Lambs of God, Ravens of Death, Rafts of Corpses: Trauma, Memory, and Representation in the Poetry of Nagai Takashi, Yamada Kan, and Yamaguchi Tsutomu

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

Abstract

This presentation discusses the verse of three hibakusha to explore how poetry has served as a medium for survivors to grapple with traumatic memory and convey the atomic experience in ways that provided catharsis and challenged landscapes of memory that ignored their experience. In this way, many hibakusha looked to poetry as a tool for social and memory activism. The Catholic Nagai Takashi interpreted the bombing as an act of God's "Providence" that was necessary to end the war by sacrificing the "pure lambs" of Urakami. During the Allied Occupation (1945-1952), Nagai's writings were the loudest voice in Nagasaki, leading, in part, to the formation of popular memory in which Nagasaki did not compare to the "rage" of Hiroshima. For decades, the poet Yamada Kan criticized Nagai for what he considered his misrepresentation of the Nagasaki hibakusha experience. Yamada rejected the lofty religious interpretations of Nagai, attempting to overwrite the sacrificial lambs with descriptions of ravens feeding on corpses and haunting the memory of survivors. For Yamada, there was no salvation, but rather only human destruction and a persistent anxiety of dying driven by the radiation absorbed in the bombing. Yamaguchi Tsutomu, who survived both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, attempted for 65 years to articulate his trauma in tanka. For him, the bombings meant the loss of human dignity, which manifested in the dead bodies clogging the rivers of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or as he described the scene, the "rafts" of corpses.

Author

• Chad R. Diehl, Loyola University Maryland