Fr Paul Glynn - A Song for Nagasaki: The Story of Takashi Nagai: Scientist, Convert, and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb

A SONG FOR NAGASAKI

PAUL GLYNN

The Story of Takashi Nagai Scientist, Convert and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb

Foreword by Shusaku Endo

IGNATIUS PRESS SAN FRANCISCO

Original editions:

1988 by Paul Glynn
All rights reserved

Published in 1988 by the Catholic Book Club of Australia
Marist Fathers Books, Hunters Hill, N.S.W., Australia

First published in the United States of America
in 1990 by William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company

Cover photograph: Marist Fathers
Hunters Hill, N.S.W., Australia

Cover calligraphy: Kaligraf, istockphoto.com

Cover design by Riz Boncan Marsella

Published in 2009 by Ignatius Press, San Francisco
All rights reserved
ISBN 978-1-58617-343-2
Library of Congress Control Number 2009923524
Printed in the United States of America

With gratitude to
Toni and Jack Josephs, Sydney,
and to the Nagai family,
Tony Glynn and the people of Tomigaoka, Japan

CONTENTS

by Shusaku Endo

The suburb of Urakami became famous when the Nagasaki A-bomb burst above it. Long before that, it had held a place of extraordinary importance in the hearts of Japanese Christians. During the long centuries when an all-powerful Japanese government had totally proscribed the Christian religion, it was the farming community of Urakami that had faithfully preserved and lived the Christian faith.

In the early 1860s the central government learned of these secret Christians and had them arrested and jailed. News of this persecution reached America and the ears of President Ulysses Grant, who was at that time involved in discussions with a group of Japanese government diplomats. They had crossed the ocean to renegotiate a treaty between the two countries. The presidents remarks that any nation that did not recognize freedom of religion could not be considered enlightened resulted in the Japanese government freeing the imprisoned Christian farmers. They celebrated this religious freedom by erecting with their own hands the magnificent cathedral of Urakami.

On that sad day when the American A-bomb exploded over Urakami, the cathedral was reduced to rubble and a great many Christian descendents of those who built it were killed. The dean of radiology at Nagasaki University, Dr. Takashi Nagai, found himself in the middle of this nuclear catastrophe. Even though he knew his involvement meant exposure to deadly radiation, Nagai threw himself and his medical skills into the service of the victims in the stricken city. He fell ill with radiation disease and spent the short remainder of his life bedridden.

Nagai began to write. One of his books, The Bells of Nagasaki , evoked an extraordinarily deep response in the hearts of the Japanese people. This was at a time when most Japanese still regarded Christianity as something alien and shied away from anything concerning the Christian religion. The Bells of Nagasaki became a unique exception to this. It became a national best seller, despite its explicit Christian flavor. The Japanese people rediscovered in this book something that had long lain buried under warlove!

The citizens of Nagasaki came to venerate the bedridden doctor as a saint. Their veneration of the man continues to this day, long after his death. Paul Glynn has fittingly commemorated that legacy in this book. Christian and non-Christian alike were deeply moved by Nagais faith in Christ that made him like Job of the Scriptures: in the midst of the nuclear wilderness he kept his heart in tranquillity and peace, neither bearing resentment against any man nor cursing God.

Takashi Nagai saw the light of day in ancient and unspoiled Shimane Prefecture. It is northeast by north of Hiroshima, and its long coastline is washed by the Sea of Japan. The winds that howl down across Siberia in the northwest fill its mountain valleys with snowdrifts in winter. Consult a map and you will see how natural a landing place it was for the ancient Chinese and Korean settlers who responded to the adventure and idealism of the call, Go east, young man, go east. The newcomers were struck by the mountainous nature of the sparsely populated land and especially by its green beauty that gushes up like fountains from rich volcanic soil. Geologists surmise that sixty million years ago Japan lay like an improbable embryo on the bottom of the sea off the Asian mainland. When the tectonic plates beneath the Pacific Ocean and the East Asian mainland moved ponderously into each other, the seabed buckled and the islands of Japan emerged dripping from their dark womb.

Old geography books described Japan as being part of the Ring of Firethe earthquake-volcano arc that stretches up the west coast of South America, through Mexico and California, across the Pacific through Hawaii and Japan, and south through Indonesia to New Zealand. After Japan emerged from the sea, volcanoes erupted everywhere and poured out masses of lava that cooled to basalt rock. The ice ages brought glaciers that moved slowly down mountains, crushing this basalt and gouging out new valleys. Wind, storm and especially the cyclones spawned in the tropics continued the slow process of creating Japans fertile soil and rich valleys.

Historians pick up traces of human habitation in Japan from Neolithic times. About the time Caesar invaded Britain, the time when Christs grandparents were born, there was a cultural leap forward in Japan culminating some centuries later in a single clan establishing effective authority and founding a capital in the south of what is now Nara Prefecture.

Long before writing came, the people had created a rich Shinto mythology. Shimanes Izumo Taisha shrine and its environs were the locale for many of the semidivine deeds of the heroes and heroines worshipped in Shinto. The stories are still favorites with little Japanese children. There is, for instance, the horrible eight-headed monster that terrorized this whole area until a valiant god engaged it in a furious battle and slew it. Shimane was venerated as holy ground by Nagai in his primary school: it was the birthplace of the Nihon-teki (purely Japanese) spirit.

Nagais birthplace is south of the city of Izumo in Shimane Prefecture and about ten minutes drive from the town of Mitoya. Completely hidden away between low mountains, it is a hamlet of a dozen houses, some of which are thatched with miscanthus reed. Such thatched houses were seen everywhere in the Japanese countryside thirty years ago and are examples of folk art at its best. The thick thatch makes houses cooler in summer and warmer in winter and blends in beautifully with the rice fields. But the days of leisurely folk crafts are gone, and the expense of renewing thatch has spelled the end of most thatched roofs. Saburo Yasuda, who is Takashi Nagais cousin, has kept the house exactly as it was when Nagai spent his boyhood here.

Nagais parents and grandparents are buried close by the home. Their Shinto tombstones, unlike the finely cut granite you see in Japans predominantly Buddhist graveyards, are natural uncut stone. Nature is sacred to Shinto, and so everything is kept as natural as possible. Grandfather and father now lie peacefully side by side, but what explosive episodes lace the family annals! Grandfather Fumitaka Nagai, of samurai stock, was master of a profession of long-standing in Japan and China, kampo yaku , or Chinese herb medicine. He was accorded the title of doctor, practicing in a country place called Tai, which means the well in the rice fields. The shrewd farmers came to look on the doctors herbs and natural methods as wellsprings of healing, and Dr. Nagai prospered.