Hiroshima
Page 20
Asai: That’s hope for Japan. How about Hiroshima?
Nakazawa: The conservative aspects of Hiroshima have to be changed. I think Hiroshima people are really conservative. The numbers of reformists must increase. In order to effect change, each person has to work away at it. I’m a cartoonist, so cartoons are my only weapon. I think everyone has to appeal in whatever position they’re in. Wouldn’t it be nice if we gradually enlarged our imaginations! We have to believe in that possibility. Doubt is extremely strong, but we have to feel that change is possible. Inspire ourselves. And like Auschwitz, Hiroshima too must sing out more and more about human dignity.
[1]The interview took place on August 20, 2007. An abbreviated translation appeared in Hiroshima Research News 10, no. 2 (November 2007): 4–5. This translation is by Richard H. Minear and appeared first on Japanfocus.org and then in International Journal of Comic Art 10, no. 2 (fall 2008): 308–27; this excerpt, slightly amended, is reprinted with permission.
[2]Kurihara Sadako (1912–2005), noted Hiroshima poet and activist. For her poems in translation, see Kurihara, Black Eggs, ed. and tr. Richard H. Minear (Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 1994).
[3]Article 9 commits Japan to the renunciation of “war as a sovereign right of the nation . . . Land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.”