Skip to content
BY-NC-ND 3.0 license Open Access Published by De Gruyter Mouton March 3, 2015

Bodies of future memories: the Japanese body in science fiction anime

  • Dolores Martinez EMAIL logo
From the journal Contemporary Japan

Abstract

This paper analyzes the role of the fighting women in Japanese anime near the end of the twentieth century. It argues that these female heroes are not just shōjo (‘young girls’) who represent Japan the nation, nor are they mere projections of otaku desire, or token women included to attract female fans. Rather than that, I maintain that these female heroes are what could be described as “cyborg goddesses,” who offer an escape from the present’s dilemmas. An analysis of whom and what they are saving reveals a desire to return to an idealized Japanese past, while representing contemporary predicaments and concerns about the future. These heroes embody a form of “honorific individualism” (Ikegami 1995), based on a strong sense of individuality, and they have the potential to generate change by challenging the conformist status quo

Abstract

本稿では、20世紀末の日本のアニメにおける戦う女性の役割を分析する。これらのヒロインたちは、ただ単に日本国家を代表する「少女」、また、単なるオタク欲望の投影、あるいは女性ファンを引き付けるための女性像ではないことを示すものである。むしろそれよりも、これらのヒロインたちが今日的なジレンマからの逃避を提供する「サイボーグ女神」として表現されると考える。彼女たちが誰もしくは何を救済しているのかという分析からは、現代の苦境と将来への懸念を表しつつ、理想化された日本の過去に戻りたいという願望が暗示される。これらのヒロインたちは、強い個性に基づき、「名誉ある個人主義」(Ikegami 1995)を具現化する。そして、彼らは現状への順応主義に挑戦することで、変化を生成する可能性がある。

References

Anno, Hideaki (director and writer). 1995-1996. Shin Seiki Evangerion [Neon Genesis Evangelion]. Tokyo: TV Tokyo.Search in Google Scholar

Aramaki, Shinji (director). 2004. Appurushīdo [Appleseed]. Tokyo: Toho.Search in Google Scholar

Bolton, Christopher. 2002. The mecha’s blind spot: “Patlabor 2” and the phenomenology of anime. Science Fiction Studies 29(3). 453-74.Search in Google Scholar

Braidotti, Rosi. 2002. Metamorphoses: Towards a materialist theory of becoming. Cambridge: Polity Press & Blackwell.Search in Google Scholar

Caputi, Jane. 2004. Goddesses and monsters: Women, myth, power, and popular culture. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Search in Google Scholar

Coulmas, Florian. 2007. Population decline and ageing in Japan: The social consequences. London: Routledge.10.4324/9780203962022Search in Google Scholar

Del Toro, Guillermo (director). 2013. Pacific Rim. Burbank, CA: Warner Brothers Pictures.Search in Google Scholar

Fletcher III, W. Miles & Peter W. von Staden (eds.). 2012. Japan’s “lost decade”: Causes, legacies and issues of transformative change. London: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Foster, Michael Dylan. 2009. Pandemonium and parade: Japanese monsters and the culture of yōkai. Berkeley: University of California Press.10.1525/9780520942677Search in Google Scholar

Galbraith, Patrick W. 2009. Moe, explore virtual potential in post-millennial Japan. Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies, Article 5. www.japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2009/Galbraith.html (accessed 1 August 2014).Search in Google Scholar

Gill, Tom. 1998. Transformational magic: Some Japanese super-heroes and monsters. In Dolores P. Martinez (ed.), The worlds of Japanese popular culture, 33-54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511470158.003Search in Google Scholar

Haraway, Donna. 1991. A cyborg manifesto: Science, technology, and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century. In Donna Haraway, Simians, cyborgs and women: The reinvention of nature, 149-181. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar

Ichikawa, Kon (director). 1965. Tōkyō orinpikku [Tokyo Olympiad]. Tokyo: Organizing Committee for the Games of the XVIII Olympiad.Search in Google Scholar

Igarashi, Yoshikuni. 2000. Bodies of memory: Narratives of war in postwar Japanese culture, 1945-1970. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Search in Google Scholar

Ikegami, Eiko. 1995. The taming of the Samurai: Honorific individualism and the making of Modern Japan. Boston: Harvard University Press.10.1080/03612759.1995.9949212Search in Google Scholar

Jameson, Fredric. 2005. Archaeologies of the future, the desire called Utopia and other science fictions. London: Verso.Search in Google Scholar

Kamiyama, Kenji (director). 2002-2005. Kōkaku kidōtai: Stand alone complex [Ghost in the shell: Stand alone complex]. Tokyo: Production I.G.Search in Google Scholar

Kidder, J. Edward. 2007. Himiko and Japan’s elusive chiefdom of Yamatai. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.10.1515/9780824862848Search in Google Scholar

Kon, Satoshi (director and writer). 2006. Papurika [Paprika]. Tokyo: Sony.Search in Google Scholar

Kondo, Dorinne. 1990. Crafting selves: Power, gender and discourses of identity in a Japanese workplace. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.10.7208/chicago/9780226098159.001.0001Search in Google Scholar

Li, Carl, Mari Nakamura & Martin Roth. 2013. Japanese science fiction in converging media: Alienation and Neon Genesis Evangelion. Asiascape.org Occasional Paper Series 6. www. asiascape.org/resources/publications/asiascape-ops6.pdf (accessed 15 July 2014).Search in Google Scholar

Martinez, Dolores P. 2004. Identity and ritual in a Japanese diving village: The making and becoming of person and place. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.10.1515/9780824842376Search in Google Scholar

Masami, Yuki (writer). 1988-1994. Kidō keisatsu patoreibā [Mobile Police Patlabor]. Tokyo: Shogakukan.Search in Google Scholar

Miyazaki, Hayao (director). 1984. Kaze no tani no Naushika [Nausicaa of the valley of the wind]. Tokyo: Toei Company.Search in Google Scholar

Montero Plata, Laura. 2014. The crisis of the self in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Paper presented at the Kinema Club Conference for Film and Moving Images from Japan XIII at Reischauer Institute, Harvard University. www.academia.edu/5808345/The_Crisis_of_the_Self_in_Neon_Genesis_Evangelion (accessed 2 August 2014).Search in Google Scholar

Napier, Susan. 1998. Vampires, psychic girls, flying women and sailor scouts: Four faces of the young female in Japanese popular culture. In Dolores P. Martinez (ed.), The worlds of Japanese popular culture, 91-108. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511470158.006Search in Google Scholar

Napier, Susan. 2002. When the machines stop: Fantasy, reality, and terminal identity in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain. Science Fiction Studies 29(3). 418-435.Search in Google Scholar

Napier, Susan. 2005. Magical girls and fantasy worlds. In Susan Napier, Anime from Akira to Howl’s moving castle: Experiencing contemporary Japanese animation. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.Search in Google Scholar

Napier, Susan. 2013. The last utopian: Miyazaki Hayao and the uses of enchantment. Seminar given at the Nissan Institute, Oxford University, 28 November.Search in Google Scholar

Nolan, Christopher (director). 2010. Inception. Burbank, CA: Warner Brothers.Search in Google Scholar

Orbaugh, Sharalyn. 2002. Sex and the single cyborg: Japanese popular culture experiments in subjectivity. Science Fiction Studies 29(3). 436-452.Search in Google Scholar

Orbaugh, Sharalyn. 2003. Busty battlin’ babes: The evolution of the shōjo in 1990s visual culture. In Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson & Maribeth Graybill (eds.), Gender and power in the Japanese visual field, 201-227. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.10.1515/9780824841577-013Search in Google Scholar

Ortega, Mariana. 2007. My father, he killed me; my mother, she ate me: Self, desire, engendering, and the mother in Neon Genesis Evangelion. Mechademia 2. 216-232.Search in Google Scholar

Oshii, Mamoru (director). 1989. Kidō keisatsu patoreibā: Gekijō-ban [Patlabor: The movie]. Headgear.Search in Google Scholar

Oshii, Mamoru (director). 1995. Kōkaku kidōtai [Ghost in the shell]. Tokyo: Production I.G.Search in Google Scholar

Oshii, Mamoru (director). 2004. Ghost in the Shell II: Inosensu [Innocence]. Tokyo: Production I.G.Search in Google Scholar

Otomo, Katsuhiro (director and writer). 1988. Akira. Tokyo: Toho.Search in Google Scholar

Perper, Timothy & Martha Cornog. 2009. Psychoanalytic cyberpunk midsummer-night’s dreamtime: Kon Satoshi’s Paprika. Mechademia 4. 326-329.10.1353/mec.0.0051Search in Google Scholar

Roberson, James E. & Nobue Suzuki (eds.). 2003. Men and masculinities in contemporary Japan: Dislocating the salaryman doxa. London: Routledge Curzon.Search in Google Scholar

Saitō, Minako. 1998. Koitten ron: Anime, tokusatsu, denki no hiroinzō [One touch of crimson: the heroine in anime, special effects and biography]. Tokyo: Birejji Sentā Shuppankyoku. Saitō, Tamaki. 2006. Sentō bishōjo no seishin bunseki [Psychoanalysis of the beautiful fighting girl]. Tokyo: Ota Shuppan.Search in Google Scholar

Scott, Ridley (director). 1982. Blade Runner. Burbank, CA: Warner Brothers.Search in Google Scholar

Silvio, Carl. 1999. Refiguring the radical cyborg in Mamoru Oshii’s “Ghost in the Shell”. Science Fiction Studies 26(1). 54-72.Search in Google Scholar

Sontag, Susan. 1979 [1965]. The imagination of disaster. In Susan Sontag, Against interpretations and other essays, 209-225. New York: Dell.Search in Google Scholar

Tsurumaki, Kazuya & Hideaki Anno (directors). 1997. Shin Seiki Evangerion Gekijō ban: shi to shinsei [Neon Genesis Evangelion: Death and rebirth]. Tokyo: Toei.Search in Google Scholar

Tsutsui, William. 2004. Godzilla on my mind: Fifty years of the king of monsters. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.Search in Google Scholar

Ueno, Chizuko. 2009. The modern family in Japan: Its rise and fall. Melbourne: Trans Pacific Press.Search in Google Scholar

Verhoeven, Paul (director). 1987. Robocop. Los Angeles: Orion Pictures.Search in Google Scholar

Wachowski, Andy & Lana (directors and writers). 1999. The Matrix. Burbank, CA: Warner Brothers.Search in Google Scholar

Wachowski, Andy & Lana (directors and writers). 2003. The Matrix Reloaded and Matrix Revolutions. Burbank, CA: Warner Brothers.Search in Google Scholar

Wilson, Sandra. 2007. Mobilizing women in inter-war Japan: The National Defence Women’s Association and the Manchurian crisis. Gender & History 7(2). 295-314.10.1111/j.1468-0424.1995.tb00026.xSearch in Google Scholar

Yoshinaga, Naoyuki (director). 1989-92. Kidō keisatsu patoreibā (television series). Tokyo: NTV Search in Google Scholar

Published Online: 2015-3-3
Published in Print: 2015-3-1

© 2015

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License.

Downloaded on 28.3.2024 from https://www.degruyter.com/document/doi/10.1515/cj-2015-0005/html
Scroll to top button