“Oppenheimer,” an Academy-award winning biopic on the man known as the father of the atomic bomb, was released on Friday in Japan, where two nuclear devices killed hundreds of thousands of civilians nearly eight decades ago. The movie’s Japan debut came more than eight months after it was released around the globe.
Screening of the film in Japan was initially delayed, as the worldwide opening last July was only weeks before the anniversary of the 1945 atomic bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki — on Aug. 6 and Aug. 9, respectively — during the final days of World War II.
Opening on a rainy Friday morning in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, the release was not a grandiose affair, with movie-goers lining up for the first screening just before 9 a.m.