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Cover of 夏の花 (Natsu no Hana)

Upper intermediate · JLPT N2

夏の花Natsu no Hana — Flowers of High Summer

by Hara Tamiki (原民喜, 1905–1951)

  • JLPT N2
  • 12,722 characters
  • 9 parts
  • about 106 minutes

夏の花 is a first-person account of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, written by a survivor who was inside his family home when the bomb fell. It opens quietly, with the narrator buying flowers for his late wife's grave. It then follows him through the collapse of the house, his escape to the riverside garden of Sentei, and the nights and days that follow among the injured and dying. The tone is restrained and almost documentary. Hara records what he saw, heard and did in plain, exact sentences, rarely commenting, and the horror comes from the accumulation of detail rather than from emotional language. For a learner, this restraint is both the reward and the challenge. The grammar is mostly straightforward plain-form narration. The vocabulary, however, is dense and written: injuries, ruins, fire, water, and many Hiroshima place names. A few older kanji and spellings also appear. One passage breaks into a fragmented poem written in katakana. The dialogue is short and casual, with a light western-Japanese flavour. It is a slow, demanding read, best taken one part at a time.

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Contents

  1. Flowers for a Grave, Then the BlastTwo days before the atomic bombing, the narrator buys summer flowers and visits his wife's grave in Hiroshima, where his parents' remains also lie. On the morning of 6 August he is in the toilet when a sudden blow plunges everything into darkness, and the house collapses around him. He stumbles out into the ruins, where his frantic sister finds him, tells him to wash the blood from his eyes, and finds him some clothes, while a bloodied man from the factory rushes past to make a phone call.
  2. Leaving the Ruined HouseThe narrator searches his wrecked family home for clothes and supplies as K, an older man from the office, appears injured and confused. As flames break out next door, they prepare to flee, and the narrator reflects on the great maple of his boyhood, which no longer moves him as it once did. They then clamber over the collapsed houses onto the road, pass a bloodied woman and a wailing old woman, and finally reach Sakae Bridge, where evacuees are crowding together.
  3. Refuge in the Garden by the RiverThe narrator loses K in the wrecked bamboo grove of Sentei, where he sees his first stunned, soulless face among the injured. Reunited with his eldest brother and sister on the riverbank, he feels a strange relief at being alive and resolves to record what has happened, as fire rages on the far bank and a sudden dark rain falls. The survivors trade accounts of the flash and are puzzled that everything is destroyed without any bomb craters.
  4. Fire, Whirlwind and the WoundedWhile the fires on the far bank rise and fall, the narrator pulls onions from a floating crate and swims out to rescue a drowning girl. A violent whirlwind tears trees from the ground, and afterwards his second brother appears, lightly burned, and tells how he escaped. Searching upstream for a ferry, the narrator sees for the first time crowds of horribly injured people lying by the river and begging for water and help.
  5. Evening on the RiverbankOn the riverbank, two horribly swollen women ask the narrator to fetch their bedding, but someone dying already lies on it. He crosses the river on a raft and helps a wounded soldier look for hot water, while burned and dying people on the sands cry out for water. There he recognises his second brother's badly burned maid. As the tide rises they move up to the embankment, where he lies down in a hollow for the night near some injured schoolgirls.
  6. A Night of Cries by the RiverThrough the night on the riverbank, the narrator listens to frightened girls and to a dying young man crying out for water, and he remembers a peaceful childhood day spent in the same spot. In the morning he sets out for a first-aid station, helping a badly injured soldier part of the way. At Tōshōgū he finds his little niece reunited with her mother, and he sees burned victims lying ignored while the wounded wait in long lines under the blazing sun.
  7. A Night and a Day at the ShrineAfter receiving first aid at the shrine, the narrator's family build a makeshift shelter and spend more than a day there among the dying. A badly injured neighbour drives off a bloodied cadet, two schoolgirls and a travelling woman die nearby, and the family grow more exhausted and hungry. Finally the eldest brother returns with a horse cart he has hired in Yahata village, and they set off.
  8. The Cart Ride Through the RuinsAs the horse cart carries the family out of Hiroshima, the second brother spots his son Fumihiko's body near the West Parade Ground, pulls off his nails and takes his belt as a keepsake. The cart then crosses the burned city centre, which the narrator describes in prose and in a broken katakana poem, before reaching the green countryside and Yahata village. There a miserable life begins: the injured do not recover, everyone grows weaker from hunger, and the burned maid dies a little over a month later.
  9. A Nephew's Return and N's SearchThe narrator's schoolboy nephew, who had been missing since the bombing, turns up alive in the village where the family has taken refuge. His hair falls out and he begins to have nosebleeds, signs people take to mean death, yet he keeps clinging to life. The passage then follows N, who spends three days searching the ruined city's corpses and aid stations for his wife without finding her, and who goes back one last time to the burnt-out school where she worked.

Before you read

  • Get used to the narrative ending 〜のであった. It marks explanation or reflection rather than simple past events, and it gives the text its sober, retrospective voice. Note also 〜らしい, used for what the narrator infers but cannot confirm in the confusion.
  • Learn the core vocabulary of the disaster before you start: 火傷 (やけど, burn), 負傷者 (injured person), 川原 / 河原 (riverbank), 土手 (embankment), 筏 (raft), 救護所 (first-aid station), 崩れる / 潰れる (collapse). These words recur in almost every part.
  • Keep the list of names at hand. Most proper nouns are real Hiroshima bridges, parks, shrines and districts, such as 栄橋, 泉邸, 東照宮 and 己斐. Readings like 饒津 (にぎつ) and 己斐 (こい) are hard to guess. Treat them as place markers rather than vocabulary to memorise.
  • Read the katakana poem in Part 8 aloud and slowly. It is written in old-style katakana with particles such as ヤ and ノ. Mentally converting it to hiragana first makes the words easier to recognise. Its broken lines are deliberate, so don't try to force them into full sentences.
  • The dialogue is brief and colloquial, with western-Japanese touches such as 〜じゃ for だ (膝じゃ) and spoken contractions like 〜なきゃ. Use the speaker and situation to fill in what is left unsaid, because the narration rarely explains it.

Words to know

The most useful words from the notes across the story.

WordMeaningJLPT
炎天えんてんblazing (summer) sun, scorching heatLiterally 'flame sky'; a written word.—
蹲ってうずくまるto crouch, huddle downdictionary form: 蹲るUsually written in kana today.—
化膿かのうfestering, suppuration (of a wound)—
嫂あによめelder brother's wife, sister-in-law—
焼跡やけあとburned-out ruins, site of a firedictionary form: 焼け跡A key word of postwar Japanese writing.—
境内けいだいgrounds of a shrine or temple—
気配けはいsign, indicationSomething sensed rather than clearly seen.N2
漸くようやくat last, finally (after a long wait)Usually written in kana today.N2
屍体したいcorpseOlder, starker spelling of 死体; the text uses both.N2
重態じゅうたいcritical conditionThis is now usually written 重体.N2
縁側えんがわveranda; wooden corridor along the garden side of a houseN1
急かしせかすto hurry someone, press someone to be quickdictionary form: 急かすSame kanji as 急ぐ, but a different reading.N1
郷里きょうりone's home town, native placeMore formal and literary than 故郷・ふるさと.N1
出喰わしたでくわすto come across, run into by chancedictionary form: 出喰わすNow usually written 出くわす.N1
呟いたつぶやくto murmur, mutterdictionary form: 呟くN1

Plot summary

Show the full summary (contains spoilers)

Two days before the bombing, the narrator visits his wife's grave with summer flowers. On the morning of 6 August he is in the toilet when the house collapses around him. He finds his sister, gathers clothes, and flees with K, an older man from the family office. They cross the wreckage to Sentei and the riverbank, where he rejoins his brothers and resolves to record what he sees. Fire, black rain and a whirlwind follow. Crowds of burned people beg for water. After a night on the embankment and a day at the Tōshōgū first-aid site, the eldest brother brings a horse cart. On the way out of the city, the second brother finds his son Fumihiko's body and takes his nails and belt as keepsakes. In Yahata village the family weaken from hunger, and the burned maid dies. A missing nephew reappears with radiation symptoms but clings to life. N searches the ruins for his wife in vain.

About the author

Hara Tamiki (1905–1951) was a poet and fiction writer born in Hiroshima. He studied English literature at Keiō University in Tokyo and began publishing poetry and short prose before the war. His wife died before the end of the war, and he returned to his family home in Hiroshima, where he survived the atomic bombing. 夏の花, based closely on that experience, became his best-known work and is regarded as a central text of Japanese atomic-bomb literature. He continued to write about the bombing and its aftermath in prose and poetry. In 1951 he took his own life in Tokyo.

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