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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.

Aioi Bridge

Shikoku was a soldier at the front in Manchuria on August 6 1945, and so is not a hibakusha. He drew this image from a documentary photograph: “Hiroshima had 49 major bridges at the time of the bombing. Nine of those were burned or collapsed and were washed away. The typhoon and floods (in September 1945) destroyed 20 more bridges. The bridges that survived were heavily damaged. Green trees were also burnt down, so all that remained was rubble and seven rivers. People aptly referred to Hiroshima as an ‘atomic desert.’”
With Japan’s defeat in World War II, Shikoku was one of tens of thousands of Japanese soldiers and personnel interned by the Soviet Union in Manchuria and Siberia. He repatriated in 1948. Gorō had vivid memories of seeing his hometown for the first time since the bombing: “I pressed my forehead against the bus window and looked out into the darkness. . . Seeing the T-shaped bridge, I knew that I was back home.” He sketched Aioibashi’s distinct shape in 1995, the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombing.

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