Resurrecting Nagasaki: Religion, Art, and Memory after the Atomic Bombing
Dienstag, 14.10.2025, 18:00 UhrVortrag, Museum Fünf Kontinente, München
Resurrecting Nagasaki: Religion, Art, and Memory after the Atomic Bombing Lecture with Chad R. Diehl, Ph.D. (Independent Scholar) on Tuesday, 14 October 2025 at 6pm
After the atomic bombing of Nagasaki in August 1945, the road to recovery was long and winding. In the reconstruction process, municipal officials emphasized the city’s history of international culture and exchange with the West, which included its legacy as a center of Catholicism. The way this imagery fit into the physical and cultural reconstruction of the city shaped Nagasaki’s image as an atomic-bombed city. This is especially evident in comparison to Hiroshima, which created a postwar identity focused on the trauma of its bombing and its role as a center of anti-nuclear weapons and peace activism. This lecture describes the process of reconstruction in Nagasaki, paying particular attention to the influence of the city’s Catholic community. It also traces the formation of a Christian image of ground zero in Japan, highlighting how cultural media outside the city, such as visual artworks, depicted Nagasaki’s experience. My discussion concludes by considering how atomic memory might carry forward to the next generation.
Chad Diehl is a historian of Japan specializing in the relationship between religion, politics, and war memory in the aftermath of the Second World War. He received his doctorate from Columbia University in New York in 2011 and taught East Asian history and literature at several universities for more than a decade. He has published two books and numerous journal articles based on archival research in Nagasaki and Tokyo, including at an archive of the Nagasaki Catholic community previously unavailable to non-Japanese researchers. His next book looks at how an unofficial Christianization program shaped the democratization process in Japan during the Allied Occupation (1945-1952). Chad Diehl is currently an independent scholar.
The lecture will be held in English.
Vortragsprogramm zur Sonderausstellung Vom Inferno zum Friedenssymbol. 80 Jahre Hiroshima und Nagasaki in Kooperation mit dem Japan-Zentrum der LMU München
