FILM: Nuclear Ginza (1995)

Röhl, Nicholas. 1995. Kakusareta Hibaku Rōdō: Nihon no Genpatsu Rōdōsha. 隠された被曝労働 – 日本の原発労働者 物語 [Nuclear Ginza]. YouTube video, 30 min, posted by “aikoku369”, Mar 30, 2011, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TC7sFNtGk4A

Nicholas Röhl, a student of Japan’s master director Imamura Shohei, produced this 30-minute documentary in 1995 for Channel 4. The film exposes how Japan’s nuclear energy industry used disadvantaged people in the 1970s and ’80s to carry out highly dangerous manual labor inside their power stations. The story follows the photojournalist/ anti-nuclear activist Kenji Higuchi as he exposes the exploitation of the “untouchables” who were pulled out of the slums of Tokyo and Osaka in order to work while exposed to radiation, often without their knowledge. Referring to the tacit cooperation and close ties between the Japanese government and the country’s nuclear industry, a man notes in one scene that “democracy has been destroyed where nuclear power stations exist.” The film shows how Japan, having suffered nuclear attacks in the past, remarkably transformed itself within a few decades into one of the most “nuclearized” nations worldwide. This documentary film has special significance in the light of the recent Fukushima nuclear crisis, in which media reports about the exploitation of unskilled laborers in the plant spawned a major controversy.
– Christian Dimmer

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NUCLEAR GINZA, PART 1 of 3

NUCLEAR GINZA, PART 2 of 3

NUCLEAR GINZA, PART 3 of 3