Takashi Nagai

British film production company Pixel Revolution Films released the film All That Remains based on the life of Nagai in 2016. The film is directed by Ian and Dominic Higgins and stars Leo Ashizawa as Dr. Nagai and Yuna Shin as his wife, Midori.

In Korea in 2004, the Most Rev. Paul Moon-hee Rhee, then Archbishop of Daegu, founded the Korean Association of "Love Your Neighbor as Yourself".

On 1 April 2003, for the succession of Nagai's spirit and a center to offer medical care for domestic and overseas hibakusha, the Nagai Takashi Memorial International Hibakusha Medical Center was founded at Nagasaki University Hospital.

In 1991, the Takashi Nagai Peace Award was founded. In Nagasaki, with the purpose of annually awarding individuals and/or organizations, both domestic and overseas, for their contributions to world peace through the improvements and developments of medicare for hibakusha and related social welfare, the Takashi Nagai Memorial Nagasaki Peace Award was founded.

Much of Nagai's writing is spiritual, consisting of Christian reflections on the experience (or, just as often, imagined future experience) of himself and the people around him, especially his children, in the aftermath of the war. His intensely personal meditations are often addressed to his children or to God, and he works out his own spiritual issues on the page as he writes in a visceral and uncensored prose. Nagai's more technical writings, in Atomic Bomb Rescue and Relief Report (Nagasaki Idai Genshi Bakudan Kyuugo Houkoku), were discovered in 1970.

His "Nyokodo", with the addition of a library, became a museum in 1952: the Nagasaki City Nagai Takashi Memorial Museum. After undergoing restoration in 2000, it is managed today by Tokusaburo Nagai, the grandson of Takashi Nagai and son of Makoto Nagai.

On 1 May 1951, he asked to be transported to the college hospital in Nagasaki so that the medical students could observe the last moments of a man preparing to die from leukemia. He prolonged the day of hospitalization to wait for the statue of Our Lady, a gift from the Italian Catholic Medical Association.

Nagai's "The Bells of Nagasaki" was used as the basis for a film of the same name produced by Shochiku movie studios and directed by Hideo Ōba. It was released on 23 September 1950. Leaving These Children Behind was filmed by Keisuke Kinoshita in 1983.

On 3 December 1949, he was made freeman of the city of Nagasaki. He received a visit from Helen Keller in October 1948. He was visited, in 1949, by Emperor Hirohito and by Cardinal Gilroy of Australia, a papal emissary.

In July 1949 a song titled "Nagasaki no Kane" ("The Bells of Nagasaki") was released by Columbia Records. It was sung by Ichiro Fujiyama with lyrics by Hachiro Sato. Yuji Koseki was the composer for the song.

In 1948, he used 50,000 yen paid by Kyushu Times to plant 1,000 three-year-old sakura (cherry) trees in the district of Urakami to transform this devastated land into a "Hill of Flowers". Although some have been replaced, these cherry trees are still called "Nagai Senbonzakura" ("1,000 cherry trees of Nagai"); their flowers decorate the houses of Urakami in spring. By 2010, the numbers of these cherry trees were reduced to only about 20 due to aging and other causes.

In 1947, the local Society of Saint Vincent de Paul (SSVDP) built a simple two-tatami teahouse-like structure for him. Nagai named it "Nyokodo" (如己堂, Nyoko-dō to, literally "As-Yourself Hall", after Jesus' words, "Love your neighbor as yourself." He styled it as a hermitage and spent his remaining years in prayer and contemplation.

In the following years, Nagai resumed teaching and began to write books. The first of these, The Bells of Nagasaki, was completed by the first anniversary of the bombing. Although he failed to find a publisher at first, eventually it became a best seller and the basis for a top box-office movie in Japan. In July 1946, he collapsed on a station platform. Now disabled, he was henceforth confined to bed.

He obtained his doctorate in 1944. On 26 April 1945, an air raid on Nagasaki left numerous victims. The hospital was overwhelmed. Takashi spent his days and nights serving the wounded in his radiology department. In June 1945, he was diagnosed with leukemia and given a life expectancy of three years. This disease was probably due to his exposure to X-rays during radiological examinations which he performed by direct observation, since films were not available during the war period. He spoke to Midori about his disease, and she said to Nagai, "Whether you live or die, it is for God's glory."

On 9 August 1945, at 11:02 am, the second atomic bomb struck Nagasaki. At the time of the atomic bombing, Dr. Nagai was working in the radiology department of Nagasaki Medical College Hospital. He received a serious injury that severed his right temporal artery but joined the rest of the surviving medical staff in dedicating themselves to treating the atomic bomb victims. He wrote a 100-page medical report about his observations detailing the "concentric circles of death" around the epicentre of the blast.

He returned to the district of Urakami (the epicenter of the bomb) on 15 October 1945 and built a small hut (about six tatami from pieces of his old house. He remained there with his two surviving children (Makoto and Kayano), his mother-in-law, and two other relatives.

For six months, he observed mourning for Midori and let his beard and hair grow. On 23 November 1945, a mass was celebrated, in front of the ruins of the cathedral, for the victims of the bomb. Takashi gave a speech filled with faith, comparing the victims to a sacred offering to obtain peace.

Nagai left behind a voluminous output of essays, memoirs, drawings, and calligraphy on themes including God, war, death, medicine, and orphanhood. These enjoyed a large readership during the American occupation of Japan (1945–52) as spiritual chronicles of the atomic bomb experience. His books have been translated into languages, including Chinese, Korean, French, and German. Four of his literary works are currently available in English: We of Nagasaki, a compilation of atomic-bomb victim testimonies edited by Nagai; The Bells of Nagasaki (trans. William Johnston); Leaving My Beloved Children Behind (trans. Maurice M. Tatsuoka and Tsuneyoshi Takai); and Thoughts from Nykodo (trans. Gabriele di Comite). His works were recently republished in new Japanese editions by Paulist Press.

After Japan declared war on the United States on 8 December 1941, Nagai had a somber presentiment: His city could be destroyed during this war.

On 7 July 1937,  the same day as the birth of his first daughter Ikuko, the war between Japan and China broke out and he was mobilized as a surgeon in the service of the Fifth division Medical Corps. He was affected by the harsh winter in China, and the distress of the civilians and soldiers, both Chinese and Japanese. On 4 February 1939, he received news of the death of his father and that of his daughter Ikuko. He remained in China until 1940. Upon his return, he continued his studies at the college.

On 9 June 1934, Nagai received baptism in the Catholic faith. He chose the Christian first name Paul and proposed to Midori. They married in August and had four children: a boy, Makoto (3 April 1935 – 4 April 2001), and three daughters, Ikuko (7 July 1937 – 1939), Sasano who died shortly after her birth, and Kayano (18 August 1941 – 2 February 2008).

Takashi received the sacrament of confirmation in December 1934. Midori was president of the association of the women of the Urakami district. Takashi became a member of the Society of Saint Vincent de Paul (SSVDP), discovered its founder, Frédéric Ozanam, and his writings, and visited his patients and the poor, to whom he brought assistance, comfort and food. From 1931 to 1936, Father Maximilian Kolbe lived in a suburb of Nagasaki, where he started a monastery. Takashi met Kolbe through involvement with his parish St. Vincent de Paul Society in Nagasaki.

In January 1933, Takashi began his military service with the Eleventh Hiroshima Regiment. In Manchuria, Nagai cared for the wounded and served in the sanitary service as a medic. He was strongly shaken in his faith in Japanese culture when saw for himself the exactions of the Japanese soldiers and their brutality towards the Chinese civilian population. While serving in Manchuria, Nagai had received a Catholic Catechism as a gift from his to-be wife Midori. The book immediately raised concerns with his commanding sergeant, who had it examined for “subversive ideas.”  Though his sergeant found the Catechism to make no sense to him, he determined that it was not “particularly socialist”, returning the book to Nagai.

He graduated in 1932 and was supposed to deliver an address at the ceremony. However, five days before he became intoxicated at a farewell party and had returned home completely soaked with water from the rain. He slept without drying himself and found the next morning that he had contracted a disease of the right ear (signs of meningitis), which made him depressed and partially deaf. He could not practice medicine and agreed to turn to radiology research.

In 1930 his mother died from a brain haemorrhage, which lead him to ponder the works of philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal. He began to read the Pensées which influenced his later conversion to Christianity and boarded with the Moriyama family, who for seven generations had been the hereditary leaders of a group of Kakure Kirishitans in Urakami. Takashi learned that the construction of the nearby cathedral was financed by poor Christian farmers and fishermen.

In April 1928, he joined the Nagasaki Medical College where he joined the Araragi, a poetry group founded by Mokichi Saito and the university basketball team (he measured 1.71 m and weighed 70 kg).

Nagai was born in Matsue and grew up in the rural area of Mitoya, raised in according to the teachings of Confucius and the Shinto religion. In 1920, he commenced his secondary studies at Matsue High School boarding at his cousins' home close by. He became increasingly interested with the surrounding atheism but was curious about Christianity.

Takashi Nagai (永井 隆, Nagai Takashi, 3 February 1908 – 1 May 1951) was a Japanese Catholic physician specializing in radiology, an author, and a survivor of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. His subsequent life of prayer and service earned him the affectionate title "saint of Urakami".

Upon his return from Manchuria, he continued his reading of the Catholic catechism, the Bible, and the Pensées of Blaise Pascal. He met with a priest, Father Matsusaburo Moriyama, whose father had been deported to Tsuwano (Shimane Prefecture) for his faith, along with many other Christian villagers in Urakami by the Meiji Government from the 1860s to the 1870s (Urakami Yoban Kuzure). Eventually, Nagai's spiritual progress took a decisive turn when he thought about Pascal's words: "There is enough light for those who only desire to see, and enough obscurity for those who have a contrary disposition."