Photo/Illutration Director Yoji Yamada, left, and Sayuri Yoshinaga, who plays the leading role in “Haha to Kuraseba,” appear at an event to promote the film in Tokyo in August 2015. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)

After playwright and author Hisashi Inoue (1934-2010) completed “Chichi to Kuraseba” (Living with father), he resolved to someday write a play about the atomic bombing of Nagasaki.

Although Inoue died before he could write it, his fervor and the title he had in mind for that work were inherited by film director Yoji Yamada, who created the 2015 film “Haha to Kuraseba” (literally, Living with mother), the English title of which is “Nagasaki: Memories of My Son.”

The story revolves around three main characters: Koji, a young man who dies in the atomic bombing of Nagasaki but reappears later as a ghost; his surviving mother, Nobuko; and his fiancee, Machiko.

Machiko suffers from survivor’s guilt and cannot commit to her new romantic partner, but Nobuko gently coaxes her to go ahead.

But when Machiko finally decides to marry him, Nobuko is filled with an array of complex, inexplicable emotions she is helpless to control.

She blurts out to her ghost-son: “Why is this girl the only one who’s going to be happy? I wish she’d died in your place.”

These lines were not in the play’s original script. Adding them underscored the depth of the pain of the bereft mother, played by Sayuri Yoshinaga.

For many decades, Yoshinaga has been holding performances around Japan, reciting atomic bomb poems before audiences.

Among her repertoire is a piece by Hozue Shimoda, a resident of Nagasaki Prefecture.

It goes to the effect, “Black rain continues to fall/ I am searching for my mother/ My throat is parched/ I want water.../ Mother, Mother, Mother/ Please answer me, Mother/ I feel as if I’m starting to become someone who is not me.”

We call for a world without nuclear weapons until we are hoarse. But the ambassador of the country that dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki is reportedly skipping today's Peace Memorial Ceremony out of consideration for Israel, to which his country is supplying weapons.

The wall before us is thick.

Still, only humans can stop nuclear weapons and wars. In the film, Koji says with resignation that his death was unavoidable because that was his fate.

But his mother retorts: “No, all this could have been avoided. It was a tremendous tragedy that was planned and brought about by humans. It wasn’t fate.”

—The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 9

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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