Tag: Akira

Reed Johnson is one of the most astute culture writers in American journalism, and as all of us have watched moments of calamity, courage and grief play out on the other side of the globe in Japan this month, his thoughts turned to the mirror moments of national disaster that have played out so famously in Japanese pop culture. Here’s an excerpt from his new article on the uncomfortable feelings and thoughts that come with this bundling of contemporary tragedy and pop-culture memory… The sublimely cheesy, enormously popular “Godzilla” films launched in the 1950s depicted a dinosaur-like monster, spawned by underwater nuclear detonations, crashing through the streets of Tokyo. The popular 1973 novel “Japan Sinks” envisions the island nation being physically split in two by a combined earthquake-tsunami. And in the landmark 1988 animated sci-fi film “Akira,” adapted from a manga epic, a nuclear ...