Street Poem Posters
Undaunted by the threat of arrest, the Our Poems Circle had many methods of putting to use poetry as a “weapon” in the fight for justice and democracy. One of their most compelling guerrilla methods was the tsuji-shi (street poem poster), which drew on classical genres that situated poetry and painting together in a single work, while innovatively claiming walls at foot-trafficked street corners throughout Hiroshima for pop-up exhibition space. The posters shown here are among the 8 extant of about 100 that Shikoku Gorō created together with poet Tōge Sankichi between 1950 to 1953.