Journal of Religion and Theatre

Vol. 1, No. 1, Fall 2002

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Nagai ends his book with a prayer for Nagasaki and a prayer for humankind. Ferlita, however, ends the play with two conflicting yet complimentary biblical quotations that Nagai had employed earlier in his work: "Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted" (Matthew 5:4), and "The Lord has given, the Lord has taken away, Blessed be the name of the Lord" (Job 1:21). Both thoughts are Nagai's (and Ferlita's) ultimate responses to the bombing of Nagasaki: those who mourn will be comforted, and all has happened as part of the greater plan of the Lord from whom all things come. The last line of the play is also a biblical call-and-response:

Chorus: And the Word was made flesh
Nagai: And dwelt among us.(37)

[page 115] The play then ends with the characters joining together onstage as the bells of Urakami Cathedral ring.

Like The Head of Mary, the title The Bells of Nagasaki ultimately refers to a piece of Catholic material culture that the bomb destroyed and that a group of Catholics worked to recover and restore. Where Tanaka's play is wholly fictional (no such group existed), Ferlita's play draws on real events; a group of Catholics did work to retrieve the bells from the rubble and ring them. In Ferlita's play, they ring on August 15th, not only the day that Japan surrendered, but also the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. In Ferlita's play, Yamada Ichitaro, reading from Nagai's statement that was published in Nagai's original text, asks "Was this convergence of events, the end of the war and the celebration of her feast day merely coincidental or was it some mysterious providence of God?"(38) Ferlita (and Nagai) also see the atomic bombing in terms of the Catholic doctrine of double effect. Double effect states that bad things may occur as the result of an action, but the good that results outweighs the bad. Nagai seems to suggest that, on a theological level, God allows the bomb to kill his virtuous believers, sending them to heaven, and providing a model and a warning for sinners, while also ending the war on a day sacred to Mary, thus calling further attention for the need to repent. The negative effects of the bomb are outweighed under this double effect doctrine by the positive outcomes. Interestingly, the bells ringing on August 15 is purely Ferlita's invention. In both history and Nagai's text they did not ring until Christmas, 1945.(39)

Both of these dramas attempt to formulate a Catholic theological response to the bombing of Nagasaki. Both embrace, to varying levels, the theme of martyrdom, although both argue for a different purpose for the survivors. Both plays involve the recovery of material aspects of Catholicism – a statue of Mary and the cathedral bells, respectively. Both plays engage in the active worship of the Virgin Mary which is appropriate considering that Urakami Cathedral was consecrated to her and the war did end on the Feast of the Assumption. Both plays utilize Buddhist elements, but it seems more accurate to state that Maria no kubi is rooted firmly in the Western, Christian tradition of shingeki, whereas Ferlita's play is rooted in the Buddhist and Shinto traditions of Noh. Both plays use their respective dramaturgical traditions [page 116] to offer a firmly Catholic response to the bombing of Nagasaki. Both plays ultimately utilize theology to offer a theodicy that consists primarily of a theophany.

Where the plays most strongly differ is in their original contexts of performance. The intended audience of Tanaka's play was the sophisticated, highly educated, left-leaning theatregoers of Tokyo in the late fifties. His was a Japanese audience that had lived through the war and come of age after it. Many in the audience had been alive when the bomb was dropped. Conversely, the intended audience of Ferlita's play is an American one, specifically a New York one, in the mid-nineties, over 50 years after the bomb had been dropped. Whereas Tanaka's play is a Japanese response to the Catholic problem of Nagasaki, written, performed, and witnessed by Japanese, Ferlita's play is an American adaptation of a Japanese book, written, performed, and witnessed by Americans. Ferlita writes the names of the characters Western style with given name first and family name second (Takashi Nagai and Ichitaro Yamada, for example). We can critique Ferlita's play on one hand for its Othering of the Japanese characters and experience, relying on the exoticism of Noh to tell the story (and not even true Noh, but an Americanized Noh – so we might also critique the appropriation of a Japanese form to present a narrative to an American audience).(40) Yet in doing so we should not deny Ferlita's attempt to present a lengthy narrative / documentary text in a highly theatrical form for the purposes of theodicy. Ferlita makes no claim that his play is authentic Noh, or even a modern Noh play. Instead, the Noh is used as a framing device to present Nagai's (and Ferlita's) theological arguments. Theology can make for a very dry performance (try to watch a straightforward production of Everyman, for example); Ferlita's use of Noh is designed to present both story and philosophy in a manner that is interesting and watchable, both expressive of the Japanese experience and accessible to contemporary American audiences. Ferilta's play is cultural [page 117] appropriation, yes; but an interesting performance experience as well that serves the larger purpose of offering a theodicy in the face of Nagasaki.

In conclusion, we might note that in the silence of Pius XII, Tanaka and Nagai (through Ferlita) cry out in prayer, thanksgiving, and supplication. While the supreme pontiff does not speak out on the specific use of atomic weapons against Catholics in Japan, other Catholics use the tragedy as an opportunity to speak out and justify faith. Rather than condemn the Earthly powers that wage war, or drop bombs on Catholics, or condemn a God who would treat His children so terribly, these Catholics use theatre to reaffirm their faith in the divine and in Catholicism. Sainthood in the Church has always begun at the popular and local level; veneration of local martyrs eventually brings the attention of Rome to particularly sanctified individuals. The theatre as well has served as rallying cry, information system, and communal representation when other structures and systems would not. These two plays are Catholic dramas in response to the bombing of Nagasaki that ultimately do what theology could not: put a human face on the suffering and redemption of the victims, and offer a visual prayer and theodicy that restores faith in the vacuum of the bomb and the "official" silence which followed it.

Endnotes

  1. John Whittier Treat, Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (Chicago: U Chicago P, 1995) 302.
  2. It should be noted that all Japanese names used in this article are given Japanese style, with surname first and given name second.
  3. David Reid, New Wine: The Cultural Shaping of Japanese Christianity (Berkeley: Asian Humanities, 1991) 7.
  4. Hochhuth's play posits that Pius XII valued Vatican stockholdings over the safety and lives of Europe's Jews. While this charge is ultimately not borne out by the facts, recent controversial scholarship has demonstrated Pius's anti-Semitism and willingness to place maintaining the power of the Papacy over all other concerns. See John Cornwall's Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII for both a summation of the influence of the play The Deputy and the possible reasons why Pius XII never spoke out against the Holocaust during the war.
  5. Part II, Chapter V, section 1.
  6. James M. Philips, From the Rising of the Sun: Christians and Society in Contemporary Japan (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1981) 3.
  7. Treat 305.
  8. Treat 301-3.
  9. Treat 313.
  10. For a more complete history of Japanese Christianity and the Nagasaki martyrs, see Reid, Phillips, and Caldarola.
  11. David G. Goodman , ed. After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Ithaca: Cornell East Asia, 1994) 112.
  12. Tanaka Chikao, "The Head of Mary," in Goodman, 119.
  13. Tanaka 126.
  14. Tanaka 179.
  15. Goodman 113.
  16. Goodman 110-112.
  17. J. Thomas Rimer, "Four Plays by Tanaka Chikao," Monumenta Nipponica 31.3 (1976) 290.
  18. Tanaka 177.
  19. Tanaka 177.
  20. Tanaka 178, 181.
  21. Rimer, "Four Plays" 284.
  22. See my "Healing the (Metaphysically) Sick: A Buddhist Ibsen in Christian Japan" for this argument.
  23. See my "Dancing at the Shrine of Jesus: Christianity and Shingeki" for this argument.
  24. Treat 310.
  25. The information about and history of Nagai's text is largely taken from translator William Johnston's introduction to the English language edition. Treat also briefly discusses the history of the book.
  26. Earnest Ferlita, Two Cities (Quincy: Baker's Plays, 1999) 39.
  27. Quoted in Benito Ortolani, The Japanese Theatre: From Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary Pluralism, rev. ed. (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995) 90.
  28. Ortolani 87-93.
  29. J. Thomas Rimer, in the introduction to Zeami's treatises notes, "In the later treatises there seems to be an increasing predilection for searching out metaphysical explanations, often Buddhist in tone, for the kinds of practical insights that Zeami had learned both as a writer and a performer" (xxi). This assertion is borne out in such writings as Yegaku shudo fuken ("Disciplines for the Joy of Art"), which draws from Buddhist sutras and Confucian maxims, Kyui ("Nine Levels") which uses the terminology of Zen, and Shugyoku tokka ("Finding Gems and Bringing the Flower"), which relies upon Buddhist concepts. See Zeami's treatises as translated by Rimer and Yamazaki.
  30. Ferlita 9.
  31. Ferlita 25.
  32. Ferlita 25.
  33. Ferlita 27.
  34. Ferlita 31.
  35. Ferlita 32.
  36. Ferlita 34.
  37. Ferlita 35.
  38. Ferlita 30.
  39. Takashi Nagai, The Bells of Nagasaki, trans. William Johnston (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1984) 117.
  40. The text is further problematized (or Americanized) through several significant errors. The script, for example, notes that the action is set on "August 6th, 1945," which is actually the date of the Hiroshima bomb (p. 6). Nagasaki was bombed on August 9. The chorus leader remarks in the opening story that Chimoto was "in his rice patty" [sic] (p.7). One assumes that "rice paddy" is what was intended. Lastly, and perhaps most problematic, is Yamada's wish that "another kamikase will come and save Japan" (p. 23). Ferlita means kamikazi, the "divine wind." "Kamikase" literally translates to mean "divine handcuffs" or "divine reel," not what is intended here at all. While these are all simple errors, they compound into a text that displays an ignorance of things Japanese, highly problematic when writing a play about Japan. While we might be tempted to overlook these errors, one should still note that they indicate a writer who remains distanced from Japan and Japanese culture, and who may be in danger of Othering the very people he wants to represent. The author presents these points in a note, as they are tangential to the main argument of Bells of Nagasaki as theology, but their significance in the creation of cross-cultural or intercultural theatre cannot be downplayed.

[page 118]

Works Cited

Caldarola, Carlo. Christianity: The Japanese Way. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1966.

Cornwall, John. Hitler's Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII. New York: Viking, 1999.

Ferlita, Earnest. Two Cities. Quincy: Baker's Plays, 1999.

Goodman, David G., ed. After Apocalypse: Four Japanese Plays of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Ithaca: Cornell East Asia, 1994.

Hochhuth, Rolf. The Deputy. Trans. Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Grove, 1964.

Nagai Takashi. The Bells of Nagasaki. Trans. William Johnston. Tokyo: Kodansha, 1984.

---. Nagasaki no kane. Tokyo: Hibiya Shuppan, 1949.

Ortolani, Benito. The Japanese Theatre: From Shamanistic Ritual to Contemporary Pluralism. Rev. ed. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1995.

Philips, James M. From the Rising of the Sun: Christians and Society in Contemporary Japan. Maryknoll: Orbis, 1981.

Reid, David. New Wine: The Cultural Shaping of Japanese Christianity. Berkeley: Asian Humanities, 1991.

Rimer, J. Thomas. "Four Plays by Tanaka Chikao." Monumenta Nipponica. 31.3 (1976): 275-298.

Tanaka Chikao. "The Head of Mary." Goodman 115-181.

[page 119] Treat, John Whittier. Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb. Chicago: U Chicago P, 1995.

Vatican Council. Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: Gaudium et Spes. Boston: Daughters of St. Paul, 1965.

Wetmore, Jr., Kevin J. "Dancing at the Shrine of Jesus: Christianity and Shingeki." Theatre Symposium: Crosscurrents of the Drama: East and West. Ed. Stanley Vincent Longman. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1998.

---. "Healing the (Metaphysically) Sick: A Buddhist Ibsen in Christian Japan." Text and Presentation. 21 (2000): 57-68.

Zeami. On the Art of Noh Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami. Trans. J. Thomas Rimer and Yamazaki Masakazu. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1984.