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Literature and The Trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Daniela Tan
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Extract

Trauma is a site that does not exist. No road leads there. No path leads around it. Trauma is. Inaccessible. Access through words seems to be blocked. How on earth can one speak about something that is impossible to express? What words could one use for a horror that is beyond the possibilities of language? How speak about something that cannot be spoken of-yet “the abundance of real suffering permits no forgetting”?

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 12 , Issue 40 , October 2014 , e3
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2014

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References

Notes

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

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

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

4 English translation by Yu Oba: Urashimaso. Saitama-ken: Josai University. Center for Inter-Cultural Studies and Education,1995.

5 An english translation by John Bester appeared in 2012 at Kodansha America under the title Black Rain.

6 English translation by David L. Swain and Toshi Yonezawa appeared 1995 at Grove Press under the title Hiroshima notes.

7 Translation in Minear, Hiroshima: Three Witnesses, p. 4.

8 An english translation by Richard Minear of the whole text is available in the volume Hiroshima. Three witnesses, edited by Richard Minear. Princeton University Press, 1990.

9 Translation in Minear, Hiroshima, pp. 52, 57. “Natsu no hana” is the title both of the first section of the book, which appeared Hara completed in 1945 (it appeared in 1947), and of the book as a whole, which appeared in Mita bungaku, June 1947.