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Citation: Stortini, Paride. 2022.
Buddhism and Cultural Heritage in
the Memorialization of the
Hiroshima Bombing: The Art and
Activism of Hirayama Ikuo. Religions
13: 146. https://doi.org/10.3390/
rel13020146
Academic Editors: Yuki Miyamoto
and Susumu Shimazono
Received: 21 November 2021
Accepted: 27 December 2021
Published: 5 February 2022
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religions
Article
Buddhism and Cultural Heritage in the Memorialization of the
Hiroshima Bombing: The Art and Activism of Hirayama Ikuo
Paride Stortini
Divinity School, The University of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60615, USA; paride@uchicago.edu
Abstract:
Debates on the memorialization of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima have played an essen-
tial role in the construction of postwar Japanese identity, public memory, and historical consciousness.
Religion, often conceived beyond traditional terms through concepts such as “spirituality” and “her-
itage”, was part of this process. This article examines the role of Buddhism in the autobiographical
and visual narratives of the atomic bomb survivor Hirayama Ikuo, who expressed his personal
trauma through art, turning it into a call for peace and for the preservation of the cultural heritage of
the Silk Road, associated with the spread of Buddhism. Using recent critical approaches to heritage
studies, I will show how the heritagization of Buddhism in Hirayama’s work does not preclude the
sacralization of aspects of Silk Road heritage. Placing Hirayama’s approach to the nuclear bombing in
the context of postwar discourses on Japan as a peaceful “nation of culture”, I will also problematize
his view of Buddhism and the Silk Road by showing how similar views were used in support of
imperialism in the prewar period.
Keywords:
cultural heritage; memory; Hiroshima bombing; Buddhism; Hirayama Ikuo; Silk Road;
Yakushiji
1. Introduction
The Japanese painter Hirayama Ikuo (1930–2009) narrates the story of his career start-
ing from a significant painting that he realized in 1979, when he was already a recognized
artist: The Rebirth of Hiroshima (Hiroshima sh
¯
ohenzu, Figure 1). In many of his autobiograph-
ical works, he talks about how, for decades, he had felt inadequate expressing his own
experience as a survivor (hibakusha) of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, on 6 August 1945,
but then, during a visit to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, he decided to deal with his
trauma and respond to the moral call of the victims in his painting (Hirayama 1997,2011).
The Rebirth of Hiroshima visualizes Hirayama’s memories of the fire and scorching heat
following the bombing, but also adds a message of hope by painting a Buddhist symbol
towering above the flames and ruins: the protective deity Fud ¯
o My¯
o¯
o.
Buddhism played an essential role in the artistic production of Hirayama Ikuo, as
the artist received his earliest awards and recognitions for his painting, The Transmission of
Buddhism (Bukky
¯
o Denrai, 1959, Figure 2). His favorite subjects were scenes from the life of
the Buddha and the history of the spread of Buddhism, as well as landscapes of sites in
Central Asia commonly associated with the Silk Road routes that facilitated the spread of
Buddhism. In addition, Hirayama is famous for his efforts to study and preserve Buddhist
sites across Asia, for which he became a UNESCO Good Will Ambassador in 1989.
Hirayama’s approach to Buddhism cannot be inscribed within any sectarian affiliation
of traditional Japanese Buddhism. Most of his works decorate museums, private collec-
tions, and public spaces rather than temples. This is the product of Hirayama’s stress on
Buddhism as a shared cultural heritage that connects East and West—an approach that
very often Hirayama prefers to the definition of Buddhism as a religion, as we will see in
the third section of this article. In his landscape paintings, the trade caravans that facilitated
the movement of Buddhist ideas, texts, and monks cross the boundaries of empires turn the
Religions 2022,13, 146. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel13020146 https://www.mdpi.com/journal/religions
Religions 2022,13, 146 2 of 15
ancient Silk Road into a symbol of flourishing economic, artistic, and religious exchange.
This visual reimagination of the past becomes practice in many of Hirayama’s projects for
the preservation of Buddhist art and sites, which are aimed at fostering international col-
laboration. Rather than being simply a source of artistic inspiration, Hirayama’s approach
to Buddhism imbues his art and preservation projects with a sense of moral mission and
spiritual purpose.
Religions 2022, 13, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 16
Figure 1. The Rebirth of Hiroshima (Hiroshima shōhenzu, 1979), by Hirayama Ikuo. Hiroshima Prefec-
tural Art Museum, Japan. Photo courtesy of the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum. Permission of
use obtained thanks to the collaboration of the Hirayama Ikuo Silk Road Museum. No reproduction
allowed without authorization.
Buddhism played an essential role in the artistic production of Hirayama Ikuo, as the
artist received his earliest awards and recognitions for his painting, The Transmission of
Buddhism (Bukkyō Denrai, 1959, Figure 2). His favorite subjects were scenes from the life of
the Buddha and the history of the spread of Buddhism, as well as landscapes of sites in
Central Asia commonly associated with the Silk Road routes that facilitated the spread of
Buddhism. In addition, Hirayama is famous for his efforts to study and preserve Buddhist
sites across Asia, for which he became a UNESCO Good Will Ambassador in 1989.
Figure 2. The Transmission of Buddhism (Bukkyō Denrai, 1959). By Hirayama Ikuo. Saku Municipal
Museum of Modern Art, Japan. Permission of use obtained thanks to the collaboration of the
Hirayama Ikuo Silk Road Museum. No reproduction allowed without authorization.
Hirayama’s approach to Buddhism cannot be inscribed within any sectarian affilia-
tion of traditional Japanese Buddhism. Most of his works decorate museums, private
Figure 1.
The Rebirth of Hiroshima (Hiroshima sh
¯
ohenzu, 1979), by Hirayama Ikuo. Hiroshima Prefectural
Art Museum, Japan. Photo courtesy of the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum. Permission of use
obtained thanks to the collaboration of the Hirayama Ikuo Silk Road Museum. No reproduction
allowed without authorization.
Religions 2022, 13, x FOR PEER REVIEW 2 of 16
Figure 1. The Rebirth of Hiroshima (Hiroshima shōhenzu, 1979), by Hirayama Ikuo. Hiroshima Prefec-
tural Art Museum, Japan. Photo courtesy of the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum. Permission of
use obtained thanks to the collaboration of the Hirayama Ikuo Silk Road Museum. No reproduction
allowed without authorization.
Buddhism played an essential role in the artistic production of Hirayama Ikuo, as the
artist received his earliest awards and recognitions for his painting, The Transmission of
Buddhism (Bukkyō Denrai, 1959, Figure 2). His favorite subjects were scenes from the life of
the Buddha and the history of the spread of Buddhism, as well as landscapes of sites in
Central Asia commonly associated with the Silk Road routes that facilitated the spread of
Buddhism. In addition, Hirayama is famous for his efforts to study and preserve Buddhist
sites across Asia, for which he became a UNESCO Good Will Ambassador in 1989.
Figure 2. The Transmission of Buddhism (Bukkyō Denrai, 1959). By Hirayama Ikuo. Saku Municipal
Museum of Modern Art, Japan. Permission of use obtained thanks to the collaboration of the
Hirayama Ikuo Silk Road Museum. No reproduction allowed without authorization.
Hirayama’s approach to Buddhism cannot be inscribed within any sectarian affilia-
tion of traditional Japanese Buddhism. Most of his works decorate museums, private
Figure 2.
The Transmission of Buddhism (Bukky
¯
o Denrai, 1959). By Hirayama Ikuo. Saku Municipal
Museum of Modern Art, Japan. Permission of use obtained thanks to the collaboration of the
Hirayama Ikuo Silk Road Museum. No reproduction allowed without authorization.
Hirayama’s approach to Buddhism can be understood within post-WWII Japanese
cultural politics, which used art and international aid to promote a new role for affluent
Religions 2022,13, 146 3 of 15
Japan in the world stage, after its war defeat and the trauma of the atomic bombings on
Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Hirayama’s role as an artist and his focus on cultural heritage
could be conceived as a form of secularization of the use of Buddhist art in continuity with
late nineteenth century museum practices and aesthetic discourse. However, in this article,
I will build on critical approaches to the memorialization of trauma and to the construction
of cultural heritage to show how Hirayama’s approach to Buddhism can be analyzed as a
form of expansion of religious discourse and practice through the moralization of nuclear
bomb victimhood, and through the intersection of Buddhist art preservation with temple
memorialization rituals. Rather than imposing a definition of the key terms of “religion”
and “cultural heritage”, I will show how Hirayama himself used them in different and
strategic ways.
I will argue that the analysis of Hirayama’s use of the concepts of religion and cultural
heritage to discuss Buddhism and the Silk Road shows the central role of his experience as a
survivor of the Hiroshima nuclear bombing, while also offering ways to think the expanded
and transformed role of religion in the “Atomic Age” As I read it, Hirayama’s own retro-
spective interpretation of his experience as a hibakusha becomes a key to the universalization
of a moral and spiritual message he imbues his artistic and cultural heritage activities with.
Following a pattern analyzed by historians of trauma and memory, Hirayama universalized
his experience of the nuclear bombing, while also offering Buddhism—in his own univer-
salist view as culture and spirituality—as a solution to this same experience. Hirayama
combined these two forms of universalization of Buddhism and of nuclear bomb trauma
in his moral imperative to use the preservation of Buddhist cultural heritage as a call
for international collaboration: many retrospective exhibitions on Hirayama significantly
define his career as a “journey of peace” (inori no tabiji,Hirayama et al. 2007). Sections 2
and 3of this article will each analyze trauma and cultural heritage and reveal the persisting
role of religion in them.
In Section 2, I will analyze the function of Buddhist elements in Hirayama’s autobio-
graphical narratives and in his artistic production. Building on Didier Fassin’s concept of
“traumatism” as a form of moralization of the status of victim (Fassin and Rechtman 2007),
and on Dominick LaCapra’s reflection on the post-secular sublimation of the memory of
trauma (LaCapra [2001] 2014), I will show how Hirayama’s association of Buddhism with
the trauma of the atomic bombing functions not only as a founding myth for his artistic
career, but also as a moral imperative which guides his activism for the preservation of
cultural heritage. In Section 3, I will build on critical approaches to religion and heritage
to analyze how the moral call produced by Hirayama’s association of Buddhism and the
hibakusha experience is translated into practices which on one side turn the sacred into
heritage, facilitating international collaboration in a secular setting, but on the other are
open to the sacralization of heritage—its use in ritual and religious contexts. An example
of the first is Hirayama’s project to build a “Red Cross for World Cultural Heritage”, while
the artist’s collaboration with the Buddhist temple Yakushiji in Nara is an example of
the second.
In the conclusion, I will question Hirayama’s parallel construction of Buddhism as a
transcultural connection and his universalization of the experience of trauma by looking at
the aesthetics of Silk Road Buddhism on a longer, transwar timeline of Japanese history. I
argue that, while Hirayama’s view of Buddhism and of the Silk Road is strengthened by the
redefinition of postwar, “Atomic Age”, Japan as a country which supports pacificism and
international collaboration, it presents continuities with interwar pan-Asian views which
were marshaled in support of Japanese militarist expansion into East and Southeast Asia.
2. Transcending History through Imagination: Trauma, Buddhism, and Travel in the
Art of Hirayama Ikuo
Hirayama Ikuo’s experience as a survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima plays
an essential role in the construction of the moral message behind his artwork and cultural
heritage activism, which he also frames in connection with Buddhism. However, as also
Religions 2022,13, 146 4 of 15
Enomoto Yasuko has noted (Enomoto 2021), the moral and spiritual reading of the trauma of
the bombing, as well as of his career and mission, does not begin with Hirayama’s postwar
artistic production. Rather, it develops especially from the 1980s, right after he produced
The Rebirth of Hiroshima. In Hirayama’s autobiographical works, the hibakusha experience is
associated with a sense of moral mission to reconstruct the city, the country, and to foster
peaceful international relations through art and the preservation of cultural heritage. In
addition, to present Hirayama’s view of Buddhism, some of his publications can be read as
spiritual or moral self-help literature. For example, Hirayama uses his own career, with
a focus on his travel and art, to discuss issues of finding one’s own personality, success
through overcoming difficulties, extending these reflections to collective Japanese identity
in the context of world history (Hirayama [1996] 2012). In this section, I will explore
Hirayama’s reinterpretation of his life, basing on the many autobiographical works—
published either as single monographs or included in exhibition catalogues—while also
critically considering the function of this retrospective reading.
Hirayama Ikuo was born in 1930 on the island of Ikuchijima, Hiroshima prefecture, in
the middle of the Seto Inland Sea.
1
At the time of the bombing, he was among the teenagers
mobilized for the war effort, and was employed in a military depot near Hiroshima. In
one of his most detailed autobiographies, he recalls August 6, 1945, which he often refers
to simply as “that day” (ano hi), when he witnessed the burning of the city from a hill
(Hirayama 1997, pp. 47–62). Despite not being injured directly from either the explosion
or the subsequent fires that engulfed the city, his exposure to the radiation has been seen
as the cause for the anemia and immune system issues that Hirayama suffered in the
postwar period.
Soon after the war, Hirayama moved to Tokyo to study art. From the late 1950s, after
a few years characterized by health and financial issues, his artistic work began to be
recognized. After receiving a UNESCO fellowship to study comparative religious art in
Europe in 1962, Hirayama started to define his career around the concept of “Silk Road”,
pursuing research projects for the study and preservation of Buddhist sites across Asia—
many of which he visited multiple times in his travels, and used as a source of inspiration
for his own artistic production. His paintings represent the landscapes and ruins of ancient
civilizations observed during his travels, together with his own reimagination of historical
events that are said to have happened at those sites.
Parallel to his artistic work, Hirayama began an academic career at the Tokyo Uni-
versity of the Arts, which he became president of in 1989. This allowed him to pursue
projects for the study of Buddhist sites in Asia—among which were the Mogao Caves
in Dunhuang, China. Building upon his previous fellowship with UNESCO, Hirayama
developed projects for the preservation of the cultural heritage of the Silk Road, and in the
1980s he envisioned a project called “Red Cross for Cultural Heritage” (Bunkazai sekij
¯
uji),
which was turned into a foundation in 1987. This contributed to his 1989 designation as
the first UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador to come from Japan. Today, his name is closely
associated with the Japanese imagination of the Silk Road—to the extent that many of
the exhibitions of his paintings are often combined with collections of artifacts from sites
across Eurasia.
2
Hirayama passed away in 2009, after completing a series of wall paintings
for Yakushiji temple in Nara (which I will discuss in further detail in the third section of
this article).
In his autobiographical accounts, Hirayama imbues many of the major turning points
in his life and career with a sense of predestination—constructing a progressive narrative
of the discovery of his sense of a moral mission. For example, Hirayama interprets the
immediate aftereffect of being an atomic bomb survivor—moving to live with his uncle—as
determining his path to an artistic career, as his uncle encouraged him not only to become
an artist, but a Japanese-style, or nihonga, painter (Hirayama 1997, p. 69). Nevertheless, we
should also contextualize this decision in the history of postwar Japanese art, when nihonga
artists could count on governmental support in their efforts to reconstruct, through this
style, a Japanese identity imbued with the new values of pacifism (Foxwell 2015).
Religions 2022,13, 146 5 of 15
Though Hirayama associates the inspiration for his successful 1959 painting, The
Transmission of Buddhism (Bukky
¯
o denrai), with his family’s religious practices and his
youth experiences, this can likewise be more practically explained in terms of the artist’s
participation in a workshop on Dunhuang during the 1950s, as Enomoto points out
(Enomoto 2021, pp. 176–80)
. Hirayama’s construction of his career around the concept
of “Silk Road” did not come simply from his travels, however. They also were derived
from his experience of a mass broadcast event: the torch relay ceremony for the 1960
Olympic Games in Rome (Hirayama 1990, vol. 3, pp. 103–17). This ceremony highlighted
the ancient cultural ties between Rome and Greece, and was further expanded through
a path modelled on the Silk Road routes for the successive Olympics in Tokyo in 1964,
symbolizing Eurasian connections.
Despite recognizing part of the historical contexts and contingencies behind important
turns in his career, Hirayama imbues them with a sense of mission strongly associated
with his hibakusha experience and with his personal interpretation of Buddhism. I propose
to analyze the religious dimension in Hirayama’s written and visual narratives under
three rubrics: his view of history as a flow and repetition that can be turned into eternity
through Buddhism; the importance of the personal experience of suffering at Hiroshima
which is solved through the symbol of the Buddhist deity Fud
¯
o My
¯
o
¯
o; and the association
of suffering, a sense of purpose, and travel with the figure of the sixth century Chinese
pilgrim-monk Xuanzang, who becomes a model in Hirayama’s art and narratives.
A sense of time and of history plays an important role in Hirayama’s art, as many
of his paintings depict personal reimaginations of historical events. The experience of
the atomic bombing is central here: in his memories of the period immediately following
the end of the war, Hirayama stresses how the Japanese defeat and the consequences
of the radiation exposure to his own health determined a sense of time dominated by
uncertainty and fluctuation (Hirayama 1997, p. 73). While the trauma of the bomb could be
limited to personal memory, Hirayama interprets history by expanding the subject, which
is immersed in the flow of time, from the individual to the collectivity of humanity (jinrui)
and culture (bunka), thus universalizing the experience of the bomb (Hirayama [1988] 2011,
pp. 22–28, 33–37).
Hirayama uses his art both as a way to represent this flow of time, and as a tool for
the imagination to suggest ways of overcoming suffering and the meaningless condition of
those immersed in the flow. While his subjects are often landscape views or historical scenes,
Hirayama approaches them from a non-realistic perspective, blurring borders and lines
with hazy colors and leaving details undefined. Commenting on the symbolic importance
of the color blue in his work, the artist associates it with three important elements of his view
of time and art: childhood memories, intercultural connections, and the imaginative role
of art to foster connections (Hirayama 1997, pp. 33–43;
Hirayama [1988] 2011, pp. 26–28)
.
He explains that the color blue recalls the Inland Sea where he grew up, but also notes
that artifacts of blue color from different sites and religious traditions can allow for an
interconnected view of the Silk Road. Finally, the artist uses the color blue to create a mystic
and hazy atmosphere in his paintings, which is aimed at encouraging the observer’s imagi-
nation and suggesting a universal meaning beyond the scene depicted. Individual memory
and sense of identity, the interpretation of culture as connecting peoples, and the role of art
in promoting this interpretation are three key aspects of Hirayama’s visual discourse.
While Hirayama describes his own approach to art as “historical painting”
(Hirayama 1997, pp. 151–52)
, he also stresses that the role of the artist is to add personal
experiences and imagination to the subject represented in order to inspire in the observer
a more intimate connection to the work. The imaginative and visionary approach in Hi-
rayama’s art allows the artist to blur personal memories and history, the past and the
present. For instance, he uses events in his own life as inspiration to represent scenes from
the life of the Buddha, and he superimposes reimagined scenes of historical events on
his observation of contemporary landscapes and ruins. Hirayama’s artistic reimagination
was recognized by the Japanese novelist Inoue Yasushi (1907–1991), who stressed that Hi-
Religions 2022,13, 146 6 of 15
rayama’s paintings allow the viewer to see the Buddhist sites of Central Asia not simply as
ghostly ruins (haikyo), but as inspiring traces of the past (iseki), noting how this perspective
impacted his own appreciation of the sites (Inoue 1976).
While the focus on ruins, desert caravans, and exotic landscapes could be associated
with a romantic approach, Hirayama rejects this characterization of his work, and instead
uses the personal experience of trauma and suffering to claim a deeper connection with the
subjects he represents (Hirayama 1997, p. 145). Hirayama’s autobiographical narratives
interpret the artist’s choice to represent Silk Road landscapes and Buddhist scenes in terms
of destiny: his experience as a survivor of the atomic bombing—with the subsequent sense
of being continuously in danger for his health—generated in him a search for eternity and
salvation that European romantic painters did not express in their interest for the exotic
(Hirayama [1988] 2011, p. 37).
If on the one hand personal suffering becomes a way to legitimize the artistic choices
of Hirayama, on the other hand his paintings are aimed at inspiring in the observer an
imaginative identification with the subject. This specifically refers to Buddhism as a
message of spiritual salvation from suffering. For example, commenting upon the painting
A Fantasy of Entering Nirvana (Ny
¯
unehan gens
¯
o, 1961), Hirayama notes that he used the scene
of the peaceful death of the Buddha ´
S
¯
akyamuni surrounded by his disciples to offer himself
consolation for the loss of his father-in-law (Hirayama 1997, p. 87).
This brings us to the second main point in the analysis of religious themes in Hi-
rayama’s visual and textual discourse: the role of Buddhism as a spiritual solution to
personal and collective suffering. It is specifically Hirayama’s experience as a hibakusha
that allows for the universalization of both suffering and the solution to suffering—that is,
Buddhism—thus extending outwards from the individual to a shared sense of humanity
and following a pattern of Hiroshima memorialization described by Lisa Yoneyama as
“nuclear universalism” (Yoneyama 1999).
This is particularly visible in Hirayama’s interpretation of the painting that I intro-
duced at the beginning of the article: The Rebirth of Hiroshima (Hiroshima sh
¯
ohenzu, 1979,
Figure 1). As previously stated, the scene is dominated by red flames, erasing the city
immediately after the atomic bombing, with the highly recognizable A-Bomb Dome at
its center. This representation combines both Hirayama’s personal memories of that day,
and an iconic symbol which makes the location of the scene easy to identify also for an
international observer—as the Dome was included in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
The idea of rebirth is represented by Hirayama with a choice that is immediate neither
to the eyes of the general observer, nor necessarily to those of a Buddhist one: the protective
deity Fud
¯
o My
¯
o
¯
o towering over the flames next to the Dome. While a common deity in
esoteric Buddhism and especially in the Tendai and Shingon sects in Japan, Fud
¯
o is less
representative of the Hiroshima area—which is dominated by J
¯
odo Shinsh
¯
u sects that
would more likely choose the image of a salvific Amida Buddha descending from the Pure
Land. In Hirayama’s explanation, he was looking for a strong symbol that would call
for rebirth. He considered Avalokite´svara—the bodhisattva of compassion—but deemed
it too gentle to convey this message; likewise Amida Buddha was deemed too weak to
respond to the post-bombing situation of Hiroshima (Hirayama 1997, introduction, and
Hirayama [1988] 2011, pp. 20–22). Being at the same time a wrathful and protective deity,
Fud
¯
o My
¯
o
¯
o was chosen as a strong and energetic symbol that would both encourage the
city to go on living, while also expressing Hirayama’s message as a survivor to overcome
both anger and pity.
The choice of Fud
¯
o can also be seen in Hirayama’s personal approach to Buddhism,
which tends to disregard cultural or sectarian divisions. In addition to the above-mentioned
explanation given by the painter himself, the decision to avoid a more direct appeal to
local J
¯
odo Shinsh
¯
u Buddhists by choosing Amida can also be seen as a way to broaden
its appeal to the audience—avoiding potential appropriation of the image by Buddhist
sects. Hirayama clearly states that the message of rebirth in the painting is meant not
only for the city or for Japanese Buddhists, but for all of humanity (Hirayama [1988] 2011,
Religions 2022,13, 146 7 of 15
p. 19). The view of Buddhism he shares through his art is seen as a tool to spread this
message. What particularly draws him to Buddhism is the experience of suffering that is
foundational to the Buddha’s message, and for which the Buddha found an answer. This
interpretation is meant to be shared across sectarian traditions, and can be considered a
universal human experience.
Hirayama’s approach to Buddhism—as expressed both in his texts and in his art—
does not reflect any particular affiliation with the Pure Land traditions which dominate
the Hiroshima area, and can be interpreted as a form of universalization of Buddhism
through the experience of suffering aimed at overcoming sectarian boundaries. This
interpretation could partially address but not solve the religious identity issue raised by
Yuki Miyamoto in her investigation of religious ethics and memorialization of the atomic
bombing
(Miyamoto 2005,2012)
. Analyzing the moral and religious interpretation of the
bombing by a local J
¯
odo Shinsh
¯
u priest, Miyamoto points out that, while the priest’s use
of Buddhist concepts of interdependent lives and collective body (d
¯
otai) can provide a
way out of dichotomies of victimization and retribution, it also leaves open the question
of how people with different religious identities and beliefs might accept such Buddhist-
based solution (Miyamoto 2005, pp. 154–57; Miyamoto 2012, chapter 3). Hirayama’s choice
of a visual approach to Buddhism not directly inspired by specific sectarian traditions
might go beyond local affiliations and appropriations, but can still fall within the limits
of exclusive religious identity. In the next section, I will further expand on this issue,
showing how Hirayama’s stress on Buddhism as cultural heritage rather than religion can
be interpreted as a universalization strategy aimed at avoiding conflict based on religious
identity and affiliation.
The way in which Hirayama describes his own approach to religious practice and to
Buddhism reflects his eclectic view. For example, he describes the important role-model
of his father, a devout Buddhist (Hirayama [1988] 2011, pp. 29–31), and he remembers his
attraction to Zen Buddhism. In addition, Hirayama uses the Buddhist concept of karmic
connection (innen) to explain why he chose to focus on Buddhist subjects in his paintings
and why he chose nihonga (Japanese-style) rather than y
¯
oga (Western-style) painting: he
sees these as the result of his connection to the previous generations of his family and to a
lineage of artistic mentors. Likewise, while Buddhist vocabulary is strong in Hirayama’s
narratives, the painter also uses terms more commonly found in a Christian context. For
instance, he compares the Christian concept of atonement with his feeling of indebtedness
toward the victims of the atomic bombing (Hirayama 1997, introduction), and uses the
term setsuri (providence) to strengthen the moral mission he associates with his choice of
Buddhist subjects.
In this way, both the experience of suffering connected with the memory of the
atomic bombing, as well as the solution to this suffering offered by Buddhism, become
universalized as human experiences in Hirayama’s narratives and in his art. This message
of rebirth is not limited to a transcendental or individual level, but is connected to an
ideal of pacifism and international collaboration that Hirayama associates with his view
of Buddhism as a tradition that has crossed borders, facilitating intercultural connections.
The idea of journey is one of the leitmotifs in Hirayama’s art, in the way he narrates his life,
and is also a basis for his efforts in the preservation of the artistic heritage of Buddhism.
The metaphor of travel is also derived from the painting that earned Hirayama his
early recognition: The Transmission of Buddhism (Bukky
¯
o denrai, 1959, Figure 2). The painting
represents two monks with shaved heads and saffron robes crossing a forest eastward on
horseback. The first monk extends his hand toward a white bird, likely a dove. The scene
is meant to depict the seventh century CE monk Xuanzang heading back to China after
spending years in India to study the sacred texts of Buddhism, which he brought back to
his country. Xuanzang played an essential role in the history of East Asian Buddhism—
not only for his direct role in the translation of Buddhist texts and the development of
philosophical schools in China, but also because his journey inspired hagiographies and a
rich religious and literary imaginary in East Asia.
3
In Hirayama’s art and texts, he became
Religions 2022,13, 146 8 of 15
a symbol of spiritual motivation and of cosmopolitan encounter, with which Hirayama
himself identified through his own life experiences.
Hirayama offers a retrospective interpretation of the painting and of how he came
to choose the subject, imbuing the former with a moral purpose and the latter with a
sense of destiny (Hirayama 1997, pp. 82–98). As with all of the other Buddhist scenes,
Hirayama explains his decision to represent characters with undefined and blurred faces
within his conception of imaginative historical painting: by not providing too many realistic
details, he makes the scene less “other” in time and space, thus facilitating the observer’s
identification with the depicted subject. The artist also points out the importance of the
direction of the two monks, who are heading eastward back to China after their journey
to India. The idea behind this choice is that spiritual travel is supposed to conclude in
one’s homeland, with the moral duty of spreading the message learnt throughout one’s
journey. The fact that Xuanzang is holding a dove, a symbol of peace, reveals the projection
of the present situation of postwar Japan on the scene: the ultimate moral message that
Hirayama wants to associate with Buddhism and travel is the need for peace. According to
this message, Buddhism is retrospectively seen as a form of transcultural spiritual salvation
from suffering which spread across Asia through the efforts of monks and pilgrims like
Xuanzang. The rediscovery—or retrospective construction—of this Buddhist message
becomes, for Hirayama, a way to support the view of Japan as a promoter of peace
and international reconciliation after World War II, thus expanding his interpretation of
Buddhism from one of individual salvation from suffering to one of collective response
to war.
Hirayama reads his extensive efforts later in life to preserve the artistic heritage of
Buddhist sites across Asia in light of this moral mission that emerges from the individual
and collective trauma of the nuclear bombing. In the same way in which Xuanzang had
undertaken a dangerous journey to search for the original meaning of the Dharma in India,
Hirayama spent decades travelling the same routes of the ancient monk to retrieve this
shared Buddhist heritage. Additionally, in this case, suffering, travel, and moral purpose are
connected in the artist’s retrospective interpretation of The Transmission of Buddhism. He tells
how the idea for the painting came to him after a hiking trip to the mountains of Aomori,
in northeastern Japan. He recalls an experience of revelation while contemplating the
natural landscape after a dangerous climb (Hirayama 1997, pp. 82–85). This episode—which
Enomoto reads as a kind of “satori” (Enomoto 2021, pp. 172–74)—expresses Hirayama’s
conception of enlightenment through suffering. It is only after the painful experience of
hiking, made even harder by his health conditions still affected from the consequences
of radiation exposure, that he could fully admire nature and attain a sense of meaning
beyond it. Hirayama compares this experience to Xuanzang’s perilous journey across
the Himalayas in search of the meaning of the Dharma. While this retrospective and
almost “self-hagiographical” account may not reflect the practical context that inspired
Hirayama’s choice to paint Xuanzang’s journey, it shows the religious narrative at work in
his interpretation—his emphasis on a combination of suffering, spiritual awakening, and
sense of purpose.
In Hirayama’s narratives, suffering becomes a way to read travel in moral terms, while
also allowing for a deeper understanding of the journey. In one of his “spiritual self-help”
publications, he discusses the meaning of the spread of Buddhism with the head priest of
an important Zen temple in Kyoto; when he is reminded of the importance of the embodied
aspect of the transmission of Buddhism through art, Hirayama notes his own sense of
gratitude for being able to travel so extensively despite the condition of his health in his
youth (Hirayama [1996] 2012). In addition, the sense of a shared purposeful suffering
together with the many other pilgrims, merchants, and monks who spread Buddhism along
the routes of the Silk Road allows Hirayama to attach a sense of moral duty to remember,
through his artistic reimagination, those who were forgotten by history (Hirayama 1997,
p. 42).
Religions 2022,13, 146 9 of 15
The two crucial paintings in Hirayama’s career that I have analyzed in this section—
The Rebirth of Hiroshima and The Transmission of Buddhism—show how the artist connects
the individual experience as an atomic bombing survivor to the universal experience of
suffering, and proposes Buddhism as a spiritual solution to both. This moralization of
memory echoes Didier Fassin’s analysis of contemporary discourses on trauma which he
defines as “traumatism”:
“During the last quarter of the century, traumatism imposed itself as a form
of original appropriation of the traces of history and as a dominant way of
representing the relation to the past
. . .
the collective memory is inscribed as a
traumatic relation with the past through which the group identifies itself as victim
by recognizing a shared experience of suffering violence. Beyond the contextual
differences, the same moral thread is traced: suffering becomes a cause, the event
nourishes a re-reading of history”.
(Fassin and Rechtman 2007, p. 30).
In light of the traumatic reading of the hibakusha experience, Hirayama proposes a
visual re-reading of Buddhism as a remedy to recent historical traumas.
While Fassin’s analysis allows us to reveal the moral and universalizing aspects of
discourses on trauma, Dominick LaCapra’s critical approach to the historiography on
trauma can be applied to Hirayama’s narratives in order to show the religious and myth-
making aspects contained within them. LaCapra defines “traumatropism” as the process
by which an experience of trauma is turned into a founding myth that legitimizes certain
practices, and uses the language of “sacred” and “martyr” to show post-secular elements in
the way victims of trauma are described (LaCapra [2001] 2014, pp. xii–xv). While Hirayama
often characterizes Buddhism in terms of spirituality and culture rather than religion, his
use of it as a potential solution to the suffering of trauma and as a shared heritage whose
recognition can avoid risk of further traumatic experiences of conflict reveals the role that
religion plays in the universalization of the memory of the atomic bombing. Rather than
being a form of secularization of Buddhism through the activities of a lay artist as Hirayama,
the artistic production and autobiographical works of this Japanese artist reveals the way in
which religion—translated in terms of culture and spirituality—played an essential role in
the memorialization of the individual and collective experience of the atomic bombing. In
the post-Hiroshima “Atomic Age” in Japan lay artists and intellectuals such as Hirayama
provided religion with the expanded language of solution to trauma. In the next section, we
will see how these narratives of Buddhism were not limited to textual and visual discourse,
but turn into practice through Hirayama’s work on heritage preservation.
3. Buddhism as Cultural Heritage, Silk Road as Sacred Memory
In his autobiographical narratives, Hirayama sees 1979 as the year in which he finally
visited Hiroshima after decades, and decided to express his personal traumatic experience
of the atomic bombing through art, painting The Rebirth of Hiroshima twenty years after his
early career-defining depiction of Xuanzang’s travels in The Transmission of Buddhism. But
1979 also held significance as the year that Hirayama translated his discourse of peaceful
intercultural collaboration, centered on the memory of shared Buddhism, into practice. An
exhibition of his works was held in China, and he took the occasion to visit the Mogao
caves in Dunhuang, fostering Sino-Japanese collaborations in the study and preservation of
its Buddhist art. The following year, Hirayama and the abbot of Yakushiji temple in Nara,
Takada K
¯
oin (1924–88), held a Buddhist ceremony to inaugurate the beginning of one of
Hirayama’s most challenging works: a series of Silk Road-inspired wall paintings for the
temple’s Xuanzang Pavilion.
Both of these events exemplify the way in which the moralizing discourse on the
memory of the nuclear bombing promoted by Hirayama is not limited to visual or tex-
tual narratives, but it contributes to the legitimization of practices of cultural heritage
preservation and of religious rituals of collective memorialization. In this section, I will
discuss both of these examples to show how they share the concept of “Buddhist heritage”,
Religions 2022,13, 146 10 of 15
blurring the boundary between secular and religious practice. While Hirayama’s mission
to study and preserve the artistic heritage of Buddhism across Asia can be considered
as a form of heritagization of Buddhism, memorialization rituals at Yakushiji connected
with Hirayama’s art and view of the Silk Road can be seen as a form of sacralization of
heritage. This dynamic shows the fluidity of the categories of religion and heritage, and
how their strategic deployment can expand, rather than confine, the role of religion in the
“Atomic Age”.
Hirayama’s interest in the preservation of the art and archaeological sites of the Silk
Road can be traced back to his early engagement with the study of comparative religious
art he had undertook with a UNESCO fellowship in the early 1960s. As we have mentioned
above, however, Hirayama was already familiar with research into the Dunhuang caves
conducted by scholars of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts. If the landscapes and ruins of the
Silk Road were a source of inspiration for Hirayama’s paintings, they were also an object
for copying practices by art students of the nihonga style in Japan—a practice that Hirayama
had encouraged by establishing expeditions to China and facilitating the arrival of Chinese
students of art in Tokyo (Arai 2015, chap. 5). On the backdrop of newly established trade
agreements between Japan and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the 1970s, as well
as the growing collaboration between the two countries in the 1980s, Hirayama played
an essential role in fostering the use of Buddhist art heritage as a field of collaboration
(Enomoto 2021, pp. 196–229). While the focus of the early missions in the 1980s was
the Buddhist caves at Dunhuang, in the 1990s Hirayama also promoted a project for the
preservation of the ancient city walls in Nanjing (Hirayama and Tani 2011, pp. 101–10).
Hirayama’s projects on cultural heritage were not limited to the study of sites or to
the use of ancient art for the inspiration of modern art; rather, they became increasingly
concerned with the preservation of artistic heritage, especially in areas affected by military
conflict. From the 1970s, Hirayama began to envision a “Red Cross for Cultural Heritage”
(Bunkazai sekij
¯
uji), which became structurally organized as a foundation in 1988 through
collaboration with the Tokyo University of the Arts, UNESCO, and Japanese aid for devel-
opment. Beyond its initial focus on Chinese sites, the foundation has supported projects
in Cambodia, South Korea, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and also for collections of Japanese
art in Europe and North America (Hirayama and T
¯
oky
¯
o Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan 2011).
Hirayama’s prestigious role as an artist and a scholar of art, as well as his connections
with UNESCO and with the Japanese political leadership of the 1980s, formed the basis for
successful funding campaigns for such projects (
¯
Omiya 2012). Indeed, the ethos of these
projects echoed the policy of expanding Japanese foreign assistance to Asian countries by
the Takeshita Noboru cabinet in the late 1980s (Enomoto 2021, pp. 212–16). The popularity
of the 1980s NHK television documentary series The Silk Road, which spurred the imagina-
tion of exotic places now more accessible for the expanding market of Japanese tourism,
also attracted interest in Hirayama’s art and his funding campaigns.
While the development of this foundation and its projects might simply be seen as
the product of a positive combination of marketing and media strategy with political
networking, Hirayama’s motivations in his efforts to preserve the cultural heritage of the
Silk Road are imbued with a sense of the collective moral duty of the Japanese people,
and with a sense of the urgency conferred by his experience of war—already visible in the
choice of the name “Red Cross” for the heritage foundation. Hirayama states that the initial
idea to establish this project came to him during the 1970s, when the civil war in Cambodia
threatened potential damage to the Angkor Wat site (Hirayama and Tani 2011, pp. 71–80).
The fate of the giant Buddhas of Bamiyan, Afghanistan was another of Hirayama’s great
concerns. Before their destruction by the Taliban in 2001, Hirayama visited and depicted
the giant statues in the 1960s, making multiple public appeals in Japan and with UNESCO
to try to save them. Hirayama connects this failed attempt to save the Afghanistan Buddhas
with his experience of war under the concept of a “cultural heritage refugee” (bunkazai
imin). Hirayama used this concept to promote projects for the retrieval and restitution of
artifacts stolen from areas of conflict.
4
In Hirayama’s view, these quasi-humanized artifacts
Religions 2022,13, 146 11 of 15
become custodians of the memory of times when people, goods, and ideas flowed along
the trade routes of Central Asia, and their protection becomes a way to promote this view
of peaceful, cosmopolitan cultural exchange.
The experience of the atomic bomb plays again an important role in the construction
of the sense of duty toward cultural heritage that Hirayama wants to spread among his
Japanese audience. He recognizes the limits and potential criticism of using development
aid only for the preservation of artistic heritage, and sees his own projects as basis for
the cultural, educational, and economic development of the local communities at the sites
involved in these various projects. Explaining the origins and purpose of his “Red Cross
for Cultural Heritage” foundation, Hirayama cites the trauma of losing one’s heritage as
one of the motivations inspiring it—conceived not only in cultural, but also in material
terms. For instance, he compares the destruction caused by the civil war in Cambodia
with his own experience of loss after the Hiroshima bombing, and with other forms
of loss due to natural disasters, such as the 1995 Great Hanshin earthquake in Japan
(Hirayama and Tani 2011, pp. 86–87
). Building on both his personal trauma as a hibakusha,
and on a collectivized memory of WWII, Hirayama stresses the duty of Japan to use its
economic power to promote international dialogue through the preservation of the cultural
heritage of the Silk Road (Hirayama and Tani 2011, chap. 8).
This instrumental use of cultural heritage preservation is particularly visible in the
case of his decades-long collaboration with the PRC from the 1970s, which focused on
the Buddhist caves of Dunhuang. In short, Hirayama sees the shared effort to study
and preserve cultural heritage as a way to go beyond national borders and interests
(Hirayama and Tani 2011, pp. 16–38)
. A key dimension of Hirayama’s project involves
looking at Buddhism as a form of shared cultural heritage rather than a religion—as the
latter could lead to sectarian and competitive forms of affiliation and identity. Hirayama’s
interpretation of Buddhism as shared culture rather than religion can be seen as a further
attempt to solve the risks implied in identifying with a specific religion that we have ana-
lyzed in the previous section. While Hirayama’s approach to Buddhism already constitutes
a form of universalization going beyond specific Japanese sectarian traditions, his stress
on Buddhism as culture can be seen as a strategy to reach a wider audience and avoid
boundaries and limits connected with religious affiliations.
Hirayama’s view of Buddhism is also expressed in his artistic reimagination of the
spread of Buddhism across Asia. While recognizing the religious aspects of Buddhism,
Hirayama nevertheless stresses that his own approach through art and heritage allowed
him to perceive it as culture (Hirayama [1996] 2012, p. 176). In addition, looking at the
history of Japan in relation to other peoples, Hirayama repeats a typical discourse of
“Japaneseness” (nihonjinron) which highlights how the Japanese have been able to absorb
and make their own elements from other cultures, and in the light of this he defines
Buddhism as an “advanced form of international culture” (Hirayama [1996] 2012, p. 95).
This focus on culture as a tool to connect Japan with the rest of Asia while also recu-
perating the value of Japanese identity in a peaceful context echoes the policy of Japan as a
“nation of culture” (bunka kokka), promoted by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru immediately
after WWII. Historian Carol Gluck discusses this as an attempt “to displace politics and to
create pride in a long cultural tradition” (Gluck 1993, p. 57). Gluck also observes how a
similar conservative construction of public memory through historical consciousness was
at work in the years immediately after the war and at the end of the Sh
¯
owa period, the late
1980s, when Hirayama Ikuo’s cultural heritage activism reached international recognition
with his appointment as UNESCO Good Will Ambassador. This same chronological pattern
characterizes the development of Japanese approaches to cultural heritage preservation as
analyzed by Aike Rots and Mark Teeuwen (Rots and Teeuwen 2020, pp. 6–12).
In light of recent research into religion and critical cultural heritage studies
(Meyer and de Witte 2013;Rots 2019)
, Hirayama’s stress on Buddhism as a form of interna-
tional cultural heritage, rather than a religion, can be seen as a discourse of “heritagization”
connected with practices of cultural heritage preservation, tourism, and marketization. But
Religions 2022,13, 146 12 of 15
this process does not imply a form of secularization or the disappearance of religion; in
fact, turning religion into heritage can expand its role in the public sphere, while religious
discourses and practices transform into new forms of sacralization, which universalize
and naturalize religious beliefs and practices—as Aike Rots shows in his analysis of the
use of heritage in Japan (Rots 2019). Hirayama’s use of the language of cultural heritage
facilitated the possibility of collaboration between Japan and the PRC by avoiding the
risks that a stress on the religious nature of Buddhist art could pose to fundraising and the
involvement of public institutions.
In addition, the interaction between religion and heritage is not a one-way process
of heritagization of the sacred. The opposite process of sacralization of heritage is also
at work, according to which certain religious elements are kept in the process, and may
even receive an enhanced “sacred surplus” in terms of universalization or authenticity
(Meyer and de Witte 2013). In the case of Hirayama’s “heritagization” of Buddhism, we
can see how his art is also used in a religious space and in connection with ritual practice
at Yakushiji temple in Nara, which benefits from the international image of the Silk Road
promoted by the artist.
As mentioned at the beginning of this section, in 1980 Hirayama began work on what
is often defined as his “Sistine Chapel”: Wall Paintings of the Great Tang Western Regions
(Dait
¯
o saiiki hekiga),
5
a series of seven scenes depicting the landscapes, from China to India
through Central Asia, which had been the setting for Xuanzang’s journey in the seventh
century, observed through the eyes of the contemporary traveler Hirayama and imbued
with his imaginative approach to “historical painting”. The paintings decorate a hall behind
the Xuanzang pavilion, which was built in the 1980s to enshrine the relics of the famous
Chinese pilgrim-monk that had been recently acquired by Yakushiji temple.
Hirayama was commissioned by the temple’s charismatic abbot, Takada K
¯
oin, as his
name had become synonymous with the Silk Road and he had first achieved recognition
with a painting dedicated to Xuanzang’s journey. Takada himself had successfully em-
ployed the cultural heritage of the Silk Road and of Buddhism as a link between Japan and
Asia to secure support and donations to Yakushiji—marshalling the temple’s long history
of connection with the continent, dating back to the Nara period and supported by its
possession of various important artifacts. Connecting this cosmopolitan view of the history
of the temple with rituals for the memorialization of the dead aimed at the lay supporters,
Takada managed to attract interest, donations, and tourism to Yakushiji, using the profits
to restore and rebuild many of the precincts’ structures (Stortini 2018).
It took twenty years for Hirayama to realize the wall paintings—a timeframe that
he compares to Xuanzang’s translation of the Prajñ
¯
ap
¯
aramit
¯
a S
¯
utras (that he had brought
back from India), stressing again the parallel between himself and the Chinese monk
(Hirayama 2001). After their completion, the paintings were solemnly inaugurated through
a consecration ritual called the “eye-opening ceremony” (kaigen kuy
¯
o) on the significant
date of 31 December 2000, the last day of the second millennium. The ritual, which was
broadcast live on television as part of the celebrations for the end of the year, was modelled
on the ritual used in the eighth century to consecrate the Great Buddha of T
¯
odaiji temple,
also located in Nara. It featured Hirayama providing the final stroke to the paintings with
a giant brush, connected through colorful ropes to the abbot of Yakushiji behind him and
to the other priests and the audience outside the hall.
The consecration of Hirayama’s wall paintings shows how the discourse on Bud-
dhism as a form of shared cultural heritage connecting Japan with Asia is not simply an
expression of the secularization or retreat of religion, but instead offers new modes of
sacralization—adding the universality, authenticity, and cosmopolitanism provided by
Hirayama’s discourse on Buddhism and his practices of cultural heritage preservation.
The experience of the nuclear bombing and the historical consciousness of living in an
“Atomic Age” are present in the discourse and ritual practice of Yakushiji, as the prayers
performed in front of Hirayama’s wall paintings are aimed at building a peaceful world.
Even today, on the fifth of each month, a ceremony is performed in front of the scenes
Religions 2022,13, 146 13 of 15
painted by Hirayama, where the commemoration of Xuanzang is associated with a prayer
for peace. The choice of consecrating the paintings on new year’s day of the first year
of the third millennium, symbolically closing a century with two world conflicts, must
also be understood in terms of the construction of a public memory which moralizes and
spiritualizes the Japanese experience of atomic bombing and war defeat to stress the new
role of postwar Japan as a country of culture and spirituality—as a country which uses its
economic power to foster peace and international collaboration.
4. Conclusions
The concept of an “Atomic Age” ushered in by nuclear experiments and atomic
bombings might suggest the idea of a deep break in historical consciousness, a “before and
after”, which might also be repeated in the construction of public memory and in the role
that religious practices and ideas have within it. As we have seen, the hibakusha experience
was central in Hirayama’s narratives of his life and artistic career, in his conception of
Buddhism as a spiritual salvation from suffering and as a cultural link across borders, and
in his universalization of trauma and his call for Japan to preserve the cultural heritage of
Buddhism and the Silk Road as its moral duty.
Yet, in Hirayama’s conception of history and in his universalization of the memory of
the atomic bombing as affecting all humanity, it is continuity rather than rupture that plays
an essential role. In particular, Hirayama uses the concept of “generation” (sedai) to connect
groups of people across time, allowing to transcend individualism into a universal sense of
humanity (Hirayama [1988] 2011, pp. 33–41). This connection across generations is also
strengthened by the Buddhist concept of causality through the idea of karma—innen—that
Hirayama uses to interpret his artistic choices in terms of destiny and indebtedness toward
the previous generations of nihonga painters. This is also visually translated into a painting
he dedicated to the art historian Okakura Kakuz
¯
o (1863–1913), whose legacy as president
of the Tokyo School of Fine Arts he felt he had inherited. The painting, titled An Image
of the Lineage of the Japanese Art Institute (Nihon Bijutsuin ketsumyakuzu, 1965), represents
Okakura riding a horse surrounded by a crowd of people, likely the generations of artists
and intellectuals with whom Hirayama felt connected. Okakura’s posture visibly echoes
Xuanzang’s in The Transmission of Buddhism; the difference is that Okakura is directed
westward, symbolizing his efforts to rediscover the spiritual connection of Japan with Asia
through art—again prefiguring Hirayama’s own efforts for the Silk Road heritage.
Hirayama’s stress on connections across generations and across national borders is
aimed at generating a sense of moral duty toward others and toward future generations,
building on a blend of Buddhist karmic causality and the modern concept of heritage. While
his aim is to foster peace and international collaboration, a critical approach to continuity
in the discourses, practices, and aesthetics of Buddhism as a cultural connection across
Asia reveals the problematic nature of this form of historical consciousness and collective
memory. As Gluck has pointed out, postwar representations of Japan as a country of culture
and peace tend to displace their political nature, erasing a similar stress on pride for a
long cultural tradition expressed in prewar Japan by the imperial institution (Gluck 1993).
Similarly, Lisa Yoneyama has shown the paradoxical use for the Hiroshima Peace Memorial
Park of a wartime architectural project originally conceived for the construction of a shrine
to celebrate the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere, which was an instrument of
Japanese imperialism and military expansion in Asia (Yoneyama 1999, pp. 1–3). These
examples show a problem with the moralization and conflation of memory and history
in discourses on trauma that is also described by Fassin and LaCapra: namely, that they
naturalize and de-politicize these domains.
Moreover, in the case of Hirayama’s construction of Buddhism and the Silk Road
as cultural connections inspiring peaceful cooperation across borders in order to avoid
the mistakes of WWII, there are potential obfuscations of elements of continuity with
prewar ideas, images, and practices which justified nationalism and imperialism. For
example, the Silk Road route used for the torch relay ceremony of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics,
Religions 2022,13, 146 14 of 15
which inspired Hirayama’s interest in the Silk Road, was originally a proposal for the 1940
Japanese Olympics, ultimately cancelled because of the start of the war (Collins 2007). The
idea of the Silk Road connecting Japan with Asia was similar, though of course the aim was
different, as the prewar project stressed the glory of the Japanese empire. This view was
certainly connected with the prewar redeployment of Okakura’s slogan, “Asia is one” and
pan-Asian views in anti-Western and imperialist discourse.
Religion and Buddhism are not immune to such a critical approach to pre- and postwar
discursive continuities. Many Buddhist priests and intellectuals contributed to this same
discourse in the prewar period, stressing a universalist view of Buddhism which justified
Japanese expansionism in East Asia. Wartime events also affect the memorialization
practices we have described at Yakushiji: while the link between the temple and Xuanzang
can indeed be located in its foundation in the Nara period and its cultural connections with
China, the relics enshrined in the Pavilion only arrived in Japan during WWII, after being
discovered in Nanjing during the military occupation (Sakaida 2013;Brose 2016). Yakushiji
priests and lay community have toured the relics in China and organized pilgrimages and
reciprocal visits with Chinese Buddhist communities, but the efforts in collaboration could
obfuscate the contested history of these relics.
Therefore, while the role of religion and of Buddhism in the construction of historical
consciousness in the “Atomic Age” might suggest ways to overcome the nationalist ap-
propriation of the symbols and narratives of trauma, at the same time, their depoliticized
and de-historicized use might obscure the way in which these same ideas and images were
conducive to imperialist ideology and militarist policies in the prewar period.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Institutional Review Board Statement: Not applicable.
Informed Consent Statement: Not applicable.
Data Availability Statement: Not applicable.
Conflicts of Interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Notes
1
For a short chronology of his life and work, see (Hirayama 2007, pp. 94–98). For his artistic production, see the seven volumes of
Hirayama 1990, while for the catalogue of a retrospective on his life and work, see (Hirayama et al. 2007).
2
See in particular the Hirayama Ikuo Silk Road Museum in Yamanashi prefecture (http://www.silkroad-museum.jp/, accessed
on 5 October 2021), and the museum dedicated to the artist’s life and work: http://hirayama-museum.or.jp/ (accessed on
5 October 2021). Other museums that host substantial collections of Hirayama’s paintings are Sagawa Art Museum (https:
//www.sagawa-artmuseum.or.jp/plan/hirayama/collection.html, accessed on 5 October 2021), and Saku Municipal Museum
(https://www.city.saku.nagano.jp/museum/exhibition/001-hirayama- ikuo.html, accessed on 5 October 2021).
3
For a recent study of the figure of Xuanzang in East Asian Buddhism and more broadly its cultural impact, see (Brose 2021). Max
Deeg has analyzed in depth Xuanzang’s travelogue and its literary, hagiographic, political aspects (Deeg 2014).
4
Hirayama visited Afghanistan in 2002. Among the results of this project of “cultural heritage refugee” is the retrieval of fifteen
objects stolen from the National Museum of Kabul and their return to Afghanistan (Ky
¯
ush
¯
u Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan et al. 2016).
5See the temple’s website: https://www.yakushiji.or.jp/guide/garan_genjyo.html (accessed on 20 September 2021).
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