Hiroshima (1953)

 Hideo Sekigawa's "Hiroshima"

The cinema that emerged out of Japan in its post-war era is perhaps some of the most influential, creative, and substantial pieces of work put to screen. Filmmakers like Akira Kurosawa, Yasujiro Ozu, and Kenji Mizoguchi all were able to reach a global market with their output. The Japanese cinema coming out of this period always seemed to thematically center around a fractured society of people, and for good reason. It's one thing to abstractly understand the reason for this creative output of work centering on broken people in a broken community. It's another entirely to actually bare witness to the sources of that pain and suffering. With Hideo Sekigawa's 1953 film "Hiroshima," it becomes easy to understand. 

There had already been a film that touched upon the fallout from the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 1952's "Children of Hiroshima." However, the Japanese Teachers Union (JTU), who commissioned the film, were unhappy with the results. They felt that the final product had strayed too far away from the adapted source material, Arata Osada's 1951 best-selling book "Children of the Bomb: Testament of the Boys and Girls of Hiroshima." "Children of Hiroshima," although gaining international recognition at the 1953 Cannes Film Festival, had turned the original novel "into a tear-jerker and destroyed its political orientation," according to the JTU. 

To remedy the lack of political orientation and to more accurately demonstrate the true devastation of the bomb, JTU commissioned Hideo Sekigawa to direct another adaption of the novel. The result was a 1953's "Hiroshima," which fully displayed the immediate chaos and aftermath. On top of this, it was heavily critical of the Americans and their savagery in destroying an entire city of civilians. 

To know intellectually what this chaos would have looked like is one thing. It is completely another to see, albeit in a fictional rendering, what it would look like. Also, there were many aspects of societal panic that I failed to even consider. Having to burn the bodies of the dead out of fear they may be toxic with radiation, the cramped hospitals with people unable to even move, and having to stay indoor for fear the ground may have radiation are just some examples of things I never considered about the fallout from this horror. What was even more insulting were Japanese children having to beg for money or food from the American occupying soldiers and even selling these soldiers the skulls of those who were caught in the blast. 

All the horrors captured in the film really stun you as a viewer. Having to witness the collective devastation of an entire people, watching as families fracture and people's lives change overnight makes one understand why Japan had the sentiments it did in the post-war era. It gives credence to the creative output. Seeing the apocalyptic horrors that were witnessed and the hellish nightmare that ensued provides a contextual foundation for the Japanese cinema of the late 1940s throughout the 1950s that cinephiles love so much. These films are made by people in pain, by a society fractured, and by a nation gripping with the terror of the unthinkable happening once again.