The 'Inheritance' of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Rethinking the Bombings towards a Post-Survivor World
Description
With 2025 marking the 80th anniversary of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, this timely study focuses on the challenge of keisho or 'inheritance' and the way a new generation of scholars and activists is re-examining the meaning of the A-bomb and the 80-year history of commemoration and activism in the stricken cities. Using a team of scholars based in the USA and Japan, many of who are academics from this new generation, The 'Inheritance' of Hiroshima and Nagasaki takes a critical look at the problem of inheritance and the current transitory moment in A-bomb commemoration and nuclear scholarship by looking at a range of historical topics from the 80-year history of post-atomic Hiroshima & Nagasaki, and beyond. The book does this by: examining historical memory in a way that disengages the two cities from a Japanese-national memory perspective by looking at global connections, on one hand, and the local history of the two cities; re-thinking the history of survivors, their experience, and their movement; and, finally, exploring material culture and the problem of inheritance and legacy.
Table of Contents
Part I: Reconstruction of Memory/Memory of Reconstruction
1. Yuko Kawaguchi: "Immigrants' Ties to Their Homeland: Hiroshiman Traders and Japanese-American Communities in the Early Postwar Years"
2. Marina Nishii: "Masculinity and Gender in Reconstruction of Hiroshima"
3. Hirokazu Miyazaki: "A Tale of Two Churches:Catholic Atomic Ruins, Fundraising, and Trans-Pacific Relationality"
4. Hibiki Yamaguchi: “Shogen as Witnessing and Fukugen as Reclaiming: Breaking the “Silence” of Nagasaki””
Part II: Hibakusha beyond Hiroshima and Nagasaki
5. Kyoko Sato: “Surviving the A-Bomb in Japanese America: Politics, Expertise, and Nuclear Visions”
6. Naoko Wake: “The Bomb's Slow Violence: The Rise of Diasporic Memories and Transnational Activism”
7. Kyoko Matsunaga: “Trans/National Nuclear Colonialisms: Revisiting Village of Widows”
8. Yuki Miyamoto: “The Metaphor of Blood and Discrimination Against Hibakusha: A Hermeneutical Lacuna in Japan's Social Order”
Part III: Material and Immaterial Inheritance
9. Chad Diehl: "Visualizing Nagasaki: Art, Ekphrasis, and Postmemory"
10.Ran Zwigenberg: “Ihin: The Sanctification of A-Bomb Objects in the Hiroshima Museum”
11.Maika Nakao: “Body for Eulogy and Investigation: Science, Religion, and Atomic Bomb Victims in Postwar Nagasaki”
12.Robert Jacobs: "Atomic Memeification: “Hiroshima” as a Unit of Measure"13.Masaya Nemoto: “From a Means to an End: The History of Inheriting the A-Bomb Experience in Hiroshima”
Maika Nakao, Masaya Nemoto, and Ran Zwigenberg: Epilogue
Product details
| Published | 03 Sep 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (PDF) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 288 |
| ISBN | 9781350378452 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 20 bw illus |
| Series | SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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