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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.

The Injured & the Dead: Sketches

These rough but evocative sketches by Shikoku Gorō are the first thing one sees in Atom Bomb Poetry. The line drawing shows a girl carrying a kettle; the text describes her giving water “to her mother, who is already dead.” On the facing page, the text presents Tōge’s voice: “When [I] passed by an hour later, [she was] still giving [her mother] water. August 6, at Funairicho.” In contrast to the rather abstract cover, these unsettling inner cover images are legible as the aftermath of an atom bomb. The images offer a preview of the poems in the book that graphically describe the destructiveness of the bomb.Since Shikoku was a soldier in Manchuria at the time of the bombing, he drew the images based on Tōge’s narration of his experiences. Such collaborative work characterized the Our Poems circle.

Shikoku’s sketches feature motifs that appear frequently in Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors’ accounts: people whose clothes were blown or burned off by the a-bomb’s powerful blast and searing heat; badly injured people pleading for water. Shikoku also depicts a mother and baby, and a lone child, hands covering its face--powerful images that he would use repeatedly over his long career.

Some poems in Atom Bomb Poetry include description of people horrifically injured and killed by the atom bomb. Other poems portray the challenges that still plagued many hibakusha in daily life years after the bombing: radiation poisoning, keloids, social discrimination, & poverty.

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