Japan needs no lessons on what happens when nuclear weapons are used. But the reality of what happens when a nuclear power plant melts down is something that is too close for comfort these days.
Japan needs no lessons on what happens when nuclear weapons are used. But the reality of what happens when a nuclear power plant melts down is something that is too close for comfort these days.
To examine the nuclear issue from various angles, a small theater in Tokyo's Nakano Ward, Pole Pole (pronounced polay polay) Higashi Nakano brings together 17 films by Japanese and foreign filmmakers, ranging from documentaries to dramas.
The event was originally intended to mark the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster on April 26, 1986.
However, after the March 11 Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent explosions at the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant, the organizers stopped to reconsider.
As fears spread of radioactive fallout from the damaged plant, making the horrors portrayed on film a reality, the organizers wondered if it was appropriate to screen them. Wouldn't that "further fan the public's fears"? some asked.
At least one other nuclear-themed exhibition in Tokyo was canceled out of similar concerns.
However, in the end, the Pole Pole staff decided the accident provided a backdrop that would "allow viewers to watch the films with a stronger sense of reality," they said.
Among the films to be shown is the 1997 film Nadezda no Mura (Nadya's Village), directed by Seiichi Motohashi.
The film follows the lives of six families from a remote village in Belarus that never benefited from the electricity produced by Chernobyl's reactors, but became contaminated after the accident. It is now off-limits to human habitation and has been wiped from the map. But these families refused to leave.
Instead of focusing on the tragedy and the villagers' destitution, the movie portrays the peaceful beauty of this rural setting, seen through the eyes a girl called Nadezda. Motohashi and his crew made numerous trips to the affected areas to film.
"Because it is so beautiful, it is tragic," Motohashi said on April 26 at an event to commemorate the Chernobyl disaster.
The event runs through May 6. Pole Pole is located near JR Higashi-Nakano Station. For more information, see (http://www.mmjp.or.jp/pole2).