Photo/Illutration The newly restored artwork “Ghosts” is returned on July 19 to the Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels in Higashi-Matsuyama, Saitama Prefecture. (Shota Tomonaga)

It looked like a scene from a battle, according to the husband and wife artists who created “The Hiroshima Panels.”

The panels are a 15-part set of paintings on “washi” paper using “sumi” ink and colors that depict the city’s devastation after the atomic bombing.

When the wife, Toshi Maruki (1912-2000), depicted a person, her husband, Iri (1901-1995), often splashed black ink over the portrait, saying, “It is too real.” Toshi would then have to rework it.

The couple completed “Ghost,” the first of the 15 works, in 1950.

“It was like a hell, a procession of ghosts, a sea of fire,” they wrote that same year. “Since there was no demon to be seen, I realized it was happening in this world.”

Several days after Hiroshima was destroyed by an atomic bomb, the artist couple visited the city.

When they exhibited the works, however, visitors initially criticized the couple for their “exaggerations,” with some saying, “Why are people naked?”

At that time, most Japanese knew nothing about the horrors of the nuclear devastation due to strict restrictions on reporting on the matter imposed by the General Headquarters, the administrative body for the Allied occupation of Japan after the end of World War II.

Infuriated by such remarks, one survivor of the atomic bombing reportedly retorted: “Exaggeration? What do you mean? My daughter’s dead body was like a charred fish.”

After witnesses of the ravages said matters had been much worse than the couple had depicted and urged them to make more paintings on the consequences of the atomic bombing, the Marukis ended up making 15 painted panels.

The couple’s series of works have since become considered as one of the best graphic representations of the reality of the aftermath of the atomic bombings in 1945.

The work to restore Panel (I), “Ghost,” which had deteriorated over many years, was completed this summer. I recently stood in front of the restored work at the Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels in Saitama Prefecture.

The extraordinary power of the painting kept my eyes glued to it, even though it was painful to view. I looked for words to describe the painting, but the work ordered me to let it be burned into my heart first.

As I held a silent dialogue with it, my thoughts went back and forth between the past and the present. Of all the official documents the Group of Seven leading democracies produced during their meeting in Hiroshima in May, only one bearing Hiroshima in its title the G-7 leaders issued argued for nuclear deterrence.

It seems they failed to realize the real cruelty of nuclear weapons.

As I moved to see Panel (III), “Water,” I found a pile of dead bodies before they were cremated. From among the legs piled up, one eye stared back at me. The eye seemed to pierce into the grim reality of today’s world, saying, “Ah, you have yet to abandon nuclear weapons.”

--The Asahi Shimbun, Aug. 6

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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