Date of Completion
2019
Document Type
Honors College Thesis
Department
Asian Languages and Literatures
Thesis Type
Honors College
First Advisor
Kyle Keoni Ikeda
Second Advisor
John Seyller
Third Advisor
Sean Field
Keywords
Nagasaki, Atomic Bomb, Seirai Yuichi, Catholic, Ground Zero Nagasaki, World War II
Abstract
This paper discusses how the Catholic faith of the hibakusha (atomic bomb victims), their families, and their community members shapes their understanding of the atomic bombing in Seirai Yuichi’s fiction work Ground Zero, Nagasaki. In re-emphasizing the preeminence of the individual atomic experience and moving away from the canonical Nagasaki atomic narratives of Nagai Takashi and Hayashi Kyoko, Seirai illuminates the essential role that familial connection to the faith plays in an individual’s personal belief and how that belief thus affects one’s interpretation of the bombing. When the bonds of family are broken, post-atomic faith begins to falter and survivors enter a Dark Night of the Soul in which, caught between belief and doubt, hope and trauma, they seek meaning. Seirai explores these moments of searching within this traumatic gray space in his text, illustrating how atomic warfare destroys the self of the faithless individual.
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Coleman, Stratton Elizabeth, "Dark Night of the Soul: Catholic Articulations of Atomic Trauma in Seirai Yuichi's "Ground Zero, Nagasaki"" (2019). UVM Patrick Leahy Honors College Senior Theses. 327.
https://scholarworks.uvm.edu/hcoltheses/327