Paper short abstract:

This study examines how newspaper cartoons provided an original look at news related to nuclear energy in post-war period and demonstrates that various newspapers, including the one mainly distributed in the Hiroshima area (Chūgoku Shinbun), have made fun of nuclear power, both civil and military.

Paper long abstract:

In 2013, several French cartoons making fun of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster have caused public outrage in Japan. While nuclear energy is often considered as a sensitive issue in the country, a recent study published by Ronald Stewart indicates that cartoons were nevertheless published in Japan after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, and that they provided both a critical perspective on the management of the accident and ways to cope with the stress it caused. Moreover, another preliminary study (Bruno 2023) confirms that Japanese cartoonists, starting with Yokoyama Taizō 横山泰三 , were already making fun of nuclear energy in the post-war period. However, at a time when Japan focused on launching its civilian nuclear program, many victims of the atomic bomb were left behind and Japan lived in fear of radioactive fallout from American and Soviet atomic tests.

This paper aims therefore to analyze how cartoonists of the main national newspapers (Asahi Shinbun, Mainichi Shinbun and Yomiuri Shinbun) humorously sketched nuclear energy, from the return of press cartoons in the early 1950s until the launch of the Japanese nuclear industry in 1957. It will also look into Chūgoku Shinbun, the main regional daily newspaper distributed in the Hiroshima area, and in particular into the Sesō kamera 世相カメラ series by cartoonist Hasumi Tan 蓮見旦, to ascertain whether there is a possible "Hiroshima exception" and whether the first city to fall victim to atomic bombing exhibit a specific sensibility towards nuclear energy.

I will thus argue that, despite inevitable differences, the cartoons published in both the national and the regional press, contributed to setting the problems related to nuclear energy on the media agenda, while allowing a form of resilience among a population particularly concerned by nuclear risks, whether civil or military, especially through images showing the absurdity of atomic testing or the irrationality of human beings.