Fascination and criticism – mixed reaction to the film Oppenheimer in Japan

THE film Oppenheimer has finally premiered in Japan where the American scientist’s nuclear weapons obliterated two cities 79 years ago.

Japanese filmgoers’ reactions were mixed and highly emotional.

Toshiyuki Mimaki, who survived the bombing of Hiroshima when he was three, said he has been fascinated by the story of J Robert Oppenheimer, often called “the father of the atomic bomb”.

“What were the Japanese thinking, carrying out the attack on Pearl Harbour, starting a war they could never hope to win,” he told The Associated Press.

He is now chairperson of a group of bomb victims called the Japan Confederation of A and H-Bomb Sufferers Organisation and he saw Oppenheimer at a preview event. “During the whole movie, I was waiting and waiting for the Hiroshima bombing scene to come on, but it never did,” Mr Mimaki said.

Oppenheimer does not directly depict what happened on the ground when the bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, turning some 100,000 people instantly into ashes, and killing thousands more in the days that followed, mostly civilians. The film instead focuses on Oppenheimer as a person and his internal conflicts.

The film’s release in Japan, more than eight months after it opened in the US, had been watched with trepidation because of the sensitivity of the subject matter.

Former Hiroshima Mayor Takashi Hiraoka, who spoke at a preview event for the film in the south-western city, was more critical of what was omitted.

“From Hiroshima’s standpoint, the horror of nuclear weapons was not sufficiently depicted,” he was quoted as saying by Japanese media.

“The film was made in a way to validate the conclusion that the atomic bomb was used to save the lives of Americans.”