Plot summary: boring Japanese family, Tokyo and the rest of the world is about to be nuked by inept US and Soviet nuclear armies supposedly in the year 2015.
There is a lot of scenes dedicated to the life and times of the boring Japanese family dealing with mundane everyday issues. Older daughter falls in love with sailor and Dad does not approve. Dad gets drunk during family dinner and passes out, mom and kids giggle lovingly.
Tensions heat up when toy Korean tanks get blown up by a toy nuclear bomb dropped by a toy airplane. Then, there are several instances of close calls of accidental detonation of toy ICBMs. For these Toho used incredibly stupid looking western non-actors in bizarre costumes, with dialog that is so wooden and ridiculous it must be heard to be believed. Multiple redundant failsafe mechanisms that in reality are built into nuclear devices are somehow miraculously bypassed. For an example, an enormous red warning light accidentally comes on, with "outbreak of nuclear war" writing on it. The CO, who is a stubborn idiot, ignores the obvious suggestion by his corporal to check with the President first, and instead goes ahead and initiates missile launch by pushing an enormous red button. The presidents generals guys find out and call him and start yelling and screaming at the CO to stop the launch. The CO argues and refuses to comply because... I'm not sure. However, the corporal finds a broken widget and for some other obscure reason this convinces the CO to abort the launch at the last second.
A street vendor accurately summarizes the Japanese version of WWII history: Japan was unfairly attacked by foreigners and were victims of a nuclear bomb. Like another naive reviewer here on IMDb, he neglects the history before Hiroshima: about the 50 years of aggression by Imperial Japan, resulting in the occupation of Korea, china, Mongolia, parts of Russia, and most of SE Asia, the deaths of tens of millions of Asian civilians, be-headings, deaths of millions of us and British soldiers, the rape of Nanjing, forced labor, death marches, and forced prostitution.
A top level American diplomat just casually tells Dad that there is going to be a nuke attack on Tokio, so Dad immediately calls his stock broker and buys stock in a company that makes bombers, and sells all of his Tokio land stocks. Older daughter and sailor book a hotel room and we are given hints that they have premarital sex. They declare themselves married the next morning. Mom plants tulip bulbs.
A bunch of kids at a boarding school sing songs to an old guy who is the cook on the sailors ship. One of the mothers, the cooks daughter, promises to take her kid to the zoo after the kid gets over her cold.
Meanwhile, we are now on the eve of destruction, after Russian and American toy jets get into a dogfight, leading to an exchange of bottle rockets flying on wires. Eventually they resort to nuclear tipped bottle rockets, and this leads to world to full blown nuclear war by toy ICBMs flying toward models of Tokyo, Delhi, new york, Paris, London and Moscow.
The Japanese government springs into action by having many long meetings and are astonished to learn that their Japanese Defense Force cannot actually defend Japan. So, they decide to hold the crisis from the public until the very last minute, guaranteeing the death of half the population. As war becomes imminent, they begin nonstop world radio and TV broadcasts calling for whirrled peas. Tokio citizens panic and flee, leading to the mandatory Toho scenes of panicked extras running through the streets, with policemen with tidy blue helmets waving their arms to move the extras more quickly.
Boarding school mom tries to get back to pick up her kid but dies at the hands of the panicking masses. Her kid gets sad and teacher cheers the kids up by singing songs.
Boring Japanese family decides to stay in Tokyo to get nuked. They go all Kabuki theater. They get very sad and mope around the house talking to themselves. Mom declares the tulip bulbs are safer in the ground than they are. Dad starts crying and hits the booze.
Finally, The toy missiles arrive at their model targets. AFter two long hours of tedium, we finally get to see stuff get blown up. Models of the worlds cities are blown to bits with gusto, using generous amounts of pyrotec explosives and gasoline. Stock footage of nuclear mushroom clouds are stuck between scenes of burning buildings, melting bridges, tidal waves, and eerie piles of soot in the shape of human bodies. Presumably the remains of boring family. This might have been done to remind people that, when a 20 megaton tritium hydrogen bomb is coming down on your head, its best to run away rather than contemplate tulip bulbs.
Sailor and old guy cook is on a ship and witness the horrible carnage and get sad. They decide to sail the ship back to Tokyo in spite of their knowledge that the massive radioactive fallout there will immediately result in a long painful slow death. The movie concludes with A few opticals with the usual warnings of planetary self destruction. The end.
