Atomic bombs, industrial poisoning, and nuclear accidents scarred the Japanese nation, people, and environment. The writing of Hayashi Kyōko, Ishimure Michiko, and Kawakami Hiromi spans over seventy-five years of Japanese history, a modernity that witnessed technological and military disasters and tragedies that threatened the existence not only of the Japanese but of humanity itself. Their stories about the atomic bombs, Minamata disease, and the Fukushima nuclear accident contest the power of government and industry to close down discourse on these disasters, to silence the victims, and to bury the evidence of the intentional harm of these human disasters.

Introduction

Atomic bombs, industrial pollution, nuclear meltdowns. The authors discussed in this chapter responded to disasters that span the history of Japanese industrial modernity, war, and postwar economic growth. Hayashi Kyōko, Ishimure Michiko, and Kawakami Hiromi wrote in response to the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in 1945, the decades-long methylmercury poisoning by the Chisso Corporation discovered in the 1950s in Minamata, and the meltdowns at the nuclear power plant in Fukushima that were precipitated by an earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Their writings diverge and intersect on a number of planes. All three write of an invisible threat: Hayashi and Kawakami of radiation, and Ishimure of toxic wastewater. These invisible toxins killed instantaneously in some instances, while in others they silently claimed lives over multiple generations as they contaminated the air, ground, sea, and the human bodies that subsisted on natural resources. Despite the clear harm from these toxic substances, the reluctance to recognize the damage, and the refusal to place blame in both Minamata and Fukushima grew out of a sense of indebtedness to the industrial plants that had secured local livelihoods and economic prosperity. In all three cases, those harmed were doubly victimized: first damaged by the weapons and toxins themselves, and later discriminated against by society at large for their association with the tragedies. While it would seem easy to lay blame for these disasters on the American government, the Chisso Corporation, and TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company, the operators of the Fukushima plant), the question of blame has been complicated by local loyalties but also by the reluctance of victims to self-identify.