午夜剧场

There are various facilities across Japan themed around nuclear power, including nuclear power PR facilities built in various regions, memorials in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that convey the disaster of the atomic bombings to the present day, the Daigo Fukuryu Maru Exhibition Hall which preserves the hull of the irradiated ship as it was, and the Maruki Gallery for the Hiroshima Panels. This book was written to introduce the exhibits of such facilities and to examine the postwar social history of nuclear power.

My specialty is art and design, and I am not in a position to be actively involved in nuclear power. The reason someone like me wrote this book is that I encountered the theme of nuclear power in the course of my research on World Expos and museums, which I have been working on for the past decade. While recent World Expos, which emphasize problem-solving, often highlight SDGs and renewable energy, exhibits themed around nuclear power were once frequently attempted. Taro Okamoto's "Tower of the Sun," the symbol of the 1970 Osaka Expo, actually has a deep connection to nuclear power. Meanwhile, museums—facilities for collecting and exhibiting materials and works—are increasingly expected to contribute to society. ICOM (International Council of Museums), the international governing body, adopted a new definition at its 2022 Prague General Assembly. That definition, which set forth diversity and sustainability as new missions, prompted a reconsideration of nuclear power exhibition facilities.

Many books have been published regarding nuclear power, but I cannot write the kind of book a scientist or a civic activist would write, and in the first place, I have no reason to. However, I thought that discussing nuclear power from the perspective of exhibitions might raise new issues. What drove me to write this book may have been the ambition to write a book for which few similar works exist—a book that no one has ever written before.

The film "Oppenheimer" is a masterpiece depicting the footsteps and anguish of the genius scientist who succeeded in developing the world's first atomic bomb through the Manhattan Project. In this book, I detail the circumstances under which atomic bomb development was planned in Japan at almost the same time but was not realized, and I also present a fictional exhibition concept that turns that process into an exhibition. It is a sensitive issue, but I believe there should be opportunities to develop such thought experiments, provided that minimum consideration is given to avoid making readers uncomfortable.

Takemi Kuresawa

Heibonsha

368 pages, 3,740 yen (tax included)

*Affiliations and titles are those at the time of publication.