Hiroshima Museums: Atomic Artifacts on the Seventy-fifth Anniversary
Abstract
This chapter examines the ways the staggering volume of tangible, physical things held by two authoritative Hiroshima museums have accrued meaning and value in the context of changing hibakusha testimonial practices, local community engagement, the global nuclear regime, geopolitical changes, and memory discourses, as well as how museum practice has changed over the seventy-five years since the bomb. Both located in Hiroshima’s Peace Park beneath the hypocentre, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for Atomic Bomb Victims are responsible for hundreds of thousands of artefacts relating to the bombing and its aftermath. This chapter employs the concepts of evidence, visible damage, museum practice, nuclear history, and chronological history to explore the ways that the shifting values of artefacts are linked to the missions and museum practices of those institutions. The seventy-fifth anniversary also saw a grassroots movement advocating for a reinterpretation of museum artefacts in relation to atomic bomb buildings (hibaku tatemono) in Hiroshima.
Repository Citation
Sherif, Ann. “Hiroshima Museums: Atomic Artifacts on the Seventy-fifth Anniversary.” In Art and Activism in the Nuclear Age: Exploring the Legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, edited Roman Rosenbaum and Yasuko Claremont, 118-153. London: Routledge, 2023.
Publisher
Routledge
Publication Date
5-11-2023
Department
East Asian Studies
Document Type
Book Chapter
DOI
https://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003320395-6
Notes
Chapter 6
ISBN
9781003320395
Language
English
Format
text
