In America, “Barbenheimer” is a success. In Japan, it’s a scandal.

The linking of nuclear holocaust to summer entertainment is backfiring spectacularly here

One nation’s tragedy is another’s merchandise.

Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” opened in American theaters last month to rave reviews and strong box-office sales. Its success was fueled by an internet meme encouraging moviegoers to watch the dark biopic about the architect of the Manhattan Project in an ad-hoc double-feature with the bubblegum “Barbie,” which opened the same day. Dubbed “Barbenheimer,” the grassroots campaign flooded online spaces with mashups of atomic imagery and Barbie chic. This led both films to outperform initial expectations, a rare bright spot for movie companies still struggling to regain audiences after the pandemic. One American media outlet called the meme “a billion-dollar win.”

“Barbie” is set to open in Japan on August 11th. “Oppenheimer” has yet to receive even so much as a local release date. Christopher Nolan’s films have generally performed well here in Japan, so you’d naturally expect the arrival of a new Nolan epic to be big news. But the silence makes sense. August is, of course, the month that the atomic weapons developed in the Manhattan Project were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. 

Every year, Japanese citizens observe a national moment of silence that is timed for the moments the actual bombs were dropped. Having lived in Japan for two decades I am very familiar with this practice. I have seen entire offices, even public city spaces, come to a total stop when the bells ring out every August 6th and 9th. The horror of the atomic bombings remains fresh in the minds of Japanese, undimmed after almost eight decades. Even simply announcing the arrival of a product that frames the man who created those weapons of mass destruction as a tragic hero would almost certainly rankle local sensibilities.

It should not surprise that Japanese view the use of atomic weapons with a far more critical eye than Westerners do, and Americans in particular. By extension one could imagine that Japanese view Robert Oppenheimer with a great deal more ambivalence than Westerners do. So this film would always have been a more difficult sell in Japan than in the English-speaking world. But the popularity of the “Barbenheimer” meme has added a new dimension of complexity and cultural friction to the situation.

It is against this backdrop that the #NoBarbenheimer hashtag began trending on Japanese-language Twitter, or whatever the site is calling itself this week. The anger isn’t directed at the historical personage, the film, or even the fans who launched the Barbenheimer campaign. Instead, online critics are directing their ire at the movie companies who have amplified the meme in their own marketing channels.

The majority of the criticism seems to be falling on “Barbie.” A post by the Twitter user Karo summed it up, with receipts in the form of nuclear memes quote-tweeted by the official Barbie account: “It’s sick seeing the makers of ‘Barbie’ using atomic bombings and mushroom clouds to sell their film. No amount of official denials can absolve them of this. It’s finished here.” It received over 35,000 likes. As of this writing, the Barbie account’s Barbenheimer retweets remain public.

It’s easy to understand the anger. Even as Japanese viscerally disagree with the decision to use the atomic bombs, there is widespread understanding of the historical context of why they were built, and some may even see value in a film based on the man who oversaw their creation. But more than 200,000 people perished in those attacks, many of them civilians, in ways so horrific that it almost defies comprehension. To many Japanese, the idea of using imagery from the atomic bombings in a marketing campaign to push pop entertainment is more than a mix-up. It’s an affront to an entire nation.

Watching random social-media users post tasteless memes of mushroom clouds tinted Barbie pink is one thing. Seeing them picked up and amplified by the official accounts of major movie companies is another. Mounting criticism forced “Barbie” distributor Warner Brothers Japan to release a statement distancing itself from what it called “the #Barbenheimer movement.” It harshly criticizes its parent company for “regrettable and inconsiderate” behavior, and demands that it “take appropriate action.” It is extremely rare to see this kind of corporate spat play out in public in Japan – another testament to how deeply the scars from Hiroshima and Nagasaki run in Japanese society. 

I never found the “Barbenheimer” memes particularly witty, but they didn’t surprise me, either. It fits a pattern in which nuclear weapons are treated as little more than props in Hollywood productions. 

Nolan’s own Dark Knight Trilogy concludes with a nuclear weapon being detonated just outside of Gotham City. This is treated as a happy ending. (I lived in Japan during the Fukushima reactor meltdown, and watched as Americans thousands of miles distant panic-bought the world’s supply of Geiger counters, to the point Japanese locals couldn’t obtain any. Color me unconvinced that Americans would be so sanguine about a nuclear bomb exploding within sight of their city.) Guillermo Del Toro punctuated “Pacific Rim” (a film, I will admit, I love) with a nuclear blast. In 1954, the Japanese filmmaker Ishiro Honda envisioned “Godzilla” as a personification of the horrors of the atomic age. But in his 2014 remake, filmmaker Gareth Edwards dropped nuclear weapons on the titular creature – not once, but twice! Talk about mixing metaphors. 

Or consider 2008’s “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull,” where Harrison Ford’s character survives a nuclear test on a mock suburb by climbing inside a refrigerator. It’s a reminder that these weapons were designed to be used on civilian populations, but Steven Spielberg frames the scene as high comedy. Indy is tossed miles through the air, only to emerge unscathed and be scolded by an angry gopher. To Hollywood filmmakers and audience-goers alike, nuclear weapons seem to represent little more than a fantastic form of fireworks, a convenient deus ex machina for special-effects spectaculars when imagination runs out.

“Barbenheimer” is only the most recent example of the perception gap that exists between Western and Japanese views of the atomic bombings. Undoubtedly it won’t be the last. But these days, it is a lot harder to get away with soft-pedaling weapons of mass destruction without victims calling it out online. “The director and producer of ‘Barbie’ are coming to Japan next week,” wrote another Twitter user. “I want to see the press ask them what they think about ‘Barbenheimer.’” That one got fifteen thousand likes.