Kawada Kikuji, LUCKY STRIKE (Rakkīsutoraiku), from the series Chizu (The Map), 1959–65, gelatin silver print

Kawada Kikuji: Chizu (The Map)

Now showing24 October 2026 – 18 July 2027$30

Kawada Kikuji's 1965 photobook Chizu, in which Coca-Cola bottles, ruined fortresses and the stained walls of the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Dome resist any single narrative of postwar Japan.

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On now All of October 2026

Preview: written before the show opened

The ceiling of Hiroshima's Atomic Bomb Dome, swirled with stains, shares a book with discarded Coca-Cola bottles and Lucky Strike packets. Kawada Kikuji published that book, Chizu (The Map), on 6 August 1965, twenty years to the day after the bombing, and it is counted among the most important photobooks ever made.

In 2022 the MFA acquired the whole project directly from Kawada: the book's 87 photographs, their negatives, his binders of contact sheets and notes, and a first edition. This show is built from that archive, so you see the prints next to the working material behind them. Sugiura Kohei designed the book and the Nobel laureate Oe Kenzaburo wrote its main text. The museum calls the images "eerily apocalyptic".

It hangs in the Herb Ritts Gallery (Gallery 169) from 24 October, included with $30 admission, and the museum stays open until 10 pm on Thursdays and Fridays.

Look for

The Atomic Bomb Dome
Look for the swirled, ravaged stains on the walls and ceiling of the dome's skeletal remains, photographed over repeated visits to Hiroshima from 1958.
LUCKY STRIKE
A discarded American cigarette packet shot in black and white, one of the occupation-era leftovers Kawada set against the ruins.
The first-edition photobook
An original copy of Chizu, whose box asks in English: "Where is our map today, our vision, our radiant order?"
Contact sheets and notes
Kawada's own binders of contact sheets and personal notes, acquired with the prints and negatives straight from the photographer.