Popular Protest in Post War Japan: The Antiwar Art of Shikoku GorōMain MenuOverviewThis 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.Atom Bomb Poetry CollectionThe Angry JizoHiroshima SketchesGlossaryResourcesAcknowledgmentsAnn Sherif99c9850c7ffbc663daa16feec7b9f1dd71ca3e2e
Sketches A-Bomb Dome
1media/sketches_a_bomb_dome_thumb.jpg2020-06-10T21:35:23+00:00Max Mitchell5fec7a6574d32fe574c01ba927cd57c749ceca6992“Lantern Festival for Victims of Atomic Bomb at Aioi Bridge,“ Watercolor and Ink, 1983. Hiroshima Sketches, pp. 134-135.plain2020-06-14T22:11:38+00:00Hirogaku ToshophotographMax Mitchell5fec7a6574d32fe574c01ba927cd57c749ceca69
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12020-05-26T15:13:28+00:00Drawing in the Hypocenter3plain25722020-06-14T15:54:48+00:00At the lantern festival (tōrō nagashi), people float paper-and-wood candle lanterns on a river in order to guide the spirits of ancestors back to their world. A long practiced ritual during the Bon Festival in August, the lantern festival took on public dimensions when practiced annually around the hypocenter in Hiroshima. Shikoku’s poem at the top of the pages notes differences in generational perceptions on this day: “Older people enclose their sadness in the flame/Young people give light to the Hiroshima’s spirit of peace/and float it on the flowing river.”
