Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57

9. Ronin of the Ainu Bears

| 119 | RONIN OF THE AINU BEARS | 9 Ronin of the Ainu Bears The Atomic Bomb Dome, as you know, is my Rashomon. My kabuki haven, my kami gate in the ruins. Oshima came out of the rain, the memories of black rain, the waves of atomu poison, and we have lived here since the start of this manuscript. Hiroshima is my bugi dance, the peace pond my fire, origami cranes my tease, the park roamers, ravens, mongrels my strain, and the Peace Memorial Museum is my Hiroshima Mon Amour. I changed the name on my museum tee shirts and decked the main entrance to the museum with the name of the movie. The noisy paper banner had a worthy audience for about three hours today. The guards, who recognize me and who liked the new name, were ordered by the director to cut it down. Hiroshima Mon Amour Museum. I lectured some twenty tourists who had arrived by bus that the new museum is named after the movie Hiroshima Mon Amour, and then assumed the role of an official tour guide in the museum. I pretended to be two decadent characters in the movie, a moody hafu architect and a seductive actress with green eyes. My voice was pitched and heady. The tourists listened, frowned, one or two smiled by doubt, but they seemed to like my style. I summoned the tourists to that case of plastic miniatures with nuclear wounds. They were pained by the hideous representations, and some turned away. My Hiroshima Mon Amour act was in front of that diorama of aesthetic victimry. I shouted at the simulations, figures in the atomu ruins, and ridiculed the miniature woman in a kimono. The trees were bare and yet the figures were dressed for the museum tourists. You saw nothing in Hiroshima. I saw everything. Atomu 12, the time is summer, twelve years after the atomu bomb incinerated Hiroshima. I played the parts of two characters in Hiroshima Mon Amour by Marguerite Duras. She said, ‘‘Four times at the museum.’’ He said, ‘‘You saw nothing in Hiroshima.’’ She said, ‘‘The people walk around, lost in thought, among the photographs,’’ contorted beams, broken bricks, a ‘‘bouquet of bot- | RONIN OF THE AINU BEARS | 120 | tle caps,’’ a wristwatch with dead hands, and a tricycle. ‘‘Human skin floating, surviving, still in the bloom of its agony.’’ He said, ‘‘You did not see the hospital in Hiroshima. You saw nothing in Hiroshima.’’ She said, ‘‘Hiroshima was blanketed with flowers. There were corn- flowers and gladiolas everywhere, and morning glories and day lilies that rose again from the ashes with an extraordinary vigor, quite unheard of for flowers till then.’’ He said, ‘‘You made it all up.’’ She said, ‘‘Like you, I know what it is to forget.’’ He said, ‘‘No, you don’t know what it is to forget.’’ She said, ‘‘Like you, I have a memory.’’ He said, ‘‘No, you don’t have a memory.’’ She said, ‘‘Like you, I too have tried with all my might not to forget. Like you, I forgot. Like you, I wanted to have an inconsolable memory , a memory of shadows and stones.’’ He said, ‘‘What are you doing in Hiroshima?’’ She said, ‘‘I’m playing in a film.’’ He said, ‘‘What’s the film you’re playing in?’’ She said, ‘‘A film about peace. What else do you expect them to make in Hiroshima except a picture about Peace?’’ You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Morning glories, horseweed dumplings, the fate of black rain, and the injustice of chance. What is remembrance, and how do we resist forgetting? Bugi in the simulated ruins. Hiroshima Mon Amour is my bugi movie tonight, because the new war on simulated peace starts right here in the museum. The nuclear nights never end in a diorama of victimry. The tourists backed away. I never lived by lies, but there is so little time to overturn the persuasive dioramas and fakers of peace. The tourists listened to my movie voices and my tease of solemn chitchat, but only one person, a retired nurse, reacted to my soliloquy , contradictions, and irony. She shouted back, ‘‘Sir, you may have lost your sense of peace.’’ You saw nothing in Hiroshima. I abandoned the tourists near the pillar of promissory letters, the scene of my last crime against the simulations of peace. The pillar was shrouded in heavy, velvet drapes. The melted, decomposed [18.226.150.175] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 23...