NAGASAKI -- The anti-war resolve of a late artist who survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki on Aug. 9, 1945, continues to shine through his works such as a "kamishibai" show (a traditional Japanese storytelling method using illustration cards), pictures and cartoons.
As the kamishibai show began one recent day, the atmosphere in the assembly room shifted. The children were drawn to the endearing, gentle illustrations. The work, whose title translates to, "Please pass it on to tomorrow," depicted the atomic bombing experience of a late anti-war manga artist when he was 17. During his lifetime, Susumu Nishiyama read out his kamishibai story in front of audiences, focusing particularly on children. His complex background may have influenced his life.
Nishiyama passed away in October 2022 at the age of 94. Born in 1928, he was the son of an Oita man who studied art in Kyoto, and the daughter of a potter who provided him with a boarding room. However, his parents were not allowed to marry, and Nishiyama was sent to live with a foster family in the Fukuoka Prefecture city of Yahata (part of present-day Kitakyushu).
His foster father was a skilled worker at Yahata Steel Works but died of illness when Nishiyama was 5. His foster mother sold udon noodles and snacks to raise Nishiyama and two other boys. Nishiyama, perhaps inheriting his biological father's talent, excelled in drawing. His foster mother proudly showed off his work on snack bags and sliding doors, saying, "He is good at this." When their financial situation worsened, Nishiyama was taken in by his grandfather in the city of Oita at the age of 10.
At 14, upon graduating from the upper division of Japan's national primary school system, he began working as a trainee at Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.'s Nagasaki Shipyard. Three years later, he was exposed to the atomic bomb while working at the shipyard, located about 3.5 kilometers south of the hypocenter. After the war, he moved between coal mines in Fukuoka Prefecture and elsewhere.
Nishiyama participated in labor movements, and when the Korean War broke out in 1950, five years after the bombing, he posted anti-war comic flyers on workers' housing walls. He was dismissed during the Red Purge, which targeted communists, and at 25, he moved to Tokyo to pursue a career as a manga artist. He began drawing satirical cartoons for publications such as labor union newsletters.
From the 1970s, he joined the Japan Confederation of A- and H-Bomb Sufferers Organizations (Nihon Hidankyo) movement and worked on the four-panel comic strip series "Orizuru-san" in the monthly Nihon Hidankyo newsletter from 1979 to 2021, totaling 500 installments.
Nishiyama served as a deputy secretary-general and later as a director of Nihon Hidankyo. He valued interactions with children while advocating for anti-war and anti-nuclear causes. His nephew, Takashi Saito, 54, who lives in Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, recalled, "Since I was in early childhood, he was a fun uncle who took me fishing and train watching, and who cooked curry and pasta for me. He also adored my older sister and son and loved children."
During his time in the coal mines, Nishiyama delighted workers' children by drawing cartoons for them. In 1983, during a visit to Syria amid ongoing conflicts in the Middle East, he drew pictures of animals and other motifs for war orphans and shared his experiences of the atomic bombing with them. He continued to worry about the welfare of Syrian children until his later years.
From 1993, he lived in the city of Fukuoka, doing kamishibai performances to share his atomic bombing story at schools. He was moved to tears when local elementary students put on a play based on his experiences.
The kamishibai show is now carried on by Peace Baton Nagasaki, a Nagasaki-based civic group dedicated to peace education. City resident Hitomi Shirabe, 63, a second-generation "hibakusha" A-bomb survivor and the group's chief, met Nishiyama around 2014. When she asked for permission to use the kamishibai story to convey the horrors of the atomic bomb, Nishiyama readily agreed.
Since 2021, Shirabe has been acting as an "interactive witness" to provide testimonies on behalf of hibakusha as part of a Nagasaki Municipal Government project, sharing Nishiyama's story. She explains, "By showing children the pictures that depict Nishiyama's real experiences, they can more easily imagine war and the atomic bomb and relate it to themselves."
On Sept. 9 this year, Peace Baton Nagasaki members presented the picture-story show to 95 third graders at Shiroyama Elementary School, about 500 meters from the bomb's hypocenter.
One scene depicted Nishiyama being ordered by his superior the day after the bombing to head to a weapons factory near the hypocenter as part of a "rescue team." What he saw included bodies of a parent apparently shielding their child, a person lying on their back reaching toward the sky, shards of glass embedded in their whole body, and a schoolgirl crushed under machinery in the factory. The story read, "Even though we were called a rescue team, there was nothing we could do."
The session concluded with a video message from Nishiyama, saying, "We must never engage in war. I hope you will study carefully about what happened in Nagasaki."
After the class, Fumino Mori, 8, said, "I felt Mr. Nishiyama's frustration at not being able to help the bomb victims and his kindness in trying to anyway."
Through kamishibai, pictures and manga, Nishiyama's "interaction" with children continues.
(Japanese original by Takehiro Higuchi, Nagasaki Bureau)