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
Our Poems
12020-05-26T15:14:08+00:00Max Mitchell5fec7a6574d32fe574c01ba927cd57c749ceca6991plain2020-05-26T15:14:08+00:00Max Mitchell5fec7a6574d32fe574c01ba927cd57c749ceca69Our Poems is available in reproduction Warera no uta fukkokuban 2 vols. (Kyoto: Sanninsha, 2013)
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12020-05-26T15:13:48+00:00Peace Issue2plain2020-06-14T15:24:41+00:00Shikoku Gorō’s cover illustration of the August 6 1950 edition of Our Poems draws on the dramatic imagery employed by the Marukis in Atom Bomb Panel paintings and Picasso’s Guernica. The iconic mother and child in the center are surrounded by faces, torsos, and hands in various poses of pain, sadness, need, and agony. The following year, Shikoku would employ similar visual vocabulary such as nude figures (associated with the atom bombing) and disconnected body parts on a flat plane for expressing vulnerability and the disruptive violence of war in the book Atom Bomb Poems. This “Peace” issue is the first to feature multiple poems that name the atom bomb and an explanation of the antinuclear petition Stockholm Appeal. The article on the “Korean Problem” focuses on President Truman’s alarming statement that nuclear weapons might be used on the Korean Peninsula, as well as critique of the economic and military ramifications of Japan’s role in the Korean War and the Cold War. Long before the advent of television and the internet, journals and books were the primary means of circulating ideas, information, and images in the mid-20th century. The Our Poems culture circle employed such paper-based print media--rather than the rarified space of museums--as part of its goal to circulate its art and social critique widely.
