Survivor
On the right, Shikoku employs washes of grey and black ink to suggest the burnt ruins of his hometown, with a lone weeping figure that he would use again in Atomic Bomb Poems. On the facing page, Shikoku paints his brother as he remembered him: a young and healthy student in his school uniform. The text on the bottom half is a poem that Shikoku wrote in memory of his brother: “I kick away at the black earth/my dead brother won’t be coming back. . . Green sprouts coming up from the scorched earth/keep growing!/Silent black earth!/People who will never come back!/Brother!/Bite, bite deep into/my heart/into the hearts of everyone on earth.” During the Asia-Pacific War, young people experienced the loss of friends, soldiers, and family in numbers that many of us now cannot imagine. Nonetheless, Shikoku especially poured his grief and love for his brother into these poems and portraits that he intended as memorial.