Writing Ground Zero

From Einstein and Truman to Sartre and Derrida, many have declared the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be decisive events in human history. None, however, have more acutely understood or perceptively critiqued the consequences of nuclear war than Japanese writers. Until now the responses of the one people subjected to nuclear war have gone largely unknown outside of Japan. In this first complete study of the nuclear theme in Japanese intellectual and artistic life, John Whittier Treat shows how much we have to learn from Japanese writers and artists about the substance and…