Hiroshima Appeals 2018
Comment from Designer
Hiroshima appeals. What appeals could I raise with the poster I have been working to create? This seemed both obvious and self-evident, while also seeming like an unsolvable problem. As I came into contact with the materials left behind I was bowled over by Hiroshima and the atomic bomb, which is something I should have already known about. I have neither the qualifications nor the capability to speak for Hiroshima. I began by first becoming self-aware of this fact.
Seventy-three years have passed since the day when an atomic mushroom cloud rose up into the sky over Hiroshima. What I depicted with my poster was how things stand in the world of 2018, where various problems still remain unsolved and numerous questions are left suspended in midair.
Perhaps it is out of fear that I will be laughed at as people wonder what appeal I was trying to raise with this poster of a happy-go-lucky question mark-shaped cloud that I am writing this composition that reads like an excuse. Yet separate from the end result of the poster, in some way I feel as if there has been some small significance in this personal experience of thinking about Hiroshima. I want to believe that, by each of us continuing to ponder the questions raised by Hiroshima, we will be able to find something that we are currently still unable to see.
Hiroshima Appeals Poster Campaign
In 1983, the Japan Graphic Designers Association Inc. (JAGDA) and the Hiroshima International Cultural Foundation announced their collaboration on a project focusing on the theme “Hiroshima’s Spirit” and launched a poster campaign with the goal of promoting peace at home and abroad. The first poster, entitled “Burning Butterflies”, was created by Yusaku Kamekura, the president of JAGDA at the time. Designers affiliated with JAGDA produce one poster each year.
The posters are sold to the general public and exhibited in a nationwide tour called the “Peace Poster Exhibition”. Posters in the series have engaged citizens around the world, displayed in the Atomic Bomb Exhibition preceding to the historic 1985 Geneva Summit, and the exhibition entitled “Hiroshima: A Message for Peace among People” held in Barcelona and Valencia in Spain, and Aosta in Italy in 1997. The 2008 poster was sent to several member cities whose mayors are members of the international group Mayors for Peace. The “Hiroshima Appeals” project, conducted annually from 1983 till 1991, was reinstated in 2005 to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of World War II.
Designers: 1983 Yusaku Kamekura; 1984 Kiyoshi Awazu; 1985 Shigeo Fukuda; 1986 Yoshio Hayakawa; 1987 Kazumasa Nagai; 1988 Ikko Tanaka; 1989 Mitsuo Katsui; 1990 Eiko Ishioka; 2005 Masayoshi Nakajo; 2006 Koichi Sato; 2007 Shin Matsunaga; 2008 Masuteru Aoba; 2009 Katsumi Asaba; 2010 Keisuke Nagatomo; 2011 Susumu Endo; 2012 Yukimasa Okumura; 2013 Kaoru Kasai; 2014 Tsuguya Inoue; 2015 Taku Satoh; 2016 Takahisa Kamijyo; 2017 Kenya Hara; 2018 Kazunari Hattori