IN BEIJING, IN JUNE 1960, I WAS SITTING ACROSS FROM MAO Zedong. In the courtyard through which we had walked to his office, magnolias were white in the midnight darkness, emitting a heavy scent, and that is what has remained most deeply in my memory. How skillfully Garcia Marquez might recreate the scene!
Mao Zedong said only things that even I, at 25 and not his most enthusiastic reader, could tell consisted of quotations from his own writings. By his side sat Zhou Enlai, turned not toward us but toward Mao, who spoke as if he were remembering things of the past for his old comrade. Each time Mao, who smoked incessantly, reached for a can of Giant Panda brand cigarettes, Zhou would gently push it slightly away.
This midnight interview was to encourage us writers who had come from Tokyo as representatives -- though it was doubtful we were truly representative -- of the Japanese "people" who were "struggling" against the United States-Japan security treaty. We the innocent guests sat down on every day of our visit to a table loaded with food, not knowing it was the year of the worst crop failure and starvation since the Revolution. We also visited a people's collective outside Nanjing and heard an old man tell how, amid the peasants being slaughtered by the Japanese Army, he had survived by hiding under a mountain of corpses, and how he still carried this trauma.
Suppose I had directly faced the Chinese, not in Chairman Mao's reception room, not in a people's collective guided by a cultural bureaucrat, but in a village leveled by Japanese army boots. How would I have been treated? The army was not alone in invading China. A great many civilians also went to the continent, dreaming of establishing a new life. After Japan's defeat, many of these people, returning to their homeland, abandoned their children. Some of these unfortunate children survived, adopted by Chinese farmers. At the time I did not know about them, either.
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Early this year I was at a conference in Seoul with the poet Kim Chi Ha and other Korean intellectuals. There I expressed the hope that though the Japanese have not finished compensating the Korean people, some attempts should be made to construct a common future for both peoples. The Korean response was that they recognized some Japanese had a conscience, but that they would forever remain a minority.
After the conference, I was given a rare opportunity for a Japanese novelist -- to address citizens of Seoul. When my speech was done, the first question was: We welcomed the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that brought an end to Japanese militarism, and we still do. We cannot understand why you are critical of the bombings. If you refuse to compensate the Korean "comfort women," how can you talk about the miseries of the atomic victims? What about the Korean atomic victims?
There still are only limited opportunities for citizens of the Republic of Korea and Japan to hold such a dialogue, even less for citizens of Japan and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. There is very little direct exchange between Chinese and Japanese citizens. That the Chinese would refuse a dialogue is to be expected, but a certain refusal can also be seen in the Japanese people's complicated, refracted thinking.
For a time there was a remarkable new literature in China that seemed to have the potential for remaking all of Asian literature. Then the incident in Tiananmen Square ended it. The United States has accepted as political refugees the writers who left China to escape the suppression; it has also provided support for those who chose to stay. Japan and its intellectuals haven't done much.
Among other things, Japan as a nation hasn't directly dealt with the suppression of speech in China. Worse, Japanese intellectuals -- especially those with memories of the crimes Japan committed -- feel they have no right to criticize China for its cultural policy.
Japan's failure to assume its proper role is also evident in the refusal of its Government and scientists to offer candid advice to China on the environmental destruction it has brought upon itself as a result of its policy of rapid economic development, even though Japan has experienced one of the worst environmental disasters and successfully dealt with it. The Government thinks only of Japan's economic prosperity, while intellectuals feel they have no right to criticize openly the economic policy China has chosen for itself. This sentiment extends, I suspect, to their attitude toward China's underground nuclear tests.
The sense among Japanese intellectuals that Japan's compensations to the Chinese are incomplete, their feeling that Japan has not managed to make a fresh start, to effect a true reconciliation with its neighbors, distorts Japan's self-image. I have no intention of belittling the efforts of Japanese physicians, engineers and young people who do volunteer work in various countries of Asia, but even these admirable Japanese are not entirely free of psychological scars, which can't be healed through moral dedication.
FOR THE JAPANESE TO BE ABLE TO REGARD 21ST-CENTURY ASIA not as a new economic power rivaling the West but as a region in which Japan can be a true partner, they must first establish a basis that would enable them to criticize their neighbors and be criticized in turn. For this, Japan must apologize for its aggression and offer compensation. This is the basic condition, and most Japanese with a good conscience have been for it. But a coalition of conservative parties, bureaucrats and business leaders opposes it.
The resolution of remorse for Japanese conduct during World War II was supposed to apologize for the calamities the war brought to Asian nations, but it was watered down. And this most likely confirmed distrust of Japan.
But the feelings of the Japanese people are expressed by a 75-year-old woman. Her husband left her, pregnant, 10 months after they were married, and was killed in Burma, where some of the fiercest battles were fought. Her house and everything she possessed were then destroyed in an air raid. She wrote to a newspaper: "The Association of the Families of the War Dead and the opposition groups in the Diet say things like, 'This was a war of self-defense that Japan fought against its will' and 'If we admit that we were the invaders, we are saying that those killed in battle died useless deaths. But our husbands were persuaded by the militarists that they were dying for the Emperor and for the country, and were herded into battlefields without knowing they were engaged in an invasion. The Government committed aggression; our husbands were its victims."
Each time my handicapped son was burdened with a new difficulty, my family and I passionately worked for his rehabilitation. Japan and the Japanese must work for rehabilitation in Asia. In the history of our modernization in general but, in particular, in the war of aggression that was its peak, we lost the right to be a part of Asia and have continued to live without recovering that right.
Without that rehabilitation we shall never be able to eradicate the ambivalence in our attitude toward our neighbors, the feeling that our relationships aren't real. If I believe these feelings might nonetheless be overcome, it is not because I expect our Government to change its attitude drastically, but because I find that true remorse is quietly but deeply internalized among common people.
What about the rest of the world? The virtual suspension by the Smithsonian Institution of an exhibition on the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the apologies that institution offered to the Japan Veterans Association and others for accepting such an exhibition in the first place -- these irritated the Japanese Government. Independent of this, victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki protested. President Clinton's statement that he has no intention of apologizing to Japan because President Truman was correct in deciding to drop the atomic bombs prompted more protests. But even if President Clinton had apologized, how much consolation would that have given to the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Indeed, if he were ever to apologize, should he not do so to the children of his country, now and in the future, and the children of the world, and do this because our planet is still haunted by nuclear annihilation?
If I am ever given a chance, there's something I'd like say to the Smithsonian Institution. In the past 50 years, two distinct views have taken root in Hiroshima and Nagasaki: the view of these two cities as embodying the awesome power of nuclear weapons and the view of them as embodying the ultimate tragedies that mankind has suffered. I'd like to offer a third: Hiroshima and Nagasaki as embodying mankind's ability to recover from the most horrible destruction.
但一位75歲的老婦人卻表達了日本人民的感受。她丈夫在婚後10個月拋棄了懷孕的她，並在緬甸陣亡，那裡曾是戰火最激烈的地方之一。她的房子和所有家當都在一次空襲中被摧毀。她寫信給一家報紙說：“戰死者家屬協會和國會中的反對派團體聲稱，‘這是一場日本違背自身意願進行的自衛戰爭’，‘如果我們承認自己是侵略者，那就等於說那些戰死沙場的人是無謂的犧牲。但我們的丈夫卻被軍國主義者欺騙，以為他們是為天皇和國家而死，在戰場政府的情況下被趕了上戰場政府的丈夫。
每當我殘疾的兒子麵臨新的困境時，我和我的家人都會滿懷熱情地為他的康復努力。日本和日本人民必須為亞洲的復興而努力。在我們整個現代化過程中，尤其是在達到頂峰的侵略戰爭中，我們失去了作為亞洲一部分的權利，並且一直活在無法恢復這項權利的陰影下。
如果沒有這種復興，我們將永遠無法消除我們對鄰國的矛盾態度，以及那種認為我們之間的關係不真實的感覺。如果我相信這些感覺最終能夠被克服，那並非因為我期望我們的政府會徹底改變其態度，而是因為我發現真正的悔恨正在普通民眾心中悄然而深刻地內化。
世界其他地方呢？史密森尼學會實際上暫停了廣島和長崎原子彈爆炸展覽，並就當初接受此類展覽向日本退伍老兵協會和其他機構道歉——這些都激怒了日本政府。除此之外，廣島和長崎的受害者也發起了抗議。柯林頓總統表示，他無意向日本道歉，因為杜魯門總統投放原子彈的決定是正確的。這起言論引發了更多抗議。但即使柯林頓總統道歉，又能為廣島和長崎的受害者帶來多少安慰呢？事實上，如果他真的要道歉，難道不該向他國家的子孫後代道歉，向全世界的子孫後代道歉嗎？因為我們的星球仍然飽受核毀滅的陰影籠罩，他應該道歉嗎？
如果有機會，我想對史密森尼學會說幾句話。在過去的50年裡，兩種截然不同的觀點在廣島和長崎紮根：一種觀點認為這兩座城市體現了核武的可怕威力，另一種觀點認為它們體現了人類遭受的終極悲劇。我想提出第三種觀點：廣島和長崎體現了人類從最可怕的毀滅中恢復的能力。
Finally, a word about Nagasaki. This southern city is remarkable for the many Christian believers among its citizens. Long suppressed during the Tokugawa Shogunate, the Christians in this city were permitted to express their faith openly soon after the Meiji Restoration, in 1868, and, though persecution continued, they began to build a church in Urakami, where the greatest martyrdom had occurred. The atomic bomb destroyed the beautifully completed church, killing 8,500 Christians.
Today the Urakami Catholic Church has been rebuilt. With the rebuilding, the surviving atomic victims are trying to move their recovery into something larger so that they may pass their faith on to those who are to come in the next century. Will this not be accepted as a common experience by Catholics all over the world and render irrelevant the national confrontation between the United States and Japan? Will it not enable us to go beyond the atomic bomb both as the embodiment of destructive power and the embodiment of human tragedy and see in it the living proof of man's ability to recover that gives hope to our planet? And will this not serve as a humane model for Japan, which had once lost its way in war -- for its rehabilitation in Asia and in the world?
最後，談談長崎。這座南方城市以其眾多的基督教徒而聞名。德川幕府時期，這座城市的基督徒長期遭受壓制，直到1868年明治維新後不久，才獲準公開表達信仰。儘管迫害仍在繼續，他們還是開始在浦上——歷史上最偉大的殉道者發生的地方——建造教堂。原子彈摧毀了這座精美的教堂，造成8500名基督徒死亡。
如今，浦上天主教堂已重建。隨著重建的進行，倖存的原子彈受害者正努力將他們的重建工作推向更大的規模，以便將他們的信仰傳遞給下個世紀的後人。這難道不會被全世界天主教徒視為共同的經歷，並使美日之間的國家對抗變得無關緊要嗎？這是否能讓我們超越原子彈作為毀滅力量和人類悲劇的化身這一概念，而從中看到人類復興能力的鮮活證明，為地球帶來希望？這是否能為曾經在戰爭中迷失方向的日本在亞洲乃至世界復興提供一個人道主義的榜樣？
Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org › wiki › Kenzaburō_Ōe
Kenzaburō Ōe (大江 健三郎, Ōe Kenzaburō; 31 January 1935 – 3 March 2023) was a Japanese author and a major figure in contemporary Japanese literature.
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