Shadows of Nagasaki : Trauma, Religion, and Memory After the Atomic Bombing

Diehl, Chad R. (EDT); Burke-Gaffney, Brian (CON); Gasha, Anna (CON); Haynes, Anthony Richard (CON); Mason, Michele M. (CON)

ISBN 10: 1531504965 / ISBN 13: 9781531504960

Published by Fordham University Press, 2024

About this Item

Seller Inventory # 45767908-n

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Shadows of Nagasaki : Trauma, Religion, and Memory After the Atomic Bombing
• Publisher: Fordham University Press
• Publication Date: 2024
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1531504965
• ISBN 13: 9781531504960
• Binding: Soft cover
• Condition: New

About this title

Synopsis

A critical introduction to how the Nagasaki atomic bombing has been remembered, especially in contrast to that of Hiroshima.
In the decades following the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the city’s residents processed their trauma and formed narratives of the destruction and reconstruction in ways that reflected their regional history and social makeup. In doing so, they created a multi-layered urban identity as an atomic-bombed city that differed markedly from Hiroshima’s image. Shadows of Nagasaki traces how Nagasaki’s trauma, history, and memory of the bombing manifested through some of the city’s many post-atomic memoryscapes, such as literature, religious discourse, art, historical landmarks, commemorative spaces, and architecture. In addition, the book pays particular attention to how the city’s history of international culture, exemplified best perhaps by the region’s Christian (especially Catholic) past, informed its response to the atomic trauma and shaped its postwar urban identity. Key historical actors in the volume’s chapters include writers, Japanese- Catholic leaders, atomic-bombing survivors (known as hibakusha), municipal officials, American occupation personnel, peace activists, artists, and architects. The story of how these diverse groups of people processed and participated in the discourse surrounding the legacies of Nagasaki’s bombing shows how regional history, culture, and politics―rather than national ones―become the most influential factors shaping narratives of destruction and reconstruction after mass trauma. In turn, and especially in the case of urban destruction, new identities emerge and old ones are rekindled, not to serve national politics or social interests but to bolster narratives that reflect local circumstances.

About the Authors

Chad R. Diehl received his PhD from the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Columbia University in 2011, specializing in modern Japanese history. He has researched the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and its aftermath since 2003 and published his first monograph, Resurrecting Nagasaki: Reconstruction and the Formation of Atomic Narratives, with Cornell University Press in 2018.

Brian Burke-Gaffney was born in Winnipeg, Canada, in 1950 and came to Japan in 1972, going on to train for nine years as an ordained monk of the Rinzai Zen Sect. He moved to Nagasaki in 1982. He is currently professor of cultural history at the Nagasaki Institute of Applied Science and honorary director of Glover Garden. He received the Nagasaki Prefecture Citizens Award in 1992 and the Nagasaki Shinbun Culture Award in 2016. He has published several books in Japanese and English, including Starcrossed: A Biography of Madame Butterfly (EastBridge, 2004) and Nagasaki: The British Experience 1854–1945 (Global Oriental UK, 2009).

Anna Gasha is a doctoral candidate in historic preservation at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation. Her research interests include the relationships between disasters and preservation and the history and politics of science and technology within preservation practice. She graduated with a BA in history of art and architecture and an ScB in materials engineering from Brown University, and she holds an MS in structural engineering, mechanics, and materials from University of California, Berkeley. She is of Japanese and Okinawan descent.

Anthony Richard Haynes received his PhD in Christian ethics and practical theology from the University of Edinburgh in 2018. He wrote his doctoral thesis on the connection between art and mysticism in the life and thought of the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain. He has since worked as an adjunct professor and visiting lecturer in philosophy and religious studies for several universities, including Lakeland University (Japan Campus) and, most recently, the University of Santo Tomas (Philippines). His academic research centers on the practical expression of religious belief and experience, particularly in fiction, visual art, and ascetic ways of life.

Michele M. Mason is associate professor of Japanese cultural studies at the University of Maryland, College Park. Her interests include colonial and postcolonial studies, gender and feminist theory, masculinity studies, environmental humanities, and contents tourism. Mason is also dedicated to the study of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in literature and history, nuclear abolition, global hibakusha movements, and nuclear power. She is the author of Dominant Narratives of Colonial Hokkaido and Imperial Japan: Envisioning the Periphery and Nation-State (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012) and coproduced, with Kathy Sloane, the award-winning documentary film Witness to Hiroshima (witnesstohiroshima.com).