Nuclear Trauma and Its Musical Responses

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

Nuclear bombs, weapons testing, and nuclear power have had a profoundly negative impact on the well-being of many people who have been exposed. However, governments and corporations have invested considerable economic and political capital in sustaining the nuclear industrial complex, while many victims’ voices have been muffled. Under these conditions, how does music serve to help victims heal from trauma or incite political action? How do musicians negotiate with hegemonic views? What are the politics and sensitivities behind commemoration?

This panel presents case studies contemplating the sounds and silences that respond to nuclear disaster. The first paper considers the 1,900-strong repertoire of music about Hiroshima and Nagasaki and contemplates the politics and sensitivities in commemorative music as produced and heard by victims and non-victims. The second paper details the importance of music in terms of larger cultural-juridical representations with respect to transnational movements for nuclear justice, specifically connecting the experiences of the Marshallese with other hibakusha communities including Japan. The third paper analyzes the oppositional positions represented by two approaches taken in post-Fukushima music—“disaster nationalism” that trumpets nationwide kizuna (connection) and antinuclear street protest music that illustrates social precarity as a structural issue. The fourth paper contrasts the memorialization of tsunami-affected communities in Tohoku through traditional festivals with the seemingly deliberate silencing of nuclear disaster. Through these case studies, we aim to present the complex interplay among taboos surrounding the victims, the human desire for redemption, and the political incentives of pro- and antinuclear camps as demonstrated in music.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• Noriko Manabe, Temple University

Chair

• Noriko Manabe, Temple University

Individual Presentations

• "Hiroshima rages, Nagasaki prays": Music Commemorating the Bomb in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - Noriko Manabe, Temple University

• Notes on Nuclear Justice: Musical Archives of Nuclear Experiences in the Marshall Islands - Jessica A. Schwartz, University of California, Los Angeles

• Sounding Affective Alliances in Post-3.11 Japan - Marie Abe, Boston University

• Tsunami Memorialization and Nuclear Silencing: Recovering through Musical Activities in Post-3.11 Tohoku - Nana Kaneko, University of California, Riverside

Discussant

• Yuki Miyamoto, DePaul University