the reality on the ground indicate the Olympics was not about Japan’s recovery, but revealed a mechanism of normalising violence stemming from the atomic bombings and the Fukushima nuclear power plant’s melt-through, in order to silence any voices going against the national agenda—that Fukushima was under control and Tokyo (and beyond) was very safe. Like the symbol of a mushroom cloud in the US and beyond that obscures the actual disaster on the ground, the official statement looms large over the actual danger. The negligence towards radiation’s harmfulness to the human body and the environment is an important constituent of a narrative of normalisation of violence, as manifested in the dismissal of the need for an issuance of a national emergency. Taken to its extreme, the normalisation of collateral violence would justify the ongoing usage of nuclear weapons in “defence”.20

Figure 7.2 Sakamoto, Nagasaki, bombed Torii gate, photograph by Dominic Galeon, Unsplash.com, public domain.

162  Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto Not all of Fukushima's population was against the Olympics. As if gasping for a break from economic disaster due to the loss of communities and the failure to assure the safety of food,21 many were indeed eager to believe in its recovery, as demonstrated by their enthusiasm in welcoming the Olympic torch relay in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic. While it is important to acknowledge their hardship, it is equally notable that other Fukushima residents like Muto continued to raise awareness of the danger to their lives. These resilient and sceptical voices resonated with those of our respondents. In the following section of the chapter we move to examine how a US narrative which justified the atomic bombings has in recent times aligned increasingly closely with a Japanese national agenda—accepting the stockpiling of nuclear weapons, under a US “nuclear umbrella”. Next, we discuss how the achievement of the acclaimed nuclear ban treaty at the UN brings into focus a misalignment between the “memory” of the hibakusha and the Japanese government’s stance about nuclear issues (Figure 7.2).

The Achievement of the UN Nuclear Ban Treaty Communities of hibakusha have a history of long and ongoing work supporting the campaign for the United Nations Treaty to ban nuclear weapons, which we suggest further undercut a US narrative of the bombings as justified. Two and a half months after the seventy-fifth anniversaries of the atomic bombings, the news of the pending achievement of a new Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) was celebrated in the cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. The TPNW was ratified on January 22, 2021, two days after the US presidential inauguration. The treaty makes the development, testing, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons illegal for those countries that have signed it. This is an extraordinary achievement for those who have suffered the most from these weapons—including the hibakusha of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the many who lived through nuclear weapons testing in the Pacific and around test sites. Making the bomb illegal turns the old US justification for the weapon on its head. Immediately following the American bombings of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki, a narrative that justified the atomic bombs for their very might and power was advanced by the US military command and the president, excluding the memory of what had happened as told from the ground. The argument was that the bombing “saved lives” due to its scale, the lives of those who would have otherwise been killed in any invasion necessary to force Japan to surrender.22 By extension, those killed and those who ­suffered the results were allowable collateral damage. The first opportunity for a worldwide audience to hear an alternative hibakusha perspective arrived in late August 1946, with the publishing of journalist and writer John Hersey’s Hiroshima, in the New Yorker. Hersey used six narratives of hibakusha from Hiroshima, to tell the story of the atomic bombing in a new and humanistic way.

Silence and Resilience  163 Soon after, Henry Stimson, the former US war secretary, attempted to seize the narrative once more, in defence of the government and in absolute rejection of the “sufferer’s voice” that the extraordinary size of the bombs unloaded on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was “psychological”, and necessary to compel the Japanese to surrender at the end of the Second World War. Stimson wrote in Harper’s Magazine as follows: We had developed a weapon of such a revolutionary character that its use against the enemy might well be expected to produce exactly the kind of shock on the Japanese ruling oligarchy which we desired, strengthening the position of those who wished peace, and weakening that of the military party.... The atomic bomb was more than a weapon of terrible destruction; it was a psychological weapon.23 Due to the wide success of the voices of the hibakusha, President Harry Truman and others, in what Lesley Blume calls the “old-boy War Department network”, urgently attempted to develop a counter-narrative. Stimson reiterated that the bombing saved (American) lives and sped up the ending of the war.24 Years after dropping the bombs the American narrative, viewing the atomic bombing in a positive light, is still prevalent. According to Pew Research Center’s survey in 2015, 56% of US respondents regarded the bombings as justified—as the bombing ended the war quickly and thereby is seen to have saved lives.25 Attempts to suppress the voices and perspectives of the hibakusha are still strong. Only one week after the UN nuclear ban treaty achieved fifty ratifications, a US senator passed a resolution to honour the nuclear weapon workers from the Manhattan Project through to the Cold War era by declaring October 30 a National Day of Remembrance for the United States.26 Nonetheless, after Hersey’s Hiroshima, the hibakusha of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki spoke out about their experiences, continuing to undercut the US narrative. Despite the official narrative that embraces the nuclear weapons as a saviour, the hibakusha have shown incredible resilience and, over the years, more and more have shared their experiences. In both Hiroshima and Nagasaki civic discourse they have been at the forefront of the campaign to support the nuclear weapons ban treaty. For example, one ninety-two-year-old hibakusha from the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945, Ozaki Tōmei, a brother in a Catholic order, Seibo no Kishi, explained the significance of the treaty to survivors like him in an interview with McClelland in 2016.27 Orphaned from the bombing at seventeen, he never found his mother’s body. He explained the necessity of banning these weapons as follows: The Germans made tools for war including poisonous gas, which was [eventually] banned […]. However, when the USA made an atomic weapon, then they … wanted to try it out. It was a war […]. And so this

164  Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto is why we say we have to eliminate nuclear weapons […]. They said they did it to end the war, but for the people who were struck, it was horrific […] there was no need to use it.28 Another hibakusha, ninety-year-old Fukahori Jōji, told McClelland how he lost his mother and three younger siblings in the Nagasaki bombing. His younger brother, Kōji, died an excruciating death around a week after the bombing, where he had walked in the hot ash with no shoes and complaining to his brother, “I’m so hot!” At the site where Fukahori’s brother was exposed, the temperature was about 1,000 degrees Celsius. Fukahori said, “You would have thought everyone would have turned into charcoal”. The downplaying of the radiation effects of the bombing was a part of the US narrative from the initial aftermath as well. Monica Braw’s The Atomic Bomb Suppressed traces the US censorship of the bombings and, more recently, Janet Brodie has described how officials attempted to silence information about radiation effects and impacts.29 Brodie argues that the American officials attempted to avoid nuclear weapons’ association with biological, chemical or even radiological warfare, which are all included in the four categories of weapons of mass destruction employed by the US military.30 For Fukahori, the lasting effects of radiation exposure is a major reason why nuclear weapons must be banned. He continued: “…the terror of radiation has to be fully communicated … The atomic bomb is unacceptable. I still cannot get over it”. Since 2009, Fukahori has been speaking out to the visitors at the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum and to the passengers on the Peace Boat. Responding to the Japanese government’s inaction, Nagasaki city council put together a more recent resolution to ask once again for the Japanese government to join the UN nuclear ban treaty. Due to the ongoing work of hibakusha and civil society, the Japanese government is now under mounting pressure to ratify the TPNW. Major Japanese financial institutions and companies have said they will no longer fund the production of nuclear weapons and nearly a third of all local assemblies have adopted proposals calling on the government to act. In 2017 when the Japanese government showed no intention of joining the treaty, the mayors of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, on the anniversaries of the bombings of these cities, called for the Japanese government to support the new United Nations nuclear weapons ban treaty. After the ceremony, when the petition to sign the treaty was handed to Prime Minister Abe Shinzō, one Nagasaki hibakusha, Kawano Kōichi, asked Abe, “Which country are you representing as the Prime Minister? (anata wa doko no kuni no sōri desuka?)” So what is the attitude of the Japanese government today, at this important juncture looking ahead to the banning of nuclear weapons? We discuss the governmental attitudes in the next section, and how they relate to the US narrative, as we refer to the recent survey comments of a number of public figures.

Silence and Resilience  165

A Covid-19 Mushroom Cloud? The seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Hiroshima was remembered in Japan under a new and immense cloud of ­concern—the mushroom cloud of the Covid-19 pandemic (Figure 7.3). Kunitake Masako, Junshin University lecturer, surmised that in other parts of Japan the focus was directed away from the memorials for the bombings by the pandemic but, in the early stages, the Nagasaki region was not badly affected by the health crisis so the atomic bombing was remembered as per usual. On the other hand, remembering the bombing of Nagasaki under the cloud of Covid-19 led some to reflect further on a connection between the two: as mentioned in the epigraph at the beginning of this essay, “For Coronavirus to occur like this at the 75th juncture of the [remembrance of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki] should be ringing alarm bells”, wrote SH, a Peace Baton Member. Osajima Aoi from the Nagasaki Youth Delegation, like SH, connected the globalised Covid-19 disaster with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the use of an atomic bomb in war, and was optimistic that a sense of shared responsibility would lead to a greater participation of people in the commemorations—online: The impacts of Covid-19 have reaffirmed how the world shares the same problems. We have considerable potential to learn a lot from the current

Figure 7.3 Covid-19 pandemic, photograph by Shawn Ang, Unsplash.com, public domain.

166  Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto circumstances, in the way they have exceeded expectations. If we consider the risks of the usage of nuclear weaponry similarly, the threat feels omnipresent, and so you would think that even more people will [from now] participate in commemoration events [of the bombings]. As more events go online, the broadcasts and participation in commemorations [of the bombings] will also become mainstream, you would think.

Coronavirus (Resilience) The Covid-19 crisis ensured that the Olympics did not come to fruition as originally planned, whether the political intentions had been for the Tokyo Olympics to eclipse memory of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorations in 2020, or not. For Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the plans of city officials and peace activists for a series of large-scale events had to be scaled back. Although the health response to the pandemic is complex, we notice a similarity in governmental attitudes to this issue, in downplaying concerns for marginal groups who are less visible. The “mushroom cloud” of Covid-19 has made opaque the experiences of many vulnerable and susceptible populations. As a public health issue, the Japanese political class has tended to treat Covid19 in 2020 with little concern for these groups, similar to Abe’s attitude above to radiation health concerns. Olympic Minister Hashimoto Seiko said “The Olympics must be held at any cost”, on September 8th, vowing to fight against the coronavirus.31 In late November 2020, the President of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) said the Olympic Games would be “the light at the end of this dark tunnel”, and suggested that the IOC would pay for vaccines for visitors to Japan.32 Abe’s successor, Prime Minister Suga, encouraged people to continue to support the “Go to” (eat out, then travel) campaign, aimed at supporting struggling restaurants and the tourist industry, before finally and reluctantly suspending this campaign for two weeks from December 28, as people customarily travel for get-­togethers at the end of the year and the beginning of a new year. Despite calls for optimism, by December 2020, as Japan saw record numbers of infections and a worrying increase in suicides, there was a growing danger that the hospital system would be overwhelmed. Health experts warned business and travel would need to be scaled down and people should remain at home. Despite Kunitake’s sense above of an apparent normality in Nagasaki, other respondents cited the impacts of Covid-19 on the ability of the elderly hibakusha to speak during the anniversary. Seirai wrote, “… I expect that the [hibakusha’s] ability to speak about peace and tell their stories will be reduced”. Yamaguchi explained the Covid-19 crisis meant many hibakusha could not go to New York to support gatherings alongside the 2020 NonProliferation Treaty Review Conference, because it was cancelled. This was likely, as he writes, the last chance for many of them to be heard outside of

Silence and Resilience  167 Japan. More devastating was the fact many hibakusha in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki could not join the peace memorial ceremony. Okuyama Shinobu, a Kwassui High School teacher, described considerable impacts of the shutting down of tourism on the commemorations and changes in the 2020 anti-nuclear discourse. Her comments recall the importance of eyewitness memory in contributing to the narrative, as per Hersey’s intervention in 1946: Opportunities for the younger generation to meet and listen to hibakusha testimonies are becoming fewer and fewer, as the number of students on school excursions and the overseas visitors declined this year. It is true that one can listen to hibakusha voices online but it is different from face-to-face interactions, and makes it difficult to inspire prayers for peace […]. In particular, requests from overseas to meet hibakusha could instigate prayers for peace, leading to the abolition of nuclear weapons and the realization of a peaceful world. Annual memorial services were reduced in scale at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Seirai wrote that the discussion of coronavirus in Japanese domestic media had stolen time from any discussion of the atomic bombings. About one-tenth of the crowds in recent years were able to attend as invited guests at the ceremony at Hiroshima (perhaps 800 people) and the chairs were spaced apart.33 VOA News reported that only hibakusha, their families “and a few” dignitaries were in attendance.34 In Nagasaki, Nippon TV News reported there were less than 500 people at the commemoration, about 10% of the usual number. Respondents were confident, however, that the size of the group able to participate would not affect the sentiment and one Nagasaki citizen, MI, wrote to us that the cancellation of live events or their transfiguration into online events was not necessarily bad. He wrote, “Instead, I think this might help people to realise how fantastic it is to be able to hold the memorial all together in the future”.

The Japanese Government’s Alignment with the US Nuclear “Umbrella” Prime Minister Abe had planned to to attend the Closing Ceremony of the Olympics on August 9, 2020, but instead, one of his final public acts as Prime Minister was to attend the Nagasaki memorial service, broadcast worldwide (as discussed below). By considering a segment of Abe’s speech in Nagasaki and respondents’ understanding of it, we notice the changing position of the Japanese government which, by aligning with the US nuclear “umbrella”, normalises violence against marginal populations as “collateral damage”.

168  Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto The position adopted in 2020 by the Japanese government in relation to ongoing nuclear activities was clearly evidenced by Abe’s presence and his speech made in Nagasaki on August 9. A Nagasaki-based researcher drew attention to this in her response to the survey. She wrote that Prime Minister Abe subtly proclaimed a closure to the consideration of impacts of the atomic bombings, which we perceive as consistent with the original plan for the Olympics. SC, who would normally have attended the memorial ceremonies to participate and to take note of what happened, instead watched the ceremony this year from her home. Nagai Tokusaburō states the importance of the memorials held on August 9 in Nagasaki is that “… the anti-nuclear/anti-war spirit is able to be strongly seen”. Holding the ceremony indeed makes the sense of mourning visible and the cry for outlawing nuclear weaponry concrete. In Abe’s speech he suggested Nagasaki had recovered from the damages. He stated (Figure 7.4): Seventy-five years ago today, Nagasaki was reduced to ashes, with not a single tree or blade of grass remaining. Yet through the efforts of its citizens, it achieved reconstruction beautifully as we see today. Mindful of this, we again feel strongly that there is no trial that cannot be overcome and feel acutely how precious peace is. SC, historian and an author of atomic bomb literature herself, wrote, in a response to the PM that, rather, the damages of the atomic bomb were still

Figure 7.4 Abe Shinzō tweet, August 9, 2020. Abe Shinzō twitter ­ c omment, August 9, 2020, screenshot, https://twitter.com/AbeShinzo/status/ 1292325885849137157?s=20.

Silence and Resilience  169 omnipresent and evident. She continued, “The radiation of Fukushima is the same”.35 SC concluded as follows: 公の行事としてこれらの被害に終止符を打つのではなく、まだ、被害は終わって いないということを提起していく必要がある。 “Rather than placing a fullstop to the damage, like this at a public event, we need to remind ourselves that the damage is not completely recognised and recovered [in remembering both the Fukushima disaster and the atomic bombings].” For SC, memories and discussion of the damage and impacts must be resilient against the government’s claim that the event has finished and is no longer relevant. Another researcher, AF, added to SC’s comments about the official speech and the importance of questioning misunderstandings or silences and of revising our collective narrative of the historical record. She wrote: Rather than upholding an easily expressed narrative of getting over and recovering from war as if it were an earthquake, I believe we must ask time and again, “Why did this happen?”, “What happened?”, “What were the thoughts people embraced as they went to their deaths?”, “What must we do to make sure this kind of thing never happens again?”, I believe,” she continued, “that about the war and the nuclear accident [in Fukushima] there are many things we don’t know and yet which are buried, I really do believe. More than ever, the remembering and re-telling of events such as Nagasaki, Hiroshima and Fukushima by eyewitnesses promote questions as we turn to the future, reminding us of our own responsibility to avoid the perils of war and of nuclear accidents. Yet Japanese policy makers like Abe continue to show an ambivalence about nuclear weapons, or an outright acceptance of them as a necessity and thus, in 2019, Japan voted against a UN General Assembly resolution that welcomed the adoption of the TPNW. There is an increasingly clear connection to the retention and potential use of US nuclear weapons on Japan’s behalf, as per the national security strategy of 2013, which states, “the extended deterrence of the US, with nuclear deterrence at its core, is indispensable [to Japan]”.36 Subtly, it appears the Japanese government itself may have accepted the atomic bombings of Japan in 1945 as an unfortunate necessity. It is this disheartening conclusion which the sufferers, the hibakusha, continue to fight against, and work for their government to imagine and realise another possibility. In contrast to Abe’s presence at the commemoration in 2020 was the everyday Nagasaki voice of Fukahori Shigemi (Figure 7.5), a Catholic kataribe (story-teller) whom McClelland interviewed in her previous project.37 Fukahori was the hibakusha representative at the official ceremony

170  Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto

Figure 7.5 Fukahori Shigemi, Urakami Cathedral, 2016, photograph by Gwyn McClelland.

in Nagasaki, and he also represented the hibakusha in meeting Pope Francis when he arrived in Nagasaki in November 2019. Fukahori said “I’m determined to keep telling my own story so that Nagasaki will be the last place on earth to have suffered an atomic attack”.38 In his interview with McClelland in 2016, Fukahori explained he was a seminary student as a fifteen-year-old in 1945 at Oura, saving him from the initial devastating impacts of the bombing, as his home was alongside the Urakami Cathedral, some one hundred metres or so from the hypocentre. He lost four siblings in the atomic bombing—his two older sisters, a younger brother and a younger sister. His elder brother had been in Kokura in war service and his father in an army factory which was sheltered, so the three of them were the only survivors in the family. After the bombing, he took refuge with the seminary from Oura Cathedral and they travelled as far afield as the regions of Oyama and Tabira in the countryside, eventually returning to a shelter, “underneath” Urakami Cathedral with his surviving family members. Fukahori represented the ongoing transmission of memory in Nagasaki, in juxtaposition to Abe and the Liberal Democratic Party’s wish to move on, to hold the Olympics at “whatever cost” and to move Japan into a future, shielded by a US “nuclear umbrella”.

Silence and Resilience  171

Online Commemorations Although Covid-19 forced commemorations of the atomic bombings online, this did not necessarily mean a lesser audience; in fact it was the opposite. The Nagasaki civic preparations had intended the seventy-fifth anniversary to be celebrated en masse. By July, it was clear that not only would there be very few, if any, tourists in Nagasaki, but that many of the yearly commemorations would no longer be able to take place due to Covid-19. This situation forced the organisers to use more online forums. Although online events required a computer equipped with camera and microphone, a wifi environment and some computer skills that may be novel to some of the hibakusha generation, it was newly possible for many to participate in online commemorations, locally, nationally and internationally, and one of the major successes of this online commemoration format was that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorations were held on August 6 and August 9 respectively. It was possible to watch the full commemorations online from around the world. Osajima Aoi, member of the Nagasaki Youth Delegation, was upbeat about the change to commemorative events online, suggesting these made it possible to include more of the younger generations. She wrote: As a result, the younger people and the hibakusha have cooperated and there has been an increase in the passing on of the inheritance of the “hibaku shougen” (testimonies of atomic devastation), opening up new possibilities in the move to online events. Okuyama Shinobu, high school teacher, wrote: …unless the audience is willing to learn from it, they may be less active in working toward peace, compared to face-to-face experiences. Yet, people’s willingness to connect to hibakusha online will lead them to a future visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the pandemic is under control. She connected the possibilities of online activity with new overseas audiences and the future potential elimination of nuclear weapons. The use of online capabilities enabled hibakusha and peace activists to appear at online events worldwide while they stayed at home. Online fora provided good opportunities for hibakusha, for whom a long flight abroad can put strain on their health, as well as for organisers whose financial responsibility for the guest speakers’ travel expenses is rising significantly. For example, hibakusha Moriguchi Mitsugi of Nagasaki and Mitsuoka Hanako, a graduate student at Nagasaki University, together with Hanford “downwinder”, Trisha Pritikin, the author of The Hanford Plaintiff,

172  Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto appeared in an online event organised by the Buddhist Peace Fellowship, Chicago Chapter, on August 6 (Chicago time), in which Moriguchi gave his testimony while Mitsuoka introduced youth activities to the audience. Kondō Kōko, who appeared in John Hersey’s Hiroshima as the daughter of Reverend Tanimoto Kiyoshi, was invited to discuss her memory of the aftermath of the bombing at an online event organised by Zero Project based in New York and Hiroshima on the anniversary of the publication of Hersey’s Hiroshima article. Kondō also appeared at another online event organised by JETAA (Japan Exchange and Teaching Alumni Association), Chicago Chapter.39 There was a concerted effort to enable a virtual presence in both Nagasaki and Hiroshima. On behalf of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, Yamaguchi Hibiki was the guide for an online tour of the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum (Figure 7.6), a few days prior to the anniversary. He wrote that “without the pandemic, this sort of action could not have happened”. He believed the tour, similarly carried out in Hiroshima

Figure 7.6 Yamaguchi Hibiki presenting the virtual tour at the Nagasaki Museum, organised by ICAN, Japan, 2020.

Silence and Resilience  173 (with different guides), gave English speakers and others overseas a chance “to learn the humanitarian consequences of nuclear use”. As speaking engagements were forced online, we also noticed this expanded our audiences, rather than reduced them. McClelland spoke on an Australian panel organised by the History Council of Victoria, Monash University and the Old Treasury Building in Melbourne. As originally envisaged, the audience would have been a local group, perhaps thirty to forty people, but the commemoration was in fact watched by participants from interstate and overseas, including 125 people at the peak of the evening. The panel discussion was wide-ranging and the issue of the potential nuclear weapon ban was discussed, as well as the future of energy production in Australia, as directed by live questions from the webinar, a  participative opportunity. Following the panel, the video was published online, and on the “Big Ideas” programme on Radio National, Australia. McClelland participated in two further online speaking engagements at the University of New England and Deakin University in Australia, while Miyamoto spoke at online events hosted by Temple University Tokyo and Notre Dame University (US).

Conclusion The year 2020 was to be the seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic bombings in Japan, but it turned out a year like no other, in which the modern Olympics was disrupted, not by war, but by the “mushroom cloud” of a health crisis. In this chapter, we have described a power imbalance in the intentions for the Olympics—the government-backed movement planned to adopt this global event intending “restoration” for Fukushima. The closing ceremony of the seventy-fifth commemoration of Nagasaki Day would have excluded those who still suffer the entrenched results of both events. After discussing silences which emerged from these political and economic-­c entric intentions, we introduced the resilience of memory via the reflections of a number of public figures we surveyed about the entangled conjunction of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the bombings, the imagined celebration of the Olympics and the unfolding Covid-19 crisis. Despite the governmental agenda, due to the pandemic, the Hiroshima and Nagasaki commemorations of the atomic bombings were downgraded, as preparations were made for social distancing and as local commemorations were cancelled alongside the postponement of the Olympics. Simultaneously, a grassroots campaign for an end to nuclear weapons also appeared likely to take a backseat, ironically because of the immediacy of the spreading deathly disease and contagion. Despite silences and deliberate erasure, the seventy-fifth commemorations were not completely drowned out by the Olympic festivities. Instead, varied online commemorations emerged and in the voices of both hibakusha and new generations, there is a continuing determination not to be silenced and an ongoing resilience, highlighting the strength of memory.

174  Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto The long campaign against nuclear weapons, born out of the sufferers’ pain, reached an important juncture just a few months on from the commemoration of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as a nuclear ban was confirmed by the United Nations, for all who signed the agreement. As we moved out from under Covid’s cloud, we anticipated continuing challenges for those who still suffer the effects of radiation and the memories of the atomic bombings of 1945. The resilience of memory, though, seriously reminds us that the sufferers themselves remember they are not the only victims of history. Listening to the silenced voices at the commemoration of Nagasaki and Hiroshima brings to the fore other issues of silence— not discussed in this chapter, but needing to be voiced—regarding those who suffered great impacts from Japan’s victimisation of Asian countries during the Pacific War. These voices are suppressed precisely because they too are incongruent with official narratives and they speak of inconvenient truths. To represent the resilience of memory, in conclusion we commend the words of Okuyama Shinobu, teacher in Nagasaki, in her commitment to “right remembering” which does not neglect difficult aspects of the past. I hope that at the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympics, [the nuclear disaster at] Fukushima and the war defeat of 1945 are raised. Moreover, by showing remorse for the way Japan ruled over and colonised Asia and thereby involved Asian peoples in the war, such memories may be crucially transmitted [to the younger generation]. In schools, teaching such a history will ensure that we do not wage war again.40

Notes 1 Gwyn McClelland and David Chapman, “Silences: The Catholics, the Untouchables and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb,” Asian Studies Review 44, no. 3 (2020): 382–400; See also Max Picard, The World of Silence (Chicago, IL: H. Regnery, 1952); Robin E. Sheriff, “Exposing Silence as Cultural Censorship: A Brazilian Case,” American Anthropologist 102, no. 1 (March 2000): 14–132; Eviatar Zerubavel, The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). 2 Zerubavel, The Elephant in the Room, 4. 3 Brianna C. Delker, Rowan Salton and Kate C. McLean. “Giving Voice to Silence: Empowerment and Disempowerment in the Developmental Shift from Trauma ‘Victim’ to ‘Survivor-Advocate’,” Journal of Trauma and Dissociation 21, no. 2 (2020): 242–263, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/ abs/10.1080/15299732.2019.1678212?journalCode=wjtd20. Robyn Fivush, “Speaking Silence: The Social Construction of Silence in Autobiographical and Cultural Narratives.” Memory 18, no. 2 (2010): 88–98. https://doi. org/10.1080/09658210903029404; Pilar Hernández-Wolfe, “Altruism Born of Suffering: How Colombian Human Rights Activists Transform Pain into Prosocial Action,” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 51, no. 2 (2011): 229–249, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0022167810379960. 4 We are thinking especially of Fukushima in this case, where the results of radiation, evacuations and irradiated soils were still omnipresent.

Silence and Resilience  175 5 Muto Ruiko and Norma Field (Introduction and Translation), “This Will Still Be True Tomorrow: ‘Fukushima Ain’t Got the Time for Olympic Games’: Two Texts on Nuclear Disaster and Pandemic,” Asia Pacific Journal 18, no. 2 (2020), https://apjjf.org/2020/13/MutoField.html. 6 The permitted dose of radiation in the time of recovery from the accident was set “between 1 Smv and 20 Smv” at the International Conference on Recovery After Nuclear Accidents: Radiological Protection Lessons from Fukushima and Beyond organised by the International Commission of Radiological Protection (ICRP) held from December 1 to December 18, 2020, discussed the permitted dose of radiation. “Kaifukuki no shin bougo kijun ‘1 miri kara 20 miri no mannaka ika’ to hyogen henkou (A new protection guideline during recovery changed, in the means of ‘1 mSv and 20 mSv’),” Our Planet-TV, December 4, 2020, http://www.ourplanet-tv.org/?q=node/2531. 7 Koide Hiroaki and Norma Field (translation), “The Fukushima Nuclear Disaster and the Tokyo Olympics,” Asia-Pacific Journal/ Japan Focus 17, no. 3 (March 2019), https://apjjf.org/2019/05/Koide-Field.html. 8 Morris Low, Visualizing Nuclear Power in Japan: A Trip to the Reactor (Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020), 197–198. Sakai’s father witnessed the flash from the explosion, although he was not in Miyoshi city, but closer to Hiroshima city. 9 “Boy Born on Day A-Bomb Fell Chosen to Light Olympic Flame,” New York Times, August 23, 1964, https://www.nytimes.com/1964/08/23/archives/boyborn-on-day-abomb-fell-chosen-to-light-olympic-flame.html; Ruik and Field, “This Will Still Be True Tomorrow,” note 6. Field’s essay informs us that he was nicknamed “Atomic Boy,” drawing on a newspaper article. 10 Presentation by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the 125th Session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), September 7, 2013, Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet Home Page, https://japan.kantei.go.jp/96_abe/­ statement/201309/07ioc_presentation_e.html. 11 Wolf Richter, “After Snatching Olympics, Japan Suddenly Admits Fukushima Not ‘Under Control,’ Begs for International Help,” Wolf Street, October 7, 2013, https://wolfstreet.com/2013/10/07/after-snatching-olympics-japan-suddenly-­ admits-fukushima-not-under-control-begs-for-international-help-2/. 12 “Hinansha su no suii” (The Transition of the Number of Evacuees, Including Those Who Moved within the Prefecture), Fukushima Mieruka Project, 2020, https://311mieruka.jp/info/data/data03/. 13 Naikakufu Hisaisha Siekatsu Shien Chimu, “Kikan kon’nan kuiki ni tsuite” (“On the Difficult-to-Return Zone,” Report,) Cabinet Office, Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, accessed December 28, 2020, https://www.meti. go.jp/earthquake/nuclear/oshirase_archives_h25.html. 14 The Ministry of the Environment, accessed December 28, 2020, https://www. env.go.jp/chemi/rhm/h29kisoshiryo/h29kiso-08-07-01.html. 15 Tokyo 2020 Official Site, accessed 28 December, 2020, https://tokyo2020.org/en/ torch/route/fukushima/. 16 For a description of the influence of Nagai Takashi, Tokusaburō’s grandfather, in Nagasaki, see Chapter 5 of Gwyn McClelland, Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki: Prayers, Protests and Catholic Survivor Narratives (New York: Routledge, 2020). 17 Mari Yamaguchi, “Hiroshima Court Recognizes Atomic Bomb ‘Black Rain’ Victims,” The Mainichi, July 29, 2020. However, the city and prefecture of Hiroshima appealed to a higher court. See “Plaintiffs Angered by Gov’t Appeal in Hiroshima ‘Black Rain’ Suit,’” The Mainichi, August 13, 2020, https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200813/p2a/00m/0na/008000c. 18 Muto and Field, “This Will Still Be True Tomorrow”.

176  Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto 19 Justin McCurry, “Fukushima Nuclear Plant May Have Suffered ‘MeltThrough’, Japan admits,” Guardian, June 8, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/ world/2011/jun/08/fukushima-nuclear-plant-melt-through. 20 As we note in light of current threats and counter-threats made by Russia and its opponents, including the US. 21 As of November 2020, Minami-soma city examined 320 food items for their cesium containment. Radioactive cesium was found in 118 items, and nine items (mainly mushrooms) exceeded the safety level. Shokuhin houshanou bunseki Kijunchigoe wa 9 ken Minami-soma shi 11 gatsu; “Food radiation detection: 9 items exceeded the safety level, Minami-soma shi November,” Mainichi shimbun, December 20, 2020, https://mainichi.jp/articles/20201220/ddl/k07/040/058000c. 22 In terms of saving American lives, historian Barton Bernstein’s archival research debunked the myth of half a million lives being saved thanks to the bombings. Barton J. Bernstein, “A Post-War Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42, no. 6 (1986): 38–40. See also Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz (eds), Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy (Stony Creek, CT: The Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998), 130–134. Another historian Adam Goodheart calls into question the possibility of Operation Olympics that laid out the US landing on mainland Japan. Adam Goodheart, “The Invasion That Never Was,” Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy, eds. Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz (Stony Creek, CT: The Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998), 135–140. 23 Henry Stimson, “Stimson on the Bomb,” Harper’s Magazine (Republished by Atomic Heritage Foundation), February 1947, 2020, https://www.atomicheritage.org/key-documents/stimson-bomb. 24 Lesley Blume, Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-Up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World (London: Scribe, 2020), 151. 25 Bruce Stokes, “70 Years after Hiroshima, Opinions Have Shifted on Use of Atomic Bomb,” Pew Research Center, August 4, 2015, https://www.pewresearch. org/fact-tank/2015/08/04/70-years-after-hiroshima-opinions-have-shifted-onuse-of-atomic-bomb/. 26 Carol A. Clerk, “Senate Unanimously Passes Udall, Heinrich Resolution Honoring Nation’s Nuclear Weapons Workers, Declares National Day of Remembrance,” Los Alamos Daily Post, November 1, 2020, https://ladaily post.com/senate-unanimously-passes-udall-heinrich-resolution-honoringnations-nuclear-weapons-workers-declares-national-day-of-remembrance/. It is important to note, however, the two senators, Tom Udall (D-N.M.) and Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) who proposed this resolution, hope the resolution will help the current compensation programme for those who were exposed to radiation to be extended to uranium miners and factory workers. 27 For more on Ozaki, and other Nagasaki hibakusha mentioned in this chapter, see Gwyn McClelland, Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki: Prayers, Protests and Catholic Survivor Narratives (London: Routledge, 2020). 28 This and the following quote were originally published in Gwyn McClelland, “‘I Still Cannot Get Over It’: 75 Years after Japan Atomic Bombs, a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty Is Finally Realised,” Conversation, October 26, 2020, https://theconversation.com/i-still-cannot-get-over-it-75-years-after-japanatomic-bombs-a-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty-is-finally-realised-147851. 29 Monica Braw, The Atomic Bomb Suppressed: American Censorship in Occupied Japan (New York: Routledge, 1991); Shigesawa Atsuko, Genbaku to ken’etsu (The Atomic Bombing and Censorship) (Tokyo: Chuo koron shin sha, 2010). 30 Janet Farrell Brodie, “Radiation Secrecy and Censorship after Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” Journal of Social History 48, no. 4 (Summer 2015): 842–864.

Silence and Resilience  177 31 Jack Tarrant, “Japan Official Says Tokyo Games Must Be Held Next Year ‘at Any Cost’,” Reuters, September 8, 2020, https://es.reuters.com/article/ olympics-2020-hashimoto/tokyo-games-must-be-held-next-year-at-any-costminister-idINKBN25Z0L8. 32 Motoko Rich and Matthew Futterman, “Despite Uncertainty, Tokyo Olympics Promoted as Light at End of Pandemic Tunnel,” New York Times, November 19, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/19/sports/olympics/tokyo-­olympicscovid-postponed.html. 33 Ben Dooley and Hisako Ueno, “Hiroshima’s 75th Anniversary: Preserving Survivors’ Message of Peace,” New York Times, August 5, 2020, https://www. nytimes.com/2020/08/05/world/asia/hiroshima-japan-75th-anniversary.html. 34 “Japan Marks 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima Atomic Bombing,” VOA News, 2020, https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/japan-marks-75th-anniversaryhiroshima-atomic-bombing. 35 Prime Minister of Japan Website, Speech Transcript, 2020, https://japan.kantei. go.jp/98_abe/statement/202008/_00002.html. 36 ICAN Website, “Japan: Nuclear-Weapon Endorser: Has Not Yet Joined the TPNW,” accessed December 8, 2020, https://www.icanw.org/japan. 37 See Gwyn McClelland, Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki: Prayers, Protests and Catholic Survivor Narratives (London: Routledge, 2020). 38 Mari Yamaguchi, “Nagasaki Urges Nuke-Ban on 75th Anniversary of US A-Bombing,” CTV News, August 8, 2020, https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/ nagasaki-urges-nuke-ban-on-75th-anniversary-of-u-s-a-bombing-1.5056996. 39 Yuki Miyamoto supported and assisted with these events. 40 Okuyama Shinobu, Kwassui Senior High School, Nagasaki, 2020.

Bibliography Abe, Shinzo (@AbeShinzo). “The Tragedy That Occurred in Nagasaki and Hiroshima, and the Suffering That It Caused, Must Never Be Repeated.” Twitter, August 9, 2020, 3: 04 p.m. https://twitter.com/AbeShinzo/status/1292325885849137157?s=20. “Address by the Prime Minister at the Nagasaki Peace Memorial Ceremony.” Prime Minister of Japan Website. Speech Transcript, 2020. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/98_ abe/statement/202008/_00002.html. Bernstein, Barton J. “A Post-War Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 42, no. 6 (1986): 38–40. https://doi.org/10.1080/00963402.1986.11 459388. Bird, Kai and Lawrence Lifschult eds. Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy. Stony Creek; CT: The Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998. Blume, Lesley. Fallout: The Hiroshima Cover-up and the Reporter Who Revealed It to the World. London: Scribe, 2020. “Boy Born on Day A-Bomb Fell Chosen to Light Olympic Flame.” New York Times, August 23, 1964. Braw, Monica. The Atomic Bomb Suppressed: American Censorship in Occupied Japan. New York: Routledge, 2017. Brodie, Janet Farrell. “Radiation Secrecy and Censorship after Hiroshima and Nagasaki.” Journal of Social History 48, no. 4 (Summer 2015): 842–864. Cabinet Office, Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry. “Naikakufu Hisaisha Siekatsu Shien Chimu, Kikan kon’nan kuiki ni tsuite” (“On the Difficult-to-Return

178  Gwyn McClelland and Yuki Miyamoto zone,” Report). Accessed December 28, 2020. https://www.meti.go.jp/earthquake/ nuclear/oshirase_archives_h25.html. Clerk, Carol A. “Senate Unanimously Passes Udall, Heinrich Resolution Honoring Nation’s Nuclear Weapons Workers, Declares National Day of Remembrance.” Los Alamos Daily Post, November 1, 2020. https://ladailypost.com/senate-­ unanimously-passes-udall-heinrich-resolution-honoring-nations-nuclearweapons-workers-declares-national-day-of-remembrance/. Delker, Brianna C., Rowan Salton and Kate C. McLean. “Giving Voice to Silence: Empowerment and Disempowerment in the Developmental Shift from Trauma ‘Victim’ to ‘Survivor-Advocate.’” Journal of Trauma and Dissociation 21, no. 2 (2020): 242–263. https://doi.org/10.1080/15299732.2019.1678212. Dooley, Ben and Hisako Ueno. “Hiroshima’s 75th Anniversary: Preserving Survivors’ Message of Peace.” New York Times, August 5, 2020. https://www. nytimes.com/2020/08/05/world/asia/hiroshima-japan-75th-anniversary.html. Field, Norma. “Introduction to Muto Ruiko’s ‘This Will Still Be True Tomorrow: ‘Fukushima Ain’t Got the Time for Olympic Games’: Two Texts on Nuclear Disaster and Pandemic’.” Asia Pacific Journal 18, no. 2 (2020). https://apjjf. org/2020/13/MutoField.html. Fivush, Robyn. “Speaking Silence: The Social Construction of Silence in Autobiographical and Cultural Narratives.” Memory 18, no. 2 (2010): 88–98. https//doi.org/10.1080/09658210903029404. Goodheart, Adam. “The Invasion That Never Was.” In Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy, edited by Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz, 135–140. Stony Creek, CT: The Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998. Hernández-Wolfe, Pilar. “Altruism Born of Suffering: How Colombian Human Rights Activists Transform Pain into Prosocial Action.” Journal of Humanistic Psychology 51, no. 2 (2011): 229–249. https://doi/10.1177/0022167810379960. “Hinansha sū no suii.” Fukushima Mieruka Project, May 1, 2010. https://311mieruka. jp/info/data/data03/. ICAN Website. “How Is Your Country Doing?/Asia.” Accessed December 8, 2020. https://www.icanw.org/region-asia. “Japan Marks 75th Anniversary of Hiroshima Atomic Bombing.” VOA News, 2020. https://www.voanews.com/east-asia-pacific/japan-marks-75th-anniversaryhiroshima-atomic-bombing. Koide, Hiroaki. “The Fukushima Disaster and the Tokyo Olympics.” Translated by Norma Field. The Asia-Pacific Journal/ Japan Focus 17, no. 3 (2019). https://apjjf. org/2019/05/Koide-Field.html. Low, Morris. Visualizing Nuclear Power in Japan: A Trip to the Reactor. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2020. McClelland, Gwyn. Dangerous Memory in Nagasaki: Prayers, Protests and Catholic Survivor Narratives. London: Routledge, 2020. McClelland, Gwyn and David Chapman. 2020. “Silences: The Catholics, the Untouchables and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb.” Asian Studies Review 44, no. 3 (2020): 382–400. McClelland, Gwyn. “’I Still Cannot Get Over It’: 75 Years after Japan Atomic Bombs, a Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty Is Finally Realised.” Conversation, October 26, 2020. https://theconversation.com/i-still-cannot-get-over-it-75-years-after-japanatomic-bombs-a-nuclear-weapons-ban-treaty-is-finally-realised-147851. McCurry, Justin. “Fukushima Nuclear Plant May Have Suffered ‘Melt-Through’, Japan Admits.” Guardian, June 8, 2011. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2011/ jun/08/fukushima-nuclear-plant-melt-through.

Silence and Resilience  179 Ministry of the Environment. Accessed December 28, 2020. https://www.env.go.jp/ chemi/rhm/h29kisoshiryo/h29kiso-08-07-01.html. Our Planet-TV. “Kaifukuki no shin bougokijun ‘1 miri kara 20 miri no mannaka ika’ to hyougen henkou” (A New Protection Guideline During Recovery Changed; “In the Means of 1 mSv and 20 mSv’). December 4, 2020. http://www. ourplanet-tv.org/?q=node/2531. Picard, Max. The World of Silence. Chicago: H. Regnery, 1952. “Presentation by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the 125th Session of the International Olympic Committee (IOC).” September 7, 2013. Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet Home Page. https://japan.kantei.go.jp/96_abe/statement/201309/07ioc_ presentation_e.html. Richter, Wolf. “After Snatching Olympics, Japan Suddenly Admits Fukushima Not ‘Under Control’, Begs for International Help.” Wolf Street, October 7, 2013. https://wolfstreet.com/2013/10/07/after-snatching-olympics-japan-suddenlyadmits-fukushima-not-under-control-begs-for-international-help-2/. Rich, Motoko and Matthew Futterman. “Despite uncertainty, Tokyo Olympics Promoted as Light at End of Pandemic Tunnel.” November 19, 2020. https://www. nytimes.com/2020/11/19/sports/olympics/tokyo-olympics-covid-postponed.html. Sheriff, R. “Exploring Silence as Cultural Censorship: A Brazilian Case.” American Anthropologist 102, no. 1 (2000): 14–132. Shigesawa, Atsuko. Genbaku to ken’etsu (The Atomic Bombing and Censorship). Tokyo: Chuo shinkoronsha, 2010. “Shokuhin houshanou bunseki Kijunchigoe wa 9 ken Minami-soma shi 11 gatsu. 2020.” (“Food Radiation Detection: 9 Items Exceeded the Safety Level, Minamisoma shi. November”). Mainichi shimbun, December 20, 2020. https://mainichi. jp/articles/20201220/ddl/k07/040/058000c. Stimson, Henry. “Stimson on the Bomb.” Atomic Heritage Foundation. Accessed, November 23, 2020. https://www.atomicheritage.org/key-documents/ stimson-bomb. Stokes, Bruce. “70 years after Hiroshima, Opinions Have Shifted on Use of Atomic Bomb.” Pew Research Center, August 4, 2015. https://www.pewresearch.org/ fact-tank/2015/08/04/70-years-after-hiroshima-opinions-have-shifted-on-use-ofatomic-bomb/. Tarrant, Jack. 2020. “Japan Official Says Tokyo Games Must Be Held Next Year ‘At Any Cost’.” Reuters, September 8, 2020. https://es.reuters.com/article/ olympics-2020-hashimoto/tokyo-games-must-be-held-next-year-at-any-costminister-idINKBN25Z0L8. The Mainichi. “Plaintiffs Angered by Gov’t Appeal in Hiroshima ‘Black Rain’ Suit.” The Mainichi, August 13, 2020, https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20200813/ p2a/00m/0na/008000c. Tokyo 2020 Official Site. https://tokyo2020.org/en/torch/route/fukushima/. Yamaguchi, Mari. “Nagasaki Urges Nuke-Ban on 75th Anniversary of US A-Bombing.” CTV News, August 8, 2020. https://www.ctvnews.ca/world/nagasakiurges-nuke-ban-on-75th-anniversary-of-u-s-a-bombing-1.5056996. Yamaguchi, Mari. 2020. “Hiroshima Court Recognizes Atomic Bomb ‘Black Rain’ Victims.” The Mainichi, July 29, 2020. Zerubavel, Eviatar. The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

8 An Apocalypse through Australian Eyes The Art and Objets Trouvés of Occupied Hiroshima Tessa Morris-Suzuki The scene that confronts us is one of utter devastation. The jumbled mass of masonry and metal heaped in mountains on the ground once, no doubt, formed part of shops or houses, but it is impossible to imagine their lost shapes or purpose. Sagging roofs and a broken bridge lead to the structure that dominates the landscape, a peculiarly distorted building which appears to be a church (although, as we shall see, it actually had a different function). Now its concrete walls have buckled outwards, and its tall tower totters at a crazy angle above the ruins of the city. Through this wilderness of destruction move barely visible human figures, their grey uniforms merging with the greyness all around them. This is the landscape of Hiroshima, painted by Australian war artist Reginald Rowed shortly before the first anniversary of the atomic bombing—on July 31, 1946. The title of Rowed’s painting is Rebuilding Hiroshima, but the optimism of the title seems almost ironic. The destruction before us leaves the viewer wondering about the possibility of reconstruction. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki overturned both the global political order and human perceptions of nature. For many artists, it was a decisive moment that shattered and reshaped their vision of the world. Salvador Dali, whose 1950s work The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory1 represents a kind of “nuclear mysticism”, wrote that the atomic explosion of August 6, 1945, shook me seismically. Thenceforth, the atom was my favourite food for thought. Many of the landscapes painted in the period express the great fear inspired in me by the announcement of that explosion.2 The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory reworks Dali’s famous 1931 painting The Persistence of Memory’3 —with its haunting image of clocks melting in a harsh surreal landscape—into a vision of “objects breaking down and separating into elemental parts, a metaphor for the material world dissolving into its atomic structure”.4 The true nature and scale of the atomic destruction, though, was not widely known until well after the event. One of the early acts of the incoming

DOI: 10.4324/9781003320395-8

An Apocalypse through Australian Eyes  181 occupiers was to impose strict censorship on reporting, and particularly on the reproduction of images, of the impact of the bombings within Japan, for fear that they might cause anger towards the occupying forces. So, when Reginald Rowed painted his pictures of Hiroshima, no Japanese artist could exhibit works showing the destruction wrought by the bombs, and no photographs of this destruction could be published in Japanese newspapers. In was not until several years later that the Japanese public was able to see the first visual images of the effects of the bomb—initially as depicted in the extraordinary works of the husband-and-wife artist team Iri and Toshi Maruki (Figure 8.1).5 But many Australian troops who took part in the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) in defeated Japan quickly came into contact with the effects of the atomic bomb at first hand. The Australian BCOF contingent was headquartered in Kure, the city next-door to Hiroshima, and some 3000–4000 Australian service people were sent into Hiroshima early in 1946 to help clear the destruction.6 Because of this exposure to the aftermath of the Hiroshima bombing, a surprisingly vivid record of the effects of that first atomic bomb exists today in Australia in soldiers’ diaries, photographs and art works. The connection of Australian troops to the atomic bombing was a deep and intense one, which went beyond the visual impact of the

Figure 8.1 Rebuilding Hiroshima by Reginald Rowed, July 1946, Australian War Memorial.

182  Tessa Morris-Suzuki ruined city. They were given no protective equipment and knew nothing about the risks of residual radiation. They dug through the dust and rubble of the city to remove bodies, prepare for the reconstruction of buildings or (in some cases) to seek “souvenirs” of ground zero. Some suffered puzzling health problems at the time, and many later came to believe that their health had been affected by exposure to residual radiation, though this has never been officially recognised.7 For these Australians, there was a sense that the atomic bombing had entered not only their vision of the world but also the very cells of their bodies. In this chapter the author explores Australian encounters with the Hiroshima bombings through four individual stories. The first three are the stories of Australian artists who painted the landscapes of destruction left by the bomb, while the fourth concerns an objet trouvé brought back from the city by one of the BCOF soldiers who served there. The experiences and visions of Hiroshima described here are diverse, reflecting the varied ways in which different individuals responded to the horrors with which they were confronted but, together, they give insights into the profound challenges of responding—psychologically and emotionally—to the realities of the Hiroshima bombing. Salvador Dali’s reaction to the atomic age operated at an intellectual, metaphysical and symbolic level, but the artists discussed here were all on the ground in Hiroshima, and felt the need to attempt to represent the reality that they saw before their eyes. For all of them, though, this was an immensely challenging, perhaps even an impossible, task. What one scene, what fragment of the shattered city, could express the magnitude of the bombing, or its implications for future generations? As Robin Gerster has suggested, for writers especially, but also ultimately for artists, “the fact and future prospect of atomic destruction was beyond representation as well as comprehension”.8 Despite this impossibility of representation, the images discussed here have value both as enduring records of the impact of the bombing and as windows into the multiple ways in which Australian occupiers struggled to make sense of the realities of the bombing and, in the process, interacted with the Japanese population of Hiroshima and beyond.

The Mind Won’t Follow: Albert Tucker in Japan The most famous Australian artist to paint the atomic destruction of Hiroshima was Albert Tucker (1914–1999), who spent about three months in Japan in 1947. During the Pacific War Tucker, who was already renowned and controversial as an expressionist painter, was recruited to work as a draughtsman in a Melbourne military hospital, where he produced some haunting depictions of war-wounded or traumatised patients. His visit to Japan was driven by a determination to confront the realities of war, and he was later to go to Germany, where he also witnessed and painted the devastating legacy of the bombing of Frankfurt and other cities.

An Apocalypse through Australian Eyes  183 The briefly Melbourne-based American writer Harry Roskolenko, who helped to arrange Tucker’s visit to Japan and travelled with him through the country, captured the experience of walking the streets of Hiroshima in the aftermath of the bombing: We refused, politely, to visit the hospitals—where the living were dying and would die for years. But we could not hide from them. We saw them in the streets, faces discoloured, skin torn, skin burnt, skin no longer skin but some medical magic; paste on paste in every searing and crippling distortion… Abnormal, unnatural, yet living, they were breathing some sort of life. We looked, feeling our own features, as if we expected, by some mystical sin, to change places with the victims of the Bomb.9 The fruit of this searing encounter was Tucker’s painting Hiroshima, painted in April 1947 and now held in the Australian War Memorial. This painting shows a small childlike figure in the midst of a surreal landscape of jumbled masonry: a lopsided house leans—half-collapsed—to one side, while a jagged yellowish wall behind seems to be the remains of some concrete structure. A cartwheel lies abandoned against an embankment and, over all this towers the black shape of a burnt and leafless tree.10 In addition to this work, Tucker made pencil sketches in Hiroshima, and photographed the building at the blast’s epicentre that came to be known as the “atomic bomb dome”. He produced stark paintings of twisted rusting metal in the war-bombed port of Kure and of the ghostly figures of survivors haunting the streets of Osaka.11 He also recorded the landscape and faces of Japan in several hundred b ­ lack-and-white photographs taken with a borrowed Leica camera.12 Tucker’s painting of Hiroshima, though deeply disconcerting, remains somehow static and distanced. Accounts of Tucker’s life often speak of his having been deeply affected by his encounter with Hiroshima,13 but his own later memories of his visit to the city suggest that he was troubled, not so much by the emotional intensity of this encounter, but rather by the discovery that he did not feel the emotions that he had anticipated. At a political level, he accepted the official allied justification of the bombing as necessary to prevent the loss of many American lives14 and, although he expressed admiration for the stoicism with which Japanese people endured the circumstances of their defeat, he had difficulty in engaging with Japan as whole. He met a number of prominent Japanese artists, including Inokuma Genichirō, of whom he painted a fine watercolour portrait but, as he put it himself, he never “really got involved” with Japanese art. He later recalled that he had observed Japanese culture “from a tourist point of view… To try to do anything… within the Asian tradition would be quite beyond me”.15 Tucker and Roskolenko made only two brief visits to Hiroshima, spending a couple of hours there each time, and Tucker later reflected that he had felt somehow less shocked than he had expected by the atomic destruction. This was partly because he had already seen photographs of the bombed city

184  Tessa Morris-Suzuki before arriving there, and partly because, by the time he arrived, new shanty towns were already emerging from the rubble. But more profoundly, there was a psychological defence mechanism which created a barrier between him and the scenes that lay before his eyes. As he put it many years later, “the mind boggled and then just simply went about its business. There is a certain point at which the mind simply won’t follow. It’s just too much to take in”.16

Reginald Rowed’s Changing Artistic Vision Reginald Wilfred Whiting Rowed (1916–1990), generally known to his friends as “Bill”, arrived in the port of Kure in July 1946 to work as a war artist with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force, and remained in Japan until February 1947.17 During that time, he painted and sketched many scenes of life in occupied Japan, including the seven images of Hiroshima held in the Australian War Memorial, as well as vivid depictions of Japanese soldiers and civilians being repatriated to Japan from the lost empire, and of Koreans and Okinawans being returned home from the Japanese ports of Senzaki and Ujina. Rowed’s arrival in Kure was not his first encounter with war-defeated Japanese. Following his appointment as an official war artist in April 1945, he had first been sent to Papua New Guinea, where he recorded images of captured Japanese soldiers in hospitals and prisoner of war camps. Born in Melbourne during the First World War, Rowed was the son of an Anglican dean, and studied at Melbourne Technical College before becoming a commercial artist: he painted several murals in Melbourne public buildings and, in 1940, was one of three artists chosen to design military recruitment and anti-fifth column posters for distribution in the state of Victoria.18 He then joined the air force, before his transfer to the Australian War Memorial’s Military History Section to work as a war artist. Rowed left little record of his time in Japan other than his paintings, and did not maintain any close connection to the country after he left. On his return to Australia, he became a lecturer in textile design at Melbourne Technical College—a position he held until his retirement in 1976.19 His great postwar passion was Australia’s high country: Rowed was an avid skier and a founding member of the Bogong Club, founded to promote the safe recreational use of Mount Bogong, and many of his postwar paintings were of mountain scenes.20 He had a sharp sense of humour, and became known for his satirical sketches, cartoons and writings, including a 1961 essay in the skiing journal Schuss, in which, at a time of heightened Cold War fears of Russia and China, he issued a spoof warning of a military menace not only from the north but also from the south: I can state quite categorically… that the Penguins are marching on us, marching resolutely and indomitably, northward. Already they have

An Apocalypse through Australian Eyes  185 proved themselves as well-organised and well-disciplined force. They have been conducting landing exercises… at our own beautiful Phillip Island and have even gone the extent of building and erecting barbedwire barricades.21 In recent years, Rowed’s Hiroshima paintings have attracted renewed interest. They were featured in the exhibition Reality in Flames: Modern Australian Art and the Second World War, which was shown at the Australian War Memorial from 2015 to 2016,22 and in the national touring exhibition Black Mist Burnt Country: Testing the Bomb—Maralinga and Australian Art (2016–2018).23 If Albert Tucker found it difficult to “take in” the enormity of Hiroshima, Rowed’s work too has been criticised for its emotional distance from his subject. Gerster writes that, in his paintings (Figure 8.2), the destruction seems to be regarded from a detached perspective, literally and emotionally. In his watercolour Hiroshima (1946) the A-bomb dome resembles a slightly decrepit European cathedral, by an elegant bridge spanning a river—a sort of Notre Dame (before the 2019 fire) by the Seine. It is a moody but decorous scene belonging more to the nineteenth century than the nuclear world.24 Yet Rowed’s experiences in Japan left a mark on his vision of the world which is evident in the style of his paintings themselves. His earlier artworks, like the mural he designed for an Australian military chapel constructed on Bougainville in 1945, had been highly conventional oil paintings.25 But once in Japan, he was influenced both by the traditions of Japanese ink painting and by the starkness of the landscape around him. The lines of his paintings become more fluid and impressionistic, and the colours more muted. The work described by Gerster is the painting that most obviously shows the direct influence of these traditions, but also the work that most distanced from its subject, though the massing clouds behind the scene add a mood of darkness to the subject. In other works, such as a second Hiroshima painting produced around the same time, as well as in the watercolour Rebuilding Hiroshima (discussed at the start of this chapter), Rowed combines the stark palate of his Japanese works with the techniques of his earlier art training to produce images where human forms are overwhelmed by the broken shapes around them. Here the sense of the grotesque inhumanity of war is more powerfully expressed than it is in the work critiqued by Gerster; as it is too in other paintings that Rowed completed in Japan, such as his image of the destruction of Japanese midget submarines in the port of Kure.26 During his stay in Japan, Rowed kept returning to Hiroshima to paint its landscape, as though repeatedly trying to come to terms with this ­un-­representable reality. His last image of the city, painted in mid-winter, shortly before he left Japan, views the city from a great distance, so that the direct impact of the bomb is almost invisible, but the abandoned stone

186  Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Figure 8.2 Hiroshima, by Reginald Rowed, August 1946, Australian War Memorial.

Figure 8.3 Hiroshima Snow, Reginald Rowed, January 1947, Australian War Memorial.

An Apocalypse through Australian Eyes  187 lantern and broken pine branch from some vanished garden in the foreground lend a sense of utter desolation to the scene (Figure 8.3).

The Survivors: Allan Waite’s Encounter with Hiroshima Unlike Albert Tucker and Reginald Rowed, both of whom came to Hiroshima as professional artists, Allan George Waite (1924–2010) arrived in Japan as a command group draughtsman with an amateur interest in painting, but no formal art training. Waite was twenty-two years old when he disembarked in Kure in March 1946 after experiencing the final stages of the Pacific War in north-eastern New Guinea, and he was to remain in Japan for about a year.27 His stay in Japan was a major milestone on the path that led Waite to a lifetime engagement with art, and one factor in the development of his artistic skills was his friendship with a Japanese man employed by BCOF Signals Command Group in Kure. Kojingaichi Shigeru, then in his forties, had been a gun designer in an arsenal in Kure but, like many Japanese (particularly those who had been employed in armaments manufacture), found himself unemployed after Japan’s defeat. To avoid going hungry, Kojingaichi had to take up a menial position as an orderly with BCOF, where his first tasks were to sweep floors and serve tea.28 His life was made more difficult by the fact that initially he spoke no English, but he learnt quickly, and struck up a warm friendship with the much younger Allan Waite, who helped him with his English vocabulary. Waite had already produced some small sketches and paintings of landscapes and people in New Guinea but, while in Japan, he enrolled in a correspondence course in painting, taught by East Sydney Technical College, and also received coaching in draughtsmanship from Kojingaichi.29 This training gave him the growing confidence as an artist which is reflected in works like Hiroshima and The Survivors—both painted during his year in Japan—and in the images of Japan which he continued to paint from photographs after his return to Australia. His 1946 painting, Hiroshima, rather like Rowed’s final image of the city, does not focus on the places where the destruction was most palpable, but uses the structure of a surviving torii gateway (possibly the gateway to the Gokoku Jinja, which survived the blast) to suggest emptiness beyond. The torii dominates the painting, and dwarfs the bent human figures who struggle uphill towards the faint traces of the atom blasted city which can be glimpsed against the darkened sky beyond. The Survivors, also painted in 1946, is one of two almost identical works which Waite painted of a scene near to the centre of Hiroshima. The same landscape, in fact, also features in one of Reg Rowed’s watercolour paintings of the city.30 Artists clearly chose to paint the city from this spot because it was a place where the shape of the atomic dome at ground zero is framed by dramatically jagged ruins of other brick and concrete buildings. In Waite’s first, less complete, depiction of this scene, the dome is almost invisible, and the viewer’s eye is drawn to the shape of a single bent figure rummaging

188  Tessa Morris-Suzuki through the rubble of ruined buildings. The second and more detailed version highlights the atomic dome and the devastation of the buildings in front of it. Here the small human forms who hunt for means of survival in the ruins are dwarfed by the scale of destruction around them (Figure 8.4). After returning to Australia, Waite maintained contact with some of the Japanese war survivors whom he had met during his time with BCOF, including Kojingaichi, whom he helped to support through the hardest years of Japan’s postwar recovery, and with whom he continued to correspond into the 1950s.31 He took a full-time art diploma under the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme, and later set up a commercial art studio before dedicating himself to Australian landscape painting. He co-founded the Australian Artist magazine and became a central figure in plein air painting circles, particularly around the Manly area in Sydney. At the same time though, he maintained an interest in representations of war, and in later life used his own collection of photos from wartime New Guinea to recreate representations of the Pacific War. Although he never travelled to Korea or Vietnam, he also painted images from the Korean and Vietnam Wars, using photographs and careful research as the basis for his works.32

Figure 8.4 The Survivors, Allan Waite, 1946, Australian War Memorial © Cynthia Waite (aka Ferguson).

An Apocalypse through Australian Eyes  189 Perhaps the most surprising of Waite’s representations of Hiroshima is his painting entitled Hiroshima, May 1946, which was actually painted in the 1950s, several years after Waite’s return to Australia, on the basis of a photograph which he had shot a couple of months after his arrival in Japan.33 At first glance, this might be taken for a tranquil landscape painting in the style of the Heidelberg School. The group of trees in the foreground is green with leaves, though blackened branches emerge here and there from the foliage. Beyond, the view stretches over a city, spread out in the valley below and bathed in a faint bluish mist, to a distant row of hills and a spring sky above. Only on very close inspection can you see the outlines of broken buildings in the city, and the faint shape of the atomic dome rising from the centre of the landscape. This painting might be seen as a euphemism—a distanced romanticisation of a horrific scene—but there is also another way of seeing it. Hiroshima, May 1946 is a reminder of the fact that, until 8.15 am on the morning of August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was not a symbol of atomic apocalypse, but just a city like any other—a place where people lived their lives and, in their free time, went up into the hills to walk and picnic and enjoy views like these. The distant vision of ruins in the midst of this tranquillity could be seen as a representation of a hope for recovery but is perhaps, above all, an image of immeasurable loss (Figure 8.5).

Figure 8.5  Hiroshima, May 1946, Allan Waite, c. 1950–1959, Australian War Memorial © Cynthia Waite (aka Ferguson).

190  Tessa Morris-Suzuki

The Melted Clock Only a small number of Australian service people brought back their own paintings or photographs of Hiroshima, but many returned from Japan with souvenirs, ranging from dolls, handkerchiefs and chinaware to macabre collections of postcards of the aftermath of the nuclear bombings, produced (despite the ban on the publication of photos) specifically for sale to the occupying foreigners. Among these souvenirs were a startlingly large number of objects removed from the ruins of Hiroshima—among them, a blue glass jar contorted like a twisted body;34 a pottery cup fused into some substance that looks like melted concrete;35 and photographic plates whose images have vanished into a crumpled and multi-layered conglomerate of glass.36 Over fifty of these objects are held in the Australian War Memorial’s collection. Many questions surround them. Why were they collected? Do they reflect simple trophy hunting, morbid curiosity or a real desire to understand the nature and impact of atomic weaponry? And are they genuine? Some were found by Australians poking through the rubble, or even received as gifts from Hiroshima residents,37 but others were purchased from people who peddled such souvenirs for money, and these could well have come from any of the hundreds of Japanese towns and cities that had been subject to mass bombing raids. The most unsettling and enigmatic of these objets trouvés is a melted glass clock, brought back from Hiroshima by Kenneth Myles Carruthers (1916–2006), a flight sergeant who served with the British Commonwealth Occupation Force in Japan from March 1946 to January 1950.38 Carruthers had been a grocer in Geelong before joining the military, and like many members of BCOF, had served in Papua New Guinea in the final stages of the war, before being transferred to Japan. He was stationed first at Bofu (Hōfu) Airbase and then at Iwakuni, about fifty kilometres from Hiroshima, and spent much of his early time in Japan spraying antiseptic chemicals onto bomb-devastated areas of Hiroshima to prevent the spread of infection. His encounter with the city’s landscapes, and with the dead and the survivors of the atomic bombing of August 6, 1945, affected Carruthers profoundly. In the extracts from his memoir, which he gave to the Australian War Memorial with the glass clock, he recalls how, on a first visit to Hiroshima on April 18, 1946, he found three nuns and seven Japanese children living “beneath a bridge demolished and slanting down into the river. Living in a shanty of old iron sheets and boxes. After many visits by the US forces, this is all these innocent people could gain”. Some nine months after the atomic bombing, bodies of the victims remained in the Ota River which flowed through the centre of Hiroshima: they had been trapped in ice during the bitterly cold winter of 1945–1946, but now in spring they rose to the surface, “bloated, twisted and burnt with the smell that forever remains in one’s mouth when thinking of it”.39

An Apocalypse through Australian Eyes  191 It seems to have been on Carruthers’ very first visit to Hiroshima, on April 7, 1946, that (according to his memoir notes) near the ruins of the once “Urakami” Cathedral approximately five hundred metre [sic] from the Hypo Centre of the bomb drop, I found a green silicone molten glass clock beneath a rubble of broken tiles and other debris, presumably from a home mantle-shelf, workshop or cathedral. He observed that “at the time, the clock was moderately high with radioactivity”.40 There is just one obvious problem with this account. Urakami Cathedral is in Nagasaki, not in Hiroshima, and there is no evidence that Carruthers ever went to Nagasaki. The radioactivity of the clock also poses an intriguing problem. The melted clock, which is preserved in the Australian War Memorial, is still radioactive today, and is kept carefully wrapped and sealed to protect Memorial staff from irradiation. But it is impossible to tell whether its radioactivity is related to the atomic bomb blast, because the clock itself is moulded from uranium glass—an inherently radioactive substance whose luminescence made it fashionable for use in decorative objects in the mid-twentieth century.41 It is just possible to make out the hands of the clock in the distorted and oxidised face, but they seem to point to 8.35, which is neither the time of the Hiroshima bombing (8.15 am) nor the time of the Nagasaki blast (11.02 am) (Figure 8.6). And yet, this chilling but oddly beautiful object has clearly been subject to unimaginable physical forces. Its original shape has vanished beyond recognition, and it has been transformed into something which, but for the circular metal disc in the centre, looks like a work of nature. As much as any photograph, artwork or verbal description, it evokes irresolvable speculation about the apocalyptic potential of nuclear weapons. It is one of Dali’s melted clocks transformed from surrealist symbolism to haunting reality. There can be little doubt that Carruthers himself saw the clock as a genuine embodiment of the horrors of atomic warfare. He looked after it with great care, and later made a special shelf above his bed where he kept it, despite warnings about the dangers of radiation.42 For Carruthers, the encounter with Hiroshima was the defining moment of his life. After completing his first tour of duty with BCOF he volunteered twice more for postings with the occupation forces in Japan, and when his third tour of duty finished at the end of 1949, he requested permission to be discharged so that he could take up work with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC) in Hiroshima. He built his own Japanese-style house on the outskirts of Hiroshima where he lived with his wife and stepson, and worked on the construction of clinical buildings for the ABCC until 1953.43 During that time he wrote, “I feel that I have seen all the suffering as two thousand individuals each month attended the centre”, many of them “mothers who had their babies burnt from their backs”.44 He would

192  Tessa Morris-Suzuki

Figure 8.6 The melted uranium glass clock donated to the Australian War Memorial by Kenneth Carruthers © Cynthia Waite (aka Ferguson).

have liked to remain longer in Japan, but returned to Australia because he believed it would be easier for his family,45 and found a job in the Australian offices of Mitsui Bussan, where he worked until his retirement in 1981.46

An Apocalypse through Australian Eyes  193 Given Carruthers’ long engagement with Japan, and particularly with Hiroshima, it is surprising that he gave obviously incorrect information about the place where the clock was found. But there is a possible explanation. Among the most visible landmarks of the bomb-shattered city was the building with the tall square tower which is the focal point of Reginald Rowed’s painting Rebuilding Hiroshima. This ruined edifice was surrounded by rubble through which survivors dug for any usable items that might remain after the blast, and nearby was a bridge across a river under which the homeless sought shelter. Though some BCOF members described this as the ruins of a “local government office”,47 its tall tower made it look more like a church. Its rounded arches and the circular apertures that pierced the tower were indeed, not unlike the design of the sections of Urakami Cathedral that remained standing after the bombing of Nagasaki (Figure 8.7). But this Hiroshima building was neither a public building nor a place of worship: it housed the headquarters of Shimomura and Co., the region’s best known and most exclusive retailer of clocks and watches. The round holes in the tower had once held four large clocks which, ever since the building was erected in 1928, had been visible from far away and from all four points of the compass,48 marking the passing moments of the day for all the citizens of Hiroshima. The shop’s display windows, and the glass cases which had

Figure 8.7 Left, ruins of Urakami Cathedral, Nagasaki, photographed by Brian McMullan and Cecelia Mary McMullan, c. 1947–1952, Australian War Memorial; right, ruins of the Shimomura Clock Shop, Hiroshima, photographer unknown, c. 1945, Australian War Memorial.

194  Tessa Morris-Suzuki lined its interior, had been filled with clocks of every shape, size and design, counting the minutes and chiming the hours, until the moment when, for the community it served, time ceased forever. The Australians whose role in the occupation brought them into contact with the ruins of Hiroshima responded in a wide range of divergent ways. For some, the encounter made relatively little impression. Most had already experienced the horrors of war in many forms, and it was widely accepted by the occupiers that (as one Australian military nurse put it) the bombing was “a terrible thing to have happened” but it “had finished the war”.49 But for others, their experiences in Japan, and particularly in Hiroshima, altered the course of their lives. Australian artists struggled to capture the realities of the event, and to process these in their own minds, and in doing so left a record of the bombed city from multiple perspectives, both physically and conceptually. Most of them have now, in turn, passed on, but the images they left remain. Meanwhile in the Australian War Memorial, the enigmatic wrapped and melted clock continues to emit a steady flow of radiation which may or may not be linked to the atomic bomb, but which is a silent reminder of the way in which the atomic force, brought into the world in the mid-twentieth century, has spread and diffused, and entered into every corner of the world.

Notes 1 Accessed August 15, 2021, https://thedali.org/permanent-collection/. 2 Quoted in Stephen Petersen, “Explosive Propositions: Artists React to the Atomic Age,” Science in Context 17, no. 4 (2004): 579–609, 580. 3 Accessed August 15, 2021, https://www.moma.org/collection/works/79018. 4 Peter Tush, Salvador Dali: Liquid Desire, ed. Ted Gott (Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2009), 261. 5 See the online display of these works on the website of the Maruki Gallery, accessed August 16, 2021, https://marukigallery.jp/en/hiroshimapanels/. 6 Alan Ramsey, “Old Soldier Gets the Mushroom Treatment Again,” Sydney Morning Herald, August 25, 2007. 7 See, for example, J. G. Collins, The War of the Veterans (Toowoomba: Toowoomba Education Centre, 2001) and Ramsey, “Old Soldier Gets the Mushroom Treatment Again”. 8 Robin Gerster, Hiroshima and Here: Reflections on Australian Atomic Culture (Lanham, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 2020), 134; for further discussion of the difficulties of representing Hiroshima in art, see also Morris Low, “Art, Photography and Remembering Hiroshima,” East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence, eds. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov and Timothy Y. Tsu, (London and New York: Routledge, 2013), 153–163. 9 Harry Roskolenko, The Terrorized (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1967), 90. 10 This painting can be seen on the Australian War Memorial Website, https:// www.awm.gov.au/collection/C188224. 11 https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C173903. 12 Melissa Miles and Robin Gerster, Pacific Exposures: Photography and the Australia-Japan Relationship (Canberra: ANU Press, 2018), 153–186, citation 157.

An Apocalypse through Australian Eyes  195 13 See, for example, J. D. Mittmann, “Atomic Testing in Australian Art,” in Black Mist Burnt Country: Testing the Bomb: Maralinga and Australian Art, Exhibition Catalogue (Upwey, VI.: Burrinja, 2016), 36–65, see particularly 37. 14 Albert Tucker, Interviewed on ABC Radio National’s Verbatim, November 23, 2006, https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/archived/verbatim/ albert-tucker/3326148. 15 Quoted in Janine Burke, Australian Gothic: A Life of Albert Tucker (Sydney: Random House, 2002). 16 Albert Tucker, ABC Verbatim Interview. 17 See Rowed’s service file in the National Archives of Australia, Canberra, Series Number B883, Control Symbol VX97193. 18 “Recruiting Posters,” The Age, June 13, 1940; see also “Lieutenant Reginald Rowed,” Australian War Memorial, accessed August 13, 2021, www.awm.gov. au/collection/P65132. 19 “Lieutenant Reginald Rowed,” Australian War Memorial. 20 Peter Vodicka, “Reginald Wilfred (Bill) Rowed: Avid Skier and Raconteur,” December 1919, Academia.edu, https://www.academia.edu/41454894/Reginald_ Wilfred_Bill_Rowed_Artist_Avid_Skier_and_Raconteur. 21 Quoted in Vodicka, “Reginald Wilfred (Bill) Rowed,” 6. 22 Sasha Grishin, “Exhibition of Modern Artists’ Perspectives of the Second World War,” Sydney Morning Herald, July 13, 2015. 23 Black Mist Burnt Country, Burrinja National Touring Project, accessed August 13, 2021, https://blackmistburntcountry.com.au/index.php/exhibition/artists/. 24 Gerster, Hiroshima and Here, 135. 25 “Torokina, Bougainville, 1945-11-03. Headquarters 3 Division. A Mural Painted by Lieutenant Rowed,” Australian War Memorial, accessed August 15, 2021, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C199278. 26 Accessed August 13, 2021, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/ART26379. 27 Allan Waite’s service file in the National Archives of Australia, Canberra, Series Number B883, Control Symbol NX177409; also Sara Johnson, Allan Waite: Peninsula Artist, Manly, Manly Art Gallery and Museum, 2009, exhibition catalogue. 28 Kojingaichi Shigeru, “Stepping Stones,” Unpublished Manuscript (Copy Supplied by Cynthia Waite). 29 Interview with Cynthia Waite, Manly, November 12, 2011. 30 Accessed August 15, 2021, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C173623. 31 Kojingaichi Shigeru to Allan Waite, October 28, 1949 and May 6, 1952, Unpublished Letters, Copies Supplied by Cynthia Waite. 32 Interview with Cynthia Waite, Manly, November 12, 2011. 33 Accessed August 14, 2021, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C1245626. 34 Australian War Memorial, accessed August 15, 2021, https://www.awm.gov.au/ collection/C965951 ≈. 35 Australian War Memorial, accessed August 15, 2021, https://www.awm.gov.au/ collection/C346904. 36 Australian War Memorial, accessed August 15, 2021, https://www.awm.gov.au/ collection/C150816. 37 For example, one distorted ceramic saké bottle held in the Australian War Memorial collection was given to Major Stanley Jarvie by the mayor of Hiroshima, Hamai Shinzō, who had retrieved it from his own bomb-damaged home, Australian War Memorial, accessed August 14, 2021, https://www.awm. gov.au/collection/C149368. 38 Carruthers’ service file in the National Archives of Australia, Canberra, Series Number A9301, Control Symbol 19008.

196  Tessa Morris-Suzuki 39 Kenneth Carruthers, “Lethal History of Hiroshima,” Unpublished Manuscript, 2 (Copy Supplied by Mrs. Ann Carruthers). 40 Carruthers, “Lethal History of Hiroshima,” 1. 41 The clock shows relatively high levels of beta radiation, which is characteristic of uranium glass. S. J. Watson and J. S. Hughes, “Radiological Implications of the Use of Uranium in Vaseline Glass,” Journal of Radiological Protection 30, no. 3, (2010): 535–544. 42 Interview with Ann Carruthers, Blue Haven, January 21, 2012. 43 Interview with Ann Carruthers, Blue Haven, January 21, 2012. 44 Carruthers, “Lethal Legacy of Hiroshima,” 3. 45 Interview with Ann Carruthers, Blue Haven, January 21, 2012. 46 Mekata Eizō, Watakushi no MBK Life (Tokyo: Privately Published, 1989). 47 Collins, The War of the Veterans, 37. 48 Okumura Mashiko, “Natsu 55-nen mae no Hiroshima: ‘Shimomura Tokeiten’ no 1-kai Kowashi: Haikara Kenchiku, Muzan ni,” Mainichi Shimbun (Hiroshima), July 8, 2000. 49 Margaret Elson Webster (neé Nicholson), interviewed by Jan Bassett, 1986, recording held in the Australian War Memorial, accessed August 16, 2021, https://www.awm.gov.au/collection/C314104.

Bibliography Burke, Janine. Australian Gothic: A Life of Albert Tucker. Sydney: Random House, 2002. Carruthers, Kenneth. “Lethal History of Hiroshima,” Unpublished Manuscript. Collins, John George Francis. The War of the Veterans. Toowoomba: Toowoomba Education Centre, 2001. Gerster, Robin. Hiroshima and Here: Reflections on Australian Atomic Culture. Lanham, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 2020. Grishin, Sasha. “Exhibition of Modern Artists’ Perspectives of the Second World War,” Sydney Morning Herald, July 13, 2015. Johnson, Sara. Allan Waite: Peninsula Artist. Manly: Manly Art Gallery and Museum, 2009. Kojingaichi Shigeru, “Stepping Stones,” Unpublished Manuscript. Low, Morris. “Art, Photography and Remembering Hiroshima.” In East Asia Beyond the History Wars: Confronting the Ghosts of Violence, edited by Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Morris Low, Leonid Petrov and Timothy Y. Tsu, 153–163. London and New York: Routledge, 2013. Mekata, Eizō, Watakushi no MBK Life. Tokyo: privately published, 1989. Miles, Melissa and Robin Gerster. Pacific Exposures: Photography and the AustraliaJapan Relationship. Canberra: ANU Press, 2018. Mittmann, J. D. “Atomic Testing in Australian Art.” In Black Mist Burnt Country: Testing the bomb: Maralinga and Australian Art, 36–65. Upwey, VI: Burrinja, 2016. Okumura, Mashiko, “Natsu 55-nen mae no Hiroshima: ‘Shimomura Tokeiten’ no 1-kai Kowashi: Haikara Kenchiku, Muzan ni.” Mainichi Shimbun (Hiroshima), July 8, 2000. Petersen, Stephen. “Explosive Propositions: Artists React to the Atomic Age.” Science in Context 17, no. 4 (2004): 579–609. Ramsey, Alan. “Old Soldier Gets the Mushroom Treatment Again.” Sydney Morning Herald, August 25, 2007.

An Apocalypse through Australian Eyes  197 Roskolenko, Harry. The Terrorized. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1967. Tush, Peter. Salvador Dali: Liquid Desire. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria, 2009. Vodicka, Peer. “Reginald Wilfred (Bill) Rowed: Avid Skier and Raconteur,” Academia.edu, December 1919. https://www.academia.edu/41454894/ Reginald_Wilfred_Bill_Rowed_Artist_Avid_Skier_and_Raconteur. Watson S. J. and J. S. Hughes. “Radiological Implications of the Use of Uranium in Vaseline Glass.” Journal of Radiological Protection 30, no. 3 (2010): 535–544.

9 Genbaku Legacy in Post-3.11 Japan Ōta Yōko and Yoshida Chia Veronica De Pieri

Introduction: The Relevance of kizuna in Time of Crisis1 The seventy-fifth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki surprised us at a very peculiar moment in human history. The global pandemic of coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has affected not only human health but, above all, human relationships, now disciplined by contact avoidance, the frequent usage of sanitiser gel in public, and the strict recommendation of wearing protective masks while moving around. These forced, new habits have implemented a climate of mistrust, resulting in the disruption of social relations—wafting around the streets with quizzical looks has become common today. In addition, the overwhelming flood of reliable and flaky news powered by worldwide access to social networks has catalysed feelings of distrust, suspiciousness, and diffidence among people. Although social networking enables people to express their ­opinions directly without restraint, the message is always conveyed through a medium that removes voice tones, facial expressions, glances, and gestures from the equation, ignoring their crucial role in correctly delivering and interpreting others’ thoughts. The flattening of online communication had implicitly implemented mutual mistrust just when the pandemic forced individuals to rely only upon shared ideals and beliefs. The perception that surrounding people no longer share the same values has made individuals feel even more physically and psychologically isolated. The result has been a slow but inexorable disruption of the social tissue due to anti-contagion measures and the widespread distrust towards others, thus implying a more deep-rooted fragmentation of the self. When social roots become dubious and unsteady, the self reflects the insecurity and instability, giving vent to psychological phenomena of isolation, self-destructive behaviour, and suicidal thoughts.2 Although it is too early to conclude the negative impact the pandemic has exerted on human mental health, it is undeniable that there is an increasing number of people in need of psychological therapy due to social distancing or home confinement. This brief digression on the psycho-social implications of the pandemic suggests deep reflection concerning similar circumstances experienced by

DOI: 10.4324/9781003320395-9

Genbaku Legacy in Post-3.11 Japan: Ōta Yōko and Yoshida Chia  199 the Japanese social environment in the aftermath of the atomic bombings and the wake of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident in 2011. The radioactive contamination—although of a different nature— involving Hiroshima and Nagasaki and later, Fukushima city, was the basis of a general radiophobia3 directed towards the contaminated areas and their inhabitants. Grounded in a widespread belief that considered radiation sickness a transmissible disease (in 1968, Lifton called it an “­ epidemic”),4 the survivors of the atomic bombings were susceptible to social discrimination. Medical investigations on atomic bombing survivors during the 1950s and 1960s debunked this prejudice. Notwithstanding, “hibakusha sociophobia” permeated Japanese society, especially regarding the risk of genetic disorders and the possibility of intergenerational trauma involving future generations. History repeats,5 and the citizens exposed to radioactive fallout in the surrounding areas of Fukushima Daiichi were also assumed to be physically impaired, thus undergoing a similar discrimination process. The homophonous term “hibakusha” denotes the victims of radioactivity—although of a different nature—in both 1945 and 2011. In the first case, the label “hibakusha” (被爆者) underlines the atomic explosion as the source of exposure to radioactivity. In the latter case, the character for “rays” (曝) strengthens the nature of the hibakusha (被曝者) condition, thus reinforcing the aerial essence of radioactive contamination. Regardless of the nature of the hibakusha victimisation, the most common outcome was the general rejection of the survivors by Japanese society—with a tinge of ghettoisation. The hibakusha writer Ōta Yōko and the journalist Yoshida Chia addressed such an upheaval of the social framework in the works at the core of this investigation. Eventually, the three-fold catastrophe of earthquake, tsunamis, and nuclear meltdown that occurred on March 11, 2011, has shed new light on the resilient attitude of the Japanese people towards the natural as well as anthropogenic disasters which have littered Japanese history. Thanks to social media, all the world was able to admire, in real time, Japanese “ganbarism”—the “Japanese ability to endure hardship”, as defined by Gebhardt and Masami.6 This ethnopsychiatric theory by Devereux explains that the cultural background of a particular community empowers individuals with the defensive strategies necessary to cope with calamities, thus giving a source for this resilient attitude.7 In addition, the theory of ethnolinguistic relativity expressed by the so-called “Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis” also supports the assumption that the more a people knows about a particular topic—such as disaster and catastrophe in Japan’s case—the more it owns the knowledge to understand and handle it.8 Further inquiries into this psycho-anthropological approach to the source of Japanese resiliency while exploring the long legacy of Japanese testimonial narratives are highly thought-provoking. Nevertheless, they require a broader space. Suffice it to mention how these theories find factual evidence in Japan in the philosophical concept of life known as “mujō”.

200  Veronica De Pieri This Buddhist principle underlines a sense of impermanence and frailty of life, which encompasses all aspects of daily life: changing seasons, weather variation, mood swings—everything is related to the circle of life and death. This sense of transience and ever-changing phenomenal reality is not associated with resignation and surrender. On the contrary, life’s perishable and transitional, temporary character is conceived as a potential source of rebirth. It also provides the principal source for resilience, understood as the ability to cope with environmental and interpersonal stressors with distressing and disturbing attributes.9 The “mujō” is far from being perceived as a mere theoretical framework: on the contrary, it results in care for daily routine and rituals. Devereux stressed the correlation between traumatic events and the importance of the daily routine, “impressive [sic] experiences generate the formation of habits”. The reiteration of the same daily habits enhances the restoration of the individual’s identity, fragmented by trauma and loss, thus representing the first step towards re-establishing social order. Hence, the “mujō” bears a double valence: on the one hand, the importance of rites, rituals, and daily habits in recovering the individual self, shocked by the traumatic event. On the other hand, rituality implicitly reinforces the central role of kizuna (human bonds) to strengthen the sense of belonging through mutual aid, support, and help. The result is the restoration of the identity roots of the self as well as the disrupted community’s roots. The world has seen a similar trend today with the pandemic. Although ambivalent and controversial in regards to social networking, the Internet has also proved to be a valuable source that has enabled individuals to preserve an ordinary lifestyle because work, learning, sporting activities, and entertainment have been carried out online with minimal discomfort. The quest for regular performance of human relationships has also forced individuals to reassess the role of social media as a powerful means of staying in touch with family and friends during the lockdown. Hence, during times of crisis, social networking services (SNS) have proved that human bonding is, without doubt, one of the most crucial sources of resiliency. The documentary works by hibakusha Ōta Yōko and journalist Yoshida Chia describe trauma and resiliency in the post-Hiroshima and the post-Fukushima scenario respectively. In doing so, they address topics of social disaggregation and human bonding. Despite the different approaches to literature and the diverse nature of the radioactivity experience at the core of their writing, both authors have committed themselves to sharing testimonies of the atomic bombings and the nuclear meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi. By touching similar topics of interest such as radiophobia and hibakusha discrimination, Ōta and Yoshida have expressed harsh criticism towards the Japanese government, which was considered, by both authors, unable to handle the crisis. After a brief overview of authorial profiles—to help understand stylistic and ideological influences in writing—this chapter presents the main authorial works, Shikabane no machi and Sono ato no Fukushima, respectively.

Genbaku Legacy in Post-3.11 Japan: Ōta Yōko and Yoshida Chia  201 The analysis of these journalistic inquiries will go beyond the above-­ mentioned keywords—political criticism, radiophobia, hibakusha discrimination, and intergenerational trauma. The author concludes by considering, from a broader perspective, the role of Japanese female journalism in the wake of catastrophe.

Profile Comparison Ōta Yōko, born Fukuda Hatsuko (Hiroshima, 1906–Fukushima, 1963), was a promising writer long before becoming known among the literary audience for her testimonial accounts of Hiroshima’s atomic bombing. She was, in all respects, the emblem of the independent, emancipated Japanese woman of the 1930s-1940s, with not the slightest intention of sacrificing her career to become a full-time housewife and mother. She married in 1925 but separated from her husband when she found he was already married with children. She then went to the capital to pursue her dream of becoming a writer. From that moment, her life became a set of ups and downs regarding her love affairs: she reunited with her husband in Hiroshima, finally separated, re-married in 1936 but divorced in the following year—she was not meant to deal with the traditional family fireside.10 Regarding her personality, Lifton commented that she showed “a fragile aura of pride, anxiety, vanity, and suspiciousness”.11 In 1940 Ōta Yōko won the Asahi Shinbun Prize for her novel Sakura no kuni, long before the hibakusha experience. At that time, she was working in Tōkyō and her career was committed to journalism and literary writing. By sheer coincidence, she came back to her hometown, Hiroshima, at the beginning of August 1945: her decision to leave Tōkyō, which had been abruptly devastated by the bombing raid in March of that year, was a turning point in her life and career.12 Ōta experienced the atomic blast at her parent’s home, less than two kilometres away from the explosion’s epicentre. The writer escaped from Hiroshima city together with her mother, her sister, and her sister’s baby. Years after witnessing the atomic bombing, Ōta suffered from emotional breakdowns and mental instability, explicitly caused by the struggle with her attempts to depict Hiroshima’s post-atomic scenario and the firm conviction of being unable to do so.13 Shikabane no machi represents the first in a long series of testimonial accounts devoted to the hibakusha experience, among which Ningen Boro (“Ragged humans”, 1951) and Hanningen (“Half humans”, 1954) are also worth mentioning. Ōta’s writing style is dry, as is typical for journalistic reportage. At the same time, the narration is ferocious and penetrating, enriched by frequent insertions of quotes from newspapers and scientific data regarding the atomic weapons. Ōta was the first journalist ever to write a report about the atomic bombing—for the Asahi Shinbun on August 30, 1945. The article was entitled Katei no yōna hikari: Genshi bakudan no kūshū

202  Veronica De Pieri in atte (“Light as on the bottom of the sea: witnessing the atomic bombing”). It described the bomb’s dropping, the flash of light, and the deafening roar witnessed by hibakusha during the atomic blast. The onomatopoeic neologism “pikadon” suggests, both visually and auditively, the impact of the unknown weapon on the city. Yoshida Chia’s journalistic career saw a turning point due to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant accident. Originally from Fukushima, now living in Saitama, the journalist became a freelancer after working for a publishing house. She is the editor and author of the quarterly Mama Rebo (Mum Revolution), for which she has written about mothers and nuclear fallout, and for the informative magazine Fukudama tayori (Fukudama News) dedicated to people evacuated in Saitama Prefecture.14 Yoshida has written three reports regarding the Fukushima meltdown since 2015. The first, Genpatsu hinanjō hakusho (Governmental report on the evacuation caused by the nuclear accident), is a collaboration with the Kwansei Gakuin University Study on Reconstruction Organizations,15 the JCN (Japan Civil Network),16 and the SAFLAN (Save Fukushima Children Lawyers’ Network).17 The report aims to shed light on governmental regulations concerning the evacuation of the surrounding areas of Fukushima Daiichi. The following year, Rupo boshi hinan—Kesareyuku genpatsu jiko higaisha (Reportage of the evacuation of mothers and children. The nuclear victims will fade) was published by Watanabe Shinsho publishing. It is a thought-provoking inquiry regarding the conditions of displaced mothers and children in refugee shelters. The reportage touches sensitive topics such as radiophobia (especially concerning pregnancy and infancy) and family disaggregation. Sono Nato no Fukushima. Genpatsu jikogo wo ikiru hitobito (Fukushima hereafter. People who live after the nuclear accident) 2018 represents a more comprehensive inquiry into the 2011 hibakusha’s life, less focused on women’s struggles. It answers the compelling plea for her to become a spokesperson for the refugees. Yoshida’s writing is scathing and dispassionate. Although journalistic inquiry about an issue such as nuclear catastrophe and radioactive contamination may not appeal to a vast literary audience, her works are accessible and enjoyable to the broader public.18 In contrast with Ōta’s struggle in seeking a language suited to depict Hiroshima’s atomic experience, Yoshida focuses on accurately accounting for the situation she saw in the evacuated zones and the refugee shelters and reporting the interviews she collected while investigating Fukushima’s meltdown. Remarkably, Yoshida did not experience Fukushima’s evacuation firsthand: therefore, the author does not share Ōta’s mental burden of being a survivor. Hence, she maintains a somewhat detached attitude towards the sensitive topics at the core of her works. Moreover, Yoshida is a freelance journalist with no ambition for a literary career, at least until now. This precludes her from any frustration when writing between reality and imagination—that is, between a

Genbaku Legacy in Post-3.11 Japan: Ōta Yōko and Yoshida Chia  203 straightforward style typical of journalistic investigation and a more flowery language, usually associated with fictional novels. Shikabane no machi versus Sono ato no Fukushima Brief Overview Ōta Yōko in person explains the genesis of Shikabane no machi in the afterward of her work, in the 1950 version of her account. Although the first draft of her testimony was completed in November 1945,19 its publication was not possible until 1948 due to the censorship imposed by the American occupation of Japan.20 The so-called GHQ press code was in force from September 1945 to April 1952 to prevent any report displaying criticism towards the US.21 For this reason, Natsu no hana (Summer Flower), published in 1947 by the poet Hara Tamiki, is often considered the first testimonial account ever released on the atomic bombings. Notwithstanding, according to Iwasaki, Natsu no hana is only partially based on the notes written by the author soon after August 6. Other details, such as the fictionalisation of some dialogues and scenes, seem deceitful for a so-claimed “authentic” representation of Hiroshima’s aftermath.22 Hence, the record must return to Shikabane no machi, casting a new light on the relevance of Ōta’s memoir as the first testimonial narrative on the Hiroshima atomic bombing. Furthermore, Ōta was a woman journalist with a sensitive attitude towards women and children’s conditions in the bombing aftermath. Particularly relevant in Shikabane no machi is the chapter now entitled Muyoku ganbō (Apathetic expression). It was sidelined from the first publication and reappeared only in 1950, with a complete review of the literary text, including the title revision of some chapters.23 In the Muyoku ganbō chapter, Ōta detected, long before clinical examinations, the alexithymic state of hibakusha she encountered in the weeks after the atomic explosion. Alexithymia, also known as “emotional illiteracy”, describes the inability to verbalise emotions. It constitutes, together with analgesia, apathy, and anhedonia, a wake-up call for a dissociative state common among post-­ traumatic sequelae.24 Considerations regarding the genesis of Shikabane no machi are also relevant in evaluating this testimonial work as “Trümmerliteratur”, as defined by Tachibana Reiko about German and Japanese literature written in the aftermath of the Second World War.25 By this term, Tachibana underlined the characteristics of literary productions that “evoke the ruins”, that is, testimonial works written soon after the traumatic event at the core of their plot. These tend to be documentary novels, often offering an ­autobiographical perspective on the events. They also share the common urge which presses the author into writing and whose natural causes can be detected in the writers paying homage to deaths, denouncing any possible responsibilities

204  Veronica De Pieri of the government regarding the tragic event or, as in Ōta’s case, the fear of upcoming death.26 The so-called “literature of the debris” finds its counterpart in “long-­ distance literature”, which is more measured and balanced. This literary production is characterised by re-processing the traumatic memories according to the first- or the third-person narrator, thus often assuming the aspect of a fictional account. The narration is mainly supported by historical and scientific data, adding reliability to the work. For this reason, time slips between the present and the past are frequent (the discontinuous time frame of Hayashi Kyōko’s production is an example). Hence, Shikabane no machi can be considered a full-fledged work of the “literature of the debris”, written in Kushima, about forty kilometres away from Hiroshima, where Ōta took refuge in the months following the disaster. The original version of the memoir consists of thirty sections, divided into seven chapters. The account emphasises the urgency of testimony, and the author compares the Hiroshima devastation to jigoku (an inferno).27 The result is a frenetic, feverish writing, reporting the first weeks after the atomic bombing: I was given some burned papers removed from the shōji, toilet papers and two or three pencils by acquaintances of the town where I took shelter and with death breathing down my neck I wished to die only after accomplishing my responsibility of writing.28 Her acute anxiety towards possible symptomatic manifestations of the so-called “atomic bomb disease” prevented Ōta from stylistically embellishing the account. It explains the authorial frustration of being unable to verbalise her hibakusha experience. In the atogaki (postface) of the 1950 edition of Shikabane no machi, the author released her resentment towards the Japanese language, understood as being too poor and inadequate to describe Hiroshima’s aftermath. This constant dissatisfaction led her to never-ending stylistic research, which involved her following works and is also the main reason for the authorial textual revision of Shikabane no machi in 1950. Eventually, Ōta became so obsessed with the theme of the atomic bombing to the extent that Treat argued she was “a bitter, disturbed and perhaps even deranged woman whose writings on Hiroshima deserve to be discounted as equally bitter, disturbed, and deranged themselves”.29 Shikabane no machi’s reading is disturbing since it lacks rhetorical embellishment: mangled bodies on the verge of death, rotting flesh burned by the atomic blast, zombie-like survivors seeking aid and water in the wake of the atomic bombing. The title itself, City of Corpses, conveys Ōta’s account well. Nevertheless, the authorial struggle regarding the literary representability of the reality of Hiroshima’s aftermath is shared by many witnesses. It regards the “aesthetics of catastrophe”, as to say, the debate which questions the legitimacy of any artistic performance or artistic representation on the theme of a traumatic event.

Genbaku Legacy in Post-3.11 Japan: Ōta Yōko and Yoshida Chia  205 Sono ato no Fukushima resembles Shikabane no machi in structure, presenting an account of episodes and situations the author witnessed in ­person—especially in the refugee shelters. Hibakusha’s interviews empower these scenes, which are also sustained by Yoshida’s critical comments to provide the readership with a broader perspective on the referential law, thus underlining a gap between municipal procedures and the factual situation in the evacuated zones. In this sense, hibakushas’ voices constitute the heart of the investigation. At the same time, Yoshida’s point of view is limited to the corollary of information necessary to offer a balanced perspective on the topic in question. As the introductory note explains, the focus of the inquiry is Fukushima, sono ato—Fukushima’s aftermath. Yoshida pointed out that the beginning of Fukushima’s recovery in 2017 also sets out the ending of any governmental subsidy to the evacuated areas in terms of supporting aid for refugee shelters.30 Yoshida stressed that not all the former citizens of the evacuated areas surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant were subjected to the Japanese governmental evacuation. People living outside the thirty-kilometre radius established by the compulsory evacuation measures could remain in the area. This legal arrangement was controversial because it raised doubts about which families living near the thirty-­k ilometre evacuation radius should have moved away. People who decided to evacuate ­voluntarily were not provided with governmental aid because their refugee status was not recognised. The farm animals, and the farmhouses left behind, did not constitute critical elements in the balance of the damage claims.31 This dichotomy of recovering/abandonment in the Fukushima Daiichi area is well addressed throughout the work, constituting the fil rouge that guides the reading. In addition to the political criticism and the social radiophobia at the basis of hibakusha discrimination (these issues will be developed in detail later), Sono ato no Fukushima handles other critical topics also mentioned in Shikabane no machi. First, the collective burial of the dead after the earthquake and the great tsunamis implicitly deprived the deceased of their identity. Second, the fear and anxiety towards radiation sickness exhibited by Fukushima evacuees and their offspring. Last, the rediscovery of the fundamental role of kizuna (social ties) among people as a powerful source of support and mutual understanding of the hibakusha’s peculiar conditions. Shikabane no machi versus Sono ato no Fukushima Political Criticism Ōta Yōko does not make a mystery of her critical stance towards both Japanese and US governments’ responsibility for the Hiroshima atomic bombings. The writer denounced both the war’s irrationality, considering the Japanese defeat as an unsurprising and ill-fated certitude long before the

206  Veronica De Pieri atomic bombings, and the US government’s decision to deliberately treat the citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on a par with human test subjects for the destructive potential of atomic weapons. Notably, the Gyokuon-hōsō, Emperor Hirohito’s declaration of surrender, which was broadcast throughout the country on August 15, 1945, was perceived as mortifying and humiliating: as the saying goes, insult on top of injury. Like other hibakusha authors (including the popular Nagasaki kataribe or story-teller par excellence, Hayashi Kyōko), Ōta emphasised the repercussions of the atomic blast, which was not a circumscribed event limited in time because it caused physical and psychological repercussions which have affected the second and the third generations of hibakusha, too: “Even though the war is over, we are still dying due to war. This is inexplicable to me”.32 Hence, Ōta accepted the challenge of making the hibakusha experience accessible to the broader public. In her purpose, she was encouraged by her commitment to giving testimony as a woman, as a journalist, and as a survivor: “Sister, you are observing them, aren’t you? I cannot. I cannot stand and stare at the corpses”. My little sister scolded me, and I replied: “I am a writer. I am looking at them in two ways—the first, the look of the human being, the second, the writer’s look”. “Will you be able to write? About it?” “I must. It is the responsibility of a writer who saw all this”.33 Notwithstanding, Ōta exhibits a critical stance towards the accountability of the hibakusha’s experience. Her writing amounts to a mission rather than a mere responsibility towards accounting the a-bombing experience. The climate of insecurity and long-lasting disorientation of individuals that overwhelmed the Japanese population after the 2011 Fukushima meltdown was intrinsically intertwined with the so-called “anzen shinwa” (“security myth”). The term refers to the belief that nuclear energy was safe. The nuclear meltdown at Fukushima Daiichi forced the Japanese people to face the disillusionment of the anzen shinwa. Notwithstanding, the nuclear accident’s actual scale was downsized by the joint action of TEPCO and the Japanese government to avoid panic, thus protecting the anzen shinwa.34 As seen before, this fracture of the social tissue underpinned a more alarming fragmentation of the self for the more fragile individuals. It was counterbalanced by “a quest for kizuna”, which profited from the same social media channels and claimed to be guilty of false information regarding the Fukushima Power Plant’s safety. Eventually, the “new” human bonds intertwined after Fukushima’s nuclear meltdown implicitly created boundaries between hibakusha and non-hibakusha, despite the fact they were also claimed to suggest a nationalistic revival of Japan after the tragic events of March 11, 2011.

Genbaku Legacy in Post-3.11 Japan: Ōta Yōko and Yoshida Chia  207 Shikabane no machi versus Sono ato no Fukushima Radiophobia and hibakusha sabetsu When dealing with the radiophobia issue, the 1945 atomic bombing experience and the 2011 Fukushima nuclear meltdown experience merge and show similar difficulties in coping with the fear of radioactive contamination, thus exposing a climate of diffidence and discrimination towards the hibakusha, as briefly explored previously. Japan is the hibaku koku par excellence: the only country in the world to have witnessed both the effects of atomic bombings and nuclear accidents.35 Eventually, FUKUSHIMA has been written in the katakana syllabary (as HIROSHIMA and NAGASAKI had previously been) to distinguish the geographical location of the cities on the map from the historical trauma of those having witnessed the radioactive contamination. Apart from the physical and psychological consequences linked to the radiation sickness, several literary references compare Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s atomic explosions with Fukushima’s radioactive fallout—from the kuroi ame (black rain) falling upon the cities soon after the blast/­accident to the testimonial narratives of those traumatic experiences. For the record, there is a difference between the radioactive contamination of Hiroshima and Fukushima. Generally speaking, the term “­genbakushō” refers to the “atomic-bomb sickness” linked to the atomic blast. On the contrary, the radioactive contamination associated with the Fukushima fallout is usually addressed as “naibu hibaku” (“inner contamination”, internationally known as “radiation sickness”), thus insisting on the invisible quality of radioactivity.36 Japan represents a peculiar breeding ground for social fragmentation when dealing with “hibakusha sabetsu” (hibakusha discrimination). The distinction of social groups into the philosophical paradigm of uchi and soto (内 “inside” versus 外 “outside”) pervades Japanese culture to the extent of shaping the Japanese language (not to mention the different language registers required to address members of different social status or social groups adequately). From a sociological perspective, this discrepancy refers to the members of one’s family distinguished from the general “others”. Eventually, this division of community into uchi and soto assumes particular value with respect to those who have or have not experienced radioactive contamination. In the first case, being a hibakusha means to be affiliated with the survivors’ group, and being able to share the same traumatic memories of the experience. All the “others” (soto) were not directly exposed to such a traumatic event and, therefore, are considered to be unable to understand it. It goes without saying that strong bonds are intertwined among members belonging to the same group: they all share feelings of mutual comprehension, trust, and acceptance. Similarly to what is happening today with the pandemic, it seems that the trauma created a boundary between

208  Veronica De Pieri infected subjects and non-infected/immune subjects, in between whom an impalpable wall of difficulty of comprehension was set up. Far from being unique in the panorama of testimonial literature (only think about Shoah’s survivors, for example), this principle becomes controversial when referring to the testimonial narratives of the events in question and who has the right to talk about them. Ōta Yōko did not dwell much on the “hibakusha sabetsu” (discrimination) topic in her Shikabane no machi since her account covers the first weeks after Hiroshima’s atomic blast. Notwithstanding, the author does not fail to report the unsympathetic behaviour of non-hibakusha towards the survivors.37 Eventually, the turning point for sociological recognition of the hibakusha occurred in 1957, when the Japanese government enacted the “Hibakusha health passport”, by passing the Atomic Bomb Victim Medical Care Law. It provided funding for free medical check-ups, treatments for atomic bombing survivors, and better working conditions.38 The designated hibakusha were defined as anyone who had been within city limits at the time of the bombings, those in areas where black rain fell, children affected by in utero radiation exposure and rescue workers and others who came into the city within the first two weeks.39 Providing proof of being exposed to the atomic explosion was the compelling requirement to obtain such a particular legal recognition, thus forcing people to dredge up that traumatic past. Eventually, many hibakusha still alive in the late 1950s were left alone—family, friends, or acquaintances had previously died, perhaps just due to diseases associated with the ­genbakushō’s (atomic bomb’s) symptoms. In this sense, proving to be a hibakusha was doubly sorrowful. Moreover, hibakusha were considered unreliable workers because of their poor health; the benefits they obtained with their health passports were regarded with envy by other war victims, especially the survivors of aerial bombings. These circumstances only emphasised ostracism and discrimination among the population and implicitly accentuated the “survivor’s guilt” of being alive. The discomfort of being labelled “hibakusha” was the origin of “a strong unconscious wish to separate oneself from the affiliated group”.40 In short, the Hibakusha health passport was perceived as a stigma and an obstacle to human relationships, especially contracting marriage and starting a family. Conversely, Yoshida Chia called the discriminatory actions towards the hibakusha of the Fukushima nuclear fallout by their proper names, genpatsu hinanjō ijime, which refers to the bullying attitude towards the e­ vacuees from the surrounding area of the Fukushima Daiichi, especially towards children and teens.41 In contrast, fūhyō higai (harmful rumours) usually addresses defamatory forms beneath the refugees’ dignity.42

Genbaku Legacy in Post-3.11 Japan: Ōta Yōko and Yoshida Chia  209 The paradigm of societal division into uchi and soto does not save the 2011 hibakusha. However, it underlines the close link between Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s atomic bombings and the Fukushima nuclear fallout. Eventually, Fukushima Daiichi’s hibakusha experienced obstacles in obtaining legal recognition for their status in a fashion not dissimilar to the 1945 hibakusha. People who lived outside the thirty-kilometre radius of compulsory evacuation and who decided to evacuate were not recognised with refugee status, thus finding their request for governmental support rejected. Social issues such as suicides, social anxiety, and self-enclosure were the ­consequences of sociophobic behaviour which hit the newspaper’s headlines in the months following the Fukushima accident. Yoshida reported these in full detail in her journalistic inquiries, especially in the short interviews in her Sono ato no Fukushima. Cases of adultery and divorce, which often led to substance abuse, were common among the genpatsu hinansha (“evacuees from the nuclear accident”) as well as among the saigai hinansha (“evacuees of the disaster”), categories to which Yoshida pays much attention. Shikabane no machi versus Sono ato no Fukushima Intergenerational Trauma The radioactivity concern stands symbolically as an element of continuity between the traumatic past, the present of the storytelling, and the feasible tomorrow. A radioactive event, regardless of the nature of its atomic blast or nuclear fallout, is conceived as long-lasting due to both the issues concerning nuclear waste disposal and the danger of genetic malformations related to communicable diseases in future generations caused by radioactive exposure. Moreover, being exposed to radioactive contamination means being condemned to lead a life constantly threatened by the fear of oncological symptoms, thus compromising the mental stability of individuals. Talking about the “A-bomb neurosis”, which can be compared to the Fukushima fallout-related neurosis, Lifton explained it “as a precarious inner balance between the need for symptoms and the anxious association of these symptoms with death and dying”.43 Therefore, the radioactive events cannot be considered only as ill-fated historical dates on human history’s timeline—to put it simply. They have never ended. Intergenerational trauma involves the offspring of survivors up to the second and third generations. According to Lifton: Psychologically speaking, leukaemia—or the threat of leukaemia— became an indefinite extension of earlier “invisible contamination”; and individual cases, particularly in children, became a later counterpart of the “ultimate horror” of the first moments of the experience.44

210  Veronica De Pieri The future is not only threatened by fear of the insurgence of symptoms correlated to the radiation disease but also by the psychological trauma experienced firsthand by the survivors and implicitly (or not) transmitted to their offspring. For example, children raised in a family environment poisoned by overprotection, shame, secrecy, or even taboo or oblivion about the radioactivity exposure of the adults may suffer from disorientation. They may show difficulty in establishing lasting relationships with others. Moreover, as seen before, the stigma towards radioactive exposure affects, by extension, the offspring.45 In this context, women represent the more sensitive gender concerning the guilt for transmitting both psychical and psychological sequelae to future generations. Although both parents concur on child-raising, the risk of radioactivity contamination even in utero involves pregnancy, thus assigning more weight to women’s role in the safe offspring's growth. Yoshida Chia makes room for this sensitive issue in her Sono ato no Fukushima and in her other journalistic works, especially when giving voice to mothers and children displaced in refugee shelters. Ōta Yōko also showed similar attention when describing the status of her sister and her little newborn in Hiroshima’s aftermath.

Conclusion: The Role of Female Journalism in the Wake of Catastrophe Testimonial literature has always been classified as secondary literary production and evaluated nearly exclusively for its educational purpose. As concerns journalistic reports and nonfictional accounts, these works do not always respond to the requisites of literariness, thus compromising their assessment in the editorial field. The “ethics of disaster” regards the plethora of philosophical and moral principles that revolve around artistic representability and the critical discourse on the literary topoi of trauma and catastrophe. Ōta Yōko and Yoshida Chia respond with the parrhesiastic plea, committing themselves to the testimonial activity. They ignored the critique of riding the wave of the radioactive contamination topic, which was very much in vogue in 1945 and in the aftermath of 2011. In this sense, the authors did not enslave themselves and their literary production to the imperative of “producing literature”. This critique was anything but unusual, especially among hibakusha groups who considered hibakusha survivors to be the only ones worthy of bearing witness to those traumatic experiences. Of course, these considerations generate an unsolvable dilemma. If hibakusha writers are seen as traitors of their unique experience for the sake of the popularity connected to the literary field, but at the same time, only hibakusha victims have the right to testify, how to answer the hunger for the truth of the broad public? A similar impasse was encountered by Shoah survivors, too, when their first testimonies came out on the bookshelves during the 1950s and 1960s.

Genbaku Legacy in Post-3.11 Japan: Ōta Yōko and Yoshida Chia  211 Despite the diversity of their profiles, both Ōta and Yoshida committed themselves, as female witnesses and reporters, to shed some light on controversial and sensitive issues, from the responsibility of radioactive ­pollution to the social prejudice connected to radiation exposure. This chapter attempted to underline the analogies between Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s atomic bombings and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant’s accidents relating to radioactivity concerns. Except for Shikabane no machi (City of Corpses), which was subjected to US censorship during the 1950s, both Ōta and Yoshida’s documentary works express harsh criticism towards the Japanese governments and give voice to the victims through first-person interviews. Eventually, the peculiar mechanism of transference should be examined from the journalists’ viewpoint, considering the emotional cost of reporting traumatic events. Ōta and Yoshida acted like “middle voices”,46 accounting for Hiroshima and Fukushima’s radioactivity concerns. By paying much attention to their interviews and dialogues with the victims, both journalists were exposed twice to the trauma linked to the hibakusha experience. The interviews with the survivors mirror the locus of a psychotherapeutic session between the therapist/journalist and the patients/interviewees, thus setting in motion the transference and counter-transference processes detected by Freud (Übertragung). Regarding any testimonial narrative, this sort of psychotherapeutic agency is echoed by the audience’s agency in the reading process, which becomes evident in the empathic involvement or identification mechanism (Freud’s Einfühlung) typical to the act of reading. The transference/self-identification is far from being only a menacing process: it is precisely thanks to the feelings of empathy that human beings can share a mutual understanding, sensitivity, and support. In a few words, the famous quest for kizuna mentioned earlier finds its source in the mental and sentimental competence of human bonding. What will be the new frontier for women’s journalism? The authors discussed in this brief chapter are an example of the value that women can add in dealing with reports in the wake of catastrophe. Although compassionate towards gender issues and intergenerational trauma involving victims’ offspring, both authors showed opposite approaches to the so-called “therapy news”, that is, the journalistic attitude that conceives interviews with the survivor as a confessional locus for traumatic experience to sensitise the public towards the issue in question.47 Neither can Ōta’s and Yoshida’s accounts be considered “soft news”, since the topic of radioactive exposure has nothing to share with gossip, leisure, and entertainment news, usually associated with women’s journalism.48 Journalism today has to deal with crucial issues such as denuclearisation and global warming. The pandemic has also challenged the newspaper and news media in the broader sense, especially considering the recent expansion of social networking on a global scale. Moreover, by interfering

212  Veronica De Pieri with the typical performance of human relationships, severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-2) has undermined the traditional concept of kizuna. At the same time, social media were fundamental in shaping new ways of reporting and media coverage and new ways of human bonding in terms of human communication and interactions. Hence, a re-evaluation of the role of the testimonial narratives, both in the nonfictional and fictional forms, should be considered to discover from the past the food for thought ­necessary to account for the ever-changing cultural phenomena of our times.

Notes 1 All translations by the author unless otherwise noted. 2 Laurie Santos (Professor of Psychology at Yale University), “The Science of WellBeing,” Live Lecture, March 30, 2020, https://www.facebook.com/Coursera/ photos/gm.530795624522086/2784802298304407. 3 Especially after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, the term is no longer limited to addressing radiation hysteria and it has been implemented in the psychotraumatology field to focus on post-traumatic stress disorder connected with nuclear fallout. 4 Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (New York: Penguin Random House, 1968), 57. 5 Kenzaburō Ōe 大江健三郎, “History Repeats,” New Yorker, March 28, 2011, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/03/28/history-repeats. 6 Lisette Gebhardt and Yūki Masami, Literature and Art after Fukushima. Four Approaches (Berlin: EB-Verlag, 2014), 13. 7 Georges Devereux, Saggi di Etnopsichiatria generale (Roma: Armando Editore, 2007 [1970]), 29. The validity of the “Sapir–Whorf hypothesis” is still debated. 8 John Leavitt, “Linguistic Relativities,” in Language, Culture, and Society. Key Topics in Linguistic Antropology, eds. Christine Jordan and Kevin Tuite (Cambridge, MD: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 47–81, 66. 9 Roni Berger, Stress, Trauma, and Posttraumatic Growth. Social Context, Environment, and Identities (London: Routledge, 2015), 13. 10 Nihon Tosho Center, 日本図書センター, Ōta Yōko shū 大田洋子集, Accessed December 12, 2013, http://www.nihontosho.co.jp/2001/11/post-372.html. 11 Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life, 402. 12 Yōko Ōta, 大田洋子, Shikabane no machi jo 屍の街序 (Tōkyō: Toga Shobou, 1950), 3. 13 Lifton, Death in Life, 405. 14 Level 7 News, accessed September 12, 2020, https://level7online.jp. 15 Kwansei Gakuin University Study on Reconstruction Organizations, accessed September 12, 2020, https://www.kwansei.ac.jp/fukkou. 16 Japan Civil Network, accessed September 12, 2020, https://www.jpn-civil.net. 17 Save Fukushima Children Lawyers’ Network, accessed September 12, 2020, http://www.saflan.jp. 18 Sono ato no Fukushima ranks 73rd in the list of top-selling books about “nuclear topics” on amazon.co.jp while her last Korui. Futaba gun shōbōshi tachi no 3.11 「孤塁 双葉郡消防士たちの3.11 」 (“Isolated stronghold. The 3.11 according to the fireman from Futaba,” 2020) ranks 32nd among “disaster books”. 19 John Whittier Treat, Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996), 208.

Genbaku Legacy in Post-3.11 Japan: Ōta Yōko and Yoshida Chia  213 20 Kazusuke Nakano, 中野和典, “‘Shikabane no machi’ wa dono youniyomaretekitaka?” 『屍の街』はどのように読まれてきたか？, Dai 48kai genbaku bungaku kenkyukai, 2015, 211, https://www.cis.fukuoka-u.ac.jp/~nakanok/study/ 201512shikabane.pdf. 21 Politicwing, The American Occupation of Japan—Press Code, accessed October 12, 2021, http://www.politicwing.net/presscode.html. 22 Fumito Iwasaki, 岩崎文人, Hara Tamiki: Hito to bungaku 原民喜―人と文学 (Tōkyō: Bensei shuppan, 2003), 173–174. 23 Nakano, “Shikabane no machi,” 211. 24 DSM-IV is the acronym for Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th Edition (New York: American Psychiatric Association – APA, 1952). 25 Reiko Tachibana, Narrative as Counter-Memory: A Half-Century of Postwar Writing in Germany and Japan (New York: New York University Press, 1998), 32. 26 Ōta Shikabane no machi jo, 7. 27 Kazuo Kuroko, 黒古一夫, Genbaku to kotoba (shō)- Hara Tamiki kara Hayashi Kyoko made 原爆と言葉（抄）―原民喜から林京子まで (Tōkyō: San-ichi Shobou, 1983), 320–323. 28 Ōta, Shikabane no machi jo, 4. 29 Treat, Writing Ground Zero, 223. 30 Chia Yoshida, 吉田千亜, Sono ato no Fukushima. Genpatsu jikogo wo ikiru hitobito その後の福島。原発事故後を生きる人々 (Tōkyō: Jinbun Shoin, 2018), 7. 31 Yoshida, Sono ato no Fukushima, 140. 32 Ōta, Shikabane no machi jo, 31. 33 Yōko Ōta, 大田洋子, Shikabane no machi 屍の街 (Tōkyō: Chūou Koronsha, 1948), 74. 34 Yoshida, Sono ato no Fukushima, 69. 35 Mikiyo Kanou, 加納実紀代, HIROSHIMA to FUKUSHIMA no aida – gendaa no shiten kara ヒロシマとフクシマのあいだ―ジェンダーの視点から(Tōkyō: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2013), 24. “Internal radiation exposure” (naibu hibaku) and “radioactivity exposure” (hōshanōsen hibaku) address the ingestion of contaminated food and water and the exposure to a radioactive environment, respectively. 36 Shuntarō Hida, 肥田俊太郎, Hibaku to hibaku. Hoshanosen ni makezuni ikiru 被 爆と被曝。放射能線に負けずに生きる (Tōkyō: Gentosha, 2013). 37 Reiko Tachibana, Narrative as Counter-Memory, 51, 55. 38 Akiko Naono, “The Origins of ‘Hibakusha’ as a Scientific and Political Classification of the Survivor,” Japanese Studies 39, no. 3 (2019): 333–352. 39 Susan Southard, Nagasaki: Life after Nuclear War (New York: Penguin Random House, 2016), 221. 40 Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life, 61. 41 Yoshida, 203. 42 Chia Yoshida, Sono ato no Fukushima, 163. 43 Lifton, Death in Life, 119. 44 Lifton, Death in Life, 104. 45 Yuka Kamite, “Prejudice and Health Anxiety about Radiation Exposure from Second-Generation Atomic Bomb Survivors: Results from a Qualitative Interview Study,” Frontiers in Psychology 8 (August 2017): 2, https://doi. org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.01462. 46 Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990), 42. 47 Deborah Chambers, Linda Steiner and Carole Fleming, Women and Journalism (New York: Routledge, 2004), 218. 48 Chambers et al., Women and Journalism, pp. 33–34.

214  Veronica De Pieri

Bibliography Berger, Roni. Stress, Trauma, and Posttraumatic Growth. Social Context, Environment, and Identities. London: Routledge, 2015. Chambers, Deborah, Linda Steiner and Carole Fleming. Women and Journalism. New York: Routledge, 2004. Devereux, Georges. Saggi di Etnopsichiatria generale. Roma: Armando Editore, 2007 [1970]. Gebhardt, Lisette and Masami Yūki. Literature and Art after Fukushima: Four Approaches. Berlin: EB-Verlag, 2014. Hasegawa, Kei 長谷川啓. Ōta, Yōko Genbaku sakuhinshu. Shikabane no machi. 大田 洋子原爆作品集。屍の街. Tōkyō: Takanashi Shobou, 2020. Hayakawa, Noriyo 早川紀代 and Esashi Akiko 江刺昭子. Genbaku to genpatsu, sono saki. Joseitachi no hikaku no jissei to shisō 原爆と原発、その先。女性たちの非核の実 践と思想. Tōkyō: Ocha no suishobou, 2016. Hida, Shuntarō 肥田俊太郎. Hibaku to hibaku. Hoshanosen ni makezuni ikiru 被爆と 被曝。放射能線に負けずに生きる. Tōkyō: Gentosha, 2013. Iwasaki, Fumito 岩崎文人. Hara Tamiki: Hito to bungaku 原民喜―人と文学. Tōkyō: Bensei Shuppan, 2003. Kanou, Mikiyo 加納実紀代. HIROSHIMA to FUKUSHIMA no aida – gendaa no shiten kara ヒロシマとフクシマのあいだ―ジェンダーの視点から. Tōkyō: Inpakuto Shuppankai, 2013. Kodama Miiko 小玉美意子. Jaanarizumu no joseikan ジャーナリズムの女性観. Tōkyō: Gakubunsha, 1991. Kobayashi, Takayoshi 小林孝吉. Genpatsu to genbaku no bungaku—Posuto Fukushima no kibou 原発と原爆の文学ーポスト·フクシマの希望。Tōkyō: Seishidou, 2016. Kuroko, Kazuo 黒古一夫. Genbaku to kotoba (shō)- Hara Tamiki kara Hayashi Kyoko made 原爆と言葉（抄）―原民喜から林京子まで. Tōkyō: San-ichi Shobou, 1983. Kuroko, Kazuo 黒古一夫. Genbaku wa bungaku ni dou egakaretekitaka 原爆は文学に どう描かれたか. Tōkyō: Hatsusakusha, 2005. Kuroko, Kazuo 黒古一夫. Genbaku bungakuron. Kakujidai to Souzouryoku 原爆文学 論。核時代と想像力. Tōkyō: Sairyusha, 1993. Leavitt, John. “Linguistic Relativities.” In Language, Culture, and Society. Key Topics in Linguistic Anthropology, edited by Christine Jordan and Kevin Tuite, 47–81. Cambridge, MD: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Lifton, Robert Jay. Death in Life. Survivors of Hiroshima. New York: Penguin Random House, 1968. Nakano, Kazusuke 中野和典. “Shikabane no machi” wa dono youniyomaretekitaka? 『屍の街』はどのように読まれてきたか？ Dai 48kai genbaku bungaku kenkyukai. 2015, 210–224. https://www.cis.fukuoka-u.ac.jp/~nakanok/study/201512shikabane.pdf. Naono, Akiko. “The Origins of ‘Hibakusha’ as a Scientific and Political Classification of the Survivor.” Japanese Studies 39 (2019): 3, 333–352. Nihon Tosho Center 日本図書センター. Ōta Yōko shū 大田洋子集. http://www.nihon tosho.co.jp/2001/11/post-372.html. Ōe, Kenzaburō 大江健三郎. “History Repeats.” The New Yorker, March 28, 2011. https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2011/03/28/history-repeats. Ōta, Yōko 大田洋子. Shikabane no machi 屍の街. Tōkyō: Chūou Koronsha, 1948.

Genbaku Legacy in Post-3.11 Japan: Ōta Yōko and Yoshida Chia  215 Ōta, Yōko 大田洋子. Shikabane no machi jo 屍の街序. Tōkyō: Toga Shobou, 1950. Politicwing. The American Occupation of Japan: Press Code. http://www.politicwing.net/presscode.html. Shimizu Shūji 清水修二. Sabetsu toshite no genshiryoku 差別としての原子力. Tōkyō: Riberuta Shuppan, 1994. Southard, Susan. Nagasaki: Life after Nuclear War. New York: Penguin Random House, 2016. Shin-Feminizumu hihyou no kaihen. “3.11 Fukushima” igo no feminizumu.