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Fantasies of War and Nation in Recent Japanese Cinema

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Fantasies of War and Nation in Recent Japanese Cinema Volume 4 | Issue 2 | Article ID 1707 | Feb 16, 2006 The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Fantasies of War and Nation in Recent Japanese Cinema Aaron Gerow Fantasies of War and Nation in Recent dialogue, each of these recent war films has a Japanese Cinema complex and sometimes contradictory story to tell. By Aaron Gerow There are certainly factors other than Japan’s It comes as no surprise that the recent recent turn to the right for the emergence of resurgence of neo-nationalist thought in Japan such films. The largest is probably the film would find expression in cinema.[1] With the industry’s effort to revive its fortunes, issue of the nation and its ability to fight war, especially as the Ministry of Economy, Trade currently prohibited by Article 9 of theand Industry has put increasing stress on Japanese constitution, being vigorouslyJapan’s content business, now led by anime, challenged by the ruling party and the right, in games and character sales, as a strategic part through actual deployment of Self-Defense industry. The Agency for Cultural Affairs has Forces in Iraq and other danger zones, it is also offered policy suggestions to bolster film significant that the year 2005 saw the release culture in Japan. After the industry’s of four big budget spectaculars offeringprecipitous decline following its peak around particular visions of Japanese fighting wars. 1960, bottoming out in the early 1990s, the film Two, Lorelei (“Rorerai,” director: Higuchi business has seen a slight increase in its Shinji) and Samurai Commando: Mission 1549 fortunes in recent years. (“Sengoku Jieitai 1549,” director: Tezuka Masaaki), are outright fantasies, albeit ones The Japanese market is the second biggest in that offer alternative narratives of historical the world, but the share held by domestic wars (World War II in the former, the sixteenth producers hovers at only around 30-40%. In century civil wars in the latter). contrast, the Korean film industry has been booming, thanks in part to concerted Another, Aegis (“Bokoku no ijisu,” director: government support not yet seen in Japan. The Sakamoto Junji), depicts a potential scenario Japanese industry has not been blind to the for Japan’s current military forces; and the last success of such Korean blockbusters as Shiri one, Yamato (“Otokotachi no Yamato,” director: (“Swiri,” director: Kang Je-gyu, 1999), Joint Sato Jun’ya), presents a spectacular and rather Security Area (“Gongdong gyeongbi guyeok melodramatic retelling of the last days of the JSA,” director: Park Chan-wook, 2000) and Tae famed battleship Yamato in World War II. The Guk Gi: The Brotherhood of War (“Taegukgi first three films were all scripted and/or based hwinalrimyeo,” director: Kang Je-gyu, 2004) all on stories penned by the successful novelist war-related action films that were also hits in Fukui Harutoshi, and all four performed well at Japan. It has thus latched onto war the box office, with Lorelei ending as the ninth spectaculars as one means of competing in the highest grossing Japanese film of 2005.[2] Yet film market. Its own war films may have been not all of them are simple celebrations of the one factor in the rise in market share, from nation at war. While they could potentially 37.5% to 41.3%, captured by Japanese films in serve as the mouthpiece for right-wing2005 compared to the year before, even as the 1 4 | 2 | 0 APJ | JF overall market has shrunk.[3] peace on the superpowers. Such works marked the fact that anime fandom, and related Recourse to war is hardly a new tactic in the audiences such as those for manga, would history of Japanese film; indeed war has played increasingly reveal right-wing tendencies in the a major role in shaping the industry throughout 1990s. These would eventually be represented its history. The first movie boom, which by such right-leaning subculture commentators eventually gave itinerant exhibitors the capital as Sato Kenji and Kiridoshi Risaku, or neo- to build the initial theaters and studios, was nationalist manga artists like Kobayashi due to the success of films showing Japan’s Yoshinori. victories in the Russo-Japanese War in 1904-05. The state reorganization of the industry during Such a history reminds us that the recent World War II, aimed at making film a more resurgence of nationalist images in popular efficient mode of war propaganda, also helped culture is not without precedent. What is establish the structural foundations for the different now is first and foremost the fact that industry’s golden era in the 1950s. From the popular phenomena that were largely regarded 1950s to the 1960s, studios like Shintoho and as low culture (Shintoho, after all, was a second Toho owed some of their success to war films rate studio that also specialized in sex and glorifying World War II martyrs like Yamamoto horror films), are now much more respected by Isoroku or the young kamikaze pilots. These official media and institutions. Compared to the were not whole-scale celebrations of national 1950s works, which tried to find glory while victories—the postwar climate probably could remaining cognizant of the reality of defeat, not sustain such openly militarist films—but as recent films, supported by the 1990s boom in individualized melodramas of victimization and alternative history novels, are also much more sacrifice, they helped lay the seeds for later bold in revising history to fantasize Japanese popular neo-nationalism in their reinforcement victories, free, in some sense, of the “taboos” of of Japanese masculinity, the veneration of the postwar Japanese democracy (sengo sacrificial war dead, and their presentation of minshushugi) that so many on the pop culture wartime Japanese as heroic victims of external right complain of. Samurai Commando: Mission forces.[4] 1549 is a case in point: it offers a more positive ending than its decidedly tragic earlier Live action war films declined in the 1970s, as incarnation, G. I. Samurai (“Sengoku Jieitai,” did stories set in actual wars. But fantasy war director Saito Mitsumasa) from 1979. We films, which could be traced back to such films should be careful, however, of perceiving a as Atragon (“Kaitei gunkan,” director: Honda monolithic quality to right-wing revisionist Ishiro, 1963), a Toho special effects movie in nationalism in Japanese popular culture. The which remnants of the Imperial Navy save the visions of a fighting Japan presented in these Earth from invading aliens, took up the slack films, precisely because they are often especially in the field of anime. For instance, contradictory, having only been effected the successful Space Battleship Yamato (“Uchu through certain compromises and ideological senkan Yamato,” both a TV series and a 1977 contortions that tell us as much about the film directed by Masuda Toshio) offered the obstacles nationalism faces in Japan as the wishful story that resurrecting the sunken gains it has made. Close analysis of these texts battleship Yamato was the only way to save the is thus essential to understanding the meanings human race, and Silent Service (“Chinmoku no they try to create and represent. In this article, kantai,” director: Takahashi Ryosuke, 1995), I would like to focus on two films that offer the based on a manga, showed a rogue Self- most prominent image of a “victorious” Japan, Defense Force warship independently forcing Lorelei and Aegis. 2 4 | 2 | 0 APJ | JF First, let me summarize the stories of these two as it seems. The Lorelei System is rather brutal films. Although the novel for Lorelei was technology, practically draining the girl Paula actually written concurrent with the script, the of life in order to work. Asakura’s men on the film version reduces the long and detailed plot sub then try to take command, revealing that of the novel into a more simple, uplifting story the officer’s plan in fact is not to stop the next of men on a mission to defend their loved ones, A-bomb attack, but actually to allow it, with a focus as much on their loves and simultaneously turning over the Lorelei System friendships as their heroism. The story, set in to the Americans. Asakura’s reasoning, very the last days of WWII, centers on a submarine, briefly, is as follows: Japan made enormous the I-507, manufactured by the Germans but mistakes during the war, under a command acquired by the Japanese after VE Day, that that was incompetent and irresponsible. In a contains the Lorelei System. That system, scene where he confronts the top military initially a mystery, is ultimately revealed to be brass, Asakura even "proves" their cowardice composed of a German-born, teenage girl with and refusal to take responsibility for their paranormal powers who, when attached to actions. For Japan to surrender as is, he elaborate sensory apparatus, provides the sub argues, would be to allow the main government with extremely accurate mapping andand military leaders to live and, arguably, go on trajectory information, something that makes to lead postwar Japan. Asakura worries about the sub virtually invincible. The sub’s mission, the postwar Japan that would be produced by however, is not to attack America, but to save such cowards, one in which no one takes Japan. Right after the bomb drops onresponsibility and thus no one really makes an Hiroshima, a member of the Navy command, authentic commitment to their country. He thus Captain Asakura, orders Lieutenanteffectively advocates the suicide of the Commander Masami to take the I-507, break nation—or at least its beheading. The atomic through US Navy defense lines, and attack the bombing of Tokyo, he reasons, would instantly airfield on Tinian Island before more atomic eliminate the wartime leaders, clean the slate, bombs can be launched.
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