Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms


Book Description

What impact did WWII and the dropping of the atomic bomb have on the people of Japan? Through the eyes of an average Japanese woman in 1955, acclaimed artist Fumiyo Kouno attempts to address this question. Kouno's light, free style of drawing evokes a tender reflection on this difficult period in Hiroshima's postwar history. As the characters go about their daily lives, the shadow of the war and the destruction of the bomb linger ghostlike in the background.




Discordant Memories


Book Description

On two separate days in August 1945, the United States dropped atomic bombs over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As the seventy-fifth anniversary of these cataclysmic bombings draws near, American and Japanese citizens are seeking new ways to memorialize these events for future generations. In Discordant Memories, Alison Fields explores—through the lenses of multiple disciplines—ongoing memories of the two bombings. Enhanced by striking color and black-and-white images, this book is an innovative contribution to the evolving fields of memory studies and nuclear humanities. To reveal the layered complexities of nuclear remembrance, Fields analyzes photography, film, and artworks; offers close readings of media and testimonial accounts; traces site visits to atomic museums in New Mexico and Japan; and features artists who give visual form to evolving memories. According to Fields, such expressions of memory both inspire group healing and expose struggles with past trauma. Visual forms of remembrance—such as science museums, peace memorials, photographs, and even scars on human bodies—serve to contain or manage painful memories. And yet, the author claims, distinct cultures lay claim to vastly different remembrances of nuclear history. Fields analyzes a range of case studies to uncover these discordant memories and to trace the legacies of nuclear weapons production and testing. Her subjects include the Bradbury Science Museum in Los Alamos, New Mexico; the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Japan; the atomic photography of Carole Gallagher and Patrick Nagatani; and artworks and experimental films by Will Wilson and Nanobah Becker. In the end, Fields argues, the trauma caused by nuclear weapons can never be fully contained. For this reason, commemorations of their effects are often incomplete and insufficient. Differences between individual memories and public accounts are also important to recognize. Discordant Memories illuminates such disparate memories in all their rich complexity.




Helter Skelter


Book Description

If you are aware of fashion in Japan you must have seen Liliko's face. For the last few years she has been at the top of the modeling world, with her face and body promoting the biggest brands. But as everyone who is in this world admits, staying on top is a constant and never ending battle. There are always new faces introduced to the public. Younger models and new looks are brought into the fold every season. And keeping that position means learning to adapt and learning to cope with change. To maintain her position, Liliko has decided to under the knife. This is not her first go with this service. It is yet another round of plastic surgery, all done to keep herself looking young and vibrant. However, in this case just a little nip and tuck was not enough. Liliko is bent on undergoing a full body makeover. From head-to-toe, every inch of her will undergo cosmetic surgery, and thus begins her madness.




Trinity: A Graphic History of the First Atomic Bomb


Book Description

Trinity, the debut graphic book by Jonathan Fetter-Vorm, depicts the dramatic history of the race to build and the decision to drop the first atomic bomb in World War Two—with a focus on the brilliant, enigmatic scientist, J. Robert Oppenheimer. "Succeeds as both a graphic primer and a philosophical meditation." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review) This sweeping historical narrative traces the spark of invention from the laboratories of nineteenth-century Europe to the massive industrial and scientific efforts of the Manhattan Project, and even transports the reader into a nuclear reaction—into the splitting atoms themselves. The power of the atom was harnessed in a top-secret government compound in Los Alamos, New Mexico, by a group of brilliant scientists led by the enigmatic wunderkind J. Robert Oppenheimer. Focused from the start on the monumentally difficult task of building an atomic weapon, these men and women soon began to wrestle with the moral implications of actually succeeding. When they detonated the first bomb at a test site code-named Trinity, they recognized that they had irreversibly thrust the world into a new and terrifying age. With powerful renderings of WWII's catastrophic events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Fetter-Vorm unflinchingly chronicles the far-reaching political, environmental, and psychological effects of this new invention. Informative and thought-provoking, Trinity is the ideal introduction to one of the most significant events in history.




Strange Tale of Panorama Island


Book Description

Edogawa Ranpo (1894-1965) was a great admirer of Edgar Allan Poe and like Poe drew on his penchant for the grotesque and the bizarre to explore the boundaries of conventional thought. Best known as the founder of the modern Japanese detective novel, Ranpo wrote for a youthful audience, and a taste for playacting and theatre animates his stories. His writing is often associated with the era of ero guro nansense (erotic grotesque nonsense), which accompanied the rise of mass culture and mass media in urban Japan in the 1920s. Characterized by an almost lurid fascination with simulacra and illusion, the era’s sensibility permeates Ranpo's first major work and one of his finest achievements, Strange Tale of Panorama Island (Panoramato kidan), published in 1926. Ranpo’s panorama island is filled with cleverly designed optical illusions: a staircase rises into the sky; white feathered “birds” speak in women’s voices and offer to serve as vehicles; clusters of naked men and women romp on slopes carpeted with rainbow-colored flowers. His fantastical utopia is filled with entrancing music and strange sweet odors, and nothing is ordinary, predictable, or boring. The novella reflected the new culture of mechanically produced simulated realities (movies, photographs, advertisements, stereoscopic and panoramic images) and focused on themes of the doppelganger and appropriated identities: its main character steals the identity of an acquaintance. The novella’s utopian vision, argues translator Elaine Gerbert, mirrors the expansionist dreams that fed Japan's colonization of the Asian continent, its ending an eerie harbinger of the collapse of those dreams. Today just as a new generation of technologies is transforming the way we think—and becoming ever more invasive and pervasive—Ranpo's work is attracting a new generation of readers. In the past few decades his writing has inspired films, anime, plays, and manga, and many translations of his stories, essays, and novels have appeared, but to date no English-language translation of Panoramato kidan has been available. This volume, which includes a critical introduction and notes, fills that gap and uncovers for English-language readers an important new dimension of an ever stimulating, provocative talent.




Hiroshima


Book Description

Summer flowers / by Hara Tamiki -- City of corpses / by Ōta Yōko -- Poems of the atomic bomb / by Tōge Sankichi.




Mushroom Clouds


Book Description

"Mushroom Clouds: Ecocritical Approaches to Militarization and the Environment in East Asia examines the growing significance of the eco-implications of the increasing militarism of East Asia. As a transcultural image and metaphor, mushroom clouds signify anthropogenic violence and destruction, such as exemplified by wars and nuclear bombings. Immediately evoking memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the mushroom clouds metaphor has deep roots and implications in East Asia, and this volume explores these roots and implications from the perspectives of a variety of scholars and artists from different parts of East Asia. The chapters that comprise Mushroom Clouds respond to the increasingly dangerous developments in the world that led up to and have occurred since the 2016 presidential election of Donald Trump, developments that threaten the stability of the region and the world. In the wake of the 70th anniversary of the division of Korea, increasing attention has been focused on the legacy of the Cold War, on the one hand, and on the continuing militarization of East Asia, on the other. After the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after the truce across the 38th parallel, after the shelling of Kinmen and Matsu, East Asia became (and remains) one the most densely militarized regions in the world. Under the shadow of war, however, the concern about environmental impacts has been growing, not only in social discourse but also in literature and the visual arts. The first of its kind, Mushroom Clouds gathers ecocritics in East Asia to examine issues such as militarization, militarized islands, military tourism, post-war environments, nuclear accidents, and DMZ wildlife, among others, in East Asia"--




The Atomic Bomb in Japanese Cinema


Book Description

Seventy years after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan is still dealing with the effects of the bombings on the national psyche. From the Occupation Period to the present, Japanese cinema had offered a means of coming to terms with one of the most controversial events of the 20th century. From the monster movies Gojira (1954) and Mothra (1961) to experimental works like Go Shibata's NN-891102 (1999), atomic bomb imagery features in all genres of Japanese film. This collection of new essays explores the cultural aftermath of the bombings and its expression in Japanese cinema. The contributors take on a number of complex issues, including the suffering of the survivors (hibakusha), the fear of future holocausts and the danger of nuclear warfare. Exclusive interviews with Go Shibata and critically acclaimed directors Roger Spottiswoode (Hiroshima) and Steven Okazaki (White Light/Black Rain) are included.




Manga: The Complete Guide


Book Description

• Reviews of more than 900 manga series • Ratings from 0 to 4 stars • Guidelines for age-appropriateness • Number of series volumes • Background info on series and artists THE ONE-STOP RESOURCE FOR CHOOSING BETWEEN THE BEST AND THE REST! Whether you’re new to the world of manga-style graphic novels or a longtime reader on the lookout for the next hot series, here’s a comprehensive guide to the wide, wonderful world of Japanese comics! • Incisive, full-length reviews of stories and artwork • Titles rated from zero to four stars–skip the clunkers, but don’t miss the hidden gems • Guidelines for age-appropriateness–from strictly mature to kid-friendly • Profiles of the biggest names in manga, including CLAMP, Osamu Tezuka, Rumiko Takahashi, and many others • The facts on the many kinds of manga–know your shôjo from your shônen • An overview of the manga industry and its history • A detailed bibliography and a glossary of manga terms LOOK NO FURTHER, YOU’VE FOUND YOUR IDEAL MANGA COMPANION!




Taking Turns


Book Description

Fear of contagion, isolated patients, a surge of overwhelming and unpreventable deaths, and the frontline healthcare workers who shouldered the responsibility of seeing us through a deadly epidemic: as we continue to confront the global pandemic caused by COVID-19, Taking Turns reminds us that we’ve been through this before. Only a few decades ago, the world faced another terrifying and deadly health crisis: HIV/AIDS. Nurse MK Czerwiec began working at the Illinois Masonic Medical Center’s HIV/AIDS Care Unit 371 in the 1990s—a pivotal time in the history of AIDS. Deaths from the disease in the United States peaked in 1995 and then dropped drastically in the following years, with the release of effective drug treatments. In this graphic memoir, Czerwiec provides an insider’s view of the lives of healthcare workers, patients, and loved ones from Unit 371. With humor, insight, and emotion, MK shows how the patients and staff cared for one another, how the sick faced their deaths, and how the survivors looked for hope in what seemed, at times, like a hopeless situation. Drawn in a restrained, inviting style, Taking Turns is an open, honest look at suffering, grief, and resilience among a community of medical professionals and patients at the heart of the AIDS epidemic.