Postcards from Nagasaki: Screen Memory in Ishiguro's Pale View of Hills

“‘Oh, by the way, Mother,” she said. “You know that friend I was telling you about, the one writing the poem about you?

I smiled. “Oh yes. Your friend.”

“She wanted me to bring back a photo or something. Of Nagasaki. Have you got anything like that? An old postcard or something?”

“I should think I could find something for you. How absurd”--I gave a laugh-- “Whatever can she be writing about me?”

“She’s a really good poet. She’s been through a lot, you see. That’s why I told her about you.”

“I’m sure she’ll write a marvellous poem, Niki.”

“Just an old postcard, anything like that. Just so she can see what everything was like.”

“Well, Niki, I’m not so sure. It has to show what everything was like, does it?”

“You know what I mean.’” (Ishiguro 177-178)

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This passage towards the end of Ishiguro’s novel highlights the ways in which screen memories obscure the reality of post-war Japan. Niki’s friend’s poem about Etsuko and her experiences will be tied to and understood in context to whatever image Etsuko’s old postcard displays. The readers however are aware that these images circulated and popularized in post-war Japan didn’t reflect the truth of atomic-bomb affected areas like Nagasaki. The memorial in “Peace Park” in Nagasaki displays a statute that in Etsuko’s eyes she “was never able to associate [the memorial] with what had occurred that day the bomb had fallen” (137). These type images serve as a means of censoring the truth of what Etsuko and other survivors in Japan would have experienced. In the last lines, Etsuko expresses this concern that the postcard would not be able to cover everything that she experienced in Nagasaki, but Niki dismisses it to imply that the postcard will be more that enough for the intended purposes. This screen memory dismisses the continued struggle of the survivor and contributes to the rhetoric of progress. If the images circulated along with stories of people affected by the bombings in Japan (like Etsuko) are the same images that promote moving forward above everything else then they distort the authority of the survivor’s experience. This passage effectively demonstrates how screen memories interrupt the reality of post-war Japan and sanitize the lasting effects of the atomic bombs on the people who experienced them.