Dates｜August 2 – September 7, 2025
Venue｜MEM  map
Hours｜12:00 – 18:00（Due to the talk event on 6th September, general admission will be from 12:00 to 14:00. After that, it will reopen at 17:00.）
Closed | Monday (Open if Monday is a public holiday, closed the following weekday)
Phone | 03-6459-3205

TALK Session
3rd August, 15:00–18:00
Speakers | Kuniyoshi Ōtaki, Jō Takeba, Ayumu Tajiri
Participation Fee | 1200yen
Capacity of 20 persons
Reservation only, Japanese version only

Reservations are available through MEM’s online store.

OPENING Reception
3rd August, 18:00–20:00
Admission free, no reservation required.
Please note that the start time may be delayed to coincide with the end of the talk.

＊Additional events will be announced on our website and SNS.

This exhibition will introduce 8.6 Hiroshima Day, a photographic project collectively carried out by members of the All-Japan Students’ Photo Association (AJSPA) in Hiroshima between 1968 and 1971. The project takes its name from August 6, the date of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Ceremony. Organized primarily around high school and university photography clubs across the country, the AJSPA welcomed photography critic Tatsuo Fukushima as its de facto leader in the mid-1960s. Under his guidance, the association shifted its focus toward pressing social issues such as the student protests and environmental pollution during a period of profound social change in Japanese society, developing its practice through exhibitions and publications.

8.6 Hiroshima Day was the name participants gave to their acts of turning their cameras on the city of Hiroshima, over twenty years after the atomic bombing, amid its rapid reconstruction, which transformed the urban landscape and the lives of its residents, to reexamine the meaning of “Hiroshima.”

Fukushima told the students, “The real crisis is not on the front lines of the protest; it lies elsewhere.” He identified that “elsewhere” as Hiroshima. These words compelled the students to head to the city. Over the course of eleven sessions, they conducted extensive photo shoots with some members taking on logistical roles such as arranging on-site accommodations. In 1969, photographs from the project were exhibited at both Hiroshima Nagarekawa Church and the Nikon Salon in Ginza. In 1972, the photobook HIROSHIMA, Hiroshima, hírou-ʃímə was published, capturing the transformation of the city under the banner of postwar reconstruction, the lives of its people, the August 6 memorial ceremony, the floating lantern ritual, the gentrification of the atomic bomb slums, and images of archival photographs and personal belongings exhibited at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The final layout of the photobook also incorporated photographs of student protests at Hiroshima University, taken by AJSPA members based in Hiroshima during the same period.

The students mimeographed a collective statement for 8.6 Hiroshima Day, and after each session, compiled reports detailing the project’s purpose, its background, and the specifics of their photographic activities. These documents include candid reflections on the inner conflicts they faced when photographing hibakusha (atomic bomb survivors), as well as the moments of both rejection and acceptance they encountered with residents. Each participant in 8.6 Hiroshima Day carried their own experiences and emotions.

While this photographic initiative was compiled into the photobook HIROSHIMA, Hiroshima, hírou-ʃímə, the book alone does not convey the full scope of 8.6 Hiroshima Day. This exhibition will present original prints featured in the photobook alongside related archival materials and documentation, offering a broader view of the project. On the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, we hope this exhibition provides an opportunity to reflect on what AJSPA’s 8.6 Hiroshima Day represented, and to ask once again: What does “Hiroshima” mean to us today?