[In the following essay, Konaka surveys several works exemplary of a Japanese literary genre known as "atomic-bomb literature."]

In On Photography, Susan Sontag tells of seeing, at the age of twelve, the victims of the Jewish concentration camp at Birkenau, and of how it changed her. For my part, I cannot forget seeing as a youth for the first time in the illustrated weekly Asahigurafu photographs depicting the suffering caused by the atomic bomb. In that year, 1952, the U.S. Occupation of Japan ended, and information about victims of the nuclear explosions became generally available. Also, just this year the film Genbaku no ko (Children of the Atomic Bomb), directed by Shindo Kanendo and based on a collection of essays by young people from Hiroshima, was released. The hellish conflagration depicted on the screen is branded on my eyelids. These accounts of the atomic-bomb blasts and the Jewish Holocaust, like those describing the burning of Rome under Nero in ancient times, did not simply appear spontaneously in the historical record; they have been passed down to posterity through the determination and the recording activities of witnesses and chroniclers, modern-day Japanese counterparts of the early Christians and of such Jewish authors as Anne Frank and Erich Weil, who wanted to document and tell of their experiences.

In 1982, thirty-seven years after the atomic bomb was dropped, I was privileged to participate in the compilation and publication of a fifteen-volume collection titled Nihon no genbaku bungaku (Japanese Atomic-Bomb Literature), the first collection of its kind in Japan. The concept for this collection was formulated as a result of a gathering that same year of some five hundred Japanese writers, who issued a "Writers' Declaration on the Danger of Nuclear War." (The declaration aroused opposition among some who felt it was an inappropriate activity for writers.) The pictures on the covers of each volume in the collection are based on the series "Atomic-Bomb Drawings" by the artists Iri and Toshi Maruki.

In working on this compilation, I decided to read many works of Japanese atomic-bomb literature in order to gain an idea of its flow. I noticed that it proceeded from reports of direct experiences to imaginative accounts, from focusing on the victim to considering the perpetrator, and that, taken as a whole, it has progressed toward the formulation of a view of the world as a global village. Among many other small revelations, I learned from Naruhiko Ito, one of the editors, that Yoko Ota, the author of Shikabane no machi (City of Corpses), did not have writing paper but instead wrote on the back of paper used to cover sliding screens (fusuma). Having been caught in the Tokyo air raids, Ota was returning to Hiroshima, her birthplace, at the time the bomb was dropped. At the age of forty-three, Ota was already active as a writer. In November, three months after the bomb was dropped on 6 August, she completed a documentary about it, a journalistic record based on her own experiences as well as on the testimony of scientists.

And corpses were lying all over, left and right, and in the middle of the road. Some were lying face upward and others face down, all of them had been headed toward the hospital. With their bulging eyes, swollen and battered lips, and bloated limbs, they were like hideous big rubber dolls. Weeping copiously, I recorded the image of those people on my heart.

"Big Sister, you've become quite accustomed to seeing them, haven't you? I can't stop and look at the corpses."

"Little Sister, you seem to be reproaching me," I answered. "I am looking at them with the eyes of a human being and the eyes of a writer."

"How can you write about such things?"

"Having seen these things, I must write about them at some time. It is a writer's responsibility."

In Ota's work there is both hatred for the American army and an abiding devotion to the Japanese emperor; with "City of Corpses" she recorded in detail the suffering of the victims, and she has subsequently continued to raise her voice in protest against the bomb.

Tamiki Hara was born in 1905. Introspective since childhood, he was sensitive but temperamental, the kind of poet who could not put Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge aside. A resident of Hiroshima at the time of the bombing, he wrote about his experience in the verse collection Natsu no hana (Flower of Summer; 1947) and elsewhere. One of his poems is simply a transcription of the cries of a victim of the bombing.

"Water, please.
Ah, water, please.
Something to drink, please.
It would have been better had I died.
Aah.
Help me, help me.
Water.
Anything.
Anyone, please.
  Ohh.…
  Ohh"

In 1951, at the height of the Korean War, Hara committed suicide by hurling himself under a train. He had been angry about the war and was himself suffering from, among other things, radiation sickness. A deep attachment to his late wife, who had died of tuberculosis, is also a very strong motif in his works.

In 1982, at the time of the New York peace march in which one million people demonstrated, an antinuclear conference was convened by writers opposing nuclear weapons, with the participation of Erica Jong and William Safire. Elementary and high-school students also participated. A poem by Goichi Matsunaga based on Hara's "Water, Please" was read. Through Hara's tragic poem the cries of the bomb victims are heard throughout the world even today.

At the same time, in "Flower of Summer" and in the short story "Shingan no kuni" (Country of One's Desire) one person's feelings of loneliness are extended to encompass images of the destruction of the earth itself. Today, in the 1980s, the prophetic images contained in Hara's personal catastrophe continue to be reflected in the works of such Japanese writers as Shusaku Endo and Kenzaburo Oe. Not only to record, but also to prophesy—these are the twin tasks of those who would write about the atomic bomb.

Masuji Ibuse (b. 1898) continues to be much loved by his readers as a writer who observes human nature and describes it with humor. However, in 1965, twenty years after Hiroshima, he shocked his readers by writing about the extremely painful realities of Japan in the aftermath of the war, basing his work on the records of bomb victims. The title of his novel Kuroi ame (Eng. Black Rain) refers to the radioactive rain that fell immediately after the bomb was dropped. The work tells the story of a young woman on whom that rain fell, and that of her uncle. The uncle's diary which makes up a portion of the novel is that of an actual person; the niece's diary, however, is Ibuse's creation. Because of the rumor that she is "a victim," the young woman is unable to marry. Later, it is understood that she has leukemia. With this work and its description of daily life, Ibuse shows that the atomic bomb not only brought instant death for many, but also generated problems of chronic illness and subsequently discrimination and contempt within Japanese society for many survivors of the August 1945 attacks. Since then, the atomic bomb has become an ever-present dilemma.

In 1963 Yoshie Hotta (b. 1916) attempted to introduce the bomb into world literature by counterposing the Japanese experience of the bomb—which until then had been discussed only in terms of its victims—against Japan's military invasion of China. In Shinpan (Eng. The Judgment) one of the two main characters is the American pilot of the Enola Gay, the airplane that dropped the bomb, and the other is a Japanese officer who witnessed the actions ordered by his superior officer. Both men are suffering from violent pangs of conscience. Hotta raises questions that we must ask ourselves today, questions concerning the nation and the individual. In particular, the relationship between the emperor and the Japanese people is considered. Nobuko Tsukui of George Mason University, who has prepared the forthcoming English translation of The Judgment, summarizes this problem as follows:

Moreover, although Kyosuke [a Japanese soldier] wonders how the Emperor who sent him into battle can sleep peacefully at night, both he and Paul [an American pilot] reject the plea that they were "only obeying orders." In accepting guilt, both men take the side of meaning. They accept responsibility for what they have done. After accepting responsibility, the problem is how to bear it. The word kutsu (pain), repeated by Paul, poignantly reveals the intensity of pain in his effort. Without human help, without love, there is no survival.

The anguish of the Enola Gay's American pilot has been a powerful stimulus to other Japanese writers as well. fidamomo's Amerika no eiyu (American Hero; 1965) is strongly critical of America, and Miyamoto Ken's drama Za pairotto (The Pilot; 1964) is a story about that particular American's visit to Nagasaki. It is a spiritual tale about how his personal anguish is engulfed and assuaged at a popular festival. The expression of forgiveness at community folk festivals for the dropping of the atomic bomb is a Japanese characteristic seen in many other works as well.

In Hiroshima noto (Hiroshima Notes; 1963) Kenzaburo Oe provides a documentary report about an important time in the history of the Japanese postwar peace movement, when the crusade to ban nuclear and thermonuclear weapons was disintegrating. In describing the medical efforts of Fumi Shigeto, director of the Atomic-Bomb Hospital, and others to save lives in the aftermath of the bombing, Oe tried to focus on the hopes of mankind.

Turning to the field of drama, Hotta Yoshimi, in Shima (The Island; 1955), describes a fierce passion for life. As is appropriate to this genre of literature, the Nagasaki and Hiroshima dialects are frequently used, and regional flavors and natural features play a prominent role in this and similar dramatic works. Among them, Chikao Tanaka's Maria no kubi (The Head of Mary; 1959) is based on the traditions of the Christian faith, particularly Catholicism, which was prohibited during the Tokugawa period. Adherents of the Catholic faith were relatively numerous in Nagasaki, where there existed a Catholic church in Urakami, and so the fact that an atomic bomb was dropped there was particularly bitter for those who believed in the Christian God. Tanaka based this drama on an actual incident. Describing how someone broke off and cherished a piece of the stone statue of Mary at that church, the author tried to convey the devotion and love of Mary, who herself had become a sacrifice. (In reality, it seems the person who broke the statue sold the stone as a souvenir, but Tanaka treated the incident as an act of devotion.)

In 1965, when Minoru Betchaku wrote Zo—the title means "The Elephant," which is also what a keloid scar is called—the Japanese antinuclear movement was bitterly divided along political lines. Moreover, the excitement of the protests against the 1960 Japan-U.S. Security Treaty had dissipated. Betchaku, himself a student during the 1960s, despaired over the Japanese people's lack of independence and depicted the atomic-bomb victims in the style of Beckett's theater of the absurd. In discussing the works of this generation of dramatists, David Goodman, a professor at the University in Illinois in Urbana, saw in this play the source of unease which nuclear weapons create in mankind and wrote:

The Elephant is a play about the survivors of Hiroshima and cannot be understood correctly except as such, and yet it is also more than that. Inasmuch as we are all survivors of Hiroshima, living daily with the knowledge that we possess the means to destroy our planet, we also face the choice posed by the invalid and his nephew, whether to accept the absurd reality of our situation and thus accept death and madness, or whether to reject that reality and embrace the absurd hope for life in the nuclear age.

Women authors, according to their respective generations, have continued to write about the bomb throughout their careers. In her story "Kangen matsuri" (Music Festival; 1978) Hiroko Takenishi focuses on the blossoming of a girl student at the time of the war in juxtaposition to a rite for the purification of the dead at Itsukushima Shrine. Ineko Sata, a writer from Nagasaki, repeats and develops similar themes in, for example, Iro no nai e (Picture without Color; 1961), describing the political activities and loves of a woman she knew who was of Chinese origin, and in Juei (Shadows of Trees; 1972). Since Matsuri no ba (Festival Scene; 1975), published thirty years after the bomb, Kyoko Hayashi has continued to write about the present in her short stories, novellas, and novels. The following comments by Koji Nakano (one of those who joined the "Writers' Declaration on the Danger of Nuclear War") about Hayashi apply just as well to the other two writers mentioned above: "What Kyoko Hayashi did here was the only thing a person can do with regard to such a historical event: namely, even though it was from the vantage point of someone who had lived through the past thirty years, she established a distance from that period and looked at it without prejudice, as one rooted in the present." Shusaku Endo as well, in his "Onna no issho" (A Woman's Life; 1985), followed the life of a woman who lived in Nagasaki.

Turning to the 1980s, Minoru Oda published Hiroshima (1981), a wide-ranging work covering a series of events extending in time from Pearl Harbor to Hiroshima and whose characters include an American Indian soldier and a uranium-mine worker who develops cancer. The novel focuses on problems occurring in the American army associated with the atomic bomb and uranium, problems which have recently gained attention. Also, even prior to the accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, Akiyoshi Nosaka examined several matters relating to nuclear energy in Jicho no kane (The Bell of Mourning for Ourselves; 1953), a novel about atomic waste set in the near future. In Japan, which has few natural sources of energy, nuclear power is differentiated from nuclear weapons, and expressions of popular concern are not yet as prevalent there as in Europe and America.

In the category of prophetic works, I would note especially Mitsuaki Inoue's Asu (Tomorrow; 1982). In his earlier novel Chi no mure (Clod of Dirt; 1963), set in Sasebo, Inoue had already examined the social discrimination brought about by the bomb. "Tomorrow" describes in detail the daily lives that average people led even in Nagasaki the day before the bomb was dropped. A young woman who works in a factory is thinking of the man who made her pregnant and subsequently abandoned her. Another woman is anticipating her wedding ceremony. A streetcar driver also appears. Although the action takes place during the war, the novel describes a modern city where people are leading everyday lives. There are elementary-school pupils and there are teachers. The citizens have no weapons. No one knows that the bomb will be dropped the next day, that a nuclear device will detonate over them "tomorrow." Is this not precisely the fate of modern mankind as a whole?

In 1983, the year after the "Writers' Declaration" was published, I started teaching Japanese literature at a university in the United States. The television film The Day After was causing a great sensation at the time. In interpreting these Japanese works on the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings I explained that what Inoue was showing in "Tomorrow" is that we are living "the day before." Now, incidentally, in June of 1988, "Tomorrow" has been released as a film under the direction of Kazuo Kuroki. Moreover, Sakura tat chiru (The Cherry Blossom Corps Is Scattered), a film about a theater company whose members died in Hiroshima while on tour there, has recently been completed under the direction of Shind Kanendo. Prior to this, in 1983, two animated films by the manga (cartoon) author Keiji Nakazawa, who lost his mother in the atomic bombing, were released: Hadashi no Ken (Barefoot Ken) and Ningen o kaese (Return Our Humanity), which was based on American documentary films.

Compared with the time when there were only such films as Akira Kurosawa's Ikimono no kiroku (1955; Eng. I Live in Fear) and Ikiru (1952; Eng. To Live) and later Tadashi Imai's Jun'ai monogatari (A Story of Pure Love; 1957), the situation had changed greatly by 1984, when Cynthia Contreras of Brooklyn College concluded her survey of the atomic-bomb experience and its aftermath in cinema as follows: "The audience tastes the terror of the obsessive imaginary presence that was slowly permeating his experience of everyday reality." Even on television, ever since Yumechiyo nikki (Dream Diary of a Thousand Ages; 1981) was first shown, numerous quiet masterpieces have been created. Moreover, when I went to America in 1982, I saw Steve Okazaki's Hibakusha (Survivors of the Atomic Bomb), a documentary depicting the anguish of survivors in the United States, based on their own accounts.

The 1984 Tokyo conference of the International PEN Club chose as its theme "Literature in the Nuclear Age: Why Do We Write?" The question was discussed by writers from around the world. Kenzaburo Oe subsequently edited an anthology of short stories abut the atomic bomb, Nan to mo shirenai mirai ni (Toward an Unknowable Future), which was later published in English as Atomic Aftermath.

Whereas the Holocaust was entirely a matter of the Jewish people's victimization, the atomic bombing of Japan may be regarded as a way of ending a war that had been started by the Japanese people. Still, the two bombs that were dropped in August of 1945 not only ended the world war but also sounded a tragic alarm for mankind, ringing in the nuclear age. Therefore, documenting and collecting information on the tragedy of the bomb and probing its historical significance for humanity are not the tasks of the bomb victims and the Japanese alone. I believe these efforts should be of concern to all people throughout the world. Now, as the movement surrounding Japanese atomic-bomb literature seeks a new vision for humanity, we are trying to collect once again those records of the past and reevaluate them.

An editor of one of the poetry volumes in the 1982 anthology "Japanese Atomic-Bomb Literature" has indicated his disappointment over the dearth of verse on the bomb: the Japanese experience is still sleeping within the hearts of the survivors of the atomic bomb. Nevertheless, in the world of poetry the works of such writers as Tamiki Hara as well as Sankichi Toge, who opposed the Occupation authorities, and Sadako Kurihara, who illuminated the point of view of women, leave a strong impression. Among the poems which I read in 1982, those that moved me most profoundly were written in that uniquely Japanese form, the haiku. I have chosen several by the Nagasaki survivor Atsuki Matsuo as a fitting conclusion to this survey.

On the eleventh of August she piles up the wood
 and burns our children's remains:
   The dragonfly alights on them,
   Three small bodies—
   Siblings.

At daybreak on the twelfth, she gathers up their bones:

Next to the pillow—
The bones that were her children.
but still her breasts are full.

On the fifteenth, l burn my wife's remains as the Emperor announces the war's end:

Imperial words of surrender.
The fires that consume my wife
Are just now at their height.

Keeping vigil over my firstborn daughter,
Gravely injured,
Summer turns to winter.

A single garment—
My child wears it, l wear it,
The morning chill.

The couple are bound for Sasa
With their cups for relief rations
Wrapped in a cloth.

Helping each other,
The two of them make their way
With their two dishes.