VOX POPULI: Japan is sending terribly mixed messages about nuclear weapons
Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a daily column that runs on Page 1 of The Asahi Shimbun.
November 30, 2023 at 13:22 JST
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A rescue worker provides food to a young girl injured in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The photo was taken by Hajime Miyatake, an Asahi Shimbun photographer, on Aug. 10, 1945. (Asahi Shimbun file photo)



During the post-World War II occupation of Japan, the General Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (GHQ) kept a sharp eye on Japanese media reports and publications concerning the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings.

Back then, a tanka poem by Satoshi Sasaki went to the effect: “In the burnt-out ruins, the bones of victims of the atomic bomb are said to glow phosphorescent.”

The GHQ deemed even this piece to be a threat to public security and in violation of the Press Code for Japan, according to Kiyoko Horiba, the author of “Genbaku: Hyogen to Kenetsu” (literally, “Atomic bombs: Expression and censorship”).

The Asahi Shimbun, too, was subjected to censorship. Under orders from the GHQ, the company incinerated its atomic bomb-related film.

However, there was one photojournalist who defied his superiors.

Hajime Miyatake, who was 31 at the end of the war, took his film negatives to his small rowhouse digs in Osaka’s Tennoji district and hid them under the floor.

Thanks to his insubordination, 119 of his photographs, taken in Hiroshima in the immediate aftermath of the nuclear attack, have survived to this day.

They include a young girl whose face is wrapped in a bandage, a charred streetcar and silhouettes of people against a scene of nuclear devastation.

“These images have been burnt into my eyegrounds forever,” Miyatake later noted.

His works are among the 1,534 photographs and videos of Hiroshima that were nominated on Nov. 28 for inclusion in UNESCO’s Memory of the World register.

They tell a history that must not be forgotten. The nuclear disaster must never be repeated. I would like to believe that the Japanese government has acknowledged the importance of these visual records for posterity.

Sadly, however, I cannot really believe what I have just written.

The Japanese government is not participating even as an observer in the second meeting of states parties to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that is under way in New York.

Hiroshima Governor Hidehiko Yuzaki who took the stage was asked by the representative of Equatorial Guinea, “Why does Japan call for the elimination of nuclear weapons and yet support the nuclear deterrence policy?”

The Asahi Shimbun’s “Asahi Kadan” poetry section once ran this piece by Osamu Sugaya: “Hiroshima and Nagasaki are in a country that does not sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons.”

The world is not blind, nor are its citizens.

--The Asahi Shimbun, Nov. 30

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Vox Populi, Vox Dei is a popular daily column that takes up a wide range of topics, including culture, arts and social trends and developments. Written by veteran Asahi Shimbun writers, the column provides useful perspectives on and insights into contemporary Japan and its culture.

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