A heart untouched by war is not included.

Asahi Shimbun Morning Edition, July 24, 1999

Studies on the psychology of people who have experienced the extreme conditions of war have led to the proposal of terms such as "war neurosis" and "shell shock" in Western countries. These were the precursors to today's research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

PTSD is a condition in which the mind is wounded after experiencing or witnessing a life-threatening terror, leading to symptoms such as anxiety, insomnia, and nightmares. In 1980, the American Psychiatric Association defined it in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), establishing diagnostic criteria.

Two years before that, in the United States, the film The Deer Hunter was released, dealing with this disorder against the backdrop of the Vietnam War. Case studies of Vietnam War veterans played a role in advancing research on PTSD. In 1990, another film on the same theme, Born on the Fourth of July, was released.

In Japan, awareness of PTSD surged following the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, the Tokyo subway sarin attack, and the outbreak of mass food poisoning caused by E. coli O157 the following year.

The Deer Hunter portrays a man who, after being forced to play Russian roulette as a prisoner of war and experiencing the terror of death, continues pulling the trigger against his own temple even after returning to Saigon. Robert De Niro's character desperately tries to save him. Born on the Fourth of July depicts Tom Cruise's character, who, after being caught up in the massacre of villagers, mistakenly kills a comrade, and returns home paralyzed from the waist down—only to face anti-war protests. The film follows his gradual journey toward regaining his sense of self.

Hollywood has cast major stars to play characters suffering from the psychological wounds of war. In Japanese cinema, while films like The Human Condition and Twenty-Four Eyes include such scenes, there seem to be no films that directly and explicitly focus on the psychological wounds inflicted by war.

This may be linked to a cultural tendency to sideline postwar reckoning. Japan, which had restored its wartime bravado with slogans like "Imperial soldiers do not suffer neurosis," subsequently plunged headlong into economic growth. Even the United States after Vietnam followed a similar trajectory.

If we continue to define mental resilience solely by the ability to endure extreme conditions without faltering, progress in mental health will remain stagnant.