Abstract

The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 are a symbolic source of all later views on a nuclear holocaust. The specificity of the Japanese narratives, however, lies in the fact that they take the first-person form, and thus they give a direct testimony of the individuals’ experience. In the article I refer to the personal accounts of the victims of the atomic bomb (the so-called hibakusha) to prove that corporeality is employed in them as the primary category of description, and functions as the existential ground on which both the horror of the explosion is constructed, and the collapse of the “world of life” of the community is experienced.