Transforming the Atomic Bombing into an 'Incident': New Life from a Scorched Earth in Fukuda Sumako's Poems

• In Event: Atomic Verses: Trauma, Survival, and Memory in Nagasaki Hibakusha Poetry

Abstract

After the atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the first language uttered was testimony from survivors. Testimony took the form of literary production that effectively produced the bombings as an event. Furthermore, the outpouring of poetic works in particular, gave shape to a mode of representation that communicated people's personal experiences of trauma. Hiroshima poet Tōge Sankichi's work, "Atomic Bomb Poems," was representational of a major movement which included Hara Tamiki and Sadako Kurihara, among others. Fukuda Sumako, who was a survivor of the Nagasaki bombing, was a poet whose work first poetry appeared in Asahi Shimbun immediately following the commemoration of the Nagasaki Peace Statue in 1955. In this moment, her maiden work sang out a candid question criticizing the city's approach to reconstruction. Twelve years later, her collection, "Yes, We are Still Alive," served as a powerful record of the literary activism of the times. In her epistolary exchange with another hibakusha poet, Yamada Kan, she complained of the importance and difficulties of recording such a life in a world transformed from scorched earth to the supposed new flowers promised in the reconstruction. Was the hope of a new life supposed to overcome the memory of death? This question gave rise to a deepening desire to communicate the atomic bomb. Through examination of Fukuda Sumako's works in the context of Nagasaki's reconstruction period, this presentation will probe the issues of the bombing's ability to continue to speak across changing modes of cultural memory and historical time.

Author

• Yoshiko Horimoto, Nihon University