Nagasaki Redemption 1

The tale centers around Hikaru, a Hiroshima teenager whose family is in the process of self-destructing just as he suffers a lethal cerebral hemorrhage. His elderly attending physician brings Hikaru back from the brink and tries to help him break through the hard shell that imprisons his mind. Hikaru accepts an invitation to accompany the retiring doctor to his hometown. He spends a year—only identified as falling during the pivotal decade between 2001 and 2009—in Nagasaki studying Japan’s history of Christian martyrdom as well as the atomic bombings. A growing interest in the nature of time mysteriously leads to experiences outside its usual constraints. When he travels in time to the Nagasaki atomic bombing, then another 400 years back to witness scenes of martyrdom and encounters with the legendary priest Tomas Jihyoe Kintsuba, he learns the meaning of life as he breaks through the thick armor encasing his heart. Hikaru starts afresh on life’s road as a healer ready to help build a world free of war. “Typical” teen Hikaru sniffs to his perplexing elderly guides, “I don’t care about history.” Despite himself, spirited sparring with them on science, philosophy, and psychology lures him to contemplate the meaning of time—a personal mission, because Hikaru’s painful childhood as a budding member of the hypercompetitive class is the ever-present past that he must overcome. Nagasaki Redemption may not be light reading, but it compels reading and kindly extends releases from tension in lyrical accounts of kite-flying, blissful encounters with nature, and enthralling descriptions of interventional neuroradiological therapy, a masterwork of contemporary medicine. Research and debate surrounding the process that led to atomic bombing have focused on the global situation before and during World War II and the American politicians and scientists who were involved in developing “the bomb”; unfortunately, little light is shed on the national character of the country that invited atomic bombing. Particularly ignored is the Tokugawa period, the crest of the world’s longest feudal age, which collapsed under the emerging nation state. Goto contends forcefully that the atomic bombings cannot be understood without examining the transition period between the middle age and modern times. A junction of competing forces since late 16th century, Nagasaki is the perfect backdrop for exploring not only the nuclear attacks, but early tolerance for cultural diversity, the banning of Christianity and the national isolation policy. The U.S. avoids discussing the genocide of Native Americans and the A-bomb massacres; Japan rejects talk of its barbaric military rampages in Asia and the Tokugawa ban on Christianity, which was executed with a barbarity comparable to the Nazi holocaust; China will not speak of mass slaughters under its military dictatorships and during the Cultural Revolution. Goto sounds a warning that if the world continues to allow pervasive nationalism to distort the study of history, humankind has no future.