Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park is widely known as a universal symbol of peace,
but there have not been studies of how people actually experience and interpret it.
This article presents a detailed case study of a visit to the memorial by using an
innovative methodology based on the use of subjective cameras (subcams). Results
show that despite the monolithic idea of peace that the memorial officially repre-
sents, it is experienced and interpreted in terms of a constant tension which exposes
conflicts in post-war Japan memory politics. The dichotomies of war/peace, death/
life, past/future, and old /new emerge as part of the participant’s encounter with
different situations during his visit. This is particularly clear where he perceives
border zones and points of intersection. The article concludes by interpreting these
dichotomies through the notion of themata, as elementary dichotomies that under-
lie a social debate around a specific topic. Specifically, two themata are proposed:
one revolving around the temporal problematisation of the past and the future in
the memory politics of the A-Bomb, and the other revolving around the spatial
dichotomy between the old and the new underlying Hiroshima’s urban renewal.