/jp/ - Otaku Culture

In Nagasaki, people found their own interpretations for the horrific bombing. When talking to survivors of August 9, 1945, one frequently hears a fatalistic acceptance of this dreadful outcome. After all, people will sadly say, Japan started the war and thus could expect to be severely punished for its actions, the same way entire clans in Japan have been wiped out for having failed to achieve their objectives. Shortly after the bombing however, another more positive explanation was in vogue. Because of the city's mountainous geography, with its northern part separated from its central and southern neighborhoods by Mt. Konpira, and with Suwa Shrine being in the central part of the city on the mountain's back flank, the shrine received virtually no major damage from the bomb. On the other hand, the northern part's famous Urakami Cathedral and surrounding Catholic neighborhoods (flourishing since the middle Meiji period's policy allowed religious freedom) were at the very center of the devastation. To people desperate for understanding, the fact that the Americans, known to be a Christian nation, had dropped this terrible weapon on the largest cathedral in all of Asia and left the city's main shrine untouched was a significant omen. According to a first-hand account, a street-preacher named Honda had walked far and wide, exhorting the dazed public to remember that it was the protection of the Kami of the shrine which had saved two-thirds of the city from ruin. The message must have been well-taken because it was only one year after the bombing and end of the war that the shrine's major festival, the Okunchi matsuri, was permitted by the Occupation and received city-wide support.

tl;dr: Moriya Shrine knows alot about nukes.