Title: XII Floating Lanterns (twelfth of the series, Hiroshima Panels)
Creator: Maruki Toshi, Maruki Iri
Date: 1968
Culture: Japanese
Materials: Sumi ink, pigment, glue, charcoal or conté on paper
Dimensions: 180 cm × 720 cm
Repository: Maruki Gallery
“On August 6, the seven rivers of Hiroshima fill with floating lanterns, inscribed with the names of fathers, mothers, sisters.
The tide shifts before the lanterns reach the sea, and they are swept back to the city by the swell. Extinguished now, the mass of crumpled lanterns drifts in the dark currents of the river.
On that day in the past, these same rivers flowed dense with corpses.” (Maruki Gallery)
This piece is yet another painting from the Hiroshima Panels. On brand with the other paintings, this piece tells a relatively untold story of an event after the bombing. August 6th 1945 is when the atomic bomb hit Hiroshima, and we see August 6th referenced here in the text. This painting represents what the city did on the anniversary of the attack.
We see box shapes that progressively change colors as we go from left to right across the panel. Starting with off-white and some sparse blue boxes, we move on to largely red boxes, which eventually progresses to a less geometric black section of the painting. The colored boxes represent the floating lanterns from the title, while the black section depicts corpses that were in the river the day of the attack.
This piece has some abstract components like many of the other panels, but it especially interested me because it captured a snapshot from two separate times. The left side captures one mournful figure casting her lantern into the sea of floating memorial lanterns in the river, and the right side shows the dark muddled chaos of adult and infant bodies, bones, and animals dead. It captures the lasting impacts of the tragedy and shows how humans and the culture of something like lanterns can be resilient through even the most extreme of disasters.
References: Maruki Gallery, https://marukigallery.jp/en/hiroshimapanels/
