Indoctrination By Films

Since the advent of World War II, Japan appears to be one of the least violent nations. It averages much less than one murder per 100,000 people, per annum, with other violent crimes barely registering. American average 5-6 murders per 100,000 people, every year.

Japanese people have been trained, however, by the movie industry, with the ultimate apocalyptic event, since the mid 1950's. If any nation has received an extended course in post-traumatic psychology and disaster preparedness, it is Japan.

One researcher claims that once you start searching for disaster-trauma in Japanese films, it is discovered everywhere, disclosing what is thought to be a widespread obsession with national disasters.

This is considered to reveal a nation of stoical people who are not afraid to face the reality of death and destruction, starting with the results of two A-bombs being dropped on their country, in World War II.

The third world's largest economy is well equipped for a huge earthquake. The current triple disaster however, of the world's biggest earthquake, followed by a massive tsunami, including the threat of a nuclear disaster with the resulting nuclear fallout, is more than any country can be expected to cope with.

In the films the hero always gains the victory in the end, as is seen in:

Astro Boy, the plucky little robot warrior; Godzilla, Gamera, Mothra and their friends.

The original film was created from a real-life incident of the poisoning of a Japanese trawler crew via an American thermonuclear device tested near Bikini Atoll.

The horrors of August 1945 was relived by Grave of the Fireflies and Barefoot Gen to a new generation, lest they forget.

Akira, portrayed nightmarish chaos in a dystopian city of the future, controlled by secret government projects, vain and corrupt scientists and underground bikey gangs.

Tetsuo the Iron Man who changes into a machine, with formal disorientation and technological-psychological terror, created a series of techno-Kafka nightmarish pop culture following.

Princess Mononoke blends Japanese fairy-tale and myth, highlighting the arrogance and stupidity of man's behavior and creates the sense that the precarious balance of everyday life is always balanced on the edge of destruction.

Eureka shows a nation haunted by its traumatic past and paralyzed by fear of the future.

While weaving in a soul-sucking website that makes people disappear, Pulse relives the nuclear disaster.

Fish Story displays a mid-70's punk that rescues the planet from destruction and depicts a Japanese culture that will survive any destructive force.

As the Japanese sat in their theatres for the past forty years, viewing apocalypse after apocalypse on the movie screen, they always had a hero who came to the rescue.

There is no hero to the rescue in the real-life scenario currently being played out, except for the sheer stoicism of the Japanese people themselves. The films did not come anywhere near the reality.