How Japan Deals with War: Anime?
Japan’s defeat in World War II was a huge emotional blow to the country which is still felt today. Although more than sixty years have passed, the subject of the war is still in many ways “taboo,” and not discussed very often outside of certain specific situations. (Kind of reminds me of growing up in the 1970s and asking what that Vietnam War thing was all about…no one seemed to want to tell me.)
One interesting mechanism the Japanese have evolved to allow them to deal with the subject of war has been an unlikely one: animation. While the traditional image of a “soldier” used to be tied to black and white photographs from the historical Pacific War, this has changed somewhat after three decades of popular culture in which the idea of “war” was more likely to be defined in sci-fi terms, such as the One Year War of the original Mobile Suit Gundam series, in which spacenoids living in orbital colonies fight for independence from Earth.
While it’s not generally possible for Japanese to wax romantic about the real war, which they lost, you can probably find fans within a certain age range who could tell you about the First Battle of Jaburo between Char Aznable-lead Zeon forces and the Federation in great detail, or a Space Battleship Yamato fan who can get misty-eyed about the Battle of Saturn, when dozens of Andromeda-class battleships were destroyed by the Comet Empire.
If you asked Japanese who they considered the most respected “military heroes” of the country were, you might find some who would answer Amuro Rei or Bright Noah or Captain Okita/Captain Avatar, the legendary characters from these war-oriented anime series. It’s not unlike the original Star Trek, which was able to tell stories about race relations and other difficult topics that couldn’t be discussed in the 1960s unless they were disguised as science fiction tales far off into the future.
I agree. I’ve had similar conversations with friends, and they all speak of the old warlords with pride. WWII was not the first war in Japan, after all.
June 10th, 2008 at 2:17 pm“Japan’s defeat in World War II was a huge emotional blow to the country which is still felt today. Although more than sixty years have passed, the subject of the war is still in many ways “taboo,” and not discussed very often outside of certain specific situations.”
Dude, let me assure you that the war is NOT an emotional blow to the vast majority of Japanese.
They are just NOT INTERESTED in the past.
It’s perplexing that Americans want to read some kind of shame/guilt/sorrow into the war here, when actually, the Japanese are just way more adept at accepting the past and moving on. Maybe it’s some kind of deep rooted Zen thing? The past is the past, they are just not interested.
Hell, the new iPhone coming next month would elicit more emotional responses from infinitely more Japanese than some sad old tale from a war they lost in another lifetime.
The oldies don’t even care so much (and I have talked to quite a few about it), they just shrug their shoulders and say things like, yeah, the war was bad. But that was then and this is now.
Look at the A-bomb memorials in Nagasaki and Hiroshima - there is no finger pointing at all. Those museums point more to the atrocities of atomic weapons of mass destruction, not at all waving a “tsk-tsk” finger at Americans.
I find your ideas about anime being a way to “deal with the war” quite absurd and childish. Stop building cliches, this culture is way more complex than such simplistic notions.
I also find it absurd that you actually believe that “If you asked Japanese who they considered the most respected “military heroes” of the country were, you might find some who would answer Amuro Rei or Bright Noah or Captain Okita/Captain Avatar, the legendary characters from these war-oriented anime series.”
What a crock of ……
June 11th, 2008 at 1:43 am“ Japan’s defeat in World War II was a huge emotional blow to the country which is still felt today. Although more than sixty years have passed, the subject of the war is still in many ways ” taboo “, and not discussed very often outside of certain specific situations.”
The war IS an emotional blow to the certain Japanese who think about Japan society or its politics.
I have nothing against anime and manga. But it’s somehow annoying to me that after many Japanese learned that there are many J-anime/manga fans all around the world, those Japanese feel proud of it. Actually, the majority of Japanese are NOT so interested in anime and manga.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:34 amCertainly many people are interested in history and cite Hideyoshi and the other famous figures as people they respect. My point was that World War II is effectively rendered a semi-taboo topic and few people (not zero) feel the need or ability to wax romantic about that particular war. Some otaku substitute fictional battles from certain famous anime as something to get excited about. I’ve talk to (a few) people like this and geeked out with them, so I know they exist. For you to say that my idea that the Japanese aren’t able to talk so openly about World War II because they revere Hideyoshi isn’t the same thing at all.
June 11th, 2008 at 10:39 pmJust so everyone is straight on this, I am the only one who is able to delete comments here. Our commenting policy is pretty clear, and you can see it here.
June 11th, 2008 at 11:17 pmInterestingly, in addition to the “generic” wars carried out by Gundam and the like, some Anime makes less-than-subtle allusions to the war. Like for anyone who’s seen Spriggan, in the futuristic setting two of the bad guys from the US Pentagon are named “Fat Man” and “Little Boy”.
And the war does still have something resembling heroes and occasional discussion in mainstream films, the closest to one being “tragic hero” Admiral Yamamoto, whose had Mifune Toshiro alone play him three times in his career.
MC: You can’t realistically expect most older Japanese to have frank discussions with a foreigner (or especially Westerners) about the war and the bombs. Even if you really know them sometimes. There are examples of how controversial the subject can still be once in a while, as when last year Shinzo Abe chewed up one of his ministers for saying the bomb droppings were “inevitable”, and controversial content being cut out of DVD releases of The Last Emperor and the like.
But there is a very noticable generation gap with the youngest here in particular. It seems the younger the generation, the less thought they give to the whole subject. I was pretty shocked that when I spent about a year at a college in Osaka fairly many students didn’t know/remember some of the basic details of the war. It may be an ironic effect of the topic being so taboo: as people want to frankly discuss it less and less, successive generations forget or lose concern about it more and more.
June 12th, 2008 at 7:11 amIs lack of regard among the youngest of the Japanese concerning WWII really that extraordinary?
WWII ended in 1945, which is 63 years ago.
The U.S. Civil War, by comparison, ended in 1865. 63 years after that puts us at 1928, which is a few years after my father was born. I don’t have any recollection of my father having any particularly strong feelings about the War Between the States, nor do I feel it strange that he did not.
June 13th, 2008 at 12:30 amTrue. But while the Civil War was devastating, war in 1865 wasn’t as davastating and total as modern war in 1945.
At 63 years, most younger Japanese have grandparents or uncles that experienced the war to pass down the legacy (not necessarily having to be strong feelings), but then again, it’s pretty impossible to transfer a national conciousness of defeat and being suddenly told that the descendent of the Emperor wasn’t really divine.
If it is just part of the natural cycle, than in the not too distant future maybe the war will also turn into a much less taboo subject, like Vietnam eventually did.
June 13th, 2008 at 7:42 amI’m with Ed. It isn’t unusual that the postwar generation has little information or interest in the war. I think that’s true for most countries. Start asking college students in the US today some basic facts about WWII (for example, name the two main alliances and their members) and you’ll get similar results.
It’s not just that it’s taboo, since I’m not so convinced that it is as a general topic. How often do you talk about WWII with your German or Italian friends? Why should we expect this to be a frequent topic of discussion?! Heck, I basically never talk about it with fellow Americans! Besides, schools run out of time by the end of the year and most never teach much past the Meiji period. My own high school social studies never got past WWII and certainly we never reached Vietnam. We ran out of time. So where exactly where they learn about it? They aren’t likely to run to the store to buy some dry history book, that’s for sure. Movies and popular culture are more likely places.
Most of the parents and grandparents in Japan don’t share much about their experiences in the war, which is fairly common elsewhere as well. It has only been the last decade or so that US vets have talked much about WWII, and they were the winners. I’ve only had a couple Japanese vets talk to me about the war and they were all very young when the war ended and none were stationed on the front lines. I have friends who know their grandparents were stationed on the continent or immigrated to Manchuria and all have said they would never talk about it.
June 13th, 2008 at 1:51 pmThis seems to be pretty common for wars and national traumas wherever they occur. The people who experience it firsthand understandably don’t want to talk about it much. The kids and certainly the grandkids see it as ancient history.
People who hang onto second or third hand memories of events over half a century ago are the ones who worry me. It tells me that they don’t have enough to do in their current life.
Even when people are aware of the history, as often as not, they draw the wrong lessons from it - usually the polar opposite of what they should have learned.
June 13th, 2008 at 2:23 pmIt doesn’t seem totally lost on them, though, particularly the lagacy of the bombings, because even the teenagers and young adults DO generally seem to carry the basic attitude that all war is Hell and should be avoided at all costs, which is not a feeling nearly as widespread in the US, UK and the like. That being said, regardless of how much they might have forgotten, I would have to say the lessons they have drawn from the war seem to be for the better. Maybe it’s infinitely more interest in the lessons of the war than the actual war.
As I mentioned, I wouldn’t expect to frankly discuss the more subjective aspects of the war with Japanese or Germans, but in Germany for Germans it’s required for all high school students to attend at least one death camp, and the Nazi is so roundly denounced even in popular culture that you can go to prison for defending it. But yeah, seeing the quite different circumstances in which Japan went down (ie the government wasn’t liquidated), it is unrealistic to expect it to be so heavily drilled in Japan.
But there is some difference in popular culture that seems to indicate WWII being more taboo there than the average taboo war of other countries: For example, in Japan there seldom seems to be very successful provacative war-themed films like Apocalypse Now or Syriana. They’re more often “is what it is” subject matter like Tora Tora Tora and Otokotachi no Yamato (which mainly just detailed the last stand of the WWII battleship’s doomed crew).
June 13th, 2008 at 4:13 pm>>>Dude, let me assure you that the war is NOT an emotional blow to the vast majority of Japanese.
They are just NOT INTERESTED in the past.
It’s perplexing that Americans want to read some kind of shame/guilt/sorrow into the war here, when actually, the Japanese are just way more adept at accepting the past and moving on.
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I love it. You just proved the author’s main point with your post.
November 20th, 2008 at 8:11 am