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Fire from the Ashes: Short Stories about Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Nobel Prize Laureate Winner Kenzaburo Oe selects and introduces nine compelling stories by japanese writers on the A-bomb and its aftermath in Japanese society from 1945 to today. To mark the 1985 fortieth anniversary of the A-bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the distinguished members of the Japan P.E.N. Center, led by Kenzaburō Ōe, planned and Readers International helped issue the first ever collection in English showing the tragedy of the A-bombs seen through Japanese eyes. Now it is the 75th anniversary of the same catastrophic events, and the state of world tensions today demands a re-issue of this classic volume so that a new generation of readers can experience firsthand those tragic events and imagine their consequences in Japanese society for generations after.
The classic stories are here: The Crazy Iris by Masuji Ibuse (masterfully translated by Ivan Morris), as well as the works by Tamiki Hara, Summer Flowers and The Land of Heart's Desire. They were censored under the post-war American occupation, but today are familiar to every Japanese schoolchild.
The volume also showcases important Japanese women writers of several generations like Yōko Ōta, Ineko Sata, Kyōko Hayashi and Hiroko Takenishi. Their stories touch on the especially bitter curse for women who were exposed to the radiation as young girls, then were rejected by a traditional society because of their infertility. These stories bring us the gift of great fiction, they allow us to engage deeply with the past, but also to imagine its consequences in an uncertain future.
The classic stories are here: The Crazy Iris by Masuji Ibuse (masterfully translated by Ivan Morris), as well as the works by Tamiki Hara, Summer Flowers and The Land of Heart's Desire. They were censored under the post-war American occupation, but today are familiar to every Japanese schoolchild.
The volume also showcases important Japanese women writers of several generations like Yōko Ōta, Ineko Sata, Kyōko Hayashi and Hiroko Takenishi. Their stories touch on the especially bitter curse for women who were exposed to the radiation as young girls, then were rejected by a traditional society because of their infertility. These stories bring us the gift of great fiction, they allow us to engage deeply with the past, but also to imagine its consequences in an uncertain future.
- GenresFictionShort Stories
205 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1985
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About the author
Kenzaburō Ōe
239 books1,690 followersKenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎) was a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature. His works, strongly influenced by French and American literature and literary theory, engages with political, social and philosophical issues including nuclear weapons, social non-conformism and existentialism.
Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."
Ōe was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1994 for creating "an imagined world, where life and myth condense to form a disconcerting picture of the human predicament today."
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 16, 2015
Fire from the Ashes: Short Stories about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is an anthology of short stories by Japanese writers who experienced the Atomic bomb or lived during the era. The stories are presented and edited by Nobel Prize Laureate Kenzaburō Ōe. Through their stories a wide spectrum of the devastation is given in unwavering detail. Some of the stories take place within the raw carnage of countless burned people in a setting that is an almost surreal representation of the end of the world. Other stories tell of the aftermath in which people attempt to make sense of what happened, live with their injuries, internalize the death of their loved ones, revisit the bombsite, and experience ostracization within their own country.
"In compiling this anthology I have come to realize anew that the short stories included herein are not merely literary expressions, composed by looking back at the past, of what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the summer of 1945. They are also highly significant vehicles for thinking about the contemporary world over which hangs the awesome threat of vastly expanded nuclear arsenals. They are, that is, a means for stirring our imaginative powers to consider the fundamental conditions of human existence; they are relevant to the present and to our movement toward all tomorrows."
This book is the cumulative result by a group of writers to intellectually confront the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the realities of living in an age of nuclear weapons. The stories themselves are written at the highest caliber of modern literature and done so with a degree of restraint that adds an immense solemnity. Nuclear annihilation is the ultimate method of dehumanization and self-destruction. It goes beyond all atrocities for at least in traditional genocide the killer must see the faces of their victims, and so acknowledge their humanity, before killing them. A nuclear weapon dropped from the sky or fired as a warhead from miles away is impersonal as ringing a doorbell.
Japanese and American people, though tied by this historic event see it in a different light. Japan says it as an atrocity, while most Americans see it as a justified means to an end. Yet if take it on sheer numbers, a devastation of one-hundred 9/11’s in a single instant is still preferable to one Hiroshima or Nagasaki. That is to speak nothing about the agonizing effects of radiation burning and birth deformities that would ensue. This is not a defense of one atrocity over the other, but a condemnation of them all. The question of extinction vs. salvation raised in this book has not ceased to be relevant. The torch has been passed to our generation and it is up to us whether we will use it to cook for the hungry, or continue to crush it out on human beings.
"In compiling this anthology I have come to realize anew that the short stories included herein are not merely literary expressions, composed by looking back at the past, of what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the summer of 1945. They are also highly significant vehicles for thinking about the contemporary world over which hangs the awesome threat of vastly expanded nuclear arsenals. They are, that is, a means for stirring our imaginative powers to consider the fundamental conditions of human existence; they are relevant to the present and to our movement toward all tomorrows."
This book is the cumulative result by a group of writers to intellectually confront the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the realities of living in an age of nuclear weapons. The stories themselves are written at the highest caliber of modern literature and done so with a degree of restraint that adds an immense solemnity. Nuclear annihilation is the ultimate method of dehumanization and self-destruction. It goes beyond all atrocities for at least in traditional genocide the killer must see the faces of their victims, and so acknowledge their humanity, before killing them. A nuclear weapon dropped from the sky or fired as a warhead from miles away is impersonal as ringing a doorbell.
Japanese and American people, though tied by this historic event see it in a different light. Japan says it as an atrocity, while most Americans see it as a justified means to an end. Yet if take it on sheer numbers, a devastation of one-hundred 9/11’s in a single instant is still preferable to one Hiroshima or Nagasaki. That is to speak nothing about the agonizing effects of radiation burning and birth deformities that would ensue. This is not a defense of one atrocity over the other, but a condemnation of them all. The question of extinction vs. salvation raised in this book has not ceased to be relevant. The torch has been passed to our generation and it is up to us whether we will use it to cook for the hungry, or continue to crush it out on human beings.
October 29, 2024
Very poignant that I read this in the wake of the Nobel Peace prize being awarded to a group of the Atomic Bomb survivors and campaigners.
June 1, 2020
Such an interesting and emotional read. It deserves your time. I'm glad that I discovered Tamiki Hara! I'm definitely going to read some more of his works and I'm particularly interested in his poetry.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews