Yesterday I watched the TV program whose name is Hodo Station on TV Asahi. A commentator whose name is Koji Igarashi who is editor of Asahi newspaper said that In the 1950s we mass media welcomed the development of nuclear energy, we recognized that kind of energy as peaceful engineering. And he said that it is necessary to inspect how and when nuclear energy gave rise to the core of Japanese industry by the mass media and political structure. I agree with him. I think that there is a strong link between mass media and politics.
Although there is the close relationship, I think that in the 1950s, we were ambitious to avoid the poverty which was based on the severe memories after WW2. The desire to escape from poverty led us to drive on developing nuclear engineering and building a lot of nuclear plants.
When an electric washing machine came to my home, my mother she was free from washing baby’s nappies in the pail. And when the electric rice cooker appeared, all housewives had a lot of time to go out to work in the market like their working husbands. Since the refrigerators came to my kitchen we have changed the life style itself, which can’t be reversed.
I think that it is important to inspect by the research of the Japanese social movement which is opposed to nuclear energy. I feel a kind of the vulnerability and instability which was based on the limited political parties and the weakness of the women’s movement in Japan. Especially I am interested in the three decades from the 1950s to the 1970s, because the period was the time when some important laws, three Nuclear Power Acts and three Power Supplies Acts were established. Why didn’t women’s movements produce fruit and couldn’t criticize and oppose the conservative party’s policy? It may be useful to conduct a comparative study with German citizen movements, for example “Die Grünen” and women’s movements.
At first we should start the study on the Suginami appeal which was declared by women’s housewives movements.