"Little Boy" --the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.
"Fat Man" --dropped on Nagasaki August 9, 1945.
From Experience to Representation:
Stories of Hiroshima Bombing
“Summer Flower” –1947
“Human Ashes” –1966
Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)
Outline

Introduction:
 From Experience to Representation to
Reader Response
 Hiroshima Literature





two generations; Oe vs. Mishma
First responses
“Summer Flower” – (a widower for one year)
"Human Ashes“ – (a boy reaching puberty)
Hiroshima mon amour – a Japanese man
and a French woman
Trauma Texts: From
Experience to
Representation
• Traumatized
•Acting-Out
Experience
Representation
1.
2.
Experience
• T.
Experienced
Representation
•Working
Through
Representation as Acting-out (re-enactment) or
Working-through (understanding and contextualization)?
The Work
of Memory
(like Dream)
Mediation
Trauma Texts: From
Experience to Representation


“Recollection”
Experience: turned to images, which
then get accumulated in the “folds” of
our minds, our eyes and urban
landscape (//history as palimpses)
Trauma Texts: From Representation
to Reader Response
• Historical
Texts
• Memoire
• Spectacles
• Fragmented,
• Metafictional
Texts
•1. Comforting
“Cured”
•2. Voyeur
Representation
R.
Response
Representation
R.
Response
1.Mediation:
fact selection &
emplotment
dramatization,
visualization
2. Self-Projection
3. Contextualization
•3.Vicariously
Traumatized
4. “Sympathy” +
Action
Reader Response as Acting-out ,
Working-through or Mere Consumption?
Trauma Texts: From
Representation to Reader
Response
Historical Facts
• Personal Accounts
• Personal Record
 Usually less attractive
than filmic dramatization
or news spectacles
• image fragments on
the news  for
consumption or genuine
understanding
•
How do we respond to spectacles?
A man stands on a roof as he awaits
rescue in heavy flooding in Taimali, southeastern Taiwan's Taitung county on August
8, 2009 during Typhoon Morakot.
p. 18 A Female Negro(AFP/AFP/Getty
Slave with a Weight Chained to her
Images) #
Ankle, from Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the
Revolted Negroes of Surinam 1772-77, 1796 John Stedman
Image
Between the Trauma Spetacles & AiHsin(Mustard Seed) Children’s Home


Equation?
Purposeful actions in a local context
http://www.mustard.org.tw/ah_home/news.
asp
Hiroshima literature according to
Kenzaburo Oe (大江健三郎)


First –generation: witness account or
realistic descriptions of the victims;
“second- generation survivors”: with
a broader perspective, acknowledge
clearly that Japan and the Japanese
were partly to blame (as aggressors in
the Pacific War, and also their invasion
of China). (“Introduction” Crazy Iris)
Kenzaburo Oe (大江健三郎) vs. Yukio
Mishma (三島由紀夫)— my limited knowledge

Yukio Mishma: wrote “Patriotism,”
formed the Tatenokai (Shield Society),
a private army composed primarily of young students
who studied martial principles and physical discipline,
and swore to protect the Emperor
-- staged a coup to perform the suicidal rite of seppuku.

Kenzaburo Oe -- The Day He Himself
Shall Wipe My Tears Away – an ill father
(with a growth resembling mushroom/chrysanthemum)
who fantasizes about having a coup to kill the emperor
and blame it on the Americans
First Reactions

First Responses to the bombing in the
two stories:





“It” came all of a sudden p. 38; p. 68-69
lack of understanding, puzzled at not seeing
holes 42; “flame” and gasoline from the sky -helpless 45
losing contact with the surrounding, numbness
(the boy’s terror 70, a group’s numbness 73)
Bewilderment –p. 39 someone rushed in…
Senseless actions
First Reactions
Common signs –


First reactions:

Disgust at injuries (infected body 41; two injured
women 45; nausea at seeing Mr. Nakayama 71 ;
Wandering or escaping to the river
1.
2.

Burned bodies, houses, twisted trees (40)
First actions:


leaving the city
some helpful, some unable to help (the shelters
by a dispensary 49; the boy’s being dragged out
of the line 83)
Main concerns


Search for one’s family members or the teacher’s
Hara Tamiki 原名喜 (1905-1951)
An English major; familiar with Russian lit,
wrote poems himself, too.
 “Summer Flower” in 1947
 “The Land of Heart's Desire” in 1951.
-- A suicide note in the form of an account of
troubled dreams recalling memories of the
Hiroshima bombing.
-- The author committed suicide in 1951, when
there were rumors about the use of A-Bomb
in the Korean war.

His works (in Japanese):
http://www.aozora.gr.jp/index_pages/perso
n293.html
“Summer Flower” (1947) &
“Human Ashes” (1969)




What are their main themes? What are the
details that stick in your mind?
Do you see any artistic transformation of
the events?
Compared with “Summer Flower,” does the
narrator in “Human Ashes” show greater
distance from, or better understanding of,
the event?
Why does “Human Ashes” take a diary
form? Do you see other literary techniques
here?
“Summer Flower” (1947)


A straightforward account of scenes witnessed by
the author after the bomb was dropped on
Hiroshima. The story begins with the narrator
visiting the graves of his wife (with incense and
flowers) and parents three days earlier, and
concludes with a friend searching for his wife's
remains mingled with the bones of her pupils in the
ruins of the girls' school where she taught.
The narrator with suicidal thought – “What had been
threatening me, what had been destined to happen,
had taken place at last. I could consider myself as
one who survived. I have to keep a record of this”
(41).
“Summer Flower”: Verbal Construction
of non-verbal memories

Central Pattern


Plot: wandering and searching (to satisfy basic
needs), amidst the injured, broken pieces and
corpses.  picked up by the eldest brother (50)
Irony: the wife’s grave, flower and incense as
the only sign of beauty and grace; memory of
childhood – a peaceful scene p47



 Images the tree 40; the ruins of his house =
The Fall of the House of Usher; sounds:
voices(46-47)
 Images Fumihiko 51; corpses 51 (“haunting
rhythm”)
 N’s experience 53-54
“Summer Flower”: Verbal Construction
of non-verbal memories (2)

Central Pattern:


Irony: Images: the sight of the living green,
true miseries began after the escape (52)
Poem  open ending
Katsuzo Oda “Human Ashes”
(1969)


a boy’s experience of displacement and his
adolescent desires: Two dreams: kamikaze vs.
physical desires  lonely 64-65
Contrasts:



avoiding his aunt (listless, displaced), 63-64  looking
for the aunt 79
Respect for soldiers/authorities (teachers
upperclassman) and even kamikaze (神風特攻隊) the
role of the military 64; “a soldier in uniform” kicking a
student 65-66  Ichikawa and the other one 67-; 
Dragonfly 69; the lieutenant Yamane 71; the student
73; Ichikawa? P. 72; a rowdy student 73
The teacher 70-71  the teacher’s wife 82
Katsuzo Oda “Human Ashes”
(1969)

Contrasts:
 Destruction of human bodies



feeling his own body 73
naked women no longer sensible or attractive
(74)
vs. survival of nature (84)
“Human Ashes” (1969)

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Other Ironies:
People losing their mind (72; 74)
People unable to help each other p. 74; violent
when it gets to getting food (crackers) 
Order and calm –only apparent p. 76
nightmare of childhood 84
Ash-Covered bodies with oil and sweat, streams of
blood (76) Human ashes (burial ritual) 84
Hiroshima mon amour (1959)
What is the film about?
-- The atomic destruction of
Hiroshima and the psychological
consequences of World War II?
Director： Alain Resnais
Script：Marguerite Duras
Actors： Emmanuelle Riva
Eiji Okada
General Introduction:
Background



1959 – the beginning of French New Wave;
also the year when Godard's Breathless,
Truffaut's The 400 Blows were released.
Resnais –By 1959 Resnais had produced a
lot of documentaries; e.g. 1955 Night and
Fog, which Godard has called a
documentary on the “memory of Auschwitz.”
After seeing the documentaries already
produced on Hiroshima, Resnais changed
his mind, asking Duras to write the script for
him.
General Introduction: Impossibility
of Historic representation



Reenacting the pain and horror of such
events cannot be portrayed in a
documentary manner;
such representation is possible only if it is
mediated through human experiences of
love and death.
Plot -- the sexual tryst between the French
actress, who is married, and her Japanese
lover, an architect who is also married,
General Introduction: Structure
and Plot


But the story goes deeper as they dig up her
past, and they have a mutual recognition.
five panels (not labeled, as such in the film
itself): Prologue, Night and Morning, Day,
The Café by the River, and Epilogue.
General Introduction: Structure
and Plot (2)

five panels (not labeled, as such in the
film itself): Prologue, Night and Morning,
Day, The Café by the River, and
Epilogue.
Starting Questions


What does the beginning shots of the film
mean? And the opening sequence?
"You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Nothing," "I
saw everything.... Every thing." What does
she see?
Remembering and Seeing


Bodily memory, or enactment of one’s
memory. (bodies in sex = bodies covered
by atomic ashes)
Opposed to the visualization of memories –
hospital, museum (with photos and artifacts),
peace square, newsreel, and a film about
"peace.“




The reconstructions were as authentic as possible.
The films were as authentic as possible.
what else can a tourist do but weep?
“I saw them. I saw the newsreel”
Like you, I Know what it is to forget. … Like you, I
forgot.
What she sees:

Hospital with patients averting their
faces, documentaries, Hiroshima park
and museum
Hiroshima at the present time:

The film and the parade:
Lui (Him) and Elle (Her)





Both traumatized;
“I was never younger than I was in
Nevers.”
Why Nevers?
I somehow understand that it was there
that I almost lost you and ran the risk of
never. ever meeting you. somehow
understand that it was that you began to
be who you are today.
 enactment of the past with him.
Her traumatic moment =
liberation of Nevers


Fragmentation narration driving at the
central event: “He was my first love”
I couldn't find the slightest between
his dead body and my own.
Example: from enactment to
working thru’

She: I think of you but I no longer speak of it
He: Madwoman!
She: Madly in love with you. My hair grows back.
He: Are you ashamed for them, my love?
She: You are dead. I'm too busy suffering. Night falls.

I hear nothing but the sound of the scissors on my head.





It eases the pain of your death a bit. Like _ I don't
know how else to say … Like for my nails... the
walls... my anger. What a pain…
He: And then one day. my love. your eternity comes
to an end. … A long time. They said it was a long
time. One day I hear them[the cathedral bells ].
Example: from enactment to
working thru’




My life that goes on,
your death that goes on.
It‘s horrible! I remember you less and less clearly.
(remembers the death again) screams  feel the
warmth of a marble
Forgetting the past
Torn between the Past, the
Present and future forgetfulness
Saying Goodbye to both the
Past or the present?



Walking thru’ Hiroshima, with
flashbacks of Nevers.
Elle: I consigned “you” to oblivion.
Lui: “We’re sad about leaving
each other”
Self-Othering

Casablanca (Hollywood film) // the
woman as a desirable object –increase
the inevitable distance between him and
her
The ending:

What does it mean to call each other
by the name of their cities?
References

“Summer Flower” (in Japanese)
http://www.aozora.gr.jp/cards/000293/files/1821_6672.html

The Crazy iris and other stories of the
atomic aftermath Google Books