1.  Progress of Reconstruction of Hiroshima

At 8:15 am on August 6, 1945, an atomic bomb exploded in the air at a height of about 580 meters in the center of the city of Hiroshima. The midtown area of Hiroshima, the center of the Chugoku region, became a sea of fire in a moment and the swirling bomb blast demolished the area completely (Fig. 1). The atomic bomb was used for actual warfare for the first time in the history of man and never-imagined large scale destruction of a city became a reality. And on August 9, the world's second atomic bomb was dropped in the city of Nagasaki.

The number of victims attacked by heat rays, bomb blast and additionally by the initial nuclear radiation is said to have reached a hundred and tens of thousands. Though there were some modern structures built of brick and reinforced concrete in some sections, the midtown area which was covered mostly by wooden buildings was burnt flat by the intense heat leaving only tiles and pebbles. Coming into sight were only brick and the reinforced concrete buildings damaged by fire and the force of the explosion, some of which were heavily damaged because of their location close to the hypocenter, and some narrowly maintain their original figure and are still being used today. It was feared at that time that no vegetation would grow semi permanently in the midtown section contaminated by radioactivity. As it was a scientific weapon called "Atomic Bomb" in which man had no experience, the situation was such that how the result might turn out was beyond imagination.

The war came to an end on August 15, 1945. Thereafter the hypocenter became an object of academic study with the participation of a survey team from the US armed forces. On the other hand, reconstruction of the ruined city area was initiated by those who happened to be out of the city thereby escaping the tragedy, those who returned from their place of refuge and those who were repatriated from battlefields. Buildings disappeared, boundary lines of land became obscure, landowners were also victims of the disaster and the urban community were totally disrupted. In such a situation, rebuilding a city　from ruin was very hard to accomplish. Some built shocks on the land they owned and soon black market stalls were open in front of Hiroshima train station and illegally built houses were seen here and there in various parts of the city.

In 1946, the year following the end of the war, a "Hiroshima City Reconstruction Planning Map" was drawn with an attitude toward the functional and modern urban planning including the rationalization of transportation systems and arrangement of parks, etc. However, the land readjustment project for the realization of the said reconstruction program did not make a smooth progress. And in 1949, after the lapse of four years since the end of the war, a bill for "The Hiroshima Peace Memorial City Construction Law" passed the Diet and became a law and thus the city of Hiroshima, a victim of an atomic air raid, made a new start.

In 1949, a competition was held for a design of a peace memorial park extending over the Nakajima district situated close to the hypocenter and destroyed totally by the atomic bomb. In the competition, the design by a group of Kenzo Tange, then an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo, won the first prize and then used for the construction work. While the initial design was modified slightly, the commemoration park, an arrangement of the Le Corbusier style into the Japanese style, has become a monument symbolizing internationalization and modernization of the Japanese communities. That park plan was an axial plan with the vista focusing on the "Genbaku Dome(Atomic Bomb Memorial Dome)" as the main axis (Note 1, Fig. 2).

The citizens of Hiroshima, who suffered from the world's first tragic, atomic bombing, have a stronger anti-war and peace keeping sentiment than other people for several decades since the end of the war and additionally have been challenging a new theme called the anti-nuclear weapon movement. Besides, their determination that the tragedy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki must not be repeated has made them repeat an appeal to the world in the face of frequent crises of the Third World War. It can be said, therefore, that the rehabilitation of the city of Hiroshima has been accompanied not only with the question of reconstruction of a city but also with a global task.
　
After the lapse of some fifty years since the end of the war, when the direct victims of an atomic bomb are passing away gradually and being replaced by the new generation, the succession of a peace movement and peace spirits of Hiroshima have emerged as a new question. Until then, the position of Hiroshima for anti-nuclear weapons was making a definite contribution internationally in the situation where the danger of the Third World War was assuming an aspect of reality in the picture against the background of a confrontation between the East and West. With the settlement of a confrontation between the East and West camps around 1990, however, the significance of Hiroshima is entering into a new stage. There a change is taking place from a confrontation between human beings called the "Ideological Confrontation" to the confrontation between human beings and environment called the "destruction of global environment," and a social system, which considers the earth as one community called "globalization" is being created through the information media and Hiroshima, under such a condition of the world, has begun to seek a new theme.

The city of Hiroshima was positioned as the center of the Chugoku region in the course of building up the nation of the Meiji era, and with the location of the headquarters of the Fifth Division of the Japanese army, it was a city with many military establishments to become a "Military City" in the early years of Showa. It was also an armed forces transport base for the South East Asia as a pivot of Japan's policy of imperialism. As the consequence of a historical process that the imperialist powers of the world had to collide with each other over hegemony sooner or later, it was probably inevitable for a city like Hiroshima to fall a victim in some form or other. Speaking from a cool viewpoint, the atomic bombing may have been only an incident in the programmed world history.

It so happened that Hiroshima became a symbolic city of the issue that human beings in the period of the 20th century were confronted with. There will be a need to reexamine the issues related to Hiroshima from the standpoint of the history of man. Hiroshima is significant not only as a symbol of the ordinary antiwar slogans and anti-nuclear weapons slogans as an individual subject but also as a material to think of the basis of the existence of mankind toward the 21st century. It is the very theme that should be considered in the critical age of global environment when mankind who acquired a thing called "science," while building up the high level civilization on the other hand, is injuring itself and even threatens to wipe out itself of existence with its own technology on the other.

In the first place, there is a fundamental question whether urban communities or mankind can survive this world. Then a new question arises as to what kind of physical and social system can a city build up and live there in the ecosystem of the earth and outer space. Questioned now is how a city should be shaped in the ecological age of the coming 21st century. By following the Gaia hypothesis that the whole earth is a single composite living body, it might be well to regard a city as an "urban organism" by assuming a city to be a multi-cell organism.

It is the gene that forms an organism, inherits its character and maintains life, which is kept in the information storehouse called the "DNA." The gene of animals has developed gradually since the age of protozoan and the DNA of man is said to maintain traces of all genes which emerged in the process of its evolution. The process of development of a city from a simple hamlet in the primitive ages may be likened to the evolution of an organism, in which something like an invisible hypothetical gene can be imagined. Even the modern cities and towns should be considered to contain the genetic information of village and urban social systems of all ages including the genetic information of communities in the primitive ages (Note 2).

In Hiroshima, following the destruction of infrastructures of a city, a postwar city reconstruction plan was laid down following the theory of functionalism to make a framework of a modern city on the one hand and the people opened black-market stalls and also revived, in the course of nature, a central shopping district along the main street (old Saigoku Road) which had been in existence since the birth of the castle town of Hiroshima during the period from the end of the 16th century to the beginning of the 17th century on the other hand. Just like an organism which exercises its restoration function and regenerates its internal organs when injured, a city also seems to be regenerated naturally in its original state prior to the injury in the first place. With the application of such a concept of the gene of cities and towns, let us consider the way that the reconstruction of the city of Hiroshima should be on the basis of a study of the reconstructed Hiroshima prior to the bombing. One is its market function and streets, which carry a gene of the fundamentals which keeps the city alive and the other is Genbaku Dome as a monument of the ruins, which has generated the so-called new type gene.

　2. Streets as a Living Phenomenon of a City

 In the city of Hiroshima, construction of a historic museum is being planned for exhibition of the past and present of the city with the conception of providing mental food to consider the way that city should be. As a site for the construction of the museum, a plot of the Radioactive Effect Research Laboratory on Mt. Hiji situated in the east of midtown area is being considered. However, the said laboratory is an institution operated jointly by Japan and the USA and because of no progress of negotiations for relocation of the institution, the plan of 20 years' standing is not yet realized. There is a plan to reproduce in the said museum a section of old Saigoku Road, located in the eastern section of Nakajima-Honmachi immediately before the bombing in the size of the original and the author is involved in collecting data for the reconstruction of buildings. Additionally, there is a plan to make a model of the streets of Shintenchi which prospered as Hiroshima's greatest entertainment center through the Taisho era until the beginning of the Showa period. Both of these plans are intended to provide materials required for reproduction and reaffirmation of the life and energy of a city.

To begin with, the castle town of Hiroshima was born in 1589 on a delta where Ohta river flows into the Inland Sea. Terumoto Mori, who ruled the Chugoku region then, resided in the Koriyama castle located in the northern mountain district and the castle town of Yoshida was situated in the basin at the foot of the mountain. Influenced by his detailed observation of the construction of a large scale castle town in Osaka by Hideyoshi Toyotomi in 1583, he began to construct a similar large scale castle town in Hiroshima. In 1590, the following year, Ieyasu Tokugawa began to construct the castle town of Edo and large scale modern castle towns with commercial functions based on maritime transport were born in Japan one after another around this period.

In the 16th century, the age of civil strife when the whole land of Japan became the scene of wars, the technology of city planning developed rapidly together with the military technology including the construction of a fortress and the comprehensive accumulation of these technologies lead to the construction of these large scale castle towns at the end of the 16th century. Among them, Hiroshima town planning was a very systematic exhibiting directly the results of technology employed in those days. The town is considered to have been modeled after Kyoto, the ancient capital city, and was designed as a town with a neat grid of streets, comprising square blocks each having a length of 60 ken (approx. 120m) on all sides, on the basis of an azimuth plan corresponding to four-divine directions. Traces of this street network clearly remain in the present midtown area, though altered considerably in the process of war damage rehabilitation. Naturally, different from Kyoto which was built in the basin where the flatland expands evenly, Hiroshima was constructed on a delta where streams branch off irregularly with the gridiron street network distorted at the point abutting on streams. Such being the case, it was not possible to realize the ideal form of town planning throughout the district (Fig. 3).

It is said that there were fishing and agrarian villages called "Five Villages" on the Hiroshima delta prior to the construction of a castle town. The castle town merged these villages and called up merchants and craftsmen from various parts of the Chugoku region. It seems, therefore, that the new town had a mixture of various elements. It can be said that the modern programmed town incorporated a gene of the age of fishing and agrarian villages. Following the Edo period of nearly three hundred years, the Meiji Restoration saw the vanishment of the worrier class from the town and the establishment of modern urban communities having a system of self-government. The urban organism called "Hiroshima" was rendered the relationships with nature, a geometrical frame and also a modern reformation, thus making today's Hiroshima the integration of various genes.

At the beginning, the main street of the castle town of Hiroshima was the Otemachi street which ran straight to the south affording an unobstructed view of the inner citadel of Hiroshima castle. However, with the gradual change of Saigoku Road, a highway extending east and west, thereby connecting the eastern part and western part of the coast of the Inland Sea, to the main highway, today's "Hondori" (main street) shopping district was formed (Fig. 4). In the highway where buildings were almost completely wiped out by bombing, a central shopping district came to life again. The process was quite natural as if the gene of the shopping district exhibited its regeneration power (Note 3).

Immediately before the bombing in the early stage of the Showa period, Nakajima-Honmachi formed a part of the west side of this Saigoku Road, while Shintenchi (a new world) was formed adjacent to Horikawa-cho on the west. Each of these districts played a central role of urban functions but was transformed in the process of the war damage rehabilitation project.

 (1) Nakajima-Honmachi

The area where Nakajima-Honmachi was situated formerly is now occupied by the Peace Memorial Park and the streets barely show its traces. If tourists, while visiting the Peace Memorial Park, can experience the streets of Nakajima- Honmachi reconstructed in the expected museum and see the contrast between life and death of a town with their own eyes, they would be filled with deep emotion. The streets of Nakajima-Honmachi have a history of about 350 years since the birth of a castle town until the time of the bombing and used to be a district full of life throughout the Edo period as a town built along the old Saigoku Road.

The truth is that the island called "Nakajima" where Nakajima-Honmachi is situated does not follow the rule of the gridiron street pattern of this 60 ken (approx. 120 meters) square despite the fact that it cuts into the central part of the castle town in the form of a wedge. The reason for this is not known but it is probable that this particular district was used as a place of preparatory works by workers for building a castle and castle town and left till later on for town building. The streets are bent hook shaped and made as to throw intruders into confusion, with a smaller width of a block as compared with other districts, thereby making the street network more complicated intentionally. In Tenjin-machi extending to the south along the bank of Motoyasu river curving at the eastern edge of Nakajima-Honmachi, the street is considered to be the only lengthy curved street in the castle town of Hiroshima with added complexity (Fig. 5). At the beginning of castle town planning, it was an ideal geometric plan but the Nakajima district, which was built a little later, rather seems to have been constructed with such complicated street networks in a positive manner as a result of pursuing the functionality of town defense. While every latter day castle town in Japan tends to make its street network more complicated intentionally, it can be inferred that there was a change from the stage of idealism aiming at the initial clear morphologic order to the stage of functionalism which resulted in the complicated street network for the purpose of town defense.

In the town of Nakajima-Honmachi immediately before the bombing in the early stage of Showa period, traces of changes in the street network following the Meiji Restoration were contained (Figs. 6-1, 6-2) (Note 4). During the period of nearly 300 years of the Edo period, the worrier class demanded discipline of all towns throughout Japan and townspeople's houses were restricted to two stories or less and did not allow the people to choose freely the form of their buildings. Wooden structures must have been modified to some extent but the street scene is not considered to have changed significantly. With the arrival of the Meiji Restoration, the people gained freedom suddenly and a wooden five-story restaurant, the literally "Five-Story Tower," soared to the sky in the midtown of Hiroshima (Fig. 7) (Note 5). In the area around Nakajima-Honmachi, a "commodity market" was opened as a new commercial center and movie houses were also built transforming the district into the shopping center of Hiroshima in the Meiji era. And in 1907, the Hiroshima Branch of Sanjushi Bank was built upon the design of Mr. Kingo Tatsuno, a representative architect of Japan known for his design of the buildings of Tokyo Station and the head office of the Bank of Japan. Though the profile of this building was not known, it was possible to produce the estimated front elevation and ground plan from two indistinct photos of facade and interior discovered later on (Figs. 8-1, 8-2) (Note 6). The exterior of the building was in Western style with the appearance of a brick building at a glance but it was of the timber framed construction in reality. The user of the building changed later to the Sanwa Bank and then to the Hiroshima Branch of the Industrial Bank of Japan.

Because of the allotment of ground which continue to exist since the Edo period, the strip-shaped lot with a narrow frontage and a greater depth has remained unchanged. Where the traditional townspeople's houses built of wood were preserved, it is assumed that there was no change at all in the style of town life but where some of these identical strip-shaped lots were integrated, slightly larger Western style buildings were placed between these strip-shaped sites. Thus the streets began to present a rather confused scenery of a mixture of modernized Western style buildings with the traditional townspeople's houses. The scenic disorganization like this is incidental to a transition period and indicates a process of transition to a modern urban scenery.

On the other hand, Western style buildings, too, were bound by the traditional strip-shaped plots. The ground of the Hiroshima Branch of the Sanjushi Bank is said to have a frontage of about 7.2 meters and a depth of about 23 meters, a long strip of land with a depth about three times the length of a frontage. It was inevitable to adopt this shape of lot which was not so rational for a bank building. Entering a bank building, one normally sees a counter extending in both directions, with a wellhole operating hall affording comfortably a wide field of vision. In this building, however, there was no such margin in the width of the frontage and the counter was extending toward the depth of the building. In 1929, a three-story reinforced concrete building of "Taishoya Drapers Store" was constructed (Fig. 9). In this case, a wall in the shape of a signboard stood up at a corner lot, with the surface of front walls of the first floor lined with a series of arched shop windows and the surface of other walls decorated in the modern textural expression. For the interior, glass showcases were placed side by side, which hardly looked like a draper's store. The advent of this draper's store designed by Kiyoshi Masuda, a noted architect, pointed to the revolution of apparel culture of the Japanese people on the one hand and symbolized an energetic process of the evolution of the streets lined with a row of tile-roofed houses taking in the modern Western architectural culture.

Incidentally, the building of this "Taishoya Draper's Store" withstood the damage from the bombing and still exists today because of its reinforced concrete construction, and with the modifications, the building has been reused to date as a tourist information office of the Peace Memorial Park under the name of "Rest House." Now, it is swayed between the intent of the municipal government of Hiroshima to dismantle the building because of deterioration and the voice of the people demanding its preservation as a monument of atomic bombing. Same as Genbaku Dome, it is in agony as a monument peculiar to Hiroshima called the "structure suffered from the atomic bombing."

In the eastern district of Nakajima-Honmachi, the modern Motoyasu bridge lined with chandelier type street lights, was built in the east, coffeehouses and photograph shops were built in the depth of the lane in the north, a large volume of a cinema house can be observed in the south, and the streets became modern composite streets studded with modern urban structures as mentioned above within themselves (Fig. 10). With the background of nearly 350 years' tradition, groups of urban structures intertwined systematically with a complicated alley composition seems to embody popular vital power of urban communities rather than the orderly streets of other districts and their vanishing owing to the bombing weighs on our mind more strongly.   

In 1921, "Shintenchi," an amusement center, was opened by Shintenchi Co., Ltd. Since this neighborhood, situated to the south of Horikawa-cho along the Saigoku Road, was a samurai's housing district in the period of castle town and also because of the presence of some shrines and temples, land use did not seem to be stable following the Meiji Restoration. There, an adventurous show proprietor, probably through invitation of capital and experts from Osaka, deployed a great undertaking. For this rectangular plot, extending approximately 220 meters from east to west and about 150 meters from south to north, new alleys were drawn up and a flourishing space containing a Kabuki theater and two cinema houses was designed (Fig. 11).

In the first place, the castle town of Hiroshima in the Aki clan had no playhouses or gay quarters to our surprise, different from other castle towns. On the Island of Miyajima across the sea, there was Itsukushima shrine thronged with visitors and gay quarters for the plaisure of adult visitors. Non-routine town facilities were, so to speak, driven out to the Island of Miyajima. The castle town of Hiroshima seems to have been made politically to an austere and upright community in a way. While it is doubtful whether a town without an urban cultural base is worthy of the name of an independent town as a matter of fact, it was probably the policy of the Asano family who ruled the Aki clan.

After the Meiji Restoration, theaters were built one after another in the streets of Hiroshima and two gay quarters were opened, each in east and west, as if there was the lifting of a ban. It was as if the so far lacking cultural transmission organ was added to the urban organism called Hiroshima and also its information was written to the gene, thus making Hiroshima a full- fledged town. On its extension, a large scale amusement center was established in this district adjacent to the east gay quarters, thereby making it a comprehensive recreation center district.

The Kabuki theater "Shintenza" was built in the form of a traditional Kabuki playhouse and was a large Japanese style structure. In the frontage, many signboards were put up, thus creating a gaily facade impression. The two cinema houses, "Taihei-kan" and "Nisshin-kan," had their walls of large wooden structures, considered to be balloon frames, decorated with ornament based on the Secession style in fashion in those days (Fig. 13). The exterior of these structures must have been filled with obviously complicated decorations, giving a loud impression, though the coloration is not known. The interior halls were used for multi-purposes such as showing motion pictures and were provided with stages of the size sufficient for a vaudeville performance and a gallery with a second floor section.

These groups of theaters were located cleverly with the addition of squares where outdoor events could be held so as to disperse them rationally. It is an intentional arrangement which may well be called an urban space design but who designed it is not known. The presentation, in which one, entering a small alley, sees the expanse of an open space in the depth, with facades of large theater buildings filled with signboards appearing one by one, was a gift of the asymmetrical design peculiar to Japan known by the Tantric Buddhist temple on the halfway of a mountain and also by a landscape garden in the go-round style. Between large structures, wooden buildings of the tenement house style were placed, wrapping the streets in simple Western decoration. There, new kinds of shops such as coffeehouses and photograph shops lined the street attracting people's attention.

For the construction of theaters, particularly the Western style cinema houses which exhibit a certain design level, it is probable that the architects, who received education in modern architecture, were involved but it is not known who designed these buildings. Since the whole area of Shintenchi seems to have been modeled after the amusement quarters of the Sennichi-mae district in the southern Osaka, it is probable that the architects, engineers and other professionals from the Kyoto-Osaka area took part in the work.

As most of these buildings were wooden structures and the district was situated approximately 700 to 900 meters from the blast center, these buildings are considered to have been burnt out completely. In the postwar rehabilitation program, construction of a trunk road (present Central Road) running through this district from south to north was projected and implemented. Regrettably, the atmosphere of entertainment culture of the theater district was to be wiped out once again. Barely, the profile of a square remained as a park but it was finally turned to a lonely open space of the underground parking lot. The memory of the theater quarter remains as new cinema house buildings lacking the former gorgeous facade decorations which were buried in the groups of buildings housing various independent restaurants and bars. And the whole area including the east gay quarters transformed to adults' night entertainment world. This district generally known as "Nagarekawa" (the name of which originates in a moat running from north to south in the Edo period) turned to eating and drinking quarters filled with a smell of alcohol, quite different from cultural facilities such as Kabuki play houses.

The change of the theater district to the trunk road in part under the functionalistic town planning and to nightspots peculiar to major cities in Japan on the other side is symbolic and means that the urban space has been bipolarized to rationality and irrationality.

  3. Genbaku Dome as a Warning Monument

 In Europe, there is an institution to preserve the ruins of a battlefield as a "war memorial" or "warning monument" as exemplified by "Emperor Wilhelm Memorial Church" in Berlin. Though it is rather difficult to adapt this kind of monument to the cultural properties in the sense of the Japanese language, it is treated in the same way as the protection of cultural properties.

In 1996, Genbaku Dome was registered as "Hiroshima Peace Memorial(Genbaku Dome)" into the world heritage list of UNESCO (Fig. 14). It was thought to have significance in the sense of universal issue and human history as a "negative heritage" same as the concentration camp of Auschwitz. On this occasion, the Dome was designated by the States as cultural assets to represent "historic sites" and it was the first time that a warning monument of this kind was officially recognized in Japan. Until then, Genbaku Dome had been a mere monument to the administration and citizens of Hiroshima and to the general public having interest in the dome.

To begin with, Genbaku Dome was designed by Jan Letzel, a Czech architect, who was running business in Japan and was called at first "Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Museum" and was lastly known as "Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall" after two name changes. Though the building was an establishment intended for exhibition of commodities produced in Hiroshima prefecture to help promote the industry of the prefecture and had a spacious show room where glass showcases stood side by side, it was also used for exhibitions of works of art and for other events and was an intimated spot of the citizens. Most of the city area of Hiroshima then was occupied by wooden structures of two-stories or less and the novel, modern building, with a main structure of three stories built with brick having a penthouse and a dome on the top, was also a landmark of the city of Hiroshima. Its design was of the Secession style originating in Vienna and the neobaroque facade boldly winding fronting on Motoyasu river was an important element of the beautiful waterfront scenery of the northern edge of Nakajima including Motoyasu bridge and Aioi bridge (Fig. 15).

A plan was drawn by Letzel's architectural office and the construction work was undertaken by Mukuda-gumi of Hiroshima prefecture. It is assumed that the novel design including an oval dome surprised and embarrassed the local contractors who took part in the construction work. It is a pity that the original structural drawings are not in existence and barely a floor plan, elevation, cross section and perspective view published in "Kenchikusekai(The Architectural World)" a special building magazine at that time, remain today. While a reconstructed and restored CG, etc. have been prepared by putting together scenic photographs, etc., it is not possible to make clear how all parts of the complicated roof style was constructed and the fact is that we still remain in the stage of assumed reconstruction (Fig. 16) (Note 7).

It is analyzed that an atomic bomb exploded at a point approximately 160 meters diagonally behind this building at a height of approximately 580 meters. Therefore, the building was almost directly under the blast and the degree of destruction was extremely high. It can be imagined the building was hit by thermic rays accompanied by a flash and shock waves at first and then by a blast from the explosion and was subsequently drawn into a whirlpool forming a mushrooming cloud thereby starting a fire. While the wooden roof truss and beam beds were completely destroyed and brick walls were seriously damaged by the blast and fire, the oval tube-like staircase was of the relatively stable construction and the section around the staircase and thicker brick walls of the first floor were able to resist the total destruction.

On the top of the staircase, there was an oval dome of steel frame structure and copper roofing, only the steel frame survived in the fused state in part. This striking scene is said to have prompted the citizens to call this ruined structure "Genbaku Dome" sometime in the past. While some insisted that the ruins which claimed many lives should be removed to vanish this tragic event from memory, there were also opinions that the dome should be preserved as a warning to coming generations. Reflecting also the public opinion at home and abroad, the first preservation work of the dome was undertaken in 1967 with funds raised through contributions and the second preservation was carried out in 1989 (Note 8).

The remains of the brick building has its walls cracked, ready to crumble and tilted. If left as it is, the building is considered to collapse sooner or later as a result of exposure to the weather. In the preservation work, therefore, the steel frame support and cracks in the brick were reinforced with the injection of epoxy resin and the danger was eliminated in some portions. Precisely speaking, it is a monument artificially mended and fixed as the remains of a building.

In this way, Genbaku Dome has become a subject of various photographers and a subject matter of painters, with its ghostly figure has spread in the world as an artistic image. There what should be called the beauty of the ruins also seems to come into being. With the landscape style garden established once in Great Britain in the 18th century, there was a technique by which the ruins were enjoyed as a folly of the garden. And such German romantic artists as Caspar David Friedrich left behind paintings of the ruins of a Gothic church depicting a spiritual image. On its extension, Genbaku Dome as the symbol of tragedy may be said to have established a position of eternal icon with its ruinous beauty.

Contrasting to the ruins of a brick building is giant hackberry and camphor trees growing by the building in the postwar period (Fig. 17). The contrast between the manly vital power of the trees and Genbaku Dome as a symbol of death casts the significance as a warning to the organism. A hackberry tree has overgrown to the extent that it may demolish the ruined building from the ground and a difficult question whether the hackberry tree, a symbol of regeneration, should be cut down or not is being discussed by the citizens of Hiroshima. It has developed into a philosophical and idealistic question that Genbaku Dome as a symbol of death is a monument founded
on a larger basis called the dignity of life to the end.

In these days when we are heading for the age of ecology, it puts us a more profound question. Because, to the urban communities which have acquired the thought of ecology, it is nothing but human beings that have damaged the earth environment and there should be not only the mere affection for the ecosystem of nature but also a monument with which mankind reflects on the crime human beings committed against the ecosystem. When the urban organism is taken into account, there should be a warning against the act of damaging the life of urban communities and the significance of Genbaku Dome can be found once again from such a viewpoint. Once there was a time when a town was formed around a church and a palace located in the center of the communities like a cell nucleus. Today what should be located at the center of a city can be the ruins as a warning monument or a tree as a symbol of life.

Roland Barthes of France and other intellectuals, taking notice that Tokyo had in its center the ruins of the Edo castle as the imperial palace covered with green affording the habitat of wild birds, considered it as a spirit symbolizing the modernized Japan. The existence of the ruins and forests in the midtown may be said to suggest the way that the structure of urban space should be in the age of ecology. In Hiroshima the ruins located in the center of the city of Hiroshima may be said to bear a theme of the age of global environment called a warning to the civilization of the 20th century above a mere relic and historic remains of the past.

When one imagines a gene of a city, the remains located in the heart of the city are newly acquired organs and will become a new genetic code. There, the ruins in the center of the city are no longer relics of the past but should rather be called an element which indicates stages of the evolution of a new city.

Recently in Hiroshima, there has been a growing interest in the non-wooden buildings which suffered relatively small damage from the bombing because of their location at a longer distance from the blast center and which have been utilized as they are or diverted to some other purpose (Note 9). Properly speaking, these brick or ferro-concrete buildings which are reminders of and hand down to posterity the bombing should be located sporadically in the city area and should be made as positive elements comprising the urban scenery of Hiroshima of the ecological age. The effect brought by a thing called the atomic bomb should not be symbolized only by Genbaku Dome located close to the hypocenter but the scars corresponding to the distance from the blast center should also be preserved. It is certain that such structures would obstruct the new urban activities and that it requires no little burden in terms of man power and economy to acquire, maintain and manage the ruins and the surrounding land remaining in the heart of the city and also that there is a need to show wisdom as to how to obtain a solution.     

 4. Toward the Birth of New Hiroshima in the 21st century

 (Notes)

1. Regarding the process of postwar reconstruction work, refer to "Pictorial History of Forty Years since Atomic Bombing - Reconstruction of Hiroshima," Ishimaru, et al, compiled by Seiji Imabori, The Planning and Coordination Bureau, Municipal Government of Hiroshima, 1985.

2. Regarding the idea of the evolution of a city and a virtual gene, the author described this thoughts in the city history of Berlin, Toshimasa Sugimoto, "Berlin - A City Will Evolve," Kodansha, 1993.

3. Regarding the formation of the castle town of Hiroshima, refer to "Pictorial History of the City of Hiroshima," compiled by the Archives of the Municipal Government of Hiroshima, 1989.

4. The reconstructed axonometric view of Nakajima-Honmachi introduced here was prepared by Professor Sugimoto's office at the Department of Engineering, Hiroshima University. To make it the size of the original, a further detailed survey is being made by the Hiroshima Urban Life Study Society.

5. Toshimasa Sugimoto, 'Architectural Study of Gokairo (Five-story tower),' "Bulletin of the Archives of the Municipal Government of Hiroshima", vol. 12 (1989), pp. 23-51.

6. Toshimasa Sugimoto, 'The Hiroshima Branch of the Sanjushi Bank and the Architect Kingo Tatsuno - through a Study of the Restoration of Building Forms,' "Bulletin of the Archives of the Municipal Government of Hiroshima", No.19 (1996) pp.23-34, frontispieces 4-6.

7. Frontispieces of 7th, 8th and 10th issues, Vol. 8 of the "Architectural World." Toshimasa Sugimoto, 'On Design Concept of Hiroshima Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall (Genbaku Dome),' in: "Study of Arts" (Hiroshima Society for the Study of Science of Arts), second issue (1989), pp. 1-14. Toshimasa Sugimoto, 'Reconstruction of the Roof Shape of Genbaku Dome (former Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall) - Through the Reresentaion Work with CG,' in: "Study Report of the Chugoku and Kyushu Branches of the Architectural Institute of Japan", 10th issue (1996), pp.653-656.

8. Regarding Genbaku Dome, refer to "Architectural Witness to the Atomic Bombing - An Record of the Future," compiled by Naomi Shono, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 1996, pp. 26-31.

9. ibid.

 < Credit >

 Fig. 1 "An Illustrated History of Postwar Hiroshima - Fifty Years of Life after Atomic Bomb," compiled by the Archives of the Municipal Government of Hiroshima, 1996.
Fig. 2 "Architectural Witness to the Atomic Bombing - An Record of the Future," compiled by Naomi Shono, Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, 1996.
Fig. 3 "Pictorial History of the City of Hiroshima," compiled by the Archives of the Municipal Government of Hiroshima, 1989.
Fig. 4,5,6-2,8-1,8-2,11,14,16,17 Sugimoto's office of Hiroshima University
Fig. 6-1,9,10,12,13,15 Archives of the Municipal Government of Hiroshima
Fig. 7 "Hiroshima Traders' purchase Guidebook," 1883.
Fig. 16 Sugimoto's office of Hiroshima University and Chuden Engineering Consaltants Co., Ltd.

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