On 9 August 1945, Iri Maruki, a Japanese artist, rushed from Tokyo to Hiroshima by train, following the dropping of the atomic bomb on the city three days earlier. Iri’s wife, Toshi Maruki, would join him soon after. Together they stayed in Hiroshima for around a month, helping to cremate the dead and tending to Iri’s partially destroyed family home, located a few kilometres from the bomb’s hypocentre. Iri’s mother survived but his uncle, two nieces, and many friends had perished; within six months Iri’s father too was dead.1Three years later, the couple embarked on a collaborative series of large-scale paintings that documented the terror of the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Over 32 years, they created the 15 ‘Hiroshima Panels’, each 1.8m by 7.2m, in the style of a traditional byōbu (wind wall); these folding screens are typically used in Japanese homes to separate interiors.The paintings employ a limited range of colours and show a mix of Western and Japanese influences, with figures in oil combined in layered inks. The first three panels Ghosts, Fire, and Water (depicting ‘a universe of suffering compressed into a kernel’2) were completed in 1950. They were initially shown nationally in civic centres, temples, and schools.3 By the end of the century they had travelled to more than 20 nations.4The Hiroshima Panels were created against the backdrop of the American occupation of Japan (1945–52). In seeking to depict the scene of the bombings from first-hand observations the panels are a form of reportage paintings. The reportage art movement, essentially a form of visual journalism, arose in 1950s Japan, highlighting the transgressions of the US occupation.The Hiroshima Panels, however, go further, promoting peace activism by depicting the true impact of a weapon that has the capacity to destroy humanity.