Japan exorcises trauma with cultural expressions

▲ Godzilla: The Art , an exhibition commemorating the 70th anniversary of the fictional creature's birth at the Mori Arts Center Gallery in Tokyo. Photo by AFP

▲ Visitors in front of the cenotaph in memory of the victims, yesterday in Peace Park, in Hiroshima. Photo AFP

AFP

La Jornada Newspaper, Tuesday, August 5, 2025, p. 3

Tokyo. The nuclear bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki have profoundly influenced Japanese culture for decades, inspiring everything from Godzilla's atomic breath to manga stories.

The Japanese title of the Astro Boy manga is Mighty Atom , while other famous anime such as Akira, Neon Genesis Evangelion and Attack on Titan feature large-scale explosions.

Going through extreme suffering and exorcising trauma is a recurring theme in Japanese cultural production, and this has fascinated global audiences , says William Tsutsui, a history professor at the University of Ottawa.

The American bombs dropped in August 1945 caused around 140,000 deaths in Hiroshima and 74,000 in Nagasaki.

Since the end of World War II, stories of destruction and mutation have been associated with the fear of frequent natural disasters and, after 2011, the Fukushima accident.

While some poems describe the sheer terror caused by the atomic bomb at the moment it was dropped , many works address the subject indirectly, confirms writer Yoko Tawada.

In his book The Emissary , published in Japan in 2014, Tawada focuses on the aftermath of a major catastrophe, drawing inspiration from the similarities between the atomic bombs, Fukushima, and Minamata disease , a mercury poisoning due to industrial pollution in southwestern Japan since the 1950s.

It's not so much a warning as a message: things may get worse, but we'll find a way to survive , explains Tawada.

Giving a face to abstract fears

Godzilla is undoubtedly the most famous creation that reflects the complex relationship between Japan and nuclear energy: a prehistoric creature awakened by US atomic tests in the Pacific.

We need monsters to give form and face to abstract fears , says Tsutsui, author of the book Godzilla in My Mind .

In the 1950s, Godzilla played that role for the Japanese, with atomic energy, with radiation, with memories of atomic bombs.

Many left the theater in tears after watching Godzilla ravage Tokyo in the original 1954 film.

▲ A 1945 photo showing the devastated city of Hiroshima after a U.S. Air Force B-29 dropped the first atomic bomb on August 6. Photo: AFP

The nuclear theme is present in the nearly 40 Godzilla films, but it is often not prominent in the plots.

The American public was not very interested in Japanese films that reflected the pain and suffering of war and, in some ways, made negative reference to the United States and its use of atomic bombs , according to Tsutsui.

Despite all this, the franchise remains very popular, and Godzilla Resurge was a huge success in 2016. The film was perceived as a critique of the management of Fukushima.

Black rain

Black Rain , Masuji Ibuse's 1965 novel about radiation sickness and discrimination, is one of the best-known accounts of the Hiroshima bombing.

Ibuse was not a survivor, which fuels a huge debate about who has the legitimacy to write these kinds of stories , explains Victoria Young of Cambridge University.

Kenzaburo Oe, writer and Nobel Prize winner for Literature in 1994, compiled testimonies from survivors in Hiroshima Notebooks , a collection of essays written in the 1960s.

Oe deliberately chose the documentary genre, notes Yoko Tawada. She confronts reality, but attempts to approach it from a personal perspective , including her relationship with her disabled son, she adds.

Tawada lived in Germany for 40 years, after growing up in Japan.

The anti-militarist upbringing I received sometimes made me think that only Japan was a victim during World War II, he says.

Regarding the bombings, Japan was certainly a victim, but it is important to take a global view and consider the atrocities it also committed.

As a child, illustrations of atomic bombings in books reminded her of descriptions of hell in classical Japanese art.

It led me to wonder whether human civilization wasn't itself a source of danger , he emphasizes. From this perspective, atomic weapons wouldn't be so much a technological advance as something lurking within humanity .