Japanese cinema in the wake of Fukushima

More than eight years have passed since the Fukushima nuclear disaster.¹ What changes, if any, has that dark day spelled for Japanese culture? In the wake of the 2011 earthquake, people throughout the country and the world were alarmed by the information pouring from the mass media sources; in the grip of a profound unease, many of us panicked, utterly uncertain what we should do.

After 3/11, Ōnuma Yūji, who in 1988 as an elementary school student came up with the now-outdated motto ‘Nuclear Power is the Energy for a Bright Future!’ rewrote the slogan: ‘Nuclear Power: Energy That Cannot Be Controlled’ or ‘A Bright Future – once we Abandon Nuclear Power’. His spirited opposition to a disaster that cannot be undone has borne fruit, freeing many from the myth that nuclear power is safe. Yet at the same time, I feel an unsettling hopelessness in this sort of response. Would it not be better to ask, how can we all live in such a way as to gain access to a truly ‘bright future’? In the wake of Fukushima, the Japanese filmmakers discussed in these essays have been in search of an answer to that question. In considering the films that have been made since Fukushima, one thing is clear: every single one of them takes a political stance that seeks to create critical awareness.

But when we speak of ‘critical awareness’, about what kind of phenomenon must we think more critically? In 1949, Martin Heidegger launched a series of lectures in Bremen entitled ‘Einblick in Das Was Ist (Insight into That Which Is)’. In these lectures Heidegger unveiled his philosophical theory of technology, outlining his deep skepticism – particularly vis-à-vis nuclear power – toward the nature of (then-) modern science and technology. Modern science and technology are at root what he called ‘Gestell (Enframing)’, a huge all-encompassing system, which incorporates human beings, nature and everything else in existence, and that, according to Heidegger, leads ultimately to nihilism. Embedded in his arguably rather mysterious theory of modern science and technology, Heidegger offers a valuable warning to us today about the nature of ‘crisis’: ‘The most critically dangerous aspect of any crisis … is the fact the true nature of the crisis – that it is a crisis – is being hidden’ (Heidegger 2003, 71). I argue that one of the goals of Heidegger’s theory of technology is to awaken humankind’s critical awareness. Fukushima was a civilizational error, one which has already happened and cannot be undone. Yet it may well be only a small part of the larger crisis modern technology has unleashed upon us. An enormous crisis may be looming, one which until now has been hidden from our sight, and if so, it is that crisis about which we must think deeply and critically. What, then, is the nature of this enormous crisis? I have not been able to encapsulate it in a single word yet but have become convinced that this crisis is deeply connected to what the philosopher Takahashi Tetsuya has called the ‘gisei no shisutemu (Sacrificial System)’ (Tetsuya 2012).

In this special issue, entitled Japanese Cinema in the Wake of Fukushima, we analyze films made by documentarians on the issue of nuclear power. This is our attempt to make audible what these women and men have sought to say about this larger crisis as they struggle to confront the almost absurd chain of events from the earthquake to the tsunami to the nuclear meltdown and resulting irradiation. How should all of us live in this world in the wake of Fukushima? What can we do vis-à-vis human society? How can we best create that ‘bright future’ after all? By lending an ear (and an eye) to the films of the men and women who have confronted Fukushima cinematically and engaging critically with them, this special issue ultimately seeks answers to these compelling questions.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Michael Raine and Jinhee Choi for supporting me editing this special issue, and for Yutaka Kubo, M. Downing Roberts, and Daniel O’Neill for contributing their excellent essays.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Hereinafter I will primarily refer to the 11 March 2011 disaster variously known as 3/11, the Great East Japan Earthquake, the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, and the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster simply as ‘Fukushima’.