Description
Book SynopsisFrom the dawn of the atomic age, art and popular culture have played an essential role interpreting nuclear issues to the public and investigating the implications of nuclear weapons to the future of human civilization. Political and social forces often seemed paralyzed in thinking beyond the advent of nuclear weapons and articulating a creative response to the dilemma posed by this apocalyptic technology. Art and popular culture are uniquely suited to grapple with the implications of the bomb and the disruptions in the continuity of traditional narratives about the human future endemic to the atomic age. Filling the Hole in the Nuclear Future explores the diversity of visions evoked in American and Japanese society by the mushroom cloud hanging over the future of humanity during the last half of the twentieth century. It presents historical scholarship on art and popular culture alongside the work of artists responding to the bomb, as well as artists discussing their own work. From t
Trade ReviewLively and thought-provoking. A nice mix of nationalities, of artists and scholars, of prose and poetry and artwork, of demonstration and oral history and analysis. -- Richard H. Minear, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Recommended. * CHOICE *
These sobering yet very readable essays from Japanese and American scholars, activists, and cultural creators explore a fascinating array of artistic and popular-cultural responses to the atomic bomb, the Cold War nuclear arms race, and the proliferation threats that dominate today's headlines. -- Paul S. Boyer, author of By the Bomb's Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age
This reader found much to think about in this volume. * Public Affairs, June 2011 *
Table of ContentsChapter 1 Preface: Hiroshima Story Chapter 2 Introduction: Filling the Hole in the Future Chapter 3 1. Fetch Lights and Grocery Lists: Metaphors and Nuclear Weapons Chapter 4 2. from Critical Assembly, Poems Chapter 5 3. Robots, A-Bombs, and War: Cultural Meanings of Science and Technology in Japan Around World War Two Chapter 6 4. The Day the Sun Was Lost, Manga Chapter 7 5. The Summer You Can't Go Back To, Manga Chapter 8 6. "The Buck Stops Here": Hiroshima Revisionism in the Truman Years Chapter 9 7. Godzilla and the Bravo Shot: Who Created and Killed the Monster? Chapter 10 8. Thank you Mr. Avedon Chapter 11 9. Target Earth: The Atomic Bomb and the Whole Earth Chapter 12 10. Nuclear Culture 13 11. Nuclear Fear 1987–2007: Has Anything Changed? Has Everything Changed?
