Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has eaten fish from the ocean off the Fukushima coast to show that it was safe and delicious, despite the release of radioactive water from the damaged nuclear plant. However, his gesture has sparked comparisons with a classic episode of The Simpsons, where Mr. Burns ate a three-eyed fish mutated by his own nuclear power plant.
Mr. Kishida visited Fukushima on Monday and sampled some of the local seafood, including flounder, sea bream and scallops. He said he wanted to “send a message to the world and to Japan that we can eat delicious fish caught in Fukushima without any worries”.
The Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant suffered a meltdown after being hit by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The Japanese government decided to release more than a million tonnes of treated water from the plant into the Pacific Ocean, starting from 2023. The move has been opposed by environmental groups and neighbouring countries, who fear that the water may still contain harmful radioactive substances.
Mr. Kishida’s attempt to reassure the public and promote the recovery of Fukushima reminded many people of a scene from The Simpsons, one of the longest-running and most popular animated sitcoms in history. In the episode “Two Cars in Every Garage and Three Eyes on Every Fish”, which aired in 1990, Mr. Burns, the owner of a nuclear power plant, ran for governor and tried to win over voters by eating a fish from a nearby lake. However, he was unaware that the fish had three eyes due to the radiation from his plant. He spat out the fish in disgust when he saw its third eye, ruining his campaign.
Fans of the show joked that The Simpsons had predicted the future once again, as they had done with many other events. “The Simpsons has done it again. They predicted that Japan’s Prime Minister would eat a radioactive fish”, tweeted @TheSimpsonsUK.
“The Simpsons is not only one of the most successful shows in TV history, but also a cultural phenomenon that has uncannily foreseen major events years before they happened”, wrote Adam White from The Independent. Some of the other predictions that The Simpsons have made include Donald Trump’s presidency, the US Capitol riot, the coronavirus pandemic, and the Disney-Fox merger.
‘Unlike most other shows, The Simpsons writing team consists largely of writers who are extremely educated in fields ranging from mathematics to social sciences because of this they are also really connected to those that are on the cutting edge,’ the host explained in The Simpsons Conspiracy: How They Predict The Future.
Using a graph, the Chuppl team worked out it takes on average about 13 years for The Simpsons predictions to come true.
Their findings also revealed the most accurate predictions come from writers with a maths degree.
Relevant articles:
- ‘The Simpsons’ predicted Japanese prime minister eating radioactive Fukushima fish, fans say, New York Post, August 31, 2023
- The Simpsons: 15 of the series’ most uncanny predictions, The Independent, September 1, 2023
- The Simpsons predicted that the Japanese PM would eat a radioactive fish, MSN, August 30, 2023
- The Simpsons ‘predicted Japanese PM eating fish from radioactive water’, Metro, August 31, 2023