Japan -

anjing. Srebrenica. Halabja. Rwanda. Cambodia. Auschwitz. As the bullet train slices a trail through western Japan, my handwritten list of 20th-century massacres is lengthening. Outside, a milky early morning sun catches the auburn foliage, enlivening the hillsides. Inside, my mood is subdued. Having just left Kobe, a city ripped asunder by an earthquake in 1995, my next stop is Hiroshima, obliterated by atomic warfare 50 years previously. Travelling, I try to convince myself, isn't always about beaches, bars and boutique hotels.

Drifting darkly through my head is Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark's 1980 synth-pop classic, 'Enola Gay', which – though largely unrecognised at the time – is a bristling protest song about the flight of the US B-29 bomber which set off on a clear morning from the Mariana Islands and dropped the world's first atomic payload on Hiroshima at 8.15am on 6 August, 1945.

At Hiroshima station, we are welcomed onto the platform by a bowing, baseball-cap-wearing train maintenance team standing by to clean the spotless carriages. Stepping from the train, middle-class commuters adjust their designer shades and disappear into urban anonymity. Few tourists appear to be joining them; looking around the terminal there is a noticeable lack of backpacks and baggage.

During the bus ride into town, modern Hiroshima slowly reveals an appealing layout buffered by parks, spliced by rivers and ringed by hills. Architecturally, it is noticeably more high-rise and experimental than conservative counterparts like Kyoto. International brands fight for mall-front space with pizza restaurants and coffee shops. European-style trams sidle down the broad thoroughfares.

But contemporary urban planning is not what brought me here. Ever since school history classes, I've been fascinated from afar by the A-Bomb Dome, Hiroshima's most poignant symbol of the atomic explosion that detonated 600 metres above it. Seeing it close up for the first time is an emotional moment. This iconic green-domed exhibition hall, designed by Czech architect Jan Letzel, is now a preserved skeleton of steel and masonry. Gutted by fire, it somehow remained partially standing – only ten per cent of Hiroshima's downtown buildings avoided total destruction. A simple inscription reads, 'Everyone in the building died immediately'.

The A-Bomb Dome now sits on a meticulously tended lawn at the confluence of the Motoyasu-gawa and Ota-gawa rivers. Rising behind it are the city's baseball stadium, home to the pro-league Hiroshima Toyo Carp, and several modern office towers. Adjacent is the Aioi-bashi Bridge, featuring a stark brass and black ink depiction of the irradiated city two months after the bombing.

Crossing the river, I enter the triangular Peace Memorial Park, featuring 64 monuments, statues and commemorations to the bombing and its aftermath. Here, it is apparent just how much of an international city Hiroshima has become. It was allegedly targeted – ahead of Niigata, Kokura and Nagasaki – by the United States for its strong military connections and, significantly, intelligence reports that few foreign prisoners of war were being held in the city. Today, multinational visitors move slowly from monument to monument, stopping to read explanatory notes translated into multiple languages. Weaving between them are groups of uniformed Japanese schoolchildren on organised outings, studying their park maps with qualified diligence.

While the A-Bomb Dome and park are genuinely unsettling, on a bright sunny day the atmosphere speaks more of hope for a nuclear-free future than fear of the past. Such complacency is immediately dispelled inside the Peace Memorial Museum. Beautifully designed and compellingly curated and presented, the museum tells Hiroshima's post-nuclear story, and that of global nuclear weapons proliferation, in uncompromisingly graphic detail.

Most government records were destroyed by the bomb, rendering the exact number of deaths uncertain – though 145,000 people are estimated to have perished by the end of 1945, and unknown thousands since. Perhaps the most chilling part of the museum, though, is dedicated to the hibakusha, Hiroshima residents who survived the holocaust. Whatever your feelings about Japan's role in the second world war, the illustrated extracts of hibakusha writings, spoken testimonials and blood-curdling photographs of injuries excoriate the evil of nuclear weaponry.

Darkness had fallen by the time I left the museum. In the park, guitar-playing students were singing folk songs by the river. Glancing over at the A-Bomb Dome, I expected it to be boldly floodlit. Instead, a gentle glow climbed up from within the mangled structure. It looked like it was on fire.

Sixty years have passed since nightmarish images of armageddon were burned into Hiroshima's soul. But visiting the city today is emotive rather than distressing. If peace really can be delivered through anti-war education, Hiroshima is playing its part – no city in the world has the motive, nor seemingly the dedication, to protest more strongly against nuclear proliferation. Between 1968 and 2004, its mayors wrote 588 protest letters to the heads of state of nations conducting nuclear weapons tests. Each one is displayed in the Peace Memorial Museum.

Yet on the broad main streets, in the neon glow of Benetton, Tower Records and Armani stores, Hiroshima's rejuvenation is palpable. The funky boutiques and beautiful cafe crowd along Jizo-dori would grace New York or Paris. Ambient bars like Otis and Opium provide a timely antidote to Asia's current trend for soulless, over-designed lounges.

For a different perspective, I caught a tram and a taxi across town to join the smart thirtysomething set at the Hiroshima Prince hotel. Sitting rather isolated on a promontory of the modern port district, the hotel itself is awkwardly designed and, to put it bluntly, rather ugly. But, the floor-to-ceiling windows of its 23rd-floor Top of Hiroshima bar afford panoramic city views. Down below, million-dollar yachts bob gently in a private marina, while across the blackened water to the south is the island of Miyajima, home of the floating Itsukushima Shinto shrine, one of Japan's most revered religious sites.

But the eyes of the cocktail crowd are gazing in just one direction – across Hiroshima's night-time cityscape cast against a silhouetted, hilly outline. It's one of those views that force you to rub your eyes and look again, then again – not for its astounding beauty, but because of what it represents. Mentally, it's impossible not to juxtapose this dazzlingly contemporary metropolitan canvas with the desolate wasteland beside the Aioi-bashi Bridge. Pressing my face to the glass, I realise that though this snapshot comes with pricey martinis and hope, the historical burden of the other remains a weighty counterbalance, the global importance of which must never be forgotten.