Photo exhibition on a postwar visual history of Japan’s children

 

Cultural News, 2009 April Issue

 

 

Scenes of Childhood: Sixty Years of Postwar Japan

April 25 – May 24

Doizaki Gallery at Japanese American Cultural and Community Center, Los Angeles

Admission Free

 

Selected by the Japan Professional Photographer’s Society from over 30,000 examples of work, Scenes of Childhood: Sixty Years of Postwar Japan is an exhibition of 100 photographs depicting the daily lives of Japanese children since the end of the Second World War.

 

The images of this postwar visual history are pulled from scenes of childhood taking place in a country recovering from the ravages of war, catapulting through economic and industrial growth, material abundance, fierce educational competition and an increased concern for the preservation of the environment.

 

This heartfelt exhibition will premier in the U.S. at JACCC’s Doizaki Gallery. Presented by The Japan Foundation.

 

The Second World War ended on August 15, 1945, after Japan accepted the terms of the Potsdam Declaration following the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima on August 6 and Nagasaki on August 9.

 

Postwar Tokyo was nothing but burnt-out ruins, reduced to rubble by air raids, and the damage was not limited to Tokyo. Most of the major cities of Japan had been bombed and burned.

 

People had nothing to eat, nothing to wear, and nowhere to live. They had to start all over, literally, from nothing. Both adults and children worked themselves to the bone in order to survive.

 

There were crowds of orphaned children in the streets of Tokyo who had lost their parents in the bombing. Many people built makeshift shelters amid the ruins, while others moved into the bomb shelters dug during the war. Because everyone in Japan was reduced to poverty, it was impossible for people to survive without helping one another.