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Popular Protest in Post War Japan: The Antiwar Art of Shikoku Gorō Overview This exhibit explores the vibrant grassroots artistic culture of Hiroshima, known as the atomic bombed city. From 1949 through the 1990s, local artist Shikoku Gorō advanced a bold and democratic vision for cultural life by bringing poetry to the streets & mobilizing visual arts to represent the vitality, beauty, and complexity of Hiroshima. The exhibit explores a set of influential books, along with other examples of socially committed art. Shikoku and his circles of collaborators illuminated pathways to civic engagement for the citizens of Hiroshima—hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors), vets, & younger generations.

Stop It!

In this poster, the eye-catching contrast between dark blue wash and white text accentuates the sweet, rounded cheeks and face, seen at different angles, of an eight-year-old child lost presumably in the bombing. The poem’s speaker, still burdened by longing and sadness at the family’s wartime loss, pleads “Stop it already! No more talk about memories” of the child.

Tōge and Shikoku varied their approaches in order to keep the posters fresh and in touch with the pulse of the nation. They made each poster by hand, and took care to vary them in tone, method, and subject matter.

Some posters attracted passersby with their intimate subjects. During one creative session, Tōge took inspiration for a poem from a sketch by Shikoku of a child weeping in the ruins of Hiroshima. After the bombing, orphans wandered the city. Parents searched for their children day after day in parts of the city that had been burnt to the ground in an instant by the atomic bomb.

The poster shown here does not mention the bomb, but the profound and widespread feeling of loss and grief expressed in this poem, even five years after the bomb burst, would have been palpable to many Hiroshima residents.

Shikoku made poem posters a number of times throughout his career, and continued to argue for their efficacy as a means of fighting for social change with art.

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Stop It!