Japan is a nation that has fascinated many outside of its borders. In this video, I explore how the nation came to be through its tragic history of World War 2 and investigate the national sentiment by discussing the films which relate to this experience.

Noteworthy Films:
Barefoot Gen. Directed by Mori Masaki. Japan: Madhouse, 1983.
Godzilla. Directed by Ishiro Honda. Tokyo: Toho, 1954.
Grave of the Fireflies. Directed by. Japan: Ghibli, 1988.
Stray Dog. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Japan: Toho, 1949.
Hiroshima Mon Amour. Directed by Alain Resnais. France: Pathe Films, 1959.
I Live in Fear. Directed by Akira Kurosawa. Japan: Toho, 1955.
Kuroi Ame. Directed by Shohei Imamura. Japan: Hayashibara Group. 1989.
Shin Godzilla. Directed by Hideaki Anno. Tokyo: Toho, 2016.

Reading Material
Allison, Anne. Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Porter, Edgar A., Ran Ying Porter and Edgar A. Porter. 2017. Japanese Reflections on World War II and the American Occupation. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Ryfle, Steve. "Godzilla's Footprint." The Virginia Quarterly Review 81, no. 1 (2005): 44-63.
Szczepanska, Kamila. 2017. Towards a ‘common’ view of difficult past? The representation of atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in trilateral teaching materials, Journal of Peace Education, 14:1, 114-129.
Shibata, Yuko. 2018. Producing Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Literature, Film, and Transnational Politics. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press.
Thomas Schnellbächer. "Has the Empire Sunk Yet? The Pacific in Japanese Science Fiction." Science Fiction Studies 29, no. 3 (2002): 382-96.