Atomic Gameboard. 原子双六

Introduction

Welcome!

This exhibit offers a close viewing and translation of a 1949 Japanese fold-out gameboard print (sugoroku) entitled Genshi Sugoroku (原子双六) held at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum of The Ohio State University Libraries. Designed by Shimouma Saburō and published by the Japan Invention Newspaper (Nihon Hatsumei Shinbunsha), this print celebrates Yukawa Hideki (1907-1981), the first Japanese scientist to ever win the Nobel Prize in Physics. Its subtitle, "Comics for science education" (Kagaku kyōiku manga), confirms the game's pedagogical focus on the history and fundamentals of Physics.

Significantly, this gameboard was created only five years after the world's first atomic bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and while Japan was still under military occupation by the US-led Allied forces. In this context, the game delivers a profound moral lesson as well -- "No More Hiroshimas!" -- written in bright yellow letters at the top center above Yukawa's image.

Navigating This Site

Visitors to this website can journey along the game's twenty-one blocks in the same order as actual players would if competing in a real-life race to the "goal" (agari) of the game. In an actual sugoroku game, players would take turns rolling dice and advancing their game pieces toward this finish line. For visitors who would like to follow the gameboard in sequential order, please click the blue boxes at the bottom of each page to proceed to close-up frames of each successive block. For visitors who prefer to jump around randomly, please hover your cursor over the table of contents icon in the top left corner of the page (or upper right corner with most smart phones and tablets). A list will appear providing links to the various sections and blocks that comprise the entire print. 

English Translations

Almost all of the pages in this web site focus on the individual stops on the gameboard and their respective images and texts. Throughout this site, these blocks are annotated with an English gloss and romanized transcriptions that appear when hovering your cursor over the Japanese text. Blocks 7 and 15 contain longer narratives that exceed the limits of the annotation tools on this web platform; therefore, the full translations of these blocks appear directly below the image. The final passage at the Winning Goal (Agari) is likewise lengthy, so translations are typed below their respective sections. As you will find, this last passage contains a list of Nobel Prize winners, their nationalities, brief descriptions of their research, and the years they won the Prize.

Credits

Major thanks go to Dr. Patricia Sieber, Professor of Chinese at The Ohio State University, for facilitating this collaboration through her course, Translation and Interpretation Practicum (CLLC 5103), in Fall 2020. We would also like to thank Kazuki Miyazaki, OSU Class of 2021, for offering translation advice and puzzling out difficult and smudged Japanese characters. In addition, we are grateful to Dr. Rex Messick, Professor Emeritus of Physics at Ohio Northern University, for providing background knowledge on the history of Quantum Mechanics and ensuring the scientific accuracy of our English translations. To learn more about this project and its authors, please visit our About the Authors page. 

Terms of Use

This work may be protected by copyright and is intended for educational or research purposes only.  

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