PDF of article by Shun’ya Yoshimi (University of Tokyo, Japan) Translated by Shi-Lin Loh Abstract: In postwar Japan, nuclear energy was transformed from fear into an object of hope, and received as a symbol of dreams and peace. Nuclear power in Fukushima goes back to 1960, the year of the massive protests against the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty. In that same year, Fukushima Prefecture announced its intention to solicit nuclear facilities. Most nuclear power stations constructed in Japan commenced operation in the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, by the mid1990s the four initial reactors of 1971 had burgeoned to fifty-four, making Japan the country with the third highest number of nuclear reactors in the world. In the context of the public’s everyday life and sense of society, how was this spectacle of a bright future desired and accepted? Taking as its subject postwar Japan’s embrace of nuclear energy, this work will investigate the transition from the ‘Nuclear-Powered Sunshine’ of the Cold War period to the ‘Radioactive Rain’ of the post Cold War period.
http://157.138.8.12/jspui/bitstream/11707/5223/1/2.%20Yoshimi.pdf
PDF of article by Shun’ya Yoshimi (University of Tokyo, Japan) Translated by Shi-Lin Loh Abstract: In postwar Japan, nuclear energy was transformed from fear into an object of hope, and received as a symbol of dreams and peace. Nuclear power in Fukushima goes back to 1960, the year of the massive protests against the US-Japan Mutual Security Treaty. In that same year, Fukushima Prefecture announced its intention to solicit nuclear facilities. Most nuclear power stations constructed in Japan commenced operation in the 1960s and 1970s. As a result, by the mid1990s the four initial reactors of 1971 had burgeoned to fifty-four, making Japan the country with the third highest number of nuclear reactors in the world. In the context of the public’s everyday life and sense of society, how was this spectacle of a bright future desired and accepted? Taking as its subject postwar Japan’s embrace of nuclear energy, this work will investigate the transition from the ‘Nuclear-Powered Sunshine’ of the Cold War period to the ‘Radioactive Rain’ of the post Cold War period.