[Reading Response: William M. Tsutsui]
Before reading this, I regarded Japanese apocalyptic movie as merely gimmicky, “pathetic claptrap”. Yet now I am mesmerized by the myriad interpretations. Perhaps, for the past seventy years, that mushroom cloud has touched every Japanese’ hearts in unique and contradictory ways. Japan was traumatized by two nuclear annihilations. Why, as suggested in the reading, Japanese at times felt nostalgic to the wartime devastation? “Once the new city is built, it will lose the strange vigor of the wasteland. The loss of a city creates a void. A void in which people move with a strange animation.” To some, apocalyptic