Okamoto urges humanity to cherish life and achieve peace.

Cover photo: Installation view of the mural Myth of Tomorrow (明日の神話), 1969, acrylic on concrete slabs, by Taro Okamoto in Shibuya City, Tokyo, Japan (2023). Photo by Danny With Love.

CONTENT WARNING: This article discusses the subjects of World War II, atomic bombs, and attacks upon civilians.

Intro

In the center of Tokyo’s busy Shibuya City hangs an imposing mural featuring flames, mushroom clouds, and a dancing skeleton. Every day, some 300,000 people pass the Myth of Tomorrow (明日の神話), the greatest masterpiece by Taro Okamoto (岡本 太郎).

Inspired by the atomic bombs detonated by the United States upon the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II, Okamoto — a war veteran himself — renders disaster at monumental scale. Comprised of 14 concrete slabs, it measures 5.5 meters (18 feet) high and 30 meters (98 feet) long. It’s overwhelming, suffocating, yet alluring.

“[T]his picture is not just the usual image of an atomic bomb, depicting the wretched, unsightly victims,” wrote Okamoto’s life partner, Toshiko (岡本 敏子). “The indescribable beauty and nobility of the burning skeletons; the vivid red of the dancing flames that dominate the vast picture, spreads across it in an almost elegant fashion.”

Infusing pain with hope, the vibrant painting is horrific and enchanting. Taro declared, “The atomic bomb explodes and the world is thrown into chaos, but humanity will overcome both disaster and fate to open a new future.”

Biography

Taro Okamoto was born in 1911, in Kawasaki City, Kanagawa Prefecture. His mother was a poet and his father was a famous cartoonist. Okamoto learned painting in Tokyo, before moving to Paris, France, where he was introduced to abstraction and surrealism. He also studied ethnography and philosophy.

In 1940, Okamoto was conscripted into the Japanese military, later captured as a prisoner-of-war in China. He returned to Japan in ‘46, becoming one of the nation’s most beloved post-war artists.

Nuclear Destruction

World War II had ended swiftly after the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan in 1945. Despite the annihilation of two cities and the loss of over 100,000 lives, a national movement against nuclear weapons did not immediately emerge.

The United States occupied Japan until 1952; to avoid accountability and public unrest, both U.S. and Japanese authorities censored information about the bombings, including scientific research and media reports.

Suddenly in ‘54, a fishing ship named Daigo Fukuryu Maru (第五福竜丸) [Lucky Dragon No. 5] was caught in the blast of Castle Bravo, a U.S. hydrogen bomb tested just off Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands. Crewmen were hospitalized upon the ship’s return. Reporters learned about the bombing days later, only after contaminated tuna was sold at Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market.

Health officials confirmed that over 800 ships were affected, resulting in the disposal of 457 tons of tuna, enough to feed 2.5 million people. This peacetime threat to the nation’s food supply was impossible to ignore.

“Radioactive fallout from the Bikini tests helped all Japanese to experience the Hiroshima A-bomb victimhood as their own,” wrote East Asian studies professor James Orr. Okamoto himself called all Japanese people “atomic bomb survivors.”

In Tokyo, housewives campaigned under the slogan, “We don’t want atomic-bombed tuna on our dinner tables.” Across the nation, 30 million signatories called for a ban on nuclear weapons.

Okamoto’s Guernica

The Lucky Dragon No. 5 incident inspired the First World Conference against Atomic and Hydrogen Bombs, as well as the creation of monster character Godzilla (ゴジラ) and Okamoto’s painting Men Aflame.

Men Aflame was made in dialogue with the 1937 painting Guernica, by Okamoto’s hero and rival Pablo Picasso, which depicts a NAZI attack upon the northern Spanish town. Both Guernica and Men Aflame address the bombing of civilians to uplift the preciousness of life.

Though Okamoto praised Picasso’s Guernica as a “scathing denunciation of the massacre” and a “shining pinnacle of modern art history,” he also noted that “the painting as a whole evokes an uncanny tranquility.” Okamoto disagreed with the “powerlessness” and “hopelessness” of Picasso’s “frozen nightmare.”

Picasso presents only victims in aftermath; the viewer is a late witness to the violence, invited to join in lament. Okamoto, instead, offers the drama of immediacy. In contrast to Picasso’s cold and somber Guernica, Okamoto creates a dynamic explosion, mixing vibrant colors and biomorphic shapes.

Okamoto portrays the bombing with anthropomorphic elements and cartoonish humor. The personified fishing boats appear to duel with the rising mushroom clouds, armed with outstretched tongues.

In accordance to his artistic philosophy of “polarism” (対極主義), the coexistence of opposites, Okamoto imbues the deadly attack with a sense of playfulness. Inspired by Aztec tradition, Okamoto argued, “Living with intensity is always premised on death.”

Mexico

The ‘60s were a time of unprecedented prosperity for both the nations of Japan and Mexico. The Tokyo Olympic Games had taken place in ‘64 and, in turn, Mexico was preparing to host the 1968 Summer Olympics.

In 1967, Okamoto was appointed producer of Expo ‘70 in Osaka, the first world’s fair in Asia. That same year, Spanish businessman Manuel Suárez y Suárez commissioned Okamoto to create a mural for his new venture, the Hotel de México. It was set to be the largest architectural complex in Latin America.

In Japan, Okamoto rebelled against the Expo’s theme of “Progress and Harmony for Mankind.” In official expo materials, Okamoto decried, “Man continues to evolve, walking away from ancient deities, from his homeland, from his fellow men who have touched his life.”

With the development of nuclear technology, humanity had captured a divine power capable of total annihilation. Okamoto argued that, because the future was bright like a nuclear bomb, humanity should instead turn to the past.

Okamoto was a primitivist. Coinciding with the rise of ethnography, primitivism was a rejection of modernity in embrace of so-called ‘uncivilized’ and ‘uncorrupted’ cultures.

Okamoto found great kinship and inspiration in Mexico. Upon his first visit, he joked, “This country is unforgivable. It has imitated me for hundreds of years.” Of the locals, he argued, “though they are poor, barefoot, and uneducated, they are much fuller and nobler than the people on Fifth Avenue in New York and the Champs-Élysées in Paris … I feel as if I had come very near to human beginnings.”

Frustrated by the confines of his official role in the World Expo, Okamoto brought his most potent ideas here, where he would create El mito del mañana, or the Myth of Tomorrow. Mexican culture’s unique embrace of death — especially Dia de Los Muertos (The Day of the Dead) — gave Okamoto the freedom to realize his macabre vision.

Okamoto painted his first and only skeleton in the center of his mural. “Nobody said that the burning skeleton was inauspicious or disgusting,” he explained. “It was because it was Mexico that I was able to paint that kind of picture.”

Analysis

Okamoto revisited Men Aflame, which he had created over ten years prior, to serve as his foundation for Myth of Tomorrow. The painting is rendered in Okamoto’s primary color palette, creating a vibrant tension.

According to Masayasu Kobayashi (小林 幹育) — who helped preserve the work — the mural should be read right to left, like a traditional scroll painting.

In the lower right, Daigo Fukuryu Maru is painted in red, pulling along tuna. There is a group of creatures fleeing the fire. Crowds of people are engulfed in flame, but they are rendered only in silhouette, their motions ambiguous. Nuclear clouds dominate the background, taken directly from Men Aflame.

A black banner with green and yellow circles rises through the flames, pulling attention to the central burning skeleton. Though human, it is deformed and abstracted, with bones stretching outward, almost like rays of sunlight or the unfolding petals of a flower. Despite the surrounding fire, the skeleton does not wilt; it is dancing, defiant.

Okamoto once quoted the diary of hibakusha (被爆者) [atomic bomb survivor] Dr. Michihiko Hachiya (蜂谷 道彦): “If the atomic bomb was beautiful and cruel, then the energy to respond to it, to overcome it, to create a new destiny, must be that much fiercer and fresher.” He paints death as a celebration of life.

Finally, on the left, Okamoto depicts three figures in rest, reminiscent of an idyllic pastoral concert, epitomizing harmony and peace. This represents the dream, or myth, of tomorrow that humanity hopes to someday achieve.

Lost & Found

Okamoto completed the Myth of Tomorrow in September of 1969. He hadn’t signed the painting, waiting until the hotel’s inauguration, but that day never came. Suárez — who was personally financing the hotel’s construction — ran out of funds; the project was abandoned. In the confusion, Okamoto’s mural was lost.

Taro Okamoto accepted the work’s disappearance. Perhaps it was a fitting end for the Myth of Tomorrow. Though he passed away in 1996, his partner Toshiko vowed to find the mural.

In 2003, the painting was finally discovered in the outskirts of Mexico, an hour’s drive from the city center, in uncovered storage. Exposed to the elements for over three decades, the mural was cracked and covered in dirt.

In the book Introduction! Taro Okamoto (2021), Akiomi Hirano (平野 暁臣), Toshiko’s nephew and director of the Taro Okamoto Memorial Museum, explains that the panels were broken along major cracks for transportation. It arrived in Japan just after Toshiko’s death, as a “jigsaw puzzle” with over 8,000 pieces of various size. Restoration took one year. In ‘08, the painting was permanently installed in Shibuya, ensuring access to the public.

Nuclear Power

Despite the horrors of atomic warfare, resource-scarce Japan embraced nuclear energy after the global oil crisis of the ‘70s. The world’s largest nuclear power plant was built in Niigata Prefecture in 1985. By 2010, 54 reactors were providing about 25% of Japan’s total electricity, with plans of continued expansion to achieve energy independence.

Then in 2011, nuclear tragedy struck Japan yet again. The nation suffered its strongest earthquake in recorded history, and the resulting tsunami caused meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi (福島第一) power plant, about 200 kilometers (124 miles) north of Tokyo. Over 300,000 people were forced to evacuate and all reactors across the nation were shut down.

In the aftermath, a panel was added to Okamoto’s Myth of Tomorrow depicting the damaged plant. The artist collective Chim↑Pom had secretly installed the new piece, connecting the ongoing disaster to Japan’s legacy of nuclear tragedy. They explained, “We can’t see history or radiation with our eyes, so we must imagine it.” Though the illicit act caused controversy, Hirano commented, “Taro would not be upset if he were alive.”

Government investigation later declared the plant’s failure “a profoundly man-made disaster” as it was not designed to withstand waves even half the size of the 15-meter (49-feet) high tsunami. To date, only one death is directly attributed to radiation.

In August of this year, the national government began to release treated nuclear wastewater from the Fukushima Daiichi plant into the Pacific Ocean. Despite support from the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency, the move has prompted objections from nearby countries China and South Korea.

Japan’s reactors have slowly resumed operation since 2015. In ‘22, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida (岸田 文雄) declared nuclear power a cornerstone of the country’s Green Transformation, with a growing majority (58%) of people finally comfortable with a nuclear restart.

Restoration

Myth of Tomorrow is regularly cleaned of dust, dirt, and clothing fibers, but the work’s condition has steadily deteriorated since installation in 2008. The painting has suffered additional cracking, peeling, and discoloration. Reinforcement is also necessary.

This year, nonprofit group Organization for the Conservation and Succession of Myth of Tomorrow has raised over 22 trillion yen (approx. 147,000 USD) through crowdfunding to cover the restoration, which began October 10th. Restoration will proceed in stages, estimated to last for several years.

Organization chairman Tomonobu Nishimura (西村 友伸) declares, “We have a mission … to pass it on to generations to come hundreds of years from now.” With explosive power, may Okamoto’s Myth of Tomorrow continue to haunt and inspire people all around the world.

Special Thanks

My thanks to English teacher Takahiro Yamauchi (山内 貴大) for his invaluable translation work which made this article possible.