80 Years Since the Bombing: When ‘Conveying’ Transforms into ‘Creating’ — The Structural Shift Illustrated by Miwa Nishikawa’s War Orphan Film, the Colorization Project, and Goshiki Theater’s ‘New Peace’

It has been 80 years since the bombing. This year, three movements emerged almost simultaneously in Hiroshima. Miwa Nishikawa’s feature film about war orphans, the film adaptation of the black-and-white photo colorization project, and Goshiki Theater’s original play ‘New Peace’ — all of these initiatives began as activities to ‘convey memory’ but are stepping into a different realm of ‘creating works.’ Notably, these three movements did not coordinate with each other. People with different methods in different settings found themselves facing the same direction in the same year. This is not a coincidence; it is evidence that the act of transmission is structurally changing over the course of 80 years.

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Miwa Nishikawa’s ‘Children I Don’t Know’ — Starting from the Admission of ‘Not Knowing’

Miwa Nishikawa, a film director from Hiroshima, has confirmed her new work ‘Children I Don’t Know’ will be featured at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF). Held every September, TIFF is one of North America’s largest film festivals, attracting around 480,000 attendees. It is also seen as a precursor to the Academy Awards, making screenings here directly connected to international critique and distribution routes.

The film tells the story of war orphans who lost their families during World War II. Director Nishikawa has expressed her desire to depict how these orphans carved out their futures through their stories.

I want to pause for a moment on the phrase ‘I don’t know’ in the title. Works depicting the bombing experience have traditionally been built on a structure where ‘those who know convey.’ There are witnesses, listeners, and records. However, Nishikawa was born in 1974 — a generation without direct experience of the bombing. By honestly admitting ‘I don’t know,’ she still reaches out. This attitude itself reflects the current shift in the subject of transmission from ‘experiencers’ to ‘imaginers.’

Looking back at Nishikawa’s filmography, she has consistently portrayed ‘individuals swaying within relationships’ in works such as ‘Tremble’ (2006), ‘The Long Excuse’ (2016), and ‘A Wonderful World’ (2021). The subject of war orphans is, after all, a story about the relationship between the state and the individual, the loss of protection, and the rebuilding through one’s own efforts. Her background as a Hiroshima native and her approach as a relationship-focused creator intersect at this 80-year mark — a structure that stirs the heart.

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Colorization of Black-and-White Photos — Adding Color as Starting a Dialogue

A project to colorize black-and-white photos that has been ongoing in Hiroshima is now moving towards being produced as a film. This project, led by Professor Hidenori Watanabe from the University of Tokyo, combines AI-based automatic coloring with interviews of the bombing survivors. It began in earnest around 2017, and hundreds of photos have been colorized so far.

The essence of this endeavor is not merely to ‘make old photos easier to view.’ When survivors are shown photos with AI-generated colors, memories that had not been previously articulated emerge, such as ‘the sky was more red’ or ‘this outfit was navy blue.’ The question of color evokes testimonies. Thus, colorization functions not as the ‘completion’ of a record but as a ‘starting point’ for dialogue.

From a technical perspective, the accuracy of AI coloring has improved year by year, yet it remains impossible for machines to restore the ‘correct colors’ alone. Ultimately, it is the memories of those present that determine the colors. This is where the intersection of technology and human warmth occurs. AI poses questions, and humans provide answers — this back-and-forth movement itself has become a new form of memory transmission.

Recording and reconstructing this process as a film is a meta-visualization of the act of colorization, possessing a nested structure that turns the ‘mechanism of conveying memory’ into a work. Beyond the completed photos, the words, silences, and corrections exchanged around color — it is in this process that the tactile nature of transmission resides.

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Goshiki Theater’s ‘New Peace’ — The Resolve to Release Testimonies as ‘Material’

Goshiki Theater will perform the original play ‘New Peace’ in Hiroshima’s Naka Ward on July 25 and 26. Each performance is expected to attract around 200 attendees, engaging with the audience in a manner unique to small theaters.

The work is described as a creative play based on testimonies from bombing survivors. The key term here is ‘based on.’ Rather than simply reading the testimonies aloud, it reconstructs them as creative material. This act involves letting go of the words of the witnesses and re-establishing them through another body and voice.

There is, in fact, a deep chasm between ‘conveying’ and ‘creating.’ Conveying testimonies as they are carries the sincerity of delivering the original power of the text. On the other hand, reconstructing them as a creative work carries the risk of ‘altering’ the testimonies. The significance of Goshiki Theater taking on that risk is not small.

The title ‘New Peace’ is also suggestive. By deliberately prefixing ‘new’ to ‘peace,’ it reflects an awareness that there are places that the previous narratives of ‘peace’ cannot reach. While the scale of 200 attendees may seem small compared to larger venues, the density of reaching each individual audience member is only possible at this scale. The ‘smallness’ as a mechanism here becomes a strength.

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Overlapping Movements — A Structural Transformation in Transmission

When we lay out these three movements, a common structure emerges.

First, all of them are led by ‘people who are not experiencers.’ Director Nishikawa is a post-war filmmaker, the colorization project is initiated by AI technologists and researchers, and the performers in Goshiki Theater are not survivors themselves. The bearers of transmission are shifting to those who are ‘outside’ the experience.

Second, all are attempting to present their works not as ‘records’ but as ‘creations.’ Unlike collections of testimonies or documentaries, they choose forms such as feature films, artistic video works, and original plays. They are steering away from merely preserving facts to creating new expressions using those facts as material.

Third, all three possess a structure of ‘questioning.’ Director Nishikawa asks, ‘I don’t know,’ the colorization project asks, ‘Is this color correct?’ and Goshiki Theater asks, ‘What is new peace?’ Rather than providing answers, they open up questions — this is perhaps the sincerity of this generation in response to the reality of the absence of experiencers.

The number 80 years since the bombing signifies the aging and decreasing number of experiencers. As of the end of March 2024, approximately 106,000 holders of the Hiroshima City-issued health handbook for bombing survivors are recorded, with an average age exceeding 85. The circuit of transmission that involves ‘listening and conveying as is’ is physically narrowing.

That is precisely why the act of ‘creating’ becomes necessary. People without direct experience use imagination, technology, and their bodies to transform memory into another form. This is not a ‘deteriorated copy’ of the original experience. Rather, it is a process through which memory gains new life through the hands of the next generation.

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What to Observe Moving Forward

The screening of ‘Children I Don’t Know’ at the Toronto International Film Festival in September, the release timing and distribution of the colorization project film, and the audience reactions following the performance of Goshiki Theater’s ‘New Peace’ at the end of July — each of these ‘aftermath’ events will indicate the direction of this structural transformation.

Particularly noteworthy is how these works will be received outside of Hiroshima. When transmission transforms into ‘creating,’ it holds the potential to open up universal questions surrounding war and memory that transcend the specificity of the land of Hiroshima. In what context will Nishikawa’s film be discussed in the international setting of Toronto? Will the method of colorization be applied to war memories outside of Hiroshima? What insights will the small theater format provide to transmission activities in other regions?

The three movements have aligned in the same direction without knowing each other. Each of their specialties — film, technology, theater — is entirely different. Yet the conclusion they have reached is the same: There are places that cannot be reached by merely ‘conveying.’ Thus, they ‘create.’

80 years since the bombing. The memory of Hiroshima is now quietly, yet surely, transforming from something that is conveyed into something that is created.