http://danhurlin.com/performance_work/recent/hiroshima_maiden.html
This puppet is part of Dan Hurlin’s theatrical piece, entitled Hiroshima Maiden. The Japanese art form of puppetry, called Bunraku, inspired the piece. It tells of the experiences of the Hiroshima Maidens, a group of twenty-five women who were disfigured by the nuclear blast at Hiroshima, and who were invited to the United States to undergo reconstructive surgeries. The female puppet hides her face, symbolically hiding herself from the world, as did most victims of physical and mental wounds from World War II.
David Serlin, an Associate Professor of Communication and Sciences Studies at the University of California at San Diego, argues in his book, “Replaceable You: Engineering the Body in Postwar America,” that the Hiroshima Maidens became a political and social symbol for post-war normalization through the use of plastic surgery. Reuven Feuerstein, David Krasilowsky, and Yaacov Rand were staff members of the Hadassa-Wizo Canada Research Institue in Jerusalem. In their article, Innovative Educational Strategies for the Integration of High-Risk Adolescents in Israel, they describe the rehabilitation of physically and psychologically impaired teenagers in Israel in society as a success on the part of the Israeli government. These two articles illustrate the difference between reconstruction in a nation that provided destruction, and in one that did not.
Reuven Feuerstein and his colleagues gave a detailed description on how children were integrated into the educational system in Israel. They described how in Israel, in order to rehabilitate the child, people focused on the individual child’s needs and intentionally placed the child in normal environments with other “normal” children. This method challenged my previous views on World War II rehabilitation, as previous articles I have read described governments that dealt with people suffering from the emotional trauma of war by groups (disabled veterans, displaced persons, etc.). The individual was never really considered as having separate needs from the others in their group. This article was not very convincing because there was a lack of footnotes and it failed to provide examples of individual cases. I also wonder if this article had a particular political agenda, considering it was written in 1974, the year after the Yom Kippur War. This was a war fought by the coalition of Arab states led by Egypt and Syria against Israel from October 6 to 25, in 1973. Feuerstein describes children from Arab speaking countries as “exhibiting a developmental gap of three to five years” compared to their European peers (Feuerstein, 557). Since he provides no evidence, one could assume that comment is racially motivated.
David Serlin described how the Hiroshima Maidens provided “safe, nostalgic images that effectively displaced wartime memories and downplayed national atrocities” (Serlin, 76). His evidence was very strong, unlike Feuerstein’s article, as he provided many examples of American society wanting to normalize relations with Japan. For example, he describes how the Museum of Modern Art began exhibiting Japanese traditional architecture, and how the choosing to rehabilitate women affected by war “feminized” and sweetened the image of Japanese culture. Even though his evidence was very strong and very interesting, sometimes I think he strayed away from his point. For example, he discusses stories of how Western women with scars and big noses decided to undergo plastic surgery to succeed in their field of work. Serlin’s article contrasts Feuerstein’s in the different ways that the two nations dealt with rehabilitation. Americans used the media to publicly show the transition of a woman disfigured by the nuclear bomb in order for society to feel better about what had happened to the Japanese people. Israeli children were also in the public’s view, not for the betterment of their society, but for the rehabilitation of the child.
According to Feuerstein and his colleagues, the child or teenager who was disfigured or psychologically damaged from war was integrated into society shamelessly. This method seemed to work. However, since I have many questions about the evidence and purpose of the article, I am skeptical of the validity of easy integration. David Serlin’s description of the Hiroshima Maidens illustrated a desire for normalcy in Japanese and American society through the use of technological and surgical advancement. These articles share a common theme, which is that governments and the people of a nation want to move past the atrocities of war through rehabilitation. However, they differ in the fact that American society obsessed through the media over the Hiroshima Maidens, for the enjoyment of Americans. Israeli citizens placed the children in public view for the child’s advancement.
Sources:
Feuerstein, Reuven, David Krasilowsky, and Yaacov Rand. “Innovative Educational Strategies for the Integration of High-Risk Adolescents in Israel.” The Phi Delta Kappan 55, no. 8 (April 1974): 556-58.
Serlin, David. Replaceable you: engineering the body in postwar America (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 57-110.
Courtney, you did a great job of incorporating an image into you blogpost. I enjoyed that you used the Bunraku of the Hiroshima Maidens it was such a unique way to introduce the topic of your blog to the audience. I also enjoyed that you added in your personal opinions on the two articles it made your voice and message of the post sound clear to outside readers. You also utilized a lot of outside knowledge including other articles that you have read which engaged the reader and gave them more information.
Great post. I would be very interested in seeing how Dan Hurlin portrayed the girls through his puppets. From David Serlin’s article, I got the feeling that they were very shy, yet open to try new things. The puppet covering her face with her fan is a good representation.
Comparing Serlin’s article about the Hiroshima Maidens to an article about rehabilitating children in Israel was an interesting choice. I had the assertion that the Hiroshima Maidens were helped as a way of America relieving some of its guilt and contrasting that to a rehabilitation program that was creating for a country’s own children helps aid that assertion.
I really liked how you were able to connect multiple sources to show how they were similar. I found it interesting how they have a play about the Hiroshima Maidens and how it conveys their story. I agree that media is used too frequently to try and cover up problems that we caused in order to feel less guilty about what we did. The media should respect victims privacy and not televise their recovery for our entertainment.