Influence of Nuclear Destruction on the Evolution of Japan
“The strangest thing was the silence. It was one of the most unforgettable impressions I have. You’d think that people would be panic-stricken, running, yelling. Not at Hiroshima. They moved in slow motion, like figures in a silent movie, shuffling through the dust and smoke. I heard thousands of people breathing the words, ‘water, give me water.’ Many simply dropped to the ground and died.”
~Setsuko Thurlow
In a flash, 120,000 corporeal humans are destroyed. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remind us of the terrible power humans can unleash, and the horrors of nuclear destruction. So if we as Americans are distressed about this event, imagine what the Japanese think. The bombings are still very present in the minds of Japanese, and one does not have to look very far to see evidence of this. Everyday Japanese remind themselves of the past through popular culture. Japanese animation (usually referred to as anime), manga comics and feature films all heavily rely on nuclear war or apocalyptic weaponry as either the main story or a huge plot device. Such a cataclysmic, culturally altering event is difficult to forget. The memory of the nuclear destruction at the end of WWII is ingrained in Japan’s collective unconscious, as reflected in everyday pieces of Japanese popular culture, especially anime films and manga.
Japanese are “still suffering from the sociological and physiological after-effects” of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Kawasaki 20). The direct victims and survivors of the bombings, called hibakusha, are not the only casualties of this event. Beyond these people, their friends and relatives all share a coll...
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...nk heavily about reality, existence, and time. While viewers need not constantly think of the nuclear destruction that brought about this art, it is important to once in awhile reflect on how this reality came to be, and recognize history and the changing face of a nation.
Works Cited
Akira. Special Edition. Pioneer Entertainment, 2001.
Grave of the Fireflies. Cmp/Us Manga Corps, 1988.
Kawasaki, Shoichiro. A Call from Hibakusha of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Tokyo: Asahi
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Linner, Rachelle. City of Silence: Listening to Hiroshima. New York: Orbis Books, 1995.
Munroe, Alexandra. Scream Against the Sky: Japanese Art after 1945. New York: Harry N. Abrahms, 1994.
Neon Genesis Evangelion. Perfect Collection. A. D. Vision, 2002.
Tasker, Peter. The Japanese: A Major Exploration of Modern Japan. New York: Truman Talley Books, 1987.
n “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, we hear a story from the viewpoint of Mama, an African American woman about a visit from her daughter Dee. Mama along with her other daughter Maggie still live poor in the Deep South while Dee has moved onto a more successful life. Mama and Maggie embrace their roots and heritage whereas Dee wants to get as far away as possible. During her return, Dee draws her attention to a quilt. It is this quilt and the title of the piece that centers on the concept of what it means to integrate one’s culture into their everyday life.
In her short story “Everyday Use,” Alice Walker portrays the conflicts and struggles within a family’s culture. The focus is on two characters with completely different personalities and their conflict about a family’s heirloom. Alice Walker shows in her story that one’s culture and values can be affected by the personalities, different lifestyles, and a family’s relationship.
Some of the people saw the bombs’ effects as a good thing for the Japanese people. They saw Japanese come together, and because of it, felt an “elated community spirit” (87). Others saw the atomic bomb as akin to a natural disaster, like a flood or a typhoon. It was something incomprehensible, and so they pushed it out of their mind. One phrase they used to summarize their opinion over the bomb was “shikata ga nai” (89). For them it meant there was nothing they could have done to stop it, so they shouldn’t worry about it. The most negative of the groups felt that the blame fell upon the U.S. for using the bomb. Dr. Sasaki, one of the survivors Hersey wrote about, stated, “Those who chose to use the bomb should all be hung”
In the short story “Everyday Use” by Alice Walker, the author portrays opposing ideas about one’s heritage. Through the eyes of two daughters, Dee and Maggie, who have chosen to live their lives in very different manners, the reader can choose which character to identify most with by judging what is really important in one’s life. In Dee’s case, she goes out to make all that can of herself while leaving her past behind, in comparison to Maggie, who stays back with her roots and makes the most out of the surroundings that she has been placed in. Through the use of symbolism, the tangible object of a family heirloom quilt brings out these issues relating to heritage to Mama, and she is able to reasonably decide which of her daughters has a real appreciation for the quilt, and can pass it on to her. Dee and Maggie shed a new light on the actual meaning of heritage through their personality traits, lifestyle decisions, and relationships with specific family members.
An interesting thing about Alice Walker’s “Everyday Use” is the fact that it seems to be told from the Mama’s eyes, rather than from one of the, arguably, main characters. This only allows the reader to see Mama’s bias in the entire situation. Because of this bias between her children, the reader can see the stark contrast of the two sisters. Alice tries to portray the importance of embracing heritage and the vulgarity of disregarding the purpose of things for one’s own pleasure.
John Berger is a European writer, artist, and intellectual. He published “Hiroshima” which first appeared in 1981 in the journal New Society, and later in his essay collection The Sense of Sight in 1985. He argues that we should look beyond the statistics to see the reality of the events that occurred during the bombing of Hiroshima. As Berger declared, “I refrain from giving the statistics: how many hundreds of thousands of dead, how many injured, how many deformed children” (Berger 11). The...
In August of 1945, the world changed forever with the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The lives of millions were shattered in a few seconds as the bombs demolished their homes and murdered their family members. Never has one incident in history affected such a great number of people for so many years. Today, the Japanese are still feeling the effects of the dropping of the atomic bombs. With the marking of the fifty-year anniversary in 1995, the dreadful scars still remain in the bodies and the hearts of those who were present in 1945. The radiation emitted from the atomic bombs caused numerous growth disorders, many psychological and social effects along with a drastic increase in leukemia and breast cancer that affected many innocent civilians.
The fateful decision was made on July 25, 1945, the day when the official bombing orders were placed on the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was on this day that sent Miss Torako and many others like her to face their unfortunate doom in the microcosm of the end of the world. But it was only a few months later, on the Sixth and Ninth of August 1945, that these poor victims actually get to experience this tragedy. Some people estimated no more than 400,000 people were truly victimized from the effects, others said more. But even now, almost seventy years later after this terrible calamity, people were still utterly disgusted but gruesomely fascinated at the true brutality that these two atomic bombs brought to the world. This fact made people argued and debated for decades on end. Two sides, two perspectives, absolutely and completely different from one another, but nonetheless, never came to a proper conclusion. Should the United States really have dropped the atomic bombs on Japan? Was it, in all reality, truly necessary? To put it blatantly, yes, the United States should have dropped the two atomic bombs on Japan. It had to have been done. With those conditions a...
The most meaningful part of this trip is that visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The survivor—Keiko-san—used her own experience to express the pain and reflection from the atomic bombing. When she described the image she saw at that moment, I had vivid image in my mind. “ Would you hate America?”, a student asked. “We didn’t hate America, but we hated the American president at that time and hated the persons who did that” Keiko-san said. I was surprised that Keiko-san answered the question with the sadness and helpless. Indeed, who wants to suffer from such devastation? They are just the citizens and residents who lived in Japan.
Traditions are crucial to identities in order to preserve family values. Those values shape who we are. Without heritage and traditions, we are at risk of losing sight of who we are, and eventually those tenets will perish. In “Everyday Use,” by Alice Walker, three women internalize heritage differently; Dee doesn’t value her heritage, Maggie values her family’s heritage, and, in the end of the story, Mama realized the true embodiment and the meaning of heritage.
It tells what each of these individuals did the day of the bombing and what happened to them years later. It describes the events of the bombing in great detail, and it gives accurate information about the bombing and the aftermath. This book raises the ethical issue of the use of nuclear weapons, and it shows several opinions of this issue throughout the story. Hiroshima affected society in a huge way by showing the horrors of what happened in Hiroshima and encouraging people around the world to voice their opinions on the use of nuclear weapons. Hiroshima showed America in its early stages of establishing its power in the world, and American society has only improved since the bombing of Hiroshima. All in all, Hiroshima by John Hersey is an emotional yet informative story about an event that had a lasting impact on
Most people want their family to be a source of love and care; however, conflicts can occur when one family member has different values from the rest. Throughout Alice Walker’s short story “Everyday Use," she shows how education affects family dynamics. Alice Walker describes Dee as having hatred towards her family and their values even before being educated. Education has not only, separated Dee from a true sense of herself, but she also lose a sense of heritage and background values that can only be taught by one 's family. Education proved to be more divisive than beneficial to Dee’s relationship to her family. Although Mama struggled, and had only obtained a second-grade education, she still found it important to send Dee off to college, despite Dee straying from the highly regarded core values laid down by their ancestors. Due to obtaining a higher education, Dee’s views on her heritage differ drastically from that of her mother.
Hooker, Richard. "The Flowering of Japanese Literature." wsu.edu. N.p., 6 June 1999. Web. 12 Feb. 2011. .
Some people often hear the word "Atomic Bomb" or hear about the cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki and picture a war torn city and a bomb that killed many. While they are right in connecting the two, the aftermath of the atomic bomb goes much deeper than that. By simply stating that it killed and injured thousands of people is an understatement. The damage from the bomb ranged from high temperature fires that scorched the land to the killing of fetuses due to in-utero radiation exposure. The atomic age, composed of complex and controversial issues, has forever changed the world and the way in which we live. The following is intended to illustrate that the bombing has changed the world and the immediate lives of the many killed and hurt in the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The illustrations are an attempt to show the immense strength of one explosion and its ability to totally wipe out any given area. By showing all of the possible injuries that can occur from a nuclear explosion, it becomes visible that an atomic bomb is very complex in its destruction.
Webster, R.G. Japan: from the old to the new. S.W. Patridge & Co., 1905, 1978