In The Map (Japanese: 地図) Kikuji Kawada examines postwar Japan’s intricate relationship with its wartime past and cultural identity through metaphorical and abstract imagery. Created primarily between 1960 and 1965, with Hiroshima as the pivotal site, Kawada’s work emerged at a time when Japan grappled profoundly with the lingering trauma of World War II. This period marked a critical juncture in Japan's search for a national identity amidst the socio-political upheaval caused by its defeat and subsequent American occupation.
Rejecting direct documentary representation, Kawada employs symbolic visual language to express the unseen psychological scars left by the atomic bomb. The stark black-and-white images range from detailed close-ups of the dome’s stains—photographed inside the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the skeletal remains of a building left standing after the atomic bomb in 1945, to evocative compositions of wartime relics and contemporary cultural symbols like American brands. This visual juxtaposition emphasizes the ongoing tension between Japan's imperialist history, the trauma of war, and postwar Western influence. These abstracted depictions represent the indelible marks of violence and loss, aligning the act of photography with the formation of historical memory itself.
Kawada's technical methodology involved deliberate experimentation. He used both a 4x5 inch view camera for meticulously composed long-exposure images and two 35mm cameras for more spontaneous captures. His darkroom practices included extreme cropping, negative manipulation, montages, and layered printing, which allowed him to push photographic expression toward metaphor and abstraction.
Upon publication in 1965, The Map quickly entered major institutional circuits—early prints appeared in New Japanese Photography (MoMA, 1974) and later in Conflict, Time, Photography (Tate Modern, 2014–15), with further presentations at the MFA Boston’s In the Wake (2015). Kawada received the Photographic Society of Japan’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2011), and in 2022 the MFA Boston acquired the project’s archive, while facsimile editions by Nazraeli (2005), Akio Nagasawa (2014), and MACK’s maquette (2021) broadened access to the work.
