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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.

Marukis Issue

This first-year anniversary issue of Our Poems features a Round Table Discussion with the Tokyo-based painters Akamatsu (Maruki) Toshi and Maruki Iri, along with other key cultural and activist figures such as renowned poet Kurihara Sadako, Mishō Hiromi (writer and physician who was arrested by the Occupation authorities for one of his poems), former proletarian writer and Communist Tsuboi Shigeji. Hayashi Sachiko (using the pen name Hayashi Yukiko) also published her renowned poem “Sky of Hiroshima” in this issue. In the early 1950s, relatively few people spoke up about their atom bomb experience for political reasons or for personal reasons. As a Hiroshima writer noted in a different culture circle journal:

"People wonder why there is not a strong anti-bomb and anti-war movement from Hiroshima, less than in other parts of the country . . . Many abomb survivors don’t want to remember . . .They still have wounds that haven’t healed. And they don’t want to be reminded. . . The hibakusha. . . also suffer from social discrimination." (Ochifuji Hisayoshi, Espoir, Sept 1951, 56-57).

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Our Poems Issue 10 Cover