The Hiroshima Panels Visualize Violence: Imagination over Life

Abstract

Experiencing the atrocities in the immediate aftermath of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima in August 1945, Chinese-ink painter Iri Maruki and oil painter Toshi Maruki began their collaboration on the Hiroshima Panels in 1950. During the occupation of Japan by the Allied powers, when reporting on the atomic bombing was strictly prohibited, the panels played a crucial role in making known the hidden nuclear sufferings through a nationwide tour. In 1953, the panels began a ten-year tour of about 20 countries, mainly in East Asia and Europe, and disseminated the stories of the sufferings in the age of the US-Soviet arms race. Acquiring perspectives that transcended national borders and ethnicities through dialogues with many people in these exhibitions, the Marukis embarked on collaborations in a new direction in the 1970s with their emphasis on complex realities of war in which the victim/perpetrator dichotomy was not clear-cut and on other forms of violence such as pollution and discrimination. The forceful images of the paintings give us an opportunity to know the memories of the dead that would otherwise be doomed to be erased from our collective memory, and to stimulate our imagination to recognize that we are always facing the problem of life. Understanding the “memories” that we have never experienced would constitute a torch to survive hardships in this world.