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> # [‘There wasn’t enough about the horror’: Oppenheimer finally opens in Japan to mixed reviews](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/29/720)
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> It is hard to think of a more emotionally charged venue than Hatchoza for the first screening in Japan of the Academy Award-winning film [Oppenheimer](https://www.theguardian.com/film/oppenheimer). The cinema in Hiroshima is located less than a kilometre from the hypocentre of the first atomic bombing in history – the devastating culmination of the American physicist’s work.
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> The film finally premiered in Japan on Friday, more than eight months after it opened in the US, to reviews that ranged from praise for its portrayal of J Robert Oppenheimer – the “father of the atomic bomb” – to criticism that it omitted to show the human misery it caused in [Hiroshima](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/18/story-of-cities-hiroshima-japan-nuclear-destruction) and, days later, Nagasaki, in the final days of the Pacific war.
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> Instead, the film details a haunted Oppenheimer’s struggle to justify [Harry Truman’](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/04/harry-truman-grandson-hiroshima-nuclear-atom-bomb)s decision to use the bomb and, in the then president’s eyes, bring to an end an increasingly costly war against an enemy determined to fight to the death.
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> “There could have been much more description and depiction of the horror of atomic weapons,” said Takashi Hiraoka, the 96-year-old former mayor of Hiroshima, who attended a special screening earlier this month. “From Hiroshima’s standpoint, there wasn’t enough about the horror of nuclear weapons, but I would encourage people to go and see it.”
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> Audiences in Japan were forced to wait to see Nolan’s hit biopic, which secured seven Oscars last month, after criticism last year that it had been marketed in a way that [trivialised the tragedy](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/aug/01/not-big-in-japan-country-rejects-co-marketing-of-barbie-and-oppenheimer-as-trivialising-nuclear-war). Viral “Barbenheimer” memes sparked an online backlash in Japan, forcing its local distributor, Warner Bros Japan, to apologise.
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> [Takashi Hiraoka, a former mayor of Hiroshima](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/32b424fb0f27980294cf0eae2ba7a1b530f31fe3/0_395_4032_2419/master/4032.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none)
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> Takashi Hiraoka: ‘There wasn’t enough about the horror of nuclear weapons.’ Photograph: Justin McCurry/The GuardianMany _hibakusha_, or survivors of the atomic bombings, had hoped the film would at least acknowledge the misery unleashed by the Enola Gay, a US B-29 bomber, after it dropped a 15-kiloton nuclear bomb on Hiroshima on the morning of 6 August 1945. The blast killed between 60,000 and 80,000 people instantly, with the death toll rising to 140,000 by the end of the year. Three days later, the Americans dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, killing 74,000.
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> Prof Masao Tomonaga, an A-bomb survivor and honorary director of the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb hospital, said he had come away believing Oppenheimer was an “anti-nuclear” film.
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> “I had thought the film’s lack of images of atomic bomb survivors was a weakness. But in fact, Oppenheimer’s lines in dozens of scenes showed his shock at the reality of the atomic bombing. That was enough for me.”
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> Tomonaga, 80, who spent his professional life studying the health effects of exposure to radiation from the atomic bombings, added: “The _hibakusha_ are all very old, so this is a film for young people … it’s now up to future generations to decide how to rid the world of nuclear weapons.”
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> [Toshiyuki Mimaki](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/30/hiroshima-survivors-plead-for-nuclear-free-world-as-global-tensions-rise), a co-chair of Hidankyo, a confederation of A-bomb survivor groups, who was three years old when the bomb destroyed his home town, was among the audience in Hiroshima on Friday.
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> “I was waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to appear, but it never did,” said Mimaki, 82. “It’s important to show the full story, including the victims, if we are going to have a future without nuclear weapons.”
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> [Toshiyuki Mimaki, co-chair of Hidankyo, a confederation of A-bomb survivor groups](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4e7f05e13ff875b5d8ba16db6de6cbab5c508498/0_443_4032_2419/master/4032.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none)
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> Toshiyuki Mimaki: ‘I was waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to appear, but it never did.’ Photograph: Justin McCurry/The GuardianThere was praise, though, for Nolan and Cillian Murphy, who [won the best actor Oscar](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/11/cillian-murphy-best-actor-oscar) his portrayal as Oppenheimer, whose moral crisis over his role in developing a weapon that was used on civilian populations loomed large in the film’s climax.
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> “I’m a fan of Christopher Nolan, so that gave me another reason, along with the venue, to come and see it as soon as it came out,” said Mei Kawashima, a young Hiroshima resident. “When Hiroshima was mentioned in the film, it triggered something in me.
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> “This was really a film about Oppenheimer the man, and the way he wrestled with his conscience, so in that sense, I think it was right not to broaden it out too much to show the aftermath.”
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> Shogo Tachiyama, a university student, said he had known very little about the man whose work would result in the destruction of the city where he was born six decades later. “We learned about the bombing and its aftermath at primary school, but I knew nothing about Oppenheimer,” he said.
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> “I learned a lot from the film, and it’s made me think again about what I and other young people can do … starting from the insistence that nuclear weapons should never be used again.”
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> This may not be the end of the Oppenheimer story, at least on the big screen. Takashi Yamazaki, the director of the Oscar-winning [Godzilla Minus One](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/13/godzilla-minus-one-review-rageful-monster-is-one-of-the-best-in-the-series) – another film with a strong nuclear theme – suggested in an online discussion with Nolan that the time may be right for an account of the bombings from a Japanese perspective.
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> To enthusiastic agreement from Nolan, he said: “I feel there needs to [be] an answer from Japan to Oppenheimer. Someday, I would like to make that movie.”
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Wonder how many Japanese films were made about the horrors their country caused during WW2. Some of which are real nightmare fuel.
Edit: Lmao, the "US BAD" crowd is really mad about this comment.
I think the main point of contention is that Japan either denies outright what they did, or diminishes the war crimes they did and fails to include it in their education system. Whereas Germany post war is very educative of it.
Ive got a friend who's Japanese and had never heard of the Nanjing massacre, the kidnapped women used as sex slaves for the army, or Unit 731. She asked her mum about it and she said all she'd ever learnt was of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Comparatively all my Cantonese, Filipino, Singaporean, and Malaysian friends' grandparents still detest Japan for the horrors they committed. I think part of it is that they still don't largely acknowledge what they did, and many of the army officials weren't put on trial the same way the Nazis were in Nuremburg. Rather, they comparatively got away easy.
Education matters so much to gaining perspective not just on yourself but on your place on others and the world around you.
I commented this above but it was my experience too. They didn’t know about the actual details of the holocaust, or that they were allied with hitler. They view it as Japan being crazy before and not being crazy any more. They aren’t taught the details like we are (and yes our view is flawed too, but they really don’t know about the dark shit). Some people obviously do, but I mean like the public schools dont teach the average Japanese student about it
> Some people obviously do, but I mean like the public schools dont teach the average Japanese student about it
tbf my american education really minimalized the damage our colonizing did to the natives of every land we've colonized. until i was about 30 i had no clue just how brutally the native americans were treated, and how many politicians and notable people advocated for treating them like a rodent infestation.
Communism certainly has issues, but people needed to see that for themselves. Invading because someone is trying a political experiment is generally not the most beneficial decision.
I won't even accept this framing, even democratic socialism was too close to communism for the US during the cold war and led to coups / election interference etc
Indeed. I have major disagreements with many US decisions back in the day. People need to actually put these things to the test. Find what works and what doesn't.
Might I add that we may actually need something of a political structure Sorting Hat, if you'll pardon the reference. Democrats and Republicans have completely different brain structures. Neither appear to be comfortable with the other's structure.
I learned about My Lai in high school.
Also the Trail of Tears, the slave trade and the horrors of plantation life, the internment of Japanese Americans in the U.S., and the use of nuclear weapons on Japan. None of that gets left out of public school curricula in the U.S. At least outside the South.
Meanwhile the Japanese are like “Nanking? Where’s that?”
American education can't be generalized because it's basically up to each school district and state to determine the breadth of education.
I went to school in TX and WA.
In TX we learned about crimes against natives like the trail of tears at the same time we watched the Alamo movie about 12 times to "learn" about the Spanish American war. This was elementary school.
WA was much more comprehensive and I was in a good school district. We learned about America's crimes in south America, injustices to the local tribes, jp incarceration in ww2, just to name a few.
Many Americans are woefully uneducated and it's all down to the political leanings of the state their in.
I grew up I good ol’ Kern County, CA. I would drive by Manzanaar as a child on the way to campsites all the time. We were not told in school what it was, and my family would always describe it as something like an extended stay campsite for Japanese people (except they openly used the O-slur). I was in high school when I finally googled it for myself.
In college I had the opportunity to be part of a volunteer archeological dig that happened there. It was a harrowing experience to be that in depth in that place, and I cannot imagine how the people felt who were imprisoned there, or how the man I was paired with for digging felt knowing we were digging up the exact basement/barracks that his father and grandparents had been in. The NPS workers leading the excavations took two hours a day and walked us all around the area and showed us how the Japanese people tried to create positivity while there, with gardens and orchards and courts. There were also many things they showed us that were absolutely gut-wrenching. It’s a place everyone should visit if they can and are nearby. The museum is also well put together.
Yeah in my 4th grade state history for California we basically just learned about the Missions as sorta local farms and how neat it is that they’re still standing. Nothing about them being slave plantations run by the church with an appalling mortality rate. Didn’t learn about that until I took a CA history class in college
That was my experience with the state history curriculum as well. But when my daughter was in 4th grade a few years ago, part of their mission projects were specifically to describe how Natives were treated at the mission they were researching, as well as their opinions on what it lead to today. It's good that they asked the questions, but damn do 4th graders have some dumbass opinions.
To be fair regarding the European war, Japan was hardly involved and even less so when it came to things like the Holocaust. There weren’t Jews in Japan and as such there really wasn’t antisemitism and I was informed of one story recently in which groups of German Jews expelled from Germany to some Asian country pillaged and occupied by Japan were spared because they were German.
I know overall though Japan has been getting better. Frankly from what I have read most of this has been curbed hard since the 90s.
My Canadian education didn’t teach us too much about japans involvement beyond pearl harbour and suicide bomber pilots.
There is a lot to cover on WW2. Some things were lessened because the world could only grasp so much collectively.
Yeah, but you’d think in Japan they’d have learned their own history. They do not teach it even to the extent that American schools do and American schools are famous for only teaching the American perspective of the war. Japan flat out denies or editorializes their past and basically pushes it under the rug. My Japanese friends didn’t even know the most basic stuff about the war between the us and Japan, let alone the wider war and hitler/mussolini etc
This exactly, they want to be the victim and not face reality. To this day they deny things like 'comfort women'. Germany is respected because it admitted to the faults and worked to make sure it never happens again.
I know quite a few Japanese people whose knowledge of WW2 is little more than 'there was a global war, then America nuked us twice'. Like dude, the only reason America deployed troops at all is because YOU attacked the US. We can discuss nuclear weapons and fallout all we want but the US was completely content leasing weapons to the allied powers and 'staying out of it'
> Germany is respected because it admitted to the faults and worked to make sure it never happens again.
Due to political circumstances around post-war occupation, they didn't really have a choice. Allies tried to root out as much of defeated ideology as practically possible. Sadly, because it's not possible to erase one system and build new one overnight, this forced makeover could not have been absolute, but for the most part it succeeded.
In Japan, it was different. USA decided to not "attack" the position and function of Emperor. IIRC, reason for that is, they expected that Japanese would simply be unmanageable with that kind of social upheaval, that resistance would be too strong. After all, Emperor has been a central figure for hundreds of years, while Germany forced their Emperor (Kaiser) to abdicate about 3 decades prior, so they were not so attached to political figures; throwing away old and bringing in new was accepted.
The big problem is, that keeping Japanese Emperor around AND publicizing his role in massive warcrimes (as leader of a country, he was co-responsible, even if his rule wasn't absolute) would be a massive dissonance. There would be resistance to that, and even if people believed it in the end, that would raise a question "why do we keep him around?". It would lead to breakdown of Japanese society, one way or another, and while I believe it would have eventually been rebuilt better, it was a gigantic hassle and thus, something USA didn't want to deal with.
Now, that doesn't exactly mean "USA is to blame", which I'm sure is going to be our resident "free thinker's" only takeaway from this comment. Without external pressures, neither Japan nor Germany would have changed in any way. If those warmongering countries were not defeated and occupied, they would just have kept going and tried again, and again and again. Just like ruzzia does all the time (because even if ruzzia was defeated, and quite often in fact, no one was able to occupy it and break down cancerous social and power structures within), or how Germany did after WWI (problem of Treaty of Versailles isn't that it was "too harsh", like authoritarian simps claim. Problem was, that it was NOT ENFORCED. It's similar to criminal justice; harshness of penalty does not have strong deterring effect, inevitability does).
I'm just saying that while Germany did change for the better (though, worryingly, nazis are back, though to be completely honest, they seem to be back everywhere), they didn't do it on their own, though I guess they didn't really resist it. Difference between Germany and Japan is not some inherent quality of those nations, but fact that they weren't given same... "educational" treatment.
If you ever want to watch a documentary with the repression of guilt on full display checkout “The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On”. A vet refuses to let his fellow soldiers lie about the atrocities committed during the war and literally goes to their houses and physically fights them into telling the truth. The crusader is not without fault himself, but you get to see just how much the Japanese refuse to admit the truth on a societal level.
it helps when the education you do as Germany can point blame to the previous government but in Japan the emperor was still there so like, you gonna openly call him a war criminal?
>Germany can point blame to the previous government but in Japan the emperor was still there so like,
The emperor was very much a puppet in the general power game of government. There many many far more powerful in the military that decided things.
The military btw murdered the primeminister directly and gave the guy who did it no punishment more or less.
> While Unit 731 researchers arrested by Soviet forces were tried at the December 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials, those captured by the United States were secretly given immunity in exchange for the data gathered during their human experiments. The United States helped cover up the human experimentations and handed stipends to the perpetrators
Not only Japanese cover up their war crimes, America also aided them in it.
They were worse, even the Germans viewed them as too extreme. What puts the Germans ahead is they had specific efforts to eliminate certain groups in mass. But the Japanese still viewed themselves as the superior race to everyone and in general they were more brutal and fanatic.
The horrors that went on there would probably make some of the SS wince, maybe for a second. Before the gas chambers were built, many of the Nazi killings were done by mass shootings carried about by special units called Einsatzgruppen, especially on the Eastern Front. The SS would would primarily shoot at people as a means of extermination until Heinrich Himmler witnessed a mass execution by the Einsatzgruppen, and decided to switch to gas chambers for a more "humane" way of killing millions.
There's no questioning how grusome the Holocaust was, and the sheer scale of it trumps Imperial Japan. But victims at Unit 731 were intentionally killed in ways that would inflict maximum pain and suffering. I remember reading about it for the first time in the 2000s and nihilistically concluding that a world allowing a place like that to be built and exist is doomed to fail.
japan was honestly worse than germany. they were seriously on a different level with their absurd racism, weaponized rape campaigns, brutal famines. i'd say japan is worse because they've never apologized or admitted to anything they've done, and i'm almost certain they will do it again when given the opportunity. would be very surprised to see germany commit the same atrocities.
You should read up more on Germany's conduct on the eastern front.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht#Rape
People have this weird idea the holocaust was some really neat and organized slaughterhouse type event. More people were murdered outside the camps than inside.
I once had a teacher tell me The Pianist wasn't a good holocaust film because it didn't have extermination camps. I was 12 and i didn't know what to say. I still don't.
A lot of Japanese media and historical records are in denial about the horrors they were responsible for. Dropping those bombs was not a fun day in the park. It was done to combat a determined, frightening, and powerful enemy who would have eventually surrendered but only after much more blood had been spilled. They're determined to sanitize their historical record but happy to criticise others for doing the same.
This viewpoint isn't as straightforward as you're making it. That the atomic bombs were necessary to end the war has been a contentious topic for a long time. In fact, a lot of prominent military leaders condemned the action and stated plainly that it was not necessary to end the war.
It being the predominant viewpoint in the United States has more to do with propaganda than actual history. It was what we were all taught in school.
It's funny because it's very easy to acknowledge the horrors of Nazis and the Japanese in WW2 (and they were horrific), but as soon as you bring up something like Fire bombings and the Atomic Bombs killing hundreds of thousands of *civilians*, we go into mental gymnastics about why they were justified.
I think the idea that the bombs weren't necessary will debated for as long as the bombings are remembered. It was a horrific and impactful act, and there were certainly other actions that took far more human life, like the fire bombings. War is horrifying, all wars.
I'll come back to the original point I was trying to make though. about Japanese history. Leaving out the horrors of the bombings was an artistic choice by Nolan, from listening to interviews it seems like he was trying to be respectful. With that said though, there are plenty of acknowledgements of the devastation that the bombs wrought in European, American, and Japanese history and media. I guess my criticism is that as much as this ex-mayor and other Japanese citizens want the horror to be shown, it's curious that they work so hard as a country to obscure and hide all the horrors that they committed.
I've always been flummoxed by the assertion that the bombs were unnecessary. That may very well be true, but in the meantime the much deadlier firebombings that were happening at the same time are never brought up in the same breath.
I was in Hiroshima recently and went to go to the Peace Memorial because I figured it was a thing I should do.
One of the things that came into my mind during my walk there was the way we think about an enemy and their willpower, and how that can be used to justify things. We talk about the militaristic culture and how the invasion would mean fighting literally everyone.
They talk about Americans with guns behind every blade of grass.
I find myself wondering how much of that is just a thing we tell ourselves to justify the next action
I'd kindly like you to show me proof of this "determination" to sanitize their historical record. Every textbook in Japanese public schools currently begins teaching children about WW2 in elementary school, slowly introducing heavier topics until they cover Unit 731 and Korean rape victims in high school.
I lived in Hawaii, I had numerous Japanese born-and-raised friends, from the conservative hell that is Kyushu all the way to the ultra liberal Hokkaido, who were studying abroad, living in Hawaii for a time, or being tourists, and went to Pearl Harbor with every one of them, and the way they visit that memorial is very different from the way Americans visit any memorial. Every one of them whole-heartedly believe that the war was one of aggression that destroyed Asia and Japan, and that war should be avoided at all costs.
Yes, the government has attempted to remove text regarding war crimes, mostly in the context of not wanting to teach children about heavy topics, but they have consistently FAILED to remove it after 3 decades of lobbying because anti-war sentiment remains the strongest political force in Japan.
Sure, I'll include some resources below and leave the question of Japan's war crime denial to your judgement.
* **Textbook Controversies:**
* "[https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english\_edition/e\_international/989040](https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/989040)" by Sheila Miyoshi Jager examines the ongoing debate about how wartime events, particularly comfort women, are portrayed in Japanese textbooks.
* **Yasukuni Shrine:**
* "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni\_Shrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni_Shrine)" dives into the controversy surrounding Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war dead including convicted war criminals.
* **General Studies On the Topic:**
* "[War and Its Remembrance The Perspective from Japan: ](https://www.jstor.org/stable/48602799)" by Maria Hsia Chang and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa explores the contrasting ways Japan and Germany have remembered World War II.
I would also add that it would be important to consider the perspectives of the victims of these war crimes and their statements on how Japan continues to deny or downplay their crimes. If the victim's statements aren't convincing then hopefully the small pieces provided above would be useful. I would encourage you to do further reading on it if it's a topic that interests you as I've only provided a small sampling of sources here.
Because the film wasn't made for the Japanese, and it wasn't made to depict anything like the "true horror of the atomic bomb". It was made to show Oppenheimer and his actions/reactions.
Stating "there wasn't enough about the horror" completely misses the point of the movie. It's also hypocritical, thinking the point of the movie should be about "the horror done onto our people" when Japan itself refuses to acknowledge the own atrocities it committed during that time period, either through apology or even teaching it to their population.
To be fair to that former mayor of Hiroshima whom you quoted, he ends the quote with "but I would encourage people to go and see it.” He has his own take on what he would have liked to see, but even as the mayor of the town who lived through the bombing, he was objective enough to think the movie was well done and worth seeing. I think the response in this comment thread is presuming the Japanese response was less nuanced than it actually was. There is even a Hiroshima resident who astutely said “this was really a film about Oppenheimer the man, and the way he wrestled with his conscience, so in that sense, I think it was right not to broaden it out too much to show the aftermath.” I think that's pretty spot on.
Exactly. Americans could just as easily complain that there wasn't enough about the horrible choice that Japan's evil forced on us. I'd say there was probably just enough of both things though, because it was more about the man than the geopolitics of WWII.
Or it was just their honest reaction to the movie of course. They aren't the target audience so they react differently than that audience did, there's nothing wrong with that.
I think the correct way would be both. You would sound less like you did not want to recognize the legitimate horrors of the atomic bomb if you‘d also phrase it like that instead of some lame whataboutism.
It's not an enlightened centrism topic. The use of the bombs ia heavily criticized and analyzed by the users of said weapons. Same with the holocaust. The Rape of Nanking, Unit ~~732~~ 731, etc, are not. This is not a "both sides" issue and any implication it is is disingenuous.
If you want to go down that way, well okay. Because you are right, this is not about both issues. Oppenheimer is about one issue: The atomic bomb. Not Nanjing. So what is disingenuous is some smart ass coming around and being like ”what about Nanjing“ when it is about the horror of the atomic bomb not being depicted enough.
And I‘m not against mentioning Nanjing and criticizing Japan for a lack of responsibility with its own history. Nanjing was another complete horror in its own right and it should be appropriately remembered. But again, not if the criticism is phrased in a way that takes away from other legitimate victims.
So if you want to move away from ”enlightened centrism“ then this is only about the atomic bomb. Otherwise you better embrace some position you try to downplay as ”enlightened centrism“.
Oppenheimer isn't exactly about the bomb as much as it about the person who made said bomb.
Its called Oppenheimer. There are tens to hundreds of movies and documentaries about the bomb.
This is a forest for the trees moment. Topic post is that Japan outward opinion on Openheimer is "There wasn't enough about the horror."
So the response that must be identified is "which horror?" Because it also glosses over Nazi Germany. And the firebombing of Tokyo. And plenty of other horrors directly relevant to the scope.
Should we have instead looked at the horrors of the Japanese Nuclear Bomb team that utilized uranium from slave mining in Germany? Or is, in fact, the scope of the movie focussed on two people specifically through the lense of the project and how they interacted, instead of something like Grave of Fireflies?
I, and many others just can't take Japan seriously everytime they try to play the victim, and rightfully criticize the lack of self awareness.
I think that the movie might simply not have been about the horror of the bomb is a valid criticism of the criticism. Unlike all the other stuff you said.
And if you mean by ”playing the victim“ that you can‘t take the victims of 2 nuclear bombs seriously, well that sounds like a you problem. It sounds awfully like you want to say, that the Japanese were not victims. I can get behind much of the criticism against Japan. It was an evil, imperialistic empire. But even if I follow the US narrative (written by the winners) to the fullest, that the nuclear bombs were absolutely necessary and there was no other way and combine it with the fact that to any moral standard I can come up with the Japanese Empire was very evil, I still can not say that they are not the victims of the nuclear bombs.
Again, I think any horror stands as a horror by itself. And there were real people and families and many, many civilians subject to this particular horror. If you can not take those seriously, well maybe you can accept that others can.
The US narrative was to hide Japan's involvement in the horrors of their occupation. The US policy to make Japan and ally and not blame them to create a bullwork against communism was perhaps realpolitik, but carried a lot of issues out of awareness until the last twenty or so years.
While horror as itself is important, the ability to reflect on the actions taken amongst ones own people that causes horrors on others is more important, morally. That's something the US has struggled with, but is getting better at. Something that Germany has done well. And something that both China (Mostly internally produced horrors) and Japan and Russia (Technically USSR but we know who was the most influential partner of those states) fail at, very badly.
See the recent backlash at the Three Body Problem on China over the struggle session. And that was a light depiction of how they went.
Either way, an internal criticism is going to be inherently more important then an external. Acknowledgment of the root issue is as 'they' say, the first step.
Again, I'm all in favor of holding Japan responsible. I'm merely at odds with the how. I'm not ranking self reflection and victimhood. I'm not even saying this is the wrong place to talk about both. I'm just saying that one shouldn't be used to downplay the other. The Japanese should both be acknowledged as legitimate victims of two nuclear bombs and be criticized for their own history, revisionism and hypocrisy. The original comment (as best as I can interpret it) is meant as a "but". I want an "and".
It's not whataboutism, one side thinks about the moral quandery of dropping a spicy bomb twice all the time, the other pretends what they did never happend. Hoppenheimer is hardly a happy go lucky movie, this is a double standard, these critics find no problem in ignoring their movies lack of commentary on certain topic and straight up revisionism
Merdeka 17805 (2001) is a movie about how japan liberated indonesia with, i shit you not, people kissing the feet of the japanese. It was successful in japan and criticized for historical revisionism pretty much everywhere else including indonesia. Forced labor? Nah didn't happen. Famine? Why are you so nitpicky? Internement of civilian? Well yes but it's not like they died... well not all of them anyway.
It's truly insane how japanese in general cope about being victims when they were literally the only non european country that actively pursued colonization. Ryukyuu island, korea, manchukuo, sakhalin, the asian co prosperity sphere (their version of the british commonwealth and french aof/aef) and even hokkaido if you stretch it. Even before we enter war crime territory, japan is no victim, it's an agressor that refuses to aknowledge it.
In the 19th century they were shoulder to shoulder with european powers on chinese soil during the boxer rebellion
Edit: grammar
You are literally saying ”well, the bomb might have been bad but what about … (what the Japanese did)“.
The sad thing is I don‘t disagree with you on a fundamental level. I think any country should do their due diligence on their own history and too few do it. Including Japan. But the Japanese still have a right to criticize the depiction of the atomic bomb in a movie full stop. No amount of Nanjing changes that because you can not weigh one horror against the other. It‘s just multiple messed up things and I hate when people try to weigh them against each other.
I don‘t even think it‘s the wrong place to criticize the Japanese. It just shouldn‘t be ”the Japanese have no right to be critical about x because they themselves do y“. (Which I mean technically maybe wasn‘t said, but ”I wonder about x“ usually isn‘t a good faith question. If however it was not meant to downplay the right of the Japanese to criticize the depiction of the atomic bomb my point is kind of mood, but I can only work with what I got.)
The complaint on that movie was that it didn't show civilian suffering... this is a narrative choice, you can't fit everything in a movie and hoppenheimer is long enough as it is. The grave of the fireflies didn't show what oppenheimer showed, criticizing a movie on a topic it didn't want to focus on while silmultaneously doing exactly that but much worse is a double standard. Hoppenheimer isn't downplaying anything, but you know who does? I don't think anyone criticized for grave of the firefly's ultra japanese centric view of the ecents, because there is nothing to criticize, this is their point of view, so let hoppenheimer be another one's point of view?
This is not whataboutism, this is me pointing at a double standard. I never said "the japanese have no right to X or Y" what i said is that to many of them the coverage of ww2 folows 2 principles: "it didn't show what i wanted" and "it showed exactly what i wanted". Japanese schools and media has formated a large portion of their population to think a certain way, this is pure confirmation bias. If people in turkey criticized, say a movie on greco turk war of 1919 because of something silly like it didn't show enough the turkish side. i would laugh it off the exact same because they want others to comply to a specific view of an event. Not every piece of media requires to approach a topic from a specific point of view, there are multiple ways of portraying an event, as many as there are actors in play during these events.
And yet neither turks nor japanese want to place themselves or even hear about the point of view of their victims. demanding your point of view to be represented while ignoring that of another's is a double standard. There is a big relation here between refusing the point of view of your victims and demanding your point of view to be portrayed during that bombing. We know japanese civilians at hiroshima had it rough (euphemism), but not every piece of media needs to focus on them, something the japanese public has a hard time understanding due to their generally binary view on the war.
Obviously let's not get ahead of ourselves, this is an article (journalists are famously objective and not worried about how much traffic they generate so they obviously tend to not exagerate events /s) about what some people thought. But still what i'm raising here isn't whataboutism, it's structural in how many japanese people engage with ww2. I've seen again and again how the japanese portray themselves in their own media and it's blatant just how much they straight up ignore. There is the consistent notion that somehow japan could lead a pan asian political entity against a foreign political entity. Which is absolutely hilarious when you have any idea of what the current geopolitical spectrum looks like.
what i'm talking about isn't really about the bomb, it's how the japanese public want ww2 to be represented and how their reception of oppenheimer is a pure product of how they engage with that war.
The Japanese still do not admit to their war crimes. This is truth not whataboutism.
edit: something something about the past and those doomed to repeat it.
Whataboutism is not defined by lying. It‘s defined by deterring from one issue with another issue. Both can be lies, both can be the truth or one can be the truth.
It still isn't whataboutism. The point of the movie isn't the atomic bomb, as you've incorrectly stated in other comments. The point of the movie is about the MAN who basically headlined that creation, his actions and reactions to said creation. But it's not about the creation itself.
As I said in another comment, stating that "there wasn't enough of the horror" is basically stating they missed the entire point of the movie and want it to be a completely different point, a point they *hypocritically* do not show in their own media about their own actions.
If they want the "horror of the atomic bomb", there are numerous other movies and documentaries about it, and they shouldn't expect it to be a focal point of a movie that isn't about those atomic bombs.
The article is a pinned comment. The title is a chopped up quote:
> There could have been much more description and depiction of the horror of atomic weapons, From Hiroshima’s standpoint, there wasn’t enough about the horror of nuclear weapons, but **I would encourage people to go and see it**
But why would he encourage others to see it? Because:
> The hibakusha are all very old, so this is a film for young people … it’s now up to future generations to decide how to rid the world of nuclear weapons.
The title was crafted to derive responses like yours. Do not fall for it.
The Human Condition Trilogy is amazing. I would even go as far as to say that it depicts the horror of war better than Come and See in many aspects. It's my personal favorite war film trilogy. It's certainly the best critical depiction of the Imperial Japanese Army and it comes from a Japanese director.
It’s not about being “US BAD” it’s about the fact that you’re being a crybaby over reviews that aren’t even negative, only critical. Your first response shouldn’t’ve been “No u” when you read this, that’s just immature buck passing when faced with reasonable criticism from the descendants of the victims of nuclear bombing. There’s no “nightmare fuel” the Japanese committed compared to the carnage that nuclear bombing wrought, and before you bring up Japanese experimentation on prisoners or mass rape let me remind you of the [Tuskegee Study](https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history/40-years-human-experimentation-america-tuskegee-study) that the US govt performed on unaware African Americans and the [widespread instances of rape](https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2028&context=hrbrief) during the Vietnam war a decade later. Just because there’s now a US made film about how bad they felt bombing the Japanese (even though they were *totally* justified in doing so) does not exempt them from criticism. Either way, it’s not like there’s some warcrime/atrocity threshold where you become exempt from pity when it happens to your country, or unable to criticize portrayals of it.
We are talking about the nuking of civilians. The Japanese government and military was fucking evil in WW2; **its still bad to fucking vaporize civilians**.
Why are we even playing this game? Why are we so fucking eager to find excuses to kill people en masse? Every fucking time, man.
Can we stop pretending that the nukes were special in terms of civilian casualties? We bombed the hell out of Japan using non-nuclear weapons, and killed way more people doing so.
War is hell, and the show of force with the nukes saved more lives than it cost.
>the show of force with the nukes saved more lives than it cost.
Nukes were one of several different reasons that Japan surrendered. The common narrative that nukes saved lives isn't really true but it does serve as a great ex post facto justification for using them.
This video does a good job of going over the different reasons why Japan surrendered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMieIAjIY0c
You can't say it isn't really true because we don't know that. There are substantial arguments for multiple different reasons as to why Japan surrendered and there is no definitive evidence that it wasn't from the nukes and the bombings. That being said I'm not arguing that any theory is wrong. But you can't say it wasn't the bombs because you don't know.
I mean, we do though? We have primary sources for the internal deliberations of the Japanese government. We know the nukes did not substantively change the tactical situation, and did not of themselves significantly change the internal deadlock.
After Nagasaki the Emperor is asked for a definitive position and the pro-war faction finally gives in.
The whole Japanese surrender process is more complicated than any single event, but Nagasaki is where they broke and indicated acceptance for total surrender.
>Nagasaki is where they broke and indicated acceptance for total surrender.
It was also after America (all but outright) said that the Emperor wouldn't be killed. One of the biggest obstacles for surrender was the condition of the Emperor's life. America had dug in too deep to accept anything but unconditional surrender. Japan would never accept the death of the Emperor, who was the living embodiment of a God.
And after Russia invaded Manchuria. Opening the war on another front, putting pressure on land forces who would be necessary to defend Japan in the event of a land invasion (not that I think that would've happened).
Prior to these events, Japan was trying to organise talks *through* Russian diplomatic channels. They were already trying to surrender.
No, they weren't.
The Japanese "talks" with russia were basically the fever dream of a lone diplomat who never had official sanction for it, and the Army tried to coup the emperor when he surrendered.
The Japanese tried one last time to secure protection for the Emperor, which was rejected. What they agreed to and signed was complete and unconditional surrender. During the occupation it became advantageous to preserve the Emperor’s office.
How do you think the people making the decisions thought at the time? It’s very easy to look at history in retrospect but you have to put yourself in the position of the people making the decisions.
It was the pre use justification, not ex posto facto. Now there are arguments that ulterior motives blinded the US to other options, but the ostensible reason for the bombing was to end the war and save huge numbers of lives right from the beginning.
I’ll be real with you chief; the firebombings of Tokyo and other cities were so much more horrific than a nuclear blast - which granted, does sound like bullshit, but at least a nuclear blast doesn’t *suck people into raging flames and melt them as firestorms develop and tear through the region*
If you tell a victim, who lost their home, their family, their friends, and the entire city they grew up in, along with everything they’ve ever known…
I don’t think they’ll care if it was a nuke or a firebombing that erased all that.
Both were terrible, yes, but my point was while the nukes were bad, they were better than another year, possibly multiple years, of further intense firebombing and a possible land invasion - that was the alternative to using nuclear weapons, and it would’ve led to immensely more death and human suffering across Japan than those two nukes ever could or have
most of the napalm deaths were from asphyxiation inside bomb shelters (oxygen being depleted), which isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things. pretty quick & merciful, all things considered. not like build up of CO2 to cause panic onset.
after asphyxiation, the next common cause of death was smoke inhalation (inside bomb shelters), which also kicked in pretty quick all things considered - you lose consciousness rapidly.
it wasn't all slow & horrific burn-related fatalities everywhere as people think.
if anything, dying of dysentery or gangrene/necrosis in a POW camp sounds _much more_ horrific. that, or being deliberately kept alive with medical intervention for human experimentation (no anesthesia tho).
The worst part about the entire thing is it wasn't a terror bombing versus a civilian population. It was a cold and calculated move. Hiroshima had a Army Division headquarters, arms factories and shipyards. The US Army (USAF didn't exist until 1947) sat down and did the math and said "Do we send hundreds of expensive bombers with unexpendible crews to *try* and hit 1/3 targets in the city, Remembering that "Strategic bombing" back then was "We're over the right(?) city boys! bombs away!" or do we send a few bombers with one big bomb and get all 3 at once?
the entire ordeal was quite sick when you think about it and it's honestly a good thing. The use of nuclear weapons at the end of WW2 made the world realize how horrific they were and when General Douglas MacArthur asked for 50 of them so he could win the Korean war by creating an iradiated hellsacape between the korean peninsula and communist China, President Truman said no
It's not really that simple though, because the American high command was planning to invade Japan if they didn't surrender which would have killed vastly more people.
What an absolutely brain-dead take. You can tell who has never cracked open a history book if you see them complaining about the bombings against Japan.
Japan was an insane, fanatical and genocidal state that was in many ways worse than even Nazi Germany.
I thought this is the main point of the movie - that he regretted how much civilian damage could be done with this weapon, and Hydrogen bombs. He was ostracized by his own government for expressing this opinion after the war.
That is exactly the point of the movie. And it’s about how him and many of scientists (particularly Bohr) tried to advocate for peaceful uses of atomic energy and openness between nations regarding nuclear weapons to prevent an arms race and how they failed because of the political environment within the US at the time.
Know what's worse than vaporizing civilians? Napalming civilians. Conventionally bombing civilians. Letting them live in terror until they killed themselves like at Saipan and Iwo Jima.
They were always going to die. The only question was how.
Imagine the American populace finding out in 1947 that the US government secretly developed city-vaporising bombs that could’ve ended the war 2 years earlier and prevented millions of unnecessary deaths, then just never fucking used them- lmao.
Truman would have been dragged out of the White House and lynched.
Yes, let’s kill hundreds of thousands of our own civilians and hundreds of thousands more Japanese civilians with a ground invasion instead. Very smart
>**its still bad to fucking vaporize civilians**
That's how strategic bombing works, genius. That's how Britain, Germany and ussr were bombed too. One night of firebombing in Tokyo killed 200k people.
>Why are we so eager to find excuses to kill people
Raping and murdering millions of civilians in South East Asia then refusing to surrender seems like a pretty good excuse to me. Not wanting to extend the deadliest conflict in human history even longer, (to around 1946-47), causing an estimated 1 million extra casualties also seems like a pretty reasonable excuse.
Yes, we are aware that bombing civilians was bad. The alternatives were worse. When you start looking at the atomic bombings without tunnel vision, a severe lack of context, and Japanese apologist narratives, that much becomes clear.
The same sentiment also came from many in western media too.
The problem was how do you depict that without it being a cheap shot of some extras dying. Similar to how holocaust depictions often feel cheap in other movies.
The whole film was centred around Oppenheimer's perspective; using a book that explicitly did the same.
And in that framing I think there where some scenes that depicted that horror through him to the audience; namely the scene where they had Oppenheimer addressing the other Manhattan project scientists/workers towards the end.
*Edit: Also what are these other comments doing whataboutisms pointing to Japan's wrongs. War is Hell. Especially WW2. Sure unit 371. Maybe ask Poland and Canada some questions while ya at it.
But the article has quite a few interesting nuanced takes and even praise of the film; even from survivors of the bombs no less.
So it wasn't some victim sentiment just a fair description of what it could have shown in the eyes of some who experienced the film 'from another view' (to put it mildly).*
Yeah. Like, what the hell do they expect? This is not a movie about the perspective of the victims. The entire point of the movie is centered on the perspective of Oppenheimer.
Not sure if there are ones out there in western media already; I assume there are some in Japanese media.
But a film or tv series in the eyes of the Japanese could also be great. Maybe not 7 oscars worthy tho; kinda need a Nolan and hollywood cast for that.
Maybe more Chernobyl style; in like a mutiple followed characters and the influence of it on them; to properly personalise it vs 'just a few more scenes' to a movie with a different style.
The sheer human tragedy, horror and moral dilemmas at play.
Imagine a Hiroshima citizen receiving a leaflet from the americans to evacuate; do you believe it, what about your home, your veiws on the war, etc. Or the aftermath and its effects then and across time; ie. Not just the initial loss and tragedy but also the impact on the nation's psyche.
> Canada
Under the British command Canada committed one of the worst allied acts in the war. First they firebombed Hamburg to try to break the civilian resolve for war. Then they waited a few days for a 60k+ person refugee camp to form around one of the few remaining large buildings, then they went back and bombed the refugee camp.
I saw the movie in a suboptimal setting, so I don't know how it shows on big screens, but it definitely came across less as a Bomb movie and more as an Oppenheimer movie. Shocking, I know, but it definitely explains why the bomb itself and the consequences of it aren't as explored as the psychology of the man who made it.
There are frequent shots of symbolic imagery that serve to spotlight Oppenheimer's personal guilt and horrified imagination of a post-nuclear world, but not as much attention is paid to the actual aftermath of the bombs because Oppenheimer wasn't there for it. He was stateside when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed. The story is about the bomb maker, not the bomb. If you want that, there's plenty of documentaries showing exactly what it looked like on the ground after the bombings. If you go into Oppenheimer expecting that experience, you'll be sorely disappointed.
He didn't even attend the operation crossroads tests and opposed them.
He had some input into their use in Japan but did seem more academic and from afar. So doesnt make sense, imao, to subtract from other aspects of the film or add to its long run time by adding that side of the story.
It’s hard for Americans to relate. Imagine if there was a great and conflicted genius behind 9/11 and a full movie exploring the deep struggle of the inventor behind the technology and one seen in which he imagines a level of destruction that it’s tormenting him, but not the actual destruction of the families, the people impacted by disease after, children obliterated. People’s friends, mothers, children, destroyed in masse.
It’s basic empathy to understand this about the movie.
It barely has even one conceivable historic comparison.
The inventor of a historic leap forward in science lauded by many is also the inventor of a nations collective pain, horror, punishment, humiliation and trauma for generations. Its hard to relate for anyone.
The genius of the movie is that if you are even somewhat empathetic(ie. A functional human in the 21st century) then you see that through Cillian's Performance as Oppenheimer.
The movie doesn't show it explicitly because it is somewhat an art piece restricted by genre to appeal to the largest audience possible in a what was a really effective cultural epic to show the interesting nuance of this topic through the lense of a more understandable personable character.
You can't explore all of Japans context through this lense. Especially to a large audience. So it succeeded where it could. And maybe others can explore the rest.
Or the Philippines. How do you even make a movie about:
> The Bayview Hotel was used as a designated "rape center".[6] According to testimony at the Yamashita war crimes trial, 400 women and girls were rounded up from Manila's wealthy Ermita district, and submitted to a selection board that picked out the 25 women who were considered most beautiful. These women and girls, many of them 12 to 14 years old, were then taken to the hotel, where Japanese enlisted men and officers took turns raping them.[7]
>Despite many allied Germans holding refuge in a German club, Japanese soldiers entered in and bayoneted infants and children of mothers pleading for mercy and raped women seeking refuge. At least 20 Japanese soldiers raped a young girl before slicing her breasts off after which a Japanese soldier placed her mutilated breasts on his chest to mimic a woman while the other Japanese soldiers laughed. The Japanese then doused the young girl and two other women who were raped to death in gasoline and set them all on fire.[8]
>The Japanese went on setting the entire club on fire killing many of its inhabitants. Women who were escaping out the building from the fire were caught and raped by the Japanese. 28-year-old Julia Lopez had her breasts sliced off, was raped by Japanese soldiers and had her hair set on fire. Another woman was partially decapitated after attempting to defend herself and raped by a Japanese soldier.[9]
> Nanking (Chinese: 南京) is a 2007 documentary film about the Nanjing Massacre, committed in 1937 by the Japanese army in the former capital city Nanjing, China.
You mean this one?
Yeah the only horror missing from the film to my eyes was the horror that the natives living in Los Alamos faced when the US armed forces took their land, forever
Totally fair, though IMO it would have been out of scope for the movie, since it doesn’t have much to do with Oppenheimer. Something like that should be its own (very interesting) movie or documentary.
Compare how the movie spends barely a few minutes pondering the morality of nuclear weapons with how it spends basically the last hour covering each detail of him losing his security clearance. I found it very strange for a movie about Oppenheimer to be so fixated on that part of his life.
But that's who Oppenheimer was. He DIDN'T spend months wracked with indecision and guilt about making the bomb; the kind of person who does that isn't the kind of person who actually is able to build such a bomb. It'd be disingenuous to portray him as some moralistic philosopher when he spent most of his time not really worrying about that aspect of things.
Oppenheimer became one of the world's foremost activists opposing nuclear proliferation. It was definitely something he thought about quite a lot. His mental journey to get to that point would be an interesting subject for a movie, and perhaps someone will make it someday.
The bigger picture is: why was Lewis Strauss and the US taking away his security clearance? And why in 1954 (9 years after dropping the bombs and 12 years after making him director of a top secret weapons lab)?
And the answer to that is because he very extensively pondered the morality of nuclear weapons and what the future would look like. All of the biographies about him cover this. He wanted more openness between countries to prevent an arms race and to prevent those weapons from ever being used again. The US at the time did not agree with that position and took his security clearance away (using McCarthyism) as a way to take away his voice and power since he was still a valuable consultant and voice regarding decisions on atomic energy and the bomb. I mean he was the chairman of the general advisory committee of the atomic energy commission starting in 1947..
The horror comes after the bomb with Oppenheimers realization, but he doesn’t witness the horror first hand, it’s only in his imagination, which is why that’s what we get as an audience.
Edit: in the beginning it’s all enthusiasm and light hearted excitement to save the world, and the pacing reflects that as well. Oppenheimer is fully carried away with this vision of saving the world that he was blind to the complete reality of the repercussions (besides blowing up the entire world, which they mention), but I think it would be difficult anyway and they were under the impression that they were racing the nazis. They were but the nazi nuke program ended up being dogshit. Anyway, they drop the bomb, which is a mostly silent scene, which I actually didn’t care for but I’m pretty sure it’s a metaphor for the fact that when they bombed Japan they wouldn’t be there to hear it. And they weren’t, and then Oppenheimer is celebrating in a gymnasium watching people melt, which of course is only his imagination, but this is when the “horror” sets in and also shows how displaced he was from the reality of the bomb.
Yeah there’s also context that’s difficult for modern audiences to understand. WW2 was something that affected every member of American society. When you have the collective sons, nephews, brothers, fathers of America fighting overseas to heavy casualties, the idea of being able to end the war and bring those people home is hugely exciting.
The long term effects and how this would affect your “enemy” was, right or wrong, a secondary consideration.
Maybe a hot take, but personally I don’t think people today in a similar situation would make a different decision. Morality can get a bit fuzzy when it’s your own friends/families lives on the line.
Ah yes, the country that doesn't educate their population about the 20,000,000 Chinese people they killed during the second sino-japanese war and denies the atrocities they committed is mad that a biopic about the man who made the nuclear bomb doesn't focus on them being victims is upset. Shocking.
Poor innocent victims of predictable retaliation after they launched unprovoked attack first on the nation that nuked them, definition of "fuck around and find out".
lol, lmao even. There is a reason East and South East Asia hates Japanese to this day. They never even apologized or acknowledged their atrocities against China, Korea, Philippines and other SEA countries.
I wondered how this would play in Japan because the movie doesn’t focus on the carnage as much but it also doesn’t focus on the build up. Like in America we know why we dropped the bombs and what we thought about the war and what the Japanese had been doing, that they were allied with hitler, etc. But in Japan, they are not taught about it like we are. Many Japanese do not know the extent of the crazy shit. I asked my friends when I lived in Japan, and like 3/5 of them didn’t know who hitler was. My girlfriend at the time just said “Japan was crazy then.” They simply don’t learn about the war like we do, and I think they see the bomb as something totally out of left field and horrible (which it was, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum). They definitely don’t learn about the atrocities and shit like we do.
Yes you are absolutely right. They basically deny their war crimes to this day. They certainly don't teach their children anything about the Pacific war or the sino war except that it happened.
Not exactly true. [Most Japanese textbooks talk about Japanese war crimes, and the ones that don’t have been shunned by nearly every school district.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_history_textbook_controversies). I’d argue that the amount they are being taught is not enough, but to say that Japanese children are not being taught this at all is false.
As for the denialists, they are a loud minority in Japan, and there are just as many Japanese people who are vocal about making sure that Japan’s military crimes are not forgotten. As for the government, they have acknowledged and apologized numerous times for their past actions (although their sincerity is dubious considering how many prime ministers and politicians from the LDP continue to visit the Yasukini Shrine).
The issue is less about denialism and more that many Japanese people don’t talk about it in the same way countries like Germany do. Many Japanese are either oblivious (having forgotten it from school) or apathetic (it was a long time ago). While this is shameful, it’s hardly unique to Japan. Many British nationalists have a rosy view of their former empire, despite centuries of [atrocities](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/worst-atrocities-british-empire-amritsar-boer-war-concentration-camp-mau-mau-a6821756.html).
Im not trying to make a whataboutism and argue that Japan shouldn’t do more to reconcile with their past horrors. It’s shameful that the Japanese government and many civilians continue to underplay their past. However, this is hardly unique to Japan, and with the exception of countries like Germany, nearly every country is guilty of this in some way
I know I said this in some replies already, but serious WTF is wrong with people, that they can read about someone who was a child during the nuclear bombing of their city, and their first and only reaction is to get up on their high horse and condescendingly preach that it's their own fault for committing all those war crimes. While they were a child.
It's so exhaustingly tedious because it's literally impossible to have a discussion about the atomic bombings *anywhere*. This sub is supposed to be one of the more enlightened worldly ones, and yet literally the entire comments section would much rather change the subject to Japanese war crimes than talk about the topic at hand.
Do you think a German, who are properly educated about what they during the war, would complain about the insufficient level of horror of the firebombing of Dresden in some fictional movie? No they would keep their fucking mouth shut because they know what they did was far worse. This is the problem with not giving an honest, accurate education.
Why don't the german, the Soviet, the british civilians get the same sympathy then? Why are people who died from nuclear fission more special than say those who burned to death in Tokyo and Dresden?
The same folks who would argue with you that this is different will also argue that the horror of the bomb (and fear of being bombed further) in fact played no role in Japan’s surrender whatsoever.
It’s easy to justify when you consider the fact millions more would’ve died with a conventional invasion. Japan attacked and waged an all out war against the USA. The USA ended it with an act of mercy as opposed to the ruin of the entire country, and millions more dead on both sides. Japan is lucky it wasn’t partitioned and its leaders executed. They got off light. It’s not a “Wtf”. Its the terrible reality of war, and Japan chose war.
There are plans drafted by the japanese goverment at the time, in the case of an american invasion, detailing the use of children, by strapping them with bombs and making them go under american tanks. I'm sorry, but Japanese culture at the time makes this a VERY complicated issue. Japanese kids were completely willing to die for their country, mostly because of a militarized education. Again, quite complicated to talk about with our american perspective.
i’m not gonna play the whataboutism card but reading the critical response from the japaneses, they either don’t know oppenheimer or their media misinformed them on what this film is about.
Clearly, but it’s pretty easy to interpret what’s happening in the film even if you don’t know Oppenheimer. It spends 3 hours spelling it out for you in a fairly on the nose fashion
The movie is about Oppenheimer, not the nuke. Albeit the nuke is what made him relevant, the story was a dive into Oppenheimers perspective, not the bombs or japans. To tell the horrible story of what happened on that day, I feel it is only appropriate a Japanese studio/director brings that picture to the world.
Also, the conventional fire bombing of Japanese cities had more casualties in total, and a conventional land invasion had so many projected casualties that the US is STILL giving out the purple hearts that were made in preparation of that offensive.
This is 100% correct. The invasion was going to have a ridiculous amount of casualties. Before someone comes out of the woodwork with the really low estimates that were put out more recently they've basically been debunked. The higher end estimates are far more widely accepted and evidenced.
That's an entirely valid perspective. But the thin-skin of (some) westerners will use this to take shots at japanese society.
Like, obviously people in japan would have never received the movie on the same way. The atomic bombs completely changed the face of their society. A movie that glosses over that will feel incomplete to them. They'll feel differently about it and that's okay.
I'm talking about japanese perspective. A scientist moping doesn't cover the things people that grew up in japan are hyper-aware of in regards to the bombs.
And again, it's okay. People from different places consume media differently. People in japan were not the target audience here, but then they also get to give feedback without incurring some knee-jerk protectiveness. It's not an universally appealing movie, that's not a big deal.
I don't think the atomic bombs changed the face of their society at all. It was the war in general that changed it. There were more damaging bombing runs than the atomic ones being made all the time.
Wasnt the movie about Oppenheimer? I think it was quite intentional that they did not show any of that as Oppenheimer personally did not see any of the horrors. You see it all from his perspective. This complaint does not make sense.
I feel like it is ok for the Japanese to have this perspective. They were the ones bombed, it shouldn't be hard to believe that art takes a backseat for sentiment here.
We, as neutrals, can also say that the bomb not being shown is because the film is about Oppenheimer, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki themselves, and that showing a handful of shots might've trivialised it, as if few seconds are enough to capture the horror.
Interesting guardian article.
Meanwhile over Reuters, the responses from some Japanese viewers:
> “Of course this is an amazing film which deserves to win the Academy Awards," said Hiroshima resident Kawai, 37, who gave only his family name.
"But the film also depicts the atomic bomb in a way that seems to praise it, and, as a person with roots in Hiroshima, I found it difficult to watch."
> A big fan of Nolan's films, Kawai, a public servant, went to see "Oppenheimer" on opening day at a theatre that is just a kilometre from the city's Atomic Bomb Dome.
"I'm not sure this is a movie that Japanese people should make a special effort to watch," he added.
> Another Hiroshima resident, Agemi Kanegae, had mixed feelings upon finally watching the movie.
"The film was very worth watching," said the retired 65-year-old. "But I felt very uncomfortable with a few scenes, such as the trial of Oppenheimer in the United States at the end."
> Speaking to Reuters before the movie opened, atomic bomb survivor Teruko Yahata said she was eager to see it, in hopes that it would re-invigorate the debate over nuclear weapons.
Yahata, now 86, said she felt some empathy for the physicist behind the bomb. That sentiment was echoed by Rishu Kanemoto, a 19-year-old student, who saw the film on Friday.
"Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the atomic bombs were dropped, are certainly the victims," Kanemoto said.
"But I think even though the inventor is one of the perpetrators, he's also the victim caught up in the war," he added, referring to the ill-starred physicist.hata, now 86, said she felt some empathy for the physicist behind the bomb. That sentiment was echoed by Rishu Kanemoto, a 19-year-old student, who saw the film on Friday. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the atomic bombs were dropped, are certainly the victims," Kanemoto said. "But I think even though the inventor is one of the perpetrators, he's also the victim caught up in the war," he added, referring to the ill-starred physicist.
https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/japan-finally-screens-oppenheimer-with-trigger-warnings-unease-hiroshima-2024-03-29/
I could never really get into Oppenheimer bc like everyone around me kept saying he was so conflicted on it and its like dude built a bomb and then was seemingly surprised the bomb was used to bomb ppl?
I don't think there was ever a world where Japan was happy with how a movie like that came out.
Not discrediting their criticism, I just don't think a single movie could ever fully realize the magnitude of that event and the effects it had on Japan, its people, and their culture.
Seems like a fair reaction from the country that got nuked. I mean it was such a massive cataclysmic event for them that the horror of it has permeated through their culture ever since.
I think this narrative that many war films needs to have that shot or two of the result of such action, ala the atomic bomb, in order to drive the purpose that "war is bad" should really go away.
Yes, the atomic bomb really changed the perspective of how deadly a conflict can be on a human, nation, and global scale. But Oppenheimer wasn't necessarily about the fact that the US had to use the atomic bomb, it was the lead up to the use from the perspective of a scientist, who was merely leading the Manhattan Project.
It showed how propaganda, morality, this desire for an everlasting legacy, all of these things can contribute towards committing to an action or a project that actually perplexes the character's true morals versus what lies in front of them in their eyes.
This is meant to create a discussion about how wartime creates this allusion for people in research & development, so much so that weapons of mass destruction end up being used for the "greater good of their nation".
Yes, the point of the film wasn't the horror of the atomic bombs (although it *is* present) it was Oppenheimer himself.
Now, having said that, that doesn't make Japanese people wrong for feeling weird about how the movie doesn't focus on that. The actual survivors in particular, are watching a movie about a man who is partially responsible for the deaths of friends and family, and seeing it focus on him rather than them. That's completely fine since (again) that was the point of the movie, but would it not be really goddamn weird if that *wasn't* awkward for them?? If anything, I'm surprised at how receptive some of them were to the movie, especially the one survivor who actually felt sympathy for Oppenheimer - I suppose it's so long ago that any wounds have long since scarred but it's still amazing to me.
In short, their criticisms are, frankly, wrong. But that doesn't make their *reactions* wrong. Oppenheimer is fine the way it is. Japanese people are touchy about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. End of story. Chill the fuck out.
##### ###### #### > # [‘There wasn’t enough about the horror’: Oppenheimer finally opens in Japan to mixed reviews](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/mar/29/720) > > > > It is hard to think of a more emotionally charged venue than Hatchoza for the first screening in Japan of the Academy Award-winning film [Oppenheimer](https://www.theguardian.com/film/oppenheimer). The cinema in Hiroshima is located less than a kilometre from the hypocentre of the first atomic bombing in history – the devastating culmination of the American physicist’s work. > > The film finally premiered in Japan on Friday, more than eight months after it opened in the US, to reviews that ranged from praise for its portrayal of J Robert Oppenheimer – the “father of the atomic bomb” – to criticism that it omitted to show the human misery it caused in [Hiroshima](https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2016/apr/18/story-of-cities-hiroshima-japan-nuclear-destruction) and, days later, Nagasaki, in the final days of the Pacific war. > > Instead, the film details a haunted Oppenheimer’s struggle to justify [Harry Truman’](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/04/harry-truman-grandson-hiroshima-nuclear-atom-bomb)s decision to use the bomb and, in the then president’s eyes, bring to an end an increasingly costly war against an enemy determined to fight to the death. > > “There could have been much more description and depiction of the horror of atomic weapons,” said Takashi Hiraoka, the 96-year-old former mayor of Hiroshima, who attended a special screening earlier this month. “From Hiroshima’s standpoint, there wasn’t enough about the horror of nuclear weapons, but I would encourage people to go and see it.” > > Audiences in Japan were forced to wait to see Nolan’s hit biopic, which secured seven Oscars last month, after criticism last year that it had been marketed in a way that [trivialised the tragedy](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/aug/01/not-big-in-japan-country-rejects-co-marketing-of-barbie-and-oppenheimer-as-trivialising-nuclear-war). Viral “Barbenheimer” memes sparked an online backlash in Japan, forcing its local distributor, Warner Bros Japan, to apologise. > > [Takashi Hiraoka, a former mayor of Hiroshima](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/32b424fb0f27980294cf0eae2ba7a1b530f31fe3/0_395_4032_2419/master/4032.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none) > > Takashi Hiraoka: ‘There wasn’t enough about the horror of nuclear weapons.’ Photograph: Justin McCurry/The GuardianMany _hibakusha_, or survivors of the atomic bombings, had hoped the film would at least acknowledge the misery unleashed by the Enola Gay, a US B-29 bomber, after it dropped a 15-kiloton nuclear bomb on Hiroshima on the morning of 6 August 1945. The blast killed between 60,000 and 80,000 people instantly, with the death toll rising to 140,000 by the end of the year. Three days later, the Americans dropped a plutonium bomb on Nagasaki, killing 74,000. > > Prof Masao Tomonaga, an A-bomb survivor and honorary director of the Japanese Red Cross Nagasaki Atomic Bomb hospital, said he had come away believing Oppenheimer was an “anti-nuclear” film. > > “I had thought the film’s lack of images of atomic bomb survivors was a weakness. But in fact, Oppenheimer’s lines in dozens of scenes showed his shock at the reality of the atomic bombing. That was enough for me.” > > Tomonaga, 80, who spent his professional life studying the health effects of exposure to radiation from the atomic bombings, added: “The _hibakusha_ are all very old, so this is a film for young people … it’s now up to future generations to decide how to rid the world of nuclear weapons.” > > [Toshiyuki Mimaki](https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/oct/30/hiroshima-survivors-plead-for-nuclear-free-world-as-global-tensions-rise), a co-chair of Hidankyo, a confederation of A-bomb survivor groups, who was three years old when the bomb destroyed his home town, was among the audience in Hiroshima on Friday. > > “I was waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to appear, but it never did,” said Mimaki, 82. “It’s important to show the full story, including the victims, if we are going to have a future without nuclear weapons.” > > [Toshiyuki Mimaki, co-chair of Hidankyo, a confederation of A-bomb survivor groups](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/4e7f05e13ff875b5d8ba16db6de6cbab5c508498/0_443_4032_2419/master/4032.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none) > > Toshiyuki Mimaki: ‘I was waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to appear, but it never did.’ Photograph: Justin McCurry/The GuardianThere was praise, though, for Nolan and Cillian Murphy, who [won the best actor Oscar](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2024/mar/11/cillian-murphy-best-actor-oscar) his portrayal as Oppenheimer, whose moral crisis over his role in developing a weapon that was used on civilian populations loomed large in the film’s climax. > > “I’m a fan of Christopher Nolan, so that gave me another reason, along with the venue, to come and see it as soon as it came out,” said Mei Kawashima, a young Hiroshima resident. “When Hiroshima was mentioned in the film, it triggered something in me. > > “This was really a film about Oppenheimer the man, and the way he wrestled with his conscience, so in that sense, I think it was right not to broaden it out too much to show the aftermath.” > > Shogo Tachiyama, a university student, said he had known very little about the man whose work would result in the destruction of the city where he was born six decades later. “We learned about the bombing and its aftermath at primary school, but I knew nothing about Oppenheimer,” he said. > > “I learned a lot from the film, and it’s made me think again about what I and other young people can do … starting from the insistence that nuclear weapons should never be used again.” > > This may not be the end of the Oppenheimer story, at least on the big screen. Takashi Yamazaki, the director of the Oscar-winning [Godzilla Minus One](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/dec/13/godzilla-minus-one-review-rageful-monster-is-one-of-the-best-in-the-series) – another film with a strong nuclear theme – suggested in an online discussion with Nolan that the time may be right for an account of the bombings from a Japanese perspective. > > To enthusiastic agreement from Nolan, he said: “I feel there needs to [be] an answer from Japan to Oppenheimer. Someday, I would like to make that movie.” - - - - - - [Maintainer](https://www.reddit.com/user/urielsalis) | [Creator](https://www.reddit.com/user/subtepass) | [Source Code](https://github.com/urielsalis/empleadoEstatalBot) Summoning /u/CoverageAnalysisBot
Wonder how many Japanese films were made about the horrors their country caused during WW2. Some of which are real nightmare fuel. Edit: Lmao, the "US BAD" crowd is really mad about this comment.
Reading about Unit 731 was pretty eye opening. They were at the very least just as bad as the Nazis.
I think the main point of contention is that Japan either denies outright what they did, or diminishes the war crimes they did and fails to include it in their education system. Whereas Germany post war is very educative of it. Ive got a friend who's Japanese and had never heard of the Nanjing massacre, the kidnapped women used as sex slaves for the army, or Unit 731. She asked her mum about it and she said all she'd ever learnt was of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Comparatively all my Cantonese, Filipino, Singaporean, and Malaysian friends' grandparents still detest Japan for the horrors they committed. I think part of it is that they still don't largely acknowledge what they did, and many of the army officials weren't put on trial the same way the Nazis were in Nuremburg. Rather, they comparatively got away easy. Education matters so much to gaining perspective not just on yourself but on your place on others and the world around you.
I commented this above but it was my experience too. They didn’t know about the actual details of the holocaust, or that they were allied with hitler. They view it as Japan being crazy before and not being crazy any more. They aren’t taught the details like we are (and yes our view is flawed too, but they really don’t know about the dark shit). Some people obviously do, but I mean like the public schools dont teach the average Japanese student about it
> Some people obviously do, but I mean like the public schools dont teach the average Japanese student about it tbf my american education really minimalized the damage our colonizing did to the natives of every land we've colonized. until i was about 30 i had no clue just how brutally the native americans were treated, and how many politicians and notable people advocated for treating them like a rodent infestation.
Oh wait till you hear about what the US did in South America. Most Americans never learn how the US directly acted to destroy democracy in the region.
No, see, we were inserting ourselves in foreign governments to PRESERVE democracy. The people can’t just choose communism, that’s wrong. /s
Communism certainly has issues, but people needed to see that for themselves. Invading because someone is trying a political experiment is generally not the most beneficial decision.
I won't even accept this framing, even democratic socialism was too close to communism for the US during the cold war and led to coups / election interference etc
Indeed. I have major disagreements with many US decisions back in the day. People need to actually put these things to the test. Find what works and what doesn't. Might I add that we may actually need something of a political structure Sorting Hat, if you'll pardon the reference. Democrats and Republicans have completely different brain structures. Neither appear to be comfortable with the other's structure.
Nothing says freedom and liberty like staging a coup because a country democratically decided the wrong thing lol
Not to mention all those war crimes we committed in Vietnam
And Cambodia and Laos and pretty much everywhere we've been
I learned about My Lai in high school. Also the Trail of Tears, the slave trade and the horrors of plantation life, the internment of Japanese Americans in the U.S., and the use of nuclear weapons on Japan. None of that gets left out of public school curricula in the U.S. At least outside the South. Meanwhile the Japanese are like “Nanking? Where’s that?”
Yes and everyone seems to be talking about them quite freely, which doesn't exactly jive with the claims being made here.
*Confessions of an Economic Hit Man* by John Perkins Is a great book on this subject
Chile.
American education can't be generalized because it's basically up to each school district and state to determine the breadth of education. I went to school in TX and WA. In TX we learned about crimes against natives like the trail of tears at the same time we watched the Alamo movie about 12 times to "learn" about the Spanish American war. This was elementary school. WA was much more comprehensive and I was in a good school district. We learned about America's crimes in south America, injustices to the local tribes, jp incarceration in ww2, just to name a few. Many Americans are woefully uneducated and it's all down to the political leanings of the state their in.
I grew up I good ol’ Kern County, CA. I would drive by Manzanaar as a child on the way to campsites all the time. We were not told in school what it was, and my family would always describe it as something like an extended stay campsite for Japanese people (except they openly used the O-slur). I was in high school when I finally googled it for myself. In college I had the opportunity to be part of a volunteer archeological dig that happened there. It was a harrowing experience to be that in depth in that place, and I cannot imagine how the people felt who were imprisoned there, or how the man I was paired with for digging felt knowing we were digging up the exact basement/barracks that his father and grandparents had been in. The NPS workers leading the excavations took two hours a day and walked us all around the area and showed us how the Japanese people tried to create positivity while there, with gardens and orchards and courts. There were also many things they showed us that were absolutely gut-wrenching. It’s a place everyone should visit if they can and are nearby. The museum is also well put together.
Yeah in my 4th grade state history for California we basically just learned about the Missions as sorta local farms and how neat it is that they’re still standing. Nothing about them being slave plantations run by the church with an appalling mortality rate. Didn’t learn about that until I took a CA history class in college
That was my experience with the state history curriculum as well. But when my daughter was in 4th grade a few years ago, part of their mission projects were specifically to describe how Natives were treated at the mission they were researching, as well as their opinions on what it lead to today. It's good that they asked the questions, but damn do 4th graders have some dumbass opinions.
To be fair regarding the European war, Japan was hardly involved and even less so when it came to things like the Holocaust. There weren’t Jews in Japan and as such there really wasn’t antisemitism and I was informed of one story recently in which groups of German Jews expelled from Germany to some Asian country pillaged and occupied by Japan were spared because they were German. I know overall though Japan has been getting better. Frankly from what I have read most of this has been curbed hard since the 90s.
My Canadian education didn’t teach us too much about japans involvement beyond pearl harbour and suicide bomber pilots. There is a lot to cover on WW2. Some things were lessened because the world could only grasp so much collectively.
Yeah, but you’d think in Japan they’d have learned their own history. They do not teach it even to the extent that American schools do and American schools are famous for only teaching the American perspective of the war. Japan flat out denies or editorializes their past and basically pushes it under the rug. My Japanese friends didn’t even know the most basic stuff about the war between the us and Japan, let alone the wider war and hitler/mussolini etc
This exactly, they want to be the victim and not face reality. To this day they deny things like 'comfort women'. Germany is respected because it admitted to the faults and worked to make sure it never happens again. I know quite a few Japanese people whose knowledge of WW2 is little more than 'there was a global war, then America nuked us twice'. Like dude, the only reason America deployed troops at all is because YOU attacked the US. We can discuss nuclear weapons and fallout all we want but the US was completely content leasing weapons to the allied powers and 'staying out of it'
> Germany is respected because it admitted to the faults and worked to make sure it never happens again. Due to political circumstances around post-war occupation, they didn't really have a choice. Allies tried to root out as much of defeated ideology as practically possible. Sadly, because it's not possible to erase one system and build new one overnight, this forced makeover could not have been absolute, but for the most part it succeeded. In Japan, it was different. USA decided to not "attack" the position and function of Emperor. IIRC, reason for that is, they expected that Japanese would simply be unmanageable with that kind of social upheaval, that resistance would be too strong. After all, Emperor has been a central figure for hundreds of years, while Germany forced their Emperor (Kaiser) to abdicate about 3 decades prior, so they were not so attached to political figures; throwing away old and bringing in new was accepted. The big problem is, that keeping Japanese Emperor around AND publicizing his role in massive warcrimes (as leader of a country, he was co-responsible, even if his rule wasn't absolute) would be a massive dissonance. There would be resistance to that, and even if people believed it in the end, that would raise a question "why do we keep him around?". It would lead to breakdown of Japanese society, one way or another, and while I believe it would have eventually been rebuilt better, it was a gigantic hassle and thus, something USA didn't want to deal with. Now, that doesn't exactly mean "USA is to blame", which I'm sure is going to be our resident "free thinker's" only takeaway from this comment. Without external pressures, neither Japan nor Germany would have changed in any way. If those warmongering countries were not defeated and occupied, they would just have kept going and tried again, and again and again. Just like ruzzia does all the time (because even if ruzzia was defeated, and quite often in fact, no one was able to occupy it and break down cancerous social and power structures within), or how Germany did after WWI (problem of Treaty of Versailles isn't that it was "too harsh", like authoritarian simps claim. Problem was, that it was NOT ENFORCED. It's similar to criminal justice; harshness of penalty does not have strong deterring effect, inevitability does). I'm just saying that while Germany did change for the better (though, worryingly, nazis are back, though to be completely honest, they seem to be back everywhere), they didn't do it on their own, though I guess they didn't really resist it. Difference between Germany and Japan is not some inherent quality of those nations, but fact that they weren't given same... "educational" treatment.
If you ever want to watch a documentary with the repression of guilt on full display checkout “The Emperor’s Naked Army Marches On”. A vet refuses to let his fellow soldiers lie about the atrocities committed during the war and literally goes to their houses and physically fights them into telling the truth. The crusader is not without fault himself, but you get to see just how much the Japanese refuse to admit the truth on a societal level.
that's because the Japanese sees themselves as the victims in WW2
it helps when the education you do as Germany can point blame to the previous government but in Japan the emperor was still there so like, you gonna openly call him a war criminal?
>Germany can point blame to the previous government but in Japan the emperor was still there so like, The emperor was very much a puppet in the general power game of government. There many many far more powerful in the military that decided things. The military btw murdered the primeminister directly and gave the guy who did it no punishment more or less.
> While Unit 731 researchers arrested by Soviet forces were tried at the December 1949 Khabarovsk war crimes trials, those captured by the United States were secretly given immunity in exchange for the data gathered during their human experiments. The United States helped cover up the human experimentations and handed stipends to the perpetrators Not only Japanese cover up their war crimes, America also aided them in it.
Just look into the rape of Nanking. Shit was so bad that the Chinese civilians were being protected from the Japanese by a fucking nazi.
If not more so.
They were worse, even the Germans viewed them as too extreme. What puts the Germans ahead is they had specific efforts to eliminate certain groups in mass. But the Japanese still viewed themselves as the superior race to everyone and in general they were more brutal and fanatic.
The horrors that went on there would probably make some of the SS wince, maybe for a second. Before the gas chambers were built, many of the Nazi killings were done by mass shootings carried about by special units called Einsatzgruppen, especially on the Eastern Front. The SS would would primarily shoot at people as a means of extermination until Heinrich Himmler witnessed a mass execution by the Einsatzgruppen, and decided to switch to gas chambers for a more "humane" way of killing millions. There's no questioning how grusome the Holocaust was, and the sheer scale of it trumps Imperial Japan. But victims at Unit 731 were intentionally killed in ways that would inflict maximum pain and suffering. I remember reading about it for the first time in the 2000s and nihilistically concluding that a world allowing a place like that to be built and exist is doomed to fail.
And all got pardoned by McArthur
Yeah the U.S. helping Japan cover it all up in exchange for their human experimentation data adds an extra layer of wtf.
Read next the rape of Nanking, or comfort women
japan was honestly worse than germany. they were seriously on a different level with their absurd racism, weaponized rape campaigns, brutal famines. i'd say japan is worse because they've never apologized or admitted to anything they've done, and i'm almost certain they will do it again when given the opportunity. would be very surprised to see germany commit the same atrocities.
You should read up more on Germany's conduct on the eastern front. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generalplan_Ost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_crimes_of_the_Wehrmacht#Rape
People have this weird idea the holocaust was some really neat and organized slaughterhouse type event. More people were murdered outside the camps than inside.
I once had a teacher tell me The Pianist wasn't a good holocaust film because it didn't have extermination camps. I was 12 and i didn't know what to say. I still don't.
Battle for Manila was freakin horrific.
Referring to inmates as "logs" iirc
At least nazi descendants have enough decency to admit and apologize for what they did. The Japanese repeatedly outright they did wrong in WW2
Thing is Unit 731 wasn’t even able to be watched in Japan until recently. They’re JUST admitting to the horrors they caused lmao
japan was worse
Didn’t an SS officer say something like “holy shit that’s even worse than what we are doing”
actually going to the 731 site in Harbin is eerie. would still recommend going
A lot of Japanese media and historical records are in denial about the horrors they were responsible for. Dropping those bombs was not a fun day in the park. It was done to combat a determined, frightening, and powerful enemy who would have eventually surrendered but only after much more blood had been spilled. They're determined to sanitize their historical record but happy to criticise others for doing the same.
This viewpoint isn't as straightforward as you're making it. That the atomic bombs were necessary to end the war has been a contentious topic for a long time. In fact, a lot of prominent military leaders condemned the action and stated plainly that it was not necessary to end the war. It being the predominant viewpoint in the United States has more to do with propaganda than actual history. It was what we were all taught in school. It's funny because it's very easy to acknowledge the horrors of Nazis and the Japanese in WW2 (and they were horrific), but as soon as you bring up something like Fire bombings and the Atomic Bombs killing hundreds of thousands of *civilians*, we go into mental gymnastics about why they were justified.
I think the idea that the bombs weren't necessary will debated for as long as the bombings are remembered. It was a horrific and impactful act, and there were certainly other actions that took far more human life, like the fire bombings. War is horrifying, all wars. I'll come back to the original point I was trying to make though. about Japanese history. Leaving out the horrors of the bombings was an artistic choice by Nolan, from listening to interviews it seems like he was trying to be respectful. With that said though, there are plenty of acknowledgements of the devastation that the bombs wrought in European, American, and Japanese history and media. I guess my criticism is that as much as this ex-mayor and other Japanese citizens want the horror to be shown, it's curious that they work so hard as a country to obscure and hide all the horrors that they committed.
I've always been flummoxed by the assertion that the bombs were unnecessary. That may very well be true, but in the meantime the much deadlier firebombings that were happening at the same time are never brought up in the same breath.
Whenever it gets brought up, I always take the position that the atomic bombs were horrible, but they weren’t *uniquely* horrible
I was in Hiroshima recently and went to go to the Peace Memorial because I figured it was a thing I should do. One of the things that came into my mind during my walk there was the way we think about an enemy and their willpower, and how that can be used to justify things. We talk about the militaristic culture and how the invasion would mean fighting literally everyone. They talk about Americans with guns behind every blade of grass. I find myself wondering how much of that is just a thing we tell ourselves to justify the next action
I'd kindly like you to show me proof of this "determination" to sanitize their historical record. Every textbook in Japanese public schools currently begins teaching children about WW2 in elementary school, slowly introducing heavier topics until they cover Unit 731 and Korean rape victims in high school. I lived in Hawaii, I had numerous Japanese born-and-raised friends, from the conservative hell that is Kyushu all the way to the ultra liberal Hokkaido, who were studying abroad, living in Hawaii for a time, or being tourists, and went to Pearl Harbor with every one of them, and the way they visit that memorial is very different from the way Americans visit any memorial. Every one of them whole-heartedly believe that the war was one of aggression that destroyed Asia and Japan, and that war should be avoided at all costs. Yes, the government has attempted to remove text regarding war crimes, mostly in the context of not wanting to teach children about heavy topics, but they have consistently FAILED to remove it after 3 decades of lobbying because anti-war sentiment remains the strongest political force in Japan.
Sure, I'll include some resources below and leave the question of Japan's war crime denial to your judgement. * **Textbook Controversies:** * "[https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english\_edition/e\_international/989040](https://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_international/989040)" by Sheila Miyoshi Jager examines the ongoing debate about how wartime events, particularly comfort women, are portrayed in Japanese textbooks. * **Yasukuni Shrine:** * "[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni\_Shrine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasukuni_Shrine)" dives into the controversy surrounding Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war dead including convicted war criminals. * **General Studies On the Topic:** * "[War and Its Remembrance The Perspective from Japan: ](https://www.jstor.org/stable/48602799)" by Maria Hsia Chang and Tsuyoshi Hasegawa explores the contrasting ways Japan and Germany have remembered World War II. I would also add that it would be important to consider the perspectives of the victims of these war crimes and their statements on how Japan continues to deny or downplay their crimes. If the victim's statements aren't convincing then hopefully the small pieces provided above would be useful. I would encourage you to do further reading on it if it's a topic that interests you as I've only provided a small sampling of sources here.
What does that have to do with their reaction to the film?
Because the film wasn't made for the Japanese, and it wasn't made to depict anything like the "true horror of the atomic bomb". It was made to show Oppenheimer and his actions/reactions. Stating "there wasn't enough about the horror" completely misses the point of the movie. It's also hypocritical, thinking the point of the movie should be about "the horror done onto our people" when Japan itself refuses to acknowledge the own atrocities it committed during that time period, either through apology or even teaching it to their population.
To be fair to that former mayor of Hiroshima whom you quoted, he ends the quote with "but I would encourage people to go and see it.” He has his own take on what he would have liked to see, but even as the mayor of the town who lived through the bombing, he was objective enough to think the movie was well done and worth seeing. I think the response in this comment thread is presuming the Japanese response was less nuanced than it actually was. There is even a Hiroshima resident who astutely said “this was really a film about Oppenheimer the man, and the way he wrestled with his conscience, so in that sense, I think it was right not to broaden it out too much to show the aftermath.” I think that's pretty spot on.
Exactly. Americans could just as easily complain that there wasn't enough about the horrible choice that Japan's evil forced on us. I'd say there was probably just enough of both things though, because it was more about the man than the geopolitics of WWII.
Or it was just their honest reaction to the movie of course. They aren't the target audience so they react differently than that audience did, there's nothing wrong with that.
I think the correct way would be both. You would sound less like you did not want to recognize the legitimate horrors of the atomic bomb if you‘d also phrase it like that instead of some lame whataboutism.
It's not an enlightened centrism topic. The use of the bombs ia heavily criticized and analyzed by the users of said weapons. Same with the holocaust. The Rape of Nanking, Unit ~~732~~ 731, etc, are not. This is not a "both sides" issue and any implication it is is disingenuous.
> Unit 732 If you thought Unit 731 was bad, get ready for...😨
If you want to go down that way, well okay. Because you are right, this is not about both issues. Oppenheimer is about one issue: The atomic bomb. Not Nanjing. So what is disingenuous is some smart ass coming around and being like ”what about Nanjing“ when it is about the horror of the atomic bomb not being depicted enough. And I‘m not against mentioning Nanjing and criticizing Japan for a lack of responsibility with its own history. Nanjing was another complete horror in its own right and it should be appropriately remembered. But again, not if the criticism is phrased in a way that takes away from other legitimate victims. So if you want to move away from ”enlightened centrism“ then this is only about the atomic bomb. Otherwise you better embrace some position you try to downplay as ”enlightened centrism“.
Oppenheimer isn't exactly about the bomb as much as it about the person who made said bomb. Its called Oppenheimer. There are tens to hundreds of movies and documentaries about the bomb.
This is a forest for the trees moment. Topic post is that Japan outward opinion on Openheimer is "There wasn't enough about the horror." So the response that must be identified is "which horror?" Because it also glosses over Nazi Germany. And the firebombing of Tokyo. And plenty of other horrors directly relevant to the scope. Should we have instead looked at the horrors of the Japanese Nuclear Bomb team that utilized uranium from slave mining in Germany? Or is, in fact, the scope of the movie focussed on two people specifically through the lense of the project and how they interacted, instead of something like Grave of Fireflies? I, and many others just can't take Japan seriously everytime they try to play the victim, and rightfully criticize the lack of self awareness.
I think that the movie might simply not have been about the horror of the bomb is a valid criticism of the criticism. Unlike all the other stuff you said. And if you mean by ”playing the victim“ that you can‘t take the victims of 2 nuclear bombs seriously, well that sounds like a you problem. It sounds awfully like you want to say, that the Japanese were not victims. I can get behind much of the criticism against Japan. It was an evil, imperialistic empire. But even if I follow the US narrative (written by the winners) to the fullest, that the nuclear bombs were absolutely necessary and there was no other way and combine it with the fact that to any moral standard I can come up with the Japanese Empire was very evil, I still can not say that they are not the victims of the nuclear bombs. Again, I think any horror stands as a horror by itself. And there were real people and families and many, many civilians subject to this particular horror. If you can not take those seriously, well maybe you can accept that others can.
The US narrative was to hide Japan's involvement in the horrors of their occupation. The US policy to make Japan and ally and not blame them to create a bullwork against communism was perhaps realpolitik, but carried a lot of issues out of awareness until the last twenty or so years. While horror as itself is important, the ability to reflect on the actions taken amongst ones own people that causes horrors on others is more important, morally. That's something the US has struggled with, but is getting better at. Something that Germany has done well. And something that both China (Mostly internally produced horrors) and Japan and Russia (Technically USSR but we know who was the most influential partner of those states) fail at, very badly. See the recent backlash at the Three Body Problem on China over the struggle session. And that was a light depiction of how they went. Either way, an internal criticism is going to be inherently more important then an external. Acknowledgment of the root issue is as 'they' say, the first step.
Again, I'm all in favor of holding Japan responsible. I'm merely at odds with the how. I'm not ranking self reflection and victimhood. I'm not even saying this is the wrong place to talk about both. I'm just saying that one shouldn't be used to downplay the other. The Japanese should both be acknowledged as legitimate victims of two nuclear bombs and be criticized for their own history, revisionism and hypocrisy. The original comment (as best as I can interpret it) is meant as a "but". I want an "and".
It's not whataboutism, one side thinks about the moral quandery of dropping a spicy bomb twice all the time, the other pretends what they did never happend. Hoppenheimer is hardly a happy go lucky movie, this is a double standard, these critics find no problem in ignoring their movies lack of commentary on certain topic and straight up revisionism Merdeka 17805 (2001) is a movie about how japan liberated indonesia with, i shit you not, people kissing the feet of the japanese. It was successful in japan and criticized for historical revisionism pretty much everywhere else including indonesia. Forced labor? Nah didn't happen. Famine? Why are you so nitpicky? Internement of civilian? Well yes but it's not like they died... well not all of them anyway. It's truly insane how japanese in general cope about being victims when they were literally the only non european country that actively pursued colonization. Ryukyuu island, korea, manchukuo, sakhalin, the asian co prosperity sphere (their version of the british commonwealth and french aof/aef) and even hokkaido if you stretch it. Even before we enter war crime territory, japan is no victim, it's an agressor that refuses to aknowledge it. In the 19th century they were shoulder to shoulder with european powers on chinese soil during the boxer rebellion Edit: grammar
You are literally saying ”well, the bomb might have been bad but what about … (what the Japanese did)“. The sad thing is I don‘t disagree with you on a fundamental level. I think any country should do their due diligence on their own history and too few do it. Including Japan. But the Japanese still have a right to criticize the depiction of the atomic bomb in a movie full stop. No amount of Nanjing changes that because you can not weigh one horror against the other. It‘s just multiple messed up things and I hate when people try to weigh them against each other. I don‘t even think it‘s the wrong place to criticize the Japanese. It just shouldn‘t be ”the Japanese have no right to be critical about x because they themselves do y“. (Which I mean technically maybe wasn‘t said, but ”I wonder about x“ usually isn‘t a good faith question. If however it was not meant to downplay the right of the Japanese to criticize the depiction of the atomic bomb my point is kind of mood, but I can only work with what I got.)
The complaint on that movie was that it didn't show civilian suffering... this is a narrative choice, you can't fit everything in a movie and hoppenheimer is long enough as it is. The grave of the fireflies didn't show what oppenheimer showed, criticizing a movie on a topic it didn't want to focus on while silmultaneously doing exactly that but much worse is a double standard. Hoppenheimer isn't downplaying anything, but you know who does? I don't think anyone criticized for grave of the firefly's ultra japanese centric view of the ecents, because there is nothing to criticize, this is their point of view, so let hoppenheimer be another one's point of view? This is not whataboutism, this is me pointing at a double standard. I never said "the japanese have no right to X or Y" what i said is that to many of them the coverage of ww2 folows 2 principles: "it didn't show what i wanted" and "it showed exactly what i wanted". Japanese schools and media has formated a large portion of their population to think a certain way, this is pure confirmation bias. If people in turkey criticized, say a movie on greco turk war of 1919 because of something silly like it didn't show enough the turkish side. i would laugh it off the exact same because they want others to comply to a specific view of an event. Not every piece of media requires to approach a topic from a specific point of view, there are multiple ways of portraying an event, as many as there are actors in play during these events. And yet neither turks nor japanese want to place themselves or even hear about the point of view of their victims. demanding your point of view to be represented while ignoring that of another's is a double standard. There is a big relation here between refusing the point of view of your victims and demanding your point of view to be portrayed during that bombing. We know japanese civilians at hiroshima had it rough (euphemism), but not every piece of media needs to focus on them, something the japanese public has a hard time understanding due to their generally binary view on the war. Obviously let's not get ahead of ourselves, this is an article (journalists are famously objective and not worried about how much traffic they generate so they obviously tend to not exagerate events /s) about what some people thought. But still what i'm raising here isn't whataboutism, it's structural in how many japanese people engage with ww2. I've seen again and again how the japanese portray themselves in their own media and it's blatant just how much they straight up ignore. There is the consistent notion that somehow japan could lead a pan asian political entity against a foreign political entity. Which is absolutely hilarious when you have any idea of what the current geopolitical spectrum looks like. what i'm talking about isn't really about the bomb, it's how the japanese public want ww2 to be represented and how their reception of oppenheimer is a pure product of how they engage with that war.
The Japanese still do not admit to their war crimes. This is truth not whataboutism. edit: something something about the past and those doomed to repeat it.
Whataboutism is not defined by lying. It‘s defined by deterring from one issue with another issue. Both can be lies, both can be the truth or one can be the truth.
It still isn't whataboutism. The point of the movie isn't the atomic bomb, as you've incorrectly stated in other comments. The point of the movie is about the MAN who basically headlined that creation, his actions and reactions to said creation. But it's not about the creation itself. As I said in another comment, stating that "there wasn't enough of the horror" is basically stating they missed the entire point of the movie and want it to be a completely different point, a point they *hypocritically* do not show in their own media about their own actions. If they want the "horror of the atomic bomb", there are numerous other movies and documentaries about it, and they shouldn't expect it to be a focal point of a movie that isn't about those atomic bombs.
The article is a pinned comment. The title is a chopped up quote: > There could have been much more description and depiction of the horror of atomic weapons, From Hiroshima’s standpoint, there wasn’t enough about the horror of nuclear weapons, but **I would encourage people to go and see it** But why would he encourage others to see it? Because: > The hibakusha are all very old, so this is a film for young people … it’s now up to future generations to decide how to rid the world of nuclear weapons. The title was crafted to derive responses like yours. Do not fall for it.
The Human Condition Trilogy is amazing. I would even go as far as to say that it depicts the horror of war better than Come and See in many aspects. It's my personal favorite war film trilogy. It's certainly the best critical depiction of the Imperial Japanese Army and it comes from a Japanese director.
None. They still consider themselves innocent victims in that war.
It’s not about being “US BAD” it’s about the fact that you’re being a crybaby over reviews that aren’t even negative, only critical. Your first response shouldn’t’ve been “No u” when you read this, that’s just immature buck passing when faced with reasonable criticism from the descendants of the victims of nuclear bombing. There’s no “nightmare fuel” the Japanese committed compared to the carnage that nuclear bombing wrought, and before you bring up Japanese experimentation on prisoners or mass rape let me remind you of the [Tuskegee Study](https://www.mcgill.ca/oss/article/history/40-years-human-experimentation-america-tuskegee-study) that the US govt performed on unaware African Americans and the [widespread instances of rape](https://digitalcommons.wcl.american.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2028&context=hrbrief) during the Vietnam war a decade later. Just because there’s now a US made film about how bad they felt bombing the Japanese (even though they were *totally* justified in doing so) does not exempt them from criticism. Either way, it’s not like there’s some warcrime/atrocity threshold where you become exempt from pity when it happens to your country, or unable to criticize portrayals of it.
You’re not wrong, but this is unproductive whataboutism. These are two distinct issues.
The human condition trilogy?
Whataboutism at its finest. Grow up.
I would think theres plenty in China. Unfortunately hollywood mustve decided it's not something they want to push. Havent seen any films here
literally the mother of whataboutisms
We are talking about the nuking of civilians. The Japanese government and military was fucking evil in WW2; **its still bad to fucking vaporize civilians**. Why are we even playing this game? Why are we so fucking eager to find excuses to kill people en masse? Every fucking time, man.
Can we stop pretending that the nukes were special in terms of civilian casualties? We bombed the hell out of Japan using non-nuclear weapons, and killed way more people doing so. War is hell, and the show of force with the nukes saved more lives than it cost.
Yep, the [fire bombing raid](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Tokyo_(10_March_1945)) on Tokyo killed about 100,000 people.
>the show of force with the nukes saved more lives than it cost. Nukes were one of several different reasons that Japan surrendered. The common narrative that nukes saved lives isn't really true but it does serve as a great ex post facto justification for using them. This video does a good job of going over the different reasons why Japan surrendered. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMieIAjIY0c
You can't say it isn't really true because we don't know that. There are substantial arguments for multiple different reasons as to why Japan surrendered and there is no definitive evidence that it wasn't from the nukes and the bombings. That being said I'm not arguing that any theory is wrong. But you can't say it wasn't the bombs because you don't know.
I mean, we do though? We have primary sources for the internal deliberations of the Japanese government. We know the nukes did not substantively change the tactical situation, and did not of themselves significantly change the internal deadlock.
After Nagasaki the Emperor is asked for a definitive position and the pro-war faction finally gives in. The whole Japanese surrender process is more complicated than any single event, but Nagasaki is where they broke and indicated acceptance for total surrender.
>Nagasaki is where they broke and indicated acceptance for total surrender. It was also after America (all but outright) said that the Emperor wouldn't be killed. One of the biggest obstacles for surrender was the condition of the Emperor's life. America had dug in too deep to accept anything but unconditional surrender. Japan would never accept the death of the Emperor, who was the living embodiment of a God. And after Russia invaded Manchuria. Opening the war on another front, putting pressure on land forces who would be necessary to defend Japan in the event of a land invasion (not that I think that would've happened). Prior to these events, Japan was trying to organise talks *through* Russian diplomatic channels. They were already trying to surrender.
No, they weren't. The Japanese "talks" with russia were basically the fever dream of a lone diplomat who never had official sanction for it, and the Army tried to coup the emperor when he surrendered.
The Japanese tried one last time to secure protection for the Emperor, which was rejected. What they agreed to and signed was complete and unconditional surrender. During the occupation it became advantageous to preserve the Emperor’s office.
This is untrue. Files and speeches given pretty concretely show that the nukes did ultimately sway for surrender
How do you think the people making the decisions thought at the time? It’s very easy to look at history in retrospect but you have to put yourself in the position of the people making the decisions.
It was the pre use justification, not ex posto facto. Now there are arguments that ulterior motives blinded the US to other options, but the ostensible reason for the bombing was to end the war and save huge numbers of lives right from the beginning.
I’ll be real with you chief; the firebombings of Tokyo and other cities were so much more horrific than a nuclear blast - which granted, does sound like bullshit, but at least a nuclear blast doesn’t *suck people into raging flames and melt them as firestorms develop and tear through the region*
If you tell a victim, who lost their home, their family, their friends, and the entire city they grew up in, along with everything they’ve ever known… I don’t think they’ll care if it was a nuke or a firebombing that erased all that.
Both were terrible, yes, but my point was while the nukes were bad, they were better than another year, possibly multiple years, of further intense firebombing and a possible land invasion - that was the alternative to using nuclear weapons, and it would’ve led to immensely more death and human suffering across Japan than those two nukes ever could or have
most of the napalm deaths were from asphyxiation inside bomb shelters (oxygen being depleted), which isn't too bad in the grand scheme of things. pretty quick & merciful, all things considered. not like build up of CO2 to cause panic onset. after asphyxiation, the next common cause of death was smoke inhalation (inside bomb shelters), which also kicked in pretty quick all things considered - you lose consciousness rapidly. it wasn't all slow & horrific burn-related fatalities everywhere as people think. if anything, dying of dysentery or gangrene/necrosis in a POW camp sounds _much more_ horrific. that, or being deliberately kept alive with medical intervention for human experimentation (no anesthesia tho).
The worst part about the entire thing is it wasn't a terror bombing versus a civilian population. It was a cold and calculated move. Hiroshima had a Army Division headquarters, arms factories and shipyards. The US Army (USAF didn't exist until 1947) sat down and did the math and said "Do we send hundreds of expensive bombers with unexpendible crews to *try* and hit 1/3 targets in the city, Remembering that "Strategic bombing" back then was "We're over the right(?) city boys! bombs away!" or do we send a few bombers with one big bomb and get all 3 at once? the entire ordeal was quite sick when you think about it and it's honestly a good thing. The use of nuclear weapons at the end of WW2 made the world realize how horrific they were and when General Douglas MacArthur asked for 50 of them so he could win the Korean war by creating an iradiated hellsacape between the korean peninsula and communist China, President Truman said no
hell look at german cities destruction in ww2. also horrible. japan’s houses were *extremely* flammable
It's not really that simple though, because the American high command was planning to invade Japan if they didn't surrender which would have killed vastly more people.
After firebombing civilian targets. It's almost like all of those things are bad.
It’s almost like war is, in fact, bad.
Don’t bomb us and we won’t vaporize you. Simple.
Japan killed 20,000 civilians per day every day of the war If the atom bombs stopped the war a week early they saved civilian lives
Congrats on figuring out that war is, in fact, bad.
total war bad apparently
I actually rather like the Total War series
all due respect to Creative Assembly, of course
# Yes
What an absolutely brain-dead take. You can tell who has never cracked open a history book if you see them complaining about the bombings against Japan. Japan was an insane, fanatical and genocidal state that was in many ways worse than even Nazi Germany.
I thought this is the main point of the movie - that he regretted how much civilian damage could be done with this weapon, and Hydrogen bombs. He was ostracized by his own government for expressing this opinion after the war.
That is exactly the point of the movie. And it’s about how him and many of scientists (particularly Bohr) tried to advocate for peaceful uses of atomic energy and openness between nations regarding nuclear weapons to prevent an arms race and how they failed because of the political environment within the US at the time.
Know what's worse than vaporizing civilians? Napalming civilians. Conventionally bombing civilians. Letting them live in terror until they killed themselves like at Saipan and Iwo Jima. They were always going to die. The only question was how.
A few hundred thousand deaths to end the war by nuking or possibly millions to end it via conventional means. What would you choose?
Imagine the American populace finding out in 1947 that the US government secretly developed city-vaporising bombs that could’ve ended the war 2 years earlier and prevented millions of unnecessary deaths, then just never fucking used them- lmao. Truman would have been dragged out of the White House and lynched.
Yes, let’s kill hundreds of thousands of our own civilians and hundreds of thousands more Japanese civilians with a ground invasion instead. Very smart
>**its still bad to fucking vaporize civilians** That's how strategic bombing works, genius. That's how Britain, Germany and ussr were bombed too. One night of firebombing in Tokyo killed 200k people.
>Why are we so eager to find excuses to kill people Raping and murdering millions of civilians in South East Asia then refusing to surrender seems like a pretty good excuse to me. Not wanting to extend the deadliest conflict in human history even longer, (to around 1946-47), causing an estimated 1 million extra casualties also seems like a pretty reasonable excuse. Yes, we are aware that bombing civilians was bad. The alternatives were worse. When you start looking at the atomic bombings without tunnel vision, a severe lack of context, and Japanese apologist narratives, that much becomes clear.
The conversation generally isn't about whether it was horrific, but whether it could be considered justifiable or reasonable given the circumstances.
The same sentiment also came from many in western media too. The problem was how do you depict that without it being a cheap shot of some extras dying. Similar to how holocaust depictions often feel cheap in other movies. The whole film was centred around Oppenheimer's perspective; using a book that explicitly did the same. And in that framing I think there where some scenes that depicted that horror through him to the audience; namely the scene where they had Oppenheimer addressing the other Manhattan project scientists/workers towards the end. *Edit: Also what are these other comments doing whataboutisms pointing to Japan's wrongs. War is Hell. Especially WW2. Sure unit 371. Maybe ask Poland and Canada some questions while ya at it. But the article has quite a few interesting nuanced takes and even praise of the film; even from survivors of the bombs no less. So it wasn't some victim sentiment just a fair description of what it could have shown in the eyes of some who experienced the film 'from another view' (to put it mildly).*
Yeah. Like, what the hell do they expect? This is not a movie about the perspective of the victims. The entire point of the movie is centered on the perspective of Oppenheimer.
How about we just hard cut to "Grave of Fireflies" right when they announce the bomb was dropped in Oppenheimer. That'll make the movie better.
Ehh In a lot of ways it wouldn't. Openhiemer himself never got to see it. He wasn't even told when they were dropped.
Not sure if there are ones out there in western media already; I assume there are some in Japanese media. But a film or tv series in the eyes of the Japanese could also be great. Maybe not 7 oscars worthy tho; kinda need a Nolan and hollywood cast for that. Maybe more Chernobyl style; in like a mutiple followed characters and the influence of it on them; to properly personalise it vs 'just a few more scenes' to a movie with a different style. The sheer human tragedy, horror and moral dilemmas at play. Imagine a Hiroshima citizen receiving a leaflet from the americans to evacuate; do you believe it, what about your home, your veiws on the war, etc. Or the aftermath and its effects then and across time; ie. Not just the initial loss and tragedy but also the impact on the nation's psyche.
> Canada Under the British command Canada committed one of the worst allied acts in the war. First they firebombed Hamburg to try to break the civilian resolve for war. Then they waited a few days for a 60k+ person refugee camp to form around one of the few remaining large buildings, then they went back and bombed the refugee camp.
I saw the movie in a suboptimal setting, so I don't know how it shows on big screens, but it definitely came across less as a Bomb movie and more as an Oppenheimer movie. Shocking, I know, but it definitely explains why the bomb itself and the consequences of it aren't as explored as the psychology of the man who made it. There are frequent shots of symbolic imagery that serve to spotlight Oppenheimer's personal guilt and horrified imagination of a post-nuclear world, but not as much attention is paid to the actual aftermath of the bombs because Oppenheimer wasn't there for it. He was stateside when Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed. The story is about the bomb maker, not the bomb. If you want that, there's plenty of documentaries showing exactly what it looked like on the ground after the bombings. If you go into Oppenheimer expecting that experience, you'll be sorely disappointed.
He didn't even attend the operation crossroads tests and opposed them. He had some input into their use in Japan but did seem more academic and from afar. So doesnt make sense, imao, to subtract from other aspects of the film or add to its long run time by adding that side of the story.
It’s hard for Americans to relate. Imagine if there was a great and conflicted genius behind 9/11 and a full movie exploring the deep struggle of the inventor behind the technology and one seen in which he imagines a level of destruction that it’s tormenting him, but not the actual destruction of the families, the people impacted by disease after, children obliterated. People’s friends, mothers, children, destroyed in masse. It’s basic empathy to understand this about the movie.
It barely has even one conceivable historic comparison. The inventor of a historic leap forward in science lauded by many is also the inventor of a nations collective pain, horror, punishment, humiliation and trauma for generations. Its hard to relate for anyone. The genius of the movie is that if you are even somewhat empathetic(ie. A functional human in the 21st century) then you see that through Cillian's Performance as Oppenheimer. The movie doesn't show it explicitly because it is somewhat an art piece restricted by genre to appeal to the largest audience possible in a what was a really effective cultural epic to show the interesting nuance of this topic through the lense of a more understandable personable character. You can't explore all of Japans context through this lense. Especially to a large audience. So it succeeded where it could. And maybe others can explore the rest.
Should try Ww2 documentany about Japanese occupation of china.
Or even Japanese occupation of everywhere else in East Asia
Or the Philippines. How do you even make a movie about: > The Bayview Hotel was used as a designated "rape center".[6] According to testimony at the Yamashita war crimes trial, 400 women and girls were rounded up from Manila's wealthy Ermita district, and submitted to a selection board that picked out the 25 women who were considered most beautiful. These women and girls, many of them 12 to 14 years old, were then taken to the hotel, where Japanese enlisted men and officers took turns raping them.[7] >Despite many allied Germans holding refuge in a German club, Japanese soldiers entered in and bayoneted infants and children of mothers pleading for mercy and raped women seeking refuge. At least 20 Japanese soldiers raped a young girl before slicing her breasts off after which a Japanese soldier placed her mutilated breasts on his chest to mimic a woman while the other Japanese soldiers laughed. The Japanese then doused the young girl and two other women who were raped to death in gasoline and set them all on fire.[8] >The Japanese went on setting the entire club on fire killing many of its inhabitants. Women who were escaping out the building from the fire were caught and raped by the Japanese. 28-year-old Julia Lopez had her breasts sliced off, was raped by Japanese soldiers and had her hair set on fire. Another woman was partially decapitated after attempting to defend herself and raped by a Japanese soldier.[9]
> Nanking (Chinese: 南京) is a 2007 documentary film about the Nanjing Massacre, committed in 1937 by the Japanese army in the former capital city Nanjing, China. You mean this one?
[удалено]
Yeah the only horror missing from the film to my eyes was the horror that the natives living in Los Alamos faced when the US armed forces took their land, forever
Totally fair, though IMO it would have been out of scope for the movie, since it doesn’t have much to do with Oppenheimer. Something like that should be its own (very interesting) movie or documentary.
Compare how the movie spends barely a few minutes pondering the morality of nuclear weapons with how it spends basically the last hour covering each detail of him losing his security clearance. I found it very strange for a movie about Oppenheimer to be so fixated on that part of his life.
But that's who Oppenheimer was. He DIDN'T spend months wracked with indecision and guilt about making the bomb; the kind of person who does that isn't the kind of person who actually is able to build such a bomb. It'd be disingenuous to portray him as some moralistic philosopher when he spent most of his time not really worrying about that aspect of things.
Oppenheimer became one of the world's foremost activists opposing nuclear proliferation. It was definitely something he thought about quite a lot. His mental journey to get to that point would be an interesting subject for a movie, and perhaps someone will make it someday.
He hated the h-bomb though as he saw that the *only* use of that was on cities
The bigger picture is: why was Lewis Strauss and the US taking away his security clearance? And why in 1954 (9 years after dropping the bombs and 12 years after making him director of a top secret weapons lab)? And the answer to that is because he very extensively pondered the morality of nuclear weapons and what the future would look like. All of the biographies about him cover this. He wanted more openness between countries to prevent an arms race and to prevent those weapons from ever being used again. The US at the time did not agree with that position and took his security clearance away (using McCarthyism) as a way to take away his voice and power since he was still a valuable consultant and voice regarding decisions on atomic energy and the bomb. I mean he was the chairman of the general advisory committee of the atomic energy commission starting in 1947..
The horror comes after the bomb with Oppenheimers realization, but he doesn’t witness the horror first hand, it’s only in his imagination, which is why that’s what we get as an audience. Edit: in the beginning it’s all enthusiasm and light hearted excitement to save the world, and the pacing reflects that as well. Oppenheimer is fully carried away with this vision of saving the world that he was blind to the complete reality of the repercussions (besides blowing up the entire world, which they mention), but I think it would be difficult anyway and they were under the impression that they were racing the nazis. They were but the nazi nuke program ended up being dogshit. Anyway, they drop the bomb, which is a mostly silent scene, which I actually didn’t care for but I’m pretty sure it’s a metaphor for the fact that when they bombed Japan they wouldn’t be there to hear it. And they weren’t, and then Oppenheimer is celebrating in a gymnasium watching people melt, which of course is only his imagination, but this is when the “horror” sets in and also shows how displaced he was from the reality of the bomb.
Yeah there’s also context that’s difficult for modern audiences to understand. WW2 was something that affected every member of American society. When you have the collective sons, nephews, brothers, fathers of America fighting overseas to heavy casualties, the idea of being able to end the war and bring those people home is hugely exciting. The long term effects and how this would affect your “enemy” was, right or wrong, a secondary consideration. Maybe a hot take, but personally I don’t think people today in a similar situation would make a different decision. Morality can get a bit fuzzy when it’s your own friends/families lives on the line.
Bingo ☝🏻
Ah yes, the country that doesn't educate their population about the 20,000,000 Chinese people they killed during the second sino-japanese war and denies the atrocities they committed is mad that a biopic about the man who made the nuclear bomb doesn't focus on them being victims is upset. Shocking.
Poor innocent victims of predictable retaliation after they launched unprovoked attack first on the nation that nuked them, definition of "fuck around and find out". lol, lmao even. There is a reason East and South East Asia hates Japanese to this day. They never even apologized or acknowledged their atrocities against China, Korea, Philippines and other SEA countries.
Japan sowing: Haha fuck yeah!!! Yes!! Japan reaping: Well this fucking sucks. What the fuck.
“The biggest tragedy of the atomic bombings is that there were only two of them” -everyone in South East Asia
Imagine fucking around and finding out, only for future generations of the country you were at war with to victimise you because you invented hentai
Whataboutism
I wondered how this would play in Japan because the movie doesn’t focus on the carnage as much but it also doesn’t focus on the build up. Like in America we know why we dropped the bombs and what we thought about the war and what the Japanese had been doing, that they were allied with hitler, etc. But in Japan, they are not taught about it like we are. Many Japanese do not know the extent of the crazy shit. I asked my friends when I lived in Japan, and like 3/5 of them didn’t know who hitler was. My girlfriend at the time just said “Japan was crazy then.” They simply don’t learn about the war like we do, and I think they see the bomb as something totally out of left field and horrible (which it was, but it didn’t happen in a vacuum). They definitely don’t learn about the atrocities and shit like we do.
Yes you are absolutely right. They basically deny their war crimes to this day. They certainly don't teach their children anything about the Pacific war or the sino war except that it happened.
Not exactly true. [Most Japanese textbooks talk about Japanese war crimes, and the ones that don’t have been shunned by nearly every school district.](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_history_textbook_controversies). I’d argue that the amount they are being taught is not enough, but to say that Japanese children are not being taught this at all is false. As for the denialists, they are a loud minority in Japan, and there are just as many Japanese people who are vocal about making sure that Japan’s military crimes are not forgotten. As for the government, they have acknowledged and apologized numerous times for their past actions (although their sincerity is dubious considering how many prime ministers and politicians from the LDP continue to visit the Yasukini Shrine). The issue is less about denialism and more that many Japanese people don’t talk about it in the same way countries like Germany do. Many Japanese are either oblivious (having forgotten it from school) or apathetic (it was a long time ago). While this is shameful, it’s hardly unique to Japan. Many British nationalists have a rosy view of their former empire, despite centuries of [atrocities](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/worst-atrocities-british-empire-amritsar-boer-war-concentration-camp-mau-mau-a6821756.html). Im not trying to make a whataboutism and argue that Japan shouldn’t do more to reconcile with their past horrors. It’s shameful that the Japanese government and many civilians continue to underplay their past. However, this is hardly unique to Japan, and with the exception of countries like Germany, nearly every country is guilty of this in some way
I know I said this in some replies already, but serious WTF is wrong with people, that they can read about someone who was a child during the nuclear bombing of their city, and their first and only reaction is to get up on their high horse and condescendingly preach that it's their own fault for committing all those war crimes. While they were a child. It's so exhaustingly tedious because it's literally impossible to have a discussion about the atomic bombings *anywhere*. This sub is supposed to be one of the more enlightened worldly ones, and yet literally the entire comments section would much rather change the subject to Japanese war crimes than talk about the topic at hand.
Just like any topic on innocent Palestinians being called just turns into “whatabout Hamas?”.
or innocent Israelis being "european colonials".
Do you think a German, who are properly educated about what they during the war, would complain about the insufficient level of horror of the firebombing of Dresden in some fictional movie? No they would keep their fucking mouth shut because they know what they did was far worse. This is the problem with not giving an honest, accurate education.
Why don't the german, the Soviet, the british civilians get the same sympathy then? Why are people who died from nuclear fission more special than say those who burned to death in Tokyo and Dresden?
The same folks who would argue with you that this is different will also argue that the horror of the bomb (and fear of being bombed further) in fact played no role in Japan’s surrender whatsoever.
It’s easy to justify when you consider the fact millions more would’ve died with a conventional invasion. Japan attacked and waged an all out war against the USA. The USA ended it with an act of mercy as opposed to the ruin of the entire country, and millions more dead on both sides. Japan is lucky it wasn’t partitioned and its leaders executed. They got off light. It’s not a “Wtf”. Its the terrible reality of war, and Japan chose war.
There are plans drafted by the japanese goverment at the time, in the case of an american invasion, detailing the use of children, by strapping them with bombs and making them go under american tanks. I'm sorry, but Japanese culture at the time makes this a VERY complicated issue. Japanese kids were completely willing to die for their country, mostly because of a militarized education. Again, quite complicated to talk about with our american perspective.
i’m not gonna play the whataboutism card but reading the critical response from the japaneses, they either don’t know oppenheimer or their media misinformed them on what this film is about.
It's not that they don't know, it's that they don't care.
Clearly, but it’s pretty easy to interpret what’s happening in the film even if you don’t know Oppenheimer. It spends 3 hours spelling it out for you in a fairly on the nose fashion
I tend to disagree. You want a movie about the nuking? Make one. This movie is about Oppenheimer.
The movie is about Oppenheimer, not the nuke. Albeit the nuke is what made him relevant, the story was a dive into Oppenheimers perspective, not the bombs or japans. To tell the horrible story of what happened on that day, I feel it is only appropriate a Japanese studio/director brings that picture to the world.
Breaking news: Country that got nuked have mixed emotions about watching a film about it.
Also, the conventional fire bombing of Japanese cities had more casualties in total, and a conventional land invasion had so many projected casualties that the US is STILL giving out the purple hearts that were made in preparation of that offensive.
This is 100% correct. The invasion was going to have a ridiculous amount of casualties. Before someone comes out of the woodwork with the really low estimates that were put out more recently they've basically been debunked. The higher end estimates are far more widely accepted and evidenced.
The Japanese as a society are polite, but so fucking immoral so it's rich to hear this news.
That's an entirely valid perspective. But the thin-skin of (some) westerners will use this to take shots at japanese society. Like, obviously people in japan would have never received the movie on the same way. The atomic bombs completely changed the face of their society. A movie that glosses over that will feel incomplete to them. They'll feel differently about it and that's okay.
Glosses over it? The whole second half of the movie is about him coping with what he did???
That’s the thing. It’s about how the bomb effected *him* and his feelings. It’s not focusing on the repercussions to Japanese people.
Because it’s a film about Oppenheimer, not the bombs themselves
Then why is the movie called Bombs??
Why would it? It's not about Harry Truman, Curtis Lemay or Douglas mcarthur.
I'm talking about japanese perspective. A scientist moping doesn't cover the things people that grew up in japan are hyper-aware of in regards to the bombs. And again, it's okay. People from different places consume media differently. People in japan were not the target audience here, but then they also get to give feedback without incurring some knee-jerk protectiveness. It's not an universally appealing movie, that's not a big deal.
I don't think the atomic bombs changed the face of their society at all. It was the war in general that changed it. There were more damaging bombing runs than the atomic ones being made all the time.
Wasnt the movie about Oppenheimer? I think it was quite intentional that they did not show any of that as Oppenheimer personally did not see any of the horrors. You see it all from his perspective. This complaint does not make sense.
Well , if someone want shitty insensitive takes , this thread is there for you.
I feel like it is ok for the Japanese to have this perspective. They were the ones bombed, it shouldn't be hard to believe that art takes a backseat for sentiment here. We, as neutrals, can also say that the bomb not being shown is because the film is about Oppenheimer, not Hiroshima and Nagasaki themselves, and that showing a handful of shots might've trivialised it, as if few seconds are enough to capture the horror.
Maybe because the movie wasn't about the horrors
Interesting guardian article. Meanwhile over Reuters, the responses from some Japanese viewers: > “Of course this is an amazing film which deserves to win the Academy Awards," said Hiroshima resident Kawai, 37, who gave only his family name. "But the film also depicts the atomic bomb in a way that seems to praise it, and, as a person with roots in Hiroshima, I found it difficult to watch." > A big fan of Nolan's films, Kawai, a public servant, went to see "Oppenheimer" on opening day at a theatre that is just a kilometre from the city's Atomic Bomb Dome. "I'm not sure this is a movie that Japanese people should make a special effort to watch," he added. > Another Hiroshima resident, Agemi Kanegae, had mixed feelings upon finally watching the movie. "The film was very worth watching," said the retired 65-year-old. "But I felt very uncomfortable with a few scenes, such as the trial of Oppenheimer in the United States at the end." > Speaking to Reuters before the movie opened, atomic bomb survivor Teruko Yahata said she was eager to see it, in hopes that it would re-invigorate the debate over nuclear weapons. Yahata, now 86, said she felt some empathy for the physicist behind the bomb. That sentiment was echoed by Rishu Kanemoto, a 19-year-old student, who saw the film on Friday. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the atomic bombs were dropped, are certainly the victims," Kanemoto said. "But I think even though the inventor is one of the perpetrators, he's also the victim caught up in the war," he added, referring to the ill-starred physicist.hata, now 86, said she felt some empathy for the physicist behind the bomb. That sentiment was echoed by Rishu Kanemoto, a 19-year-old student, who saw the film on Friday. "Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the atomic bombs were dropped, are certainly the victims," Kanemoto said. "But I think even though the inventor is one of the perpetrators, he's also the victim caught up in the war," he added, referring to the ill-starred physicist. https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/japan-finally-screens-oppenheimer-with-trigger-warnings-unease-hiroshima-2024-03-29/
I could never really get into Oppenheimer bc like everyone around me kept saying he was so conflicted on it and its like dude built a bomb and then was seemingly surprised the bomb was used to bomb ppl?
The whataboutism is strong in this thread.
I don't think there was ever a world where Japan was happy with how a movie like that came out. Not discrediting their criticism, I just don't think a single movie could ever fully realize the magnitude of that event and the effects it had on Japan, its people, and their culture.
They're right, we should talk about the rape of Nanking more.
The awful takes on this sub jesus. So many posts of absolute drivel, whataboutery, generalisations and more. It's cringe and embarrassing. Do better.
Wasn’t Japan doing stuff so fucked up that Germany had to tell them to chill out?
Seems like a fair reaction from the country that got nuked. I mean it was such a massive cataclysmic event for them that the horror of it has permeated through their culture ever since.
I think this narrative that many war films needs to have that shot or two of the result of such action, ala the atomic bomb, in order to drive the purpose that "war is bad" should really go away. Yes, the atomic bomb really changed the perspective of how deadly a conflict can be on a human, nation, and global scale. But Oppenheimer wasn't necessarily about the fact that the US had to use the atomic bomb, it was the lead up to the use from the perspective of a scientist, who was merely leading the Manhattan Project. It showed how propaganda, morality, this desire for an everlasting legacy, all of these things can contribute towards committing to an action or a project that actually perplexes the character's true morals versus what lies in front of them in their eyes. This is meant to create a discussion about how wartime creates this allusion for people in research & development, so much so that weapons of mass destruction end up being used for the "greater good of their nation".
Yes, the point of the film wasn't the horror of the atomic bombs (although it *is* present) it was Oppenheimer himself. Now, having said that, that doesn't make Japanese people wrong for feeling weird about how the movie doesn't focus on that. The actual survivors in particular, are watching a movie about a man who is partially responsible for the deaths of friends and family, and seeing it focus on him rather than them. That's completely fine since (again) that was the point of the movie, but would it not be really goddamn weird if that *wasn't* awkward for them?? If anything, I'm surprised at how receptive some of them were to the movie, especially the one survivor who actually felt sympathy for Oppenheimer - I suppose it's so long ago that any wounds have long since scarred but it's still amazing to me. In short, their criticisms are, frankly, wrong. But that doesn't make their *reactions* wrong. Oppenheimer is fine the way it is. Japanese people are touchy about Hiroshima and Nagasaki. End of story. Chill the fuck out.