Oscar-winning film ‘Oppenheimer’ finally premiered in Japan on Friday, over eight months after it opened in the US. This year at the Oscars, the film won the Best Picture award and Cillian Murphy won the Oscar for ‘Best Actor’. The film was celebrated worldwide for its sheer brilliance.
Oppenheimer screening in Japan
While the world cheered for the movie, Japan had been left out of the global screening until now. This is rooted in the fact that two cities in Japan, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, saw nuclear blasts in the past which left them devastated, killing more than 200,000.
Images circulating on social media showed Tokyo theatres featuring a warning which said the movie carried images of nuclear tests that could evoke the damage caused by the bombs.
The movie was met with mixed reactions in Japan.
A 37-year-old Hiroshima resident, Kawai, told Reuters that the film is amazing and deserved to win at the Oscars. “But the film also depicts the atomic bomb in a way that seems to praise it, and, as a person with roots in Hiroshima, I found it difficult to watch,” he further said.
Agemi Kanegae, another Hiroshima resident, said they had mixed feelings after watching Oppenheimer.
“The film was very worth watching…But I felt very uncomfortable with a few scenes, such as the trial of Oppenheimer in the United States at the end,” the 65-year-old said.
Speaking with Reuters prior to the film’s release, Teruko Yahata, a survivor of the atomic bomb, expressed her anticipation to watch it, hoping that it would reignite discussions about nuclear weapons. Now 86 years old, Yahata mentioned feeling a degree of understanding towards the physicist responsible for the bomb. This sentiment was mirrored by Rishu Kanemoto, a 19-year-old student who watched the film on Friday.
“Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the atomic bombs were dropped, are certainly the victims,” Kanemoto said.
“But I think even though the inventor is one of the perpetrators, he’s also the victim caught up in the war,” he added, referring to the ill-starred physicist.