War & Society
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Introduction to the Special Issue: Hiroshima +75:
building peace in Japan and beyond
Dahlia Simangan, Mari Katayanagi & Luli van der Does
To cite this article: Dahlia Simangan, Mari Katayanagi & Luli van der Does (2024) Introduction
to the Special Issue: Hiroshima +75: building peace in Japan and beyond, War & Society, 43:1,
1-6, DOI: 10.1080/07292473.2024.2288747
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WAR & SOCIETY, Vol. 43 No. 1, February 2024, 1–6
Introduction to the Special Issue:
Hiroshima 175: building peace in
Japan and beyond
DAHLIA SIMANGANa
DOESc
, MARI KATAYANAGIb
and LULI VAN DER
a
The IDEC Institute, Hiroshima University, Higashi-Hiroshima,
Hiroshima, Japan;
b
Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Hiroshima
University, Higashi-Hiroshima, Hiroshima, Japan;
c
The Center for Peace, Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan
The use of atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki has been extensively
studied in war and peace literature. Research abounds on the ethical
debates surrounding the bombing, the legal and political ramifications of
the use of nuclear weapons, the socio-cultural underpinnings of the peace
movements, and the somatic and psychological consequences of the
bombing. However, Hiroshima’s reconstruction has rarely been studied
from the scholarly lens of peacebuilding approaches that cover various
aspects of post-war reconstruction. The city and prefectural governments
of Hiroshima published several reports on Hiroshima’s history of recon­
struction over the years, and as of 2014, with an aim to support peace­
building efforts elsewhere and contribute to achieving a peaceful world.
Using policy analysis, new empirical data, updated historical accounts,
and interdisciplinary lenses, the contributions in this Special Issue
respond to this objective by bridging the past war experience and the pre­
sent peace aspirations from Hiroshima to bring new insights into postwar reconstruction and peacebuilding research and practice.
Hiroshima; Nagasaki; atomic bomb; peacebuilding; post-war
reconstruction
KEYWORDS
It has now been more than seventy-five years since the United States dropped the
atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The bombings
can be considered a closing chapter to the devastations of the two world wars, an
# 2023 School of Humanities and Social Sciences,
UNSW Canberra
DOI: 10.1080/07292473.2024.2288747
2
D. SIMANGAN ET AL.
introduction to a new international peace and security landscape, or both. The
aftermath of the bombings created a sense of urgency in revising the international
system to prevent another Hiroshima or Nagasaki. Peace movements emerged soon
after calling for nuclear disarmament. Meanwhile, the nuclear arms race between
the US and the former Soviet Union, among other factors, escalated into the Cold
War. Debates regarding the strategic justification and humanitarian consequences
of the bombings shaped the field of international politics and strategic studies, as
well as the public discourse on war and peace.
‘Nothing will grow for the next seventy-five years’ was the rumour that circu­
lated after the Hiroshima bombing, which could not be further from the truth.
Except for the memorial sites, most notably the preserved A-bomb dome, it is hard
to recognise that Hiroshima was the epicentre of the first nuclear attack. Trees
flourished, physical infrastructure rolled out, and people’s lives resumed. Indeed,
Hiroshima has ‘risen from the ashes’ and is now widely known as the ‘city of
peace’. The social, legal, political, physical, psychological, and cultural impact of
the bombing, including the post-war reconstruction, however, ripples to this day.
As an example, in May 2023, a class action lawsuit was filed with the Hiroshima
District Court by twenty-three victims of the ‘black rain’ challenging the existing
recognition standards of hibakusha (atomic bomb victims).
Hiroshima has been extensively studied in war and peace literature. The ethical
considerations and justifications for the bombing, for instance, have been heavily
debated throughout the years.1 This led to legal and political examinations of the
use of nuclear weapons and sociological and cultural analyses of the peace move­
ments and anti-nuclear activism.2 Relatedly, research abounds about the somatic
and psychological consequences of the bombing. Hiroshima’s reconstruction has,
however, rarely been studied from the scholarly lens of peacebuilding approaches
that cover various aspects of post-war reconstruction.
The prefectural and city government of Hiroshima jointly organised the
‘Hiroshima for Global Peace’ Plan Joint Project Executive Committee to undertake
1
2
Gar Alperovitz, Atomic Diplomacy: Hiroshima and Potsdam, 2nd ed. (CO: Pluto Press, 1994); James F.
Byrnes, All in One Lifetime (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1958); Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, ed., The End
of the Pacific War: Reappraisals (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007); Robert James Maddox, ed.,
Hiroshima in History: The Myths of Revisionism (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007); John
Ray Skates, The Invasion of Japan: Alternative to the Bomb (SC: University of South Carolina Press,
1994); Henry L. Stimson and Harry S. Truman, ‘The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb’, Bulletin of the
Atomic Scientists 3, no. 2 (1947), 37–67.
For legal discussion: Katherine E. McKinney, Scott D. Sagan, and Allen S. Weiner, ‘Why the Atomic
Bombing of Hiroshima Would be Illegal Today’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 76, no. 4 (2020), 157–
165; Gro Nystuen, Stuart Casey-Maslen and Annie Golden Bersagel, eds, Nuclear Weapons under
International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2014). From a political perspective: Scott
D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: An Enduring Debate, 3rd ed. (New
York: Norton, 2012). The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) has engaged in research on
various issues surrounding nuclear weapons, and its thematic issue of International Review of the Red
Cross, Humanitarian Debate: Law Policy, Action in 2015, ‘The Human Cost of Nuclear Weapons’,
includes legal, political, and humanitarian perspectives, and the voices of hibakusha and civil society. A
recent publication containing multiple perspectives on the atomic bomb is Michael D. Gordin and G. J.
Ikenberry, eds, The Age of Hiroshima (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2020).
INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE: HIROSHIMA þ75
3
a two-year project on ‘Hiroshima Reconstruction and Peacebuilding Research
Project’ from 2012 to 2013. The project published a detailed report on the destruc­
tion and post-war reconstruction of Hiroshima, including the challenges and les­
sons learned throughout the process.3 Three more volumes have been published
since then, focusing on educational institutions and medical treatment facilities, the
administrative system for dealing with atomic bomb damage, the stories of the
atomic bomb orphans, the importance of inheriting and conveying the Hiroshima
experience, and international support received following the bombing. It is the
objective of the city and prefectural governments for these reports to ‘support
reconstruction efforts and peacebuilding in post-conflict countries and contribute
to the realisation of a peaceful and stable international community’.4 This special
issue engages with the said objective by analysing policy documents, new empirical
data, updated historical accounts, and interdisciplinary concepts to bridge the past
war experience and the present peace aspirations from Hiroshima and bring new
insights into post-war reconstruction and peacebuilding research and practice.
This special issue aims to contribute to scholarly and public dialogues on postwar reconstruction and peacebuilding using the case of the atomic bombing of
Japan and its local, regional, and international implications for peacebuilding. The
articles are diverse in analytical approaches, providing a comprehensive and bal­
anced scholarly discourse on the political and social aspects of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki’s post-war reconstruction. These aspects include but are not limited to
policymaking, identity-formation, memorialisation, and peace promotion and are
interrogated through historical, anthropological, socio-psychological, and sociopolitical lenses, among other disciplinary lenses. The first and second articles chal­
lenge the dominant scholarly discourse on peacebuilding by presenting Hiroshima
as a case of peacebuilding and highlighting its value in providing new insights into
the processes of peace formation. The third and fourth articles also challenge com­
mon assumptions about trauma and religion, respectively, vis-�a-vis conditions of
war and peace. The fifth and sixth articles in this special issue advance these conver­
sations by situating them within the Anthropocene debate, signifying the broader
agential, temporal, and spatial implications of war experiences and peace formation
that emanated from Hiroshima. In doing so, these articles underscore the relevance
of Hiroshima’s (and to some extent, Nagasaki’s) bombing and reconstruction in
drawing lessons for contemporary and emerging post-war or post-conflict peace­
building efforts.
While the array of topics discussed in this special issue is not exhaustive, this col­
lection advances these conversations and critically engages with long-held assump­
tions about post-war reconstruction and peacebuilding. The first article opens with
the history of Hiroshima’s post-war initiatives by delving into the debates that
occurred between local citizens and the city government. In their article,
‘Reconstructing Hiroshima as a peace memorial city: local agency and identity3
4
‘Hiroshima for Global Peace’ Plan Joint Project Executive Committee (HGPPJPEC), Hiroshima
Prefecture and City of Hiroshima. Learning from Hiroshima’s Reconstruction Experience: Reborn from
the Ashes (Hiroshima: Hiroshima Prefecture, 2014).
HGPPJPEC, ‘About this Publication’.
4
D. SIMANGAN ET AL.
making in peacebuilding’, Mari Katayanagi and Noriyuki Kawano trace the phys­
ical and symbolical transformations of Hiroshima after the bombing. They argue
that the 1949 Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Law accelerated the
city’s identity formation after the war. Anchoring on the concept of local peace­
building, Katayanagi and Kawano identified local contestations, compromises, and
compliances that influenced the identity-making process that turned Hiroshima
from a military city to a city of peace. As such, the article advances our understand­
ing of the dynamics behind identity-making and its role in peacebuilding. The
second contribution to this special issue also contests mainstream peacebuilding
scholarship, which mainly focuses on international interventions in intrastate con­
flicts since the 1990s, by presenting Hiroshima as a case of post-war peacebuilding.
In his article, ‘Hiroshima’s ongoing peacebuilding and beyond: how does this local
initiative seek to extend to world peace?’, Tatsuo Yamane characterises
Hiroshima’s peacebuilding as a project that is yet to be completed. His combined
analysis of local–global and local–state relations shows that the Japanese national
government is yet to affirm immediate and complete nuclear disarmament at the
global level despite the global resonance of local aspirations for achieving world
peace free of nuclear weapons in Hiroshima’s ongoing peacebuilding.
This critical discourse on dominant post-war framings follows through the
subsequent articles. The third article, titled ‘Anomalies in collective victimhood
in post-war Japan: “Hiroshima” as a victimisation symbol for the collective
national memory of war’, provokes questions regarding collective victimhood,
which draws heavily on the relationship between victims and perpetrators. Yuji
Uesugi argues that such a relationship is not explicit in the case of Japan, where
acts of identifying the perpetrator, seeking revenge, and pursuing safety from
the perpetrator are absent. The personal victimhood of the hibakusha became
the ‘chosen national trauma’ for Japan. Contrasting with socio-psychological
theories of collective victimhood, Uesugi situates the unique formation of col­
lective war memory in post-war Japan.
In the fourth article, Hirokazu Miyazaki also challenges a common assumption,
specifically on how religion could cause or promote violence. ‘The bishop’s “fine
tact”: the ambiguity, ambivalence, and relationality of Catholic peacebuilding from
Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Flores, Indonesia during the Asia-Pacific war’, follows
the experience of Japanese Catholic priests from Hiroshima and Nagasaki in their
mission to Flores, Indonesia. Miyazaki elucidates a unique type of relationality
based on tact in which the Japanese priests cooperated with missionaries and civil­
ians from enemy nations against the Japanese military. In doing so, the article pro­
vides a rich narrative of the constructive role of religion, embodied by the Japanese
Catholic Church leaders, in promoting peace amid Japan’s aggressive nationalism
and imperialism.
Relationality can also be found beyond actors. The fifth article in this special
issue, ‘Agencies, Temporalities, and Spatialities in Hiroshima’s Post-War
Reconstruction: A Case of Reflexive Peacebuilding in the Anthropocene?’,
incorporates considerations of time and space in peacebuilding. By engaging
with the expanded notions of agency, temporality, and spatiality in the critical
INTRODUCTION TO THE SPECIAL ISSUE: HIROSHIMA þ75
5
discourse on the Anthropocene, Dahlia Simangan argues that reflexivity or the
iterative process of recognition, reflection, and response could help illuminate
the multiple, interwoven, evolving, and sometimes contesting peace narratives
coming from a singular post-war experience. By situating the case of Hiroshima
in the broader Anthropocene debate, the article links post-war peace formation
to more recent peacebuilding challenges posed by global environmental change.
Luli van der Does builds on the value of the concept of the Anthropocene in ana­
lysing the temporal, spatial and interpersonal shifts in the hibakusha’s anthropo­
genic discourse. In the sixth and final article, ‘Turning a Disaster into a
Regenerative Strength: Hiroshima’s Strategy for Societal Peace in the
Anthropocene’, she reviewed the history of the recovery discourse of atomic
bombed cities. She then analysed more than 20,000 survivor testimonies and the
entire set of Hiroshima Peace Declarations to unpack the meanings associated with
the bombing, life in the aftermath, recovery and reconstruction, and the formation
of Hiroshima’s postwar identity over time. The article demonstrates that the
anthropogenic discourse surrounding the bombing evolved from immediate, local
post-disaster relief and recovery to nuclear disarmament and global peace.
While it has been more than seventy-five years since the bombs were dropped at
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this historical moment continues to have a lasting psy­
chological, social, and political impact for generations to come. When the G7 lead­
ers visited Hiroshima in May 2023 and reaffirmed their commitment to achieving a
world without nuclear weapons, none of the G7 countries ratified the Treaty on the
Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) to date. Japan’s reluctance to sign the
treaty, in particular, continues to disappoint the survivors whose demands for a
nuclear-free world are left unmet. Furthermore, the threat of nuclear weapons
remains, especially in the ongoing war in Ukraine and geopolitical tensions in the
Korean peninsula. Yet the G7 Leaders’ Hiroshima Vision on Nuclear Disarmament
affirmed nuclear deterrence without even mentioning the TPNW. These issues sig­
nify the need for continued conversations about the impact of nuclear weapons on
war and peace.
For these reasons, the authors in this special issue prompt several questions for
future research and policy considerations regarding peacebuilding. In their analysis
of local agency in Hiroshima’s peacebuilding discourse, Katayanagi and Kawano
encourage further exploration of the role of city branding in post-war reconstruc­
tion. Yamane also encourages further studies into the other types of local agencies
in Hiroshima’s peacebuilding. Uesugi and Miyazaki call for an expansion of exist­
ing theories on collective victimhood and the relationship between religion and vio­
lence, respectively, by examining unique cases, such as those found in Hiroshima
and Nagasaki. Similarly, Simangan demonstrates the value of extended temporal­
ities and expanded spatialities when analysing post-war reconstruction. Finally, van
der Does’s discourse analysis highlights the importance of continuously examining
the evolving narratives about Hiroshima’s post-war experience across local and glo­
bal contexts. With ongoing war and violence in many parts of the world, these his­
torical and future-oriented lessons from Hiroshima, as well as Nagasaki, could
inform practitioners and policymakers in implementing inclusive, transformative,
and peaceful post-war reconstruction efforts.
6
D. SIMANGAN ET AL.
Acknowledgements
The editorial team wishes to thank Mr Michael Lemmer, Academy Library,
UNSW Canberra for his expert assistance with the footnotes in this special issue.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes on contributors
Dahlia Simangan is Associate Professor at the IDEC Institute of Hiroshima
University and one of the core members of the university’s Network for
Education and Research on Peace and Sustainability (NERPS). She holds a PhD
in International, Political, and Strategic Studies from the Australian National
University (2017). She is the author of International Peacebuilding and Local
Involvement: A Liberal Renaissance (Routledge, 2019) and several research
articles on post-conflict peacebuilding, the relationship between peace and sus­
tainability, and international relations in the Anthropocene. She is an Assistant
Editor of Peacebuilding and a member of the Planet Politics Institute.
Mari Katayanagi is Professor and Vice-Director of International Peace and
Coexistence Program at the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences
of Hiroshima University. She holds a PhD in Law from Warwick University,
UK. Previously she served at the UN peacekeeping operation in Croatia and
then the Office of the High Representative in Bosnia and Herzegovina as a pol­
itical adviser. Her research and teaching focus on peacebuilding and human
rights. Her publications include Human Rights Functions of United Nations
Peacekeeping Operations (Kluwer Law International, 2002), and contributions
to Preventing Violent Conflict in Africa (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and
Confronting Land and Property Problems for Peace (Routledge, 2014).
Luli van der Does is Associate Professor of Memory Studies at the Centre for
Peace, Hiroshima University. She is a member of the ICOM-ICMEOHRI and
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum Steering Committee. Her research explores
the nexus of mind and society by looking closely at linguistic, visual, and sen­
sory representations of traumatic memory. Her publications include Media and
Environmental Sustainability: An Empirical Study of National Media Reporting
of Environmental Issues in China and Japan (Routledge 2017) and articles on
war, media, heritage, and social change.
ORCID
Dahlia Simangan
Mari Katayanagi
Luli van der Does
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9418-969X
http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9356-9535
http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4469-1731
Correspondence to: Dahlia Simangan. Email: simangan@hiroshima-u.ac.jp