My Life: Interview with TV Director Yasuko Isono, Part 1
Jun. 26, 2013
The preciousness of peace
by Takahiro Yamase, Staff Writer
Conveying the tragedy of war
While working as a director of television programs at the Yamaguchi Broadcasting Company, Yasuko Isono, 76, earned acclaim at home and abroad for her serious documentaries. The themes of her work include the lives of people who were exposed to the atomic bomb while in their mother's womb and the anguish felt by crew members of human torpedoes and suicide submarines during World War II. In later years, she assumed the posts of board member of the company and the superintendent of education in the city of Iwakuni. The arc of her career coincides with the social advances of women in the post-war period.
I joined the Yamaguchi Broadcasting Company in 1959. I wanted to direct documentaries, but I wouldn't have gotten the chance if I had just sat and waited for it to happen. I chose to work in broadcasting because television was a new force in the post-war era. But at the company I faced an old and unchanging environment dominated by men, not the environment of equality and freedom that I had hoped for. So I fought against the hidebound traditions there.
I made my way while learning to be tough in a man's world. I was an announcer, at first. But I kept asking for a transfer to the production department, and I was then offered a position as a director of radio programming. It was there that I received the recognition which enabled me to enter the field of television journalism in the 1970s.
In 1979, Ms. Isono released a documentary about an Iwakuni couple and their daughter, who suffers from microcephaly as a result of her exposure to the atomic bomb while still in her mother’s uterus. The program “Mama I Can Hear You: Yuriko, a Child of the Atomic Bomb” won the Grand Prix in the TV Documentary Category at the National Arts Festival organized by the Agency for Cultural Affairs and a “Prix Futura Berlin” [Berlin Future Award].
I was born in the city of Etajima [on an island in Hiroshima Bay]. More than 10 family members, including my younger brother and aunt, were exposed to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. But in Yamaguchi Prefecture, where I was working, people didn't express much concern about nuclear weapons, even though Yamaguchi is next door to Hiroshima Prefecture. So I wanted to convey the tragedy to people in my own way.
Because of her exposure to the atomic bomb, the daughter with microcephaly, a grown women in her 30s, was unable to go to the bathroom without assistance. Her parents watched over their daughter quietly as their lives went on under the roar of U.S. planes [based at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni]. My approach is to convey the absurdity of war and the preciousness of peace through depictions of people's everyday lives.
Most of Ms. Isono’s works involve war-related themes.
I lived near the naval academy when I was growing up. Hiroshima, Kure, and Ujina were all close to my home. So the war was close to me.
The war ended when I was in sixth grade. Even when cities throughout the country were set ablaze in air raids, I still believed that Japan would never be defeated. I trusted the naval academy, and I believed such things as the divine wind blowing for the nation. I realized that I had been deceived by false information at an impressionable age. That was a defining time in my life.
(Originally published on November 30, 2010)
by Takahiro Yamase, Staff Writer
Conveying the tragedy of war
While working as a director of television programs at the Yamaguchi Broadcasting Company, Yasuko Isono, 76, earned acclaim at home and abroad for her serious documentaries. The themes of her work include the lives of people who were exposed to the atomic bomb while in their mother's womb and the anguish felt by crew members of human torpedoes and suicide submarines during World War II. In later years, she assumed the posts of board member of the company and the superintendent of education in the city of Iwakuni. The arc of her career coincides with the social advances of women in the post-war period.
I joined the Yamaguchi Broadcasting Company in 1959. I wanted to direct documentaries, but I wouldn't have gotten the chance if I had just sat and waited for it to happen. I chose to work in broadcasting because television was a new force in the post-war era. But at the company I faced an old and unchanging environment dominated by men, not the environment of equality and freedom that I had hoped for. So I fought against the hidebound traditions there.
I made my way while learning to be tough in a man's world. I was an announcer, at first. But I kept asking for a transfer to the production department, and I was then offered a position as a director of radio programming. It was there that I received the recognition which enabled me to enter the field of television journalism in the 1970s.
In 1979, Ms. Isono released a documentary about an Iwakuni couple and their daughter, who suffers from microcephaly as a result of her exposure to the atomic bomb while still in her mother’s uterus. The program “Mama I Can Hear You: Yuriko, a Child of the Atomic Bomb” won the Grand Prix in the TV Documentary Category at the National Arts Festival organized by the Agency for Cultural Affairs and a “Prix Futura Berlin” [Berlin Future Award].
I was born in the city of Etajima [on an island in Hiroshima Bay]. More than 10 family members, including my younger brother and aunt, were exposed to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. But in Yamaguchi Prefecture, where I was working, people didn't express much concern about nuclear weapons, even though Yamaguchi is next door to Hiroshima Prefecture. So I wanted to convey the tragedy to people in my own way.
Because of her exposure to the atomic bomb, the daughter with microcephaly, a grown women in her 30s, was unable to go to the bathroom without assistance. Her parents watched over their daughter quietly as their lives went on under the roar of U.S. planes [based at the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni]. My approach is to convey the absurdity of war and the preciousness of peace through depictions of people's everyday lives.
Most of Ms. Isono’s works involve war-related themes.
I lived near the naval academy when I was growing up. Hiroshima, Kure, and Ujina were all close to my home. So the war was close to me.
The war ended when I was in sixth grade. Even when cities throughout the country were set ablaze in air raids, I still believed that Japan would never be defeated. I trusted the naval academy, and I believed such things as the divine wind blowing for the nation. I realized that I had been deceived by false information at an impressionable age. That was a defining time in my life.
(Originally published on November 30, 2010)
