The Origin of the Whole Earth Icon in the Ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 地球全体か地球全滅 か−−ヒロシマ・ナガサキの灰燼より浮上した地球の全体図
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Volume 9 | Issue 13 | Number 5 | Article ID 3505 | Mar 21, 2011 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Whole Earth or No Earth: The Origin of the Whole Earth Icon in the Ashes of Hiroshima and Nagasaki 地球全体か地球全滅 か−−ヒロシマ・ナガサキの灰燼より浮上した地球の全体図 Robert Jacobs Whole Earth or No Earth: The Origin posters, advertisements, packaging, and all of the Whole Earth Icon in the Ashes over the world-wide-web. It is the descendent of such essential early tools of human of Hiroshima and Nagasaki imagining as the map and the globe, but the Whole Earth is a radical reformulation of those Robert Jacobs older tools. It is a tool that opens humans to a "Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from new perspective about the relationship of the outside, is available - once the sheer isolation of individual to the planet, and to the other the Earth becomes known - a new idea as creatures living on the planet, especially the powerful as any in history will be let loose." other people. --Fred Hoyle, 19501 The history of the modern visual image of the Whole Earth derives from photographs taken of the Earth from space. Much as the ability to see deeply into space has completely revised our ideas about the nature of the universe around us, the ability to see our home planet from space, has fundamentally revised our concepts of the nature of the planet on which we live. Photographs of the Whole Earth entered culture in the late 1960s as a result of the development of satellites and manned space travel. But in this article I will argue that the visual content of the icon of the Whole Earth actually emerged several decades earlier. Before there were color photographs of the Earth from space, the visual image of the Earth as whole was first expressed in a manner we The Whole Earth, taken by Apollo 17, Dec. would come to associate with this icon by 7, 19722 editorial cartoonists in direct and immediate response to the use of atomic bombs on the Introduction Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The image of the Whole Earth is one of the most ubiquitous visual icons of the lateThese cartoonists grasped, as did others, that twentieth century. It is everywhere, on books, the threat posed to human civilization by the 1 9 | 13 | 5 APJ | JF invention and manufacture of nuclear weapons Nagasaki. This study will examine the work of threatened the people of the Earth in a holistic Western editorial cartoonists who not only way-it threatened the very existence of life on grasped this idea, but were able to put it into Earth. visual form and communicate it to a wide audience, amazingly even in the first week of It was instantly clear to people who heard the the atomic age. Their work depicted this Target news of the nuclear destruction of Hiroshima Earth and examined its dilemma at the hands of and Nagasaki that something fundamental had the new nuclear weaponry. I would argue that 3 changed in human warfare. Wars had long the work of these cartoonists was the very first taken the lives of the soldiers that fought them, place where we can begin to see the and over time the tactics and weaponry of war emergence of the visual icon that would be had evolved leading to the destruction of cities called the Whole Earth once it was rendered and various scorched earth tactics. Throughout into photographic form. The image of the World War Two, people had fled cities to avoid Whole Earth is the photographic opposite of the the destruction being wrought by aerialimage of Target Earth: Target Earth depicted bombing and crude rockets. But in the atomic what would die-the Whole Earth depicted what age, there was nowhere to flee to; as David was alive. They are negative images of each 4 Bradley put it, there was "no place to hide." other, and in that way, in the dark imaginings International law had established a distinction of the days, weeks and months after the news between combatants and noncombatants. Often from Hiroshima and Nagasaki, we discern that line had blurred as cities were attacked by primal awareness of the threat of nuclear war invading armies, and as technology made cities that gave birth to the most life affirming visual themselves targets. In the atomic age no one icon of the twentieth century. While the image was away from the battlefield: the battlefield of the Whole Earth had to wait for cameras to was the Earth itself. The Cold War threat of a be sent up into space on rockets, the content of global thermonuclear war involving thousands the icon blew in on the wind along with the of weapons detonating in a brief window of fallout from Hiroshima and Nagasaki. time was envisioned as the mechanism that could bring "the end of the world." Nuclear Whole Earth Image Content weapons were imagined to hold the collective fate of the world in their hands. As a visual icon, the image of the Whole Earth as seen from space communicates a very Against this backdrop a new vision of the Earth complicated set of ideas in a very simple image. emerged: the Earth as target, the Earth as This iconography centers on the way in which victim. In imaginings of a nuclear war, what the image simplifies many of the complexities would be killed was the planet as a whole, and of human society through the idea of all of its living creatures. While apocalyptic wholeness. Let's examine the most important of mythologies worldwide had spoken of the these iconographic statements. potential for global species death, this was hitherto at the discretion of divine forces. With The image of the Whole Earth presents a world the advent of nuclear weaponry, this power was without the political borders that have for so now in the hands of mundane and flawed long defined the way most people envision the human leaders. The future not only looked world. This old model is of a world of divisions: grim, it looked apocalyptic. divisions between countries, religions, races and ethnicity, economic philosophies, and Many people immediately grasped thispolitical systems. In the image of the Whole narrative after the news from Hiroshima and Earth there are no visible borders on the 2 9 | 13 | 5 APJ | JF landmasses. The only real division visible on What these other values combine to ultimately the Earth's surface is between land and sea. It suggest is that all of the creatures alive on reinforces the idea that the borders we have Earth share a single common destiny. Apart envisioned between our societies are largely from our individual destinies, when one artificial and of human construction. It tells a considers the long-term welfare of this fragile story about us all being from the same place planet in the darkness of space, either the and living in a common space. planet will survive, along with its inhabitants, or it will perish. This is perhaps the most The other border that comes into sharp relief in powerful and profound aspect of the this image is the separation between the iconography of the Whole Earth. If a nuclear beautiful blue planet and the cold darkness of war were to break out, the borders so space. This aspect of the image emphasizes the important to humans, between the conflicting fragility of life on Earth. The Earth is seen as a parties, and between combatant and non- small outpost, a delicate planet enveloped by a thin atmosphere in which all of life exists; this combatants, would be illusory. The is cast against the immensity and emptiness of contamination of radioactive fallout would not space. It almost seems as if the iciness of space stop at the borders that humans draw on maps: could swallow the Earth up if we are not lucky, the planet as a whole would be affected. And in and careful. Rather than an eternal sense of this sense, the victims of nuclear war would be timelessness, the Earth appears to beall of the inhabitants of Earth. The victim of a precarious when cast against such emptiness, nuclear war would be the Earth itself and all its giving it a sense of vulnerability. Theinhabitants. maintenance of life on this planet would appear to take constant vigilance against powerful Another significant thing to emerge out of such forces. It suggests the need for the careful a perspective is the sense of the Earth as a balancing of complex factors to assuresingle ecosystem. Whereas previously people continued life here. may have thought of themselves as living in the mountains, or on an island, or on the plains, consideration of the Whole Earth makes one realize that the problems that affect one segment of the ecosystem may affect all the others. An enlargement of the sense of self accompanies this realization-whereas previously one might identify as a citizen of a certain country, tribe or religion, looking at the image of the Whole Earth can work to change one's social calibration to a more global perspective. Such a perspective is at the root of the debate about global warming. People are aware that their efforts to make changes will not succeed if some countries work against those changes. The solutions must be holistic, systemic, and not restricted by the artificial borders of human map making, war making or voting. A long view of the Earth against the emptiness of space History of the Whole Earth as a Visual Icon 3 9 | 13 | 5 APJ | JF The image of the Whole Earth is taken from photographs of the Earth as seen from space.