ABSTRACT
This critical content analysis focuses on picturebooks about the atomic bombing of Hiroshima that were originally published in Japan and then translated into English in the United States. The theoretical frames of imagined communities and postcolonialism are used to explore how visual and narrative discourses create constructs of Japanese nationhood, reflecting a hidden social ideology that figures prominently in children’s literature. The analysis investigates how the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the people of the city are portrayed in international picture books and how readers are positioned by the visual and narrative discourses in these books. The books include: Toshi Maruki’s Hiroshima no Pika (1981), Junko Morimoto’s My Hiroshima (1987), Tatsuharu Kodama’s Shin’s Tricycle (1995), and the English (1997) version of Yukio Tsuchiya’s Faithful Elephants. These books were published during the postcolonial period in Japan and written by Japanese authors with colonial and war memories. The analysis uses analytical tools to examine character relationships, color choices, gaze, mood, and positioning to identify the ways in which these books reflect a view of Japanese nationalism as victimhood in a peaceful culture, while failing to reveal Japanese aggression during World War II.
