Introduction
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Notes Introduction 1. Rev. 22:13 Revised Standard Version. 2. Examples of apocalyptic movements in non-Judeo-Christian religious traditions include Zoroastrianism in ancient Persia; Mahdism in premodern Islam; Maitreya faith in East Asia; the “cargo” cults of the South Pacific and the Ghost Dance movement of North America. See Kenelm Burridge, New Heaven New Earth: A Study of Millenarian Activities (New York: Schocken, 1969). Eschatologies in non-Western tradition are also discussed in detail in Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return: or, Cosmos and History, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971) (Originally published as Le Mythe de l’eternel retour: Archetypes et repetition). Japanese eschatological folklore is studied in Miyata Noboru, Shūmatsukan no minzo- kugaku (The Folklore of Eschatology) (Tokyo: Chikuma shoten, 1998), 27–84. 3. The Epic of Gilgamesh contains a flood myth that is considered to be from ca. the twentieth century BC. Also, the sacred Hindu Brahmanas written between the tenth and the sixth centuries BC include a myth detailing a devastating flood endured by Manu, ancestor of humanity. Discussion of flood myths can be found in Kusano Takumi, Seikimatsu: kamigami no shūmatsu monjo (Fin de Siècle: Apocalyptic Literature by the Gods) (Tokyo: Shin kigensha, 1997), 38–46. 4. Ikeuchi Megumi, Gendai arabu no shakai shisō (The Contemporary Arabic Social Thought) (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2002), 151–161. 5. Anime can refer to animated content in any genre in films, on television, on the Internet, and in video games. 6. It is important to note that in the Japanese context the “postwar period” has not yet ended. Outside Japan, many understand Japan’s postwar period to have come to an end with the Occupation in 1952, or with the start of the period of high economic growth in 1955, or even with the opening of the Tokyo Olympic Games in 1964, which for many represented Japan’s return to the world commu- nity. For most Japanese, however, sengo—which literally means “after the war,” but specifically refers to the period following the end of WWII—has not ended and has no foreseeable end. 158 NOTES 7. Junbungaku is usually understood to refer to modern literary works with artistic rather than commercial value, and is often regarded as the opposite of taishū bungaku, popular literature. 8. Saitō Tamaki, Bungaku no dansō (Dislocation in Literature) (Tokyo: Asahi shinbunsha, 2008), 10–17. 9. The economic impact of the recent best-selling trilogy by Murakami Haruki, 1Q84, is reported at over ¥10 billion (about US$100 million at an exchange rate of ¥100 to $1). The Evangelion series and its related derivatives, on the other hand, are reported to have had sales of over ¥150 billion (about $1.50 billion) between 1995 and 2008. It is notable that Evangelion has neither sequels nor prequels; the new film series of Evangelion are still based mostly on the original plot and characters. Chapter 1 1. The terms millennium in Latin and chilias in Greek signify a period of one thousand years. According to the Judeo-Christian tradition, millenarianism (also millenarism) is the belief by a religious, social, or political movement in a coming major transformation of society, after which all things will be changed in a particular way. Millennialism is a specific form of millenarism based on a one-thousand-year cycle, especially significant for Judeo-Christian tradition. Apocalypse is considered to be a form of millennialism which accompanies the major destruction of the community, the world or the universe. See Yonina Talmon, “Millenarism,” in International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences (New York: Macmillan-Free Press, 1968), 349–350; and G. W. Trompf, “Millenarism: History, Sociology, and Cross-Cultural Analysis,” The Journal of Religious History 24, 1 (February 2000), 108. 2. Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages (London: Pimlico, 1993), 4–20. 3. Ibid., 4, 18–26. 4. Mircea Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return: Or, Cosmos and History, trans. Willard R. Trask (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1971), 143. 5. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 19. 6. Frank Kermode, The Sense of An Ending: Studies in the Theory of Fiction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 25. 7. Kusano Takumi, Seikimatsu: Kamigami no shūmatsu monjo (Fin de Siècle: Apocalyptic Literature by the Gods) (Tokyo: Shin kigensha, 1997), 71. 8. Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium, 22. 9. Ibid., 89. 10. See historical examples of apocalyptic movements such as those by Franciscans, Brethren of the Free Spirit, Thomas Müntzer, and The Ranters in Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium. NOTES 159 11. Lucian Boia, Sekai no shūmatsu, trans. Moriya Nobuaki (Tokyo: Papyrus, 1992) (Originally published as La fin du monde), 98. 12. Ibid, 100–101. 13. Nagayama Yasuo, Natsukashii mirai (A Good Old Future) (Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 2001), 9–10. 14. Boia, Sekai no shūmatsu, 130–131. 15. Ibid., 150–154. 16. Boia, Sekai no shūmatsu, 150; and Nagayama, Natsukashii mirai, 10–13. 17. Ōsawa Masachi, Fukanōsei no jidai (The Age of Impossibility) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2008), 219–220. 18. Kermode, The Sense of An Ending, 7–8. 19. Trompf, “Millenarism: History, Sociology, and Cross-Cultural Analysis,” 108. 20. Kusano, Seikimatsu, 14–25; and Kermode, The Sense of An Ending, 3–6. 21. Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, 1–34. 22. Kusano, Seikimatsu, 17–18. 23. Eliade, The Myth of the Eternal Return, 141–147. 24. Ibid., 142. 25. Ibid., 141–142. 26. Ibid., 141–143. 27. Ibid., 154–156. 28. Ibid., 156–157. 29. Jean-François Lyotard, The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, and Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1984), xxiv. 30. Fredric Jameson, “Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism,” in Postmodernism: A Reader, ed. Thomas Docherty (New York: New York University Press, 1993), 62. 31. Ibid., 66–79. 32. As cited in Lee Quinby, Anti-Apocalypse: Exercise in Genealogical Criticism (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 1994), xxii. 33. Jacques Derrida, “Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in Philosophy,” trans. John P. Leavey, Jr., Oxford Literary Review 6 (1984): 3–37. 34. As cited in James Berger, After the End: Representation of Post-Apocalypse (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 8–9. 35. Ania Lichtarowicz, “Virtual kingdom richer than Bulgaria,” BBC News Online, Friday, March 29, 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/1899420. stm. 36. Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” The National Interest (Summer 1989): 3–18. 37. Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (London/New York: Free Press, 2006). 38. Berger, After the End, xiii. 160 NOTES 39. Ibid., xiii. 40. Ibid., xx. 41. Catherine Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then: A Feminist Guide to the End of the World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1996), 16–17. 42. D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse (London/New York: Penguin Books, 1996), Introduction. 43. Quinby, Anti-Apocalypse, Introduction. See also Lee Quinby, Millennial Seduction: A Skeptic Confronts Apocalyptic Culture (Ithaca/London: Cornell University Press, 1999). 44. Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then, 10. 45. Kazama Kenji, “Apocalypse Now,” Eureka: Poetry and Criticism 31, 2 (February 1999): 126–135. 46. Keller, Apocalypse Now and Then, 10. 47. Michele Marra, “The Development of Mappō Thought in Japan (I),” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 15, 1 (1988): 25–54. 48. Kazama, “Apocalypse Now,” 126–135. 49. Kusano, Seikimatsu, 58–69. 50. H. G. Wells, Taimu mashin, trans. Ishikawa Toshi (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 2002) (Originally published as The Time Machine). 51. Miyadai argues that the leader and followers of Aum perpetrated the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway because they could not endure endless life without the sense of an ending. See Miyadai Shinji, Owari naki nichijō wo ikiro: Aum kanzen kokufuku manyuaru (Live in the Endless Everyday: The Perfect Manual for Conquering Aum) (Tokyo: Chikuma shoten, 1998). Tsurumi’s book begins with the declaration that there will be no big ending in our life. See Tsurumi Wataru, Kanzen jisatsu manyuaru (The Complete Manual of Suicide) (Tokyo: Ōta shuppan, 1993) for further details. Chapter 2 1. Kurano Kenji, ed., Kojiki (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1963), 13–209. See also Kawai Hayao, Shinwa to Nihon jin no kokoro (Myth and the Japanese Mind) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2003), 21–104. 2. Tamura Yoshirō, Nihon bukkyōshi nyūmon (Introduction to the History of Japanese Buddhism) (Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten, 1969), 29. 3. Michele Marra, “The Development of Mappō Thought in Japan (I),” Japanese Journal of Religious Studies 15, 1 (1988): 25–54. See also Hayami Tasuku, Heian bukkyō to mappō shisō (Heian Buddhism and Mappō Thought) (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 2006), 196–199. 4. Sueki Fumihiko, Nihon bukkyōshi (The History of Japanese Buddhism) (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1992), 127–144. NOTES 161 5. Hōnen, the monk who advocated a new type of Amidism in the early Kamakura period, declared in his writing that the time is the Last Dharma Age, and all people are evil. Two other monks who were active after Hōnen, Shinran, founder of the Jōdo shin sect, and Ippen, founder of the Ji sect, were Amidists. Eisai, founder of the Rinzai sect, and Dōgen, founder of the Sōtō sect, belong to the Zen branch. Nichiren, founder of the Hokke sect, belongs to the Tendai branch. All these reformers left the same understanding of the present situa- tion as matsudai (the defiled age), bonpu (people without enlightenment), and hendo (the marginal land). The word hendo implies the place far from the Pure Land and from the center of the Buddhist teachings. See Tamura, Nihon bukkyōshi nyūmon, 115–117. 6. Ibid., 115–117. Also see Sueki Fumihiko, Nihon shūkyōshi (The History of Japanese Religion) (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2006), 73–75.