Pathway to Japanese Literature

I dedicate this collection to those whose lives were taken by the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and on Nagasaki on August 9; to those who continue to be tormented by death’s terror and agony up to this very moment; to those who can find no means to dispel their anguish and sorrow as long as they live; and further still—to all people across this world who abhor atomic bombs.

Prologue

Return our fathers. Return our mothers.

Return our elders.

Return our children.

Return me. Return those bound to me.

Return humanity.

Humanity's—humanity's world—as long as it persists,

unbreakable peace—

Return peace

August 6th

Could we ever forget that flash?

In an instant, thirty thousand vanished from the streets.

In the depths of crushed darkness,

Fifty thousand screams ceased.

As the swirling yellow smoke thinned,

Buildings split, bridges collapsed.
The crowded train burned where it stood.
Hiroshima became a boundless accumulation of rubble and smoldering debris.
Eventually skin hung like tattered rags,
both hands pressed to chests,
trampling crumbled brain matter
with scorched cloth wrapped around waists—
a procession of naked bodies walking and weeping.
Corpses lay scattered across the drill ground like stone statues.
Crowds piled on riverbanks crawled toward tethered rafts.
Under the scorching sun they gradually turned to corpses.

In the flames piercing the evening sky,
The area around the town where mother and younger brother had been alive under the debris also
became nuclear shadows.
On the Arsenal floor soiled with excrement and urine
of the female students who had fled and lay -
Swollen-bellied, one-eye-burst, half-flayed, shaved-head -
If the morning sun were to shine upon a crowd unrecognizable as who or whom,
Already, nothing moved anymore.
In the midst of stagnant foul stench,
Only the buzzing of flies alighting on the metal basin.
Three hundred thousand filled the entire city.
Could we ever forget that silence?
In that silence

The white eye sockets of the wives and children who did not return

Split our very souls apart
the poured-in pleas—
Could we ever forget?!

Death

!

The wailing voice in the depths of the ear

Soundlessly swelled

Lunged forth

A space of ferocious abnormality

Enveloping dust and smoke—

Through the space of ominous flapping

Madly running figures

〈Ah

Ah—geh!

れる〉

From waists springing upright

Crumbling-scattering brick fragments of

Bodies

Burning.

Knocked down from behind

The hot wind
Sleeves and shoulders

became fire
they grasped through the smoke

The concrete corner of the water tank

In the water
The head already
Clothes for dousing water
Burned away
There were none.
Power lines, lumber, nails, glass shards
Undulating tile wall
Fingernails burning
Heels came off.
Molten lead plates adhered to backs.
〈U... u... u... u...〉
Already fire.
Turned black.
Utility poles and earthen walls
Gushed into split heads.

Fire and smoke—
a vortex—
“Hiro-chan! Hiro-chan!”—
a stifled breast—
oh—the hole with bloodied gauze—
lying fallen—
“You—you—where are you”—
crawling on their bellies through the smoke—
appeared from nowhere—
joining hand in hand—
they continued the Bon dance’s endless circling—
naked girls—

Stumbling collapsing circle’s
From beneath the tiles

Another shoulder—
the hairless old woman
baked out by the heat—
convulsing shrill scream.
Already flickering roadside of flames
swelled the drum's belly.
Lips peeled back up to—
red flesh masses
grabbed ankles.
Slickly peeled hands
screamed with rolled-back eyes—
necks boiled white—
hairs trampled by hands, brain matter—
smoke filling air, clashing winds of fire—
in darkness of sparking embers—
golden eyes of a child—
burning body—

Burning throat

Collapsed all at once

Arm

Sinking into

Shoulder

Oh—enough

Could not advance.

The dark solitary depths

The roaring in their temples suddenly grew distant,

Ah—

What has become of us?

Why have I

In such a place by the roadside

Parted from you too—
D-die...
Must
not
mustn't
Mustn’t I?
Flames—
The slammed dome’s
death-shrouds billowed wide
beneath lowering clouds’

From the dim-lit ground
thrust aside smoke
gnashed teeth
leapt up
merged together—
black red blue flames
scattering glittering embers
now over all the city

They rose up over the entire city.
Like algae swaying,
The advancing ranks of flames.
The herd of cattle being dragged toward slaughter.

Avalanched down the riverbank,
A single ash-gray pigeon
Shrank its wings and tumbled onto the bridge.
Twitch twitch
Crawled out from under volcanic smoke,
Those being engulfed by flames—

Four-legged forms—countless humans.
In layers of spewed and crumbled embers,
With hair torn out,

They stiffened.

A curse smoldered.

Having been concentrated,

After time exploded,

Only scorching hatred

Voraciously spread.

Silence accumulated in space—

Rhymeless silence.

The sun had been displaced.

Uranium heat rays

Upon the virgin’s back flesh

Branded the gauze robe’s floral pattern,

Ignited the priest’s black vestments,

Causing them to flare up instantly:

1945, August 6—

Midnight at noon—

Humanity’s undeniable fiery execution upon god.

An undeniable fire execution.

This single night
Hiroshima’s firelight
reflected in the human race’s beds.
History will eventually
ambush
all things resembling gods.

Blindness—
crushed at the riverbank—
from the depths of the maternity hospital’s accumulated wreckage...

The men who had been accompanying their wives

Dragging their limbs,
They gathered at the stone cliff landing.
In pitch darkness where glass shards assailed them from chest to face,
The tidal flat's landing lay smothered in embers.
Blind ones harried by heat
Stumbled down to the riverbed—
Staggering legs,
Legs swallowed by mud.

Among the fallen crowd
Desolation and Hiroshima blazed,
crumbled into embers
Already the dusk’s full tide
The tide surged onto the riverbed.
The tide swelled full.
Hands soaked, legs soaked.
From countless wounds, seawater seeped in.
The motionless ones.
In the darkness of trembling consciousness,
nerves groped for what was lost
collided with the flash’s explosive curtain
once more.

Burn out completely.

The instinct that had navigated through colossal collapse

tore limbs apart mid-drift

against the charred black beam falling into the river -

the flickering afterimage of life

(The wife's smile with her infant

the transparent delivery room's morning meal by the window)

And

eyes gouged by glass

blood pus and mud

rift in the smoke-clouds
the mountain-top’s
accumulating dusk’s glow

At the Temporary Dressing Station

you all—
who cried with no tear ducts left to weep from,
screamed with no lips left to form words,
thrashed with no skin left on your clutching fingers—
you all—
limbs thrashing in blood and greasy sweat and lymph,
eyes sewn thread-tight glowing white,
bellies bloated blue retaining only underwear elastic—
you all whom they made unable even to cover your shame—

Ah, all of you were so lovely until just now—
the schoolgirls you once were
Who could think this real?
Hiroshima’s charred and festering
From within the dimly flickering flames
You who are no longer yourselves

One after another, they jumped out and crawled out

Reaching this grassy field,

they buried their frizzy Rakan-cut heads in the agony-filled dust.

"Why must we endure such suffering?"

"Why must we endure such suffering?"

"For what purpose—"

"For what purpose—"

And you all,

already yourselves in what state,

reduced to beings far removed from humanity,

did not know what condition you were trapped in—

were just thinking—

You all were thinking—

Father until this morning, mother, younger brother, younger sister—

(Even if we met now, who would recognize you?)

And the house where they slept, woke, and ate meals—

(In an instant, the fence flowers were torn away—now even ash traces remain unknown)

Thinking thinking

wedged among others of their kind growing still one after another

Thinking.

Once daughters

the days when they were human daughters

Eyes.

An unfamiliar face gazed this way.

From what era—

In a dark warehouse outside time,

Through warped lattice windows fell a light neither day nor night.

Sodden heaps—what had once been faces.
A face that was a head's front portion.

At humanity's crown where life's joys and sorrows—

Faces that rippled like water's reflection.

Ah, now just eyes burning within the festering, rotted lumps of flesh
The torn-off imprints of humans
They remain collapsed and lying on the concrete floor
Pressed down by some force and utterly immobile—that
Pale blue, bloated heavy rounded mass of flesh
Moving only a white light through fissured flesh
They watch my every step as I go

Eyes clinging thickly to my back, shoulder, arm, never detaching.
Why do they stare so intently?
From behind, from all around, they chase and encircle, shooting thin white gazes.
Eyes, eyes, EYES,

From that distant front, from those dark shadows, even from beneath these feet—

Agh... agh... agh...

At any rate, the forehead had skin, the nose rose straight—

I—this human dressed and standing—walked on,

Fixedly, eyes pierced through and refused to detach.

From the heat-radiating floor,

From suffocating walls, from corners of sturdy pillars supporting hollow ceilings,

Eyes appeared—emerged—never vanished.

Ah—that morning I had still been searching for one who'd been my sister,

From back to chest—armpit to shoulder—I who'd stepped into this darkness—

Clinging thickly, never to vanish for eternity—

Eyes!
Buried in the woven gaps of straw matting on concrete where urine seeped through,
cheeks verging on collapse
beneath deathly faces glistening with ointment, secretions, blood, and scorched ash—
Ah... ah...
The moving eye spilled a trickle of transparent fluid.

With peeled-back lips
Teeth frothing with blood
They call my name, gnashing through decayed teeth.
Warehouse Records

That day

In the midst of a lotus field where all the leaves had been burned into horseshoe shapes stood the second floor of the Army Clothing Depot warehouse.
A dim concrete floor with only high grilled windows.
On top of it lay those who had fled, sprawled haphazardly across a single military blanket.
Everyone was barely clad in scraps of drawers and work pants wrapped around their waists, their bodies otherwise naked.

Those lying so thickly there was no place to step were mostly junior high school girls who had been clearing evacuated house ruins, but burns covering their faces and bodies—along with mercurochrome stains, coagulated blood, oil-based ointments, and bandages—had transformed them into a filthy horde resembling a crowd of beggar women.

By the walls and in the shadows of thick pillars, buckets and latrine pits brimmed with filth, excrement flowing everywhere amidst a stench that pierced to the bone.

“Help me—Daddy—help me—”

“Water! Water!”
“Oh, so wonderful! So wonderful!”

“Fifty sen!”
“This is fifty sen!”

“Move it—the dead one under my feet—move it!”

The voices were high-pitched, thin, and endless; some already mentally compromised, half now unmoving corpses with no hands to remove them.
Occasionally, parents searching for their daughters would enter in strict air-raid gear, frantically peering at similar-looking faces and the striped patterns of work pants.
When they realized this, the girls’ voices desperately clamored for water and rescue.

“Mister! Water!”
“Bring water!”

A hairless girl—one eye twitching, her entire body beginning to swell—rose halfway from behind a pillar, lifting and shaking a crushed canteen, repeating the motion endlessly without surrender; but the adults, having been taught that water must not be given to burn victims, never once responded to her pleas, so many girls who had screamed themselves hoarse now lowered their voices resentfully, and soon that child too collapsed back into the pillar’s shadow.

The unlit warehouse transmitted through the ground the distant reverberations of the still-burning town and, filled with maddening cries that ebbed and swelled, was gradually swallowed by the night’s darkness.

The second day

Morning—quiet, a quiet so profound it seemed unreal.
The crowd on the floor had diminished by half, and yesterday’s screams were gone.
The bodies of those who remained had uniformly swollen to a bronze hue—whether arms were thighs or thighs were bellies became indistinguishable—as singed and shriveled clumps of hair, armpit hair, and youthful pubic hair cast stagnant shadows in the crevices of tangled limbs and torsos distorted into twisted lines, while only their dull white eyes lingered thinly within that stagnation, melting into slits.

Here and there, parents who had found their daughters crouched to make them drink something, while the thin gruel with pickled plums floating in the metal basin by the pillows had become a gathering spot for flies.

Whenever an explosion-like roar resembling an airplane's engine sounded, among the jolting figures twisting their bodies, the number of those turning into motionless shadows increased once more—and there, beside those shadows, one found Mrs. K's eyes.

The third day

Mrs. K's condition: 30 breaths per minute, pulse 100; burn locations—half the face, entire back, lower back partially, both heels; fever present, complete loss of appetite; feverish heat rose in her white eyes that had silently watched everyone's mad cries all morning; hands trembled as she clung astride the waste bucket.
"Give me water—give me tea—I want pickled cucumbers," her words grew disordered as evening fell.
The memory of her husband who died on Iwo Jima slipped from her arms; the form of the child she had entrusted to neighbors for labor service crumbled away from her eyes; instinctual agony detached from her ravaged flesh.

The fourth day

White, violent watery diarrhea.
Eyes with singed lashes pulled upward; no trace of a smile flickered anymore; all burn areas suppurated.
For burns, oil; for diarrhea, only gennoshōko.
And soon blood began mixing into the diarrhea; purple and crimson speckles started appearing on skin mottled with lingering spots; and amidst the mounting groans of vomiting, whispers about Attu Island’s recapture spread through the warehouse that evening.

The fifth day

Hair that fell out at the slightest touch.
The maggots clustered on the suppurating areas; when dug into, they crumbled away, scattered across the floor, and crawled back to the pus.

The warehouse—where there had been no space to step—emptied until only those remaining were left; in that corner, in this shadow, people swollen with despair and a few caretakers with dark faces squirmed about and chased flies that swarmed over wounds.
As sunlight from the high windows shifted across the stained floor, evening darkness crept in early; by the light of candles, those departing to seek relatives at the next shelter were watched by mask-like faces sprawled across the floor.

The sixth day

In the shadow of a pillar across the way, a young laborer—only his eyes visible through full-body bandages—sang "Kimigayo" in a thin, faltering voice.

“What’s an enemy B-29? We’ve got Zero fighters—Hayates—the enemy’s getting cocky—just a little more—everyone, just a little more endurance—”

His hot breath came intermittent and faltering.

“Stay strong, go to sleep. If you call me ‘Auntie,’ I’ll come right away,” said the one-eyed woman with cloth-wrapped head crawling closer from nearby, her voice reaching out.

“Auntie?”
“It’s not Auntie—it’s Mom, it’s Mother!”

His arms remained motionless as he inched his livid cheekbones—glistening with greasy sweat—into a tilt, two streaks of tears spilling from his blazing eyes to seep beneath the bandages.

The seventh day

The hollow warehouse’s dim gloom—a figure in that corner sobbing all day long, and in this pillar’s shadow, the last remaining wounded person silent as stone, occasionally arching their chest in gasps.

The eighth day.

The emptied warehouse.
In the sky beyond the distorted iron bars, today too, smoke rose from the piled corpses in the vacant lot outside.

From the pillar’s shadow, a hand suddenly shook a canteen,
Countless terrified eyeballs layered upon a dark wall.
Mrs. K also died.
—No occupants—deceased: so-and-so—
The ink dried on the paper fragment posted at the entrance.

Torn-off lotus petal fragments lay scattered white across the paving stones.

Elderly Mother

Do not die.

Elderly Mother

This must not go on as it is.

In a corner of the mother-child dormitory creaking in the wind
A four-and-a-half-tatami empty room.

In front of the mandarin orange box altar
her body of sagging skin and sinews sprawled
Inside the too-heavy rice-cracker futon
All day something—
The muttering mother.

A deceptively cold day—
Coming from Koi Hill in the west

Lifting the dusk-accumulated dust on the windowpane

Your temple’s white hair faintly illuminated in this nearing-winter brightness—you were there again with your dear son and daughter-in-law and grandchild, turning their parched faces toward her—might she not still have been speaking?—when the faded photo on the Buddhist altar quivered faintly and smiled.

The photo on the altar was smiling.

Yesterday, someone from the company brought word that they had dug out a front tooth with a gold crown from right around where your son’s seat had been.

They had brought it.

As for the daughter-in-law and the little one—

It was around Tsubashi Bridge—

With the neighborhood association people, they all suffered full-body burns,

they crawled down to the nearby Tenma River

they were apparently washed away one after another by the water

Those scorching days—

Leaned on a cane, pulling your hand—
she walked searching through shadowless Hiroshima

Crossed tile mountains and traversed collapsed bridges

West to east, south to north—

From the crossroads rumored to have gathered corpses

Temples and schools on the town outskirts
To the small island's detention camp
Flipping through the half-torn casualty register
Through the midst of people continuing to moan
Peering and inquiring around

Truly the seventh day
Heading toward a hospital in a mountain village she had suddenly heard about
when she was crossing the burnt ruins again
Until now,
You who had been stubbornly resolute
The utility pole reduced to just its base
beside the sputtering smolder
She suddenly squatted down and remained there.
“Ah, enough already.
Enough is enough.
Why must we suffer such—
Why must we suffer such cruel fates? There’s no need for that!”
Bawling at the top of her voice,
burst into tears

The umbrella collapsed in the ash.

A small cloud of dust rose.
In the ridiculously blue sky,
there was nothing—

There was nothing.

A solitary white wisp of smoke

had been rising and rising...

When she was young, her husband had died—
sewing, laundry starching—
the only son she had raised by even running an all-night udon shop—
after graduating from university, five or six years with a chest illness—
after finally recovering, he took a wife—
six months into having a grandchild—
on that morning of August 6th—
he left smiling as usual—

The daughter-in-law carried the grandchild on her back
was taken out to evacuation work
They stayed just as they were
they did not return
Leaving you alone at home
the three who never came back

Ah, Mother...

The elderly mother

I must not pass away like this.

Perhaps from the exhaustion of walking through the burnt ruins—
or perhaps struck by lingering toxic fumes—
her body grew heavy,
and she eventually fell asleep.
Now even her own murmured words
escaped Mother's lips unclear—
not her sorrow but your sorrow,
your grudge without resentment—
relatives lost in that war,
the thoughts and bonds of all people
woven into a force to never again let such suffering

It must become the power to never let this happen again in the world of people.

That murmur.
The traces of tears.
As she stitched them only onto parched ribs,
"I must not pass away like this.
To pass away like this—
I must not."

Season of Flames

FLASH!
The entire city
was engulfed
In magnesium,
It crumbled like silhouettes.
It was not sound.
It was
Weightlessly,
Hurled-out consciousness.
The instant of being buried
Far.

Damn you,

Countless shards of flying glass.

Aged beams heavier than lead.

Thudding earthen wall.

Dealt the final blow,

Outside—
Strange gray
Clumsily crushed roofs’
Power line grids’
Human-stench-filled
Depopulated
Several-square-mile
Deathly stillness.

Deathly stillness.

The scorched-brown mountain range that suddenly rose—

At the bottom of the mortar bowl

From crushed Hiroshima—

What a cataclysm!

Swelling churning lashing-back thrusting-upward

Cloud—

Cloud—

Cloud—

Red—Orange—Purple—

A crimson eruption at the far zenith—

Coiled—

Exploded—

From fissures in the earth's crust—smoke swirled—

Boiled into the stratosphere—

The atmosphere!

For the first time, reverberations traveled through the ground—

Reverberations groaned, blast noise roared!

Uranium U-235
Hiroshima’s predetermined

At 500 meters in the sky
It caused an artificial sun to appear,
At 8:15 AM—
Indeed—
had forced citizens into dense crowds on downtown streets.
Hiroshima—

It could no longer be seen.
Beneath pubic hair-like smoke,
swelling twofold, threefold, then shrinking,
under the flickering sun,
flames’ tongues writhed and spread,
licking peeled human skin—
licking peeled skin—
whipping wildly in the whirlwind,
black torrential rain—

Sealing lips that called to kin—
Line,
Line,
Passing through a phantom rainbow—
A procession of ghosts,
Like ants whose nest lay shattered,
They fled toward the city's edge.
Filling roads,
Hands dangling before them,
Sluggishly—
For an interval—
For an interval—
What once were humans—
A caravan of creatures.
Sky and earth both vanished.
Through space rank with scorching winds,
Through seven sunken channels flowed
The water's torpid drift.
Jagged protrusions,
Sodden swellings—

That which continues infinitely
The bay mouth's
Collides with islands.

(Ah, we—
Because we are not fish,
We couldn't just turn our bellies in silence—
Bikini Atoll had spewed up
What mirrored those tens of thousands of tons of seawater was
Pig—
Sheep—
Monkey—
experimental animals'
...blankly staring eyes—eyes—eyes)

The sun scorched,

Rain seeps in—

Vast, sprawling rubble across a three-ri expanse in all directions—
leveling white bones and brick fragments,

Indeed,

about three shaku—

Hiroshima rose.

Dead: 247,000.

Missing: 14,000.

Injured: 38,000.

Atomic Bomb Remnants lay scattered at the arrayed sites.

Scorched stones,
Melted roof tiles,
Crushed glass bottles,
and dust-covered
Tourist hotel urban planning pamphlets.
However,

1951

Today too, blazing clouds.

Skimming past them,
floating gently—
Certainly, those were two white dots—

Th-those!
Tethered by radio from the other side of the Earth
the parachute of the atomic bomb effect measuring device.
We,
from the retinas of the Hiroshima tribe
unfading
that morning’s
parachute
floating lightly,
behind the clouds
drifting playfully.

The little one

Little one, sweet child

Where on earth are you?

Like a stone I had stumbled over suddenly,
Parted on that clear morning and remained,
Before eyes opened wide.

Mother isn't here.

Behind your eyes that vividly reflect the sky,

Suddenly,

Crimson-black clouds rose,
at the zenith curling and spreading.
That soundless luminous anomaly
before the endless stream of a child’s questions—
Who would speak of that day?

Little one, sweet child,
where on earth have you gone?
Left you with neighbors and went out to work,
your being
drawn solely by that obsession.

On the rotting flesh of the soles that had run through flame-engulfed streets,
the maggots had begun to swarm.
Without even strength to recoil in disgust,
in the gloom of the makeshift shelter
your mother died without a word.

In that belly where she had carried you,

the Father torn into eight pieces by an artillery shell on a southern island,

his gentle body coated with tears of parting

swelled with burns, pus, and blotches,

writhing piled among many similar corpses.

Only what was in the emergency bag remained unsoiled and unburned.

The new picture book meant for you,

left at the bedside,

she grew still.

About that night's events,

who would tell you?

Little one, sweet child

How on earth were you faring?

The naked sun trembled beyond the clouds.

Through burning ash, along a deafened lone path

Raining firebombs, amidst flying shards of glittering glass

In memories of being pursued and running

With the skin of your heart drawn taut

Stammering,

Mother cried out for you

Only you

Had wanted to tell only you

About your father

About your mother

And now

The heartache of making you go on alone
Who would tell
Who would tell for us?

Yes, I will—
I will surely find you

Press my mouth to your soft ear
I'll tell you.
The fathers and mothers throughout Japan, the beloved little ones—
The tearing apart of each and every person,
crushing with dark force,
Eventually, like flies,
swatting
spearing
That war that drove them to madness and death
How did it—
Burned the seas, burned the islands
burned the town of Hiroshima
From your clear eyes, from your clinging hands
Did they take your father?
Did they take your mother?
I'll tell you the real truth of it.
I’ll tell you!

Grave marker

You all stood huddled together,

like people pressed tight for warmth on a cold day,

Gradually grew smaller and was crammed into a corner.

By now,

no one even notices.

A single small grave marker
“Spirits of the War-Affected Children of Saibi Elementary School”
Surrounded at the base with burnt bricks,
a piece of wood less than three feet long erected,
a split bamboo tube leaning flowerless against it.

AB Advertising Company

CD Scooter Co.

And the massive signboard of

Hiroshima Peace City Construction Co., Ltd.

Behind the rows of flimsy buildings

painted green

the corner of the road leading to the Ma Cup Tennis Court

Piled and discarded roof tiles and cement debris.

The school’s collapsed gateposts were half-buried.

When rain fell, that area became a muddy swamp.

From the municipal barrack housing that no longer seemed usable

At the corner where a baby’s cries never ceased,

You all stood.

Gradually becoming a rotting tree,

Handless,

Legless,

What were you clinging to

Asking for nothing,

Silently, silently

You stood.

However much you called,

However hard you cried,

Neither father nor mother

would have come.

Shaking off those clinging hands,

the strangers surely fled.

Beneath grief's crushing weight,

amid scorching winds

in airless darkness where you choked—

(Ah, what crime could they have committed?)

Those soft hands,

small necks—

Under stones and iron and old lumber, blood spurted—
How easily they were crushed.
In the shadow of Hijiyama

The line of friends whose eyes were burned like steamed buns
trembled and crouched.

At the clatter of sword-bearing soldiers running past,
even when they called out, "Help us, soldiers!"

No one answered you all,

By the darkening water tank

"Take me!" they cried.

Even when they pointed westward,
No one took them by the hand.

And then, mimicking others, they submerged in the water tank,
placing fig leaves on their faces.
In that state of understanding nothing,
they died.
You all—
You can’t smell apples.
You can’t suck on candy balls.
You who have gone far away—
“〈We do not want… until victory〉” you were made to say—

〈...until victory〉—who forced those words from you?

Who in creation was it?!

"The Spirits of Saibi Elementary School's War-Orphaned Children"

You who stand silent,

In those eyes brimming with wonder—

The field gun that older brothers and fathers were made to cling to
rusted red, lay rolled
in the clover hollow
where foreign soldiers and women
sprawled visible at this street corner—
in the open field beyond,
toward the detention center surrounded by high new walls—
the people who said they would not wage war

At this street corner where again today they were being led along

Truly, how astonishing it all was.
Into your rabbit-like ears,
from the eaves of a gabled roof,
a static-filled radio
reported that hundreds of tons of bombs were being dropped somewhere,
that the atomic bomb production budget was being increased by billions of dollars,
that reinforcement troops were landing in Korea—
the sound of it relentlessly streaming news was heard.

From the roots of pungent railway grass,

even a rusted nail

was collected and sold—

Ah, you all were being cleared away—

You were forgotten.

The single barely surviving marker post,

eventually buried under earth and sand from the civil engineering company’s expansion work.

Those small hands and

The place where the neck bones were buried

Beneath something,
it was lost forever

“The Spirits of Saibi Elementary School’s War-Orphaned Children”

Even if the vase held no flowers,
two butterflies chased each other

In the dark wood grain,

The wind blew from the sea
Like that morning long ago
The sky still held its shining blue
Will you not emerge?
With soft arms intertwined—
Won't you rise up?

Granny
swore she’d never go to some flashy peace festival dressed up like a carnival.
Even now she kept waiting for you

Grandfather

Under the hibiscus tree’s shade
he was secretly hiding your old shoes.

She suckled at her fallen mother’s breast.
The child who survived that day
was already six—
stealing,
begging,
she wandered the rainy road.

Your friends too,
already burned black by the sun,
had arms strong enough to rival adults'—
As if they'd ever lose!
As if they'd ever lose—
The Korean friends
at sun-scorched Hiroshima Station
gathered signatures to prevent war.

As if they'd ever lose!
As if they’d ever lose—

The Japanese children
They abandoned shoe-shining tools
They sold newspapers telling the truth

You all

Enough already. No more staying silent.

With the adults trying to start wars,

To fight throughout the world,
shine your round eyes,
with your clear voices,

Hah!
Shout and come leaping out!

And then—
Spread arms that anyone could cling to—
Press your cheeks to every heart to summon back righteous tears—
"We are Hiroshima’s
We are Hiroshima’s children—"
To every body
Leap in!

Shadow

Movie theaters, waiting rooms, open-air markets
Burned down only to be rebuilt, stood only to collapse, spreading psoriasis-like—
Big brother’s Hiroshima’s

Greasy heads where oil melted
In bare-legged reconstruction—
Found clinging here and there
Were promptly hung with Western-lettered signboards

Yet another "Atomic Bomb Remnant".

Surrounded by a painted fence
the corner of a bank’s stone steps
seeped into the reddish-black stone grain
a subtle pattern

That morning
By a flash reaching tens of thousands of degrees,
Someone's waist had been scorched in an instant onto the thick slab of granite
On the pale red cracked steps
The trace of blood that viscously melted and flowed with internal organs
A scorched shadow
Ah, that morning
In the midst of an unfathomable flash, scorching heat, and smoke
Churning in the vortex of flame's glare and cloud shadows
Dragging peeled skin, crawling around
Even a wife, even a child
They had become unrecognizable even to those they encountered
For a person of Hiroshima
This shadow too
Crawling through memory's wounds

it should remain indelible, yet
Pitifully virtuous and
beside the comings and goings of utterly indifferent citizens
Exposed to the sun, beaten by the rain, buried in sand and dust.
Year by year, that shadow faded.
The bank displaying a 'remnant' at its entrance's edge
spewed gritty burnt stone and glass fragments into the street.
Having completed large-scale restoration work
its massive form glistened in the western sun

In the square diagonally across the street,

a showman dressed as a mountain ascetic gathered a crowd.

“If we don’t put up a glass covering, it’ll disappear,”

The authorities scoffed,
Today too,
Those sailors who came sauntering over
Clicked their white shoes and halted.

they went on snapping photos each on their own,
a shoe-shine boy who had come up from behind
with a look that said, "What’s this?"

He peered into the fence.

Friend.

When he removed his black glasses, his eyelids rolled up from between the adhered scar tissue.

Tears welled up.

At that detention camp, he moistened the congealed blood.

Unwinding each layer of the white cloth wrapped around his entire face, when he peeled back the final gauze—

Both eyes—now a single visceral mass—had healed as they were, seeping thin droplets.

The fingertips that spoke of his lost wife and children trembled as they groped for a handkerchief.

*Where am I? What kind of place is this?* he thought, having been brought from the corpse depository. The same words as when he first regained consciousness—he muttered them again,

He adjusted the thick bamboo cane and probed the threshold with his gaiters' tips.

He slowly made his way out.

--Even this must be forgiven by God along with all else--

--Fifty yen per massage--soon I'll treat you to real white rice--

He attended Catholic services, learned therapeutic massage, all his wanderings sinking into time's depths--

One dusk nearing winter

From a passing train window, they saw him--this military-uniformed figure being led by his new wife with her hair bound up.

*Where am I? What kind of place is this?* The question lingered beneath the city's din.

He stopped as if to verify his equilibrium.

He turned only his fedora-clad face toward the light in the sky.
He constantly appeared to be asking his wife something.
Several more years later, at a north wind-swept street corner, he approached from the opposite direction.

There was that figure.

He bent his back and avoided the Reserve Corps' crowd while

his arm remained firmly supported against his shockingly emaciated wife's chest,

facing straight into the wind,

they hurried past as if trying to catch up with something.

What seeped from the wrinkles of his skin behind those black glasses had long since parched in the distance. He walked on through his own heart. It was a trace of suffering.

A Landscape with a River

Already, the setting sun casts its chill upon the city.

The city lurks deep in the inlet, its bridge poised on tiptoe.

In the thinning dusk of dwellings,

Crumbling fragments of autumn bereft of time,

The river bristles its back.

The lost mountain range sleeps with snow heaped at its source,

The blade of snow casts light from afar upon life's brow.

Wife—do you lament winter preparations again tonight?

Withered chrysanthemums cling to the promenade of vases,

The festival where we dreamed of our child-to-be-born has passed too.

Close your eyes and spread your arms—there in the riverbank wind
Upon this city leveled by bones
We too,
living grave markers
Raging flames upon the surface of waves
The shattering sound falls into the mountain folds of liberated imperial domains.

And

The setting sun already stands still.

The river ripples and rustles in the wind.

Morning.

Dreaming,

The laborer rested his pickaxe-hand where sweat pooled in flash-scars and dreamed.

The wife lay prone on her sewing machine, sudden armpit stench rising from sloughed skin as she dreamed.

The ticket girl hid crab-leg spasms in both arms while punching stubs and dreamed.

The match-selling child dreamed with glass shards still bedded in their neck,

Of livid uranium—white-light element drawn from carnotite—

within the force that endlessly split apart

the starving desert was transformed into a rippling fertile plain

a shining canal ran through crushed mountain foothills,

under the artificial sun, even in the barren lands of the far north,

they dreamed of a glistening golden city being built,

In the leafy shade where workers rest, festival banners sway.

They dreamed of Hiroshima’s legend being told by gentle lips,

Erupting earth veins—they who could wield the quaking crust’s power only for slaughter,

Swine cloaked in human skin,

Left only in children's picture stories,

gunpowder's ten million times—one gram's 10,000,000 units of energy

liberated from within the atom into the people's arms,

within the people's peace,

the bountiful harvest of science

like heavy-laden clusters of grapes

dew-drenched

is gathered in

morning

dreaming

Smile.

At that time, you smiled.

Since that morning—both enemies and allies, both air raids and flames—

had lost all relevance.

The sugar and rice so desperately wanted

had become unnecessary.

You who were blasted out from the siege of war within the jostling crowd of people
The news of the war’s end
Like the only remaining medicine rushed to whisper
Facing me
You certainly smiled
Your maggot-covered body had even stopped groaning
Eyelashes gone through lidless gaps
Placing my human self far away
Lovingly cradling
The shadow of a smile
In air thick with pus’s choking stench
Stripped even of hating and raging—your

The final smile sent to humanity
That quiet smile

That quiet smile is painfully loaded inside me

Three years, five years—the pressure mounted.
The force toward war that had surged back again
faced the people losing their resistance—
Now it was about to explode!
The smile you gave me—
with a ferocity that seemed to loathe even that—
Ah, now—

It's about to explode!

August 6, 1950

They came running.

They came running.

From over there and from over here,

gripped the pistols at their waists,

the police came rushing up.

Police officers come running.

August 6, 1950

Peace memorial services were prohibited.

Night street corners, dawn bridge approaches—

Sentry police officers swarmed,

Hiroshima that had reached today—

The middle of the city, Hatchōbori Intersection

Behind the F Department Store
At the memorial tower and the burnt ruins,
The stream of citizens who had come to offer flowers
Instantly swirled into a vortex—
The sweat-stiffened chin straps
Surged into the crowd,
Split apart by black ranks,
Staggering—
The department store they all looked up at in unison—
From fifth-floor windows, sixth-floor windows
Flutter flutter
Flutter flutter
Against a backdrop of summer clouds
In shadow, in sunlight they glimmered

Countless fliers fluttered down
Over upturned faces
Amidst outstretched hands
In the depths of starving hearts
Slowly settled
Someone picked one up
An arm struck it down
A hand grabbed it mid-air
Eyes read
Workers merchants students young women
Elderly people from nearby villages children
All Hiroshima’s citizens who shared August sixth as their day of remembrance
Citizen masses and police officers
Shoving roaring
The peace leaflets they tried to seize
The anti-war fliers struggling against seizure

A piercing appeal!

The tram stops.

Traffic control breaks down.

A Jeep comes barreling in.

The fire engine’s siren blares.

Two, three trucks of the armed police force arrive.

Through the cordon of plainclothes officers

Foreign luxury cars intrude

Department store entrances and exits transform into strict checkpoints.

But still the fliers fall.

Slowly, slowly,

The flier caught on the eaves—a hand holding a broom appears and

They carefully sweep it off.

Each one, like living things,

like voiceless screams

Flutter flutter

Flutter down

Releasing doves and ringing bells,

The peace festival where the mayor scattered his peace message to the wind—

was stamped out like a sparkler

Lectures,

Concerts,

UNESCO gatherings,

All gatherings were prohibited,

Hiroshima, occupied by armed and plainclothes police officers,

The smoke from rocket artillery

Rises from movie theater screens

From the backstreets—anti-atomic bomb petition signatures with children among them—

The calls reverberate

The sky over Hiroshima on August 6, 1950,

Scattering light upon citizens' anxiety,
casting shadows upon cemetery silence,
To you who love peace,
To me who wishes for peace,
While setting police upon them,
The fliers fall.
The fliers fall.

Night.

Surrounding the field of vision,
Setting the optic nerves throbbing,
Hiroshima's countless pinprick lights
Of raised scars—
The slick skin of keloids twitching,
Wet rails smeared
On the muddy path reeking of entrails—
From scorched trunks of avenue trees, swollen buds sprout
Beneath endless rain—
The woman's eyes glow redder than burning tobacco,
Does not hide crumbling bruises on her thighs—
Hiroshima!
The atomic bomb leaves barren swells in your night—
The woman forgets to conceive—
My sperm lose their tails.

The glittering concessions within Hiroshima

Hijiyama Park’s tree shadows swell with

The Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission’s arch light

the taillights of miscarrying luxury cars

The indigenous music of the New Mexico desert seeps through.

O night fog,

(In the window frame of the distant riverbank,

stretching up, shedding petals

plucking stamens

the cat tribe woman

there too, she begins her nightly routine)

On the station’s rooftop where trains donning eyepatches come to rest

The fickle electric news bulletins

Tonight too, they spell out sightless letters.

They announced the second, third, and hundredth atomic bomb tests.

Blood dripped from somewhere as—
a drunkard staggered down.
The riverside’s shadows.

A creaking boat
From within it
A lanky soldier jerks upright
Hiding scrap-metal scavenger tracks
The night tide creeps shoreward
Moth-dark
Wingbeats alone crossing sky
Night toward dawn
Dawn toward night's maw
A light hung distant
A light snagged mid-plunge
A light trembling toward oblivion
Foam-scattered light

trembling light—dying light—
moment by moment by moment—
dragging plasma and crawling—
even now while moving further from that day—
Hiroshima’s light crawls closer from nowhere definite

In history's darkness
quietly and low
Hiroshima’s light overflows

In the streets

O the very thing

The receding station policeman

The anger of broker women exchanging insults at the train window

clustered in the gloom

the laughter of white women deliberately letting out coquettish cries

Without even pressing the wound, letting blood drip

The drunkard’s sorrow as he staggered away

Behind those

Behind those

Stab once, and—

The very thing about to surge forth!

To a Woman

Split belly turned skyward
The phantom of a draft horse stepping into the void

Prowled the stone pavement of the watering place

The shantytown on former logistics corps grounds
In the depths of gutters exposed through alleys, you lived hidden
Since that summer—about a year now—
Hiding beneath umbrellas on rainy days
Hospital visits
The shadow of a transparent B-29
Suddenly began falling toward your face
The scar from the flash

Clumped from eyelid to nose,
You—
vowed not to meet another soul until death—
torn from you by the collapsing house.

Knitting with one arm,
the yarn of survival—
what kind of coagulated blood
do you drag into that palm?

A windmill spun slowly.

In the vegetable garden where children played, this quiet town

Several times turning back,

Today at last I went to seek you out
this path through burnt ruins
reptilian swellings and
skin glossy without a single downy hair
in faintly red evening sun

Upon my lips I recalled the taste of my kin's bones.
From that scar throbbing ceaselessly through heat and cold
Dripped foul-smelling pus.
Beneath the hardened scab,
To you who focused a daughter's heart seared by flames,
I would speak:
From its depths seeped a frenzied longing -
The power of flames seared onto all people.

Those thousand likenesses
the struggle devouring the world's darkness

Beneath the newly looming roar

I will speak

My anger

Your curse

The moment it becomes its most beautiful expression!

Landscape

We always possessed a burning landscape.

The city upon the sandbar of the Fire-Ring Archipelago,

Building windows spouted colorless flames,

Go-Stop dammed up and released exiled people adorned with fire,

Crumbled into chimney fires; the station’s great clock hidden by flames.

At the ring of the breakwater at the tip, ships loading fire came and went, suddenly spewing soundless steam whistles of flame.

What the train hauled away in one frantic sweep—hooded flames’ constriction.

The woman gathered fiery pus in her crotch, and when a foreigner stopped to scatter flames from his lighter,

scrambling black-clothed beggar wretches

Ah, over there—the cigarette that scrap gatherer grabbed still burned.

We always dwelled in a landscape of flames.

This flame will never be extinguished.

This flame will never go out.

And who dares claim we are no longer flames?

The metropolis' night lights flicker above neon embers in this tunnel-like dark sky.

Clustering signs of flames waver—swarming monstrous siblings.

Ah, legs that are only legs, hands that are only hands—each wound licked open by flames.

Finally brains split open; galaxies ignite.

Collapsed.

A rose of flame, blue fire sparks.

Vortex of raging winds.

A darkness raised voices in unison.

Resentment—regret—fury—curse—hatred—supplication—wailing.

A sky where all groans struck the earth and quivered upward.

We within us—another me—the stench of my charred flesh.

Your peeled skin—wife’s bald head—child’s spots—O living atomic tribe.

Humans unhuman.

We at the edge of the ocean leaped into action even at experiments on the atolls.

The manufactured bombs were each suspended by black parachutes into our crucible.

A dance of flames without tongues
The lungless tongue's contortion
Teeth pierce lips, lips spew liquid fire.

Voiceless flames spread one after another across the world.

Hiroshima raging within London

Hiroshima exploding inside New York
Hiroshima scorching translucent within Moscow
A voiceless dance suffusing the world—the fury of postures

We ourselves had become flames scorching landscapes bare.

Like forests ablaze, like molten earth,

Flames smothering the Earth—heat incarnate.

And schemes of atomic slaughter further forged,

A fire-mass crushing all—madness made manifest.

Appeal

It’s still not too late even now.

It is not too late to rouse your true power.

From the wounded heart pierced by that day’s flash that scorched retinas

If you have tears that never cease dripping

Even now from that fissure thickly drips blood and pus cursing war.

If you carry Hiroshima’s stench

From under the main house pressed by flames

abandoning a sister who thrashes with outstretched hands

without covering their genitals with burnt scraps of clothing

Dangling raw reddened arms over chests,
staggering on fire-filled bare feet,
through the rubble desert reflecting glare,
they wandered into a journey where comfort would never come.
The true you -
extend those monstrous arms high,
together with countless identical arms,
to support the cursed sun that threatens to fall again.
Even now it's not too late.
You who stand detesting war,
block with your death-branded back
the tear ducts of all gentle people,
clasp those trembling hands
with your own raw red palms -
Now!
Even now it's not too late.

those timidly drooping hands
With your raw, reddened palms
To clasp them firmly together
Now.
It’s still not too late even now.

When will that day come?

1

Hot rubble and collapsed buildings,

Roads buried from three directions converged

A charred tram with tangled copper wires rolled and crossed.

In the center of Hiroshima, there in a corner of Kamiya-cho Square

Left uncleaned and cast aside—you,

As for sound—only the heat’s presence, enough to split even a shard of roof tile.

As for moving things—only in the dizzying August sky,

rasping smoke rose

In the emptiness that scorched the mind's eye—as if everything had perished—

You—girlishly bending your waist at a sharp angle—

like a small bird clinging to the earth with both hands

lay half-prostrated in death,

Though there were only naked raw-reddened corpses,

for some reason you alone wore clothes,

one shoe still on your foot,

With a slightly smudged cheek and thick hair,

the rotted areas showed no traces of blood,

The back of your skirt-style work pants alone—

completely burned through,

your buttocks roundedly exposed

the agony of death expelled a small amount of feces

dried and adhered

The shadowless midday sun is shining down,

2

Your home was Ujina-machi

Since the First Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars

Japanese youths were always made to carry guns,

spilling tears of torn love along with sake onto their pillows

the port town of Hiroshima where youths were loaded into ship holds to meet their deaths,

the stench of ditches filling the air

In the depths of cluttered back alleys,
After her mother’s passing—with her foundry worker father—she became both parent and sibling,
growing slender like some stunted plant.

She finally began to blossom into a young woman,

As the war drew closer to defeat,

Every night among Japanese towns burning like straw bundles,

Only Hiroshima somehow remained unburned—

Their days filled with anxiety and rumors—

The home they'd long lived in was torn down by forced evacuation ropes,

In eastern districts they rented huts—four family members,

Chewing soybeans buried underground,

Cooking railway weeds into gruel,

Scrambling among adults fearing rumored water attacks,

scrambled to secure bamboo tube life-saving devices—one for each family member,

they fled holding hands on nights of air raids

were knocked down by self-defense groups fortifying bridges

Days of frantic living,

From the raging force of war spinning out of control,
she desperately tried to help her father who suffered from neuralgia and protect her young siblings.
That girl's hands, that body—
3

And as August 6th approached,

You did not know,

Japan’s military, without weapons, to southern islands and jungles—
scattered by hunger and illness,
warships that had lost their oil hid in the shadows of islands and could not move.
The entire nation was left exposed to a rain of flames.
The fascists knew no means to stop the war.
You did not know:
the Soviet power that had crushed the Nazis,
with the notice of non-renewal of the non-aggression pact,
when it stood blocking before Imperial Japan,
that Japan’s surrender was already nothing more than a matter of time—
visible to all nations’ gaze,

You did not know,

The swastika flag fell.

Because the red flag had already been raised over Berlin,

The day of Soviet entry into the war, set three months later,

had begun to flutter grandly across the sky of history,

〈The atomic bomb must be dropped quickly〉

They felt they must crush Japan with their own hands by that day.

Under a dark and sinister will

The dropping must be rushed

July 16th, from the experiment in New Mexico

by the day of Soviet entry into the war

〈There is far too little time!〉

4
On that previous night—the late hours of the fifth—when they would reduce Hiroshima to ashes,

By a definite rumor scattered from the sky,
The citizens who had fled to surrounding mountains and watermelon fields to wait out the night
While menaced by endlessly wailing sirens,
Relieved at the uneventful dawn, turned back toward home

They began spilling into the town’s streets and roads, heading out to today’s hopeless work.

That morning—August 6th, that hour—
You sent your father off to the factory.
You packed a lunch for your brother who had just entered middle school.
Then you sent your younger sister,

as usual, sent her younger sister off to play at relatives in a distant town,

You locked the rattling house door

to your own mobilization workplace

Today too, you headed out to be scolded at work you still couldn’t get used to,

You came quickly halfway in silence,

When you lay face down sensing something,
the flash struck you from directly behind.

When the dust and smoke settled and consciousness returned,

Still trying to reach the factory,
diving through the wave of fleeing people, you came this far and collapsed.

She folded even her judgment of this event into herself,

She closed her eyes obediently, just like that,

Within the girl's thoughts,

What could have been confirmed then?

In that desperate mind of hers, how could the atomic bomb have been measured?

That hand—like a small bird that fell to earth while longing for the future—

Her wrist bent and lay splayed on the ground.

Her knees,

as if ashamed to be collapsed in such a place,

were neatly pressed together and drawn inward.

Only the braided pigtails

lay scattered across the asphalt.

From when she first became aware of the world, she had grown up amid war.

Even the rainbow of hope—quietly restrained until now—burned away completely.
The fact of living and working had been so utterly unnoticed by others that—
a gentle being
by the most brutal method on earth
now here is killed.
〈Ah, this is no accident, no act of God—
The world’s first atomic bomb—through flawlessly precise planning and
through the will of insatiable ambition
over the Japanese archipelago, Hiroshima and Nagasaki were chosen and dropped upon,
as one of four hundred thousand comrades who writhed and vanished—〉

“you will die,”〉

Did you think then,

of the sunflowers by the drainage ditch from your childhood,

the scent of Mom’s once-a-year detachable collar,

your little sister’s pleas after the war grew worse,

the lipstick you’d apply and wipe off with friends in the warehouse shadows,

the floral-patterned skirt you longed to wear,

And did you even think—

This nostalgic Hiroshima’s road leading to the square would soon be widened,

would be named MacArthur Road,

On the willow trees of the boulevard, the neckerchiefs of Japanese women selling their bodies to foreign soldiers

fluttered and tangled as they passed—

And did she also grieve and lament:

"Even without dropping the atomic bomb,

the war would have ended anyway—"

No—how could anyone think that way?

Even those who survived
there were still meanings they did not know—
that Atomic Bomb No. 2 had been dropped on Nagasaki

the Soviet Army was heading south toward the Manchurian border
It was the morning they had crossed over.
Years later, when Atomic Bomb No. 3 was about to be used,
the target was again
the yellow-faced races—
5
Ah, this was no accident, no act of God—
The first atomic bomb in human history
through meticulous planning and insatiable ambition’s will
over the Orient’s archipelago, upon the Japanese people’s heads
In a flash it was dropped,
as one of four hundred thousand victims who writhed and vanished

You were killed.
Your murdered body—
no one tried to lift you up.

There was nothing to cover your scorched-through mompe pants' shame.
There was of course nothing left to wipe away those clinging marks of agony.

In the struggle of a modest life,
striving with all your might while
you always lived with only timid smiles,
you suppressed in your chest the gentle feelings that gradually swelled—
your most bashful age's
soft buttocks exposed to sunlight,
the stain of dried excrement—
occasionally passing figures searching for corpses
merely looked on with vacant expressions.

That was cruel.
That was anguish.
That was grief.

No—more than that—
What are we to do with this humiliation!
Already you feel no shame—

Burned into the eyes of those who saw it, growing ever more vivid with time—

Humiliation that seeps into the heart—
That had already left you—

A humiliation carved into all Japanese people!

6

We must endure this humiliation.

We must endure forevermore.

We must endure evenings when blizzards bury children crushed beneath jeeps.

We must endure foreign-made armor and pistols.

We must endure Mays when Japan’s youthful blood boils forth.

Freedom lies chained.

We must endure endless days of this nation’s subjugation.

But you—what shall we do when endurance fails?

Though you spread your hands like fledgling wings,

though you soothe us from death’s far shore,

No matter how gently you tried to suppress it with that bashful heart of yours,
the humiliation of your corpse burned into our hearts
piled up like volcanic heat,
through the intimidation of an ugly will brimming with ambition,
the people being driven into war once again—
the unbearable strength of those mothers, those children, those sisters
became the rage of a nation yearning for peace.

The day of explosion will come.

That very day—
Your body is covered without shame,
This humiliation is washed by the people’s tears
The atomic bomb’s curse pooled upon the earth
will at last begin to fade away—
Ah, that day—
When will that day come?

Aspiration—In Response to "The Hiroshima Panels"—

I stood myself before this grotesque form
Before this cruelty, I would lay bare my path
The voice pursuing summer loomed deeper than darkness
Tears brimming from painting to painting never dried, heavy—
Vividly I saw within these pages
those dear who had escaped // the faces of those beloved who had perished
The countless agonies of swarming naked figures
In the midst of trembling that clung to the heart
Beyond the flames, lying still and staring fixedly at me—
Those were unmistakably my own eyes!

Ah—let us stretch these twisted legs
Cover naked hips
this heart that strives to loosen each bloodied finger clenched tight
Who could dare hinder
As a threat of new war over a perishing Japan
The light of the atomic bomb was released
In the face of the fact that it instantly took the lives of over two hundred thousand citizens
Who could ever suppress the fury awakening from the depths?

Before this panel, I pledged my path.

Before this history, so that we might not let the future be filled with regret.

Afterword

On the morning of August 6, 1945, I was about to leave my home in a town over three kilometers from the hypocenter for central Hiroshima when the atomic bomb struck. I survived with only glass fragment wounds and several months of radiation sickness. At that time, those within approximately a two-kilometer radius from the city center were burned to death indoors—either killed instantly by the blast or buried alive—while those outdoors were obliterated, charred, or died within about a week after fleeing with burns. People in the surrounding areas perished within months from burns and radiation sickness. Those farther out barely survived, and in the towns encircling the city, families who had sent members through neighborhood associations to clean up after firebreak demolitions never saw their loved ones return home. Furthermore, rumors spread by leaflets scattered during an air raid on another city several days prior—warning that Hiroshima would be burned to ground on the night of the fifth—along with the mobilization of middle school and girls' school underclassmen for evacuation work, rendered this tragedy even more agonizing.

Now everyone knows that in Hiroshima, approximately two hundred thousand people were killed by a single atomic bomb.
The same holds true for Nagasaki.
But these remain generalized facts—precisely because the scale defies comprehension, one cannot grasp this visceral reality that would reduce anyone confronting it to inconsolable wailing.
Even we who were caught in that maelstrom could not physically fathom the catastrophe’s full scope; now we bear both time’s distance—recoverable only through fragmented recollections—and society’s transformed landscape.

Yet these recollections, though tinged with grief and resignation, possessed a nature that continually added fresh tears and increased the trickle of blood amidst the burdens piled upon the shoulders of those left behind in the ebb and flow of drifting lives. Moreover, through the terror born of the atomic bomb’s utterly cruel experience and the anxiety and insight toward the entirely transformed meaning of war it brought about, the dried tears and congealed blood acquired a peculiar, profound depth—as if jagged fragments pressed against the underside of one’s skin.

This year too approached the eighth memorial for those who had eventually perished.
In Hiroshima came the season when many households—accommodating temples overwhelmed by simultaneous requests—began conducting memorial services they had advanced or postponed through rescheduling, yet who could fathom what festering anguish accumulated in the sealed depths of hearts belonging to those seated there?
Having become words never to be uttered and tears never to be shed, it sank ever deeper into those heart-depths even as—within history's unfolding currents, whether consciously recognized or not—it now assumed new forms, while the event's meaning gradually brought its profound force to bear upon humanity's goodwill through rational yet fierce expansion.

While compiling this manuscript, I felt ashamed—ashamed of my six years of negligence as a poet confronting this matter, ashamed that this poetry collection remains too meager, too feeble to convey the visceral reality of this event, to lay bare the substance of this fact in every heart and imbue history’s unfolding—for each individual, each nation, each homeland, all humanity—with meaning and weight transcending mere memory from past to future.

Yet this is my—no, our gift from Hiroshima’s survivors to all people of the world: a gift filled to the brim within gentle hands that cannot help but extend, as human compassion toward oneself and others in unguarded moments, into those innate eyes that glimmer quietly within every person’s being under any circumstance.
I beseech you to receive this heart.

Moreover, I must add this: that simply because I sing my wish for peace through poetry in this way reveals how our times regress so severely that even humanity's most fundamental freedoms must be stripped away.
Through such literary activities I have been nearly deprived of all means to make a living—of course—while enduring constant tangible and intangible oppression that grows ever more severe.
This stands as nothing less than definitive proof of how Japan's current political reality drags us back toward war while trampling upon the people's will.

Moreover, I want to state.
that the people promoting such oppression against me are taking actions utterly hostile to humanity itself.

This poetry collection is both a gift to all who love humanity and a book of warning to such people.

May 10, 1952

Tōge Sankichi