The Hiroshima Panels

- Archita

The phenomenal 15 slide panels of paintings and haunting artwork of the reality of the world in which we live by Toshi Maruki and Iri Maruki, the married couple for 32 years between 1950 to 1982, showed the extremism of any kind of war, be it nuclear or chemical. The human sufferings and the inhuman torture that were forced upon the common people of Hiroshima on 6th August, 1945, were shown vividly in the panels. 

The couple, Toshi and Iri, were both trained in traditional Japanese artwork (nihonga) and art style. They travelled to Hiroshima (Iri's hometown) after the devastation. What they witnessed and experienced was beyond human imagination. Words would be insufficient to describe the infinite horrors of the surroundings. Melted down bodies roaming around, people with melted skin screaming and crying from suffering from sins that they did not commit. Suffering from radiation sickness, burns, deaths, mothers carrying dead children, lovers dying embracing each other and many other horrors of the same kind. 

Their artwork, the 15 large folding screens (byōbu), was painted in black ink and watercolour. It showed a style which was a blend, or rather a combination, of traditional Japanese brush technologies with modern-day expressive art. Each panel, being 1.8 metres high and several metres wide, gave the paintings a monumental presence and made them comprehensible. It conveyed the exact violence they witnessed and experienced. All the sufferings were prominently shown on the screens. The panels further expanded to show the devastations and horrors of the Nagasaki massacre as well, and even the Auschwitz concentration camps, the Okinawa battle and the Minamata mercury poisoning. Even though the panels were hauntingly monochrome, they were adorned with red brush strokes that represented blood, flames and fumes. 

The paintings concluded and challenged the audience not only to mourn but to be aware of the consequences of war, be it nuclear or chemical or any type of war. 

The Maruki couple were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize (1995) for their mesmerising yet shockingly haunting artwork of the reality of the world, where we live and will be living in the future.