Cenotaph
A man in Hiroshima Memorial Peace park, framed by the memorial Cenotaph.
The smooth concrete and granite arch built in 1952 was designed by Kenzo Tange, a professor at the University of Tokyo, to resemble an ancient arch-shaped house, representing a shelter for the souls of the victims. The stone chest in the center holds the names of all of the people killed by the bomb, directly or indirectly. The registry comprises 108 volumes with 297684 names and one volume of many unidentified (August 2015).
The epitaph on the cenotaph can be translated as “please rest in peace, for [we/they] shall not repeat the error”. The sentence, written by the professor of English Literature at Hiroshima University, Tadayoshi Saika, takes advantage of the lexical ambiguity of polite Japanese speech, omitting the sentence’s subject, to memorialize the victims of Hiroshima without politicizing the issue.
Cenotaph
A man in Hiroshima Memorial Peace park, framed by the memorial Cenotaph.
The smooth concrete and granite arch built in 1952 was designed by Kenzo Tange, a professor at the University of Tokyo, to resemble an ancient arch-shaped house, representing a shelter for the souls of the victims. The stone chest in the center holds the names of all of the people killed by the bomb, directly or indirectly. The registry comprises 108 volumes with 297684 names and one volume of many unidentified (August 2015).
The epitaph on the cenotaph can be translated as “please rest in peace, for [we/they] shall not repeat the error”. The sentence, written by the professor of English Literature at Hiroshima University, Tadayoshi Saika, takes advantage of the lexical ambiguity of polite Japanese speech, omitting the sentence’s subject, to memorialize the victims of Hiroshima without politicizing the issue.