From Experience to Representation: Stories of Hiroshima Bombing

“Summer Flower” –1947

“Human Ashes” –1966

Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959)

"Little Boy" --the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. "Fat Man" --dropped on Nagasaki August 9, 1945.

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

Representation as Acting-out (re-enactment) or Working-through (understanding and contextualization)?

1. The Work of Memory (like Dream)

2. 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

Reader Response as Acting-out ,Working-through or Mere Consumption?

1.Mediation: fact selection &

emplotment dramatization,

visualization2. Self-Projection3. Contextualization

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

p. 18 A Female Negro Slave with a Weight Chained to her Ankle, from Narrative of a Five Years Expedition Against the Revolted Negroes of Surinam 1772-77, 1796 John Stedman

How do we respond to spectacles? Image

A man stands on a roof as he awaits rescue in heavy flooding in Taimali, south-eastern Taiwan's Taitung county on August 8, 2009 during Typhoon Morakot. (AFP/AFP/Getty Images) #

Between the Trauma Spetacles & Ai-Hsin(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 –

Burned bodies, houses, twisted trees (40) First reactions:

1. Disgust at injuries (infected body 41; two injured women 45; nausea at seeing Mr. Nakayama 71 ;

2. Wandering or escaping to the river 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 wife

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/person293.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)

Other Ironies: 1. People losing their mind (72; 74)2. People unable to help each other p. 74; violent

when it gets to getting food (crackers) 3. Order and calm –only apparent p. 76 4. nightmare of childhood 84 5. 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