Hiroshima Victims Memorial Cenotaph

This guide to the Hiroshima Victims Memorial Cenotaph in Hiroshima opens with a shape easy to misread, a plain concrete arch over a stone box that looks finished but isn't, since city workers still open the register beneath it once a year. You'll hear why architect Kenzo Tange modeled the arch on an ancient clay house from Japan's oldest royal tombs, and how he aimed its sightline through the Flame of Peace toward the ruined dome across the river. The guide also follows the professor asked to write the words cut into the stone, and the objection those two hours of writing later provoked. Line your eye through the arch before you read them.