Watching “Oppenheimer,” the Oscar-winning biopic about the father of the atomic bomb that opened Friday in Japan, Kako Okuno was stunned by a scene in which scientists celebrated the blast over Hiroshima by stomping their feet and waving American flags. flags.
Seeing the happy faces “really shook me,” said Ms. Okuno, 22, a kindergarten teacher who grew up in Hiroshima and has worked as a peace and environmental activist.
Eight months after the success of Christopher Nolan’s film in the United States, “Oppenheimer” now treats Japanese audiences with the reverse American perspective on the most significant events in Japan’s history.
The film follows the groundbreaking discoveries of J. Robert Oppenheimer and his team before the United States hits Japan with the first salvo of the nuclear age. It won seven Academy Awards last month, including best picture.
Ms Okuno, who watched the film in Tokyo on Saturday, lamented that it did not reflect the experiences of the hundreds of thousands of atomic bomb victims in Hiroshima or Nagasaki.
“It’s scary that this film is going out into the world without a proper understanding of the effects of the nuclear bomb,” he said. As for the regret Oppenheimer expresses in the second half of the film, “if he really believed he had created technology to destroy the world,” he said, “I wish he had done something more about it.”
Bitters End, the indie Japanese distributor that released the film, said in a statement in December that it decided to bring “Oppenheimer” to theaters after “much discussion and consideration” because “the subject matter it deals with is very important and special significance for us Japanese.”
Long before the film opened in Japan, would-be moviegoers were outraged by American fans who appeared to reveal the atomic bomb by merging images from “Oppenheimer” and the movie “Barbie” into an online “Barbenheimer” meme.
Mindful of domestic sensitivities, some theaters in Japan carry trigger warnings, with signs warning audiences of scenes “that may remind viewers of the damage caused by atomic bombings.”
However, some critics said they appreciated that the film was shown in Japan. “We must not create a society that makes it impossible to watch, think and discuss,” wrote Yasuko Onda, a member of the editorial board at the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan’s largest daily newspaper. “We shouldn’t narrow our eyes at watching movies.”
While some people, including atomic bomb survivors, have protested the exclusion of scenes from Hiroshima or Nagasaki, Yujin Yaguchi, a professor of American studies at the University of Tokyo, said “Oppenheimer” simply reflects a conventional view that omits many others. narrative, including Native Americans whose land was used for nuclear testing.
The film “celebrates a tiny group of white scientists who really enjoyed their privilege and their love of political power,” Mr. Yaguchi wrote in an email. “We should focus more on why such a one-sided white male story continues to attract such attention and admiration in the US and what it says about current politics and the broader politics of memory in the US (and elsewhere).”
Some viewers who saw the film over the weekend said they recognized the film had another story to tell.
Tae Tanno, 50, who watched it with her husband in Yokohama, Japan’s second-largest city, said she focused on Oppenheimer’s revulsion as she began to realize the devastating damage he and his fellow scientists had caused.
“I really thought, oh, he felt like that — a sense of remorse,” Ms. Tanno said.
This portrayal of a moral conscience may reflect changes in American public sentiment, said Kazuhiro Maeshima, a professor of American government and politics at Sophia University in Tokyo.
A few decades ago, a film depicting bomb-maker guilt might not have been popular in the United States, where the narrative was that atomic bombs had prevented a costly invasion of mainland Japan and saved the lives of thousands of American soldiers. said Mr. Maeshima.
In 1995, for example, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington drastically scaled back an exhibit that featured part of the fuselage of the Enola Gay, the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. Veterans groups and some members of Congress objected to parts of the proposed material that cast doubt on America’s reasoning for dropping the bomb.
“Thirty years ago, people thought it was good that the bomb fell,” Mr. Maeshima said. “Now, I feel like there’s a more ambivalent view.”
In Japan, viewers may now be more willing to watch a film that doesn’t focus on the victims, nearly eight decades after the end of World War II and eight years after Barack Obama became the first sitting US president to visit Hiroshima .
Kana Miyoshi, 30, a Hiroshima native whose grandmother was 7 when the bomb fell and lost her father and a brother in the attack, saw the film with her parents in Hiroshima on Saturday.
Like other viewers, Ms Miyoshi was moved by the scenes of celebration after the bomb was dropped, but said they should not be condemned. “This is the reality and we can’t change it,” said Ms Miyoshi, whose grandmother died almost three years ago aged 83.
Many Japanese support nuclear disarmament, and the country, which has no atomic weapons of its own, relies on the United States’ so-called nuclear umbrella for protection. As North Korea boosts its nuclear arsenal and Russia threatens to routinely use nuclear weapons in Ukraine, experts said “Oppenheimer” could reinvigorate the debate over nuclear deterrence as the United States approaches a potentially game-changing election drastically their commitment to global alliances.
“There’s so much to deal with here in Japan’s position on nuclear weapons,” said Jennifer Lind, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College who specializes in East Asian security. “This film comes at such an exciting time for them to think, ‘What is our national politics?'”
Japanese peace activists also see fodder for debate in “Oppenheimer.”
“It’s a great opportunity to think about nuclear weapons from a very international perspective, because normally in Japan the subject of nuclear weapons is taught as the history of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,” said Akira Kawasaki, who serves on Peace Boat’s executive committee. . Japanese non-profit group that operates cruises oriented towards social causes.
As scientists develop artificial intelligence and other potentially destructive technologies that could be abused by governments, Mr. Kawasaki said “Oppenheimer” offered a potential warning.
“Scientists are very vulnerable and very weak in the face of all this power,” Mr Kawasaki said. “A person cannot be strong enough to resist these things.”
