The Life of Particles enters into a dialogue with the contemporary situation of Japan in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake and nuclear disaster in Fukushima, looking at the relation between subjectivity, animist spirituality and modern technology in Japan after 1945.

The film is a travelogue that begins with the actual form of military colonisation in Okinawa and the massive presence of the US military since World War II. It re-itinerates the “Atom for Peace” campaign in Hiroshima and the reconstruction of Japan as a country built on science within the ideology of the so-called “energy millenarism” as a nuclear dream project during the Cold War.

The Life of Particles actualises the longlasting anti-nuclear struggles against the building of a new nuclear power plant on Iwaishi island. The research ends in Tokyo and Kyoto with comments by the photographer and anthropologist Chihiro Minato and the Bhutto dancer Min Tanaka about Japan’s history of technology where the animist tradition is central for the development of Japanese craft and the relation between nature and culture. “We cannot resolve the problem of radioactivity with this relation between nature and culture. In Japan after Fukushima geography is psychology.”