Beyond the Mushroom Cloud : Commemoration, Religion, and Responsibility after Hiroshima [1 ed.] 9780823249312, 9780823240500

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B E YO N D T HE M U S HR O O M CL O U D

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B O RD E R I NG R E L IG I O N S: C O N CEP T S , C O N F LI C T S , A N D C ON V E R SAT I O NS

k at hr yn ku en y, ka re n p ec hi li s, an d j am es t. ro bi ns on , s er ie s e di to rs

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BEYOND THE MUSHROOM CLOUD Commemoration, Religion, and Responsibility After Hiroshima yuki miyamoto

Fordham University Press n e w yo r k

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2012

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Copyright 䉷 2012 Fordham University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher. Fordham University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party Internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Fordham University Press also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Miyamoto, Yuki. Beyond the mushroom cloud : commemoration, religion, and responsibility after Hiroshima / Yuki Miyamoto.—1st ed. p. cm.— (Bordering religions) Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 978-0-8232-4050-0 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978-0-8232-4051-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Hiroshima-shi (Japan)—History—Bombardment, 1945—Moral and ethical aspects. 2. Atomic bomb victims—Religious life—Japan—Hiroshima-shi. 3. Collective memory—Japan—Hiroshima-shi. 4. Memorials—Japan— Hiroshima-shi. 5. Responsibility—Social aspects—Japan—Hiroshima-shi. 6. Peace movements—Japan—Hiroshima-shi. 7. Hiroshima-shi (Japan)— Religious life and customs. 8. Collective memory—Case studies. 9. Responsibility—Social aspects—Case studies. 10. Nuclear warfare—Moral and ethical aspects. I. Title. D767.25.H6M57 2012 940.54⬘2521954—dc23 2011038986 Printed in the United States of America 14 13 12 5 4 3 2 1 First edition

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For Motoko Miyamoto (1939–2001) and Mitsuaki Miyamoto

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CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix A Note on the Text xv

Introduction: The Ethics of Commemoration 1

I

Commemoration

1

Toward a Community of Memory 13

2

Dialogue with the Dead: The Yasukuni Shinto Shrine and Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park 47

II Religious Interpretations

3

Beyond Good and Evil: Ko¯ji Shigenobu and the True Pure Land Understanding of the Atomic Bombing 81

4 Sacrificial Lambs: Nagai Takashi and the Roman Catholic Interpretation of the Bombing 111 III Responsibility

5

Women in Atomic Bomb Narratives: Hagiography, Alterity, and Non-Nomological Ethics 145

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Contents

Postscript: After Too Many Mushroom Clouds 177 Afterword 183 Notes 185 Bibliography 217 Index 227

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Countless people provided encouragement and support in various forms throughout the writing of this manuscript; their offerings of time, thought, and other resources were gifts received gratefully. Although I am unable to mention all of them by name, I would like to acknowledge here some of the individuals, organizations, and institutions who helped make this a better book. I am indebted foremost to the many hibakusha people of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and elsewhere whom I have had the privilege of getting to know. Their humility, energy, and commitment to the antinuclear cause have both humbled me and motivated me to continue writing. I am particularly grateful to Shuntaro¯ Hida, Katsuji Yoshida, Sachiko Masuoka, Shigeko Sasamori, and Emiko Okada, who not only shared their testimonies of their bomb-related experiences and sufferings but also exhibited appreciation and affection for my students and others in their audience. They have touched many hearts, including my own. Takanobu Masumi in Hiroshima has shown extraordinary support by sending me books and newspaper clippings that have assisted my research; no amount of thanks could match his generosity. I owe a debt of gratitude to many other people in Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Chicago. With James Halstead of my home institution, DePaul University, I have had the pleasure of directing three short-term studyabroad programs to Hiroshima and Nagasaki to date. These trips would not have been possible without the support of my colleagues at DePaul, particularly Nobuko Chikamatsu. In the context of this program, Rev. Shigenobu Ko¯ji has kindly taken the time to talk with my students on our visits to his True Pure Land Buddhist temple, Ko¯ryu¯ji, in Hiroshima. On each trip, Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba of Hiroshima and Mayor

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Tomihisa Taue of Nagasaki have been generous enough to meet with our group, instilling in students a sense of the possibilities of citizens’ initiative. Steven Leeper, chairperson of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, a division of the local Hiroshima government, also captivated and inspired students in his dual role as both a representative of Hiroshima and an American citizen—an embodiment of hope and peace between two countries once engaged in a brutal war. Thanks to their encounters with such remarkable figures as these, one group of students launched a petition drive on the DePaul University campus upon their return from Japan, collecting more than six hundred signatures in two days to submit to Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, urging him to join Mayors for Peace, a nongovernmental organization comprising mayors from cities across the globe. Moved by these students’ enthusiasm, Gene Lee, his deputy chief of staff, helped us secure a meeting with Mayor Daley, who signed on to join Mayors for Peace in front of our eyes. I thank my students, particularly Patrick Coffey, who led this effort, for their exemplary display of courage and persistence in entering the realm of politics. Though much of the research for this volume was conducted after I graduated from the University of Chicago, my studies there were foundational to this project, and the institution provided me with important resources and financial support. But the most exciting aspect of being a student at the University of Chicago was my introduction to the scholar’s life, represented in my mind by the alluring rows of books in many different languages at the Joseph Regenstein Library. I received invaluable support from those professors who initiated me into the joys and fears of being a scholar: Jean Bethke Elshtain, James Ketelaar, Frank Reynolds, William Schweiker, and Winnifred Sullivan. Norma Field in the East Asian Languages and Civilizations of the University of Chicago, with whom I came to work more closely in the years following my graduation, has been a mentor and friend, as well as a role model for her excellence in scholarship and teaching. A Research Travel Grant from the Japan–United States Friendship Commission and the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies supplied me with generous financial support crucial to finishing my research. The East Asian Research Study Group at Northwestern University, led by Laura Hein, provided a venue in which to discuss scholarly matters with peers from across academic disciplines. Steven Heine offered me the opportunity to present my thoughts on

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Acknowledgments xiii

representations of atomic bomb survivors in contemporary film at Florida International University in 2008, and has since been a valued mentor. I also benefited greatly from the formidable research skills of Tomomi Yamaguchi of Montana State University, who was kind enough to direct me to up-to-date information about nuclear issues. My home institution, DePaul University, has provided support for my scholarship in numerous ways. I am grateful to DePaul’s Humanities Center for a generous fellowship in the form of a teaching reduction that enabled me to focus on completing the manuscript. The Center also provided resources for hiring an excellent research assistant, Andrew Mancus, who later worked as an intern under Steven Leeper’s supervision at the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. DePaul’s University Research Council’s summer grant provided financial help to finish this project. I also extend my gratitude to the DePaul students with whom I have worked, and in conversation with whom I shaped and sharpened my ideas about the atomic bombs and nationalism. I would especially like to acknowledge Claire Sherman and Margaret Miller for their enthusiastic support of this project and their insightful comments on a draft of the manuscript. Some parts of this book were first presented in earlier versions at academic conferences or in journals. A portion of Chapter 2 was presented under the title ‘‘Dialogue with the Dead: Deconstructing Boundaries in the Atomic Bomb Narratives’’ at the Society for Asian and Comparative Philosophy Annual Conference in 2008. An earlier version of part of Chapter 5 appeared as ‘‘Sacred Pariahs: Hagiographies of Alterity, Sexuality, and Salvation in Atomic Bomb Literature’’ in Japan Studies Review 13 (2009). While I was revising the final manuscript in November 2010, I received news from Hiroshima that former Hiroshima mayor Hamai Shinzo¯’s memoir Genbaku shicho¯, which I discuss in Chapter 1, had been translated into English under the title A-Bomb Mayor by Elizabeth Baldwin, whom I am happy to count as a friend. I am excited by the prospect that the stories and insights of Hamai and his fellow Hiroshima citizens about restoring the city, and resurrecting it specifically as a city of peace, will further inspire others in the English-speaking world. Photographer Sachiko Miyamae, a lifelong friend from Hiroshima, took the photo that graces the cover of this book. Her friendship has been invaluable.

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My husband, Jeremy, was the most supportive (and most critical) reader of my manuscript. His confidence in this project and in me motivated my efforts. My parents-in-law never failed to provide me comfort when I feared I would succumb to pressure or insecurity. I could not ask for a better family. With gratitude, I dedicate this book to my parents, Motoko Miyamoto (1939–2001) and Mitsuaki Miyamoto. I regret only that, not ready to face a parent’s emotional vulnerability, I was unable to gather up the courage to ask my mother about her experience in Hiroshima, at the age of six, of the atomic bombing, one mile from the hypocenter.

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A NO TE O N TH E TEXT

In Japanese, the term hibakusha can be rendered in two different ways in writing. When the element baku is written with the Chinese character for ‘‘bomb,’’ it refers to survivors of the atomic bombings of 1945. When baku is written with the Chinese character for ‘‘exposure,’’ the meaning of hibakusha is widened to include not only victims of the bombings but also all those harmed by exposure to radiation from nuclear material (for example, workers at the crippled Fukushima nuclear power plants after the accident triggered by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011). In this book, unless I specify otherwise, I use ‘‘hibakusha’’ to refer to those who suffered from the atomic bombing and/or its radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Though in Japanese no distinction is made between singular and plural nouns (number is indicated by context), for ease of reading I have adopted English conventions in the use of ‘‘hibakusha.’’ When it refers to an individual survivor, it appears as ‘‘hibakusha’’; the plural is rendered ‘‘hibakushas.’’ My use of the definite article in conjunction with ‘‘hibakusha’’ when used as a mass noun is to adhere to English conventions and should not be taken to indicate that ‘‘the’’ hibakusha comprise a univocal group or monolithic category. With the exception of names widely known among English readers (for example, Kenzaburo¯ Oe and Akira Kurosawa), in rendering East Asian names in the body of the text I follow the conventional ordering of the region, with surnames followed by given names. For example, Nagai Takashi’s name appears in the Japanese order; the surname Nagai precedes the given name, Takashi. In the acknowledgments section alone, surnames follow given names. When possible, I have used available English translations of Japanese texts; unless otherwise indicated, all other translations from the Japanese are mine.

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Introduction: The Ethics of Commemoration

But of others there is no memory; They have perished as though They had never existed; They have become as though They had never been born, They and their children after them. —Sirah 44:9

On the fortieth anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Andre´ Ryerson, former professor of French at Amherst College, summed up the descriptions of the bombing that generally characterize commemoration ceremonies: The scene is Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Japanese people are seen going about their own business, children are at play, a trolley tinkles gaily down the street, a mother bares her breast tenderly to nurse her babe, and the only hint that a war might be going on is vaguely suggested by a man in uniform going to his lookout post to scan the skies. Then a silver plane appears. A smiling little boy points to it. Suddenly a flash, and hell on earth is loosed—peeling flesh, dead babies, bloodencased bodies, carbonized corpses in grotesque postures.1

Narratives of the atomic bombings—be they testimonies, literary accounts, films, or theatrical reproductions—tend to produce and reproduce the sort of images that Ryerson conjures in his description. Such narratives, he claims, create ‘‘a fairy tale of malevolence as neat as any that could be conceived,’’ giving rise to ‘‘the contemporary myth of Hiroshima.’’2

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According to Ryerson, this presentation of Hiroshima and the event of the atomic bombing stimulates guilt among the attendees of the commemorative ceremonies; indeed, evocation of guilt is the very ‘‘aim of Western commemorations of Hiroshima.’’ Ryerson critiques the ceremonies on this point, claiming that such manipulation of emotions distorts the understanding of the event (though he also acknowledges that guilt alone is not reason enough to halt commemorations). Commemorations evoking guilt isolate and remove the event ‘‘from the context of the war in which it occurred.’’3 As Ryerson admits, however, such decontextualization characterizes ‘‘Western commemorations of Hiroshima’’; the actual commemoration that takes place in Hiroshima hardly surfaces in the atomic-bomb discourse. This loss of context raises a further issue concerning the ethical implications of memory. ‘‘One may ask,’’ writes Ryerson, ‘‘why we ignore the millions of victims of Japanese fascism—Koreans, Manchurians, Chinese, Indochinese, Burmese, Malays, and Filipinos?’’4 The narratives employed at commemorations tend to contribute to the neglect of the victims of Japanese fascism, focusing instead upon the victimhood of the Japanese people. The problem, then, is how the event of the atomic bombing and its victims should be remembered, while still paying respect to those who suffered atrocities perpetrated by the Japanese government during the war—the victims of Unit 731, the ‘‘comfort women,’’ those slaughtered in the Nanjing Massacre, and other victims of crimes against humanity.5 More broadly, how should we define and understand the ethical role of commemoration, in reference both to ceremonial events and circulated narratives, particularly in relation to the events of war and human-caused mass death? This book is an attempt to respond to these questions through an examination of the messages and experiences of the hibakusha, or atomic bomb survivors. Unfortunately, the message of the hibakusha (more specifically, the kataribe, or witnesses to the atomic bomb, who offer public testimonies) has been impeded from reaching wider audiences. In fact, this message has been obscured by the very image of the mushroom cloud—that spectacular symbol of wartime triumph and scientific achievement, emblem of the division of nations, and dark cloud covering a morass of guilt and self-recrimination. As a figure of horror and otherness, the mushroom cloud also represents the division between the victims who actually suffered in its shadow and those inclined to objectify the victims. This book seeks to go beyond the mushroom cloud in an

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attempt to provide new insights into the discourse surrounding the atomic bombing in order to listen to the hibakushas’ voices before it is too late to do so. Examination of the message emerging from hibakushas’ testimonies offers a new vision of a community of memory—a community not divided by national borders, but rather cohering around the goal of the abolition of nuclear weaponry. This vision responds to the question raised by Ryerson: How should we remember the atomic bombing without allowing commemoration of bomb victims to overshadow or displace that of other victims in the Pacific War? The merit of such a community of memory lies in part in the manner in which it transcends national borders—a dynamic that at once recalls and responds to the atomic bomb’s indiscriminate nature. For framing the bombing as an event specific to a particular nation or ethnicity undermines full appreciation of the indiscriminate destruction caused by nuclear weapons: Among the estimated 350,000–400,000 victims of the bombs, 45,000 were Korean residents in Japan, Japanese Americans, Allied prisoners of war, and other non-Japanese citizens.6 The bomb’s indiscriminate nature, as well as the more than two thousand nuclear tests that have been conducted worldwide and the more than twenty thousand nuclear weapons currently in existence,7 make nuclear weaponry a matter of global urgency. In light of the universal problems represented by nuclear weaponry, the work of the hibakusha focuses on the worldwide elimination of nuclear weaponry, attempting to evolve a community not divided by national, ethnic, or other boundaries. Political realists often criticize the hibakushas’ aim as naı¨ve or idealistic. What the hibakushas’ critics commonly misunderstand, however, is that ‘‘political realism’’ is itself not always realistic. Political realists ‘‘advocate balance of power policies—realpolitik— because they see no other means to protect the state in an effective manner.’’8 This is a theory in which the end of ‘‘protecting the state’’ justifies the means—in this case, cohabiting with twenty thousand nuclear arms allegedly ensuring such protection. Maintaining this situation might strike some as no more ‘‘realistic’’ than the attempt to abolish nuclear weaponry. In any case, one stake of this book is that the hibakusha—through their firsthand testimonials and a mode of discourse that crosses national and other boundaries—bring a level of realism and nuance to the discussion surrounding nuclear weaponry by calling into question the current nation-state framework of the

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discourse. This message is urgent, for the amount of weaponry is sufficient to destroy the entire planet more than ten times over. Receiving and responding to the message of the hibakusha is all the more crucial in light of the solution it might provide to this critical situation. The message of the hibakusha, far from intending to evoke guilt in the ‘‘West,’’ thus focuses above all on the global abolition of nuclear weaponry. This conviction on the part of the hibakusha is profoundly rooted in their own experiences of the nuclear attacks, and captured in the refrain that is the center of their discourse: ‘‘I do not want anyone to go through this again.’’9 While acknowledging the atrocities committed by the Japanese armies and the violent nature of the social structure of Japan during the war, the hibakusha eschew accusations aimed at the victimizers.10 On the contrary, as this book will reveal, their message emerges from and constitutes a genuinely self-critical process: I too have done wrong, and I am not justified in condemning others. This self-critical dimension of the hibakusha message also provides valuable insights concerning possibilities for reconciliation. Calling for solidarity among all those who suffered from radiation, regardless of national or ethnic affiliation, and wanting to abolish nuclear weaponry globally effectively unsettles the prevailing discourse around nuclear weaponry, framed according to national borders. The hibakushas’ message is not characterized by divisions between victims and victimizers. The kataribe in particular avoid leveling accusations at those who have committed what some might consider a crime in dropping the bombs. Rather than imputing guilt or pursuing retaliation, the survivors seek reconciliation through sharing their testimonies, reaching from the other side of the mushroom cloud with the aim of preventing the future suffering of others. The hibakushas’ self-critical stance avoids accusation and retaliation in a manner that may contribute to reconciliatory efforts. But might their refusal of dichotomies—us against them, the United States against Japan, victimizers against victims—obscure the responsibility of both Japan and the United States? For example, how should the Japanese government speak for the hibakushas’ sufferings while also admitting and bearing responsibility for the crimes against humanity committed during the war, including the mass murder of civilians? And how should the American government impute responsibility for atrocities committed by the Japanese military while addressing its own responsibility for the invention of weaponry so indiscriminate in its scope that it destroys combatants and noncombatants alike?

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As we will see, the hibakushas’ denial of dichotomization does not evade responsibility, but rather underlies an ethic of reconciliation that offers responses to such questions as these. The following pages will reveal that the hibakushas’ critical self-reflections in the face of human-made tragedy merit consideration as components of a model for an ethic of reconciliation. In addition, we will see that religious sensibilities inform this ethic, as realized in commemorations of the atomic bombings. Moving toward reconciliation begins by going beyond the divisions represented by the mushroom cloud; out from under its obscuring shadow, the hibakushas’ message of remembrance and reconciliation becomes clear.

Remembering, Reconciliation, and Religious Sensibilities In conducting this journey beyond the mushroom cloud, I begin with commemorations practiced in the United States, in order to illuminate the current atomic bomb discourse and its framework—that which prevents us from fully perceiving the experiences of those who suffered beneath the cloud. I will then examine interpretations of the bombing emerging from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. With regard to the Hiroshima interpretations, I will investigate both secular and religious commemorations. Yet, I argue that even secular institutions managed by the city of Hiroshima draw upon religious sentiments in conducting their commemorative ethics. Meanwhile, explicitly religious interpretations of the atomic bombing in Hiroshima emerge from the True Pure Land sect, the largest religious group in Hiroshima. A Christian framework, on the other hand, characterizes interpretations from Nagasaki, with its large population of Roman Catholics. I examine the prominent interpretation offered by a Nagasaki medical doctor and lay Catholic, Nagai Takashi. Finally, I will return to the question of our present-day responsibility regarding commemoration through an examination of portrayals of the bombing in recent films. This book is thus divided into three parts: Remembering and Commemoration; Religion and Reconciliation; and Responsibility. The first two chapters articulate the ethical implications of memory and community, revealing the problematic aspects of religions and modern nationstates as frameworks of public remembrance. Calling into question the current framework of the discourse, I seek out the ethical implications of commemoration. The following two chapters, addressing reconciliation, examine religious interpretations of the bombing. The mode of

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reconciliation recommended by the hibakusha becomes comprehensible when placed in the context of the religious sentiments that inform it: True Pure Land Buddhism (Jo¯do shin shu¯) in Hiroshima and Roman Catholicism in Nagasaki. Tracing the interpretation of representative figures from each tradition, I will show the way in which these two traditions come to terms with atomic bomb experiences. The final chapter examines contemporary representations of the bombings in Japanese popular media and the responsibility we share in forming a universal community of memory. In investigating atomic bomb narratives in such media, I pay particular attention to the distinctive ways in which religious tropes and images are employed in formulating a collective memory that transcends the borders between nations and transgresses those boundaries constituting divisions between self and other. This journey beyond the mushroom cloud proceeds through a conversation with key ethical thinkers dealing with questions of commemoration, religion, nation-states, and community. My primary interlocutor in Chapter 1 is Israeli philosopher Avishai Margalit, whose work on the significance of national discourses in the practice of commemoration informs my treatment of the way in which religious sentiments are called upon in commemoration to evoke a sense of continuity that transcends one’s mortality, as well as to reinvent and reinforce national identity. Margalit has claimed that ‘‘memory as a project of gaining some form of immortality in a community of memory . . . can take the form of something akin to revivification. All this points to the reason why religion is so engaged with memory and can be regarded as the primary agency for treasuring memory.’’11 At the intersection of religion, politics, and history, practices of commemoration of the atomic bombing constitute a kind of ‘‘immortality’’ that forms the basis for a universal community of memory. As a powerful example of how a national framework structures discourse around the atomic bomb, I revisit the Smithsonian debate, which quite explicitly illustrates the problems and questions of nationstate framework. In commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the atomic bombings, the Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution planned an exhibition featuring the Enola Gay as well as bombrelated artifacts from museums in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This project generated a controversy that came to be known as the ‘‘Smithsonian debate.’’ The exhibition was planned by then-director Martin Harwit,

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who was vigorously criticized for what was seen as an attempt to introduce a narrative that would extend its borders beyond those of the United States. As examination of the Smithsonian debate will reveal, there exists in Japan a tension between a national discourse that attempts to incorporate the atomic bombing as an idiosyncratic experience particular to the nation, and the mode of commemoration observed in Hiroshima, which promotes a ‘‘universal’’ memory of the nuclear attack to be preserved and shared by all. Chapter 2 investigates this tension, focusing once again on the ethicality of commemoration. In order to address this matter, this chapter compares three sites of commemoration: the Yasukuni Shinto shrine in Tokyo, the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and Museum. While religious trappings legitimate the nationalistic interpretation of the dead at the Yasukuni shrine, religious interpretations of the bombings pose their own problems and possibilities. Chapter 3 explores a Buddhist interpretation: an approach emerging from True Pure Land Buddhism (also referred to as Shin Buddhism), specifically that of Ko¯ji Shigenobu,12 a True Pure Land priest in Hiroshima. Hiroshima is characterized by a large population of True Pure Land adherents; approximately 80 percent of the city’s residents belong to this sect. Focusing on Ko¯ji Shigenobu’s interpretation of the bombing, I examine how a Buddhist understanding may aid both believers and nonbelievers in coming to terms with what is an otherwise incomprehensible act of violence. Chapter 4 deals with the interpretation of the atomic bombings by Nagai Takashi, a Catholic medical doctor and hibakusha in Nagasaki. Nagai posed a peculiar and controversial interpretation of the atomic bomb. According to Nagai, the bomb was a blessing from God, and those killed by it were ‘‘sacrificial lambs,’’ worthy offerings to God; the bomb thus produced something beautiful and sublime. I reveal that Nagai’s understanding of suffering, though startling, is in fact consistent with that of the orthodox Roman Catholic understanding of suffering as conveyed in Pope John Paul II’s encyclical Salvifici Doloris. Although Nagai’s account can justifiably be criticized for its apparent glorification of the sufferings of Nagasaki Catholics, it also suggests one way in which certain religious interpretations, thanks to their avoidance of imputing responsibility to the victimizers, may contribute to reconciliation—not only between those who dropped the bomb and those who suffered

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from it, but also between Japan as an aggressor and the victims of that aggression. The mode of self-criticism observed in the atomic bomb narratives gives rise to a crucial question in discussing actual Japanese atrocities. Keeping in mind the critique from Ryerson and others, we must ask how we should address responsibility when the Buddhist understanding of retributive justice (karma) often extends beyond this lifetime. Furthermore, how can we discuss responsibility when the concept of the self, in which moral agency is located, is considered illusory? How might a Christian thinker reconcile the fact of human suffering with belief in the goodness of God? Chapter 5 examines the way in which survivors and non-hibakusha alike attempt to hand down experiences of the atomic bombing, particularly through popular media. It investigates our responsibility with respect to this historical event, contending with the question of what constitutes a responsible practice of remembering. To this end, I focus on narratives appearing in popular culture, which form powerful channels for communicating memory of the bombings. The chapter draws upon a key idea from philosopher Edith Wyschogrod, namely that postmodern ethics should look to the lives of saints as exemplifying the unification of theory and practice in encounters with the other. Extending this idea, I suggest that a hagiographical reading of popular atomic bomb narratives advances a praxis of commemoration that promotes reconciliation by transgressing national and social boundaries. Before moving into this journey beyond the mushroom cloud, I want to emphasize that the hibakusha do not, of course, constitute a univocal group or monolithic category—a fact that should be made clear by the multiplicity of voices represented in this book. While most kataribe eschew casting blame on the U.S. for the bombing, at least one group of hibakushas has pursued a lawsuit seeking to impute responsibility on the American government. The most recent such example comes from the genbaku saiban, the International Peoples’ Tribunal on the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On July 16, 2007, in Hiroshima, the tribunal concluded with a judgment that the dropping of the atomic bombs constituted a crime against humanity. The methods and goals of groups like the tribunal are sometimes at variance with those that pursue the ethic that is the preoccupation of this book. However, all of these groups are united in their attempts to draw the

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attention of the international community to the ongoing risks and injuries attendant upon nuclear weaponry, so that no one will ever suffer from another nuclear attack. Receiving and understanding the message of the hibakusha, in which reconciliation with their own suffering is arrived at through critical self-reflection, provides actionable insights into a world rife with conflict. But hope also emerges in the discourse of the hibakusha. For even after unimaginable suffering, they seek to evade the imputation of responsibility that so often impedes the process of reconciliation. The ethic that takes shape through the discourse of the hibakusha is resolutely oriented toward the wellbeing of others, regardless of their nationalities and other attributes. Analyzing and coming to terms with the religious sensibilities that have engendered or contributed to their ethic will assist us in journeying beyond the mushroom cloud, in the hope that it will no longer loom before us but will forever remain a matter of commemoration.

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part i

Commemoration

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1 Toward a Community of Memory

We must realize that collective memory is a process of reconstructing representations of the past in light of the present. This type of exercise highlights the critical aspects of the nature of the cultural enterprise we call ‘‘collective memory’’ and provides us with a consciousness of our frameworks, of the way we use symbols, of the ways rituals provide us with moral meanings, and the ways we situate ourselves as moral subjects with the capacity to envision a different future. — m ar ´ı a p ´ı a l a r a, Narrating Evil

In his speeches, Akiba Tadatoshi, the mayor of Hiroshima, often refers to three contributions that the hibakusha have made to the world. First, even after enduring unimaginable experiences, they have demonstrated their courage by choosing to live and generating a spirit of nonretaliation. Second, they courageously speak out about and share their experiences with others, contributing, some believe, to preventing the further use of nuclear arms upon humankind. Finally, they provide a new vision of a community of memory that transcends existing boundaries (national, social, and cultural) and elaborates the hibakushas’ central message of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation.’’1 Unfortunately, despite the repeated proclamation of Mayor Akiba and the city of Hiroshima, the hibakushas’ contribution has not yet had a decisive influence on the formulation of nuclear policy in the international community. Attempting to interpret and assist the distribution of the hibakushas’ discourse, this book seeks to illuminate the message of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation,’’ which has hitherto been neither fully recognized nor appreciated. I argue that understanding this message—the ethics of the message and the ground upon which that ethics stands—brings a

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new perspective to bear not only on the existing atomic bomb discourse, particularly as defined by a problematic nation-state framework, but also on ethical thought in general. The current atomic bomb discourse is largely confined within a nation-state framework and figured by the image of the mushroom cloud. Consequently, there is no room for the hibakushas’ message to be heard and examined as an alternative framework. This predicament also prevents us from fully understanding the nature of nuclear weaponry. By failing to address the issues that lie beyond the mushroom cloud, the current state of the discourse, I believe, puts our lives and ethical thought and practice at stake. Consider, for example, the irony in our casual use of the term ‘‘nuke.’’ We hardly know what this term really means, a fact emphasized by Theodore Van Kirk, navigator of Enola Gay, the aircraft that dropped the atom bomb over Hiroshima in 1945.2 Knowledge of the destruction caused by nuclear weapons more than sixty years ago is rarely brought to our attention: the searing flash from the explosion that printed people’s ‘‘shadows’’ on the ground; the intense heat, rising to 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit at the hypocenter, instantly evaporating human bodies;3 the force of the blast, which caused victims’ eyes and internal organs to burst from their bodies and, along with the heat, left some people’s skins literally melting. Similarly, it is not yet common knowledge that rescue personnel who entered the city from a few hours to a couple of days after the bombing died from acute radiation sickness. In addition, relatively few know that those fetuses in mothers’ wombs at the time of bombing were often born with diminished brain size, a condition called microcephaly.4 Similarly, the long-term effects on hibakushas’ health, as well as the genetic influence on their children and grandchildren, remain largely unknown or misunderstood.5 The mushroom cloud, representing national borders, also left in obscurity those people who do not fit into the too-simple classification of ‘‘Japanese.’’ The prevailing discourse on the bomb thus routinely excludes Korean hibakushas, who account for 10 percent of all hibakushas, as well as Japanese American hibakushas and POWs of the Allied powers.6 By failing to recognize those who fall into the abyss created by national borders, the current discourse similarly discounts the indiscriminate nature of the nuclear weaponry, which destroys friend and foe, combatants and noncombatants alike. The nation-state framework additionally diverts our attention from recognizing hibakushas even within its borders, for example, the

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Japanese American population residing in Hiroshima at the time of the bomb as well as the American POWs. But it also fails to account for the ‘‘atomic soldiers’’ who were too close to the site of the first test in Alamogordo, New Mexico (July 16, 1945), local residents in the Marshall Islands,7 and others affected by the nuclear tests—the ‘‘downwinders’’ proximal to the Nevada test sites. Taking into consideration the nature of radiation as an indiscriminate force that transgresses national or state borders, the common image of nuclear weaponry—something that explodes elsewhere, not here—is tragically misleading. Nonetheless, the tendency is to imagine looking at the mushroom cloud from afar, even while in actuality we remain under that very cloud. As a result of this failure of attention, since 1945 more than two thousand nuclear tests have been conducted in the air, underground, and underwater, and we now exist in a world harboring more than twenty thousand nuclear weapons.8 In this book, I propose to go beyond the mushroom cloud, in the hope of coming into further contact with, and developing greater appreciation for, the hibakushas of 1945. The encounter with the hibakusha, I argue, will first reveal the scope of destruction and long-lasting effects from the detonations of nuclear weaponry—knowledge of which is necessary to all of us, now surrounded by these weapons. Second, I hope to bring fuller recognition to those hibakushas whose identities are not accommodated within the nation-state boundaries. The suffering of those hibakushas illustrates the indiscriminate nature of the weaponry, thereby revealing the limitations and invalidity of the nation-state framework of the atomic bomb discourse. Third, encountering hibakushas within and beyond national borders enables us to draw relations between the hibakushas of 1945 and other hibakushas—victims of radiation from nuclear tests and the like, outside of Japan—thus enhancing our awareness of the current situation regarding the nuclear weaponry. Finally, but not least important, the encounter with hibakushas will introduce the hibakusha ethics that emerges from their experiences. As summarized by Akiba, the hibakusha ethics advocates ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation.’’ This ethics, based upon the hibakushas’ determination to prevent further suffering from nuclear destruction, envisions a nuclear-free world realized by building a community that includes the hibakushas’ experiences. This ethics of nonretaliation and reconciliation is generated from the hibakushas’ critical self-reflection—a theme that will be examined in Chapters 3 and 4. In the meantime, I suggest that

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the power of the hibakusha ethics resides in its inclusive nature—all humans should be spared from a nuclear attack—and thereby proposes an alternative framework to the existing discourse based upon nationstate boundaries. Focusing upon the emergence of the hibakusha ethics, the present chapter examines Hiroshima mayors’ attempts to represent the hibakusha on the one hand and, on the other, to seek a way to realize a community that remembers hibakushas’ experiences and encompasses all of humanity. While I acknowledge that these mayors, past and present, do not necessarily represent the hibakusha as a group, they are expected to voice or give voice to hibakushas’ experiences and message. This examination of Hiroshima mayors’ relations to the hibakusha will provide one foundation for the comparison of the city’s commemorations of war with the Japanese national construction of war memory, the subject of the following chapter. Examining the city of Hiroshima also will be juxtaposed to the national attempt of war memory in Chapter 2. In order to clarify the problems related to the nation-state framework and the difficulties of building a community as the hibakusha envision, I begin my discussion with an examination of the Smithsonian debate of 1994 and 1995.

Commemoration and the Smithsonian Debate The Smithsonian debate focused on the connection between memory and community. The controversy surfaced in public consciousness around 1994, revolving around an exhibit proposed by Martin Harwit, then director of the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution (NASM). The exhibit was designed to mark the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II and was planned to open the following year, 1995. The focus of the debate did not directly involve passing moral judgment on the decision to drop the atomic bombs, but was rather triggered by the question of whether to incorporate the hibakushas’ viewpoints into the planned exhibit. The Smithsonian exhibition, originally entitled ‘‘The Last Act: The Atomic Bomb and the End of World War II,’’ included a plan to display Enola Gay, the aircraft that carried Little Boy, as the bomb was dubbed, to Hiroshima in 1945. Preparations began in 1987, shortly after Harwit took office as director. In the following year, the staff of the NASM met

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with Paul Tibbets, the retired pilot of Enola Gay. Also present at this meeting were two veterans for the 509th Composite Group, which Tibbets had organized, headed, and led to execute the mission of dropping the atomic bomb on Hiroshima.9 As a result of the meeting, a fundraising campaign—an endeavor involving more than six hundred veterans of World War II—to restore Enola Gay was launched and continued for the next two years. In 1993, the exhibition staff turned to Japan with a request to loan items to the museum that would represent ‘‘Japanese experiences, images, and artifacts recalling August 6, 1945.’’10 In the process of realizing this exhibition, Harwit had a clear idea about the role of the museum. He believed that the museum should present a perspective to shape a coherent ‘‘narrative,’’ rather than simply display an array of items. ‘‘Museums,’’ Harwit would later write, ‘‘cannot help but tell stories. Curators and exhibition designers are storytellers. Histories are particular types of stories museums tell. They are stories about events that actually happened, and museums are responsible for portraying those events accurately and truthfully.’’11 In addition to this narrativizing function of the museum, Harwit also advocated the museum’s educational role. According to him, a museum should exhibit sound scholarship, and thereby provide new knowledge for its audience. In order to fulfill these functions, Harwit sought ways to promote the plan for the anniversary exhibition, which he was confident would serve the museum’s objectives of accuracy, balance, and diverse perspectives. To achieve factual accuracy, for example, Harwit was scrupulous in checking items exhibited in the museum—the facts, figures, names, ages, dates, weights, and measures—for correctness.12 Balance, meanwhile, would be demonstrated in the selection of items. Harwit believed that this balance in the form of exhibition of diverse bomb-related artifacts would demonstrate that the advent and use of nuclear weaponry marked a sea change in the course of human history; the weapons posed a global danger that threatened the continued existence of humanity. As we will see, however, at the time of the 1995 Smithsonian exhibition, Harwit became aware that the balance he sought, and the message that he believed this balance conveyed, would not be tolerated by the American public when applied to the use of the atomic bomb. Harwit sought to present Enola Gay and other items related to the war from perspectives literally and metaphorically both above and beneath the mushroom cloud, in the hope of granting representation not only to

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the American victors, but also to those who were injured and killed by the bomb, soldiers and civilians alike. As a symbol, Enola Gay appeared sacrosanct—for it had been effectively consecrated as an icon of the savior, of victory, and of the achievement of science and technology and was thus to be protected from critical analysis. This view, Harwit found, was to prevail over the view of the bombings as marking a new era in which the human species was endangered. Consequently, what Harwit considered a balanced view was met with fierce criticism that, ironically, condemned the plan for entirely lacking in ‘‘balance.’’ Historian Michael J. Hogan summarizes the veterans’ dissatisfaction that gave rise to this criticism: ‘‘By ignoring the authentic voices of the past, according to the critics, the curators had failed to properly contextualize the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They had ignored the record of Japan’s aggression, the brutality of its war policy, and the fanaticism of its soldiers.’’13 In the veterans’ eyes, Harwit’s blueprint exhibited only the horrible results of the bombing without mentioning the motivation for the destruction, thus tarnishing their careers. Feeling that their viewpoint was being overlooked, the veterans believed the plan failed to achieve ‘‘balance.’’ In addition to critical scrutiny from veterans’ organizations, including the Air Force Association, the American Legion, and the Retired Officers Association, the debate eventually received attention from political figures and academics. Major journalistic organs such as the Boston Globe and Wall Street Journal weighed in on the debate, criticizing the plan as one in which ‘‘elite American museums had joined modern intellectuals to redefine American history in a way that assaulted traditional values.’’14 Politicians sided with the major media. Responding to critics of the exhibition plan, the Organization of American Historians (OAH) announced their stance, condemning such political pressure as ‘‘threats by members of Congress to penalize the Smithsonian, because of its controversial exhibit and deploring ‘the removal of historical documents and revisions of interpretations of history for reasons outside the professional procedures and criteria by which museum exhibitions are created.’ ’’ Subsequently, the OAH ‘‘urged immediate efforts by a number of historical societies to protect the rights and professional autonomy of museums and historical societies.’’15 Whereas the major media expressed fears that traditional values would be eroded by the planned exhibition, the OAH feared academic freedom was being impinged upon through the intervention of veterans, the media, and politicians.

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In the end, the controversy resulted in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum retracting their offers to lend items for the Smithsonian exhibit, and also in Harwit’s subsequent resignation. On January 30, 1995, Michael Heyman, secretary of the Smithsonian, announced the institute’s restructured objectives, which now contradicted Harwit’s principle concerning the role of the museum. In conjunction with this statement, Heyman retracted his original support for Harwit, now claiming that one function of a national institution such as the Smithsonian would be to ‘‘commemorate’’ the soldiers’ ‘‘valor and sacrifice.’’ He writes: We made a basic error in attempting to couple an historical treatment of the use of atomic weapons with the fiftieth anniversary commemoration of the end of the war. In this important anniversary year, veterans and their families were expecting, and rightly so, that the nation would honour and commemorate their valour and sacrifice. They were not looking for analysis, and frankly, we did not give enough thought to the intense feelings such an analysis would evoke.16

The statement reveals that the expectation that the nation—its individuals and its institutions—would ‘‘honor and commemorate [the veterans’] valor and sacrifice’’ overrides the educational mission of the museum to present multiple perspectives and new analyses. This point has since been the subject of little public discussion. Of equal importance is the fact that the viewpoint from the ground—the perspective of the victims themselves—was never presented. To do so would be considered not merely different or unprecedented; it would also potentially tarnish the soldiers’ sacrifices. Republican Representative Peter Blute of Massachusetts denounced the plan as ‘‘anti-American,’’ and Michael J. Hogan reports that ‘‘at least some of the criticism seemed to imply that the exhibit was tainted with un-Americanism.’’17 The controversy surrounding the exhibition culminated in critics not simply labeling Harwit’s plan ‘‘anti-American,’’ but in extending that epithet to apply to any supporters of the proposed plan; supporters were asked for proof of their ethnicity, education, or countries of birth. For example, critics pointed out that Akira Iriye, who was a member of an advisory group at the Smithsonian and a distinguished historian formerly teaching at Harvard University, was a native of Japan, and that lead curator Michael Neufeld was a Canadian citizen. Above all, the critics focused

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their disapproval upon Martin Harwit’s birth in Prague and in his education in the Czech Republic, Germany, and Turkey, without mentioning that he was also educated at Oberlin College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The accusations, in sum, focused upon personal histories; Iriye, Neufeld, and Harwit were not born in the United States and did not receive their early education in America. The planned exhibition was considered un-American not only because it did not reflect the prevailing American point of view, but also because its advocates were not sufficiently ‘‘American.’’ Rather than focus on why discussion of the destruction brought about by the atomic bombs might ‘‘taint’’ the American traditional values, the debate soon devolved into attempts to find ‘‘un-American’’ traits in individuals. Harwit replied to this criticism in his book An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay. There he points out that, unlike the general understanding of World War II in the European theater, where the Allied powers fought against Nazi Germany, the war in the Pacific was more narrowly defined as the war between the United States and the Great Japanese Empire. Harwit explains that such a narrow definition of the Pacific War added to the accusation of un-Americanism. And yet, Canada, too, had participated in the war as part of the Allied powers, an observation Harwit made in reference to hiring Neufeld. Harwit writes, ‘‘We offered the position to Michael Neufeld, a Canadian citizen who clearly had the required credentials. Later, the museum would come under attack for having a curator who was Canadian taking the lead on this exhibition—as though Canada had not fought shoulder to shoulder with the United States throughout World War II.’’18 Harwit argues that this narrowly defined perspective of war—characterizing the Pacific War as a conflict between only the United States and Japan— contributed to a sentiment that would seek to exclude anything deemed un-American in the Smithsonian exhibit. In addition to revealing the allegedly un-American attitude presumed to have been fostered by the organizers’ immigrant status and early foreign education, on top of their ‘‘elite’’ education in the United States, the Smithsonian debate reveals in dramatic fashion that not paying ‘‘proper’’ respect to those who fought and died in the name of the nation—actions taken to be sacrificial—is tantamount to sacrilege. In other words, such deaths are consecrated as a representation of group ideology and identity. (The subject of the war dead and national commemoration will be examined in the next chapter.) Given the reverential sentiments surrounding the soldiers’ sacrifices, it is not surprising

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Harwit’s original plan for the Smithsonian exhibition turned inflammatory; the exhibit blueprint appeared to demean, or at least call into question, the very sacredness of the nation. How the memory of sacrifice for the nation is preserved and exhibited is thus a crucial element for a community and its self-understanding. From this perspective, it is apparent that the atomic bombing was part of a sacred mission to save American soldiers and American values, even though it resulted in an unfortunate loss of non-American lives. Those lost lives must not be focused upon at the expense of properly paying respect to the American soldiers’ valor. Philosopher Judith Butler has asked, ‘‘What are the cultural barriers against which we struggle when we try to find out about the losses that we are asked not to mourn, when we attempt to name, and so to bring under the rubric of the ‘human,’ those whom the United States and its allies have killed?’’19 If it is the nation-state framework that prevents us from mourning the lives lost under the mushroom cloud, who will remember those who fall into the abyss created by national boundaries? One stake of this book is that formulating an inclusive community of memory based upon the experiences of the hibakusha will address these problems. Such a community, we will find, aims to transcend the cultural and national boundaries that prevent the memory and mourning of those who remain beyond or between such boundaries. Avishai Margalit analyzes more closely the relations between memory and community in The Ethics of Memory; unfolding his argument will help us grasp the difficulties of the project of constructing an inclusive community of memory and the ethical import of memory.

Ethical Community/Moral Community In The Ethics of Memory, Margalit clarifies the ethical import of memory, focusing on memory’s relation to the community that harbors it. For a given incident or event to survive as a shared memory, he argues, requires a community that will carry that memory. This memory represents the community’s ideology and bolsters the community’s identity, an observation borne out in the case of Smithsonian debate. Memory needs a community in order to survive, even as a community requires memory to maintain itself. Those events that are remembered evolve into a narrative through which a community’s ideology and identity cohere. Through this narrative process, the remembered events are thus

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made intelligible to members of the community. This is how memory is shared and transmitted. But this ‘‘community of memory,’’ as Margalit calls it, cannot be just any given community. This is made clear by Margalit’s response to anthropologist Benedict Anderson’s critical question of why we commemorate ‘‘unknown soldiers’’ but not the ‘‘unknown social democrat’’ or ‘‘unknown liberal.’’20 Margalit replies that ‘‘the answer surely has to do with the fact that under these labels we do not find ‘natural’ communities of memory’’—that is, communities based on metaphorical kinships that thus most ‘‘naturally’’ support collective memory—‘‘because such ideologies are not engaged in the businesses of immortality, in whatever form. That is both their strength and their weakness. But nations, like religious communities, do.’’21 Margalit contends that such ideologies as social democracy or liberalism cannot alone form a community of memory, because the community that can carry on memory must respond to humans’ ‘‘strong desire for immortality.’’ That is, the community transcends the human conditions of natality and mortality, providing a means of carrying on memory; the ‘‘horror of extinction and utter oblivion’’ are mitigated against by ‘‘the human project of memory, i.e., commemoration.’’ This commemoration is one key function of a community, which provides the structures and rituals of commemoration in a ‘‘project to secure some form of immortality.’’22 When the community assures its constituents of immortality, the community can be termed a ‘‘community of memory.’’ Margalit does not limit such communities to those founded on literal kinship alone. A community of memory provides a sense of continuity that transcends human mortality through the legacy of the community itself. Moreover, the attitude of care that binds members in such a community is not predicated on achievements of some sort, but is simply ‘‘based on belonging.’’23 In order to distinguish further this natural community from other communities, Margalit focuses on the relations that each community generates and nurtures. Constituents of the natural community, according to Margalit, exhibit ‘‘thick’’ relations, while ‘‘thin’’ relations embrace all of humanity. These thick and thin relations, as we will see, also correspond to his distinction between ethics and morality. He refers to thick relations as ‘‘ethics’’ or ‘‘ethical relations’’ and to thin relations as ‘‘morality’’ or ‘‘moral relations.’’ The distinction between ethics and morality lies in the human relations manifested in a given community.24 Morality, or thin relations, writes

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Margalit, ‘‘in my usage, ought to guide our behavior toward those to whom we are related just by virtue of their being fellow human beings, and by virtue of no other attribute.’’25 Morality signifies relations constructed upon the mere fact that we are all humans—the community of humankind. On the other hand, ethics emerges from thick relations, which bring forth natural communities. More precisely, Margalit explains that thick relations ‘‘can be directed to others only insofar as they are worthy of our love. By ‘worthy of our love’ I do not mean that they possess lovely traits, but that they are people with whom we have historical relations, and not just a brief accidental encounter.’’26 In contrast to moral relations, encompassing humanity where individuals are treated equally and impartially, ethical relations presuppose partiality of relations. ‘‘Ethical relations,’’ states Margalit, ‘‘involve partiality—that is, favoring a person or a group over others with equal moral claim.’’27 A thick relation, Margalit continues, requires time to be constructed, even as the bonds that are formed emerge only through the history and acts of commemoration through which memories are shared. Through time, a community demonstrates its continuity. Thanks to shared memory, the constituents develop thick relations that encourage the partiality that lends ‘‘naturalness’’ to the community. These thick relations enable the evocation of collective sentiments and attitudes, for example, those of self-sacrifice.28 In sum, ethics is based upon thick relations that are predicated on distinctions between those within the community and those outside of it, providing grounds for the partial treatment of fellow community members. To further clarify the notions of morality and ethics, we may turn to Margalit’s interpretation of the biblical parable of Good Samaritan,29 which demonstrates the demarcations between ethics and morality. Margalit summarizes the Good Samaritan parable: A man—a Jew—went from Jerusalem to Jericho, and on the way he was attacked, robbed, wounded, and left half dead on the roadside. By chance a certain priest came down that way, and then a Levite. Both were fellow Jews with religious standing, and both ‘‘passed by on the other side.’’ Then there came a Samaritan, who belonged to a nation hostile to the Jews, and—as the verse tells us—‘‘took care of him.’’30

According to Margalit, the Samaritan who took care of the Jew fulfilled his moral duty by saving a fellow human being’s life; the Samaritan does not bear an ethical duty, as he and the Jew do not belong to

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the same community. Margalit explains that the Samaritan ‘‘responded to a moral duty—and arguably went beyond his moral duty—to help and give comfort to a fellow human being despite being a stranger.’’31 On the other hand, the priest and the Levites recognized the wounded Jew yet deserted him, neglecting their moral duty by abandoning an injured human being, but also disregarding their ethical duty by leaving a fellow member of the community behind. In analyzing this parable through the perspectives of moral and ethical duties, Margalit views Christianity as an enterprise geared toward establishing a universal community in which everyone is expected to bear responsibility for each other in the same way that the Samaritan did. In other words, the parable urges one to extend thick relations to all humankind.32 The Samaritan’s care for the injured man is unquestionably praiseworthy. If the duty to care for all of humanity were to be conceived on ethical, rather than moral grounds, the demands implied by such thick relations would be ‘‘very difficult to achieve,’’ claims Margalit, and perhaps conceptually impossible, for thick relations demand a contrast (those within versus those outside of the community). Let us turn to Margalit’s argument for why ethical relations require preferential treatment. He considers a scenario in which two people are drowning. If both are strangers, my moral duty extends to both of them equally; if only one can be saved, I ‘‘pick’’ at random whom to save. If, on the other hand, one of the two people is my spouse, I do not randomly ‘‘pick’’ whom to save, but selectively choose between the two people. ‘‘Ethical relations,’’ maintains Margalit, ‘‘are allowed to be partial as a moral tie-breaker but not otherwise.’’33 Margalit asserts that ethical duty should override moral duty in those cases in which there is a moral ‘‘tie.’’ Margalit admits that, in certain cases, actual life experiences call for partial treatment based upon thick relations. On the other hand, Margalit acknowledges that thick relations bring about selfless attitudes on the one hand, and on the other yield collective egoism that ignores moral duty for humanity. It is important, therefore, that Margalit also claims to allow morality to intervene when thick relations become oblivious to moral duty for humanity. He maintains that ‘‘we are all familiar with people who care greatly about ‘their’ people and who are ready to make real sacrifices for them but who have utter disregard for those outside the tribe. Unselfish idealism is sometimes responsible for

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unspeakable cruelty to outsiders.’’34 In distinguishing ethics (thick relations) from morality (thin relations), Margalit provides scenarios in which ethics takes priority over morality and where morality intervenes ethics. If it is the case, as Margalit argues, that memory requires a natural community built upon thick relations, then the experiences and message of the hibakusha stand little chance of being acknowledged beyond their own community. But as I have tried to show in my discussion of the dangers and ignorance surrounding nuclear weaponry, there is too much at stake to neglect their experiences and message. In addressing this problem, we may turn our attention to an examination of Margalit’s idea of community of memory regarding atrocities.

An Inclusive Community of Memory In light of the consequence of the Smithsonian debate and Margalit’s analyses of community and memory, the formation of a community of memory that transcends the boundaries of existing communities—be they tribal, religious, or national—appears a difficult task. ‘‘Memory,’’ explains Margalit, ‘‘is too tied to the idea of immortality to expect that anonymous humanity can serve as a community of commemoration when it fails miserably as a community of communication.’’35 Although he concludes that continuity of memory is most often and most readily ensured by a community based on thick ethical relations, he acknowledges the possibility of memory that is shared by humanity on the whole. Pointing to the difficulties in realizing a community of memory at the level of humankind, he provides readers with insight into both its problems and its possibilities. The first difficulty in realizing such a community, according to Margalit, is found in a society’s cultural biases. For we in what Margalit calls the ‘‘so-called First World’’ tend to pay more attention to, and to be more alerted by, the news from the area that is geographically, culturally, and economically closer to us. He points to the fact that the death toll in Kosovo made news headlines more often than that of Rwanda, reflecting our own interests in the region. He holds that ‘‘the atrocities of Europe will come to be perceived as morally more significant than atrocities elsewhere.’’36 Cultural biases stemming from geographical, cultural, and political proximity as well as economic concerns, underwrite a ‘‘false moral superiority.’’ Because of this assumption, when violent conflict broke out in Kosovo, it shocked those in the ‘‘First World.’’

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Thanks to such ‘‘biased salience,’’ these events ‘‘are likely to be better remembered’’ than massacres at greater geographical distances.37 But more fundamentally, difficulties in realizing an inclusive community of memory lie in the extension of thick relations as based in memory. Margalit revisits the connections between memory, community, and thick relations: To say that I expect you to remember me is to say that you should remember me, if our relations now are as thick as I believe them to be. This is not a prediction but a prescription. We address such normative expectations to those with whom we have thick personal relations. They offer a basis for rational hope; there is nothing outlandish in the expectation of being remembered by those to whom we matter during our life.38

One expects, and perhaps demands, to be remembered by those with whom one has thick relations. And through this expectation, a sense of collective identity is attained: a ‘‘we.’’ Commemoration—an opportunity to show that the community remembers one of its own—is crucial for the community to sustain itself. Through commemoration, a community presents and reinforces the sense of ‘‘we.’’ It would therefore be unnecessary for the members of the community to have actual face-toface encounters among members, since members can be assured that through their participation in the collective, in the ‘‘we,’’ they will be remembered. ‘‘This ‘we,’ ’’ claims Margalit, ‘‘is an enduring body that will survive after our personal death. We shall not be remembered personally, but we shall be remembered by taking part in events that will be remembered for their significance in the life of the collective.’’39 A community open to all humanity, on the other hand, cannot expect its constituents to remember certain events. Its relations are thinner, sharing only the mere fact of being human. Thick relations, meanwhile, are imbued with members’ emotional investment. Without such emotional charge, the community loses its motive to remember, and memory cannot be carried on. Political scientist Michael Walzer’s addresses the possibility of a community of humanity in a manner that resonates with and illuminates the ideas that Margalit has outlined. ‘‘Humanity has members but no memory, and so it has no history and no culture, no customary practices, no familiar life-ways, no festivals, no shared understanding of social goods.’’40 The relations found in the community of humanity

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would be thin, as Walzer states, as there is no shared history, culture, customary practices, and so on. Despite the obstacles in realization of an inclusive community of memory, however, Margalit believes that there are certain events that must be shared by humanity and be remembered by a human community. The following simple yet powerful statement reveals Margalit’s conviction that certain memories should be supported by a community of humanity: ‘‘What should humanity remember? The short answer is striking examples of radical evil and crimes against humanity, such as enslavement, deportations of civilian populations, and mass exterminations.’’41 Memory of such events—incidents that ‘‘undermine the very foundation of morality,’’ the ‘‘very idea of shared humanity’’42 —need to be remembered by humankind, so as not to be repeated. Such memory, which Margalit calls radical evil, must not be forgotten or be deliberately rewritten. The atomic bombing, I would submit, is one of the memories that should be shared by humanity, because of its degree of destruction and continuing relevance to our lives. On one hand, Margalit shows us the difficulties of building a community that embraces humanity, and on the other hand, he insists that certain events must be remembered by humanity at large. Although he does not resolve this problem, he suggests that memories shared by humanity will most readily emerge from a natural community of memory.43 For example, Margalit criticizes the Holocaust memorial in Berlin despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that the monument was intended to be erected ‘‘by humanity, for humanity.’’44 While he believes that the Holocaust should be remembered by humanity, he criticizes this attempt: First, the Germans as perpetrators of this atrocity should not represent this incident objectively ‘‘for humanity.’’ Second, the victims were—though not exclusively, but undoubtedly largely—Jewish people who cannot be simply reduced to ‘‘humans,’’ especially when the victims identified themselves as Jews and this attribute was believed to be the main reason for mass murder. Margalit therefore proposes one possible solution to this issue, that is, to urge ‘‘the German people to reestablish themselves as an ethical community, encumbered with painful shared memories.’’45 According to Margalit, humanity first must witness the German people—a national and thus natural community— commemorating the Holocaust. Margalit continues to apply the case of the German people and memory of the Holocaust to the case of atrocities committed by the

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Japanese against other Asian peoples: ‘‘With all due differences, the same holds with regard to the Japanese community vis-a`-vis the Korean comfort women. To include these women in the Japanese shared memory is to bring them to life by recognizing their suffering, and that is the first step toward repentance.’’46 In this regard, I agree with Margalit that memories of the suffering inflicted upon people within and outside of Japan by Japanese armies during the war should be incorporated into a national community of memory in Japan. Victims of the Nanjing massacre, of Unit 731, and comfort women—comprising women from not only Korea but also China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, and the Netherlands—should all be remembered by the Japanese people. Margalit does not, however, offer a satisfying explanation for why memory of such atrocities should emerge from a national community.47 I want to begin redressing this problem by investigating Hiroshima city’s attempt to create a community that transcends national boundaries. As we will find, this imagined community calls into question Margalit’s suggestion that the community of memory should come into being from a ‘‘natural’’ community, most likely a nation-state. In seeing how this is so, it is necessary to ask how the United States, and humanity on the whole, might remember the hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and how the hibakushas’ experiences might be accommodated by the American national narrative. As I have already argued, deeper and more fully disseminated knowledge of the destruction caused by the atomic bombing is imperative, not just as another element of cultural education, but because it concerns the future of humanity. The Smithsonian debate, meanwhile, demonstrated that within the still prevailing discourse, remembering the hibakusha is of dubious value, even being seen as ‘‘un-American.’’ In adapting Margalit’s argument, I here introduce the Hiroshima mayors’ efforts and the city’s endeavors to build an inclusive community that transcends national boundaries. It should go without saying that the city’s endeavors cannot fully encompass the experiences of the hibakusha and their way of understanding the atomic bombing. Nevertheless, I argue that tracing the development of the city of Hiroshima’s commemoration practices illustrates that a local community, in coming to terms with a tragic event, may form the basis for a community of memory that is genuinely inclusive, not restricted by national boundaries.

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The Hibakushas’ Community of Memory In the Peace Declaration at the Peace Memorial Ceremony in Hiroshima on August 6, 2008, Hiroshima Mayor Akiba Tadatoshi introduced the phrase ‘‘hibakusha philosophy.’’48 This is an indication of the hibakushas’ message of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation,’’ and their determination to ensure that ‘‘no one else should ever suffer as we did.’’49 Examining mayoral speeches in Hiroshima at the annual commemoration for the atomic bombing is one avenue for discerning how a local government has come to terms with the atomic bombing and found way for reconciliation with its past.50 In this process of reconciliation, the ‘‘hibakusha philosophy,’’ which I have called the hibakusha ethics, emerged. The hibakushas’ wish that no one should suffer from a nuclear attack—in other words, that everyone should be free from this threat—provides grounds for an inclusive community of memory based upon hibakushas’ experiences. While neither the ‘‘hibakusha philosophy’’ nor the idea of an inclusive community emerged immediately after the bombing, mayoral speeches and writings indicate their beginnings. In tracing the history of Hiroshima city after the bombing and investigating the birth and growth of the hibakusha ethics that surfaces in the mayors’ Peace Declaration, official statements, and memoirs, I hope to show that Hiroshima city’s commemorative endeavors provide an alternative way to build a community of memory unrestricted by national boundaries. Six months after the bombing, in February 1946, as the initial chaos was subsiding, the city of Hiroshima formed a restoration council in order to elaborate a vision for a new city.51 Then mayor Hamai Shinzo¯, himself a hibakusha, initiated this project. (He held the office of mayor for three consecutive terms from 1947 to 1959, and again for another term from 1963 to 1967.) The first item that the council discussed was the city’s identity. Hiroshima had been recognized as a military base since the Sino-Japanese War in 1894, and following World War II, the city was in need of a new identity. Not only was the military disbanded at the end of the war, but people in Hiroshima also wanted to be dissociated from war culture after suffering from the bombing and defeat. After considering various ways of conceiving of the city’s identity—a sightseeing city, an industrialized city, an educational city—the council unanimously agreed to develop a heiwa toshi, or city of peace.52 According to Hamai, as early as 1946, he and his colleagues on the council drew

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a blueprint to construct a peace memorial park in the center of the city, near the hypocenter of the atomic bombing, to symbolize the city’s mission of peace. While the precise nature of the peace city was still being defined, the primary concern of the city was to deal with the dead, whose bones remained scattered throughout the city half a year after the bombing. A month after the inauguration of the council, in March 1946, the city began to erect a memorial tower intended to house and console the spirits of the unknown victims of the atomic bombing. The tower was built near the hypocenter, in the section where the Pure Land Buddhist temple Jisen-ji had been located; the chief priest of Tamon-in, a Shingon Buddhist temple, wrote the inscription on the tower. The bodies and bones of the victims were gathered and buried at Zenho¯-ji, a True Pure Land Buddhist temple. Over the next five months, work to gather the bones continued, amounting to 3,700 bodies by July 1946.53 For about a year, then, the city’s work focused on dealing with the remaining bones, using the Buddhist temples as burial sites overseen by priests who conducted rituals to console the departed souls. Recalling the conditions of the lives of Hiroshima residents immediately after the bombing, Hamai writes, ‘‘A large number of hibakusha in Hiroshima merely existed day to day, in despair and unable to think about the future. Virtually no family in the city avoided the loss of a member of the family. People lost at least one or two family members to the bomb, or were themselves affected from it. Despondency hovered over the Hiroshima citizens.’’ Gradually, however, Hamai began hearing, in the midst of hardship, a persistent antiwar message: ‘‘We strongly refuse war by any means. Such cruelty must not be allowed in the human world.’’ This voice developed into the hibakusha ethics of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation,’’ while their desire to ensure that no one, from whatever country, experience a nuclear attack generated a concept of an inclusive community transcending nation-state borders. Later in his memoir, Hamai emphasizes that the antiwar movement ‘‘is not an issue for Hiroshima citizens alone’’ but must extend beyond the boundaries of city and nation. ‘‘We must convey our experiences and make efforts to build true peace, so that such atrocities will not happen again. This is the responsibility for us, the survivors in Hiroshima.’’54 Unfortunately, the mission to spread this message concerning nuclear destruction at a global level has occasionally been accompanied with a distorted sense of privilege. At a meeting to extend discussion of

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the city’s restoration plan in 1946, the city decided to ask for additional financial aid from the Hiroshima Chamber of Commerce and Industry. Hamai writes about the discussion that ensued at this meeting: Everyone agreed that ‘‘Hiroshima citizens alone can appeal the world about the experience of the atomic bombing, which is also the only way to recompense the victims of the bomb.’’55 Hamai also noted, at this meeting of more than two hundred attendees, what he dubbed Hiroshima no kokoro, or ‘‘the Hiroshima mind’’—an attitude of exclusivity and privilege. What motivated and abetted this sense of privilege? On one hand, hibakushas suffer from discrimination due to disfigurement, frailty, infertility, as well as unsubstantiated beliefs concerning their physical conditions. Against such discrimination, it is perhaps understandable that some hibakushas reformulated their sufferings into an element of a positive, if exclusive, mission for them. This privilege born of suffering also extends to those non-hibakushas who take the experiences of the hibakusha to legitimate the moral authority of the survivors.56 The balance between respect for the hibakushas’ experiences while mitigating against a sense of privilege based on those experiences is difficult to achieve and remains a challenge to the hibakushas’ vision of an inclusive community. Despite these difficulties, officials of the city of Hiroshima generated the idea of hosting an annual commemorative ceremony in Hiroshima on August 6. In 1947, the city designated August 6 as a public holiday and conducted the first peace festival (heiwasai) to console the spirits of the dead (ireisai). According to Hamai’s memoir, approximately 2,500 people—mostly Hiroshima citizens wearing Buddhist prayer beads around their wrists—attended the ceremony. Hamai delivered the Peace Declaration for the ceremony, representing the voice of the hibakusha. Each year since this first ceremony (with the exception of 1950, when the Korean War broke out and the Supreme Commander of the Allied powers canceled the event), the Hiroshima mayors’ Peace Declaration has been a main focus of the ceremony. In the first Peace Declaration, Hamai stated: Our city of Hiroshima was obliterated in an instant by the atomic bomb that was dropped for the first time in the course of human history. Tens of thousands of our citizens lost their precious lives, and Hiroshima became the city of darkness and death. However, despite the calamity

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of the bombing, it was in some sense a fortunate event, as it forced the government to renounce continuation of fighting, bringing the miserable war to its end. In this sense, we insist that humanity should remember August 6 as the day when world peace began. It is for this reason that we conduct a solemn peace festival to commemorate this day, even as we embrace infinite suffering. After all, only those who experienced the misery and sinfulness of war most deeply and who are thus aware of it can refuse war fundamentally as manifestation of extreme suffering, and can desire peace most enthusiastically.57

In this first speech, one finds Hamai arguing that memory of the atomic bombing should be shared by humanity as a whole. The text also reveals that Hamai views that the atomic bombing as the end of a ‘‘miserable’’ war, suggesting that the anti-nuclear message is inseparable from a wider antiwar campaign.58 The declaration concludes: ‘‘Let us build true peace on earth by eliminating the fear and sinfulness of war. Let us build the ideal of world peace on earth by renouncing war perpetually. Under the peace tower, we declare peace thusly.’’59 Sentiments against nuclear weaponry are intertwined with a broader antiwar cause in this first Peace Declaration, and this has remained the case in the hibakusha ethics. Eventually, the idea of ‘‘peace’’ was employed in seeking financial support for the city’s project. In order to receive more funding from the central government, the city drafted a proposal for the Construction of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial city law (Hiroshima heiwa kinen toshi kensetsu ho¯), which passed in both the Shu¯gi’in (Upper House) and Sangi’in (Lower House) on May 10 and 11, 1949. This law allowed Hiroshima to receive financial benefits from the central government, which in fact contributed greatly to the restoration of the city. In addition to practical benefits, Hamai finds symbolic import in the law’s passage: The most significant thing about this law lies in its unequivocal description of the spirit of the newly restructured Hiroshima in the first article, that is, ‘‘to build the city of Hiroshima as the ideal symbol of the realization of perpetual peace.’’ This [granting of funding to the city of Hiroshima] was proof on the part of the Japanese government that they were willing to help with the reconstruction of Hiroshima. I believed the spirit of peace to be the city’s principle. In fact, the enactment of the law gave courage and much hope to the citizens.60

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Japan was still under occupation at this time, and having the Allied supreme commander’s support enabled passage of the law. Finally, in 1949, Hiroshima was recognized as the ‘‘city of peace’’ by both the supreme commander and the central government under occupation. The identity began to gain recognition. Hamai led the effort to build the Peace Memorial Park and Museum near the hypocenter; their constructions were finally completed in 1954 and 1955, respectively. These sites were concrete visualizations of the city’s understanding of peace and its corresponding ethics. In the planning stages, Hamai conceptualized the park as being built around the memorial facing an open space, such that visitors could gather together in remembering the atomic bombing and its victims: ‘‘Hiroshima citizens would always pay respect to the victims, to be there with the dead.’’61 In order to encapsulate the hibakushas’ ethics explicitly and concisely in the park, Hamai asked Saiga Tadayoshi, a professor of liberal arts (kyo¯yo¯ bu) at Hiroshima University, to compose an inscription for the memorial site. He chose these words: Yasuraka ni nemutte kudasai, Ayamachi wa kurikaeshimasen kara, or, ‘‘Rest in peace, this mistake will not be repeated.’’ Benign though the inscription may seem, it would become the center of controversy (see Chapter 2), since it does not specify who committed this ‘‘mistake’’: Was America at fault for dropping the bombs, or did blame reside with the Japanese, who instigated a war that provoked such a response? One criticism along these lines came from Radhabinod Pal, a judge in the Tokyo tribunal.62 When Judge Pal visited Hiroshima and saw the inscription, he inquired with the city staff as to why the inscription did not indicate the agent behind the ‘‘mistake.’’ Being unsatisfied with the staff’s unclear explanation, Pal insisted that the memorial should state that the bombing was America’s mistake. Refuting Pal’s criticism, Hamai maintains in his memoir that the inscription deliberately eschews the subject of whose mistake the bombing was, so that everyone who stands before the memorial would take the bombing as a matter of personal responsibility. Scientific discovery must be used for the well being of humanity, and it was a mistake by humankind to utilize it for massacre and destruction. When everyone who comes before the memorial [on which the inscription is written] takes responsibility as part of the human community for this mistake, and apologizes to the victims, I find the spirit of sincere

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self-reflection, modesty, tolerance, and firm determination [toward peace], all of which are necessary to build world peace.63

This statement is especially salient insofar as Hamai finds that the basis of peace—self-reflection, modesty, tolerance, and firm determination—is nurtured in taking responsibility for the atomic bombing. Moreover, Hamai’s insistence on the importance of critical selfreflection extends to the hibakusha themselves (a matter we will examine in more detail in Chapters 3 and 4). Hamai’s thoughts thus served as a foundation for the hibakusha ethics. Hamai repeatedly stressed the importance of abandoning the impulse to retaliation in order to realize peace. Consider these lines from his memoir, where he claims that overcoming the impulse to retaliation and cultivating tolerance must not, however, blind us to sinful acts. It is unforgivable to use a cruel and reckless weapon such as the atomic bomb, which resulted in the obliteration of innocent citizens—the old, the young, women and children. There is no more sinful act on earth. Dropping the atomic bomb was wrong, no matter who executed it and no matter the reason. The same holds with regard to the massacres in Nanjing and Manila that Japanese soldiers committed during the war. However, it will not be constructive for future peace if we accuse and offend each other; this will only lead to widening the gap between opposing parties. Wrong is wrong. We all must apologize for it to each other and decide sincerely not to repeat the mistake. This is the only way to lead to peace and to consolation for the victims.64

While Hamai refers to the wrongness of the atomic bombing, he also acknowledges that the massacres in Nanjing and Manila, committed by Japanese soldiers, were likewise wrong. He is not defending Japan, but insisting on its wrongdoing, something made possible by critical selfreflection. And this self-reflection allows Hamai to acknowledge his ambivalent position as both a victim and a victimizer. Such self-reflection, though critical, is also constructive, as it seeks to envision an inclusive community of memory. In order to prevent nuclear war, and in order to unite to this end with all the victims and potential victims of nuclear weaponry, one must also acknowledge one’s own faults and shortcomings. Focusing on the misery wrought by war, Hamai is able to acknowledge the sufferings of victims of the Japanese army. Extending his

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sympathy beyond the confines of national boundaries to the victims in Nanjing and Manila, he is able to envision an inclusive community not confined by a nation-state framework. Hamai’s notion of self-reflection leaves us with the urgent question of responsibility. For Hamai, acknowledging one’s dual identity as both victim and perpetrator is part and parcel of the recognition that imputing blame does not facilitate peace. He believes that accusations aimed at the Japanese government for its wrongdoing, as well as at the American government for dropping the atomic bombs, brings about further discord among the concerned parties. Instead of laying blame on each other, he directs focus on the future; determination not to repeat the same mistake is, according to Hamai, of far greater urgency than accusing each other of past wrongdoings. This idea is observed in the thoughts of the current mayor, Akiba, and it remains controversial. What does it mean for us to reflect upon ourselves and our wrongdoings without imputing blame? Is it possible to work toward a more peaceful future without addressing the question of blame? The question may therefore be raised about how one can be determined not to repeat a ‘‘mistake’’ without accusing an entity—in this case a nation and its people—of being responsible for having committed that mistake. Similarly, the victims of the Japanese army’s atrocities may find Hamai’s idea of reconciliation dissatisfying. But it is here, I believe, that the concept of self-reflection is especially significant. By ‘‘self-reflection’’ I understand Hamai and the hibakusha to mean that one must cultivate awareness of one’s own mistakes, and in doing so enhance one’s sense of empathy for others’ sufferings. Understood this way, abandoning the impulse to accusation does not entail negligence regarding past crimes. On the contrary, abandoning accusation presupposes admission of one’s own wrongdoing through self-reflection. The subject of self-refection will be elaborated and examined in the context of religious responses to the bomb in Chapters 3 and 4, as well as below, in the context of the mayors’ peace declarations and memoirs. But first it will assist readers to briefly trace the trajectory of the peace movement as it emerged from the experiences of the atomic bombing. In the late 1950s, the antinuclear movement reached national proportions, raising awareness of the dangers of radiation and nuclear weaponry in Japan and abroad. The movement was instigated in 1954 by one of a series of nuclear tests conducted by the United States on Bikini Atoll, part of the Marshall Islands. Unfortunately, the hydrogen

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bomb explosion affected a Japanese fishing boat and its crew. The accident was referred to as ‘‘Daigo Fukuryu¯ maru jiken,’’ or the Lucky Dragon incident, named after the fishing boat. Despite the location of the boat outside the designated danger zone, the crew witnessed the flash from the detonation of the bomb and the boat was soon covered with nuclear fallout, later called shi no hai, or the ashes of death. The crew of the Lucky Dragon immediately changed its course and hurried to return to shore. After two weeks, it arrived at a homeport in Japan. One member of the crew, Kuboyama Aikichi, died from radiation sickness six months after the incident. The tuna they brought with them proved to be highly irradiated. Realizing this, housewives in Tokyo began collecting signatures for a petition to stop U.S. nuclear tests in the Pacific. This marked the beginning of a nationwide recognition of health hazards deriving from radiation and nuclear weapons.65 The antinuclear movement was eventually taken up and supported by Japanese political parties, primarily the Social Democrats and the Communists. The movement later split, with some supporting the USSR’s nuclear tests as a counterforce to the United States, and others accusing those supporters of the USSR as hypocritical.66 The rivalry of the two groups continued, to the extent that both groups attempted to interfere with the August 6 commemoration ceremony. Criticizing the political parties’ attitudes—far from peaceful—Hamai writes, Originally the peace movement in Hiroshima did not emerge under a particular leader or from a particular political party or organization. Desire not to repeat such an atrocity on the part of the citizens who actually experienced it brought forth the peace movement. In the peace movement, there is neither political right nor left: neither bourgeoisie nor proletariat; no conflict based upon differences of ideologies and religions. All the citizens, as individuals, participated in the peace movement with the determination to eliminate war and realize lasting peace.67

A peace movement advocating against war and nuclear weapons is undoubtedly part and parcel of a political stance. What Hamai envisioned in this memoir, however, is a community that transcends not only national boundaries, but also ideological, class, and religious boundaries, for only such a community could function toward the end of abolishing war and nuclear weaponry on a global level.

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Hamai’s statement recalls the fact that Hiroshima’s peace movement has often been associated with the political left, and indeed the city has seen intervention from right-wing activists. For example, according to Hamai’s record, the right wingers distributed fliers on August 5 and 6 in Hiroshima city, reading ‘‘smash the red peace movement’’ (akai heiwa undo¯ o funsai seyo); interfered with events hosted by peace activists; ran vans rigged with speakers throughout the city to spread their message at a full volume; and threatened the supporters of the peace movement with insinuations of physical violence. Even in the midst of the solemn commemorative ceremony, they played gunkan ma¯chi, or the battleship march, a popular war-glorifying song that was often coupled with right-wing activism. Troubled by such interference from the right, in 1960, the city invited Prince Akihito (now Emperor Heisei) to the peace ceremony. Since these Japanese right-wingers advocated the reign of the imperial household and valued the emperor system, the city thought that they would not dare interrupt a ceremony with the prince in attendance.68 On the other hand, the political left, opposing the emperor system, complained about the city’s decision. Hamai explained that by inviting the prince, the fifteenth anniversary of the bombing would be a memorable one, and the city could keep the right-wingers at bay. Hiroshima, in other words, sought to distance itself from both the political right and the left. The city’s attitude toward the Japanese central government was ambiguous. For the fifteenth anniversary, Hiroshima Prefecture offered to hold the ceremony in collaboration with the city, and Hamai gladly agreed. ‘‘Formerly,’’ explains Hamai, ‘‘we hoped that the ceremony would be held by the central government as a part of national events. I have no objection, therefore, to co-hosting the ceremony with the prefecture.’’69 What is revealed in Hamai’s memoir is that the city—or at least Hamai himself—did not necessarily consider the ceremony to be exclusively the purview of the city. Consequently, the city hosted the ceremony jointly with Hiroshima Prefecture, with the royal guest Prince Akihito in attendance; the central government refused to participate in the event. The central government’s attitude toward the atomic bombing and its victims was not entirely transparent. Owing to the Lucky Dragon incident and the subsequent heightened awareness of radiation and nuclear weaponry, the atomic bombing gradually began to be framed as

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an event that directly affected not just Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but Japan on the whole. Underscoring this point is the rhetoric of uniqueness that emerged in the 1950s, characterizing Japan as ‘‘Yuiitsu no hibakukoku’’—‘‘the only country’’ to have experienced the bombs. Historian James J. Orr points out that during the August 6 ceremony held for the first time after Japan’s independence in 1952, an Asahi shimbun editorial column described the atomic bombing as ‘‘an exclusively Japanese experience.’’70 Observing that the rhetoric functioned to emphasize the unique victimhood of Japan, Orr argues that ultimately such rhetoric served to privilege Japan; experiencing and surviving the nuclear attack gave the Japanese people a sense of self-worth in the face of having suffered wartime defeat and diminished confidence at being an insignificant player in the international community. Historian Ichiba Junko reported that over time the majority of people in Japan came to believe that the Japanese are ‘‘the only people who truly acknowledge the horror of the nuclear attacks.’’71 Taking into consideration others who have suffered from nuclear power in one form or another—the ‘‘downwinders’’ in the United States, locals in the Marshall Islands, and inhabitants near the nuclear test sites—this statement seems far from accurate. Nonetheless, the rhetoric abetting perception of the atomic bombing as a uniquely Japanese incident is repeatedly employed, even appearing in the official document of the annual white paper of Japan’s Defense Agency of 1983. Historian John W. Dower suggests this rhetoric was employed to reinforce the Japanese myth of Japan itself as a homogeneous country: ‘‘one race, one state, and one language.’’72 The myth, however, suppresses minorities while supporting nationalistic sentiment. This rhetoric of uniqueness and attendant privilege, seeing the atomic bombing as a national event but also the Japanese people as the only victims, began to be called into question in the 1960s, though wider public attention did not come until later. In 1965, when diplomatic relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea were normalized with the Treaty on Basic Relations, a Hiroshima newspaper, Chu¯goku shimbun, sent journalist Hiraoka Takashi to South Korea. His objective for the trip was to find and report on Korean hibakushas residing in South Korea. Given the dearth of information then available on repatriated Korean hibakushas, their accounts were illuminating but shocking to Hiraoka. In Korea, the dropping of the atomic bomb was largely viewed as something that brought an end not only to war, but more significantly,

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to Japanese colonization; the atom bomb, it was thought, had liberated the Korean people. But this interpretation of the atomic bombs also discouraged repatriated Korean hibakushas from coming forward with their bomb-related sufferings, and they therefore continued to do without the sort of governmental medical assistance for which their Japanese counterparts were eligible. They suffered from physical and emotional trauma caused by the bomb, endured poverty due to their physical frailty from radiation sickness, and continued to suffer from lack of public understanding. Hiraoka sought to reveal the tremendous suffering of those South Korean hibakushas, and upon his return to Japan, he filed articles on the matter with Chu¯goku shimbun as well as other publications. ‘‘Discovery’’ of Korean hibakushas compelled Japanese hibakushas and non-hibakushas alike to reflect on Japan’s history of colonization, and to see the falsity of the rhetoric of ‘‘Japanese as the only people’’ suffering from the bombings. Some years later, Hiraoka was elected Hiroshima mayor, serving two terms from 1991 to 1999. The shock he experienced as a journalist in encountering Korean hibakushas, who were abandoned by the governments of both Japan and South Korea, informed a perspective that he brought to the mayor’s office. In his memoir, Kibou no Hiroshima (Hiroshima as hope), Hiraoka relates that since his encounter with Korean hibakushas, ‘‘I have kept claiming that Hiroshima’s appeal [for the abolition of nuclear weaponry] will not reach Asian people unless we face the war victims in Asia.’’73 Hiraoka goes on to claim that ‘‘only a perspective capturing Japanese hibakushas as victims as well as victimizers would enable a new ‘Hiroshima philosophy’ to emerge.’’ Like his predecessors, Hiraoaka emphasizes the crucial role of self-reflection: ‘‘unless we ask ourselves the question of why people from the Korean peninsula suffered from the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and make efforts to respond to this question, the peace that Hiroshima has advocated will not capture people’s minds in Asia.’’74 Hiraoka thus urges people—Japanese hibakushas and non-hibakushas—to acknowledge fully Japan’s war crimes. This perspective resonates with Hamai’s call to admit to Japan’s aggressions, and its importance for creating an inclusive community of memory.75 Although Hiraoka urges recognition of the hibakushas as victims as well as victimizers while advocating for apology for the victims of Japanese aggression, he also emphasizes the criminality of use of the nuclear weapons. These two points were made clear in the first peace declaration he delivered as mayor of Hiroshima in 1991. Hiraoka proclaimed,

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‘‘Japan once inflicted great suffering and sorrow to people in Asia and the Pacific in its colonization and war. We feel regret for that.’’76 At the 1995 Peace Triangle Summit in Naha, Okinawa, where the mayors of Okinawa, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki gathered together to discuss their cities’ roles in promoting peace, Hiraoka again mentioned the fact that Hiroshima had been a military city for the army division that deployed soldiers throughout Asia during the war. He stated, ‘‘We have insisted that using nuclear weaponry violates international law due to its indiscriminate and atrocious character. Yet, without self-reflection and apology for the war, the appeal to abolish nuclear weapons will not be commonly embraced.’’77 Once again, he insists on the inhumane character of nuclear weaponry, while claiming that it is crucial to apologize for past crimes—a product of critical self-reflection—if the antinuclear message is to be heard beyond the boundaries of Japan. Unlike Hamai—who was not affiliated with any party and thus did not side with either the political right or left, and who remained in ambiguous relations with the Japanese government—Hiraoka was more explicit in his differences from the central government. For example, at the Triangle Peace Summit, he stated that ‘‘it is because the national government is unwilling to deal with its own past that we, the three cities [Okinawa, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki], try to act out on the idea of peace beyond the national borders by facing the nation’s past.’’78 With this statement, Hiraoka suggested that cities, less restricted by national political agendas, have greater potential than nation-states for achieving peace, and are thus better suited to engender an inclusive community that transcends existing boundaries. On August 6 of that same year, 1995, the top representatives of three authorities (legislative, executive, and judicial) in Japanese politics came to Hiroshima to attend the annual ceremony: Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi; Doi Takako and Saito¯ Ju¯ro¯, speakers of the House and the Congress, respectively; and Kusaba Ryo¯hachi, chief judge of the Supreme Court. The fiftieth anniversary of the bombing thus became the first occasion for the city to welcome these authorities at one time. In terms of national recognition and attention, their attendance was significant. Later, however, Hiraoka expressed his disappointment with the prime minister’s speech, customarily offered after the mayor’s peace declaration. Hiraoka found the speech ‘‘ ‘netsui’ ga ‘kihaku’ ’’—lacking in enthusiasm and sincerity—because it did not contain historical perspective or a clear sense of purpose regarding the abolition of nuclear

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weaponry.79 By contrast, Hiraoka’s peace declaration of 1995 unambiguously proclaimed his convictions concerning the criminality of the use and proliferation of nuclear weaponry as human-rights offenses— causes of hunger, poverty, regional conflicts, and contamination of the living environment. He also repeated his call for Japan to apologize for past atrocities.80 Whereas the prime minister did not mention Japan’s past atrocities during the ceremony, the city mayor apologized for sufferings inflicted upon people by the national government. After Hiraoka stepped down at the end of his second term in 1999, Akiba Tadatoshi was elected mayor of Hiroshima. Having committed himself to the nuclear issue prior to taking office, Akiba, still in office as of the time of this writing, is determined to carry on the legacy of the hibakusha, and continues to maintain distance from the national government. An examination of his stance toward the national government further illuminates the hibakusha ethics. Akiba firmly demands of the Japanese government a continued observance of article 9 of the Constitution, which renounces war and prohibits Japanese remilitarization. The article was (and still is) debated, with the prospect of being changed so that Japan might make contributions to the international community by deploying soldiers to places where policing is needed. Akiba argues against the change of article 9 by referring to another article of the Constitution: Article 99 of the Japanese Constitution stipulates that ‘‘The Emperor or the Regent as well as Ministers of State, members of the Diet, judges, and all other public officials have the obligation to respect and uphold the Constitution.’’ The proper role of the Japanese government, under this provision, is to avoid making Japan a ‘‘normal country’’ capable of making war ‘‘like all the other nations.’’ The government is bound to reject nuclear weapons absolutely and to renounce war. Furthermore, the national government has a responsibility to convey the memories, voices, and prayers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki throughout the world, especially to the United States, and, for the sake of tomorrow’s children, to prevent war.81

Japan, argues Akiba, should be exemplary in its renunciation of military power; its uniqueness lies not in its victimhood but in its rejection of nuclear weapons and warmaking. He concludes, therefore, that attempts to change article 9 are in fact unconstitutional.

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In his speech at the 2002 Peace Memorial Ceremony, with the prime minister in attendance, Akiba criticized the national government for its failure to provide adequate financial assistance to hibakushas, especially those living outside Japan. During the ceremony in the following year, Akiba proffered a critical comment on the national government’s oftused rhetoric depicting Japan as the ‘‘only nation to have suffered from the bomb’’ (yuiitsu no hibakukoku): The Japanese government, which publicly asserts its status as ‘‘the only A-bombed nation,’’ must fulfill the responsibilities that accompany that status, both at home and abroad. Specifically, it must adopt as national precepts the three new non-nuclear principles . . . and work conscientiously toward an Asian nuclear free zone. It must also provide full support to all hibakusha everywhere, including those exposed in ‘‘black rain areas’’ and those who live overseas.82

As his speech makes clear, Akiba recognizes that not all hibakushas are Japanese, and that Japan is not the only country to have suffered from the nuclear attack. In another of his speeches, Akiba again emphasizes that the message of peace must transcend any nation-state framework: Hiroshima calls on politicians, religious professionals, academics, writers, journalists, teachers, artists, athletes and other leaders with influence. We must establish a climate that is quick to confront any statement—even casual comments—when they appear to approve of nuclear weapons or to encourage war. To prevent war and to abolish the absolute evil of nuclear weapons, we must pray, speak, and act to that effect in our daily lives.83

Resonating with Hamai’s proposition, Akiba also envisions a community that transcends ideological, class, and religious differences. To date, Akiba appears to share the perspectives articulated by Hamai and Hiraoka. He also has contributed significantly to quadrupling the number of member cities of Mayors for Peace,84 the organization of mayors around the world working toward abolition of nuclear weaponry. What is distinctive about Akiba’s philosophy, as expressed in the peace declaration and in his writings, is encapsulated in two points: first, his explicit criticism of American foreign policy; and second, the absence of any mention of critical self-reflection. His personal history

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accounts for these differences: He lived in the United States, is not himself a hibakusha, and was not in the city at the time of the bombing (unlike his predecessors, who were themselves hibakushas or lost loved ones to the bomb). We may examine these points in turn, in order better to understand Akiba’s significant contributions to the pursuit of peace. In his first peace declaration following the 9/11 attacks in America, Akiba criticized both the American and Japanese governments, displaying a kind of outspokenness rare among leaders of Japanese local governments. He argued that it was wrong for the United States to attack Afghanistan and wrong for the Japanese government to support U.S. foreign policy. Reflecting the hibakushas’ fear that the attack on Afghanistan would escalate to the use of nuclear bombs,85 Akiba urged then President George W. Bush to visit Hiroshima in order to learn about the destruction caused by the atomic bombing. Again when criticizing the attacks on Afghanistan, Akiba stated, ‘‘The United States government has no right to force Pax Americana on the rest of us, or to unilaterally determine the fate of the world. On the contrary, we, the people of the world, have the right to demand ‘no annihilation without representation.’ ’’86 Since taking office in 1999, in his annual peace declaration, Akiba has continued to criticize American policy. (The only exception to date was in 2009, when Akiba praised President Barack Obama’s Prague speech announcing his vision of a nuclear-free world.) Such criticism, I believe, is not a manifestation of anti-American sentiment any more than his criticism of the Japanese government is anti-Japanese. It is, rather, an extension of a project advocating a community that transcends national boundaries—something for which the leader of a municipal, rather than national, government is well suited. In the interest of creating such a community, he appointed American citizen Steven Leeper as chairperson of the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation in 2004, a position never previously occupied by non-Japanese citizen. The chairperson presides over Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the peace activities organized by the city. Hibakushas as well as Hiroshima citizens welcomed Leeper’s appointment, which was a potent symbol: An American citizen representing the hibakushas’ voice marks a step toward realizing an inclusive community of memory. This community of memory is open not only to non-hibakushas, but to American citizens as well. The

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appointment suggests that whoever supports and shares the hibakushas’ desire for a nuclear-free world may participate in this community. Another distinctive characteristic of Akiba’s thought lies in its absence of entreaty for critical self-reflection. That Akiba’s speeches contain no discussion of the possibilities of self-reflection might be traced to his status as a non-hibakusha. Hamai (a hibakusha) and his successors—Yamada Setsuso, Araki Takeshi (himself a hibakusha), and Hiraoka Takashi—either experienced the bombing directly or were natives of Hiroshima. Yet, Akiba is the first mayor of Hiroshima since the end of the war who did not grow up in the city and who did not have relatives killed by the bomb, a fact that, I believe, explains the absence of discussion of critical self-reflection in his writings and speeches. In his first peace declaration in 1999, Akiba thanked the hibakusha for having contributed to peace through sharing testimonies of their experiences, despite their difficulties and the discrimination from which they suffered. In one speech, Akiba stated that ‘‘it is the many courageous hibakusha and the people who have identified with their spirit who have led this struggle [for the abolition of nuclear weaponry for fifty-four years]. Looking at the important contributions these hibakusha have made, we cannot but express our deepest gratitude to them.’’87 This marked the first official appreciation for the hibakusha on behalf of the city. In his book Ho¯fuku dewanaku Wakai o (Not retaliation, but reconciliation),88 Akiba gestures toward a reason for the reluctance of his predecessors to offer public appreciation of the hibakusha. Noting that the previous mayors were themselves hibakushas or the relatives of hibakushas, the implication is that praising the survivors would be akin to self-praise.89 A similar attitude may explain Akiba’s reluctance to advocate critical self-reflection; non-hibakushas cannot demand self-criticism of hibakushas, perhaps especially children, prisoners of war, and forced laborers from the Korean Peninsula, who, though residing in Japan, were sometimes mobilized for Japan’s war efforts. Instead of demanding more from the hibakusha, Akiba directs our attention to their three major accomplishments, outlined at the beginning of this chapter: demonstration of courage by choosing to live, caring for others through the sharing of their experiences, and envisioning an inclusive community of memory. These contributions are key facets of what Akiba characterizes as an ethics of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation.’’

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Though I support Akiba’s efforts to work toward such a community with the help of the hibakusha, I also see challenges in the face of realizing such a community, the difficulty of creating a community of memory in the terms suggested by Margalit: memory requires a community because a community assures continuity; a community selects the events it remembers and controls the way in which the narratives around it are constructed. Nonetheless, Hiroshima’s attempts thus far—identifying itself as a the city of peace, distancing itself from the national government, and welcoming those who agree with the vision of nuclear-free world—is worthy of examination. Endeavors to allow the voices of those hibakushas who fall between national boundaries to be heard, and the move to place an American citizen in a position representing the hibakushas’ voices: these are steps toward an inclusive community of memory, steps that are perhaps most readily taken by a municipal government—a possibility not taken into account by Margalit.

‘‘Not Retaliation, but Reconciliation’’ As we have seen, the Smithsonian debate not only exemplifies the problems associated with overlooking those who do not fall within the boundaries of a nation-state framework, thereby neglecting the indiscriminate nature of the nuclear weaponry; it also demonstrates the intertwined relations between memory and community. Margalit argues that the nation-state is a viable and ready framework for memory: It is a ‘‘natural candidate’’ for a community dealing with the mortality of its members. As we will soon see, the nation-state is particularly invested in honoring its fallen soldiers, in an exhibition of concern for members’ mortality and a display of its ability to carry on their legacy. Margalit also relates the notions of ethics and morality to the community of memory. While morality concerns care for humanity in general, ethics refers to care among members of a natural community. Both are important, but when it comes down to a ‘‘moral tie,’’ ethical relations override moral ones. Margalit does, however, suggest that certain memories should be shared by humanity: those that undermine the conditions of moral relations among humans. As examples of such ‘‘radical evil,’’ Margalit names the comfort women, Unit 731, and massacres in Nanjing and Manila. To this list I would add the use, and even the very existence, of nuclear weaponry—for nuclear weaponry destroys

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soldier and civilian, friend and foe, indiscriminately.90 Furthermore, it damages even the unborn. The power to disintegrate human bodies to ashes in an instant with its heat, or to scorch living human beings, melting flesh from bone, undermines humanity itself. Margalit believes that remembering such occasions of radical evil falls most naturally to a nation. Memory of the Holocaust, for example, should be firmly rooted in the German community, while memory of comfort women should be grounded in the Japanese community. Yet, through examination of the Smithsonian debate, we have seen that even the atrocities that ought to be remembered by all humankind are often excluded from full acknowledgment by the nation that committed them. As a counterexample to the problems of nation-states as the bases of communities of memory, I discussed attempts by the city of Hiroshima to transcend the nation-state boundaries from which the resistance to acknowledgment most often arises. Envisioning a community of memory at this level does not entail ignoring the existence of a nation-state framework, but rather overcomes these boundaries in acknowledging the dangers of radical evil. Though the hibakusha have provided a helpful way to understand the relations of the nation-state and the inclusive community that transcends national boundaries, they may also insist, for example, that Japan as a nation apologize for its war crimes—a position that recognizes national boundaries. Such was the case of mayor Hiraoka, as we have seen. They demonstrate that promoting the idea of an inclusive community beyond the framework of nation-states does not mean failing to take account of their nation’s past atrocities. This flexibility in belongingness—to a city, a nation, and an inclusive community of humans— allows them to be aware of others’ sufferings, in a form of care that is encapsulated in their ethics of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation.’’ Chapters 3 and 4 will reveal the religious underpinnings of this ethics through an examination of religious interpretations of the atomic bombing. But first we shall examine the relations between practices of commemoration and the nation-state framework in the Japanese context, the subject of the next chapter.

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2 Dialogue with the Dead the yasukuni shinto shrine and hiroshima peace memorial park

Very often the emergency supplies of meaning brought to a given incident, structure, or theme in one’s life are cover-ups, are ways of addressing the wound of nonmeaning. I think it’s very hard to keep things in the tensional structure of the openness, whether it’s ecstatic or not, of nonmeaning. This is very difficult, which is why there is then the quick grab for transcendental signifiers—for God, for nation, and for other master signifiers. The widespread craving for meaning has tended to be very misused and abused by certain types of, let’s say, power guzzlers or by more innocent, if needy, people toward dubious ends. — a vi t a l ro n e l l, Examined Life

Commemoration, Nation, and War Since its opening in 1867, the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo has entombed and enshrined Japanese soldiers and civilians killed in wartime service, in an attempt to at once console their souls and glorify their sacrifices on behalf of the nation. The Yasukuni shrine thus embodies and abets strong relations between memory and the continuity of the nation-state. On the other hand, commemorative practices in Hiroshima, as we saw in Chapter 1, have sought a way to establish a community not confined by the nation-state framework. But by the mid-1980s,1 the Japanese national narrative had begun to appropriate the accounts emerging from Hiroshima and Nagasaki as part of a narrative of victimhood. Comparing the manners of commemoration at Yasukuni and Hiroshima allows a deeper investigation into the ethics of commemoration, providing a contrast that illustrates the problems of collective memory.

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My comparison of the Yasukuni and Hiroshima commemoration sites and practices draws upon Buddhist philosopher Sueki Fumihiko’s notion of ‘‘dialogue with the dead’’ as an ethical praxis whose import lies partly in the resources it provides for critiquing and reconfiguring existing frameworks of meaning. Engagement in dialogue with the dead, explains Sueki, humbles us, because it not only reminds us of our mortality—a kind of ‘‘memento mori’’—but also points to the fact that our existence is inseparable from, and in some sense dependent upon, the dead. In fact, our lives are in significantly shaped by the dead. Sueki argues that it is a form of arrogance to think that the dead only exist in the past and have no influence over our lives. Our predecessors not only instituted laws and regulations by which we remain bound, but they also continue to solicit a restoration of human dignity beyond the limits of laws and mortality. Sueki takes up a hypothetical case of murder to make his point. The legal trial and verdict, he claims, function not only punitively, in the interest of maintaining social order; attention to the plight of the victim also constitutes a restoration of his or her human dignity. In this sense, the dead do not exist simply in the past; we the living continue to interact with them in our daily lives. Nonetheless, according to Sueki, the living—be they Americans or Japanese—have not taken interaction with the dead seriously. In responding to this problem, Sueki takes inspiration from Japanese philosopher Tanabe Hajime’s postwar work on ‘‘philosophy of death.’’2 Tanabe, known as a Kyoto-school scholar who during the war encouraged self-sacrifice for the nation, wrote in his postwar period a work entitled Zangedo¯ no tetsugaku (Philosophy as a way of repentance), which expressed remorse for his past writings. He eventually began to write more about religious themes, particularly in Zen Buddhism and Christianity. It was during this period that Tanabe deepened his thought in the philosophy of death through a critique of Martin Heidegger’s argument, in which humans can restore their authenticity by Verlaufende Entschlossenheit zum Tode (anticipation of death). The anticipated death of which Heidegger speaks, however, is always one’s own death, which is precisely what one can never experience. In developing his own philosophy, Tanabe therefore shifts his attention from his own death to the death of others—a crucial ethical move, according to Sueki, who takes this turn as his starting point in situating the relationship to the dead a fundamentally ethical issue.3

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The Myth of the War Experience Historian George L. Mosse, in his book by that title, offers a view of the ‘‘myth of the war experience’’ that, although its focus lies in Western Europe from the French Revolution to the end of World War I, addresses the case of Japan as well. Mosse claims that public commemoration functions as an apparatus for producing and reinforcing nationalism by fortifying group identity through employment of religious languages, rituals, and architectures; modern public commemoration generates nationalistic sentiments appealing to religious sensibilities.4 To prove his point, Mosse’s analysis illustrates the history of the employment of citizen soldiers and ways of commemorating them from the French Revolution through the German War against Napoleon to World War I. In describing the transformation of private memories of soldiers’ deaths to public memories, Mosse asserts that the emergence and maintenance of modern nation-states required attaching solemn and momentous meaning to the death of the soldiers through commemoration. The modern nation-state, with its ideal of democracy based upon equality for all, permits anyone to fight for something bigger than oneself—a privilege previously reserved for only a certain social class.5 In other words, the opportunity to fight for a meaningful cause has, with the emergence of modern nationstate, been ‘‘democratically’’ distributed in Western Europe. Modern nation-states are therefore capable of securing soldiers to fight not only for the states’ preservation but sometimes even on behalf of expansionist ambitions; in turn, nation-states provide meaning for which the soldiers would die with confidence and with the comfort of knowing that they would be remembered and honored. Commemoration of the war dead, argues Mosse, is connected both to a nation-state framework in modern times and a religious apparatus to reinforce that framework. Mosse’s argument will help illuminate the Yasukuni commemoration, since it exemplifies one way in which a nation commemorates war dead by exploiting religious traditions. Mosse argues that the ‘‘cult of fallen soldiers’’ deploys a range of Christian symbolism—Jesus, roses, the cross—in contributing to the creation of the myth of the war experience by consecrating soldiers’ deaths for the nation. For example, popular World War I–era postcards contained such images as machine guns ensconced in a bed of roses, Jesus visiting the grave of a fallen soldier, and a British military cemetery at Vlamertinghe at the center of which is the Stone of Remembrance and Cross of Sacrifice.6 Mosse notes that ‘‘the cult of the fallen

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soldier could not have come into existence were it not for the new citizen-army, the new status of the soldier, and the festivals of the Revolution.’’7 Even while the ideology of the French Revolution evoked antagonism toward the authority of the Catholic Church, funerals and burials of the dead were conducted in a conventionally Christian manner. The citizen-soldiers fought in the name of the ideology of the Revolution and as citizens of a new nation, but were buried as Christians. The national identity that thus emerged from this conflict in some sense mitigates the tension between the revolutionary ideology that overturned the ancien regime and the Christian authority supported by that very regime. As Mosse comments, ‘‘With the beginning of modern warfare and a new national consciousness, death in war was being absorbed by Christianity or by the Revolution, both on behalf of the nation.’’8 The new ideology, though advocating separation from churchly authority, failed to provide the rituals and narratives that would appeal to the people. Consequently, it appropriated Christian symbols and images, particularly the story of the resurrection: ‘‘those who sacrificed their lives [to the nation] will be resurrected.’’9 Prior to being recognized as sacrifices for the nation, soldiers’ deaths were privately mourned by their families and friends, much like any other tragic deaths. ‘‘The new citizen-armies,’’ observes Mosse, did not at first lead to the recognition of the sacrifice of the individual soldier through the way he was buried or commemorated on monuments. But his status was obviously improving—after all, he exemplified the heroic ideal—and in isolated instances he did receive an individual tomb or have his name inscribed on a memorial (even if it came after those of his superior officers). True equality came only with the First World War.10

By the time of the First World War, soldiers’ deaths were gradually being recognized not only privately but also collectively, as could be seen in France and Germany. This change was also brought about by different interpretations of death in Christianity: ‘‘During the Enlightenment,’’ argues Mosse, ‘‘the Christian attitude toward death which called for repentance and humility gave way to the concept of death as an opportunity for the teaching of virtue.’’11 Deaths on behalf of the nation were distinguished from ‘‘ordinary’’ deaths; no longer diminished for lacking the sacrament of

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atonement, soldiers’ deaths were, on the contrary, perceived as the opportunity to demonstrate courage, a sense of fraternity, and the will to self-sacrifice. The image of the solder as a self-sacrificial figure was a projection of the crucified Christ, and thus it lent itself to the formation of a cult—the cult of the fallen soldiers: ‘‘The fallen were truly made sacred in the imitation of Christ. The cult of the fallen provided the nation with martyrs and, in their last resting place, with a shrine of national worship.’’12 Previously lacking a meaningful manner in which to deal with the dead, nations including France and Germany now found such a means, consecrating the war dead as virtuous selfsacrificial figures in the service of constituting the nation’s identity. Appropriating the soldiers’ deaths as a mass sacrifice on behalf of the nation led to the collective recognition of fallen soldiers and their families: ‘‘For the first time the common soldier was the object of a cult, not just generals, kings, or princes—a consequence of his startling rise in status.’’13 The citizen soldiers came to be remembered as martyrs, further promoting nationalistic loyalty. It is here that ‘‘national faith’’ and Christian faith unify in the myth of the war experience. Mosse writes, ‘‘It was not only the belief in the goals of the war which justified death for the fatherland, but death itself was transcended; the fallen were truly made sacred in the imitation of Christ. The cut of the fallen provided the nation with martyrs and, in their last resting place, with a shrine of national worship.’’14 Modern Western European nation-states found further benefit in such treatment of the war dead: the glories accruing to the dead appealed to the common people, thus underwriting recruitment and enhancing enthusiasm for the war. This shift from the personal to public commemoration, according to Mosse, saw the transformation of the cult of fallen soldiers into the myth of the war experience. The task ‘‘of transcending death in war was of a new and pressing urgency,’’ necessary to sustaining fervor on behalf of the nation. This retrospective revaluation of the war as a ‘‘meaningful and even sacred event’’ defines the myth.15 Drawing upon the Christian resurrection narrative, it created a new interpretive framework for the war, exalting suffering and violent deaths on the battlefield, and transforming tragedy into joyful triumphs. The myth ‘‘transcended death in war, giving a happy ending to war’s drama . . . indeed, they [the fallen soldiers] are already among us.’’16 The war dead are immanent in historical narratives, monuments, and national holidays.

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The myth of the war experience thus ‘‘masked’’ war, seeking to ‘‘legitimize the war experience; it was meant to displace the reality of war. The memory of the war,’’ Mosse continues, ‘‘was refashioned into a sacred experience which provided the nation with a new depth of religious feeling, putting at its disposal ever-present saints and martyrs, places of worship, and a heritage to emulate.’’17 As sites of worship and objects of veneration, the war dead became a collective sacred symbol for the nation, transcending class differences among its constituents. War thus becomes a potent machine for ‘‘the enforcement of conformity,’’18 homogenizing an understanding of ‘‘who we are,’’ and thereby establishing a common understanding of history. Mosse’s analyses are limited primarily to Western Europe in the late eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries, but they may be brought to bear as well on those nation-states emerging in the postcolonial period of the later twentieth century. Extending his insights concerning the role of treatment of the war dead to the emergence and development of modern nation-states, we may now turn to the case of Japan and the Yasukuni commemoration. As we will find, the appropriation of religious symbols and narratives in glorifying the war dead is not limited to uses of Christianity, for Shinto has provided the framework for a narrative of Japanese war dead that likewise elevates its victims in the name of the nation.

The Case of Yasukuni: Matsurigoto, or Politics as Religion Broaching the idiosyncratic character of the Yasukuni shrine requires some understanding of the history of Shinto in Japan. As scholar of Japanese religions Joseph M. Kitagawa has noted, in early Shinto, there were two categories of kami19 (deities, objects of worship). One category included spirits residing in nature, and believed to ‘‘come from and return to the mountains or islands.’’20 The other included actual historical figures: ‘‘the spirits (tama) of the dead, especially those of noblemen, were believed to become kami and return to the other world.’’21 In addition to ‘‘eight hundred myriads of kami’’ (yaorozu no kami) appearing in myth,22 there were regional kami called ubusuna-kami or chinju-nokami (the kami of the region where one is born) and kami of the clan commonly referred to as uji-gami.23 When Shinto was exploited as an ideology for uniting the Japanese modern nation-state in the late nineteenth century, the emperor was taken to be part of an unbroken

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lineage deriving from mythological times, a fact foregrounded in both the preamble to and article 1 of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan (or Meiji Constitution).24 Consequently, those attaining the position of emperor were identified as kami, and regarded as sacred and inviolable (sihnsei nishite fukashin).25 Shinto has a long tradition of considering death as a kind of defilement. Philosopher Thomas P. Kasulis describes the Shinto ideology of death as ‘‘kami-filled and tama [spirit]-charged.’’ Acknowledging that contact with the dead is a main taboo in Shinto, he notes that in Japan prior to the eighth century, a new palace was typically erected upon the death of the emperor or empress, so as to allow his or her successor protection from the pollution of the deceased sovereign’s death—a ‘‘fresh start.’’26 Because it regards death as defilement, Shinto practices have placed great emphasis on purification of the pollution of death. One strategy of purification is to deify the dead. In fact, as Kitagawa points out, ‘‘spirits of enemies and those who might have met an unfortunate death, later known as go-ryo¯, were also believed to have potency [to become kami],’’ and thus needed to be pacified, lest the ominous pollution of death infect the living.27 After Buddhism was introduced to Japan and assumed a position similar to that of a state-religion (chingo kokka, or protection of the state), Buddhism and Shinto were at times so close that they seemed to be indistinguishable,28 while at other times, Shinto maintained its distinctiveness.29 In the eighteenth century, the field of Native Studies (kokugaku) began to draw attention from scholars. Native Studies intended ‘‘to bring to the study of ancient Japanese texts the methodological sophistication and insight already shown by the Japanese Confucian scholars in studying ancient Chinese classics (so-called kogaku, ‘ancient [Chinese] studies’).’’30 Motoori Norinaga (1730–1801) was particularly valuable to this school of thought, using his philological expertise to argue that Japanese religion, culture, and language were not merely derivatives of Chinese culture. Rather, Motoori embraced what he took to be distinctive features of Japan: its imperial lineage and the privilege of being a land created by kami. Motoori’s thought, with its emphasis on locating Japan’s ‘‘authenticity’’ in the emperor and his divine lineage, stimulated an emerging nationalistic sentiment that formed the groundwork for the Meiji Restoration, which overturned the shogunate and restored the reign of the emperor. In light of Motoori’s attention to

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Kojiki, a chronicle of Japanese historical and mythical narratives compiled in 712, the idea that the imperial lineage proceeded from the kami world was reinforced. This school of thought influenced a number of scholars, including Hirata Atsutane, who developed Motoori’s view of Japan as a distinctive culture, and whose ideas about Shinto underwrote the Shintoist ideology of the Meiji administration. Kasulis focuses especially on Hirata’s distinctive treatment of two religious concepts in Shinto: an emphasis on creation and the development of a theory of the afterlife, both of which influenced the Meiji government’s new policy.31 First, by focusing on a single deity in Japanese mythology, Ame-no-minaka-nushi, as the creator of the islands of Japan,32 Hirata places Japan at the origin of the world. The idea of Japan as the land of kami was not unique to Hirata, but together with Motoori’s emphasis on Japan’s uniqueness and originality as the proof of its cultural superiority, Hirata’s ‘‘rediscovery’’ of Japan as the creation of kami laid the foundations for an ethnocentrism that eventually animated Japan’s expansionist ambitions. Second, Hirata develops the idea of an afterlife by purporting that ¯ Okuninushi, a mythological deity, rewards those who exhibited ‘‘good’’ behaviors with a joyful afterlife.33 Traditionally, death was considered an impurity in Shinto; a sophisticated doctrine of the afterlife was therefore absent from Shinto thought. However, Hirata holds that dedicating one’s life to kami constitutes good behavior. Kasulis explains that ‘‘to die for the emperor, he [Hirata] believed, could not mean going to ¯ kuninushi some underworld of great defilement.34 Quite the contrary, O would judge such a person good and reward the soul accordingly in the afterlife.’’35 Hirata’s version of Shinto thus prepared the way for the new administration’s policy of inculcating nationalism and militarism in the people. As we have observed of the cult of the fallen soldiers, if the modern nation-state requires a citizen-army, the nation must be holy and sacred enough to inspire a will to self-sacrifice, and in turn the nation must hold out the reward of remembering these solders as martyrs. In the specifically Japanese context, as we will now see, nationalist fervor and religious beliefs mingled in Shintoist ideology, promoting nationalism and militarism in successive wars waged by the Meiji government. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 saw a political revolution aimed at ‘‘restoring’’ the emperor’s reign, bringing an end to more than two hundred years of rule by the Tokugawa shogunate. The primary aim of

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those involved in the revolution was to construct a new Japan of equal stature with the Western powers; they sought, in other words, to create a modern nation-state modeled on Western legal, military, religious, and educational systems.36 To accomplish these ends, the feudal system was abolished, a judicial system was instituted, and a military force established. In order to inculcate the idea of a new ‘‘nation’’ (kokumin) in the minds of the Japanese people, the Meiji government produced a Shinto ideology deriving from the thought of Motoori and Hirata, placing the emperor at its head. This Shintoist teaching was combined with moral teachings from Confucianism to create subjects of a new nation-state. To expedite and enforce this innovation, in 1871 the government-established Jingi sho¯, or the Ministry of Religion, which in 1872 was converted into Kyo¯bu sho¯, or the Ministry of Teaching Religion, dedicated to promulgating the government’s moral teachings.37 This ministry was abolished only five years later. The vicissitudes of the ministry attest to the struggle of the Meiji administration in adapting to the Western model of government, in which religion and politics, church and state, are separated, at least in theory. Originally, the Meiji government created the Ministry of Religion with the aim of ensuring veneration for the emperor as based upon Shinto mythology and a social morality rooted in Confucianism. But these attempts failed, as they excluded Buddhism, which was more widely practiced in Japan. The Ministry of Teaching Religion included Buddhist doctrines on its agenda, but, as we have seen, it soon dissolved, thanks to a conflict of interests among Buddhist and Shinto institutions and to the Western powers’ pressures to separate religion and state. From then on, the Meiji government promulgated worship of the emperor by claiming that this teaching constituted not religion, but ideology. During this period, the form of Shinto that the government imposed on its subjects thus evolved into what I will call the ‘‘emperor cult,’’ in which the Meiji administration demanded veneration of the emperor as part of a divine lineage and himself a living kami—a veneration that would eventually stimulate a will to self-sacrifice among Japanese soldiers. This self-sacrificial will was abetted by an emerging narrative of commemoration for fallen soldiers, in which the spirits of those who died on behalf of the emperor were enshrined and elevated to an eirei, or heroic kami. One agent of this narrative is what is now known as the

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Yasukuni shrine, originally erected in 1869 as Tokyo Sho¯ konsha, or ‘‘shrine inviting the spirits,’’38 to house the spirits of the dead who fought for the emperor against the Tokugawa loyalists. As Harry Hartoonian observes, since its inception, the Yasukuni shrine has never distinguished between sacrifices made for the nation and those made for the emperor.39 This conflation of nation and emperor is captured in the term kokutai, or ‘‘nation-body,’’ an idea prevalent in the early twentieth century.40 Indeed, the myth of the war experience in Japan arose as the concepts of nation and religion were projected and consolidated in the figure of the emperor. The emperor embodied the Japanese ideology, becoming an emblem of the national body.41 The power of the emperor cult resided in part in its ability to appropriate the war dead on behalf of the nation, as epitomized in the emperor himself. During successive wars, ‘‘soldiers were told that they would become national gods of the ancestral land (sokoku kuni) and worshiped at the shrine if they gave up their lives by serving the emperor in war. To be made a deity inhabiting the Yasukuni Shrine was a special honor bestowed only on national heroes.’’42 Deifying historical figures in order to pacify their souls was common in the history of Shinto (as we will see below), but deification of common people such as soldiers was unheard of. At the Yasukuni shrine, however, the emperor cult provided grounds for the deification of all Japanese soldiers who died in service to the empire. Sueki emphasizes the idiosyncrasy of the Yasukuni shrine. He notes, first, that those enshrined at Yasukuni were essentially common people, not figures in positions of power, as in the case of shrines such as Kitano Tenmangu¯ (Sugawara no Michizane), Toyokuni, or Ho¯koku, jinja (Toyotomi Hideoyoshi), or To¯sho¯gu¯ (Tokugawa Ieyasu), where aristocrats and shogun are venerated. Second, all the spirits at Yasukuni are deified; no other Shinto shrine is dedicated to so many spirits—more than 2,466,000 deities.43 Regardless of their rank from private to general, the spirits are enshrined on an equal basis at the shrine.44 Criticizing Buddhism for its increasing involvement with modernization and consequently losing touch with the dead,45 Sueki commends the Yasukuni shrine for dealing with the dead, providing a venue for people to communicate with the dead through religious festivals deriving not only from Shinto but from Buddhism as well. The mitama matsuri, for example, includes a folk dance (bon odori)46 emerging from the Japanese Buddhist ritual for welcoming returning spirits from anoyo, the other world.

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The Yasukuni shrine flourished as soldiers died in the Second World War. Upon the end of the War, however, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP) deliberated about whether the shrine should be closed and dissolved because of its role as a pivotal site of the emperor cult, or be maintained so as not to stir up the ire of the Japanese people. Ultimately, SCAP chose to close the shrine, but to leave the site intact. With the independence of Japan and its new constitution, however, Yasukuni was permitted to reopen, with the stipulation that it operate it as a ‘‘regular’’ shrine, no longer eligible to receive any financial support or privilege from the government.47 The Shinto practice conducted at Yasukuni was now considered religious, not part of a state ideology, and thus upheld a separation of religion and state. This reopening did not end the controversy surrounding the existence of the Yasukuni shrine; its basic function remained unchanged. In 1975, Miki Takeo, then the Japanese prime minister, visited the Yasukuni shrine. His visit came on August 15, the day marking Japan’s surrender in World War II, raising the issue of whether this visit violated the separation of religion and state. Prime Minister Miki argued that he came to the shrine on a private visit,48 not as a public figure. On August 15, 1980, then–Prime Minister Suzuki Zenkou and nineteen ministers again visited Yasukuni, not remarking on whether this was a public or private visit. This visit came just two years after A-rank war criminals’ spirits were enshrined at Yasukuni. By the time Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro visited Yasukuni in 1986, various issues concerning these politicians’ visits to Yasukuni surfaced in public debate. For example, should the prime minister undertake visits as a public figure or as a private individual? And should Nakasone participate in the Shinto ritual of consoling the spirits led by Shinto priests? Unlike Nakasone, who avoided public discussion of the status under which he visited the shrine, Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro¯, before his 2001 visit, declared that he would pay homage at the shrine as Japan’s prime minister. His visit triggered heated controversy both within and outside of Japan. In Japan, the debate revolved primarily around the interpretation of Yasukuni’s status as both a religious and a political site, and the related question of whether prime ministers’ visits to the shrine breach the separation of religion and politics stipulated in the Japanese constitution. Meanwhile, outside of Japan, Koizumi’s public visit was generally perceived as paying homage to soldiers who destroyed thousands of lives in Asia; the prime minister was seen as willfully refusing to

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acknowledge responsibility for Japanese aggression in the war. Consequently, Koizumi’s actions were taken as an insult to the people and countries that suffered under Japanese imperialism and militarism. Klaus Antoni, an historian of Japanese religions, neatly summarizes the basis of the Yasukuni controversy: ‘‘The issue centers mainly on the question [of] whether the shrine is a mere memorial, to be compared to the tombs of the Unknown Soldier in Western countries, or if it is a real shrine in the sense of a definite religious place, a holy site of the Shinto religion.’’49 But Antoni’s account is too simplistic in its delineation of commemoration at the Yasukuni shrine as ‘‘religious,’’ with other memorials, such as Arlington National Cemetery or Vietnam War Memorial, being ‘‘secular.’’ As Mosse has shown, in treatments of the war dead, religion and commemoration are frequently inseparable. Kasulis’s insights underscore this point, suggesting that the Yasukuni shrine is a venue for communion with the dead; indeed, commemoration constitutes communion with the dead, and thus a domain of religion. Along these lines, Harry Harootunian believes it is illusory to think that a modern nation-state can be free of religious influences. On the contrary, ‘‘the rearticulation of a religious memory in institutional form constituted a condition of modern, secular society, not a rejection of it.’’50 Harootunian’s assertion reminds us that the ancient Japanese term matsurigoto designates at once political and religious authority. ‘‘Yasukuni,’’ writes Harootunian, ‘‘was a religious force that constantly reminded contemporaries—moderns—that politics was religious ceremony and vice versa, and that there was no easy way to rationalize these into separate, differentiated arenas.’’51 If Mosse, Kasulis, and Harootunian are right in their belief that national commemoration of the war dead is intertwined with religion, we must inquire into the ethical implications of such commemorations. In the present context, we will ask if the hibakusha ethics of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation’’ have been born out of commemoration within a nation-state framework. In broaching the broader ethical questions surrounding commemoration of the war dead, we shall examine Sueki’s ethical valuation of the Yasukuni commemoration, as well as the possibilities exhibited by commemorative practices in Hiroshima.

The Dead as the Other: Buddhism and Ethics Ethicist Edith Wyschogrod holds that ethics concerns ‘‘the sphere of transactions between ‘self ’ and ‘Other.’ ’’52 Wyschogrod defines this

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other as being ‘‘different from oneself; her/his existence will be shown to carry compelling moral weight,’’ because the other ‘‘opens the venue of ethics, the place where ethical existence occurs.’’53 Wyschogrod’s assertion that ethics concerns our interaction with the other resonates with the thought of Emmanuel Levinas, one of her primary influences: ‘‘The strangeness of the other, his irreducibility to the I, to my thoughts and my possessions, is precisely accomplished as a calling into question of my spontaneity, as ethics.’’54 The other focuses the orientation of ethics insofar as our tendency in encountering the other is to reduce the unfamiliarity to something comprehensible, familiar. This reduction does not arise from the desire to understand the other, but rather from an intolerable uneasiness in confronting the other in all of his or her unfamiliarity. Both Levinas and Wyschogrod locate ethical import in our interactions with the other: How can engage the other while avoiding the impulse to assimilation? Sueki Fumihiko elaborates the idea of ethics in relation to the other (tasha). He defines the other as the one ‘‘whom we encounter beyond the realm of our mutual understanding, in particular, the dead.’’55 The other is a being beyond our comprehension, exceeding our norms. In interacting with the other, we find our institutional rules, customs, or conventions inadequate; and in applying our norms when confronting the strangeness of the other, we are eschewing interaction with the other, reducing that person to versions of ourselves. Sueki finds this tendency at work in our interactions with those who exemplify otherness: the dead. Death itself is beyond human comprehension; we thus deal with the dead through our institutional rules, customs, and other conventions. Sueki, as we have seen, believes that Yasukuni offers a venue to have dialogue with the dead. Contrary to what Sueki asserts, however, I argue that the otherness of the dead at the Yasukuni shrine is in fact reduced to something comprehensible, for the shrine seeks to give definitive meaning to the deaths of those it consecrates. Sueki formulates his idea of otherness in relation to the Buddhist tradition in his book Bukkyo tai rinri (Buddhism versus ethics). Sueki believes that in its attempts to modernize, contemporary Japanese Buddhism fails to take death seriously, dismissing communication with spirits of the dead as superstitious and irrational. Though Buddhism continues to be the main religious tradition in which funeral rites (so¯shiki bukkyo) in Japan are conducted, Sueki criticizes the prevalence of

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Buddhist funeral rituals as merely part of a moneymaking industry. Lamenting the current situation of Buddhism, Sueki turns to an examination of traditional Buddhist doctrines, arguing that Buddhism does not, in fact, avoid the problem of death and the otherness of the dead. The question of how to relate to the other, according to Sueki, did not explicitly appear in early Buddhism. Only with the emergence of the idea of the bodhisattva in the first century did the question of the other appear.56 To speak roughly, the conception of the bodhisattva— generally understood as one who is able to attain Buddhahood, but who chooses to remain for a time among the unenlightened in order to assist them toward salvation—differentiates Theravada Buddhism from Mahayana Buddhism. Sueki argues that the emergence of the concept of the bodhisattva thus marks a pivotal moment in Buddhist history, because it shifted the paradigm of Buddhism from a self-reliant soteriology, in which one’s salvation (or escape from samsara) must be achieved essentially by one’s own efforts, to a soteriology based on assistance from the bodhisattva in the quest for salvation.57 The multitude of bodhisattva figures gave rise to the concept of manifold Buddhas; instead of following one historical Shakamuni Buddha (Siddhattha Gautama), practitioners engage a highly intricate pantheon of Buddhas. The multiplicity of Buddhas, argues Sueki, gave rise to two theoretical possibilities. The first sees Buddhahood as an ultimate goal, with the bodhisattva stage marking one step toward the final goal. Subsequently, more attention is paid to ascetic practices, such as the six pa¯ ramita¯ (Da¯na, or offering; Sı¯la, or observing precepts; Ksya¯nti, or fortitude; Vı¯rya, or devotion; Dhya¯na, or meditation; and Prajna¯, or wisdom), which were believed to be those that Shakyamuni exercised. The perfection of such ascetic practices, however, is impossible for humans to attain. This fact led to the second possibility: focusing on the Buddha’s divinity, and perceiving Buddha as a savior.58 This second possibility paved the way for the development of Amida Buddhism in East Asia (Amida derives from the Sanskrit amita¯bha, or ‘‘infinite light,’’ which resides in the Western Paradise, a realm of the Buddhist cosmos). This Buddhist school centers on the belief that Amida’s mercy will save the unenlightened. With this development, individual ascetic practices became less significant than divine mercy. This school of thought also brought about a paradigm shift in Buddhist soteriology. Previously, karma was thought to determine one’s salvation; attaining enlightenment over multiple lifetimes breaks the cycle of

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death and rebirth. The paradigm shift that comes with the idea of a bodhisattva as a helper and the Buddha as a savior, however, places far more focus on salvation granted by something other than one’s own karmic causality—a bodhisattva’s assistance or Amida’s mercy.59 Responsibility for salvation is transferred largely from oneself (and therefore one’s karma) to the Buddha. Consequently, ethical codes observed in the practice of the six pa¯ramita¯ became diminished in significance.60 Corresponding to this paradigm shift from the Buddha as a model of enlightenment to a savior, the Buddha, according to Sueki, came to be perceived as the other in Mahayana tradition.61 No longer merely a historical figure, the Buddha is viewed as the purveyor of salvation, entirely removed from this earthly realm. Salvation now has less to do with conforming one’s life to the model of an exemplary figure, and more to do with the Buddha’s intervention. Sueki argues that Mahayana Buddhism’s construal of the Buddha as ‘‘savior’’ points to the origins of the Buddhist formulation of the transcendent other, for such a savior exists beyond the realm of our norms. As he writes, ‘‘Only when we step out of the framework of ethics does the other appear. Therefore, the important task for transethics (cho¯-rinri) lies in interaction with the other.’’62 To account for relations to the divine other who transcends the realm of earthly ethical norms, Sueki coins the term ‘‘transethics.’’ Of particular interest in the present context is Sueki’s account of the dead as the irreducibly other, beyond the grasp of human comprehension. It is this irreducible otherness that instigates transethics. Ethics is the domain of constantly negotiated ‘‘worldly rules’’63 that facilitates communication, understanding, and relationships among human beings. Ethics should not, therefore, be conceived as a fixed set of regulations, but rather as multifaceted rules that are adjusted according to the modes of our relationships. Some are more strictly enforced than others; school regulations, for example, will generally apply more loosely than a nation’s constitution. Different relationships require different sorts of regulations, and in turn, regulations shape human relations, such as religious commitments, manners in public space, a village’s tacit customs, and so on. Beneath their manifold manifestations, what ethical rules have in common is their purpose to construct and maintain human relations. While regulations may pertain to a particular group, culture, or nation, Sueki asserts that they are not entirely independent from each other. On the contrary, they can be infinitely extended to all of the people

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around the globe through political and economic networks.64 When the relationships between people change on the basis of, for example, socioeconomic changes, the rules governing relationships are subsequently altered accordingly. Ethics and social relations thus stand in dialectical relation, each shaping and being shaped by the other. Given the dialectical, dynamic nature of these relations, Sueki argues that there is no universal ethics.65 ‘‘Ethics is sustained by circumstances [of human relations]. No human can exist by him or herself,’’ and neither does some abstract ethics exist apart from human relations.66 This understanding of ethics is founded upon Buddhist anthropology and ontology. In the Buddhist tradition, the ‘‘self’’ does not precede its relation to others. On the contrary, one is always already related to others, even prior to one’s individual existence. For example, before one is born, one is already part of a web of human relations constituted by mother, father, siblings, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and so on. Rather than being ‘‘thrown’’ into a world independent of human relations, in Buddhism, humans emerge within the web of relationships. For Sueki, it would be incoherent to think of ethics separated from those human relations that precede one’s existence. Like Levinas, who situated ethics as ‘‘first philosophy,’’ Sueki argues that ethics precedes ontology. And since human relations are not static, neither is ethics. Given this understanding of ethics and human relations, Sueki realizes that ethical discourse in its prevailing form—with its emphasis on rules and regulations for human relations—cannot address those questions arising from beyond the realm of human relations. For Sueki, one such question emerges in relation to the ‘‘voices’’ of the dead. Including the voices of the dead within our human relations is the basis of the notion of cho¯-rinri, or transethics. Why should we attend to matters that are incompatible with thisworldly ethics? While transethical discourse is not restricted by the rules that govern human relations, it nonetheless influences those relations— the realm of ethics. Sueki provides examples in which the rules of earthly ethics do not apply: the Holocaust, the atomic bombings, the attacks of September 11, 2001. Each of these is too grave and too far beyond comprehension to be dealt with adequately by the human-made regulations of ethics.67 Precisely because of the impossibility of ever adequately communicating the destruction and suffering of these events, we fail to understand those incidents fully. But in order to avoid repeating such tragedies, Sueki argues that we should learn to communicate

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with the transcendent other. This is the task of dialogue with the dead, and the aim of transethics.68 Communication with the dead is thus a matter of (trans)ethical urgency. Without mediation by the dead, argues Sueki, humans are unable to relate with one another. Sueki’s thought can be illuminatingly analogized with Martin Buber’s theology, in which humans come to perceive others as ‘‘Thou’’ rather than ‘‘it’’ through relations with God.’’69 Buber believes that without relations with God, a human is condemned to recognizing another merely as ‘‘it.’’ Only when one establishes a relationship with God is one able to recognize the other as a genuine ‘‘thou.’’ Similarly, Sueki stipulates that only when one has a relationship with an other-worldly being—be it God, Buddha, kami, a spirit, or the dead—is one able to relate to others: ‘‘When the dead are completely forgotten, love between the living becomes impossible.’’70 He goes on to stress the transethical call to and of the other in encountering the dead: The other drives me to do gratuitous acts, which emerge not from money, not from desire, but from an ungraspable reason. This impact—something utterly incomprehensible—in encountering the other is nothing but the otherness of the other. . . . It may be called love or perhaps other names. But when the other responds to my calling, even from afar, something that is impossible to be reduced to the realm of human rules comes into being.71

In a manner reminiscent of Buber’s theological anthropology, thisworldly relations are mediated by the other, including the dead. Our world, in other words, is supported and animated by the dead. As Bruce Lincoln writes, ‘‘those who die do not just pass on but continue to contribute to the sustenance of this world, as the world of the living draws strength, meaning, and wisdom from the world of the dead.’’72 It is for this reason that we need to engage in dialogue with the dead. The ethical import of this dialogue lies not (only) in abiding by the rules and regulations created by those who are now dead, but in continuing a relationship with the dead in memory. A community of memory therefore cannot exclude the dead. On the contrary, memory of the dead is its very foundation. In surpassing ethics, we enter the world of religion.73 Christianity, Sueki notes, began when it accepted the death of Jesus and turned the memory of him into the basis of a theology. Religion ‘‘deviate[s] from

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the world of human relations, and at the same time, it must maintain sho¯ ki [sanity, groundedness] by returning to [the matters of] this world.’’ In addressing both worldly and otherworldly relations, religion is a point of ‘‘tension’’ between the realm of human relations and the transcendent.74 When religion is reduced and confined to the world of human relations, this tension is neutralized, dissolved. On the other hand, if it deviates from the world of human relations, remaining beyond the realm of worldly ethics, religion can produce harm and destruction. Sueki points to the example of the Aum Shinrikyo terrorist attack in Tokyo in 1995, when members of the cult released sarin gas into a Tokyo subway system, resulting in dozens of deaths. To avoid such catastrophes, religions must dwell in the tension between this world and the other, communicating with both: Religion, often compromising with ethics, goes beyond the realm of ethics. It is in this tense relation that religion stumbles upon the other. Religion tries to bring the other down to the world of human relations, yet religion finds itself still facing the other, who cannot be reduced to this world. This is the issue to which transethics responds.75

Religion is important to worldly concerns insofar as it traffics between the realms of ethics and transethics. But Sueki does not presume that religion alone is capable of generating transethics: There are two different approaches in constructing ethics independent from religion: One is a rational approach claiming that reason alone serves to solve ethical issues independent from religion (Karatani Ko¯jin);76 the other is an approach that values emotions as much as reason, and simultaneously distances itself from religion (Avishai Margalit). I do not therefore take religion to be the only source of ethics, but [take as the first step of transethical thought] constructing relations with the dead.77

Religion, not confined to the realm of human ethical relations, should address the call of the other in the form of interactions with the dead. As we will see, it is for this reason that Sueki values the Yasukuni commemoration, as an example of a religious institution that engages the dead.

Revisiting the Yasukuni Shrine Sueki acknowledges the problems with which the Yasukuni shrine has been associated: its profound relations with the war dead who died for

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the emperor; its role as a symbol of state-religion, and therefore the manifestation of the ideology supporting Japanese wartime aggression; and the political stance it embodies, supported by Japanese nationalists and criticized by antinationalists. In light of these problems, the discourse surrounding the Yasukuni shrine tends to be simplistically divided along stark binary lines: the conservative right promotes the nationalization of Yasukuni, whereas the liberal left castigates the ideological orientation of the shrine. As a result, the religious dimensions of Yasukuni have been largely overlooked.78 Such matters are too often reduced to problems pertaining to Shinto, rather than being seen as issues in which politics, ethics, and religion are entangled. To be sure, at the Yasukuni shrine one finds a thorough intertwining of the religious and the political, for it draws upon the Shinto tradition of pacifying the spirits of the dead in its commemoration of those who lost their lives at war. In contrast to Buddhism’s attempt to suppress dealings with death by systematizing the funeral ritual, and thereby rendering banal the communication with the dead, the Shinto shrine at Yasukuni, Sueki argues, encourages relations to the dead through the use of a Shinto framework. Shinto, he believes, ‘‘has made efforts to create a new relationship with the dead more affirmatively.’’79 Sueki’s high regard for the Yasukuni commemoration is part of a critique of the customary Buddhist practices of dealing with the dead, which includes putting a price on the naming of the deceased. The bereaved family purchases a posthumous name for the dead as part of the funeral preparations. The origins of this practice lie in the belief that giving a different name amounted to endowing the dead with a new identity. But as this custom became entrepreneurial, it exploited the bereaved family’s sentiments; the more money paid, the longer the name; the longer the name, it is believed, the better care the family of the dead is taking of the deceased in the afterlife. Sueki, not surprisingly, condemns this custom, arguing that the practice is nothing but discrimination against the dead based on their family’s financial standing. For this reason, he favors the customs of the Yasukuni shrine, where a private soldier is enshrined in the same way as officers of higher ranks. It is true that Yasukuni does not, in this sense, discriminate—not even against A-rank war criminals.80 Sueki’s discussion also treats the Hiroshima commemoration of those who died from the atomic bombing. In contrast to the Yasukuni commemoration, the atomic bomb commemoration in the city of Hiroshima—a public entity, unlike the private Yasukuni Shinto shrine—

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takes no recourse to explicitly religious beliefs or structures. This lack of religious structuring diminishes the significance of the Hiroshima practice in Sueki’s eyes; he favors the religious interpretation offered by Nagasaki Roman Catholic convert medical doctor Nagai Takashi, who will be one subject of Chapter 4. In condemning the absence of religious discourse in treating the dead in Hiroshima, and pointing to Buddhism’s failure to take a leading role in shaping atomic bomb interpretations, Sueki overlooks the significant presence in Hiroshima of Aki monto, adamant True Pure Land Buddhists, which we will examine in detail in the following chapter. Due in part to Japanese Buddhist institutions distancing themselves from interactions with the dead, Sueki holds that the Hiroshima peace movement has mistreated the dead. Referring to the inscription on the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park cenotaph commemorating the bomb victims—‘‘Rest in peace, this mistake will not be repeated’’—he suggests that ‘‘we may need to reflect more humbly upon ourselves, admitting to an arrogance that has produced the illusion that we might create peace without the help of the dead, letting the dead ‘rest in peace’ and silence in our movement.’’81 The cenotaph is not a suitable means for communicating with the dead, for it marks an attempt to demarcate the world of the living from that of the dead, with the world of the living recognizing no support from the world of the dead. By contrast, Sueki argues, Yasukuni, provides a venue to enable dialogue with the dead; one is able to turn ‘‘communion’’82 with the dead into living energy—a dynamic that Sueki believes should provide a model for the Hiroshima commemoration.

Yasukuni: Monological Discourse Though Sueki is right to argue that ‘‘communion’’ with the dead should inform efforts toward peace based on a community of memory, I would strongly resist his claim that the Yasukuni shrine facilitates dialogue with the dead while Hiroshima fails to do so. I want to argue, on the contrary, that Yasukuni produces merely a monological discourse, while the commemoration practice at Hiroshima promotes a genuine dialogical relationship with the dead. In order to discern the manner in which Yasukuni impedes, while Hiroshima promotes, dialogical relations with the dead, I propose to offer, first, a ‘‘tour’’ of the Yu¯shu¯kan,83 the museum affiliated with the Yasukuni shrine, and to examine the literature it offers the public. Doing so will reveal the ideological content and thus

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the institutional orientation of the nationalistic narrative that the shrine produces. A tour of the museum at the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima will allow us to compare and contrast the respective strategies and ideologies of these commemorative sites, with special attention to the prospects for facilitating dialogue with the dead. Yu¯shu¯kan, originally built in 1882 and renovated in 2003, displays paintings, armor, and weapons, as well as letters from soldiers to their families. At the entrance of the museum, a real Zero fighter plane is proudly displayed, overwhelming visitors with its physical presence in a privileged place within the museum. According to former chief Yasukuni priest Yuzawa Tadashi, whose essay introduces the museum catalogue, the refurbished museum bears two missions: one is ‘‘to publicly recognize distinguished service by heroic soldiers’’ (eirei kensho¯),84 while the other is to correct what he takes to be the mistaken view that Yasukuni promotes Japanese fascist ideology, and thus ‘‘to clarify the truth in modern history.’’85 The first mission is reiterated in the museum brochure: ‘‘one will learn something important through encountering the heroic soldiers’ sincerity and their actions, in which they dedicated their lives to their beloved country, hometowns, and families.’’86 This rhetoric equates the soldiers’ desire to protect their families and hometowns with a self-sacrificial dedication to the country; family, hometown, and nation are inseparable.87 This ideological conflation emerged as a result of the inculcation of the emperor cult, which teaches that people of Japan are all part of a patriarchal family with the emperor as its head, and that the land of Japan was created by mythical gods, ancestors of the emperor. The resulting cultic logic implies that protecting one’s family and hometown extends to dying for the emperor. The accompanying rhetoric suggests that the people of Japan partook of ‘‘natural’’ familial relations with the emperor, even as emperors since the Meiji Restoration rarely appeared before the masses, hiding themselves behind a mythical veil in order to maintain their air of sacredness.88 The idea of offering one’s life to the emperor is visually presented in the first room of the museum’s second level. In this, the first exhibition room, visitors are welcomed with banners inscribed with waka, poems of five to seven syllables. One poem, composed in the fourteenth century by Prince Munenaga, reads, ‘‘For the sovereign and the world, would I spare my life, when sacrificing it for them is so worthwhile?’’

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Here the sovereign—in the form of the emperor—and the world—the land of kami—are seen as inseparable. These poems indicate and elevate the close relations between the nation of ‘‘Japan’’ and the imperial household, revealing the deep embeddedness in Japanese tradition of the sublime sacrifice of self for the emperor. The second room at Yu¯shu¯kan, exhibiting panoplies of armor, begins with an anachronistic narrative: an interpretive plaque explains that ‘‘more than 2,600 years ago, an independent nation was formed on these islands.’’ This erroneous statement, passed off here as ‘‘history,’’ derives from the Japanese creation myth (discussed above) in which kami brought the Japanese archipelago into being. As we have seen, since the Meiji era, these kami have often been regarded as ancestors of the emperor, thus securing the ‘‘divine’’ lineage of the imperial household. In the context of the Yasukuni museum, this mythic past is exploited in order to emphasize the importance of fighting on behalf of the emperor for the sake of protecting the sacred land of the nation. Mythical associations are here used to justify national ambitions, through glorification of the war dead. This mythological framework determines the ‘‘meaning’’ of death in war; consequently, this narrative is the primary means for understanding the war dead. Historical explanations become even more problematic in the third exhibition room. The museum refuses the use of the conventional terms ‘‘World War II’’ or the ‘‘Pacific War,’’ referring to this conflict rather as the ‘‘Great East Asian War’’ (Dai To¯a senso¯), as it was referred to by Japan during the time of the conflict. The explanation for this persistent defiance of convention is found in the museum’s particular interpretation of history. According to one explanatory panel, the Pacific War was the consequence of ‘‘Western powers encroach[ing] upon Asia’’; Japan, in other words, was forced into the conflict. This suggests that the ‘‘correct’’ view that the museum seeks to propagate is that Japan fought not to pursue its ambitions to expand its empire, but rather to liberate neighboring countries from Western expansionism. The term ‘‘World War II,’’ connoting a conflict in which the Allied powers defeated the fascist regimes, is dismissed in favor of a term implying a war scenario in which East Asian countries rose up against Western colonization. Japan is, in this narrative, portrayed as a liberator of Asia—a continent that had been suffering from Western colonization and exploitation. This insistence on promoting a heroic interpretation of Japan’s role in global history also accounts for the fact that the museum entirely

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ignores the existence of Unit 731, a unit that clandestinely conducted inhumane medical experiments on the local Manchurians, Chinese rebels against Japanese invasion, and the American POWs.89 It also fails to acknowledge the existence of the officially sanctioned brothels housing ju¯gun ianfu, or ‘‘comfort women.’’ After the Nanjing massacre in 1937, in which Japanese soldiers flooded into the city of Nanjing and raped and murdered many civilians,90 the government set up brothels intended to curb soldier’s violent, rapacious inclinations. Most of the women unfortunate enough to be forced into the role of sex slaves were brought in under the false pretense of receiving a high-paying job.91 Yaukuni’s ‘‘correct’’ view of Japan’s involvement in the war is possible only if one neglects to acknowledge such atrocities. Indeed, the museum’s acknowledgment of aggression on the part of the Japanese, where it exists at all, is obscured, if not skewed. For instance, the Marco Polo Bridge Incident is explained in equivocal terms: ‘‘On July 7, 1937, while Japanese troops were conducting night maneuvers near the Marco Polo Bridge on the outskirts of Beijing, shots were fired at them. Shots were also fired at Japanese reinforcements who arrived at the next morning. A battle was subsequently fought against the Chinese at Nanjing.’’ This ambiguous account, conveyed in the passive tense, leaves unspecified the subjects of actions—‘‘shots were fired,’’ it reads, ultimately obfuscating the conditions that led to the incident. The subtle rhetorical dissembling functions further to justify the Japanese army’s attacks on the Chinese people in the eight years following the conflict.92 Such observations illuminate Yu¯shu¯kan’s interpretation of the war and those it killed: Japan was forced into war, and the Japanese army fought for the liberation of other Asian peoples oppressed by the Western powers. Consequently, the deaths of the Japanese soldiers were in the interest of noble causes, and thus construed as sacred sacrifices (toutoi gisei)—ample justification for enshrining the war dead as eirei, or heroic spirits.93 This same rhetoric is the object of Mosse’s analysis of the myth of the war experience. The rhetoric supporting this myth effectively ‘‘transcend[s] death in war, giving a happy ending to war’s drama: those who sacrificed their lives will be resurrected; indeed, they are already among us.’’94 If soldiers are believed to have fought a ‘‘holy war on behalf of a holy nation,’’95 this gives rise to the question of what that holiness can be used to justify; in the case of imperial Japan, it is expansionism, ethnocentrism, and colonialism. It also suggests that the

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dead can be exploited in such ‘‘holy’’ pursuits, assimilated within a monological narrative benefitting the state. Though visitors to the Yasukuni shrine and museum may reunite with the spirits of the dead, I propose to argue that the Yu¯shu¯kan narrative does not generate genuine dialogue with the dead. Rather than providing a platform for a dialogical relations with the dead, an open relation of change and exchange, death at Yu¯shu¯kan is always already given a definitive, secure meaning—it is defined as ‘‘sacrifice’’ for the nation. Such a predetermination of the meaning of death in this context not only legitimates Japan’s aggression and violence to both soldiers and civilians through a glorification of the war dead, but it also blinds us, the living, from the very real fear and resentment that those soldiers destined to die in battle may have experienced in risking and losing their lives. This is to say that a kind of secondary violence is done to the dead at the Yasukuni shrine through their narrative of glorification and sacralization—through the imposition of an interpretation that ‘‘reads’’ the dead as sacrificial heroes. The Yu¯shu¯kan narrative does not, therefore, contribute to dialogical relations with the dead, but rather produces a monological discourse. The narrative at the shrine is written in the interest of the living, at the expense of the dead. Alleging to console the spirits of the dead, the shrine in fact averts the attention of the living from the inhumane treatment of those lost at war. What the museum exhibits is not transethics, but merely an ethic of constraint, an ethic reduced to the earthly concern of regulating national interest and the pursuit of power. The Yu¯shu¯kan museum’s ideology of sacrifice and triumph conditions its treatment of the dead, with its overdetermined and thus restricted interpretation of death—an interpretation whose narrow, obscuring insistence on glorification and sacralization forecloses the possibility of a dialogue through which the living might be changed by the dead. As comparison to the Hiroshima commemoration will make clear by contrast, the narrative of the war dead presented by the Yu¯shu¯kan has not changed since the end of World War II: the emperor’s divinity is unquestioned, and sacrifices on the emperor’s behalf by soldiers and civilians are praiseworthy. Perhaps more important, war atrocities committed by the Japanese army are not acknowledged. Such narrative reification presents a danger: it entrenches a worldview that brought about tragedies in the twentieth century.

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Are there ways to undercut this monological narrative and to engage in a genuine dialogue with the dead at the Yu¯shu¯kan museum? I believe that reading letters written by soldiers to loved ones might be a first step toward doing so. While one suspects that wartime censorship by the military as well as the political agenda evident at Yasukuni means that the letters exhibited at the museum are selective in their scope and content, one may yet discern in the voices of the dead something beyond the glorifying rhetoric of heroic self-sacrifice. For example, First Lieutenant Tateyama Hideo composed a letter to his mother that was found in the pocket of his uniform upon his death in Manchuria. The letter ends with the author calling out to his mother twenty-four times: ‘‘Mother, Mother, Mother, Mother,’’96 belying the common belief that soldiers should die extolling the emperor. The sadness and desperation in the letter of a soldier destined to die gives lie to the idea that soldiers gave their lives in the service of Japanese expansionism willingly and without regret. A young pilot, Yasuhara Masafumi, wrote a letter the night before his departure on a deadly mission. He addressed it to a girl, Chizuru, whose mother was taking care of young pilots doomed to die. In the letter, Yasuhara wrote, ‘‘I will be watching over you, little Chizuru, from above as a star in the sky.’’97 The letter suggests that Yasuhara did not believe that he would become a kami, enshrined at Yasukuni. The absence of dialogue with the dead is not a problem unique to the Yasukuni commemoration practices. Commenting on commemoration in Israel, for example, Judith Tydor Baumel argues that ‘‘memorials almost always serve the interests of the commemorators and not necessarily of those being commemorated.’’98 Baumel’s question concerning on whose behalf we commemorate generates an important question in the context of the present study: How should we construct commemorations for ‘‘those being commemorated’’ as well as for the commemorators? This question compels us to consider the very nature of dialogue with the dead. If communion with the dead is to be genuinely dialogical, and not merely an enforced monologue in the interest of advancing an ideology, nationalist or otherwise, we must admit that it is open and ongoing, ever changing. It may in fact be that we will never achieve a perfect dialogue with the dead, a dialogue in which the interests of those being commemorated is on par with the interests of the commemorators. Nonetheless, we should endeavor to enable such a dialogue, in the

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hope that it will enrich our earthly lives, challenging and perhaps widening our thinking beyond prevailing social and political conventions. If such exchange with the dead is conceived of as a religious practice, it may nevertheless be the case that dialogue is best achieved not within a traditional religious setting or a national one such as that of Yasukuni, but rather a secular one at the level of the city—for example, the municipal Peace Memorial Museum and Park at Hiroshima.

The Hiroshima Commemoration The commemoration of the dead at Hiroshima is not, contrary to Sueki’s claim, devoid of religious dimensions. In fact, every August 6, religious leaders conduct rituals at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.99 I therefore take Sueki’s disapproval of the nonreligious nature of Hiroshima’s practices to be based on observations of secular memorials and institutions maintained by the city of Hiroshima. Yet, even in the commemoration practices conducted by the city, one finds elements of Japanese religiosity; they comprise ‘‘a distinctly Japanese religious response to the bombing, a response grounded in the traditional handling of the dead.’’100 And as James Foard comments of the prevailing mood in Hiroshima’s commemorations: ‘‘while not jovial, [it] is everywhere civil and cordial, with an openness to strangers, including foreigners, that is unusual in Japan.’’101 Such openness is reflected in Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Museum. In 1994, the museum reopened with a new wing.102 In the entrance is a video display showing the destruction that followed upon bombing— photographic evidence of the leveled city, the injured bodies. But in addition to this video, in the first room of the museum, is a series of photos testifying to the history of Hiroshima as a military city. These documentary photos thus do not partake of some narrative of victimhood, but rather reveal the city in its time of prosperity thriving on a military industry. Unlike the Yasukuni museum, in which a distorting mythic ‘‘history’’ deifies the emperor and in turn serves to consecrate the war dead in the interest of the state, the Hiroshima museum acknowledges the city’s complicity in war, accepting a sense of shared guilt for the ‘‘mistakes’’ of the war. This refusal of some grand narrative of meaning undermines any tidy victim narrative. Thus, the ‘‘city of peace,’’ as Hiroshima is known, offers a critical reflection on its own

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unpeaceful past, and in doing so counters both the triumphalist narrative of Yasukuni as well as a narrative of ‘‘innocent’’ suffering, instead advancing open dialogue with the dead to produce critical reflection. The depiction of Hiroshima’s wartime culture continues on the mezzanine level of the museum. The second level, however, illustrates the current global situation regarding nuclear weaponry, with a host of statistics and graphics concerning the global pervasiveness of nuclear weaponry, thereby tying history to present. After this room, one passes through the connecting bridge to the main building. Here guests encounter a life-size diorama depicting damage to human bodies and their environs. From this room to the end, photos and items such as a lunchbox with rice charred by the blast, melted and deformed glass bottles, clothes burnt from the intense heat, and so on attest to the degree of the destruction. Such exhibitions cannot support a nationalistic agenda such as found at Yasukuni. Neither are they simply expressions of a victim narrative that would eschew the wrongdoings of the Japanese army. Rather, such artifacts and information are a call for attention to an imminent global danger. In the absence of the myth of the war experience in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, the sheer horror of the bombing deaths is readily exposed. Violence done to human bodies is revealed and exhibited. There is no glory in seeing photos of a young girl whose face was burnt, melted, and rendered unidentifiable by the bombing. Neither is there glory in the picture of a nineteen-year-old soldier whose face is marred by lesions from acute radiation sickness; he entered the city after the bombing in the hope of helping those who were suffering amid the chaos, but he died two hours after the photo was taken. Displaying the horror of such deaths without the distancing mechanism of a sacrificial narrative effectively deconstructs the myth of the war experience as presented at the Yasukuni museum; rejecting ‘‘the closure of ideological and religious certainty,’’103 Hiroshima demonstrates a new mode of ‘‘open’’ narrative, not fixed or overdetermined by nationalistic interests. Following the 1994 renovation, a section dedicated to Sasaki Sadako was added to the Peace Memorial Museum.104 Sadako experienced the bombing at the age of two. Before dying of radiation-related leukemia at the age of fourteen, while in the hospital Sadako began folding origami cranes, a signal of hope for recovery. After her death, she became an icon of hope for peace, particularly for children. Today children and

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adults from all over the world send folded paper cranes to Peace Memorial Park in a gesture of hope that no such violence will befall innocent children. Toward the exit, visitors walk along a glass wall to their left, from which they can look down upon Peace Memorial Park, with the cenotaph and the atomic dome in the background. On the right is a space where visitors may pause to watch video testimonies of hibakushas. The museum thus focuses on conveying the tremendous destructive power of the atomic bomb to both humans and objects and its long-lasting effects on human bodies. Though the Peace Memorial Museum was built by the city of Hiroshima, in 2002 the Japanese national government supplied an addition to the museum in the form of the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims (Kokuritsu Hiroshima genbaku shibotsuhsa tsuitou heiwa kinenkan), located in the Peace Park proper. The building appears as if buried in the ground, with only its roof exposed. Visitors first descend a flight of stairs toward the entrance. Once inside, visitors continue their descent on a gently spiraling ramp leading to the lower level. Before entering the main hall, one encounters a panel referring to the hibakusha as ‘‘toutoi gisei,’’ or sacred sacrifice. The phrase ‘‘sacred sacrifice’’ is also repeated in the brochure available at the entrance of the Memorial Hall and on the Web site of the Memorial Hall: ‘‘The Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims is an effort by the Japanese national government to remember and mourn the sacred sacrifice of the atomic bomb victims.’’105 The national institution thus interprets the victims of the bomb as ‘‘sacrifices,’’ but it never specifies on whose behalf these sacrifices were committed. Some hibakushas voiced uncertainty about the intention of the national government’s plans to build another memorial hall fifty years after the bombing. The reasoning behind the decision to build the hall remains obscure; the literature distributed by the government reiterates the importance of recognizing the victims’ ‘‘sacrifice,’’ and expresses ‘‘Japan’s desire for genuine and lasting peace,’’106 but does not explain the motivations for undertaking the project at this particular point in time. Other hibakushas were even more skeptical. Because the park is the property of the city, final approval for construction of the Memorial Hall lay with the citizens and municipal leaders of Hiroshima. One outspoken hibakusha, Tsuboi Tadashi, chairperson of the Hiroshima

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Confederation of A-bomb and H-bomb Sufferers Organizations, stated at an international symposium in 2004, held by the Hiroshima Peace Institute, that the hibakusha group negotiated with the national government, stipulating that unless the government inserted language acknowledging that the atomic bomb was the result of the nation’s ‘‘wrong decisions’’ (ayamatta kokusaku), they would not support the construction of the National Memorial Hall. This is an example of hibakushas resisting incorporation within a national narrative. They want to resist restricting survivors’ experiences to identification with ‘‘Japan,’’ and to seek solidarity with other hibakushas from around the world suffering from radiation exposure and nuclear bomb tests. If radiation is unconfined by national borders, neither should such borders divide survivors; rather, they should be united in their fight against radiation. Hiroshima, as Foard has argued above, not being confined by a nation-state framework, is making a universal claim—advocating world peace based upon the hibakushas’ experiences. As we saw in the previous chapter, despite the central government’s long neglect and marginalization of the hibakusha, the hibakusha themselves have grasped that their experiences must not be assimilated into the limiting narrative of any particular country or closed community. Rather, they are to be shared by all those concerned about our continued existence in the midst of nuclear weaponry. The hibakusha seek an open community based upon the memory of the atomic bombing. As Foard suggests, creating such a new community, the hibakusha are ‘‘like a guerrilla resistance, they have found unity with others in a common enemy—‘the Bomb’—that has invaded Hiroshima particularly and the consciousness of humanity universally.’’107 Foard concludes that the Hiroshima commemoration thus embodies a ‘‘rejection of hegemonic meaning.’’108 In avoiding the imposition of meaning upon the dead, the Hiroshima commemoration not only exhibits a new mode for commemorating mass deaths; it also exhibits dialogical relations with the dead. Evidence of this exercise of dialogue lies in the shift in character undergone by the city of Hiroshima itself. Though it once flourished as a military city, Hiroshima now embraces an identity as a city of peace. As we have seen when examining the construction of the national institution within the Peace Memorial Park, the city resists being assimilated by a national narrative and thereby exploited in the pursuit of national interests. Through its resistance, the Hiroshima municipal museum protects the dead, giving their voices a space in which

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to be heard and engaged. This space, though local and specific, thus enables an ongoing and open dialogue with the dead, marking a commemoration through which a universal community of memory may emerge.

Conclusion Yasukuni enshrines, among its 2,460,000 deified spirits, the spirits of civilians. For example, fourteen hundred children who drowned when a U.S. submarine attacked their evacuation ship from Okinawa in 1944 are enshrined there. In addition to these children, Yasukuni also includes the spirits of approximately two thousand civilians who were attacked by another U.S. submarine as they made their way from Singapore to Japan in 1945, as well as those of nine female telephone operators who chose to commit suicide as the Soviets prepared to invade Sakhalin. All of these civilians’ deaths are described at the shrine as sacrifices to the nation,109 an explanation that draws repeatedly upon the myth of the war experience, obscuring the horrific nature of their violent deaths with shrouds of nationalistic glory and noble, selfsacrificial sentiments. By interpreting the deaths of those lost in wartime in this way, the Yasukuni narrative imposes a meaning on the dead, assimilating the dead as elements of sacrifice for the nation, and commemorating— indeed deifying—them through the religious trappings of the emperor cult.110 Understood as sacrifices, these deaths are thus framed as voluntary and noble. What goes unmentioned here is the fact that soldiers were often conscripted, with severe punishments doled out for those attempting to evade service.111 The narrow understanding of the war and the war dead proffered at Yasukuni fails to disclose the conditions that brought these soldiers to their allegedly voluntary and noble deaths, and it does not acknowledge the ideological interests of the culture of emperor worship that persuaded other soldiers to lay down their lives in service to the nation. In obscuring such matters, the Yasukuni shrine narrative imposes its monological discourse and advances its nationalistic interests. In contrast, Hiroshima city, though secular, exhibits dimensions of religious rituals in its annual ceremony. With its geographical distance from Tokyo (seat of the central government), Hiroshima also enjoys a psychological distance from the state, a fact supporting its efforts to

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produce a narrative that goes beyond national borders. Whereas the Yasukuni narrative perceives war as well as the war dead from a limited perspective, Hiroshima, rejecting the imposition of a particular meaning, seeks a dialectical relation with the dead. Resisting the temptation to impose a definite and predetermined interpretation on the dead allows for Hiroshima’s commemoration to present the unmitigated tragedy of nuclear violence and to exposes the ‘‘sheer horror’’ of the bombing experience.112 Because these deaths are presented as meaningless, visitors are exposed to the meaninglessness of violence done to the victims’ bodies. It is this meaningless horror to which the hibakusha still respond today. Indeed, perhaps the most salient element of the Hiroshima commemoration comes from the hibakushas’ unyielding determination not to let the horrors of the bombing befall others. This sentiment is in their hearts and minds, and is explicit in their words: ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation.’’113 Their resolution to abolish nuclear weaponry uncompromisingly refuses to serve the interests of nation-states, and continues to call for solidarity among other radiation victims and sympathizers across all socially constructed lines, and beyond national borders. In contrast with the monological Yasukuni narrative, the Hiroshima narrative thus transgresses national, racial, and ideological boundaries—the boundaries often represented by the image of the mushroom cloud—while respecting the ‘‘silence’’ of the dead through its resistance to giving meaning to their deaths. The dead provide resources for disrupting boundaries, not only through their otherworldly existence, but also by calling into question nationalistic, mythical, and heroic narratives. A dialogue with the dead of the sort exemplified by the hibakushas’ vow to abolish nuclear weaponry draws strength from the dead to resist and unsettle the conditions of this world, replacing them with an evolving vision of a different world—a world bound not by the image of the mushroom cloud, but by a sympathy for others that knows no earthly bounds.

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part ii

Religious Interpretations

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3 Beyond Good and Evil ko¯ ji shigenobu and the true pure land understanding of the atomic bombing

On what condition does goodness exist beyond all calculation? On the condition that goodness forget itself, that the movement be a movement of the gift that renounces itself, hence a movement of infinite love. — j ac q u e s d e r r id a , The Gift of Death

Religion and the Atomic Bombing Ian Buruma has written that ‘‘religion was linked to the nuclear bombs from the beginning.’’1 Unprecedented in the scope of their devastation, and so excessive in their horror as to be beyond the purview of everyday language, the explosions of the atomic bombs have often been described and interpreted in religious language. Journalist William Leonard Laurence, covering the Manhattan Project in 1945, was near the detonation site of the first atomic bomb in Alamogordo, New Mexico, on July 16, 1945. Just ‘‘twenty miles away on Compania Hill,’’2 he described the moment of the blast: ‘‘It was as though the earth had opened and the skies had split. One felt as though one were present at the moment of creation when God said: ‘Let there be light.’ ’’3 Laurence’s book about the experience, Dawn Over Zero, opens with a chapter entitled ‘‘Genesis’’ and concludes with ‘‘Armageddon.’’ J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the chief scientists leading the Manhattan Project, also resorted to religious language in describing the Alamogordo test, citing Bhagavad-Gita. ‘‘If the radiance of a thousand suns/Were to burst into the sky/That would be like/The splendor of the Mighty One.’’ When the ‘‘full enormity of the explosion dawned on Oppenheimer,’’ he again returned to this sacred text: ‘‘I am become

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Death, the shatterer of worlds.’’4 This name of this first test further bore out its religious quality: ‘‘The Trinity.’’ We have seen that the ethics of the hibakusha is grounded in their impulse for self-reflection and that commemoration as practiced at Hiroshima’s Peace Memorial Museum—a secular institution—exhibits a religious aspect, for it promotes transethical relations in the form of dialogue with the dead.5 Now, through examination of explicitly religious interpretations of the atomic bombings in this and the following chapter, we may discern the manner in which religious interpretations, particularly those of hibakushas, contribute to the construction of an inclusive community of memory through this emphasis on selfreflection. We have already seen how nation and religion are often intertwined. But, of course, religion is not always congruent with nation, and neither are religious sentiments and ideas always in the service of nationalism. Discerning the religious resources for self-reflection will reveal at least one way in which religious traditions offer resources for approaching the bombing beyond the nation-state framework. Buruma finds religious interpretations of the atomic bombing problematic. ‘‘The trouble with focusing on God, sin, transgression and other moral or religious aspects of this [religious] strategy is that it makes it very hard to discuss the politics and the historical circumstances dispassionately. This is especially true when politicians, newspaper columnists, peace activists and veterans enter the debate. Too often emotional moralism sets the tone.’’6 To bolster his point, Buruma offers examples in which ‘‘God language’’ is used in support of arguments both to condemn and to condone the decision to drop the bombs. For instance, some condemn the nuclear attacks as a ‘‘sin against God and [hu]man,’’ in conjunction with the argument that the attacks were ‘‘unnecessary and politically reprehensible.’’ On the other hand, those believing that political exigencies were not sufficient to justify the bombing tend to take God on their side: ‘‘The bombs must show that God was on our side, that only the purest of motives prevailed.’’7 Buruma is right to suggest that religious language can serve to inject emotional heat into a debate in which dispassion and ‘‘objectivity’’ are called for. And it is true that appeals to religion can be used in support of most any political position. Together, these problems may indicate why religious interpretations of the bombings have to date been left so underexamined.

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These genuine critiques of religious language notwithstanding, Buruma’s otherwise subtle commentary on the bombings fails to appreciate the resources for critical self-reflection and the building of a community of memory offered by religious traditions. In focusing on religious interpretations of the atomic bombing by Ko¯ji Shigenobu8 in this chapter and Nagai Takashi in the following chapter, I want to follow a twofold trajectory, first delineating the key differences between religious and national communities, and then articulating the hitherto overlooked contributions of religious traditions and patterns of interpretation to the atomic bomb discourse. In following this itinerary, my intent is not to offer a religious apologia. Rather, I mean to investigate the way in which religious languages and worldviews help humans come to terms with the unprecedented historical event of the atomic bombings, and to stimulate and support an ethic of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation.’’

Hiroshima Aki Monto: True Pure Land Buddhist Adherents John Hersey’s Hiroshima, a classic of atomic-bomb literature, first appeared in The New Yorker a year after the bombing. It comprises interviews with a Methodist minister, Catholic priests, and laypeople affiliated with both traditions. Although Hersey’s accounts may give the impression that Hiroshima, like Nagasaki, has a significant Christian population, the people of Hiroshima have for centuries been known as Aki monto (‘‘Hiroshima believers’’)9 for their adamant adherence to Jo¯do shinshu¯, or True Pure Land Buddhism.10 James H. Foard estimates that as of 1994, 80 percent of Hiroshima residents belong to this school of Buddhism.11 And unlike Nagasaki, whose religious culture has been captured in Nagai Takashi’s prolific writings, the religious ethos of Hiroshima, and the theological interpretation of the bombing that has arisen from this particular context, has yet to be written. Hiroshima’s collective sentiment concerning the atomic bombing in contrast to that of Nagasaki has been characterized with the phrase ‘‘wrathful Hiroshima, prayerful Nagasaki’’ (ikari no Hiroshima, inori no Nagasaki). This description can be attributed to a widely pervasive, if stereotypical, perception of the citizens of Hiroshima as more inclined toward political involvement and agitation, whereas Nagasaki is more ‘‘religious’’ and peaceful. As we will see in the following chapter, Nagai’s interpretation of the atomic bombing has largely determined the tone

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of the Nagasaki narrative. But according to acclaimed Hiroshima hibakusha poet Kurihara Sadako, best known for her poem ‘‘Umashimenkana’’ (‘‘We Shall Bring Forth New Life’’), the differing collective attitudes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki cannot be attributed to their respective predominant religions. ‘‘While Nagasaki is known for Catholic perseverance and repentance,’’ writes the poet, ‘‘Hiroshima is also known for Aki monto, or the Pure Land Sect followers rebellious to authority, which is the religion of karmic retribution and resignation. Both Nagasaki and Hiroshima were under the same spell of tradition.’’12 The ‘‘spell’’ of religion, Kurihara believes, is an impediment to the antinuclear peace movement for which Hiroshima is known; religion is a sedative, promoting passivism rather than activism. Yet, though the religious understanding of the atomic bombing among Hiroshima’s True Pure Land Buddhists is not widely known, one contention of this chapter is that a Buddhist sensibility has in fact stimulated, rather than discouraged, Hiroshima’s acclaimed peace movement. For example, True Pure Land temples have organized several meetings in which hibakushas share their atomic bomb experiences, and they have provided accommodations for hibakushas who have traveled from overseas for medical treatment in Hiroshima. Lack of public recognition of such political and philanthropic True Pure Land activities has to do in part with the fact that the community lacks a charismatic and prolific public intellectual such as Nagai Takashi.13 Tracing the thought of Shinran, founder of the school of True Pure Land Buddhism, on human nature, evil, and ethics reveals that it forms a background for Ko¯ ji’s interpretation. Ko¯ ji understands the atomic bombing as a consequence of ayamachi, or human moral errors— mistakes made by Hiroshima residents, Japanese citizens, and humankind in general. Ko¯ji’s True Pure Land Buddhist understanding of the atomic bombing does not therefore compel imputation of responsibility for use of the atomic bombs and its consequences, but in stressing the unenlightened nature of human beings and reminding us of our codependent relations to each other, it sees this event as a matter of shared responsibility—the responsibility of all people.

The Emergence of Pure Land Buddhism According to the 2005 census, conducted by the Monbu Kagaku sho¯ (Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology), the

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population of Japan was 125,730,148.14 Those claiming to be adherents to Shinto numbered 107,020,747; Buddhists numbered 91,260,273, followed by 2,595,397 Christians and 9,917,555 ‘‘others.’’15 These statistics show that 85 percent of the population identifies as Shinto believers, while 73 percent identify as Buddhist adherents. The numbers here obviously exceed the total population; in other words, Shinto and Buddhism—at least in this contemporary setting16 —are not taken to be mutually exclusive faiths among their adherents. Further complicating the religious landscape of Japan is the fact that in both Shinto and Buddhism, the ritual dimensions of practice are generally considered more important than the verbal confession of faith. Consequently, although True Pure Land Buddhism is known to be ‘‘single-minded’’ (ikko¯), it is not uncommon for the adherents to participate in certain Shinto rituals and festivals, such as visiting a shrine on New Year (hatsumoude) or presenting newborn babies to Shinto deities (omiya mairi). Buddhism came to Japan from China in the sixth century via the Korean Peninsula. A dispute among the powerful clans in Japan erupted over whether the state should accept this new foreign religion. Under the reign of his aunt, Empress Suiko (r. 592–628), Prince Regent Sho¯toku (573–621), who was later venerated as a Buddhist saint, would come to accept Buddhism, in part, for political reasons17 and in order to pursue intellectual curiosity.18 However mixed his motives, it is clear that Sho¯toku undertook to incorporate Buddhism into the Japanese religious landscape as a way of keeping adherents of whatever tradition appeased, and thus ensuring sociopolitical stability. As this example suggests, then, ‘‘the aim of the government in sponsoring Buddhism was not the salvation of the people but the protection of the state.’’19 Indeed, Sho¯ toku ‘‘made every effort to maintain a proper balance among Shinto, Confucianism, and Buddhism.’’20 Although Buddhism was, in its introduction to Japan, adopted partly out of political exigency, during the seventh and eighth centuries, Buddhist institutions gained influence in the political realm of Nara, then the capital of Japan. In order to evade interference from Buddhist institutions, Emperor Kammu (737–806) moved the capital from Nara to Heian (present-day Kyoto) in 794. To divest the power of the Nara schools even more, the Heian court implemented a new ordination system (kanjo¯), which gave the court the authority to ordain monks—a

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privilege that during this time period had been monopolized and enjoyed only by the temples in Nara.21 This ordination right was eventually given to Enryaku-ji, a main temple of the Tendai (Ti’ien-t’ai) school, newly established by Saicho¯ (767–822), a Buddhist monk who would bring the Tendai teachings to Japan. Unlike the teachings of Hosso¯, Kegon, and Ritsu,22 prevalent in the old capital of Nara and stressing individual’s efforts for salvation, the Tendai teachings introduced by Saicho¯ 23 advocated a more inclusive view of salvation extending to all sentient beings.24 Upon his return from China, Saicho¯ built the temple of Enryaku-ji on Mount Hiei, located northeast of the capital.25 Mount Hiei thus became the central site for the Tendai school.26 It was after Saicho¯’s death that Enryaku-ji was finally granted ordination rights from the Heian court. With the support of this political authority, the Tendai school quickly rose to power. It was on Mount Hiei that both Ho¯nen (1133–1212), the founder of Pure Land Buddhism (Jo¯do-shu), and Shinran (1173–1262), the founder of True Pure Land Buddhism, served as, or were trained to become, Tendai monks. With its increase of power, the Tendai school also suffered moral decay as concern for the common person’s salvation gave way to catering to wealthy aristocrats willing to pay hefty sums for rituals meant to ensure their earthly well-being. Under these circumstances, young clergymen sought spiritual guidance outside traditional Tendai teachings, and became attracted to the newly introduced idea of Amida Buddha.27 The name Amida Buddha is a transliteration from the Sanskrit Amita¯bha to the Chinese Amituo or Amituo fo (Amida or Amida butsu in Japanese). Legend suggests that prior to attaining enlightenment, Amida was a bodhisattva named Ho¯zo¯ (Dharma¯kara) who made fortyeight vows to save all sentient beings.28 After making these vows, Ho¯zo¯ attained enlightenment and became Amida Buddha. ‘‘As promised in his [Amida’s] vows,’’ scholar of Buddhism Hisao Inagaki writes, ‘‘he became the Buddha of Infinite Light (Amita¯ bha) and Infinite Life (Amita¯yus). . . . His land of bliss is suffused with brilliant, pure light, and full of happiness.’’29 This teaching of Amida took root in China, spread from there throughout East Asia. The teachings of Amida grew in prominence during the late Heian period, becoming the center of an independent school called Pure Land Buddhism. This school of thought was based upon the belief that Amida resides in the ‘‘pure’’ realm of Sukha¯vatı¯ (Sanskrit for ‘‘possessed of

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happiness’’),30 as opposed to the impure land of the unenlightened. According to Inagaki’s citation from the Smaller Sutra, a sacred Buddhist text, Amida’s realm is located ‘‘a hundred thousand koti of Buddhalands away from here to the west,’’31 and for this reason is also referred to as saiho¯ jo¯do, or the Western Paradise. The Buddhist imagination captures the Pure Land in evocative imagery; it is ‘‘vast in extent, unsurpassed and supremely wonderful,’’ populated by bodhisattvas and sages.32 Initially, the Pure Land was understood to ‘‘accept ordinary, unenlightened beings and enable them to practise the Way under the most favourable conditions and eventually to attain Enlightenment.’’33 Over time, however, rebirth in Amida’s Pure Land itself, rather than the attainment of enlightenment, became the aim of this practice and belief. This shift of focus—away from attaining enlightenment through understanding complex Buddhist teachings and toward rigorous training to rebirth in the Pure Land through faith in Amida’s mercy—was indeed a revolution of Copernican proportions in Buddhist soteriology. Originally, in Buddhism, salvation consisted in escaping reincarnation and samsara, or the suffering of this world, moving beyond the karmic cycle of life and death in the attainment of nirvana. In this sense, salvation and enlightenment are synonymous and inseparable. Amida’s teachings introduced a wedge into this soteriological system in the form of a separation of enlightenment from salvation. This distinction, along with the popularity of the Amida practice,34 eventually rendered enlightenment less significant than salvation.35 The basis for the emphasis on salvation in Amida belief is attributed to the forty-eight vows that the bodhisattva Ho¯zo¯ made prior to becoming a Buddha. Among these forty-eight, the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth vows address the issue of salvation; the eighteenth, in particular, is regarded as a primary teaching in Japanese Pure Land Buddhism: If, when I attain Buddhahood, sentient beings in the lands of the ten directions who sincerely and joyfully entrust themselves to me, desire to be born in my land, and call my Name even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain perfect Enlightenment. Excluded, however, are those who commit the five gravest offences and abuse the right Dharma.36

The significance of this vow lies in its inclusive scope of salvation and its exoteric instructions for attaining it. The three requirements for

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salvation explicated here are: sincere and joyful entrustment of oneself to Amida Buddha, that is, submission to Amida’s Power (tariki); one’s desire to be born in Amida’s Pure Land; and recitation of Amida’s Name as few as ten times in one’s life. Based upon this scriptural evidence, recitation of Amida’s Name constitutes an important component for the Pure Land practice. Shinran, the founder of the True Pure Land school, which we will discuss, explains the importance of the chanting practice: The creating of this land is to guide all sentient beings. Though the land be exquisite, if it is difficult for beings to be born there, it would go against the intent of the great compassion and the great vow. . . . Hence, in order that all foolish beings, both good and evil, may equally be born and that they may all aspire for the land of bliss, I shall make simply the utterance of the three characters of the Name, A-mi-da, the special cause for birth therein.37

This expansive soteriological vision was a response to the common people’s yearning for salvation during an era in which Buddhists in Japan believed that they had entered the time of mappo¯, or the end of the Law. According to this belief, after the death of Shakamuni Buddha (Siddhartha Gautama), there was a period of sho¯bo¯, when the Buddha’s teaching was correctly transmitted, followed by zo¯ho¯, during which only a few people correctly understood the Buddha’s teaching. The final period is mappo¯, in which no one correctly understands the teaching and, consequently, no salvation is granted.38 Given the elimination of the prospect of salvation, together with the political turmoil of the late twelfth century as the Heian court’s rule came to an end and the Kamakura shogunate rose to power, people were yearning for some hope of being saved. This mixture of pessimism and desire for salvation characterized the cultural climate, pervading the minds of both the common people as well as some high-rank officers. Yet the Tendai monk Ho¯nen was one of the few who was acutely aware of growing concerns for the mappo¯ period among the non-elite population—for whose salvation the Tendai Buddhist institution did not show much interest. Gradually, Ho¯nen became drawn to the Amida teachings, which addressed the question of salvation during the time of mappo¯, and found the practice of nembutsu (the chanting of ‘‘Namu Amida Butsu’’ or Venerable Amida Buddha) to encapsulate these teachings. Since this chanting practice does not

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require years of scriptural study, it is a practice available to anyone— even peasants as they are engaged in farming. Ho¯nen’s sympathy for the commoners led him to preach on Pure Land scriptures and its doctrine to nonscholarly commoners, and to encourage them to practice nembutsu chanting. The growing popularity of Ho¯ nen’s Amida teachings among the non-elites and commoners, however, threatened the Tendai authority, and stimulated antagonism within the Tendai institution. Consequently, the reigning shogunate exiled Ho¯nen and his disciples. Among them was Shinran. Like Ho¯ nen, Shinran had trained at Mount Hiei to be a Tendai monk. While Ho¯nen was exiled to Shikoku Island, relatively close to the capital Kyoto, known for its mild weather, Shinran was sent to Echigo (present-day Niigata prefecture), a region further from the capital, and known for its severe cold and great snowfalls in winter. Although Ho¯nen was the leader of this nembutsu movement among the common people, he was already an established monk at Mount Hiei and was well respected, which most likely resulted in the rather gentle sentence handed down to Ho¯nen, who was to be exiled for a shorter time than was Shinran. In Echigo, despite his status as a layperson, Shinran continued to preach the Amida teachings. The experience of exile, however, reaffirmed to Shinran the importance of faith. He believed his teaching of faith alone to be more compelling in the absence of a Buddhist title and institutional affiliation. During this period of exile, he married a former nun, Eshin’ni, and had several children with her. While Shinran was a faithful disciple to Ho¯nen throughout his life, his understanding of the Amida belief diverged from that of Ho¯nen. Sinran’s own thoughts were formulated during his exile in Echigo and the time he spent spreading his own understanding of Pure Land Buddhism, later to be called True Pure Land, in the Kanto¯ area. In contrast to Ho¯ nen, who advocated repetitive chanting, Shinran claimed that Amida’s name need not be repeated. His repudiation of repetitive chanting grew from a concern that chanting may lead to the loss of meaning, putting focus on empty repetition rather than on the content of the words. On the contrary, he emphasized the power of Amida’s name: if one utters Amida’s name only once, as one surrenders completely to Amida’s salvific efficacy, Amida will hear it. The emphasis, therefore, should not be placed on the number of repetitions in a chant, but the sincerity of faith in which Amida’s name is recited.

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Calling into question the chanting practice established by his teacher Ho¯nen, Shinran further develops his thought on faith. For Shinran, as we have seen, faith in Amida Buddha is not realized in chanting alone. In order to venerate Amida wholeheartedly, faith must be founded upon realization of one’s helplessness. In other words, absolute dependence on Amida requires one to deny one’s own power for salvation. Belief that one’s own efforts can secure salvation, Shinran thought, means failing to recognize Amida’s mercy and salvific power: ‘‘You should not think that you deserve to attain birth because you are good. You cannot be born into the true and real fulfilled land through such self-power calculation. I have been taught that with shinjin [true entrusting]39 of self-power a person can attain birth only in the realm of indolence, the borderland, the womb-palace, or the city of doubt.’’40 For this reason, Shinran holds that the power expressed in the chanting of Amida’s name should not be attributed to oneself and one’s efforts, but to Amida’s mercy. Chanting is granted through Amida’s great Compassion, and therefore is a mystery (myo¯ go¯ fushigi) beyond human comprehension. Joseph M. Kitagawa explains Shinran’s thought on faith: ‘‘After testing all other paths and disciplines, there was nothing left for him [Shinran] except to believe in the mercy of Amida. Accordingly, he believed it is not man who ‘chooses’ Amida, but rather it was Amida’s Original Vow which ‘chose’ all beings to be saved.’’41 Shinran believes that even though universal salvation is promised in the Vows, Amida’s mercy alone can save humans; salvation is not the product of human effort. In sum, faith in Amida—manifested through chanting as a form of submission to Amida—is required for salvation. While Ho¯nen encourages the chanting practice as an opportunity to appreciate the power of the Name, Shinran asserts that chanting is an expression of Amida’s work through the believer. The unenlightened person is incapable of achieving salvation by oneself and must entrust oneself to Amida’s power. Shinran’s understanding, though compelling, gives rise to questions of human agency. If it is not me who utters Amida’s Name, what is my responsibility as an agent? Is the very idea of agency— based upon rationality and free will—a fiction? The question of human responsibility as linked to agency, though often taken for granted as the source of moral accountability, is called into question by Shinran, and will resurface in our examination of Ko¯ji’s interpretation of the atomic bombing. Meanwhile, we will investigate Shinran’s

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understanding of human agency in relation to Amida’s salvific Power—an understanding that provides background for Ko¯ji’s ethic of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation.’’

Shinran’s Soteriology: Salvation and Human Agency ‘‘Akunin sho¯ki’’ is the phrase most frequently used to express Shinran’s thought on salvation. It is found in Tan’nisho¯, a collection of Shinran’s purported sayings compiled by his disciple, Yuien.42 The phrase encapsulates Shinran’s idea that ‘‘even the good person realizes birth [i.e., rebirth in the Pure Land]—what need is there to speak of the evil person!’’43 This is to say, if Amida saves the good person, the evil person will be certainly saved. With this unusual idea, Shinran here challenges commonsense notions of good and evil. Shinran is aware that his words will be seen as controversial, the very opposite of the common sense: ‘‘People in the world commonly say, ‘Even the evil person is born [in the Pure Land]—what need is there to speak of the good person?’ ’’44 Indeed, the conventional understanding is that good deeds will be rewarded, and that religions often promise such reward, if not in this life, then in the afterlife. This commonsense notion is what Shinran calls into question: If one does good with the intention of obtaining a reward, one not only presumes to know that Amida will grant salvation, but also believes in one’s own power over one’s actions and their consequences. This is to say that for Shinran, the ‘‘good’’ person believes in oneself, acts in ‘‘self-power,’’ and thereby trusts one’s own efforts to attain salvation—proof that he does not entrust himself entirely to Amida. By contrast, Shinran continues, one who, rather than being selfreliant and confident in his goodness, acknowledges his ‘‘evil’’ ways, acceding to his sinfulness and thus accepting his helplessness, is in a state of complete dependence on Amida’s mercy.45 While the ‘‘good’’ person, entrusting in his own ability to do good, thereby precludes submission to Amida’s mercy, the ‘‘evil’’ person who is aware of her sinfulness is more aptly positioned to entrust herself to Amida. ‘‘The person who performs good acts in self-power, because he lacks the heart that entrusts totally to Other Power [tariki], is not (in accord with) Amida’s Primal Vow. However, when a person overturns his heart of self-power and entrusts himself to Other Power, he will realize birth in the true fulfilled land.’’46

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A similar paradox is found in the Christian tradition, where the ‘‘good’’ person is not necessarily commended in the eyes of God: Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’’ But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even look up to heaven, but was beating his breast and saying, ‘‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’’ I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other; for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.47

The story tells us that God favors the one who implores the mercy of God over the one who, confident in his own goodness, does not seek mercy but rather expects reward. What this parable and Shinran’s words tell us challenges commonsense ethics, which links goodness with reward. It is difficult to find any faults with the Pharisee, observing the Commandments and assiduously fasting and tithing—but precisely because he does not discern his own faults, he exalts himself rather than humbly seeking God’s mercy. For Christians and Buddhists, then, observance of rules and regulations spelled out in sacred texts does not suffice for attaining salvation, and may even impede it. Rather, what is essential is to discern and acknowledge one’s own sinfulness or fallibility before the transcendent being. These religious traditions thus offer the ethical insight that awareness and admission of one’s own sinful or unenlightened nature is liberating. This awareness in turn encourages critical self-reflection in everyday life,48 and an accompanying sense of humility. In both religious traditions, then, what is reproachable is not good works—chanting, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, and the like—but misplaced faith in oneself, such as the Pharisee’s arrogant self-satisfaction. On the other hand, what is commended is the evil person’s dependency on Amida or the sinful tax collector’s humility before God. The logic behind these comparable stories may invite misunderstanding: the evil person’s way is an easier path to salvation; not abiding by any regulation, the one who repents in the end will secure reward. Indeed, after his idea of ‘‘akunin sho¯ki’’ became widespread, Shinran repeatedly had to correct the misunderstanding that his teachings encouraged evil acts.49 On the other hand, according to Shinran, as soon as one tries to

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do good, the agent’s tendency toward self-reliance in pursuing and bringing about good results taints the goodness of the agent. For the intention to do good already takes for granted reliance on one’s own power to bring about good, and therefore marks a failure fully to entrust oneself to Amida’s exclusive salvific power. Again, Shinran does not discourage good actions as such, but rather the attitude that sees good actions as proof of one’s goodness and self-efficacy. How, then, does one avoid such self-reliance? Shinran advocates avoidance of ‘‘calculation’’ (hakarigoto), or acting in the interest of achieving salvation. Rather, one should act from jinen, ‘‘spontaneous working.’’50 Shinran glosses jinen as ‘‘to be made to become so’’: ‘‘To be made to become so’’ means that without the practicer’s calculating in any way whatsoever, all that practicer’s past, present, and future evil karma is transformed into the highest good. ‘‘To be transformed’’ means that evil karma, without being nullified or eradicated, is made into the highest good, just as all waters, upon entering the great ocean, immediately become ocean water. We are made to acquire the Tathagata’s virtues through entrusting ourselves to the Vow-power; hence the expression, ‘‘made to become so.’’51

Much as an ice cube, without will or intention, melts into water, revealing two aspects of a single substance, so too may evil, beyond human will, be ‘‘transformed’’ into good. ‘‘Jinen,’’ continues Shinran, ‘‘means that from the very beginning one is made to become so. Amida’s Vow is, from the very beginning, designed to have each one entrust oneself in Namu-Amida-butsu and be received in the Pure Land; none of this is through the practicer’s calculation.’’52 Jinen is formless, Shinran claims, as ‘‘the supreme Buddha is formless, and because of being formless is called jinen. . . . In order to make us realize that the true Buddha is formless, it is expressly called Amida Buddha.’’53 Overall, jinen is what we are made to be, that is, a state of formlessness, uninfluenced by our calculations, self-reliance, or hope for reward. Shinran’s emphasis on jinen resonates with the Jesus’s admonition to his disciples: ‘‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.’’54 Jesus goes on to say, ‘‘Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.’’55 In

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contrast with the uncalculated behavior of children is the avaricious calculation of certain wealthy persons. A wealthy man came to Jesus and posed the question, ‘‘Teacher, what good deed must I do to have eternal life?’’56 The answer Jesus gives is that the man must disown all of his worldly possessions, giving them to the poor. Upon hearing this, the man is departs in sadness, unwilling to renounce his earthly possessions in exchange for eternal life. This episode not only suggests that excessive wealth may hinder one from attaining eternal life; it also exhibits human helplessness. What might befall a man who, having giving his possessions to the poor, has no earthly wealth to rely upon? What is really left under his control? Willing to do the good in both religious traditions under investigation here is encouraged but not sufficient, since what enables one to do good is not always under one’s control. Shinran especially reprimands humans’ arrogance in trusting in their capability for doing good. He asserts that the good done by humans is done through them by Amida. Shinran explains the relations between good and hakarai: To think of the two, good and evil, in terms of two modes, aid and hindrance to birth, interposing one’s own designs (hakarai), is to endeavor in acts to bring about birth according to one’s own judgments and to make the nembutsu one utters one’s own practice, without relying on the inconceivable [working] of the Vow. Such a person, further, does not entrust himself to the inconceivable [working] of the Name either.57

Shinran further elaborates the notions of jinen and hakarai in relation to nembutsu (chanting) and the good, in terms that may at first appear paradoxical. ‘‘The nembutsu, for the practicer, is not-practice and not-good. Since it must not be practiced out of one’s own calculation (hakarai), it is called ‘not-practice.’ Since it is also not a good act performed out of one’s own calculation, it is called ‘not-good.’ ’’58 Since both ‘‘practice’’ and ‘‘good’’ imply calculation and thus self-reliance, chanting must be a spontaneous expression—neither a practice nor a good. Entrusting oneself to Amida means avoiding calculation in the interest of achieving salvation, for hakarai only betrays one’s lack of trust in Amida’s salvific Power. Shinran explains his disdain for hakarai: ‘‘Our coming to say the nembutsu, entrusting ourselves [without any doubt] that, saved by the inconceivable [working] of Amida’s great Vow of great compassion, we

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will go out from birth-and-death, is itself the Tatha¯gata’s working (hakarai); when we realize this, then our own efforts and designs (hakarai) are not in the least involved.’’59 Human actions worth being called good come always and solely from Amida, regardless of our intention. We are thus returned to the question of where human responsibility is located in acts of good and evil.

Beyond Good and Evil in Shinran If good acts are all initiated by Amida, and executed through us as manifestations of Amida’s mercy, human moral accountability is nullified. According to Shinran, we thus need to reconstruct our notion of good as well as evil. Although the traditional Buddhist belief rejects as illusory the binary worldview of good versus evil, Shinran does not entirely deny the distinctions between good acts and bad. Instead, he renounces our conscious involvement in discerning good from bad. It may sound odd to suggest that we do not choose good or evil actions. But a conversation between Shinran and Yuien, his disciple and also the editor of Tan’nisho¯, represents Shinran’s provocative thoughts on human agency.60 One day Shinran asked Yuien if he was willing to obey Shinran’s words. As a devout disciple of Shinran, Yuien, without hesitation, answered in the affirmative. Shinran again asked if Yuien would do exactly what Shinran wanted him to do. Yuien’s reply was again, ‘‘Yes.’’ Shinran then presented his disciple with a disturbing request: ‘‘To begin with, would you kill one thousand people for me? If this is done, your birth [in the Pure Land] will be settled.’’61 Yuien, taken by surprise, declined to fulfill Shinran’s favor and said, ‘‘Although these are your words, I do not think I can kill even one person.’’ ‘‘Then why do you claim,’’ demands Shinran, ‘‘that you will not diverge from what [I,] Shinran, say?’’ He goes on, ‘‘By this you should realize: If everything were left up to your will [to determine], then upon my saying, ‘For the sake of birth kill a thousand people,’ you would immediately kill.’’62 In the same manner that any good act does not come out of our own hakarai, Shinran holds that even evil acts do not derive from our will, but rather from karmic causation. Shinran attributes evil acts, as well as good, to karma. ‘‘Because you lack the karmic cause enabling you to fulfill [what I said], even with a single person, you do not inflict harm. It is not that you do not kill because your own heart is good.’’63 Neither evil nor good is a product

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of one’s own deliberation; evil acts are karmically caused, beyond our will. ‘‘Good thoughts arise,’’ repeats Shinran, ‘‘through the prompting of past good; evil comes to be thought and performed through the working of evil karma.’’64 Shinran continues to explain the way in which karma influences our lives: ‘‘it may happen that a person kill a hundred or a thousand people, even though he desires not to inflict harm on anyone.’’65 Shinran’s understanding of karmic evil is not simply to make it coherent with his thought of good. His concern for those who do not intend to harm others yet end up executing evil is rooted in his experiences during the exile to Echigo and the following years spent in the Kanto¯ area. During these times, he encountered people he would never have met had he stayed in Mount Hiei—fishers and hunters. They were tormented by the prospect of never achieving salvation, due to their making a living by taking the lives of other beings—a karmically ‘‘evil’’ occupation from a Buddhist perspective, and an unclean one according to social convention. Consequently, fishers and hunters were discriminated against socially and excluded from religious communities. The sorrow and agony Shinran encountered during this time influenced his thought. He realized that the circumstances we are born into—which are beyond our choice—dictate our lives. Beyond such contingencies, he did not recognize any differences between himself and these others: ‘‘If the karmic cause that it be so prompts us, we will commit any kind of act.’’66 ‘‘Even evil committed while presuming upon the Vow occurs through the prompting of past karma.’’67 Therefore, he concludes that evil acts must not be attributed to one’s disposition, but to one’s environment and the karma that determines one’s particular situation. As we will see, impugning evil to an individual is integral to Ko¯ji Shigenobu’s interpretation of the atomic bombing, as is humility in front of the Other Power.

Reverend Ko¯ji Shigenobu’s Interpretation As we have noted, Hiroshima is known for its Aki monto, adamant followers of True Pure Land Buddhism. Though lacking a religiously inclined public intellectual comparable to Nagasaki’s Nagai Takashi, interpretations of the bombing emerging from Hiroshima are also informed by religious sensibilities. The major voice in interpreting the

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bombing from within True Pure Land Buddhism is Reverend Ko¯ji Shigenobu. Ko¯ji’s essay ‘‘Bukkyoto to shite no hibakutaiken to heiwa no negai’’ (Atomic bomb experience and peaceful wishes from a Buddhist), which will provide one focus of this chapter, is collected in Ningen no kokoro, Hiroshima no kokoro (Human heart, Hiroshima mind), edited by the current mayor of Hiroshima, Akiba Tadatoshi.68 In examining Ko¯ji’s interpretation of the bombing, I will also draw upon his other essay, ‘‘Hibaku taiken ko¯wa,’’ a personal testimony of the atomic bombing. Through investigation of these works, we may discern the key features of the True Pure Land interpretation and its relation to the hibakusha ethics. Ko¯ji Shigenobu was born in 1935 into a True Pure Land priestly family overseeing the Ko¯ryu¯ji Temple in the city of Hiroshima. Prior to the bombing of August 1945, Ko¯ji and his fellow grade-school students had evacuated to a school in a village approximately sixty miles north of the city, as part of the conventional practice throughout Japan to protect children from possible air raids on the city.69 Despite his distance from the city, Ko¯ji remembers witnessing the flash of the detonation as he played with his friends on the school ground on the morning of August 6, and even feeling the warmth of the heat emitted from the explosion. He also recalls seeing the mushroom cloud rising up from afar. To him, the image was uncanny yet remarkably solemn and beautiful; he could not withdraw his gaze from the image. The lower portion of the mushroom cloud grew rosy in color, a reflection of the fire that had erupted throughout the city beneath it.70 Not understanding what he was seeing, Ko¯ji stared at the cloud until teachers rushed him and other students inside the school building.71 After the bombing, Ko¯ji waited for his family to bring him home, but no one reached him. He had no choice but to remain for the next couple of months in the village to which he had been evacuated. In the meantime, as he learned later, his house, located about two kilometers (1.2 miles) from the hypocenter, had been completely destroyed by the bomb, and his two sisters killed. Teruko, two years Ko¯ji’s elder, was scheduled to work with her fellow students as part of kinro¯ ho¯shi, the mobilization of the people (including students), about half a mile from the hypocenter, and had since been missing without a trace.72 On the morning of August 6, Ko¯ji’s other sister, Hiroko, five years his elder, woke up feeling feverish, and stayed home later than usual. When the bomb was detonated, she was on a train to catch up with her class,

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also called for work as kinro¯ ho¯shi. Though in close proximity to the hypocenter, she miraculously survived with only a few cuts on her face. Hiroko was able to reunite with other members of her family after the bombing, and fled to the western side of the city to stay with relatives. Soon after, however, she fell gravely ill, presumably from acute radiation sickness, and died on August 14.73 Ko¯ji’s father suffered no serious injury directly from the bombing. Yet, he went into the city every day to look for his missing daughter, Teruko, which, Ko¯ji believes, exposed his father to residual radiation, and consequently caused his death from cancer seven years later. Remembering his father’s death, Ko¯ ji states that his father’s belief in Amida lessened the grief of having lost his children: ‘‘Had he not believed that Amida’s mercy ensured salvation for his daughters, he would not have had any moment of peace in his mind.’’74 Believing that Amida’s mercy saved both Teruko and Hiroko gave comfort to Ko¯ji’s father on his deathbed. Ko¯ji grounds his analysis of the atomic bombing in this personal experience, concluding that the bombing was an accumulation of three major ‘‘mistakes’’ or ‘‘errors’’ (ayamachi): the mistake of the Hiroshima residents, that of the Japanese people, and that of humankind. First, let us look at the mistake of the Hiroshima residents. According to Ko¯ji, the mistake of Hiroshima residents lay in their ‘‘oime,’’ a pervasive failure to attend to others. A symptom of this selfishness emerged as guilt in the wake of the bombing. ‘‘A number of hibakushas,’’ explains Ko¯ji, ‘‘still feel pain for the dead, and are still indebted to them: abandoning one’s own child, crying for help, under the beams of the collapsed house on fire, leaving people who were begging for help, surviving while other friends have been dead.’’75 Elsewhere, however, in distinguishing his thought from that of American psychologist Robert Jay Lifton in his book Life in Death: Survivors of Hiroshima, Ko¯ji reiterates that the hibakushas’ remorse for having survived (‘‘ikinokotte ite gomen’nasai’’) should be understood as a product of their failure to accept impermanence—‘‘as a flower falls, life comes to an end with death.’’76 According to the Buddhist perspective, everything in this world is impermanent; attachment to impermanent things is the source of suffering. We, the unenlightened, become attached to these impermanent things and thus inevitably suffer when they are gone. Survivors’ guilt must not, therefore, be understood as a result of having done wrong. Rather, it refers to the condition of this

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world, in which everything is part of the cycle of samsara. Though the hibakusha are not responsible for the deaths caused by the atomic bombing, Ko¯ji finds among the hibakusha a sense of sorrowful apology stemming from a Buddhist worldview: ‘‘I am sorry for having survived, living in Hiroshima.’’77 The ‘‘mistake by Hiroshima residents’’ lies both in their failure to attend to the needs of others and in their failure to recognize and accept the inevitability of impermanence and loss in the world. As a Hiroshima resident, Ko¯ji professes to understand the hibakushas’ remorse and sorrow (though he is not a hibakusha in the legal sense, having experienced the bomb from a distance).78 Ko¯ji acknowledges that like so many of the hibakushas suffering from survivors’ guilt, most people would have been similarly incapacitated after the bombing, incapable, in their fear and shock, to lend assistance to others. Imagining himself within the context in which ethical decisions come to pass, he admits that he, too, would have abandoned people in need for the sake of his own survival, thus acknowledging his own unenlightened nature. In doing so, however, Ko¯ji comes to understand the survivors’ sufferings through critical self-reflection. In his discussion of the ‘‘mistakes’’ of Hiroshima, however, Ko¯ji fails to mention that the city was home to the second largest military facility in Japan during the war. The Ujina port, located 1.5 miles south of the hypocenter, was the primary source of soldiers sent off to the Korean Peninsula, the Chinese mainland, and lands occupied by the Japanese army throughout the Asia Pacific region.79 Ujina was, thus, a strategically important military port. If there was any ‘‘mistake’’ on the part of the Hiroshima residents, it would lie in this fact. Although Ko¯ji does not explicitly discuss the existence of the Ujina port, he does, of course, treat the war efforts carried out by people in Japan—the second level of ‘‘mistake.’’ Ko¯ji begins his discussion of the mistake of the Japanese people with Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor as the incident that initiated the war between the United States and Japan. Though one popular understanding sees the bombing of Hiroshima as retaliation for the attack on Pearl Harbor, most scholarship recognizes the original target of the Manhattan Project as Nazi Germany, notes the lapse of four years between the Pearl Harbor attack (1941) and the atomic bombings (1945), and acknowledges the disproportionality of the scale and the target between the two attacks and so on, thus making

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such a claim difficult to uphold. Ko¯ji, however, seems to suggest a connection between Pearl Harbor and the atomic bombs: ‘‘The United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. But it was the result of the war that Japan had initiated.’’80 The war against the United States, however, was a continuation of the war Japan had started against other Asian countries. Ko¯ji continues: It [the atomic bombing] was also a result of Japanese colonization policy on the Korean Peninsula, invasion of China and South East Asia, and taking precious lives in successive wars in Japanese modern history. We must not forget that our country was in fact an aggressor toward other countries. The dead from the atomic bombing were the victims of this series of events.81

Those killed by the atomic bombs were the victims of the mistake of the Japanese people, who, in supporting the fascist regime, also backed an aggressive foreign policy, invading other countries and instigating a long-lasting war. This observation brings to mind Japanese Buddhist karmic causality, which finds rewards and recompense not only in the next life, but in this one as well: the people of Japan harmed others, bringing upon themselves the punishment of the atomic bombing. But another reading suggests something quite different. I believe that this statement reveals the depth of Ko¯ji’s will to self-reflection. For example, despite the fact that Ko¯ji was only ten years old at the time of the bombing, he does not take himself to have been innocent: ‘‘Though I was just a schoolboy during the war, along with the rest of the people, I participated in the war by getting excited by the enemy’s loss and by our gain. As a result, we witnessed the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, experienced it as a consequence of the foolish war, hurt ourselves, and mourned numerous victims.’’82 As one who suffered directly from the bomb—having lost his sisters and eventually his father—his selfreflection precludes the possibility of leaving his own faults as well as those of his country unexamined. Extending his critical self-reflection and questioning his country’s wartime conduct, he is unconfined by the social and national borders that so often restrain sympathy, and is able to attend to the needs and positions of others beyond his immediate situation, not only in the United States but also in Asia. We may note, for example, that he has provided accommodations for Korean hibakusha when they visit Hiroshima for medical service.

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Having explained the atomic bombing as the result of aggressive Japanese policies, Ko¯ji argues that the war was structurally embedded in the very process of building the nation—a process that for Japan since the 1868 Meiji Restoration amounted to an attempt to become an equal to the Western powers. In the midst of Western expansionism and colonialism culminating in the nineteenth century, Japan accelerated efforts for recognition as a modern nation-state by attempting to extend its empire to include the Korean Peninsula, China, and South East Asia. Though Ko¯ ji holds that the horrors of Japanese aggression and crimes against humanity are not erased by the destruction and suffering caused by the atomic bombing, neither does he believe that the atomic bombing can be understood as a justifiable retaliation (to¯zen no mukui) for the attack on Pearl Harbor and the atrocities on the part of the Japanese army. He simply sees the wrongness of taking lives in the Pearl Harbor attack as well as in the dropping of the bomb—for both actions are mistaken in their destruction of life; he argues that it is important to acknowledge that Japan took the ‘‘destructive action’’ (hakai ko¯do¯) of attacking Pearl Harbor, while the United States also took the ‘‘destructive action’’ of dropping the atomic bombs. Neither action, according to Ko¯ji, is morally praiseworthy. We human beings are engaged in lamentable ‘‘collective behaviors’’ (shu¯go¯teki ko¯i, or gu¯go¯, in Buddhist terminology) that stem from our unenlightened nature. The unenlightened state of human beings introduces Ko¯ ji’s third level of mistake: mistakes on the part of humankind as a whole. ‘‘War,’’ Ko¯ji writes, ‘‘is clearly an act of humankind.’’83 In order to address this mistake, it is necessary to understand the concept of human beings in Buddhism. In Buddhist anthropology, as Ko¯ji explains, human beings do not have dominion over nature, but are rather one among many other kinds of beings—animals, plants, and even nonorganic beings, such as rocks and rivers. Further, Buddhist ontology posits interconnected relations among all these beings. Ko¯ji explains that all beings— both organic and nonorganic—are given form in contingency, ‘‘temporarily taking a certain shape by in’nen (a cause and a condition).’’84 There are not fundamental, but only contingent differences in appearances and functions (hataraki) between humans and other beings, as well as among human beings. As interconnections lie behind apparent differences in form and matter among beings, so is there continuity across time, according to Buddhist cosmology and cosmogony. In Pure Land Buddhism, Amida Buddha is not conceived as the creator

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of the world or of life. Accordingly, Earth was not created, but rather came into being out of invisible chaos, from which water, organic beings, plants, and animals came into existence. Thus, we are able to trace the source of life back to those visible and invisible matters that emerged at the beginning of time. Based on this logic, Ko¯ji affirms that all beings are part of a continuous totality of life reaching from the inception of the earth through integration and disintegration of matter. The differences among beings in appearances and functions therefore arise only from ‘‘differences in processes’’ (katei), not from differences of essence. These ‘‘differences in process’’ are brought about by in’nen (causal conditions). The processes to which Ko¯ji refers are not evolutionary or teleological in nature. ‘‘In Buddhism, differences are not the consequences of evolution, but simply caused by in’nen.’’ All beings, both organic and nonorganic, ‘‘exist in continuity of life,’’85 interconnected beyond time and space. According to this Buddhist ontology, humans and nonhuman beings share matter in their essence, though they take on different forms and appearances. Referring to the Nirvana Sutra, which teaches that all grass, trees, and even soil will attain enlightenment, Ko¯ji reminds us that human beings are not the only species possessing innate dignity. Ko¯ji maintains that if we attribute dignity to humans, then other organic and nonorganic beings likewise possess dignity; what differentiates humans from other beings is merely their form or appearance. Humans are often described by Buddhist thinkers as ki, conventionally translated as ‘‘being,’’ ‘‘nature,’’ or ‘‘opportunity.’’ Ko¯ji glosses this notion of ki as ‘‘chance’’ (hazumi) or ‘‘opportunity’’ (kikkake), and the ‘‘possibility to get better or worse,’’ that is, to improve or worsen morally.86 Ko¯ji perceives humans as much more helpless than we generally believe ourselves to be; we are tossed about on the waves of fateful contingency. ‘‘Humans . . . are, thus, not willing, confident, and infallible beings, but on the contrary helpless beings influenced ‘by chance’ (hazumi) and changed by ‘opportunity’ (kikkake).’’87 This statement calls to mind Shinran’s understanding of good and evil, as Shinran holds that it is not we who choose good and evil acts, but rather our karma that determines our moral conduct. Citing Shinran’s Tan’nisho¯ —‘‘If the karmic cause that it be so prompts us, we will commit any kind of act’’88 —Ko¯ji elaborates the idea of human free will and moral culpability. ‘‘Even when I am determined to behave righteously or not to make any mistakes,’’ writes Ko¯ji, ‘‘some

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accidental factor makes me commit a mistake. It is human [not to be certain of one’s moral capacity].’’89 Just as Shinran refutes the idea of our free will to choose good and evil, but accepts that karmic causality determines our actions, Ko¯ji also argues that we commit mistakes and evils even when we do not intend to do so.90 Nonetheless, the question of human culpability in relation to the will arises here. Though a full treatment of the question of karma in relation to free will is beyond the scope of this book, we may suggest that while karma restricts the range of our possible behaviors, it does not determine our behaviors absolutely. Karma dictates certain conditions over which we have no control—when and where we are born, for instance—but within that situation we are presented with choices. With this in mind, let us briefly return to Shinran to understand his thought on human free will and the question of evil. Shinran suggests that the reality of our unenlightened condition is that our free will is limited. ‘‘If it were only through observing precepts and upholding rules that one were able to entrust oneself to the Primal Vow,’’ Shinran writes, ‘‘how could we [ever] become free of [the cycle of] birth-and-death?’’91 True Pure Land scholar Taitetsu Unno explains: ‘‘The ability to entrust oneself [to Amida comes] from the side of Amida Buddha; it is not the product of human will, volition, intention or aspiration.’’92 If this is the case, then we do not possess the power to liberate ourselves from the cycle of samsara; our will is not sufficient. Furthermore, Shinran condemns as hakarai attempts to break away from that cycle. Shinran believes that one should not be distracted by the question of how to discern the origins of good and evil—which, he has concluded, is caused by karma—and should rather devote oneself to Amida. He advises, ‘‘it is when one simply leaves both good and evil acts to karmic recompense and entrusts wholeheartedly to the Primal Vow that [one] is [in accord with] Other Power.’’93 Good can only be brought about by a power outside of oneself. Similarly, attempts to avoid evil are also seen by Shinran as evidence of self-reliance, rather than dependence on Amida’s power. According to Shinran, ‘‘To seek to eradicate karmic evil is the mind of self-power and the basic intent of people who pray to end their lives in a state of right-mindedness; thus it indicates an absence of shinjin [true entrusting] that is Other Power.’’94 As we will see later, Amida’s Name is thought to have the power to eradicate evil. But intending to eliminate evil karma shows a lack of faith in Amida. Thus,

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any hakarai, even when its goal is for good or to eliminate evil, is not embraced in Shinran’s thought. Last, with regard to the problem of evil, it is important to note the contradiction between Amida’s eighteenth vow and Shinran’s thought. To reiterate, the eighteenth vow reads, ‘‘If, when I attain Buddhahood, sentient beings in the lands of the ten directions who sincerely and joyfully entrust themselves to me, desire to be born in my land, and call my Name even ten times, should not be born there, may I not attain perfect Enlightenment. Excluded, however, are those who commit the five gravest offences95 and abuse the right Dharma.’’96 The vow plainly rejects the prospect of salvation for individuals who have committed certain evils. But Shinran famously declares that the evil person will be saved in Tan’nisho¯. While Shinran and other True Pure Land believers emphasize Amida’s pervasive power, which will save anyone entrusting himself to Amida, Amida’s eighteenth vow indicates that there are some evil acts that will exclude those who commit them from salvation. Shinran addresses the contradiction: An evildoer of the ten transgressions and five damning acts who does not say the nembutsu in his everyday life, for the first time, when his life is about to end, through the instruction of a true teacher, comes to say [the Name] once, whereupon he eradicates the karmic evil for eight billion kalpas [of birth-and-death], or says [the Name] ten times, whereupon he eradicates the grave karmic evil for ten times eight billion kalpas [of birth-and-death], and thus is born [in the Pure Land].97

Reciting Amida’s Name, in other words, has the power to eradicate any karmic retribution for evil doings. To believe otherwise would be to suggest that there is evil that Amida’s Name cannot penetrate, that Amida’s power is limited and constrained by evil. Shinran’s interpretation of the eighteenth vow is that when the evildoer repents and recites Amida’s Name, and this act is not done out of his hakarai, the evildoer must be saved. In addition to Shinran’s account of good and evil as related to karmic causality, the Buddhist concept of rin’ne, or reincarnation, also informs Ko¯ ji’s understanding of the atomic bombing. Ko¯ ji writes, ‘‘I myself could have been born in the United States, and thus could have been ordered to press the button to release the atomic bomb from the Enola Gay, which I could have been flying on August 6.’’98 Basing his thinking

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upon the notion of interconnectedness through continuity and reincarnation, Ko¯ji does not abstract himself as an objective bystander passing moral judgment concerning the dropping of the atomic bomb. On the contrary, acknowledging the scant information given to the plane’s crew,99 commands from authorities, fear of the enemy, and enthusiastic wartime patriotism, Ko¯ji attempts to understand what those aboard the Enola Gay crew would have perceived and experienced. Further eschewing the binary of victimizer versus victimized, Ko¯ji observes that the destruction wrought by the bomb extends beyond those killed or injured by the explosion. ‘‘This incident, the dropping of the bomb, left a scar not only in the minds of the victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also in that of Americans. . . . We need to keep in mind here that awareness of the mistake [of having dropped the bomb] should be directed not only toward the atomic bomb victims, but also toward plants, trees, and other animals alike.’’100 Ko¯ji’s Buddhist ontology extends the mistake of the bombing beyond the perpetrators to other beings as well, in an infinite web of shared responsibility. This inclusive view—which takes humans, animals, and nonorganic beings to partake of the same essence, and thus to be mutually implicated in a given situation—appears in the form of do¯tai, or one body, in Ko¯ji’s understanding of the atomic bombing. He describes this concept, integral to the True Pure Land school: As everything is continuous from the very beginning of life and partakes of a single totality, this one body transcends conventional constraints of time and space. We are all related beyond the constraints of time and space; our being is one of codependence. This one body, however, is not intrinsically gracious and peaceful. As Ko¯ji points out, for example, the very functioning of the food chain entails that organisms kill each other to survive. More troubling is the fact that humans also exert great effort in bringing about the most effective means for destroying each other. Human beings are imperfect and unenlightened. Reflecting upon this characteristic of human nature, Ko¯ji labels this one body as the body of the unenlightened (mayoerumono). However, Amida’s compassion extends itself to the body of the unenlightened, and allows it to be connected to the body of Amida Buddha in such a way that Amida is at once transcendent and immanent. Because of Amida’s immanence, Amida embraces humans’ confusion, suffering, pain, and sadness. Ko¯ji writes that Amida thereby ‘‘transforms

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our agony into peace, pain into comfort, and sorrow into joy through Amida’s wisdom and mercy.’’101 This idea of transformation is explained by Shinran: Amida’s mercy is so inclusive, embracing good and evil alike, that they merged into one in Amida’s being, in the same way that a drop of water blends into the ocean. ‘‘The ocean of the inconceivable Name,’’ continues Shinran, ‘‘does not hold unchanged; / The corpses of the five grave offenses and slander of the dharma; / The myriad rivers of evil acts, on entering it, / Become one in taste with the ocean water of virtues.’’102 In order to explain this transformation, Ko¯ji employs a more intimate analogy involving dried persimmons, a popular traditional sweet snack in Japan. To make these snacks, a kind of bitter persimmon (shibugaki) is dried. In the process, these persimmons are exposed to the coldness of winter, bringing forth sweetness from what was previously bitter. As Shinran asserts that Amida transforms evil into virtue, Ko¯ji also assures us that we do not have to eliminate pain and sadness. As bitterness in the persimmons is transformed into sweetness over time, we are called to transform pain and sadness into comfort and joy by exposing ourselves to Amida’s mercy. Applying this analogy to the atomic bombing, Ko¯ji suggests that through Amida’s Power, the agony and pain caused by the atomic bombing should be transformed into something sweet. Reciting Amida’s Name will help us to transform sufferings—an idea that resonates with the True Pure Land understanding of good and evil. It is important, therefore, to note that pain and agony are not considered things needing to be eradicated by Amida’s Power. Rather, they should be transformed. Shinran’s thought on good and evil helps us understand not only the transformation of suffering that Ko¯ji suggests here, but also the notion of evil in the True Pure Land tradition. As we have seen, Shinran discerned a contradiction in the mind of moral agents: When one aims at doing good, one fails to entrust oneself entirely to the transcendent power of Amida. Those who, though committing evil acts, recognize their helplessness and evil nature are better positioned to place complete faith in Amida. Moreover, Shinran explains that acts of evil are determined through karmic causality. However, this explanation of evil does not thus far address the actual conduct of evil and the damage done to others. Here is where the idea of ‘‘transformation’’ assists us in appreciating the scope of Sinran’s thought.

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True Pure Land scholar Taitetsu Unno explains the dynamic ‘‘tension between two forces: unlimited compassion and limited samsaric being.’’103 The tension is resolved when one removes the ego-self, including calculative though concerning good and evil. This tension itself is, as Shinran also emphasizes, an aspect of the dialectical process of transformation:104 Through the benefit of the unhindered light, We realize shinjin [true entrusting] of vast, majestic virtues, And the ice of our blind passions necessarily melts, Immediately becoming water of enlightenment. Obstructions of karmic evil turn into virtues; It is like the relation of ice and water: The more the ice, the more the water; The more the obstructions, the more the virtues.105

Put differently, good and evil are not precisely opposites, as there is no absolute good or evil; rather, they are related like ice and water, constituted of the same essence, and differing only in their appearances. As the analogy suggests, evil may be transformed into good. Amida’s mercy, therefore, presents a world that transcends the binary categories of good and evil, as well as pain and sweetness. Based upon this understanding, Ko¯ji proposes that the bitterness of victimization and victimhood may be transformed into sweetness—a world beyond the dichotomy of ‘‘us’’ versus ‘‘them’’—by depending on Amida’s mercy. Amida’s Power, believes Ko¯ji, reaches both those who died inhumane deaths by the atomic bombs and those who dropped the atomic bomb. At least implicitly, then, Ko¯ji proposes a vision congruent with an inclusive community based not upon an attempt to assimilate others, but upon rejecting the very dichotomization that divides the world into victims and victimizers. ‘‘Since we belong to one body,’’ holds Ko¯ji, ‘‘not to a dichotomy of one or the other, but in continuous relations, we must complement each others’ shortcomings, in order to reach better wisdom and realize a better ‘one body.’ ’’106 Ko¯ji’s interpretation of the atomic bombings, drawing upon Shinran’s understanding of the relativity of good and evil, dependence on the Other Power, and rejection of dichotomization, supports the hibakushas’ ethic of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation’’ and provides a direction for achieving an inclusive community of memory.107 Such a community, illuminated and informed by a Buddhist sensibility, may

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arise in part through critical self-reflection enabling the recognition that we are beings shaped by causal forces beyond our control, emerging into situations as a matter of contingency. This recognition assists us in realizing the limits of our capabilities, fostering a greater sense of humility and revealing that we are intimately interconnected with others, across the human-constructed boundaries of nations and even religions. The humility that this insight affords—whether before a transcendent being or in response to the ethical call of human others—is one key aspect of the hibakusha ethics. The cultivation of humility impedes the impulse to retaliation and revenge; it transforms the inclination to impute responsibility to others into a recognition that responsibility necessarily extends to oneself. A shared responsibility would inform the inclusive community imagined by the hibakusha, a community of reconciliation that might see sadness transformed into mercy.

Conclusion While it is not the sole basis of the critical self-reflection and attendant renunciation of retaliation of the hibakusha ethics emerging from Hiroshima, True Pure Land Buddhism, as Ko¯ji’s interpretation of the bombing makes clear, broadly informs the Hiroshima discourse. No single faith tradition has given rise to the hibakusha ethics of reconciliation, but the religious sensibilities found in Hiroshima and Nagasaki have helped generate an ethics that seeks not to impute responsibility for the dropping the bombs,108 but rather to stimulate critical self-reflection, and in doing so to refocus the question of responsibility, bringing it to bear on one’s own fallible nature. This critical self-reflection is not to be confused with self-denigration; it is, rather, a component in an affirmative project of reconciliation. While Buddhism promotes the idea of negation of the self in escaping the entrapment of the ego, this is in no way concomitant with self-hatred. To fall into this mode of thought would be a symptom of hakarai, tantamount to an arrogant rejection of Amida’s merciful power to embrace all sentient beings. Rather, self-reflection in this context is made possible through an understanding of Amida’s mercy and salvific power, which alone transforms our sorrows as well as ourselves. Shinran sums up this point: ‘‘Concerning the true and real heart and mind, in seeking the Pure Land, rejecting this defiled world, and entrusting to the Buddha’s Vow, one must have such a heart and mind. It does not

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necessarily mean to openly manifest shame or to make a show of one’s faults. You should deeply reflect on this in all circumstances and on all occasions.’’109 In this context, critical self-reflection involves an acceptance of Amida’s mercy that undercuts human arrogance and humbles believers. The hibakusha ethics, seeking reconciliation rather than imputing blame, may be in danger of being misunderstood to embrace the Buddhist notion of teinen, or ‘‘resignation.’’ Such a line of thinking would say that ‘‘the bombs were dropped, and this could not have been helped (shikata ga nai).’’ But the hibakushas’ ethics is not a form of resignation, and neither does teinen suggest a mere surrendering to circumstances. Rather, it points to the positive possibilities of transforming myself, based upon the realization that I am incapable of changing myself or my circumstances except by accepting Amida’s mercy. Teinen involves entrusting oneself to Amida, to Amida’s power to transform bitterness into sweetness. The ethics of the hibakusha, rooted in critical self-reflection, has emerged through the humbleness of the unenlightened entrusting themselves to a transcendent being—be it the Christian God or Amida Buddha. This attitude of thought may offer an alternative paradigm to the current atomic bomb discourse, primarily confined by nation-state frameworks. However, this ethics may provoke criticism, particularly regarding the avoidance of imputing responsibility to the perpetrators, and calling into question the meaning of moral accountability. Such criticisms, based on ‘‘us versus them’’ oppositions, also go to the heart of True Pure Land Buddhism, for this faith tradition holds that institutional and social dichotomies, like the division between self and other, are illusory. Though the rejection of binary concepts, as we have seen, may help us to escape cycles of violence, on the other hand, rejecting the very idea of absolute evil—for instance, in the cases of the Holocaust or the Nanjing massacre—is not only difficult for most to accept, but it also becomes even more troubling when coupled with the appeal that the victims engage in critical self-reflection. The question of responsibility is, of course, a political issue for both Japan and the United States: How should the Japanese government address the crimes against humanity it committed during the war, such as the existence of Unit 731, comfort women, and other atrocities carried out by the Japanese army? How should the American government address its invention of weaponry designed to indiscriminately attack

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combatants and noncombatants, friend and foe, Japanese and nonJapanese alike? In the absence of a system for assigning guilt and doling out punishment, the hibakusha ethics may be seen as a convenient escape for the perpetrators of such crimes. The hibakusha ethics seeks not to escape but rather to short-circuit such questions, always bringing the question of responsibility to bear not on how to assign blame but how to achieve reconciliation. Their own consistent articulation of this position, particularly in light of their considerable sufferings, provides a dramatic, lived example for how this attitude of thought might exist in the world. It is an attitude of thought that, rather than remaining confined by the entrenched dichotomies that most of us take as given—America versus Japan, victimizers versus victims, and even good versus evil—exceeds these divisions through a self-reflection aimed at reconciliation. Immediately after the bombing, however, another powerful interpretation of the event emerged from Nagasaki, the center of Japanese Roman Catholicism. This interpretation also advocated reconciliation, but responsibility was solely placed upon the Japanese citizens and surviving Nagasaki Catholics. Like that of Ko¯ji, Nagai Takashi’s interpretation of the atomic bombing calls for critical self-reflection and a willingness to admit one’s imperfection and past wrongdoings. The next chapter unfolds this Roman Catholic interpretation of the atomic bombing in comparison with Ko¯ji’s True Pure Land understanding, as well as that of John Paul II.

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4 Sacrificial Lambs nagai takashi and the roman catholic interpretation of the bombing

His [the Deity’s] power, we allow, is infinite; whatever he wills is executed: But neither man nor any other animal is happy; therefore, he does not will their happiness. His wisdom is infinite; He is never mistaken in choosing the means to any end; But the course of nature tends not to human or animal felicity: . . . Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then is he impotent? Is he able, but now willing? Then is he malevolent? Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil? — d av i d h um e , Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Nagai Takashi and the Urakami Roman Catholic Parish In the previous chapter, we examined True Pure Land priest Ko¯ji Shigenobu’s attempt to understand the atomic bombing by drawing upon religious resources, and thereby generating an ethics of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation’’ through critical self-reflection. Although some Buddhist groups have contributed to antiwar and antinuclear movements, there have been relatively few concerted attempts to respond to the question of how we might understand the atomic bombings from within a particular religious framework.1 For example, the clergy of Shinto, a religion once exploited by the fascist government of Japan, have never publicly discussed the issue of the atomic bombing and nuclear weaponry. With the exception of the Yasukuni Shrine, as we saw in Chapter 2, most Shinto shrines appear apolitical, refusing to come forward with a position on such matters as the use of nuclear bombs. Although religious institutions make political pronouncements upon issues of war, peace, nuclear proliferation, and nuclear disarmament,

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for the most part they have neglected serious engagement with the task of developing a theological response to the experience of the atomic bombings. Meanwhile, the religious dimensions of the hibakushas’ experiences have to date been treated only superficially, or ignored entirely, in much scholarship on the bombings. One of the few exceptions from the Christian tradition is Nagai Takashi. Though his name is no longer as widely recognized as it was in the immediate postwar period, Nagai, a medical doctor and Roman Catholic writer from the Urakami community in Nagasaki, remains an important figure in the history of atomic bomb interpretation. I hope to show that Nagai, working from within Christianity, develops an interpretation of the bombing that, like Ko¯ji’s Buddhist interpretation, promotes an ethics that takes as its central principle ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation,’’ with a primary concern to ‘‘let no one again suffer from a nuclear attack.’’ The ethical sensibilities of both the Christian and Buddhist traditions, as formulated by Nagai and Ko¯ji, draw upon resources for critical self-reflection in the wake of tragedy. Nagai’s distinctive perspective is not one of distance from the bombing; rather, it was conceived beneath the mushroom cloud, and shaped by his Catholic beliefs concerning sin and redemptive sacrifice. Though the particulars of Nagai’s theological argument for critical self-reflection in response to the atomic bombing in Nagasaki is idiosyncratic, the linking of sin and the bombing is not unique to Nagai. As Ian Buruma has noted, the Federal Council of Churches claimed in 1946 that ‘‘as the power that first used the atomic bomb under these circumstances, we [Americans] have sinned grievously against the laws of God and against the peoples of Japan.’’2 This tone of condemnation of the bombing was, however, shortlived, and was eventually superseded by news of the Soviet Union’s first successful atomic bomb test in 1949. Public sentiment shifted with this news; ‘‘if the communist adversary has caught up with our weaponry,’’ ran this line of thought, ‘‘only manufacturing more, and more powerful, weapons will ensure our security.’’ Survival depends upon the production of bigger and better arms than those of the enemy. As a result, in 1951, just two years after the Soviet test, the United States succeeded in testing the first hydrogen bomb. The test occurred amid U.S. involvement in the Korean War, with the United States considering the use of nuclear bombs in this context. During the Vietnam War, the possibility of deploying nuclear weaponry

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again resurfaced in the Johnson administration.3 Responding to the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 and U.S. involvement in Vietnam, in 1963 Pope John XXIII issued the encyclical known as Pacem in Terris, or Peace on Earth, in which he explicitly called for a ban on nuclear weaponry.4 The pope’s message, echoing the Second Vatican Council, reaffirmed that ‘‘every act of war directed to the indiscriminate destruction of whole cities or vast areas with their inhabitants is a crime against God and man.’’5 The tension between the United States and the Soviet Union did not cease in the 1960s and continued well into the 1980s. In 1983, the U.S. Catholic bishops issued a pastoral letter entitled The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response.6 In this document, the bishops state: ‘‘The moral duty today is to prevent nuclear war from ever occurring and to protect and preserve those key values of justice, freedom, and independence which are necessary for personal dignity and national integrity.’’7 After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, attention to nuclear weaponry grew less intense, only to be revived after the events of September 11, 2001, with the heightened fear that nuclear weapons may find their way into the hands of terrorist organizations. In light of these circumstances, one task of this chapter is to illuminate Christian understanding of suffering, and the ethics that emerges through on the ground, vernacular applications of these religious resources in the aftermath of tragedy. Nagai Takashi’s religious interpretation of the atomic bombing, as we will see, centers on the idea that dropping the atomic bomb on Nagasaki was an act of divine providence. Those killed by the bomb were pure ‘‘sacrificial lambs’’ offered to God; the survivors, meanwhile, were sinners destined to suffer from the aftermath. Outrageous and cruel as this interpretation may sound, particularly coming from a survivor of the bomb, Nagai’s interpretation was ardently embraced by the Catholics of the local community over which the bomb had been dropped. Even more provocatively, his interpretation was contradicted in a speech by Pope John Paul II—though Nagai’s position is not far removed from the Vatican’s official understanding of suffering.

Roman Catholicism in Japan A short history of the Urakami community of Nagasaki, where Nagai Takashi lived, will provide context for the religious practices and beliefs

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that informed his theological interpretation of the bombing, and will help account for the community’s embrace of his sometimes troubling position. Located southwest of Nagasaki city, Urakami, the hypocenter of the atomic bombing, has been the religious center of the Catholic populace in Japan for more than five hundred years. Due to their faith, as we will see, the Catholics of Urakami experienced persecution, oppression, and ostracism throughout much of their history, dating back to the sixteenth century. Christianity first reached the Japanese archipelago officially with the arrival of Francis Xavier (1506–52), Cosme de Torres (1510–70), and Juan Ferna´ndes (1525–67) on August 15, 1549.8 Six years prior to their arrival, Portuguese merchants had already approached Japan for trading purposes. Thanks to friendly relationships established with local feudal lords, the missionaries were relatively successful.9 Eventually, missionaries received financial support and political ¯ tomo Sumitada10 in protection from powerful local lords, such as O ¯ Omura, near Nagasaki; Oda Nobunaga in Azuchi and the capital, present-day Kyoto; and Takayama Ukon in Takatsuki, near Osaka. The missionaries not only attracted high-ranking warriors, but they also made converts of Buddhist monks, merchants, farmers, and outcasts. As a result, the number of converts during the fifty-year period of evangelization in the late sixteenth century amounted to as many as 760,000.11 In 1582, during his rise to power and attempt to unify Japan, Oda Nobunaga (1534–82) developed close rapport with the Christian missionaries in the interest of acquiring matchlocks (the newest technology of the time) and opposing the Buddhist influence. In the midst of realizing his ambition to unify Japan, Oda was attacked by one of his generals, Akechi Mitsuhide (1528?–82), and forced to kill himself. Shortly thereafter, Toyotomi Hideoyoshi (1537–98), also one of Oda’s top generals, overthrew Akechi and obtained control over the regions formerly under Oda’s reign. Toyotomi came to view the Portuguese and Spanish economic and material influence over Japan as a threat to his project of unifying the country and became increasingly reluctant to support the Christian missionaries. Gradually, his favoritism for Portuguese and Spanish culture (clothes, furniture, music, and art) transformed into antagonism, culminating in an edict calling for the expulsion of all foreign missionaries. With the missionaries’ deportation, Toyotomi confiscated the land in Urakami that had been offered to the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Despite the edict, however, some foreign missionaries

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remained and went underground to continue propagation and maintenance of the existing Christian communities. It was under such circumstances that the first persecution against Christians took place on February 5, 1597. The persecution was triggered a year earlier when a ship, the San Felipe, wrecked off the island of Shikoku.12 At this incident, Toyotomi aided the crew to safety while also confiscating the merchandise on the ship. Angered by the loss of their goods to Toyotomi, the crew claimed that the missionaries were sent to create docile converts and colonize the land. Toyotomi responded by mounting a campaign resulting in the arrest and persecution of Christians evangelizing in Japan. The persecution began in Kyoto, with the arrest of six European Franciscans13 and eighteen Japanese Christians who were engaged in public preaching and missionary work.14 Arrested Christians were brought to Osaka, Sakai, and Nagasaki—cities highly populated by Christian missionaries and merchants—before their final destination, Nishizaka. En route, two more Christians were seized; altogether, twenty-six men and children were crucified in Nishizaka, on the outskirts of Urakami, Nagasaki. The location of the execution site suggests the importance of Nagasaki at large for the prominent Christian community at the time; arrests were made in various cities, but Nishizaka was selected for its symbolic centrality to the Christian population, thus sending a powerful message from the government concerning the fate of Christians. Tokugawa Ieyasu (1543–1616), the successor of Toyotomi and founder of the Tokugawa shogunate, adopted a policy hostile to Christianity, expelling missionaries and, in 1612, proscribing the religion in Kyoto. In 1614, the proscription was extended to the entire country.15 As part of this policy, Saint Clare Church in Urakami, constructed in 1603, was demolished in 1614, along with other Christian institutions across the country. Between 1598 and 1642, in Nagasaki alone, thirtyseven new Buddhist temples were constructed, some on former sites of Christian churches. In the meantime, Catholic churches were successively demolished. Primarily in the southern part of the Japanese archipelago where, traditionally, more Christian adherents were believed to reside, a new way to persecute Christians was implemented in 1629. Efumi, or the ritual of forced trampling (fumi) of sacred images (e), was forced upon all residents of certain villages; they were compelled to step on images of Christ or Christian saints in front of local government officials. Conducted annually, usually around the New Year, the practice

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of Efumi coerced Catholics to symbolically reject their faith in exchange for their lives. This cruel innovation gave rise to a practice among these regretful Catholics of reciting a prayer of contrition.16 The Efumi practice was ruthless enough, but the persecution of Christians escalated its cruelty in responding to resistance by foreign missionaries and local Japanese Christians. From 1543 to 1651, the shogunate encouraged people to report information on Christians who disguised their faith in return for a monetary reward. Furthering efforts to maintain control over the population, in 1671 the shogunate made it mandatory for all people to register at local Buddhist temples, a census system called shu¯ mon aratame.17 Using information gathered in this process, the shogunate eventually forbade people in Japan from changing their occupations in order to stabilize the social hierarchy.18 It also forbade open travel from domain to domain in order to control the labor force. The shogunate’s compilation of Shu¯monjin beccho¯, or the ‘‘Additional Buddhist Temple Registration,’’ allowed authorities to locate the relatives and even descendants of former Christians who had been long separated from others in the community. Those who were on the blacklist were put under surveillance, arrested, and tortured until they renounced their faith or were killed. The ultimate goal of this practice was, however, not merely to eradicate the Christian population, but rather to prove the shogunate’s power through demonstration of the consequences of rebelling against its authority. This discriminatory policy against Christians intensified and led to another policy: Kirishitan Ruizoku Koseki, or ‘‘The Registration of the Christian-Related.’’ Under this registration system, all the relatives of anyone known to be or have been Christian became targets of persecution. Despite the shogunate’s persistent persecutions,19 some communities were able to hold onto their faith during this period.20 Urakami, which encompasses the hypocenter of the atomic bombing, was one of those communities in which people cooperated with each other to hand down their ancestors’ faith to their children—a practice that played an important role in reuniting Japanese Catholic communities with the Roman Catholic Church more than two hundred years later.

Urakami as a Community of Memory Throughout the time of the Christian missionary activity, Nagasaki continued to be a significant site for Christians in Japan. Under the

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authority of the Vatican, Japanese parishes became independent from the Indian Province in 1581 and formed a vice province of the Roman Catholic Church, with which the first Vice-Provincial, Gaspar Coelho (1530–90), established the main office, choosing Nagasaki for its location. Only thirty years later, this vice province was made an independent province thanks to its increasing population of converts; Nagasaki remained its headquarters.21 Such facts attest to the importance of Nagasaki for Christian communities, with Urakami at its outskirts. (Today, Urakami is included in the city of Nagasaki.) Hence, during the era of persecution, the Nagasaki area suffered greatly. The shogunate’s appointment in 1626 of the notoriously cruel Mizuno Morinobu to oversee control of Christians in Nagasaki launched an era of severe persecution against Christians. In 1635, the shogunate issued an even more stringent ban on Christian practices. Two years later, a large-scale rebellion took place in Shimabara, Nagasaki (outside of the city limits, but within the Nagasaki prefecture). Historians agree that this uprising was motivated by heavy taxation and the tyrannical governing of the local lord. However, the shogunate framed the insurrection as a Christian rebellion. Relentless torture during the time of persecution produced a number of apostates known as korobi, or ‘‘the fallen,’’ in Nagasaki and elsewhere, with some of these ex-Christians being employed as inquisitors by the shogunate.22 With antagonism mounting between Christians and the shogunate, the Urakami community suffered harsh treatment. With kuzure, or ‘‘far-reaching arrests,’’ for example, many members of the community were arrested in a single sweep; this occurred four times under the Tokugawa shogunate regime (in 1790, 1842, 1859, and 1867), marking greater severity than in any other Christian community in Japan. While most of the Christian documents during this persecution period were confiscated and destroyed by the shogunate, one notable text survived the persecution. This text detailed instructions for Christians on how to prepare for arrest and subsequent imprisonment and torture; it is rife with prayers for martyrs and instructions for how to become a martyr.23 In 1861, two years after the third kuzure, in which eighty Urakami Christians were detained, the shogunate suddenly took drastic measures to alleviate the suppression of Christians, thanks most likely to pressure from the Western powers. Loosening restrictions on the practice of Christianity was a result of the Treaty of Commerce and Amity, jointly ratified by Japan and the United States in 1858, followed by Britain,

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Russia, France, and the Netherlands. Those countries put pressure on the shogunate to stop mistreating Christians. Consequently, the shogunate announced the discontinuation of the Efumi practice on its people and granted freedom of religion, but only to foreign residents. With official permission from the shogunate, Father Prudence Girard (1821– 67) of the Paris Foreign Missioners (PFM) built a church in Yokohama ¯ ura, Nagasaki, in 1865. in 1862 and another in O ¯ ura church, a group of ‘‘CathA month after the completion of the O 24 olics’’ from Urakami decided to see the resident priest, Father Bernard Petitjean (1828–84), in order to confirm that he was indeed a priest who shared the same religious beliefs as those of their ancestors. Since the shogunate still forbade Christian practices among Japanese people, the Urakami Christians carried out this excursion at great risk to their lives. Posing nonchalantly as visitors, they entered the church. Sugimoto Yuri, one of the Urakami visitors, approached Father Petitjean and whispered to him, ‘‘Our heart is the same as yours.’’25 She then asked Father Petitjean, ‘‘Where is the image of Virgin Mary?’’26 Petitjean, who had heard about Christian converts in Japan prior to his arrival there, was not yet certain whether the faith had been carried on clandestinely, and if so, if it had been practiced correctly, though without priests and contact with Vatican authority. This moment marked the reconnection of Japanese Christians, who had indeed secretly practiced their faith in isolation for more than two hundred years, with the Roman Catholic Church.27 Though the proscription of Christianity and the persecution of Christians by the shogunate continued, the Urakami Catholics were invigorated by their encounter with a Catholic priest and by continuous close communication with him and the Church. Gradually, in the public realm, they became more expressive about their Christian faith. In 1867, the Catholics in Urakami refused to invite a Buddhist priest to conduct a funeral, though the presence of a Buddhist priest at funerals had been made mandatory by the shogunate. Instead, they independently performed Christian burials of the dead in their community. When this violation came to light, sixty-eight of the Urakami Catholics were immediately imprisoned, marking the beginning of the fourth major persecution (kuzure) against the Urakami Catholics. During the following year, more arrests were made, with the shogunate exiling 114 Catholics from Urakami. This same year, the new Meiji government was established, overthrowing the Tokugawa shogunate. While the Meiji administration abolished the feudal system and the

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warrior class, it retained the proscription on Christianity and kept the exiles in various places in Japan. Meanwhile, the number arrested increased and finally amounted to 3,400—almost the entire community was detained, broken up across twenty-three different domains in Japan. Finally, five years after the exile, thanks to further pressure from the Western powers, all 1,930 remaining detainees were released to return home; of the original 3,400 arrested, 662 had died from disease and maltreatment, while a further 808 remained missing.28 Though joyful in their return and in their newfound freedom of religion, life after exile was not easy for the Urakami Catholics, for their ‘‘home’’ was virtually ruined during their long absence. Their first task was thus to build a church. This undertaking took nearly forty years, and was completed in 1914, when Saint Mary’s Church became the largest cathedral in East Asia. Only thirty-one years after its completion, the cathedral and most of its surroundings were destroyed by the atomic bomb. Indeed, the predominantly Catholic Urakami was annihilated. In Nagasaki at large, ‘‘there were 14,000 Catholics. . . . More than half were killed by the bomb.’’29 At the time their parish was reduced to ashes, the shared memories of this community were rife with persecution, martyrdom, and destruction. A distinctive Catholic community in Japan, its history is exceptional as well. It is from this fraught history that Nagai Takashi and his interpretation of the atomic bombing emerge.

Nagai Takashi and His Conversion When the bomb was dropped over Urakami, Nagai was on the second floor of the University of Nagasaki medical school hospital, where he had worked the night shift. He was dean of the radiology department, preparing for his class, selecting X-rays to show for his lecture. By that time, Nagai, formerly an atheist, had converted to Catholicism, settled in Urakami with his family, and risen to a position of respect in the Catholic community. Born on February 3, 1908, Nagai Takashi was the first son of Tsune and Noburu,30 a general practitioner in the old city of Matsue, located in Shimane prefecture. The family belonged to Izumo Oyashiro kyo, a sect of Shinto particular to this region. In this sect, practitioners worship a deity called Okuninushi no Okami, venerated at Izumo Shrine, whose origin was recorded in the ancient chronicles Kojikii (712) and

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Nihongi (720). In addition to this Shinto belief, Nagai’s mother held to a rigidly disciplined Confucian ethics, as was common among daughters of families once belonging to the warrior class. Practicing both Buddhism and Shinto—common in Japan—in addition to adhering to the Confucian moral code shaped Nagai’s religious sensibilities during his upbringing. During this time, Protestant influences were also becoming more visible in Japan, especially among the elite class in cities—but no Christian influence was yet observable in Nagai Takashi’s early childhood. Though Nagai was raised in a religiously observant household, his relationship to religion would grow troubled over time. In high school, he became fascinated with conducing scientific experiments. As he would recall, ‘‘I was astonished when the experiment resulted in the outcome predicted by the application of theory and formulas. This provided a young student like me with a faith that natural science would never fail to grasp the truth.’’31 His yearning for unambiguous truth and his admiration for natural science prepared him to be a thoroughgoing materialist: ‘‘It was the Taisho¯ era (1911–1926)32 when natural science was considered as almighty, and materialism was winning over people’s confidence. Under such circumstances, it was even shameful for the youth to talk about religion.’’33 Given his keen interest in science, and with social expectations encouraging sons (especially if firstborn) to follow in their fathers’ footsteps, it seemed natural for Nagai to become a doctor. Entering a medical school in Nagasaki, Nagai began performing autopsies, which further convinced him that human beings were composed of mere matter. He writes, ‘‘Man’s body is composed of elements such as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen, calcium, and so on. As these elements contain no intrinsic dignity . . . human beings therefore have no dignity, either. Once one dies, one’s body decomposes and simply returns to the elements.’’34 A hard-nosed empiricist, he harbored no belief in the existence of souls or supernatural beings. Nagai’s strong materialist convictions were, however, profoundly shaken by the death of his mother in 1931, when Nagai was a sophomore in medical school. Upon the arrival of the news that his mother, Tsune, had suffered a stroke and was in critical condition, Nagai hurried to his hometown. When he arrived home, his mother was dying. In her final living moments, without uttering a word, his mother looked directly into Nagai’s eyes, then passed away. Nagai believed his mother was

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communicating with him nonverbally, to indicate that her soul would remain with him after her physical death. Nagai recalls, ‘‘Although I had long renounced the existence of the soul, I acknowledged immediately and recognized spiritually at the time of looking back into her eyes that the soul of my mother was there, and that her soul would not perish, even if her body did.’’35 Being present at his mother’s death marked a first conversion for Nagai—from a strict materialist to a tentative spiritualist—and prepared the way for a second conversion, to Catholicism. Soon after his mother’s death, Nagai began to read physicist and religious thinker Blaise Pascal (1623–62) who was at the time gaining popularity among Japanese Catholics and intellectuals. Yoshimitsu Yoshihiko (1904–45), a leading Catholic intellectual and contemporary of Nagai, emphasized in the Catholic Journal the importance of reading Pascal for the manner in which he combines religious faith and the discipline of science in his writings, despite the Enlightenment principle that faith and reason are incompatible. Encountering the work of Pascal, simultaneously a scientist and a religious philosopher, provoked curiosity in Nagai. Nagai expressed his surprise as follows: ‘‘The soul, eternity, and God—what a surprise that the great physicist Pascal, one of our predecessors, believed in such concepts! Pascal, this unprecedented genius, believed them! What was this Catholicism that made the scientist Pascal believe them so thoroughly, yet without abandoning his scientific knowledge?’’36 The death of his mother and the encounter with Pascal thus brought about a change in Nagai’s thinking. He decided to move from Narutakicho—a convenient location, close to the downtown area of Nagasaki—to Urakami, the Catholic community of the city. While intellectual curiosity concerning Catholicism motivated his move to Urakami, Nagai was also seeking to understand how Catholicism worked in practice. In Urakami, Nagai boarded with the Moriyama family, whose ancestor Magoemon was remembered not only by the family but also by the wider Catholic community as an organizer of the underground Christians during the persecution era.37 The Moriyama family consisted of Moriyama Sadakichi, his wife Tsumo, and their only daughter, Midori. Together, they played an instrumental role in introducing Nagai to a simple, earthbound, earnest faith shared by Urakami Catholics. Observing Urakami Catholics working hard, praying constantly, and

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never failing to attend mass on Sundays and holidays, Nagai was astonished and filled with admiration: ‘‘Life itself is a prayer [here]. There is no life without prayers.’’38 Eventually, he came to recognize the gravestones of martyrs all over the community. One day, overlooking the community from a seminary on a hill, Nagai realized that neither opulent mansions nor impoverished shacks were to be found in Urakami, for people shared what they had. Seeing Urakami’s welfare system working in the community was refreshing to Nagai. In fact, in his high school years, he had been interested in social reform, before dismissing it as impractical. But before his eyes was a community, unknown to many, realizing this ideal. Urakami orphanages, run by local churches, were also unfamiliar to Nagai, as parents of unwanted and still unborn children typically aborted pregnancies. One Christmas Eve, the Moriyama family invited Nagai to join them for dinner at their home. After dinner, the head of the household, Sadakichi, asked Nagai if he was interested in accompanying them to midnight Mass. Not knowing anything about Christian ritual, Nagai politely declined the invitation. But Sadakichi persuaded Nagai by assuring him that the church would not refuse the attendance of a non-Christian and would indeed welcome him. Nagai’s inquisitiveness won over his hesitation, and he agreed to attend the Christmas Mass. Upon their arrival at the Urakami Cathedral, five thousand Catholics were already seated. As Nagai later revealed, at the moment he stepped into the cathedral, he experienced the presence of the Almighty, feeling humbled and worthless before a transcendent power. This feeling of awe and humility remained with him long after that night. Only five days before his graduation from medical school, Nagai contracted an ear infection that resulted in a hearing impairment rendering him unable to use a stethoscope. Consequently, he had to give up his lifelong aspiration to become a general practitioner like his father. At this point, his choices were limited. Nagai decided to specialize in radiology, a promising new area in medicine, continuing to focus on research. Eight months later, however, Nagai’s work was interrupted when he was conscripted as a medical officer. He was dispatched to Hiroshima where wounded and sick soldiers were sent from Manchuria and other areas of Asia. While attending to the injured and invalid soldiers, Nagai began to question the meaning of life and death.

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During his duty in Hiroshima, Nagai received a package from Midori, the only daughter of the Moriyama family. The package contained a pair of gloves and socks that Midori had knitted. At the bottom of the package, he also found a small book, entitled Ko¯kyo¯ yo¯ri, or catechism. Though he opened the book with no particular expectations, Nagai soon believed that he found the truth in it—the truth he had been yearning to discover. Surrounded by the injured and suffering, he took comfort in reading the catechism in his spare time. He also reflected on his own lifestyle, particularly his habit of heavy drinking, and began to feel ashamed. Unexpectedly released from duty as a military medical doctor, Nagai returned to Nagasaki and began to study Catholic doctrine with the parochial priest. Within a month, the priest confirmed that Nagai was ready to join the church, and in June 1934, he was baptized as Nagai Paulo Takashi. Two months after his baptism, Nagai married Moriyama Midori, who had sent Nagai the catechism that led to his baptism. Four months later, Nagai applied to join the Nagasaki branch of the Saint Vincent de Paul Society. Initially, members of the Vincentians did not accept Nagai as a full member because they were skeptical about his sincerity as a convert. Nagai’s active and passionate involvement in the society as a doctor, however, gradually gained recognition and appreciation, especially from the sick, as their doctors were often in residency on remote islands. Nagai, however, visited and treated them as part of the society’s activities. Soon his work earned Nagai full acceptance in the society.39 In 1935, Nagai’s first child, Makoto Jacob-Kizaemon, was born, followed by Ikuko Maria a year later. In 1937, Nagai was conscripted again to Manchuria, and this time his service lasted for three years. While away from home, Nagai lost both his father and father-in-law to cancer; he also lost his second child, Ikuko.40 Manchuria held an important place in Nagai’s thought, particularly his religious understanding of the war. It was in Manchuria that the puppet government was established by Imperial Japan as a step in its campaign of expansionism and colonialism.41 Nagai’s autobiography,42 Horobinu mono o (For that which passeth not away), published in 1948, contains reflections on the time he spent in China and reveals his antiwar position: Even though they [the people of China] speak differently and wear different clothing from us, aren’t they humans like us, resembling people in Japan, looking meek, and perhaps thinking similar things? When

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we face each other individually, we cannot get angry or hate each other even if we would try. Nonetheless, with regard to ethnic divisions, why do we hate, curse, and murder each other? Acknowledging killing is a grave sin, why do we justify war, in which a group kills members of another group on a mass scale? Is there any truth to just war or war for peace?43

Nagai also recalls hearing the Angelus deep in the mountains of China, and he relates his encounter with an Italian priest presiding at the church there. Nagai removed his rosary from his pocket, showing it to the priest to identify himself as a Catholic. The gate of the church was then opened for him. Once inside, Nagai found that his military uniform drew scornful looks. Upon displaying the rosary in his hand, however, children shouted with joy and women smiled at him.44 ‘‘All the people can unite,’’ writes Nagai. ‘‘We can unite through love, bringing to an end to the absurdity in which we fight the nonsensical war, being far away from the family, provoking hatred in each other, and killing one another. This is possible when we entrust ourselves to the heart of Christ Jesus. By and through Christ alone is this possible.’’45 It remains unclear whether Nagai’s idealistic view of religion as a force that can unify people even in the midst of the war reflects his wishful thinking during the conflict, or emerged through reflections following the war. Nagai’s positive account of his embrace of Catholicism pivots on this religion’s potential to unite people irrespective of national identities. But his description also obscures the fact that he as well as the Japanese soldiers were stationed in North China for the purpose of waging war. For example, consider Nagai’s idyllic account, written to his family from Beijing, of his experiences in Chahar (present-day Inner Mongolia): Seeing many churches, tears sometimes welled up in my eyes, especially when I found a modest church in a remote village between the mountains; I felt homesick, and also gratitude [upon seeing the church]. After an exhausting march, I prayed as I rode a horse; in Chahar, I unexpectedly heard the Angelus. [I admired] the person who was protecting the holy Eucharist; he was keeping the Angelus even amidst the fall of cannonballs. My only pleasure in my service [in the army] is that I, as a Catholic, pray to the Eucharist wherever I am in the world.46

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While such accounts fail to give readers clear indications of Nagai’s attitude toward the war while he was in the service (thanks, perhaps to the threat of military censorship), there is evidence that his experiences of Catholicism during this time helped lay the foundations for what would become his antiwar stance. For example, in Horobinu mono o, Nagai relates an episode that took place in Qingdao: When we were there in January, the Japanese Church had just one priest and the attached convent had a nun who was sent from Bizen kuroshima. Now, six months later, more than ten people come to Mass. It had been a while since Ryu¯kichi [Nagai’s pseudonym] listened to prayers recited in Japanese. Ryu¯kichi made a confession after a long interval, and received the Eucharist. His uniform was covered with blood, but God will forgive him since it was the blood of love.47

Nagai here emphasizes that his involvement in the war was not as a soldier, but a medical doctor. Both his beliefs as a Catholic and his vocation as a doctor inform Nagai’s ethic of treating humanity as his sisters and brothers, transcending national borders. Nagai writes, ‘‘The medical unit is in the battle field not to fight for the country, but to help those who are injured, sick, and troubled. This is the universal spirit of Red Cross.’’48 In both his own writings as well as those of his biographers, one finds Nagai tending to both local patients as well as enemy combatants.49 Such experiences formed the basis of Nagai’s antiwar stance, and his sensitivity toward matters of social inequity. ‘‘Why is it that those highranking officials who have decided to wage war have stayed safely behind in the capital city, while they have uneducated and innocent youths kill each other?’’50 Treating the peasants and children who were left behind by others, Nagai confronts the absurdity of waging war in the interest of peace: ‘‘Seeing the local people covered with blood, Ryu¯kichi’s anger surfaces in his mind—but toward whom? Why on earth does this child have to lose his hand in the interest of world peace? In order to liberate East Asia, do peasants have to have their torsos blown open?’’51 Identifying himself not solely as Japanese, but also as a Catholic and a medical doctor, enabled Nagai to see the senselessness of the war of aggression that Japan was fighting, while so many others in Japan—whether due to the media’s manipulation of information, war propaganda disseminated in schools, or fear of punishment for opposing the government’s policy—supported the war as ‘‘sacred.’’

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Nagai was released from duty and allowed to return to Nagasaki in 1940. The following year, he and his wife had a daughter, Kayano Gemma, and 1943 saw the birth of another daughter, Sasano Colletta, who died from disease just a year later.52 In 1941, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, instigating the war between the United States and Japan. As the war continued, Nagai’s hospital, as well as many other medical facilities throughout Japan, brimmed with patients while medical supplies and manpower were in extreme shortage. Under such circumstances, Nagai and other doctors donated long hours of their own time to meet patients’ needs. Consequently, Nagai, in administering treatments, overexposed himself to radiation; in 1943 he was diagnosed with leukemia, with a life expectancy of two years. Nagai, however, outlived this prognosis and was in Nagasaki two years later, when the bomb detonated over the city. His conversion to Catholicism—with its claims to universalism and, in Nagai’s eyes, its powers to unite—as well as his experiences as a medical doctor— treating patients irrespective of national affiliations—provide the foundations for his distinctive, if perturbing, interpretation of the bombing.

Nagai’s Experience of the Bomb At 11:02 a.m. on August 9, 1945, the ‘‘Fat Man’’ atomic bomb detonated approximately half a mile from Nagai’s hospital in Urakami. The blast threw Nagai sixteen feet into the air, and pieces of shattered glass cut the artery in his right temple. The building in which Nagai was working was made of concrete, thanks to which, Nagai was able to avoid direct contact from the heat and radiation.53 But the hospital’s headquarters, a wooden structure closer to the hypocenter, was blasted to the ground and erupted into flames as a result of the extreme heat of the explosion. Before the bombing, Nagai’s two children and his mother-in-law had already evacuated the city to avoid possible air raids, which had by then destroyed most of the cities throughout Japan. They fled to their second house in the suburb of Koba, about two and a half miles away from their residence in Urakami. But both Midori and Nagai had stayed in Urakami, in order to remain close to Nagai’s hospital. At the time of the bombing, Midori was alone at home, less than a half of a mile away from the hypocenter. Because of this close proximity, the house collapsed and was instantly engulfed in flames, killing Midori.

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Following the blast, and not fully grasping the magnitude of the bombing, Nagai was needed to treat the influx of severely injured persons. It was five hours after the explosion before Nagai realized that the bomb must have destroyed the entire Urakami area, and that Midori must have been killed in the blast. Nagai knew that if she had survived, she would have come to the hospital to find him. Nonetheless, Nagai, providing constant medical attention to as many patients as possible, did not return home to look for Midori for another three days. When Nagai finally returned to his home, he found only a mound of ashes, pieces of bones, and a fragment of Midori’s rosary. Although staff and patients appreciated Nagai’s self-sacrificial devotion at the hospital for the three days immediately following the bombing, he later confessed that tending to patients was not the primary reason for his delayed return to his home. His family’s house was close to the hypocenter of the explosion, and he feared the possibility of further attacks: ‘‘We [survivors] were absolutely selfish. We were rough and cruel people. We were beasts.’’54 In contrast to accounts of his life prior to the atomic bombing, in which Nagai was critical of the war but failed to reflect upon his own involvement in it, the writings detailing his thought after bombing exhibit critical self-reflection. Another five days had passed before Nagai was able to reunite with his children and mother-in-law in Koba, where he was relieved to find his remaining family safe and sound. Here, he set up a triage center with his colleagues. Shortly after settling in Koba, however, Nagai fell into a coma caused by the continual bleeding from the wound on his temple. His mother-in-law and other Urakami Catholics prayed for him by his bedside, a gesture to which Nagai later attributed his miraculous emergence from the coma. In the midst of exhaustion from treating patients while recovering from his own injury, Nagai began speculating that the vast destruction he witnessed might have been caused by a new kind of weapon, possibly the atomic bomb: ‘‘[Before the atomic bombing] we were members of a research group that had great interest in nuclear physics and we totally devoted ourselves to this branch of science. Ironically, we ourselves became the victims of the atom bomb, an invention utilizing the very core of the theory we were studying.’’55 Nagai was also seeking the most effective treatment for patients in a situation in which medical resources were extremely limited: ‘‘The injection of vitamin B and grape sugar was very effective in counteracting nausea [from the effect of the

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gamma rays of the bomb].’’56 On August 15, 1945, Japan surrendered, and the war was finally over. On August 20, Nagai again fell into a coma. His condition was serious; he received the Sacrament of Penance. But yet again, he experienced what seemed to be a miraculous recovery, and was able to recuperate enough that by autumn he could return to medical school and to teaching.

Nagai’s Interpretation of the Bomb The medical school and hospital were temporarily relocated from Naga¯ mura, about twenty miles from Nagasaki. Despite the long saki to O commute, burdened by frail health, Nagai never considered a move to ¯ mura. On the contrary, he was determined to undertake the daunting O process of rebuilding the Urakami community with his fellow Catholics. Urakami had been obliterated and restoration seemed impossible. For some Urakami residents, the scene recalled the return from the exile in 1873. In 1983, long after the devastation of Urakami by the bombing, the Urakami Cathedral conducted a survey that revealed that the Urakami parish suffered the highest number of deaths among Catholic communities in Nagasaki: The number of registered Catholics at the parish plunged from 8,850 before the bombing to 1,950 a year after—less than a quarter of its former size.57 Urakami Catholics were thus both physically and spiritually impoverished, having lost a number of priests, nuns, and active members of the community. The initial reaction among Urakami Catholics toward this destruction was that it was a punishment from God. Nagai himself pondered the meaning of the bomb for the community, and was asked to deliver a speech at the Requiem Mass that the community planned to hold on November 23, 1945, three months after the bombing. Nagai composed the speech around two main points key to his interpretation of the event: the bomb was God’s providence, and those who were killed by the bomb were God’s ‘‘sacrificial lambs.’’ Nagai’s interpretation of the bomb, his attempt to find a theological explanation for the horror that would speak to his fellow Catholics, gradually formed through the course of conversation with friends. For example, two of his former students who had seen combat and had recently returned to Japan visited Nagai. On their visit, they asked for Nagai to share his understanding of the atomic bombing, because they had heard that non-Catholics in Nagasaki, and even some Catholics,

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perceived the atomic bomb as the Shinto deities’ punishment of Catholics. Non-Catholics claimed that Catholics worshiped a foreign god in the land of kami (Japanese deities), while Catholics believed they had incurred punishment for not exemplifying the faith of their persecuted ancestors. The two students who came to see Nagai also expressed their laments for Japan’s defeat and pledged revenge.58 In responding to the students’ inquiries, Nagai first sought to disprove the power of the Shinto gods, claiming that they were merely human constructions, and therefore manipulated by human needs. ‘‘They were,’’ said Nagai, ‘‘mere paper gods. Nonetheless, through worshipping them we came to believe in the invincibility of our country and in the divine wind59 and the like. We were simply paying homage to lifeless idols.’’60 The students asked whether people in Japan needed to have their own gods embodying the ‘‘Japanese spirit.’’ Nagai dismissed this combination of religion and national identity as an elementary form of nationalism.61 He emphasized that religious teachings should not be addressed to one people or to one nation. Here one finds Nagai’s attempts to envision a community that is not bound by national borders, even as the framework of his thought is rooted in the teachings of Roman Catholicism. Nagai reproached the students for their impulse to retaliation, calling it meaningless and vicious. He argued that war is merely an opportunity for some to gain financial advantage: ‘‘War is a money-making business. Such people know that if there is a war once every ten years they’ll become millionaires. They are pigs. And it’s lust for money, precisely this, that will be the source of warmongering in the future. This is the gang that seduces our young and innocent people with talk of revenge.’’62 Indeed, Japan had been engaged in war nearly every ten years since the Sino-Japanese war in 1894, with the Russo-Japanese War in 1904 and the First World War in 1914. The Mukden Incident in 1931 marked the beginning of Japan’s war against China, and Japan launched its attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, beginning a war that would last until 1945. Nagai was also visited by a Catholic friend, Yamada Ichitaro¯, who had returned from the battlefield to find his hometown devastated, his house in ashes, and his wife and children incinerated by the atomic bomb. Like many other Urakami Catholics who had lost loved ones, Yamada was in agony, and thus sought a theological meaning behind the destruction of their Catholic community. Yamada told Nagai that

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non-Catholics in Nagasaki were ‘‘muttering that the A-bomb was obviously tenbatsu, or Heaven’s punishment.’’63 Yamada was tormented by what he heard around him: ‘‘[people say that] the atomic bomb was a punishment from Heaven. Those Catholics who died were evil people; those who survived received a special grace from God. But then, does that mean that my wife and children were evil people?’’64 Responding to Yamada, Nagai replied, ‘‘I have a completely different view. In fact, I have the opposite view. The atomic bomb falling on Nagasaki was a great act of Divine Providence. It was an act of grace from God. Nagasaki must give thanks to God.’’65 This statement encapsulates what came to be known as Nagai’s hansai setsu, or ‘‘holocaust theory’’ of the bombing. Elaborating his interpretation, Nagai showed Yamada a draft for the Requiem Mass, part of which reads: ‘‘During the war this same [Urakami] church never ceased to pray day and night for a lasting peace. Was it not, then, the one unblemished lamb that had to be offered on the altar of God? Thanks to the sacrifice of this lamb many millions who would otherwise have fallen victim to the ravages of war have been saved.’’66 Listening to Nagai reading the manuscript, Yamada was relieved, saying, ‘‘Then my wife and children didn’t go to hell.’’67 Yamada inquired not only about the status of the victims according to Nagai’s account, but also about the survivors. Nagai responded, ‘‘You and I, both of us, have failed the entrance exam to heaven!’’ This darkly humorous remark was a tonic; as Nagai writes, ‘‘Together we raised our voices and laughed heartily. It was as though a heavy burden had fallen from our shoulders.’’68 To Nagai, who encouraged efforts to restore the Urakami Catholic community, Yamada said, ‘‘I am a sinner. To suffer and expiate my sins will be a joy. Let’s work and pray.’’69 Nagai’s interpretation, disquieting—and perhaps preposterous—as it may sound, must be evaluated from within its particular context, for it provided comfort to the survivors and is still embraced by Urakami Catholics to this day. To understand its meaning and function, we must examine Nagai’s speech at the Requiem Mass, where Nagai most fully articulated his holocaust theory. As we have seen, in this speech, Nagai claims that the atomic bomb was God’s providence, and those killed by the bomb were God’s ‘‘sacrificial lambs.’’ In supporting his claim that the atomic bombing of Urakami was not incidental but was rather a theologically meaningful event as the manifestation of God’s will, Nagai points to several coincidences regarding the war and its conclusion that

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he interprets as meaningful ‘‘signs.’’ Nagai emphasizes the fact that on the morning of August 9, members of the Japanese Supreme Council of War gathered to discuss whether they should continue the war or surrender. The atomic bomb was dropped that same morning, a ‘‘sacrifice’’ of eight thousand Christians’ lives bringing an end to the war. ‘‘At midnight of that same night,’’ writes Nagai, ‘‘the cathedral suddenly burst into flames and was burned to the ground. And exactly at that time in the Imperial Palace, His Majesty the Emperor made known his sacred decision to bring the war to an end.’’70 Another meaningful confluence, according to Nagai, is that the day the emperor announced Japan’s surrender was ‘‘also the great feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. It is significant that Urakami Cathedral was dedicated to her. And we must ask if this convergence of events—the ending of the war and the celebration of her feast—was merely coincidental or if there was here some mysterious providence of God.’’71 From the beginning of Japanese Catholic history, Japan was dedicated to the Virgin Mary by St. Francis Xavier.72 The Urakami Cathedral was also dedicated to her, and the end of war was announced on the day of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. In Nagai’s mind, these events constituted a meaningful constellation, underwriting his conviction that the bombing was God’s will, and that Nagasaki’s destruction would end the war. This conviction that Nagasaki played a role in a divine plan was further bolstered by the fact that Nagasaki was not the original target city. He asked the congregation, ‘‘Is there not a profound relationship between the destruction of Nagasaki and the end of the war? Nagasaki, the only holy place in all Japan—was it not chosen as a victim, a pure lamb, to be slaughtered and burned on the altar of sacrifice to expiate the sins committed by humanity in the Second World War?’’73 Both the atomic bombing and the subsequent ending of the war were thus framed as theologically meaningful events to Urakami Catholics. The link between the destruction of Nagasaki and the end of the war also provides grounds for a theologically meaningful interpretation of the deaths caused by the bomb, an interpretation that exalts the victims from among the Urakami Catholic community.74 Catholics outside Nagasaki, wrote Nagai, ‘‘were not suitable sacrifices; nor did God accept them. Only when Nagasaki was destroyed did God accept the sacrifice.’’75 Having accepted the sacrifices, ‘‘[God] inspired the emperor to issue the sacred decree by which the war was brought to an end.’’76

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Reminiscent of the American ‘‘myth’’ that the atomic bombs saved a half-million American soldiers’ lives,77 Nagai’s interpretation contends that those killed by the bomb spared the lives of other potential victims of the war. Nagai further asserts that ‘‘thanks to the sacrifice of this lamb many millions who would otherwise have fallen victim to the ravages of war have been saved.’’78 Glorification of the victims culminates at this point in his speech: How noble, how splendid was that holocaust of August 9, when flames soared up from the cathedral, dispelling the darkness of war and bringing the light of peace! In the very depth of our grief we reverently saw here something beautiful, something pure, something sublime. Eight thousand people, together with their priests, burning with pure smoke, entered into eternal life. All without exception were good people whom we deeply mourn. How happy are those people who left this world without knowing the defeat of their country! How happy are the pure lambs who rest in the bosom of god!79

Nagai concluded his speech with a reaffirmation of the theological meaning of the atomic bombing and its victims, inviting his audience to ‘‘give thanks that Nagasaki was chosen for the sacrifice. Let us give thanks that through this sacrifice peace was given to the world and freedom of religion to Japan.’’80 Recalling the long-lasting era of persecution of Christians in Japan, Nagai’s account of the bombing sees the sacrifice of ‘‘unblemished lambs’’ not only as offerings bringing peace, but also religious freedom, thus bringing to a conclusion the tragic trajectory of Urakami’s distinctive history. At the conclusion of the speech, the cathedral fell silent as those in attendance at the Mass reflected on Nagai’s words. Paul Glynn, the author of a biography of Nagai, asserts that ‘‘his finding of God’s Providence at work even in the horrors of August 9 had a profound effect on the listeners and, repeated later in his books, on non-Christians in Nagasaki and throughout Japan.’’81 Indeed, Nagai employed—and perhaps exploited—the community’s memory of persecution and martyrdom to make this catastrophic event part of a narrative of Urakami’s exceptionalism. For example, Nagai reminded his fellow Urakami Catholics that ‘‘our church of Nagasaki kept the faith during four hundred years of persecution when religion was proscribed and the blood of martyrs

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flowed freely.’’82 Such rhetoric fell upon the receptive ears of a congregation that had suffered the loss of so many loved ones, and had suffered criticism from those beyond its community. While Nagai’s interpretation of the bombing provided a narrative that at once exalted and comforted its audience, it raises a host of ethical problems. One such problem lies in the question of responsibility. If wartime destruction is a manifestation of God’s will, then consideration of human culpability and moral accountability in relation to matters such as war crimes becomes meaningless. Given this ethical breakdown, can such theological interpretations of the bombing hold any significance? My contention is that despite its problems, Nagai’s understanding of the atomic bombing, based upon Roman Catholic teachings, has the value of urging those who receive it to reflect on their own wrongdoings by reminding humans of their sinful nature, and thus discouraging people from acting out with vengeance. Providing a perspective that encourages humility through critical self-reflection is thus one benefit that religious interpretations of the bombing may offer. Nagai realized that, as against God’s commandment to love one another, he participated in war in which people hated and murdered each other. As an army doctor, what Nagai witnessed and experienced was the very opposite of the love he believed should be practiced in accordance with God’s commandment. ‘‘Real war is a cruel affair,’’ he writes. ‘‘Oh yes, it’s beautiful and inspiring to lean back in an armchair and read war literature and then to reflect: ‘I, too, would like to go to the front.’ But the reality is different.’’83 The hatred that generates the ‘‘cruel affair’’ of war, Nagai observes, is also often inseparable from the sin of greed: ‘‘War is a money-making business. These people know that if there is a war once every ten years they’ll become millionaires.’’84 Yet, Nagai does not blame the perpetrators of the war. Demonstrating the critical self-reflection he also hopes to foster in those who hear his words, he acknowledges his own sin: participating in war, being unable to stop it, and in fact supporting its driving ideology. With this self-realization as a sinful being, he relinquishes any grounds for judging others. Quoting the Hebrew Bible, Nagai asserts: ‘‘ ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay.’ God has His own way of punishing those who are unjust in His sight. Revenge is not our business.’’85 As we have seen, though Nagai’s ethical vision is constructed from within the framework of Roman Catholicism, he attempts to restructure a community into

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one that transcends national borders. Nagai’s Roman Catholic teaching demonstrates the possibility of an inclusive community embodying the ethics of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation.’’ Nonetheless, criticisms of Nagai’s interpretation emerge both from within and beyond the Catholic community.86 Although Urakami embraced Nagai’s interpretation of the atomic bombing, this interpretation faced criticism even from within Nagasaki’s wider Catholic community. For example, Akizuki Tatsuichiro¯—a medical doctor in Nagasaki, a hibakusha, and a convert from True Pure Land Buddhism to Roman Catholicism—expressed ambivalence about the ‘‘holocaust’’ interpretation: though he takes issue with the interpretation for its failure to promote accountability, he nonetheless admires Urakami Catholics for deriving from the interpretation a strengthened faith in the midst of suffering.87 While Akizuki is right to point to the problem of attributing responsibility that seems to go unspoken in Nagai’s interpretation, I believe that a response to this issue can be formulated by turning to John Paul II’s understanding of the war, the atomic bomb, and suffering. Though John Paul and Nagai differ in important ways in their accounts of violence, they are, as we will find, in accord with respect to their approaches to the redemptive nature of suffering as a means of stimulating self-reflection and assuming individual responsibility for wrongdoings.

Pope John Paul II and the Question of Suffering Among the criticisms from various fronts, the most troubling for the Urakami Catholics came from Pope John Paul II. John Paul visited Japan in 1981, making stops in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. On February 25, the pope delivered a speech at Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, in which he stated, ‘‘War is the work of man. War is destruction of human life. War is death.’’88 This papal statement amounts to a counterargument to Nagai’s understanding, in which the atomic bombing is seen as God’s providence, and those killed by the bomb as God’s sacrificial lambs bringing an end to the war.89 While the respective interpretations of the source of war, and of violence, differs, and though Nagai’s interpretation may strike some as heterodox, it is in fact in accord with fundamental Christian, and specifically Catholic, teachings in its emphasis on the redemptive potentials of suffering and the call to critical

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self-reflection. Indeed, Nagai’s interpretation maintains a surprising fidelity to Catholicism in his reliance upon resources in the tradition. In order to understand what the Roman Catholic tradition offered to the Urakami Catholics who embraced Nagai’s interpretation of the bombing, we may turn to John Paul’s 1984 encyclical Salvifici Doloris, issued three years after his visit to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In this encyclical, the pope formulates his Christian interpretation of human suffering. The meaning of human suffering is, of course, a longcontested issue in Christianity (and in the monotheistic traditions more generally): Why would an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God allow tragedy to befall God’s creatures? The pope follows Saint Augustine’s theodicy, which explains suffering as a product of distance from God. In distance from God—all good and full Being—one suffers evil, that is, the deprivation of good and the absence of being.90 Evil, by this account, is not located in a corporeal being; rather, evil is a deprivation, a nonexistence. Like Augustine, John Paul believes that suffering exists because of separation from God. In the second part of Salvifici Doloris, John Paul II articulates the cause of suffering: ‘‘Man suffers on account of evil, which is a certain lack, limitation or distortion of good. We could say that man suffers because of a good in which he does not share, from which in a certain sense he is cut off, or of which he has deprived himself.’’91 This is an essentially Augustinian understanding of evil as the deprivation of good; suffering is, like evil, being out of touch with the good, or God. In other words, ‘‘in the Christian view, the reality of suffering is explained through evil, which always, in some way, refers to a good.’’92 This understanding of evil addresses only spiritual and emotional suffering; it takes no account of physical suffering, such as the agonies visited upon the victims of the bomb. If a believer suffers the loss of a loved one, she may eventually find comfort in prayers or in the feeling of closeness to the transcendent being. But when one suffers, for example, from the horrific burns caused by the atomic bombing, how can such suffering be accounted for? Drawing upon its foundations in the Hebrew tradition, Christianity offers rich resources for contending with this question. The book of Job is one such resource. In interpreting the problem of suffering in light of Job, John Paul II unfolds possible meanings of suffering, including suffering as a test of faith and suffering as a punishment. He writes, ‘‘While it is true that suffering has a meaning as punishment, when it is

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connected with a fault, it is not true that all suffering is a consequence of a fault and has the nature of a punishment. . . . The suffering has the nature of a test.’’93 John Paul claims that suffering connected with a fault may be a punishment, and thus an ‘‘educational value’’ adheres to it.94 Suffering as a punishment is perhaps the most difficult interpretation to our contemporary sensibilities, even when that punishment aims not at deprivation, but at salvation. More specifically, the educational value lies in restoration of the relationship with God, the overcoming of the separation from God. ‘‘Suffering must serve for conversion, that is, for the rebuilding of goodness in the subject, who can recognize the divine mercy in this call to repentance.’’95 This understanding of suffering as having educational value as part of a process of repentance resonates with Nagai’s interpretation of the bomb: Those who survived the bomb failed the ‘‘test’’ to be accepted into Heaven; while they remain on earth, they will continue to be tested in their sufferings, having the opportunity to reflect on their mistakes and to grow less sinful. While Nagai compares those who died as a result of the blast to unblemished lambs, he also pronounces upon the status of the survivors: ‘‘Why must we alone continue this miserable existence? It is because we are sinners. Ah! Now indeed we are forced to see the enormity of our sins! It is because I have not made expiation for my sins that I am left behind.’’96 According to this position, those who suffer from the bomb are expected to turn toward the Almighty in an opportunity to repent. John Paul further develops the meaning of suffering, finding in it the presence of love. He says, ‘‘Love is: also the fullest source of the answer to the question of the meaning of suffering.’’97 John Paul II elaborates the relationship between suffering and love, arguing that the suffering we experience on earth is not a definitive but a provisional suffering: ‘‘The opposite of salvation is not, therefore, only temporal suffering, any kind of suffering, but the definitive suffering: the loss of eternal life, being rejected by God, damnation.’’98 In other words, the suffering that humankind experiences in this world is not the ultimate form of suffering, and Christians are saved from the ultimate punishment of eternal damnation. It is here that the idea of love is conjoined with Christ in illuminating the problem of suffering. Though humans suffer, the pope continues, we can have the hope of one day being saved. This salvation is made possible for humans

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through the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, the only Son of God. ‘‘The mission of the only-begotten Son,’’ the pope’s encyclical states, ‘‘consists in conquering sin and death. He conquers sin by his obedience unto death, and he overcomes death by his Resurrection.’’ According to this theological line of thought, Jesus’s incarnation and subsequent suffering were undertaken for love of human beings. Through his salvific work, Jesus eliminates Original Sin from humans; death is conquered, and believers are saved from the ultimate suffering of damnation. Thus, Jesus’s temporal suffering and sacrificial death allow humans to aspire to everlasting life and to overcome the eternal suffering of damnation. Eliminating both sin and death is the ‘‘essential condition of ‘eternal life,’ ’’ writes John Paul, ‘‘that is, of man’s definitive happiness in union with God: this means, for the saved, that in the eschatological perspective suffering is totally blotted out.’’ Jesus’s crucifixion and resurrection bring forth hope in ‘‘eternal life and holiness’’ to humans.99 In this faith tradition, Jesus’s redemptive sacrifice on behalf of humans is always explained as an expression of love. ‘‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life,’’100 and ‘‘He [Jesus] loved me and gave himself for me,’’101 the Scriptures read. Thus, human beings have not known the worst suffering, and Jesus’s sacrifice as a manifestation of God’s love gives hope for elimination of such suffering. This notion informs Nagai’s thinking on the question of suffering in relation to the atomic bombing, and is adapted to that context in the Requiem Mass: ‘‘We Japanese, a vanquished people, must now walk along a path that is full of pain and suffering. The reparations imposed by the Potsdam Declaration are a heavy burden. But this painful path along which we walk carrying our burden—is it not also the path of hope which gives to us sinners an opportunity to expiate our sins?’’102 With its Christian rationale for suffering, the statement illustrates both the suffering of wartime loss as well as the hope that lies therein. The focus of Salvifici Doloris moves from the meaning of human suffering to developing an understanding of Christ’s suffering. Citing Saint Paul’s letter to the Galatians, the encyclical reads, ‘‘Faith enables the author of these words to know that love which led Christ to the Cross.’’ Christ’s redemptive suffering has been accomplished, yet is open to ‘‘all love expressed in human suffering.’’ Though Christ’s suffering has been historically accomplished, human beings can participate in his redemptive suffering; it remains ‘‘open.’’ John Paul writes, ‘‘In this

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redemptive suffering, through which the Redemption of the world was accomplished, Christ opened himself from the beginning to every human suffering and constantly does so. Yes, it seems to be part of the very essence of Christ’s redemptive suffering that this suffering is required to be unceasingly completed.’’103 The meaning of suffering is thus to be found in the hope of salvation through participation in Christ’s suffering. Human suffering is now understood as participation in Christ’s salvific and redemptive suffering. John Paul holds: Christ does not explain in the abstract the reasons for suffering, but before all else he says: ‘‘follow me!’’ Come! Take part through your suffering in this work of saving the world, a salvation achieved through my suffering! Through my Cross. Gradually, as the individual takes up his cross, spiritually uniting himself to the Cross of Christ, the salvific meaning of suffering is revealed before him. He [who suffers] does not discover this meaning at his own human level, but at the level of the suffering of Christ.104

The meaning of suffering is only intelligible insofar as one participates in Jesus’s suffering. Nagai similarly understands human suffering as participation in Christ’s Passion. In his requiem speech, he admonishes the congregation, ‘‘We must walk this way of expiation faithfully and sincerely. And as we walk in hunger and thirst, ridiculed, penalized, scourged, pouring with sweat and covered with blood, let us remember how Jesus Christ carried His cross to the hill of Calvary. He will give us courage.’’105 Nagai is here concerned with addressing the status of the bomb survivors: How should they interpret their continuing suffering in the face of the destruction and the loss of loved ones? For Nagai as for John Paul, the answer lies in conformity to the model of Christ, in taking up one’s cross as a means for suffering ‘‘at the level of Christ.’’ For the survivors, expiation in taking up the cross requires self-interrogation, a reflection on one’s sins, and an attempt thereby to make oneself as holy as the ‘‘pure lambs’’ who were taken by God’s providence through the explosion of the bomb. Survivors, in other words, are to be Christlike, just as those killed in the bomb were sacrificed as Christ was sacrificed. There are, to be sure, incongruences in Nagai’s analogizing of the bomb victims to Christ. Jesus chose to go to the cross, aware of the meaning of his sacrifice, whereas the victims did not will to be taken by the bomb. Yet, Nagai’s

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interpretation of the atomic bombing is not entirely at odds with the pope’s pronouncements on suffering. Those killed by the bomb were unblemished lambs offered up to atone for the sins of Japanese people engaged in the murderous business of war; those who survived were afforded further time to expiate their sins. Both Nagai and the pope thus urge their audiences to reflect on their own sinful selves, seeking repentance rather than retaliation. This cultivation of critical selfreflection is at the heart of the hibakusha ethics and community of memory.

Conclusion In his analysis of literature about the Nagasaki bombing, John Whittier Treat states, ‘‘Looming behind much of the discussion of Nagasaki’s atomic-bomb literature—and present in some of that literature itself—is a strange mythology: namely that in Nagasaki Christians themselves reconcile their fate as bomb victims with Christianity’s, and perhaps in particular Japanese Christianity’s, special regard for martyrs.’’106 In the tightly bound community of Urakami, memory of martyrdom and the suffering of their ancestors generated and nurtured Nagai’s understanding of the bombing, which reminds us that, as Peter Brown states, the Christian tradition itself emerged from a memory of martyrdom and suffering.107 One problem with this tradition of suffering is that it promotes a tendency to eschew actual suffering in this world; the promise of a better life after death threatens to devalue this earthly existence and diminishes the urgency of attending to suffering. And yet, Nagai’s interpretation of suffering, like that of the pope’s in Salvifici Doloris, urges examination, directing our attention to our own wrongdoing as the cause of suffering. Nagai’s seemingly sensational interpretation of the bombing thus embodies a crucial message: the necessity of critical selfreflection in the midst of suffering. I take this to be a key contribution of the Christian understanding of suffering, and one that resonates with, and helpfully illuminates, the hibakusha ethics of self-reflection as a counter to the impulse to retaliation. Nagai’s admonition to his vengeful former students, we may recall, emerged from this orientation toward examination of one’s wrongdoings. Interpreting suffering as a call to self-critique rooted in love functions to short-circuit the desire for revenge.

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But more than merely focusing on one’s own suffering and its redemptive potentials, Nagai and the Catholic tradition train attention on the suffering of others. Questions of responsibility and justification in the prevailing discourse on the atomic bombings have revolved around the problem of moral accountability: Whose fault was the bombing? That of the Japanese aggressors, or that of the Americans who dropped the bomb? Yet the Catholic interpretation of suffering refocuses the question of responsibility on one’s attitude toward the suffering of others. While Nagai’s interpretation, as we have seen, is addressed to a specific audience and may therefore limit the community of memory, John Paul’s Salvifici Doloris extends this limit. The pope offers an interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan in order to discuss Christians’ obligations not as sufferers but as witnesses to others’ sufferings. The pope suggests that we are all called upon to alleviate the sufferings of others, to make a ‘‘gift’’ of ourselves: ‘‘We can say that he [the Samaritan] gives himself, his very ‘I,’ opening this ‘I’ to the other person. Here we touch upon one of the key points of all Christian anthropology.’’ Witnessing another’s suffering is an opportunity for one to ‘‘unleash love in the human person.’’108 Suffering—of the other, this time—again finds meaning in love. Similarly, Nagai’s interpretation of the bombing, emerging from his Catholicism and his vocation as a medical caregiver, is grounded in a love that does not recognize human-made boundaries in responding to the suffering of the other. Much as John Paul’s Salvifici Doloris complements Nagai’s theory in its efforts to call for everyone’s responsibility to each other, Nagai’s interpretation addresses an issue that Roman Catholicism as an institution has not addressed: how to think of the suffering caused by the atomic bombing in particular. Like the hibakusha ethics of which his interpretation is an example, Nagai’s approach is to treat suffering not only as an occasion for critical examination of oneself but also as an occasion to assist others. Nagai’s life dramatically displays the practices that he urged in his writings—to alleviate others’ sufferings through an attention achieved when love displaces the impulse to retaliation, putting in its place the desire for reconciliation. Though analysis of Nagai’s understanding of the atomic bombing shows that religious interpretations generate and encourage self-reflection—one foundation of an ethics of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation’’—Nagai’s vision would nevertheless seem to privilege Catholic believers; they are ‘‘chosen’’ by God, elevated to the position of ‘‘pure’’

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sacrificial lambs analogous to Christ. This privileging, perhaps at odds with his insistence on the ‘‘universality’’ of Catholicism, calls into question the viability of Nagai’s theology as the basis of a universal community of memory. Indeed, Nagai’s interpretation of the bombing turns on a sacrificial logic similar to that of the Japanese national narrative: it glorifies those who have died at war, surrounding their memories in a sacred aura of sanctity. This sacrificial logic, which privileges and glorifies victims, is inimical to the creation of an inclusive community that would exceed the boundaries upon which such privileging is predicated. As we have seen in previous chapters, if a community of memory is to transcend such boundaries, it must be founded upon commemorations that demystify death at war, recognizing the sheer horror of the bombings. While Nagai’s Catholic interpretation of the bombing provides a basis for encouraging critical self-reflection and attending to the suffering of others, it remains to be seen what responsibility falls to non-hibakusha in creating a genuinely universal community of memory—one that would not require sacrificial lambs to expiate for human sinfulness. What role should those of us not directly afflicted by the bombings take in achieving reconciliation and participating in the creation of a community of memory? In responding to this question, we will encounter further dichotomies, boundaries that privilege some while oppressing others—women in particular.

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part iii

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5 Women in Atomic Bomb Narratives hagiography, alterity, and non-nomological ethics

Woman was the embodiment of respectability; even as defender and protector of her people she was assimilated to her traditional role as woman and mother, the custodian of tradition, who kept nostalgia alive in the active world of men. — g eo r g e l. m o s se , Nationalism and Sexuality

Women and the Bomb The eponymous protagonist of the television drama Yumechiyo Nikki, or The Diary of Yumechiyo (hereafter Yumechiyo), is thirty-four years old and has been diagnosed with leukemia. Her illness is attributed to her exposure, while still a fetus in her mother’s womb, to the atomic bombing of 1945 in Hiroshima. With only three years to live, Yumechiyo must travel twice a year to a hospital in the city, several hours by train from her small village. Keeping her sickness a secret, she continues her life as a geisha and caretaker for other geisha. Despite its grave themes—the plight of the geisha, leukemia, and the atomic bombing—or perhaps because of its dramatic seriousness, the Yumechiyo story, by renowned screenwriter Hayasaka Akira, enjoyed wide popularity upon first airing in Japan in 1981. The show began with five episodes from NHK, a public television station, and was followed by two sequels, a movie, and numerous theatrical productions. No other atomic bomb narrative before it had garnered so much attention in popular media. The plot of the series revolves around the character of Yumechiyo, who has returned to her small childhood village to take up her mother’s occupation—working as a geisha and landlady. She has become a

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mother figure for other geishas working under her but has given up a romantic relationship owing to her infertility. Relinquishing her love not only gestures toward the relations between her radiation exposure while a fetus and her incapacity to reproduce, but also points to cultural norms and virtues, in which bearing a child constitutes the happiness of women and of the family; a barren woman should not expect such happiness. Further intensifying this already melodramatic background, the story begins after her diagnosis with leukemia, leaving her with just three years to live before her inevitable death. The story thus unfolds from the perspective of a woman whose life is coming to an end sooner rather than later. Feminist thinker Maya Morioka Todeschini rightly criticizes the plot of Yumechio, arguing that such a generic story not only ignores individual female survivors’ sufferings but also emphasizes, and even glorifies, the conflation of inner and outer feminine beauty through portrayals of romanticized suffering and premature death: These beautiful, unscarred maidens exhibit the virtues of patience and consideration toward others, even as they endure intense emotional and physical suffering. Furthermore, Todeschini argues that the image of long-suffering women evokes nostalgia for cultural purity, since women are portrayed ‘‘as embodiments and symbols of a ‘tradition’ that persists even if their bodies might perish.’’1 In other words, we encounter in this popular narrative the themes of self-sacrifice and nationalism that we discussed in Chapter 2, here specifically the self-sacrificial attitudes of virtuous women, and nationalism in the portrayal of these suffering women as carriers of cultural purity. Before extending Todeschini’s critique, we should consider the importance of attending to such fictional narratives. As literary critic Hayden White puts it in his celebrated analysis of narrative structure, The Form of the Content, ‘‘narrativity, certainly in factual storytelling and probably in fictional storytelling as well, is intimately related to, if not a function of, the impulse to moralize reality, that is, to identify it with the social system that is the source of any morality that we can imagine.’’2 I want to argue that, by relativizing conventional understandings of good and evil, the first season of the original Yumechiyo television series sheds light on the characters whose acts often go beyond social norms defining good and evil. Such acts are usefully illuminated through Buddhist scholar Sueki Fumihiko’s notion of transethics. Their

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ethical import can be further understood through Edith Wyschogrod’s concept of non-nomological concern or care for others. One well-known nonfictional account, for example, is the story of Sasaki Sadako, who was exposed to the atomic bombing when two years old. She later contracted leukemia and died at the age of twelve, and her story has circulated widely in the form of a children’s book.3 Hibakusha Nakazawa Keiji’s semiautobiographical graphic novel Hadashi no Gen, or Barefoot Gen, is similarly widely read, both domestically and abroad.4 If such hibakushas’ testimonies are readily available, then why should we examine fictional accounts composed by non-hibakusha? The fact that the number of hibakushas decreases each passing year makes more urgent the question of the responsibility of non-hibakushas in learning from hibakushas’ experiences and handing down those experiences through the creation and study of fictional narratives. Todeschini’s critique focuses primarily on the film version of Yumechiyo, but the popular 1980s TV program confirms her critique, for it betrays a quintessential melodramatic feature: the tragedy of a maiden’s premature death. The program can also be submitted to an alternative reading, made possible by revealing the manner in which tropes from Japanese hagiography function in the narrative. Reading Yumechiyo through a hagiographic lens provides a more nuanced appreciation of the characters while also suggesting further features of the hibakusha ethics that is the subject of this book. My treatment of Yumechiyo is followed by an analysis of two recent popular films, Chichi to Kuraseba (The Face of Jizo, hereafter Jizo) and Yu¯nagi no machi, Sakura no kuni (first a graphic novel entitled Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms, later made into the film Yu¯nagi City, Sakura Country, hereafter Yu¯nagi). These two movies refrain from the stereotypical portrayal of women as observed in Yumechiyo— the premature death of the hibakusha maiden—and proffer insights into another key theme of this book: the construction of a community of memory that transcends confinement by human-made boundaries, whether those of the nation-state or patriarchal family structures in which women’s experiences are too often reduced to their reproductive functions. There was a paradigm shift between the films made in the 1980s and those, such as these two, made in the first decade of the twenty-first century. As Todeschini points out, films from the 1980s depicting hibakusha women include, without exception, the familiar trope of a young

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and beautiful woman’s premature death. With the turn of the millennium, however, films based upon screenplays and graphic novels began to portray hibakusha women and their stories differently from those of the decades before. The most noticeable difference lies in shifting the focus from the innocent maiden—always facing a premature death—to women with a hope for continuity of life. Investigating varying portrayals of the representations of hibakusha women in popular media, the second half of this chapter explores the possibility of constructing thick relations that do not solely depend upon biological relations as represented by women’s reproductive functions. The tragic fate of hibakusha women as depicted in films of the 1980s stems not only from their premature deaths, but also from their inability to become mothers—a matter best appreciated in light of Japanese patriarchal society, in which marriage and procreation are thought to secure a woman’s place in the household. Such security, in turn, is considered the social ideal of happiness. Extending while also critically diverging from Todeschini’s argument through a hagiographical reading of Yumechiyo will help elaborate a transethical vision that exceeds such restrictive social norms, while evading the stereotypical portrayal of hibakusha maidens struck down by premature death. Films released since 2000, meanwhile, reveal a different model of happiness, one not secured solely by biological reproduction, which maidens cannot realize in their sickness and death. These films at once reflect and promote a changing social structure in which fulfillment can be achieved through other modes of continuity of life. The stories in these films depict a mode of relation that does not solely depend upon biological relations, but rather develops through an ethics of care that displaces the social norm of women’s happiness as defined through motherhood. The idea of ‘‘continuity of life’’ in this context derives from the work of feminist hibakusha writers Seki Chieko and Kanou Mikiyo. Both reflect upon the antinuclear movement emerging out of the 1954 Lucky Dragon (dai-go Fukuryu¯-maru) incident and its consequences. The discourse of the antinuclear movement was, according to Kanou, saturated with the ‘‘mother myth,’’ calling for a unity of women for abolition of nuclear weapons, since mothers are givers and nurturers of life.5 Kanou criticizes this perspective on mothers as merely a construction of the patriarchal system abetting the subservience of women. Aiming to escape the mother myth, Kanou poses the question of the significance of

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women speaking about their atomic bomb experiences. Both Kanou and Seki define women as umu sei, or ‘‘the sex that gives life.’’ But in doing so, they see women not as mere reproductive vessels, but rather figures in the midst of the continuity of life, even when they are infertile or choose not to bear children. Why are women so often the focus of these narratives and their critiques? As Todeschini points out, the overwhelming number of women protagonists in atomic bomb narratives does not accurately reflect reality. According to journalist Seki Chieko, herself a hibakusha, the population of the city of Hiroshima in 1944 shows a slightly higher percentage of women to men—52 percent to 48 percent, a ratio that does not account for the preponderance of female protagonists in atomic-bomb narratives.6 It is widely recognized that not only in the narratives but also in many tragic stories, victimization is often embodied in the nonmasculine figures of women and children. Examining the narratives of the atomic bombing thus draws us into the problems of representation. Why do popular representations focus predominantly on the experiences of women, to such an extent that they overshadow the experiences of their male counterparts? Is there a way for women to speak about their experiences without falling into stereotypical tropes in which women are depicted as beautiful but helpless maidens? Though the problem concerning disproportionate representation of women is a real one, it is also the case that hibakusha women’s experiences tend to differ from those of men. Seki offers examples of different experiences between men and women in life after the atomic bomb. First, a hibakusha wife’s miscarriage is most often attributed to her exposure to the atomic bombing, while miscarriages of non-hibakusha wives of survivors are rarely associated with their husbands.7 The second example lies in different social interpretations of men’s and women’s physical disfigurements. Scars on men’s faces are, depending on their degree,8 generally read as a signs of courage or heroic acts, particularly in 1940s and 1950s Japan, while women’s facial scars enjoy no similar positive interpretation. This accounts for why the twentyfive scarred bomb survivors—genbaku otome, or ‘‘Hiroshima Maidens’’—who were invited to the United States for free plastic surgery were all women, and why there was no opposition to such a clearly gendered selection of candidates on either side.9 In light of this observation, Seki concludes that social expectations for, and emphasis on,

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women’s external beauty places a greater social stigma on women with scars than on their male counterparts.10 Third, a 1970s census shows that the number of women employed as day laborers in Hiroshima (5.8 percent) was much higher than that of the national average (2.7 percent). Given the low wages and undesirability associated with this kind of work, Seki speculates that more women than men tended to stay single after the bomb; married women, she believes, would not be compelled to work, or would work more desirable jobs.11 This suggests that female survivors were afflicted with a social stigma, and thus seen to be undesirable as spouses. In sum, women experienced and responded to the atomic bombs and their aftermath differently from men. Yet this experience has been too readily framed within the ‘‘mother myth.’’ In order to discern the eventual shift in popular representations of female survivors and the ethical possibilities opened up by this shift, I will examine, in addition to Yumechiyo, the films of Jizo and Yu¯nagi and their antecedent texts.12

Saintly Lives and Postmodern Ethics In addition to arguing that women protagonists are employed in order to aestheticize the bomb experiences and thereby evoke nationalistic nostalgia, Todeschini extends her argument to the discourse of war responsibility. Popular media portrayals have often construed hibakusha women as innocent victims, an image that has been conveniently utilized to create a victim narrative not only for diverting the audience’s attention from Japanese wartime aggression, but also for depoliticizing the experiences of hibakushas in general.13 Todeschini’s critique—that such portrayals ignore individual female hibakushas’ sufferings while fostering the conflation of inner and outer feminine beauty through portrayals of romanticized suffering and premature death—is insightful and compelling. I believe we must avoid viewing the popularity of this fictive narrative as merely the result of a simple-minded audience being manipulated into seeing Yumechiyo as a representation of A-bomb ‘‘maidens,’’ as Todeschini’s interpretation might suggest. Rather, an examination of an alternative reading of Yumechiyo—one recognizing that the show’s popularity is not merely the result of seeming sexism among its Japanese audience—will help elaborate a transethics, by Sueki Fumihiko’s

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understanding of the term. Though the filmic story illustrates the problems that Todeschini points out, I propose to expand treatment of the story to include the television program, which reveals further subtleties in each character’s ethical sensibilities that might assist in the creation of a transethical account of the bombing. In developing this alternative interpretation, I follow the work of philosopher Edith Wyschogrod, who argues that hagiographical works—accounts of the lives of saints— provide models for a postmodern ethics suited to dealing with the moral impasses that arise in attempts to compare incommensurables, such as people’s lives. Indeed, the atomic bomb discourse serves as a good example of this moral impasse, as it seems inevitably to raise the question of whether the deaths of 140,000 people in Hiroshima and 70,000 in Nagasaki were the necessary, if unfortunate, cost of saving American lives—whether 20,000 or 500,000.14 Confronting such moral impasses, Wyschogrod holds that no ethical theory can produce a universally agreeable outcome. Wyschogrod therefore suggests going beyond traditional ethical theory: examining saintly lives may provide a new paradigm for broaching cases of apparent moral impasse. Briefly sketching Wyschogrod’s argument concerning hagiography and postmodern ethics will facilitate our reading of Yumechiyo. It may be that experiences of ineffable suffering from unprecedented events cannot be adequately represented in any form of media, and that neither Yumechiyo nor a hagiographical reading of it will rectify what I take to be a misuse of hibakusha women’s experiences—a rendering of their experiences as part of a sexist and nationalistic narrative of ‘‘purity.’’ But I hope that interpreting Yumechiyo within a hagiographical framework will disclose a new approach to ethical thinking about the experiences of the atomic bombing—one that liberates women’s experiences from the nomological constraints associated with patriarchal social expectations. Hagiography, or sacred biography, differs from historiography in its amalgamation of ‘‘mythic’’ and ‘‘historical’’ material. Although what constitutes ‘‘mythical’’ versus ‘‘historical’’ remains a contested issue, Frank E. Reynolds and Donald Capps, editors of The Biographical Process, suggest a useful approach to hagiographical texts. According to these writers, what is most worth examining in hagiographical literature is revealed through analyses of the ‘‘mythical’’ ideal—that is, an ideal that renders life experience extraordinary, thereby giving rise to a new idea of the ‘‘holy.’’ ‘‘Given that the mythical ideal remains somewhat

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fluid at the time the sacred biography is written or compiled, the selection of biographical material is an extremely vexing problem. A single reported episode may have a constitutive effect on the resulting mythical ideal.’’15 In other words, the mythical ideal gives shape to the hagiographical trope; in turn, an extraordinary episode in a biographical narrative provides structure to the mythical ideal. Therefore, ‘‘the sacred biographer is not primarily concerned to provide a narrative portrait or ‘likeness’ of the subject. Establishing the mythical ideal, or what might better be called the biographic image, takes precedence over a simple chronicling of biographical facts.’’16 In its blending of biography and fictive narratives, the mythical ideal generates a structural foundation for hagiography. In the present context, the aim is not to treat hibakushas as saints, or as idealized ‘‘moral man,’’ as Nobel laureate Kenzaburo¯ Oe once described victims of the bomb.17 Rather, we will find that the plot of Yumechiyo generates a particular understanding of the ‘‘holy,’’ which suggests that the compelling nature of Yumechiyo does not stem exclusively from nostalgia for national purity evoked by the stereotypical portrayal of the innocent maiden. Rather, the idea of the ‘‘holy’’ directs our attention to the ethical implications of the story, revealing the urgency of participating in a community of memory founded upon hibakushas’ experiences. How, then, might hagiographies, founded on mythical ideals, enhance ethical discourse, particularly in our time? Edith Wyshogrod argues that postmodern ethics, emerging in response to the genocides and other atrocities that the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have witnessed, concerns the question of the way in which we define the concept of alterity and deal with the other. What has allowed humans to commit genocide and other atrocities, claims Wyschogrod, is the failure to reflect deeply on one’s relationship with alterity. Wyschogrod therefore suggests that postmodern ethics should lie in ‘‘the sphere of transactions between ‘self’ and ‘Other’ and is to be constructed nonnomologically.’’18 This non-nomological thought stands in contrast to ethical systems that engage in ‘‘the investigation of the nomos of conduct’’ in modernity, defining an ethics beyond nomological thought —what Sueki calls ‘‘transethics.’’ Nomological ethical systems, Wyschogrod suggests, have tended to treat the other as a lesser, self—one that can be assimilated by the self. Otherness is feared, and as a result, erased.

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By contrast, saints are defined as those who ‘‘put themselves totally at the disposal of the Other,’’ and their lives are thereby defined by ‘‘compassion for the Other.’’19 In other words, saints embody a paradigm shift in which the relations between the self and the other are differently asymmetrical; the other has priority over the self. While the ‘‘discovery’’ of saints’ lives as exempla of ethical conduct directs attention toward historical figures, the emergent ethics does not conform to some premodern paradigm in which the nomos of conduct only serves the interests of an institutional framework. Rather, as Wyschogrod makes clear, developing an ethics on the basis of saints’ lives is part of an innovative ethics that prioritizes the needs of the other. Narratives of saintly embodiments of radical altruism and practices of self-negation dramatically display the refusal to make of the other a mere extension of the self, and instead put the saint’s ‘‘own body and material goods at the disposal of the Other.’’20 Exhibiting altruism and practices of self-denial, the saints’ lives ‘‘unfold in tension with institutional frameworks,’’ which generally advocate nomological moral behaviors. Wyschogrod claims that saints’ manifestations of negation— negation of self by renouncing their power, as a means to alleviate or relate to the negation of the existence of the other—undermines the order of institutional frameworks and perhaps any social structures that presuppose the pursuit of individual or collective self-preservation over the preservation of the other.21 Saints’ non-nomological behaviors therefore appear as the mythical ideal, as manifestations of saints’ extraordinary concerns and care for others, at the expense of their social or even physical self-preservation. In short, saints’ lives call into question institutional orders, be they ecclesial or otherwise. And thanks to this challenge, hagiography critiques those social values that are commonly taken for granted. Furthermore, postmodern hagiographical ethics does not nullify the sense of the self in premodern times. Wyschogrod thus writes the followings: If . . . saintliness is a total emptying without replenishment, there is no subject to engage the Other. In either case the alterity of the Other disappears, is reduced to the homogeneity of the Same. This paradox opened up by saintly selflessness will be seen to dissolve once the relationship between power and powerlessness in saintly existence is clarified. Powerlessness will be viewed as renunciation and suffering, the

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expressions of self-negation in saintly life, whereas, by contrast, the field of moral action will be interpreted as requiring empowerment.22

This dialectical relationship with the other—one’s awareness of power over the other, the renunciation of that power, and the embrace of powerless as a way to relate to the other—is, as I will show, what characterizes the ‘‘mythical ideal’’ that sustains the hagiographical structure of atomic bomb narratives. This abnegation of one’s power for the other must not come from self-interest, but from ‘‘excessive desire, a desire on behalf of the other that seeks the cessation of another’s suffering and the birth of another’s joy.’’23 Since such self-sacrificial acts, as we saw in Chapter 2, can be exploited and must not be imposed upon others, it is therefore crucial to recognize that hagiographical accounts register dissonance with the nomological moral guidance often encouraged by institutions. In these features of hagiography Wyschogrod finds resources for new approaches to ethical thinking. While institutional frameworks such as those of the church attempt to use hagiographical narratives as part of a disciplinary regime aimed at controlling the institution’s members, this means of exercising power sharply contradicts the model of saintly lives. Saints’ exhibition of power is only manifested in their abnegation of power: ‘‘Saintly action is connected with the abnegation of power in that the authorization of saintly work derives from the renunciation of power. On the face of it, such renunciation appears to preclude action altogether so that saintly work has an apparently paradoxical character: it appears to be an exercise of power but depends on the abnegation of power.’’24 Thus, while hagiographies can be put to use by institutional authorities, they are never exhausted by such use, but rather persistently display a resistance to attempts to limit them within the bounds of social normativity. In sum, hagiographies contribute to contemporary moral theory by displaying ways in which altruism can be put into practice. At the same time, they exhibit antinomian behaviors through their relentless negations of self.25 With this in mind, we may turn to Yumechiyo.

Yumechiyo Nikki as Hagiography The story of Yumechiyo begins with Yumechiyo’s returning from the hospital on a train crossing a high iron bridge into her village, evoking

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a sense of remoteness from the convenience of city life. Another passenger on the train is a detective investigating a murder case whose main suspect is Ichikoma, one of the geishas under Yumechiyo’s care. Though Yumechiyo, terminally ill, acknowledges the fate of a brief life, she is more bothered by the threat posed to her community by an infestation of yakuza (Japanese mafia), who want to turn her village into a resort area. Yumechiyo’s protective instinct extends to Ichikoma, assisting in her escape. Meanwhile, the only medical doctor in the village flees with one of Yumechiyo’s geishas. Although the villagers trusted the doctor, it is discovered that he has been practicing medicine without a license. There is no grand finale to this melodramatic plot; rather, the story is indefinitely protracted through characters’ arrivals to and departures from the village, interweaving their past and present lives. Describing this story as an ‘‘A-bomb soap opera’’ and an ‘‘A-bomb tear jerker,’’ Todeschini maintains that Yumechiyo ‘‘contains all the ingredients for commercial success: a long-suffering beautiful heroine who dies fashionably . . . romantic love and sex; traditional dance, song and popular theater; intrigue, female suicide and murder.’’26 In her analyses of such A-bomb ‘‘maiden’’ movies (including the well-known Kuroi ame, or Black Rain),27 Todeschini attributes their popular success to their exploitation of female hibakushas: The A-bomb stories fashion their experiences into ‘‘culturally and politically sanctioned narratives’’ by imposing cultural stereotypes upon women in general as silently suffering innocents, and in particular upon female hibakusha, whose individuality is dismissed in favor of romanticized victimization through the glamorization of suffering.28 While the story of the A-bomb maiden, especially as visually represented, aestheticizes radiation-related sicknesses by suggesting that women’s external beauty corresponds to inner virtues developed through silent suffering,29 the actual suffering experienced by hibakushas, as Todeschini claims, is largely ignored. The case of the ‘‘Hiroshima Maidens’’ would seem to prove this point: A-bomb maidens portrayed in fiction have to be physically intact, as if their outward appearance confirmed their inner beauty.30 Deformed bodies—visible keloids, lost limbs, and the like—must be hidden even in fictional narratives and visual portrayals of women protagonists.31 Todeschini further argues that the theme of such short-lived innocent beauty evokes in readers’ minds the ‘‘mono no aware, or the ‘suchness’ and ‘sad beauty’ of existence.’’32 This notion is associated with

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the eighteenth-century philosopher Motoori Norinaga, whose school of National Learning provided the theoretical underpinnings of the Japanese nationalism that led to wars in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In this way, these A-bomb maiden stories stimulates nationalistic memory, exhibiting ‘‘symbolic alignment with ‘tradition,’ and the supposed ‘essence’ of pre-modern Japan,’’33 an illusory Japan ‘‘untainted’’ by modernism, that is, ‘‘Western’’ influences. The combination of Yumechiyo’s flawless appearance, her ‘‘traditional’’ occupation of geisha, and her inner strength and virtues, notwithstanding her physical deterioration, evokes the national image of Japan as an entity scarred by wars and Western influences but retaining its beauty intact. The fact that Yumechiyo was exposed to radiation while still in her mother’s womb creates more firmly the image of ‘‘innocent suffering.’’ Consequently, Todeschini claims, ‘‘the portrayal of heroic, ‘innocent’ survivors allows for a ‘symbolic reconciliation’ of the various political, social and moral tensions and ambiguities in Japanese public memory surrounding the A-bomb experience, with regard to the dropping of the bomb, conditions that led up to it, and the social position of survivors in Japanese society.’’34 The Yumechiyo story, representing the suffering of innocent Japanese, effectively distracts the audience from consideration of Japanese war responsibility. I fully agree with Todeschini’s criticism that the rhetoric of innocent suffering serves the purpose of concealing Japan’s wartime crimes. But this alone does not account for the popularity of the Yumechiyo story, whose incarnations go beyond the film. Though the film was tailored for commercial success, the TV series created by the NHK is relatively free from the usual sensationalistic tropes motivated by commercial interests. Examining the original television script reveals that the Yumechiyo story does not simplistically and unambiguously portray the suffering of an innocent, but in fact can elucidate the moral complexity of human beings, calling into question the crude categorization of characters as either innocent or wicked. Todeschini’s analysis, limited to the film version of Yumechiyo, cannot take account of the moral vicissitudes of the wider story’s characters, and thus simplifies them. Consequently, her argument may give the impression that the Yumechiyo story was largely supported by a male audience or that the female audience in Japan is not critically acute enough to see through the nationalistic agenda behind the overly romanticized tragedy. As a corrective to this reading, examining the television program through the interpretive framework

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of hagiography reveals the ethical insights concerning non-nomological self-renunciation. For example, in the first TV series, Yumechiyo abets her fellow geisha, Ichikoma, a murder suspect, not out of conviction of Ichikoma’s innocence but from an impulse to take responsibility as a guardian for all the geishas under her care. This gives rise to a moral dilemma between compliance with public authority and complicity in Ichikoma’s flight. Yumechiyo chooses to side with Ichikoma. Assisting in Ichikoma’s absconding, Yumechiyo exhibits the ambiguity of her moral character as a heroine, rather than exemplifying unadulterated innocence. Meanwhile, Numata, a member of the yakuza who harasses the villagers with the aim of making them yield to selling their properties in order to build a resort, turns out to be a hibakusha who was helped by Yumechiyo’s mother when he lost his parents to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. When Numata realizes that a geisha house that his group is trying to purchase belonged to Yumechiyo’s late mother, who Yumechiyo has succeeded, he opens his collar wider to reveal a keloid on his chest. He then sits down on the tatami mat to offer incense at the Buddhist altar, paying respect to Yumechiyo’s mother, but suffers a spell of vertigo upon standing up. Returning to the tatami mat, Numata says, ‘‘This is because of the Pika. The effect won’t go away after these many years.’’35 (Pika is an onomatopoeic term for the flash of the atomic bomb. Together with the noise from the explosion—‘‘don’’ in the onomatopoetic expression—the bomb is often referred to as ‘‘Pika don,’’ or simply ‘‘Pika.’’) Yumechiyo asks if he has sought medical assistance. He responds, ‘‘No one wants to see me live long. What about you?’’ Lowering her eyes, Yumechiyo avoids answering. ‘‘Must be the same as me, as you, too, were exposed to the Pika in your mother’s womb.’’36 Numata is a hibakusha, and yet, in contrast to the stereotype, he is neither wholly morally virtuous or nor heroically courageous, but as weak and inclined toward corruption as anyone else. In addition, Kihara, the village’s kindhearted doctor, flees with one of Yumechiyo’s geisha after authorities discover that he has been practicing without a license. Again, the tension between public authority and personal human relationships resurfaces: the most helpful and sympathetic doctor in this rural village is a lawbreaker. In the end, detective Yamane decides to let Ichikoma get away, burns the evidence of Kihara’s illegal practice, and resigns from his job. In addition, Kihara’s malpractice extended to assisting in an illegal adoption. After a failed suicide

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attempt and subsequent miscarriage, with Kihara’s help, one of Yumechiyo’s geishas, Kingyo, adopts a baby, Ako. Taking responsibility for Ako revives Kingyo’s will to live. Here we see how justice as dictated by public authorities does not function in the context of ‘‘thick’’ human ethical relationships. This is not to say that these episodes suggest that the nomological moral behavior prescribed by public authorities is wrong. Rather, they offer a glimpse of the possibilities of non-nomological transethics that, though transgressing norms, afford a greater attention to the suffering of others. Focusing upon Yumechiyo’s ‘‘innocent’’ suffering alone fails to acknowledge the complexity of hibakushas, the people surrounding them, and the prospects of non-nomological ethics. The main characters in Yumechiyo, including the long-suffering protagonist, are far from being simplistically righteous, just, or innocent, but are rather morally ambiguous, caught between social norms and non-nomological compassion that cannot be constrained by the mechanisms of public authority. Despite the surprisingly complex portraits of human character and moral ambiguities in this melodramatic narrative, however, the Yumechiyo story does not address a question of relating to others as a step toward an inclusive community of memory. And this is where we may return to Wyschogrod’s insistence upon hagiography as a way of discerning the ethical import of compassion that exceeds norms.

From the Lowly to the Holy The sort of moral ambiguity present in the Yumechiyo story is also evident in the lives of saints. Because of their extreme altruism and practices of self-negation, saints’ behaviors often go beyond those institutional norms that demarcate right and wrong, just and unjust, innocent and wicked. Fascination with the lives of saints, like that of the Yumechiyo story, derives from their power to nullify social and ethical norms through their extraordinary acts of altruism, toward the end of alleviating the suffering of others. In addition, examining hagiographies in Japan reveals that saintly figures transgress not only social norms and metaphysical demarcations of good and evil, but also physical boundaries, through transmogrification. In reading Yumechiyo through a hagiographical lens, one must keep in mind that most hagiographies of holy women in medieval times were written by men; men’s perspectives thus inevitably construct saintly

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women’s experiences, as historian of medieval Europe Catherine M. Mooney has argued. ‘‘Given the patriarchal and misogynistic cast of medieval society and, in particular, the medieval Church,’’ observes Mooney, ‘‘many scholars have increasingly expressed skepticism regarding these sources, noting that male-authored depictions of holy women, however sincerely intentioned, are likely to reveal far more about men’s idealized notions of female sanctity and its embodiment in women’s lives than they reveal about the female saints themselves.’’37 Though Mooney is referring specifically to the Christian tradition in medieval Europe, the problems and questions she poses are applicable to stories deriving from Japan. Scholar of Japanese history Janet R. Goodwin echoes Mooney, claiming that ‘‘for the most part this [hagiography] was a male discourse. . . . Largely missing from the discourse are the women’s own voices.’’38 With this caveat in mind, let us examine a twelfth-century hagiography, Kenkyu¯ gojunreiki, a ‘‘prototype’’ from which later hagiographical folk tales emerged. The story describes the origin and history of the Ashuku-ji (Ashuku temple), which was said to be the origin of Hokkeji in Nara, located on the route of a female aristocrat’s pilgrimage to Nanto, or the ‘‘Southern Capital’’ (present-day Nara). The structure of this story proved generative, becoming the basis of stories of the origin of the Hokke-ji and Todai-ji temples,39 both of which are still to be found in Nara, and house Buddhist statues designated as national treasures. A monk named Jitsuei compiled the record of this woman’s travels in 1191, but we can still only speculate about her identity. This pilgrimage record portrays the mythical story of an empress who witnesses the transformation of a leper into the Buddha.40 This elevation of the lowly into the holy is a prominent theme of the Japanese hagiographic genre and, as we will see, marks an important dynamic in the movies under discussion in this chapter. The protagonist of this prominent hagiographical folktale, of which there exist numerous variations, is Empress Ko¯mei, who opens a public bath catering to the poor and sick. She even offers to wash the first person to visit her bath. The first person who appears is a leper who demands that the empress wash him with her own hands. The empress acquiesces, though hesitantly, and washes him, admonishing him not to tell anyone of her actions, for fear of being marginalized for having come into contact

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with a leper. But upon being bathed by the empress, the leper transforms into a Buddha who ascends into Heaven.41 This story not only shows the ambiguity of the character of the empress as simultaneously merciful and concerned with self-preservation; it also portrays the unsettling proximity of the holy and the unholy: The marginalized sufferer is, in fact, a sacred being, and the empress, through her encounter with the lowly figure, becomes a saintly figure. Japanese hagiographies are indeed rich in representations of the socially marginalized—the sick, the poor, and female prostitutes— elevated from their lowly social positions in ways that relativize the prevailing norms. Such a dynamic also characterizes the Yumechiyo story, where we will find that a hagiographical interpretation not only offers further insight into the question of the popularity of the ‘‘A-bomb maiden’’ genre, and in particular Yumechiyo, but also promotes more nuanced analyses of Japanese ethical sensibilities in the face of tragic events. Without simplistically identifying actual hibakushas with saints or saintly figures and thus eschewing their individual sufferings and shortcomings, we may investigate how hagiographic tropes and structures facilitate a better understanding of the hibakusha ethics. The pattern of empowering the unholy and thereby nullifying the boundaries of worldly hierarchies permeates Japanese hagiographies. In this connection, an examination of the historical attributes of the geisha provides further insight. Following Todeschini’s critique, Yumechiyo’s occupation as a geisha may be interpreted as another apparatus for aestheticization and evocation of nostalgia. The stereotype of the ‘‘geisha’’ evokes women’s subjugation to men. The image of the subservient geisha has been romanticized, particularly in Western European and North American contexts, primarily because of the enigmatic and ‘‘exotic’’ nature of the occupation: geisha are skillful entertainers, attention-givers, and yet not simply prostitutes. But Yumechiyo departs from this stereotype in important ways. She is one of two villagers (the other is a woman who owns an old-fashioned hotel in the village) who not only runs a business but also refuses to give in to the threats of the yakuza, while most of the male villagers capitulate to their demands. Confronting both the yakuza and a detective—figures representing hierarchical orders of authority in the worlds of organized crime and the law— Yumechiyo is far from submissive. The import of Yumechiyo’s resistance to social restrictions can be approached in light of hagiographical patterns; a historical overview of the origins of geisha, meanwhile, will

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assist in understanding their contribution to shaping hagiographical tropes. Traditionally, there are a number of ways to refer to female entertainers in Japan, including asobime, asobibe, shirabyo¯shi, and yu¯jo, to name a few. This varied nomenclature reflects the varying range of their skills and associations. Similarly, the social status of these female entertainers is difficult to define, at least before the Middle Ages (the twelfth through fifteenth centuries), when written records of their lives appeared. Janet R. Goodwin notes that opinions among scholars dealing with the question of the entertainers’ social standing are divided into two factions: those who argue that the female entertainers were marginalized and voiceless, and those who point to their association with highranked priests, aristocrats, and others of high social standing. Goodwin agrees with neither camp, arguing instead that ‘‘attitudes toward female entertainers were always ambiguous, ranging from delight to dismay at any given time.’’42 Bernard Faure, meanwhile, claims that the geisha’s role was to act as a religious mediator: ‘‘The term asobi, used concurrently with ukare (also read yu¯) in the medieval period, implied an artistic talent related to music, song, and dance. But it would also be misleading to read the yu¯ or yu¯jo as mere entertainment. The term asobi seems to have first meant a ritual to console the soul of the departed (and those of his relatives).’’43 Faure goes on to assert that ‘‘because they served ‘sacred beings’ (the kami and the emperor himself), they participated to a certain extent in sacredness. These specialists of ‘deep play’ (asobi) took on all of the meanings of the word asobi itself, with its broad semantic field, ranging from the religious to the sexual and artistic domains.’’44 Though some scholars have questioned the historical association of the female entertainers with religious power, the closeness of these women to the sacred was a conceit commonly adopted in literary representations, expressing and promoting the association in the Japanese imagination.45 As Goodwin claims, from the mid-Kamakura era on, ‘‘one image of [the female entertainers], as transgressors against social norms, became dominant.’’46 Recalling that the mythical ideal is constituted of non-nomological behaviors that transgress social norms, one may suggest that female entertainers transcend the conventional morality of good versus bad. Such behaviors threaten authority, yet as we have seen, they can also express self-renunciation in care for others.

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Having noted the ambiguous status of female entertainers and their role in the popular imagination, we may now turn to one of those narratives in which a saint, encountering a marginalized female entertainer, attains enlightenment. In this story, in which the yu¯jo reveals herself as a manifestation of the holy, the boundaries between the sacred and the profane are disrupted, disclosing the instability of these categories. Despite (or perhaps because of) their low social status, the female entertainers in Japanese hagiography are transformed into sacred beings. They take on the role not of the saved but of the saviors. As Goodwin demonstrates, by the end of the Middle Ages, the status of these female entertainers had diminished, as seen in the fifteenthcentury Noh play Eguchi. Here the yu¯jo no longer holds the privileged social status associated with being a spiritual mediator between the sacred and the profane. Rather, her initial position of lowliness sets the stage for a transgression of social and ontological boundaries, as the yu¯jo becomes holy.47 The Eguchi story is based on the legend of a tenthcentury Buddhist saint, Sho¯ku¯ sho¯nin, who had a burning desire to see the bodhisattva Fugen, or Samantabhadra. He had a dream, however, that directed him to visit a yu¯jo instead. Eventually, Sho¯ku¯ sho¯nin is able to see the yu¯jo as an avatar of the bodhisattva Fugen. The movement in this hagiographical story from profane to sacred, low to high, in the juxtaposition of the yu¯jo and the bodhisattva evokes the frangibility of social, moral, and religious boundaries in this world, undermining the certainty of authoritative social, moral, and religious norms. Such hagiographical tropes are reimagined in Yumechiyo’s multifaceted social stigmata. Grave enough in the context of Japanese society to place her on the bottom of the social hierarchy—she is a hibakusha, barren, suffering from terminal illness, and a geisha in a rural village— her stigmata relegate her to the position of a pariah. At the same time, these very qualities anticipate a transformation into a saintly figure: That the people of the actual village on which the fictional village is based have constructed a statue of Yumechiyo as a bodhisattva confirms that she is perceived as a holy figure in the popular imagination.48 One reason this melodrama has been found so compelling lies not in its provocation of chauvinistic and nationalistic sentiment alone, but rather in its appeal to the audience’s ethical imagination, in its attempt to understand, and perhaps respond to, the suffering of others. The Yumechiyo story trades in hagiographical tropes in which the lowly become holy through their ‘‘excessive desire . . . on behalf of the Other,’’

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through seeking to end the suffering of others and to promote the ‘‘birth of another’s joy.’’49 The characters of this story, neither morally perfect nor totally corrupt, are agents of the nullification of worldly moral norms through the extension of compassion to the suffering of others. But more important, the transformation from lowly to holy is made possible when one dares to transgress the boundaries set up by social norms, as in the moment when the empress touches the leper, when the Buddhist monk comes to see the yu¯jo, or when detective Yamane abandons the pursuit of ‘‘criminals.’’ The transformation thus occurs on both ends: Empress Ko¯mei, Sho¯ku¯ sho¯nin, and Yamane, outside of their usual environs, encounter the suffering and lowly other, and in doing so abandon their impulse to self-preservation; transgressing social norms, and having renounced social power, the ‘‘holy’’ is revealed to them. Reading Yumechiyo in light of its use of hagiographical tropes not only helps to explain the popularity of the television series but also yields ethical insight. The transformation of pariahs into saints is only made possible, in Japanese hagiographies, when the individual—the empress at the public bath or Buddhist sage in the Noh play Eguchi— overcomes the impulse to self-preservation by coming into contact with the lowly other. The other, in these narratives, reveals the arbitrariness of the socially constructed boundaries associated with the moral sentiments of good and evil, culminating in a transformation of the lowly into the holy. Similarly, the difficulties associated with enduring marginalization notwithstanding, actual A-bomb survivors in their testimonies break down the boundaries separating victims and victimizers. The hibakusha do not focus upon prosecuting the perpetrators of crimes; rather, they frequently reconcile their experiences of the atomic bombing by reflecting upon their own shortcomings: I too have done wrong, so I am not in the place to condemn others.50 Rather than imputing responsibility or pursuing retaliation, the hibakusha have sought reconciliation through sharing their testimonies, toward the end of preventing the future suffering of others—all others, beyond any given biological, regional, cultural, or religious relations. Such attempts as those made by the hibakusha to envision a community of memory, as discussed in Chapter 1, by extending relations beyond these boundaries are overlooked in the existing atomic bomb discourse. Reading the Yumechiyo story through a hagiographical lens

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discloses the arbitrariness of social and national boundaries, and in doing so claims its ethical import. This hagiographical reading of Yumechiyo does not, however, correct the problems that Todeschini reveals, such as the patriarchal ideology associated with the premature death of hibakusha maidens. Neither have such melodramatic elements completely disappeared from recent films—but these films nonetheless display differences from their counterparts from the 1980s by proposing a way to relate to others that is not defined by biological relations alone.

Jizo and Yu¯nagi: Hope for the Future, Continuity of Life Revisiting Todeschini’s criticism clarifies several problems in the portrayal of hibakusha women in the media. Projecting a nostalgic vision onto hibakusha women while ignoring the plight of individual victims aestheticizes emotional and physical suffering in a way that is reflected outwardly in women’s unblemished appearances. Hibakusha women are thus caught in a double bind: they are expected to fulfill the mutually incompatible roles of childbearing mothers in the service of perpetuating the patriarchal system and maidens in the service of nationalistic nostalgia. Hibakusha women are depicted as falling short of the normative portrayal of mature woman who sponsor the patriarchal family system through the conception of new life while being expected to remain within that system in the form of maidens who remain forever ‘‘innocent.’’ Though I agree with Todeschini’s analysis of hibakusha women’s portrayals in fictional accounts, I have sought a different way of reading them, focusing on hagiographical tropes in the Yumechiyo story rather than the theme of premature death among ‘‘maidens.’’ In doing so, I argued that the Yumechiyo story employs morally ambiguous characters, including the protagonists, and thereby exhibits non-nomological concerns for others, one key theme of hagiography. Another form of non-nomological ethics is found in recent atomic bomb films, which reveal a further ethical dimension to hibakusha women’s portrayal in popular media. In analyzing the two A-bomb movies thus far released since 2000, I rely on key ideas from Hiroshima hibakusha feminist writers Seki Chieko and Kanou Mikiyo. Both Seki and Kanou ask what it means for women to express and discuss the Hiroshima experiences without being restricted in advance by the prevailing stereotypes. Seki, as we will see, suggests that readers

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approach the question of women’s suffering by formulating a distinction between mothers and ‘‘umu sei,’’ or ‘‘the sex that gives birth.’’51 Kanou, who also emphasizes mothers’ sufferings, urges readers not to fall into the ‘‘bosei shinwa,’’ or ‘‘mother myth.’’ We may recall, for example, that Yumechiyo is portrayed simultaneously as barren—and thereby perpetually a ‘‘maiden’’—and as a mother figure to the other women at her geisha house, while Kingyo becomes mother through adoption. Though neither of these figures biologically bears a child, both nonetheless exemplify the theme of women as ‘‘the sex that gives life.’’ Though it offers ethical insight, the Yumechiyo story traffics in aestheticizing stereotypes: women as silent sufferers and female hibakusha as outwardly beautiful but doomed to premature death. Recent atomic bomb films critically depart from such stereotypes, and in doing so dramatically realize the means of approach suggested in the work of Seki and Kanou, formulating conditions for human relations that do not depend on biological affiliation alone, and thus avoiding the essentializing view of women as merely mechanisms of reproduction, or figures constructed by the mother myth. In her article ‘‘Genbaku saigai to josei’’ (The atomic bomb destruction and women), Seki observes that the sorrow of mothers over the loss of children to the bombings has received much attention, particularly in Japan. The grief of fathers, meanwhile, is largely overlooked or avoided. Such portrayals, according to Seki, exclude from aspects of the atomic bomb experiences not only fathers, but also women who are not mothers. In responding to this asymmetry, Seki endeavors to redescribe the notion of women as ‘‘umu sei.’’ Umu sei, claims Seki, is different from simply becoming a mother: ‘‘When it comes to . . . the continuity of lives, women understand intuitively or biologically what we call the seimei genri, or life principle. This is not the privilege of mothers alone, because women—including those women who do not bear a child, those who are not married, or who choose not to have a child—are capable of sensing that we are in the midst of the chain of life and in the life principle.’’52 Displacing an essentialist view of women according to their biological capacity—either mothers or maidens, having conceived or not yet conceived—Seki articulates a more inclusive understanding of the category of ‘‘the sex that gives birth.’’ And this sex, claims Seki, is tasked with bringing men into this life principle. Like Seki, who discerns a preponderance of attention to the emotions of hibakusha mothers, Kanou also questions the stress placed upon

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mothers through the ‘‘mother myth.’’ She reveals that the attention to the mother in Hiroshima derives from this myth, a construction of the male-dominated society: ‘‘Women are born with maternal instincts. A mother protects her children and loves her children unconditionally at the expense of herself. This is simply a myth that men created in order to bring about perpetual and infinite self-sacrificial attitudes from women.’’53 Kanou proceeds to emphasize that women are not immune to conceiving of themselves in terms of the mother myth. On the contrary, many women have internalized and drawn upon it, particularly in dealing with the issues surrounding the atomic bombings and nuclear weaponry. For example, Kanou points out that after the Lucky Dragon incident in 1954, an antinuclear movement composed exclusively of mothers in Japan emerged. The members of this movement participated in the first international Mothers’ Congress, which convened in Japan in 1955. Its slogan, shared by the entire international movement, was: ‘‘It is the earnest desire of all mothers that the life they have created be nurtured and protected.’’54 Given this observation, Kanou remarks, ‘‘it is not unique to Japan to refer to motherhood in making a peace statement and antinuclear announcement, but is rather a universal phenomenon in the modern era. It is characteristic of the modern age to divide . . . women into mothers or prostitutes, as we clearly see in times of war. Soldiers deal with their carnal desires with ju¯ gun ianfu [‘‘comfort women,’’ or sex slaves serving the Japanese armies], and die shouting for their mothers.’’55 The mother myth is constructed in the interest of the patriarchal system, and women themselves conform to the model it creates. Kanou poses the question of what a genuine voice for women in the nuclear debates would look like—in other words, one not divided by the mother/prostitute dichotomy. What is the significance of women’s stories, as differentiated from men’s? In responding to this question, she refers to two characteristics of nuclear weaponry itself. She first suggests that nuclear weaponry is nondiscriminatory; it does not distinguish between combatant and civilian, between adults and children, between this or that nationality. But Kanou follows this observation with a more provocative one. Children, she suggests, are more vulnerable to radiation, and thus they suffer more than adults. She concludes that in fact nuclear weapons are therefore discriminatory: They aim at

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the weak—an unconventional understanding of discrimination in relation to the nuclear weaponry. The second characteristic she points out lies in the prolonged effects of nuclear weaponry. She refers not to lingering radiation, but rather to hereditary influences: ‘‘its destruction carries on to the next and the following generations, beyond the limit of any individual’s life.’’56 Kanou suggests that it is these continuing influences, passed on through generations, that lead to the associations between nuclear issues and motherhood. Yet, like Seki, she wants to render motherhood distinct from womanhood: ‘‘It is rather women than men who realize the continuity of life in the long run. However, this realization must not be reduced to the maternal instinct, but stems from the fact that women are biologically endowed with the function of giving birth.’’57 The common assumption of both Seki and Kanou is that the defining feature of women is their biological reproductive capacity, regardless of whether or not they actually bear children. Yet they also warn readers not to fall into the trap of the mother myth, a sort of myth that abets the patriarchal system. We have seen that the early antinuclear movement relied upon the mother myth, and observed the problems associated with connecting the significance of women to their biological functions. But defining women’s role in the discourse on nuclear weaponry in relation to their reproductive functions also diminishes or ignores the experiences of male parents, while at the same time reifying social norms, making tragic victims of women who do not give birth. It is here that recent atomic bomb films provide guidance, illustrating thick relations not exclusively based upon biological relations, and therefore not solely dependent on women’s reproductive functions. Since the turn of the millennium, and as of the time of this writing, two popular films on the atomic bombing have been released in Japan: Jizo, in 2005, and Yu¯nagi, in 2007. These movies demonstrate a divergence from the typical portrayal of hibakusha women as subordinates within the patriarchal system—the barren women and eternal maidens that Todeschini found in the films of the 1980s. Though to some extent the women in these later films fulfill the old stereotypes—in Jizo, finding a spouse indicates women’s happiness, while in Yu¯nagi the protagonist encounters the premature deaths of her aunt and mother—they also illustrate a continuity of life that depends neither upon the patriarchal system nor the mother myth that attends that system. Though a

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product of this system, the mother myth has also been used by women to promote the antinuclear movement, as Kanou points out. In order to examine the form that ‘‘continuity of life’’ might take beyond the framework of traditional family relations and the mother myth, we will briefly retrace the stories of Jizo and Yu¯nagi. As we will find, these portrayals of hibakusha women demonstrate an innovative ethics of ‘‘the continuity of life.’’ The film The Face of Jizo is based on a play by renowned writer Inoue Hisashi and was first performed in 1994.58 The story is set in Hiroshima, three years after the atomic bombing, where a woman named Fukuyoshi Mitsue is living with her father, Takezo¯. One day, a young scholar named Kinoshita visits the library where Mitsue works, telling her that he is collecting information about the atomic bombing. Though they experience mutual attraction, when Kinoshita asks her to come with him to his hometown in the northern part of Japan, a gesture that could be interpreted as a marriage proposal, Mitsue hesitates. Her reluctance stems from survivor’s guilt; she is convinced that she does not deserve happiness. Through a conversation with her father, Mitsue’s experience on the day of the bombing is revealed: she abandoned her wounded father after the bomb. The charred statue of the bodhisattva Jizo in the yard of her house reminds her of that day, when she fled from the fire and from her injured father. As their conversation unfolds, the audience learns that her father was burnt to death on the day of the bombing, but he continues to appear to Mitsue as an apparition in order to encourage Mitsue to move on with Kinoshita. The plot thus revolves around one survivor’s critical reflections on abandoning her father. Survivor’s guilt, as we saw in Chapter 3, is a familiar topic in atomic bomb narratives—but this film provides a new perspective, for here continuity of life is not predicated on conforming to the mother myth. Breaking from the usual nostalgic stereotypes, the protagonist, while young and beautiful, does not suffer illness or face premature death. Though the woman’s happiness is still associated with finding a mate, her unhappiness has nothing to do with anxiety about marital prospects, as was the case in Kuroi Ame, or Black Rain, with its theme of infertility. Moreover, the story promotes an account of the continuity of human relationships beyond this earthly life by focusing on Mitsue’s conversation with her father. Relationships of this sort are what Sueki Fumihiko characterizes as ‘‘dialogue with the dead.’’ The film thus exhibits a continuity of life

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unbroken by physical death, and therefore describes a thick relationship that does not center solely on the protagonist’s mortality and fertility. Through an imagined dialogue with her late father, Mitsue gathers the courage to continue to live, and to lead a happy life. In such dialogical relations Sueki finds the basis of a transethics, that is, an ethics beyond social norms. Jizo illustrates this transethics in the conversation between Mitsue and her father. Toward the end of the story, where the dialogue between Mitsue and her father Takezo¯ is highlighted, Mitsue finally breaks down in admitting that she had abandoned Takezo¯ and therefore she cannot pursue a relationship with Kinoshita. In a scolding voice, Takezo¯ says to Mitsue: ‘‘Were you able to hear my last words, Mitsue? ‘Live. Live my life for me too!’ So, you see, you will go on living because of me.’’59 Takezo¯ continues, ‘‘Go on living 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 you work is for? To tell people those things?’’60 As Sueki would affirm, Mitsue mounts the courage to live through dialogue with the deceased Takezo¯. She has to live for the dead, to convey the content of their experiences to the living. In a snippet of dialogue from the screenplay, Takezo¯ elaborates this form of continuity of life: Takezo¯: You’ve got your work cut out for you, to tell people sad things an’ happy things. If you don’t get that through your head, then you’re really the stupid pigheaded daughter you say you are and there’s no way I can ever depend on you. [I would] Just as soon have some other child instead. Mitsue: Some other child? Takezo¯: A grandchild . . . a great grandchild.61

Takezo¯ expresses a hope that life will continue, despite the atrocious deaths and destruction wrought by the nuclear bombings. Continuity of life may be a hope among the hibakusha in particular, as Japan is a place in which relations with ancestors figure significantly into everyday life. This fact sheds light on the literal translation of Takezo¯ ’s last line, which differs from the cited translation—‘‘washi no mago jaga, himago jaga,’’ that is, ‘‘my grandchild . . . my great grandchild’’—which acknowledges that he will be one day be revered as the ancestor of his grandchild and great grandchild.62 However, by defining

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‘‘my’’ grandchild and great-grandchild, the line also assumes that Mitsue will one day become a mother, whether through biological birth or by adopting a child. This scenario thus raises the question of how to consider hope for continuity of life that acknowledges women’s biological capacities without reducing them to those capacities—a hope that is addressed in our second film, Yu¯nagi. The narrative of Yu¯nagi, based upon Kouno Fumiyo’s graphic novel of the same title, is divided into three parts: the story of Minami in Hiroshima, ten years after the bombing; the story of Nanami, Minami’s niece, in Tokyo sixty years after the bombing; and Nanami’s visit to Hiroshima. Minami, the protagonist of the first part, suffers from survivor’s guilt and dies prematurely from radiation sickness. Unlike Mitsue, Minami’s guilt stems not from abandoning others in order to survive, but from surviving an attack that was intended to take her life along with those of many others. Ten years after the bombing, encountering scarred women in a public bath in Hiroshima, Minami murmurs, ‘‘All I know is that somebody wanted us dead. They wanted us to die, but we survived. The most terrifying thing is how it changed me. I’ve become the sort of person one ought to wish dead.’’63 Faced with a graphic reminder of the sufferings of others, and recalling the death of her younger sister, Minami feels uncertain that she deserves life. Mr. Uchikoshi, a colleague of Minami’s, expresses his appreciation for her survival, which gives her an incentive for continued life. Soon thereafter, however, the young maiden Minami becomes ill and bedridden. Slipping in and out of consciousness, her monologue continues, emphasizing the absurd brutality of nuclear weaponry—the absurdity that the bomb still takes lives ten, twenty, and even thirty years after the end of the war, the context of which had supposedly justified the bomb’s use. Minami tries to fathom why someone would wish for her demise. On her deathbed, she even wonders if her death will satisfy those who favored dropping the bomb: ‘‘Happy now? It’s been ten years. I wonder if the people who dropped the bomb are pleased with themselves—‘Yes! Got another one!’ ’’64 Contemplating the irrationality of dying ten years after the bombing, Minami is overwhelmed: ‘‘This isn’t fair. I thought I was one of the survivors. I feel wind. The evening calm, the yu¯nagi—has faded?’’ This is Minami’s final line in this part of the story. From here, a third-person narrator takes over and concludes this section: ‘‘This story isn’t over yet. No matter how many times the yu¯nagi fades, this story won’t ever

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end.’’65 Minami has fallen ill immediately after Uchikoshi’s confession of his romantic affection for her, thus exemplifying that quintessentially melodramatic theme of the maiden’s death so prevalent in previous A-bomb films. What distinguishes this narrative, however, is that it does not conclude on this sentimental, if tragic, note, but extends the story to address the second generation of the hibakusha (hibaku nisei) in the next part. The second segment of the narrative introduces Nanami, a tomboyish young woman living with her family in contemporary Tokyo. Here Nanami is portrayed engaging in everyday activities—and yet there are hints of something unusual lurking beneath her apparently ‘‘normal’’ life, related to elements and incidents of Nanami’s childhood. For example, one finds images of a healthy and energetic Nanami juxtaposed with those of her sickly younger brother. In addition, when Nanami is hit by a baseball and suffers a nosebleed, or when she fakes a dizzy spell in order to escape getting into trouble, her grandmother’s reaction appears overblown, as she believes that the nosebleed and dizziness are symptoms of radiation sickness. Moreover, the graphic novel on which the movie is based includes a scene in which Nanami prays at a Buddhist altar, suggesting that she has lost a loved one. It was her mother who, it is later revealed, was a hibakusha. This explains why her grandmother, now Nanami’s guardian, is so concerned about her health. These unusual features of her life are further clarified in the third part of the story, when Nanami surreptitiously follows her father as he makes a secret trip to Hiroshima. In this final part of the narrative, the story of Nanami’s parents is revealed. Nanami’s mother, Kyoka, was orphaned by the atomic bomb (genbaku koji), and lived with her brother. Since Minami’s death, her younger brother, Ishikawa Asahi, returned from his adopted parents to Hiroshima to live with Hirano Fujimi, the mother of Minami and Asahi. In this way Asahi meets Kyoka and eventually gives birth to Nanami. Kyoka is teased for being mentally challenged, her antagonists attributing her slowness to exposure to the bomb as a child. But Asahi finds Kyoka warm-hearted and eventually falls in love with her. Taking notice of Asahi’s feelings for Kyoka, Asahi’s mother, Fujimi, herself a hibakusha, addresses Asahi accusingly: ‘‘You intend to marry a hibakusha victim? Why do you think we sent you away to be raised by others? And how would I explain this to your Ishikawa parents? Oh, why can’t I die? I don’t want to see any more people I know die from the bomb.’’66

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Fujimi’s concerns dramatize the manner in which discrimination against the hibakusha can be internalized and reproduced even by the survivors themselves. Kyoka dies of radiation sickness at the age of thirty-eight, when Nanami is still a child. Years later, Nanami’s father, Asahi, starts behaving strangely; he leaves home suspiciously, his phone bills appear unusually high, and it is clear he is hiding something from his family. Nanami decides to follow her father when he leaves the house one day believing himself to be alone. Nanami observes her father meeting with people who, she later learns, once knew his sister, Minami; his hope is to reconstruct her life story. Over the course of the day, Nanami also gradually reconstructs her own long-suppressed memories of her mother—the day she collapsed and began succumbing to radiation sickness. Revealing stories of Nanami’s aunt (Minami), her father, and her mother in Hiroshima, the third part of this story also touches upon the particular problems and experiences of second-generation hibakusha—a perspective that had not previously been explored in popular media. By addressing the second generation’s relations to the event of the bombings, the narrative points to the continuing proximity of this tragedy. For example, Nanami’s childhood friend To¯ko accompanies her to Hiroshima, partly in the hope of learning more about the atomic bombing. This marks To¯ko’s first visit to the Peace Memorial Museum, where she becomes physically sickened upon being exposed to the graphic images and artifacts on display. To¯ko’s parents are opposed to To¯ko’s romantic interest in Nanami’s brother, Nagio. The story suggests that behind her parents’ opposition is a suspicion about Nagio’s health; they attribute the severe asthma he suffered in his childhood to a pernicious genetic influence, as Nagio is a second-generation hibakusha. On their way home in a bus, To¯ko remarks to Nanami that she is glad she accompanied her to Hiroshima. ‘‘Next time I’ll bring my parents. Once they’re here, I’m sure they’ll come to like Hiroshima.’’67 A monologue from Nanami follows while To¯ko is asleep. ‘‘No one ever explicitly said that my mom died at 38 because of the atomic bomb. And when my grandma died at age 80, no one blamed it on the bomb. Yet people stubbornly believe that both Nagio and I could die at any time because of the bomb. In the same way . . . I was stubborn in wanting to forget everything that happened to me back in our old neighborhood.’’68 She finally admits to the discomfort associated with being perceived as a person who will die young, while also realizing that

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she cannot dissociate herself from the history of the atomic bombing. In the end, however, having been born as a daughter of a hibakusha parent is no longer seen a curse, but is embraced as a choice: ‘‘I looked down at these two [Asahi and Kyoka] and decided to be born to them. I’m sure of it.’’69 The story is not merely a tragic narrative unfolded from the perspective of a mother who died young, leaving her children behind, but the hopeful story of a daughter in a dialogue with the dead and with a hibakusha. This episode thus returns us to the subject of Chapter 2, the ethical import of dialogue with the dead. In that chapter, we found that the dead commemorated at the Yasukuni Shinto shrine have an ideological meaning imposed upon them—they are a ‘‘sacrifice’’ for the nation—in a manner that precludes genuinely dialogical relations. On the other hand, the Hiroshima commemoration attempts to avoid the dangers of monological discourse, in which meaning is ascribed to the dead in an attempt to make sense of an unprecedented event. In the present context, we should note that when Nanami has the label of second-generation hibakusha imposed upon her, she suppresses unpleasant memories relating to her mother’s death; she refuses to open herself to dialogue with the dead. However, her eventual interaction with the dead, in learning about her parents’ history, changed her selfunderstanding and her attitude toward her late mother. She no longer suppresses her relations with her mother, her aunt Minami, and the history of atomic bombing. As Sueki would suggest, such dialogue with the dead supplies the living with a kind of ‘‘energy’’; we live with the help of the dead.70 Such encouragement by the dead is portrayed in the closing scenes of Yu¯nagi, on a train back in Tokyo. Nanami is surprised to find her father sitting next to her; he knew he had been followed. The final scene of both the film and the graphic novel emphasizes the resemblance between Minami and Nanami. Asahi says, ‘‘You know, you remind me of [Minami]. My big sister [Minami] would be sad if you don’t find happiness.’’71 Nanami’s happiness, however, arrives in a manner that escapes the mother myth and the essentializing idea of woman as the sex that gives birth—and thanks to Asahi, a non-hibakusha. While it is true that Minami and Nanami are biologically related, the connection between them is made possible by Asahi’s efforts to relate himself to his late sister. Though Asahi is at times overshadowed by the female protagonists, his attributes and role throughout the story of Yu¯nagi are

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significant: his status as a non-hibakusha exemplifies a transethical crossing of boundaries: he not only married a hibakusha woman, against social norms, but he also mediates between hibakushas and nonhibakushas, the dead and the living. Though the first part of Yu¯nagi follows the pattern observed in films from the 1980s, displaying the problems that Todeschini points out— namely the aestheticization of women’s suffering and the protagonists’ premature deaths—the concluding lines of this section suggest that Minami’s death does not mark the end of her story: ‘‘This story isn’t over yet. No matter how many times the Yu¯nagi [evening breeze] fades, this story won’t ever end.’’72 Though Minami died young, Nanami rediscovers her relations with Minami, owing to Asahi’s efforts to reconnect to his own history. Nanami also reestablishes connection with her hibakusha mother by learning about her parents’ history. Her friend To¯ko, meanwhile, engages the history of the bombing and its consequent suffering through her romantic relations with Nanami’s brother, Nagio. She even proposes to bring her parents to Hiroshima in the hope of dispelling their prejudices around the atomic bombing, the hibakusha, and the second generation, such as Nagio. In these ways, they enact the ethics of care that animates a community of memory based upon the hibakusha experience. Both the film and the graphic novel demonstrate the widening a circle of people who come to be concerned about the bombing through relations that are not restricted by the expectations of the mother myth. Nanami’s premature death is tragic, but the fact that she does not bear children is not; Nanami’s experience is conveyed through channels that exceed those of biological reproduction, suggesting a model for transethical relations.

Conclusion Reading Yumechiyo in light of hagiographical tropes reveals the manner in which socially constructed boundaries can be exceeded, allowing for relations that might form the basis of an ethical community. This community can be extended through relations with hibakushas that are not restricted by traditional biological lines, a point borne out in my analysis of representations of hibakusha women in the recent films Jizo and Yu¯nagi. In these popular representations, we find resources for constructing a community of memory that transcends national, religious,

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and gender boundaries—a community that realizes the hibakushas’ desire to embrace all people in the effort to ensure that no one is again subjected to the horrors of nuclear weaponry. The aim to abolish nuclear weaponry is often criticized as unrealistic. But one claim of this book is that it makes even less sense to discuss nuclear deterrence without taking into account the actual survivors’ testimonies. The survivors’ experiences, the means by which they have sought to come to terms with the atomic bombing, and the ethical vision that arises from those experiences must be incorporated into the atomic bomb discourse. Realizing this aim will depend on our willingness to exceed existing social frameworks in which we remain surrounded by literally thousands of nuclear warheads. It will depend on relating to the hibakusha, and through that relation to cultivate, as Edith Wyschogrod puts it, a ‘‘desire on behalf of the other,’’ a ‘‘desire for the birth of another’s joy’’73 that can be attained only by going beyond the mushroom cloud.

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How have tactile experiences of the world evolved cross-culturally in response to the growth of the nuclear complex, the spread of nuclear materials, and the cognitive remapping of time and space? What might be the social consequences of living in a world where the everyday has been so thoroughly colonized by the possibility of annihilation that, for most, it has become simply banal? — j os e p h ma s c o , The Nuclear Borderlands

During a presentation in a class on ‘‘atom bomb discourse’’ that I teach at DePaul University, one group of students showed a film clip from Wasabi, a 2001 French movie written by Luc Besson and directed by Ge´rard Krawczyk, in which a group of villains captures Yumi, the estranged daughter of the French protagonist. Not seeing what this movie had to do with the subject matter of the course, I was on the verge of intervening. Then the students paused the film. The screen showed a man pointing a gun at Yumi’s head; a dozen gangsters surrounded him and Yumi, all pointing their guns at each other. It was, in fact, quite a spectacular scene. Then one of the students in the group said, ‘‘This is our situation in relation to nuclear arms.’’ I was impressed that the students had found such an apt visual metaphor for our predicament. The film clip captures a keen sense of tension: the characters understand that a single move—intentional or not—might let loose a chain of violence, most likely resulting in the loss of everyone’s life. And yet, in our own everyday lives, the situation seems far less tense, despite the occurrence of such disturbing, real-life incidents as six nuclear warheads, mistakenly thought to be unarmed, flying across U.S. skies one day in 2007, or several nuclear missiles going missing.1 Confronting the direness of our all too real nuclear situation has led me to ponder Akira

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Kurosawa’s film Ikimono no kiroku (I Live in Fear) and Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.2 Both films depict the fine line separating sanity from insanity when it comes to our fears about nuclear weaponry, challenging audiences to contemplate who is really more unreasonable: those who, overwhelmed by fear about potential nuclear explosions, cannot lead ‘‘normal’’ lives, or those whose sense of security is enhanced by knowledge that there are multitudinous nuclear weapons aimed at the ‘‘enemy.’’ Though the hibakusha provide insight that comes from having experienced the horrors of atomic bombings firsthand, political discourse around nuclear weaponry rarely takes into account their experiences. As a result, we have detonated more than two thousand nuclear weapons around the globe and are now living with a stockpile of more than twenty thousand nuclear arms, sufficient to eradicate all life on this planet many times over.3 Perplexed by the blatant disconnect between hibakushas’ pleas for a nuclear-free world on one hand and the reality of thousands of nuclear arms on the other, I have sought to understand what accounts for this discrepancy. In doing so, I soon came to see what characterized the predominant American discourse on the atomic bombings, namely, that dropping the bomb was necessary, ultimately, in order to save lives—the lives of American soldiers as well as Japanese civilians. In this context, the bomb is perceived as a savior. While the myth of the bomb as salvific has been convincingly debunked by scholars, it remains a prevalent understanding of the event—one that by its very nature excludes the voices of the hibakusha.4 Meanwhile, those parties insisting on the necessity of ‘‘balanced’’ or ‘‘unbiased’’ treatments of the bombing ironically and unfortunately seem most inclined to suppress the message of the hibakusha. Attempts to offer a place in which hibakushas’ voices might be heard and thus provide ‘‘balance’’—such as seen in Martin Harwit’s attempt to integrate these voices into a Smithsonian exhibition—have faced opposition and severe criticism for being ‘‘biased.’’5 Although I appreciate Andre´ Ryerson’s argument that voices of victims of Japanese aggression must not be overshadowed by the atomic bomb testimonies, I believe just as firmly that hibakushas’ voices must not be ignored solely on account of the atrocities committed by the Japanese army. I would hurry to emphasize again that I do not believe

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that the hibakushas’ sufferings deserve a place of privilege over the sufferings of victims of other atrocities. Neither do I believe that nuclear arms are the only inhumane weaponry that needs to be eliminated. Rather, I seek to promote further genuine conversation with the hibakusha, both living and dead. Failing to take account of their message of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation’’ is to remain lost within the mushroom cloud—blinded to the indiscriminate nature of nuclear weaponry and confined within a nation-state framework. Ignoring this message also evidences an unwillingness to reflect critically upon ourselves, a failure to face squarely a contradiction that haunts the prevailing discourse on nuclear weapons: on one hand, equality and the dignity of human life are often taken to be fundamental and unassailable ethical values, while on the other hand, the continuing production and maintenance of nuclear weaponry evidences the belief that some humans deserve to be incinerated, scorched, or made to suffer from radiation for years after exposure to a bomb’s radiation. Attending to the hibakushas’ ethics at the very least should compel us to critically examine our own ethical values. The hibakusha have not been alone in having to overcome hardship and in developing an ethics of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation.’’ Over the course of history, and across the world, there have been numerous attempts both individually and collectively to avert chains of violence and revenge. One encounter I treasure to this day was my meeting with Jack Miller. He joined the U.S. Air Force at the age of nineteen and in 1941 was sent to the Pacific theater, leaving behind his fiance´e. He was captured by the Japanese army in the Philippines, survived the Bataan Death March, and was sent to Osaka, where he was imprisoned until the end of the war. By the time he was liberated by the Allied Powers in September 1945, this six-foot-tall young man weighed only ninety pounds. Despite these harrowing experiences, Miller warmly welcomed me upon my visit with him in Michigan. His apparent attitude of reconciliation seemed to me to coincide with the sensibilities of the hibakusha. In this book, I have used the term hibakusha primarily to point to the kataribe—those who offer testimonies of their atomic bomb experiences. Though the hibakusha ethics of ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation’’ that I have sought to examine in this book draws upon the testimonies of kataribe, the hibakusha do not comprise a monolithic entity, and a variety of beliefs concerning the bombing can be found

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among them, whether as individuals or groups. For instance, some hibakushas and their supporters have declared the use of the bombs a criminal act.6 Other groups claiming to consist at least partly of hibakushas insist that Japan should remilitarize and include nuclear weapons in its arsenal so as to secure a greater balance of power, particularly in relation to North Korea and China. New groups such as the Association of Hibakushas Seeking Peace and Security (Heiwa to anzen o motomeru hibakusha tachi no kai) take such a stance.7 The constituents of this group are unclear to me, but the association’s homepage states that the group comprises hibakushas and their offspring.8 The group does not aim at eliminating nuclear weapons, unlike the longstanding hibakusha movements, but seeks a way to coexist with nuclear arms. Nonetheless, to the best of my knowledge, those kataribe who speak of their sufferings in public testimonies are unanimously against the possession and use of nuclear weaponry. Growing up in Hiroshima, I was fortunate enough to be able to meet a number of kataribe hibakusha, some of whom were guest speakers at schools I attended, while others included schoolteachers, neighbors, and family members. If I remember correctly, my first-and second-grade teacher was herself a bomb survivor, one of many hibakusha teachers in the city. In addition to encountering survivors, my schooling in the city of Hiroshima shaped my interest in the subject of the atomic bombings. In our first-grade classroom, a bookshelf contained a copy of the multivolume graphic novel Hadashi no Gen, or Barefoot Gen, for any student to borrow. Each August 6, though it would fall during summer breaks, all the elementary and junior-high school students in the city of Hiroshima were called to attend school. On that day, we would sing a song lamenting the atomic bomb tragedy, watch a film about the atomic bombing, and hear testimonies of kataribe. While in second grade, I heard a narrative shared by a hibakusha that still stands out among the many testimonies I encountered either firsthand or in written form. This survivor shared a story about a friend of hers, a mother looking for her daughter, who was missing after the bombing. This mother found a body, lying in the street among many other corpses, that resembled her daughter, shrouded with a white handkerchief often used to cover the faces of the dead. Hoping to positively identify the body, the mother attempted to remove the cloth from the face of the victim she believed to be her daughter. But the handkerchief stuck to the flesh of her face, which had been burnt and melted.

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These and other, similar stories were repeatedly shared in school. They so horrified me and other student friends that we were unable to look directly upon even that relatively benign symbol of the bombing, the Atomic Bomb Dome at the center of Hiroshima. Still other scars from the bomb marked the city of my childhood. Though today Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is a clean, well-manicured site visited by many tourists, years ago, during my childhood, it was a more ominous place, where thousands of unidentified people’s bones and ashes were preserved.9 And I recall, too, the row of small hutches, called genbaku suramu, or ‘‘A-bomb slums,’’ crowded along the bank of the river just north of the park. Living in these hutches were people impoverished by the bomb, continuing to suffer decades after the attack. Stories about the sufferings of atomic bomb survivors circulated widely. Children would be told of anemic mothers; of aunts who never married; and of neighbors who, hiding their scars, never wore short sleeves, despite sweltering summer heat. Even today, Hiroshima’s citizens are familiar with rumors that the bones of bomb victims remain in the riverbed. In fact, evidence of the bomb is occasionally excavated from the river. In 2007, a student of mine who was participating in DePaul University’s study-abroad program to Hiroshima and Nagasaki went down to the riverbank during low tide after a visit to the Atomic Bomb Dome, located at the river’s edge. Exploring the riverbank, he discovered a small object resembling a pebble, its surface rough with spiky bumps. We later found that this odd object was a piece of a roof tile dating to 1945; the unusual texture of its surface was produced by the heat from the explosion. To me, this anecdote symbolizes both a fear and a hope. My fear is that, like the chip of roof tile that had for decades remained undiscovered, memory of the bombing will be increasingly buried with the passing of the hibakushas who still keep that memory alive. Over six decades have passed since the bombing; the average age of living hibakushas is now seventy-four years. In the years to come, firsthand kataribe testimonies will become ever more rare, remnants of the past too easily buried in the river of history. But there is also hope. Like my student, who made the effort to investigate the riverbed and there discovered evidence the bombing, I hope others will take responsibility for seeking out and listening to the stories and message of the hibakusha. It will fall to us—all of us who

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regard the presence of nuclear weaponry as a threat to humanity itself—to develop and maintain the community of memory that will be the legacy of the hibakusha. The cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are archiving video footage of kataribe testimonies, making significant contributions to this urgent project of preserving and sharing the voices of the hibakusha. I hope that this book constitutes some modest contribution to this task, giving further voice to the hibakusha and to the ethics that emerges from their experiences. Ultimately this hope comes in the form of an invitation to readers to go beyond the mushroom clouds, of which we now have witnessed too many.

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Afterword

On March 11, 2011, while this book was in the final stages of preparation for publication, a catastrophic earthquake and tsunami devastated northeastern Japan, crippling the four reactors in one of Fukushima’s two nuclear power plants. This horrific accident, still unfolding as of this writing, caused irrevocable damage to the health and property of the inhabitants of the area, as well as to the natural environment. The social effects of this nuclear disaster have also been devastating. Parents of sufficient means in Fukushima and the surrounding region sent their children to schools beyond the contaminated zone. But these children faced bullying and ostracization, being deemed ‘‘polluted’’ and ‘‘unclean.’’ Meanwhile, those who, for lack of means or job prospects, had no choice but to stay in areas where high levels of radiation have been detected have been dubbed ‘‘hibakusha,’’ a label they have resisted.1 The desire on the part of those imperiled by the radiation leaks to avoid such a historically fraught designation stems in part, I believe, from the reluctance to have an essentializing label imposed upon them; they do not want to be reduced simply to victims. Though in Japanese the term hibakusha, when applied to those exposed to radiation of this sort, is spelled differently from the term that designates victims of the 1945 bombings, it nonetheless still carries with it socially stigmatizing associations, and is thus a continuing source of shame. Though the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are acutely aware of such social stigmas, the leaders of these cities have largely remained quiet on the issue of nuclear power and its potential dangers. The Fukushima catastrophe, however, has compelled some politicians to address the matter more openly. In April 2011, with Akiba Tadatoshi’s

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retirement, Matsui Kazumi assumed the position of mayor of Hiroshima. Unlike the majority of political leaders in Japan, who either endorse nuclear power plants or remain silent on the subject, the newly elected Mayor Matsui, himself a second-generation hibakusha, has publicly proclaimed the urgent need to reexamine Japan’s national energy policy and has called for discussion about the possible abolition of nuclear power plants.2 The hibakusha of 1945 grieve for those who have suffered from the nuclear disaster in Fukushima. One must hope that all those who suffer from radiation—whether from the bombings, from catastrophes like the one that has devastated northeastern Japan, or from other sources of exposure—will, following the example of Hiroshima’s mayors and so many hibakusha, work toward a critical reevaluation of nuclear weaponry and power plants. The ethical call to end these causes of shame and affliction extends to all.

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NOTES

Introduction: The Ethics of Commemoration 1. 2. 3. 4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

Andre´ Ryerson, ‘‘The Cult of Hiroshima,’’ Commentary (October 1985), 36. Ibid. Ibid., 37. Ibid. Ryerson further argues, ‘‘after all, those who died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki were made to do so for a reason—to end the war—whereas the millions of people killed and wounded by the Japanese suffered for no reason at all, were victims in the root sense of being truly innocent.’’ The question Ryerson poses is worth examining, but his claim here falls short as a response, since it merely represents the victor’s logic. Here he represents the realpolitik standpoint where, in order to achieve the end of preserving the state, any necessary means is justified. But the same logic can provide a ‘‘reason’’ for those who were killed by the Japanese, who perpetrated violence in order to maintain their territory, win the war, and like reasons. A Japanese secret unit specializing in experimental operations on POWs and locals, ‘‘Unit 731 was the secret biological warfare unit set up in the northeast of China following the Japanese invasion; the headquarters were on the outskirts of Harbin in Manchukuo, Unit 731 researched, developed, produced, and tested biological weapons. As part of its research program, it experimented on humans and animals.’’ Yuki Tanaka, Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997). Lisa Yoneyama, ‘‘Memory Matters: Hiroshima’s Korean Atom Bomb Memorial and the Politics of Ethnicity,’’ in Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age, ed. Laura Hein and Mark Selden (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1997). Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, ‘‘Nuclear Pursuits,’’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59, no. 5 (September/October 2003): 71–72; Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, ‘‘Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, 1945–2010,’’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 66, no. 4 (July/August 2010): 77. Scott D. Sagan, ‘‘Realist Perspective on Ethical Norms and Weapons of Mass Destruction,’’ in Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives, ed. Sohail H. Hashmi and Steven P. Lee (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 74. Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba cites this phrase as the expression that he has heard most often used by the hibakusha. Tadatoshi Akiba, Ho¯fuku dewanaku wakai o: Ima,

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Notes to pages 4–14

Hiroshima kara sekai e (Reconciliation instead of retaliation: Message from Hiroshima) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2004), 26. 10. One kataribe, Okada Emiko, was remorseful for her ignorance of discrimination against the people from Korea during the war, even though she was only eight years old at the time of the bombing. Okada seeks help from American audiences in securing a nuclear-free future, rather than blaming Americans for the nuclear attack. Okada Emiko, testimony made at DePaul University October 26, 2007. And one hibakusha was interviewed at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum by documentary director Anand Patwardhan, who asked whether he were angry with Americans. Recalling his sorrow from having lost his parents to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, he momentarily faltered, then said, ‘‘I was sad.’’ 11. Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 108. 12. According to the Japanese government’s definition, Ko¯ji is not a hibakusha. However, he witnessed the mushroom cloud, and upon returning to the city two months after the bombing, he learned that several of his family members died from the bombing and subsequent radiation sickness.

1. Toward a Community of Memory 1.

2. 3.

4. 5.

6.

Tadatoshi Akiba, Ho¯fuku dewanaku wakai o: Ima Hiroshima kara sekai e (Reconciliation instead of retaliation: Message from Hiroshima) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2004), 22–25. Theodore Van Kirk makes this statement in Steven Okazaki’s film White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Berkeley: Farallon Films, 2007). ¯ tani Minako, M.D., a professor at Hiroshima University, and Hoshi Ibid. However, O Masaharu, a radiologist there, argue that human bodies do not, strictly speaking, evaporate. Rather, these doctors speculate that some bodies are carbonized by the intense heat, with remnants instantly blown away by the force of the blast. Chu¯goku Shimbunsha, ed., 10dai ga tsukuru heiwa shinbun Hiroshima koku (Peace newspaper produced by Japanese teens in Hiroshima: Peace seeds) (Tokyo: Akashi Shoten, 2009), 260. It is worth noting that though the literal translation of Hiroshima koku is ‘‘Hiroshima Nation,’’ the title is rendered in English by the publisher as ‘‘peace seeds.’’ I am grateful to Nobuko Chikamatsu for drawing my attention to this book. See Steven Okazaki, The Mushroom Club (Berkeley, Calif.: Farallon Films, 2005). Journalist Chu¯jo¯ Kazuo reports that in the 1970s, three decades after the bombing, Kondo Nobuyoshi, a doctor and member of the Tokyo cosmopolitan assembly, proposed that hibakushas be sterilized, believing their children to be genetically damaged. Chu¯jo¯ Kazuo, Genbaku to sabetsu (Atomic bombing and discrimination) (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha, 1986), 21. Lisa Yoneyama, ‘‘Memory Matters: Hiroshima’s Korean Atom Bomb Memorial and the Politics of Ethnicity,’’ in Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age, ed. Laura Hein and Mark Selden (Armonk, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), 205.

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Notes to pages 15–22 187

7.

8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13.

14. 15. 16. 17.

18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24.

The Marshall Islands were ceded to Japan after Germany’s loss in World War I. The Marshalls were occupied by the United States military in 1944, and in 1947 they officially became a United States trust territory. They became independent in 1986 as the Republic of the Marshall Islands. The atomic and hydrogen bomb tests by the United States were conducted between 1946 and 1958. Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, ‘‘Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, 1945– 2010,’’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 66, no. 4 (July/August 2010): 78–83. Martin Harwit, An Exhibit Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1996), ix. Ibid., xi. Ibid., 53. Ibid. Michael J. Hogan, ‘‘The Enola Gay Controversy: History, Memory, and the Politics of Presentation,’’ in Hiroshima in History and Memory, ed. Michael J. Hogan (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 207. See also the memoir by Charles Sweeney, chief pilot of Bock’s Car, which carried the ‘‘Fat Man’’ bomb to Nagasaki. Charles W. Sweeney, James A. Antonucci, and Marion K. Antonucci, War’s End: An Eyewitness Account of America’s Last Atomic Mission (Minneapolis: Quill, 1999). In this memoir, Sweeney expresses his opposition to Harwit’s plan. Hogan, ‘‘The Enola Gay Controversy,’’ 218. Ibid., 224. Michael Heyman quoted in Harwit, An Exhibit Denied, viii. Hogan, ‘‘The Enola Gay Controversy,’’ 215, 212. The rhetoric of ‘‘un-Americanism’’ was also observed at the time of bombing. Leo Szilard, having worked at the Metallurgical Laboratory at the University of Chicago, was also a researcher at the secret Los Alamos site in New Mexico. After having heard the news of the use of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima, Szilard came to the office of Robert Hutchins. Szilard asked ‘‘if the Met lab staff might wear black mourning bands on their arms, but Hutchins thought the gesture ‘a little Hungarian’ and suggested Szilard find some less dramatic way for the scientists to demonstrate their grief.’’ William Lanouette, ‘‘Three Attempts to Stop the Bomb,’’ in Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy, ed. Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz (Stony Creek, Conn.: The Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998), 113. Emphasis mine. Harwit, An Exhibit Denied, 51. Judith Butler, Precarious Life: The Powers of Mourning and Violence (London: Verso, 2004), 46. Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism, rev. ed. (London: Verso, 1996), 9–10. Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002), 26. All quotations in this paragraph are from ibid., 25. Ibid., 75. Distinguishing ethics from morality is not unique to Margalit. Many philosophers, ethicists, and scholars of religion have attempted to understand morality and ethics on their own terms. For example, Darrell J. Fasching and Dell deChant emphasize the

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25.

26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32.

33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47.

Notes to pages 22–28

significance of narrative ethics in the postmodern era, whose threshold is marked by the events at Auschwitz and Hiroshima. They define morality as ‘‘the finite order of society,’’ while ethics is thought that ‘‘encourages doubt and questioning’’ of such order. Darrell J. Fasching and Dell deChant, Comparative Religious Ethics: A Narrative Approach (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001), esp. 98–102. (Here I will only point out that their definitions of morality and ethics correspond to theories of particularism and universalism. That is to say, they view morality as rules and regulations pertinent only to a certain group or within a certain context. Thus, they take morality as a series of rules serving to maintain a given community. On the other hand, these authors take ethics to address principles universally applicable to humanity, revealed by questioning moral rules. While Fasching and deChant endorse the universal principles that encompass humanity impartially rather than socially defined particular rules, Margalit sees a need for both universal principles and particular sets of rules. Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, 37. Morality, by Margalit’s definition, corresponds to Kantian universalism, in which everyone should be treated equally, impartially, and with dignity based solely upon his or her humanity. Ibid., 44. Ibid., 87. Ibid., 34–35. See Luke 10:25–37. Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, 41. Ibid., 43–44. This is where Margalit places the key difference between Christianity and Judaism: Christianity turns ‘‘morality into ethics (by making all relations thick)’’ while Judaism keeps ‘‘morality and ethics apart.’’ Ibid., 45. Ibid., 87. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 79. Ibid., 80. Ibid. Ibid., 93. Ibid., 96. Michael Walzer, Thick and Thin: Moral Argument at Home and Abroad (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006), 8. Ibid., 78. Ibid., 79. Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, 82. Ibid., 81. Ibid. Ibid., 82. Margalit claims in rather vague terms that institutions dedicated to storing and disseminating memories ‘‘shared by the whole of mankind is desirable and important,’’ but that such institutions are ‘‘likely to be bureaucratic and soulless,’’ and that humanity on the whole ‘‘fails miserably as a community of communication.’’ Margalit, Ethics of Memory, 79.

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Notes to pages 29–38 189

48. ‘‘Next month the G8 Speakers’ Meeting will, for the first time, take place in Japan. I fervently hope that Hiroshima’s hosting of this meeting will help our ‘hibakusha philosophy’ spread throughout the world.’’ http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/declaration/English/2008/index.html (Hiroshima city’s official homepage). A month later, Hiroshima welcomed the delegates from the G8 countries. Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was among those who dedicated a wreath in front of the cenotaph. 49. Tadatoshi Akiba, Ho¯fuku dewa naku wakai o, 19. 50. A brief overview of the mayoral Peace Declaration since 1947 can be found in Mizumoto Kazumi’s ‘‘Hiroshima-shi no Heiwa sengen 60 shu¯nen ni omou’’ (Thoughts on the sixtieth anniversary of the Hiroshima Mayors’ Peace Declarations), Heiwa Bunka 3, no. 167 (December 2007): 3. 51. Hamai Shinzo¯, Genbaku shicho¯: Hiroshima to tomoni 20 nen (A-bomb mayor: Twenty years with Hiroshima) (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha, 1967), 59. 52. Ibid., 62. 53. Ibid., 87. 54. All quotations in this paragraph are from ibid., 103. 55. Ibid., 104. Emphasis mine. 56. For example, Nobel laureate Kenzaburo¯ Oe describes the hibakusha as ‘‘moral man,’’ an epithet based their having survived the bomb and maintained the courage to continue living. See especially Chapter 3, ‘‘The Moralists of Hiroshima,’’ and Chapter 6, ‘‘An Authentic Man,’’ in Kenzaburo¯ Oe, Hiroshima Notes, trans. Toshi Yonezawa and David L. Swain (New York: Grove Press, 1996). 57. Hamai Shinzo¯, Genbaku shicho¯, 104. 58. This was a few years before the SCAP drafted the Japanese Constitution, Article 9 of which advocates renouncing war and military force. 59. Hamai Shinzo¯, Genbaku shicho¯, 105. 60. Ibid., 154. 61. Ibid., 207. 62. Pal’s memorial was erected at the Yasukuni shrine. 63. Hamai Shinzo¯, Genbaku shicho¯, 208. 64. Ibid., 209. 65. The movie Gojira (Godzilla) was made to protest nuclear tests in the Pacific, following upon the Lucky Dragon incident. Gojira, dir. Honda Ishiro¯ (Tokyo: To¯ho¯, 1954 [2008]). 66. The disintegration of the movement and tension brought about by political conflicts was depicted by Kenzaburo¯ Oe, in Hiroshima Notes. 67. Hamai Shinzo¯, Genbaku shicho¯, 267. 68. It is ironic that Japanese right-wing advocates of remilitarization of Japan, extending to the possession of nuclear weapons, have recently utilized the experiences of the atomic bomb in criticizing American imperialism and proving Japanese resilience. For example, popular graphic novel writer Kobayashi Yoshinori glorifies war experiences in his graphic novels. See especially Kobayashi Yoshinori, Shin Go¯manizum sengen: Supesharu senso¯ron (New declaration of arrogance: Special: Theory of war) (Tokyo: Gento¯sha, 1998). 69. Hamai Shinzo¯, Genbaku shicho¯, 288. 70. James J. Orr, The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), 43.

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Notes to pages 38–46

71. Ichiba Junko, ‘‘ ‘Yuiitsu no hibaku koku’ kara ‘hirakareta hibakukoku’ e’’ (From ‘‘the only A-bombed country’’ to ‘‘the open A-bombed country’’), Sekai 692 (2001): 89–91. 72. John W. Dower, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon Books, 1986), 315. 73. Hiraoka Takashi, Kibou no Hiroshima: Shicho¯ wa uttaeru (Hiroshima as hope: Mayor’s appeal) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1996), 61. 74. Ibid., 62. 75. Matsumoto Hiroshi, professor at Hiroshima Shu¯do¯ University, also calls attention to this ambiguity of hibakushas as both victims and victimizers in Hiroshima to iu shiso¯. ‘‘To Hiroshima citizens,’’ writes Matsumoto, ‘‘victimizers were not different from, and unrelated to, us, Hiroshima citizens. Even when we did not execute directly assaults and aggression, none of us is immune to the possibility of becoming a victimizer. (For instance, let us imagine the situation where Japan had possessed the atomic bomb and debated whether or not to drop it over American cities, how many of Hiroshima citizens would decide not to use it).’’ Matsumoto Hiroshi, Hiroshima to iu shiso¯: ‘‘Shinanai tame ni’’ dewa naku ‘‘ikiru tame ni’’ (A philosophy called Hiroshima: Not avoiding death, but choosing life) (Tokyo: Tokyo So¯gensha, 1995), 78. 76. Hiraoka Takashi, Kibou no Hiroshima, 64. 77. Ibid., 67. 78. Ibid., 68. 79. Ibid., 75–76. 80. Ibid., 74. 81. Ibid., 17. 82. The principles were first advocated by then Prime Minister Sato¯ Eisaku. The ‘‘three antinuclear principles’’ (hikaku sangensoku) refer to ‘‘no possession, no production, no passing onto the land of nuclear weaponry.’’ Sato¯’s formulation of these principles was the basis for his being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1974. Hiraoka Takashi, Kibou no Hiroshima, 68. 83. Ibid. 84. Araki Takeshi, himself a hibakusha, served as mayor for four consecutive terms, from 1975 to 1991, and conceived of and launched the international organization of Mayors for Peace. He is also known for having sent telegrams urging peace to the leaders of the world each time a country conducted nuclear tests, a practice initiated by his predecessor, Yamada Setsuo, in 1968. All the telegrams are exhibited at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. As of 2007, the number of telegrams amounted to 593. 85. Highly radioactive depleted uranium was, however, already employed in the first Gulf War of 1990. 86. Tadatoshi Akiba, Ho¯fuku dewa naku, 17. 87. http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/declaration/English/1999/index.html. 88. The English title supplied by the publisher of this book is Reconciliation Instead of Retaliation. 89. Tadatoshi Akiba, Ho¯fuku dewa naku, 79. 90. I would distinguish here between ‘‘radical evil’’—an evil that, as Margalit puts it, threatens the very foundation of humanity—and the philosophical idea of ‘‘absolute evil,’’ which will be examined in Chapter 3 through a discussion of Shinran’s True Pure Land Buddhist relativization of good and evil.

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Notes to pages 47–52 191

2. Dialogue with the Dead: The Yasukuni Shinto Shrine and Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park 1.

2. 3. 4. 5.

6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19.

20. 21.

In 1985, two incidents important to the continuing formation of the Japanese national narrative on the war took place. (Both are discussed in further detail in this chapter.) First, the museum that had been annexed to the Yasukuni shrine during the war for the exhibition of Japanese armor was reopened, having been closed under pressure by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers. Second, then-prime minister Nakasone Yasuhiro, together with other ministers, paid a visit to the Yasukuni shrine on August 15—the day marking Japan’s surrender, and the day of liberation from Japanese imperialism in Asian countries. Since his visit was not made as a private citizen but as a public official, with tax revenue covering expenses, it ignited the controversy around the separation of religion and state. In addition, Nakasone’s visit to the Yasukuni shrine, where fallen soldiers, including the A-rank war criminals, were enshrined, jeopardized the relationships with other Asian countries; in particular, South Korea and China found the gesture provocative and insensitive. For further commentary on Nakasone’s visit to Yasukuni, see Helen Hardacre, Shinto and the State, 1868–1988 (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1991). Sueki Fumihiko, Bukkyo tai rinri (Buddhism versus ethics) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo¯, 2006), 184. Ibid., 182–184. George L. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers: Reshaping the Memory of the World Wars (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990). See chapter 2, especially pp. 33–34. Ernst H. Kantorowicz traces such tendencies in the medieval era. Ernst H. Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Medieval Political Theology (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1997). See particularly 232–272. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, 67, 76, 83. Ibid., 35–36. Ibid., 50. Ibid., 32. Ibid., 50. Ibid., 39. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 37. Ibid., 35. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 32. Ibid., 7. Ibid., 174–175. Kitagawa suggests that the term kami translates as ‘‘gods, deities, or spirits, but also means ‘above,’ ‘superior,’ or the ‘numinous or sacred nature.’ ’’ Joseph M. Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 12. Ibid., 14. Ibid. Kitagawa also discusses the fact that Shinto distinguishes four kinds of spirits: ‘‘ara-mi-tama, those which rule with authority and power; nigi-mi-tama, those which

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22.

23. 24.

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26. 27.

28. 29. 30. 31.

32. 33. 34. 35. 36.

37.

Notes to pages 52–55

bring about union, harmony, and recollection; kushi-mi-tama, those which cause mysterious transformation; and saki-mi-tama, those which impart blessings.’’ In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, shrines were established to deify the powerful feudal lords Toyotomi Hideyoshi and Tokugawa Ieyasu in the Toyokuni and To¯sho¯gu¯ shrines, respectively. (Toyotomi is known for unifying the country after a century of war among local lords, while he is also notorious for his invasion of the Korean Peninsula. Tokugawa is the founder of the Tokugawa shogunate [1604–1868], which endured for more than 250 years.) Both died natural deaths, but their descendants glorified their ancestors in order to claim political authority. Bukkyo tai rinri, 213. Shinto mythology was compiled in works entitled Kojiki and Nihonshoki in 712 and 720, respectively. These works contain stories of personified kami and helped develop the notion of the importance of the kami-emperor lineage to justify the imperial family’s reign. Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History, 15. The preamble refers to the ‘‘throne of a lineal succession unbroken for ages eternal,’’ and the first article states that ‘‘the Empire of Japan shall be reigned over and governed by a line of Emperors unbroken for ages eternal.’’ Ito¯ Hirobumi, Commentaries on the Constitution of the Empire of Japan, trans. Ito¯ Miyoji (Tokyo: Igirisu-ho¯ritsu gakko, 1889). See http://history.hanover.edu/texts/1889con.html. The process of consecrating the emperor is analyzed in Walter A. Skya’s Japan’s Holy War: The Ideology of Radical Shinto¯ Ultranationalism (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2009). Thomas P. Kasulis, Shinto: The Way Home (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004), 48. The power of death was observed in Hirata Atsutane (1776–1843), one of the kokugaku, or Native Studies scholars. Hirata asserts that the spiritual level of the time of death determines the rank of soul after death. See ibid., 128. Shinto kami are explained in various Buddhist doctrines, for example, in the honji suijaku. Yoshida Shinto and Watarai Shinto, for example, remained distinct from Buddhism. Kasulis, Shinto, 112. Hirata’s beliefs in creation and the final judgment, as Kasulis points out, are likely influenced by Christianity. Although books on Christianity had been banned for some time in Japan, it was not impossible to attain them. Ibid., 112. Ibid., 123–124. Ibid. The idea of Yomi derives from Atsutane’s predecessor, Norinaga. Kasulis, Shinto, 129. Here and elsewhere, I use the terms ‘‘West’’ and ‘‘Western,’’ though with hesitation stemming from the ambiguity of these terms. The terms do not indicate a geographical west; Morocco, for instance, is located west of Italy, but is not a ‘‘Western’’ country. Neither does the area designated by ‘‘West’’ simply coincide with the influence of Christianity. Though the ‘‘West’’ cannot be precisely pinpointed, I employ it for want of a less ambiguous term. Shingi sho was terminated in 1877 to distinguish Shinto from religion. Shinto was promulgated as ideology from this point on.

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Notes to pages 56–58 193

38. Though the Japanese terms tamashii or kon may be translated as ‘‘souls,’’ I use ‘‘spirits’’ to translate these terms, so as to avoid unintended resonances with the Jewish, Christian, or Islamic conceptions of ‘‘soul.’’ 39. Harry Harootunian, ‘‘Memory, Mourning, and National Morality: Yasukuni Shrine and the Reunion of State and Religion in Postwar Japan,’’ in Nation and Religion: Perspectives on Europe and Asia, ed. Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999), 150. 40. This strong belief in kokutai was said to contribute to resistance against unconditional surrender at the end of the Second World War, which instigated dethronement of the emperor. Scholar of Japanese religions William P. Woodard refers to post–Meiji Restoration Shinto as the ‘‘Kokutai Cult.’’ William P. Woodard, The Allied Occupation of Japan 1945–1952 and Japanese Religions (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972). I refer to this brand of religiosity as the ‘‘emperor cult,’’ because it suggests the continuation of this cult even after 1945. 41. The idea of entrusting one’s rights to the sovereign as expounded in Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan may illuminate the notion of kokutai. However, the emperor’s sovereignty and its relation to subjects’ rights, as expressed in the tenno kikan setsu, or the emperor organ theory, became a matter of debate during the war. See Japan’s Holy War. 42. Harootunian, ‘‘Memory, Mourning, and National Morality,’’ 149. 43. Sueki, Bukkyo tai rinri, 213. 44. This is not correct. At Yasukuni, former Korean Prince Yi U, who died from the atomic bombing in Hiroshima, is enshrined as a higher deity than the common soldiers, yet he is still ranked below Japanese imperial family members. 45. Sueki, Bukkyo tai rinri, 213–214. 46. Sueki Fumihiko, Tasha/Shisha/Watashi: Tetsugaku to shukyo no ressun (Other/dead/ myself: Lessons of philosophy and religion) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2007), 232. 47. Despite this brief interruption, the Yasukuni ideology that was intertwined with the emperor cult was resuscitated when, two decades later, a Christian widow by the name of Nakatani Yasuko pleaded that her late husband’s name be removed from the pantheon of spirits enshrined at Yasukuni. Yasuko’s husband was a Self-Defense Force officer who died accidentally on duty in 1968, and was enshrined in 1972 without his wife’s consent. Nakatani Yasuko’s story is told eloquently in Norma Field’s In the Realm of a Dying Emperor: Japan at Century’s End (New York: Random House, 1993). However, authorities at the Yasukuni shrine refused to ‘‘unenshrine’’ her husband’s spirit, arguing that they cannot demote deities. The very same rhetoric was recycled when the enshrinement with A-rank war criminals roused controversy within and out of the country. Takahashi Tetsuya argues that the problem of A-rank war criminals at Yasukuni is that by turning them into scapegoats, our attention is diverted from holding them accountable. Takahashi Tetsuya, Yasukuni mondai (Problems surrounding Yasukuni) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo¯, 2005), 64–96. 48. If the visit were made by an elected public figure, the expenses would be covered by tax money, while a personal visit would be paid for by the individual. 49. Klaus Antoni, ‘‘Yasukuni-Jinja and Folk Religion: The Problem of Vengeful Spirits,’’ Asian Folklore Studies 47, no. 1 (1988): 123. 50. Harootunian, ‘‘Memory, Mourning, and National Morality,’’ 148.

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Notes to pages 58–64

51. Ibid., 151. 52. Edith Wyschogrod, Saints and Postmodernism: Revisioning Moral Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), xv. 53. Ibid., xxi. 54. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity: An Essay on Exteriority, trans. Alphonso Lingis (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1961), 43. 55. Sueki, Bukkyo tai rinri, 25. 56. Ibid., 26. 57. Eventually, in Amida Buddhism (as in Pure Land and True Pure Land Buddhism), self-dependent soteriology is denied and complete dependence on Amida is advocated. The teaching of True Pure Land Buddhism will be examined more closely in Chapter 3. 58. Sueki, Bukkyo tai rinri, 52–53. 59. Ibid., 52–53. 60. Ibid., 54. 61. Needless to say, one still has to deal with others in everyday life, but those others, holds Sueki, are within the realm of ‘‘ethics.’’ Reading the Lotus Sutra, Sueki explains that our existence is conditioned by others. Sueki, Bukkyo tai rinri, 130–131. 62. Ibid., 88. 63. Ibid., 25. Sueki’s anthropology was also influenced by Kyoto school philosopher Watsuji Tetsuro¯, who asserts that the term nin’gen, or human beings, transliterates as ‘‘a person between.’’ Paying attention to the between-ness in nin’gen, Watsuji suggests that one is always defined by the relationships into which one is thrown. Yet one eventually learns how to actively maintain and shape these relationships. Watsuji Tetsuro¯, Nin’gen no gaku to shite no rinrigaku (Ethics as a study of human beings) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1934; reprint, Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1971), 18–23 (page citations are to the reprint edition). 64. Sueki, Bukkyo tai rinri, 93. 65. Ibid., 94. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid., 101. 68. Ibid., 202. 69. Martin Buber, I and Thou, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Free Press, 1971). 70. Sueki, Bukkyo tai rinri, 150. 71. Ibid., 149. 72. Bruce Lincoln, Death, War, and Sacrifice: Studies in Ideology and Practice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1991), 58. 73. Sueki, Bukkyo tai rinri, 180. 74. Ibid., 108. 75. Ibid., 109. 76. Karatani is a Japanese philosopher and literary critic. 77. Sueki, Bukkyo tai rinri, 209. Sueki’s statement may be productively compared to Jeffrey Stout’s account in Ethics After Babel: The Languages of Moral and Their Discontents (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988), in which the author argues that without languages and the framework of religious ethics, philosophical ethics may not be intelligible. Ethics After Babel, 187–188.

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78. Sueki, Bukkyo tai rinri, 212. 79. Ibid., 214. 80. Ibid. The imperial families and their relatives are, however, enshrined as higher deities. The Chinreisha, or the Shrine of Consolation of the Spirits, was erected in 1965 on the Yasukuni property to enshrine the spirits of non-Japanese subjects at the time of war. They were separated from the main shrine. 81. Ibid., 216. 82. I thank Thomas Kuslis for pointing out that what Sueki commends about the Yasukuni commemoration is that it provides a venue for ‘‘communion’’ with the dead. What I am criticizing in the following section are the ideological impositions of the institutionalized communion at the Yu¯shu¯kan museum. 83. According to the museum’s brochure, this rather unusual name for a war museum means a place for ‘‘interacting with and learning from noble people’’ (Kunshi wa oru ni kanarazu kyo¯ o erabi, asobu ni kanarazu shi ni tsuku). 84. Eirei literally means ‘‘heroic spirits.’’ At Yasukuni, eirei are distinguished from the ‘‘ordinary’’ dead spirits. According to anthropologist Namihira Emiko, this naming itself is a rhetorical strategy on the part of the army, emphasizing the value of spirits rather than the body after one’s death, in order to console the bereaved families as the bodies of their fathers, sons, and brothers were irretrievable from extirpative battles. Namihira examines the importance of the body in Japanese religiosity in her book, and how war rhetoric, still observable at Yasukuni and Yu¯shu¯kan, changed views on death and the body. See Namihira Emiko, Nihonjin no shi no katachi: Dento¯girei kara Yasukuni made (Forms of Japanese deaths: From traditional rituals to Yasukuni) (Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha, 2004), 178. 85. Yuzawa Tadashi, ‘‘Goaisatsu’’ (‘‘Greetings’’) in Yasukuni jinja Yu¯shu¯kan zuroku (Yasukuni Shrine Yu¯shu¯kan Museum catalogue), ed. Yasukuni jinja (Tokyo: Yasukuni Jinja, 2003), 2. 86. Ibid. 87. Drawing upon Mosse and Kantorowicz, philosopher Takahashi Tetsuya focuses on the notion of ‘‘sacred sacrifice’’ and asserts that ‘‘kokka kyo or ‘state-religion,’ in which people worship the state as god, sustains the modern nation-state.’’ Takahashi Tetsuya, Kokka to gisei (State and sacrifice) (Tokyo: Nihon Ho¯so¯ Shuppan Kyo¯kai, 2005), 192–193. 88. It is worth recalling again that a nation constitutes a natural community for Margalit: ‘‘Natural communities of memory are families, clans, tribes, religious communities, and nations,’’ because they deal with ‘‘life and death.’’ Margalit, Ethics of Memory, 69. 89. See Introduction, note 6. Further details concerning Unit 731 are found in Saburo Ienaga, The Pacific War, 1931–1945: A Critical Perspective on Japan’s Role in World War II, trans. Frank Baldwin (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 90. The official number of victims cited by the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders is 300,000. The number has been debated among historians. See, for example, Takashi Yoshida, ‘‘A Battle Over History: The Nanjing Massacre in Japan,’’ in The Nanjing Massacre in History and Historiography, ed. Joshua A. Fogel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), especially 79–85. 91. For more detailed information, see Yuki Tanaka, Japanese Hidden Horrors: Japanese War Crimes in World War II (Boulder: Westview Press, 1997).

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92. Not surprisingly, there is no mention of the Nanjing Massacre in this museum. 93. Takahashi thoroughly examines the rhetoric of ‘‘sacred sacrifice’’ in Kokka to gisei. See especially 26–51. 94. Mosse, Fallen Soldiers, 32. 95. Ibid., 35. 96. Yasukuni jinja, Yasukuni jinja Yu¯shu¯kan zuroku, 111. 97. Ibid., 110. 98. Judith Tydor Baumel, Double Jeopardy: Gender and the Holocaust (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1998), 211. 99. For example, in the early morning of August 6 every year, a series of religious ceremonies conducted by clergy from a variety of traditions—Buddhism, Shinto, Roman Catholicism, and Protestantism—takes place in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. See James H. Foard, ‘‘The Universal and the Particular in the Rites of Hiroshima,’’ in Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia, ed. Charles F. Keyes, Laurel Kendall, and Helen Hardacre (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 39. 100. Ibid., 19. 101. Ibid., 28. 102. Although the renewal of 1994 was criticized as an attempt to curry favor with Asian countries and their representatives as the city prepared to host the 1994 Asian Games, their actual display of the city’s pre-bomb history must not be discounted. 103. ‘‘The Universal and the Particular in the Rites of Hiroshima,’’ 39. 104. Sadako experienced the atomic bomb at the age of two. Ten years later, she was diagnosed with leukemia; she died two years after that. While in the hospital, recalling the belief that folding a thousand paper cranes would result in the fulfilling of one’s wish, she began to create cranes. After her death, her classmates raised money to support the erection of the Children’s statue in the Peace Memorial Park. Her story has been translated into numerous languages, including English; children from all over the world who read the story send thousands of paper cranes to the city of Hiroshima every year. After arson damaged the site in 2003, the city built a plastic case to cover the cranes. 105. Museum brochure. 106. Ibid. 107. Foard, ‘‘The Universal and the Particular in the Rites of Hiroshima,’’ 19. 108. Ibid., 38. 109. Tanaka Nobumasa, Yasukuni no sengoshi (Yasukuni’s postwar history) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002), 40. 110. I would like to acknowledge the helpful comments I received on this matter from Thomas Kasulis and Masami Takahashi. As they rightly point out, dialogue with the dead is taking place when people go to the Yasukuni shrine to ‘‘meet’’ and ‘‘talk with’’ the spirits of their loved ones. My purpose is to discuss the ‘‘meaning’’ imposed on the dead by the institution and its supporters, such as Nakanishi. 111. Penalties for dismissal of conscription are detailed on the obverse of the draft notice (akagami). For more information on the conscription, in particular of kamikaze pilots, see, for example, Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 162–163. As for the persecution toward those who rejected the

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conscription in Japan, see Inagaki Masami, Ryo¯shinteki heieki kyohi no cho¯ryu¯: Nihon to sekai no hisen no keifu (Current of the conscientious objection: Genealogy of pacifism in Japan and the world) (Tokyo: Shakai Hihyo¯sha, 2002). 112. Amy Hollywood, Sensible Ecstasy: Mysticism, Sexual Difference, and the Demands of History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 83. 113. The difficulties of victims in speaking about their experiences are well summarized in Monica Braw’s article ‘‘Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Voluntary Silence,’’ in Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age, ed. Laura Hein and Mark Selden (Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1997), 155–172.

3. Beyond Good and Evil: Ko¯ji Shigenobu and the True Pure Land Understanding of the Atomic Bombing 1.

Ian Buruma, The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West (London: Faber and Faber, 1996; reprint, New York: Random House, 1996), 215. 2. Stephen Walker, Shockwave: Countdown to Hiroshima (New York: HarperCollins, 2005), 65–66. 3. William L. Laurence, Dawn Over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Knopf, 1950), 10–11. 4. Gerard J. DeGroot, The Bomb: A Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2006), 64–65. 5. I am translating Sueki’s term ‘‘cho-rinri’’ as ‘‘transethics,’’ rather than ‘‘trans-ethics,’’ in order to be consistent with the common English rendering. Given that the term could have been rendered in Japanese without the hyphen—‘‘chorinri’’—it is worth noting that Sueki inserts this mark between cho (trans) and rinri (ethics), in order to emphasize his concept’s difference from ethics as generally conceived. Wherever ‘‘transethics’’ appears in the present text, that difference should be recalled. 6. Buruma, The Missionary and the Libertine, 216. 7. Ibid., 216. 8. Ko¯ji is also referred to as Ko¯ji Ju¯shin, as well as Shigenobu. 9. By the eighth century, Japan was divided into sixty-eight provinces (and later added the northern island of Hokkaido and other provinces in the northern part of Japan). Aki is one of the administrative provinces, which existed until 1871, when the Meiji government reorganized the provinces and renamed the province Hiroshima (though Aki covers only the western part of Hiroshima prefecture). The province of Aki was known for having a large number of True Pure Land adherents, who were called ‘‘Aki monto.’’ 10. True Pure Land Buddhism is also referred as to Shin Buddhism in English texts. It was founded by Shinran, if perhaps accidentally. According to Joseph M. Kitagawa, ‘‘Shinran never intended to found a new sect. In fact he refused to call anyone his disciple.’’ Joseph M. Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 116. 11. James H. Foard, ‘‘The Universal and the Particular in the Rites of Hiroshima,’’ in Asian Visions of Authority: Religion and the Modern States of East and Southeast Asia, ed. Charles F. Keyes, Laurel Kendall, and Helen Hardacre (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994), 25.

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12. Kurihara Sadako, Hiroshima 24nen: Gendai no kyu¯sai (Hiroshima 24 years later: Salvation in our time) (Tokyo: Shakai Shinpo¯sha, 1970), 59–60. 13. For example, in 1948, Nagai Takashi’s essay Konoko o nokoshite (Leaving my children behind) was ranked the ninth-best-selling book of the year. In the following year, the same book was ranked first, while another of his books, Nagasaki no kane (The bells of Nagasaki) was placed fourth on the list. In 1950, a movie adaptation of Nagasaki no kane appeared and was a hit; its theme song swept over Japan. The Showa Emperor visited Nagai, as did an envoy sent by Pope Pius XII. Inoue Hisashi, Besutosera¯ no sengoshi (The best-selling books of postwar Japan), vol. 1 (Tokyo: Bungei Shunju¯, 1995), 59. Nagai’s accomplishment was remarkable, taking into consideration Urakami’s history, as explained in Chapter 4. In addition, the Urakami area was located next to the residential area of the outcaste class. It was the Tokugawa shogunate’s strategy to place these two minority groups, Roman Catholics and the outcaste class, in proximity to each other. See Monma Sachio, Sabetsu to kegare no shu¯kyo¯ kenkyu¯: Kenryoku to shite no ‘‘chi’’ (Religious studies on discrimination and impurity: ‘‘Knowledge’’ as power) (Tokyo: Iwata Shoten, 1997). 14. Including non-Japanese citizens, the number rises to 127,767,994. See http://www.stat.go.jp/. 15. See http://www.mext.go.jp/b_menu/toukei/001/index39.htm. 16. However, in the early Meiji period, in order to implement Shinto as a state ideology, Buddhism was criticized and persecuted, and some temples were demolished. See James E. Ketelaar, Of Heretics and Martyrs in Meiji Japan: Buddhism and Its Persecution (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1990). 17. Prince Sho¯toku sought to align himself with the powerful Soga clan, which embraced Buddhism. 18. Kitagawa writes, ‘‘Prince Sho¯toku seemed to be attracted to Buddhism not only through his own personal faith but because of its force as the bearer of a great civilization.’’ Religion in Japanese History, 26. 19. Ibid., 35. 20. Ibid., 25. 21. The ordination was initiated by a Chinese monk, Jian Zhen. Ibid., 37–38. 22. Kitagawa regards the differences between these schools as rather insignificant, rooted in variant scriptural understandings. Thus, he treats them as sects of the same tradition rather than as different schools. Ibid., 37. 23. Saicho¯ was also attracted to mikkyo, or esoteric Buddhism, but he lacked the time to study it. On the other hand, Ku¯kai, a younger monk who went to China at the same time as Saicho¯, learned Shingon (Chen yan) teachings and esoteric Buddhism. Upon returning to Japan and taking charge of To¯ji in the capital (present-day Kyoto), Ku¯kai eventually built Kongo¯bu-ji at Mount Koya. 24. The inclusive soteriology of the Tendai teaching appealed to Saicho¯, who was studying in China, especially after having ‘‘received the bodhisattva ordination from Tao-sui, the mystical Mantra (Mikkyo) doctrines from Shun-chiao, and the secret of Zen meditation from Hsiu-jan.’’ Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History, 60. 25. The direction northeast was considered ominous, the direction from which demons enter the city. Enryaku-ji’s location northeast of the capital, Heian, afforded it the role of ‘‘protector’’ of the country.

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26. Since Saicho¯ was amenable to Shinto, Shinto was incorporated into the Tendai teaching, which resulted in generating Sanno¯ Ichijitsu Shinto. Mount Hiei is also the place where the Shinto kami Sanno¯ is venerated by Tendai monks. Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History, 61. 27. Ku¯ya (903–972) and Genshin (942–1017) were other Tendai priests in Japan known for devoting themselves to the Amida belief and contributing to its dissemination. See Ishii Yoshinaga, Amida Hijiri Ku¯ya: Nembutsu o hajimeta heianso¯ (Amida Saint Ku¯ya: the monk who began nembutsu practice in Heian period) (Tokyo: Ko¯dansha, 2003). 28. According to Shigematsu Akihisa, ‘‘The beginning of the inscription asserts that the ‘dharma body’ (hossin) has no form and therefore cannot be grasped by its appearance. This is the doctrine of nothingness from the Sanron and Prajn˜a¯ schools. Next, there is mention of the forty-eight vows of Ho¯zo¯ (Dharma¯kara) Bodhisattva. This inscription is derived from the Larger Sutra. At the end of it, there is a prayer for eternal happiness for living relatives and also for the happiness of ancestors. It is a prayer for happiness in this life and in the next life probably referring to the Pure Land.’’ Shigematsu Akihisa, ‘‘An Overview of Early Japanese Pure Land,’’ trans. Michael Solomon, in The Pure Land Tradition: History and Development, ed. James Foard, Michael Solomon, and Richard K. Payne (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 277. 29. Hisao Inagaki in collaboration with Harold Stewart, The Three Pure Land Sutras: A Study and Translation from Chinese (Kyoto: Nagata Bunshodo, 1994), 21. 30. Ibid., 26. Inagaki writes, ‘‘It is also known by other names in China and Japan, such as ‘‘the Land of Utmost Bliss,’’ ‘‘the Land of Peace and Provision’’ and ‘‘the Land of Peace and Bliss.’’ 31. A koti is a measurement of distance. According to Inagaki, ‘‘since a koti is a large number equal to 10 million, and one Buddha-land contains a universe of a thousand million worlds, this description amounts to saying that the Pure Land is an infinitely distant paradise.’’ Ibid., 26–27. 32. Ibid., 27. 33. Ibid. 34. Later in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, True Pure Land Buddhism was often called ‘‘Ikko¯-shu’’ (one-directional, single-mindedness), suggesting the adherent’s single-minded devotion to Amida. 35. Zen Buddhism picked up the theme of individual enlightenment. It is noteworthy that Zen Buddhism and Pure Land and True Pure Land teachings based on Amida belief spread in Japan at the same time, during the Kamakura period (1186–1333). 36. Inagaki, The Three Pure Land Sutras, 243. 37. Seikaku, Yuishinsho¯ (Essentials of faith alone), trans. Dennis Hirota, Hisao Inagaki, Michio Tokunaga, and Ryushin Uryuzu in The Collected Works of Shinran, vol. 1 (Kyoto: Jo¯do Shinshu¯ Hongwanji-ha, 1997), 687. Shinran later wrote a commentary on this text, entitled Yuishinsho¯ mon’i (Notes on ‘‘Essentials of faith alone’’), trans. Dennis Hirota, Hisao Inagaki, Michio Tokunaga, and Ryushin Uryuzu in The Collected Works of Shinran, vol. 1 (Kyoto: Jo¯do Shinshu¯ Hongwanji-ha, 1997). 38. ‘‘The Japanese calculated the first age to last one thousand years and the second, five hundred years. They believed that the first age, the age of the flourishing of the Law, ended in 552, the year the Chronicles of Japan gives for the introduction of Buddhism

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39.

40.

41. 42.

43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49.

50.

Notes to pages 88–93

to Japan from Korea, and that the second age, the age of the decline of the Law, would yield to the age of mappo¯ a half millennium later, in 1052. Wm. Theodore de Bary et al., eds., Sources of Japanese Tradition: From Earliest Times to 1600, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001), 1:206. The translation of shinjin is from Taitetsu Unno, ‘‘Shinran: A New Path to Buddhahood,’’ trans. Michael Solomon, in Foard, Solomon, and Payne, The Pure Land Tradition, 328. Shinran, ‘‘Lamp for the Latter Ages, Letter 2, I,’’ trans. Dennis Hirota, Hisao Inagaki, Michio Tokunaga, and Ryushin Uryuzu, in The Collected Works of Shinran, 1:525–526. This realization is explained in Sources of Japanese Tradition: ‘‘His [Shinran’s] dilemma was resolved when he realized that salvation was not won through human effort but was granted by Amida Buddha, the compassionate one who vowed to save all people, regardless of their moral standing or religious achievements. By rejecting all practices performed through one’s own effort (jiriki), Shinran went even further than his teacher by suggesting that chanting the nembutsu should not result from deliberative effort but from the saving action granted by Amida.’’ De Bary et al., Sources of Japanese Tradition, vol. 1, 215. Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History, 115. The question of how much in Tan’nisho¯ should be attributed to Shinran and how much to Yuien remains open to debate. For the purposes of this chapter, I take what is written in Tan’nisho¯ as Shinran’s words. Yuien, Tan’nisho¯: A Primer—A Record of the Words of Shinran Set Down in Lamentation Over Departures from His Teaching, trans. Dennis Hirota (Kyoto: Ryu¯koku University, 1982), 3:1–2, 59. Ibid., 3:3, 59. Here as elsewhere, I use the male pronoun in order to maintain consistency with the Dennis Hirota’s English translation of Tan’nisho¯. Ibid., 3:6–7, 61. Luke 18:10–14. Sueki Fumihiko values religious ethics insofar as it provides an alternative to mere social rules and regulations. See the discussion in Chapter 2 of this book. For example, ‘‘In those days there was a person who had fallen into wrong views; [reasoning that] since it is the Vow to save the person who has committed evil, he said that one should purposely choose to do evil and make it the act [by which to attain] birth. When [rumors of] evildoing gradually came to be heard, in a letter [Shinran] wrote, ‘Do not take a liking to poison thinking [it safe] because there is an antidote,’ in order to put a halt to that attachment to wrong views.’’ Yuien, Tan’nisho¯, 13:13, 33–34. In contemporary usage, Jinen shares the same Chinese characters (kanji) as shizen, or ‘‘nature.’’ The first Chinese character indicates spontaneity or ‘‘on its own,’’ while the second designates the state of ‘‘as it is’’ or ‘‘therefore.’’ According to The Collected Works of Shinran of the Shin Buddhism Translation series, jinen is best translated as ‘‘spontaneous working.’’ Renowned translator of True Pure Land Buddhist documents Dennis Hirota leaves jinen untranslated, believing that the word’s meaning cannot be adequately conveyed in English. Following Hirota’s reasoning, I will leave jinen untranslated.

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51. Shinran, ‘‘Yuishinsho¯ mon’i,’’ 453. 52. Shinran, Letters of Shinran: A Translation of Mattosho, trans. Yoshifumi Ueda, ed. Shin Buddhism Translation Series (Kyoto: Hongwanji International Center, 1978), 29. 53. Ibid., 30. 54. Matthew 18:1–5. 55. Matthew 19:14. 56. Matthew 19:16. 57. Yuien, Tan’nisho¯, 11:5, 81. 58. Ibid., 8:1–3, 71. 59. Ibid., 11:3, 79. 60. Though Yuien alleged to have compiled Shinran’s sayings, some scholars argue that some of the statements attributed to Shinran were composed by Yuien himself. 61. Yuien, Tan’nisho¯, 13:6–7, 93. 62. Ibid., 13:8–11, 93. 63. Ibid. 64. Ibid., 13:3–4, 91. 65. Ibid., 13:12, 95. 66. Ibid., 13:19. 97. 67. Ibid., 13:20, 99. 68. Ko¯ji Shigenobu, ‘‘Bukkyoto to shite no hibakutaiken to heiwa no negai’’ (Atomic bomb experience and peaceful wishes from a Buddhist), in Ningen no kokoro, Hiroshima no kokoro (Human heart, Hiroshima mind), ed. Akiba Tadatoshi (Tokyo: Sanyu¯ shuppan, 1988). 69. Before August 6, Hiroshima had never experienced an air raid. 70. Dr. Hida Shuntaro¯, for example, describes the mushroom cloud as a pillar of fire. Steven Okazaki, White Light/Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Berkeley, Calif.: Farallon Films, 2007). 71. http://www.shin.gr.jp/activity/study/yasukuni/img/24_03.pdf. 72. Ko¯ji, ‘‘Bukkyoto to shite no,’’ 129–130. 73. http://www.shin.gr.jp/activity/study/yasukuni/img/24_03.pdf. 74. Ko¯ji ‘‘Bukkyoto to shite no,’’ 130. 75. Ibid. 76. See also his discussion of Robert Jay Lifton’s Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991) in http://www.shin.gr.jp/ kyodan/dl/kougi_03.pdf. 77. http://www.shin.gr.jp/activity/study/yasukuni/img/24_03.pdf. 78. For the definition of ‘‘hibakusha,’’ see the introduction to this book. 79. See Sora Tatsuo, Kagaikichi Ujina: Atarashii Hiroshima gakushu¯ (Ujina, a base of invasion: A new study for Hiroshima) (Tokyo: Cho¯bunsha, 1994). 80. http://www.shin.gr.jp/activity/study/yasukuni/img/24_03.pdf. 81. Ibid. 82. Ko¯ji, ‘‘Bukkyoto to shite no,’’ 131. 83. Ibid., 131. 84. Ibid. 85. Ibid.

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86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

91. 92. 93. 94. 95.

Notes to pages 102–4

Ibid., 133. Ibid. Yuien, Tan’nisho¯, 13:19, 97. Ko¯ji, ‘‘Bukkyoto to shite no,’’ 133. This gap between desire and action is not particular to Buddhism. Saint Paul famously frames the tension between wanting to do good yet committing evil in terms of a dichotomization of mind and flesh: ‘‘With my mind I am a slave to the law of God, but with my flesh I am a slave to the law of sin.’’ Romans 7:25. Paul also writes, ‘‘I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate.’’ Romans 7:15. Buddhist (and Ko¯ji’s) thought differs from St. Paul’s in the negation of this binary paradigm. Yuien, Tan’nisho¯, 13:15, 95. Taitetsu Unno, ‘‘Shinran: A New Path to Buddhahood,’’ 327. Yuien, Tan’nisho¯, 13: 21, 99. Ibid., 14: 14, 107. Shinran devotes one section to the explanation of the five grave offenses, introducing four different interpretations. He writes, ‘‘According to Tzu-chou, there are two traditions concerning the five grave offenses. One is the five grave offenses of the three vehicles: 1) intentionally killing one’s father; 2) intentionally killing one’s mother; 3) intentionally killing an arhat; 4) disrupting the harmony of the sangha through one’s inverted views; and 5) maliciously causing blood to flow from the body of the Buddha.’’ Shinran, ‘‘Ken jo¯do shinjitsu kyo¯gyo¯sho¯ monrui’’ (The True Teaching, Practice, and Realization of the Pure Land Way), in The Collected Works of Shinran, 3:149. The other three explanations are as follows: ‘‘The Abbidharma-kosa lists five acts of uninterrupted pain similar to those above. A verse states: Violating one’s mother or a nun of the stage of nonlearning [equivalent to the karmic evil of killing one’s mother], Killing a bodhisattva who abides in meditation [equivalent to the karmic evil of killing one’s father], Or a sage of the stage of learning or nonlearning [equivalent to killing an arhat]. Destroying the cause of happiness in the sangha [equivalent to the karmic evil of disrupting the sangha], and smashing stupas [equivalent to causing blood to flow from the body of the Buddha].’’ Ibid. ‘‘The second tradition is the five grave offenses of the Mahayana. The Sutra Taught to Nigranthas states: 1) Destroying stupas, burning sutra repositories, or plundering the belongings of the three treasures, 2) Speaking evil of the teaching of the three vehicles, saying they are not the sacred teachings, obstructing and censuring it, or attempting to hide and obscure it, 3) Beating those who have abandoned home life, whether they observe precepts, have not received precepts, or break precepts; persecuting them, enumerating their faults, confining them, forcing them to return to lay life, putting them to menial labor, exacting taxes from them, or depriving them of life, 4) Killing one’s father, harming one’s mother, causing blood to flow from the body of the Buddha, disrupting the harmony of the sangha, or killing an arhat, 5) Speaking evil by saying there is no cause and effect and constantly performing the ten transgressions throughout the long night of ignorance.’’ Ibid., 3: 123, 150. ‘‘The [Ten Wheel] Sutra states: 1) Killing a pratyekabuddha out of evil intentions; this is destroying life, 2) Violating a nun who has attained arhatship; this is an act of lust, 3) Stealing or destroying what has been offered to the three treasures, this is taking

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what has not been given one, 4) Disrupting the harmony of the sangha with inverted views; this is speaking falsely.’’ Ibid. 96. The Three Pure Land Sutras, 243. 97. Yuien, Tan’nisho¯, 14:2, 101. 98. Ko¯ji, ‘‘Bukkyoto to shite no,’’ 133. 99. The crew of Enola Gay was not fully informed about the nature of the bomb and the scope of potential for destruction. The briefing took place on August 4: ‘‘The 509th commander introduced [William S.] Parsons, who wasted no words. He told the crews the bomb they were going to drop was something new in the history of warfare, the most destructive weapon ever made: it would probably almost totally destroy an area three miles across. . . . [Paul] Tibbets took over again. They were not the hottest crews in the Air Force, he warned them. He forbade them to write letters home or to discuss the mission even among themselves.’’ Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986), 700–701. 100. Ko¯ji, ‘‘Bukkyoto to shite no,’’ 134. 101. Ibid., 136. 102. Shinran, ‘‘Ko¯so¯ wasan’’ (Hymns of the Pure Land Masters), in The Collected Works of Shinran, vol. 1, verse 41, 371. 103. Taitetsu Unno, ‘‘Shinran: A New Path to Buddhahood,’’ in The Pure Land Tradition, 329. 104. Ibid., 329–330. 105. Shinran, ‘‘Ko¯so¯ wasan,’’ verses 39–40, 371. 106. Ko¯ji, ‘‘Bukkyoto to shite no,’’ 137. 107. David W. Chappell discusses Buddhist ethics in light of weapons of mass destruction. ‘‘Buddhist spiritual goals and practices (to dissolve ego attachments and cultivate calm mindfulness of the interdependence of all things) are opposed to perceiving anyone as an enemy, to dividing the world into false dichotomies of ‘us versus them.’ ’’ David W. Chappell, ‘‘Buddhist Perspectives on Weapons of Mass Destruction,’’ in Ethics and Weapons of Mass Destruction: Religious and Secular Perspectives, ed. Sohail H. Hashmi and Steven P. Lee (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 214. 108. It is important to note that some hibakushas joined the atomic bomb lawsuit at the International Peoples’ Tribunal on the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, initiated by Professor Yuki Tanaka in 2007 (http://www.k3.dion.ne.jp/⬃abomb/Judgment-J.pdf). While their aim is to articulate the criminality of the atomic bombing, they also declare that they regard this tribunal as a step toward the abolition of nuclear weaponry. 109. Seikaku, ‘‘Yuishinsho¯,’’ 691.

4. Sacrificial Lambs: Nagai Takashi and the Roman Catholic Interpretation of the Bombing 1.

The Japan Buddhist Federation counts fifty-eight primary Buddhist sects as members, including Tendai, Shingon, True/Pure Land, Rinzai, and So¯to¯ Zen, and has worked closely with World Conference of Religions of Peace. See also Robert Kisala, Prophets of Peace: Pacifism and Cultural Identity in Japan’s New Religions (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1999).

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2.

3.

4. 5. 6. 7.

8.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

Notes to pages 112–15

Ian Buruma, The Missionary and the Libertine: Love and War in East and West (London: Faber and Faber Limited, 1996; reprint, New York: Random House, Inc., 2000), 215– 216. Page citations are to the reprint edition. The discourse on nuclear arms in the United States is examined in Ira Chernus, Nuclear Madness: Religion and the Psychology of the Nuclear Age (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991). See especially 168–172. John XXIII, Pacem in Terris, April 11, 1963. http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/ john_xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_11041963_pacem_en.html, sec. 112. Ibid., sec. 216. It is ironic that in the same year, President Ronald Reagan issued the Strategic Defense Initiative, popularly known as ‘‘Star Wars.’’ See Chernus, Nuclear Madness, 172–175. The National Conference of Catholic Bishops, The Challenge of Peace: God’s Promise and Our Response—A Pastoral Letter on War and Peace (Washington, D.C.: United States Catholic Conference, 1995), sec. 175. In 1455, Pope Paul III commissioned the Jesuits to Christianize any newly discovered land. Prior to their arrival to Japan, the Portuguese had already occupied Goa, India (1510), Malacca, Malaysia (1511), and the Hormuz Islands in the Persian Gulf (1515), all of which served as missionary bases. Along this sea line, Christianity was introduced to the southern part of Japan. Xavier and two others landed on Kagoshima, the tip of the southern island of Japan with guidance from a Japanese man named Yajiro¯ (or Anjiro¯), whom Xavier had met in Malacca. Yajiro¯, who had originally fled from Japan to avoid the charge of homicide, convinced Xavier to evangelize in Japan. Yajiro¯ led them to Kagoshima, from where he hailed, even though Xavier had planned to go to China first. Ebisawa Arimichi, Nihon Kirishitan shi (History of Japanese Christians) (Tokyo: Hanawa Shobo¯, 1966), 64. After the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, the Franciscans, Dominicans, and Augustinians followed. He later converted, along with his twenty-five retainers, in 1562. His nephew, Arima Harunobu, became a Catholic in 1584, and donated the land of Urakami as a token of gratitude for winning a war against his longtime rivals, the Ryu¯zo¯ji family. Gonoi Takashi, Nihon Kirisuto kyo¯shi (History of Japanese Christianity) (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Ko¯bunkan, 1990), 12. The number of the missionaries, estimates Gonoi, was approximately 290. Ibid., 2–4. The criteria for ‘‘conversion’’ remain controversial. Historian Ikuo Higashibaba, for example, notes that ‘‘mass baptisms converted the whole village, allowing the villagers to maintain a communal faith, just as before.’’ Ikuo Higashibaba, Christianity in Early Modern Japan: Kirishitan Belief and Practice (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2001), 28. The crew of the San Felipe, a Spanish commercial ship, insulted one of Toyotomi’s retainers by suggesting that Japan would soon be colonized, with missionaries and Japanese Christians being mere pawns in this strategy. Toyotomi, already suspicious of Spain’s intention, felt compelled to react to such offensive remarks. In addition to this persecution, there was also internal disintegration among the missionaries, in particular, between the Portuguese Jesuits and the Spanish Franciscans. George Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), 138.

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14. The six Franciscans included three priests (Pedro Bautista, Martin de la Ascencio´n, and Francisco Blanco) as well as three brothers (Francisco de la Parrilla, Gonc¸alo Garcia, and Felipe de Jesus). The eighteen Japanese included a Jesuit brother, Paulo Miki; two Jesuit novices, Joa˜o Goto¯ and Diego Kisai; and Franciscan lay followers Paulo Suzuki Gabriel, Juan Kinuya, Tome Ise, Francisco Kusushi, Tome Kozaki, Joachim Sakakibara, Ventura, Leon Karasumaru, Mathias, Antonio, Luis, Pablo Ibaragi, Miguel Kozaki, and Cosme Takeya. Neil S. Fujita, Japan’s Encounter with Christianity: The Catholic Mission in Pre-Modern Japan (New York: Paulist Press, 1991), 139–140. 15. The shogunate’s policy toward Christians was at the outset more tolerant than that of its predecessor, Toyotomi. Thanks to the new Tokugawa policy, a consistent growth in the number of Christian converts was observed until the shogunate overturned its policy and began persecuting Christians. According to historian Ebisawa Arimichi, three reasons account for the shogunate’s policy shift concerning Christianity: First, the shogunate had aimed at monopolizing the economic benefits from foreign trade by bringing all trading business under the shogunate’s control. Instead of sharing the benefits with foreign missionaries as mediators of trade, the shogunate established a monopoly by expelling foreign missionaries. Second, in 1600, a trade ship from the Netherlands, a rapidly advancing country, came ashore to Japan for the first time. This new connection rendered less important remaining on good terms with Portugal and Spain, two Catholic countries. Third, Dutch merchants emphasized their freedom from religious authorities at home, which garnered the shogunate’s favor over the strong ties to the Catholic Church that Portuguese and Spanish merchants enjoyed. Gonoi, Nihon Kirishitanshi shi, 278–286. 16. Kataoka Yakichi, Fumie: Kinkyo¯ no rekishi (Fumie: History of forbidden religion) (Tokyo: Nihon Ho¯so¯ Shuppan Kyo¯kai, 1969), 83–85, and 114. For a prayer of contrition, see ibid., 203–207. 17. In addition to Christianity, some Buddhist sects were persecuted. For example, in 1687, Nichio¯ (1565–1630), the founder of Nichiren-shu¯ fuju-fuse-ha, was exiled to Tsushima Island. ‘‘According to this principle of fuju-fuse (‘not receiving from outsiders’), Nichio¯ refused the invitation to cooperate with the first shogun.’’ Joseph M. Kitagawa, Religion in Japanese History (New York: Columbia University Press, 1966), 165. This was followed by persecution of the whole sect in 1691. 18. The social hierarchy during the Tokugawa shogunate was roughly divided into the following four classes, in addition to the outcaste below the class system: shi (warriors), no¯ (farmers), ko¯ (artisans), and sho¯ (merchants). Supposedly the order of this hierarchy corresponds to degrees of power, but as the currency economy began to permeate Japan, power held by merchants became more prominent, while warriors, excepting a handful of those of high rank, came to be a target of mockery; they were warriors who never fought. 19. For example, see Endo¯ Shu¯saku, Silence, trans. William Johnston (New York: Taplinger, 1969). The story is fictional, but is based upon historical fact. Religious scholar Senoo Keiji describes this tenacious persecution of Christians: ‘‘The religious policy of Oda, Toyotomi, Tokugawa, and other powerful feudal lords in the early modern period in Japan undoubtedly had to do with their ambition of unification of Japan. While using Buddhism, the authority also tried to dissolve Buddhist’s influence

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20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25. 26.

Notes to pages 116–18

over people, disintegrate their authority, by which it demolished religion as the common people’s weapon [referring to uprisings organized by Ikko¯ sect and Hokke sect of Buddhism]. The ultimate aim was to reformulate religion, so that religion would serve to the government’s interests.’’ Senoo Keiji, ‘‘Kinsei shoto¯ ni okeru butsu-ya no ko¯sho¯ ni tsuite’’ (The relations between Buddhism and Christianity in early modern Japan), in Rissho¯ Daigaku Shigakukai so¯ritsu 35 shu¯nen kinen shigaku ronbunshu¯, ed. Rissho¯ Daigaku Shigakukai (Tokyo: Ogawa Shoten, 1960), 279. Severed from other Catholic communities, not to mention the Vatican, some Catholic communities gradually developed their own doctrines, narratives, and rituals. They are called kakure, or ‘‘hidden,’’ as in ‘‘hidden Christians.’’ The communities still exist but are on their way to extinction. For more about their beliefs, see The Beginning of Heaven and Earth: The Sacred Book of Japan’s Hidden Christians, trans. Christal Whelan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1996). Kataoka Yakichi, ‘‘Nagasaki no Kirishitan’’ (Christians in Nagasaki), in Kirishitan fudoki: Kyu¯shu¯ hen (Christian topography: Kyu¯shu¯), ed. Kataoka Yakichi (Tokyo: Ho¯bunkan, 1960), 130. Endo¯ Shu¯saku’s novel Silence captures the torture, apostasy, and inquisition of this time period. The text consists of a written oath of apostasy, which comprises two oaths: Nihon Senshi, or the Japanese Oath, in which one swears to the Japanese gods of one’s abandonment of the Christian faith; and Nanban Senshi, or Southern Barbarian Oath, in which apostates take another oath to the Christian God not to return to Christianity; a Christian calendar; a note on Christian customs; advice on martyrdom; preparation for martyrdom; an excerpt from the Dominica, or Sunday prayer; a fragment on epistemology; an excerpt from ‘‘Against Buddhism’’; basic ideas on Shinto; discussion on the ideal of martyrdom; prayers; creed; ten regulations (different from the Ten Commandments); discussion of the potency of prayers. Anesaki Masaharu, Kirishitan shumon no hakugai to senpuku (The persecution and concealment of Christians) (Tokyo: Do¯bunkan, 1925), 45–48. Because of their detachment from the Church for almost two hundred years, with the concealment of their faith, the Catholic identity among Urakami Christians had become less certain. Their practice had been somewhat transformed to adapt to the current environment. Those Urakami Catholics acknowledge that their religious practices, which had been handed down from their ancestors, were different from Buddhists’ practices, but were unable to articulate the basic principles of the practices. Miyazaki Kentaro¯, ‘‘Nihonjin no Kirisutokyo juyo¯ to sono rikai’’ (Acceptance of Christianity by Japanese and their understanding of its teaching), in Nihonjin wa Kirisutokyo o donoyouni juyo¯ shitaka (The way in which Japanese people have accepted Christianity), ed. Yamaori Tetsuo and Nagata Toshiki (Kyoto: Kokusai Nihon Bunka Kenkyu¯ Senta¯, 1998), 201. Joseph J. Spae, Catholicism in Japan: A Sociological Study (Tokyo: ISR Press, 1964), 13. Kataoka Yakichi, Nagasaki no Kirishitan (Christians in Nagasaki) (Nagasaki: Seibo no Kishi Sha, 1989), 98–99. Fr. Petitjean, who was not expecting that there would still be Catholics in Japan, was greatly impressed, to the extent that he quoted Yuri’s words in his letter to Fr. Girard in Yokohama: ‘‘Santa Maria no gozo¯ wa doko?’’ Francisque

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27.

28.

29. 30.

31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37.

38.

39.

Marnas, La religion de Je´sus ressuscite´e au Japon dans la seconde moitie´ du XIXe sie`cle (Paris: Delhomme et Briquet, 1896), 1:488. Fr. Petitjean, however, soon realized that there were several serious misunderstandings in their beliefs and practices. As historian C. R. Boxer writes, ‘‘Naturally, certain superstitious habits accumulated in the course of centuries, and there was a tendency to identify St. John the Baptist with the water god, St. Lawrence and St. Francis as wind gods and so on.’’ C. R. Boxer, Christian Century in Japan: 1549–1650 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 396. With Petitjean’s guidance, the Urakami Catholics received the sacrament of baptism and instructions on how to recite prayers correctly. Despite the overall sense of joy, some were not able to reunite with the Church, as their practices had transformed and merged with some Buddhist and other indigenous beliefs and could not be reconciled with Petitjean’s Catholicism. They still practice their own version of Catholicism. See Ann M. Harrington, Japan’s Hidden Christians (Chicago: Loyola University Press, 1993), Miyazaki Kentaro¯, Kakure Kirishitan no shinko¯ sekai (The world according to hidden Christians) (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1996), and Stephen Turnbull, The Kakure Kirishitan of Japan: A Study of Their Development, Beliefs and Rituals to the Present Day (Surrey: Japan Library, 1998). During the exile, ‘‘Fr. Petitjean encouraged them to maintain God’s commands, admonished them not to sin by apostatizing, and advised them to remember the 26 martyrs of 270 years ago.’’ Kawamura Kunimitsu, ‘‘Gisei to shite no Kirishitan: Junkyo¯ to tabi no omosa’’ (Christian sacrifice: The significance of martyrdom and the journey), in Yamaori and Nagata, Nihonjin wa Kirisutokyo¯ o donoyouni juyo¯ shitaka, 38. Buruma, The Missionary and the Libertine, 211. Today 70,000 Catholics live in Nagasaki, attesting to their continued faith through a tragic history. Takashi’s father’s name is often read, and in fact cited, as ‘‘Noboru.’’ However, I have followed the reading of Nagai Makoto, Takashi’s son. Nagai Makoto, Nagai Takashi: Nagasaki no genbaku ni chokugeki sareta ho¯shasen ishi (Nagai Takashi: A radiologist who was attacked by the atomic bomb in Nagasaki) (Tokyo: San Paulo, 2000). Nagai Takashi, Rozario no kusari (Rosary) (Tokyo: Romansu sha, 1948; reprint, Tokyo: San Paulo, 1995), 203 (page citations are to the reprint edition). During this era, Japanese intellectuals enjoyed relative freedom. Nagai, Rozario no kusari, 203. Ibid., 15–16. Ibid., 16–17. Ibid., 18. Kataoka Yakichi, Nagai Takashi no sho¯gai (Life of Nagai Takashi) (Tokyo: San Paulo, 1961), 43–46 and 57–58. For example, Magoemon and his family were responsible for assembling the name list of the baptized and maintaining the Church calendar in the community. People would congregate in the Moriyama’s household, which was often served as a substitute church. Nagai Takashi, Horobinu mono o (For that which passeth not away) (Nagasaki: Nagasaki Nichinichi Shimbun Sha, 1948; reprint, Tokyo: San Paulo, 1996), 19. Page citations are to the reprint edition. It was through such active involvement in Catholic charity that Nagai met Father Maximillian Koble in 1934. Father Kolbe was the founder of a Franciscan monastery in

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40. 41.

42. 43.

44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58.

Notes to pages 122–29

Nagasaki called Lourdes Grotto, and published the Catholic magazine Seibo no kishi, or The Knights of Our Lady, still widely circulated in Catholic communities. Father Kolbe suffered from tuberculosis, and Nagai saw him until his departure from Japan in 1936. Father Kolbe then returned to his homeland, Poland, where he fell victim to the Nazis. Paul Glynn, A Song for Nagasaki (London: Fourth Paperbacks, 1990), 183–184. What caused Ikuko’s death is unknown. In Nagai’s autobiography and biographies, her death is simply attributed to sickness. See Nagai, Nagai Takashi, 132–133. In 1931, a Japanese-owned railroad truck was exploded in Manchuria. Japan accused local Chinese dissidents of committing this act, and decided to dispatch troops to the area in order to maintain local security. Later, the League of Nations sent an investigative team that came to the conclusion that Japan most likely organized the explosion. Upon receiving the report from the investigative team, the League of Nations urged them to withdraw from the area. Perceiving this suggestion as an insult, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933. The names of the characters in the book are slightly changed, but still identifiable. The basic narrative is based upon Nagai’s life experiences. Nagai, Horobinu mono o, 235. We can only speculate about whether Nagai’s antiwar sentiment was in place before the war or was rather a product of the pervasive antiwar mentality that emerged in Japan following the war. See, for example, Nagai, Nagai Takashi, 125–127. Also Kataoka Nagai Takashi no sho¯gai, 125. Nagai, Horobinu mono o, 253–254. Nagai, Nagai Takashi no sho¯gai, 132. Nagai, Horobinu mono o, 275. Ibid., 286. See, for example, Nagai, Horobinu mono o, 263, 285–286, 287–290. See also Kataoka, Nagai Takashi no sho¯gai, 141–144. Nagai, Horobinu mono o, 287. Ibid., 287–288. As is the case with Nagai’s older daughter Ikuko’s death, the cause of Sasano’s death is unknown. Nagai, Nagai Takashi, 160. Nagai Takashi, The Bells of Nagasaki, trans. William Johnston (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1984), 11. The original Japanese edition, Nagasaki no kane, was published in 1946. Nagai Takashi, Nyokodo¯ zuihitsu (Essays at Nyokodo¯) (Tokyo: Dominiko, 1957; reprint, Tokyo: San Paulo, 1996), 77 (page citations are to the reprint edition). Ibid., 60. Ibid., 96. Ito¯ Akihiko, Genshiya no Yobu ki: Katsute kaku-sensou ga atta (The book of Job in the atomic field: There was once a nuclear war) (Tokyo: Komichi Shobo¯, 1993), 258. This reaction was extreme, yet not entirely exceptional. Historian John W. Dower describes the various responses to the Emperor’s announcement of Japan’s surrender: ‘‘The number of people who gathered before the imperial residence was relatively small, and the tears that ordinary people everywhere did shed reflected a multitude of sentiments apart from emperor-centered grief: anguish, regret, and loss of purpose—or

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59.

60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72.

73. 74. 75. 76. 77.

78. 79. 80. 81.

simple joy at the unexpected surcease of misery and death.’’ John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: Norton, 1999), 38. Kamikaze, or Divine Wind, refers to typhoons at the Mongolian attacks in 1274 and 1281. When the Mongols twice attempted to invade Japan, typhoons overcame their fleets both times. It was believed that Japan’s escape from the Mongol invasion was thanks to this ‘‘divine wind’’ (kamikaze), which protected Japan, the land of kami. The legacy of the Divine Wind was revived during World War II. Even toward the end of the war, some in Japan still believed that the Divine Wind would blow, saving Japan. And of course, Japanese suicide pilots were called kamikaze, an expression of hope that their sacrifice would bring about the Divine Wind. Nagai, The Bells of Nagasaki, 102. Ibid., 103. Ibid., 102. Glynn, A Song for Nagasaki, 186. Nagai, The Bells of Nagasaki, 106. Ibid., 106. Ibid., 108. Ibid., 109. Ibid., 110. Ibid. Ibid., 106–107. Ibid., 107. In 1949, celebrating the four-hundred-year anniversary of Saint Francis Xavier’s landing on Japan, an envoy from the Vatican came to Nagasaki with a relic of Xavier’s right arm, part of a strategy orchestrated by Supreme Commander Douglas MacArthur to divert people’s anger from the bomb. For descriptions of the festive atmosphere in Nagasaki, see Akizuki Tatsuichiro¯, Shi no do¯shin’en (The concentric circle of death) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1972), 144. Nagai, The Bells of Nagasaki, 107. Though Nagai of course acknowledges that Hiroshima was also destroyed by an atomic bomb, he provides no theological or other interpretation of this event. Nagai, The Bells of Nagasaki, 108. Ibid. The inflation of the number of American soldiers’ lives was thoroughly examined in historian Barton Bernstein’s article ‘‘A Postwar Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved,’’ in Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy, ed. Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz (Stony Creek, Conn.: The Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998), 130–134. Nagai, The Bells of Nagasaki, 108. Ibid., 108. Ibid., 109. Glynn, A Song for Nagasaki, 189. Nagai completed The Bells of Nagasaki, containing this requiem speech, in 1946. Because of the censorship by the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), however, The Bells of Nagasaki was published only in 1949, and then on the condition that it must include a short essay on Japanese atrocities

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82. 83. 84. 85. 86.

87.

88.

Notes to pages 132–32

in Manila, Manira no higeki (The tragedy in Manila). As the preface of the essay clarifies, the purpose of the attachment of this essay was to make known the Japanese army’s cruelty in Manila, which not only justifies the dropping of the atomic bombs but also points to the fact that Japan inflicted suffering on Catholics in other places as well. According to journalist Kamata Sadao, ‘‘The Tragedy of Manila’’ consists of seven pages of photographs showing evidence of atrocities by the Japanese military and eleven chapters of victims’ testimonies. Kamata Sadao, ‘‘Nagasaki no genbaku rikai to bungaku no kadai’’ (Nagasaki writers: The mission), in Kaku, Hinkon, Yokuatsu (Literature under the nuclear cloud: Reports from the Hiroshima International Conference of Asian Writers), ed. Ito¯ Narihiko, Ko¯mura Fujihiko, and Kamata Sadao (Tokyo: San’yu¯sha, 1984), 221–227. Nagai, The Bells of Nagasaki, 108. Ibid., 103. Ibid., 102. Ibid., 104. For example, philosopher Takahashi Shinji refutes Nagai’s interpretation, since it has made little contribution to the dissemination of information concerning the horrors of nuclear weaponry, the peace movement, self-reflection concerning Japan’s war responsibility, or the awareness of nuclear weaponry. Takahashi Shinji, Nagasaki ni atte tetsugaku suru: Kakujidai no shi to sei (Philosophizing in Nagasaki: Death and life in the nuclear era) (Tokyo: Hokuju Shuppan, 1994), esp. 198–199. Journalist Kamata Sadao, finding the Buddhist trait of teinen, or resignation, in Nagai’s interpretation, argues pointedly that the experience of the nuclear attack should not be understood to privilege one group over another. Journalist Ito¯ Akihiko was sympathetic to Urakami Catholics, who not only endured a series of sufferings as a community but were also left with only Nagai’s interpretation to rely upon for making sense of the bombing. He calls upon religious institutions to assume responsibility for addressing the experiences of the atomic bombing. Motoshima Hitoshi, former Nagasaki mayor and a non-hibakusha Catholic, stresses the same point. Taking the community’s history of hardships into account, Motoshima claims that the only good fortune that befell the despondent Urakami Catholics in the midst of the ruins was perhaps attainment of religious freedom, which they had never previously enjoyed to such a full extent. Motoshima also points out that Nagai’s interpretation was perhaps more appropriate in the pre–Vatican II era: ‘‘If mishaps are also from God [as well as good fortune], Catholics should overcome this affliction of the bomb, appreciating God. Nagai would have liked to claim that we Catholics must have the strength to do so.’’ Nagasaki shimbun August 4, 2000. ‘‘I could never understand why the nuns were smiling in agony, describing their tragedy as ‘God’s Providence’. . . . I said to the Catholic nuns that I could not understand why God caused you such suffering, when you are praying and devoting your whole life to helping others. Despite the sarcastic tone of my voice, those nuns proclaimed their steadfast belief in God, replying ‘this is the result of our sin, the sin of human beings.’ ’’ Shi no do¯shin’en, 244. John Paul II, ‘‘Appeal for Peace,’’ in Hiroshima in Memoriam and Today: A Testament of Peace for the World, ed. Hitoshi Takayama (Asheville, N.C.: Biltmore Press, 1973), 114.

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211

89. For example, Ito¯, Genshiya no Yobu-ki, 281–282, 314. 90. For example, Saint Augustine, Confessions, trans. R. S. Pine-Coffin (New York: Penguin Books, 1961), Book VII, sec. 12–13, 148. 91. John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, February 11, 1984. http://tiny.cc/salvifici. 92. Ibid. 93. Ibid., sec. 3. All italics in quotes from this document appear in the original. 94. Ibid., sec. 3, ‘‘Already in the Old Testament we note an orientation that begins to go beyond the concept according to which suffering has a meaning only as a punishment for sin, insofar as it emphasizes at the same time the educational value of suffering as a punishment.’’ 95. Ibid., sec. 3. 96. Nagai, The Bells of Nagasaki, 109. 97. John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, sec. 3. 98. Ibid., sec. 4. 99. Ibid. 100. John 18:11. 101. Galatians 2:20. 102. Nagai, The Bells of Nagasaki, 109. 103. John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, sec. 5. Italics in original. 104. Ibid., sec. 6. Italics in original. 105. Nagai, The Bells of Nagasaki, 109. 106. John Whittier Treat, Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 304. 107. For example, Peter Brown, The Cult of the Saint: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). 108. John Paul II, Salvifici Doloris, sec. 7.

5. Women in Atomic Bomb Narratives: Hagiography, Alterity, and Non-Nomological Ethics 1.

2. 3.

4.

Maya Morioka Todeschini, ‘‘ ‘Death and the Maiden’: Female Hibakusha as Cultural Heroines, and the Politics of A-bomb Memory,’’ in Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film, ed. Mick Broderick (London: Kegan Paul International, 1996), 241. Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1987), 14. See, for example, Umino Shiho, Paper Crane Journey: Carrying Sadako’s Prayer, trans. Keiko Miyamoto and Steve Leeper (Tokyo: PHP Kenkyu¯sho, 2003): ‘‘Sadako and her paper crane story have flown with prayers for peace to Russia, Austria, Spain, Italy, France, Israel, Kuwait, Australia . . . all around the world’’ (38). In addition to the English translation, ‘‘one or more of these volumes have also been published in French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Swedish, Norwegian, Indonesian, Tagalog, and Esperanto.’’ Namie Asazuma, ‘‘About Project Gen,’’ in Nakazawa Keiji, Barefoot Gen: A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima (San Francisco: Last Gasp, 2004), 1:286.

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Notes to pages 148–52

5.

Kanou Mikiyo, ‘‘On’na ga Hiroshima o kataru toiu koto’’ (What it means for women to talk about Hiroshima), in On’na ga Hiroshima o kataru (Women talk about Hiroshima), ed. Esashi Akiko and others (Tokyo: Impakuto Shuppankai, 1996), 236. Seki Chieko, ‘‘Genbaku saigai to josei’’ (The A-bomb destruction and women), in ibid., 205. Ibid., 214. Mr. Yoshida Katsuji, whose face was severely burnt by the atomic bombing in Nagasaki, testifies about his suffering in a documentary film, White Light/Black Rain, directed by Steven Okazaki (Berkeley, Calif.: Farallon Films, 2007.) Their experiences were partly documented by American media and were also captured in White Light/Black Rain. See Yamaoka Michiko, ‘‘We Must Doubt as Well as Trust,’’ in White Flash Black Rain: Women of Japan Relive the Bomb, ed. and trans. Lequita Yance-Watkins and Aratani Mariko (Minneapolis: Milkweed Editions, 1995), 71–75. Seki, ‘‘Genbaku saigai to josei,’’ 215. Ibid. In addition to the pieces I address in this section, there are a number of fictional treatments of women’s experiences of the atomic bombing by non-hibakusha authors, for example Tanaka Chikao’s play Maria no kubi (The Head of Mary) and Ibuse Masuji’s novel Kuroi ame (Black Rain). In addition to being written by non-hibakusha authors, these stories have in common that they feature women as the chief protagonists and proved popular enough to be translated into English. Tanaka Chikao, ‘‘The Head of Mary: Nagasaki as Theophany’’ in After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ed. and trans. David G. Goodman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), and Ibuse Masuji, Black Rain, trans. John Bester (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1988). Black Rain has been examined thoroughly by Todeschini’s article, ‘‘Death and the Maiden’’ and John Whittier Treat’s monograph Writing Ground Zero. My analysis of Yumechiyo Nikki (Diary of Yumechiyo) resonates with the main theme of The Head of Mary. Todeschini, ‘‘Death and the Maiden,’’ 223. As we have already seen, this figure is disputed. See Barton Bernstein, ‘‘A Postwar Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved,’’ in Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy, ed. Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz (Stony Creek, Conn.: The Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998), 130–134. Frank E. Reynolds and Donald Capps, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in The Biographical Process: Studies in the History and Psychology of Religion, ed. Frank E. Reynolds and Donald Capps (Mouton: The Hague, 1976), 1, 3. Ibid., 4. Kenzaburo¯ Oe, Hiroshima Notes, trans. Toshi Yonezawa and David L. Swain (New York: Grove Press, 1996). See especially Chapter 3, ‘‘The Moralists of Hiroshima,’’ 78–95. ‘‘The Other, both individually and collectively as the precondition for moral existence, is the Other in her or his corporeal being. The saintly response to the Other entails putting her/his own body and material goods at the disposal of the Other.’’ Edith Wyschogrod, Saints and Postmodernism: Revisioning Moral Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990), xxii, xv.

6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11. 12.

13. 14.

15.

16. 17.

18.

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Notes to pages 153–59

19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25.

26. 27.

28. 29. 30.

31.

32. 33. 34. 35.

36. 37.

38. 39.

40.

213

Ibid., xiv, xxiii. Ibid., xxii. Ibid., xxiii. Ibid., 33–34. Ibid., xxiv. Ibid., 57. ‘‘Although hagiographic texts endorsed by religious traditions are often idealized biography or autobiography, saints’ antinomian acts, according to Wyschogrod, provide an intratextual counterdiscourse to the constructed artifacts of already well-developed theological and institutional frameworks.’’ Ibid., 37. Todeschini, ‘‘Death and the Maiden,’’ 225. Ibuse Masuji’s Kuroi Ame (Black Rain), published in 1966, is a semifictional account based upon an actual diary of a hibakusha man and his hibakusha niece. The novel was made into a film in 1989, directed by Imamura Sho¯hei. Todeschini, ‘‘Death and the Maiden,’’ 223. Before the development of treatment for tuberculosis and pneumonia, these were prevalent maidens’ diseases in romantic English novels. For example, Yumechiyo never appears as a patient suffering from chemotherapy. She simply becomes more fragile. Similarly, in Black Rain, the protagonist, Yasuko, loses her hair, but no subsequent scenes show further loss of her hair or any physical manifestation of radiation sickness, aside from her becoming thinner and paler. To my knowledge, the only exception is Tanaka Chikao’s Maria no kubi. This story has, however, never been adapted for television or film, suggesting that deformity in a female protagonist is believed to be commercially unmarketable. Todeschini, ‘‘Death and the Maiden,’’ 232. Ibid., 241. Ibid., 244. Hayasaka Akira, Yumechiyo Nikki (Diary of Yumechiyo) (Tokyo: Daiwa Shobo¯, 1983; Tokyo: Shinpu¯sha, 2003), 174 (page citations are to the paperback edition from Shinpu¯sha). Hereafter Yumechiyo. Ibid. Catherine M. Mooney, ‘‘Voice, Gender, and the Portrayal of Sanctity,’’ in Gendered Voices: Medieval Saints and Their Interpreters, ed. Catherine M. Mooney (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1999), 3. Janet R. Goodwin, ‘‘Shadows of Transgression: Heian and Kamakura Constructions of Prostitution’’ Monumenta Nipponica 55, no. 3 (2000): 328. The incorporation of this prototypical story into the origin of these temples took place in the Muromachi period, roughly five hundred years after the actual construction of the temples. The story of the empress is recorded in Konjaku monogatari and other documents compiled in the twelfth through sixteenth centuries. Historian Abe Yasuro¯ examines the similarity of this story’s plot with that of Xuanzang’s story (in The Journey to the West). Abe Yasuro¯, Yuya no ko¯go¯: Chu¯sei no sei to sei naru mono (Empress in public bath: Sex and sacred in the medieval Japan) (Nagoya: Nagoya Daigaku Shuppankai, 1998), 31–38.

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214

Notes to pages 160–65

41. Another version holds that the leper demands that the empress suck the pus from his wounds. See Abe, Yuya no ko¯go¯, 24. 42. Goodwin, ‘‘Shadows of Transgression,’’ 329. In another version of the story, the bodhisattva Monju, or Manjushri, replaces Buddha. Abe, Yuya no ko¯go¯, 29. 43. Bernard Faure, The Power of Denial: Buddhism, Purity, and Gender (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2003), 252. 44. Faure derives the term ‘‘deep play’’ not from Clifford Geertz’s account (drawn from Jeremy Bentham and explained in ‘‘Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight,’’ compiled in The Interpretation of Cultures) but rather from Johan Huizinga and Georges Bataille: ‘‘These specialists of ‘deep play’ (asobi) took on all of the meanings of the word asobi itself, with its broad semantic field, ranging from the religious to the sexual and artistic domains. This semantic spectrum was discussed by Johan Huizinga in Homo Ludens, and indeed we find in Japanese mythology intuitions close to those of Huizinga on the ritual importance of play, or of Georges Bataille on the relations between eroticism and death.’’ Ibid., 255. 45. Koyano Atsushi, for example, believes that seeking the origin of the female entertainers is a misguided enterprise that falls prey to the tendency to romantic, fantasized constructions of the entertainers as sacred figures. Koyano Atsushi, ‘‘ ‘Sei naru sei’ no saikentou’’ (Reexamining the sacred sex), Nihon kenkyu¯ 29, no. 2 (2004): 301–323. See also Koyano, Nihon baishun shi: Yu¯gyo¯nyofu kara so¯pu rando made (History of Japanese prostitutes: From wandering female entertainers to women in the contemporary sex industry) (Tokyo: Shincho¯sha, 2007). Rather than arguing whether or not the occupation originated in religious rituals, Koyano asserts that combining sex and the sacred is part of a kyo¯do¯ genso¯, or collective fantasy. Koyano argues that the idea of ‘‘sacred sex’’ (sei naru sei) is imported in the early twentieth century from Euro-American academic discourse, long after the folktales and hagiographies in question were compiled. ‘‘Sei naru sei,’’ 315. 46. Goodwin, ‘‘Shadows of Transgression,’’ 329. 47. Abe, Yuya no ko¯go¯, 150–151. 48. Hayasaka, Yumechiyo Nikki, 265. 49. Wyschogrod, Saints and Postmodernism, xxiv. 50. In public testimonies given at DePaul University, Emiko Okada, who was eight years old at the time of bombing, reflects upon herself critically, noting that she was unaware of discrimination against Koreans before the bombing, and that she wished to be a brave soldier, were she were a boy. In White Light/Black Rain, another hibakusha, Nagano Etsuko, blames herself, recounting that the reason her younger brother and sister died from the bomb was because she insisted on returning to the city before the bomb. Rev. Ko¯ji Shigenobu, who lost his sisters and father to the bombing and radiation aftereffects, admits that he would have pressed the button to release the bomb, had he been the pilot of the Enola Gay (public talk by Rev. Ko¯ji, 4 December, 2007, at Ko¯ryu¯ji, Hiroshima, Japan). Even the inscription on the memorial in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park does not seek to impute responsibility, stating simply, ‘‘Rest in peace, this mistake will not be repeated.’’ 51. Seki, ‘‘Genbaku saigai to josei,’’ 215. 52. Ibid., 219.

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Notes to pages 166–75 215

53. Kanou, ‘‘On’na ga Hiroshima o kataru toiu koto,’’ 236. 54. Mari Yamamoto, Grassroots Pacifism in Post-War Japan: The Rebirth of a Nation (New York: Routledge Curzon, 2004), 168. Yamamoto also claims that those women who participated in antinuclear movement ‘‘believed that since the Japanese were the only people who had been victims of nuclear bombings,’’ that only ‘‘they had the credibility and duty to call for nuclear disarmament’’ (169). The atomic bombing had already been incorporated into the national experience. 55. Kanou, ‘‘On’na ga Hiroshima o kataru to iukoto,’’ 237. 56. Ibid., 238. For the same reason, Kanou criticizes society’s dependence on nuclear power plants. 57. Ibid., 240. 58. In 1997, Inoue also wrote the script for the play Kamiya-cho Sakura Hoteru (Kamiyacho Sakura Hotel). Inoue Hisashi, Saishin gikyokushu¯: Kamiya-cho Sakura Hoteru (The latest plays: Kamiya-cho Sakura Hotel) (Tokyo: Sho¯gakkan, 2001). The story is about a theater company performing in Hiroshima on the day of the bombing. The members of this theater company all died from the bomb either instantly or later from radiation sickness. A story by Ezu Hagie, Sakuratai zenmetsu: Aru gekidan no genbaku jun’nan ki (Dissolution of Sakura-unit: A theater group’s suffering from the atomic bombing) (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1980), was made into a movie, Sakura-tai chiru (The fall of Sakuraunit), directed by Shindo¯ Kaneto, 1988. The Face of Jizo was performed in Paris in 1997 and Moscow in 2001. See ‘‘Performances’’ in Hisashi Inoue, The Face of Jizo (Chichi to kuraseba), trans. Roger Pulvers (Tokyo: Komatsuza, 2004), 182–185. 59. The Face of Jizo, 166. 60. Ibid., 168. 61. Ibid. 62. Italics mine. 63. Kouno Fumiyo, Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms (Yu¯nagi no machi, sakura no kuni), trans. Naoko Amemiya and Andy Nakatani (San Francisco: Last Gasp, 2006). Hereafter Yu¯nagi. Since the film includes an adaptation of this scene, I have used the monologue included in the English translation of Kouno’s graphic novel, Yu¯nagi no machi Sakura no kuni. 64. Ibid., 33. 65. Ibid., 34. 66. Ibid., 84. Translation slightly altered. 67. Ibid., 86. 68. Ibid., 86–87. 69. Ibid., 95. 70. Sueki Fumihiko, Bukkyo tai rinri (Buddhism versus ethics) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo¯, 2006), 217. 71. Kouno, Yu¯nagi, 98. In addition to the physical resemblance of these two women and the nearness of their names, the movie makes use of a variety of other markers to signify the continuity between the two characters—for example, a hair ornament passed down from Minami to Nanami and the appearance of the Jizo bodhisattva statue. 72. Ibid., 34. 73. Wyschogrod, Saints and Postmodernism, xxiv.

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216

Notes to pages 177–84

Postscript: After Too Many Mushroom Clouds 1. 2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7. 8. 9.

New York Times, September 6, 2007. See also Chu¯goku Shimbunsha, ed., Exposure: Victims of Radiation Speak Out (New York: Kodansha International, 1992), 303–319. In Kurosawa’s film, renowned actor Mifune Toshiro¯ plays an elderly man named Nakajima Kiichi who attempts to sell his business and belongings in the hope of moving to Brazil in order to avoid possible nuclear attack. He ends up being confined in a mental institution by his family members, who want to secure their inheritances. I thank Norma Field for directing me to this film. Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, ‘‘Nuclear Pursuits,’’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59, no. 5 (September/October 2003): 71–72, and ‘‘Global Nuclear Weapons Inventories, 1945–2010,’’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 66, no. 4 (July/August 2010): 77–83. Barton Bernstein, ‘‘A Postwar Myth: 500,000 U.S. Lives Saved,’’ in Hiroshima’s Shadow: Writings on the Denial of History and the Smithsonian Controversy, ed. Kai Bird and Lawrence Lifschultz (Stony Creek, Conn.: The Pamphleteer’s Press, 1998), 130–134. If a balance is to be achieved in discourse on the bombings, we must address not only the message of the hibakusha but also such matters as the fact that the bomb gave a sense of liberation to those suffering inhumane treatment by the invading Japanese army. The International Peoples’ Tribunal on the Dropping of Atomic Bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was initiated by Dr. Yuki Tanaka, who selflessly committed himself to the project. On July 16, 2007, the anniversary of the first atomic bomb test in the U.S. soil, it announced its final verdict: that the dropping of the bombs was illegal. I am grateful to Tomomi Yamaguchi at Montana State University for directing my attention to this group. http://www.realpas.com. The bones are still housed in the Peace Memorial Park. But that park, once a more desolate place, has been increasingly beautified and scrupulously maintained over the years. In this way, the wider park is in tension with the Peace Memorial Museum that it contains. The contents of the museum, which, as I discussed in Chapter 1, display and preserve the horror of the bombings, stand in stark contrast to the well-kept park outside the museum walls.

Afterword 1. 2.

See the Introduction for an explanation of the different spellings and corresponding meanings of the term hibakusha. ‘‘ ‘Datsu genpatsu fukume seisaku minaoshi o’ Hiroshima shicho¯ ga teigen’’ (Hiroshima mayor proposes reexamination of national energy policy, including the abolition of nuclear energy), Asahi Shimbun, May 11, 2011.

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INDEX

Akiba, Tadatoshi, xi, 13, 15, 29, 35, 41–45, 97, 183, 185n9 Amida, 60, 86, 87, 88–95, 98, 101, 103–6, 109, 194n57, 199n27, 199n34, 200n40 Amida’s mercy, 61, 87, 90–91, 95, 98, 106–9 Amida’s Name, 88–90, 103–4, 106 Amida’s (salvific, merciful) Power, 88–91, 93–94, 103–4, 106–9 See also Other Power Amida Buddha. See Amida Amida’s Power. See Other Power atomic bomb/ing, the, xiii, xiv, xv, 1–4, 5, 6–8, 14, 16–21, 27–40, 42–44, 46, 62, 65–66, 72–75, 77, 81–84, 90, 96–101, 104–14, 116, 119, 126–41, 145, 147, 149–52, 155–57, 160, 163–68, 170–75, 178–81, 183–84, 186n10, 185n5, 187n17, 189n68, 190n75, 193n44, 196n104, 203n99, 203n108, 207n74, 210n81, 210n86, 211n106, 212n8, 212n12, 215n54, 215n58, 216n6 atomic bomb discourse, 2, 5, 14–15, 21, 83, 109, 140, 151, 163, 175, 177–78, 216n5 interpretation of, 5, 7, 66, 82–83, 96, 107–8, 112, 119, 126, 128, 130–31, 133–36, 139, 140–41

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narrative/s, xiii, 1, 6, 8, 145, 149, 154, 168 understanding of, 28, 84, 105, 128, 133–34, 139, 140 bodhisattva, 60–61, 86–87, 162, 168, 198n24, 199n28, 202n95, 214n42, 215n71 border/s, 3–4, 6–7, 14–15, 30, 40, 75, 77, 90, 100, 125, 129, 134 boundary/ies, 3, 6, 8, 13, 15–16, 21, 25, 28–30, 35–36, 40, 43, 45–46, 77, 108, 140–41, 147, 160, 162–64, 174–75 Buddhism, 53, 55–56, 59–62, 65, 85–87, 101–2, 108, 120, 192n29, 196n99, 198n16, 198n17, 198n18, 198n23, 199n38, 202n90, 205n19, 206n19, 206n23 Buddhist/s, 7, 8, 31, 48, 55–56, 60–62, 65–66, 84–85, 87–89, 92, 95–102, 104–5, 107–9, 112, 114, 146, 159, 162–63, 190n90, 192n28, 202n90, 203n1, 205n17, 206n24, 207n27, 210n86 Buddhist ethics, 203n107 Buddhist monk/priest, 86, 114, 118, 163 Buddhist temple/s, 30, 115–16 Buddhist tradition, 59, 62, 112

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Pure Land Buddhism, 86–87, 101, 194n57 True Pure Land Buddhism. See True Pure Land Zen Buddhism, 48, 199n35, 203n1 calculation, 81, 90, 93, 94 Catholicism, 6, 110, 119, 121, 124–26, 129, 133–35, 140–41, 196n99, 206n25, 207n27 Catholic/s, 5, 7, 66, 83–84, 110, 112–14, 116, 118–19, 121–25, 127–35, 140, 198n13, 204n10, 205n15, 206n24, 206n26, 207n29, 208n39, 210n81, 210n86, 210n87 Catholic Church/churches, 50, 115–18, 122, 124–25, 205n15 Catholic community/ies, 116, 119, 121, 128–31, 134, 206n20, 208n39 Catholic interpretation, 110, 115, 140–41 Catholic tradition, 135, 140 Christ, 51, 115, 124, 136–38, 141 Christianity, 24, 48, 50, 52, 63, 112, 114–15, 117–19, 135, 139, 188n32, 192n31, 192n36, 204n8, 205n15, 205n17, 206n23 Christian/s, 5, 8, 49–51, 85, 92, 109, 115–18, 120–22, 131–32, 134–37, 139–40, 193n38, 193n47, 204n12, 205n15, 205n19, 206n20, 206n23, 207n27 Christian community/ies, 115, 117 Christian missionary/ies, 114–16 Christian population, 83, 115–16 Christian tradition, 92, 112, 139, 159 Christian understanding, 113, 139 comfort women, 2, 28, 45, 46, 69, 109, 166 commemoration, 1–3, 5–9, 22–23, 25–26, 28–29, 36, 46–49, 51–52, 54–55, 58, 64–66, 70–72, 75–77, 82, 141, 173, 195n82

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community, 3, 5–6, 9, 13, 15–16, 21–31, 33, 35–36, 38, 40–47, 75, 84, 107–8, 115–16, 129, 133–34, 141, 155, 175, 188n24, 189n47, 195n88, 207n37, 210n86 community of memory, 3, 6, 13, 21–22, 25, 27–29, 34, 39–46, 63, 66, 76, 82–83, 107, 139–41, 147, 152, 158, 163, 174, 182 ethical community, 27, 174 Urakami community. See Urakami community Confucianism, 55, 85 continuity, 6, 22–23, 25, 45, 47, 105, 168, 215n71 of life/lives, 102, 148–49, 165, 167–70 critical self-reflection, 5, 9, 15, 34, 40, 42–44, 72, 83, 92, 99, 100, 108–12, 127, 133–35, 139–41, 168, 179, 210n86 dead, the, 25, 30–31, 33, 48–53, 56, 58–66, 69–72, 75–77, 98, 100, 118, 169, 173–74, 179–80, 195n82, 195n84 dialogue with the dead, viii, 48, 59, 63, 66, 67, 70, 71, 73, 76, 77, 82, 168, 173, 196n110 The Diary of Yumechiyo, 145–48, 150–52, 154–56, 158, 160, 162–65, 174, 212n12 emperor, 37, 41, 52–56, 65, 67–68, 70–72, 76, 85, 131, 161, 192n22, 192n24, 192n25, 193n40, 193n41, 193n47, 198n13, 208n58 emperor cult, 54–57, 67, 76, 193n40, 193n47 empress, 53, 85, 159–60, 163, 213n40, 214n41 enlightenment (in Buddhism), 60, 61, 86, 87, 102, 104, 107, 162, 199n35 Enola Gay, 6, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 104, 105, 187n9, 187n13, 203n99, 214n50

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Index

ethic/s, 5, 8–9, 13, 15–16, 22–25, 27, 33, 43–48, 58–59, 61–65, 70, 83–84, 91–92, 108–9, 111–13, 120, 125, 134, 140, 152–53, 168–69, 179, 182, 185n8, 186n11, 187n24, 188n24, 188n32, 194n61, 194n77, 197n5, 200n48 ethical community, 27, 174 ethical implication/s, 2, 5, 58, 152 ethical import, 21, 59, 63, 147, 158, 164, 173 ethical insight/s, 92, 157, 163, 165 ethical relations, 22–25, 45, 158 ethical sensibilities, 112, 151, 160 ethical thinking/thought, 14, 151, 154 ethics of care, 148, 174 non-nomological ethics, 158, 164 postmodern ethics, 8, 151–53 transethics/transethical, 61–64, 70, 82, 146, 148, 150–52, 158, 169, 174, 197n5 evil, 27, 42, 45–46, 84, 88, 91–96, 102–4, 106–7, 109–10, 130, 135, 146, 158, 163, 190n90, 200n49, 202n90 faith, 51, 85, 87, 89–90, 92, 103, 106, 108–9, 114, 116, 118, 120–21, 129, 132, 134–35, 137, 198n18, 204n11, 206n23 fallen soldiers, 45, 49, 51, 53–55, 191n1 hagiography/ies, xiii, 147, 151–54, 157–60, 162–64 hagiographical lens, 147, 158, 163 hagiographical reading, 8, 148, 151, 164 hagiographical text/s, 151, 213n25 hagiographical trope/s, 152, 160–64, 174 Hamai, Shinzo¯, viii, 29–37, 39, 40, 42, 44 Harwit, Martin, 6, 16–21, 178, 187n13 hibakusha/s, xi, xv, 2–9, 13–16, 21, 25, 28–31, 34, 35, 38, 39, 41, 42, 43, 44,

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45, 46, 74, 75, 77, 82, 84, 98, 99, 108, 112, 147, 149, 152, 157, 158, 160, 162, 163, 164, 169, 170, 172, 173, 174, 175, 178, 179, 180, 181, 182, 183, 185n9, 186n10, 186n12, 186n5, 189n48, 189n56, 190n75, 190n84, 201n78, 203n108, 210n86, 211n1, 213n27, 214n50, 216n5, 216n1 hibakusha ethics (or ethics of hibakusha), 15–16, 29–30, 32–34, 41, 58, 82, 97, 107–10, 139–40, 147, 160, 179, 182 hibakusha woman/women (or female hibakusha), 147, 148, 150, 154, 164, 165, 167, 168, 174 Korean hibakusha, 14, 38, 39, 100 second generation of hibakusha (hibaku nisei), 170, 172, 173, 174, 184 Hiraoka, Takashi, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 44, 46 Hiroshima, xi–xv, 1–2, 5–8, 13–18, 28–33, 36–48, 58, 65–67, 70, 72–77, 83–84, 96–100, 105, 108, 122–23, 134–35, 145, 149–51, 155, 157, 164, 166, 168, 170–74, 180–84, 185n1, 185n2, 185n6, 185n9, 186n9, 186n10, 186n1, 186n2, 186n3, 186n6, 187n13, 187n17, 188n24, 189n48, 189n50, 189n51, 189n56, 190n73, 190n75, 190n84, 193n44, 196n99, 196n104, 197n113, 197n2, 197n9, 198n12, 201n68, 201n69, 201n70, 201n76, 201n79, 203n108, 209n74, 209n77, 210n81, 210n88, 211n1, 211n4, 212n5, 212n14, 212n17, 214n50, 215n58, 216n2 Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims, 7, 74–75 Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation, xii–xiii, 43 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 7, 19, 33, 43, 72–75, 82, 172, 186n10

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Index

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, 7, 30, 33, 47, 66–67, 72, 74–75, 134, 181, 196n99, 214n50 holy, 54, 58, 69–70, 138, 162–63 holy, the, 124, 131, 151–52, 159–60, 162–63 holy women, 158–59 Ho¯nen, 86, 88–90 jinen, 93–94, 200n50 Jizo, 147, 150, 167–69, 174, 215n58 John XXIII, 113 John Paul II, 7, 110, 113, 134–40 kami, 52–54, 63, 68, 71, 119, 129, 161, 191n19, 192n22, 199n26, 209n59 Kanou, Mikiyo, 148, 149, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 215n56 karma, 8, 60–61, 93, 95–96, 102–3 karmic causality/causation/cause, 61, 95–96, 100, 102–4, 106 karmic retribution, 84, 104 kataribe, 2, 4, 8, 179, 180, 181, 182, 186n10 Kitagawa, Joseph M., 52–53, 90, 191n19, 191n21, 197n10, 198n18, 198n22, 198n24, 199n26, 205n17 Ko¯ji, Shigenobu, xi, 7, 81, 83–84, 90–91, 96–108, 110–12, 186n12, 197n8, 201n68, 214n50 lamb/s, 7, 111, 113, 128, 130–32, 134, 136, 138–39, 141 Leeper, Steven, xii, xiii, 43, 211n3 Levinas, Emmanuel, 59, 62, 194n54 Lucky Dragon Incident, 36, 37, 148, 166, 189n65 Manchuria/n, 2, 69, 71, 122, 123, 208n41 Manila Massacre, the, 34, 35, 45, 210n81 Margalit, Avishai, 6, 21–28, 45–46, 186n11, 187n21, 187n24, 188n24, 188n25, 188n32, 188n47, 190n90, 195n88

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Marshall Islands, 15, 35, 38, 187n7 Meiji administration, 54, 55, 118 government, 53, 54, 55, 118, 197n9 Restoration, 53, 67, 101, 193n40 memory/memories, 2, 5–8, 13, 16, 21–23, 25–28, 32, 41, 45–47, 49, 52, 58, 63, 75, 119, 139, 141, 156, 172–73, 181, 188n47 Minami, 170, 171, 172, 173, 174, 215n71 Mitsue (Fukuyoshi), 168–70 morality, 22–25, 27, 31, 45, 55, 146, 161, 187n24, 188n24, 188n25, 188n32 moral accountability, 90, 95, 109, 133, 140 moral agency/agent, 8, 106 moral duty, 23–24, 113 moral judgment, 16, 105 moral norms, 162–63 moral relations, 22–23, 45 Mosse, George L., 49, 50, 51, 52, 58, 69, 195n87 mother myth, 148, 150, 165–168, 172, 174 motherhood, 148, 166–67 mushroom cloud, 2, 4–6, 8–9, 14–15, 17, 21, 77, 97, 112, 175, 179, 182, 186n12, 201n70 ‘‘myth of the war experience,’’ 49, 51–52, 56, 69, 73, 76 Nagai (Moriyama), Midori, 123, 126–27 Nagai, Takashi, xv, 5, 7, 66, 83–84, 96, 110, 112–13, 119–41, 198n13, 207n30, 207n39, 208n39, 208n40, 208n42, 208n43, 209n74, 209n81, 210n86 Nagasaki, xi–xii, xv, 1, 5–8, 18, 28, 38–41, 47, 66, 83–84, 96, 105, 108, 110, 112–20, 123, 126, 128, 130–32, 134–35, 139, 151, 181–83, 185n4, 187n13, 198n13, 203n108, 207n29, 208n39, 209n72, 210n81, 210n86, 212n8, 216n6 Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum, 19 Name (Amida’s), 87–90, 94, 103–4, 106

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Nanami, 170–74, 215n71 Nanjing Massacre, 2, 28, 34–35, 45, 69, 109, 195n90, 196n92 nation/s, 2–3, 6–7, 19–21, 23, 30, 35, 40–42, 46–48, 50–56, 61, 67–70, 75–76, 82, 101, 108, 129, 173, 195n88 national borders/boundaries, 3–4, 8, 13–16, 21, 28–30, 35–36, 40, 43, 45–46, 75, 77, 100, 108, 125, 129, 134, 164, 174–75 nationalism, xii, 49, 53–54, 82, 129, 146, 156 nationalistic agenda, 73, 156 national(istic) narrative, 67, 75, 77, 141, 151, 191n1 nationalistic nostalgia, 150, 164 nationalistic sentiment, 38, 49, 53, 162 National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution, 6–7, 16–21, 25, 28, 45–46, 178 nation-state/s, 6, 14–16, 28, 35, 40, 42, 45–47, 49, 51–55, 58, 77, 101, 147, 195n87 nation-state framework, 3, 5–6, 14–16, 21, 35, 42, 45–47, 49, 58, 75, 82, 109, 179 nembutsu, 88, 89, 94, 104, 199n27, 200n40 ‘‘not retaliation, but reconciliation,’’ 13, 15, 29, 30, 44, 46, 58, 77, 83, 91, 107, 111, 112, 134, 140, 179 nuclear weaponry, 3–4, 8–9, 13–15, 17, 25, 32, 34–36, 39–43, 45, 73, 75, 77, 81, 111–13, 166–67, 169–70, 175, 177–80, 182, 184, 189n68, 190n82, 203n108, 204n3, 210n86, 215n54 abolition of, 4, 44, 77, 148, 175 nuclear attack, 4, 7, 9, 16, 29–30, 38, 42, 82, 112, 186n10, 210n86, 216n2 nuclear-free world, 15, 43–45, 178, 186n10 nuclear power plant/s, xv, 183–84, 215n56, 216n2

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nuclear tests, 3, 15, 35–36, 38, 75, 178, 189n65, 190n84 Other Power (Amida’s Power), 88–91, 93–94, 96, 103–4, 106–9 peace declaration, 29, 31–32, 35, 39–44, 189n50 Pearl Harbor, 99, 100, 101, 126, 129 religion/s, 5–6, 36, 53–58, 63–65, 81–82, 84–85, 91, 108, 111, 115, 120, 124, 129, 132, 187n24, 191n1, 192n37, 193n40, 206n19 belief/s, 54, 66, 113, 118 boundaries, 36, 162, 174 community/communities, 22, 25, 83, 96, 195n88 freedom of, 118–19, 132 interpretations, 5, 7, 46, 66, 82–83, 113, 133, 140 language/s, 49, 81–83 practice, 72, 113, 206n24 religious, 57–58, 65, 83, 161, 214n45 rituals, 49, 76, 214n45 sensibilities, 5, 9, 49, 96, 108, 120 sentiment, 5, 6, 82 state-religion, 53, 65, 195n87 tradition/s, 49, 59, 82–83, 92, 94, 213n25 remembrance/remembering, 5, 8, 33, 53, 98 responsibility/responsibilities, 4–9, 24, 30, 33–35, 41–42, 58, 61, 84, 90, 95, 105, 108–10, 133–34, 140–41, 147, 156–58, 163, 181, 210n86, 214n50 Ryerson, Andre´, 1, 2, 3, 8, 178, 185n4 sacred, xiii, 21, 51–54, 68–69, 81, 115, 125, 131, 141, 151–52, 162, 191n19, 214n45 sacred, the, 161, 162, 214n45 sacred being/s, 160, 161, 162 sacred sacrifice. See sacrifice

INDX

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sacred text/s, 81, 87, 92 sacredness, 27, 67, 161 sacrifice/sacrificial, 19–21, 24, 47, 49–51, 56, 67, 69–70, 74, 76, 112, 130–32, 134, 137–38, 141, 173, 209n59 sacred sacrifice, 69, 74, 195n87, 196n93 sacrificial lamb/s. See lamb/s self-sacrifice/sacrificial (sacrifice of self), 23, 48, 51, 53–55, 67–68, 71, 76, 127, 146, 154, 166 salvation, xiii, 60–61, 85–88, 90–94, 96, 98, 104, 136, 138, 200n40 Salvifici Doloris, 7, 135, 137, 139–40, 211n91, 211n97, 211n103, 211n108 Seki, Chieko, 148–50, 164–65, 167 Shinran, 84, 86, 88–96, 102–4, 106–7, 190n90, 197n10, 199n37, 200n40, 200n42, 200n49, 201n60, 202n95 Shinto, 52–58, 65, 85, 111, 119–20, 129, 191n21, 192n28, 192n29, 192n37, 193n40, 196n99, 198n16, 199n26, 206n23 ideology, 53, 55 mythology, 55, 192n22 practice, 53, 57 shrine, 7, 56, 65, 173 Smithsonian Institution. See National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution social norms, 146, 148, 158, 161, 163, 167, 169, 174 Sueki, Fumihiko, 48, 56, 58–66, 72, 146, 150, 152, 168–69, 173, 194n61, 194n63, 194n77, 195n82, 197n5, 200n48 suffering, xi, 4, 7–9, 15, 28–29, 31–32, 34–35, 39–40, 46, 51, 62, 68, 73, 75, 87, 98–99, 101, 105–6, 110, 113, 123, 134–41, 146, 150–51, 153–54, 156, 158, 160, 162–65, 170, 174, 179–81, 210n81, 210n86, 210n87, 211n94, 212n8, 213n30, 215n58, 216n5

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INDX

Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP), 31, 37, 57, 179, 191n1, 209n81 Tanaka, Yuki (Toshiyuki), 185n5, 203n108, 216n6 Todeschini, Maya Morioka, 146–51, 155–56, 160, 164, 167, 174, 212n12 transethics. See ethics True Pure Land, 105–7, 110–11, 197n9, 203n1 True Pure Land Buddhism (Jo¯do shin shu¯, or Shin Buddhism), 5–7, 83–86, 88, 96–97, 108–9, 134, 194n57, 197n10, 199n35 True Pure Land Buddhist/s, xi, 7, 30, 66, 84, 104, 190n90, 197n9, 200n50, 200n56 Unit 731, 2, 28, 45, 69, 109, 185n5, 195n89 Urakami, 114–19, 121–22, 126–28, 130–32, 134, 198n13, 204n10 Urakami community, 112–13, 117, 121, 128, 130–31, 133, 139 Urakami Christians/Catholics, 114, 117–19, 121, 127–32, 134–35, 206n24, 207n27, 210n86 Van Kirk, Theodore, 14, 186n2 war/s, xii, 1–2, 16, 29–30, 32–34, 36–38, 41–42, 50–52, 56, 65, 68–70, 72, 77, 100–1, 111, 113, 124–25, 129–30, 132–34, 141, 156, 166, 185n4, 189n58, 189n68, 190n85, 192n21, 195n80, 195n83, 195n84, 204n10 First World War, 49–50, 129, 187n7 Korean War, 31, 112 Second World War (or the Pacific War), 2–4, 16–20, 28–29, 32, 34, 39–40, 44, 48, 57–58, 69–70, 72, 76, 99–101, 109, 123–34, 170, 179, 186n10, 191n1, 193n40, 193n41, 208n43, 209n59, 210n86

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Vietnam War, 58, 112 war crimes/criminals, 46, 57, 65, 68, 133, 156, 191n1, 193n47 war dead, 20, 49, 50–52, 56, 58, 64, 68, 69, 70, 72, 76, 77 war responsibility, 150, 156, 210n86 Wyschogrod, Edith, 8, 58–59, 147, 151–54, 158, 175, 212n18, 213n25 Yasukuni (Shinto) shrine, 7, 47–49, 52, 56–59, 64–67, 69–73, 76–77, 111,

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173, 189n62, 191n1, 193n39, 193n44, 193n47, 195n80, 195n82, 195n84, 196n110 Yasukuni museum. See Yu¯shu¯kan Yuien, 91, 95, 200n42, 201n60 Yumechiyo, 145, 150, 154–58, 160, 162, 165, 213n30 Yu¯nagi no machi, Sakura no kuni, 147, 167, 168, 170, 173, 174, 215n71 Yu¯shu¯kan (or Yasukuni museum), 66–73, 76, 195n82, 195n84

INDX

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