Japanese Swords As Symbols of Historical Amnesia: Touken Ranbu and the Sword Boom in Popular Media
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Volume 19 | Issue 7 | Number 1 | Article ID 5564 | Apr 01, 2021 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Japanese Swords as Symbols of Historical Amnesia: Touken Ranbu and the Sword Boom in Popular Media Kohki Watabe Abstract: This essay analyses the Japanese revisionism, nationalism, symbolism of sword boom in popular media in the 21st Japanese swords, Touken Ranbu century, situating Touken Ranbu, an online video game franchise, within its wider political and historical context. In the first two decades of the 21st century, government, commercial, Introduction and semi-public institutions, such as museums, extensively deployed positive depictions of In the 2010s, Japan's media culture witnessed a Japanese swords in popular media, including phenomenon that could be termed a Japanese anime, manga, TV, and films in public relations sword boom, evident in forms from manga and campaigns. As a historical ideological icon, anime to video games and films. The swords have been used to signify class in the transmedia popularity of sword iconography Edo period (1603-1868) and to justify the has influenced public relations strategies of Japanese Empire’s expansion into Asia during companies and governments and encouraged the Asia-Pacific War (1931-1945). Bycollaborations among public and private emphasizing the object's symbolism andsectors. Arguably, the most notable example of aestheticism, the sword boom of the 21st this phenomenon is a video game called Touken century is following a similar trajectory. Ranbu and its transmedia franchise. Taken Popular representations of swords in media together, these trends represent a fascination culture selectively feature historical episodes with the trope of the sword: some that are deemed politically uncontroversial and representations are historically grounded while beneficial for promoting a sense of national others are radically decontextualized; some pride. This practice systematically ignores the media and messages lean towards nationalistic shadow of modern Japanese history in which nostalgia while others invest decidedly new swords played a central role, such as the meaning and affect to this cultural icon. The controversial wartime “contest to kill one significance and implications of this 21st hundred people using a sword” (hyakunin giri century sword boom deserve a critical reading kyoso) in China in 1937. The recent notable that addresses the troubling mobilization of the rise of this idealized symbolism exemplifies the physical and symbolic sword in interpretations mechanism through which historicalof Japanese history. This essay locates the revisionism—serving neo-nationalist/right-wing boom within the broader historical context of interests—infiltrates Japanese society through modern Japanese history, distinguishing the popular culture. The sword has been mobilized phenomenon from the discourses that glorify in contemporary Japanese media as a symbolic the “Cool Japan Policy” and contemporary cultural commodity to influence consumers’ Japanese media content. knowledge and consciousness and to condition their views of modern Japanese history. This essay is positioned within academic debates addressing propagandistic Keywords: popular culture, media, historical representations of war and history. The sword 1 19 | 7 | 1 APJ | JF boom is a prime example of popular media's symbolic aspects emphasized instead. Such contribution to the shaping of public historical abstraction has enabled the Japanese sword to knowledge and, importantly,function as a focal point for historical (mis)understanding, which historians ofrevisionism, facilitating the creation of a modern Japan, such as Carol Gluck and Tessa narrative in which palatable versions of modern Morris-Suzuki, have addressed (Gluck 2007; Japanese history, largely associated with Morris 2005). As a specific example, Sabine aestheticism, are selectively remembered in the Frühstück argues that Japan’s Self-Defense popular media culture of Japan in the 2010s. Force has been deploying images of children, particularly innocent pre-teen girls and sexualized young women, that resignify and Symbolizing the Sword in Japanese History fetishize machines of war in its public relations campaigns from the 1990s to the 21st century Japanese swords derive from curved single- (2017: 165-210). Covering much the same time edge blades produced in the Heian period frame, this essay shares an academic(794-1185). The emerging samurai class commitment to the critique of war glorification, brought long tachi swords, a type of Japanese focusing on the popular aesthetics of Japanese sword common during the feudal era, into swords in transmedia content. battle for the purpose of mounted combat (Miyazaki 2018: 6). In fact, swords were not Below, I argue that the current sword boom is a necessarily the primary weapon for warriors symptom of a post-WWII Japanese society that from the Kamakura period (1185-1333) to the institutionally ignores the practical and actual Sengoku period (1467-1590), the most use of Japanese swords as weapons and instead turbulent time in Japanese history, as stone treats them as aesthetic objects that symbolize slings, arrows, spears, and naginata (a pole certain ethno-nationalist values. Japanese weapon with a single-edge blade) were more people have been enjoying the beauty of the effective and safer weapons on the battlefield structural aspects of Japanese swords since (Kaku 2016: 72-75). Additionally, the use of premodern times: textures on the steel made by swords was not limited to the samurai class at folding techniques during forging; patterns of that time. Even peasants possessed and carried martensite created during the cooling process; swords and were pressed into service as and temper patterns on the blade. However, soldiers. In short, swords were not always a the Firearm and Sword Possession Control Law symbol of the samurai class, who are said to after WWII established a rule for possession of have mastered kyūba no michi (“the way of the Japanese swords, officially defining them as bow and the horse”). valuable historical and/or artistic objects (Watanabe and Sumi 2014: 3-4, 92-94). This The symbolic meanings of Japanese swords aestheticization of Japanese swords underpins changed during the largely peaceful Edo period the collaboration of various actors in the sword (1603-1868). It was in the 17th century, during boom of the 2010s. No single playerthe Tokugawa Shogunate, that Japanese society orchestrated the Japanese sword and samurai embedded the symbolic value of swords into its boom as a form of propaganda, but the social order with a set of laws that regulated symbolic malleability of sword images certainly the possession and carrying of swords enabled the collaboration. Below I examine according to the occasion and the owner’s class Touken Ranbu, a smash hit video game (Owaki 2018: 72-117; Sakai 2011: 299-302). franchise, as a contemporary case study to Since long tachi swords were no longer show how the lethal aspect of swords have necessary in times of peace, the samurai began been underplayed and their aesthetic and to carry a pair ofuchigatana and wakizashi 2 19 | 7 | 1 APJ | JF swords: uchigatana were the primary weapons, and Sumi 2014: 90-91). In order to meet a little bit shorter thantachi , and wakizashi increasing demand, a workshop was built to were much shorter secondary swords used in produce Japanese swords for military use case of the loss of theuchigatana . Although within the Imperial Shrine of Yasukuni, which non-samurai classes were allowed to possess was built in 1869 to commemorate those who and carry wakizashi according to their roles in died in service to the Meiji government and contribution to government, the pair of (Kishida 1998: 33-34; Watanabe and Sumi uchigatana and wakizashi swords became 2014: 91). In this way, the link among symbols of, and were permitted only to, the Japanese, samurai spirit, and swords was samurai class. In the civil conflicts between fostered. Imperial and Shogunate forces that occurred during the Boshin War in 1868, Japanese Thus, Japanese swords emerged as prominent swords and skilled samurai were no longer symbols of a Japanese superiority in the years effective against more modern infantry. The of war and colonial expansion. During the time of swords ended with the Tokugawa order; invasions of the Korean peninsula, mainland therefore, many popular references to samurai China via Manchuria, South East Asia, and the and Japanese swords depict times before the Pacific Islands in the first half of the twentieth Meiji era (1868-1912), which followed the Edo century, Imperial Japan mobilized propaganda period. to enforce its ideology and consolidate its totalitarian regime. Bushidō (“the way of the Even after the Tokugawa order, Japanese samurai”) and the cherry blossom symbol, swords maintained their symbolic value in which Nitobe associated with bushido in his society. Intellectuals in the Meiji period used book of the same name, were praised as virtues sword symbolism in establishing a national indigenous to and distinctive of Japan. The identity grounded in an idealization of the Imperial Shrine of Yasukuni was thought to be samurai; for example, Nitobe Inazo wrote a a holy place, where the souls of Japanese book called Bushido, which elevated Japan’s soldiers who died in battle were brought and reputation in international society, introducing would appear in the form of cherry blossoms to a fanciful version of the identity and ethics of the eyes of the living