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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.

Mushroom Cloud Cover

With the global rise of the antinuclear movements in 1950s and 1960s in both the US and Soviet blocs, the Tokyo publisher of one of dozens of reprints of Atomic Bomb Poetry Collection anticipates readers’ recognition of the iconic mushroom cloud as a ubiquitous symbol of nuclear weapons. Similarly, the names Hiroshima and Nagasaki became symbols of apocalypse, as the fierce nuclear arms race made people around the world realize that their town could suffer the same fate.

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Mushroom Cloud Cover, 1969