More than 7 decades have passed since the atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (August 6 and 9, 1945, respectively).

The two American bombs killed as many as 220,000 people, while many survived but suffered their devastating effects, and many later died of diseases related to the atomic bombing.

And many of the literary works that interacted with the nuclear bombing - including testimonies, memoirs, poetry, plays and prose - formed what became called "nuclear bomb literature", which was popular in the era of the sixties of the last century, and included survivors of the bombings who wrote down their own experiences, and pessimistic writers about the future of humanity that possesses That destructive weapon, and others who dealt with the social, psychological, political and even philosophical and religious consequences of the atomic bombing.

As literature is the refuge we resort to when we have to confront contradictions that transcend reason, as the Japanese writer and novelist Yoko Ogawa says, philosophical and religious responses to nuclear destruction have been part of the features of the post-World War II world, and continue to contribute to contemporary intellectual transformations that have increased their pace. With the recent resurgence of talk of the nuclear threat against the backdrop of the Russian war on Ukraine.

nuclear bomb literature

Literary works provide important interpretations of the post-nuclear world, and one of 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.

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, and he once said of her, "If I lose my wife, I will live only one year to leave behind me a collection of sad and beautiful poems." A year later, just before the first anniversary of her death, Hiroshima was bombed while it was In his parents' home, these two traumatic experiences become central to his literary work.

Japanese Tamiki Hara is one of the most prominent pioneers of atomic bomb literature (networking sites)

Hara wrote his most famous work, "Summer Flowers" by August 1946, but it was not published until June 1947. Two further sections of the work were later published, "From Ruins" in 1947, and "A Prelude to Extermination" in 1949, describing his horrific experience.

In what appears to be a kind of language inability to describe the disaster, his literary style seemed as if the intolerable resentment against this absurdity binds us together and we no longer need words to say, according to a previous report by Al Jazeera Net.

Hara is typical of atomic bomb literature. Nihilism, absurdity, and loss of purpose are crystal clear while presenting the reader with horrific scenes.

Showing a kind of calm acceptance of what happened, but the fact of the matter is that the feeling of amazement, detachment and indifference provides deep expressions of despair or expresses a form of intense 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 soft, as if whispering voice, straight from soul to soul: "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, lying on a train track, his fragile mental state exacerbated by the outbreak of the Korean War that seemed to confirm his continuing pessimism about the dark future of history. .

Religious and philosophical debate

Within that controversy, the testimonies and memories of the hibakusha - a Japanese word for those affected by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 - have contributed to a large share of the debate in literature and nuclear controversy, and Yuki Miyamoto, a professor of religious studies at DePaul University, says she is frustrated given that the views of The philosophical, religious, and spiritual hibakusha on this issue are largely ignored in English-language literature, adding, "popular culture seems to appreciate their tragic stories, but not their struggle to come to terms with the event."

In her article for The Conversation, Miyamoto, as an ethics studies expert who analyzes nuclear discourses in the United States and Japan, sees that the perception of hibakusha religious leaders is rooted in their experiences of living in Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the atomic bombings. An impression of our "violent world", and at times, their interpretations of nuclear bombing have been used to promote political agendas.

However, their interpretations allow people today to reconsider the ethics of responsibility in the atomic age.

Punishment from above

Hiroshima - where the first two bombs were dropped in Japan - was historically famous for the "Shin Buddhism" school, the largest Buddhist institution in Japan, and its followers in Hiroshima are called "Aki Munto".

One of them was Kōji Shigenobu, who grew up to be a Buddhist priest at the school, and he and other schoolchildren were evacuated from the city during the war but lost their family members in nuclear hell.

Eventually, he developed his view of the bombing that represented the state of mind of many Hiroshima residents, as the author describes it in her book Beyond the Mushroom Cloud: Memory, Religion, and Responsibility after Hiroshima.

The book "Beyond the Mushroom Cloud... Memory, Religion and Responsibility after Hiroshima" was published by the American Fordham University Press (Al Jazeera)

Koji Shigenobu sees the atomic bomb as representing 3 circles of sin: the sins of the inhabitants of Hiroshima, the sins of Japanese citizens, and the sin of all humanity.

However, Koji criticized the citizens of Hiroshima as being selfish, wrote that they abandoned the wounded after the bombing, condemned Japan for its military aggression, and lamented that humankind had become warmongers.

This human nature, according to Koji, called for atomic bombing.

His "critical self-reflection" and attempts to transcend black and white understandings of good and evil - such as Japanese vs. Americans or victims vs. perpetrators - may offer insight into how to escape cycles of violence, according to the author.

But, on the other hand, the Shigenobu's understanding of the Buddhist doctrine that interpreted a particular historical incident as a universal sin of mankind may have distracted from the responsibility of the Japanese and American governments.

Miyamoto's book explores the morals and religious sensibilities of a group of hibakusha (survivors) from the 1945 atomic bombings, and finds that their "unfortunately" morals of "not vengeance but reconciliation" have not been widely recognized, perhaps obscured by the mushroom cloud, the symbol of American weapons. Victory and scientific achievement.

The book considers that the survivors' determination not to allow anyone to suffer further from nuclear weapons, along with critical self-reflection, discourages taking responsibility for the bombing of nuclear bombs;

Instead, the hibakusha often consider themselves "sinners".

sacrificial lambs

Nagasaki, about 320 kilometers west of Hiroshima, has a long history of Catholicism.

In the 16th century, in many parts of the Japanese archipelago, local nobility converted to Christianity, leading to mass conversions in their regions.

But the next 250 years saw the expulsion of foreign priests and the persecution of converts.

Even after Christianity was banned as the worship of a "foreign god", political leaders saw Catholics as a major threat to the country's stability.

Hence, the Catholic community in Nagasaki, which practiced its religion secretly, was forced to live alongside the "burakumin", a social group traditionally considered "untouchable".

This date helps explain the special analysis given by a convert to Catholicism, a doctor and professor in Nagasaki named Nagai Takashi, who said, "How noble, how wonderful was the Holocaust of August 9, when the flames from the cathedral, dissipated The darkness of war brings the light of peace!

Three months after the bombing, a mass was held at the site of Orakami Cathedral, the closest teacher to the epicenter of the explosion, and Nagai was asked to give a speech, in which he expressed his anguish from people who told him that he had lost his family and community because of his "belief in a foreign god", and his disrespect for Japanese gods and the emperor.

In the letter, Nagai responded that those killed by bombs were “sacrificial lambs chosen by God because of their impeccable nature,” and noted that the war ended thanks to their sacrifice, while survivors like him had to endure defeat and destruction.

Nagai portrayed the hardships as "an exam to enter heaven to be reunited with loved ones."

It is perhaps understandable that the Catholics of Nagasaki, whose history was filled with persecution and "martyrdom", adopted the Nagai message to help them come to terms with the loss of their loved ones, which is not entirely far from the Catholic approach to the idea of ​​"theodisia", i.e. the question of why God allows human suffering.

However, the author says, Nagai's interpretation (and also Koji's) can be victim-blaming, and ignores blame for actual perpetrators, if their principle of critical self-reflection is adopted - not by victims, but also by Those who caused the tragedy - perhaps the world could have avoided creating more casualties from the production and testing of nuclear weapons.