Shadows of the Atomic Bombings in The Family of Man: The American Photographic Exhibition Tour of Japan in the Post-Occupation Period
Citation
Takenaka, Yumi Kim. “Shadows of the Atomic Bombings in The Family of Man: The American Photographic Exhibition Tour of Japan in the Post-Occupation Period.” In Capture Japan, edited by [editors NOT confirmed this round]. Bloomsbury Academic, 2022. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350186811.0021.
Tier justification
Tier 2: book chapter in an academic edited volume published by Bloomsbury Academic (major academic press). Author Yumi Kim Takenaka is a researcher at Ritsumeikan University, Kyoto, with an established publication record on The Family of Man in Japan (see also src-takenaka-2016-fsa-steichen, if in repo, and earlier Japanese-language work). The Bloomsbury volume is an academic press publication with edited peer oversight.
Relevance
Examines the 1956–57 Japan tour of The Family of Man, specifically the controversy over the removal of Yosuke Yamahata’s atomic-bomb photographs of Nagasaki shortly after the exhibition opened, and the press protest that followed. Provides the primary scholarly account of the Japanese reception, including the role of the Japanese executive committee (architects Kenzo Tange, photographers Ihee Kimura and Yasuhiro Ishimoto, graphic designer Takashi Kono), the promotion by MoMA, USIS, and Nihon Keizai Shimbun, and the cultural tensions around nuclear imagery in post-occupation Japan. This is the most substantial English-language scholarly treatment of the Tokyo stop.
Key excerpts / pages
- Search-result verbatim (2026-04-30): ‘The exhibition attracted one million visitors in Japan and the immediate removal of some photographs of the atomic bombing on Nagasaki, which were specially added to the installation, caused controversy. This characterized the reception of The Family of Man in Japan as being in cultural tensions between the aspirations for nuclear energy and the fears of nuclear disaster in the 1950s.’
- Press protest (search result, 2026-04-30): ‘the April 29, 1956 issue of Asahi Graph posted a picture of the wall with the headline “Your Highness the Emperor and Prince Yoshi, Please Look at These” so that readers could see what was removed.’
- Executive committee named in search result (2026-04-30): ‘Ihee Kimura, Yoshio Watanabe, Shigene Kanemaru, Yasuhiro Ishimoto, the graphic designer Takashi Kōno, and the architect Kenzo Tange.’
Notes
- Body text NOT consulted in this round. The ResearchGate page for this publication was returned in search results (2026-04-30) but not opened; full text is request-only on that platform. The DOI (10.5040/9781350186811.0021) is a Bloomsbury Digital Resources identifier.
- Publication type clarification: the search results first described this as a journal article (citing Aesthetics, no. 20, 2016), then clarified the 2022 entry as a book chapter in Capture Japan (Bloomsbury). These may be two distinct publications by the same author; the 2022 Bloomsbury chapter is the entry here. The 2016 Aesthetics article (‘FSA photography and the Steichen Collections: The Family of Man and The Bitter Years in Luxembourg’) is a separate prior publication (NOT in this repo as a separate entry; NOT consulted this round).
- The Asahi Graph controversy (April 29, 1956) is a primary-press event that would benefit from a separate source entry if the issue can be located in a Japanese newspaper archive.
- The Japan tour dates (1956–57) and attendance figure (over one million) confirmed across multiple search results (2026-04-30); primary attestation for the opening date at Takashimaya Department Store (March 21, 1956) comes from secondary sources returned in this search session — primary archival confirmation not fetched.
- Kenzo Tange’s exhibition design for the Tokyo venue (scaling and sequencing approximately 500 photographs) is the subject of a separate grant project by Yasufumi Nakamori (Graham Foundation; see
src-nakamori-graham-fom-tokyoif created). That project had NOT published a book as of this search session. - A future pass should retrieve the Bloomsbury chapter via library access to confirm editors, page numbers, and exact quotations.