Body Horror in Japanese Media: Manga
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BODY HORROR IN JAPANESE MEDIA: MANGA by Tatiana Ivanchenko A Third Year Research Project in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts in Cultural Studies at The School of Advanced Studies University of Tyumen June 2020 МИНИСТЕРСТВО НАУКИ И ВЫСШЕГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ РОССИЙСКОЙ ФЕДЕРАЦИИ Федеральное государственное автономное образовательное учреждение высшего образования «ТЮМЕНСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ УНИВЕРСИТЕТ» ШКОЛА ПЕРСПЕКТИВНЫХ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ (SAS) ТЮМГУ Директор Школы к.ф.н., Ph.D. А.В. Щербенок КУРСОВАЯ РАБОТА БОДИ-ХОРРОР В ЯПОНСКИХ МЕДИА: МАНГА 50.03.01 Искусства и гуманитарные науки Выполнила работу Студентка 3-ого курса Иванченко Татьяна Сергеевна Очной формы обучения Руководитель Джонс Дж. А. Питер PhD Тюмень 2020 DECLARATION OF ORIGINALITY By submitting this research project, I hereby certify that: I am its sole author and that any ideas, techniques, quotations, or any other material from the work of other people included in my research project, published or otherwise, are fully acknowledged in accordance with the standard referencing practices of my major; and that no third-party proofreading, editing, or translating services have been used in its completion. Tatiana Ivanchenko WORD COUNT: 4753 3 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT………………………………………………… ……………………….5 INTRODUCTION… …………………………………………………………………6 WHO IS A PROTAGONIST OF BODY HORROR ………………………………..7 JAPANESE TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE OF MODERNITY… .…………………8 A BRIEF HISTORY OF MANGA… ………………………………………………10 WORKS CONSIDERED …………………………………………………………..12 NATURAL …………………………………………………………………………12 JAPANESE FOLKLORE AND URBAN CYBORG BODY ……………………...16 A SENSE OF OWNERSHIP AND AGENCY …………………………………….19 INDUSTRIAL FEAR ……………………………………………………………....21 CONCLUSION… …………………………………………………………………..25 BIBLIOGRAPHY… ………………………………………………………………..27 FIGURES… ………………...………........…………………………………………32 4 ABSTRACT Considering interrelationships between the human, nature, and technology in five manga comics — Ōtomo Katsuhiro’s Akira (1982-1990), Iwaaki Hitoshi’s Parasyte (1989-1995), Itō Junji’s U zumaki (1998-1999), G yo (2001-2), and M old (1991) — this paper explores relationships between primal fears, heritage, and cultural change in modern Japan. To the extent that Japanese manga has been influenced by Western tendencies, I approach these works through the lens of the body-horror, familiar from Western film studies. I investigate several motifs that constitute the horror narrative of these works: the body, the natural, industrial fear, and the cyborg. Although this exploration can be attributed as a general contribution to manga studies, it also deals more broadly with the particular culture of Japanese studies of religions and folk beliefs in the urban environment. I argue that the relationships of human and inorganic, or organic but foreign objects are depicted in a way to attest to a belief that nature and technologies are foreign to each other – and therefore their fusion being frightening. But at the same time I have noticed that the very possibility of this fusion (what is imaginable seems possible) shown in given works, forces the reader to speculate, whether they are so different to the extent of ultimate incompatibility. And the consequence of allowing this fusion to happen is implemented in the Haraway’s concept of the cyborg. 5 INTRODUCTION The human has changed its conception of itself throughout the course of history. It has imagined itself as part of an evolutionary tree, medicalized its body, and more recently approached the moral dilemma, through creating conscious robots, of its affinity to machines. Works of culture in modern Japan, as of one of the countries aspiring to technological superiority, have developed certain dreams of scientific leaps along these lines. Consequently, it has also been afraid of harmful technologies and their potential threat to the organic human body. Body horror plays on exactly this fear, as it explores how a fusion of the body with foreign objects can inevitably result in disaster. In this paper, I will explore this human fear from the perspective of social constructivism, although I simultaneously assume the biological determinist position. Although fear is a defense mechanism, hard-wired into humans to protect them from basic dangers, I suggest that some more complex fears are culturally defined and can become more or less scary, depending on stages of culture. This was the case, for example, with the commodification of Oni demons in Japan, which emerged as a result of a trend towards rationalization which began as early as the 17th century, and which was later driven further by the advent of consumerism.1 1 Noriko Reider, Japanese Demon Lore: Oni from Ancient Times to the Present (Logan: Utah State University Press, 2010), 91-95. 6 By considering the treatment of body horror in Japanese manga, I am not only talking about works being officially tagged as belonging to the body horror, but rather works presenting graphic violations of the human body as one of the main components of the plot of the manga novels. Being violated in any way, the human body, as I argue, becomes the one of a cyborg, enhanced and expanded through time and space, losing or gaining organic or inorganic parts. WHO IS A PROTAGONIST OF BODY HORROR? Graphic violation of the body is not a new subject of art and literature (whether you consider Hans Andersen’s original tales, or Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein). But as a solid genre, body horror appeared in Western cinema in late 1970s, before having its fame decline after the 1980s. Legit, dictionary body horror is characterized by uncontrollable and graphic changes of the body, and is divided into two sub-groups: medical (with a medical setting, where the protagonist is usually a scientist or doctor inflicting the disaster on himself); and non-medical.2 Either way, bodily violations in the genre lead to the victim losing basic functions, feeling a disgust towards their own body, and the frustration of not being able to escape their horrible condition. 2 Shelley F. Baker, “Body-horror Movies: Their Emergence and Evolution.”. PhD diss. (Sheffield Hallam University, 2000), 4-8. 7 Moreover, the resulting mutant poses a danger for the rest of society. Body horror, in fact, does more than showing images: it explores relationships between the human and its self-image, and the mutant and the society. This mutant, I would argue, is nothing less than a Harawaean cyborg: a creature of blurred boundaries. For the cyborg, living in-between is usually the only possible way of existing. While diluting the boundaries between human and machine and human and animal, the cyborg also observes changes in how usual things become framed in a new way. For instance, an organism becomes a biotic component, and the absence of the divide between public and private is defined as a cyborg citizenship.3 Donna Haraway states how previously existing divides should be eliminated, as they bring with them some confusing and exploitative biopolitics. It is my aim to insert this insight into the study of cyborgs and their constructions in Japanese culture. JAPANESE TRAUMATIC EXPERIENCE OF MODERNITY Modern times in general are characterized by a break with traditional habits, including a wider unification and pluralization of times,4 the advent of new 3 Donna J. Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto,” Manifestly Haraway (University of Minnesota Press, London,2016), 14-15, 28-29. 4 Stephen Kern, The Culture of Time and Space 1880-1918 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983). 8 technologies and thus changing living habits within the environment.5 In modern times the “struggle” (they may not fight consciously, but rather attempt to cohabit) between humans and the environment has taken a big step forward. This is not only because the latter became “armed” with nuclear reactors or the Arctic ozone gap, but also because the environment has managed to shift the human perception about himself. The Japanese experience of modernity has consisted of rethinking or reconstructing (national) identity in the light of the globalization, natural disasters, and wars. At some point in time, Japan experienced a so-called “cultural homelessness,”6 during which time it felt an alienation towards itself, and tried to identify with and at the same time to reject the West, with its standards and aesthetics. At the same time, it attempted to establish itself by oppressing others, while deciding what to do with the fast proliferation of the mass culture. One of the main figures of early-modern Japanese literature was the city landscape and its transformation. The city was used to express different feelings and ideas. Disruptions made by an earthquake in Kanto region (1923), during which half of the old Tokyo was destroyed, were interpreted as losing the cultural roots together 5 Robin Walz, Modernism (London: Routledge, 2008), 3. 6 Seiji Lippit, Topographies of Japanese Modernism (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 5-7. 9 with the historical buildings of the city. The disaster inflicted, thus, “the sense of fragility of the modern city”.7 Depicting the urban environment or space in general was connected to the events the writer intended to set, and to the general mood and ideology of the novel. Thus, Shanghai was depicted as a dirty and decaying space, as the writer expressed the justification for imperial aspirations or national anxieties of Japan of that time.8 Postwar Japan continued the construction of its identity. This time the country underwent the trauma of six years of colonization and great losses of people and capital. Japan needed to rebuild itself as a strong and competitive country, one that could stand no lower than USA, its former colonizer,9 while also imposing the revised form of Shinto on citizens as a state religion to promote nationalist values.10 Restoring these glories, Japan boosted its technological and economic progress, while manga, all the way after World War II, played a role by establishing a vast international market and cultural influence. 7 Lippit, 22–23. 8 Lippit, 22-23. 9 Roman Rosenbaum,“Reading Shōwa History through Manga,” Manga and the Representation of Japanese History, ed.