$45.18
- Hardcover
- 74 pages
- 230 x 276 mm
- Japanese, English
- Jun 2025
“Engraved on stone on a distant day
Shadows cast on the sand
Amid the collapsing world
Appears the vision of a flower”
― “Inscription” by Tamiki Hara, quoted in the beginning of “Chorus of Cicadas”
Hiroshima is a city caught in overlapping temporalities. Home to over a million people, it is also marked by historic catastrophe. The city stands as a symbol of both devastation and fragile hope for peace. Tatsuya Hirabayashi’s "Chorus of Cicadas" lingers in this tension.
What began as a visit in 2006 to see a Tsuguharu Foujita exhibition turned into a quiet exploration of the city with a camera in hand. Hirabayashi captured buildings, animals, passersby, and streetscapes. Yet, everything seems touched by the past. Even the buzz of cicadas, typically a sign of the arrival of summer, takes on a more solemn meaning. How strongly does the past echo through the present?
“Cicadas live undergroud for three to five years, depending on the species, and live by sapsucking from the roots of trees. Trees take in nutrients from the soil, which is composed of minerals and the excrement and carcasses of living creatures.
Many people are still buried underground in Hiroshima. Could the cicadas be absorbing Hiroshima and singing? Every time the sound of the cicadas echoes through the air, I feel a wish for peace and the consolation of the spirits of the dead.”
― from Tatsuya Hirabayashi’s afterword
