Book Announcement: Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Literature, Film, and Transnational Politics (University of Hawaii Press)

With apologies for a slightly delayed announcement, I would like to bring your attention to my new book:

Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Literature, Film, and Transnational Politics (University of Hawaii Press, 2018). 176 pages, ISBN-13: 9780824867775

For more information, please see the University of Hawaii Press website at:

https://www.uhpress.hawaii.edu/title/producing-hiroshima-and-nagasaki-literature-film-and-transnational-politics/

You can order the book at a 20% discount price from University of Hawaii Press by using the code “AAA18” up to February 28, 2019.

Overview

Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki establishes a new kind of transnational and transpacific studies on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and raises the possibility of a comparative area studies to match the age of world literature. The book takes up two canonical works—American journalist John Hersey’s account, Hiroshima, and French director Alain Resnais’ avant-garde film, Hiroshima Mon Amour—that are traditionally excluded from study in Japanese literature and cinema. Juxtaposing these texts with Japanese ones, Shibata’s relational readings highlight the “connected divides” in the production of disciplinary knowledge. She also approaches these texts from a postcolonial perspective, while examining neglected historical contexts, such as the relationship between the Japanese and French empires in French Indochina. Placing these contexts within the Cold War framework, the book analyzes the ways in which specific narrative patterns are normalized.

Contents

Introduction. Knowledge Production on Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Politics of Representation and a Critique of Canonization  1

1. Postcolonial Hiroshima Mon Amour: Franco-Japanese Collaboration in the American Shadow  17

2. Validating and Invalidating the National Sentiment: Kamei Fumio and the Early Days of Japanese Cinema on Hiroshima and Nagasaki  38

3. “You Saw Nothing in Hiroshima”: Performing Atomic Bomb Victimhood and the Visibility of the Hibakusha  64

4. Entangled Discourses: John Hersey and Nagai Takashi 82

Afterword  99

Notes  105

Selected Bibliography  131

Index  155

Best wishes,

Yuko Shibata