This painting by Nakano Kenichi is a painting that was drawn on the day of Hiroshima and its a depiction of what Japan looked like after the terrible attack. Being only an amateur artist back when he painted this, his paintings seem more anime like and less sophisticated. But he is able to demonstrate the incident with a certain message. He uses the light color of yellow, red, and orange in order to make the painting give a sense of suffering and burning. When looking at the paintings similar to this one, the use of warm colors is shown throughout all the paintings, especially yellow, orange, and shade of red. The high flames of fire as the background make it seem almost exaggerated, but knowing the catastrophic incident makes it believable. He did not aim for reality in this painting but rather aimed to quickly sketch the images he was seeing outside of his house; which consisted of death, suffering, and pain. Even the skin color of the people are changed into tanned and light brown color in order to emphasize the rate of the burn that the bomb caused. He also writes Japanese characters on the painting that state, “living Hell in this world”, which is similar to the title. Thus, emphasizing the high flames of fire in the background that makes the painting’s setting look like hell with the surround of firing walls. The difference of a woman standing and many suffering, but still living also gives it the imagery of hell. Another analysis is the image of people running around in the background but no able to escape because of the walls of fire which makes it seem as hell is imposed in Japan and it is impossible to escape out of it.
The painting clearly shows the power of destruction humans have to use against each other. In other perspective, the bombing can be seen to be the only option possible for the United States of America but after looking at this painting, it makes people change views of Hiroshima.
