A Song for Nagasaki: The Story of Takashi Nagai: Scientist, Convert, and Survivor of the Atomic Bomb

by Paul Glynn

“Gentlemen, this is man, the object of our studies. A body with physical properties. Things you can see, weigh, test, measure. And this is all man is.” Nagai found nothing odd in this denial of the spiritual. It would be wrong to say he did not believe in anything. He passionately believed in science, sure that science held the key to every door that barred human progress. That faith spurred him on to study with the dedication his father showed thirty years earlier. Nagai believed also in “humanity”. Science had dispelled the mists of the long Dark Ages, and the human race was at last coming into its own. Banzai for the tremendous future of the human race! Finally, he believed in Japan. His burgeoning knowledge of the Japanese classics gave him a glimpse of the length and depth of Japanese history and culture. He read with delight and a growing awe the Manyoshu—a collection of roughly 4,500 poems, most of them written in the last half of the seventh and the first half of the eighth century A.D. By any nation’s standards, the Manyoshu is an extraordinary literary masterpiece.