CROWS - Iri and Toshi Maruki

Iri and Toshi Maruki - Picture: Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels *

The artists Iri (1901-1995) and Toshi Maruki (1912-2000) from Hiroshima were 44 and 35 years old respectively when the bomb exploded. They were both in Tokyo at the time, but they lost several members of their families in the bombing. They spent their lives expressing the trauma of war in their immense drawings; first of all the atomic bombing, then the battle of Okinawa. During one of their trip and exhibition in the USA, a visitor had pointed out to Toshi Maruki that their artistic interpretation of the war was biased, their works portrayed the Japanese only as victims never as oppressors ... The couple's response was their work on The Nanking massacre in China, called by the Japanese the "Chinese incident" ...

 Iri and Toshi Maruki, 1975, the Nanking Rape- picture: imaginationwithoutborders **

The Nanking massacre, also known as the Nanking Rape, is an event of the Sino-Japanese War that took place from December 1937, after the Battle of Nanking. During the six-week Nanking massacre hundreds of thousands of unarmed civilians and soldiers are murdered and between 20,000 and 80,000 women and children are raped by the Japanese Imperial Army soldiers.***

Iri & Toshi Maruki - CROWS The Hiroshima panels #14 (1972) - Picture: Hyperallergic, NYC ****

Also, here below is a text of the two artists exhibited at the Nagasaki Museum, which does not lack self-criticism:

"Korean people are similar in appearance to Japanese. How then could anyone distinguish among them in the carnage after the atomic bombing? “It was the corpses of Koreans that remained scattered in the ruins longer than any others. One reason is that although many Japanese people survived the atomic bombing, very few Koreans survived. There was nothing we could do. Crows flew down in flocks from the sky and ate the eyeballs of the Korean corpses. (from Chrysanthemum and Nagasaki by Michiko Ishimure).
Even the corpses of Korean people were subject to discrimination. The Japanese discriminated even against corpses. The Japanese and Koreans were both Asian people exposed to atomic bombing. Beautiful traditional Korean dresses fly up and sail to the sky over the Korean homeland. The work of art CROWS is completed. We offer it in devotion to the victims…
The approximately 5000 Koreans drafted by force to work at the Mitsubishi Nagasaki Shipyard were exposed to the atomic bombing en masse. The same thing happened in Hiroshima. Today some 15 000 Korean atomic bomb survivors are living in their homeland without any of the recognition or medical benefits enjoyed by Japanese survivors.”
Iri Maruki and Toshi Maruki.

* http://www.aya.or.jp/~marukimsn/english/message.html

** http://imaginationwithoutborders.northwestern.edu/collections/muruki-toshi-and-iri-collection/

*** Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre

**** http://hyperallergic.com/255344/the-historic-painted-panels-that-exposed-the-hell-of-hiroshima/

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