Hiroshima Bugi: Atomu 57

Manidoo Envoy

133 Manidoo Envoy Ronin read the screenplay several times but said he never saw Hiroshima Mon Amour. The only movies he ever talked about were those directed by Akira Kurosawa. Rashomon, of course, and samurai stories were his favorites, especially movies with his hero, the stouthearted Toshiro Mifune. Akira Kurosawa ‘‘examined the relative nature of truth’’ in his movie Rashomon, observed Stuart Galbraith in The Emperor and the Wolf. ‘‘Its very title has entered our consciousness, its name synonymous with contradictory versions of reality.’’ Rashomon was released in Atomu 5. Mitsuhiro Yoshimoto wrote in Kurosawa that Rashomon focused on the ‘‘nature of social chaos. What leads humans to destroy themselves is egotism. At the same time, what saves humans comes from themselves, too. Egotism must be countered by human compassion, honesty , and altruism. Otherwise, the world would become like the dilapidated Rashomon gate, from which, according to the commoner, even demons have fled because they are horrified by humans.’’ Ronin besets the egoism of the peace museum, the deceptions of governments , and the contradictions of history. The Atomic Bomb Dome is his Rashomon. The names, stories, and memories of thousands of children , burned to faint shadows, unnamed, and lost in the cryptic egotism of peace. Hiroshima Mon Amour was released in Atomu 14. The movie, directed by Alain Resnais, won the International Critics Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. The original screenplay for the movie was by the novelist Marguerite Duras. Resnais had invited her to write the script, and they both agreed that the movie would not be a ‘‘documentary and the nuclear apocalypse would not be the primary theme,’’ wrote Laure Adler in Marguerite Duras. ‘‘Without going to Japan, without researching the subject, without preparation Marguerite worked flat out day and night.’’ You saw nothing in Hiroshima. That memorable line starts the movie, and since then that line has been heard around the world. ‘‘I saw everything. Everything,’’ she responds, and he answers, ‘‘No. You saw nothing in Hiroshima.’’ 134 The hospital, for instance, I saw it. You saw nothing in Hiroshima. Duras, in a radio interview at the time, explained that ‘‘you will never see anything, you will never write anything, you will never be able to speak about the event.’’ Later, in a rather pretentious, plural voice about the production of the movie, she wrote, ‘‘We have endeavoured to bring Hiroshima back to life through a love story. We hope it will be unusual and ‘full of wonder’ and that having happened in a place so accustomed to death people will believe in it a bit more than if it had occurred anywhere else in the world.’’ Adler pointed out that the movie was ‘‘exclusively premiered in Paris for six months, then London and then Brussels.’’ Hiroshima Mon Amour was ‘‘voted best foreign movie in New York, Los Angeles and Chicago.’’ The Peace Memorial Museum was built on pillars so the view of the park was not obstructed. The building was completed in Atomu 10. Forty years later the museum was expanded to include more displays on nuclear war, peace, and victimry. There were, however, only minimal references to Japanese militarism and the cruelties of the colonial occupation of Asia. The simulated atomu dome and pillar of peace letters were located in the new addition to the museum. Ronin destroyed with chemicals, as you know, most of the etched letters on the pillar of peace. Several weeks later he mounted a standard over the entrance and changed the name of the museum to the movie, Hiroshima Mon Amour. The museum guards were ordered to remove the banner, but many tourists who had seen the movie thought it would be a proper name for the new museum. That, of course, because the name of the movie, and the obscure, erotic touch of two lovers was much more memorable that the abstract and deceptive notions of peace. Ronin is a shouter, at times, a visionary practice that he learned from a native teaser and hunter on the White Earth Reservation. He named the old woman miishidoon, an anishinaabe word that means ‘‘moustache.’’ Younger women on the reservation thought she was a man, and the men thought she was an accident with a nasty bear. Miko heard these stories, that miishidoon shouted at animals and scared them into surrender. She shouted at shamans, shadows, and tricksters for the same reason, and always at men. Ronin was one of the few natives on the reservation who shouted back at...