Ground Zero, Nagasaki
Stories
Seirai YŪichi Translated by Paul Warham An awa r d -winning co lle c t i o n a bo u t t h e ato mi c b om b , tol d f r om t h e pe r s pe c t i v e o f t h os e who l iv e in th e s ha d ow o f i ts u s e .
Set in contemporary Nagasaki, the six short stories in this collection draw an unflinching portrait of the A-bomb’s horrific, ongoing trauma. Whether they experienced the attack directly or have merely heard about it from survivors, many of the characters in these tales filter their pain and alienation through their Catholic faith, illuminating a side of Japanese culture little known in the West. The Urakami Cathedral, the center of Japanese Christian life, stood at ground zero of the A-bomb attack.
In “Birds,” a man in his sixties reflects on his life as a husband, father, and grandfather. Just a baby when he was found crying in the rubble near ground zero, he knows neither his parents’ nor his own identity. His birthday is set as August 9, the day the A-bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. In other stories, a woman is haunted by her brief affair with a married man, who is now dead, and the parents of a schizophrenic man—a virtual time bomb—murders his wife, and they struggle to make sense of the aftermath of the crime. These characters battle with guilt, shame, loss, love, and the limits of explaining an inexplicable event. They feel anger toward those who were not affected by the bomb and ambivalence toward a God who would allow such horror to happen. Seirai Yūichi
“Ground Zero, Nagasaki represents some of the best literary fiction that is being produced in Japan today. It should gain an appreciative audience among those who enjoy moving, informative writing.” —Van Gessel, Brigham Young University
“A moving document of the atomic experience and one that suggests the ways it still affects Japan today.” —Stephen Snyder, Middlebury College
is a novelist from Nagasaki.
He is the author of Jeronimo no jujika (Geronimo’s Cross), which won the Bungakukai Prize for New Writers. He also won the Akutagawa Prize for Seisui (Holy Water) and the Ito Sei Literary Prize and the Tanizaki Jun’ichiro Prize for Bakushin (Ground Zero).
$35.00* / £24.00 cloth 978-0-231-17116-8 $34.99 / £24.00 ebook 978-0-231-53856-5 J a n u a r y 208 pages J apanese L iterature W eatherhead B o o ks o n A sia
World English-language Rights: Columbia University Press; All Other Rights: Japanese Literature Publishing Project cup.c o lumbia.edu | 43