"Inheritance" of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Maika Nakao is Associate Professor at Hiroshima University, Japan. She received her Ph.D. in history of science from the University of Tokyo and is an expert on the nuclear history of Japan. She worked at Nagasaki University from 2018 to 2021 and co-edited the book, Seventy-five Years after the Atomic Bombing: Tracing Records and Memories of Nagasaki (Shoshi Tsukumo, 2021).Masaya Nemoto is Associate Professor at Matsuyama University, Japan. His 2018 book written in Japanese, Hiroshima Paradokusu: Senngo Nihon no Hankaku to Jindoishiki (Hiroshima Paradox: Anti-nuclear and Humanistic Conscience in Post-war Japan) won prizes from Japanese academic societies.Ran Zwigenberg is Associate Professor at Pennsylvania State University, USA. He has published multiple works on Hiroshima, beginning with his 2014 prize-winning monograph, Hiroshima: The Rise of Global Memory Culture, which addresses survivor politics, trauma, and heritage issues.

• Maika Nakao, Masaya Nemoto, and Ran Zwigenberg: Introduction: Hiroshima and Nagasaki on the Eightieth Anniversary of the BombingPart 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 Nagasaki5. 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

Eighty years on, as the immediacy of the past continues to fade, this timely anthology explores important questions of how, why, and which aspects of the history of post-nuclear Hiroshima and Nagasaki should be preserved and retold. It represents a significant milestone in Japanese and Japanese studies perspectives.