New play about the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, performed in London

London (Jiji Press) – “Love in Action,” a new play by Japanese playwright Hideki Noda about the 1945 U.S. atomic bombing of the city of Nagasaki in southwestern Japan, was staged in London, with the first show performed Thursday.

Inspired by 19th-century Russian literary giant Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, the play, set in Nagasaki in August 1945, questions the weight of guilt in killing people. Although it begins as a courtroom drama with a comic twist, the story gradually becomes more somber, eventually reaching the moment of the atomic bomb, one of the worst tragedies in human history.

“I thought the atomic bomb needed to be depicted in a direct way to reach (the audience),” said Noda, 68, who wrote and performed the play. He was born in Nagasaki and had depicted the atomic bombing of his hometown figuratively in his earlier works. This was the first time he explicitly portrayed the event in his play.

Seventy-nine years have passed since the end of World War II and memories of the war continue to fade. “The fact of the atomic bombings may have become just a single line on the page of history,” Noda said.

He also pointed out that in Japan too, the view might prevail that atomic bombs were inevitable to end the war and reduce casualties. “What happened is nothing but an impossible massacre,” he emphasized.

In October, Japan’s Confederation of Organizations for A and H Bomb Patients, or Nihon Hidankyo, which has called for the abolition of nuclear weapons, was named as the recipient of this year’s Nobel Peace Prize. While welcoming this achievement, Noda lamented that even such great news quickly gets buried under the flood of information. He said the phrase “the only country to suffer atomic bombings” sounds to him like a seasonal greeting. “I want people to chew on the phrase one more time,” Noda added.

After the Japan tour, Japanese actors Jun Matsumoto, Masami Nagasawa and Eita Nagayama also burned the stage in London. After the opening night in a theater full of about 1,500 spectators, the cast received a standing ovation and thunderous applause.

A 44-year-old woman from Colchester in southeastern Britain who visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in Japan’s other atomic bombed city of Hiroshima said the scene in the play where the atomic bomb was dropped was striking. She said she felt the enormous damage from the bombing in a different way than the museum and that she found it heartbreaking.