For These Japanese Artists, Hiroshima’s Leveling Was Their Greatest Tragedy—And Inspiration

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Iri and Toshi Maruki’s Hiroshima Panels were among the first works to depict human sorrow in the aftermath of the atomic bomb.

Iri and Toshi Maruki, two Japanese painters, wanted the world to know what had occurred in Hiroshima. Buildings on fire, bodies burned like kindling, and a thick cloud of flies and smoke in the air. Only paint, at first as three collaborative murals, then two more, and so on, as their dedication to sharing firsthand experiences increased. The Hiroshima Panels, or simply The Hiroshima Panels, were the first pieces of art to depict human suffering in the aftermath of the world’s first-ever deployed atomic bomb, which is believed to have killed an estimated 140,000 Japanese on and after August 6, 1945.

Details of the Hiroshima bombing, as well as those in Nagasaki three days later, were kept secret by the US government. This continued in occupied Japan, where the press was controlled by the Americans. Unlike many in Japan, however, the Marukis—a husband-and-wife pacifist couple—had personally seen the nuclear fallout when racing to Hiroshima to save family days after the bombing. The streets were filled with “the smell of death,” as Iri Maruki said in Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima, a 1986 documentary about their job. He said, “Many individuals perished without understanding what had occurred.” “They must have believed the earth had split open,” says the narrator.

Fearing communal forgetfulness, the Marukis started painting reimaginings of their experiences, and by 1950, they had produced three multi-segment pieces. Fire (featured on these pages) depicts a fire engulfing crowds of people; Ghosts and Water, its siblings, follow victims as they stumble through the streets and seek shelter in a river. These images of Hiroshima’s dead and dying were for many Japanese the first portrayals of what had happened on that terrible day.

After the Allied occupation ended in 1952, the Marukis maintained the theme. Their increasing collection of work increased awareness of the disaster both in Japan and overseas, but it also drew condemnation from Japanese war victims. These discussions led the artists to renew their dedication to portraying war as the world’s ultimate evil, not only nuclear conflict. The Marukis had gone on to paint many more historic atrocities, including those perpetrated by Japan, by the time they revealed the 15th and final Hiroshima Panel in 1982.

“Glass shards pierced bellies/arms and legs were lost/people fell and were taken by the fire,” writes Iri and Toshi Maruki in their poem “Fire,” which can be seen above and below. (For the Hiroshima Panels, Maruki Gallery)

Iri Maruki (1901-1995), a traditional Japanese ink painter, brought darkness and depth to Toshi Maruki’s (1912-2000) harsh but beautiful images. (For the Hiroshima Panels, Maruki Gallery)

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For These Japanese Artists, Hiroshima’s Leveling Was Their Greatest Tragedy—And Inspiration

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