From Hiroshima to Tokaimura (1945-1957): a Cultural History of the Genesis of Japanese Civilian Nuclear Project Through the Newspapers Asahi Shinbun and Yomiuri Shinbun

In addition to questions that are inherent to the safety of nuclear installations, the accident at Fukushima Dai'ichi Nuclear Power Plant of March 2011 raised what can be considered a paradox: Japan has embarked on a nuclear adventure even though it has been the victim of a nuclear bomb itself and while it regularly faces natural catastrophes. Furthermore, the Fukushima catastrophe has encouraged some reflection on the Japanese media, with special focus on the role these have played in the promotion of nuclear energy and in its acceptance by the Japanese public after the Second World War. This study, which belongs to the field of cultural history, aims at understanding through the prism of the media image, in what way Japan has accomplished a transition between Hiroshima (1945) and Tokaimura (1957); in other words between military nuclear power and civilian nuclear energy, while attaching special importance to how the debate about these two aspects of the nuclear reality has been articulated in the Japanese press. To do this, we analyse the manner in which the big national newspapers: the Asahi Shinbun and Yomiuri Shinbun, dealt with atomic energy during the establishment of the Japanese civilian nuclear project (1945-1957), a pivotal period which started with the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and closed with the start-up of the first Japanese experimental nuclear reactor in Tokaimura. By means of a plan that is structured chronologically around four periods we will try to provide answers to the following question: how was civilian nuclear energy represented in the Japanese national press at the time of its introduction in the archipelago? In the first period (1945-1949), we observe how nuclear energy was represented during the first years following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at a time that any discussion about atomic bombings was censured by the Allied Forces and that civilian nuclear energy was still in its infancy. In the second period (1949-1952), we analyse how the base of the representations of that energy evolves while the threat of nuclear war surfaces and while the first successes of the production of nuclear energy draw the attention of the Japanese press. Our third period (1953-1955) focuses on three media events which influenced the debate around nuclear energy: the American speech Atoms for Peace; the incident of the tuna fishing boat Daigo Fukuryu Maru and the arrival of the American industrialist John Jay Hopkins at the invitation of Shoriki Matstutaro, the head of the daily newspaper Yomiuri Shinbun. Finally, in our last period (1955-1957) we analyse first of all the manner in which the Yomiuri Shinbun covered the great exhibition on 'the pacific uses of nuclear energy' which it had itself co-organized with the United States Information Agency after the Daigo Fukuryu Maru incident, in order to improve the image of the latter. Then, we examine the political debates at the time that Japan began to institutionalize its nuclear civilian project. Lastly we end this part discussing an event that should symbolize the successful conclusion of the Japanese nuclear project: the start-up of the first experimental nuclear reactor in Japan in the village of Tokaimura. (author)