Yumi Kim Takenaka, “The Family of Man in Japan: A Photographic Exhibition for World Peace and Atomic Culture in the 1950s”
Abstract
The ambitious exhibition The Family of Man, which made the popular culture of press photography an American modern art, is well known for touring around fifty countries during the Cold War and attracting nine million people. As a path-breaking case of the globalization of art exhibitions, historical studies on its reception in each country are ongoing. This paper reconsidered the Japan tour of The Family of Man between 1956 and 1957. It is noteworthy that it attracted one million visitors in a country and that the immediate removal of some photographs of the atomic bombing on Nagasaki, which were specially added to the installation, caused controversy. This paper investigated the press and criticisms on the removal and characterized the reception of The Family of Man in Japan: it was in cultural tensions between the aspirations for nuclear energy and the fears of nuclear disaster in the 1950s.
Keywords
history of photography, Exhibition studies, Globalization of art, Censorship, Atomic bombing photographs, Atoms for Peace campaign
1. Introduction
The large-scale photographic exhibition The Family of Man, which was organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MoMA) in 1955, made the popular culture of press photography an American modern art through the aesthetics of display. The exhibition that celebrated world peace left its mark on the history of photography not only in the U.S. but also in many countries around the world, because it toured 48 countries with the support of the United States Information Agency (USIA) and attracted nine million visitors globally during the Cold War. It also toured in Japan where more than one million visitors came to view this American exhibition. In spite of the large amount of previous studies on The Family of Man, the touring of this exhibition in Japan that attracted one-ninth of the total number of visitors in the whole world has not received much attention internationally. Why was it able to attract so many visitors in Japan? What was the special meaning of the exhibition traveling to Japan? While the Japan tour of The Family of Man was touring and welcomed across Japan between 1956 and 1957, a controversial incident occurred shortly after its opening at the first venue in Tokyo. That is, some photographs of the aftermath of the atomic bombing on Nagasaki, which had been specially added to the installation by the Japanese executive committee, were removed from the venue by the organizer of The Family of Man. Although the elimination of them was not noticeable in subsequent tours through Japan, I suppose that it indicates an essential issue of the reception process of The Family of Man in Japan.
In this paper, I will investigate the press and criticisms on this elimination and will characterize this incident as the collision in some cultural contexts of Japan in the 1950s. First, these criticisms must also be seen in relation to the growth of the photographic medium in the 1950s. There was a boom of photography and photographic journals which occurred alongside with the rapid development of the Japanese camera industry after the World War II. Second, the atomic bombing photographs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which had been censored by General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP) during the occupation period were released to the public in 1952. And the radiation exposure of an experimental U.S. hydrogen bomb explosion was a big social issue in 1954. Third, there was another exhibition supported by USIA, Atoms For Peace, which also started its Japan tour in 1955 and attracted even more visitors than The Family of Man. The purpose of this paper is to show that the Japan tour of The Family of Man should be reconsidered as an event in the ambivalent atomic culture that was driven by an antagonism between the anti-nuclear weapons movement and the positive attitude towards nuclear energy development.
2. The Diplomatic Aspect of The Family of Man
The Family of Man was a monumental photo exhibition curated by Edward Steichen in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of MoMA in 1955. It was a large-scale installation work, in which 503 pictures by 273 photographers were structured three-dimensionally in about 40 sections depicting human life, such as marriage, childbirth, child raising, work, entertainment, hard times, war, death, and so on. Juxtaposing countries, races, religions, and cultures, Steichen presented a grand theme: “the essential oneness of mankind throughout the world.”[1] Following a tour in the U.S., the exhibition then toured 48 countries between 1955 and 1962. As it attracted a mass audience, however, it encountered unfavorable reactions to “pictures touching traditional taboos, such as childbirth, pregnancy, sex and love”[2] and severe criticisms, including the naive humanism of its theme, Steichen’s assertive curation that ignored the original context of the photographs and the photographers’ intentions.[3] Likewise, the political aspects of this exhibition, devoted to world peace, were discussed because of the world tour of The Family of Man was being conducted under the auspices of USIA (known abroad as the United States Information Service [USIS]), which was established as a foreign affairs agency for public relations activities abroad in 1953 and was abolished in 1999.[4] Eric Sandeen discussed in his foundational study on The Family of Man that the show held in Moscow played an important role as a form of the U.S. cultural diplomacy during the Cold War.[5] Previous to this paper, I argued that the Clervaux Castle in Luxembourg, where The Family of Man has been exhibited permanently since 1995, preserves the memory of the battle of World War II which had destroyed the castle, rather than celebrating peace in Europe after the end of the Cold War.[6] And at an international conference, “The Family of Man in the 21st century,” held at Clervaux Castle in 2015, some presented papers investigated the reception of the show in Germany from new perspectives.[7]
Like with the Soviet Union and Germany, diplomatic relations with Japan were high on the agenda of the post-war U.S. In fact, the Japan tour of The Family of Man between 1956 and 1957 attracted over one million people, and so, it is remembered as the most influential exhibition of the U.S. in the history of Japanese photography. However, it has not been sufficiently discussed that some photographs of the atomic bombing on Nagasaki were added and showed only to the exhibition in Tokyo, and that they were removed soon after its opening. It is obviously not only a question about curatorial choices; it is actually a question that has political as well as foreign policy implications. The initial inclusion and the subsequent withdrawal of these images further suggest the collision around the representations of atomic bombing apparent at the time. In order to illuminate the collision, we need to start by understanding how the Japan tour of The Family of Man was organized and why the atomic bombing photographs were added to the show and then to consider the reasons and the reactions for the removal relative to the curatorial concept of the original exhibition at MoMA and to the social, political, and cultural context of Japan in the 1950s.
3. The Family of Man in Tokyo
According to the exhibition catalogue of The Family of Man in Japan, the Japan tour was promoted by MoMA, USIS and Nihon Keizai Shimbun, a major financial newspaper. In addition to the executive chairman, Edward Steichen, the Japanese executive committee consisted of prominent photographers Ihee Kimura, Yoshio Watanabe, Shigene Kanemaru, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, the graphic designer Takashi Kōno who designed the catalogue, and the architect Kenzo Tange who designed the installation, et al.[8] It should be noted that, in advance of the Japan tour, Steichen himself visited the country and enthusiastically shared his idea with the executive committee members for the exhibition in the fall of 1955. Steichen and the committee members decided to recreate the set of more than 500 negatives in Japan and to leave printing and installation of them to the Japanese committee. For the circulation around the world, the set of photographs, which compose The Family of Man, was reproduced in four full-size versions with their three duplicated versions and several smaller-size versions.[9] The photography historian Masakazu Inubuse’s survey suggests that another four versions, one full-size and three smaller ones, which were reproduced by the Japanese executive committee toured 25 cities, including Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto, Okayama, Hiroshima, and Shizuoka, etc., and most of the venues were department stores.[10]
One of the reasons why the attendance figures of Japan tour of The Family of Man came to a total of one million is due to the large number of venues which were very easy to access. The fact that the department stores have been important venues for art exhibitions other than museums and art galleries is a remarkable feature of the history of art exhibitions in Japan. The Japanese major department stores had been dealing with fine arts and crafts from the initial period, and after the World War II, they started to hold various cultural events including art exhibitions.[11] Another reason is that The Family of Man coincided with the photography boom in Japan at that time. The technological development of optical weapons had been advanced in Japan through the two World Wars, and it improved the camera manufacturing technology after the World War II. The Japan camera industry rapidly developed as an export industry, and by 1955 the annual production of cameras in Japan exceeded one million.[12] With the confidence that Japan became the dominant player in the global camera industry, the number of cameras owned in Japan also has increased to three million at that time. The keen interest of Japanese people in photography and photojournalism has brought the publication of about ten photographic magazines in the 1950s.[13] Under these situations, as a matter of fact, on the same floor of The Family of Man venue in a department store, the special camera department was often set up for sales promotion. It means that The Family of Man attracted customers to the department stores and contributed to sales. Therefore, we should notice that the Japan tour of The Family of Man, which was a cultural diplomacy of the U.S., was welcomed in a domestic business cooperation between the media, the camera industry and commercial facilities such as department stores.
Turning now to the content of The Family of Man, at many sites where it was exhibited in the world, some photographs were excluded or added to reflect local culture and society. The inclusion and exclusion of certain images, depending on where they were being shown, was therefore not uncommon. Because the world tour of The Family of Man was provided by USIA, the authority over such decision was given to the senior public officer of the American Embassy in each country.[14] In the case of Japan, according to Yoshio Watanabe, a member of the executive committee, Steichen and the committee decided to add 60 works by Japanese photographers, among which five of Yosuke Yamahata’s aftermath photographs from atomic bombing on Nagasaki were included, in order to make the show special.[15] As soon as the Tokyo exhibition was first opened on March 21, 1956, the venue, the Takashimaya Department Store, was crowded with enthusiastic audiences. However, when two days after the opening, the Emperor Showa visited the venue, one wall of one section was concealed with a white curtain to hide the images of victims of atomic bombing on Nagasaki.[16]. The fact that the images of the Nagasaki bombing had been hidden from the Emperor was reported immediately by the newspapers. Shortly after that, the images were removed from the exhibition with the exception of an image of a boy holding a rice ball, from the original set of The Family of Man. Protests followed in newspapers and magazines that the Emperor should have been able to see the hidden photographs, and some publications published the image of the wall before it was removed.[17] For example, the April 29, 1956 issue of Asahi Graph (The Asahi Picture News) posted a picture of the whole wall with the headline “Your Highness the Emperor and Prince Yoshi, Please Look at These” so that readers could see what was removed.[18]
The original exhibition that was held at MoMA included a photograph of an experimental hydrogen bomb explosion. This image was placed at the climax of this section in the show. In the Tokyo exhibition, it was replaced by Yosuke Yamahata’s mural-sized landscape of the ground zero at Nagasaki the day after it was bombed, showing nothing but burnt-out ruins, including corpses whose tortured and bent limbs show their sufferings from their burns. A quotation from Bertrand Russell, which had been placed next to the room with the image of the hydrogen bomb in the original installation at MoMA, was put on the upper left of the wall in the Tokyo installation:
…the best authorities are unanimous in saying that a war with hydrogen bombs is quite likely to put an end to the human race. …there will be universal death—sudden only for a fortunate minority, but for the majority a slow torture of disease and disintegration…[19]
The burnt corpses in the apocalyptic landscape represent the “fortunate minority” in the quotation, and four photographs of survivors, who represent the unfortunate “majority”, were placed over the landscape; a staggering mother and her son holding rice balls, a boy carrying his injured brother on his back, a father holding his injured baby, and a girl waiting for rescue, sitting between lying women who could have been her mother and sister. They are families who were living in Nagasaki, yet they were driven out of the exhibition, as if atomic bomb survivors were unsuitable for members of the “family of man”.[20] The Japan tour of The Family of Man continued to attract a large number of visitors at all venues until 1957 without the images of the victims of atomic bombing or the image of an experimental hydrogen bomb explosion which was shown in other countries.
4. Criticisms of the Elimination of the Atomic Bombing Photographs
On the concealment of the wall from the Emperor, Inubuse explained from a semiotic perspective that the meaning of these photographs would have been differed for general audiences and the Emperor. For the general public, the unprecedented disaster caused by the atomic bombing was a symbol of a tragedy shared by all citizens of their defeated country Japan, and they were able to accept the image as a universal symbol of the misery of war. However, the Emperor, the former head of the state, who was exempted from war responsibility under the occupation policy, could not be a victim of tragedy. Therefore, because the Emperor who could not on principle accept the photographs as symbols, the organizers naturally chose to conceal them.[21] Nevertheless, the Grand Steward of the Imperial Household Agency announced immediately to a newspaper that he had recognized in advance the photographs of the atomic bombing included in the show and had intended to show them to the Emperor, and his announcement suggested that the concealment was a sudden decision by the organizers.[22] Similar concealment of atomic bombing images from the imperial family followed before long. When the second son of the Emperor, Prince Yoshi, visited the Nagasaki International Cultural Center on April 3, the photographs and wax models of the atomic bomb victims in the exhibition were hidden. The media reported in the public opinion that the Emperor - and the Imperial Family - should know the real lives of the people and criticized the concealments by the meddlesome authorities.[23]
The media reported the comment of Steichen as the representative of organizers. He regretted that there had been a minor misunderstanding that he approved the installation of the atomic bombing images, although he had been impressed with Yamahata’s photographs. He explained that he had consistently avoided any specific issues in the exhibition, devoting it instead to general themes of mankind because the signification of specific matters might be distorted in significance unless it is presented in detail.[24] However, mass media and photographers were not satisfied with this explanation, and the incident continued to be a focus of questioning. Yamahata, the photographer of the Nagasaki atomic bombing, wrote that he questioned whether atomic bombing could be called simply a specific event.[25] And a joint statement published on April 23, 1956 by nine influential photographers, editors and critics, including Yonosuke Natori, Tsutomu Watanabe, and Koen Shigemori was taken up as a hot topic by the media. It protested that the elimination of the atomic bombing images without any clear reason could be considered as a threat to freedom of expression and the right to view.[26] The promptitude of the protest by leaders of photojournalism is supposed to have stemmed from their concern over censorship.
After Japan’s surrender in the Pacific War, the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ/SCAP) ostensibly banned the type of censorship exerted by the former Empire of Japan, on the other hand, GHQ/SCAP issued and carried out severe censorship on Japanese media, such as newspapers, books including textbooks in the elementary schools, radio, films and photographs, during the occupation period. Besides expressions that disturb public tranquility, criticisms of the Allied Forces of Occupation and anything which might invite resentment against these troops were banned. Also, it was instructed that there must be no mention of censorship in the publication.[27] The images of the atomic bombings have been strictly censored up until 1952. The critic Jun Eto’s research on the GHQ/SCAP censorship revealed that the Civil Intelligence Section of SCAP tried to suppress the accusation of “atrocities” of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. He wrote that the censorship was “an invisible war of attrition against thought and culture” in Japan after “the visible war ended.”[28]
When the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty came into force on April 22 in 1952, the photographs of victims and damage by atomic bombings were revealed to the public in rapid succession.
On August 6, 1952, the Atomic-bomb Day of Hiroshima, the special issue of Asahi Graph and Iwanami Shashin Bunko 72 Hiroshima: Senso to toshi (Iwanami Photography library 72 Hiroshima: War and the City) were published and sold out at once. On August 15, 1952, the anniversary of the end of World War II, the book Kiroku Shashin: Genbaku no Nagasaki (Photographic Document: Nagasaki of Atomic Bombing), which consists of Yamahata’s photographs was published with a large social impact. [29] These liberated photographs and reports about the damages by atomic bombing not only reveal the hidden crucial information to the public but also seems to be presented as a symbol of the freedom of expression, which would mark the end of the invisible war in the postwar period that Eto mentioned above. The Japanese executive committee members of The Family of Man who had been in the publishing world from before the war were keenly aware of the information suppression and the censorship by both the Japanese military regime during the war and the GHQ/SCAP after the war. That must be one of reasons that they added the atomic bombing images of Nagasaki to the American art exhibition consisted of the press photography. In other words, the specialty of the atomic bombing photographs in The Family of Man in Japan is presumably that it was a statement that the disaster of the atomic bombing was the crucial issue for all humankind, and also, it was a demonstration of emancipation from the occupation by the GHQ/SCAP. It was a meaningful action that the Japanese executive committee members attempted from the inside of the exhibition, which was provided by USIA to show an American set of values.
As a result of eliminating the specialty, Steichen continued to be suspected by the Japanese media that there were political reasons. Steichen, however, simply explained that by including photographs of a specific incident the theme of the exhibition as a whole would be undermined. The photo critic Tsutomu Watanabe cited Steichen’s career of conducting the photographic propaganda for the Navy during the Pacific War and stressed the political tone of his work, questioning the genuine nature of Steichen’s universal humanism.[30] However, this criticism misses the mark, only to hit another point. Among the executive committee members, Ihee Kimura, Yoshio Watanabe, and Shigene Kanemaru were all involved in producing propaganda under the support of the Imperial Japanese Army General Staff Office during the war.[31] The international cultural propaganda in the 1930s that not only the executive committee members but also Tsutomu Watanabe himself and Yonosuke Natori, who released the joint statement together that protested the elimination of the atomic bombing photographs, had been involved was eventually integrated into the propaganda for the Japanese army during the war. Therefore, if Steichen’s background should be questioned, the backgrounds of most leading figures in photography world of Japan at that time must be questioned as well.
5. The Original Concept of The Family of Man at MoMA
Photography critics who viewed The Family of Man in Japan praised the composition and installation without exception, although the concept and narrative of the exhibition were rarely discussed in detail. In the international conference, “The Family of Man in the 21st century,” Miles Orvell analyzed the composition of the original exhibition at MoMA and suggested that the exhibition’s central point was the image of a hydrogen bomb explosion.[32] Shown as a mural-sized back-lit color transparency in the original MoMA exhibition, this unique image was not included in any exhibition catalogues and was replaced with a black-and-white image in the other traveling versions. Orvell reads this image as the lynchpin of Steichen’s argument, namely, a terrifying warning against the nuclear war.
Of course, one might read the giant luminous bomb image as a Cold War threat as well, a warning to the rest of the world, a warning to our ‘enemies’, that we’ve got the power to kill you. But that power to kill is also suicidal, for the bomb is a threat to all mankind, not just the enemy. […] the perceived differences represented in The Family of Man – between rich and poor, first world and developing world, city and farm, scientist and hunter – will be erased, not by love but by death.[33]
As Steichen was preparing for the exhibition, images of the victims of atomic bombing in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were first published in the U.S. in the September 29, 1952 issue of Life magazine. This was only a few weeks before the first experimental hydrogen bomb was successfully detonated at Eniwetok on the Marshall Islands on November 1, 1952. As Orvell argues, these two incidents must have inspired Steichen with his theme of imminent world peace. Thus, if the experimental hydrogen bomb explosion is a warning of a miserable future, the image of the United Nations General Assembly accompanied with the Charter of the United Nations in the following section of the image of the hydrogen bomb explosion may indicate a means of choosing a brighter future, allowing audiences to hope that they can avoid a horrible doom. In contrast, the apocalyptic images of the Nagasaki bombings are records of a past event, leading to the images being read as an event to be regretted. This is why the atomic bombing images conflicted with the optimistic tone of Steichen’s original concept, and the Japanese executive committees had not understood this point. It was what Steichen had referred to as “a minor misunderstanding” in his statement above.
6. Japanese Atomic Culture in the 1950s
If we observe the Japanese tour of The Family of Man from the outside, political factors become more visible, including the fact that the campaign for the peaceful use of nuclear energy was being promoted both in the U.S. and Japan at that point. After the occupation of the GHQ/SCAP was ended with the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in 1952, restrictions on the study of nuclear energy were lifted, and the Japanese government and media launched a campaign triggered by Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech of 1953, which specified the necessity of repurposing existing nuclear weapons technology for peaceful ends.
The emphasis on the peaceful use of nuclear energy and co-development between Japan and the U.S. government also aimed to impair the memories of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Meanwhile, however, a tuna fishing boat, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru (Lucky Dragon no.5), which had been operating near the Bikini Atoll was affected by the nuclear fallout from a U.S. hydrogen bomb test in March 1954. Newspapers reported about the incident including images of the twenty-three crew members of the boat who suffered severe radiation illness leading to the death of one of them half a year after the exposure. This Daigo Fukuryu Maru incident rekindled the memories of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and had a profound impact on the civil movement in Japan against the atomic and hydrogen bombs. The movement expanded rapidly not only Japan but worldwide, and more than thirty-two million signatures for the prohibition of nuclear weapons were collected when the first World Conference against A & H Bombs was held in Hiroshima in August 1955.[34] Nevertheless, on one hand, the media reported the surge of the civil movement against nuclear weapons, yet on the other hand, major newspapers were also posting opinions of politicians and intellectuals that the Japan nation needed to recover the confidence of the state, which had been totally destroyed by the atomic bombs, through peaceful use of nuclear energy. The aspirations for nuclear energy were not only provided by the U.S. after the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty came into force, but they had been born and growing during the occupation period due to an event: the theoretical physical scientist Hideki Yukawa became the first Japanese to win the Nobel Prize in 1949. Dr. Yukawa’s feat excited the Japanese nation, which had been discouraged through its defeat in the World War II and subsequent occupation, and brought the discourse and images of “dreams of atomic power by Japanese scientists”.[35]
It is noteworthy in Japanese popular culture after World War II, especially in comic magazines and children’s magazines, that atomic power was frequently represented as a huge positive power during the occupation period, and then, as the photographs of the atomic bombings were released after the occupation by GHQ/SCAP was ended in 1952, and, moreover, after the Daigo Fukuryumaru Incident in 1954, novels and films that depicted the suffering of hibakusha and nuclear fear emerged. Just at that time, while The Family of Man was traveling around Japan, another exhibition organized by USIS, as a part of the campaign for the peaceful use of nuclear energy, was also being shown: the scientific exposition Atoms for Peace / Genshiryoku Heiwariyo Hakurankai. The exposition, which was much bigger in scale than The Family of Man, gave a pleasant image for the introduction of nuclear power and its scientists, nuclear reactors, the use of nuclear power in many fields, and finally the images of a bright future, supported by nuclear power for the masses. The Japan tour of Atoms for Peace started in Tokyo on November 1, 1955, sponsored by USIS and the largest Japanese newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun. The exposition traveled to ten venues around Japan, including the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, which had just been inaugurated for the memory of the atomic bombing there. Two and a half million visitors attended the exposition over two years. The popularity of the exposition was supported by significant media coverage by Yomiuri Shimbun and other newspapers, and in addition by support at local venues.
The purpose of the two USIA exhibitions was to display U.S. power: its artistic strength with The Family of Man, which absorbs the cultural differences of the world, and its scientific strength, with Atoms for Peace, which gives affluence to the world through nuclear energy. Thus, the two exhibitions traveled in coordination throughout Japan. Remarkably, while Atoms for Peace did not mention nuclear fear, The Family of Man dealt with it in an implicit way, such that the literal images of the atomic bombing were required to be eliminated. However, not all audiences in Japan received these as USIA intended, due to the complexity of the culture around atomic issues.
At the same time as the Japanese government and major media were rushing to use nuclear power,[36] there were heated civil movements against it and cool insights in popular culture. Two best-known works, the comic Mighty Atom and the film Godzilla are worth looking back here. The first serial appearance of the Mighty Atom was published in 1952. It features a nuclear-powered robot who is human enough in his distress that he is not human; this character fights against the greed and cruelty that mankind is still struggling with the future. Further, Godzilla, released in 1954, a surviving dinosaur made gigantic by the exposure to successive hydrogen bomb experiments, which symbolizes the very nuclear disasters as it attacks a fishing boat and then Tokyo. A scientist who develops a new weapon to defeat Godzilla chooses to die with Godzilla to prevent the weapon from being used in another war, which emphasizes the sense of responsibility among scientists. In other words, these two works, Mighty Atom and Godzilla, represent the helpful side and the monstrous side of nuclear power. These perspectives in popular culture reflected the antagonism between the aspirations for nuclear energy development and the anti-nuclear weapons movement, and they surrounded the controversy over The Family of Man in Tokyo.
The Family of Man was traveling all over the world, presenting the non-historical “oneness of mankind,” however as previous studies have clarified, the differences in acceptance of the exhibition in each country appeared in criticisms and rejections rather than compliments. As we have seen in this paper, the controversy over the additional installation and the elimination of photographs of the atomic bombing in The Family of Man in Tokyo was triggered by the emancipation from the occupation by the GHQ/SCAP and the keen awareness that the atrocity of nuclear weapons is the crucial issue for all mankind. Therefore, this controversial incident pertaining to the representation of the atomic bombings in a photographic exhibition for world peace should be remembered as a case not only in the history of Japanese photography but also in the global cultural history of the 20th century.
[1] Edward Steichen, “Introduction by Edward Steichen,” The Family of Man, exh. cat. (New York: MoMA, 1983[1955]),3.
[2] Shamoon Zamir, “The Family of Man in Munich: Visitors’ Reactions”, in The Family of Man Revisited: Photography in a Global Age, ed. Gerd Hern, Anke Reitz, Shamoon Zamir (London: I. B. Tauris, 2018), Kindle: No.2175/6183.
[3] On initial critical responses to The Family of Man at MoMA, see Monique Berlier, “The Family of Man: Reading of an Exhibition, in Picturing the Past: Media, History, and Photography, ed. Bonnie Brennen and Hanno Hardt (University of Illinois Press, 1999), 206-241.
[4] “Records of the United States Information Agency (RG 306),” Last accessed January 31, 2020.
https://www.archives.gov/research/foreign-policy/related-records/rg-306
[5] Eric J. Sandeen, Picturing an Exhibition: The Family of Man and 1950s America (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1995), 125-153.
[6] Yumi Kim Takenaka, “FSA photography and the Steichen Collections: The Family of Man and The Bitter Years in Luxembourg,” Aesthetics, no.20 (March 2016): 62-74. Last accessed January 31, 2020.
http://www.bigakukai.jp/aesthetics_online/aesthetics_20/text20/text20_takenakayumikim.pdf
[7] The contributions of the conference and additional texts were published in The Family of Man Revisited: Photography in a Global Age. According to Zamir, the first exhibition of The Family of Man in Europe was held in Germany, Belin and Munich in 1955. It returned to Germany in 1958, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Hanover, and drew totally 161,000 visitors. See Zamir, “The Family of Man in Munich: Visitors’ Reactions,” in The Family of Man Revisited, Kindle: No.1989/6183.
[8] The Family of Man, exh. cat., Tokyo: Nihon Keizai Shimbun, 1956.
[9] Sandeen, Picturing an Exhibition, 95-96.
[10] Masakazu Inubuse, “‘Ningen Kazoku’ten no nihon ni okeru juyo,” Geijutsu, 37 (December 2014): 18.
[11] Kenjiro Shiga, Hyakkaten no Tenrankai, Tokyo: Chikumashobo), 2018.
[12] Imtiaz Hossain Mohiuddin, “Nihon camerasangyo ni okeru yushutu marketing si,” Keizai -Ronso (The Economic Review), Kyoto University Economic Society, Vol.158, No.4 (1996): 66-107.
[13] Manabu Torihara, Nihon Shashinshi (Jo) (Tokyo: Chuokoron-shinsha, 2013), 129.
[14] Zamir, “The Family of Man in Munich,” Kindle:No.2197/6183.
[15] “1956: Tokyo, Nihon junkaiten wo furikaeru: Watanabe Yoshio ni kiku,” in The Family of Man exh. cat., (Tokyo: G.I.P Tokyo, 1993), 28.
When the restoration of a copy of The Family of Man, which was bequeathed to Luxembourg from MoMA, was completed, the show was held again in Tokyo from 1993 to 1994 by Centre National de L’Audiovisuel, Luxembourg, and its exhibition catalogue was published.
[16] “Ten’no niwa misenai: Genbaku shashin ni curtain,” The Asahi Shimbun News Paper, evening ed., Mar. 23,1956, 7.
“Heika shashin-ten e: The Family of Man,” Yomiurii Shimbun News Paper, evening ed., Mar. 23, 1956, 3.
[17] “Ten’no niwa misenai,” ibid.
[18] “Ten’no sama Yoshinomiya sama, gorankudasaimase,” Asahi Graph, April 29, 1956, 3. Translation of the headline is cited from Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Past Within Us: Media, Memory, History (London: Verso, 2015), 116.
The wall was faithfully reproduced in the exhibition War and Postwar: The Prism of the Times held at Izu Photo Museum from July 18, 2015 to January 31, 2016.
[19] Quoted from the original exhibition catalogue. The Family of Man, exh. cat. (New York: MoMA, 1983[1955]): 179.
[20] Atomic bomb survivors, called “Hibakusha,” have suffered from not only atomic-bomb disease but also discrimination against just because they are hibakusha.
[21] Inubuse, “‘Ningen Kazoku’ten no nihon ni okeru juyo,” 22-23.
[22] “Ten’no niwa misenai,” ibid.
[23] “Ten’no sama Yoshinomiya sama, gorankudasaimase, ” ibid.
See, for instance, a reader’s column, “Ten’no ni arinomama wo,” Yomiuri Shimbun, morning ed., Mar. 28, 1956, 3.
[24] “Tokuteijiken, saketai,” The Asahi Shimbun, evening ed., Mar. 27, 1956, 3
[25] Shigeichi Nagano, Kotaro Iizawa, Naoyuki Kinoshita ed., Nihon no Shashinka 23: Yamahata Yosuke (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 1998), 64.
[26] The full text of the statement can be read in the following book.
Tetsuo Kishi, Sengo shashinsi (Tokyo: David-sha, 1974), 46.
[27] Monica Braw, The atomic bomb suppressed: American censorship in occupied Japan (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1991), 41-42.
[28] Jun Eto, Tozasareta Gengo Kukan: Senryogun no Ken’etsu to Sengo Nihon (Tokyo: Bungei Shunju, 1994[1982]), 155. [my translation from Japanese]
[29]Asahi Graph, Tokyo: Asahi Shimbunsha, August 6, 1952.
Iwanami Shashin Bunko 72 Hiroshima: Senso to toshi, (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten), 1952.
Munehito Kitajima ed., Kiroku Shashin Genbaku no Nagasaki, (Tokyo: Daiichi Shuppansha), 1952.
[30] Tsutomu Watanabe, “U.S. Camera Hihan,” Geijutsu Shincho, Shinchosha, (April,1956): 269.
[31] It is known that they were publishing the elaborated foreign propaganda magazine FRONT. The best-known propaganda photomural presented by the Army Uchiteshi yamam (Keep on Fighting [my translation from Japanese]), was produced by Kanemaru and the photographic workshop G.T.Sun, which produced the panels of the Japanese version of The Family of Man.
[32] Miles Orvell, “Et in Arcadia Ego: The Family of Man as Cold War Pastoral,” in The Family of Man Revisited: Photography in a Global Age, Kindle: No.4416-4854/6183.
[33] Kindle: No.4445/6183.
[34] Yamamoto Akihiro, Kaku to Nihonjin (Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2015), 25-29.
[35] Ibid., 6-8.
On this subject, see Toru Takeda, 'Kaku'ron, Tokyo: Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2006. Shunya Yoshimi, Yume no Gensiryoku: Atoms for Dream, (Tokyo: Chikumashobo), 2012.
[36] Soon after the owner of the Yomiuri Shimbun, Masutaro Shoriki, became Minister of State in charge of nuclear power in November 1955, he rushed to construct nuclear power plants.
See Mitsuo Ikawa, “Genshiryoku Heiwariyo Hakurankai to Shimbunsha,” in Toshihiro Tsuganesawa ed., Sengo Nihon no Media Event: 1945-1960nen (Kyoto: Sekaishisosha, 2002), 247-265.
