On August 6, 1945, in the closing days of World War II, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima, destroying the city and killing perhaps 100,000 people, then a second bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki a few days later, with the same devastating effect. .

In the face of this shock that humanity witnessed for the first time, a group of literary responses was formed called "Atomic Bomb Literature", and as Japan was the only country that was subjected to a nuclear attack, these literary responses were associated with Japanese writers, mostly wrote some of them in English, and expressed heavy effects that left Its imprints are - and still are - historically and psychologically, across generations.

While scientific reports and historical records have made clear the tangible effects of the tragedies of the atomic bomb, it is through literature that people have better understood the deeper and longer-lasting emotional impact of this tragedy, amid the frantic hype of the post-war era.

Hara and Ota

Among the most prominent pioneers of atomic bomb literature is Tamiki Hara (1905-1951), who was born in Hiroshima and became a survivor of the atomic bombing, and for his prior knowledge of Russian literature and English poetry, which he studied at Keio University in Japan, his writing combined the nature of victim prose with professional world literature.

Hara's wife fell ill in 1939, and died in 1944, of which he once said, "If I lose my wife, I will live only one year to leave behind a collection of sad and beautiful poems." A year later, just before the first anniversary of her death, Hiroshima was bombed While he was at his parents' home, these two traumatic experiences became central to his literary work.

Hara (Summer Flowers), his most famous work, was written by August 1946 but was not published until June 1947. Two further sections of the work were later published, Out of Ruins in 1947, and An Introduction to Extermination in 1949 describing his experience terrifying.

In what seemed a kind of inability of language to describe the catastrophe, his literary style seemed as if unbearable resentment against this absurdity binds us together, and we no longer need words to say.

Numerous literary works describe the brightness of the light of a nuclear explosion and the beauty of the strange and horrific mushroom cloud (Reuters)

Nihilism, absurdity, and loss of purpose are all too evident as he presents the reader with horrific scenes, showing a kind of quiet admission of what happened, but the fact of the matter is that the sense of bewilderment, detachment, and apathy, offers deep expressions of despair or expresses a form of Severe and prolonged psychological anesthesia in which the survivor responds to his reality.

Amid the frenetic noise of the post-war era, he speaks to the reader in a faint voice, as if whispering straight, from soul to soul, and says, "I have not discovered any deeper truth in war."

Hara's final work (The Land of Heart's Desire 1951) can be read as his suicide note. He committed suicide in Tokyo on March 13, 1951, by lying on a train track, his fragile mental state exacerbated by the outbreak of the Korean War, which seemed to confirm his continuing pessimism about a bleak future. for history.

Along with Hara, Yoko Ota, a Japanese who survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, is best known for her fear of becoming a victim of atomic radiation sickness, and she worked hard to quickly complete her novel City of Corpses, an account of her experiences at the time of the bombing. She wrote the novel in the fall of 1945, But then it was banned and finally published 3 years later with parts of it deleted.

She later wrote "Human Beasts" and "Half-Human" in 1954, which depicted the author's struggle with mental illness threatened by radiation sickness and fears of an impending world war.

The combination of art and science

In her report to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the academic Gabriel Dekamos referred to examples of Japanese atomic bomb literature written by survivors of the disaster, including the "Diaries of 1945" by Hachia Michiko, who was the director of a hospital in Hiroshima at the time, and despite his numerous injuries to the face and body, he worked in The ruined and crowded hospital amidst the stench of burning and charred corpses.

And "With Coolness and Mercy" Hachiya's writings, along with the literary novel of Nurse Fumitsuki Junko and others, show an unusual literary discussion of scientific reports on the bomb and radioactivity in "City of Corpses", and show that the artistic-science mixture is strongly present in postwar Japanese literature. .

The Japanese philosopher Kazashi Nobu wrote a poetic novel in which he reconsiders the importance of the Hiroshima Dome, the monument that has remained standing in the heart of the city, even after reconstruction with "ultra-modern buildings" lined up around it, arguing that the monument still has significant strength despite its current location. Amid the buildings of a sophisticated city, the distinctive shape of the atomic bomb scene is a constant reminder of the origin of the nuclear age, so to speak, and “has the power to re-ask questions about the meaning of human civilization, and about life itself and its foundation.”

American nuclear literature

Although no specific literary genre emerged as a result of the nuclear bombing of World War II, there were several key pieces of American literature that communicated the devastation of nuclear war to those who did not experience it firsthand.

For writers who chose to write about the nuclear crisis, their best chance of obtaining primary source or first-hand witness to Hiroshima and Nagasaki was by interviewing those who had survived. Hiroshima.

When it was published, all 300,000 copies were instantly sold out, the article was reprinted in magazines and newspapers around the world, and was even read entirely on radio, 3 million copies were sold in book form, and Hersey, a war correspondent, collected the stories essential to these Widget through extensive interviews with the stories of 6 survivors.

This article was significant because it shaped how Western viewers understood and responded to this new nuclear threat, and shaped the way in which nuclear war was subsequently portrayed, while photographs and newspaper accounts were able to show the physical damage caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, literature revealed These attacks have generated tremendous psychological trauma and suffering, not only for the survivors and their relatives, but also for an entire nation of people.

The comparison between Japanese literature and American literature on nuclear attacks is interesting, because both have succeeded in conveying unique individual experiences to a broad base of readers, yet this has been achieved in dramatically different ways. Japanese literature on the atomic bomb clearly focuses on the author or "" private experiences", while American literature on Hiroshima and Nagasaki tends instead to use anonymity, especially since these novels were written by writers who did not experience the effects of the nuclear disaster directly.

In the end, the goal of Japanese and American literature on atomic bombs during this time was to emphasize the destructive potential of nuclear war on a global scale, according to a paper by the Academy of Sophia Xiao published by Stanford University.

However, the MIT report says that Japanese nuclear literature remains largely unknown to the West and only a few have been translated, and the Japanese poet Sadako Kurihara (1913-2005) notes the extent of Holocaust literature compared to the atomic bomb literature.

While the Hiroshima atomic bomb literature also stands as a glowing nuclear archive or “a massive figurative monument like a dome in the city” including survivor testimonies, unfortunately, there is no equivalent to half of the atomic bomb dome in Nagasaki, and perhaps because of that, Nagasaki literature is less comprehensive and attracts less attention .

However, Nagasaki deserves more spotlight after the bombing of Hiroshima. The purpose of its bombing was not to win the war but to make a statement. It was - according to the book "Writing Earth Zero" that reviews nuclear literature around the world - a post-war review of the ability Military and power!