Hiroshima Monster Girl

Hiroshima Monster Girl is a solo performance by Sachiko Hara. In 30 minutes she tells what happened in Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, how a girl survived there, how she continues to live, how she later meets a girl from Fukushima, what she wishes for the world today.

Sachiko Hara speaks a haunting text and plays with strong body expression and interacts with projected video images. The music was composed by the Japanese improvisation musician Kazuhisa Uchihashi. Paintings by the Hiroshima artist Goro Shikoku are shown, who painted Hiroshima whole his life for world peace. As background of the performance please look here : hiroshima-salon.sachikohara.net

What do survivors of the Hiroshima Atomic bomb hope? Of Nagasaki? Of Bikini Atoll? What do victims of the war want? A world without war, a world without bombs. It seems almost impossible today to achieve complete world peace . But I want to struggle for it in my own way and I want to discuss with people what we can do for it. Why should we keep remembering? I have seen many places: Ruins after wars, pain of lost homeland, fear of living near a military base or a nuclear waste dump. In everyday life we can ignore such fears, but sometimes we can make them the subject of discussion. After the performance, which tells what happened in Hiroshima, we can reflect on what it means today. Are there similar stories in your city?

In Germany, for example: after a phase of apparent détente and disarmament from the 1990s onwards, the planned cancellation of the INF treaty (“Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces”) for the disarmament of medium-range missiles by Donald Trump is another step in the reversal of global nuclear weapons policy – in Germany as well. Up to 20 B61 bombs of the US military are stationed at the nuclear weapons base “Fliegerhorst Büchel” in the Eifel region in Germany for use by German soldiers. According to the Nobel Peace Prize winner ICAN (“International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons”), each of these bombs has a ​maximum explosive power comparable to that of 13 Hiroshima bombs. Not only Germany. Hiroshima is everywhere. We live with danger. How should we live? What shall we do? These questions are forever in my mind as I travel around the world with this performance.