The Japanification of Children's Popular Culture

THE JAPANIFICATION OF CHILDREN’S POPULAR CULTURE

From Godzilla to Miyazaki

Edited by Mark I.West

The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lanham, Maryland • Toronto • Plymouth, UK 2009 SCARECROW PRESS, INC.

Published in the United States of America by Scarecrow Press, Inc. A wholly owned subsidiary of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.scarecrowpress.com

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data The Japanification of children’s popular culture : from godzilla to miyazaki / edited by Mark I. West. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-5121-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 0-8108-5121-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) ISBN-13: 978-0-8108-6249-4 (ebook) ISBN-10: 0-8108-6249-2 (ebook) 1. Children–United States–Social conditions. 2. United States–Civilization– Japanese influences. 3. Popular culture–United States. 4. Popular culture– Japan. I. West, Mark I. HQ792.U56J37 2009 303.48'273052083–dc22 2008027163

ϱ™ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992. Manufactured in the United States of America. CONTENTS

Acknowledgments v Introduction vii Mark I.West 1 Godzilla, the Evolving Monster 1 Dale Pike 2 Reptar: The Rugrats Meet Godzilla 7 Jan Susina 3 Invasion of the Japanese Monsters: A Home-Front Report 17 Mark I.West 4 Hello Kitty in America 25 Kathy Merlock Jackson 5 The Allure of Anthropomorphism in Manga and Animé 41 Fred Patten 6 We All Live in a Pokémon World: Animated Utopia for Kids 53 Cary Elza 7 Pokémon as Theater: Training the Pocket Monsters of Self and Consumerism 73 Mark Pizzato

iii iv CONTENTS

8 Japanese Dominance of the Video-game Industry and the Future of Interactive Media 85 Joe Wezorek 9 Jet-Set Kids: Mutation/Seduction/Hybridization 107 Derek A. Burrill 10 Interviews with Adolescent Animé Fans 119 Brent Allison 11 North American Reactions to Yaoi 147 Antonia Levi 12 Paradigm Lost: How the Rising Ubiquity of All Things Japanese Ruined the National Pastime for One American Father 175 Bill Davis 13 Two Worlds, United by Animé 185 Elizabeth Flynn 14 The Cross-Cultural Appeal of the Characters in Manga and Animé 191 Hiroaki Hatayama 15 The Censorship of Japanese Animé in America: Do American Children Need to Be Protected from Dragon Ball? 199 Rieko Okuhara 16 Early Japanese Animation in the United States: Changing Tetsuwan Atomu to Astro Boy 209 Brian Ruh 17 Inu Yasha:The Search for the Jewel of Four Souls in America 227 Nicoloe Farrell 18 Folklore and Gender Inversion in Cardcaptor Sakura 249 Bill Ellis 19 Anima and Animé: Environmental Perspectives and New Frontiers in Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away 267 Nathalie op de Beeck Index 285 About the Contributors 291 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

My son, Gavin West, first became interested in Japanese popular culture as a toddler and, now that he is a teenager, this interest has developed into a passion. The decision to edit this book is tied to his fascination with animé and other forms of popular culture that have Japanese roots. I thank him for introducing me to this fascinating and multifaceted world. My appreciation also goes to the contributors of this volume, not only for sharing their expertise but also for their patience. I became a full- time university administrator shortly after I began working on this book, and this development limited the time I had available to complete this project. Over the course of editing this book, I worked with three supportive editors at Scarecrow Press. Sue Easun is the editor who first encouraged me to pursue the idea of editing this volume. Kim Tabor helped me during the middle stages of editing this book. Most recently, Corinne O. Burton has played an important role in bringing this project to comple- tion. My thanks go to all three of them. My thanks also go to Patty Moore, who helped me with some of the correspondence with the contributors, and to my wife, Nancy North- cott, who played a supportive role throughout the entire process of editing this volume.

INTRODUCTION Mark I.West

When Tokyo Disneyland Park opened in 1983, commentators cited this development as an example of the global reach of American popular culture. America, however, is not the only country to export its popular culture products. For more than fifty years, many young people in Amer- ica have taken an interest in various forms of Japanese popular culture. This phenomenon started with the first Godzilla movie, which opened in Japan in 1954 and in America in 1956. Other Godzilla movies soon followed, and before long Godzilla became nearly as popular among American children as he was with Japanese youngsters. Next came a wave of Japanese animated television programs, generally known as an- imé. At first only a few Japanese animated programs aired on American television, the most famous of which were Astro Boy (sometimes called Mighty Atom) and Speed Racer. Gradually, however, more and more such programs were imported. Nowadays, animé accounts for a major portion of the programming for children aired on American commercial television networks. Soon American children embraced other forms of Japanese popular culture, including comics (generally known as manga), computer/video role-playing games, and feature-length films. The films of Hayao Miyazaki have become especially popular as well as critically acclaimed. In 2003, his film Spirited Away won the Academy Award for

vii viii INTRODUCTION animation. The granting of this award underscores America’s increasing acceptance of animé and other forms children’s popular culture that have Japanese roots. For many years, American adults seemed largely oblivious to the increasing Japanese influence on children’s popular culture, but beginning in the 1990s critics began to take notice of this phenomenon. David Sheff was one of the first Americans to write a book on this topic. In Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Captured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children (1993), Sheff took an alarmist response to the growing popularity of Japanese video games among American children. Soon other American authors began writing about Japanese popular culture from a more sympathetic point of view. Sev- eral American authors wrote scholarly books about the history and nature of animé and manga. Three important examples are Antonia Levi’s Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese Animation (1996), Frederik Schodt’s Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga (1996), and Susan Napier’s Animé: From Akira to Princess Mononoke (2001). These books include passages about the popularity of Japanese popular culture in America, but none focuses on this subject. More recently, a few books have been published that began to explore why many American children gravitate toward forms of popular culture that have Japanese connections. For example, in Wrong About Japan (2004), Peter Carey writes about a trip that he and his twelve-year-old son took to Japan in response to his son’s fascination with manga and an- imé. In Pikachu’s Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon (2004), Joseph Tobin compiles a number of scholarly essays about the international appeal of Pokémon, and several of the chapters deal specif- ically with the popularity of Pokémon in the United States. As Carey’s and Tobin’s volumes suggest, there are aspects of manga, animé, and other forms of Japanese popular culture that resonate with American children even though these children do not fully understand the historical and cultural references imbedded in these imports from Japan. The contributors to The Japanification of Children’s Popular Cul- ture: From Godzilla to Miyazaki discuss the history of this phenomenon and provide a variety of reasons why so many American children like Japanese and Japanese-influenced forms of popular culture. These con- INTRODUCTION ix tributors come from diverse backgrounds, and consequently, they approach this overarching topic from different angles. Some take a scholarly approach, while others write out of personal experience. Some focus on particular animé programs or other specific forms of popular culture. Other contributors, however, are more interested in the responses that audiences have to these forms of popular culture. This book begins with Dale Pike’s chapter about Godzilla, which is a fitting start since it was the 1956 American release of the first Godzilla movie that introduced American children to Japanese popular culture. Godzilla not only won the hearts of many American children, but as Jan Susina points out in the second chapter, Godzilla also served as the in- spiration for Reptar from Rugrats. The third chapter looks at other Japanese monsters in addition to Godzilla and explores some of the reasons why these monsters appeal to American children. The monstrous is an important element in Japanese popular culture, but so too is cuteness, which the Japanese call kawaisa. Kathy Merlock Jackson discusses the appeal of this aspect of Japanese popular culture in her chapter titled “Hello Kitty in America.” Fred Patten, a well- known figure in animé fandom circles, examines the connections between cuteness and anthropomorphism as portrayed in popular animé and manga. Characters from Japanese popular culture, both monstrous and cute, also figure in computer and video games. The most famous example is Pokémon, which became popular in America in the late 1990s. In her chapter, Cary Elza provides an overview of the success of Pokémon in America. In his chapter, Mark Pizzato looks at the Pokémon as a form of theater. Of course, Pokémon is just one of many video games that origi- nated in Japan. As Joe Wezorek details in his chapter, throughout the history of the video-game industry, Nintendo and other Japanese com- panies have played a central part in the development of both the tech- nology and the content of video games. Derek Burrill devotes his chapter to analyzing the appeal of a Japanese video game titled Jet Set Kids. Several of the contributors to this book focus on American responses to animé and other forms of Japanese popular culture. In his chapter, Brent Allison reports on a series of interviews he conducted with American teenagers who are animé fans. Like Allison, Antonia Levi also conducted x INTRODUCTION a series of interviews with animé fans, and she analyzes the results of this research in her chapter titled “North American Reactions to Yaoi.” As Levi explains in her chapter, the term yaoi generally refers to gay ro- mances written by women for girls in manga or animé. The next four chapters also deal with American responses to animé and manga, but the authors of these chapters draw primarily from personal experience. In a personal essay titled “Paradigm Lost: How the Rising Ubiquity of All Things Japanese Ruined the National Pastime for One American Father,” Bill Davis writes humorously about his son’s fascination with Japanese popular culture. In her chapter titled “Two Worlds, United by Anime,” Elizabeth Flynn discusses the role that an- imé played in her childhood, which she spent partially in Japan and partially in the United States. Hiroaki Hatayama is from Japan, but when he went to graduate school in the United States, he was surprised to see the popularity of animé and manga among many Americans. In his chapter, he examines the differences between how Americans and Japanese respond to animé and manga. Rieko Okuhara is also a citizen of Japan who attended graduate school in the United States, and like Hiroaki Hatayama, she took an interest in the popularity of animé in America. She soon realized, however, that the versions of animé programs on American television are not true to the originals as aired in Japan. She writes about this issue in her chapter titled “The Censorship of Japanese Animé in America: Do American Children Need to Be Pro- tected from Dragon Ball?” The final four chapters all focus on particular examples of animé that have gained popularity in America. Brian Ruh discusses the beginnings of this phenomenon in his chapter titled “Early Japanese Animation in the United States: Changing Tetsuwan Atomu to Astro Boy.” In her chapter, Nicoloe Farrell examines Inu Yasha and provides some reasons why this program is so appealing to many Americans. Bill Ellis is an ex- pert in the area of folklore studies, and he draws on this expertise in his chapter titled “Folklore and Gender Inversion in Cardcaptor Sakura.” Nathalie op de Beeck concludes the book by analyzing two of the most important films by Hayao Miyazaki in her chapter titled “Anima and An- imé: Environmental Perspectives and New Frontiers in Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away.” INTRODUCTION xi

WORKS CITED

Carey, Peter. Wrong About Japan. New York: Vintage Books, 2004. Levi, Antonia. Samurai from Outer Space: Understanding Japanese Animation. Chicago: Open Court, 1996. Napier, Susan. Animé: From Akira to Princess Mononoke. New York: Palgrave, 2001. Schodt, Frederik L. Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 1996. Sheff, David. Game Over: How Nintendo Zapped an American Industry, Cap- tured Your Dollars, and Enslaved Your Children. New York: Random House, 1993. Tobin, Joseph, ed. Pikachu’s Global Adventure: The Rise and Fall of Pokémon. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004.

GODZILLA, THE EVOLVING MONSTER Dale Pike

In 1954, Toho Motion Picture Company released Gojira to the Japanese movie-going public. The film’s opening scenes establish the allegorical emphasis of the story, as a fishing boat crew is exposed to deadly levels of radiation from some mysterious source. We ultimately discover that the destructive force is a giant mutated dinosaur known as Gojira. As the story unfolds, it is clear that the devastation ultimately unleashed upon Tokyo by the reptilian star is directly symbolic of the nuclear devastation caused by the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of World War II. In 1956, Godzilla, King of Monsters was released in the United States. As the film was dubbed into English, it was edited significantly, with the lead American actor, Raymond Burr, performing new scenes to fill out the American version of the story. Despite the obvious references to America’s atomic warfare and its impact on Japanese society, Godzilla was well received in the United States (Ryfle). In fact, Godzilla’s influence as a cultural icon continues to resonate to this day. While few children have actually watched many of the original series of Godzilla films, nearly any child in the United States could tell you something about Godzilla. Even those who couldn’t identify Godzilla directly are exposed to numerous Godzilla references in many different

1 2 CHAPTER 1 pop culture formats. For example, the popular children’s series The Rug- rats includes a character named “Reptar” who is the subject of an hour- long special called “Runaway Reptar” (Ho) that is essentially an homage to the entire Godzilla industry. There is even another character introduced, “Dactar,” a pterodactyl who seems to represent the plethora of flying monsters that do battle with Godzilla over the years. Episodes of many popular American animated series, from The Simpsons (Reardon) to South Park (“Mecha-Streisand”), reference Godzilla in many ways. So how did Godzilla make the transition from an allegorical embodi- ment of nuclear destruction to a Saturday morning superstar? What is it about Godzilla that resonates with youth of so many cultures? Godzilla was among the first of an entire genre of science-fiction films that dealt with massively destructive monsters. These films, dubbed kaiju eiga or “monster movies,” are categorized by Napier (1996) as “se- cure horror” films due to their formulaic approach to conflict and reso- lution. The monster causes destruction, but science and government work together to eventually emerge victorious. This formula proved to be appealing to American audiences. Several factors contributed to the success of Godzilla in the United States, despite its obviously foreign origins. The anxiety experienced by the Japanese over the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the end of the World War II were at the core of Godzilla’s message. This message became truly universal once the stalemate of the Cold War pumped nuclear tensions higher and spread them farther than they had ever been before. It was into this arena that Godzilla was unleashed. As with the fairy tales and ghost stories of every culture, Godzilla allowed moviegoers the ability to experience not only the catharsis of fear, but also the thrill of victory represented by the destruction of the monster at the end of the film. While the original Japanese presentation of the film had significant Japanese cultural overtones, the film was heavily edited—replacing the somewhat heavy emotional tone of the original with a familiar nuclear monster theme that was already coming of age in American cinema. Such B-movie classics as The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953) and Them! (1954) paved the way for the concepts and presentation of Godzilla: King of Monsters (1956). Adding to the credibility of the U.S. adaptation, Raymond Burr does a convincing job of narrating the film, GODZILLA, THE EVOLVING MONSTER 3 especially considering the stretches necessary to film scenes with stand- ins and fill-in footage. Attempting to assign any sort of comprehensive symbolism over time, however, would prove a most difficult task. The Godzilla who stood as an allegorical nuclear protest in the original film experienced a series of schizophrenic identity shifts over the next several decades. In the 1960s, Godzilla was the action hero of Japanese cinema, gradually losing his “force of nature” aloofness and ultimately becoming directly involved with the protection of Japan from other monsters. The 1970s saw a decline in the popularity of the Godzilla series of films, both in Japan and abroad. This market shrinkage encouraged the marketers at Toho to find another demographic, and the one they finally settled on was the young adolescent boy. The fantasy appeal of a giant dinosaur that can crush buildings beneath its clawed feet is undeniably attractive to male children of almost any culture. Add the fighter jets, space aliens, and kung-fu-style fighting scenes with a variety of other fantastic creatures, and you have a recipe for success. This appeal to youthful fantasy is most powerfully expressed in the ad- mittedly campy 1967 film Son of Godzilla, featuring a somewhat nur- turing and fatherly Godzilla teaching his son the tricks of the trade. It is this fairly wild deviation from Godzilla’s personality pedigree that, I be- lieve, serves as one of the primary bridges to American children’s popular culture. During the 1970s and 1980s, the English-dubbed versions of these kid-friendly Godzilla movies were aired on countless Saturday af- ternoon television movie programs across the United States. I grew up watching Godzilla perform all-star wrestling moves on his monster ene- mies. I remember watching Godzilla’s son blow smoke rings, trying to be like dear old dad. Whereas the American versions of nuclear monster films had long since lost their widespread appeal, Toho’s dogged com- mitment to the Godzilla franchise ended up producing a monster mutated once again, only this time by focus groups and marketing analyses. Godzilla became a kid’s commodity, and with the proliferation of public- access programming caused first by the proliferation of UHF television channels in the early 1970s and later by cable television, there was a need to fill up those less-than-prime-time slots in the programming schedule. The inexpensive licensing of the Toho films made them ideal candidates for widespread broadcast.