Кёко Хаяси

The haunting story of a visit to the test site for the first nuclear bomb that bends time.

Hayashi transports us from Nagasaki in 1945, where she experienced a nuclear bomb first hand, to tourist gift shops and museum cinemas in New Mexico in 1999. The effect made me feel like one of those pieces of trinitite, a glass pearl formed from a nuclear explosion that disconnected me from the ground beneath my feet.

The translator's notes and introduction are valuable, both as information and as artistic response. Otake, the translator, is a performance artist, and chooses her interpretation as an exact, metered translation of Hayashi's original text. The effect is engrossing and a constant reminder of the "otherness" of Hayashi as a hibakusha (a person who survived either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki nuclear bombings).

The world does need Hayashi's experiment.… (more)