ANIME from Akira to Princess Mononoke Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation Susan J. Napier ANIME ✱ from Akira to Princess Mononoke Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation Susan J. Napier for St. Martin’s Griffin ANIME FROM AKIRA TO PRINCESS MONONOKE © Susan J. Napier, 2001 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. Portions of chapter 4, “Controlling Bodies,” first appeared in “The Frenzy of Metamorphosis: The Body in Japanese Pornographic Animation,” by Susan J. Napier in Word and Image in Japanese Cinema, Dennis Washburn and Carole Cavanaugh, eds. Reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2000 by PALGRAVE 175FifthAvenue,NewYork,N.Y. Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE is the new global publishing imprint of St. Martin ‘s Press LLC Scholarly and Reference Division and Palgrave Publishers Ltd (formerly Macmillan Press Ltd). ISBN 0-312-23862-2 hardback ISBN 0-312-23863-0 paperback Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Napier, Susan Jolliffe. Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke : experiencing contemporary Japanese animation / Susan J. Napier. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-312-23862-2 — ISBN 0-312-23863-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Animated films—Japan. I. Title. NC1766.J3 N37 2001 791.43’3—dc21 00-051473 Design by planettheo.com First edition: May 2001 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 Printed in the United States of America. For Julia Moon Prism Power! This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Acknowledgments..................................vii PART ONE INTRODUCTION CHAPTER ONE WhyAnime?........................................3 CHAPTER TWO AnimeandLocal/GlobalIdentity.......................15 PART TWO BODY, METAMORPHOSIS, IDENTITY CHAPTER THREE Akira and Ranma 1/2: The Monstrous Adolescent . 39 CHAPTER FOUR Controlling Bodies: The Body in Pornographic Anime . 63 CHAPTER FIVE Ghosts and Machines: The Technological Body . 85 CHAPTER SIX Doll Parts: Technology and the Body in Ghost in the Shell . 103 PART THREE MAGICAL GIRLS AND FANTASY WORLDS CHAPTER SEVEN The Enchantment of Estrangement: The Shojo intheWorldofMiyazakiHayao..............121 CHAPTER EIGHT Carnival and Conservatism in Romantic Comedy. 139 PART FOUR REMAKING MASTER NARRATIVES: ANIME CONFRONTS HISTORY CHAPTER NINE No More Words: Barefoot Gen, Grave of the Fireflies, and “Victim’s History” ..............................161 CHAPTER TEN Princess Mononoke: Fantasy, the Feminine, and the Myth of “Progress”. ....................................175 CHAPTER ELEVEN Waiting for the End of the World: Apocalyptic Identity . 193 CHAPTER TWELVE Elegies..........................................219 CONCLUSION AFragmentedMirror...............................235 APPENDIX The Fifth Look: Western Audiences andJapaneseAnimation.............................239 Notes...........................................257 Bibliography......................................291 Index...........................................301 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS One day in 1989 a student lingered after my Japanese class to show me one of the Japanese comic books (manga) he had frequently brought up in class discussion. Expecting something simple and upbeat along the lines of my childhood favorite, Superman, I was surprised, then transfixed. The comic he showed me, Akira, was a complex evocation of a twenty-first century dystopian Japan, dominated by beautifully rendered images of surpassing bleakness. Thanks to the manga, I was inspired the next year, while teaching in London, to go to the British premier of Akira and was again transfixed, gradually becoming aware that I was seeing something both wonderful and different. So my first acknowledgment must be to the student who first showed me Akira and to all the students and anime fans over the last 11 years who have shared with me their favorite manga and anime and their thoughts about them. I want particularly to thank Jonathan Nawrocki, Peter Siegenthaler, Kara Williams, Brian Ruh, and Alex Aguila, who have been especially helpful at various stages in the research of this book. Perhaps it was no coincidence that the premier of Akira was followed shortly thereafter by what I believe was the first conference on Japanese Popular Culture ever organized in the West. I must thank most deeply its organizers, Beth Berry and John Treat, who invited me to give a paper there. The paper turned out to be on Akira and the enthusiasticresponseattheconferencemademerealizethatthiswas a research topic worth pursuing at far greater length. Venturing to write a book-length discussion of anime was really journeying into undiscovered country. I could not possibly have done it without the generous awards from three institutions, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the University of Texas, whose awards gave me the time to leave the teaching world temporarily behind. I cannot thank enough VIII ✱ ANIME FROM AKIRA TO PRINCESS MONONOKE the friends/colleagues/mentors who helped me obtain these awards: Anne Allison, Helen Hardacre, Patrick Olivelle, Sharalyn Orbaugh, Miriam Silverberg, Arthur Stockwin, and Ezra Vogel. Others who helped along the way are Sharon Kinsella, Livia Monnet, Jay Rubin, Robert Khan, Henry Smith, Ian Reader, Alex Smith, Kotani Mari, and Takayuki Tatsumi. As always, I would like to thank my two most important mentors, Howard Hibbett and Asai Kiyoshi, who have remained marvelously supportive, especially considering how far I seemed to have traveled from the study of “pure literature.” Along the way I also made some exciting new friends in the anime community. I am grateful and honored by Helen McCarthy’s enthusiasm for the book. I also want to thank Marc Hairston for his consistent support and interest in the project. The editing of this book was a whole other journey in itself. I would like to thank Robert Luskin for his help in the initial stages and with the statistical surveys used in the Appendix. As for my editors at Palgrave—Anthony (Toby) Wahl, Alan Bradshaw, and Annjeanette Kern—they are in a class by themselves, the very best. I must especially extend my heartfelt gratitude to Toby, whose consistent support and enthusiasm for the project, combined with editorial brilliance and (perhaps even more important) saintlike patience, made him the perfect editor. LastlyIwanttothankthepeopleclosesttomewhoseliveswere most touched by anime (whether they wanted it to be or not). I want to thank Bill Barlow for his consistent interest, not to mention his willingness to attend anime conventions. And I want to thank my daughter, Julia, who lived through too many weekends of my writing and not playing with her, and to whom this book is dedicated. PART ONE ✱ INTRODUCTION This page intentionally left blank CHAPTER ONE WHY ANIME? THERE ARE MANY ANSWERS to the question that titles this chapter, as the rest of this introduction will demonstrate, but for now it is worth exploring the question itself. Japanese animation, or “anime,” as it is now usually referred to in both Japan and the West, is a phenomenon of popular culture. This means that much (some would argue most) of its products are short-lived, rising and falling due to popular taste and the demands of the hungry market place. Can or even should anime be taken as seriously as the extraordinary range of high cultural artifacts, from woodblock prints to haiku, that Japanese culture is famous for? Can or should anime be seen as an “art,” or should it only be analyzed as a sociological phenomenon, a key to understanding some of the current concerns abounding in present- day Japanese society? These are legitimate questions. As John Treat, one of the major scholars in this area, notes in his ground-breaking introduction to Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture: 4 ✱ ANIME FROM AKIRA TO PRINCESS MONONOKE To worry about the relation of the popular to high or official culture is to think about the perennial problem of value: perennial first because value is so exasperatingly mercurial ...andsecond because its determination only deflects us from understanding how cultures high, low and in-between exist in discursive and material relations of exchange, negotiation and conflict with each other.”1 The “culture” to which anime belongs is at present a “popular” or “mass” culture in Japan, and in America it exists as a “sub” culture. However, as Treat’s point about the mercuriality of value suggests, this situation may well change. Indeed, in Japan over the last decade, anime has been increasingly seen as an intellectually challenging art form, as the number of scholarly writings on the subject attest. Furthermore, anime is a popular cultural form that clearly builds on previous high cultural traditions. Not only does the medium show influences from such Japanese traditional arts as Kabuki and the woodblock print (originally popular culture phenomena themselves), but it also makes use of worldwide artistic traditions of twentieth- century cinema and photography. Finally, the issues it explores, often in surprisingly complex ways, are ones familiar to readers of contemporary “high culture” literature (both inside and outside Japan) and viewers of contemporary art cinema. Anime texts entertain audiences around the world on the most basic level, but, equally importantly, they also move and provoke viewers on other levels as well, stimulating