Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 No Nukes before Fukushima : Postwar Atomic Cinema and the History of the “Safety Myth”
- 2 Straddling 3/11: The Political Power of Ashes to Honey
- 3 Resistance against the Nuclear Village
- 4 The Power of Interviews
- 5 Learning about Fukushima from the Margins
- 6 The Power of Art in the Post-3/11 World
- Appendix: Interview from “Film Workshop with Director Hamaguchi Ryusuke”
- Bibliography
- Index
3 - Resistance against the Nuclear Village
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 February 2024
- Frontmatter
- Table of Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- 1 No Nukes before Fukushima : Postwar Atomic Cinema and the History of the “Safety Myth”
- 2 Straddling 3/11: The Political Power of Ashes to Honey
- 3 Resistance against the Nuclear Village
- 4 The Power of Interviews
- 5 Learning about Fukushima from the Margins
- 6 The Power of Art in the Post-3/11 World
- Appendix: Interview from “Film Workshop with Director Hamaguchi Ryusuke”
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Abstract: This chapter focuses on Kawai Hiroyuki, a career lawyer turned filmmaker. Although Kawai is an “amateur,” he chose cinema as the medium to convey his strong message to people outside the courtroom. I analyze the nuclear trilogy Kawai produced in succession after the 2011 quake: Nuclear Japan: Has Nuclear Power Brought Us Happiness? (2014); Nuclear Japan: The Nightmare Continues (2015); and Renewable Japan: The Search for a New Energy Paradigm (2017), also referring to his two short YouTube videos released in 2019. What is Kawai attempting to communicate to audiences? We can say: truth and justice. Kawai took on the role of director to disseminate “accurate” information that neither the government nor Tokyo Electric Power Company dares to tell.
Keywords: the nuclear village; cinema and law; intelligibility; the history of documentary; telementary
Kawai Hiroyuki, a lawyer/filmmaker, is “an amateur” when it comes to filmmaking; nonetheless, he has something he wants to convey. Why, then, did he choose film as his medium? Kawai responds as follows:
People do not read books anymore. So, when I thought about what would allow me to make an appeal to the largest audience possible, I could think of nothing else than film. Mass media such as television do not lend an ear to what I have to say in the first place.
To understand his “appeal” to a fuller extent, I was convinced that I had to scrutinize his documentary films.
In this chapter, I will shed light upon two films from the anti-nuclear trilogy that Kawai directed after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster. The first film, and the first in Kawai’s trilogy, is Nuclear Japan: Has Nuclear Power Brought Us Happiness? (2014, hereinafter referred to as Nuclear Japan). The second film is the final installment in the trilogy: Renewable Japan: The Search for a New Energy Paradigm (2017, hereinafter referred to as Renewable Japan). In addition, I will examine two short films that Kawai released on YouTube in 2019: The Criminal Trial of TEPCO: Undeniable Evidence and Nuclear Accident (hereinafter referred to as The Criminal Trial of TEPCO) and The Criminal Trial of TEPCO: The Unfair Ruling (hereinafter referred to as The Unfair Ruling).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Japanese Filmmakers in the Wake of FukushimaPerspectives on Nuclear Disasters, pp. 83 - 116Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2023