Gently to Nagasaki
by Joy Kogawa
Source: paperback/library
Published: Sept 2016
Publisher: Caitlin Press

Length: 214 pages
Genre: Memoir
Target Age: Adult (suitable for 16+)

• I read Gently to Nagaski as my first pick for the 2024 Runalong The Shelves Booktempter’s TBR Challenge. January’s prompt was to “randomly choose a book by someone you’ve never read before”. Ogawa is a Japanese Canadian most well known for her novel Obasan, published in 1981. I haven’t read Obasan, but Gently to Nagaski made its way onto my TBR shortly after it was published in 2016. Subtitled “A spiritual pilgrimage, an exploration both communal and intensely personal”, both the spiritual aspect and the perspective of an elder Japanese Canadian intrigued me.
• I had it in my mind that this was going to be one cohesive narrative, in which Ogawa travels to Japan as part of her ‘spiritual pilgrimage’. Not so. The book is comprised of 42 chapters or reflections on a variety of subjects. The legacy of her father, a man who was deeply involved in the Japanese Canadian community and also a pedophile, features in many of the chapters. I was a bit blindsided by that, as it’s not touched on anywhere in the book’s description.

A nisei psychiatrist in Toronto told me he had not heard from any of Dad’s victims.
“Not one?”
“Not one.”
“If you write about your father,” he said, “it will act as a lightning rod. And not all the anger will have anything to do with you or your father. You’d be inviting controversy. You’ll be targeted. My advice is, let sleeping dogs lie. But if you’re going ahead, you should be prepared.”

Gently to Nagaski, pg 100

• The ‘spiritual’ descriptor, imo, was deployed too broadly with this book. There are some interesting explorations of Christianity and Japanese identity, but it’s not like Ogawa’s own spirituality is a strong thread throughout the book. …Well. That’s probably incorrect for me to say, actually, loool. It’s just for me, I felt other aspects of her writing more strongly than when she wrote about her own spirtuality. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say it’s a strong thread, but not the only strong thread.
• Do you ever read a memoir that’s so open and personal that it makes you a little uncomfortable and you think “Should she be saying that in a book that’s for the public? Is it okay for me to be reading this??” While Gently to Nagasaki is not the most extreme memoir in I can think of in this category, there were a good number of moments that made me think that. I wondered how much of her writing Kogawa had run by her subjects before publishing the book, or if perhaps being in her 80s, her friends’ reception to her writing was less of a concern. It’s tough to judge the content of a memoir, when you know it’s just someone telling you about their actual life.

No matter how much I explained that it was how we talked about nuclear energy that mattered to me, Metta was having none of it. “You’re beating a dead horse, Joy,” she said. “Move on! We have to abandon nuclear power and concentrate on alternative sources of energy. [lists several reasons to abandon nuclear] For some reason, you just don’t get it. You’re confusing trustin gin God with trusting in particular human beings, which is confused with the reliability of particular evidence, which is confused with the economic and social grounds that make a given course of action practicable or dangerous. On logical grounds, your thinking’s a mess. […] If you think people regard Helen Caldicott as a nutt case, just wait until yo udiscover what people think you are. It’s the embarrassment of all time. I’m sorry to say it, but I wouldn’t be your friend if I didn’t”. Metta believes in fighting as a way to get closer to the truth.

Gently to Nagasaki pg 41

• The first chapters, exploring the atomic bombing of Nagasaki and the future of nuclear energy, were striking. The parts of this book which I enjoyed most were Kogawa’s reflections on history. I also had no idea the controversy Kogawa stirred up when she published The Rain Ascends.
• 💭 The Bottom Line: Recommended for readers interested in Japanese Canadian history or how a daughter reckons with her father’s history of sexual abuse.

Do you read memoirs?
What’s a time period from your country’s history which you would like to learn more about?