FILM: Cold War Scenarios For Introducing Nuclear Energy To Japan (1995)

NHK. 1995. Genpatsu Dōnyū Shinario ～ Reisenka no Tainichi Genshiryoku Senryaku 原発導入シナリオ ～冷戦下の対日原子力戦略 [Cold War Scenarios for Introducing Nuclear Energy to Japan]. YouTube video, 45 min, posted by “naga2218,” Mar 27, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnPdkg-lZE8

This NHK documentary tries to shed light on how Japan, the only nation in the world that experienced a nuclear attack, came to readily embrace a plan to generate energy using nuclear power during peacetime. As seen in earlier posts on this site, a strong anti-nuclear sentiment prevailed in the early post-war years, which peaked in 1954 after the crew of the fishing trawler Lucky Dragon No.5 was exposed to the nuclear fallout of American hydrogen bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. The film describes a process in which the president of the Yomiuri newspaper company, Matsutarō Shōriki, and the United States Information Service collaborated during the 1950s in order to overturn public anti-nuclear sentiment and to introduce the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The producers of the film seem to suggest that the introduction of plans for nuclear power generation to Japan was part of a Cold War strategy of the United States; critically underplayed are domestic political debates and foreign policy. –Akiko Ishii & Christian Dimmer

Please contact Akiko Ishii (akiko47 [at] gmail.com) to work on a collaboration to make English subtitles for this film for educational purposes.

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