FILM: Explaining the Nuclear Accident to Kids – Nuclear Reactor Boy’s Upset Stomach (2011)

Hachiya, Kazuhiko. 2011.  Unchi, Onara de Tatoeru Genpatsu Kaisetsu: Onaka ga Itakunatta Genpatsu-kun. うんち・おならで例える原発解説〜おなかがいたくなった原発くん [Explaining the Nuclear Accident with Farts and Poop - Nuclear Reactor Boy’s Upset Stomach]. YouTube video, 4:34 min, posted by GenkiRadio, Mar 16, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sakN2hSVxA&

This short animation by the media artist Kazuhiko Hachiya has made the rounds since the early days of the nuclear crisis at the Fukushima No.1 nuclear power station. On March 15, four days after the tsunami crippled the Fukushima plant and brought the nuclear fuel in the reactors 1 through 4 to the brink of a meltdown, Hachiya posted a series of tweets that explained what is going on inside the power station through bathroom humor. We can assume that children are the target audience of the resulting video, a thoughtful feat of science, technology, medical, and disaster communication for kids. Hachiya presents the catastrophe using the iconography of Japanese ‘cute,’ or ‘kawaii,’ in which the highly dangerous Fukushima No.1 plant becomes Nuclear Reactor Boy, a little guy with merely an “upset stomach.” The workers at the facility risking their lives while desperately trying to avoid further damage of the nuclear fuel rods are depicted as doctors working “around the clock to make sure Nuclear Reactor Boy doesn’t poop.” The possibility of the reactor container explosion is likened to “poop,” and the radioactive emissions are likened to passed gas that a “Sniffer man” judges the “stinkiness,” or safety, of. This well intended animation avoids the fear-mongering that characterized the foreign press during the first two weeks after the earthquake. It also cautiously hints at the complicity of a general public that has in the past consumed energy without reflecting upon the severe problems and dangers resulting from nuclear power generation until the crisis. On this token, to some, the animation may evoke images of earlier promotional videos for children during the 1990s, in which the nuclear energy industry convinced people of the safety of this kind of energy. – Christian Dimmer

FILM: Cold War Scenarios For Introducing Nuclear Energy To Japan (1995)

NHK. 1995. Genpatsu Dōnyū Shinario ～ Reisenka no Tainichi Genshiryoku Senryaku 原発導入シナリオ ～冷戦下の対日原子力戦略 [Cold War Scenarios for Introducing Nuclear Energy to Japan]. YouTube video, 45 min, posted by “naga2218,” Mar 27, 2011, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnPdkg-lZE8

This NHK documentary tries to shed light on how Japan, the only nation in the world that experienced a nuclear attack, came to readily embrace a plan to generate energy using nuclear power during peacetime. As seen in earlier posts on this site, a strong anti-nuclear sentiment prevailed in the early post-war years, which peaked in 1954 after the crew of the fishing trawler Lucky Dragon No.5 was exposed to the nuclear fallout of American hydrogen bomb tests at Bikini Atoll. The film describes a process in which the president of the Yomiuri newspaper company, Matsutarō Shōriki, and the United States Information Service collaborated during the 1950s in order to overturn public anti-nuclear sentiment and to introduce the peaceful use of nuclear energy. The producers of the film seem to suggest that the introduction of plans for nuclear power generation to Japan was part of a Cold War strategy of the United States; critically underplayed are domestic political debates and foreign policy. –Akiko Ishii & Christian Dimmer

Please contact Akiko Ishii (akiko47 [at] gmail.com) to work on a collaboration to make English subtitles for this film for educational purposes.

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