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 Brick Warehouse
1media/sketches_brick_warehouse_thumb.jpg2020-06-10T21:35:25+00:00Max Mitchell5fec7a6574d32fe574c01ba927cd57c749ceca6992Nittsu Deshio Army Warehouse, Watercolor and Ink on paper,1984, (Hiroshima Sketches, p. 99).plain2020-06-14T22:12:38+00:00Hirogaku ToshophotographMax Mitchell5fec7a6574d32fe574c01ba927cd57c749ceca69
With the technologies of airplanes and bombs, World War II brought the violence of war to towns and cities previously separated from the battlefront. The U.S. use of the first atomic bomb in combat on Hiroshima continued this wide-spread practice of air war, but with an utterly new and shockingly powerful weapon. Separate from the theme of nuclear destruction, Shikoku includes images in the Hiroshima Sketches that portray the multiple ways the city of Hiroshima contributed to the Japanese Empire’s building of a strong military for half a century before the bombing, as well as ways that the state and citizens mobilized for Total War from the late 1930s until 1945. During the Pacific war (1941-1945) when money and things were extremely scarce, Shikoku himself sadly came into his first set of oil paints and brushes when a family passed on those of their son, who had died on the battlefield (p. 114).