From the Author    For several decades now, scholars and pundits have told us that the bomb is a unique, unprecedented event, one that ruptured our connection to the past and tradition. We now live, it is said, in a perilous new age, "The Atomic Age," and this age requires new ways of living. In other words, unless we are stridently antinuclear, then we must be "psychically numb" victims of "nuclearism," who must be wakened to this new reality.     Ironically, describing current events as a rupture from the past and tradition, as numbing experience, and as cyclical, has been a part of our culture and society for thousands of years; one might even go as far as to say that such worldviews are "traditional." Scholars and critics also tell us that the cinema is one of the main agents contributing to our numb lives. But, if we put aside our prejudices and begin with the films themselves, we come to very different conclusions.     First of all, over a thousand bomb films have shown in American cinemas since 1945, or an average of about eighteen films per year. With such high numbers, it is unfair to say that Americans are numb or unconcerned by the nuclear dilemma.   American and other Western bomb films, in keeping with ancient Jewish apocalyptic narrative traditions, have one overriding purpose: to extol survival, self-actualization, and the restoration of a fractured world.       Japanese films,  as different as they may seem, are actually quite similar to American or Western films. Japanese films exhort in the viewer the desire to restore balance and harmony within humanity and with nature. Atomic bomb cinema is at least one instance of how Hollywood is a vital, positive social force in our society, for bomb films encourage people to survive, self-actualize, and make the world a better place to live.   © 2001 Atomic Bomb Cinema, Ltd