THE FUTURE OF AUGUST 6TH 1945: A CASE OF THE 'PEACEFUL UTILIZATION' OF NUCLEAR ENERGY IN JAPAN

This article attempts to explain the enigma of Japan's nuclear policies, which I claim cannot be fully comprehended by mere economic calculations, political ambitions, or the bureaucratic interests of decision-makers. I use the concept of "time imagery" developed by Maki Yusuke(1) and argue that Japan's devastating defeat in 1945-marked by two atom bombs-became the origin in a segmented linear time imagery. In this imagery, the telos was constituted by the vision of a technotopia that was the anti-reality of 1945. This imagery became institutionalized immediately after the war, and it materialized in the steady comprehensive expansion of Japan's nuclear project. The first part of the article offers an overview of the enigma of Japan's nuclear energy policies. The second part explains the features of this enigma more closely, drawing specifically on Maki's theory of time imagery. In the conclusion, I evaluate Maki's model of four types of time imagery and also touch upon Japan's possible future nuclear policy after the Fukushima accident.