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Visualizing Nuclear Power in Japan pp 117–133Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

Living in Fear: Nuclear Films

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Abstract

In the 1950s, Japanese science-fiction films and documentaries portrayed the threat posed by nuclear weapons while nevertheless acknowledging the power of science and scientists to enhance people’s lives. This chapter discusses the American-made The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and how it inspired mutant monster films such as Godzilla (1954). Nuclear fear was vividly portrayed in I Live in Fear (1955). At the same time, documentaries were being made in the USA and Japan to provide different perspectives on the situation that Japan uniquely found itself in: a nation that had fallen victim three times to nuclear weapons (at Hiroshima, Nagasaki and near Bikini Atoll) but strong in theoretical nuclear physics and actively pursuing the possibility of introducing civilian nuclear power.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day, June 17, 1953,” The Eleanor Roosevelt Papers Digital Edition (2017), accessed 17 May 2019, https://www2.gwu.edu/~erpapers/myday/displaydoc.cfm?_y=1953&_f=md002565

  2. 2.

    Alexander Hammond, “Rescripting the Nuclear Threat in 1953: The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms,” Northwest Review 22, no. 1 (1 Jan. 1984): 181–194, esp. 190.

  3. 3.

    Takayuki Tatsumi, trans. Seth Jacobowitz, “On the Monstrous Plant, Or How Godzilla Took a Roman Holiday,” in The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film, ed. Sonja Fritzche (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2014), 69–85, esp. 77.

  4. 4.

    Nagao Ikeda, “The Discoveries of Uranium 237 and Symmetric Fission: From the Archival Papers of Nishina and Kimura,” Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Series B, Physical and Biological Sciences 87, no. 7 (2011): 371–375.

  5. 5.

    H. K. Yoshihara, “The Dawn of Radiochemistry in Japan,” Radiochimica Acta 100 (2012): 523–527.

  6. 6.

    Yoshihara, “The Dawn of Radiochemistry in Japan.”

  7. 7.

    “Ash of Death” script, U.S. Department of State, General Records, RG 59, Office of the Secretary, Special Assistant to Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, General Records Relating to Atomic Energy Matters, 1948–1962, Country File: Japan, U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, MD.

  8. 8.

    “Ash of Death” script, 2.

  9. 9.

    “Ash of Death” script, 3.

  10. 10.

    “Ash of Death” script, 4.

  11. 11.

    “Ash of Death” script, 4–5.

  12. 12.

    “Ash of Death” script, 8.

  13. 13.

    “Ash of Death” script, 9.

  14. 14.

    Yuki Miyamoto, “Gendered Bodies in Tokusatsu: Monsters and Aliens as the Atomic Bomb Victims,” Journal of Popular Culture 49, no. 5 (2016): 1086–1106, esp. 1091.

  15. 15.

    William Tsutsui, Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 20.

  16. 16.

    Yuki Tanaka, “Godzilla and the Bravo Shot: Who Created and Killed the Monster?” Asia-Pacific Journal 3, no. 6 (10 Jun. 2005), https://apjjf.org/-Yuki-Tanaka/1652/article.pdf

  17. 17.

    John Vohlidka, “Atomic Reaction: Godzilla as Metaphor for Generational Attitudes toward the United States and the Bomb,” in The Atomic Bomb in Japanese Cinema: Critical Essays, ed. Matthew Edwards (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Co., 2015), 56–67, esp. 58.

  18. 18.

    Miyamoto, “Gendered Bodies in Tokusatsu.”

  19. 19.

    Tanaka, “Godzilla and the Bravo Shot.”

  20. 20.

    Miyamoto, “Gendered Bodies in Tokusatsu,” 1088.

  21. 21.

    Tsuchiya, Yuka, “The Atoms for Peace USIS Films: Spreading the Gospel of the “Blessing” of Atomic Energy in the Early Cold War Era,” International Journal of Korean History 19, no. 2 (Aug. 2014): 107–135, esp. 124–125.

  22. 22.

    L.D. Stoughton, “The Cosmotron Building,” Review of Scientific Instruments 24, no. 9 (Sept. 1953): 854–855; M. Hildred Blewett, “The Cosmotron: A Review,” Review of Scientific Instruments 24, no. 9 (Sept. 1953): 725–737.

  23. 23.

    W.B. Fowler, R.P. Shutt, A.M. Thorndike and W.L. Whittemore, “Examples of Multiple Pion Production in n-p Collisions Observed at the Cosmotron,” Physical Review 91, no. 3 (Aug. 1953): 758–759.

  24. 24.

    William J. Broad, “Columbia’s Historic Atom Smasher Is Now Destined for the Junk Heap,” New York Times, 20 Dec. 2007, B1.

  25. 25.

    “Report Prepared by the National Security Council,” 2 Mar. 1955, Washington D.C. In U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1955–1957, Foreign Policy; Foreign Information Program, Vol. IX, ed. John P. Glennon (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987), 517.

  26. 26.

    Akira Kurosaki, “Japanese Scientists’ Critique of Nuclear Deterrence Theory and Its Influence on Pugwash, 1954–1964,” Journal of Cold War Studies 20, no. 1 (Winter 2018): 101–139, esp. 111.

  27. 27.

    “Logs of Nobel Prize-winning Physicist Yukawa Shows Clues on Wartime Nuke Research,” Mainichi Newspapers, 22 Jul. 2018, https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20171222/p2a/00m/0na/028000c, accessed 25 May 2019; Morris Low, Science and the Building of a New Japan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), 38.

  28. 28.

    James Goodwin, Akira Kurosawa and Intertextual Cinema (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 231.

  29. 29.

    Tadao Satō, Currents in Japanese Cinema, trans. by Gregory Barrett (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1982, 1987), 129, 199–200.

  30. 30.

    James Goodwin, “Akira Kurosawa and the Atomic Age,” in Perspectives on Akira Kurosawa, ed. James Goodwin (New York: G.K. Hall and Co., 1994), 124–142, esp. 131.

  31. 31.

    Satō, Currents in Japanese Cinema, 129, 199–200.

  32. 32.

    Taketani, Mituo, “Shōchōshugi no genkai” (“The Limits of Symbolism”), Kinema junpō (Motion Picture Times), no. 133 (Dec. 1955): 49–50, esp. 50.

  33. 33.

    Yamamoto, Akihiro, Kaku to Nihonjin (Japanese and the Nuclear) (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 2015), 33–34.

  34. 34.

    Taketani, “Shōchōshugi no genkai,” 49.

  35. 35.

    Satō, Currents in Japanese Cinema, 129, 199–200.

  36. 36.

    George O. Totten and Tamio Kawakami, “Gensuikyō and the Peace Movement in Japan,” Asian Survey 4, no. 5 (May 1964): 833–841, esp. 834–835.

  37. 37.

    Yuko Shibata, “Belated Arrival in Political Transition: 1950s Films on Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” in When the Tsunami Came to Shore: Culture and Disaster in Japan, Roy Starrs (Leiden: Global Oriental, 2014), 231–248, esp. 235–238. For commentary on the conference, see Lawrence S. Wittner, The Struggle against the Bomb, Vol. 2 (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1997), 9–10.

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  • Taketani, Mituo, “Shōchōshugi no genkai” (“The Limits of Symbolism”). Kinema junpō (Motion Picture Times), no. 133 (Dec. 1955): 49–50.

    Google Scholar 

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    Google Scholar 

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    Google Scholar 

  • Yamamoto, Akihiro. Kaku to Nihonjin (Japanese and the Nuclear). Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 2015.

    Google Scholar 

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    Article  Google Scholar 

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  1. School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

    Morris Low

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Low, M. (2020). Living in Fear: Nuclear Films. In: Visualizing Nuclear Power in Japan. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47198-9_6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47198-9_6

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