Walking Without Purpose: Sensations of History and Memory in Nagasaki City Rupert Cox

This article engages with two well-known episodes in Nagasaki's history by examining the everyday relationships between the discursive space of museums and the embodied space of walking. It is an examination of the exhibitive strategies and image conventions of sixteenth-century painted screens, namban byôbu, which depict the contact between Iberian visitors and city residents, and photographs of the trauma inflicted on victims of the atomic bombing of 1946. These two images collide in the presentation of the city to tourists, and I examine the ways that a new program of guided walks creates the opportunity for participants to experience commonplace sounds as the ephemeral residue of history. These sensations are made possible by the peripatetic routes that the guides, being long-term residents of the areas, create out of their own experiences.