After the World War II, Japan was at tremendous lost both physically and mentally. The act of dropping two atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki of the US have brought up a controversial topics of whether it was a justified decision or not. There are two polars of the conversation: The advocates argued that the bombs were the essential element to stop Japanese affiliation with the Nazi wings thus this would help stop the war (Broderick, 1996), on the other hand Japanese with the majority of the globe disagreed and questioned the necessary of the bombs for its monstrosity power. During World War II, the media has always play as another important instrument. Politic propaganda was most well-delivered through major films, as major films were the portray of the society at the times. To understand how Japanese society reacted to the war, I choose to study and analyzed the Japanese films post World War II.
One of the pioneer in making post-war film was Kaneto Shindou. His movie Children of Hiroshima (1952) gave the world a scope of the sorrow Japanese people have to bear. The movie told the story of a young girl return to her hometown in Hiroshima after the bombing. It shows the horrific after-effect that left on the people and the vacancy of buildings that were demolished by the bomb. Another movie called I Live in Fear (1955) directed by Akira Kurosawa tells the story of an old man who tried to convince his family to move aboard and to purchase a bunker for nuclear hideout. Throughout the movie, he was drove insane by the fear and then isolated by his family. Not only in motion picture but also in animation, Isao Takahata of the Studio Ghibli had made one of the most resonating animation called Graveyard of the Fireflies (1988). It is the heart-wrecking telling of two siblings, guiding their ways away from the war field. The ending was a distress reminder about the brutality of war, where the younger brother was starved to death in the arms of his brother.
These movies sent out a depressing message about the Japanese society. Their targeted audience is not the domestic market but the foreigner and international forum, since most of the movies were broadcast international shortly after their debut in Japan, and most films were sent to the Canes Film Festival. Directors of these movies consciously notified the outsider that Japan did not deserve to be this miserable. The structure of these movies most have in a common a moment where Japanese scenery was portrayed as peaceful and beautiful. That moment could be a pre-bomb memory like the mountain peak in Rhapsody in August (Kurosawa, 1991) or a destroyed monument but surrounded by the strong survivors of the land like the school in Children of Hiroshima (Shindou, 1952). The audience will go through an emotion roller coaster and leave with an aching feeling for the Japanese. The world started questioning the sanity in the US decision and the media accused Truman for being greedy of power (Washington Post, 1985). Japan was portrayed as the most pitiful victim of the World War II.
Meanwhile, regardless of the “right or wrong” debate, I felt that the conversation which should be focused on was the World War II itself and the invention of the atomic bombs. Before the Hiroshima and Nagasaki incidents, the morality of the monster bombs with such power to annihilate a whole state have never been questioned. The bomb was just one among the many weapons in the arms race between the US and the Soviet. Japanese people were truly victims, but their government was also to be blamed. Professor Bernstein stated in his The atomic bombings reconsidered : “While the worst atrocities were perpetrated by the Axis, all the major nation-states sliced away at the moral code -- often to the applause of their leaders and citizens alike. By 1945 there were few moral restraints left in what had become virtually a total war.” (1995)
Most media productions were biased toward their creators. The products can be ‘unconsciously’ shaping the emotion of a large audience group. While it was not wrong for the Japanese films to have this imagery of a broken country, the film industry of Japan could have also peek into the bad deeds of Japanese government during the war and the many reason that lead to the bombing decision of the US. Nowadays, talking about the war, Japanese people would speak more of Hiroshima and Nagasaki while victimized themselves instead of remembering that Japan was in the Nazi wings.
Audiences of the mass media must understand to see from multiple perspective. “Hate” and “Accusation” are easily spread, and as there is no raw “truth” in media, the way an event was mediated can lead to segregation of the public. Instead of taking side or trying to say which is wrong or right, the ultimate goal of media literacy is to open personal scope to more media source and analyzed them evenly.
Reference
Alperovitz, G. 04 August 1985. Did America Have To Drop the Bomb?Not to End the War, But Truman Wanted To Intimidate Russia. Retrieved January 22, 2018, from https://goo.gl/niVpVL .
Bernstein, B. J. (1995). The atomic bombings reconsidered. Foreign Affairs, 135 - 152.
Broderick, M. (1996). Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima. Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film. (London: Kegan Paul, 1996).
Fleischer, R. & Fukasaku, K. & Masuda, T. (Director). 23 September 1970. Tora! Tora!. USA: Twentieth Century Fox.
Kurosawa, A. (Director). 22 November 1955. Ikimono no kiroku (I Live In Fear). Japan: Toho Company.
Kurosawa, A. (Director). May 1991. Hachi-gatsu no Rapusodi (Rhapsody in August). Japan: Kurosawa Production Co.
Takahata, I (Director). 16 April 1988. Hotaru no Haka (Graveyard of Fireflies). Japan: Shinchosha Company & Studio Ghibli.
Satou, J. (Director). 17 December 2005. Otoko-tachi no Yamato (Yamato). Japan: Toei Company.
Shindou, K. (Director). 6 August 1952. Genbaku no ko (Children of Hiroshima). Japan: Kindai Eiga Kyokai & Mingei Production Company.