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Jacob Sundeen Elizabeth Bermingham ENGL 382 28 October 2011 Finding Japans Missing Identity Put on nearly any sort of Japanese anime, and you will probably notice a somewhat perplexing trend: Those supposedly Asian characters are peculiarly not-very-Asian-looking. In fact, many of these characters exhibit Western characteristics such as blond hair and pale, white skin. Then again, for every blond Western character you get a crazy pink-haired humananimal hybrid with eyes half the size of their already over-sized head. So now I pose you this question: What exactly is the identity of the characters in Japanese anime? Is it Japanese? Is it American? Or is it possibly something completely different? Anime walks a precarious line as it is neither clearly Japanese nor Western; it is mukokuseki, lacking a national identity completely. Susan J. Napier, Professor of Japanese Literature and Culture at the University of Texas and author of Anime: From Akira to Howls Moving Castle, puts it more eloquently: Anime is a world unto itself that offers a space for identity exploration in which the audience can revel in a safe form of Otherness unmatched by any other contemporary medium (26 27). So the characters essentially become de-Japanized in what animator Oshii Mamoru describes as an attempt to evade the fact that they are Japanese (25), and famed director Miyazaki bluntly says it is the result of the fact that the Japanese hate their own faces (25). Is this really true? Are the Japanese experiencing such a crisis of identity that they reject their own so fervently? Perhaps the question from earlier should be rephrased: How have the Japanese

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constructed a new identity through anime? Japanese culture sits at a unique place in society that sets them distinctly apart from other cultures: They have experienced technology at both of its extremes from a complete Western modernization to experiencing first-hand the utter devastation of the atomic bomb, and anime such as Grave of the Fireflies, Spirited Away, and Ghost in the Shell have become vessels in which Japan has been able to express this complex cultural background and consequently, construct their national identities. Japanese society is unique, its culture rich and full of history, but Japan had eyes on the industrialization of the West. The West held great power and influence and the only way to achieve that would be to follow their example, so Japan rapidly modernized their society between the 1960s and 1970s and, in the process, essentially became a Western country. What resulted is an obvious clash between the traditional aspects of Japanese society and the modern society that wished to expand its growth. Only so much can be gained without losing something else, and certain traditional aspects of Japanese culture became lost in the process of rapid modernization. Japan was now faced with an identity crisis: Was Japan a country of the East, the West, or something completely different? Eventually Japan faced a series of economic downturns, and the perceived failure (or at least inadequacy) of Japans postwar economic successled to an increasing disenchantment with the values and goals that much of postwar Japan has been built on (29). This modern society had failed them, and Japan was now in a sort of limbo, caught between the promises of modern society and the lost values of traditional society. Miyazakis Spirited Away captures the essence of this internalized search for identity in Japan as the main protagonist Chihiro becomes a representation of Japan. Chihiro herself is caught in a state of limbo, trapped between the spiritual world and her own, and not wholly accepted or respected in either world. Her search for her own identity represents Japans similar

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search and desire to reconnect with the traditional values of the past represented by the spirits in the film. In the end, Chihiro finds herself in a fantasy world where traditional Japanese culture comes alive in the form of the bathhouse, but beneath this faade of perfection there exists corruption as well which seems to suggest that even a complete return to traditional values is not in the best interest of Japan. Japan may have set itself apart from other Eastern countries in their process of rapid modernization, but another event isolated them even more. Out of all the atrocities committed on Earth, the genocides, and the ravages of war, the atomic bomb remains one of humans most cruel and diabolical inventions, and Japan remains the only country to have suffered the horrors of the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb is technology at its most efficiently destructive-best, and the aftermath of such devastation is something that doesnt just go away overnight or even by the next decade: its an experience that continues to affect the society today and that has created for many <in Japan> a collective sense of victimhood (28). Because of this, strong themes of apocalypse, a resistance to modern technology, and social anxieties about the future are prevalent in much of Japanese anime. A clear connection with Japans social distresses and Takahatas anime film Grave of the Fireflies, which follows a boy and his sister as they try to survive in Japan near the end of WWII, can be drawn. The opening scene depicts the young boy Seita alone in a subway station slowly dying of malnutrition as people pass him by, giving him little or no notice. Its a gripping and emotionally wrenching way to show not only how war has wreaked terrible repercussions on Japanese society but also how society has failed its own citizens, leaving them to starve and suffer on the side of the street. The boys isolation becomes representative of the social isolation experienced by Japan: Not only is Japan the only country to have suffered the atomic bomb, but they were the

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first non-Western nation to modernize successfully (27). Japan as a nation became isolated in a sense: they had become Western in the eyes of the Eastern countries around them, but they were not returned with the same respect by the Western countries they tried to emulate; they were caught between two worlds. And as evident in Grave of the Fireflies, social isolation leads ultimately to destruction: Seita and his sister Setsuko struggle to survive by themselves in an abandoned bomb shelter until Setsuko eventually dies of malnutrition, and Seita, as mentioned earlier, dies in a similar fashion in a subway station. Takahata seems to be giving us a brutally honest glimpse into the bitter reality of Japans societal woes and social isolation with his depiction of the struggles of Seita and Setsuko. The machinations of war may have been the instigators of their suffering, but technology isnt always necessary the problem in anime. The relationship is much more complex. Thomas Lamarre, professor at McGill University and author of The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation, argues that technology is not depicted wholly as a problem in Japanese anime but rather as a complex relationship and in which anime offers a critique of this modern technological condition (11). There are, of course, negatives and positives to both sides of technology, and this dual-nature of technology is represented in many of Miyazakis films: Technologies, while they appear by their very nature to generate social unevenness and to lead to global destruction (49) are also often a source of wonder and awe in Miyazakis films (49). Miyazakis films may seem to suggest a complete rejection of technology and a return to Earths natural pre-technology state, but this is not the case: Miyazaki does not deny the beauty and human ingenuity that powers much of our technology, and he does not want this to be lost. Vast destruction may result from technology, but Miyazakis films make us wonder if this destruction is inherent in technology or in humans (49). We, as humans, need to better

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understand our relationship with technology, and only then can we forge forward with a positive future. This struggle with the nature of technology is beautifully articulated in Oshii Mamorus anime film Ghost in the Shell as the Major, a cyborg, ponders her humanity while floating through a city canal on a boat, completely alone in a sea of humans. The Majors vulnerability expressed here suggests a profound sense of loss in relation to the modern world (Napier 32): How much of our humanity has been lost to technology? Similarly, how much of Japans culture has been lost in the process of modernization? Japan has experienced technology at its worst while wholly embracing it at the same time, and anime has allowed for Japan to express these cultural issues and help forge something that has constantly eluded them: a national identity. Like the Majors search for identity, Japan has been in a similar search, isolated and alone. For better or for worse, Japans troubled past has allowed for them to produce some of the most expressive and emotionally-charged pieces of animation that has ever been produced by any culture. Anime is one of the defining characteristics of Japanese culture, and it has become an inexorable part of their identity in the process.

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Works Cited Ghost in the Shell. Dir. Mamoru Oshii. Per. Atsuko Tanaka, Iemasa Kayumi, and Richard Epcar. Production I.G., 1995. Film. Grave of the Fireflies. Dir. Isao Takahata. Per. Tsutomu Tatsumi, Ayano Shiraishi, and Akemi Yamaguchi. Studio Ghibli, 1988. Film. Lamarre, Thomas. The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. Print. Napier, Susan J. Anime: From Akira to Howls Moving Castle. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005. Print. Spirited Away. Dir. Hayao Miyazaki. Per. Daveigh Chase, Suzanne Pleshette, and Miyu Irino. Studio Ghibli, 2001. Film.