Hiroshima
and the Art of Outrage
by Kenzaburo Oe
August 5, 2010 New York Times Source
Tokyo
THE Futenma Marine Corps Air Station on Okinawa, one of the largest
United States military bases in East Asia, is in the center of
a crowded city.
The American and Japanese governments acknowledge the dangers of
this situation, and they agreed nearly 15 years ago that the base
should
be moved; however, no move has yet been made.
In 2009 a new prime minister, Yukio Hatoyama, tantalized
Okinawans with the prospect of moving the despised base off the island,
but
he was recently
forced to resign, in part because of his failure to keep that promise.
Mr. Hatoyama’s successor, Naoto Kan, has made it clear that
he intends to respect the United States-Japan security treaty — a
position that, while not directly related to the issue of dialing
down the United States military presence in Japan, may indicate
which way
the wind is blowing.
It was recently reported
here that a government panel is about to submit a policy paper
to Prime Minister Kan, suggesting
that
regarding
Japan’s “three
nonnuclear principles” — prohibiting the production, possession
and introduction of nuclear weapons — it was not wise to “limit
the helping hand of the United States,” and recommending
that we allow the transport of nuclear arms through our territory
to improve
the so-called nuclear umbrella.
When I read about this in the newspaper last week, I felt a great
sense of outrage. (I’ll explain later why that word has
such deep significance for me.) I felt the same way when another
outrageous
bit of news came
to light this year: the decades-old, Okinawa-related secret agreement
entered into by the United States and Japan in contravention
of the third of the three nonnuclear principles, which forbids
bringing
nuclear weapons
into Japan.
At the annual Hiroshima Peace Ceremony on Friday,
this year marking the 65th anniversary of the dropping of the atom
bomb, representatives
from
Britain, France and the United States planned to be in
attendance,
for the first time. This is a public event at which government
leaders give
speeches, but it also has a more profound and private aspect,
as the atomic bomb survivors offer ritual consolation to
the spirits
of their
dead relatives. Of all the official events that have been
created during the past 200 years of modernization, the
peace ceremony
has the greatest
degree of moral seriousness.
I’m using the term “moral seriousness” deliberately
here, to echo a passage in the speech President Obama delivered in Prague
in April 2009. “As the only nuclear power to have used a nuclear
weapon,” he said, “the United States has a moral responsibility
to act.” The president’s call is yet another
indication that a sense of crisis is germinating, fueled
by a growing awareness
that
if decisive steps are not taken, before long the possession
of nuclear weapons will not be limited to a few privileged
countries.
Mr. Obama’s Prague speech reflected the sentiments expressed previously
by George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger and Sam Nunn in a 2007
article for The Wall Street Journal titled “A World Free of Nuclear
Weapons.” They wrote: “Deterrence continues
to be a relevant consideration for many states with
regard to threats
from other states.
But reliance on nuclear weapons for this purpose is
becoming increasingly hazardous and decreasingly effective.”
The antinuclear mood in America and Europe appears
to be gaining momentum; indeed, the American, British
and
French
presence at
the peace ceremony
may be seen as a small symbolic step toward a nuclear-free
world. However, as things stand now, Japan still
has no concrete plan
for moving the
air base. In the same vein, there’s the possibility
that we will allow nuclear weapons to pass through
Japan in exchange
for
American
protection.
At a meeting of the United Nations Security Council
before he was deposed, Prime Minister Hatoyama
responded to
Mr. Obama’s Prague speech
by noting that Japan, too, had a “moral responsibility” because
it was “the only victim of nuclear bombings.”
But what sort of action will result from all this
antinuclear rhetoric? If Prime Minister Kan also
takes the time
to think about President
Obama’s
phrase, how might he interpret it? It probably wouldn’t
go over very well if, in his speech at the peace ceremony,
he were to
side with
the crowd advocating transport of nuclear weapons through
Japan.
But suppose he did — how would such a declaration be received by
the foreign dignitaries who have allied themselves with Mr. Obama’s
pledge? And what about the bombing victims who will fill the venue? Wouldn’t
they feel a sense of outrage if they were told that it’s
their moral responsibility, as citizens of the only
atom-bombed country,
to choose to live under the protection of a nuclear
umbrella, and that wanting
to discard that umbrella in favor of freedom is, conversely,
an abdication of responsibility?
I’m concerned, too — now that the former prime minister’s
rosy promises of relocation have failed to materialize and the original
plan to move the Futenma base to an offshore site near the Okinawan village
of Henoko has been brought back to life — about
how such a policy change would be perceived by the
elderly
men and women
who
have been
staging a sit-in at Henoko for more than 2,000 days.
Sixty-five years ago, after learning that
a friend who was reported missing after
the bombing
of
Hiroshima had
turned
up in a hospital
there, my
mother put together a meager care package
and set out from our home in Shikoku to
pay a visit.
When
she returned,
she shared
her friend’s
description of that morning in August 1945.
Moments before the atomic bomb was dropped,
my mother’s friend
happened to seek shelter from the bright summer sunlight in the shadow
of a sturdy brick wall, and she watched from there as two children who
had been playing out in the open were vaporized in the blink of an eye. “I
just felt outraged,” she told my
mother, weeping.
Even though I didn’t fully grasp its import at the time, I feel
that hearing that horrifying story (along with the word outrage, which
put down deep, abiding roots in my heart) is what impelled me to become
a writer. But I’m haunted by the thought that, ultimately, I was
never able to write a “big novel” about the people who experienced
the bombings and the subsequent 50-plus years of the nuclear age that
I’ve lived through — and
I think now that writing that novel is
the only thing I ever really
wanted to do.
In Edward W. Said’s last book, “On Late Style,” he
gives many examples of artists (composers,
musicians, poets, writers) whose work as they grew older contained
a peculiar
sort of concentrated
tension, hovering on the brink of catastrophe,
and
who, in their later years, used that
tension to express their
epochs, their
worlds, their
societies, themselves.
As for me, on the day last week when
I learned about the revival of the
nuclear-umbrella ideology, I looked
at myself
sitting
alone in my study
in the dead of night . . . . . .
and what
I saw was an aged, powerless human
being,
motionless
under
the weight
of this
great outrage,
just feeling the peculiarly concentrated
tension, as if doing so (while
doing nothing) were an art form in
itself. And
for that old Japanese man, perhaps
sitting there alone in silent protest
will be his own “late
work.”
Kenzaburo Oe, who received the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1994, is
the author, most
recently,
of “The Changeling.” This
article was translated by Deborah Boehm from the Japanese.
