Memory and identity questions in post-atomic space in H Story by Nobuhiro Suwa and Nagasaki by Éric Faye

Abstract

For Pierre Nora, memory and history are opposed in the way modern societies organize the remains of their past, and old and new monuments feed a sense of historical continuity even though, in some cases, the collective memory is still torn apart by the memory of terrible events. This notion is expanded in the present study to include con-siderations regarding the progression of memory. New memorial narratives, Nobuhiro Suwa’s films, H Story (2001) and A Letter from Hiroshima (2002), and Eric Faye’s novel Na-gasaki (2010), related to the affect of current generations, manage to express the taboos persisting in the Japanese culture today and the identity issues they highlight. Have the experiences of bomb victims and their descendants properly been taken into account? Does the (re)organization of traces of the past sometimes aim to appease enduring ran-cour? Does the past resurface in the present to demand the recognition of smothered suffering, based on unresolved injustices? These questions form the basis of the argument developed here.