A-Bomb Dome with Our Poems Circle Members
1 media/abomb_dome_photo_thumb.JPG 2019-08-20T18:52:39+00:00 Maxwell Mitchell 5fec7a6574d32fe574c01ba927cd57c749ceca69 13 1 Our Poems Circle members in front of Hiroshima A-bomb dome, ca. 1951. Shikoku Gorō is first row, second from left, and Tōge Sankichi behind him. plain 2019-08-20T18:52:39+00:00 TBD TBD TBD TBD TBD Maxwell Mitchell 5fec7a6574d32fe574c01ba927cd57c749ceca69This page is referenced by:
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In 1951, with Cold War tensions rising as the superpower nuclear arms race accelerated, U.S. Occupation and Japanese authorities were on the watch for publications about the atom bombings that could be construed as criticism of the Occupation or sympathy for the Soviet foe. That didn’t deter the Hiroshima artists from locally publishing this book with the bold title Atom Bomb Poetry Collection. Anxiety that the brutal war in neighboring Korea might turn into a nuclear World War III was one reason for their urgency. Hiroshima readers were attracted by the name of admired local hibakusha poet Tōge Sankichi on the cover; progressive literary critics in Tokyo sensed in the cover design an expression with their concerns about the nuclearized world’s perilous course. The book was later published by a mainstream publisher and has remained in print ever since. What forces lead to the unlikely publication of this book? Who was involved? Why was the book so controversial in its day? How did it become a classic?
Although Tōge Sankichi’s name is the only one on the cover, the poet would have been the first to admit that that Atom Bomb Poetry resulted from his collaboration with a diverse network of people. Artist and Army vet Shikoku Gorō designed the cover and illustrations. Tōge and Shikoku’s shared commitment to using art to better society had developed as part of their involvement in Our Poems Circle, the group of young local aspiring poets & poets pictured here.
This famous Hiroshima circle constituted a node in a nationwide grassroots movement of “democratic culture” that evolved as part of post-war democracy. During the late 1940s and 1950s, civically-engaged cultural circles cropped up in communities throughout Japan. They had in common (1) democratic cultural formations that were inclusive and egalitarian, and rejected the hierarchy of the elite literary and art establishments; (2) practice centering on action in public space and mobile means of expressive arts, such as books, journals, plays, poetry readings, and street art, and (3) sustainability through fluid formation and dissolution, along with resilience in shifting political, media, historical, and aesthetic environments.
- 1 2019-08-26T17:32:35+00:00 Hiroshima Dome 3 plain 2020-05-19T14:02:04+00:00 Shikoku Gorō would return to the Peace Park to sketch and paint the A-bomb Dome repeatedly throughout his lifetime. This site of memory rested over the bones of the dead from wartime, and was close to the hypocenter where the Hiroshima bomb marked the start of the nuclear age. The Dome also signified to Shikoku this period of struggle and creativity with Our Poems during his youth, an experience that fueled his imagination and political commitment for forty years.