Hiroshima: Three Witnesses 069100837X, 9780691008370

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Hiroshima Three Witnesses

.

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Copyright© 1990 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, Chichester, West Sussex All Rights Reserved This book has been composed in Linotron Bembo Princeton University Press books are printed on acid-free paper and meet the guidelines for permanence and durability of the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on Library Resources Printed in the United States of America Cover illustration: A section of "Floating Lanterns" (r969) by Maruki lri and Maruki Toshi. Maruki Toshi's text for this illustration reads: "On August 6, the seven rivers of Hiroshima are filled with floating lanterns. Inscribed with the names of mothers, fathers, younger sisters, they float down to the sea. Before they reach the sea, the tide shifts, and the rising tide sweeps the lanterns back up. Their candles out, they drift on dark currents. This is the same ()ta River that 3 8 years earlier was filled with corpses." Parts of five other murals by the Marukis appear in this volume, courtesy of Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshim.a Panels. For discussion of the Maruki.s, their art, and the murals represented here, see pp. 371-378. Lll3R.ARY 01' CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Hiroshima : three witnesses I Richard H. Minear, editor and translator. p. cm. Contents: pt. I. Summer flowers I Hara Tamiki-pt. 2. City of corpses I Ota Yoko-pt. 3. Poems of the atomic bomb I Toge Sankichi. ISBN 0-69.1-05573-4 (cl.)-ISBN 0-691-00837-x (pbk.) I. Hiroshima-shi Qapan)-History-Bombardment, r945Personal narratives. 2. Hiroshima-shi (Japan)-HistoryBon1bardment, r945-Poetry. 3. Japanese poetry-20th century. 4. Hara, Tamiki, 1905-195r. 5. Ota, Yoko, 1903-1963. 6. Toge, Sankichi, 1917-1953. I. Minear, Richard H. D767.25.H6H672 1990 940.54'25-dc20 89-10460 10 9 8 7 6 5 4

For Robert Christian Minear and Edward Lawrence Minear

Contents

List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi Note onJapanese Names and Terms

Introduction

xiii

3

Summer Flowers by Hara Tamiki Translator's Introduction

21

Summer Flowers 45 From the Ruins 61 Prelude to Annihilation

79

City of Corpses by Ota Yoko Translator's Introduction

19

115

117

Preface to Second Edition (1950)

147

An Autumn So Horrible Even the Stones Cry Out Expressionless Paces 165 Hiroshima, City ofDoom 178 The City: A Tangle of Corpses 198 Relief 225 Wind and Rain 251 Late Autumn Koto Music 268

Poems of the Atomic Bomb by Toge Sankichi Translator's Introduction

153

275

277

Prelude 305 August 6 306 Dying 308 Flames 311 Blind 313 At the Makeshift: Aid Station 315 Eyes 317 Warehouse Chronicle 319 Old Woman 323 Season of Flames 327 Little One 331 CONTENTS

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Grave Marker 334 The Shadow 339 A Friend 341 Landscape with River 343 Dawn 344 The Smile 346 August 6, 1950 347 Night 350 In the Streets 352 To a Certain Woman 353 Landscape 355 Appeal 357 When Will That Day Come? 358 Entreaty 366 Afterword 367

The Hiroshima Murals of Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi: A Note 371 Glossary 379 Guide to Names and Places 381 Suggestions for Further Reading

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389

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

The Hara clan before Hiroshima 22 Hara Tamiki and his wife Sadae, undated 26 Hara Tamiki, May 16, 1949 31 Three passages Hara deleted from "Summer Flowers" prior to its initial publication 37 Otaandherfamily, 1951 123 Ota Yoko, 195 5 128 Cover of City of Corpses (1948), showing the notations of the censors 139 Manuscript of page one of City of Corpses, with editorial notations 140 Toge Sankichi 284 Cover of the posthumous volume commemorating Toge Sankichi (1954) 290 Cover of (mimeographed) first edition of Poems of the Atomic Bomb 294 Maruki Toshi and Maruki Iri 378 MAPS I.

2.

3. 4. 5.

6.

WesternJapan 12 Hiroshima and environs 13 Hiroshima City with selected locations 14 Hiroshima City with selected neighborhoods 15 Northeast Hiroshima (detail) 16 Outlying towns to the west of Hiroshima 17

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

lX

Acknowledgments

As

ALWAYS, I am indebted to many institutions and individuals for assistance of various kinds. Among the former are: the American Council of Learned Societies, for a grant that supported the writing of the introductory material; the Rockefeller Foundation, for a month at its study center in Bellagio during which I polished the translation of Summer Flowers; the University of Massachusetts, for sabbatical leave; and the libraries and librarians of Harvard (Harvard-Yenching), Yale (Sterling), Wilmington College (Ohio), the University of Maryland (Prange Collection of the McKeldin Library), and the University of Massachusetts. Among the latter are the following: in this country, Paul Boyer, Kazue Edamatsu Campbell, John Dower, Roy Doyon, Bm Ehrhart, Joan E. Ericson, David Goodman, Howard Hibbett, Atsuko Hirai, Robert Jones, John Junkerman, Lawrence Langer, Joseph Langland, Claire and Ed Manwell, my parents Gladys and Paul Minear, Helen Redding, Yoshiko Yokochi Samuel, Hiroaki Sato, Kyoko and Mark Selden, Mariko Shinjo, Frank Joseph Shulman, Nobuko Tsukui; in Japan, Edamatsu Sakae, Hara Yoshiko, Hasegawa Kei, Masuoka Toshikazu, Murakami Masanori, Nakagawa Ichie, Nakano Shigeharu's estate, Omuta Minoru, Onuma Yasuaki, Sasaki Kiichi, Sayama Jiro, Sayama Kyoko, Shibata Shingo, Sodei Rinjiro, Suginome Yasuko, and Yamane Jitsuko of the Gembaku kinen bunko in Hiroshima. At Princeton University Press, Margaret Case served as editor, Sue Bishop as designer, and Laura Ward as copyeditor. The maps are the work of Dorothy A. Graaskamp of the University of Massachusetts. A special note of thanks to Yasuko Fukumi, colleague (newly retired as Librarian for East Asian Studies) and friend. As with my earlier translation project, Requiem for Battleship Yamato, so with this one: she was of enormous assistance from the start. That assistance included general encouragement but also help with translation, with reference, and with communications and contacts in Japan. Without ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Xl

that help, this project would have taken much longer and been much more difficult. For translation rights I am indebted to Hara Tokihiko (Summer Flowers), Nakagawa Ichie (City of Corpses), and Toge Takashi (Poems of the Atomic Bomb). For permission to reproduce their art I thank Maruki lri and Maruki Toshi. Needless to say, the institutions and individuals listed above bear no final responsibility for this book. That responsibility is mine alone.

Xll

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

NOTE ON JAPANESE NAMES AND TERMS Throughout this volume Japanese names are given inJapanese order: surname first, then given name. In the case of Hara Tamiki, Hara is the writer's family name; Tamiki, his given name. In the case of Ota Yoko, Ota is the writer's family name; Yoko, her given name. Japanese words are not difficult to pronounce. There is little accent; vowel sounds are close to those of Spanish or Italian; long marks prolong the same sound. Hiroshima is He-row-she-ma (there is a slight accent on the second syllable). Hara Tamiki is Hah-rah Tah-mekey. Ota Yoko is Ohh-tah Yeo-ko. Toge Sankichi is Tohh-geh Sahnkey-chee. This book includes a Glossary of Japanese terms and a Guide to Names and Places.

Xlll

Hiroshima Three Witnesses

Introduction

Part of the horror of thinking about a holocaust lies in the fact that it leads us to supplant the human world with a statistical world; we seek a human truth and come up with a handful offigures. The only source that gives us a glimpse of the human truth is the testimony of the survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. -Jonathan Schell, The Fate of the Earth

AT

8:15:17 on the morning of August 6, 1945, the United States exploded an atomic bomb over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. According to an official Japanese reckoning of 1946 that did not include military personnel, the bomb left II8,661 dead, 30,524 severely injured, 48,606 slightly injured, 3,677 missing, and 118,613 uninjured. Scientific research since 1945 has determined with great exactitude the height at which the bomb exploded (580 meters plus or minus 15 meters), the temperature of the outer edge of the fireball (I, 800 degrees centigrade l 5 milliseconds after the explosion), the velocity of the shock (100 meters per second I, ooo meters from the epicenter). 1 Can we find the truth of Hiroshima in statistics? What do these numbers tell us? What can they tell us when American and Soviet nuclear arsenals today hold weapons a thousand times more powerful than the bomb the United States dropped on Hiroshima? Jonathan Schell is surely right: we must look to the survivors for the human truth of Hiroshima. Yet how many voices of Hiroshima have we heard? Three writers of note were in Hiroshima on August 6 and survived to write of their experiences. The witnesses are the fabulist Hara Tamiki, the novelist Ota Yoko, and the poet Toge Sankichi. They were three very different individuals, different in their politics, their ' The Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ed., Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of the Atomic Bomhin,Rs, trans. Eisei Ishikawa and David L. Swain (New York: Basic Books, 1981). INTRODUCTION

3

writing, their styles of life and death. (We will encounter all three in more depth in the separate introductions to their works.) Still, they shared the staggering burden of bearing witness to August 6. Within 48 hours of August 6, before leaving with his relatives for shelter outside the city, Hara Tamikijotted down this note: "Miraculously unhurt; must be Heaven's will that I survive and report what happened. If so, have my work cut out." Ota Yoko later recorded this exchange with her half sister as they walked through a street littered with corpses: "You're really looking at them-how can you? I can't stand and look at corpses." Sister seemed to be criticizing me. I replied: "I'm looking with two sets of eyes-the eyes of a human being and the eyes of a writer." "Can you write-about something like this?" "Some day I'll have to. That's the responsibility of a writer who's seen it."

In one of his poems, Toge Sankichi addresses a child whose father was killed in the South Pacific and whose mother died on August 6; there is no one to answer the child's innocent questions. The first three stanzas of the poem end with questions: "Who will tell you of that day? ... Who will tell you/of that night? ... Who will tell you?/Who?" In the final stanza Toge answers his own question: Right! I'll search you out, put my lips to your tender ear, and tell you ... I'll tell you the real storyI swear I will.

This volume presents the first complete translation into English of Hara Tamiki's Summer Flowers, the first translation into English of Ota Yoko's City of Corpses, and a new translation of Toge Sankichi's Poems of the Atomic Bomb. Forty-five years have passed since August 6, 1945, and the English-language world is able only now to read the premier first-person accounts of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Have we tried to avoid messages we preferred not to hear? IN JAPAN there is a category of writing called "atomic bomb literature" (gembaku bungaku). The category is a broad one. It includes jour4

INTRODUCTION

nalism, memoirs, novels, poems, plays; it includes authors who were victims and authors who were not; it includes famous writers and anonymous ones. In 1983 a press in Tokyo published the most comprehensive compendium to date, Nihon no gembaku bungaku (The atomic bomb literature of Japan), in fifteen volumes. There are individual volumes for six writers, including Hara Tamiki (volume r, with Summer Flowers as the lead entry) and Ota Yoko (volume 2, with City of Corpses as the lead entry). Six poems by Toge Sankichi appear in volume l 3, which is devoted to poetry. 2 Much of the material dates from the 1960s and later-the writings, for example, of Hayashi Kyoko (b. 1930), Oda Makoto (b. 1932), and Oe Kenzaburo (b. 1935). Hara, Ota, and Toge were the pioneers, the first generation; long before 1960 Hara and Toge were dead, and Ota, exhausted, had turned away from the subject ofHiroshima. 3 In The Plague, Albert Camus has Tarrou speak the following lines: "At the beginning of a pestilence and when it ends, there's always a propensity for rhetoric. In the first case, habits have not yet been lost; in the second, they're returning. It is in the thick of a calamity that one gets hardened to the truth-in other words, to silence."4 With Summer Flowers and City of Corpses, we are still "in the thick of the calamity," and "the propensity for rhetoric" has not had much time to reassert itself. Neither Summer Flowers nor City of Corpses is fiction. Each is the writer's account of personal experience. Art is evident in the writer's focus, choice of events, style, vocabulary. But the events themselves are real; they happened. 2 Nihon no gembaku bungaku, l 5 vols. (Tokyo: Horupu, 1983). Five ofToge's poems appear in the text; the sixth, "Prelude," appears in the frontispiece, a photograph of the stone monument to Toge in Peace Park, Hiroshima. Given Toge's status, it does seem strange that the compendium does not include all the poems of Poems of the Atomic Bomb. For existing translations into English of nonfictional and fictional accounts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, see Suggestions for Further Reading.

The writer Nakano Kqji divides writers of atomic bomb literature into two generations: those who were mature in 1945, and those who were children then. In addition to Hara, Ota, and Toge, his first generation includes Kurihara Sadako and a few others. "Taidan: gembaku bungaku o megutte" (Dialogue [with Nagaoka Hiroyoshi]: on literature of the atomic bomb), Kokuhungaku kaishaku to kansho, August 1985, p. 1 r. This dialogue opens an issue devoted to literature of the atomic bomb. 3

• Albert Camus, The Plague, trans. Stuart Gilbert (New York: Modern Library, 1948), p. 107. INTRODUCTION

5

Hara, Ota, and Toge are all figures of note in twentieth-century Japanese literature but seldom get the attention they deserve. The Kodansha Encyclopedia ofjapan (9 volumes, 1983) has a brief (and inaccurate) entry on Hara but ignores Ota and Toge. Donald Keene's magisterial Dawn to the West: Japanese Literature of the Modern Era (2 volumes, 1984) makes no mention of any of the three. Edward Seidensticker, second only to Keene in introducing Japanese literature to the English-language world, recently dismissed Hara and Ota in shocking fashion: "Until Ibuse Masuji came along with much the best book that has been written about Hiroshima, the chief propagandists were Hara Tamiki and Ota Yoko." 5 Perhaps this volume will provide an opportunity for others to come to their own judgments. The experience of Hiroshima reminds us of the experience of other holocausts, in particular, the European Holocaust. There, too, survivors-Charlotte Delbo, Primo Levi, Nelly Sachs, Elie Wieselbear witness. There, too, the burden of testifying proves crushing. What words can describe the horror without taming it, domesticating it, demeaning it, trivializing it? What testimony can bring peace to the soul of the witness? Of course, there were significant differences between the two holocausts-differences in duration, in motivation, in distance between perpetrator and victim. Still, we cannot overlook the striking similarities. In his fine book on the literature of the European Holocaust, Lawrence Langer wrote: " ... every survivor memoir must be read, at least partially, as a work of the imagination, which selects some details and blocks out others for the purpose of shaping the reader's response-indeed, for the purpose of organizing the author's own response, too .... all telling modifies what is being told." 6 Langer's words should guide us in our study of Hiroshima. Hara's experience is not the Hiroshima experience; it is his Hiroshima. Ota's Hiroshima .is not Hara's Hiroshima but her Hiroshima. Toge's Hiroshima is a 'Edward Seidensticker, review ofJay Rubin's Injurious to Public Morals, in journal ofJapanese Studies r I. I:22I (Winter r985). "Lawrence Langer, Versions of Survival (Albany: State University of New York, r982), p. xii. See also the same author's The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1975) and The Age of Atrocity (Boston: Beacon, 1978).

6

INTRODUCTION

third Hiroshima. To be sure, the experience of atomic holocaust was more uniform than the experience of the European Holocaust, but in both cases the personality and world view of the witness affected the individual's reaction. Who the witness was played a significant role in how that person reacted. Hara, Ota, and Toge survived August 6. More than one hundred thousand in Hiroshima did not. Who tells us their story? Who speaks for them? John Hersey's Hiroshima (1946) was the first significant account in English of the devastation of Hiroshima; it remains an enormously influential book, the account that introduces Hiroshima to most Western readers. 7 Reading Hiroshima can be an intensely moving experience, but the book may mislead us even as it enlightens. In her slashing attack on Hiroshima, Mary McCarthy wrote: "To have done the atomic bomb justice, Mr. Hersey would have had to interview the dead." Rhetoric aside, her point is a serious one: the atomic holocaust of Hiroshima is qualitatively different from other disasters. Formulas appropriate to accounts of flood or earthquake are simply not adequate. McCarthy wrote: "Hell is not [Hersey's] sphere. Yet it is precisely in this sphere-that is, in the moral world-that the atomic bomb exploded. To treat it journalistically ... is, in a sense, to deny its existence .... up to August 3 I of this year r1946], no one dared think of Hiroshima-it appeared to us all as a kind of hole in human history. Mr. Hersey has filled that hole ... he has made it familiar and safe, and so, in the final sense, boring." 8 We need not agree with John Hersey, Hiroshima (New York: Knopf, 1946; new edition with additional chapter, New York: Knopf, 1985).

7

Mary McCarthy, Letter to the Editor, Politics 3. ro:367 (November 1946). See also Dwight MacDonald, "Hersey's 'Hiroshima,' " Politics 3. ro:308 (October 1946) and Robert Warshaw, "E. B. White and the New Yorker" (1947), in Robert Warshaw, The Immediate Experience: Movies, Comics, Theatre and Other Aspects of Popular Culture (Garden City, N. Y.: Anchor, 1964), pp. 63-66. John Leonard dismisses both McCarthy and MacDonald ("Looking Back at Hiroshima Makes Uneasy Viewing," New York Times, August 1, 1976, p. D.23): "This, of course, isn't really coping; it is striking an attitude. It is, moreover, greedy and elitist, a kind of critical imperialism: my categories are better than your categories, and what do ordinary people know anyway, unworthy as they are of their tragedies?" See also Michael J. Yavenditti, ''John Hersey and the American Conscience: The Reception of 'Hiroshima,' " Pacific Historical Review 43. r :24-49 (February 1975) and the same author's "American Reactions to the Use of the Atomic Bombs on Japan, 1945--1947" (Ph.D. diss., University of California at Berkeley, 1970), and Paul Boyer, By the Bomb's Early Light: 8

INTRODUCTION

7

McCarthy in full to be grateful for her warning of the dangers of speaking the unspeakable, describing the indescribable, taming the untameable. A recent survey of our nuclear images catalogs the stunning impact of the bomb on all aspects of our thinking. 9 Our willingness to listen now to these witnesses may mean that we acknowledge the justice of McCarthy's assertion that the atomic bomb exploded in our moral world. To paraphrase Ota Yoko's comment about the responsibility of the writer: can we read-about Hiroshima? Can we not read? WHATEVER our end point, we start with a place, the city of Hiroshima. Hara, Ota, Toge: all three had spent long years in Hiroshima; all three had a great love for the city. It will help us in reading their accounts to have a general sense of the geography of the city. We can gain such a sense in part by studying the maps that form part of this volume, in part by listening to the witnesses themselves. For now, we need to know that the setting is one of great natural beauty: a delta surrounded by mountains and divided by the seven arms of the Ota River, with the Inland Sea and its islands to the south. Here is Ota Yoko's description: Hiroshima fanned out between the mountain ranges to the north and the Inland Sea to the south; seven rivers flowed gently through the city in the delta. Countless bridges spanned the great branches of the river ... They were all modern, clean, broad, white, long. From Ujina Bay, the fishing boats with their white sails and the small passenger boats came fairly far up all the branches. Upstream, the river offered vivid reflections of the mountains. The rivers of Hiroshima were beautiful. Theirs was a serene and unchanging beauty. They stretched out uniformly blue in this broad expanse with no variation in elevation. One couldn't see distinct currents; one couldn't hear the pleasant sound of rapids; nor could one watch gentle brooks. The rivers were serene and unchanging even on freezing winter days, when snow fell. I liked Hiroshima's rivers best on days when heavy snow fell. The snow American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (New York: Pantheon, 1985), pp. 203-2ro.

Spencer R. Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988).

9

8

INTRODUCTION

sealed off the various parts of town from each other and turned the city into a silent and uniformly silver world. Yet the seven rivers still flowed, unhurried ....

Tributes to Hiroshima's beauty also appear frequently in the writings of Hara and Toge. Rivers were the key to Hiroshima's beauty in 1945; they are still Hiroshima's pride today. On August 6 they played a different role: they offered what little relief was available to the victims of the atomic bomb-water, escape from the flames that engulfed everything flammable. Most branches of the Ota flowed in riverbeds between manmade embankments five or more feet high, the water level rising and falling with the season and the tide; even at high water, there were often dry stretches of riverbed. The riverbanks were the areas atop the embankments, between river and city. Together, riverbeds and riverbanks became the setting where the drama of life and, more often, death played itself out. Hara Tamiki and Ota Yoko fled to the same river-indeed, to the same area of the river; farther away from Ground Zero, Toge did not need to flee to a river, yet rivers figure prominently in his poems. Atomic holocaust may render all geography ultimately irrelevant; but it was Hiroshima the bomb obliterated on August 6, not a nameless, featureless spot on the map. WE MUST LEARN a new geography; we must learn a new chronology, too. Hara, Ota, and Toge told time differently from most of us. Ask most of us to think of events during these early postwar years, and we will come up with a fairly standard list: Churchill's Iron Curtain speech (March 15, 1946), the Marshall Plan (June 5, 1947), the Berlin Blockade (June 24, 1948), the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, April 4, 1949), the victory of the Chinese Communists (December 8, 1949), the Korean War (June 25, 1950), the election of President Eisenhower (November 4, 1952) and his reelection (November 6, 1956). A few of us will remember as well the Hiss case (1948), the McCarran Act (1950), the trial of the Rosen bergs (1951), and the McCarthy hearings (1953-1954). INTRODUCTION

9

These are not the dates that loom large in the universe of the writer-victims of the atomic bomb. Their calendar is closer to the famous dock of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Sundials record only the sunny hours; the writer-victims reacted particularly to events atomic. Their calendar of these years focused on these dates: 1946 1948 1949 1950

July April-May September March November

1952 November 1953 September 1954 March

September

American atomic tests at Bikini American atomic tests at Eniwetok Soviet explosion of atomic bomb Stockholm Peace Petition President Truman's statement that the use of atomic weapons in Korea was under consideration American announcement of development of hydrogen bomb Soviet announcement of development of hydrogen bomb American test of hydrogen bomb at Bikini, leading to the radiation death of a fisherman from a Japanese boat (the Lucky Dragon) that strayed into the test zone Soviet test of hydrogen bomb

These are the dates that figure prominently in the consciousness of survivors of Hiroshima. And surely this calendar is less parochial, more significant in world history, than the calendar most of us carry around in our heads. It underscores as well how successful most of us have been in holding things atomic at arm's length: one calendar for real history, a second calendar when-and if-we focus on the atomic side of today's world. 10 The first decade after August 6 saw very little political agitation in Japan against the bomb. Hiroshima's first international conference against atomic and hydrogen bombs was convened in 1955, on the '° The new chapter in the 1985 edition of Hersey's Hiroshima, "The Aftermath," is interrupted periodically by news reports presented in italics; for example (p. 179), "On September 23, 1949, Moscow Radio announced that the Soviet Union had developed an atomic bomb." This historical frame for the new chapter serves, surely unintentionally, to underline how bare of historical setting the original Hiroshima was.

IO

INTRODUCTION

tenth anniversary of August 6; until that time survivors of Hiroshima were largely ignored, very much on their own. Indeed, the American Occupation ofJapan (which lasted until 1952) attempted with considerable success to keep discussion of the atomic bomb from lay audiences in Japan. As we shall see, both Hara Tamiki and Ota Yoko ran afoul of Occupation censorship. Censorship extended to photographs and even to paintings: in 1950, when Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi, the premier artists of Hiroshima's atomic experience, exhibited the first of their paintings, they had to change its title from Atomic Bomb to August 6, 1945. We must be careful not to read history backwards, to attribute to the first postwar decade the nuclear consciousness of a later period. WRITING IN 1924, less than ten years after the outbreak of World War I, the German writer Thomas Mann spoke of the prewar era as being "in the long ago, in the old days, the days of the world before the Great War, with whose beginning so much began that has scarcely left off beginning."II We are even more justified in saying of Hiroshima and August 6 that with its "beginning so much began that has scarcely left off beginning." Who of us today traces the world's plight to 1914? Who of us today can avoid tracing our plight to August 6? If Camus is correct, the experience of August 6 might have hardened Hara Tamiki, Ota Yoko, and Toge Sankichi to silence; we can be grateful that it did not. They write of their Hiroshimas. Their Hiroshimas help each of us in the construction of our own Hiroshimas. Without their Hiroshimas, we know little of the human truth of Hiroshima. And without the human truth of Hiroshima, we know little of Hiroshima. " Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain, trans. H. T. Lowe-Porter (New York: Knopf, 1951), p. v; I have made a significant correction in the wording (see Mann, Der Zauberberg, in Thomas Mann: Gesammelte Werke, vol. 3 [Oldenburg: Fischer, 1960), pp. 9-IO).

INTRODUCTION

II

oct..Al'I

.- ·one

pA

0

100 Kilometers

MAP

r. WesternJapan

I2

200

Main rail lines 10

20

30

Kilometers

Bingo Offing

MAP 2.

Hiro sh.ima and . environs .

13

+++ Main rail lines it-ti- Street car lines

0 Kilometers

MAP

3. Hiroshima City with selected locations

14

-I++ Main rail lines -tHt- Street car lines

D

Neighborhoods

Numbered Neighborhoods 1 HAKUSHIMA KUKENCHQ 6 HIRATAYA-CHO 2 HATCHQBORI 7 TERAMACHI 3 KAMIYANAGl-CHO 8 HIRATSUKA 4 KAMIYA- CHO 9 MIDORI KANSHA-DQRl 5 HORIKAWA-CHO 10 KOK UT Alli MAP

. 0

1'. Kilometers

4. Hiroshima City with selected neighborhoods

15

+tt Main rail lines -tt-tt- Street car lines

0

500

Meters

•

Tiishogu Shrine

East Parade Ground

MAP 5.

Northeast Hiroshima (detail)

16

- - - - National highway and prefectural road

II I I I

Main rail lines Trail 5

L-......J'----L~.....L~-'--...J

•

~-{S~KAICHI: J-IATSUKAICHI." ·~:-;.

.: .

·.

.

. .

.

:. NOMIJIMA

MAP

6. Outlying towns to the west of Hiroshima

17

Summer Flowers

Translator's Introduction

HARA T AMIKI survived August 6 and devoted much of the remaining six years of his life to recording his experience as a victim. The work for which he is most famous is Summer Flowers, a triptych he wrote soon after August 6 and published in its entirety in 1949. HARA's FAMILY AND CAREER, 1905-1944 Hara Tamiki was born on November 15, 1905, son of a prosperous businessman. 1 The family factory was located in Kamiyanagicho, Hiroshima; the family home was part of the same compound. 2 Hara's father and mother began their family in 1891, when his mother was seventeen years old. Their firstborn child was a daughter. The second and third children were sons who died in infancy. The fourth child, the sister to whom Hara was especially close, was born in 1897. After her came a son (1899-1987), who although actually the third son became heir to the family business; in Summer Flowers Hara calls him "Jun'ichi" and paints a most unflattering picture of him. A third daughter arrived in 1900, and then came a fourth son, the "Seiji" 1 For biographical data on Hara, see Yamamoto Kenkichi, Cho Kota, and Sasaki Kiichi, eds., Hara Tamiki zenshu (hereafter simply Zenshu), 3 vols. (Tokyo: Seidosha, 1978), 3 .404412, and two biographies: Kawanishi Masaaki, Hitotsu no ummei-Hara Tamiki ron (One person's fate--Hara Tamiki) (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1980), and Kokai Eiji, Hara Tamiki-Shijin no shi (Hara Tamiki-Death of a poet) (Tokyo: Kokubunsha, 1978). See also Nakahodo Masanori, Hara Tamiki noto (Notes on Hara Tamiki) (Tokyo: Keiso, 1983). For bibliographical matters, see Hara Tamiki shiryo mokuroku (Catalog of Hara Tamiki materials), Nihon kindai bungakkan shozo shiryo mokuroku IO (Tokyo: Nihon kindai bungakkan, 1983). There is an earlier two-volume collected works: Hara Tamiki zenshu (Collected works of Hara Tamiki) (Tokyo: Haga Shoten, 1965).

The chronology in Zensht~ (3-409) gives Nobori-cho as the address of the family home; another source, dated 1912, gives the neighboring ward, Kamiyanagi-cho, as the location of the Hara weaving factory (Sakakibara Shozo, ed., Hiroshima-shi chimei sokuin [Index to place names in the city of Hiroshima] [1912; reprint, Hiroshima: Aki shobo, 1984], appendix, p. 7). John W. Treat writes that Kamiyanagi-cho is now Nobori-cho (Treat, "Atomic Bomb Literature and the Documentary Fallacy," Journal ofJapanese Studies 14. 1:37 [Winter 1988]), but the 1912 source indicates that both Kamiyanagi-cho and Nobori-cho were in existence at that time. 2

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

21

The Hara clan before Hiroshima. Hara Tamiki is seated at left, wearing glasses. His sister Yasuko stands at right rear holding an infant. "Jun'ichi" is seated at center; "Takako," the wife of"Jun'ichi," sits immediately to his left. "Seiji" stands just behind Hara Tamiki; the wife of "Seiji" stands at the extreme right. Courtesy Nihon kindai bungakkan

of Summer Flowers (1902-1978). Hara Tamiki, born in 1905, was the fifth son and eighth child. A sixth son arrived in 1908. Daughters were born in 1910 and 1912; the second of these is the "Yasuko" of Summer Flowers. The twelfth and final child arrived in 1916. In Japanese families of that class and era, the sequence of birth had considerable significance, establishing not only the rights to succession but also the pecking order. Because he was the senior son, "Jun'ichi" controlled the factory; he hectored "Yasuko"; he and his immediate family ate better than did "Seiji" and the narrator. (Japanese readers of Summer Flowers have an easy time keeping all this in mind, for the second element of each of these given names denotes rank in the family. The "ichi" ofJun'ichi means first, the "ji" of Seiji 22

HARA TAMIKI

means second, the "zo" of Shozo-the name given the author's persona in "Prelude to Annihilation"-means third.) The wealth of his family was a significant factor throughout Hara's life. It enabled him to get a fine private education. It made it possible for him to experience a profligate period in his twenties and made it unnecessary for him to depend upon salaried work for much of his adult life. The family wealth explains the ability of his oldest brother "Jun'ichi" to experiment with a trial separation from his wife "Takako," and it also explains the presence in their home in 1945 ofluxury items such as navel oranges. Despite the affluence that the Hara family enjoyed, death was a constant presence. The first two sons died before reaching the age of three; the sixth died at age four. Hara was seven when this brother died, twelve when his father died (in 1917), thirteen when his favorite elder sister died (in 1918), nineteen when his eldest sister died (in 1924), thirty-one when his mother died (in 1936). Add to these deaths the death of his beloved wife Sadae in 1944, when Hara was thirtynine, and it is perhaps not surprising that death occupied so important a part of Hara's consciousness. Hara's father supplied clothing to the Japanese military, and 1905, the year ofHara's birth, witnessed a remarkable series ofJapanese military victories over Russia: the fall of Port Arthur in January, the victory at Mukden in March, the destruction of the Russian Baltic Fleet by Admiral Togo in May, all leading to the signing of the Treaty of Portsmouth in September. Stirred by these events, the elder Hara gave his newborn son a name to suit: the people (tami) rejoice (ki). The external events of Hara's life before the bomb can be related quickly. Hara attended schools in Hiroshima from 1912 through 1923. In 1918 he failed the entrance examination for middle school but passed it the second time around a year later. In 1923 he took a year off and immersed himself in literature. Before he left Hiroshima to pursue higher education in Tokyo, Hara had already read widely and published his own poetry. His reading included the great Russian writers of the nineteenth century-Gogol, Chekhov, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Turgenev; the Bible, to which he had been introduced by his TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

23

favorite elder sister; Walt Whitman; and of course the pantheon of Japanese writers. In 1918, the year of his favorite sister's death, Hara first came into contact with the writing of the German lyric poet Rainer Maria Rilke. From that point on, writes Iida Momo, 3 Hara never let Rilke's The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge out of his grasp. In fact, The Notebooks and Summer Flowers exhibit striking similarities of form and content. Like The Notebooks, Summer Flowers is a string ofloosely-related episodes/sections; Rilke's volume is as little a novel in the accepted sense as is Summer Flowers. Like Rilke, Hara was prey to fears and dreams; like Rilke, he was hypersensitive. Hara started keeping a diary at the age of twelve; that year he and "Seiji" published the first number of their own journal. One ofHara's youthful poems, written a few years later, concerned the large maple tree that stood in the garden of the Hara home; as we shall see, that tree appears in Summer Flowers. The poem reads as follows: Great maple tree by my window: 0 maple, you alone understand me to the bottom of my heart. 0 maple, you alone understand my sorrow today. 0 maple, you alone understand the loneliness in my breast. The joys and sorrows that only the maple and I share, and more, the grief and desolation that cloud the bright moon of my heart; My heart-what is it? And still stranger: My body. 0 maple, do you know what I am? Probably not. Nor I, nor anyone else. 4 ' Iida Momo, "Kaisetsu" (Commentary), in Hara Tamiki zenshii, 2 vols. (Tokyo: Haga shoten, 1965), reprinted in Nihon no gembaku bungaku (The atomic bomb literature ofJapan), 15 vols. (Tokyo: Horupu, 1983), r.308. There are two two-volume editions ofHara's collected works: Hara Tamiki sakuhinshii (Collected works of Hara Tamiki) (Tokyo: Kadogawa shoten, 1953) and Hara Tamiki zenshii (Collected works of Hara Tamiki) (Tokyo: Haga shoten, 1965). • "Kaide" ("Maple"), Zenshii r.687.

24

HARA TAMIKI

Not great poetry, perhaps; but a remarkable effort for a boy of fifteen and eloquent testimony to inner turmoil and anguish. In April 1924, Hara entered the preparatory course of the Literature Faculty of Keio University, one of Japan's most prestigious private institutions. From 1924 until his graduation in 1932 at the age of 26, Hara was affiliated with Keio, majoring in English literature and writing a thesis on Wordsworth. During these years he continued to read widely-in particular, Dadaism and Marxism-and to write both poetry and prose. His last years at Keio coincided with the worst years of the Depression and also the high point of the proletarian literature movement in Japan. Hara was a member of a group that produced a circular, "The Magazine of the Club of Four or Five"; Kawanishi Masaaki writes that the other members were surprised one time to find, scribbled in Hara's handwriting, "Long live the Communist Party!" and "Workers of the world, unite!'' 5 Hara became involved in radical politics and organizing from 1929 until 193 I. That activity led to his arrest in Tokyo in 193 l and to his break with political action. One of Hara's biographers describes the process not as a change of heart or apostasy but as an "abandonment" of politics. 6 On leaving politics, Hara turned to other interests entirely, becoming something of a dandy. He smoked cigarettes that were outlandishly expensive. At considerable cost he bought out the contract of a Yokohama prostitute and lived with her for a month before she ran out on him. Shortly after she left him, Hara attempted suicide. This phase ofHara's life came to an end with his marriage in 1933 to Nagai Sadae, who at twenty-two was five years younger than he. With her help he led a life happier than any he had known since early childhood. In his early years, he had depended first on his mother and then on his elder sister; now he depended completely on Sadae. Even before his marriage he had displayed introspective, even antisocial tendencies. Entering middle school a year later than his age group, he had kept himself apart and largely silent. He thought of himself as schizoid; his friends offered politer diagnoses. Hypersensitive at the s Kawanishi, Hitotsu no ummei, p.

20.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

6

Kawanishi, Hitotsu no ummei, p.

27.

25

very least, Hara feared the dark, bright light, and shocks of any kind. In the words of one friend, Hara was "thoroughly incompetent, handicapped, and deformed for life in society." 7 Sadae became his contact with the world. She communicated for him. Hara would throw up at the prospect of going to Tokyo (from their apartment in Chiba, not far distant) or of meeting people. She accompanied him everywhere, even to the doctor's office in the neighborhood. In the words of one biographer, "From that time on, of his own will, he ceased all attempts to communicate with others." 8 It was "thoroughgoing misanthropy." Wrapped in this cocoon, Hara gave himself over to a life of writing, the only form of communication with which he was comfortable. Staying up late, sleeping late (a habit that in 1945 earned him the sharp criticism of both elder brothers), he wrote and wrote, mainly short pieces and tales of childhood (Japanese critics use the German term Mdrchen). Kokai Eiji9 argues that these tales place Hara among the top three Japanese writers of childhood. An excerpt from "The Marten" (1936) is indicative of their nature: Standing on one leg, the apricot tree stretches both arms wide into the blue sky. The tree says to the breeze blowing through its top: "Hmm, pretty ripe." 1 Yamamoto Kenkichi, "Hara Tamiki," Mita bungaku (July r951), reprinted in Yamamoto Kenkichi zenshii (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1984) 10.162. 8

Kawanishi, Hitotsu no ummei, p. 33.

9

Kokai, Hara Tamiki, p.

106.

Hara Tamiki and his wife Sadae, undated. Courtesy Nihon kindai bungakkan

26

HARA TAMIKI

Enticed by the breeze, a bumblebee comes along. Its two arms still stretched wide, the tree speaks to the bee: "I'll bet the apricot tree in the Kawasaki garden is pretty ripe." The bee says, "I have no idea," and flies off. The tree laughs as if tickled, shaking its two arms: "Ha ha ha! That dumb bee doesn't know the Kawasaki garden!" 10

Between his marriage in 1933 and his wife's death in 1944 there were only two significant intrusions into Hara's fairy-tale world: not Japan's war in China, not Pearl Harbor, but events that had a direct bearing on him. The first came in 1934, when the Thought Police arrested both Hara and his wife, held them for thirty hours, and then released them. Apparently neighbors had become suspicious ofHara's behavior. It was an age of suspicion, and of course Hara had a prior arrest on his record. This second arrest, Hara would write later, "burned itself onto [my] very soul."II The second intrusion was both more gradual and more earthshaking. In 1939 Sadae was diagnosed as having pulmonary tuberculosis. From then until her death in September 1944 at the age of 33, she became an invalid. Hara stopped writing his tales, resumed some writing of poetry, and took on work, first teaching English in a middle school, then working for a film company. Sadae's brother has left a moving description of Hara's attendance at his wife's sickbed: When my sister fell ill and entered the hospital of Chiba Medical College, Hara went to the hospital every other day. No matter what the weather, he never missed a visit .... When he set out for the hospital, he seemed utterly happy, as guileless as a grade-school kid heading for the zoo. I don't doubt that he would have gone every day had it been possible; but he had a job, and he worried that daily visits might look a little queer, so he settled on every other day. Having stayed home one day, he would set out lightheartedly the next, as if he had been longing for that day to come. It was a touching sight . . . . He visited her room, but it appears he hardly ever said anything. He would simply sit at his wife's bedside, stare fixedly at her face, and perhaps peel and eat a piece of fruit. 12

'°"Ten," Zenshu

r.270.

" "Kuroshiku utsukushiki natsu" ("A painfully beautiful summer") (1949), Zenshu Hara is writing of himself in the third person. "Quoted in Kokai, Hara Tamiki, pp. rr3-rr5. TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

27

2.272.

In fact, continues the brother-in-law, Hara may have been happier, more at peace with the world, at his wife's bedside than at any other time in his life. Sadae died in September 1944. Hara had long been incapable of living alone, and in January 1945 he returned to his family home in Hiroshima, moving in with "Jun'ichi." Summer Flowers opens with the narrator buying flowers to place on his wife's grave. The festival of the dead-ban, August r 5-was less than two weeks away, the first ban since his wife's death eleven months earlier. Virtually the entire first section of Summer Flowers is an amplification of the notes that Hara began to set down less than 36 hours after the bomb fell; but not this opening. Perhaps it is testimony to the continuing influence of his wife. Or perhaps the flowers he places on her grave are also, symbolically, flowers for those who died on August 6. 1944-1950 The death and the deaths-the personal, individual death of his beloved Sadae and the impersonal, mass deaths of the residents of Hiroshima-came less than a year apart and brought about a profound transformation in Hara's life and thought. That transformation was not all negative. Both in the psychological and in the literary senses, these two events had their enabling aspects. Consider first the psychological impact of his wife's death. Hara's almost total dependence on Sadae, his guileless joy even in the grim business of regular visits to a patient slowly dying of tuberculosis, came to an end. Hara's biographer Kawanishi Masaaki has suggested that Sadae's death led to Hara's rebirth. ' 3 Kawanishi describes Hara's writing before 1944 as the product of an immature self and argues that the death of Sadae began the process whereby Hara broke free of his self-inclosed inner world. Even so, his vision was still personal and solitary. This feeling comes across in "Far Journey," an essay first published in I 9 5 r. "Far Journey" recounts a memory of an earlier year: "The next spring a collection of his works first saw the light of day. Yet even as he held DEATH AND THE ATOMIC BOMB,

'3

Kawanishi, Hitotsu no ummei, pp. 85-87. HARA TAMIKI

the volume in his hand, he wasn't sure whether to be happy or sad.... It had happened just after he had married. His wife had spoken dreamily of death. As he looked at his young wife's face, it had occurred to him that he might soon lose her. If she were to die, he would outlive her by only a year-in order to leave behind a single volume of sad and beautiful poems." 14 A volume of sad and beautiful poems: until August 6, that had been Hara's goal. Had that been his fate, he would not be of such interest. In the words of Kokai Eiji, ". . . had he not experienced the atomic bomb, he probably would not have achieved historical significance as a postwar writer." 1 s For all the confessional aspects of Hara's writings on dreams and death, one can glean little about the events of his life from his writing-until August 6. Kokai 16 remarks that Hara's writings underwent no significant changes in the 1930s despite all the turmoil: his one month's cohabitation with the ex-prostitute, his attempted suicide, his subsequent marriage to Sadae. Kawanishi adds: "Hara was a writer who did not sing of the springtime of youth. It was not merely that he did not sing of youth. He consciously refused to sing of youth. It was not the case that he had no youth of which to sing. He had ideal material. Poems, Dadaism, Marxism, love, wine, women, attempted suicide, arrest. He did not lack for material. Self-imposed isolation, disintegration, maclness." 1 7 Elsewhere Kawanishi suggests a direct link between Hara's earlier isolation and the power of his postwar work: "Precisely because he had cut off the avenues leading to society ... he was able better than anyone else to see the human condition clear-eyed amid the unprecedented experience of the atomic bomb." 18 In "Flowers after the Frost," an essay of 1947, Hara describes the process himself, more simply: "The atomic bomb moved him to what might be called a new compassion for and interest in humankind." 19 As Yamamoto Kenkichi has written, "If marriage taught solitary Hara the world of another person, that grim experience [of the atomic bomb] taught him the world in which everyone is linked by 'grief' " 20 '• "Haruka na tabi," Zenshu 2.298. '6

Kokai, Hara Tamiki, p. 9r.

'' Kawanishi, Hitotsu no ummei, p. 39. 20

'' Kokai, Hara Tamiki, p. 132 (his italics).

' 7 Kawanishi, Hitotsu no ummei, p. 58. ' 9 "Hyoka," Zenshu 2. 30.

Yamamoto, "Hara Tamiki," p. 163.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

29

Not only was there a new compassion and interest, there was also a sense of mission. In "The Atomic Bomb: Contemporary Notes of a Victim," Hara jotted down this thought: "Miraculously unhurt; must be Heaven's will that I survive and report what happened." 21 In Summer Flowers that statement becomes "I thought to myself: I must set these things down in writing." Later still, Hara would write an essay entitled "The Will to Peace." The precise date is uncertain, but from internal evidence it must be after 1948. Hara addresses himself: "You who escaped harm from the thunderclap of the atomic bomb-when you tried to scramble to your feet among so many whose whole bodies were nearly destroyed, when it came to the clamor of the vortex of dead people all around, when you still tried to survive in the face of a long spell of hunger: why was it important to survive? Did something order you to survive? -Answer! Answer! Tell of its meaning!" Hara proceeds to make a statement against nuclear weapons and in favor of peace: "In the back of the mind in which a single human being desires and affirms war, the vague feeling probably rules that even if the other millions of people die violent deaths I alone will survive. Without doubt, such an outcome was possible in past wars. But war henceforth will lead to the wiping out of each and every person of every country, impartially-that fact must be impressed upon people."22 Or, as Hara writes in Requiem, "I kept telling myself again and again-don't live for yourself; live only to lament those who have died." 23 His political stance comes across most clearly in an essay of 1948, "On War": "Will humankind merely live pitiful lives in the valleys between wars? Can one not sense its meaning unless one's own skin is seared by the murderous rays of an atomic bomb? Will man's opposition to the slaughter of men remain powerless? ... I don't know. I know only one thing clearly: those faint voices of the countless injured people, fallen in the tragedy of Hiroshima, their voices all appealing to Heaven-I know what they would say." 2 4 Hara had moved back to Hiroshima less than four months after " "Gembaku hisaiji no noto," Zenshu 3.340-34r. 2 '

Chinkonka (1949), Zenshu

30

2. 107.

22

"Hciwa c no ishi," Zenshu

'4

"Senso ni tsuite," Zenshti

2. 599-600.

2. 598.

HARA TAMIKI

Hara Tamiki, May 16, 1949. Courtesy Nihon kindai bungakkan

31

Sadae's death. There he was on August 6, 1945, and within four months after the bomb he had completed "Summer Flowers." It was writing unlike anything he had undertaken previously. It was not a fairy tale or a poem, not a dream. It was about death, and he had written often about death; but the differences were more striking than the similarities. Before Sadae's death and before August 6, Hara was a precious, insulated, isolated writer, writing out of childhood memories and dreams and nightmares. After August 6, he produced Summer Flowers. 25

Yet even as he was writing Summer Flowers, between 1945 and 1949, his thinking changed. Hara himself described the process of relative disillusionment in "Death, Love, Solitude," an essay of 1949: "It is true that from amid the screams and chaos of death I burned with a prayer for a new human being. That I, a weakling, was able to withstand bitter hunger and destitution-that too was probably due in part to that prayer. But the tempestuous seas of the postwar era beat thunderously upon me and threaten even now to break me in pieces." 26 Hara felt misused by a friend, by his nephew, by a landlord; his faith in a new human being gave way. Evidence of the change can be found in Summer Flowers. In "Summer Flowers," the opening section that he finished in 1945, Hara focuses almost exclusively on the magnitude of the tragedy; he tells us almost nothing about relations among the members of the narrator's family. In "From the Ruins," published in 1947, Hara speaks critically of some people, in particular the villagers who did not welcome the refugees from Hiroshima. In "Prelude to Destruction," published in January 1949, Hara is scathingly critical not simply of outsiders but also of the family itself. Though it deals with events that happened before August 6 (and hence predating "Summer Flowers" and "From the Ruins"), "Prelude to Destruction" was written last; by then Hara had moved back to his awareness of 25 Hara also wrote free verse and haiku about Hiroshima; for the latter and one of the former, see Richard H. Minear, "Haiku and Hiroshima: Hara Tamiki," Modern Haiku 19.1:11-17 (Winter-Spring 1988). The same free verse poem is found (translator not credited) in Kenzaburo Oe, Hiroshima Notes, ed. David L. Swain (Tokyo: YMCA, 1981) and (with a second poem) in John W. Treat, "Early Hiroshima Poetry," Journal ef the Association of Teachers of Japanese 20.2:221-225 (November 1986). 26

"Shi to ai to kodoku," Zenshu

2. 5 50.

HARA TAMIKI

humankind's daily inhumanity. In Hara's own words: "For me it seems precisely as iC while we are alive on this earth, each moment is filled to the brim with fathomless horror. And the tragedies that take place daily in people's minds, the unbearable agonies that each individual human being is subjected to-things like these now fester horribly inside me. Is it likely that I can stand up to them, depict them?" 2 7 These "unbearable agonies" found voice in another work of 1949, Requiem. There Hara writes as follows: "I have absolutely no idea how everyone lives. Humanity is all like glass shattered into smithereens .... The world is broken. Humankind! Humankind! Humankind! I can't understand. I can't connect. I tremble. Humankind. Humankind. Humankind. I want to understand. I want to connect. I want to live. Am I the only one trembling? Always inside me there is the sound of something exploding. Always something is chasing me. I am made to tremble, am flogged, am made to flare up, am shut down." 28 The years immediately after Sadae's death and the atomic bomb had been not a cure but a remission, and by 1949 Hara's internal demons were in the ascendant once more. DEATH

The two most significant works of Hara's late years are Requiem and "Land of My Heart's Desire," published in 1951 shortly after Hara's death. In the former, Hara treats the death of Sadae and the deaths of Hiroshima almost as a single loss and comes to terms with both. The tone is tranquil, elegiac. Early in Requiem he composes an imaginary ESSAY ON MAN (the title is capitalized and in English in the original): Death: death made me grow up. Love: love made me endure. Madness: madness made me suffer. Passion: passion bewildered me. Balance: my goddess is balance. Dreams: dreams are my everything. The gods: the gods cause me to be silent. Bureaucrats: bureaucrats make me melancholy. 27

"Shi to ai to kodoku," Zenshu

2. 550.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

28

Chinkonka, Zenshu

2. 122-123.

33

Flowers: flowers are my sisters. Tears: tears resuscitate me. Laughter: I wish I had a splendid laugh. War: ah, war makes people come to grief 29

Toward the end of Requiem Hara returns to this list, now transformed into a prayer for the people he sees as he wanders aimlessly through the city: "(That their deaths be mature. That their love endure. That they not be alone. That passion not bewilder, that madness not be too tearing. That they be blessed with balance and dreams. That they not be lost sight of by the gods. That their bureaucrats be kind. That flowers move them to tears. That they often laugh together. That war be exterminated.)" 3° In "Land of My Heart's Desire," Hara speaks of his own death in terms that are only slightly veiled. For example: "This life no longer offers even a single straw for me to clutch." 31 But the most moving passage of all is the section in which he talks of a grade crossing near his apartment in Tokyo: This is a crossing I often use; often when the barrier comes down I have to wait. Trains come from the direction ofNishi-Ogikubo or from the direction of Kichijoji. As the trains approach, the tracks here vibrate perceptibly up and down. Then the trains roar past at full throttle. The speed somehow washes me clean of all cares. It may be that I am jealous of those people who can charge through life at full throttle. But the ones who appear to my mind's eye are people who fix their gaze more despondently on these tracks. Men broken by life, who despite their writhing and struggling have already been shoved down into a pit from which there is no escape-it always seems that their shades loiter in the vicinity of these tracks. But as, stopping at this crossing, I sink into this contemplation ... won't my shade, too, soon loiter along these tracks?J 2

Within days of writing these lines, at I I: 3 1 on the night of March 13, 1951, Hara Tamiki lay down on these rails and was run over. 29

Chinkonka, Zenshu

2. l

ro.

Chinkonka, Zenshu 2. 142-143.

'' "Shingan no kuni," Zenshu 2. 329. For a complete translation, see Richard H. Minear, "Hara Tamiki's 'Land of My Heart's Desire' " (University of Massachusetts Asian Studies Committee Occasional Papers, no. 14, forthcoming); see also "The Land ofHeart's Desire," trans. John Bester, in Kenzaburo Oe, ed., Atomic Aftermath: Short Stories about Hiroshima and Nagasaki, trans. David Swain (Tokyo: Shueisha, 1984), pp. 55-6r. '' "Shingan no kuni," Zenshu 2.33r.

34

HARA TAMIKI

One of Hara's biographers, Kokai Eiji, stresses the political context ofHara's suicide, that Hara was despondent over the Korean War and specifically over President Truman's statement in a November 1950 press conference that the use of atomic bombs was under consideration.31 In fact, Hara did compose the following poem in response to Truman's declaration (he enclosed it in a last letter to a friend): Lord, pity the homeless child's Christmas. The child now homeless will be homeless tomorrow, too; and the children who now have homes, they too will be homeless tomorrow. Wretched, stupid, we lead ourselves on to destruction, bodies and souls, not knowing enough to stop one step this side of destruction. Tomorrow, once again, fire will pour down from the skies; tomorrow, once again, people will be seared and die. The misery will continue, repeat itself, till countries everywhere, cities everywhere all meet destruction. Pity, pity these thoughts of a Christmas night filled, filled with signs that the day of destruction is near. J4

Still, Hara's long-standing fixation on death and the tranquility of his final writings suggest that internal causes had more to do with his suicide than external causes, that the internal dialectic took precedence over the external stimulus of President Truman's nuclear brinksmanship. This is not to say, of course, that Truman's threat had only a minor impact on Hara's thinking. Those who did not experience Hiroshima or Nagasaki can imagine only with great difficulty what President Truman's statement must have meant to Hara: after all, the same man had ordered the bombing of Hiroshima and Naga33

Kokai, Hara Tamiki, p. 14.

34

"le naki ko no Kurisumasu" ("The homeless child's Christmas"), Zenshu 3.36.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

35

saki. But the Korean War and President Truman's threat were not the only factors in Hara's calculations.3s Writing after Hara's death, Hara's friend Yamamoto Kenkichi caught that personal dialectic best. In the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, he writes, Hara's darkest premonitions and allegories became reality. Hara "devoted the next five years exclusively to speaking of its meaning." In the process, he "became merely a voice, losing all sounds apart from it." Consequently, "his death was like the death of a cricket when winter comes and he has sung his last song."3 6 SUMMER FLOWERS: THE TEXT

The first two sections of Summer Flowers appeared separately in Mita bungaku (Mita letters), a literary journal associated with Keio University, located in Mita. "Summer Flowers" appeared in June 1947; "From the Ruins,'' in November 1947. Hara chose Mita bungaku because it did not face pre-publication censorship by the Occupation authorities. (Hara first approached Kindai bungaku [Modern letters], which did face such censorship. The journal was instructed not to publish "Summer Flowers." Hara thought briefly of arranging initial publication in English translation in order to present the censors with a fait accompli, but that option did not prove practicable.) "Prelude to Annihilation" appeared in Kindai bungaku in January 1949.37 In July 1949 Hara wrote of himself as one "who tends sometimes to be so despairing his head swirls, thinking that all is naught." Book review in Mita bungaku 31:35 (July 1949).

35

36

Yamamoto, "Hara Tamiki," pp. 160--163.

See, for example, Hirano Ken, "Hara Tamiki," Nihon no gembaku bungaku r. 319. The Prange Collection at the University of Maryland includes the issues of Mita bungaku containing the first two parts of Summer Flowers, no. IO (June 1947) and no. 12 (November 1947). They show clearly that Mita bungaku was subject to post-publication censorship during these years. The first issue stamped "Spot Checked" is that of October 1949; the first issue stamped "Processed w/o Examination" is that of March 1949· Further, the Prange Collection copies indicate that the censors took no issue with either "Summer Flowers" or "From the Ruins." Four earlier articles (issues of January 1946 and November 1946) were post-censored and marked disapproved; the penalties, if any, are not clear. Kindai bungaku, which for this period had roughly twice the circulation of Mita bungaku, faced pre-publication censorship until the end of 1949 brought a virtual end to censorship; Hara's "Prelude to Annihilation"-which mentions the atomic bomb only in its final sentence-appeared in the January 1949 issue. In her study of Occupation censorship of things atomic (The Atomic Bomb Suppressed: American Censorship in Japan, 1945-1949 [Lund: Liber, 1986], p. 106), Monica Braw comments: "It is sometimes difficult to see in what respect the published 37

HARA TAMIKI

Three passages Hara deleted from "Summer Flowers" prior to its initial publication (June 1947). The first two excerpts he restored when he published the completed Summer Flowers in February 1949; in this volume they appear on pages 52 and 57-58. The third passage, a poem, Hara published later, separately. Courtesy Nihon kindai bungakkan and Hara Tokihiko

The first appearance of the entire work came in February 1949, when N oraku shorin brought out a single volume under the title Summer Flowers. In his "Afterword" to that volume, Hara referred to the work for the first time in print as a triptych.3 8 Since 1949 Summer Flowers has appeared in many forms: in the various collections of Hara's works, in anthologies, and twice on its own. The latter is the form articles are different from those suppressed." The inconsistencies in the censors' treatment of Hara and Mita bungaku seem to support that assessment. '' Hara Tamiki, Natsu no hana (Tokyo: Noraku shorin, 1949), p. 216; reprinted in Zenshu 3.367-368. The Noraku shorin volume also included three short pieces; Hara wrote that they had "links to the triptych (sanbusaku)." TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

37

in which it attained its greatest popularity: the Shobunsha edition of 1970 had gone through ten printings by 198r. The differences among the various texts are largely insignificant, with one major exception: the order of the three parts. Chronological order does not match order of composition. "Prelude to Annihilation" opens in the spring of 1945 and takes the story up to August 4; it ends with the sentence, "There were still more than forty-eight hours to go before the atomic bomb paid its visit." "Summer Flowers" opens on August 4. "From the Ruins" tells of life in the village to which Hara and some of his family fled several days after August 6. However, that is not the order in which Hara wrote them. "Prelude to Annihilation" came last, a full eighteen months after "Summer Flowers," fourteen months after "From the Ruins." Nor is it Hara's preferred order. In the first appearance of the triptych as a whole, Hara arranged the three parts in order of composition. Moreover, in his "Afterword" he referred to the three parts as "original, continuation, and supplement. "39 That terminology sets "Prelude to Annihilation" in a distinctly subordinate position. ("The Atomic Bomb: Contemporary Notes of a Victim" forms the basis for only two parts of the triptych-"Summer Flowers" and "From the Ruins"; it begins with August 6 and contains no reference to the subject matter of "Prelude to Annihilation.") The Shobunsha edition, which is the version most Japanese readers know, ignores the order of composition in favor of chronological order; the various collected works all yield to the author's preference. The order is significant for a number of reasons. Most important, the tone of "Prelude to Annihilation" differs markedly from that of the other two. It marks the emergence of a darkened picture of the human beings who are the central characters of all three parts-the rebirth, writes Kawanishi, 40 of egoism. In it Hara writes of intense friction among the members of the family; the overbearing attitude of "Jun'ichi" toward the junior members of the family is perhaps most '" Sei, zoku, ho; Hara, Natsu no hana, p. 86 (Zenshii 3.367). 4° Kawanishi, Hitotsu no ummei, p. II8. HARA TAMIKI

striking. Kawanishi links this development to the larger trend of Hara' s growing disillusionment. This translation follows the order Hara himself favored, order of composition rather than chronological order. In "Summer Flowers" and "From the Ruins" Hara writes in the first person and designates his immediate family by their relation to him-"eldest brother," "second brother," "younger sister," "sister-inlaw"-not by name. Indeed, the sole name he uses in "Summer Flowers" is that of his nephew Fumihiko, who appears only in death. In "Summer Flowers" Hara identifies acquaintances by initials ("K.," "N."); in "From the Ruins" he gives them names ("Nishida," "Maki"). In "Prelude to Annihilation" Hara invents names for the immediate family: "Jun'ichi" for the eldest brother, "Seiji" for the second brother, "Yasuko" for the younger sister, "Takako" for the wife of "Jun'ichi." He gives full names to all others who appear, except the schoolteacher, "Miss T.," for whom there is at least a hint that the author has a soft spot. Finally, in the case of the narrator-figure Hara shifts from the first person of "Summer Flowers" and "From the Ruins" to third person, "Shozo." It is grating in English (as it is not in Japanese) to refer repeatedly to "eldest brother," "second brother," and "younger sister," so in "From the Ruins" this translation uses for the immediate family the names Hara uses only in "Prelude to Annihilation." The designation of the narrator-figure remains unchanged: "I" in the first two parts, "Shozo" in "Prelude to Annihilation." This is not the first translation into English of the work of Hara Tamiki. In 1953 George Saito published a nearly complete translation of "Summer Flowers," the first part of Summer Flowers.41 The present translation is the first complete translation of Summer Flowers into English (or any other language). •• George Saito, trans., "The Summer Flower," Pacific Spectator 7.2:202-212 (Spring 1953)That translation has been reprinted several times, most recently in Shoichi Saeki, ed., The Catch and Other War Stories (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1981) and in expanded form in Oe, ed., Atomic Aftermath (the identity of the "editor" who did the expanding is not clear, nor is the expanded text in fact complete). TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

39

ONE CRITIC has commented that of all Hara's works, Summer Flowers leaves the "faintest impression." He couples that criticism with the comment that Hara's gifts were not well suited to the stark portrayal of reality. 4 2 Hara's voice is always soft, often muted. Here is the critic Yamamoto Kenkichi: "Amid the frenzied noise of the postwar era, he speaks to us in a faint, soft voice, as if whispering directly, soul to soul; and even though it originates in the single earthshaking experience [of the bomb], his voice is so pure that only those who listen intently can hear it." 43 Some of Hara's works-"Land of My Heart's Desire" comes immediately to mind-positively sing; Summer Flowers does not. But the criticism is wide of the mark insofar as it assumes that literary excellence in its normal acceptation is the crucial criterion in judging accounts of holocaust. Perhaps event overwhelms style. Perhaps event-and the need for witness-forces a rethinking of the category "literary excellence." Hara is not the greatest writer of his generation, but Summer Flowers is one of the important books of the twentieth century. Other writers have written with greater style; indeed, Hara himself does in some of his other works. But Summer Flowers is the classic account of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Hirano Ken, "Hara Tamiki," Nihon no gembaku bungaku I.319. See also John W. Treat, "Atomic Bomb Literature and the Documentary Fallacy," Journal ofJapanese Studies 14. I :2757 (Winter 1988). 4J Yamamoto, "Hara Tamiki," p. 160. 42

40

HARA TAMIKI

Summer Flowers by Hara Tamiki

0 loved ones, may you romp and play like the roe, the fawn, deep in fragrant mountains.

Summer Flowers WHEN r WENT OUT and bought flowers, it was with the intention of visiting my wife's grave. In my pocket was a bundle of incense sticks I had taken from the butsudan. August r 5 would be the first hon since my wife's death; but I doubted that this hometown of mine would survive that long unscathed. It happened that the day was a no-electricity day; early that morning I saw no other men walking along carrying flowers. I do not know the proper name of the flowers; but with their small yellow petals, they had a nice country flavor about them, very summer-flower-like. I splashed water on the gravestone standing exposed to the hot sun, divided the flowers into two bunches, and stuck them in the flower holders on either side. Once I had done so, the grave seemed somehow cleansed and purified, and for a moment I gazed at flowers and gravestone. Beneath this stone lay buried not only my wife's ashes, but also Father's and Mother's. After setting a match to the incense I had brought and bowing in silent respect, I took a drink of water at the well nearby. Then I walked home the roundabout way, via Nigitsu Park; that day and the next, the smell of incense clung to my pocket. It was on the third day that the atomic bomb fell. I OWE MY LIFE to the fact that I was in the privy. The morning of August 6 I got out of bed at about eight o'clock. The air raid warning had sounded twice the previous night, but there had been no air raid; so before daybreak I had taken off all my clothes, changed for the first time in a while into sleepwear of yukata and shorts, and gone to sleep. When I got out of bed, I had on only the shorts. Catching sight of me, Sister complained about my having stayed in bed so long; without a word I went into the privy. How many seconds later it happened I can't say, but all of a sudden there was a blow to my head, and everything went dark. I cried out instinctively and stood up, hand to my head. Things crashed as in a storm, and it was pitch dark; I didn't know what was going on. Grasping the handle and opening the door, I came out onto the veSUMMER FLOWERS

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randa. Until that point, I was in agony: amid the hail of sound I had heard my own cry distinctly, but I couldn't see a thing. However, once out on the veranda I quickly saw, materializing in the thin light, a scene of destruction; my feelings too came into focus. It was like something in the most horrible dream. Right from the start, when I received the blow to my head and things went black, I knew I wasn't dead. Then, thinking what an enormous inconvenience this all was, I tried to work myself up to anger. My cry sounded in my ear like someone else's voice. But as the situation around me, though still hazy, began to resolve itself, I soon felt as ifl were standing on a stage that had been set for a tragedy. I had surely seen spectacles like this at the movies. Beyond the dense cloud of dust, there appeared patches of blue, and then the patches grew in number. Light came streaming in where walls had collapsed and from other unlikely directions. As I took a few tentative steps on the floorboards, from which the tatami had been sent flying, Sister flew toward me from across the way. "Not hurt? Not hurt? You're all right?" she cried. Then: "Your eye is bleeding; go wash it off right away," and she told me the water was running in the kitchen sink. Realizing that I was utterly naked, I said, looking back at Sister, "Isn't there something for me to put on?" She produced some underpants from a closet that had survived the destruction. At that point someone rushed in making strange gestures. Face bloody and wearing only a shirt, he was one of the factory workers. He saw me, said over his shoulder, "You're lucky you weren't hurt," and went off busily, muttering, "Phone, phone, I must phone." Cracks had opened everywhere; screens and tatami were scattered all about; bare joists and doorsills were plainly in sight; for some time a strange silence continued. The house seemed on its last legs. As I learned later, most houses in this area collapsed flat; but our second story did not fall, and the floor held firm. Probably because it was so solidly built. My father, a cautious person, had built it forty years ago. Trampling on the jumble of tatami and sliding screens, I looked for something to put on. Right off I found a jacket; but as I was searching here and there for pants, my busy eye was caught by stuff lying scattered, in a mess. The book I had been reading, half-finished HARA TAMIKI

last night, lay on the floor, pages curled up. Fallen from the lintel, a picture frame covered my bed, ominously. My canteen emerged out of the blue, and then I found my cap. My pants did not turn up, so I looked for something to put on my feet. At that point K. from the office appeared on the veranda of the drawing room. On seeing me, he called in a pathetic voice, "Help! I'm hurt," and slumped to the floor. Blood was oozing from his forehead; tears glistened in his eyes. I asked him, "Where are you hurt?" He replied, "My knee," pressing it and contorting his pale, wrinkled face. I gave him a piece of cloth that was there and pulled on two pairs of socks, one over the other. "Look-smoke! Let's get out of here! Take me with you!" K. urged me repeatedly. Though a good deal older than I, K. was normally far more energetic; but even he was a little lost. Surveying the scene from the veranda, I saw an expanse of rubble, the ruins of collapsed houses; except for the reinforced concrete building still standing in the middle distance, there wasn't even anything by which to get my bearings. The large maple next to the earthen wall-now toppled-of the garden had had its trunk snapped off halfway up, and the upper half of the tree had been thrown atop the outdoor washstand. Stooping over the air raid shelter, K. said, irrationally, "Shall we stick it out here? We've got water ... " "No," I said, "let's head for the river," and with a look of incomprehension, he cried, "River? Which way to the river, I wonder?" As a matter of fact, even if we wished to flee, we still hadn't made any preparations for doing so. Pulling some pajamas out of a closet, I handed them to him and also tore down the veranda's blackout curtains. I picked up some cushions, too. When I turned over the tatami scattered on the veranda, my emergency kit came to light. Relieved, I slung it over my shoulder. Small red flames began to appear from the storehouse of the medicine factory next door. It was time to get out. The last to leave, I climbed over the wall alongside the maple tree, snapped off and broken. That large maple had stood forever in the corner of the garden; when I was young, it had figured in my daydreams. After having been SUMMER FLOWERS

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away a long time, I had returned this spring to live in my old home; I had thought it odd, since returning, that the tree no longer held its old charm. Strangely, this whole city seemed to have lost its gentle naturalness, to have become a collection of cold inorganic matter. Each time I entered the room that looked out onto the garden, there had come floating into my mind, unbidden, the words, "The Fall of the House of Usher." over the ruins of the house and around what was in our way, K. and I proceeded at first quite slowly. Soon our feet came to level ground, so we knew that we had come out onto the road. Then we hurried briskly down the center of the road. From the other side of a flattened building came a voice crying, "Mister, please!" We turned, and a girl whose face was bloody came walking toward us; she was crying. Looking absolutely horror-stricken, she followed us for all she was worth, calling, "Help!" We went on a while and met an old woman standing squarely in our way in the road, weeping like a child: "The house is burning! The house is burning!" Smoke was rising here and there among the ruins, but suddenly we came to a place where tongues of flame licked at us fiercely. Running, we got past that spot, and the road became level again; we had come to the foot of Sakae Bridge. Here refugees had gathered in droves. Someone on top of the bridge was being a hero: "Those of you who are up to it-form a bucket brigade!" I took the road in the direction of the bamboo grove at the Izumi Villa and at this point became separated from K. The bamboo grove had been blown flat, but the press of people fleeing had opened a path. I looked up at the trees; most of them, too, had been snapped off partway up. This historic garden flanking the river: it too was now covered with wounds. Suddenly I noticed the face of a middle-aged woman who was squatting next to the shrubs, her fleshy body slumped over. Wholly devoid of life, her face seemed even as I watched to become infected with something. This was my first encounter with such a face. But thereafter I was to see countless faces more grotesque still. Where the grove joined the riverbank, I came upon a bunch of schoolgirls. They had fled here from the factory, all lightly injured; CLAMBERING

HARA TAMIKI

they still trembled from the vividness of the event that had only just taken place before their very eyes, yet they chattered all the more spiritedly. At that point my eldest brother turned up. Wearing only a shirt and carrying a beer bottle in one hand, he seemed at first glance uninjured. On the opposite bank, too, as far as the eye could see, buildings had collapsed, and only telephone poles still stood; the fire was already spreading. When I sat down on the narrow path on the riverbank, I felt, despite everything, that I was now safe. What had hung over our heads for so long, what in time surely had to come, had come. There was nothing left to fear; I myself had survived. Before, I had given myself an even chance of dying; now, the fact that I was alive took my breath away. I thought to myself: I must set these things down in writing. However, at that time I still had virtually no idea of the true state of things brought about by this air raid. THE FIRE on the opposite bank had grown in force. The heat was being reflected all the way over to our side, so we repeatedly so,1ked the cushions in the river, which was at high tide, and covered our heads with them. Meanwhile, someone shouted, "Air raid!" A \'oice s,1id, "Those wearing white hide under the trees," and people responded by crawling, all of them, into the center of the bamboo grove On the other side of the grove, too, with the sun pouring down, it looked as if a fire was burning. With bated breath I waited for a while, but it didn't appear that an air raid was coming; so I came out again 011 the river side of the grove. The fire on the opposite bank had not lessened in force. A hot wind blew over our heads, and, fanned across toward us, black smoke came as far as mid-river. Suddenly the sky overhead seemed to have turned black, and large drops of rain came pouring down, a torrent. The rain dampened the fire a bit in our vicinity, but in a while the sky turned cloudless again. The fire on the opposite bank burned on. Now, on this bank, I saw my eldest brother, Sister, and two or three acquaintances from the neighborhood; we all drew together, and each of us gave his account of the morning's events. When the bomb fell, my brother was at the table in the office. A brilliant light flashed through the garden, and immediately thereafter SUMMER FLOWERS

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he was sent flying six feet or so; trapped under the building, he struggled for a while. Noticing a gap at last and crawling out, he became aware that over at the factory the schoolgirls were screaming for help. He struggled mightily to get them out. Sister was at the entryway when she saw a brilliant flash and quickly took cover under the stairs, so she was not injured badly. Each of us had been convinced at first that only his own house had been bombed; when we did go outside, we were flabbergasted to see that the same thing had happened everywhere. We were also amazed that while everything aboveground had collapsed, there were no holes that looked like bomb craters. Sister said it had happened soon after the lifting of the preliminary alert. There had been a brilliant flash and a soft hissing, like the sound of magnesium burning, and instantaneously everything had turned upside down ... just like black magic, she said, trembling. As the fire on the other bank began to die down, a voice said the trees in this garden had caught fire. A faint smoke began to be visible high in the sky over the bamboo grove behind us. The water in the river was still at full tide and gave no indication of falling. I walked along the stone wall and climbed down to the water's edge. Just at my feet, a large wooden crate came floating past, and onions that had spilled out of the crate were bobbing about. I pulled the box over, grabbed onion after onion out of it, and handed them to people on the bank. On the railway bridge upstream a freight train had derailed, and this box, thrown out, had floated down. While hauling in onions, I heard a voice crying, "Help!" A young girl was floating past in the middle of the river holding on to a piece of wood, her head sometimes above the water, sometimes under it. I picked out a big log and swam out, pushing it ahead of me. I hadn't swum in a long time, but I was able, more easily than I would have thought, to rescue her. The fire on the opposite bank had slackened for a while but suddenly star~ed raging again. This time dark smoke appeared in the midst of the red flames, and the black mass spread savagely; even as we watched, the temperature of the flames seemed to rise. But even that eerie blaze too gradually burned itself out; when it did, only empty shells of buildings remained to be seen. It was then that I noticed, in the sky downstream above the middle of the river, an abso50

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lutely translucent layer of air trembling and moving toward us. A tornado, I thought; at that very moment violent winds were already blowing overhead. The trees and plants all around me trembled; suddenly, I saw many trees above my head sucked up by the wind, just like that, and carried off into the sky. Dancing crazily in the air, the trees fell into the midst of the maelstrom with the force of arrows. I don't remember clearly what color the surrounding air was. But I think we must have been enveloped in the dreadfully gloomy faint green light of the medieval paintings of Buddhist hell. Once this twister had passed, a kind of twilight obtained, and my second brother, who hadn't appeared until then, unexpectedly came to where we were. His face was streaked with gray; the back of his shirt was torn, too. The marks on his skin looked as if he had gotten sunburned at the beach; later, they developed into real burns that suppurated and required several months of treatment. But at the moment he was still pretty fit. He said he had just returned home on an errand when he spotted a small airplane high in the sky and then saw three strange flashes. He was thrown a good six feet. _He rescued his wife and the maid, both of whom had been pinned under and were struggling; he entrusted the two children to the maid and sent them fleeing ahead of him; then he rescued the old man next door, which took longer than he expected. My sister-in-law was very worried about the children from whom she had become separated, but then the maid called from the other bank. Her arms hurt, she said, and she was no longer able to carry the children; please come quickly. The trees of the Izumi Villa were burning, a few at a time. We would be in trouble if the fire burned its way here after dark; we wanted to cross to the opposite shore while it was still light. But there was no boat to be seen. My eldest brother and his family decided to cross to the other shore via the bridge; still searching for a boat, my second brother and I went up the river. As we proceeded up the narrow stone path running along the river, I saw for the first time a group of people defying description. The rays of sunlight, already slanting, cast a wan light on the surrounding scene; there were people both on top of the bank and below it, and their shadows fell on the water. SUMMER FLOWERS

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What kind of people? ... Their faces were so swollen and crumpled that it was impossible to tell which were men and which women; their eyes were narrowed to slits; their lips were festering horribly. Baring their hideously painful arms and legs, they lay on their sides, more dead than alive. As we passed in front of them, these monstrous people called to us in thin soft voices. "Please give me a little water to drink!" or "Please help me!"-every last one appealed to us. I was stopped by someone calling "Mister!" in a sharp, pitiful voice. In the river just there I saw the naked corpse of a boy, entirely submerged; and on the stone steps less than a yard away crouched two women. Their faces were swollen to about half again normal size, deformed and ugly, leaving only their burned and tangled hair as a sign that they were women. At first sight, rather than pity, I felt my hair stand on end. When these women saw that I had stopped, they pleaded with me: "That blanket over there by the trees is ours; won't you please bring it here?" Over there by the trees there was indeed something that looked like a blanket. But on top of it lay a badly injured person on the point of death, and there was nothing I could do. We found a small raft, so we untied the rope and rowed toward the other bank. By the time the raft landed on the sandy beach on the other bank, night had already fallen; but here too, it seemed, many injured were waiting. One soldier who had been crouching at the river's edge pleaded, "Give me some hot water to drink!" so I made him lean on my shoulder as we walked on. In pain, he tottered forward over the sand, and then he muttered as if in utter despair, 'T d be better off dead." I agreed sadly but said nothing. It was as if unbearable resentment against this absurdity bound us together; we needed no words. Partway there I had him wait, and looked up from the base of the stone wall to the emergency stand with its supply of hot water; it had been set up on top of the embankment. At the place on the stand from which steam rose, a large head, burned black, was grasping a teabowl and slowly drinking hot water. The huge grotesque face seemed to me made entirely of black beans. What is more, the hair on its head had been cut off in a straight line just at the ear. (Later, as I saw people with burns, hair cut off in a straight line, I came to realize 52

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that their hair had been burned off right up to the line of their caps.) I got a bowl of water and carried it back to where I had left the soldier. In the river a single soldier, seriously injured, was squatting, drinking his fill of river water. In the dusk the sky above the Izumi Villa and the fire in our immediate vicinity loomed brilliantly; on the sandy shore some people were even burning bits of wood to cook supper. A woman had been stretched out right beside me for some time, face swollen like a spongy balloon; from her voice pleading for water I recognized her for the first time as the maid from my second brother's house. Carrying the baby, she had been about to set out from the kitchen when the flash caught her, burning her face, chest, and hands. Then, taking with her the eldest daughter and the baby, she had fled just ahead of my brother and his wife; but at the bridge she had become separated from the girl and had reached the riverbank here carrying only the baby. The hand that had been injured when she first tried to shield her face from the flash, she complained, that hand still hurt as badly now as if it were being wrenched off. The tide was now rising, so we left the riverbed and moved toward the embankment. Night had fallen; crazed voices echoed from this side and that, crying, "Water! Water!" The clamor of those still left behind on the riverbed gradually grew more insistent. On top of the embankment a breeze stirred, and it was a little chilly for sleeping. Immediately across the way was Nigitsu Park; it too was now enclosed in darkness, only the faint outlines of broken tree trunks visible. My brother and his family were lying in a hollow in the ground; I found another hollowed out place and crawled into it. Lying right next to me were three or four injured schoolgirls. Someone was worried and said, "The trees across the way have caught fire; wouldn't we be better off fleeing?" I emerged from my hollow and looked across. The flames were flashing in the trees two or three hundred yards away, but they didn't seem about to come toward us. "Is the fire burning our way?" an injured young girl asked me, trembling. SUMMER FLOWERS

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"No," I told her, "we're okay," and she had another question: "What time is it now-not twelve yet?" The preliminary alert sounded. Somewhere there must have been an undamaged siren, for one reverberated faintly. Downstream there was a glow, vast and hazy: the fire in the city must still be going strong. The schoolgirls sighed: "Ah, if only morning would come!" In soft, gentle voices they sang in chorus, "Father! Mother!" "Is the fire burning our way?" the injured young girl asked me agam. At the riverbed could be heard the dying gasps of someone apparently quite young and strong. Echoing on all sides, his voice carried everywhere. "Water, water, water, please! ... Oh! ... Mother! ... Sister! ... Mit-chan!": the words poured out as if he were being torn body and soul; interspersed between the words, forced out of him by the pain, were faint groans of "Ooh, ooh!" -Once when I was a child I walked along this embankment to fish from this riverbank. The memory of that entire hot day still remains strangely vivid. On the sand is a large billboard for Lion toothpaste; from time to time, off in the direction of the railway bridge, I hear the roar of trains crossing. It is a scene peaceful as in a dream ... WHEN DAWN CAME, last night's voice was stilled. Its bloodcurdling death cry seemed to linger in my ear; yet the light was full, and a morning breeze was blowing. My eldest brother and Sister went around to the charred ruins of our house, and since people said there was an aid station in the East Parade Ground, my second brother and his family set off for there. I too was about to head for the East Parade Ground when the soldier next to me asked to go along. This hefty soldier must have been pretty badly injured; leaning on my shoulder, he went forward on his own legs one hesitant step at a time, just as if carrying something fragile. What is more, ours was a terrible, ominous path: fragments and splinters and corpses, still smoldering. When we got to Tokiwa Bridge, he was tired out and told me to leave him because he couldn't take another step. So I left him there and proceeded alone in the direction of Nigitsu Park. In some places 54

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houses were still there, as they had collapsed, spared by the flames; but the brilliant flash seemed to have left the marks of its claws everywhere. In an open space people had gathered. Water was trickling from a pipe. It was then word reached me that my niece was being cared for at the Toshogu disaster station. I hurried to the precincts of Toshogu Shrine. Just as I got there, my niece came face to face with her mother again. Yesterday she had become separated from the maid at the bridge, then afterward had fled in the company of people from somewhere else; when she saw her mother, she burst out crying, as if suddenly she could stand it no longer. Her neck, black from burns, looked painful. The aid station had been set up at the base of the Toshogu torii. A police officer asked for home addresses, ages, and so on. But even after the injured were given the slips of paper on which he had written down that information, they had to wait another hour and a half or so in a long line under the hot sun. Still, if you were injured and able to join this line, you were probably among the fortunate. Even now, there was a voice crying frantically, "Soldier! Soldier! Help! Soldier!" It was a girl with bums; she had collapsed at the side of the road and was rolling about. And a man wearing the uniform of the guards had lain down, his head, swollen with burns, atop a stone; just then he opened his pitch-black mouth, pleading brokenly in a weak voice: "Please help me, someone! Oh! Nurse! Doctor!" But no one paid him any attention. Police officers, doctors, nurses: all had come from other cities to help out, and there weren't enough of them. Accompanying the maid from my second brother's house, I joined the line; by now she was swollen badly and could hardly stay on her feet. Presently her turn came, and she was treated; then we had to make a place where we could rest. Every spot within the shrine precincts was taken up by badly injured people lying about; we saw no tents, no shade. So for a roof we leaned some thin boards against the stone wall and crawled underneath. In this cramped space the six of us spent more than twenty-four hours. Right beside us, too, a similar shelter had been fashioned, and a fellow was in constant motion atop its mats; he called over to me. He had neither shirt nor undershirt; only one leg of his long pants was SUMMER FLOWERS

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left, and that reduced to a piece about his waist; he had burns on both hands, both feet, and face. He said he had been on the seventh floor of the Chugoku Building when the bomb fell; he must have had enormous willpower, for despite his severe injuries he had made it this far-pleading with some people to help him, ordering others. Then a young man came wandering over, whole body bloody and wearing the armband of a headquarters cadet. Seeing him, the man next to us reared up and almost roared, from his high horse: "Hey! Hey! Get away! My body's a mess; touch me and you'll get yours! There's plenty of room, so why pick this tiny spot? Quick, take off!" Looking dazed, the bloody young man stood up. Perhaps ten feet from our shelter there was a cherry tree with only a few leaves, and two schoolgirls had lain down under it. Faces burned black and thin backs exposed to the hot sun, they both groaned for water. Students from the girls' vocational school, they had come to this area to dig potatoes and here had met disaster. Then another woman came, face bloated, wearing cotton work trousers; setting her handbag down, she stretched her legs out, exhausted ... The sun was already beginning to set. Another night here? I was singularly forlorn at the thought. BEGINNING just before dawn we heard voices here and there reciting the nembutsu over and over. People were dying one after the other. When the morning sun rose high in the sky, the students from the girls' vocational school both breathed their last, too. Having checked their corpses, which lay face down in the ditch, a police officer approached the woman clad in cotton work clothes. She too had collapsed and seemed now to be dead. When the police officer checked her handbag, he found a bank book and a war-bond book. So she had been on a trip when disaster struck. At about noon, the air raid warning sounded, and we could hear planes. We had become quite inured to the sorrow and grotesque ugliness on all sides; even so, our exhaustion and hunger gradually became severe. Both the eldest son and the youngest son of my second brother had been going to school in the city, so we still didn't know what had happened to them. People died one after the other, and the HARA TAMIKI

corpses simply lay there. With a sense that no help was coming, people walked about restlessly. Yet now, from over toward the parade ground, a bugle sounded, loud and clear. Suffering from burns, the nieces cried bitterly, and the maid pleaded frequently for water. Just when we had had about all we could endure of their complaints, my eldest brother returned. Yesterday he had gone off in the direction of Hatsukaichi, to which his wife had been evacuated; today he had come back with a horse-drawn goods cart he had arranged to hire in the village of Yahata. So we climbed onto the cart and left. LOADED with my brother's household and Sister and me, the cart left Toshogu and went in the direction of Nigitsu. It happened as the cart set off from Hakushima toward the entrance of the Izumi Villa. In an open area over toward the West Parade Ground my brother happened to spot a corpse clothed in familiar yellow shorts. He got off the cart and went over. My sister-in-law and then I also left the cart and converged on the spot. In addition to the familiar shorts, the corpse wore an unmistakable belt. The body was that of my nephew Fumihiko. He had no jacket; there was a fist-sized swelling on his chest, and fluid was flowing from it. His face had turned pitch-black, and in it a white tooth or two could barely be seen. Though his arms were flung out, the fingers of both hands were tightly clenched, the nails biting into the palms. Next to him was the corpse of a junior high school student and farther off, the corpse of a young girl, both rigid just as they had died. My second brother pulled off Fumihiko's fingernails, took his belt too as a memento, attached a name tag, and left. It was an encounter beyond tears. THE WAGON then went toward Kokutaiji and, crossing Sumiyoshi Bridge, toward Koi, so I was able to get a look at virtually all the ruins. In the expanse of silvery emptiness stretching out under the glaring hot sun, there were roads, there were rivers, there were bridges. And corpses, flesh swollen and raw, lay here and there. This was without doubt a new hell, brought to pass by precision craftsmanship. Here everything human had been obliterated-for example, SUMMER FLOWERS

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the expressions on the faces of the corpses had been replaced by something model-like, automaton-like. The limbs had a sort of bewitching rhythm, as if rigor mortis had frozen them even as they thrashed about in agony. With the electric wires, jumbled and fallen, and the countless splinters and fragments, one sensed a spastic design amid the nothingness. But seeing the streetcars, overturned and burned apparently in an instant, and the horses with enormous swollen bellies lying on their sides, one might have thought one was in the world of surrealistic paintings. Even the tall camphor trees of Kokutaiji had been torn up, roots and all; the gravestones too had been scattered. The Asano Library, of which only the outer shell remained, had become a morgue. The road still gave off smoke here and there and was filled with the stench of death. Each time we crossed a river, we marveled that the bridge hadn't fallen. Somehow I can capture my impressions of this area better in capital letters. So here I set down the following stanza: BROKEN PIECES, GLITTERING, AND GRAY-WHITE CINDERS, A VAST PANORAMATHE STRANGE RHYTHM OF HUMAN CORPSES BURNED RED. WAS ALL THIS REAL? COULD IT BE REAL? THE UNIVERSE HENCEFORTH, STRIPPED IN A FLASH OF EVERYTHING. THE WHEELS OF OVERTURNED STREETCARS, THE BELLIES OF THE HORSES, DISTENDED, THE SMELL OF ELECTRIC WIRES, SMOLDERING AND SIZZLING

The wagon proceeded along the road through the endless destruction. Even when we got to the suburbs, there were rows of collapsed houses; when we passed Kusatsu, things finally were green, liberated from the color of calamity. The sight of a swarm of dragonflies flying lightly and swiftly above green fields engraved itself on my eyes. Then came the long and monotonous road to Yahata. By the time we got to Yahata, night had already fallen. Next day began our wretched life in that place. The injured made little progress toward recovery, and even those who had been healthy gradually grew weak from lack of adequate food. The arm burns of the maid suppurated horribly, flies swarmed, and finally her arms became infested HARA TAMIKI

with maggots. No matter how we treated them, the maggots came back, again and again. After more than a month, she died. ON THE FOURTH or fifth day after we came here, my middle school nephew turned up; he had been among the missing. On the morning of the sixth, he had gone to school in order to help clear firebreaks; the flash came just as he was in the classroom. Instantly he had thrown himself under a desk, and then the ceiling had collapsed, burying him; but he had found a hole and crawled out. Not more than four or five of the schoolchildren were able to crawl out and flee; the others had all been killed in the initial blast. With four or five others, he had fled to Hijiyama, vomiting up white fluid on the way. Then he had gone by train to the home of a friend who had fled with him, and they had taken him in. However, a week or so after he came home to us here, he too saw his hair fall out, and within a few days he became completely bald. At that time many of the victims of the bomb subscribed to the theory that if your hair fell out and your nose started to bleed, you were done for. On the twelfth or thirteenth day after his hair fell out, my nephew finally began having nosebleeds. That night the doctor declared him to be in critical condition. However, he did hold his own, his condition still critical. ON HIS WAY by train, for the first time, to a factory evacuated into the countryside, N. felt the bomb's shock at the precise moment the train entered a tunnel. On emerging from the tunnel, he looked toward Hiroshima and saw three parachutes floating gently down. Then the train arrived at the next station, and he was astonished that the station's windows were badly splintered. By the time he got to his destination, detailed reports had already come in. Turning around on the spot, he boarded a train bound for Hiroshima. The trains he passed that came from Hiroshima were all filled with grotesquely injured people. He waited impatiently for the fire in the city to die out, then walked along at a rapid pace on asphalt that was still hot. He went first to the girls' school where his wife taught. In the ashes of the classroom, he found the bones of schoolchildren; in the ashes of the principal's office, he found a skeleton that appeared to be the principal's. SUMMER FLOWERS

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But he found no skeleton that could have been his wife's. In great haste he went in the direction of their house. That was near Ujina, where houses had merely been knocked flat; they had been spared the fire. But he found no trace of his wife there either. So now, one by one, he checked the corpses lying on the road between his house and the school. Because most of the corpses were lying face down, he had to pull them into a sitting position in order to examine the faces; every last face was grossly disfigured, but none belonged to his wife. In the end, he went looking almost mindlessly, even in places in the opposite direction. In a cistern there were ten or more corpses piled one atop the other. On a ladder leaning on the riverbank, there were three corpses; rigor mortis had frozen them with their hands on the ladder. In a line waiting for the bus, corpses were standing just as they had been; they had died with their fingernails sticking into the shoulder of the person ahead of them in line. He also saw a large group of corpses-an entire unit of the labor corps mobilized from the countryside to clear firebreaks had been annihilated. Those scenes still did not equal the West Parade Ground. That was a mountain of dead soldiers. Yet nowhere did he find his wife's corpse. Visiting in turn every aid station, N. examined the faces of the severely injured. Each face was the very picture of suffering, but none belonged to his wife. Then, having spent three days and three nights examining corpses and burn victims to the point of utter revulsion, N. started all over again, going once more to the charred ruins of the girls' school at which his wife had taught.

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From the Ruins moved to the village of Yahata, I still had lots of energy; I loaded the injured onto the cart and went with them to the hospital, walked here and there to pick up what was being handed out, and kept in touch with Jun'ichi in Hatsukaichi. The house was the outbuilding to a farmhouse in Yahata; Seiji had rented it. From our initial place ofrefuge Yasuko and I ended up moving in with his family. The flies from the cowbarn came swarming boldly into the rooms. They stuck tight to the burned neck of my young niece and did not budge. Throwing down her chopsticks, she screamed frantically. To ward them off, we spread mosquito netting even during the day. Face and back burned, Seiji was stretched out inside the netting, a gloomy expression on his face. The main house was separated from us by a garden, and on the veranda we could see a man with cruelly swollen face-we had already seen so many such faces that we had grown weary of them; in the back, a bed had been laid out for someone apparently even more seriously injured. In the evening we heard a weird delirious voice from over there. He'll die any time now, I thought. Soon thereafter we heard a voice already intoning the nembutsu. It was the husband of the family's eldest daughter who had died; he had been in Hiroshima when the bomb fell, then walked all the way back. After taking to bed, they say, he scratched involuntarily at his burns and in short order developed fever on the brain. No matter when we went, the clinic was crowded with the injured. It took a whole hour to treat a middle-aged woman, carried in by three others-her entire body lacerated by splinters of glass; so we had to wait until afternoon. Some of the people we met no matter when we went: the injured old man brought by handcart, the junior high school student with burns on face and hands-he had been at the East Parade Ground when the bomb fell-and others. When they changed my young niece's bandages, she screamed as if possessed: "Ouch! Ouch! Give me some candy!" With a bittersweet smile, the doctor said, "You say, 'Give me some candy!' but I haven't got any." The room adjoining the examination room was full, too-apparWHEN WE FIRST

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ently, with injured relatives of the doctor who had been brought there; their dying moans were unearthly. While I was transporting the injured, the air raid alarm frequently went off; I even heard planes flying overhead. That day, too, our turn didn't come and didn't come, so I decided to return home for a while and rest; I left the cart just where it stood at the hospital entrance. When Yasuko, who was in the kitchen, saw that I had returned, she said, looking puzzled: "A little while ago they began playing the national anthem; I wonder why." Brought up short, I went straight to the radio in the main house. I couldn't hear the voice of the newscaster distinctly, but the words "cessation of hostilities" were unmistakable. Shocked so deeply I couldn't sit still, I went outside again and set off for the hospital. At the entrance to the hospital, Seiji was still waiting, a vacant look on his face. On seeing him, I said: "What a pity! The war's over, but ... " If only the war had ended a little sooner-these words became a common refrain thereafter. Seiji lost his youngest son; the belongings he had got ready with the intent of evacuating here all went up in flames, too. IN THE EVENING I followed a path amid green rice paddies and descended to the embankment along the Yahata. It was a small shallow stream, the water was clear, and a black dragonfly was resting its wings on a rock. I submerged myself in the water, shirt and all, and heaved a great sigh. Turning my head, I could see the low mountain range quietly changing color in the twilight; the distant peaks sparkled brightly as they caught the slanting rays of sunlight. It was a scene too beautiful to be real. No longer was there fear of air raid; now the broad sky wore an air of deep tranquility. I felt almost like a new person, someone born with that atomic thunderclap. All the same, what of the people who died desperate deaths that day on the riverbed near Nigitsu and on the riverbank by the Izumi Villa?-1 enjoy this tranquil view, but what has become of those charred ruins? The newspaper reports that for 75 years the center of the city will be uninhabitable; people say that there are ten thousand corpses still unidentified, that every night the spirits of the dead wander among the ruins. The fish in the river, too: a few days after the bomb, dead fish floated to the

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surface, and the people who ate them, it is said, soon died. Even people about us who seemed fine at the time died thereafter of blood poisoning, and I was haunted by a stubborn and incomprehensible unease. WE LIVED EVERY DAY in dire need of food. No one in this town extended a helping hand to the victims. Day after day we had to live on a bit of rice gruel; increasingly exhausted, I became absurdly sleepy after eating. When I looked out from the second floor, I saw rice paddies stretching all the way to the foot of the low mountain range. Tall green rice plants quivered under the hot sun. Was this rice the fruit of the land? Or was it there in order to make people hungry? Sky, mountains, green fields: in the eyes of hungry people they might as well not have been there. At night scattered lights appeared in the fields between here and the foot of the mountains. It had been some time since we had seen lights, and the sight was a cheering one, making me feel almost as if I were on a journey. Completely worn out when she finished cleaning up after a meal, Yasuko would come climbing up to the second floor. As if still not wakened from the nightmare of that day, shaking like a leaf, she kept recalling that instant in great detail. Shortly before the bomb fell, she had been about to go to the storehouse to get the luggage ready; had she been in the storehouse, she probably would not have survived. I too had survived only by chance. The young man on the second floor next door had been killed instantly, and he was only the width of a single fence from where I was.-Even now Yasuko trembled when she remembered so vividly a neighborhood child she had seen pinned under. It was a child in her own child's class who had taken part in the mass evacuation to the countryside; but the child had been simply unable to get used to life there, so it had been sent home to its parents. Whenever Yasuko had seen the child playing in the street, she had wanted to call her own child home, if only for a short while. When the flames appeared, she saw this child, pinned under a rafter, lifting its head and appealing to her, "Help!" But try as she could, she wasn't strong enough to help. Many stories of this kind were making the rounds. When the SUMMER FLOWERS

bomb fell, Jun'ichi was pinned under but squirmed out, stood up, and recognized the face of the old woman of the house across the way, also pinned under. Though his first impulse was to rush to her aid, he could not turn a deaf ear to the voices of the schoolgirls screaming over at the factory. His wife's relatives were worse off yet. The Maki home had been a tranquil nest facing the river in Otemachi; after coming back to Hiroshima this spring, I too had gone there once to pay my respects. Otemachi was virtually the epicenter of the atomic bomb. Maki's wife had called for help from the kitchen; yet even with her voice in his ear, Maki had no choice but to rush right out of the house. When their eldest daughter gave birth at the place to which she had fled, she took a sudden turn for the worse, suppurated from the needlemarks left by the blood transfusion, and finally died. And as for the Nagarekawa branch of the family, the husband was away at the front and didn't know what had happened to his wife and children. I had lived in Hiroshima less than half a year, so I didn't know many people; but Seiji's wife and Yasuko were forever gleaning news from somewhere about some neighbor's fate and rejoicing or grieving accordingly. At the factory three of the schoolgirls had died. The second floor, it appeared, had collapsed on top of them; only their skeletons remained, heads touching as if examining a photograph or something. From a very few clues, it was established who they were. But the fate of Miss T., the teacher, was not known. That morning she hadn't shown up yet at the factory. She lived at a temple in Saiku-machi; whether at home or en route, she had probably been killed. In my mind's eye I could still see her, neat and composed. Once, needing some paperwork from her, I went to her place; looking a bit flustered, she scribbled something in a hasty hand and gave it to me. I had taught the schoolgirls English on the second floor of the factory during their lunch hour; gradually the air raid alerts had become more frequent. One time no alert sounded even as the radio was reporting that planes could be heard and seen in the skies over Hiroshima. "What should we do?" I asked her. "I'll let you know if it looks dangerous; please go on with the lesson until then,'' she said. But the HARA TAMIKI

situation was alarming: American planes circling over Hiroshima in broad daylight. One day I finished class, came down from the second floor, and Miss T. was sitting in a corner of the factory all by herself. From a cardboard box beside her there arose frequent peeps. I looked in, and it was full of wriggling chicks. I asked, "Where did you get them?" and she said with a smile, "One of the schoolgirls brought them in." The schoolgirls sometimes brought in flowers. They were either set in water on the desk in the office or placed on Miss T.'s table. When, leaving the factory, the girls streamed out the front door and lined up in the street, Miss T. always supervised them in an inconspicuous way, from a spot a little off to the side. In her hand was a bunch of flowers, and there was something noble about her small, tastefully dressed figure. Supposing disaster had struck while she was on the way to school, her face, too, had probably been transformed into a gruesome sight, like the faces of all the other injured. I often went to the East Asian Travel Office to arrange bus passes for the schoolgirls and the factory workers. The bureau had already moved twice since this spring because its buildings had been razed. The site to which it moved the second time was right in the center of the destruction. There had been a young woman there who knew me by sight; she had a dark complexion and spoke with a lisp, but she seemed intelligent. She too had probably not survived. There was an old man over 70 who often came to the office about his military disability pay. My brother in Hatsukaichi said he saw this old man afterwards, apparently in good health. EVERY NOW AND THEN normal human voices terrified me. When someone over at the barn let out a sudden cry, that cry immediately called to mind the wailing voices of those dying on the riverbed. There must be only the tiniest of differences between voices that rend one's heart and voices making madcap jokes. I became conscious of something abnormal in the corner of my left eye. Four or five days after moving here, when walking the roads in broad daylight, I sensed an insect or something floating and gleaming in the corner of my left eye. I thought it might be refracted light; but sometimes even when I SUMMER FLOWERS

was walking in the shade, something glittered in my eye. And even after dark, even at night, at odd times something bright flickered. Was it because I had seen so many flames? Or because of the blow to the head I had taken? I was in the privy that morning when the bomb fell, so I didn't see the flash everyone else saw; darkness suddenly descended, and something hit me on the head. There was some bleeding from above my left eyelid, but the injury was so slight it left virtually no scar. Is the trauma of that morning still reverberating in my nerves? -but it was a matter of only a few seconds, hardly enough to call a trauma. A SEVERE and excruc1atmg case of diarrhea hit me. The sky had looked threatening since dusk, and the storm struck that night. The lights were off on the second floor; lying there I could hear the wind howling over the rice paddies, loud and clear. The house might be blown away, so Seiji and his family and Yasuko, who were downstairs, fled to the main house. I was alone on the second floor, in bed, listening drowsily to the sound of the wind. Before the house collapsed, I thought, the rain shutters would fly off and the tiles scatter. The extraordinary experience of the bomb had made everyone jumpy. Occasionally, when the wind died down completely, the croaking of frogs reached my ear. But then the wind at once resumed its onslaught, with a vengeance. In bed I too considered what to do if worst came to worst. What to take with me in flight? The satchel right beside me, and that was about it. Each time I went downstairs to the privy, I looked at the sky, and the pitch-black of the sky didn't seem about to grow lighter. There was a crunch, the sound of something cracking. Gritty sand came falling from overhead. Next morning the wind died out completely, but my diarrhea wouldn't stop. I was weak in the knees and tottered when I walked. My nephew, the junior high schooler, had survived the bomb miraculously despite having been out clearing firebreaks; thereafter all his hair had fallen out, and his health had gradually failed. Then small pink dots had begun to appear on his limbs. On examining my body that morning, I too found pink dots, albeit very few of them. To be on the safe side, I went to the hospital to be examined; the injured 66

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overflowed out into the garden. One woman there had moved from Onomichi to Hiroshima and was at Otemachi when the bomb fell. Her hair hadn't fallen out, but that morning she had begun to spit up blood. She was apparently pregnant, and her weary face wore an unfathomable disquiet and signs that death was approaching. THE FAMIL y of my elder sister in Funairi Kawaguchi-cha had survived: that report came from my brother in Hatsukaichi. Her husband had been confined to his sickbed since spring, and everyone figured the family could not have survived. But although the house was damaged, the fire had spared it. Her son was now suffering greatly from dysentery, so they asked that Yasuko come and help. Yasuko wasn't any too well herself; but deciding to go see him anyway, she set out. Next day she came back from Hiroshima and told me how, much to her surprise, she had bumped into Nishida on the streetcar. Nishida had been employed at the factory for the last twenty years. That morning he had not yet reported for work, so we figured he had been en route when the flash came and was surely done for. In the streetcar Yasuko saw a man whose face was burned black and swollen all out of shape. All the passengers were staring at him; but almost as if nothing were the matter, he was asking the conductor something. Yasuko thought his voice sounded really quite like Nishida's, so she approached him; he recognized her and greeted her in a loud voice. That was his first excursion into the outside world from the place where he was being treated .... It was more than a month later when I saw Nishida, and by then the burns on his face had already scabbed over. He said he and his bicycle had both been sent flying, and that even after he had been carried to the treatment center, he had had a very rough time. Almost all the injured around him died, and maggots bred in his ear: "The maggots were always trying to get into the ear canal; it was unbearable." He spoke with his head tilted to the side, as if being tickled. ONCE SEPTEMBER CAME, there was rain and more rain. My nephew's hair had fallen out, and he had lost heart; now he suddenly took a turn for the worse. He was bleeding from the nose, and from his throat too SUMMER FLOWERS

came a stream of blood clots. The crisis would. likely come tonight, they said. So from Hatsukaichi my brother's family joined us at the bedside. My nephew had the smooth pale face and wholly bald head of a monk, and he had been dressed in a silk garment with small stripes. Stretched out dead tired, he looked like a weird bunraku puppet. The cotton plug in his nostril was soaked with blood; the basin was colored bright red from his vomit. His father tried fervently to keep his spirits up, saying in a low voice: "Come on! You can make it!" Oblivious of his own burns, which had not yet healed, he was completely absorbed in nursing the boy. Miraculously, when the anxious night gave way to day, my nephew had held his ground. A classmate had fled to safety with my nephew; word came from his parents that the boy had died. The energetic old man from the insurance company, too, whom my brother had seen in Hatsukaichi, began to bleed from the gums and soon died. He had been within 200 meters of me when the bomb fell. My stubborn diarrhea gradually subsided, but there was nothing I could do to halt the weakening of my body. My hair, too, got conspicuously thinner. Autumn deepened: the low mountains close by were enveloped completely in white mist; the rice in the paddies rustled ripely in the breeze. Dozing, I had a rambling dream. Watching the light of the evening lamps as it spilled onto the surface of the rice paddies soaked in rain, 1 thought repeatedly of my wife's deathbed. The first anniversary of her death was approaching; I got the feeling that I was still in that familiar house we had rented in Chiba, shut in with her by the rain. I almost never thought of the Hiroshima house, which had been reduced to ashes. But in early morning dreams I often saw the house just after the bomb fell. I saw various treasures of mine, strewn about, to be sure. Books, paper, desk had all been turned to ash; but in my inmost heart I felt a sense of elation. I wanted to try writing about it with every ounce of power that was in me. One morning the rain lifted, and a cloudless blue sky spread out over the low mountains. To the eyes of one long beset by the extended rainy spell, that blue sky seemed too good to be true. Indeed, the break in the weather lasted barely a day; next morning the grim rain 68

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clouds returned. From the home of my late wife came word that her brother had died; though sent special delivery, the message had taken ten days to get here. He had been commuting to Hiroshima by train; we had heard that on the sixth he had escaped without a scratch and that afterwards too he had been energetic and active. Coming on top of that report, this word of his death stunned me. There must still be some harmful substance in Hiroshima; even people who set out from the countryside healthy, they say, come back unsteady. Utterly exhausted from nursing both husband and son, my sister in Funairi Kawaguchi-cha had taken to her bed, too; so once more they asked Yasuko to help out. It happened the day after Yasuko left for Hiroshima. Beginning that morning, the radio warned of a typhoon; at dusk the winds grew more and more violent. The wind brought heavy rains, and in the pitch-black night it howled with rage. As I lay drowsing on the second floor, there came from below the sound of rain shutters being opened noisily and, out in the paddy, people talking. There was a sound like that of rushing water. The embankment had collapsed. Before long Seiji and his family roused me so we could all seek refuge in the main house. My nephew still could not walk, so Seiji picked him up, bedding and all, and carried him along the dark corridor to the big house. There everyone was up, looking anxious. Nothing like the collapse of the embankment of the river had happened, it seemed, for ages. "This is what happens when you lose a war," lamented the farmer's wife. The wind shook the front door of the big house violently. A thick log had been braced against it. Next morning the storm had gone on its way, and it was as if nothing had happened. The rice stalks were all bent in the direction the typhoon had gone; thick red clouds drifted at the edge of the mountains .... It was two or three days later that we heard that the railroad had become impassable and that nearly all the bridges of Hiroshima had been swept away. THE FIRST anniversary of my wife's death was approaching, so I had had it in mind to go to Hongo. The temple in Hiroshima where her ashes were buried had burned down completely; but in the place of SUMMER FLOWERS

her birth lived her mother, who had nursed her until the end. Still, rail service was said to be suspended, and the extent of the damage was not clear. In an attempt to find out more about how things stood, I went to Hatsukaichi Station. The newspaper had been pasted on the wall of the station; it carried reports of the damage. As of now, it appeared the trains were running between Otake and Aki-Nakano; how soon the entire route would be open was not known, but October IO was the estimated date for the reopening of the line between Aki-Nakano and Hachihommatsu. So even going simply by that, the trains wouldn't be running for two weeks. The newspaper also contained figures on the flood damage within Hiroshima Prefecture; a two-week interruption of rail service was absolutely unprecedented. I was lucky enough to buy a ticket to Hiroshima, so on the spur of the moment I decided to go to Hiroshima Station. This would be my first visit since that day. All was well as far as Itsukaichi. But little by little, beginning already when the train entered Koi Station, traces of destruction became evident outside the window. The pine trees on the hillsides had been mowed down and tossed about; they too bespoke the horror of that moment. Still lying where they had been hurled in that instant, roofs and fences stretched on, a continuous black; here and there empty concrete shells and rust-red girders lay jumbled together. As for Yokogawa Station, only the platforms were left. The train moved on into an area in which the destruction was even more severe. Those passengers who were traveling past for the first time could only stare in astonishment; as for me, I could still feel the glowing embers of that day. The train crossed the iron bridge, and Tokiwa Bridge came into sight. Behind the burned riverbank, giant trees, burned black, clawed the sky, and endless piles of cinders undulated like serpents. On that day of the bomb, on this riverbed, there had been a demonstration of human suffering beyond words; but now the water of the river was flowing quiet and clear. What is more, having taken a new lease on life, people were now trooping across the bridge whose railing had been blown off Once past Nigitsu Park, we could see the East Parade Ground, burned out; a bit higher up, the stone steps of Toshogu Shrine glittered like a fragment of a grisly nightmare. I had camped out in those precincts, mixed in among the

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injured, so many of whom had died one after the other. The black black memory of those days seemed still to be engraved vividly on those stone steps. I got off at Hiroshima Station and joined the line for the bus to Ujina. If I went from Ujina to Onomichi by ship, I could go then from Onomichi to Hongo by train; but without going to Ujina, I couldn't tell whether the ship was operating. The bus left at two-hour intervals; the line of people waiting for the bus stretched several blocks. The hot sun shone overhead, and in the shadeless square the line did not move. If I went now to Ujina and back, I would not be in time to make the train home. I gave up and left the line. Intending to have a look at the ruins of the house, I crossed Enka Bridge and proceeded directly along the road toward Nobori-cho. The destruction to left and right still called to mind some of my feelings as I fled on the day of the bomb. When I came to Kyobashi, the burned-out embankment stretched as far as the eye could see; distances were far more compressed than they had been. Come to think of it, I had noticed some time before that the mountains were clearly visible beyond the endless heaps of ruins. No matter how far one went, there were the same ashes; but in some places, strangely enough, there were piles of countless glass bottles, and in others only steel helmets had been blown into one spot. In a daze, I stood before the ruins of the house and thought of how I had fled that day. The rocks of the garden and the pond were still there, in fine shape; but with the charred trees it was impossible to tell what kind of tree they had been. The tiles of the kitchen sink were still there, unbroken. The faucet had been blown away; even now a broken stream of water issued from the pipe. That day, right after the calamity, I had used this water to wash the blood off my face. Even though from time to time people came and went along the road on which I was now standing, for a while I was possessed by the scene. Then I went back again in the direction of the station, and from somewhere or other a stray dog appeared. Its eyes wore a singular expression, as if it were frightened; now ahead of me, now behind, it kept me company. I had an hour before the train left, and the western sun burned SUMMER FLOWERS

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down on the exposed plaza. The station building, of which only the shell remained, was a black cavern and looked about to collapse even now; a wire had been strung up, with signs: "Danger! Keep out!" The canvas roof of the ticket counter was anchored by a pile of stones. Men and women in ragged clothes squatted here and there, and about every last one of them flies were buzzing unpleasantly. Given the recent heavy rain, there should have been fewer flies; but they were still rampant. However, with both legs stretched out on the ground and munching something black, the men seemed utterly heedless of the flies and talked as if of third persons: "Walked twenty kilometers yesterday"; "Wonder where to camp out tonight." As I watched, an old woman with a vacant look on her face approached and asked in a comical tone, "Isn't the train leaving yet? Where do they punch the tickets?" Before I could tell her, she said, "Ah, is that so?" thanked me, and went off. Something was undoubtedly wrong with her, too. An old man in geta, feet badly swollen, said something listlessly to his companion, another old man. IN THE TRAIN on the way back that day, I overheard someone say that a trial run on the Kure line would begin the next day; so on the next day but one I set off again for Hatsukaichi, intending to take the Kure line to Hongo. However, they had taken down the train schedule, so I took the streetcar to Koi. Having got that far, I figured I might as well go to Ujina; but the trolley bridge had collapsed, so from that point on the connection was via ferry, and I heard that there was nearly an hour's wait for the next one. So deciding to go once again to Hiroshima Station, I sat down on a bench at Koi Station. All sorts of people were thrown together in that narrow space. One person said he had come that morning by ship from Onomichi; someone else said he had walked here after getting off a boat at Yanaizu. People asked each other about their own destinations, saying all the while that the situation wasn't clear because reports varied, so how could they know unless they went there themselves? Among them were five or six demobilized soldiers carrying large bundles; the pop-eyed one opened his bag and pressed a package of white rice packed in a sock on the merchant woman beside him. 72

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"It's because I'm so sorry for her, that's why. She's off to collect her soldier's ashes; I can't just leave her like this," he muttered to himself. Then a man came up and said, "How about selling me some?" "Impossible! We've come back from Korea, see, and we still have to get to Tokyo. On the way we'll have to walk forty kilometers, eighty." Saying this, the pop-eyed fellow produced a wool blanket and muttered, "Want to buy this off me?" On reaching Hiroshima Station, I learned that the report was false: trains on the Kure line were not running. I was at a loss what to do, but then it occurred to me to visit my sister's house in Funairi Kawaguchi-cha. From Hatchobori to Dobashi a streetcar was running on a single set of tracks. From Dobashi in the direction of Eba, my way lay through ruins. I saw a single streetcar sitting there that had not burned, but I saw nothing resembling a house. Presently a farm field came into view and, beyond it, a single compound spared by the flames. It appeared that the fire had burned right up to the field, that my sister's house had been saved at the last moment. Still, the fence was twisted, the roof torn, and the main entrance a mess. Coming around from the back gate, I got to the veranda. My sister, my nephew, and Yasuko were all sick in bed, pillows lined up in a row underneath mosquito netting. Even Yasuko, who had come to help out, had fallen ill here; two or three days ago she had taken to bed. When my sister realized I was there, she called out from inside the netting: "Let me have a look at you! Come over here and show me your face! I heard you too were ill." The talk turned to the events of the day of the bomb. That day my sister luckily had not even been injured. But my nephew had a slight injury, so they had set off for Eba to get it treated. But that hadn't helped at all. Each time he saw a badly burned person along the way, my nephew had felt worse; since then he had been in poor spirits. The night of the bomb the flames had burned right up to where they were; my sister had sat shuddering in the air raid trenchthey could not move my sick brother-in-law. Then, too, the typhoon of several days ago had been fierce here. The broken roof, she said, had seemed again about to fly off, rain had leaked in, and the wind had come blowing in through every crack, relentlessly; they had SUMMER FLOWERS

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thought they were done for. Even now, looking up, I could see large cracks in the roof, exposed as it was because the ceiling had caved in. In this neighborhood the water still was nol running, the electricity was off, and night and day it was unsafe. I went to the next room to say hello to my brother-in-law; a small mosquito net was spread in one corner of a room whose walls were cracked and pillars bent, and he was lying there. He had a fever or something, which gave his red and swollen face a vacant look; when I spoke, he only panted, "It's rough! Rough!" Having rested two or three hours at my sister's house, I went back to Hiroshima Station and returned in the evening to Hatsukaichi, going to Jun'ichi's house. To my surprise Yasuko's son Shiro had turned up. The place to which he had been evacuated had also been cut off by the flooding of several days ago; it had taken him three whole days, accompanied by his teacher, to get back here. From heel to knee he had countless marks where fleas had got him, but he looked in pretty good shape. Deciding to take him along with me to Yahata the next day, I stayed that night at Jun'ichi's. But somehow I couldn't sleep. The spectacle of the ashes, in all its detail, and the sight of dazed people came back to life in my sleepless head. I remembered the breeze that all of a sudden had blown in through the bus windows as I rode from Hatchobori to the station; it had carried a strange smell. Beyond a doubt, it was the stench of death. Beginning at dawn I heard the sound of rain. Next day in the rain I returned to Yahata, taking along my nephew. Barefoot, he trudged along after me. MY SISTER-IN-LAW grieved for her dead son every day, constantly. That was what it was, her muttering as she worked in the small damp kitchen. And their belongings, too, would not have gone up in flames had they been sent off a bit sooner: this had become virtually her stock refrain. Seiji listened to her in silence; but sometimes, unable to contain himself, he was gruff with her. Trembling with hunger, Yasuko's son caught locusts and such and ate them. Two of Seiji' s sons had left with the evacuation of the schoolchildren; since the trains weren't running, they still hadn't returned. The long spell of bad weather finally

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lifted, and fine fall weather arrived, clear and dry. The rice ears trembled, and the big drums for the village festival reverberated. In total absorption, the people of the village carried the festival palanquin along the embankment. Stomachs empty, we stared after them in a daze. One morning word came that my brother-in-law in Funairi Kawaguchi-cha had died. Seiji and I exchanged glances and got ready to set out for the funeral ceremonies. The two of us walked at a brisk pace along the river to the streetcar stop, four kilometers or more away. So he had died, after all. We could not but feel his death deeply. What appeared to my mind's eye first was something that happened when I visited his office after coming back to Hiroshima this spring. He was wearing an old overcoat and clinging to a hibachi that was burning green wood; his voice trembled as he said, "I'm cold, I'm cold." He had become frail both in speech and in bearing; he had aged appreciably. Soon after that he took to his bed. The doctor's examination revealed that his lungs had been damaged; but that was something people who had known him before simply couldn't believe. There was suddenly more white in his hair; one day when I went to see him, he raised his head and talked of various things. He foresaw already that defeat was approaching, and he gave vent to his indignation: the people, he said softly, had been fooled by the military. I had never expected to hear such words from him. Once, about the time the China Incident began, he had got drunk and had given me a very hard time. He had served a long stint as an army engineer; people like me probably went against his grain. I knew many things about the life he led after marrying my sister. I could write volumes about him. When we reached Koi, we transferred to streetcar. The streetcars were running as far as Temma-cho; from there one made connections by walking across a temporary bridge to the other side. Even this temporary bridge, it appeared, had been open only in the last day or so. People walked cautiously over the planks-the bridge was three feet wide, and only one person at a time could cross. (It was a long time before the railway bridge was restored, and one had to go by foot, so SUMMER FLOWERS

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for some time the black market flourished in this sector.) We arrived at my sister's house before noon. Four or five relatives had gathered in the guest room with its fallen ceiling and cracked walls. Looking at all of us, my sister said through her tears, "He wanted the children to have everything there was to eat, so he wouldn't take a lunch to work; instead, he would walk to a porridge shop and make do with that." The body lay in the next room, a white cloth covering the face. In death his face called to mind the charcoal in a hibachi after the fire has gone out. When it got late, even the streetcars stopped running, so we had to complete the cremation in daylight. Neighborhood people transported the corpse and made the preparations. Presently we all left my sister's house and walked to a field four or five blocks past her house. Not in a coffin but simply wrapped in sheets, my brother-in-law's body had been carried to an open area at the edge of the field. Many corpses had been cremated here since the atomic bomb; scraps of wood from demolished buildings had been piled up for fuel. We all made a circle, with my brother-in-law's body in the center, a priest dressed in standard civilian attire read the sutra, and someone set fire to the straw. My brother-in-law's son, ten years old, burst out crying. Quietly, sadly, the wood caught fire. The early evening sky, threatening rain, was already getting darker moment by moment. We said our goodbyes there, then hurried back. Coming out onto the embankment along the river, Seiji and I hurried down the road to the temporary bridge at Temma-cho. At our feet, the river had become completely dark, and there wasn't a single light to be seen in the ruins that stretched out along the other side. The dark, chill path continued on and on. We could feel the stench of death in the air, wafted out of nowhere. We had heard quite a while ago that in this area there were countless corpses under the rubble and still not disposed of, that it had become a breeding ground for maggots. Even now the pitch-black ruins seemed darkly threatening. Then faintly I heard the crying of a baby. My ears weren't playing tricks; as we walked, the voice gradually grew more distinct. It was a vigorous, sad voice, but how innocent! Were people already HARA TAMIKI

living there, and babies crying? An indescribable emotion wrenched at my heart. MR. MAKI had returned from Shanghai, recently demobilized; but on returning, he found his house, wife, and children all gone. That was why he stayed with my sister in Hatsukaichi and sometimes set off for Hiroshima. Today, more than four months have passed since the atomic bomb. If a missing person hasn't turned up yet, one really has to resign oneself to his death. Still, Mr. Maki made the rounds of the likely places, beginning with his wife's birthplace; but at each and every stop he heard only condolences. He went twice to the ashes of the Nagarekawa house. Here and there victims told him their personal accounts. In fact, in Hiroshima even now someone, somewhere was forever telling and retelling the events of August 6. There was the story of the man who, in searching for his wife, lifted up the corpses of several hundred women in order to examine their faces; not a single one still had a wristwatch on. There was the story about the woman who died in front of the radio station in Nagarekawa, doubled over as if to prevent the flames from reaching her baby. And, a change of topic, there was the story about a certain island in the Inland Sea: on that day all the males in the village had been mobilized for labor service clearing firebreaks, so all the women in the village had become widows; later, they had gone to the village chief's house to demand an apology. Mr. Maki liked listening to such stories on the streetcar, in corners of stations, and it soon became a kind of habit of his to go again and again to Hiroshima. Of course, he also went as well to the black markets at Koi Station and in front of Hiroshima Station. But more than a practical matter, it became a consolation of sorts to wander among the ashes. Before, you had to climb a rather tall building to see all the way to the Chugoku range; now, no matter where you walked, the range was visible, and even the island mountains of the Inland Sea appeared right before your eyes. The mountains seemed to look down at the people of the ashes, asking what in the world had happened. And rash people were already beginning, impetuously, to erect crude shacks among the ruins. This city had prospered as a milSUMMER FLOWERS

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itary city; Mr. Maki tried to imagine the form it might take from now on, as it came back to life. A peaceful city encircled by luxuriant green trees: the vision floated hazily before his mind's eye. As he walked, thinking vaguely of one thing and another, Mr. Maki was often greeted by people he didn't recognize. Long ago he had hung out his shingle as a doctor, so he thought they might be patients who remembered him. Still, it was strange. He first noticed it, in fact, when walking the muddy road leading from Koi to Temma Bridge. Rain had just begun to fall; from the opposite direction came a man, apparently a beggar, wrapped in tattered clothing and carrying on his head a broken piece of rusty red sheet metal. Holding the piece of metal over his head in place of an umbrella, he stuck his face unexpectedly out from behind the edge, his glittering eyes looked hard and inquiringly at Mr. Maki's face, and he appeared on the point of introducing himself. But then disappointment quickly showed in his eyes, and he hid his face behind the sheet metal. When Mr. Maki was riding on crowded streetcars, too, someone on the other side of the car would frequently nod to him. When in an unguarded moment he nodded back, the person would say something like "My heavens! Mr. Yamada, isn't it?"-a case of mistaken identity. When he told this story to others, he learned that he was not the only one to have strangers greet him. Indeed, in Hiroshima even now someone was always trying to find someone.

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Prelude to Annihilation A POWDERY SNOW had been falling since morning. The traveler had spent the night in the city, and enticed by the powdery snow he went walking toward the river. Honkawa Bridge was very close to the place he had stayed. The name itself--Honkawa Bridge: it too he recalled from the distant past. It seemed still to hold memories of his middle school days long ago. The powdery snow sharpened his eyesight, already keen. Coming to a stop at about the middle of the bridge and looking toward the shore, he noticed an antiquated billboard advertising "Honkawa Dumplings." All at once he seemed to sink into that marvelously peaceful landscape of long ago. But then a shudder welled up inside him, beyond his control. In that tranquil moment mantled in powdery snow, there had flashed into his mind a vision of a most gruesome end of the world .... He set all this down in a letter and sent it to a friend who lived here. Then he left the city and traveled to distant parts .... THE RECIPIENT of that letter was looking out his second-floor window, daydreaming. Immediately under his gaze was the small earthen storehouse next door; near the roof, one patch of white had peeled away, exposing coarse red mud-the sight made him lonely, for only things like that one tiny patch still looked the way he remembered them looking long ago .... His current residence in the city was a matter of the recent past; he had been away for a long time, and now it all seemed to be a world to which he had no ties. What had happened to them, the mountains and rivers that had nourished his boyhood dreams? Letting his feet take him where they would, he walked, gazing at the scenes this place of his birth offered. Crowned with late spring snow, the Chugoku range and the rivers that flowed at its feet made only a faint impression because of the hubbub in the city, awkward in its wartime role of armed camp. People he came upon in the streets treated him brusquely. Yet even in the midst of the high tension, one still found pockets of the old languor-a weird world. . . . He found himself pondering the shudder his friend had experiSUMMER FLOWERS

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enced and written about in the letter. A hellish cataclysm beyond imagining-moreover, one that would arise in an instant. Should that happen, wouldn't he perish along with this city? Or had he returned in order to see with his own eyes the final hour of this city of his birth? His fate was a fifty-fifty proposition. Perhaps, somehow, this city would survive unharmed, unscathed?-such selfish, fatuous thoughts also flitted through his head. His HANDSOME black woolen jacket tied at the hips with a black sash, his cleanly shaven chin shining, feet apart, Seiji stood with a busy air in the doorway of Sho:ZO's room. "Hey-off your duffl" The gentleness of Seiji's glance belied the harshness of his words. Squatting beside the desk on which Shozo was writing a letter, he riffled through the pictures in Winckelmann's Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Art, a copy of which was lying there. Shozo put down his pen and watched his elder brother silently. As a young man, this elder brother of his had once had a passion for art history-might it not hold attraction for him even now? ... But Seiji immediately shut the book with a bang. To Shozo, that sound was a continuation of the "Hey-off your duffl" of a moment ago. More than a month had passed since he had found his way back to his eldest brother's house, but he still had no job, and he continued simply to stay up late and sleep late. Compared with Shozo, this second brother lived each day in a disciplined way, tensely. Even after the factory closed, the lights in the office were sometimes on late into the night. One time Shozo happened to come down the alley and look in at the office; there was Seiji, sitting alone at the desk, writing away. Putting his seal on the monthly wage packets to be handed to the factory workers, readying the documents to be sent to the mobilization office: his contentment in handling such bureaucratic chores could be read even in his characteristic handwriting. Various announcements were stuck to the office walls in neat letters, as well-formed as if they had been set in type .... As Shozo looked admiringly at those signs, Seiji swung his swivel chair toward the coal stove that still hadn't gone out; saying, "How about a cigarette?" he produced a crumpled pack of cigarettes from a desk 80

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drawer, then turned on the radio that was sitting on the shelf. The radio warned of crisis at Iwojima. They couldn't avoid talking about the prospects of the war. Seiji merely mentioned his doubts; Shozo uttered words that clearly showed his despair.... At night, when the alarm sounded, Seiji would generally come hurrying to the office. Less than five minutes after the alarm, the front bell rings stridently. Sleepy-faced, Shozo opens the shutters from the inside, and outside are two young girls. They are workers at the factory who are on guard duty. One of them calls to Shozo: "Good evening!" Shozo immediately feels touched, that he too should look sharp. He gropes his way through the darkness of the office and turns on the radio and its dial light; about then, a fidgety Seiji shows up, wearing a heavy cotton air raid hood. "Anyone there?" Seiji calls in the direction of the light and sits down in a chair; but he immediately stands up again and goes to take a look around the factory. The morning after the alert, too, Seiji comes to work on his bicycle, bright and early. And it is he who comes to the second floor rear, where Shozo is sleeping late, to admonish him, "Are you going to sleep all day?" Now, too, Shozo read the usual admonition in Seiji's busy air; putting Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Art back in its place, Seiji suddenly asked, "Where's Jun'ichi gone?" "He got a phone call this morning; he's probably gone to Takasu." A slight smile in his eyes, Seiji lay down with a sigh and muttered softly, "Again? What a pain!" He seemed to be waiting to hear Shozo blab about the doings of their eldest brother, Jun'ichi. But Shozo hadn't really figured out the recent trouble between Jun'ichi and his wife, and Jun'ichi never said anything more about it than he had to. SINCE THE DAY Shozo had come back to his eldest brother's house, he had sensed something amiss in its atmosphere. It was not the black cloth covering the lights and the blackout curtains hanging everywhere, nor was it merely the manner in which they had failed to welcome this younger brotherwhose wife had died and who in this time of general hardship had had no choice but to find his way here. No, something beyond bearing lurked in the house. Harsh shadows were SUMMER FLOWERS

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sometimes etched onjun'ichi's face, and he sensed in his sister-in-law Takako's face some anguish, rankling obscurely. Even his two middle schooler nephews, who had been mobilized to work at Mitsubishi, were strangely quiet, their faces gloomy.... One day sister-in-law Takako disappeared from the house. Then began Jun'ichi's harried solo departures, and the management of the house was entrusted to their younger sister, a young widow living in the neighborhood. Even late at night this sister, Yasuko by name, came to Shozo's room on the second floor and chattered on and on about all sorts of things. Shozo learned that this wasn't the first time his sister-in-law had disappeared, that twice already the care of the house had been entrusted to Yasuko. This woman in her thirties, sister-in-law to Takako, described for him the atmosphere of the house, a description that was filled with conjecture and distortion. For that very reason, parts of it stuck firmly in his mind .... In the family room out back, hung with blackout curtains, a kotatsu with its attached quilt ofluxurious damask glowed red, lit by the light of the stand-there he occasionally spotted Jun'ichi, apparently in very low spirits. The sight told Shozo something extremely sad. But the next morning Jun'ichi would get into his work clothes and speedily begin packing for the evacuation. His face would hold nothing but arrogance and menace .... From time to time, long-distance calls would come, and Jun'ichi would set off with a busy air. In Takasu, it seemed, there was a mediator-but Shozo knew no more than that .... Yasuko attributed these changes in their sister-in-law over the last few years to her having been spoiled by the luxuries the war had brought-luxuries compared to all the troubles the war had imposed on Yasuko herself--and she talked apprehensively as if this latest perplexing disappearance might well be a physiological phenomenon brought on by menopause .... Occasionally, as she was chattering on, Seiji came and listened silently. Then, interrupting: "In short, she has no mind to work. But she could show a little consideration for the factory workers." Yasuko nods assent: "She's a lady ofleisure, all the way." But when Shozo comes out with "Still, I wonder if the untruths of this war aren't destroying all our souls," Seiji replies with a smile: HARA TAMIKI

"No, it's not that complicated. She's just angry because all her luxuries are finally at an end." More than a week after Takako flounced out of the house, she returned as if nothing had happened. But apparently something was still unresolved, and after four or five days she disappeared again. Jun'ichi's pursuit began all over. Head high, he declared: "This time she'll be away a good while." He also made snide remarks about his younger brothers: "Shilly shally, and everyone will make fun of you. You're past the age of forty, and you still don't know how to deal with people?" ... In both his elder brothers Shozo had detected characteristics that he shared, a fact that sometimes gave him an unpleasant feeling. Yasuko, who was acting as supervisor of the Mori Works, pointed out the ineptness in their behavior toward people at large. That ineptness was part of Shozo's makeup, too .... But how his brothers had changed during the long time he had been away! Still, was it likely that Shozo himself had not changed at all? ... No. Exposed to the dangers threatening every day, every last one of them was changing and would continue to change; of that there could be no doubt. He would watch it with his own eyes to the very end .... These thoughts came floating of their own accord into Shozo's head. "I T's HERE!" Seiji produced a slip of paper and passed it to Shozo. It was the notice calling Shozo up into the reserves. Shoz6 stared at the paper and read it again, to the very last punctuation mark. "May?" he murmured. Shozo was no longer so frightened as he had been last year when he was mobilized for training in the militia. Still, seeing the anguished expression on Shozo's face, Seiji said, "What's the problem? Nowadays they don't send you overseas any more; no big deal." His nonchalant words masked his real concern. . . . May-two months from now; Shozo asked himself, would the war last that long? Shozo often walked aimlessly about the city. Taking Yasuko's son Kan'ichi with him, he went to the Izumi Villa; it had been a long time since his last visit. In the old days, when he was a child, he too had often been taken there; now, as then, the trees and the water lay hushed in the warm rays of the early spring sun. The thought immeSUMMER FLOWERS

diately flashed into his mind: an ideal place to flee to .... From late forenoon on, the movie theaters were full, and the lunchrooms in the entertainment quarter were always crowded. Shozo walked on, taking byroads he still remembered; but nowhere could he find any of the things that had engraved themselves on his child's mind, any of the things for which he yearned. A unit of soldiers led by a noncommissioned officer appeared suddenly from a cross street, singing a sad and heroic song. Wearing white headbands, a unit of the schoolgirl labor corps came marching in step like soldiers and also passed him. . . . Standing on a bridge and looking upstream, Shozo could see many hills whose names he did not know; from the direction of the Inland Sea at the other edge of the city, the island hills peeked out from behind tall buildings. Shozo almost felt like calling out to all these hills surrounding the city. . . . One evening two young women passing the corner caught his eye. They piqued his curiosity: with their healthy bodies and full permanents, were they perhaps tomorrow's new type? Shozo followed them and tried to overhear what they were saying. "We'll be okay, see, as long as we've got potatoes." The voice was horrible: dull and worn out.

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that some sixty schoolgirls would come to work at the garment factory in the Mori Works. Seiji toiled like a beaver on preparations for the reception for them; as the day neared, even Shozo, who until now had been loafing around, showed up at the office of his own accord and was put to work. Wearing new work clothes and shuffling his geta noisily, Shozo carried chairs from the storehouse; there was something ungainly in his manner, as if he were resisting unaccustomed labor. ... Chairs had been moved, curtains had been hung, the program written by Seiji had been posted: the hall stood ready. The ceremony was supposed to begin at 9. But the air raid alarm had sounded early that morning, so the schedule got all fouled up. "Planes over Okayama, Bingo, Matsuyama ... ": moment by moment the radio reported the attacks of carrier-based aircraft. About the time Shozo finished getting ready, the antiaircraft guns roared out. It was the first antiaircraft fire heard in the city; leaden, the sky seemed HAD BEEN ARRANGED

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to reflect the somewhat heightened tension. But no planes were to be seen, and once they downgraded the alarm to an alert for the time being, people became merely fidgety. . . . When Shozo entered the office, he bumped into Ueda, who was wearing a metal helmet. "They've finally come. My, oh me," said Ueda, who commuted to work from the country. Even now, Ueda's stout body and the face through which his candid spirit shone somehow evoked in Shozo a sense of reassurance. Then Seiji appeared, wearing a jacket. He tried to smile gallantly, but his eyes were bright with excitement .... It happened when Ueda and Seiji had gone out front and Shozo was sitting alone in a chair. For a while, he was daydreaming, thinking of nothing at all; suddenly, there was a whistling noise from the direction of the roof and then a crash. Thinking something was falling right on his head, Shozo looked quickly toward the window. For a moment the second floor eaves across the way and the top of the pine in the garden engraved themselves onto his retina with an extraordinary intensity. The noise did not come again. Soon people came crowding back from out front. With a twisted smile on his face, Miura said: "Ah, what a shock! Scared the pants off me." ... When the alert was lifted, people in great numbers began to pass by along the street. Amid the bustle, one could even sense a mood, somehow, of jauntiness. Someone brought in a piece of shrapnel; he said he had picked it up right over there. Next day, wearing white headbands, the class of schoolgirls streamed in, led by their principal and the teacher in charge, and were taken immediately to the hall. When the factory workers too had all been seated, Shozo and Miura sat down together at the very back. Shozo listened in a perfunctory manner to the address of the man from the mobilization section of the prefectural government and to the words of instruction from the principal. Then Jun'ichi took the rostrum, a fine figure in his civilian uniform. Shozo perked up and listened carefully to each word and phrase of his speech. Jun'ichi must have had experience in this kind of ceremony; his voice and demeanor were both crisp. But there were also moments when he seemed to stumble somewhat on a word-rather, on the contradiction between what he was saying and what he really felt. While Shozo was observSUMMER FLOWERS

ing him closely, Jun'ichi looked straight at him. Jun'ichi's eyes shone strangely, as if flinging some sort of challenge .... The schoolgirls sang a song; then, from that day on, they streamed cheerfully into the factory. They appeared early each morning; in the evening, lined up in precise order, they were led off by their teacher. They brought something fresh to the works and added a little charm. Their sweetness, too, struck Shozo. Shozo was counting buttons in a corner of the office. The buttons were scattered on the tabletop, and he was supposed to sort them into piles of one hundred. Jun'ichi was meeting with some visitors but kept a close eye on him; as Shozo continued languidly and clumsily, his fingers not accustomed to the task, Jun'ichi called out, as if finally fed up: "That's no way to count! It isn't a game, you know!" Katayama had kept on scribbling a letter, but now he set his pen down and came over. "Ah, that? Try it this way." With a kindly air, Katayama showed him how. Younger than he and full of vigor, this Katayama was frighteningly smart and always two jumps ahead of Shozo. after the carrier-based planes appeared over the city, the air raid alarm sounded again. The planes flew in over Bungo Strait but turned away at Sada Point and streamed toward Kyushu. This time the city escaped unscathed, but now people and city both experienced a sudden loss of confidence. As military units were dispatched to raze building after building, the evacuation continued day and night. In the early afternoon, after everyone else had left the office, Shozo sat alone, immersed in the lwanami paperback edition of The Discovery of Zero. There was something that strangely moved him in the story of the French officer, a prisoner of the Russian army at the time of the Napoleonic wars, who in his mortification lost himself in the study of mathematics .... Then Seiji came bustling back. From the expression on his face it was clear that he was worked up about something. "Jun'ichi still isn't back?" "Apparently not," answered Shozo, with an abstracted air. As before, Jun'ichi often was off somewhere; how the trouble between ON THE NINTH DAY

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him and Takako had gone recently, no third party could judge. "We can't just sit here!" burst out Seiji, anger in his voice. "Go out and take a look. They've gone and razed both Takeya-cho road and the neighborhood of Hirataya-cho. The Army Clothing Depot is about to be evacuated!" "Come to that, has it? That shows Hiroshima's about three months behind Tokyo." Shozo muttered this comment offhandedly; but Seiji stared unblinkingly at him, the expression on his face sterner still: "You have to think, don't you, that Hiroshima is lucky to be that far behind." ... With its many children, Seiji's house had recently been thrown into confusion by one thing after another. Clothes to be sent off were spread out in every single room; moreover, two of the children were part of the group evacuation and were to leave soon, so getting them ready was a big deal all by itself. Mitsuko did not have a deft hand, and she worked at a snail's pace; occasionally she wasted time in idle chatter. When Seiji came back from being out, he was always irritated, and he took it out on his wife. But when supper was over, he usually withdrew into the back room and pedaled away at the sewing machine. He was sewing up a rucksack. However, there were already two rucksacks in the house, so a third didn't seem all that urgent a matter. But Seiji was absorbed in the excitement of making it. Muttering "Damn! Damn!" he plied his needle. "I'll be switched ifl can't do a better job than a rucksack maker." In fact, the rucksack he made was better than what a poor rucksack maker would have turned out .... Thus Seiji continued to divert himself in Seiji-like ways; but today, on reporting at the Army Clothing Depot and being ordered to evacuate the factory, he had felt the ground suddenly give way beneath him. Then, on his way back, he approached Takeya-cho. For forty years he had been accustomed to the sight of these small streets; now, overnight, they looked like a mouth that has lost all its teeth, and soldiers were plying their axes pell-mell. Except for two or three years in his twenties when he had gone away to school, Seiji had virtually never been away from this city of his birth; he had borne patiently with the tasks given him and had seen his status gradually beSUMMER FLOWERS

come secure-for him it was quite unbearable to see all this happening .... What in the world was to become of everything? It was not something someone like Shozo would understand. He had to see Jun'ichi as quickly as possible and inform him about the evacuation of the factory. He felt a need to have a brotherly talk withJun'ichi about a whole series of things. But Jun'ichi was Jun'ichi, wrapped up in the matter of Takako; it didn't look as if he would be a source of strength now. Seiji stripped off his leggings and sat for a while, a blank look on his face. While he was sitting there, Ueda and Miura returned, and the office filled with talk of the razing of buildings. Ueda admired the speed with which the soldiers worked: "They're really rough! They saw away at the pillars, tie a rope, and heave away on it; then it's wholesale destruction-roof tiles and everything are one big mess." "A pity about the papermaker, Nagata! Even if you only saw it from the outside, his house looked solidly built; the old man was crying like a baby as he moved his hands over the pillar of the tokonoma." Miura spoke as if he had just come from watching it. Smiling once again, Seiji too joined in the conversation. And at that point Jun'ichi too returned, a somber expression on his face. WHEN APRIL CAME to the city, fresh young leaves gradually began to appear; the wind fanned the earth and sand of the mud walls, and the air became very gritty. The constant coming and going of horses and carts continued, and people's lives now stood exposed, naked. Looking out the office window, Seiji smiled and said, "You wouldn't believe what they're taking!" There came a stuffed pheasant, trembling, on a large cart. As if struck by life's vicissitudes, Jun'ichi muttered: "Rough, isn't it! They say things are really bad in China; but aren't we just as bad off?" As the eldest brother, he was very careful to avoid criticism of the war; but when Iwojima fell, he let slip, "Drawing and quartering would be too good for Tojo and his ilk." Still, when Seiji urged haste with the evacuation of the factory, Jun'ichi was not particularly approving: "It's a fine mess when the Clothing Depot is the first to cut and run." Shozo, too, wrapped on his leggings and went out more often. 88

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The bank, the prefectural offices, the city hall, the travel agency, the mobilization bureau--simple errands, all of them, and on the way back he strolled the streets .... The streets of Horikawa-cho had been opened way out; they had left only the storehouses behind each house, and traces of destruction could be seen, glittering, way off into the distance: it was like an impressionist painting. In spite of himself, Shozo almost conceded it a certain charm. One day countless white sea gulls were moving about in the middle of that impressionist painting: schoolgirls on a labor detail. They had alighted atop the brightly gleaming rubble; white blouses bathed in the bright rays of the sun, each had opened her lunchbox. . . . When he went to the secondhand bookstores, too, panic and disorder were evident; there was an enormous turnover of merchandise. "Don't you have any books on astrology?" Shozo could still hear the voice of the young man who made this inquiry.... One no-electricity day he visited the grave of his wife and afterward walked over to Nigitsu Park. Before, people had thronged here to see the flowers and to have picnics; thinking of those crowds, he looked into the hushed shade and saw an old woman and a young girl who had quietly spread out a box lunch. The peach trees were in full bloom, and the willow leaves were glistening. Still, for Shozo the feeling of the season somehow simply wasn't there. Something had slipped out of place; things were dreadfully out ofjoint .... He wrote these thoughts in a letter to a friend who had been evacuated to Iwate Prefecture. He often received letters from this friend. "Stay well. Take care of yourself." Reading between these lines, short as they were, Shozo got the feeling that his friend was praying with all his heart that the war end soon. But, Shozo thought, will I still be alive when that new day dawns? ... KATAYAMA received his induction notice. Undaunted, joking as usual, he set about briskly winding up his affairs. "Had your physical?" Shozo asked him. Katayama smiled: "That was supposed to take place this year . now this! No matter: it's a colossal war, one in a thousand years; so they're taking everyone." SUMMER FLOWERS

On account of illness, old man Mitsui had not shown up for a long time. With a worried air, he had been watching the two of them from the corner of the office. Now he approached Katayama quietly and spoke as if giving advice to a son: "Once you're in the army, make yourself callous! Don't let things get to you!" ... Old Mitsui had been an employee ever since Shozo's father's time. Once as a child Shozo had fallen ill at school, and this man, Shozo remembered, had come to get him. Shozo had been pale, and Mitsui had cheered him up, patting him on the shoulder as he vomited over by the river. Would Mitsui with his shriveled face, practically expressionless, still remember that trivial incident oflong ago? Shozo sometimes felt like asking the old man what he thought of a time like the present. But the old man, always sitting in the corner of the office, seemed somehow hard and unapproachable .... Once the Army Paymaster Section sent for rings to attach to blackout curtains. Ueda quickly produced boxes of rings from the storehouse and set them out on the office table; the soldier from the Paymaster Section asked, "How many to a box?" Ueda answered nonchalantly, "A thousand." Over in the corner the old man had been watching closely and suddenly put in his oar: "A thousand? Not likely." Ueda looked at the old man, unbelieving: "Of course it's a thousand. That's what it's always been." "No. You're wrong." The old man stood up and brought over a scales. He weighed rno rings and then placed a box of rings on the scales. When he divided the weight of the whole by the weight of 100, 700 it was. THE SEND-OFF PARTY for Katayama was held at the Mori Works. People Shozo didn't know appeared in the office, bringing stuff from who knows where. It dawned gradually on Shozo that various groups Jun'ichi belonged to were bartering goods .... By that time the long dissension between Takako and Jun'ichi had finally lost its edge and was approaching a surprising resolution. As if being evacuated, Takako would go to a house off in Itsukaichi, and the domestic affairs of the Mori house would be entrusted to Yasuko, whose son had just been evacuated with the schoolchildren 90

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and who was now alone. Once this decision had been reached, Takako returned ostentatiously, and she did the packing for the move. But Jun'ichi became even more absorbed in the packing than Takako. He bound things up neatly with rope; he prepared covers and casings. In between, he returned to the office and worked the check-writing machine or met guests. At night he drank alone, though Yasuko sat with him. Jun'ichi had got the sake by hook or by crook, and he was in a good mood .... Then one morning B-29s swept through the sky over the city. Looking out the windows or scrambling onto the roof, the schoolgirls in the garment factory at the Mori Works all were fascinated by the contrails of the planes, still to be seen in the sky. One by one, the girls sighed in admiration: "Beautiful, aren't they!" "Wow! They go so fast." This was the first time that B-29s-indeed, that contrails-had appeared over the city.... Last year Shozo had become used to the sight in Tokyo, but these were the first contrails he had seen in a good while. Next day carts came and transported Takako's things to ltsukaichi. With a laugh, Takako said, 'Tm sending off my trousseau a second time!" Then she bade good-bye to the people of the neighborhood and left. But four or five days later Takako came back again for a formal neighborhood send-off. It was a no-electricity day, and from morning on the rice-cake mortar stood ready in the kitchen; Jun'ichi and Yasuko worked on the preparations for making rice cakes. As they did so, the women of the neighborhood association poured into the kitchen .... By then Shozo, too, had had to listen until he was bored stiff as Yasuko talked about the affairs of these neighbors. Who was in cahoots with whom, which families were at loggerheads, how they were all circumventing the rationing and making do. The women who came to the kitchen all looked like wily old birds; they seemed to have vital energies that someone like Shozo could not equal and an instinct for dealing innocently in lies .... Various colleagues came to Jun'ichi with suggestions for the banquet-"Better drink while we still can!"--and the kitchen of the Mori house was a bustling place. At such times the neighborhood women come and pitch in. SUMMER FLOWERS

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Sh6z6 saw himself violently thrown about in a storm and felt himself falling. Just then came a thump, and the windowpanes reverberated. Soon a cry from right close by reached his ear: "Smoke! Smoke!" On wobbly legs he edged up to the second-floor window and saw, far off in the western sky, black smoke boiling up. Straightening his clothes, he went downstairs, but by that time the planes had already flown off. ... Seiji had a worried look on his face. He scolded Sh6z6: "This is no time to be sleeping late!" Sh6z6 hadn't even been aware the alarm had sounded that morning, but no sooner had the radio reported one plane heading for Hamada (on the Japan Sea coast, a port in Shimane Prefecture) than it happened: a string of bombs came rammg down on Kamiya-cho. This happened at the end of April. DREAMING,

and preliminary drills for the muster were held every evening in the auditorium of the local elementary school. Sh6z6 hadn't known they were going on; but he finally became aware of that fact on the fourth, before the drill. From that day on, like everyone else, he finished supper early and set out for the auditorium. By this time the school was already being used as a barracks. Standing on the bare floor of the dimly lit auditorium was a motley group, some relatively old and some really very young. A young drill instructor with ruddy cheeks stood as if at attention; his high boots gleamed, the calves quivering like rubber. Calm at first, the drill instructor asked Shozo: "You're the only one who didn't notice everyone was coming here to drill?" Sh6z6 whispered an excuse. "Speak up!" the drill instructor thundered suddenly in a startling voice. Shozo quickly realized that here everyone shouted. He waggled his head and, desperate, strained his voice to its limit. When he returned home, tired out, the shouting still eddied inside him .... The drill instructor rounded up the young people and drilled them one by one for the muster. In response to his questions, they answered in high spirits, and the drill proceeded smoothly. When it came the turn of a MAY CAME,

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young man with something of a limp, the drill instructor looked down at him from the dais: "Occupation: photographer?" "That is so, sir," the young man answered, his head dipping obsequiously. "Cut that out. 'Yes' will do. I've kept things nice and simple so far, but answers like that spoil everything," said the drill instructor with a tight smile. It was this pronouncement that suddenly enlightened Shozo: the man was drunk! Returning home, Shozo poured out to Yasuko: "It's the height of absurdity. The Japanese military is drunk on form." IT WAS A DARK MORNING, with rain threatening at any moment. Shozo was standing in formation on the playground of the elementary school. They had been at it since 5, nothing but instructions and formations, repeated over and over; it seemed they would never move out. That morning the drill instructor had told a young man his attitude was disgraceful, then slapped him on the cheek; he looked as if he still was very much of a mind to find fault. At just that point a middle-aged man appeared, very grimy, and started to mumble an excuse. "What!" Everyone there could hear the drill instructor's voice and nothing else. "You haven't made it to even one of these drills, yet you show up this morning? -you've got some nerve!" The drill instructor stared him in the face and shouted: "Strip!" The man tentatively started undoing buttons. The drill instructor soon went wild: "This is how you strip!" Hauling the man to the front, he spun him around and ripped the shirt off his back. There in the sunlight, made weaker by the green haze that enveloped the scene, stood exposed the man's ugly back, covered all over with pimples. "This body needed absolute bed rest, eh?" The drill instructor paused a second in anticipation. "Dummy!" Even as he spoke, his fist lashed out. At just that moment the siren in the schoolyard began to moan out the preliminary alert. That loud noise, so mournful, added a yet more gruesome note to the scene. When in due time the siren stopped, the drill instructor declared to one and all, as if largely satisfied with what he had SUMMER FLOWERS

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achieved, "I'm going to report this fellow to the military police," and then for the first time he ordered them to move out. . . . As the formation neared the West Parade Ground, drops of rain began to fall. The harsh sound of marching feet followed the moat along. On the other side of the moat stood II Corps of the Western Command, but Shozo's eye was caught by the azaleas blooming in profusion, bloodred against the dusky green of the embankment. APART FROM A BAG or two sent to the site to which her son's school had been evacuated and a trunk entrusted to a friend in the country, most of Yasuko's belongings were stored in the storehouse at Jun'ichi's. Her personal effects and her work things had been put in the six-mat room that held the sewing machine. She liked to work away amid half-finished jobs spread out all over; she simply did not notice the mess. The weather tended toward the wet, and the light faded early; as soon as the sun set, mice came rustling out and hid behind the cartons. Jun'ichi liked things neat and sometimes scolded her, and then and only then Yasuko went through the motions of cleaning up; but the room immediately became even messier than before. Yasuko often grumbled to Seiji that what with the business, the cooking, and the cleaning, it was impossible to keep this large house the way Jun'ichi wanted it kept .... Since renting the house in Itsukaichi, Jun'ichi kept thinking of one thing after another to be sent there; virtually every day he devoted himself to packing. But it was his habit, after scattering things about, to put everything neatly back in its place. The rucksack Jun'ichi had prepared to take with him in flight was packed with food and fastened to a rope hanging down from the porch ceiling. That was to protect it from the mice .... Jun'ichi had Nishizaki tie up the luggage, and then the two of them carried it to a corner of the factory; thereupon Jun'ichi went to the office, put on his reading glasses, read two or three documents, then up and headed for the bathroom and set about giving the tiles a good scrubbing .... Body and soul, Jun'ichi was spinning like a top these days. He had sent Takako off, but the ward council refused to approve the evacuation of those who had important roles in the air raid procedures and 94

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thus did not certify her change of residence. So Jun'ichi had to carry food, too, to Takako. He was able to wangle a commuter's ticket to Itsukaichi; further, in order to keep a supply of rice on hand, he arranged for a steady influx from the black market. ... By the time Jun'ichi finished cleaning the bath, he had already made his plans for tomorrow's packing. Now he dried his hands and feet, slipped into geta, and went to take a look at the storehouse. Yasuko's belongings were piled in confusion just beside the entrance-boxes from which something had been taken and the top left off; boxes with the top on and clothes spilling out. That was the way they always were. But still they caught his eye. For a time Jun'ichi eyed them stonily; then, remembering why he had come, he muttered to himself that they could use more water buckets here. Already in her late thirties, Yasuko was no longer so cheerful as she had been in her schoolgirl days; her serenity had disappeared along the way. In its place now was a certain impudence. Her sickly husband had died, and she had taken her young child and moved to a place near Jun'ichi. Since then her life had been difficult. Moreover, during that time she also had spent a full year learning dressmaking. During the time she was unable to make ends meet, she had received rough treatment at the hands of her mother-in-law and the neighborhood group and her sister-in-law and her elder brothers. She had gradually come to understand quite a bit about life. What interested her most of all these days was other people; speculating about people's feelings and criticizing them had become virtually an addiction. And then she beguiled the time in her own fashion by twisting people around her little finger-better, by having entertaining chats with people and giving and receiving small favors. She was extremely fond of a newly married and guileless husband and wife in the neighborhood whom she had come to know six months ago, so on nights Jun'ichi was away, off to Itsukaichi, Yasuko would have these two in and prepare beanjam pancakes. With the blackout in force and the specter of death looming nightly, such evenings were happy times for her; she was like a child playing house .... Ever since the domestic affairs of the main house had been placed in Yasuko's keeping, her middle school nephews too had grown fond SUMMER FLOWERS

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of her and often addressed her as if she were their elder sister. Of the two, the younger one had gone to Itsukaichi with his mother; the elder middle schooler, who had already started to smoke and perhaps was drawn by the nightlife of the city, stayed in Hiroshima. In the evening, when he came home from the Mitsubishi factory, he immediately looked in at the kitchen. Yasuko always prepared something different to please him-steamed bread, doughnuts, and the like. After eating his fill at supper, he would lumber off into the dark streets; when he returned, he would climb right into the bath and relax. At his ease in the bath, he would sing in a loud voice-exactly like a factory hand. His face was still that of a child, but his body had become that of an adult. Yasuko always tittered as she listened to him sing .... When she fixed bean-paste dumplings and set them out for Jun'ichi to eat after his evening drink, Jun'ichi would praise her extravagantly. Wearing an open-throated shirt and feeling young again, Jun'ichi sometimes joked good-naturedly: "Put on weight, haven't you? Hey, you're getting fatter by the day!" Actually, Yasuko's stomach did protrude, and her face soon shone with the luster of someone in her twenties. Still, her sister-in-law did come back about once a week from Itsukaichi. Wearing loud cotton bloomers and trailing perfume in her wake, Takako never said as much but apparently came to keep an eye on Yasuko. When at such times the air raid alarm sounded, Takako would immediately frown; when it lifted, she would depart in haste: ''I'll be stuck here if the alarm sounds again, so I'm off now." ... Second brother Seiji usually turned up at about the time Yasuko began preparing supper. Sometimes, with a happy air, he would pull out a postcard, saying it had come from his children, who had been evacuated. But sometimes Seiji would complain, ''I'm feeling shaky," or "I'm dizzy." With all animation gone from his face, his fretfulness was all the more prominent. When Yasuko offered him a rice ball, he would devour it silently and with relish. Then, seeing how caught up in the evacuation everyone was, he would laugh mockingly and say something like "While you're at it, why not take the stone lanterns and the shrubs, too?" Yasuko had been worried about a chest and a vanity that had simHARA TAMIKI

ply been left lying in the storehouse. She had even got Jun'ichi to say, "It'd be a good idea to make a crate for this vanity"; ifhe would only give Nishizaki the word, the problem would be solved. But, occupied with his own evacuation, Jun'ichi looked as ifhe had already forgotten about it. Yasuko was very reluctant to ask Nishizaki directly. Nishizaki obeyed any order of Takako's unconditionally, but he seemed somehow to hold back when it came to Yasuko .... That morning Yasuko watched closely from the office asJun'ichi carried a claw hammer to the storehouse and saw from his face that he had calmed down; so she figured now was as good a time as any and quickly broached the subject of the vanity. "Vanity?" Jun'ichi muttered, unmoved. "Uh-huh. I'd really like to get it out of here, even if nothing else goes." Yasuko stared straight at him, as if appealing to him. His gaze slid off to the side. "That ... rubbish? I really don't care what happens to it," said Jun'ichi, then wheeled around and left. At first Yasuko felt as if she had had the wind knocked out of her. Then her resentment rose in waves, and she was no longer able to concentrate. Rubbish it might be, but it was the many times she had moved that had turned it into rubbish. It was something she kept for remembrance; her mother, now dead, had given it to her at the time of her wedding. Where his own things were involved, Jun'ichi was attached to every last broom; couldn't he understand someone else's heartache? ... There floated up again before her mind's eye the terrible look onJun'ichi's face that one evenmg. It had been about the time arrangements were being made to send Takako off to Itsukaichi. Jun'ichi wanted to move Yasuko here to take Takako's place and entrust everything to her; but Yasuko would not be persuaded. In part, her refusal was a covert rebuke of her spoiled sister-in-law, but she was also worried about her child, who had been evacuated to Kake; she thought she would rather go there as a governess. Placating her, coaxing her, Takako andJun'ichi hemmed Yasuko in, and the night wore on. Drawing himself up, Jun'ichi asked, "Is there really no way you'll agree to come?" SUMMER FLOWERS

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Yasuko repeated, "No. Hiroshima is a dangerous place; I'd rather go to Kake .... " Suddenly Jun'ichi grabbed the skin of a navel orange lying beside the hibachi and flung it with a smack against the far wall. His fury flooded out, a deluge. As if mediating, Takako got a word in-"Well, well, please think it over again during the night"-and during the night Yasuko finally did acquiesce .... For a little while next morning Yasuko walked around the house aimlessly, as if dizzy; soon, almost in spite of herself, she climbed the stairs and came to Shozo's room. So early in the morning, Shozo was alone in his room, mending his socks. Without pausing for breath, she told him all about how Jun'ichi had acted, and then her tears overflowed for the first time. Afterwards, she did seem to become a bit calmer. Shozo merely listened in gloomy silence. AFTER ROLL CALL, Shozo's mind tended to go blank; he himself was powerless to prevent it. At that time he didn't have much to do, and he hardly ever even put in an appearance at the office. When he did appear, it was to read the newspaper. Germany had already surrendered unconditionally, and now people in Japan were advocating a fight to the finish on the main islands; phrases such as "digging in" began to appear. Reading between the lines of the editorials, Shozo tried to sniff out some sense of the truth. But for two days and maybe even three he hadn't been able to read the paper. Up until now he could expect to find it on Jun'ichi's desk; now, for some reason, it wasn't there. Shozo felt forever driven, yet it was impossible not to let up. He spent a lot of time aimlessly pacing the large house, as if he didn't know what to do with himself. ... At noon, the schoolgirls came to the kitchen to fetch tea. At that time they were liberated from work, and their lively voices could be heard at the alley of the factory, separated from the kitchen only by a black wooden wall. Shozo would sit down on the veranda of the cafeteria on this side of the wall, his troubled gaze dropping to the small pond at his feet; over at the factory, the girls' physical exercises were beginning, and you could hear the bright voice of the class leader: "One, two! One, two!" It was strange, 98

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but only the gentle, bouncy voices of the girls seemed able to offer Shozo consolation .... When three o'clock came around, as if it had just occurred to him to do so, he would return to his own room on the second floor and mend his socks. Then the girls would appear, standing and working at a lively pace, on the floor above the office, over there across the garden, and the sound of the electric sewing machines too reached across to him. While he felt with his fingertip for the eye of the needle, the thought would flicker through Shozo's mind: "When I pull these on and head for the hills, it will mean ... " From then on he was often to be seen evenings in the streets, walking dejectedly. In one quarter after another the houses had been razed, so in unexpected places open areas had been cleared and crude shelters crouched. Turning from a street that was far broader than necessary-the streetcar hardly ever ran here any more-he came out onto the embankment along the river. Green fig leaves flourished, thick and heavy, by crumbling dirt walls. Dusk had gathered but would not give way to night; a heavy dampness filled the air. Shozo felt as if he were walking in a place completely strange to him .... But passing the embankment, he came out at the end ofKyobashi and then walked again along the embankment along the river. When he got to the door of Seiji's house, first his niece called to him-she had been playing at the edge of the street-and then his nephew the first grader came flying. The boy tugged at Shozo's hand, and his small hard nails bit into Shozo's wrist. About that time Shozo began to want a carryall to take with him in flight. Each time the alarm sounded, he took a furoshiki with him; but his elder brothers had fine rucksacks, and Yasuko had a satchel that hung from her shoulder. Yasuko agreed to sew one up for him any time he found the cloth. When Shozo broached the subject to Jun'ichi, Jun'ichi mumbled, "Cloth for a satchel?" Shozo couldn't tell from Jun'ichi's look whether there was any cloth. Shozo waited, thinking Jun'ichi might produce some one day, but there were no signs that he would; so Shozo pressedJun'ichi again. Smiling meanly, Jun'ichi said, "You don't need one! You want something to take with you when you flee? Take one of those rucksacks hanging over there!" No matter how Sh6z6 explained that he wanted a satchel just for imSUMMER FLOWERS

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portant documents and personal effects, Jun'ichi paid no heed .... Shozo heaved a deep sigh. He simply could not grasp Jun'ichi's thinking. Yasuko explained to him how to manipulateJun'ichi: "Try sulking. I give him a hard time by crying." She had even succeeded in getting Jun'ichi to send the vanity off to safety. But prolonged haggling was more than Shozo could manage .... He went to Seiji's house and mentioned the matter of the satchel. Seiji produced the kind of cloth perfect for a satchel and said, "This ought to be enough. It's worth a bag of rice on the barter circuit; what can you offer?" Seiji knew full well that Shozo had nothing to offer. With the cloth in hand, Shozo asked Yasuko to make the satchel. She too had a spiteful remark: "Why is it you think always and only of fleeing?" THE CITY had not come under air attack since the bombing of April 30. So the evacuation went by fits and starts, and the public mood, too, alternated constantly between tension and languor. The alarm sounded virtually every night, but the planes always dropped mines in the harbor, so even at the Mori Works they discontinued the watch. But the sense of being embattled, of having to fight a last-ditch battle, on the main islands, had gradually intensified. One day in the office Seiji said to Shozo: "Field Marshal Hata has come to Hiroshima! The headquarters for Fortress Japan is at the East Parade Ground. Looks like Hiroshima will be the site of the last stand!" Seiji had his doubts; but compared with Shozo, he seemed almost eager for the decisive battle .... "Field Marshal Hata, eh?" drawled Ueda. "All he does every day is sit on his fat duff at headquarters." ... In the evening, the radio in the office reported that five hundred B-29s had raided the Tokyo-Yokohama area. Listening with a frown, old Mitsui suddenly said in astonishment, "Gee-five hundred!" Everyone snickered .... One day the city's factory owners were summoned to the second floor of East Police Headquarters to receive some instructions. Shozo went in place of Jun'ichi. This was the first time that Shozo had attended this sort of affair; looking bored, he let his thoughts wander. When he came to, the speaker had changed, and a police officer with a splendid physique was beginning his talk. Shozo began to pay a little IOO

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attention to the man. Both in stature and in face, he was the very model of a police officer. His voice, too, was clear and direct: "Well, let me say a few words now about the air raid training exercises .... " Shozo lent an ear even as he marveled: cities throughout the land are exposed to shot and shell, and here we talk of exercises? "As you know, at the present time refugees are flooding into Hiroshima from all over-Tokyo, Nagoya, the Osaka-Kobe area. What is it that these refugees talk about to our townspeople? They grumble: 'My goodness, the air raids were terrifying, terrifying. The only thing to do is to get out as quick as you can.' But after all, these people are the losers in the air raids; they are pitiful, ignorant. We who are fully self-reliant must never listen to them. To be sure, the fighting is fierce, and the air assault is getting worse. But no matter how dangerous it becomes, there is nothing to be the least bit afraid of as long as we take resolute measures against it.'' Saying this, he swiveled around in the direction of the blackboard and began his actual presentation with diagrams .... He showed not the slightest uneasiness; listening to him talk, one might have thought that air raids were simple and clear-cut affairs, that human life too was subject to simple and clear-cut physical processes: that and no more. A curious fellow, thought Sh6z6. But in Japan today jolly robots of that sort are not in short supply. JuN'ICHI never set off for ltsukaichi empty-handed, but always stuffed into his rucksack small items destined for there; he usually set out after supper, alone and happy. But one time he took Shozo along: "If an emergency arose and you didn't know how to get there, we'd be stuck; so come with me now." Given a small package to carry, Shozo headed with Jun'ichi for the streetcar stop. The car for Koi didn't come and didn't come; Shozo stood looking toward the far end of the broad thoroughfare. Beyond the buildings, the crouching form of Gosaso Mountain was clearly visible. Charged with the humidity of a summer's evening, Gosaso was now full of life. The other mountains connected to it usually looked as if they were snoozing; but today they too were absolutely filled with vitality. Clouds drifted lazily through the clear sky. The mounSUMMER FLOWERS

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tains looked as if at any moment they might shake and tremble, call out. It was a strange spectacle. Shozo imagined a large composition with this city at its center.... Even after the streetcar crossed several clear rivers and got to the suburbs, Shozo's eyes devoured the scenery outside the window. The tracks ran through an area that used to be thronged with beach-goers; even now the breeze blowing in through the window brought with it the smell of happy memories. But the look of the Chugoku range, which had frightened Shozo even before they boarded the streetcar, still had not lost its vigor. Against the darkening sky the mountains displayed an ever more brilliant green; the islands of the Inland Sea too stood out in bold relief. The waves, the calm blue waves, seemed at any moment about to rage, stirred up by the fiercest of storms. THE MAP OF JAPAN, so familiar, popped into Shozo's head. On the edge of the Pacific Ocean, infinitely broad, the Japanese archipelago appears first as small dots. A formation of B-29s that has taken off from bases in the Marianas threads its way through the clouds, like so many shooting stars. The Japanese archipelago draws much nearer. Over Hachijojima, the formation splits in two; one part heads straight for Mt. Fuji, the other follows Kumano Sea toward Kii Channel. One plane from that formation gradually detaches itself, crosses Muroto Cape, and heads rapidly for Tosa Bay.... A mountain range comes into view, massed and rising over green plains like a foaming wave; once the plane crosses these peaks, the Inland Sea appears, calm as a mirror. The plane inspects the islands scattered atop this mirror and wheels silently over Hiroshima Bay. In the too-strong rays of the noonday sun, the Chugoku range and the city facing the bay are both a hazy light purple .... Soon the contours of Ujina Harbor appear clearly; now all of Hiroshima City is visible. Flowing between the mountains, the Ota River divides as it enters the city, and then the divisions divide again; the city spreads out over the delta. The city engulfs the low hills in the immediate background, and two squaresthe two parade grounds-shine large and white. But recently, all over this city divided by rivers, bare white spots have appeared where firebreaks have been cleared. Can these defenses against firebombs be im102

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pregnable? ... Binoculars reveal bridges. Even now groups of human beings the size of ants are moving about busily. Soldiers, without a doubt. Soldiers: recently, it seems, they have taken over the entire city. It goes without saying that the figures on the parade grounds, moving about like ants, are soldiers; but even those figures scattered about among the tiny buildings appear to be soldiers .... Perhaps the siren has sounded. Many carts are moving through the streets. A toy train is moving at a snail's pace through green paddies on the outskirts of the city.... Farewell, tranquil city! The B-29 banks and flies majestically off ABOUT THE TIME the battle for Okinawa came to a close, there were major air raids on the city of Okayama in the prefecture next door; then, after midnight on the night ofJune 30, the city of Kure went up in flames. Over and over that night the sound of squadrons of planes crossing the sky above Hiroshima assailed the ears of the residents; even Seiji turned up at the Mori Works, eyes huge and glittering beneath his air raid hood. No one was at the factory or in the office, but three people-Yasuko, Shozo, and the middle school nephew-were crouching in the entryway of the house. The thought occurred instantly to Seiji: only the three of them to stand watch over this vast compound? Then the fire bell rang out front, and a voice could be heard shouting, "Take shelter!" The four of them quickly took shelter in the trench in the garden. Densely clouded, the sky did not look as if it would lighten up soon; again and again they heard airplanes. The all clear finally sounded as they began to be able to make out shapes .... Calm was restored to the city; but Jun'ichi, very agitated, strode through its streets at a great pace. At Itsukaichi he hadn't had a moment's sleep; all night long he had watched the fires burning brightly across the bay. Muttering to himself-mustn't be caught off guard; the fires are already right at our doorstep-he hurried home as quickly as possible. The streetcar did not come promptly that morning either, and the passengers all had vacant expressions on their faces. By the time Jun'ichi got to the office, the sun was already high in the sky; here too everyone he met had a vacant, sleepy expression on his face. SUMMER FLOWERS

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As soon as he saw Seiji, Jun'ichi announced: "This is no time for idling! Quick, get going with the evacuation of the factory!" The dismantling of the sewing machines, the petition to the prefectural office asking for horse-drawn carts, the evacuation of the remaining household effects-there was still a huge pile of urgent matters for Jun'ichi to deal with. However, he had to consult with Seiji, and Seiji kept slipping in his doubts about details; he did not throw himself into it wholeheartedly. Jun'ichi burned with the thought of how he would like to crack the whip. but one, the rumor spread like wildfire that it was Hiroshima's turn for a major air raid. That evening, after Ueda had relayed the warning he had received from the office for food rations, Jun'ichi pressed Yasuko to have an early supper, then looked at Sh6z6 and Yasuko and said, 'Tm off now; please take care of things." Sh6z6 stated emphatically: "If the alarm sounds, I'm not sticking around ... " and Jun'ichi nodded: "If it looks hopeless, put the sewing machine in the well." Brave thoughts welled up inside Sh6z6: "How about sealing the doors of the storehouse? Shouldn't we do that now while we've still got the chance?" He went to stand in front of the storehouse. Some time ago red clay had been plastered on; but sealing the doors of the storehouse-that was something that had never been done in his father's day. Raising the ladder, Sh6z6 pushed sticky red clay into the cracks around the white-paneled doors. By the time he finished, Jun'ichi had already disappeared. Sh6z6 took it into his head to go to Seiji's. He found Mitsuko stuffing things into sacks in great haste. When Sh6z6 said, "Tonight's supposed to be a bad one ... "Mitsuko replied slowly, "Yeah, it's supposed to be a secret; but our neighbor Mr. Kojima heard about it this evening at the government office where he works." The normal preparations were completed, and Sh6z6 had just crawled into the mosquito net in the six-mat room on the ground floor-by this time Sh6z6 had begun sleeping on the ground floor. The radio reported a preliminary alert along the coast of Tosa. Inside the mosquito net Sh6z6 pricked up his ears. Kochi Prefecture and ON THE NEXT DAY

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Ehime Prefecture went on preliminary alert; then the alerts changed to alarms. Shozo crawled out of the net and wrapped on his gaiters. Throwing canteen over one shoulder and carryall over the other, crossing the straps over his chest, he added a belt around his chest to keep them in place. By the time he had searched out his shoes at the entryway and finally pulled on his gloves, the siren sounded the preliminary alert. He rushed outside and hurried toward Seiji's house. In the dark, the asphalt seemed to fight the hard soles of his shoes. For all his hurry, Shozo was conscious of how taut his legs were, how well they were functioning. The gate of Seiji's house stood open. He knocked at the entryway door as loudly as he could, but there was no response. They must have left already. Shozo burst out onto the road on the embankment and hurried toward Sakae Bridge. As he neared the bridge, the siren roared the air raid alarm. Frantically crossing the bridge, he went round the dike by Nigitsu Park and soon came to the embankment leading in the direction of Ushita. Now at last Shozo became aware of the throngs of people in his immediate vicinity, jostling each other as they streamed along. Young, old, male, female-city folk of all sorts, they wore looks of desperate determination. A baby carriage carrying an old woman and a bicycle-drawn trailer piled high with bowls and pots went past, fighting their way through the crowds. A man sailing out in metal helmet, an army dog pulling his bicycle; an old man clinging to a cane and limping ... A truck came. A horse passed. Dark and narrow, the street was now as thronged with people as on the day of a festival. ... Shozo sat down on a log beside a cistern underneath some trees. An old woman passing by asked him, "Do you think we're safe here?" Turning the spigot of his canteen, Shozo replied, "I think sothe river's right there; no houses nearby ... "The sky over the city of Hiroshima had become much lighter; it made one think that any time now flames would appear. If the entire city goes up in flames, what will become of me? Even as he had this thought, Shoz6 took an interest in the fate of these refugees so close at hand. The scene of the refugees at the beginning of Hermann und Dorothea came to mind. But this sight was even more terribly desolate than that scene . . . . Presently the air raid alarm was lifted, then the alert too. Leaving, people SUMMER FLOWERS

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streamed away down the road along the embankment. Shozo too retraced his steps down that road. It was more crowded than it was when he came. Shouting something, litter-bearers and their litters came one after another: nurses carrying the sick. HANDBILLS dropped from the sky announced that an air raid was imminent, and with the setting of the sun the terrified residents began to flee en masse. The alert had not sounded yet, but the upper reaches of the river, the open spaces in the suburbs, the lower parts of the hills filled with people; in grassy spots, they set out what they had brought with them: mosquito netting, bedding, even cooking utensils. The trains on the Miyajima line, congested all day, became yet more of a struggle in the evening. But even though flight was instinctive, the authorities immediately instituted strict regulations against it. The refusal to approve the evacuation of personnel deemed essential for the air raid defenses had been in effect here for some time; now, in an attempt to check up on such people, they stuck a list of names and ages on each door. At night soldiers with bayonets and police stood guard at the approaches to bridges and at crossroads. They tried to intimidate the fainthearted residents and make them defend this city to the death; but like cornered mice, the people outsmarted them, sneaking past behind their backs. At night Shozo tried checking the houses along the course of his flight; it certainly appeared that more houses were empty than not. From that night of July 3 until the night of August 5-the last night people fled-Shozo, too, took flight immediately if things looked bad . . . . When the preliminary alert sounded along the coast ofTosa, he would begin to get ready. When the air raid alarm sounded in Kochi Prefecture and Ehime Prefecture, it would be less than ten minutes before the preliminary alert sounded in Hiroshima Prefecture and Yamaguchi Prefecture. He would wrap his gaiters on in the dark, immediately; sometimes he would be delayed a bit by some small thing-towel, shoehorn, or the like. But by the time the siren sounded for the preliminary alert, he would always be in the entryway with his shoes on. Yasuko would get dressed at her own pace but would reach the entryway at about the same time. One after the other, the two ro6

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would go out the gate .... Having turned a certain corner and gone only ten steps, Shozo would think, here it comes! Sure enough, from the dark on all sides the awful air raid siren would scream out at him. What a hideous sound, rising and falling! Like the cry of a wounded beast, wasn't it? How would later historians describe it?-such were the thoughts that ran through his head; and then memories ... Long ago, he had only to hear at a distance the flute of the lion dancers as they came down the street to go absolutely pale and flee. The purity of his terror then, and his terror now: now the terror had somehow become routine. -Such thoughts would pop into Shozo's head for a few seconds; then, panting for breath, he would climb the stone steps leading to the embankment. Sometimes when he raced up to the gate of Seiji's house, the whole family would have finished getting ready; sometimes they would have made no preparations at all. Either just before Shozo showed up or right on his heels, Yasuko would come running at her own pace .... His little niece holds out her hood to Shozo: "Please tie these strings." After tying the strings tight, he swings his niece up onto his back and goes out the gate a step ahead of the rest. Getting across Sakae Bridge, he heaves a sigh; his pace eases a bit, too. Crossing the railroad tracks and coming out onto the Nigitsu embankment, Shozo sets his niece down on a clump of grass. The water of the river gleams white, and the large cedar throws a black shadow on the road. Will this small child remember this scene? There suddenly pops into Shozo's sweat-soaked head The Life of a Woman, which begins with the child heroine fleeing night after night. ... Soon Seiji's whole family comes along. His sister-in-law is carrying the baby on her back; the maid has something in her arms. Yasuko is out front, holding the hand of her small nephew and setting a brisk pace. (Once when fleeing alone she was caught by the police and scolded severely, so since then she "borrows" her nephew.) Seiji and the middle school nephew bring up the rear. They listen to radios from houses nearby and, if the situation calls for it, go farther up the river. As they make their way rapidly up the long bank, there are fewer houses, and the surfaces of paddies and the lower slopes of the hills come faintly into view. All over there resounds the croaking of frogs. There is no break in the stream of people fleeing quietly SUMMER FLOWERS

through the dark night. Soon the night grows lighter; sometimes too a heavy fog envelops the entire return road. Sometimes Shozo flees all by himself. Occasionally in the last month he has been dragged out to the drills of the military reservists; but although at first over twenty people attend, the number gradually decreases, and now no more than four or five show up. "Sometime in August they're going to call up a whole lot of people," says the head of the unit. Shozo is made to stand in the dark schoolyard and listen to the talk of a reserve ensign, while far off in the sky over Ujina searchlights move back and forth; soon he becomes restless. The drill over, he returns home, and just at that moment the siren blows. But by the time the air raid alarm sounds in its wake, Shozo has completed his preparations. As if continuing the feverish pace of the drill, he rushes out into the dark streets. Listening to the lively clatter of feet, he pretends to be hurrying home. Safely past the checkpoint at the bridge, he comes at last to the embankment above Nigitsu .... Here Shozo stops for the first time and sits down in the grass. Just downstream is the rail bridge; with the tide out, the white sand seems to float up mistily. It is a scene Shozo remembers well, having often walked here since his boyhood; the starry sky over his head makes him imagine what a battle in the open would be like. That vision of Nature in all its beauty that one of the characters in War and Peace beheld, and that tranquility of mind: will they come to me too as I die? From the branches of the cedar just above the grassy spot where Shozo is crouching comes an unsettling cry. Dear me ... an owl? -Shozo has an uncanny feeling. Should the war come to the final battle for the main islands, and should Hiroshima become the site of the last stand, could he fight resolutely, at the cost of his life? ... What a delusion, crazier than crazy-that the last stand will be in Hiroshima! Suppose he were to write an epic about it; it would undoubtedly turn out stunted and unrelievedly grim .... Shozo feels as if the bird he cannot see above his head is fluttering its wings right beside him. Even after the alert is lifted and they all return to Seiji's house, Shozo sometimes stays there in the entry and listens for a while to the radio. Occasionally they have to flee again, so his nephews and his niece all keep their shoes on. However, while the grown-ups are abro8

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sorbed in listening to the radio, the nephew, who has been chattering away until just a moment ago, stretches out on the stone in the entryway and quickly is sound asleep, snoring away. Wholly accustomed to this uncertain and unsettled life, the child is snoring just like a trooper. (Shozo watches him with no special concern, never dreaming that the child will soon die a trooper's death. Still in first grade, the nephew was unable to take part in the group evacuation, so he was still going off and on to elementary school. As luck would have it, August 6 was one of the days he went to school, and that morning, near the West Parade Ground, this child met a tragic end.) . . . If it becomes clear, after they wait a while, that all is well, Yasuko goes home first, and then Shozo too leaves Seiji's. By the time he gets back to the main house, his two layers of clothes are drenched with sweat, and he wants to strip both shirt and socks right off. Having rinsed off with cold water in the bathroom, he sits down on the kitchen chair; only then does Shozo feel himself again. -Tonight's chapter may be ended; but tomorrow's ... ? Tomorrow night, too, the planes will surely come in from Tosa. Then all the things he has got ready-gaiters, carryall, shoes-will leap out of the dark, and the road down which to flee will be there at his feet. . . . (Afterward, when he thought back to this time, Shozo realized he had been in pretty good health but still wondered how he could have dashed about so quickly. It must be that everyone's life holds surprises.) THE EVACUATION of the Mori Works went forward at a snail's pace. Even after the sewing machines had been dismantled, it was still a while before the factory's turn with the horse carts came. The morning the carts appeared everyone was busy with the moving, and Jun'ichi became especially animated. At one point the floor mats of the living room were all carried off in one cart. Stripped of its tatami, with only bare floorboards showing, the room seemed huge; plop in the middle of it, the sofa had been left on its side. One got the feeling that this house was nearing its end. Shozo stood for a while on the veranda and gazed at the white flower in the corner of the garden. The plant had begun to bloom at about the time the rainy season set in, a second flower blooming as the first wilted; now a six-petaled flower SUMMER FLOWERS

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stood, quiet and alone. When he asked Seiji what it was called, Seiji replied, cape jasmine. It was a flower he had known since childhood; now, standing silent and alone, it spoke so hauntingly of times past . . . . Shozo received a letter from a friend in Tokyo: "1 CAN'T TELL YOU HOW MANY AIR RAIDS WE HAVE EXPERIENCED ALREADY. EVEN NOW THE COAST IS BRIGHT WITH FIRES. EACH TIME THE ALERT SOUNDS, I TAKE MY MANUSCRIPT AND HIDE IN THE SHELTER. NOWADAYS I AM STUDYING HIGHER MATHEMATICS. MATH IS BEAUTIFUL. JAPAN'S WRITERS AND ARTISTS ARE NO GOOD BECAUSE THEY DON'T UNDERSTAND

Shozo hadn't heard from him for some time. There had been no recent word from his friend in Iwate Prefecture. Kamaishi had come under naval bombardment, so that area couldn't be safe any longer, either. One morning Shozo was in the office when Otani turned up; he worked in a company nearby. A relative of Takako's, he had been dropping in often since the trouble between Jun'ichi and Takako, so he was no longer a stranger to Shozo. With his thin legs encased in black gaiters, lanky trunk, and long, thin face, he gave the impression of being fragile; but his drive seemed to compensate for it. Otani strode up to Jun'ichi's desk and spoke with great good cheer: "What is it with Hiroshima? Last night again they seemed headed right our way, but then they veered off toward Ube. The enemy knows what's what, don't they?-that there are important factories in Ube. By comparison, Hiroshima's only got soldiers. As far as industry is concerned, nothing to speak of, you know. Recently I've begun to think: we're surely safe here; we'll be spared." (On the morning of August 6, Otani disappeared on his way to work.) ... Otani was not the only one who began to think that Hiroshima might be spared. At one time the nighttime exodus had flourished, but now the numbers of those fleeing gradually fell off. At this juncture there were several air raids involving small airplanes; but the large formations that cut through the sky over Hiroshima in daylight didn't drop their bombs here. What is more, the antiaircraft guns at the West Parade Ground even shot down a middle-sized plane. In the streetcar a resident asked a military officer, "Hiroshima will hold THIS."

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them off, won't it?" The officer nodded silently.... "Ah," said Yasuko to Shozo, "it was exciting! I'd never seen an air battle like that!" Sitting in a room with no tatami, Shozo was immersed in Gide's Si le grain ne meurt. The beautiful portrayal of youth and the ego developing amid the burning heat of Africa impressed itself indelibly on his mind. SEIJI DIDN'T THINK the whole city would be spared, but he always prayed that his own house facing the river not go up in flames. He dreamed of the day his two children, evacuated to Miyoshi, might return in safety to this house and all of them together could fish and go boating on the river again. But when would that day come? When he took it all too much to heart, he became utterly lost. Ever since they began fleeing every night, Yasuko had become ever so anxious: "If even just the small children could be sent off ... " About that time Seiji's wife Mitsuko also alluded to evacuation: "Please do something quickly." Seiji didn't like it at all and responded, "You find a place!" He simply couldn't imagine how he himself could go on living in this house if he sent his wife and children off-he wasn't like Jun'ichi, for whom things somehow went smoothly. If it were a matter of wanting to rent a house somewhere in the country to ship just their belongings to-he had already talked that over with his wife. But Seiji himself hadn't a prayer of finding such a house in the country. By this time, instead of insinuating this or that about Jun'ichi's actions, Seiji kept his thoughts to himself, his face set and resentful. But it became impossible for Jun'ichi simply to ignore the problem of Seiji's family. Eventually, with Jun'ichi's help, they were able to rent a house in the country. But the horse-drawn cart to transport their belongings was not available immediately. Now that a house in the country had been found, Seiji heaved a sigh and lost himself in the packing. Then from the teacher at the evacuation site in Miyoshi came the announcement of a visiting day for parents. If he was going to visit Miyoshi, Seiji wanted to take with him all the children's winter things, and what with packing for the evacuation and preparing things to take to the boys, the house was once again a pretty mess. In addition, Seiji had an odd quirk: he couldn't rest until each item he was SUMMER FLOWERS

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taking to the children had on it, in neat and tidy brushwork, the name of the child. By the time he had cleaned this up and messed that up, evening had come and Seiji's mood had changed, so he took his fishing pole and went out to the riverbank just in front of the house. There wasn't much to catch these days, but Seiji was most at peace when his line was in. . . . As if startled by the din the river was making, Seiji came to himself. It was as if for a few moments, his gaze fixed on the river, he had been dreaming. He seemed to have been recalling drowsily the scene of the flood in the Old Testament, which he had read long ago. Then Mitsuko appeared from the direction of the house on top of the bank, shouting to him. Fishing pole in hand, Seiji climbed the stone steps; abruptly, his wife said, "The house!" Not comprehending, Seiji responded, "What?" "A bit ago Okawa came and told us. We have three days to move out; then they raze the house!" Seiji groaned: "You agreed?" "That's not the point. If we don't do something, we're done for! Last time we saw Okawa he showed us a sketch and explained that our house didn't fall into this phase of the plans; but now all of a sudden he says the regulations call for a break every twenty meters." "That bastard conned us?" Mitsuko began to grow impatient: "Mortifying, isn't it. If we don't do something, we're done for!" "You go settle it," Seiji declared, feigning indifference; but it was no time for indecision. "Let's go talk withJun'ichi," and soon the two of them went to the main house. But that evening, too, Jun'ichi had already set out for Itsukaichi. They tried calling long-distance, but for some reason no phone calls were getting through that night. Mitsuko clutched Yasuko and railed on and on once more about what Okawa had done. Now, as he listened to her, Seiji felt absolutely desperate, oppressed by the thought of how his house would appear three days from now, razed. In his youth Seiji had been a Christian, and when he opened his mouth, this was the prayer that popped out: "Please, Lord. If it's go!12

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ing to happen, let all of Hiroshima go up in smoke in the next three days." Next morning Seiji's wife went to the office to see Jun'ichi and complained and complained about the evacuation; since the razing of buildings was apparently City Councilman Tazaki's brainchild, she asked Jun'ichi please to make some kind of approach to Tazaki. Jun'ichi listened with a long-suffering air; soon, phoning Itsukaichi, he told Takako to come at once. Then, looking at Seiji, he grumbled, "Spineless, ehi' They say, 'Your house is to be razed,' and you say, 'Yes, I see,' and do as they say? Houses that burn in an air raid are covered by insurance; houses that get torn down aren't." In due time Takako appeared. After getting a general sense of the situation, she set off in good humor: "Well, I'm off to Mr. Tazaki's." She was back within the hour, her face beaming: "Mr. Tazaki promised me the razing of buildings in that area will stop." Thus was solved, easily, the vexed question of Seiji's house. And just then the preliminary alert was lifted. "Well, it'll be a bother if the alarm sounds again, so I'm off now." Takako set off in a hurry. Presently the two chicks in the chicken coop at the side of the storehouse peeped, each on its own. They were young, and their voices still hadn't matured, so their peeping sometimes amused Jun'ichi and the others; but now no one was listening. The hot rays of the sun filled the tranquil sky over the crape myrtle .... There were still more than forty hours to go before the atomic bomb paid its visit.

SUMMER FLOWERS

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City of Corpses

Translator's Introduction

CITY

OF CORPSES is Ota Yoko's single most famous work. As with Summer Flowers and Hara Tamiki, so with City of Corpses and Ota Yoko: the specific work of witness fits into the larger context of the writer's life and writing. Hara Tamiki was born in Hiroshima in 1905; Ota Yoko was then two years old. On August 6, 1945, Hara was almost forty; Ota, almost forty-two. When Hara died in 1951 at the age of forty-five, a suicide, Ota was forty-seven. Ota lived on for twelve more years, dying in 1963 at the age of sixty, of heart failure. Hara and Ota were the two premier prose writers to survive Hiroshima and write about the experience; but they never met, and their lives both before and after the bomb were vastly different.

1903-1947 Ota Yoko was born Fukuda Hatsuko in Kushima, a small village in the hinterlands west of Hiroshima. 1 Her father was a landowner of consequence in the village; Ota was his firstborn (the "Hatsu" of Hatsuko means first). In mid-August 1945, fleeing Hiroshima, Ota made her way back to Kushima. One passage from City of Corpses describes her family's standing both at the time of her birth and in 1945: FAMILY AND CAREER,

A large old house stood in spacious grounds atop a stone embankment. The branches of giant trees intertwined luxuriantly on a tiny artificial hill with its own pond, and flowers of all kinds bloomed year-round. If we made a circuit of the hill, there was an earthen storehouse, a wooden cabin, a pickle shed, a bathhouse, and a large detached cookhouse. From the hill a path led to the mountain that was part of the property. The paddies and hills around the ' The only full-length biography of Ota Yoko is Esashi Akiko, Kusaz.ue: hyoden Ota Yoko (Withered grass: A critical biography of Ota Yoko), rev. ed. (Tokyo: Otsuki, 1981). There is an edition of her works that omits many important writings: 6t~ Yoko shu, 4 vols. (Tokyo: San'ichi, 1982). There is also a volume (volume 2) devoted to Ota in Nihon no gembaku bungaku (The atomic bomb literature ofJapan), 15 vols. (Tokyo: Horupu, 1983). Ota Yoko shu and volume 2 include important biographical data and essays on various aspects ofOta's life and work. See also essays by Hasegawa Kei listed in notes. TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

I

I7

house and almost all the fields and woods visible from the house belonged to us. We lost the entire property to extravagant living in Father's generation. The family graveyard was the only thing in the village still belonging to us. Under these conditions neither Mother nor Sister had any stomach for returning and living on the second floor of someone else's house. Once in spring Mother had taken it into her head to rent a house there, and someone had said, "You people again!" Tears had come to Mother's eyes, and she had felt miserable.

Ota was her father's firstborn but not her mother's. Her mother Tomi had already had one child, a daughter, by her first husband; within five years of divorcing him, she married a second time, in 1901 or 1902, and in 1903 gave birth to Ota Yoko. Tomi was perhaps the single most important figure in Ota Yoko's life. Mother and daughter lived together in Tokyo before 1945; mother and daughter were in the same house at 8:15 a.m. on August 6; mother and daughter lived together in Tokyo after Hiroshima. Tomi died in 1959 at the age of eighty-two. She was the subject of two of Ota Yoko's final works: Eighty (1961) and Eighty-four (1962). Ota's childhood was hardly a stable one. When her mother left her first husband, she abandoned her firstborn daughter, too. Her marriage to Ota Yoko's father lasted ten years; she left him in 1910, when Ota was seven and her younger brother five. Mother and daughter returned to Tomi's family home. Tomi gave her daughter Hatsuko in adoption to a family named Ota (the adoptive parents were then seventy and sixty-five), but by 1912 Ota Yoko was back, living first with her grandmother and then following her mother into the household of her mother's third and final husband, whom Tomi married in 1912. That family already included two sons (a year older and two years younger than Ota); daughters were born in 1913, 1916, and 1919. Thus Ota Yoko was the only child of the six not related by blood to the head of the house. Ota Yoko came from village Japan. She arrived in the city-Hiroshima, not Tokyo-at age thirteen. Her formal education took place in schools that were respectable but far from elite. She began primary school in 1910, changed schools in 1912, and graduated in 1916. In 1918 she entered a girls' higher school in Hiroshima, graduII8

OTA YOKO

ating in 1920 at the age of seventeen, and then did a year of "graduate" work. Her formal education ended well before her twentieth birthday. Less than eight months after finishing her "graduate" course, Ota took employment as a teacher at an elementary school on Etajima, the island in Hiroshima Bay famous as the site of Japan's Imperial Naval Academy. She lasted only a year; the verdict seems to have been that she was a nice person but not a good teacher. From 1924 until her major literary breakthrough in 1940-1941, she supported herself in various ways: as a typist, as a dance-hall hostess, as a secretary. An attractive woman, she had numerous affairs, often with figures in the world of letters. So there were inevitably those who charged later, when she had achieved success, that she had made it to the top not on her talent but on her back. Life was not easy in Japan in the late 192os-in the literary world or in any other arena-for single female provincials. Her first love was a newspaperman she came to know in 1925. She married him, only to have a woman and three children show up from Tokyo claiming, rightly, to be his family. Ota left him in 1926, but not before bearing him a son, her first and only child. In a replay of her mother's action, Ota allowed the child to be adopted. Although Ota returned six months later to live again with the reporter, the relation was not an easy one. Ota's second marriage took place in Tokyo (1936-1937); her third, after the war (1947-1948). For most of her adult life, Ota lived alone and supported herself. Ota went to Tokyo for the first time in 1926 and stayed less than a year. Introductions got her a job as private secretary to one of the lions ofJapan's literary establishment; she met many prominent writers of the period. She moved to Tokyo once again in 1930, after she had begun to publish stories in the journal Nyonin geijutsu (Female writers). This time she stayed until the intense American bombing of late 1944 forced her back to the relative security of Hiroshima. Ota Yoko's literary activities began in Hiroshima before the second move to Tokyo. There in late 1929 she helped form a literary circle, offshoot of an organization of female artists and writers based in Osaka. Throughout her life she was to be involved in groups of female writers. Her literary debut came inJune 1929 in the journal of TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

119

the organization in which she soon became active, and during the next four years her stories appeared in that journal more than a dozen times. By 1932 she was publishing stories in newspapers and other journals as well. She began her first long piece in 1937 after the breakup of her second marriage; a fictionalized account of that marriage, it appeared in a journal in June 1939 and then as a book six months later. But her real breakthrough came in 1940. In that year she published not one book but two. The first, Woman of the Sea, had appeared in a journal in 1939, taking first prize in a contest sponsored by a major journal, Chuo koron. The second, Land of Cherry Blossoms, took first prize in another major contest, sponsored by the Tokyo newspaper Asahi; it ran serially in the newspaper and then appeared as a book in October 1940. The second success is all the more impressive in that she submitted that manuscript under an assumed name. Building on these successes, Ota enjoyed her greatest popular acclaim in the years 1940-1944. During that time her stories appeared somewhere almost monthly, and she published six collections. These include The Dawn Is Beautiful and Daughter of Battle (both 1943). Wartime Japan was not a place conducive to artistic creativityat least, not to art that did not glorify the state-and Ota was most popular precisely when the pressures for conformity, for national unity, for thought control were at their most intense. Like Hara Tamiki, Ota had flirted briefly with the proletarian literature movement in earlier days; but in the 1940s Ota wrote stories to which the most nationalistic Japanese did not object. The titles themselves-Land of Cherry Blossoms, Daughter of Battle-are one index; the content indicates that the titles are not misleading. Hasegawa Kei has termed Woman of the Sea "production literature," that is, literature extolling the virtues of work in the service of the nation. 2 Ota herself described the story in these terms: "It was my desire to portray the development in a life lived with little reflection when a young woman with a bright future runs into external setbacks which seem bleak but does not sueHasegawa Kei, "Nitchu sensoki no josei sakka-Ota.:_ Yoko to Sata Ineko no baai" (Female writers during the Sino-Japanese War-the cases of Ota Yoko and Sata lneko), in Shinshii shirakaba 53-55.281 (April 1983). 2

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cumb to slippery metaphysical writhing." 3 Ota's anti-intellectualism here is stunning; so also is what her biographer Esashi Akiko calls the "exact fit" between C)ta's express aim and the "direction in which the country was moving." If Woman of the Sea earned the label "production literature," Land of Cherry Blossoms earned a whole range of labels: "continental literature," with continent: referring to the Asian mainland and Japan's imperialist ambitions there; "war-effort literature" and "literature glorifying war"; "national policy literature." Land of Cherry Blossoms is the story of young Japanese in China; one of them speaks these lines: "No matter when you look, Japan is a youthful country. The country of youth. Okay, so I'll work like the fires of youth in that China where the stench of old age is strong! I'll rejuvenate China with the blood of a young Japanese man." 4 Land of Cherry Blossoms was part of the patriotic bath in which the Japanese public was immersed during the war years. No irresistible external compulsion forced Ota in this direction. She had welcomed the outbreak of war with China. At least, when her second husband left her and went to Manchuria, she had lamented the fact that as a woman she did not have that option. In October 1938 she paid her own way to China to see for herself and to gather material for Land of Cherry Blossoms. Later she went on junkets sponsored by the military to improve the morale of the troops. Land of Cherry Blossoms became a major movie; it was released on November l, 1941, less than six weeks before Pearl Harbor. In a story published in 1943, Ota recounts her reaction to the news of the Japanese attack: "On the eighth [on the other side of the international date line, Pearl Harbor took place on December 8] sacred war was declared against America and England. I wasn't surprised or frightened by the beginning of the war; on the eighth I stayed glued to newspapers and the radio, cried, and felt as if fully alive; I felt a fresh new flame." 5 To be sure, one cannot assume automatically that 3 Quoted in Esashi, Kusazue, p. l 17. • Quoted in Hasegawa Kei, "Ota Yoko no Sakura no kuni to watakushi" (Ota Yoko's Land of Cherry Blossoms and I), in]ugoshi noto (Notes from the home front) 6. 148 (1977).

5 "Junigatsu yoka no yo" (The night of December 8), March 1943, quoted in Esashi, Kusazue, p. 120.

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an author speaks through her characters, but there is no reason not to think so here. Statements like this provide a benchmark against which to measure the radical shift in Ota's politics after Hiroshima. After the war Ota did not disclaim these works or recant, but according to her biographer she chose not to list them on her curriculum vitae. 6 The poet Kurihara Sadako, a friend of Ota and one of her staunchest defenders, has suggested that a good deal of Ota's postwar sense of insecurity may be attributable to embarrassment over her wartime works. 7 In January 1945 Ota returned from Tokyo, which had become virtually unlivable, to Hiroshima, to the house of her half sister Nakagawa Ichie; she had sent her mother back to Hiroshima some time earlier. The fall of Saipan in June 1944 had brought Tokyo within range of land-based American bombers; the night of March 9-ro, 1945, witnessed the devastation ofTokyo by firebombs. As Ota wrote in City of Corpses: "I had come back from Tokyo at New Year's, intending to wait until March and then take someone with me to dispose of my house in Tokyo. For until things warmed up a bit, it was impossible to do anything at all in Tokyo, where day and night one had to hole up in air raid shelters .... Exhausted by the day-andnight bombing of Tokyo and by the shortage of food, I had come back to Hiroshima." The house in Hakushima Kuken-cho in the northeast section of Hiroshima held four women: Ota's mother Tomi, Ota herself, her sister Nakagawa, and Nakagawa's baby daughter. Ota had intended to stay only briefly, but an extended hospitalization and then the difficulties of arranging transport to the village that was her ultimate destination delayed her departure. At 8: 15 on the morning of August 6 Ota was in bed: "At daybreak the air raid alarm was lifted; shortly after seven o'clock the alert too was lifted. I went back to bed. I usually slept late anyway, and since I had just been released from the hospital, where I often slept till almost noon, those in the house left me alone until that bright light flashed. I was sound asleep inside the mosquito net." 8 6

Esashi, Kusazue, p. 193·

7

Kurihara Sadako, "Kaisetsu" (Commentary), in Ota Yoko shii 3.413.

8

City of Corpses was not Ota's first published account of the atomic bomb. On September 122

OTA YOKO

Ota and her family, r95I. Ota Yoko is second from left. Her mother is in the middle. Ota's younger half sister is to the right of her mother. The three children are the children of this half sister, nieces to Ota Yoko. Courtesy Nakagawa Ichic

City ef Corpses tells the story of Ota's experience of the atomic bomb, both the events of August 6 in Hiroshima and the subsequent days and months in Kushima. It is a straightforward narrative, more reportorial and less consciously literary than Summer Flowers. 1947-1963 Ota returned to Tokyo in late 1947. Hara Tamiki outlived the atomic bomb experience by less than six years; Ota Yoko lived on for eighteen years. For all those years, the shadow of the atomic bomb hung over her. It was not merely that she worried about her health, nor that people quickly came to label her, often disparagingly, the CAREER,

30, 1945, before Occupation censorship swung into action, Ota published a short account in the Asahi shimbun: "Umizoko no yo na hikari: genshibakudan no kiishii ni atte" (A flash as at the bottom of the sea: Encounter with atomic bombing); in Ota Yoko shu 2.275-280. That essay is the very first listing in the chronological bibliography of writings about the atomic bomb offered in Nihon no gembaku bungaku r 5.344. TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

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"atomic bomb writer." But in the early years the experience of the atomic bomb left her unable to write on other subjects. In 1950 Ota commented on this block in the Preface to the first complete edition of City of Corpses: The reverberations continue to this day.... I tried to write other works. I tried to write works unrelated to the atomic bomb, different works. But the image of my hometown Hiroshima branded onto my mind drove away the vision of other works .... I had witnessed with my eyes and heart and listened to people talk about the reality of the destruction of Hiroshima and the annihilation of people. And that reality produced a vision of a concrete piece of writing that ... crippled my zest for writing other works.

But writing about the atomic bomb was never easy. Indeed, to write about it was to relive the experience: "Ifl try to write about the Hiroshima of the summer of 1945, I am tormented, of course, by the accumulated memories and fragments of memories I have collected. I gaze fixedly at these events I have to call up from memory in order to write, and I become ill; I become nauseated; my stomach starts to throb with pain." In these years Ota was dependent periodically on drugs and attributed this problem to the anguish she had to endure. In 1956 she wrote: "Literature is a hard fight from start to finish; but in order to continue writing on the theme of the atomic bomb, I exhaust myself in the vicious confrontation with my atomic-bomb antagonist . . . . Frightened of what I was writing even as I was writing it, I took tranquilizers as I wrote." 9 Still, between 1945 and 1955 Ota wrote and published five major works relating directly to the atomic bomb. Two took the experience of August 6 as their centerpiece, one in straightforward nonfictional fashion (City of Corpses), one in the form of a novel (Human Tatters, 1951). Two took as their subject the fate of the city and its inhabitants in the years after the atomic bomb. The fifth is a lightly disguised account of the mental and physical ailments that led Ota in 1951 to have herself admitted for a lengthy hospital stay. Together, they constitute a body of work unequaled, at least in quantity, by any other writer-survivor. Critics generally consider Hara Tamiki the better 9

"Bungaku no osoroshisa" (The fearsomeness ofliterature) (March 1956); in Ota Yoko shu,

2.322.

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writer, but all his writings that treat the atomic bomb do not fill a medium-sized book. Even before the deaths of Hara (1951) and Toge Sankichi (1953), Ota had reason for the touchy pride she revealed in her statement to Robert Jay Lifton: "I am the only A-bomb writer. Who else could you find?" 10 These writings do not make easy reading. This is true not only because they offer accounts of the bomb itself, but also because of their tone and overall outlook. In Human Tatters Ota creates fictional characters who then experience the bomb. Ota places them at various spots in Hiroshima on August 6, hence forcing herself to conduct research to supplement her own memories. Human Tatters opens with an idyllic scene: On a midsummer morning the Inland Sea gave off its characteristic vivid emerald glitter. With a sharp, earsplitting noise, three diesel-powered ships were slicing through the ripples that gleamed white in the sun. The surface of the sea spread out vast and comfortable, its color changing lazily among the colors unique to the Inland Sea: delicate velvety blue, pale grape, dark and light blue, occasionally light yellow. I I

Although the "sharp, earsplitting noise" may foreshadow the atomic bomb, the mood is hardly somber. Over 250 pages later, the final chapter begins with this passage: Winter came. In the city the snow sparkled, and the wind blew. Sullen-faced soldiers of foreign armies walked the streets of the city, whose roof tiles sparkled with white powder. In this city English soldiers had replaced the American troops who arrived immediately after the war ended. English, Australian, French troops and soldiers, white and yellow and black troops, Chinese troops were stationed here or vacationed here. And the so-called postwar phase that was assaulting every last inch of Japanese territory assaulted every last part of Hiroshima, too, inside and out. Because virtually all the houses had been destroyed, there was no indoor crime in the city; the crime took place out of doors, and indoor crime arose with great frequency in the small towns. The criminals themselves were shabby victims of the war; in town after town chases, gambling, prostitution, fraud, '°Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hirq_shima (New York: Basic Books, 1967), p. 402; we have only the interpreter's version, not Ota's own words. " Ota Yoko shii

2. 7.

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and murder were all daily occurrences. People gradually grew inured to them, and in some quarters people even voiced approval of the psychology of the criminals. 12

Human Tatters ends with the female protagonist full ofloathing both for the world and for herself: "Without knowing why, she thought she would like to go off somewhere deep in the mountains. That is, to someplace where there were no people. A world without people is a world without destruction." 1 3 World events affected Ota's moods, and the Korean War was raging as she wrote Human Tatters. But four years later, in "Pockets of Ugliness," the mood is little different. Here is the opening passage, profoundly unsettling: About the small hovel there was the sound of splashing rain. It sounded like a sudden squall. It was late at night, with people fast asleep; and the thought that this wretched hut was not standing in isolation all by itself, but that all around it stood hundreds of similar structures, that in all of them people were living and sleeping, somehow brought an unaccustomed relief to my spirits .... And I felt as if from the house in which I was sitting and from the neighboring houses inches away, the warm breath of sleeping people came carried across to my skin. Perhaps, I thought, in every house a single person was up, intent as I was on controlling the slugs that were crawling around the rain-drenched hut. With a sharp glance I looked into the next room. The only light in the house had been taken into the three-mat alcove off the kitchen; the old lightyellow mosquito netting hung suspended, filling the six-mat room, from one edge to the other, and the corner of the light only just reached it, a glow. In the shadowy spaces between the light reaching the mosquito netting and the nooks, I could sec countless slugs crawling about. The slugs grabbed hold of the hem of this ancient netting and with their distinctive crawl slowly moved up the front of the netting. One after the other, a set distance between them, the slugs crawled soundlessly up, taking possession of the entire netting, their soft bodies weaving their way along, undulating sinuously. For the slugs, it seemed, all moisture was food and air. 4 1

'" Ota Yoko shii 2.266. ' 3 Ota Yoko shii 2.273. For a recent study of narrative voice in City ofCorpses, Human Tatters, and Hanningen (Half-human) (1954), see John Whittier Treat, "Hiroshima and the Place of the Narrator," Journal of Asian Studies 48. 1:29-49 (February 1989). 1•

"Zanshu tenten," in Ota Yoko shii 126

r.220.

OTA YOKO

It is a disturbing start, and things get worse, not better. It is the narrator's relatives--sister, sister's two daughters, mother-under the netting. The site is a shantytown thrown up on Hiroshima's West Parade Ground. Inadequate as the huts are, there are not enough of them to go around; the narrator's sister got hers through a lottery. Because the area had always been wet, the slugs flourish. It is the sister's practice to pick off the slugs with chopsticks and drop them into a pail of salt solution. The narrator objects to that way of dealing with the problem: "I didn't like to kill the slugs. Somehow I wanted to spare them. They didn't know anything, hadn't committed any crime." Untiringly, the sister and the mother drop slugs into the pail: But I peeked in the pail. The slugs were half-dissolved, not completely dissolved. They became like mush; there was no indication they offered the slightest resistance to this sole and primitive disposal. Ever since seeing the state of things in the pail, I had begun to be distressed by what it reminded me of. It made me think of human bodies piled high, half-burned and halfmelted, not wholly melted, unable to resist in any way. The slugs in the pail resembled the pile of bodies precisely. I couldn't think of the slugs as mere slugs. ' 5

In both "Pockets ofUgliness" and City of Twilight, People of Twilight (1955), 16 Ota reveals herself to be an early opponent of Hiroshima's urban renewal. Not that Hiroshima should not be rebuilt. Ota had crossed that bridge in 1945; in City of Corpses she states that it was simply unthinkable to preserve Hiroshima as it then was for a memorial to atomic holocaust: "Those who were the guinea pigs when Hiroshima was blanketed in the stench of death must be praying from the grave that Hiroshima be rebuilt. That the city be beautiful, peaceful, fertile, bright." But Ota's support for rebuilding Hiroshima did not mean that she supported what actually took place; far from it. Boulevards one hundred meters wide were stately, but how many people would they displace? Would they have military uses like Hitler's autobahns? New high rises were attractive, yet who but the wellto-do could afford them? What about the people displaced? Ota spoke for the dispossessed, seeking at least to bring their plight and their 1'

Ota Yoko shu r.222.

16

Ota Yoko shu 3. 5-294.

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Ota Yoko, 1955- Courtesy Nakagawa Ichie

plaints to the attention of her readers. In some ways Ota had returned to her earlier sympathies; her writing was hardly proletarian literature, but it was advocacy of causes unpopular in postwar Japan. Still, by 1956 it all became too much: Korea and President Truman's threat to use nuclear weapons, the Bikini tests of 1954 and the contamination by radioactive fallout of the Japanese fishing vessel, the Lucky Dragon. As Ota wrote in 1958: The memory of the atomic bomb branded me with a dark stigma. In 1954 I took another rest cure at home, and when I awoke ... the Bikini incident occurred; the twenty-three men of the Lucky Dragon were at the point of death. I was shocked, to be sure; but in my heart of hearts, I thought I had known it would happen. I thought: that's why I've kept writing about the atomic bomb. I became angry. Why must I be the only writer to write on this issue? I was uneasy-was it enough to leave the writing to me? More writers must write-of those things .... [One of the fishermen], whose condition had been cause for grave concern, died. In that week or ten days, quick as a

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wink, my lush black hair turned gray and then white. My blood pressure fell; fingers, toes, the soles of my feet grew itchy; I became unable to soak in the bath.'7

Unwilling to subject herself to further anguish, Ota turned to a wandering existence. She explains why in Wandering (1956). She mentions a wanderlust that goes back to her childhood and a statement by her late friend, the novelist Hayashi Fumiko: "On the small scale, I want to escape my own home. On the large scale, I want to escape the globe." Ota writes of her own "sour sympathy for those words" and comments that Hayashi's thoughts were "like those of anyone living in the modern world." Then comes this passage: Soon after making that prudish statement, Hayashi Fumiko died suddenly; then there were the hydrogen-bomb tests, and what people called the ashes of death came blowing toward Tokyo. I thought to myself: serves them right! If, smeared in the ashes of death, they die one after the other: fine! If that happens, they may be able to understand how the human soul must change in response to modern anxiety; their hearts may be shaken. Having thought these thoughts, I decided to set out on a trip. 18

Kurihara Sadako is one of Ota's most insightful critics. In 1982 Kurihara wrote: "Someday I'll have to. It's the responsibility of a writer who's seen it"-this determination is the unwavering writer's declaration Ota made in the extreme hardship of the days after the bomb fell. Then ten years later, just as the antinuclear movement in Japan started to build with the H-bomb tests at Bikini, she began to spit out an atomic curse on those who had caused her previous struggles against the atomic bomb to make no headway, who did not understand the fearsomeness of the atomic bomb, who had criticized as "oversensitive" the sufferings of the survivors. She spat out these words that could not be taken back-"Serves them right!" "If, smeared in the ashes of death, they die one after the other: fine!"-and drove herself to a position from which there was no going back. r9

Here is the major turning point in Ota's literary career after 1945, a confession of surfeit and impotence and rage. '7 "Noiroze no kokufuku" (Conquering neurosis) (February 1958); in Ota Yoko shii 2.336-33 8. '8

Ota Yoko shii 3.296--297.

' 9 Kurihara, "Kaisetsu," in Ota Yoko shii 3.403.

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Between 1955 and her death in 1963 Ota wrote much less than she had in previous years. Her major pieces during this time were the two long essays on her mother already noted. Still, her output was substantial, and she was in the middle of a serialized novel when, on December IO, 1963, she died of heart failure. To judge from Ota's writing, Hara Tamiki's suicide was often on her mind. In a brief essay on Hara's death, Ota had listed the parallels in their lives: they grew up in Hiroshima, they were close contemporaries, they were not far apart in Hiroshima on August 6, they fled to the same riverbank, they wound up a week later in the same general area west of Hiroshima, they returned thereafter to live in Tokyo. Nevertheless, they never met, and Ota said she had not been particularly interested in meeting Hara: "Reading the works of writers, one thinks of some, 'I'd really like to meet them,' and of others, no such thoughts . . . . Hara was not a writer who excited my interest to meet him." She continued: had Hara been in the former category rather than the latter, "he probably wouldn't have been able to commit suicide. He would have wished to live long, not in order not to die but because he had much to accomplish .... Hara died leading a daily life he could not bear." These are strangely unsympathetic words on the death of a fellow writer-survivor. Where others admired the purity of Hara's life and intentions, Ota raised questions: I acknowledge the fact that we are living in fearsome times; but solitude-the idea that it is fine not to have deeply felt connections to others, to get along on one's own-now no longer suffices. World-weariness, isolation, the contemplation of death: all are related to evasion, and evasion is part of everyone's makeup; but one must consider the fundamental difference between indulging only in literature, becoming entranced by it, and getting out into the real world and writing as the conscience of the age. 20

The clear implication is that Hara gave up the struggle prematurely. In a short story of 1953, she added: "No one really understands suicide. Some say Hara Tamiki was the suicidal type even if memories of "Hara Tamiki no shi ni tsuite" (On Hara Tamiki's ~eath), Kindai bungaku,_August r95r; in Nihon no gembaku bungaku r.292-293 (and not in Ota Yoko shii); see also Ota's essay on the death of Toge Sankichi: "Gcmbaku shijin no shi" (Death of the poet of the atomic bomb) (March 1953); in Nihon no gembaku bungaku 2:2851-290.

20

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OTA YOKO

the atomic bomb had not terrified him. They may be right . . . . Still, I can't think of the atomic bomb and Hara's suicide except as connected."21 At various times in her own life she had considered suicide; indeed, one critic has suggested that Ota assailed Hara's suicide so sharply to guard against following his lead. In the same short story of 1953, two workmen approach the narrator as she is lost in thought at the ruins of Hiroshima Castle, site of a proposed memorial to Hara: "Lady ... "-gently-·-"what's so heavy on your mind? ... Don't tell me you're going to leave a last note and take your own life? You're not, are you?" "No, I'm not!" ... I had no intention of dying the way Hara Tamiki did. Yet the danger of a self-willed death dogged my steps. I wanted to live, but regardless there was always the danger of a self-willed death. 22

Hara's death had made her own life more difficult. She had felt a bond with him, at least after he was gone. In "Fireflies" she speaks of having eyes and soul in common with Hara, in contrast particularly with "the eyes and souls of those ... from Tokyo, who had not seen the vicious radioactive rays." 2 J But it was not simply a matter of sharing the atomic experience. After all, she shared that experience with several hundred thousand survivors. It was that Hara and she were among the very few writers seeking to write about Hiroshima, to transform Hiroshima into art. Ota spoke most poignantly of this burden in 1952, in response to a questionnaire that included the question, "From here on, what methods of writing do you propose to use?" Her answer began not with methods but with subject matter: I think I shall probably continue to write works that take as their subject matter the experience of the atomic bomb. In thinking so, I can only consider myself unfortunate. If true peace should come to pass, if there were no war anywhere in the world, then I should write other works. In its discussions " "Hotaru" (Fireflies) (June 1953); in Nihon no gembaku bungaku 2. 194-195. For an English translation of the entire story, see "Fireflies," trans. Koichi Nakagawa, in Kenzaburo Oe, ed., Atomic Aftermath: Short Stories about Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Tokyo: Shucisha, 1984), pp. 93-119. 22

"Hotaru," in Nihon no gembaku bungaku

2.

2 '

"Hotaru," in Nihon no gembaku bungaku

2. l

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

175.

76. 131

with the United States, the Japanese government says not a word about the great human and material losses brought about by the bomb; people in general seem to think that the atomic bombs were some natural calamity that fell on distant Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the atomic bomb is merely something America is testing year-round, that it has no particular connection to them. Hence they don't set great store by the creation of literature based on it. Some reviewers criticize my writings as "Hiroshima stuff," call it "atomic bomb stuff," say it is "written as if only she could write it." I think such criticism comes from perplexed intellectuals; I tend to think that it is because of that attitude that the advocates of rearmament are not willing to stay in the background. Had Hara Tamiki lived and written as he could, were Toge Sankichi in better health and writing lots of poetry, should the "children of the atomic bomb" grow up and write a whole series of great works even without being required to do so by their teachers, then my soul would soon find rest. You don't know how hard it is, thinking that I must write all by myself. One person can't write it all. It is a disgrace for Japanese writers that I am left to write it alone. 4 2

But Hara had taken his own life in 1951, and Toge Sankichi died on the operating table in 1953. From 1953 on, Ota was the only prominent writer-survivor of Hiroshima. OTA AND THE CRITICS

The critics have not been kind to Ota Yoko. There is one biography in Japanese, a prizewinning account that appeared in 197r. Its author, Esashi Akiko, knew Ota personally toward the end of Ota's life (Esashi was twenty-one when Ota died, twenty-nine when her biography of Ota appeared), and she poked with great diligence into Ota's private life. She relates with relish anecdotes and impressions from various sources that a less uninhibited biographer would have suppressed; the biography is as much about Esashi as about Ota. Esashi is particularly acerbic about Ota's early life and loves. For example, she writes: "This was the 1920s, when one heard words like 'freedom' and 'liberation.' The newspapers devoted a lot of space as well to the topic of free love. Yoko too became a practitioner of free love.'' 2 s Esashi shows some sympathy for Ota, but her portrait re2• 2

s

"Sakka no taido" (The attitude of the writer) (July 1952); in Ota Yoko shii 2.3 ro-3 r r. Esashi, Kusazue, p. 47.

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mains a nasty one. One sentence brings together these adjectives to describe Ota: unpleasant, haughty, overbearing, stingy, narrowminded, spoiled, self-centered, cold-blooded, gloomy. 26 Esashi's harsh comments encompass Ota's writings as well: "Yoko was not a talented writer. She hadn't the composure to amuse herself in the world ofideas. Nor did she have the spark of the poet or the talent to throw a veil over the depiction of passions and let them develop in a quiet key. Rather, she was the type of writer who went after what she herself had experienced and seen. And somehow, in going after that, after throwing herself headlong and letting go of the works, she was stuck on one leg, unable to jump to the next foothold. Once upon a time she had spread wide the wings of her imagination and written great love stories. But by now [late in Ota's career] she had lost the energy one needs to write long works; she was worn out after the atomic bomb, and the springs of her imagination had dried up." 2 7 A member of Ota's household only in the late, unhappy years, Esashi could hardly have been expected to come up with a bright picture; but her account does seem jaundiced. Ota Yoko is known to the English-language world primarily through the portrait Robert Jay Lifton painted in a late chapter of Death in Life (I 967), his psychohistorical study of survivors of Hiroshima. 28 Where Esashi was critical of Ota largely in personal terms, Lifton couched his criticism in the language of psychology. Lifton found Ota "touchy and ambivalent about our meeting," "harassed and restless," surrounded by "a fragile aura of pride, anxiety, vanity, and suspiciousness." Although these harsh first impressions softened, Lifton discussed Ota and her work in terms of his own categories: survival priority, guilt, sense of mission, and so on. His chapter title for Ota is "Literary Entrapment"; he wrote that "the imprisoning actuality of the A-bomb experience prevented her from entering upon its imaginative re-creation" and that her "early sensitivities concerning love and dependency were exacerbated by her A-bomb experience and her subsequent literary struggles." Lifton described Ota as "entrapped 26

Esashi, Kusazue, p. 82.

28

Lifton, Death in Life, pp. 402-407.

21

Esashi, Kusazue, p. 208.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

133

by the identity of the dead, by its disturbing inner questions, which in her case are asked in literary terms: 'Do I have the right to imagination? Can what I say about the dead ever be authentic?' Her increasing dissatisfaction with the memoir approach to A-bomb literature, and her inability to evolve an alternative one, undoubtedly contributed to her 'anger' at the A-bomb." 29 It is hardly an attractive picture, although one senses that Lifton the person was more sympathetic than his psychological categories permitted him to be. 1° But think for a moment of the circumstances of Lifton's interview with Ota. The year was 1962, little more than a year before Ota's death. She was fifty-nine. Six years earlier, fed up with the burden of being "the atomic bomb author," she had turned her back on Hiroshima. Lifton was a male psychologist in his late twenties, not fluent in Japanese (they spoke through an interpreter); he hadn't read her works. He was a national of the country that had dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Under these conditions, it is hardly surprising that she was reluctant to see Lifton at all or that the picture Lifton painted was less than complimentary. Lifton's approach and his categories invite scrutiny. He felt it necessary to distance himself-by means of single quotation marksfrom Ota's "anger"; he saw her experience as something to be mastered. But can it be mastered? Should Ota have moved beyond it? Are those who have experienced atrocity neurotic in living in the past? In his study of the European Holocaust, Lawrence L. Langer wrote: "A terminology of order may help us to cope with the experience of chaos, but it does not encourage us to enter its unsettling realm." The "neurosis,'' wrote Langer, 29 Lifton, Death in Life, p. 405. It is not clear whether the questions arc Ota's words or Lifton's.

Discussing in 1970 his earlier writings on Hiroshima, Lifton spoke of"what I should have known from the start: there is no tone, no framework, adequate to the nuclear weapons experience." Lifton, "The Hiroshima Bomb," in History and Human Survival, ed. Robert Jay Lifton (New York: Random House, 1970), p. 115. Lifton's comment is not directed to his treatment of Ota, but it applies. For an incisive-and vitriolic-critique of Death in Life, see Paul Goodman, "Stoicism and the Holocaust," New York Review of Books, March 28, 1968. ' 0

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OTA YOKO

may actually represent only a more honest if more painful encounter with the heritage of atrocity. Retaining a portion of that heritage, meeting and expressing it imaginatively, accepting the constricted life that confrontation with the Holocaust sometimes imposes, may be a normal response to an experience that is mocked by the idea of renewal. The emptiness and despair that accompany what the psychiatrist clinically defines as psychic numbing ... may not signify a retreat from truth but a simple acknowledgment of how extermination has invaded our lives. 31

Langer was speaking of the writer-survivors of the European Holocaust. All civilization united in condemning the Holocaust, and still the writer-survivors clung to "an experience that is mocked by the idea of renewal." Langer's analysis holds equally for the writer-survivors of Hiroshima. Even though there was scattered condemnation of the dropping of the atomic bombs, the major powers continued to build up their arsenals, to test new atomic and hydrogen weapons, and to threaten their use. There is a large element of sheer heroism in Ota's dozen years of encounter with Hiroshima; it is astonishing that she persisted as long as she did. It is hardly surprising that to the end of her life she remained torn and "conflicted," as in the interview with Lifton. Ota was a complicated person even before she experienced the atomic bomb; the negative reactions to her and to her work are not without foundation. Ota herself was as aware as anyone of the shortcomings of her work. In the Preface (1950) to City of Corpses, she wrote as follows: I had no time to write City of Corpses in the form of a novel. ... I had neither the time nor the emotional reserves necessary to portray that reality clearly and skillfully in the format of superior literature. I hurried with the writing, one thought in mind: to get it written, using the strength I had and a form that came easily to me, before I died.

She spoke particularly of her inability to "describe adequately" what Hiroshima was like; the reality of Hiroshima was far more tragic than '' Lawrence L. Langer, Versions of Survival (Albany: State University of New York, 1982), pp. r4-r5. TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

13 5

any reader can accept readily. She gave a few examples before concluding: To people who know nothing of the nature of a uranium bomb, facts like these must seem like lies. But precisely for this reason it was all the more important that I write about Hiroshima. The disaster of Hiroshima cannot be considered apart from its historical significance. When one realizes this, then even in a work ofliterature one cannot fabricate, one cannot take one's time. One should transplant the situation into fiction, preserving its factual underpinnings and not arbitrarily destroying its original form. And the very fact that it has to be written makes it difficult to begin.

Ota ended her Preface with the hope that she might still write "a literary work that can make good the inadequacies of this memoir." But what exactly did she have in mind? Two years later, m response to a questionnaire, she made this statement: I think that the literary high road is, after all, realism [Ota used the English word]. I want to write without hard-to-read, conceptual, useless frills or distortions, so that everyone can read, everyone can understand. So I shall probably continue to write works that go against the grain of the literary establishment; I can think of nothing that would cause me more regret afterward than to lose my nerve and give way to the writing style of the literary establishment. 32

If nothing else, this passage demonstrates Ota's willingness to offend the literary establishment of the day: literature, yes; but realistic literature. Four years later, in 1956, as she was turning from the atomic bomb to other subjects, Ota published an essay entitled "The Fearsomeness of Literature." The essay concludes with this passage: I sometimes think I have forgotten how to write fiction. When I try to construct a work according to the hitherto traditional rules ofJapanese fiction, it makes me severely ashamed. I become so ashamed I tremble. Because I who live in this extraordinary Japan cannot hold fast to the conventional literary forms. However, I am not satisfied with my own method of writing fiction. I would dearly love to write a great, perfectly constructed roman [Ota used the French word]. But if, for example, I were to write 'fiction' based on what ' 2

"Sakka no taido," Ota Yoko shii

136

2. 3 r r.

OTA YOKO

is there in documentary form in City of Twilight, People of Twilight, it would take me 2,000 pages. My way attempts to meet journalism halfway; but journalism doesn't seem about to meet my work halfway.... I intend to write first what I have to write even if it means closing my eyes to the artistry of literature. Then I read Hara Tamiki's Summer Flowers. When I read Summer Flowers, I know for dead sure that I am in pursuit of artistry. I too wish to capture not the facticity of the atomic bomb that I know so well, but the unique purity of literature. Herein lies my contradiction. More than that, the fearsomeness ofliterature is brought home to me.13

"The unique purity of literature" may be more Hara's realm than Ota's, but her achievement is an enormous one nonetheless. There is a larger issue that these criticisms tend to obscure. Consider these words of Sasaki Kiichi: I feel I am skating on thin ice when I talk about these two writers [Ota Yoko and Hara Tamiki] who experienced the atomic bomb and wrote that internal and external experience into fiction and poems. Recently I have come to feel ever more strongly that it is of no use to argue whether their works arc good or bad. They wrote with a total involvement that was virtually prayer-like; for us to participate in their experience of the atomic bomb, we too must have a sense of prayer roughly as strong as theirs .... The fact that what the two wrote is literature appears almost incidental, a phenomenon brought about by the profundity of their personal experience. So I like to think. Had they confronted the experience of the atomic bomb from the outset thinking ''I'll turn it into fiction" or "I'll turn it into poetry," their works likely would not be so deeply impressive.14

To be sure, Sasaki himself was hardly an unbiased observer. A writer himself, he was Hara Tamiki's brother-in-law (brother of Hara's beloved wife), a contemporary of Ota's, and not untouched by either the war or the atomic bomb. Still, his perspective may well be broader than those of Ota's detractors. The dropping of the atomic bomb is one of the critical events of the twentieth century. Anyone wishing to enter vicariously into that event must cherish every account, every "prayer." 13

"Bungaku no osoroshisa" (March 1956); in Ota Yoko shu 2. 323.

1• Sasaki Kiichi, "Hara Tamiki to Ota Yoko san no koto" (Hara Tamiki and Ota Yoko) (1970); in Nihon no gembaku bungaku 2.339. TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

137

CITY OF CORPSES: CENSORSHIP AND THE TEXT

Like Hara Tamiki, Ota Yoko faced Occupation censorship. Her efforts to publish City of Corpses brought her to the attention both of the censors and of Army intelligence. Her account of the incident is heavy with irony and resentment: The policy was that a work a Japanese writer wished to publish in Japan had to pass the censorship of the army of occupation in the section of Japan she resided in. In my case, I had fled to the hills of Hiroshima Prefecture; but if I wished to get clearance for my manuscript, I had to send it to Kokura in Kyushu. There had been a reply addressed to me from Kokura, that I should submit two copies of the work in question. I didn't feel like making two copies of the 3 50-page manuscript. I knew full well that America did not take kindly to the publication of the book; and it was more than I could bear to have the manuscript-written in pencil on scraps of paper pulled off shoji, toilet paper, and smudged writing paper-sent back from Tokyo for me to see once more. And I was not happy that to spite me the reply from Kokura had used incorrect characters for my names, both first and last. I sent a card saying that next time they should get it right. Soon an Occupation intelligence officer appeared on her doorstep. Her interrogator was a tall white American in his thirties; he was accompanied by an interpreter, a short American of Japanese descent. The intelligence officer had not read her manuscript; his interests were narrow and simplistic. Ota recounted the give-and-take as follows: "Apart from you yourself, who has read the manuscript of your book?" "Only I, before I sent it off to the publisher in Tokyo. I received a letter from Mr. E. of the editorial staff, so he must have read it." "What arc Mr. E.'s ideas and politics?" "He is a liberal." "What Japanese political party does he belong to?" "I don't know him personally, so I can't say; but to go by the past habits ofJapanese intellectuals, he probably doesn't belong to any political party." Swiveling his large head from left to right and back again, the interpreter transmitted the questions and answers back and forth between the officer and me; the officer didn't seem particularly interested, didn't even nod his head. He had taken out a notebook and occasionally jotted things down in it. "Aside from Japanese, has any foreigner read the manuscript?" "No. No foreigner has read it." "Please name as many of your friends as you can .... What arc their ideas and politics?" 138

OTA YOKO

Cover of City of Corpses (November 1948), showing the notations of the censors. The artist is Fukuzawa Ichiro. Courtesy of the Gordon W. Prange Collection, University of Maryland College Park Libraries 139

Manuscript of page one of City of Corpses, with editorial notations. Courtesy Nihon kindai bungakkan and Nakagawa Ichie

"They are liberals. They are antiwar." "What political party do they belong to?" "To none."

Ota volunteered some thoughts on the relation between art and politics but soon realized that neither man was interested. The questions continued: "Since August 6, have you walked through Hiroshima?" "Yes." "At that time, were you in the company of foreigners?" "No." "Did you write in your manuscript about any atomic bomb secrets?" "No. I don't know any atomic bomb secrets. What I wrote about was simply what the city of Hiroshima and the people in it experienced."

Then, toward the end, the officer said: "I want you to forget your memories of the atomic bomb. America won't use the atomic bomb again, so I want you to forget the events in Hiroshima." After a moment I responded: "I don't think I can forget. Even ifl wanted to forget, I couldn't." The two were silent. "As a resident of the city, I want to forget, but forgetting and writing are two different things. A writer writes even about things long past and forgotten. In that sense I can't promise to forget." He made no response to this either. "For my part, I have a question .... " "If it is something I can answer, I will." "I hear that in respect to the atomic bomb there is an unwritten rule that only scientific reports can be published; I know that no prohibition has been issued publicly. Why is that?" "It's not my job to answer." "Even if I can't publish, I have to write; apart from the fact that I don't know any atomic bomb secrets, is what cannot be published a matter of the cruelty involved? Or is it a total prohibition?" "It's not my job to answer that, either, so I can't answer. I want you to forget the atomic bomb." I could not accept the American officer's word that America would not drop another atomic bomb. Given the fact that America dropped it on Japan, there was the possibility of bringing about a crisis in the next, greater warthe pain in my heart was ineradicable. Then, out of the blue, I said: "Ifl can't TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

publish it in Japan, I'll make a present of it to America." The resentment piercing my breast suddenly was gone. 3 5

Ota's memory may not be entirely reliable, for she published this account eight years after the event. And the hand of the Occupation was not so heavy: the Occupation authorities did not throw her into prison, did not torture her, did not forbid the appearance of a censored version of City of Corpses. Still, this encounter holds enormous pathos. The manuscript of City of Corpses reflected the conditions in which Ota lived and worked. It consisted of thirteen sequences of text on many sizes, types, and brands of paper; a good many pages had writing on both sides, numbered in various orders. 36 The first edition appeared in November 1948, published by one of Japan's major publishers. The threat of censorship had led to the deletion of the second chapter, "Expressionless Faces." 37 In her Preface of 1950, Ota refers to these deletions as "voluntary," although they were more likely voluntary on the part of the publishers than on her own part. The second edition-the first complete version-appeared in May 1950; it serves as the basis for this translation. 3 8 is

"Sanjo" (Mountaintop) (May 1955); in Ota Yiiko shii

I.

186-190, 192, 199-20!.

Nagaoka Hiroyoshi, "Shikabane no machi no genko ni tsuite" (On the manuscript of City of Corpses), in Nagaoka, Gembaku bunken o yo mu (Reading atomic bomb literature) (Tokyo: San'ichi, 1982), pp. 241-267. J7 The first edition contains 26 numbered sections, not the 30 of the second edition. The five numbered sections that make up the second chapter are missing, and the final chapter is broken up into two numbered sections, section 26 beginning with the line: "Late autumn has finally come to this small country village." ' 6

'' The second edition was reissued in August 1951, this time as volume 65 of a "Citizen's Library" series. A fourth appearance came in August 1955, as volume 66 in a second series. Since Ota's death City ofCorpses has appeared in several forms: as a book (July 1972, volume 79 in yet another "Library"), as the lead entr_y in volume 1 of Ota Yiiko shii, and as the lead entry in volume 2-the volume devoted to Ota Yoko-of Nihon no gembaku bungaku. Portions of City of Corpses have appeared in a number of anthologies. There are no major textual differences among the editions published from 1950 on.

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OTA YOKO

City of Corpses by Ota Yoko

Preface to Second Edition (1950) I WROTE City of Corpses between August 1945 and the end of November 1945· I was living at the time on a razor's edge between death and life, never knowing from moment to moment when death would drag me over to its side. After August l 5, when the unconditional surrender of Japan ended the war, and after the 29th, alarming symptoms of atomic bomb sickness suddenly began to appear among those who had survived August 6, and people died one after the other. I hurried to finish City of Corpses. If like the others I too was dying, then I had to hurry to finish it. I had lost everything I owned that day in the conflagration that devastated Hiroshima, and even after I got to the country, I hadn't even a single sheet of paper, not one pencil, let alone pens and manuscript paper. At the time there wasn't a single store selling these items. I got yellowed paper, peeled from the shoji of the house I was staying in and the houses of acquaintances in the village, toilet paper, two or three pencils. Death was breathing down my neck. If I was to die, I wanted first to fulfill my responsibility of getting the story written down. Under those circumstances, I had no time to organize City of Corpses in good literary form. Having listened to many people who had experienced with their own bodies and souls the reality of Hiroshima on August 6, and having done some research, I had neither the time nor the emotional reserves necessary to portray that reality clearly and skillfully in the format of superior fiction. I hurried with the writing, one thought in mind: to get it written, using the strength I had and a form that came easily to me, before I died. Now, on the occasion of its republication, I have given it a careful reading. As I read, I could not help feeling, all the more keenly, that what I experienced was small and insignificant when set against the extraordinary suffering that unfolded throughout Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. CITY OF CORPSES

147

My pen did not take in the whole city. I wrote only of my very limited experience of the riverbed. I had been living in Mother's house but escaped from there to the riverbed, where I lived in the open for three days. I wrote also of the sights I saw on our flight to the country. The whole city was buried in a calamity more sad and severe than the scenes I saw on the riverbed and in the streets: that fact I should like my readers to be aware of. Readers will probably find my style unsatisfying. In rereading this book today, five years later, I myself felt impatient at many points. There arose before my mind's eye the conditions in Hiroshima then, conditions I was unable to describe adequately; I could not help remembering physical and spiritual suffering so severe it seared my very soul. THESE FIVE YEARS I have thought only of reorganizing City of Corpses in less subjective fashion and, having regained my mental and spiritual health, of turning it into a literary work. But, surprisingly enough, the city of death that the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima created makes very difficult subject matter for literature. The new methods of description and expression necessary to write cannot be found in the repertoire of an established writer. I have not seen hell, nor do I acknowledge the existence of the Buddhist hell. Losing sight of the exaggeration involved, people often spoke of the experience of the atomic bomb as 'hell' or 'scenes of hell.' It would probably have been a simple matter if one were able to express the bitterness of that experience in terms of that ready-made concept 'hell,' whose existence I did not acknowledge. I was absolutely unable to depict the truth without first creating a new terminology. Using the writer's pre-existing concept of what constitutes literature, I found it difficult to communicate in writing the indescribable fright and terror, the gruesome misery, the numbers of victims and dead, the horrifying conditions of atomic bomb sickness. I was a witness when for the first time ever, in one instant, a city of 400,000 people was wiped out by the fires of war. I also learned then for the first time that those fires of war were brought about by OTA YOKO

something called an atomic bomb, which contains unknown and frightening mysteries. It was also the first time that thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of human beings died in one instant, and I was among the first to walk weeping among corpses lying about, so many that there was hardly place to set one's feet. I was also the first to see the gruesomeness of atomic bomb sickness, a vast and profound force that destroys the human body even while the body is alive. Under these conditions anything and everything I was forced to see was new under the sun; being forced to witness it was itself tragic. Similarly, for example, hearing of a girl who had been on Kanawa Island, eight kilometers due south of the epicenter in Otemachi: in the instant after the radioactive flash she had one breast gouged out. Try as one might to depict that in writing, it cannot be done. A girl closer to the blast escaped death because she was working on a girls' volunteer brigade on a small island out in the Inland Sea; but she had her breasts ripped off by the glass splinters the blast sent flying, and a round, breast-shaped ball of bloody flesh protruded and hung from the socket in her chest that thereafter became a black cavity. To people who know nothing of the nature of a uranium bomb, facts like these must seem like lies. But precisely for this reason it was all the more important that I write about Hiroshima. The disaster of Hiroshima cannot be considered apart from its historical significance. When one realizes this, then even in a work ofliterature one cannot fabricate, one cannot take one's time. One should transplant the situation into fiction, preserving its factual underpinnings and not arbitrarily destroying its original form. And the very fact that it has to be written makes it difficult to begin. I WAS UNABLE to publish City of Corpses even after the war had ended, due to unfortunate conditions that had nothing to do with me personally. I finished writing City of Corpses in a village off in the hills forty kilometers north of Hiroshima, thinking, as I wrote earlier, that every moment might be my last. After having been off the air for a whole month because of damage caused by typhoon and flood, the radio came on again one day, and I heard the faint voice of the announcer CITY OF CORPSES

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say that only scientific accounts of the atomic bomb could be published. Not being able to publish-that was another of the fateful burdens writers of a defeated nation had to shoulder. City of Corpses was published, in November of 1948. But a fair number of pages, containing parts I thought important, had been excised voluntarily. The result was a work that had been watered down and was incomplete. From 1948 until now I have let it sit. I had hoped in the five years after 1945 to reestablish my standing as a novelist, but these five years have been an unfortunate, fatefulindeed, strange--period. The war had rendered about ten years of my life null and void; these five years added to the damage. The reverberations continue to this day. During that time I tried to write other works. I tried to write works unrelated to the atomic bomb, different works. But the image of my hometown Hiroshima branded onto my mind drove away the vision of other works. It was difficult to turn the Hiroshima of the atomic bomb into a work of literature. Even more, I had witnessed with my eyes and heart and listened to people talk about the reality of the destruction of Hiroshima and the annihilation of people. And that reality produced a vision of a concrete piece of writing that was something less than literature and that crippled my zest for writing other works. Ifl try to write about the Hiroshima of the summer of 1945, I am tormented, of course, by the accumulation of memories and of fragments of memories I have collected. I gaze fixedly at these events I have to call up from memory in order to write, and I become ill; I become nauseated; my stomach starts to throb with pain. Take one episode, reported in the press at the time, that is still fresh in my mind. It is the story of three children, orphaned in that instant on August 6, who entered the camp for orphans that had been set up in Kusatsu, outside Hiroshima; they wished to become monks. Two of the children were eleven; one was thirteen. The three said they wanted to become monks and dedicate their lives to the spirits of their parents and to the spirits of other victims of the war; accompanied by a monk from a branch temple in Hiroshima, they went to Kyoto, to the main temple of that sect. 150

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There they took the tonsure and wore the shawls and robes of priests. Right or wrong aside (and I doubt that these children should end their lives as monks), the memory of this newspaper article is all it takes to flood my heart with tears. I am a writer; but even so, I wanted first and foremost to wrap my arms around those small children and weep. I wanted to be a writer able to do that with good grace. I grieved bitterly; body and mind threatened to fall apart. I could not get over the pathos of those children; confronted by other griefs as well, I would throw down my pen. There were also days when I doubted whether writers should write at a distance from their emotions. Wholly caught up in the city of corpses, I was unable to write about anything else. For me there is no way other than to let more time pass. This may be only natural. Tormented as I am by such thoughts, I take only slight consolation from the republication of this book. The atomic bomb is the greatest tragedy of the century-no, of Japanese history. The republication of this book helps me with the unbearable thought of the people of Hiroshima who died and the people who were injured and survived. Indeed, I do hope some day to write a literary work that makes good the inadequacies of this memoir.

May 6, 1950

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Ota Yoko

An Autumn So Horrible Even the Stones Cry Out r. The days come, the days go, and chaos and nightmare seem to wall me in. Even the full light of clear, perfectly limpid autumn days brings no relief from profound stupefaction and sorrow: I seem to be submerged in the deepest twilight. On all sides people whose condition is no different from mine die every day. Both the neighbors to the west and the neighbors to the east are getting ready for funerals. Yesterday I was told that the person I saw at the doctor's three or four days earlier had begun to vomit up pitchblack blood; today, that the pretty girl I bumped into a few days ago on the street has lost all her hair, is covered with purple spots, and lies at the point of death. Nor do I know when death will come to me. Any number of times each day I tug at my hair and count the strands that pull out. Terrified of the spots that may appear suddenly, at any moment, I examine the skin of my arms and legs dozens of times, squinting with the effort. Small red mosquito bites I mark with ink; when, with time, the red bites fade, I am relieved they were bites and not spots. Atomic bomb sickness inflicts strange, idiotic bodily harm: you remain fully conscious, yet no matter how dreadful the symptoms that appear, you are aware of neither pain nor numbness. For those suffering from it, atomic bomb sickness represents the discovery of a new hell. Incomprehensible terror when death beckons and anger at the war (the war itself, not the defeat) intertwine like serpents and even on the most listless of days throb violently. I have always wanted to spend an autumn in the country; yet now that I am here, I find myselfin a peculiar state. I am not on a welcome trip in the natural course of events. I have come driven out of the burnt-out wasteland of a metropolis totally destroyed, a metropolis no longer deserving of the name; I am so utterly weak and wretched CITY OF CORPSES

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that I have lost all touch with that dream that was once so dear to my heart. Even if only because of my memories of childhood, the beauty of the seasons as they change from summer to fall in this place deep in the mountains has given me what strength I have. The magnificent colors as the sky, once light blue, darkens each day, changing in late autumn to deep azure; the delight the mountains provide when, far and near, the billowing ranges appear in the evening to be piles of bright green crystal; the mountains and fields, scorched by the sun, changing gradually from light yellow and brown to dark brown, then, withering, to silver gray and the color of miscanthus. And the rice fields hour by hour taking on color, the rice tassels seen at a distance a faint line that becomes finally the surface of an ocean, its golden waves undulating. The sound of flowing water on a moonlit night, a murmur almost like someone sobbing, echoing softly. The autumn insects that chirp like wind chimes almost until winter. The mountain birds with their brilliant plumage, in quiet repose off in the hills, and the male pheasants with their beautiful wing colors. Even in the midst of Tokyo, where life was often unkind, such memories of the landscape revived me. In Tokyo I often thought: someday I'll go back to that place of my memories and take a long vacation. Now I have come at last to the countryside of which I was so fond. Afflicted in body and soul by the brutality of war, I have come to lay my body down. I look at the light purple mountains, at the perfectly clear blue sky; at night I sit looking at the brilliance of the moon or listening to the sound of flowing water. But those sights and sounds no longer hold me spellbound. I think of the day I came back, a beggar, to this village that was once mine, where I no longer have a home of my own. From the skin out, all the clothes I had on were full of blood, sweat, and dirt; my face and hands were swollen, and streaks of dried blood encrusted my clothing. That fateful morning I had been sleeping in a silk nightgown with 154

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a white-on-blue pattern and a narrow obi and, underneath, an undersash and white cotton underclothes. Those clothes had all been sliced through in back as if by a sharp knife, all at once, a cut only about an inch long; one after the other, the injuries to my ear and back had begun to fester. The clouds are gray; the earth is damp to its marrow. Autumn is here. I am cast out, with no home; my clothes are all in tatters. -from the verses Gorky has Pashka recite in The Three

The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima took place on the morning of August 6. People fleeing the city of flames began reaching the country here the next day, the seventh-the city was still burning furiously; and they were all in the same condition. They were even worse off than the person in Pashka's song. For some reason the bus, which made only one trip a day, was not running; one after another, severely injured people came walking down the road from the train station twenty-five kilometers away at Hatsukaichi. Swathed in white, only their eyes glittering, people with burns over their entire bodies came down the shortcut over the pass. There are now more than 360 such people in the village; each day even now, with September nearly past, someone new returns, death perched on his shoulder. One day a young girl who had lost both parents to the atomic bomb came tottering as far as the top of the pass and died, her lips to the water of the mountain stream. September 6, one month to the day after the bomb fell, was brilliantly clear; it followed a period of continual rain. In the sunlight, a bunch of girls came by, chattering away, returning from the elementary school nearby. From the second floor I observed these young village girls. One of them, ten or eleven years old and wearing cotton trousers, came to a sudden stop and looked up at the bright sun as if just re2.

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membering. Hand shading her eyes, she said, "Gee, I'm terrified! Punishment from Heaven! The atomic bomb ... " The other girls, too, all turned their faces toward the sky, looked at the sun and, as if frightened, put both hands up to cover their heads or shield their faces. The child's expression is an interesting one: "punishment from Heaven." The bright flash that morning reached even this village-twenty-five kilometers from Hiroshima as the crow flies. The blast that came on the heels of the flash knocked sideways the villagers who were cutting grass or doing other work high in the mountains that morning. The girls walked on, shouting as if it were a song: "Punishment from Heaven! Punishment from Heaven!" In any of their homes, one or two members of their immediate families or relatives who have come for refuge are headed for or are on the point of dying cruel deaths. Even the feelings of little children seem to have been affected. The eight-year-old girl from the first floor came upstairs to play, and I asked her, "Did you see the flash, too?" "Yeah, yeah. Saw it clearly. Grampa, you know, was working in the field, and the field glowed, see. He thought, you know, there might be a fire underground, so he started to dig." She and I both burst out laughing. "Where were you? Weren't you frightened?" "Not really frightened, see; I didn't know what was happening. Not frightened. I was in school, you know, and the teacher was calling the roll. As he said 'Matsui Shigeo,' there was a sudden flash." Talking away in her charming voice, the girl spread her hands wide, as far apart as she could. I could almost see the bluish-white flash emerging from between her extended palms. "Matsui Shigeo looked around in great confusion; he thought it might be a movie." When I am curious, I can't help opening my eyes wide. The moment the bluish flash got here over the mountains from Hiroshima, a first-grade boy stared wide-eyed and expectant, thinking a movie was about to begin: how pathetic! OTA YOKO

"The other kids, too-they clapped their hands and said, 'Hey, a movie's beginning!' The teacher scolded them." Then, she said, the children were led to the air raid shelter and squatted there for a long time. As I was listening to the story this girl told, six P-5 Is-was this a flight to mark the first month since the bomb?-appeared with a great roar from over the mountains to the west and flew off to the east. Just at that moment a group of twelve or thirteen children came past on their way home from school. They were all boys-perhaps friends of Matsui Shigeo. The children spotted the planes. On the instant, confused, they scattered in all directions, then clustered together again; excited, they stuttered and cried out, "Hey, look! America, America! Those planes bring the bright pika and the loud don!" "Hey, pika-don, pika-don! They're 29s! 29s! 29s!" They were so flustered they didn't speak in complete sentences. To see the planes they stretched up until their feet almost left the ground; their small bodies teetered. One child spread his legs as far apart as he could: "Hey, hey! I got a good look at them. They weren't Bs or 29s. Neither one. When they turned, they had something written on the side .... "His right hand, thrust suddenly and fiercely into the air, flew off to the side, as if following the lettering. Another child said timidly, "Then, uh, maybe they were Japanese planes? How would American planes know the way to Kushima?" "Don't be silly. Aren't no roads in the sky. With no roads, you can't lose your way no matter where you go. That's why they're always coming over." This child spoke emphatically. The children needn't wonder. It's been a month since Japanese planes lost the freedom of the skies. 3. Another incident: on a rainy day near the end of September, I was coming down from the annex on the second floor of the house that is my temporary quarters; I got partway down the stairs and then happened to look to the bottom. I almost reeled. There, slumped over on the open veranda of the first-floor room, was a young man. One look at his face told me he had atomic bomb CITY OF CORPSES

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disease. He had set his hands weakly on the veranda and looked barely able to hold himself up. This must be Gin-chan, I thought, a distant relative of the family. I had heard he had come back two or three days ago. If this was Ginchan, I had heard that his hair was falling out, and his teeth were loose in his gums as if he had pyorrhea; what is more, he had lost so much weight he was a living skeleton. What stunned me so was the indescribably eerie color of his skin. The skin all over his body was like that of someone in the last stages of tuberculosis, and that color had been painted over with a more hopeless color, opaque like that of roasted eggplant. The skin around his eyes was tinted lightly, as if tattooed blue; his lips were ashen and dry. His hair was as thin as that of an eightyyear-old and had turned the color of ash. His body was encrusted all over with spots-pale blue, purple, dark blue-the size of beans. I had heard about such symptoms from the doctor and had read about them in the newspaper. When things were that far along, you had two or three days to live, at most five; people like that didn't even bother to go to the doctor's. As I stood there, startled at the dreadfulness of these symptoms I was seeing for the first time, a member of the household said, "This is Gin-chan; he showed up just recently." Drawing closer, I said, "I was in Hakushima that day and was injured slightly; where were you?" "Hiratsuka,'' he answered sullenly. "How far was Hiratsuka from the epicenter?" "Less than a kilometer." Those within a radius of two kilometers were said to have received a more or less brutal dose of radiation. We may stay healthy for a while and feel no pain, but suddenly we develop the standard symptoms. According to the specialists studying the situation, the 'standard symptoms' include the following (as reported in Hiroshima's Chugoku shimbun): -fever -loss of energy OTA YOKO

-apathy -loss of hair (as if pulled out, but with the root attached) -loss of blood (bleeding at the spots on the skin, nosebleeds, bloody phlegm, hemorrhage, bloody vomit, bloody urine) -inflammation of the mouth (especially inflammation of the gums) -tonsillitis (especially gangrenous tonsillitis) -diarrhea (especially with blood in the stool). By the time these external symptoms become apparent, drastic changes in the blood corpuscles-especially the white ones-have already taken place. Naka Midori, an actress of the new drama, had come to Hiroshima with the troupe that included Maruyama Sadao; she was examined by Dr. Tsuzuki of Tokyo University. It was announced that before she died in the surgical clinic at Tokyo University her white corpuscle count had fallen to between 500 and 600; her red corpuscle count was at the 3,000,000 level. Under normal conditions, they say, one has 6,ooo to 7,000 white corpuscles and about 4,500,000 red. Yet Dr. Sawada of Kyushu University published a count of barely 200 to 300 white corpuscles per cubic centimeter of blood-completely unthinkable under normal conditions. I read these reports of the clinical research of Dr. Tsuzuki and the other specialists very closely, with the eyes of a sick person, and I intend to set this all down in proper fashion. But first I must back up a bit. The damage caused by the atomic bomb is peculiar in these ways: people do not feel pain immediately in their bodies, and the symptoms do not manifest themselves for a long while. Until September 2 Gin-chan had kept his vim and vigor. The burns on his leg had healed; but on the third his hair began to fall out, he bled at the gums, and the spots appeared. The young man muttered, "It's all over with me. I might as well die. Three doctors all told me so." "Rest quietly. They say those who develop the disease late recover. Tell yourself you are going to live no matter what. Be tough." It was with complex emotions that I spoke to the young man, for CITY OF CORPSES

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if indeed he was able to survive despite being in such shape, then I, too, who had not yet exhibited the symptoms, might also survive. "I was in bed, but I was dying for a smoke, so I got up to get some cigarettes." He said he might as well die; yet all the while he asked for and got the necessities oflife-pipe, notebook, toothpicksfrom the members of the household. Wearing a thin padded dressing gown directly over his bare skin, he went out into the autumn rain, hands inside next to his chest. Afterward, one of the household spoke of him: "I tell you, Ginchan' s hair used to be thick and pitch black. He prided himself on it." Gin-chan appeared at one moment to be an old man, at the next a boy; in reality he was twenty-three years old. While the war was in full swing, he had boarded ships and set off for the South Pacific and for the North Pacific, too. As the defeat approached, the ships stopped sailing, so he had returned to Hiroshima just recently and was living with a woman who was supposed to be from Kagoshima; to speak plainly, he was a young tough. Those who cause their parents such grief, they say, are better off dead. Still, even his young heart may have had its feelings. Adopted from somewhere or other at the age of two, he had gone bad at an early age, a juvenile delinquent impossible to control. In Hiroshima that morning, in his rented room in Hiratsuka, Gin-chan was still in bed with the girl. She was pinned under, and he pulled her from the rubble. However, her hair fell out until she was completely bald, she suffered from dysentery-like diarrhea, and she died before Gin-chan's symptoms appeared. His parents had evacuated to this village some time earlier. Carrying the ashes of the girl, Gin-chan finally made it to the house in which his foster parents were renting space. His foster father was a white-haired old man who helped out at the village barbershop; his face always had a pallid yellowish coloring. He sometimes hobbled to my place for a visit, on legs that were bad from chronic tuberculosis. When he did, he would walk about slowly, looking at the plants in the large garden; peering for a long time at the pond, he would watch the carp-black, scarlet, and white. Was he really looking at them? He seemed instead to be depressed about something. 160

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Foster father and Gin-chan: they didn't have a smile between them. 4. And another: here in the village there is only the one clinic. Old Doctor S. and my late father were friends. When I was young, he was often at our house. So when I returned to the village after ten-odd years away and went to be treated, we sometimes talked about all kinds of things. It felt almost like talking with Father. One day Dr. S. told me the following story. A girl first came to him with her head filthy, covered all over with splinters of glass. When Dr. S. took out all the pieces of glass and wiped away the dried blood, he found only two cuts, and those so small they might have been made by the tip of a chopstick. The girl felt relieved. Still, after two weeks or more had passed and she no longer needed treatment for the cuts, pale spots appeared on her arms. Not thinking, Dr. S. said, "Spots, eh? Let's have a look," then examined her arm gently. She let out a shriek. Then she collapsed against him. Frantic, she asked, "When will I die? Doctor, tell me, when will I die? Which stops first, my pulse or my heart?" "Who says you're going to die? The fact that these spots have appeared doesn't mean you're going to die. Don't worry. You're not going to die." "But everyone dies-every last person who was in Hiroshima that day will die, all of them. Sooner or later, every last one will die." The girl died within the week. She hemorrhaged and had an attack similar to blood poisoning. Generally speaking, the blood hemorrhaged by atomic bomb victims is not red but black, pulpy and rotten. One day Dr. S. told me this story. I had caught sight of this man sometimes at the clinic. He was thirty-two or thirty-three, a roughhewn type, and he resented the fact that Japan had lost the war. Shaking his fist, he would accost patients in the waiting room. It appeared that he had been injured in two or three places in both legs. His wife, a good-looking woman who wore glasses, always accompanied him. He spoke in a loud, cheerful voice. There were many patients in the CITY OF CORPSES

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waiting room; even when his turn came, he would make all the others who seemed in bad shape-those with burns, for example-go first, and he himself would go last. Dr. S. gave more of his attention to the wife than to the husband. From the start he thought: "She will die." She had received only a slight cut on the chest, but deep in her complexion lurked a strange and indescribable color. One morning about three weeks after they first appeared, the man showed up, as always with his wife, and reported he was very tired. He stretched out on the bed and said: "I was a ship's cook, you know, and every time I went ashore I got a shot of Salvarsan; by now I've had 250 or more. Even now, ifl'm tired when I get the shot, I feel fine. I don't know how I'll react this time, but won't you give me one?" With a wave of his hand, Dr. S. said, "I wouldn't give you one now. It'd be dangerous." ''I'm already done for, no matter what you do. You're a doctor, aren't you? Wouldn't it be worth experimenting on me? There's nothing to lose." "The needlemark will surely get infected." "Please go ahead and see what happens. Shoot me up, please, with Salvarsan." The doctor decided he would try it. But not with a full dose. He would give him a shot one-third the normal strength, cut with distilled water. That would probably be safe. Dr. S. turned his back to the man and made his preparations, hiding what he was doing with his body so the man wouldn't complain. As he was doing so, he heard the man's cheerful voice behind him: "Hey, how about giving me a somewhat smaller dose?" "How about just distilled water?" "No, I didn't say just water. There has to be a little medicine, too." From the very first, the man had been neither excited nor blustery; a tranquil smile had always played about his face. When Dr. S. administered the injection, the reaction was imme162

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diate. The man shook and shivered but did not say anything. When the shaking stopped, his cheeks turned the color of blood. ''I'm boiling! Boiling! Boiling, Doc! Take my temperature; I bet it's over 120!" He smiled as he spoke, then took the hand of his wife, who was standing beside him, and raised it to his forehead. "Not even 104," said the doctor. "You just feel hot. One person in three reacts this way. Does it always hit you this way?" "It's never been this bad." Dr. S. took the man's temperature, and it was ro5. 8; this was typical for atomic bomb sickness. But as the man said, the feeling you got from touching his skin was that his temperature was much higher than ro5.8. "Let's put you to sleep tonight in this bed. We'll find you a futon and boil you some rice gruel. How about it?" The man refused the offer. "No. It may give my wife a fat head ifl say this, but even her family home is better for me than this place." After watching as his wife left the waiting room, the man asked Dr. S., "Say, how much more time does the wife have?" "She's got about a week left." "Then she and I will die at about the same time, won't we? War has finally begun to kill us off in pairs, husbands and wives. I can take my own death; but she's a woman-sad! Still, it's not a bad fate, to keep each other company into the next world." When he came the next day, red spots had appeared, three on the tip of his tongue, four or five at the bottom of his armpit. But he said nothing about them, and Dr. S. did not speak of them, either. Without referring to them, Dr. S. asked, "You were worn out yesterday, weren't you?" "Yeah. It took three hours to walk the four kilometers home. Until yesterday it took less than an hour." "From now on stay home. I'll come to you. By the way, what are you eating-a rice-barley mix?" "Yes." "Stomach trouble's no fun, so why don't you stick to straight rice?" "Okay, will do. Makes sense." Next day someone from the wife's village came for Dr. S. When CITY OF CORPSES

Dr. S. got there, the man was sitting up in bed. He bowed: "Thanks a lot for coming." But even as he spoke, a smile crossed his face. "Beginning last night I've been eating nothing but white rice, lots of it. But it doesn't taste good any more. Still, I realized how clever doctors are, the way they tell you you're dying. My tongue and armpits are covered with red spots and purple spots. That's why you spoke of white rice, isn't it?" "You knew?" "It's my body. As long as I'm alive, I'll know what's happening to it. But Doctor, there's something that's puzzling me. Japan took a real licking, and the war ended, didn't it? And, see, the war's been over now for a while. Yet we're dying because of the war, I tell you. Even though the war's over, we're still actually dying like this because of the war. That's weird." Three days later Dr. S. had to write out the man's death certificate. The wife died quietly two days later.

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Expressionless Faces 5. In the last days of the war, Japan's opponent employed atomic bombs. Most people seem to react to that fact with resentment. In doing so, they rely more on emotion than on reason. They refuse to face the facts. Theirs is like the illusion of those who said that the Soviet Union would mediate at war's end and settle things equitably; they haven't thought things through. It makes no sense to think of waging modern war for ten or even fifteen years, etiquette as proper as with the samurai of old, in leisurely fashion. We lament the ravages of war. But we must bment as well what led up to the ravages of war. Nations decide in cold blood and without pity to go to war; in modern war it is simply a matter of course that there is hideous agony, that one uses radio waves to set fires until city after city goes up in flames, that one destroys everything, wiping out the last trace of every last house. It is no longer possible to hope for any other kind of war. Win or lose, aggressive war brings pretty much the same grief. That we had to go to war in the first place was the result of stupidity and corruption. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, the war was already over. The Fascist and Nazi armies had been utterly defeated, and Japan stood alone against the entire world. A war in which, objectively speaking, the outcome has been settled is no longer a war. In that sense, the war was already over. Had the militarists not held out desperately and pointlessly, the war actually would have been over. The atomic bomb, at Hiroshima or anywhere else, is unthinkable except as the ugly after-echo of a war that had already ended. The war had already ended on the crest of the wave that rolled from Iwojima to Okinawa. So an inversion takes place in my mind. It goes like this: it was America that dropped the atomic bomb on our heads, yet at the same time it was also Japan's militarism. From then on Japan's exhaustion became conspicuous. The exhaustion of a dazed populace made for more deaths that day in Hiroshima; it piled up the corpses. 6.

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One after the other, in rapid succession, cities all over Japan were being attacked from the air and exposed to a suffocating, apocalyptic horror. But until dawn on August 6 Hiroshima had been left absolutely alone. No one understood why this was so. People sat around marveling at the fact. On the map ofJapan it became more and more obvious that only Kyoto and Hiroshima were being left alone. In that period between June and the beginning of August, the following conjectures made the rounds of residents of the city. American bombers would destroy the dam on a large river back in the mountains in the northern part of Hiroshima Prefecture. The dam in question was a large one; if they took out the dam, forty kilometers of villages and towns would be washed out into the Inland Sea. Even if people fled to the high mountains, wherever they gathered bombs would fall on them. And those who survived would die of starvation, unable to get produce from any of the farm villages throughout the prefecture that had been washed away by the water. About the time this rumor began to circulate, life preservers made of bamboo were distributed to neighborhood associations at neighborhood meetings in some parts of the city. They weren't given out to all residents, so I never even saw one; but I understand that this was the plan: should waves of night bombings create a ring of fire around the city, cutting off the people inside the ring from the outlying areas to which they were supposed to flee, then they should grab their life preservers, jump into one of the seven rivers running through the city, float out to sea, and be rescued by waiting navy ships. Distributed courtesy of the military, these bamboo life preservers gave birth to this sort of mistaken speculation, and so, without specifying the content of the rumor, the Hiroshima newspaper reproved the residents editorially. However, by the time I heard the talk about destroying the dam, that rumor had already spread throughout the city with absolutely irresistible force. Wondering whether in the war in Europe there had been similar cases of intentional flooding, I asked whether the rumor 166

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had any basis in fact; I was told no. Nevertheless, people in town were making rough calculations. If the dam in the mountains were destroyed, it would take eight hours for the water to reach Hiroshima; no, they would time the destruction of the darn to coincide with high tide, so we would be submerged in two and a half hours. When all that water got to Hiroshima, it would be enough to cover Hiroshima to an average depth of only four inches; no, four feet. But even if B-29s were to take out the dam, they couldn't take it out simply by dropping a couple of bombs. That dam wouldn't break unless the B-29s came in like Japan's special-attack squadrons, diving into the dam carrying the bombs. Talk like this spread throughout Hiroshima. Aware in a vague way that something was going to happen sometime, we did not pursue further what it meant that Hiroshima had not been bombed. The residents of the city also had pipe dreams that were even wilder. For example: Hiroshima was known as the city of water; it was a beautiful stretch of delta crossed by the seven rivers that flowed through the city. So the Americans would turn it into their residential sector. I, too, had vain dreams of this sort. Hiroshima was not a particularly beautiful city; I couldn't think the city would hold charm for foreigners. But every other city had been destroyed; so when they landed in Japan, they might at first be hard up. "On an east-west axis, Hiroshima is in the exact middle ofJapan; so they may be leaving it as a place to store their stuff when they get here." When Mother and Sister and I were alone, I would say things like this. Mainly in jest, but a little bit in earnest. Without realizing it, people had fallen into thoughts of defeateven while continuing to think with one part of their minds that each and every Japanese would take on ten of the American soldiers as they came ashore, that we would "fight to the death." From the middle ofJuly through the end of the month, the cities to the east of Hiroshima went up in flames, including Okayama; to the south, Kure was utterly destroyed by fire. To the west, the important smaller cities of Yamaguchi Prefecture were bombed and deCITY OF CORPSES

voured by fire, one after the other, and the towns in our vicinity that had not been bombed were gasping for breath. Once in the spring Hiroshima had confronted several hundred enemy carrier planes; but even then there had been merely a small air battle and minor damage out among the islands. People in the city didn't even get a good look at the enemy planes, and without going well out of their way, they couldn't even see the marks left by enemy shells. Around the beginning of April a single B-29 flew over, and in passing it dropped a bomb or two downtown, on Otemachi; that was all. That incident, too, happened in the morning. However, it was so early-before 7-that the big buildings-City Hall, the banks, the companies-were empty, with no signs oflife, and even in the neighborhoods nearby not many people died. From then on until about the time Okinawa fell, the skies over Hiroshima were comparatively quiet. Once the fierce air assault spread to Okayama and Kure and Yamaguchi, day in and day out formations ofB-29s passed high over Hiroshima, from the east and from the west, even from the south and from the north, on their way to burn out other cities. On some days they were accompanied by large numbers of carrier planes. Some days we thought for sure that Hiroshima's turn had come. But as always, the planes flew on, and we were spared. It was spooky. Once more Hiroshimans began to talk. Why was it the Americans took care not to touch Kyoto and Hiroshima? Kyoto was the city of flowers, and Hiroshima was the city of water; they must be destined to become residential sectors for the Americans. What is more, people began to say even stranger things. There had always been a lot of emigration from Hiroshima; historically, Hiroshima Prefecture had sent off more emigrants to America than had any other part ofJapan. Their sons were manning the American battle lines in this war and performing well. So out of indebtedness to them the United States was not bombing Hiroshima. Even intellectuals with some discernment passed on this kind of talk among themselves and to others with a straight face, just as some intellectuals get swept away by ridiculous new sects. 168

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Meanwhile, those in charge of the war established categories of enemy air assault--strategic bombing, tactical bombing-and required the newspapers to use them. Those in charge of the war were able to make judgments of that kind; why was it they never used their talents for orthodox technical and tactical things to pursue the matter of why there were large cities that hadn't been bombed? As for modern scientific weapons, the time had come to introduce them with all haste. If our side didn't, the other side would. That they would be cruel and horrible was a foregone conclusion. Add to this presentiment other aspects-geography, surroundings, distance-of the cities that had been spared, and one has to think that the smartest of those in charge of the war had some idea of what might happen. Had they pursued that train of thought to its conclusion, the corpses might not be piled so high in Hiroshima and in the villages of the prefecture. Sadly, the war had left everyone dazed and exhausted. As the end of the war approached and even before the atomic bombs, Japan itself had already fallen to the mental state epitomized by expressionless faces. 7. Next, from newspaper clippings in my possession, I should like to set down for posterity a statistical count of the casualties the atomic bomb inflicted. I don't know why it is, but without doing so I can't get myself into the mood to start writing of the events that summer morning in Hiroshima. Leaving aside for the moment the very interesting interim reports of the experts and the phenomenon called "atomic bomb sickness" that appears over and above specific injuries, the statistics for deaths and injuries are as follows: Dead:

males females gender unknown total

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21, 125 21,277

3,773 46, 185

Missing:

males females

8,554 8,875

total

17,429

Severely injured: males females

9,857 9,834

total

19,691

males females

21,947 23,032

total

44,979

males females

103,649 132,008

total

235,657

Slightly injured:

Homeless:

These figures-they must be considered very conservative estimates-are totals compiled August 25; they are by no means the last word. On September 15 the newspaper reported that if the missing and severely injured were counted as dead, the death toll would exceed 120,000. And it was after August 24 that people listed as slightly injured, who had only scratches, and people wholly without either cuts or burns began to die one after the other. Even in my small village, three or four people died each day. And at that time it was said that even people from the surrounding areas would die, people who had not been in Hiroshima on August 6 but had gone there afterward, on labor details, to dispose of the dead bodies and the like. This fear of death was even more profound than the vague and inchoate fear the day the atomic bomb fell; in all its anxiety, it lasted for nearly a month. Only after September 20 did we learn that a small number might manage to survive. 8. As regards the terra incognita inhabited by people who went to Hiroshima after August 6, soon contracted atomic bomb sickness, and died, Professor Fujiwara of Hiroshima University has issued an interim report. Professor Fujiwara has a doctorate in physics and specializes in X rays. His report states: OTA YOKO

-On August 20 a resident of the suburbs went to Nishi-Teramachi in Hiroshima City and spent half a day digging graves; soon after returning home, he contracted atomic bomb sickness. -Despite the fact that he had not been injured, a person who on August 6 was three kilometers outside the area of the blast (in Yoshijima Hommachi) soon died. -Countless balls of fire fell that day on the eastern part of Midori Kansha-dori (three kilometers from the epicenter). -Similarly, intense radiation poured down on Hiroshima Technical School in Chiyoda. -One person in Yaga in the suburbs felt intense light and heat on his face but thereafter exhibited no symptoms at all. -My own experience was that a ball of fire fell on the roof of my house (in Midori); yet when the woman next door brought water to douse the fire, she could find nothing out of the ordinary. -Dr. Watanabe of the Japan Red Cross Hospital examined a patient in Shobara, Hiba County (on the sixth the patient had been at home in Midori) and found a white corpuscle count ofless than 2,000.

In his scrupulous way, Dr. Fujiwara continues: Having heard often of these and other anomalies, I wondered whether there might not have been variations in the diffusion of radioactive matter. I wondered whether, even after the fighting had ended, the radioactivity might not still be relatively strong. So I went to the eastern part of Midori Kansha-dori, the spot where balls of fire were said to have rained down on August 6, and when I measured the radioactivity I found the level quite high. Moreover, at Hiroshima Technical School a piece of the positive terminal of a rectifier had fallen. And chips of stone had fallen into a storeroom of my house, and an electric iron that must have been heated to a pretty high temperature had come tumbling into the living room; probably all of them had been sent flying from the blast zone. Rectifier, stones, iron: on none of them could I detect any radioactivity. Inferring from this fact, one might conclude that the neutrons, gamma rays, electrons, X rays, ultraviCITY OF CORPSES

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olet rays, light rays, and heat rays created in the destruction of the atomic structure of the bomb's substance (uranium) went flying in all directions, giving rise to a strong blast that in turn sent material flying from the blast zone. The professor's report continues earnestly: We are open to the charge of having neglected this point. If we postulate that they used two bombs, the first one exploding at a height of 6,ooo meters and the second one probably induced by that explosion, the explosion of the second bomb would have taken place at a lower altitude than the first and would have been less than complete. Following this line of thought, it is conceivable that in addition to scattering objects in the blast zone to the four winds, the atomic bomb also sent fragments of itself flying. It is likely that the matter that scattered in all directions was heated to a high temperature and that that temperature was due simply to the application of external heat or to heating as in a high-frequency electric furnace. Moreover, there were probably some fragments to which much of the destructive substance of the bomb adhered and some to which it did not adhere. Fragments with high radioactivity were sent flying to the eastern part of Kansha-dori, as mentioned earlier; stones and metal scraps that were not radioactive but simply incandescent were sent flying toward my house. From these premises, Dr. Fujiwara reaches his conclusion: Following this line of thought, is it not possible to affirm that even people some distance from the blast zone suffered burns or developed the symptoms of atomic bomb sickness? Not long ago the newspaper published the opinion of Dr. Tsuzuki that "the radioactivity is spread relatively uniformly," but I call those places where blast matter landed "points of special impact." I am proceeding now to investigate how much radioactivity remains at these "points of special impact." As Dr. Tsuzuki too reported, even in the blast zone the radioactivity appears today to have become so slight that it is of no danger to the human body. 172

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But as Dr. Asada says, it appears that for two or three days after the explosion the radioactivity in the center of the blast zone remained relatively high. Hence the fact that, for example, soldiers who worked for a week disposing of corpses at the West Parade Ground suddenly died is likely due to the fact that at the latter time their health and the conditions of the environment were not good. It probably stands to reason: as long as they were healthy, the symptoms wouldn't become apparent; but overwork and inadequate diet would cause atomic bomb sickness to manifest itself With the above, Dr. Fujiwara's report of his investigation of residual radioactivity comes, by and large, to an end. Thorough as it is, it still leaves us groping about in the dark. 9. Let's see what Dr. Tsuzuki of Tokyo University, the leading anatomical expert, has to say: Given conditions today, four weeks after the bombing, I believe it is reasonable to conclude that there is nothing remaining at the site that might affect negatively the degree of contamination. So the problem is determining how much heat was produced on the morning of August 6 at the point of explosion. Perhaps we can draw an analogy with something we all know about. Having conferred with physicists, I think I will be understood most easily if I speak in the following terms. The heat of the uranium 1 500 feet above the ground appears to have been equal to the heat of the alpha rays given off by 100,000,000 tons of radium. What would have happened had they dropped 100,000,000 tons of radium? Normally we discuss radium in terms of milligrams; the figure 100,000,000 tons gives us a rough idea. There is a legend that Taira no Kiyomori called back the setting sun; it is not necessarily impossible that such energy exists. As far as energy from the sky is concerned, there are generally four forms. The first is the power of light and heat, which runs in a given direction and gives rise through reflection to strong energy. The second is meCITY OF CORPSES

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chanical, explosive force, the power that destroys houses and sends people flying. The third is power we still don't know about, the result, for example, of radioactivity. The fourth we can only call power still unknown; today, as in the past, we don't know what it is. I myself am taken with this phrase "still unknown." It may be because of the conceptual mystique of this phrase that I am setting this informal talk down faithfully. What could the radioactive substance have been? If this atomic bomb used uranium, which has been under study in America for some years, then the most important sources of heat are the neutrons; they are particles that move at extremely high speed. The neutrons forever rushing about the universe are thought not to harm the human body, but they are capable of doing so. Continuing: The Institute of Physical and Chemical Research collected soil from air raid shelters; the poison in that soil is now losing its potency at a rapid rate. Phosphorus is found in bones, so we know the most about it; when I came to Hiroshima the first time [author's note: August 8?], I found an animal bone in the vicinity of the Aioi Bridge. I thought it was a paw bone; when I brought it back and examined it, I detected radioactivity. At the time of the explosion on August 6, there was probably two hundred times the normal amount of radioactivity in that bone. When I examined the bones of a human burned to death in the vicinity of Ground Zero, I found roughly ninety times the normal radioactivity. The day before yesterday (September 2), I examined human bones found in that vicinity, and the radioactivity was ninety times greater than normal. The human body is not affected unless there is radioactivity more than one thousand times greater than normal. I'm talking only about phosphorus, but people who entered Hiroshima immediately after the bomb received less than one-tenth that damage; after several days had passed, radioactivity disappeared 174

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completely from substances like iron and copper. So I concluded that except for the first few days after the bombing there was virtually no damage. Continuing: The fourth, unknown power I still do not understand. I can only think that it is something extraordinary. Even if the equivalent of a 222-kilogram bomb-weight 500 pounds, length 30-3 6 inches, diameter I 8-20 inches-came packed with poison, it is not conceivable that it could poison so many things. What I do know is this: the substances emitted in the instant of the bombing-the neutrons and something equivalent to the gamma rays of radiation-are like high-frequency X rays; they burst all at one time, and what was exposed got hit first. Regarding the damage neutrons pose for human beings, we can compare neutrons with what we normally deal with; neutrons probably have about twice the power of the gamma rays of uranium. But in the moment of the explosion, the heat is unimaginable, and the heat thereafter can hardly be measured in the normal lab. Today, now that one month has elapsed, I think it is probable that nothing remains which even in the aggregate can cause harm to human beings. As for the question of pathological changes, it is not possible at the present moment to say that they always have a progressive character. Assuming that neutrons suddenly hit our bodies, I think that at first our whole bodies would contain small amounts of radium but that in a month's time the radium would have left the body; however, in terms of pathology, we will not know more precisely until we conduct miscroscopic examinations in Tokyo. Still, as of now I do not think it has a progressive character. Then further: Madame Curie, the discoverer of uranium, died of primary radiation; but given proper treatment, people who survived the instant of the explosion I think will recover. CITY OF CORPSES

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Another report: the Sawada team of internists from Kyushu University Medical School entered Nagasaki on August 29 and worked at the site and in relief hospitals. They speak of the effects of uranium on the human body as follows: The effects of the atomic bomb on the human body can be divided into three categories. Category r is instant death; category 2 includes those who develop the symptoms of diarrhea, like patients with false diarrhea, and die; category 3 includes those now in the relief stations who have no major superficial injuries-that is, no burns-yet still die. The chief symptoms of these category-3 patients are these: their gums bleed, they exhibit anemia, their hair falls out, and they develop throat ulcers. Some spit blood, vomit blood, have bloody urine and bloody stools; the spots on their skin bleed; and their white corpuscle count falls to 200 or 300 per cubic centimeter. When one studies these cases clinically, one learns that the disease to some extent destroys bone marrow. Bone marrow is where the cells of red corpuscles crystallize (red corpuscles perform the function of coagulation). Block this capability of bone marrow, and you give rise in the first instance to anemia; as a disease that reduces the production of corpuscles, anemia then gives rise to fever, hoarseness, and inflammation of the tonsils. The symptoms are similar to those of diphtheria. Some women develop tumors, and because the platelets do not adhere to each other, the bleeding will not stop. As for the issue of white corpuscles, what normally happens is acute leukemia. Here, by contrast, the white corpuscles increase, the spleen and other parts swell, and the patient dies; in this acute leukemia, there is acute myelosis. That is, it resembles very closely the way the white corpuscles decrease rapidly in the case of the atomic bomb. In these matters we should like from here on to focus our attention on histological changes in bone marrow. OTA YOKO

Virtually everyone had an opinion, expressed as earnestly as this, about such technical matters and about treatment. Yet our unease would not abate. The unease was primarily a psychological thing. Now subject, now object, we victims could not help feeling that death was forever tugging at us. All these effects arose from the fact that such an event had never happened before. A special quality of the damage the atomic bomb inflicts lies in the extreme unease it generates, unease because the truth is not likely to be known for many years. It cannot be denied that the issues are of extraordinary scientific interest. And out of honor and conscience and righteous indignation, not to mention curiosity and interest, the specialists conscientiously confined their interest to their own disciplines. However, no one seemed to be interested in understanding the psychology of the victims. It may be that this was not the fault of the scientists. The concern of the central authorities at the time seemed uniformly weak. Given that situation, things of the body may have been more important; but what we most wanted was consolation for our souls. Methods of treatment were determined, but then the stock of those medicines and injections immediately disappeared, even in doctors' offices; in rural areas it was not possible even to count blood corpuscles. And when it came to nutrition, there was no fruit at all and no vegetables; even in the case of grains, only half a pint was distributed per day-two-thirds barley, one-third polished rice. Had huge trucks-loaded with medicine, injections, the equipment for various experiments, and nourishing food-come racing to us, that critical assistance would have resuscitated the bruised spirits of the victims; of that there can be no doubt. Oh, how I hoped that well-meaning shipments would arrive at one village after another to tend to our spiritual wounds! For in the villages way back in the hills and far from Hiroshima, the nightmare of death had had its baleful effects on the very souls of many of the victims.

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Hiroshima, City of Doom IO. Those who were never in Hiroshima before the bomb fell must wonder just what Hiroshima used to be like. In the distant past it was called not Hiroshima, broad island, but Ashihara, reed plain. It was a broad, reed-covered delta. In the era of warring states about four hundred years ago, Mori Motonari built a castle here. Motonari was driven away by the Tokugawa and moved west to Hagi in Yamaguchi Prefecture. Fukushima Masanori succeeded him, expanded the castle, and made it his seat. But the house of Fukushima, too, lasted only one generation. Its successor, the Asano, flourished for thirteen generations before its long rule came to an end in the Meiji Restoration; Lord Asano Nagamoto of the Loyalist faction was the last of the line. In that era of revolution, neighboring Choshu had risen to a position of great prominence; but not Hiroshima. Marquis N agamoto was a fine and noble man; but the people under his command, it was said, lacked fire. This fact is not without its lessons for an understanding of the psychology of Hiroshima people in modern times. Like Hiroshima's scenery, the Hiroshima personality is in some respects cheerful, but it is irresponsible and unsociable. In the local dialect, words are spoken lightly at the tip of one's tongue, the exact opposite of the heaviness of the Tohoku accent. Still, as long as one didn't take things to heart or get deeply involved, it was a cheerful city with a good climate, rich in material goods and a good place to live. In topography, Hiroshima fanned out between the mountain ranges to the north and the Inland Sea to the south; seven rivers flowed gently through the city in the delta. Countless bridges spanned the great branches of the river flowing through the city. They were all modern, clean, broad, white, long. From Ujina Bay, the fishing boats with their white sails and the small passenger boats came quite far up all the branches. Upstream, the river offered vivid reflections of the mountains. OTA YOKO

The rivers of Hiroshima were beautiful. Theirs was a serene and unchanging beauty. They stretched out uniformly blue in this broad area with no variation in elevation. One couldn't see distinct currents; one couldn't hear the pleasant sound of rapids; nor could one watch gentle brooks. The rivers were serene and unchanging even on freezing winter days when snow fell. I liked Hiroshima's rivers best on days when heavy snow fell. The snow sealed off the various parts of town from each other and turned the city into a silent and uniformly silver world. Yet the seven rivers still flowed, unhurried, the water so clear that the white sand and greenish pebbles on the bottom gleamed through as always. The fine sand of the dry riverbed was white, and the pebbles were white and brown and dark green. Occasionally, one even saw stones that looked as if they had been dyed red. The surface of the water was a quiet pale blue, just like that of a lake deep in the mountains. In the winter it appeared to be covered with a sheet of thin smoky glass or overspread with the thinnest coat of wax; flake by flake, the snow pouring down onto it was absorbed gently and disappeared. According to the map, Hiroshima lay in the west; but it somehow gave off a southern warmth, a languid and carefree air, due probably to these rivers and to the fact that the city opened like a fan with its handle to the south. With the exception of the southern side toward the water, the city was surrounded on three sides by mountains. Low and gently rolling, the mountains ran one into the next like the humps of a sleeping camel. No matter where you looked, the mountains were there, visible even from the bustling streets in the heart of the city; I had not always lived in Hiroshima, and the nearness of the mountains surprised me. And then, no matter which part of town you were in, Hiroshima Castle and its crumbling foundation of stone also seemed very near, rising up in bold relief against the mountains. With its quiet tones of white, black, and gray, the tall old castle provided the flat city one sort of variation. The young women of Hiroshima do not have the white skin and fierce faces of mountain women; their coloring is generally light tan. CITY OF CORPSES

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(Some people say they get their tans not at the beach but along the rivers. The tide enters the rivers from Ujina Bay nearby, ebbing and flowing several times a day; so it may make sense to speak of 'riverburns.') The young women are usually chunky; though, with their black hair and white teeth, they brim with youth, they sway strangely when they walk, run when they don't need to, avert their vacant eyes as if making fun of people, and on the bus let their mouths hang open. Occasionally you see a tall and high-spirited girl with a beautiful face. But the sound of her soft chatter-as I mentioned before, she uses only the tip of her tongue-is disappointing. The population of Hiroshima-including, of course, such easygoing young women as these-was said to be 400,000. One also heard 300,000 and 500,000. The evacuation to the countryside must have reduced the figure greatly. But on the other hand, great numbers of the military had come from all over, in rapid succession. On August 6 there were, I think, about 400,000 people here. Using a conservative estimate of one house for every four people, Hiroshima had about 100,000 houses. Before August 6, houses in every quarter-even historic buildings-had been torn down ruthlessly to create firebreaks anywhere and everywhere. Yet shortly before August 6, as I looked at the city from the fourth-floor roof of the Japan Red Cross Hospital, the rows of houses stood so crowded together, shoulder to shoulder, that one wondered where the firebreaks were. This was the city above which, one morning at the height of summer, suddenly and without warning, there flashed an eerie blue flash. I was living in the house of my mother and younger sister in Hakushima Kuken-ch6. Hakushima is on the northeast edge of the city; long ago it had become an established residential area. Entirely befitting a middle-class world, many military officers and government officials lived there; so during the day its front doors stayed closed and, except for the housewives, it was deserted. There were four of us in an all-female house: Mother, Sister, her baby daughter, and I. Sister's husband had been called up for the sec11.

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ond time at the end of June, and we still didn't even know where he was. I had come back from Tokyo at New Year's, intending to wait until March and then take someone with me to dispose of my house in Tokyo. For until things warmed up a bit, it was impossible to do anything at all in Tokyo, where day and night one had to hole up in air raid shelters. The very first bombing of Tokyo took place the rainy night of October 30. Hit repeatedly by bombs and firebombs, Nishi-Kanda and the area around Nihombashi burned from r r at night until after 5 in the morning. And in the next raid, on November 2, seventy planes appeared suddenly in the sky over Nerima, where I was living, and scattered bombs and firebombs over Musashino, an area in which the houses were spaced somewhat sparsely. People said two hundred bombs fell, one bomb per one and a half city blocks; even in the vicinity of my own residence, houses I knew well went up in smoke or were demolished. A nearby female writer friend and I often repeated to ourselves Togo Heihachiro's words, and they became a kind of joke: "The enemy will come when you least expect him." Exhausted by the roundthe-clock bombing of Tokyo and by the shortage of food, I had come back to Hiroshima. During the war Hiroshima was not thought of as a safe place to live. But one could not head for the countryside empty-handed, either; so I planned to go get the belongings I had left in Tokyo. March came and went, April came, and still I was afraid to set out for Tokyo. From Tokyo west as far as Osaka and Kobe, eastern Japan was already exposed to terrible bombing, with not a day's letup. In May I suddenly took sick and was admitted to the Red Cross Hospital. I stayed there until July 26. Before entering the hospital, I had engaged a house in the country, but factors like these delayed my departure. On the morning of August 6 I was sound asleep. On the night of the fifth, virtually all night long, repeated waves of bombers had hit Ube in Yamaguchi Prefecture. As I listened to the radio reports, the flames seemed to rise up before my very eyes. CITY OF CORPSES

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To the west of us in Yamaguchi Prefecture, one city after another had burned: Hikari, Kudamatsu, Ube. That very night Hiroshima too might be turned into a sea of fire. The announcer later retracted the report, saying it had been in error; but on the night of the fifth, the radio reported that Fukuyama, on the other side of Hiroshima from Ube, was undergoing its own firebomb attack. The air raid alarm sounded in Hiroshima, too, and the neighborhood group sent round a warning to be ready to flee at any moment. So on the night of the fifth, sleep was wholly out of the question. At daybreak the air raid alarm was lifted; shortly after seven o'clock the alert too was lifted. I went back to bed. I usually slept late anyway, and since I had just been discharged from the hospital, where I often slept till almost noon, I was left alone until that bright light flashed. I was sound asleep inside the mosquito net. Some say it was 8:rn when the bomb fell; some say 8:30. Whichever it was, I dreamed I was enveloped by a blue flash, like lightning at the bottom of the sea. Immediately thereafter came a terrible sound, loud enough to shake the earth. With an indescribable sound, almost like a roll of thunder, like a huge boulder tumbling down a mountain, the roof of the house came crashing down. When I came to, I was standing there, dazed, in a cloud of dust-the plaster walls smashed to smithereens. I was standing there completely in a fog, struck absolutely dumb. I felt no pain; I was not frightened; I was somehow calm and vaguely lightheaded. The sun, which had shone so brightly early that morning, had faded, and the light was dim, almost as in the evening during the ramy season. The firebombing of Kure popped into my head; the bombs there had fallen, I had heard, like very large snowflakes. Everything came crashing down-windowpanes, exterior walls, Jusuma dividing my room from the next, roof. As it did, I looked for firebombs this way and that on the second floor, now dark and a mere skeleton. For I imagined that forty or fifty firebombs must have fallen. Yet there was no flame, no smoke. And I was alive. How could I still be alive? That seemed strange. I looked about me dazedly, half expecting to see my dead body stretched out somewhere. 182

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On the second floor I could see nothing at all. The only thing left was a small pile of dirt, dust rising from it, glass broken into tiny fragments, and a small mound of pieces of roof tile; of the mosquito net and even of the bed, there was not the slightest trace. There were none of the things that had been at my bedside: no flak jacket, no helmet, no watch, no books. There was not a trace of the twelve pieces of luggage we had packed for the countryside and left sitting in the next room; it was as if they had been swept away. The several large glass-fronted bookcases containing the 3,000 volumes of the library belonging to Sister's husband-I had no idea where they had gone. Inside the house there was nothing at all to be seen. But outside, as far as the eye could see--which was much farther than usual-there stretched ruined house after ruined house. The same was true even of those parts of town a long way off. The Chugoku shimbun building in Hatchobori, the radio station in N agarekawa, and other buildings looked deserted and empty, silhouettes. In the case of the house across the street, only the stone gate remained, standing all by itself; the house had collapsed utterly and completely. In the gate a young girl was standing dazedly, as if stripped of all life. She looked up at me, in full view on the second floor, and said, "Oh!" Then, in a subdued voice: "Climb down quickly!" I could not climb down. Both stairways, front and back, were still standing, unbroken; but they were blocked halfway up by boards and tiles and dirt, a pile taller than I. I had the girl from the house in front summon someone from my family. I counted on them, yet I felt they would never come. Smeared with blood, her face transformed monstrously, Sister came climbing halfway up the stairs. As if she had dyed it, her white dress had become pure red; her jaw was wrapped in a white cloth, and her face was already swollen up like a pumpkin. My first question: "Is Mother alive?" "Yeah, she's okay. She's watching you from the cemetery out back. The baby's alive, too. Quick, come on down." "How'm I going to get down? It looks impossible." Relieved that Mother was alive, I found my strength had deserted me. With both hands, Sister pushed away at the stuff obstructing the staircase. Then CITY OF CORPSES

she closed her eyes tight and looked about to collapse on top of the pile. Looking down at her, I said, "Please go back. I'll be right down." She replied: "You're not so badly injured as I am, so do get yourself out somehow!" As she said this, I noticed for the first time that the collar of my kimono was thoroughly drenched in blood. From shoulder to waist, I was soaked in blood. As I left the room, this room I would never enter again, this ten-mat room that had been home to me these several months, I took a last look around. I couldn't see even a single handkerchief; where I thought the bed had been, I finally made out the Singer sewing machine, on its side and in pieces. On the stairs, I opened a hole in the pile of debris just big enough to crawl through and went downstairs. The ground floor wasn't as much of a shambles as the second floor; the chests and trunks and boxes that Sister had packed just two days ago to take with her when she left for the countryside were piled impossibly on top of each other. In the garden behind the house, my large trunk and Mother's wicker trunk were half-buried, as if they had been hurled down with great force. Last night we had set them out on the edge of the second-floor balcony. If a firebomb attack came, we had planned to throw them down into the cemetery out back. The cemetery stood outside the board fence that surrounded the yard. In the fence were gates of woven twigs, and on the edge of the spacious cemetery we had dug an air raid shelter. There was also a tiny vegetable garden. The fence had been blown away, so I could see the whole cemetery. Mother was coming and going between cemetery and house. The cemetery led to a raised-stone embankment, and around the stone embankment stretched a board fence; that board fence too was gone. Normally I could not see the stone steps, but now they were clearly visible, and I could see, way over there, that the shrine of Sister's husband had been completely destroyed. Only the torii was still standing. !joined Mother and Sister in the cemetery. As if whispering a secret, Mother murmured to me in a low voice, "Could they have been aiming at the shrine?" But despite the 12.

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fact that so many houses had been demolished completely, there were no fires; so it couldn't have been firebombs. Ordinary bombs were hardly thinkable, either. I had experienced both in Tokyo, and this was different. For one thing, no air raid alarm or other warning had sounded, nor had I heard any planes. How could everything in our vicinity have been so transformed in one instant? We hadn't the slightest idea. Perhaps it hadn't been an air raid. In my daze, I had a different idea: that it might have no connection with the war, that it might be something that occurs at the end of the world, when the globe disintegrates. As children, we had read about such things in books. Where we were, things were quiet, hushed. (The newspaper wrote that there was "instant pandemonium," but that was a preconceived notion on the part of the writer. In fact, an eerie stillness settled, so still that one wondered whether people, trees, and plants hadn't all died at one fell swoop.) Mother said, "We called up to you many times; didn't you hear us? We heard a scream; but then, no matter how many times we called, there was no answer. We figured you must be dead." I couldn't remember having cried out. Mother went on: "Was I happy when I looked from the cemetery and you were standing there staring!" "Really?" I replied. "We were lucky, weren't we! All of us survived." Seated on a gravestone, her face in her hands, Sister was barely staving off collapse. Mother handed the sleeping baby to me. To get water, Mother went back into the house, which looked as if it might collapse at any moment. She appeared to shrink as she walked through our house, through the house in front, too, and finally out the other side. People from the house next door and from other houses in the neighborhood gathered in the cemetery; most of them were barefoot, and every single one was drenched in blood. Heavily wooded, the cemetery was a large and pleasant space; curiously, not a single gravestone had been knocked over. Everyone was strangely calm. Their faces were calm and expressionless, and they talked among themselves exactly as they always did-"Did you all get out?" "You were lucky CITY OF CORPSES

you weren't hurt badly," and so on. No one spoke of bombs or firebombs; they kept their mouths shut about such matters almost as if they thought them not proper subjects for Japanese to talk about. Meanwhile the fat girl next door had begun to call out: "Mother! Mother! Let's get out of here! There're fires. If we try to find too many things in the house, we'll burn to death. That's how people everywhere have died. Let's get out of here! Quick! Quick!" Upon hearing her cry, we too realized it was dangerous to stay there long, unworried. If we took our time, Mother, too, would keep going back into the house in search of things. We should leave soon, if only to stop Mother. As if creeping along the ground, thin smoke started to issue from the eastern part of the flattened neighborhood. The trunk and the wicker suitcase were partly buried in the ground; intending to stow them in the air raid shelter, I set my hand to them. But I was too weak. And if I gave the baby to Sister to hold, the baby would become covered with blood. So I gave up on the luggage. Mother, who was not bleeding, had brought some cotton trousers for me, and I pulled them on. Then I put on some old straw sandals we used for going out into the fields and shouldered my satchel. Each evening we set all our satchels in the entryway; only the things set in the entryway were undamaged. We carried a single bucket. Like an old woman, I used a dark green umbrella for a cane. The stock of the umbrella was bent in the middle, just like the house. Mother had thrown things out into the cemetery for me-several pairs of good shoes I valued, a summer overcoat, and the like. I saw them as I fled; but like a person beyond such desires I did not reach for them. It would be better to say that I had lost interest in the belongings than that I had given up on them. For the same reason, even people who normally were very concerned about possessions abandoned things they might well have carried. This hollowness, almost numbness, lasted a long while; even thirty or forty days later, it had changed hardly at all. In the shrine precincts we caught sight of the wife of Sister's husband's younger brother. She was wandering back and forth between the shrine and her demolished house. In June her husband had gone 186

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on active duty for the third time; he was in I Corps, stationed in Hiroshima City, so his young wife had been alone. By the time we got out onto the road in front of the shrine, fire was already crawling toward us from across the road on the right. Nearby on the left the embankment was visible, and we saw five or six people walking along the railway tracks on top. Those people didn't seem to be in a rush; seeing this, we figured the fire couldn't be all that fierce yet. Even though we were walking through a neighborhood that had been demolished, it aroused no feeling at all in us. As if it were an everyday time and an ordinary occurrence, we did not feel surprise, we did not cry; so it was without particularly hurrying that we followed the others up onto the nearby embankment. On one side of the embankment was a quarter of government-owned homes for officials. Although it too was part of Hakushima, the ranks of homes there were of a much higher quality, more grand and beautiful than those in Kuken-cho. Every one of these houses, too, had been leveled, as if flattened by a powerful force. Even the house in which my friend Saeki Ayako lived had been demolished without a trace. What had become of Saeki Ayako?-the question flitted across my mind, and I looked around. But here, too, it was hushed and quiet; nowhere was anyone to be seen. Each of the beautiful estates on the embankment had stone steps leading down from back garden to riverbed, so one could climb down. On the parts of the riverbed where water did not flow, there were vegetable gardens. Hedges formed boundaries between plots. It was to this riverbed that we climbed down from the demolished houses. (From our house to the riverbed was about three blocks. Probably a good forty minutes had elapsed since the bomb fell-as we sat disoriented in the cemetery and then came to the riverbed. But it was only long afterward that I managed to call to mind what had gone on during that time.) 13. The tide had ebbed; a band of blue water was flowing gently on the other side of the white sand. It was wide, the white sandy bank; CITY OF CORPSES

in places, bunches of weeds were growing, and there were clumps of straw and the like that had come floating down at high tide. Compared with those who were pinned under and had trouble freeing themselves, we had gotten here quickly. Tongues of flame were nowhere to be seen, so there weren't all that many people on the riverbed. As if they had come to see an outdoor play, people wandered about searching out the best place to sit. Each to his fancy, they constructed places to sit under dense hedges, next to the trees between vegetable plots, right next to the flowing water, and so on. We chose a spot beneath a fig tree. It was on the edge of the garden that was part of Saeki Ayako's residence. It was quite a distance from the flowing water. The stream of people fleeing became constant and unending. The desirable places-for example, the shady spots where one could escape the sun-were soon gone. Every last person who flocked to the riverbed had been injured. One might have thought the riverbed was open only to the injured. From the faces, hands, legs protruding from their clothing, it was impossible to tell what it was that had given these people their lacerations. But they had a half dozen or more cuts, and they were covered with blood. Some people had many streaks of clotted blood on their faces and limbs, the blood already dried. Some were still bleeding; their faces, hands, and legs were dripping blood. By now, all the faces, too, had been hideously transformed. The number of people on the riverbed increased every moment, and we began to notice people with severe burns. At first, we didn't realize that their injuries were burns. There was no fire, so where and how could these people have got burned so badly? Strange, grotesque, they were pathetic and pitiable rather than frightening. They had all been burned in precisely the same way, as if the men who bake sembei had roasted them all in those iron ovens. Normal burns are part red and part white, but these burns were ashcolored. It was as if the skin had been broiled rather than burned: ash-colored skin hung from their bodies, peeling off in strips, like the skins of roast potatoes. Virtually everyone was naked to the waist. Their trousers were all tattered, and some people were wearing only underpants. Their 188

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bodies were distended, like the bodies of people who have drowned. Their faces were fat and enormously puffed up. Their eyes were swollen shut, and the skin around their eyes was crinkly and pink. They held their puffy swollen arms, bent at the elbows, in front of them, much like crabs with their two claws. And hanging down from both arms like rags was gray-colored skin. On their heads they appeared to be wearing bowls: the black hair on top was still there, having been protected by their field caps; but from the ears down, the hair had disappeared, leaving a dividing line as sharp as if the hair had been shaved off. Many of those who looked like this, we knew, were members of a unit of young soldiers, well-built, with broad chests and shoulders. These people with strange injuries sooner or later lay down on the hot sand of the riverbed, sand scorched by the sun. One couldn't see their eyes. Even though these people were in such frightful shape, nowhere did pandemonium arise. Nor did the term harrowing apply. For everyone was silent. The soldiers too were silent. They didn't say it hurt or that they were hot; nor did they say how dreadful it was. In no time at all, injured people filled the broad riverbed. Here and there on the hot sand people were sitting, standing around, or stretched out as if dead. Those with burns vomited continually, and the sound was nerve-wracking. Saeki Ayako's German shepherd prowled the riverbed. With people arriving all the while, the human mass on the riverbed grew still larger. Quickly locating small places of their own, they settled in. No matter what the situation, it seems, people are always impatient to find a place to call their own. Even out-of-doors, people clearly prefer not to be jumbled together but to have exclusive possession of a specific piece of ground. Soon fires began to break out all over the city. Even then, people still did not dream that the whole city had been set ablaze all at once. Each thought that only his own part of town-for us, Hakushima-had been hit by a major disaster. 14. Pillars of fire rose up in a row in our section ofKuken-cho. Then the grand homes on the embankment, the residences of officials, began to burn. On the other side of the river, the houses on top of the CITY OF CORPSES

bank burst into flames, and beyond a white fence over there, in Nigitsu Park, tall pillars of flame suddenly shot up. From out of the flames came loud reports-things exploding. With my short temper, I soon got angry and said to Mother and Sister: "Why should fires be breaking out everywhere like this? Once fires start, it's all over. Didn't we all go through all that training in being careful with fire? It wasn't firebombs, so it must be carelessness. If only people had put out their stove and hibachi fires before they fled!" Mother and Sister kept silent, as much as to say that nothing could be done. Resignation was an attitude I detested. As if attacking Mother and Sister for not getting angry, I went on: "These fires are a disgrace for the people of Hiroshima. Now everyone will make fun of us. Fires like this-I can't believe it!" The sky was still as dark as at dusk. In the dark sky airplanes had been audible for some time now, and we passed the word from one person to the next, even to strangers, to watch out for strafing. People rushed to conceal everything white and red, pushed into hedges, or went to the edge of the riverbed intending to jump into the river. The sparks and the flames from the row of houses burning on the embankment were so hot it was impossible to stay in the vicinity of our fig tree. We went out onto the sand. What with the warmth of the sun and the heat of the flames, we soon moved to the water's edge. That area was full of soldiers with burns, lying face up. Time and again they asked us to soak towels in the water for them. We got the towels sopping wet and spread them as we were told on their chests; but soon the towels were bone-dry once more. Mother asked a soldier, "What happened to you?" He replied, "We were on a labor detail at the elementary school. I don't know what it was, but this enormous noise sounded, and we got these burns." His face was completely swollen, as if he had gray leprosy; the contrast with his imposingly broad chest and the youthfulness of his entire well-built and handsome body was all too pathetic. The fires spread fiercely, with irresistible force. Close by on the right, flames even began to spurt from the engine of the freight train 190

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stopped in the very middle of the railway bridge. One after the other, the black cars of the train burst into flame, and when the fire got to the last car, it sent sparks flying and belched thick smoke, as if it had had a full load of gunpowder. It spat fire; it was as if molten iron were gushing out of a tunnel. Underneath the bridge, we could see over there the shore of the elegant park, the Asano Izumi Villa; on the bank there, too, demonic deep red flames crawled. Soon the riverside began to burn, and we could see groups of people crossing to the other side. The river was burning fiercely. The people around us on the riverbed attempted to flee upstream. Over our heads, without letup, circling B-29s roared, a sound we had grown accustomed to hearing; at any moment strafing fire or firebombs or bombs might pour down on our miserable group. People felt certain that there would be a second wave to the attack. In one corner of my heart, I thought: there's probably no need to drop anything more. While we hid in the grass or squatted beside the river, fearing that we would be strafed, up in the sky they were taking photographs. Out in the open as we were, we had our pictures taken from overhead, as did the entire devastated city. A typhoon-like wind had arisen. Only its secondary gusts blew toward us, and soon large drops of rain fell. When Osaka burned, too, a wind arose, and rain fell; people emerged from their shelters carrying umbrellas even though the sun was shining. I had heard about that, so I opened the blue umbrella. The rain was blackish in color. Countless sparks rained down in its midst. I say sparks, and I thought they were small sparks; but these sparks were bits of rag and scraps of wood glowing bright red as they were swept along by the high wind. The sky became darker still, as if night had come, and the red ball of the sun seemed to sink rapidly out of a mass of black clouds. Sister came toward me, saying in a small voice, "Sister! Up there in the sky-a firebomb! A firebomb!" "What are you talking about? That's the sun, isn't it?" For the first time we both laughed a bit. But by then neither one of us could open her mouth easily. CITY OF CORPSES

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I said to her, "Tomorrow I may not be able to eat. So I'm going to drink some water now and scoop some up for later." I scooped water into the bucket. By now dead bodies were likely floating in the river. Yet over there in the sky was a faint rainbow. The rain had just stopped. The faint colors of the rainbow in the sky over there looked eene. "Water! Water! Water, please!" The soldiers with burns constantly craved water. To stop them, people said, "With burns you shouldn't drink, or you'll die. We can't give you water." Between those warning against drinking and those still pleading for water, there could already be seen, faintly, the shadow of death. The fires swelled up, became mountainous, burned everything in their path, and proceeded on their way; the city was being destroyed a block at a time. The heat was unbearable. We could see the fires spreading to distant neighborhoods and hear fiery explosions somewhere or other continually. No Japanese plane showed itself in the sky. We could not conceive of the day's events as being related in any way to the war. We had been flattened by a force-arbitrary and violent-that wasn't war. Moreover, fellow countrymen did not particularly encourage one another, nor did they console one another. They behaved submissively and said not a word. No one showed up to tend the injured; no one came to tell us how or where to pass the night. We were simply on our own. Saeki Ayako's German shepherd was still hanging about the groups of injured people on the riverbed; it hadn't barked once. That dog was known even in Hiroshima as a fierce dog; but he came and went dragging his tail, looking exactly like a lonesome human being, as if he had lost all powers of resistance. Saeki Ayako wasn't to be seen anywhere. Since coming to the riverbed, I had kept looking, almost without being conscious of doing so, for the mother-in-law and the only daughter, nearly sixteen years old, who lived with her. In the end, even after dusk fell, I failed to catch sight of them. 192

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15. Night fell. It was impossible to say just when. The day, too, had been dark, so between day and night there was no clear break. But when night came, city and riverbed were both bright red from the reflection of the fires. We did not eat during the day or during the night, but we did not feel hungry. Even after we each had taken great pains to fashion the spots we had chosen, we were unable during the day to stay for very long in one place; the sparks, the rain, and the sound of enemy planes chased us away. However, people said that the tide would rise after dark, so they gathered in the vegetable gardens and near the trees on the edge of the gardens on the way down to the sandy riverbed. We, too, fashioned a place to lie down in front of the hedge facing the sandy riverbed. Pulling up lots of weeds and spreading them out, we covered them with some straw that had washed up on the sand, then the nursemaid's coat Mother had been wearing as she carried the baby on her back. The four of us took our places on this small platform, almost like a theater box. Eight months old and chubby, the baby slept even during the day, and it did not wake up at night. Sister and I removed the kerchiefs that had protected our necks and faces all day long. For the first time we each got a good look at the other's angry-looking face, but we were beyond smiling at each other. Neither of us could see her own face, but looking at the other's face gave us a sense of the shape we were in. Sister's face was puffed up like a round loaf of bread, and her eyes, normally large, black, and uncannily clear, had become mere slits; the skin around them looked as if dark ink had been spilled on it. A cut in the shape of a cross extended from the right edge of her lip to her cheek, so her whole mouth was twisted into a sideways and inverted letter L; it was so ugly I couldn't look at it for long. Her hair was caked with blood and with the red clay of the walls; she looked like a long-time beggarwoman. Both Sister and I had bound up our wounds with strange material. I can't recall where we had found it, but three or four days earlier, in preparation for autumn and winter, Mother had dyed a piece of crepe-the broad collar of an old kimono. Each of us had wrapped the CITY OF CORPSES

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cloth under her chin and tied it in a bow on top of her head. I had a deep cut from the middle of my left ear to down below the ear. Our injuries were covered over with strands of hair caked with blood. On account of our injuries, it was not easy for Sister and me to open our mouths, now swollen shut. It was not so much that it was painful as that it felt like glue, as if a lock had been placed on my jaw. Lips barely moving, I finally spoke: "What were you two doing yesterday morning?" "Yesterday? It was this morning!" Her lips puckered as if playing a flute, Sister laughed. Thinking back with regret in her voice, Mother said, "This morning I got out the salted bamboo shoots I had been saving for some special occasion and cooked up a delicious dish: boiled carrots and potatoes I had grown out back, seasoned with soy. And I had just eaten a mouthful of the rice I was having with it when there came a bright blue flash." "What did you think it was? A bomb? A firebomb?" "Before I even had time to think what it was, there was a bang, and the cupboard came falling down, see. I had thrown myself down when the flash hit, you know. Then the cupboard fell on top of me; but fortunately the closet behind me kept the cupboard from falling to the floor, and I was bent over in a kind of cave just as ifl were curled up under a desk or whatever, so I was quite all right. Then I heard you give a shriek." Sister had been sitting across from Mother in the living room; she too had just eaten a mouthful ofbreakfast. When she saw the flash, she rushed to the baby in the next room. Because there were mosquitoes about even in the morning, she had put the baby to sleep under mosquito netting. She threw herself down on top of the baby, who was sound asleep. But thinking that a firebomb had fallen on the parlor, she turned to look in that direction. As she did so, there came a sudden gust of wind, and she immediately started bleeding. "The blue flash lasted only an instant, but I must have flown to the baby in the first instant of that instant. Still, I have absolutely no memory of getting through the mosquito netting." Mother spoke again: "That breakfast this morning-what a waste!" 194

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I said, "What could it have been, then, this morning? I haven't the faintest idea. That umbrella stock had no bend in it before, you know." Perhaps thinking she had to say something, Sister responded, "Maybe it was mustard gas?" "What's mustard gas?" "Poison gas." "That's it, for sure. But it wasn't poison gas that knocked the houses down, was it?" "They combined it-with conventional bombs." Having no clear idea what had happened, we talked nonsense. In the distance the fires still soared into the sky, burning fiercely. Hakushima had burned completely: Kuken-cho, nearby Higashimachi and N akamachi and Kitamachi, the houses on the embankment. In the night Hakushima dimmed to the color of ash. On the riverbank opposite, two or three houses still burned away, out of control. The flames burned wildly, writhing and turning like giant snakes. The area over toward U shita had already been on fire during the day; when night came, the fires burned from peak to peak on the low, wavy range; they looked like lights in a far-off town. Like shooting stars, flames often flew across the space between one peak and the next, and then the second peak too caught fire. After night fell, groaning voices, slow and dull, could be heard coming from a distance. Monotonous groaning voices, deeply melancholic, sounded here and there. It was about then that someone came to inform us that a meal would be distributed. We hadn't given the slightest thought to supper, so we responded happily. The firm voice of someone, apparently a soldier, called to those of us along the hedge: "All those able to walk, please go to the East Parade Ground to pick up food." Everyone began to gabble, and for the first time you could tell that the silhouettes moving along the riverbed were in fact flesh-and-blood people. Of our little group, both Sister and I ached all over and were unable either to stand or to walk; so Mother went, helped by a young woman nearby. It was a little more than a mile to the East Parade Ground. Mother was given four CITY OF CORPSES

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large, white, triangular rice balls, still warm. She also received four bags of hard biscuits. "A feast!" We took the rice balls happily in our hands; they were so large they were actually heavy. But Sister and I were simply unable to open our mouths wide enough to eat. Like a dentist, I forced apart my numb jaws with the thumb and index finger of my left hand; with my right, I pushed the rice into my mouth a few grains at a time. "Tokiwa Bridge-was it still standing?" "The railing on both sides was all burned away, but the middle of the roadway was still there, all bulged out. Things are really pretty bad; the flames have spared nothing." People were sitting in a row in front of the fence facing the river; simply by listening to them talk, we understood that today's conflagration destroyed the entire city of Hiroshima, that not a single part of town was spared. It was not a minor fire caused by carelessness; it was caused by enemy planes scattering sparks over the whole city. "They scattered sparks? No wonder the whole place burned! With bombs, it would have taken a P'.mdred or two, even five hundred or a thousand. They didn't drop that many. They 'sprayed' the place." "Spraying" is a provincialism meaning to sprinkle clusters of bombs, a waterfall. There were no craters anywhere, yet people still didn't realize it hadn't been bombs. So people did not complain about what happened today. We lay down. Thanks to the forest fires and the fires along the coast, it was bright and warm. We listened to the groaning voices audible far and near, as if to the sad sound of musical instruments. The voices of insects, too, came to our ears. It was all so very sad. With my whole body numb with sadness and pain, a distinct idea set itself loose in my head. A numbed feeling. A strangely numbed feeling brought on by violent external shock. This was the immediate effect on my body this morning in the instant of the strange blue flash, the enormous noise, and the destruction of the city. It might be some function from physics or even something from physical chemistrysay, a poison gas; but it did not stink, was not visible to the eye, had no odor. Something that had no color, no smell, no form, I thought, OTA YOKO

had burned up the air. I wanted to pin it down; from its impact on my senses I wanted somehow to figure out what it was. I fell easily, naturally, into a primitive mode of thought. Like a child, I thought of the nitrogen and the oxygen and the carbonic acid gas and so on in the air. Perhaps the enemy had sent electrons in the form of ultra-short waves to these elements invisible to the human eye. Without giving off any sound or smell, without exhibiting any color, these airborne radio waves must have turned into a great white fire. Unless I drew a mental picture of a new mystery world like that, I couldn't conceive of how there could be so many victims with those strange burns. I thought it pretty remarkable that I could reason like this at such a time--indeed, rather than thoughts, they were feelings received via the senses. Falling into an unbearable sense of defeat, I felt awful. Sister was sitting beside me; in a low voice I murmured into her ear, "The war's over." "What are you saying?" Her tone was reproachful. "Japan's done for, of course. At the most, two months more." I spoke in a subdued voice. Spreading from peak to peak, the fires in the mountains continued to burn spectacularly. It was late at night, but no one came to attend to the injured. Interspersed with the heavy, low human voices arising from here and there, we could hear the voices of insects.

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The City: A Tangle of Corpses It was a gloomy morning. I say morning, but dawn had only just begun to break. Right next to me, as if snuggling up to my bed of grass and straw, a boy of fourteen or fifteen had been moaning off and on since yesterday evening. About daybreak he started saying, "Cold! Cold! Oh, I'm so terribly cold!" He trembled all over; every time he moved his arms and legs, he shook and shivered. Except for a pair of underpants, he was naked; the skin of his face, arms and legs, chest, and back was burned and festering. All night long we had had to gather grass and straw to cover him and fetch water for him to drink. I asked him, "How'd you lose all your clothes?" "By the time I noticed anything, my shirt and pants were already on fire, burnt to shreds. I pulled them away from my body, but they were burning to pieces and simply fell off. When the flash came, you know, even the grass under my feet caught fire." He spoke distinctly. "The grass on fire? Where's your home?" "Miyajima." "Where were you?" "I had gone to Takeya-cho with a labor detail from the dormitory of Sotoku Middle School." "They say it's better not to drink water, so try to make it through the night. A relief squad is supposed to come at daybreak; we'll ask them to treat you first of all." With these words we tried to quiet the boy's groaning. 'Tm dying. I think I'm dying. It's horrible." "All the people here look like they're dying, so bear with it. When morning comes, someone from your family will show up to take you home." The boy to whom we said these things during the night died at dawn. The woman just the other side of the boy said, "What a pity! He's dead." My conscience troubled me for a long time thereafter. I had 16.

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learned that he came from Miyajima. Why hadn't I asked his name so I could let his family know where he died? The morning sun began to shine on the tenements along the river-that is, on the small partitioned-off individual plots lined up along the hedge. Long ago I had seen Gorky's The Lower Depths on the stage; here was a group exactly like the people of that slum society, like the crowds of beggars, cripples, and the severely ill that appear in every work by Russian writers. They filled up the riverbed so completely you couldn't see the sand. The tide had gone out again, and the curtain had already risen on death. People had died lying face down; people had died face up; people had died sitting on the grass. The people walking dazedly about were all in rags and tatters, hair unkempt, faces hard; only their gimlet eyes gleamed. The women were an ugly sight. A girl was walking about naked, with nothing on her feet. A young girl had not one strand of hair. An old woman had both shoulders dislocated, and her arms hung limply. Occasionally someone walked by who had neither injuries nor burns, and people would turn and stare in astonishment. People were no longer vomiting up everything, as had been the case yesterday; but there were people whose whole bodies were covered with broil-like burns-skin hanging off, bleeding, exuding an oil-like secretion. They had all slept naked on the sand, so sand and blades of grass and bits of straw and the like were pasted onto the putrid-looking flesh of their burns. The hills we could see from the riverbed were still on fire, burning dully. The raging fires in town had burned themselves out; neighborhoods lay in pitiful ruins. On the bridge yesterday's freight train lay on its side. Everything burnable had burned, and the red of the flames had died out; the train had become a mere skeleton, long, thin, and black, a burned harmonica, the bones of a snake. On the opposite bank two concrete structures side by side were still burning slowly. Distribution stations for rice rations, someone said; rice contains oil, so those buildings will go on burning forever. And so many buildings had burned furiously: the shrine and the restaurant at Nigitsu Park, the mansions of the rich . CITY OF CORPSES

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Around us that morning we heard typical morning chitchat. "Well, well. A welcome morning! Nothing to do. I'm forty-one years old, and this is the first time I've had a morning with so little to do!" There came the sound oflight female laughter. "That's how it is when you have a house to run. First thing in the morning to last thing at night-so busy all day you go dizzy. Get up; while it's still dark out, clean the whole house, living room to toilet. Do the cooking. The washing. Mind the children, too. Meanwhile-can't tell when-the deliveryman knocks; you run to answer. Get back again; boil and roast-if you've got something to cook, fine. Complain that you haven't this, haven't that; but even while complaining, make do somehow; boil and fry something. But take this morning now. Not a thing to do!" The men talked among themselves in the voices almost of selfhatred men use when they become totally disgusted with themselves. "Well, no big deal-the damage." "No, there's a good deal of damage. They're checking it out now-the damage citywide." About this time we learned of the deaths of Mayor A waya, General Superintendent Otsuka, and a Korean prince, Prince Somethingor-other. Someone said, "The civilian air raid wardens are all dead or injured, so they can't be of any use. The people who are still hale and hearty-they're all from outside Hiroshima." These words suddenly set me thinking. Yesterday morning, as we sat dazedly in the cemetery, I had a sense of waiting for something. Counting on someone to take very systematic action, we waited and waited and waited. We had lost long since the ability to act on our own. During the air raids it was immoral to act on our own, and thinking only got in the way. We became marionettes, operating only on the instructions of our leaders. We had come to leave even our minds to busybody leaders; so in moments of crisis like yesterday morning, the spirit of obedience that had been indoctrinated into us took right over. It had been decided that if firebombs fell thick as snowflakes, we would flee; everything had been planned out precisely-who would flee with whom, where outside the city to go. The city had parceled out evacuation pointsschools in the countryside-among the various neighborhood associ200

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ations. It was expected that people would go where they were supposed to go even if great fires blocked their way. But yesterday morning, after the catastrophe, no one told us anything. Not a single person showed up-not the head of the ward association, not the air raid wardens. Before, if they so much as saw a dim light during a blackout, they would get all worked up, rise up on their hind legs to search out its source, and then turn to the neighbors and call out "Traitor!" or put you in prison. But where were those leaders yesterday morning? Mother and Sister were so solicitous of the people in their neighborhood association; come to think of it, where have those people been all this time? Yesterday morning, when we gathered with our bloody faces in the cemetery in the grove and then departed, we met no one. Having had little contact with the members of our neighborhood association, I myself didn't know them well; but we had encountered none of the difficulties one heard about elsewhere. They handled things skillfully-with gentleness, kindness, and cooperation. They didn't send old people or women with babies out on labor detail or on antiaircraft exercises. Without even a raised eyebrow, they picked up rations for people who were often away, holding the goods for their return. They stepped in to cover at home for those women who went off to work. They gave and received with good cheer and sometimes pooled resources to make sushi or rice dumplings to eat at a happy get-together. Because it was that kind of neighborhood group, Mother and Sister were keenly concerned about its members. So despite hearing time and again that the houses of Hakushima had all burned, that not a single one was left standing, the three of us refused to believe it. (Hakushima was the size of a district like Kojimachi or Koishikawa in Tokyo.) We all shared the hope that perhaps the area around our own houses in Kuken-ch6 had not burned. The distribution of breakfast began early. There was neither soup nor tea, but a rice ball and a bag of hard biscuits apiece; once again Mother went to the East Parade Ground to pick up ours. Sister's face was all puffed up and had turned an ugly purple. In the insteps of both feet, she had horizontal cuts about an inch long, CITY OF CORPSES

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and the hollows of her knees, too, had cuts that looked as if they had been made with a knife; she couldn't walk without limping. I was not injured as badly as she, but my neck and left arm were bruised so badly I couldn't move them. Without helping hands from Mother and Sister, I couldn't lie down or get up, stand or sit. Since we couldn't open our mouths, Sister and I dipped our hard biscuits into an enameled cup filled with water and poked them into our mouths, a little at a time. Red outside, white inside, with a handle, this enameled cup had been in our knapsack; it and the water bucket came in terribly handy for a long time thereafter. But drinking the river water already seemed risky. From time to time bloated corpses the color of copper came floating past. The body of the boy who had died right beside me lay just as he had died. It was so hot the air itself seemed to be boiling. We heard the roar of a B-29, and people said there might be strafing once again. We climbed into one of the air raid shelters that were located here and there next to the ruins of houses. But what was going on in the sky now was repeated photographing. (That fact emerged from conversations with the plane's crew that appeared later in the newspaper's column for foreign telegraphic despatches.) We moved to a spot some distance off from the young man's corpse. Just before noon we learned that yesterday's attack was the first use of a new weapon. Only a single plane had come. Some said there had been three planes. Cutting its engines, it came high over the city. The new-style bomb was dropped by parachute. The white parachute descended gently, gently, and then suddenly it gave off a blue fl.ash. To those who heard the story, it sounded like a tall tale. But people did not seem overly frightened, nor did their faces show agitation. The grim affirmation that what was to come had come made its way quietly among the people. Today, too, the riverbed was as calm as it had been yesterday. From the overall mood one had no sense of people making a fuss, speaking in loud apprehensive voices, or getting angry at their ordeal. Mrs. H. of the neighborhood group came past our spot. Mother called to her, and she rushed up to us, looking as if she hadn't seen us for months. Mrs. H. said that she and people from three or four 202

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houses in our neighborhood group were way down at the eastern end of this row. As for the rest of the people, she said, some appeared to be still in the cemetery, but others were here and there on the riverbank. She was holding in her hand a pretty red-patterned kimono, apparently her daughter's. She said she was going to give it to the wellbuilt soldier who was roaming the riverbed naked. Sister asked, "Do you know him?" "No, I don't know who he is. But last night, all night long, right beside us, he kept saying 'I'm cold! I'm cold!' I've been home just now and brought it from the air raid shelter. I'll give it to him to put on." "Everything burned up?" "Uh-huh. Not even ashes left." Sister hung her head, looking mournful. On the way back to the house, said Mrs. H., the ground was still so hot you couldn't get near; her sturdy body shook as she spoke. The kimono might have fit a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old girl; Mrs. H. put it over the shoulders of the soldier who was wandering aimlessly back and forth. There was no obi, so the red silk upper lining and the green lower lining fell open; it looked strange. The sun shone brilliantly, much too hot. Using her hand to shield her eyes from the sizzling sun, Mrs. G., captain of the neighborhood group, came over to us. She said she had learned of our whereabouts from Mrs. H. "Welcome," we said, inviting Mrs. G. up onto our floor of grass and weeds as if we were admitting someone to our living room. Mrs. G. had come to suggest that Sister and I have our wounds treated at Teishin Hospital. Her twenty-one-year-old daughter had cuts all over her head and face and had come just now, Mrs. G. said, from Teishin Hospital. Mother and Mrs. G. gave us each a hand, and Sister and I struggled to our feet. I put a branch to use as a cane in each hand and climbed slowly up onto the embankment. 17. It was no longer possible to tell what was embankment and what was residential area. It had all been transformed into a field of rubble. Since no one had made the slightest attempt to put out the fires, everything really had burned right down to the ground. It had all become a vast field of rubble: the neighborhoods on CITY OF CORPSES

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level ground that we could see from the embankment-Kuken-cho, N akamachi, Kitamachi, Higashimachi-and the distant neighborhoods as far as the eye could see. Here and there we could see fires still burning slowly; everywhere there were fires smoldering. Each time I had gone to my friend Saeki Ayako's house, I had been struck by the architectural beauty of the large temple at the foot of the slope that fell away from the front of her house, the temple that looked up at an angle toward her house. But now it had burned down, and only the frame was left, ash-colored and utterly caved in. Telephone poles had burned and toppled. Electric wires were all tangled like a torn spider's web; hanging down, a shambles, they reached the rubble-filled streets and crawled along. We walked on, not touching the dangling lines, as fearful as if the power were still on. But it was impossible to walk without stepping on at least one wire. People came streaming in from the east and from the west, apparently having come from outlying towns in search of relatives. They stood rooted, aghast, gazes fixed on the vast area leveled by the flames. Bathed in the strong rays of the sun, these people remained mute as they heaved deep sighs. The Teishin Hospital was six or seven blocks from the riverbed, next door to the Hakushima Post and Telegraphic Office. The road that came out onto the road with the streetcar line that led to the hospital had been a street of shops; but we could not tell which shops had been where. Many bicycles were lying about in the middle of the street, burned the color of rust, twisted into delicate lines, reduced to frames. At several points the street was still spitting flames. We came out onto the street with the streetcar tracks. The rails were twisted and bulged out to the side. One streetcar had been turned into a yellowish-brown corpse and left stranded atop splayed rails. I thought of Saeki Ayako. Night before last, when I went to use her telephone, she said she was going out somewhere early on the morning of the sixth. So perhaps she met instant death while standing at this streetcar terminal. Perhaps she had already boarded the car. Perhaps it was when she got nearly to Hatchobori that both flash and blast enveloped her. Or might she perhaps have been severely injured and even now be lying exposed to the hot sun? We turned off the 204

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streetcar street to the right, onto a street that was no longer a thoroughfare, no longer a street, a way clogged so completely with debris and rubble that there wasn't even space to set one's feet. On this street there were corpses lying on the right, on the left, and even in the middle of the road. The corpses were all headed in the direction of the hospital, some face up, some face down. Eyes and mouths all swollen shut and limbs, too, as swollen as they could possibly be, they looked like huge ugly rubber dolls. Even as I wept, I engraved the appearance of these people on my heart. "You're really looking at them-how can you? I can't stand and look at corpses." Sister seemed to be criticizing me. I replied, "I'm looking with two sets of eyes-the eyes of a human being and the eyes of a writer." "Can you write-about something like this?" "Some day I'll have to. That's the responsibility of a writer who's seen it." The dead bodies lay in heaps. The bodies were all facing the hospital. Where the hospital's front gate had been, two or three steps inside the gate, and elsewhere, they had died with arms stretched out, as if floundering. Seeing this pathetic sight, the bodies of people who had come tottering toward the hospital only to die before reaching a doctor, I could not help feeling that their resentful spirits were flaring up, like shimmering heat waves. I don't like to use the word 'hell' because that would use up my vocabulary of horror; but there was no way to describe this scene other than as the wrath of hell. As for the three-story hospital, only a scorched concrete shell remained. The inside was empty. If you stood on this side of the gate and looked, you could easily see right through the hollowed-out second and third floors to the mountains on the other side ofUjina. Dead bodies were everywhere: in the densely planted areas to left and right, in the entryway, even in the lobby. Forming a line, the great mass of the injured waited their turn. I wondered why we had come. Our injuries did not put us in the same category. In the middle of the courtyard there was a reception desk, like the check-in table at a track meet, and there the crowd divided into two lines-burns and cuts. Burns to the right, cuts to the left, the two lines moved forward a step at a time. CITY OF CORPSES

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There were doctors; there were nurses. But they moved at such a snail's pace you could hardly tell they were there. Why they were so slow I can't say. It may have been that they had lost their composure. Perhaps they were overly conscious of the fact that as scientists they should not be surprised or excited even in the face of an event like this, that they thought to themselves too often, "Keep calm, keep calm," and kept too calm. Inside the hollow shell and in the lobby, the injured lay facing this way and that, like pieces of luggage wrapped in rags. After a long wait, Sister and I received treatment. There were no bandages, so they rewrapped us in the purple silk cloth that was already soaked with blood. Blood had begun to flow from my ear, and it hurt badly. They said I had an inflammation of the inner ear. We returned to the riverbed. The dead bodies on the riverbed lay exposed to the sizzling sun, and flies were swarming about them. I marveled that the flies had survived. Beginning in the afternoon, a relief squad came to the embankment. It was made up of doctors and nurses who had come in from various places. They were full of energy. The young nurses in particular rolled up their sleeves and went to work briskly and dynamically. The hospital they set up on the sand did a thriving business. Approximately half of the troop of injured had burns, and half had cuts. It may sound strange, but in the two lines not a single person had lost an arm or a leg, had lost an eye, or had gone mad. Even in the desperate atmosphere of the aid station, with everyone at the end of his tether, a curious situation arose. A middle-aged man, himself uninjured, was helping by forming the stream of injured people into orderly lines. He appeared to be a Hakushima person. Time and again, moistening the tip of his pencil on his tongue, he wrote names and addresses down on slips of paper. Then, having lined the people up in order of arrival, he sent them in to the doctors in that order. But every now and then he cheated. He would take people who had come later and people who came from the sides and squeeze them in adroitly at the head of the line. They appeared to be people he knew; until the night of the fifth they had lived in his neighborhood. The young girls he called, familiarly, Yot-chan or Shizuchan. His own two children he summoned from the back of the line 206

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and put up front; when they said the doctors' treatment hurt, he took the opportunity to make a stern face and scold them harshly. By scolding them harshly, he fooled many of the injured. I had to laugh: no matter what the circumstances, you find cheats like him. Going to the hospital, going to pick up food rations, eating them, listening to people's stories, keeping an eye on those with severe injuries-there was always something to keep us busy. While there is life, there are things to be done. Some people came in family groups that included men and brought along quite a few of their belongings; they had the strength and the know-how and in no time at all constructed habitations on the riverbed. Scrounging scorched sheet iron and scraps of wood, they stretched burned wire or vines or rope across between upright trees and built huts that kept out wind and rain. People of that sort had even built a stove with stones from the riverbed, set a pot to cook, and were cooking food and boiling water. For fare, they went and got the scorched squash and cucumbers that lay on the ground all over the place in the gardens of the houses on the embankment. Once the river water became undrinkable, someone discovered that the mansions in a row on the embankment had their own wells. We too roasted squash and ate it. The people preparing food at the stove were kind enough to say we too could use the stove. So Mother got them to boil some water for us. Sister and I soaked our biscuits in the hot water; after blowing to cool them off, we ate them. By evening we had been drenched with sweat many times and had dried off in the sun only to be soaked again; the dust and sand and blood were unbearable. Mother said she would wash my underwear for me in the river, so I changed to what I had in the knapsack. When I looked at the underwear I had taken off, a spot on the back as broad as my palm was stained bright red with blood. So I realized that I had a cut back there. Sash, kimono, and underwear had all been sliced through. Mother used well water to rinse the clothes she had washed in the river, then hung them on branches. Sister washed the baby's diapers. "So much to do!" she said. All the people on the riverbed who were only slightly injured went to the river and began to wash their clothes. On the riverbed CITY OF CORPSES

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people organized something approaching family life; they carried on, quite naturally, a life that was simple, though not in the sense of extreme poverty. Still, I wanted to get away from there as quickly as possible. There is no question that I was afraid that infectious diseases could get a start, and that there might be a second air raid. But I had a different, more basic terror: I did not want my soul damaged more than it already had been by seeing the dismal spectacle of the city of corpses. If for some time I were to watch the city as it putrefied street by street, my heart might be injured, my very soul ruined. But we had to try one more time to return to our house. We had left any number of things in the air raid shelter there, and we could not believe they had all burned. We simply couldn't leave without taking a look. Mother had said many times that she was off for home. But today the ground was still warm, and it was not safe to walk about. By the morning of the eighth the ground would probably be somewhat cooler. In addition, we couldn't go anywhere without papers certifying that we were victims. During the day the police set up a station on the riverbed and issued these papers. Still, when Sister went there toward evening, they said they were busy disposing of the dead and did not process her application. Again that night we had no alternative but to sleep on the riverbed. About sunset a relief force of troops from Shimane Prefecture came along. Young soldiers-they said they had come by truck from Hamada-walked around handing out hard biscuits. The biscuits smelled faintly of milk. Faint as the smell was, it was still enough to restore our spirits. Simply getting a whiff ... The houses along the opposite shore were still burning. The hills were crimson, still burning slowly. The fires did not sparkle; they did not shimmer; nor were they as pale as the light of fireflies. Without spreading or appearing to burn, they looked as if an entertainment quarter hung with beautiful lanterns burning crimson had been spread out over the hills. A doctor who had come in from the country to help out passed by, talking with a companion: "We'll be sleeping on the riverbed tonight, too, won't we?" The corpse of the young boy had been put behind the hedge, barely two or three feet from where it had been. I had a bad conscience, thinking I bore some responsibility for the boy. 208

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On into the night, people came in search of family members, relatives, acquaintances, more people than had come during the day. A tall man who looked like a teacher walked about carrying a lantern and calling out, "Any children here from Sotoku Middle School? No? Sotoku Middle School students?" I asked Mother to point out to him the body of the boy who had died next to me. But he was looking for live students. A corpse was something else again; to carry it away or bury it was someone else's job. It was a dark night. The large fires had gone out, so we felt the touch of the chilly wind. No one spoke in a loud voice; no one laughed or cried; it was hushed and still. From time to time, from somewhere or other, a faint moaning could be heard. Even after night had fallen, the soldier with the large frame walked constantly and aimlessly to and fro, the red silk kimono Mrs. H. had given him wide open, trailing. 18. Cold because the river breeze was blowing and we had no blankets, we moved again. Underneath a lush willow at the foot of stone steps where a house had been, we constructed a bed of grass, straw, and the nursemaid's coat. The spot was next to the place where Saeki Ayako's house had been. Many years ago Saeki Ayako had been a writer. She was no longer writing; but not writing cleansed her, purified her. Her elder sister, they say, had been a very fine writer; but she had died early, and I never met her. Back then I was a young writer, a woman from the back of beyond, and, arrogant in my ignorance, I put people off. Saeki Ayako had smiled down at me and enticed me into the gentle world of her own art. I had often slipped away from the dormitory of the girls' school to spend time at her large house. She was somewhat older than I. From that time on, we were friends. I had no friends in Hiroshima except for her, so when I came back from Tokyo, I often went to see her. She was more of a romantic than I, but she criticized the war with a cool eye. Letting her anger toward simple-minded militarism show just a bit, she spoke of the irretrievable complexity of the war that the militarists had started nonchalantly-indeed, with gung ho spirit. Before the air raid on the sixth, when there were ruCITY OF CORPSES

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mors that the Americans would destroy the dams and wash Hiroshima away in the floodwaters, we both felt the tension, and Saeki Ayako would sometimes burst out laughing. "If we gave in now, we would probably be in sad shape," she said, "but our side would disguise it for us somehow, so I do hope we'll end it soon . . . . " In society at large people were still preaching the patriotic zeal of Kusunoki Masashige. The ancient etiquette of the battlefield called for individual combat between mounted knights, each of whom announced his name and fought gloriously. Saeki Ayako would laugh and ask, do they intend to fight America from here on in on the basis of that etiquette? The strain of attempting the impossible threw our lives into confusion. Impatient now that just about everything in Japan had slowed to a snail's pace, Saeki Ayako would ask: did people in Japan think the Americans would come walking to war, one at a time, from across the ocean? While talking of such matters, she would tell stories of bamboo spears or of the neighborhood groups that went to the hills to collect pine needles so as to be ready, in case of air raid, to spread smoke screens. She and I restrained ourselves even when we could hardly keep from laughing. Without doubt the war would end soon, but we agreed that the manner in which it would end was important-to speak precisely, how Japan lost. Throughout the war, we could not be true to our own selves. We lamented the fact that we could not say what we wanted to say; but we also had to say and do things we didn't want to say and do. That was very painful. We who revered a rational peace, liberty, and democratic politics nevertheless were forced to turn our backs on the world of those fine ideals and commit our souls to the grave. We had to play dead. Given that situation, there was absolutely nothing one could do even when the enemy dropped propaganda leaflets from the skies warning that the all-out air raids would continue until Japan surrendered. No matter how much we used the handbills to argue that we had been fooled by the military and must surrender soon, Japan wasn't a democratic or rational or free country. So the Japanese people themselves were not capable even of forming opinions. We had reached the point of wearing stiff masks over our ears, our eyes, our mouths; we 210

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had lost completely the ability to hear, to see, to speak. With words like these I turned aside friends who wanted me to say once and for all whether Japan had been right or wrong in starting the war. Rational peace, liberty, democratic politics-they were a dream I could speak of only with Saeki Ayako. And this huge war itself-perhaps it wasn't something that some human beings had started against other human beings? Otherwise it was too tragic, too horrifying. Perhaps it wasn't war at all, but the latest cosmic phenomenon? So many months and years had passed since the world began; perhaps the globe wasn't able any longer to rein in all its emotions and had handed the reins over to the world of natural phenomena? There is even, it seems, a term 'universal gravitation'; this war must have arisen out of that supernatural force. It is neither a war of aggression nor, as Japan often said, a war for control of the world, nor a war simply for the sake of East Asia. It may not be a passing vanity of that sort; instead, it may be a philosophical, a cosmic phantasm that has taken the form of war and is on the prowl. With truly fearsome power, with truly fearsome sadism. Unless that were the case, an event of this magnitude probably would never have taken place. The fate of the cosmos itself, no doubt, is to burn out and then become colder than ice; then again blaze, be destroyed, collapse; then wander anew; then shed silent tears of sadness and anger. The process of the earth's self-destruction, so to speak, might have taken the form of war. As I spoke this childish nonsense and waved my hands about like a mischievous child, she listened with her characteristic innocent look, occasionally nodding her head. I could almost see her face as she played dumb. Yet she herself was not to be seen. On this riverbed adjoining her house, a spot safe enough that people had fled here from neighborhoods quite a distance away, her absence weighed on my mind. The three of them lived together, but I was unable to catch sight of either her mother or Yuriko. Yuriko had been off on a labor detail, away from the girls' high school, so the bomb probably caught her at the factory. Saeki Ayako's mother often set off in the morning to shop for vegetables, so on the sixth she may have been out in the open when the bomb fell. CITY OF CORPSES

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On the night of the fifth, I had gone to her house to make a telephone call concerning how I was going to get here, to this village. A man named T. lived in the town of Gian, about an hour outside Hiroshima by suburban train; he owned a car and had gasoline. The people with whom I am now staying in the country had arranged for me to come here in T's car. Otherwise there was no way I, a convalescent, could make it here over the mountains. It took rice or sake or a suit of clothes, or sugar or oil, to get T. to take his car into the country. I had none of those things, but the people here who found me a house were on good terms with T.; so it was agreed that money alone would suffice. However, T. was a long time in getting started. It had been arranged that I should move to the country on August I, but it was put off a day and then another day. I sensed danger very strongly around me, so I telephoned Gian daily. T. never answered the phone; it was always his wife. On the night of the third, she said that T. hadn't been home the last two or three days. Almost in tears, she said she didn't know where he was. (Since coming here, I have learned that that was precisely the time T. was having an affair and lying low at the woman's house.) I felt oppressed every single moment by a sense of danger, but there was nothing to do but wait for T. to show up with his car; so I began to pack small parcels and mail them to the country. The post office accepted only parcels that weighed less than nine pounds. Each household could send only one. The post office in Hakushima accepted only ten parcels a day. On the fourth, I sent one parcel in the name of our next-door neighbor-that is, two in all; they reached here the morning of the sixth. But the three I sent on the morning of the fifth apparently went up in flames; a month has passed, and they haven't turned up. The two parcels I was set to mail on the sixth burned with our house. (The parcels sent from Tokyo apparently also burned when Hiroshima burned.) When I telephoned on the evening of the fifth, the wife answered once again and said that T. might come home late that night, so wouldn't I please come see him tomorrow, early or late? Sitting beside me, Saeki Ayako said with a stern look, as 212

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if scolding me, "He's never going to come unless you go there yourself and throw yourself on his mercy." "Throw myself on his mercy? Or offer rice or sake?" I was not one to throw myself on someone's mercy over a mere automobile. But then I didn't have rice or sake, either. Saeki Ayako laughed and said that even telephoning every day wouldn't do the trick. But with my one-track mind I concentrated my energies on telephoning, relying entirely on the wife, who apparently had absolutely no say. In the end I lost. Somewhere Saeki Ayako is probably laughing at me. In order to escape being injured by the atomic bomb, nothing was of any use except not being in Hiroshima .... Water buckets, work pants, helmets, even first-aid kits, yes, and all that air raid training-none of it was of any use at all. 19. I invited Mother and Sister to come with me to this village. I had arranged to come alone; the people from whom I had rented rooms before had reserved the second floor for me. Up until twenty years ago, this village had been our home. A large old house stood in spacious grounds atop a stone embankment. The branches of giant trees intertwined luxuriantly on a tiny artificial hill with its own pond, and flowers of all kinds bloomed year-round. If we made a circuit of the hill, there was an earthen storehouse, a wooden cabin, a pickle shed, a bathhouse, and a large detached cookhouse. From the hill a path led to the mountain that was part of the property. The paddies and hills around the house and almost all the fields and forests visible from the house belonged to us. We lost the entire property to extravagant living in Father's generation. The family graveyard was the only thing in the village still belonging to us. Under these conditions neither Mother nor Sister had any stomach for returning and living on the second floor of someone else's house. Once in spring Mother had taken it into her head to rent a house there, and someone had said, "You people again!" Tears had come to Mother's eyes, and she had felt miserable. Mother and Sister had decided that after seeing me off they would go to Nomijima. The house of Sister's husband was standing CITY OF CORPSES

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vacant in N omijima, and Sister wanted to take care of it while her husband was off on military service. She thought that was part of being a virtuous wife. On the fourth, my middle sister's husband came and finished off the packing of the belongings that would go by ship to N omijima. Even as late as the evening of the eighth, Sister still seemed to want to go alone to Nomijima. Nomijima was an extension of Etajima, and you could see the buildings of the Naval Academy on Etajima clearly right across an inlet of the ocean. Behind the Naval Academy you could see the hills of Kure. The coast ofNomijima had been bombed and strafed any number of times. One week before August 6, Sister had gone to arrange to stay in the Nomijima house, and she had spent the entire day in an air raid shelter listening to the resounding thud of bombs. She came home having seen as well a warship torn in two and fishing boats set ablaze along the shore, one after the other. On the sixth and seventh, it was said, dead bodies from Hiroshima had been taken at night to nearby Ninoshima and Nomijima. There was also a rumor that many American bombs had fallen on these mortuary sites. I admired Sister's desire to go there, but I could not take to the idea of Mother's going with her to such a place. I couldn't believe that ships were leaving from either Ujina or Honkawa. Even supposing Sister and Mother got as far as Ujina or Honkawa, there was no telling how many corpses they would have to trample on, street after street, before they got that far. The night was damp, as if dew might fall. The electricity was off, and the radio didn't work either. We heard American planes every three or four hours; each time, instead of a siren, someone came around calling out, "Air raid! Air raid!" So time after time we climbed down into the air raid shelters, charred and gruesome though they were. In one of the shelters lay the corpse of a young woman. When we lighted a match, we saw that the eyes were open, the hands clasped tightly. Immediately next to us, now standing, now sitting, someone we couldn't see was groaning softly. The person whispered twice, three times, ''I'm dying!" Then we began to hear the high-pitched crying of a young girl. Her screams were piercing, something like a night bird's. She shouted the same words again and again: "Father! 214

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Mother! Everything's all right now! Come on home!" Yelling at the top of her lungs, she didn't stop for a minute. Now she sang as loud as she could: The moon's all alone; I'm all alone too. The moon's all alone; I'm all alone too. The moon's all alone; I'm all ... The girl sang quickly and repeatedly, loud enough to burst her lungs, as if she were being pursued by something dreadful. And then she went back to crying: "Father! Mother! It's okay now! Come on home! Mother! Father!" Because of the mad midnight singing of this grief-stricken girl, people couldn't sleep, and many tossed and turned on their beds of grass. I dozed off and fell under the thrall of a vision. Flowers are blooming on a nearby hill. On top of the hill stands a reddish-yellow three-story house, unmistakable. The open windows of the third floor face us, and a young woman is resting on the bed. But the woman is crazy. The vision was as plain as day. Indeed, we do hear a voice coming from above.' A cry distressing enough to turn those listening to it crazy, too: I would not have thought it could come from the same stretch of sand. The absence of buildings had its effect. People said the girl was stretched out on the riverbed only a hundred meters to the south of us, burns all over her body. One couldn't tell whether she had been pretty. Burn blisters like thick tubes were crawling all over her body, and last evening they had broken. People said that her mother, who was injured, was at her side. Her father was in the navy, and of the seven people who had been in the house only the two-mother and daughter-were still alive; the others had all died on the sixth. The woman next to us suddenly burst into tears as she whispered this girl's story to us. The fellow right next to us died at dawn. He had been forever standing up and sitting down, sitting down and standing up, always murmuring to himself or moaning softly. His fingers were almost CITY OF CORPSES

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touching my face. Mother said the body was face up, completely naked. By now we had become inured even to dead bodies, but I could not bear to look at the corpse of this tormented young man. I got Mother to cover his dead body with grass, and then Sister and I got to our feet. While it was still dark, we broke some branches off the willow and used them to veil the face of death. It was now the third day after August 6, so the stench of death filled the riverbed. As the day grew light, we discovered on every side the bodies of people who were alive yesterday but had collapsed and died. Even the soldier wearing the red silk gown-his body lay beside the path, all swollen up, his young life ended. A girl barely five years old had died; her body lay on its side on the riverbed as if she were taking a nap, hand flung out. A baby had died at the water's edge; burned all over, the body lay exposed to the sun. The girl who had gone insane kept screaming on into the morning; but then, I understand, a car came from somewhere, picked up both mother and daughter, and left. Apart from her, no one was screaming, and no one was talking. It was quiet. Today, too, the sun shone brilliantly, boiling hot. A small boat came up the river, picked up the badly injured soldiers and the bodies, and left. But the dead body of the young man from Miyajima was still there, starting to decompose. From morning on, the first-aid station was besieged by a throng of injured people. The doctors and nurses at the station came from outside Hiroshima in relays, so those with injuries were treated by different people each day. The authorities had decided to treat cuts with hydrogen peroxide solution and Mercurochrome and to treat burns with salve, poultices, and other medicines. So each time they were treated, lacerations turned redder, and burns glistened more brightly, were smudged whiter, or were stained grayer. For the most part, these injuries looked gruesome. The splinters of glass and the other fragments had come flying so very fast, it seemed, that all the cuts were deeper than they appeared. I said to Sister, "Bullets from machine guns leave neater wounds, don't they!" I remembered that just recently at the Red Cross Hospital I had seen a woman who had been hit by machine-gun fire. She had been going by boat to Nomijima, taking the last of the clothes she 216

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planned to store outside the city, when shots were fired down into the boat. When she was brought to the hospital on a stretcher, her lips were pressed firmly together, and her eyes glittered; she screamed and complained of the pain. (Victims of the atomic bomb have vacant expressions on their faces.) Before they moved her to the Red Cross Hospital, the island doctor had removed the bullets from her arm, which was sliced wide open from below the shoulder to the wrist. Calling me over, the head of the hospital had shown me the X ray; the bones were broken, and the X ray showed the presence of gas. The head of the hospital said, "If that's gangrene, we'll have to take the whole arm off." Still, the wound looked neat, and the woman's excited expression was also fresh and attractive. Injuries caused by the atomic bomb were so much messier that no comparison was possible. And the people wore such vacant expressions. The people at the aid station said that they would not treat people who had been treated yesterday. We had to leave for the country today, but without transportation we would have to walk; so we asked them to treat us. Even so, they refused. There was such a horde of injured people and so little medicine. An older doctor rushed about in agitation: "I didn't think it was this bad. Not enough medicine to go around!" Extremely busy, he juggled what little medicine he had. What was strange was the relationship that arose between victims and nonvictims. From the first, the average person treated the injured, from whom he differed only in not being injured, almost as if they had always been dirty beggars. He was arrogant in words and attitude and treated them as inferiors. I could not help being struck both by this psychology and also by the psychology whereby victims as victims became absolutely servile, as if they had always been pathetic creatures, even though only two or three days had passed since they had been burned out of house and home. Mrs. H. and Mrs. G. came and said that since the distribution of food was going to be regularized from now on, the members of the neighborhood group wanted to get together as a group in one place. In addition, the riverbed was not a safe place. Bombs might fall at any time on so large a group of people out in the open. The people on the CITY OF CORPSES

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riverbed were beginning to leave, a few at a time, each going his own way. We decided to gather for now back at the cemetery. Sister went and got the papers certifying us for relief aid. As ifbranding us definitively with the mark of victims of the atomic bomb, these small, thin sheets of paper seared our hearts; they made us miserable. Leaving Sister behind, Mother and I went first, taking our leave of the white sand of the riverbed of death, enveloped as it was in stench. To the last I looked around for Saeki Ayako's dog, but it was nowhere to be seen. After climbing the embankment and before descending to the vast expanse burned flat by the flames, I looked back at the riverbed. All I could see was the reflection of the bright rays of the sun, and a mass of people. With neither land nor houses of their own, a bunch of nomads had found a bit of land on the edge of a river and were living a rootless existence, one day at a time. That is what the mass of people I saw on the riverbed looked like. When I looked in the direction of the city, there was no city. It looked like a winter field, bleak and desolate. We climbed down as far as the area in front of the remains of the temple that had collapsed and burned, but the road to where our own house had been was changed so completely we didn't recognize it. All we could do was walk through the vast expanse of rubble, aiming for the trees of the cemetery. Before I knew it, moved to tears, I wanted to walk by myself. Slowing to a snail's pace, I said to Mother, "Please go on ahead." Mother had decided she would go back to the riverbed once more to fetch the baby, so she left me behind and walked on ahead. My heart broke, and I wept at the tragic state of the people who had died on the riverbed and at the state of the whole city of Hiroshima, utterly and completely leveled, a state that I was seeing now as I walked. A man was sitting on a rock at a place where until the morning of the sixth there had been a bend in the road. Next to him there was an air raid trench. A mat had been spread in the trench, and the body of a girl of twelve or thirteen had been laid down facing the other way. A white cloth covered her. Beside her pillow had been placed a small red bowl holding a ball of white rice. An incense stick with a point of 20.

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red flame was sending up smoke. New clogs had been put on her feet and fastened with thin thongs. I asked the man sitting on the rock, "Is she dead?" He nodded and said, "Uh-huh." Tears welled up in the young father's eyes; tears overflowed in my eyes, too. Her father had clothed her in a pretty traveling outfit, and she reminded me of Otsuru, the character in the play who makes a pilgrimage to Awa. The parental love expressed in his tender treatment of his daughter's dead body reverberated in my own heart like the echo of a gentle poem, I who had lived these three days amid devastation. I walked on, sobbing loudly, through dead bodies so numerous there was no place to set my feet. I walked, reeling, not even mopping away the tears which flowed so bounteously. The sun dried my tears, and I felt a bit relieved. Looking up at heaven, I prayed, "Give us back eternal peace!" Even though this great disaster had been visited upon us, I thought it was hardly possible that God would not let humankind have peace again. What was God, after all? God was an idea inside us. Sobbing loudly, I walked along the rubblestrewn street, still warm, to the spot in front of our house. When I saw Mother, my tears stopped of their own accord. The house had burned so completely one could not imagine that a house had ever stood there. Two stone gateposts remained, protruding from the ground like cemetery headstones; where the bath had been, only the metal tub remained, scorched a rust color and looking unreal. In addition, the frame of the sewing machine that had been on the second floor, the shears that had been at the bottom of the parcel to go to the country, and two or three pieces of pottery were half-buried in the burned ground, reduced to ash though still holding their shapes. Mother and I exchanged a silent glance. Then Mother said, "What do you suppose happened to all the glass? There aren't even any broken bits!" Indeed, the glass was gone without a trace. Perhaps, melted down like jelly, it had flowed away? As for the pots and kettles, someone might have stolen them in the last three days, so people said; but I thought they too might have melted down and flowed away. We also saw ashes in the shape of the wicker trunk, ashes in the shape of the camera bag, and so on. CITY OF CORPSES

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At the air raid shelter in the cemetery, the four or five thick quilts Mother had thrown into the entrance as she left were gone; only a mound of ashes was left. Some time ago we had placed a sturdy box filled with foodstuffs in the front half of the shelter; that large box had acted as a wall, and the things beyond it had not burned. What had not burned? The portable charcoal stove and the pots and kettles and a scant three trunks of clothing. When I saw the things that hadn't burned, I felt as I would feel on seeing, safe and sound, people I thought had died: how wonderful to clasp their hands in mine! The pots and kettles and trunks seemed to be calling out to us; it irritated me that they didn't come walking out toward us now of their own accord. Up until now I hadn't liked the air raid shelter. It was not like a tunnel, open at both ends, but had only one entrance; so had people been inside it, they might have suffocated. They would surely be dead. These belongings survived because they were inanimate; had there been an opening at the other end, too, they would surely have gone up in flames. I am not a fatalist; still, ifl were able to think of things as fated, then fate was surely all about us. The headstones in the cemetery were not broken or toppled or even discolored by the flames; they were standing in straight rows, just as before, seared only by the sizzling rays of the sun. Among them were stones on which dates from the r 8 50s and r 86os were carved. When I looked at those stones and their inscriptions, it was as if I had suddenly been transported back in time. The more recent gravestones were lighter in color, and the graves of those who had died in this war were newer still. The tall trees in the cemetery had been pine and cedar and zelkova and fir, but now only the thick trunks remained. The branches and leaves were all dry as a bone, curled up tongue-like. The large ginkgo tree that had been growing in the stone wall of the shrine was torn in two, in three; one part hung down toward the cemetery, one part hung down limply to the side, and the bark smoldered like charcoal that hasn't been fired long enough. There was no wind, so the cemetery was even hotter than the riverbed. Breathlessly hot, we sat atop the stone bases of the tombstones. In order to avoid even a bit of the sun, which moved along the other side of the trees, now reduced to thick trunks, we moved con220

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stantly in the other direction, keeping pace with the sun. The people of our neighborhood group stayed inside rude shacks, hardly worthy of the name, sat like us on the bare pedestals, or stood around aimlessly. Even after we got here, we sometimes heard the roar of B-29s overhead. Much time had passed, but we still were not out of danger. While the houses were still standing, we had not been able to see the rail line on the embankment on the other side of the river. Along it a procession of people was now passing. They weren't injured, but they were the very picture of refugees. American bombers were right overhead, but the procession streamed on, not even climbing down off the tracks. Those people had been passengers on a train coming from far off; they were walking from Y okogawa, down the line, to Hiroshima Station and then on to Kaita to make connections with another train. In Hiroshima there was no place to hide when you heard planes; so, carrying their bundles and their precious shoes, those people simply walked straight ahead down the tracks, which were blazing hot in the sun. Once Sister too got to the cemetery, we opened the boxes of food. Inside, there was a little rice and some soy beans and some salt and dried bonito and dried chestnuts. In addition, there were tea bowls, plates, chopsticks, spoons. To me the tea bowls and chopsticks seemed extraordinary beyond words, and I rejoiced as at an unexpected gift. There were lots of chopsticks and spoons, so we handed some to the people in the hut of our neighbor, Mr. F. Mr. F.'s sixteen-year-old daughter was lying in the narrow hut; she had been pinned under on the second floor, and both her head and her arms were covered with injuries. She had major injuries to both legs as well. Next to her sat her elder sister, a teacher at a girls' school, who, they said, had been sleeping beside her sister that morning; she hadn't the slightest scratch. Another elder sister was also in the hut. This elder sister had married into a Kure family. When Kure was bombed, she was living in a lone house halfway up the mountain, so she figured she was safe. But, she told us, it had burned first of all. She had come here shortly before the sixth, and on that very morning, the sixth, she had set off by train for Kure. When the train got just CITY OF CORPSES

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beyond Kaita, she saw the brilliant blue flash, and the shock came immediately thereafter. She says passengers tumbled off the seats right and left. Lightly made up, this young woman was wearing neat Western clothes and shoes, too. Eyes wide in astonishment, she said, "The train kept right on going, but when I looked out the window toward Hiroshima, you know, an indescribably strange smoke was billowing up, and then it got pitch-dark. I didn't know what had happened, so when I got to Kure I switched immediately to a train coming back here; but the train couldn't get any farther than Kaita. From Kaita I came by foot; what a shock!" "How far is it from Kaita?" "Eight kilometers, maybe? Did my feet get sore! It's not your ordinary road, you know. Because all along the way, houses and dead bodies lay piled on top of each other. But you know, all along the train tracks, beginning on the other side ofKaita, people were cooking rice and making rice balls. That was nice." "They were making rice balls out in the open?" "Uh-huh. All along the tracks they had set up a line of tables, you see; all along the way, people were making rice balls." I commented, "I bet some of the food we got came from there." Everyone smiled at that nice thought. We didn't know whether three members of our neighborhood group were alive or dead. One woman had set out that morning for the prefectural office on business; she had not returned yet, even though it was now the eighth. A thirteen- or fourteen-year-old girl had gone off to assist a labor-service detail and hadn't been seen since. The third was Mrs. H.'s husband. The office where he worked was a wreck, so Mrs. H. searched for him every day; but he had not been admitted to any of the treatment centers nor to any of the several hospitals of which only the exteriors remained. No one in our neighborhood group had burns. Except for an old woman who had lost an arm and a young woman with splinters of glass in her eye, it was all bruises and cuts. Nor had anyone been pinned under. The more people we saw, the more chance appeared to have played a role. Most of our group were homemakers who were 222

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uninjured. Many of these women who were middle-aged or olderMrs. H., Mrs. B., Mother, and those from other families, too-had not received even a scratch. The same thing continued to hold true even later. Men and young women had the serious injuries, probably because they went off to work and led active lives. The women past middle age and the old people, even the men, shut up inside their houses, received injuries that were relatively slight. It appeared to be chance, but then again it may not have been. The wife of Sister's husband's brother was stretched out in the air raid shelter with a head injury. Two days had passed, but there was still no sign of her husband. We made a fire in the charcoal stove and crumbled up our ration of rice balls into a pot, sliced in the squash we had brought with us from the riverbed, filled the pot with water, and cooked a porridge of rice and vegetables. Sitting in the hot sun and eating hot stew, blowing on it to cool it off, was pure delight. In the burned rubble, a fountain of water played out of the water main from a broken pipe. It was nice, too, to wash the dishes and the pot off there and put them back into the box they came from. We tucked the box away in the back of the air raid shelter. A short train ran past, made up only of engines that looked like wedge-shaped snowplows, with people who looked like station staff and work crew hanging from the train. They were probably off to clear away the remains of that train lying on its side on the bridge. The train going west from Hiroshima, we heard, would depart after noon. We decided to board the train at Yokogawa Station and leave Hiroshima. Mrs. K.'s husband agreed to take our luggage to the station by bicycle. Mrs. K. was expecting a child in September; as she said good-bye to us, her hair was dirty and mussed up, her face was swollen and bloody from a cut that stretched from her eyebrow across her nose, and she was barefoot. We were the first in the group to leave Hiroshima, so our words of farewell to each person were sad ones: "We'll surely see you again sometime, won't we?" The people of the neighborhood group had gotten along well with each other, but they must have known that they couldn't live the rest of their lives in the same place. Still, on the surface at least, they CITY OF CORPSES

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hid from each other their sorrow that the group was scattering, that life was so uncertain. A white chicken pattered about underfoot. The child from the temple in front of the shrine came looking for it and carried it off. People said that three of those living at the temple--husband, baby, and five-year-old son-had been pinned under and died. Mother had a furoshiki with a light purple stripe. I wrapped my head and face in it, tying it under my jaw, and set off in the direction from which the strong rays of the afternoon sun were pouring down on us.

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Relief Had Hiroshima been functioning normally and had its residents been clad in normal apparel, then the four of us-mother, daughter, daughter, granddaughter-might have seemed to be lunatics or perhaps long-time beggars who had been badly injured. But every last person was in the same shape. Even the town itself-one couldn't tell whether it was dead or alive. Clad in squalid disguises, the people all wore vacant expressions on their faces; all of them walked at a strange slow pace, as ifheading for a destination they were reluctant to reach. My whole body hurt, so I walked very slowly, tottering like a marionette on a string. But no matter how strange you looked, people did not laugh. Nor did they show sympathy. For no matter how sad the shape you were in, people no longer felt they had to show sympathy. There were dead bodies wherever we went. Dead bodies virtually blocked the road we were walking on, though it was not really a road. Almost all of the bodies had burns, so even alive they had given off a foul odor. Half-decayed, the dead bodies sent wafting in the air an acid smell, as of a crematorium. Some of the dead bodies seemed to have only just died, and the salve that had been used to treat their burns gleamed wet and white in the sunlight. Unmoved, unafraid, we walked amid the corpses. But on coming up to one corpse, I stopped in my tracks. My skin turned cold. The place appeared to be the entrance to the quarters of some military unit; here were two stone pillars that looked like a guardhouse gate. A young man was sitting with his back against one of those pillars, both legs drawn up and arms wrapped around them, not moving at all. He was twenty-three or twenty-four years old; he was wearing a shirt and pants; he even had shoes on, too. His coloring resembled that of opium addicts I had seen in China, but he did not look as if he had been sick. The young man was dead. His was the first corpse I had seen that hadn't bled at all and that had no burns. He appeared to be a member of a student militia unit from some other prefecture. Four or five soldiers-they looked like university students-were carrying a stretcher to dispose of corpses. They did not 21.

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touch the young man's body, which in death leaned against the stone pillar like a seated statue. Instead, they stuck poles under the arms and clumsily tipped the body onto the stretcher. The lower half of the young man's body turned out to be swollen like a barrel, out of all proportion to the upper half of his body. It was already decomposing. By then I was accustomed to dead bodies. Everyone was. Even on the sixth itself, the day the bomb fell, people did not feel any great pain from their own severe injuries, and there was virtually no anguish in our hearts. The dead bodies themselves did not show agony-neither the beautiful bodies of children that looked alive nor the bodies that had begun to decompose. Nor did the people passing by revive our anguish. We didn't think of connecting this situation in any way with the war. It was as if we had lost even the ability to think. Yet tears were continually welling up in our eyes. When I walked out onto the bridge and looked over toward Hiroshima Castle, toppled to earth and absolutely flattened, a great wave of emotion swept over me. Grief and the ability to think, reviving periodically, made my heart ache. The castle keep looked as if it had collapsed and shattered without offering much resistance. Because the castle was white, it had been visible in normal times from anywhere in the city; so yesterday when I climbed up onto the embankment or when I was on the way to Teishin Hospital, I should have noticed that it was gone. Then I would have understood merely that the castle was gone. But the fact that the castle had been demolished so utterly told me something. Even supposing a new city were to be built on this land, there would be no rebuilding the castle. Hiroshima was a flat city with no hills. Thanks to its white castle, Hiroshima became three-dimensional and preserved the flavor of the past. Hiroshima, too, had its history, and it saddened me to march forward over the corpse of the past. Having lived so long in Tokyo, I was not accustomed to crossing long bridges. Even in normal times, it was a scary thing for me to cross Hiroshima's long, long bridges. But now the buildings on both banks that seemed to anchor the bridge were gone, as were the sections of the city that had formed a distant backdrop. So the bridge 226

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appeared to be floating in the air, and I seemed about to be dragged off and down to the bottom of the river. The bridge hung suspended like a rainbow over a great void. Those hundreds of temples that were such a grand sight in Teramachi, always visible on the left-they were gone. The ancient buildings of the Hongan Temple, so vast and stately that only Kyoto could match them-they were completely flattened; not even pieces of roof were visible. Yokogawa was across the bridge, about a mile and a half from Hakushima. It lay on the outskirts of the city, a small factory belt with many lumber mills; so it had scars to show that were more ghastly yet than the ashes of the residential areas. From all the windows of the concrete warehouses and the factory buildings, so solidly constructed, red flames belched and swirled in astonishing shapes. The fires were so hot we could hardly get by. A stranger walking alongside me struck up a conversation: "Some fire, isn't it! That warehouse over on the right was chock-full of sugar. Those are the flames of burning sugar. The bright red flames of sugar." Wondering if that was true, I didn't respond, and he spoke again: "I know, see; I worked in that warehouse." Sister had a sweet tooth. Glancing up at him with eyes so swollen they were mere slits, she complained, "If the sugar was going to go up in flames, it's a shame they didn't hand it out!" Her face showed her chagrin. There was a smell in the air like that of caramel on the stove. So it wasn't a lie; the building was a sugar warehouse. Amid the charred ruins, so ruined it was impossible to tell what they had been, a small, pure-white pile was burning briskly, red tongues of flame reaching out; it might have been asbestos or perhaps salt. Five or six young men were squatting on the ground nearby. Looking in my direction-I who looked like a beggar-they laughed, "It's the fifty-three stages of the Tokaid6, isn't it! One of Sharaku's woodblocks ... " Those young men were wooden dolls wrapped in rags; only their faces showed any life. At the Misasa Shrine just outside Yokogawa, only the trunk of a giant tree rose into the sky, its bark scorched; the shrine and the main building and all other structures had burned down. The shrine was the home of my second sister's husband. Sister had taken four children CITY OF CORPSES

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with her and evacuated to the country, but her husband and her eldest son would have been here. Stopping to face in the direction of the shrine, Mother looked as if she wanted to go there, but the forest fire still burning behind it had such force that we could not go near. Just in front of Yokogawa Station a navy hospital aid station had been set up, and hordes of injured people poured into the tent. Directly in front of the tent, atop a mountain of rubble, lay the dead bodies of men and women, old people and children and babies, tossed together and piled up as if they were merely, say, dead cats. We were wholly accustomed to the sight of dead bodies; still, this mountain of dead bodies forced us to avert our eyes. There was no tent, only a wooden sign on which was written "Emergency Mortuary." The mound of corpses lay exposed to the strong rays of the high summer sun. On the mound lay the body of a fat young woman, naked arms and legs spread out indecently; it seemed to be staring fiercely at the sky. All the dead bodies were bloated and fat and burned pitch black, their skin like that of a bronze Buddha. (They had been burned by the bluish flash, not by the flames, so they had not felt the heat of that flash directly.) The sooner I left this city behind, the better. I didn't know what things would be like once the train got to Hatsukaichi; but even if we were to live in the open as before, I thought I'd rather be in Hatsukaichi, forty minutes away by train, than in Hiroshima. At Yokogawa Station, too, there was no building left that looked anything like a station. There were only the station platforms. At a place resembling a ticket booth for an open-air play, we picked up refugee tickets, and then we went onto a platform that was awash in a whirlpool of refugees. The four o'clock train came at six; but when I saw the engine coming toward me I rejoiced, as amazed as when, as a child, I first saw a train. My chest expanded and gave off a happy noise, like the pop when a lotus blossom opens. The train brought victims from the next station up, Hiroshima's main station. Inside, it was a human cattle car. The injured lay piled one atop the other in the corridors. The people looked as if they had been crushed alive; they did not say a word. Downcast, they kept si228

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lent and exhibited clearly the dementia that characterized this disaster; they looked as if they weren't getting enough air. Some of the passengers had come from well east of Hiroshima and had not known how things were in Hiroshima; with dazed expressions on their faces, they stared at the injured people inside the car or, wide-eyed, looked out the window. And one group of young officers who apparently came from some other part of the country folded their white-gloved hands atop their swagger sticks. Displaying an icy attitude, they did not even offer their seats to those with serious injuries. Outside the window, the suburban towns on the edge of Hiroshima went past. The rows of houses here were like the houses in the city in those very first moments of August 6: they were smashed, twisted and leaning, or fallen completely over, or crumbled all to pieces. To the eyes of those who had wandered through places in the city that were like desolate fields, where every last house had burned, where there weren't even any houses that had only half burned, these collapsed houses looked weird. They had been crushed in the twinkling of an eye by a terrible pressure from the sky, indescribably strong though invisible. One could tell that graphically from their condition. Even in this area, the shells of houses were sometimes burning raggedly; they tugged at my heartstrings. In the fields, too, here and there, large balls of fire were burning. (I can believe the tales, reported afterward by Professor Fujiwara of Hiroshima University, of balls of fire, some of them burning fiercely even on the surface of rivers.) Fragments of the bomb, so people in the train said, had acted as incendiaries. In terms of geographical spread, they said the damage was greatest to the west, that to the west there were clearly more corpses and more people with severe injuries. On August 6, they said, the wind had been in the direction of Koi. Since the towns and villages we could see from the windows of the train were extensions of Koi, blood-red balls of fire had probably caused all that fire damage. Stretching as far as the eye could see in the pale blue twilight, the rows of collapsed houses and the bright red balls of fire burning in the fields seemed to be nightmare, not reality. Even after we got to Itsukaichi, we could see houses about to collapse and houses where glass and slidCITY OF CORPSES

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ing panels had been blown out. Arriving at Hatsukaichi, we finally saw a normal town, now dark. The train got to Hatsukaichi in about the usual forty minutes. We came out into the familiar square in front of the station, out under the cherry trees of the square, the trees I always saw when I came home from school on even the shortest of vacations-spring, summer, winter. I was on the point of fainting. Sister helped me to lie down on the ground. Hatsukaichi was dark, all lights out. The town was engulfed in terror, not knowing when what happened to Hiroshima might happen to it. All the long-time inns in the town had been turned into dormitories for soldiers and for workers in the war industries; there was no room for us. For a place to spend the night, we would have no alternative but to go to the elementary school, now an aid station. Having gotten this far from Hiroshima, we had no desire to go near a place where there were corpses and hosts of the injured. Setting her rucksack down under the cherry trees, Mother commented, "I'd almost rather sleep in the open." She said she'd look for lodging. "I'd prefer to set out for Kushima, even if we get only a step or two." I suggested this because I was pained at the thought of Mother walking the dark streets. But Mother has her own ways of doing things and demonstrated her love for us by taking upon herself what would normally have been ours to do. She disappeared into the dark streets. She returned almost a full hour later. I was grouchy, thinking to myself, "Where's she been all this time?" When I am grouchy, she normally keeps her distance; but now she looked me squarely in the eye and said: "I went to the police station and asked, and they said the hotels and guest-houses were all full, so I should go to the aid station. I wondered what to do. Then, figuring it was useless, I decided I might as well come on back. I was on my way back here when a woman came toward me, hale and hearty; so I told her we were going to Kushima and asked her, see, whether we'd find lodging in a village along the way. She said the country inns, too, were probably full of 22.

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injured people from Hiroshima. Two or three refugees were staying at her house, she said, so why didn't I come too? I said that ifl were alone, I would impose on her hospitality, but my daughters and the baby were waiting at the station, and with so many of us I couldn't possibly impose on her. She said no, that didn't matter. That she was like that; even if Hiroshima hadn't happened she liked to do things for people. That catastrophe had been so bad that putting up four or five people wasn't too much to ask. That's what she said. The bath's hot, she said, so it's better than staying in the open. And she took me along to show me where she lives. What do you think?" I thought for a moment. Mother went on: "It's strange to get put up for even a single night by someone you don't know; but in the towns up ahead, they say, virtually every inn has victims staying in it. . . ." "Don't call them 'victims,' at least call them 'refugees.' 'Victims' sounds pitiful. What sort of house is it?" "It's a large house. Now what business are they in? The name is Osono. She said she'd leave the gate open for us, but what do you want to do? If you don't like the idea, we can sleep in the open or walk a bit in the direction of Kushima.'' "Let's accept her hospitality for one night." We walked through dark streets. Sister spoke: "It's embarrassing that so many of us are descending on her, but what choice do we have?" There were no destroyed houses and no fires thereabouts, and no one in the street looked like a refugee, so we felt better. Like everyone else, I too had fallen unawares into the standard refugee mentality. Noticing that state of mind, I became unbearably scornful of myself, but I couldn't help it. After a long walk on a street I remembered, Mother stopped in front of a large house with a broad frontage. "Here we are. " Mother gets lost even during the day and going to a house she knows well. It was astonishing that she should have found a pitchdark house on the very first try, and I was filled with admiration. The house belonged to a timber merchant, not Osono but Osoto. It had many rooms, and we were led to a room with a tokonoma. There apCITY OF CORPSES

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peared to be refugees both in the next room and in the annex. A large earthenware jug was filled to the brim with hot green tea, and scallions were set out as a side dish. On the third day after the disaster we drank this tea, and it was so delicious it seemed to permeate my entire body. It was nearly midnight. Normally, the trip from Hiroshima to Hatsukaichi takes an hour and a half, even if you take your time. This trip had taken more than ten hours. The air raid alarm sounded twice during the night, and we could hear explosions in the distance. Absolutely terrified, the people of Hatsukaichi spent practically the whole time in air raid shelters. But we were no longer able even to get ourselves out from under the mosquito net. To die on tatami-that was better, at least, than dying on that horrible riverbed. The next day, too, was fine weather, so hot we seemed to roast. The bus for Kushima left only once each day, at four in the afternoon. In the Osoto house, too, there was coming and going; there was talk about close relatives still missing in Hiroshima, and there were women crying. In addition, they were frightfully busy with clothing and food to be sent to the aid station, so we decided to leave during the morning. Mrs. Osoto wouldn't let us leave until she had fed us lunch, and then she hurried after us, after we had departed, to return a little something we had left in token of our thanks. As if we had borrowed something we could not return, our debt to her weighed on our spirits. It was only 2 p. m. when we got to the waiting room for the bus; yet refugees had gathered, silent as usual, an ash-colored flock. Most unbearable of all was the bad smell emanating from the injuries. There were several dozen people. Their ghost-like faces and whatever parts of their bodies stuck out of their clothing-neck, both arms, chest, both legs-were all burned, so there was a smell of burns and of grossly swollen naked bodies. It was like a room full of deathbed cancer patients. The waiting room led as well to the stop of the suburban trolley for Miyajima. Each time the trolley arrived, victims of the atomic bomb came pouring out the exit gate, looking almost like a bunch of 232

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convicts, utterly down and out. Had I been an observer rather than a fellow victim, I might have felt revulsion and contempt rather than sympathy. That's how filthy the refugees were. A man who looked like a ghost got off the streetcar. He had burns; his whole body was swathed in bandages, including both arms to the fingertips. The bandages on his face were oozing blood and pus, and only his shining eyes with their burned eyelashes poked out. He looked around uneasily. A woman with two children ran up to him: "A moment ago your brother from Furuta got on the streetcar bound for Hiroshima!" "Really? Just missed him, did I? Shucks." The man looked back toward the streetcar. "I chased after him, but the streetcar went too fast. And to think he would have seen me if he'd only looked this way for a bit." "He must have come in from the country. Too bad. I really have to go right after him, don't you think?" "You've just gotten here by the skin of your teeth! You can't want to go back to Hiroshima." "I don't want to, but I came that close to seeing him. So I can't just let him go. Given the state of things, even if he goes to our place in Hiroshima, there's no way he can find us. He won't know what to do. I'll go back. When the bus comes, you take the children and go on ahead." "No. I'll go. You take the children." Tears came to her eyes. "No, I'd better go. A woman can't do it. I'll go to Hiroshima now and look for him. I may miss the bus and have to stay the night somewhere; that's rough. I'm such a mess I put everyone off. I smell bad, and I get the bed all sticky and messy." Faint tears came to his eyes, too. "So I'll go," said the wife. "You go on home." "No, I'm going. The sooner you get the children to the country, the better." With that the conversation between husband and wife came to an end. The woman turned away and wiped her tears with a handkerchief. CITY OF CORPSES

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The refugees were packed so tight on the benches in the waiting room that there were no seats left. But on one of the benches sat a couple no one went near. They were both past fifty. Someone asked, "What happened to you?" The wife, a large woman, replied: "Our home is in Yoshijima, and I had gone out behind the kitchen and was washing greens. That's when the bluish flash suddenly hit, see; I put my hands to my face. This is what happened to all the exposed parts of my body, from face to chest." She looked like a leper. On her skin, burned the color of copper, there was white medicine and red medicine and salve, and also broken blisters, like rows of roasted chestnuts. "I finally found my husband on the evening of the sixth at the spot in Temma where he had tumbled out of a streetcar. That's the state he was in." Her husband lay prone on the bench just as if he were lying on a stretcher. He was burned in virtually the same way as she; his color was darker, almost metallic. As if it had been shaved off, the hair was gone from those parts of his head not covered by his cap. The person who had asked the earlier question said, "There are lots of people whose heads look like this, as if they all agreed to get shaved this way. Roasted by that flash, weren't they?" The woman talked without haste, with frequent pauses: "Everyone out in the open got burned like this. It's like a snapshot, isn't it?-the difference between where light hit and where it didn't. My husband was standing on the platform at the back of the streetcar, you see, so he was in the open. The streetcar, too, got burned pitch black, and there were a lot of people, too, who died inside it. The people who tumbled out were lying one atop the other, all over the street. Fortunately, my husband survived." The buses for both Tsuda and Yoshiwa were to leave from here, so these people were not all waiting for the Kushima bus. But we couldn't know how many people would have gathered by 4 p.m. What is more, we couldn't be sure that the buses headed for these three destinations would actually leave. Nor, people said, was it certain when they would leave. The ticket window was shut. When we looked into the office from the side door, the clerks were smoking, looking the other way, or lost in their own talk. They simply did not 23.

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respond to refugees who wished to inquire about various things. The refugees stood alone. One could only gaze in silent wonder at the Japanese characteristics brought into such clear relief in this situation: passivity, laxity, the absence of even an ounce of intelligence, and other crucial human shallownesses and weaknesses. Even after an event like this, one that might happen only once in a hundred years, a clear policy about carrying refugees had not reached those in charge of the buses. They shut themselves up in the office as if hiding, as if afraid, should they act decisively or be kind to the refugees and treat them with compassion and feeling, that someone would reprimand them afterward. They had to carry on just as they always did. Someone or other told us that the severely injured would get first shot at the bus. Three o'clock passed. They said "severely injured" and "slightly injured," but there was no sharp difference between the two categories. And even the slightly injured, if left behind, did not know where or how they could wait until 4 tomorrow afternoon. One man, young and unnaturally pale, said he had come back yesterday from Okayama to Hiroshima and was heading for the country because he didn't know whether his family was safe. Suddenly, on purpose, he developed a limp in one leg. As ifhe had suddenly broken a shoulder, he began to look exhausted, like one of the injured. He kept his place at the very head of the line at the ticket window. A rattletrap bus departed, bound for Tsuda. The Yoshiwa bus, too, departed right afterward. The bus for Kushima wasn't that full, but the attendant in charge of the passengers stuck to his callous air, asking each person to state the nature of his injuries. After we boarded the bus, Mother said in a small voice, "Once we get to Kushima, we'll all collapse." The bus drove off, giving us a good shaking; but we were as wellbehaved as shabby luggage. The bus entered an area in the hills, sparsely dotted with farmhouses. No one was walking on the road. I had seen my fill of people, and as we went forward into the natural tranquility of the region, I felt I was awakening from a bad dream. The summer greenery seemed at its lushest. I had come wandering through a city that looked like a winter field. Had my eyes suddenly CITY OF CORPSES

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been dipped in bright green dye? Might the clear green restore my half-dead soul? Sister and I weren't able to open our mouths easily, so we hadn't been able to eat our fill. Still, we had never once felt hungry. As the bus entered the mountains and dusk approached, I became terribly hungry. I got some hard biscuits out and chewed on them. I had half noticed a cute youngster sitting in back. So while I was at it, I turned and gave him a piece. The boy was just nine, and his head was wrapped in a filthy, blood-stained cloth. The person sitting on the seat next to him asked what had happened, and he told this story in a brisk voice. On that fateful morning he had lost father and mother and elder sister. The three had been pinned under; only their hands and toes peeked out from under the wood and dirt. He pulled every which way trying to free them, but the fire burned its way right up to where he was. He couldn't see his mother; he could only hear her voice. She said to get away quickly, so he fled. Left on his own, he decided to go to his grandmother's place in Tsuda. He had missed the bus for Tsuda, so he was taking this bus. He understood that the bus for Tsuda, having made a wide swing, would double back to a point up ahead, so he would have to transfer there. He had cried when he resolved to go by himself, but he wasn't sad any longer. The man sitting next to him said, "I hope you make the bus for Tsuda!" The boy answered squarely, "If I miss the connection, I'll walk." The boy gave no sign that he would eat the hard biscuit I had handed back to him. The man next to him apparently had shared a rice ball with him, and even though he urged him t0 eat it right away, the boy seemed to have made up his mind. He replied, ''I'm not hungry now; I'll eat it after I get on the other bus." Worried about the connection, the people around him gave him words of advice. The boy himself went to the driver's seat and checked with the driver, and when we came to the corner past which the Tsuda bus ran, he jumped lightly off, without looking back or saying a word. Then he came to a stop in front of an old village restaurant and watched our bus leave, a sullen look on his face. OTA YOKO

The sun set. The air was clear. The smell of earth and the resiny smell of tree bark came drifting in the air. Next day we arrived at our temporary lodging, and for the first time in a long while, in a long-handled mirror we borrowed, Sister and I saw our own faces. "What a face! All puffed up and ghastly! And before we knew what was happening!" In truth, Sister's face was in worse shape than mine. Mine wasn't so monstrous; one half was all swollen up, and stray strands of bloodsoaked hair were stuck fast to my cheek, which was clotted with blood. But her injury was beside her mouth; and the skin around her eyes was swollen an indescribable purple-she really was all puffed up and ghastly. It was I who had used the word ghastly before Sister could speak. Sister responded without laughing, "You're right, but we're lucky to be alive. Wouldn't have surprised me a bit had we died." Neither of us so much as smiled. As we spoke with each other, we were absolutely sick at heart. Having found a place where we could gather our wits, we felt more or less out of harm's way. But it really was "more or less." We no longer had to sleep on a riverbed or in a cemetery-that was all. Life indoors is not as unconstrained as life without bedding in a cemetery or on a riverbed. People living indoors face many constraints; having come from the riverbed where neither constraints nor conventions obtained, we were aware in an apathetic way of the lack of freedom. It really is strange. I don't understand which is which, what is unconstrained and what is not. Humanity is astonishingly adaptable: even amid total devastation people find ways to carry on. There began to flicker in the darkness of my heart a glimmer, almost a hope: no matter what the conditions, life goes on. The living hell that was Hiroshima and the peaceful countryside were distinctly different worlds, but in both of them ordered life went on. I found it remarkable. I said "peaceful countryside," but to the people who came here from Hiroshima, that meant only that they could sleep on tatami rather than on the ground. It did not mean peace 24.

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and contentment. That we, gypsies, had come uninvited was an added drag on our spirits. In the meantime, even after we got to the village, the war continued dizzily, sending sparks flying like fireworks. Here, too, people were engulfed in it. That is, they were drawn into the beginning of the end. In the village, as elsewhere, the air raid siren sounded constantly, and B-29s and P-5 Is and other bombers large and small sped incessantly across the sky. The second atomic bomb fell on Nagasaki at I I a.m. on the ninth. Almost simultaneously it was announced that the Soviet Union had declared war. The Soviets had now joined the fighting, and the newspaper, which came a day late, carried news of their attacks in Korea and Manchuria. Near dusk on the thirteenth, a large formation of B-29s flew across the evening sky, flowing along majestically, like a great rushing river, white and shining. As if there were a broad highway in the sky over the mountains, south to north, formations of ten to twelve planes appeared one after the other. For some reason there was a single black plane in the corner of every box formation. A lone black plane in every pure white formation: it was ominous. Even with the atomic bomb, the Soviet entry into the war, and hundreds of giant bombers in the skies over small villages and hamlets, people still didn't suspect that these events marked the heartbreaking beginning of the surrender that would end the war. Poor creatures, they thought the war would go on and on for a long time into the future-three years, five. On the fifteenth, when she learned that there would be an important broadcast, Sister was greatly concerned: "What d'you think it is? Couldn't be the end, could it?" "Yesterday's paper said that we would fight the Soviet Union resolutely. Perhaps it'll be something to this effect, that we'll arm ourselves with spears and fight to the last Japanese. But I can't think what they'll come up with now." The radio was broken, so we couldn't listen to the broadcast at home. Thinking we might be able to listen at Dr. S.'s house, I went there with Sister just before noon. But Dr. S.'s radio was broken, too. Even if it had been working, the sound didn't carry to the waiting OTA YOKO

room, and I had lost the gumption it would have taken to go to the doctor's private quarters and listen there. Rather, I was struck dumbeven though I saw the same scene every day-at the mass of the injured, packed tight, from the dirt floor of the entryway to the waiting room to the rooms with tatami. I was so overwhelmed I even forgot the announcement about the important broadcast, and having lost track of its importance I could think of nothing but what was before my eyes. In addition to the people I saw every day, there were the new patients who were leaving Hiroshima and coming here in a steady stream. And that unbearable stench wafted through the waiting room. A patient came not to have one thing looked at, but for five or more injuries, from head to toe. Splinters of glass had to be removed with great care. Amid the stench we would have to wait as long as three hours. Each time the thin adhesive was removed from beside Sister's mouth, her face turned an earthy color, and she almost fainted. When we first came here, Dr. S. said to her, "Hmm, you've got a bad injury in a bad place ... " and her face suddenly paled. The same scene was repeated each day thereafter. Since we had slept a number of nights on the filthy ground, we feared greatly that we might contract tetanus from germs in the soil, so we asked Dr. S. to give us preventive shots. (In Tokyo, too, and particularly in Osaka, a great many of the homeless contracted tetanus. They say there was an incubation period of several days, then horrible twitching would develop and one was done for.) That day, too, we asked Dr. S. to give Sister a shot. He smiled, "You look as if you need a shot in the arm more than a tetanus injection," had her lie down on the bed, and gave her the injection. While I was waiting for Sister, the patients all left (the office closed at 12). Then Sister too got up and left before me, so Dr. S. and I were left alone. As I wrote at the beginning, Dr. S. was like a father to me, so I relaxed in his office and listened to him talk about the injuries these new patients had and about other things. Up until a little while ago, Dr. S.'s elderly wife had been hard at work preparing prescriptions in the apothecary. As I was sitting there, she came into the office, polishing the metal rims of her glasses, her CITY OF CORPSES

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face a little different from usual, and said to her husband, "They say Japan's capitulated! The children heard it on the two o'clock broadcast .... " Dr. S.'s face suddenly turned dry and pale: "What? For sure? Not a rumor?" In a vague and listless tone, his wife said, "They say Japanese territory will be trimmed back to a line east of Kagoshima or Nagasaki.'' His brow wrinkled, as crestfallen as a child, Dr. S. sat speaking now to his wife, now to me: "What to do? What to do? What should we do? What has Japan done? There are various ways of surrendering. What kind of surrender has Japan made? The same as Germany's?" Going out the large gate of Dr. S.'s house, I climbed down the stone steps. People often describe such an experience by saying that everything went black, but I felt I had been set free into bright clear air. I say air, but it was an indescribable emptiness, as when you climb to mountain highlands; the air was thin and too light, the kind that makes you giddy. It was like walking in the fog when no one else is around. My legs trembled. I was shaking so badly I couldn't even walk. No one was about, so I was helpless to stop my tears. Meanwhile, I felt in my heart of hearts a series of emotions: relief, a sense of how long the war had gone on, safety. If I were to meet someone, even someone I didn't know, I'd have to check whether it really was true that the war had ended. The road back to the house seemed twice or three times its normal length. Around me all was quiet. There was no way to tell that something important had happened. It was dead quiet, no noise at all. That night I couldn't sleep a wink. Not sleeping-rather, lying motionless in bed-became too much for me, and I spent the time sitting outside the mosquito net, pacing up and down, looking out the window at the dark village. A few solitary houses in the village even had lights on. They were burning the lights that people had made such a fuss about. That must have been it-they couldn't sleep. And perhaps those houses held seriously injured people lying now at the point of death. I wondered 240

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how to explain these two sudden reverses: the atomic bomb and the end of the war. . . . Neither Mother nor Sister could sleep. From her knapsack Sister took out a candle she had saved carefully for many years, lit it, set it on the edge of the table, and stared at it. As she sat there, I could smell her wound. Only the baby, chubby and cute, slept soundly. From outside the mosquito net I could see the scrapes on its feet and the blue of the small bruise on its cheek. 25. Food was in short supply even in the country. In the broad paddies, green and undulating, the stalks began to bend with the weight of the still-colorless heads of rice; squash and cucumber and other vegetables were growing in the fields. But they all belonged to others. The government's food distribution amounted to only a little rice and barley; salt and soy were supposed to be for sale, but the distribution center had neither. And no supplementary foods were distributed, not even a single potato. Every last thing was stored in places not visible to us-in the sheds and storehouses and back recesses of the kitchens of other people's houses. It didn't emerge of its own accord. We had only two alternatives: beg and whine like gypsies, who cried outside people's houses even when they had in their pockets the money to pay the staggering prices of the black market, or become thieves. Our family, all of us, were most maladroit at asking things of people; I would sooner go hungry than wander about begging. In the hamlet that long ago had been our family home, there were a dozen or so people whom Father and Mother had helped out in the old days, and they were kind enough to bring us things to eat. One after the other, they brought us soy and salt and pickles, and such things as barley flour and flour for making noodles; at bon they brought us rice cakes and rice dumplings. Had they not done so, we might have gone without food for three days, even four, at a time. We sank helplessly into feelings we could not express. In the past, our family's ancient house code had stipulated that we take care of the villagers. This assistance involved special bonds, virtually lifelong, second in importance only to the bonds among blood relations. It included tutoring the young women at the main house, making chests CITY OF CORPSES

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of drawers and crested kimonos for people when they got married, listening to the problems of the young men, getting together to celebrate the joys of marriage or to bemoan divorces, organizing celebrations when children were born. But now, having not visited them for many years, we showed up, beggars, reduced to poverty and accursed. We did not beg in so many words, but without their help we would have starved; so it amounted to the same thing. They all greeted us with surprise: "Well, that was a horrible thing that happened over in Oki; you're lucky you weren't severely injured." The villagers referred to Hiroshima as Oki. We were there because of the horrible thing that happened in Oki, so their comment served only to hurt us and make us all the more self-conscious. Talk of food quite disgusted me. It was because we had none that we talked so compulsively about food. People talked openly about the ridiculously high prices on the black market, as if such prices were an everyday occurrence, forgetting that talking like that only sent the prices still higher. We were drawing the rope tight around our own necks. Two years ago I had grown tired of stories about starvation rations and about the black market; in the end we got by without hearing them. (In Tokyo the talk of food stopped when the bombing became fierce. Life itself is more important than the mundane matter of wanting to eat.) It had become possible in Hiroshima to get by without hearing the stories; now we had to hear them all over again in the country. Hiroshima was one year behind Tokyo in everything, and the countryside was another year behind Hiroshima. Now (since the end of the war) people were shocked at the food distribution-half rice, half barley-and complained from dawn to dusk. As for us, we were shocked by this behavior; wartime conditions in the cities were so much worse than in the countryside, and we were numbed by the thought of what things must be like now in the large cities. No matter where you turned, there was no intellectual life in the countryside. In the big cities, supposedly half-filled with the social ills of dishonesty, deception, and ugliness, there was a dazzling intellectual life. There were no sparks of intelligence and conscience in the country, nor was there eye-opening evil; in their place, on a much 242

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smaller-indeed, petty-scale, was an odor of decline and decadence. One would not have thought that the riverbed and the cemetery and the streets reeking of rotting human flesh were fit for human habitation; but in the country there even came moments when, on looking back, I thought how pure and clean life in those places had been. That's how bad, in the country, the rural avarice was. I still could not turn my head easily. Nor did all my aches from the fierce trauma of the blast go away. There were times when, with an assist from Mother, I got up, went into the river out back, on which faint moonlight was shining, and washed my blood-stained clothes. Then the cruelty of war came home to me with a vengeance, and my tears flowed freely. It was almost as ifI went to the river to weep. For the first time I even thought that there might be no relief at all. War itself was cruelty to humanity, pure and simple, and I had already understood the agony of war on the day the war broke out. I thought it likely that the agony would spread to Japan, too. Now those shocking thoughts came back to torment me once more. Having suffered the ultimate evil of these two sudden reverses, I wanted nothing more than to crawl into a hole. But entirely apart from that feeling, the last embers of the war were still smoldering in my body. On August 20, Mother and Sister got up at 4 a. m., bought tickets for the bus, and left. We did not know if my younger brother-in-law was alive, if my younger sister's family was safe, or what the situation of other relatives was. So they went in part to make inquiries about them. Also, they had not been able to reconcile themselves to living in someone else's house. To say "someone else's house" was to say that one did not have a house of one's own. Mother and Sister went to Nomijima to live in a house by themselves and to plant seeds in their own garden. I hoped that their wishes would be granted, that they would reap a bountiful harvest. I knew they would plant lateblooming herbs and lovingly protect the seeds with a cover of dirt. On the evening of the same day I moved to the house I am now living in. I, too, moved in order to plant good seed. For the writer's itch was beginning to come back to me. CITY OF CORPSES

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26. All at once, soon after the 20th, the victims who had come from Hiroshima were attacked by the radiation sickness I described at the beginning of this volume, and one after the other they began to die. The phenomenon of completely unanticipated death rose to distress. . mg prommence. A young woman and a boy were among those going back and forth past my window; pulled on a large wagon, they came every day at a set time. On the wagon was a low box with a cushion on top of it; the woman sat on the cushion, in bandages and holding a parasol. Face pale and head bandaged, the boy sat beside her. The man pulling the wagon was the father of the young woman, but woman and boy were not mother and son. I sometimes saw the two at Dr. S.'s clinic as well. The woman and the boy had been next-door neighbors in Hiroshima. The morning the bomb fell the woman lost her own child; the boy lost his mother. The boy's father, a soldier, was in Java. The boy had been playing outdoors with the woman's child; only he had survived. The woman would have brought the boy along with her, she said, even ifher own child had lived. She seemed not to want to think that she had brought him instead of her own child. When the woman told people this story, the boy listened with downcast eyes, then wept slowly. He was six years old. Three or four other children about that age also came to Dr. S.'s clinic, and every time he treated them, they complained and misbehaved. Only this boy shut one eye tight and said not a word. I enjoyed seeing this woman and boy being pulled on the wagon. I liked that kind of story. I also liked seeing the old father pull the wagon. The woman had had a good constitution, but then all of a sudden she died. The boy is still alive. A person the same age as Sister frequently went to Dr. S.'s clinic with her four-year-old child; she said she had been one of Sister's classmates in primary school. On the fifth, the day before the bomb, she had left the child in Hiroshima and come to see if she could stay in her parents' home. The next day had seen her son transformed into his present condition. He had burns over his whole body, with the sole exception of his

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eyes. They changed the bandages every day, and in the process, splashed by the child's blood and pus, the mother's back and neck became filthy. If you got close to her, the smell would make you vomit. While the doctor was treating him, the child complained and cried. His mother soothed him and told him not to cry, since crying only made it hurt worse, to which he responded, "Before it hurt and I didn't cry; now I'll cry every day. Momn\y! Mommy! Water! Water! Water!" And he cried. His mother said, "Cry like that and you'll never make a soldier. Don't cry," and he said, "I won't be a soldier! I don't want to be a soldier! Mommy!" He cried and repeated the same word, stretching it out slowly until the tail end of the word faded away: "Waterrrr! Waterrrr! Waterrrrl" Dr. S. smiled broadly: "What's all this singing about?" His wife brought cooled tea for the child to drink. One morning it was the young mother's face, not the child's, that looked worn out and thin and palely swollen. She said, "His throat has the worst burns, and some of them don't heal over; they just don't seem to get better." Pace still downcast, she put the half-dead child on her back and went out into the hot sun. The stench the two left behind was suffocating. Said one old man, "A whiff of that is enough all by itself to kill you." Another person told this story: "Even those who went to Hiroshima after the bomb fell, it appears, were poisoned and will die. Bit by bit, they will die. In the village of K., the men in the civilian guard all left for Hiroshima on the sixth to clear firebreaks; virtually all of them died. The village doesn't have any more males. And even those who came back fit as a fiddle, they say, will die, too." Such talk came to the ear of Dr. S. in his office, yet oddly he did not gainsay the idea that even people who had not been in Hiroshima when the bomb fell would die. That night the four-year-old burn victim died in his sleep, his short and troubled life at an end. A taciturn young man said he was fine, he had only a trifling scratch on his back. One day he leaned against the pillar in the waiting CITY OF CORPSES

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room and pulled at his hair. Suddenly and curtly, he said, "It's falling out!" And he smiled. The hair fell out here and there on his round head, as ifhe had the mange. I saw this young man two or three times in Dr. S.'s waiting room; he died soon thereafter. A jovial middle-aged woman told the following story. That morning the alarm had been lifted and then the alert, too, and it was hot; so everyone had taken off their cotton work pants. She was about to begin her laundry, so she wound up with burns on her face and both arms. Still, there was something very strange. She heard the sound of an engine, and a plane passed overhead, so with the woman next door she watched the plane. As they watched it, the sound stopped suddenly, and then something fell toward her. The woman next door said, "Something's falling from that plane! Something's falling!" At that very moment there came a brilliant flash, and everything turned bright blue. Yet the other woman kept watching. In the instant of the flash, the speaker had thrown herself flat on the ground and held her breath. When she opened her eyes, it was pitch dark; she couldn't see a thing. At one stroke the house and everything else had been blown away; she was astonished to see the woman next door still standing and looking up at the sky. Because the other woman looked at the flash for such a long time, her face and hands and feet and chest were all badly burned; her skin sagged greasily. The speaker's stomach had begun to ache, and she had had a bad case of diarrhea. The poison, she thinks, may well have left her body then. For even though people were dying here and there, it looked as if she would survive. The speaker recovered beautifully from her burns. The woman next door was alive, too; the speaker had met her in Hiroshima. In a loud voice the speaker said, "But that brilliant flash, you know, lasted only a second. Had it lasted for two or three hours, every last person would have died." An injured old man who often talked with this woman replied, "No. Two or three hours would have been okay; but had it lasted a whole day without fading, what then? Hell on earth." He had three or four cuts on his forehead, and eventually he died. Another old person, OTA YOKO

a woman, had been fine-not a pinprick anywhere-when she got back from Hiroshima, so she was helping out with the rice harvest. Then suddenly spots appeared all over her body. In less than three days she was dead. After the old woman died, Dr. S. commented: "I don't like to say they were beautiful. But red, green, yellow, black spots appeared like stars all over her body, and I was fascinated by them." Another story about burns. When a person who might have been his younger sister first brought him in, the patient was in such shape one wondered if he could be alive. Only his eyes were gleaming; all the rest of his body was covered with burns. He was just like the person I had seen in the bus waiting room in Hatsukaichi. There were spots where he was burned black, light pink spots where skin had fallen off, and places where his skin was like that of an albino. But he wore a cotton kimono over the bandages that covered his body and walked with his back straight as a ramrod. He had gone with one of the volunteer brigades to clear firebreaks. The location was Senda (probably close to Dr. Fujiwara's residence). He had climbed up onto a roof, at first wearing a shirt all buttoned up and with the sleeves rolled down. But the strong morning sun got too hot, so he unbuttoned the shirt and bared his upper body. And then came the flash of blue lightning. Uh oh! he thought, a nearby gas tank has exploded. (In Nagasaki, too, many people apparently had the same idea.) He jumped down off the roof. There was no refuge in Senda, so he ran toward Ujina. Along his path, people stuck faces and hands out from under collapsed houses and called for help; he didn't know how many there were, but there were lots of them. Without stopping to help a single one, he ran to the ocean and jumped in. After soaking in the ocean, he thought again about his conduct in not pulling out even one of the people who had called for help. But had he pulled them out, the flames of the fire that came chasing after him would certainly have gotten him. He did not die, either. Dr. S. was said to be an expert at treating burns; even so, this person recovered completely, without even a scar. It was almost too good to be true. Still, his younger sister, who had CITY OF CORPSES

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shown up the first time with a happy expression on her face: she died, even though her only injury was a slight cut on the lip. It suddenly dawned on me. I asked Dr. S., and he said I was right. The people with burns did not die, even if their burns were very extensive or covered the entire body. Death came to those who were slightly injured, with only two or three burns, and to those with no injury at all. Those who died right at the start-that is, those who died either in Hiroshima or while fleeing, unable even to make it all the way back to this village-were a different matter. Those with burns who were able to get to Dr. S.'s clinic, no matter how bad their burns, were classified as second-degree cases. Those with third- and fourthdegree burns, far from coming here, died in Hiroshima. The corpses of those who died instantly of burns, corpses that glistened a pure black like bronze Buddhas-those were burns of the most severe kind, fourth-degree, mortal wounds. But people with second-degree burns over their whole bodies did not die, and people with no injuries or with cuts hardly worth mentioning died one after the other: that was the issue. The rumor spread even among lay people, and the somber message was treated as if it were definitive. How could it be that people with burns were less likely to die than people with no injuries at all? In a newspaper article in mid-September, Dr. Tsuzuki touched in passing on this matter: "Even people roughly two kilometers from Ground Zero who received burns, it appears, do not lose their hair or run fevers. One might even suppose that having a burn to some extent protects the body from radioactivity." Experts other than Dr. Tsuzuki did not respond. To be sure, I read only the one paper published in Hiroshima, the Chugoku shimbun, which continued to be published even in the midst of the chaos. It is true that on account of typhoon and heavy rains, all communications are broken, and I haven't read a single newspaper since September 17; so in the meantime things that once were 'unknown' may have been found out. There may have been reports and accounts of them. Dr. S. has spoken to me a little more specifically about Dr. TsuOTA YOKO

zuki's opinion. In the case of normal burns, if the burn covers more than one third of the surface area of the body, the skin cannot breathe, the circulation of the blood is blocked, and the patient dies. But with these burns, even burns covering the entire body, as long as the burn is second-degree or less, the patient does not die. Strange. Excepting those with burns over only a small area of the body, most people had burns on the front upper body (virtually no one was burned on the back); but in not a single case is the skin still there, as in normal burns. This may provide a clue. In one instant, with a force that had that special effect, the bomb may have stripped off both the Malpighian layer of the skin and the uranium. Ordinary victims speak of radioactivity simply as poison or as poison gas; it may be that they have discharged that poison each day together with the secretions from their burns. Dr. S. talked to me in these terms about why it was that the burn victims survived. There were still gaps in our knowledge, but even lay people frequently said the same thing, though their words were not so logical as his. Second-degree burns affect the skin's upper, Malpighian layer. Everything above that layer had been scraped away, and so the poison was eliminated: even the victims said that much. If this theory is correct, it becomes all too easy to understand why patients died who had injuries other than burns and were unable to slough off the uranium. The slightly injured and those with a clean bill of health will all die; they have survived, but only so far. They haven't died yet, but they will. I asked Dr. S.: "Is it clearly the case that those with cuts are more likely to die than those with burns?" "Yes, it is. Only two people with burns have died-the fouryear-old child you saw and one person I treated at his home. I have treated some 290 patients. Of those, 15 percent have died; two of them had burns. Some died whose cut was only a pinprick." I was deathly silent. In my heart, I had been repeating, almost like an incantation, that on that morning I had been inside the mosquito netting, inside the mosquito netting; thinking that I might have CITY OF CORPSES

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been under the futon, I was obsessed with the thought that netting and futon might well have functioned as a Malpighian layer. Dr. S. went on: "Well, I said it from the start: these injuries are all horizontal cuts. You are the only one with a vertical cut, the only exception. I really don't understand it. You'd think some expert would say something about it; but without exception all the cuts are horizontal, eye-shaped. It was probably glass that made all the cuts. It may be a farfetched idea, but perhaps an indescribably strong force pressed down from above and broke the glass, so it all flew sideways. But that's strange, too. There are all kinds of strange things. It isn't dear why those with burns don't die. Nor do I understand either why those with cuts die. Only a hair's breadth separates those likely to die from those likely to live." I had a feeling that the logic didn't hold. But to be told that the cut on my ear was not horizontal but vertical-even that was enough to allow me to think I might not die.

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Wind and Rain 27. The newspaper came once every week or ten days, a week or ten days' worth at one time. From these late newspapers I learned that an unexpected number of noted people had been killed by the atomic bomb. The prince about whom I had heard in Hiroshima was His Highness Prince Yi Kon. It was also true, as I had heard, both that General Superintendent Otsuka was a victim and that the mayor had been killed. Mr. Otsuka had seemed to be a person with the sensibility of a modern intellectual, so his coming to Hiroshima had pleased us. We had expected big things of him. Mayor Awaya l had met through my great-uncle. Great-uncle S. had been a second deputy mayor. That fateful morning, while still at home, Uncle S. was injured. But since he was temporarily acting mayor, he had soon forced himself to go to City Hall. Thereafter his hair fell out, he ran a fever, and, I learned from village scuttlebutt, he took to bed in a hotel in Miyajima. Since that time high winds and heavy rains had cut off all communications completely; the mail wasn't getting through, and the telephones weren't working. The family of General Superintendent Otsuka had evacuated, people said, to someone's mansion in Hera, a flatland village close to Hatsukaichi. From my village here there is a steep road four kilometers up to a pass and then a steep road four kilometers down from the pass to Hera, just this side of Hatsukaichi. On the morning of the sixth, someone in our neighborhood told us, all eight members of the Otsuka household survived unscathed except for the governor, who was pinned under when the house collapsed. Only his head, all bloody, was sticking out. Engulfed in the eddying smoke and flame, he told his family not to worry about him but to leave him there and get out quickly. The person telling me this story wept. Various people had died: acquaintances from the Chugoku shimCITY OF CORPSES

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bun, famous legislators and military men, noted actors like Maruyama Sadao. And then an odd thought struck me: how strange, given the fact that all these people had died, that I had survived. The axe of fate-I mean thereby the first atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima-fell, with no warning, on all our heads alike; so it would have been fitting had death, too, come to all alike. Perhaps those who survived were like some kind of insect, were not human. The shame of being alive, I thought, might weaken me. My next thought, that I might be the next to die, caused me to shake with terror. Having to die of injuries received in an air raid but after the war itself had already ended: that really was absurd. Death hung suspended before our eyes. During the day, during the night, one was alive, yet face-to-face with death. Put cancer and leprosy patients together in a large room, and with two or three of them dying every day, those still alive will rivet their gaze on death. They will do so because they know that their illness is incurable. We resembled them, yet we weren't even sick! We resembled them in being incurable; but the differences were greater than the similarities. It wasn't even a matter of being incurable-we were being killed off willy-nilly by an unknown agent. The interim reports of the scientific investigations still under way also lured the victims willy-nilly into thoughts of death. The research team from Tokyo University came to Hiroshima for the first time on September 2. I thought that was slow. Why hadn't they come rushing in the very day after August 6? And then it wasn't enough to be at the site only four or five days or a week or two; they should have taken twenty-five days, thirty days. Psychologists should have come, too. And some eminent Buddhist priests. It would have been wise to mobilize a lot of general practitioners from outside Hiroshima Prefecture. And it would have helped if a stream of ingenious and committed purveyors of foodstuffs had come, too. The fact that even these modest steps proved impossible we may attribute to a typically Japanese characteristic. The Japanese are not quick. They are slow on the uptake and lack fire. There is nothing to be done about Japan's material poverty, but OTA YOKO

in dealing with this catastrophe-so enormous that over half the population of a large city died in one day-and in stating that this catastrophe was a result of the war, the authorities simply weren't smart enough. Even in an atmosphere of death in which no matter where you turned there was no help at all, the people made homeless that day kept their mouths shut, neither grumbling nor complaining. One of the symptoms of atomic bomb disease is an expressionless face. It is not, I think, something that develops after one contracts radiation sickness; it has been in evidence ever since August 6. It is the expressionless face of imbecility, the face of the idiot. The expressionless face of the imbecile has become a state of mind, and it is this very condition that manifests itself in the victims of this calamity, setting them apart. It is a reality that cannot be measured in terms of conventional bombing: incendiaries, bombs, naval shelling. If the issue is terror, waves of incendiaries, bombs, naval shelling may well be more terrifying. If one is under attack all day or continuously day and night, the fear may drive one crazy. We were not afraid of the atomic bomb. We had no time to think about being afraid. And even afterward we were not afraid. We probably won't be afraid until two or three years have passed. But the shadow of death crossed before our very eyes, returned, passed on. Alongside one's live self stood one's dead self. There are no words to describe it. The only way to get through the day was to feel cheered if you awoke in the morning alive, having made it back from hell, and to rejoice at having been brought back from death. We even forgot to resent the atomic bomb. It is the resolve to use the atomic bomb that is terrifying. Even supposing the bomb contained no poison, the injury to the spirit amounts to the same thing. Japan had lost the war long since; still, it had not surrendered in orthodox fashion, and it had no way of mounting a fierce counterattack. So even when the enemy came with his decisive stroke, Japan could do nothing. When you get into a brawl, you can't rule out certain blows, nor can you rule out certain weapons. Even if the enemy had not introduced the atomic bombs, we had lost the war. The black curtain of CITY OF CORPSES

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defeat simply descended sooner. Still, used in a conflict among human beings, the atomic bomb is the very epitome of evil. Someone somewhere may think up something to best even atomic bombs. Suppose something is developed that can beat atomic bombs, it will be possible to fight, all right, but that will no longer be war. It will be all-out destruction. We have now reached a revolutionary moment in this human tragedy that progress comes only through destruction. The only road to peace is to make progress without destruction. I hope this defeat contributes to making Japan truly peaceful. This is why, in the midst of all the suffering, I am writing this book. Rain falls. Rain falls. And the wind blows. Beginning at the end of August-just when the Occupation army landed near Atsugi in Kanazawa-rain began to fall, a prolonged rain, with intervals of a half day or a day when it cleared a bit. It rained and rained for ten days, for two weeks. Every last person who passed by beneath my second-floor window-the men, as you might expect; the bent old women; even children who knew only a few words-went by speaking only of the atomic bomb and the defeat. They completely forgot about food, about which there had been so much talk. Instead, in place of the normal civilities, they talked with characteristic candor about how Japan had been defeated after fighting such a stupid war and about how, duped, they had worked throughout the war until their bones ached but now didn't want to work any more because disappointment had left them absolutely limp. Home from the war, young warriors also passed by, groups of them. If one couldn't tell from strong faces and hard bodies that they had been trained to a fine point, it was because these warriors no longer looked like warriors. For example, some young men back from the navy returned wearing shirts that looked like underwearthe sleeves were short and the neck scooped out-tucked into their pants, and they came riding in vehicles. They bore the unmistakable look of a defeated army. As they went past, they greeted people at the roadside cheerfully 254

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and with spirit-"We're not in the military any more"-but the villagers were hard put to find words of consolation. During a trip to China I had seen soldiers coming home without their weapons, so I understood how the villagers felt. The next day, too, and the day after that, demobilized soldiers returned, soldiers no more and wearing hangdog expressions. The rain poured down on their backs, soaking them. A young man who had been near Omiya Island came staggering back, weaponless. When he set foot in his own home, I hear, the very first thing he said to his mother was, "Please get me a cushion. My tail is so sore I can't sit down." But even with a cushion his tail bones were so sore he couldn't sit down: that's how emaciated he was. The hundred or so children from Hiroshima who had been evacuated to the three temples in the village couldn't wait for a clear day but returned to Hiroshima on a day when it was raining hard. It was the same group that had come, except that three of the children, who had lost both parents, stayed on in the village. They were children from towns around Hiroshima, not children from the city itself. Even so, when they got to Hiroshima Station and saw that the large white building that had been the station had burned, collapsed, and disappeared without a trace, and that the area in front of the station and extending off into the distance had been reduced to ruins, they were struck dumb. Hearts heavy, the children looked at the city. The acting mayor was there to welcome them, and they responded to his greeting in these terms: "How happy we would have been to come back after winning! When we learned that we had lost, we felt as if the ground had been swept out from under our feet." Another girl spoke her thoughts to a journalist: "If Japan had won, I could accept even all this damage; but now I can hardly bear it. I was very surprised to see the city in ruins. It's impossible to tell where you are. If Mother hadn't come to meet me, I couldn't have found my way home." The children returned, to be sure, to the outskirts of the city, but most of them to half-destroyed houses or to temporary housing with CITY OF CORPSES

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low floors and with sheets of tin for a roof. The monsoon-like rain continued to pour, and even indoors they had to put up umbrellas. The American reporters who entered Japan with the army of occupation got to Hiroshima quickly, on September 3. On that day, too, rain obscured their view. Photographers included, there were twenty people. They had come to see evidence of the power of the atomic bomb, which had provided a telling reason for ending the war. After landing at an airfield near Kure, they got into cars sent round by the navy and came to Hiroshima, place of doom. Their assignment was to cover this new phenomenon, and so they had come specifically to see Hiroshima. Greeting them, Hiroshima lay in ruins and drenched in rain. After they completed a thorough inspection, the reporters' association of Hiroshima Prefecture had a question-and-answer session with W. H. Lawrence of the New York Times and the others. "What are your feelings on seeing the sad state of things in Hiroshima?" "We have been with the armies on every front in Europe and the Pacific, but Hiroshima's damage is the worst of all. In The World to Come, H. G. Wells says, 'War carried out with the new scientific forces becomes ever fiercer, ever more destructive; it simply cannot be withstood.' That reality we see vividly in Hiroshima." "People say the area where the atomic bomb exploded will be uninhabitable for humans and other living things for the next 75 years. Is that true?" "We don't know. We'll know for sure when order has been established in Japan and American scientists come and investigate." "Do you think the atomic bomb serves the cause of future peace?" "Right now that's not clear." After giving these dispassionate answers, the American reporters questioned the Japanese: "Did you think Japan would win the war?" "Yes, we did. Until the very last moment, there wasn't one of us who thought Japan would lose." In Japan even reporters were able to speak only in this roundabout manner. For me, the desolate form of that response was far OTA YOKO

more painful than the somber letters of that day's headline: "Hiroshima Damage: World's Worst." The Americans asked, "What were the restrictions on speech?" The Japanese reporters replied, "Now, with the war over, there is freedom of expression." To think! The fact is that when Japanese open their mouths to communicate with foreigners, they are at a loss for words. Silence is golden, so they say; but that is among people who are well acquainted. When two parties do not understand each other, how can you expect the other party to understand either silence or offensive candor? They smack of trickery. In the matter of freedom of expression, we must start with a bold leap; we have no alternative. Because Japanese have forgotten by now how to use free words. Thinking that this is what freedom is, they make free with things that are of no consequence. The rain poured down singlemindedly, spitefully. The newspaper that came from Hiroshima still devoted more than half of its space to accounts of the atomic bomb and continued to write about conditions in the aftermath of the bomb. 28. Hiroshima unlivable for 75 years: the bald figure caused a great sensation. It gave me a strange feeling, but one day in response the newspaper ran a large headline impressively across the top of page 2: "The 75-Year Rumor-A Lie." It is a lie: what does that mean? Who was it, I wonder, who first voiced the lie? On the morning of September 8, independently of the American reporters, an observation team of Allied experts came from overseas specifically to see Hiroshima. In addition to technical experts attached to Brigadier Generals Farrell and Newman of the Army Corps of Engineers, there were, among others, Dr. Morison, a physicist, and Dr. Junod of the International Red Cross. Of course, photographers were also in the party. Dr. Tsuzuki happened to be in Hiroshima when the party arrived, and he also joined it. As an escort the party brought along several police officers who wore armbands with the word 'Police' in English and in Japanese; passing through the neighborhood of the Gokoku Shrine, which had been Ground Zero, they arrived at the CITY OF CORPSES

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ruins of the buildings that had served as Imperial Headquarters during the Russo-Japanese War. This day, too, rain fell incessantly. Listening carefully to Dr. Tsuzuki talk about the results of his on-site investigations, the observer team stood in the rain atop the charred ruins of Hiroshima Castle and looked out over the whole tragic scene. Afterward it visited radiationmeasuring spots, aid stations, and the like. Dr. Junod had come from the International Red Cross in Geneva. As an expression of sympathy for this unprecedented tragedy, he had brought along fifteen tons of emergency medical supplies; the supplies had been brought by air to lwakuni airfield. According to the newspaper, Dr. Junod spoke in these terms: "I am astounded at the fearsome power of the atomic bomb-a single blast with such destructive force. The people of Hiroshima were the first human beings to experience the atomic bomb, and we can only sympathize fully with them. We must work to see that such weapons are never used again. As soon as the tragedy of Hiroshima was reported to us, the International Red Cross immediately organized a delegation and came to Japan." Dr. Tsuzuki had served to that point as guide and interpreter; now he asked Dr. Junod, Dr. Morison, and the others about the rumor that uranium poison was involved: "There is only one thing I should like to ask about. That is, wasn't the atomic bomb equipped with something like poison gas? When I listen to reports of the explosion, they say that a white, gas-like something floated above Ground Zero." Brigadier General Farrell and Dr. Morison both responded: "We will explain that later." Dr. Tsuzuki asked again: "According to foreign press reports, American specialists have announced that the poison of the atomic bomb will remain potent for the next seventy-five years. However, the results of my research lead me to believe that that is entirely wrong. What is your opinion?" This time both Dr. Morison and Brigadier General Farrell responded on the spot and said in unison: "Seventy-five years is nonsense. The bomb presented a danger on the day it fell, but not a month later, let alone a year; it probably had lost its potency the day after or OTA YOKO

the second or third day after." They clearly rejected the seventy-fiveyear theory. Moreover, Reuters, too, reported from America as follows: American reporters had inspected the atomic test site in New Mexico and were refuting reports from Japan that radioactivity made Hiroshima and Nagasaki danger zones unsuitable for human habitation. Those newsmen reported: "It is possible to explode an atomic bomb in such a way as to cause long-term radioactivity at the target site; but this method was not used because the purpose was to demonstrate the explosive force involved in scientific war. At Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the bombs were exploded in such a way as to achieve the greatest destructive force and the least radioactivity." Not until the observation team left Hiroshima for Nagasaki did Dr. Morison, the physicist, respond to the earlier question from Dr. Tsuzuki: "Many people have asked us whether this atomic bomb contained poison gas. The reason a foreign substance resembling white gas floated above Ground Zero immediately after the explosion is that at the time of the explosion chemicals combined in the air, became active, and gave rise to that phenomenon. Depending on its density, it may have caused some damage. The deaths they say are becoming frequent now are entirely the result of deep-level radiation damage, not of any poison gas." Brigadier General Farrell, too, spoke as he left Hiroshima: "When we came, we already knew of the damage to Hiroshima from dozens of aerial photos taken immediately after the fact. But here on the spot, the more we looked and the more we listened, the more we were astonished at the scale of the damage. As for the results of our investigation, we must report first to our own government; this is not the time to make them public." Meanwhile, as they banqueted together at the Restaurant Ganso in Itsukushima, the military doctors on the research team and the prefectural reporters asked each other questions. The reporters: "What thoughts do you have as a result of your investigations?" Colonel Oughterson, military doctor: "It's a tragedy, pure and simple. We military doctors are in full sympathy. Please don't ask us CITY OF CORPSES

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about our investigation of atomic bomb damage; until we have reported to General MacArthur we can't release it. But your Dr. Tsuzuki's thesis and our own are pretty much in agreement; and all of us are very grateful to him and express our respect for his cooperation and for his scholarly attitude. You referred to Dr. Tsuzuki's theory, so I simply wished to note that it is, after all, the same as ours." Reporters: "The fact that the victims and the slightly injured are dying one after the other has caused great consternation among the people living on the scorched earth of Hiroshima. Isn't the 75-year theory perhaps accurate?" Colonel Warren: "No. It's a silly theory with no basis whatsoever in fact. When an atomic bomb explodes, the wind blows the radioactivity away. Because in summertime it is lighter than air, there is absolutely no danger that it will settle into the soil with the rain." Reporters: "What about methods of treatment?" Colonel Oughterson: "The best method is blood transfusion; on this trip we flew fifteen tons of medical supplies from Atsugi to Iwakuni, and that included lots of blood plasma for use in transfusions." The prefectural reporters took the occasion to ask candidly: "How many atomic bombs does the United States have?" From his position off to one side, Dr. Tsuzuki answered this question: "The team may be in the position of not being able to respond in public. But estimating from data gathered from other sources, I think that America already has produced about a hundred. Of these they used two, on Hiroshima and on Nagasaki." Reporters: "Then they still have 98?" Dr. Tsuzuki: "The ore exists only in America and in Africa. The raw materials, after all, don't exist in Japan; so we're out ofluck. To be sure, twenty years ago, in Pittsburgh in 1925, I got hold of a small sample for research use; but one can't build an atomic bomb with a small sample." Colonel Oughterson: "Pearl Harbor was an unexpected tragedy for the United States. The atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki were unexpected tragedies for Japan. It began in unforeseen tragedy and ended in unforeseen tragedy. I hope that we all cooperate from now on so that unforeseen tragedies do not arise for either side." 260

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The press reported this relaxed and reasonable exchange, too, and we heard that in the burned ruins of Hiroshima, the vegetation was returning to life and sending out green leaves. But even as we heard these things, people were still dying. And when we saw the figure-barely 6,000--for those who had been in Hiroshima and were now in good health, even the wind and the rain seemed dark and gloomy. The victims who had descended upon this mountain village saw not a trace of the medical supplies shipped from America, and the newspaper was content to shout, as if arrogantly giving orders, "Apply moxa cautery immediately!" It ran photographs of such poor quality one couldn't even see the black moxa scars; it wrote that it is medicinal to eat squash; it recommended drinking a decoction of cucumber and persimmon leaves. As for the foul-smelling dokudami plant, said to be effective even if your hair had fallen out, the black market price went up frightfully, turning it into treasure, and those who needed it could no longer get it. It became impossible to find even a single leaf of dokudami in the fields. The rain fell in such a constant drizzle I feared my body would rot. More than forty days had passed since I had come here, and bit by bit my half-numbed soul seemed to have revived. Like a person who has just had a serious illness and regains her health one tiny step at a time, I had begun to return little by little to the way I was before August 6. And as I returned to normal, I began to be subject to an indescribable terror. At night, if the sound of the rain suddenly turned harsh, I would be overcome by the feeling that the bluish flash had come again, that the roof I was sleeping under might collapse without a sound, and I would jump up and examine the ceiling. My acute sensibility came back to life, yet I still thought I would die, albeit somewhat later than the others. Morning and evening I said to the people of the house in which I was lodging: "From here on in I'll probably die by slow degrees." I could only speak as if in jest, but I made out my will for real. In the hamlet up the river where we lived long ago, the family plot was all that remained. I wrote, among other things, that I wished to be buried there by the people of the hamlet. CITY OF CORPSES

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The monsoon-like rain continued to fall through mid-September. On the 16th it rained heavily all day, and on the 17th, too, the heavy rains didn't let up for a moment. When night fell, the storm developed into a typhoon. I was in bed on the second floor, and the building shook. The east wind came up off the garden with its large pond as if to blow the house down. It shook the shutters and seemed about to rip the mosquito netting to pieces. Not letting up for a moment, the rain continued to fall with enough force to smash the house. The roof began to leak. The power was still not on. Suddenly the air raid siren at the post office sang out. Since the end of the war, it was sounded to announce the hour-5 in the morning, noon, 9 at night. But I had opposed its use because it sang out exactly like the air raid sirens during the war. It was the most hateful sound I had heard since coming to the village. Each time I heard the siren, I remembered things that happened during the war and broke out in a sweat. But this time there was heavy rain, and high wind to boot, and I raced down the stairs to the ground floor, bursting in on the people living in the main part of the house. The old woman and the young wife and some others had just lighted a paper lantern. The two women-mother and daughter-laughed: "Startled, weren't you! We were just thinking of calling up to you." Dressed in rain gear, the husband of the older woman was standing in the entryway. Fields and houses and roads might be washed away in the storm, so the civilian guard was being called out to do what it could. Amid the rain and wind we could hear footsteps and loud voices out front. Still, instead of summoning people with that horrible siren, I wished they would beat a large drum or something. For each time that unbearable siren rang out in Tokyo and in Hiroshima, we had crawled into holes in the ground, not knowing if we would live through the night. Although they invited me to sleep downstairs with them, I took a lamp and returned to the second floor. Each time the great gusts of the storm hit, the second floor creaked and shook; so I couldn't bring myself to get inside the mosquito net. Now standing up, now sitting down, I didn't know quite what to do, and then the picture frame in OTA YOKO

the transom, above the shoji on the east wall, fell with a thud, and the stucco wall behind it also crumbled to the tatami. The shoji became sopping wet. Carrying the lamp, I went downstairs again and stayed up until dawn. There is nothing as clear as the daylight after a midnight storm, the air cleansed by wind and rain. The weather was still not good, and the last remnants of the wind and rain were still keeping the day overcast. But from time to time faint rays of sunshine did break through. The side of the low hill directly across the river had been sliced off, and red earth had gone sliding down into the river. Having expanded sideways, the river gave off a roar as it rushed past. Far and near, the wooden bridges had all washed out. In some places, tiles had blown off, and roofs had been left half fallen. In other places, roads had crumbled and become rivers. Here and there entire paddies in which golden waves of rice had billowed had been sucked down toward the river, and the rice stalks lay flat in the mud. The college student who had fled here from Hiroshima had developed atomic bomb sickness: spots had appeared on his skin, and his hair had fallen out. But he had recovered and regained his energy. On the night of the 17th, the ceiling above his bed collapsed. He thought another bomb had fallen. The old men of the village said it was sixty years since there had been a storm that bad: "A real beating, that was-on top of the bomb! We give up!" The electric wires stayed down, so the village once again was pitch dark. Most houses had neither candles nor oil; but in my room, in good old-fashioned style, a lamp kept me company. I hadn't given it much thought, but I liked the lamp, and I was grateful at first for the dark, quiet nights. The flame of the lamp was soft and attractive; it illumined the room gently. But when I read or wrote, I immediately became sleepy. How nice it would be, I had long thought, to go to a hot spring off in the mountains to write, to pass the nights by lamplight. I had asked around after such a place but hadn't stumbled onto one.

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The power was off, so I couldn't even listen to the radio. But that was fine with me, because I don't like the radio: you hear human voices coming out of a square box, vivid and uncanny, but you can't see faces. Communications with the city were completely cut off; neither newspapers nor mail arrived. Even after the 17th, much rain fell. Early in October, more rain fell, so heavy it shook the earth and then bounced back up, and a wild storm blew up. The village took on its present look of utter exhaustion. The river grew broader and broader; rocks and stones gave off a loud rumbling as the river carried them past. Hillside and mountainside slid down into the paddies below, squeezing out the rice. In lordly fashion giant trees toppled over onto the rice; standing upright on what was left of the rice, shrubs put down roots, like potted plants. Like an untended park, the paddies were covered with bright red sumac and red maple leaves and purple asters. The power wasn't on; the newspaper didn't come. Things had been that way since September 17. Trucks and buses coming from Hatsukaichi, they said, probably wouldn't be able to make it for the rest of the year. The villagers got together and went off to repair the washed-out road to Sensui Pass, and fourteen or fifteen people left for Hatsukaichi to bring back soy and vinegar for the Fall Festival. With baskets on their backs and age enjoying no preferential treatment, old and young set off cheerfully to buy the vinegar and soy. They looked like the ceremonial procession of a feudal lord. How people picked up the other food rations was also fascinating to see. The young people's group and the volunteer militia set off for Hatsukaichi in full force, those with bikes riding, those without bikes carrying baskets on their backs. Washed out here and there, the route was twenty-four kilometers long. They made it there and back in one day. This procession of bicycles and shoulder baskets was a grand spectacle. Groups from nearby villages also came through. In the morning it was like watching an athletic meet or a bicycle rally; in the evening it made us think of exhausted marathon runners. People rarely left the village. People rarely came from outside. OTA YOKO

The lamplit nights continued for two weeks, and even though a month had passed, there was still no newspaper. So, night and day, things were as they had been in the distant past. Like people in the distant past, we knew only what happened in the village. We didn't even know what was going on in Hiroshima. A full month after August 6, people said, corpses lay wherever you went in the city, skeletons were everywhere, and a nauseating smell blanketed the city. Flies were all over the place, as if someone had scattered red beans; the flies were so dense in the burned streetcars running in some parts of the city that they turned the passengers' skin pitch black; big black flies swarmed hideously, particularly on the faces of babies. Flies even got inside those aluminum lunch boxes with the tight lids and expired atop the rice. Immediately after the bomb fell, there were people suffering from dysentery, and the basement ofFukuya, the department store in the middle of the once bustling city, had been turned into an isolation ward for dysentery patients. Hearing things like this, I could not help thinking of the back streets of China, supposedly the world's most unsanitary country, the home of the plague. Better, Hiroshima resembled Panama City around the turn of the century, when it suffered from yellow fever, the germs of which were transmitted by mosquitoes. Cuba's Havana had been a beautiful port, and the topography was salubrious. But the whole filthy city had been filled with a bad smell, and the streets were chock-full of rotting vegetables, dead animals, filth, and dirt. The charity hospitals were always jam-packed, but many poor people, unable to get admitted even to them, lay in the streets. No matter where one went, beggars stuck out their hands and importuned one for money. A committee had been set up to study yellow fever, and scientists and military doctors were despatched to Havana from the United States. Of these men, Carroll and Lazear and others died because of their research. But as a result of the successful experiments, Governor General Lee and Dr. Gorgas, head of the Bureau of Sanitation, instituted draconian measures, and by about 1905 the city had become as clean as if born anew. The mosquitoes and mosquito larvae had been eradicated, cleaned out. The Havana of that era had a population of CITY OF CORPSES

and in some respects it resembled Hiroshima. Yet after the atomic bomb Hiroshima most nearly resembled Havana of the pre1905 era. But in Hiroshima today there is no Dr. Gorgas, no Governor General Lee, no self-sacrificing victims of yellow fever like Carroll, no discoverers of mosquito larvae like Reed. It hasn't been decided who will be mayor of the city; the prefectural governor has been promoted to the ministry in Tokyo; his successor has not been appointed. Hiroshima makes one think of the Havana of a century ago, a solitary island off in a distant sea. The fact that there are no houses makes it even worse than Havana. Nonetheless, even after only two months, people have settled into life in makeshift huts and refuse to move. A woman I know spent a month in a hut in the field behind her home; the hut had been built by someone who then left. She slept among corpses, she was terrified by the idea of uranium poison, and the crematory flames rose up each night all around her; one might have expected her to go off her head. But she stayed on until wind and rain destroyed the hut. I know from reports of people from here who have gone to Hiroshima that all the bridges in Hiroshima have collapsed. More than twenty modern bridges spanned the seven rivers. In Hiroshima the bridges had linked the neighborhoods; so if the bridges had washed away, one couldn't even set out for the neighboring quarter of the city. People were crossing the rivers on ferries, they said, but sometimes too many people boarded these ferries, the ferries capsized, and people drowned. One old man, not a boatman, was taking his own things across in a small boat when people called to him to stop and pick them up, and he took a number of people across. As their fare, people gave the old man fifty sen or one yen. The old man rented a boat and became a ferryman. And on a day of heavy rain the boat capsized and sank, drowning many people. He too sank beneath the waves and died. Bridges that had survived the atomic bomb washed away, so there could be no doubt it was a heavy rain. How could the sky hold enough water for a full month of such rain? In times of drought farmers light fires on even the lowest hills to beseech Heaven for rain. On August 6, even with the sun shining brightly, large drops of 300,000,

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rain fell on and around the great conflagration. The fire god and the rain god on high: were they smiling at each other? We grieved that we were taking such a beating. But these events were not unrelatedundoubtedly both heavy rain and typhoon were aftereffects of the fire. City after city was razed by fire, and in the end cities were destroyed and burned by atomic bombs. These events reverberated up into the sky and came falling back down to earth in the form of rain. The bomb had its effects not only on the ground but also in the sky. I had begun to be aware of the inconvenience of lamplight at night. At first, the lamplight had been soft and romantic; but when I had to depend on it night after night, the glow strained my eyes. My posture sagged, and my brain became befogged. Moreover, the smell of oil lost its early charm. Most of all, I could not bear the fact that the lamp created a sense of gloom and made me feel absolutely isolated, off where foxes barked.

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Late Autumn Koto Music 30. People went off to Hiroshima on one errand or another, but I simply could not bring myself to go. People encouraged me: of all people, a writer should go and have a look. And they may have been right. But I was unable to bring myself to go again just to gawk. It made me unhappy to see people going partly to sightsee; in some small way it was insulting to me. I will never lose that slight sense of humiliation. I don't know where the talk got started about keeping Hiroshima forever as it was on August 6, of making it a war memorial. But early in September, in the editorial column of the Chugoku shimbun, a writer gave vent to his anger in these terms: People cry out that Hiroshima, now in ruins, should be left as a war memorial and advocate the preservation for all time of this wasteland, burnt out as far as the eye can see. It is impossible not to become incensed at the audacity of people who, coolly and with no sense of shame, give vent to such utterly irresponsible nonsense; for all the people of Hiroshima love their city. To be sure, the ravages of uranium are without precedent. The majority of us residents of the city are dead, sacrifices to the atomic bomb. Amid the chill winds of autumn, we have now finished burying them, and we are setting about the tasks of recovery and reconstruction. Yet they choose this precise moment to put a damper on our spirits, heartlessly, as if it were not their business, too: their shortsightedness is truly thoughtless in the extreme. Those who advocate that we leave Hiroshima as a war memorial say that from the point of view of physiology and pathology, Hiroshima is not fit either for human habitation or for the cultivation of crops; they write off Hiroshima. But look! The city trolleys are running again, and in the shells of high-rise buildings a good many people--to be sure, fewer than in the past-come and go to their offices. There are plans to restore telegraph and telephone service; day by day, the opportunity comes to rebuild as well

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other facilities that were destroyed. The contradiction and inconsistency between this reality and what they advocate: how can those people resolve it? At the present moment, the fall in the count of white corpuscles and the reconstruction of the city offset each other, and proponents of both schools are conducting studies .... Prudence is a fine thing; but with the issue hanging in the balance, they are wasting time, waiting to see which course is the most politic to follow. Consider this: the glorious history of Hiroshima began with the Sino-Japanese War and ended with the Pacific War. The burden of this role was a heavy one, rarely equaled elsewhere in the nation .... Ignore such things as the relative diminution in our white-blood-cell count, and assume the worst-that we die in the process of reconstruction. Even then, don't we have the determination to defend with our lives this delta our ancestors bequeathed to us? The human will to start again and the effects of weather make it impossible, I think, to turn Hiroshima as is into a memorial, a specimen. It is more difficult yet to turn a cold shoulder to this angry writer, whose grandiose style harks back to the nineteenth century. In the Xhabei region of Shanghai, I once saw vestiges of bomb damage, a war memorial of sorts. It was labeled "ruins of war," and all kinds of travelers came to see it. Beggars were living in the cellars of concrete buildings that had been destroyed ruthlessly. Anti-Japanese slogans had been carved on walls all around. Later, I learned, the question arose: should Japan preserve all of Xhabei as "ruins of war" or raze it and clean it up? (The year was 1940, perhaps 1939.) At the time I heard about it, I thought, what a strange thing to be discussing! We were stressing peace and cooperation for all we were worth, yet there seemed nothing more counterproductive than to leave Chinese ruins of our making just as they were, exposed forever to the eyes of the Chinese people. Xhabei came to mind when I read the angry editorial in the Chugoku shimbun. Those who were the guinea pigs when the stench of death blanketed Hiroshima must be praying from the grave that Hiroshima be rebuilt. That the city be beautiful, peaceful, fertile, bright. CITY OF CORPSES

In the faint, faint glow of the lamp, I thought of many things. Beginning that tragic midsummer morning and continuing until the late autumn of today, when the mountains and fields have turned to gold, I have had extraordinary experience upon extraordinary experience. I have gained from these experiences, I think, a new and profound view of humanity. Compared with a tattered spirit, tattered clothing is of no consequence whatsoever. You can simply take tattered clothing off and change it, but not a tattered spirit. That experience ofliving for three days on the riverbed among all those corpses, horrible as it was, left me as a human being with a profound and unique lesson I shall never forget. Lives hinged on whether one had evacuated to a safe place before August 6. One speaks of the simple life, but I have a sense that now I have grasped its true form. Before, try as I might, I hadn't been able to. They say every last person was stripped completely naked; but people weren't walking about naked, nor were they going barefoot. Apart from handkerchief, belt, and the like, I had only three pieces of clothing the whole summer. One I wore every day, one I slept in, and the last I used as a spare. That state was both simple and clean. I had one geta and one straw sandal, given me by an old woman I knew long ago, to wear with care, and that sufficed. My life up until then I had thought of as simple, but I realize I had been wrong. I had had too many possessions; I had been controlled by them; and my very spirit had been coarsened. Japanese are enslaved by varieties and numbers of articles of clothing; Japanese have come to rely for energy too much on foods that are attractive but lack nutritional value. Japanese were masters when it came to food and clothing; but these concerns used up their time, and they lost the time it takes to cultivate depth. Feeling the writer's spirit burning once again within me, I experience bliss. Strong emotions begin to stir inside, emotions that only those who have been submerged in a long hibernation can know. The disaster of the atomic bomb has had various and sundry effects on my mind and body. All the tears, I feel, have purified my writer's soul; put water through a filter, and in due time only pure water will emerge. In fact, I am angrier at the mindlessness of Japan's imperialism, a mindlessness that almost destroyed my life as a writer, than I 270

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am at the destruction of Hiroshima. It is not a personal anger; it is entwined with my lament for my country. Seeing the mortal defeat pass into history, I grieve.Japan today seems to be sloughing off much of its traditional character. Japan was crushed in the war, but that does not mean that Japan also came up short in all other aspects oflife. The idea that Japan failed across the board is a psychological side effect, something that defeat brings in its train. One should not root out all those other things simply because of the defeat. They are fundamentally progressive. The compass needle seems to have swung rapidly toward peace. But Japan and the Japanese belong to the Japanese; they cannot belong to anyone else. Is that the reason there is room for both feelings, the sad and the happy? Most Japanese don't really seem to know what democracy is. But in order for Japan and the Japanese to revive or, better, in order to shed the old skin and carve out an image of a new human being, we have no alternative but to clear the way for democracy. This political principle that has never flowered here is a relatively short word, yet it has surmounted the zigzags of a long history. It is the progenitor of the modern age. But the soil of Japan may be too harsh even to permit its transplantation to succeed. However, even in the present chaotic conditions of defeat, we must live according to our ideals. For the sake of true peace in the distant future, we must achieve a precise understanding of what needs doing right now; the fact that there will be deep suffering we must take for granted. Responding sharply to direct impacts on our very lives, our spirits will gradually become keener, more acute, even if we pay no particular attention. Together, the Japanese people shoulder the burden of this grave fate. If they all realize that fact, they must take as their guiding principles the wisdom to survive the dark, the bitter struggles they are conscious of, and great strong hope itself. The somber reminder that we have a common fate absolutely forbids us to indulge in either nihilism or easy evasion. Late autumn has finally come to this small country village. The rain no longer falls with such startling ferocity. Occasionally a mistCITY OF CORPSES

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like rain falls, but then the sky immediately clears to the navy blue unique to late autumn. When the wind blows above the golden rice fields, now fully ripe, the yellow waves of grain give off a dry whishing sound like the rustle of crinoline. The rhythm is indescribably pleasant, and the sound resembles that produced when one runs the plectrum gently sideways over the strings of the koto. The sound of the koto has already faded, but the various insects of autumn still sing, and when their sound joins the chirping of the birds and the murmuring of the stream, the result is a melodious koto song. It reminds me of when I was a girl, of the very first song I learned when I began taking koto lessons, and I sing it to myself: Gems you don't polish Give off no sparkle. Character, too, Comes only with effort. I hated obvious moral injunctions, so for a long time I turned a deaf ear to this song. Now it seems to go straight to my heart. As for the people who came here from Hiroshima, those who could not outrun death have died; those who outran death are living, albeit with long faces. Supplemental food is simply not being distributed to those who have come from the outside. Someday a major social issue will be made of this coarseness and neglect (I am not using the word coarseness loosely). It devastates me to think what it will be like when people raise an outcry. We who have come from the outside are all gypsies; we have money but no food. For the victims still alive, the traces of burns and the scars left by cuts on faces, necks, and hands are still fresh. Some of us bear the mark of burns long untreated while we wandered about Hiroshima; we have scars in the skin of our armpits such that we cannot lift our arms all the way, eyebrows that were burned off and have not grown back. The scars from our cuts are completely different from the scars from ordinary cuts; the two sides of the cut roll in toward the inside and join only irregularly. Dr. S. says that in the case of these ugly scars uranium poison destroyed the skin tissue around the cut. OTA YOKO

The Gin-chan I wrote about at the beginning of this book is still alive today, even though Dr. S. doubted he would last through September. His face is still as ghastly as ifhe were on his deathbed, but he leads a bold life. He says he buried the clothes of his dead wife somewhere in Hiroshima, so he goes off to dig them up; ifhe simply leaves them there, he says, someone will steal them. Until the very moment of death, people don't understand life. Their skin scarred by the hideous atomic bomb disease, many people live by sheer force of will. But they are like living corpses, and the scars on their souls manifest themselves somewhere on their bodies. During these three months that I have glimpsed unfathomable death, I too have kept it at a distance. But once or twice a day I call to mind four or five scenes. They are not panoramas of the vast destruction of the city, but vignettes. The young girl who died on the riverbed at the edge of the water, stretched out as if asleep; the girl in the air raid trench at the side of the road who departed this life like Pilgrim Otsuru in the play, and the young father sitting on the scorched rock beside her body; the many dead girls, bodies distended barrel-like and burned bronze: I cannot forget them. Further, the Saekis' dog wandering about the riverbank, barking not at all, and the white chickens from the temple roaming about the cemetery are oddly luminous in my memory. In the villages the rice, singed brown, has been harvested. If you look closely, you won't see joy in those who harvest the rice; you will see the pain of farm folks worn out by the war. Their padded vests sag; they wear no hats; their bare feet protrude from broken straw sandals. The shaggy sheaves of rice lean against the ricks. Set up here and there as far as the eye can see in the paddies, the ricks are like screens of gold. The sky sparkles emerald blue, infinite. The groans of hungry Japanese are the koto song of the countryside in this year when even the stones cry out. War and natural disaster: these two millstones grind against each other, and the song of death they produce creeps along the ground.

CITY OF CORPSES

273

Poems of the Atomic Bomb

Translator's Introduction

TOGE SANKICHI is a figure of epic proportions. Twelve years younger than Hara Tamiki, fourteen years younger than Ota Yoko, Toge was twenty-eight on August 6, 1945; always sickly, he died on March ro, 1953, at the age of 36. The English-language world knows Toge, if at all, through the portrait Robert Jay Lifton painted in 1967. Lifton described Toge as "the most celebrated A-bomb poet-and in fact the only Hiroshima writer to become a popular hero ... the epitome of the poet of protest." For Lifton, Toge was "a poet of the streets and militant spokesman for the young and disaffected .... " 1 Toge's was an extraordinary life, and his is extraordinary poetry. FAMILY AND CAREER,

1917-1945

Toge Sankichi was born Toge Mitsuyoshi. (The two given names, Mitsuyoshi and Sankichi, are alternate readings of the same Chinese characters; it was only in his teens that Toge decided to go along with the more obvious reading, Sankichi.) The Toge family had lived in Hiroshima for two generations, Toge Sankichi's grandfather having moved his family there from a remote village. Toge's father Ki'ichi was a successful manufacturer of bricks until the panic of 1927, when his company failed; at about the same time he resigned his directorship of a second company due to the involvement of his children in radical politics. He died in 1950. (As we shall see, 1950 was a time of great activity, indeed crisis, for Toge Sankichi. Even as his father lay dying on the first floor of their rented house, on the second floor Toge and his fellow poet-activists were rehearsing and arguing into the small hours of the morning.) Toge's mother Sute died of blood poisoning in 1927, when Toge was ten. 2 'Lifton, Death in Life: Survivors of Hiroshima (New York: Basic Books, 1967), pp. 441, 446. The main sources on TC>ge's life are Masuoka Toshikazu, Hachigatsu no shijin (Poet of

2

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

277

Toge's parents were quite unusual. Despite his life in the business world, Ki'ichi supported his children in their radical (and dangerous) political activities before the war; after the war he waited up at night for Toge Sankichi to return from his organizing. Ki'ichi also loved music. Sute was a teacher and revered the feminist Hiratsuka Raicho; because of its treatment of women, she opposed Buddhism. A fan of poetry, she liked Heinrich Heine in particular. The family as a whole read the works of Leo Tolstoy and the Christian social reformer Kagawa Toyohiko. There were five children. The eldest was a daughter born in 1906. She exerted a major influence on Toge Sankichi, especially after their mother's early death. A convert to Protestant Christianity, she was musical and taught piano. She married and had one child, a son with infantile paralysis; she raised him to be a composer. Her husband died after August 6 of secondary radiation. After the war she lived with Toge Sankichi and their father until her death from cerebral hemorrhage in 1950. The second child was a boy born in 1909; two years later came a second daughter; and in 1914 a second son was born. All four of these children became involved in radical activities; two joined the Communist Party. All were arrested (the elder son over a dozen times), and three of the four went to prison. The second son was sentenced to seven years' imprisonment, but then on appeal his sentence was reduced to six years. In prison he contracted tuberculosis and died, at twenty-two, soon after being released. The elder son inspired comparison with the dashing swordsman Miyamoto Musashi; the second son was known to have shouted "Down with Imperialism!" in darkened movie theaters.3 The younger daughter, also radical, was an athlete and dancer. August) (Tokyo: Toho, 1978); Masuoka, Gembaku shijin monogatari: Toge Sankichi to sono shiihen (Story of the atomic poet: Toge Sankichi and his surroundings) (Osaka: Nihon kikanshi shuppan senta, 1987); Toge Sankichi tsuitoshu shuppan iinkai, ed., Kaze no yo ni, honoo no yo ni: Toge Sankichi tsuitoshii (Like the wind, like the flame: A tribute to the memory of Toge Sankichi) (Hiroshima: Warera no shi no kai, 1954). There are two publications of Toge's work: Toge Sankichi sakuhinshu (Collected works of Toge Sankichi), 2 vols. (Tokyo: Aoki, 1975) and Gembaku shishii (Poems of the atomic bomb) (Tokyo: Aoki, 1952). On Ki'ichi's retirement from the business world, see Masuoka, Gembaku shijin monogatari, pp. 79--80. 1

Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, pp. 12--14. TOGE SANKICHI

Toge Sankichi was born on February 19, 1917. Half a generation younger than the sister born in 1906, he was the youngest of all by three years. From the start he was a sickly child, suffering from asthma and periodic vomiting. He refused to eat meat or fish and was even choosy about the vegetables he ate-he preferred green. Perhaps because Toge was weak and the youngest, perhaps reacting against the experiences of the elder children, perhaps hoping that here finally was a suitable heir, Toge's father tried to keep him from following the same political path as the elder children. Hence after a normal schooling, Toge went not to the mainstream higher school but to Hiroshima Prefecture's school of commerce; he graduated in 193 5 at eighteen. Thereupon he went to work for the Hiroshima Gas Company. Three years later Toge was diagnosed, wrongly, as having tuberculosis. Believing himself to have only a few years to live, he spent most of his time an invalid. Ten years later, on November 17, 1948, Toge learned that the diagnosis was wrong. On that day he had undergone a physical examination to prepare for a scheduled operation and learned that his illness was not tuberculosis but bronchiectasis, an enlargement of the bronchial tube. Here is what he wrote: I went outside and there was a clear autumn sky, not a scrap of cloud. Ah! My ten years and more of life as a TB patient with large cavities: it is-is it not?- over now! Indeed! Rejoicing, I walk on the grass near the pond, hand in hand with Yoshiko, and pass through the pine grove. Yoshiko cries. Undoubtedly there will be coughing and phlegm and occasionally hemorrhage, and what is more, there is no cure; but how wonderful that it is not tuberculosis. I can't believe it. My second life began today. Up till now I thought my fate was to suffocate oflung hemorrhage and that I had at best two or three years oflife; now my life plans can be longer, ten years or even twenty, and I can count on a future as long as the normal person's! I'm so happy I must be dreaming! How wonderful. 4

As his friend and biographer Masuoka Toshikazu comments, there is irony here. Streptomycin and other medical developments soon mastered tuberculosis. For bronchiectasis the only treatment was surgical, and that surgery was the occasion of Toge's death. Masuoka goes on to tie Toge's death to the weakening of his body through radiation sickness at a time when "America did not notify the residents of Hi4

Toge Sankichi sakuhinshil 2.245; quoted in Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 224.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

279

roshima of the fearsomeness of radiation sickness." Masuoka concludes: "The atomic bomb killed Toge." 5 But that is both going beyond the evidence and getting ahead of the story. The immediate point is that beginning in 1938 Toge considered himself an invalid under sentence of death. At an early age, Toge had taken an interest in literature. Beginning in his third year of primary school he wrote stories; in the second year of middle school he began to compose poems. Early influences included Tolstoy and Kagawa, as we have seen, but also Heine, Shimazaki Toson, and Sato Haruo. In 193 8 he read his first proletarian literature. On December 20, 1942, he was baptized into the Catholic Church, having been moved in the direction of Christianity by his elder sister and, suggests Masuoka, by Tolstoy and Beethoven. By 1945 Toge had composed 3,000 tanka and even more haiku. Writes Masuoka: "The world knows Toge Sankichi as 'the poet of the atomic bomb'; his friends and acquaintances know him always as a lyric poet." 6 There are striking connections in content between the two facets of Toge's work. His lyric poems focus on girls, boys, old people, mothers, babies, young women in love. These same figures appear prominently in Toge's Poems of the Atomic Bomb., 7 But what is not present in the prewar poems and is present in the postwar poems is the concept of poetry as a weapon, as a means to personal and political change. 8 Still, Masuoka is undoubtedly correct in labeling Toge "a lyric poet from cradle to grave." 9 Despite the example of his elder brothers and sisters, Toge Sankichi was naive politically before Hiroshima. Sickly and hence not in danger of being called up for military service, Toge described himself in his diary as an "onlooker." In part for this reason, Japan's war in China had little effect on him. On the one hand, suggests Masuoka, he saw it as a holy war; on the other, he was conscious of war's human ' Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p.

225.

6

Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 54.

1

Cf. Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 57.

8

Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 79. See the manifestos in Toge Sankichi sakuhinshu,

2. 8 r-

I 12. 9

Masuoka, Gembaku shijin monogatari, p. 84.

280

TOGE SANKICHI

cost. He did express a preference for fighting England rather than China. 10 Toge went to Yokohama in January of 1945 and stayed there until June, working at an easy job in a company where his brother-in-law was an official. So he witnessed the massive Yokohama raid of May 29, and he witnessed as well at least one instance in which prisoners of war were maltreated. In his diary for May 29 he wrote: I saw an enemy POW, who had parachuted to the edge of Kikuna Pond and had been captured, under arrest. From less than a meter away, I observed him for some time. He was on a bicycle-drawn trailer, hands tied behind him, blindfolded, and legs stretched out, accompanied by two soldiers; one wore a sword, and one was an interpreter. He appeared to be a youngster of about 20, with gray hair, a big nose, childish lips tightly clenched; he wore a shirt and pants and leather shoes. His neck rose stiffly from his breast; what thoughts did his breast contain? The crowd (in reality, there were ten or twelve people, still not unruly) surrounded him and watched silently; there were whispers, someone saying softly, "Wire would be better to tie him with," another saying, "Isn't there something we can do for him?" Just before the trailer began to move again, someone caught the guards napping and suddenly landed a good kick on the POW's legs, limp and pale, stretched out over the metal bumper in front of us. The POW held back his pain with an "oh!" and pulled in his legs, and the soldier angrily pulled his pistol. The person quickly fled, melting into the crowd, and the trailer began to move and pulled away. I returned, deep in thought. Without falling into animal hatred (nay, I may suffer because I can't easily do so), taking the path of intellectual affirmation, I suffer greatly trying to hate him. Indeed, my sense of intellectual struggle is deep. He too is a young man and probably to some degree feels a sense of righteousness. I can't have a sense of righteousness strong enough to destroy his and to engulf me. For me the slogans-co-prosperity sphere, liberation of oppressed peoples, and the like-are only intellectual concepts and are not sublimated to beliefs; so I have a weakness: I cannot hate him firmly and deeply with my mind. I I

On August 6, 1945, Toge was in Hiroshima, at home in Midoricho. Had the bomb fallen at 8:20 or 8:25 rather than at 8:15, Toge '° Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, pp. 38, 39.

" Quoted in Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 42. TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

would probably not have survived, for he was just on the point of setting out. Here is his statement from the Afterword to Poems of the Atomic Bomb: "On the morning of August 6, 1945, at home in a part of town more than three kilometers from Ground Zero, I was just about to set out for downtown Hiroshima when the bomb fell, and I survived merely with cuts from splinters of glass and atomic bomb sickness." 1945-1953 Masuoka Toshikazu has written that Toge flashed across the sky "like a comet." 12 Robert Jay Lifton called him "a Hiroshima version of the lyrical-revolutionary tradition of Mayakovsky and Yevtushenko."'3 They are describing not the years before 1945, but the alltoo-brief years between 1945 and Toge's untimely death in 1953. These years wrought sudden and dramatic changes in Toge's life and thinking and work; they raised him to national prominence. Toge's disillusionment with the war came very quickly. Masuoka cites a diary entry of September to the effect that it was good Japan had lost the war and offers the poem "Truth" as additional evidence. "Truth" is an opaque poem, open to at least two distinct readings. It describes a death, with enlightenment ("the pure scent of truth,'' "the beautiful bird of truth") occurring just at the moment of death. Masuoka interprets the corpse mentioned in the final line as the death of Toge's belief in Japan's holy war. '4 Toge's disillusionment developed in a striking direction. Many factors were involved: his life with Harada Yoshiko, his activities in various cultural organizations, his decision to join the Japanese Communist Party, labor strife in Hiroshima, and the Korean War. By 1951 Toge was writing poetry startlingly different from his earlier efforts. After being involved in largely platonic affairs with a number of women, Toge settled down and lived with Harada Yoshiko, a widow three years older than he. The two had to overcome real obstacles: THE POSTWAR YEARS,

" Masuoka, Gembaku shijin monogatari, pp. 19-20.

' 3 Lifton, Death in Life, p. 443.

'4 Masuoka, Gembaku shijin monogatari, pp. 123-124; the entry is not included in the diary excerpts published in Toge Sankichi sakuhinshu. "Makoto" is in Toge Sankichi sakuhinshii r.98.

TOGE SANKICHI

Toge very much wanted children of his own, yet because of an earlier operation Yoshiko could bear no more children; her first husband's family would not permit a second marriage; her son Osamu took a long time to accept Toge. But the problems did not prevent them from having an extraordinarily warm life together. Here is an excerpt from a poem ofJanuary 1948: Oh! What a happy event! Out of the blue, two people have discovered love. Take my hands, reaching wide-wide, wide, as wide as we can reachand claim this gift. is

Yoshiko outlived T6ge by twelve years; in March 1965 she committed suicide. Masuoka has described in great detail Toge's activities in various cultural organizations. 16 Suffice it here to say that Toge was extraordinarily active, that the activities brought him into contact with cultural figures on the left and with idealistic students and labor movement radicals, that they played a major role in the development of his thinking, and that his new friends sustained his spirits even as the activities left him exhausted physically. These activities brought T6ge to public notice in a way that Hara Tamiki and Ota Yoko never experienced. Toge's conversion to Communism came slowly and with considerable reluctance. It was only in the postwar years that Toge read his brother's books on socialism, and he always worried about his individualism. But by May of 1946 his thinking had changed, dramatically. For one thing, he came to see Japan's defeat in the Pacific War as-in Masuoka's words-"the defeat of fascism and the victory of world democracy." 17 For another, he concluded that Christianity and Communism were a linked pair. His short piece "Distant Thunder" is largely a dialogue between a dying Communist (Kimoto) and a '5 "Karada o kakete," Tiige Sankichi sakuhinshu I. I 12; quoted in Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. r8o. ' 6 Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, pp. I 8 r-288. " Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. So.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

283

Toge Sankichi. Courtesy Nihon kindai bungakkan

Christian (Tanaka). The Christian offers love of humanity; the Communist counters that love is not enough. The Christian speaks for the character of each individual; the Communist speaks of the group. But the Christian concludes as follows: That you put your life on the line for the sake of society in the struggle to serve your ideology and that we believe in and try to practice the teachings of Christ-after all, don't they come from the same spiritual core? If they do, it isn't likely that we alone will gain eternal life or that you and your comrades will fall into eternal nothingness. Without a truth so entirely limitless, so completely turned into a faith that it does not disappear even with the death of an individual, we cannot be linked to this world properly and effectively. 18

On April II, I949, Toge joined the party. In Hiroshima, as in Japan as a whole, labor strife was endemic in the early postwar years. Landmark events included MacArthur's prohibition in I 94 7 of the planned nationwide rail strike (February I); the Occupation's first (October I949) and second (October I950) Red Purges; and, in June I949, the wholesale dismissals at the Hiroshima factory of Japan Steel. The latter was a major event not only in Hiroshima but also in the national news. Some one-third of the 2,000 '8

"Enrai," Toge Sankichi sakuhinshu, 2.42; quoted in Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 194. TOGE SANKICHI

workers were fired; Occupation officials involved themselves on the pretext that the factory was one of those designated for reparations; and 2,000 police officers faced 10,000 demonstrators. Toge returned from a day of confrontation to write "Song of Rage," a poem he then read aloud before the strikers: The machines that till yesterday produced sewing machines and vehicles are stopped, the workers driven off; today on the roof of the locked factory, the hated police flag flutters. Seize our broken flagpoles, yes! and break the shackles that bind our wrists! Even if our blood drenches the dust, even if nightsticks knock us outaged workers complain about pistols drawn in threat; wives do not leave even though the babies strapped to their backs sleep, heads to one side. Our numbers increasing moment by moment, we surround the factory. Amid fluttering union flags: our rage that becomes a song our tears that become a hymn In the shade of the trees, as dusk gathers, Japan Steel workers, prostrate, sleep: sleeping giants. 1 9

In his diary that night, Toge recorded his elation: "[w]orkers listened with tears flowing ... today's 'Song of Rage' is the first poem of mine that actually has been received with joy by the hearts of the people; moreover, today is the first time that I-a poet who has changed the esthetics of his poems in practice and shed one skin-have been able to receive joy. I'm happy; I feel an intense maturation. It can be done! I can accomplish something!" 20 A final contributing factor was an increased concern with atomic weapons. In March 1950 came the Stockholm Appeal against atomic ' 9 Toge Sankichi sakuhinshu 1. r 3 2. Masuoka gives a vivid description of the events (Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, pp. 237-239). 20

Toge Sankichi sakuhinshu 2. 261-262.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

weapons. The Stockholm Appeal was a landmark in the propaganda battle surrounding nuclear weapons; eventually millions of people around the world signed it. It inspired Toge to write "Appeal," his first poem of the atomic bomb, in time for May Day. Toge also wrote "Little One" for publication in August (its original title was "The Truth"-both titles are phrases from the poem). 21 In June came the Korean War, which figures in a number of poems in Poems of the Atomic Bomb. 22 And on November 30 came President Truman's threat to use atomic weapons in Korea. In his diary for December I Toge noted the negative reaction in England and France and elsewhere and commented, "There ought to be some quick expression of opinion from the people of Hiroshima." 2 3 As always, Toge was in poor health. A spate of hemorrhaging in June had made him think he was dying; to Yoshiko he whispered, "Good-bye, Yoshiko! Up the revolution! Long live our poetry!" 2 4 In January 195 I Toge entered the hospital to prepare for an operation scheduled for April. In a phenomenal burst of energy he wrote almost all the poems of Poems of the Atomic Bomb during that time; those he did not compose while he was in the hospital, he polished there. Provided with a table and an eight-person room for his own use, he wrote till late at night, covering up the windows with newspaper so that the doctors wouldn't see that he was still up. 25 He completed the poems, but the doctors called off the operation; the previous three such operations had all ended in the death of the patient. By 1951 Toge had become a figure of charisma and fame. National campaigns raised blood for transfusions and money for hospital expenses. In April 1952 Toge was in Shizuoka and collapsed once again; Yoshiko was back in Hiroshima. Here is part of what Toge wrote in a long letter to Yoshiko: 2 ' For the original title, see Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 267. Toge's first poem of the atomic bomb was "Ehon" (Picture Book), composed August 9, 1945; but it is strikingly different in tone. Cf. Masuoka, Gembaku shijin monogatari, pp. 126-127. Masuoka claims some of the credit for stimulating Toge's development by involving him in the editing of an anthology of antiwar poetry (Masuoka, Gembaku shijin monogatari, pp. 126-127). 22

23 24

See "Grave Marker," "The Smile," "August 6, 1950," "Landscape."

Toge Sankichi sakuhinshu 2.268; quoted in Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 276. Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 265. s Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 276. 2

286

TOGE SANKICHI

[O]n the 9th, the fund-raising campaign of the local independent laborers delivered 4 70 yen. Three rain-soaked people in very ragged clothing acted as representatives and brought the money. In the accompanying circular I was introduced as the poet of the atomic bomb, and most people gave very small contributions-20 or 30 yen. The sums are small, but they have a truly valuable meaning for me. Think of it, dear! People who probably don't know my face or my name are stirred by an appeal- ... that a poet who stands against war and for peace and with the proletariat has fallen ill away from home; can't you please help?-and from that day's wages that probably aren't enough for their evening rice or food take 20 or 30 yen, dug out of workjackets that are worse than beggar's clothes or out of slack purses, and present it unconditionally to me! What on earth does that mean? If this has no meaning for my life, then nothing has any meaning. For good or for ill, many things like this are happening to me. Events happen one after the other that prove that my life is not mine and yours .... [W]hat responsibility I felt! I think you will understand. That I must not warp my life with personal desires, that I live for everyone and die for everyone, that this is the supreme path whereby I am I. This is easy to say but difficult to do. Am I up to it? I want to try to be like that. "For the happiness of all" means to help create a society in which capitalism is crushed and in which people are freed from worry about their daily bread. There is no other road whereby we and the people can achieve happiness. 26

Masuoka comments that this sense of mission, the conviction that his life was no longer his own, may have undercut Toge's reluctance to go ahead with the rescheduled operation. The rescheduled operation took place on March 9, 1953. The doctors estimated Toge's chances at 70:30, up from 50:50 two years earlier. 27 The operation began at 2 p.m., but preparations started before that time. Masuoka was in prison at the time and so was not an eyewitness; but he reports as follows: From morning on, young comrades from [the various poetry circles associated with Toge] arrived one after the other. As they had done already many times before, as they had pledged to do in forming the transfusion brigade that had been organized for each time Toge hemorrhaged. But none of them thought this would be the last time. So as Sankichi was getting his final Toge Sankichi to Yoshiko, April 7-ro, 1952, in Kaze no yo ni, honoo no yo ni, pp. ro4ro5; quoted in Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, pp. 279-280.

26

27

Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 367.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

checkup at IO that morning, they whiled away the time in a happy circle on the lawn below the window of his room. Singing songs, they waited. 28

Inveterate diarist, Toge wrote his last entry at about noon. It ran: Beautiful weather. While they aspirated me in the clinic, many people have shown up. The time passes in a whirl of activity: having blood taken and some kind of check on it done, being given all kinds of shots and medicine, measuring respiration, going for a fluoroscope, measuring blood pressure. I haven't eaten, so I am thinner; but I feel fine. My health is the best. I am confident I can stand up to any pain. In about an hour I go under the knife. 9 2

At 4 the next morning Tsubota Masao, an X-ray technician, set down a detailed record, virtually minute by minute, of the operation and its aftermath. That record includes these developments: i:35 p.m.

2:15 p.m. 2:30 p.m. 4:ro p.m.

4:20 4:50 5:00 6:00

p.m. p.m. p.m. p.m.

6:30 p.m.

7:00 p.m. 7=05 p.m.

Toge wheeled into operating room. After exchanging good wishes with the attendants, Toge "said not another word in the fourteen long hours" of his ordeal except to count out loud as the anesthetic took effect. Five doctors, a dozen or so nurses. The first incision. The first transfusion. With ninety minutes of operation to go, T6ge's blood pressure suddenly drops; his pulse rises sharply. Doctors bring surgery to a halt. Condition critical: no pulse, no blood pressure. Pulse up to 60. Pulse around 54. 300-cc. transfusion of blood offered by T6ge's friends and supporters (making 1700 cc. in all). Pulse up to 92. Toge regains consciousness. Pulse at r IO. Subdermal emphysema develops.

28

Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 364.

2

Toge Sankichi sakuhinshii

0

288

2.291;

quoted in Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 368. TOGE SANKICHI

p.m. u:50 p.m.

8:00

2

a.m.

3:30 a.m.

Transfusion up to 2200 cc. Doctors, nurses eat in relays. Toge's left hand writes in the air; Tsubota gives Toge a pencil, but the result is not legible. Then Toge writes "Quick!" Breaking the rules, doctors permit direct transfusions from nurses. Yoshiko and Toge's friends enter Operating Room briefly, one at a time. Someone puts a copy of Poems of the Atomic Bomb by Toge's head. Tsubota reads "Prelude" aloud.3°

Still in the Operating Room, Toge died at 4:45 a.m. Ota Yoko commemorated Toge's death in a strange essay. It begins with praise: "By the lights of the literary establishment, he was not a famous poet, but he died having left us the volume Poems of the Atomic Bomb and his spirit. Poems of the Atomic Bomb is, I think, immortal. The poems are emotional, almost shuddering with his grief and sadness, and Toge Sankichi's antiwar conviction is stronger than the form of his poems." Her essay then moves to an account of one of her last meetings with Toge, in 195r. The meeting took place as Ota, hoping to learn the reasons for the suicide earlier that year of Hara Tamiki, visited the Hara family home. She comments on the uncomfortable contrast between the unseemly sumptuousness of the house, newly rebuilt, and the pale and sickly Toge. She remembers walking away from the Hara home with Toge, through a Hiroshima-" city in ruins"-that the tourists and postwar arrivals "could never know." She concludes: "He hoped for peace. It is not surprising that a single poet who experienced the atomic bomb should hope for peace, but it hardly seems likely that arts people-poets, painters, writers, and the like-should all work for peace." Even in a tribute to Toge, newly dead, Ota cannot restrain her tongue, and she castigates the literary establishment that turned a cold shoulder to all three: Ota herself, Hara Tamiki, and Toge Sankichi.3' Tsubota Masao, "Shujutsushitsu yori no hokoku" (Report from the operating room), in Kaze no yo ni, honoo no yo ni, pp. r24-r25; cf. Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, pp. 364-366. Tsubota writes literally that he read aloud the Preface. Masuoka interprets that to mean the poem "Prelude"; the only other prefatory material is the dedication. ' 0

3'

"Gembaku shijin no shi" (Death of a poet of the atomic bomb) (March 1953), in Nihon

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

Cover of the posthumous volume commemorating Toge Sankichi, Kaze no yo ni, honoo no yo ni: Toge Sankichi tsuitoshii (Like the wind, like flames: Essays in memory of Toge Sankichi) (Hiroshima, 1954).

The artist is Maruki Toshi (her signature is in the bottom right-hand corner); the original is in color TOGE SANKICHI

Robert Jay Lifton speaks of Toge as "a legendary figure and an A-bomb martyr" and comments on "the canonizing needs" of his followers and on "the canonizing imagery" in accounts of his life and death.32 Still, there is much that is extraordinary here. Toge is indeed an epic hero. THE POEMS

Toge Sankichi published a mimeographed edition of Poems of the Atomic Bomb in 19 5 I. It was equal parts description of the effects of the atomic bomb and call for action against the bomb. 3 3 In its printed form (1952), it has gone through more than forty printings. Masuoka is hardly an unbiased witness in calling Poems of the Atomic Bombeven thirty years later-"the most advanced" book of poetry about the atomic bomb;J 4 but no single poet rivals Toge, and only anthologies rival Poems of the Atomic Bomb. A few comments about aspects of Toge's poems may help the reader. Masuoka traces at length the development of Toge's poetry away from symbolism toward what Masuoka calls realism, a development that took place largely in the years after 1945. 35 Here the concern is primarily with some aspects of Toge's late poems, most of which are included in Poems of the Atomic Bomb. First of all, Toge experiments with form. Not one of these poems employs the format of tanka or haiku, thousands of which Toge had written before the war. They are "free verse." Stanzas (and poems) have no specified number of lines; lines have no specified length. In Poems of the Atomic Bomb, line counts range from 8 ("Prelude") to 18 5 ("When Will That Day Come?"); syllable counts per line range from 1 to over 30. Toge even includes "Warehouse Chronicle," which is almost pure prose. In one poem, "Dying," Toge attempts to underline the story of no gembaku bungaku (The atomic bomb literature ofJapan), r 5 vols. (Tokyo: Horupu, 1983), 2:289-290. ' 2

JJ

Lifton, Death in Life, pp. 443, 445. Cf. Masuoka, Gembaku shijin monogatari, pp. ro4-ro5.

Masuoka, Gembaku sh if in monogatari, p. r 37. "Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, pp. 81, 253-254.

34

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

291

a person dying on August 6 by having the poem, too, expire. The poem is 86 lines long, with none of the structural breaks Toge normally employs; the lines are generally short, breathless. The ending is particularly striking, made up as it is oflines of the following syllable counts: 2, 6, 8, 12, 9, 3, 2, I, 2, I. The person dies; the lines die. Here is the Japanese: Aa doshita koto doshite watashi wa michibata no konna tokoro de omae kara mo hanareshi, shinaneba naranu ka

In this passage Toge uses only two Chinese characters: the michi of michibata (roadside) and the shi of shinaneba (die). The last five lines are really only the verb (shinaneba naranu) plus the interrogative ka; this fact adds to the sense of expiration. The equivalent English terms are all of one syllable, and there is no voiced interrogative, so replication is impossible: Ah! Why? Why here by the side of the road, cut off, dear, from you; why must die ?

Toge uses other techniques that bring the reader up short. The Japanese language has no exclamation point; it achieves the same effect with a voiced particle. But "Dying" opens with a first line that is an exclamation point standing alone. "Flames" includes one line set in English: "1945, Aug. 6." "Season of Flames" opens with the word 292

TOGE SANKICHI

in English and capitalized (ironically, "WHOOSH!" is a more fitting translation than "FLASH!"). "Dawn" includes a line that is almost entirely statistical: "the energy ten million times more powerful than gunpowder, I gram the equal of 10,000,000." "Poem without Title"-not included in Poems of the Atomic Bomb-has blank spaces to mimic censorship: "FLASH!"

The newspapers that carry news of have been banned; the peace festival at Tokyo University has been crushed by the police; the fellow who placed antiwar handbills on the bus seats has been arrested again today. Have you seen them? Go to the station: many times a day passenger trains are shunted onto sidings and freight trains full o f - - go rumbling through, headed west.J 6

The first blank refers to the Korean War; the second, to weapons. Toge published this poem under a pseudonym, and Masuoka argues that in 1950 Occupation censorship necessitated the blanks and the false name. 37 Toge makes frequent use of repetition. This repetition takes many forms. In "August 6" the phrase wasureyo ka ("who can forget it?") in the first line appears again twice in the final stanza; indeed, the phrase constitutes the final line. In "At the Makeshift Aid Station" the phrase omotte iru ("thinking") appears five times in the last eleven lines. In "Grave Marker" the inscription "Seibi Primary School Dead" appears three times, each time standing alone, a stanza unto itself. Sometimes Toge repeats words or phrases but varies the orthography. In "Blind," one line runs "Eyes, eyes, eyes." Toge writes the first with the Chinese character for eye; the second, with the hiragana syllable for the sound; the third, with the katakana syllable for the sound. When the poem is read aloud, the audience can detect no difference among the three; if the audience sees the text, the difference is striking. In English a roughly comparable impact is as follows: "Eyes, eyes, 16

"Dai no nai uta," Toge Sankichi sakuhinshu

J7

Masuoka, Gembaku shijin monogatari, p. r 3 r.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

2.

r3g--r40.

293

EYES." Not entirely in the same category, but visual repetition nonetheless, is Toge's use of the character for fire in "Landscape." In the second stanza Toge deploys seventy-nine Chinese characters and over a hundred hiragana syllables; fifteen of the Chinese characters include the element for fire. In the third stanza five characters (of ten) include the element for fire, and four of the five are the character for flames, which consists of the character for fire written twice; so in thirteen lines the reader's eye sees fire twenty-five times. The sixteen lines of the final stanza of "Night" constitute a second example: lines 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and I 3 end in the same character, which appears twice elsewhere as well. In setting scenes Toge proceeds normally from the large to the small, from the general to the specific. The structure ofJapanese aids

Cover of (mimeographed) first edition ofPoems of the Atomic Bomb. The artist is Shikoku Garo. Courtesy Nihon kindai bungakkan and the estate of Nakano Shigeharu

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TOGE SANKICHI

him; the structure of English sometimes makes it difficult to replicate the original. For example, "Eyes" sets the scene beginning with line 2 as follows (in literal translation): unknown world unknown time, dark warehouse light falling through barred window faces of the dying

The second stanza of "Old Woman" moves as follows (this translation, too, is literal; the translation in its final version inverts this order): creaking in the wind, home for widows, corner of 41/2-mat empty room orange crate butsudan, in front of flabby skin, sinews only, your body, stretched out too heavy, thin futon, under all day, something muttering, old woman.

In both cases Toge moves from the large to the small, from establishing shot, as it were, to close-up. The second stanza of "August 6, 1950" provides a third example. In Poems of the Atomic Bomb Toge never once writes "United States" or "America" or "American." Yet the United States is the unspoken subtext of virtually every poem in the ~ollection. It is the unnamed addressee of "Prelude," and it lurks in the background of all the poems that speak of the sufferings of August 6. In "When Will That Day Come?" Toge writes: Ah, that was no accident, no act of God. After precision planning, with insatiable ambition, humanity's first atomic bomb was dropped, a single flash, on the archipelago in the eastern sea, on the Japanese people; you were killed, one of 400,000 victims who died horrible deaths. TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

295

But he does not write "America" or "United States." The United States held the Bikini tests that figure in "Season of Flames," "Night," and "Landscape"; but Toge speaks of the tests, not of America. In "Grave Marker" he speaks with irony of "the MacArthur Cup tennis courts," and in "When Will That Day Come?" of MacArthur Boulevard. In "Season of Flames" he uses the circumlocution "the other side of the world." In "Night" he speaks of the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission and expensive cars and the "rhythms of the New Mexican desert." But he does not say "America" or "the United States." Most often Toge uses the word "foreign." To be sure, there were other foreign presences in postwar Hiroshima; but most of Toge's references are surely to the United States. In "Grave Marker," "a foreign soldier and a girl" lie sprawled. In "The Shadow," "foreign sailors amble up in their white leggings, I come to a stop with a click of their heels, I and, each having taken a snapshot, go off." In "When Will That Day Come?" Toge writes with particular bite of "Japanese women selling their bodies to foreign soldiers" and of "the night when the snow drifted high atop the child run over by the jeep." It is in this poem, added at the last moment to increase the political emphases of Poems of the Atomic Bomb, that Toge flirts most openly with anti-American, almost nationalistic sentiments. He speaks of the two atomic bombs, asserts that "the war would have ended in any case I even without the atomic bomb," stresses the humiliation "that has engraved itself on the souls of all Japanese," and decries the fate of Japan "bound in servitude without limit of time." But even here Toge speaks indirectly and does not write "America" or "United States." Toge published Poems of the Atomic Bomb first in mimeographed form in l 9 5 l, when the American Occupation was still in control. As we have seen, the Occupation censors placed obstacles in the way of Hara Tamiki and Ota Yoko. Was Toge's avoidance of "America" and "the United States" simply his attempt to evade censorship? Probably not. Toge wrote most of his atomic bomb poems in 1950 and 1951, when Occupation censorship was no longer a real factor; what is more, he outlived the Occupation, if only by a matter of months. The more likely answer is that Toge chose not to name the country that dropped the bomb, that he preferred indirection and apparent evaTOGE SANKICHI

sion. Indeed, reading these poems, we can see the wisdom of his choice. 38 All these stylistic devices play a supporting role to the message. In an essay of early 1947 entitled "The Agony Leading to the New Age," Toge had written of the tendency of intellectuals (he writes "intelligentsia") to "love the muse more than humanity." 39 By 1950 Toge had enlisted firmly in the cause of changing society, of using poetry to mobilize opposition to injustice. Toge dwells on pain and seeks to convert that agony into political action. Several poems speak primarily of physical pain; among these are "Dying," "A Friend," "Eyes." More typical are the poems that move from that pain to anger and affirmation and action. In the final stanza of "Flames" Toge writes: Hiroshima's night of fire casts its glow over sleeping humanity; before long history will set an ambush for all who would play god.

In "In the Streets" Toge writes of "the anger of black-market women," "the laughter of painted ladies," and "the sorrow of a drunk staggering along"; "underneath I underneath," he detects emotions "that the slightest pinprick would bring gushing out." He does not specify the emotions, but they clearly include resentment and anger. "The Smile" ends with these two stanzas: In the choking stench of pus, stripped even of the capacity for hatred, for anger, you sent the world of the living that last smile. That quiet smile Masuoka speaks approvingly of the evolution of the opening line of "Ehon" (Picture Book). The initial opening phrase of 1945, Teki no te (at the hands of the enemy), became the more general Tatakai no te (in the struggle) a year or so later; Masuoka, Gembaku shijin monogatari, p. 127. Apparently Toge used a number of pseudonyms to cause difficulty for the Occupation censors; cf. Toge Sankichi sakuhinshu r. 122. '8

J9 "Shinjidai e no kuno," Toge Sankichi sakuhinshu suoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 201.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

2.72;

quoted (with incorrect title) in Ma-

297

has been primed, painfully, inside me; for three years, five years, the pressure has built up and now is about to explode in the direction of the war-making power that, once again, has forced its way back, and of people who are losing the will to resist. With a violence that abhors even that smile you smiledyes! Now it is about to explode!

The one triumphal poem here, "Dawn," Toge wrote to celebrate the Soviet Union's development of atomic power. The largely lyrical poems-for example, "Landscape with River"-are the exceptions. The anger that suffuses so much of Toge's poetry appears even in "Prelude," the deceptively simple poem written entirely in the hiragana syllabary, in words (figuratively, not literally) of one syllable. The poem has been quoted widely, anthologized, set to music, and carved onto a memorial to Toge in Peace Park in Hiroshima. "Prelude" doesn't seem angry, and it has been criticized for being too accepting, too passive. But Masuoka argues that it "expresses pithily and plainly the anger at those who dropped the bomb" and suggests that it be read once again after reading the entire collection. He comments that its simplicity is not accidental: "The words that human beings use when they have sublimated the most poignant thoughts are probably pithy and plain." Masuoka cites the note Toge added when he published Poems of the Atomic Bomb in mimeographed form: "These poems are prophecy ... these words are omens." Masuoka takes comfort from the fact that this poem is engraved in stone only one hundred meters away from the atomic cenotaph so that it redresses the balance. 4° The inscription on the atomic cenotaph reads: "Rest in peace. The mistake shall not be repeated." Critics have long considMasuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, pp. 314-317. The complete text of the passage excised from the printed version is as follows (Masuoka, Gembaku shUin monogatari, p. 113): "These words- I poems of prophecy? I These poems- I words of omen? I I These poems- I a record of the suffering I suddenly visited on mankind, I a cry of sorrow I that cannot be expunged from the heart. // So now I these poems- I words of prophecy, are they not? I These words- I poems of omen, are they not?"

+0

TOGE SANKICHI

ered that inscription at best empty moralizing, at worst an exculpation of the United States and President Harry S Truman. T6ge's "Prelude" is considerably more pointed. Indeed, Toge apparently wrote at least one poem-"When Will That Day Come?"--in response to the criticism that Poems of the Atomic Bomb was not political enough. Masuoka, for example, was a close friend and fellow poet; an activist, he reports that he was one of those dropping leaflets from the upper floors of the Fukuya Department Store (cf. "August 6, 1950").41 He welcomed T6ge's move away from symbolism and sees the real line of T6ge's late development as running from "August 6, 1950" to "Landscape" to "When Will That Day Come?"-in one sense at least, the more political, the better. T6ge's aim after completing Poems of the Atomic Bomb was to write an epic poem to be entitled "Hiroshima." For such a poem, "When Will That Day Come?" would have served as a trial run. Toge never did write "Hiroshima," but by one account he intended it to deal with these themes, among others: research into the atom; the fight against the Nazis; atomic spies; military misrule in Japan; the firebombings ofJapanese cities; the successful atomic tests; the scientists in opposition and "the politicians and capitalists" who pushed the decision through; the Soviet atomic bomb tests; the Korean War; the American tests of atomic and hydrogen bombs. 42 Masuoka suggests that T6ge's aim was to depict Japan as both victimizer and victim, America as both developer and dropper of the bomb, and atomic power as both destructive and beneficial. 43 THE TEXT

Poems of the Atomic Bomb appeared first in 1951, in time, writes Masuoka, for the sixth anniversary of August 6. 44 (The chronology in Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 342. Masuoka reports that the leaflets focused on the Stockholm Appeal and the Korean War (Masuoka, Gembaku shijin monogatari, p. 103).

«

Sasaki Takco (?), "Jojo no henkaku-Jojishi 'Hiroshima' e no doryoku no tochu de" (Change oflyrics-on the road to the epic poem 'Hiroshima'), in Kaze no yo ni, honoo no yo ni, pp. 87-88; Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, pp. 360-36I.

42

43

Masuoka, Gembaku shijin monogatari, pp. 3 5-36.

44

Masuoka, Hachigatsu no shijin, p. 276.

TRANSLATOR'S INTRODUCTION

299

Kaze no yo ni, honoo no yo ni gives the date as September.)45 That version, mimeographed rather than printed, is now a collector's item. The first printed edition appeared in 1952, published by Aoki shoten (no. 48 in the Aoki Library); that edition includes "When Will That Day Come?" and several other poems that were not part of the mimeographed edition, and of course the Afterword. 46 4s

Kaze no yo ni, honoo no yo ni, p. 127.

There are conflicting dates for the publication of the first Aoki Library edition: Kaze no yo ni, honoo no yo ni gives the date as June (Toge's Afterword is dated May ro); but the later editions give the date as February. Existing translations ofToge's poems include the following: "Prelude" and "August 6" (excerpts) and "Dawn"-in Lifton, Death in Life, pp. 441-443 (no translator is credited); "At the Makeshift Aid Station," "To a Certain Woman," "Night," "Landscape"-James Kirkup, in Kirkup and A. R. Davis, Modern Japanese Poetry (St. Lucia, Queensland: University of Queensland Press, 1978), pp. l 52160; "Prelude"-John W. Treat, in Treat, "Early Hiroshima Poetry," Journal of the Association of Teachers ofJapanese 20.2:219 (November 1986); and an excerpt from "August 6, 1950" translated into English from a German translation-in RobertJungk, Children of the Atomic Bomb, trans. Constantine Fitzgibbon (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1961), pp. 213-214. The only complete translation is a joint effort: Hiroshima Poems, trans. Rob Jackaman, Dennis Logan, and T. Shioda (Tokyo: Sanyusha, 1977). •6

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Poems of the Atomic Bomb by T age Sankichi

Dedicated to those whose lives were taken by the atomic bombs dropped August 6, 1945, on Hiroshima and August 9, 1945, on Nagasaki, to those who have continued down to the present to be tormented by the terror of death and by pain, to those who as long as they live have no way of extinguishing their agony and grief, and finally to those throughout the world who abhor atomic bombs

Prelude Bring back the fathers! Bring back the mothers! Bring back the old people! Bring back the children! Bring me back! Bring back the human beings I had contact with! For as long as there are human beings, a world of human beings, bring back peace, unbroken peace.

POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

August 6 That brilliant flash-who can forget it? In a split second, 30,000 in the streets vanished; the screams of 50,000 pinned under in pitch black died away. The churning yellow smoke thinned to reveal Hiroshima: buildings split, bridges fallen, packed streetcars burned, an endless heap of rubble and embers. Soon a procession of the naked, crying, walking in bunches, trampling on brain matter: charred clothes about waists, skin hanging like rags from arms raised to breasts. Corpses at the Parade Ground, scattered about like stone statues; at the river's edge, too, fallen in a heap, a group that had crawled toward a tethered raft, turning gradually, under the burning rays of the sun, into corpses; in the glare of the flames piercing the night sky, the area where Mother and Brother were pinned under aliveit too went up in flames. In the feces and urine on the floor of the arsenal a group of schoolgirls who had fled lay fallen; bellies swollen like drums, blinded in one eye, skin half-gone, hairless, impossible to tell one from the otherby the time the rays of the morning sun picked them out, they had all stopped moving;

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TOGE SANKICHI

amid the stagnant stench, the only sound: flies buzzing about metal washbasins. The stillness that reigned over the city of 300,000: who can forget it? In that hush the white eyes of dead women and children sent us a soul-rending appeal: who can forget it?

POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

Dying

Loud in my ear: screams. Soundlessly welling up, pouncmg on me: space, all upside-down. Hanging, fluttering clouds of dust smelling of smoke, and, running madly about, figures. "Ah, get out of here!" Scattering fragments of brick, I spring to my feet; my body's on fire. The hot blast that blew me down from behind set sleeves, shoulders on fire. Amid the smoke I grab a corner of the cement water tank; myheadalready in. The clothes I splash water on burn, drop off: gone. Wires, boards, nails, glass, a rippling wall of tiles. Fingernails burn; heels-gone; plastered to my back: a sheet of molten lead. "Owww!" Flames already 308

TOGE SANKICHI

blacken; telephone poles, walls, too. Eddies of flame and smoke blow down on my broken head. "Hiro-chan! Hiro-chan !" Press hand to breast: ah-a bloody cotton hole. Fallen, I cryChild! Child! Child! Where are you? Amid the smoke that crawls along the groundwhere could they have come from?hand in hand, round and round as in the bon dance, naked girls: one falls, all fall. From under tiles, someone else's shoulder: a hairless old woman, driven up by the heat, writhing, crying shrilly. Beside the road where flames already flicker, stomachs distended like great drums, even their lips torn off: lumps of red flesh. A hand that grabs my ankle slips off, peels off. An eyeball that pleads at my feet. A head boiled white. Hair, brain matter my hand presses down on. Steamy smoke; fiery air that rushes at me. Amid the darkness of flying sparks: children's eyes, the color of gold. Burning body, scalding throat; arm POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

309

that suddenly collapses; shoulder that sinks to the ground. Oh, I can go no farther. In the lonely dark, the thunder in my ears suddenly fades. Ah! Why? Why here by the side of the road cut off, dear, from you; why must I die ?

3ro

TOGE SANKICHI

Flames Pushing up through smoke from a world half-darkened by overhanging cloudthe shroud that mushroomed out and struck the dome of the sky, the angry flamesblack, red, bluedance into the air, merge, scatter glittering sparks, already tower over the whole city. Quivering like seaweed, the mass of flames spurts forward. Cattle bound for the slaughterhouse avalanche down the riverbank; wings drawn in, a single ash-colored pigeon lies on its side atop the bridge. Popping up in the dense smoke, crawling out wreathed in fire: countless human beings on all fours. In a heap of embers that erupt and subside, hair rent, rigid in death, there smolders a curse. After that concentrated moment of the explosion, pure incandescent hatred spreads out, boundless. POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

311

Blank silence piles up into the air. The hot rays of uranium that shouldered the sun aside burn onto a girl's back the flowered pattern of thin silk, set instantaneously ablaze the black garb of the priestAugust 6, 1945: that midday midnight man burned the gods at the stake. Hiroshima's night of fire casts its glow over sleeping humanity; before long history will set an ambush for all who would play God.

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Blind From under the pile of rubble on the riverbankall that's left of the maternity hospitalmen who had been visiting their wives drag themselves-arms, legsdown to a barge at the stone embankment. In darkness brought on by the splinters of glass that attacked chests and faces, the beached barge is daubed with sparks. Driven by the heat, the blind stagger down to the riverbed; staggering feet slip in the mud and fall. Above the knot of fallen men, Hiroshima burns silently, burns and crumbles; already here-evening high tide. In the riverbed the water rises, comes full, covers arms, covers legs; salt water seeps into the countless open wounds of people who no longer move. In the blackness of flickering consciousness, nerves that grope for sensations no longer there strike against an exploding curtain-the flash oflightand burn out once more. As arms, legs begin to float, senses that survived all the destruction are wrenched off; POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

313

inside log-like bodies, burned black, that tumble into the river glimmer afterimages oflife: the smile of a wife with her newborn child; breakfast at the window of the delivery room. Now two eyeballs gouged out by flying glass reflect bloody pus and mud, a rift in the clouds and smoke, and the evening light over the mountains.

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At the Makeshift Aid Station You girlsweeping even though there is no place for tears to come from; crying out even though you have no lips to shape the words; reaching out even though there is no skin on your fingers to grasp withyou girls. Oozing blood and greasy sweat and lymph, your limbs twitch; puffed to slits, your eyes glitter whitely; only the elastic bands of your panties hold in your swollen bellies; though your private parts are exposed, you are wholly beyond shame: to think that a little while ago you all were pretty schoolgirls! Emerging from the flames that flickered gloomily in burned-out Hiroshima no longer yourselves, you rushed out, crawled out one after the other, struggled along to this grassy spot, in agony laid your heads, bald but for a few wisps of hair, on the ground. Why must you suffer like this? Why must you suffer like this? For what reason? For what reason? You girls don't know

POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

how desperate your condition, how far transformed from the human. You are simply thinking, thinking of those who until this morning were your fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters (would any of them know you now?) and of the homes in which you slept, woke, ate (in that instant the hedgeroses were torn off; who knows what has become of their ashes?) thinking, thinkingas you lie there among friends who one after the other stop movingthinking of when you were girls, human beings.

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Eyes Shapes I do not recognize are looking toward me. In a lost world, a lost time, inside a dark storehouse, a light neither night nor day falls through the twisted bars of a window; piled one atop the other-shapes that once were faces. Shapes that once were the front sides of heads. Faces once the upper parts of human beings, that like flickering water reflected life's joys and sorrows. Now-ah!-lumps of putrid, blubbery flesh, only the eyes ablaze; seals of the human, skin torn away, on the ground, sinking into the cement floor; swollen, soft, heavy, round objects not moving as if pinned down by some force; the only movement: white gleaming from torn flesh, watching my every step. Eyes fastened to my back, fixed on my shoulder, my arm. Why do they look at me like this? After me, after me, from all sides, thin white beams coming at me: eyes, eyes, EYESfrom way up ahead, from that dark corner, from right here at my feet. Ah! Ah! Ah! Erect, clothed, brow intact and nose undamaged, I walk on-a human being: eyes transfix me, hold steady on me. From the hot floor, from the oppressive walls, from beside stout pillars supporting the cavernous ceiling, eyes materialize, materialize, do not fade. Ah, pasted to me, fixed forever on meback, then chest; armpit, then shoulderPOEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

317

I who step into this dark in search of the one who only this morning was my younger sistereyes! A straw mat on the cement floor, urine from somewhere oozing through its meshes; pressing into the mat, sunken-cheeked, slippery with ointment, secretions, blood, burnt ash-a death mask.

Oh! Oh!an eyeball that moves spills drops of transparent liquid; from torn lips red-flecked teeth groan out my name.

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Warehouse Chronicle DAY ONE The site: amid fields oflotus plants, all the leaves scorched into horseshoe-shape, the Army Clothing Depot, the second floor. High windows with gratings offering the only dim light; concrete floor. Atop army blankets that cover the floor, those who have fled here are lying every which way. All of them naked but for pieces of panty and cotton workpants about their waists. They lie so close together there is no place to set foot, most of them thirteen- and fourteen-year-olds from the girls' school who had gone to clean up the debris left as firebreaks were cleared; burns on faces and over whole bodies, Mercurochrome, clotted blood, salve, bandages, and the like make them resemble a bunch of filthy old beggarwomen. By the wall, beside the thick pillars, buckets and barrels are full of filth, overflow; into them they pour excrement. Amid the pungent stench: "Help, Daddy, help!" "There's water, water! Oh, I'm so happy! Happy!" "Fifty sen! Fifty sen here!" "Get it out of here! This dead body at my feet-get it out of here!" The voices are high and thin and never stop. Some girls already become delirious; half are already corpses that move no more; but there is no one to dispose of them. From time to time a parent seeking a daughter comes in, all wrapped up in air-raid clothing, and looks about uneasily for familiar features or cotton workpants of a certain pattern. When the girls know someone is there, they call for a while, frantically, for water and for help. No hair, one eye twitching, _her whole body swollen, a girl halfrises by a pillar, holds out a battered canteen, and waves it; not giving up, she repeats over and over the plea, "Please, mister, water! Bring me some water!" But the adult has been told not to give water to burn victims and does not heed her plea; so most of the girls grow weary POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

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of moaning and lower their voices as if in reproach, and the one girl by the pillar soon slumps back. The unlighted warehouse transmits to the earth the reverberations of the city still burning in the distance; its mad voices rising and falling, it is gradually engulfed by the night. Morning: quiet, an unreal quiet. The group on the floor is down to half; there is none of yesterday's screaming. The bodies of those still here are all swollen and bronze-colored-arms like thighs, thighs like bellies; the dark shading of clumps of hair, singed and curly-armpit hair, young pubic hair-lends unmoving shadows to the indentations of jumbled limbs and twisted bodies; only whites of eyes, thin and faint, are not swallowed up in that pool of darkness. Here and there fathers and mothers who have found daughters bend over, give them something to drink; the metal basins alongside that hold thin gruel have become the haunt of flies. There is a sound like that of airplanes, and the bodies all cringe; the number of those no longer moving increases yet again. Spotted beside these corpses: the eyes that are Mrs. K. DAY TWO

Mrs. K.'s condition: respiration 30; pulse mo; burns over half the face, the entire back, a bit at the waist, both heels; fever; no appetite; eyes that watched quietly as the others screamed all morning are hot; hands tremble gripping the rim as she squats over the bucket. Toward evening, delirium: Water! Tea! I want some pickled cucumber! Her arms forget the feel of her husband, dead at lwojima; her eyes forget the sight of her little one, left with neighbors as she went off on labor detail-the agony as the senses leave her inflamed flesh. DAY THREE

Severe diarrhea, white and watery. Eyes with burned eyebrows freeze; no more faint smiles; suppuration over entire area of burns. Treatment: salve for burns, herbs for diarrhea-nothing more. Soon stools begin to be bloody; small purple and crimson spots begin to appear where skin is not burned; in the evening, in between groans DAY FOUR

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as vomltmg worsens, people pass along in whispers the rumor that Japan has retaken Attu Island. Hair comes out at the slightest touch. Maggots gather in suppurating wounds; cleaned off, they drop in clumps to the floor, scatter, and creep back into the pus. Once so full there was no place to set foot, the warehouse now seems empty, only a few still alive; in that corner over there, in this shadow here, people swollen and hopeless; two or three attendants move about, faces dark, waving off the flies that swarm on wounds. Shining through the high window, the sun moves across the floor with its stains; the evening dusk steals in early; candles in hand, people leave to search for relatives at the next aid station; the eyes of the mask-like faces on the floor follow them. DAY FIVE

In a thin, thin voice, the young factory worker over by the pillar, his entire body swathed in bandages and only his eyes showing through, sings the national anthem. With feeble, feverish breath: "The enemy B-29s are no big deal; we've got Zeros, Hayates-the enemy thinks he's so good; just hold on a little longer, everyone, a little longer-" Her head wrapped in bandages, one-eyed, the woman near him crawls over and speaks to him: Be strong! Try to get some sleep! Call Auntie, here, and I'll come right over. ... "Auntie? You're not Auntie. You're Mother! Mother!" His arms don't move; inch by inch he turns his face, his darkly flushed cheekbones greasy with sweat; tears form two tracks from his glittering eyes, trickle down beneath the bandages. DAY SIX

In the dim light of the empty warehouse, someone sobbing all day over in the corner; by this pillar, someone silent as stone, sometimes arching her back and gasping-the last of the wounded.

DAY SEVEN

Warehouse now completely empty. In the sky seen through the twisted grate, smoke rises today, too-they are cremating the corpses piled up outside in the open.

DAY EIGHT

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By a pillar, a hand waving a canteen; the dark walls with their rows of countless terror-stricken eyes. Mrs. K. too is dead. "Patients: none. Dead: ... " The ink on the piece of paper pasted up in front of the gate has dried; lotus petals, torn off, lie scattered, white, on the pavement.

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Old Woman You mustn't die! Old woman, you mustn't go like this! Old woman, muttering away all day long, your body that is only sinews and flabby skin stretched out under a thin futon too heavy for you, before an orange-crate butsudan in a bare room seven by ten in a corner of a home for widows that creaks in the wind. The pale sunlight comes from the west, from over the hills ofKoi, lighting up the evening dust on the windowpane, giving a gentle glow to the white lock of hair at your temple. In this late-autumn light, once agam you've turned their yellowed faces this wayyour dear son, his wife, your grandson, and you're talking with them, aren't you? The faded photo on the butsudan, slightly cracked, seems almost to smile. Yesterday someone from the office brought you these gold-capped front teeth dug up right at the spot your son's desk stood. Rumor has it his wife and son, POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

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covered with burns like all the neighbors in Dobashi, crawled down to the Temma River close by and one after the other were swept away. Day after day, under that blazing sun, I took one hand as, cane in the other, you searched a Hiroshima that offered no shade; over mountains of rubble, climbing across fallen bridges; north, south, east, west; from the crossing that, rumor had it, had become a mortuary, to temples and schools on the edge of town and small aid stations on the islands; leafing through torn pages of registers of the injured, searching all over among people still groaning; it was on the seventh day, headed for a village hospital back in the hills you'd heard of by chance, as you crossed, once again, the burned-out wasteuntil then you'd been strong-willed to the point of stubbornnessthat, suddenly squatting beside the broken-off stump of a telephone pole that still smoldered, sputtered, you said: "Enough is enough! More than enough! Why should I have had to suffer like this?" Raising your voice, you cried; your umbrella tumbled into the ash, and a small cloud of dust arose, nothing, absolutely nothing in the absurdly blue sky 324

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but a single wisp of white smoke rising ever so slowly. . .. You lost your husband when you were still young; your only son, whom you supported by becoming a seamstress, a washerwoman, even hawking noodles at night, had T.B. for five, six years after college, finally recovered and took a bride, had a son, and six months later, on that morning, August 6, set off, laughing as always; the baby on her back, his bride was called out to clear firebreaks and never came back. The three of them left you all alone at home and never came back. Oh, woman! Old woman! You mustn't die like this! Is it exhaustion from searching among the ashes? Is it the effect of the poison that's still here? Weary, soon to doze off, you yourself no longer understand clearly the words you mutter. Your grief that is beyond grief, bitterness beyond bitterness, will join with the thoughts of all those

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who lost loved ones in the war and become strong enough to keep such a thing from happening ever again in this world. Keeping only to yourself your muttered words, your dried tears, you mustn't die like this; you mustn't go.

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Season of Flames WHOOSH! Reduced to shadows in burning magnesium, the whole city crumbles. It wasn't sound; only consciousness sent reeling. At the instant of being buried under, I am far away; ten million flying splinters of glass. Old beams heavier than lead, plaster thudding mark the end; outside: strangely gray roofs twisted all out of shape, webs of wires, several square miles that stink of people, where people died-the hush of death. Suddenly the brown mountains loom higher over devastated Hiroshima in the bowl they formquite ajump! Boiling, rolling, quivering, thrusting up: cloudPOEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

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cloudcloudred-orange-purplea crimson eruption high in the firmament. Bumping against itself, exploding violently, boiling up into the atmosphere from smoking fissures in the eartha great blast of air! A sound, a moan, a roar heard on earth for the first time ever! 500 meters above Hiroshima, as intended, uramum 235 produces a man-made sun; 8:15 a.m. makes it certain that residents will be clogging the streets at the center of the city.

Hiroshima 1s no more. Beneath smoke dark as pubic hair, under the sun that swells to twice, three times its size and shrinks, appears and disappears, crawl tongues of flame that lick at the torn flesh ofhuman beings, and flutter in the whirlwind. Sudden black rain stops up mouths calling out for their own kind.

A line, a line, 328

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a procession of ghosts, passing under a strange rainbow, on and on. Fleeing the city, ants whose anthill has been destroyed, filling the streets, hands dangling in midair in front of them, moving at a snail's pace: a procession of living creatures who were once once human beings. No sky, no earth; hot wind and stench, and in between, the lazy movement of water flowing in the seven branches of the river. Hard, soft, they come on, ever on, bump up against the islands in the estuary.

(Ah, we aren't fish, so we can't float silently, belly-up. The tens of thousands of tons of seawater that spouted into the air at Bikini were mirrored in the vacant eyes-eyes-eyes of the animals used in the test: p1gssheepmonkeys.) Hiroshima: the sun scorches it; POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

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the rain soaks it; the vast, vast rubble-seven miles by sevenof white bones and pieces of tile surely has raised the elevation of Hiroshima three feet or so. The dead: 247,000. The missing: 14,000. The injured: 38,000. Lying about in the atomic bomb exhibition hall: scorched rocks, melted tiles, twisted glass bottles, and, covered with dust, blueprints for tourist hotels the city once hoped to build. Yet even today, m 1951,

the cloud still billows up. And skirting it, floating down lazilySure! Two white dots! Look! That's what it is! Parachutes with instruments to measure radioactivity, controlled by radio from the other side of the world. They never fade from our sight, we of the clan of Hiroshima, the parachutes of that fateful morning; they dance-oh, so lightlybelow the cloud.

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Little One Little one, dear one, where, oh where have you gone? That bright morning, in the twinkling of an eye, Mommy was cut off from ym.~; you keep looking, but she's gone. The pupils of your eyes that reflect the sky so strikingly suddenly show calamity: the reddish-black cloud rises up, the silent flash of light billows out and fills the sky. Your childlike questions never end; who will tell you of that day? Little one, dear one, where, oh where are you? Mommy had left you with neighbors and gone off on work detail; sustained solely by fierce devotion to you, she dashed back through burning streets; in the darkness of the makeshift aid station, too weak even to feel revulsion at the maggots infesting the burned soles of her feet, silent, she died. Having left Mommy pregnant with you, Daddy was blown to bits in the South Pacific-artillery fire. Once bathed in his parting tears, now swollen with burns, pus, purple spots, her gentle body writhed in agony in a heap of many similar bodies; she had kept her satchel-it alone-from the dirt and fire, and with the new picture book intended for you POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

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beside her on the floor, she breathed her last. Who will tell you of that night? Little one, dear one, where, oh where are you? The naked sun shimmered above the mushroom cloud; all along the deaferring road, its dust aflame, bits of fire poured down, splinters of glass glittered as they flew through the air; driven, Mommy ran; sick at heart, stammering, Mommy called you, you and you alone, wanting to tell you, only you, about Daddy, about Mommy, and about her anguish on leaving you all alone. Who will tell you? Who? Right! I'll search you out, put my lips to your tender ear, and tell you: how the war that all over Japan cut daddies and mommies asunder from small sons they loved, with sinister force stretched them on the rack, and finally swatted them dead like flies, stabbed them to death, drove them to mad death; how it 332

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burned the sea, burned the islands, burned the city of Hiroshima; and how it snatched Daddy, snatched Mommy from your innocent gaze, your clinging hands. I'll tell you the real story1 swear I will.

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Grave Marker You kids stand together, one clump. It is as if you had huddled together for warmth on a cold day, been gradually compressed, squeezed into a corner, become this small grave marker that no one notices any more: "Seibi Primary School Dead."* Base surrounded by scorched bricks; upright strip of wood less than three feet tall; bamboo flower holder, cracked and empty, atilt. Behind a row of false-fronted buildingsA. B. Advertising, C. D. Scooters, and a huge billboard for Hiroshima Peace City Construction Company, Inc.on the corner of the road that leads to the MacArthur Cup Tennis Courts, painted green; on that corner where bits of tile and concrete, discarded, lie heaped, where the school gate, fallen, lies half-buried, where on rainy days it turns into a mudhole, where one always hears babies crying in the municipal barrack-apartments that look beyond repair, there you kids stand. Turned into an upright strip of wood, gradually rotting, without hands,

* Sci bi Primary School was a school that admitted only the children of military personnel. 334

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without feet, not wheedling, not clamoring, silent, silent, you stand. No matter how you called, no matter how you cried, your daddies, your mommies couldn't come to your aid. Brushing aside your outstretched hands, other daddies fled. Heavy weights pinning you under, the hot, hot wind blowing, in that dark, dark, choking place, (Ah! What could you have done to deserve this?) your gentle hands, your thin neckshow easy, beneath rock and steel and old lumber, to make blood spurt, to crush! In the shadow of Hijiyama, eyes burned like roasted marshmallows, a row of friends squatted, dazed; hearing soldiers running by, side arms clattering, you called out, "Soldier! Please help!" and even then no one answered; when as dusk fell beside the water tank you pleaded, "Take us with you!" and pointed west, no one took your hands. Then, aping the adults, you climbed into the water tank, covered your faces with compresses ofleaves, and, still understanding not a thing, POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

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died. Ah, you kids! You kids who have gone to a far place where you can't smell apples, where you can't lick lollipops: whoever made you say "We can do without .. until victory is ours"? "Seibi Primary School Dead." This corner from which, as you kids stand, silent, your disbelieving eyes can see a field gun your fathers and elder brothers were forced to defend, rusted red, lying on its side, and, in a hollow green with clover, a foreign soldier and a girl, sprawled out; this corner across from the empty lot across which today againbecause they said "Stop the war!"people are led off in chains to the detention center behind high new walls. Indeed, how strange! From under the eaves of a roof of cheap shingles your sharp ears hear a radio plagued with static elatedly pouring out news: how many tons of bombs dropped where; how many hundred million dollars added to the funds for building atomic bombs; reinforcements landing in Korea. From deep in the horseweed that smells like grass even rusty nails get scavenged and sold. 336

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Ah! You kids: even this simple grave marker barely holding its own will be cleared away and then forgotten, will be buried soon in dirt and sand as Peace City Construction builds its annex; the grave that holds the bones of your small hands and necks will be lost forever underneath something. "Seibi Primary School Dead." Even though the flower tube holds no flowers, two butterflies chase each other about; the breeze blows off the ocean over the weatherworn strip of wood; the sky is as sparkling blue as on that fateful morning. Kids, won't you come forth? Gentle arm in gentle arm, won't you arise? Grammy"Who would want to go to that Peace Festival shindig?"waits for you still; Grampa too, unwilling to throw out your old shoes, has stuck them out of sight under the rose of Sharon. The babies who sucked away that day at the breasts of dead mothers and survived are already six years old. Your friends, too, who prowled rainy streets stealing, POEMS OF THE ATOM1C BOMB

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begging, already have the muscles of adults, burned brown in the sun. "Never give in! Never give in!"at Hiroshima Station, under the hot sun, Korean comrades collect signatures: stop the war! "Never give in! Never give in!"Japanese war orphans throw down their shoeshine kits and sell the newspaper that tells the truth. You kids, enough already! Enough of being silent! Come forth, eyes sparkling, clear voices raised in protest, to do battle round the world with the adults who would start wars. And throwing open the arms we would all be embraced by, thrusting forward the cheeks that would bring back good tears to all our hearts, come and throw yourselves into everyone's arms, saying: "We are the children, the children of Hiroshima!"

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The Shadow Cheap movie theaters, saloons, fly-by-night markets, burned, rebuilt, standing, crumbling, spreading like the itchthe new Hiroshima, head shiny with hair oil, barefaced in its resurgence; already visible all over the place, in growing numbers, billboards in English; one of these: "Historic A-Bomb Site." Enclosed by a painted fence on a corner of the bank steps, stained onto the grain of the dark red stone: a quiet pattern. That morning a flash tens of thousands of degrees hot burned it all of a sudden onto the thick slab of granite: someone's trunk. Burned onto the step, cracked and watery red, the mark of the blood that flowed as intestines melted to mush: a shadow. Ah! If you are from Hiroshima and on that morning, amid indescribable flash and heat and smoke, were buffeted in the whirlpool of the glare of the flames, the shadow of the cloud, crawled about dragging skin that was peeling off, so transformed that even your wife and children would not have known you, this shadow POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

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is etched in tragic memory and will never fade. Right beside the street where the people of the city come and go, well-meaning but utterly indifferent, assaulted by the sun, attacked by the rain, covered over by dust, growing fainter year by year: this shadow. The bank with the "Historic Site" sign at the foot of its steps dumped out into the street pieces of stone and glass, burned gritty, completed a major reconstruction, and set the whole enormous building sparkling in the evening sun. In the vacant lot diagonally across, drawing a crowd: a quack in the garb of a mountain ascetic. Indifferent, the authorities say: "If we don't protect it with glass or something, it will fade away," but do nothing. Today, too, foreign sailors amble up in their white leggings, come to a stop with a click of their heels, and, each having taken a snapshot, go off; the shoeshine boy who followed them here peers over the fence, wonders why all the fuss, and goes on his way.

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A Friend When he took off the dark glasses, tears oozed from the scar left as eyelids, torn off, healed and pulled together. At the treatment center, when they moistened the crusted blood, loosened bit by bit the white cotton that swathed his whole face, removed the last gauze, that was how his eyes, now a single mass of matter, had healed; a thin trickle oozed as he spoke of the wife and child he had lost, and his fingers trembled as they fumbled with a handkerchief. "Where am I? Where is this?" Speaking once more the words he had spoken on first regaining consciousness, carried from the morgue, he took a firmer grip on the thick bamboo cane, felt for the sill with the toes of his gaitered legs, and inched his way out. -This too must be God's will.-I get 50 yen per massage; soon I'll be able to set a spread for you.He attended the Catholic church, learned massage, all sorrows buried in the depths of time; one evening toward winter I looked out from the train and saw him, in old military clothes, a new bride, her hair in a bun, leading him by the hand. "Where am I? Where is this?" Stopping amid the din of the street as if to make sure of his balance,

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he turned his face in his felt hat toward the gleam in the sky; it looked as ifhe was forever asking her something. Then several years later, I saw him coming toward me once again at that corner where the north wind blows, Bent double, making way for a bunch of reservists, arm supported firmly by his dreadfully gaunt wife, he went past, hurrying into the teeth of the wind as if trying to catch up with something. The tears that oozed from the fold of skin behind his dark glasses had dried up long since, the mark of the pain making its way through his heart.

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Landscape with River The sun, already setting over the city, is cold. The city at the head of the bay is hushed, bridges on tiptoe. Flowing in the twilight between sparsely spaced houses, its surface jagged, the timeless river reflects broken pieces of autumn sky. Now lost in darkness, the mountains upstream sleep, snow on their peaks. From afar, the snow sends down on the living its foretaste of winter cold. Dear wife! Sighing again tonight over what we will wear to keep warm? Clinging to the vase, withered chrysanthemums dangle; those happy days when we dreamed of children: they too are gone. Close our eyes, open our arms, and in the wind on the riverbank above this city of bleached bones, leveled, we too are living grave markers. The flames on the surface of the waves, rising up; the echoes, breaking, falling on the pleated hills; now the setting sun is gone; the river is choppy in the wind.

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Dawn They dreamthe laborer, setting his pickaxe down for a moment, sweat pooling in the marks left by the atomic flash; the housewife, slumped over her sewing machine, her scarred armpits giving off a smell; the girl selling tickets, elbows forward crablike to conceal her twisted hands; the child selling matches, too, neck full of splinters of glassdream of the element of white light, dug out of pitchblende and cak mines, in its infinite power of fission transforming dry desert into fertile and undulating fields; dream of sparkling canals passing along the feet of mountains reduced to rubble; dream of man-made suns used to build shining cities of gold even in the barren regions of the North Pole; dream of festive flags swaying in shady spots as working folk take their holiday ease and speak in gentle tones of the Hiroshima that once was; dream of a dawn when the pigs in human skin who use the power of earth's veins erupting, of earth's crust quaking, only for butchery, will not be found except in fairy tales; when the energy ten million times more powerful than gunpowder, r gram the equal of ro,000,000, will be released from inside the atom and strengthen the arms of the people; 344

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when in the peacetime of the people we will harvest the fecund fruits of science like lush bunches of grapes heavy with dew.

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The Smile You smiled that once. Since that fateful morning, friend and foe, bombs and fire had ceased to hold meaning for you; the sugar and rice you once so craved had become of no use to you. You had been blasted beyond the pale of jostling humanity, of war. I hastened to whisper to you the news that the war had endedthe only medicine I had. Yes, I swear, you smiled in my direction. You even stopped groaning. Your body covered with maggots, between the lids oflashless eyes, there appeared the ghost of a smile, full of tenderness toward me, alive, distant. In the choking stench of pus, stripped even of the capacity for hatred, for anger, you sent the world of the living that last smile. That quiet smile has been primed, painfully, inside me; for three years, five years, the pressure has built up and now is about to explode in the direction of the war-making power that, once again, has forced its way back, and of people who are losing the will to resist. With a violence that abhors even that smile you smiledyes! Now it is about to explode! TOGE SANKICHI

August 6, I 9 50 They come running; they come running. From that side, from this, hands on holstered pistols, the police come on the run. August 6, 1950: the Peace Ceremony has been banned; on street corners at night, on bridge approaches at dawn, the police standing guard are restive. Today, at the very center of Hiroshimathe Hatchobori intersection, in the shadow of the F. Department Storethe stream of city folk who have come to place flowers at memorials, at ruins, suddenly becomes a whirlpool; chin-straps taut with sweat plunge into the crowd; split by the black battle-line, reeling, the crowd as one looks up at the department storefrom fifth-floor windows, sixth-floor windows, fluttering, fluttering, against the backdrop of summer clouds, now in shadow, now in sunlight, countless handbills dance and scatter slowly over upturned faces, into outstretched hands, into the depths of empty hearts. POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

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People pick them up off the ground; arms swing and knock them out of the air; hands grab them in midair; eyes read them: workers, merchants, students, girls, old people and children from outlying villagesa throng of residents representing all Hiroshima for whom August 6 is the anniversary of a death-and the police: pushing, shoving. Angry cries. The urgent appeal of the peace handbills they reach for, the antiwar handbills they will not be denied. Streetcars stop; traffic lights topple; jeeps roll up; fire sirens scream; riot trucks drive up-two trucks, three; an expensive foreign car forces its way through the ranks of police in plain clothes; the entrance to the department store becomes a grim checkpoint. Still handbills fall, gently, gently. Handbills catch on the canopy; hands appear, holding a broom, sweep every last one off; they dance their way down one by one, like living things, like voiceless shouts, lightly, lightly. The Peace Ceremony-the releasing of doves, the ringing of bells, the mayor's peace message carried off on the breezeis stamped out like a child's sparkler; all gatherings are banned: speeches, TOGE SANKICHI

concerts, the UNESCO meeting; Hiroshima is under occupation by armed police and police in mufti. The smoke of rocket launchers rises from newsreel screens; from back streets resound the shouts of those, children too, who signed petitions against the bomb. In the sky over Hiroshima on August 6, 1950, spreading light above anxious residents, casting shadows on silent graveyards, toward you who love peace, toward me who wants peace, drawing the police on the double, handbills fall, handbills fall.

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Night The myriad tiny lights of Hiroshima hem in my view, prick my eyes; cramped by the greasy skin of bulging keloids, shiny rails run in all directions; tender buds sprout from the charred trunks of the trees lining the muddy streets that reek of entrails; in the pouring rain, the woman's eyes are redder than the tips oflighted cigarettes; she does not hide the festering bruise on her thigh. Ah, Hiroshima! Your night, whose erection the atomic bomb rendered sterile. My sperm lose their tails, don't reach the woman's womb. The lighted arch of the ABCC building, pregnant beneath the trees ofHijiyama Park on its glittering leasehold in the middle of Hiroshimathe taillights of the limousines that leave its womb, the rhythms of the New Mexican desert that fill the airAh, night fog! (Across the river, framed in a window, a whore stretches up to pull off her dress and takes a man's penis; here too the women of the cat clan carry on their nocturnal occupation.) Atop the roof of the station where trains rest, headlights doused, the winking lights of the moving news ribbon tonight too coalesce into blind letters that tell of the second, third, hundredth atomic test. Trailing drops of blood, 350

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men who have tried to drown their sorrows come staggering down the dark riverbank; a boat rocks and creaks, and a tall soldier suddenly sits up. Stealing up from the sea, the evening tide covers the footprints of those scavenging scrap metal. Something pale dark, moth-like, cuts across the sky with a mere flap of wings, night and day, day and night: lights off in the distance; lights that snagged as they were about to fall; lights that, terrified, want to forget; lights that, evanescent, barely hold on; lights that flicker; lights about to die; lights of Hiroshima that from one moment to the next just barely survive, that trying still to leave that day behind crawl no one knows where. In the darkness of history, soft and low, shine the many lights of Hiroshima.

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In the Streets Oh, the emotions! The anger of the black-market women at the train window, all cursing the station cop as the train pulls out; the laughter of the painted ladies, coquettish voices raised as they huddle in the dark; the sorrow of a drunk staggering along, blood dripping from an unbandaged wound; underneath it all, underneath it alla pinprick, and it would all come gushing outthe emotions!

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To a Certain Woman Torn belly up, a workhorse treads the air with its hooves: a phantasm hanging over the stones of the water trough in this shantytown where the quartermaster corps once stood. You live hidden away at the back of this foul alley, and for the year or so since that summer have gone back and forth to the hospital hidden behind an umbrella; the scar from the flashthe precise shape of a B-29, fallen all of a sudden onto your face-now encrusted over eyes and nose, you say never agam can you face people. In this crumbling house, one forearm torn off, you knit for a living: how often do you draw blood from your palm? This quiet quarter where a pinwheel turns lazily and children play in the vegetable patch. This burned-out street: I have turned back any number of times, but today I pay you a call. Your skin bulges snake-like, absolutely hairless and shiny; in the faint evening light it reminds me of what happened to dear ones of mine. POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

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Thanks to tough scabs that discharge putrid pus from scars that ache horribly in heat and cold, your girlish innocence is congealed, burned up. I'll speak with youtell you of the force of the flames as the desperate desire that wells up is branded on all people; tell you of the struggle of a thousand like you to eradicate the world's dark ills. With the sound of planes overhead once more, I'll speak: of the day my anger, your curses become supremely beautiful.

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Landscape You and I carry with us a landscape always in flames. City on a delta on a chain of islands born of fire; windows of buildings spouting colorless flames; traffic lights festooned with fire holding back, releasing displaced people; chimney crumbling into the fire, great station clock hidden in the flames; ships loaded with fire entering, leaving the far breakwater; sudden steam whistle of flame, emitting no sound; train pulling away at top speed, locomotive-penis hidden in fire; fiery pus collecting in a woman's crotch; a foreigner stopping, scattering flame from a lighter; beggars in black scrambling for the buttah! over there: someone's got it, still burning. You and I live in a landscape always in flames. These flames never go out; these flames never die. And you and I: who can say we too haven't become flames? Night lamps all over the city. Above neon embers flashing on and off in a sky dark as a tunnel, portents of fire, massed and flickering; the brotherhood of the deformed, milling about. Ah! Hands and feet that are simply pieces of flesh; open wounds in each that flames lick; in the end brains crack open; the Milky Way burns and crumbles. Flame-roses, blue sparks, gale-wind vortex, the dark crying out with one voice: resentment, regret, rage, curses, hatred, pleas, wails. POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

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The groans smite the earth, rise flickering into the sky. The true you and I, inside. Another I. The stench of my body, burned and festering. Your torn skin. The woman's hairless head. The child's purple spots: oh, living kinsfolk of the atomic race, humans no longer human. You and I rise up in terror even at tests on atolls far across the Pacific. Each bomb they build hangs suspended from a black parachute over this cauldron in which we live. Flames dance, tongue-less; tongues twist, lung-less; teeth bite lips; lips spew out flaming liquid; voiceless flames spread in waves around the world: Hiroshima blazing in the middle of London; Hiroshima exploding in the middle of New York; Hiroshima burning white-hot in the middle of Moscow: the voiceless dance that extends throughout the world; the rage of the dancers. You and I, by now we ourselves-flames consuming the landscape; flames, heat covering the globe like a forest, like lava; the fireball, the rage that crush the plans, already laid once more, for atomicide.

356

TOGE SANKICHI

When Will That Day Come? I

Buried under hot rubble and collapsed buildings, roads from three directions come together, intersect where a streetcar lies on its side, burned black and snarled . . m copper wires: the heart of Hiroshima-here in a corner of Kamiya-cha square you lie, a corpse not yet disposed of. No sound, but evidence of a heat that penetrated every last fragment of tile; no movement, but smoke that rises brokenly into the dazzling August sky; as for the rest: a brain-numbing emptiness, everything annihilated. Bending at the waist, as befits a girl, gripping the vast earth with both hands, bird-like, half prostrate, you lie dead. The other corpses are all naked and raw red; why is it that you alone are clothed, even have one shoe on? Above a cheek that is slightly sooty, your hair is full, and neither burns nor blood are to be seenexcept that the back of your cotton culottes, only the back, is burned clear through, exposing your round bottom; forced out in your death agonies, a bit of excrement sticks there, dried; with shade nonexistent, the rays of the midday sun pick it out. 2

Your home is in Ujinaport of Hiroshima where ever since the wars with China, with Russia TOGE SANKICHI

the young men ofJapan were given guns to carry and slopped wine and tears into their pillows at being separated from loved ones; loaded into the holds of ships, they went to their deaths. Deep in the squalid alley enveloped in the smell of gutters, you were wife-once Mother died-to your metal-caster father, mother to your younger brother and sister; delicate, like a plant that has been forced, you became at last a young woman; but as defeat approached, fear and rumor became your daily fare: with the cities ofJapan being burned out night by night, so many sheaves of straw, why hadn't Hiroshima been put to the torch? Your beloved home was pulled down by the ropes of the firebreak-clearers, and you four rented a hut in the eastern part of town; you gnawed at raw soybeans that had been cached underground and boiled horseweed for gruel; you fought for bamboo life preservers for each member of your family with grown-ups frightened by rumors the enemy would flood the city out; you fled on air raid nights hand in hand, were knocked to the ground by the home guard standing watch at the bridges; you spent your days rushing hither and thither, your girl's hands, girl's body frantic to help your neuralgic father, to defend your brother and sister against the raging forces of war. 3 And as August 6 approached, you did not know POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

359

that in the jungles of the South Pacific the Japanese army was scattered, weaponless, starving, sick; that warships were out of oil, hiding in the lee of islands, unable to move; that the entire nation was bathed in a rain of fire; that the fascists still didn't know how to bring the war to an end. You did not know that in the eyes of the world the surrender ofJapan had become simply a matter of time once the Soviet forces that had destroyed the Nazis confronted ImperialJapan with the announcement that the nonaggression pact would not be extended. You did not know that because in Berlin the Hakenkreuz had been struck and the Red Flag already raised, the day of the Soviet entry into the warset for three months thereafterwas already looming large. They rushed to drop the atomic bomb. They felt they had to destroy Japan on their own before that day. With this dark and ugly motive they rushed to drop the atomic bomb. There was so little time between July r6-the test in New Mexicoand the day of the Soviet entry! 4 Late at night on the fifth, the night before, came the accurate rumor, spread by pamphlets dropped from the sky, that Hiroshima would be burned out; people fled to the surrounding hills and melon patches and stayed up all night; TOGE SANKICHI

though still intimidated by the sirens that continued to wail, relieved when dawn arrived without incident, they returned home; setting out for jobs that were ultimately useless, they began to fill the streets of the city. That morning-August 6, that houryou saw your father off to the factory, fixed lunch for your brother who had just started middle school, and then, as always, sending your sister to play at the home of relatives in a distant quarter, you locked the door of the rickety house and set off for your work site, mobilized labor, to be scolded today too, doing work you were not yet accustomed to. Silent, hurrying, you got partway there. For some reason you threw yourself down as a blinding flash hit you from behind; when the dust and smoke settled and you came to, you still tried to struggle on to the factory; you fought the waves of people fleeing in the opposite direction and, having got here, collapsed. Your judgment on this event sealed in your heart, accepting your fate, you died. At this point, young girl, what could you have known for sure? How could your earnest brain have fathomed the atomic bomb? Wrists bent, leaning forward like a small bird fallen to earth even as it longed for the sky; your knees are tight together, as if embarrassed to be lying in so public a place; only your hair is in disarray, braided down the back, but now lying on the pavement. POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

Having grown up knowing nothing but war, you lost to the flames all glimmer of your modest and restrained dreams; a person so gentle no one ever really noticed you or what you didhere you lie, killed by the cruelest method on earth. Ah, that was no accident, no act of God. With unprecedented precision, with insatiable ambition, the world's first atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese archipelago, on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and you died, one of the 400,000 who died horrible deaths. Did you think, at that moment, of the sunflowers along the ditch when you were a child? of the scent of the powder your mother put on once a year? of your little sister's begging for things once the war worsened? of the lipstick you and your friend put on, then wiped off, behind the storehouse? of flowered skirts you longed to wear? And could you have thought that the street leading to this square in our beloved Hiroshima would be widened out, renamed MacArthur Boulevard? that the time would come when streets lined with willow trees would flicker with the kerchiefs ofJapanese women selling their bodies to foreign soldiers? And could you have thought in your grief that the war would have ended in any case even without the atomic bomb? No. How could you have thought such thoughts? There are things TOGE SANKICHI

even the survivors still don't know the meaning of: that the day the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki was the morning the Soviet army crossed the Manchurian border and headed south; that several years later, when the third atomic bomb was about to be used, then too the target was the race with yellow faces. 5

Ah, that was no accident, no act of God. After precision planning, with insatiable ambition, humanity's first atomic bomb was dropped, a single flash, on the archipelago in the eastern sea, on the Japanese people; you were killed, one of 400,000 victims who died horrible deaths. There is no one to identify and take charge of your murdered body. There is no one to cover over the shame of your burned pants. And of course no one to wipe away the mark of your agony clinging there. Even as you gave your all in the struggle of your humble life, always with a timid smile on your face, and held back the tender thoughts that rose, more and more, in your breast, you were at the age most vulnerable to embarrassmentnow your soft bottom lies exposed to the sun, and from time to time people come by searching for a particular corpse, look dully at the spot of dried excrement and go on their way. Is it the cruelty? Is it the anguish? POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

Is it the pathos? No, morethe humiliation: what can be done? You are already beyond shame, but the humiliation seared itself onto the retinas of those who have seen, and with the passage of time it will penetrate their very hearts; this is a humiliation that is no longer yours alone, that has engraved itself on the souls of all Japanese. 6 We must endure this humiliation, endure it for a long, long time. The night when the snow drifted high atop the child run over by the jeep-that too we must endure. The May when the blood ofJapan's youth spouted forth at the hands of helmets and pistols of foreign makethat too we must endure. The era when freedom is put in chains and this country is bound in servitude without limit of timethat too we must endure. But tell me: what shall we do if the day comes when we can endure it no longer? Even should you come, hands spread bird-like, from the land of death and try to calm us, no matter how you try to hold it gently in check in your easily embarrassed breast, the humiliation of your corpse, seared onto our hearts, builds and builds like subterranean heat; the day will come when the menace of an ugly, grasping will seems about to force the people once again to war; when a force that mothers and children and sisters can hold back no longer TOGE SANKICHI

turns into the wrath of a peace-loving people and erupts. On that day your body will be covered over without shame; the humiliation will be cleansed by the tears of the race; the curses against the atomic bomb that have accumulated in this world will begin to dissipate. When, oh when will that day come?

POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

Entreaty -on reading "Paintings of the Atomic Bomb"

Before these grotesque figures, let me pause, stand; against the measure of these cruel scenes, may what I have done, will do, be tested. Page after page, their voices close in on me, darker than dark; picture after picture, my tears flow freely, never stopping. In this book I see so graphically the faces of close friends who fled, loved ones who died. Even as shudders engulf my heart at the agony of these countless naked people, I see beyond the flames-what is it?-fallen, staring fixedly at meCan it be? -my own eye. Ah! Who could check the desire to straighten these twisted legs, to cover these naked loins, to free, one by one, these fingers, clenched and bloody? Who can repress indignation, deep and growing, that an atomic flash was set off in the skies over a dying Japan, warning shot in a new war; that in that instant 200,000 Japanese lives were taken? Before these paintings I pledge that I will act; that in the light of this history, the future will not be one that calls for repentance.

TOGE SANKICHI

Afterword of August 6, 1945, at home in a part of town more than three kilometers from Ground Zero, I was just about to set out for downtown Hiroshima when the bomb fell, and I escaped merely with cuts from splinters of glass and with atomic bomb sickness. People who were then within a radius of about two kilometers from the center of Hiroshima died-if they were indoors-of trauma or burned to death while pinned under and-if outdoors-disappeared, burned to death, or, having fled with burns, died within about a week. People just beyond died of burns and of atomic bomb sickness within a few months, and people farther away barely survived. In the towns and villages surrounding the city each household had someone, sent by the neighborhood group to clean up after the firebreak-clearers, who never came back. Moreover, several factors made this disaster even more grievous: the rumor that on the night of the fifth Hiroshima would be burned out-according, people said, to handbills dropped several days earlier at the time of the bombing of certain cities; the mobilization of middle schoolers and the lower grades of the girls' schools to help clear firebreaks; and the like. Today everyone knows that at Hiroshima about 300,000 people were killed in the blast of a single atomic bomb. And at Nagasaki, 100,000 or so. These events are so enormous-figures are merely factual summaries-that it is impossible to get a true sense of them; no one confronting them head-on could ever stop weeping. At the time, even those of us in the vortex could not know in our bones the full story of these disasters, and today there have been changes in the social environment and time has cut us off so these events are accessible to us only in the form of recollections. Still, colored as they are by grief and despair, these recollections add new tears, increase the bleeding of those survivors who are weighed down day in and day out by a life that is far from stable. And the tears we have shed and the blood that has dried as we fathomed ON THE MORNING

POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

the terror of the cruelest of cruel experiences of the atomic bomb and the unease about what it means in terms of the complete transformation of war have become something particularly intense, striking, as it were, our exposed nerves. This year the eighth anniversary of the deaths approaches. The temples cannot respond all at one time to the demands of the occasion; most households in Hiroshima take that fact into account and either postpone the services or move them up. So these services are already beginning to be held. But who can know the pain stored away, sealed off in the innermost hearts of the people attending those services? That pain has already become words that can never be spoken, tears that can never be shed, sinking all the deeper into their innermost hearts; in the development of history, consciously or unconsciously, it is now taking on new forms, and, given the good will of humankind, the meaning of these events has great power to spread and little by little is gaining an enormous force. I have now completed this manuscript, but I am ashamed that for six years I neglected to compose poems about these events; that this collection of poems is too meager; and that my powers are too weak to convey the true sense of these events and to impress on the hearts of all people the actual facts and their continuing importance-these are not merely recollections-for the future of every person, people, nation, of humankind. This is a gift, from me-no, from us in Hiroshima-to the people of the entire world: to eyes that twinkle stealthily no matter how grim the situation, into gentle hands that cannot help reaching out, instinctively, with sympathy; it is the greatest gift of which I am capable. I should like to add this: I sing in my poems of this desire for peace; yet the times are going in such a backward direction that people must be stripped of even their basic human freedoms. I have virtually no chance of making a living with this kind of literary activity-that goes without saying, and the pressures, tangible and intangible, increase; they are growing steadily worse. This is proof positive of how political conditions in Japan today disregard the people's will and lead again to war. TOGE SANKICHI

Moreover, I wish to say that the people who are quickening these pressures on me are taking action hostile to humankind itself. This collection of poems is a gift to all people who love humankind; at the same time, it is a book of admonition to those others.

May

10, 1952

POEMS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

Toge Sankichi

The Hiroshima Murals of Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi: A Note

PROSE AND POETRY are not the only forms of artistic response to Hiroshima. In the world of film, Alain Resnais' Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959), based on a script by Marguerite Duras, is the most noteworthy attempt to deal head-on with Hiroshima. Other films, in Japan and elsewhere, have dealt with life in the nuclear age. Kurosawa Akira produced !kimono no kiroku (The record of a living being [sometimes translated: I live in fearl) (1955), the story of a businessman who begins to take seriously the threat of nuclear war. The film was a commercial failure, but it has its merits. Other film treatments of the atomic bomb range from Stanley Kramer's On the Beach (1959), based on the novel by Nevil Shute, to Stanley Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove (1964) to The Day After (1983), produced for television. In the world of sculpture, the most striking work is that of Kita Kazuaki (1934- ). 1 In the world of painting, the preeminent artists are Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi. Together, they have produced one of the most striking artistic legacies of the twentieth century. Maruki Iri was born in 1901, two years before the birth of Ota Yoko, four years before the birth of Hara Tamiki. He was the eldest son in a farming family living in a village that was then on the northern outskirts of the city of Hiroshima. As urban sprawl came to Japan, the city engulfed the village. But lri's memories go back to the time before:

The Ota River flowed past the house, and from early each morning dozens of boats floated past, loaded with lumber and firewood. Just in front of the house the river was still, so there they stuck in their sweeps and used them like oars. The squeak of the sweeps against the gunwales resounded and gave ' See Society to Study Kazuaki Kita's Creative History, ed., The World of Kazuaki Kita's Art: The New Era (After Hiroshima 42=1987) (Tokyo: 1987). THE HIROSHIMA MURALS: A NOTE

371

rise to a fine air. While rowing their sweeps, men proud of their voices sang boat songs .... 2

Resolving at an early age to become a painter, Iri gravitated toward the traditional medium of ink and paper; he also remembers an early attraction to poster art. Irijoined and left many groups of artists in the 1930s. He was influenced by the proletarian art movement and after the war joined the Communist Party; both Iri and Toshi would be expelled from the Party in the 1950s for opposing all nuclear testing, including that of the Soviet Union. Some of the ink paintings he did before embarking on the Hiroshima paintings are huge affairs: a painting of a lion (1939) measures roughly six feet by ten feet; a painting of a peacock (1940), roughly six by eight; a group of horses (1940) stretches across a screen twenty-two feet long. 3 Maruki Toshi was born in 1912, eldest daughter of a Buddhist priest in a small town in Hokkaido. She began drawing early, not always under supervision. As she remembers in her delightful autobiography: It was a day no one was home. I don't know why. I may have been five years old. I noticed the lid of the box in which Daddy kept his ink stone had been left open. I tried rubbing ink like Daddy. Then I took a brush and tried dipping it in the ink. Then I wanted to paint something. Why not that school excursion that went past the house a while ago? No paper? Well, this wall is perfect. Beautiful white paper, newly papered. Two first graders, with hats on and rice ball lunches at their waists, holding hands, walk along side by side, singing. Next girls holding hands-one, two, three, four, still morego by. Five, six, ten, twenty, fifty. Now the second grade. I covered the wall completely. Nothing for it but to continue the painting on the adjacentfusuma. The fusuma, too, filled up. So now slide it back and continue on the corridor wall. Second grade, third grade: on and on went the school excursion . . . Grandma and Mother came home; I don't recall how surprised or sad they were. I'm sure I wasn't scolded. Had I been scolded, I'm sure I'd remember.4 2 Maruki Iri, unpublished autobiography written circa 1980, p. 17. I am indebted to John Junkerman for access to his copy.

3

Maruki Iri, Garyu (Reclining dragon) (Tokyo: 1970) is a partial catalog of his work.

4

Maruki Toshi, Onna egaki no tanjo (Birth of a female painter) (Tokyo: Asahi sensho 93,

1977), pp. 22-23.

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So, like Iri, Toshi got an early start; like him, she had a flair for largescale work. Toshi's academic career included art school in Tokyo from age seventeen to twenty-one. After graduation she taught for four years in a primary school near Tokyo. In 1937 she decided it was either teaching or art; she chose the latter. There followed a period of several years of unsettled existence, including service as governess to children of Japanese diplomats in Moscow, a stay in the South Pacific, and an affair with Maruki Iri. Only after the affair began did Toshi learn that Iri was still married--to his second wife. Iri and Toshi were married m 194I. The two lived in Tokyo and worked separately, he on ink paintings, she on oils. Together, they resisted the wartime pressures to paint patriotic art; together, they experienced the bombing of Tokyo. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, lri got on the next train to help out. From the train he witnessed the firebombing of Nagoya; then the train made its way by fits and starts to Hiroshima: [A ]s the train neared Hiroshima, all the trains coming this way carried victims of the bomb. In the train I was on, there were barely five or six passengers left, and I was assailed by a feeling of total abandonment, that I was about to go off for good into another world .... Even after the train stopped, I was unable to bestir myself for some time. Thinking this was it, I was barely able to stagger down off the train like a sleepwalker; and when I did, I found neither anything like a station nor any signs of life. The city of Hiroshima was a field of rubble, complete and total, and fires were still burning everywhere. It was particularly striking that in the dark I could see Hiroshima Bay and even the islands of Etajima and Miyajima. s

He proceeded on foot to Yokogawa Station and thence home. Toshi joined him several days later. She described her arrival in these words: "Burned pines, houses from which the roof tiles had been blown off, houses smashed to pieces, telephone poles and wires burned like fishbones continued; and then a plain as far as the eye could see up ahead, a wasteland completely gray. Here and there a charred storehouse survived, giving off smoke and flame. The train ' Maruki Iri, unpublished autobiography, pp. 88-89. THE HIROSHIMA MURALS: A NOTE

373

stopped. Hiroshima." 6 The two spent a month in Hiroshima tending Iri's family (his father and two uncles would soon die) and helping with the general cleanup. After they returned to Tokyo, Toshi developed the symptoms of radiation sickness. For several years after 1945, Iri and Toshi continued their separate artistic efforts, and neither of them dealt with Hiroshima. In 1948, all that changed. These are Toshi's words: The shibboleth among our artists' group was "It's time to build. Paint peaceful, bright faces!" For all we were worth, we painted young men and young women. Even lri, who had painted only quiet still-life works and landscapes before, began to do drawings of people .... We thought we had to paint faces of bright, healthy Japanese. But somehow what we wound up producing were faces with worried looks. Something must still be wrong with our techniques, we kept saying as we painted; but whatever the reason, no shining brightness came from within us. It was on a rainy summer night all of three years after the bomb fell that we resolved to paint pictures of the atomic bomb. Without either of us having to say so, we agreed; we shuddered and nestled close to each other.... What had we been doing for three full years? Was it muddleheadedness from the atomic bomb? No, the painters at the time in Hiroshima forgot to paint; and although we went to Hiroshima after the bomb fell, we wandered about half-crazed and starving, just like those injured by the atomic bomb. I had been praised for being a demon for work; yet in the month in Hiroshima I did only two drawings. Somehow sketching gave me a bad feeling. Uninjured ourselves, we could not bear the futility of observing those who were injured; it seemed more important to treat injuries than to paint, more important to feed the injured than to paint. So we did our best to act as if we did not see the corpses, and we dreaded being called to by people who had collapsed and could not move. There must be all kinds of excuses-we had no paper, we had no pens; but true artists should have penetrated on the spot to the heart of this hell that should not have existed in this human world, faced the reality angry and fresh, and painted it out; we were fainthearted painters. We returned from Hiroshima to Tokyo, and for three years we were muddleheaded with the words "peace," "construction." During the war we were muddleheaded from the war; in Hiroshima, muddleheaded from the atomic bomb; in peace, muddleheaded from peace. In retrospect, we had 6

Maruki Toshi, Onna egaki no tanji5, p. r 17.

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THE HIROSHIMA MURALS: A NOTE

been slow, but it still might not be too late. Because no one else was painting Hiroshima. 7

That night began an artistic collaboration that has lasted four decades. Iri has commented with simple eloquence on the background that led them to paint Hiroshima: We don't paint these subjects because we enjoy painting them. It's not out of some desire to do something for humanity or to make a point. We painted the bomb because we had seen Hiroshima, and we thought there had to be some record of what had happened. But we could not have done those paintings if we had not already been different in our way of thinking about the world. We had opposed the war, we were socialists, and we were not satisfied only painting pretty pictures. That's the kind of people we were, so we painted the atomic bomb. It happened naturally. 8

The Marukis painted monumental murals of Hiroshima into the 1960s, completing a series of fourteen, each roughly six feet by twenty-four feet. The focus of their paintings was people, drawn almost life-size. In all their paintings of Hiroshima, there is no recognizable landmark-no atomic dome, no eternal flame, no specific bridge or riverbank or temple or shrine. Instead, there are people. When they started painting Hiroshima, there were no photographs of Hiroshima and only a few paintings-showing solitary figures wandering through the moonscape Hiroshima had become. Iri commented in 1981: "The atomic bomb isn't a matter of buildings. Unless you paint people, it's not the atomic bomb. Unless you paint the condition of the people, it's not the atomic bomb .... I'm not sure whether I hit upon it or she did, but we had to paint people."9 The parallel with the poems of Toge Sankichi is striking. Indeed, Iri's statement can stand as a manifesto for Hara Tamiki and Ota Yoko, too. The atomic bomb is people. 1

Maruki Toshi, Onna egaki no tanji5, pp. 125-127.

John Dower and John Junkerman, eds., The Hiroshima Murals: The Art of Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1986), p. 125.

8

Kitagawa Furamu, ed., Contemporary Human Documents: Watakushi de wa naku, Shiranuhi no umi ga (Contemporary human documents: Not I, but Shiranuhi Sea) (Tokyo: Gendai

o

kikakushitsu, 1981), p. 74. THE HIROSHIMA MURALS: A NOTE

375

At the early exhibitions Toshi found herself talking with viewers about the paintings: "In order to explain, I had begun giving talks. Iri said to please stop giving talks in front of our own paintings. But when I was asked questions, I had to answer." The spoken word led to arguments, and Iri commented, "Such things happen because you say what there is no need to say." Toshi writes: I decided to write a statement and paste it up instead of giving talks .... To be sure, I ran into the criticism that I had sullied the purity of the paintings. That may be so. But what wasn't said completely in pictures I had to communicate orally. And what I couldn't communicate orally, I had to write. By whatever means it took, I wanted to communicate the truth of Hiroshima to as many people as possible. How can that be impure? What after all is art?ro

The dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima forced Hara, Ota, Toge, and the Marukis to face this question. Their achievements force readers and viewers to confront the same question. Paintings by the Marukis adorn the covers of the fifteen-volume compendium of the atomic bomb literature of Japan. The Marukis had no personal contact with Hara Tamiki, but then few people did. Ota Yoko mentioned Toshi at least twice, both times in 1952. In July, Ota wrote: "[Maruki] Toshiko has said that since 300,000 people died, her own lifetime is not time enough to paint their deaths one by one; her calculation touched me." Five months later Ota linked the Hiroshima paintings with her own City of Corpses and Human Tatters and stressed the inadequacy of all three, and even of recently published photographs of the destruction the bomb wrought. The Marukis' connection with Toge was indeed close. One of Toge's poems, "Entreaty,'' is a celebration of their painting; Iri was among the support group at the hospital the day Toge died; a painting by Toshi adorns the cover of the volume memorializing Toge, and a drawing by her is the frontispiece for the standard edition of Poems of the Atomic Bomb; the Marukis' catalog of 1967 includes a number of poems, among them excerpts from Toge's "Grave Marker." II

'° Maruki Toshi, Onna egaki no tanjo, pp. 133-135.

" "Sakka no taido" (The attitude of the writer) (July 1952), in Ota Yoko shu 2.3I1, and "Ikinokori no shinri" (The psychology of the survivor) (November 1952), in Ota Yoko shu 2. 320. A detail from the Marukis' first mural forms the endpapers for Ota's collected works. THE HIROSHIMA MURALS: A NOTE

MURALS REPRESENTED IN THIS VOLUME

The title page is a section of "Water," third in the Hiroshima series (1950). Maruki Toshi's text for "Water" reads in part: An injured mother fled with her baby along the river. Stumbling into deep water, then panicking and scrambling back into shallows, cooling her head with water as the raging flames enveloped the river, fleeing, fleeing, she came at long last to this spot. She offered her breast to her child and only then realized it was dead. A 20th-century image of mother and child. Injured mother cradles her dead child. A mother-and-child image of despair, is it not? Mother and child should be an image of hope.

Preceding page 3 is a section of "Fire," second painting in the series (1950). Maruki Toshi's text (there are at least two versions, and this passage is from the earlier) notes that the artists used "traditional Japanese forms" in painting the flames; stylized flames such as these appear in paintings as early as the 13th century. After page 41 is a section of "Relief," the eighth painting (1954). Maruki Toshi was the model for the woman pulling the cart. After page 143 is a section of "Boys and Girls," the fifth painting (1951). In the superb documentary film about the Marukis and their art (Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima [1986; First Run Features]), Maruki Toshi says: "No matter how cruel it is, and it is cruel-it is an atrocity ... when I draw that I don't want to only draw the tragedy. I always want to depict the beauty as well. The face may be deformed, but there is a breast or a finger that is beautiful. The body may be burned, but the profile of the face is still beautiful. It is a dreadful, cruel scene, but I want to paint it with kindness." Note the contrast between the burns of the girl in the left foreground and the unmarked skin of the others; Maruki Toshi's text notes that some bodies had no visible wounds. (The silhouette on the back endpaper is from this painting. The text reads: "Two sisters, horribly disfigured, embraced.") After page 301 is a section of"Yaizu" (1955). Yaizu was the home port of the Lucky Dragon, the fishing ship contaminated by fallout from the American test of a hydrogen bomb at Bikini (1954); one member of the crew died. The right half of the painting depicts a THE HIROSHIMA MURALS: A NOTE

377

ghostly Lucky Dragon suspended in mid-air over the ocean; the left half, from which this section comes, depicts the townspeople of Yaizu. Maruki Toshi's text states in part: "Three times the Japanese have fallen victim to nuclear weapons." The revised version adds: "Yaizu and Bikini: a shared fate." Maruki Toshi and Maruki Iri. Courtesy of the Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels

THE HIROSHIMA MURALS: A NOTE

Glossary

bon: Summer (mid-July or mid-August) festival, Buddhist in origin, in honor of the spirits of the ancestors. bunraku: Traditional theatrical form featuring large hand-held puppets. butsudan: Cabinet in the home for image of Buddha and for ancestral mortuary tablets. Normally, families make offerings of food, flowers, and incense on a regular basis. dokudami: Foul-smelling perennial plant, family Saururaceae; Houttuynia cordata. Juroshiki: Carrying-cloth. Jusuma: Sliding door or screen. futon: Padded quilt used for bedding. geta: Wooden clogs. Hakenkreuz: Swastika (Toge reproduces Hakenkreuz phonetically). hibachi: Charcoal brazier, used as a space heater. hiragana: Cursive syllabary (cf. katakana). katakana: Block syllabary (cf. hiragana). kotatsu: Space heater, usually set into floor under low table so that family dangles feet into the heated space. koto: Thirteen-stringed zither, horizontal (nearly two meters long) and semicylindrical; played by plucking with the right hand. nembutsu: Prayer/recitation-" All hail, Amida Buddha!" (Namu Amida butsu)for rebirth into Amida's Western Paradise. pika-don: Literally, flash-boom; the colloquial expression for the flash (pika), then boom (don) of the atomic bomb. sake: Rice wine. Salvarsan: Arsenical powder for treatment of syphilis; superceded by penicillin. sembei: Cracker, made with rice or wheat flour. sen: One-hundredth of a yen; in the early postwar years, the exchange rate was fixed at 360 yen to the U.S. dollar. shoJi: Sliding screen or door. tanka: Traditional poetic form of thirty-one syllables. tatami: Rush mats (roughly 3' x 6 that form the flooring ofliving quarters of traditional Japanese home. tokonoma: Alcove, often used for displaying works of art. torii: Sacred gate to Shinto shrine. yen: Japanese currency (equal to mo sen), set in postwar years at 360 to the U.S. dollar. yukata: Unlined cotton garment for informal wear; bathrobe. 1

GLOSSARY

)

379

Guide to Names and Places

NAMES

Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission. Successor to Joint Commission for the Investigation of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb in Japan; established by presidential order, under the general direction of the National Academy of Sciences and with funds from the Atomic Energy Commission. Hiroshima offices were located on Hijiyama. Target of considerable Japanese suspicion and antagonism; cf. Robert Jay Lifton, Death in Life, esp. p. 344. Asada Tsunesaburo: 1900-1984. Member, Osaka Imperial University Research Team. Asano Nagamoto: 1842-1937. Last daimyo of Hiroshima. Awaya Senkichi: 1898-1945. Mayor of Hiroshima. Carroll, Dr. James: 1854-1907. Assistant surgeon, U.S. Army; bacteriologist for U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission; author with Walter Reed of several articles on yellow fever. Carroll contracted yellow fever, as did Lazear; but Carroll recovered. Chugoku shimbun: The most important of several newspapers published in Hiroshima. Curie, Madame Marie: 1867-1934. Polish-born scientist, winner of the Nobel Prize for chemistry in 191 l for her work on radium (she had shared an earlier Nobel, for physics, in 1903). The Discovery of Zero: Account of the life ofJean Victor Poncelet (1788-1867), French expert in geometry and industrial mechanics; prisoner of war, November 1812-June 1814. The Iwanami shinsho series is roughly comparable to Modern Library. The Fall of the House of Usher: Masterpiece of Edgar Allen Poe ( 1809--1849), published in l 845. Farrell, Brig. Gen. (later Major Gen.) Thomas: 1891-1967. Construction engineer. Deputy commander, atomic bomb project, 1944-1945; head of Manhattan District group. Fujiwara Takeo: l897-198r. Professor, Hiroshima University. Gide, Andre: l869"-195r. French writer; author of Si le grain ne meurt (Ifit die) (1921). Gorgas, Col. (later Major General) William C.: 1854-1920. Sanitarian, surgeon general of the U.S. Army; appointed chief sanitary officer of Havana, 1898. Gorky, Maxim (Maksim Gorkii): 1868-1936. Russian writer; published The ABCC:

GUIDE TO NAMES AND PLACES

Three (Tpoe) in 1900. A literal translation of Gorky's original (which has only four lines) is as follows: "The clouds are gray, I and the earth is damp: I Thus comes autumn. I But I have neither house nor home, I and all my clothes-one hole upon another." Compare the version in Gorky, The Three, trans. Margaret Wettlin (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, n.d.), p. 84. Author also of The Lower Depths (Na Dnye) (1902). Hata Shunroku: 1879-1962. Field Marshal, Imperial Japanese Army. Hayate: Nakajima Ki-84; fighter plane designed and developed during the war. Hermann und Dorothea: Long poem (1797) by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). Junod, Marcel: l904-196r. Swiss surgeon; vice-chair, International Committee of the Red Cross; author, Le troisieme Combattant: de l'yperite en Abyssinie a la bombe atomique d'Hiroshima (Paris: Payot, 1947), published in English as Warrior without Weapons, trans. Edward Fitzgerald (London: Jonathan Cape, 1951). Kusunoki Masashige: Died 1336; legendary swordsman, warrior chief, active in the loyalist cause of Emperor Go-Daigo (Kem mu Restoration, l 3 3 313 36). Lawrence, W. H.: 1916-1972. New York Times correspondent in the Pacific, 1945· (Easily confused with Laurence, William Leonard (1888-1977), who was the only journalist present at Alamagordo in 1945 and who was an eyewitness to the Nagasaki bombing. Laurence was also the author of (among other books) Dawn over Zero: The Story of the Atomic Bomb (New York: Knopf, 1946); The Hell Bomb (New York: Knopf, 1951); and Men and Atoms: The Discovery, the Uses, and the Future of Atomic Ene1;1;y (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1959).] Lazcar, Dr. Jesse W.: 1866-1900. Assistant surgeon, United States Army; member with Recd and Carroll (and Agramonte), U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission; died of yellow fever. Lee, Fitzhugh: l 83 5-l 90 5. Soldier, bureaucrat, governor of Virginia 1886- l 890; consul general, Havana, 1896-1898; military governor, Pinar dcl Rio. Life ofa Woman: Aru onna no shogai (1921), novel by poet and novelist Shimazaki Toson, 1872-1943. Maruyama Sadao: 1901-1945. Prominent Shingeki actor. Meiji Restoration: 1868. The coup d'etat that brought an end to the Tokugawa shogunate (1600--1868) and established a central government that soon undertook major modernizing policies. Mori Motonari: l497-157r. Powerful military leader and daimyo in Hiroshima area. Morrison, Philip: 1915- . Physicist and group leader, Los Alamos, 1944-1946; professor at Cornell (1946-1965) and M.I. T. (1976- ). Naka Midori: 1909-1945. Actress. Newman, Brigadier General: Identity unknown. GUIDE TO NAMES AND PLACES

Otsuka Seiken: 1884-1945. General Superintendent. During the war the Japanese government established this position as an intermediate step between the national government and the prefectural governors (several of whom reported to each general superintendent). Oughterson, Col. Ashley W.: 1895-1956. Clinical professor of surgery, Yale University; surgical consultant in the Pacific Theater of Operations (i.e., to Gen. Douglas MacArthur), served on Joint Commission for the Investigation of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb inJapan; editor (with S. Warren), Medical Effects of the Atomic Bomb in japan (1956). Reed, Dr. Walter: 1851-1902. Head of U.S. Army Yellow Fever Commission. Sawada Toichiro: 1895-1982. Professor, Kyushu University Medical Faculty. Sharaku: Toshiisai Sharaku, active 1794-1795; famous for woodblock prints of kabuki actors. Taira no Kiyomori: l l l 8-1l8 l. For legend of his stopping the sun, and its use by Hotta Kiyomi, a playwright from Hiroshima, see David Goodman, Af ter Apocalypse (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), pp. 13, 2324. Togo Heihachiro: 1848--1934. Admiral; architect of Japan's naval victory over Russia, 1905. Tsuzuki Masao: 1892-1961. Head of Department of Surgery, Tokyo Imperial University; director, Medical Division ofJapan Research Council. War and Peace: Voina i mir (1869), masterpiece of Count Leo Tolstoy (Lev Tolstoi, 1828-1910). Warren, Commander Shields: 1898-1980. Pathologist, New England Deaconess Hospital, 1927-1963; member Nav TechJap, Team l l (to investigate impact of atomic bomb on Nagasaki). There was also a second Warren: Col. Stafford L. Warren, 1896- ; head of survey team, Sept. 8-19, 1945, representing the Manhattan District; director, Manhattan District Project, r 943; chief of medical section, 1943-1946; head of medical section of Farrell team. Watanabe Masumi: l 898-1987. Red Cross doctor. Wells, H. G.: 1866-1946. English writer; prolific author, with at least a halfdozen titles that could be translated into Japanese as Kitarubeki sekai. They include The Shape of Things to Come, "A Story of the Days to Come," and The Way the World Is Going. Winckelmann, Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Art: Johann Joachim Winckelmann, 1717-1768; author of Gedanken uber die Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst (Thoughts on the imitation of Greek works in painting and sculpture) (1755). Yi Kon: The Korean prince who, according to Ota Yoko, was killed at Hiroshima. A prince died at Hiroshima, but it was a brother of Yi Kon: Yi U (1912-1945), lieutenant colonel in the Japanese Imperial Army. Zero: Mitsubishi A6M Reisen, best Japanese fighter of the war. GUIDE TO NAMES AND PLACES

PLACES

Aioi Bridge: The T-shaped bridge at the heart of Hiroshima that served as the target for the Enola Gay's bombardier. See Map 3. Aki-Nakano: See Map 2. Army Clothing Depot: See Map 3. Asano Library: See Map 3. Atsugi: City in central Honshu; in September 1945 Atsugi was the landing point for General Douglas MacArthur and the Occupation forces. Attu Island: Farthest west of the Aleutians, Attu was controlled by Japan betweenJunc 1942 and June 1943· Bikini: Atoll, one of Marshall Islands in Northern Pacific; site of U.S. atomic bomb tests, 1946-1958. Bingo Offing: See Map l. Bungo Strait: North-south waterway between the islands of Shikoku and Kyushu. Chiba: City and prefecture on the eastern side of Tokyo Bay. Chiyoda: Ota writes Chiyoda, but there is no such section of Hiroshima; the only Chiyoda in Hiroshima Prefecture is thirty miles north of Hiroshima. Drop the middle character, and the name becomes Senda. See Map 3. Chashu: Daimiate on the western end of Honshu; one of major players in the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Chugoku Building: See Map 3. Chugoku Range: East-west mountain range that runs throughout western Honshu. See Maps l and 2. City Hall: See Map 3. Dobashi: See Map 4.

East Parade Ground: See Map 5. East Police Headquarters: See Map 5. Eba: See Map 4. Ehime Prefecture: Prefecture occupying the northwest quarter of Shikoku. Enka Bridge: See Map 5. Etajima: Island south of Hiroshima; site (1888-1945) of the Imperial Naval Academy. Sec Map 2. Fuji, Mt.: See Map l. Fukushima: Capital of Fukushima Prefecture in north-central Honshu. Fukuya Department Store: See Map 5. Fukuyama: City on eastern edge of Hiroshima Prefecture, on main rail line between Hiroshima and Kobe. Funairi Kawaguchi-cha: See Map 4. Furuta: Hamlet in western Hiroshima Prefecture. Gion: Sec Map 2. Gosasa Mountain: Sec Map 2. Hachihommatsu: See Map 2. Hachijajima: Small island 300 kilometers due south of Tokyo. Hagi: City on Sea ofJapan in Yamaguchi Prefecture, almost directly north of Ube. Hakushima: See Map 4. Hakushima Kuken-cho: See Map 4. Hakushima Post and Telegraph: See Map 5. Hamada: See Map 1. Hatchabori: See Map 2. Hatsukaichi: Sec Map 6. Hera: Sec Map 6. Hijiyama: Sec Map 3. Hikari: City on Inland Sea, southeastern Yamaguchi Prefecture, 3 5 GUIDE TO NAMES AND PLACES

kilometers east and south oflwakuni. Hirataya-cho: See Map 4. Hiratsuka: See Map 4. Hiroshima Castle: See Map 3. Hiroshima Prefecture: One of prewar Japan's 40-odd administrative divisions (roughly comparable to American states), bounded on the west by Yamaguchi, on the north by Shimane, on the northeast by Tottori, and on the east by Okayama Prefectures. Hiroshima Station: See Map 3. Hiroshima Technical School: See Map 3. Hongan temple: See Map 3. Hongo: See Map 2. Honkawa Bridge: See Map 3. Horikawa-cho: Sec Map 4. Imperial Naval Academy: See Map 2. Inland Sea: See Map 2. Itsukaichi: See Map 6. Itsukushima: See Map 6. Iwakuni: City in eastern Yamaguchi Prefecture, site of industrial complex and (after the war) of major American air base. See Map 6. Iwate Prefecture: Prefecture on northern Honshu's Pacific coast. Iwojima: Island 750 miles south of Tokyo, captured by the American forces after bitter struggle, February-March 1945; proper Japanese reading is Iojima. Izumi Villa: Scenic spot, Kaminagarekawa-cho, originally the detached villa of the Asano family, with formal garden known as Shukkeien. Ota y oko refers to it once as Asano Sentei; John HerGUIDE TO NAMES AND PLACES

sey (Hiroshima) refers to it as Asano Park. See Map 5. Japan Red Cross Hospital: See Map 3. Kagoshima: See Map r. Kaita: See Map 2. Kake: See Map 2. Kamaishi: Coastal city in central Iwate Prefecture. Kamiya-cha: See Map 4. Kamiyanagi-cho: See Map 4. Kanawa Island: See Map 3. Kanazawa: Capital of Ishikawa Prefecture on the Japan Sea coast of central Honshu. See Map r. Kii Channel: North-South waterway between eastern Shikoku and Honshu. Kobe: Capital of Hyogo Prefecture. See Map r. Kochi Prefecture: One of prewar Japan's 40-odd administrative divisions (roughly comparable to American states), comprising most of southern Shikoku. Koi: See Map 3. Koishikawa: Section of Tokyo. Kojimachi: Section of Tokyo. Kokutaiji: See Map 3. Kudamatsu: City on Inland Sea in southeastern Yamaguchi Prefecture, 40 kilometers west and south oflwakuni. Kumano Sea: See Map r. Kure: Important port city south of Hiroshima, major naval base and shipbuilding site. See Map 2. Kusatsu: See Map 4. Kushima: See Map 6. Kyobashi: See Map 5. Kyoto: See Map r. Kyushu: See Map r. Marianas: Island group in Western Pa-

Marianas (cont.) cific, including Guam, Saipan, and Tinian; mandated ~o Japan by League of Nations (1920), occupied by United States in 1944, and mandated to United States in 1947. The Enola Gay took off from Tinian with the atomic bomb it dropped on Hiroshima. Matsuyama: See Map I. Midori Kansha-dori: See Map 4. Mihara: See Map 2. Misasa Shrine: See Map 3. Miyajima: Town on Hiroshima Bay opposite Itsukushima, the island famous for Itsukushima Shrine with its huge torii out in the water. See Map 6. Miyoshi: See Map 2. Mori Works: Hara's fictional name for the Hara factory in Kamiyanagicho. Muroto Point: See Map 1. Musashino: City in Tokyo Prefecture. Nagarckawa: See Map 4. Nagasaki: Capital of Nagasaki Prefecture in western Kyushu, target of second atomic bomb. See Map I.

Nagoya: See Map r. Nerima: Section ofTokyo. Nigitsu Park: See Map 5. Nihombashi: Section of Tokyo. Ninoshima: See Map 6. Nishi-Kanda: Section ofTokyo. Nishi-Teramachi: See Map 4. N obori-cho: Sec Map 4. Nomijima: Sec Map 6. Okayama: City on Honshu Coast of Inland Sea, roughly halfway between Hiroshima and Kobe; capital of Okayama Prefecture.

Okinawa: Largest of Ryukyu Islands south of Kyushu; site of bitter fighting (April-June 1945) leading to Allied conquest. Omiyajima: See Map 2. Onomichi: See Map 2. Osaka: See Map r. Ota River: See Map 2. Otake: See Map 2. Otemachi: Sec Map 4. Rail bridge: See Map 5. Sada Point: Sec Map I. Saijo: See Map 2. Saiku-machi: See Map 4. Sakae Bridge: See Map 5. Seibi Primary School: See Map 5. Senda: See Map 3. Sensui Pass: Sec Map 6. Shimanc Prefecture: Prefecture immediately north of Hiroshima Prefecture, onJapan Sea coast. Sotoku Middle School: See Map 3. Sumiyoshi Bridge: See Map 4. Takasu: See Map 4. Takeya-cho: See Map 4. Teishin (Communications) Hospital: Also Post and Communications Hospital, Hiroshima Communications Hospital, and Communications Department (P. 0.) Hospital; site oflabors of Dr. Hachiya Michihiko (Hiroshima Diary). See Map 5. Temma: See Map 4. Temma River: See Map 4. Tohoku: Northeast section of Honshu. Tokaido: Eastern Sea Road, highway linking Tokyo and Kyoto. Tokiwa Bridge: See Map 5. Tosa: City in Kochi Prefecture on south-central coast of Shikoku. GUIDE TO NAMES AND PLACES

Tsuda: See Map 2. Ube: See Map I. Ujina: See Map 4. Ushita: See Map 4. West Parade Ground: See Map 5. Xhabei: Section of Shanghai. Yaga: Neighborhood 2 kilometers due east of Hiroshima Station. Yahata: See Map 6. Yamaguchi Prefecture: One ofJapan's 44 administrative divisions (roughly comparable to American states), immediately west of Hiroshima Prefecture, compris-

GUIDE TO NAMES AND PLACES

ing western end of Honshu. Yanagi-cha: Neighborhood in Hiroshima, comprised ofKamiyanagi-chO (see Map 4) and Shimoyanagi-cho immediately to the south. Yanaizu: See Map 2. Yokogawa: See Map 4. Yokohama: See Map r. Yoshijima Hommachi: See Map 4. Yoshiwa: Village on western edge of Hiroshima Prefecture, 25 kilometers northwest ofHatsukaichi.

Suggestions for Further Reading

READERS interested in further materials in Japanese should turn first of all to the collected works (cited in the notes) of Hara Tamiki, Ota Yoko, and Toge Sankichi and then to the fifteen-volume Nihon no gembaku bungaku (The atomic bomb literature ofJapan) (Tokyo: Horupu, 1983). Readers interested in further materials in English should turn to the followmg:

WRITINGS OF SURVIVORS

Akizuki, Tatsuichiro. Nagasaki 1945. Trans. Keiichi Nagata. Ed. Gordon Honeycombe. London, Melbourne, and New York: Quartet, l98I. An earlier version of this translation was published privately in l97T Document of ABombed Nagasaki. Originally published as Nagasaki gembakki (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1966). Chujo, Kazuo. Nuclear Holocaust: A Personal Account I Watakushi no Hiroshima no gembaku. Trans. Asahi Evening News. Tokyo: Asahi shimbun, 1983. Simultaneous English I Japanese edition. Hachiya, Michihiko. Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of aJapanese Physician, August 6--September 30, 1945. Trans. and ed. Warner Wells. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955· Originally published as Hiroshima nikki (Tokyo: Asahi shimbunsha, 1955). Kanda, Mikio, ed. Widows of Hiroshima: The Life Stories of Nineteen Peasant Wives. Trans. Taeko Midorikawa. New York: St. Martin's, 1989. Originally published as Gembaku ni otto o ubawarete (Tokyo: lwanami shoten, 1982).

Kurihara, Sadako. "The Songs of Hiroshima-When Hiroshima Is Spoken of." Trans. Cheryl Lammers, Wayne Lammers, Laylehe Masaoka, Osamu Masaoka, Cheiron McMahill, Miyao Ohara, and Setsuko Thurlow. Hiroshima: Anthology Publishing Association, 1980. Kurihara, Sadako. "Four Poems (1941-45) by the Hiroshima Poet Kurihara Sadako." Trans. Richard H. Minear. Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 2I. l :46-49 (January-March 1989). Nagai, Takashi. The Bells of Nagasaki. Trans. William Johnston. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1984. Originally published as Nagasaki no kane (Tokyo: Hibiya shuppan, 1949). SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Nakazawa, Keiji. Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen): A Cartoon Story of Hiroshima. Trans. Project Gen. Tokyo: Project Gen, 1978. Nakazawa, Keiji. Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen): The Day After. Trans. Dadakai and Project Gen. Philadelphia: New Society Publishers, 1988. Oe, Kenzabur6, ed. The Crazy Iris, and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath. New York: Grove, 1985. (This is the American edition of Atomic Aftermath: Short Stories about Hiroshima and Nagasaki [Tokyo: Shueisha, 1984].) Included are Ibusc Masuji's "The Crazy Iris" ("Kakitsubata," 1951), translated by Ivan Morris; Hara Tamiki's "Summer Flower" ("Natsu no hana," the first part of the work translated here), translated by George Saito, slightly emended; Hara's "The Land of Heart's Desire" ("Shingan no kuni"), translated by John Bester; Oda Katsuzo's "Human Ashes" ("Ningen no hai," 1966), translated by Burton Watson; Ota Yoko's "Fireflies" ("Hotaru," 1953), translated by Koichi Nakagawa; Sata Ineko's "The Colorless Paintings" ("Iro no nai e," 1961), translated by Shiloh Ann Shimura; Hayashi Kyoko's "The Empty Can" ("Akikan," 1979), translated by Margaret Mitsutani; Inoue Mitsuharu's "The House of Hands" ("Tc no ie," 1960), translated by Frederick Uleman and Koichi Nakagawa; and Takcnishi Hiroko's "The Rite" ("Gishiki," 1963), translated by Eileen Kato. Of these authors, Hara, Ota, and Sata experienced Hiroshima, and Hayashi experienced Nagasaki. Osada, Arata, comp. Children of the Atomic Bomb: Testament of the Boys and Girls ofHiroshima. Trans. Jean Dan and Ruth Sieben-Morgen. Ann Arbor: Midwest Publishers, International, 1982. (Authorized reprint of the first English edition, Tokyo: Uchida Rokakuho, 1959.) According to the "Publisher's Note to the American Edition" (n.p.), Children ojthe A-Bomb (New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1963) is an abridgment published "against the wishes of Dr. Osada." Originally published as Gembaku no ko-Hiroshima no shonen shojo no uttae (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1951). Saeki, Shoichi, ed. The Catch and Other War Stories. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 198r. Reprint (with one deletion) of a volume by the same press, The Shadow of Sunrise (1966). The stories are Oe's "The Catch" ("Shiiku," 1958), translated by John Bester; Umezaki Haruo's "Sakurajima" ("Sakurajima," 1946), translated by D. E. Mills; Hara's "Summer Flower," translated by George Saito; and Hayashi Fumiko's "Bones" ("Hone," 1949), translated by Ted T. Takaya. Selden, Kyoko, ed. and trans. "Poems by Atomic Bomb Survivors." Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 19.2:17-23 (April-June 1987). Selden, Kyoko, trans. "Hayashi Ky6ko's 'Ritual of Death' (Matsuri no ba r19751)." japan Interpreter 12. l: 54-93 (Winter 1978). Selden, Kyoko, ed. and trans. "Hayashi Kyoko's 'Two Grave Markers' (Futari

390

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

no bohyo [1975])." Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 18.1:23-35 (JanuaryMarch 1986). Selden, Kyoko and Mark, eds. The Atomic Bomb: Voices from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New York: M. E. Sharpe, forthcoming. Shiotsuki, Masao. Doctor at Nagasaki: My First Assignment Was Mercy Killing (Hatsushigoto wa anrakusatsu datta). Tokyo: Kosei, 1987. Shohno [Shono], Naomi, ed. Hibakusha: Survivors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Trans. Gaynor Sekimor. Tokyo: Kosei, 1986. Shono, Naomi, ed. The Legacy of Hiroshima (Hiroshima wa mukashibanashi ka). Trans. Tomoko Nakamura. Tokyo: Kosei, 1986. Siemes, John A. Uohannes] [S. J. ]. "Hiroshima: Eye-witness." Trans. Averill A. Liebow. Saturday Review ef Literature, May II, 1946. See also "From Hiroshima: A Report and a Question." Time, February l l, 1946.

LITERARY TREATMENTS OF THE ATOMIC BOMB

Agawa, Hiroyuki. The Devil's Heritage. Trans. John M. Maki. Tokyo: Hokuseido, I957. Originally published as Ma no isan (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1954). Goodman, David, ed. and trans. After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. New York: Columbia University Press, 1985. The four plays are "The Island" ("Shima," 1955) by Hotta Kiyomi, a native of Hiroshima but not a survivor of August 6; "The Head of Mary" ("Maria no kubi," 1958) by Tanaka Chikao, a native of Nagasaki but not a survivor of August 9; "The Elephant" ("Zo," 1962) by Betsuyaku Minoru; and "Nezumi Koza: The Rat" ("Nezumi kozojirokichi," 1969) by Satoh Makoto. Ibuse, Masuji. Black Rain. Trans. John Bester. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1969. Originally published as Kuroi ame (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1966). Though from Hiroshima, Ibuse was not there on August 6, 1945; still, he uses lengthy excerpts from the actual diary of a survivor. Nagai, Takashi. We of Nagasaki: The Story of Survivors in an Atomic Wasteland. Trans. Ichiro Shirato and Herbert B. L. Silverman. New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 195r. Originally published as Genshi senjo shinri (The psychology of those on an atomic battlefield) (n. p., n. d.). 6c, Kcnzaburo, ed. The Crazy Iris, and Other Stories of the Atomic Aftermath New York: Grove, 1985. Sec above under "Writings of Survivors." 6c, Kenzaburo. Hiroshima Notes. Ed. David L. Swain, Trans. Toshi Yonczawa. Tokyo: YMCA, 198r. Originally published as Hiroshima noto (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1965). Saeki, Shoichi, ed. The Catch and Other War Stories. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 198 r. Sec above under "Writings of Survivors." SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

391

OTHER WORKS

Barker, Rodney. Hiroshima Maidens. New York: Penguin, 1985. Braw, Monica. The Atomic Bomb Suppressed: American Censorship in japan, 19451949. Lund, Sweden: Liber, 1986. Burchett, Wilfred. Shadows ef Hiroshima. London: Verso, 1983. Chisholm, Anne. Faces of Hiroshima. London: Jonathan Cape, 1985. Chujo, Kazuo. Hiroshima Maidens: The Nuclear Holocaust Retold. Trans. Asahi Evening News. Tokyo: Asahi shimbun, 1984. The Committee for the Compilation of Materials on Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ed. Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of the Atomic Bombings. Trans. Eisei Ishikawa and David L. Swain. New York: Basic Books, 1981. Originally published as Hiroshima Nagasaki no gembaku saigai (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1979). An abridged edition of this book is The Impact of the A-Bomb: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1945-1985. Trans. Eisei Ishikawa and David L. Swain. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1985. Del Tredici, Robert. At Work in the Fields of the Bomb. New York: Harper & Row, 1987. Dower, John W. "Art, Children, and the Bomb." Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars 16.2:33-39 (April-June 1984). Dower, John W., andJunkerman, John, eds. The Hiroshima Murals: The Art of Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki. New York: Kodansha International, 1985. Hersey, John. Hiroshima. New York: Knopf, 1946. New edition with "a final chapter written forty years after the explosion," 1985. Japanese Broadcasting Corporation (NHK), ed. Unforgettable Fire: Pictures Drawn by Atomic Bomb Survivors. Trans. World Friendship Center in Hiroshima, supervised by Howard Schonberger and Leona Row. New York: Pantheon, 1977· Jungk, Robert. Children of the Ashes: The People of Hiroshima. Trans. Constantine Fitzgibbon. New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1961. Jungk is author as well of an earlier book, Brighter Than a Thousand Suns: The Story of the Men Who Made the Bomb, Trans. James Cleugh (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1958). Junod, Marcel. Warrior without Weapons. Trans. Edward Fitzgerald. London: Jonathan Cape, 1951. Lammers, Wayne P., and Osamu, Masaoka.]apanese A-Bomb Literature: An Annotated Bibliography. Wilmington; Ohio: Wilmington College Peace Resource Center, 1977. There are at least two supplements (1981 and 1982) to this valuable bibliography. Liebow, Averill A. Encounter with Disaster: A Medical Diary of Hiroshima, 1945. New York: W. W. Norton, 1970. This is a reprint of a 1965 article in The Yale Journal of Biology and Medicine; Liebow was a member of the Joint 392

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

Commission for the Investigation of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Japan. Lifton, Betty Jean. A Place Called Hiroshima. Photographs by Eikoh Hosoe. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1985. Maruki, Iri, and Maruki, Toshi. The Hiroshima Panels. Saitama: Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels Foundation, 1984. Maruki, Toshi. Hiroshima no pika. New York: Lothrop, Lee & Shepard, 1980. Pacific War Research Society, ed. The Day Man Lost: Hiroshima, 6 August 1945. Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1972. Rhodes, Richard. The Making of the Atomic Bomb. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986. Samuel, Yoshiko Y. A Requiem: Atomic-bomb Literature-30 Years After. Master's thesis, Indiana University, 1976. Society to Study Kazuaki Kita's Creative History, ed. The World of Kazuaki Kita's Art: The New Era (AfterHiroshima42=1987). Tokyo; 1987. Townsend, Peter. The Postman of Nagasaki. London: Collins, 1984. Treat, John W. Pools of Water, Pillars of Fire: The Literature ofibuse Masuji. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1988. Tsukui, Nobuko. "Writer's Mission: An A-Bomb Experience in the Works of Ota Yoko, Hara Tamiki, Ibuse Masuji, and Hotta Yoshie." Typescript, 1984.

Tsurumi, E. Patricia, ed. The Other Japan. Armonk, N. Y.: M. E. Sharpe, 1988. Wyden, Peter. Day One: Before Hiroshima and After. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1984.

SUGGESTIONS FOR FURTHER READING

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