War and Peace

Just finished a good novel, Plum Wine by Angela Davis-Gardner. It’s set in the 1960s and is about an American woman, living in Japan, teaching English (if casting a movie version, I see her being played by Cate Blanchett).

Before reading the book, when I would hear Hiroshima, I would see a mental picture of a mushroom cloud. Now I will think of these characters….

Survivors of the atomic bombing are called hibakusha. At a Japanese friend’s funeral, the American woman mentions that the deceased was hibakusha; a comment that is met with stunned silence. Later she asks a friend why:

“I realize now that I shouldn’t have mentioned that Michi-san was an hibakusha – but could you please tell me why? I don’t understand.”

“The bomb survivors are associated with bad luck and death. Indeed with their exposure to radiation the victims themselves are considered a pollution. Hibakusha have become almost a pariah caste in Japan.”

“It’s hard to comprehend how victims of bombing could be considered outcasts.”

“This has its beginning long ago in Japanese thinking. Any group which is different or in some way shamed may be regarded as outcast.”

The book depicts war, not as a mushroom cloud or lines and colors on a map, but as it affects individual lives – the flesh of war – brothers, sisters, friends.

The woman falls in love with a man who is hibakusha. He loves her, too, but is unable to be happy because of the things he has experienced… and because of his guilt over being a survivor. The whole novel feels like that – like emotions held back. It’s a love story, but unlike Anna Karenina or Wuthering Heights, there’s no heroine throwing herself in front of a train and there’s no tortured hero wandering the moors. It’s civilized and spare – and in that way feels real to me.