Recently Stephen Fry's BBC comedy quiz show "QI," was in trouble over panelist's comments regarding Tsutomu Yamaguchi, a survivor of both atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Amid generally admiring chit chat about Yamaguchi, panelists treated the bombings with a degree of levity typical of the show, prompting the Japanese embassy to make a rare complaint.

This goes to show the great sensitivity surrounding the atomic bombings, and the deep respect with which survivors are treated as redemptive symbols of national suffering in Japan. A similar degree of softly-spoken reverence seems to surround Ikuo Hirayama, the renowned nihonga (Japanese style) painter who died in 2009. That reverence has taken on an almost hagiographic tone at the latest exhibition of his works "Hirayama Ikuo and the Preservation of Buddhist Heritage" at the Tokyo National Museum.

Like Yamaguchi, who passed away at the age of 93 last year, Hirayama witnessed and survived the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. At that time he was a 15-year-old schoolboy and he later suffered some of the ill effects. As part of the narrative of his life, this experience not only adds poignancy to his subsequent career as an artist, but it may have influenced the direction that his art took, pointing him toward Buddhist themes and subject matter that reflected the fragility and transience of the material world.