Tokyo's Burning

Tony Barrell, Radio Eye – ABC RN, March 1995

Tony Barrell, who died in 2011, contributed a distinctive voice to Australian radio. He subverted norms of realist documentary by fusing pop culture with serious political analysis, for example. But of his vast back catalogue, I’ve chosen to feature Tokyo’s Burning – a more conventional documentary about the WWII firebombing of Tokyo – in the hopes that it will be canonised as a 'classic'.

This feature combines factual exposition in the form of witness accounts and reportage, blended with a haunting soundscape created by Russell Stapleton. The voices float above a persistent drone, signalling impending doom, demonstrating that sound design is not just 'decoration' or to oil the wheels of the narrative, but rather, conveys meaning. Everything in a sound-rich story is 'information', even, or perhaps especially, silence. This documentary won the Oscars of radio, the Prix Italia in 1995.