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Picturing Hiroshima

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Abstract

In Japan, there were continuities between wartime image production and early post-war images of the devastation at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The artist Akamatsu Toshiko (later known as Maruki Toshi), illustrated patriotic children’s books during the war but would go on to produce what became known as the Hiroshima panels with her husband Maruki Iri. The Marukis were able to avoid the censorship that had been imposed on film footage and photographs of what occurred at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Their mural-sized paintings, begun in the late 1940s, toured throughout Japan. The Hiroshima panels formed the core of exhibitions that sought to address the use of the atomic bomb and to educate the Japanese public about the dangers and possibilities opened up by the atomic age.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Yasuko Suga, “Modernism, Nationalism and Gender: Crafting ‘Modern’ Japonisme,” Journal of Design History 21, no. 3 (Autumn 2008): 259–275.

  2. 2.

    Kamata Satoshi, “Gaka: Maruki Toshi (Gendai no shōzō)” (“Artist: Maruki Toshi, A Contemporary Portrait”), Aera (11 Aug. 1997): 52–56.

  3. 3.

    Kozawa Setsuko, “Genbaku no zu”: Egakareta “kioku,” katarareta “kaiga” (“The Hiroshima Panels”: Painted Memories, Narrated Paintings) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002), 33.

  4. 4.

    Kozawa, “Genbaku no zu, 35.

  5. 5.

    Usami Shō, Ikebukuro monparunasu (Ikebukuro Montparnasse) (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1990), 21.

  6. 6.

    Toshima City Hall, “Nagasaki Atelier Village,” accessed 15 Dec. 2019. https://www.city.toshima.lg.jp/artculture_en/brand/art/atelier-mura.html

  7. 7.

    Kozawa, “Genbaku no zu, 36.

  8. 8.

    Kamata, “Gaka: Maruki Toshi (Gendai no shōzō);” Usami, Ikebukuro monparunasu, 456.

  9. 9.

    Maki Kaneko, “New Art Collectives in the Service of the War: The Formation of Art Organizations during the Asia-Pacific War,” positions: asia critique 21, no. 2 (Spring 2013): 309–350.

  10. 10.

    Bert Winther-Tamaki, Maximum Embodiment: Yōga, The Western Painting of Japan, 1912–1955 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012), 8.

  11. 11.

    Charlotte Eubanks, “Avant-Garde in the South Seas: Akamatsu Toshiko’s Micronesia Sketches,” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 1, no. 2 (Fall 2015): 1–20, esp. 1, 17.

  12. 12.

    Tadao Yanaihara, Pacific Islands under Japanese Mandate (London: Oxford University Press, 1940), 280–305.

  13. 13.

    Mark R. Peattie, Nan’yō: The Rise and Fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885–1945 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1988).

  14. 14.

    Okaya Kōji, Nankai hyōtō: Mikuroneshia ni miserareta Hijikata Hisakatsu, Sugiura Sasuke, Nakajima Atsushi (South Seas Drifting: Hijikata Hisakatsu, Sugiura Sasuke and Nakajima Atsushi) (Tokyo: Fuzanbō Intānashonaru, 2007), 132–133.

  15. 15.

    Kozawa, “Genbaku no zu, 38.

  16. 16.

    “Inochi o mitsumete: Maruki Toshi, seitan 100-nen, chū, Nan’yō taiken to shūsen” (“Gazing at Life: 100th Anniversary of the Birth of Maruki Toshi, part 2, Her South Seas Experience and the End of the War”), Chūgoku shimbun (Chūgoku Newspaper), morning edition, 2 August 2012, http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=22185

  17. 17.

    Nishi Haruhiko, Kaisō no Nihon gaikō (Reminiscences of Japanese Diplomacy) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1965), 102–111.

  18. 18.

    Kozawa, “Genbaku no zu,” 46.

  19. 19.

    Ida Yoshiharu and Nishi Teruhiko, eds, “Nishi Haruhiko ryaku nenpu chosho ronbun nado mokuroku shō” (“Short Chronology and Selected Publications of Nishi Haruhiko,” Eigaku-shi kenkyū (History of English Studies) 20 (1987): 241–245; Kozawa, “Genbaku no zu,” 46.

  20. 20.

    Kamata, “Gaka: Maruki Toshi (Gendai no shōzō).”

  21. 21.

    Takaaki Kumagai, “Kitagawa Tamiji’s Art and Art Education: Translating Culture in Postrevolutionary Mexico and Modern Japan,” PhD dissertation, University of Kansas, 2017, 141.

  22. 22.

    Usami, Ikebukuro monparunasu, 452.

  23. 23.

    Maruyama Kaoru, illustrated by Akamatsu Toshiko, Yashi no mino tabi (The Travels of a Palm Tree Fruit) (Tokyo: Teikoku Kyōiku Shuppanbu, 1942).

  24. 24.

    Kamata, “Gaka: Maruki Toshi (Gendai no shōzō);” Kozawa, “Genbaku no zu, 53.

  25. 25.

    Tsuchiya Yukio, illustrated by Akamatsu Toshiko, Yashi no ki no shita (Under a Palm Tree) (Tokyo: Shōgakkan, 1942).

  26. 26.

    Kamata, “Gaka: Maruki Toshi (Gendai no shōzō).”

  27. 27.

    Tsuchiya, Yashi no ki no shita (Under a Palm Tree).

  28. 28.

    Kozawa Setsuko, “Maruki Suma to Daidō Aya no `kaiga sekai’” (The Artistic World of Maruki Suma and Daidō Aya), Genbaku bungaku kenkyū (Atomic Bomb Literature Studies) 8 (21 Dec. 2009): 169–182.

  29. 29.

    Kamata, “Gaka: Maruki Toshi (Gendai no shōzō);” Richard H. Minear, “The Hiroshima Murals of Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi: A Note,” in Hiroshima: Three Witnesses, ed. and trans. Richard H. Minear (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 371–378, esp. 374.

  30. 30.

    Cleo Macmillan, “The Power of the Hiroshima Panels,” Arena Magazine no. 121 (Dec. 2012 - Jan 2013): 29–34; “The Hiroshima Panels,” Australian Left Review 1, no. 2 (Aug. – Sept. 1966): 32–33.

  31. 31.

    Both were ousted from the Japanese Communist Party in 1964 over their opposition to all nuclear tests, including those of the Soviet Union. Yukinori Okamura, “The Hiroshima Panels Visualize Violence: Imagination over Life,” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 2, no. 2 (2019): 518–534, esp. 520, 528.

  32. 32.

    Okamura, “The Hiroshima Panels Visualize Violence,” note 3.

  33. 33.

    Okamura, “The Hiroshima Panels Visualize Violence,” esp. 522.

  34. 34.

    GHQ, UN and Far East Command, Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, Intelligence Summary: Intelligence Data covering the Military Counterintelligence, Economic and Political Fields in: Japan, Korea, Philippines, China, Southeast Asia, Secret, no. 3252 (5 Aug. 1951), Japan Section, J-2. It has been suggested that the Hiroshima panels constitute one component of a performance-based art form. See Charlotte Eubanks, “The Mirror of Memory: Constructions of Hell in the Marukis’ Nuclear Murals,” PMLA (Modern Language Association of America) 124, no. 5 (Oct. 2009): 1614–1631, esp. 1615.

  35. 35.

    GHQ, UN and Far East Command, Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, Intelligence Summary: Intelligence Data covering the Military Counterintelligence, Economic and Political Fields in: Japan, Korea, Philippines, China, Southeast Asia, Secret, no. 3253 (6 Aug. 1951), Japan Section, J-2.

  36. 36.

    It was subsequently reorganized and became the Japan Peace Protection Committee (Heiwa Yōgo Nippon Iinkai). See Nagashima Yūki, “Heiwa yōgo undo ni okeru tōronshūkai no keisei (1952–1953 nen”) (“The Formation of the Peace Protection Movement Forum, 1952–1953”), Ōhara Shakai Mondai Kenkyūjo zasshi (Journal of Ōhara Institute for Social Research), no. 709 (Nov. 2017): 44–57, esp. 46.

  37. 37.

    GHQ, UN and Far East Command, Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, Intelligence Summary: Intelligence (6 Aug. 1951), Japan Section, J-2.

  38. 38.

    GHQ, UN and Far East Command, Military Intelligence Section, General Staff, Intelligence Summary: Intelligence Data covering the Military Counterintelligence, Economic and Political Fields in: Japan, Korea, Philippines, China, Southeast Asia, Secret, no. 3254 (7 Aug. 1951), Japan Section, J-2.

  39. 39.

    Okamura Yukinori, “Genbaku no zu” zenkoku junkai: Senryōka, hyakumannin ga mita! (The Nationwide Tour of the Hiroshima Panels: One Million People Saw Them!) (Tokyo: Shinjuku Shobō, 2015), 104–105.

  40. 40.

    Okamura, “Genbaku no zu” zenkoku junkai, 104.

  41. 41.

    Kawai Ichirō, “Senryōka no `Sōgō genbaku-ten’ 3” (“Occupation-Period `Comprehensive Atomic Bomb Exhibition’, Part 3,” Kyōto hoken i shimbun (Kyoto Medical Practitioners Newspaper), 20 July, 2011, 4.

  42. 42.

    Okamura, “Genbaku no zu” zenkoku junkai, 110.

  43. 43.

    Okamura, “Genbaku no zu” zenkoku junkai, 119.

  44. 44.

    Okamura, “Genbaku no zu” zenkoku junkai, 120–121.

  45. 45.

    Paul F. Langer, Communism in Japan: A Case of Political Naturalization (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1972), 49.

  46. 46.

    Okamura, “The Hiroshima Panels Visualize Violence,” esp. 521.

  47. 47.

    Okamura, “Genbaku no zu” zenkoku junkai 123–125.

  48. 48.

    Okamura, “Genbaku no zu” zenkoku junkai, 125. For further details of the case, see Imanishi Hajime, “Shinpojiumu: Rekishi toshite no Shiratori jiken, Shiratori jiken to wa nani ka” (“Symposium: The Shiratori Incident as History, What was the Shiratori incident?”), Shōgaku tōkyū (Otaru University of Commerce Business Studies) 64, nos. 2–3 (2012): 3–19.

  49. 49.

    Okamura, “The Hiroshima Panels Visualize Violence,” esp. 523.

  50. 50.

    Inaga Shigemi, “Sensō-ga to heiwa-ga no aida: Rekishi no naka no kaiga sakuhin no unmei: Maruki Iri, Toshi fusai “Genbaku no zu” saikō, jyō” (“Somewhere between War Paintings and Peace Paintings: The Fate of Paintings in History, A Reconsideration of Maruki Iri and Toshi’s Hiroshima Panels, Part 1”), Aida, no. 113 (20 May 2005): 39–44.

  51. 51.

    Gorō Osada, “Messages from Hiroshima,” Asahi Shimbun Digital, Memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Messages from Hibakusha, accessed 3 Jan. 2020. http://www.asahi.com/hibakusha/english/hiroshima/h00-00009e.html

  52. 52.

    Arata Osada, comp., Children of the A-Bomb: The Testament of the Boys and Girls of Hiroshima, trans. by Jean Dan and Ruth Sieben-Morgen (London: Peter Owen, 1963).

  53. 53.

    Kusakabe Shigeko, “Kamishibai undo o kiri hiraita hitobito: Inaniwa Keiko, heiwa o negatte” (“Pioneers of the Kamishibai Movement: Inaniwa Keiko, Wishing for Peace,” Rikkyō Daigaku Jogakuin Tanki Daigaku kiyō (Rikkyō University Women’s College Bulletin), no. 47 (2015): 109–122, esp. 116–117.

  54. 54.

    Inaniwa Keiko, illustrated by Satō Chūryō, Heiwa no chikai: Osada Arata hen “Genbaku no ko” yori (The Promise of Peace: From Osada Arata’s “Children of the A-Bomb”) (Tokyo: Kyōiku Kamishibai Kenkyūkai, 1952).

  55. 55.

    See Kamishibai, “Heiwa no chikai” (Paper Theatre “The Promise of Peace”), accessed 2 Jan. 2020 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wov7rtdK3xs. For a written description in English, Japan Communist Party, comp., Guide to Propaganda (c. 1958), 117–127, General CIA Records, CIA-RDP81-01043R002300230001–6.

  56. 56.

    See Kamishibai, “Heiwa no chikai”; Japan Communist Party, comp., Guide to Propaganda.

  57. 57.

    Yuko Shibata, Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Literature, Film, and Transnational Politics (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018), 46.

  58. 58.

    Japan Communist Party, comp., Guide to Propaganda.

  59. 59.

    Hirofumi Utsumi, “Nuclear Images and National Self-Portraits: Japanese Illustrated Magazine Asahi Graph, 1945–1965,” Annual Review of the Institute for Advanced Social Research 5 (March 2011): 1–29, esp. 8–9.

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Low, M. (2020). Picturing Hiroshima. In: Visualizing Nuclear Power in Japan. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47198-9_3

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