CCCW-DivFac Seminar – Wednesday 26 November 2025, 4 pm
The Meaning of the Atom Bomb: Takashi Nagai and Nagasaki
Dr Alastair Lockhardt, University of Cambridge
Wednesday 26 November 2025, 4.00–5.30pm GMT
Lightfoot Room, Faculty of Divinity, West Road & Online
On 23 November 1945, near the ruins of the Cathedral of the Assumption in Nagasaki, Dr. Takashi Nagai – himself a victim of the explosion – delivered a funeral address for 8,000 Catholic victims of the atomic bomb that had been detonated over the city four months earlier. The address offered a penetrating and arresting account of the deaths as a sacrifice for the ending the World War. This paper sets Nagai’s eulogy in the context of his wider account of the nuclear attack on the city – The Bells of Nagasaki (1984 in English, originally published in Japanese as Nagasaki no Kane in 1949) – and the longer history of Nagasaki as the preeminent Christian and Catholic city of Japan. The discussion explores the theodicy of the bomb offered by Nagai to examine some of the theological tensions it contains.
Dr Alastair Lockhart is a member of the Faculty of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Churchill College, and Director of Studies in Theology at Hughes Hall. His work focusses on the historical and conceptual study of religion and belief in the twentieth century, with particular research interests in apocalypticism and related movements and the psychology of religion. He is author of several works including the monograph Personal Religion and Spiritual Healing: The Panacea Society in the Twentieth Century (SUNY, 2019).
