Reprinted with permission from Greg Mitchell’s newsletter Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.
Despite its global popularity last summer and early fall, including in China and other Asian markets, it was no shock to find that a wide release in Japan was kept on hold. Might have happened anyway, but this was guaranteed after Japanese protested some of the early “Barbenheimer” promotion there, which I wrote about here. Sample of an offending poster:
Some Japanese Twitter users responded with photos of the 1945 bombing victims.
Yesterday we finally got word of a release in Japan, with no fixed date but likely in spring, for Oscar season, which even there gets wide attention. The distributor has the rather too on-the-nose name, Bitters End.
In a statement carried in Japanese media, the firm said it had taken the decision after lengthy discussions that took into account the backlash it had sparked in Japan after it went on international release at the same time as the comedy movie Barbie in July. “The film’s subject matter is of great importance and holds special meaning for Japanese people, so we decided to release it in Japan after various discussions and considerations,” Bitters End said.
And there was this in the Los Angeles Times:
Jeffrey J. Hall, who researches pop culture in Japan, said the news of the film’s release was warmly received, becoming the country’s No. 1 trending topic on X, formerly Twitter, after it was announced.
“There was definitely a sense of exclusion among Japanese cinephiles,” Hall, a special lecturer at Kanda University of International Studies outside Tokyo, said in an email. “Even if the subject matter of the film might be a bit uncomfortable for Japanese viewers, the fact that it was created by a world-famous director will be reason enough for many viewers to give it a chance.”
“I don’t think there will be a repeat of the Barbenheimer controversy,” Hall said, “provided that Japanese distributors approach the subject matter in a tasteful manner.”
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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including “Hiroshima in America,” and the recent award-winning The Beginning or the End: How Hollywood – and America – Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, and has directed three documentary films since 2021, including two for PBS (plus award-winning “Atomic Cover-up”). He has written widely about the atomic bomb and atomic bombings, and their aftermath, for over forty years. He writes often at Oppenheimer: From Hiroshima to Hollywood.
To me, the whole deal about the movie is to show the world we developed the d*mn thing and then used it, like rubbing it into the face of the world, particularly Japan. Even Eisenhower said we should not have dropped “that awful thing” on Japan.
Japan should have refused to allow the movie to be released there. They should have made an alternative movie showing how much the Japanese suffered from the war and atomic bombs and how much Japanese American Families suffered in the concentration camps.
I don’t know that showing this film in Japan is the real controversy of the film. It’s the casting choice. My grandmother told me that
CleopatraRobert Oppenheimer was black.