The Difference Between American and Japanese Perception of Nuclear Power

On August, 6, 1945, at 8:15 am the United States of America dropped an atomic bomb on the city of Hiroshima killing 140,000 people. This was the spark that started the Cold War. While most people, when learning about Hiroshima, go straight to the obvious effects of this tragic event and they ignore an impact, a long-lasting cultural impact that still resonates to this day.

In her article, “Godzilla was a Metaphor for Hiroshima, and Hollywood Whitewashed it” Kimmy Yam criticizes the Hollywood adaptation of Godzilla, stating that, “Hollywood took the Japanese concept (of Godzilla) and scrubbed it of its political message before presenting it to American audience to deflect from the U.S decision to drop the bomb.” Yam goes on to say that, “In the original Japanese film, the creature was portrayed as a surviving dinosaur from the Jurassic Period… (but) after an American H-bomb test in the South Pacific, the creature became radiated, hurt and angry.”

This shows the extraordinary gap between U.S nuclear culture and Japanese nuclear culture. Even with the exact same movie one side perceives it as a goofy cheesy movie while the other speaks to a deeply entrenched part of a broken national psyche. Godzilla is an example of the deep impacting and long-lasting effects of the drop of the nuclear bomb on Hiroshima. It also shows the length that American culture will go to justify this horrendous act.

A great example of how far American culture will go to justify this horrendous act is how it is taught in our schools. The majority of Americans learned, in school, that it was a ‘necessary evil’ and ‘it had to be done (Wong)’. One compelling quote by a High School History teacher said, “We looked at casualties of each island, projected casualties, and discussed why the bomb was so effective. It is more a "matter of fact" that it was used and not a real dwelling point (Wong).”

This just goes to show that while the bombing of Hiroshima was an atrocity, it did not leave as significant of an impact on American culture as it did on the entire Japanese culture. This impact shaped through schooling changes the way the media and the people perceive nuclear anything.

This disconnect between how America perceives nuclear items is most obvious in our movies. In American pop culture, nuclear radiation or waste is almost glorified and seen as an improvement, leading to heroes such as Spider-Man, the Hulk, and Daredevil. These characters are recognized as something for little children to look up to while both are effects of radiation.

In Japan, there is no reverential look towards radiation as some kind of superhero maker. Rather they look at it as something out of a horror novel. The bombing of Hiroshima inspired the likes of Godzilla, a monster awakened from the depths when an American atomic bomb testing in the Atlantic woke it up to cause havoc throughout the streets of Tokyo. Proving once again, the scars of the horror on that day run deep in Japan.

These cultural differences between America and Japan are truly astonishing, if not completely surprising, and are an important part of both cultures. These different gaps in movies and in the literature show that both the completely different ideas and the complete cultural disconnect are harmful to Americans as we truly can not comprehend the horrors of that day. Rather we play it down as a necessary evil or even go so far as to glorify it in our heroes. I hope that this allows you to take a step back and recognize the differences between our cultures and how we perceive nuclear radiation.

Works Cited

Wong, Herman. “How the Hiroshima Bombing Is Taught around the World.” The Washington Post, WP Company, 2 May 2019, www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2015/08/06/how-the-hiroshima-bombing-is-taught-around-the-world/.

Xiao, Sophia. Depiction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese and American Literature, 27 Mar. 2018, large.stanford.edu/courses/2018/ph241/xiao2/.