I was born five years after World War II, so I lack a real sense of what war entails. I experienced the post-war atmosphere, though, and I gained a sense of the cruelty of war and the importance of peace from the news headlines that repeated year after year. Today, wars continue to rage across the globe. How long will humankind continue to make the same mistakes? When I received the Hiroshima Appeals commission, I sat stunned for a while and wondered how to proceed. I realized how difficult it would be to convey the horrors of the atomic bomb while espousing peace and a strong anti-war sentiment in just one poster. Was this task beyond me?

I mainly create advertisements for a living. This led me to consider creating an image more grounded in reality rather than one sprung from a designer’s imagination. While browsing through materials from that time, I came across “Hiroshima”, a photo collection by Miyako Ishiuchi. With the permission of the families and the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, Ishiuchi was commissioned by a publisher to photograph articles left behind by atomic bomb victims. What struck me most were the clothes worn on that fateful day. As you’d expect, these were ripped and torn. Ishiuchi explained how she had placed the items on a large lightbox to shoot them. Perhaps I shouldn’t say this, but despite the tragic air, the objects also had a certain beauty, perhaps because of this backlight effect. The rawness is stripped away, with the photos portraying that awful moment in a powerfully symbolic way. Ishiuchi showed it was possible to represent the horror of the atomic bomb symbolically rather than directly. These artifacts contain a strong message: “Never forget what happened”.

With Ishiuchi’s consent, I used one of these photos to create the poster. Even now, each year brings new donations of treasured artifacts from the victims’ families. Ishiuchi also continues to visit Hiroshima annually to take photographs.. Soeda Takayuki”