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Walking out of ground zero: art and the aftereffects of the atomic bombs in postwar Japan

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WALKING OUT OF GROUND ZERO:

ART AND THE AFTEREFFECTS OF THE ATOMIC BOMBS IN POSTWAR JAPAN

by

Rika Iezumi Hiro

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE USC GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(ART HISTORY)

August 2016

Copyright © 2016 Rika Iezumi Hiro

i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Writing a dissertation is a long, winding process, yet it is certainly not a lone
marathon. Without numerous individuals’ and institutions’ support and encouragement, I
would not have been able to cross the finish line.
First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge my co-advisors Sonya Lee and
Miya Mizuta Lippit for their expertise, patience, and thoughtful advisement throughout
the process. Dr. Lee, who also served as my committee chair, has helped me particularly
with her attentiveness to methodological questions and the larger frame, as I tend to get
bogged down in details. Dr. Mizuta Lippit has offered indispensable suggestions and
encouraged me to convey my own voice in a scholarly yet passionate manner. I am
equally grateful to Akira Lippit and Bert Winther-Tamaki, whose scholarship and respect
for images I highly admire, for generously serving on my committee. Dr. Lippit’s critical
thinking and Dr. Winther-Tamaki’s vast and deep knowledge of Japanese art have helped
me hone a clearer direction. Words cannot express how much my committee members
have been crucial to developing this dissertation. Any remaining shortcomings, however,
are solely my own.
I am also deeply indebted to Reiko Tomii, who kindly looked at one of the
chapters that I had difficulty in organizing. In addition to her scholarship, I truly revere
Dr. Tomii’s dedication to elevating the field of postwar art in Japan and her care for
junior scholars. At the University of Southern California, I sincerely appreciate Richard
Mayer for his support at an early stage of my studies. In fact, one of the papers for his
seminar in early 2009 has become the basis of this dissertation. Along the way, Clinton
Godart, Ryan Holmberg, Selma Holo, and Anne McKnight also helped shape my vague

ii
ideas into the form of a dissertation. Outside USC, Jonathan Reynolds generously shared
part of his manuscript when it was not publically available. I have also benefited
immensely from Katō Norihiro and his mentorship. To be his student as an undergraduate
opened up my interest in Japan’s postwar and cultural productions.
My special thanks also go to individuals who have graciously accepted my
request for interviews. Kudō Hiroko kindly welcomed me to her home and has continued
to be available for my questions. I wholeheartedly believe that Kudō Tetsumi would not
have produced his art in the way he did, and his work and archive would not have
survived, without Mrs. Kudō’s collaboration and diligence. I would also like to note the
great generosity of Yamamura Shigeo for sharing his experience and precious materials
that he has carefully kept, as well as Nakamura Hiroshi for providing unique accounts
and an art historical lesson from an insider’s perspective. Moreover, Kawada Kikuji,
Narahara Keiko, and Takahashi Sayaka of Photo Gallery International have been kind
enough to respond to my inquiries through e-mails.
The following curators, archivists, and institutions have also assured my access to
their significant collections and/or introduced me to people whom I was eager to meet:
Ikeda Tōru, curator at Aomori Museum of Art; Nakano Yasuo, former curator at Taro
Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki; Uesaki Sen, archivist at Keio University Art Center;
Fujii Aki, curator at Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo; Watanabe Kotoyo, chief
archivist at Hiroshima Municipal Archives; Yasuda Kazuya, curator of Daigo
Fukuryumaru Exhibition Hall; and Joshua Mack, an independent curator and researcher.
The Special Collection staff of the Getty Research Institute and Doheny Memorial
Library at the University of Southern California as well as librarians of the National Diet

iii
Library, Tokyo, and particularly its Newspaper Reading Room have also facilitated my
requests. Visits to these archival collections and interviews were made possible by
financial assistance from USC through a Research Enhancement Fellowship from the
Office of the Provost, Ace-Nikaido Fellowships from the East Asian Studies Center, and
travel awards from the Department of Art History. The Dana and David Dornsife College
of Letters, Arts, and Sciences, and Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowships also
funded my research at an early stage.
Portions of the project have been presented at the Department of Art History of
Cornell University, PoNJA-Genkon and New York University, the Japanese Studies
Center at the University of California, Berkeley, and most recently at the Japanese Arts &
Globalizations (JAG) University of California Multi-Campus Workshop. I would like to
acknowledge my hosts and discussants for their indispensable feedback: Davinder
Bhowmik, John Branstetter, Chelsea Foxwell, Sohl Lee, Tom Looser, Christine Marran,
William Marotti, Tatiana Sulovska, Alan Tansman, Miwako Tezuka, Reiko Tomii,
Yasutaka Tsuji, Midori Yoshimoto, Hyejong Yoo, and Bo Zheng.
My colleagues have also been essential interlocutors and supporters. In particular,
my writing process would have been much more difficult without two dissertation-
writing groups with art historians Karen Huang, Megan Mastroianni, and Clair Rifelj, and
with Japanese literature and media specialist Amanda Kennel and historian Young Sun
Park. Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye kindly read Chapter Two and offered valuable suggestions.
I am also grateful for the friendship and intellectual stimulation of Bess Murphy, Ellen
Dooley, Yoonah Hwang, Younjung Oh, Nadya Bair, Katie Kelligan, Sam Adams, Erin
Sullivan, Kate Page-Lippsmeyer, Yunji Park, Rio Katayama, and Yasuhito Abe.

iv
Moreover, I wish to express my earnest gratitude to Sara Schaffzin for her diligent
copyediting.
Finally, I would like to acknowledge my family, who have been physically remote
but closely supported me. In particular, my father sheared his love for art, and my sister
has stepped in at the last minute to confirm bibliographic information for materials that I
could not access in the United States. Above all, I thank Nao, who has been my toughest
interlocutor but has also cared for me so that I have been able to maintain a balanced life
away from my workstation. I would like to dedicate this dissertation to our son, Kai, who
has grown up with this project and most importantly assured me of the strength and
beauty of life.

v
TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements

List of Illustrations

Abstract

Introduction

Chapter One
Documentary: The Atomic Bombs, Documentary Art,
and Records of the Japanese
Gensuikyō and its Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu
From The Family of Man to Records of the Japanese
Reconstructing Records of the Japanese
Documentary Art, Realism, and Reportage in the 1950s
Records of the Japanese, Undocumented
Conclusion or Documenting Records of the Japanese as Documentary Art

Chapter Two
Explosion: Okamoto Tarō and the Challenge to the Poof in the Sky
Disaster, Aerial View vs. Catastrophe on the Ground
Unearthing the Myth of Myth of Tomorrow
From “Polarism” to “Explosion”
Okamoto, Atomic Bombs, and Nuclear Energy
Recuperating the Voice of the Voiceless, By Way of Mexico
Blue Sky After Explosion
Conclusion

Chapter Three
Metamorphosis: Kudō Tetsumi, Toward Archive and Transformation
Metamorphosis, Context of 1950s Japan
Kudō’s Basis
Encapsulation and Archive, for Alteration
By Radioactivity and Industrial Pollution
Fossil in Hiroshima, To Break Fossilized Hiroshima
Conclusion

i

vii

xi

1

33

36
42
49
56
68
71

133
74
78
80
88
93
101
112
116

119
123
129
135
143
154
161

vi
Chapter Four
Site-Specificity: Chim↑Pom, Art of Site and Memory of Site
Flash Spectacle over Hiroshima: Problems in Narrating Atrocity
From Superflat to Super Rat: De-flattening the Flattened
Art in Post-Defeat Japan
The Site-Specific and the Ephemeral
Art of Site, or Undoing the Site of Art and Memory of Site
Conclusion

Epilogue
Pilgrimage, or Walking from Hiroshima, via Fukushima, to

Illustrations

Bibliography

163
166
172
185
189
199
203

206

211

294

vii
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Fig. I.1
Fig. I.2
Fig. I.3

Fig. I.4
Fig. I.5
Fig. I.6
Fig. I.7
Fig. I.8
Fig. I.9
Fig. 1.1

Fig. 1.2

Fig. 1.3

Fig. 1.4
Fig. 1.5

Fig. 1.6

Fig. 1.7

Fig. 1.8

Fig. 1.9
Fig. 1.10

Fig. 1.11

Fig. 1.12
Fig. 1.13
Fig. 1.14
Fig. 1.15
Fig. 1.16
Fig. 1.17

Fig. 1.18
Fig. 1.19

Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshiko, From Pikadon, 1950
Sumitomo Bank Company, Hiroshima Branch, November 20, 1945
Bruce Conner, A Movie, 1958; Andy Warhol, Atomic Bomb, 1965; James
Rosenquist, F-111, 1964–65
Hosoe Eikoh and Hijikata Tatsumi, from Kamaitachi, 1969
Tōmatsu Shōmei, The Time Stopped at 11:02, 1945, Nagasaki, 1961
Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshi, 1 Yūrei/Ghost from Hiroshima Panels, 1950
Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshiko, Cover for Pikadon, 1950
Asahi gurafu/The Asahi Picture News, 1952
Gensuiryoku heiwa riyō no shiori/Atoms for the Peace, exh. brochure, 1955
“Ninki wo atsumeru kinenbi-ten” [Commemorative art exhibition gaining
popularity], Asahi Shimbun, Hiroshima edition, 1959
Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese: Art Exhibition in
Commemoration of the 5
th
World Conference Against Atomic and
Hydrogen Bombs, 1959
Maruki Toshi, The Fourth World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen
Bombs, poster, 1958
Awazu Kiyoshi, Umi wo kaese [Give our sea back], poster, 1955
Awazu Kiyoshi and Sugiura Kōhei, The Fifth World Conference Against
Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, 1959; Cover for Gensuikyō
Tsūshin/Bulletin of the Japan Council Against A & H-Bombs, no. 4, 1959
Yonaki no inuhito: Gensuibaku ga aru kagiri shinpashī wa kienai! [Night-
crying dog-man: Our sympasy won’t dissappear as long as nucmear arms
exist], 1959/1960
Yamahata Yōsuke, Mother and boy holding rice balls and A boy holding a
rice ball, August 10, 1945
Yamahata Yōsuke, Nagasaki photographs, installation view, The Family of
Man, Tokyo, 1956
Okamoto Tarō, speaking at the public lecture, Hiroshima, August 2, 1959
Hongō Shin, Arashi no naka no boshi zō/Statue of Mother and Child in the
Storm, 1953/1960
Awazu Kiyoshi, Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese, Installation
view, 1959
Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese, installation view, 1959
Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese, installation view, 1959
Itabashi Yoshio, Shi no hai/Death Ashes, poster, 1959
Kawada Kikuji, from “Gyokō” [Fishing Port], 1959
Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese, installation view, 1959
Kamekura Yūsaku, Genshi enerugī wo heiwa sangyō ni! [Atomic energy for
peace industry!], poster, 1956
Domon Ken, Hiroshima, 1958
Domon Ken, “Atomic Bomb Survivor at the Red Cross Hospital” and “Mr.
and Mrs. Kotani: Two Who Have Suffered from the Bomb,” 1957

viii
Fig. 1.20
Fig. 1.21
Fig. 1.22
Fig. 1.23
Fig. 1.24
Fig. 1.25

Fig. 1.26

Fig. 1.27
Fig. 1.28

Fig. 2.1
Fig. 2.2
Fig. 2.3

Fig. 2.4

Fig. 2.5
Fig. 2.6
Fig. 2.7

Fig. 2.8

Fig. 2.9

Fig. 2.10
Fig. 2.11

Fig. 2.12

Fig. 2.13

Fig. 2.14
Fig. 2.15

Fig. 2.16

Fig. 2.17
Fig. 2.18

Fig. 2.19
Maruki Toshi(ko), Study for Hiroshima Panels, 1948
Tsuruoka Masao, Omoi te/Heavy Hands, 1949
Iwao Uchida, Heiwa/La Paix, 1952
Tōmatsu Shōmei, from Memory of War, Toyokawa, Aichi, 1959
Nakamura Hiroshi, Sunagawa No. 5, 1955
Tamura Shigeru, Union strike at Mitsukoshi Department Store, Shibuya,
1951
Awazu Kiyoshi and Sugiura Kōhei, Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the
Japanese: Art Exhibition in Commemoration of the 5
th
World Conference
Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, exh. poster/brochure, 1959
Tatehata Kakuzō, Kaku/Nucleus, 1956
The Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, ed. Hiroshima-
Nagasaki, Document 1961, 1961
Okamoto Tarō, Asu no shinwa/Myth of Tomorrow, 1968–69
Okamoto Tarō, Detail of Myth of Tomorrow, 1968–69
Department of the Air Force, Mushroom Cloud, Hiroshima, August 6, 1945;
Mushroom clouds of the Atomic Bomb, Nagasaki, August 9, 1945
Mexico 2000 Plan drawing, From Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros, 1970 and
Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros, 1964–1971
Okamoto Tarō, Gotairiku/Five Continents, 1967/1993
Okamoto Tarō, First study of Myth of Tomorrow, 1967
Okamoto Tarō, Detail of Myth of Tomorrow, 1968–69; Drawing for Moeru
Hiro/Men Aflame, no. 27, 1955
Okamoto Tarō, Detail of Myth of Tomorrow, 1968–69; and David Alfaro
Siqueiros, March of Humanity on Earth and Toward the Cosmos, 1964–
1971
Tange Kenzō, Grand Roof; and Okamoto Tarō, Tower of the Sun, Japan
World Exposition, Osaka, 1970
Okamoto Tarō seimei kūkan no dorama Tarō Bakuhatsu, 1968
André Masson, Cover design for Acéphale, 1936; and Okamoto Tarō in front
of Tower of the Sun, 1970
Kimura Tsunehisa, War, Destruction, Peace, Theme Pavilion, Japan World
Exposition, 1970
Shirai Seiichi, Plans for Genbaku-do/Temple Atomic Catastrophes, 1954-
1955; and Isamu Noguchi, Model for Memorial for the Dead of
Hiroshima, 1952/1991
Tower of the Sun with searchlights, Japan World Exposition, 1970
Kōno Takashi, Design for Kanashimi no tō/Tower of Sorrow and Yorokobi
no tō/Tower of Happiness, Japanese Government Pavilion, Japan World
Exposition, 1970
Okamoto Tarō, “Genshiryoku ban’nō jidai” [An era of omnipotent nuclear
energy]. Mainichi Shimbun, 1955
Okamoto Tarō, Taiyō no shinwa/Myth of the Sun, 1952
David Alfaro Siqueiros, Explosion in the City, ca. 1935-1945 and The
Explosion of Hiroshima, 1955
Okamoto Tarō, Moeru hito/Men Aflame, 1956

ix
Fig. 2.20

Fig. 2.21

Fig. 2.22
Fig. 2.23
Fig. 2.24
Fig. 3.1

Fig. 3.2
Fig. 3.3

Fig. 3.4

Fig. 3.5

Fig. 3.6

Fig. 3.7

Fig. 3.8

Fig. 3.9

Fig. 3.10

Fig. 3.11
Fig. 3.12

Fig. 3.13
Fig. 3.14
Fig. 3.15

Fig. 3.16

Fig. 3.17

Fig. 3.18

Fig. 3.19

Okamoto Tarō, Book cover design for Ōta Yōko’s Han-ningen [Half
human], 1954
Okamoto Tarō, On’na to tori/A Woman and a Bird. Yomiuri Shimbun,
evening edition, 1955.
Okamoto Tarō, Jūkōgyō/Heavy Industry, 1949
Okamoto Tarō, Aozora/Blue Sky, 1954
David Alfaro Siqueiros, América Tropical, 1932
Kudō Tetsumi, Hiroshima no kaseki/Fossil in Hiroshima—Souvenir of Molt,
1960–1970
Kudō Tetsumi, Anata no shōzō/Your Portrait, 1964
Hijikata Tatsumi, From Hijikata Tatsumi and the Japanese: Revolt of the
Flesh, 1968; Miki Tomio, Mimi (Ear), 1965; and Yayoi Kusama,
Accumulation No. 1. 1962
Kudō Tetsumi, Zōshokusei rensa han’nō B/Proliferating Chain Reaction B,
1960
Kudō Tetsumi, Heimen junkantai ni okeru zōshokusei rensa
han’nō/Proliferous Chain Reaction in Plane Circulation Substance, 1958
Kudō Tetsumi, Heimen junkantai ni okeru yūgō han’nō/Confluent Reaction
in Plane Circulation Substance, 1958–59
Kudō Tetsumi, Seishin ni okeru ryūdō to sono gyōshūsei/The Flowing
Movement and Its Condensation in Mind, 1958; and Installation view of
solo exhibition at Bungei Shunjū Gallery, Tokyo, 1961
Electrically Operated Model of Nuclear Chain Reaction, Atoms for Peace
exhibition, Tokyo 1955
Kudō Tetsumi, Instant Sperm (performance, object, and performance relics),
1962 and 1964
Kudō Tetsumi, Inpo tetsugaku, Inpo bunpuzu to sono hōwa bubun ni okeru
hogo dōmu no hassei/Philosophy of Impotence or Distribution Map of
Impotence and the Appearance of Protective Domes at the Points of
Saturation, 1961-62
Kudō Tetsumi, Happening at Boulogne Film Studio, Paris, 1963
Yoshioka Yasuhiro, Installation detail of Kudō Tetsumi’s Philosophy of
Impotence at the 14th Yomiuri Independent, 1962; and the work’s current
configuration
Magazine pages taken from Philosophy of Impotence
Yoshioka Yasuhiro, Installation detail of Philosophy of Impotence, 1962
Akasegawa Genpei, from “Gendai kōgaikō” [Thoughts on contemporary
environmental pollution], Gendai no me, no. 11 (November 1970)
Akasegawa Genpei, from “Gendai kōgaikō” [Thoughts on contemporary
environmental pollution], Gendai no me, no. 11 (November 1970)
Kudō Tetsumi, Denshikairo no naka ni okeru hōshanō niyoru
yōshoku/Cultivation by Radioactivity in the Electronic Circuit, 1970
Kudō Tetsumi, Kankyō osen–Yōshoku–Atarashii ekorojī/Pollution–
Cultivation–New Ecology, 1971
“Fūkei shirīzu 4: Machikado no obuje [Landscape series 4: Object on a street
corner] featuring Kudō Tesumi’s Homage to the Young Generation—The

x

Fig. 3.20
Fig. 3.21
Fig. 3.22

Fig. 3.23

Fig. 3.24
Fig. 4.1
Fig. 4.2
Fig. 4.3
Fig. 4.4
Fig. 4.5
Fig. 4.6
Fig. 4.7
Fig. 4.8

Fig. 4.9
Fig. 4.10
Fig. 4.11
Fig. 4.12
Fig. 4.13
Fig. 4.14

Fig. 4.15

Fig. 4.16

Fig. 4.17
Fig. 4.18
Fig. 4.19
Fig. 4.20
Fig. 4.21
Fig. 4.22
Fig. 4.23
Fig. E.1
Fig. E.2
Cocoon Opens (1968), Shūkan Yomiuri/The Yomiuri Weekly (September
19, 1969)
Kudō Tetsumi, Dappi no kinenhi/Monument of Metamorphosis, 1969
Kudō Tetsumi, Fossil in Hiroshima, 1960–1970
Kudō Tetsumi, Hiroshima no kaseki 1945-nen 8-gatsu 8-nichi 8-ji 15-fun
Kudō no rinkō/Fossil in Hiroshima 8:15 - 8. Aug. 1945 Phosphorescence
Kudō, 1973
Kudō Tetsumi, ‘Dappi’ no kinenhin, homo sapiens, 1965 Pari/Souvenir of
Molt—Homo Sapiens 1965 Paris, 1965
Kudō Tetsumi, Hiroshima no kaseki/Fossil in Hiroshima 2 & 3, 1976
Chim↑Pom, Making the Sky of Hiroshima ‘PIKA’!, 2008
Chim↑Pom, Installation view of Real Thousand Cranes, 2008–
Chim↑Pom, Untitled, 2009
Chim↑Pom group portrait, From Super Rat, 2006
Superflat, Installation view at MOCA Pacific Design Center, 2001
Little Boy, Installation view at Japan Society, NY, 2005
Little Boy, Installation view at Japan Society, NY, 2005
Aida Makoto, The video of a man calling himself Bin Laden staying in
Japan, 2005
Aida Makoto, Utsukushii hata/Beautiful Flags, 1995
Aida Makoto, Dai shirazu/No One Knows the Title, 1996
Chim↑Pom, Super Rat, 2006
Chim↑Pom, Black of Death, 2007
Chim↑Pom, Black of Death, 2007
Chim↑Pom, Becoming friend, Eating each other or Falling down together,
installation views at Hiromi Yoshii Gallery, Tokyo, 2008
Takashi Murakami, Time Bokan-Pink, 2001; The mushroom cloud of “Little
Boy, Hiroshima, August 6, 1945; and Mushroom cloud “Bravo,”
Marshall Islands, March 1, 1954
Takashi Murakami, Eco Eco Rangers Earth Force (2005) as Little Boy
exhibition banner, 2005
Chim↑Pom, Real Thousand Cranes, from Hiroshima!!!!!, 2013
Chim↑Pom, LEVEL7 feat. “Myth of Tomorrow,” 2011
Chim↑Pom, LEVEL7 feat. “Myth of Tomorrow,” 2011
Chim↑Pom, Red Card, 2009
Chim↑Pom, Real Times, April 11, 2011
Chim↑Pom, Never Give Up, 2011
Cai Guo-Qiang, Black Fireworks: Project for Hiroshima, 2008
Ishiuchi Miyako, ひろしま/hiroshima #9 (Ogawa Ritsu), 2007
Domon Ken, from Hiroshima, 1958

xi
ABSTRACT

This dissertation examines the ways in which artists of postwar Japan visualized
the aftereffects of the atomic bombs and conditions arising from the catastrophes—
despite their unrepresentability. It asks how artists and individuals engaging in cultural
productions took the nuclear issues and politics as their own, rendered the catastrophes
vis-à-vis the crises of vision, ontology, and the environment, or, if not, denoted the
detachment from ground zero in the decades after the atomic detonations. The project
thus speaks for the productive force of the atomic bombs and their legacies, the
possibility of creative and intellectual challenges that question, expand, or override the
predominant narrative of the nuclear catastrophes and its relationship to visual
representations as trauma, a tabula rasa, or a fundamental rupture.
The study approaches the subject by clustering it around five themes—
documentary, explosion, metamorphosis, site-specificity, and pilgrimage—and
corresponding case studies. It begins by problematizing the ideas of documentation and
documentary art by exploring the large but nearly forgotten art exhibition Nihonjin no
kiroku/Records of the Japanese (1959) in Hiroshima. While dissecting the facile
association of art about the atomic bombs with clear-cut documentation, the chapter
serves as a critical introduction to various artistic representations of the man-made
catastrophes. Chapter Two looks at how the atomic bomb calamities are being
reconsidered as a means to question their iconic images, such as explosions and
mushroom clouds, and the historical narratives they represent. This is done by centering
on Okamoto Tarō’s monumental mural in Mexico City, Asu no shinwa/Myth of
Tomorrow (1968–1969). Chapter Three investigates the visualization of invisible

xii
radioactivity and other industrial toxins but as productive energy rather than a destructive
kind, through Kudō Tetsumi’s deployment of a visual theory of metamorphosis from the
1950s to the 1970s. Chapter Four revisits the artist collective Chim↑Pom’s hotly debated
guerrilla art project in Hiroshima (2008) so as to illuminate negotiations between site-
specific artwork and site-specific memory, which eventually led them to depict
Hiroshima as something fluid and transient, liberated from the actual time and space of
the 1945 disaster. The study concludes with an epilogue that contemplates the notion of
pilgrimage out from and to ground zero to emphasize a process of healing and
understanding the aftereffects of the bombs rather than focusing on a singular conclusion
or tangible artwork. In this manner, the dissertation embraces the complexities,
confusions, contradictions, and flexibility that arise when we face such unimaginable and
unrepresentable events.

1
INTRODUCTION

In 1950 ink painter Maruki Iri (1901–1995) and oil painter Maruki Toshi(ko)
(1912–2000), who are known for their monumental painting series Hiroshima Panels
(1950–1982), created a palm-size picture book. Entitled Pikadon, an onomatopoetic name
for the atomic bomb, the book is largely based on stories and scenes that the Marukis
heard and saw when they had returned to Hiroshima, Iri’s hometown, shortly after the
atomic disaster. In the book, they asserted that there is “no one who can recount what
happened at ground zero” (Fig. I.1).
1
Alongside this remark, the artists included a simple
drawing of a no-mans’ land in which charred trees stand—or rather manage to escape
falling—over debris.
Indeed, at ground zero the victims were instantly “vaporized, blown apart, melted,
burned, flayed, lacerated, crushed, irradiated, and otherwise destroyed” by the bomb’s
massive heat, its blast, and the radiation it produced.
2
No vision of the experience at
ground zero survived and therefore the images of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that we see
today are not of “the explosion itself, but its aftereffect.”
3
Sawaragi Noi, a prolific art
critic who has been exploring the issue of war and the atomic disasters in the postwar art
of Japan, argues that there are only descriptions and documentation of the horrific
catastrophe in Japanese art. Sawaragi also points out, in reference to Theodor W.

1
Maruki Iri and Maruki Toshiko, Pikadon (Tokyo: Potsudamu Shoten, 1950), unpaginated. Throughout
this dissertation, Japanese names appear in the East Asian order, surname first, unless the individual resides
abroad and adopts the Western order of surname last. All translations from Japanese materials are my own,
unless otherwise noted.
2
Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, “The Iconic Image of the Mushroom Cloud and the Cold War
Nuclear Optic,” Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis, eds. Geoffrey Batchen et al. (London: Reaktion
Books, 2012), 135. The bomb’s heat is estimated to have been 3,000-4,000 degrees Celsius on the ground.
3
Ibid., 141.
Introduction

2
Adorno’s famous dictum of the impossibility of writing poetry after Auschwitz,
4
that
these descriptions and documentations fail to raise critical inquiries into the fact that only
“shadows” that were left at ground zero, like a dark smudge on concrete steps (Fig. I.2).
5

Their representation is therefore fundamentally impossible.
The advent of nuclear weapons completely changed the ways in which people
imagined and sought visuality and visual representation. My concern is therefore the
aftereffects, how artists rendered the visuals vis-à-vis conditions produced by the atomic
catastrophes—despite their unrepresentability. Since “3.11,” the 2011 calamities of the
magnitude 9.0 earthquake, tsunami, and Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster,
there have been a number of studies about how the Japanese nation has coped with
devastation, especially the nuclear crisis, which frequently refers to Japan’s previous
atomic disasters. Instead of focusing on the most recent nuclear crisis so as to offer clues
to how to confront the ongoing predicament, this study sheds light on the ways in which
artists and individuals engaging in cultural productions took the nuclear issues and
politics as their own or, if not, denoted the detachment from ground zero in the decades
after the atomic detonations. That is, although I embarked on my exploration of this
subject prior to 3.11, the dissertation is in part my response to 3.11 as an art historian.
For this purpose, I approach the subject by clustering it around five themes—
documentary, explosion, metamorphosis, site-specificity, and pilgrimage—and including
corresponding case studies. They range from a large-scale but nearly forgotten art
exhibition Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese (1959) in Hiroshima, to Okamoto

4
Theodor W. Adorno, “Cultural Criticism and Society,” Prisms, trans. Samuel and Shierry Weber
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), 34.
5
Sawaragi Noi, Sensō to Banpaku/World Wars and World Fairs (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 2005), 31.
To be precise, these “shadows” are the areas protected from the heat by those who were sitting or standing
there.
Introduction

3
Tarō’s Asu no shinwa/Myth of Tomorrow (1968–1969) in Mexico City, a monumental
mural which has achieved “national art status” in post-Fukushima Japan, to Kudō
Tetsumi’s internationally exhibited assemblage sculpture and performance about nuclear
radioactivity and pollution from the 1950s to the 1970s, and a hotly debated guerrilla art
project in Hiroshima (2008) by the artist collective Chim↑Pom. As a postscript, the recent
display of Ishiuchi Miyako’s ひろしま/hiroshima in Los Angeles is also discussed.
Except for the Records of the Japanese exhibition, the artists and art projects that
I examine are far from obscure. Nonetheless, despite their present prominence, I see a
necessity to historicize and reexamine their works in the context of the aftereffects of the
atomic bombs. Interestingly, each key subject was involved in “dislocations” in their own
context:
6
the disappearance of the 1959 exhibition in Hiroshima from both contemporary
and historical accounts; the long oblivion of Okamoto’s mural and even Okamoto himself
as an artist of significance; Kudō’s relocation from Japan to Paris, which prompted the
artist to approach nuclear issues in a nuanced way; and the cancellation of an exhibition
of Chim↑Pom’s site-specific art. Dislocations, then, entail the disappearance of these art
projects from the public domain, people’s consciousness or the historical narrative.
Essentially, this condition of being or being made invisible corresponds to the
unrepresentability of the atomic bombs as well as invisibility of radiation and the atomic
bomb victims themselves and even survivors.
As the artists in question attempted to visualize the aftereffects of the atomic
bombs, my task is to make them visible, to articulate the locations of these “dislocated”
works, exhibitions, and artists with guidance from archival research, interviews, and a

6
I deeply thank Bert Winther-Tamaki for pointing out the “dislocations” that thread through these case
studies.
Introduction

4
close look at the artworks. I ask how these artists as well as critics and curators
interrogated the historical discourse; how they related to national and international
politics, including class struggles or the contradictory stances of anti-nuclear arms and
pro-nuclear energy; how they dealt with the crises of vision, ontology, and/or the
environment. The nuclear catastrophes and politics profoundly affected or even shaped
these conditions. I explicate the artists’ nuanced reactions to the atomic disasters and the
ways they question, expand, or override the accepted narrative of the catastrophes and its
relationship to art. I thereby underscore the productivity of the atomic bombs as, no
matter how devastating they were, the events pushed the creative and intellectual
horizons of the artists and curators whose work I discuss.
However, these complexities have often been obscured by a relatively monolithic
discourse about the atomic bombs’ effect on the visual field in later times. The artists’
return to and their visualization of the atomic catastrophe are not necessarily motivated
and characterized by tragedy or trauma—as discussed, for example, by Cathy Caruth in
her analysis of Alain Resnais’s film Hiroshima Mon Amour (1959). Caruth illuminates
the unknowability of the atomic catastrophe in relation to trauma’s intangible but
unforgettable condition.
7
In a similar vein, the atomic bombs’ devastation does not
always function as a tabula rasa or rupture that fundamentally affected the culture,

7
Cathy Caruth, “Literature and the Enactment of Memory (Duras, Resnais, Hiroshima mon amour)” in
Trauma and Visuality in Modernity, eds. Lisa Saltzman and Eric Rosenberg (Hanover: Dartmouth College
Press, 2006), 189–221. Other examples that share the entry point of psychoanalysis, especially trauma
studies, include In Imag(in)ing the War in Japan: Representing and Responding to Trauma in Postwar
Literature and Film, eds. David C. Stahl and Mark B. Williams (Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010); Beyond
Hiroshima: The Return of the Repressed, Wartime Memory, Performativity and the Documentary in
Contemporary Japanese Photography and Video Art, ed. Ayelet Zohar (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Art
Gallery, 2015). In contrast, media theorist Thomas Lamarre has suggested an alternative approach to that of
trauma in his study of “Manga Bomb: Between the Lines of Barefoot Gen,” Comics Worlds and the World
of Comics, ed. Jaqueline Berndt (Kyoto: International Manga Research Center, Kyoto Seika University,
2010), 262–307.
Introduction

5
psyche, and history of postwar Japan as suggested by existing scholarship and exhibitions,
such as Takashi Murakami’s highly acclaimed curation of Little Boy (2005).
8

The literary endeavors of hibakusha—atomic bomb survivors—are accepted as
the genre of “hibakusha literature,” and there is a large compilation of atomic bomb
literature, or genbaku bungaku.
9
In the field of Japanese art, exhaustive research on
sensō-ga, war paintings or war campaign documentary paintings, which were made
roughly between 1937 and 1945, has been on the rise.
10
However, scholarly studies that
examine the impact of the atomic bombs on visual media have mainly focused on popular
culture—in particular, film, anime (animation), and manga (comic strips and books).
11

8
Takashi Murakami, Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture (New York and New Haven:
Japan Society and Yale University Press, 2005).
9
The most extensive publication is a fifteen-volume collection of nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and drama,
Nihon no genbaku bungaku [Japan’s atomic bomb literature] ed. Hara Tamiki (Tokyo: Horupu Shuppan,
1983). Ōe Kenzaburō’s Hiroshima nōto/Hiroshima Notes, based on reportage and interviews with survivors,
is a unique publication by this promising novelist (Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 1965; English translation in
1995). For a scholarly study of this subject in English, see John Whittier Treat’s Writing Ground Zero:
Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
10
One instance is a catalogue raisonné of sensō-ga, Sensō to bijutsu 1937-1945/Art in Wartime Japan
1937–1945 (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, 2007). See also Bert Winther-Tamaki’s
“Embodiment/Disembodiment: Japanese Painting During the Fifteen-Year War,” Monumenta Nipponica,
52: 2 ([Summer 1997]: 145–180), which looks at artistic productions in the war period including sensō-ga;
and Mayu Tsuruya, “Sensō Sakusen Kirokuga: Seeing Japan’s War Documentary Painting as a Public
Monument” in Since Meiji: Perspectives on the Japanese Visual Arts 1868–2000 (Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press, 2012), 99–123. For the afterlives of sensō-ga, see Asato Ikeda, “Japan’s Haunting War Art:
Contested War Memories and Art Museums,” disClosure: A Journal of Social Theory, 8: 2 (2009): 5–32.
11
For example, see Yoshikuni Igarashi’s outstanding study Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in
Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945–1970 (Princeton University, 2000), which explores the narratives of war
in popular culture including sports in Japan through the trope of the body. Other representative research
includes In Imag(in)ing the War in Japan, which looks at literature and film; Robert Jacobs, ed., Filling the
Hole in the Nuclear Future: Art and Popular Culture Respond to the Bomb (Lanham: Lexington Books,
2010); and Mick Broderick, ed., Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and the Nuclear Image in
Japan (London and New York: Kegan Paul International and Columbia University, 1996). Concerning
manga, a 6-volume anthology Mangakatachi no sensō [A war for manga artists] (Tokyo: Kin no hoshi-sha,
2013) is an excellent introduction. For scholarly insights, Lamarre published about this subject, including
“Born of Trauma: Akira and Capitalist Modes of Destruction” in positions, 16: 1 (Spring 2008): 131–56 in
addition to “Manga Bomb.”
Introduction

6
Perhaps the only exceptions are the medium of photography, because of its mnemonic
feature, and its extended form, video.
12

In fact, a handful of visual artists have responded to the atomic bombs. For
example, the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum (established in 1968) and the Hiroshima
City Museum of Contemporary Art (hereafter Hiroshima MOCA, established in 1989)
have approached the subject repeatedly, collecting and exhibiting artwork about war and
peace, and the atomic bomb devastation.
13
In particular, the Hiroshima MOCA and its
superintendent, the city of Hiroshima, have commissioned contemporary artists’ works
about these themes and even launched the Hiroshima Art Prize in 1989, with the first
awardee being fashion designer and atomic bomb survivor Issey Miyake.
14
Every three
years since, they have selected an artist, not necessarily Japanese, who has “contributed
to the peace of all humanity in the field of art, and aims to appeal through art to the wider
world for the spread of the ‘Spirit of Hiroshima’.”
15

12
Sample publications include Tokyo-to Shashin Bijutsukan ed., Kaku—hangenki/The Half-life of
Awareness: Photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Tokyo: Tokyo-to Shashin Bijutsukan, 1995);
Bakushinchi no shashin 1945–1951 [Photographs of Ground Zero 1945–1951], Photographers’ Gallery
Press, no. 12 (Tokyo: Photographers’ Gallery, 2014); and Charles Merewether, “A Language to Come:
Japanese Photography After the Event,” interarchive eds. Beatrice von Bismarck, et al. (Luneberg:
Kunstraum der Universität, 2002), 168–176. Hiroshima Ground Zero 1945, eds. Erin Barnett and
Philomena Mariani (New York: International Center of Photography and Steidl, 2011) surveys damage
documentation photographs taken by the United States Strategic Bombing Survey’s Physical Damage
Division. Another unique project is Camera Atomica, ed. John O’Brian (London: Black Dog Publishing,
2015), which examines nuclear photographs but is not limited to those of the atomic bombs. For a more
recent exploration through the lens of what Marianne Hirsch has defined as “postmemory,” see Beyond
Hiroshima.
13
See, for example, Hiroshima MOCA’s two-volume catalogue, Hiroshima igo: Gendai bijutsu karano
messēji I & II/After Hiroshima: Messages from Contemporary Art I & II (Hiroshima: Hiroshima City
Museum of Contemporary Art, 1995).
14
Miyake also lost his mother shortly after the doomed day. However, he chose to be quiet about his
experience until fairly recently (Issey Miyake, “A Flash of Memory,” The New York Times, July 13, 2009,
accessed December 14, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/14/opinion/14miyake.html?_r=0).
15
The list of awardees includes Krzysztof Wodiczko (1998), Yoko Ono (2010), and Mona Hatoum (2015)
as well as architect Daniel Libeskind (2001). For the complete list of awardees and further information
about their works, see the museum’s website, http://www.hiroshima-moca.jp/en/hiroshima-art-prize/
(accessed December 14, 2015).
Introduction

7
Rather than surveying an exhaustive list of artwork, however, I focus on the
rhetoric and themes of artwork that I argue are illustrative and crucial—documentary,
explosion, metamorphosis, site-specificity, and pilgrimage. While these themes often
come up in the discussion of art of, or indeed out of, ground zero, they simultaneously
constitute either the period or each practitioner’s artistic dictum. Yet I do not regard them
as axiomatic but interrogate them. In so doing, the dissertation interweaves the
methodologies and arguments of the artists in question, which have not been explored
alongside each other. Although the artwork to be discussed was made by Japanese artists,
I provide in-depth analyses that demand inter- and/or transnational perspectives, such as a
consideration of the Records of the Japanese exhibition in the context of cultural
productions of Cold War geopolitics; Okamoto Tarō’s mural project in Mexico City
through the lens of Mexican Muralism; and Paris-based artist Kudō Tetsumi’s series of
ephemeral and tangible works about radioactivity from Japanese and European
perspectives. Accordingly, the study is not merely about Japan or Japanese artists but
instead speaks for the possibility of visual representation, the significant intervention of
artists, theorists, and curators in opening up the way in which human atrocities are
represented, discussed, and remembered, despite the seeming impossibility of such an
undertaking.

Why Art and Why Now?
Sawaragi laments that analytical examination concerning the impossibility of
visual representation of the atomic bombs has been lacking in the art of postwar Japan. In
this regard, film and cultural theorist Akira Mizuta Lippit’s discussion of the invisibility
Introduction

8
of the bombs’ impact, or excess visuality, from the point of view of cinema and
photography offers a provocative departure. In his book Atomic Light (Shadow Optics),
Lippit introduces the concept of “avisuality,” which refers to a visuality of nothing and/or
transparency, enabled by the invention of “light”—x-rays/atomic bombs, cinema or art of
light, and psychoanalysis—that penetrates the human body, space, and the unconscious.
The blinding light of the atomic attack as well as the invisible radiation that cuts through
living things are an exemplary case in this theory. Not only did the bomb and radiation
force the human body into a crisis, materially and conceptually, but they also meant a
crisis of visuality.
16
Lippit also notes that, expanding on Paul Virilio’s reflection on the
light-weapon,
17
the atomic bombs themselves were “a type of violent photography”
unleashed onto the human body and turned Hiroshima and Nagasaki into large
photographic darkrooms.
18

Art historian Rosalyn Deutsche also reiterates the impossibility of producing
“authentic” images of the atomic bombs, but looks at the issue from the vantage point of
contemporary art and activism. In her analysis of contemporary video works that reflect
upon America’s war against Iraq, Deutsche evaluates select artists’ relating of America’s
recent and ongoing military assaults to previous ones, especially Hiroshima. In these
creative endeavors, by employing psychoanalysis, Deutsche tries to uncover art’s ability
“to combine concern for subjectivity with a concern about the problem of war.”
19
Her
claim of what art can do in the realm of real life and politics echoes what artists, critics,

16
Akira Mizuta Lippit, Atomic Light (Shadow Optics) (Minneapolis and London: University of Minnesota,
2005), 4, 81–86, and 92–95.
17
Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception (New York: Columbia University Press,
2010), 44–45.
18
Lippit, 108–109.
19
Rosalyn Deutsche, Hiroshima After Iraq: Three Studies in Art and War (New York: Columbia
University Press, 2010), 7.
Introduction

9
and curators associated with the Records of the Japanese exhibition, the subject of
Chapter One, had sought. They also strove to merge art and politics to ban nuclear
weapons. In terms of the atomic bombs, however, following Virilio and Lippit, Deutsche
explains that only symbols, such as the mushroom cloud, attest to the condition of
avisuality of the catastrophe.
20

Nonetheless, popular references to symbolic images of the atomic bombs, an
explosion or a mushroom cloud for instance, do not always demand contemplation of
such theoretical, social, and/or political dimensions of the image. More importantly,
iconic images themselves have been politically and ideologically constructed. In their
discussion of the “Cold War Nuclear Optic,” Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites
look at the photographic image of a symmetrical, picturesque mushroom cloud that
allowed an abstraction of the atrocity and separation from the victims of the destruction.
Such an iconic image therefore lets its viewers avoid moral questions concerning the
bombs. At the same time, this “Cold War Nuclear Optic” secured state control of
weaponry technology.
21
The rise of international photographic magazines such as Life
facilitated the construction and the circulation of the iconic image.
22
However, as Peter
Hales argues, Life also contributed to making a pleasing visual myth of the nuclear
explosion and mushroom cloud while still hailing the scientific and technological
innovation employed by the United States in making the weapon of mass destruction.
23
In

20
Ibid., 44–46.
21
Hariman and Lucaites, 135–141. The authors state that the Cold War Nuclear Optic is activated by three
key design features: 1) the structured absence of death and destruction; 2) the formal perfection of the
explosion; and 3) the containment of the bomb within a closed circuit of military control.
22
The Cold War has certainly cast light and shadows on legislation as well as creative and popular cultural
productions in Japan, too. See, for instance, Ann Sherif’s rumination, Japan’s Cold War: Media, Literature,
and Law (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009).
23
Peter Bacon Hales, “Imaging the Atomic Age: Life and the Atom,” Looking at Life Magazine, ed. Erica
Doss (Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001), 103–122.
Introduction

10
this respect, Bruce Conner’s montage pairing a mushroom clouds’ growing out of the
hydrogen bomb test with various found footage in his A Movie (1958) and Pop artists’
employment of mushroom clouds interrogate the power dynamic associated with the
pleasurable, consumable, and ideological icons of the atomic bombs (Fig. I.3).
The parallel development of warfare and photographic technologies, and how a
certain image of the nuclear devastation has become iconic and indexical, is historicized
by Japanese art historian Gennifer Weisenfeld.
24
Focusing on the Great Kantō Earthquake
(1923), Weisenfeld’s exploration of the social scope of the visual, specifically how it
functions in relation to the disaster, is insightful. As the first disaster in Japan’s modern
history, the earthquake coincided with an expansion of the global news circuit together
with the robust development of military aerial photographic technology, which allowed
this earthquake to be a national and in part global disaster. In other words, the creation,
circulation, and consumption of images actively participate in shaping the collective and
national histories of a catastrophe. However, the same means occasionally operate to
erase part of the memory concerning a catastrophe, as with the iconic image of the atomic
bombs. In this regard, there is no clear and pure distinction between natural and man-
made disasters.
25
Weisenfeld also argues that the visuality of disaster is accumulative; in
other words, how the Great Kanto Earthquake was captured has served as “the visual

24
Gennifer Weisenfeld, Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of
1923 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013). For a discussion of the similar
effect of aerial photography in general, see Devide Deriu’s “Picturing Ruinscapes: The Aerial Photograph
as Image of Historical Trauma,” The Image and The Witness: Trauma, Memory and Visual Culture, eds.
Frances Guerin and Roger Hallas (London: Wallflower Press, 2007), 189–203.
25
Weisenfeld, 11.
Introduction

11
lexicon of disaster” for natural and man-made disasters to come, including the atomic
obliterations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
26

In spite of the atomic bomb’s iconic image as a consumable spectacle or
“technological sublime,”
27
or the impossibility of producing “authentic” images, artists
still attempted to fill the representational void and visualize the unrepresentable
catastrophes. This is the central focus of my study. In order to do so, in the absence of
documentation of actual devastating events, imagination and creativity are a necessary or
perhaps the only means to illuminate them. This is exactly where Ernestine Schlant
begins her edited volume of comparative studies on literature in West Germany and
Japan that responds to the defeat, loss, and guilt of WWII (1939–1945)/the Asia-Pacific
War (1931–1945). Although her discussion centers on, yet again, literature, it also applies
to visual art:
[The literatures] reveal more intimately and, perhaps, more accurately, the
contemporary Japanese and West Germany peoples’ intellectual outlook and
provide information that is not part of the official cant, of vulgar stereotypes, or of
simplistic clichés. In short, literary truth often goes deeper than political or
economic analysis, and it reflects the conditions and values of the society under
which it was created.
28

Or as Cathy Caruth has said, the significance of the film Hiroshima mon amour exactly
lies in “how it explores the possibility of a faithful history [of the atomic catastrophe] in
the very indirectness” of the film’s mode of telling, as opposed to “direct archival
footage.”
29
Nevertheless, as literature scholars David Stahl and Mark Williams wrote in

26
Ibid,, 295. In this regard, we can stretch the discussion to the lineage of the visual penchant for disaster
and violence in Japanese art, including the pictorial tradition of otoko-e (men’s painting) of the Tale of the
Heiji Rebellion scrolls (13
th
century), for instance.
27
Peter Hales, “The Atomic Sublime,” American Studies, 32 (1991): 5–31; and David Nye, “Atomic Bomb
and Apollo XI,” American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 225–256.
28
Ernestine Schlant and J. Thomas Rimer, eds., Legacies and Ambiguities: Postwar Fiction and Culture in
West Germany and Japan (Washington, D.C.: The Woodrow Wilson Center Press, 1991), 1.
29
Caruth, 191.
Introduction

12
2010, the contribution of art—literature and film here—“to the constitution, integration
and comprehension of traumatic historical events has yet to be sufficiently acknowledged,
articulated or realized.”
30

Insertion or acknowledgement of imagination is sometimes considered
problematic. Indeed, this was at the heart of the debate over art historian Georges Didi-
Huberman’s investigation of photographs of Auschwitz. Didi-Huberman demands that
we imagine the circumstances of the only four images taken inside the concentration
camp by the Sondercommando, how they were taken, the location, and the time, “in spite
of” the risks and our inability to know how to look at them today.
31
These angled,
incomplete visual fragments, Didi-Huberman insists, still constitute the truth and become
historical evidence with the guide of our imagination. His recognition of imagination to
fill the evidential gap has been harshly criticized as something that could solicit
“overinterpretation” of images or even falsehood.
32
Although there is a certain difficulty
in discussing the Nazi Holocaust and the atomic holocaust together, as Sawaragi has
acknowledged, I support Didi-Huberman’s approach, not so much for the sake of
solidifying the singular account, but to weigh the act of imagining the unimaginable event,
which is fundamental to artistic responses to the nuclear catastrophes. Paradoxically, as
historian Michael Sherry has pointed out, imagination, or in his word prophecy, has often

30
David C. Stahl and Mark B. Williams, Introduction, In Imag(in)ing the War in Japan, 1.
31
Georges Didi-Huberman, Images In Spite of All: Four Photographs From Auschwitz, trans. Shane B.
Lillis (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 3–17.
32
Criticism of Didi-Huberman and his counterargument constitutes a large part of the second chapter of
Images In Spite of All, 51–88.
Introduction

13
led to the scientific and technological developments of weaponry, as well as the way war
has been strategized, executed, and consequently remembered.
33

Turning to the field of Japanese art, the consequences of the defeat in the Asia-
Pacific War and the atomic bomb attacks might not be the ultimate concern but is often
explained as something that haunts cultural productions and history overall. In other
words, not only the actual images of the war and atomic bomb annihilations but the
resulting darkness and trauma are regarded as emblematic of Japan’s postwar-period art
and visual culture. For example, the rhetoric of war and wartime Japan weaves through
the Guggenheim’s exhibition Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (1994–
1995), curated by Alexandra Munroe.
34
The accompanying catalogue opens with Hosoe
Eikoh’s black and white photographic image of barefoot butoh dancer Hijikata Tatsumi
in a loose female kimono, with wild hair and a mustache, running with Japan’s military
flag in his hands (1967; Fig. I.4). Hijikata, like a ghost or monster from the wartime past
coming back to haunt the present, screams against the sky, against the backdrop of danchi,
a new type of apartment complex that emerged as part of the country’s postwar
urbanization project.
35
The second image is a panoramic photo-documentation of Tokyo

33
Michael Sherry, “The U.S. Strategic Bombing: From Prophecy to Memory” in Bombing Civilians: A
Twentieth Century History, eds. Yuki Tanaka and Marilyn B. Young (New York: New Press, 2009), 175–
190.
34
Alexandra Munroe ed., Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (New York: H.N. Abrams,
1994). The exhibition was inaugurated at the Yokohama Museum of Art in Japan and later travelled to the
Guggenheim Museum of Art in New York and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The book is a
significant source of research including translations of select primary documents along with the Museum of
Modern Art’s recent publication From Postwar to Postmodern: Art in Japan 1945–1989, Primary
Documents (2012).
35
With Japan’s economic boom starting in the 1950s, danchi was one of the foremost urban and suburban
city development projects to house the new middle class “nuclear” families around Tokyo. For a discussion
of danchi in the context of Japan’s urbanization program, see Takeji Mizushima’s “Transformation of
Cities” in A Social History of Science and Technology in Contemporary Japan: High Economic Growth
Period, 1960-1969. eds. Shigeru Nakayama, Kunio Gotō, and Hitoshi Yoshioka (Victoria, Australia: Trans
Pacific Press, 2006), 430–440.
Introduction

14
flattened after the firebomb assault in March 1945.
36
This is followed by architect Isozaki
Arata’s 1968 installation view of Electric Labyrinth, an imaginary architectonic structure
proposed for Hiroshima in ruins.
37
As documentation of the grand survey exhibition of art
of postwar Japan, held at Japanese and American museums, the publication is significant
in visually setting the tone for, and thereby reinstating the view of, art in postwar Japan as
being profoundly imprinted by the dark memory of war devastation and violence.
In this respect, Sawaragi Noi offers a strong view that the defeat in the Asia-
Pacific War troubled the conception of contemporary art and artists in Japan. His book
Nihon, gendai, bijutsu (Japan, contemporary, art) posits that understanding the narrative
of the war is essential to grasp Japanese contemporary art history or, to be precise,
ahistory. In other words, Sawaragi considers the Japanese postwar-period art as having
been unable to weave a cohesive history because of the very experience of the defeat in
war and the atomic bombs, which the nation has been never able to swallow.
38

Paradoxically, then, Sawaragi argues, the year 1945 has been inscribed as the absolute
origin of contemporary art in Japan.
The ahistorical condition of a Japanese postwar artistic avant-garde, which
Sawaragi calls “a bad place,” is further associated with the war narrative in his later
publication Sensō to Banpaku/World Wars and World Fairs. He draws a trajectory of
avant-garde art in Japan from war propaganda art to experimental and technological art
commissioned for the Japan World Exposition (popularly known as Expo 70). Here,
Sawaragi sees a parallel in the circumstances of the artists, who in both cases were
voluntarily (or involuntarily in a few instances) mobilized by these state-driven events:

36
Munroe, 26.
37
Ibid., 30.
38
Sawaragi Noi, Nihon, gendai, bijutsu [Japan, contemporary, art] (Tokyo: Shinchosha, 1998).
Introduction

15
war and Expo.
39
Together with his previous book, his claim stands out as an effort to
write a history of post-1945 art in Japan that was inescapably related to the wartime past.
This becomes the theoretical and curatorial grounds for artist Takashi Murakami’s
Superflat and its offspring, Little Boy.
40

As the foremost art critic who investigates the issues of war and atomic bombs in
art in Japan, Sawaragi’s writings are crucial for mapping out the fundamental questions
for my project, and particularly helpful for my analysis of Chim↑Pom.
41
Simultaneously,
however, his theory leans toward bracketing experimental art in Japan as culturally
specific. Thus, these books do not quite look at intercultural influences and/or trans-
cultural claims in which artists, both Japanese and non-Japanese, frequently engage via
their work about atrocities in general. This is certainly true in some of the cases that I
examine: Okamoto Tarō was educated in and deeply influenced by the intellectual
environment of interwar Paris and Mexican Muralism, and Kudō Tetsumi was an active
participant in the European art community. Furthermore, as my study suggests, an artistic,
social, and/or historical gulf existed even within Japan—whose art is often written about
as being more homogenous or from the perspective of Tokyo.
42

To a certain degree, Munroe’s curation and Sawaragi’s Nihon, gendai, bijutsu,
which started to be serialized in the contemporary art magazine Bijutsu techō in 1996,

39
Sawaragi Noi, Sensō to Banpaku/World Wars and World Fairs (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 2005).
40
Murakami Takashi ed., Superflat (Tokyo: Madra Shuppan, 2000).
41
Other major publications by Sawaragi concerning the theme include ‘Bakushinchi’ no geijutsu [The art
of ‘ground zero’] (Tokyo: Shōbun-sha, 2002) and Nihon zero-nen [Ground zero Japan](Mito: Art Tower
Mito, 1999). Other figures who had continuously concerned the relationship between war and visual art
include art critics Haryū Ichrō (1925–2010) and Segi Shin’ichi (1931–2011), the latter of whom is
discussed in depth in Chapter One of this dissertation.
42
In this regard, I support scholar Reiko Tomii’s study of radical artists in the “wilderness,” not just as
vanguard artists’ challenge to the establishment but also as defying the Tokyo-centered narrative. See
Tomii, Radicalism in the Wilderness: Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan (Cambridge, MA and
London: MIT Press, 2016).
Introduction

16
can be said to relate to the half-century anniversary of the end of the Asia-Pacific War.
Furthermore, they reflect an increasing intellectual interest in the historiography of
Japanese art.
43
It is thus understandable that they focus on the larger framework that
elucidates postwar art in Japan as a response to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, a
handful of Japanologists, such as Harry Harootunian and Marilyn Ivy, have pointed out
Japan’s peculiar situation or even desire in which sengo, or the postwar, compulsively
and interminably daunts the nation and discourse there.
44
In fact, interest in the issues of
the atomic bombs, defeat in war, and the postwar has been revived by the media, popular
discourse, and numerous scholars every ten anniversary years since the end of the war.
In addition, multiple scholars have posited the effects of the atomic bomb
experience on individual artists or artworks. The experience of the atomic bomb
catastrophe and its return to jeopardize one’s psychology and ontology are essential
themes of art historian Julia Bryan-Wilson’s careful reading of Yoko Ono’s performance
of Cut Piece (first performed in Kyoto in 1964). In this study, Bryan-Wilson points to a
similar tendency in Fluxus artists’ events. She writes, “Chance and happenstance—the
hallmark of Fluxus manifestos—lead not to liberation from reality but to an inevitable,
uncontrollable, nuclear explosion.”
45
It is Bryan-Wilson’s observation that the production
of Ono’s performance in the 1960s perfectly echoes the notion of the psychic deferral
response to trauma, which informs the period-specific reading of art, and connects that to

43
Kitazawa Noriaki’s Me no shinden [Temple of the eye] (Tokyo: Bijutsu Shuppan-sha, 1989) and Satō
Dōshin’s Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu [Meiji State and modern art] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 1999)
are some of the principal reference works written in Japanese. For the excerpted translations of these
authors’ studies, see Review of Japanese Culture and Society, eds. Bert Winther-Tamaki and Kenichi
Yoshida, vol. 24 (December 2014).
44
For example, see Marilyn Ivy’s “Trauma’s Two Times: Japanese Wars and Postwars,” positions: East
Asia Cultures Critique, 16:1 (Spring 2008): 169; and Harry Harootunian, “Japan’s Long Postwar: The
Trick of Memory and the Ruse of History,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, 99: 4 (2000): 715–739.
45
Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Remembering Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece,” Oxford Art Journal, 26: 1 (2003): 105.
Introduction

17
the vulnerability of the body, in particular the female body, under the continuing nuclear
threat ever since the two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan.
A comparable explanation has been applied to the analysis of 1960s experimental
art in Japan in Darrell Davisson’s ambitious study, Art After the Bomb: Iconographies of
Trauma in Late Modern Art.
46
Davisson points out that Japan’s 1960s Anti-Art
movement, characterized by playful but destructive and nihilistic art with banal materials
and performance, is rooted in the nation’s atomic experience rather than the political
climate of early 1960s Japan. Specifically, Davisson looks at select sculptures by Kudō
Tetsumi from the late 1950s to the early 1970s along with Kusama Yayoi’s soft sculpture,
Hijikata’s dance pieces, and Ono’s event/performance. For Davisson, the repetitive use of
deformed and dissected bodies exemplifies these artists’ voluntary return to the trauma of
the atomic bombs as an attempt to achieve mastery over it. In other words, a formal
element, the employment of body parts in sculpture as well as sick and deformed bodies,
or bodies in danger in performances, is crucial to his analysis.
47
Davisson’s thesis, as well
as that of others who have attempted to decipher postwar art in Japan from a memory and
trauma studies perspective, is that the atomic experience is pivotal and its trauma is
something meant to be overcome.
48

Art historian Bert Winther-Tamaki’s examination of yōga, or “western painting,”
also acknowledges the sociopolitical implications in oil painters’ deployment of
deformed and fragmented human figures, especially in relation to their devastating

46
Darrell D. Davisson, Art After the Bomb: Iconographies of Trauma in Late Modern Art (AuthorHouse,
2009). This is an extensive survey that includes artists beyond Japan.
47
Davisson, 183.
48
This approach is also evident in Jung Ah Woo’s parallel study of On Kawara and Yoko Ono in her
dissertation “The Postwar Art of On Kawara and Yoko Ono: As If Nothing Happened” (Ph.D. Diss.,
University of California Los Angeles, 2006).
Introduction

18
experience of war.
49
Yet Winther-Tamaki historicizes the visual modes of physical
deformity and what he identifies as “disembodiment” in late wartime and postwar
paintings as something built upon the convention of oil painting in which the depiction of
the body can be categorized into the representation of the self, sexuality, imperial
nationality, and even material substance itself. In other words, Winther-Tamaki’s study
accentuates a larger context which encompasses the introduction of “fine art” to Japan via
sensō-ga, or sensō sakuhin kirokuga, to gestural abstraction, instead of restricting the
image of physical deformity as merely a response to the atomic bombs.
Art historian Kajiya Kenji’s study of a range of visual artists, who were all active
contemporaneously with the atomic catastrophes, from the viewpoints of witness and not
witness is not to be missed. In addition to the art historical and cultural context in which
each artwork was made, Kajiya respects the artworks and the conventions of visual
analysis. In so doing, he identifies differences even among works by the same artist, and
suggests that to be a witness is not an indication of an artist’s physical “thereness” at the
atomic atrocities but the artist’s self-recognition and self-determination to be, or not to be,
a witness, such as in the case of the Marukis.
50
In turn, non-witnesses’ choice to depict
the atomic bombs, including artists such as Salvador Dalí and Yves Klein, reveals the
expansiveness in the ways the artist constructs the image and thus the possibility of
connecting the work to other contexts because of the very distance from or “dilution of
the impact of the primal scene.”
51
His analysis serves as a methodological model for my

49
Bert Winther-Tamaki, Maximum Embodiment: Yōga, the Western Painting of Japan, 1912-1955
(Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012), 23 and 129–132.
50
Kajiya Kenji, “Genbaku wo mokugeki shita gaka, shinakatta gaka: Genbaku no mokugeki to sono
shikakuteki hyōgen/Painters Who Did and Did Not Witness the Atomic Bomb: The Witnessing and
Representation of the Atomic Bomb,” Genbaku bungaku kenkyū/Journal of Genbaku Literature, no. 9
(2010): 70.
51
Ibid., 82–83.
Introduction

19
study, which investigates how the atomic devastation and its aftereffects operate as the
productive force for creative and intellectual challenges.
Since 3.11, revisiting the chronology of nuclear disasters in Japan has been an
ethically, politically, and historically pressing issue for artists, art historians, curators, and
cultural institutions as well.
52
This made the year 2015, the seventieth anniversary of the
end of the war, more prominent than previous ones. Among the burgeoning publications,
again mostly about popular culture if concerning the visuals,
53
a modest but noteworthy
book is Hikaku geijutsu an’nai (Guide to non-nuclear art) by Okamura Yukinori, curator
of the Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels.
54
Historian John W. Dower, who also
writes frequently about the twentieth-century visual culture of Japan, explains that there
are three broad categories of visual art that have been derived from Hiroshima and
Nagasaki: “illustrations for young people; the drawings and paintings of survivors; and
the fine art of professional artists.”
55
Okamura’s booklet surveys all of these categories,
in addition to manga and even popular songs. Yet the book’s strength lies in the third

52
In his editor’s note for Japan’s major contemporary art magazine Bijutsu techō’s summer 2015 issue
about “Painters and War,” Iwabuchi Teiya mentioned the booming number of art exhibitions that revisited
art and war in summer 2015 alone, a tally which is much bigger than that in 2005. He explained that it is
unrelated to the Japanese government’s inclination toward neo-nationalism (Iwabuchi Teiya, “Editor’s
Note,” Bijutsu techō [Art notebook], no. 1026 [September 2015]: 9). I should note, however, that in the
immediate aftermath of 3.11, the exhibition Genbaku wo miru 1945–1970 [Visualize the Atomic Bombs
1945–1970] that gathered paintings, photographs, manga, and magazines, scheduled to open in April 2011,
was postponed and eventually cancelled (“Genbaku-ten munen no kaisai dan’nen” [The atomic bomb
exhibition, disappointingly cancelled], Asahi Shimbun [Asahi newspaper], evening edition, May 2, 2012, 3).
53
There are Yoshimi Shun’ya’s Yume no genshiryoku/Atoms for Dream (Tokyo: Chikuma shinsho, 2012)
and Yamamoto Akihiro’s Kaku to Nihon jin: Hiroshima, Fukushima, Gojira [Nukes and the Japanese:
Hiroshima, Godzilla, Fukushima] (Tokyo: Chūkō shinsho, 2015) to list a few.
54
Okamura Yukinori, Hikaku geijutsu an’nai: Kaku wa dō egakaretekitaka [Guide to non-nuclear art: How
nukes have been visualized], Iwanami Booklet no. 887 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2013).
55
John W. Dower, “War, Peace, and Beauty,” Hiroshima Murals: The Art of Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki.
eds. Dower and John Junkerman (Tokyo and New York: Kodansha International Ltd., 1985), 9–10. Dower
also plays the major role in introducing pictorial documentation by the atomic bomb survivors to an
English-speaking audience. For example, he manages MIT’s Visualizing Cultures project about this
subject: Ground Zero 1945: Pictures by Atomic Bomb Survivors, accessed January 26, 2016,
http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/groundzero1945/gz_essay01.html; see also Zuroku genbaku no e—
Hiroshima wo tsutaeru/A-bomb drawings by survivors, ed. Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum (Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 2007).
Introduction

20
category, spanning from David Alfalo Siqueiros’s 1936 painting to Arai Takashi’s 2011
daguerreotype of a lily in Fukushima. The term “non-nuclear art,” as opposed to “anti-
nuclear art,” suggests Okamura’s post-Fukushima point of view: the impossibility of the
coexistence of humans and nukes, whether destructive weapons or productive energy.
56

At the same time, this approach tends to overlook the particularities of each artwork,
including historical, political, and/or cultural contexts, and some examples that he
introduces do not easily comply with the no-nuke claim.
Finally, I want to close my digest of the state of the field by stressing what literary
critic Hanada Kiyoteru discussed back in 1955. In his article “Genshi jidai no geijutsu”
(Art in the atomic age), Hanada critiques the manner in which the majority of paintings
and especially literature, which is the main subject of the essay, about the atomic bombs
in Japan had been created based on pre-determined values—a moral sense, humanism,
and/or traditions of animism and Buddhist nihilism.
57
In his view, such artistic
productions are far from avant-garde. The aim of the text is to turn people’s attention to
something that transcends the established notion of documentary art, the category of art
highly debated along with Realism and Reportage in the 1950s. This claim relates
directly to my discussion of the Records of the Japanese exhibition, the focus of Chapter
One. It also explains why my study concerns experimental or avant-garde visual art,
which includes illustrations, designs, ephemeral art and performance in addition to
painting, sculpture, and photography. These artworks challenge predetermined,
irresistible, overarching views about the atomic bombs and instead carry complexities,

56
Okamura, 61–62.
57
Hanada Kiyoteru, “Genshi jidai no Geijutsu” [Art of the atomic age] (1955), reprinted in Hanada
Kiyoteru zenshū [The complete works of Hanada Kiyoteru], vol. 5 (Tokyo: Kodan-sha, 1977), 265–278.
Introduction

21
including inconsistencies, contradictions, and ambiguities in the artists’ responses to the
atomic bomb annihilations.

Visuals in the Aftermath
Before outlining my study, it will be beneficial to demarcate certain incidents,
dates, and terms that recur across chapters. The uranium gun-type bomb nicknamed
“Little Boy” exploded at 600 meters above Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, instantly
extinguishing between 70,000 and 80,000 lives.
58
Three days later, the plutonium
implosion-type bomb “Fat Man” took another 7,000 lives in Nagasaki. Although the
exact number is not known, over 210,000 people in total are estimated to have perished
by the end of 1945.
59

The choice of Hiroshima as the target of the first nuclear weapon used in actual
war was a strategic one, as opposed to the more spontaneous selection of Nagasaki due to
the weather.
60
Hiroshima is about 675 kilometers (420 miles) away from Tokyo but has
been one of the country’s key modern military operation sites since the Sino-Japan War

58
For a chronicle of the atomic bombs, especially how they were reported, see Hiroshima wa dō
kirokusaretaka: NHK to Chūgoku Shimbun no Genbaku hōdō [How was Hiroshima documented?:
Reporting of the A-bombing by NHK and The Chugoku Shimbun] (Tokyo: NHK Shuppan, 2003); and
Odagiri Hideo ed., Shinbun shiryō: Genbaku, vol. 1 [Newspaper materials: The atomic bombs] (Tokyo:
Nihon Tosho Centā, 1987).
59
The official numbers of the deceased victims listed on the atomic bomb cenotaphs in the two cities by
2015 are: 297,684 in Hiroshima (as of August 6, 2015) and 168,797 in Nagasaki (as of August 9, 2015).
Moreover, the 219,410 atomic bomb survivors have been registered as still suffering from various health
complications, based on the registry approved by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare (as of March
2011). In addition, there are 4,280 registered survivors living outside Japan (as of March 2015). The
majority are Japanese, with a considerable number of people from Japan’s former colonies, especially
Korea, China, and Taiwan as well as Southeast Asia. Accessed January 14, 2016,
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/bunya/kenkou/genbaku09/01.html;
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryou/kenkou/genbaku/genbaku09/16.html.
60
Hiroshima was one of the top two candidate cities along with Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital and
“intellectual center.” Other candidates were Yokohama, Kure, and Kokura, the last of which was the
second bomb’s intended target (Memorandum from Major J. A. Derry and Dr. N.F. Ramsey to General L.R.
Groves, “Summary of Target Committee Meetings on 10 and 11 May 1945,” May 12, 1945, Top Secret,
The National Security Archive at The George Washington University [The Atomic Bomb and the End of
World War II: RG 77, MED Records, Top Secret Documents, File no. 5d.]).
Introduction

22
(1894). Thus, the atomic attack on the city also took the lives of American POWs and a
considerable number of those relocated from Japan’s colonies, especially tens of
thousands of Koreans.
61
Most importantly, the city had not been a target of an air raid and
its geography, being surrounded by mountains, was thought to be best suited to maximize
the bomb’s blast and to measure the bomb’s destructive impact.
62
The considerable
distance from Tokyo was also of significance. Maintaining the country’s administrative
center would make the occupation process smoother, while allowing the media to report
America’s technological and weaponry innovation to the world.
Since then, the city of Hiroshima has been transformed into an iconic global peace
city, which, as historian Lisa Yoneyama suggests, simultaneously has served to conceal
Japan’s own aggression.
63
In other words, Hiroshima, as well as Nagasaki, has become
symbolized, fixated upon, and bracketed as such, as epitomized by the often-referred to
atomic bomb images of watches frozen at the time of the explosions (Fig. I.5). The artist
collective Chim↑Pom, the focus of my fourth chapter, has pointed out the exceptional
quality, and even sacredness, of the bombed cities and their relationship to art. They note:
Despite the fact that the atomic bombs were one of the biggest issues in Japan’s
contemporary history, the reason that “genbaku geijutsu” (atomic bomb art)
doesn’t shine at all in the history of Japanese art is that there is a sense of despair
over ‘the impossibility of representing issues of the atomic bombs;’ but it is also
true that they have been untouchable.
64

A few photographs of the devastation, such as those of Nagasaki in ruins taken by
military photographer Yamahata Yōsuke on the day following the atomic attack, made it

61
For a discussion of Korean hibakusha and the controversy over their memorial, see Lisa Yoneyama,
“Memory Matters: Hiroshima’s Korean Atom Bomb Memorial and the Politics of Ethnicity,” Public
Culture, 7: 3 (1995): 499–527.
62
Ibid., 4 .
63
Lisa Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space and the Dialectics of Memory (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California, 1999).
64
Chim↑Pom, Geijutsu jikkōhan [Art perpetrators] (Tokyo: Asahi Shuppan-sha, 2012), 59.
Introduction

23
to the press.
65
However, these images and news reports were soon suppressed. While the
Allied Occupation introduced the concepts of a free society, political democracy, and
liberal culture, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Occupation (SCAP) enforced a
Press Code as early as September 19, 1945. The Code regulated the mass media,
scholarly publications, literature, and the visual arts, prohibiting them from saying
anything unfavorable about the presence of the Allies and, especially, about the human
casualties of the atomic bombs, even for medical or scientific purposes.
66
This forced
survivors to suffer in a double or triple sense, as they had to endure political, social, and
medical shunning.
67
Not being able to share their dreadful experience and grief, the
survivors were discriminated against, and even developed a sense of guilt.
68
Therefore, as
much as the actual distance, there was a social and psychological gap between the
bombed cities, including hibakusha, and the rest of the nation. This condition foregrounds
some of my arguments, especially in the first and fourth chapters.

65
Although the article was about Hiroshima, the accompanying photograph by Yamahata was of Nagasaki
(“Hiroshima ni toritsuita akuryō” [Evil spirit possessed Hiroshima], Asahi Shimbun [Asahi newspaper]
August 25, 1945, 2).
66
As opposed to the wartime Imperial government’s censorship, which left a visual mark when
objectionable words were physically crossed out, the SCAP demanded a complete rewrite and thus the
reader or viewer would not know about the act of censorship. However, even before the Code was put into
effect, members of the Japanese press were “advised” by Japanese military officials not to use the term
“atomic bomb,” but rather to refer to “a new type of weapon/bomb” (Yukuo Sasamoto, “Reporting on the
Atomic Bomb and the Press Code” in A Social History of Science and Technology in Contemporary Japan
Vol. 1: The Occupation Period, 1945-1952 [Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press, 2001], 438–439).
67
John W. Dower. “The Bombed: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Memory” in Michael J. Hogan ed.,
Hiroshima in History and Memory (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 124–
134. For further discussion of the Occupation period and its influence over cultural productions, see another
study by Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton & Co.,
1999).
68
While news reports on the atomic bombs were still regulated, survivors came to discuss their experiences
around 1948 after the Tokyo War Crimes Trial. Excellent examples of such accounts are by Nagai Takashi,
a medical doctor who specialized in radiology, and an atomic bomb survivor himself; his first two books, in
1948 and 1949, became national bestsellers. However, as Yamamoto Akihiro has pointed out, Nagai
viewed the atomic bombs as repercussions for Japan’s barbarous actions during the war and as a Christian,
he considered the atomic bomb victims as offerings to God for bringing peace. Because of this particular
framing, Yamamoto suggests, Nagai’s books were not regulated under the Press Code (Kaku to nihonjin, 4).
Introduction

24
Under such circumstances, the Marukis’ artistic activity was striking. The artists
are best known for their grand painting series Hiroshima Panels (1950–1982), which
depicts the bomb’s damage to civilians, in particular women and children, as well as
themes beyond Hiroshima and Nagasaki (Fig. I.6).
69
Exactly when the Marukis arrived in
Hiroshima is not clearly known,
70
but Kozawa Setsuko, the foremost researcher of the
Marukis’ work, stresses that their work was grounded upon their not-thereness at the time
of the atomic detonation.
71
Around the time the artists embarked on a national tour of the
set of the first three paintings from the series in 1950,
72
they also produced Pikadon (Fig.
I.7). Although it was quickly produced and printed on inexpensive, coarse paper—
reflecting the country’s shortage of materials in the aftermath of war—it was published
with much attention. The front and back covers’ use of pale salmon pink is reminiscent of
the cherry blossom, Japan’s most cherished flower for its transient beauty. Moreover, it
suggests the color of flesh. Framed as a story told by Iri’s hibakusha mother, Suma,
Pikadon consists of line drawings and short, colloquial text. The book is thus

69
The Marukis have painted multi-national victims such as American POWs and Koreans as part of
Hiroshima Panels and, outside the series, they also worked on paintings about the battles of Okinawa and
Nanjing, and the horror of Auschwitz, for example.
70
The common understanding is that husband and sumi ink painter Iri left Tokyo a few days after the
disaster for his hometown to help his family members, whereas wife and oil painter Toshi(ko) joined Iri
about a week later.
71
Kozawa Setsuko, ‘Genbaku no zu’: Egakareta ‘kioku,’ katarareta ‘kaiga’ [Hiroshima Panels: Painted
‘memories,’ storied ‘paintings’] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002), 59–62. In English, John W. Dower has
been a passionate introducer of the Marukis to the West. For a more recent study, Charlotte Eubanks
approaches the artwork as a performance, comparing it with Buddhist rituals (“The Mirror of Memory:
Constructions of Hell in the Marukis’ Nuclear Murals,” PMLA, 124: 5 [October 2009]: 1614–1631).
72
The work was shown for the first time at the third annual Japan Independent exhibigtion in 1950. After
that, Genbaku bijutsu ten/Atomic Bomb Art Exhibigtion reached more than 170 locations in total and
eventually went overseas, including Europe, the Soviet Union, and the People’s Republic of China.
Concerning the exhibition, see art critic Yoshida Yoshie, who was one of the original exhibition organizers,
and his insider’s account: Maruki Iri Toshi no jikū: Kaiga to shite no Genbaku no zu [Space and time of
Maruki Iri and Toshi: Hiroshima Panels as painting] (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 1996), 155–164. See also
Okamura Yukinori, Genbaku no zu zenkoku junkai—Senryō ka hyakuman’nin ga mita! [Hiroshima Panels’
national tour—A million people saw them in Occupied Japan](Tokyo: Shuinjuku Shobo, 2015); and
Kozawa, 148–150.
Introduction

25
approachable for children but also intended for those who might not be able to read.
73

Moreover, because of its vernacular quality, it reveals the bomb’s human cause as well as
the immediacy of what the survivors experienced, as also suggested by the title Pikadon,
a colloquial name of the atomic bomb rather than the more official name, genshi bakudan
or genbaku.
74

Nevertheless, Pikadon was soon confiscated and the Marukis’ original drawings
for the book came under the SCAP’s custody.
75
The Press Code was lifted in April 1952,
along with the termination of the Allied Occupation with the enactment of the Treaty of
Peace with Japan. However, signing the new U.S.-Japan Security Treaty (popularly
referred to by its Japanese acronym, Anpo) in fact reinforced the alliance of Japan and the
United States. It was only after then that extensive images of the atomic bombs became
readily available to the public. For example, the popular pictorial magazine Asahi
gurafu/The Asahi Picture News dedicated its August 6th, 1952 issue, the 7
th
anniversary
of Hiroshima, to the “first public showing of [photographs of] the atomic bomb
devastation” as stated on the cover—although this was not precisely true (Fig. 1.8).
76
The
issue became extremely popular; with four editions published, circulation reached as

73
Pikadon was published by the small publishing company Potsdamu Shoten, whose name was taken from
the Potsdam Declaration (July 26, 1945) that called for Japan’s surrender or otherwise promised to bring
utter destruction to the country. The publisher was known to be influenced by the political and
enlightenment print movement in early twentieth-century China. Consequently, Pikadon, its format, style,
and devotion to a clear political and social aim, followed the tradition of that particular print movement in
China (Kami Shōichirō, referred in Kozawa, 109).
74
In addition, the book repeats, in Suma’s words, “Pika does not just fall if people don’t drop it,” which
became widely known: first on the verso of the cover and then on the second-to-last page (Maruki, Pikadon,
unpaginated).
75
The reason for censorship was also that the Marukis belonged to the Japan Communist Party. The
whereabouts of the original drawings is still unknown. Select images have been reproduced in Ōe’s
Hiroshima Notes (1965).
76
Examples are the picture book Living Hiroshima and the illustrated book Hiroshima (both 1949). For a
discussion of photographs of Hiroshima made during the Occupation period, including these publications,
see Bakushinchi no shashin 1945–1951.
Introduction

26
many as 700,000 copies.
77
The decade after 1952 therefore saw artistic productions
inspired by these newly available materials.
78

In addition, by the early 1950s, anxiety about a potential Third World War had
become palpable in Japan: President Truman’s threat to use nuclear weapons in the
Korean conflict in November 1950 further inflamed global fears. On March 1, 1954, the
United States’ hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific Ocean caused the
acute irradiation of Japanese fishermen and ended up killing one, even though they were
outside the announced danger zone.
79
This incident, nicknamed Lucky Dragon No. 5 after
the fishing vessel, also led to radioactive contamination of the ocean and seafood, which
triggered the first major public opposition to the United States and its nuclear weapons
policy.
80
It was only then that the earlier atomic catastrophe became part of the nation’s
consciousness.
81
In order to consolidate public opinion and to appeal to the international
community, a group of housewives in Tokyo’s Suginami Ward launched a petition
movement to ban nuclear weapons and tests. From this grassroots movement,
Gensuibaku Kinshi Nihon Kyōgikai/the Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen
Bombs (known by its Japanese acronym, Gensuikyō) was founded and had its first

77
Another notable production that received both domestic and international attention was the film Children
of Hiroshima (directed by Shindō Kaneto) in 1952.
78
In this respect, the situation cannot necessarily be described as a trauma deferral response to the atomic
catastrophe because it was the first opportunity for the majority of Japanese to actually see or hear images
and stories of and understand the catastrophe. Marianne Hirsch has analyzed how these images and stories
could imprint or induce trauma in second- and third-generation Holocaust survivors, as if of their own
experience, which she called “postmemory” (Marianne Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory: Writing
and Visual Culture after the Holocaust [New York: Columbia University Press, 2012]). For a discussion of
postmemory in the context of Japanese contemporary art and the atomic bombs, see Beyond Hiroshima.
79
Richard G. Hewlett, Atoms for Peace and War 1953–1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy
Commission (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1989), 172–179.
80
Lawrence S. Wittner, Confronting the Bomb: A Short History of the World Nuclear Disarmament
Movement (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009), 9–11 and 52–58.
81
Yamamoto Akihiro, Kaku enerugī gensetsu no sengoshi 1945–1960: ‘Hibaku no kioku’ to ‘genshiryoku
no yume’ [Postwar history of nuclear energy discourse 1945–1960: ‘Memory of the atomic bomb’ and
‘dream of nuclear power’] (Tokyo: Jinbun shoin, 2012), 115–151; and Yoshimi, 121–194.
Introduction

27
international conference in 1955 at the newly opened Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Museum, designed by renowned architect Tange Kenzō (1913–2005).
82
These peace and
anti-nuclear weapons movements were one of the major driving forces for the 1959 art
exhibition in Hiroshima as well as for Okamoto Tarō.
Ironically, however, the rise of the anti-atomic weapons movement and public
awareness of the atomic atrocities also brought with it a completely opposite result:
celebratory welcome of nuclear energy. Dower explains that this unexpected turnaround
happened partly because Japan thought that its defeat in the Asia-Pacific War was due to
a lack of scientific and technological progress, and thus the country tried to strengthen
these areas in the postwar period.
83
However, this radical change in attitude toward the
peaceful use of nuclear power was also the result of well-orchestrated media and cultural
campaigns.
84
An exemplary case was the 1956 Atoms for Peace exhibition held ironically
at the same site where the Gensuikyō organized the anti-nuclear conference just a year
earlier (Fig. I.9). The exhibition was held at ten different venues throughout Japan. In
Hiroshima, in order to hold the exhibition at the Peace Memorial Museum, the atomic
bomb relics in the museum’s collection had been temporarily removed. The exhibition
was essential in presenting nuclear power as a positive and necessary energy source for
progress and to overcome the Japanese “nuclear allergy,” particularly after the Lucky

82
For its meaning in the postwar narrative in Japan, see Hyunjung Cho’s “War Narratives in Postwar
Japanese Architecture 1945–1970” (Ph.D. Diss., The University of Southern California, 2011), 41–49.
83
Dower, “The bombed,” 121–123. Susan Lindee, a historian and sociologist of science, also explains that
the Japanese welcomed science as a sign of American democracy (M. Susan Lindee, “The Repatriation of
Atomic Bomb Victim Body Parts to Japan: Natural Objects and Diplomacy,” Osiris, 2nd Series, vol. 13,
Beyond Joseph Needham: Science, Technology, and Medicine in East and Southeast Asia [1998]: 379).
84
The central figures were Shōriki Matsutarō, Japanese media king and later the first Agency Head for
Science and Technology (1956), and conservative politician Nakasone Yasuhiro in collaboration with the
United States, which was trying to gain global political power under the guise of what President
Eisenhower called “Atoms for Peace” in a speech by that title (1953). For further discussion of the history
of nuclear development in Japan, see Yamazaki Masakatsu’s Nihon no kaku kaihatsu 1939-1955: Genbaku
kara genshiryoku e [Japan’s nuclear development 1939–1955: From atomic bomb to atomic energy]
(Tokyo: Sekibundō Shuppan, 2011).
Introduction

28
Dragon No. 5 incident. For that very purpose, Hiroshima was symbolically selected as the
site for domesticating and repackaging atomic energy.
85
Sponsored by Hiroshima
University and Hiroshima’s leading newspaper Chugoku Shimbun as well as the city and
the prefecture, the exhibition was an enormous success, and a number of atomic bomb
survivors’ organizations supported the civil use of nuclear power. The nation’s first
nuclear research reactor started operation in Tōkaimura of Ibaraki Prefecture in 1957,
which paved the way for the country’s increasing dependence on nuclear energy. This
was in truth a nessesary step for developing nuclear arms, should they be permitted and
needed in the future. This eventually led to the Fukushima nuclear crisis. The ambiguous
or contradictory relationship with nuclear technology, and the popular discourse praising
this new and “clean” energy, foreshadows the cultural milieu from which emerged the
protagonists of my second and third chapters, Okamoto Tarō and especially Kudō
Tetsumi.

Chapter Summaries
Each chapter indicates distinct approachdx and categories of art used to visualize
the atomic bombs: art exhibition, public mural, assemblage and performance art, and
ephemeral and guerrilla art. Moreover, the four case studies mark the trajectory of
postwar art in Japan in the decades following the atomic bombs: from Realism and
documentary art to the dilemma over the political, documentary style versus avant-garde
art, from Anti-Art and performance-based art that speaks to “international

85
Ran Zwigenberg, “The Coming of a Second Sun: The 1956 Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima and
Japan’s Embrace of Nuclear Power,” The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol. 10, issue 6, no. 1
(February 6, 2012), accessed April 3, 2013, http://japanfocus.org/-Ran-Zwigenberg/3685. See also
Gensuiryoku heiwa riyō no shiori/Atoms for the Peace exhibition brochure (Tokyo: United States
Information Agency, 1955) and Yoshimi, Yume no genshiryoku, 121–194.
Introduction

29
contemporaneity” to site-specific and hip guerrilla art also accepted in the global art
scene.
Chapter One, “Documentary: The Atomic Bombs, Documentary Art, and Records
of the Japanese” complicates the ideas of documentation and documentary art by
exploring the 1959 exhibition Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese in Hiroshima.
The exhibition gathered more than a hundred paintings, photographs, prints, sculptures,
and posters by both established and emerging artists. Through interviews and several
extant documents, the chapter reconstructs this large but almost forgotten art exhibition
organized by Gensuikyō, including its agenda, key works, and location in art history.
While historicizing the exhibition, the chapter suggests possible reasons for its failure. I
argue that the exhibition could otherwise have contributed immensely to the discourse of
visual representations of the man-made disaster as well as the conception of documentary
art, which was a highly debated category of art and methodology in the 1950s. In so
doing, the chapter also dissects the facile association of art about the atomic bombs with
documentation or clear-cut description of the catastrophe, while serving as a critical
introduction to a wide range of artistic representations of the man-made catastrophes.
If the Records of the Japanese exhibition was not entirely forgotten, this was
arguably due to Okamoto Tarō’s (1911–1996) participation, even though the exhibition is
often eliminated from his biography. Chapter Two, “Explosion: Okamoto Tarō and
Challenge to the Poof in the Sky” centers on Asu no shinwa/Myth of Tomorrow (1968–
1969), a defunct mural project in Mexico City by Okamoto, who was one of the key
avant-garde artists and theorists in Japan in the late 1940s and 1950s. I illuminate how
Okamoto tactically deploys the iconic visual rhetoric of the atomic bombs—such as a
Introduction

30
mushroom cloud and explosion—so as to destabilize the historical narrative of the atomic
bomb disaster built upon the iconic images. His monumental mural recuperates the voice
of the voiceless and connects the devastating event back to its anonymous victims. Here,
the mural’s original venue of Mexico and in particular the practice of Mexican Muralism
are crucial for this reading, as are Okamoto’s intellectual roots in 1930s Paris. With the
mural, Okamoto also defied the cartographic history of the atomic bombs, altering it from
one exclusive to Japan to something that entails all humans. Okamoto was vocal about
his interest in the masses and his political stance, including his opposition to war and
nuclear weapons. Yet he was also not shy about celebrating the aesthetic splendor of the
atomic bombs and, perhaps passively, supported nuclear energy. However, such
ambiguities are less recognized, especially with the recent boom in attention to the late
artist and the mural becoming an emblem of post-Fukushima Japan.
In this respect, the art of Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990) more openly dwells on the
idea of nuclear technology as something innovative and dynamic. Chapter Three,
“Metamorphosis: Kudō Tetsumi, Toward Archive and Transformation” investigates the
ways in which the artist represents radioactivity and pollution and their environmental
effects. Kudō, whose work represented experimental art in early 1960s Japan, did not
simply criticize the atomic bombs, even though he acknowledged their immediate
damage and lingering consequences. Instead, the artist tried to internalize the devastation.
As an active participant in major avant-garde art movements in Germany, the
Netherlands, and especially France, the artist was aware of his European audiences’
stereotypical labeling of his art as arising from the trauma of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Simultaneously, however, as someone immersed in popular science, new technology, and
Introduction

31
bioscience, he could not ignore, even found astounding, innovations and transformations,
if not developments, that the new technology had made and could offer. Despite how
grotesque his art of dismembered and transfiguring body parts might look, Kudō’s
adherence to the idea of metamorphosis is a way not only to visualize invisible toxins but
also to transform the destructive force of the atomic bombs into an energetic, productive
one. In so doing, the artist also undoes the accepted narrative of the atomic bombs.
While the aforementioned chapters center on historical examples, Chapter Four,
“Site-Specificity: Chim↑Pom, Art of Site and Memory of Site” looks at recent artwork, a
guerrilla art project by the Tokyo-based artist collective Chim↑Pom. In a sense,
Chim↑Pom’s work is built upon Okamoto’s social commentary—indeed, Chim↑Pom
literally “collaborated” with Okamoto by adding a painted panel to his mural—and
Kūdo’s optimism and his shock-inducing visuals and performances about radioactivity
and survival. This chapter underscores the clash of the site-specificities, between site-
specific memory and site-specific art concerning the atomic bomb adversity, by exploring
the controversy over Chim↑Pom’s skywriting in Hiroshima (2008). For that purpose, I
refer heavily to reception of the work—public discourse and the type of language used in
the controversy, which synthesized the issues of morality, public art and spectatorship,
including who narrates what, and how and to whom the visualization of a catastrophic
event is presented. Chim↑Pom’s art, together with the controversy surrounding it, poses
complex yet unavoidable questions when we face the atomic bomb disasters, their history
and memories. I argue that the artwork produces a discursive site which intervenes in
Hiroshima and renders it as something fluid and transient, liberated from the actual time
and space of the 1945 disaster.
Introduction

32
The case studies that I analyze present a wide-range of artworks and varied
approaches that challenge the unified narratives of the atomic disasters and their impact
on its visual representation. The epilogue, “Pilgrimage, or Walking from Hiroshima, via
Fukushima, to …” considers the notion of pilgrimage out from and to ground zero—the
act of getting close to and walking around ground zero or the heart of the issue—as a
process of healing and understanding the atomic bombs and their aftereffects. The
emphasis here is on the process rather than on producing a tactile object or a solid
conclusion. Additionally, I intend to situate my dissertation as a pilgrimage—a walk-
through of critical junctures including documentary, explosion, metamorphosis, and site-
specificity—in the discussion of art and the aftereffects of the atomic bombs. In this way,
rather than a solid and singular conclusion, my project embraces the complexities,
confusions, and contradictions we encounter and the flexibility when we face such
unimaginable and unrepresentable events.

33
CHAPTER ONE

Documentary:
The Atomic Bombs, Documentary Art, and Records of the Japanese

Every summer on August 6th since two years after the atomic bomb scorched the
city and its people, Hiroshima has hosted the Peace Memorial Ceremony. In 1959, the
city also welcomed the Fifth World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs
and the accompanying Peace March, a relay of fifty-six-day-long demonstration walks
from various parts of Japan. Among this bustling activity, an art exhibition opened its
doors at the new Asahi Kaikan hall in the center of the city, not far from the Peace
Memorial Park where the conference was about to take place. A group of school children
waiting outside rushed into the gallery space. The public followed. “The exhibition gains
popularity,” reported Asahi Shimbun’s Hiroshima edition, which included a small
photograph of visitors looking at an abstract sculpture, paintings, and photographs on the
wall (Fig. 1.1).
1
However, the exhibition was soon forgotten and remains
unacknowledged even by the majority of the participants.
This chapter investigates the entwined ideas of documentation and documentary
art as a critical category of art, and their relationship to the atomic bomb devastation,
primarily by examining a large-scale but nearly forgotten art exhibition in Hiroshima.
Entitled Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese: Art Exhibition in Commemoration
of the Fifth World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs (hereafter, Records
of the Japanese), the exhibition was held from August 1 to 7 (Fig. 1.2). It was a rare

1
“Ninki wo atsumeru kinenbi-ten” [Commemorative art exhibition gaining popularity], Asahi Shimbun
[Asahi newspaper], Hiroshima edition, August 2, 1959, 12.
Chapter One
34
occurence, the first and last art show organized by the Japan Council Against Atomic and
Hydrogen Bombs (known by the Japanese acronym, Gensuikyō) with the support of art
critic Segi Shin’ichi and photo critic Shigemori Kōen, who were both prominent figures
in bridging art and politics at the time.
2
The civic organization, which also planned the
conference and the Peach March, noted that the Records of the Japanese exhibition was
the first attempt to gather artworks that illuminated the nuclear catastrophe and the
current state of the bombed cities, atomic bomb survivors, and the nation.
The foundation of Gensuikyō was in direct response to the Lucky Dragon No. 5
incident on March 1, 1954. Named after a Japanese fishing vessel, the incident involved
acute irradiation of the crews on board even though the vessel was outside the announced
danger zone of the United States’ thermonuclear bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the South
Pacific. The incident famously triggered a massive petition to ban nuclear weapons,
initiated by a group of housewives who feared seafood contamination, which led to the
launch of Gensuikyō and the World Conference in the following year.
3
The Records of
the Japanese exhibition was therefore necessary to set forth a palpable message through
artworks by professional artists and designers for the general public as well as national
and international activists who were visiting Hiroshima. Although unverified, the project
gathered sixty-eight artists, ranging from well-known figures such as Maruki Iri and

2
Records of the Japanese, exhibition poster/brochure (1959), partially reprinted in black and white in
Kobayashi Tōru ed., Gensuibaku kinshi undō shiryōshū, vol. 6 (1959) [Documents of the
Movement Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, vol. 6] (Tokyo: Ryokuin Shobō, 1996), 322.
Although the poster/brochure states that the exhibition was organized by the Asahi Shimbun
Company and supported by Gensuikyō, the art event was essentially Gensuikyō’s production
with the support of Asahi Newspaper Company’s Hiroshima Branch. In addition, Fuji Film Co. provided
material and technical support.
3
See also the Introduction of this dissertation for further readings on the incident.
Chapter One
35
Maruki Toshi,
4
Okamoto Tarō, print artist Munakata Shikō, and photographer Domon
Ken to then-emerging artists like Nakamura Hiroshi, Tōmatsu Shōmei, and Kawada
Kikuji.
5
Furthermore, the exhibition displayed posters by more than a dozen graphic
designers, both young and established. Even a cursory examination shows that the art
exhibition juxtaposed those who had been active during the war period with the younger
generation. The fact that a great number of objects by this large, diverse group of
participants were gathered in Hiroshima would have required a substantial commitment,
both financial and intellectual, not to mention the artists’ cooperation. Nonetheless, the
exhibition was hardly discussed or mentioned in art journals of the time, and received no
reviews in national papers. Even contributing artists rarely listed the exhibition in their
biographies. However, contemporaneous indifference to the exhibition and its resulting
erasure from history make it worthy of investigation. An analysis of an exhibition could
illuminate the issues with visual representations of the atomic bombs, art’s relationship to
politics and activism, and even the distance between Tokyo, the center of Japanese
culture and politics, and the peripheral city of Hiroshima.

4
In 1956 Maruki Toshiko changed her first name to Toshi, which blurred gender by name. See also the
Introduction about the Marukis and their collaborative project. However, the Records of the Japanese
exhibition brochure still listed her old name.
5
Gensuibaku kinshi undō shiryōshū, 324–325. In addition to the above-listed, the complete list
of the participants is: painters—Akatsuka Tōru, Asakura Setsu, Abe Nobuya, Inoue Chōzaburō,
Uchida Iwao, Okamoto Hiroshi, Kikuchi Yōnosuke, Satō Chūryō (listed as Tadayoshi),
Takayanagi Hiroya, Taketani Fujio, Tsuchiya Yukio, Tsuruoka Masao, Nakatani Yasushi (also
known as Tai), Nishi Tsuneo, Mida Genjirō, Mori Yoshio, Yamaguchi Kaoru, Yokoyama Misao,
Yoshii Tadashi, and Watanabe Gaku; print artists—Ueno Makoto and Shinkai Sumio;
sculptors—Irie Hiro, Oka Hiroshi, Satō (who also submitted a painted work), Hongō Shin, and
Mōri Bushirō; photographers—Ishii Akira, Uea Masaharu, Kitazawa Hiroshi, Kimura Ihei, Saeki
Yoshikatsu, Sonobe Kiyoshi, Tanuma Takeyoshi, Tamura Shigeru, Nakamura Masaya, Nakamura
Yoshinobu, (listed as Kazutaka) Ikkō, Nomura Masahiro, Hamaya Yutaka, Hayashi Tadahiko,
Harada Tadashi, Higuchi Susumu, Fujikawa Kisyoshi, Hutamura Jirō, Miki Jun, and Watabe
Yūkichi;graphic designers—Awazu Kiyoshi, Sugiura Kōhei, Itabashi Yoshio, Itō Kenji, Iwamoto
Morihiko, Kamekura Yūsaku, Kusuhara Giichi, Kōno Takashi, Takahashi Kinkichi, Hirohashi
Keiko, Hosoya Iwao, Miyanaga Takehiko, and Yamashiro Ryūichi.
Chapter One
36
In order to do so, I first reconstruct this significant art event, how the exhibition
came to be and its aim and content, especially through interviews and several extant
documentation photographs. Ironically, there is no substantial published material or
documentation of this exhibition about “records.” Rather than describing the entire
collection of objects in the exhibition, I look at the exhibition organization and locate key
objects in each of the categories of display. Subsequently, I historicize the exhibition in
the context of art history. Records of the Japanese took the conception of
“documentation,” “record,” and “documentary art” as its central subject, and not merely
the atomic bombs per se. This reflects the major discursive debate in 1950s Japanese art
circles, where documentary art, Reportage, and Realism were thriving and
enthusiastically debated across the mediums of painting, film, literature, and photography.
Finally, I propose possible reasons for the erasure of the exhibition in the historiography
of Japanese art and reframe its significance.

Gensuikyō and its Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu
Before discussing the content of the Records of the Japanese exhibition, it would
be helpful to introduce the sociocultural milieu at the time, and how a new division
developed within Gensuikyō conceptualized the exhibition. In the late 1940s and early
1950s a number of socially conscious art collectives and exhibitions were springing up.
6

The 1947 launch of the annual Japan Independent exhibition, which became the locus of

6
For a general history of art around this period, see, for example, Nagoya City Museum ed., Sengo Nihon
no realizumu 1945–1960/Realism in Postwar Japan 1945–1960 (Nagoya: Sengo Nihon no riarizumu-gen
jikkō iinkai, 1998); and Segi Shin’ichi’s recollection about art in the period followed the end of Asia
Pacific War, Sengo kūhakuki no bijutsu/The Vacuums in the Post-war Art of Japan (Tokyo: Shichō-sha,
1996). Concerning art collectives, see Ken Yoshida, “In Focus: Artists’ Groups and Collectives in Postwar
Japan,” in From Postwar to Postmodern: Art in Japan 1945–1989, Primary Documents, eds. Doryun
Chong et al. (New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2012), 39–40.
Chapter One
37
political art, was one primary example. In contrast, the Yomiuri Independent exhibition
that opened two years later became the major venue of experimental, destructive type of
art.
7
In addition, Heiwa bijutsu ten/Peace Art Exhibition (first held in June 1952) and
Nippon ten/Japan Exhibition (first held in March 1953, final exhibit 1958) both presented
war and peace as their central theme. Organized by the newly founded Bijutsuka Heiwa
Kondankai (later changed to Bijutsuka Heiwa Kaigi/Artists Congress for Peace), the
Peace Art Exhibition was the artists’ response to the worsening political tensions between
the United States and the Soviet Union, which culminated in the Korean War. Since then,
the Peace Art Exhibition has been held annually throughout the country by the
Congress’s branch organizations. Amateur artists could also participate in this art event.
In comparison, the annual Japan Exhibition was organized by Nihon Seinen Bijutsuka
Rengō (Youth Art Alliance, or Seibiren), which encouraged alliance of young artists
across schools, to promote liberty and peace, much like Peace Art Exhibition. However,
the Seibiren artists aspired to creative challenges as much as addressing political and
activist concerns. The major participants were Reportage painters,
8
who tried to either
disavow Realism’s factual depiction of the real, outer world or combine it with abstract
and Surrealist quests for the interiority and the unconscious so as to contribute to social

7
For a discussion of the exhibition, see William Marotti’s Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and
Revolution in 1960s Japan (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013), 111–199. In addition,
Akasegawa Genpei, Imaya akushon aru nomi! ‘Yomiuri Andepandan’ to iu genshō [Action only, now! The
phenomenon called the Yomiuri Independent] (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo, 1985) is an excellent account by
an artist.
8
Originally taken from a French word for news reporting, Reportage was first established as a literary
genre. Reportage painting in Japan, and therefore the rise of the Nippon exhibition, was also deeply
inspired by the 1949 exhibition in France: Salon des peintres: Témoins de leur temps [Painters: Witnesses
of their Time]. For a discussion of Reportage painters in the Nippon exhibition, see Haryū Ichirō, “Iwayuru
‘ruporutāju kaiga’” [So-called ‘Reportage painting’] in Bijutsu hihyō to sengo bijutsu/Art Criticism and
Postwar Art in Japan, ed. AICA Japan (Tokyo: Brücke, 2007), 95–101.
Chapter One
38
betterment.
9
These artist-led exhibitions that sought integration of art and politics paved
the way for Records of the Japanese and indeed a number of artists who became part of
the 1959 exhibition had previously participated in the Peace Art Exhibition and/or the
Japan Exhibition.
In fact, Gensuikyō had commissioned professional painters to create posters for
their World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs since its launch in 1955.
For example, Maruki Toshi (1912–2000), who is known for Hiroshima Panels (1950–
1982), the collaborative painting series with her husband, provided two similarly themed
paintings for posters for the First and Fourth World Conferences—one with a mother and
a baby and the other with babies encircled by pigeons, both along with a group of multi-
racial children (1955 and 1958; Fig. 1.3).
10
Painter and sculptor Satō Chūryō (1912–
2011) was in charge of the Second World Conference poster, while graphic designer
Awazu Kiyoshi (1929–2009) made a poster for the third one. These commissions attest to
the organization’s keen interest in visual materials, and that artists took part in the anti-
nuclear weapons movement from very early on. All three artists participated in the 1959
exhibition in Hiroshima, but Awazu’s involvement was particularly significant for
Gensuikyō’s move to expand their visual programs. A self-trained artist who strongly
admired Ben Shahn, Awazu reached prominence by winning a design award for his self-
produced poster, Umi wo kaese (Give our sea back) in 1955 (Fig. 1.4). The poster
featured a Social Realist-style painting of a fisherman in tattered kimono behind barbed

9
Toba Kōji, 1950-nen dai: ‘Kiroku’ no jidai [The 1950s: The age of ‘documentary’] (Tokyo: Kawade
shobō-sha, 2010), 48–59.
10
For a discussion of peace posters, see Kashima Takashi’s catalogue essay for the unrealized exhibition
Genbaku wo miru 1945–1970 [Visualize the Atomic Bombs 1945–1970], “Hato = modan dezain no
jōhatsu: Sengo Nihon no heiwa postā ni okeru keishō no keifu” [Pigeons = evaporation of modern design:
Genealogy of forms in peace posters in postwar Japan], accessed May 16, 2016,
https://sites.google.com/site/oxyfunk/public.
Chapter One
39
wire casting an accusatory eye toward viewers, contesting hydrogen weapon tests’ severe
repercussions for nature and humans.
11

In reviewing its activities in 1958, the Gensuikyō members pointed out the
necessity of further strengthening the organization’s outreach and PR effort.
12
Slightly
before then, Yamamura Shigeo (b. 1932) had become involved in the organization and,
within Gensuikyō, launched Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu (literally, the group for advertising
or publicity techniques) along with his poet-friend Sekine Hiroshi (1920–1994).
13

Agreeing to focus on advertising and publicity in the following year, Gensuikyō, or
indeed Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu, detailed its program and objectives in their newsletter
and even advocated “turning publicity activities into a [peace and mass] movement.”
14

The organization stressed that innovative and dynamic creativity was to be the kernel of
publicity, and shed away the cliché of civic or activist organizations’ publicity being all
about pasting agitation bills and posters.

11
Awazu soon became one of the founding members of Metabolism (est. 1960), one of the most significant
architecture and design collectives in postwar Japan, and his activity encompassed a wide range of media
from painting, design, and sculpture to set design. For further information on his life and work, see Awazu
Kiyoshi, makurihirogeru: Dokyumento bukku [Awazu Kiyoshi, Expose: Document book](Gendai
Kikakushitsu and Kanazawa 21-seiki Bijutsukan, 2012) and Awazu Kiyoshi: Kōya no
gurafizumu/Graphism in the Wilderness: Kiyoshi Awazu (Tokyo: Firumu Ātosha, 2007).
12
Proceedings of the 5
th
National General Meeting of the Japan Council Against Atomic & H-Bombs, The
Japan Council Against Atomic & H-Bombs Conference Room, December 26, 1958, reprinted in Kobayashi
Tōtu ed., Gensuibaku kinshi undō shiryōshū, 452.
13
Yamamura Shigeo, interview with the author, Tokyo, June 16, 2015. The chronicle of the Gensuikyō’s
Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu largely relies on Yamamura’s account, with supporting information from Segi
Shin’ichi, Sekine Hiroshi, Awazu Kiyoshi, Tanikawa Shuntarō, et al. “Zadankai, Taishū undō ni okeru
senden to geijutsu” [Roundtable discussion, senden and art in mass movements], Shin Nihon bungaku/Nova
Japana Literaturo, 15: 7 (July 1960): 10–21. Okamura Yukinori, Hikaku geijutsu an’nai—Kaku wa dou
egakaretekitaka, Iwanami Booklet 887 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2013), 57; and Gensuikyō tsūshin/Bulletin
of the Japan Council Against A & H-Bombs between 1958 and 1959.
14
For the sake of translation, I inserted a “peace and mass” movement. However, the original text does not
specify the movement, which reads, “senden-katsudō wo undōka shiyō” (Gensuibaku Kinshi Nihon
Kyōgikai ed., Gensuikyō tsūshin/Bulletin of the Japan Council Against A & H-Bombs [May 25, 1959], 2–3).
A summery of other points they claimed is: 1) to centralize and strategize the publicity, including emphasis,
direction, target, and method; 2) to expand the PR target from those who already belong to some type of
organization to those not in any movement or organization; 3) to promote communication between the main
office in Tokyo and the council’s local offices and the general public by consolidating the Bulletin as the
method of chief communication, rather than relying on various reports and leaflets published by each office.
Chapter One
40
While Yamamura was widely interested in art and design as an amateur poet,
Sekine was an activist-poet who was previously involved in Yoru no Kai (Night Society,
est. 1948), an interdisciplinary study group organized by Marxist critic Hanada Kiyoteru
and painter Okamoto Tarō.
15
Sekine’s pre-Gensuikyō activities allowed him to recruit a
notable crowd of artists and writers, including leftist art critic Segi, who became the head
of Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu.
16
Graphic designer Awazu and his junior Sugiura Kōhei (b.
1932) were also crucial members of Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu and together oversaw cover
designs of Gensuikyō’s newsletters, logo, and posters for the Fifth World Conference
(Fig. 1.5).
17
Emerging poets Tanikawa Shuntarō and Ibaragi Noriko—whose Watashiga
ichiban kireidatta toki/When I was at most beautiful (1958) is one of the most widely
known post-Hiroshima, anti-war poems—became involved as well. The group regularly
held meetings, one of which led to a manga leaflet collaboratively produced by
experimental cartoon artists Kuri Yōji and Manabe Hiroshi along with text by Tanikawa
and Ibaragi. Promoting Gensuikyō’s world conference and peace march, the leaflet
exemplifies the temperatment that permeated the period: it denounces nuclear arms,
which would turn the world into ruins, yet ends with a depiction of a prosperous era of
nuclear energy (Fig. 1.6).
18

The inauguration of Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu also reflected what was at stake in

15
Sekine also participated in Seiki (Century, est. 1948), a collective later consolidated with Yoru no Kai.
There were in fact more groups born out of Yoru no Kai, including visual art-oriented Abangyarudo
Geijutsu Kenkyū Kai (Avant-Garde Art Research Group) whose members included Okamoto, Ikeda Tatsuo,
and later Jikken Kōbō/Experimental Workshop members, Kitadai Shōzō and Yamaguchi Katsuhiro. See
also Chapter Two of this dissertation for discussions on the collective and Okamoto.
16
For Segi Shin’ichi’s biography, see Segi Shin’ichi, interview with Miyata Tetsuya and Adachi Gen, Oral
History Archives of Japanese Art, accessed May 30, 2015,
http://www.oralarthistory.org/archives/segi_shinichi/print_01.php and
http://www.oralarthistory.org/archives/segi_shinichi/print_02.php.
17
Kashima, “Hato=Modan dezain no jōhatsu.”
18
The booklet, Yonaki no inuhito: Gensuibaku ga aru kagiri shinpashī wa kienai! [Night-crying dog-man:
Our sympathy won’t disappear as long as nuclear arms exist!], made for Gensuikyō’s 5
th
World Conference,
reprinted in Shin Nihon bungaku/Nova Japana Literaturo, 15: 7 (July 1960): 5–9.
Chapter One
41
the field of design. In particular, with the founding of Nihon Senden Bijutsu Kai/Japan
Advertising Artists Club (known by the Japanese acronym, Nissenbi) in the early 1950s,
graphic designers had been attempting to redefine design work as more than commercial
advertisements or the nationalistic propaganda produced during the war.
19
For instance,
Itabashi Yoshio, one of the founding members of Nissenbi and a participant in the
Records of the Japanese exhibition, wrote that Nissenbi was an advocacy group or a
sociocultural organization to encourage social responsibility of senden bijutsu (publicity
or advertising art) rather than shōgyō bijutsu (commercial art).
20
As also pointed out by
Segi, the term senden not only suggests social responsibility to the public, but also the
autonomy of designers.
21
Thus, it goes beyond the notion of kōkoku, which is also often
translated as “advertising.”
In addition to Sekine’s and Segi’s network of activist-intellectuals, Yamamura
speculates that up-and-coming writers and artists working in many genres joined Senden
Gijutsu Gurūpu because of its openness and flexibility. The group never forced anyone to
use a specific style or how to execute a theme, and artists were encouraged to participate
in projects’ planning stages, except for the invitation-based Records of the Japanese

19
For further discussions of propagandistic pictorial magazines in wartime Japan, see Gennifer
Weisenfeld’s “Touring ‘Japan as Museum’: Nippon and Other Japanese Imperialist Travelogues, positions:
East Asia Cultures Critique, 8: 3 (2000): 747–793 as well as “Publicity and Propaganda in 1930s Japan:
Modernism as Method,” Design Issues, 25: 4 (Fall, 2009): 13-28; and Kashiwagi Hiroshi, “Sensō no
gurafizumu” [Graphism of war] in Shōzō no nakano kenryoku [Power in portraits] (Tokyo: Kodan-sha,
1987, reprinted 2000, 50–84.
20
Itabashi Yoshio, “Nissenbi sōritsu zenya” [An eve of the foundation of Nissenbi], Nihon dezain shōshi
[Concise history of Japanese design] (Tokyo: David-sha, 1970), 283. For general chronology of the field of
design in the early postwar era and its relationship with other cultural productions, see Tamayo Iemura’s
“Beyond Genres” in 1953: Shedding Light on Art in Japan, trans. Reiko Tomii (Tokyo: Tama
Art University, 1997), 33–42.
21
Segi Shin’ichi, “Zenshi: Zuan, shōgyōbijutsu, sendenbijutsu e no myakuryū” (Pre-history: Currents from
design and commercial art to publicity art” in Nissenbi no jidai: Nihon no gurafikku dezain 1950–1970/The
Epoch of the Japan Advertising Artists Club, eds. Segi Shin’ichi and Tanaka Ikkō (Tokyo: TransArt Inc.,
2000), 10–13.
Chapter One
42
exhibition.
22
In addition, although some of the Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu participants were
members of the Japanese Communist Party, such as Sekine and Awazu, and even
Gensuikyō became politicized and eventually polarized in the 1960s,
23
it was originally
not a political but a civic association.
24
The art exhibition is one indication of the
organization’s experimental and malleable nature. While fulfilling this bottom-up, civic
and peace movement’s outreach effort, the exhibition also appealed to Gensuikyō as a
collective act of creative innovation that sought to provoke further voices against the
atomic and hydrogen bombs.

From The Family of Man to Records of the Japanese

Although Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu was active until around 1962, it only organized
an art exhibition once, to celebrate the return of the World Conference Against Atomic
and Hydrogen Bombs to Hiroshima.
25
However, there was another motive behind the
exhibition—to respond to a widely admired photo-exhibition, The Family of Man (first
opened in 1955).
26
Curated by Edward Steichen, director of the photography department
at New York City’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), The Family of Man remains the

22
Still, Tanikawa expressed a certain difficulty in composing poetry, quite hastily, for Gensuikyō. For
example, he wished to have had communications with activists before he wrote it (Tanikawa, commented
in “Zadankai, Taishū undō ni okeru senden to geijutsu,” 16.
23
Ōe Kenzaburō reported about the confusion behind the polarization of Gensuikyō in his reportage
“Hiroshima e no saisho no tabi” [The first trip to Hiroshima] in his Hiroshima nōto [Hiroshima notes]
(Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 1965), 15–43.
24
For example, Yamamoto Akihiro has pointed out that the success of the petition campaign to ban the
thermonuclear bomb experiment was largely due to the absence of any particular political goals and that
they instead focused on a single issue, Yes or No to the nuclear weapons. Because of that, the anti-atomic
and hydrogen bombs petition campaign, from which the Gensuikyō developed, promptly spread to gain
more than 30,000, 000 petition signatures by the time the Gensuikyō organized the first world conference
in August 1955 (Yamamoto, Kaku enerugī gensetsu no sengoshi 1945–1960:‘Hibaku no kioku’ to
‘genshiryoku no yume’ [Postwar history of nuclear energy discourse 1945–1960: ‘Memory of the atomic
bomb’ and ‘dream of nuclear power’]. [Tokyo: Jinbun shoin, 2012], 121–122).
25
The first world conference was held in Hiroshima and the second conference moved to Nagasaki, while
the third and fifth ones were in Tokyo.
26
Yamamura Shigeo, interview with the author, Tokyo, June 16, 2015.
Chapter One
43
largest exhibition ever held at MoMA. Dedicated to “the essential oneness of mankind
throughout the world,” the exhibition consisted of 503 photographic works from sixty-
eight countries, mostly journalistic images with a sharp focus and clear subject matter
depicting people in daily activities.
27

Steichen, with the support of his assistant Wayne Miller and architect Paul
Rudolph, displayed this massive number of photographic works in an unconventional,
installation-like manner. For example, the photographs were not aligned at eye level;
some were wired from the ceiling so that the images were layered, and others were put on
low, angled platforms.
28
It was also the most widely seen exhibition in the world. The
United States Information Agency (USIA) that supported the exhibition’s world tour to
thirty-seven countries estimated almost nine million people saw it.
29
The exhibition
reached Japan in 1956 and was welcomed fervently by close to one million viewers at its
twenty-five venues in total.
30

The Family of Man has long been discussed as a cultural offspring of the Cold
War, a tool to advocate capitalism and American democracy in opposition to the
communist regimes. In this respect, the exhibition shared the similar objective with
USIA’s another cultural and ideological campaign, the Atoms for Peace exhibition that

27
Edward Steichen, “Introduction by Edward Steichen,” The Family of Man: The greatest photographic
exhibition of all time (New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1955), 4.
28
For Steichen’s emphasis on news pictures and his display strategy as well as the resulting controversy,
see Kristen Gresh, “An Era of Photographic Controversy: Edward Steichen at the MoMA” in Getting the
Picture: The Visual Culture of the News, eds. Jason E. Hill and Vanessa R. Schwartz (London and New
York: Bloomsbury, 2015), 259–265.
29
John Szarkowski, “The Family of Man,” Studies in Modern Art 4: The Museum of Modern Art at Mid-
Century: At Home and Abroad (New York: Museum of Modern Art and H.N. Abrams, 1994), 13.
30
It was so popular that the Japanese organizers decided to show the exhibition again in Tokyo before
completing its Japan tour (“Kinou heimaku, Za famirī obu man” [The Family of Man closed yesterday],
Nihon Keizai Shimbun [April 16, 1956], 1). See also John O’Brian, “The Nuclear Family of Man,” The
Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol. 6, issue 7, no. 0 (July 2, 2008), accessed June 29, 2015,
http://www.japanfocus.org/- John-O_Brian/2816.
Chapter One
44
toured worldwide including Japan between 1955 and 1957.
31
The Family of Man’s
ideological standpoint was under attack even at the time with critics denouncing the
exhibition as eclipsing the context of the pictured subjects and thus ignoring the cultural,
historical, racial, and/or geographical specificity of each image while encouraging
exoticism.
32
However, some recent studies attempt to recuperate Steichen’s effort by
emphasizing the exhibition’s experimental installation design, which provoked the
perceptual participation of individual viewers, and the exhibition’s remarkably
democratic views during America’s most conformist years.
33

Indeed, Steichen included humanity’s negative aspects, such as sections dedicated
to war and death. He even had a photograph of the lynching of an African-American man,
although Steichen himself pulled it soon after the exhibition opened in New York.
34

Additionally, the exhibition included a wall text of a quote from the Russell–Einstein
Manifesto (1955) warning nuclear war: “ … the best authorities are unanimous in saying
that a war with hydrogen bombs is quite likely to put an end to the human race. …there
will be universal death.”
35
Lastly, displayed toward the end of the exhibition was an
eight-foot-long image of a mushroom cloud from a thermonuclear weapons test on
October 31, 1952. In the exhibition’s presentation at MoMA, this was the only color
image, illuminated from the back; however, a black-and-white version was displayed at

31
Ran Zwigenberg, “The Coming of a Second Sun”: The 1956 Atoms for Peace Exhibit in Hiroshima and
Japan’s Embrace of Nuclear Power, The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol. 10, issue 6, no. 1
(February 6, 2012), accessed April 3, 2013, http://japanfocus.org/-Ran-Zwigenberg/3685; and Yoshimi
Shun’ya, “Yume no genshiryoku/Atoms for Dream (Tokyo: Chikuma shinsho, 2012), 121–194.
32
One of the known criticisms made then was by Roland Barthes, “The Great Family of Man” (1956)
reprinted in his Mythologies, trans. Annette Lavers (New York: Hill and Wang, 1976), 100–102. For
further discussions on the exhibition, see Eric J. Sandeen, Picturing an Exhibition: “The Family of Man”
and 1950s America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), and the afore-mentioned
Szarkowski’s article.
33
Fred Turner, “The Family of Man and the Politics of Attention in Cold War America,” Public Culture,
24: 166 (January 2012): 55–84.
34
Turner, 83; and O’Brien, “The Nuclear Family of Man.”
35
Steichen, The Family of Man, 179.
Chapter One
45
all other locations.
36
These curatorial decisions imply Steichen’s oscillation between
condemning the nuclear weapons race and avoiding politicizing the exhibit. Steichen
refrained from highlighting any specific human atrocity, such as the bombing of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, so that the exhibition would reflect the universality of human
experience, including the dread of nuclear attack.
In one instance, however, Steichen did have an image of a Nagasaki victim—a
close-up photograph of a boy holding a rice ball.
37
The image is taken from a series of
photographs pictured by military photographer Yamahata Yōsuke (1917–1966) on the
day following the atomic bomb’s eruption over Nagasaki. Yamashita’s series also has a
fuller view with a wounded mother in a bandage with the boy (Fig. 1.7: full and close
up).
38
By choosing the one without the mother standing in the hazy yet clearly disturbed
landscape, the presumably blood stains on the boy’s face might look like insignificant dirt,
especially when displayed along with a group of portraits of stern-looking faces of
different races, ages, and genders.
Despite Steichen’s intensions, the ideological nature of The Family of Man was
underscored in the exhibition’s Japanese presentation, which was co-sponsored by Nihon
Keizai Shimbun (Japan Economic Newspaper, or Nikkei). The exhibition ignited a
controversy over representations of the atomic bomb devastation soon after its opening in

36
The photograph, released by the Civil Defense Administration, was first published in Life, 36: 18 (May 3,
1954): 54. See also O’Brien, “The Nuclear Family of Man.”
37
O’Brien, “The Nuclear Family of Man.” In addition, Tessa Morris-Suzuki has extensively discussed
Yamahata’s photograph in the context of The Family of Men exhibition and his oeuvre. Morris-Suzuki,
“Shadows on Lens: Memory as Photograph” in The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History (London and
New York: Verso, 2005), 71–119.
38
Yamahata, along with painter Yamada Eiji and writer Higashi Jun, was ordered to photograph the
damage “so as to be as useful as possible for military propaganda” (“Photographing the Bomb—A Memo
[1952]” in Nagasaki Journey: The Photograph if Yosuke Yamahata August 10, 1945, ed. Rupert Jenkins
[San Francisco: Pomegranate Artbooks, 1995], 45); the publication based on Kitajima Muneto and
Yamahata Yōsuke, Kiroku shashin genbaku no Nagasaki [Tōkyō: Daiichi Shuppansha, 1952]).
Chapter One
46
Tokyo. Besides Nikkei, the Japanese presentation was supervised by an exhibition
committee that consisted of modernist intellectuals and photographers, many of whom
contributed to nationalistic propaganda in the war period. The committee included
architect Tange Kenzō, who worked on the gallery design closely following Rudolph’s
display strategy, while the exhibition organization adhered to the catalogue rather than
the MoMA installation. Graphic designer Kōno Takashi designed the Japanese catalogue,
and photographers Kimara Ihei and Watanabe Yoshio took care of the printing with the
support of Yamahata and his father’s photo agency, G.T. Sun.
39
Based on the exhibition’s
aim and contents as well as communication with Steichen, the committee made some
alterations. Steichen was known for strictly deciding what should be in his exhibitions
and how the works should be displayed. Although Steichen could not oversee the actual
installation on site, he approved the Japanese exhibition committee’s changes, or at least
that was what the Japanese side thought, which led to a controversy in the end.
40

First of all, the exhibition committee added approximately sixty works by
Japanese photographers,
41
because the original exhibition, as Kimura commented, did not

39
Additional committee members were photographers Kanemaru Shigene and Ishimoto Yasuhiro (who was
Steichen’s assistant of the exhibition’s Japanese works); Francis Blakemore, an artist as well as a USIS
Tokyo staff member in charge of art and culture; and Enjōji Jirō, the Nikkei’s Editor in Chief. Kimura Ihei
retrospectively talked about the difficulty of the printing process due to the differences in practice and
materials between New York and Japanese photographers, especially in available paper types (“‘Za familī
obu man’ ten to Nihon shashin kai” [The Family of Man exhibition and the world of Japanese photography],
Geijutsu Shinchō [New trends in art], 9: 4 [April 1958]: 130-131).
40
Nakajima Kenzō, Ishida Eiichirō, and Kanamaru Shigene, “Shashin ni yoru jinrui no jojishi: Za famirī
obu man ten wo kataru” [Human epic through photography: Conversation on The Family of Man
exhibition], Camera Mainichi, no. 25 (June 1956): 123 and 125; and Inubuse Masakazu, “Ningen kazoku
ten no Nihon ni okeru juyō/On the Japanese Reception of “The Family of Man” in 1956,” Journal of Osaka
University of Art, no. 37 (December 2014): 17–28.
41
“Shashin ni yoru jinrui no jojishi.” See also Sandra S. Phillips, “Currents in Photography in Postwar
Japan,” Shomei Tomatsu: Skin of the Nation (San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, 2004),
50.
Chapter One
47
represent the masterworks of photography in Japan.
42
Secondly, the panel of the
mushroom cloud was removed, presumably due to the robust national sentiment against
nuclear testing since the Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident. Instead, the Japanese committee
included multiple images of atomic bomb victims, all taken by Yamahata.
43
One of them,
a panoramic view of ruined Nagasaki with charred bodies, was blown up as a wall mural
on which other Nagasaki photographs were placed, including the boy and the wounded
mother holding rice balls (Fig. 1.8). Concerning these additions, Tange stated when the
exhibition opened:
As the only nation bombed by nuclear weapons in the world, [Japanese] citizens’
interest in the atomic bombs is profound. Mr. Steichen thus let the Japanese side
take care of this issue, and we added the atomic bomb photographs, which we
believe would not interfere with the compassionate humanism that permeates the
photographic exhibition.
44

In fact, the Nagasaki images were not necessarily taken as shocking or traumatic by
Japanese viewers. For example, at the exhibition’s opening reception, Prince Mikasa
commented that he wished to have a “stronger impression” of the atomic bomb
catastrophe, for example, by having the mushroom cloud and the Nagasaki images side
by side.
45
Nevertheless, upon Emperor Hirohito’s visit to the exhibition, all the atomic
bomb photographs were hidden by a curtain, which was removed immediately after he
left.
46
Within a few days of the Emperor’s visit, however, Nikkei decided to withdraw all

42
“Shijō saidai no ‘Za famirī obu man’ shashinten hiraku” [The largest ever photographic exhibition, The
Family of Man, opens], Nihon Keizai Shimbun, March 22, 1956, 5.
43
O’Brian; and Inubuse, 22–23.
44
“Shijō saidai no ‘Za famirī obu man’ shashinten hiraku,” 4.
45
“‘Za famirī obu man’ seiki no shashinten hiraku” [The Family of Man, the greatest exhibition of the
century opens], Nihon Keizai Shimbun, March 21, 1956, 11.
46
“Ten’nō heika niwa misenai: Genbaku shashin ni kāten” [Not to show to Emperor: Curtains on the
atomic bomb photographs], Asahi Shimbun, evening edition, March 23, 1956, 7. “Heika shashinten e” [The
Emperor goes to the photo-exhibition], Yomiuri Shimbun, evening edition, March 23, 1956, 3.
Chapter One
48
of the Nagasaki photographs from the exhibition, except the photograph of the boy with a
rice ball, which was in the exhibition from the beginning.
Later studies suggest diplomatic reasons behind the withdrawal of Nagasaki
images because of the presence of an American ambassador who attended the Emperor’s
visit.
47
Yet a Nikkei article announced at the time that Steichen had requested the removal
of any shocking images that would turn viewers’ attention away from the exhibition’s
overarching theme.
48
The Japanese exhibition committee respected Steichen’s curatorship
and Nikkei’s decision; but they publicly expressed their displeasure as well.
49
Some
committee members even spoke of distrusting Nikkei and the way the atomic bomb
images were censored. Members of the press followed suit and a group of photographers
and critics, including Shigemori Kōen—one of the curators of Records of the Japanese—
also protested.
50
It is hence understandable that Gensuikyō and artists and curators, who
supported the anti-nuclear weapons movement, had a bitter response to The Family of
Man and sought an opportunity to bring representations of the atomic bombs to the public.
At the same time, Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu presumably positioned the Records of
the Japanese exhibition as an entertainment for domestic and international activists and
visitors to Hiroshima as much as an educational and promotional opportunity. The
organizer estimated approximately a hundred foreign participants from twenty-six
countries, including Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Linus Pauling and eight thousand domestic

47
Tsuchiyama Yōko, “’Ningen kazoku’ ten (1955-nen) no reisengo no fukugen ni yoru saikaishaku: 1956-
nen no Nihon junkaiten tono hikaku nioite” [Reinterpretation through the post-Cold War representation of
The Family of Man exhibition: In comparison with the 1956 travelling exhibition in Japan], Nenpō/Kajima
Foundation for the Arts Annual Report, no. 29 (2012): 401.
48
“Tokutei jiken saketai” [Wants to avoid any specific incident], Asahi Shimbun, evening edition, March
27, 1956, 3.
49
Tange Kenzō, Comment in “Genbaku shashin wa hazuse” [Remove the atomic bomb photographs],
Asahi Shimbun, March 27, 1956, 11.
50
The protest was issued in April 1956.
Chapter One
49
participants. Accordingly, Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu even made exhibition goods for sale:
handkerchiefs decorated with Yamaguchi Kaoru’s painted image of the Peace Memorial
Park and tenugui, or light-weight cotton towels, featuring Yokoyama Misao’s abstract ink
painting of steel frames (1958). The total sales of these products were not significant, but
these exhibition goods predate museum shops and perhaps even the trend of today’s dark
tourism.
51

Reconstructing Records of the Japanese

Planning of the Records of the Japanese exhibition began as soon as Senden
Gijutsu Gurūpu was founded. One of the main goals was to discover new artworks about
the atomic bombs, even works made perhaps covertly during and after the Occupation
period, to offer the public an overview of artworks about the atomic bombs as well as a
visible response to The Family of Man. In addition, they wanted to spotlight not just the
atomic bombs’ material and corporeal damage but also the psychological harms that
survivors and the nation had to endure—the “internal keloid”—as Shigemori described.
52

Simultaneously, the exhibition organizers felt that the exhibit should depart from a
journalistic documentation of the atomic bomb catastrophes, which was mostly made in
1945, and reorient perceptions about the atomic bombs in a contemporary sense.
Nevertheless, Gensuikyō did not entirely exclude images of the original
devastation, either. With the support of researchers at Hiroshima University, they
concurrently planned a public display of enlarged photographic images of the

51
This refers to a trend of tourism to the site of historical atrocity, death, and/or natural disaster. See, for
example, the book by John Lennon and Malcolm Foley, who coined the term “Dark Tourism,” Dark
Tourism: The Attraction of Death and Disaster (London and New York: Continuum, 2000).
52
Shigemori Kōen, Curatorial statement, Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese, exh. brochure/poster,
1959; also reprinted in Gensuibaku kinshi undō shiryōshū, vol. 6 (1959), 323.
Chapter One
50
devastation—the largest one measured one by five meters—at nine key locations
throughout the city, including Hiroshima Castle and the conference site.
53
Although the
actual display has not been verified, the double presentation of Hiroshima and Japan then
and since then was Gensuikyō’s strategy. In contrast to these photographic panels, the
Records of the Japanese exhibition emphasized the current state of atomic bomb
survivors and the country, along with various problems that the nation had undergone
after the war. The exhibition statement, printed both in Japanese and English, says:
There have been various changes during the fourteen years since the end of the
war. To all appearances the scars of the war seem to have disappeared, but the
image branded upon our memory can never be wiped out completely. We know
full well that scars remain. The experience of course has been common to all
Japanese. However, these impressions caught by the artists are based upon the
depth of our feeling, and therefore are more intense. It is of great significance that
we are able to exhibit these excellent works of outstanding artists, designers and
photographers of modern Japan. We hope that full understanding will be given to
the first attempt of this kind in Japan. Also, we hope our memory of the war
preserved in the records collected here will be kept vivid for the sake of the
present and future generations.
54

Yet, first and foremost, the exhibition should consist of artistically noteworthy works that
were “worthy to represent contemporary Japanese art (gendai Nihon bijutsu),” stated Segi,
who was aware of the international art scene as a contributor to art publications in France
and Germany.
55
Segi even proclaimed, “Postwar is one segment in history but also
brought a revolutionary change to the content of art. Perhaps we can flatter ourselves that
there is no other country that produced so many high-quality artworks.”
56

Under this rubric, Segi selected painted, printed, sculpted, and graphic works that

53
Gensuikyō Tsūshin/Bulletin of the Japan Council Against A & H-Bombs, no.6 (July 15, 1959): 9. See also
“Gensuibaku kinshi sekai taikai: Kyūkasho ni hibaku shashin” [The World Conference Against the Atomic
and Hydrogen Bombs: The atomic bomb irradiation photographs at nine locations], Asahi Shimbun,
Hiroshima edition, July 21, 1959, 12. However, the photographic display might not have been actually held
in the end (Yamamura Shigeo, e-mail massage to author, December 28, 2015).
54
Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese, exhibition brochure/poster, 1959.
55
Segi Shin’ichi, Curatorial statement, Ibid., 326.
56
Ibid.
Chapter One
51
encapsulated Japan’s postwar state of mind. Shigemori was in charge of photographic
works, which he described as “contemporary witnesses” and “whistleblowers of
contradiction” of our time.
57
The preparation schedule was extremely tight; nonetheless,
they managed to secure as many as sixty-eight artists by July. While most painters, print
artists, and sculptors submitted a single object, the majority of photographers turned in
multiple prints, and one artist, Satō Chūryō (listed as Tadayoshi), turned in both painting
and sculpture. Moreover, on the second day of the exhibition, Hiroshima’s foremost local
newspaper, Chugoku Shimbun, hosted lectures by two of the most outstanding artists
among the participants, painter Okamoto Tarō and photographer Domon Ken (Fig. 1.9).
58

The well-attended lectures were followed by a screening of Guernica (1950) by French
filmmaker Alain Resnais, who was no stranger to Hiroshima. By then, his first feature-
length film, Hiroshima mon amour (1959) had been completed shooting in the city.
Touted as the “first attempt of its kind,” Records of the Japanese was indeed
unique on multiple levels. First, the exhibition organizers gathered works across mediums
and art organizations, which were and are often strictly divided in Japan, holding their
own exhibitions and forming distinct art markets and discourses.
59
Additionaly, even
though many works were largely clustered by medium, the exhibition was thematically
organized, divided into four sections: “Genkei” (Archetypes); “Umi · yama · machi no

57
Shigemori Kōen, Curatorial statement, Ibid., 326.
58
The talks were entitled “Painting and Drama” (Okamoto) and “Photographer’s Social Responsibility”
(Domon). Yet these were pre-announced titles and therefore the actual talks could have been about
something different. Gensuibaku kinshi undō shiryōshū, vol. 6 (1959), 139 and 150.
59
Some of the exemplary genres are yōga (western-style, mostly oil painting on canvas and thus the
category is also called abura-e) and nihonga (Japanese-style painting with ink and mineral pigments,
diluted by hide glue, on paper or silk) as well as abstract and representative paintings. The official
sponsorship of these genres had been terminated by the mid-1950s, which brought declines to them.
However, salons and art organizations were still powerful and consequently the Records of the Japanese
exhibition brochure listed artists’ affiliations when applicable. See also Bert Winther-Tamaki’s Maximum
Embodiment: Yoga, the Western Painting of Japan, 1912-1955 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press,
2012), which looks at historiography of painting genres, especially yōga, in great depth.
Chapter One
52
kurashi” (Lives of sea, mountain, and town); “Tatakai · kokuhatsu” (Struggles and
prosecutions); and “Asu-e” (For tomorrow).
60
One object, Hongō Shin’s monumental
sculpture in plaster, was put outside simply due to its sheer size; a bronze version of it is
now located at the entrance of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park (Fig. 1.10).
The verso of the exhibition poster/brochure has a checklist with the artists’ names
and work titles; nevertheless, the actual configuration of the exhibition is not entirely
clear. For example, there is a discrepancy between the number of objects listed—eighty
six or possibly eighty seven—whereas the article in Asahi newspaper’s Hiroshima edition
announcing the exhibition opening mentions a total of 117 works.
61
There might have
been last-minute additions, which suggest negotiations with artists went on up to the
exhibition opening. Furthermore, the brochure does not note which works were in which
sections, either. However, together with Segi’s short articles about select exhibition
objects, several photographic documents help us grasp the display environment. For
example, despite the challenging theme and thoughtful lineup of artwork, the exhibition
design itself was fairly conventional—works aligned on the walls, small captions
attached below each work, and section titles pasted on the upper walls. A tight schedule
and budget were an obvious issue, but the emphasis on the selection and content rather
than the installation is one indication that the exhibition was organized by a civic group.

60
Segi Shin’ichi, “Sekaitaikai kinennbijutsu ten ‘Nihonjin no kiroku’ kara’” [From the exhibition of
Records of the Japanese celebrating the World Conference], Asahi Shimbun, Hiroshima edition, August 7,
1959, 12. Previously, the exhibition was thought to have had six sections: “Mother Earth,” “Labor and
everyday life,” “Children,” “Love,” “Struggle,” and “Peace” (Gensuibaku kinshi undō shiryōshū, vol. 6
[1959], 139).
61
“Ninki wo atsumeru kinenbi-ten.”
Chapter One
53
The exhibition’s first section, “Archetype,” begins with Domon Ken’s black and
white photographic works of haniwa terracotta figures (ca. 1959).
62
Awazu’s snapshot,
which is intentionally blurry and out-of-focus, shows Domon’s five photographs of
haniwa figurines juxtaposed with a silhouette of a sculptural work in the foreground (Fig.
1.11). The designation of the “Archetype” section and type of artifacts represented here—
simple clay statues—that were thought to epitomize the nation and its cultural roots is
noteworthy. They suggest the organizer’s attentiveness to foreign visitors, but also reflect
the 1950s debate on tradition in the fields of art and especially architecture. Dubbed
“dentō ronsō” (the tradition debate), artists, architects, and writers argued that the
prehistoric Jōmon earthenware—thick, rough, dynamic, asymmetric, and Dionysian—
were the nation’s cultural roots as opposed to the following Yayoi-period earthenware—
thin, elegant, symmetric, and somber—which originated in rice cultivation culture in
continental Asia that had been thought to be the origin of Japanese art.
63
The exhibition
organizers obviously followed the tradition debate in which artists and thinkers tried to
associate present-day Japan and its art with ancient artifacts (to be precise however,
haniwa figures appeared after the late Yayoi and throughout the tumulus period). In this
respect, Records of the Japanese might also have been inspired by the “History” section

62
Segi Shin’ichi, “Sekai taikai kinen bijutsu-ten ‘Nihonjin no kiroku’ kara: Haniwa” [From the World
Conference Commemorative Art Exhibition, ‘Records of the Japanese’: Haniwa], Asahi Shimbun,
Hiroshima edition, August 7, 1959, 12.
63
For further discussion on the tradition debate in architecture, see Nakamori Yoshifumi, “Kawazoe
Noboru: Architecture Journal Shinkenchiku and dento ronso (the Tradition Discourse): As a Breach to a
Japanese Tragedy” in Metabolism, The City of Future (Tokyo: Mori Art Museum, 2011), 242–249. For
discussions across genres and media, see Jonathan M. Reynolds, Allegories of Time and Space: Japanese
Identity in Photography and Architecture (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, 2015); Adachi Gen, “1950-nen
dai no zen’ei geijutsu ni okeru dentō ronsō” [The tradition debate in 1950s avant-garde art] in Zen’ei no
idenshi: Anakizumu kara sengo bijutsu e/Memes of the Japanese Avant-Garde: From Anarchism to
Postwar Art (Tokyo: Brücke, 2012), 275–309; for its influence on the 1960s art, see Kitazawa Noriaki,
“Dentō ronsō—60-nen dai avan gyarudo e no airo/Controversies on Tradition—The Narrow Path to the
1960s Avant-garde),” Bijutsu hihyō to sengo bijutsu/Art Criticism and Postwar Art in Japan, ed. AICA
Japan (Tokyo: Brücke, 2007), 103–122. See also Chapter Two of this dissertation about Okamoto and his
contribution to the tradision debate.

Chapter One
54
display in the Japanese Pavilion, designed by architect Maekawa Kunio, at the Brussels
Expo in 1958. In it, Jōmon vases and haniwa figures were installed in Kenmochi Isamu-
designed, modern-looking vitrines.
64
In addition, the choice of Domon’s photographs, not
the actual statues, reinforces the idea that the exhibition is about a renewed perspective.
Dedicated to the theme of “Lives of sea, mountain, and town,” the second section
consisted of images of people, especially of children, various life styles, and customs
throughout the Japanese archipelago (Fig. 1.12). Presumably, a number of senior
photographers’ works appeared in this section, such as Hamaya Hiroshi’s photographic
work of children of fishermen’s villages, Kimura Ihei’s young Japanese, and Hayashi
Tadahiko’s images of the northernmost prefecture of Hokkaidō and southern Kūshū’s
Sakurajima. Along with the section’s premise, the presence of these photographers’
works echoes the aspirations of The Family of Man exhibition as much as they reinstate a
certain continuity from the wartime period in the way they try to represent a vision of the
nation. Along with these journalistic and Realist photographs, however, the section most
likely presented constructed and subjective photography by Ueda Shōji and the works of
younger photographers as well. Notably, some of the founders of the self-managed
agency VIVO (est. 1957)—whose work rebelled against their seniors’ patronage of
Realism and absolute objectivity—were included here.
65
Furthermore, the range of styles

64
Minami Yuriko, “1958 Brussels bankoku hakurankai ni okeru nihonkan—Sono tenji ito to hyōka ni
kansuru ichikōsatsu” [Japanese Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels World Exposition—A study of its display
intent and receptions] (M.A. Thesis, Kanazawa College of Art, 2013).
65
As discussed by Shigemori himself and others active contemporaneously, VIVO members such as
Tōmatsu Shōmei, Kawada Kikuji, and Narahara Ikkō emphasized subjective and individualistic expressions
even in their social and documentary-themed photographs. See, for example, Shigemori Kōen, “Shashin ni
okeru riarizumu ronsō” [Realism debate in photography] in Geijutsu Shinchō [New trends in art], 11: 10
[October 1960]: 103. Regarding the shift from Realism to subjective approach in photography, see Thomas
F. O’Leary’s “Tokyo Visions: Contemporary Japanese Photography and a Search For a Subjective
Documentary” (Ph.D. Diss., University of Southern California, 2009); and Iizawa Kōtarō, Sengo shashin
Chapter One
55
represented in the exhibition attests to Shigemori’s flexibility as a curator, despite the fact
that he was known as a supporter of Realism in photography.
The third section, “Struggles and Prosecutions,” turns to Gensuikyō’s
underpinnings—empathy with labor and civic movements. The section ends with a
collection of posters, which indicates that this particular medium and collaboration with
professional graphic designers were taken as the primary means to promulgate collective
voices and connect activism to the masses, especially after the rise of Awazu (Fig. 1.13).
The majority of the posters included in the exhibition condemn the contamination caused
by hydrogen bomb tests. As Segi has asserted in his statement, the exhibition also had to
deal with social and political events that were unique to the Japanese experience of the
postwar period. Quite obviously, reference to the Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident was
unavoidable, especially since it directly related to Gensuikyō’s foundation and its concern
of hibakusha, the atomic bomb survivors.
66
Works in this section include Kōno Takashi’s
Hai wa haidayo/Ashes are ashes (1957), which features a stylized image of a military
officer piping out mushroom clouds, and Itabashi Yoshio’s Shi no hai/Death Ashes
(1959; Fig. 14), which deploys a grainy photographic image of an elderly citizen sunk in
the darkness behind the large typography of “shi no hai.” Hiroshima-born painter and
designer Tsuchiya Yukio’s abstract painting Haikai (Mass of ashes, ca. 1954) and
Kawada Kikuji’s photograph Yaizu (1959) (Fig. 1.15)—in the artist’s words a “reportage”

shi nōto: Shashin wa nani wo hyōgen shite kita ka [Notes on postwar photographic history: What
photography has expressed]. (Tokyo: Chūkō Shinsho, 1993).
66
Segi Shin’ichi, Curatorial statement, Records of the Japanese, exh. brochure (1959), unpaginated. Other
works about the Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident were by Abe Tenya/Nobuya, Takahashi Hiroya, Taketani
Fujio, Tsuchiya Yukio, Nakatani Yasushi/Tai, Shinkai Sumio, and Okamoto Tarō.
Chapter One
56
image of the fishing port in which the Lucky Dragon No. 5 vessel was berthed—were
also among the total of nine works about this particular subject.
67

The final section, “For Tomorrow,” opens with one of the highlights of the
exhibition, Okamoto Tarō’s Moeru hito (Man Aflame, 1955), a large oil painting about
the Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident in his signature style that combines abstraction and
figurative (Fig. 1.16).
68
Presumably, the section also includes Nakamura Masaya’s
photograph of the Peace Bridge (1952), which was designed by Japanese-American artist
Isamu Noguchi. Another unique object most likely included in this section is Kamekura
Yūsaku’s poster promoting “atomic energy for the peace industry,” which features a
geometric design that symbolizes radiating light of nuclear energy (1956; Fig. 1.17).
Having won Nissenbi’s top design award of the year, the poster stood in stark contrast to
the Japanese design field of the time, where stylized but representative motifs were the
trend. Consequently, the work propelled Kamekura into the public eye and he went on to
become one of the official designers for the 1964 Tokyo Summer Olympic.
69
More
importantly, the inclusion of this particular poster reveals the anti-nuclear weapon
movement’s simultaneous endorsement of nuclear energy, which was not taken as
awkward even in Hiroshima.

Documentary Art, Realism, and Reportage in the 1950s

In their curatorial statements, Segi and Shigemori wrote that the atomic bomb
experience marked the beginning of the postwar era; but it was not necessarily the

67
Kawada Kikuji, e-mail message to author via Takahashi Sayaka, June 8, 2015.
68
See also Chapter Two of this dissertation for further discussion of Okamoto and his art.
69
Nissenbi no jidai, 84.
Chapter One
57
exhibition’s sole focus.
70
The most outstanding work about the atomic bombs and
survivors was a selection from a master of photographic Realism, Domon Ken’s
Hiroshima (published as a photo-book in 1958). The series was initially commissioned
by the newly launched weekly magazine Shūkan Shinchō (Weekly Shinchō) in response
to reports that the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission’s (ABCC) research hospitals were
treating hibakusha like marmots.
71
In fact, Domon had had multiple offers to photograph
Hiroshima before, but he intentionally avoided the opportunity for fear of radioactive
contamination.
72
Deeply shocked by the misery and poverty which atomic bomb
survivors had had to suffer for more than a decade, Domon realized that the existing
atomic bomb images, such as the famous August 6 issue of Asahi Graph, had become
“historical records,” Domon wrote—something put away along with a pile of old
newspapers to which people would not care to go back.
73
He thus decided to “document
and bring the reality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki” to light. Domon continued:
The hibakusha’s medical costs have become the state’s responsibility and atomic
bomb hospitals in white marble have been built. Yet there are a number of
survivors who cannot be hospitalized simply because they have no futon
(bedding) to bring. … The issue at stake is this very familiar “Japanese reality.”
While [our government] effortlessly budgets three hundred million yen for a
single training jet for the Self Defense Forces, no budget is allocated for the poor
hibakusha to receive medication without any anxiety. We need to wholeheartedly
face the reality of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on which all of our discontent, war
and poverty intertwined, is being placed. Without taking this situation into
account, I think it is unavoidable that the anti-atomic and hydrogen bombs and
survivor relief movements fall into politics or ideology.
74

70
Segi Shin’ichi and Shigemori Kōen, Curatorial statements, Records of the Japanese, exh. brochure
(1959), unpaginated.
71
Yanagita Kunio, “‘Hiroshima’ to Domon Ken” [Hiroshima and Domon Ken], Bessatsu Taiyō: Domon
Ken, no. 2173 (April 2009): 170–171.
72
Domon Ken, “Riyū no nai kyōfu: 13-nen go no Hiroshima” [Fear without reason: Hiroshima thirteen
years after], Sekai [World], no. 153 (September 1958): 193–200.
73
Domon Ken, “Hajimeni” [Foreword], Hiroshima (Tokyo: Kenko-sha, 1958), 4–5.
74
Ibid.
Chapter One
58
Indeed, the Gensuikyō’s 1959 survey on hibakusha in both Hiroshima and Nagasaki
suggests that more than half fell under the poverty line, on top of the health complications
caused by radiation. In addition, the survey concluded that the majority of hibakusha
were not participating in the anti-nuclear weapons movement, although interested, due to
these pressing issues.
75
Besides that, Gensuikyō was being criticized because it was
becoming more political and ideological; in particular, it declared a political stance in
1959 by denouncing the renewal of the United States–Japan Security Treaty, or Anpo,
scheduled in the following year.
Domon’s foreword to Hiroshima emphasizes this sociopolitical milieu, the
public’s responsibility for being aware of it, and the need for constantly recontextualizing
history. The text also indicates Domon’s denouncement of his own work of journalistic
Realism, which could be forgotten easily and leave no impact. Thus, unlike many photo-
books published around that time, Domon gave Hiroshima art book status, printing it on
heavy paper along with a cover design and illustrations by a professional painter, Sano
Shigejirō, and a red plastic insert over the title page—the color reminiscent of blood,
flesh, and fire as well as Japan’s national flag (Fig. 1.18).
76
In so doing, Domon hoped
that the issues around hibakusha, and his publication, would occupy a special place in
people’s minds, seem fresh and reachable, and not to be packed away with junk or old
newspapers. Exactly which Hiroshima image was featured in Records of the Japanese is
unknown—it could have been of an orphan, a hibakusha lying on a thin futon in a ragged

75
The majority of them were strongly against the nuclear weaponry developments, but only 3 % of them
actively supported Gensuikyō’s activity. “Megumarenai genbaku hibakusha” [The unprivileged atomic
bomb survivors], Asahi Shimbun, June 27, 1959, 11.
76
Domon’s Hiroshima is thus one of the early instances of highly designed, crafted photo-books for which
Japanese photographers came to be known in the field today. For example, see Ryūichi Kaneko and Ivan
Vartanian, Japanese Photobooks of the 1960s and ‘70s (New York: Aperture and D.A.P, 2009).
Chapter One
59
barracks, or a young leukemia patient—or there is a possibility of no image at all in the
end (Fig. 1.19). Nevertheless, his Hiroshima work was a wake-up call for the public,
survivors, and even those who were already active participants in the anti-nuclear bomb
movement to re-relate the present time to the past catastrophe.
Along with Kimura Ihei, Domon had become known as a strong advocate of
Realism in photography when his statement that a photograph should be “an absolute,
unstaged snapshot” so as to connect the medium to social reality became famous.
77

Domon’s brand of photographic Realism soon became the chief style of camera
magazines’ amateur photography competitions. In part, as historian of Japanese
photography Kai Yoshiaki has pointed out, Domon conceived it as a method of
democratization of the medium because snapshots could be easily employed by anyone
using any camera without special knowledge or technical manipulation.
78
However,
snapshots of factual reality, especially of workers, the poor, and the marginalized,
became ubiquitous and soon seemed hackneyed. In 1954, Domon himself recognized the
limitation of the style and declared the end of the first phase of Realism in photography.
79

His work thus started reflecting the position of the exploited or someone nearby.
Previously, Domon had tried to avoid making eye contact with his photographic subjects
through the camera lens, or weaving a narrative through sequential shots such as he did in

77
Domon Ken, “Riarizumu shashin to saron pikuchā,” Camera, 46: 4 (October 1953): 185–89; translated as
“Photographic Realism and the salon picture,” Setting Sun: Writings by Japanese Photographs, eds. Ivan
Vartanian, et al. (New York: Aperture, 2006), 22–27. However, Domon used the term Realism as early as
1950.
78
Kai Yoshiaki, “Domon Ken to Riarizumu shashin: ‘Zettai sunappu’ no jirenma” [Domon Ken and
Realism Photography: Dilemma of an ‘absolute snapshot’], Jikkenjō 1950s [Site of Experimentations:
1950s] eds. Suzuki Katsuo, Masuda Tomohiro, and Ōtani Shōgo, (Tokyo: National Museum of Modern Art,
Tokyo, 2012), 106–107.
79
Regarding the tension between objective realism and subjective realism, see O’lreary, “Tokyo Visions,”
13–80.
Chapter One
60
the Hiroshima series.
80
Considering the fact that the Hiroshima book was made public
right around the time that Records of the Japanese was in progress, curators would have
perused Domon’s publication. Therefore, they invited him and thought through the
questions that Domon posed regarding the role, context, and meaning of documentation
and documentary art vis-à-vis politics and activism.
In fact, critics and artists scrutinized Realism and documentary art, including the
comparable category of Reportage, in the 1950s.
81
As literary scholar Toba Kōji has
written, the 1950s can be thought of as “the age of documentary.”
82
In other words,
Domon’s rethinking of Realism in photography as well as the Japan Exhibition that I
touched upon earlier in the chapter operated within this larger trend in arts.
83
While the
country was still unstable and rapidly transforming, artists and writers became conscious
of the world around them and considered ways to express real, urgent social matters.
Nevertheless, art had mostly concerned the individual, the internal, and the unconscious
since Modernism. For that purpose, leftist intellectuals and proletarian groups’ initial

80
Kai Yoshiaki has argued that Domon’s oscillation over “an absolute, unstaged snapshot” was visibly
admitted as early as 1953 (“Domon Ken to Riarizumu shashin,” 100–115); for further discussion about
Domon’s dilemma over Realism, see also Julia Adeney Thomas, “Power Made Visible: Photography and
Postwar Japan's Elusive Reality,” The Journal of Asian Studies, 67: 2 (May, 2008): 365-394; and Okai
Teruo’s Domon Ken no kakutō: Riarizumu shashin kara koji junrei e no michi [Domon Ken’s fight: A path
from Realism photography to Pilgrimages to the Ancient Temples] (Tokyo: Seikō Shobō, 2005).
81
In fact, there was the “Realism debate” unfolded among art critics and writers in the late 1940s, which
deeply foreshadowed a range of discussions upon the idea of documentary in the 1950s. For the debate, see
Justin Jetsy’s “The Realism Debate and the Politics of Modern Art in Early Postwar Japan,” Japan Forum,
26: 4 (2014): 508-529.
82
Toba Kōji, 1950-nen dai: ‘Kiroku’ no jidai [The 1950s: The age of ‘documentary’]. For discussions of
visual art including an overview, see Suzuki Katsuo, “Shūdan no yume: 50-nen dai wo tsuranuku
rekishiteki patosu” [Collective dream: Historical pathos threads through the 1950s] in Jikkenjō: 1950s, 10–
39; Toshiaki Minemura also discussed various realities that artists tried to tackle in his “The Realism of
Tactility: Another Japan That Erupted” in 1953: Shedding Light on Art in Japan, trans. Reiko Tomii
(Tokyo: Tama Art University, 1997), 45–56.
83
For example, some of the representative collectives and theories range from Seikatsu kiroku undō (the
Documenting Daily Life Movement) and other similar circle activities, and novelist Abe Kōbō’s claim of
“sub-realism” to unearth something beneath realism, to Reportage literature and painting including the
serial publication of Nihon no shōgen [Testimony of Japan] (1955). In the field of photography, the series
of 285 books Iwanami Shashin Bunko (1950–1959) is another outstanding compilation of photographic
documents of the nation, customs, incidents, and the world.
Chapter One
61
efforts involved recording their own lives, individuals’ plights, and contemporary events.
These creative endeavors enhanced collaboration between intellectuals and the masses
but also across various genres such as literature, art, film, and theater. However, the
definition of documentary, for whom it was intended, how and what to record, was in
considerable flux. For example, Socialist Realism, developed in the Soviet Union and
endorsed by the Japan Communist Party, was characterized by a rigid, realistic pictorial
style. In contrast, artists involved in the internationally flourishing Social Realism, and
especially Reportage painting and writing in Japan, aimed at more flexible, often surreal
expressions while still conveying conspicuous social and political messages.
84

Photographic Realism shared a similar objective, as suggested by Domon’s work, but had
own medium, method, and style.
85

By the late 1950s, Reportage had waned because it was seen as clinging to an
outmoded painterly style with easily identifiable narratives, and the idea of documentary
became both problematic and nuanced. The most influential case to note was the launch
of Kiroku Geijutsu no Kai (Association for Documentary Arts) in 1957, whose creators
announced that they were beginning with “the negation of the existing idea of
documentary art.”
86
The collective attempted to reconstruct the idea of documentary, and
deepen Realism in art, within the contradictions of the real world, while pursuing

84
For discussions of Social Realism in art in 1950s Japan, including Reportage Painting movement, see
Justin Jetsy, “Arts of Engagement: Art and Social Movements in Japan's Early Postwar” (Ph.D. Diss.,
University of Chicago, 2010); and Linda Hoaglund, “Protest Art in 1950s Japan: The Forgotten Reportage
Painters,” The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol.12, issue 43, no. 1 (October 20, 2014), accessed
November 2, 2014, http://japanfocus.org/-Linda-Hoaglund/4203/article.html.
85
For instance, Realism in photography and therefore documentary photography in Japan has its roots in
1930s Germany.
86
Tamai Goichi, “Kiroku geijutsu no kai: Geijutsu undō shōkai 1” [The association for documentary arts:
Introduction of art movement 1], Shinnihon bungaku/Nova Japana Literaturo, 12: 11 (October 1957):
130. For further discussion of the group, including its theory and impact on film and literature in particular,
see Yuriko Furuhata, “Refiguring Actuality: Japan’s Film Theory and Avant-Garde Documentary
Movement, 1950s-1960s” (Ph.D. Diss., Brown University, 2009).
Chapter One
62
political aims.
87
In essence, the collective tried to achieve documentary art as
methodology, rather than style or genre, by overcoming factual and empirical
documentation through equally emphasizing the internal, the incidental, and the
unconscious. For the members of Kiroku Geijutsu no Kai, the metaphysical realms were
also part of reality and thus should not be excluded in this new or true documentary art,
or avant-garde documentary per Yuriko Furuhata’s definition.
88
Moreover, this new
documentary art has to be influential or operative in the real world. In other words, it is a
way to achieve criticality that could eventually alter the world and worldview.
The same concept has been explained with different terms: Shigemori Kōen
discusses how the “incidental, anti-form, whimsical” snapshot in fact reveals the
“material situation” of the truth in reference to Sasaki Kiichi’s study of the documentary
method in film.
89
By “material situation,” Shigemori means something invisible to our
naked eye or something our consciousness does not reach, like an image of cells captured
through a microscope. For these theorists, the new documentary art highlights individual
truths or material situations, contra preexisting images and stereotypes, and reintegrates
them into the contemporary age. Kiroku Geijutsu no Kai was essentially a renewed
version of Yoru no Kai (Night Society), and the members overlapped somewhat. Hanada
Kiyoteru served as both groups’ brain, and novelist Abe Kōbō was similarly active in
both collectives.
90
The association also attracted experimental filmmakers, poets, artists,

87
Tamai, 126–127.
88
Furuhata, “Refiguring Actuality.”
89
Shigemori Kōen, “Kiroku ni okeru sunappu teki hōhō” [Method of snap in documentary], Bungaku
[Literature], 30: 5 (May 1962): 474. Sasaki was also a Kiroku Geijutsu no Kai participant.
90
Abe Kōbō earlier tried to define the approach of new documentary art in his “Atarashii riarizumu no
tame ni: Ruporutāju no igi” (1952), trans. by Ken Yoshida as “For a New Realism: The Meaning of
Reportage” in From Postwar to Postmodern: Art in Japan 1945–1989, 44–48.
Chapter One
63
and art critics, including Senden Gijutsu Gurūpu organizer Sekine Hiroshi. Segi Shin’ichi
withheld the invitation but was still very close to the association.
91

Reflecting these debates over the concept of documentary, the Records of the
Japanese exhibition presented multiple approaches or even contradictions concerning the
definition of documentary art. The exhibition included direct “documentation” of the
atomic bomb catastrophe in the form of a study for Hiroshima Panels by Maruki
Toshi(ko), who was better at painting human figures than her partner was because of her
training in western-style oil painting (Fig. 1.20).
92
In and outside the exhibition, the
Marukis’ horrific but aesthetically strong Hiroshima Panels was, and is, one of the most-
recognized depictions of the atomic bombs’ damage to civilians. However, because of
their persistence with the subject and fairly straightforward portrayal of the hellish
circumstances,

the Marukis’ art has not been the focus of serious art historical research.
Simultaneously, some, including hibakusha, condemned the paintings for being too
aesthetically oriented to be taken as documentation.
93
Regarding an analytical discussion
of documentary art on the atomic bombs, in his 1955 essay “Genshi jidai no geijutsu”
(Art in the atomic age) Hanada Kiyoteru discusses the ways in which Hiroshima Panels
was done—the series shows the strong influence of Japan’s pre-modern painting tradition,
including animism and Buddhist nihilism, as well as the artists’ moral sense—picturing

91
Notable filmmakers involved in the association included Teshigawara Hiroshi, Matsumoto Toshio, and
Noda Shinkichi. Art critics Haryū Ichirō and Nakahara Yūsuke and painter Okamoto Tarō, as well as
public intellectual Tsurumi Shunsuke were also among the founding members. See an account by
Hasegawa Shirō, who was also a member, “‘Kiroku geijutsu no kai’ seiritsu madeno keika hōkoku” [Report
on the development of the Association of Documentary Arts] in Kirokugeijutsu no kai geppō [Monthly
report of the Association of Documentary Arts], no. 1 (August 1957); reprinted in Hasegawa Shirō zenshū
vol. 5 [Hasegawa Shirō complete works] (Tokyo: Shōbun-sha, 1976), 270–271.
92
On the contrary, Maruki Iri’s submission to the exhibition was a painting of a cow.
93
For instance, see Kozawa Setsuko, ‘Genbaku no zu’: Egakareta ‘kioku,’ katarareta ‘kaiga’ [The
Hiroshima Panels: Painted ‘memories,’ storied ‘paintings’] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2002), 84. For the
general reception of the work, see Okamura Yukinori, Genbaku no zu zenkoku junkai—Senryō ka
hyakuman’nin ga mita! [Hiroshima Panels’ national tour—A million people saw them in Occupied
Japan](Tokyo: Shuinjuku Shobo, 2015); and Dower’s Hiroshima Murals.
Chapter One
64
the atomic bomb’s mass violence only as tragedy.
94
Hanada continues, because the
atrocity has been filtered through such pre-determined values, the painting, as well as the
majority of the atomic bomb literature that the article chiefly discusses, cannot be avant-
garde and therefore true or new documentary art. Nevertheless, while it is obvious that
Records of the Japanese could not include the massive-sized Hiroshima Panels, the
selection of Maruki Toshi’s quick drawing can be taken as a gesture of reclamation of a
more immediate, personal, and unconscious reaction of the artist to the nuclear calamity.
In contrast, the exhibition also presented Tsuruoka Masao’s painted work Omoi
te/Heavy Hands (1949; Fig. 1.21) in which a man crouches under multiple hands. The
painting illuminates the external and internal pressures that made people feel stagnant in
the immediate postwar years, to the extent that their existence felt like a thing, instead of
a living being.
95
This work also reflected the artist’s attitude towards Japanese art,
especially paintings. Tsuruoka noted that he wanted to “paint things rather than events.”
96

In other words, Heavy Hands is also an embodiment of his and his cohort-artists’ reaction
to the state of art in Japan, the anti-thesis of Realism that flourished at that time.
97

94
Hanada Kiyoteru, “Genshi jidai no geijutsu” [Art of the atomic age](1955) reprinted in Hanada Kiyoteru
zenshū vol. 5 [The complete works of Hanada Kiyoteru] (Tokyo: Kodan-sha, 1977), 265–278; see also
Itakura Taiki’s “Hanada Kiyoteru ‘Genshi jidai no geijutsu ron’—abangyarudo no riron to
gensuibaku/genshiryoku” [On Hanada Kiyoteru, “Art of the atomic age”—Avant-garde theory and the
atomic bombs/nuclear energy], Bulletin of the Research Center for the Technique of Representation, no. 10
(March 2015): 1–14.
95
For a discussion of Tsuruoka as well as Japanese painters’ endorsements of the ideology of war and
challenges in the war’s aftermath, see Bert Winther-Tamaki, “From Resplendent Signs to Heavy Hands,”
Since Meiji: Perspectives on the Japanese Visual Arts, 1868–2000, ed. J. Thomas Rimer (Honolulu:
University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012), 124–143.
96
Tsuruoka Masao, along with Oyamada Jirō, Komai Tetsurō, Saitō Yoshishige, and Sugimata Tadashi,
“Zadankai ‘koto’ dewa naku ‘mono’ o egaku toiukoto” [Roundtable: To paint ‘things’ not ‘events’] in
“Bijutsu hihyō [Art criticism], no. 26 (February, 1954): 17.
97
Art critic Minemura Toshiaki has underscored the aptness and significance of Tsuruoka’s phrase, which
could be associated with the emergences of the Gutai Art Association (est. 1954) and Mono-ha in the late
1960s (“The Realism of Tactility: Another Japan That Erupted,” 107 and 112).
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65
Interestingly, the exhibition also represented the mimetic realism, for example, through
Heiwa/La Paix (1952; Fig. 1.22) by Uchida Iwao, a master of Realism in painting.
98

In the genre of photography, as opposed to Realists’ encouragement of candid,
unmanipulated snapshots, Tōmatsu Shōmei’s photograph of sunlight through bullet holes
on the corrugated walls of a naval dockyard shows the intact material scars of an air raid
of the war, but in a lyrical way. The photograph retains a somewhat abstract quality such
that viewers would not know what the pictured subject really is by just looking at the
image (1959; Fig. 1.23).
99
Likewise, Narahara Ikkō takes a more subjective approach in
his submission of the series about coal miners and concrete structures in Nagasaki’s so-
called “Battleship Island” (1954–1957). The work documents the coal miners’ harsh
labor conditions, which are juxtaposed with soaring artificial structures and the island’s
natural environment.
100
The series also reflects Narahara’s formal consciousness in the
way the images are framed and composed. These works certainly deviate from a pure and
straightforward recording of the subject.
Another unique body of works that the exhibition featured was portraits of those
killed by the atomic bombs that were made based on photographs of them. Six
contributing artists, including Asakura Setsu and Satō Chūryō, were part of the newly
launched project of Genbaku Giseisha Shōzōga Undō/A-bomb Victims Portrait

98
Concerning Uchida Iwao and his political stance, see Maki Kaneko’s “Under the Banner of the New
Order: Uchida Iwao’s Reponses to the Asia-Pacific War and Japan’s Defeat,” Art and War in Japan and Its
Empire 1931–1960, eds. Asato Ikeda, Aya Louisa McDonald, and Ming Tiampo (Leiden and Boston: Brill,
2013), 190–207.
99
However, this untitled image is from the series called Memory of War, Toyama, Aichi.
100
For further discussion, see Narahara Ikkō’s “Ningen no tochi (Human Land)” and his comments first
appeared in Chūō kōron/The Central View, 72: 6 (May 1957): 11–27; compiled as a photo-book published
by Riburopōto (1987). For a discussion of his work and life, see Narahara Ikkō: Te no naka no sora 1954–
2004/Ikko Narahara 1954–2004 (Shimane: Shimane kenritsu bijutsukan, 2010).
Chapter One
66
Movement.
101
By making painterly copies of the mechanically reproduced images, these
artists were in a sense producing a media hierarchy: the painted portraits stand as a type
of authorized and official documentation of the deceased. The act of painting suggests a
more intimate and obligated relationship between the producer of the image and the
depicted subject. Furthermore, with the laborious process including time and materials
consumed, the bereaved families regard the painted portraits as art and a means to give
agency back to the non-speaking, irradiated victims.
In contrast, young Reportage artist Nakamura Hiroshi presented one of his early
seminal paintings, Sunagawa No. 5 (1955; Fig. 1.24). Anti-military base and union
movements had become one of the prominent themes in art by the mid-1950s and also
had a significant presence in the Records of the Japanese exhibition. Sunagawa No. 5
depicts one of the most notable anti-American base riots, which occurred in 1955 near the
Tachikawa base outside Tokyo. Nakamura himself joined the farmers to protest the
government’s seizure of their property to expand the base. As a Reportage painter,
Nakamura went back to the site to sketch the landscape, a Globemaster, and farmers, and
looked at news photographs of anti-base riots. Consequently, this painting in subdued
colors and intense, undulating contours conveys truthfulness as to the farmers’ attire and
the way in which the artist renders the open vista with the base and the mountains in the
far distance. Simultaneously, the work evidences the artist’s departure from simple
reportage or documentation to what he calls “montage.”
102
It captures the struggle in the

101
The movement was supported by the Japan Confederation of A- and H- Bomb Sufferers Organizations
in collaboration with Bijutsuka Heiwa Kaigi/Artists Congress for Peace and Gensuikyō. In the Records of
the Japanese exhibition, six oil painters, Asakura Setsu, Satō Chūryō, Nakatani Yasushi, Nishi Tsuneo,
Mida Genjirō, and Mori Yoshio, submitted such portraits of the victims.
102
Nakamura, who was an enthusiastic film fan, tried to apply filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s montage
theory to his painting. Nakamura Hiroshi, interview with the author, Tokyo, June 29, 2015. See also
Nakamura Hiroshi, interview with Chinzei Yoshimi, Fujii Aki, and Kajiya Kenji, Oral History Archives of
Chapter One
67
foreground—angered farmers with large, prominent workers’ hands confronting
expressionless police officers, joined by a miniature Buddhist monk—which is delineated
in a flat but dramatic manner by his manipulation of the perspective. By ascribing a sense
of movement and time to a single frame, Nakamura reflects the crushing energy and
disturbance of the protest. Concurrently, the technique allows us to question Realism’s
mimetic representation and Reportage painting’s rigorous interest in real events. Here,
the artist reconstructs the “tableau” by projecting his own psychological vision onto the
struggle that he took part in by using tools of visual experimentation.
103

In this way, Nakamura tried to attain the “reality of painting,” according to him,
partly because he thought that painting could not compete with photography in terms of
the ability to document a sense of the “realism of the site.”
104
In contrast, Tamura
Shigeru’s photograph of union strike at the Mitsukoshi Department Store (1951; Fig.
1.25) in the Records of the Japanese exhibition, for instance, delivers a better sense of
what happened than a painting would. Yet the photograph does not necessarily depict the
dialectic relationship between the photographer and the photographed. Therefore, how
the artist attempts to contribute to or challenge the documented circumstance is unclear.
In this respect, based on the definition of documentary art by Kiroku Geijutsu no Kai,
Nakamura’s artwork concerns the new dimension of documentary art. As these examples
suggest, while Records of the Japanese certainly addressed humanism and humanitarian
efforts through art, the exhibition did not simply complying with journalistic

Japanese Art, accessed June 20, 2015,
http://www.oralarthistory.org/archives/nakamura_hiroshi/interview_01.php; and
http://www.oralarthistory.org/archives/nakamura_hiroshi/interview_02.php.
103
Thus, Nakamura’s use of the term “tableau” for his painted works has a specific meaning. See also
Kaiga-sha Nakamura Hiroshi: The Exhibition of Hiroshi Nakamura (Shizuoka: Hamamatsu Municipal
Museum of Art, 2015); and Nakamura Hiroshi, Nakamura Hiroshi: Zuga jiken 1953-2007/Hiroshi
Nakamura: Pictorial disturbances 1953-2007 (Tokyo: Tokyo Shimbun, 2007).
104
Nakamura Hiroshi, interview with the author, Tokyo, June 27, 2015.
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68
documentation as did The Family of Man. Instead, the exhibition complicated the ideas of
records and documentary art.

Records of the Japanese, Undocumented
Even a cursory review of the exhibition content reveals that Records of the
Japanese presented varied approaches to the idea of documentary. Then, why was the
Records of the Japanese exhibition overlooked contemporaneously and in later research?
It is notable that the exhibition title leaves the content of the exhibition relatively
ambiguous. In so doing, it allows a space for the curators, participating artists, and
viewers to ponder a range of “records” and methods of documentary art that could
represent the Japanese. This standpoint has been visualized in the exhibition
poster/brochure as well (Fig. 1.26). Designed by Awazu Kiyoshi, the poster illustrates his
and the exhibition’s position of the socially attentive and artistically avant-garde. It
features a detail of Tatehata Kakuzō’s modernist sculpture Kaku/Nucleus (1956; Fig.
1.27) as the background. However, the use of a monotone, deep blue color further
obscures the already abstract artwork, which looks like an amorphous but spiky hand-like
creature holding an iron ball. Therefore, the poster contests, again, a clear-cut
understanding of what the exhibition is about and the definition of “records,”
documentation, and/or documentary art. Such ambiguity marks the expansiveness and
inclusiveness of the exhibition as well as the richness of its content. However, this very
trait can become a drawback and a contradiction: a lack of unity of tying the exhibition
together as a whole.
Chapter One
69
Yet this indefinability was not the only reason that the exhibition slipped out of
written accounts of art and even the memory of a number of the participating artists and
activists. Although the exhibition was a quite unique and challenging attempt as a peace
organization’s outreach effort, the publicity of the exhibition itself was underplayed. It
was announced through Gensuikyō’s newsletters but not advertised in art magazines or
newspapers. Except for very small articles in Asahi’s local editions right before and after
the exhibition opening, it was even ignored by the newspaper company, the co-host of the
exhibition. Furthermore, Nakamura Hiroshi recalls that Segi never proffered a full
explanation of the exhibition, presumably due to the lack of preparation time.
105
This
might be another reason that many participants forgot about the exhibition and failed to
list it in their biographies or CVs. These documents serve as a basic resource for writers,
historians, and even artists themselves, so its absence in them helped ensure its erasure
from art historial accounts.
Aside from these logistical shortcomings, the Fifth World Conference Against
Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs itself became a debated subject. A year before the
scheduled renewal of the Anpo treaty in 1960, Gensuikyō announced its objection to the
renewal. As an organization that wanted nuclear weapons banned, its denunciation of the
Anpo renewal was to be expected. However, the announcement was taken as political and
caused the denial of public funding and the withdrawal of pro-Anpo politicians from the
Fifth World Conference, which gained much media attention. Had it not more, the

105
Nakamura Hiroshi, interview with the author, Tokyo, June 27, 2015. Another participant, photographer
Kawada Kikuji, explained to the author that he does not recall anything about the exhibition and even his
participation (Kawada, e-mail message to author, June 8, 2015). However, Yamamura has confirmed
Kawada’s participation in Records of the Japanese. Moreover, although Kawada did not admit it, his
participation in the exhibition seems not to be unrelated to his later production of The Map (1960-1965),
which included images of memory of war, such as the Atomic Bomb Memorial Dome.
Chapter One
70
content of the Conference, including the art exhibition and other programs, would have
had more resources and advertisement. Furthermore, this controversy over the
politicization of Gensuikyō might have resulted in the exhibition participants’
intentionally remaining quiet about their involvement in the art event planned by the
organization.
More importantly, the absence of documentation of and interest in the Records of
the Japanese exhibition illuminates the chasms between Tokyo and Hiroshima, one of the
local cities that would have much less presence in politics or art without the the atomic
bomb attack, as well as between the art world and activism. Not only did the physical
distance over 400 hundred miles between Tokyo and Hiroshima hinder participants’
effort to actually visit the exhibition, there were both historical and psychological
disassociations between the bombed cities, the rest of the country and the world.
106
The
withdrawal of Nagasaki photographs from The Family of Man exhibition is one
indication of the general attitude toward the atomic bomb devastation and hibakusha. In
addition, Nagasaki has been pushed to an even more dismal location: where “no more
Hiroshima” became a dictum of the anti-nuclear weapons movement, this second bombed
city has been always secondary in politics, history, and peace movements. Furthermore,
even though the list of the Records of the Japanese exhibition participants is quite
extraordinary, both in a cotemporary sense and historically, their ways of documenting
the atomic bomb annihilations might not resonate with the hearts of the people in
Hiroshima or Nagasaki. In fact, the exhibition did not include any artists based in these
cities.

106
See also Chapter Four of this dissertation for a discussion of distance between the bombed cities and the
rest of the country.
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71
Upon his return from Records of the Japanese, Segi wrote about Tokyo’s art
world in which the young artists were becoming more pragmatic, distancing themselves
from politics not to mention activism.
107
Part of the Records of the Japanese exhibition
was unofficially presented for a few days at the Kotobukiya Department Store in Iwakuni,
Yamaguchi Prefecture, one of the “base cities” adjacent to Hiroshima, after the original
exhibition closed.
108
However, there were no further loan requests of the exhibition, even
though Gensuikyō promoted a packaged version of sixty photographic and graphic
works.
109

Conclusion or Documenting Records of the Japanese as Documentary Art

Despite the failure of the Records of the Japanese exhibition, Senden Gijutsu
Gurūpu left a publication, Hiroshima-Nagasaki, Document 1961, which expanded on its
experience of the Records of the Japanese exhibition before the dissolution of the group
(Fig. 1.27).
110
After the Fifth World Conference, Gensuikyō realized the need to widely
publicize ravages of the atomic bombs and the plight of hibakusha. Inspired by the
success of Domon’s Hiroshima, they chose to do so through a photo-book.
111
The
publication brought together selected images from Domon’s book and newly
commissioned Nagasaki works by Tōmatsu with a selection from the Marukis’

107
Segi Shin’ichi, “Jitsuri shugi no otoshiana” [Pitfall of pragmatism], Geijutsu Shinchō [New trends in
art], 10: 3 (September 1959): 105–108.
108
Yamamura Shigeo, interview with the author, Tokyo, June 16, 2015.
109
“’Nihonjin no kiroku’ shashin junkai ten, mōshikomi uketsuke” [Records of the Japanese photographic
exhibition tour, loan request], Gensuikyō tsūshin, no. 10 (October 1959): 8.
110
Hiroshima-Nagasaki, Document 1961 (Tokyo: The Japan Council Against A & H-Bombs, 1961). In
addition to Yamamura, Segi, and Shigemori, photography critic and editor Itō Tomomi served on the
publication committee.
111
Gensuikyō tsūshin, no. 25 (October 1960): 11.
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72
Hiroshima Panels.
112
Unlike the 1959 exhibition, Hiroshima-Nagasaki, Document 1961
has remained a significant work in the history of art, photography, and activism to this
day, not only as a significant resource for scientific data, medical records, and a survey of
peace movements, all written in English.
113
The publication also attained art book status
and entered art museums’ special collections. Awazu and Sugiura created a quintessential
design by bravely cropping works by the Marukis and even Domon, a proponent of “no
manipulation.” The publication’s success in becoming the prime example of “Hiroshima-
Nagasaki Document” seems to be largely due to its physical accessibility, including its
circulation, as opposed to art objects and exhibitions. In addition, its clear, definitive title
suggests that what the world, as well as Japan, still needed was forthright documentation
of the atomic bomb disasters and their enduring effects. Although the book includes quite
abstract images especially of Tōmatsu’s Nagasaki, the juxtaposition of photographs with
poems by Hasegawa Ryūsei, who was a member of Kiroku Geijutsu no Kai, and other
writings keeps reminding readers about the heart of the problem: the atomic bombs.
In contrast, the level of lack of attention to the Record of the Japanese exhibition
can be perhaps called active non-acknowledgement of what could have been a significant
and historical exhibition. Nakamura Hiroshi points out that the exhibition might have
fallen victim to the contradictions between art, politics, and the real world, even though
they were exactly what “new documentary art” tried to achieve.
114
Yamamura speculates
that such indifference to the exhibition was chiefly because it was organized by a peace
movement organization, not an art organization. Moreover, activists and the general

112
Tōmatsu later compiled his Nagasaki photographs and published them as 11:02 Nagasaki (Tokyo:
Shashin Dōjinsha, 1966), which also included drawings and commentaries by hibakusha.
113
A smaller number of editions were published in Russian.
114
Nakamura Hiroshi, interview with the author, Tokyo, June 27, 2015
Chapter One
73
public were not concerned with the art world, even though the artwork depicts an urgent
social and political issue. However, the very fact of the erasure of the exhibition from
history in turn suggests the possibility of comprehending the exhibition in a new light: the
exhibition as documentary art itself. Indeed, it meets the definition of new or avant-garde
documentary art. The exhibition and the history of the exhibition were truthful to
people’s forgetfulness of and unresponsiveness to the atomic bomb catastrophes,
endorsement of nuclear energy and simultaneous promotion of anti-nuclear weapons,
contradictions over documentary art, dissonant styles and genres, and the gap between the
art scene, politics, and activism as well as Tokyo and Hiroshima. In addition, at least on
the conceptual level, the exhibition merged art and real life, bringing artistic discordance
to the site of political disturbance for the sake of enhancing people’s participation in the
movement against nuclear weapons and achieving a world without them.

74
CHAPTER TWO

Explosion: Okamoto Tarō and the Challenge to the Poof in the Sky

In August 1963, artist and public intellectual Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
submitted an article, “Hiroshima ’63,” to Asahi Shimbun, one of Japan’s largest national
newspapers. In it, he candidly wrote about the contrast between the beauty of the atomic
explosion and the atrocity it unleashed on the ground:
A proud, impetuous explosion of energy. Dream-like beauty. But at that very
moment, at the bottom end, with the same force, just below, adversity and
humiliation were gouged in utter blackness. An ultimate expression of glory and
misery.
1

Okamoto, who was educated in interwar-period Paris, was one of the most prominent
avant-garde artists in postwar Japan through his prolific writings, the multiple art
collectives in which he was involved, and of course his artworks.
2
He was very attuned to
socio-political issues and, as discussed in the previous chapter about the Records of the
Japanese exhibition, the aforementioned Asahi contribution was not his first reflection on
the atomic bombs or his first visit to Hiroshima. However, his 1963 visit marked his clear
intention to confront issues concerning the atomic devastation and to engage in analytical

1
Okamoto Tarō, “Hiroshima ’63-nen, jō” [Hiroshima ’63, part one], Asahi Shimbun [Asahi newspaper],
August 3, 1963, 11. This two-part article was reprinted as “Shunkan” [The moment] in Watashi no gendai
bijutsu [My contemporary art] (Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 1963), 289–294.
2
For a general biography of Okamoto in English and a consolidation of his influence over younger
experimental artists in the postwar period, see Thomas R.H. Havens, “Avant-Garde Visual Culture, Local
and Historical” in Radicals and Realists in the Japanese Nonverbal Arts: The Avant-Garde Rejection of
Modernism (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, 2006), 72–84. Regarding Okamoto and his recollection of
his military service and experience as a POW, see Kataoka Kaoru, “Okamoto Tarō no sensō taiken”
[Okamoto Tarō’s war memories] in Hokoraka na messēji: ‘Asu no shinwa' kansei e no michi/Taro
Okamoto's Proud Message: the Road to Completion of Tomorrow’s Myth (Kawasaki: Taro Okamoto
Museum of Art, Kawasaki, 2005), 14–18.
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75
observation of the ways in which the city reconfigured itself as the national and global
city of peace through the atomic bomb memorials.
3

Okamoto’s “Hiroshima ’63” indeed offers insightful criticism about the self-
deceiving and touristy nature of the public monuments, especially the Peace Park with its
Memorial Museum (1955) that was designed by renowned modernist architect Tange
Kenzō.
4
Rather than the construction of conspicuously cathartic peace monuments,
Okamoto suggests a void, “an expanse of white sand” for instance, for the site of ground
zero so that visitors to the decimated city would be able to individually confront and
contemplate the atomic bomb as an ongoing issue:
The moment has been burned into our flesh as an emblem. Not as the event in the
past, but rather genuinely and fervently, the moment has been exploding within us.
The moment is exploding. If the atomic bomb is beautiful yet inhumane, the
energy that responds to it, that overcomes it and opens up the new destiny, should
be as fervent and innovative [as the bomb was]. Otherwise, the atomic bomb
remains merely a calamity and dropped [from our consideration, too].
5

For Okamoto, the atomic bomb was current, still “burning” and “exploding,” and not
something encapsulated in the past as Segi Shin’ichi framed it in his curatorial statement

3
In this regard, the artist poses similar questions to those explored by historian Lisa Yoneyama in her study
Hiroshima Traces. Yoneyama examines the politics of remembering and forgetting the Asia Pacific War as
well as tracing historical narratives of victims and victimizers by looking at rebuilding projects in
Hiroshima (Yoneyama, Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space and the Dialectics of Memory [Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California, 1999]). In addition, Okamoto condemns the inscription on the Cenotaph
for the A-bomb Victims, which lacks the nominative subject pronoun and thus leaves the cause of and
responsibility for the man-made calamity ambiguous. This resonates with the “Hiroshima Cenotaph
inscription controversy,” initially sparked in 1952 by Indian judge Radhabinod Pal, one of the appointed
judges of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, also known as the Tokyo Trials. The debate is
still active today.
4
For the selection competition, mission, and building process of Tange’s Peace Park including the
Memorial Museum and Cenotaph, see Carola Hein, “Hiroshima: The Atomic Bomb and Kenzo Tange’s
Hiroshima Peace Center” in Out of Ground Zero: Case Studies in Urban Reinvention, ed. Joan Ockman
(New York: Columbia University, 2002), 62–83. Also, Yoneyama begins her query predominantly around
Tange’s plan (Hiroshima Traces, 1–40).
5
Okamoto, “Hiroshima ’63-nen, ge,” [Hiroshima ’63, part two], Asahi Shimbun [Asahi newspaper], August
4, 1963, 11.
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76
for Records of the Japanese, for instance.
6
Simultaneously, the article reveals that
Okamoto’s reaction was visually driven, inspired by what he refers to as a survivor’s
“innocent” description of the atomic cloud: “That beautiful cloud! … neither red nor
yellow” expanding over the city drew a contrast against the dark, black adversity
penetrating the ground.
7

As an artist, however, it would have been a challenge to visually represent the
presentness of the past catastrophic event, not as a void as he suggested. He needed five
more years, or nearly a decade after his participation in Records of the Japanese, to create
Asu no shinwa/Myth of Tomorrow (1968-69; Fig. 2.1), a monumental painting of a
massive explosion, monstrous yet beautiful, that not only took place in the sky but
obliterated many citizens underneath. Okamoto commented that the mural is about the
chaotic world brought about by the atomic detonation.
8
Indeed, the work was once
subtitled, or nicknamed, Hiroshima [and] Nagasaki (Fig. 2.2).
9
However, this
commercially commissioned painting project in Mexico City was abandoned. The mural
went missing and was not rediscovered until 2003.
This chapter examines Okamoto Tarō and his critical use of the notion explosion
as rhetoric as well as referring to the visual. The focus of study here is Myth of Tomorrow,
which, I argue, strategically employs the iconic motifs of the atomic bombs, such as the

6
Segi Shin’ichi, Curatorial Statement, Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese, exh. brochure (1959),
unpaginated.
7
The narrative of a magnificent cloud which was “spreading out like a golden screen” comes from one of
the visitors to Hachiya Michihiko, a severely wounded medical doctor and the author of the widely read
Hiroshima Diary (1955). Hachiya also notes that many atomic bomb witnesses described the cloud as
beautiful (Hachiya Michihiko, Hiroshima Diary: The Journal of a Japanese Physician, August 6–
September 30, 1945, trans. Warner Wells [Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1955], 162).
8
“Mekishiko ni iku Asu no shinwa, Okamoto Tarō no hekiga” [Myth of Tomorrow goes to Mexico,
Okamoto Tarō’s mural], Asahi Shimbun, evening edition, June 27, 1968, 5.
9
Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki, ed. ‘Asu no shinwa' kansei e no michi/Taro Okamoto's Proud
Message: the Road to Completion of ‘Tomorrow’s Myth’ (Kawasaki: Taro Okamoto Museum of Art,
Kawasaki, 2005), 47.
Chapter Two

77
mushroom cloud and detonation, in order to question the existing division of above from
below or the image of the bombs from the resulting calamities. In so doing, Okamoto and
his work attempted to destabilize the historical narrative of the atomic disasters built
upon the constructed icons. For that purpose, the chapter also looks at related artwork
including Taiyō no tō/Tower of the Sun (1970), another of Okamoto’s seminal works but
in sculpture, as well as select group of small illustrations and writings—genres that
weighed equally in his creative life. Although these materials have been less studied, I
consider them, especially those submitted to magazines and newspapers, a significant
outlet for Okamoto to connect to the masses.
10
In addition, these “side jobs” helped the
artist build relationships with editors, novelists, and thinkers, and some of them became
central to shaping Okamoto’s art and theory.
11

This case study also questions the atomic bombs as a domestic and historical issue
and reflects the anxiety over the nuclear threat throughout the 1950s and 1960s. With the
mural in particular, Okamoto attempted to recuperate the voice of the voiceless,
connecting the nuclear devastation back to its anonymous victims, while he employed the
visual rhetoric of the mushroom cloud and explosion. I propose that the mural’s intended
location of Mexico, and the Mexican Muralists’ claim that art exists to project an explicit
social, political, and public appeal, is especially crucial in this reading. In addition, by
painting the atomic bomb for an audience in Mexico, Okamoto aimed to transform the
cartographic history of the nuclear disaster from one exclusive to the Japanese, as Segi

10
Okamoto once mentioned that he published extensively because he could not financially support himself
as he rarely sold his art. His writings had great public appeal, perhaps more than his visual productions.
11
For a discussion of Okamoto’s relationship with critics and writers who nurtured him especially in the
late 1940s and early 1950s, see Setagaya jidai 1946–1954 no Okamoto Tarō/Taro Okamoto and His
Contemporaries in the Post-War Era, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Setagaya Museum of Art, 2007).
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78
Shin’ichi and Shigemori Kōen conceived with their curation of Records of the Japanese
discussed in the previous chapter, into one of a man-made atrocity against humanity.

Disaster, Aerial View vs. Catastrophe on the Ground
Although focusing on the 1923 natural disaster of the Great Kanto Earthquake, art
historian Gennifer Weisenfeld’s study of the visual culture of natural disaster touches on
how modern technology intervenes in visual productions and socio-politics. In particular,
as Weisenfeld points out, the camera and aircraft technology that produced a bird’s-eye
view allowed the state to dominate and control the territory under surveillance.
12
In other
words, the aerial photographic eye was an essential tool for the state and its efforts at
disaster management, and even became a potential weapon itself.
13
By contrast,
photographs taken from the ground reduced the photographed cities and disaster sites to
human scale and therefore invite viewers’ emotional reaction and identification with the
plight of the survivors.
14
Weisenfeld’s discussion resonates with what Robert Hariman
and John Louis Lucaites have termed the “Cold War Nuclear Optic.” They argued that
the atomic bombs’ exceptional destructive capacity allowed a new kind of image to enter
the visual field—the aerial photographic image of the nearly perfect form of the towering
mushroom cloud of smoke (Fig. 2.3). Such visual representation became a crucial
instrument not only to acknowledge the new weapon, but also to manage and limit public
opinion about the bomb.
15
These iconic images thus allow the detachment of an official,

12
Gennifer Weisenfeld, Imaging Disaster: Tokyo and the Visual Culture of Japan’s Great Earthquake of
1923 (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2013), 4–6.
13
Ibid., 39.
14
Ibid., 45.
15
Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites, “The Iconic Image of the Mushroom Cloud and the Cold War
Nuclear Optic,” Picturing Atrocity: Photography in Crisis (London: Reaktion Books, 2012), 135–141.
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79
dominating or surveillance vision of the atomic bomb from the actual catastrophe that
victims and survivors experienced and witnesses observed.
Occasionally, the visual division of aerial versus ground views of a disaster, or the
“Cold War Nuclear Optic,” becomes an essential part of a debate, as seen in the
controversy over the Enola Gay exhibition (1994–1995) at the Smithsonian National Air
and Space Museum. The original exhibition plan to commemorate the fifty-year
anniversary of the end of World War II/the Asia-Pacific War was challenged by a group
of veterans’ associations and conservative politicians who supported them. In the end, the
exhibition eliminated the artifacts of radiation, photographs of the ground view, which
veterans condemned as a victim’s view,
16
and sections on the Japanese invasion of other
Asian countries and the threatened use of nuclear weapons as part of Cold War
geopolitics. Instead, the exhibition was organized primarily with images of aerial views
such as mushroom clouds along with the conserved parts of the B-29 aircraft Enola Gay,
which dropped the atomic bomb over Hiroshima.
17

Edward Said refers to the controversy over the exhibition as a case in which
America’s official collective memory is questioned and re-presented.
18
In a similar vein,
the atomic bomb catastrophe has long been used to retain Japanese state memory in order
to narrate Japan as a victim of the last world war rather than a victimizer in pursuit of the

16
For further details of the exhibition planning, controversy, and aftermath, see then-Director of the
Museum Martin Harwit’s book entitled An Exhibition Denied: Lobbying the History of Enola Gay (New
York: Springer-Verlag, 1996). For example, Harwit notes that Congressmen Duncan Hunter (R-California)
and Sam Johnson (R-Texas, ex-fighter pilot in Vietnam) were especially appalled that the museum intended
“to display ground zero at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, or people hurt on the ground” (An Exhibition Denied,
253–254). The controversy ended with the resignation of Harwit.
17
For further scholarly reflections on the controversy, see Lisa Yoneyama, “For Transformative
Knowledge and Postnationalist Public Spheres: The Smithsonian Enola Gay Controversy” in Perilous
Memories: the Asia-Pacific War(s), eds. Takashi Fujitani, Geoffrey M. White, and Lisa Yoneyama
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2001), 323–346.
18
Edward W. Said, “Invention, Memory, and Place,” Critical Inquiry, 26: 2 (Winter 2000): 176. He also
states, “Collective memory is not an inert and passive thing, but a field of activity in which past events are
selected, reconstructed, maintained, modified, and endowed with political meaning” (Ibid., 185).
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80
state’s imperial expansion.
19
In other words, the controversy illuminated how “[t]he art of
memory of the modern world is … to be used, misused, and exploited.”
20
In fact,
however, long before the Smithsonian controversy erupted, the Press Code that was
enacted during the Allied Occupation of Japan (1945–1952) prohibited reporting, writing
about, and showing images of the destruction of the bomb, especially of the human
casualties.
21
America’s strategic memory making and remaking also paralleled that of the
Japanese in that visual representations of the calamity functioned as a major mnemonic
device.
22
Expanding on Weisenfeld’s visual theory as well as Hariman’s and Lucaites’s
analysis of the iconic image of the mushroom cloud, the following section looks at
Okamoto’s Myth of Tomorrow in depth and discusses how it takes up and departs from
the legacy and common visual rhetoric of the atomic bombs.

Unearthing the Myth of Myth of Tomorrow
Under the Press Code and in the absence of governmental support of hibakusha,
or the atomic bomb survivors, accounts of the atomic bombs and their human casualties
had long been relegated to local histories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as illuminated in
the discussion of the Records of the Japanese exhibition in Chapter One. Consequently,

19
Harry Harootunian, “Memory, Mourning and National Morality: Yasukuni Shrine and the Reunion of
State and Religion in Postwar Japan,” Nation and Religion. eds. Peter van der Veer and Hartmut Lehmann
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 145–147.
20
Said, 179. Also, historian John W. Dower has pointed out multiple narratives of history and humanity in
relation to the controversy in “Three Narratives of Our Humanity,” History Wars: The Enola Gay and
Other Battles for the American Past (New York: Metropolitan Books, 1996), 63–96.
21
For details about the Press Code and other taboos, see John W. Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the
Wake of World War II (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), 405–440.
22
Another notable example of the visual as a result of the Cold War Nuclear Optic was the proposed design
of a USPS stamp, again to commemorate the half-century anniversary of the end of WWII/the Asia-Pacific
War. It had a rising mushroom cloud along with a short commentary outside the frame which reads,
“Atomic Bombs hasten war’s end, August 1945.” In the end, this proposal was withdrawn in response to
backlash from the Japanese government. However, together with the Enola Gay exhibition controversy, the
stamp design illuminates how a particular image and material culture still stimulated strong national
sentiment over an event that happened fifty years earlier.
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81
the majority of Japanese had only a vague idea of the calamities through the censored
images of mushroom clouds and the cleaned-up ruins of the burnt cities. Okamoto
questions the ways in which the nation collected and retold the story of the atomic bombs,
narratives which had been built upon these constructed, secure images. To his eyes, the
nation, even including hibakusha, seemed to willingly hold back the truth of their
experiences for the sake of the victimizers, specifically the United States, and accept the
repurposing of the bombed cities and adversarial history by humanitarians and peace
activists.
23
Okamoto was thus trying to make a “myth,” something alternative to history,
by depicting the atomic bombs’ spectacular and unprecedented beauty with a vivid color
palette and dynamic composition, rather than just focus on the dreadful and deadly
explosion. In a sense, the ways in which Okamoto writes about the beauty of the atomic
bomb echo the aesthetic tradition of the sublime in his recognition of something
terrifying and overwhelming that is also awe-inspiring in relation to the rationality of the
observer.
24
Indeed, Peter Hals and David Nye respectively develop discussions of the
imagery of nuclear explosions and mushroom clouds along with atomic weapon
technology in relation to the sublime.
25
However, Okamoto’s artwork suggests something
more than this aesthetic practice, especially in his reference to the Mexican Muralism
approach, to connect his creative outputs to those wounded by the bombs, which I discuss
further later in this chapter.

23
Okamoto, “Hiroshima ’63-nen.”
24
Indebted to Edmund Burke’s 1757 treatise entitled A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas
of the Sublime and Beautiful (the full text can be accessed at http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/), the idea of
the sublime in art is closely tied to wild and awesome landscapes, as opposed to picturesque or beautiful
ones by such artists as J.M.W. Turner (British), Casper David Friederich (German), and American Hudson
River school painters.
25
Peter Hales, “The Atomic Sublime,” American Studies, 32 (1991): 5–31; David Nye, “Atomic Bomb and
Apollo XI,” American Technological Sublime (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1994), 225–256.
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Painted in water-based acrylic on panels made of concrete with chrysotile, a type
of asbestos, Myth of Tomorrow is no doubt the pinnacle of Okamoto’s painted work, with
its grandeur conveyed by its vast size measuring five and half meters high and thirty
meters wide. In addition, the life of the mural itself is also exceptional. It was
commissioned by Mexican entrepreneur and industrialist Manuel Suárez y Suárez, who
was also known as an enthusiastic patron of contemporary art in Mexico. The mural
commission was for the soaring lobby of the Hotel de Mexico, which Suárez envisioned
as accommodating athletes participating in and visitors to the 1968 Mexico Olympics
(Fig. 2.4). In addition to the mural, Suárez planned to place Okamoto’s abstract sculpture,
Gotairiku/Five Continents, at the entrance (Fig. 2.5). However, the construction of the
hotel was not completed by the opening of the Olympic games, which made it hard for
Suarez to keep raising funds for the project, and eventually the half-done building was
sold to a series of developers after Suárez's death in 1987.
26
While the building, which
had been left as a massive skeleton, was repurposed as Mexico’s World Trade Center in
the early 1990s, Okamoto’s mural went missing and was not seen for more than three
decades. Finally in 2003, Okamoto’s secretary and adopted daughter Okamoto Toshiko
found the work abandoned and partly shattered into pieces in a semi-open warehouse
outside Mexico City, a story which hit the major media.
27
The campaign to retrieve
Okamoto’s largest painting, including transportation from Mexico to Japan,

26
Anthony DePalma, “Don Manuel’s Dream Tower: A 50-Story Folly?,” The New York Times, November
24, 1994, A4.
27
Susana Reyes, “Instalan en Tokio mural de Okamoto perdido 30 años en México” [Okamoto’s mural lost
for 30 years installed in Tokyo], El Universal, December 12, 2008, accessed May 30, 2014,
http://www.eluniversal.com.mx/notas/562368.html.
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83
conservation,
28
and permanent installation in Tokyo, helped revive the reputation of
Okamoto, who had long been forgotten as an artist of substance and was known primarily
as an eccentric artist who appeared on television.
29

With a very few exceptions, Okamoto worked on multiple studies before
completion of his work. He began with graphite drawings and then moved to paints; if it
was an oil painting, he started with a small size and then made a series of studies that
were progressively larger. These studies suggest that the artist usually had a very clear
idea of the subject matter and how he wanted to represent it, as they maintained their
compositional precision rather than oscillate between different pictorial motifs and
compositional experiments. Myth of Tomorrow is no exception. During his stay in
Mexico, where he signed the commission agreement with Suárez, Okamoto worked on a
quick pencil drawing of the skeleton in flames on the hotel’s letterhead.
30
On September
8, 1967, the day after Okamoto returned to Tokyo from Mexico,

he produced a rough
study of the mural.
31
The artist whited out the study, but an infrared photograph of it
reveals that the composition was already very close to that of the final mural (Fig. 2.6).
32

28
Concerning the mural’s conservation process, see Yoshimura Emiiru’s Okamoto Tarō ‘Asu no shinwa’
shūfuku 960-nichi kan no kiroku [Record of 960 days of conserving Okamoto Tarō’s Myth of Tomorrow]
(Tokyo: Seishun shuppan-sha, 2006).
29
From the late 1970s, Okamoto became, in a way, a TV celebrity, known through TV commercials and
variety shows rather than through his artwork. For a discussion of Okamoto’s interest in the masses in the
1970s and his televised images in the 1980s, see Yoshida Narushi, “Banpaku to taishū” [Expo and the
masses], Tanjō 100-nen ningen Okamoto Tarō ten/Taro Okamoto: The man—The 100
th
Anniversary of His
Birth (Kawasaki: Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki, 2011), 216–226.
30
There is a drawing dated August 20, 1967, for example, in the collection of the Taro Okamoto Memorial
Museum, Tokyo.
31
Okamoto Toshiko, “‘Asu no shinwa’ tanjō hiwa” [Untold story of the birth of Myth of Tomorrow], Asu
no shinwa Okamoto Tarō no messēji [Myth of Tomorrow: Okamoto Tarō’s message], ed. Okamoto Tarō
Kinen Gendai Geijutsu Shinkō Zaidan (Tokyo: Seishun Shuppansha, 2006), 43.
32
There have long been four known studies of Myth of Tomorrow. Their widths range from 195 cm (Taro
Okamoto Memorial Museum, Tokyo) to 537 cm (The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama), 728 cm (Nagoya
City Art Museum), and 1085 cm (Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki).
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Myth of Tomorrow shows Okamoto’s quintessential painterly practice—use of
bold colors and amalgamation of abstract and figurative. The mural looks almost as if it
is floating in the air, as it was meant to be positioned over the hotel’s front staircase
landing, which would have been an appropriate display location for the mural with the
immense background of the dark sky. From right to left, the work begins with several
sea-like creatures, one of which has streams of bloody tears, and anthropomorphic figures
around the lower right corner. Above them are a number of dark, twig-like figures which
all seem to be fleeing from the spreading flame and smoke. Next, there appears a
monstrous-looking ship-girl pulling a red-eyed fish, again followed by the overarching
flame. Adjacent to the ship is an explosion in the form of a large, glaring-eyed mushroom
cloud and a dark octopus-leg-like band with multicolor circles reaching the large skeleton
in the center of the mural. This section depicts the incident of the Lucky Dragon No. 5, a
tuna-fishing vessel that was contaminated by radioactive fallout from the U.S. hydrogen
bomb test at Bikini Atoll on March 1, 1954 (Fig. 2.7). The incident irradiated twenty-
three boatmen and one of them, Kuboyama Aikichi, died in September of that year.
Moving leftward, the picture plane becomes more chaotic, filled with multiple visual
elements. There are additional red flames, occasionally outlined in white, and between
the flames are another fishing boat, flocks of burning people, and a thunder-monster or
fantastic creature with a blue zigzag on its body.
What appears next is a large, red-eyed skeleton in flames with open and radiating
limbs over evolving mushroom clouds, positioned slightly off-center. Unquestionably,
the principal motif is the skeleton, which is the only relief-like or “sculpted” element
raised and textured—to emulate the look of real bone—in synthetic rubber, the material
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85
and the technique actively employed by David Alfalo Siqueiros for his Polyforum mural
(Fig. 2.8). Because Okamoto was unfamiliar with the mural technique, his assistants in
Mexico, especially Japanese painter Takeda Shinzaburō (b. 1935) and Japanese-Mexican
painter Luis Nishizawa (1918–2014), played a significant part in deciding on the painting
materials and method.
33
The skeleton reflects another Mexican influence: the popular
imagery of calaveras, skulls and skeletons. These became particularly known outside
Mexico via the satirical works of political cartoonist Jose Guadalupe Posada (1852-1913),
whom surrealist André Breton introduced as the first practitioner of black humor.
34

Likewise, Okamoto’s skeleton represents the dead and thus is in agony, but it might also
be roaring with laughter, reflecting the positive and humorous connotations of such
images in Mexico.
35
Moreover, having an element of laughter as an act of negating
seriousness or meaning, or making it non-meaning, is significant in Okamoto’s work.
36

To the left of the skeleton, there are more flames burning stick-like people, a
chain of growing red-toothed mushroom clouds and a fish-like monster. A dark tornado-
like cloud is emerging from the central explosion, blowing people away, or perhaps they
are spirits of the dead as they are no longer represented by black stick-like figures, and

33
For instance, in a letter from Takeda to Okamoto, Takeda, now based in Oaxaca, explained that assistants
had applied a base coat three times but were planning to have another layer to avoid cracks and protect the
work from dirt and dust (Takeda Shinzaburō, Letter to Okamoto, May 24, 1968, Taro Okamoto Memorial
Museum).
34
André Breton, “Bois de Posada,” Minotaure, no.10 (1938): 18–19. However, Breton only evaluated the
formal element of calaveras in Posada’s broadsheet and was unconcerned with any revolutionary claims
attached to the image. Regarding errors and problematic reading of Breton, see Patrick Franc, Posada’s
Broadsheets: Mexican Popular Imagery 1890–1910 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998),
235–237.
35
Okamoto Tarō’s comment, quoted by Okamoto Toshiko, “‘Asu no shinwa’ hakken (Discovery of Myth
of Tomorrow),” Asu no shinwa Okamoto Tarō no messēji, 8. Art critic Sawaragi Noi, art historian
Yamashita Yūji, and curator Ōsugi Kōji also support this view. (Yamashita, “Okamoto Tarō ga ‘Asu no
shinwa’ ni kometa omoi” [Thoughts Okamoto Tarō puts into Myth of Tomorrow]; Ōsugi “’Asu no shinwa’
ni itaru hansen, hankaku no messēji [Anti-war and anti-nuke message leading to Myth of Tomorrow],” Asu
no shinwa: Okamoto Tarō no messēji, 68 and 83).
36
Okamoto Tarō, “Muimi, warai, ‘Mori no okite’” [Non-meaning, laugh, Law of the Jungle], Atelier,
(November 1950), reprinted in Jujutsu tanjō [The birth of magic] (Tokyo: Misuzu shobo, 1998), 68–69.
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86
hugging the burning sun, which also looks like a big, monstrous eye in the sky. Then
bands of yellow, orange, red, and white illuminate the dark sky. The leftmost section is
filled with warm hues which encircle a group of three figures in bright colors that look as
though they are dancing or reclining. This is supposedly a scene of paradise or utopia.
Although the skeleton is clearly the central focus, an infrared photograph of the
mural’s first study also reveals two key elements of the work along with the skeleton: the
Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident as the large mushroom cloud on the right, and the paradise
scene. Following the tradition of Japanese handscroll painting, the mural’s visual
program is also arranged to be viewed from right to left. In other words, the three
segments respectively represent three separate times: the Lucky Dragon incident in the
past, the atomic explosion in the present—as Okamoto had written that the atomic bomb
was still a “burning” and “current” issue—and the future full of hope and joy. The
chronological segmentation is also a notable feature of Okamoto’s far more popular work,
the seventy-meter-high Tower of the Sun at Expo ’70 (Fig. 2.9).
This magnum opus also functioned as an exhibition space, which along with two
companion towers, Youth and Motherhood, comprised the Theme Pavilion in the heart of
the Expo site.
37
Tower of the Sun was conceived as a monument to anachronism, or in
Okamoto’s words a symbol of matsuri, or traditional festivals, that embodied dynamic
and primordial energies gathered together to confront technological progress. In other
words, Tower of the Sun was Okamoto’s most visible public statement in the middle of a

37
For the mission, plans, and displays of the Theme Pavilion of which Tower of the Sun was part, see
Hirano Akiomi’s Okamoto Tarō to taiyō no tō [Okamoto Tarō and Tower of the Sun] (Tokyo: Shōgakkan
Kurieitibu, 2008) and the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, Japanese Government, Nihon
Bankoku Hakurankai seifu kōshiki kiroku [Official report of the Japan World Exposition] (Tōkyō: Tsūshō
Sangyōshō, 1971). For scholarly responses to Expo and its impact on art, see Review of Japanese Culture
and Society, vol. 28, special issue of “Expo ’70 and Japanese Art: Dissonant Voices” (December 2011).
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87
state-sponsored festival that promoted industry and technology. Indeed, this monstrous,
totem-like sculpture supposedly in the form of Neolithic earthenware literally pierced
through the world’s then-largest in square footage roof, designed by Tange Kenzō and
realized by cutting-edge engineering technology.
In addition, visitors experienced the Tower spatiotemporally, starting with the
open plaza that represented the present time and the world of harmony. The next section
was the tower’s subterranean space, which was dedicated to the presentation of the past
such as sections of “genesis of life” and “prayer” where primitive votive objects,
sculptures of deities, masks, and tools collected from around the world were displayed.
38

The following display was housed inside the tower, which was transformed into the Tree
of Life and showed the evolution of man. The last section was the “sky” or “mid-air”
display, dedicated to the future of technology and of the world, including cosmic space
and “Mandarama,” a panoramic multiscreen display of The Family of Man-type
photographs of people, various cultures, and natural scenery. In short, while the Tower
functioned as a shaft to transport visitors through space and time, it was also a liminal
space that allowed visitors to shift within the cycle of life, between nature and technology,
primitive and modern as well as ritual and mundane. Myth of Tomorrow, which was made
around the same time, certainly shares aspects of the conception and expression of the
Tower in the ways in which Okamoto juxtaposes destruction in the past and present
caused by technology against a reconstruction of the future by the people and their
primordial power.

38
Upon Okamoto’s request, anthropologists Umesao Tadao and Izumi Seiichi led the exhibition object hunt.
After Expo, the collected objects became the core of the founding collection of the National Museum of
Ethnology, which opened in 1974.
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88
From “Polarism” to “Explosion”
Working through two opposing concepts without reconciling them, such as
ancient and modern, nature and technology, and employing different artistic styles, was
indeed fundamental for Okamoto. This section explores Okamoto’s theoretical
background and how he translated it into visual form. Already during his Paris years
(1930–1940), the young artist grappled with the dilemma of how to incorporate the two
different approaches to painterly abstraction. This thought process was extended into the
early postwar-period conflict between realism and abstraction, which Okamoto theorized
as taikyoku-shugi or “Polarism.” In his 1948 publication in which he used the term for the
first time, the artist explained:
First observe the real world calmly and assess the polar opposites [of the Realistic
and the Romantic], and then, by grasping them subjectively without reconciling
them, desperately deepen the abyss of the contradiction and advance into the very
tension. Today [a person with] a stern soul shouldn’t incline either toward
rationalism or irrationalism and shouldn’t attain spiritual peace. Or shouldn’t
blend them to make a lukewarm cocktail. The way the mind exists is [in] a violent
scene of sparks generated between the polar opposites by the tensions of fervent
attraction and repulsion, which is, like a ripped wound, a fresh scene from hell.
39

Okamoto called attention to the germinating postwar-period avant-garde art movement in
Japan, especially in contrast to the then rising interest in Reportage painting—a genre of
painting visually similar to an amalgam of Social Realism and Surrealism that was put
forth by socially conscious artists to convey clear, straightforward messages about socio-
political issues in the turbulent period following the war.
40
However, Polarism was not

39
Okamoto Tarō, Okamoto Tarō gabunshū abangyarudo [Okamoto Tarō’s paintings and texts: The avant-
garde](Tokyo: Getsuyō-shobō, 1948), 123–124.
40
Regarding Reportage painting, see Chapter One of this dissertation as well as the section dedicated to
Reportage painting in Justin Jesty’s “Arts of Engagement: Art and Social Movements in Japan’s Early
Postwar” (Ph.D. diss., The University of Chicago, 2010), 74–149. See also Linda Hoaglund’s “Protest Art
in 1950s Japan: The Forgotten Reportage Painters,” The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol.12, issue
43, no. 1 (October 27, 2014), accessed November 2, 2014, http://japanfocus.org/-Linda-
Hoaglund/4203/article.html.
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limited to the question of artistic style or approach. As pointed out by art critic Sawaragi
Noi, who played a major role in the recent revival of Okamoto’s artwork, Okamoto’s
Polarism was a means to recuperate from the two-fold predicament of artistic modernism
in the immediate aftermath of the Asia-Pacific War and of postwar Japan itself.
41
At the
same time, Sawaragi adds, through Polarism, Okamoto attempted to overcome Hegelian
dialectics, which sought a synthesis of thesis and anti-thesis as well as teleology.
Expanding on sociologist and philosopher George Bataille’s view of history,
which was very much informed by Alexandre Kojève’s lectures on Hegel—Okamoto
himself was a regular attendee—Okamoto developed the discourse of Polarism with the
support of Marxist critic Hanada Kiyoteru (1909-1974).
42
Together, Okamoto and
Hanada founded the short-lived progressive group called Yoru no Kai (Night Society, est.
1948), one of the first interdisciplinary study groups in the postwar period from which a
number of significant writers, thinkers, and artists emerged.
43
Hanada also conceived that

41
Sawaragi Noi, “Kuroi taiyō to akai kani: Okamoto Tarō to Nippon III, Pazuru no naka no ‘bakuhatsu’”
[Black sun and red crab: Okamoto Tarō and Japan III, “Explosion” in a puzzle], Chūō kōron/The Central
View, 117: 3 (March 2002): 280−289, updated and reprinted as “Bataille to bakuhatsu” [Bataille and
explosion] in Tarō to bakuhatsu: Kitarubeki Okamoto Tarō e [Tarō and explosion: For Okamoto Tarō to
come] (Tokyo: Kawadeshobo Shinsha, 2012), 69–85. For a discussion of Okamoto’s Polarism and Bataille,
see also Kitazawa Noriaki, “Taikyoku no shisō: 1930-nendai kara 50-nendai shotō ni itaru Okamoto Tarō
no gakyō [Philosophy of bipolar opposition: Okamoto Taro’s painterly work from the 1930s to the early
1950s], Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kyōzai no kenkyū [National literature: Research for interpretation and
education], 52: 2 (February 2007): 40–51.
42
Yoru no Kai was named after Okamoto’s 1947 painting entitled Yoru/the Night, which is claimed to be
one of the first works that Okamoto produced since his return to Japan after his military service and short
POW time in China. After finding that his house and studio, and most of his artwork, had been completely
destroyed by fire in an air raid, Okamoto produced this work, which shows a spiritual uplift to confront a
devastating situation: a young woman with a hidden knife in her hand faces a monstrous tree that looks like
a skull with burning red eyes. Scholars, including Ishii Takumi, read the painting as an illustrative link to
Okamoto’s experience of Acéphale’s nighttime ritual (Ishii Takumi, Nazotoki ‘Taiyō no tō’ [Deciphering
Tower of the Sun] [Tokyo: Gentosha shinsho, 2010], 73–100).
43
The collective included writers like Abe Kōbō and Haniya Yutaka. After the collective dissolved,
Okamoto and Hanada founded Abangyarudo Geijutsu Kenkyū Kai (Avant-garde Art Research Group),
which included more visual artists such as Ikeda Tatsuo, the young Kitadai Shōzso and Yamaguchi
Katsuhiro, the latter two of whom later became the core members of the Jikken Kōbō/Experimental
Workshop. For further discussion of Hanada and his critical presence in the art world, see Ken Yoshida’s
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the avant-garde was something that could capture the dialectics of the inner and outer
world, high and lowbrow art, nature and technology or primitive and advanced, and art
and politics, which was very similar to what Okamoto intended to attain through Polarism
but without reaching the point of Hegelian synthesis.
44

Around this time, Okamoto was inclined toward communism, as were many
intellectuals in Japan during the late 1940s and the early 1950s, especially through his
relationship with Hanada and novelist Abe Kōbō, who were once active party members,
although Okamoto in fact never belonged. This was part of the reason that Okamoto
claimed avant-garde art to be tied to the masses. In his seminal essay “Abangyarudo
sengen (Avant-Garde manifesto)” (1949), Okamoto reiterates that art must be made by
the people and of the people:
Art is creation. Painting must be made by everybody.
Art is of the people (“taishū”).
Art is free.
It eradicates the authority of esoteric technical skill that is underwritten by the
power of the privileged few, and abandons the provincial confines of artisanal
technique. It is indeed avant-garde art that plunges in among the masses with an
expression that is completely liberated.
45

As opposed to the Realism of Courbet, for instance, which deals with easily recognizable
motifs and subjects, or Social Realism or Reportage paintings that tended to focus on
external reality, Okamoto says that avant-garde art clenches the very moment of
“contradiction between social and asocial realms.” Moreover, it should “optimistically”

“Interstitial Movements in the Works of Hanada Kiyoteru: A Preliminary Study,” positions: East Asia
Cultures Critique, 22: 4 (Fall 2014): 781–808.
44
Curator and researcher Ōtani Shōgo follows Okamoto’s discursive development into Polarism from his
Paris days and points to Hanada’s significance in Okamoto’s refinement of the discourse (Ōtani, “Okamoto
Tarō no ‘taikyoku shugi’ no seiritsu wo megutte” [The formation of Okamoto Taro's ‘Polarism’], Bulletin
of The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo, vol. 13 [2009]: 18–36).
45
Okamoto Tarō, “Geijutsukan—Abangyarudo sengen” [A view of art: Avant-Garde Manifesto], Kaizō
[Reconstruction], 30: 11 (November 1949): 64-68, reprinted in Jujutsu tanjō, 46. English translation is by
Justin Jesty, with slight modifications by the author, in Primary Documents From Postwar to Postmodern:
Art in Japan 1945-1989, 36.
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exist with the masses, Okamoto asserts. In other words, Okamoto’s Polarism was not just
about artistic concerns but also acknowledged the existence of class struggle. Nonetheless,
the tone used to describe class struggle in the 1949 text, in which Okamoto also stated
that “avant-garde art is nothing other than revolutionary art,” had waned a little by the
late 1950s. In a 1957 dialogue between Okamoto, art critic Haryū Ichirō, and filmmaker
Hani Susumu, Okamoto said that for him “taishū” suggested humans’ fundamental way
of being, rather than an economic or historial sense of categorization of a certain class, as
leftists usually applied the term.
46
Art was therefore meant to recapture something
essential, or fundamental things or beings. In addition, although admitting that a number
of ordinary people said that they did not understand his art, Okamoto paradoxically said
that his art was linked to the people, especially their energy.
47

Okamoto, via Hanada, envisioned Polarism as much different from regular “isms;”
however, its theoretical undertone hindered the reach of the theory beyond intellectual
circles. Sawaragi argues that Okamoto thus employed the term bakuhatsu, or “explosion,”
instead as his artistic dictum in the late 1960s, as a more accessible and appealing word
for the masses for essentially the same concept as Polarism.
48
The artist’s first public
statement on “explosion” was his 1968 exhibition Okamoto Tarō seimei kūkan no
dorama: Tarō Bakuhatsu (Okamoto Tarō drama of life and space: Tarō Explodes) that

46
Okamoto Tarō, Haryū Ichirō, and Hani Susumu, “Bijutsu to taishū” [Art and the people], Bijutsu techō
[Art notebook], no. 125 (May 1957): 50.
47
Ibid., 53.
48
Sawaragi Noi, “Kuroi taiyō to akai kani: Okamoto Tarō to Nippon III, Pazuru no naka no ‘bakuhatsu,’”
282–284. Okamoto, however, repeatedly used terms quite similar to “explosion,” such as “clash” and
“spark” as well as “ripped wound” or “fresh wound” as a result of “clash,” from very early on in his
writings about Polarism.
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opened at Ginza Matsuya Department Store, another way to reach a wider viewership
than exhibitions at art museums could achive.
49

Even though the exhibition lasted for only about two weeks, this mid-career
retrospective was a full-throttle event. Designed by a team of emerging architect Hara
Hiroshi and established designer Awazu Kiyoshi with the support of ex-VIVO member
photographer Narahara Ikkō and ex-Experimental Workshop member composer
Takemitsu Tōru, the exhibition encompassed Okamoto’s early paintings, sculpture, and
design works such as furniture and ashtrays.
50
Works in progress were also one of the
exhibition highlights, including models of Five Continents and Tower of the Sun as well
as the largest study of Myth of Tomorrow, and its skeleton in flames was even used on the
exhibition poster or one of the posters (Fig. 2.10). Because the title as well as the
exhibition was a request from the department store, Okamoto was initially hesitant but
agreed with the exhibition title in the end. Rather than articulating the meaning of
“explosion,” however, Okamoto presented it as a way of life, or raison d’être, and wished
to attain a “whole-person explosion.”
51
He even insisted that every person explode and
breakthrough the mood that permeated a society in which people were “forced to act
correctly toward each other and to be servile.”

49
Okamoto’s choice of department stores over art museums as exhibition venues was also indebted to the
fact that department store exhibitions could travel to smaller cities, away from Tokyo (Nakano Yasuo,
curator at the Okamoto Tarō Museum of Art, Kawasaki, interview with the author, Kawasaki City, June 16,
2015). Furthermore, Okamoto did not sell his art to private collectors as he hoped his works would stay
accessible to the public. For a history of department stores as cultural institutions as much as art
entrepreneurs for the new middle class in Japan, see Younjung Oh’s “Shopping for Art: The New Middle
Class’s Art Consumption in Modern Japanese Department Stores,” Journal of Design Hisotry, 27: 4
(November 2014): 351–369.
50
For a discussion of Okamoto as a designer, see Anne Gossot’s “Le design « art d'aujourd'hui, art pour
tous ». Notes autour de l'exposition « La période Aoyama d'Okamoto Tarō, 1954-1970 » Museum of Art,
Kawasaki, 21 avril-1er juillet 2007,” Ebisu, no. 37 (2007): 115–137.
51
Okamoto Tarō, Okamoto Tarō seimei kūkan no dorama Tarō Bakuhatsu [Okamoto Tarō drama of life
and space, Tarō Explodes] (Tokyo: Ginza Matsuya, 1968), title page.
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It is thus ironic that while “art is an explosion” became Okamoto’s most
memorable phrase among the public—it was even chosen as the new buzz-word-of-the-
year in 1986—he is best known for his eccentric behavior on TV programs and
commercials, which in the end served to reiterate the image of a “crazy artist.”
Consequently, Okamoto’s intention behind the term, either Polarism or explosion as an
energetic clash of opposing elements, including style and thinking or a way of life,
remained largely unrecognized. I will come back to Okamoto’s idea of the masses and
class struggle later and simply emphasize here that Tower of the Sun is a visualization of
“explosion” at the site of Expo. In this sense, Myth of Tomorrow literally depicts the
moment of the atomic detonation, the explosion or Polarism of the cruelty and beauty of
the bombs, and people’s sparkling energy to confront the calamity.
52

Okamoto, Atomic Bombs, and Nuclear Energy
Compared to Tower of the Sun, however, there are very few studies that analyze
the mural beyond the semantic reading of Myth of Tomorrow as a symbol of anti-war and
anti-nuclear weapons sentiments.
53
For example, Ishii Takumi claims that Tower of the
Sun, the Tree of Life, and the mural’s skeleton represent the cosmological axis and
ultimately Okamoto’s self-image. In this analysis, the artist’s 1970 article “Waga sekai
bijutsu shi” (My world art history), which was serialized in the monthly art magazine
Geijutsu Shinchō (New trends in art), serves a crutial entry.
54
Ishii argues that the

52
Sawaragi, Tarō to bakuhatsu: Kitarubeki Okamoto Tarō e, 275.
53
See, for example, the exhibition catalogue, Myth of Tomorrow: Okamoto Tarō, Hokoraka na messēji:
‘Asu no shinwa’ kansei e no michi; and Asu no shinwa Okamoto Tarō no messēji.
54
With the article, Okamoto thought to challenge west-centered canonical art history and discussed pre-
historic and modern as well as eastern and western objects alongside each other under twelve different
themes. The serialized article was published as a book, Bi no juryoku [Magic power of beauty] in the
following year.
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common motif of a figure with eyes and arms wide open, floating or flying in the sky,
suggests a direct link to Bataille’s secret society Acéphale’s emblem of a headless man
(Fig. 2.11). In addition, Ishii notes that Okamoto converged the image with the Tree of
Life, as Tower of the Sun was once entitled,
55
the tower and skeleton being the center of
the universe in Buddhist cosmology, specifically Garbhadhatu Mandala or Taizō-kai
mandala (Womb World Mandala).
56
In contrast, curator Sasaki Hidenori focuses on the
idea of the Tree of Life or a shaman’s ladder as suggested by Okamoto ’s personal copy
of Mircea Eliade’s Le Chamamisme (1951).
57

Nevertheless, for the purpose of the representation of the atomic bomb and its
legacy, I focus on some of the recent scholarly insights on this particular theme. Though
in a cursory way, Sawaragi speculates post 3.11/post-Fukushima that one of Okamoto’s
favorite visual motifs of the black or deep green sun, which was also painted on the back
side of Tower of the Sun, may represent nuclear power and weapons.
58
Historian of
Japanese art Bert Winther-Tamaki also posits that this large sculpture signals nuclear
dread, yet from a more flexible perspective than Sawaragi’s analysis. In Winther-
Tamaki’s study, Myth of Tomorrow is the major grounding in theorizing the Tower as a

55
“Hito katadotta ‘Seimei no ki’” [‘The Tree of Life’ in the form of a man], Yomiuri Shimbun [Yomiuri
newspaper], October 22, 1967, 14.
56
Okamoto reproduced the mandala as one of the two color images in the book version of “My world art
history,” the other being Christ from Matthias Grünewald’s Isenheim Altarpiece’s “Resurrection” scene (ca.
1515). Sawaragi Noi also argues that Tower of the Sun represents the cosmology of the Singon Sect of
Buddhism, or Sino-Japanese Esoteric Buddhism, in reference to Miki Manabu’s study of iconography of
Tower of the Sun. Sawaragi, “Kuroi taiyō to akai kani,” 256-258. Miki Manabu, “Taiyō no tō no
zuzōgaku/Essay on the Iconography of the Tower of the Sun,” 10 ＋1, no. 36 (September 2004): 145–154.
57
Sasaki Hidenori ed., Okamoto Tarō no shāmanizumu/Taro Okamoto: Le Chamanisme (Kasawaki: Taro
Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki, 2013), 11 and 66–89. Okamoto obviously perused Eliade’s books
including Le Chamamisme et les techniques archaïques de l'extase (Paris: Payot, 1957).
58
Sawaragi Noi, Tarō to bakuhatsu: Kitarubeki Okamoto Tarō e [Tarō and explosion: For Okamoto Tarō to
come] (Tokyo: Kawadeshobo Shinsha, 2012), 7–8.
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monument of Okamoto’s take on Mexico, nuclear terror, and world art history.
59
In
addition, architect Isozaki Arata, who as a project manager of the Expo’s Theme Pavilion
had a personal relationship with Okamoto, its chief producer, argues that the Tower was
the symbol of the atomic bomb and anti-nuke feelings.
60

Certainly, Okamoto planned to exhibit three monumental panels of a
photographic collage of “war, destruction, and peace” as part of the Theme Pavilion’s sky
display.
61
Designed by Kimura Tsunehisa (1928–2008), one of the experimental
designers who raised the genre of graphic design to the level of critical works of art, the
collage showed multiple mushroom clouds (“war”), cities in ruins along with the
enlarged feet of victims (“destruction”), and a moon and fireworks (“peace”)(Fig. 2.12).
Nevertheless, the close-up view of the war victims’ body parts was condemned as too
graphic and gruesome for Expo audiences and was thus replaced by images of bombed
buildings in the end.
62

However, in response to the move to make Okamoto and especially Tower of the
Sun and Myth of Tomorrow into a post 3.11 emblem of anti-atomic bomb and anti-
nuclear energy sentiment, a small number of researchers have pointed to the danger of
positioning these two monumental works together from a post-Fukushima perspective
and suggested examining them in their respective, especially historical, contexts. For

59
Bert Winther-Tamaki, “To Put on A Big Face: The Globalist Stance of Okamoto Tarō’s Tower of the Sun
for the Japan World Exposition,” Review of Japanese Culture and Society, vol. 23 (December 2011): 81–
101.
60
In fact, Isozaki already referred to Okamoto’s Tower of the Sun, which has become a “national
monument” (Isozaki Arata, “Watashi no rirekisho: Kenchikuka Izozaki Arata 18” [My résumé: Architect
Isozaki Arata], Nihon keizai shimbun [Japan Economic Newspaper] [May 19, 2009], 36. Isozaki also
served as the exhibition designer of Okamoto’s solo shows in 1964.
61
Sawaragi Noi, ed., Okamoto Tarō bakuhatsu taizen [Okamoto Tarō complete book of explosion],
(Tokyo: Kawadeshobo Shinsha, 2011), unpaginated.
62
“Bankokuhaku no genbaku shashin wo tenaoshi” [Adjusting Expo’s atomic bomb photographs], Yomiuri
Shimbun, February 6, 1970, 14. Regarding Kimura’s graphic works, see Kimura Tsunehisa, et al. Kimura
kamera: Kimura Tsunehisa no vijuaru sukyandaru [Kimura camera: Kimura Tsunehisa’s visual scandal]
(Tokyo: Parco Shuppan, 1979).
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example, literary critic Suga Hidemi objects to Okamoto’s increasingly conspicuous
status as a “national artist” for post-3.11 Japan.
63
Anti- and zero nuclear power plant
voices hardly existed in 1970, when Expo was held, and Suga also argues that the small
group of people who were involved in the anti-/no nuclear power movement then were
mostly motivated by conservative ends. In other words, their objective was to protect the
ownership of their property, and their appeal had no scientific, medical, or theoretical
grounding. Suga notes that it was only after around 1974, with the launch of the Citizens’
Nuclear Information Center, that a handful of leftist journalists were inspired to take
seriously the issue of anti-nuclear energy as the consensus of the anti/no nuclear
movement.
64

As touched upon in Chapter One, the disconnection of nuclear energy
(genshiryoku) and nuclear power plants (genpatsu) from the anti-nuke movement
(hankaku) in the majority’s consciousness had taken place throughout the 1950s and 1960.
Moreover, as Suga suggests, this attitude was even shared by intellectuals who are now
known as active proponents of abandoning nuclear energy, such as the Nobel laureate
novelist Ōe Kenzaburō.
65
Suga, although briefly, refers to Ōe’s 1970 publication,
Kakujitai no sōzōryoku (Imagination for the nuclear age), a book based on Ōe’s monthly
public lecture series in 1968 at the Kinokuniya Bookstore in Shinjuku, the quarter known
for gatherings and riots of leftist students and intellectuals. Considering the time and
location, it is important to reiterate Ōe’s assertion that only creative and imaginative

63
A number of papers, articles, and weblogs have discussed the mural in this context since 3.11, including
an article by Isozaki Arata, for example (Isozaki Arata, “Fukushima de anata wa nanimo miteinai [You
didn’t see anything in Fukushima],” Imakoso watashi wa genpatsu ni hantai shimasu [I oppose nuclear
power plants now], ed. Japan P.E.N. Club [Tokyo: Heibon-Sha, 2012], 253–263).
64
Suga Hidemi, “‘Taiyō no tō’ o hairo seyo [Abolish Tower of the Sun], Datsu genpatsu ‘iron’ [Divergent
discourse of no nuclear power plants] (Tokyo: Sakuhin-sha, 2011), 192–193.
65
Ibid., 188.
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activities could push the horizon beyond the barbarous violence of nuclear weapons, as
seen in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, the novelist also spoke of the need to develop
nuclear technology, especially in the area of nuclear energy.
66
Given the fact that
someone like Ōe supported nuclear energy, it was understandable for Okamoto to accept
it as well. Suga additionally points out that international expositions, including Expo 70,
were the locus to enhance cooperation between industry and academia. With these
conditions, Suga concludes that Okamoto opposed nuclear weapons and war but
supported nuclear energy.
Artist and critic Okazaki Kenjirō discusses Okamoto in a comparative context. In
his study of modernist architect Shirai Seiichi (1905–1983), Okazaki discusses the
structural resemblance of verticality, which literally breaks through something horizontal,
between Shirai’s unrealized structure of Genbaku-dō or Temple Atomic Catastrophes
(1954–1955), another unrealized monument of Isamu Noguchi’s Memorial for the Dead
of Hiroshima (plan presented in 1952), and Tower of the Sun (Fig. 2.13).
67
Okazaki also
points out the rhetorical analogies in their writings in which they clearly recognized the
“explosive” or expressive energy of Japan’s Neolithic Jōmon artifacts, which they aptly
compared to destructive yet resourceful nuclear energy. In discussing their idiom of
something primitive and explosive as something destructive and yet innovative, and

66
Ōe Kenzaburō, Kakujitai no sōzōryoku [Imagination for the nuclear age] (Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 1970),
109–114.
67
Shirai conceived the Temple Atomic Catastrophes privately as a permanent museum for Maruki Iri and
Maruki Toshi’s Hiroshima Panels. A general response to Shirai’s proposal was that its main structure
looked like a stylized form of a mushroom cloud, which was one of the major reasons that the Marukis did
not accept his design. Okazaki refutes this general view and instead suggests that Shirai’s aerial design
drawing reveals that the intended structure was in fact much closer to the model of nuclear fission (Okazaki
Kenjirō, “Geijutsu no jōken 1: Shirai Seiichi to iu mondaigun (zenpen)” [Conditions of art 1: Issues of
Shirai Seiichi, Part 1], Bijutsu techō [Art notebook], no. 948 [February 2011]: 114–131). For the
disagreement between the Marukis and Shirai over different ways of representing the atomic bomb, see
Ishizaki Takashi, “Bijutsukan to shite no Genbakudō ni kansuru oboegaki: Maruki Iri · Toshi fusai to Shirai
Seiichi no kōryū/Memorandum Relating to Genbakudo as a Museum: Exchange Between Iri and Toshi
Maruki and Seiichi Shirai,” Bulletin of Musashino Art University, no. 42 (2011): 11–24.
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simultaneously creative and fundamental, Okazaki comes back to the function of sun and
that Okamoto’s Tower meant an emblem of the artificial sun, that is, atomic/nuclear
energy, rather than the natural sun.
68

Building upon Okazaki’s research, art critic and writer Kuresawa Takemi also
stresses the need to look at Tower of the Sun in contrast to Myth of Tomorrow, primarily
because of the occasion for which the Tower was constructed: the Osaka Expo. As Suga
has framed it, international expositions historically showcased new technology and
industry since their inception with the Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All
Nations in London in 1851. Kuresawa especially underscores how the Brussels Expo in
1958 boasted innovations in nuclear technology through Atomium, the Expo’s monument
in the shape of connected spheres that were inspired by the form of atoms.
69
Kuresawa
sees that the Osaka Expo was a step forward from the Brussels Expo and could justifiably
be called “Genpatsu Banpaku” (Nuclear Power Plant Expo), where the most prominent
example was Okamoto’s Tower of the Sun. Two searchlights lit from the eyes atop Tower
of the Sun, which was located near the entrance, were powered by the Tsuruga Nuclear
Power Plant, by which the Japan Atomic Power Company strove to deliver this “clean”
energy to the Expo’s inaugural ceremony (Fig. 2.14).
70
Like Atomium of the Brussels

68
Nonetheless, in his separate article on Noguchi and Shirai, Okazaki situates Shirai’s Temple Atomic
Catastrophes as indicative of the architect’s warning about the dangers of nuclear power plants as much as
it simulates nuclear fission and the structure of power plant (Okazaki Kenjirō, “A Place to Bury Names, or
Resurrection (Circulation and Continuity of Energy) as a Dissolution of Identity: Isamu Noguchi’s
Memorial to the Dead of Hiroshima and Shirai Sei’ichi’s Temple Atomic Catastrophes,” Review of
Japanese Culture and Society, vol. 26 (December 2014): 314–317.
69
Other examples at Expo that touched on or were powered by nuclear technology were the nuclear reactor
model exhibited at the American Pavilion and displays pertaining to nuclear energy technology at the
French and British Pavilions. Another popular theme at Expo was space technology, as suggested by the
USSR’s Sputnik I that was successfully launched in the previous year. For an overview of the Brussels
Expo, see Expo 58: Between Utopia and Reality/Under the leadership of Gonzague Pluvinage (Brussels:
Brussels City Archives, 2008) and L'Expo 58 et le style atome (Bruxelles: Magic-Strip, 1983).
70
“Keizaitaikoku Nippon ga zenmen ni, kage ga usui ‘genbaku’ tenji” [Pushing the image of Japan as an
economic superpower, contra to mute presence of “the atomic bomb” exhibition], Asahi Shimbun, evening
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Expo, Kuresawa claims that Okamoto’s Tower of the Sun was a metaphoric symbol of
nuclear energy for the Osaka Expo.
71
Kuresawa also speculates that Okamoto’s rhetoric
of a “beautiful” and “impetuous explosion of energy” in Hiroshima ’63 could mean
nuclear energy, which presents an undeniable contrast to the dark atomic bomb
devastation gouged in the ground.
The rejection of nuclear weapons and simultaneous endorsement of nuclear
energy was widely shared by the public at that time and indeed was reiterated at the
Expo’s Japanese Pavilion, which was sponsored by the government of Japan. Its fourth
tower, dedicated to the display of new science and technology in Japan, included a pair of
large tapestries, each measuring six by eighteen meters, juxtaposing “good and bad use of
nuclear power.” Entitled Yorokobi no tō/Tower of Happiness, the tapestry of virtuous
nuclear power featured an image of the sun in a golden circle, surrounded by semi-
spherical lines against a reddish-orange background. In contrast, the other of the pair,
Kanashimi no tō/Tower of Sorrow included black and white mushroom clouds growing
over Hiroshima in monochromatic abstract patterning, which was meant to represent
keloid scars against the vivid polychrome sky (Fig. 2.15).
72
However, similar to the
responses to the photo-collage of the atomic bombs at the Theme Pavilion, which was

edition, March 14, 1970, 10. The Mihama Nuclear Power Plant also started providing electricity to the
Osaka Expo on August 8, 1970.
71
“Banpaku ni genshi no hi o” (Nuclear light for Expo) was a catchphrase of the Kansai Electric Power Co.
(KEPCO). Kuresawa Takemi, “Banpaku to genshiryoku: Atomiumu kara ‘Taiyō no tō’ e” [The World
Exposition and nuclear energy: From Atomium to Tower of the Sun] in Osaka banpaku no inpakuto [Osaka
Expo’s impact], accessed July 15, 2014, http://www.seikyusha.co.jp/wp/rennsai/kuresawaeto5.html;
expanded and reprinted as Etō Mitsunori and Kuresawa Takemi, Ōsaka banpaku ga enshutsu shita mirai:
Zen’ei geijutsu no sōzōryoku to sono jidai [The future Expo presented: Imagination of avant-garde art and
the era] (Tokyo: Seikyu-sha, 2014).
72
“Keizaitaikoku Nippon ga zenmen ni, kage ga usui ‘genbaku’ tenji.” While announcing the Expo
opening, the article points out that the troublesome past (like atomic bombs) and present conditions such as
industrial pollution had been covered up by Expo’s celebratory image of Japan as the world’s second
largest economic power. The article also reported about the ambiguousness of the tapestry as well as
invisibility of the war and the peace constitution at Expo.
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eventually altered, this tapestry exhibition also provoked criticism. While there was a call
to have something about the atomic bombs at the Japanese Pavilion, the organizer chose a
tapestry because the medium was less graphic and descriptive, in comparison to
photography, for example. In the end, the representation of the nuclear explosion and the
second sun was abstracted and stylized to the extent that most visitors could not tell what
the images were, which stimulated further condemnation.
73

Interestingly, Okamoto himself expressed the dream of nuclear energy as far back
as 1955. When the United States and Japanese governments were still negotiating
compensation for the irradiated Lucky Dragon No. 5 crews, the artist contributed an
illustrated article entitled “Genshiryoku ban’nō jidai” (An era of omnipotent nuclear
energy) to Mainichi Shimbun (Mainichi newspaper) on January 4, which states (Fig.
2.16):
I am hoping that we will ably utilize nuclear energy, which hurt and troubled us
so much in [19]54 … . Peaceful use of nuclear energy is easy. Our entire life can
rely on nuclear energy. We all have been working very hard. So let’s take a break
now[.] Have nuclear energy feed us, while we recline, and serve us alcoholic
beverages. Have it even play pachinko (Japanese pinball) [for us].
74

The small line drawing accompanying the text shows an anthropomorphized mushroom
cloud, which is very similar to the ones in Okamoto’s paintings about the atomic bombs,
with multiple arms that are busily at work, pouring wine into a glass, filling a bowl with
cereal-like snacks, and feeding a reclining man from a bowl of rice with chopsticks. The

73
The photograph display was changed to the set of tapestries in early 1969, but Kaya Seiji, chairman of
Expo’s Theme Committee and Professor Emeritus of Physics at Tokyo University, who visited the Expo
site right before the public opening, unhappily commented that tapestries were impressive handicrafts but
did not convey a sense of the calamity of the atomic bombs. Even those who received an explanation in
front of the tapestries could not grasp what they depicted. “Genbaku tenji ‘hisansa tarinaine” [The atomic
bomb display ‘does not show misery’], Mainichi Shimbun [Mainichi newspaper], March 5, 1970, 14.
74
Okamoto, “Genshiryoku ban’nōjidai” [An era of omnipotent nuclear energy], Mainichi Shimbun, January
4, 1955, 8.
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illustration and text shows Okamoto’s typical hyperbole and playfulness. However,
Okamoto is not simply being sarcastically euphemistic; he means what he is saying.
Additionally, the article was presented as his new year’s resolution of 1955. In the
following year, Okamoto also submitted a small illustration for a Yomiuri Shimbun article
that explains nuclear power plant technology, including its drawbacks, but overall
promotes this new technology, which would soon start operating in Japan.
75
Okamoto, an
outspoken artist who had numerous means and occasions to express his opinions, never
rejected or criticized nuclear power. In effect, he endorsed this technological
development, although perhaps not proactively. In this circumstance, though nominal,
especially compared to his monumental artwork, these newspaper submissions show
Okamoto as being a supporter of or inclined to support the technical development of the
peaceful use of nuclear energy, which should not be disregarded when we look at Myth of
Tomorrow and Tower of the Sun.

Recuperating the Voice of the Voiceless, By Way of Mexico
In Myth of Tomorrow, there is another crucial element. In reference to the mural,
multiple scholars have elucidated that Okamoto’s interest in Mexico’s ancient culture
intensified in the postwar period. One of the earliest influences was the Mexican Art
Exhibition in 1955, which gathered from ancient artifacts, including Aztec Calendar
Stone, to contemporary paintings by such artists as David Alfalo Siqueiros, Rufino

75
Nakamura Seitarō, “Hoshi o chijō e: Genshiryoku no atarashii shinro” [Bringing stars to the ground: The
new path of atomic energy], Yomiuri Shimbun, January 3, 1956, 11.
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Tamayo, and even Luis Nishizawa, who assisted Okamoto’s mural.
76
As Winther-
Tamaki’s study suggests, the exhibition had a great impact on avant-garde artists and
theorists, who had been keeping an eye on new arts in Europe and in the United States,
with the result that Mexico became an alternative artistic model.
77
In part, the exhibition
was another occasion to provoke the tradition debate in the fields of art and architecture,
and Okamoto was one of the major contributors or initiators with his article about
prehistoric earthenware.
78
Okamoto was also more than an observer in the Mexico boom
since he was one of the exhibition’s executive committee members.
79
His admiration of
the arts and people of Mexico was further deepened through his visits to the country in
1963, made at the invitation of Reportage painter Toneyama Kōjin, and again in 1967 as

76
The exhibition traveled worldwide, and the Japanese presentation was held at the Tokyo National
Museum from September 10 to October 20, 1955 (Atarashi Kikuo ed., Mekishiko bijutsuten/Mexican Art
Exhibition [Tokyo: The Tokyo National Museum, 1955]).
77
Winther-Tamaki, “To Put on a Big Face,” 91–97. See also Nakano Yasuo’s summery of the trajectory of
Japanese artists’ fascination with Mexico, “Okamoto Tarō, Mekishiko e no manazashi” [Okamoto Tarō and
his view on Mexico], Okamoto Tarō to Mekishiko: Atsui manazashi/Taro Okamoto and Mexico (Kawasaki:
Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, 2002), 60–62; and “Zadankai: Gendai Nihon bijutsu wa dōugoitaka, Hanyū
Ichirō, Tōno Yoshiaki, Nakahara Yūsuke, Minemura Toshiaki, and Okada Tatsuhiko” [Roundtable
discussion: How Japanese contemporary art was transformed, Hanyū Ichirō, Tōno Yoshiaki, Nakahara
Yūsuke, Minemura Toshiaki, and Okada Tatsuhiko], Bijutsu techō [Art notebook], no. 436 (July 1978): 18
and 21. For example, the young On Kawara, who later established himself as a conceptual artist, left for
Mexico after being greatly inspired by the Mexico exhibition before he arrived in New York City. Art critic
Nakahara Yūsuke points out Siqueiros’s influence on the unique perspective of Kawara’s 1955 work Black
Soldier. See also Bert Winther-Tamakai’s study, Maximum Embodiment: Yoga, the Western Painting of
Japan, 1912-1955 (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2012), 157–162.
78
Okamoto Tarō, “Jōmon doki ron” [On Jōmon Ceramics], originally published in Mizue [Watercolor], no.
558 (February 1952): 3–18, trans. Jonathan M. Reynolds, Art in Translation, 1: 1 (2009): 49–60. The
article challenged the then common idea of Japanese art and design were characterized by the simple, two-
dimensional, and sophisticated Yayoi-period earthenware that was associated with the practice of rice
farming introduced from the continent. Okamoto argued instead that the previous Jōmon-period’s crude yet
thick, sculptural, and dynamic, or “Dionysian,” earthenware, which was not even included in general art
history textbooks at that time. The discussion continued among architecture and design practitioners,
especially Kawazoe Noboru, editor in chief of Shinkenchiku (New Architecture) magazine, and architect
Tange Kenzō, whom Kawazoe supported. For a further discussion of Okamoto and his recuperation of
ancient Japanese art and Japaneseness, see Jonathan M. Reynolds, “Uncanny, Hypermodern Japaneseness:
Okamoto Tarō and the Search for Prehistoric Modernism,” Allegories of Time and Space: Japanese Identity
in Photography and Architecture (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i, 2015), 54–85; See also Akasaka
Norio’s Okamoto Tarō no mita Nihon [Japan that Okamoto Tarō saw] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2007),
which discusses Okamoto as an ethnographer; see also Chapter 1 of this dissertation.
79
“Hatsu no jōnin iinkai o hiraku, Mekisiko bijutsu ten” [Holding the first exhibition committee meeting,
Mexican Art Exhibition], Yomiuri Shimbun, August 14, 1955, 7.
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part of a television program about Latin America. It was during this latter trip that
Okamoto met Suárez and agreed on the mural commission.
80

Long before that, however, Okamoto had encountered Pre-Columbian culture
while he was in Paris in the 1930s when European intellectuals were revisiting ancient
Mexican cultures inspired by recent archeological discoveries. Okamoto, who was then a
student of sociologist and anthropologist Marcel Mauss, recalled his bodily reaction when
he was shown by one of his artist-friends Kurt Seligmann what was presumably the site
of Aztec sacrificial rites. Calling to his mind the astonishing impression of fresh blood
and its intense redness, Okamoto wrote:
[M]y blood flowed backward, boiling up within me. The pyramid I saw was no
longer a pile of stones. It transformed itself into the huge figure of [a] man—no,
an intense image of the whole universe that transcends humankind. This
represents the drama of the universe, the drama of humans. Blood then powerfully
returned to me as a compelling object. I have since had a strong interest in
Mexico.
81

Since then, the color of blood, which is also associated with the birth of the sun, or Sun
God, in ancient Mexico, became the primary color for Okamoto as a representation of
something fearsome yet ecstatic. The color is also visibly dominant in many of
Okamoto’s paintings, including Myth of Tomorrow.
82

Okamoto’s connection to Mexico in the prewar period has not been actively
researched; the writings focusing on the subject are expressions of his nascent love of
Mexico’s ancient culture. However, his interest in Mexico comprises more than its

80
Yamada Satoshi, “Okamoto Tarō to Mekishiko no hekiga” [Okamoto Tarō and Mexican Mural],
Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kyōzai no kenkyū, 52: 2 (February 2007): 7–8. Noya Fumiaki, “Isamu Noguchi,
Okamoto Tarō to Mekishiko” [Isamu Noguchi, Okamoto Tarō, and Mexico], Journal of Latin American
Studies, Institute for Latin American Studies, Rikkyo University, vol. 34 (2005): 47–64.
81
Okamoto Tarō, “Waga sekai bijutsu shi 4: Kodai no chi, gendai no chi,” Geijutsu Shinchō [New trends in
art], 21: 4 (April 1970), 50, trans. Reiko Tomii as “Ancient Blood, Contemporary Blood,” Review of
Japanese Culture and Society, vol. 23 (December 2011): 105.
82
Ibid., 108.
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104
ancient culture, and I speculate that Okamoto was also aware of the Muralism movement
in Mexico, the art movement initiated in the 1920s by Minister of Education José
Vasconcelos Calderón (1882–1959) long before the Mexico exhibition in Tokyo. The
Muralists’ novel painting technique, materiality, and revolutionary themes as well as their
opinionated and activist stance, had a great impact on artists beyond Mexico, especially
in the United States where, like Okamoto in postwar Japan, progressive artists—such as
Ben Shahn or even Jackson Pollock, who participated in the painting workshop founded
by Siqueiros—were actively seeking non-European models.
83
Concerning Okamoto in
relation to Mexico in the interwar period, anthropologist Imafuku Ryūta has made
cursory reference to Okamoto being engaged in the 1930s intellectual climate in Paris,
comparing him to the Primitivists and Surrealists who fled to Mexico from the pressures
of the Nazi assault on France. Imafuku says that Okamoto possibly had a more immanent
and immediate relationship to Mexico than those European artists as he was an
ethnographer himself.
84
Nonetheless, Okamoto’s Mexico connection then was definitely
through a Paris lens and therefore he, too, reiterated the trope of Aztecs as blood-thirsty
savages and made some erroneous commentaries.
85

83
For this subject, see for instance Ellen G. Landau’s Mexico and American Modernism (New Haven: Yale
University Press, 2013).
84
For example, Okamoto as ethnographer, Imafuku says, is evidenced by photographs that Okamoto took
during his trip to Mexico. However, Imafuku does not look into how Okamoto might have been exposed to
contemporary art in Mexico, not just ethnographic artifacts and Mexican people (Imafuku Ryūta, “Ishi to
taiyō: Okamoto Tarō to Mekishiko” [Stone and sun: Okamoto Tarō and Mexico], Okamoto Tarō to
Mekishiko: Atsui manazashi, 25–26. In addition, Susanne Baackmann and David Craven’s “Surrealism and
Post-Colonial Latin America,” Journal of Surrealism and the Americas (3:1&2 [2009]: 1–17) provides an
overview of how Surrealism provided an international discursive field. For Surrealists in Mexico, see Serge
Fauchereau’s “Surrealism in Mexico,” Artforum International, 25:1 (September 1986): 86–91.
85
One example is that, in his article “My world art history 4,” Okamoto, or possibly a Geijutsu Shinchō
editor, inserted an illustrated example of a sacrificial rite. Its caption reads, “16
th
-century copy of Mayan
codex.” In fact, however, it is an except from Codex Borgia, a scene of the Toxcatle festival dedicated to
one of the Aztec gods, Tezcatlipoca the “smoking mirror.” The image still matches Okamoto’s description
of the ritual (Okamoto Tarō, “Waga sekai bijutsu shi 4,” 50). I thank Jennifer Reynolds-Kaye for pointing
out the correct reference.
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105
Before delving into a discussion of Okamoto and Mexico, it is now worth briefly
reviewing his life in Paris and seeking a connection to Mexico. Okamoto arrived in Paris
in 1930 to accompany his creative parents, satirical cartoonist Okamoto Ippei (1886-
1948) and poet and novelist Okamoto Kanoko (1889-1939). His parents left for London
shortly afterward, but Tarō remained in Paris until the eve before the city fell to the
Germans in 1940. During the decade of his stay in Paris, he earned a degree from the
Sorbonne in ethnography under Mauss, whose lectures were mainly held at the newly
opened Musée de l’Homme. As I have touched upon, the individual by whom Okamoto
was most influenced during his Paris decade was Georges Bataille, as noted extensively
by the artist himself.
86
Okamoto got to know him at the 1936 gathering of Contre-attaque,
the short-lived radical group that Bataille founded with Surrealist artist and poet André
Breton to denounce fascism and Stalinism.
87
Within two years, Okamoto developed a
close friendship with Bataille, who invited this young Japanese artist into his intellectual
circles such as the Collège de sociologie and the secret society Acéphale in 1938. In
particular, Acéphale’s intellectual and spiritual bonding through nighttime sacrificial rites,
which can be compared to, although stereotypical and thus problematic from today’s
standpoint, bloody Aztec rituals. And this inspired the founding of Yoru no Kai (Night
Society) in Japan.

86
Okamoto has written about his relationship with Bataille in multiple texts, including “Waga tomo
Georges Bataille” [My Friend, Georges Bataille] (1957) reprinted in Jujutsu tanjō, 200–204; and “Jidenshō,
idomu 11: Bataille to no deai” [Autobiography, To challenge 11: Encounter with Bataille], Yomiuri
Shimbun, evening edition, December 4, 1976, 7. Sawaragi Noi and Tsukahara Fumi consider Okamoto’s
connection to Bataille to be crucial to his credos of Polarism and “explosion” (Sawaragi) and Tower of the
Sun (Tsukahara) (Sawaragi, “Kuroi taiyō to akai kani,” 280−289; Tsukahara, “Okamoto Tarō and Bataille:
Taiyō no tō kaidoku no kokoromi, Soleil cou coupé” [Okamoto Tarō and Bataille: An attempt to decipher
Tower of the Sun, Sun Slit Throat] in Kokubungaku: Kaishaku to kyōzai no kenkyū, 52: 2 [February 2007]:
15–31.)
87
It was Surrealist artists Max Ernst and Patrick Waldberg who took Okamoto to the Contre-attaque
meeting.
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106
Also interesting is how Bataille’s discussion of Hiroshima and survivors’
memoirs in 1947 echoed Okamoto’s 1963 Asahi article on Hiroshima in claiming not to
politicize and historicize the atomic catastrophe.
88
Additionally, multiple scholars have
pointed out that Bataille’s influence can be also traced in Okamoto’s trope of the sun as
nuclear power.
89
Artistically, Okamoto, who had been the youngest member of the
renowned Abstract Creación, was moving away from pure abstraction, so remote from
any social or political issues, and started incorporating representative forms. Okamoto
eventually participated in the Surrealism exhibition in 1938,
90
through which he gained
further acquaintance with Breton, who could provide another link, though indirectly,
between Okamoto and Mexico. This known Surrealist went on a lecture trip to Mexico in
1938 and, along with Leon Trotsky and Diego Rivera, one of the big three Mexican
Muralists, issued an influential manifesto during the tour. Entitled “Towards a Free
Revolutionary Art,” the manifesto was published in the New York-based leftist
intellectual journal Partisan Review and ignited discussions among intellectuals,
especially of painterly abstraction that served as inter- and intra-national communication
between the established and emerging art capitals of Paris and New York. The presence
of Mexico was substantial in these contexts of modernism and art’s relationship to
political activism.
91

88
George Bataille, “Concerning the Accounts Given by the Residents of Hiroshima” (1947), reprinted in
Trauma: Explorations in Memory, ed. Cathy Caruth (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995)
221–235.
89
Suga, Okazaki, and Kuresawa pointed this out in their aforementioned publications.
90
For a discussion of Okamoto from the perspective of Surrealism during the interwar period, see Majella
Munro, Communicating Vessels: The Surrealist Movement in Japan, 1923-1970 (Cambridge: Enzo Arts &
Publishing, 2012), 44–49.
91
Although written primarily by Trotsky, the manifesto reflects the anti-fascist and anti-Stalinist ideals of
Contre-attaque and calls for freedom of artists to create true art that takes part “actively and consciously in
the preparation of the revolution” (Partisan Review [August/September 1938]: 49-53], reprinted in Art in
Theory 1900-1990: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Woods, [Malden and
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107
In the postwar period, Okamoto noted that he was deeply intrigued by
contemporary paintings by Mexican artists that were very different from those by
Japanese and European artists.
92
Okamoto admits, “Europeans do not value contemporary
Mexican paintings;” nevertheless, he notes that contemporary Mexican painters can
easily accomplish something that Europeans and Japanese had strived to achieve. On
another occasion, Okamoto commented that their works are “non-painting” (hi-kaigateki)
in a positive and modernist sense, and the murals that embellished educational buildings,
for example, are a “marriage of contemporary and ancient, and East and West”
93
as well
as new and Aztec and Mayan traditions.
94

In post-revolutionary Mexico, Muralismo had been the leading art movement.
With a conspicuously didactic, ideological, and public art program, Muralism was to
critique modernity on the one hand and capture the struggles of Mexican peasants,
indigenous people, and workers, who it claimed were the true basis for regenerating
Mexico as a place of utopian promise, on the other. Represented by Los Tres Grandes—
José Clemente Orozco, Diego Rivera, and David Alfaro Siqueiros, though each artist
supported different or even conflicting styles and ideologies
95
—public murals were

Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2003], 532–536). Concerning the impact of the manifesto on the New York
art scene, see Serge Guilbaut’s “The New Adventures of the Avant-Garde in America: Greenberg, Pollock,
or from Trotskyism to the New Liberalism of the ‘Vital Center’,” trans. Thomas Repensek, October, 15: 61
(December 1980): 197–210.
92
Okamoto Tarō, “Mokuteki to shite no kaiga, shudan to shite no kaiga: Sekai kon’ichi no bijutsu ten o
megutte” [Painting for a purpose or painting as a means: On the exhibition of World Art Today], Bijutsu
techō, no. 121 (February 1957): 34.
93
Okamoto Tarō, along with Egami Namio and Victor M. Reyes of Director of Art at Palacio Nacional de
Belles Artes, Mexico, “Zadankai Mekishiko bijutsu ten ni yosete” [Roundtable discussion, For the occasion
of the Mexican Art Exhibition], Yomiuri Shimbun, September 7, 1955, 9.
94
Okamoto Tarō, “Sikeirosu to gendai bijutsu hihan” [Siqueiros and critique of contemporary art], Mizue,
no. 811 (August 1972): 89.
95
Alejandro Anreus, “Los Tres Grandes: Ideologies and Styles,” Mexican Muralism: A Critical History,
eds. Alejandro Anreus et al. (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), 37–55.
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108
considered to represent the voice of the voiceless in the Mexican national
consciousness.
96

Mexican muralists’ polemics and concern for the voiceless were deeply woven
into Okamoto’s activities in the early postwar years in Japan, as were issues of formal
abstraction vis-à-vis progressive ideology, as addressed in the Breton/Trotsky/Rivera
manifesto, issues Okamoto had already grappled with during his Paris days. For example,
in an essay entitled “Yoru no Kai,” Okamoto used direct terms such as artistic revolution
and revolutionary art, and he claimed that artists should be proactive and outspoken.
97

His assertion of the activist attitude of an artist and idea of revolutionary art was most
likely inspired by the Night Society members but also reflective of what
Trozky/Breton/Rivera as well as Mexican muralists declared.
98

However, a simple question is why Suárez, who had been a committed patron of
Mexican master muralists including Siqueiros (1896–1974) and Rufino Tamayo (1899–
1991), invited Okamoto to create a mural to embellish his massive capitalist development
for the occasion of the Mexico Olympics. It is true that Okamoto was a popular artist and
public intellectual in Japan, but his art was relatively unknown outside the country,
except perhaps for in France. This lack of attention was partly due to Okamoto’s intense
color schemes and mixed style of abstract and representative, which did not mesh with
popular views of Japanese art overseas—abstract art hinted at Zen-inspired minimalist

96
Robin Adèle Greeley, “Muralism and the State in Post-Revolution Mexico, 1920–1970,” Mexican
Muralism, 13.
97
Okamoto Tarō, “Yoru no Kai” [Night Society], Sekai nippō [World Times] (February 13, 1948),
reprinted in Jujutsu tanjō, 40–42.
98
Ken Yoshida also positions Okamoto’s interest in Jōmon culture in the discussion of class conflict.
“Between Matter and Ecology: Art in Postwar Japan and the Question of Totality (1954–1975),” (Ph.D.
Diss., University of California, Irvine, 2011], 40.
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109
aesthetics.
99
Indeed, his submissions to international annuals and biennials were ignored
by critics outside Japan, who considered Okamoto and other Japanese artists in the same
vein.
100
Curator Yamada Satoshi speculates that one of the main reasons for Suárez’s
choice of Okamoto was that Muralism was discernibly in decline by the late 1960s, with
the death of Orozco (d. 1949) and Rivera (d. 1957) as well as Tamayo’s break from
Muralism.
101
The elder Siqueiros was the only active master-muralist at the time. Indeed,
by the 1960s the movement had lost its revolutionary appeal and independence and had
become deeply institutionalized, as the celebrated writer Octavio Paz charged.
102

Siqueiros in particular was Paz’s target of attack as a producer of “petrified” art that
complied with the state.
103

Such an artistic environment allowed extra space for a foreign artist; however,
before Suárez approached Okamoto, he commissioned Siqueiros to produce murals for
Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros, the culture and conference center in Parque de la Lama in
which the Hotel de Mexico was also located. This unique poly-angular building, which
looks like a dodecagon outside and an octagon inside, is covered on both its exterior and
interior with Siqueiros’s mechanically operated, multi-sensory “sculptured mural.” The

99
Bert Winther-Tamaki, Art in the Encounter of Nations: Japanese and American Artists in the Early
Postwar Years (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2001), 22–26. Domestically, too, Okamoto virtually
had no market or gallery to deal in his art (“E wo tō shita mōretsu na sakebi, Okamoto Tarō-shi” [Intense
scream through paintings, Mr. Okamoto Tarō], Shūkan sankei [Weekly Sankei], 17: 30 (July 15, 1968): 66.
100
Art critic Imaizumi Atsuo, who had just returned from Paris, pointed out how Japanese artists’
participation in the Salon de mai made no impact or no impression on the international art world. This
illuminates the large gulf between the type of art hailed in and outside Japan (Imaizumi Atsuo, Oka
Shikanosuke, and Kawabata Minoru, “Sekai gadan no genkyō to nihon gadan no ichi” [Current situation of
the world art circle and the location of the Japanese art circle], Mizue, no. 565 [September 1952]: 23–38). A
number of artists and critics responded to Imaizumi and expressed a sense of urgency regarding the fate of
Japanese art and artists, which is often referred to as “Imaizumi senpū (Imaizumi whirlwind).
101
Yamada, “Okamoto Tarō to Mekishiko no hekiga,” 10.
102
Octavio Paz, Essays on Mexican Art, trans. Helen Lane (New York: Harcourt Brace & Company, 1987),
132. For further discussions of the transition of Mexican murals from revolutionary art to official and
institutionalized culture, see Mary K. Coffey, How a Revolutionary Art Became Official Culture: Murals,
Museums, and the Mexican State (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2012).
103
Coffey, 179–180.
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110
Hotel and Polyforum were the chief structures that made up Mexico 2000, a site
developed to promote tourism and the arts, international and contemporaneous arts as
well as indigenous handicrafts, while helping to decentralize Mexico City.
104
Whereas
Polyforum functioned as a Siqueiros museum, Suárez, who initially planned to appoint
Siqueiros for the hotel’s mural as well,
105
eventually commissioned Okamoto after having
been shown the artist’s publication by a famed Mexico-based gardener-friend, Junzō
Oguri.
106
Considering the internationalism and tourism to which the Mexico 2000 campus
was dedicated, the appointment of Okamoto seems an appropriate choice. Yet Suárez also
told Okamoto that he was most impressed by Okamoto’s atomic bomb paintings.
107

Therefore, the selection of Okamoto could also have been prompted by Suárez who
considered him someone who could produce a more truthful representation of the nuclear
catastrophe.
Suárez’s dual appointment of Okamoto and Siqueiros came down to the
comparative approaches in their work, specifically the materials and techniques that they
employed. Previously, Okamoto had worked on public art in mosaics and ceramic reliefs,
his first being Taiyō no shinwa/Myth of the Sun, (1952; Fig. 2.17), which
ichnographically relates to both Myth of Tomorrow and Tower of the Sun with concurring
motifs of the anthropomorphic sun with open arms in the center and the Tree of Life or a
white ladder on the right side.
108
For Myth of Tomorrow, Okamoto, who almost
exclusively used oil and canvas for his paintings, employed the same industrial

104
Manuel Suárez y Suárez ed., Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros, Mexico (México: Poliforum Siqueiros,
1970), 3–9. See also Leonard Fologarait, So Far from Heaven: David Alfaro Siqueiros’ The March of
Humanity and Mexican Revolutionary Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).
105
Suárez, 5.
106
Yamada, “Okamoto Tarō to Mekishiko no hekiga,” 7.
107
Ōsugi Kōji, “Dokyumento Asu no shinwa” [Document of Myth of Tomorrow], Asu no shinwa Okamoto
Tarō no messēji, 54.
108
Sasaki, 11.
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materials—acrylic on asbestos and cement—used by Siqueiros, who was known for
experimenting with new materials and devices such as airguns, and incorporated the
element of “raised” or “sculpted” feature. Additionally, their overarching themes are not
unrelated. While Okamoto’s work is about constructing an aspirational future out of the
nuclear disaster, Siqueiros’s Polyforum mural, The March of Humanity on Earth and
Toward the Cosmos (1957–1971), depicts peoples’ struggles throughout history but in the
end point toward the betterment of humanity, for a peaceful and harmonious society.
There is another ironic similarity between Mexican and Japanese master artists. The
March of Humanity, which is thought to be the world’s largest mural, occasionally
became a target of criticism for Siqueiros’s engagement in such a costly project
supported by a wealthy businessman. In addition, his representation of romantic
humanism was attacked for having ignored the Mexican government’s violence against
student protesters and civilians in the 1968 Tlatelolco Massacre right before the Olympic
Games, for example.
109
Interestingly, this echoed the voices of Anti-Expo by progressive
students and artists in Japan. They were highly critical of the fact that Okamoto, who was
once a key avant-garde artist in Japan, became a conformist and produced the
conspicuously expensive Tower of the Sun in the heart of a state-sponsored spectacle of
industrialization and commercialization.
110
Furthermore, it is important not to overlook

109
For instance, young artist José Luis Cuevas counteracted Muralism, especially Siqueiros’s The March of
Humanity, by producing a new type of mural (Coffey, 73-74). His Mural Efímero/Ephemeral mural (1967),
which included imagery of nuclear war victims, was ephemeral, non-revolutionary, and an abstract
assemblage on a commercial billboard. See also Robin Adèle Greeley, “Muralism and the State in Post-
Revolution Mexico, 1920-1970” in Mexican Muralism, 29–30.
110
In this sense, Osaka Expo certainly brought a split to a group of experimental artists, those who
supported/participated in the Expo and those who positioned anti-Expo claims as part of a larger anti-war
movement. A significant person from the latter group was art critic Haryū Ichirō, who wrote “Hanpaku:
Hansen undō no shikō sakugo” [Anti-Expo: Trial and error of anti-war movements] in the leftist journal
Gendai no me [Contemporary eye], no. 10 (October 1969): 126–135; and his edited volume Ware-ware ni
totte banpaku towa nanika [What does Expo’70 mean to us?] (Tokyo: Tabata shoten, 1969).
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112
that Siqueiros also produced a range of easel works about an atomic disaster, Hiroshima,
and visions of the end of the world epitomized as the image of a monstrous or typhoon
eye—which resonates with Okamoto’s depiction of the sun in his final study of Myth of
Tomorrow (Fig. 2.18).
111
Yet Siqueiros never included human victims in these paintings:
they are either of an aerial view of the city in atomic flames or a close-up view of the
eye/sun, which could have meant the second sun that dominates the sky.

Blue Sky After Explosion
As Suárez had seen, the atomic bombs and radiation were not a new subject for
Okamoto, who worked on several artworks about the issue especially between 1954 and
1956, including Moeru hito/Men Aflame (Fig. 2.19), Shunkan/The Moment (declared
missing), and Shi no hai/Nuclear Fallout. He even contributed to a cover design for the
renowned novelist and atomic bomb survivor Ōta Yōko’s Han-ningen (Half human,
1954; Fig. 2.20).
112
In 1955, Okamoto made Men Aflame in response to the Lucky
Dragon No. 5 incident, which had occurred in the previous year and brought local
narratives of the atomic bomb devastation into the national discourse. Obviously,
Okamoto was also prompted to look back at the catastrophic events in the past.
113
After
the Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident, Okamoto immediately began working on paintings that
concerned the atomic bombs as well: The Moment (1955) depicts the moment of the
atomic explosion as a large, stylized eye, which melts figures on the left, and Nuclear

111
Siqueiros, Landscape Painter (Long Beach and Mexico City: Museum of Latin American Art and
Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, 2010).
112
For a study on Ōta’s atomic bomb literature, see John Whittier Treat’s “Ōta Yōko and the Place of the
Narrator,” Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (Chicago and London:
University of Chicago Press, 1995), 199–226.
113
See also Introduction and Chapter One of this dissertation for a discussion of art, the Lucky Dragon No.
5 incident, and Gensuikyō.
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113
Fallout (1956) features figures with split faces, presumably in agony, scorched by the
atomic blaze.
In between vividly colored and sharply contoured oil paintings, in August 1955
Okamoto made a unique but lesser known work in which he used the night sky as the
chief medium. In this On’na to tori (A woman and a bird), also known by its descriptive
title “Tokyo no yozora ni hikari de e wo egaku” (Drawing a picture by light in Tokyo’s
night sky), Okamoto chartered a helicopter to make a “light drawing” over the busy
Ginza shopping district in Tokyo by using two 500-watt lights, one handheld and one
attached to the helicopter (Fig. 2.21).
114
Similar to the skeleton replacing mushroom
clouds in Myth of Tomorrow, a large ephemeral image of a woman with arms wide open
and round, voluptuous breasts next to a bird is perhaps a feminized version of Tower of
the Sun or the skeleton in Myth of Tomorrow. Like Venus of Willendorf, a Japanese
prehistoric dogū figurine, or even Aztec goddess Coatlicue, she represents something
primordial, earthy, lively, and fertile that reclaimed Tokyo’s mid-summer sky from the
deadly firebombs that illuminated the city’s night in the wartime past.
Through his artwork and writings, instead of being part of any particular political
group, Okamoto publicly expressed his empathy and support for workers and ordinary
people. Another example that epitomize this approach by the artist is Jūkōgyō/Heavy
Industry (1949; Fig. 2.22), one of the first paintings in which Okamoto explicitely
merged the political and the visual, presumably under the influence of Hanada, who
urged Okamoto that Polarism not be limited to art matters.
115
The work juxtaposes a ship,

114
Okamoto Tarō, “Hericoputā de egaku, Okamoto gahaku shijō saidai no dessan On’na to tori” [Drawing
by helicopter, The World’s Largest Drawing by Painter Okamoto, A woman and a bird], Yomiuri Shimbun,
evening edition, August 28, 1955, 1.
115
Ōtani, 34.
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114
machinery, toothed gears, and small stylized figures in bright yellow against a bundle of
green onions, which diagonally cuts through the darkly hued canvas. There are also
farmers and coal miners gathering around the roots of the green onions to nurture them.
Here, Okamoto depicts the dehumanization of heavy industry workers as well as the
tension between the diminishing agricultural sector and the rapidly growing industrial
one, including in the Kawasaki area where Okamoto was born. Another work in which he
expressed a strong sense of identification with the people is his 1954 Aozora/Blue Sky
(Fig. 2.23), which revisits the 1952 Bloody May Day incident in which union-led
protesters gathered in front of the Imperial Palace and clashed with police officers, who
ended up killing two protesters and injuring many others. The incident marked the
opening of a tumultuous political decade of labor and student movements and protests
against American military bases throughout Japan.
116
Even though the painting captures
the chaotic moment of the authorities beating protesters, it conveys an optimistic mood,
energy, and hope in the assortment of colorful creatures and a flag held by protesters who
are pushing away skinny, baton-holding officials, who also form pictographs that read as
“ho, a, n” (“public security officials”). Concerning the painting, Okamoto says:
In order to strongly protest, somberness wouldn’t do. Look at this face. It is
cheerful, innocent, and not a miserable face at all [even] being [beaten] down.
People (minshū) will always stand up even though they are brought down and
down …
117

Okamoto’s works about the legacy of the atomic bombs and radiation are indeed
in line with these paintings produced under his increasing interest in ordinary people,
who raised their voices, under the influence of trade unions and leftist movements, to

116
Hoaglund, “Protest Art in 1950s Japan.”
117
Okamoto, in an interview titled “Minshū wa kōgi suru” [People protest], Asahi Shimbun, August 20,
1954, 5.
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115
protest their plight. They are also a reflection of politically charged artistic gatherings in
which Okamoto took part in Paris as well as the ambitions of the Mexican Muralists that
Okamoto re-introduced himself to in the mid-1950s. At the same time, as pointed out by
leftist art critic Segi Shin’ichi, Okamoto intended to vie with Picasso by painting an event
that shocked Japan, the irradiation of the Lucky Dragon No. 5.
118
Okamoto submitted this
painting to the Third Nihon Kokusai Bijutsu ten (Japan International Art Exhibition, later
known as the Tokyo Biennale), to which Picasso’s masterpiece, Guernica (1937), was
said to be coming.
119
In contrast to the monochromatic Guernica, Okamoto’s Men Aflame,
a fairly large painting measuring 212.5 by 308.5 centimeters, is rich in color and some
motifs even look comical, marking the entire painting as uplifting and dynamic despite
the catastrophic subject matter.
In spite of Okamoto’s efforts, the goal of reaching people and resonating with the
masses was never achieved, as shown by the fact that no one responded to Okamoto’s
call for the launching of a “Polarism Art Association” at the opening day of the 1950
Yomiuri Independent exhibition.
120
For example, in his 1976 letter to art critic Miyakawa
Atsushi, French literature scholar Abe Yoshio pointed out the paradox in Okamoto’s
famous phrase “everyone can paint and must paint” from his best-selling book Kon’nichi
no geijutsu (Arts today, 1954). No matter how democratic this line might sound, Abe

118
Segi was a fellow member of Seiki no Kai (The century group), founded by Okamoto after the
dissolution of Yoru no kai. For a discussion of Segi, see Chapter One of this dissertation.
119
In the end, Picasso’s submission to the exhibition was a small still life (Segi Shin’ichi, “‘Asu no shinwa’
e no sengo shi” [Postwar history leads to Myth of Tomorrow], Hokoraka na messēji: ‘Asu no shinwa' kansei
e no michi, 12). Okamoto saw Guernica in person at its first public showing at the 1937 World’s Fair in
Paris. Regarding Okamoto’s fascination with and challenges to Picasso and his art, see Okamoto Tarō,
Seishun Pikaso [Jeunesse Picasso] (Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 1953; reprinted in 2000).
120
Sawaragi Noi, ed., “Chronology” in Okamoto Tarō Bakuhatsu Taizen [Okamoto Tarō Complete Book of
Explosion], unpaginated. The same chronology is accessible on the website of the Okamoto Taro Museum
of Art, Kawasaki, accessed on November 18, 2014,
http://www.taromuseum.jp/introduction/introduction.html.
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wrote, it shows nothing but Okamoto’s elitism.
121
Sawaragi thus speculates that Okamoto
became reticent about Polarism until he re-framed the basically same concept as the more
accessible “explosion.” It was right around then that Okamoto worked on Myth of
Tomorrow, the public mural about the moment of nuclear explosion and mushroom
clouds. Therefore, the mural is not just about Okamoto’s re-engagement with the legacy
of the atomic bombs and victims, but also with the people, their plight yet their dynamic
energy.

Conclusion
As a visual artist, Okamoto strove to reconnect the nuclear catastrophe with
people—the survivors, Japanese, Mexicans, and beyond—in Myth of Tomorrow. For that
purpose, Okamoto does not reduce the atomic bombs, the explosions, and the wounds and
loss they produced to an iconic image that allows the disconnection of the agent and
victims of this modern-age destruction. Inspired by the Mexican Muralists including
Siqueiros, his commitment to Acéphale and Yoru no Kai, and critical insights derived
from Bataille and Hanada, the artist painted it as an event of the people, for the people,
and brought its history back to the people, who were ravaged by the atomic bombs and
war destruction. It was thus particularly meaningful that the mural was made in and for
Mexico, rather than Japan or Euro-America, at a time when the nuclear arms race was
ever accelerating. By employing the image of a burning skeleton, Okamoto expresses the
bodily and psychological damage suffered by those lost and wounded by the bombs who

121
Abe’s letter to art critic Miyakawa Atsushi, dated August 8, 1976, compares the dialectics or paradox in
Okamoto’s discourse to Baudelaire’s renowned 1846 statement about salon painting. Abe Yoshio,
Correspondence with Miyakawa Atsushi, “Bijutsushi to sono gensetsu o meguru Abe Yoshio tono ōfuku
shokan” [Correspondence with Abe Yoshio over art history and its discourse], Miyakawa, Bijutsushi to
sono gensetsu [Art history and its discourse] (Tokyo: Chūōkōron-sha, 1978, reprinted in 2002), 335-337.
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thus became sacrifices, giving their lives for the fate of humanity, like Christ per Ishii’s
reading or perhaps closer to the crucified Native American boy killed by the imperialists
in Siqueiros’s whitewashed mural América Tropical (1932; Fig. 2.24).
122

Furthermore, with the skeleton being reminiscent of popular Mexican imagery,
Okamoto resituates the nuclear devastation in the past as something ongoing,
approachable, and relatable beyond Japan, raising awareness of the slippage of the
historical and local, artistic and political, or beautiful and the catastrophic. In addition,
unlike Reportage painting or Social Realism’s easily recognizable, dark delineation of
social stigma, Okamoto’s colorful, dynamic, and even comical images are meant to
generate a lively energy, people’s explosive energy, to overcome the dreadful event in the
past and the current nuclear fear in order to open up a hopeful future, even a future
brightened by nuclear energy. In sum, the image of explosion was not merely about the
atomic and hydrogen bombs but also the visualization of Okamoto’s Polarism. As the
artist once said, the mural is about “the whole worldly explosion of human energy as well
as creative energy.”
123
Or, as Okamoto thought that the void was the ultimate form of
sacredness and contemplation,
124
he might consider those eradicated and evaporated by
the atomic bombs to embody, and disembody, all of the above.

122
It is an interesting coincidence that Siqueiros “appropriated” the crucifixion image from British
photographer Felice Beato’s Meiji-period photograph of a Japanese peasant killed for committing a robbery,
Execution of the Servant Sokichi (ca. 1865–1868). Regarding Siqueiros’s mural and its history, including
censorship, see Siqueiros in Los Angeles: Censorship Defied (Los Angeles: Autry National Center, 2010).
For the technique and materials he employed and issues of conserving the whitewashed mural, see Leslie
Rainer, “Conserving and Presenting Siqueiros’s América Tropical,” American Art, 26: 1 (Spring 2012):
14–17.
123
“Shinzen no janbo hekiga” [Jumbo mural of friendship], Yomiuri Shimbun, evening edition, April 18,
1972, 8.
124
In fact, the idea of void has captivated Okamoto since his visit to Okinawa in 1959 where he saw utaki,
a sacred site as an empty open space in the woods. For Okamoto, utaki became the fundamental yet
ultimate form of purity and sacredness. For further discussion of Okamoto’s relationship to Okinawa, see
his Wasurerareta Nihon Okinawa bunka ron [Forgotten Japan, cultures of Okinawa] (Tokyo: Chūō
Kōronsha 1961).
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But then, Myth of Tomorrow—which forty years after its creation has been
permanently installed in Tokyo’s Shibuya Station, Japan’s busiest train station with three
hundred thousand passengers per day on average—has shifted its meaning among the
Japanese public. In retrospect, Shibuya was an interesting choice, as opposed to the other
candidate cities of Hiroshima, Nagasaki, or Suita City, Osaka, where Expo 70 was
held.
125
The mural that represents Okamoto’s strong statement against nuclear arms is
physically located in the heart of the nation, rather than in relation to the specific
spatiotemporality and the historical discourse of the cities that had direct association with
the subject of the mural, or Osaka, where one might be able to reconsider the questions
raised around 1970, including the promotion of nuclear energy.
Myth of Tomorrow’s current location thus marks a shift in the mural’s reception
since its production. The popular claim of making the mural as well as Okamoto into a
post-Fukushima, anti-nuke symbol, as Suga argues, could conceal the artist’s and the
majority of Japanese citizens’ endorsement of nuclear power even in cities such as
Hiroshima.
126
With Myth of Tomorrow, Okamoto intended to construct a new and hopeful
“myth” for the future, rather than simply delineating anxiety over what had happened and
the anxious present of the cold and hot wars in the 1950s and 1960s. The artwork now
helps construct a false perception or a “myth” of the artist, which I revisit along with
contemporary art projects in Chapter Four.

125
The Taro Okamoto Memorial Foundation for Contemporary Art held the competition, from which
Nagasaki withdrew early on while Hiroshima and Suita City in Osaka competed with Shibuya until the end.
For a brief summary of Okamoto’s relationship with Hiroshima and the city’s strategy for the mural
invitation campaign, see Takezawa Yūsō, “Okamoto Tarō ‘Asu no shinwa’ Hiroshima yūchi tenmatsu ki
1954-2009/A Critical Document about the Campaign to Place Okamoto Tarō’s “Myth of the Future” in
Hiroshima,” Geijutsu kenkyū [Art research], vol. 21 & 22 (2009): 1–19.
126
Suga, 189.

119
CHAPTER THREE

Metamorphosis:
Kudō Tetsumi, Toward Archive and Transformation

In 1969, painter, sculptor, and performance artist Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
conceived an artwork entitled Hiroshima no kaseki/Fossil in Hiroshima, Souvenir of Molt
(1960–1970; Fig. 3.1). From an artist known for room-sized installations and flashy
performances, Fossil in Hiroshima is a modest work—a small key chain in the shape of a
penis-chrysalis, which sits on a bed of dry cotton in a plastic box. Kudō sold this
handheld-sized object as a souvenir to visitors to his one-day exhibition, which celebrated
his temporary return to Japan for the first time in his seven-year stay in Paris.
1
As its
designated date and title suggest, the object serves as a dense memento. It commemorates
the artist’s achievements in Europe but also relates them to his earlier practice in Japan
where he started visually incorporating body parts, as seen in Fossil in Hiroshima. More
importantly, this hardened white penis-chrysalis was presented as a little keepsake of the
atomic bombardment of the country.
Kudō was one of the foremost practitioners of Japan’s Anti-Art (han-geijutsu), an
art movement that arose at the dawn of the 1960s to challenge the conception of “art” in a
modern sense by deploying banal, everyday materials.
2
However, Kudō was also an

1
The exhibition was held on September 10 at Ichibankan Gallery, Ginza, Tokyo. Yoshioka Yasuhiro,
“Kudō Tetsumi: Sentōteki taiken kara umareru hyōgen kōi” [Expressive actions born out of combative
experience], Bijutsu techō [Art notebook], no. 319 (November 1969): 183.
2
Art critic Miyakawa Atsushi famously framed the artistic tendency as “descent to the everyday” in his
article “Han-geijutsu: Sono nichijōsei e no kakō” [Anti-art: Its descent to the everyday], Bijutsu techō, no.
234 (April 1964): 48–57. Concerning Anti-Art and its theoretical impact, see studies by Reiko Tomii,
“Geijutsu on Their Mind: Memorable Words on Anti-Art” in Art, Anti-Art, Non-Art: Experimentations in
the Public Sphere in Postwar Japan, 1950–1970, eds. Charles Merewether and Rika Iezumi Hiro (Los
Angeles: Getty Publications, 2007), 35–62; and Mitsuda Yuri, “Geijutsu ・fuzai ・nichijō: ‘Han-geijutsu’ o
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anomaly among those artists and strongly pursued art as a device, calling it “sōchi,”
something equipped with actual “function” in society.
3
In addition, when the idea of
international contemporaneity came into art practitioners’ consciousness in 1960s Japan,
4

Kudō left behind his burgeoning popularity and moved to Paris in early summer 1962. He
actively showed his artwork in Europe, including the Netherlands, Germany, and
particularly France, his base for more than twenty years. There, his artwork, especially
objects and performance, became part of major experimental art exhibitions and
movements, including Assemblage, Happenings, and Nouveau Réalisme, the French
counterpart of Pop Art.
5
However, Kudō never lost his Japanese connections,
corresponding with writers and curators,
6
and subscribing to science magazines from
Japan; additionally, he never attempted to learn French.
Therefore, it makes sense that the artist acknowledged his earlier practice through
Fossil in Hiroshima. Kudō became known for his vigorous deployment of penis-pupa
figures but also for dismembered, frayed, putrefied, waxed, melted, or molted body parts,
which reminded his European audience of Japan’s nuclear obliteration (Fig. 3.2). In some

meguru hihyō gensetsu/Art, Alibi, Daily Life: Critical Discourse on ‘Anti-Art’ in Tokyo,” Bijutsu hihyō to
sengo bijutsu/Art Criticism and Postwar Art in Japan, ed. AICA Japan (Tokyo: Brücke, 2007), 145–168.
3
Both “sōchi” and “fankushon” are Kudō’s own words. See, for instance, Kudō’s statement, “Shigeki→
han’nō→kyakutaika” [Stimulus→reaction→objectification], Bijutsu techō, no. 190 (June 1961): 29; and
Kudō’s dialogue with photographer and filmographer Yoshioka Yasuhiro, who was Kudō’s high school
alumnus, and art critic Nakahara Yūsuke, “Geijutsu to shakai to sekkusu to” [Art and society and sex], SD:
Space Design, Journal of Art and Architecture, no. 60 (November 1969): 22–23.
4
For a discussion of the term “international contemporaneity” (kokusaiseki dōjisei) and its meaning in the
1960s art in Japan, see Reiko Tomii, “Introduction to “International Contemporaneity” and “Contemporary
Art,” Radicalism in Wilderness: Radicalism in the Wilderness: Contemporaneity and 1960s Art in Japan
[Boston: MIT Press, 2016], 12–44.
5
See Shima Atsuhiko’s edited exhibition catalogue, Anatano shōzō: Kudō Tetsumi kaikoten/Your Portrait:
A Tetsumi Kudō Retrospective (Osaka: The National Museum of Art, Osaka and Daikin Foundation for
Contemporary Arts, 2013), which is the most complete resource about the artist. In addition, Tetsumi Kudo:
Garden of Metamorphosis, ed. Doryun Chong (Minneapolis: Walker Art Center, 2008) includes invaluable
comments by the artist’ wife, Kudō Hiroko, on his artwork.
6
For example, Kudō’s letters are housed in the archives of Takiguchi Shūzō and Tōno Yoshiaki at Keio
University Art Center and Kaido Hideo Archive.
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cases, they even triggered a memory of the Nazis’ human-skin lampshades, as the
director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam, W.A.L Beeren, once vexedly noted.
7
On
another occasion, while reviewing Kudō’s exhibition in 1971, a Le Monde art writer
stated how the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as well as air raids in Tokyo had
determined Kudō’s artistic orientation.
8
Another reviewer also warned, “Kudō always
displays his souvenir of Hiroshima.”
9
Yet his reference to the nuclear annihilation was
much more complex. Kudō commented that his recurring use of human bodies and body
parts undergoing metamorphoses was not just triggered by the atomic bombs, and that
Hiroshima did not “stand alone as the cruel act.”
10

This chapter explores Kudō’s tenacious reference to metamorphosis in relation to
the nuclear issue in art. It was in part a tactical means to visualize problems bursting forth
in the world, especially environmental and radioactive pollution. Nonetheless, Kudō’s
approach was not a straightforward criticism of the modern weapon of mass destruction
or the doomed relationship between humans, nature, science, and technology. I propose
that Kudō envisioned the atomic bombs, radioactive contamination, and industrial
pollution as a dynamic and productive force, not just a destructive one. Furthermore, in
his conception of metamorphosis, Kudō gave equal emphasis to a state of dormancy or a
temporal respite for the sake of transformation or production. In so doing, Kudō

7
W. A. L. Beeren, “Dear Kudō,” open correspondence with Kudō published in the exhibition catalogue
Kudō (Amsterdam: Galerie 20, 1966), unpaginated.
8
Jacques Michel, “Kudō, ‘guérillero’ du monde artistique,” Le Monde, October 27, 1971, 17.
9
“L’exposition 72 au Grand Palais,” Le Monde, May 17, 1972, 17. Other reviews also touched on
Hiroshima’s influence on Kudo, including that of the artist’s semi-retrospective in Düsseldorf, Kudō
Tetsumi: Cultivation by Radioactivity (1970), which was headlined “From Hiroshima” or “After the
Mushroom Cloud” (“Aus Hiroshima Objekte von Tetsumi Kudō im Kunstverein,” Düsseldorfer Nachricten,
April 17, 1970; Walter Vitt, “Nach dem Atompiltz,” Generalanzeiger für Bonn, June 15, 1970). See also
Shima Atsuhiko, “A Guide to Tetsumi Kudō Part 13: First Retrospective in Düsseldorf” in Anatano shōzō,
206–207.
10
Kudō Tetsumi, “Dear Mr. Beeren (Dear Europeans),” Kudō, unpaginated. The emphasis is in the original.
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intervened in the ossified narrative of the nuclear catastrophes and the hardened reception
of his artwork vis-à-vis the atomic bombs. While acknowledging that Kudō’s art of
metamorphosis responded to crises of politics, the natural environment, and nuclear dread,
this chapter reorients his work, which has been frequently framed as symptomatic of
destruction, failure, war trauma, or the futurelessness of the living.
11

In my analysis, I look at the agency of the artist and the ways in which Kudō
strove to internalize the nuclear devastation. Guided by Kudō’s archive, I address his
deployment of metamorphosis, including accumulation and proliferation, as something
deeply entrenched in bio/science and technology, an aspect of his work which has not yet
been explored in depth.
12
Reflecting on the defeat in WWII/the Asia-Pacific War, the
Japanese nation tried to strengthen the area of science, including the technology of
nuclear energy, in the postwar period.
13
The situation led to, as touched upon in the
previous chapter, the example of Okamoto Tarō, who supported nuclear energy while
denouncing nuclear weapons. Kudō was more fervently immersed in this environment
and in fact was an avid lay reader of these subjects, from theories of nuclear physics and

11
Darrell D. Davisson, Art After the Bomb: Iconographies of Trauma in Late Modern Art (Bloomington:
AuthorHouse, 2009), 182–184. The following reviews also share this view: Carole Boulbès, “Tetsumi
Kudō: Portrait de l’artiste dans la crise,” artpress, no. 331 (February 2007): 32–38; and Roberta Smith,
“Art in Review: Tetsumi Kudō,” The New York Times, July 4, 2008, 27.
12
For example, see recent exhibitions and catalogues about the artist: Tetsumi Kudo—La montagne que
nous cherchons est dans la serre [The mountain we are looking for is in the greenhouse] at La Maison
Rouge, Fondation Antoine de Galbert, Paris, France (2007); Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis at
the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2008–2009); and Anatano shōzō organized by The National Museum
of Art, Osaka, Japan, which travelled to the National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo and the Aomori
Museum of Art (2013–2014).
13
John W. Dower. “The Bombed: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Memory,” Hiroshima in History
and Memory, ed. Michael J. Hogan (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 121–
123; M. Susan Lindee, “The Repatriation of Atomic Bomb Victim Body Parts to Japan: Natural Objects
and Diplomacy,” Osiris, 2nd Series, vol. 13, Beyond Joseph Needham: Science, Technology, and Medicine
in East and Southeast Asia (1998): 379.
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mathematics to innovations in biology and technologies.
14
He started incorporating this
material into his artwork in the mid-1950s while he was still an art student, immediately
after such information became readily available to the public in Japan.

Metamorphosis, Context of 1950s Japan
The visual rhetoric of metamorphosis is transhistorical and transcultural. From
sculptures of Greek gods to science-fiction movies, the biological process of
transformation has inspired people’s imagination to produce imageries amalgamating
animals, humans, and/or cyborgs, the malicious and the benevolent, and even the
intermediary. Kudō was no exception: he created countless works which were themed
“metamorphosis” and used a chrysalis or molt as a prominent visual element, as was the
case with Fossil in Hiroshima. Because of such formal and thematic traits, curator
Doryun Chung has assigned the subtitle Garden of Metamorphosis to the artist’s first
retrospective in the United States (2008–2009).
15
Concerning his transformative images,
Kudō spoke about how humans should also go through such changes in accordance with
aspects of new life and society.
16
This section further articulates the meaning of
metamorphosis in Japanese cultural history.
In his discussion of 1950s art in Japan, curator Suzuki Katsuo has pointed out the
significance of the grotesque and metamorphosis in visual art. Especially crucial were
images of metamorphoses with materialistic connotations, rather than more pervasive
depictions of wounded bodies, which implied negative consequences of the violence of

14
The artist commented in “Takiguchi Shūzō to sengo bijutsu: Ōkina orību no ki no shitade, taidan Ikeda
Tatsuo, Kudō Tetsumi” [Takigushi Shūzō and post-war art: Under a big olive tree, dialogue between Ikeda
Tatsuo and Tetsumi Kudō], Bijutsu techō, no. 501 (September 1982): 63.
15
The exhibition was held at the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2008–2009).
16
Kudō Tetsumi, “Dear Mr. Beeren (Dear Europeans).”
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war, expressed from humanistic and psychological perspectives. In other words, by
incorporating an element of metamorphosis, Suzuki argues, artists and writers treated
humans, animals, plants, and things equivalently, which in turn proposed a critique of
modern—meaning western—anthropocentrism.
17
Furthermore, Suzuki stresses the
influence of literary critic Hanada Kiyoteru’s 1946 essay “Henkeitan—Gēte” (The tales
of metamorphosis—Goethe) in which the critic intended social transformation by way of
Goethe’s metamorphosis. As an intellectual who lived through the war, Hanada set out
his analytical foundation for decades to follow with his first postwar-period publication,
which was out less than half a year after the end of the Asia-Pacific War. In essence,
expanding on Irving Bebitt’s analysis of Goethe’s theory of the metamorphosis of plants,
Hanada values what Bebitt termed “frein vital,” or life’s/species’ restraining, centripetal,
reductive force and impulse to hold onto the way it is or “the special stability.”
18
This
contrasts with Henri-Louis Bergson’s conception of “élan vital,” or life’s vital,
centrifugal, and magnifying force, which has been normally understood to bring about
metamorphoses of life, individuals, and society.
19

I rely on this particular double-conception of metamorphosis, which equally
weighs external and internal forces—centrifugal and centripetal, or active and inactive—
for reading Kudō’s work. The artist was educated and started exhibiting in the 1950s.
Moreover, Kudō himself invested in Goethe’s concept of metamorphosis, as suggested by
a page from a magazine article about Goethe used as part of Kudō’s seminal work,

17
Suzuki Katsuo, “Shūdan no yume: 50-nendai wo tsuranuku rekishiteki patosu” [Dream of the masses:
Historical pathos permeating the 1950s], Jikkenjō 1950s/Experimental Ground 1950s (Tokyo: Tokyo
Kokuritsu Kindai Bijutsukan, 2012), 23–30.
18
Hanada Kiyoteru, “Henkeitan—Gēte” [The tales of metamorphosis—Goethe], Hanada Kiyoteru zenshū
2 [The complete works of Hanada Kiyoteru 2](Tokyo: Kodansha, 1977), 404.
19
In addition, as a Marxist critic, Hanada notes that, as opposed to the metamorphosis of wealthy
protagonists in Kafka’s or Apollinaire’s works, only workers can acquire “frein vital” through labor and
transform themselves and society (Hanada, 400–409).
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Philosophy of Impotence (1961–1962), which I discuss in depth later in this chapter.
Additionally, Kudō often deployed body parts, plants, insects/small animals, or industrial
goods similarly and interchangeably, while aiming to dismantle the ideals of the well-
balanced human body represented since Greek art.
20

Although not so much in terms of Hanada’s suggestion of how metamorphosis in
art could precede or bring about social and political transformations, multiple scholars
have explored Kudō’s metamorphosis, or to be precise his and his cohort artists’ violent
use of bodies and body fragments, as a reflection of socio-political change and its failure.
Essential in this reading is the massive 1960 protest against the renewal of the U.S.-Japan
Security Treaty (known by its Japanese acronym, Anpo), which was enacted in 1952.
21

For example, Japanese historian William Marotti emphasizes the influence of political
activism in the works and performances by Anti-Art artists especially gathered at the
annual non-juried Yomiuri Independent exhibition, which included the work of Kudō.
22

These artists’ employment of everyday and local practice was in opposition to the state’s
expansion of its cultural policing in the post-Anpo period so as to promote the image of a
non-political and de-historicized country for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics (1964).

20
Haryū Ichirō and Kudō Tetsumi with Alain Jouffroy, “Diarōgu 30: Kudō Tetsumi” [Dialogue 30: Kudō
Tetsumi], Mizue [Watercolor], no. 814 (December 1972): 68.
21
The signing the Anpo in 1952 marked the end of the Allied Occupation. However, the treaty in fact
reinforced the alliance of Japan and the United States. According to the Tokyo Metropolitan Police
Department, more than 130,000 students and members of the public gathered around Japan’s National Diet
on June 15, 1960. In contrast, the student organizers counted 330,000 participants.
22
William Marotti, “Political Aesthetics: Activism, Everyday Life, and Art’s Object in 1960s Japan,” Inter-
Asia Cultural Studies, 7: 4 (2006): 606–618. The Yomiuri Independent exhibition was launched in 1949 by
the Yomiuri Newspaper Company in opposition to the salon system and art organizations that dominated
the art scene in the prewar period and was re-implemented soon after the end of the war. While its rival, the
Japan Independent (held at the same Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art) was a locus of Reportage
painting, the Yomiuri Independent increasingly became the hub for radical artists as early as 1955. For a
history of the Yomiuri Independent, see William Marotti, Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and
Revolution in 1960s Japan (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2013), 111–199. For an artist’s
account of the exhibition, see Akasegawa Genpei, Imaya akushon aru nomi! ‘Yomiuri Andepandan’ to iu
genshō [Action only, now! The phenomenon called the Yomiuri Independent] (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo,
1985).
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Marotti argues that in light of the swift transformations of the real world, both politically
and economically, the Yomiuri Independent exhibitions, especially the last three
installments from 1961 until 1963, became the only loci for artists to examine such
transformations. In essence, destructive yet playful art was a means for the young artists
to confront the state in defense against the politicization of everyday life.
23
Their works
looked quite remote from politics at a glance, but because of their apperance, Marotti
contends that these young artists conceptually intervened in everyday politics.
Somewhat resonating with Marotti’s argument, curator Alexandra Munroe
acknowledges the impulse of Kudō and his peers, especially Neo Dadaists (active 1960–
1961) to transform politics and avant-garde art.
24
Munroe also points to the analogous
penchant in the works by prominent artists active then, namely Kudō, Yayoi Kusama,
Miki Tomio, and dancer Hijikata Tatsumi (Fig. 3.3). Their obsession with “physical
deformity, self-obliteration, and spiritual violence” is independent of any established
genres and thus embraces the period’s spirit of anti-establishment and anti-institutional
sentiment. In addition, Munroe explains that their works share the sensibility that was
rooted not only in the social and political crisis that culminated in the Anpo struggles but
also in collective trauma.
25
Art historian Ignacio Adriasola Muñoz similarly posits double

23
Marotti, “Political Aesthetics,” 607.
24
Munroe refers to an anecdote about select Neo Dada members’ participation in the June 15, 1960 anti-
Anpo riot. In it, they yelled “Down with Anfo”—a coined term synthesizing Anpo and a Japanese
abbreviation of Informel. See Munroe, “Morphology of Revenge: Artists and Social Protest Tendencies in
the 1960s,” Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky (New York: H.N. Abrams, 1994), 151.
Japanese Neo Dada, originally known as Neo Dadaism Organizers, is not hyphenated because the
collective needs to be thought of on its own terms as much as in relation to Neo-Dada in the United States.
Although Kudō was not a Neo Dada member, he was a regular participant in the group’s parties cum
private art events. Artist Miki Tomio and architect Isozaki Arata were also frequent attendees at their
parties and exhibitions. For a further discussion of Japan’s Neo Dada, see Kuroda Raiji’s “A Flash of Neo
Dada: Cheerful Destroyers in Tokyo,” trans. Reiko Tomii with Justin Jesty, Review of Japanese Culture
and Society, vol. 17 [December 2005]: 51–71; and Suga Akira, ed., Neo Dada Japan 1958–1998: Arata
Isozaki and the Artists of “White House” (Oita: Oita City Board of Education, 1998).
25
Munroe, 189.
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meanings of the political and the artistic, focusing on the trope of impotence in Miki
Tomio’s use of a right ear and particularly Kudō’s Philosophy of Impotence. Adriasola
Muñoz argues that the work exemplifies a sense of impotence, an inability to produce
institutional and political change through public action, including overturning Japan’s
post-Anpo semi-colonial status. Likewise, Kudō’s work demonstrates the failure to attain
the artistic avant-garde, which aimed for the integration of art and life.
26

Kudō’s art indeed involves social and political dimensions. For example, in 1961,
shortly after the Anpo struggles, the artist spoke of his artwork being a critique of self
and society.
27
However, Kudō seems to take politics in a much broader sense—as part of
human activity and civilization, at least until the late 1960s, as the chapter shows.
Moreover, instead of reflecting a feeling of failure, devastation, or impotency in light of
political and artistic changes or their merger, Kudō’s artwork from quite early on
expresses potency and possibility. In this regard, Kudō’s work does not fit neatly with the
destructive tendency of the artists around him.
The term Anti-Art was first employed in Japan by Tōno Yoshiaki, one of the
leading art critics active in the 1960s, in response to Kudō’s submission to the 1960
Yomiuri Independent exhibition, Zōshokusei rensa han’nō B/Proliferate Chain Reaction
B. Despite its title’s recondite tone, this strange object consisted of familiar and

26
Ignacio Adriasola Muñoz, “Melancholy Sites: The Affective Politics of Marginality in Post-Anpo Japan,
1960-1970” (Ph.D. Diss., Duke University, 2011), 28–31. Adriasola Muñoz situates Kudō work as
eventually leaning toward marginality and possibility. Correspondingly, Anne Gossot emphasizes the
feeling of impotence and the masochistic connotations in early 1960s action-based art, including Kudō’s
work. Gossot reads them in the context of anti-Anpo politics but also in relation to the defeat in the war
(Anne Gossot, “Repression of History and Engagement of Bodies: Birth of Action Art at the Beginning of
the 1960s,” Japan’s Postwar, ed. Michael Lucken et al., trans. J. A. A. Stockwin [London: Routledge,
2011], 203–224).
27
Expressed in a roundtable discussion with four other emerging Anti-Art artists, Akasegawa Genpei,
Nakanishi Natsuyuki, Arakawa Shūsaku, and Itō Takayasu, and moderated by critic Ebara Jun. “Round
Table: Wakai bōkenha wa kataru” [Round Table: Young adventurers talk], Bijutsu techō, no. 192 (July
1961): 14. The article includes the summery by Nakahara Yūsuke.
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inexpensive commercial goods—numerous scrub brushes that were attached by pink,
yellow, and white vinyl tubes, meticulously knotted onto a metal frame (Fig. 3.4). Having
just returned from a research trip to Europe and America, Tōno observed that the
penchant for “anti-painting and anti-sculpture” was also emerging in the works by young
artists in Japan.
28
Simultaneously, Tōno commented on their cultural specificity, that
these works were comprised of a mass of junk of war ruins and therefore exemplified the
true après guerre. However, Kudō did not really deploy junk and war detritus as Tōno
understood it. The artist even hired a fabricator for the metal frames, like the one used for
Proliferate Chain Reaction B.
29
Furthermore, Kudō did not destroy his work after
showing it.
30
His work was, along with his performances, fairly well kept, documented,
and/or archived with the support of his wife, Hiroko, partly due to French art critic and
theorist of Informel Michel Tapié’s advice.
31
This is another prominent aspect of Kudō
that was contrary to many Anti-Art artists whose work was much like an impromptu
event and was often destroyed or left abandoned after it was shown.
32
By comparison,

28
Tōno Yoshiaki, “Yomiuri andepandan-ten kara 1: ‘Zōshokusei rensa han’nō B’⎯Kudō Tetsumi garakuta
no hangeijutsu” [From the Yomiuri Independent exhibition, report 1: “Proliferating Chain
Reaction”⎯Tetsumi Kudō, the anti-art of junk], Yomiuri Shimbun [Yomiuri newspaper], evening edition,
March 2, 1960, 1. Later, Tōno more explicitly stated that the lives of artists born in the late 1930s and early
1940s were “constituted by postwar ruin, the smell of death, and social disorder. They played in the burnt
ruins, the absolute emptiness of which necessarily informed their art” (Tōno Yoshiaki, “Neo Data et Anti-
Art,” Japón des avant-gardes [Paris: Centre Georges Pompidou, 1986], 33, quoted by Kuroda, “A Flash of
Neo Dada,” 58).
29
Hiroko Kudo, “Chronology of Selected Works,” Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of Metamorphosis, 209.
30
There were a few exceptions in his early days. For example, Kudō punched and destroyed his paintings
during his live painting performances.
31
Tapié, who sought the intercontinental network of Informel, highly praised Kudō’s abstract paintings as
among the best art at the 1958 Yomiuri Independent (Michel Tapié, “Sekai no naka no Nihon no wakai
geijutsuka” [Young Japanese artists in the world], trans. Haga Tōru, Yomiuri Shimbun, evening edition,
April 3, 1958, 3). It was then that Tapié visited Kudō’s studio in Tokyo and gave this advice (Kudō Hiroko,
interview with Shima Atsuhiko and Ikegami Hiroko, Oral History Archives of Japanese Art, accessed July
25, 2014 http://www.oralarthistory.org/archives/Kudō_hiroko/interview_01.php.)
32
In addition to physically destroying their artwork, many Neo Dadaists expressed destructive tendencies
in their works, as suggested by curator and researcher Kuroda Raiji in his “A Flash of Neo Dada,” 65–67.
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Kudō pursued art’s function and had no intention of turning his objects into rubbish and
to go against or nullify “art” or art-making.

Kudō’s Basis
As Kudō’s work titles and statements suggest, his practice was leaning toward
accumulation and proliferation or letting energy circulate, rather than focusing on pure
destruction, and metamorphosis was a means to encompass all of this. What is also
noteworthy about Kudō was his enthusiasm for science, biology, physics, and technology,
which, I argue, was crucial for developing his tenet of metamorphosis. For example, in
the late 1950s Kudō gradually shifted from two-dimensional to three-dimensional
artwork. However, there was no clear boundary between his painting and sculpture.
Works made between 1958 and 1960, collectively entitled Proliferate Chain Reaction,
show formal and conceptual parallels. Layers of polychrome and meandering lines form
amorphous patterns in his paintings (Fig. 3.5). These become a community of dots or
knots, carefully connected by interlocking ropes or tubes, stretched over a frame, and are
finally painted with enamel (Fig. 3.6). This was perhaps one of the reasons that he
continued to register in the painting section in the Yomiuri Independent even for his
three-dimensional submissions,
33
as much as it was a tactic to enhance the incongruity of
his works, as speculated by curator Shima Atsuhiko, the foremost researcher of Kudō’s
art.
34
Visually, Kudō’s early painted works are often compared to the works of Abstract
Expressionism and Informel, and were therefore highly rated by Tapié. Yet Kudō’s net-

33
Segi Shin’ichi and Sōgō Bijutsu Kenkyūjo, eds. Nihon andepandan ten zenkiroku: 1949–1963 [Complete
document of the Japan Independent exhibitions] (Tōkyō: Sōbisha, 1993), 187, 204, 220, 236, and 246.
34
Shima Atsuhiko, “Kudō Tetsumi nyūmon 4: Kaiga ni se wo mukete—Senryakuteki jikaku no mebae/A
Guide to Tetsumi Kudo Part 4: Kudo Turns His Back on Painting: A Strategy in the Making,” Anata no
shōzō, 58 and 60.
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like patterns, frequently in polychrome, are also about the local lacquereware of Aomori,
the northern tip of Japan’s main island where the artist spent part of his childhood.
35

Furthermore, they are an amalgam of mathematical set theory and microgram images of
cells, minerals, or bacteria.
36
Therefore, as pointed out by Kudō himself, his art of
abstraction entails different dimensions from Pollock’s work, for instance, which is
characterized by the automatic, unconscious, and spontaneous.
37

Despite a number of relocations, Kudō held onto clippings from articles about
tsugaru-nuri lacquerware, medical and scientific microscopic photographs, popular
science journals, and industry magazines including television circuit diagrams.
38
It is
unknown to what extent the artist understood these scientific theories and technical terms,
but these holdings—and his handwritten marks on them—reveal that the artist remained
passionate about the connections or fluidity between human bodies and machines or
artificial organs as well as life and electricity, to point out a few of his concerns.
39
The

35
In addition to Aomori’s tsugaru-nuri lacquerware, Kudō employed Japanese motifs in the late 1950s,
such as a kimono-like performance costume. We could also see Kudō’s inclination toward Japanese motifs
in the names of the art collectives that he founded with his classmates at Tokyo National University of Fine
Arts and Music (now called Tokyo University of the Arts, or Geidai): Tuchi (meaning, “earth”) and Ei
(“sharp”). KuroDalaiJee (Kuroda Raiji) has pointed out that Kudō’s employment of Japanese motifs made
him stand out among his radical artist friends in Nikutai no anākizumu: 1960-nendai · Nihon bijutsu ni
okeru pafōmansu no chikasuimyaku, [Anarchy of the body: Undercurrents of performance art in 1960s
Japan](Tokyo: Grambooks, 2010), 123.
36
Kudō Tetsumi, “60-nen dai āto wa kon’nichi ni ikite iruka” [Does 1960s art live today?], transcript of the
public dialogue between Kudō and art critic Tani Arata at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo,
December 5, 1981, 20–21, Kudō Tetsumi Papers at the Aomori Museum of Art.
37
Harold Rosenberg, “The American Action Painters,” Art News, 51:8 (December 1952): 22–23 and 48–50.
38
In e-mail to the author on August 24, 2014, Kudō Hiroko explained that the artist’s archive was donated
to the Aomori Museum of Art in two installments, in 1990 and 2001. The Aomori archive encompasses
exhibition-related documents, such as ephemera and business correspondence, installation and travel
expenditures, a pool of clippings, and performance props and relics as well as publications from the artist’s
personal library, which includes these biology and science magazines and journals. The National Museum
of Art, Osaka also houses part of Kudō’s substantial archive.
39
Some of the exemplary articles include: “Tokushū: Jinkō naizō kara igaku kōgaku e” [Feature articles:
From artificial organs to biomedical engineering], Kagaku Yomiuri [Science Yomiuri], 14: 11 (October
1962); Minami Sadao, “Seitai denki de kikai ga ugoku” [Bioelectricity moves machines], Kagaku Yomiuri,
16: 1 (January 1964), 63–70; Yamamura Hideo, “Seimei wa reitō dekiru” [Life can be frozen], Kagaku
Yomiuri, 17: 8 (August 1965), 37–40; Ōki Kōsuke, “‘Seishin’ wo ryōshi de ou” [Pursuing mind through
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association of machines/technology and organisms was advocated in the architectural
discipline in Japan as suggested by the launch in 1960 of Metabolism, the internationally
recognized collective of architects and designers.
40
However, it was not necessarily a
prominent approach in art there at that time. There are a few exceptions, however, such as
that certain members of Gutai Bijutsu Kyōkai/Gutai Art Association (active 1954–1972)
were fascinated by the technology and circuitry of electricity as seen in the case of
Tanaka Atsuko.
41
Moreover, Jikken Kōbō/Experimental Workshop (active 1951–ca.
1957) integrated new technology, including automated slide projectors, which had just
come out from the company now known as Sony.
42
In comparison, Kudō’s reference to
these materials was on a conceptual level rather than the actual fusion of technology and
art, even though he incorporated sound in multiple works and produced early examples of
computer-generated paintings (1971).
Take, for instance, a body of works entitled Zōshokusei rensa han’nō/Proliferating
Chain Reaction and Seishin ni okeru ryūdō to sono gyōshūsei/The Flowing Movement
and Its Condensation in Mind (1958–1960; Fig. 3.7). Clusters of colors made by hand
and footprints or materials of interlocking ropes or vinyl tubes create amorphous patterns,
as if they have lives on their own, spreading and growing out of frames or bases. In some
cases, his art literally created lives: paintings and sculptures made with eggs and flour

quantum theory], Kagaku Asahi [Science Asahi], 28: 4 (April, 1968), 111–117; Yoshida Mitsukuni, “Waga
teashi to shiteno dōgu: Mashō ushinatta kikai wo dō kangaeru” [Tools as our own arms and legs: How do
we think about machines that have lost magical power], Kagaku Asahi, 32: 1 (January 1972), 62–68.
40
See, for instance, the exhibition catalogue Metabolism, The City of Future (Tokyo: Mori Art Museum,
2011).
41
Atsuko Tanaka, Ming Tiampo, and Mizuho Kato eds. Electrifying Art: Atsuko Tanaka, 1954–
1968 (Vancouver: Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, 2004).
42
For a discussion of the collective, see Miwako Tezuka, “Jikken Kōbō and Takiguchi Shūzō: The New
Deal Collectivism of 1950s Japan,” positions, 21: 2 (Spring 2013): 351–381.
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hatched an astonishing number of maggots.
43
Concerning these works, like describing a
live culture or a virus growing in a petri dish, the artist explains that these elements
continuously react, clash, and evolve or transform into something else:
[There] emerge dots guided by pulse of entrails, spinal fluids, and mind. … These
dots proliferate into an amoebic cluster or subset, from its most condensed area
extends a prosthetic leg, further proliferation occurs around the leg and the main
body moves along with it. As the movement actively advances, the amoebic
cluster develops into a large set and the circulation matrix will be filled with
various members or elements, clusters or subsets, and then set. All of them invade,
then react, merge, or divide and scatter, or otherwise create new subsets and
proliferate again. … What is most important in this entire reaction is the desperate
attitude without any expectation and the sustainment of full tension in which the
whole body turns into a keen antenna.
44

Here, Kudō writes about the kinship of the visual, materiality, and corporeality by using
mathematical, especially set theory, and biological terms. Applying set theory in
anthropomorphic and relational terms was not entirely new to young intellectuals in
Japan at that time.
45
In addition, both the text and the work titles imply that Kudō was
also inspired by the nuclear chain reaction—one neutron from fission initiates and
sustains a nuclear chain reaction. The study of nuclear physics especially concerning the
operation of nuclear reactors was introduced to the general public in Japan in the mid-
1950s as well. For example, a large, electrically operated model of a nuclear chain
reaction was one of the highlights, along with a life-sized model of a graphite reactor, at
the Atoms for Peace exhibition that toured throughout the country between 1955 and

43
Shima Atsuhiko, “Kudō Tesumi nyūmon 2: Oitachi, soshite han-kyōiku e/A Guide to Tetsumi Kudo Part
2: Personal History and Anti-Education,” Anatano shōzō, 45 and 47.
44
Kudō Tetsumi, Unpublished artist’s statement, ca. 1959, Kaidō Hideo Archive.
45
Curator Masuda Tomohiro has pointed out the popularity of German mathematician Georg Cantor’s
theory and its link to Kudō’s work in his presentation “Kudō Tetsumi to Takamatsu Jirō—Shoki sakuhin no
hikaku kara” [Kudō Tetsumi and Takamatsu Jirō: Comparative study of their early works], paper presented
at Anatano shōzō/Your Portrait: A Tetsumi Kudo Retrospective Pre-event, the National Museum of Modern
Art, Tokyo, June 23, 2013.
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1957 (Fig. 3.8).
46
Organized by the United States Information Agency, the exhibition
travelled internationally but was particularly popular in Japan, where the show even
reached Hiroshima. Some of Kudō’s works from the late 1950s are visually and
conceptually akin to the chain reaction model. More importantly, Kudō also compared his
art itself to the operative structure of a nuclear reactor. In other words, Kudō envisioned
his art as stimulating, rather than being stimulated by, the audience and society, like an
apparatus to effectively, objectively, and continuously convert invisible energy (a nuclear
chain reaction) into something functional (electricity):
When we consider the energy of an atom, if the atom is exploded as in an atomic
bomb, the energy is dispersed and not converted into any tangible form. We
therefore build an atomic reactor and accelerate particles in that reactor to
generate a massive amount of electricity. That energy is converted into electricity
and other practical things. Think of my work as doing the same. … That device
must objectify the responses of the self as clearly as possible and sustain the cycle
of stimulus → response → objectification.
47

The way in which Kudō sought through his art to provoke his audience and society
by means of technology also echoed the theory of cybernetics.
48
Introduced by scholars
such as Norbert Wiener with his 1948 book (translated into Japanese in 1957 with a
second edition coming out in 1962), cybernetics influenced numerous artists worldwide.
49

Kudō, too, became interested in the theory which pursued a complex matrix of

46
“Semaru genshiryoku heiwa riyou hakurankai” [The Atoms for Peace exhibition approaching], Yomiuri
Shimbun, October 26, 1955, 10–11; “Chishiki eta 36-man nin: Genshiryoku heiwa riyō haku kyō heimaku”
[360,000 people acquired knowledge: The Atoms for Peace exhibition closes today], Yomiuri Shimbun,
December 12, 1955, 7; and Atoms for Peace, exh. brochure, 1955.
47
Kudō Tetsumi, “Shigeki→ han’nō→kyakutaika,” 29; English trans. by the Miki Associates with slight
modifications by the author in Tetsumi Kudō: Garden of Metamorphosis, 84.
48
Adriasola Muñoz, 41. Kudō also held onto a copy of John R. Pierce’s book, Symbols, Signals, and Noise:
The Nature and Process of Communication (1961), which was titled in Japanese Saibanettikkusu no
ninshiki (Tokyo: Hakuyo-sha, 1963).
49
For a discussion of how the theory of cybernetics affected American artists in the 1960s, see Pamela M.
Lee, Chronophobia: On Time in the Art of the 1960's (Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2006). See
aslo James Nisbet’s Ecologies, Environments, and Energy Systems in Art of the 1960s and 1970s
(Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 2014), which looks at the influence of information theory and, as
its extension, the idea of ecology over land art.
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psychological, social, technological, and environmental interactions. Presumably,
however, Kudō was not quite interested in cybernetics as the regulatory information
system in Cold War geopolitics.
50
Kudō instead conceived systems in his art, including
regulations or limitations represented as canvas, frame, box, casing, or puparium, as an
effective tool to accumulate energy to transform objects into something useful, like a
nuclear reactor does.
After his move to Paris in 1962, Kudō presented multiple performances and
objects under the production name Cybernetic Art, Kudō Co., Ltd. In addition to pasting
handmade company labels onto objects, Kudō assigned the production title to his
Happening programs well into the early 1970s. One of the earliest instances that
mentioned “Cybernetic Art” was Instant Sperm (1962). Consisting of objects,
performance, and performance relics, this three-fold work also amplified aspects of
casing, distribution, and replication. The performance program, entitled “Today’s
Manufactures,” publicizes this “effective and portable” Instant Sperm for a “natural and
artificial uterus” and even asks people to “make use of Instant [S]perm positively.”
51
In
the performance, Kudō and his wife, Hiroko, handed out condoms to the public, while
drinking a semen-like substance, made with vodka (or other available hard liquor) and
yogurt, from the tip of a condom. Some audiences reacted by thinking the object
contained real bodily fluid while others inquired how to preserve it as an artwork.
52
The

50
Fred Turner has explored both the romantic and managerial sides of the cybernetics theory by focusing
on the Pepsi Pavilion at the Osaka Expo ’70: “The Corporation and the Counterculture: Revisiting the Pepsi
Pavilion and the Politics of Cold War Multimedia,” The Velvet Light Trap, no. 73 (Spring 2014): 66–78.
51
Kudō Tetsumi, “Today’s Manufactures: Bottled Humanism and Instant Sperm, Cybernetic Art, Kudō Co.
Ltd. 1962,” ca. 1963, Kudō Tetsumi Papers, the Aomori Museum of Art.
52
Kudō Hiroko, interview with Shima Atsuhiko and Ikegami Hiroko, Oral History Archives of Japanese
Art, accessed July 25, 2014, http://www.oralarthistory.org/archives/kudo_hiroko/interview_02.php.
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object version consisted of multiple condoms, vacuum-packed and stored in a briefcase;
thus, Instant Sperm was ready for sale anywhere and anytime (Fig. 3.9).
Operating under the fictional company’s name and passing this “engineered,
commercial product” to his audience, Kudō lampooned sex and humanity as well as the
conception of art with such raw materials. Instant Sperm also accentuates the artist’s
satirical but positive take on artificiality and technology.
53
Furthermore, similar to a
number of Kudō’s earlier works made in Japan, these performances and related objects
speak for the sustainment, replication, circulation, and proliferation of energy and life,
which were also taken as data and something manufacturable and changeable, following
the cybernetic thinking. In the late 1960s, Kudō exaggerated the element of technology,
artificiality, and engineering even further by turning to the environmental crisis and the
conditions of living—life enhanced, transformed, or degenerated to some viewers, by
radiation, pollution, and engineered nature.

Encapsulation and Archive, for Alteration
Kudō’s interest in energy flow by means of transfiguration, or vice versa, and the
double-force for generating metamorphosis have converged in a most discernible way in
his canonical work, Philosophy of Impotence (1961–62; Fig. 3.10), or in its complete title,
Inpo tetsugaku: Inpo bunpuzu to sono hōwa bubun ni okueru hogo dōmu no
hassei/Philosophy of Impotence or Distribution Map of Impotence and the Appearance of

53
Kudō often performed Instant Sperm along with Bottled Humanism, in which the artist put a baby doll in
a glass bottle filled with alcohol. He shook it to make a special “cocktail of humanism” and threw the bottle
to the crowd.
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Protective Domes at the Points of Saturation.
54
Dubbed by Neo Dada member
Akasegawa Genpei as the best work at the 1962 Yomiuri Independent Exhibition, this
room-sized sculpture was the first installation piece in Japan.
55
The work was also a
landmark in the way that it solidified Kudō’s morphology of the penis-pupa.
56

Highly detailed, the installation of Philosophy of Impotence features over one
hundred phallic-pupa objects made of strings and/or electric cords, mostly wrapped in
black insulation tape with used flashlight bulbs attached at the tips. They are
systematically “distributed” on the gallery ceiling, attached by using a stretched net.
These phalli-pupae are gradually replaced by loaves of bread on the walls. There are two
“saturated” points in the form of bundled white strings and yarn (originally udon noodles),
which dangle down from the ceiling. Plastic bowls are attached to these dangling parts as
“protective domes” that contain vitamin pills and/or phallic-pupa objects, and extra
noodles/strings rest on the floor. One of the “saturated points” has a large, pinkish red
papier-mâché penis, and several magazine pages and clippings are placed on the
noodles/strings, as metaphoric ejaculation.
Soon after the Yomiuri Independent, Kudō moved to Paris and used this large
sculpture for his debut performance there in fall 1962 as part of a performance art
extravaganza curated by Happening artist and theorist Jean-Jacques Lebel (Fig. 3.11).
57

54
The title of the work is often abbreviated as Philosophy of Impotence or Inpo bunpu zu (Distribution Map
of Impotence) in Japan.
55
Akasegawa Genpei, Imaya akushon aru nomi!, 183–185.
56
Part of the artwork had been previously exhibited in Kudō’s 1961 solo exhibition at the Bungeishunjū
Gallery, Ginza, Tokyo.
57
Entitled Pour conjurer l’esprit de catastrophe/For exercising the spirit of catastrophe, the
exhibition/event was curated by Jean-Jacques Lebel and first opened at the Raymond Cordier Gallery in
Paris. Its extended version presented for filming at the Boulogne Movie Studios was held in February 1963.
The photo documentation of these Happenings are reproduced along with Lebel’s annotations in Allan
Kaprow's seminal publication, Assemblage, Environments & Happenings (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1966),
234–240. The book also helped introduce the Gutai Art Association to Euro-American readers.
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There, Kudō attached part of the disassembled Philosophy of Impotence to his clothes as
performative sculpture and something that blurs the subject-object relationship.
58

Consequently, the work had a life beyond the three-dimensional state, and its creation
and recreation continued long after the designated end date of the artwork/installation.
This sense of openness and instability or duration of creation is central, not only to
Kudō’s thematic and formal penchant for proliferation, chain reaction, and energy
circulation, but also to my discussion of his endorsement of archive as opposed to history.
As touched upon, Philosophy of Impotence is frequently framed as a work
symbolic of the political and artistic impotency that permeated early 1960s Japan. The
artist commented that the phallic imagery, which had become the major component of
Kudō’s art since then, signified humanism.
59
He was attracted by its sheer form and
function, which Kudō thought “artificial” and even “absurd,” especially in comparison to
female genitalia that look more “natural.”
60
Above all, despite its look, Kudō said that the
work was no more “erotic than ascetic”
61
and an attempt to emancipate humans from the
state of enslavement to the preservation of species by rendering everything impotent.
62

Presumably, however, the work also implied biological impotency and man’s

58
Kaprow, 236. The contact sheet of the performance photographs, including ones reproduced in Kaprow’s
publication, is in the Allan Kaprow Papers at the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles.
59
Kudō Tetsumi, “Kudō tono taiwa” (1974) [A Dialogue with Tetsumi Kudō], statement manuscript
published in the exhibition catalogue, Kudo (Paris: Galerie Beaubourg and Galerie Vallois, 1977), reprinted
in Anatano shōzō, 263.
60
Ibid.
61
Nakamura Keiji, “Kudō Tetsumi,” Kudō Tetsumi kaikoten: Igi to sōzō/Tetsumi Kudō
Contestation/Création (Osaka: National Museum of Art, Osaka, 1995), 12. See also Doryun Chong, “When
the Body Changes into New Forms: Tracing Tetsumi Kudō,” Tetsumi Kudō: Garden of Metamorphosis, 29.
62
Kudō’s remark in his interview with art critic Haryū Ichirō (“Dialogue 30,” 68). Kudō also mentioned in
another interview, which was done around the time when he was working on Philosophy of Impotence: “I
am thinking about such ideas as reaching the state of saturation in the limited space of the canvas and trying
to paint the states of lines. At the foundation of this way of thinking is an image of the way humans exist in
this society, within some sort of mechanism—all of us packed together and wriggling inside a giant
polyethylene package” (“Kokusai seinen bijutsu-ten de taishō wo eta Kudō Tetsumi,” Asahi Shimbun
[Asahi newspaper], February 18, 1962, 10, translated and quoted in Chong, Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of
Metamorphosis, 29).
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inability to bear “normal” offspring. In the late fifties, there was a fear of male sterility
caused by the radiation-polluted rainfall released by the nuclear weaponry tests.
63
For
example, in 1957 as Japan was launching a research nuclear reactor, the popular literary
magazine Bungei shunjū (Spring and autumn of literary arts) ran an article to warn that
the most fearsome harm of radioactivity was its effects on men’s reproductive organs,
causing genetic mutations and affecting future progeny.
64
Although Kudō’s explicit
reference to radioactivity’s effects on living organisms came much later, Philosophy of
Impotence can be situated between previous works about the chain reaction of nuclear
energy and later productions dealing with metamorphosis by radioactivity.
In sum, while Kudō’s phallic imageries indicate the dissolution of humanism—the
classical human form in perfection and the natural evolution of the living—Philosophy of
Impotence also plays with the pervasive nuclear anxiety. Kudō thus deprived the male
sexual and reproductive organ of its biological function and turned it into a literal phallic
object. In this respect, his work shared the 1960s artistic tendency beyond Japan,
especially the way events and happenings often responded to the vulnerability of the
human body in light of the Cold War nuclear dread.
65
Nevertheless, Kudō granted his
phalli the sui generis potency of asexual reproduction, and he visualized them as new or
different forms of organisms by adding the function of pupae. In other words, Kudō took
the state of impotency as a period of dormancy, a condensation of energy to eventually
bring about a change from within and by itself.

63
Particularly strong among the public was the fear of strontium-90, which is a nuclear fission byproduct
that is prone to be absorbed by organisms. In addition, its half-life is relatively long.
64
G.B.T., “Sutoronchiumu-90 wa ame to furu: Hōshanō ga makichiraru ‘warui shushi’ no sekai”
[Strontium-90 falls as rainfall: The world of “bad seeds” distributed by radioactivity], Bungei shunjū
[Spring and autumn of literary arts], 35: 5 (May 1957): 56–67.
65
Julia Bryan-Wilson, “Remembering Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece,” Oxford Art Journal, 26: 1 (2003): 99–123.
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In addition, an examination of other components of the work, related
documentation, and archival materials suggests that Philosophy of Impotence can be
explained as the artist’s aim to destabilize the idea of linear history as a result of human
progress and expansion of human activities. Instead, the artist prioritizes the idea of
archive and its complexity. In particular, the way Kudō used the component of magazine
pages and clippings reveals that he acted as an archivist and the act of archiving—
collecting, selecting or deselecting, and keeping—was a crucial practice for him beyond
the fact that this artwork, like a number of his other works are, is an Assemblage.
66

The current configuration of Philosophy of Impotence shows fifteen magazine
pages and clippings in total (Fig. 3.12): images of an exercising man, Pollock’s Number
11, 1952 (Blue Pole), photographs of the University of Tokyo’s Yasuda Hall incident
(January 18–19, 1969), and a German article on Goethe. Additionally included are
photographs of Land Art by Michael Heizer (Rift and Dissipate, 1968) and Allan
Kaprow’s environments, Words (Rearrangeable environment with lights and sounds),
(1961) and Population (1968), which were all taken from the Japanese contemporary art
magazine, Bijutsu techō’s (Art notebook) July 1969 issue.
67
In contrast, a photograph by
artist-photographer and Kudō’s high school classmate Yoshioka Yasuhiro documenting
the work’s Yomiuri Independent installation provides a glimpse into the magazine pages

66
In his 1961 Art of Assemblage exhibition catalogue, curator William C. Seitz at the Museum of Modern
Art defines Assemblage as: 1) assembled rather than painted, drawn, modeled, or carved; 2) made up
entirely or in part of “performed natural or manufactured materials, objects, or fragments not intended as
art materials” (The Art of Assemblage [New York: Museum of Modern Art, 1962], 6).
67
Akiyama Kuniharu’s “Allan Kaprow: Kōi no geijutsugaku ka, kōi no seijigaku ka” [Allan Kaprow: Art
theory of action, or political science of action] and Fujieda Teruo’s “Kan’nen no romanthishizumu—
Busshitsu no shōmetsu” [Romanticism of a concept—Disappearance of material] in “Tokushū, Atarashii
shizen: Erementarizumu ‘Āsu wāku’” [Feature, New nature: Elemental-ism ‘Earthwork’], Bijutsu techō, no.
315 (July 1969): 46–71 and 78–113. The issue also includes Allan Kaprow’s “Gendai ni okeru geijutsuka
no moraru” [Artist’s morality in contemporary time], trans. Akiyama Kuniharu, 72–75, which discusses the
“function” of art. Kudō might also have referred to the articles for his own Earthwork/Land Art, Monument
of Metamorphosis, as well as the term fankushon. However, Kudō had been looking into the functionality
of his art since the 1950s, as I have discussed.
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and other materials used in it. Those include the same Pollock page, a reproduction of
Jasper Johns’ Target with Four Faces (1955), a photo of Buckminster Fuller’s geodesic
domes, packages of instant food, a photograph of young people dancing the Twist, and a
bag with what seems to be vitamin pills.
68
Presumably, Kudō changed most of these
items on the occasion of his 1970 mid-career retrospective exhibition at Kunsthalle
Düsseldorf.
69

The point is not how many and which images were used or replaced, but rather that
they were individually put into and displayed in polyethylene bags from the beginning
and replaced as necessary.
70
Furthermore, the artist held onto some of them that he
removed, and these are now housed in his archive still intact in crumbling bags (Fig.
3.13).
71
The plastic bags might have been used initially for practical reasons, to protect
the pieces of paper as they rested on raw noodles. However, if the bags were only for
protection, the question is why the artist put the aluminum foil-wrapped instant food
package in the plastic bag as well. Concerning Philosophy of Impotence’s magazine
pages and clippings, Kudō Hiroko, the artist’s widow, frequent collaborator, and de facto
registrar/archivist, has briefly commented in retrospect that they were put in bags “as if
[they were] vacuum-packed.”
72
Similar to the instant food being packaged for
convenience to be consumed in the future, which would have drawn a great contrast with
the noodles and bread decaying during the exhibition if they had not been replaced per

68
According to Kudō’s installation plan, the artist also had or thought about including reproductions of art
by European artists such as Picasso and Jean Tinguely along with American contemporary artists, but, as
his handwritten notes suggest, images of Tinguely were “in short supply.” Kudō Tetsumi, The final
installation plans for Philosophy of Impotence (1961–1962), Collection of the National Museum of Art,
Osaka; reproduced in Anatano shōzō, 74–75.
69
The exhibition Tetsumi Kudō: Cultivation by Radioactivity was held from April 17 to July 5, 1970.
70
Kudō Hiroko, interview with the author, Tokyo, June 18, 2013.
71
The page on Dalí, the Morinaga soup package, and the photograph of young people dancing the Twist are
now housed with the Kudō Tetsumi Papers in the Aomori Museum of Art.
72
Kudō Hiroko, “Chronology of Selected Works,” 214.
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the exhibition organizer’s request,
73
the magazine pages and clippings were selected and
encased in a visible container as indexes of popular art, incidents, and phenomena of the
time of the installation. Furthermore, these clippings and pages were meant to be
accessed repeatedly, selected, or deselected but kept in the artist’s storage box. In other
words, not only are these pages and clippings themselves evidence of Kudō’s interest in
an archive and his practice of artist-as-archivist, but also, the condition in which they
have been placed is reflective of how archives and archival materials are.
This relationship between borrowed images in art and the idea of an archive seems
in part comparable to Rosalind Krauss’s reading of Robert Rauschenberg’s “combines”
and select silkscreen works.
74
Expanding on Leo Steinberg’s theory of the “Flatbed
Picture Plane,” Krauss discusses Rauschenberg’s jumbled images that are leveled in the
picture plane as part of his engagement with memory, like a flat documentary or reservoir.
In addition, Krauss argues that Rauschenberg intervenes in memory to remove it from the
private and insert it into the public realm. Kudō’s work, although in a three-dimensional
form, seems to operate in a similar way. Still, at least how Kudō presents the magazine
pages and clippings—used and unused, encased to be recovered, and mostly replaced but
stored away from public view—is something closer to an archive rather than memory or
perhaps pre-memory or memory that hovers between the private and public realms. As
raw data or unorganized resources, these materials are accumulated, stored, and selected

73
In the following year, the Yomiuri Independent organizer tried to regulate Anti-Art works by issuing
Standards for the Exhibits at the Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum: “Prohibited are works that involve loud,
unpleasant sounds, that smell bad, that decompose, that are dangerous or potentially toxic, and that are
installed either directly on the floor or hung from the ceiling” (“Yomiuri andepandan ten” [The Yomiuri
Independent exhibition], Bijutsu techō, no. 436 [July, extra edition, 1978]: 171–172). Clearly, this Standard
was largely in reaction to Kudō’s Philosophy of Impotence and other works and performances shown in the
previous year.
74
Rosalind Krauss, “Rauschenberg and the Materialized Image,” Artforum, no. 13 (December 1974): 36-43.
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to be processed and organized as public and collective memory or written into history—
or they might never be used at all.
These magazine pages and clippings support past scholarship as windows into
Kudō’s practice and his interest in abstract patterns, repetitive surface textures, and action
painting through Pollock; the idea of metamorphosis through Goethe; biology and
medicine through vitamin pills; physique and physicality through exercise images;
movement and performance through dance; politics and street riots through student riots;
new technology, food, and consumer culture through instant food; and even kinetics and
the dialectics between human bodies and machines through Tinguery’s absent image that
Kudō initially wanted to include, for example. Concurrently, they are an embodiment of
the act of archiving and an encapsulation of Kudō’s archival impulse.
Through the lens of an archive, the “protective domes” in Philosophy of Impotence,
the plastic spheres made of two clear, facing cooking bowls, start to bear meaning as a
time capsule. While rendering the contents visible, the transparent capsules protect the
objects inside until they can be opened and the impotence of the contents can be reversed
with vitamins and revitalizers, which are also stored in the “domes.”
75
As Yoshioka’s
photograph documenting the 1962 installation shows, some phallic or chrysalis objects
were also put in polyethylene bags (Fig. 3.14). Interestingly, concerning Your Portrait
(1962), the first example of Kudō’s stacked dice-box work with hanging metal bowls,
which Kudō conceived as a following chapter to Philosophy of Impotence, the artist

75
In this respect, it is interesting to note what Hal Foster has said about archival artists, or archive art, and
how they engage in history. Foster has discussed that archival art and artists produce “a shift away from a
melancholic culture that views the historical as little more than the traumatic” by turning “excavation sites
to construction sites” or sites of creation (Hal Foster, “An Archival Impulse,” October, vol. 110 [Autumn,
2004]: 22).
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allowed viewers to open the metal bowls and see what was inside.
76
If the protective
domes or boxes were temporarily closed and they were accessible and supposed to be
opened to revitalize the contents and the current status, the state of impotency was a
temporary and positive respite, like a pupa undergoing metamorphosis and a cocoon
bearing a new form of life in a new time and environment. In addition, residues, skins,
and shells were mementos of transformation. In this manner, Kudō merged his art and his
view of history and archive in biological terms. However, this does not mean that he
emulated stages of human life from infantile and maturity to death, but instead he
challenged the teleological narrative, or a linear sequence. This “anti-evolutional” process
becomes even more significant in comprehending Kudō’s work about radioactivity,
environmental pollution, and ultimately the atomic bombs.

By Radioactivity and Industrial Pollution
While maintaining the visual language of penis/pupa, accumulation/proliferation,
and transformation, Kudō underwent an environmental turn in the late 1960s. As revealed
in Rachel Carson’s international bestseller Silent Spring (1962), industrial pollution had
started to affect the environment and human health. In Japan, too, the rapid industrial and
economic growth brought high levels of urbanization and rural devastation by the late
1960s.
77
One of the consequences of these drastic changes was environmental pollution.
Although it was a globally pressing issue,
78
Japan in the late 1960s was recognized as the

76
Kudō Tetsumi, Letter to Takiguchi Shūzō, October 26, 1962, Takiguchi Shūzō Papers, Keio University
Art Center.
77
Anthropologist Marilyn Ivy theorizes Japan’s loss of tradition and what remained of the pre-modern past
and the nation’s urge to rediscover them in the midst of their disappearance in her Discourses of the
Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1995).
78
For example, see details and the declaration of the United Nations Conference about the Human
Environment, the first international conference on the subject held in Stockholm in 1972. Accessed
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world’s most polluted place, especially with the “four big pollution diseases,” as
respected biologist and ecologist Paul R. Ehrlich famously observed. In part, developing
interest in environmental issues was an expected path for Kudō, who had been pursuing
popular science and technology. The artist evidently followed the media coverage of
these pollution diseases in France through his subscriptions including Kagaku Asahi
(Asahi Science) and Kagaku Yomiuri (Yomiuri Science), which started featuring articles
about pollution in the mid-1960s.
79
In Japan, the mercury poisoning of Minamata and
Niigata Minamata,
80
the air pollution that triggered Yokkaichi Asthma,
81
and the
cadmium poisoning of itai-itai byō (“it hurts, it hurts disease”)
82
were finally recognized

February 19, 2015,
http://www.unep.org/Documents.Multilingual/Default.asp?documentid=97&articleid=1503.
79
There is trace evidence that Kudō read and marked articles about environmental pollution in such
magazines as Kagaku Asahi [Science Asahi], including “Nōyaku osen” [Pesticide pollution], 31: 7 (July
1971), “Tokushū, Gendai shinkagaku, nyūmon: Kankyō gekihen no nakade ikinokorumono” [Featured
articles, Contemporary evolution theory: What would survive in the environmental upheavals], 31: 8
(August 1971); “Metsubōno michi wo ayumu ningen” [Humans’ path toward destruction], 31: 10 (October
1971) and “Tokyo-to no kōgai ni tsuite” [On pollution in Tokyo], 33: 2 (Feb 1973). All housed in Kudō
Tetsumi Papers, the Aomori Museum of Art.
80
Minamata disease is named after a small seashore community on Kyūshū Island in southern Japan. By
1953, organic mercury compounds dumped into the Minamata River and Bay from the Chisso
Corporation’s factory, which manufactured plastics, caused health problems. Because the symptoms were
confined to fishing families in villages outside the Minamata City, city dwellers considered the disease to
be contagious and due to poor hygiene, and they ostracized the afflicted. In the late 1950s, a doctor at the
Chisso Corporation Hospital pinned down organic mercury in shellfish and anchovies as the cause of the
brain damage. However, the government did nothing until 1968 and the Chisso Corporation continued
dumping mercury-polluted wastewater. By 2000, more than 2,000 people were certified as having
Minamata disease and 8,000 more were listed as non-certified patients (Angus M. Gunn, Unnatural
Disasters: Case Studies of Human-Induced Environmental Catastrophes [Westport: Greenwood Press,
2003], 123–126); and Brett Walker, Toxic Archipelago: A History of Industrial Disease in Japan
[University of Washington Press, 2009], 137–175.)
81
This was severe asthma found as early as 1960 around the industrial center surrounding Yokkaichi City,
Mie Prefecture. It was caused by sulfur and nitrogen dioxides released from a petro-chemical complex
which supported the country’s reconstruction through the production of fuel and plastic. More than 2,000
residents in the area were certified as victims and nearly half were children. See Walker, 207–210.
82
Itai-itai disease was acknowledged by the government as a pollution disease, along with Minamata, in
1968. The symptoms, however, appeared in the 1910s in a small farming village in Toyama Prefecture in
northwest Japan. It was caused by the Mitsui Mining and Smelting Company’s cadmium pollution in the
nearby Jinzū River. New and improved mining and smelting technologies produced unprecedented amounts
of a heavy metal pollutant, cadmium, which permeated rivers, rice fields, and human, especially women’s
bodies. Cadmium contamination caused severe pain in the joints and spine, and made bones extremely
fragile so the disease was named after the victims’ cry, “it hurts, it hurts.” By the mid-1970s, over 200
people in the Fuchū area had been recognized as victims and among them, 130 had died (Norie Huddle and
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by the government as kōgai, literally meaning “public damage” or “public pollution,” at
the end of the 1960s. In their classic study about Japan’s environmental crisis (1975),
Norie Huddle and Michael Reich pointed out that the early 1970s saw “a nationwide
epidemic of pollution diseases.”
83
In many cases, however, human-induced disease
victims were rebuffed by the companies whose activities caused the disease, local and
state authorities, communities, and sometimes even by their own families.
84
Or simply,
kōgai itself was a form of social discrimination against the rural and the poor to the
benefit of the country’s economic achievements, as suggested by Ui Jun, an anti-pollution
activist and researcher who propagated the term kōgai.
85

From today’s standpoint, it is not surprising to discuss the atomic bombs and their
effects in tandem with environmental pollution, but this was not the case in the early
1970s.
86
Major publications on kōgai did not mention the atomic bombs, nor did they
mention studies on their aftereffects, including leukemia, cataracts, thyroid cancer, birth
defects, and other health complications as a consequence of radioactivity.
87
The rare
exception was, again, Ui, who briefly commented in 1970 that the atomic bomb was the
archetype of “public pollution” in Japan and that the neglect of the issues pertaining to
the bombs and survivors led to the late 1960s pollution crisis.
88

Michael Reich with Nahum Stiskin. Island of Dreams: Environmental Crisis in Japan [New York and
Tokyo: Autumn Press, 1975], 186–9; Walker, 108–136).
83
Huddle and Reich, Island of Dreams, 22.
84
Jeffrey Broadbent, Environmental Politics In Japan: Networks of Power and Protest (UK: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 103. Huddle and Reich also argue that under the intense pressures of Japan’s
group-centered social order, pollution-disease victims’ families often tried to hide the sick from public view
and even refused to take the victims to doctors (Huddle and Reich,108).
85
Ui Jun, “A basic theory of kōgai” (1972) in Science and Society in Modern Japan: Selected Historical
Sources, The M.I.T. East Asian Science Series, eds. Shigeru Nakayama, David L. Swain, and Eri Yagi
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1974), 298.
86
Gunn, 25.
87
Ibid., 28.
88
Ui Jun, commenting in the article “Hiroshima Nagasaki 25-nen” [25 years of Hiroshima and Nagasaki],
Asahi Shimbun, August 3, 1970, 19.
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As touched upon in the previous chapters, the SCAP’s Press Code regulated public
discussion of anything unfavorable toward the Occupation, especially human casualties
of the atomic bombs. Survivors could not share their grief and dreadful experiences, nor
could they get sufficient medical support. In fact, the atomic bomb disease victims were
considered non-existent—the bomb’s long-term effects were ostensibly denied early on
by the Allied authorities.
89
The United States provided no aid to hibakusha because if it
had done so, the act could have been construed as acknowledging that the use of the
bombs had been improper.
90
The U. S. Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission (ABCC),
with hospitals in

Hiroshima and Nagasaki, was charged with collecting scientific data on
victims and tissue specimens to research the bombs’ long-term biological effects and
prepare for a possible nuclear war to come.
91
The Japanese government, too, failed to
establish an organized relief effort and medical treatment for victims in the tumult of the
war’s aftermath and later focused on collecting census data for “joint research” with the
United States.
92
Hibakusha were yet again experimental subjects whose treatment as
scientific curiosities only served to deepen their sense of shame, guilt, and
discrimination—the situation which instigated Domon’s production of Hiroshima (1958),
as we have seen.

89
On September 6, 1945, Brigadier General Thomas Farrell at a news conference at the Tokyo Imperial
Hotel, where SCAP’s headquarters were located, declared that “those expected to die have already died. As
of the beginning of September there are no people suffering as a result of atomic bomb radioactivity.”
Quoted by Yukuo Sasamoto, “Investigations of the Effects of the Atomic Bomb” in A Social History of
Science and Technology in Contemporary Japan, vol. 1. The Occupation Period, 1945-1952 (Melbourne:
Trans Pacific Press, 2001), 80.
90
Dower, “The Bombed,” 124–134.
91
Lindee, 376–409.
92
This was especially true until 1957, when the A-bomb Victims Medical Care Law was put into effect,
and finally in 1968 the A-bomb Victims Special Welfare Law was enacted (Sasamoto, “Investigations of
the Effects of the Atomic Bomb,” 73–107).
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The 1954 Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident, in which Japanese fishermen were
irradiated by nuclear fallout from hydrogen bomb testing in the South Pacific, had helped
illuminate the previous nuclear catastrophes in the context of a national discourse.
Ironically however, the incident also fueled the celebratory welcome of nuclear power
plants as a peaceful and efficient use of nuclear energy, an idea to which the Atoms of
Peace exhibition greatly contributed and which affected Kudō. Nuclear power plants
were taken as clean, as opposed to thermal power plants, for example, which release
sulfur compounds as air pollutants.
93
Furthermore, the incident did not necessarily raise
awareness of the plight of people with the atomic bomb disease. Simon Avenell, a
historian of the environment and activism in Japan has pointed out that as opposed to
other pollution-induced diseases, invisible radiation and the invisibility of its victims
hindered the development of atomic radiation as the focus of a movement. This caused a
nuclear blind spot in Japanese victim-centered environmental activism, which, Avenell
claims, led to the Fukushima disaster.
94
However, if the invisibility of radiation and
radioactive contamination were the issue, visuals could make a significant contribution to
their acknowledgement. As we have seen in Chapter One, a number of artists in various
genres expressed their concerns in response to the Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident and the
anti-nuclear weapons movement in the 1950s. In contrast, few experimental artists

93
For example, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported that Japan’s three biggest electric companies were rapidly
building nuclear power plants to replace “villain” thermal plants. “Genshiryoku hatsuden kyū picchi, kōgai
de karyoku kiraware” [Fast pace to build nuclear power plants, thermal plants abhorred for pollution],
Yomiuri Shimbun, January 7, 1969, 7.
94
Simon Avenell, “From Fearsome Pollution to Fukushima: Environmental Activism and the Nuclear
Blind Spot in Contemporary Japan,” Environmental History, 17: 2 (2012): 247.
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ventured into this subject in their artwork when pollution disease became a national and
global issue.
95

For example, when the Japanese nation was deeply involved in the 1970 Osaka
Expo festivities, as touched upon in the previous chapter’s discussion of Okamoto, the
unprecedented level of pollution and the atomic bombs’ lingering problems were
concealed from Expo visitors.
96
Concerning this matter, an Asahi Shimbun (Asahi
newspaper) article questioned why the Expo did not provide any identifiable reference to
negative aspects of technological development or human atrocities. The article also
referred to the photographic panels of the atomic bomb victims that occupied large walls
of the Japanese Pavilion at the 1958 Brussels Expo and the “heart-wrenching display of
the Holocaust victims” at the 1967 Montreal Expo. In these situations, although few in
number, the significance of artworks that look into the atomic bomb radiation in the
context of environmental pollution should be stressed. One example is an illustrated
essay by Akasegawa Genpei (1937–2015), formerly the key member of Neo Dada and Hi
Red Center who was also close to Kudō, for the leftist journal Gendai no me
(Contemporary Eye) (Fig. 3.15).
97
Entitled “Gendai kōgaikō” (Thoughts on contemporary
public pollution), Akasegawa’s text and especially his monochromatic illustrations
playfully problematize the term “kōgai” because, he states, the very use of “kō” (meaning,

95
In contrast, this particular theme was popular in mass culture. One of the most well-known examples was
the film company Toei’s tokusatsu (special effects) movie and superhero television series, such as
Gojira/Godzilla. The 1954 film was made in response to the Lucky Dragon incident, and Gojira, the lizard-
monster, becomes a mutant through radioactive contamination. The series also includes an episode of
Hedora/Hedrah (1971), in which the monster emerged from a highly polluted ocean. For a further
discussion of pollution, including radioactive contamination, and popular culture, see Yamamoto Akihiro,
Kaku to nihonjin: Hiroshima, Gojira, Fukushima [Nukes and the Japanese: Hiroshima, Godzilla,
Fukushima] (Tokyo: Chūkō shinsho, 2015), 111−159. See also Chapter Four of this dissertation.
96
“Keizaitaikoku Nippon ga zenmen ni, kage ga usui ‘genbaku’ tenji” [Pushing the image of Japan as an
economic superpower, contrary to the mute presence of “the atomic bomb” exhibition], Asahi Shimbun,
evening edition, March 14, 1970, 10. See also Chapter Two of this dissertation.
97
Akasegawa Genpei, “Gendai kōgaikō” [Thoughts on contemporary public pollution], Gendai no me
[Contemporary eye], no. 11 (November 1970): 147−150.
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“public”) helps private companies conceal their responsibility for causing pollution.
Akasegawa criticizes the displacement made possible by the term and goes on to accuse
the authorities and the bourgeoisie who were exploiting the masses. His bold and cryptic
drawings, inspired by the style of gekiga (“dramatic pictures”), a genre of noir-ish
psychological graphic novels popular then, is particularly effective.
98

Moreover, Akasegawa depicts Nagasaki’s iconic mushroom cloud on the opening
page of the essay and, in the following spread, repeats the building of Hiroshima’s
Atomic Bomb Dome under a flock of black crows. These illustrations, delineated in
cryptic lines and dramatic shadows, scandalously illustrate how the state and big
corporations together were manipulating the current situation and the atomic events in the
past. “The pollution is popularization of war,” says Akasegawa, which benefits
capitalists—a kind of everyday, everywhere warfare against the public.
99
Additionally, he
points out that photographs of the victims of both the environmental crisis and the atomic
bombs echo each other perfectly. Indeed, in his drawing, the image of the Atomic Bomb
Dome seems to be repeated infinitely beyond the vantage point to suggest this would
simply continue from the past into the distant future (Fig. 3.16). In addition, Akasegawa
appropriately depicts the absence of human bodies, even of the victims, in the
circumstance in which the authorities’ indifference to citizens and neglect of the victims’
and survivors’ pain and dignity routinely happens.

98
The term gekiga was coined by manga artist Tatsumi Yoshihiro (b. 1935) in 1957. For further discussion
of gekiga and what role Garo played in the history of manga and cultural production in general, see Ryan
Holmberg, Garo Manga: The First Decade, 1964−1973 (New York: The Center for Book Arts, 2010).
99
Akasegawa, “Gendai kōgaikō,” 148–149.
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Interestingly, in a 1974 interview in which Kudō role-played both the interviewer
and the interviewee, he also referred to the atomic bomb victims’ and indeed Japan’s
unspoken specimen status along with the pollution victims:
Since the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, Japan has been functioning as
a guinea pig for the world. First, [Japan was] a guinea pig in the atomic
biomedical experiment, then became a model of economic growth as a postwar
economic animal, and then a test site for the worst pollution in the world. Now
[the Japanese have become] a sample of a group of people with the most
advanced mass communications and mass media. Japan has always been a
laboratory, and Japanese people are faithful guinea pigs that provide experimental
data. To put it in slightly sarcastic terms, Japan seems to serve as a kind of martyr
for you—the human race.
100

Although I have read Philosophy of Impotence in the context of nuclear pollution as well,
Kudō openly ventured into this subject around 1967, much before he wrote this statement.
Kudō’s work illuminated the victims, depicted as bodies dismembered and morphed by
radioactivity and pollution, when the plight of pollution victims and atomic bomb
survivors was not socially recognized as complementary. However, Kudō’s art also
attests to his more nuanced stance, which was engrained in his earlier practice. This was
well represented by Denshikairo no naka ni okeru hōshanō niyoru yōshoku/Cultivation
by Radioactivity in the Electric Circuit (1970; Fig. 3.17). The object consists of a plastic
incubator-like hemisphere over a mucus-like, mousy yellowish-green landscape with
recycled transistors poking out in an open area surrounded by artificial mosses. Within
this “protective dome,” nurtured together by radioactivity, are his favorite motif of a
penis-chrysalis, noses with bushy nostril hair, and a tiny toy mouse. These are elements
of this contaminated, swamp-like landscape, replacing rocks, caves, and mountains. They
are also organisms by themselves, each crawling like a mouse. Other works collectively

100
Kudō Tetsumi, “Kudō tono taiwa” (1974), reprinted in Anatano shōzō, 263 and 404. Translation by
Christopher Stephens with slight modifications by the author.
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titled Cultivation by Radioactivity are also tinted with fluorescent colors and feature
organs and body parts, including brains, penises, and eyeballs. Alternatively, they often
include snails, cacti, flowers, and/or industrial products such as transistors and vacuum
tubes. Placed within aquariums, buckets, or transparent spheres, these elements are
treated in an equal manner. The choice of bright, artificial colors was not new to the artist,
who had used them for his performance costumes and objects so as to indicate an
artificial quality and otherworldly or non-human status. Art critic Nakahara Yūsuke once
said that these objects force a “fundamental rethinking of the ways the organisms would
live.”
101
In essence, they are a microcosm, a bonsai-like model, which shows a state of
emergence of a new form of organism as part of a necessary process of this contaminated
world.
Subsequently, Kudō made a much larger sculpture, or an environment, which
incorporated Allan Kaprow’s definition of “environment” in the sense of today’s
installations and referred to the natural environment in crisis. Entitled Kankyō osen–
Yōshoku–Atarashii ekorojī/Pollution–Cultivation–New Ecology (1971, Fig. 3.18), this
large installation depicts humans having already become part of a “new ecology” that is
cultivated and transformed by industrial pollution. The garden or field, grafted with
Kudō’s familiar items including flowers, phalli, arms and legs attached to steel pipes,
transistors, and vacuum tubes, is without a protective cover or cage. Therefore, the work
suggests that no boundary exists between this artwork and the real world, and we, the
viewers, are also compelled to be part of this open, polluted land—a mishmash of nature,
technology, and humans.

101
Nakahara Yūsuke, “Kudō Tetsumi no sakuhin chūshaku” [Notes on the work of Kudō Tetsumi], Bijutsu
techō, no. 381 (May 1974): 221.
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In his discussion of American artists’ intervention in land and ecology, art
historian James Nisbet has pointed out a shift in the late 1960s from art involving the idea
of the singular earth, a vision enabled by the exploration to outer space, and which
formally deployed terraria and bio-domes. But in the late 1960s, fragmentary visions
came in which denied ecology’s singularity and wholeness. Kudō’s aforementioned
sculptural works are figurative examples of this shift, Nisbet notes. In other words, they
represent a break from “a self-sufficient ecosystem,” as seen in the hemispherical
Cultivation by Radioactivity, and move to a collection of broken up and incomplete
Pollution–Cultivation–New Ecology.
This is certainly a provocative suggestion to reconsider whole versus fragmentary
visions in relation to Kudō’s depiction of ecology as well as the effect of technology and
the atomic bombs. In addition, the pairing of the whole and fragmentary visions in
Kudō’s work indicates the body in entirety versus the body in smaller parts, or in Kudō’s
words “dissolution of human nobleness.” However, Kudō had been investigating how
small parts relate, embody, and transgress and transform themselves into other parts and
something larger, while he was familiarizing himself with new ideas in bioscience, set
theory, and nuclear physics. Moreover, Kudō envisioned a non-hierarchal relationship
between small parts and the whole as much as he conceived phalli-pupae, humanity,
flowers, and industrial tools equivalently. This was emphasized in an interview of him,
which was made shortly after the production of Pollution–Cultivation–New Ecology. In it,
Kudō commented that the very notion of pollution stemmed from the West’s antagonistic
contraposition of humans against nature. Kudō then went on to proclaim a “new ecology,”
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an alternative in which humans, nature, and technology are interconnected and
metamorphosed alongside each other:
[New ecology is] a metamorphosis of human beings and simultaneously the
decomposition of nature, the transmutation of the environment, and contamination,
the result of which becomes pulpy, and from which emerges genuine electronics.
This is not the electronics antagonistic to nature that Europe[ans] conceive but
rather [electronics that] naturally emerges from a bog as mold does. In a sense,
decomposed humans and electronics can be considered like plant buds of the
same species. Therefore, there will be no class difference between man and nature
as well as man and machine, and they are in an equivalent relationship to that of
symbiotic plants, insects and plants, or of neuron and muscle cells. And this is
new ecology.
102

Environmental historian of Japan Brett Walker argues that pollution diseases reveal that
modernity, its technologies, and engineered landscapes exaggerate our connections to the
natural world at interfaces of the organic and inorganic.
103
In this respect, Kudō’s
deployment of bodies, decomposed and metamorphosed by radioactivity and pollution,
was also a visualization of what Walker terms homo sapiens industrialis, who were
engulfed and transformed, often at the molecular level, by engineered and irradiated
nature.
Still, no matter how grotesque, ugly, and violent Kudō’s art might look, as often
described, Kudō’s distinctiveness lies in his ambivalence about technology, even though
he acknowledged the negative consequences brought by technological advancement. That
is, rather than simply accusing technological development or turning away from the
predicament arising from it, Kudō employs it as a catalyst that can generate a creative
force—like his art but also providing an occasion for renewing ourselves and our
relationships to the environment, which in Kudō’s definition includes technology. In this
respect, hibakusha and pollution disease victims, like penis-pupae and noses, might be

102
Kudō and Haryū, “Dialōgue 30,” 67−68.
103
Walker, 8.
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the next step in this new and alternative “evolutionary” process.

Fossil in Hiroshima, To Break Fossilized Hiroshima
In the discussion of Kudō’s art of radioactive and industrial pollution, I should also
underscore the influence of politics. It was indeed one of the major reasons that
compelled the artist to go back to Japan for the first time in seven years. In 1968, Kudō
learned about young students protesting in Japan as well and made a work dedicated to
them. Entitled Wakai sedai e no sanka—Mayu wa hiraku/Homage to the Young
Generation—The Cocoon Opens, the sculpture consists of what seems to be a human
skin or frayed human pushing a stroller. Carried in it is a pink-hued split-open cocoon
bearing brains, which are wired to an electric circuit and another enlarged brain, placed
down on the ground. It also incorporates the sound of a baby crying. Here, the
electronically nurtured brains are about to come out to replace the residue of humanity,
which holds onto a flat, empty Monoprix shopping bag on which purchase receipts are
attached to suggest a trace of excessive commercial activities.
Upon his return to Japan, Kudō took the trouble to bring this sculpture all the way
from Paris to the Westgate Plaza at the Shinjuku Station, one of Tokyo’s major railway
hubs (Fig. 3.19). This was a conscious topological choice for his impromptu street
exhibition and performance of the artwork about student protesters. At that time,
Shinjuku was pivotal for political activism, a place where progressive students and folk
singers regularly held guerrilla gatherings and the state violently intervened to regulate
them. The area was also filled with sexual and cultural radicals as well as fūten
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(layabouts), with illegal brothels, bar stalls, and unpermitted tent theaters.
104
Above all, as
sociologist Yoshimi Shun’ya has noted, the area was the key site that provoked
communal and symbiotic sensitivity among the anonymous radicals who flocked there—
new leftists, vagabonds, sex workers, and sexual minorities—and even allowed them to
be protean.
105
In other words, Shinjuku was the place of metamorphosis.
In addition to rolling the stroller to Shinjuku, Kudō attempted to invigorate young
protesters and his aspiration of metamorphosis further by producing works during his stay
in Japan: a large relief of Dappi no kinenhi/Monument of Metamorphosis (1969; Fig.
3.20) and the key chains of Fossil in Hiroshima (Fig. 3.21). Kudo’s sole land art, the 25-
meter relief Monument of Metamorphosis, is a double image of a penis and chrysalis or
fossil in the process of being excavated. Although the location was an old, privately
owned rock quarry outside Tokyo, its flat vertical cliff served as a perfect display wall,
making visible this “ō-chinchin,” or giant penis, even from afar. In a documentary film
about the artwork, Kudō again said it was dedicated to the student protesters. He also
envisioned implanting his phalli-chrysalises “inside and outside the establishment,”
images which, he hoped, would “proliferate and make a leap” like a life undergoing
transformation and eventually breaking through its own old form or protective shell.
Fossil in Hiroshima stood as a miniature version of Monument of Metamorphosis. Yet the
reference to Hiroshima marking the artist’s re-engagement in Japan and the political riots

104
William Marotti, “Dramatizing the Space of Shinjuku: Violence, Theater, and Voice in Tokyo, 1968-
1969,” lecture presentation, USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture, University of
Southern California, Los Angeles, November 3, 2015.
105
My emphasis. Yoshimi Shun’ya, “Toposu to shiteno Shinjuku” [Shinjuku as a topos], Toshi no
doramatsurugī: Tokyo sakariba no shakaishi [Dramaturgy of the city: A social history of Tokyo’s
amusement quarters] (Tokyo: Kōbundō, 1987), 264–288. In addition, Shinjuku had been the area in which
Neo Dada members and their friends, including Kudō, held parties and self-organized exhibitions at Neo
Dada member Yoshimura Masunobu’s residence. Yoshioka’s house was nicknamed “White House” for its
modern white mortar structure, designed by architect Isozaki Arata.
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seems a little unexpected. Kudō’s oeuvre has been taken as deeply affected by Japan’s
atomic devastation, especially in the West, including the frayed human figure hanging
onto the stroller in Homage to the Young Generation,
106
but such a reading was not
prevalent in Japan. On top of that, the artist had once denied that the atomic disaster was
the predominant influence on his practice. Nonetheless, because of this very reason,
Kudō’s explicit reference to the atomic disaster at this time makes it more intriguing.
During his stay in Japan, Kudō had direct contact with students, holding
discussions with radical young artists at Tama Art University and visiting demonstrations
on college campuses. Such a penchant for politics surprised Kudō’s old artist friend
Yoshioka, for example, who asked the artist how “non-political Kudō” became interested
in the students’ riots in the late 1960s.
107
Regarding this point, critic Nakahara Yūsuke
later succinctly noted the May 1968 student riots in Paris deeply connected Kudō’s
investment in politics with the subject of pollution and “new ecology,” while admitting
that they also stemmed from things with which the artist had been grappling since the
1950s.
108

Just before the year of the barricades, Kudō took part in an exhibition in France as
one of the twenty-six “politically engaged figurative painters.” Curated by critic Gérald
Gassiot-Talabot and Pierre Gaudibert, director of the Department of Animation,
Recherche, Contestation (ARC) at the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris, the Le
Monde en question exhibition had a strong political undertone. It asked whether art could

106
For example, an extended object label at the Tokyo 1955–1970: A New Avant-Garde exhibition at the
Museum of Modern Art, New York (November 18, 2012–February 25, 2013) describes the work as “an
allusion to metamorphosis that evokes the infamous human shadow burned into steps in Hiroshima.”
107
Kudō, Yoshioka, and Nakahara, “Geijutsu to shakai to sekkusu to,” 21.
108
Nakahara, “Kudō Tetsumi no sakuhin chūshaku,” 249.
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contribute to events and situations or whether it could only reflect or represent them.
109

Kudō submitted an installation, not a painted work, Dappi no hanazono/Jardin—La mue,
which consisted of semi-human-shape casings and enlarged heads resting on four beach
chairs placed within gigantic artificial flowers and molts.
110
Participation in this
exhibition might have prompted Kudō to take part in street demonstrations the following
year. However, he only accumulated a sense of disconnectedness, partly due to the
generation gap between him and the student protesters and partly due to his foreign status.
In the end, Kudō decided to temporarily leave Paris, which had become dysfunctional
with the disruption of services, for Amsterdam on a half-year residency program. The
majority of his artworks about pollution and new ecology were made during this
residency.
Kudō’s delineation of bodies in disfiguration and metamorphosis due to the
environmental crisis was therefore associated with the tumult of politics, dysfunctional
urban space, and physical and psychological alienation. However, Kudō tried to be an
artist in the sense that his work aimed to interfuse a transformation of society, the
environment, and humanism rather than explicitly expressing political and activists’
claims. Concerning this point, French poet and critic Alain Jouffroy, who had curated
Kudō’s work multiple times since immediately after the artist’s arrival in Paris, argued
that Kudō’s art uniquely stood in the realms of art and ideology without falling into
“revolutionists’ barbarism.”
111
Yoshioka made a similar point, but in the context of

109
Pierre Gaudibert, “Introduction,” Le monde en question (Paris: Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de
Paris, 1967), quoted in Pierre Sami Siegelbaum, “The Invisible Prison: Art, Collectivity, and Protest in
1960s France,” (Ph.D. Diss., University of California, Irvine, 2011), 19.
110
Anatano shōzō, 498.
111
Alain Jouffroy, “Rejisutansu: Kudō Tetsumi no, Kudō Tetsumi e no/La résistance de Tetsumi Kudo, et
la résistance à Tetsumi Kudo,” Bijutsu techō, no. 381 (May 1974): 253 and 257. Its shortened French
version was published in XXe siècle, no. 46 (September 1976): 128–135.
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political riots in Japan, noting that Kudō made the right decision to chisel a large penis-
pupa, rather than to participate in the riots themselves or the anti-Expo movements that
were on the rise among certain groups of radical artists.
112
In essence, Kudō remained an
artist rather than becoming an activist; still, he keenly believed in the function of art to
somehow raise and change consciousness as much as offer a eulogy for the student
protesters.
113

His Hiroshima keychain work therefore represents the atomic bomb catastrophe
also as a condensation of the disillusion over politics, the ecological crisis, and the very
possibility and efficacy of metamorphosis of—and by—such adverse conditions. Kudō
made a relatively small number of works identifying Hiroshima in the title. For these
works, too, he deployed his signature penis-pupa, except for one work that playfully
utilized a fragmented and melted image of his own body. Fossil in Hiroshima 8:15- 8.
Aug. 1945 Phosphorescence Kudō (1973) contained a collection of what seems to be
relics of the nuclear catastrophe in a flat box: a clock stopped at the time of the atomic
detonation, a hairpiece with glasses and melting eyeballs, and a partial, flat foot cast (Fig.
3.22).
Intriguingly, along with Fossil in Hiroshima, Kudō’s atomic bomb works,
including this boxed object that suggests his own obliteration, offer the effect of a
“souvenir.” Kudō had previously produced a range of artworks exploring the concept of
souvenir and memorabilia, such as the series ‘Dappi’ no kinenhin/Souvenir of Molt—
Homo Sapiens (1965) in which elements of human skin, footprints, and/or handprints are
sandwiched between plastic sheets (Fig. 3.23). Emulating a traditional hangingscroll

112
Yoshioka, “Kudō Tetsumi: Sentōteki taiken kara umareru hyōgen kōi,” 183.
113
Kudō, Yoshioka, and Nakahara, 22.
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format with wooden rods at the top and bottom ends, these works can be easily rolled up,
stored away, and unpacked to be displayed on an appropriate occasion. In a sense, the
way they are constructed is comparable to the archival component—the magazine pages
in plastic bags of Philosophy of Impotence. Somewhat reflecting Fluxus’ multiples or
mail art, these objects, often multiplied or serialized as was usual with Kudō’s practice,
question the institutionalization of art—and therefore anti-art—including the exhibition
and circulation systems as well as art’s one-and-only status. However, rather than sharing
instructions or concepts as did the Fluxus artists, Kudō often traveled along with them.
As much as cocoons, pupae, or shells protect and nurture the bursting forth of new forms
of life, the majority of these works were also practically compartmentalized, set in a
suitcase, box, or cage, or formatted like hangingscrolls, which allowed Kudō to hold
exhibitions and performances on the go as they were easily stored away.
114
Therefore,
chance did not play a significant role in the majority of Kudō’s art or even “Happenings.”
Instead, distribution of “souvenirs” was a practice in itself.
In effect, while the idea of souvenir and the act of giving out multiples are a kind
of generous gesture by the artist, they also suggest Kudō’s increasing attempts to reach
out to his audience.
115
Therefore, giving out a tangible and portable object that
encapsulates the frozen moment of Hiroshima in the shape of penis or pupa, a residue of
humanity but simultaneously a possibility of new life, is to leave a petrified fragment of
the catastrophic past in the hands of viewers. Like giving out a plant’s seed or
tamatebako, a souvenir mystery box in a Japanese folktale which, when opened, instantly

114
Kudō Hiroko, interview with the author, Tokyo, June 18, 2013.
115
The emphasis on the idea of “souvenir” is also inspired by Julia Brian-Wilson’s study of Yoko Ono’s
Cut Piece (1964). Brian-Wilson introduced the term so as to shift the comprehension of Ono’s performance
from involving a passive female body to a productive one (Brian-Wilson, “Remembering Yoko Ono’s Cut
Piece”)
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transformed the protagonist into an elderly man, Kudō invited the audience’s
participation in letting the metamorphoses of the atomic bomb history happen. Or the
audience can simply keep or carry away the object to commemorate the nuclear
devastation in the past, for a metamorphosis to come, or completely abandon it. One
could also choose not to own it at all in the first place.
If the life and time fossilized in Hiroshima had been left untouched, it would
remain as a hidden object and hardened history. Reminiscent of the “protective domes” of
Philosophy of Impotence that were meant to be opened, Kudō wished to uncover, recall
and revitalize the atomic catastrophe and its historical narrative. The history would be
transformed in a place where industrial contamination was worse than ever and political
tumult still continued, which, in Kudō’s view, could be a catalyst to stimulate this very
change. Concurrently, this could mean a breakthrough from the stereotypical reading of
his artwork having been impacted by Japan’s nuclear annihilation, although Kudō was
also clearly playing with this cliché. It is then suggestive of what his later series,
Hiroshima no kaseki/Fossil in Hiroshima (1976; Fig. 3.24), possibly connotes.
Consisting of five embossed images with fluorescent colors, these mechanically
reproduced multiples showed a flower, penis-pupa, and heart which are all trapped in an
amoeba-like form or grid. Perhaps fossils in Hiroshima and the history of the atomic
bombs were not reactivated at that time. Or, they are completely shielded and hidden, and
their metamorphoses never take place.

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Conclusion
Kudō’s art of penises, frayed skins, or body parts dangling by themselves, vacuum-
packed or immersed in a mucus-like, contaminated landscape could hardly be seen as
aesthetically pleasing. They often evoke visual shock and negative reactions, the trauma
of war, and post-atomic dystopia.
116
These decomposing and metamorphosing bodies also
correspond to the vulnerability of human existence in the age of nuclear war, political
upheavals, and environmental crisis in the 1960s and 1970s.
Nonetheless, Kudō did not simply treat the situation and lives in crisis as
indisputable predicaments and victims. In other words, not only responding to the quickly
changing society and difficult circumstances, his artwork about atomic radiation and
nuclear energy embraces potency, inspired by new ideas in science and technology. It is
something that acts toward the possibility of change and building an alternative
relationship between humans and nature as well as science and technology. Kudō’s use of
psychedelic colors, base materiality, and the way various elements are presented non-
hierarchically bears witness to his optimistic aspiration and playfulness.
117
Moreover, his
practice of sharing artworks with viewers by means of performances, multiples, and
souvenirs opens up further the prospect of metamorphosis in viewers’ hands and bodies.

116
Alain Jouffroy also commented on these reactions as a popular critique of Kudō’s art in “Rejisutansu/La
résistance de Tetsumi Kudo,” 258.
117
Kudō’s art utilizing everyday, commercial goods has also been discussed in the context of the 1960s
sub- and counter-culture. For instance, Kudō was invited by renowned curator Harald Szeemann to his
large-scale multimedia exhibition, Science Fiction (1967–1968) that included comic books, novels, and
robots in addition to artworks. In addition, Paul McCarthy and the late Mike Kelley had been self-
proclaimed fans of Kudō. See, for example, Jens Hoffmann and Paul McCarthy, Paul McCarthy’s Low Life
Slow Life, Tide Box Tide Book (Ostfildern and San Francisco: Hatje Cantz and CCA Wattis Institute for
Contemporary Arts, 2010); Mike Kelley, “Cultivation by Radioactivity,” Tetsumi Kudo: Garden of
Metamorphosis, 50–57; and Kelley’s legendary curation, The Uncanny, which included Kudō’s L’amour
(1964) and Your Portrait (1963–64) (The Uncanny [Arnhem: Gemeentemuseum, 1993], pl. 38).
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In addition, instead of a one-time, quick, and drastic transformation, Kudō
proposed multiple changes by adopting precarious and often toxic conditions for living
things. For this purpose, the stage of respite, condensation, or dormancy, depicted as
penis-pupae, casings, and fossils, was a necessary process for continuous and
proliferation of metamorphoses. Our melting, dissecting, and disfiguring bodies are
unavoidable, but they are also a means to internalize catastrophic conditions and turn
them into productive energy. In Kudō’s rationale, this is arguably the only way to survive
a world full of crises.
In this respect, Kudō’s work can also be read as an embodiment of an alteration of
history. As suggested by such works as Philosophy of Impotence and Fossil in Hiroshima,
by encapsulating body parts or mementos of the atomic annihilation, Kudō underscores
the in-between status, like an archive or raw data, in order to re-engage the past and
reshape the historical narrative. Thus, Kudō also proposes the atomic adversity as an
occasion of transformation, renewal, and survival. In 1970, Kudō noted that “energy of
metamorphosis” should not be a one-time revolution or riot. Instead, it has to permeate,
perhaps being latent at this moment, and be sustainable.
118
Kudō also compared his art to
the function of the lymphatic system.
119
Like the interstitial fluid that circulates
throughout the body or even radioactivity that permeates genes and works to sustain
organisms or destroys them from the inside, Kudō sought his artwork to be not a
reflection of the world but instead an impetus for a chain of metamorphoses of humans,
society, politics, and history, including that of the atomic bombs.

118
Kudō Tetsumi, “Hangeijutsu to hantaisei” [Anti-art and anti-establishment], Mainichi Shimbun
[Mainichi Newspaper], evening edition, March 3, 1970, 5.
119
Kudō, Yoshioka, and Nakahara, 23.

163
CHAPTER FOUR

Site-Specificity: Chim↑Pom, Art of Site and Memory of Site

On October 21, 2008, a small aircraft flew over Hiroshima and slowly wrote
characters in white smoke against the sunny blue sky. They formed a word, ピカッ (PI
KA!), which hovered for a moment over a wrecked building topped by the skeletal
Atomic Bomb Dome—an emblem of the atomic disaster of the Asia-Pacific War—and
now a UNESCO-designated World Heritage site (Fig. 4.1).
1
The word dissolved shortly,
but before it did, a line of kindergarteners passed underneath it. It was a peaceful day
indeed.
The skywriting was a guerrilla art project by the Tokyo-based, six-artist collective
Chim↑Pom (active since August 2005). The action was videotaped and was slated for
inclusion in the collective’s first museum exhibition that was scheduled to open on
November 1, 2008 at the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art (Hiroshima
MOCA).
2
The intended installation consisted of two parts: Real Thousand Cranes and
Making the Sky of Hiroshima ‘PIKA’! (hereafter, PIKA). The former was to be a
sculptural work composed of life-size Japanese crane figures along with origami paper
cranes—a conventional symbol of peace and longevity, and thus associated with the

1
The Atomic Bomb Dome, or Genbaku dōmu, is part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, which was
inscribed as a World Heritage Site in 1996. Accessed November 16, 2015,
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/775/.
2
The collective members are Ellie, Ushiro Ryūta, Hayashi Yasutaka, Okada Masataka Okada, Mizuno
Toshinori, and Inaoka Motomu. They won the Hiroshima MOCA award out of 218 submissions in the
newly established open-call art competition, Re-Act: New Art Competition 2007 with their work Thank
You Celeb Project, ‘I’m Bokan’/I’m exploded (2007), a project about mines in Cambodia. The award
allowed them an exhibition based on the proposal submitted by the artists in the museum’s project gallery
space (Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art, ed., Re-Act shin kōbo ten: Kirokushū/Re-Act: New
Art Competition 2007 at Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art 2007 [Hiroshima: Hiroshima City
Museum of Contemporary Art, 2007]).
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bombed cities, the victims, and world peace (Fig. 4.2).
3
The origami cranes had been
crafted in collaboration with local schoolchildren, although the total number of them had
not yet reached a thousand. The latter part of the installation was to be a work involving
the skywriting: a five-minute video in which a chartered aircraft would write “a flash of
light,” the colloquial name for the atomic bomb.
As soon as the word appeared in the sky, however, citizens of Hiroshima, who
were unaware of the guerilla filming, began to call City Hall and local news agencies to
inquire about the skywriting, as they had no idea of its implications—could it be a
warning, a sign of terrorism, or have no meaning.
4
The enigmatic skywriting that
insinuated the atomic bomb made the local news, which soon became national news; a
photograph of the skywriting taken by an anonymous viewer was circulated widely. The
PIKA project was condemned by Hiroshima citizens, the media, and, especially harshly,
by “Netizens” as an irresponsible, egoistic, and immoral action that offended people in
Hiroshima and particularly hibakusha, the atomic bomb survivors. In the end, the group’s
gallery exhibition, which was held concurrently in Tokyo, was closed early, the weblog

3
The most famous story about Hiroshima’s origami cranes is of a young girl, Sasaki Sadako, who died of
leukemia in 1955. She folded cranes wishing for life as people said your wish would come true when the
number of cranes reached to a thousand. In memory of her and her prayer for world peace, in the Hiroshima
Peace Memorial Park a bronze statue of Sadako was built, to which origami cranes have been dedicated
from around the world. Two of the last cranes that she folded are now housed in the 9/11 Tribute Center
and the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum. For the legacy of Sadako’s paper cranes in the context of
American history, see David P. Janes, “Hiroshima and 9/11: Linking Memorials for Peace,” Behavioral
Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression, 2: 2 (2010): 150–161.
4
Chugoku Shimbun later reported that there were four calls of complaints and inquiries to the city and four
calls and emails to the Chugoku Shimbun Co. (“‘Pika’ moji, shi gendai bijutsukan ga chinsha” [City
Museum of Contemporary Art apologized for the word of ‘Pika’], Chugoku Shimbun [Chūgoku newspaper],
October 23, 2008, 28).
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of one of the group members was shut down,
5
the planned exhibition at the Hiroshima
MOCA was “voluntarily restrain[ed],” and the group apologized publicly.
6

This chapter revisits Chim↑Pom’s PIKA and the resulting controversy to explore
the polemics aroused by contemporary artists’ looking at the past atomic catastrophe and
its site specificity. In part, Chim↑Pom’s guerrilla art is built upon Okamoto Tarō’s social
commentary—in another work, the collective literally “tagged” Okamoto’s Myth of
Tomorrow by adding a small painted panel, as if making an addition to his chronicle of
nuclear disaster. The collective’s work also shares Kūdo Tetsumi’s optimistic and shock-
inducing visuals and performances about life’s survival and renewal through radiation
and pollution. In other words, Chim↑Pom converses with the visual history of the atomic
bombs, but the collective also responds to contemporaneous art interlocutors, such as
artist Murakami Takashi and his theory of Superflat.
More importantly, Chim↑Pom’s work demands another look into critical junctures
in the discussion of art and the aftereffects of the atomic bombs. Compared to the three
case studies addressed previously in this dissertation, Chim↑Pom’s uniqueness lies in its
direct action that literally intervenes in the site in which the disaster happened.
Concurrently, their action intersects multiplicities of site-specificity as a practice in art.
PIKA marked the beginning of Chim↑Pom’s socially engaged, guerrilla tactics. In
addition, the work paved the way for their projects about the March 11, 2011 nuclear
disaster in Fukushima, for which the collective is now attaining prominence in the global
art scene. For this analysis, the PIKA controversy—its reception—is crucial. Accordingly,

5
Apparently, Ellie had requested that they close the blog well in advance of the PIKA controversy, perhaps
in anticipation of it. However, the artist never specified the reason for this request.
6
Chim↑Pom, “On the Cancellation of the Chim↑Pom Exhibition at the Hiroshima City Museum of
Contemporary Art Studio,” Mujin-to Production. October 24, 2008, accessed December 3, 2008,
http://www.mujin-to.com/cphiroshima.html.
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166
I first provide a detailed overview of the PIKA controversy, which illuminates how it
synthesized the issue of the morality of art and artists, the public, and spectatorship,
including who narrates and how to narrate a catastrophic event. I suggest reframing PIKA
as a work interrogating the ideas of site and public space as much as challenging the
dominant approach to aestheticizing the atomic bomb, partly due to the collective’s active
and often physical involvement in the site. In the end, PIKA, as well as their works on
3.11, constructs a discursive site which renders the disaster site as something fluid and
complex, liberated from the actual time and space of the nuclear catastrophes in 1945 and
2011.

Flash Spectacle over Hiroshima: Problems in Narrating Atrocity
Chim↑Pom’s PIKA was first reported by Hiroshima’s foremost newspaper,
Chugoku Shimbun (Chūgoku newspaper) on the day after the skywriting took place (Fig.
4.3).
7
The paper, which became the major arena for the controversy, reproduced a
photograph of the skywriting along with comments from the general public, such as
“distasteful” and “eerie,” as well as responses from atomic bomb survivors.
8
For example,
one young female observer mentioned that the skywriting reminded her of pika-don.
9

When the atomic bomb destroyed the city, this new weapon of mass destruction was not
known to ordinary citizens, who thus called it pika or pika-don—pika being a mimetic
word describing a flash of light while don onomatopoeically suggested an explosive

7
“Hiroshima jōkū ni ‘Pika’ no moji, geijutsu-ka heiwauttae egaku” [The word Pika in the sky over
Hiroshima, artists drew in wishing for peace], Chugoku Shimbun, October 22, 2008, accessed October 24,
2008, http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/News/Sp200810220233.html; and http://www.chugoku-
np.co.jp/News/Tn200810220238.html.
8
“Hiroshima jōkū ‘Pika’ no moji, geijutsu-ka heiwauttae hikōki de egaku.”
9
Ibid.
Chapter Four
167
sound that would follow that light, as light travels faster than sound. One article included
a comment by Hiroshima-based painter and hibakusha Irino Tadayoshi, who questioned
the Hiroshima MOCA’s acquisition and exhibition policy that favored Tokyo-based and
international artists whose artwork touches on Hiroshima. Irino alleged that the museum
did so without seriously investigating the content of the work.
10
On another occasion,
Chugoku Shimbun referred to Ōi Kenji, art history professor at Hiroshima City University,
who expressed a certain affinity for PIKA but nonetheless described the city of Hiroshima
as a “sacred site” and artists needed to consider aging survivors’ feelings.
11

In the following days, Chūgoku Shimbun printed an interview with Ushiro Ryūta,
the leader of the six-member collective, who mentioned that their initial ambition for the
work was to transform pika from an emblem of the trauma of hibakusha into one
representing the trauma of humankind:

Q: What was the aim of your apology?
A: We apologized for not sharing our intention and thoughts with atomic bomb
survivors and the people involved in advance. We regret [this].
Q: What was the intent of your expression ？
A: We shot the Atomic Bomb Dome and the word floating in the sky with a still
camera and video. We thought that the word PIKA! symbolized the trauma of
hibakusha. But we felt obligated to [shift and] leave it as the trauma of humankind.
We wanted to make it as a video work to provoke imagination about peace.
Q: Couldn’t you predict [your work] could hurt many people?
A: We thought about it, but after the controversy erupted, we heard about the
atomic bomb experiences from Mr. Harada Yasuo, Director of the City Museum,
which were beyond our imagination. We did not fully understand hibakushas’
feelings.
12

10
“Hiroshima jōkū ni ‘Pika’ no moji, geijutsu-ka heiwauttae egaku.”
11
“Jōkū ni ‘PIKA’ hibakusha kara fukaikan, Hiroshima shiritsudai no Ōi kyōju ni kiku” [Pika in the high
sky induced survivors discomfort, interview with Professor Ōi of Hiroshima City University], Chugoku
Shimbun, October 23, 2008, 11.
12
Excerpted from Takeuchi Kōsuke, “Higaisha no kimochi rikai shite nakatta, Pika de ichimon ittō” [Not
understanding the victims’ feelings, Q & A over PIKA], Chugoku Shimbun. October 25, 2008, accessed
December 1, 2008, http://www.chugoku-np.co.jp/News/Sp200810250105.html.
Chapter Four
168
As Hiroshima’s leading paper, Chugoku Shimbun produced articles that were nuanced,
contrasting regional and generational gaps over attitudes toward and knowledge and
memory of the traumatic event, especially between the survivors and the Tokyo-based
artists.
13

The chasm between the artist collective and disparaging respondents to their work
was also apparent in the very language that was used. The word pika or pika-don
connotes something unrepresentable and untranslatable—survivors’ more immanent
experience of the catastrophe, loss, and physical and psychological pain, as opposed to
the official, scientific, and military term for the atomic bomb, in Japanese genbaku or
genshi bakudan. Although its English title is PIKA, Chim↑Pom’s skywriting ピカッ is
precisely transcribed as pi ka and small tsu. The last character, small tsu, suggests a
glottal stop in speaking, which has no substantial meaning by itself. However, by
inserting this small syllable the word implies the kind of sound symbolism found in
manga or comic books.
14
This manga-like expression was also one of the provocations of
the controversy because the artwork was taken as a ludic, amusing gesture rather than a
sincere interlocution. In retrospect, Ushiro Ryūta realized that the choice of the word also
came from the description of the bomb in Nakazaza Keiji’s bestseller Hadashi no
Gen/Barefoot Gen, a semi-autobiographical manga about the author’s survival in the
atomic bomb aftermath.
15

13
“Hiroshima jōkū ni Pika no moji.”
14
Manga critic Natsume Fusanosuke termed this on’yu, or “sound metaphor(s).” Natsume, “Gion kara
‘on’yu’ e nihon bunka ni rikkyaku shita ‘on’yu’ no hōjō na sekai” [From onomatopoeia to ‘sound
metaphor,’ The sound metaphors’ fertile world based on Japanese culture], Manga no yomikata [How to
read manga] (Tokyo: Takarajima-sha, 1995), 127.
15
Like many children in Japan, Ushiro grew up reading this manga, which had a profound influence on him
(Abe Ken’ichi ed., Naze Hiroshima no sora wo PIKA tto sasetewa ikenainoka?/Why Can’t We Make the
Sky of Hiroshima PIKA? [Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shin-sha, 2009], 38, 51, and 269). See also Kusumi
Kiyoshi’s “Pika to don—Sen’kō to bakuon: Ano kumo ni tsuite Cai Guo-Qiang tono taiwa kara” [Pika and
Chapter Four
169
The survivors’ criticism culminated in a remark by Tsuboi Sunao, the president of
the Hiroshima Prefectural Confederation of A-Bomb Sufferers Organizations. Tsuboi
stated, “The artists were entertaining themselves at the expense of others and they should
have thought more seriously about the issues involved.”
16
Tsuboi’s comment resonates
with what Susan Sontag addresses in her book Regarding the Pain of Others. In this
“society of spectacle,” Sontag writes about how images of war, even journalistic
photographs of atrocities, have no ability to generate an ethical effect or to stop wars.
Confronting images of horror and suffering, a viewer becomes a mere spectator and takes
such images as spectacles.
17
Yet Sontag also asserts that sincerity can turn a mere
spectator into a witness of atrocities.
18
Tsuboi’s response, along with Sontag’s, points to
multiple layers of spectatorship and narratives concerning the horrific event to which the
PIKA project refers. On the one hand, the members of Chim↑Pom are second- or third-
generation spectators to the 1945 atrocity, having “fun” with the atomic bomb at the
expense of other people’s trauma. On the other hand, these spectators are also producers

don—Flash of light and roar: From dialogue with Cai Guo-Qian about the cloud] in Naze Hiroshima no
sora wo PIKA tto sasetewa ikenainoka?, 95–99; and Sawaragi Noi’s extensive discussion of the
collective’s choice of manga-like words in relation to a body of their artwork: “Kaku ni harifuda—
Chin↑Pomu no ‘mu’ wo megutte/Stickering the Nuclear: On the Last “m” of Chim↑Pom,” Super Rat, ed.
Abe Ken’ichi (Tokyo: Parco Co., LTD., 2012), 68–77.
16
Edan Corkill, “Poof! Goes the Art Work as Taboos Broken,” The Japan Times, October 30, 2008,
accessed February 5, 2009, http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fa20081030ec.html.
17
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2003). Sontag basically expressed the
same view as in her 1973 book, On Photography (New York: Dell Pub. Co., 1977). Sontag has extended
her analysis to the photographs of prisoners abused at Abu Ghraib as “Regarding the Torture of Others,”
The New York Times, May 23, 2004, http://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/23/magazine/regarding-the-torture-
of-others.html?_r=0; see also Judith Butler’s reflection on the media images of war and her examination of
Sontag’s writings, “Torture and the Ethics of Photography: Thinking with Sontag,” Frames of War: When
is Life Grievable? (London and New York: Verso, 2009), 63–100.
18
Ibid., 42. Art historian Kajiya Kenji’s study unfolds a similar discussion of the notion of witness and the
atomic bombs. Kajiya argues that to be a witness is not an indication of someone’s physical “thereness” at
the atomic atrocities but one’s self-recognition and self-determination to be, or not to be, a witness
(“Genbaku wo mokugeki shita gaka, shinakatta gaka: Genbaku no mokugeki to sono shikakuteki
hyōgen/Painters Who Did and Did Not Witness the Atomic Bomb: The Witnessing and Representation of
the Atomic Bomb,” Genbaku bungaku kenkyū/Journal of Genbaku Literature, no. 9 (2010): 69–86).
Chapter Four
170
of another, quite public, spectacle. The spectators for their skywriting spectacle included
actual atomic bomb survivors, who are also witnesses in Sontag’s sense of the word.
The difference between spectator and witness is not simple, and thus who narrates
how, and to whom to narrate a horrific event becomes problematic. As Sontag also writes,
"No ‘we’ should be taken for granted when the subject is looking at other people’s
pain.”
19
The processes of selection and manipulation in shaping collective memory
conversely indicate the impossibility of one account becoming everyone’s shared
memory. In addition, there is memory that is particular to a certain site. “Site-specific
memory” is involved in what occurred in a particular place, and the place itself becomes
the very embodiment and identifier of the memory of what happened. This is akin to the
rationale of those who regard Hiroshima as a sacred site. However, it does not mean that
all sacred sites embrace site-specific memory. Conversely, memory of site or site-specific
memories do not necessarily make the respective site sacred.
What the PIKA debate revealed is indeed that there is no unified memory or
single narrator that recounts the horrific event, especially after more than sixty years had
passed by the time Chim↑Pom undertook the project. “We” the survivors and “we” the
artists, or “I” the artist, embrace varied experiences and sentiments about the event and
hence varied memories of and approaches to it. Especially problematic were the playful,
comical references by the young, Tokyo-based artists to the atomic bombs. Amnesia and
the fear of amnesia, particularly among the aging survivors, also interpolated the
narrative of the devastating experience. The Hiroshima sky controversy was further
complicated by the voice of “we” the viewers, including the media and Netizens, who
took advantage of their anonymity to convey overtly vitriolic criticism. Describing PIKA

19
Ibid., 7.
Chapter Four
171
as an “exploitation of Hiroshima,” “ignorant,” and “immoral,” Netizens often spoke, or
pretended to speak, on behalf of survivors and judged PIKA and what “art” should be like
from moral, ethical, and didactic standpoints. Some even expressed hatred of the
collective itself and said that it was not worth looking at or commenting on their artwork
at all.
20
In this case, social media such as blogs and message boards served as a focal
arena in which the meaning of art was questioned by first- or second-hand viewers or by
those who had never seen the artwork, even as a reproduction. Additionally, this type of
criticism could actually repress certain artistic and cultural productions, which is what
happened in this case.
21

For Sontag, rather than being merely a spectator, the goal is to be a witness of an
event and to experience trauma associated with re-remembering the event. As she briefly
touches on, however, art is not simply the same as war photography, the genre she
emphasizes in her essay. Although art is an intellectual endeavor as well as a display of

20
I particularly refer here to 2-Channel, one of the most popular textboards and online forums in Japan,
with tens of millions accesses per day and thus having a strong influence over society as well as major
media. There were several entries that mentioned Chim↑Pom’s PIKA in different categories such as news,
society, and art. In particular, I took comments under the section of art, which is categorized under
“academy,” into my account because of the comment writers’ awareness of being art observers and part of
the dynamics of art production, the art market, popular reception, and intellectual activity. Indeed, their
voices were the major player in this “Hiroshima sky controversy.” For example, see 2-Channel entries
under “‘PIKA’ Chim↑Pom ‘Chū’” and “‘Āto kai no hokoru’ Chim↓Pom ‘munōshūdan’” [‘Boast to the art
world’ Chim↓Pom ‘the incompetent collective’], http://academy6.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/art/1224683031;
http://academy6.2ch.net/test/read.cgi/art/1224945206/ (accessed November 5, 2008). In addition, many
posts encouraged signing petitions to, or just attempted to harass the daily operations of, the Hiroshima
City Museum of Art and City Hall in an attempt to get them to cancel the exhibition. Some posts even
demanded to fire the curators, including chief curator Yukie Kamiya, who was not in charge of the
exhibition but, some thought, supposedly knew about the skywriting but failed in her obligation to inform
the public about the project.
21
See posts under “‘PIKA’ Chim↑Pom ‘Chū’,” 2-Channel. For a discussion of the historical development
of active viewers and readership about art in Japan, see Omuka Toshiharu, Kanshū no seiritsu: Bijutsu ten,
bijutsu zasshi, bijutsushi [The establishment of kanshū: Art exhibitions, art magazines, art history] (Tokyo:
University of Tokyo Press, 2008). Omuka, a specialist in Dadaism in Japan, underscores the role of art fans
and connoisseurs, and their network through newspapers and popular art magazines, who ultimately helped
shape and re-shape the history of progressive art in early twentieth-century Japan. Here, Omuka carefully
differentiates kanshū (観衆) from ordinary, passive museum and exhibition goers (kanshū, 鑑衆) and from
the general public (taishū, 大衆).
Chapter Four
172
skills and/or wealth, history shows that it has frequently been a spectacle, wunderkammer,
a magic show, or an attempt to dwell on visual and sensory amusement or shock (and
often shifts among these categories). Through such means, an artist can be a spectator or
a witness and, simultaneously, a producer of a spectacle or an event. In short, the
controversy was the consequence of a collision between the site-specific art/performance
induced by Tokyo-based artists’ take on the nuclear catastrophe and Hiroshima-specific
memory, or memory specific to the very location where the catastrophe and this
ephemeral art/performance unfolded and was witnessed. How, then, does “morality,”
“ethics,” or “sincerity” operate in the production of art whose subject matter is atrocities
and other people’s pain and trauma? Should it even be necessary to consider morality? If
Chim↑Pom’s PIKA was merely a derogatory, playful gesture, what can we take away
from the work and the controversy?

From Superflat to Super Rat: De-flattening the Flattened
Before embarking on a discussion of PIKA, this section provides an outlook on
the cultural context to help articulate Chim↑Pom’s position. Chim↑Pom’s launch in 2005
intriguingly reflects Tokyo’s contemporary art and popular culture scene.
22
Through
artwork, the collective engages in mockery and a feeling of resignation about the nation’s
domestic, everyday condition (Fig. 4.4). A sense of derision and humor is inherent in the
group’s very name, for example. Although the members have explained that the
collective’s name is derived from the Japanese word for “team,” or chīmu, and a word

22
Sociologist Adrian Favell has introduced a number of Japanese artists, curators, and writers who
constituted, supported, and challenged Superflat in his Before and After Superflat: A Short History of
Japanese Contemporary Art, 1990–2011 (Hong Kong: Blue Kingfisher, 2011). The publication also
introduces Chim↑Pom, 204–207.
Chapter Four
173
that sounds like an explosion, like “poof,” anyone conversant in Japanese would
immediately associate their name with the slang expression for penis, especially since the
group’s name is written with an arrow facing upwards.
23
It is thus not difficult to imagine
that the collective’s name might have been one of the factors that provoked the PIKA
controversy.
24

Around then, artwork coming out of Japan had often been associated with
Superflat (2000), the idea propagated by artist Takashi Murakami (b. 1962) (Fig. 4.5).
25

In a sense, Murakami plays with Clement Greenberg’s privileging of medium specificity
and flatness as the primary vehicle of modernism and self-criticism.
26
However,
Murakami does not limit his theory to the medium of painting but rather expands it to
fashion, design, and animation produced in postmodern Japan—visual and material
cultures that Greenberg would disdain as kitsch.
27
By coining the catchy term, Murakami
explains a continuum in the aesthetics of Japan’s painterly practice since the Edo period
(1603-1868), of a flat spatial treatment—no use of chiaroscuro, evenly applied color, and
the employment of multiple viewpoints by which the timeline and spatial depth are
flattened out in the painted plane. The term also refers to the conceptual absence of the
Western sense of “fine art;” in short, in pre-modern Japan, there was no boundary
between high and low, or art and design or applied arts, a fluidity which, Murakami

23
As a result, Japan’s leading broadcaster NHK prohibited its newscasters from pronouncing the group’s
name when delivering the news on PIKA; instead they referred to the group as an “artists collective.”
24
On the Internet, this arrow was frequently depicted as pointing downward (Chim↓Pom), suggesting a
sign of impotence or a thumbs-down.
25
Murakami Takashi, ed. Super Flat (Tokyo: Madra shuppan, 2000). The analogy between contemporary
Japanese art and Edo-period painting is most evident in the publication rather than the exhibition. The
Superflat exhibition opened in Tokyo in 2000 and then at the Pacific Design Center of the Museum of
Contemporary Art in Los Angeles (2001), from which the show traveled to the Walker Art Center in
Minneapolis and the Henry Art Gallery in Seattle, where its tour ended in 2002.
26
Clement Greenberg, “Towards a Newer Laocoon” (1940) and “Modernist Painting,” (1960), reprinted in
Art in Theory 1900–2000: An Anthology of Changing Ideas, eds. Charles Harrison and Paul Wood
(Malden: Blackwell Publishing, 2003), 562–568 and 774–779.
27
Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (1939), reprinted in Art in Theory 1900–2000, 539–549.
Chapter Four
174
claims, is still applicable to today’s art in Japan. Superflat also embodies the notion that
Japan is a classless society (or all Japanese are middle class), an idea that has been
embraced nationally since the 1970s.
28
In other words, while ukiyo-e woodblock prints
were a popular visual form for the townspeople of the Edo period, Superflat is an art for
the masses in our time.
In essence, Superflat highlights the continuity between pre-modern and modern or
postmodern visuality. In contrast, another of Murakami’s curatorial endeavors and the
last of the Superflat trilogy, Little Boy, which was shown at the Japan Society in New
York (2005), offers an explicitly political perspective, emphasizing disjunctures in
historical and art historical narratives. The exhibition illuminated two instances that
compelled Japan to be America’s perpetual “little boy”: the dropping of the atomic
bombs and when Japan was spectacularly defeated in the Asia-Pacific War in 1945.
Murakami demonstrates the effect of these events on the nation’s visual productions in
the post-atomic age (Fig. 4.6).
29
Such a view was condensed in one of the exhibition
galleries of the Japan Society that was dedicated to the evolution of Gojia/Godzilla, the
lizard-monster from the 1954 movie (dir. Honda Ishirō). The movie tells of a gentle
reptile of the Jurassic period dormant under the South Pacific that was transformed into a
destructive monster by radiation.
30
In other words, Godzilla symbolizes the Lucky
Dragon No. 5 incident that happened earlier, in 1954, in which Japanese fishing boat
crews were irradiated by exposure to the fallout from the United States’ hydrogen bomb

28
Concerning the rhetoric of the “middle class” since the advent of modern Japan, see Jordan Sand,
“Chūrū/Middling” from “Working Words: New Approaches to Japanese Studies,” eds. Jordan Sand, Alan
Tansman, and Dennis Washburn (2012), accessed January 26, 2016,
http://escholarship.org/uc/item/3rw380hc.
29
Takashi Murakami, ed. Little Boy: The Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture (New York and New
Heaven: Japan Society and Yale University Press, 2005). The second exhibition of the Superflat trilogy was
Nurie/Coloriage, shown in France in 2002.
30
Murakami, Little Boy, 20-24.
Chapter Four
175
testing.
31
On the exhibition gallery wall, behind the Godzilla figures, was Article Nine of
the Japanese Constitution (promulgated in 1946 and enacted in 1947), the democratic
constitution drafted by the American Occupation authorities, which forever renounces
armed forces and war (Fig. 4.7).
32

The year 1945 as a tabula rasa or disjuncture in the history of art in Japan has
been elucidated by Sawaragi Noi, a prolific art critic who has explored the issue of war in
the arts and visual culture of Japan and paved the theoretical ground for Murakami in the
1990s. Similar to Murakami, Sawaragi explains how the defeat in the Asia-Pacific War
troubled the conception of contemporary art and artists in Japan. In his book Nihon,
gendai, bijutsu (Japan, contemporary, art), Sawaragi argues that the narrative of war is
essential to grasp Japanese contemporary art history or, to be precise, ahistory. In other
words, Sawaragi considers the Japanese postwar-period art to have been deprived of a
cohesive history because of the very experience of the defeat in war and the atomic
bombs, which the nation has never been able to fully swallow.
33
Paradoxically then,
Sawaragi says, the year 1945 has been inscribed as the absolute origin of contemporary
art in Japan. Additionally, Sawaragi points out problems with the concept that the terms

31
There are a large number of studies that explore the political, social, and cultural significance of the
movie and the fantastic monster. Examples include a collection of scholarly essays about the movie and
monstrosity in Japanese popular culture, In Godzilla’s Footsteps: Japanese Pop Culture Icons on the
Global Stage (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); recent Japanese language publications which have
become particularly prominent after 3.11 include Katō Norihiro, “Atomu to Gojira: Kinen to on’nen”
[Astro Boy and Godzilla: Prayer and grudge] in 3.11 shinigami ni tsukitobasareru [3.11 thrust away by the
Grim Reaper] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2011), 98–127, which expanded on Sayōnara gojira tachi [Good
bye, Godzillas](Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2010); and Yamamoto Akihiro, Kaku to nihonjin: Hiroshima,
Gojira, Fukushima [Nukes and the Japanese: Hiroshima, Godzilla, Fukushima] (Tokyo: Chūkōshinsho,
2015). See also Chapter Three of this dissertation.
32
Article 9 states: (1) Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese
people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of
settling international disputes. (2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and
air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state
will not be recognized.
33
Sawaragi Noi, Nihon, gendai, bijutsu [Japan, contemporary, art] (Tokyo: Shincho-sha, 1998).
Chapter Four
176
“contemporary” and “art” in relation to one another are incompatible in Japan, where
“(fine) art” was a notion essentially imported from the West as part of the state
modernization policy of the Meiji government (1868–1912).
34
Consequently, there is a
discontinuity between the “fine art” made during the modern period and the visual culture
of the previous era; hence, there cannot be avant-garde art in Japan without any preceding
art movements and theories to dismantle. In a sense, “contemporary art” is just floating
by itself, or in Sawaragi’s view the trajectory of contemporary art in Japan is a “closed
circle” and thus “a bad place.”
35

For Sawaragi, works by Murakami and the artists represented in Superflat are the
embodiment of this disjuncture, with a strong implication of the rupture and an
irreparable break by Japan’s participation in the war and especially its experience of the
atomic bombs.
36
Nevertheless, Japanese society now observes the end of “flatness,” in an
economic sense, having shifted from a society that boasted its “all-middle class” status to

34
This is not just an analysis of Sawaragi but is based on historical fact. For example, the Japanese term for
fine art, bijutsu, was a neologism, translated from the German kunst for the occasion of the Japanese
government’s participation in the 1873 international exposition in Vienna. For further discussion of the
historiography of Japanese art history, see Kitazawa Noriaki’s Me no shinden [Temple of the eye](Tokyo:
Bijutsu Shuppansha, 1989) and its excerpted translation by Kenneth Masaki Shima, “From Temple of the
Eye – Notes on the Reception of ‘Fine Art’” in Review of Japanese Culture and Society, vol. 24 (December
2014): 228–241; and Satō Dōshin’s Meiji kokka to kindai bijutsu: Bi no seijigaku (Tokyo: Yoshikawa
Kōbunkan, 1999), translated by Hiroshi Nara as Modern Japanese Art and the Meiji State: The Politics of
Beauty (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2011); Satō Dōshin, “Nihon bijutsu” tanjō: Kindai Nihon
no “kotoba” to senryaku” [The birth of “Japanese Art”: The “language” and strategy of modern Japan]
(Tokyo: Kodansha, 1996). An excerpt of Satō’s updated study, Bijutsu no aidentitī: dare no tame ni, nani
no tame ni [Art and identity: For whom, For what?] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2007), has been
translated as “From Art and Identity: For Whom, For What? The “Present” Upon the ‘Contemporary,’ trans.
Sarah Allen in Review of Japanese Culture and Society, vol. 24 (December 2014): 341–361.
35
Sawaragi, Nihon, gendai, bijutsu, 8–26. Sawaragi’s analysis of postwar art in Japan is built upon Chiba
Shigeo’s study, Gendai bijutsu itsudatsushi 1945–1985 [A history of deviations in contemporary art 1945–
1985], which draws a trajectory from Gutai to Mono-ha artists (Tokyo: Shobunsha, 1986). In contrast, art
historian Reiko Tomii explores the expanded 1960s by way of a geohistorical concept of “international
contemporaneity” (kokusaiteki dōjisei) (“Introduction to “International Contemporaneity” and
“Contemporary Art,” Radicalism in Wilderness: Radicalism in the Wilderness: Contemporaneity and 1960s
Art in Japan [Boston: MIT Press, 2016], 12–44).
36
Sawaragi Noi, ‘Bakushinchi’ no geijutsu [Art of ‘Ground Zero’] (Tokyo: Shobun-sha, 2002). Sawaragi
himself curated an exhibition that embodies this idea. See Sawaragi Noi, et al. ed., Nihon zero nen/ Ground
Zero Japan (Mito: Art Tower Mito, 1999).
Chapter Four
177
a society experiencing widening disparities between the rich and the poor, with particular
difficulties for the young, working poor.
37
Moreover, given the success of Murakami’s
conception of Superflat in the global art market as well as his association with
international institutions and the high fashion industry, the question is whether Superflat
is still emblematic of the visual culture of Japan in the early twenty-first century and the
“future of the world,” as Murakami once proclaimed.
38

Murakami’s commercially successful and critically acclaimed Superflat trilogy
provided an important context in which Chim↑Pom appeared and which the collective
challenged. It is thus noteworthy that the majority of Chim↑Pom’s members studied at
Bigakkō, an alternative art school founded in 1969 in Tokyo, under artist Aida Makoto (b.
1965).
39
Aida studied oil painting at the prestigious Tokyo University of Arts (known as
Geidai in Japan), while Murakami received a doctorate from the same university in
nihonga or Japanese-style painting—a genre invented in the mid-nineteenth century by
combining Western technique with traditional media and subject matter.
40
In addition,
like Murakami, Aida was strongly influenced by anime and manga.
41
While neo-pop and

37
The Koizumi administration (2001–2006)’s Neoliberalism policy helped boost Japan’s economy from the
post-bubble downturn; however, it simultaneously brought a visible divide between “winners” and “losers”
within society. Economists have pointed out that growing inequality was already evident around 1997–98.
However, public awareness of “kakusha shakai” (literally, “society of widening gap” or “widening
disparities”) became prominent around the mid-2000s, primarily due to the growing number of the young
working poor with lower wages and part-time jobs. For example, see the 2006 Keizai rōdō hakusho, a
white paper of the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare, accessed April 8, 2016,
http://www.mhlw.go.jp/wp/hakusyo/roudou/06/index.html. “Kakusha shakai” was one of the top ten “buzz
words of the year” in 2006.
38
Murakami, Super Flat, 4–5.
39
The sole female participant, Ellie, studied design at Musashino Art University, Tokyo. Aida Makoto and
his impact on younger artists are discussed in a series of featured articles, “Around the Aida Makoto,”
edited by Aida himself in Bijutsu techō, no. 907 (May 2008): 10–97. The cover shows Aida surrounded by
four young artists who were his former students, including Ellie and Ushiro Ryūta of Chim↑Pom. See also
Adrian Favell’s Before and After Superflat, 109–121, 201–209.
40
Murakami was the first doctorate awardee in nihonga at Geidai (1993) with the submission of a research
paper entitled “Imi no muimi no imi” [Meaning of non-meaning of meaning] along with multiple artworks
that he made based on the research.
41
In fact, Murakami invited Aida to one of his Superflat exhibitions, Coloriage (2002).
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178
neo-Japonisme are visible in the works of both artists, Aida claims “absolute domesticity
and anachronism”
42
whereas Murakami has been acclaimed in the international art
market but is infamous in Japan.
43
Despite his claim, however, Aida often depicts
transnational and transhistorical subject matter in his work. In The Video of a Man
Calling Himself Bin Laden Staying in Japan (2005; Fig. 4.8), for instance, Aida,
costumed as Bin Laden, rests at a kotatsu, a traditional fireplace with a coverlet, and
drinks sake while commenting on Japan’s peaceful and “lukewarm” society in which he
loves to retire from sacred wars. In a series of paintings entitled War Painting Returns
(1995–2003), Aida revisits the wartime practice of propaganda paintings but depicts his
fantasy instead of battle scenes and glorious war heroes in praise of Japan’s imperial
state.
44
Examples include a pair of two-panel screen paintings of Japanese and Korean
high school girls with their respective national flags in their hands standing proudly on
the war ruins (Fig. 4.9), which appropriates the composition of Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer
Prize-winning photograph of Iwao Jima (Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, 1945). Other
works from the series show Japanese Zero fighter planes flying in the infinity pattern and

42
The Ueno Royal Museum ed., Āto de sōrō: Aida Makoto, Yamaguchi Akira/Art de Sauro: Aida Makoto,
Yamaguchi Akira (Tokyo: The Ueno Royal Museum, 2007), 61. For the most complete study of his work at
the moment, see Aida Makoto tensai de gomen’nasai/Monument for Nothing Tensai de gomennasai
(Tokyo: Mori Art Museum, 2013). Aida’s claims are evident, for instance, in his manifesto for the pseudo-
movement or school Kotatsu-ha (School of kotatsu), named after a traditional heater with a coverlet that is
often associated with indoor laziness. The artist mocked the launch of a group of his artist-friends who he
thought shared his penchant for the everyday and his idea of domesticity yet were also uncomfortable with
simplistic traditionalism. The Kotatsu-ha exhibition, held at Mizuma Gallery, Tokyo between June 19 and
July 12, 1997, included Yamagushi Akira, Ōtsuka Satoru, Sakaguchi Hiroki, and Aida himself. In addition,
Aida and his artist-friends Ozawa Tsuyoshi, Matsukage Hiroyuki, Ozawa Tsuyoshi, and Brazilian Japanese
Oscar Ōiwa founded Shōwa 40-nen Kai, or Association of the 40
th
Year of the Shōwa Era, only because
they were all born in 1965/the fourteenth year of the Shōwa era.
43
Murakami is often taken as an exploiter of otaku/geek culture for taking on the role of spokesperson for
Japanese popular culture and arts. For example, he has not had a solo exhibition for quite a long time in
Japan—despite his popularity outside Japan. The Mori Art Museum finally held an exhibition in fall 2015
of Murakami’s grand 100-meter-long painting that the artist conceived as “a token of gratitude to the nation
of Qatar,” one of the first nations and organizations that offered recovery aid to Japan following the 3.11
disaster. The exhibition was quite successful.
44
For Aida’s reflection on war paintings, see Aida Makoto and Sawaragi Noi, Sensōga to Nippon [War
paintings and Japan] (Tokyo: Kōdan-sha, 2015).
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bombing Manhattan (A Picture of an Air Raid on New York City, 1996) and a sketch-like
rendering of old and new ruins, the Atomic Bomb Dome enclosed by the Parthenon (No
One Knows the Title, 1996; Fig. 4.10). These works attest to Aida’s technical and/or
compositional references to masterworks of traditional art, including of Japan.
45
At the
same time, as critic Matsui Midori has suggested, they also serve as a platform to
condemn modernity and art that ended up producing and contributing to acts of
violence.
46
Nevertheless, war is not necessarily Aida’s principle subject: his work often
tackles Lolita complexes, the grotesque, and the nonsensical. Although his art has been
exhibited internationally,
47
Aida reiterates his indifference about exhibiting his art outside
Japan, claiming that his artwork does not have as much critical significance overseas as it
does in his home country.
48

Evidently, Chim↑Pom demonstrates Aida’s penchant for mockery and social
commentary, but the group’s artwork goes even further to acknowledge, and challenge,
Murakami’s Superflat. In this respect, the collective has one foot in domestic issues,
which are real, pressing matters for the members’ everyday lives, and another foot in the
global art scene where Chim↑Pom has come to be recognized as socially engaged
curators and a guerrilla art collective. This is already evident in one of their earliest
productions, Super Rat (2006), which consists of video documentation, photographs, and
sculptures. In this work, we see how Chim↑Pom members catch rats in predawn Shibuya,
one of Tokyo’s busiest shopping quarters particularly popular among the young. In

45
Yamashita Yūji, “Giakusha Aida Makoto—Nihon bijutsushi kara no kakushinhanteki in’yō ni tsuite/Aida
Makoto, Pretend Villain—Premeditated Quotations from Japanese Art History,” Aida Makoto tensai de
gomen’nasai, 185–196.
46
Matsui Midori, “The Place of Marginal Positionality: Legacies of Japanese Anti-Modernity,” Consuming
Bodies: Sex and Contemporary Japanese Art ed. Fran Lloyd (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), 151–155.
47
The Bin Laden video was first shown in London and the painting of the air raid on New York City was
included in the American Effect exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art (2003)
48
“Yamaguchi Akira interview with Aida Makoto,” Bijutsu techō, no. 843 (January 2004): 70–71.
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180
collaboration with a taxidermist, they created a diorama of the quarter in which real rats-
transformed-into-stuffed-Pikachu—a popular character from the children’s animation and
video game Pokémon—were placed as if they are, like Godzilla, invading the heart of
Shibuya (Fig. 4.11). Interestingly, not only was the title of the work, Super Rat, derived
from Superflat but also the artists’ statement for the work reveals their consciousness of
Superflat vis-à-vis the popular youth culture of the country:
49

Cultures like art or rock or punk
that wish to be beautiful like rats in the ditch
and cultures like Japanimation or Gals
that are called Japan Pop or “Super flat”
may
would
should come across each other
at the scramble crossing in Shibuya
so we took the last train for Shibuya to Central Street
….
We pursued rats and dreams
for our works coming into being
in the midnight center of Japan
where everything sounds like an excuse

Both the statement and the work encourage reinterpretation of Superflat as a spatial,
urban theory. Particularly with the Little Boy exhibition, “superflat” can also be read as a
reference to the images of, and as born out of, the flattened cities of Tokyo after an air
raid, of Hiroshima after being destroyed by “Little Boy,” and of Nagasaki after being
decimated by “Fat Man.” On the other hand, with Super Rat Chim↑Pom seems to attempt
to “de-flatten” or restore special depth to the city by providing views down below,
incorporating rats living hidden from the city surface, and physically engaging the city. In

49
Chim↑Pom, “Super Rat.” Artists’ Statement (November 2006), re-printed in Super Rat, 82.
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181
particular, the streets of Shibuya are an everyday playground for the collective members
as much as the hub of youth consumer culture.
50

The ways in which Chim↑Pom engages the city and merges popular and
consumer culture, rats in ditches, and the artists themselves in Super Rat manifests
Michel de Certeau’s premise of the everyday and his special practice of “walking in the
city” as a tactic to operate against authority, discipline, and power. De Certeau equates a
bird’s-eye-view of the city, which is represented by modern cartography for instance,
with God’s view. In contrast, he describes the action of walking through the urban core as
something similar to repeating a “joyful experience of childhood.” Furthermore, he
discusses this as a tactic for escaping the “imaginary totalizations” of the modern,
consumer city and individuals’ struggles against institutionalism in everyday life.
51

Although de Certeau distinguishes art from popular culture, his analysis is helpful in
configuring Super Rat, and thus Chim↑Pom, which whimsically coalesces rats and the
artists by turning a playful and childish act into an aggressive form of art, or fuses play,
street action, consumption, and creation. In so doing, Chim↑Pom (re)appropriates the
topographical and social system to undo the consistent, totalized vision of the very space
and culture it inhabits.
52

50
The district of Shibuya has arisen as such since the 1970s and replaced Shinjuku, the area considered to
represent youth culture and leftist politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s. However, while Shinjuku in
the 1960s was filled with the young and drifters from the provinces, those who flocked to Shibuya were
children of middle-class families in Tokyo and the vicinity, which is also true of the core members of
Chim↑Pom. For a sociological study of the rise and fall of entertainment and market districts in Tokyo, see
Yoshimi Shun’ya, Toshi no doramatsurugī: Tokyo, sakariba no rekishi [The dramaturgy of the city: Social
history of Tokyo’s popular resort] (Tokyo: Kobundo, 1987). Building upon Yoshimi’s analysis of Tokyo’s
entertainment quarters, Kitada Akihiro speaks of highly commercialized urban space such as Shibuya since
the 1980s as an archive of information (Kōkoku toshi Tokyo: Sono tanjō to shi [Advertising City, Tokyo: Its
birth and death][Tokyo: Kōsaidō-shuppan, 2002]).
51
Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California
Press, 1984), ix–xi and 93–110.
52
The idea to apply de Certeau to the reading of Chim↑Pom’s art is not uniquely mine. For instance, see
Julian Worrall, “Chim↑Pom no kūkan senjutsu: Paburikku supēsu no āto/Chim↑Pom’s Spatial Tactics: An
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182
In a literal sense, the video of Super Rat shows the process of getting into the
street in the dark and catching rats. Here, the artists superimpose their own existence over
these rats, which are small but “super” mice that can discharge electricity in hazardous
situations and fight back against predators. This is why Pikachu’s tail is shaped like a
lightning bolt and his name, again, includes the portmanteau of pika, a flash of light, as
also suggested by the atomic bomb’s colloquial name. At the same time, “super rat” also
suggests rats that have become resistant to pesticides and are clever enough to avoid traps.
Super Rat symbolizes these lower life forms’ survival schemata of action and conversely
the artists’ own survival tactics. Chim↑Pom has repeatedly referred to Super Rat as the
group’s manifesto and self-portrait. The collective in fact made a sequel to it, to update
the work as a portrait of post-Fukushima Japan. In other words, Chim↑Pom usurps the
negative, marginal, and toxic, even pesticides and radiatioactivity, to transmute itself in
order to live through these predicaments imposed by the authorities, much like Kudō
conceived metamorphosis by radioactivity and industrial pollution as an occasion of
renewal and survival. Indeed, as the artists state that they consider mutation as something
like a fundamental experiment for species to evolve but not a negative consequence.
Their return to Super Rat therefore exemplifies their hope that “humans would overcome
changes in circumstances or environments.”
53

Art of Public Space,” Super Rat, 218–224. In addition, inspired by Gills Deleuze and Félix Guattari’s
theory of “minor literature” and de Certeau’s ruminations on “practices of everyday life,” art critic and
comparative literature scholar Midori Matsui has termed the inclination to personal matters, the ordinary
and childlike imagination in today’s art, including that of Chim↑Pom, “micropop.” As opposed to Pop Art
with uppercase letters, according to Matsui, micropop suggests a non-institutionalized position grounded
upon minor, childlike, and hybrid expressions. (Matsui ed., Maikuro poppu no jidai: Natsu he no
tobira/The Age of Micropop: The New Generation of Japanese Artists [Tokyo: Parco, 2007] and Winter
Garden: The Exploration of the Micropop Imagination in Contemporary Japanese Art [2009]).
53
Chim↑Pom, Geijutsu jikkōhan [Art perpetrators] (Tokyo: Asahi Shuppan-sha, 2012), 30.
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In a similar vein, Chim↑Pom’s other video and photographic work, Black of
Death (2007), can be discussed according to de Certeau’s thinking. The work, especially
the video component, depicts Ellie on the back seat of a scooter or the passenger seat of a
car while holding a stuffed crow. Simultaneously, another member, or occasionally Ellie
herself, holds a loudspeaker which plays an audio recording of a crow’s squawking. The
artists lead a flock of live crows to representative locations in Tokyo, including Shibuya,
Tokyo Tower, the murky entertainment quarter of Kabuki-chō, and the national
parliament buildings (Fig. 4.12).
54
In this way, the artwork collates Tokyo’s urban
cores—commercial, entertainment, and administrative—with the crows and the artists’
collective. Like rats, crows are expanding their habitat because of excessive food and
garbage piling up in the street, a situation quite typical in highly populated urban areas.
For this reason, the eradication of crows was one of the pet projects of former Tokyo
Governor Ishihara Shintarō (r. 1999–2012).
55
In Black of Death, Chim↑Pom and crows
together invade Japan’s capital, even the parliament building; since cars and motorcycles
are not allowed to stop in front of them, Ellie literally runs through the street,
circumnavigating the Diet Building with the stuffed crow in her hand. Their photographic
documentation also captures Chim↑Pom’s and the crows’ gestures of symbolic
occupation of the city from the sky and the street: crows hover like a dark, amorphous
smudge in the sky while Ellie poses in front of the National Diet Building, holding aloft a
large winged crow (Fig. 4.13).

54
Chim↑Pom’s works can be viewed on the collective’s official web site: http://chimpom.jp/ (accessed
November 20, 2015). See also the catalogue raisonné of their work up to 2012, Super Rat.
55
For example, see Ishihara’s official website as well as a report issued by the Environment Bureau of the
Tokyo Metropolitan Government about the eradication of crows from Tokyo:
http://210.136.153.187/policy/karasu/index.html and
http://www.kankyo.metro.tokyo.jp/nature/publications/crow_report.html (accessed November 9, 2015).
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The relationship forged between Chim↑Pom, crows, and rats, and their
intervention in space and survival, is emphasized once again in the collective’s solo
exhibition, Becoming Friend, Eating Each Other or Falling Down Together in Tokyo
(2008) in which the artists put together the photographs and video of Black of Death as
well as the diorama from Super Rat.
56
The centerpiece of the exhibition was a 3-by-2-by-
2-meter space built at the end of the gallery in which one of the members, Mizuno
Toshinori, locked himself (Fig. 4.14). Through a one-way mirror and a surveillance
camera, exhibition visitors could see inside. On the wall of the small white cube was a
colorful painting, which bore slogans such as “we are friends” and “our firm friendship.”
For the duration of the exhibition, this confined space served as a habitat for Mizuno, a
live rat caught in Shibuya, and a live crow saved from a crow trap set by Tokyo’s
municipal offices. The trio lived off garbage that was collected in Shibuya and hand
delivered by the rest of the members of the collective. The three “roommates”—Mizuno
even named the other two—found a way to share the food and space: the crow even
started perching on Mizuno’s leg to be fed, but it died before the show ended. As the
exhibition title suggests, Mizuno cooked and ate the crow after its passing as a way of
mourning.
57
The crow was later stuffed whereas the rat was released. Although the
project was staged in a gallery space, the exhibition was a concentration of the
collective’s street performance, which blurred the distinction between private and public

56
The exhibition was held at Hiromi Yoshii Gallery, Tokyo from August 9 to 30, 2008.
57
Mizuno kept a diary in which he wrote about his sorrow: “Kātan [the crow’s nickname] was very right.
Too light, even if it’s made so to fly … Kātan was to be killed by the public organization. We tried to help
him but made him die anyway. … Stabbing a knife into the belly of Kātan. No negative impression like
feeling pity. Strange even to me” (Super Rat, trans. Matsushita Manabu, 139). See also exhibition reviews
such as Edan Corkill’s “Chim↑Pom exhibition review,” Frieze (October 2, 2008).
http://www.frieze.com/shows/review/chim_pom/; and “Shock Tactics Return: Art collective Chim↑Pom
provokes Tokyo with a crow and a rat,” The Japan Times, August 14, 2008,
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/fa20080814a1.html (both accessed May 9, 2009).
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185
spaces, and featured scandalous, extreme action. These became the tenet of the
collective’s art.

Art in Post-Defeat Japan
Just as Chim↑Pom stages this type of shocking, child-like, mischievous art and
performance, Superflattism is likewise the product of a schoolboy mentality. However,
what is distinct between these art practitioners is that Murakami attempts a totalized
vision of Japan’s defeat in war, its psychology, and its visual culture that shone under the
“atomic sunshine.”
58
His painting of a mushroom cloud illustrated along with the
documentation photographs of the towering clouds of “Little Boy” and the 1954
hydrogen bomb “Bravo” show this overarching narrative (Fig. 4.15).
59
Indeed, in the
Little Boy exhibition catalogue, Murakami writes:
The two atomic bombs have left a permanent scar on Japanese history: they have
touched the national nerve beyond the effects of the catastrophic physical
destruction. “Pika-don” symbolizes the visual, aural, and other sensory imprints
made on the Japanese psyche, which has been completely transformed in the
wake of the collective subjection of the Japanese people to the horrendous
experience of nuclear annihilation. Perhaps from this national trauma did kawaii
[cute] and otaku [geek] cultures emerge in contemporary Japan.
60

The transformation of horrific experiences into cute visuals and a geek culture,
epitomized by such characters as Hello Kitty and Godzilla, is worthy of research in

58
“The atomic sunshine” refers to a phrase of General Courtney Whitney, one of the chief officials who
drafted the Japanese Constitution, at the time of handing the draft to Japanese officials on February 13,
1946. Only fifteen minutes were granted to the Japanese side to accept or not to accept the drafted
Constitution. After the fifteen-minute break, when the meeting was reconvened, General Courtney Whitney
said to the Japanese officials, “We’ve just been basking in the warmth of the atomic sunshine.” In essence,
the new Constitution was endorsed by the power of the atomic bomb (Katō Norihiro, Haisengo ron [After-
defeat] [Tokyo: Kodansha, 1997], 19–20). See also a dialogue between Jean Miyake Downey and curator
Shinya Watanabe about Watanabe’s curation of an art exhibition that took Article 9 as its central subject:
“Into the Atomic Sunshine: Shinya Watanabe’s New York and Tokyo Exhibition on Post-War Art Under
Article 9,” The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol. 6, issue 3, no. 0 (March 3, 2008), accessed January
7, 2015, http://apjjf.org/-Jean-Miyake-Downey/2700/article.html.
59
Murakami, Little Boy, 14–19.
60
Ibid., 19.
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186
itself.
61
It is well exemplified by Murakami’s painting entitled Eco Eco Rangers Earth
Force (2005), the image used as the Little Boy exhibition banner (Fig. 4.16). The artist
turns two mushroom clouds, representing the two atomic bombs that erupted over
Hiroshima and Nagasaki, into cute anthropomorphic figures dancing against a blue sky
with his signature smiley polychrome flowers. They are surrounded by little flying
creatures, which seem to be celebrating rather than protecting the earth from or
disapproving of the atomic explosions. Although also deeply informed by youth and
consumer culture, Chim↑Pom’s artwork, and even the controversy over PIKA, seems to
provide a different perspective from Superflat’s exposition of the atomic bomb
experience. In particular, they pose a challenge to the common idiom of the nation’s
humiliation due to its defeat in the war and the bombs.
In her article “Trauma’s Two Times,” anthropologist Marilyn Ivy applies
psychoanalysis and trauma studies to analogize Murakami’s Little Boy to Japanese
literary and social critic Katō Norihiro’s highly debated Haisengo ron (“Discourse on
post-defeat” or “After-defeat”).
62
Ivy, along with other Japanologists, problematizes an
obsessional tendency in discourse in Japan to continuously return to the Asia-Pacific
War.
63
In particular, Ivy points out that both Murakami and Katō adopt neo-nationalism
in associating the constitution of the nation with the trauma of the defeat in the war, and
therefore proclaim a unified national polity and psyche based on the defeat and the

61
For a discussion of cuteness in Japanese art, see, for example, Marilyn Ivy’s “The Art of Cute Little
Things: Nara Yoshitomo’s Parapolitics” in Mechademia, vol. 5 (2010): 3–29. As an alternative response to
Little Boy’s praise of cute and geek culture, see David Elliot’s curation of Bye Bye Kitty!!!: Between
Heaven and Hell in Contemporary Japanese Art (New York and New Haven: Japan Society and Yale
University Press, 2011).
62
“Haisengo ron” was first published as an article in the journal Gunzō (Portrait of the mass), 50: 1
(January 1995): 252-294, published in book format in 1997.
63
Marilyn Ivy “Trauma’s Two Times: Japanese Wars and Postwars,” positions: East Asia Cultures
Critique, 16: 1 (Spring 2008): 165–188; and Harry Harootunian, “Japan’s Long Postwar: The Trick of
Memory and the Ruse of History,” The South Atlantic Quarterly, 99: 4 (2000): 715–739.
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187
atomic bombs.
64
Murakami’s and Katō’s corresponding rhetoric is certainly well-founded,
particularly through Katō’s singularizing Japan’s historical and political subjectivity
through his use of the unified subject “we” and “us” the Japanese in order to mourn the
war dead and properly apologize to war victims in Asia. However, Katō equally
acknowledges non-ideological, non-assertive voices in postwar art, especially in literature,
as a form of struggle against ideology and the mainstream.
65
Moreover, Katō’s suggestion
echoes de Certeau’s premise which argues that being light, irresponsible, non-ideological,
or in Katō’s word “non-moral”/amoral is a form of individual resistance that can be used
to restore and even to alter a person’s (artistic) subjectivity. Similarly, de Certeau
acknowledges the individual as a locus of interactions between incoherence and
plurality.
66

With regard to a correlation between art and war, particularly in reference to
Japan’s experience of the atomic bombs, as well as issues of creative subjecthood and
morality, novelist Ōe Kenzaburō’s Nobel Laureate speech, “Japan, the Ambiguous, and
Myself” (1994) is indicative. In the speech, Ōe posits that since the modern period, Japan
has been split between a process of intense westernization and tradition. Ōe notes that the
Asia-Pacific War pushed the nation even further toward moral and cultural ambiguity
following Japan’s invasion of Asia and the devastation left by the war, especially the
atomic bomb calamity.
Within the polarized nation, Ōe tries to define his identity and literary work as
“decent,” per George Orwell, and “humanist” in the sense employed by French

64
Ibid.
65
Katō Norihiro, “Sengo kōron” [After “After-defeat”] in Haisengo ron, 95–221. “Non-moral” is a term
coined by literary critic Kawamura Minato in his response to Katō’s “Haisengo ron.”
66
De Certeau, xi.
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188
humanists.
67
By employing these as a motto of his creativity, Ōe pursues “serious works
of literature,” which “dissociate[s] themselves] from those novels which are mere
reflections of the vast consumer cultures of Tokyo and the subcultures of the world at
large.”
68
On the eve of the fiftieth anniversary of the end of World War II/the Asia-
Pacific War, which also foreshadowed the publication of Katō’s study, Ōe’s deliberate
selection of “serious,” “decent,” and “humanistic” to distinguish his subjectivity is useful
in the analysis of Chim↑Pom’s work. Not only was Chim↑Pom’s PIKA slammed as
immoral, egoistic, and ignorant, but also Ōe clearly differentiates “humanist” and “decent
work of production” from “creation reflecting the vast consumer cultures and subcultures.”
Although there is a certain difficulty in discussing literature and visual work on the same
plane, the latter category seems to effectively describe the practices of Chim↑Pom and
even Superflat: indeed, the Little Boy exhibition was subtitled “arts of Japan’s exploding
subculture.”
For instance, as a young student deeply inspired by Jean-Paul Sartre’s claim of
engagement, Ōe interviewed a group of hibakusha, including medical doctors, in
Hiroshima in the early 1960s and compiled their stories and Ōe’s response into a book
along with select illustrations taken from Maruki Iri and Toshi(ko)’s 1950 picture book
Pikadon. Certainly, Ōe’s Hiroshima Notes (1965) and Chim↑Pom’s PIKA are quite
distinct in terms of the time invested in their production, the approaches employed, and

67
In particular, Ōe acknowledges his mentor and French Renaissance literature scholar Watanabe Kazuo’s
effort to introduce the humanist view, especially that of François Rabelais, to Japan despite the pressures of
wartime patriotism (“Kenzaburo Oe - Nobel Lecture: Japan, The Ambiguous, and Myself” Stockholm,
December 7, 2004, accessed April 8, 2009, http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/literature/laureates/1994/oe-
lecture.html). For further discussion of humanism in Ōe’s work and his concern about Hiroshima, see John
Whittier-Treat’s Writing Ground Zero: Japanese Literature and the Atomic Bomb (University of Chicago
Press, 1995), 229–258.
68
Ōe, “Japan, The Ambiguous, and Myself."
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189
the relationship with hibakusha.
69
However, what differentiates these creative attempts is
not just their textual and visual representations. To follow Ōe’s description, Chim↑Pom’s
art, which is amusing and pretentious in its incorporation of pastiche and destructive and
ludic behaviors, is arguably an “indecent” and “immoral” spectacle. Indeed, the work as
well as the artists were taken as such by people in Hiroshima and those who assumed the
position of survivors. However, the PIKA project remains meaningful in that these young
artists strove to challenge an overarching historical narrative of the atomic devastation in
their own way rather than attempting to speak for the survivors and invisible ghosts of the
atomic bombs. As de Certeau and to some extent Katō have suggested, being light,
playful, and irresponsible can also allow a work to be a radical and significant way to
present a counter-narrative against the dominant, seemingly irrefutable, and organized
discourse and history. In this case, Chim↑Pom challenges Superflat’s uniform and now
institutionalized vision of the atomic bomb devastation.

The Site-Specific and the Ephemeral
What complicates the PIKA project and the resulting controversy was, however,
that the artwork was deprived of the opportunity to be shown, at least momentarily, as the
artists intended. The origami part of the project—a collaborative effort to assemble and
accumulate craftworks of a popular childhood pastime and an act of de-flattening and
giving a three-dimensional shape to a flat piece of paper—was never realized. Therefore,

69
In his Hiroshima Notes, Ōe called some of the hibakusha whom he met moralists. Referring to an
anecdote of an old hibakusha woman, Ōe noted that she “is a stubborn, independent-minded person who
bases her judgments on what she sees with her own eyes and hears with her own ears. She has no use for
dogmatic or conventional ideas; she has seen too many people struggle to overcome difficulties which
established ideas and norms could not have solved anyway. It is people like this woman whom I call the
moralists of Hiroshima” (Hiroshima nōto/Hiroshima Notes [Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 1965, 73 and New
York: Marison Boyars, 1995, 82]). I should also note that Ōe’s book was not free of any criticism,
including that coming from hibakusha. See Treat, 364 and 432.
Chapter Four
190
the work was suspended as an ephemeral, textual representation on the surface of the
Hiroshima sky. Supposedly, the sky is not bound to anyone or any event and thus is not
imbued with any specific meaning. Conversely, as a medium, it can gravitate toward any
place or event, once imbued with a certain implication. As de Certeau compares the
vision from the sky with God’s view, something omnipotent that supersedes all living
things, this limitless space and the vision above represent power and ideology. In the end,
Chim↑Pom’s skywriting stood alone to reiterate the artists’ attempt to possess such power.
Moreover, Chim↑Pom’s deployment of the sky as a medium for their work was
akin to the sensibility of those who dropped the bombs. Sawaragi has also pointed this
out and added that Chim↑Pom’s undertaking in 2008 and the pushing of the bomb launch
button in 1945 can be understood as actions away from land (de-land or de-patrie).
70

Sawaragi suggests that the PIKA project represents Japan’s post-Hiroshima condition
rather than the atomic bomb catastrophe per se.
71
The artwork revealed how Japan, the
country defeated in war, had little choice but to provisionally assume the American
position in the postwar period, so much so that the nation became peaceful and
Americanized.
72
However, while de-patrie is a condition in which one does not have any
sense of attachment or belonging to any particular land, or has no homeland, PIKA, along
with other artwork by the collective, still embraces a certain orientation toward place and

70
Sawaragi Noi, “Katsute enora gai kara mieta ‘sora’—Chim↑Pom no ‘Pika(tsu)’ to, kaiki suru genbaku
tōkashatachi no mado” [‘Sky’ once seen from the Enola Gay—Chim↑Pom’s ‘Pika’ and a recurring
simulated window], Naze Hiroshima no sora wo PIKA tto sasetewa ikenainoka?, 56.
71
Interestingly, however, Akira Mizuta Lippit discusses the importance in the action of falling or the
downward movement in catastrophe, a form of power pressing downward, and the cinematic rhetoric of a
cat’s falling in his “Neko to inu no yō ni—Eiga to katasutorofu/Like Cats and Dogs—Cinema and
Catastrophe,” Paraphophia Chronicle, 1: 1 (October 2013): 2–24. Accessed May 7, 2014,
http://www.parasophia.jp/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2014/09/parasophia_chronicle_vol_1_no_1.pdf.
72
Sawaragi, “Katsute enora gai kara mieta ‘sora’,” 43. To be precise, Americanization in Japan has its roots
in the prewar period, a fact which has often been unacknowledged. This is one of the examples to suggest
that Japan’s willful forgetfulness, which Harry Harootunian suggests, comes out of desire to retain its
postwar (Harootunian, “Japan’s Long Postwar”).
Chapter Four
191
site, as I have discussed. Consequently, rather than deeming PIKA as a production of de-
patrie and an outcome of Americanization, which is analogous to the premise endorsed
by Murakami, I would like to complicate the work once more by exploring the concepts
of place and site, especially through the lens of the artistic category and practice of site-
specificity.
“Site,” as a dictionary definition, suggests a place occupied by a specified thing
and where a specific event occurred or will occur, and consequently is associated with a
sense of time.
73
In the field of art, where Michael Fried’s classic essay of 1967 has
underscored the significance of specific environments or sites, artwork such as
Minimalist sculptures of the 1960s came to interrogate the physical and social
surroundings of the work. Minimalism necessitated viewers’ participation and enhanced
their roles in completing the meaning of the artwork.
74
With the advent of Land Art, the
physical site became integral to the artwork both defining and being defined by the
location and situation in which the work appears. Examples of such work are therefore
site-specific, a condition which also marks its presence and immobility. In this way, these
works and their locations have revealed and often critiqued ideologies behind the
seemingly neutral space of art museums and galleries.
75
By contrast, in his discussion of
large-scale sculptures by Gordon Matta-Clark and Richard Serra’s Tilted Arc in New
York’s Federal Plaza (1981), Thomas Crow scrutinizes these site-specific works’
temporal trajectory by stressing the ephemerality of their site-specific projects.
76
Crow

73
Leah Fosco, “Site,” Theories of Media: Keywords Glossary, accessed November 20, 2015,
http://csmt.uchicago.edu/glossary2004/site.htm.
74
Michael Fried, “Art and Objecthood,” Artforum, no. 5 (June 1967): 12–23.
75
Miwon Kwon, “Genealogy of Site Specificity,” One Place After Another: Site-Specific and Locational
identity (Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: MIT Press, 2004), 11–31.
76
Thomas Crow, “Site Specific Art: The Strong and the Weak,” Modern Art in the Common Culture (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1996), 131–150.
Chapter Four
192
observes that because of their “short-lives,” these works had virtually no “interlocutor or
beholder” and even did not “entail any effort to clarify the site or the circumstance.”
77
Consequently, these works were disqualified as appropriate site-specific art. However,
the very removal of Serra’s Tilted Arc has transformed the site of the Federal Plaza into
something deficient and subtracted from, at least for as long as one remembers the
controversy over the artwork.
78
In line with Crow’s discussion, Miwon Kwon looks at
site-specific works from the 1980s and 1990s that interrogate public realms even further.
Kwon posits site-specificity as the practice of a discursive site. In other words, a site is
not only a physical, spatial, cultural space but can even be a non-place as well as a
network of social relations, which is often fluid, impermanent, and relative.
79

PIKA can be situated the way in which Crow and Kwon articulate the site-specific.
The collective conceived the work for Hiroshima. Their objective was to exhibit
something specifically related to the atomic bomb, in this significant site. According to
the artists, the dissolving skywriting was an emblematic representation of disappearing
memory and forgetfulness about the nuclear disaster as well as their own humorous
commentary on the current situation.
80
In fact, they initially thought to stage a flash of
light to illuminate the city; however, what Chim↑Pom values most is “reality,” and to
them the reality of the issues concerning the atomic bombs and Hiroshima was “not war
but peace” and the lightness of it in the 2000s.
81
In the end, they choose to write PIKA
instead. The intended exhibition was designed as an installation for a quarantined white
cube and thus the project’s lightness and immorality would have been taken as less

77
Ibid., 135 and 146.
78
Ibid., 149.
79
Kwon, One Place After Another, 1–9.
80
Chim↑Pom, Super Rat, 34.
81
Chim↑Pom, Geijutsu jikkōhan, 49–51.
Chapter Four
193
problematic. However, the abrupt, unexpected withholding of the project suspended the
work in the sky, whereas down on the ground the PIKA controversy revealed public
adherence to the survivors’ account of the atomic bombs. PIKA’s occupation of the sky
insisted on an overarching narrative of Japanese society and arts being developed under
the atomic sunshine and American hegemony, rather than leaning toward the
contradictions and questions that PIKA and Real Thousand Cranes could presumably
embody. In addition, because of the very ephemerality, the work, which had no intention
to represent the dominant narrative or the city of Hiroshima, was rejected as something
utterly disqualified as “public art” of Hiroshima as well as the atomic bomb victims and
survivors. Nonetheless, the criticism of PIKA and removal of Chim↑Pom’s exhibition in
turn helped create a site of practice that exposed the precariousness of the dominant
narrative and memory that has been sustaining Hiroshima as Hiroshima, the sacred site.
With the unexpected level of backlash against PIKA and the collective’s tactics,
Chim↑Pom was compelled to think through the aftereffects of the atomic bombs and the
positionality of their art more seriously—but without changing their artistic style. The
collective continued a conversation with the survivors, especially Tsuboi Sunao, the
president of Hiroshima’s Prefectural Confederation of A-Bomb Sufferers Organizations,
who was initially critical of Chim↑Pom’s work but eventually became a key supporter
and collaborator with the collective. The following year, Chim↑Pom held the planned
exhibition, entitled Hiroshima!, at a gallery space in Tokyo to which Tsuboi was invited
as a special guest and lecturer.
82
Coincidentally, the collective launched a publication, or

82
The short exhibition was held at an alternative space, VACANT (March 20–22, 2009). See also a
collection of exhibition reviews, “Special Review: Chim↑Pom “Hiroshima!,” Bijutsu techō, no. 922 (June
2009), 98–113.
Chapter Four
194
an analysis-in-progress, about the controversy.
83
Since then, Chim↑Pom has installed the
Hiroshima exhibition at multiple locations, each time with slight variations of the works
on display. Finally, although it was not held at Hiroshima MOCA, the exhibition returned
to the city in 2013 at the bombed building that formerly housed Japan Bank’s Hiroshima
Branch—the only building that survived fairly intact through the atomic calamity—in
which origami cranes from all over the world donated to the Hiroshima Memorial Park
have been kept (Fig. 4.17).
84

Ultimately, the controversial guerrilla art project in and about Hiroshima became
Chim↑Pom’s milestone. This was the beginning of their recurring engagement with the
nuclear issue in art, as well as the ideas of ephemerality and site-specificity with a twist.
On April 30, 2011, only one and a half months after the Great East Japan Earthquake that
caused a massive tsunami and triple meltdowns of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power
Plant, Chim↑Pom anonymously attached a painted panel to the lower right corner of
Okamoto Tarō’s Asu no shinwa/Myth of Tomorrow (1968–69; see Chapter Two), which
has been installed in Tokyo’s Shibuya Station since 2008 (Fig. 4.18). This large painted
work is not a perfect oblong shape—there are blank rectangular spaces in the two bottom
corners. Chim↑Pom utilized one of them for their guerilla addition. Created on an
approximately one-by-two-meter piece of paper on a PVC panel, Chim↑Pom’s addition
depicts the buildings of the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s seaside Fukushima Power

83
Abe Ken’ichi ed., Naze Hiroshima no sora wo PIKA tto sasetewa ikenainoka?.
84
The second presentation was at the art bookstore/gallery Nadiff (June 12–19, 2009), followed by a show
at the Soma Museum of Art, Seoul Korea (April 9–June 6, 2010), and the Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima
Panels along with Chim↑Pom’s project about Fukushima (December 10–18, 2011). Finally, the collective
held pre-art events at multiple venues in Hiroshima (July 16–21, 2013) that provided funding for the fuller
version (December 8–17, 2013). Each time the collective held an exhibition, they added an exclamation
mark to the exhibition title, which makes the last one Hiroshima!!!!!. For the exhibition details and press
release, see the collective’s official website, Chim↑Pom, accessed October 28, 2015,
http://www.chimpom.jp/hiroshima2013.html.
Chapter Four
195
Plant, which has become a daunting, iconic image since what is widely referred to as 3.11
(Fig. 4.19).
85
The Fukushima nuclear crisis was rated at Level 7, the highest level on the
International Nuclear and Radiological Event Scale (INES), which put it at the same
danger level as the Chernobyl catastrophe of 1986. Chim↑Pom points to the significance
of the Fukushima disaster by titling the project, LEVEL7 feat. “Myth of Tomorrow.” The
artists’ rendering of dark anthropomorphic mushroom clouds emerging from the
exploded structures skillfully mimics Okamoto’s color scheme and painterly style,
including his signature monstrous, red-colored eyes and a tooth-like tongue. The new
panel thus blended well with the original mural, right beneath Okamoto’s pictorial
vignette of the 1954 Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident.
Here, too, Chim↑Pom’s work appeared suddenly and unexpectedly. They placed
the panel about ten o’clock at night, at one of Japan’s busiest train stations, but many of
the passersby did not notice this newly added image of the Fukushima disaster.
86
By the
following morning, however, it had caused a certain sensation in social media. In the
meantime, the panel, which was attached with masking tape so as not to damage the
original mural and the station wall, became loose. By the evening of the following day,
Shibuya police officers took away Chim↑Pom’s painted panel, which remained in their
custody until almost the end of the year.
87
The panel was included in their exhibition at

85
A description of the work and performance relies on Chim↑Pom’s “LEVEL7 feat. “Myth of Tomorrow,”
Super Rat, 28–33; Nishioka Kazumasa, “Okamoto Tarō hekiga ni genpatsu no tsuketashi, osawagase
shūdan jitsu wa shitataka” [Adding nuclear energy plant to Okamoto Tarō’s mural, the trouble making
collective actually shrewd], Asahi Shimbun, May 25, 2011, 25; and Edan Corkill, “Chim↑Pom and the Art
of Social Engagement,” The Japan Times, September 29, 2011, accessed December 10, 2015,
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2011/09/29/culture/chimpom-and-the-art-of-social-
engagement/#.VnhVhWSrS2x.
86
The process has been videotaped and can be viewed on You Tube, accessed November 2, 2015
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKZBhbzLqv4&feature=youtu.be.
87
Three members were questioned over a possible violation of the Minor Offenses Act but were not
prosecuted in the end.
Chapter Four
196
the Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum, not far from where Okamoto’s mural has been
permanently displayed. Eventually, the collective donated the work to this master-artist’s
longtime studio-turned-museum.
88

Much like tagging PIKA onto the blank canvas of the sky, adding “graffiti” to
Okamoto’s mural prompted another debate, especially since there was absolutely no sign
that the Fukushima crisis would end anytime soon. Some criticized the action as tasteless,
mischievous behavior that hurt people who were deeply affected by the disaster, and
some took it as vandalism even though there was no actual harm to the mural. By contrast,
others praised the way that still-anonymous people employed Okamoto’s painterly
manner and posited that Okamoto would have appreciated this kind of intervention.
89
The
accusatory voices were magnified when Chim↑Pom uploaded a short video clip on
YouTube announcing their solo exhibition, Real Times, to open soon, which included an
excerpt showing them putting the panel underneath Okamoto’s mural.
90
The exhibition
was one of the first artistic responses to 3.11., and it displayed such works as a pair of
photographs of Mizuno Toshinori, one of the members who volunteered as a temporary
worker at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant, holding high a red card as a sign of
absolute “no” to the wrecked plant buildings (Red Card, 2011; Fig. 4.20). Also included
was a video work in which members of the collective paint a red circle, like the rising sun

88
Abe Ken’ichi, “Colum on Level 7 feat. ‘Myth of Tomorrow’,” Super Rat, 32.
89
Nishioka Kazukasa, “Okamoto Tarō hekiga ni genpatsu no e tsuketashi.” Even the director of the
Okamoto Taro Memorial Museum commented that while he did not praise the quality of the work itself, he
acknowledged that Chim↑Pom’s undertaking was done within the context of art and indeed respected
Okamoto, and above all proved the relevance of Okamoto’s work in the present time (Nishioka Kazumasa,
“Okamoto Tarō to kagakuhan’nō,” [Chemical reaction with Okamoto Tarō], Asahi Shimbun, evening
edition, April 17, 2013, 3; and Inoue Shinji, “Chim↑Pom x Okamoto Tarō no kikakuten” [Special art
exhibition of Chim↑Pom x Okamoto Tarō], Yomiuri Shimbun, May 2, 2013, 16).
90
Chim↑Pom, “Yokoku” [Advance announcement], “Chim↑Pom REAL TIMES, 2011/5/20-25,” accessed
November 16, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OTqokIecNhs; before then, the collective held the
first exhibition in response to Fukushima, Never Give Up!, two weeks after 3.11.
Chapter Four
197
of the Japanese national flag, but then turn it into the hazard mark symbolizing ionizing
radiation. Finally, they mount the flag on the outlook built on the adjacent hill looking
down on the nuclear plant, as if it were a sign of seizure like the act of raising the Stars
and Stripes on Mt. Suribachi of Iwo Jima (Real Times, April 11, 2011; Fig. 4.21).
Concerning the work, the collective has stated:
The title Real Times simultaneously stands for three meanings: as this very
moment “right now,” as a historical time as in the film title Modern Times, and as
a media title as in newspapers like The New York Times against the situation
where the actual story of inside the high-security area was never reported through
mass media.
91

Despite or because of the bilious reactions in the media, the Real Times show was packed
with visitors; as many as four thousand people viewed the six-day exhibition, which was
quite unusual for a gallery exhibition of contemporary art.
92

By inserting a visual addendum of Fukushima into Okamoto’s work, Chim↑Pom
has updated Okamoto’s chronicle of nuclear disasters in Japan, from Hiroshima and
Nagasaki, via the Lucky Dragon No. 5, to 3.11. In other words, the collective transports
Okamoto and his work into the present moment, making his and Japan’s nuclear
chronicles open-ended.
93
As Chim↑Pom has stated, the action turns the existing blank
spaces within Okamoto’s mural into “prophetic margins” to be filled with any nuclear
disaster to come in the future.
94
The lineage of the country’s irradiation has been stressed
even more by the inclusion of a facsimile of a handwritten message, “Never Give Up,” by
the atomic bomb survivor Tsuboi Sunao in the Real Times exhibition. Tsuboi’s

91
Chim↑Pom, Super Rat, 24.
92
Chim↑Pom, Geijutsu jikkōhani, 72.
93
For further discussion about the work as a commentary on the anti-nuclear movement and its history, see
Alexander Brown, “Remembering Hiroshima and the Lucky Dragon in Chim↑Pom’s Level 7 feat. ‘Myth of
Tomorrow’,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, vol. 13, issue 16, no. 3 (February 16, 2015), accessed
April 11, 2015, http://japanfocus.org/-Alexander-Brown/4279/article.html.
94
Chim↑Pom, Artists’ statement (2011), Super Rat, 31.
Chapter Four
198
calligraphy of his own life motto was mounted on a wrecked frame retrieved by
Chim↑Pom in Fukushima along with photographs of animals found abandoned in the area
(Fig. 4.22).
While the Real Times exhibition evoked history, the ephemeral and site-specific
quality of Level 7 and PIKA has helped elucidate the monumentality, immutable and
public, of Okamoto’s Myth of Tomorrow and the Atomic Bomb Dome that Chim↑Pom
actually and discursively juxtaposed within the collective’s art projects. As James
E. Young has discussed in his widely referenced essay about Holocaust monuments and
counter-monuments, site-specific and transitory work such as Chim↑Pom’s functions as
an anti-monument, something to provoke and therefore change, and “not to be ignored by
its passersby but to demand interaction.” Young has also written that the counter-
monument is “not to remain pristine but to invite its own violation and desecration and
not to accept graciously the burden of memory but to throw it back at the town’s feet.”
95

This is in contrast to a traditional monument, which has historically been something
authoritarian and didactic that turns its viewers into passive spectators.
96
In addition, by
constructing monuments, we encourage these public objects to reduce and fixate memory
or history—to flatten it. In other words, we hope that monuments “do our memory-work
for us” and consequently “we become that much more forgetful rather than confronting
the event.”
97

The panel that was temporarily affixed to Okamoto’s Myth of Tomorrow, along
with the discourse it generated, presents a parallel to Crow’s discussion of the “absence”

95
James E. Young, “The Counter-Monument: Memory against Itself in Germany Today,” Critical Inquiry,
18: 2 (Winter, 1992): 277.
96
Ibid., 274.
97
Ibid., 273.
Chapter Four
199
of Serra’s Tilted Arc once it was removed from the Federal Plaza. People have become
aware of the void—even taking a photograph of the gap in Okamoto’s mural and mulling
it over, the artists say.
98
Chim↑Pom superimposes a physical void of their work on the
invisibility of “what is truly awful and dangerous,” such as radiation and the history of
nuclear crises, and only imagination stands today as “the very possibility for ground zero,
and the most fundamental power to create the future.”
99
Simultaneously, however, as I
have briefly touched upon in the second chapter, Chim↑Pom’s short-lived site-specific
project has helped to elevate and fix Okamoto and his mural as the post-3.11 monument
that represents the anti-nuclear energy movement, which means Chim↑Pom is layering a
new meaning or building a “myth” of Okamoto.
100

Art of Site, or Undoing the Site of Art and the Memory of Site
In its third and the most recent probe of the nuclear disaster, Chim↑Pom extended
its time-“unspecific” project to Fukushima’s unprecedented level of radioactive
contamination that could exceed the lifespan of currently living things. Entitled Don’t
Follow the Wind, the exhibition opened on March 11, 2015, the fourth anniversary of
3.11.
101
Another unusual feature of this exhibition is that it has been staged in what has
been designated the no entry zone (or “difficult-to-return zone” in Japanese) due to the
high level of radiation.
102
Chim↑Pom and the curatorial team recruited twelve artists from

98
Chim↑Pom, Geijutsu jikkōhan, 14.
99
Ibid.; and Chim↑Pom, Super Rat, 31.
100
Critics Suga Sigemi and Kuresawa Takemi have pointed this out. See also Chapter Two of this
dissertation.
101
Chim↑Pom started mulling over the exhibition concept as early as 2012 and recruited Kubota Kenji,
Jason Waite, and artists Eva and Franco Mattes as the project curators.
102
Issued by the Nuclear Emergency Response Headquarters that was established within the Cabinet Office
of Japan. The area is where the cumulative annual exposure is expected to be 50 milliSieverts, and is
considered to be no less than 20 milliSieverts even after five years since the disaster. The zone, initially
Chapter Four
200
across the globe, ranging from internationally known practitioners such as Ai Weiwei and
Taryn Simon to Japanese artists including Takeuchi Kōta, who has presented a highly
debated work responding to Fukushima,
103
and Koizumi Meirō, who has dealt with
memory of war,
104
and Chim↑Pom themselves.
105
The exhibition stands as a conceptual
work by itself in complicating the idea of the visual and in/visibility. It differs from their
project Level 7, which was temporarily visible, for this exhibition still exists but cannot
be viewed by the general public. Paradoxically, the exhibition is very much object- and
site-based and therefore the organizers emphasize the invisibility of the art exhibition. All
the works have been specifically made for the exhibition and dispersed into four different
locations that have been rented from the evacuees—an emptied residence, a warehouse, a
farm, and a recreation center—each of which retains a strong connection to the everyday
lives of its occupants. The exhibition title is also an empirical one, taken from an
anecdote of a resident and exhibition collaborator, who was also an amateur fisherman.
The directive “Don’t follow the wind” was key for evacuees, telling them to avoid
radioactive pollutants emanating from the Nuclear Power Plant, which were quickly

designated the 20-kilometer radius around the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, has been revised
multiple times since then, according to the most recent assessment. For the Headquarters’ meeting
proceedings and documents issued, see the Cabinet Office’s official website,
https://www.kantei.go.jp/jp/singi/genshiryoku/ (accessed December 28, 2015).
103
Although not admitted by the artist, Takeuchi, or his proxy, was employed as a “volunteer” worker at
the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant and stood still in a protective suit, pointing an accusatory
finger at one of the plant’s live webcams that were set to monitor the ongoing disaster. The action was said
to be a reenactment of Vito Acconci’s famous body art/performance Centers (1971) and thus by someone
with a solid art background. Documents, drawings, and studies for the “performance” by this “anonymous
yubisashi sagyōin” (pointer-plant worker) soon became accessible online,
http://pointatfuku1cam.nobody.jp/ (accessed January 7, 2016). Its video captures are widely available; one
example is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t3g8L_7cTkM (accessed April 2, 2015).
104
One of Koizumi’s exemplary works is Portrait of a Young Samurai (2009), in which Koizumi has
staged a fictional monologue of a young kamikaze fighter. For an analysis of his work, see his first solo
exhibition catalogue, Koizumi Meiro, Torawareta koe wa seijaku no yume wo miru/KOIZUMI Meiro:
Trapped Voice Would Dream of Silence (Tokyo: Gendai kikakushitsu, 2015).
105
The complete list of the exhibition participants includes Grand Guignol Mirai, Nikolaus Hirsch and
Jorge Otero-Pailos, Takekawa Nobuaki, Eva and Franco Mattes, Miyanaga Aiko, Ahmet Ögut, and Trevor
Paglen.
Chapter Four
201
spread by the wind. Initially, central and local governments advised residents to flee to
the north, while the amateur fisherman, who was attuned to reading the wind, fled in the
exact opposite direction.
106
“Wind” also implies rumors, especially “harmful rumors”
about the Fukushima disaster. In short, not to follow the wind, and thus the official orders
and information as well as informal rumors, is what Chim↑Pom thought an essential
credo for survival in this contaminated world.
107

The exhibition will remain inaccessible, and therefore invisible, until the
restrictions on visits are lifted when the area becomes decontaminated to a level tolerable
to the human body. Although its website became available on the exhibition’s opening
day, it remains blank and only provides an audio loop of the curators and participating
artists reading the exhibition statement, part of which says:
What cannot be perceived has immense power. There is no official timeline for
access to these sites—perhaps three years, ten years, or decades. Periods that can
expand beyond our lifetime and make us reconsider our relationship to art, [the]
environment, and time itself.
108

No one knows whether the work will be irradiated but intact or deteriorated when the
exhibition eventually becomes available to the public. Once again, the invisibility and
inaccessibility of the objects connote invisible radioactive contaminants; however,
Chim↑Pom comments that the exhibition can still be seen even “with your eyes

106
Chim↑Pom, Sawaragi Noi, and the Don’t Follow the Wind Exhibition Committee ed., Don't Follow the
Wind (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shin-sha, 2015), 45.
107
Independent scholar and curator Miwako Tezuka has pointed out that the trait of “rumor” is also
applicable to the exhibition itself, particularly due to its physical inaccessibility. Having seen the exhibition,
Tezuka considers that it is not proper to describe it in depth to those who have not seen it. In her
presentation about the exhibition, Tezuka therefore only talks around it. She then asks her audience to be
interpreters, or carriers, of the “rumor” of Don’t Follow the Wind (Miwako Tezuka, “Don’t Follow the
Wind: Chim↑Pom and the Creation of a Collective Imaginary,” paper presented at Socially Engaged Art in
Japan: Questions for Contemporary Policy and Practice, University of Washington, Seattle, November 12–
14, 2015).
108
Don't Follow the Wind official website, accessed November 9, 2015,
http://www.dontfollowthewind.info/.
Chapter Four
202
closed.”
109
In other words, the act of imagining is more significant than seeing. The
artists think that this restriction helps prolong people’s attention to the Fukushima
disaster and the lives affected by it rather than reducing its representation to a typical art
exhibition, wherein the issue would quickly become part of past memory and fade away,
as suggested by the discussion of monument and counter-monument. In the mind’s eye,
would-be viewers can relate to the Fukushima nightmare and share the indeterminate
span of time until the evacuees can get out of limbo and return to their homes.
110
In this
way, the ideas of in/visibility, site, and time are deeply intertwined through the exhibition
in Fukushima’s high irradiation zone.
To be precise, however, in addition to the website, part of or a version of the
exhibition has already become accessible via the exhibition catalogue, which consists of a
statement, writings about the content, and introductions to the artists but without clear
images of the exhibition objects (distant views with surroundings are in the book).
Furthermore, for a limited time the organizers held a satellite exhibition in Tokyo, which
consisted of data, documents, and works and interpretations about or made in response to
the actual exhibition.
111
Entitled Don’t Follow the Wind: Non-Visitor Center, the satellite
project was conceived as an information center for imaginary and future visitors to the
main exhibition in Fukushima. As an exhibition participant and contributor to the
catalogue, Sawaragi argues that this satellite version serves as a “non-site,” following

109
Chim↑Pom, “Me wo tojite kanshō shite” [Please close eyes and watch], Don’t Follow the Wind, 21.
110
“Switch and TAB Special Feature, Dialogue: Ushiro Ryūta (Chim↑Pom) and Kubota Kenji (curator),
Don't Follow the Wind,” accessed November 22, 2015,
http://www.tokyoartbeat.com/tablog/entries.ja/2015/09/switch-tab-dontfollowthewind-chimpom-
ryutaushiro-kenjikubota.html.
111
It was held at the Watari Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo from September 19 to November 3,
2015. For the exhibition statement and participating artists including three additional ones compared to the
Fukushima version, see the exhibition website. Accessed November 22, 2015,
http://www.watarium.co.jp/exhibition/1509DFW_NVC/index2.html.
Chapter Four
203
artist Robert Smithson’s site/non-site dialectics.
112
Smithson originally defines a non-site
as an “indoor earthwork” at a gallery space, which can consist of sculpture with raw
material, photographs, and/or films. It should also be mobile—whereas the site of an
earthwork is fixed in a remote place—and functions as a metaphor rather than as
expressive art by itself.
113
Although the Non-Visitor Center exhibition seems to operate
as more than what Smithson describes as a “container” which “abstracts site,” it expands
the site of the Fukushima exhibition or even undoes the site-specificity of it. Indeed,
Smithson has noted, “Let us say that one goes on a fictitious trip if one decides to go to
the site of the Non-Site.” In so doing, whether the artists have intended it or not, the
project as a whole becomes unbound to any physical site and even the conditions of
invisibility and inaccessibility, and conversely makes Fukushima a metaphysical and
atemporal site, one that is open to both the future and the past.

Conclusion
Chim↑Pom’s PIKA over the Hiroshima sky was, prematurely, seen as an act of
imposing their blithe and immoral take on the atomic bomb catastrophe, literally, on the
flattened city of Hiroshima. In other words, this site-oriented performative art was deeply
infused with these young Tokyo artists’ perceptions of the nuclear catastrophe. Therefore,
it was not necessarily and readily accepted in another location, especially the fixed site of
Hiroshima as a sacred place in which individuals conform to unspoken rules and

112
Sawaragi Noi, “Bijutsu to hōsha•nō/Telos and entelecheia: ‘Don’t Follow the Wind’-ten no hata ga tatsu
ichi” [Art and radio-activity/Telos and entelecheia: Topos in which stands the flag of ‘Don’t Follow the
Wind’ exhibition], Don’t Follow the Wind, 78–84.
113
Robert Smithson, “A Provisional Theory of Non-Sites” (1966), Robert Smithson: The Collected
Writings, ed. Jack Flam (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), 364.
Chapter Four
204
pressures that constitute that sacredness. In other words, the sacred site operates with
different gravity, in which Tokyo’s lightness was simply taken as unbearably light.
To many, Chim↑Pom appeared ignorant about the catastrophe and exploited the
atomic bomb survivors and victims. Additionally, critical respondents often pointed out
that these young artists did not take proper steps to work with municipal offices and the
community where the project took place as well as to engage with survivors.
114

Interestingly, at 1 p.m. on October 25, 2008, only four days after Chim↑Pom did the
skywriting, another artwork in the sky was produced by the internationally known artist
Cai Guo-Qiang. Cai lit a set of twelve hundred black fireworks, “as if painting with ink
wash in the sky,” over the Atomic Bomb Dome as a kind of collective requiem while
celebrating Hiroshima’s rebirth (Fig. 4.23).
115
Black Fireworks: Project for Hiroshima
was part of Cai’s solo exhibition at the Hiroshima MOCA, which was held in honor of
the artist as a recipient of the seventh Hiroshima Prize given by the city.
116
As opposed to
PIKA, which stirred much public debate, Cai’s Black Fireworks was welcomed. As an
artist known for large-scale art projects that utilize fireworks and gunpowder, Cai knew
how to execute explosive and combustible public works. The artist had informed the
neighboring communities and public facilities in advance, in addition to the city’s
newsletter’s announcement about the project.
117
Having previously worked on a project

114
A number of respondents to PIKA suggested that working closely with the survivors was as much
needed as advance notice to the city and residents. See, for example, Ozaki Tetsuya, “Out of Tokyo 198:
Chim↑Pom-ten chūshi no tenmatsu” [Details of the cancellation of Chim↑Pom’s exhibition], Realtokyo
(November 8, 2008), reprinted in Naze Hiroshima no sora wo PIKA tto sasetewa ikenainoka?, 26.
115
Cai, “Black Fireworks,” 171.
116
The reason for the award was that Cai’s oeuvre is “based on a unique body of the cosmos rooted in
traditional Chinese culture and philosophy, combined with his penetrating vision of human history and
civilization” (Cai Guo-Qiang, “Black Fireworks—Project for Hiroshima,” Cai Guo-Qiang: Ladder to the
Sky [Munich and London: Prestel, 2012], 171).
117
Ozaki Tetsuya, “Chim↑Pom ten chūshi no tenmatsu,” 28–29; and Kusumi Kiyoshi, “Pika to don,” 90–91.
Chapter Four
205
in Hiroshima in 1994 during his ten-year stay in Japan,
118
Cai was also aware of the need
to be sensitive about the subject, especially in Hiroshima.
Indeed, what differentiates Cai’s and Chim↑Pom’s approaches, although they
both used the daytime sky over the Atomic Bomb Dome, is perhaps the degree of
recognition of the particularity or sacredness of Hiroshima, including its people and
community.
119
This could be symbolized by how Cai’s fireworks departed from and thus
gravitated toward the ground. Furthermore, the black skeletal shape, consisting of traces
of hundreds of black fireworks that gradually formed a black and then gray mushroom
cloud, recalled a sense of mourning, as the artist intended. In contrast, Chim↑Pom’s
“graffiti” in white smoke remained in the sky like a tagging or the atomic bomb that
dropped from above.
120
However, the quality of non-qualification of Chim↑Pom’s PIKA
as site-specific public art to represent Hiroshima as well as the memory and narrative of
the atomic bombs in fact makes it a discursive site-specific work. Consequently, the
project could intervene in Hiroshima as a fluid and transient site, liberated from the actual
time and space, that is, the 1945 disaster.

118
The work, The Earth Has Its Black Hole, Too: Project for Extraterrestrials No. 16, suggests the atomic
devastation as an artificial black hole on earth. Cai was in fact nominated for the year’s Hiroshima Prize,
which went to another artist in the end. The artist initially proposed to light a fire at the height and location
of the atomic bomb’s eruption, but was turned down (Michelle Yun, “The Earth Has Its Black Hole, Too:
Project for Extraterrestrials No. 16,” in Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe, edited by Krens and Munroe
[New York: Guggenheim Museum, 2008], 150–151).
119
In his interview with Kusumi Kiyoshi, Cai has suggested the need to be considerate of the feelings of
people in Hiroshima upon making artwork about the atomic bomb catastrophe (Kusumi, “Pika to don,” 90.)
120
To be fair, Cai’s work, such as his black and mushroom clouds and fireworks, is often described as an
ephemeral, counter-monument that forces oscillation between collective remembering, forgetting or denial,
and mourning of a tragic event, such as the atomic bombs and 9.11, and the death of others. The work is
also often taken as something that coalesces destruction, creation, and consumption such as art and war. For
the first set of queries, see David Ross’s “Fear of Remembering” in Cai Guo-Qiang: Transparent
Monument (Milano: Charta, 2006), 10–13; and for the latter, see Miwon Kwon’s “The Art of Expenditure,”
Cai Guo-Qiang: I Want to Believe, 62–74.

206
EPILOGUE

Pilgrimage, or Walking from Hiroshima, via Fukushima, to …

Seventy years and two months after the bombing of Hiroshima, the photographic
exhibition Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar Shadows opened at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los
Angeles.
1
The apex of Ishiuchi’s first retrospective at an American art museum was her
series ひろしま/hiroshima (2007–). This ongoing project consists of photographs of
garments, mostly young women’s, and things that belonged to the atomic bomb victims,
which are now housed in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. Ishiuchi’s
photographs of summer dresses and shirts, backlit by a light box or infused with natural
light, look as if they are floating in the air and blazing summer light, like a thin layer of
skin or fragile dragonfly wings (Fig. E.1). The way Ishiuchi displays them enhances such
visual effects; they are placed high above or down below eye level on the exhibition
walls, like animated objects. “To my surprise, they were stylish and touchingly sweet,”
says the artist, recalling her first impression of them.
2
Often tailored by the wearer’s
mother or perhaps by the wearer herself, some dresses were made from kimonos, with
intricately patterned or printed fabric, or decorated with lace and bows, despite the
difficulties of war.
3

Ishiuchi’s images certainly convey the loveliness and lyricism engendered by
these clothes—even though they are torn, stained, and tattered—and are sweet reminders

1
The exhibition ran from October 6, 2015 to February 21, 2016. For details, see Ishiuchi Miyako: Postwar
Shadows, ed. Amanda Maddox (Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Museum, 2015).
2
Ishiuchi Miyako, “Fragility in Photos: A Photographer's Intimate Study of the Body and Soul,” public
conversation with Ito Hiromi, Japan Foundation Los Angeles, October 2, 2015.
3
Washida Kiyokazu, “Koromo no mugon” [Silence of garments], booklet accompanying Ishiuchi
Miyako’s Hiroshima (Tokyo: Shueisha, 2008), 10–11.
Epilogue
207
of the young people who wore them. Yet the very lightness and luminosity captured here
is also indicative of the atomic detonation and the intense blast of light that tore and
penetrated these wearers’ bodies. In other words, in one moment, the dresses were burned,
ripped, or melted, and melded with the wearers’ skin, such that they were deprived of any
corporeal weight.
Before embarking on the series, Ishiuchi knew hardly anything about Hiroshima:
what little she knew came from history textbooks and Domon Ken’s seminal publication
Hiroshima (1958). However, Domon’s monochromatic photographs were extremely
painful—so much so that she wanted to look away.
4
Ishiuchi acknowledges that her
Hiroshima project is built upon multiple photographers’ work on the legacy of the
nuclear catastrophe. However, visual representations of Hiroshima as well as Nagasaki
have predominantly been documentations of the past, constituted by a “masculine”
viewpoint—indeed taken by male photographers—as suggested by Domon’s influence.
5

“I wanted to lift Hiroshima from such a weighted place and the terrible burden of history
that Hiroshima carries,” Ishiuchi said.
6
Photographing in color is one gesture in that
direction. Moreover, Ishiuchi insists the series title always be listed in the Japanese

4
Ishiuchi, “Fragility in Photos.”
5
In addition to Domon, some of the photographers known to have pursued this subject are Fukushima
Kikujirō (1921–2015), Tōmatsu Shōmei (1930–2012), Kawada Kikuji (b. 1933), and Tsuchida Hiromi (b.
1939). Regarding the gendered perspective of Hiroshima, scholar and hibakusha Kanō Mikiyo has warned
against the idea of “innocent” female atomic bomb victims in Japan’s victim-oriented discourse of the
atomic bombs, as symbolized by genbaku otome or “atomic maidens.” Kanō points out that Japanese
women, including hibakusha, also supported the ideology of war and Japan’s imperialism. Kanō therefore
has mentioned about a certain discomfort concerning the gendered framing of Ishiuchi’s Hiroshima work
(“Bungaku to seijiteki realizumu: Komento, zentai tōron” [Literature and political realism: Comments,
plenary discussion], symposium proceeding, published in Genbaku bungaku kenkyū/Journal of Genbaku
Literature, no. 9 (2010): 107–110. For a discussion of the atomic bombs and feminism, see Ueno
Chizuko’s “Hiroshima from the Feminist Perspective: Between War Crime and the Crime of War” (Asian
Women, vol. 12 [2001]: 53–79), which further complicates Kanō’s analysis; and Kanō’s book, Hiroshima
to Fukushima no aida: Jendā no shiten kara [Between Hiroshima and Fukushima: From the perspectives of
gender] (Tokyo: Inpakuto shuppankai, 2013).
6
Ishiuchi Miyako, “Ishiuchi Miyako in Conversation,” public talk, trans. Linda Hoaglund, Getty Center,
Los Angeles, October 7, 2015.
Epilogue
208
hiragana syllabary, a so-called female system of writing, to undo the “masculine” image
of Hiroshima, something buried in the past or an icon to global peace. The artist instead
individualizes the archived items, speaks to them, and thereby each person that the
garment or item belonged to, as living things while she photographs them. In this manner,
Ishiuchi’s photographs snuggle up to the object and let it speak for itself.
In fact, Domon included one color image in his Hiroshima book: a photograph of
burn marks on the crossed arms of the first registered atomic bomb survivor. This was
arguably a sign of his effort to situate the atomic bomb issues in the present tense. He
also photographed the Memorial Museum’s collection of victims’ garments, which were
intact in display boxes or donned by mannequins inside glass cases against natural light
(Fig. E.2). The way he photographed these objects presents them as a mass of static relics
sunk in shadows and the past, resembling gravestones that appear in the following pages
in Hiroshima. He pictured the same materials, but in a manner quite contrary to Ishiuchi’s
photographs of animated and luminary clothes.
My intension is not to critique Domon in comparison with Ishiuchi, but instead to
stress that it took a long time until Ishiuchi’s color photographs came out, were
appreciated without spurring a sense of guilt or insulting the dead, and were even
exhibited across the Pacific at a major art institution, in this case the Getty. Any
devastating event, natural or man-made, would need quite a length of time to be
understood in different ways. On top of that, as Chim↑Pom has attempted to envision
through the exhibition Don’t Forget the Wind, nuclear decontamination entails a long
span of time, could be far longer than the human life span.
Epilogue
209
In closing my study about art and the aftereffects of the atomic bombs in postwar
Japan, I suggest that we ruminate on the long, winding process of pilgrimage. With
regard to 3.11, ethnologist and director of the Fukushima Museum Akasaka Norio has
suggested that we have a Michinoku Art Pilgrimage. Akasaka argues that the human-
induced disaster of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant inflected our experience
of the devastation of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Tōhoku, the northeastern region
of Japan.
7
He could only start by walking through and seeing the landscape where signs
of devastation were quickly disappearing. Words would come later, Akasaka writes. He
has thus launched an art journey to visit eleven different sites per year, dispersed the
affected areas, for a total of eighty-eight location visits over eight years. Inspired by the
early ninth-century pilgrimage around the island of Shikoku of a monk named Kūkai,
Akasaka has initiated a Tōhoku version of pilgrimage as a way of granting repose to the
deceased’s souls, remembering and praying for resurgence—through art.
8
Instead of
setting up a single, final destination, Akasaka equates each site with the rest, seeing each
as one of many or of equal significance. In addition to his objectives, I emphasize
pilgrimage itself as a practice, which demands our physical and lengthy participation.
Similar to a long and often burdensome journey to sacred sites, the act of meandering,
walking around, getting close to, or speaking near ground zero, the disaster site, the
irradiated, and/or the loss can be a process of understanding and possibly healing. In the
Introduction, I wrote about my intention to situate this dissertation like a pilgrimage, or a
walk-through of critical junctures, including documentary, explosion, metamorphosis,

7
Akasaka Norio, “Tōhoku junrei 1” [Tōhoku pilgrimage 1], G2, vol. 9 (January 2012), accessed March 28,
2015, http://g2.kodansha.co.jp/10955/11406/11407/11408.html.
8
Akasaka Norio, “Futatabi, michinoku no āto junrei e [Once more, off to Michinoku’s art pilgrimage],”
Shin bijutsu shimbun/Japanese Art News, no. 1338 (March 11, 2014), 1.
Epilogue
210
and site specificity, in art and the aftereffects of the atomic bombs to honor complexities
and flexibility rather than form a solid and singular conclusion. Much like filmmaker
Linda Hoaglund describes Ishiuchi’s yearly visit to the Memorial Museum to shoot newly
donated items left behind by hibakusha as a pilgrimage,
9
I realize now that this study is
part of my own pilgrimage, or walking out of or toward ground zero.

9
Linda Hoaglund, “Behind Things Left Behind: Ishiuchi Miyako,” accessed March 22, 2016,
http://lhoaglund.com/behind-things-left-behind-ishiuchi-miyako/. Hoaglund directed Things Left Behind
(2012), a documentary film on Ishiuchi’s Hiroshima project and its exhibition at the UBC Museum of
Anthropology in Vancouver (2011–2012).

211
ILLUSTRATIONS

Introduction

Fig. I.1
Maruki Iri (1901–1995) and Maruki Toshiko (1912–2000)
From Pikadon (Tokyo: Potsudamu Shoten, 1950), unpaginated 12.8 x 18 cm

Fig. I.2
United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS)
Building 19: Sumitomo Bank Company, Hiroshima Branch
(260 meters from ground zero), November 20, 1945
International Center of Photography, New York (2006.1.411)
Illustrations
212

Fig. I.3
Top Left:
Bruce Conner (1933–2008)
A Movie, 1958
Still image from 16 mm film
http://www.criticalcommons.org/Members/ccManager/clips/bruceconneramovie50deinter
laced.mp4/view (Accessed January 8, 2016)

Top Right:
Andy Warhol (1928–1987)
Atomic Bomb, 1965, Silkscreen on Canvas
264 x 204.5 cm
Saatchi Gallery, London

Bottom:
James Rosenquist (b. 1933)
F-111, 1964-65
Oil on canvas with aluminum, twenty-three sections
304.8 x 2621.3 cm
Museum of Modern Art,
Gift of Mr. and Mrs. Alex L. Hillman and Lillie P. Bliss Bequest
Illustrations
213

Fig. I.4
Hosoe Eikoh (b. 1933)
Hijikata Tatsumi holding the “Rising Sun Flag” or military flag, 1967
From Hosoe Eikoh and Hijikata Tatsumi, Kamaitachi: Hosoe Eiko sakuhinshū (Tokyo:
Gendai shinchō-sha, 1969). Getty Research Institute, ID no. 2639-354

Fig. I.5
Tōmatsu Shōmei (1930–2012)
The Time Stopped at 11:02, 1945, Nagasaki, 1961 from Domon Ken and Hiroshima-
Nagasaki, Document 61, ed. The Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs
(Tokyo: Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, 1961), Getty Research
Institute, ID no. 2604-898
Illustrations
214

Fig. I.6
Maruki Iri (1901–1995) and Maruki Toshi (1912–2000)
1 Yūrei/Ghost, 1950, from Hiroshima Panels (1950–1982)
8-panel painting; ink on paper
180 x 720 cm

Fig. I.7
Maruki Iri (1901–1995) and Maruki Toshiko (1912–2000)
Cover for Pikadon (Tokyo: Potsudamu Shoten, 1950).
12.8 x 18 cm

Illustrations
215

Fig. I.8
Cover depicting a woman at the Hiroshima Peace Bridge designed by Isamu Noguchi
(1953) from Asahi gurafu/The Asahi Picture News, 56: 32 (August 6, 1952), h. 37 cm

Fig. I.9
Gensuiryoku heiwa riyō no shiori/Atoms for the Peace exhibition brochure
(Tokyo: United States Information Agency, 1955), h. 30 cm
The Hiroshima Municipal Archives
Illustrations
216
Chapter One

Fig. 1.1
“Ninki wo atsumeru kinenbi-ten” [Commemorative art exhibition gaining popularity].
Asahi Shimbun, Hiroshima edition, August 2, 1959, 12.

Illustrations
217

Fig. 1.2
View of the exhibition entrance (installation in progress), Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of
the Japanese: Art Exhibition in Commemoration of the 5
th
World Conference Against
Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, Asahi Kaikan, Hiroshima, August 1–7, 1959
Courtesy of Yamamura Shigeo

Illustrations
218

Fig. 1.3
Maruki Toshi (1912–2000)
Poster for the Fourth World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, 1958
The Hiroshima City Archives
Illustrations
219

Fig. 1.4

Awazu Kiyoshi (1929–2009)
Umi wo kaese [Give our sea back], 1955
Watercolor painting for poster, 72.8 × 103 cm
The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

Illustrations
220

Fig. 1.5
Left: Awazu Kiyoshi (1929–2009) and Sugiura Kōhei (b. 1932)
Poster for the Fifth World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, 1959
60 x 42.5 cm, The 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa

Right: Awazu’s cover illustration and Sugiura’s logo design for
Gensuikyō tsūshin/Bulletin of the Japan Council Against A & H-Bombs, no. 4 (June 25,
1959).

Illustrations
221

Fig. 1.6
Manabe Hiroshi (1932–2000) and Kuri Yōji (b. 1928) with text by Tanikawa Shuntarō (b.
1931) and Ibaragi Noriko (1926–2006) with Sekine Hiroshi (1920–1994) and
Kusuhara Giichi (b.1929), Yonaki no inuhito: Gensuibaku ga aru kagiri shinpashī wa
kienai! [Night-crying dog-man: Our sympasy won’t dissappear as long as nucmear
arms exist!], 1959; Reprinted in Shin Nihon bungaku/Nova Japana Literaturo, 15: 7
(July 1960): 6 and 8.

Illustrations
222

Fig. 1.7
Yamahata Yōsuke (1917–1966)
Left: Mother and boy holding rice balls
(used in Japanese presentation of The Family of Man)
Right: A boy holding a rice ball (used in The Family of Man)
Gelatin silver prints, August 10, 1945

Fig. 1.8
Illustrations
223
Installation of Yamahata Yōsuke’s Nagasaki photographs in The Family of Man,
Takashimaya Department Store, Tokyo, March 21–April 15, 1956.
Recreated by Kōno Takashi for Camera Mainichi, 3: 6 (June 1956): 67–68.

Fig. 1.9
Okamoto Tarō’s (1911–1996) speaking at the public lecture
Chūgoku Shimbun-sha Hall, Hiroshima, August 2, 1959
Courtesy of Yamamura Shigeo

Fig. 1.10
Hongō Shin (1905–1980)
Arashi no naka no boshi zō/Statue of Mother and Child in the Storm, 1953/1960
Bronze (based on a 1953 plaster sculpture included in Records of the Japanese)
h. 150 x w. 160 x d. 65 cm
Illustrations
224

Fig. 1.11
Awazu Kiyoshi, Installation view of Section One: “Archetype” from Nihonjin no
kiroku/Records of the Japanese, Asahi Kaikan, Hiroshima, August 1–7, 1959
Courtesy of Yamamura Shigeo

Fig. 1.12
Installation view, Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese, Asahi Kaikan, Hiroshima,
August 1–7, 1959
Courtesy of Yamamura Shigeo

Illustrations
225

Fig. 1.13
Installation view of Section Three: “Struggles and Prosecutions” from Nihonjin no
kiroku/Records of the Japanese, Asahi Kaikan Hall, Hiroshima, August 1–7, 1959
Courtesy of Yamamura Shigeo

Fig. 1.14
Itabashi Yoshio (1928–1995)
Shi no hai/Death Ashes, 1959
Poster for the Japan Council Against the Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs
Illustrations
226

Fig. 1.15 (Reference image)
Kawada Kikuji (b. 1933)
From “Gyokō” [Fishing Port], Chūō kōron/The Central View, 74: 12 (September 1959): 9.
Illustrations
227

Fig. 1.16
Installation view of Section Four: “For Tomorrow” from Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of
the Japanese, Asahi Kaikan Hall, Hiroshima, August 1–7, 1959
Courtesy of Yamamura Shigeo

Fig. 1.17
Kamekura Yūsaku (1915–1997), Genshi enerugī wo heiwa sangyō ni! (Atomic energy for
peace industry!), 1956, Poster (silkscreen), 103 × 72.8 cm
The National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo
Illustrations
228

Fig. 1.18
Domon Ken (1909–1990), Hiroshima (Tokyo: Kenko-sha, 1958)
Right: Getty Research Institute, ID no. 2598-451

Fig. 1.19 (reference image)
Domon Ken (1909–1990), “Atomic Bomb Survivor at the Red Cross Hospital” and “Mr.
and Mrs. Kotani: Two Who Have Suffered from the Bomb” (1957) from Hiroshima
(Tokyo: Kenkō-sha, 1958), 30–31 and 114–115.
Getty Research Institute, ID no. 2598-451

Illustrations
229

Fig. 1.20 (reference image)
Maruki Toshi(ko) (1912–2000)
Study for Hiroshima Panels, 1948

Fig. 1.21
Tsuruoka Masao (1907–1979)
Omoi te/Heavy Hands, 1949
Oil on canvas, 130 × 97 cm
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo

Illustrations
230

Fig. 1.22
Iwao Uchida (1900–1953)
Heiwa/La Paix, 1952
Oil on canvas, 90.8 × 73 cm
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

Fig. 1.23
Tōmatsu Shōmei (1930–2012)
“Untitled” from Memory of War, Toyokawa, Aichi, 1959
Gelatin silver print, original size unidentified (23.2 x 23.5 cm)
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Illustrations
231

Fig. 1.24
Nakamura Hiroshi (b. 1932)
Sunagawa No. 5, 1955
Oil on wood board, 92.5 x 183 cm
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo

Fig. 1.25 (reference image)
Tamura Shigeru (1906–1987)
Union strike at the Mitsukoshi Department Store, Shibuya, 1951
Gelatin silver print, original installation size unidentified (31 x 23.2 cm)
Kawasaki City Museum, Kawasaki
Illustrations
232

Left: Fig. 1.26
Awazu Kiyoshi (1929–2009) and Sugiura Kōhei (b. 1932)
Poster/brochure for Nihonjin no kiroku/Records of the Japanese: Art Exhibition in
Commemoration of the 5
th
World Conference Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, 1959
Courtesy of Yamamura Shigeo; Photo by the author

Right: Fig. 1.27
Tatehata Kakuzō (1919–2006)
Kaku/Nucleus, 1956
Cement and iron, 65 x 45 x 51 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, Wakayama

Illustrations
233

Fig. 1.28
Top Left: Awazu Kiyoshi (1929–2009) and Sugiura Kōhei (b. 1932), Book and slipcase
design, Hiroshima-Nagasaki, Document 1961, ed. The Japan Council Against Atomic
and Hydrogen Bombs (Tokyo: Japan Council Against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs,
1961).

From Top Right to Bottom: Page examples of Domon Ken (1909–1990), Tōmatsu
Shōmei (1930–2012), and Maruki Iri (1901–1995) and Maruki Toshi(ko) (1912–2000)
from Hiroshima-Nagasaki, Document 1961
Getty Research Institute, ID no. 2604-898

Illustrations
234
Chapter Two

Fig. 2.1
Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
Asu no shinwa/Myth of Tomorrow, 1968–1969
Acrylic on concrete and chrysotile panels, 550 x 3000 cm
Currently located at Shibuya Station, Tokyo
Illustrations
235

Fig. 2.2
Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
Detail of Myth of Tomorrow
With the label “Hiroshima Nagasaki,” 1980

Illustrations
236

Fig. 2.3
Left: Department of Defense. Department of the Air Force
At the time this photo was made, smoke billowed 20,000 feet above Hiroshima while
smoke from the bursting of the first atomic bomb had spread over 10,000 feet across the
target at the base of the rising column, Hiroshima, August 6, 1945
National Archives and Records Administration, ID: 542192

Left: Office for Emergency Management. Office of War Information. Overseas
Operations Branch. New York Office. News and Features Bureau
Mushroom clouds of the Atomic Bomb, Nagasaki, August 9, 1945
National Archives and Records Administration, ID: 535795

Illustrations
237

Fig. 2.4
Left: Mexico 2000 Plan drawing
from Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros (México: Poliforum Siqueiros, 1970)

Right: Polyforum Cultural Siqueiros (1964–1971) with Hotel de Mexico behind

Fig. 2.5
Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
Gotairiku/Five Continents, 1967/1993
Concrete with stucco
Urayasu Sports Park, Urayasu City, Chiba Prefecture

Illustrations
238

Fig. 2.6
Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
First study of Myth of Tomorrow, 1967
Infrared photography, 29 × 181.5 cm
Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum, Tokyo
http://www.taro-okamoto.or.jp/asunoshinwa.html
(Accessed November 18, 2014)

Fig. 2.7
Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
Left: Detail of Lucky Dragon 5 Incident from Myth of Tomorrow, 1968–1969

Right: Drawing for Moeru Hiro/Men Aflame, no. 27, 1955
Ink and pencil on paper, 39.4 x 27.4 cm
Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki

Illustrations
239

Fig. 2.8
Top: Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
Detail of “sculpted” skeleton from Myth of Tomorrow, 1968–1969
Photograph by the author

Bottom: David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974)
Right: Scene of “Future revolution”
From March of Humanity on Earth and Toward the Cosmos, 1964–1971
Interior mural, acrylic on asbestos and concrete with low-relief sculpture
Illustrations
240

Fig. 2.9
Tange Kenzō (1913–2005), Grand Roof
Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996), Tower of the Sun
Ferro-concrete with stucco
Japan World Exposition, Osaka, 1970

Illustrations
241

Fig. 2.10
Installation photographs of Okamoto Tarō seimei kūkan no dorama Tarō Bakuhatsu
Matsuzakaya Department Store, Ginza, June 14–26, 1968
Okamoto Archive, Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki
Illustrations
242

Fig. 2.11
Left: André Masson (1896–1987)
Cover design for Acéphale, no. 1, (June 24, 1936), h. 28 cm
Getty Research Institute, NX456.5.S8 A34

Right: Okamoto Tarō in front of Tower of the Sun, 1970

Illustrations
243

Fig. 2.12
Kimura Tsunehisa (1928–2008)
War, Destruction, Peace
Set of three photo-collages, Theme Pavilion, Japan World Exposition, 1970
Illustrations
244

Fig. 2.13
Top: Shirai Seiichi (1905–1983), Genbaku-dō/Temple Atomic Catastrophes, 1954-1955
Unrealized architecture plan and areial view

Bottom: Isamu Noguchi (1904–1988), Memorial for the Dead of Hiroshima, 1952/1991
Unrealized monument, 1/5 model
Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art

Illustrations
245

Fig. 2.14
Tower of the Sun with searchlights
Japan World Exposition, 1970

Illustrations
246

Fig. 2.15
Kōno Takashi (1906–1999)
Design for Kanashimi no tō/Tower of Sorrow and Yorokobi no tō/Tower of Happiness
Japanese Government Pavilion, Japan World Exposition, 1970
A pair of tapestries, 920 x 1920 cm each

Bottom: Flat view of Kanashimi no tō/Tower of Sorrow

Illustrations
247

Fig. 2.16
Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
“Genshiryoku ban’nō jidai” [An era of omnipotent nuclear energy]
Illustration and article for Mainichi Shimbun [Mainichi newspaper], January 4, 1955, 8.

Illustrations
248

Fig. 2.17
Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
Taiyō no shinwa/Myth of the Sun, 1952
Mosaic tiles, 180 x 240 cm
Collection of Daiwa Securities Group

Illustrations
249

Fig. 2.18
David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974)
Left: Explosion in the City, ca. 1935-1945
Pyroxylin on pressed wood, 121 x 91 cm
Instituto Naciona de Bellas Artes y Literatura/Museo de Arte Carrillo Gil, Mexico City

Right: The Explosion of Hiroshima, 1955
Pyroxylin on Masonite, 76.5 x 60 cm
Collection of Pascual Guiérrez Roldán, Mexico

Illustrations
250

Fig. 2.19
Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
Moeru hito/Men Aflame, 1956
Oil on canvas, 212.5 × 308.5 cm
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

Illustrations
251

Fig. 2.20
Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
Book cover for Ōta Yōko, Han-ningen [Half human] (Tokyo: Kodan-sha, 1954).

Illustrations
252

Fig. 2.21
Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
On’na to tori [A Woman and a Bird], 1955
From Yomiuri Shimbun [Yomiuri newspaper], evening edition, August 28, 1955, 1.

Illustrations
253

Fig. 2.22
Okamoto Tarō (1911–1996)
Jūkōgyō/Heavy Industry, 1949
Oil on canvas, 116.7 x 266.7 cm
Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki

Illustrations
254

Fig. 2.23
Okamoto Tarō
Aozora/Blue Sky, 1954
Oil on canvas, 162 x 226 cm
Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki

Fig. 2.24
David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896–1974)
América Tropical, 1932
Computer colorized rendering of the mural (fresco applied with airgun on cement)
500 x 3000 m
El Pueblo de Los Angeles Historical Monument
© Luis Garza. Courtesy of the Autry National Center
http://theautry.org/exhibitions/siqueiros (Accessed November 18, 2014)

Illustrations
255
Chapter Three

Fig. 3.1
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Hiroshima no kaseki/Fossil in Hiroshima—Souvenir of Molt, 1960–1970
Plastic, polyester, resin, metal, key ring, dry cotton, plastic box, 2.5 x 12 x 4.5 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, Toyama

Illustrations
256

Fig. 3.2
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Anata no shōzō/Your Portrait, 1964
Beach chair, cotton, plastic, polyester, electrical diagrams, resin, bathing suit, magazine
120 x 80 x 150 cm
The Aomori Museum of Art

Illustrations
257

Fig. 3.3
Top: Hijikata Tatsumi (1928–1986)
From Hijikata Tatsumi to nihonjin: Nikutai no hanran (Hijikata Tatsumi and the
Japanese: Revolt of the Flesh), The Nihon seinen kan Hall, Tokyo, 1968

Bottom Left: Miki Tomio (1937–1978)
Mimi (Ear), 1965,
Aluminum alloy, 22 x 175 x 40 cm
The National Museum of Art, Tokyo

Bottom Right: Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929)
Accumulation No. 1. 1962
Sewn stuffed fabric, paint, and chair fringe, 94 x 99.1 x 109.2 cm
The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Illustrations
258

Fig. 3.4
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Zōshokusei rensa han’nō B/Proliferating Chain Reaction B
From Yomiuri Shimbun [Yomiuri newspaper], evening edition, March 2, 1960, 1.

Illustrations
259

Fig. 3.5
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Heimen junkantai ni okeru zōshokusei rensa han’nō/Proliferous Chain Reaction in Plane
Circulation Substance, 1958, oil on wood panel, 151.8 x 152.0 cm
Hara Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo

Illustrations
260

Fig. 3.6
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Heimen junkantai ni okeru yūgō han’nō/Confluent Reaction in Plane Circulation
Substance, 1958–59, Iron frame with strings, vinyl tubes, cotton gloves, enamel paint,
170 x 185.8 x 60 cm
Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo

Illustrations
261

Fig. 3.7
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Top: Seishin ni okeru ryūdō to sono gyōshūsei/The Flowing Movement and Its
Condensation in Mind, 1958, Watercolor on cotton, 260 x 275 cm
Aomori Museum of Art, Aomori

Bottom: Installation view of solo exhibition at Bungei Shunjū Gallery, Tokyo, 1961
With Inpo tetsugaku/Philosophy of Impotence, 1960–1961 (front and left wall);
Kanzenjunkantai ni okeru zōshokusei rensa han’nō/Proliferous Chain Reaction in
Complete Circulation Substance, 1960 (behind); Junkan tainai de kasoku sareta
zōshokusei rensa han’nō/Accelerated and Pressurized Proliferating Chain Reaction in
Circulation Substance, 1959 (right wall). Photo by Watanabe Nobuhiko
Illustrations
262

Fig. 3.8
Electrically Operated Model of Nuclear Chain Reaction
Reproduced in “Semaru genshiryoku heiwa riyou hakurankai” [The Atoms for Peace
Exhibition approaching], Yomiuri Shimbun [Yomiuri newspaper], October 26, 1955, 10.

Illustrations
263

Fig. 3.9
Top Left: Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990) and Kudō Hiroko (b. 1934) distribute Instant
Sperm at Workshop de la Libre Expression at the Centre Americain des Artistes
Paris, May 26, 1964

Top Right: Example of distributed Instant Sperm, 1966
Latex, fabric, and plastic
Bottom: Instant Sperm, 1962
Suitcase, latex, ink on paper, wax, 34 x 26.5 x 13
The National Museum of Art, Osaka
Illustrations
264

Fig. 3.10
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Inpo tetsugaku, Inpo bunpuzu to sono hōwa bubun ni okeru hogo dōmu no
hassei/Philosophy of Impotence or Distribution Map of Impotence and the Appearance of
Protective Domes at the Points of Saturation, 1961-62
At the 14th Yomiuri Independent Exhibition, Tokyo Metropolitan Art Museum, 1962
Plastic bowls, paper, cotton, plastic polyester, duct tape, light bulbs, string, magazine
pages, installation, dimensions variable
Illustrations
265

Fig. 3.11
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Happening at Boulogne Film Studio, Paris, 1963 from Allan Kaprow’s Assemblage,
Environments & Happenings (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1966), 236.

Fig. 3.12
Left: Yoshioka Yasuhiro (1934–2002), Installation detail of Kudō Tetsumi’s Philosophy
of Impotence at the 14th Yomiuri Independent, 1962

Right: Current configuration, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis
Illustrations
266

Fig. 3.13 (Images cannot be shared)
Magazine pages in polyethylene bags
Taken from Philosophy of Impotence
Kudō Tetsumi Papers, The Aomori Museum of Art
Photos by the Author

Fig. 3.14
Yoshioka Yasuhiro (1934–2002), Installation detail of Philosophy of Impotence, 1962

Illustrations
267

Fig. 3.15
Akasegawa Genpei (1937–2014)
From “Gendai kōgaikō” [Thoughts on contemporary
environmental pollution], Gendai no me, no. 11 (November 1970): 147.

Illustrations
268

Fig. 3.16
Akasegawa Genpei (1937–2014)
From “Gendai kōgaikō” [Thoughts on contemporary
environmental pollution], Gendai no me, no. 11 (November 1970): 148–149.

Illustrations
269

Fig. 3.17
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Denshikairo no naka ni okeru hōshanō niyoru yōshoku/ Cultivation by Radioactivity in
the Electronic Circuit, 1970
Plastic bowl, wood, cotton, plastic, polyester, artificial hair, electrical diagrams, artificial
soil, toy mouse, transistors, paint), 25 x D. 48 cm
Aomori Museum of Art, Aomori

Illustrations
270

Fig. 3.18
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Kankyō osen–Yōshoku–Atarashii ekorojī/Pollution–Cultivation–New Ecology, 1971
Metal, plywood, hardboard, cotton, plastic, polyester, plastic flowers, black light,
artificial hair, wire mesh, light bulbs, string, placard with text,
270 x 430 x 527 cm
Center Pompidou, Paris

Illustrations
271

Fig. 3.19
Yoshida Toshio, “Fūkei shirīzu 4: Machikado no obuje [Landscape series 4: Object on a
street corner] featuring Kudō Tesumi’s Wakai sedai e no sanka—Mayu wa hiraku/
Homage to the Young Generation—The Cocoon Opens (1968) in front of Shinjuku
Station, Shūkan Yomiuri/The Yomiuri Weekly, 28: 42 (September 19, 1969): 74–75.

Illustrations
272

Fig. 3.20
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Dappi no kinenhi/Monument of Metamorphosis, 1969
Mt. Nokogiri, Chiba Prefecture, Japan

Left: Yoshioka Yasuhiro (1934–2002)
Right: Harry Shunk (1924–2006) and János Kender (1938–2009)
Harry Shunk and Shunk-Kender Photographs
Getty Research Institute, 2014.R.20

Fig. 3.21
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Fossil in Hiroshima, 1960–1970
Illustrations
273

Fig. 3.22
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Hiroshima no kaseki 1945-nen 8-gatsu 8-nichi 8-ji 15-fun Kudō no rinkō/Fossil in
Hiroshima 8:15 - 8. Aug. 1945 Phosphorescence Kudō, 1973
Watch, artificial hair, glasses, dry cotton, polyester, resin, plastic, box, 19 x 49 x 5.5 cm
Private Collection

Illustrations
274

Fig. 3.23
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
‘Dappi’ no kinenhin, homo sapiens 1965 Pari/
Souvenir of Molt—Homo Sapiens 1965 Paris, 1965
Wood, cotton, plastic, polyester, paint, 140 x 40 cm
Aomori Museum of Art, Aomori
Illustrations
275

Fig. 3.24
Kudō Tetsumi (1935–1990)
Hiroshima no kaseki/Fossil in Hiroshima 2 & 3, 1976
Embossing, spray paint on paper, fishing lure, series of four drawings, 66 x 50 cm each
Takamatsu City Museum of Art

Illustrations
276
Chapter Four

Fig. 4.1
Chim↑Pom (active 2005–)
Making the Sky of Hiroshima ‘PIKA’!, 2008
Photograph by Cacus Nakao

Illustrations
277

Fig. 4.2
Chim↑Pom (active 2005–)
Installation view of Real Thousand Cranes, 2008–
FRP, feathers, origami, prayer plates, etc.
Hiroshima! at VACANT, Tokyo, March 20–22, 2009

Illustrations
278

Fig. 4.3
Chim↑Pom (active 2005–)
Untitled, 2009
Pencil and colored pencil on paper, 31.2 x 20.1 cm
Drawing of Chugoku Chimbun article (October 22, 2008, 29) reporting Making the Sky of
Hiroshima ‘PIKA’!, with a photograph of the skywriting taken by “anonymous reader”
from Nishi-ku, Hiroshima, October 21, 2008, 11:20 a.m.

Illustrations
279

Fig. 4.4
Chim↑Pom group portrait, from Super Rat, 2006
Still from video (2’ 28”)

Illustrations
280

Fig. 4.5 (Images cannot be shared)
Installation views of Superflat at MOCA Pacific Design Center
Curated by Takashi Murakami (b. 1962)
MOCA Pacific Design Center, Los Angeles, January 14–May 27, 2001

Illustrations
281

Fig. 4.6
Installation view of Yanobe Kenji’s Atom Suite Project at Little Boy
Curated by Takashi Murakami, Japan Society, NY, April 8–July 24, 2005

Fig. 4.7
Installation view of Godzilla and Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution at Little Boy,
Curated by Takashi Murakami, Japan Society, NY, April 8–July 24, 2005
Illustrations
282

Fig. 4.8
Aida Makoto (b. 1965)
The video of a man calling himself Bin Laden staying in Japan, 2005
Still from video (8’ 14”)

Fig. 4.9
Aida Makoto (b. 1965)
Utsukushii hata/Beautiful Flags (1995) from Series War Picture Returns
Acrylic, color, glue, and charcoal on sliding doors assembled as a pair of 2-panel screens,
174 x 170 cm each
Takahashi Collection, Tokyo
Illustrations
283

Fig. 4.10
Aida Makoto (b. 1965)
Dai shirazu/No One Knows the Title (1996) from Series War Picture Returns
Enamel, vinyl tablcloth on sliding doors assembled as a four-panel screen
178.4 x 272.4 cm, Private Collection

Fig. 4.11
Chim↑Pom (active 2005–)
Super Rat, 2006
Mixed media installation (diorama detail, C-print, and video still)

Illustrations
284

Fig. 4.12
Chim↑Pom (active 2005–)
From Black of Death, 2007
Lambda print, 117.5 x 78.5 cm

Fig. 4.13
Chim↑Pom (active 2005–)
Black of Death, 2007
Segment of the National Diet Building, still from video (9’ 13”)
Illustrations
285

Fig. 4.14
Chim↑Pom (active 2005–)
Installation views of Becoming friend, Eating each other or Falling down together
Hiromi Yoshii Gallery, Tokyo
August 9–30, 2008

Illustrations
286

Fig. 4.15
Top Left: Takashi Murakami (b. 1962)
Time Bokan-Pink, 2001
Acrylic on canvas, 180 x 180 cm

Top Right:
The mushroom cloud of “Little Boy over Hiroshima, August 6, 1945
U.S. National Archives [RG 77-AEC]

Bottom:
Mushroom cloud from the Operation Castle “Bravo” nuclear explosion in the Bikini Atoll,
Marshall Islands, March 1, 1954
US Air Force

Illustrations
287

Fig. 4.16
Takashi Murakami (b. 1962)
Eco Eco Rangers Earth Force (2005) as Little Boy exhibition banner
Japan Society, NY, 2005

Fig. 4.17
Chim↑Pom (active 2005–)
Real Thousand Cranes, 2008 –, from Hiroshima!!!!!
The Japan Bank’s former Hiroshima branch, Hiroshima, December 8–17, 2013

Illustrations
288

Fig. 4.18
Chim↑Pom (active 2005–)
LEVEL7 feat. “Myth of Tomorrow,” 2011
Still from video (6’ 35”)

Fig. 4.19
Chim↑Pom (active 2005–)
LEVEL7 feat. “Myth of Tomorrow,” 2011
Detail; acrylic and paper on PVC panel, 200 x 84 cm
Illustrations
289

Fig. 4.20
Chim↑Pom (active 2005–)
Red Card, 2009
A pair of Lambda prints, 69 x 85 x 32 x 40 cm

Illustrations
290

Fig. 4.21
Real Times, April 11, 2011
Stills from video (11’ 11”)

Illustrations
291

Fig. 4.22
Chim↑Pom (active 2005–)
Never Give Up, 2011
Calligraphy by Tsuboi Sunao, destroyed frame from Fukushima
39.7 x 47.3 cm

Fig. 4.23
Cai Guo-Qiang (b. 1957)
Black Fireworks: Project for Hiroshima, 2008
Black smoke shells
Realized at Motomachi Riverside Park near the Atomic Bomb Dome, Hiroshima
October 25, 2008, 1 P.M. 60 seconds
Commissioned by the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art
Illustrations
292
Epilogue

Fig. E.1
Ishiuchi Miyako (b. 1947)
ひろしま/hiroshima #9 (Ogawa Ritsu), 2007
Chromogenic Print
187 x 120 cm

Illustrations
293

Fig. E.2
Domon Ken (1909–1990)
From Hiroshima (Tokyo: Kenko-sha, 1958), 122 and 123.
Getty Research Institute, ID no. 2598-451

294
BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Adriasola Muñoz, Ignacio. “Melancholy Sites: The Affective Politics of Marginality in
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Newspapers, Periodicals, and Webblogs Consulted (Authors anonymous)
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Chugoku Shimbun
Le Monde
Mainichi Shimbun
Nihon Keizai Shimbun
Yomiuri Shimbun

Gensuikyō tsūshin/Bulletin of the Japan Council Against A & H-Bombs
2-Channel

Archives Consulted
Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles
Doheny Research Library, University of Southern California
Hiroshima Municipal Archives
Keio University Art Center, Tokyo
Kudō Tetsumi Papers, The Aomori Museum of Art
National Security Archive at The George Washington University
National Archives and Records Administration
National Diet Library, Tokyo, and its Newspaper Reading Room
Taro Okamoto Museum of Art, Kawasaki
Tetsumi Kudō Papers from the Yomiuri Independent to Pompidou Center and Nakamura
Library, Museum of Contemporary Art, Tokyo
Kaidō Hideo papers
Yamamura Shigeo papers

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Core Title Walking out of ground zero: art and the aftereffects of the atomic bombs in postwar Japan

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