Gwyn McClelland

University of New England | UNE · School of Humanities Arts and Social Sciences

The islands in the Gotō region off Kyushu Island were refuges, mountains providing both terraces for growing potatoes and rice; and hideaways for clandestine religious practices; seas and bays providing fish and seaweed. Religious refugees arrived here in the 18th and 19th centuries, but had to contend with a harsh winter climate, the strong prejud...

As atomic eyewitness memory passes on, and the hibakusha (atomic-bomb survivor) population dwindles, their trauma is increasingly communicated and negotiated by new generations. After the hibakusha, various protagonists are picking up the baton to continue telling the story of Nagasaki, some children of hibakusha and others not. More than seventy-f...

Within this chapter I evaluate the still unfolding evolution of digital resources in the case of museum and archive practice related to Nagasaki and their suitability in assisting in the task of teaching the difficult history of the atomic bombing. Memorial museums do exist to convince, and to assist the public in recalling public and collective tr...

A uniquely powerful marker of ethnic, gender, and class identities, scent can also overwhelm previously constructed boundaries and transform social-sensory realities within contexts of environmental degradation, pathogen outbreaks, and racial politics. This innovative multidisciplinary volume critically examines olfaction in Asian societies with th...

Maria Iwanaga Maki (1849–1920) was 23 years old in 1873 when she returned home after a community exile and persecutions of more than 3000 people carried out by the Meiji government. Historians in the public record refer to Iwanaga as otoko‐masari (man‐nish) when she stood up to a representative of the Shogun, while in her public work she became kno...

A proliferation of new sources in sensory studies has continued to be published over the last few years across the disciplines. However, there remains a bias towards European or North American contexts within the literature. For that reason alone this new book, Sensory Anthropology: Culture and Experience in Asia is a helpful addition to the litera...

Gwyn McClelland introduces a Nagasaki Catholic hibakusha named Father Ozaki Tōmei, who took a different path from Nagai. Father Ozaki wrote much about the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and worked as a kataribe (a public speaker about the atomic experience), which served as important parts of his identity as both a hibakusha and a Catholic. McClelland...

The Hidden Christian World Heritage in the Gotō project focuses on UNESCO Hidden Christian World Heritage sites in the Gotō Islands in Nagasaki Prefecture, incorporating five interview transcripts in English and Japanese as well as their associated audio (totalling six participants). This project centers on oral history methodology in Japanese Stud...

Covid-19 in 2020 produced a “mushroom cloud” which threatened to obscure and suppress the seventy-fifth commemorations of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Official narratives simultaneously attempted to proclaim an end to past difficulties and hibakusha (sufferers of the atomic bombings) and their supporters stood up to all of these c...

After the 1945 atomic bombing of Nagasaki, the ruined Urakami Cathedral, situated prominently on a hilltop close to ground zero, became an iconic site. It represented the rupture experienced by a totally devastated community and landscape in an irradiated environment at the end of World War II. Yet, beginning in 1958, the ruins of the building were...

Before COVID-19, language learning was undergoing technology-driven change, including classroom delivery through blended learning and opportunities for autonomous learning through online affordances. The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated these trends, forcing educators and students to diversify into new forms of online teaching and learning. In...

Bulletin of Faculty of Education, Nagasaki University [長崎大学教育学部紀要]

Since 1945, official Catholic discourse around nuclear weapons has condemned their existence on the one hand and supported them as deterrents on the other. This paper argues the largely abstracted discourse on nuclear weapons within the World Church has been disrupted by voices of Urakami in Nagasaki since at least 1981, as the Vatican has re-consi...

A review of "Studying Japan: Handbook of Research Designs, Fieldwork and Methods" edited by Nora Kottmann and Cornelia Reiher, Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft (Baden-Baden, Germany), 2020.

Introduction to New Voices in Japanese Studies, Volume 13 [Special Issue] Beyond Japanese Studies: Challenges, Opportunities and COVID-19

Recently the world observed the closing ceremony of the ‘2020’ Olympics. The Olympics occurred despite many calls from within and without Japan to halt the event. While the many sporting events were running in an ‘Olympic Bubble’, doctors in Japan called for attention for hospitals crowded with increasing numbers due to COVID-19. Their calls were n...

Nuclear geographies and geographers contemplate the significance of nuclear technologies and issues for humans, nonhumans, and ecologies in the past, present, and future. This definition highlights how radiation interacts across different scales and mobilities by considering the significance of their relations to humans, nonhumans, ecologies, and m...

Especially helpful for Australian historians and oral historians, this book introduces the resources of the Australian Generations Oral History Project, funded by an Australian Research Council Linkage Grant, that involved conducting three hundred in-depth life-history interviews with Australians born between 1920 and 1990. The authors of the chapt...

The UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons will finally come into force after the 50th country (Honduras) ratified it over the weekend. The treaty will make the development, testing, stockpiling and use of nuclear weapons illegal for those countries that have signed it. This is an extraordinary achievement for those who have suffered the m...

In this essay, McClelland introduces some reflections of Nagasaki atomic bomb survivors about the loss of their mothers and some of their experiences of motherhood in the aftermath, utilizing a feminist lens to analyze the effects of the bomb. Japanese feminist Chizuko Ueno has written that those women who died might be signified as “non-war heroes...

Over the last 12 years, I have studied the immense implications of the Nagasaki bombing on the city’s Catholic community through interviews with survivors, the community and local researchers. Together with Yuki Miyamoto, an ethicist at Depaul University in Chicago, I have collated some discussion about how the 75th anniversary of the bombing would...

Almost 75 years since the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, the Catholic and the nearby burakumin (an ostracised community of “untouchables”) experiences of the bombing have been little reported. This article draws on recent oral history interviews and new sources to reveal important evidence about the shared experiences of these two communities. In part...

In this short essay, I raise Metz’s dangerous memory which considers theological scandal in times of trauma, as a schema for interpreting our doubts and reimagining the future in view of the present and past derangement and duress. Metz’s dangerous memory demands that suffering be remembered. This memory is oriented towards a provisional future vie...

Almost seventy-five years post-war, the publishing of The Unfinished Atomic Bomb shows that interest in the legacy of the atomic bombings of Japan is not on the wane. This recent collection, edited by Australian scholars David Lowe, Cassandra Atherton, and Alyson Miller, and sourced largely in Australia, provides a fascinating interdisciplinary app...

In Faking Liberties, Jolyon Thomas subjects a pervasive idea that in 1945 American religion brought freedom to a religious despot Japa-nese state to careful critique. During an intense period of teaching both Japanese and religious studies during his Ph.D. tenure, Thomas explains that he began to engage in the discourse of religious freedom in Japa...

A blog-post from the Oral History Review, United States, about my trip to return an oral history to its place of origin, Nagasaki. Full article is available here: http://oralhistoryreview.org/oral-history/bringing-your-research-full-circle/

Religion and Ethics Report Radio National Australia

An explainer about why Pope Francis’ visit to Nagasaki was particularly important for survivors and for the Catholic community in Japan. Available here: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-24/trauma-of-japans-catholic-atomic-bomb-survivors-pope-visit/11703542

On 9th August 1945, the US dropped the second atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Of the dead, approximately 8500 were Catholic Christians, representing over sixty percent of the community. In this collective biography, nine Catholic survivors share personal and compelling stories about the aftermath of the bomb and their lives since that day. Examining the...

Japan: History and Culture from Classical to Cool, Nancy K. Stalker. University of California Press (Oakland), 2018. 446 pp., ISBN: 9780520287778

Nancy K. Stalker’s Japan: History and Culture from Classical to Cool is a tertiary-level history textbook of Japan, bridging the premodern to modern periods.

On 9 August 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Nagasaki. Of the dead, approximately 8500 were Catholic, representing sixty to seventy-five percent of their own community and over ten percent of the total. This thesis analyses the memories and narratives of surviving members of the Catholic community in Nagasaki through the lens of Jo...

This interdisciplinary study explores Marian imagery and representations in world literature and art throughout the centuries. This book demonstrates the widespread deep veneration of the image of the Blessed Virgin Mary in various countries and different Christian traditions. Devotion to the Holy Virgin has served as a bridge to different cultures...

The connection from the movie Silence to the Catholic community of Nagasaki who were devastated by the atomic bombing of 1945. https://theconversation.com/scorseses-silence-and-the-catholic-connection-to-the-atomic-bomb-66824

In Nagasaki: Life after Nuclear War, Susan Southard has written a chronological treatment of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. The book composes a narrative derived mainly from interviews completed by Southard with five survivors of the bombing. Southard’s quest is to make this story known in the United States, to correct a skewed narrative. Southard...

When Urakami Cathedral was rebuilt in 1959, many citizens experienced the loss of the ruins as a silencing of Nagasaki’s experience. This paper explores Catholic survivors’ attitudes towards the Cathedral and loss of an important atomic relic, and shows that while they regret the ruins’ disappearance, they also recognise the rebuilt Cathedral as a...

Review of Shijo Chie's 2015 Japanese language book, Review in English.

Nagasaki was the second city to experience a nuclear attack at the end of WWII, seventy years ago. As we approach this anniversary, Paul Warham's translation of Seirai Yuichi's novel presents a fascinating window on the world view of the Catholic community, who were concentrated around Ground Zero in Nagasaki, in the locality of Urakami. Narratives...

Nagasaki was the second city to experience a nuclear attack at the end of World War II, 70 years ago. As we approach this anniversary, two writings suggest the razing of the atomic ruins of Urakami Cathedral in 1959 have constituted a central reason for the relative silence of Nagasaki in comparison to Hiroshima, calling the loss of the ruins a def...