mechademia

3
Limits of the Human
Mechademia
An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga, and Fan Arts

frenchy lunning, editor

Mechademia is a series of books, published by the University of Minnesota Press, devoted to

creative and critical work on anime, manga, and the fan arts. Linked through their specific but
complex aesthetic, anime, manga, and the fan arts have influenced a wide array of contemporary
and historical culture through design, art, film, and gaming. This series seeks to examine, discuss,
theorize, and reveal this unique style through its historic Japanese origins and its ubiquitous
global presence and manifestation in popular and gallery culture. Each book is organized around
a particular narrative aspect of anime and manga; these themes are sufficiently provocative and
broad in interpretation to allow for creative and insightful investigations of this global artistic
phenomenon.
mechademia
3
Limits
of the
Human

Frenchy Lunning, Editor

u n i v e r s i t y o f m i n n e s ota p r e s s m i n n e a p o l i s • lo n d o n
http://www.mechademia.org

Spot illustrations by MUSEbasement: Adèle-Elise Prévost, S. Gannon,

M. Millward, Y.-T. Liu, R. Tseng, and M. Ouahes
Mechademia seal by Miyata Fūka

Copyright 2008 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
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Mechademia Editorial Staff

Frenchy Lunning, Editor-in-Chief
Michelle Ollie, Associate Editor
Thomas LaMarre, Associate Editor
Christopher Bolton, Associate Editor
Timothy Perper, Review and Commentary Editor
Martha Cornog, Review and Commentary Editor

Editorial Board Gilles Poitras

Brent Allison David Rapp
C. B. Cebulski Brian Ruh
Patrick Drazen Toshiya Ueno
Pamela Gossin Theresa Winge
Marc Hairston Mark J. P. Wolf
Trish Ledoux Wendy Siuyi Wong
John A. Lent
Thomas Looser Production
Hajime Nakatani Michael Baxter
Susan Napier Yasuko Nakaegawa
Abé Mark Nornes Ursula Husted
Nora Paul
 Contents

ix Preface: The Limits of the Human

FRENCHY LUNNING

xi Introduction: The Limits of “The Limits of the Human”

C H R I S T O P H E R B O LT O N

人間に Contours—Around the Human

3 Refiguring the Human

M A R K C . TAY L O R

8 The Otherworlds of Mizuki Shigeru

MICHAEL DYLAN FOSTER

30 Extreme Makeover for a Heian-Era Wizard

LAURA MILLER

47 Undressing and Dressing Loli: A Search for

the Identity of the Japanese Lolita
t he re sa wing e

65 Manga: Komatopia
natsu me fu sanosu ke
T R A N S L AT E D B Y M A R G H E R I TA LO N G
I N T R O D U C T I O N B Y H A J I M E N A K ATA N I
人 間と Companions—With the Human

75 Speciesism, Part I: Translating Races

into Animals in Wartime Animation
THOMAS LAMARRE

97 Stigmata in Tezuka Osamu’s Works

YO M OTA I N U H I KO

T R A N S L AT E D A N D I N T R O D U C E D B Y H A J I M E N A K ATA N I

111 Disarming Atom: Tezuka Osamu’s Manga

at War and Peace
ŌTSUKA EIJI

T R A N S L AT E D B Y T H O M A S L A M A R R E

127 States of Emergency: Urban Space and the

Robotic Body in the Metropolis Tales
LAWRENCE BIRD

150 Emotional Infectivity: Cyborg Affect

and the Limits of the Human
S H A R A LY N O R B A U G H

173 Manga: The Signal of Noise

WRITTEN AND ADAPTED BY ADÈLE-ELISE PRÉVOST

I L L U ST R AT E D B Y M U S E B A S E M E N T

人 間で Compossibles—Of the Human

191 Gundam and the Future of Japanoid Art

TA K AY U K I TAT S U M I

T R A N S L AT E D A N D W I T H A R E S P O N S E B Y C H R I S T O P H E R B O LT O N

200 Pop Culture Icons: Religious Inflections

of the Character Toy in Taiwan
T E R I S I LV I O
222 Machinic Desires: Hans Bellmer’s Dolls and the Technological
Uncanny in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence
ST E V E N T. B R O W N

255 Postscript: On “The Living”

CARY WOLFE

Review and Commentary

256 A Healing, Gentle Apocalypse: Yokohama 268 “Always Exoticize!” Cyborg Identities
kaidashi kikō and the Challenge of the Nonhuman
MARC HAIRSTON in Full Metal Apache
J O S H UA PAU L DA L E

259 Lost in Transition: Train Men and Dolls

in Millennial Japan 271 Postmodern Is Old Hat: Samūrai Champloo
SUSAN NAPIER WILLIAM L. BENZON

261 Howl’s Moving Castle トレンド Torendo

ANTONIA LEVI

274 Giant Robots and Superheroes:

263 Playing Outside the Box with Mind Game Manifestations of Divine Power,
PAU L J AC KS O N East and West
An Interview with Crispin Freeman
266 From Transnationalization to Globalization: FRENCHY LUNNING

The Experience of Hong Kong

WENDY SIUYI WONG

283 Contributors

287 Call for Papers

This page intentionally left blank
 Preface
french y lunning

THE LIMITS OF THE HUMAN

Everyone, regardless of his or her position in culture or location on the earth,

is aware of a distinct shift in the idea of what is human. Those who fear this
change rage against science and technology as the harbingers of what is, from
another point of view, the inevitable evolution of humanity. Those who em-
brace this change are unsure of what to call this moment, how to summarize
the movement, when to say, “This is it.” And within this rupture in history,
wars are being fought with these changes as the unspeakable, unsayable, un-
recognizable, and unpronounceable subtext.
In our game, evidence of change and expanded notions of the human
abound, and have for at least three decades. Japanese anime and manga have
offered innumerable narratives of humans in transition and postulated brave
new human concepts with a quietly profound creativity and dazzling art.
There is a constellation of prototypes: from the cyber-person, whose amalga-
mation with technology offers myriad possibilities as well as certain pitfalls,
to the grotesque, whose fuzzy yet noble additions require us to look differ-
ently toward ourselves and our fellow inhabitants, to the more subtle, more
metaphorical (and often metafictional) intellectual and perceptual shifts that
have dominated Western fiction in the past two decades.
This volume of Mechademia asked for a map of the terrain of the new
humanities, using the cast of characters created for anime and manga as
guides and the narratives as signposts to begin to discover how to speak, say,

ix
 recognize, and pronounce out loud these new limits and potentialities. The
artists and authors of this issue speak from different positions and locations
but sing of this evolutionary shift in a condensation of voices inspired by the
narrative and artistic power of Japanese manga and anime.
With this map in hand, we hope for a new understanding and a new level
of compassion for the Other, that the different, the emerging, the transi-
tional be accorded a place at the table. We ourselves have been seen as differ-
ent, as otaku. We should be among those who lead the way in an investigation
of the new limits of the human.

This book owes its wonderfully crafted form to Mechademia’s associate edi-
tors, Christopher Bolton and Thomas LaMarre, who worked especially long
and hard, beyond the call of duty, to assure its high quality and fascinating
content.

x  prefac e
 Introduction
ch ristoph er bolton

THE LIMITS OF
“THE LIMITS OF THE HUMAN”

As Frenchy Lunning points out in this volume’s opening statement, the lim-
its of the human constitute a theme that has been at the center of manga
and anime for quite some time, but it is only relatively recently, with the
explosion of academic interest in the posthuman, that criticism’s attention
has turned to this question, or at least to this formulation of its perennial
questions.
It is tempting to summarize posthuman studies by enumerating vari-
ous human/nonhuman dichotomies that characterize its different branches:
biological versus mechanical, human versus animal (or monster), bounded
self versus distributed field. If the machine, the creature, and the network
constitute a trio par excellence of nonhuman others, then posthuman criti-
cism might be defined as that which seeks to revise or overcome conventional
notions of the human by blurring or erasing the lines that divide us from
these nonhuman alternatives. Lunning’s trio of the cyber-person, the fuzzy,
and the otaku represent three of these posthuman hybrids, but these are
points of excursion rather than destinations. While the essays in this volume
are grouped largely according to these familiar hybrids and dichotomies, we
note at the outset that enumerating the varieties of the nonhuman is an act
that often threatens to reinstate convention and solidify the contours of the

xi
 If the machine, the
human rather than expand its boundaries.
creature, and the network
What Lunning and all the authors in this
constitute a trio par
volume call us to do is to be open to the ex-
excellence of nonhuman
pansion or contraction of the human along
others, then posthuman
entirely unexpected frontiers. This is the
criticism might be defined
impulse behind the headings of the book’s
as that which seeks to
three sections: “Contours,” “Companions,”
revise or overcome
and “Compossibles.” Each is intended to be
conventional notions of
descriptive in ways outlined below, but also
the human by blurring or
unfamiliar, counterintuitive, productively
erasing the lines that
strange. The critical manga that come be-
divide us from these
tween sections function in the same way,
nonhuman alternatives.
shifting media to shake loose new ideas:
The Signal of Noise is an original reading of
Serial Experiments Lain by Adèle-Elise Prévost, recast as a manga by Prévost
and MUSEbasement. And Natsume Fusanosuke’s pioneering critical manga
Komatopia is an effort not just to illustrate a textual argument but to think
and argue visually.
The uncertain territory of the posthuman is the space Mark C. Taylor at-
tempts to chart in the volume’s first conceptual essay. Along with the volume
postscript by Cary Wolfe, Taylor’s is one of two provocations on the general
nature of the posthuman Mechademia solicited to place the other essays in
a wider intellectual context. Taylor’s map of the contours of the human is a
Venn diagram, and his overlapping sets suggest that none of the dichotomies
mentioned above is ever permanent or complete: the intersecting systems we
now delineate as nature, culture, society, and technology are part of a network,
and each is in turn composed of smaller networks, with products emerging
and evolving through the spontaneous organization of connected elements.
The changing, aleatory quality of these emerging phenomena and the fractal
nature of this structure—in which there is no universal metanetwork, and
each subnetwork subdivides infinitely into still smaller ones—combine to en-
sure that no division will ever be permanent or absolute. Information itself
emerges only in the interval between too much and too little change.
So, following Taylor, the meaning of the texts in this volume should
emerge less from the groupings imposed by the editors (or the metalanguage
of this Introduction) than from the spontaneous interaction between the
various pieces. With that caveat, we attempt to trace some of the larger rela-
tions linking the different essays.
The chapters that follow Taylor’s in the first section all revolve around

xii  intro du c t io n
the notion of the monstrous, a space that defines the contours of the human
by lying on the other side of some perceived supernatural divide. Michael
Dylan Foster’s essay on manga artist Mizuki Shigeru traces the link between
Mizuki’s own life and his monstrous yōkai subjects like his classic character
Gegege no Kitarō. Foster shows how Mizuki constructed an autobiographical
mythology alongside his manga and anime fictions and his semifictionalized
studies of yōkai folklore: in all three narratives, Mizuki seemed to hold out to
his urban readers the promise of a vanished primitive past to which modern
humans might return through the gate of yōkai culture.
Laura Miller also traces the meeting of the modern and the premodern
with a chapter on Abe no Seimei. Starting in the 1990s, this tenth-century
court magician was transformed into a pop-culture icon in Japan, the super-
natural hero of manga and films, and the mascot for a wide array of consumer
products. Extending her previous work on beauty culture and girl culture
into the realm of the supernatural, Miller shows that Abe no Seimei’s cultural
metamorphosis was accompanied by a physical transformation from a portly
Heian gentleman to a beautiful male hero. Miller relates this to the power
young girls now have as cultural consumers, the power to remake distant
historical figures in their own (desired) image.
Theresa Winge continues this theme with a chapter on Lolita fashion. The
Gothic Lolita style that has attracted so much attention in the West links the-
matically to the theme of the monstrous (or at least the Gothic), but Winge
describes a fuller range of Lolita subcultures and concludes, not unlike Miller,
that this fashion represents a kind of empowerment for its adherents, who
achieve agency by setting themselves outside conventional Japanese culture
with dress perceived by others as monstrous or childish or both.
In the second section of the volume—“Companions”—we combine es-
says that treat animal and mechanical others and try to conceive relation-
ships that are intimate but not anthropomorphized, complementary but dis-
tinct. Thomas LaMarre contributes the first part of a two-part theorization
of “speciesism,” which in his usage represents the displacement of race and
racism onto relations between humans and nonhuman animals. Looking at
prewar and wartime anime like the Norakuro series, LaMarre shows that in
these films the world’s different races are differentiated by often racist as-
sociations with different species; at the same time, the plasticity of animal
depiction provides the opportunity for new blurrings and associations that
move beyond naive humanism. The result is a remapping of racial and species
difference that offers new risks as well as new opportunities.
There follow two essays by noted Japanese manga critics writing on

i n t r o d u ct i o n  xi i i
 Tezuka Osamu’s original cyborg hero, Atom. Yomota Inuhiko links the animal
and mechanical nonhumans in Tezuka’s work by comparing the boy robot
Atom with the extraterrestrial and animal characters in Lost World and Tezu-
ka’s other series. If humanity in these works is always defined by its exclusion
and domination of nonhuman others, Yomota argues that Tezuka’s heroes
often occupy a liminal state between human and nonhuman that allows them
to perceive and critique this state, even if they can never overcome it. Ōtsuka
Eiji considers Atom in the context of the American occupation and the re-
nunciation of war in the postwar constitution that the United States forced
on Japan. Ōtsuka sees Atom as liminal not only in his almost human status
but because, in formal terms, he is part of a new style that mediates between
the scientific realism of wartime manga that portrayed military technology
and the property LaMarre notes: the Disney-esque American style of plastic
bodies that were both indestructible and subject to endless violence.
Finally, the chapters by Lawrence Bird and Sharalyn Orbaugh continue to
treat the interface between the human and the machine, but they also form
a bridge to the next section of the volume, which traces the expanding net-
work in which “human” is but one of many interconnected nodes. Combining
architectural and film history, Bird looks at the relationship between humans
and their urban environments in three versions of Metropolis: Fritz Lang’s
1927 film, Tezuka Osamu’s later manga, and the more recent anime written
by Ōtomo Katsuhiro and directed by Rintarō. Bird reveals how the traces of
power are mapped onto the three cities and their human and robotic inhabit-
ants, and he sees in the crises and destruction of these cities a dissolution (al-
ternately apocalyptic and revolutionary) of human bodies and boundaries.
While Bird looks to the architecture of the city to illuminate the relation-
ship between human and robot characters, Orbaugh does the reverse for Os-
hii Mamoru’s Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. Urban power networks in Oshii’s
film are already all too clear, but Orbaugh discovers a concealed social/human
network of affect—what she theorizes as a shared, sensed emotion that links
the human, animal, and mechanical characters and viewers with one another.
The blurry distinction between body and mind or soul implied by the film’s
title has been examined by any number of critics in the context of the first
film, but Orbaugh makes it new by turning it inside out: instead of a human
ghost trapped in a mechanical shell, she suggests that feeling (the characters’
feeling and the feeling we have for them) is always already part of a field that
floats around and between them and us.
The third section of the volume turns on compossibility, which might be
further glossed as a kind of coexistence in which the human and inhuman

xiv  intro du c t io n
are spaces we inhabit with others, or even put on and take off. The classic
example is the robot battle suit, but the principle extends to dolls, puppets,
and plastic models as well.
Takayuki Tatsumi’s essay on the Gundam series discusses the powered suit,
its rosy promise of transparently magnifying and extending human power,
and the resonance between that fantasy and Japan’s political situation from
the time of Gundam’s debut down to today. This balance or imbalance between
the technical, the ethical, and the political is like the situation Ōtsuka traces
for Atom; and in his characteristically encyclopedic style, Tatsumi shows how
Gundam’s web of influence extends even further, back to Robert A. Heinlein
and forward to contemporary Japanese art. The essay turns the monolithic
individual robots of the series, images of human magnification and contain-
ment, into a complex web of interrelated figures and ideas.
Teri Silvio traces a congruent process in her anthropological study of
character-toy collectors in Taiwan. Silvio compares the toys with religious
icons: while icons are believed to embody or enclose the spirit or personality
(the ling) of the god, the production and duplication of icons also permit the
god to multiply and spread—a process Silvio compares with global consumer
culture and the spread of character dolls and action figures. Silvio sees these
processes and the link between them not as a fading of belief (in the human
or the divine) but as part of a transition in the formation of the human from
the realm of history, biology, and race to the realm of imagination. And for
an alternative or dissenting approach that also takes religion and robots as
its starting point, see the long interview with voice actor Crispin Freeman
in the Torendo section. Instead of the nonhuman, Freeman focuses on the
superhuman, which he explores through the notion of enduring religious and
mythic archetypes. Freeman’s search for stable conventions that illuminate
human limits could be interpreted as a rejection of the posthuman perspec-
tive and an effort to assert the ongoing importance of a more traditional,
humanistic one.
Steven T. Brown’s reading of Innocence begins from the related notion of
the doll, but it ranges widely enough to recapitulate themes from many of
the previous essays. Brown examines the notion of the uncanny in this film,
especially with respect to the dolls that are so important to the film’s imagery
and plot. Like Orbaugh, he views the film as inverting the geometry of human
interiority: as the robot dolls are opened up and taken apart, their fleshly
striptease promises to reveal their interiors, but they are all finally empty.
Brown relates that image to Hans Bellmer’s doll photography from the 1930s.
In one reading, Bellmer’s fetishistic photographs portray a degeneracy that

i n t r o d u ct i o n  xv
 opposes the mythologized human form promoted by the Nazis, much in the
same way Rintarō’s Metropolis destroys the heroine’s body and the surround-
ing city in order to resist the authoritarianism of Lang’s original film. If there
is a positive ideal in Innocence, Brown sees it in Batō’s canine companion. But
this is a “companion” in Donna Haraway’s particular sense of the term: that
which transforms both the human and the animal into something else. Even
Taylor’s ideas reappear here, in Brown’s notion that the déjà vu–like repeti-
tions in Innocence constitute a kind of aleatory metafictional machine that
generates new meanings with each iteration.
This last point is reiterated in Cary Wolfe’s brief, suggestive statement
that our changing understandings of life and information increasingly invade
and challenge one another. Wolfe makes explicit the issue that all the essays
have treated implicitly: once we’ve pushed the limits of the human out (or in,
or back) on all these several fronts, the issue becomes not just the nature of
the human but the nature of life itself.
As these rising stakes suggest, a volume introduction like this one must
quickly reach its own limits. By the nature of the subject, there is only so far
that a map like this can or should extend. So we now invite our readers to
forge ahead and explore this new territory firsthand.

xv i  intro du c t io n
 人間に
Contours
Around the Human
MARK C. TAYLOR

Refiguring
the Human

We are always already posthuman. The human is never separate and closed
in on itself but is always implicated in open systems and structures that ex-
pose it to dimensions of alterity that disrupt stability and displace identity.
Recent developments in media and networking technologies as well as bio-
informatics disclose the inadequacies of taxonomic schemata that have long
been used to define the human by distinguishing it from that which appears
to be other.

Self/World
Human/Nonhuman
Organism/Machine
Culture/Nature
Information/Noise
Negentropy/Entropy

Far from exclusive opposites, these binaries are coemergent and co-
dependent: each presupposes the other and neither can be itself apart from
the other. When fully elaborated and deployed, structures of codependence

3
 form complex adaptive networks in which the reciprocal relations issue in co-
evolutionary processes that perpetually figure, disfigure, and refigure every
identity that seems to be secure (see Figure 1).

C U LT U R E

Philosophy Art

E SOCI
TUR ETY
NA Religion

Chemistry Biology Economics Politics

Physics Psychology

Medial
Bioinformatics Communications

Information

T E C H NO LO G Y

figure 1. Codependence of nature, culture, society, and technology.

The interplay of nature, society, culture, and technology forms the shifty
matrix within which reality as we know it is constituted.
All such relational webs have the following characteristics.
. They are composed of many codependent parts connected in multiple
and changing ways.
. They display spontaneous self-organization, which occurs within
parameters of constraint that leave space for the aleatory.
. The structures resulting from spontaneous self-organization emerge
from but are not necessarily reducible to the interactivity of the com-
ponents in the system.
. Self-organizing structures are open and, therefore, are able to adapt
and coevolve with other structures.
. As connectivity increases, networks become more complex and move
toward a tipping where a discontinuous phase shift occurs.

4 ma rk c . taylo r
 It is important to stress three important points in this context. First, the
structure of these networks is fractal; that is to say, they display the same
structure at every level of organization. Since networks are always networks
composed of other networks, there is no underlying or overarching meta-
network. Second, networks are isomorphic across media. Natural, cultural,
social, and technological networks have the same structure and operational
logic. Third, and finally, networks are self-organizing—order emerges from
within and is not imposed from without. Within the ever-changing web of
relations, nothing is fixed or permanent. Patterns are transient, and survival
depends on adaptivity to fitness landscapes that are themselves subject to
coevolutionary pressures.
The currency of exchange in complex adaptive networks is information.
In their 1949 groundbreaking book The Mathematical Theory of Information,
Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver develop a notion of information that
differs significantly from the common sense of the term. “The word informa-
tion, in this theory,” Weaver explains, “must not be confused with its ordinary
usage. In particular, information must not be confused with meaning.”¹ Mean-
ing arises at a different level of organization. Information, in the strict sense
of the term, is inversely proportional to probability: the more probable, the
less information; the less probable, the more information. Gregory Bateson
offers a concise definition of information when he claims: “information is a
difference that makes a difference.”² The domain of information lies between
too little and too much difference. On the one hand, information is a differ-
ence and, therefore, in the absence of difference there is no information. On
the other hand, information is a difference that makes a difference. Not all
differences make a difference because some differences are indifferent and
hence inconsequential. Both too little and too much difference creates noise.
Always articulated between a condition of undifferentiation and indifferent
differentiation, information emerges along the two-sided edge of chaos. The
articulation of difference brings about the emergence of pattern from noise.
Information and noise are not merely opposites but coemerge and, therefore,
are codependent: information is noise in formation. Noise, by contrast, inter-
rupts or interferes with informative patterns. When understood in this way,
information stabilizes noise and noise destabilizes information. This process
of destabilization is not, however, merely negative, because it provides the
occasion for the emergence of new informative patterns.
Insofar as complex adaptive networks are isomorphic across media, in-
formation processes are not limited to either computer and media networks
or mental and cultural activities but are distributed throughout all natural

refiguring the human5

 and social systems. Biological and chemical as well political and economic
processes are, for example, distributed information processes, which have the
same structure and functionality as cognitive processes. The isomorphism of
these processes is the condition of the possibility of their interoperability.
Borders are not fixed, membranes are permeable, and lines that once seemed
precise become fuzzy. As opposition gives way to relation, self and other fold
into each other in such a way that social and natural worlds come to self-con-
sciousness in and through human awareness, and human consciousness and
self-consciousness are realized in and through natural and social processes.
The play of differences that make a difference is the infinite process of emer-
gent creativity in which everything arises and passes away.

Notes
. Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver, The Mathematical Theory of Communication
(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ), .
. Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine Books, ),
.

6 ma rk c . taylo r
 MICHAEL DYLAN FOSTER

The Otherworlds
of Mizuki Shigeru

Shape-shifting foxes, tengu mountain goblins, kappa water spirits, and a pan-
oply of other fantastic beings have long haunted the Japanese cultural imagi-
nary. In contemporary discourse, such creatures are generally labeled “yōkai,”
a word variously understood as monster, spirit, goblin, ghost, demon, phan-
tom, specter, supernatural creature, lower-order deity, or more amorphously
as any unexplainable experience or numinous occurrence.¹ Such weird and
mysterious things emerge ambiguously at the intersection of the everyday
and extraordinary, the real and the imaginary, questioning the borders of the
human, and challenging the way we order the world around us. Despite its
historical longevity, the notion of yōkai is neither monolithic nor transcen-
dent; rather, as has been said of the “monster” in the West, the yōkai “is an
embodiment of a certain cultural moment—of a time, a feeling, and a place.” ²
That is to say, the meaning of yōkai is always changing—shape-shifting, as it
were—to reflect the episteme of the particular time and place. By interrogat-
ing this meaning we uncover some of the hidden philosophies and uncon-
scious ideologies of the given historical moment.
In the following pages, I focus on some of the yōkai images created by
manga/anime artist Mizuki Shigeru (b. 1922), whose work has shaped the

8
meaning and function of yōkai within the popular imagination of late twenti-
eth-century and early twenty-first-century Japan. Mizuki’s anime and manga
are familiar to nearly every Japanese who
grew up watching television or reading
the yōkai “is an embodiment
manga since the late 1960s, and today he
of a certain cultural
continues to make an impact on a whole
moment-of a time, a
new generation: in April 2007, a live-ac-
feeling, and a place.”
tion movie based on his Gegege no Kitarō
(Spooky Kitarō) series opened in theaters
nationwide, the latest filmmaking venture in a list that also includes the 2005
blockbuster The Great Yōkai War (Yōkai daisensō) directed by Miike Takashi.
Here I would like to treat not only Mizuki’s anime and manga but also
some of his writing in other genres. Mizuki researches and writes extensively
on yōkai and has published numerous illustrated yōkai catalogs that recall
the Edo-period bestiaries of two hundred years ago. He has also penned sev-
eral personal memoirs, some recounting his experiences during the Pacific
War and his role as a sort of accidental ethnographer of the people he came
in contact with in the South Pacific. In all of these writings—memoirs, yōkai
encyclopedias, and anime and manga like Gegege no Kitarō—we find similar
strains of nostalgic longing for a purer, more authentic world. And as Mi-
zuki’s personal history becomes metonymic of the Japanese postwar experi-
ence, both he and the yōkai he describes and produces are implicated in the
formation of Japan’s identity as a nation.

YOKAI DISCOURSES

In order to grasp Mizuki’s place within the cultural imagination of postwar

Japan, it is important to know something about his precursors in the dis-
cursive history of yōkai since the Edo period (ca. 1600–1868). One of these
key figures is Toriyama Sekien (1712–1788), a yōkai cataloger whose work
emblemizes Edo consciousness with regard to fantastic creatures. Between
1776 and 1784, Toriyama produced four sets of illustrated bestiaries that col-
lectively document over two hundred different yōkai.³ These texts represent
the coalescence of two modes of expression that were particularly promi-
nent during this period: the encyclopedic and the ludic. The encyclopedic
entails processes of collecting, labeling, and cataloging that were influenced
by neo-Confucian ideas and led to the publication of numerous natural his-
tory texts, pharmacopoeias, and encyclopedias. The ludic mode, on the other

t h e ot h e rwo r l d s o f m i z u k i s h i g e r u  9
 hand, denotes a sensibility that values recreation and play, and was manifest
in such practices as comic versification (kyōka and senryū) and the spooky
tale-telling sessions known as hyaku monogatari.
Sekien’s yōkai catalogs creatively combined the
For Yanagita and his
encyclopedic and the ludic modes of expression:
followers, the
each page featured an illustration of a particular
collecting of yōkai
yōkai, often complete with description just like a
represented a
natural history text; at the same time, however,
recognition of their
the accompanying text and often the illustra-
value as cultural
tion itself contained lively word and image play.
commodities evocative
That is to say, Sekien may have been cataloging
of an idealized past.
yōkai, but he and his readers were having fun in
the process. In fact, it is likely that Sekien, while
clearly knowledgeable about traditional yōkai beliefs, was not at all averse to
inventing his own creatures to add to the panoply.⁴
Sekien never explicitly questioned the ontological veracity of yōkai.
During the Meiji period (1868–1912), however, the importation of Western
scientific principles inspired bunmei kaika (civilization-and-enlightenment)
ideologues to actively interrogate the supernatural and debunk phenomena
like yōkai. In particular, philosopher and educator Inoue Enryō (1858–1919)
created the discipline of yōkaigaku (yōkai-ology) with a specific objective: to
rationally explain away supernatural beliefs so that Japan could become a
modern nation-state. To this end, Enryō collected volumes of data on yōkai-
related folk beliefs from around Japan and developed an analytical frame-
work to categorize yōkai and systematically filter out “superstitions” from
what he defined as “true mystery.”
In the early twentieth century, Yanagita Kunio (1875–1962) appropri-
ated yōkai for his own burgeoning discipline of folklore studies or native
ethnology (minzokugaku). One of modern Japan’s most influential thinkers,
Yanagita did not debunk yōkai as superstitions but rather set out to collect
and preserve them as disappearing relics of earlier belief systems. One re-
sult of this process was “Yōkai meii” (Yōkai glossary); published over several
months between 1938 and 1939, this short text lists and describes yōkai from
around Japan, with information culled from a variety of local gazetteers and
folklore collections.⁵ For Yanagita and his followers, the collecting of yōkai
represented a recognition of their value as cultural commodities evocative
of an idealized past. Classifying yōkai may have been a way to demarcate an
“authentic” Japan, but it also converted them into lifeless historical relics,
fossilized specimens from another time. In a sense, yōkai were shorn of their

10  mich ae l dylan fo s t e r
living mystery, remaining only as weird premodern forms stored in the folk-
loric archives of the modern nation.
Although many other voices participated in the discourse of yōkai from
the Edo period to the present, Sekien’s catalogs, Enryō’s yōkaigaku, and
Yanagita’s folkloristics are paradigmatic of shifting historical attitudes toward
weird and mysterious phenomena. By the time Mizuki Shigeru arrives on the
scene, yōkai are generally conceived of as nostalgic icons from a purer, more
authentic, prewar—if not pre-Meiji—Japan. They are interesting artifacts,
to be sure, but ultimately empty and irrelevant to urban and suburban life in
modern Japan. Starting in the 1960s, Mizuki would almost single-handedly
revitalize the image of yōkai in the popular imagination, breathing life into
their weird forms so that they would once again playfully enchant children
and adults alike, but at the same time retain their nostalgic association with
an earlier Japan.

MIZUKI-SAN AND KITARO

In many ways the yōkai phenomenon comes full circle with Mizuki’s yōkai
catalogs and fictions: like Sekien, he exploits the popular media of his time
while also carefully treading the line between ludic (commercial) endeavors
and the encyclopedic mode. Of course, the Sekien-Mizuki comparison can
only be taken so far, as the radically different historical contexts of the eigh-
teenth and late twentieth centuries endow their yōkai with distinct functions
and meanings. But one thing is clear: by their promulgation through a variety
of media, Mizuki’s images and narratives are very much a part of the popular
imagination of Japanese children and adults today.⁶
One character who appears frequently in Mizuki’s manga is a somewhat
comical-looking, bespectacled man who represents the illustrator himself. By
inserting this self-deprecating image of himself (often referred to as “Miz-
uki-san”) into his own narratives, Mizuki infuses them with a light-hearted
self-referentiality and also contributes to a biographical narrative that has
come to be as much a part of his personal mystique as the yōkai world he il-
lustrates. Adding to the autobiographical material in his manga and anime,
Mizuki has also described himself in a popular series of memoirs detailing his
childhood in a country village and his experiences as a soldier during World
War II. Together, these texts have created a persona that is intimately linked
with the nostalgic image of yōkai and Japan’s rural past.
Born Mura Shigeru in 1922, Mizuki grew up in the rural village of Sakaim-

t h e ot h e rwo r l d s o f m i z u k i s h i g e r u  11
 Portrayed as a small disembodied
inato in Tottori prefecture. Al-
eyeball with arms and legs and
though his own memoirs (and
voice, Medama-oyaji serves as
biographical blurbs on his
Kitarō’s protective familiar and can
books) often identify his place
often be found sitting atop his head
of birth as Sakaiminato, ap-
or shoulder, proffering advice.
parently he was actually born
in Osaka, where his father was
employed, returning to Sakaiminato with his mother one month after his
birth.⁷ This rewriting of his birthplace from a major urban center to a small
rural community is a minor point to be sure, but it underscores Mizuki’s self-
inscription as a person with authentic roots in the yōkai-infested country-
side. (In the mid-1990s, this association became inscribed in the landscape of
Sakaiminato with the creation of “Mizuki Shigeru Road,” a street festooned
with over one hundred bronze statues modeled on Mizuki’s yōkai.) During the
war, Mizuki saw combat near Rabaul in Papua New Guinea, where he suffered
the loss of his left arm. After returning to Japan, he studied at Musashino Art
School and worked as an illustrator for kami shibai (picture-card shows) and
kashi hon manga, cheaply produced manga that could be borrowed for a small
price at shops throughout Japan.⁸
Mizuki first garnered critical acclaim and popular success with his 1965
manga “Terebi-kun” (Television boy), which received the Sixth Kōdansha Jidō
Manga Award. The narrative tells of a boy, Terebi-kun, who can enter into a
television set and participate in the world beyond the screen. Appropriately
for a period of rapid economic growth, Terebi-kun’s television incursions
seem limited to commercials for new products—from ice cream to bicycles—
which he is able to acquire before they appear on the market. He does not
use his special skills for personal gain, however: he gives many of the objects
he acquires to a classmate whose family is too poor even to own a television
set. He then disappears for parts unknown, traveling with his portable “tran-
sistor” television and providing newly marketed products to needy children
throughout Japan.⁹
Although “Terebi-kun” does not concern yōkai explicitly, it plays with the
notion of another world that interacts with our everyday existence, while
also highlighting the intensely commercial nature of the medium. The pro-
gram captured the tenor of the times with regard to the mystifying new
phenomenon of television, and Mizuki’s own continued success was tied to
the rapidly developing TV industry: in 1968, his manga Gegege no Kitarō was
made into a black-and-white animated television series. Subsequent series,
in color, ran 1971–72, 1985–88, and 1996–98, with numerous reruns, and a

12 mich ae l dylan fo s t e r

new version starting in 2007. The Gegege no Kitarō narratives concern the
adventures of a yōkai named Kitarō and his cohort of yōkai characters. The
progeny of a ghost family, Kitarō looks like a normal boy but for a shock
of hair covering his left eye. His name, written with the character for de-
mon (oni), might be translated as “demon-boy,” a not-so-subtle reminder of
his monstrous origins. As if to compensate for the missing left eye, another
character, Medama-oyaji (Papa eyeball), rep-
resents the remains of Kitarō’s dead father.
Portrayed as a small disembodied eyeball with
arms and legs and voice, Medama-oyaji serves
as Kitarō’s protective familiar and can often be
found sitting atop his head or shoulder, prof-
fering advice¹⁰ (see Figure 1).
The self-referentiality of the Gegege no
Kitarō character starts with the fact that
Mizuki’s nickname as a child was Gege, or
Gegeru (his own childish mispronunciation of
Shigeru).¹¹ Furthermore, it was Mizuki’s left
arm that was lost in the war, and one might
posit that the mystical presence of that lost
limb serves as an invisible guide in his work
just as Medama-oyaji supervises Kitarō in his
various pursuits. More to the point, Medama-
oyaji’s monocular vision provides Kitarō with figure 1. Bronze figure of Kitarō and Medama-
critical insight into the otherworld of yōkai. oyaji atop a postbox in Sakaiminato. Photograph
by author.
One common theme in the Gegege no Kitarō
series has Kitarō joining forces with his father and other familiar yōkai as a
team of superheroes fighting for the survival of good yōkai and good humans
against the forces of evil. In this way Kitarō serves as a corollary to Mizuki
himself, struggling to protect yōkai and the (super)natural world from fading
into irrelevance.
Kitarō, Medama-oyaji, and other characters, such as the devious Nezumi-
otoko (Rat-man), are original creations of Mizuki. But many characters in the
series are derived directly from earlier yōkai documented by the likes of Sekien
and Yanagita. In particular, Gegege no Kitarō visually presents a number of the
creatures listed in Yanagita’s “Yōkai meii.” In one short entry, for example,
Yanagita explains that the “Sunakake-babaa” (literally “sand-throwing old
woman”) is “said to be found in various places in Nara Prefecture. [She] threat-
ens people by sprinkling sand on them when [they] pass through such places

t h e ot h e rwo r l d s o f m i z u k i s h i g e r u  13
 as the shadows of a lonely forest of a shrine.
Although nobody has ever seen her, it is said
that she is an old woman.” ¹² Mizuki renders
visible this yōkai that “nobody has ever seen,”
removing her from the relative obscurity of
Yanagita’s academic writings to display her un-
der the bright lights of popular culture.
Another regularly featured yōkai from the
series, Nurikabe (Plastered wall), similarly ex-
emplifies this creation of character. In Yanag-
ita’s glossary Nurikabe refers to a troubling
phenomenon: while you are walking along a
road at night, “suddenly a wall appears in front
of you, and you cannot go anywhere.” ¹³ Mizuki
converts this phenomenon—the experience
figure 2. Bronze figurine of Nurikabe on Mizuki of mysteriously being prevented from making
Shigeru Road in Sakaiminato. Photograph by forward progress—into an embodied visual
author.
representation: a large rectangular block with
eyes and legs (and personality). Where Yanagita simply states that a wall “ap-
pears,” Mizuki illustrates the wall’s appearance and an invisible local phenom-
enon is transformed into a nationally recognized character¹⁴ (see Figure 2).

MEMORY, MONSTERS, MANGA

Gegege no Kitarō and other Mizuki manga are creative narratives. At the same
time, however, Mizuki labels himself a “yōkai researcher” and has made a
project of seeking out and illustrating yōkai from around Japan. As with
Sekien’s Edo-period codices, Mizuki’s work often assumes an encyclopedic
format: catalogs and dictionaries that come in a dazzling variety of sizes and
shapes. Illustrated with the same creative levity as his manga, they stand
as autonomous collections but also interact with and supplement his narra-
tives. Indeed, many of his yōkai circulate in and out of different expressive
forms, sometimes presented as individualized characters in his manga and
anime, other times presented as “real” yōkai in his catalogs.
I should reiterate that not all of Mizuki’s yōkai are derived from tradi-
tion; Kitarō and his father, for example, are wholly original creations, and
accordingly they do not generally appear in his catalogs.¹⁵ The ontological
status of other creatures—such as Nurikabe and Sunakake-babaa—is more

14 mich ae l dylan fo s t e r

 Central to Mizuki’s entry is
ambiguous. Although they appear in his
the illustration, in which an
manga/anime narratives as distinct char-
invisible phenomenon is made
acters with individual personalities, they
into a visible creature.
are also documented as “real” yōkai to
be collected and displayed encyclopedi-
cally. In a catalog entry for Nurikabe, for example, Mizuki first duly refer-
ences Yanagita, noting the specific location where the belief was collected
in Chikuzen (present-day Fukuoka Prefecture), and then relates a personal
experience with a Nurikabe-like encounter that occurred when he was away
in the “dark jungles” of the south (nanpō) during the war.¹⁶ As an admixture
of previous reference and personal anecdote, there is nothing particularly de-
finitive about Mizuki’s entry, but its inclusion in a book entitled Nihon yōkai
taizen, or the “Complete compendium of Japanese yōkai,” lends it an unim-
peachable sense of authority. Significant too is Mizuki’s linking of a specific
Japanese location in the past (Chikuzen) to a non-Japanese place (the dark
jungles). That is to say, the Nurikabe signifies a local/past experience as well
as a universal/present experience, both of which somehow fit under the ru-
bric of Japanese yōkai.
Central to Mizuki’s entry is the illustration, in which an invisible phe-
nomenon is made into a visible creature. In one of his many short essays on
yōkai, Mizuki addresses this critical issue of rendering the invisible world
visible, suggesting that yōkai and similar spirits “want to take shape (katachi
ni naritagatte iru). That is to say, they want to show their appearance (sugata)
to people.” Even as he elaborates the mechanism by which this works, Mizuki
infuses yōkai with agency:

As something that tries to take form, they hint by knocking on the brain of
the artist or the sculptor. (In other words, this is the thing we call inspira-
tion.) We often hear, “yōkai and kami [deities] are created by humans,” but
the funny thing is that the instant you believe this, the yōkai or the kami will
stop knocking on your brain.
You have to believe that yōkai and kami do exist.
It is just that they are rather elusive because their forms are difficult to
discover, difficult to feel.¹⁷

Mizuki suggests that one must possess a certain sensitivity to the invis-
ible world, a “yōkai sense,” in order to endow these elusive creatures with
form for all to see. Ultimately, it seems, yōkai are affective phenomena; illus-
trating their appearance is akin to articulating a particular emotion.

t h e ot h e rwo r l d s o f m i z u k i s h i g e r u  15
 Along with Yanagita’s descriptions, Mizuki’s other major source is the
work of Toriyama Sekien. Mizuki refashions many of Sekien’s yōkai, reinsert-
ing them into a context more relevant to his readers. This is the case with
one of Sekien’s original creations, the Tenjōname, literally “Ceiling-licker.”
Sekien draws a tall bony creature, seemingly suspended in mid-air, licking
a wooden ceiling with an extraordinarily long tongue. This strange creature
appears in his Hyakki tsurezure bukuro of 1784. The title of the collection and
the Tenjōname entry both reference Yoshida Kenkō’s famous essay collection
Tsurezuregusa (ca. 1331, Essays in Idleness). In entry number 55 of this text,
Kenkō suggests that “a house should be built with the summer in mind. In
winter it is possible to live anywhere, but a badly made house is unbearable
when it gets hot . . . A room with a high ceiling is cold in winter and dark by
lamplight.” ¹⁸ Sekien’s Tenjōname entry plays with this directive: “It is said
that if the ceiling is high, (the room) will be dark and in winter it will be cold;
but the reason for this does not lie with the design of the house. It is en-
tirely through the machinations of this yōkai [kai] that you feel a chill in your
dreams.” ¹⁹ In other words, it is not the architecture that creates the darkness
and chilliness but the haunting of the Tenjōname (see Figure 3).
The same yōkai is found in Mizuki’s catalogs, with an illustration that is
remarkably similar to Sekien’s drawing. Mizuki’s description of the creature,
however, is different:

There is a yōkai called “Tenjōname.” You would think that it would be a

great help for neatly licking clean the ceiling, which normally does not get
cleaned—but this is not the case. It is fine that this “Ceiling-licker” licks the
ceiling without being asked, but it actually causes dirty stains to adhere.
When there is nobody around in an old house, temple, or shrine, it comes
out and licks with its long tongue . . . It seems that if they found stains
on the ceiling, people in the old days thought it was the handiwork of the
Tenjōname.²⁰

Not only is there no mention here of Sekien (or Yoshida Kenkō), but Miz-
uki transforms the Tenjōname into a traditional yōkai that “people in the old
days” invoked to explain the stains on their ceilings. In addition to inserting
the creature into the discourse of folk tradition, he also goes on to enshroud
the Tenjōname in a veil of personal remembrance, with a concomitant note
of nostalgia. “When I was a child,” he explains, “there was an old woman in
the neighborhood who was particularly knowledgeable about yōkai. On occa-
sion, she used to stay at our place, and she looked at the stains on the ceiling

16 mich ae l dylan fo s t e r

of our house and said, ‘Look! The Tenjōname comes out at night and makes
those stains.’ ” ²¹
Through Mizuki’s reinscription, the Tenjōname is transformed from a
Sekien invention (a playful riff on Kenkō’s canonical text), to a traditional
yōkai lurking in the rural hinterlands and embedded within the corpus of
lore possessed by old people before the war. By inserting his own childhood
memory into an encyclopedic compendium of yōkai, Mizuki underscores his
folkloric authority as somebody with an explicit personal connection to the
traditions of the past. In this account, his own history is informed neither
by scholarly familiarity with texts such as Sekien’s and Yanagita’s, nor by his
years of activity within the urban world of the postwar mass media industry,
but rather by a childhood spent in the rural village of Sakaiminato before the

figure 3. Toriyama Sekien’s Tenjōname. Courtesy of the Kawasaki City Museum.

t h e ot h e rwo r l d s o f m i z u k i s h i g e r u  17
 war. It was there and then, in an innocent, almost mystic atmosphere, that
yōkai and the stories surrounding them inspired the imagination of old and
young alike. Mizuki constructs his own hometown as an authentic and idyl-
lic space representative of all hometowns; his manga, anime, catalogs, and
personal memoirs bind postwar Japan to this desired prewar, prelapsarian,
moment in much the same way Yanagita’s writings linked early twentieth-
century modernity with a mystical pre-Meiji imaginary.
In one of his autobiographical texts, Mizuki establishes this nostalgic
world and his own position as a child within it. The old neighborhood woman
mentioned in the Tenjōname entry, in fact, is one of the most memorable
and lasting characters of his experience. She is called Nonnonbaa (Granny
Nonnon); her name, along with her knowledge of the otherworld, becomes
indelibly linked with Mizuki in the title of his prose memoir, Nonnonbaa to ore
(Granny Nonnon and me) originally published in 1977.²² The memoir relates
anecdotes of his childhood in Sakaiminato, stressing his dubious performance
as a student, his struggle to become a leader among the village children, and
his relationship with Nonnonbaa, purveyor of local knowledge.
In the first section of the book, entitled “Childhood years living amongst
the yōkai,” Mizuki tells how he heard about the Tenjōname for the first time,
and the language repeats and transforms the details from his catalog entry:

Along with knowledge of annual events and ceremonies, Nonnonbaa also

knew all sorts of obake and mysterious stories.
She would look at the stains in the dim light of the kitchen ceiling, and
say with a serious expression on her face that they were made by an obake
called “Tenjōname” that would come in the night when everybody was qui-
etly sleeping. I would look at the ceiling carefully and think, well yes, those
stains seem to be from that. There was no room for doubt. (20–21)

By giving voice to Nonnonbaa as the bearer of tradition, Mizuki links

himself to a premodern Japanese authority. “Nonnon,” Mizuki explains, was
a local expression for somebody who “attends to the spirits” (16). He writes:
“I came to have a sense of belief that there was another world in addition to
the human world. As an interpreter of this other world, Nonnonbaa was an
absolutely indispensable person.” As a medium between an older/other world
and Mizuki’s, Nonnonbaa translates sounds and signs into oral pictures that
the young Mizuki can imagine and that he will eventually render visually for
others to see.
Or so the autobiographical narrative would have us believe. Strictly

18  mich ae l dylan fo s t e r
speaking, in fact, many of Mizuki’s illustrations, such as the Tenjōname, are
overtly derivative of Sekien’s images, problematizing the extent of Nonnon-
baa’s influence on Mizuki’s visual imagination.²³ (With regard to Sekien’s
image itself, Komatsu Kazuhiko points out that it is impossible to assess
whether Sekien illustrated the Tenjōname out of local tradition or whether he
actually fabricated it from scratch and it was later introduced into oral tradi-
tion through his texts.²⁴) In a biography of the manga artist, Adachi Noriyuki
reports that according to Mizuki’s older brother, Nonnonbaa “was just a com-
pletely normal rural old woman. As for outstanding abilities, or special knowl-
edge concerning spiritual matters, she had nothing at all of that sort.” ²⁵
But by retelling the story of Sekien’s monsters through the authenticat-
ing voice of Nonnonbaa, complete with explanations suited to a rural village,
Mizuki reinscribes these yōkai into the life of the countryside. Just as Non-
nonbaa becomes the symbolic medium through which he is made privy to
the secret workings of the supernatural world of the past, Mizuki himself
serves as medium between the lost world of a country town and the (often)
suburban or urban worlds of his readership. My point here is not to chal-
lenge the “authenticity” of Mizuki’s recollections but simply to note that by
sharing his personal memories, whether fabricated or not, Mizuki contrib-
utes to the postwar construction of a communal memory of a premodern
cultural ecology. Whereas a century ear-
lier Inoue Enryō had worked to efface the
topography of the supernatural with his
analytical yōkai studies, Mizuki’s manga
and yōkai compendia redraw the map of
this nostalgic landscape.
The figure of Nonnonbaa acts as a
guide through this terrain, teaching Mi- Image not available
zuki to interpret signs, such as stains on
the ceiling, as traces and trail of the in-
visible, otherworldly creatures that have
passed before them. Nonnonbaa herself
has already lived out her time: her stories
have no resonance for “rational” adults. figure 4. Bronze statues of Nonnonbaa and young Mi-
But to the prerational Mizuki, her teach- zuki in front of the Mizuki Shigeru Kinenkan (museum)
in Sakaiminato. Photograph by author.
ings make perfect sense. The knowledge
of the mystic skips the skeptical modern generation (and educated elite) of
Enryō and Yanagita to be imparted directly to the innocent young Mizuki
(see Figure 4). And Mizuki, as an adult, passes on this knowledge to the

t h e ot h e rwo r l d s o f m i z u k i s h i g e r u  19
 reader, invariably presenting it in a sentimental haze as something already-
no-longer available—and therefore, all the more desirable.

ACCIDENTAL ETHNOGRAPHER

The public persona Mizuki creates through his autobiographical writings

complements the world of his manga and illustrated catalogs. His own life
becomes paradigmatic of Japan’s twentieth-century experience—or at least
the experience of the “common” man in twentieth-century Japan. Raised in
a country village, Mizuki was a reluctant conscripted soldier, who suffered—
as did Japan—irreparable damage from the war. And yet, through his or-
deals he discovers inner resources and otherworlds that fortify his future
creativity. On his return home, Mizuki struggles through poverty like the
war-ravaged nation itself, ultimately overcoming his handicap to succeed in
a competitive market.
One of Mizuki’s manga not related directly to yōkai is entitled Komikku
Shōwa shi (Manga history of Shōwa). Commencing publication in 1988 as
the Shōwa period was coming to a close, this eight-volume illustrated his-
tory includes accounts of political and military events as well as social and
cultural movements. But Mizuki, who was born on the cusp of the Shōwa
period, also intersperses scenes from his own life, renarrating his childhood
in Sakaiminato and his relationship with Nonnonbaa. He illustrates, for
example, the scene in which Nonnonbaa points out stains on the ceiling—
although he does not draw the Tenjōname itself.²⁶ The history of the Shōwa
period is also the history of Mizuki Shigeru: his personal memories of his
hometown and wartime experiences become part of the collective memory
of the nation. To some extent, Mizuki’s popularity develops out of this self-
narrativization—he himself represents the transcendent experiences of
the nation, and therefore he has the authority and the insight to re-present
them for popular consumption.²⁷
The folklorist Yanagita Kunio often portrayed himself as a medium be-
tween the urban intellectual world of early twentieth-century Tokyo and the
rural hinterlands. In his seminal Tōno monogatari (1910, Tales of Tōno), for
example, he assumes the persona of ethnographer-hero, venturing into dis-
tant realms and returning to report his experiences. Mizuki can be viewed
similarly: not only does he construct a persona for himself as interlocutor
between Nonnonbaa/Sakaiminato and his readers, but his non-yōkai-related
work also centers on this motif of alien or otherworldly experience. Unlike

20  mich ae l dylan fo s t e r
Yanagita, however, his audience is not the elite intellectual of Tokyo but the
everyman manga reader of postwar Japan, and Mizuki himself is an ethnog-
rapher-hero only by accident: an ordinary man who has stumbled upon ex-
traordinary people and places. This is particularly evident in the way he char-
acterizes his wartime experiences.
His memoir, Musume ni kataru otōsan no senki (1995, Papa’s war diary told
to his daughters), rhetorically positions the reader in the place of Mizuki’s
children; that is, Mizuki’s personal account of the war becomes a public ac-
count, his individual memories retold for the sake of the family/nation. The
memoir recounts Mizuki’s career as a soldier and also describes in detail his
encounter with some of the native people of Papua New Guinea. Recovering
from the loss of his arm, and suffering repeated bouts of malaria, Mizuki no-
tices some indigenous children passing by the field hospital. Realizing there
must be a village nearby, he duly sets off to find it. His first impression of the
natives’ lifestyle evokes a utopian otherworldliness as well as a desire for an
unspoiled Japanese past, harkening all the way back to Japan’s Jōmon period
(ca. 13,000–300 BCE): “The natives were like the Jōmon people, all of them
living in a place with a nice vista. Looking out at the ocean in the distance and
eating a banana, you couldn’t tell if you were fighting a war or in heaven. That
is how much Papa liked the atmosphere of the native village.” He describes
the village houses and observes flowers he has never seen before: “These gave
me the sense all the more that I had come to an otherworld (ikai). With a feel-
ing as if I had somehow come upon a fairyland or the Jōmon period, I moved
toward where some natives were preparing food and getting ready to eat.” ²⁸
Mizuki goes on to relate how he becomes friends with the villagers and
spends more and more time with them. Echoing his veneration of Nonnon-
baa, he finds another old woman at the spiritual heart of the community:
“It would seem that all the doings of the
village were directed by the old woman,
Mizuki’s personal account
Ikarian” (152). Mizuki feels at home in
of the war becomes a public
“Ikarian’s village” and spends all his free
account, his individual
time there, eating and relaxing with his
memories retold for the
new friends. At one point in a villager’s
sake of the family/nation.
home he comes across a Christian Bible;
jokingly he reads several passages aloud,
and the villagers begin to call him “Paulo.” Mizuki himself never elaborates
on this choice of names, but it is impossible to overlook the reference here to
the New Testament apostle who changed his name from Saul to Paul upon his
conversion. For Mizuki has undergone a spiritual rebirth, discovering in this

t h e ot h e rwo r l d s o f m i z u k i s h i g e r u  2 1
 small village the same innocent faith he had in Sakaiminato before the war.
Indeed, immediately after this informal christening, he notices a strange odor
emanating from the healing stump of his wounded arm: “it was the smell of
a baby. The smell of something reborn anew. Somehow something like hope
was springing forth” (153–54).
Notably absent from Mizuki’s portrayal of his war experience are sym-
pathetic Japanese characters; his fellow soldiers usually remain nameless,
and his commanding officers tend to act in a mean-spirited and incompre-
hensible fashion: “I was bullied (your Papa had the lowest rank, so he was
regularly beaten by the soldiers), and in every instance, they would say, it’s
the Emperor’s command, so die.” In contrast, the residents of Ikarian’s uto-
pian village are individually named and described, their “wonderful lifestyle”
lionized in hyperbolic terms (174). The disparity between the two worlds is
made all the more vivid when Mizuki is forbidden by his military superi-
ors to visit the village and then suffers a life-threatening bout of malaria.
Emaciated and unable to move, he is gazing absentmindedly outside when
one of his native friends walks by. Mizuki signals to him and asks him to
bring fruit. Later that evening, something cool brushes his hand; he opens
his eyes, and just barely visible in the gathering darkness is the outline of a
native child holding a dish of banana and pineapple. These visitations con-
tinue for several months until he gradually recovers (178–80). Not only does
the episode vividly illustrate Mizuki’s faith in the life-restoring powers of the
natives and their utopian lifestyle, it also portrays the natives themselves as
otherworldy inhabitants with special powers, appearing at twilight and vis-
ible only to Mizuki.²⁹
Elsewhere Mizuki writes, “I found these mysterious natives to be rare
and interesting . . . In later years I came to draw yōkai, but this was probably
nothing but giving form to the agreeable atmosphere of these people.” ³⁰ The
otherworldly realm, whether at home or abroad, is visible only to those will-
ing (or naïve enough) to experience it. Just as he was the most receptive child
to Nonnonbaa’s teachings, so too Mizuki is the only soldier to care deeply for
the invisible natives living around him. In both cases, Mizuki is an accidental
ethnographer who ventures into these other realms and returns to tell about
them. When the war is finally over and he is to be repatriated, it is with great
sadness that he informs the villagers he must leave. They suggest he stay
and he consults with one of his doctors, who replies, “There are one hundred
thousand soldiers here, and you are the only one who wants to be discharged
locally” (190). In the end, Mizuki decides to go back to Japan, but he promises
to return.

22 mich ae l dylan fo s t e r

 And some thirty years later he does: the last section of his war memoir,
entitled “Little Heaven,” describes this journey back. Ikarian, the old matri-
arch, has long since passed away, but some of his other friends are still alive,
and the reunion with “Paulo” is joyful. In the afterword, Mizuki explains
how he returns many times, eating with the villagers and staying overnight
in their houses. This afterword, and indeed much of the second half of the
memoir, ignores the fighting and suffering Mizuki experienced as a soldier—
and avoids completely the politics of Japan’s Pacific War. It seems rather that
what Mizuki wants to pass on to his daughters (and the rest of the nation)
is the story of the discovery of a little heaven on earth, an otherworld where
one can be saved, reborn, and nurtured.
It is fitting that in the thirty years between his war experiences and his
joyful return to the village, Mizuki had created an entire encyclopedically in-
scribed otherworld of yōkai. “I can’t say it in a very loud voice,” he admits,
but there is a correlation between the villagers and his yōkai: “Kitarō’s world
is similar to theirs.” ³¹ In musing on the pristine “primitive way of life” (genshi
seikatsu) of the natives in Rabaul, he wondered what had gone wrong with the
modern way of life:

Instead of enhancing the good aspects of the primitive way of life, human-
kind had advanced in a strange direction . . . The proof of this is that worries
have increased at a ridiculous pace and we are so busy rushing around that
we are left with nothing. I passed my days thinking about whether it would
be possible to somehow improve upon this wonderful primitive way of life
and discover a “modern primitive way of life” really worth living. (174–75)

Mizuki’s re-creation of Sekien’s and Yanagita’s yōkai against the back-

drop of his childhood in Sakaiminato is an attempt to do just this: to imbue
modern life with a sense of the primitive and mystical. He is, as it were, at-
tempting to breathe life and mystery back into the “nothing” of modern ex-
istence. Taking Yanagita’s ethnographic work one step further, Mizuki does
not simply map the yōkai topography of the past but directly channels this
past—suitably enhanced—into his manga, anime, and illustrated compen-
dia. His project aims to keep the past relevant for the present, to reintroduce
and reanimate the museum pieces shelved and ordered by the folklorists be-
fore him, and to create a “modern primitive” world for children living in the
expanding conurbations of the late twentieth century.
But while he succeeds in making yōkai a constant playful presence in the
lives of Japanese children, ultimately Mizuki’s reinvigorated creatures are akin

t h e ot h e rwo r l d s o f m i z u k i s h i g e r u  2 3
 to the childhood memories of the nation itself. They derive, as Komatsu puts
it, “from a profound regret, and are illustrated exactly as if they were memo-
rial photographs.” ³² Mizuki’s pictures, and with them the predominant image
of yōkai in postwar Japan, are memorials for a past now gone, a landscape
permanently eradicated by the rapid economic growth of the postwar period.

MEDIA/MEDIUM

Mizuki Shigeru’s career has been built through a profound agility in different
commercial media, from kami shibai, manga, television, films, and books, to
video games and interactive computer technologies.³³ Like his own Terebi-
kun, he co-opts modern technology to enter other worlds and bring back
rare and exciting gifts to an appreciative audience. To a certain extent Mi-
zuki himself is a media construct: his public character morphs, yōkai-like,
from the innocent adventurous child (Gegeru), to the bumbling sincere sol-
dier (Paulo), to the irreverently wise old man (Mizuki-san) of his most recent
memoirs. Mizuki’s adeptness within contemporary media has endowed his
yōkai with far greater range and influence than the monsters on which they
are based. The yōkai he claims to have learned about from Nonnonbaa are
no longer localized to Sakaiminato but have become metonyms for the weird
and mysterious that once haunted all of Japan. They are the monsters of a
national landscape.
In a sense, the trope of media is also appropriate for considering Mizuki’s
own role as ambassador within this landscape. As a human with special ac-
cess to the supernatural, he acts as a medium, an intermediary, translating
and negotiating different realms of experience. He stands between Sakaimi-
nato and the world of his readers as a direct link with the ancestors of the
modern Japanese, a liaison between the oral and the visual, the then and the
now. And he seems to cherish this mediator role, noting facetiously that he is
often thought of as a “yōkai-human.” ³⁴
Indeed, as a medium, Mizuki channels other times and other places into
the here and now. While yōkai always test the limits of the human, Mizu-
ki’s work also questions the limits and possibilities of human society. In a
tiny war-torn village far away in Rabaul, Mizuki finds a model for life back
home in Japan, a way to live that is both “modern” and “primitive.” Similarly,
his encyclopedically documented otherworld of yōkai represents an ideal-
ized Japanese past even as it suggests the potential for a utopian future. In
early twenty-first-century Japan, the continued (and increasing) popularity

24 mich ae l dylan fo s t e r

of Mizuki’s work stems from a desire to escape the limits of modern soci-
ety—the limits of the human construct itself—into otherworlds of utopian
innocence like Sakaiminato or Ikarian’s village, each a “little heaven” where
everyday signs can be read as traces of not-so-everyday possibilities (Figure
5). Japan’s current and ongoing “yōkai boom” reflects a longing for such an
“other mysterious world,” ³⁵ a fetishizing of an alternative space and the hope
that there is something more than what we see before us. Mizuki’s work sug-
gests that such an alternative space is always close at hand, just on the other
side of history, beneath the map, around the corner, through the television
screen. These otherworlds of Mizuki Shigeru expand the limits of the present
human world, enchanting it with mystery and, perhaps, infusing it with the
hope of something better.

Image not available

figure 5. The layering of one world over the other is literally, if playfully, signified within the land-
scape of Mizuki’s hometown: a sign on the platform of the Sakaiminato Japan Rail Station identi-
fies it as “Kitarō Station” with “Sakaiminato Station” noted parenthetically beneath. Photograph
by author.

t h e ot h e rwo r l d s o f m i z u k i s h i g e r u  2 5
 Notes
This essay has benefited from the valuable suggestions of a great many people, but I would
particularly like to thank Christopher Bolton for his constant encouragement and insight-
ful editorial feedback.
. Although yōkai is presently the word of choice, other terms are also invoked—
such as bakemono, the more childish obake, and the more academic-sounding kaii genshō.
Historically, the popularity of the word yōkai is relatively recent: although it has semantic
roots in China and appears in Japan as early as mid-Edo, it did not develop into the default
technical term until the Meiji-period writings of Inoue Enryō. See Komatsu Kazuhiko,
“Yōkai: kaisetsu,” in Yōkai, ed. Komatsu Kazuhiko (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, ),
–; also Kyōgoku Natsuhiko, “Yōkai to iu kotoba ni tsuite (sono )” (About the word
‘yōkai’; second installment) Kai  (December ): –.
. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, “Monster Culture (Seven Theses),” in Monster Theory: Reading
Culture, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ), .
. Gazu hyakkiyagyō, ; Konjaku gazu zoku hyakki, ; Konjaku hyakki shūi, ;
Hyakki tsurezure bukuro, . All four texts are reproduced in Inada Atsunobu and Tanaka
Naohi, ed., Toriyama Sekien gazu hyakkiyagyō (Tokyo: Kokusho Kankōkai, ).
. One breakdown of Sekien’s work posits that most are derived from Japanese
folklore or literature, fourteen come directly from Chinese sources, and some eighty-five
may have been fabricated by Sekien. See Tada Katsumi, Hyakki kaidoku (Tokyo: Kōdansha,
), .
. Originally published in the journal Minkan denshō, “Yōkai meii” is reprinted in
Teihon Yanagita Kunio shū (Collected works of Yanagita Kunio) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō,
), : –.
. As the godfather of the contemporary yōkai world, Mizuki has greatly influenced a
number of other artists and writers, most notably bestselling mystery novelist (and 
Naoki Prize winner) Kyōgoku Natsuhiko (b. ).
. Adachi Noriyuki, Yōkai to aruku: Hyōden, Mizuki Shigeru (Walking with yōkai: Criti-
cal biography, Mizuko Shigeru) (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū, ), .
. For more on kami-shibai and the manga industry, see Fujishima Usaku, Sengo
manga no minzokugaku shi (Folkloric history of postwar manga) (Tokyo: Kawai Shuppan,
), –. Kashi hon manga existed before the war but flourished particularly in the
s, when kashi-hon shops were nicknamed “libraries for the common folk” (shomin no
toshokan). See Fujishima, Sengo manga, –.
. See Mizuki Shigeru, Gensō sekai e no tabi, yōkai wandârando  (Journey into the
fantastic world, yōkai wonderland, vol. ) (Tokyo: Chikuma Bunko, ), –. “Terebi-
kun” was originally published in Bessatsu shōnen magajin,  August .
. According to the manga episode in which Kitarō is born, Medama-oyaji is the sole
remnant of Kitarō’s father who melts away through disease. The eyeball remains to watch
over Kitarō as he grows up. See Mizuki Shigeru, Chūkō aizōban Gegege no Kitarō  (Chūkō
treasury, Gegege no Kitarō, vol. ) (Tokyo: Chūōkōronsha, ), –; the episode, entitled
“Kitarō no tanjō,” was originally published in Garo, March . With his monstrous but
loving father, Kitarō might be contrasted with that other charming boy-hero of postatomic

26 mich ae l dylan fo s t e r

manga/anime, Tezuka Osamu’s Tetsuwan Atom, a high-tech robot created by a technocrat
father. Both Kitarō and Atom are outsiders (the one a yōkai, the other a robot) in human
society; they both represent a kind of nostalgia: Kitarō for a mysterious utopian past and
Atom for a techno-haunted utopian future. For more on Atom’s liminal or outsider status,
see Anne Allison, Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ), –, and the pieces by Yomota
Inuhiko and Ōtsuka Eiji in this volume.
. Mizuki Shigeru, Nonnonbaa to ore (Granny Nonnon and me) (Tokyo: Chikuma
Bunko, ), .
. Yanagita, “Yōkai meii,” . Although Yanagita lists this yōkai as Sunakake baba
(with a short final vowel), Mizuki presents it with a long final vowel, “babaa.” Please note:
throughout this article, all translations from Japanese are my own.
. Ibid., .
. Similarly, Kyōgoku Natsuhiko discusses the development of another Mizuki char-
acter, Konaki-jijii (“old man crying like a baby”) from a local phenomenon into a “national
‘character.’” See “Tsūzoku ‘yōkai’ gainen no seiritsu ni kansuru ichi kōsatsu” (Thoughts
about the formation of the popular concept of yōkai) in Nihon yōkaigaku taizen (Compen-
dium of Japanese yōkai studies), ed. Komatsu Kazuhiko (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, ), .
By tracing Konaki-jiji back to its point of origin in Shikoku, researchers have charted the
way in which “a word used on the family level” () to denote a particular old man who
could imitate the crying of a baby is transformed, through Yanagita and eventually Mizuki,
into a nationally known yōkai figure (–). See also Higashi Masao, Yōkai densetsu ki-
bun (Yōkai legends and strange tales) (Tokyo: Gakken, ), –.
. Having said this, I should note that Kitarō has appeared in an encyclopedic format
where Mizuki explains: “This is a made-up story, but having thought about it for many
years, this yōkai took shape in my head. All the yōkai in this book actually might exist
(well, you can’t actually see them, but . . . ) so I wanted to put [Kitarō] into this group” Mi-
zuki Shigeru, Yōkai gadan (Yōkai pictures and tales) (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, ), .
. Mizuki Shigeru, Zusetsu Nihon yōkai taizen (Illustrated compendium of Japanese
yōkai) (Tokyo: Kōdansha, ), .
. Mizuki Shigeru, “Me ni mienai mono o miru” (Seeing the unseeable), in Yōkai ten-
goku (Yōkai heaven) (Tokyo: Chikuma Bunko, ), .
. Donald Keene, trans., Essays in Idleness: The Tsurezuregusa of Kenkō (New York: Co-
lumbia University Press, ), –.
. Inada and Tanaka, Toriyama Sekien gazu hyakki yagyō, . Sekien’s entry is typi-
cally packed with verbal and visual punning. Tada Katsumi suggests that the appearance of
the Tenjōname itself is a play on Edo-period fire companies: the monster’s clothing, mane,
and fingers resemble a matoi, a frilly flag-like banner carried by firemen. See Tada Katsumi,
“Etoki Gazu hyakkiyagyō no yōkai” (Unpacking the yōkai of Gazu hyakkiyagyō), Kai 
(December ): –.
. Mizuki Shigeru, Zoku yōkai jiten (Yōkai dictionary continued) (Tokyo: Tōkyōdō
Shuppan, ), –.
. Ibid., .
. The memoir was originally published by Chikuma Shobō in . All citations here
are taken from a  Kōdansha Komikkusu edition and noted parenthetically in the text.

t h e ot h e rwo r l d s o f m i z u k i s h i g e r u  2 7
 . Mizuki explains: “As a child, whenever I heard a yōkai story, I would draw an im-
age in my head. In other words, having heard of it, the shape would take form; so when I
first had a chance to look at Sekien’s illustrations, I knew most of the yōkai without even
looking at the names.” Mizuki Shigeru, “Yōkai no ‘katachi’ konjaku” (The shape of yōkai,
now and long ago), in Mizuki, Yōkai tengoku, .
. The folklorist Iwai Hiromi (b. ) describes a Tenjōname similar to Mizuki’s as
an item of local folklore, but Komatsu notes that Iwai too may be influenced by Sekien’s
illustration, which Iwai includes with his description. Murakami Kenji suggests that the
Tenjōname is an invention of Sekien’s that plays off notions of ceilings and closets as
boundaries between this world and the other. Komatsu Kazuhiko, Yōkaigaku shinkō: Yōkai
kara miru Nihonjin no kokoro (New thoughts on yōkai-ology: The heart of the Japanese as
seen through yōkai) (Tokyo: Shōgakukan, ), ; Iwai Hiromi, Kurashi no naka no yōkai
(Yōkai in our lives) (Tokyo: Bunka Shuppankyoku, ), -; Murakami Kenji, Yōkai
jiten (Yōkai dictionary) (Tokyo: Mainichi Shinbunsha, ), .
. Adachi, Yōkai to aruku, .
. Mizuki Shigeru, Komikku Shōwa shi (Manga history of Shōwa), vol.  (Tokyo:
Kōdansha Komikkusu, ), –.
. The final volume of the series includes, appropriately, two parallel datelines: one
for the Shōwa period and one for Mizuki’s life. See Mizuki Shigeru, Komikku Shōwa shi
(Manga history of Shōwa), vol.  (Tokyo: Kōdansha Komikkusu, ), –.
. Mizuki Shigeru, Musume ni kataru otōsan no senki (Papa’s war diary told to his
daughters) (Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha, ), –. For subsequent citations, page
numbers are given parenthetically in the text.
. Mizuki’s lionization of the local people is rare in Japanese war memoirs about
Rabaul, most of which speak disparagingly of the natives and their lifestyle. See Iwamoto
Hiromitsu, “Japanese and New Guinean Memories of Wartime Experiences at Rabaul” (pa-
per delivered at the symposium Remembering the War in New Guinea, Australian National
University, Canberra, – October ), http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/remember.nsf/
pages/NTBE (accessed  June ).
. Mizuki Shigeru, Rabauru jūgun kōki: Topetoro to no gojū nen (Rabaul military ser-
vice postscript: Fifty years with Topetoro) (Tokyo: Chūōkōron Shinsha, ), .
. Ibid., .
. Komatsu, Yōkaigaku shinkō, .
. Some eight years before “Gegege no Kitarō” was made into a television series, he
published a manga in which he predicted presciently that Kitarō would be “dragged” into
television and cinema. See the discussion of this episode in Kyōgoku Natsuhiko, Tada
Katsumi, and Murakami Kenji, Yōkai baka (Yōkai crazy) (Tokyo: Shinchō OH! Bunko, ),
–.
. Mizuki Shigeru, Umareta toki kara “yōkai” datta (Yōkai since birth) (Tokyo:
Kōdansha, ), .
. In Japanese, “betsu no fushigi na sekai” (Mizuki, Umareta, ).

28  mich ae l dylan fo s t e r
 LAURA MILLER

Extreme Makeover
for a Heian-Era Wizard

In 2000, observers of Japanese social life were amazed to see groups of

schoolgirls massing at Shintō shrines dedicated to Abeno Seimei, a legend-
ary sorcerer of the Heian era (794–1185 AD). Some noted that these visitors
treated Seimei more like an idol than a kami (shrine deity). At a scholarly “cul-
ture seminar” on phantoms and the supernatural where Abeno Seimei was
one of the topics for discussion, the venue could only hold sixty, but one hun-
dred and twenty people came, many of them schoolgirls who tried to crowd
into the room.¹ Girls’ interest in visiting Seimei shrines and hearing lectures
about him were only part of a trajectory of exploding fascination with this
historic figure. Seimei, a genuine person who most likely lived between 921
and 1005 AD, became the focus of intense cultural energy and was the sub-
ject of numerous manga, films, a TV series, novels, anime, and books. The
question of why a medieval wizard became a modern icon and folk hero is in-
trinsically interesting, yet is also a useful case to consider in our exploration
of trends in contemporary Japanese popular culture. I believe that his new
celebrity status reveals multiple threads that might be fruitful to consider.
The example of Abeno Seimei idolatry gives us a unique perspective from
which to consider the role of the culture industry in fueling and buttressing

30
 figure 1. Painting of Abeno Seimei from the Abeno Ōji Shrine Treasury in Osaka.
Reproduced on the cover of Fujimaki, Abeno Seimei.

interest in the occult and the possibility of supernatural powers that extend
the limits of the human.
For one thing, production and consumption of Seimei is an illustration of
the power of the girl market. Japanese girls have been driving the consumer
economy in numerous ways for more than a decade, forming a rich counter-
part to male-inspired otaku culture. In medieval folktales, statues, and paint-
ings, Seimei is presented as a grave middle-aged man exemplary of Heian-era
masculinity. He has a chubby face, thin eyes, and a pale complexion (Figure
1).² But in the Heisei era (1989–), Seimei has been re-imagined as a bishōnen,
a beautiful young man with huge eyes, flowing locks, and a sculpted face. One
cultural change this indicates is the importance of what we might term the
“girl gaze” in popular consumption. Because the aesthetic tastes and desires

e xt r e m e m a k e ov e r f o r a h e i a n -e r a w i z a r d  3 1
 Seimei challenges the
of girls are encoded in Seimei imagery,
limits of the human with his
the creators and consumers of Seimei
reputation for having
products and representations do not have
extraordinary magical
to actually be girls for the girl gaze to be
abilities that point to new
present. Takahara Eiri’s somewhat differ-
realms of human attainment.
ent concept of the “consciousness of the
girl” is characterized by a valorization of
the fantastic.³ Yet both the girl gaze and girl consciousness point to the fact
that a girl’s point of view or thinking like a girl is not related to age or sex.
As an onmyōji, or court practitioner of occult science, Seimei was espe-
cially attractive to a female audience in which there had been a preexisting
fascination with divination and the occult.⁴ In addition, Seimei challenges
the limits of the human with his reputation for having extraordinary magical
abilities that point to new realms of human attainment. The combination of
mass-culture themes—girls’ desire for bishōnen images and interest in the
extension of natural human endowment through the use of magic—led to
what Malcolm Gladwell might call a “tipping point,” in which a preponder-
ance of factors ensure that a new trend takes off.⁵

WHO WAS ABENO SEIMEI?

We know about Seimei and his magical talents from venerable folktales such
as the late Heian collection Konjaku monogatari shū (ca. 1000–1100 AD, Tales
of Times Now Past) and the early Kamakura period Uji shūi monogatari (ca.
1190–1242, A collection of tales from Uji). In these compilations Seimei uses
his remarkable ability for commanding goblins, channeling spirits, and pre-
dicting the future to rescue court nobles and to protect the capital. The story
of Seimei’s background goes something like this: his father is a court noble
named Abeno Yasuna and his mother a famous beauty named Kuzunoha.
One day Yasuna is traveling in the countryside when he comes upon a mil-
itary officer hunting foxes to use in making medical potions. Yasuna feels
sorry for a trapped white fox the officer carries and engages in a bout to free
it. Later he encounters a beautiful woman named Kuzunoha, who is really the
spirit of the white fox. Kuzunoha nurses the injured Yasuna and accompa-
nies him home where they marry. In time she gives birth to their son Seimei,
who seems to have inherited both brilliance and paranormal powers from his
mother. One day Seimei catches a glimpse of his mother’s foxtail, and now
that her true identity is revealed, she decides to leave her life as a human and

32 la ur a mille r
return to the forest. As a parting gift to Seimei she confers on him the power
to understand the language of animals.⁶
The historic Seimei was part of an established court bureaucracy that was
in charge of ritual and magic that constituted a syncretic form of esoteric cos-
mology and divination called Onmyōdō. Onmyōdō evolved in the late seventh
century from a mixture of Taoist, Buddhist, and incipient Shintō beliefs and
rituals. Central to their wizard practice was the system of Chinese applied
numerology, composed of three central institutions. These were the concep-
tual model of Yin Yang (the symmetrical opposition and balance of the forces
of nature), the Five Elements System (a Taoist schema whereby wood, fire,
water, earth, and metal metaphorically represent the dynamic processes of
the natural world), and the I Ching (The Book of Changes, an omen text with
predictions encoded in a set of eight trigrams and sixty-four hexagrams). The
court magicians were responsible for analyzing strange events and anoma-
lous phenomena, regulating divination, charting the auspicious calendar, ex-
orcism, and protection from evil spirits. They also performed thanksgiving
rites at royal tombs and forms of geomancy. Because the calendar was critical
to assigning dates for imperial rituals, the status of almanac-devisers such
as Seimei was much higher than that accorded court traders and clerks who
computed profit and taxation. Seimei was thought to be especially brilliant
in determining the sex of fetuses, finding lost or stolen articles, and predict-
ing the best days for outside activity or movement, called katatagae.⁷ He was
credited with the ability to communicate with ghosts and goblins, and to use
spirit helpers effectively. His achievements earned him immense respect and
status in court society. It was believed that onmyōji had the power to channel
or command spirits called shikigami (also called shikijin). Shikigami were used
to serve the wizard as scouts and messengers, and would do his bidding and
protect him. Through enchantment a great wizard such as Seimei could trans-
form inanimate objects such as scrolls and paper dolls into spirit helpers or
even use them as self-replica decoys to trick enemies.

SEMEI TODAY

Perhaps the person who has done the most to engender onmyōji fixation is
science fiction writer Yumemakura Baku, who began publishing a novel series
entitled Onmyōji in 1994. It is clear from subsequent interviews and essays
that Yumemakura had “girl consciousness” and the girl market in mind when
he began his Seimei output. He describes Seimei as young, great in stature,

e xt r e m e m a k e ov e r f o r a h e i a n -e r a w i z a r d  3 3
 pale in complexion, and overall a gorgeous man. In interviews he said that
because folktales only feature Seimei as an old man and or a child, he wanted
to imagine him as a vibrant young adult.⁸ In his novels and later in the manga
and film series on which Yumemakura collaborated, Seimei becomes friends
with another handsome young man named Minamotono Hiromasa Ason.
Hiromasa was also a real historic figure famous as a flute player who was pas-
sionate about music. A story about him in the Konjaku monogatari shū said
that his “skill at the flute was amazing, the beauty of his flute-playing inde-
scribable.” ⁹ In Yumemakura’s work they collaborate in solving supernatural
mysteries and rescuing court members and the capital from a series of at-
tacks from demons and evil ghosts.
As he was writing, Yumemakura came to see Seimei and Hiromasa as a
pair similar to Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. Since those two were always
convening in the Baker Street digs, Yumemakura selected Seimei’s mansion
as the place where the two Heian gentlemen could always be found sitting
and drinking sake. Yumemakura confessed that, although historically Seimei
and Hiromasa would have been married with children, he decided not to in-
clude this in his novels and manga.¹⁰ Yumemakura later teamed up with the
girls’ comic artist Okano Reiko, daughter-in-law of the late Tezuka Osamu, to
produce a thirteen-volume manga series also entitled Onmyōji.¹¹ It sold five
million copies and won the Tezuka cultural grand prize in 2001. In volumes 1
to 9, Okano followed Yumemakura’s novels closely, but after that she began
to incorporate more esoteric imagery, including Egyptian and Greek fantasy
scenes. In interviews, Okano claimed to have frequented “secret rituals and
Shintō ceremonies” in order to obtain a proper “supernatural tone” for her
illustrations.¹² Okano and Yumemakura remember the initiation of their col-
laboration differently: Yumemakura recalls that from the beginning he had
handpicked Okano, a premier girl’s manga artist, for the task, while Okano
remembers that she herself contacted the publisher of Yumemakura’s novels
to express interest in illustrating them in manga form.¹³
After the incredible success of the onmyōji books and manga, Yume-
makura consulted on the production of two feature films.¹⁴ The actor selected
to play the role of Abeno Seimei was Nomura Mansai, a handsome actor in
kyōgen theater (comedy sketches performed as an interlude for Noh plays).
Nomura created a fabulously sexy voice for Seimei’s incantations and gave
virtuoso performances that flirted with the theme of an erotic attraction be-
tween Seimei and Hiromasa. In the film’s sequel Nomura cross-dresses as a
graceful shrine maiden, or miko, who dances to Hiromasa’s flute. This homo-
erotic subtext no doubt was feeding the desires of yaoi-hungry girl fans.¹⁵

34 la ur a mille r
Episodes in the movie are newly created or are loosely based on existing folk-
tales. For example, the scene in the first film in the series in which Seimei
uses a blade of grass to sever a butterfly is based on a tale describing how
Seimei is challenged by Buddhist monks to kill a frog.¹⁶
The film was not the only media product to follow Yumemakura’s novel
and manga series, and from 2001 onward the Seimei and onmyōji boom pro-
liferated in countless forms. There was also an onmyōji TV series, as well as a
musical.¹⁷ In all these representations Seimei is never the oyaji/old guy of me-
dieval portraiture but rather the bishōnen of girl’s manga. Tachibana Kaimu
and Matsudono Rio created a manga series entitled Bibō no mato (The evil
capital of the handsome) about Seimei and a fictional twin brother, Hōmei,
who is trained in bunraku, traditional Japanese puppetry. Both are paranor-
mally gifted hunks who face off with a series of supernatural beings (Figure
2). The series Seimei Kitan (A Semei oddity) is illustrated by yaoi manga art-
ist Kanpe Akira and features Abeno Seimei and Ashiya Dōman as rivals for
the role of supreme onmyōji.¹⁸ In medieval folktales, the two soothsayers are
contemporary rivals who compete in wizard battles. In one story the emperor
presents them with a box and asks them to divine the contents. Dōman has
bribed a servant to place fifteen tangerines inside and gives this as his an-
swer, but Seimei turns them into rats and gives the correct answer.
In Kanpe’s manga the story is
changed somewhat, and Dōman must
become the student of Seimei when he
loses the contest. The contrast between
Kanpe’s image of two pretty-boy wiz-
ards and the Edo-period illustration of
the same scene in Hokusai’s 1814 collec-
tion of manga woodcuts and sketches
is striking.¹⁹ In Hokusai’s illustrations,
Seimei and Dōman are depicted as odd-
looking middle-aged sorcerers with
moustaches and soul patches. Dōman
sports the currently detestable bushy
“centipede” eyebrows. In Kanpe’s
manga Seimei has blonde hair, and both
he and Dōman have large eyes, narrow

figure 2. A beautified Seimei in the 2004

manga by Tachibana and Matsudono.

e xt r e m e m a k e ov e r f o r a h e i a n -e r a w i z a r d  3 5
 Scholars of the Seimei fad
chins, and high cheekbones. Most other
noticed that girls were
contemporary manga images of Seimei also
leaving not-very-religious
depict him as an attractive young man in
messages on the ema.
flowing robes. In Sanazaki’s 2001 manga
Abeno Seimei, Dōman is a sexy voluptuary
while Seimei is a tortured soul who cares about others. Her series contains
interesting scenes of wizard sex. In Takada’s 2000 manga series Hana emi no
otome: Abeno Seimei koigatari (The flower-blossom maiden: Abeno Seimei love
stories), we are offered Seimei as a young boy involved in a hopeless love af-
fair with a high-ranking court maiden.²⁰ Seimei’s makeover as a young, male
beauty recalls the trend beginning in the 1990s in which girls exerted pres-
sure on living men to reproduce bishōnen aesthetics and style on their own
bodies.²¹ Now that power is arcing back in time to refashion historical men.
Aside from manga, Abeno Seimei and onmyōji began appearing in other
media forms, such as the music video for the PlayStation2 video game series
Shin gōketsuji ichizoku that features wizards, miko, and Buddhist monks danc-
ing to techno music.²² There have been a series of documentary films, such
as Shiraishi’s Onmyōji juso kaeshi (2002, The reciprocal curse), in which living
victims of yin yang magic describe their difficulties. A number of onmyōji or
yin yang music albums were also released. New Age musician Miyashita came
out with the soothing In’yō gogyō on (2001, Yin yang five element music), and
Brian Eno and Peter Schwalm released Music for Onmyōji (2002). A Japanese
visual-kei heavy metal band (a genre of popular music in which outward ap-
pearance is part of the appeal) named Onmyōza began issuing CDs in 1999.
Their song lyrics often refer to goblins, spirits, yin yang, and the world of
the supernatural, and several of their albums have pentagrams adorning the
covers.²³ Seimei and onmyōji proved to be a lucrative cultural industry, one
that is wonderfully explored by Imagawa, who created lists of Seimei goods
and media. He offers a selection of ten Seimei novels, ten Seimei manga, ten
Seimei entertainment products, and ten Seimei nonfiction works.²⁴
As the Seimei and onmyōji boom escalated, Shintō shrines associated with
or dedicated to Seimei began manufacturing and selling amulets and charms
targeting the girls who were visiting their precincts (Figure 3). One popular
shrine good is a cell phone strap amulet (omamori) with a stone in the shape
of magatama, a curved bead thought to have protective qualities. The stones
come in different colors for better accessorizing. There are shrines devoted
to Abeno Seimei in Kyoto, Nara, and Osaka. (Altogether at least thirty-three
shrines throughout Japan have some type of connection to him.) Scholars of
the Seimei fad noticed that girls were leaving not-very-religious messages on

36 la ur a mille r
the ema. (These are small wooden votive plaques. They are purchased onsite
and, after a prayer or petition is written on them, are left hanging in a des-
ignated area for the deities to read.) One ema message read: “Okano Reiko-
sensei, please give your best to the Onmyōji manga series!” Some ema were
directed to Yumemakura instead.²⁵ Groups of five or more schoolgirls could
be seen taking photos at the shrines. On a narrow alleyway adjacent to the
Seimei Shrine in Kyoto is a shop that once sold neckties. When girls began
walking up and down the street searching in frustration for more souvenirs
from their visit to the shrine, the owner decided to change his business to the
“Onmyōji Original Goods Shop.” He sells Seimei postcards, posters, T-shirts,
dolls, and occult objects. His hottest item is the Shikigami Facial Oil Blotting
Paper (Figure 4).

figure 3. Popular goods sold at the

Seimei Shrine in Kyoto include cell phone
straps, wooden votive plaques, amulets,
paper charms, and purification wands.
Photograph by the author.

figure 4. Shikigami Facial Oil Blotting Paper sold at the Onmyōji

Original Goods Shop in Kyoto. Photograph by the author.

e xt r e m e m a k e ov e r f o r a h e i a n -e r a w i z a r d  3 7
 MAKING SENSE OF SEIMEI

The Seimei boom illustrates the interwoven nature of the Japanese culture
industry as well as the interplay between producer and consumer. A com-
mon business plan is to produce and release cultural products with a shared
theme or character simultaneously in a spectrum of media. Often referred
to as “media mix,” it began when J-Pop songs were released as theme songs
for new TV dramas or commercials. And unlike the usually separate film
and comic markets in the United States, Japanese manga artists often work
closely with film, TV, and music producers to insert their creations into other
cultural domains. An important aspect of the Seimei boom is that there is no
central narrative or story that is the object of interest and repetition. Culture
producers rummage around in old folktales and histories of the Heian era
for ideas about Seimei stories to tell, and patch together and create widely
different versions of Seimei’s life. The interest is not in the story but in the
character of Seimei. Scholars of manga have also noted the deep interaction
between artists and their fans and how this mutually influences both produc-
tion and consumption. Unlike many culture producers in the United States,
who represent their work as artistic endeavors not informed by market forces
or audience desire, creators of Seimei like Yumemakura are very open about
the fact that their projects are propelled by market reasoning. Most of the
Seimei products point toward the interests and desires of an imagined girl-
audience.
In his description of boy-oriented anime, Gill focuses on the theme of
mecha-transformation, a type of nonbiological change that requires a de-
vice that is available to anyone. There are no
special skills needed, thus making the pos-
An important aspect of
sibility of transformation an egalitarian op-
the Seimei boom is that
portunity.²⁶ In contrast, the skills and power
there is no central
of the wizard are not available to everyone
narrative or story that
and are often of a biological nature. There are
is the object of interest
many types of transformations in the Seimei
and repetition.
cultural wave, and it is not only Seimei who
gets a makeover. In several medieval scroll
paintings Seimei is depicted reading a magic ritual text while two obedient
shikigami sit waiting behind him.²⁷ The shikigami in all these scrolls are hor-
ribly deformed humanoid creatures with bulging eyes and misshapen, discol-
ored heads and stunted limbs. In contemporary works, however, the spirit
helpers are refashioned as cute human-like creatures. In the Onmyōji film

38  la ura mille r
series, Seimei’s shikigami, named Mitsumushi, is an adorable female court
lady played by actress Imai Eriko. Mitsumushi is appealingly vacuous, sweet,
and kindhearted. She is able to transform into butterfly form at will and is
said to have been brought back from China by the Buddhist monk Kūkai. In
the manga Gōsuto basutâ Abeno Seimei (Ghost buster Abeno Seimei), a cute
young Seimei is accompanied by shikigami who are sometimes represented as
precious little girls with ponytails and hair ribbons, huge slightly weird eyes,
and pointed ears (Figure 5).²⁸

figure 5. Ghost Buster Seimei in the 2003 manga by Hayami and Koyanagi.

e xt r e m e m a k e ov e r f o r a h e i a n -e r a w i z a r d  3 9
 A minor thread that may have contributed to intense Seimei fascination
is the Harry Potter novels and films, which were hugely successful in Japan.
The first three of J. K. Rowling’s novels were translated and released in 1999,
2000, and 2001, respectively, and by 2001 had become bestsellers.²⁹ Perhaps
fans wondered about Japan’s own wizard tradition after reading the books
or seeing the films. There are, of course, other interpretations of the Abeno
Seimei and onmyōji boom. It has been suggested that it is part of a new na-
tionalism that is expressed in renewed interest in history and the great ep-
ochs of Japanese cultural innovation. Another theory is that Seimei’s char-
acter resonates with today’s youth, who see themselves as similarly involved
in anxieties about political and social culture, and so avoid reality and im-
merse themselves in fantasies of the future. Finally, a journalist links Seimei
and onmyōji fixation to fear generated from the September 11 attacks and the
Japanese recession.³⁰
During a thousand year period Abeno Seimei has been the subject of
folktales, Kabuki plays, and other writing, yet he was never quite as popu-
lar as he became after 1999. To understand the new fascination with Abeno
Seimei and his shaman culture, I find Grant McCracken’s concept of “dis-
placed meaning” especially useful.³¹ This schema, in which cultural meaning
is said to be removed from daily life and relocated in a safe, distant historical
domain, allows me to make sense of onmyōji fixation as more than simple
escapist daydreaming or fantasy literature. Living in an extremely pragmatic
science-oriented society, consumers of onmyōji stories, goods, and images are
able to locate the fantastic, the magical, and the improbable in another world
that validates the occult as authentic, real, and natively Japanese. Heian-era
Japan is not only the location of one of the golden ages of high cultural pro-
duction revered by conservatives, but it is where we find ghosts, shikigami,
and great soothsayers such as Seimei.
Many scholars have commented on the overt place of divination in con-
temporary society.³² Divination services and practices are grouped under the
term uranai and encompass Western and Chinese astrology, feng shui, Tarot,
I Ching, blood typology, physiognomy, name divination, numerology, and
other forms. H. Taneda describes the uranai situation today as being domi-
nated by women as both providers and consumers of services.³³ This “femini-
zation of fortune-telling” results in a preponderance of female interests be-
ing channeled into the fortune-telling businesses. The association of women
with uranai is so strong that one book singles out the uranai maniac who is
obsessed with drawing a good omikuji (sacred lottery) as a particular type of
disturbed woman.³⁴

40  la ura mille r
 Living in an extremely pragmatic
Although some occult pursuits
science-oriented society,
have a long association with an older
consumers of onmyōji stories,
female cohort and with low or stig-
goods, and images are able to
matized social groups, the popularity
locate the fantastic, the
of divination among young women
magical, and the improbable in
escalated during the 1980s. While
another world that validates
older women are interested in tra-
the occult as authentic, real,
ditional forms such as the Chinese-
and natively Japanese.
style sixty-year-cycle astrology (ki-
gaku) offered by street fortune-tellers
or promoted by conservative author and TV personality Hosoki Kazuko,
younger women consume multiple forms of novel or creolized divination.
For example, many girls’ magazines contain horoscopes that blend the West-
ern zodiac with the Japanese ABO blood-typology system called ketsuekigata.
There are new divination boutiques in trendy Harajuku, and teen magazines
such as Cawaii, Popteen, and Seventeen regularly carry divination and astrol-
ogy features. Divination fads for youth have included Gundam fortune-tell-
ing, in which anime Gundam characters are paired with blood types A, B, AB,
and O to yield forty-eight personality types. Another craze was buttressed by
manga artist Kubo Kiriko, who began illustrating a series of divination books
that classified personality by animal types, a new zoomancy that differs from
the Chinese zodiac.³⁵ (These last two fads probe the limits of the human on
fronts beyond the occult, blurring the human–mechanical and human–ani-
mal boundaries that are the subject of other essays in this volume.)
The displacement of interest in magic and the occult to the historic He-
ian era confers a type of immunity. How can something so integral to one of
Japan’s most glorious cultural epochs get dismissed as nonsense? Girls’ inter-
est in divination can therefore be redeemed: no longer is it simply a frivolous
game but instead is a behavior at the core of ancient and traditional imperial
court culture.
Heian onmyōji and Seimei became ideal locations for contemporary girls
to situate their interest in divination and occult. Magical practices and divi-
nation have existed in all historical periods, but by placing the new cultural
products and ideas in an esteemed historic realm, they become associated
with the pinnacle of Japanese cultural achievement, in other words “a his-
torical period in which documentation and evidence exists in reassuring
abundance.” ³⁶ Therefore, Seimei stories offer empirical documentation that
actual magic once existed. The films, books, and drawings are often careful to
present Heian-era clothing, screens, and curtains just so. When she set about

e xt r e m e m a k e ov e r f o r a h e i a n -e r a w i z a r d  4 1
 drawing the onmyōji manga, Okano read Heian history and diaries, visited
museums, and attended festivals and performances in order to get ideas and
to make her drawings appear authentic.³⁷ Yumemakura consulted a historian
to make sure that all those scenes of Seimei and Hiromasa enjoying a cup of
sake were correct. Did they even drink sake then, he asked? ³⁸
To have created such mass appeal, Seimei and onmyōji must have tapped
into a raw arena of contested cultural tension. The contrast is between the
forces of irrational, mystical preoccupation, openly endorsed in girls’ culture,
and the discourses of scientific reasoning promoted in productivity-oriented
patriarchal culture. (Indeed, this male model is seen in Health Minister
Yanagisawa’s January 2007 reference to women as “birth-giving machines.”)
I do not see the Seimei and onmyōji boom as fitting the epidemiological
model Gladwell suggests. According to him, trends move like viruses: they
are contagious and have huge consequences, because they spread and change
quickly. As a psychologist he also sees trends as driven by exceptional in-
dividuals and only somewhat by a vague notion of “context.” But although
certain culture creators such as Yumemakua played a huge role in spreading
the craze, their efforts alone are not be sufficient to explain it. In my view, the
huge success of the Abeno Seimei phenomena results from the convergences
that occurred in the cultural context, especially the different threads run-
ning through girls’ culture. One theme is not sufficient to distill the whole
phenomenon of interest in Seimei and onmyōji: the confluence of girls’ fasci-
nation with bishōnen and things like divination is at the core of this contem-
porary cultural cult.
Within the appealing contradiction of an occult boom against the back-
ground of late capitalism, the Seimei fad also offers an intriguing case of the
underanalyzed girl market. It is an ideal example of how culture producers are
increasingly called on to recognize girls’ preoccupations, desires, and aesthet-
ics. In 2006, the Gundam anime series director Tomino Yoshiyuki was curtly
dismissive of my idea that much of contemporary girls’ manga is driven by
their specific tastes, as seen, for instance, in the gorgeous eroticized versions
of such classic male figures as Genji from Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji).³⁹
Tomino insisted that girls’ interest in Genji stems only from their apprecia-
tion of a good romantic story. One hesitates to argue against the narrative
power of Murasaki’s classic novel, which most certainly had some role in the
popularity of the numerous contemporary versions of Genji seen in manga,
anime, theater, TV, film, and other media. In the Seimei situation, however,
it is not an irresistible narrative that propelled him to beautified idol status.
Rather, the traits associated with the character Seimei—his supernatural

42 la ura mille r

powers, his mastery of divination arts, and his newly proclaimed beauty—
are the primary reasons for his celebrity emergence. At the same time that he
became an exemplary vehicle for validating girls’ decades-long interest in the
occult, Seimei is simultaneously pressed into the service of female subversion
when he is so radically reinvented as an aesthetic object of erotic interest.

Notes
. Yumemakura Baku, Onmyōji dokuhon (The onmyōji reader) (Tokyo: Bunshun
Bunko, ), .
. Aki Hirota () describes a similar transformation process for male heroes de-
picted in the classic Heian-era Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji). She notes that Genji’s
plump face, thick eyebrows, tiny rosebud mouth, and thin eyes are never seen in Genji
characters found in modern girls’ comics. Instead, there are only bishōnen versions of Genji
and his peers. Aki Hirota, “The Tale of Genji: From Heian Classic to Heisei Comic,” Journal
of Popular Culture , no.  (): –.
. Takahara Eiri, “The Consciousness of the Girl,” in Woman Critiqued: Translated Es-
says on Japanese Women’s Writing, ed. R. Copeland (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press,
), .
. Laura Miller, “People Types: Personality Classification in Japanese Women’s Mag-
azines,” Journal of Popular Culture , no.  (): –.
. Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
(Boston: Little, Brown, ).
. For translations of some of these stories from Uju shūi monogatari, see Royall Ty-
ler, ed. and trans. Japanese Tales (New York: Pantheon, ), –. Stories about Seimei
as a child (when his nickname was Dōji) and about his mother Kuzunoha are also common
in the Buddhist narrative style called sekkyō bushi or “sermon-ballads.” See Janet E. Goff,
“Conjuring Kuzunoha from the World of Abe no Seimei,” in A Kabuki Reader: History and
Performance, ed. S. L. Leiter (New York: M. E. Sharpe, ), –. Kabuki and puppetry
play scripts also feature the story of Kuzunoha. The story is also the subject of numer-
ous paintings and prints, such as Tsukioka Yoshitoshi’s (–) “The Fox Woman
Kuzunoha Leaving Her Child” (). For more on the fox spirit or kitsune in Japanese cul-
ture, see Michael R. Bathgate, The Fox’s Craft in Japanese Religion and Folklore: Shapeshifters,
Transformations, and Duplicities (New York: Routledge, ).
. Fujimaki Kazuho, Abeno Seimei (Tokyo: Gakken, ).
. Yumemakura, Onmyōji dokuhon, .
. Marian Ury, trans., Tales of Times Now Past: Sixty-Two Tales from a Medieval Japa-
nese Collection (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ), –.
. Yumemakura Onmyōji dokuhon, –.
. Okano Reiko and Yumemakura Baku. Onmyōji (The ying yang master),  vols.
(Tokyo: Hakusensha, –).
. Timothy Lehmann, Manga: Masters of the Art (New York: Collins Design, Harper
Collins, ), .

e xt r e m e m a k e ov e r f o r a h e i a n -e r a w i z a r d  4 3
 . Shimura Kunihiro, Yumemakura Baku to Abeno Seimei (Yumemakura Baku and
Abeno Seimei) (Tokyo: Ōtō Shobo, ), ; Lehmann, Manga, .
. Takita Yōjirō, dir., Onmyōji (The yin yang master) (); Takita, Onmyōji II
(); both translated as Onmyōji Collection, -DVD set (Geneon/Pioneer, ).
. Yaoi is the term for a female genre that features romance and sex between male
characters. For a description of yaoi fan culture see Matt Thorn, “Girls and Women Getting
Out of Hand: The Pleasure and Politics of Japan’s Amateur Comics Community,” in Fan-
ning the Flames: Fandoms and Consumer Culture in Contemporary Japan, ed. W. W. Kelly (New
York: SUNY Press, ).
. Tyler, Japanese Stories, .
. The NHK TV Series Onmyōji aired in . It starred SMAP boy-band member
Inagaki Gorō as Abeno Seimei. The musical was performed by an all-female opera troupe
similar to the Takarazuka named New OSK Nihon Kagekidan. They perform in Osaka at
the Sekaikan (World Hall).
. Tachibana Kaimu and Matsudono Rio, Bibō no mato (The evil capital of the hand-
some) (Tokyo: Shinshokan, ); Kanpe Akira, Seimei kitan (A Semei oddity) (Tokyo:
Gakken, ).
. Katsushika Hokusai, Hokusai manga, color woodcuts and sketches, . Image
reproduced in Fujimaki, Abeno Seimei, .
. Sanazaki Harumo, Abeno Seimei (Tokyo: Bunkasha Comics, ); Takada Tami,
Hana emi no otome: Abeno Seimei koigatari (The flower-blossom maiden: Abeno Seimei love
stories) (Tokyo: Kōdansha, ). These and the other manga products mentioned here
are only the tip of the iceberg. Seimei also appears in numerous other manga and anime,
including his convoluted modern and past incarnations in the successful Abenobashi mahō
shōtengai manga and anime series from Gainax. Gainax and various artists, Abenobashi
mahō shōtengai, manga series (Tokyo: Kōdansha, ), translated as Magical Shopping Ar-
cade Abenobashi,  vols. (Los Angeles: Tokyopop, ); Yamaga Hiroyuki, dir. Abenobashi
mahō shōtengai ()  DVDs (King Rekōdo, ); translated as Magical Shopping Arcade
Abenobashi (ADV Films, ).
. Laura Miller, Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body Aesthetics (Berkeley
and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ).
. The video features Yabeno Hikomaro and Kotohime, with the Bōzu dancers.
. Seimei was associated with the mystical symbol of the equidistant five-pointed
star referred to as the pentagram or gobōsei. Known in Japan as the “Seal of Abeno
Seimei,” it often adorns interior design in Seimei shrines as well as exterior shrine lanterns
and roof tiles. Because of its magical power it is also used on amulets and other shrine
goods to confer protection. The pentagram is common in borrowed Chinese Taoist writ-
ings on the interaction of the five elements. In one formation, the five elements are part
of the dynamic equilibrium called the Cycle of Mutual Control. In this scheme Fire wins
Metal, Earth wins Water, Metal wins Wood, and Water wins Fire. Girls’ consumption of
occult goods, including the tarot deck, have made them aware of the status of the pen-
tagram. Consumers are able to recover and tap into the mysterious world of the onmyōji
through consumption of these products. One notable form recovery takes is through the
symbol of the pentagram. It gives substance and immediate connection to Seimei’s world.
The symbol is a sort of proof of the concreteness of magic.

44 la ura mille r

 . Shiraishi Kōji, dir. Onmyōji juso kaeshi (The reciprocal curse), DVD (Broadway,
); Miyashita Fumio, In’yō gogyō on (Ying yang five elements music) CD (Biwa Studio,
); Brian Eno and Peter Schwalm, Music for Onmyōji, CD (JVC Victor, ); Imagawa
Miku, “Seimei ōru gaido” (The total Seimei guide), in Rekishi gunzō shiriizu  (The his-
tory collective series ), ed. Gakken Kenkyūsha (Tokyo: Gakken, ), –. Aesthetic
salons also got involved in the fad and began offering yin yang five elements beauty treat-
ments. For a description see Miller, Beauty Up.
. Yumemakura Baku, ed., Shichinin no Abeno Seimei (Abeno Seimei from seven writ-
ers) (Tokyo: Bunshun Bunko, ), ; Shimamura, Yumemakura Baku to Abeno Seimei, .
. Tom Gill, “Transformational Magic: Some Japanese Super-heroes and Monsters,”
in The Worlds of Japanese Popular Culture: Gender, Shifting Boundaries, and Global Cultures,
ed. D. Martinez (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –.
. Three similar scrolls illustrating Abeno Seimei communicating with goblins while
shikigami wait behind him are found in the Abeno Ōji Shrine Treasury in Osaka, the Tokyo
National Museum, and at the Seimei Shrine in Kyoto.
. Hayami Yoku and Koyanagi Junji, Gōsuto basutâ Abeno Seimei (Ghost buster
Abeno Seimei) (Tokyo: Gakken, ).
.  Japan Almanac (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun, ), .
. “Soothsayers Rise from Dead after Terrorist Attacks,” Mainichi Daily News, 
November , http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/waiwai/archive/news///
pgmdmc.html (accessed  March ).
. Grant McCracken, Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Char-
acter of Consumer Goods and Activities, reprint edition (Bloomington: Indiana University
Press, ).
. Suzuki Kentarō, “Divination in Contemporary Japan,” Japanese Journal of Reli-
gious Studies , no. - (): -.
. H. Taneda, “Fortune-Telling and Women—Contemporary Characteristics of For-
tune-Telling in Japanese society,” Journal of UOEH , no.  (): –.
. Ōtawa Fumie, Choi yaba onna ni tsukeru kusuri (Medicine to cure occasionally gross
women) (Tokyo: PHP Kenkyūsha, ), –.
. See, for example, Kubo Kiriko’s Dōbutsu uranai: Onnanoko hen (Animal divination:
Compilation for women) (Tokyo: Shogakukan, ). For a fuller description of kigaku and
other divination types popular among young women, see Miller, “People Types.”
. McCracken, Culture and Consumption, . For an example of divination in an-
other period, see Michael Foster’s description of the ouija board type of divination game
named kokkuri, which reached mass popularity during the Meiji period: Michael Dylan
Foster, “Strange Games and Enchanted Science: The Mystery of Kokkuri,” Journal of Asian
Studies , no.  (): –.
. Lehmann, Manga, –.
. Yumemakura Onmyōji dokuhon, –.
. The Tale of Genji was written by Murasaki Shikubu, who is thought to have lived
between  and . Tomino’s remarks to me were part of a panel discussion sponsored
by the Japan America Society of Chicago and the Chicago International Film Festival, at
Columbia College on October , .

e xt r e m e m a k e ov e r f o r a h e i a n -e r a w i z a r d  4 5
THERESA WINGE

Undressing and Dressing Loli:

A Search for the Identity
of the Japanese Lolita

Every Sunday in Tokyo’s Harajuku neighborhood, the Sangūbashi pedestrian

bridge becomes a stage for style sukos, or tribes, to gather, share, and present
revolutions and evolutions in music, technology, fashion, and other areas of
pop culture. A busy pedestrian crossing during the work week, on weekends
the bridge is transformed into a space for Japanese youth to express and es-
tablish subcultural identities, primarily through the visual display of dress.
One of the groups that has gained increasing attention over the last two or
three decades is the Lolita subculture, which today plays an integral role in
Japanese subcultural fashion.¹
Lolitas, also known as “Lolis,” are young women and men who dress as
anachronistic visual representations of Victorian-era dolls, covered from head
to toe in lace, ruffles, and bows. In the West, the term “Lolita” is often associ-
ated with the title character in Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel,² an adolescent
girl who has a sexual relationship with her middle-aged stepfather; and in
Japanese, “Lolita complex” refers generally to older men who are attracted to
young girls. But in the 1980s in Japan, the term “Lolita” (Roriita) gained new
associations within fashion subcultures. Japanese Lolitas are usually young
women (not girls), who dress in cute, childlike, and modest fashions without

47
 the overly sexualized appearance typically associated with Nabokov’s Lolita.
Or so it would appear at first glance, but perhaps this is but another form of
sexual display.
The Lolita aesthetic emphasizes features of Victorian-era girls’ dress, such
as lace, ruffles, high necklines, and voluminous skirts, similar to the clothing
worn by the heroine of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.³ These
are combined in turn with aspects of Japanese culture, such as Hello Kitty,
manga, and anime. The Lolita subculture occupies a complex place within
both Japanese culture and international popular culture. Within Japanese
culture, Lolitas occupy a subcultural space where young women and men are
empowered by the Lolita aesthetic to present themselves anachronistically in
order to escape the trappings of adult life and with it the culture’s dominant
ideologies. But while they exist on the margins of Japanese culture, Lolitas
also have had an impact on global popular culture: their traces are surfacing
at global cosplay events, in American music videos, and even on the streets
of New York City.⁴ This exposure has led to much scrutiny of the name and
the style, as well as some unintended asso-
ciations and appropriations, such Gwen Ste-
The Lolita subculture
fani’s Harajuku girls.
occupies a complex place
The Japanese Lolita communicates non-
within both Japanese
verbally through a highly complex visual ap-
culture and international
pearance that requires close examination to
popular culture.
understand. This paper focuses on the Lolita
aesthetic as something that has created a
space for the expression of a unique Japanese subcultural identity. I begin
with an introduction to the Lolita subculture and its place within the context
of a global popular culture. I then “undress” the Lolita by presenting three ex-
amples of Lolita genres and related aesthetics. I conclude by “dressing” Lolita
with discussions about the aesthetic as a ritualized performance, a kawaii
phenomenon, and a transnational object (global commodity), in order to un-
derstand the impact and importance of the Lolita identity.

LOLITA SUBCULTURE

The Lolita subculture emerged from the fertile ground of the kawaii or cute
craze that began in the 1970s. This started when Japanese youth adopted a
kawaii handwriting style, which included not only horizontal writing with
loopy letters but also hand-drawn flourishes, such as faces, hearts, and stars,

48  t here s a w in ge
inserted into the text.⁵ By the 1980s, Japanese mainstream culture became
obsessed with all things kawaii,⁶ and cuteness has become a significant part
of the Lolita subculture, as seen in the use of stuffed animals as accessories
and childlike silhouettes.
The 1980s also ushered in the vijuaru kei (visual-kei, or visual style) rock
bands, such as Buck-Tick, who wore elaborate make-up and costumes that
explored the Lolita look. In the 1990s, visual-kei bands like X Japan and Mal-
ice Mizer gained popularity in Japan and helped bring attention to the Lolita
subculture. Not only have these bands dressed as Lolita characters onstage
but one member, Mana, also dresses as a Lolita for magazine photographs
and has popularized the aesthetic. Early in the new millennium, the Lolita
aesthetic was introduced to a global audience within the pages of the Japa-
nese periodical Gothic and Lolita Bible and in Western rock music videos, such
as the Rich Girl video by Gwen Stefani, featuring the Harajuku girls.
Lolitas are seen not only in the streets of Harajuku or Akihabara and in
music videos but also within manga, anime, and films, and there is a related
sexual fixation or fetish as well. Paradise Kiss (2000–2004, manga; 2005, an-
ime; Paradaisu kisu) and Chobits (2001–2002, manga; 2002, anime; Chobittsu),
for example, are manga and anime series that feature Lolita characters. Some
of the earliest anime references to the Lolita character are the Wonder Kids’
Lolita anime I: Yuki no kurenai keshō (1984) and Shōjo bara kei (1984). In anime
and manga, Lolitas have been presented in ways that both support (e.g., Le
Portrait de Petit Cossette [2004, manga and anime; Kozetto no shōzō] and Rozen
Maiden [2002–2007, manga; 2004–2006, anime; Rōzen Meiden]) and undermine
(e.g., He Is My Master [2002–present, manga; 2005, anime; Kore ga watashi no
goshujin-sama]) the principles of the Lolita aesthetic as advanced by members
of the Lolita subculture themselves. For example, the character Sakurada Mi-
wako, from Paradise Kiss, could rightly be classified as a Sweet Lolita. The char-
acters Sawatari Izumi and Sawatari Mitsuki, from He Is My Master, are difficult
to classify as Lolitas, but they are often referred to as such because these sib-
lings are frequently dressed as maids. The Sawatari sisters’ dress, actions, and
demeanor conflict with the Lolita aesthetic established within the subculture.
Still, it is interesting to note that the anime and manga portraying Lolitas
in unfavorable ways have still not received the kind of criticism directed at
Gwen Stefani and the Harajuku girls. This could be because the Lolita may
have originated, at least as a character type, within shōjo manga.
Additional examples of Lolitas in popular culture include the movie Ka-
mikaze Girls (2004, Shimotsuma monogatari) and several other Gwen Stefani
music videos that feature the Harajuku girls. It should be noted that when

u n d r e s s i n g a n d d r e s s i n g lo l i  4 9
 A Lolita’s dress
the Lolita aesthetic is coopted for global consump-
modestly conceals
tion, it rarely reflects the representations seen in
her mature body
the streets of Japan. Stefani’s Harajuku girls, for
beneath ornately
example, have presented the Lolita aesthetic with
elaborate garments
some specific modifications. Stefani’s music videos
adorned with lace,
and stage performances portray this aesthetic as
ribbons, ruffles,
overtly sexualized—with form-fitting and body-
and bows.
revealing fashions—and they also remove it from
the context of subculturally approved gathering
spaces to present it within constructed Western contexts like music videos
and songs. As a result, these music video presentations have modified the
original Japanese Lolita aesthetic, causing waves of discontent in the Lolita
subculture.
Members of the Lolita subculture have a distinctive appearance, inspired
and influenced by Victorian-era porcelain dolls; anime, and manga characters
(Figure 1); Western literary characters; visual-kei bands and celebrities; and
global popular culture. A Lolita’s dress modestly conceals her mature body
beneath ornately elaborate garments adorned with lace, ribbons, ruffles, and
bows; she poses and conducts herself in order to create a surreal and fantastic
childlike appearance; and she communicates kawaii characteristics—hyper-
cute and hyperfeminine—with her dress, poses, and mannerisms.
Female Lolis are far more common than males. The male Lolitas tend to
follow one of two forms. The first is an ōji, inspired by Victorian-era boy’s
dress. He wears trousers or short pants and a vest or jacket often made of
velvet, with knee socks and a cap. The ōji dress may also be worn by a female
Lolita wanting to achieve the male Lolita aesthetic, like a Western tomboy.
The second type is a male who cross-dresses to visually communicate charac-
teristics of a female Lolita. Mana, the former lead singer for Malice Mizer, is
an example.
The Lolita subculture has been placed under a microscope in Japan and
internationally, and has received varied interpretations and mixed reviews.
One popular interpretation is that these Lolitas are in some way representa-
tive of Nabokov’s character. The subculture’s use of the name makes this is
an all-too-easy interpretation; however, the Japanese Lolita subculture has
redefined the name to create a new meaning that suits its own purposes.
This new meaning reflects the modest, innocent, graceful, polite, and kawaii
image of a Japanese Lolita; however, it also plays suggestively with the idea
of a young girl as a forbidden sexual object. Japanese Lolitas claim they are
not attempting to be sexually alluring and that they are frequently ostracized

50  t here s a w in ge
figure 1. Visual representation of the Lolita style appropriating Victorian-era
fashion details. From the Body Line online catalog (www.bodyline.co.jp).

u n d r e s s i n g a n d d r e s s i n g lo l i  51
 for a style of dress and a subcultural affiliation that lie outside the accept-
able norms of the dominant Japanese culture. But despite this claim, Lolitas
are still the focus of sexual attention from adult Japanese men. As a result,
the Lolita subculture has been criticized for its naïveté, especially given the
role the aesthetic plays in the “Lolita complex” or rorikon—a sexual obsession
or fetish directed toward young girls. For this reason, areas in Japan where
Lolitas gather are patrolled by police and security to protect women from
stalkers and predators. These different depictions of Lolitas within popular
culture demonstrate varying interpretations and misinterpretations of the
subculture, and the subculture itself is a complicated space that informs and
is informed by these depictions.
The Lolita aesthetic—that is, her ritualized appearance and performance—
is perhaps one of the most important aspects of the subculture. A Lolita wears
dresses that deemphasize and cover her adult female (or male) body, resulting
in a childlike silhouette with a minimal amount of skin showing. Her hair is
often worn in curls and/or bisected into ponytails, with bonnets and bows.
Makeup is used to create a more youthful appearance, such as large eyes and
blemish-free skin, to the point of recreating the facial texture of a porcelain
doll. Accessories often include stuffed animals and dolls. Outsiders often as-
sume the childlike appearance of the Japanese Lolitas is an attempt to further
represent Nabokov’s Lolita. But members of the Lolita subculture argue that
the novel’s character did not dress as a Victorian-era doll, and they contend
that the Lolita aesthetic radiates an anachronistic kind of empowerment.

LOLITA GENRES

The Lolita subculture is made up of many individual genres of Lolis. Each genre
has specific dress (i.e., clothing, hairstyles, accessories, and make-up), poses,
and mannerisms that follow the Lolita aesthetic, and each genre offers dif-
ferent insights into the subculture as a whole.⁷ The genres discussed below—
Classic Lolita, Sweet Lolita, and Gothic Lolita—are just a sampling of the many
and varied Lolita genres; I have chosen these to provide a framework for under-
standing the Lolita aesthetic as it is utilized by the Lolita subculture.

Classic Lolita
The Classic (or Traditional) Lolita is the most basic of the Lolita genres be-
cause it presents the fundamental elements of the Lolita aesthetic (Figure 2).
This Lolita is inspired primarily by Alice in Wonderland and Victorian porcelain

52 t here s a w in ge
dolls. Her dress deemphasizes the bust and hips with a flattened bodice, high
waistline, and full skirt that extends past the knees (with volume created
by layers of underskirts that further conceal the hips). The clothing is often
a solid color or a floral or fruit print, partially covered by a white or pastel
apron. The Classic Lolita’s hair is often worn in ringlets with a head covering,
usually a bonnet. Accessories may include a small purse, stuffed animal (i.e.,
teddy bear or Hello Kitty), and/or parasol. A Classic Lolita poses to evoke the
illusion of being a very young girl, i.e., with knees together and toes pointed
inward, head slightly lilted to one side. The Classic Lolita is closely associated
with the Sweet Lolita and Country Lolita, but all the Lolita genres include
numerous elements established by the Classic Lolita.

figure 2. Classic Lolita Style. From the Body Line catalog.

u n d r e s s i n g a n d d r e s s i n g lo l i  53
 Sweet Lolita
The Sweet Lolita or Ama Roriita is extremely popular, due in part to the
genre’s excessive use of kawaii. This Lolita genre is also inspired by Alice in
Wonderland and perhaps best portrays the Victorian doll aesthetic (Figure
3), although it is also associated with a certain Rococo or Romantic excess.
Her dress also deemphasizes the bust and hips with a flattened bodice, high
waistline, and full knee-length skirt (with volume again created by layers of
underskirts). The fabric for her dress is often a solid, pastel color, accented
with bows, ruffles, and lace. The Sweet Lolita’s hair is worn in ringlets, loose
curls, or ponytails, with matching
pastel-colored ribbons, hair bows, and
lacy headbands. These Lolitas carry hy-
perfeminine accessories (heart-shaped
purses, pastel parasols, and lacey
handkerchiefs) and hypercute kawaii
objects, such as teddy bears or Hello
Kitty and Charmmy Kitty parapherna-
lia. Sweet Lolitas will assume postures
and poses similar to those of the Clas-
sic Lolitas and convey the saccharin yet
surreal image of a childlike doll. Stores
that specialize in Sweet Lolita fashions
include Angelic Pretty and Baby, the
Stars Shine Bright.

Gothic Lolita
Gothic Lolita is also an extremely
popular Lolita genre. The term “Gothic
Lolita” is often used to reference the
entire Lolita subculture; however, the
Gothic Lolita is a distinct genre and
should not be confused with the others
or used as a catch-all descriptor. The
Gothic Lolita is inspired not only by
Victorian-era porcelain dolls but also
the mourning clothes associated with
Queen Victoria herself (Figure 4). Like
the Classic Lolita and Sweet Lolita, the
figure 3. Sweet Lolita Style. From the Body Line catalog. Gothic Lolita’s dress also deemphasizes

54 t here s a w in ge
the bust and hips with a flattened bodice, high waistline, and full skirt, with
skirt volume varying depending on the desired effect. Dress lengths range
from just above the knee to floor length. Gothic Lolitas dress primarily in
black, in a variety of fabrics from satin to velvet, with white or red lace or rib-
bon accents. The hair is worn to frame the face, often in curls, with lacy head
coverings. Accessories like a coffin purse, injured teddy bear, and/or black
parasol continue the Gothic theme. Gothic Lolitas are sometimes described
as looking like French maids; however, this comparison only considers the
color combinations (i.e., black fabric with white lace) and misses the details.
Gothic Lolitas pose like Classic or Sweet Lolitas, with a slightly bolder stance
that helps convey a darker, moribund, and gloomy image. The singer Mana

figure 4. Gothic Lolita Style. From the Body Line catalog.

u n d r e s s i n g a n d d r e s s i n g lo l i  55
 often dresses as a Gothic Lolita. Subgenres include the Elegant Gothic Lolita
(EGL) and Elegant Gothic Aristocrat Lolita (EGA or EGAL), which may fea-
ture more subtle accessories, less use of accent colors, and longer dresses.

LOLITA AESTHETIC AND IDENTITY

While each of these genres has distinct and distinguishable characteristics,

they share certain commonalities that result in a united aesthetic. Most
Lolitas, for example, utilize lace, bows, and ruffles in their dress, along with
kawaii accessories. Still, the Lolita identity is often ambiguous and unclear,
and it requires some effort and context to reconstruct that identity from her
visual appearance. The following discussion explores the Lolita aesthetic and
identity as visually presented in Loli dress.

Performance as Ritualized Identity

The Lolita presents her aesthetic for display in public spaces, in order to define
and redefine her identity within Japanese culture. To sum up what has come
before, Loli is a surreal amalgam of influences: anime or manga characters,
Victorian-era porcelain dolls, the Nabokov Lolita character, visual-kei bands,
and kawaii. But while the aesthetic is achieved through the use of clothing
as described above, the Lolita identity is accomplished through a ritualized
performance—poses and mannerisms—in combination with the designated
dress.
According Victor Turner, a ritual consists of three phases: (1) preliminal
phase (separation); (2) liminal phase (transition); and (3) postliminal phase
(reincorporation).⁸ During the first phase of a ritual, an individual separates
herself or himself from the dominant culture or society. In the case of the
Lolita, she foregoes everyday clothing and dresses herself as a specific genre
of Lolita based on an established Lolita aesthetic portrayed in images and
how-to articles in periodicals. Lolita Internet chat forums often include dis-
cussions about how Lolis consult Kera and The Gothic and Lolita Bible, as well
as each other, for shopping and presentation advice. The purchase of desig-
nated clothes, makeup, and accessories that are not part of dominant Japa-
nese culture (and not approved of by it) constitutes the separation phase of
the ritual for Japanese youth who assume and develop the Lolita identity.
The second phase of a ritual is the transition phase, which indicates move-
ment from one station or position to another. This phase includes the pro-
cess of dressing as a Lolita, practicing poses and mannerisms used by similar

56 t here s a w in ge
 the Lolita identity is
Lolita genres, and seeking the approval of
accomplished through a
other more experienced Lolitas. During this
ritualized performance-
phase, a Lolita exists in a liminal space; she is
poses and mannerisms-
not part of dominant Japanese culture and is
in combination with the
not quite part of the Lolita subculture either.
designated dress.
While a Lolita has ritualized the aesthetic
of dress and performance, she also has the
freedom to select, acquire, and combine specific items of dress, ornamenta-
tion, and details to create individual meaning and identity. In this way, she
draws from a range of influences to create an amalgam that expresses the
Lolita aesthetic.⁹ Perhaps the best demonstration of this bricolage is the
Gothic Lolita, who selects and borrows from Goth subculture (e.g., coffin-
shaped backpacks and Ankhs), Japanese culture (e.g., kawaii objects—teddy
bears in black dress and lace), and Victorian-era culture (e.g., the porcelain-
doll aesthetic and mourning dress) to create new and meaning-laden fashions
specific to the Gothic Lolita’s identity. For example, the black patent leather
Mary Jane platform shoes with lace details worn by Gothic Lolitas represent
a combination of Victorian children’s shoe style, lace details from Western
children’s dress, and the Gothic subcultural penchant for black platform
shoes. Early in the history of the Lolita subculture, Lolitas would buy Goth
Mary Jane platform shoes and attach lace and embellishments that they re-
moved from second-hand children’s clothing, in order to create the desired
Lolita aesthetic; but today many stores carry ready-made shoes of this kind.
In this way, Lolitas use bricolage to create fashions that remain within the
Lolita aesthetic, yet express an individual identity.
The third phase of the ritual is a reincorporation phase, where individu-
als seek and find a new space within a given community. Once the Lolita pres-
ents herself to the subculture and the dominant culture in a public setting,
she acknowledges and confirms her membership in the Lolita subculture as
a Loli. Here it is important to recognize the performance spaces where she
displays and visually communicates her aesthetic and identity, such as urban
streets, stages, televisions, Web sites, films, and magazines.
In these spaces Lolitas experience a sense of the carnivalesque—a cele-
bration or space where there is temporary release from expected and estab-
lished order and norms, time, and space.¹⁰ The carnivalesque is commonly
divided into three types: comic presentations, abusive language, and ritual
performances. It is the last that best describes the spaces where Lolitas dress,
gather, and display their aesthetic for insiders and outsiders. Within this
carnival, an individual is part of the subcultural collective. She ceases to be

u n d r e s s i n g a n d d r e s s i n g lo l i  57
 herself; she is a Lolita. In these carnivalesque spaces Lolitas are free from the
constraints of the dominant culture and free to display the Lolita aesthetic.
They are also free to pose for photographs, which provides them with agency
by making them objects of desire.
In addition to the agency gained from these carnivalesque presentations,
the Lolita subculture also produces agency from the presentation of the Lolita
aesthetic as a visual resistance. In Japanese culture, it is generally understood
that it is better to dress according to dominant
norms than suffer the disapproving gaze of
Lolitas are attempting
the group.¹¹ Since the Lolita aesthetic exists
to prolong childhood
outside these norms, its members often suffer
with the Lolita aesthetic
public social rejection. Despite this rejection,
via the use of kawaii.
or perhaps because of it, presenting the Lolita
aesthetic provides subculture members with a
way to visually and socially express their dissatisfaction with the dominant
culture and their place within it.
The Lolita aesthetic visually communicates membership and identity
in the Lolita subcultural community. At the same time, Lolitas also visually
express their individuality, most commonly through their unique accessory
choices. For example, young women dress as Gothic Lolitas, and because of
their similar dress, they are visually grouped as members of the Lolita subcul-
ture. Still, each of these Gothic Lolitas displays individual and personal acces-
sories: one wears a small black coffin backpack; another carries a black velvet
purse; and yet another has a white and black teddy bear dressed in black lace.
So within the constraints of the Lolita aesthetic (which creates and supports
a sense of community and belonging through visual similarity), the Lolita
subculture also allows for individualism and self-expression, creating a space
for both the Lolita subcultural community and the individual member. The
subcultural community is associated with a consistent recognized aesthetic,
but it is also dynamic and rich with texture and variation created by the indi-
vidual interpretations of that aesthetic. Maintaining individuality within the
Lolita subcultural community is a delicate balance, but necessary to give the
Loli a sense of agency.
The Lolita subculture functions not just as a visually recognizable com-
munity but also as a safe space for communal and individual resistance. Loli-
tas use this communal space for exploration of a subcultural identity and of
the Lolita aesthetic. This adherence to the subcultural community and Lolita
aesthetic demonstrates that Lolitas are not willing to completely surrender
the ideals of uniformity and community established by their parent culture.

58  t here s a w in ge
Sweet Lolitas, for example, draw attention to themselves with their anach-
ronistic dress, childlike mannerisms, and doll-like poses. But subsequently
these stereotypes become objects of visual resistance against acceptable
norms of dress and all that these norms stand for. Within the Lolita subcul-
tural community, the Sweet Lolita is provided with the safety to present her
individual Lolita aesthetic, and by maintaining her resistance and agency, she
in turn empowers the subculture itself.¹²

Kawaii
The concept of kawaii seems ubiquitous in Japanese culture, and it is a signifi-
cant part of the Lolita aesthetic and identity. By exploring the relationship
between Lolita and kawaii, it is possible to understand aspects of Lolita that
go beyond the Nabokov character, living doll, sexual fetish, or transnational
object. Japan seems obsessed with all things kawaii, and Lolitas reconnect
to childhood through the use of kawaii objects,¹³ which embody and visually
communicate much more than “cute” or “feminine/cute”; they also represent
a desire for empathy, infantilism, compassion, and (dis)approval within the
understood and hierarchical power structure.¹⁴ Therefore, carrying or wear-
ing kawaii objects allows the Lolitas to hold on to and nonverbally commu-
nicate their childlike perspective toward the outside dominant culture, a cul-
ture that could be interpreted as playing the parental role. In this way, Lolitas
also garner compassion and interest when they present kawaii objects, char-
acteristics, and images, which indicate nostalgia for a past era and a desire to
escape adult responsibilities for the carefree days of youth. In essence, Lolitas
are attempting to prolong childhood with the Lolita aesthetic via the use of
kawaii.
Kawaii serves an additional purpose within the Lolita aesthetic: it also
creates a hyperfeminine and hypercute visual identity for Lolitas. From dress
to mannerisms, the way Lolitas employ kawaii is said to give the viewer a feel-
ing of “moe”—a sense of intense attraction and contentment for things that
have youthful, feminine attributes. A Sweet Lolita, for example, presents
kawaii in excess and is often compared to sugary, sweet objects, such as candy
(e.g., a lollipop or loli) and desserts. Moreover, the Sweet Lolita also exhib-
its stereotypical feminine characteristics (wearing lacy dresses, hair ribbons,
and shoes with bows) in excess. From the standpoint of Japanese women’s
struggle for equality, this anachronistic portrayal of females as living dolls
would seem to undermine the feminist position. For the outsider, Lolita is
a representation of a woman as an object to be played with, an ideal girl to
be loved or possessed, who manifests the culture’s desire for virginal youth.

u n d r e s s i n g a n d d r e s s i n g lo l i  59
 For a Lolita, though, this aesthetic creates a safe space to be sexy and strong
behind the protection of the childhood patina, and a way to be different while
having subcultural sameness.¹⁵
Kawaii also satisfies Japan’s nostalgia for previous eras, both Eastern and
Western,¹⁶ by innocently incorporating aspects of these “simpler times” into
contemporary life. The use of kawaii within Japanese culture is intrinsically
tied to “neo-romantic notions of childhood,” ¹⁷ a childhood that is further re-
moved from contemporary trappings and responsibilities by being located in
another time period. The Lolita subculture’s use of the Lolita aesthetic is an
extreme example of seeking to experience the simplicity of the Victorian era
by creating and wearing anachronistic fashions. But the Lolita subculture has
not only borrowed from this historic era but also redefined it in a way that
suits its own needs, as something that exists outside space and time—a “neo-
Victorian” era. Applied to the fashions, poses, and mannerism that created
the Lolita aesthetic, this neo-Victorian perspective helps the Lolita achieve a
type of escape from dominant Japanese ideology, culture, and society.
Objects of desire have power; moreover, desire and power are interde-
pendent in the same way that sameness and otherness are interdependent.¹⁸
This helps explain the power and agency that Lolitas have acquired by incor-
porating the sameness of the dominant culture—for example, kawaii char-
acteristics—into the subcultural otherness of the Lolita identity, an identity
that simultaneously also resists and subverts the dominant culture’s power
structures and the way they disadvantage Japanese women. This is how Lol-
ita performs and achieves power and agency through her appearance.

Transnational Object
A key component of any subculture is the way that it commodifies and con-
sumes goods and activities in a way that renews and stimulates the borrow-
ing culture.¹⁹ In fact, part of the initial creation of the Lolita aesthetic be-
gan with the consumption of specific elements from Western culture. In the
same way that the Japanese have consumed other aspects of Western cul-
ture, such as blue jeans and rockabilly, Lolitas selected and consumed aspects
of the Victorian era and redefined them as something uniquely Japanese.²⁰
The Victorian-era dolls and dress were removed from their original Western
context, which allowed their assimilation and incorporation into Japanese
culture as the Lolita aesthetic.
The commodification of the Lolita aesthetic may actually have begun
within the subculture itself. For example, celebrity Lolita subculture mem-
bers Kana and Mana, who are also singers in visual-kei bands, have posed

60  there s a w in ge
 Today in Japan, there are
as Gothic Lolitas for magazines. In 1999,
many retail stores dedicated
Mana started his own Gothic Lolita
to the sale of Lolita
fashion label called Moi-même-Moitié.
fashions, with several
Another example of the commodifica-
emerging in the United States
tion and consumption of the Lolita aes-
and Great Britain as well.
thetic is the Gothic and Lolita Bible series
(2000–), marketed by and for Lolitas. It
features various pictorials of Lolitas, patterns and sewing instructions for
Lolita fashions, and how-to tips, all of which shaped the Lolita aesthetic. The
cover illustrations by Mihara Mitsukazu for the first eight issues also inspired
and informed the Lolita aesthetic. The Gothic and Lolita Bible provides the
means for both commodification and consumption of the Lolita aesthetic
from both inside and outside the Lolita subculture.
The Lolita aesthetic has been further commodified and consumed
within broader popular culture, specifically through its portrayal in anime
and manga. Rōzen Maiden, for example, is a manga, anime, and video game
franchise inspired by the Lolita subculture and portrays a variety of Lolita
genres. All of the characters are living dolls who have characteristics, dress,
and mannerisms based on Lolita genres. The character Shinku, for instance,
could be classified as an Elegant Gothic Aristocrat Lolita based on her dark,
elegant dress and mature mannerisms. Another aspect of the Rōzen Maiden
phenomenon is the practice of cosplayers mimicking the dress of their favor-
ite characters at anime and manga conventions. This mimicking complicates
the consumption and commodification of the Lolita aesthetic because Lolita
cosplayers are not truly part of the Lolita subculture, nor do they necessarily
understand the Lolita aesthetic. As anime and manga consume and commod-
ify elements from the Lolita subculture, they begin to circulate on a global
scale and may even be transformed and reflected back into the subculture
itself. All of these processes provide opportunities to explore new ways of
understanding the Lolita aesthetic.
Today in Japan, there are many retail stores dedicated to the sale of
Lolita fashions, with several emerging in the United States and Great Brit-
ain as well.²¹ And there are a limited but growing number of online Lolita
fashion boutiques.²² This commodification and consumption of the Lolita
aesthetic on a global scale has created a “mass marketed” Lolita subculture.
It is through this global appropriation and reinterpretation that the Lolita
achieves her role as a transnational object, as well as her role as an object of
resistance, agency, and nostalgia.
To sum up, presentation of the Lolita aesthetic creates a visual form of

u n d r e s s i n g a n d d r e s s i n g lo l i  6 1
 resistance against the dominant culture and provides both the subculture
and its members with agency and identity. Lolitas communicate nonver-
bally and reveal that identity through a highly complex visual appearance.
This aesthetic uses elements from both the East and the West in a way that
represents a resistance to the dominant Japanese ideology and culture. The
Lolita identity redefines the role of women in particular, through its empow-
ered, even extraordinary qualities. At the same time, this aesthetic is based
in part on visually communicating hyperfeminine and hypercute character-
istics through the use of kawaii objects (as well as ritualized dress, poses,
and mannerisms), and these hypercute, hyperfeminine characteristics can be
interpreted and misinterpreted in various ways. For example, the subculture
provides its members with a safe space to escape everyday life, but this may
constitute either a positive form of resistance and agency, or a nostalgic and
anachronistic evasion (or perhaps both).
Individual members of the Lolita subculture interpret the Lolita aes-
thetic in unique ways that play a significant role in creating and maintaining
the subcultural community. But at the same time, this agency is diffused as
the aesthetic is consumed and commodified by those inside and outside the
subculture, with the result that the Lolita is becoming a transnational object
to be bought and sold. Still, the Lolita aesthetic subversively empowers Lolis
to extend themselves into spaces and ways otherwise unavailable to them,
creating a wholly unique subcultural identity.

Notes
. Donald Richie, The Image Factory: Fads and Fashions in Japan (London: Reaktion
Books, ).
. Vladamir Nabokov, Lolita (Paris: Olympia Press, ).
. Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland (London: MacMillan & Co., ).
. Laura Holson, “Gothic Lolitas: Demure vs. Dominatrix,” New York Times,  March
, http://www.nytimes.com////fashion/GOTH.html.
. Hiroshi Aoyagi, “Pop Idols and the Asian Identity,” in Japan Pop!: Inside the World
of Japanese Popular Culture, ed. Timothy J. Craig (New York: M. E. Sharpe, Inc., ),
–.
. Brian J. McVeigh, Wearing Ideology: State, Schooling, and Self-Presentation in Japan
(New York: Berg, ); Susan J. Napier, Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke (New York:
Palgrave, ); Richie, The Image Factory, –.
. Joanne Eicher, “Dress,” in Routledge International Encyclopedia of Women (New
York: Routledge, ), –; Dick Hebdige, Sub-culture: The Meaning of Style (London:
Routledge, ).

62 there s a w in ge
 . Victor Turner, From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (New York:
PAJ Publications, ).
. Hebdige, Sub-culture, –.
. Mikhail Bakhtin, Rabelais and His World, trans. Helene Iswolsky (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, ).
. McVeigh, Wearing Ideology; Edwin O. Reischauer and Marius B. Jansen, The Japa-
nese Today: Change and Continuity (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ).
. Sharon Kinsella, “Cuties in Japan,” in Women, Media, and Consumption in Japan,
ed. Lisa Skov and Brian Moeran (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, ), –.
. Takako Aoyama and Jennifer Cahill, Cosplay Girls: Japan’s Live Animation Heroines
(Tokyo: DH Publishing, ); Yuko Hasegawa, “Post-identity Kawaii: Commerce, Gender,
and Contemporary Japanese Art,” in Consuming Bodies: Sex and Contemporary Japanese
Art, ed. Fran Lloyd (London: Reaktion Books, ), –; Kinsella, “Cuties in Japan,”
–.
. Kinsella, “Cuties in Japan,” –; McVeigh, Wearing Ideology, –.
. Laura Miller and Jan Bardsely, Bad Girls in Japan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
).
. Hasegawa, “Post-identity Kawaii,” –; Peter Nosco, Remembering Paradise:
Nativism and Nostalgia in Eighteenth-Century Japan (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, ).
. Kinsella, “Cuties in Japan,” –.
. Michel Foucault, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings
– (New York: Pantheon, ), .
. Grant McCracken, Cutlure and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Charac-
ter of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, ).
. Aoyama and Cahill, Cosplay Girls, –.
. Yuniya Kawamura, “Japanese Teens as Producers of Street Fashion,” Current Soci-
ology , no.  (): –.
. These stores include Angelic Pretty (www.angelicpretty.com/), Baby, the Stars
Shine Bright (www.babyssb.co.jp/), Blasphemina’s Closet (www.blaspheminascloset.com/),
Delirium Kawaii (www.deliriumclothing.com/kawaii/index.htm), Metamorphose (www.
metamorphose.gr.jp/english/index.html), Moi-même-Moitié (www.rakuten.co.jp/moi-
meme-moitie/), and Victorian Maiden (http://www.victorianmaiden.com/).

u n d r e s s i n g a n d d r e s s i n g lo l i  6 3
NATSUME FUSANOSUKE
Translated by Margherita Long
Introduction by Hajime Nakatani

Komatopia

INTRODUCTION

In the last two decades Natsume Fusanosuke (incidentally, a descendent

of Natsume Soseki, the towering figure of modern Japanese literature) has
emerged as a central figure in manga criticism. Aside from his encyclopedic
knowledge of manga history and his critical acumen, what distinguishes Nat-
sume from many of his fellow critics and scholars is his background as a pro-
fessional manga author. While the bulk of his recent output falls squarely
within the domain of criticism, his intimate understanding of the craft of
manga composition and penmanship served to bring to the field a rich aware-
ness of the medium’s formal and stylistic density. Natsume has also inau-
gurated the new genre of “manga criticism through manga,” an example of
which is translated here.¹
This piece is the first in a series discussing the frames that divide a manga
page into discrete elements. (In Japanese these discrete boxes are called koma,
which gives the series its name.) The frame is a particularly salient and fertile
embodiment of the question of “limit,” and not only in the literal sense that it
serves to limit and to organize the shifting scope of visibility in the unfolding

65
 of a manga work. More fundamentally, it constitutes the most basic order of
manga storytelling, the threshold beneath which the basic coherence and leg-
ibility of manga unravels. As such a safeguard of manga’s narrative order, the
formal question of the frame also resonates with the thematics of order and
disorder, self and other, and humans and nonhumans that preoccupy many
of the contributions in this issue. While Natsume is here primarily concerned
with the formal and narratological functions of the frame, his experiments
toward the end of the piece underscore this underlying unity of formal and
ideological orders by destabilizing both, literally in one stroke of the fram-
ing pen. This insight opens a fertile avenue to explore the ways form and
content intersect in manga. One may begin to wonder, for instance, whether
Tezuka Osamu’s persistent plays with the frame have something to do with
his no-less-persistent preoccupation with the tenuous line dividing humans
and nonhumans. This, of course, is the theme explored in many of the essays
included in this volume, especially those by Yomota and Ōtsuka.

Note
. This manga appears in Natsume Fusanosuke manga gaku: Manga de manga o yomu
(Natsume Fusanosuke’s manga criticism: Reading manga through manga) (Chikuma
Shobō ), –; first published by Daiwa Shobō in . Note that we have omitted
the diacritics to conform with North American manga style (and manga fonts). The name
we would write “Ōnyūdō” elsewhere in the volume appears here as “Onyudo.” Likewise for
Taishō, Shōwa, Shishido Sagyō, and Supiido Tarō.

66 natsu me fu s an o s u ke
 When we
think of
that the story modern
should be manga, it
broken into seems only
frames that natural
move it along,
like this.

Long But that’s

ago not how
... things were
from the
beginning.

hing There were

not e,
ot words to
I ’v e g r her
, e explain the
Hey do ov ow.”
to ou kn story or satire,
y
and pictures to
accompany.

It was like what today we call

“illustration.”

Gripping his 14-foot sword,

Onyudo the Giant launched a Which is to say,
full frontal attack. the plot and the
It’s like dialogue were
a freeze Meeting it smartly with his left completely
frame. iron-ribbed fan, Fusanosuke to captions
said “Slash away, Slasher!” (ekotoba).

Or so it seemed he was
about to say, just before he
vanished.
 tion
mo It was only
With
“HAH!” afterward that
Where’d Fusanosuke
Then, he go? dialog came to
vanished,
more be to put inside
and Onyudo the
reducing a separate
more Giant looks
the frame,
often, for him,
motion steaming captions
came with anger. propor-
to be tionately,
used
and
in the
image. expanding
what
could be
expressed
in pictures.

motion

I give up!
It was at this point I give up! Until finally artists
that the frame as we started telling the
know it today made its This is story without the
first true appearance. unbear- use of captions.
able!

Probably
around
1925, the
end of Very
well
Taisho
or the then.
beginning
of Showa.

left completely In other words, what was left

to the reader’s of the story after dialogue and
and the imagination. motion were extracted, which until
Add to then had been in the captions, was
use of
this a crammed here, into the silence of
frames
cinematic the gap between frames,
really begins
approach
to open new
to angles
territory
and
for
editing,
expression.
Supiido Taro,
between 1930

From Sagyo
composed

Shishido,
and 1933

no matter So now, in
how far- any the logic
fetched, can transition, of this new
be stuffed system
into this
gap between
frames.
 . . . or, at And, at
least, that’s any way the same
the theory. he or she as long as time...
the artist the reader
likes!
is free to can follow
split the things,
frames

Even
these
sorts of
things are
within the
realm of
possibility.
Of
course,
one is also free
to lean the
frame over…

people like Actually,

this Tezuka
sort of Osamu,
nonsense during the
age of the
monthlies,

really
put
this

But technique
through its
paces.
 is undeniably

that
Als
o,
which

sustains
the
drawings’
sense of
reality. difficult to read.

it
makes
us
un- feel
easy
.

This
If the frame
should become
is
fluid and because,
unpredictable, in
manga
the W
edge
a
of the
a
the sense
frame
aa
of reality gives
way to insecurity. !
And if this
technique is pushed
to extremes, the
narrative
completely rep-
This
s
collapses. resents bring
order back
itself - mem-
!
ories
 t
jus this
en
Ev ating es
t r a k
s m
co The illu oint eel
m s p f
se mon e da I’m me
nt!
qu to ys like ting
Dismou
e
fra tia ha it’s
n t
me lit ndle ge nk!
st c y dru
yli uts of t the
sh i h
wa n a e
y

to
create

a
kind special
of

nuance.

I prefer
to try
But at
some-
thing the risk
of sea-
sickness,

That’s
the
subject
of this
series!
a little
more
unusual.
 And
that

will
Thank
conclude
you
my
very
opening
much.
remarks.

formal
You’re awfully
torso.
for a headless

Oooh
….

Clink
 人間と
Companions
With the Human
THOMAS LaMARRE

Speciesism, Part I:
Translating Races into Animals
in Wartime Animation

To scores of millions of participants, John Dower reminds us, World War II

was a race war.¹ Among the many patterns of racial prejudice explored in his
book War without Mercy, Dower discusses how the American media depicted
the Japanese as animals: “A characteristic feature of this level of anti-Japanese
sentiment was the resort to nonhuman or subhuman representation, in
which the Japanese were perceived as animals, reptiles, or insects (monkeys,
baboons, gorillas, dogs, mice and rats, vipers and rattlesnakes, cockroaches,
vermin, or more indirectly, ‘the Japanese herd’ and the like).” ² And yet, “with-
out question . . . the most common caricature of the Japanese by Westerners,
writers and cartoonists alike, was the monkey or ape.” ³
In the American animalization or bestialization of the Japanese enemy,
Dower detects a general strategy of dehumanization. Behind this strategy
is the idea that to depict someone as an animal is to strip away their very
humanness, their humanity. In effect, both human animals and nonhuman
animals are degraded through these dehumanizing, bestializing depictions.
The racial imaginary, however, is not limited to the application of negative
animal qualities to humans (bestialization). Friendly or positive animal im-
ages may imply strategies of racialization, too. For instance, when Dower

75
 considers the American postwar transformation of the image of the Japa-
nese from a horrifying ape or gorilla into a friendly pet chimp, he remarks,
“that vicious racial stereotypes were transformed, however, does not mean
that they were dispelled.” ⁴ In other words, although he does not speak to it as
such, Dower points to the persistence of this racial consciousness and racial
typology whenever human animals are depicted as nonhuman animals.⁵ This
is what I call “speciesism.”
Speciesism is a displacement of race and racism (relations between hu-
mans as imagined in racial terms) onto relations between humans and ani-
mals. The term speciesism was coined and is
often used to indicate discrimination against
Japanese war media, in
nonhuman animals.⁶ On the one hand, spe-
contrast to the American,
ciesism is a matter of blatant discrimination
did not tend to bestialize
against animals, which comes of attributing
the American enemy.
“bestial,” that is, negative characteristics
to nonhuman animals and extending these
negative attributes to humans. On the other hand, speciesism entails the dis-
placement of problems associated with race relations onto species relations,
and vice versa.⁷ Speciesism thus comprises violence to nonhuman animals
and to those designated as racial others. In this essay, it is the latter inflection
of speciesism that concerns me primarily, the translation of racial differences
into animal differences, in the context of Japanese animation. Moreover, the
prevalence of speciesism in prewar and postwar Japanese animation implies
important continuity between the prewar and postwar racial imaginary. My
intent is not to declare a simple continuity between prewar and postwar Jap-
anese thinking about race. Not only are there different inflections of specie-
sism in wartime animation, but also postwar animation responds to wartime
speciesism in a variety of ways: unwitting replication, celebration, fascina-
tion, ambivalence, disavowal. There are unthinking responses and critical re-
sponses.
Japanese wartime speciesism presents a contrast with American war-
time speciesism. Dower reminds us that Japanese war media, in contrast to
the American, did not tend to bestialize the American enemy. Dower is quick
to remind us that this does not mean that Japanese propaganda was not
dehumanizing: “No side had a monopoly on attributing ‘beastliness’ to the
other, although the Westerners possessed a more intricate web of metaphors
with which to convey this.” ⁸ Dower stresses how Japanese tended to depict
the American enemy as failed humans, as demons, ogres, or fiends. Crucial to
his assessment is the representation of English and American enemies in Seo

76 thom as lamarre

Mitsuyo’s 1945 animated film Momotarō: Umi no shinpei (Momotarō’s divine
army).⁹ In this film, Japan’s English-speaking enemies appear in human form
but with horns on their head, reflecting their degraded and demonic stature,
and suggesting that Japan’s spiritual youthful purity and vigor, embodied in
Momotarō, will dispel them (Figure 1).
In such not-entirely-dehumanizing depictions, Dower sees “symbolic rup-
tures” that “helped prepare the ground for discarding the antipodal stereo-
types of pure Self and incorrigibly evil Other once Japan had acknowledged
its defeat.” ¹⁰ In effect, Dower detects a potential humanization or humanism
encrypted within Japanese depictions of the American enemy. Oddly, how-
ever, in light of his remarks about how postwar American transformation of
the vile simian into the cute pet chimp still constituted racism, Dower never
considers the relation between humanization of the enemy (humanism) and
racialization (racism).¹¹ Yet in his examples humanizing strategies and racial-
izing procedures are intertwined.

figure 1. The English commander, sporting a horn on his head, nervously addresses Momotarō
(flanked by his companion animals) in English to the effect that “you’re placing us in a difficult
situation,” which is translated into Japanese in the accompanying title.

s p e ci e s i s m , pa rt o n e  7 7
 What is more, Dower passes over Japanese depictions of the empire’s
colonized peoples and non-Western enemies, which gives the impression
that Japanese war media did not engage in speciesism. In animated films,
however, Japan’s wartime speciesism is impossible to ignore. In Momotarō:
Umi no shinpei, for instance, as in the other prewar Momotarō animated films,
colonial peoples appear as animals, as indigenous animals. They appear as
cute and friendly animals that fairly cry out for nurture. What is more, in
Momotarō: Umi no shinpei native critters happily lend their strengths and
abilities to the construction of a Japanese airstrip and military enclave. The
cuteness of local animals meshes nicely with their status as a readily available
and willing source of labor. This is a kind of speciesism unlike the American
bestialization of the enemy. It hints at a different imaginary at work in the
translation of racial problems into human–animal relations.
This difference comes partly of Japan’s conscious evocation of, and resis-
tance to, American racism. As is well known (but infrequently addressed in
discussions of Japanese cultural production), the Japanese war was couched
as one of racial liberation, emancipating “Asians” or “people of color” from
“white demons” or Western imperialists. As Dower points out, the Japanese
media consistently expressed indignation over how Westerners looked on
colored people in general as simply “races who should serve them like do-
mestic animals.” ¹² Yet Japanese wartime media do not eschew speciesism.
Although Japanese animated films do not bestialize the enemy or the colo-
nized in order to dehumanize them, the depiction of colonized peoples as
cute, friendly, and accommodating native critters is hardly innocent. The
Japanese imaginary is one of “companion species” rather than one of wild
animals to be hunted and exterminated or one of domestic animals to be
exploited. The imaginary of companion species is related to a specific geopo-
litical imaginary.¹³
Significantly, as Dower’s remarks about America’s postwar transforma-
tion of the ugly simian into the cute pet (“to the victors, the simian became
a pet, the child a pupil, the madman a patient”)¹⁴ suggest, Japanese wartime
speciesism not only shows signs of overlap and intersection with the geo-
political imaginary of American speciesism but also seems to anticipate Amer-
ican postwar speciesism in which the defeated quasi-colonial other is trans-
formed into a companion species: the ape or gorilla becomes a pet chimp. To
make a long argument exceedingly short, it is my opinion that Japanese war-
time speciesism anticipates or intersects with American postwar speciesism,
because of an overlap in their geopolitical concerns.¹⁵ Both wartime Japan
and postwar America tried to imagine multinational or multiethnic empire,

78  t hom as lamarre
 for historical and
which entails an effort to imagine the productive
material reasons,
coexistence of different communities that are fre-
animation has come
quently typed as races, racial communities, racial
to provide a prime
ethnicities, or national races. Within the framework
site for speciesism.
of multiethnic empire, speciesism—translating race
relations into species relations—not only promises
a way of working through racism but also entertains hopes of moving be-
yond racism altogether. It is here, in Japanese wartime animation, that the
problem that Dower seems intent on avoiding—that of the relation between
racism and humanism in the context of multiethnic empire—becomes im-
possible to overlook.
The central hypothesis of this essay is that, for historical and material
reasons, animation has come to provide a prime site for speciesism. Although
in this paper I pay less attention to the dynamics of manga than those of
animation, I think that the commonalities between certain lineages of manga
and animation will become obvious in the overall discussion of speciesism. In
part one of this essay, I will present some general reflections on animation’s
love affair with animals in order to set the stage for a discussion of speciesism
in Japanese animation. Subsequently, as a first step toward delineating some
of the range of speciesism in Japanese animation, I will briefly consider how
speciesism overlaps with, yet differs from, racism. Particularly important in
part one are the animated films based on the manga character Norakuro, or
“Stray Black,” a series of films in which the Japanese dog regiment does battle
with a range of animal enemies. In part two, I will continue the discussion
of wartime animation looking at the depictions of colonial peoples in the
Momotarō films and will conclude with an analysis of the legacy of wartime
speciesism in the works of Tezuka Osamu.¹⁶

ANIMATION’S LOVE OF ANIMALS

Animation loves animals. In fact, animals are such a staple of animated films
that it is hard to think about animation without thinking of scenes of nonhu-
man animals frolicking, dancing, leaping, and of course, being bent, crushed,
and stretched. There is a sort of “kinetophilia” associated with animated ani-
mals, a sheer delight in movement, as well as a fascination with plasticity and
elasticity, which Eisenstein called “plasmaticness” and I will call plasmatic-
ity.¹⁷ The deformation and reformation of characters—stretching, bending,
flattening, inflating, shattering—becomes a source of pleasure in itself and,

s p e ci e s i s m , pa rt o n e  7 9
 as Eisenstein notes, implies an ability of an animated form to attach itself to
any life form.
As Ōtsuka Eiji notes in his essay in this volume, the elasticity associated
with animated characters imparts a sense of their invulnerability and even
immortality: they appear resilient and resis-
tant to injury and death. As such, plasmaticity
the plasmaticity of
implies another register of deathlessness—the
characters in animation
transformative ability of animated characters
seems to encourage all
to adopt the qualities and shapes of a range of
manner of cruel and
life forms (other species) and of developmental
violent deformations
moments (phases and stages). In this respect,
of the body form.
the sensibility of animation vis-à-vis animals
differs profoundly from that of cinema.
In his chapter on the history of cinema and cruelty to animals in Animals
in Film, Jonathan Burt notes how cinematic images of animals have histori-
cally received a great deal of attention from animal advocates, to the point
where film viewers have become more sanguine about violence to humans in
cinema than they are about cruelty to animals. He concludes that the “split
within the animal image—the artificial image that can never quite be read as
artificial—is one that ruptures all readings of it.” ¹⁸ Yet, even though the split
in the cinematic animal image ultimately ruptures readings of it, Burt re-
minds us that such ruptures happen along specific lines: an underlying sense
of the reality of the cinematic image has contributed to a set of conventions
and expectations for the humane treatment of animals depicted in film.
Animation, in contrast, implies a different sense of the reality of the im-
age, and the “animetic” treatment of the animal image need not eschew vio-
lence and cruelty. In fact, the plasmaticity of characters in animation seems to
encourage all manner of cruel and violent deformations of the body form—
as if taking slapstick gags to their limit, as is common in Looney Tunes, Ub
Iwerks’s Mickey Mouse, and vintage Tom and Jerry (lampooned so well in
“Itchy and Scratchy” in The Simpsons). As Ōtsuka Eiji notes, American silent
comedy had a powerful influence on animation, and Japanese animation also
has its lineages of slapstick humor and violence in animation, which enable
equally parodic excess in more recent edgy fare such as Excel Saga (1999–2000,
Ekuseru Saaga), Tamala 2010 (2004), or Panda Z (2004, Pandaa zetto: The Ro-
bonimation). Yet it is not necessary to take the capacity for bodily deforma-
tion to its limit in violence for the plasmaticity of animation to exert its hold
on us. Even when bodily movement and transformation is handled lyrically
with an insistence on grace and suppleness, animation imparts a different

8 0  t ho mas lamarre
sense of the powers of the body, which is commonly linked to animal or ani-
malized bodies.
I don’t wish to imply that cinema and animation cannot or do not over-
lap significantly. As is evident in recent films such as Charlotte’s Web (2006),
which use digital technologies and animatronics to construct talking animals
with suitably expressive faces, animation and cinema can overlap a good deal.
Nor do I want to imply that animation sanctions cruelty to animals or that
animation does not have its conventions for dealing with violence. Rather,
as both Sergei Eisenstein and Ōtsuka Eiji note, the inherent elasticity of the
animetic animal image imparts a sense of its invulnerability to violence done
to it. The animetic image seems to erase all traces of violence and even of
death. Animation doesn’t fret over the fragility and mortality of animals but
celebrates their apparent invulnerability and immortality (lyrically and vio-
lently) and frequently extends these qualities to human animals.
Both cinema and animation today are caught up in a paradoxical situation,
however. For instance, it should give us pause that, in an era of increasing ur-
banization and “mediatization” on a global scale, human animals have less
and less contact with nonhuman animals, and pets tend to be the animals that
most urbanized folk know best. As a result, media forms such as animation
and cinema become a prime source, and maybe the prime source, of knowl-
edge about a range of nonhuman animals. Akira Lippit expresses the paradox
succinctly in his discussion of animals in film and philosophy, remarking that,
in an age of massive extinction, in which the majority of nonhuman animals
seem on the verge of disappearing from our world entirely, our media abound
in images of animals. It is as if those vanishing animals return to us in spectral
form, proliferating across media platforms, as cartoon characters, electronic
pets, animatronic and SFX creatures in films, on stickers, in ads, on book cov-
ers, in a vain attempt to mark their presence at the moment of their global
disappearance.¹⁹ The image that comes to mind is that of the reddish alien
phantoms in the first Final Fantasy movie, The Spirits Within (2001): the en-
tire zoosphere of a distant planet, exterminated in a global war, is hurtled to
Earth in the form of a great chain of ghostly life that haunts the human world
with the possibility of planetary death. Much of our zoosphere is currently in
danger of such a spectral existence, condemned to survive only on film and in
other media, and it is hard not to see the proliferation of animated animals
across media (and their transnational movement) in terms of a global panic
formation: our attempt to capture animals and their nonhuman animality be-
fore they disappear actually is part of a process of erasing their lives and life
worlds while frantically retaining them in spectral form.

s p e ci e s i s m , pa rt o n e  8 1
 Still, even though both cinema and animation seem equally caught up in
this zoological panic formation that loves animals to death, cinema and ani-
mation have different ways of expressing their love for nonhuman animals.
Not only are animals more prevalent in animation, but also animation seems
bent on expressing animal invulnerability, where cinema tends to linger on
animal fragility. (These are, of course, tendencies, not mutually exclusive op-
positional categories.) Simply put, for historical, formal and material reasons,
animation tends toward vitalism, animism, and animal powers.
One explanation for the prevalence of animals in animation has it that
humans (or human animals, if you will) are much fussier about images of
humans than about images of nonhumans, especially with respect to move-
ment. Apparently, human viewers demand a higher degree of verisimilitude
in the depiction and movement of human characters. Because humans are
much more attentive to details when it comes to depictions of their own
species than other species, the human viewer will accept a greater degree of
deformation and simplification with nonhuman figures. Simply stated, an-
imality and plasmaticity are mutually enabling. Consequently, if you’re an
animator who wants to experiment with, or push the limits of, the plasticity
inherent in drawing figures for cel animation, using nonhuman animals al-
lows you to sustain a sense of verisimilitude in action while allowing a great
deal of leeway for deformations and transformations of the figure. Thus the
use of nonhuman animals allows for heightened fluidity as well as intensi-
fied violence and abruptness of movement, whence animation’s penchant for
lyrically graceful motions in tandem with over-the-top slapstick, pratfalls,
gags. This also explains why, from the earliest days of animated film, so many
of the nonhuman animals in animation appear poised between human and
animal—we see bipedal cats, monkeys, pigs, dogs, bears, and mice, with paws
like hands, often in human attire, acting downright human—Norakuro the
Stray Black dog, Felix the Cat, Mickey Mouse, Songokû the Monkey,²⁰ Cubby
Bear, and so on. Are they animals or humans? Are these humanized animals
or animalized humans?
Where cinema viewing tends to draw a line between humans and animals,
treating the cinematic images of nonhuman animals as less artificial than
those of humans, animation viewing does not draw a strict line between non-
human animals and human animals. It would seem that cinema humanizes
animals, while animation tends to animalize humans. This may derive from
the ability of human viewers to detect the artificiality of human actors on
film, and thus violence against humans concerns them less than that against
animals—they sense that the humans are not real. In animation, however, it

8 2 t hom as lamarre
 animation seems bent
is less a matter of reality and artificiality than a mat-
on expressing animal
ter of verisimilitude and plasmaticity. Whatever the
invulnerability, where
reasons, what is important in this context is that ani-
cinema tends to linger
mation delights in constructing zones where human
on animal fragility.
and animal become indiscernible, where the animal
opens into the human, and the human into the ani-
mal. It surely goes without saying that animation’s love of animals is more for
the delight of humans than for the benefit of nonhuman animals. But then
maybe animation presents interesting possibilities for imagining the human–
animal interface, to which we have never paid much critical attention.
As animation opens the human love affair with animals, that love takes
a variety of forms: animals appear as loyal comrades in arms, as worthy foes,
as advisors, as second selves, as therapists, as potential mates, as sexual ob-
jects. As with any love affair, unexpected obstacles and detours may appear,
resulting in jealousies, quarrels, even battles, but also reunions and complex
sympathies. There is no guarantee that things will turn out well, nor can
we say definitively what it would mean for things to turn out well between
humans and animals in the realm of animation. Uncertainty about the out-
come arises in part because, even though animation appears ideally suited to
reminding humans that they too are animals, affection can lead to ambiva-
lence. After all, it is the nature of affection—insofar as it entails affect or af-
fective responses—to take things out of circulation, to form self-sustaining
circuits and feedback loops, precisely because affect does not allow for neat
distinctions between subjects and objects. This is not necessarily a comfort-
able situation.²¹
Among the varied implications of animation’s blurring of distinctions
between human and animal—first and foremost evident in the prevalence of
humanized animals or animalized humans, I am most interested here in how
animation thus becomes an ideal site for translating race relations into spe-
cies relations. The translation of races into species makes for a situation that
is not so straightforward to critique as racial stereotyping. In this respect,
racism in animation and manga demands some remarks, however brief.
It is relatively common to lament racial stereotypes of humans in early
animation. This is the case with the depictions of Africans in Disney’s Trader
Mickey (1932). Trader Mickey stages a wild African village dance, drawing on
“Black dandy” stereotypes in Sheldon Brooks’s song “The Darktown Strut-
ters’ Ball” (1917), in which African Americans dress up like big shots but speak
and behave like uneducated louts.²² Yet David Gerstein, who presents this
example on his Web site, also reminds us that such cartoons sometimes open

s p e ci e s i s m , pa rt o n e  8 3
 critical perspectives on the white fascination with black culture. In the car-
toon Showing Off (1931), for instance, the portrayal of a white boy mimicking
black culture also affords a way to see the boy’s imitation as crude and ridicu-
lous. And Gernstein concludes, “While still some distance from a real accep-
tance of Black contributions or acknowledgement of white racism, Showing
Off is at least an interesting start.”
Such fascination with racial others is equally evident in Japanese ani-
mation from the 1930s. In a Japanese animated short from the early 1930s
(actual date unknown) based on a manga by Shimada Keizō, entitled Bōken
Dankichi—Hyōryû no kan (The adventurous Dankichi: Adrift),²³ the young
hero Dankichi and his little mouse friend are cast ashore on a far-off island
where they strike a lion with an arrow. As they flee the lion, they encounter
“natives” who look stereotypically African but, given the context, probably
represent New Guineans or one of the peoples loosely designated at that time
in Japan as “South Seas natives.” Caught between lion and natives, Dankichi
and his companion mouse leap into a tree and then onto the back of an ele-
phant. Riding the elephant, they literally trample the natives who thereupon
joyously crown Dankichi king of the island (Figure 2).

figure 2. The native king, once conquered, happily places his crown on Dankichi’s head.

8 4 t ho mas lamarre
 This chapter of Bōken Dankichi is easy to critique, not only for its unen-
lightened, stereotyped depiction of Japan’s colonized peoples but also for its
use of a stock scenario of imperial desire in which the conquered or colonized
people is ultimately asked to express its love for the conqueror or colonizer.
The native king does not merely crown Dankichi as the new ruler of the is-
land; he does so with delight and affection. The use of racial stereotypes and
the expression of imperial desire is so obvious in this short animated romp
that it almost defies criticism. This is fun colonialism, in which the interac-
tions between colonizer and colonized appear in the guise of hyperactive yet
harmless child’s play. In order to frame colonialism as a playful adventure,
however, Bōken Dankichi must also level the playing field, so to speak. If na-
tives and their conqueror are to “play war,” they must have some common
ground. In Bōken Dankichi, this common ground appears briefly in a shot in
which Dankichi and the native king literally bump noses (Figure 3).
This moment is notable for a couple of reasons. First, it is early example of
the use of close-up in animation. In manga of the early 1930s, artists did not
tend to use cinematic techniques such as close-up. For the most part, figures
appeared in each manga frame from head to toe, and the same techniques

figure 3. Dankichi and the “island native” bump noses.

s p e ci e s i s m , pa rt o n e  8 5
 extended to animated adaptations of manga. In this moment in Bōken Dan-
kichi, however, the emphasis is on the faces in the manner of cinematic close-
up. Second, the simplification of the two faces enhances and reinforces the
sense of commonality between Dankichi and the native king: composed of
various geometric figures, they appear in almost perfect symmetry, with the
same eyes, nose, mouth, facial curvatures, and head, and even the same pro-
portions and distribution of black and white. They are almost mirror images
of one another.
In sum, this moment of erasure of racial difference depends on visual
strategies that bring us very close to the image (close-up) and to the fun-
damentals of figuration (simplified geometrical composition), as a result of
which we do not perceive difference between the native king and Dankichi.
Rather we feel their fundamental common-
ality, which comes of sort of primordial sim-
With speciesism, we can
plicity and elasticity of the animated figure, a
never be entirely sure
plasmaticity that implicates the transforma-
what a certain animal
tive ability of animated characters to adopt
stands for-a race, a
the qualities and shapes of other entities and
nation, an ethnicity, all of
of other developmental moments (so-called
these, or none of these.
primitive or childish stages).
In Dankichi the story concerns humans.
Speciesism will introduce another twist to this plasmaticity, however. As
speciesism translates racial difference into species difference, we lose fixed
points of reference that commonly allow us to identify racism and racial ste-
reotypes. In many respects, the scene of the native king and Dankichi bump-
ing noses anticipates the operations of animation’s speciesism. The native
king in Bōken Dankichi is already so simplified and generalized that we cannot
say with certainty what he represents in ethnic or racial terms, even though
this is a racialized depiction. With speciesism, we can never be entirely sure
what a certain animal stands for—a race, a nation, an ethnicity, all of these,
or none of these. We know that it makes a difference yet we don’t know what
kind of difference it makes. We have a sense that racial distinctions are being
made, and yet they are not racial distinctions exactly.
In sum, even in depictions of racial difference in animation, we see a
tendency to make racial difference elastic, plastic, plasmatic. Speciesism ex-
tends this plasmaticity at the level of form to the level of referent. Anima-
tion’s affection for animals entails an investment in a plasmaticity in which
deformation and transformation take precedence over, and appears more
fundamental than, representation and figuration. At the same time, iconicity

8 6 t ho mas lamarre
takes precedence over, and appears more fundamental than, referentiality.
The important question becomes whether speciesism can truly move beyond
racism by “plasmaticizing” it, or whether it merely holds racial difference un-
der erasure in order to repeat it more effectively—continually displacing and
renewing racism by simultaneously marking and erasing it.

NORAKURO

In its potential to depict the enemy as an animal species, wartime anima-

tion differs from Japanese wartime cinema or “national policy films” insofar
as these latter tended to avoid depictions of Japan’s enemies, particularly
those involved in the war in China and those on other fronts and throughout
the colonies. Because such scholars as Satō Tadao, Kyoko Hirano, and John
Dower have stressed this tendency of Japanese war cinema to avoid depic-
tions of the enemy, I feel that I can present it schematically here.²⁴ The em-
phasis in national policy films falls instead on the difficulties and sacrifices of
the soldiers who carry on regardless of privations and who continue to em-
body youth and sincerity. We don’t see who the enemy is, we don’t know what
the context for the war is, and even battles remain rather abstract, mostly
a matter of an experience of the difficulties of war. War thus appears as an
existential test site for purity, integrity, and sacrifice on the part of Japanese
soldiers. To some extent, the erasure of the enemy makes sense in ideologi-
cal terms. Because the Japanese war was presented in terms of liberation,
it would surely not have been wise to crank out images of Japanese soldiers
killing Chinese soldiers or murdering civilian populations (even though the
murder of civilians gradually becomes the rule in modern warfare).
Again, Japan’s wartime animation differs from its wartime cinema. Ani-
mation (and manga) seemed to enjoy a certain freedom in the presentation
of war battles with the enemy. This is not to say that manga and animation
offered direct representations of the enemy as a rule. Rather, because ani-
mation and manga so readily translate “races” (in the slippery sense of the
term that comprises peoples, ethnic communities, and nations) into animals,
something very different happens in Japan’s wartime animation. Cartoons of
Norakuro or “Stray Black” provide prime examples.
A cartoon character created by Tagawa Suihō and often described as a ca-
nine counterpart to Felix the Cat, Norakuro first appeared in print in Shōnen
kurabu in 1931, the year in which the rigged Manchurian Incident gave the
Japanese government its excuse to begin a full-scale invasion of, and war

s p e ci e s i s m , pa rt o n e  8 7
 against, China. Norakuro begins his adventures as an accident-prone soldier
in a dog regiment under the command of Buru the Bulldog. The Stray Black
dog enjoyed such popularity that the manga were soon adapted in animation,
with some episodes adapted repeatedly. There are, for instance, two extant
versions of Norakuro’s first adventure in the army entitled Norakuro nitōhei
(Norakuro, Private Second Class). Murata Yasuji directed a version in 1933,²⁵
and Seo Mitsuyo directed another in 1935.²⁶
In Murata’s version, Norakuro stands out from the other dogs in the dog
regiment on the basis of his color (the other dogs are white), and he con-
stantly stumbles and bumbles through his duties. In Figure 4, for instance,
from Murata’s version, as the line of dog soldiers smartly salute their com-
mander, Norakuro throws both hands in the air in a moment of irrepressible
enthusiasm.
Norakuro’s unruly and lazy behavior is striking in comparison with the
general insistence in national policy films on regimentation and synchroniza-
tion of soldierly activities, which reached new aesthetic heights in films like
Hawai Maree oki kaisen (1945, War at sea from Hawaii to Malaysia). In Seo’s
1935 production of Norakuro as a
private second class, Norakuro lazily
sleeps on after the other soldiers are
already at their calisthenics. For-
tunately, Norakuro’s bed comes to
life, and when the bed is unable to
awaken him, it runs him out to join
the squad of soldiers.
Despite his lack of discipline and
coordination, the Stray Black shows
unusual spirit on the battlefield—
he runs headlong to face the enemy
when other dogs of the regiment
hesitate. He also has dumb luck in
figure 4. In the 1933 version of his adventures as a private spades, and frequently produces a
second class, Norakuro the Stray Black dog finds it diffi- victory through some sort of ruse.
cult to stay in formation with the other dog soldiers.
As a result of his spirit, ingenuity,
and good fortune, Norakuro leads the dog regiment to victory after victory
against its enemies. With each victory, Norakuro rises in rank, and conse-
quently there are a series of animated shorts based on the manga episodes
that track Norakuro’s climb through the military ranks. The episodes begin
with “private second class” (Norakuro nitōhei), and Stray Black gradually rises

8 8  t ho mas lamarre
from “private first class” (Norakuro ittōhei)²⁷ to “corporal” (Norakuro gochō)²⁸
and “minor company officer” (Norakuro shōjō).²⁹ Because Norakuro made his
appearance in 1931 at the start of Japan’s war against China, his rise through
the ranks corresponds with Japan’s movement deeper and deeper into its
“Asian” war. Needless to say, Norakuro’s good fortunes stand in stark con-
trast with Japan’s wartime fortunes.
Now, Norakuro and the dogs are clearly Japanese. In Norakuro gochō
(1934, Corporal Norakuro), for instance, Japanese flags stand at the gate to
the dogs’ military encampment. But what do the animal enemies stand for?
In Seo Mitsuyo’s 1935 version of Norakuro nitōhei, for instance, the dog regi-
ment encounters a ferocious tiger. Does the tiger stand for a specific foe?
Because national animal heraldry retained some importance in the 1930s,
and because Korea commonly designated itself as a tiger, it is tempting to
construe Norakuro’s battle against the tiger in terms of national allegory: dog
versus tiger is Japan versus Korea. Such a reading certainly proves interest-
ing. In Seo’s film, Norakuro accidentally paints himself with tiger stripes and
confronts the adult tiger as if he were a cub of the same species (Figure 5).

figure 5. In the 1935 version of Norakuro’s adventures as private second class, Norakuro fortuitously develops
stripes and approaches the enemy tiger disguised as a tiger cub.

s p e ci e s i s m , pa rt o n e  8 9
 Is speciesism fated to
Norakuro’s little tiger disguise allows him
displace racism (to
to immobilize the larger tiger (among other
erase, reinscribe, and
things, his proximity allows him to toss laugh-
renew it), or can it
ing gas down the tiger’s throat), and in the end,
produce something
the Japanese dog regiment cages and merrily
entirely new, something
drags off the tiger. Read allegorically, the Japa-
beyond racial thought?
nese dog in Seo’s Norakuro Nitōhei who acts as a
friendly little benefactor of the same species in
order to cage the tiger and drag it home is evocative of the dupery and force
involved in Japan’s mass exportation of Korean labor into Japanese facto-
ries during the war, and also recalls the “recruitment” of “comfort women”
(Korean women were especially numerous among the women drafted by the
Japanese army, by force or by ruse, into military sexual slavery).³⁰
Similarly, other animals in the Norakuro series can be read as allegori-
cal representations of Japan’s colonized peoples and enemies. The pigs, for
instance, are usually read as Chinese, and there is cause to do so.³¹ But there
are many possible readings for the gorillas or apes in Norakuro ittōhei (who
are frightened into submission by a jack-in-the-box tiger head) or monkeys
in Norakuro gochō (who are apparently proving difficult to assimilate into the
dog army).³² In other words, it is difficult and probably impossible to sus-
tain an allegorical reading based on a one-to-one correspondence between
an animal species and a people or nation. Something strange happens with
speciesism in general. Something strange happens when races, nationalities,
or ethnicities are translated into nonhuman animal species.
As remarked above, speciesism entails a plastic or elastic relation to rac-
ism. Even though we know very well that racial differences are at work, we can-
not say for certain which peoples or which racial relations are in play. This is a
general property of speciesism: we may say that the pigs in the Norakuro series
are Chinese and the dogs Japanese; we may wonder about Bernard Weber’s
analogies between ant societies and Indian or Japanese social structures in his
novel Les fourmis (1991, Ants);³³ the “domestic beast-people” or “human cattle”
called “Yapoo” in Numa Shōzō’s novels are Japanese who have been biologi-
cally engineered to fulfill a variety of domestic functions, but with the trans-
formation of Japanese in Yapoo, we might well ask whether “Japanese” is not
now a species rather than a people or nation;³⁴ we may feel that the humanoid
alien in Wolfgang Peterson’s film Enemy Mine (1985) is somehow Japanese, es-
pecially if we note its similarity to John Boorman’s Hell in the Pacific (1968);
and we may read the concern for human–alien relations in Octavia Butler’s Xe-
nogenesis series as a displacement of contemporary American racism against

90  tho mas lamarre

African Americans³⁵—and yet, in all these instances, the exact racial reference
has been rendered fluid, at once evoking a familiar mode of discrimination and
conjuring up a different world of experience. This is a relatively common trope
in science fiction, as these examples suggest. Some mode of racial discrimina-
tion is displaced onto a relation between different species, and frequently be-
tween humans and humanoid aliens. Speciesism allows for the exploration and
maybe resolution of racial discrimination, with outcomes ranging from pious
moral treacle to perverse scenarios of mutual bondage or shared guilt.
Speciesism introduces uncertainty about the boundary between races and
species. With humanoid aliens, we are already on slippery grounds. We cannot
always be sure whether humanoid aliens constitute another species or another
race or people: in Star Trek, for instance, Klingons or Vulcans may appear to
constitute another species, but then, because humans marry and bear off-
spring with Klingons and Vulcans, these aliens turn out to be more like races
(in the course of the series we may alternately think of Klingons as Russians,
as African Americans, or as some other people, nation, or race). The appellation
“humanoid” glosses over the difficulty in ascertaining what the relations be-
tween humans and humanoids really are—different races or different species?
The idea of humanoid aliens constructs a zone of indiscernibility between race
and species. With relations that are between human animals and nonhuman
animals, we may assume an even greater gap or a greater degree of referential
plasmaticity; humans and animals don’t usually marry and bear children to-
gether. Of course, because speciesism is a translation of race and racism, we
can’t rule out the possibility either. And the prior question arises again. Is spe-
ciesism fated to displace racism (to erase, reinscribe, and renew it), or can it
produce something entirely new, something beyond racial thought?
Such a question can only be entertained in specific contexts, with specific
materials. In effect, speciesism in Japanese wartime animation constituted
a powerful attempt to move beyond (Western) racism, a concerted effort to
imagine the multinational or multiethnic world proposed in pan-Asianist
thinking. In the Norakuro animated films, the translation of the military con-
flicts of national empire into interspecies warfare produces a paradoxical situa-
tion in which racism is at once challenged and embraced. On the one hand, the
Norakuro series introduces an insuperable divide between friend and enemy.
War is no longer a matter of humans fighting humans but of one species (dogs)
fighting other species (tigers, monkeys, apes, pigs). But does the Norakuro se-
ries thus take racism to a new extreme wherein the enemy is no longer of the
same species? What peace can be hoped for between dogs and tigers? While
enemies are not imagined as racial others, neither are they entirely human.

s p e ci e s i s m , pa rt o n e  9 1
 On the other hand, the Norakuro films depict friend and foe as human-
oid animals, or precisely, as animalized humans. Animals on both sides ap-
pear cute, playful, childlike, elastic, and plastic. Instead of humanism then,
this sort of animation develops an “animalism” mingled with animism, vital-
ism, and what might be called “childism.” There is a turn to “earlier” phases of
development in terms of ontogeny and phylogeny, to a primordial youthful
vitality, a wellspring of life, of animality—plasmaticity.
The beauty of such animated plasmaticity in ideological terms is that it
decisively separates different communities (evoking fundamental biological
differences between species—dogs, pigs, apes, and so forth) while linking the
same communities to one another at a level different from that of traditional
humanism. While animals in the Norakuro series may fight, their conflict is
not that of social Darwinism (survival of the fittest), whose racial implica-
tions Japanese imperial ideologies strove to resist (namely the implication
that whites are the fittest race because their imperial strength is greater).
If the Norakuro series successfully avoids the racism implicit in the
American bestialization of the Japanese foe, its manner of speciesism does
not entirely break with racism and racialization, despite its challenge to the
racial imaginary. Its animated animals thus come to embody the paradoxical
stance underlying the Japanese war of racial liberation: races are simultane-
ously delineated and “liberated” (allowed free reign to swarm), simultane-
ously projected and overcome. Animation’s love affair with animals paves the
way for rendering pan-Asianism in the form of pan-speciesism—a sphere of
coprosperity that takes the form of the cooperation of animal species (in such
ecosystems as jungle, savannah, woodlands, and coral reef) who cooperate
despite, and paradoxically because of, their innate irreconcilable differences.
It should give us pause that the state of war itself is necessary for the
work of cooperation and coprosperity, while the vital plasmaticity of anima-
tion promises to underwrite the transformation of races into species primarily
through modalities of cuteness and play. This cooperation and coprosperity is
predicated on, and only sustainable through, the perpetuation of war among
ever-younger generations.
The Japanese wartime version of speciesism—the wartime attempt to get
out of racism through animal cooperation—will haunt the racial imaginary of
postwar Japan, and it is Tezuka Osamu’s works in particular that strive to take
up and transform wartime speciesism into an ethics of nurture of the nonhu-
man in a cosmopolitan era.³⁶ Understanding the prewar–postwar transforma-
tion of speciesism, however, demands some account of the legacy of folklore
in animation, as with the modern invention of the Momotarō tradition that

92 tho mas lamarre

happened between folklore studies and animation. Thus we might begin to
take seriously the idea that “cute is what remains of Japanese empire” and de-
mand that speciesism in our films and fictions live up to its promise to imag-
ine other worlds of difference rather than assuage our racial anxieties.

Notes
. John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pan-
theon Books, ), .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. While the preference in animal studies is to refer consistently to humans as hu-
man animals (and to animals as nonhuman animals) in order to stress that humans are
indeed animals, I sometimes use the shorthand terms humans and animals but with the
understanding (and hope) that my intermittent use of human animals and nonhuman ani-
mals (in conjunction with my general argument) provides ample indication that I do not
separate humans and animals.
. Richard Ryder coined the term in the early s to refer to prejudices toward
nonhuman animals, and animal advocates have picked up the term with this general con-
notation. While Ryder and subsequent writers see speciesism as akin to racism and sex-
ism, I shift and expand the definition of speciesism in order to indicate that speciesism is
often intimately connected with racism.
. Some would argue that Homo sapiens is unusual as a species because, having killed
off all other species of the genus, human is de facto a genus and a species. In any event,
it is beyond the scope of this article to explore the many questions that arise in classifica-
tion of species (which frequently breaks down). What is important here is the history of
racial thought in which the problem of racial difference was imagined in terms of species
difference, and one of the central questions of the late nineteenth century became, Can
different races interbreed? The answer is of course yes, but many racial thinkers insisted
that such hybridity would weaken the species, while others suggested that hybridity would
improve the human stock. Such questions, which are discussed more fully in Part Two of
this essay, are outlined nicely in Robert Young, Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture
and Race (London: Routledge, ). Interestingly enough, upon the transmission of
Gobineau’s ideas about race and the “yellow peril” into Japan, thinkers such as Mori Ōgai
not only challenged such thinking but also showed it to be scientifically spurious.
. Dower, War without Mercy, .
. Seo Mitsuyo, dir., Momotarō: Umi no shinpei (Momotarō’s divine army) (Shōchiku
hōmu bideo, n.d.).
. Dower, War without Mercy, .
. Étienne Balibar, in the chapter “Racism and Nationalism,” in Race, Nation, and
Class: Ambiguous Identities, by Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (London: Verso,
), speaks to the problematic that runs throughout this essay. To summarize his

s p e ci e s i s m , pa rt o n e  9 3
 account very simply, humanism, like racism, is a supplement to nationalism, but human-
ism promises a supernationalism that will overcome the racial supplementation of nation-
alism. Balibar argues persuasively that humanism and racism are closely related, and in
fact, humanism frequently operates as a form of whiteness. Needless to say, Pan-Asianism
implies a logic analogous to humanism.
. Dower, War without Mercy, .
. In an earlier version of the work that became The Companion Species Manifesto:
Dogs, People, and Significant Others (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm, ), an essay entitled
“Cyborgs to Companion Species: Reconfiguring Kinship in Technoscience” (in Chasing
Technoscience: Matrix for Materiality, ed. Don Ihde and Evan Selinger [Bloomington: Indi-
ana University Press, ]), Donna Haraway begins with the provocative thesis that “I
have come to see cyborgs as junior siblings in the much bigger, queer family of companion
species.” Yet, even though she refers to sites of potential overlap between companion spe-
cies and imperialism (for instance, settlers’ dogs in Israel’s conquered territories displacing
local wild types), she glosses over questions of power implied in companion-species for-
mations. In this respect, while I borrow her term and owe a great deal to her discussion, I
tend to insist on the power dynamics implicit in specific formations of companion species
and not simply within the technoscientific formulation of companion animals.
. Dower, War without Mercy, .
. Naoki Sakai, in his discussion of Kyoto School philosopher Tanabe Hajime, pro-
vides a concise and persuasive account of this problem. See “Subject and Substratum: On
Japanese Imperial Nationalism,” Cultural Studies , no. / (): –.
. Part two will be published in Mechademia .
. Sergei Eisenstein, Eisenstein on Disney, ed. Jay Leyda, trans. Alan Upchurch (Lon-
don: Methuen, ). Eisenstein favors the term plasmaticness because ‘here we have
a being represented in drawing, a being of definite form, a being which has attained a
definite appearance, and which behaves like the primal protoplasm, not yet possessing a
‘stable form, but capable of assuming any form and which skipping along the rungs of the
evolutionary ladder, attaches itself to any and all forms of animal existence’ ().
. Jonathan Burt, Animals in Film (London: Reaktion Books, ), .
. Akira Mizuta Lippit, Electric Animal: Toward a Rhetoric of Wildlife (Minneapolis:
University of Minnesota Press, ).
. Not surprisingly, the adventures of Songokû the Monkey from The Journey to the
West figure among the earliest extant animated films.
. In this volume Sharalyn Orbaugh discusses some of the ways affect challenges
conventional boundaries of the subject. I would add in this context that the prolongation
of affect results in something like a body, a sensorimotor schema that is temporally sus-
tainable. Here arises a politics of “bare life” or “naked life.”
. See David Gernstein’s “Cartoon Pop Music Page” for Africans in Disney’s Trader
Mickey: http://www.cartoonresearch.com/gerstein/cartoonmusic (accessed February ,
).
. Bōken Dankichi—Hyōryû no kan (The adventurous Dankichi: Adrift), original
manga by Shima Keizō, in Shōwa manga eiga daikōshin,  VHS tapes (Victor Entertainment,
), vol. , title .
. See, for instance, Tadao Sato’s chapter, “Japanese War Films,” trans. Gregory

94 tho mas lamarre

Burnett, in Currents in Japanese Cinema (Tokyo: Kodansha International, ); Kyoko
Hirano’s chapter, “From War to Occupation,” in Mr. Smith Goes to Tokyo (Washington, D.C.:
Smithsonian Institute, ), and John Dower’s chapter, “Japanese Cinema Goes to War,”
in Japan in War and Peace (New York: New Press, ). Two fairly recent edited collections
have considerably complicated some of the prior insistence on the absence of representa-
tion of Japan’s others in Japan’s national policy cinema, opening the history of Japan’s
imperial film production and distribution: see especially Iwamoto Kenji’s introduction to
his edited volume, Nihon eiga to nashonarizumu – (Tokyo: Shinwasha, ); and
An Ni’s essay, “Daitōa eiga e no kaidan: ‘Tairiku eiga’ shiron,” in another volume edited by
Iwamoto Kenji, Eiga to “Daitōa kyōeiken” (Tokyo: Shinwasha, ).
. Murata Yasuji, manga and direction, Norakuro nitōhei, in Shōwa manga eiga
daikōshin, vol. , title .
. Seo Mitsuyo, dir., Norakuro nitōhei, in Nihon aato animeeshon eiga senshû,  DVDs
(Kinokuniya Company, ), vol. , title .
. Seo Mitsuyo, dir., Norakuro ittōhei, in Nihon aato animeeshon eiga senshû, vol. ,
title .
. Murata Yasuji, Norakuro gochō, in Shōwa manga eiga daikōshin, vol. , title .
. Murata Yasuji, Norakuro shōjō—nichiyōbi no kaijiken, in Shōwa manga eiga
daikōshin, vol. , title .
. For an introduction of the “comfort women” and the debates on history sur-
rounding their testimony, see True Stories of the Korean Comfort Women, ed. Keith Howard
(London: Cassell, ) and Hyunah Yang, “Revisiting the Issue of Korean ‘Military Com-
fort Women’: The Question of Truth and Positionality,” in The Comfort Women: Colonialism,
War, and Sex, ed. Elaine H. Kim (Durham, N.C..: Duke University Press, ), –.
. Akiyama Masami makes this point in a presentation and commentary on the
manga of Norakuro’s dog regiment versus the pigs in Maboroshi no sensō manga no sekai
(Tokyo: Natsume shobō, ), –.
. Note that, in Japanese, dogs and monkeys are considered natural enemies, and
instead of “like cat and dog,” in Japanese one says “like dog and monkey.”
. Bernard Weber, Les fourmis (Paris: Éditions Albin Michel, ). There would be
two additional books in the trilogy, Jour des fourmis () and La révolution des fourmis
().
. In the final revised version of Numa Shōzō’s Kachikujin Yapuu comprises five vol-
umes (Tokyo: Gentōsha, ). There are also two important manga versions: Ishinomori
Shōtarō’s () and Egawa Tatsuya’s (). Takayuki Tatsumi, in Full Metal Apache:
Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and Avant-Pop America (Durham, N.C.: Duke Univer-
sity Press, ), gives a nice introduction to the Yapoo as kachikujin or “domestic animal-
people,” which he renders as “human cattle” (–).
. There are three books in the Xenogenesis trilogy: Dawn (), Adulthood Rites
(), and Imago (), reprinted together in the omnibus edition Xenogenisis (New
York: Doubleday, ).
. I will take up this question in part two to be published later; see, too, Yomota
Inuhiko’s essay on Tezuka in this volume.

s p e ci e s i s m , pa rt o n e  9 5
YOMOTA INUHIKO
Translated and Introduced by Hajime Nakatani

Stigmata in Tezuka
Osamu’s Works

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

A prominent and prolific scholar, Yomota Inuhiko is the author of more than
a dozen books of cultural criticism. Best known for his nuanced and theo-
retically ambitious writings on film history and criticism, Yomota is also the
author of a number of books and essays devoted to manga, including Manga
genron (1994, The principles of manga), a seminal study of the semiotic struc-
tures of the medium that brought manga studies to a new level of critical
awareness.¹ This now-classic study deftly weaves rigorous analysis of semi-
otic structures with close attention to the texture and nuance of individual
works. The same combination of theoretical rigor and sensitivity to detail is
already evident in the translated essay, one of the first to apply methods of
literary criticism to the analysis of manga.
Tezuka Osamu, the central subject of the essay, is considered by many
the father of postwar manga and one of the most influential cultural fig-
ures in postwar Japan. While a certain amount of hyperbole and retrospec-
tive myth making inevitably enters such glorification of a single author, it is
fair to say that Tezuka single-handedly defined the parameters of what we

97
 now consider manga and, moreover, was largely responsible—both as au-
thor and as spokesman—for lending this popular medium the visibility and
cultural cachet it now enjoys in Japan. Be-
cause of this privileged position in postwar
Insofar as you are human,
manga, Tezuka’s oeuvre is often regarded
you will be able to achieve
as the touchstone of manga criticism and
the truth only through
theory. Indeed many of the landmark stud-
a nonhuman other.
ies of manga in recent years have focused
on Tezuka, including Natsume Fusanosuke
and Ōtsuka Eiji’s important monographs. (A translation of a chapter from
Ōtsuka’s volume appears in this volume.)
Tezuka’s life-long preoccupation with the fraught relationship between
humanity and its others (robots, cyborgs, animals, monsters)—discussed
here with impressive clarity and insight—has since grown into something
akin to the medium’s obsession, epitomized in some of the landmark works
of postwar manga history (e.g. Ōtomo Katsuhiro’s Akira and Iwaaki Hitoshi’s
Parasyte among the more recent examples). Originally derived from Disney
animations and science fiction literature, both major sources of Tezuka’s in-
spiration, the theme was given a distinctive twist by Tezuka and later manga
authors who have intensified the underlying ambiguity and precariousness
of the human–other divide with increasing sophistication and poignancy.
The formative period of this distinctive thematic complex is the subject of
the following essay.

PROLOGUE

You, speaker who are about to seize the word—how will you prove that you are hu-
man? As you have probably noticed, there are some nonhumans among us. At first
sight, everyone may appear to be human. But if all around you are indeed human,
it automatically falls on you to assume the role of the nonhuman against whom
others can assert their own humanity. Whether you are human or not unfortu-
nately remains unknown even to yourself. If you nonetheless wish to be human, it
is incumbent on you to actively place yourself amid those others and to recognize
them as human. Now, you are probably not the only one who’s preoccupied with
all this. All those others you consider human are in fact thinking the same thing.
That’s why there is no other way than for all to stick together and to recognize each
other, for only thus can you proclaim yourself to be human. You do so, however, not
as a plain statement of conviction but as a gamble, one taken against the lethal

98  yomota in u h iko
threat that those very others you recognized as human may come back to claim that
you are the nonhuman one.
You cannot construct your truth in complete isolation. Insofar as you are hu-
man, you will be able to achieve the truth only through a nonhuman other. It is only
by excluding this other that you can achieve your own humanity.

SIMULACRUM OF THE HUMAN

Tezuka Osamu’s Ambassador Atom (Atomu taishi), published in the magazine

Shōnen in 1951, featured the first appearance of a robot named Atom, thereby
inaugurating the famous Astro Boy (1952–68, Tetsuwan Atomu) series that con-
tinued for more than ten years.² It is thus all the more interesting that the ini-
tial piece gives a completely different impression from that of the subsequent
series. In Ambassador Atom, Atom is not the detached and superhuman arbiter
of human evil that he will later become in the series; nor does he engage in
spectacular combats with other robots. In the inaugural piece, Atom’s narra-
tive role remains largely underdeveloped. He does not yet enjoy the company
of robot siblings and parents, and is indeed portrayed as the only robot ad-
vanced enough to communicate with humans. Thus the theme of competition
and conflict between humans and robots—the driving theme of the Astro Boy
series in its various permutations—has not yet crystallized in Ambassador
Atom. In fact, Atom is not even the central protagonist of the story but just
one of its many secondary characters.
Some of these discrepancies may perhaps be attributed to the fact that Am-
bassador Atom was originally conceived as a stand-alone piece (which, if the origi-
nal Japanese title had been translated into English, would have carried a subtitle
“The Travellers”) and was recast into the series only retroactively, in response
to the positive reception of the original piece. But that is not all. The rupture
between Ambassador Atom and Astro Boy has more fundamental implications
for our understanding of the series as a whole. I suggest that Ambassador Atom
may be viewed as a preliminary narrative operation that enables the subsequent
integration of Atom into the codes of human order. Rather than advancing a
narrative framework for the subsequent Astro Boy series to adhere to, it remains
very much a stand-alone piece; and if it does serve to ground the subsequent
series, it does so from outside of the narrative universe of the series as such. In
other words, Ambassador Atom deploys the primary processes whereby the op-
position between humans and robots first takes shape, the fundamental opposi-
tion that the Astro Boy series will subsequently reiterate ad nauseum (Figure 1).

s t i g m ata i n t e z u k a o s a m u ’s wo r k s  9 9
 figure 1. Ambassador Atom. Humans achieve their human identity through the exclusion of
robots. Copyright Tezuka Productions.

First, a synopsis of Ambassador Atom is in order:

Extraterrestrials who have wandered across the universe for two thou-
sand years since the explosion of their home planet accidentally discover the
Earth and land in the Japanese mountains of Chichibu. These extraterrestri-
als are not only humanoid in general appearance but each individual corre-
sponds to a human individual so closely that they can hardly be told apart.
A young male extraterrestrial Tamao surreptitiously leaves the starship and
heads to Tokyo, where he is soon kidnapped by humans who sell him off to
a circus in the seedy entertainment district of Shinjuku. The ringmaster is
planning a stage showdown between humans and robots, and the young ex-
traterrestrial is cast in the role of the human. In the robot’s role is Atom, a
hi-tech humanoid that the mad scientist Doctor Tenma has created to replace
his beloved son, tragically killed in a car accident. However, in a Pinocchio-
like tragicomedy, it turns out that Atom’s body does not grow, and the furi-
ous doctor dumps Atom, selling him to the troupe at a nominal price. On the
day of the show, the young extraterrestrial sees among the audience a boy
and his father who look just like himself and his own father. In the mayhem

10 0  yomota in u h iko
that ensues, Tamao flees the circus. The next day, the two Tamaos appear
at the same school, leading to more confusion. Through the extraterrestrial
Tamao, humans learn of the existence of the other humanoid race and of the
virtually identical lives that the two humanities lead.
The extraterrestrials decide to leave the spaceship behind to live among
humans. But the honeymoon between the two humanities is short lived. The
extraterrestrials are gradually introduced to deplorable human habits, nota-
bly the consumption of living creatures. The outcome is a critical shortage of
food on a planetary scale, and human-led riots
break out. Doctor Tenma takes control of the se-
humans can achieve
cret police and launches an anti-extraterrestrial
their own humanity only
campaign using his new chemical weapon that
through the exclusion
causes cells to shrink. The enraged extrater-
of extraterrestrials.
restrials rush back to the spaceship to launch a
retaliatory attack on Tokyo. The only one who
can mediate this conflict is Atom, being neither human nor extraterrestrial.
Atom negotiates the terms for peace with the extraterrestrials and leaves his
head as ransom. In the meantime, Doctor Tenma dies from the effects of his
own chemical weapon. Thereafter, the two humanities finally reconcile. The
extraterrestrials return Atom’s head to him and happily take off to Venus,
their new home.
Extraterrestrials who arrive from a planet exactly replicating the Earth,
who lead a social life virtually identical to that of humans, and who can barely
be distinguished from their human counterparts even on an individual ba-
sis—this is a particularly radical embodiment of the figure of otherness that
Tezuka tirelessly deployed in his life-long and single-minded pursuit of the
theme of encounters with the nonhuman—e.g., the man-beast in The Vam-
pires (1966–67, Banpaiya), the bird-man in The Adventure of Rock (1952–54,
Rokku bōkenki), and the countless robots). And this infinite proximity be-
tween humans and extraterrestrials in Ambassador Atom is what propels the
humans’ persistent discrimination and exclusion of extraterrestrials, in their
struggle to maintain terrestrial order and to confirm their human identity.
To put it more succinctly, what the narrative suggests is this: humans can
achieve their own humanity only through the exclusion of extraterrestrials.
What then differentiates humans and extraterrestrials? A seemingly
small but nonetheless fundamental difference separates the two. While hu-
mans are carnivorous and engage in hunting, extraterrestrials are able to ex-
tract atmospheric compounds to synthesize their nutrition; and since their
existence is not predicated on the sacrifice of other species, there is no guilt

s t i g m ata i n t e z u k a o s a m u ’s wo r k s  10 1
 attached to the progress of civilization; progress is pure good. Thus, freed
from the necessary evil of the struggle for survival that continues to burden
humans, the extraterrestrials can afford to maintain an inner kernel of inno-
cence in spite of their technological advances. (Note also that there is no sug-
gestion in the story that their accidental
arrival on Earth was in any way an act of
Atom’s well-nigh complete
aggression.) It is against the backdrop of
failure to fulfill his
this peaceful innocence that human evil
creator’s intentions is
is highlighted, a contrast brought forth
precisely what enables him
with particular poignancy first in the in-
to emerge as the privileged
troduction of the docile extraterrestrials
critic of human evil.
to carnivorous habits (which inserts them
into the terrestrial food chain), and next
in the mass extermination of extraterrestrials perpetrated by humans. But
aside from such differences at the level of narrative content, there is another
way in which humans and extraterrestrials can be clearly distinguished: the
extraterrestrials have huge ears—much larger than their human counter-
parts. None of the characters in the story make explicit mention of this dis-
tinguishing mark, which is thus relegated to the purely visual register of the
narrative, but it nonetheless assists both the readers and the characters in
the story—notably the secret police—in their efforts to discriminate extra-
terrestrials from humans.
Atom’s mode of existence is conditioned in many ways by those subtle
differences separating the two humanities. At the same time, his existence as
such constitutes another, and perhaps more decisive register of differences.
While the human Doctor Tenma is propelled by the death of his beloved son
to fabricate a double, the extraterrestrial Doctor Tenma is not. Lacking a no-
tion of copy, the extraterrestrial one develops in its stead a chemical weapon
that reduces life literally to nothing. This difference is crucial to the unfolding
of the conflict between humans and extraterrestrials that eventuates in the
penultimate massacre of the latter, since the tragedy to follow is inaugurated
by the two scientists’ struggle over the unique and indivisible Atom.
How is Atom positioned in this conflict? As a creation of the demonic
mad scientist, he necessarily maintains a certain proximity to human evil
even though he does not take part in it. In fact, Atom’s well-nigh complete
failure to fulfill his creator’s intentions—to be a perfect copy of man, a grow-
ing organism that is an integral part of the food chain and of the struggle
for survival—is precisely what enables him to emerge as the privileged critic
of human evil. Moreover, his uncertain status suspended between humans

10 2 yom ota in u h iko

and nonhumans brings him closer to the extraterrestrials. The black horns
displayed prominently on Atom’s head are indeed no other than the transfer-
ence of the giant ears that mark the extraterrestrials. Thus, Atom constitutes
the unique and privileged point of intersection between humans and nonhu-
mans, and the two Doctor Tenmas’ struggle over Atom is hence the logical
consequence of his ambiguous belonging.
The ending of Ambassador Atom is quite ambiguous. Or, more precisely,
Tezuka imposes a forced closure on the story without bringing its many con-
tradictions to a satisfactory resolution. In his effort to bring peace to hu-
mans and extraterrestrials alike, Atom persuades the two parties to agree to
a somewhat idealistic proposal, that each group have one half of its popula-
tion remain on Earth and the other half emigrate to Mars. Yet, it is not clear,
at the end of the story, how this proposal is brought to fruition. In fact, the
contradictions on the human side are brought to an abrupt end through the
scapegoat-like death of Doctor Tenma, and the extraterrestrials take off hap-
pily for Venus, not Mars. This should not be dismissed as a mere oversight on
the part of the author. Ambassador Atom concludes by expelling the extrater-
restrials from Earth rather than enacting a well-crafted peace treaty, and this
should be understood as a symptom of Tezuka’s failure to truly envision a
peaceful coexistence between the two humanities according to Atom’s ideals.
It may not be a simple coincidence that the San Francisco Peace Treaty was
signed around the time of the publication of Ambassador Atom.³ But to stay
close to the work itself, it should be stressed that this failed closure of the
original story was what opened the possibility for the later Atom series.
The human experience of otherness in Ambassador Atom is reminiscent
of what Jacques Lacan called the mirror stage.⁴ Humans encounter their own
mirror image in the extraterrestrials. And by recognizing these likenesses of
themselves as nonhuman and thereby expelling them from human order, hu-
mans succeed in shaping and consolidating their human self. As Lacan sug-
gested, humans can attain Truth only through the presence and exclusion of
an other. But how can one carry out this difficult task? This is where Atom
comes in. Atom’s role is to recognize humans as humans and to designate
them as such. Himself situated on the threshold between humans and oth-
ers, he functions as the catalyst that helps humans (re)gain their identity.
Nonetheless, when after his self-sacrificing dedication to humans Atom fi-
nally begins to claim his own humanity, he is himself cruelly expelled from
the category of the human. The resulting sense of loss on Atom’s part can
only be compensated for by his continual struggles against the countless
nonhuman beings that are tirelessly summoned into the universe of the Astro

s t i g m ata i n t e z u k a o s a m u ’s wo r k s  10 3
 Boy series—the Gas Men, dinosaurs, Lightning Men, and Martians. In other
words, Atom’s experience in Ambassador Atom constitutes a trauma that will
continue to haunt him thereafter, and, consequently, the Astro Boy series is
no less than the pathography of Atom’s compulsive repetition.

EAR AND TAIL

Such a narrative structure evidently did not emerge all at

once. Atom’s archetype can indeed be traced back to Tezuka’s
earlier works. Incidentally, to trace the genealogy of Atom is
also to trace the genealogy of Atom’s two horns. What after
all is the use of those two black protrusions, those curious
horns that never overlap regardless of where they are seen
from (Figure 2)? Given that many robots in Astro Boy look ex-
actly like human beings, those distinguishing horns no doubt
reveal something essential about Atom’s identity.
Lost World (1948, Rosuto waarudo) and The Mysterious
Underground Man (1948, Chiteikoku no kaijin) are instructive
in this regard. Both were published in 1948 and feature a
rabbit endowed by the latest technology with human intel-
ligence and emotion. Although the rabbit in both works is
only a secondary character accompanying the central pair of
Hige-Oyaji and Ken’ichi, he nonetheless dies a tragic death
in the service of humans. Lost World’s rabbit character Mii-
chan’s rocket crashes into the Earth on his return from the
exploration of planet Mamango; Big-Ears in The Mysterious
Underground Man persists in disguising his identity to avoid
ridicule and persecution, only to perish in a fire while con-
tinuing to believe in his own humanity. One may also add to
this genealogy Sayoko of The Moony Man (1948, Gessekai shin-
shi), as this creature from the moon also meets a tragic end:
having inadvertently revealed her rabbit-like face to her ter-
restrial lover, she commits suicide by jumping out of a rocket
on its way back to Earth.
What distinguishes all those unfortunate side characters
figure 2. How are Atom’s is their large ears (Figure 3). While their peculiar features are
horns actually positioned?
What do they mean? Copy-
explained within the respective narrative universes by the fact
right Tezuka Productions. that the characters are either a mutated rabbit or a creature

10 4 yom ota in u h iko

from the moon, the more profound significance of the ears
is that they function as stigmata. The large ears are the mark
of destiny, their bearer bound to serve humans unto death.
At the same time, enlarged ears somehow signify high in-
telligence and thus connote scientific progress (understood
positively). Both Mii-chan and Big-Ears are indeed endowed
with an idealized high intelligence that exceeds that of ordi-
nary humans, and the moon people’s science is far beyond
the science of their human counterparts. The genealogy of
the rabbit-like superhumans begins with those earlier works
and extends into Tezuka’s later career, as in the case of Bocco
of Amazing Three (1965–66, Wandaa surii) and Cleopatra of
Astro Boy: The Secret of the Egyptian Conspirators (1959, Tet-
suwan Atomu: Ejiputo inbōdan no himitsu).
It is not difficult to see how Lost World and The Mysteri-
ous Underground Man foreshadow Ambassador Atom. For ex-
ample, Planet Mamango in Lost World, Earth’s twin planet,
returns after five million years of separation from Earth;
thus, although uninhabited, the planet nonetheless poses a
threat to the spatial identity of humanity, a threat culminat-
ing in the abandonment of the human simulacrum Ayame
on Mamango. The echoes of Ambassador Atom are unmistak-
able. Likewise, The Mysterious Underground Man features the
Underground People, ancient occupants of Earth whose am-
bition is to conquer the surface of the planet. Those threats
are dispelled through the heroic deeds of the superhuman
rabbits, just as Atom would later accomplish the same thing
through his superhuman actions. It is thus evident that the figure 3. Long-eared pre-
cursors to Atom. From The
rabbit characters are indeed Atom’s precursors, and Atom’s Mysterious Underground Man
black horns the traces of his rabbit ancestry. Owing to their (top), Lost World (middle),
and The Moony Man (bottom).
stigmata of horns or ears, Atom and his rabbit ancestors Copyright Tezuka Productions.
alike are both positioned at the liminal margin between hu-
mans and nonhumans, and contribute to the renaming of humanity in the
brave new world of scientific progress.
It is interesting to observe in passing that, while the nose is another
oft-exaggerated feature in Tezuka’s works, it has far less significance than the
ear, evoking little beyond the narrow sign-functions assigned to it by the au-
thor. From Doctor Ochanomizu in Astro Boy to the learned Sarutahiko in The
Phoenix (1954–88, Hi no tori), the large nose merely indexes the stock character

s t i g m ata i n t e z u k a o s a m u ’s wo r k s  1 0 5
 of the lone intellectual burdened by a solitary knowledge, and does not serve
to complicate the broader narrative of humanity and its self-identification.
Unlike the ears, it only serves as a straightforward allegorical sign, not as the
symptom of an essential difference.
There is, however, another genealogy of stigmata besides the ear-horn
that should not be overlooked. It is the genealogy of the tailed characters,
one that begins with such works as Man of a Tail (1949, Yūbijin) and Jungle
Emperor Leo (1950–54, Janguru taitei), typically set in the jungle, and extends
to The Vampires (1966) and Lion Books (1971, Raion bukkusu). If large ears typi-
cally occur in labs or on other planets and imply an ode to human intelligence
and the power of science, the tail is associated with jungles and mountains;
what it evokes is a moral contrast between man and nature, highlighting the
pettiness of human evil and arrogance against the background of Nature’s
permanence, and critiquing humanity from the perspective of benevolent
animals. Zero Man (1959–60, Zero man) is a particularly memorable work in
this regard, as it weaves the two genealogies of ears and tails into an elabo-
rate tapestry of motifs (Figure 4). The story achieves an almost epic scale as
it traverses a variety of spaces and places that runs the gamut of the Tezuka
world: the mountains of Tibet, futuristic Tokyo, jungles, the American Wild
West, the underground world, Mars, and so on. The intricate story is not easy
to summarize but goes more or less as follows:
Zero Men are extraterrestrials with squirrel-like tails who migrated from
Venus to Earth in far antiquity. Despite their highly developed science and
civilization, Zero Men avoid humans like the plague and lead a quiet, reclusive
life in the Underground City deep beneath the Himalayas, under the despotic
rule of their patriarch the Great Monk. A young Zero Man named Rickie,
wandering in the mountains, accidentally encounters a Japanese soldier, who
adopts him, and he grows up in Tokyo as a human being while concealing his
tail from the eyes of others. Rickie later learns that the Zero Man couple that
Doctor Tategami brought back from a research trip to the Himalayas are his
biological parents, and this inspires him to visit the Underground City again;
but disillusioned by the dystopic oppressiveness of Zero Man society, he soon
returns to Japan. Meanwhile, the Zero Men underground plot to conquer the
surface world. They launch their plot by dispatching to Japan a mysterious
character named Hell-King (Enma daiō), who proceeds to forcibly transform
Tokyo into a Zero Man–style prison city. Rickie’s efforts to stop the Zero Men
inadvertently result in the explosion of Mt. Fuji. Hell-King attempts to con-
tain the explosion using an electronic megafreezer, but this in turn causes
Earth to enter an artificially induced ice age. The struggle for survival that

10 6 yomota in u h iko
ensues divides humans, one half of whom are wiped out in a war against Zero
Men while the other half attempts a desperate exodus to Venus. Meanwhile,
a revolt against the despotic Monk erupts in the Underground City, and the
Great Monk seeks refuge with the humans. In the meantime, the threat of a
new Ice Age is averted, owing to Nature’s great resilience, and Earth returns
to its moderate climate. Peace is struck between the Zero Man revolutionary
government and the humans back from Venus, and Rickie is selected to act
as the human ambassador. Eventually, however, the evil Charcoal Grey ap-
propriates the Zero Men’s high-tech laser matter-extinguisher to reduce the
Underground City to rubble, and the Zero Men return to Venus.
The extent to which Zero Man overlaps with Ambassador Atom should be
evident from the above. There is an extraordinary degree of correspondence
between the two, such as between the Zero Men and the extraterrestrials, the
new Ice Age and the food crisis, the laser matter-extinguisher and the chemi-
cal cell-extinguisher, and Charcoal Grey and Doctor Tenma. The endings are
practically identical, with the nonhumans migrating to Venus and human
society returning to its prior state. It then seems only natural that Rickie

figure 4. Zero Man is an epic narrative on the Law of humanity. Copyright Tezuka Productions.

s t i g m ata i n t e z u k a o s a m u ’s wo r k s  1 0 7
 bears a significant resemblance to Atom, with identical round clear eyes and
a puffy nose. We may also note that Rickie’s countenance is quite similar to
Mii-chan’s in Lost World. It thus becomes apparent that Rickie’s baseball cap
with the prominent visor is, like Atom’s horns, a permutation of rabbit ears.
Rickie grows up among humans as a strange boy with a tail, and later, los-
ing his tail in a rocket accident, returns to his native land as a strange tailless
Zero Man. The artificial tail attached to him to replace his lost real one is a
token of his ambivalent belonging, neither fully human nor fully Zero Man.
The one significant difference that
separates Ambassador Atom and Zero
why is it that humans cannot
Man concerns the ultimate allegiance
maintain even their basic sense
of this intermediate figure. Whereas
of humanity without being
Atom remains among humans to enact
continuously designated as
an interminable drama of self-sacrifice
such by others?
for the sake of humans, Rickie’s final
choice is instead to leave humans be-
hind and go to Venus, thus altogether forsaking his wish to become human.
This is how Rickie manages to escape the nagging sense of lack vis-à-vis hu-
mans that haunts the many liminal characters in Tezuka’s previous works,
thereby averting the tragic self-sacrificing death of his precursors. It is in this
sense that Zero Man brings a certain closure to the worldview of Tezuka’s
earlier works.
But all the above still leaves us with a basic question: why is it that non-
humans always have to become the object of exclusion in Tezuka’s works? Or,
to put it differently, why is it that humans cannot maintain even their basic
sense of humanity without being continuously designated as such by others?
Why is it that the moment this act of designation ceases, humans always
lapse into uncontrollable anxiety and eventually chaos? Such are the ques-
tions that continue to haunt the readers of Tezuka’s works.
The question is brought to sharper relief by comparing Tezuka’s works
like Jungle Emperor Leo and Astro Boy to works by another pioneer of post-
war Japanese manga, Mizuki Shigeru,⁵ notably the author of Neko-himesama
(1975, Cat princess) and Kappa no Sanpei (1961–62, Sanpei the kappa).⁶ In
Mizuki’s works, too, humans encounter countless nonhumans: kappas, mon-
sters, aboriginals of the southern seas, and so on; but there, the nonhuman
others are never the objects of exclusion. Instead, faced with the fear and
allure of the unknown, it is the human protagonist who gradually sheds his
human outline, eventually mutating into a nonhuman in a blissful metamor-
phosis. Having thus thoroughly outgrown the parochial notion of humanity

10 8  yom ota in u h iko

and embraced the other world in body and in soul, those human mediators
in Mizuki’s works cannot ever find a happy home back in the human world
(if they return there at all). To the poignant self-sacrificing death of Tezuka
we can thus contrast Mizuki’s strangely comforting nondeath that is perme-
ated by the bliss of the Pleasure Principle. Whereas the former ceaselessly
strives to draw and to redraw human Law, the latter does not hesitate to de-
stroy human order on a whim. My nagging sense of discomfort with Tezuka
derives from what this contrast serves to highlight, the obsessiveness with
which Tezuka continues to reestablish human order even as he attempts to
relativize it.

Notes
. Manga genron [The principles of manga] (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, ).
. Ambassador Atom is the literal translation of the Japanese title, but the estab-
lished English translation for this title is Captain Atom. I have used Ambassador Atom here
to make a connection with Ōtsuka Eiji’s article in this volume, where Atom is discussed as
a literal ambassador. But for other Tezuka manga I have used the established English titles
and character names, even for works not yet published in English translation.
. The treaty signed in  between Japan and the Allies that officially ended World
War II. For more on the connections between Ambassador Atom and the treaty, see the es-
say by Ōtsuka Eiji in this volume.
. In an influential essay (“The Mirror Stage as Formative of the Function of the I as
Revealed in Psychoanalytic Experience,” Ecrits [New York: Norton, ], –), the French
psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan argued that infants initially lack a coherent sense of their
own body and that their experiences consist of a loose aggregate of decentered physical
sensations focused on particular organs. A coherent body image emerges only through the
infants’ identification with an externalized image either of themselves (mirror image) or
of others on which one projects one’s own image. The notion of the mirror stage was cen-
tral to Lacan’s early theory of subject formation.
. Mizuki Shigeru (b. ) is one of the most influential, prolific, and widely read
manga authors in postwar Japan. Best known for his long-lasting series Gegege no Kitaro,
he single-handedly created the unique genre of “yōkai manga” and remains its greatest
master. While yōkai can be roughly translated as “monster,” yōkai manga leans more to-
ward humor than horror and tends to draw heavily on folklore. It thus carries a decidedly
more autochthonous tone than the genre of fantasy. For details, see Michael Foster’s essay
in this volume.
. A kappa is a humanoid monster found in Japanese folklore that is said to inhabit
ponds and rivers.

s t i g m ata i n t e z u k a o s a m u ’s wo r k s  1 0 9
OTSUKA EIJI
Translated by Thomas LaMarre

Disarming Atom:
Tezuka Osamu’s Manga
at War and Peace

AMBASSADOR ATOM: A PARABLE

OF THE JAPAN–U.S. PEACE TREATY

Nearly all readers of manga are familiar with Tezuka Osamu’s most repre-
sentative series Mighty Atom (Tetsuwan Atomu),¹ but casual readers may not
be familiar with the earliest version of this series, Ambassador Atom, which
began serialization in the April issue of Shōnen in 1951. This was also the year
the Japan–U.S. Peace Treaty was signed.² Because the American government
had sent a draft of the peace treaty to the Japanese government earlier in the
year, on March 27, the topic of the treaty was already in the air when Ambassa-
dor Atom (Atomu Taishi) appeared. Because Ambassador Atom ran in serializa-
tion until March 1952, in the course of its serialization Japan signed both the
Treaty of Peace with Japan³ and the Japan–U.S. Mutual Security Treaty,⁴ and
saw its “special envoys” and members of the “plenary committee” return to
Japan. The very title, Ambassador Atom, imparts to its hero a set of attributes
completely different from those of the later “Mighty Atom,” and as I will dis-
cuss below, the presentation of Atom as an ambassador for the nation in a
time of conflict reflects the concerns of the era. Nonetheless, the image of the

111
 we don’t have to read too deeply
hero as an ambassador, appearing
into Ambassador Atom to detect
at the time of the Japan–U.S. Peace
a parable of the Japan-U.S.
Treaty should not be read only in
Peace Treaty and of Japan under
negative terms, merely as a sort of
the Occupation, which General
diplomatic gesture.
Douglas MacArthur, Supreme
In the issue of Shōnen prior to
Commander of the Allied Powers
the one in which Ambassador Atom
(SCAP) in Japan, described as a
began serialization, a preview no-
“boy of twelve” in terms of its
tice appears. Yet, as historians of
maturation towards democracy.
manga know, the preview does
not contain any images of Atom
but only the title that Tezuka gave to the editors in advance: Atom Continent
(Atomu tairiku). While there is no way to know to what extent the transforma-
tion of Atom Continent into Ambassador Atom betrays an awareness of events
surrounding the Japan–U.S. Peace Treaty, the storyline of Ambassador Atom
certainly reads very much like a parable of the Treaty.⁵
Ambassador Atom tells of an unexpected invasion of Earth by aliens.
Oddly enough, for each and every alien there is a human who resembles him
or her, like two peas in a pod. To give an example, for the youth named Tama-
chan, there appears among the aliens a youth with exactly the same face and
features, and this set-up extends to all the other characters. There is but one
exception: the robot boy Atom, built by Dr. Tenma. The robot Atom is a sort
of death effigy, as Dr. Tenma constructs Atom as an exact likeness of his be-
loved son Tobio after the boy’s death in a traffic accident. While it is never
explained logically in the story, it would seem that, insofar as Earth now lacks
a Tobio, no Tobio appears among the aliens, and, consequently, only the ro-
bot Atom has no corresponding match. Such neutrality⁶ is the condition for
Atom to play the role of ambassador, and, in fact, Atom receives permission
from the aliens to call on them, and he enters into peace talks and succeeds.
What is striking is that Atom also suffers under the burden of the lot cast
upon him by his father Dr. Tenma, that of “the child who can’t grow up.”
Dr. Tenma constructs the robot as an exact likeness of his son and yet,
exasperated by the robot’s inability to grow, winds up selling the robot To-
bio to a circus. Thus Atom’s first appearance as a character presents an odd
variation on the narrative pattern of the “exile of the noble.” ⁷ Naturally, to
any adult with common sense it seems unlikely that a scientist could fail to
comprehend that a robot cannot grow, but we must not forget that this story
operates as a “parable.” As a “child who can’t grow up,” Atom aspires to peace
talks with the “invaders,” and in that capacity, Atom offers them his own

112 ō tsu ka e ij i
“way” as a robot, all of which reflects the diplomacy of that era. What mer-
its closer attention, however, is the final sequence, in which the aliens send
Atom an “adult face” after peace is established (Figure 1).
The aliens send him this message:

Dear Atom,
We constructed an adult face for you using your current face for refer-
ence. It won’t do for you to remain forever a boy. When next we meet, let it
be as equals.
Farewell.

Thereupon Atom’s friend Tama-chan shouts to the departing aliens, “Next

time I too will be grown up!” and with this frame, Ambassador Atom ends.
Clearly, we don’t have to read too deeply into Ambassador Atom to detect
a parable of the Japan–U.S. Peace Treaty and of Japan under the Occupation,
which General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Pow-
ers (SCAP) in Japan, described as a “boy of twelve” in terms of its matura-
tion towards democracy. SCAP’s Regulations for Newspapers and Publishers

figure 1. Frames 51–55 from the closing sequence of Tezuka Osamu’s postwar manga Atomu tai-
shi (Ambassador Atom). Courtesy of Tezuka Productions.

d i s a r m i n g ato m  11 3
 were abolished just after Ambassador began serialization, on May 1, 1951, so
in presenting the invaders as exact likenesses and not setting up overt sym-
bolism for America, Tezuka was certainly not oblivious to concerns about
censorship.

“SURROGATES FOR AMERICAN JUSTICE”

OR “AMBASSADORS OF DISARMAMENT”?

One of Tezuka’s memos about Continent Atom proves that he originally had a
very different framework in mind, one that underwent substantial transfor-
mation to arrive at the story that we have today in Ambassador Atom. The fol-
lowing is taken from the memo as it appeared in an exhibit on Tezuka Osamu
at the Isetan museum in Yoyogi in 2004.

Ōtsuka Heita: a sham communist, a politician who proposes to enslave the

shadowmen

Korinteddo Dōrumen: American president, pacifist, proposes opening the

sea to the shadowmen

Dr. Tenma: loses his only son Noboru and suffers a nervous breakdown;
makes plastic reconstructions of Noboru called Atom 1, 2, 3, 4, with the in-
tent of replacing him; he later considers making slaves of the shadowmen,
but he is stopped by another Dr. Tenma and Noboru; he makes amends and
commits suicide

Atom: a plastic robot that is an exact likeness of Tenma Noboru; becomes

cultivated through instruction; possessor of a man-made brain, he pursues
what is right and opposes what is wrong; goes to the side of the shadowmen
and defeats Dr. Tenma

While the problem of “shadowman slavery” in Continent Atom anticipates the

theme of discrimination against robots and the robot emancipation move-
ment in Ambassador Atom, it is the Japanese “sham communist” who pro-
poses slavery in Continent Atom, and Dr. Tenma supports him. What strikes
me as particularly significant, however, is that the American president ad-
vocates “emancipation” of the “shadowmen.” The role of Atom is that of the
robot who “pursues what is right and opposes what is wrong” and “defeats
Dr. Tenma.” Such a role provided the model for the Atom of the animated

114 ō tsu ka e ij i
TV series, who heroically pursues justice. This Atom, who believes in “what is
right” and who “defeats” “what is wrong” under the aegis of American paci-
fism, faithfully reflects another facet of the postwar, namely the achievement
of “peace” through the formation of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (announced
by Yoshida Shigeru on January 31, 1952) and the signing of the Mutual As-
sistance Security Pact (February 29, 1952).
Ultimately, however, Tezuka strove to present Atom as an ambassador
for disarmament rather than a surrogate for American justice. The unwrit-
ten Atom of Continent Atom is a historical trace of postwar Japan (and its
status as surrogate), while the written
Atom of Ambassador Atom is faithful to
the Atom with the Disney-esque
the Preface and Article 9 of the Japa-
body that “never grows up”
nese Constitution (and disarmament).
nonetheless does “grow up”
Put another way, America drops out of
by rejecting military power
the picture as the partner in Japan’s
and entering into peace talks.
peace, and the subsequent shift toward
a sense of “we ourselves” is surely the
first sign that the influence of America was becoming difficult to detect, a
transformation that deeply bothered the literary and cultural critic Etō Jun.
Immediately after Ambassador Atom, Tezuka wrote manga adaptations of
Disney’s Bambi and Pinocchio in quick succession. There’s no need here to dis-
cuss at length how Tezuka reworked Jungle Emperor (aka Kimba the White Lion
[1950–54, Janguru taitei]) and the serialized Atom in the image of Bambi and
Pinocchio, respectively. In contrast, in one of his wartime sketches, “Till the
Day of Victory” (1954, Shōri no hi made), Tezuka portrays a youth (probably
an image of himself) who is slain by Mickey Mouse with a machine gun. To
consider the work of Tezuka—who inaugurated his own mode of expression
under the American Occupation by reaccepting and reconciling himself with
Disney-esque expression—we need briefly to consider what his total recon-
ciliation with Disney means in the wake of the Japan–U.S. Peace Treaty.
On the one hand, it certainly seems that Tezuka stacked things in fa-
vor of the postwar constitution: the Atom with the Disney-esque body that
“never grows up” nonetheless does “grow up” by rejecting military power
and entering into peace talks. Today, even as Japan argues with Russia over
possession of the Sakhalin islands and aspires to become a permanent mem-
ber of the UN Security Council in order to become a “full-fledged nation,” Ja-
pan’s promised maturity—analagous to Tama-chan’s promise that the “next
time we meet, I’ll be grown up too”—appears terribly stunted. On the other
hand, Tezuka himself suppressed the ending of Ambassador Atom for a long

d i s a r m i n g ato m  1 1 5
 time, for it raised difficult questions about how Atom as a hero continued to
live on in child form in the subsequent series. Consequently, even if we’re
not particularly satisfied with the final choice in this ending, there remains
a certain tension between the Ambassador Atom who made it to the page
and the Ambassador Atom who did not, reflecting the ways in which the
Japan–U.S. Peace Treaty, as figured in the Preface and Article 9 of the Japa-
nese Constitution, was torn between mutual security and pacificism (based
on disarmament). In this respect, Ambassador Atom truly is a manga of the
Japan–U.S. Peace Treaty.
Why did Tezuka have Atom disarm? This was not simply a matter of Te-
zuka arriving at a conclusion under complicated political conditions. Rather
the problematic of disarmament is related to Tezuka’s choices vis-à-vis manga
technique.⁸ The decision to disarm Atom arose from Tezuka’s reacceptance of
Disney during the Occupation.

THE PREWAR RECEPTION OF DISNEY: PICTORIAL

SYSTEMS AND THE “UNDYING BODY”

I should first point out that it is a mistake to view Tezuka Osamu’s manga
system of representation⁹ as originating entirely in Japan. It is not impos-
sible to see manga in terms of a lineage that goes back to ukiyoe of the Edo
period or comic animal art of the medieval period, but such a view of history
ignores the “invented traditions” prevalent in so many of the introductory
books on manga published in the late 1920s and early 1930s. With respect
to stylistic innovations at that time, the reception of Disney is exceedingly
important. Tezuka’s first experience with Disney in the prewar era was not
with the original animated films. Reference is often made to Shaka Bontarō’s
Umi no kaizoku (1935, Sea pirates) as a source for Tezuka, and this manga is
very reminiscent of his Mikkii no katsuyaku (Mickey’s activities) published in
1934. In the absence of international copyright laws, Shaka Bontarō could
appropriate Disney characters, and the overall conceit is that Japanese
manga characters welcome Mickey and other Disney figures on their trip
to Japan. Significantly, however, when Tezuka first brings Mickey onto the
stage in his own manga, it is in the wartime sketch “Till the Day of Victory,”
and Tezuka is not copying from Shaka but drawing on the original Disney
animation (Figure 2).
With respect to the influence of American animation on his work, Tezuka
made the following comments in an interview:

116 ō ts u ka e ij i
figure 2. Mickey Mouse fires on the Japanese protagonist in Tezuka Osamu’s wartime manga
Shōri no hi made (Till the Day of Victory). Courtesy of Tezuka Productions.

tezuka osamu: There are three filmmakers whom I deeply admire, Cecil
B. DeMille, Chaplin, and Disney. With the death of Chaplin in 1977, all had
three had died, and I had the impression that my era too had come to an end.

ishiko jun: But that’s not really the case. (laughs)

tezuka: But now gradually all three will be forgotten, the very people I
thought, for a number of reasons, were the most characteristic of filmmak-
ers. DeMille’s spectacles are such a crucial part of cinema. Even in manga,
when you depict things panoramically, you’re doing film spectacle.

ishiko: The DeMille style has often made an appearance in your work,
hasn’t it? In the depiction of natural disasters, floods, vast destruction, and
so forth. There are touches that recall the scene in The Ten Commandants
where the Red Sea parts.

tezuka: During the war I had a terrifying experience of an air raid. I saw an
entire city almost instantly consumed in flames before my eyes. It’s not the
best way of putting it, but that was spectacle. Because I saw it with my own
eyes, I felt somehow compelled to put into pictures this kind of large-scale
destruction or large-scale conflict. Conversely, however, such scenes tend to

d i s a r m i n g ato m  1 1 7
 deemphasize characters. . . . With respect to manga, I was deeply influenced
by American manga around age 15 or 16, around 1937 or 1938. Still, Ameri-
can manga themselves were deeply influenced by the golden age of film
comedies, like those of Buster Keaton or Mack Sennett. In many of the gag
manga produced over there, you see manga characters make faces just like
those of Roscoe Arbuckle, Ben Turpin, or other film comedians. Chaplin was
especially important, with his crab legs and oversized shoes. These sorts of
things make for manga without any alteration. In other words, illustrations
by American cartoonists of that era drew from that bunch of comedians.
Likewise I diligently copied them, and my manga were full of crab legs and
oversized shoes. And then the comedies of Chaplin with their powerful so-
cial satire and “smiling through the tears” had a huge impact on me in terms
of content. But above all it is their rhythm that influenced me.¹⁰

Around the same time that Tezuka encountered Disney through the works of
Shaka, the influence of Disney on American animation also made an impact
on him. And yet, as Tezuka aptly recognized, the stylistics¹¹ of Hollywood
film comedies reflected in these different works was of greater importance
than Disney per se. Common to Hollywood
comedies and Disney animation is the fact
it is a myth that the
that the characters are physically “tough to
“pictorial techniques” of
kill.” Even when Mickey falls from a cliff and
manga derive from the
is squashed flat into the ground, he reappears
work of a handful of
in the next scene without a scratch. This “un-
manga artists who
dying” or “deathless” physicality is one of the
resided at the Tokiwasō
legacies of Hollywood in anime, which comes
in the postwar era.
via Disney. Needless to say, such an “undy-
ing” physicality is a definite trend in pictorial
forms of representation based on caricature, and at the same time, as Max
Lüthi has shown, fairy tales have an analogous “invunerable” physicality,
which Lüthi styles as “flatness.” ¹² Although such physicality may not be en-
tirely a Hollywood notion, this ideology still reigns to some degree in Holly-
wood, as the title of a film like Die Hard suggests. Space does not permit a full
discussion, but I would like to add in passing that the anime-like physicality
of Hollywood provided the basis for The Matrix to stage Japanese anime-style
movements with live actors.
In sum, it is a myth that the “pictorial techniques” ¹³ of manga derive
from the work of a handful of manga artists who resided at the Tokiwasō¹⁴
in the postwar era. Rather, the reigning wisdom among researchers of manga

118  ō ts u ka e ij i
history today is that, around 1935, an important dimension of manga’s so-
called pictorial techniques took shape through its reception of American ani-
mation, the influences of which were revived by Tezuka Osamu during the
Occupation.

REGULATION OF MANGA BEFORE AND DURING THE

WAR: THE TECHNICAL REALISM OF WEAPONRY

One thing still demands consideration, however. Another pictorial technique

that was introduced into manga in the early 1930s is formally very differ-
ent from the pictorial techniques of early animation with its Disney-esque
bodies. A manga artist from the early 1930s who merits particular attention
is the illustrator Ōshiro Noboru. He did the artwork for Mars Exploration
(1940, Kasei tanken), with writer Koguma Hideo (under the pseudonym of
Asahi Tarō).
As regards Ōshiro’s Funny Factory (1941, Yukai na kōjō), the artist begins
works muttering some incomprehensible refrain to the effect, “Well, I have
all the reference materials I need; with a little elbow grease, I’ll make a book.”
Somehow or other the artist has gained access to materials about “factory
tours,” which are evidently a source for his story of a young protagonist who
goes to Manchuria in the company of a professor to inquire into “veins of
iron” and an “iron factory” constructed there. Needless to say, the story re-
flects the national policy that prevailed at that time. It was not merely a the-
matization of national policy that was desired in manga but also “scientific”
representation. If the author was muttering about manga as something that
could be written simply by collecting reference materials, it is because it was
“science” not “fantasy” that conferred authority on manga, which bias re-
flects a very real change in attitude at that time. In fact, in Funny Factory, sci-
ence and fantasy are still in competition, and in the end, the national policy
factory scenes culminate in these words: “All in all, what a delightful dream it
was! And a truly topical book that shows it as it is!”
According to Miyamoto Hiroto, in the Prospectus Regarding the Im-
provement of Children’s Reading Materials that the Ministry of Home Affairs
issued to publishing houses on October 1938, most desirable were children’s
manga that did “full justice” to “Japan–China Cooperation.” Ōshiro’s depiction
of Japan–China cooperation in Funny Factory certainly fits the bill for manga
under government regulation. Miyamoto reminds us that under these circum-
stances the “full justice” looked for in manga entailed “scientific realism.”

d i s a r m i n g ato m  1 1 9
 In children’s manga under the government regulations for children’s reading
materials, exaggeration, ellipsis, and absurdity were restricted in favor of
large weapons. Such was the logic of the regulations: this was a war of sci-
ence, which demanded a scientific attitude among children, and thus scien-
tific depiction was taken as realism.¹⁵

In other words, through “science” Ōshiro strove for “realism,” whence the
presentation of its author with piles of reference materials before him. Thus,
on the one hand, in those scenes that might well be thought of as “dream,” the
factory machinery is depicted with great “real-
ism.” On the other hand, insofar as it happens
Realistic representation
“in a dream,” the characters are depicted with
and perspectival
Disney-esque antirealism (precisely because to
techniques became the
enter a dream is to enter an anime world). In
preferred ideology for
sum, scientific realism and the Disney-esque
drawing and painting in
coexist in the same manga.
times of war and, in the
In the same year (1941), immediately after
course of the Fifteen-
the start of the U.S.–Japan war, Ōshiro pub-
Year Asia-Pacific War,
lished Travel by Rail (Kisha no ryokō). Its most
came to be sought
obvious difference with the previous work lies
after in manga too.
in the bold use of techniques of perspective.¹⁶
In order to do “full justice” to the train car in
which father and son are traveling, and to the passengers gathered there to
hear various stories from the father, Travel by Rail employs techniques of per-
spective very precisely, breaking with the classical style of composition used
in prior works (such as Norakuro or “Stray Black”), in which characters were
arranged from right to left across the frame, as if seen “on stage” by those
seated in the audience. Scientific realism leads inevitably to the adoption of
techniques of perspective within manga, and it is used to greatest effect in
the depiction of the train.
When “true sketching” (shinsha) or “realism” based on perspective was
initially used in modern Japan, it was at the demand of the Army and Navy
as a drafting technique. Immediately after the Meiji Restoration (1868), art
schools were under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Industry (Kōbushō).
Artists who accompanied the military during the Sino-Japanese War (1904–5)
further developed realistic drawing techniques. Realistic representation and
perspectival techniques became the preferred ideology for drawing and paint-
ing in times of war and, in the course of the Fifteen-Year Asia-Pacific War,¹⁷
came to be sought after in manga too.

120  ō tsu ka e ij i
 The system of pictorical representation in Travel by Rail can be read as a
precedent for Tezuka. Rather than being a mere application of film and ani-
mation techniques to manga, this system of representation emerged through
“regulations” promoting realism in the form of perspective and “scientism.”

THE POTENTIAL OF POSTWAR MANGA,

BORN AND KILLED BY MICKEY

One result of the combination of techniques discussed previously was a situ-

ation in which manga embraced realism in the portrayal of weaponry and
anime-style¹⁸ antirealism in the depiction of characters, which made possi-
ble something like Tezuka’s wartime manga “Till the Day of Victory.” In this
sketch, which bears the same title as a famous national policy film,¹⁹ perspec-
tival realism and anime-style antirealism have found a way to coexist. I would
like to insist on this point: at this time the pictorial system of representation
found in Tezuka’s manga deploys a combination of perspectival techniques
and faithful realism.²⁰ Note in Figure 3 the realistic portrayal of the American
warplane in conjunction with exact perspective.
A contradiction arises between the realistic depiction of industrial ma-
chinery, trains, and weaponry, and the world of “undying” Mickey-style char-
acters, characters without physical substance. Tezuka
betrays a certain anxiety about this contradiction, pre-
senting an apparently deathless young man who re-
ceives a direct hit from the machine-gun bullets fired
by Mickey’s realistically rendered fighter plane. The
techniques of representation are such that the actual
body of the youth, head slumped and gushing blood,
remains anime-like. In this system of representation,
I detect a symbolic turning point in the history of
manga in terms of how it will depict “life” and “death”
and “sex”—the inevitable mortality of the living body
appears fundamentally at odds with Disney-esque
antirealism. This is how postwar manga could, on the
one hand, internalize the topics of life and death in a

figure 3. The Japanese protagonist of Tezuka’s wartime manga

Shōri no hi made (Till the Day of Victory) watches American fighter
planes close in. Courtesy of Tezuka Productions.

d i s a r m i n g ato m  1 2 1
 “literary” manner and, on the other hand, move in the direction of pornogra-
phy associated with the moe style of anime drawing.²¹
In sum, this system of representation arises as Japanese wartime thought
was forced to coexist with Americanism in the form of Disney-esque tech-
nique, within a single manga.

REJECTING WEAPONRY REALISM,

DISARMING AMBASSADOR ATOM

As Figure 4 clearly indicates, the “pictorial system of representation” that Te-

zuka uses in New Treasure Island (1947, Shin takarajima) is not that of wartime
perspectival realism, which returns us to the problem of “anti-armament” in
Ambassador Atom.
In this composition, Tezuka allows for perspective in terms of movement
into the picture, and yet, if you look closely at the “car,” not only is it de-
formed but also the tires appear to crumple as it moves along. Simply put,
it is drawn antirealistically. As I discussed previously, it was the “scientism”

figure 4. A sequence from Tezuka Osamu’s postwar manga Shintakarajima (New Treasure Island).
Courtesy of Tezuka Productions.

122 ō ts u ka e ij i
touted in the wartime regulations that encouraged detailed depiction of in-
dustrial machinery, weaponry, and trains. Because I don’t have the space and
time to provide examples in this context, let me simply say that it was around
1940 that manga became thoroughly realistic in their depictions of fighter
planes and weapons.
Characteristic of Tezuka’s postwar manga is the use of an anime-like “sys-
tem of representation” (that is, a filmic style) that forced open the realistic de-
piction of weaponry. In the Disney-esque world, even mechanical objects are
drawn in the same manner as antirealistic characters. In his postwar manga,
Tezuka carried forward the wartime scientism that resulted in the realistic
depiction of weaponry or armaments, but also the antirealistic depiction of
bodies introduced in the prewar era. The latter were to provide a premise for
disarmament, because wartime realism proved unsuitable for drawing the
character of Atom and for postwar manga more generally.

RETURNING TO REALISM IN WEAPONRY,

REALIGNING MANGA WITH NATIONAL POLICY

Naturally the question remains as to whether postwar manga was destined

to take such a path or whether such transformations followed from Tezuka’s
ethics. Was it a matter of personal judgment or broader historical forces?
Historical study of manga attentive to World War II and the American Oc-
cupation has barely begun. In any case, “disarmament” in Ambassador Atom
entails certain contradictions that echo those of the Japan–U.S. Peace Treaty.
With Atom, Tezuka depicts a hero who stands in for American justice and yet
acts as a negotiator on behalf of complete disarmament. Analogously, even
as Tezuka abandoned the weaponry realism that had become mandatory dur-
ing the war, he didn’t accept Disney unconditionally. Rather he embraced the
contradiction inherent in using antirealistic techniques to depict actual bod-
ies that go to their deaths. He embraced this contradiction as part of the
potential of postwar manga.
The “weaponry realism” that Tezuka renounced was subsequently re-
vived in Mobile Suit Gundam (1979–80, Kidō senshi Gandamu), which used it
to depict robots as weapons. Japanimation²² and contemporary otaku culture
have inherited this trend. Anime fans harkened to this revival of weaponry
realism in the early work of Miyazaki Hayao, as well as to his keen interest in
little girls. In effect, the origins of “otaku modes of expression” lie at least in
part in the wartime era.

d i s a r m i n g ato m  12 3
 “Otaku modes of expression,” compulsory today in manga, comprise
both the possibilities and the difficulties in Tezuka’s work. They thus con-
tinue to rework the contradictions between Americanism and scientism as
they emerged in manga during the war and into the Occupation. As an author
of manga scenarios, I cannot help but be concerned about the ways in which
contemporary manga are prone to align themselves with national policy. I
believe that we must not forget that our modes of expression originated in
the crucible of that policy, made compulsory by government mandate.
In writing this, I reproach myself as well.

Translator’s Notes
Originally published in Japanese under the title “Nichibei kōwa to ‘Tetsuwan Atomu’:
Tezuka Osamu wa naze ‘Atomu’ o busō kaijo shita ka” [The U.S.–Japan Peace Treaty and
Tetsuwan Atomu: Why did Tezuka Osamu disarm ‘Atom’?], in “Rethinking the Occupation:
Occupation or Liberation?” a special issue of Kan  (Summer ): –.
. While Tezuka first introduced the character of the robot Atom in  in the
manga entitled Ambassdor Atom (somewhat oddly translated on the TezukaOsamu@World
Web site as Captain Atom), it was in  that Tezuka began to serialize stories about the
robot Atom under the title of Tetsuwan Atomu or Mighty Atom. He continued to publish
Atom stories regularly in Shōnen until , and even published Atom stories until 
in other venues. In , Tezuka turned Mighty Atom into a black-and-white animated
television series, one of the first in Japan, which was picked up in the United States almost
immediately, with Fred Ladd “localizing” the series under the title of Astro Boy with Eng-
lish dubs. While the title Astro Boy is more familiar to readers, I have used the translation
Mighty Atom because the idea of nuclear disarmament is crucial to Ōtsuka’s argument: the
robot ambassador, Atom, could be seen as a disarmed atomic weapon.
. The peace treaty signed in San Francisco in  officially ended the American
Occupation of Japan. In English it is known as the U.S.–Japan Peace Treaty, while in Japa-
nese it is called the Japan–U.S. Peace Treaty (Nichi-bei kōwa). I’ve retained the Japanese
emphasis in this translation.
. The Peace Treaty signed in San Francisco is also known as the Treaty of Peace
with Japan (Tainichi kōwa jōyaku). A translation appears at www.vcn.bc.ca/alpha/learn/
SanFran.htm.
. On September , , the United States and Japan signed the Mutual Security
Treaty (Nichi-bei anzen hoshō jōyaku), which stationed U.S. troops on Japanese soil for the
defense of Japan.
. Ōtsuka notes that he has advanced a similar argument in other contexts, notably
in his book Atomu no Meidai: Tezuka Osamu to sengo manga.
. Ōtsuka uses the term chūritsusei, which could be translated as “neutrality” or
“mediality.” In effect, Atom is not so much neutral as medial.
. Discussion of early and medieval Japanese literature in terms of the narrative

124 ō ts u ka e ij i
pattern or motif of the “exile of the noble” (kizoku ryūri tan) is associated with the famous
folklore scholar, Orikuchi Shinobu (sometimes romanized as Origuchi).
. Although the term hōhō is most frequently translated as “methods,” I render it
here as “technique,” which seems more in keeping with Ōtsuka’s discussion of manga hōhō.
. I have rendered manga hyōgen as “manga system of representation” rather than
“manga expression,” because this conveys something of Ōtsuka’s sense of the systematic
nature of manga expression or representation.
. Interview with Tezuka Osamu, in Tezuka Osamu: manga no ougi (Tezuka Osamu:
The secret heart of manga), by Tezuka Osamu and Ishiko Jun (Tokyo: Kōdansha, ).
. Ōtsuka uses the term keishikisei to indicate the formalistic character of Hollywood
cinema, which I have rendered as “stylistics” because the more literal “formality” or “for-
malasticity” does not make sense.
. Ōtsuka uses the term heimensei, which is either flatness or two-dimensionality.
. Like the term manga hyōgen or “manga (system of) representation,” the term eizō
teki shuhō implies something of a systematic set of techniques or methods for organizing
pictorial or “imagistic” space.
. The Tokiwasō, an apartment in Toshima, Tokyo, refers to a group of manga artists
who resided there at the same time—Tezuka Osamu, Ishimori (Ishinomori) Shōtarō, Akat-
suka Fujio, and Fujiko Fujio—who are deemed the founders of the postwar manga form in
terms of style, systems of representation, and narrative.
. Miyamoto Hiroto, “Mieru koto mienai koto: Matsushita Iwao no senchū – sengo”
(Things seen and unseen: Matsushita Iwao during and after the war), Shingenjitsu 
().
. In this essay, Ōtsuka uses two different terms to refer to techniques of perspective
in art, enkinhō and tōshi zuhō, which are difficult to distinguish in translation. Because he
uses them synonymously, I have rendered the first as “techniques of perspective” and the
second as “perspectival techniques.”
. What is known in English as World War II is also called the Fifteen-Year Asia-
Pacific War in Japanese, because the war began with the Manchuria Incident of  and
ended with Japan’s surrender to the Allied Forces in .
. The term here is anime-teki, which literally means something like “animetic,” but,
although I prefer that translation, “anime-style” is more lucid in this instance.
. Ōtsuka is referring to Naruse Mikio’s  film of the same name, Shōri no hi made.
. The term shajitsu teki riarizumu, which suggests a form of realism based on trac-
ing or copying reality, is rendered here for the sake of simplicity as “faithful realism.”
. Moe—literally, to sprout (or with alternative characters, to blaze)—refers to
the élan or affective response of anime and manga fans to particular characters or, more
precisely, to characteristics or features of characters, which become the basis for a sort of
fetishistic relation to a character or series. Insofar as such an affective élan is most associ-
ated with male fans’ quasi-sexual arousal, Ōtsuka associates moe with pornography.
. The term “Japanimation” appears in katakana in the original.

d i s a r m i n g ato m  1 2 5
LAWRENCE BIRD

States of Emergency:
Urban Space and the Robotic
Body in the Metropolis Tales

The tradition of the oppressed shows us that the “state of emergency” in which
we live is not the exception but the rule.
—Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History”

One of the most ubiquitous and disturbing images in anime and manga—
indeed, an image that comes close to defining them—is the apocalyptic de-
struction of the city, with a human or humanoid figure at the epicenter. Very
often this figure shares in the destruction of the city: it comes apart as the city
does. This mutually experienced destruction implies more than just catastro-
phe. Whether we are aware of it or not, bodies and cities act as each other’s
limits. On the one hand cities and buildings, as they shelter and enclose us,
articulate a series of important distinctions. They mark a boundary between
the spaces of the individual and those of the public. They afford a distinc-
tion between the space of citizens (often associated with the human) and
the space beyond citizens, beyond civilization (the realms of the inhuman).
On the other hand, our bodies in turn place limits on the city. Architecture
and urban form take the human as their measure, literally and metaphori-
cally. The shared destruction of these mutually delimiting figures—human

127
 Freder is the “Mediator”
and urban architectures—implies a modern
who might reconcile the
crisis in what it means to be human and what
cold-hearted ruler with
it means to dwell together in a community.
his suffering people.
Such images are all the more disturbing in
their resonance with world events, which have
with increasing frequency made us witnesses to the disintegration of real bod-
ies, real cities. This implies some relation between anime and manga images
of destruction and the history of destruction of cities in the real world. Par-
ticularly important in Japan is the leveling of cities at the end of World War
II.¹ Nonetheless, neither the imagery nor the circumstances for such imagery
is uniquely Japanese. Both speak to a more general crisis of modernity, and to
the political, social, and ontological implications of modernity as articulated
in architectural form. Here I propose a look at three instances of the destruc-
tion of the modern city and its relation to the disintegration of the human, all
of which strive to topple the same behemoth, the modern Metropolis.
The first attempt on the Metropolis is Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927), a
silent film that has had such a profound impact on the dystopian imagination
in science fiction. Although Lang’s film toys with the possibility of the total
destruction of the city, it ultimately offers something else: the immolation
of a humanoid body, the sacrifice of a gynoid robot. Something similar oc-
curs at the end of Tezuka Osamu’s manga Metropolis (1949): while the rebel-
lion of the robots threatens to destroy the Metropolis, ultimately it is the
robot that disintegrates. The connection between Lang’s and Tezuka’s tales
is tenuous. By his own account, Tezuka had seen only one still from Lang’s
film, and knew little else about its content.² Tezuka was not rewriting or re-
making Lang’s film, and the two stories differ significantly, as I will discuss
below. Nonetheless, Tezuka and Lang are both concerned with the destruc-
tive forces of modernity and the potential obliteration of the very emblem
of modernity, the Metropolis. It is on the basis of this shared concern for
the modern destruction of body/city that director Rintarō and writer Ōtomo
Katsuhiro’s animated Metropolis (2001) folds together elements of the two
prior Metropolis stories. The 2001 version achieves the urban apocalypse only
promised in the prior attempts, ending with the destruction of the gynoid
robot and the Metropolis.
Clearly, with the destruction of both the modern city and the human
body at stake, there are political implications to such stories and images. In
fact, each Metropolis presents a political scenario: the destruction of the city
is linked to conflicts between factions and social classes as well as to the rise
and fall of leaders. There is a direct engagement with structures of authority

128  law re n c e b ird

and sovereignty. Significantly, structures of authority and sovereignty are
imagined through structures of urban spaces and the positioning of artifi-
cial humans in relation to them. Here, with the three Metropolis stories as a
guide, I wish to explore the relation between the structuration of urban space
and the imagination of (and critical response to) modern sovereignty.

BETWEEN TOWER AND LABYRINTH

Lang’s version of Metropolis appeared in the brief lull after Germany’s defeat
in the First World War, shortly after the ensuing inflationary crisis but before
the Great Depression and the rise of Nazism. It speaks of the traumas and so-
cial tensions resulting from and foreshadowing these events.³ Central to the
film, for instance, is the oppression of the working class whose labor supports
the luxury lifestyle of the rulers of the massive city Metropolis. A heartless
autocrat, Joh Frederson, runs the city, and his rule depends on the genius
of the brilliant inventor Rotwang. The film pits the merciless Joh against his
own son Freder and against the woman with whom Freder falls in love, Ma-
ria, who is struggling to improve the lot of the workers. For Maria, Freder is
the “Mediator” who might reconcile the cold-hearted ruler with his suffering
people—which is presented as a reconciliation of the “head” and the “hands”
through the “heart.” Joh Frederson has other plans, however. He has already
ordered Rotwang to construct the prototype for a machine to replace the hu-
man workers completely.⁴ In some versions of the film, the robot takes the
name “Futura.” Once Joh becomes aware of Maria’s efforts on behalf of the
workers, he decides to give the robot her appearance. So the robot is a “False
Maria,” as other versions of the film dub her.⁵
The story turns on Joh’s plot to substitute Futura for Maria, in order to
incite the workers to violence, which would in turn justify their destruction.
In the climactic scenes of the film, a flood sweeps through the lower levels of
the Metropolis where workers are in full rebellion. Believing their children
dead in the flood, and seeing the False Maria’s role in the catastrophe, the
rioting workers burn the False Maria at the stake. In the confusion, the true
Maria and Freder are nearly killed, and in the end, seeing the near death of
his son, Joh Frederson realizes the error of his ways. He gains the wisdom of
a true leader and is reconciled with the workers.
Fritz Lang’s film translated these social divisions and conflicts into urban
form, drawing inspiration from metropolitan Manhattan.⁶ He also drew on
visions of the future city from such architects and artists as Antonio Sant’

s tat e s o f e m e r g e n cy  12 9
 the Tower of Babel can be
Elia, Le Corbusier, and Hugh Ferris.⁷
read as an architecture that
For modern architects, a functionalist
superimposes the convoluted
division of urban space became a key
question mark of the Labyrinth
tenet of design, and the utopian vision
upon the soaring exclamation
of modernist urban designs was predi-
mark of the Tower.
cated on a separation of spaces for liv-
ing, working, and recreation. These
divisions were typically horizontal, but some of the more fantastic plans ap-
plied these principles vertically as well. Lang, for instance, transformed this
functional division vertically, and a strict vertical hierarchy structures his
Metropolis. Mid-air bridges and train lines spawn the yawning canyons be-
tween towering skyscrapers. The upper classes live in the upper reaches, in
graciously partitioned spaces of play and repose. Underground, far from the
light of day, are two levels of austerely delineated space. There are the worker’s
tenements, where the bodies that labor for the wealthy reside. In addition
there are the machine rooms, where they work and occasionally die as they
labor to keep the machinery of the city running. The New Tower of Babel, a
skyscraper dominating the skyline, provides an axis for the vertical hierarchy.
It is the control center for the entire city, with main thoroughfares radiating
from it, while its internal mechanisms plunge down into the lowest levels. The
subterranean tenements and machine rooms form part of this rational axis.⁸
Insofar as the New Tower of Babel serves as the axis for this fundamentally
vertical gesture, the entire city appears as one great tower (Figure 1).
Now the biblical Tower of Babel that this structure evokes was in fact a
ziggurat, a species of pyramid that one ascended along a path that spiraled
up its perimeter to the apex. The Tower of Babel thus combines two differ-
ent, potentially contradictory architectural structurations of movement: the
tower and the labyrinth. In Greek mythology, the labyrinth was the maze
built by the first architect Daedalus at the behest of a sovereign, Minos, in
order to hide his wife’s monstrous offspring. At the center of the labyrinth
dwelled the Minotaur, half bull, half man. Each year Minos forced young men
and women into the maze, where they invariably lost their way and fell prey
to the Minotaur. The Labyrinth implies both disorientation and hybridiza-
tion. It spatially poses the question of “where?” and “who?” but offers only
cryptic replies. In contrast to the Labyrinth, the tower unequivocally marks
a place and acts as a beacon, as if to answer the question posed by the Laby-
rinth: “Where?” “Here!” And, in response to the question of confused iden-
tity or tangled origins, the Tower poses a unitary and unifying entity. In ef-
fect, the Tower of Babel can be read as an architecture that superimposes the

130  law re n c e b ird

figure 1. The New Tower of Babel dominates the skyline of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis (1927).

convoluted question mark of the Labyrinth upon the soaring exclamation

mark of the Tower. It is a figure that at once rectifies and twists spatial orien-
tations, actions, and identities.
In the Judeo-Christian tradition, the Tower of Babel came to represent
man’s hubris, his attempt to ascend to the level of God. Hence it supplied an
apt metaphor for modernity, when man really did lay claim to godlike pow-
ers, pushed God aside and proclaimed Him dead, only to discover that human
works did not prove a sufficient replacement for divinity. This is ostensibly
how the Metropolis films conjure forth the Tower of Babel: as an icon for the
inevitable failure of the modern project.
While the Metropolis of Lang’s film is structured around the New Tower
of Babel, it also offers a labyrinth: twisting passages and catacombs beneath
the city, at once spaces of danger, secrecy, and safety (Figure 2). Yet even as
these labyrinthine structures appear to unravel the vertical authority of the
city, they are inseparable from it. The city generates them and imparts inten-
sity to them. Ultimately even the rational axis of the New Tower partakes of
the labyrinth. The austere worker housing and the machine rooms that form
part of its modern machinery are also shadowy, smoky, and connected to the
twisting underground catacombs. In other words, if Lang’s Metropolis can

s tat e s o f e m e r g e n cy  13 1
 be understood as a Tower of Babel, it is
because it combines tower and labyrinth
in specific ways. Another dominant build-
ing in the film, the Gothic Cathedral, also
combines tower and labyrinth and pro-
vides some insights into the specificity of
Lang’s Metropolis.
Significantly, in medieval Europe,
the soaring Gothic cathedrals were imag-
ined as Towers of Babel, and on their
figure 2. The Metropolis’s suffering workers follow
floors, labyrinthine symbols of religious
a map to refuge deep in the labyrinth of tunnels be- perambulation were etched. They thus
neath the city. combined a heavenward gesture with the
convoluted motion of ritual. In circles of architecture and urban planning
in 1920s Germany, however, the cathedral took on another meaning.⁹ It was
taken as the model for a truly German version of the American skyscraper.¹⁰
Many believed that one massive central building in each city, in the manner
of the cathedral, was preferable to the American model of unbridled com-
mercial growth.¹¹ In this sense, the cathedral promised a way to produce a
German modernity free of foreign influence. It is noteworthy that, in Lang’s
film, the people burn the False Maria at the stake before the cathedral, in an
attempt to purify their realm of the dangers of hybridity (Figure 3).
In an essay published in 1929, Joseph Goebbels describes the Berlin ca-
thedral Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtnis-Kirche as a refuge from the vicious cos-
mopolitan metropolis of Berlin. His vision is so reminiscent of Lang’s film
that it is likely that Goebells penned the essay after seeing the film.¹² While
Lang was not a Nazi (he was in fact part Jewish), many critics have taken his
film to task for its resonance with the reactionary political rhetoric gaining
ground in Germany at the time. Lang himself indicates that his Metropolis
was a favorite of Hitler and Goebbels.¹³ This is not so surprising in view of
the film’s resolution of the conflicts and inequalities between different social
factions and classes under the rule of a loving leader. This is not far from
Hitler’s vision of a united Volk, a people of one blood, sharing a common
wellspring of life.
In Lang’s Metropolis the happy resolution is predicated on the elimination
of otherness, as embodied in the labyrinth and the female robot. Not only
does the European tradition posit the biblical Tower of Babel as an Oriental
structure¹⁴ but the novel by Thea von Harbou (scriptwriter and Lang’s wife)
on which the film is based makes clear that the city’s labyrinthine spaces are

132 law re n c e b ird

also somehow Oriental. Rotwang’s house, for instance, was built long ago by
a mysterious man from the East.¹⁵ Moreover, the city’s site of debauchery is
named Yoshiwara, after the famous pleasure quarters of the city of Edo (early
modern Tokyo). All in all, the novel makes clear, even where the film does
not, that a foreign Oriental presence, associated with labyrinthine spaces,
threatens the upright character of the towering city. Not coincidentally, the
robot is born of these spaces. Thus Futura or the False Maria comes to em-
body the otherness that menaces Metropolis.
Because the robot is a replica of Maria, only their behavior serves to dis-
tinguish the true and false Marias. The true Maria is upright with a direct
yet demure regard, while the false Maria is twisted, winking and grimacing.
They repeat the contrast between tower and labyrinth, but in this form, the
tower can be purified of the labyrinth. The immolation of the robot promises
to purify the upright city of its twisted otherness. Oddly, however, the other
is not other in appearance, only in behavior. This recalls one of the great fears
of Nazism, the fear of the alien undistinguishable from “us.” In Lang’s film,
this disguised alien must be identified and destroyed to ensure the safety of

figure 3. At the climax of the film the “False Maria,” the robot double, is burned at the stake, on
the parvis of the purifying cathedral. Here as elsewhere her body twists and distorts, its move-
ment reflected in the gyrations of the rioting workers.

s tat e s o f e m e r g e n cy  13 3
 the populace. Significantly, at the climax of the film, the robot’s human skin
burns away, and she is shown to be nothing but a mechanical device, not a
genuine human at all.
In sum, it is the displacement of the tension between tower and labyrinth
onto the mechanical robot versus organic human that allows Lang’s Metrop-
olis to resolve its social tensions. Yet, insofar as the Metropolis, as the New
Tower of Babel, is by its very nature a combination of tower and labyrinth,
the city must always be at war with itself, in a constant state of emergency. It
must commit to the identification and elimination of the peoples and spaces
that allow for difference, social conflict and social interaction. The entire Me-
tropolis has the potential to transform into a killing field, into a closed space
in which aliens must be separated out and destroyed. In its disavowal of the
hybridity of its structures, this model of modernity ultimately turns to self-
destruction in an effort to overcome itself. The film makes possible a happy
resolution. The other is burned under the people’s eyes, the city is united
under its proper leader, and the apocalypse is averted. Germany was not to
have such a happy ending.

THE DARKENED SUN

Not long after the war engendered in part by the conditions articulated in
Lang’s film, Tezuka Osamu developed a very different set of relations to ro-
bots and the Metropolis in his manga Metropolis (1949) (Figure 4). Although
Tezuka, like Lang, based his Metropolis on Manhattan (as seen in photo-
graphs and comics), Tezuka’s city differs radically from Lang’s. Where Lang
develops a tension between vertical tower and spiraling labyrinth, Tezuka
offers horizontal, diffuse, and largely unfocussed urban spaces. Tezuka draws
lots of buildings, and his manga includes towers and labyrinths. The climactic
battle, for example, takes place atop a skyscraper. But unlike Lang’s Tower or
Cathedral, Tezuka’s skyscraper has no explicitly mythic or iconic status. Like-
wise, while some of the events of the story occur in labyrinthine spaces—for
example, the underground headquarters of the evil Duke Red—they have no
clear relationship to the overall organization of the city. They seem rather
to float free of it. Some episodes even take place at a distance from the city:
aboard an oceanliner or on a distant uncharted island. In sum, the dispersed
spatiality and non-iconic architectures of Tezuka’s manga contrast sharply
with Lang’s film. Where Lang’s Metropolis remained shut off from the world,
intent on identifying and expunging the inner alien, Tezuka’s Metropolis

134 law re n c e b ird

 Michi embodies a more
opens to lands beyond the ocean (one of the main
ambiguous and
characters hails from Japan), to the other spots
ambivalent relation to
on the planet (events in the Metropolis affect the
modern technology.
globe), and to even the heavens.
Just as the robot in Lang’s film embodied the
tension between labyrinth (otherness) and tower (self), the robot in Tezuka’s
manga embodies the dispersion of urban space. Where Lang presented two
distinct versions of one body (Maria/Futura) in order to stage a conflict be-
tween true and false, good and evil, inorganic and organic, Tezuka’s robot
Michi is always in a position of being neither/nor and both/and. Grown from
artificial cells, Michi oscillates between the inorganic and organic. Similarly
Michi transforms from male to female at the flip of a switch. Neither good
nor evil, he/she becomes violent only when provoked. In sum, Michi embod-
ies a more ambiguous and ambivalent relation to modern technology. Even
her identity remains in suspense. While constructed like the False Maria in
the image of another, Michi is modeled on a work of art. He/she bears the
face of the most beautiful statue in the world. Consequently, Michi does not

figure 4. Michi flies through Tezuka’s Metropolis (1949); note that in contrast to Figure 1, none of
these tall buildings dominates the others. This robot moves through the manga city in swoops and
swerves, in contrast to the frenetic movement of her counterpart in Lang’s Metropolis. Copyright
Tezuka Productions.

s tat e s o f e m e r g e n cy  13 5
 conceal a true identity. It is impossible to burn away her skin and flesh to
reveal an underlying truth. When Michi dies at the end of the manga, he/she
melts into a formless mass. Her death affords no final revelation (Figure 5).
Consistent with the dispersion of ur-
ban space and the undecidable nature of
the robot, Tezuka’s manga offers no figure
of legitimate political authority. Lang’s film
turns on the legitimacy of Joh Frederson,
challenging his legitimacy only to reconfirm
it in the end. Tezuka’s story follows Duke
Red’s struggle to seize power, but Duke Red
is clearly a criminal, without any legitimate
authority. This lack of a political center is
consistent with the unfocused spatial lay-
figure 5. Michi begins to dissolve at the climax of out of the city. If there is any center to the
Tezuka’s Metropolis. Copyright Tezuka Productions.
story and to the city, it is one that acts at a
great distance from the city and in an entirely different register from urban
space: the sun.
Although Tezuka does not introduce the sun until page 22 of the manga,
the entire plot revolves around its effects. The evil Duke Red’s plans to take
over the world depend on transforming the sun. He fires a super weapon at
it to create sunspots that at once increase the temperature of the Earth and
produce a form of radiation (omothenium rays) that allows for the produc-
tion of life with artificial cells (Figure 6). The scientist Dr Lawton creates the
artificial human Michi with the omothenium-irradiated artificial cells. Duke
Red sees in Michi a tool to hasten his ascent to global domination. Michi
escapes him, however, and in his/her anger, leads the robots in rebellion
against the Metropolis.
It is easy to interpret Tezuka’s open, decentered, unfocused, loose, am-
biguous, and horizontal comic book Metropolis as a response to Japan’s con-
dition—both physical and political—at the end of the war. Largely leveled in
the war, many of Japan’s cities consisted of a patchwork of survival and ruin,
demolition and reconstruction. The political condition was similar. Under the
American occupation, Japan’s government and economic institutions were
to be restructured, with a new constitution in which the sovereign center,
the emperor, renounced his divinity, becoming just a symbolic center. Until
only four years prior to Tezuka’s manga, official doctrine had posited the Em-
peror of Japan as the descendant of the sun goddess. It is telling, then, that
Tezuka makes the sun central to his narrative, yet at the same time places it

136 law re n c e b ird

at a distance, off to the side, and darkened. While the formerly legitimate po-
litical authority (sun) is displaced, and contemporary claimants to power are
discredited as criminal (Duke Red), Tezuka’s sun continues to exert a power-
ful and deleterious influence on the world, precisely because illegitimate poli-
ticians and criminals can manipulate it. Significantly, it is the politically and
scientifically instrumental use of the sun/emperor in its displaced position
that is the source of evil, rather than the sun itself.
In this respect, while it is tempting perhaps to read Duke Red, with his
long legs and high nose, as a sign of the Western, Tezuka’s manga is not a
critique of the Americanness of the occupation, of foreign forces come to re-
model Japan. Tezuka implicitly takes to task the criminal nature of the Japa-
nese government under the American occupation, and also, perhaps acciden-
tally, points to the repositioning of Japan in the Cold War. After all, this Duke
is Red, and in 1949 it was already clear that Japan was America’s front line
in the war against communism. There was plenty of anxiety about the pos-
sibility of “reds” in Japan. All of which suggests that Michi, as the product
of a transformative attack on the sun, is equally a product of the displaced

figure 6. The radiation from Duke Red’s sunspots provides the missing spark that brings Dr. Law-
ton’s synthetic proteins to life: a form of life that oscillates between organic and artificial and
with an intimate relationship to the sun. Copyright Tezuka Productions.

s tat e s o f e m e r g e n cy  13 7
 emperor, and United States’ and the Soviet Union’s “criminal” grab for power,
both in postwar Japan and around the world. Michi’s combination of inno-
cence and total ambiguity speaks to the consequent decentering of sover-
eignty, not only in Japan but also the postwar world of the Pax Americana, in
which questions of place and identity—“who?” and “where?”—threatened to
become unanswerable.
In combining and drawing connections between Lang’s Metropolis and
Tezuka’s, Rintarō and Ōtomo’s animated Metropolis succeeds not only in con-
structing a vision of the contemporary global city that is grounded in prior
formations but also in showing how the fascism of the 1930s could transform
and adapt itself to the diffuse and open conditions of place and identity as-
sociated with information society and postmodernity. This is the version of
Metropolis I will consider next.

THE TOWER OF THE SUN

Rintarō and Ōtomo’s city is even more centralized than Lang’s. At the center
of their animated Metropolis stands a tower known as the Ziggurat, which
implies that it is structurally a ziggurat and thus analogous to the biblical
Tower of Babel. Yet within the language of the film’s art-deco design scheme
it is a cathedral: a cross in plan, topped by gargoyles, flanked by flying but-
tresses. The Tower/Cathedral forms a cross at the center of the city grid, and
all roads lead from it and return to it. In sum, where Lang’s film presented
combinations of tower and labyrinth in two major architectural figures, one
modern (the New Tower of Babel) and one “traditional” (the Cathedral),
Rintarō and Ōtomo’s animated film fuses the New Tower of Babel and the
Cathedral into one structure: the Ziggurat (Figure 7). Such a fusion of struc-
tures might be read as a compression of figures of sovereignty, in the sense
that the animated Metropolis combines the two symbols of sovereignty from
Lang’s film (one symbolizing power and the other, ostensibly, purity). It also
implies, like Lang’s cathedral, a distillation of identity. The animated film be-
gins with newsreel footage of Duke Red atop the Ziggurat, announcing the
approach or ascent of his nation to the heavens. This is pronounced in a lan-
guage reminiscent of wartime (and contemporary) invocations of national
pride, emphasizing a shared identity: an emphatic “we” and “our” (“ware ware
wa, waga”), and a term for “nation” (“kokka”) derived from the Chinese char-
acters for country and household.¹⁶ So the Ziggurat brings sovereignty and
identity into focus at a single point, in a sort of Tower of the Sun.

138  law re n c e b ird

 the Ziggurat brings
For it is here, at the center of the Metropolis,
sovereignty and
that Rintarō and Ōtomo place Tezuka’s sun-pol-
identity into focus at a
luting super weapon. This is a very different ges-
single point, in a sort
ture from Tezuka, who had placed the weapon
of Tower of the Sun.
at a great distance from his city, paralleling the
sun’s own distance and ambiguity as a source of
power and authority. While Tezuka had pushed the sun off to the side, the
animated Metropolis recenters it within the city through the very weapon de-
signed to attack it. In a similar departure from Tezuka, the animated film
makes Duke Red not just a criminal but a public figure. At the beginning of
the film he is wealthy and influential; he is responsible for the construction
of the Ziggurat. And by the end of the film he has actually provoked a coup
d’état and violently taken control of the city. He thus differs from Joh Fred-
erson, whose legitimacy is ultimately upheld, and from Tezuka’s Duke Red,
who falls without ever achieving political legitimacy. In effect, the Tower of
the Sun allows for a structural blurring of the distinction between legitimate
and illegitimate sovereignty.
The animated Metropolis also has labyrinthine subterranean zones remi-
niscent of those in Lang’s film, and a divide between the city above ground

figure 7. Lang’s two dominant buildings, the New Tower of Babel and the Cathedral, are merged
together to form the Ziggurat in Rintarō and Ōtomo Katsuhiro’s animated Metropolis (2001).

s tat e s o f e m e r g e n cy  13 9
 and zones below ground was essential to Rintarō and Ōtomo’s vision of the
Metropolis from the outset.¹⁷ This underground is also home to the most ab-
ject of city dwellers: unemployed or impoverished humans, and robots. Yet,
unlike the austere, featureless architectures of Lang’s underground spaces,
the subterranean world of the animated Metropolis bursts with color. Its den-
izens are poor and live in shanties, but these shantytowns are ablaze with
activity (some of it black market or criminal), crowded with markets, food
stands, bars. Instead of the dark pockets of otherness found in Lang’s film,
Rintarō and Ōtomo create a collage of heterogeneous elements. Examples of
architecture from around the world and from a vast range of historical peri-
ods crowd into one space. We see citations of classical architecture, indus-
trial architecture, nineteenth-century arcades, Gaudi, and Peter Eisenman.
This colorful architectural collage answers to the fusion and compression of
architectures in the Ziggurat, with a kaleidoscopic and chaotic superimposi-
tion of elements that refuses to constitute a single space (Figure 8). If the
Ziggurat compresses sovereignty and identity into a single-minded “we!” and
proudly proclaims “here!” in response the animated labyrinth continually
asks “where?” and “who?” Who are we in this collage of wheres?
One of the main characters, Ban Shunsaku, a detective from Japan
(adapted from Tezuka’s manga), speaks of his sense of disorientation, “I’m
such a stranger here, I don’t know East from West!” (“machi wa hajimete de, hi-
gashi mo nishi mo kaimoku” and “higashi mo nishi mo shiran tokoro de”).¹⁸ In this
respect, too, the animated Metropolis is as open and dispersed as Tezuka’s.

figure 8. Unlike the narrow, twisting, and empty tunnels beneath Lang’s city, the animated Me-
tropolis is a collage of spaces grand and small, old and new, colorful and dark—and inhabited.

140  law re n c e b ird

 Rintarō and Ōtomo achieve
Yet rather than discrediting sovereignty
what Lang and Tezuka
or criminalizing it, the indeterminacy of
imagined but deferred: the
Rintarō and Ōtomo’s underground city
fall of Babel, the world
invites the arbitrary exercise of sovereign
after the apocalypse.
power, in the form of a rigorous zoning and
policing of zones. Paradoxically, the under-
ground zones are strictly controlled, yet we are told that laws do not apply
there. These are exactly what Giorgio Agamben calls “spaces of exception,”
wherein the law creates zones where the law does not apply. The underground
is legally unlawful. The result is a constant state of emergency. Those who
inhabit these zones are “bare life” or “naked life,” subject to authority that
legally places them outside the law, which is in this case symbolized in the
highly compressed architectural authority of the Ziggurat.¹⁹
The robot Tima in the animated Metropolis emerges from this labyrinth,
as does Futura or the False Maria in Lang’s film. But where Futura embodied
the otherness concealed within identity (the dark side to be eradicated), Tima
is a thoroughly hybrid figure. She is both the true and the false Maria, as it
were. While the animated Metropolis makes the robot definitely female (in
contrast to Tezuka’s gender-switching Michi), Tima is nonetheless as hybrid
a figure as Michi, who remained poised between inorganic and organic, true
and false, good and evil. She seems capable of adopting any identity, and not
surprisingly, her tag line in the film is “Who am I?” She is an embodiment of
bare life.
If Tima has a truth, it is that she has been designed as the final piece in
the weapon that will launch a strike on the sun. Duke Red aims to sit her
atop the Ziggurat as the new ruler of his world. In other words, what emerges
from the labyrinth (bare life) is taken for the rule of sovereignty. The excep-
tion is to become the rule. Yet things do not turn out as Duke Red planned.
In keeping with its doubling of the silent film and the manga, this Metropolis
gives us not one but two revolutions or rebellions. The first rebellion, on the
part of human revolutionaries, proves unsuccessful. Despite its earnestness
and good intentions, it is an entirely conservative revolution, with the goal
of overturning Duke Red and returning the city to a time before robots. In-
deed the failure of this revolution appears as a warning against conservative
revolution and thus as a critique of the complicity between Lang’s film and
national socialism. Consequently, there must be a second uprising, that of
robots, the figures of bare life.
The second uprising occurs when Duke Red is about to succeed in his plan
to sit Tima (the robotic emblem of bare life) upon a throne atop the Ziggurat.

s tat e s o f e m e r g e n cy  14 1
 As she loses her “human” nature and becomes one with the machine, the
robots rise against this ultimate injustice, that is, the transformation of their
state of exception into the new law for world order. Thus the Tower falls, de-
stroyed by the very bare life whose state of exception allowed its emergence,
and the film ends with humans and robots poking through the now horizon-
tal ruins of the Ziggurat, in a search for Tima’s remains. In effect, Rintarō
and Ōtomo achieve what Lang and Tezuka imagined but deferred: the fall of
Babel, the world after the apocalypse.
Near the end of the film an immense red globe raises up Tima’s throne, an
image that evokes the red disk of the sun on the Japanese flag, the hi no maru.
For an instant, something like Japan appears in the place of absolute sover-
eignty (Duke Red) and bare life (Tima)—a place for Japan unimaginable in
Tezuka’s manga but also a place that Rintarō and Ōtomo are intent on reject-
ing or at least questioning. Their robot, designed to attack the sun, becomes
equated with it. Tima becomes (the film tells us) a goddess, if only briefly:
new life and pure violence pouring forth together. Such a condition, which is
somehow our condition, cannot endure. As she fulfills this condition, Tima
brings it to a crisis, immediately provoking its destruction—and her own.
Through this gesture she frees the people of the Labyrinth: both robots
and the poorest humans are in effect led to a new land devoid of power struc-
tures. But as she falls from the collapsing Ziggurat she again repeats her ta-
gline “Who am I?” (Figure 9). Who does she save through her death? Who are
her people, really, and where is her city? An answer can be found, I think, if

figure 9. As Tima disintegrates and falls at the climax of the animated Metropolis, the question
of identity is posed yet again.

142 law re n c e b ird

we explore some of the connections between the architectural spaces of the
animated Metropolis and those of contemporary Japan.

OUR METROPOLIS

One building in Tokyo in particular assimilates closely to Rintarō and Ōtomo’s

Ziggurat. It is one of the most notorious buildings in Japan: the Tokyo Met-
ropolitan Government Headquarters, or Tokyo City Hall, designed by Tange
Kenzō (completed 1991).²⁰ This building was conceived as a center of power
and technocracy, part of the largest single set of buildings to be constructed
in Japan in the twentieth century. It was designed to evoke the imposing
authority of traditional architectures—castles and Edo-era government
buildings—and the lattice-like pattern of a computer circuit board. Its most
prominent building, City Hall Tower 1, was also immediately noted (and dis-
paraged) for its resemblance to the building at the heart of Paris—the gothic
cathedral Notre Dame de Paris.²¹ So, in a building that itself can be considered
parodic—it would be classified by many as a
piece of postmodern architecture—we find
a literal fusion of control Tower and Cathe-
dral (Figure 10).
Today this building is occupied by
the administration of governor Ishihara
Shintarō, who has been criticized for his
extreme nationalism and for statements
many have considered racist, sexist, and
historically revisionist, including a speech
that called for the Japanese army to be pre-
pared to put down hordes of rioting foreign
residents of Japan in the event of a major
earthquake.²² The foreigners Ishihara was
speaking about occupy an economic niche
in Japan that makes them like the robots
in Metropolis: essential laborers who barely
exist socially and politically and yet whose
very existence provokes resentment and
fear. It is in response to their existence
figure 10. City Hall Tower 1 of the Tokyo Metropoli-
that the right wing has attempted to an- tan Government Headquarters (Tange Kenzō, 1991).
swer the question of identity: “Who are we Photograph by the author.

s tat e s o f e m e r g e n cy  14 3
 Japanese? We are not those Asian foreigners. We are we.” Such conceptions
of national identity might be considered to turn this Ziggurat into a monu-
ment to the Japanese sun, embodied bizarrely in a cathedral like Rintarō’s—
and Lang’s.²³
But Tokyo’s relationship to national identity is complex. Indeed one of
the reasons for building such an ostentatious city hall was to underline To-
kyo’s autonomy from the national government. Tokyo’s boundaries really lie
outside of Japan, in the many countries from which it draws its resources.
It is one of those metropolises referred to by economists and sociologists as
“global cities.” ²⁴ Like other global cities, Tokyo is a crucial node in the supra-
national flows of capital, information, and technology that link subnational
regions, provoking a crisis in what it means to be situated locally, to be a
nation.²⁵
The identities of all citizens become a problem in this condition. And so
we long for a time when we were whole, our bodies intact; or a time when
we were part of one body, one folk. Leaders like
Ishihara Shintarō appeal to precisely this long-
“Who are we Japanese?
ing. Yet their rhetoric disguises the fact that
We are not those Asian
they—and we—depend on those lives that are
foreigners. We are we.”
reduced to a subhuman condition by the ex-
ercise of our power. These are the millions of
people, sometimes entire populaces, we employ or enslave daily to die for us:
foreign guest workers, occupants of refugee camps, captives of all kinds.
This is the condition described in Rintarō and Ōtomo’s Metropolis. In it
a new form of fascism—articulated in an architecture derived from Lang—
combines with the diffuse and open conditions of place and identity of our
own era—conditions that find expression in a loose urban structure derived
from Tezuka’s city. While these conditions have their roots in the past, they
take on a new accent now because of the decline of the two Cold War em-
pires, the expansion of the information society, and the other complex cir-
cumstances that go together to make up what is often described as “post-
modernity.” In this condition the questions of “Who are we?” and “Where
are we?” become acute. The nationalist or culturalist rhetoric that responds
to this anxiety divides the world into two camps: those who are with us and
those who are not. The result is, as in Japan, leaders with global power but
only local legitimacy. Criminals and pretenders can, like Duke Red, actually
achieve positions as global sovereigns.
This is an ironic outcome, given that some hoped that the new decen-
tralization might yield a revolution from below. But many writers and artists

144 law re n c e b ird

of Rintarō’s and Ōtomo’s generation were among those who tried to reform
Japan in the early postwar period, only to see it swing increasingly to the
Right, and much of their work now seems to be imbued with a pessimistic be-
lief that revolution from below is no longer possible. This may be the source
of the animated film’s dependence on an apocalypse provoked from above.
Tima’s robot revolution succeeds where a human revolution failed. At the
same time, it promises liberation from rogues like Duke Red, a world in which
all power structures have been leveled and from which we can begin to pull
together the pieces that make up some kind of bare life. The hope is that this
life will offer sovereignty on a small scale, a sovereignty of individuals or of
small communities that, while distinct, can accommodate relationships be-
tween people, or even between humans and robots.
This is not a new dream. Walter Benjamin, who wrote under the shadow
of Hitler’s fascism, hoped for a messianic or divine violence, as opposed to
the bloody mythic one he saw tearing apart his world.²⁶ Divine violence was
to annihilate the very notion of sovereignty, leveling all power structures.
But it is unclear today, as it was in Benjamin’s time, what might be the end
condition that comes out of this divine violence. What form would a com-
munity dwelling together in the world take after the destruction of Towers?
For the yearning for a postpolitical world is also shared by the representa-
tives of the Right against which this film reacts. An apolitical condition can
in the end turn out to be about pure power, whether that power is expressed
through violence or love. The postapocalypse may turn out to be just another
state of emergency.
But at least Rintarō’s film does not restore the sovereign, as Lang’s did.
Tima becomes a goddess and then immediately cancels out her own sover-
eignty. And while Lang’s Metropolis papered over the hybrid condition of mo-
dernity through the sacrifice of a robot in place of the city, Tima’s death occurs
alongside the destruction of the city and confirms our own hybrid condition.
Instead of an answer to the question “Who am I?” the animated film leaves
us with the question unanswered. Rather than one united folk, the ruins of
the animated Ziggurat are populated by bands of robots and humans, two
communities. With the fall of Babel, many tongues replace one, and one story
becomes two. And just as the later retellings of the Babel and Metropolis sto-
ries restore and distort their antecedents, so we humans’ second identity,
Tima, both turns on us and saves us. If there is some hope to be read in the
shared destruction of body and city, this is it. Whether it is enough, whether
the film as destructive creation can possibly contribute to a creation born out
of destruction in the real world, is another question.

s tat e s o f e m e r g e n cy  14 5
 Notes
. See, for example, Murakami Takashi, “Earth in My Window,” trans. Linda Hoa-
glund, and Sawaragi Noi, “On the Battlefield of ‘Superflat’: Subculture and Art in Postwar
Japan,” both in Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture, ed. Murakami Takashi
(New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, ). For an opposing position, see Thomas
Lamarre, “Torauma kara umarete: Akira to shihonshugi teki na hakai yōshiki” (Born of trauma:
Akira and the capitalist mode of destruction), Shingenjitsu  (April ): –.
. Tezuka Osamu, “atogaki” (postscript), Metoroporisu (Metropolis) (Tokyo: Kōdan-
sha, ).
. Siegfried Krackauer, From Caligari to Hitler (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University
Press, ).
. This is made clear in the  novel by Thea von Harbou, Metropolis (Boston: Gregg
Press, ). The robot’s primary purpose as laborer is implied but not explicit in the film.
. Including the most recent and most complete restoration of the film: Metropolis,
dir. Fritz Lang (); restored and released on DVD (Kino Video, ). My analysis is
based on this version of the film.
. In  Fritz Lang visited New York City for the first time, in the company of his
wife and scriptwriter Thea von Harbou, and famed architect Erich Mendelsohn. It was
on the first evening of this journey, looking across the water at Manhattan from the ship
where he and his companions were still confined (as, in his words, “enemy aliens”), that he
conceived Metropolis. Jean-Louis Cohen, Scenes of the World to Come (Paris and Montréal:
Flammarion and Canadian Centre for Architecture, ), .
. Dietrich Neumann, “Before and after Metropolis: Film and Architecture in Search
of the Modern City,” in Film Architecture: Set Designs from “Metropolis” to “Bladerunner,” ed.
Dietrich Neumann (Munich: Prestel, ), .
. This is implied in the film in its best-restored version today, but even in this ver-
sion approximately one quarter of the original film has disappeared (it was edited out in
part for American distribution). The vertical axis of movement tying together the New
Tower of Babel and the machine rooms below is made explicit in von Harbou’s novel Me-
tropolis. The novel, written while the screenplay was being developed, describes the Pater-
noster Machine (an early elevator), which ascends and descends within the New Tower and
connects through to the control mechanism in the depths below to which Freder Freder-
son is bound at one point in the story. In the film this control mechanism takes the form
of a giant clocklike disk. In the novel Freder is attached instead to an insectoid machine
with a trunklike sucker that “jacks in” (to borrow a phrase anachronistically from cyber-
punk) to his head. In the novel this device is referred to as the “Ganesh machine” (see the
following discussion on oriental imagery in Lang). A few surviving stills show the Pater-
noster Machine in action as it appeared in the original film.
. Lang would have been aware of this because of his training in architecture, which
he studied for one year before switching to film.
. Since Goethe, the Gothic had been seen as a quintessentially German style of ar-
chitecture, and the Gothic cathedral as the epitome of German culture. Of course Gothic
architecture was a pan-European phenomenon. There were, though, local variations of

146 law re n c e b ird

Gothic, and in the modern era recognition of these became important to the construction
of a national identity in opposition to the international, even abstract, tone of classical
architecture. Victor Hugo, for example, suggested in his great novel Notre-Dame de Paris
(originally published in ; English title The Hunchback of Notre-Dame,) that the Gothic,
epitomized for him by the cathedral at the heart of Paris, was quintessentially French. In
England, to give another example, one reason that Sir Charles Barry designed the British
Houses of Parliament (begun ) as Gothic buildings was because it was seen as the
most British of styles.
. Thousands of such buildings were designed as projects in the s, including
Otto Kohlz’s federal office building in Berlin and Haimovici, Tshcammer, and Caroli’s trade
fair tower in Leipzig (both ). Neumann, Film Architecture, – and .
. This is speculation, but the full text does support it strongly. Here is one excerpt:
“In the middle of this turmoil of the metropolis the Gedächniskirche stretches its narrow
steeples up into the grey evening. It is alien in this noisy life. Like an anachronism left be-
hind, it mourns between the cafés and cabarets, condescends to the automobiles humming
around its stony body, and calmly announces the hour to the sin of corruption . . . This is
not the true Berlin. It is elsewhere waiting, hoping, struggling. It is beginning to recognize
the Judas who is selling our people for thirty pieces of silver. / The other Berlin is lurking,
ready to pounce. A few thousand are working days and nights on end so that sometime
the day will arrive. And this day will demolish the abodes of corruption all around the
Gedächtniskirche; it will transform them and give them over to a risen people. / The day of
judgment! It will be a day of freedom!” Joseph Goebbels, “Around the Gedächtniskirche,”
in The Weimar Republic Sourcebook, ed. Anton Kaes and Edward Dimendberg (Berkeley and
Los Angeles: University of California Press, ; first published as “Rund um die Gedächt-
niskirche,” in Der Angriff, January , ).
. William Friedkin, “Conversation with Fritz Lang,” supplementary material on M,
dir. Fritz Lang (); restored and released on DVD (Criterion Collection, ).
. “And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in
the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there . . . And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and
a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven” (Gen. :–; King James version).
. Asian and pestilential: “There was a house in the great Metropolis which was older
than the town . . . It was said that a magician, who came from the East (and in the track of
whom the plague wandered) had built the house in seven nights” (Gen. :).
. The text is “Ima, ware ware wa, waga kokka wa masa ni tenjō ni itaran to shite iru.”
Ōtomo Katsuhiro, Metoroporisu (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, ), . This is rendered in
subtitles on the DVD Metoroporisu, dir. Rintarō (); translated as Metropolis, subtitled
DVD (Columbia Tristar, ), as “At this moment our state extends its reach to the
stars!” or “presently, we, as a nation, are about to touch the heavens!”
. “Ōtomo Katsuhiro x Rintarō: The Making of Metropolis,” interview in Ōtomo, Me-
toroporisu, .
. Ōtomo, Metoroporisu, , . This sense of disorientation dominates not only in
the spaces of the film, but the plot as well: the Japanese detective’s pursuit of a criminal
is sidetracked by other chases and intrigues, while Duke Red launches his coup d’état, and
an insurrection is crushed as soon as it arises. In other words, there is an abundance of
action, much of it political action, yet all of it seems misdirected, as if unable to arrive at

s tat e s o f e m e r g e n cy  14 7
 a full articulation of who should act and where. What is more, much of the action goes
astray because concealed identities and indeterminate identities constantly undermine
any sense of certainty.
. Giorgio Agamben, Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, trans. Daniel Heller-
Roazen (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, ); and State of Exception, trans.
Kevin Attell (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ).
. Tange was also architect of a building erected at the opposite end of Japan’s
postwar expansion and associated with another apocalyptic explosion: Hiroshima’s Peace
Memorial Museum (). That building is a profoundly horizontal gesture—see discus-
sion of Tezuka’s diffuse and horizontal city above. Images are available at Kenzo Tange As-
sociates Official Site, http://www.ktaweb.com (accessed June , ).
. William Coaldrake, Architecture and Authority in Japan (London: Routledge, ),
–.
. “With Sangokujin and foreigners repeating serious crimes, we should prepare our-
selves for possible riots that may be instigated by them at the outbreak of an earthquake . . .
As police [are] not always fit for handling all contingencies, the Self-Defense forces should
be ready to respond to threats to public security besides natural disasters.” Cited on the
Web site of the International Movement Against All Forms of Discrimination and Racism
(IMADR), http://www.imadr.org/new/ishihara.html (accessed March , )
. Ishihara is also one of Japan’s most prominent writers. His work includes several
screenplays, including the recent For Those We Love (, Ore wa kimi no tame ni koso shini
ni iku; the title has also been translated as “I go to die for you”). According to Ishihara,
his intention in writing this script was “to convey the [kamikaze] corps’ beauty to young
people today” (quoted in Kim Do-hyeong, “The Kamikaze in Japanese and International
Film,” Japan Focus [May , ], http://japanfocus.org/products/details/ [accessed
May , ]). In  Ishihara was reelected for a third term as governor of Tokyo. As
though to underline the relationship between film and architecture that seems to emerge
again and again from these films and the events that surround them, one of his opponents
in the election was Kurokawa Kishō, prominent architect and member of the s ar-
chitectural group known as the Metabolists. Kurokawa opposed Ishihara mainly because
of a conviction that the governor’s promotion of Tokyo’s bid for the  Olympics was
misguided. The Olympic bid, as Olympic bids tend to do, engaged a rhetoric of equal parts
national(ist) and civic pride, both to be crystallized in the form of grand architectural proj-
ects (the master planner was to be Andō Tadao, another prominent architect). Additional
information can be found at the Tokyo  Olympic Games Bid Committee Web site,
http://www.tokyo.or.jp/en/index.html (accessed June , ).
. Saskia Sassen, The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton
University Press, ).
. These flows are predicated on a culture of consumption that finds some of its pur-
est expressions in spaces in Japan not far from Tokyo City Hall, the entertainment district
around Shinjuku station. Such spaces (there are many others) might well be compared to
the Labyrinth of the animated Metropolis: playful, phantasmagoric collages fueled by a
commerce of bare life both legitimate and not.
. Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” in Reflections, ed. Hannah Arendt (New
York: Schocken Books, ), .

148  law re n c e b ird

 SHARALYN ORBAUGH

Emotional Infectivity:
Cyborg Affect and the
Limits of the Human

If it is true that our gods and our hopes are no longer anything but scientific,
is there any reason why our love should not also be so?
—Villiers de l’Isle-Adam

The epigraph is from the 1886 novel L’Ève future (Future Eve) by novelist, play-
wright, and poet Jean Marie Mathias Phillipe Auguste, comte de Villiers de
l’Isle-Adam (1838–1889; hereafter, Villiers). I have highlighted it here because
anime director Oshii Mamoru (b. 1951) also chose it as the epigraph for his
2004 film Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (hereafter Innocence).¹ It is the connec-
tions and disjunctures between emotion and science that lie at the heart of
Villiers’s novel and Oshii’s film. For both, a central question is, can an android
love and be loved? Or, to put the emphasis differently, is love possible only for
humans, or are emotions and affect also possible in artificial beings? Oshii’s
film suggests that the emotion that remains in a cyborg or android context is
precisely what will keep us “human” even after our bodies have become mostly
or entirely artificial. In this study I will use Oshii’s source text, L’Ève future, as
well as contemporary affect theory in a preliminary exploration of the philo-
sophical and ontological issues depicted so provocatively in Oshii’s film.²

150
 is love possible only for
It is clear that Villiers’s L’Ève future, far
humans, or are emotions
beyond providing a single sentence for the
and affect also possible
film’s epigraph, is a source text for Innocence.
in artificial beings?
The novel, which has been called “the ex-
emplary forerunner of the cinematic repre-
sentation of the mechanical woman,” ³ features a fictionalized Thomas Alva
Edison as its protagonist and is set in Edison’s laboratory in Menlo Park,
New Jersey, in 1883–84.⁴ The plot is relatively simple. Edison has invented
a perfect mechanical woman and decides to give her to his young friend and
benefactor, Lord Celian Ewald, who has been mortally disappointed by the
crassness of his beautiful mistress, Alicia Clary, and has resolved on suicide.
Edison’s “andreid” (Villiers’s neologism for an artificial creature, the origin
for our current word “android”) is called Hadaly, meaning “ideal” in Persian.⁵
Edison reshapes Hadaly to be an exact replica of Ewald’s mistress in every
respect except character: while the flesh-and-blood Alicia has no soul deserv-
ing of the name, and is therefore incapable of loving and unworthy of being
loved, Hadaly has a “mind”/”soul” fully worthy of Ewald’s love and, Ewald
comes to believe, capable of loving him in return. On meeting the completed
andreid, Ewald is quickly convinced that she is his ideal woman and resolves
to take her back to England where they will dwell in romantic ecstasy until his
eventual death (at which time he is to destroy Hadaly, too, Edison instructs
him). The novel ends as Edison receives news that the ship carrying Ewald,
Alicia, and Hadaly across the Atlantic has caught fire and sunk, drowning
Alicia, bearing Hadaly to the bottom of the sea, and leaving Ewald alive to
mourn his irrecoverable love.
The original inspiration for Edison’s invention of Hadaly had come from
the tragic story of his friend Edward Anderson, who, ensnared by the wiles
of the seductive dancer Evelyn Habal, had abandoned his wife and family,
and eventually committed suicide after sinking into a life of sexual depravity.
Edison has befriended Anderson’s widow, Any (sic), who now uses what seem
to be telepathic powers to aid him in his work. (When acting as a telepathic
medium, Any Anderson goes by the name Sowana.) It is to prevent such trag-
edies in the future that Edison has created his Hadaly, and he sees the perfect
opportunity to put his invention to use when he hears of Lord Ewald’s des-
perate situation: Alicia Clary is a virulent femme fatale just as Evelyn Habal
was, and Lord Ewald can be saved only by transferring his love to a pure, ideal
“woman” such as Hadaly.
Although the plot of L’Ève future is quite simple, much of the narrative is
consumed in complex explanation of the “science” behind Hadaly’s construc-

e m ot i o n a l i n f e ct i v i t y  151
 “Lord Ewald’s final doubts
tion, and the elaborate philosophical
about the mechanical nature
debate between Ewald and Edison over
of what seemed to him a
the possibility of creating a being who,
living woman are dispelled
although entirely artificial, nonetheless
in a horrible recognition of
can possess a sense of self and can experi-
the compatibility of
ence and inspire emotions.
technology and desire.”
In the process of persuading Ewald
to accept the gift of the andreid, Edison
must convince him that an artificial life form can be worth loving. The in-
ventor reveals every aspect of her composition to Ewald, opening Hadaly up
to show him the wires, motors, inductors, and miniature phonographs that
constitute her “organs.” This scene is most significant, given the mainstream
modernist conceptualization of the origin of human affect, the foundation
of “selfhood.”
According to this conceptualization (which is still one of the dominant
ways of understanding affect), selfhood is predicated on a carefully main-
tained distinction between the outside (of the person) and the inside, a
distinction materialized in/through the structure of the human body.⁶ The
body is conceived as being self-contained, autonomous, with the skin serving
as its outer boundary—both holding in the person’s “insides” and prevent-
ing (or at least hindering) the invasion of elements from the outside. The
somatosensory organs on the surface of the body—eyes, ears, skin, and so
on—allow for impressions from the outside world to enter the body as data.
Similarly, the skin may register on its surface information about a person’s
internal affective state—a blush of shame, for example—which can be read
by an observer. Communication between outside and inside is thus possible:
the boundaries of the body act as gatekeepers for the movement of informa-
tion (conceived here as nonmaterial) from exterior to interior or vice versa,
but those boundaries are not physically violated in the process. Moreover, a
person’s emotions and attitudes are believed to arise from the mind, soul, or
heart—or, in scientific discourse, from the neurophysiology of the tissues,
fluids, and electrical charges—that make up the person’s/body’s “insides”
and create a sense of “interiority.” ⁷ “Affect” then, in this conceptualization,
refers to the emotions that arise from and are felt within human interiority,
and also to how information about those emotions is conveyed at the body’s
surface, allowing others to “read” them and respond.
In the scene described above, therefore, Ewald is forced by the inventor
to see and acknowledge the entirely artificial, mechanical nature of Hadaly’s
interior and therefore to question how her internal machines could possibly

152 sharalyn o rbau gh

give rise to, or even simply house, genuine affect. To his surprise, however, this
does not dissuade him from pursuing the project. Mary Ann Doane describes
the young man’s reaction: “Lord Ewald’s final doubts about the mechanical
nature of what seemed to him a living woman are dispelled in a horrible rec-
ognition of the compatibility of technology and desire.” ⁸ Villiers’s version of
this scene is more florid, in keeping with nineteenth-century French decadent
style: “Now he found himself face to face with a marvel the obvious possibili-
ties of which, as they transcend even the imaginary, dazzled his understand-
ing and made him suddenly feel to what lengths a man who wishes can extend
the courage of his desires.” ⁹ By the end of the novel, Lord Ewald has managed
to extend the courage of his desires to the point of accepting and loving an
artificial woman, and feeling himself loved by her in return.
Readers familiar with Innocence will recognize several similarities of plot
and theme between the film and L’Ève future, most immediately the protago-
nist’s love and longing for a woman who is entirely nonorganic and who ap-
pears to be entirely lost to him. One major difference between the two is that
in L’Ève future Ewald does not lose Hadaly until the end of the novel (shortly
after he has acquired her), whereas in Innocence the protagonist’s lost love is
absent from the beginning of the film, and actually returns briefly at the end.
Like L’Ève future, the plot of Innocence is fairly simple, but much of the
film’s narrative space is taken up with philosophical conversations about the
nature of human and cyborg (and postcyborg, in the case of one character)
subjectivity.
The mechanical uncanny represented in Innocence comes in a much wider
variety than L’Ève future’s single andreid. In the film we see various kinds of
ningyō (meaning “dolls,” but literally “human-shaped”): crude rag dolls; life-
like but immobile toy dolls; karakuri ningyō (playful automata from the Ja-
pan’s eighteenth and nineteenth centuries); jerky and crude automata that
contain some element of human intelligence; huge mechanical figures of
animals and demons; and sophisticated androids with no organic parts but a
sort of artificial “ghost,” giving them a sense of self. We encounter the mem-
bers of special security unit Division Nine, familiar from the earlier Ghost in
the Shell narratives:¹⁰ the completely organic Aramaki, Head of the Division;
near-organic humans such as Togusa, whose only cybernetic component is
the interface holes in the back of his neck that connect his brain to the Net;
partial cyborgs, whose organic bodies incorporate a prosthesis or two; and
complete cyborgs such as our protagonist, Batō, who has so many artificial
body parts that, after he loses his flesh-and-blood arm in the middle of the
film and has it replaced with a prosthesis, his brain may be his only remaining

e m ot i o n a l i n f e ct i v i t y  153
 original organic feature. (In this he is like Major Kusanagi Motoko, protago-
nist of the previous film, Ghost in the Shell.) If we include the absent Kusan-
agi, now presumably a completely disembodied, cybernetic life form, we see
in Innocence a wide range of posthuman entities.¹¹
Ghost in the Shell depicted the subjectivity of the cyborg, a hybrid crea-
ture that incorporates both mechanical and organic parts. From the credit
sequence early in the film, in which we follow the process of replicating (for
the first or hundredth time) the protagonist, Kusanagi Motoko, we learn that
she is completely mechanical/artificial except for some of her original brain
matter, encased in a titanium skull. The implication is that it is because of the
retention of this brain matter that Kusanagi also retains a “ghost”—that is,
a sense of human selfhood that gives rise to intuition and emotion, affective
promptings that cannot be accounted for logically.¹² But Kusanagi questions
both the authenticity of her own “ghost”—she wonders whether her memory
and emotions have been implanted by the same company that manufactured
her body—and whether that original “ghost” is the sole origin of her current
sense of self:

Of course we have the right to resign from Section Nine, if we discreetly

hand over these artificial bodies and part of our memories. But as many ele-
ments as there are that make us human, there are just as many that make

figure 1. Three levels of posthuman entities coexisting in Innocence. From Ghost in the Shell 2:
Innocence, directed by Oshii Mamoru. Dreamworks Home Entertainment, 2004.

154 sharalyn o rbau gh

 up a self. The face that sets you apart from others, the unconscious sound
of your own voice, the hand you stare at on waking up. . . . Not just that:
the information and the network I can access with my electronic brain, all
of this is a part of me, producing the consciousness I call myself, and at the
same time setting limits on that self.¹³

Christopher Bolton cites this passage to underscore Kusanagi’s recognition

that her selfhood transcends her embodiment, but I think it can equally
represent her recognition that her current body—despite being entirely ar-
tificial—contributes in fundamental ways to that sense of self; her organic
brain is not the sole source of her selfhood. But, by the end of the film, after
merging with a cybernetic (and thus completely bodiless) life form called the
Puppet Master, Kusanagi prepares to abandon both her artificial body and
her organic brain, to take up life as both herself and her offspring, capable of
traveling the Net freely as a disembodied data stream. As Kusanagi bids him
farewell in the final scene, Batō, whose love for her has been gently suggested
throughout the film, is left to wonder whether, when, how, and in what form
she may ever reappear to him.
Given the nature of the medium, film requires a visible protagonist.¹⁴
Those of us anxiously awaiting the sequel to Ghost in the Shell therefore won-
dered how Kusanagi could be depicted in her disembodied form. The answer
is that Batō, rather than Kusanagi, becomes the protagonist of Innocence,
and its thematic focus shifts from posthuman reproduction—a matter of the
body—to posthuman love—a matter of affect. While both films raise ques-
tions about what is necessary to produce (post)human selfhood and emo-
tions (do they require “genuine” organic material? do they require a body?),
Innocence explores them in a context where the body is in some cases no lon-
ger an organic/mechanical hybrid (cyborg) but rather is completely absent.
This is another way in which Villiers’s novel can be seen as a major inspira-
tion for Innocence. The cutting-edge technology used by Edison in Hadaly’s
construction—the phonograph, the telephone, and even the cinema (which
did not yet exist)—are icons of presence-in-absence, “transporting the trace
of the [absent] other.” ¹⁵ As we shall see, Oshii similarly uses contemporary
(and not yet existing) technologies to show how Kusanagi can still be con-
ceived of as “present.”
The plot of Innocence takes the form of a detective story, involving the
murder of a number of prominent Japanese men by their sex-toy “gynoids”
(female-shaped androids). Division Nine is called in to investigate the crimes
and, as the film opens, Batō is called to a crime scene. The regular (noncyborg)

e m ot i o n a l i n f e ct i v i t y  155
 police are grouped at the entrance to a dark, narrow alleyway. Inside, they
tell him, are two dead police officers and their murderer, a gynoid who had
earlier also killed her male owner. Batō enters the alley alone and confronts
the evil android. She looks young and sweet, but she attacks him viciously.
When she sees that she cannot kill him, she whispers “tasukete, tasukete”
(help me, help me) in a childish voice as she rips her own chest open. Batō
then blows her away.
Batō and his new partner Togusa (who was Kusanagi’s partner in the pre-
vious film) learn that a number of gynoids identical to this one have recently
murdered their owners and then committed “suicide.” Purchased as sex toys,
the gynoids are programmed to love and sexually serve male humans; the
aberrant violence of one particular model, called “Hadaly,” is a mystery to the
company that manufactures them. They should not be able to kill humans,
nor should they have any desire to commit suicide, since they should have no
real sense of self. Nonetheless, this model has somehow acquired the ability
to override the basic ethical programming common to all robots.¹⁶ Batō and
Togusa spend the rest of the film trying to discover how the gynoids have
acquired their faulty programming—is it the work of a terrorist hacker, for
example, targeting prominent men? Is it the work of a yakuza organization?
Is it the fault of a computer virus? Or is it a bug intentionally built into the
system by the corporation Rokusu Sorusu (Locus Solus),¹⁷ that manufactured
the gynoids? After following clues throughout Tokyo and a “special economic
zone” on Etorofu Island, Batō finally infiltrates the corporation’s secret off-
shore factory, where Chinese-speaking androids sound the alarm. Hundreds
of naked gynoids, identical to the sweet-featured young girl he met earlier
in the dark alley, drop from the ceilings and rise from the floors to kill him.
Although his weapons are enough to wipe out most of the robots, it becomes
clear that they will eventually overwhelm him—until, suddenly, one of them
grabs a weapon and starts fighting on his side. It is, of course, his lost love,
Major Kusanagi, who has downloaded herself into one of the gynoid bodies
to help him. Together they subdue all the remaining gynoids and go to track
down the source of the programming bug.
They find a young girl, about eight years old, strapped inside a large me-
tallic device that connects her to hundreds of other devices holding partially
completed gynoids. The company has been using trafficked children in an il-
legal procedure called “ghost-dubbing,” transferring their “ghosts” to gynoids
to animate them. (The procedure is illegal because, although it does endow
androids with a crude version of a ghost, or soul, it eventually destroys the
mind of the human original.) When Batō finds the girl she is whispering

156 sharalyn o rbau gh

“tasukete, tasukete” (help me, help me) over and over, just as the suicidal gy-
noid had done. When the little girl is completely clear of the machine she ex-
plains that she had been assured by a Locus Solus employee, Volkerson, that
she would be rescued because he had modified the gynoids’ ethical program-
ming to allow them to do bad things. Appalled, Batō asks if Volkerson had
had no thought for the victims that would result, both human and gynoid.
She responds with childish petulance: “datte watashi wa ningyō ni naritaku-
nakattan da mono” (but I didn’t want to be made into dolls). Kusanagi, still in
the body of a gynoid, comments that if the gynoid dolls had had their own
voices they would have screamed out that they did not want to become hu-
man. After this Kusanagi leaves, telling Batō that every time he accesses the
Net, she is there beside him. The abandoned gynoid body she had occupied
crumples to the floor.
Let me return to Villiers’s L’Ève future. Despite protagonist Edison’s claims
throughout most of the novel that Hadaly is purely a creature of science, au-
thor Villiers is not prepared to endorse such a reductionist view.¹⁸ The reader
eventually discovers that the heartbroken widow Any (Sowana) Anderson,
whose husband had abandoned her for the false temptress Evelyn Habal,
uses her extrasensory powers to somehow fuse with the mechanical Hadaly,

figure 2. “But I didn’t want to be made into dolls.” From Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, directed
by Oshii Mamoru. Dreamworks Home Entertainment, 2004.

e m ot i o n a l i n f e ct i v i t y  157
 thus imparting to the andreid a soul. This is Villiers’s nineteenth-century,
decidedly unscientific version of “ghost-dubbing.” In the case of L’Ève future
the “dubbing” is voluntarily performed, although Any/Sowana actually dies
once she has accomplished the awakening of Hadaly’s soul.¹⁹ The widow is
willing to cooperate with Edison because of his motive for creating the per-
fect artificial woman: “Far from being hostile to the love of men for their
wives—who are so necessary to perpetuate the race (at least until a new
order of things comes in), I propose to reinforce, ensure, and guarantee that
love. I will do so with the aid of thousands and thousands of marvelous and
completely innocent facsimiles, who will render wholly superfluous all those
beautiful but deceptive mistresses, ineffective henceforth forever” (empha-
sis added).²⁰
Edison’s stress on the infinite replicability and “complete innocence” of
his envisioned cyborg army of women is savagely parodied in Oshii’s film.
The “thousands and thousands” of sweet-looking gynoids are created for the
purpose of satisfying men’s lust, and are made to look young and innocent to
enhance that effect. The fact that, like Edison’s ideal Hadaly, these artificial
women have acquired self-consciousness, emotion, and judgment is ironically
what causes them to enact the horrific violence that drives the film’s plot.

figure 3. Innocent facsimiles in Innocence. From Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, directed by Oshii
Mamoru. Dreamworks Home Entertainment, 2004.

158  sharalyn o rbau gh

 Innocence makes the
Given these apparently parodic
argument that posthuman
contrasts, it would appear that Villiers’s
subjectivity retains important
novel promotes an idealistic vision of
elements of human affect-
potentially perfect (artificial) woman-
love and other emotions may
hood—pure, innocent, incapable of
still exist even when the
sex,²¹ and worthy of the love of a fine
organic body does not.
and brilliant man like Lord Ewald—
while Innocence appears to hold up a
cynical vision of corrupted (artificial) womanhood, sexualized and violent
despite its innocent-looking form. But, in fact, L’Ève future is premised on the
idea that love is a sham: that women are empty, mindless creatures whose
beauty intoxicates men so that they lose all reason; that the apparent beauty
of women—whether “andreid” or organic—is in every case entirely artifi-
cial;²² and that the love and desire of even an educated, worldly man such as
Lord Ewald can be adequately fed for a lifetime by the prerecorded speeches
and gestures of an android. In contrast, under its cynical postmodern sur-
face, Innocence makes the argument that posthuman subjectivity retains im-
portant elements of human affect—love and other emotions may still exist
even when the organic body does not.
This is evident, for example, in the scene where Togusa and Batō visit po-
lice robot expert Haraway (named for cyborg theorist Donna Haraway) at the
crime lab. Both Haraway and Batō evince sympathy for the gynoids and for all
intelligent artificial creatures used and then discarded by humans, attribut-
ing to them significant affect: a justifiable anger at being abandoned. This is
one of many scenes in the film in which characters assert the affective nature
of (“female”) artificial beings (including Batō’s beloved dog, which has been
artificially produced in some unspecified way). In contrast to Edison’s con-
tempt for women (whether real or artificial), men, and human emotion, the
characters in Oshii’s film affirm the possibility and authenticity of feelings.
In an interview conducted during the final stages of the film’s produc-
tion, Oshii explained the ideas his screenplay attempts to convey.²³ He begins
by arguing that humans are losing their bodies—have been gradually losing
them, in fact, since the acquisition of language by proto-humans (25–26). The
body that preexists language and thought no longer exists for humans. The
body is now just baggage, while humans live primarily through “the things
they see, the things they hear, what comes into them through their heads”
(26). He calls this functionless body the tsumetai shintai (the cold body) and
relates it to the artificial, empty bodies of dolls (30–31). This “cold body” is
the state toward which humans are inexorably moving, he says, whether as

e m ot i o n a l i n f e ct i v i t y  159
 cyborgs with increasing numbers of mechanical parts or as human “termi-
nals,” sentient nodes on the networks that make up urban, computerized life.
The only creatures for whom the body does preexist language and thought are
animals, who have what he calls the niou shintai (the body that smells): that is,
a creature for whom body and selfhood are identical.²⁴ (Here “the body that
smells” is meant to convey both the idea that animals use the more primitive
sensory mode of smelling to explore and decipher their world and the idea
that animal bodies have odor, as befits their unselfconscious organic nature.)
Throughout Innocence, we see cold bodies contrasted with bodies that smell in
the frequent depictions of dolls, automata, or gynoids, on the one hand, and
dogs, birds, and fish, on the other.
In the past, Oshii explains, he believed that memory was the key to hu-
man selfhood or subjectivity, but now he has concluded that since memory
can be fabricated and transferred, it cannot function as the foundation for
selfhood. Nor can the body, since it is in the process of disappearing (27–28).
(Ghost in the Shell can be considered a preliminary exploration of the ramifi-
cations of the loss of both reliably authentic memory and the body.) But Os-
hii remains surprisingly hopeful about the future of humanity. He says that
he has come to believe that “even without our bodies we should be able to go

figure 4. Juxtaposition of tsumetai shintai and niou shintai in Innocence. From Ghost in the Shell
2: Innocence, directed by Oshii Mamoru. Dreamworks Home Entertainment, 2004.

160  sharalyn o rbau gh

on being humans; this [situation] is even desirable. If you look at history, that
is basically how it has gone: it is only by losing our bodies that we have been
able to create culture and civilization” (29).
To the unidentified interviewer’s question “If humans have no memory
and no body, in what sense are they still human?” Oshii responds with one
word: omoi, which can be translated equally plausibly as “thought” or “feeling/
emotion” (29–30). (I often translate it here as “affect,” which connotes both.)²⁵
He says he wrote the film expressly to explore what happens when memory
and the body are untrustworthy as foundations of selfhood and when affect
is the only remaining marker of self; he wanted to imagine what the next
stage of humankind would be under those circumstances (29–30). “Even if we
are already resigned to the loss of [the body and memory], I believe that affect
remains (omoi ga nokoru). It may be some kind of feeling toward a particular
woman, or toward the dog who lives with you, or toward the body you have
lost” (35). “The affect that a person leaves behind is the evidence that they
have lived” (36). Oshii says that he wanted to create a film crystallized around
this key phrase “affect remains” (omoi ga nokoru) (36). He therefore chose as
his protagonist Batō, who “really is no longer anything more than some brain
matter and his memories of a woman” (34).
Although Oshii is eloquent in this interview about his intention to chal-
lenge accepted notions about the limits of the human, it is in his films that he
actually reveals his ideas in all their complexity and explores their philosophi-
cal or ontological ramifications.
In Ghost in the Shell, Kusanagi’s body is the point around which the nar-
rative condenses. It is her body we see in the opening credit sequence, re-
constructed from (almost) zero, and it is her body that is torn apart through
her own exertions as she struggles to reach the Puppet Master in the pen-
ultimate sequence. (This scene is echoed in Innocence when Kusanagi, who
has downloaded herself into one of the gynoids, rips off her own arm trying
to pull open a locked door.) It is Kusanagi’s body that we see duplicated in
others as she moves through the city in the lyrical passage in the center of
the film—presumably these are duplicates made by the same company that
manufactured her shell.
Kusanagi’s lack of affect vis-à-vis her own body in Ghost in the Shell is
striking. She shows no pain (and presumably feels none) when her body is
ripped apart and evinces no shame at her own nakedness (although Batō,
in an old-fashioned gesture, covers her with his jacket—another scene that
is echoed in Innocence). In this she resembles most of the “women” in L’Ève
future: Hadaly, who has no shame at revealing her body, including its internal

e m ot i o n a l i n f e ct i v i t y  16 1
 organs, to Ewald; Alicia, who tortures Ewald’s delicate sense of morals with
her lack of shame about having been tricked out of her virginity; and Evelyn
Habal, who shamelessly seduces and enslaves Anderson.
In Ghost in the Shell, Kusanagi’s lack of shame is not depicted as a moral
issue. Rather, Kusanagi in a sense stands for the inauthenticity of the body/
shell, and it is therefore not surprising that she exhibits no affective connec-
tion with it or through it. As I have argued elsewhere, we may presume that
there is no affective kernel to the shell, in the ordinary sense: it would be
counterproductive for the company that produces her body for the benefit
and to the specifications of the Division Nine special security force to pro-
vide her with “innards” programmed to experience/produce pain or pleasure,
or an outer shell that communi-
cates the workings of her inner
If the deterministic genetic
mechanisms to the world.²⁶ Like
coding of our organic bodies can
Hadaly, Kusanagi’s “insides” are
give rise to the seemingly wide
all artificial, and all her potential
range of a human’s affective
responses preprogrammed.²⁷ This
states, then it would seem that
is the opposite of the modernist
the mechanical or digital coding
notion of how the interiority pro-
of artificial bodies could
duced by human embodiment en-
analogously give rise to affect.
ables selfhood, as outlined above.
With no interiority to produce
selfhood, and no mechanisms to experience or express affect—such as the
shame that her lack of modesty “should” engender—Kusanagi signifies “in-
authenticity,” even “monstrosity,” given the commonly shared conceptualiza-
tion of what defines the human. And yet Kusanagi is the protagonist of the
film, the focal point of the viewer’s (emotional) response to it. Through our
identification with this protagonist, we are put inside the experience of the
posthuman “cold body.” This experience is tolerable, and even interesting,
because of the intense emotion that is connected with Kusanagi, even though
hardly expressed by her in any conventional way.
This is not to say that Kusanagi is depicted as utterly without affect. Al-
though she evinces neither pain nor dismay as her body is ripped apart, her
eyes—that is, the direction of her gaze, the widening of her eyes, and the dila-
tion or contraction of her pupils—briefly register emotion in several scenes,
such as the moment when she sees her double in a café or when she first hears
the Puppet Master’s voice summoning her. It is not that Kusanagi is depicted
as entirely devoid of affect but rather that the origin of the affect she experi-
ences is highly ambiguous. Since a number of early scenes demonstrate the

162 sha ralyn o rbau gh

“emptiness” of her shell—its entirely artificial, mechanical nature—viewers
are left to wonder about the origins of the emotions that drive her increas-
ingly desperate attempts to join with the Puppet Master.
In fact, the type of body and subjectivity I have described for Kusanagi
would seem to reflect another, somewhat more contemporary, conceptualiza-
tion of affect and selfhood: that of genetic determinism. In this model, which
has been strengthened in recent years by technological advances that allow
for the exact mapping of genes, the organic body is seen as being genetically
programmed to respond in particular ways to environmental stimuli. While
many scientists share the belief that the source of subjectivity or mind is
purely physical, some believe that the sum of the interaction of the physical
parts creates a greater, transcendent whole. In contrast, genetic determinists
argue that the affect we experience and use to define ourselves as subjects is
in fact “hardwired” in the DNA of every cell; each person’s subjectivity is pre-
programmed from birth. According to this model, there is no reason why an
artificial being such as Hadaly or a composite being such as Kusanagi should
lack affect. If the deterministic genetic coding of our organic bodies can give
rise to the seemingly wide range of a human’s affective states, then it would
seem that the mechanical or digital coding of artificial bodies could analo-
gously give rise to affect.
This is, in fact, precisely the way that Hadaly is at first depicted in L’Ève
future. As Edison shows her to Ewald he explains that all of her responses
have been prerecorded and preprogrammed: “Below the lungs, you see here
the Cylinder on which will be coded the gestures, the bearing, the facial ex-
pressions, and the attitudes of the adored being. . . . To be more precise, this
Cylinder is programmed to make possible some seventy different movements
of a general character. It is approximately the same number that any well-
bred woman can and should command.”²⁸ Hadaly’s “lungs” are two small
phonographs made of gold, on which Edison will record numerous hours of
speeches, poems, and songs, all in the voice of Ewald’s human mistress, Alicia.
When Ewald expresses his unhappiness at the thought of having to forever
suit his conversation to the responses Hadaly will be programmed to give,
Edison replies: “What matter, if it ensures the REALITY of your dream? . . .
And who is really free in any case?” ²⁹ Here we see Edison’s cynicism regarding
love and affective connection. He is sure that Hadaly’s beauty, and the beau-
tiful words that will be all she knows how to say, will be sufficient to arouse
Ewald’s desire, which will then by itself create the illusion of a relationship.
At the end of the novel, Hadaly passes a sort of Turing test, in which she fools
Ewald into believing that she is actually his live, organic mistress, Alicia, who

e m ot i o n a l i n f e ct i v i t y  16 3
 has miraculously gained the soul she lacked hitherto. When he realizes his
mistake, Ewald’s immediate infatuation with Hadaly seems to prove Edison
correct about men’s willingness to delude themselves into “recognizing” (ac-
tually constructing) affect through even predigested material. This parallels
the view of genetic determinists, who argue that what we “feel” as emotion
directed toward us from others is no more than an illusion that arises from
our own genetically programmed desire to experience such emotion.
But Edison’s “genetic determinist” point of view does not have the last
word; Villiers has informed the reader that Hadaly’s “soul” has been provided
by the mystic Sowana, who transferred her own into Hadaly’s mechanical
shell. Moreover, it is not Hadaly’s prerecorded words that convince Ewald of
her authenticity and lovability but her silence and a tear she sheds—affective
responses not programmed by Edison.³⁰ In other words, despite Villiers’s un-
deniable misogyny (clear in many of his writings) and cynicism regarding the
possibility of love between a man and a woman, he does endorse the concept
of affect as existing independently of the body’s programming.
Although it would seem that the model of genetic determinism should
explain Kusanagi’s mysterious affect as well, considering that almost all
the elements of her body are manufactured and programmed by a corpora-
tion, this is not the way that Oshii depicts affect in Ghost in the Shell either.
Throughout the film we see Kusanagi’s gradually intensifying efforts to re-
produce, in order to prove to herself that she is real and allowing her to move
to the next stage of (postcyborg) evolution. Yet there is no indication that
Kusanagi’s obviously quite desperate efforts are motivated by desires that
arise from her body’s programming, her own particular kind of “interiority.”
On the contrary, it is almost as if Kusanagi is infected with affect from an
outside source (possibly the Puppet Master).³¹
Batō in Innocence is depicted similarly: we see him lose a flesh-and-blood
arm, and have it replaced—as the majority of the rest of his body has already
been—with a mechanical prosthetic. Like Kusanagi, his body is shown to
be just a functional shell, not an “authentic” foundation for selfhood. Batō
shows little emotion through most of the film; his obviously prosthetic eyes
enhance the impression that he lacks conventional affect. Again, however, we
find that Batō’s desperately felt (though hardly expressed) emotion—his love
and longing for the absent Kusanagi—is the motivating force of the film. The
plot may focus on the unraveling of a crime, but the impact of the film comes
entirely from the affective subtext.
When we consider the emotional force of Innocence, a question arises:
just exactly what is in love with what? The verb, the affect, remains, but the

164 sha ralyn o rbau gh

 “the transmission of affect, if
subject and object are obscure, un-
only for an instant, alters the
locatable, demonstrably inauthen-
biochemistry and the neurology
tic. The emotions in the film are in-
of the subject. The ‘atmosphere’
tense, but they do not show on the
or the environment literally
surface of bodies; they are always
gets into the individual.”
outside any enclosed, autonomous
subject, always moving, transfer-
able. Oshii is, in fact, proposing/depicting a model for the origin and nature
of human affect that differs significantly from the mainstream modernist
one outlined above. Unlike Villiers, Oshii does not suggest any mystical or
religious origin for subjectivity or affect; but unlike the more recent genetic
determinist model, he also does not suggest that these attributes are prepro-
grammed and unalterable.
Oshii’s depiction of selfhood more closely resembles ideas put forward by
recent theorists who argue that affect does not arise solely or even primarily
from within a self-contained, autonomous body.³² Teresa Brennan is perhaps
the most radical of these, as she argues that affect moves between (and into
and out of) bodies in a literal, physical sense. She describes what she calls the
transmission of affect:

Is there anyone who has not, at least once, walked into a room and “felt the
atmosphere”? . . . The transmission of affect, whether it is grief, anxiety,
or anger, is social or psychological in origin. But the transmission is also
responsible for bodily changes; some are brief changes, as in a whiff of the
room’s atmosphere, some longer lasting. In other words, the transmission
of affect, if only for an instant, alters the biochemistry and the neurology
of the subject. The “atmosphere” or the environment literally gets into the
individual. Physically and biologically, something is there that was not there
before, but it did not originate sui generis: it was not generated solely or
sometimes even in part by the individual organism or its genes.
In a time when the popularity of genetic explanations for social behav-
ior is increasing, the transmission of affect is a conceptual oddity. If trans-
mission takes place and has effects on behavior, it is not genes that deter-
mine social life; it is the socially induced affect that changes our biology.³³

As Brennan explains, the body experiences physiological changes in response

to chemical stimuli—ingesting airborne pheromone molecules through the
nose, for example. In this case, a material substance from outside the body
penetrates the body’s boundaries through one of its somatosensory gateways

e m ot i o n a l i n f e ct i v i t y  16 5
 and initiates what is called by neurologists “entrainment”: neurological net-
works are activated, and the body responds with the release of appropriate
corticosteroids (for example). Entrainment need not involve the ingestion of
material objects such as chemical molecules (through nose, mouth, or skin),
however: “Visual images [and] auditory traces, also have a direct physical im-
pact; their reception involves the activation of neurological networks, stim-
ulated by spectrum vibrations at various frequencies. These also constitute
transmissions breaching the bounds between individual and environment.” ³⁴
In Brennan’s model, bodies respond as they are “programmed” to do: the
individual body cannot (or at least not easily) resist the entrainment caused
by chemical or other sensory input. But her view is not entirely reductionist
because “we may influence the registration of the transmitted affect in a vari-
ety of ways; affects are not recovered or registered in a vacuum.” ³⁵
Brennan’s view contrasts with the modernist view of selfhood: in the mod-
ernist view it is “cognition, more than emotion, [that] determines agency.”
The valorization of cognition leads to an idea of the self-containment of the
subject: the brain, as the location of cognition, is seen as the autonomous,
sole origin of selfhood. To believe on the contrary that emotions/affect de-
termine agency and to understand that affect is transmissible leads to a view
of human selfhood that is interactive. In sum, the important points in Bren-
nan’s model are (1) that bodies are far from being self-contained, as in the
modernist model—rather, they are permeable; and (2) bodies are equally far
from being autonomous, as in the genetic determinist model—rather, they
interact with each other.
Oshii highlights the permeability of the body in Ghost in the Shell and
even more so in Innocence, but since he features cyborg bodies, this perme-
ability is effected through interfaces that link his characters to the Net. Their
bodies are penetrated by data streams rather than organic chemicals, but,
just as in Brennan’s model, those data streams produce effects that are both
physical and, in many cases, affective. Information here is figured as material
and physical, effecting material, physical changes as it moves between one
system (such as a body) and another. This contrasts with the more commonly
held notion, described earlier, that the information about a person’s internal
affect that may show on the body’s surface—a smile, a blush of shame—is
nonmaterial, simply communication.
Batō’s general lack of apparent affect in Innocence is in some ways even
more striking than Kusanagi’s in Ghost in the Shell. Because Batō’s eyes are
obviously prosthetic, the viewer does not even have dilated or contracted pu-
pils to use as guides for interpreting changes in his emotions. But, just as with

166 sha ralyn o rbau gh

Kusanagi in Ghost in the Shell, Batō in Innocence eventually reveals that he has
been “infected” with affect. We see him go berserk in a small neighborhood
store because (as we learn later) his prosthetic arm has been hacked so that
he unconsciously shoots himself. And it is not only Batō who experiences af-
fect in this way. Later he defeats a group of yakuza thugs by hacking into their
“cheap prosthetics,” thereby fooling them into hysterically expending all their
ammunition on an illusion. And, in the mansion of the genius hacker, Kim,
Togusa has his sense hacked and suffers a series of terrifying hallucinations.
In all these cases, just as in the “ghost dubbing” of the Hadaly gynoids, which
is predicated on and in turn causes such violence, the frightening, uncanny
nature of entrainment is emphasized. The metaphorical models here are inva-
sion, expressed through the idea of “hacking,” and contagion, infection, as
expressed through the idea of a computer “virus.” In highlighting the nega-
tive, terrifying aspects of physical interactivity and the transmission of affect,
Oshii is playing to contemporary human fears about our seemingly inexorable
march into a posthuman condition marked by the loss of stable boundaries.
Remarkably, however, fear is not his final message; Innocence ultimately af-
firms the desirability of affect’s capacity for transference and interactivity.
In the title of this paper I have used the word “infectivity” because I think
it well expresses the way Oshii depicts the nature of affect. “Infectivity” refers
to the ability of a pathogen to establish an infection; it is thus distinguished
from “virulence,” which refers to the degree of damage done once the infec-
tion is established. Some infections, such as leprosy, are not very infective but
highly virulent. The converse is also possible: some pathogens, such as those
of the common cold, have high infectivity but low virulence.³⁶ When we are
forced to understand our bodies/selves as permeable to affective influences
from the outside that cause literal physical changes, we tend to think in terms
of an analogy with infection by virulent pathogens. This is a scary image.
We know, however, that some highly infective materials are not virulent
at all. Some infective bacteria, for example, establish commensal relationships
with a host, living together with little mutual harm or benefit. Others estab-
lish symbiotic, beneficial relationships with the host they have infected (such
as the bacteria in the human intestine that help in the digestion of complex
carbohydrates). The “invasions” of the body effected by external substances
may be of any of these three characters: parasitic/pathogenic, commensal, or
symbiotic/beneficial. Contemporary science and medicine recognize that the
bodies we tend to think of as autonomous, clean, and purely human are, in
fact, multiply invaded, radically hybrid. The “insides” we imagine as produc-
ing our human subjectivity and affect are, in fact, inhabited by millions of

e m ot i o n a l i n f e ct i v i t y  16 7
 nonhuman creatures. Although most of us tend to repress this knowledge
and, when that repression fails, to view it as terrifying, narratives such as
Innocence can remind us that our physical permeability to others is at times
actually beneficial.
In Innocence, Kusanagi is able to move into and out of complex systems,
such as artificial or wired bodies; in this sense, she herself is “infective.” But
this infectivity is shown throughout the film to function as beneficial to the
protagonist, Batō. In the scene in which Batō battles the gynoids it is clear
that he would have been overwhelmed and killed if Kusanagi had not down-
loaded herself into one of the gynoid bodies to fight on his side. Previous to
that climactic scene as well, Kusanagi “infects” various systems to give Batō
crucial warnings or hints about the solution of the mystery. It is Kusanagi’s
ability to move in and out of bodies/systems as information that allows her
to continue to interact with Batō in (temporarily) physical form, saving his
life and helping him to locate the final piece of the puzzle. It is her ability to
“infect” other information systems that allows her to communicate hints to
Batō even when she is not embodied. And it is because “affect remains” (omoi
ga nokoru) that Batō has a reason for living. Although his continuing love
for the vanished Kusanagi is painful, it is clearly depicted as integral to his
current sense of self, his sense of purpose. (His affection for his dog serves
a similar function.) When we consider the artificial Batō’s love for either the

figure 5. “What exactly is in love with what?” From Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, directed by
Oshii Mamoru. Dreamworks Home Entertainment, 2004.

168  sharalyn o rbau gh

disembodied Kusanagi or for his artificially produced dog we may not be able
to answer the question “what exactly is in love with what,” but the predicate,
the affect, remains, suggesting that “the posthuman” retains at least some
valuable characteristics of “the human.”

Notes
. This is my translation of the Japanese sentence used by Oshii Mamoru as the
epigraph to Innocence. The Japanese reads “Wareware no kamigami mo wareware no kibō
mo, mohaya tada kagakuteki na mono de shika nai to sureba, wareware no ai mo mata
kagakuteki de atte ikenai iware ga arimashou ka?” This is from a Japanese translation of
Villiers’s  novel, L’Ève future (literally, Future Eve). The original French sentence reads:
“Puisque nos dieux et nos espoirs ne sont plus que scientifiques, pourquoi nos amours ne le
deviendraient-ils pas également?” (emphasis in original). (Villiers, L’Ève future, ed. Alan Raitt
[Paris: Gallimard, ], .) L’Ève future was translated into Japanese at least twice: as Mi-
rai no ibu, trans. Watanabe Kazuo (Tokyo: Hakusuisha, ; reprinted by Iwanami Shoten in
); and as L’Ève future/Mirai no ibu, trans. Saitō Isō (Tokyo: Tōkyō Sōgensha, ). It has
been translated into English at least twice as well: as Eve of the Future Eden, trans. Marilyn
Gaddis Rose (Lawrence, Kans.: Coronado Press, ); and as Tomorrow’s Eve, trans. Robert
Martin Adams (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, ). All subsequent English quota-
tions from L’Ève future are from Adams’s translation, unless otherwise noted.
. I am indebted to Sneja Gunew for inviting me to participate in a year-long group
project on affect through the Centre for Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of
British Columbia, which introduced me to theoretical and critical works on affect. In ad-
dition, I am grateful to Sneja, Jackie Stacy, Sara Ahmed, and others who took part in the
affect project for inspiration and insightful feedback on my ongoing research on the Japa-
nese cyborg. I am also indebted to Christopher Bolton for incisive comments on an early
version of this article.
. Mary Ann Doane, “Technophilia: Technology, Representation, and the Feminine,”
in The Gendered Cyborg: A Reader, ed. Gill Kirkup et al. (London: Routledge, ), .
. According to Alan Raitt, Villiers had begun composition of a story about the cre-
ation of an artificial woman as early as , inspired by the announcement in France that
year of Edison’s invention of the phonograph (Raitt, “Preface to Villiers’s, L’Ève future, ). I
have written elsewhere about the relationship between L’Ève future and Innocence; for more
about the connection between these two works and other science fiction novels, films, and
anime, see Sharalyn Orbaugh, “Frankenstein and the Cyborg Metropolis: The Evolution of
Body and City in Science Fiction Narratives,” in Cinema Anime, ed. Steven T. Brown (New
York: Palgrave, ), –.
. Edison is wrong: hadaly does not mean “ideal” in Farsi.
. Psychoanalytic theorists, such as Freud, focus less on the body as the instantia-
tion of inside/outside boundaries of the self; instead they posit a “body ego” that is the
mind’s projection of its own “physical” boundaries. Didier Anzieu has reformulated this
as the “skin ego,” again as a mental projection of the self’s “physical” boundaries, based on

e m ot i o n a l i n f e ct i v i t y  16 9
 the infant’s experience of skin as surface and marker of separation between self and other.
Nonetheless, whether a matter of literal materialized flesh or, as in these cases, a projec-
tion of mind, it is the body that is used to provide the fundamental understanding of inte-
riority/exteriority.
. At least since the time of Descartes’s separation of mind and body, philosophers,
physicians, and scientists have argued the question of the origin and location of mind,
subjectivity, or affect; an overview of such arguments is unfortunately impossible in the
scope of this essay. Among the most frequently debated questions are: does the mind
arise purely from the physical elements that make up a human, or does it have an external
(usually religious or mystical) source; and if it does arise purely from the physical, is it
entirely a matter of the neurophysiology of the brain, or does it arise more generally from
the entire body? Among the diversity of theories there is surprising agreement, however,
in the basic conceptualization of the location of “selfhood” or “mind” (from which affect
originates), at least while the person in question is alive: the self/mind is conceived as
somehow housed inside the body. For a good overview of many recent theories of mind,
see Carol de Dobay Rifelj, “Minds, Computers, and Hadaly,” in Jeering Dreamers: Essays on
“L’Ève Future,” ed. John Anzalone (Amsterdam: Editions Rodobi B. V., ), –. For a
treatment of the first Ghost in the Shell film within the framework of classical philosophy,
see the article by Chris Goto-Jones in this volume.
. Doane, “Technophilia,” .
. Villiers, Tomorrow’s Eve, .
. Ghost in the Shell was originally a manga series by Shirō Masamune, begun in
. In , Oshii Mamoru directed a feature-length anime film, Kōkaku kidōtai (Ghost
in the Shell), based on the manga; Innocence, with an original screenplay by Oshii, is the
 sequel to that film. In addition, from , a televised anime series called Ghost in
the Shell: Stand Alone Complex was launched, based on the same characters and themes as
Shirō’s manga. Here I discuss only the two films by Oshii, but many of the same issues re-
garding cyborg/android affect arise in the other Ghost in the Shell narratives.
. In Shirō’s manga and in Stand Alone Complex yet another type of posthuman crea-
ture appears: the tachikoma, machines that have no organic component at all, and are not
human-shaped, but are intelligent and self-aware. The implication is that their intelligence
is purely a matter of artificial intelligence (AI), with no connection to an “original” human
mind.
. At the end of the film, her friend Batō sacrifices his own arm to save her brain from
destruction and escapes with it, eventually installing it in a new body. Again the implication
is that without this “original” organic matter, Kusanagi would no longer exist in any mean-
ingful form. But Innocence challenges this implication, suggesting that Kusanagi somehow
retains her identity and some version of “selfhood,” despite being completely disembodied.
. Quoted in Christopher Bolton, “From Wooden Cyborgs to Celluloid Souls: Mechan-
ical Bodies in Anime and Japanese Puppet Theater,” positions , no.  (), . Bolton’s
translation.
. Oshii makes this point himself in “Shintai to kioku no higan ni” (On the equinox
of body and memory), in Oshii Mamoru ron: Memento mori (Essays on Oshii Mamoru: Me-
mento mori), ed. Nihon Terebi (Tokyo: Nihon Terebi Hōsō Kabushikigaisha, ), .
. Rifelj, “Minds, Computers, and Hadaly,” .

170  sharalyn o rbau gh

 . Haraway, the robot expert who is conducting the police investigation into the aber-
rant gynoids, tells Batō and Togusa that the Hadaly model had found a way to overcome
robot rule number three: “A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection
does not injure a human being.” Oshii refers here to Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics,
first detailed in his short work “Runaround” (in Astounding Science Fiction, March ).
. The name of this company is a playful gesture on Oshii’s part toward another
source text. Locus Solus is the title of another French proto–science fiction novel (like L’Ève
future), written by Raymond Roussel in . Its protagonist, a wealthy inventor/scien-
tist named Chanterel, shows a group of guests around his huge estate, on which he has
housed his numerous experiments. Several of these involve the (re-)animation of dead or
inorganic tissue, and all are inspired by affecting stories, which Chanterel relates in detail,
together with an explanation of the science behind each experiment. While Locus Solus is
less obviously linked to Innocence (except in Oshii’s depiction of the mansion of the master
hacker Kim), it too functions as inspiration for Oshii’s screenplay, in its attention to the
connections between affect and science in the context of artificial creatures.
. Reductionism here is a shorthand reference to the belief that the human mind
and emotions—the self or soul—can be explained completely in terms of physical causes.
A devout Catholic, Villiers evidently intends to mock his character Edison’s belief in the
omnipotence of science. For more on this, see Rifelj, “Minds, Computers, and Hadaly,” and
Raitt, “Preface.”
. Note that by the end of this strange novel all three main female characters are
dead, while the men live on: the supremely beautiful but soulless Alicia drowns; the su-
premely good and soul-full but jilted widow Any (Sowana) Anderson dies mysteriously
after imparting her soul to Hadaly; and Hadaly, the ideal combination of supreme beauty
and supreme “soul-fullness,” disappears at the bottom of the ocean when the ship goes
down. (The evil seductress Evelyn Habal is also long dead.) This “tragic” ending well suits
the cynical attitude toward women and love that permeates the novel: it may be better for
Ewald that his love for Hadaly is never put to an extended test.
. Villiers, Tomorrow’s Eve, . Precisely how the andreids are intended to keep
men together with their wives is nowhere explained in the novel.
. In L’Ève future, it is made clear that Hadaly will not be capable of the physical act
of sex even after she “comes to life” in every other sense. (In this she is like Kusanagi in
her current disembodied form, and radically different from the gynoid-sexaroids, who are
built specifically for sexual interaction with human men.) Edison convinces Lord Ewald
that the beautiful, idyllic mood with which one is suffused in the first days of love—which
is what he will experience forever with Hadaly—is so intoxicating and satisfying that the
physical union will not be missed. (This sexless love is, of course, the same kind of love
Batō must accept if Kusanagi remains his love-object.)
. Edison demonstrates this fact to Ewald by showing him a movie (before cinema
had been invented!) of the seductress Evelyn Habal who had ruined Any Anderson’s mar-
riage. Her attractiveness is undeniable until Edison shows Ewald the loathsome prosthetic
devices—wig, false teeth, cosmetics, false bosom and hips—by which Evelyn’s illusion of
beauty was achieved.
. Oshii, “Shintai to kioku no higan ni”; page numbers will be cited parenthetically in
the text.

e m ot i o n a l i n f e ct i v i t y  17 1
 . In this Oshii moves away from Donna Haraway, despite much overlap in their
ideas about our posthuman present and future. Haraway’s cyborg embodies the decon-
struction of three seemingly fundamental boundaries: human versus animal, machine ver-
sus organism, and the physical versus the nonmaterial. For Oshii, though, the posthuman
condition involves an even greater distance between the human and the animal.
. Among the many recent attempts to define “affect,” I incline to Teresa Brennan’s,
which links the somatic aspects of emotion with an evaluative judgment about that emo-
tion—both feeling and thought are required for affect. See Teresa Brennan, The Transmis-
sion of Affect (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ), –.
. See Sharalyn Orbaugh, “Sex and the Single Cyborg: Japanese Pop Culture Experi-
ments in Subjectivity,” in Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from
Origins to Anime, ed. Christopher Bolton, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., and Takayuki Tatsumi
(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ), –. Kusanagi and her Divi-
sion Nine colleagues have obviously been programmed to “feel” and exhibit some kinds
of affect—their voices, for example, are flexible and emotive, not merely machinic—but
presumably only those that may support their function as special security police. They evi-
dently do not feel physical pain, nor do they bleed.
. Kusanagi herself remarks on the shortcomings of her programming when she
tells Togusa that she chose him as a partner, despite his “weak” organic body, because his
human unpredictability will provide a useful counter to the limits of her preprogrammed
responses to a situation.
. Villiers, Tomorrow’s Eve, .
. Villiers, Tomorrow’s Eve,  (punctuation as in original).
. For more on this point, see Rifelj, “Minds, Computers, and Hadaly,” –.
. The evocative music provided by Kawai Kenji is crucial to the viewer’s understand-
ing of the emotional states of the protagonists in both Ghost in the Shell and Innocence. The
role of music in these films, and in a lot of postmodern visual narrative, deserves a great
deal more consideration than I can give it here, especially in relation to the “infectivity” of
affect, discussed below.
. A number of (primarily feminist) theorists have challenged the idea of the body
as autonomous and closed, although they do not go as far as Brennan in terms of positing
actual physical transmission of affect. The essays in S. Ahmed and J. Stacey, ed., Thinking
Through the Skin (London: Routledge, ) provide a useful overview of challenges to the
idea of the body as closed. It is noteworthy, however, that even the authors of these chal-
lenges frequently conceptualize the body as a “container” for affect and selfhood, if not an
entirely discrete one.
. Brennan, The Transmission of Affect, –.
. Brennan, The Transmission of Affect, . It is not possible in the confines of this
essay to do justice to the mass of evidence that Brennan marshals to support her model of
the transmission of affect. For her descriptions of the medical, scientific evidence for affec-
tive entrainment, see especially pages –.
. Brennan, The Transmission of Affect, .
. It is significant that Edison describes Evelyn Habal’s type of seductiveness as a
“plague” (highly infective and highly virulent) that will devastate and destroy mankind.

172 sha ralyn o rbau gh

 人間で
Compossibles
Of the Human
TAKAYUKI TATSUMI
Translated by Christopher Bolton

Gundam and the

Future of Japanoid Art

When I saw the Kubrick-conceived, Spielberg-directed film AI in the sum-

mer of 2001, I immediately thought of the Japanese mecha tradition from
Gundam on down to Evangelion. AI is full of images that look like live-action
realizations of anime’s ideas—from the setting two thousand years hence, in
a world emerging from the threat of nuclear weapons, to the submarine city
in the final scenes.
In the same year, I wrote an afterword for the new paperback edition
of Tsuki ni mayu, chi ni wa kajitsu (2000, Cocoons on the moon, fruit on the
earth), a Gundam novel written by the popular fiction writer Fukui Haru-
toshi.¹ It was an assignment I eagerly accepted: Fukui had already gained
acclaim as a talented new writer after winning a series of fiction prizes, in-
cluding three prominent awards for his third novel Bōkoku no iijisu (Aimless
aegis) in 1999.² But his reputation derived less from science fiction than from
espionage novels centered on international intrigue. His books frequently
addressed the justification for and latent power of Japan’s armed forces in
the context of the U.S.–Japan Joint Security Treaty. Still, it is not so sur-
prising that a young author with an interest in military affairs would turn
to Gundam, and Fukui puts his characteristic spin on the Gundam world,

191
 highlighting issues associated with Japan’s self-defense forces. (For example,
it is in exchange for lunar technology necessary for self-defense that Gwen
offers use of the battleship Willgem and the Turn A Gundams.)
About a month after the publication of the paperback edition of Tsuki ni
mayu, the terrorist attacks of September 11 and the ensuing Iraq war renewed
controversy over the role of Japan’s self defense forces, and Fukui became a
hotter property than ever. In sum, the anime imagination of future war, with
its emphasis on mecha, meshed closely with the emergence of the war on ter-
ror and even seemed to anticipate its dynamics.
We can trace the history of the mecha back to Robert A. Heinlein’s 1959
novel Starship Troopers, which introduced the concept of the “powered suit.”
The novel spawned a stormy ideological debate about whether Heinlein’s ideas
were fascist. In Japan, too, a violent dispute erupted between Yano Tetsu, the
translator of the 1967 Japanese version, and the critic Ishikawa Kyōji. Need-
less to say, the impact of Heinlein on Japa-
nese prose science fiction is complex and
the anime imagination of
will continue to change. But Starship Troop-
future war, with its
ers had another legacy: in 1977, Hayakawa
emphasis on mecha,
publishers issued a paperback edition with a
meshed closely with the
cover illustration of the powered suit drawn
emergence of the war on
by Studio Nue (Figure 1), and this image
terror and even seemed
would have a profound impact on the design
to anticipate its dynamics.
of “mobile suits” in Japanese robot anime,
starting with Gundam.³
Heinlein describes the suit as making its wearer look like “a big steel go-
rilla.” The suit is compact enough to fit inside a small space capsule, but pow-
erful enough that a single soldier can wipe out a tank division. Although it
weighs two thousand pounds, the suit’s advanced feedback and amplification
technology do not require special training to use: it can sense what the wear-
er’s body is trying to do and magnify it. The novel describes this as “controlled
force . . . force controlled without your having to think about it. . . . that is
the beauty of a powered suit: you don’t have to think about it.”⁴ This idea of
power without conscious thought surely had great appeal after the turmoil of
the 1960s, during a new decade in which design philosophy gradually replaced
political ideology, and the postwar emphasis on a politics of perseverance
(manifested particularly in sports manga) gave way to an interest in cutting-
edge aesthetics. Tired of agonizing over abstract problems with no solution
or conclusion, people were entranced by a technology that symbolized such
stylish agility—the mobility to outflank any opponent.

192 ta kayu ki tats u mi

figure 1. Powered suit illustration by Katō Naoyuki, one of several Studio Nue covers for the
Hayakawa bunko edition of Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers. These illustrations exerted an
important influence on the visual tradition of Japanese mecha beginning with Gundam.

g u n da m a n d t h e f u t u r e o f j a pa n o i d a rt  19 3
 Today Japanese anime is a global phenomenon, and when an author with
Fukui’s political concerns turns to Gundam to question the dynamics of early
twenty-first-century globalism, he inevitably resurrects some of the ques-
tions that Heinlein posed during the Cold War. But even today in the wake of
September 11, the tendency to use science fiction novels as material for ex-
ploring ideological debates (so pronounced in the 1960s and 1970s) is on the
wane. Fukui’s screenplay for the 2005 remake of G. I. Samurai (1979, Sengoku
jieitai), for example, is a quintessential piece of new century entertainment.⁵
In her “Cyborg Manifesto,” Donna Haraway analyzed the status of the
subject under hypercapitalism and linked the union of technology and the
organic to the notion of racial and cul-
tural hybridity as well. Haraway declared
Today as the East and West
famously that “we are all chimeras . . . we
teem with otaku, we have
are cyborgs.”⁶ But even if this is becom-
ironically reached the
ing a world of cyborgs, there is one place
point where we can declare
where cyborg subjectivity has been more
that we are all Japanoids.
thoroughly naturalized than anywhere
else. That is the discursive space of Japan,
which was stripped of its ideological certainties after World War II, forced
to discard all but the shell of the traditional emperor system, and made to
accept American democracy while donning the protective suit of the U.S.–
Japan Joint Security Treaty. And if all Japanese have become cyborgs in this
sense, then now they are also turning into virtual Japanese subjects that can
be reproduced outside Japan. Fifteen years ago I started using the term “Ja-
panoid” to describe this new subject.⁷ Today as the East and West teem with
otaku, we have ironically reached the point where we can declare that we are
all Japanoids.
Fukui’s alternate history novel Shūsen no rōrerai (2002, Lorelei at war’s
end) takes place in the final days of World War II, when the Japanese navy has
acquired a German submarine with a secret weapon on board, a sensor array
called the lorelei system that can track and display any ship on the battlefield.
I can’t help but think that the Lorelei System is an analog to the cyborgs of
today’s Gundam generation.⁸ In this sense, Fukui’s novel presents an inci-
sive commentary on the postwar Japanese, and on the fate that has rendered
them cyborgs or Japanoids. At the end of World War II, no one could have
foreseen the strangely global significance that this Japanoid subject would
assume fifty years later. If Fukui’s twenty-first-century novel draws on cy-
borg theory to undertake a kind of New Historicist rereading of that era, then
its view of the past may well hint at the future of Japanoid art.

194 ta kayu ki tats u mi

 RESPONSE
Christopher Bolton

It is ironic that Takayuki Tatsumi traces the origin of Gundam’s distinctive

visuals to Starship Troopers, because whatever else that novel is, it is reso-
lutely verbal. Even when it is not preaching its particular political philosophy,
Heinlein’s narrative is virtually devoid of visual descriptions. This contrasts
sharply with the visual richness of Gundam, something that was on display
at a recent Japanese exhibition of Gundam-inspired contemporary art. Tat-
sumi’s essay appeared in the catalog for this exhibition, titled Gundam Gen-
erating Futures: Kitarubeki mirai no tame ni (Figure 2).⁹ The show (curated by
Azumaya Takashi) toured several Japanese museums from 2005 to 2007, and
I saw it in spring 2007 at the newly opened Kyoto International Manga Mu-
seum.¹⁰
The venue was certainly appropriate to the show: the museum—a joint
project by Kyoto Seika University and the city of Kyoto—has a research and
reading collection of hundreds of thousands of prewar, postwar, and con-
temporary Japanese comics, all housed in the former Tatsuike Elementary
School building downtown. On the lower level, older or rarer materials sit on
rows of compact shelving in a climate-controlled space, but the upper levels
preserve the nostalgic feel of the old elementary school, with patrons of vari-
ous ages wandering through halls and former classrooms that are now lined
with shelves of manga. When I was there, the visitors reading on the spacious
(if artificial) lawn outside were watched over by a giant mecha stenciled on
the museum windows, the icon of the Gundam exhibit (Figure 3).
As if taking their cue from this initial image, several pieces in the show
inside used effects of scale to underline the intimacy and alienation Gun-
dam fans feel toward these humanoid shells or machines. One room was
completely filled with a huge plaster sculpture of the series’s character Sayla
Mass, six meters long and almost three meters high. The figure (by Nishio
Yasuyuki) was down on her hands and knees, her mouth twisted in a grimace,
her stomach gaping open to reveal a life-sized cockpit. Also playing on the
size of the machines, calligrapher Yokoyama Hōran created a giant wooden
writing brush in the shape of the outsized beam rifles carried by the mo-
bile suits. Yokoyama also contributed a scroll with dialogue from the series
rendered in archaic hentaigana calligraphy, and there were other pieces that
combined traditional fine arts with avant-pop: Tenmyōya Hisashi produced a
screen painting of the iconic RX-78-2 model suit in the style of the Edo-period
Kanō school, complete with gold leaf background. (This inversion of past and

g u n da m a n d t h e f u t u r e o f j a pa n o i d a rt  1 9 5
 figure 2 ( left ) . Gundam exhibit flyer.

figure 3 ( below ) . Interior of the Kyoto

International Manga Museum. The building
mixes modern architectural elements, like
this elevated bridge and the glass wall at
right, with traditional features that recall the
building’s origins as an elementary school.
Parts of the interior preserve the class-
rooms, hallways, wooden stairs, and other
features of the prewar school, adding an
element of childhood nostalgia that seems
inseparable from the manga experience.
Photograph by Christopher Bolton.

196 ta kayu ki tats u mi

future and the notion of a traditional tomorrow correspond to an important
current in Tatsumi’s work, which often treats the way that Japanese “deriva-
tions” trump their so-called originals; for example, the complex web of Gun-
dam influences and appropriations traced in the present essay undermines
any simple notion of original and copy.)
Elsewhere in the exhibition and the catalog, artists took up the Gundam
franchise in digital photography, abstract sculpture, graphic art, and partici-
patory installations, with effects that ranged from playful through darkly
pessimistic to simply ironic. Tokiwa Hibiki’s photo series “a girl in the room
with acguy” depicted a fetching model posing with thousands of LP records,
including several with Gundam images on the record jackets. Tokiwa’s pro-
vocative but clearly staged photographs address the notion of otaku fantasy
more directly than most of the other art. And his image of the young person
standing before a wall of records actually resembles the scenes of young peo-
ple browsing shelves of manga elsewhere in the museum. But Tokiwa’s was
certainly not the only piece to hold a mirror up to the viewer, nor was the gi-
ant Sayla Mass sculpture with its open stomach cockpit the only installation
that tempted patrons to literally enter inside the art.
Tatsumi’s notion of cyborg identity includes the way humans absorb and
become absorbed by technology as well as a broader kind of cultural amalga-
mation, but it also embraces the ways the stories of our own lives merge with
fiction to produce new hybrid narratives. In his writing, this is sometimes
expressed with autobiographical anecdotes, like the personal experiences
of 2001 that structure this essay. In the Gundam exhibition, the pieces by
Tokiwa, Nishio, and other artists engaged patrons personally in this same
kind of narrative and bodily dialogue with the art. In that respect the exhibi-
tion represents at least one fascinating trajectory of the Japanoid art that
Tatsumi describes.

Notes
. Fukui Harutoshi, Tsuki ni mayu, chi ni wa kajitsu (Cocoons on the moon, fruit on
the earth),  bunkobon vols. (Tokyo: Gentōsha, ). Based on the Gundam or Turn A
Gundam series, this novel was originally published in  with the title Taan Ee Gandamu
(Turn A Gundam),  vols. (Tokyo: Haruki Noberusu).
. In , Fukui’s first long novel Kawa no fukasa ni (How deep is your river, Mr.
guard?) was a nominee for the Edogawa Rampō prize for mystery and fantasy, and he
won the prize the following year with his second novel Twelve Y.O. In  Bōkoku no Iijisu
scored a triple sweep: the second Ōyabu Haruhiko prize and the annual prizes from the

g u n da m a n d t h e f u t u r e o f j a pa n o i d a rt  1 9 7
 Mystery Writers of Japan, Inc., and the Japan Adventure Fiction Association. (All three
novels were published by Kōdansha in Tokyo.)
. Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, ); trans-
lated by Yano Tetsu as Uchū no senshi (Tokyo: Hayakawa Bunko, ). For a brief discus-
sion of Heinlein’s significance for Japanese science fiction, see the introduction to Robot
Ghosts and Wired Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to Anime, ed. Christopher
Bolton, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., and Tatsumi Takayuki (Minneapolis: University of Min-
nesota Press, ). [There was also a Starship Troopers anime OVA released in . It
was produced by Sunrise, the studio that made the Gundam anime, and its director, Amino
Tetsurō, worked on the storyboards for the Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam and Turn A Gundam
series. —Trans., with thanks to Brian Ruh]
. Heinlein, Starship Troopers, –.
. Sengoku jieitai, dir. Saitō Mitsumasa (); translated as G. I. Samurai, VHS
(Xenon, ); Sengoku jieitai , dir. Tezuka Masaaki, screenplay by Fukui Harutoshi
(). Both films were based on Hanmura Ryō’s  novel Sengoku jieitai (Tokyo: Ka-
dokawa Bunko, ).
. Donna J. Haraway, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Fem-
inism in the Late Twentieth Century,” in Simians Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of
Nature (New York: Routledge, ), .
. Takayuki Tatsumi, Japanoido sengen (A Japanoid manifesto) (Tokyo: Hayakawa
Shobō, ).
. [Fukui’s novel was made into a live-action film in  that featured the contribu-
tions of many notable names in Japanese anime, including Higuchi Shinji, Oshii Mamoru,
Izubuchi Yutaka, Anno Hideaki, and Gundam’s own Tomino Yoshiyuki. —Trans., with
thanks to Brian Ruh]
. Takayuki Tatsumi, “Japanoido aato no mirai” (The future of Japanaoid art), in
Gundam Generating Futures: Kitarubeki mirai no tame ni (For the future that should come),
ed. Sugawa Yoshiyuki, Hattori Reiji, and Azumaya Takashi (Tokyo: Sōtsū, ), –.
. http://kyotomm.com.

198  ta kayu ki tats u mi

 TERI SILVIO

Pop Culture Icons: Religious

Inflections of the Character
Toy in Taiwan

The figure of the religious icon has played a prominent role in theories of
modern consumer culture. In European theory, the icon is often invoked as
a metaphor for various ambivalent losses that accompany the spread of capi-
talism, what Max Weber called disenchantment, the replacement of the di-
vine with the secular as the anchor of meaning. Walter Benjamin’s thesis that
the aura of the work of art is lost in mechanical reproduction is based on the
comparison of mass culture images with religious art and artifacts. Perhaps
the theorist who makes the comparison between consumer culture images
and religious icons most explicitly is Jean Baudrillard. In an early passage in
his famous essay on “The Precession of Simulacra,” Baudrillard asks:

What becomes of the divinity when it reveals itself in icons, when it is mul-
tiplied in simulacra? . . . It can be seen that the iconoclasts, who are often ac-
cused of despising and denying images, were in fact the ones who accorded
them their actual worth, unlike the iconolaters, who saw in them only re-
flections and were content to venerate God at one remove. But the converse
can also be said, namely that the iconolaters possessed the most modern
and adventurous minds, since, underneath the idea of the apparition of God

200
 in the mirror of images, they already enacted his death and his disappear-
ance in the epiphany of his representations.¹

Although there are certainly other traditions within Judaism, Christianity,

and Islam, the idea of the icon as an “apparition” reflects what Alfred Gell
identifies as the triumph of Protestant anti-mimesis ideology in the West.²
For Benjamin and Baudrillard, the Real has the qualities of the God of Abra-
ham—nonhuman, unique, indivisible, and unrepresentable. As simulacra em-
body the opposite of the qualities of the divine, their mimesis and multiplica-
tion thus lead to an increased sense of unreality in the contemporary world.
In Taiwan as well, the image of the religious icon has become a power-
ful trope for the multiple transformations of late capitalism. Taiwanese artist
Yang Maolin gave this trope concrete form in his sculpture series “Ceremonies
before Rewarding: Inviting the Immortals III” (2003, Feng Shen zhi Qian Xi—
Qing Zhong Xian III) and “Canonization of the Gods—the Pure Land of Maha”
(2006, Feng Shen Yan Yi—Ma Ha—Ji Le Shijie). The pieces are of hand-carved
wood and cast bronze, and they look, from a distance, like classical Buddhist
icons—figures seated in lotus position, reclining, or in martial
rtial stances,
some overarched by halos spiked with stylized flames. But up close,
the figures in the center are revealed to be characters from m pop-
ular Japanese anime or from the Walt Disney repertoire—in —in
other words, the sculptures’ forms conflate Buddhist god- d-
icons with the mass-produced plastic “character toys” sold d
in stationery and toy stores throughout East Asia.
Yang Maolin’s literalization of the trope of the “pop
culture icon” might easily be read as an absurdist critiquee
of contemporary culture’s secularization and commercializa- a-
tion. Yang, however, claims that he does not see his statuess in
this way:

Since 1996, I have incorporated cartoon and animation characters

acters
into my art. You could say that, within my work, they are thee most
meaningful images. In the earliest period, I thought about discourse
iscourse
from the angle of “the penetration and influence of colonial cul-
ture vs. the creation and establishment of subjective culture.”
.”
I used these images of “foreign culture” and “subculture” as a

figure 1. Yang Maolin’s “Astro Bodhisattva” (Yuanzi Xiao Pusa),

2003. Photograph reproduced with permission of the artist.

p o p cu lt u r e i co n s  2 0 1
 metaphor for the so-called “immortals” in traditional folk culture. Some
people thought this type of comparison had a satirical flavor; they thought I
“maintained an allegorical, critical attitude towards hybrid culture.” . . . Not
only do I not maintain an allegorical, critical attitude toward hybrid culture,
to the contrary, I see hybrid, bastardized culture as a beautiful contingency,
something worthy of praise and promotion. . . . When I look at these ador-
able, familiar cartoon characters in such otherworldly, transcendent atti-
tudes, solemnly making the hand gestures of the bodhisattvas, I smile, and
feel at peace.³

figure 2. Taiwanese books and magazines by and for character-toy collectors. Photograph by
author.

20 2 t er i s ilvio
 what do character toys and
The same trope that indexes the loss of
Taiwanese religious icons
any transcendent reality for Baudrillard
actually have in common?
indexes the “beautiful contingencies” of
contemporary globalization for Yang.
Religious traditions provide an important lens through which people
interpret the transformations of capitalism, even (or especially) in places
where those traditions are already objects of nostalgia. In this paper, I want
to examine how local religious traditions shape Taiwanese readings of what
it means to live in a postindustrial, globally networked society. Specifically,
I want to ask, what do character toys and Taiwanese religious icons actually
have in common? What are the specific inflections of the “pop icon” trope in
the context of a society where a syncretic blend of Taoism, Buddhism, and
folk belief is the dominant religious tradition? In other words, how is the
proliferation of simulacra experienced where idol worship is not a histori-
cal heresy but everyday practice—where the divine was never conceived as
absolutely separate from the human, never unique or indivisible, and never
unrepresentable?
I approach these questions ethnographically, by comparing how Taiwan-
ese people interact with and talk about religious icons and character toys.
My analysis is based on fieldwork over the past two years with a variety of
toy collectors in Taiwan, including a survey of consumers at one of Taipei’s
main character toy markets and interviews with collectors, designers, and
merchants. My understanding of Taiwanese attitudes toward religious icons
is based primarily on the work of other ethnographers and on interviews
with icon carvers and with sellers and collectors of antique icons.
Several scholars have noted a religious background to the content of Jap-
anese manga, anime, and games. As Anne Allison summarizes, “fed in part by
folkloric and religious traditions, an animist sensibility percolates the mod-
ern landscape of Japan today . . . in postwar properties like Tetsuwan Atomu,
for example, one sees a universe where the borders between thing and life
continually cross and intermesh.” ⁴ In this paper, I am not so much concerned
with the types and forms of these media characters as with their functions—
how the place of icons within Taiwanese folk religion influences Taiwanese
consumers’ conception of the ontology of media characters in general and
how they structure community.⁵
I will begin my explication of the pop culture icon trope by first looking at
how mass-produced character toys are placed discursively within a continuum
of human-form images that link them to icons. Second, I will compare how
Taiwanese worshippers value and interact with icons with how Taiwanese fan

p o p cu lt u r e i co n s  2 0 3
 collectors value and interact with characters and character toys. Finally, I out-
line some of the implications of these differences for Taiwanese experiences
and interpretations of globalization and the postmodern condition.

THE ANG-A CONTINUUM

The practice of icon worship was brought to Taiwan by settlers from the
Chinese provinces of Fujian and Guangdong, who immigrated in waves be-
tween the seventeenth century and 1945. The descendants of these settlers
currently make up approximately 80 percent of
the island’s population. The mother tongue of 70
icon worship is a part
percent of the population is the Hokkien (Min-
of daily life for the
nan) dialect, or Holo; another 15 percent are of the
majority of young,
Hakka minority. When the Chinese Nationalist
urban, character toy
Party (KMT) took over the island from the Japa-
consumers in Taiwan.
nese at the end of World War II, they instituted
Mandarin, developed from the dialect of Beijing,
as the “national language.” Most of my younger informants speak primarily
Mandarin but understand Holo; informants in their late twenties or older
often speak Holo at home with older relatives and a mixture of Mandarin and
Holo with friends and at work.
My informants generally viewed themselves as part of a secular, “scien-
tific” generation, and tended to see icon worship more as a nostalgic cultural
tradition than a matter of personal belief. In general, icon worship, like the
Holo dialect, is a part of daily life for the majority of young, urban, character
toy consumers in Taiwan, associated with private family life, but it is not, as
it often is for older, working-class, and rural Taiwanese, an important part of
their social life or personal identities.⁶ It is precisely as a kind of unnoticed
domestic background, rather than conscious belief, that the religiously in-
flected categories of Holo language influence interpretations of the character
toy market.
In Holo, character toys are called “ang-a.” ⁷ The term ang-a refers to al-
most any small image of a person, or of an animal or object invested with
human features and a human personality. Ang-a most often refers to
three-dimensional figurines, but sometimes also to two-dimensional figures.
Comic books, first introduced during the Japanese colonial era, are called ang-
a chhe, or “ang-a books.” The category of ang-a brings together a number of
different kinds of objects that have separate names in Mandarin (or are called

20 4 t er i s ilvio
by loan words from Japanese, English, and Cantonese). These include not
only a wide variety of mass-produced character toys imported from Japan
(or cheaper pirate versions produced in the People’s Republic of China [PRC])
and limited-edition “designer toys” (mostly imported from Hong Kong and
the United States) but also icons that have been desacralized or that have not
yet been sacralized.
The most common referent for the term ang-a is the puppet, and I see
puppets as the middle ground linking religious tradition to the commercial
toy market. Taiwanese puppets are related to icons in several ways. Puppet
performances are a common feature of religious rituals. Marionette perfor-
mance, or kui lei xi / ka-lei-hi,⁸ is used in Taiwan almost exclusively for funeral
and exorcism rituals. The most popular type of puppetry in Taiwan, bu dai
xi / po-te-hi, or hand-puppet theater, has been one of the most common en-
tertainments for both gods and humans at temple festivals since the Qing
dynasty. Many of the characters in traditional bu dai xi plays are gods, bo-
dhisattvas, immortals, or historical persons who later were deified. Some of
these divine characters also appear in manga, anime, and video games (for
example, Guan Yu, the Three Kingdoms–era general later deified as Guan
Gong, the god of war, literature, and wealth, appears in all of these genres).

figure 3. A display of character toys in a Taiwanese collector’s home. Photograph by author.

p o p cu lt u r e i co n s  2 0 5
 Traditional bu dai xi puppeteers observe taboos around puppets of divine
characters; those puppets used for the ban xian / pan sian, a ritual perfor-
mance for the gods at temple festivals, must be handled with particular care.
One antique puppet dealer told me that he had seen a troupe of puppeteers
in Fujian worshipping a sacralized marionette of Tian Du Yuanshuai, the god
of actors.
If puppets are linked to god-icons through historical practice and folk
belief, they are also commercial products. Puppets have been one of the most
popular toys for Taiwanese boys since the Qing dynasty. Many collectors of
character toys, especially men, fondly remembered puppets as their earliest
childhood toys. Since the 1970s, when bu dai xi was adapted to the television
serial format, television puppetry characters have become local “pop culture
idols,” often compared with characters from Japanese and American anima-
tion. In the early 1990s, the Pili International Multimedia Company began
producing its “digital video knights-errant bu dai xi” serials. Images of the
Pili characters are currently reproduced and sold as wooden puppets, plastic
dolls, vinyl toys, as well as a wide range of other products.
Puppets are also the middle ground between icons and character toys in
a continuum of producers to consumers. Wooden puppets and religious icons

figure 4. Interior of a Pili puppet boutique. Photograph by author.

20 6 t er i s ilvio
are often hand-carved by the same people.⁹ In my research, I found that col-
lectors of antique icons often collected antique puppets as well. I also found
that many collectors of antique puppets also collected modern puppets, in-
cluding Pili characters. And many fans of the Pili serials who collected Pili
puppets and toys were also fans of Japanese manga and anime and collected
Japanese character toys.

ON THE ONTOLOGY OF GODS

AND CARTOON CHARACTERS

Chinese gods are believed to exist in several different places, or states, simul-
taneously. They are said to be “all around,” watching over the human world,
but also to be living in a parallel world of the dead, where they are officials
in a hierarchical imperium. In another sense, gods exist within the realm of
narrative, as characters in stories. Prasenjit Duara has characterized Chinese
god-cults as “interpretive arenas” developed over time through a process he
calls “superscription:”

In this process, extant versions are not totally wiped out. Rather, images and
sequences common to most versions of the
myth are preserved, but by adding or “redis-
Media fans in Taiwan, like
covering” new elements or by giving existing
American, European, and
elements a particular slant, the new inter-
Japanese sci-fi and anime
pretation is lodged in place. Even if the new
fans, actively construct
interpretation should become dominant, pre-
narratives and images
vious versions do not disappear but instead
of the characters far
come into a new relationship with it, as their
beyond those produced
own statuses and roles within what might be
by the mass media.
called the “interpretive arena” of the myth
come to be negotiated and redefined.¹⁰

Media characters likewise exist within an interpretive arena of overlap-

ping and contradictory stories. In my interviews with them, toy merchants
and an agent who brokered the rights to reproduce Japanese and Korean
character images told me that in order for a character to become popular in
Taiwan, it must have a background story. This, they claimed, is why manga
and anime tie-in products sell best. Media fans in Taiwan, like American, Eu-
ropean, and Japanese sci-fi and anime fans, actively construct narratives and

p o p cu lt u r e i co n s  2 0 7
 images of the characters far beyond those produced by the mass media.¹¹ Fans
write backstories for the characters and place them into new situations and
new relationships. They usually see their own fiction and art as drawing out
aspects of the characters that are “hidden” within the original serials, rather
than pure invention. The shared imagination of media characters’ “personali-
ties” are abstracted from fans’ own circulating narratives and images as well
as from the original comics and videos. In many fan performances I observed
during my fieldwork, Pili characters were represented as if they were star ac-
tors who “play themselves” within the Pili serials, sometimes chafing at the
whimsical orders of the scriptwriters or seeking their own means of winning
over fans so that the scriptwriters would be forced to give them “larger roles.”
Like gods, then, media characters may be thought of as having lives of their
own in another, parallel world.

“IDOLIZING” GODS AND MEDIA CHARACTERS:

EMBODIMENT AND AGENCY

In contrast to Japan, where the English loan word aidoru is often used for
media “idols,” the key term in the Taiwanese metaphor is taken from classi-
cal Chinese compound word for icon—ouxiang, or “copy-image.” Fans watch
“idol dramas” (ouxiang ju) from Japan and Korea and are said to “worship
(media) idols” (chongbai ouxiang) or to “idolize” (ouxiang hua) mass media
characters. These phrases are used as much by fans as by critical outsiders. I
believe the use of the term ouxiang implies not so much that Taiwanese fans
think of media characters as being “like gods” but that they think of character
toys as “copy-images” of fictional characters in the same way that icons are
“copy-images” of gods.
Significantly, the ou in ouxiang is also used in the Mandarin terms for
puppets (mu ou) and toy figurines (wan ou, ren ou). One of the main func-
tions of icons and ang-a is to bring the gods or characters out of the realm of
pure narrative, out of the “other world” where they usually reside, and make
them available for interaction with human beings. According to Lin Weipin,
Taiwanese icons, called kim sin (golden bodies) in Holo or shen xiang (god im-
ages) in Mandarin, serve to concretize, or embody, the god, allowing worship-
pers a means to communicate with him or her.¹² The god’s embodiment in the
icon is accomplished first through the rituals for carving the icon and install-
ing it on the home or temple altar. These rituals vary from place to place, but
the process always includes:

20 8  t er i s ilvio
 “The icon is the god’s
1. ru shen / lu sen (bringing in the god): In this
shell-body (shen ke),
ritual, done after the icon is completely carved,
where the god’s soul
a number of objects are sealed into a hole in
(ling hun) resides.”
the back of the icon. This ritual brings the god’s
ling (power, or efficacy) into the icon. If the icon
represents an already existing god, the incense ash from the burner of
another icon of that god is placed in the hole; if the god is a new one, the
ash is replaced with a fu, a paper Taoist charm. Other items symbolically
give the god in the icon life force. These items may vary for different gods
and in different places but often include the five grains and a live wasp or
the fresh blood of a rooster.

2. kai guang dian yan / khai kung (opening the light by dotting the eyes): This
ritual is done after a ritual specialist has selected the most auspicious
place for the icon to reside in the temple or home and the most auspicious
time for it to be installed. This ritual marks the transition from ang-a to
icon. Only after its eyes have been opened is the statue said to “have a
god” (you shen / u sen).¹³

Icons are worshipped through the lighting of incense and sometimes the of-
fering of food. Once the incense has been lit, the worshipper may speak di-
rectly to the god. This may be practiced daily (as in home altars to Guan Yin,
the Buddhist goddess of mercy, or in shop altars to Guan Gong), according to
lunar calendrical rituals (as in major temple festivals), or on an irregular basis
(for example, requests for a sickness to be healed or for a child to pass her
exams). If people fail to worship an icon, the god will leave it. If this happens,
icons may be resacralized through redoing the eye-opening ritual.
As Lin points out, these rituals invest the icon with what Alfred Gell calls
“internal agency” (the sense that the god is physically dwelling within the
icon, that the icon is alive) and “external agency” (the sense that the icon can
be treated as a social being). The agency of icons includes two aspects: ling (or
divine power) and personality.
Liu Wensan, a seminal scholar on local religion and collector of icons,
describes the relationship between gods and icons this way:

The icon is the god’s shell-body (shen ke), where the god’s soul (ling hun) re-
sides. The same god can have many icons, because the gods’ souls (shen ling)
are limitless. They can divide their divine power (shen ling) from their souls
(ling hun) and send it into their icons, to protect and bless the believers in
every district.¹⁴

p o p cu lt u r e i co n s  2 0 9
 the process of constructing a
The term that Liu (and others) uses
communicative relationship with
for the soul of a god is the same as
the media character through
that used for the human soul (ling
its material embodiment in the
hun). As David Jordan noted in his
toy begins with the gaze.
influential work on Taiwanese folk
religion, Taiwanese worship three
types of supernatural beings—gods, ghosts, and ancestors—and the line be-
tween these three is porous.¹⁵ Virtually all of the gods worshipped in Taiwan-
ese temples, both Buddhist and folk Taoist, are historical persons who were
deified after their death. Most gods are thus also ancestors, and ancestors
may become gods. Ghosts are the souls of the dead who have not been prop-
erly worshipped by their descendents (or who have none to worship them).
Ancestors may become “wandering ghosts” if worship is discontinued; ghosts
may become ancestors again if they are rediscovered (e.g., through dreams or
divination) and worship resumed.
The term ling is most often translated as power or efficacy; it is the power
manifest in miracles and accurate prognostications by diviners or spirit me-
diums. Ling is quantitative; icons are said to have more or less of it. There
is another aspect of the soul that is not quantitative but qualitative and in-
dividual. As Daniel C. S. Chen notes, “the concept of ling-hun contains an
important element better translated as ‘personality’ than ‘soul.’ ” ¹⁶ Thus, sud-
den changes in a person’s habitual affect are often explained in terms of the
soul having been “frightened” from the body (xia hun / kia hun). Gods, like
persons, have distinctive personalities, and the faces of icons symbolically
express their character traits. The two aspects of the god’s soul—ling and hun,
power and personality—are intertwined in the icon.
Both the threat and the promise of the simulacra, the ambivalence of sec-
ularization, are bound up in the idea of souls without ling. Media characters
and toys do not have ling. Nonetheless, collectors do, in various ways, treat
character toys as if they have personalities and agency. And how fans invest
character toys with internal and external agency parallels in some striking
ways how worshippers interact with icons.
As with icons, the process of constructing a communicative relationship
with the media character through its material embodiment in the toy begins
with the gaze. Many collectors told me that an ang-a’s most important fea-
ture, that which makes it seem alive, is its yan shen. Yan shen literally means
“eye-god,” and the term is similar to the Hindu concept of darsan, the icon’s
gaze that accepts the worshipper’s devotion and blesses the beholding/beheld
worshipper.¹⁷ Many collectors report that they bought a puppet or figurine

210  ter i s ilvio

only after they felt it was looking at them; this sensed reciprocal gaze is the
primary marker of yuan fen, or a fated relationship between the ang-a and
the collector. The idea that consumer items somehow “call out” to collectors
is hardly unique to Taiwan, and I am sure that doll and figurine collectors
throughout the world may experience some form of the mutual gaze. What I
am interested in here is that the discourse of yan shen and yuan fen link this
experience of consumer culture explicitly to local religious traditions.
As with icons, bringing the character toy home and displaying it allows
the character to become embedded in personal and communal relationships.
One Pili fan wrote the following on a Web site I set up (January–December
2004):

My first puppet was an 18 inch “White

Knight” [one of a series of mass-
produced Pili puppets sold through 7-11
convenience stores in 2004]. . . . When I
first saw it I was surprised by its beauty,
it was like the original, but even more
slim and handsome! I used to feel that
people who bought an “ou” and brought
it home were really crazy, a friend of
mine even described it . . . it’s carry-
ing a miniature “icon” (the kind that
go through the streets in processions)
home to worship! (I hope this doesn’t
offend anyone.) But, after I got my 18
inch “White Knight,” it gave me a kind
of “tasteful collection” pleasure! [ellipsis
and quotation marks in original]

Another fan responded: “Actually, I also

feel that when we buy a puppet and place
it in our home, taking care of it in all sorts
of ways, it really does feel a bit like an
icon.” Although I have never heard a col-
lector of Japanese character toys make an figure 5. Display of Pili puppets in a collector’s home.
Photograph by author.
explicit analogy between toys and icons,
they, like puppet collectors, often refer to buying character products as “bring-
ing Doraemon (or whatever character) home.”

p o p cu lt u r e i co n s  2 11
 Xiao Hong (a pseudonym) is an officer of a fan club dedicated to one of
the stars of the Pili puppetry serials. When I interviewed her in 2006, she
was twenty-nine years old, working as the secretary for her family’s small
retail firm. Around three years before, she had started to collect Pili character
“Xiao Yu wawa”—plastic dolls about eight inches tall, with oversized heads,
huge round eyes, and tiny O-shaped mouths, which are fitted with specially
made costumes, wigs, and accessories to look like various heroes of the Pili
puppetry serials. At the time I interviewed her, she had purchased nine of the
dolls, each one a different character. She and her friends tried to buy different
characters, so that they could create a wide variety of scenarios with them,
and they frequently sent their dolls to each other’s homes to “stay over.” I
asked her how she interacted with the dolls. She said:

I kiss each one every night, only then can I sleep. I used to sleep holding my
Yi Ye Shu doll . . . Yes, I talk to them; I tell them everything. They watch the
Pili videos with me. If the plot of the video makes me angry, I’ll scold them
for their bad behavior. If they do cute things in the videos, I’ll kiss them . . .

Both Pili puppet and character toy collectors often say that Doraemon (or
the White Knight et al.) is a “member of the family.” Pili fans even jokingly
call their puppets “my daughter” or “my son,” or more commonly “our fam-
ily’s (women jia de) White Knight.” As with members of temple associations,
whose icons reside in a different home each year, fans tend to use the trope
of fictive kinship to define their community. Fans often call and refer to their
fan friends as “sister” or “brother.”

BEN ZUN AND FEN SHEN:

THE GENEALOGICAL METAPHOR

I have argued that, due to the similarities between the “superscription” of

myths and the overlapping arena of official and fan narratives, Pili puppetry
fan culture embodies an imagination of globalization as a process that par-
allels the expansion of Chinese god-cults.¹⁸ Judging from the diversity and
abundance of media-fan fiction (tong ren zhi) in Taiwan, I would argue that
this holds for manga, anime, and game fandoms as well. Here I want to note
another parallel between god-cults and fandom, the role that the reproduc-
tion of three-dimensional “copy-images” plays in expanding the territory of
communities.

212 ter i s ilvio

 Bernard Faure writes that

[The] aura [of Buddhist icons] is often explained as resulting from an un-
broken line of mimesis and contact between the first icon and its later
reproductions—the power of this first icon, the Udayana image, itself owing
to its resemblance to and contact with the Buddha himself.¹⁹

In Taiwan, Taoist icons’ histories of mimesis and contact are also traced back
through the incense taken from the burner of an “original” icon and placed
within another during the ru shen / lu sen or “inviting the god in” ritual. Re-
gardless of whether the god represented is associated with the Buddhist or
Taoist pantheon, this process is called fen xiang / hun siang or “dividing the
incense.” The relationship between the original icon and those that contain
its incense ashes is described in terms of a matrilineal metaphor; they are
“mother” and “child” icons; when a local temple icon is brought back to the
temple with the icon from which its internal incense was taken, it is said to
“return to its mother’s home” (hui niang jia).²⁰ In Holo, the term for a “mother”
icon is ben zun / pun chun, the “original eminence”; the term for its “children”
is fen shen / hun sen or “divided bodies.”

figure 6. A side altar in the Di Cang Wang Temple in the Wanhua District of Taipei, featuring large
and small icons of the god Bei Ji Da Di (with black face and black beard) and small icons of several
other gods. Photograph by author.

p o p cu lt u r e i co n s  2 13
 Unlike god-icons or
The same measure word used for icons, zun,
puppets, figurines of
is also frequently used for puppets, especially by
manga, anime, and game
puppeteers and fans. Fans of the Pili serials refer
characters are not
to the puppets used in the videos and films as the
believed to descend
“ben zun.” When Pili fans purchase a puppet rep-
from an “original” toy.
lica of their favorite character, they usually want
it to look as much like the ben zun as possible. A
form of “contagious magic” is also evident in Pili fans’ values for fen shen pup-
pets; puppets made by the same carver who carved the original and costumes
that were cut from the same bolt of cloth as the costume used in the videos
are most valued.
Unlike god-icons or puppets, figurines of manga, anime, and game char-
acters are not believed to descend from an “original” toy. Character-toy col-
lectors do, however, use the metaphor of descent, but they trace toys back
to two-dimensional, rather than three-dimensional, originals—or, perhaps
more accurately, to the images of the “original” characters they have distilled
from the interpretive arena of official and unofficial narratives and images.
For most fan collectors of Japanese character toys, copyrighted toys
(zheng ban) are more valued than pirated (dao ban) ones, and many collec-
tors will only buy copyrighted ones. The copyright tag is not, however, valued
as a legal guarantee—none of the collectors I interviewed were at all con-
cerned with the protection of intellectual property rights. Rather, copyright
was seen as a likely guarantee of mimetic closeness to the original character.
Fans usually claimed that copyrighted products are more jing zhi (refined)
than pirated ones. This is not only because they usually have higher quality
craftsmanship but because they are seen to be more precise simulations. Xie
Yuqi, the author of Duo-la-A-meng Shoucang Da Ji He (Doraemon collector’s
set), claims:

You can measure the quality (jing zhi) [of a toy] from the following: What
material is it made of? Does its appearance [zaoxing] faithfully represent the
special characteristics of the cartoon? Are the small parts detailed? . . . For me,
the most important thing to consider is whether the product brings out Dorae-
mon’s special qualities.²¹

Xie also describes copyrighted Doraemon toys as “products with a Japanese

bloodline” (riben xuetong de shangpin).²² Here she follows the genealogical
metaphor of the icon; copyright, like the ashes within a “child” icon, is proof
of an unbroken line of mimesis with the “parent” cartoon.

214 ter i s ilvio

 THE SPREAD OF THE CULT:
LOCALIZATION AND GLOBALIZATION

As Lin Weipin argues, icons function not only to embody gods but to localize
them, “anchoring” them as permanent protectors of a geographically defined
community.²³ Thus the process of dividing the incense and investing new
icons with a god’s agency is critical to the process of the expansion of Chinese
god-cults—both spreading cults over geographical space and maintaining ties
between satellite and center temple communities through pilgrimage. Given
that this is a major function of Chinese icons, the “pop culture icon” trope is
almost inevitably associated in Taiwan with the process of globalization.
Anthropologists have noted a major transformation in Taiwanese folk
religion over the course of the twentieth century:

Today, religious associations see themselves as part of island-wide net-

works, and deity cultures have gained ground at the expense of local temple
cults . . . What Lin Meirong has described as “belief circles” (xinyangquan),
with no territorial limitation, are ascendant over the “worship circles” (jisi-
quan) of traditional Taiwan.²⁴

Local temple cults still exist in many villages and urban neighborhoods in
Taiwan. For example, for temple cults dedicated to the Earth God (Tu Di
Gong) the worship circle of those who participate in collective rituals is geo-
graphically limited to the space marked out by annual rituals in which the
icons are carried around the village or neighborhood. But for young, urban,
middle-class Taiwanese like my informants, such practices have become nos-
talgic phenomena. The religious institutions that are thriving today often
have territories that expand not only throughout the island but beyond. For
example, the Mazu cult now includes huge pilgrimages between Taiwan and
Fujian, mapping out a cross-strait territory that defies state borders, and the
Buddhist Compassion Association (Ciji Hui) has established branches around
the world.²⁵
As with the Mazu cult, pilgrimage has become part of how media char-
acters’ “belief circles” are reterritorialized into “worship circles,” defined not
by the permanent residential space of fans but by their physical movement
through the world. Leng Bin’s second book on her Snoopy toy collection is
the record of a trip she took to a number of international “origin sites” of the
character, including Charles Schulz’s birthplace in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the
Camp Snoopy theme park in California, and the giant Snoopy Town store in

p o p cu lt u r e i co n s  2 15
 Osaka.²⁶ The book includes photographs of Leng Bin’s own Snoopy toys at
several of these sites. Although Leng Bin does not explicitly use the pilgrim-
age trope, the similarities between her trip and Mazu worshippers’ carrying
icons of the deity from various temples in Taiwan to “mother” temples in
Fujian is striking.
Like deities, media characters are characterized by fans in terms of their
territorial range; the Pili heroes are “Taiwanese popular culture icons” whose
movements into the global market are celebrated. Snoopy and Doraemon are
described, in contrast, as “global characters.”
As several scholars (e.g., Faure, Sangren) have noted, the multiplication
of images of Chinese deities does not in itself diminish their aura. To the
contrary, more images are proof of the strength of the god’s ling. Likewise,
despite the fact that hard-to-find toys are indeed more valuable for Taiwan-
ese collectors, the proliferation of mass-market character toys does not di-
minish the aura of the “original” media character. Rather, the multiplication
and geographical reach of character toys is seen as proof of the charisma of
the “original” character.

SIMULACRA AND LOSS OF AURA IN TAIWAN

If the proliferation of simulacra is not a threat to the aura, Taiwanese people

nevertheless feel the loss of ling as an effect of modernity and as the loss of
a certain kind of “reality.” Ling, as I have noted, is the common power among
gods, ghosts, and ancestors. The character also refers to the dead and to fu-
nerary ritual. Humans are generally not said to have ling during life (unless
they are possessed by, or otherwise in contact with, a god, ghost, or ances-
tor). The association of ling with death may also be seen in the animal sac-
rifice within the ru shen ritual. Thus, we might say that ling is the power of
the dead to influence the world of the living. When character toys take over
the agency-embodying and community-grounding functions of icons, they
diminish the weight of history, lineage, and the racial conception of Chinese
identity. Media characters are symbols of secularization not so much due to
their commodity status as to their fictionality, their detachment from bio-
logical descent. What is lost is not the possibility of transcending the human
but rather of forsaking human biology for human imagination.²⁷
Despite differences in religious bases for understanding capitalist con-
sumer culture, the theories of Benjamin, Baudrillard, and Jameson are ex-
tremely popular in Taiwan. The concept of hyperreality resonates strongly

216 ter i s ilvio

with the experiences of many scholars and students here. Taiwanese schol-
ars and students most often apply these theories to American cultural prod-
ucts rather than to Japanese or Taiwanese ones. When postmodern theories
of the loss of the real are applied to East Asian media characters, however,
the ambivalent implications of the “pop culture icon” trope for Taiwan’s e-
generation come into focus.
Taiwanese artist Hong Donglu’s CG images show glossy figurines of
super-girl characters from video games and manga (e.g., Sailor Moon) floating
in front of Renaissance Christian paintings or iconic Chinese national images
such as the Great Wall. Citing Baudrillard, Qiu Yaxuan gives a “queer shojo”
(ku’er shaonü) reading of Hong’s work. She writes:

If the figures in the foreground are fake, the national and religious images
in the background cannot hide their own falsehood either. The world we
are facing is like a thin, fragile eggshell, we can only embody the myth of
the new generation and walk freely through it. The GK [garage kit—a kind
of PVC figurine that must be assembled from parts] models break through
the background, facing the audience in righteous and brilliant poses. For
the audience, who have shared both their loneliness and tenderness with
them, it is like facing a micro-archaeology of game–manga–anime geneal-
ogy and the frequent changes of the real world outside—only the generic
characters of the world of manga and anime are real. . . . Together these im-
mature girls shoulder the power and the duty to change the world. Perhaps
they also conceal the marginal cultural values of the new generation’s youth
culture, desiring nevertheless to participate in the real world. The revolution
of the individual can be completed in the audiovisual world, but the ideal of
self-realization is finally lost within a constructed fantasy.²⁸

Steven Sangren has argued, following Durkheim and Marx, that ling is an
“alienated representation” of the self-productive capacity of both individual
and collective subjects.²⁹ The trope of the “pop culture icon” disrupts this alien-
ation, throwing the responsibility for both self-making and world-making
back to the human beings. It is not surprising, then, that Sailor Moon might
present Taiwanese youth with the same ambivalent sense of terror and ex-
hilaration that Walter Benjamin found in the technologies of mechanical re-
production. One particularity of Taiwanese readings of the trope, however, is
the emphasis on the exchange of the racial-historical grounding of identity
for the possibility of stepping “out into the world”—a promise not just for
individual girls and for youth culture but for Taiwan itself.

p o p cu lt u r e i co n s  2 17
 Notes

Research for this paper was funded by the National Science Council of Taiwan (grant
#NSC --H--). I thank Ilana Gershon, Naifei Ding, Amie Parry, Irene Fang-
chih Yang, and Chang Hsun for their extremely helpful comments on my drafts, as well as
the anonymous reviewers for Mechademia. I also thank my wonderful research assistants
Lingyi Huang, Yi-yi Hsieh, and Wenyi Huang.
. Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation, trans. Sheila Faria Glaser (Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan Press, ), .
. Alfred Gell, Art and Agency: an Anthropological Theory (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
), –.
. Yang Mao-lin, Canonization of the Gods—the Pure Land of Maha, gallery catalog
(Taipei: Lin and Keng Gallery, ), .
. Anne Allison, Millennial Monsters: Japanese Toys and the Global Imagination (Berke-
ley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ), –.
. I do not see Taiwanese folk religion, or the pop culture icon trope, as unique or
unchanging. Scholarly and popular discourse on folk religion in contemporary Taiwan has
been strongly influenced by the ideology of “indigenization” and intertwined with a variety
of contradictory identity projects. See Randall Nadeau and Chang Hsun, “Gods, Ghosts,
and Ancestors: Religious Studies and the Question of ‘Taiwanese Identity,’” in Religion in
Modern Taiwan, ed. Philip Clart and Charles B. Jones (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,
), and Mayfair Meihui Yang, “Goddess across the Taiwan Strait: Matrifocal Ritual
Space, Nation-State, and Satellite Television Footprints,” Public Culture , no.  ():
–. I am most interested in the points of intersection between these discourses and
local discourses about consumer culture. Many of the practices and concepts I discuss here
may resonate with other areas of the world, particularly China and Japan, whose religious
histories have long been entwined with Taiwan’s. My focus here, however, is on how global-
ized media images are cathected to “Taiwanese culture” through specific, local inflections of
the toy-as-icon trope. I should also note that Taiwanese toy collectors are by no means a ho-
mogenous group with a unified set of ideas about toys and icons. People of both sexes and
all ages collect character toys in Taiwan, although the majority are high school and college
students, and young professionals. In my fieldwork I came across a wide variety of attitudes
towards character toys. The pop culture icon trope, however, is most explicit and elaborated
in discourse of and about a subculture of media fans who are primarily young (teens to
early thirties), urban, and strongly coded as feminine, although men participate.
. Among the toy collectors I questioned on the subject, approximately  percent
identified themselves as Christian,  percent defined themselves as Buddhist, and
another  percent identified themselves as having “no religion.” The remaining half in-
dicated that they participated in some form of folk religious worship, mostly limited to
home altar worship (of ancestors and gods) and to annual festivals such as Tomb Sweeping
Day. Many of these prefaced their answer with “No religion, but . . .”
. There is a roughly equivalent term in Hakka, ning-shen (I thank Zhang Zhengwei
for this information), but no term with the same semantic range in Mandarin.

218  t er i s ilvio
 . For terms that translate easily between dialects, I put the Mandarin first with the
Holo after the slash.
. According to master carver Xu Bingyuan, Taiwanese puppeteers from the Qing
Dynasty to the s usually bought their puppets from carvers in Fujian. However, as the
Sino-Japanese war began, and direct relations between Taiwan and the mainland were cut
off, puppeteers began asking local icon carvers to make puppets based on the Fujianese
models (interview with author, June ).
. Prasenjit Duara, “Superscribing Symbols: The Myth of Guandi, Chinese God of
War,” Journal of Asian Studies , no.  (): .
. The classic ethnography of American active media-fan culture is Henry Jenkins,
Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture (New York: Routledge, ). For
Japan, see Sharon Kinsella, “Japanese Subculture in the s: Otaku and the Amateur
Manga Movement,” Journal of Japanese Studies , no.  (): –.
. Lin Wei-pin, “Taiwan Han Ren de Shenxiang: Tan Shen Ruhe Juxiang” (Icons of
the Taiwanese Han people: A discussion of how gods are objectified) Taiwan Journal of An-
thropology , no.  (): –.
. These descriptions are summarized from Liu Wensan, Taiwan Shenxiang Yishu (The
art of Taiwanese icons) (Taipei: Yishu Jia Chubanshe, ) and Lin, “Taiwan Han Ren de
Shenxiang.”
. Liu, Taiwan Shenxiang Yishu, .
. David Jordan, Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors: Folk Religion in a Taiwanese Village
(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ).
. Daniel C. S. Chen, “The Notion of the Soul in Chinese Folk Religion and Christian
Witness,” Asia Journal of Theology (Singapore) , no.  (): . There is much debate
among specialists in Chinese religion about the nature and number of the human soul.
The theories that there are three, ten, or twelve distinct kinds of “soul” are summarized in
Chen’s article. I am simplifying here in order to focus on those aspects of the concept of
ling-hun that are most familiar and relevant for my informants, who are laypeople and not
specialists.
. Although there is no term in Chinese that can translate darsan, the term is used
to analyze Buddhist and Taiwanese folk religious icon worship in Bernard Faure, “The Bud-
dhist Icon and the Modern Gaze,” Critical Inquiry , no.  (): –, and Lin, “Tai-
wan Han Ren de Shenxiang.”
. Teri Silvio, “Remediation and Local Globalizations: How Taiwan’s ‘Digital Video
Knights-errant Puppetry’ Writes the History of the New Media in Chinese,” Cultural An-
thropology , no.  (): –.
. Faure, “The Buddhist Icon,” .
. P. Steven Sangren, “Dialectics of Alienation: Individuals and Collectivities in Chi-
nese Religion,” Man , no.  (): –; Yang, “Goddess across the Taiwan Strait.”
. Xie Yuqi, Duo-la-A-meng Shoucang Da Ji He (Doraemon collector’s set) (Taipei: Guo
Bao, ): , italics added.
. Ibid., .
. Lin, “Taiwan Han Ren de Shenxiang.”
. Nadeau and Chang, “Gods, Ghosts, and Ancestors,” .
. See Yang, “Goddess across the Taiwan Strait.”

p o p cu lt u r e i co n s  2 19
 . Leng Bin, Ai Shang Shinupi: Women de Shinupi Shoucang  (In love with Snoopy:
Our Snoopy collection  [Snoopy in our memories ]) (Taipei: Guo Bao, ).
. The literal worship of fictional characters is by no means a new phenomenon in
Chinese folk religion. Sun Wukong and Zhu Bajie (the Monkey King and Pigsy), characters
from the Ming Dynasty novel Journey to the West, have long been worshipped in Taiwan.
This practice is seen as superstition by religious specialists and is associated with the lower
classes, women, and marginal social groups (in Taiwan, Zhu Bajie is worshipped by prosti-
tutes). To a certain extent, then, the ambivalence of the pop culture icon trope in contem-
porary Taiwan replicates a historical ambivalence around popular culture and religion. The
“worship” of commercialized mass media characters represents a threat to the authority of
patriarchal lineage and official narrative. It is thus not surprising that it is young women,
who are marginalized by these lineages and narratives, who are most active within media
fandoms.
. Qiu Yaxuan, “Zai bentao yuan qu de tongnian yu shanshan lai chi de chengzhang
zhijian, qing siyu wo xiang shijie geming de liliang: tan Hong Donglu jiu jiu nian wanju
xilie” (Between swiflty fleeing childhood and slowly approaching maturity, please give me
the strength to move toward world revolution: on Hong Donglu’s  toy series), United
Daily News Supplement, “Literary Café,” December . http://web.cca.gov.tw/coffee/au-
thor/skyyoung/.html (accessed September , ).
. Sangren, “Dialectics of Alienation.”

220  t er i s ilvio
 STEVEN T. BROWN

Machinic Desires: Hans Bellmer’s

Dolls and the Technological
Uncanny in Ghost in the Shell 2:
Innocence

There are no human beings in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence. The characters
are all human-shaped dolls.
—Oshii Mamoru

One of the most distinctive aspects of Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence, Os-
hii Mamoru’s 2004 sequel to the highly acclaimed feature-length anima-
tion Ghost in the Shell (1995), is the film’s obsession with the uncanniness
of ningyō (literally, “human-shaped figures”) in the form of dolls, puppets,
automata, androids, and cyborgs. In interviews, Oshii has acknowledged the
importance of the concept of the uncanny (unheimlich in German; bukimina in
Japanese) and its relation to ningyō for an understanding of Ghost in the Shell
2.¹ This concern is one that the sequel shares with the first movie, but Ghost
in the Shell 2 goes well beyond the earlier film in the scope of its engagement.
Of particular interest is Ghost in the Shell 2’s repeated references to the erotic
grotesque dolls constructed and photographed by German Surrealist Hans
Bellmer (1902–1975). In this essay, I explore Ghost in the Shell 2’s interme-
dial play with various ningyō and how such engagements enter into the film’s
complex evocations of the uncanny at the limits of the human.

222
 Any study of the uncanny must acknowledge at the outset how much
it owes to the pioneering efforts of not only Sigmund Freud but also Ernst
Jentsch,² the earliest writers to analyze the variety of complex phenomena
associated with the uncanny and attempt to account for it in psychological
and/or psychoanalytic terms. In addition, an enormous amount of critical at-
tention has been given to Freud’s essay on “The ‘Uncanny’” (1919) by contem-
porary philosophers, literary theorists, and cultural critics such as Jacques
Derrida, Hélène Cixous, Sander Gilman, Neil Hertz, Samuel Weber, and Nich-
olas Royle.³ In most cases, such post-Freudian readers of the uncanny have fo-
cused their analysis on deconstructing Freud’s reading of E. T. A. Hoffmann’s
“The Sandman” (1816).⁴ In what follows, I am more concerned with discussing
the uncanny as a literary and artistic motif with philosophical implications
than I am in the explanatory power of Freudian discourse to account for the
psychosexual etiology of the uncanny. In other words, I am less interested in
rereading Freud’s (mis)reading of “The Sandman,” or in critiquing psychoana-
lytic metanarratives such as the “castration complex” or “death drive,” than I
am in unpacking the function of the trope of the uncanny in Ghost in the Shell
2. Indeed, I argue that engagements with the uncanny appearing in Ghost in
the Shell 2 should be regarded not so much as Freudian gestures on the part
of Oshii as they are byproducts of Oshii’s remediation⁵ of the dolls of Hans
Bellmer, which were explicitly designed to evoke the uncanny on many levels:
more specifically, in terms of the repetition of déjà vu, the blurring of bound-
aries between life and death, animate and inanimate, and the doppelgänger.
What binds together all of these instances of the uncanny is that in each case,
the uncanny evokes a sense of unfamiliarity at the heart of the familiar, a
feeling of unhomeliness in the home, an estrangement of the everyday. The
defamiliarizations produced by the uncanny in Ghost in the Shell 2 work to de-
stabilize our assumptions about what it means to be human in a posthuman
world and how we might relate to all the ningyō with whom we increasingly
share the world.

“ONCE THEIR STRINGS ARE CUT,

THEY EASILY CRUMBLE”

In his essay “From Wooden Cyborgs to Celluloid Souls: Mechanical Bodies

in Anime and Japanese Puppet Theater,” Christopher Bolton points out the
strong analogy in the first Ghost in the Shell movie between cyborgs and tra-
ditional Japanese puppet performance (ningyō jōruri) with respect to “the

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 2 3
 Visually, the puppet motif
divide between body and voice” that is
appears repeatedly in
“foregrounded by the ventriloquistic me-
conjunction with scenes in
dium of animation.” ⁶ There is no ques-
which one character
tion that puppet-like characters and the
literally or metaphorically
division of body and voice are also im-
“pulls the strings” of
portant to the world of Ghost in the Shell
another via cyberbrain
2. During the course of their investiga-
hacking and manipulation.
tions into a series of gruesome crimes
committed by female androids called “gy-
noids” ⁷—“hyper-realistic female robot[s] created specifically for sexual com-
panionship” ⁸ who have murdered their owners after apparent malfunctions
and then self-destructed—Batou and his new partner Togusa encounter nu-
merous figures who are likened to puppets and confronted with their lack
of control over their own actions and identity. This concern with puppets is
announced to us in the soundtrack that plays as the opening credits roll in a
choral melody composed by Kawai Kenji (with three variations repeated dur-
ing the course of the film), entitled “Song of Puppets” (Kugutsu uta), which
tells of a legendary Japanese creature called a “nue,” with a monkey’s head,
raccoon dog’s body, tiger’s legs, and snake’s tail, who sings in grief about the
inanimate spirits of flowers, which lament “their being in this world of life, /
Their dreams having faded away,” awaiting the dawn of a new world in which
the “gods will descend.”⁹ The nue is a chimera, able to turn itself into a black
cloud, that brings misfortune and malady to those it visits, such as in the
famous episode from the Tale of the Heike, where it is said to have made Em-
peror Konoe (r. 1141–1155) sick before being vanquished by Minamoto no Yo-
rimasa (1106–1180). In the context of Ghost in the Shell 2, as the nue’s “Song of
Puppets” is played over the opening credits, we witness the manufacture and
assembly of a gynoid. Insofar as the ontological status of puppets (and their
close cousins: dolls, automata, robots, cyborgs) and their relation to humans
haunts the entire film, the elegiac “Song of Puppets” seems to announce not
only the disappearance of completely organic human beings, whose “dreams
having faded away” grieve and fall like the flowers mentioned in the song, but
perhaps also the corruption of innocence that Oshii associates with the an-
thropomorphization of dolls and robots. But even as it nostalgically mourns
the loss of beauty and innocence, the nue also announces the dawn of a new
world. What that new world entails is the subject of Ghost in the Shell 2.
Visually, the puppet motif appears repeatedly in conjunction with scenes
in which one character literally or metaphorically “pulls the strings” of an-
other via cyberbrain hacking and manipulation. In the world of Ghost in the

224 ste ve n t. b row n

Shell 2, cyberbrain hacking is associated with “the implantation of virtual ex-
periences, including false memories, in order to steal information or control
the victim.” ¹⁰ In the futuristic setting of the story, which takes place in the
year 2032 in unnamed multiethnic Asian cities (modeled after Hong Kong,
Taipei, Manhattan, and Milan), Batou and most of his colleagues in Section
9 have cyberbrain implants, which are electronic components that facilitate
direct access to massive information networks and memory storage in cyber-
space, as well as other functions such as silent communication transmissions.
Although clearly augmenting human capability, such implants also make one
vulnerable to hackers, despite the existence of attack barriers that are sup-
posed to help prevent infiltration but cannot guarantee it.
Scenes of puppet-like cyberbrain manipulation are foregrounded
throughout Ghost in the Shell 2. For example, when Batou and Togusa pay
a visit to the Kōjinkai yakuza gang, a local crime syndicate suspected in the
murder of Jack Volkerson (a shipping inspector for the company that manu-
factures the gynoids), Batou defeats his opponents in the gun battle that en-
sues by hacking into their cyberbrains and infiltrating their technologically
augmented vision centers so that they shoot at a holograph of Batou rather
than at Batou himself. In the process, Batou also subdues a yakuza cyborg
outfitted with an illegal Chinese prosthetic limb known as “the claw” and
manipulates him like a marionette. In the convenience store scene that fol-
lows, which is a spectacular blend of three-dimensional computer-generated
backgrounds and two-dimensional cel-style characters melded together into
a hybrid form that astonishes with the sheer complexity of visual detail,¹¹ it
is Batou himself who becomes the object of “ghost-hacking” and is manipu-
lated like a puppet, probably by the professional hacker Kim at the request of
Locus Solus (literally, “solitary place”), the company that manufactures the
gynoids. In order to protect Batou from himself, as well as other patrons in
the store, Ishikawa zaps Batou’s cyberbrain implants. Batou later does the
same to Togusa during a visit to Kim’s mansion when Togusa is brain-hacked
by Kim and subjected to a series of hallucinations, including scenes in which
both he himself and Batou have turned into automata. Although Togusa is
the least cybernetic member of the Section 9 team, he is nonetheless vulner-
able to ghost-hacking due to his cyberbrain implants.
The uncanny blurring of boundaries between the animate and the inani-
mate, the living and the dead, is clearly exemplified by puppet-like characters,
but the uncanny is also evoked in scenes involving cyberbrain hacking and e-
brain communication. In recent years, there has been quite a bit of debate in
the United States about the constitutionality (or lack thereof) of warrantless

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 2 5
 wiretapping performed by the National Security Agency for purposes of do-
mestic spying on suspected terrorist subjects. What Ghost in the Shell 2 offers
is a meditation on ontological wiretapping or electronic telepathy. If warrant-
less wiretapping violates free speech and privacy rights, ontological wiretap-
ping (or electronic telepathy) undercuts the very existence of the stable sub-
ject to which such rights supposedly accrue.¹² What makes such instances
of electronic telepathy profoundly uncanny is that, as Andrew Bennett and
Nicholas Royle have suggested, they involve “the thought that your thoughts
are perhaps not your own, however private or concealed you might have as-
sumed them to be.” ¹³
Of course, this also raises serious questions about the status and au-
thenticity of memory. If one’s memories are not entirely one’s own, if virtual
memories are as vivid and realistic as actual memories, then how does one
know whether one’s memories are real or simply fake memories that have
been implanted like those of the replicants in Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner
(1982)? In the first Ghost in the Shell, Batou expresses a thoroughgoing skepti-
cism about the possibility of distinguishing the real from the virtual: “Virtual
experiences, dreams. . . . All data that exists is both reality and fantasy,” says
Batou to Kusanagi. And he articulates similar views in Ghost in the Shell 2,
where he affirms that “there is no way to distinguish reminiscence from true
memory” and asks Togusa: “Do your wife and daughter, waiting for you at
home, really exist? . . . Your family exists only in your mind.” In so doing, Ba-
tou draws an implicit comparison between Togusa and a ghost-hacked trash
collector who appeared in the first Ghost in the Shell, whose implanted memo-
ries led him to believe that he was living with his wife and daughter, when, in
fact, he was living alone.¹⁴ And on this matter at least, Batou is in agreement
with the philosophically inclined hacker Kim in Ghost in the Shell 2, who ex-
plicitly questions how one can distinguish between physical reality and “an
extension of false illusions generated by virtual signals.” “Humans,” argues
Kim, “are nothing but the thread from which the dream of life is woven.”
With memory and subjectivity destabilized in this way, it is no wonder
that characters in the world of Ghost in the Shell are frequently subjected to
acts of ventriloquism, in which one is used as the mouthpiece for another.
This ventriloquism is perhaps most pronounced in Ghost in the Shell 2 in
terms of the unbridled intertexuality of its screenplay. The dialogue of Ghost
in the Shell 2 is replete with layer upon layer of literary, religious, philosophi-
cal, and scientific citations, ranging from the Buddha to Confucius, from the
Bible to Milton, from Zeami to Gogol, from Julien Offray de La Mettrie to
Richard Dawkins.

226 ste ve n t. b row n

 Among the many quotations appearing in the film is one that is repeated
time and time again. After the spectacular festival scene, as Batou interrogates
an informant in an effort to determine the whereabouts of Kim, Togusa spots
a stone plaque on the wall of a mausoleum in ruins, on which is inscribed the
following poem: “Life and death come and go like marionettes dancing on a
table. Once their strings are cut, they easily crumble (Seishi no kyorai suru wa
hōtō no kairai tari issen tayuru toki raku raku rai rai).” ¹⁵ Oshii underscores the
importance of language in his animated cinema not only by the tissue of quo-
tations he interweaves throughout but also by visually foregrounding specific
quotations such as this as texts on the screen. The same poem appears again
as Kim’s “dying message” ¹⁶ in the form of a hologram (see Figure 1). Later, it
shows up yet again painted on a wall inside the offshore factory ship belong-
ing to Locus Solus. Although Ghost in the Shell 2 is replete with quotations,
this is the only one that is repeated multiple times and linked either directly
or indirectly to Locus Solus, Inc., and its manufacture of gynoids. Clearly, it
is significant to the animated world that Oshii has constructed. So how are
we to interpret it?
First, it should be pointed out that this quotation is from a poem in-
cluded in a treatise by the Muromachi-period noh playwright and actor Zeami
(c.1363–c.1443) entitled “Mirror of the Flower” (1424, Kakyō).¹⁷ Taking into
consideration the Buddhist connotations and genealogy of the poem, a more

figure 1. An image of the poem that constitutes Kim’s calling card and eventually his dying mes-
sage. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 2 7
 literal translation might be: “Cycles of birth and death come and go, a pup-
pet dances on the stage. When one string is cut, it collapses and crumbles.”
In the context of noh drama, Zeami uses this poem to advise the actor that
he must “make his mind [function] like [these] strings, and without its being
perceived by anyone.” ¹⁸ In other words, when playing a particular role, the
noh actor must learn to create the illusion that a character has come to life on
the noh stage, just like a marionette manipulated by a puppeteer. The perfor-
mance of noh relies upon forms of artifice not unlike the strings of a puppet.
In the context of Ghost in the Shell 2, this quotation from Zeami’s “Mirror of
the Flower” treatise underscores the function of citationality throughout the
film, as well as the performative aspect of animation itself.
At the formal level, the technique of interspersing quotations with dia-
logue is one that Oshii openly borrows from French New Wave director Jean-
Luc Godard, who has made great use of such citationality in his films. Godard
is well known for rejecting the continuity editing of classical Hollywood cin-
ema and offering instead “a discontinuous and fragmentary narrative style
that breaks up time and space, thereby forming a collage of letters, words,
images, sounds, music, voices, paintings, quotations, and references to art
and cinema.” ¹⁹ Godard’s employment of quotation, in particular, adds a dis-
tinctive dimension to his films that foregrounds the status of language in
cinema, with “words and images intermingl[ing] constantly,” ²⁰ “infusing the
image with language,” ²¹ thereby creating a sort of “cinematic essay” ²² that
constantly reminds us that we are viewing a film that is the product of the
director’s arbitrary choices.
However, in addition to being an obvious homage to Godard,²³ I would
argue that Oshii’s use of citationality in Ghost in the Shell 2 also serves a
larger philosophical purpose in relation to the ventriloquism of the puppet
theater. Such citationality foregrounds not simply the ventriloquism of the
director or screenplay writer but, more importantly, the ventriloquism of the
flows of transnational cultural production, as has been discussed by numer-
ous contemporary critical theorists. “Who speaks and acts?” asks philoso-
pher Gilles Deleuze. “It is always a multiplicity, even within the person who
speaks and acts.” ²⁴ In short, the subject becomes a tissue of citations. The
numerous literary, poetic, philosophical, and scientific quotations in Ghost
in the Shell 2 underscore the extent to which its characters are akin to talk-
ing dolls—mouthpieces for the sociocultural machinery and transnational
flows that intersect them. By foregrounding the transnational intertextuality
of human subjectivity, Oshii underscores the extent to which we are thor-
oughly mediated animals, with no authentic thoughts or intentions but only

228  st e ve n t. b row n
 The numerous literary, poetic,
always already mediated thoughts
philosophical, and scientific
and intentions. This citationality at
quotations in Ghost in the Shell
the narrative level is paralleled at the
2 underscore the extent to
visual level by a city that is overflow-
which its characters are akin
ing with signs and advertisements, a
to talking dolls-mouthpieces
thoroughly commodified urban space
for the sociocultural
not unlike what one finds in the
machinery and transnational
shopping districts of Tokyo, Osaka,
flows that intersect them.
or Hong Kong today. In his director’s
notes for the film, Oshii has com-
mented on the ubiquity and importance of signs (especially those using Chi-
nese characters) to the visual appearance of the urban landscapes in Ghost in
the Shell 2.²⁵ This ubiquity of signs and unavoidability of mass media suggests
that the city itself and almost everyone in it is subject to the mechanisms of
commodification: “reality” dissolves into the virtuality of mass media.²⁶ In
such a world, human beings start to resemble automata.

FROM PUPPETS TO AUTOMATA

Although there is no question that a significant proportion of imagery in

Ghost in the Shell 2 resonates with the history of the puppet theater in Japan,
the Japanese puppet theater does not go far enough to account for the ap-
pearance in the film of the plethora of doll-like figures of varying types, which
extend far beyond that of traditional puppets. In particular, Ghost in the Shell
2 also places great emphasis on two types of dolls that are quite distinct from
the dolls of the Japanese puppet theater: mechanical dolls or automata,
called karakuri ningyō, on the one hand, and the gynoids inspired by the dolls
photographed by Hans Bellmer, on the other. Before turning to the gynoids
and their relaton to the dolls of Bellmer, it is worth spending some time to
unpack the role played by karakuri ningyō and their relation to the uncanny.
Japan has a long history of mechanical dolls, stretching back as far as the
seventh century, when a doll that could indicate directions by means of an
internal compass was presented to Empress Saimei (r. 655–661) in the year
658 by the Buddhist priest Chiyu.²⁷ Perhaps the most famous ancient Japa-
nese mechanical doll is one that was developed during the ninth century by
Prince Kaya (794–871) in response to a terrible drought that was choking the
rice fields throughout the land. Prince Kaya, who, in addition to being the son
of Emperor Kanmu (r. 781–806), was known as a skilled craftsman, devised

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 2 9
 a mechanical doll to aid a local temple that was particularly affected by the
drought, as recounted in the Konjaku monogatari (Tales of Times Now Past)
from the twelfth century:

He made a doll in the shape of a boy about four feet tall, holding a jug up-
raised in both hands. It was devised so that when it was filled with water
the water would instantly pour down over the boy’s face. Those who saw it
brought ladles full of water so that they could fill the jug and watch the boy’s
face get wet. It was a great curiosity; the news spread, and soon all the capi-
tal was there, pouring water and loudly enjoying the fun. And all the while,
naturally, the water was collecting in the fields. When the fields were fully
inundated, the Prince took the doll and hid it. And when the water dried
up, he took the doll out and set it up again. Just as before, people gathered
to pour water, and the fields were inundated. In this manner the fields were
kept safe from harm.²⁸

Like many other dolls that were later

What sharply distinguishes
developed in medieval and early mod-
automata such as karakuri
ern Japan, Prince Kaya’s mechanical
ningyō from the dolls
doll, which is known as the mizukumi
employed in the Japanese
ningyō, or “water-splashing doll,”
puppet theater is the former’s
combined practical technology with
mechanism of self-animation.
entertainment. Another famous early
example dates back to the Muromachi
period (1392–1573), when Gosukōin (1372–1456), the father of Emperor Go-
hanazono (r. 1428–1464), describes in his diary an “elaborate mechanical doll
tableaux reenacting famous battle scenes such as Yoshitsune’s perilous cliff
descent at the Battle of Ichinotani or the great hunt on Mount Fuji of the
Soga Brothers.” ²⁹ Insofar as early Japanese mechanical dolls seem to have
been inspired by even earlier Chinese examples, the etymology of the term
karakuri ningyō is said to reflect this genealogy with the “kara” of karakuri
phonetically connoting its Chinese origin or derivation.
The development of karakuri ningyō and their popularity peaked dur-
ing the Edo period under the guidance of Takeda Ōmi (d. 1727), who incor-
porated and adapted clockwork technology, which had been recently im-
ported from the West, and established the first mechanical puppet theater
in the Dōtombori entertainment district of Osaka to compete with kabuki
and ningyō jōruri, Japan’s traditional puppet theater. Takeda specialized in
karakuri ningyō based on technology involving wooden cogwheel and string

230  st e ve n t. b row n
mechanisms, weight-driven mechanisms based on the displacement of sand,
water, or mercury, and a new spring mechanism (zenmai), which he had devel-
oped, that was made out of whalebone. A wide range of karakuri ningyō were
developed for Takeda’s theater, including exhibits and performances that il-
lustrated “the development of a fetus within the womb,” “a neck-wrestling
figure in which members of the audience were invited to match their strength
against a life-sized mechanical doll, and calligraphy demonstrations based
on the characters for ‘plum,’ ‘cherry,’ and ‘pine,’ in which a mechanical doll
simultaneously executed these figures using a brush in both hands and his
mouth.” ³⁰ In an effort to compete with kabuki and traditional puppet the-
ater, the karakuri ningyō displays became even more complex and spectacu-
lar; however, this was not enough to prevent Takeda’s karakuri ningyō theater
from being eclipsed by the more popular kabuki and ningyō jōruri.
What sharply distinguishes automata such as karakuri ningyō from the
dolls employed in the Japanese puppet theater is the former’s mechanism
of self-animation, their ability to move (or at least appear to move) by them-
selves. Although especially complex karakuri tableaux sometimes required
the employment of operators, the karakuri performances were more mechan-
ically driven than puppeteer controlled. In contrast, the dolls of traditional
Japanese puppet theater were animated, but they were not automated. It is
this automation—the very mechanism denoted by the word “karakuri”—that
also distinguishes automata from puppets in Ghost in the Shell 2.
In the context of Ghost in the Shell 2, we see three types of karakuri ningyō
in action: (1) enormous dashi karakuri (parade float mechanical dolls) created
for processional floats used in festival parades, such as the giant automated
elephant and other large-scale creatures appearing in the religious festival
witnessed by Batou and Togusa on their way to investigating Locus Solus,
which were traditionally intended not only to entertain the gods but also
to serve as vessels into which the gods were thought to descend; (2) much
smaller zashiki karakuri (parlor mechanical dolls) produced for home use and
enjoyment, such as the “tea-serving” karakuri ningyō encountered in Kim’s
mansion; and (3) life-sized butai karakuri (stage mechanical dolls) designed
for public performance, such as in Takeda Ōmi’s theater. The figure of Kim,
the professional hacker working for Locus Solus, as well as the automaton-
like doubles of Togusa and Batou that are hallucinated by Togusa in Kim’s
neo-baroque mansion, are reminiscent of the sort of life-sized mechanical
dolls used in butai karakuri. Although all three types of karakuri ningyō are
relevant to the film’s diegetic world, it is the last type that becomes the focus
of Oshii’s engagements with the uncanny in Ghost in the Shell 2.

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 3 1
 THE UNCANNY MANSION

In Batou and Togusa’s encounter with Kim in his surrealistic mansion, it is

Kim’s mechanical movements and gestures that make him more akin to a
karakuri ningyō than to an android or cyborg. This is not to say that androids
are not also capable of inhuman movements lacking smooth transitions,
but in the case of Kim, he is represented in a way that repeatedly evokes the
automaton-like appearance and cogwheel-driven mechanisms of other kara-
kuri ningyō, such as the “tea-serving” (chahakobi ningyō) doll that also appears
in Kim’s mansion. In her study of Edo-period aesthetics and culture, Mor-
ishita Misako has suggested that it is the strangeness of karakuri movements
that underscores their liminality:

The karakuri puppet appears on the border where man and puppet make
precarious contact. The figure of the [karakuri] puppet resembles the human
figure. However, the moment that it starts to move, it reveals a decisive
divergence from human movement; it makes rapid shifts difficult to capture
with the naked eye, while simultaneously exposing its clumsiness. Each mo-
ment that its naive movement is inscribed, the expected modes of everyday
performance and standard narrative patterns are dislocated. This disillusion
is compensated for by our attraction to the movements and changes which
that strange body, distinct from the human body, enacts to a greater or
lesser degree than normal.³¹

It is at this intersection between attraction and repulsion, between simulation

of the human and its estrangement, between the organic and the mechanical,
that Togusa and Batou encounter the uncanny in all its multifariousness.
In the scenes that unfold at Kim’s mansion, the uncanny is evoked in four
ways. First, the uncanny enters Kim’s mansion in the form of déjà vu, a sense
that something has happened before, of having seen or experienced some-
thing before.³² Each feedback loop in which Batou and Togusa find them-
selves caught, as they are compelled to repeat their tour of Kim’s mansion
again and again and again, produces the repetition associated with déjà vu.
Such repetition has the effect of evoking uncertainty as to which realities are
truly real and which are simulacra—uncertainty that is further heightened
by the numerous trompe l’oeil paintings and holographs found throughout
Kim’s mansion.³³ It is only with the help of Batou’s guardian angel, Kusanagi,
who functions on more than one occasion as a sort of deus ex machina, that
Batou is finally able to discern the illusoriness of the déjà vu experience.

232 ste ve n t. b row n

 The second way the uncanny becomes an issue is in terms of the blurring
of boundaries between life and death evoked by the confusion as to whether
Kim is dead or alive in his study.³⁴ Not only Batou’s reflections on the myth
of the Golem, as prompted by Kusanagi’s holographic messages concerning
the Hebrew words for “truth” (aemaeth) and “death” (maeth), but also Kim’s
own philosophical meditations are relevant here. “The doubt,” asserts Kim in
a guise that makes him look like an automaton version of Togusa, “is whether
a creature that certainly appears to be alive, really is.”

Alternatively, the doubt that a lifeless object might actually live. That’s why
dolls haunt us. They are modeled on humans. They are, in fact, nothing but
human. They make us face the terror of being reduced to simple mecha-
nisms and matter. In other words, the fear that, fundamentally, all humans
belong to the void.

Kim’s mode of embodiment provokes such boundary confusion precisely in-

sofar as he is an automaton, which brings us to the third form of the uncanny.
Although Freud suggests that the uncanny may be summoned when “what
is human is perceived as merely mechanical,” such as in the case of epileptic
fits, sleepwalking, and other trance-like states, the opposite is also true: au-
tomata are also potentially uncanny because “what is perceived as human is
in fact mechanical.” ³⁵ In his dialogue with Batou, Kim (still wearing the guise
of the automaton-like Togusa) offers an explanation for why this confusion
between human and machine especially resonates with this era:

In this age, the twin technologies of robotics and electronic neurology

resurrected the eighteenth-century theory of man as machine. And now
that computers have enabled externalized memory, humans have pursued
self-mechanization aggressively, to expand the limits of their own func-
tions. Determined to leave behind Darwinian natural selection, this human
determination to beat evolutionary odds also reveals the very quest for per-
fection that gave it birth. The mirage of life equipped with perfect hardware
engendered this nightmare.

After Kim offers this explanation, Batou’s head turns toward Togusa with
a clicking sound and opens up to reveal the sort of mechanisms that were
first shown in the opening scene when a gynoid attempted to commit suicide
in an alleyway after murdering her owner and two police officers. In Kim’s
mansion, after Togusa reacts with horror to the mechanization of Batou, the

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 3 3
 feedback loop begins again with another scene of déjà vu. This brings us to
the fourth form of the uncanny: the doppelgänger or double.
In the last instance of déjà vu, the structure of repetition enters into the
scene of the uncanny in the form of the doppelgänger as Togusa has night-
marish visions that both he himself and Batou have automata doubles. Even
more horrifying, after the appearance of the automaton double of Togusa,
whose voice was that of Kim, in the next sequence the automaton double of
Batou is substituted for Kim. After these multiple scenes of doubling, To-
gusa, hallucinating that he has been injured by an attack on Kim’s mansion
launched by the offshore factory ship of Locus Solus, witnesses his chest burst
open to reveal that he himself is an automaton with a metal rib cage. As Mi-
chael Bennett and Nicholas Royle have argued, “The double is paradoxically
both a promise of immortality (look, there’s my double, I can be reproduced,
I can live forever) and a harbinger of death (look, there I am, no longer me
here, but there: I am about to die, or else I must be dead already).” ³⁶ Although
Kim sought perfection and immortality by transferring his consciousness to
an automaton-like shell, the proliferation of doubles—Kim’s double, Togusa’s
double, Batou’s double—ends up undermining the very logic of identity.³⁷
Each instance of the uncanny that unfolds at Kim’s mansion (the repeti-
tion of déjà vu, the blurring of boundaries between life and death, animate
and inanimate, and the doppelgänger) evokes a feeling of unhomeliness in
the home, a defamiliarization of the everyday that destabilizes our assump-
tions about what it means to be human in a posthuman world and how we
are to relate to all the ningyō (dolls, puppets, automata, and androids) that
inhabit the world with us. It is to the last type of uncanny ningyō—referred
to as “gynoids” in Ghost in the Shell 2—and their relationship to the work of
Hans Bellmer that I now turn.

THE DOLLS OF HANS BELLMER

Oshii has made it very clear in his production notes to Ghost in the Shell 2 and
related interviews that his conception of the gynoid owes much to the work
of Hans Bellmer, whose female dolls are referenced both visually and nar-
rativally throughout the film. According to the production notes, Oshii “has
wanted to explore the theme of dolls” for thirty years, since he first “fell in
love” as a student “with photographs of Hans Bellmer’s ball-jointed doll.” ³⁸
Bellmer’s influence can be seen throughout the film, from the design of the
gynoids themselves to recreations of specific poses from Bellmer’s art. In the

234 ste ve n t. b row n

remainder of my essay, I explore the significance of Bellmer’s work, review
some of the relevant scenes from Ghost in the Shell 2 in which Bellmer’s work
is clearly cited, and then discuss how Oshii’s gynoids reiterate issues raised by
Bellmer in relation to the question of machinic desire.
Hans Bellmer constructed his first life-sized female doll (which he dubbed
“Die Puppe”—German for “doll” or “puppet”) in 1933 out of papier-mâché
and plaster covering a framework made of wood and metal. Bellmer stated
his goals for the doll as follows: “I am going to construct an artificial girl with
anatomical possibilities which are capable of re-creating the heights of pas-
sion, even of inventing new desires.” ³⁹ This doll was the subject of Bellmer’s
first book of photographs also entitled The Doll (Die Puppe), published pri-
vately in Germany in 1934, featuring ten black-and-white photographs of the
doll situated in a variety of tableaux.⁴⁰ These photos, along with eight ad-
ditional, were then published at the end of the year in the sixth issue of the
famous Surrealist magazine Minotaure with the following header: “Doll. Hans
Bellmer, variations on the assembling of an articulated female minor.” ⁴¹
Perhaps borne out of his frustration with the limited range of movement
of the first doll, Bellmer created a second female doll (which he called “La
Poupée”—French for “doll” or “puppet”), fabricated in 1935 out of glue and
tissue paper painted to resemble flesh over a structure of “wooden ball joints
and appendages pivoting around a central ball joint.” ⁴² “Inspired by a pair of
sixteenth-century articulated wooden dolls in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum,”
according to specialist Sue Taylor, Bellmer “produced a spherical belly for
the new doll, around which could be arranged a number of parts in various
combinations: four legs, four round stylized breasts, an upper torso, three
pelvises, a pair of arms, and the recycled head and hand from the first doll.” ⁴³
This second doll was the subject of over one hundred photographs taken be-
tween 1935 and 1938, many of them hand-colored with monochromatic yel-
low, green, blue, or pink, or combinations of fluorescent colors.
The gender politics associated with Bellmer’s dolls are complicated to say
the least. Therese Lichtenstein and others have critiqued Bellmer’s dolls for
“linking his fantasies of adolescent girls as passive victim and powerful seduc-
tress with the themes of nostalgia and eroticism, and t[ying] his work to the
French Surrealists’ ambivalent desire for and revulsion at the female body.” ⁴⁴
Although stopping short of confirming Lichtenstein’s conclusion about “revul-
sion at the female body,” in his essay “Memories of the Doll Theme,” which is a
revised version of the foreword to his book The Doll, Bellmer does admit to the
importance of masculine fantasy in the creation of the doll: “And didn’t the doll,
which lived solely through the thoughts projected into it, and which despite its

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 3 5
 unlimited pliancy could be maddeningly stand-offish, didn’t the very creation
of its dollishness contain the desire and intensity sought in it by the imagi-
nation?” ⁴⁵ And yet, such gender politics are also complicated by the fact that
Bellmer views the dolls as exposing the foundations of such embodied fanta-
sies and bringing to light the “anatomy of the physical unconscious” (anatomie
de l’inconscient physique), as he referred to it.⁴⁶ To illustrate the mechanisms of
interiority and their link to exteriority, Bellmer conceived of a doll with a rotat-
ing panorama mechanism installed in its stomach, an illustration of which was
included in the publication of his book The Doll. By pressing the button located
in the doll’s left breast,⁴⁷ the panorama was set into motion and one could gaze
upon a jumble of “small objects, different materials and colour pictures in bad
taste,” which were supposed to display “a girl’s thoughts and dreams,” ⁴⁸ but
which more likely displayed what the artist projected onto them.
Bellmer’s practice of reconfiguring the doll in grotesque ways, includ-
ing doubling and multiplying sections of the doll to create what he acknowl-
edged were “monstrous” additions—“a second pair of legs and arms, another
torso with four breasts,” ⁴⁹ and so forth—pushed the limits of what might
be construed as human through a grammar of infinite combination and re-
combination. “I am talking about the possibilities of decomposing and then
recomposing the body and its limbs ‘against nature,’” wrote Bellmer in his
unpublished notes from January of 1946.⁵⁰ What Bellmer was attempting to
do with his doll experiments was to construct corporeal anagrams: “The body
resembles a sentence,” wrote Bellmer, “that seems to invite us to dismantle
it into its component letters, so that its true meanings may be revealed ever
anew through an endless stream of anagrams.” ⁵¹
Although Bellmer’s dolls are not functioning automata, their quasi-
mechanical internal workings, which are frequently exposed, seem designed
to underscore their resemblance to automata.⁵² As art historians Therese Lich-
tenstein and Sidra Stich have remarked, insofar as “the entire body could be
assembled and reassembled like a machine,” ⁵³ Bellmer’s dolls seem to embody
the Surrealist “nightmare of mechanization” ⁵⁴ that haunted many artists in
the wake of the First World War.⁵⁵ And like the automaton Olympia in E. T.
A. Hoffman’s short story “The Sandman,” which had a significant impact on
Bellmer, the dolls evoke the uncanny in their blurring of boundaries between
the living and the dead, the animate and the inanimate. Whether in relation
to the panorama mechanism contained in the belly of the first doll or the me-
chanical mobility of the ball joint utilized in the second doll, which Bellmer
considered “a perfect cog around which endless bodily contortions could pivot
and out of which he devised a vast operating system,” ⁵⁶ the uncanny automaton

236 ste ve n t. b row n

 What Bellmer was
is central to an understanding of Bellmer’s art. All
attempting to do with
of the concepts that he employs to describe his
his doll experiments
work—such as “anatomy of the image” (anatomie
was to construct
de l’image), “anatomy of the physical unconscious”
corporeal anagrams.
(anatomie de l’inconscient physique), and “anatomy
of love” (anatomie de l’amour)⁵⁷—emphasize the
machinic links between interiority and exteriority that are part and parcel
of Bellmer’s ongoing attempts to make visible the “desire apparatus” of our
unconscious with its mechanisms, both real and virtual.⁵⁸
The crime “against nature” that Bellmer enthusiastically choreographed
in the erotic scenographies of his doll photos was perpetrated not against
actual human beings but rather against the fascistic conception of beauty
and the perfect body proffered by National Socialist ideologues. After Hitler
came to power on January 30, 1933, Bellmer was determined “to avoid any
work that might in any way be of service to the state.” ⁵⁹ Bellmer writes that
what he was doing was “a gesture of rejection of German fascism and the
prospect of war: cessation of all socially useful activity.” ⁶⁰ As Michael Semff
and Anthony Spira have suggested, Bellmer employed the doll “as a powerful
tool for social critique, and a violent attack on stereotypes and the promotion
of an idealised Aryan race.” ⁶¹ By photographing his dolls in a way that under-
scored their grotesque and uncanny aspects, Bellmer offered acts of artistic
resistance against the Nazi regime and its cult of the perfect body. Although
Bellmer’s art was not singled out for the Nazi-sponsored exhibition on “De-
generate Art” (“Entartete Kunst”), which opened in Munich in 1937 before
traveling to Berlin in 1938,⁶² nevertheless, Bellmer was well aware that his
style of art and its subject matter were highly transgressive and that he was
becoming “increasingly isolated” ⁶³ in Germany in the current political atmo-
sphere. Therefore, in March of 1938, Bellmer fled Berlin for Paris with a host
of other German artists and intellectuals.

BELLMER/OSHII

Bellmer’s influence can be seen throughout Ghost in the Shell 2. Every scene
in which a ball-jointed gynoid appears may be construed as a reference to
and remediation of Bellmer’s doll photos. Among the strongest citations are
images from the manufacturing scene in the opening credits, which shows
us the assembly and doubling of the gynoid’s ball-jointed body (see Figures
2 and 3).

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 3 7
 figure 2. The assembly of a ball-jointed gynoid. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

figure 3. The doubling of the gynoid’s body. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

When manipulating and deforming the integrity of the body, Bellmer

had many tools at his disposal, including anatomical division, subtraction,
addition, and multiplication (see Figure 4).⁶⁴ By utilizing two of those tech-
niques, division and multiplication, the opening credits of Ghost in the Shell 2
offer a poignant remediation of Bellmer’s corporeal anagrams in the service
of posthuman capitalism and its fetishistic obsession with what Walter Ben-
jamin has described as “the sex appeal of the inorganic.” ⁶⁵
Perhaps the most significant scene for understanding Oshii’s remedia-
tion of Bellmer occurs at the film’s outset when Batou comes face-to-face in
a dark alley with a gynoid, who has just murdered her owner and two police

238  ste ve n t. b row n

officers. The gynoid repeatedly asks
for help before tearing open her
chest with her own hands in an ap-
parent suicide attempt and is then
dispatched with multiple shotgun
blasts by Batou. As Oshii confirms
in his production notes,⁶⁶ this scene
of self-mutilation is a direct citation
of an illustration by Bellmer entitled
Rose ouverte la nuit (Rose open at
night) from 1934 (see Figure 5), pro-
duced contemporaneously with his
doll photos. In addition to being a
photographer, it is worth noting that
Bellmer created numerous drawings, figure 4. Hans Bellmer, La Poupée (1938). Copyright 2007
Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris.
paintings, etchings, and sculptures
“in an obsessive quest for a ‘monstrous dictionary,’” as he called it, “dedicated
to the ambivalence of the body.” ⁶⁷ Rather than pigeonholing Bellmer as a Sur-
realist photographer, it is probably more apt, as Michael Semff and Anthony
Spira have suggested, to describe him as “an anatomist, an engineer, even
a geographer or cartographer of the body.” ⁶⁸ Executed in pencil and white
gouache on paper, Rose ouverte la nuit is considered by many Bellmer schol-
ars to be “the most overtly transgressive” of all the monochrome drawings
from this period, since the girl exposes her “internal organs and . . . ushers
in the theme of ‘undressing’—of interiority.” ⁶⁹ A number of Bellmer’s doll
photos reveal a similar interest in
the disclosure of the doll’s interior
spaces and mechanisms. As I have
already suggested in my discussion
of his “anatomy of the physical un-
conscious,” Bellmer was intensely
interested in the reversibility of
inside and outside, in turning the
inside out and the outside in.⁷⁰
Standing in sharp contrast to
the grotesque scene depicted in
Rose ouverte la nuit is the delicate
figure 5. Closeup of Hans Bellmer, Rose ouverte
la nuit (1934). Copyright 2007 Artists Rights Soci-
ornamental pattern appearing to
ety (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris. the left of the girl, “undulating

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 3 9
 like a lacy curtain.” ⁷¹ As is the case in other works by Bellmer, the interlaced
pattern in Rose ouverte la nuit visualizes pulsating lines of energy, tension,
and desire as emitted from the girl’s body. In comparing Oshii’s gynoid with
Bellmer’s self-rending girl, it is noteworthy that the gynoid also wears a simi-
larly impassive look on her face even as she tears open the skin on her torso
and reveals the rib cage and machinic innards beneath (see Figure 6)—an ex-
pression that the gynoid also shares with the wax anatomical figures modeled
after actual corpses that Oshii studied during preproduction at La Specola in
Italy, which have sometimes been compared to Bellmer’s work.⁷²
The brick wall behind the gynoid, whose distorted lines are the result
of the gynoid’s impact against the wall during her combat with Batou, ap-
pear to undulate in the low-key lighting much like the lines of energy, ten-
sion, and desire emitted from the girl’s body in Rose ouverte la nuit. However,
whereas Bellmer’s self-rending girl peers into the interior spaces of her abdo-
men, Oshii’s gynoid looks directly at the camera at the precise moment of
self-mutilation, appealing not only to Batou for help but also to the audi-
ence. Moreover, just as Bellmer’s dolls, many of which reveal a similar inter-
est in and disclosure of the body’s interior spaces and mechanisms, function
as an artistic protest against the Nazi regime’s cult of youth and the perfect
body, so too the scene of gynoid self-mutilation at the outset of Ghost in the

figure 6. A gynoid attempting suicide. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

240  ste ve n t. b row n

Shell 2 seems to function as an act of resistance against the ideal of beauty
to which the kidnapped adolescent girls are being held captive. The gynoids
engage in acts of destruction and self-mutilation in order to draw attention
to the plight and exploitation of adolescent girls who have been kidnapped
by the Kōjinkai gang and supplied to Locus Solus for the purpose of “ghost-
dubbing”—a process by which the mind or spirit of a human is transferred to
a gynoid in order to make it more “desirable.”
The key to understanding this scene and others that follow is a detail
that appears in the crime scene where Jack Volkerson, the shipping inspector
for Locus Solus, was gruesomely murdered. During the course of investiga-
tion, Batou comes across a copy of Bellmer’s book The Doll (see Figure 7), into
which a holographic photo of an adolescent girl had been inserted. What we
are shown in this scene is the front cover of a Japanese edition of The Doll,
which was first published in 1995, featuring one of the hand-colored photos
of Bellmer’s ball-jointed doll.⁷³
That the camera dwells on the cover of the book long enough to make out
the title and even the author’s name leaves no doubt that Bellmer’s work is
crucial to an understanding of Ghost in the Shell 2. But it is what is inside the
book that provides the most important clue to the significance of Bellmer’s
work to the film as a whole. As Batou looks through the book, he comes upon

figure 7. Batou holds a copy of Hans Bellmer’s The Doll. Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence.

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 4 1
 a holographic photo of an adolescent girl, which he studies at the crime scene
and then again at his house. By situating the holographic image of the miss-
ing girl inside the book of The Doll by Bellmer, Oshii provides us with a visual
metaphor that anticipates Batou’s eventual discovery of the kidnapped girls
being held captive by Locus Solus for the purpose of ghost-dubbing. In effect,
just as Bellmer’s book on artificial dolls contains the simulacrum of the cap-
tive girl inside of it, so too, the Locus Solus gynoids have been instilled with
the simulacrum of the adolescent girls held captive. In this way, the revers-
ibility of inside and outside that so deeply interested Bellmer is reenvisioned
by Oshii as a critique of the anthropomorphization of gynoids and other ro-
bots.⁷⁴ Why is it necessary to make robots in our own image? Is it possible
to coexist with forms of artificial intelligence without forcing them into the
human mold? These are the sort of questions raised by Ghost in the Shell 2
during the course of the anime’s engagement with uncanny ningyō.
However, Oshii does not stop there. Just as important as the critique of
the anthropomorphization of robots is a questioning of the human as such.
As Coroner Haraway (a character named after Donna Haraway, author of the
famed “Cyborg Manifesto” ⁷⁵) remarks, in a scene that features disassembled
and suspended gynoids that strongly resemble Bellmer’s doll photos, especially
those showing dolls that are hanging in mid-air from a door frame or tree,

The dolls that little girls mother are not surrogates for real babies. Little
girls aren’t so much imitating child rearing, as they are experiencing some-
thing deeply akin to child rearing. . . . Raising children is the simplest way to
achieve the ancient dream of artificial life.

It is not only that dolls or gynoids are modeled after humans, it is that hu-
mans model themselves after the ideals embodied by artificial dolls such as
gynoids. In other words, what we consider “human” is not simply a natural
phenomenon but a complex sociocultural and philosophical construction. In
response to Haraway’s philosophizing, Togusa exclaims in protest: “Children
aren’t dolls!” However, Batou acknowledges Haraway’s point by remarking
that “Descartes didn’t differentiate man from machine, animate from inani-
mate. He lost his beloved five-year-old daughter and then named a doll after
her, Francine.” Descartes doted on the doll named Francine as if it were his
own daughter. Oshii not only blurs the boundaries between human and ma-
chine, animate and inanimate in order to evoke the uncanny, he also shows
us the chiasmic intertwinement between the human and the machinic—the
machinic in the human and the human in the machine.

242 ste ve n t. b row n

 In the penultimate shot of the film, Oshii brings to the fore the machinic
nature of the human by showing Togusa’s daughter happily embracing the
blonde-and-blue-eyed doll that she has just received as a gift from her father.
This simple image of a girl hugging her doll resonates with new meanings in
the wake of all that has preceded, suggesting that, at the very least, it should
be reinterpreted as constituting not merely an imitation of human rearing
but more pointedly a circuit of relations—i.e., a machine—connecting hu-
mans and artificial figures made to look human in a relationship of coexis-
tence that modifies each other in unforeseen ways. As Oshii has remarked in
interviews, “to ask what the difference is between an adult raising a child and
a girl playing with her doll” is “not an immoral question, nor does it indicate
some kind of regression.” Rather, it is quite simply “the only way we can un-
derstand the nature of human existence.” ⁷⁶
In the end, Ghost in the Shell 2 offers something more profound than sim-
ply another lesson in compassionate humanism, since it places into question
the very foundation of humanism itself. When the cybernetically enhanced
human subject looks into the mirror in Ghost in the Shell 2, what it sees is
nothing more or less than what it has already projected as human. In other
words, at the limits of the human, Batou discovers that human nature is it-
self synthetic—human “nature” is itself an artificial construct and desiring-
machine.⁷⁷ As Togusa remarks to Batou in the elevator on the way to Coroner
Haraway’s lab, quoting Meiji-period satirist Saitō Ryokuu (1867–1904): “The
mirror is not a tool of enlightenment, it is a tool of illusion [kagami wa sa-
tori no gu ni arazu, mayoi no gu nari].” ⁷⁸ However, in the midst of demystify-
ing such anthropocentric illusions and projections, just as it seems that, as
philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche argues, “the human intellect cannot avoid
seeing itself in its own perspectives, and only in these,” since “we cannot look
around our own corner,” ⁷⁹ Oshii suggests a way outside of ourselves that is
not conceived metaphysically in terms of transcendence but rather in terms
of the “innocence” of becoming-animal.

ON THE INNOCENCE OF DOLLS,

ANGELS, AND BECOMING-ANIMAL

Although the anime is known internationally as Ghost in the Shell 2: Inno-

cence, in Japan it was originally released as simply Inosensu, the Japanese
phoneticization of the English word “innocence.” Oshii’s stress on the word
“innocence” begs the question as to whom or what the word applies in the

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 4 3
 film. During a discussion held at the Japanese premiere of Ghost in the Shell
2, Oshii offered the following reflections on the problem of innocence in rela-
tion to humans and dolls:

What would it mean for a human to “become more than human”? One an-
swer would be to discard the actual human body, and embrace becoming a
doll. People try to adjust their natural bodies, evolved for something very
different, to the modern urban environment. Instead of following that tra-
jectory, we’re better off turning into dolls, into intended artifice.⁸⁰

In a sense, this is what happens when the adolescent girls are ghost-hacked in
order to breathe life into the gynoids by making them more animated and de-
sirable, metaphorically transforming the girls into dolls themselves. However,
Oshii goes to great lengths to undercut the innocence of the young women.
Even as the self-destructing gynoids demystify the cultural constructedness
(and artificiality) of the ideal of beauty in which the figure of the adolescent
girl is quite literally trapped, Ghost in the Shell 2 underscores the complicity of
young women in the construction and perpetuation of such ideals. Although
the girl released by Batou and Kusanagi proclaims loudly that she “didn’t
want to become a doll,” Kusanagi criticizes the girl’s self-pity, saying that “if
the dolls could speak, no doubt they’d scream: ‘I didn’t want to become hu-
man.’ ” In other words, the girl–gynoid interface evokes the loss of innocence
rather than its positive assertion. If innocence is to be found here, it is not in
the adolescent girls but rather in the gynoids
before they have been imprinted by the girls.
“What would it mean for
As suggested by science fiction writer Ya-
a human to ‘become more
mada Masaki, who wrote the prequel novel-
than human’? One answer
ization to Ghost in the Shell 2, entitled Inno-
would be to discard the
cence: After the Long Goodbye: “an empty doll
actual human body, and
is much more innocent than people attached
embrace becoming a doll.”
to the illusion of ‘human-ness.’ ” ⁸¹
On another level, innocence may be sug-
gested by Batou’s ethereal relationship with his “guardian angel,” Kusanagi,
who exists largely in cyberspace after merging with the Puppet Master at the
end of the first movie. In his discussion with Oshii at Ghost in the Shell 2’s
premiere, Yamada Masaki offered the following interpretation:

The reason Batou goes into enemy territory isn’t really because he wants to
rescue someone, nor is it really because he wants to solve the case. He just

244 ste ve n t. b row n

 wants to meet his angel, Motoko. It doesn’t really matter whether their re-
lationship is a conventional romance or not. You see, their love might seem
cold to humans, but what is between them is no longer human, and now
very innocent.⁸²

However, what is all too often lost in discussions of the innocence of Batou’s
relationship with Kusanagi is the significance of Kusanagi’s name, which is
rich with cultural connotations in Japanese history and mythology. Accord-
ing to Japanese mythology, the Kusanagi Sword (or Kusanagi no Tsurugi) was
one of the legendary imperial treasures once given as a gift to the warrior
Yamato Takeru to help him defeat his enemies—a weapon comparable in im-
portance to the sword Excalibur in the history of Britain. It was thought that
any warrior who brandished the Kusanagi Sword could defeat an entire army.
It is said that in one particular battle, when he was trapped in an expanse of
grassland ignited by his enemy, Yamato Takeru employed the sword both to
cut the grass and control the direction of the wind, thereby protecting him-
self and blowing the grass fire toward his enemy, who was soon vanquished.
To commemorate his victory, Yamato Takeru renamed the sword “Kusanagi,”
which means “grasscutter.” ⁸³
In the context of Ghost in the Shell 2, as soon as Batou has gained access to
the production area for Hadaly-model gynoids, an army of gynoids is released
to seize the intruder. Batou initially keeps the gynoids at bay but is soon out-
numbered. Suddenly, Batou’s guardian angel, Kusanagi, downloads herself into
one of the gynoids in order to protect Batou and assist him in defeating the
gynoid army. In this sense, however innocent Batou’s relationship to Kusanagi
may seem, by turning Kusanagi into a weapon for Batou’s protection, her char-
acter is reduced to little more than a supplement to aid him in defeating the
army of gynoids. Indeed, even Kusanagi remarks on the limitations placed on
her agency and powers of expression when downloaded into the body of a gy-
noid: “To be precise, it’s just a fragment of me downloaded via satellite. This
gynoid’s e-brain lacks capacity. It can only handle the combat robotics control
system. This is the best I can do for facial and vocal expression.” As soon as
she has fulfilled her mission, Kusanagi disappears again into the ether of cy-
berspace, leaving the viewer to wonder if this representation of the vanishing
woman with its erasure of the female body is really so innocent after all.⁸⁴
However, there is one more example of innocence, and it is one that Oshii
has raised repeatedly in interviews about Ghost in the Shell 2. In response to
the question that was considered earlier—“What would it mean for a human
to ‘become more than human’?” —Oshii offers a second possible answer:

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 4 5
 Another option is to communicate with dogs. Once you discard anthrocen-
trism, you have to take animals into consideration. Dogs provide a much
better contrast against robots or dolls than humans do. . . . Dogs became
unique creatures by interacting and living with humans. . . . By communicat-
ing with dogs, I thought humans might realize something about themselves.
So I wanted to contrast humans against dogs, rather than simply against
artificial intelligence.⁸⁵

Oshii is well known for inserting cameos of his beloved basset hound “Gabriel”
in most of his anime and a few of his live-action films, but Ghost in the Shell
2 provides the most extended homage to basset hounds thus far. In addition
to modeling the animated basset hound after the likeness of the real Gabriel,
Oshii recorded his dog’s barks and other sounds for added authenticity. From
Batou’s affectionate relationship with his dog to the basset hound posters and
imagery sprinkled throughout the film (including a mechanical basset hound
in the likeness of Gabriel at Batou’s house and images of a basset on the spin-
ning globe inside Kim’s mansion), the dog motif plays a significant role in
Ghost in the Shell 2.⁸⁶ Indeed, the importance of dogs is signaled in the very
first scene when we are shown a neon sign situated on top of a large skyscraper
displaying the Chinese character for small dog or puppy. Likewise, in the last
scene of the film, after we see Togusa hug his daughter and his daughter hug
the new doll that he has just given to her as an omiyage, the camera cuts to a
close-up of the doll’s face, followed by a head-and-shoulders close-up shot of
Batou hugging his dog with city skyscrapers looming in the distance. Batou’s
basset hound emits a low murmur and stares pensively at the girl and her new
doll, while Batou looks directly at the camera through his opaque cyborg eyes.
Insofar as the dog motif appears in both the first and last shots of the film, it
effectively enframes the film as a whole, underscoring the importance of the
dog to Ghost in the Shell 2. To understand why Oshii has “gone to the dogs,”
it helps to consider the concept of “becoming-animal” elaborated by philoso-
phers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus.⁸⁷
Rather than reduce the animal to “a representative of the drives, or a rep-
resentation of the parents,” which is, according to Deleuze and Guattari, what
psychoanalysis does every time it encounters the question of the becoming-
animal in humans, Ghost in the Shell 2 shows us a cybernetic human (Batou)
who is becoming-animal by entering into composition with a dog, thereby
forming a new assemblage with one another, an assemblage in which rela-
tions of movement and rest, speed and slowness, as well as zones of prox-
imity and intensity, are shared. Batou’s becoming-animal does not involve

246 ste ve n t. b row n

imitation of his dog—he does not try to represent the dog as human; rather,
he enters into composition with it, thereby releasing nonhuman possibilities
into the human “outside the programmed body.” ⁸⁸ Becoming-animal is not
simply the reproduction of an animal image, much less the metamorphosis
into that animal, but rather a deterritorialization of the human and the ani-
mal, in which both the human and animal become something else—involving
new intensities, affects, speeds, and modes of being—as a result of the new
assemblage formed by their circuit of relations, such that it becomes “impos-
sible to say where the boundary between the human and animal lies.” ⁸⁹
At the very end of Ghost in the Shell 2, as Batou and his basset appear in
the last shot in a mutual embrace, the becoming-animal of Batou approaches
cyborg theorist Donna Haraway’s reflections on “companion species” as an at-
tempt to find “non-anthropomorphic ways” to conceive of agencies and actors
and the coevolutionary networks that constitute them.⁹⁰ It is not simply, as
Lisa Bode argues, that “the unconditional love and animal innocence of our
pets is one of the few things that keeps us from becoming truly dehumanised
while living and working in dehumanising systems.” ⁹¹ Rather, it is that as we
enter into coevolutionary networks with dogs, as we learn to coexist with
nonhuman entities in the most intimate of spaces—our homes—we are al-
tered by dogs as much as dogs are altered by us. In the end, Oshii suggests
that our relations with dogs may be a possible way out of our anthropocentric
obsession with uncanny ningyō, a way outside of ourselves. As Deleuze and
Guattari put it: “There is no longer man or animal, since each deterritorializes
the other, in a conjunction of flux, in a continuum of reversible intensities.” ⁹²

Notes
The author wishes to thank Daisuke Miyao, Tom Looser, Gerald Figal, and Paul Young for
their constructive feedback.
. Interview with Oshii Mamoru, “Anime wa zure kara hajimaru: D to D no
hazama de” (Anime Starts from a gap: At the interval between D and D), Yuriika ,
no.  (): . Also see Sharalyn Orbaugh, “Frankenstein and the Cyborg Metropolis:
The Evolution of Body and City in Science Fiction Narratives,” in Cinema Anime: Critical
Engagements with Japanese Animation, ed. Steven T. Brown (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,
), , –,  n..
. Sigmund Freud, “The ‘Uncanny,’” in The Standard Edition of the Complete Psycholog-
ical Works of Sigmund Freud, ed. and trans. James Strachey et al. (London: Hogarth, ),
:–; Ernst Jentsch, “On the Psychology of the Uncanny,” Angelaki , no.  ():
–.
. Jacques Derrida, “The Double Session,” in Dissemination, trans. Barbara Johnson

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 4 7
 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ),  n., – n.; Hélène Cixous, “Fic-
tion and Its Phantoms: A Reading of Freud’s ‘Das Unheimliche’ (‘The “Uncanny”’),” New
Literary History  (): –; Sander Gilman, ed., Reading Freud’s Reading (New York:
New York University Press, ); Neil Hertz, “Freud and the Sandman,” in The End of the
Line: Essays on Psychoanalysis and the Sublime (New York: Columbia University Press, ),
–; Samuel Weber, The Legend of Freud (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press,
); Nicholas Royle, The Uncanny (New York: Routledge, ).
. E. T. A. Hoffmann, “The Sandman,” in The Golden Pot and Other Tales, trans.
Ritchie Robertson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), –.
. “Remediation” is defined by media theorists Jay David Bolter and Richard Gruisin
as follows: “It is that which appropriates the techniques, forms, and social significance
of other media and attempts to rival or refashion them in the name of the real.” I would
qualify this definition by revising the last part: acts of remediation are performed not only
in the name of “the real” but may just as well be performed in the name of “literary or
aesthetic value,” “cultural or political authority,” “beauty,” as well as “pleasure” and “enter-
tainment.” Indeed, the functions of remediation are probably as diverse as the audiences
of remediation. On remediation, see Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin, Remediation:
Understanding New Media (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, ), .
. Christopher Bolton, “From Wooden Cyborgs to Celluloid Souls: Mechanical Bod-
ies in Anime and Japanese Puppet Theater,” positions , no.  (Winter ): .
. As Tatsumi Takayuki points out, the term “gynoid” was first coined by British sci-
ence fiction novelist Gwyneth Jones in Divine Endurance (London; Boston: Allen & Unwin,
) and later appropriated by other authors and artists, from Richard Calder to Sorayama
Hajime. See Tatsumi Takayuki, Full Metal Apache: Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and
Avant-Pop America (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, ), –,  n.–.
. From the marketing materials for Inosensu, dir. Oshii Mamoru (); trans-
lated as Ghost in the Shell : Innocence, subtitled DVD (Universal City, Calif.: DreamWorks
Home Entertainment, ). The murders are committed by a “Hadaly-model” gynoid.
The name “Hadaly” invokes not only the female android of the same name that appears
in the nineteenth-century science fiction novel L’Ève future (Future Eve, ) by French
symbolist writer Auguste Villiers de l’Isle-Adam (–), who first coined the word
“android” and whose work is quoted in the epigraph at the outset of Ghost in the Shell , but
also the humanoid robot with the same name developed in  at the Humanoid Robotics
Institute at Waseda University in Tokyo to investigate human–robot interaction and com-
munication, which had the capability to speak and listen in Japanese and make meaningful
gestures with its arms in order to give directions. Incidentally, Hans Bellmer also cited L’Ève
future as a minor influence on his work. For a discussion of Ghost in the Shell  in relation
to L’Ève future, see Sharalyn Orbaugh, “Frankenstein and the Cyborg Metropolis,” , ,
as well as Orbaugh’s chapter in this volume. On robotics research at Waseda University, see
Humanoid Robotics Institute Web site, http://www.humanoid.rise.waseda.ac.jp/ booklet/
booklet.html (accessed October , ). On Bellmer and L’Ève future, see Sue Taylor,
Hans Bellmer: The Anatomy of Anxiety (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, ), , n..
. Oshii Mamoru, Ghost in the Shell : Innocence (Ani-Manga),  vols., trans. Yuji
Oniki (San Francisco: Viz, ), :–.
. See “Glossary of Terms,” in Oshii, Ghost in the Shell : Innocence (Ani-Manga), :.

248  st e ve n t. b row n
 . Whereas limited animation was first adopted as a way to cut corners on a tight
budget, Oshii pushes the complexity of contemporary animation (and the animators whom
he employs) to the limit in scenes such as this, which reportedly required two-to-three
thousand background drawings.
. See Bolton, “From Wooden Cyborgs to Celluloid Souls,” –.
. Andrew Bennett and Nicholas Royle, An Introduction to Literature, Criticism, and
Theory, rd ed. (Harlow, U.K.: Pearson Longman, ), . See also Freud, “The ‘Uncanny,’”
; Royle, The Uncanny, –.
. The trash collector was a puppet used to ghost-hack government officials.
. This poem also appears in the late-fourteenth-century Rinzai Zen text Gettan
oshō hōgo (Priest Gettan’s Buddhist sermons). According to noh scholars Omote Akira and
Katō Shūichi, the medieval pronunciation would have been slightly different: “Shōji korai
hōtō no kwairai issen tayuru toki raku raku rai rai.” See Omote Akira and Katō Shūichi, eds.
Zeami, Zenchiku, in Nihon shisō taikei, vol.  (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, ), .
. Oshii Mamoru, “Inosensu” Methods: Oshii Mamoru enshutsu nōto (“Innocence meth-
ods: Oshii Mamoru’s direction notes) (Tokyo: Kadokawa Shoten, ), .
. Oshii on the audio commentary to Ghost in the Shell : Innocence DVD.
. Mark Nearman, “Kakyō: Zeami’s Fundamental Principles of Acting (Part Two),”
Monumenta Nipponica , no.  (Winter ): .
. Peder Grøngaard, “For Ever Godard: Two or Three Things I Know about Euro-
pean and American Cinema,” p.o.v.  (December ), http://pov.imv.au.dk/Issue_/
section_/artcA.html (accessed September , ).
. Jean-Luc Godard, “A Woman Is a Woman”; “A Married Woman”; “Two or Three Things
I Know about Her”: Three Films (London: Lorrimer, ), .
. John Conomos, “Only the Cinema,” Senses of Cinema  (June ), http://www.
sensesofcinema.com/contents///godard_conomos.html (accessed October , ).
. Grøngaard, “For Ever Godard.”
. In The Cinema of Mamoru Oshii: Fantasy, Technology, and Politics, Dani Cavallaro
recognizes that Oshii’s use of intertextuality is derived from Godard but does not explore
the larger philosophical implications of such a technique in the context of the film’s ex-
tended engagement with ningyō. See Dani Cavallaro, The Cinema of Mamoru Oshii: Fantasy,
Technology, and Politics (Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland & Company, Inc., ), .
. Gilles Deleuze, “Intellectuals and Power,” in Language, Counter-memory, Practice:
Selected Essays and Interviews by Michel Foucault, ed. Donald F. Bouchard (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cor-
nell University Press, ), .
. Oshii, “Inosensu” Methods, .
. Scott Bukatman, Terminal Identity: The Virtual Subject in Postmodern Science Fiction
(Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, ), –.
. Alan Scott Pate, Ningyō: The Art of the Japanese Doll (Boston: Tuttle, ), .
For this and other details concerning karakuri ningyō, I am indebted to Pate, –; Mor-
ishita Misako, Edo no biishiki (Edo’s aesthetic sense) (Tokyo: Shinyōsha, ), –;
Nishimura Shigenaga and Takeda Ōmi, Ōkarakuri ezukushi (Illustrated collection of Kara-
kuri) (Tokyo: Yoneyamado, ); and Tagaya Kanchusen, Kawaeda Toyonobu, Hosokawa
Yorinao, and Kikuchi Toshiyoshi, Karakuri kinmo kagamigusa (Textbook on Karakuri)
(Tokyo: Kowa Shuppan, ).

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 4 9
 . Marian Ury, trans., Tales of Times Now Past (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University
of California Press, ), .
. Recorded in Kanmon gyōki (Diary of things seen and heard), quoted in Pate,
Ningyō, .
. Pate, Ningyō, .
. Morishita, Edo no biishiki, –, quoted in Yamaguchi Masao, “Karakuri: The
Ludic Relationship between Man and Machine in Tokugawa Japan,” in Japan at Play: The
Ludic and the Logic of Power, ed. Joy Hendry and Massimo Raveri (London: Routledge,
), .
. The name of the gynoid manufacturing company, “Locus Solus,” is a reference to
the  French novel of the same name by Raymond Roussel. Canterel, the protagonist
of Roussel’s Locus Solus, resembles the hacker Kim in Ghost in the Shell  not only with re-
spect to the surrealistic country estate he occupies, which contains all manner of strange
sights (including reanimated corpses), but also insofar as he orchestrates numerous scenes
of repetition, causing the dead to reenact the most important events of their lives again
and again in a perpetual cycle of déjà vu. See Raymond Roussel, Locus Solus, trans. Rupert
Copeland Cunningham (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, );
and Mark Ford, Raymond Roussel and the Republic of Dreams (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univer-
sity Press, ), –.
. A number of the surrealistic scenes in Kim’s mansion were inspired by the work
of American photographers Jerry Uelsmann and Arthur Tress. According to the director’s
annotations to the storyboards for Ghost in the Shell , Oshii consulted the following col-
lections by Uelsmann: Uelsmann: Process and Perception (Gainesville: University Press of
Florida, ), Jerry Uelsmann: Photo Synthesis (Gainesville: University Press of Florida,
), and Uelsmann/Yosemite (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, ). On the pho-
tography of Arthur Tress, see Richard Lorenz, Arthur Tress: Fantastic Voyage: Photographs
– (Boston: Little, Brown, ).
. Here it is worth noting that the character design for Kim was inspired by the
work of artist Yotsuya Shimon (commonly known as Yotsuya Simon), particularly his life-
sized, ball-jointed dolls (see especially a work entitled “Man” from ). Since Yotsuya’s
dolls frequently blur the boundary between the living and the dead, the human and the
mechanical, it is easy to see why his work lent itself to Oshii’s vision in Ghost in the Shell
. Indeed, Oshii was so taken by Yotsuya’s work and its resemblance to the dolls of Hans
Bellmer, who is also one of Yotsuya’s principal inspirations, that he collaborated with Yot-
suya on an Oshii-supervised exhibition entitled “Dolls of Innocence,” which was held at
the Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo from February  through March , . The
exhibit included many disturbing works of doll-related art by artists including Yotsuya,
Bellmer, Akiyama Mahoko, Igeta Hiroko, Amano Katan, and Miura Etsuko. On the “Dolls
of Innocence,” see http://www.simon-yotsuya.net/information/dolls-of-innocence.htm
(accessed October , ).
. Bennett and Royle, An Introduction, –. Also see Freud, “The ‘Uncanny,’”
–. A similar uncanniness is evoked when the face of Coroner Haraway, who appears
to be an organic human, opens up to reveal hidden mechanisms.
. Ibid., .
. See ibid.

250  ste ve n t. b row n

 . During preproduction research, Oshii made a special trip, which is said to have
had “a profound impact on his vision for Ghost in the Shell ,” to the International Center
of Photography in New York to study a special exhibition of Bellmer’s doll photos. See the
production notes for Ghost in the Shell  at http://www.gofishpictures.com/GITS/main.
html (accessed July , ). Also see Oshii Mamoru, Inosensu sōsaku nōto: Ningyō, ken-
chiku, shintai no tabi+taidan (Innocence production notes: The journey of dolls, architecture,
bodies + interviews) (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, ), –.
. Quoted in Peter Webb with Robert Short, Hans Bellmer (London: Quartet Books,
), .
. For examples of the first doll, see Hans Bellmer, The Doll, trans. Malcolm Green
(London: Atlas Press, ), –; Michael Semff and Anthony Spira, eds., Hans Bellmer
(Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz Publishers, ), –; and Sue Taylor, “Hans
Bellmer in the Art Institute of Chicago: The Wandering Libido and the Hysterical Body,”
http://www.artic.edu/reynolds/essays/taylor (accessed August , ).
. Quoted in Agnès de la Beaumelle and Laure de Buzon-Vallet, “Chronology,” in
Hans Bellmer, ed. Michael Semff and Anthony Spira, .
. From the curator’s introduction to an exhibit of Hans Bellmer’s photography held
at the International Center of Photography, March –June , , which is probably
the exhibit of Bellmer’s work to which Oshii refers in his production notes. See Therese
Lichtenstein, “Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer,” http://museum.icp.org/
museum/exhibitions/bellmer/intro.html (accessed September , ).
. Taylor, “Hans Bellmer in the Art Institute of Chicago.” For examples of the second
doll, see Bellmer, The Doll, –; Semff and Spira, eds., Hans Bellmer, –; and Taylor,
“Hans Bellmer in the Art Institute of Chicago.” A selection of Bellmer’s photographs of
both dolls is available online at http://www.angelfire.com/in/belmer/ (accessed July ,
).
. Therese Lichtenstein, “Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer.”
. Hans Bellmer, “Memories of the Doll Theme,” in The Doll, trans. Malcolm Green, .
. According to Bellmer and his cohorts, he “aimed from the very beginning at re-
vealing the ‘physical unconscious.’” See Malcolm Green, “Introduction,” in Hans Bellmer,
The Doll, trans. Malcolm Green, ; Peter Webb, The Erotic Arts (London: Secker and War-
burg, ), –; and Webb and Short, Hans Bellmer, .
. See Bellmer, “Memories of the Doll Theme,” –.
. Quoted in de la Beaumelle and de Buzon-Vallet, “Chronology,” .
. Ibid., .
. Quoted in Agnès de la Beaumelle, “Hans Bellmer: The Stakes at Play in Drawing
Les Jeux de la poupée,” in Hans Bellmer, ed. Michael Semff and Anthony Spira, .
. Hans Bellmer, “A Brief Anatomy of the Physical Unconscious, or The Anatomy of
the Image,” in The Doll, trans. Malcolm Green, .
. See Bellmer, The Doll, , –.
. Lichtenstein, “Behind Closed Doors.”
. Sidra Stich, Anxious Visions: Surrealist Art (Berkeley, Calif.: University Art Museum;
New York: Abbeville Press, ), .
. See de la Beaumelle, “Hans Bellmer,” . Also compare Hal Foster, Compulsive
Beauty (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, ), .

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 51
 . De la Beaumelle, “Hans Bellmer,” .
. Wieland Schmied, “The Engineer of Eros,” in Hans Bellmer, ed. Michael Semff and
Anthony Spira, .
. Ibid., ; de la Beaumelle, “Hans Bellmer,” .
. Green, “Introduction,” .
. Quoted in de la Beaumelle and de Buzon-Vallet, “Chronology,” .
. Michael Semff and Anthony Spira, “Introduction,” in Hans Bellmer, eds. Semff and
Spira, . Also see Therese Lichtenstein, Behind Closed Doors: The Art of Hans Bellmer (Berke-
ley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, ), –, –, –, –,
–.
. Lichtenstein, Behind Closed Doors, –.
. De la Beaumelle and de Buzon-Vallet, “Chronology,” .
. See de la Beaumelle, “Hans Bellmer,” .
. Walter Benjamin, “Paris, the Capital of the Nineteenth Century” (), in The
Arcades Project, trans. Howard Eiland and Kevin McLaughlin (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap
Press, ), . On cyberpunk’s “desire for machines” and technofetishism, see Thomas
Foster, The Souls of Cyberfolk: Posthumanism as Vernacular Theory (Minneapolis: University
of Minnesota Press, ), –.
. Oshii, “Inosensu” Methods, .
. Ibid., .
. Ibid., .
. De la Beaumelle and de Buzon-Vallet, “Chronology,” .
. Bellmer, “The Ball-Joint,” in Hans Bellmer, The Doll, trans. Malcolm Green, –.
. Taylor, Hans Bellmer, .
. For examples from the collection at La Specola that bear a striking resemblance
to the self-rending girl in Bellmer’s Rose ouverte la nuit and Oshii’s suicidal gynoid in Ghost
in the Shell , see Monika von Düring, Marta Poggesi, and Georges Didi-Huberman, Ency-
clopaedia Anatomica: Museo La Specola Florence (Cologne: Taschen, ), –.
. Although the text of the book has been changed to Korean, the cover is a repro-
duction of the Japanese edition of Hans Bellmer’s The Doll that was published by Treville
in  and is cited in the credits to Ghost in the Shell . See Hans Bellmer, The Doll (Tokyo:
Treville Co., Ltd., ).
. In his press release for Cannes, Oshii opines: “This movie does not hold the view
that the world revolves around the human race. Instead, it concludes that all forms of
life—humans, animals, and robots—are equal. . . . What we need today is not some kind
of anthropocentric humanism. Humanity has reached its limits.”
. Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs: Science, Technology, and Socialist
Feminism in the s,” in The Haraway Reader (New York: Routledge, ), –. Al-
though some of the gynoids in Ghost in the Shell , particularly those without hair that are
suspended in Coroner Haraway’s lab, seem to bear more than a passing resemblance to
the amorous androids made famous in Björk’s acclaimed  music video “All Is Full of
Love” (dir. Chris Cunningham), Oshii has indicated that the gynoids were inspired by the
work of Hans Bellmer and Yotsuya Simon. On Björk’s “All Is Full of Love,” see http://www.
director-file.com/cunningham/bjork.html (accessed July , ).
. Oshii Mamoru, “Afterword: Masaki Yamada and Mamoru Oshii on Innocence,” in

252 st e ve n t. b row n
Yamada Masaki, Ghost in the Shell : Innocence: After the Long Goodbye (San Francisco: Viz
Media, ), .
. Compare Christine Boyer and Dani Cavallaro on the “mass-production of iden-
tity.” See M. Christine Boyer, CyberCities: Visual Perception in the Age of Electronic Communi-
cation (New York: Princeton Architectural Press, ), ; and Dani Cavallaro, Cyberpunk
and Cyberculture: Science Fiction and the Work of William Gibson (London: Athlone Press,
), .
. Saitō Ryokuu, Ryokuu keigo (Ryokuu’s aphorisms) (Tokyo: Fuzanbō, ), 
(translation mine). Compare Cavallaro in The Cinema of Mamoru Oshii, who notes, “Oshii
has posited the image of the mirror as a symbol of self-absorption and, by extension, ego-
ism and accordingly furnished Kim’s mansion with a plethora of reflective surfaces, includ-
ing marble and polished gold” ().
. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, trans. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage
Books, ), aph. .
. Oshii, “Afterword,” .
. Yamada Masaki, “Afterword,” .
. Ibid., –.
. The sword was originally called “Ame no murakumo no tsurugi,” or “Sword of Bil-
lowing Clouds.”
. On the figure of the vanishing woman in relation to the emergence of new visual
technologies in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and anxieties about the female
body, see Karen Beckman, Vanishing Women: Magic, Film, and Feminism (Durham, N.C.:
Duke University Press, ).
. Oshii, “Afterword,” –.
. In the scene of Batou feeding his basset hound, it is hard not to be reminded of
similar scenes involving the character of Ash and her pet basset in Oshii’s live-action cy-
berpunk film Avalon (). Like Ash, after lovingly preparing his dog’s food, Batou first
tastes it, as a mother might do for her baby.
. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophre-
nia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ), –,
–.
. Ibid., –.
. Ibid., , , quoting René Schérer and Guy Hocquenghem, Co-ire, Recherche 
(): –.
. Donna Haraway, “Cyborgs to Companion Species: Reconfiguring Kinship in
Technoscience,” in The Haraway Reader (New York: Routledge, ), –.
. Lisa Bode, “Oshii’s Redemptive Pets and Killer Puppets,” http://www.realtimearts.
net/rt/bode.html (accessed October , ).
. Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Kafka: Toward a Minor Literature, trans. Dana
Polan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ), .

m ach i n i c d e s i r e s  2 53
 Postscript
cary wolfe

ON “THE LIVING”

One of the hallmarks of posthumanism is ability to think about a variety

of phenomena—phenomena that were previously lodged in ontologically or
epistemologically discrete domains—in terms of dynamic, complex, non-
linear systems. Given that the movement from chaos theory to complexity
theory and more recently to autopoiesis theory was made possible by shifting
away from models derived from physics and mathematics, toward theoretical
paradigms drawn from the life sciences (which are then redeployed to de-
scribe social, cultural, and political phenomena as well), an interesting ques-
tion presents itself: what, if anything, is at stake in the difference between
living and nonliving systems? Given the obvious interpenetration of living
and nonliving systems in everything from biomedical to informatic systems,
what, in short, is the specificity, the status, and the stake of “the living”?
And how does the question of the living—that which is alive—complicate
and challenge representational strategies by introducing problems of time,
duration, movement, affect, and self-reference, in ways that in some sense
pose a limit or barrier to what can be thought, known, drawn, and—more
pointedly—rendered?

2 55
 REVIEW & COMMENTARY

A Healing, Gentle Apocalypse: series its title. She rides a motor scooter over
Yokohama kaidashi kiko broken highways with grass growing through
the cracks and has to take an alternate route
ma rc h a ir sto n
when she finds the main road is under water.
Ashinano Hitoshi. Yokohama kaidashi kikō (Yoko- Yokohama seems much smaller now, though
hama Shopping Log). Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1995–2006. the seventy-story Yokohama Landmark Tower
14 volumes. ISBN 4-06-321050-2; 4-06-321055-3; still remains. After buying the coffee beans and
4-06-321061-8; 4-06-321066-9; 4-06-0321081-2; doing some window shopping, she spends the
4-06-321095-2; 4-06-321110-X; 4-06-321120-7; night sleeping by the side of the road outside
4-06-321134-7; 4-06-321147-9; 4-06-3321159-2; the town, then rides back to the café. Thus the
4-06-321165-7; 4-06-321171-1; 4-06-321176-2. first chapter sets the tone for the rest of the
series. There is not much plot or story. Instead,
Postapocalyptic stories are a staple in anime Yokohama kaidashi kikō focuses on creating the
and manga, usually presenting a depressing and mood and atmosphere of this future twilight
frequently violent image of the future world. In world. Nothing much happens, but that “noth-
the midst of these is a unique manga that de- ing much” unfolds with amazing beauty, grace,
picts the view of a simple life in a gentle posta- and serenity. Over the course of 140 chapters
pocalyptic world: Yokohama kaidashi kikō (gener- (and about 20 years within the story), this world
ally translated as Yokohama Shopping Log). Cre- is delicately sketched in by showing bits of Al-
ated by Ashinano Hitoshi, Yokohama kaidashi pha’s life and her interactions with her circle of
kikō premiered in Afternoon Magazine in June friends, both humans and a few other androids.
1994 and ended in February 2006.¹ Because the manga focuses more on the
Set hundreds of years in the future, Yoko- atmosphere than the storyline, it allows Ashi-
hama kaidashi kikō centers on the quiet life of a nano to be more lyrical in his presentation of
female android named Alpha who runs a small Alpha and her world. Frequently the only text
coffee shop on the coastline in rural Miura. An for a chapter is a poetic narration by Alpha ac-
unexplained environmental apocalypse of some companying the images. In fact, a few chapters
sort occurred in the past, causing a rise in the are purely visual with no text at all. There is a
sea levels and a drastic decrease in the human strong sense here of mono no aware (“a sensitiv-
population, which is further diminishing with ity to things”), the classic Japanese aesthetic
each passing generation. With fewer humans sense of melancholy and an acceptance of the
left to run things, the physical infrastructure of beauty inherent in the impermanence of things.
modern society is decaying and the technology Although common in much of Japanese art and
of the past is slowly being forgotten. Alpha’s literature, this concept rarely appears in manga
“owner” used to run the café but went off to or anime. An example of this mono no aware oc-
travel (and never appears in the series), leaving curs in chapter 22, “Yokosuka Cruise,” where
Alpha to keep operating the café. Alpha takes an afternoon trip trying to find the
The opening chapter follows Alpha as she first place that her owner took her to see years
takes an overnight shopping trip to Yokohama ago (3:101–16). She ends up at a bluff overlook-
to buy coffee beans for the café, thus giving the ing the drowned city of Yokosuka where she

2 56
runs into her friend “Sensei.” Sensei, an elderly (Figure 2) she observes, “With all its might the
doctor and scientist, worked on robot research engine expresses its joy of running after so
when she was young and helped develop the many decades. It spins like it’s crying while hur-
Alpha series of androids. As they watch the rying, rushing, as if it’s saying ‘I will not leave
sunset, one by one the lights of the dead city a drop of what might be the last the last bit of
begin to glow under the water until the expanse fuel ever’” (13:60). And then it dies, allowing the
of the lost city can be seen stretching out into silence of the countryside to return.
the darkened ocean (Figure 1). Alpha’s thoughts Yokohama kaidashi kikō is often referred
serve as an elegiac commentary on the scene. to as an iyashi kei (“healing type”) manga. The
“These lights that used to shine for practical term is used to refer to anything (an artwork,
purposes now just shine only for the sake of a piece of music, a person, even a scenic view)
shining . . . Flowers of light left for us by people that creates a sense of peace and spiritual satis-
of the past” (3:113–16). faction. It serves as an emotional refreshment
Another example of mono no aware appears in for the stress-filled viewer in need of such an
chapter 124, “Heartbeat,” where Alpha finds an antidote to modern life. Alpha lives in a delib-
old model-airplane engine in the shop owner’s erately slow-paced world full of small, ordinary
storage shed and sets about to fix it (13:51–66). details showing the reader that life is to be en-
She ends up using what little model airplane joyed and savored, not something to be rushed
fuel she has, and during the engine’s short run through. This harkens back to the classic idea

figure 1. Alpha and Sensei looking at the drowned city of Yokosuka at night. Used by permission of
Kodansha.

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 57
 of beauty and art serving the primary purpose The story hints that the purpose of these eter-
of uplifting and enriching the soul. While other nal (and eternally young) androids is to pre-
manga and anime series share some of the same serve the memory of humanity’s existence once
themes (and occasional sentimentality) as Yoko- the people are gone.
hama kaidashi kikō, only a very few fall into the After its twelve-year run, the final chapter of
same iyashi kei category, most notably Amano series ends where it began, with Alpha repeat-
Kozue’s manga ARIA.² ing her shopping trip into Yokohama and then
Part of the appeal of Yokohama kaidashi kikō returning to the café (14:137–52). On the way
lies in its mysteries. Ashinano creates a world back home, we hear Alpha’s thoughts as she ad-
that is both believable and intriguingly incom- dresses the reader directly: “My place is Café Al-
plete. What was the catastrophe that changed pha. The things I have seen and everyone I have
the world, and why is humanity dying out? Why known, I will never forget. Those days when
do the male androids have only a short lifespan the whole world had been like a festival slowly
while the female androids seem to last forever? calmed down. The gentle time that will later
For that matter, the very existence of the an- come to be called the ‘Age of Calm Evening.’ Let
droids is the central mystery of the manga. me show you that brief moment before night
How could a society that has lost the ability to comes. The night of humanity . . . May it be a
keep more than a few old airplanes flying have peaceful age” (14:149–52).
the technology to create such near-human an- It is not surprising that scores of anime and
droids? What was the reason for their creation? manga present depressing apocalyptic visions
where the world ends with violent destruction
and upheavals. This is the escapism of our era,
our way of dealing with our own worries and
fears about the future. The creation of Yokohama
kaidashi kikō gives us something much more rare
and precious: a postapocalyptic manga with a
hopeful vision. What Yokohama kaidashi kikō is
saying is that maybe this is how the world will
end, not with a whimper, not with a bang, but
with a peaceful sigh of wistful contentment. Liv-
ing as we do in these precarious and uncertain
times, that is a strangely reassuring message.

Notes
I am grateful to Dr. Watanabe Yuki for her help in
this review.
1. Yokohama kaidashi kikō is available in Eng-
lish only in unofficial online translations: Record of
a Yokohama Shopping Trip at http://ykk.misago.org
and Café Alpha Manga Translations at http://www.
cafealpha.org/ (both accessed November 2006).
The direct quotations in this review were trans-
lated from the Japanese by Dr. Watanabe Yuki.
figure 2. Alpha’s meditation as she watches a
model airplane engine running. Used by permis- 2. Amano Kozue, ARIA, 12 vols. (Tokyo: Mag-
sion of Kodansha. Garden, 2002–2008).

258  revie w & c o mme n tary

Lost in Transition: Train Men and in a scene that Japanese viewers would recog-
Dolls in Millennial Japan nize as a traditional form of abandonment, he
places the box in the river and walks away.
su sa n n a pier Train Man’s actions could be read as a form
In 2005 the Densha otoko phenomenon swept of growing up. By renouncing his fantasy world,
Japan. Purporting to be the real-life story of a he indicates that he is now willing to start a real-
young otaku (obsessive technogeek) who finds life relationship with another human being. But
romance after he defends an attractive young the television series itself is a wish-fulfilling
lady on a train, Densha otoko or “Train Man” fantasy. Ultimately, he gets to have his dolls and
was first a book, then a movie, and finally a hit his lady too. The box is returned to him, and his
television series. In novel form, the narrative girlfriend indicates that the dolls are not a prob-
is particularly fascinating for its text, which is lem. In fact, she too collects dolls.
created entirely of e-mail messages between Dolls and action figures are big business in
the hero, nicknamed Train Man, and a group of Japan. They are also works of art, icons of ideol-
likeminded friends on the Internet who create ogy and emotion, and objects of fetishization.
a supportive and warm community out of the In my research on dolls in Tokyo last year, I
thinness of cyberspace. Both film and televi- spent a great deal of time in Akihabara, the area
sion series augment and enrich these charac- of Tokyo that as a center for the latest techno-
terizations, especially of the hapless hero who products used to be known as the “electric city”
slowly transcends otaku-hood to win the girl of but might equally well be known as the “doll
his dreams. city” today. My trips to Akihabara were like go-
The television series with its longer narra- ing from sunshine into shadow. I would start in
tive arc was able to develop the story more fully a well-lit mammoth store such as Laox, stuffed
and enlarge on or even create episodes that with seemingly every gadget, toy, and action
delved more deeply into the heart of the char- figure under the sun; then progress to smaller
acters. One of the most heartfelt of these epi- places specializing in dolls or sometimes simply
sodes involves dolls (ningyō)—or perhaps one doll parts (one particularly distinctive store had
should say “figures,” since these dolls belong to huge cabinets full of glass dolls’ eyes, like some-
the male protagonist rather than the female. In thing from Blade Runner [1982]); to truly spe-
this episode, which takes place about halfway cialized places—warrens of glass cases owned
through the series, Train Man fears that he may by individuals that exhibited their owners’ par-
have lost the girl and decides that he must stop ticular tastes, ranging from the innocuous, like
being such an otaku. How to accomplish this? Barbie dolls and trading cards, to the disturb-
We see him go to his small cluttered room and ing—dolls in bondage or even simply dismem-
look around at his enormous collection of ac- bered doll torsos rising from a rose-blossom-
tion figures. He picks one up, stares at it, and shaped pool of blood. These stores would often
puts it down again, clearly in much turmoil of sell doll-centered magazines, usually containing
mind. Finally, he gets out a box and begins it pictures of mutilated nude dolls in disorient-
to fill it with the action figures. Although most ingly beautiful scenes and exquisitely lit and
are generic anime-esque characters, he particu- photographed. My last stop would usually be
larly hesitates on encountering one of them—a an upper floor of a “Costume Shop” where life-
doll from the immensely popular science fiction sized dolls in various costumes, ranging from
anime series Gundam (1979–present, and very cute schoolgirl uniforms to provocative French
much an object of otaku fandom). This doll he maid outfits, would be available for prices start-
salutes, clearly with a lump in his throat. Then, ing at 50,000 yen. These are of course the stores

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 59
 frequented by otaku, who in recent years have on Winnicott’s theories calls the “post-modern
become one of the driving forces behind what crisis.” ³ He specifies this crisis as arising from a
might be called the doll worship subculture of world of growing depersonalization, where the
contemporary Japan. analysand’s lack emotional engagement with
All cultures have had dolls or puppets, hu- the environment and complain of a general
man simulacrums as objects of play, collection, sense of nonbeing, of existing as an object in a
or even as spiritual aids. In fact, the doll, par- world of meaningless objects.
ticularly in puppet form, has a long history of Perhaps for otaku in particular, who usually
associations with the sacred and the supernatu- see themselves as outsiders, the doll can be a de-
ral. Victoria Nelson points out in The Secret Life fense against the emptiness (kyomu) that seems
of Puppets, to swirl around much of modern Japanese life.
It is perhaps no accident that dolls are related in
The human simulacrum in particular, important ways to a number of significant an-
whether stationary or moving, two or three ime series and films. This is most obvious in the
dimensional, in its contemporary form of anime Ghost in the Shell (1995, Kōkaku kidōtai)
children’s dolls or robots, cyborgs, and the and Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (2004, Ino-
like in popular film and literature, is an ob- sensu) by director Oshii Mamoru. Whereas the
ject we once worshipped . . . the point of first film brings up the notion of soul in a cy-
literal congruence between transcendental borg body, Innocence highlights various forms
spirit and physical matter, and thus a great of bonding—such as with pets or through
and holy mystery.¹ friendship and romantic love—and emphasizes
the ambiguous nature of cyborgs and dolls and
But dolls may also serve another, more homely our ambivalent connection to them, to give
purpose that may be particularly crucial in us a nightmare (or is it a dream?) scenario of
postindustrial societies such as Japan, where, as a posthuman world. In Innocence the dolls are
Densha otoko suggests, our interaction with oth- “sexroids,” life-sized, anatomically correct
ers is increasingly “virtual.” This is the notion of dolls that have had the souls of little girls ille-
the doll as a transitional object, as developed by gally imbedded in them. However, these girls/
D. W. Winnicott, a British psychoanalyst and pe- dolls refuse to be passive figures for the male.
diatrician.² Traditionally, the transitional object In several horrifying scenes they turn violently
is considered an artifact of childhood. As the murderous. They are transitional objects in a
child begins to separate from its mother, it finds number of senses—in their passive form they
the process frightening and confusing. A transi- embody what the Akihabara dolls hint at: they
tional object is something that helps in the pro- serve as substitutes for real women to a male
cess of separation. Often, it is a blanket or per- who may or may not be able to transition from
haps a cuddly toy, but frequently it is a doll. In the virtual to the real. But they also embody the
psychoanalytic terms, the doll (or other object) problematic transition between the human and
is a stand-in for the mother’s breast that the in- the technology that is all around us.
fant initially associates as part of him/herself. It may be that dolls serve both a transitional
Originally, transitional object theory cen- and a sacred function. Not only can they be a
tered around infancy and childhood, but in comforting bridge to an adult form of real-
recent years the notion of adults needing tran- ity (as in Densha otoko) but, in straddling the
sitional objects at certain times in their lives mysterious boundary between human and
has come into circulation. This need is probably other, between concrete reality and the virtual
related to what Michael Szollosy in his article worlds of imagination and play, they open up

260  revie w & c o mme n tary

a bridge between reality and its Other, be that Films based on popular novels always evoke a
supernatural, sacred, or virtual. In this regard dilemma. If too faithful to the book, they may
dolls may be the perfect vessel to emblemize a be charged with having simply illustrated a
modern Japan where boundaries are dissolving work from the literary canon; if too different
between mundane life and the virtual reality of from the original, fans of the novel complain
games, toys, anime/manga, and cyberculture in that it is not what they came to see. In Howl’s
general. Moving Castle, Miyazaki gets away with ventur-
At the denouement of Innocence, one of the ing very far from Diana Wynne Jones’s original
little girls explains why she wants to be rescued story, mostly because the fan base for his films
from her sexroid body. She cries out, “I didn’t and for Jones’s young adult fantasies do not
want to become a doll!” To which Motoko com- overlap much. However, for those who are fa-
ments, “But maybe if the dolls had voices, they miliar with both the book and the film, watch-
would say that they didn’t want to become hu- ing Howl’s Moving Castle is a bit like reading
man?” The movie refuses to answer that ques- very good fan fiction. The premise, the main
tion but prefers to leave us at the boundary line, characters, and the settings are the same, but
free to move around in our own versions of a Miyazaki has used them to tell a completely dif-
puppet play. As for Train Man, whose very name ferent story. Whereas Jones uses Sophie, Howl,
suggests a person in transition, the modern and Calcifer in a fairytale format to tell a story
world at its best can offer real and virtual con- about challenging class and gender expecta-
nections that are perhaps all equally satisfying. tions, Miyazaki uses the same characters to tell
a story about personal loyalty, love, and war.
Notes This contrast is not immediately apparent in
1. Victoria Nelson, The Secret Life of Puppets the film, since the first third seems to follow the
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, novel fairly closely, with only small changes only
2001), 29–30. later revealed to have major impact on the over-
2. D. W. Winnicott, Through Paediatrics to Psy- all plot. In both novel and film, a young woman
choanalysis (New York: Basic Books, 1975). named Sophie is wasting her life by refusing to
3. Michael Szollosy, “Winnicott’s Potential challenge the norms of the fairytale society in
Spaces: Using Psychoanalytic Theory to Redress which she lives. “It is quite a misfortune to be
the Crises of Postmodern Culture,” Psyche Matters, born the eldest of three,” Jones writes in the
http://www.psychematters.com/papers/szollosy. novel’s first paragraph: “Everyone knows you
htm (accessed November 27, 2006). are the one who will fail first and worst, if the
three of you set out to seek your fortunes.” In
the film, the same sentiment is spoken by So-
Howl’s Moving Castle phie’s sister Lettie, but we see no more of Lettie
or very much of the third sister Martha. Thus,
a n to n ia lev i
the novel’s major story—three young women
Miyazaki, Hayao (director). Hauru no ugoku shiro. challenging their society’s assumptions and
2004. Translated as Howl’s Moving Castle, expectations and using different stratagems to
subtitled DVD. Walt Disney Home Entertainment, build lives for themselves—is replaced by that
2006. ASIN: B000CDGVOE. of Sophie alone and her triumph over her own
timidity and lack of self-confidence.
Diana Wynne Jones. Howl’s Moving Castle. The means by which Sophie is forced to face
New York: HarperCollins, 1986. her issues also appear similar but are subtly dif-
ISBN: 0-06-441034-X. ferent. In both novel and film, the Wicked Witch

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 6 1
 of the Waste transforms her into an old crone. concerns war rather than his vanity, immatu-
In the novel, the witch’s motives are initially un- rity, or womanizing.
clear; only later are they revealed to be profes- Howl is still vain and immature in the film,
sional rivalry with Sophie, for, although unaware but his main issue relates to an ongoing conflict
of her powers, Sophie herself is a very powerful in which both sides are trying to draft his ser-
witch who stitches spells into the hats and cloth- vices. Although the novel has a subplot about
ing she sews. But in the film, the witch’s battle two kingdoms trying to recruit Howl to find a
is with the wizard Howl. Sophie, an innocent by- missing prince, the kingdoms are not at war. Yet
stander, is dragged into it due to an earlier, ac- a war is central to Howl’s part of the film where,
cidental encounter with the wizard. The central despite his emotional cowardice, he becomes an
story of her suppressed witchy powers and the antiwar hero even before he meets Sophie. He
fact that she is unconsciously maintaining the recognizes that the war is pointless and spends
old-age spell herself are both muted. his nights defending the innocent on all sides
However, these themes are not entirely lost. from hideous organic bombs that are often
Although Miyazaki never references them in actually wizards transformed into weapons.
the script, he does show these themes through To do so he must transform into a monstrous
Sophie’s many incarnations and changes in form himself: a huge predatory bird. The more
appearance. The film shows her in four basic often he changes and the longer he remains in
forms: her original brunette girl self, a hump- bird form, however, the harder it is for him to
backed old crone, an upright old lady, and a return to his human form. Howl is a wonderful
young woman with prematurely grey hair. She metaphor for what happens to soldiers—even
shifts back and forth between these forms de- antisoldiers—in war. He fights only to defend
pending on her mood and the situation, thus others, especially those he loves, but the act of
revealing that she has control over the spell. fighting is turning him into a monster. Howl’s
A most striking example occurs when she tells dilemma also plays into Sophie’s story in that
Howl that she is not pretty. As she says this, she she takes the greatest physical and emotional
is in her young girl with grey hair form. When risk of her life by attempting to save Howl from
he replies that she is beautiful (in both the book the war and from himself.
and the film, Howl sees through the spell al- The relationship between Howl and Calcifer,
most immediately), she changes instantly back the fire demon who holds Howl’s heart, remains
into her crone form. fairly faithful to the novel, but its importance in
The film’s Sophie is also shown stitching the film is increased due to how the film treats
blue triangles into Howl’s ruined clothing, the issue of family. Although family is central
but this has no real meaning because of how to both film and novel, the latter deals primar-
Howl’s part of the story has been changed. In ily with biological family and the need to define
the novel, Howl’s story centers on his immatu- oneself as an individual within it. In contrast,
rity, his vanity, his laziness, the importance he the film focuses on a created family of choice,
places on physical beauty, and his womanizing. and sees the creation of that family as part of
The legend that he eats young women’s hearts the self-definition of both Sophie and Howl.
and has no heart himself is a central metaphor, In the novel, Sophie’s biological family
and the spells Sophie unwittingly stitches into poses an obstacle to—or at least a complica-
his garments are a major plot point. But in the tion in—her personal development. Much of
film, Sophie’s stitch-spells have little meaning, what is holds her back is society’s understand-
not only because Sophie’s witch powers are less ing of what it means to be the eldest daughter.
pivotal but also because Howl’s central story Her stepmother plays on this, arguing that it is

262 revie w & c o mme n tary

right and proper that Sophie remain in the shop The family in this case is mostly the creation of
as an unpaid apprentice since she will eventu- Howl and Sophie, and its creation is a part of
ally inherit the business. Seeing through this their personal coming of age rather than an ob-
manipulation and refusing to go along with it stacle or complication.
becomes a major part of Sophie’s story. So is her The good news for those who love Sophie
growing understanding and forgiveness of her and Howl is that because the film is so different
stepmother, whom she comes to see as neither from the book, fans get two appealing stories
saintly nor evil but a young and pretty widow about the same characters.¹ Diana Wynne Jones
trying desperately to reclaim some sort of life loved the way Miyazaki brought her characters
without using outright brutality toward the to the screen, and rather enjoyed the new story.
three girls in her care. Sophie also must come She also enjoyed meeting Miyazaki. “I don’t
to terms with her own self-inflicted feelings of think I’ve ever met anyone before who thinks
protectiveness toward her younger sisters. In like I do,” she said. “He saw my books from the
fact, Sophie’s sisters are quite capable of taking inside out.” ²
care of themselves and have actually preceded
her into the adult world of self-determination. Notes
In the film, Sophie’s biological family does 1. Actually, there are three stories about Howl
not play a major role. The mother—not step- and Sophie. They also appear in another novel by
mother—makes two short appearances, and Jones set in the fairytale land of Ingary: Castle in
her sister Lettie appears once. Neither is well the Air (not to be confused with Miyazaki’s Castle
defined as a character and both are used mostly in the Sky), although in that novel, they are sup-
for exposition and plotting (probably to sim- porting rather than central characters.
plify the plot into a two-hour film). Whereas 2. Nick Bradshaw, “He Saw My Books from
the novel is a complex web of interconnected the Inside Out,” Telegraph.co.uk (September 23,
stories, Miyazaki focuses on only two: Sophie’s 2005), http://www.telegraph.co.uk/arts/main.
coming of age and the solution to Howl and jhtml?xml=/arts/2005/09/23/bfwynne23.xml
Calcifer’s dilemma. I personally regretted that (accessed October 30, 2006).
this meant also cutting out one of the novel’s
most interesting digressions. When one of the
castle’s doors turns out to lead to our universe Playing Outside the Box
and to twentieth-century Wales, Sophie learns with Mind Game
that the true name of the great wizard Howl is
paul j ackson
Howell Jenkins and that he is regarded by his
disapproving sister as a lazy good-for-nothing. Yuasa, Masaaki (director). Maindo geemu, 2004.
The elimination of the family themes, how- Translated as Mind Game, subtitled Japanese DVD.
ever necessary for producing a film, nonethe- Big Time Entertainment, 2004. ASIN B0001X9D90.
less has ramifications. Miyazaki kept some fam-
ily themes but creates a family of people who do The notion of what constitutes avant-garde film
not share biological connections: Sophie, Howl, has always been contentious. Defining anime
Calcifer, a boy apprentice named Markl (a teen variations, it seems, has also been difficult. The
named Michael in the novel), a senile Witch of commonly cited characteristics of individual art-
the Waste (she remains young in the novel), a ists—low budgets and mainstream opposition—
bespelled scarecrow whose story is never devel- don’t quite apply to Mind Game, director Yuasa
oped, and a dog with cut vocal cords (there is a Masaaki’s debut feature. But, paradoxically, nei-
bespelled dog in the novel, but he is not Heen). ther does it resemble more typical anime films.

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 6 3
 Therein lies the film’s strength—formal experi- for all the similarities between the two films,
mentation paired with a popular narrative. Us- one major difference cannot be overlooked.
ing traditional 2D cel animation, rotoscoping, Whereas Cat Soup is an exercise in decoding the
and computer-generated effects, among other signifiers, Mind Game is much more traditional
techniques, Mind Game displays a kaleidoscopic in its storytelling. Aside from the obvious ques-
patchwork of filmmaking practices.¹ tions (i.e., how can Nishi reverse time?), Mind
The plot follows Nishi, a twenty-year-old Game makes perfect sense by its own logic.
manga artist, who by chance runs into Myon, It is perhaps more accurate to place Mind
a physically well-endowed past love from high Game alongside Gainax’s FLCL (2000). Both
school. Unbeknownst to Nishi, Myon is being mix the mundane, absurd, and experimental;
followed by two yakuza in search of her father are thematically similar; and are equally en-
to settle debts. At her family yakitori restau- trenched in popular culture. Like FLCL, Mind
rant, Myon introduces her fiancé to a predict- Game’s intertextual references and allusions
ably devastated Nishi. Enter the two pursuing aren’t exclusively Japanese. In fact, Village Voice
yakuza, and a heartbroken, terrified Nishi is commentator Michael Atkinson tellingly de-
killed. Moments later, standing before God, he scribes the film as “anti-anime.” ² Once inside
is instructed to walk through a red portal and the whale, Nishi, Myon and Yan meet Jiisan, a
disappear. Meanwhile, God opens a path back man who has been living inside for more than
to earth. Naturally, grief-stricken Nishi defies thirty years. The obvious Western comparison
God’s instruction and runs to the earthbound is Disney’s animated film Pinocchio (1940), but
path, traversing time and space until he is back Jiisan’s home of raised platforms and rickety
in his body seconds before his murder. This time, walkways also recalls Disney’s Swiss Family
Nishi kills the yakuza and flees with Myon and Robinson (1960). Mind Game shares with Swiss
her sister Yan in tow. A high-speed car chase en- Family Robinson the same sense of an unlikely
sues, culminating in Nishi and company being utopia away from society’s trappings, even if
swallowed by a whale. material needs still exist. Indeed, the first thing
Yuasa is no stranger to eccentric plots Jiisan utters is “I’ve got a radio.” Of course, the
and challenging aesthetics, having previously film subverts such similarities exponentially.
worked as storyboard artist and animation Like Swiss Family Robinson, the characters of
producer on the similarly experimental Cat Mind Game also befriend the “locals.” Whereas
Soup (2001, Nekojiru-so). The story of anthro- the Robinson animals were incarcerated against
pomorphic cat siblings Nyako and Nyatta, Cat their will, Jiisan’s collection of fish preserves
Soup charts the journey their souls undertake species thought long extinct, including a Loch
as Nyatta’s body lies on the brink of death. Tra- Ness–style monster.
ditional narrative devices are dropped in favor Furthermore, Yuasa incorporates three
of a series of related vignettes (this technique musical sequences that recall both Disney and
is carried over into Mind Game and perhaps the overt sexualization of Japanese animation,
explains its occasional pacing problems). Cat yet fully succumb to neither. The first depicts a
Soup’s central set piece of a giant mechanical Fantasia-style (1940) routine of synchronized
clock reversing time is visualized using many swimming, as the characters are freed from
of the techniques so prominent in Mind Game: their predicament for the first time. Colors be-
men evolve and devolve in a barrage of digital come exceptionally bright and change freely,
brush strokes, a firing squad resurrects the akin to Disney’s The Lion King (1994). Later,
dead with a chalk-like finish, and fatal accidents the girls joyously skip over bamboo penile ex-
are rewound in abstract landscapes. However, tensions worn by Nishi and Jiisan, as the floor

264 revie w & c o mme n tary

radiates colors like some sort of primal disco. sequence that shows an animated Robin Nishi
The second sees Yan, now a performance art- (author of the original manga) giving advice to
ist, wearing a bondage-style mask and water three adoring fans. His body exaggerated and
filled balloons over her chest and crotch. She sexualized like Myon’s before it, his dialogue is
douses herself with paint before throwing her almost exclusively marked by curse-filled quips
newly curvaceous body at a circular canvas; each (“Fuck yeah!”). Significantly, this scene reveals
color print becomes a frame of a zoetrope-like the thematic key to the film: Robin advises,
sequence. Hosepipes feed her balloon-made “Have fun and become a man, not a clone, but
breasts, which, toward the end of the sequence, someone who transcends.”
burst and drench the onlookers. Nishi begins the film as a loser, loveless,
The final “dance” sequence sees Nishi and and without a career. But through the course
Myon make love for the first time. Perhaps the of the narrative, he defies almost all of life’s re-
most technically accomplished scene in the film, strictions. First, he cheats death and reverses
the routine is visualized using a breathtaking time, allowing himself a second chance. Later,
array of animation techniques. The characters he makes love to Myon and repairs a broken
embrace moments before morphing into insect- ankle. During the escape sequence he is even
like creatures and back again. Later, seismic lines seen in Japanese superhero guises (Ultraman,
seem to punctuate the skin, knowingly intercut Gridman), before finally floating above the city.
with Freudian images of computer-generated Transcendence is the key.
trains and tunnels. Finally, the couple are ren- The plot follows a similar path. Act 1 is
dered using what appears to be paint-on-film, rendered in drab grays and dull reds. Lines are
recalling scenes from Cat Soup. drawn atypically rough, and the plot is rife with
Through adopting Disney conventions, anime clichés. Act 2, inside the whale, culmi-
Yuasa imbues sex with a childlike innocence. nates in the delirious escape sequence. Finally,
Whereas in Disney films sex is noticeable only Act 3 returns to the “real” world, but gone are
by its absence and in anime is highlighted by its the angular stylings in favor of more photo-
all-too-frequent gratuitousness, in Mind Game, realistic animation: like the characters, we
for all its stylistic innovation, sex is presented are seeing the world from a fresh perspective.
as matter-of-fact. Although the scene is sig- This altered perception is further accentuated
nificant to those concerned, for the audience it through the film’s cyclical narrative. Opening
is most noteworthy for its beauty and lack of with a montage of Japanese life, consisting of
shock value. unfamiliar people, places, and times, the film
To this end, as much as Mind Game doesn’t ends with the same sequence. This time, how-
adhere to Disney’s model, despite some inten- ever, the characters are recognizable as youthful
tional similarities, neither does its content or incarnations of Nishi and company. Although
style resemble more typically Japanese works. the images are the same, our new understand-
Yuasa is as at home subverting anime stereo- ing irrevocably alters their meaning.
types as he is Disney iconography. The usual To- Such a clear narrative structure also reveals
kyo-centric setting is dropped in favor of Osaka. certain weaknesses. Act 1 is occasionally labori-
While both Myon’s exaggerated form and the ously slow compared to later scenes—this isn‘t
caricature yakuza could have walked out of a the intentional leisurely pace you might expect
pulpy manga serial or a less original anime, Yu- from a Ghibli film, for example, but a glut of
asa deliberately introduces anime stereotypes unimportant information—and its subplots
only to shatter them before the film’s climax. are frustratingly forgotten by the film’s climax.
This is later made clear in an imagined sci-fi The first thirty minutes establish the cyclical

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 6 5
 narrative but nonetheless stand as an elabo- In East and Southeast Asia, the influence of
rately wrought set-up whose sole purpose, it Japanese manga and anime is prominent. Since
seems, is to move the principal characters into the 1960s, comics and animation from Japan
place ready for Act 2. Although amusing, the have been popular leisure materials in Hong
banter-filled relationship between the pursuing Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea. The
yakuza is likewise overplayed and given dispro- growth of Japanese manga and anime in this re-
portionate screen time. gion contributed to the spread of manga and an-
That said, Mind Game remains a remark- ime to Europe and North America in the 1990s.
able achievement. But, although significant, it Among these regions, Hong Kong has been
would be wrong to fully praise (or dismiss) the able to maintain its unique local culture by hy-
film on its avant-garde or “anti-anime” creden- bridizing others. Kwai-Cheung Lo’s book offers
tials alone. Like any director who knowledgably insight into globalization and transnational
deviates from a set of codes and conventions, identity by examining such topics as newspaper
be they genre or production techniques, Yuasa columns, book culture, film, kung-fu comics,
depends on anime practices as much as he de- and theme parks.
nounces them. Yuasa’s experimentation seems While this book analyzes language, images,
to arise as a natural extension of fully realized and objects found in Hong Kong popular cul-
characters, and questions of why and how even- ture, Lo also incorporates a global and transna-
tually fall into insignificance. The film may be a tional perspective, declaring that the effect of
few pieces short of a neat genre label, but Mind English subtitles in Hong Kong films is “to rep-
Game is all the better for it. Indeed, a better resent a certain cultural specificity or designate
combination of popular and avant-garde sen- certain ethnic characteristics are a hindrance
sibilities has arguably never been done in the that—paradoxically—facilitates globalization”
field of anime. (19). Action movies and kung-fu comics as ex-
amples demonstrate how Hong Kong popular
Notes culture struggles to form its own identity when
1. Mind Game is a region 2 NTSC Japanese encountering external influences, a process of
DVD with optional English subtitles. global localization or “glocalization.”
2. Michael Atkinson, “Excess Express: Mind Kung-fu comics, like many popular culture
Trips and Psychotic Inventions at Annual Asian genres in Hong Kong, have a long history of
Series,” The Village Voice, June 13, 2005, http:// hybridizing their own Chinese tradition with
www.villagevoice.com/film/0524,atkinson foreign examples. We can trace the American in-
3,64893,20.html (accessed June 10, 2006). fluence on Hong Kong comics back to the 1920s
Shanghai cartoon character Mr. Wang (Wang Xi-
ansheng), created by Yeh Qian-yu and published
From Transnationalization in Shanghai Sketch in 1928. This genre of minise-
to Globalization: The Experience ries entertainment cartoons was influenced by
of Hong Kong Western/American cartoons such as Ally Sloper’s
Half Holiday (1884) by Gilbert Daliziel and The
wen dy siu y i wo n g
Yellow Kid (1896) by Richard Outcault.
Kwai-Cheung Lo. Chinese Face/Off: American cartoon books in English were
The Transnational Popular Culture of Hong Kong. available in Hong Kong before the Second
Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, World War. By the early 1950s, some American
2005. ISBN: 0-252-07228-6. cartoon books had been translated into Chi-
nese and published in Hong Kong, popularizing

266 revie w & c o mme n tary

characters such as Pinocchio, Mickey Mouse, throughout the decades, Hong Kong comic art-
Donald Duck, and Elmer Fudd. Due to the lack ists were able to develop a genre and style of
of new manhua developments in Mainland their own.²
China and the relative lack of experience and Kung-fu comics integrate American and
exposure of many local cartoonists, American Japanese action comics, and are an excellent
cartoon books became the highest form of man- demonstration of the globalization of popular
hua available to Hong Kong readers at that time. culture where origin is no longer important.
As a result, many locally produced cartoons ex- When Hong Kong action movies traveled to
hibited obvious American influences. Hollywood along with Jackie Chan, John Woo,
With the advent of free wireless television Chow Yun Fat, and Jet Li, Western audiences
broadcasts in Hong Kong in 1967, the 1970s were already familiar with them. At the same
saw an increasing influence of Japanese popu- time, the genre retained its authenticity. In his
lar culture in Hong Kong through television book, Lo is able to articulate this circular pro-
and pirated Japanese manga. Japanese tele- cess of transnationalization of the local in a
vision became prime-time entertainment in global context.
the early 1970s, with programs such as Young For readers interested in the transnation-
Sparkler (1969–70, Sign wa V).¹ Children’s after- alization of Japanese comics and anime, Part
noon viewing time was filled with Japanese car- 2, “Image Is Everything,” provides interesting
toons, including Candy Candy (1976–79, Kyandi insights into the direction manga and anime
Kyandi), Ultraman (1979–80, Za Urutoraman), might take in Europe and North America in the
Little Monk Ikkyu (1975–82, Ikkyu-san), Dorae- future. We can call this a second flow of glo-
mon (1973, 1979–present), and many others. balization led by Japan rather than by Ameri-
Generally speaking, Hong Kong’s younger gen- can popular culture. The influence of Japanese
erations still tend to identify more with Japa- manga and anime are still emerging in Euro-
nese manga and anime characters than with pean and North American countries, so local
American comics and cartoons. Apart from the production of Japanese-style manga and anime
“official” distribution channel through televi- has yet to mature. Given time, it may be pos-
sion, “unauthorized” Japanese manga repro- sible to see Hong Kong’s experience duplicated
duction and distribution became widespread in somewhere in Western countries.
the mid-1960s. Some cultural critics term this phenomenon
Several popular manga in the 1960s, includ- “Japanization of the West.” With the rising
ing Astro Boy (1952–68, Tetsuwan Atomu) and economic power of China, speculation about
Princess Knight (1953–56, 1958–59, 1963–66, China’s future role in global popular culture is
Ribon no kishi) by Tezuka Osamu, and Mochi- growing. Whether it is called “Japanization of
zuki Mikiya’s Wild 7 (1969–79, Wairudo 7), were the West” or “Asianization of the West,” the
among the titles reproduced without copyright phenomenon is yet to be defined and fully de-
authorization by Hong Kong and Taiwan- bated. At the end of his book, Lo shifts the fo-
ese publishers. At that time, copyright issues cus of the transnationalization discussion from
were not widely considered to be important by the self-fabricated identity of “Chineseness” to
Chinese readers or even by many of the copy- the relocation of Chineseness through global
right holders of the pirated Japanese manga. icons such as giant pandas, Mickey Mouse, and
The booming popularity of Japanese manga Disneyland in Hong Kong. What are the impli-
in 1970s Hong Kong was actively initiated by cations of this latest glocalization development
Hong Kong publishers themselves, rather than on the future development of globalization?
the Japanese manga publishing houses. Yet, The answer has yet to be discovered.

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 6 7
 In his book, Lo successfully analyzes selected Around a century ago, when these stereo-
topics of Hong Kong popular culture within types seemed fresh and new, the United States
the context of globalization studies. This work and other Western countries were gripped by a
will prove to be a good reference for the study craze for acquiring art and collectibles from the
of future globalization trends in European and Far East. According to Thomas Kim, the boom in
North American countries. collecting these exotic products—from screens
to fans, porcelain to scrolls—coincided with the
Notes development of consumerism: by bringing these
1. Yoshiko Nakano, “Who Initiates a Global objects into their homes, middle-class consum-
Flow? Japanese Popular Culture in Asia,” Visual ers from industrialized societies attempted to
Communication 1, no. 2 (2002): 229–53. construct their identity as modern subjects,
2. Wendy Siuyi Wong, “Hong Kong Comic whose assumed superiority to Asian “others”
Strips and Japanese Manga: A Historical Perspec- did not preclude learning the art of aesthetic ap-
tive on the Influence of American and Japanese preciation from ancient, exotic cultures. “Collec-
Comics on Hong Kong Manhua,” Design Discourse, tors seemed to imagine Japan emerging from a
Inaugural Preparatory Issue (2004): 22–37. time capsule,” Kim writes, “and in large part the
Oriental message from the past was conceived
as an education in beauty and order.”¹ Does the
“Always Exoticize!” new millennial boom for high-tech Japanese
Cyborg Identities and the exotica represent a message from a time cap-
Challenge of the Nonhuman sule of the future rather than the past? Is it a
in Full Metal Apache call to become postmodern subjects with a new
aesthetic, able to navigate the dizzying world of
jo sh u a pa u l da le
late-capitalist consumerism without falling into
Takayuki Tatsumi. Full Metal Apache: the condescending racism that characterized
Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and the past consumption of the exotic Orient?
Avant-Pop America. Durham, N.C.: Duke To trace Tatsumi’s nuanced analysis of this
University Press, 2006. ISBN 0-8223-3774-6. question and give a taste of his eclectic and mul-
tilayered style, I follow his exegesis of the title
As well as offering a fine comparative study of Full Metal Apache. Tatsumi begins with Tsuka-
Japanese and American literary and cultural moto Shin’ya’s two recent films Tetsuo (1989)
productions, Tatsumi Takayuki’s new book also and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992), which de-
intervenes in the critical debates surrounding scribe the transformation of an ordinary Japa-
orientalism and exoticism. This is especially nese salaryman, and later a group of skinheads,
relevant considering the recent international into metallicized cyborg bioweapons. While
popularity of things Japanese, particularly an- acknowledging the debt these films have to
ime and manga. Tatsumi’s book provides a valu- American cyberpunk science fiction, Tatsumi
able history of the cross-cultural interactions outlines the postwar Japanese cultural history
that first created and now nurture this sud- that provides an additional antecedent to Tsu-
den desire for contemporary Japanese cultural kamoto’s theme of the outlaw bonding of metal
products, whose appeal is largely based on a and human. In the closing days of World War
perceived difference between stylish new Japa- II, the Osaka munitions factory, the largest in
nese products and the old and familiar “orien- Asia, was bombed to ruins. After the war, indi-
tal” exotic stereotypes of, as Tatsumi succinctly gent people squatting in rough shacks across
puts it “Fujiyama-geisha-sushi-harakiri” (4). the river—Koreans, Okinawans, and Japanese

268  rev ie w & c o mme n tary

living on the fringes of society—realized the Vietnam War films and cyborgian subjectivity,
value of the metal scrap embedded in the ruins which he bases on the American fear of “high-
and began to forage for it. If they could evade tech Mongoloid soldiers as a type of cyborg,”
police—not easy to do when weighted down fails to convince (169). By convention, this
with a hundred pounds of metal—they could filmic genre always showcases American tech-
sell the scrap for huge profits (158). nological superiority and represents the Viet-
Earlier in the book, when Tatsumi ana- namese Other with colonialist narratives of
lyzes Japan’s self-exoticizing literary tradition primitivism (or, at best, noble savagery).
of the “deep North gothic,” he details the his- This is one example of an unfortunate ten-
torically marginal status of people forced by dency in Full Metal Apache: occasionally, the
circumstances to live on Japan’s flood-prone analysis is too cavalier as it skips from one point
riverbanks. He also points out that even this to another. But in a previous chapter on the
indigenous literary form was influenced by works of William Gibson and Richard Calder,
the multicultural voice of Lafcadio Hearn. In Tatsumi effectively traces the cyborg identity as
a similar vein, the Osaka scrap-metal thieves it impacts on Western subjectivity through cy-
were dubbed “Japanese Apaches” by the media. berpunk science fiction; in fact, the reader often
This sobriquet elevated them to a heroic status finds that weak points in the text are addressed
that appealed to Japanese film audiences, who elsewhere in the book.
romanticized the Apache Indian characters in Full Metal Apache shows its strengths ar-
Hollywood westerns directed by John Ford and ticulating the contemporary Japanese identity.
others (159). Tatsumi’s Pax Japonica is not merely a peace
The untamed, outlaw spirit attached to this built by economic rather than military might.
nickname inspired Komatsu Sakyō’s 1964 sci- Instead, his more radical insight is that the Jap-
ence fiction novel Nippon Apacchi-Zoku (The anese identity is constructed along the lines of
Japanese Apache). Komatsu seized on the metal the Emperor’s postwar fate: the Emperor’s de-
scavengers’ description of themselves as people scent from divine status into a media-enabled
who “eat iron scrap,” when they turn junk into figurehead is directly linked to the reconstruc-
money for food (161). In The Japanese Apache, tion of individuality in Japan through frenzied
Komatsu creates a new species of “metallivo- consumerism. Drawing from Donna Harraway’s
rous” humans who literally eat iron and ex- classic “Manifesto for Cyborgs,” ² Tatsumi writes:
crete high-quality steel. This is an example of “Just as the Emperor has survived postwar life
Tatsumi’s theory of “creative masochism,” to as a cyborgian chimera, so too have the Japa-
which he refers periodically throughout Full nese people all become cyborgs—what I refer
Metal Apache. The postwar Japanese identity to as ‘Japanoids’—transforming a once divine
was formed through the ability to press on nation into a monstrously hybrid one” (25).
through the pain of reconstruction and emerge Japanese postwar subjectivity itself has evolved
triumphant into what Tatsumi terms the “Pax from eating metal and thus is fundamentally
Japonica” (44). split by the intercession of the inorganic.
Finally, the title Full Metal Apache invokes Readers familiar with such poststructural-
Stanley Kubrick’s 1989 film Full Metal Jacket, ist thinkers as Foucault, Barthes, Derrida, and
in which, Tatsumi maintains, “the western dis- Lacan will already be aware of this concept of
course of orientalism . . . turns out to be closely the split subject, which states that identity is
intertwined with the western construction of never whole because it is constructed around a
cyborgian subjectivity” (169). Ultimately, Tat- kernel of absolute, inhuman otherness. There-
sumi’s argument for the connection between fore, exploring the limits of the human involves

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 6 9
 negotiation with an internal nonhuman: this developing and future cross-cultural relations.
insight goes to the core of Tatsumi’s argument According to Thomas Kim, the exotic ob-
in Full Metal Apache. His comparative analysis jects collected in the West a hundred years ago
of American orientalism and Japanese occiden- concealed an untamed Other in their depths;
talism moves from the old dynamic of exoticism the process of bringing them inside the home,
and imitation, respectively, into the realm of therefore, creates the possibility of certain un-
synchronicity, in which he finds strange points canny “destabilizations in the time and space of
of connection between these seemingly oppo- the self and its attendant culture even as it os-
site doctrines (12). The book’s final movement tensibly promises self-aggrandizement.”⁵ In Full
elucidates what he calls the new exotic, which Metal Apache, Tatsumi suggests a new manifes-
comprises “the multicultural and transgeneric tation of the uncanny encounter between self
poetics of chaotic negotiation” (176). and other. While the prior doctrines of exotici-
The bulk of this last section is an extended zation and imitation allowed twentieth-century
analysis of the work of Kobayashi Erika, espe- Westerners to feel self-aggrandizement, and
cially her first novella, “Neversoapland.” This granted to postwar Japanese the subversive
appears as a refreshing if brief interlude, since power of creative masochism, Tatsumi’s new ex-
Full Metal Apache includes disappointingly few otic is a clarion call to allow this discomforting
analyses of works by women. In fact, except for encounter to happen without taking refuge in
brief mentions of well-known science fiction feelings of either superiority or inferiority.
authors like Octavia Butler and James Tiptree Therefore, the connection Tatsumi articu-
Jr. (pseudonym of Alice B. Sheldon), women lates between Americans and Japanese has
writers or artists are disregarded entirely. It’s nothing to do with the two groups identifying
a disappointing lapse. To name just two exam- with each other. Instead, his concept of the
ples: Linda Nagata, in her four nanotechnology new exotic avoids racist appropriations of the
novels,³ and Maureen F. McHugh, in her won- Other by proposing a postmodern subjectivity
derful China Mountain Zhang and Nekropolis,⁴ constructed by a mutual but separate conver-
both employ the motifs of cyberpunk to explore gence with the inorganic, or nonhuman. Tat-
multicultural subjectivity and technological hu- sumi’s plea to “Always exoticize!” I believe, calls
man hybridity in ways that match the final arc on readers of Full Metal Apache to explore their
of Tatsumi’s analysis. relation to others by performatively enacting a
This lapse aside, the key point of Full Metal cyborg identity that defiantly displays the in-
Apache’s paradigm of the new exotic is that Tat- ternal, nonhuman limits of the human.
sumi does not argue for either an ongoing con-
vergence or a built-in separation between Japan Notes
and the United States. No grand narratives pull 1. Thomas W. Kim, “Being Modern: The Circu-
the two countries together or push them apart: lation of Oriental Objects,” American Quarterly 58
such overarching themes belong to an earlier (2006): 383.
era of exotification and imitation. Therefore, 2. Donna Haraway, “A Manifesto for Cyborgs:
when Larry McCaffrey hails the book’s read- Science, Technology, and Socialist Feminism in the
ers as “fellow Japanoids” in his foreword to Full 1980s,” Socialist Review 15, no. 2 (1985): 65–108.
Metal Apache, he uses the term inaccurately 3. Linda Nagata, The Bohr Maker (New York:
(xi). Japanoids are not presented as a model Bantam Spectra, 1995); Tech-Heaven (New York:
for all humanity. However, there is a way in Bantam Spectra, 1995); Deception Well (New York:
which Tatsumi’s analysis of this “monstrously Bantam Spectra, 1997); Vast (New York: Bantam
hybrid” identity provides an important clue for Spectra, 1998).

270  revie w & c o mme n tary

 4. Maureen F. McHugh, China Mountain Zhang its moons, and asteroids. As the title suggests,
(New York: Tor Books, 1992); Nekropolis (New the music leans towards jazz even as the plot
York: HarperCollins, 2001). and imagery invokes the Old West. Champloo
5. Kim, “Being Modern,” 380, n. 1. is set in early modern Japan, though the exact
time period is radically indeterminate. The title
theme is hip-hop, and hip-hop occurs in the
Postmodern Is Old Hat: soundtrack, imagery, and thematics.
Samurai Champloo Champloo is also anachronistic, and therein
resides its genius. We see this in the title se-
willia m l. ben zo n
quence, which combines traditional Japanese
Samurai chanpur. TV series, 2004–2005. Watanabe paintings, drawings, and lettering with thor-
Shin’ichirō (director). Translated as Samurai Cham- oughly modern graphic styling. Anachronism is
ploo. 7-DVD box set. Geneon Entertainment (USA) pounded home in the opening segments of the
Inc., 2006. AISN B000FC2EXE. first episode. We see Jin and Mugen bound and
in position for decapitation; the sound track has
Watanabe Shin’ichirō’s twenty-six-episode no music, just spoken words of condemnation
Samurai Champloo is seductive, tempting the from the executioner and defiance from Jin and
sophisticated critic to read it in terms of post- Mugen. The second segment is introduced with
modern eclecticism, cultural hybridity, and the title “one day earlier,” followed by a contem-
self-consciousness. A more sophisticated critic, porary street scene: a graffiti-covered wall in
or perhaps one utterly lacking in such sophisti- the background and a b-boy ambling right-to-
cation, knows better. It is not that Champloo left across the screen to the discordant hip-hop
does not exhibit those signs of postmodern soundtrack. Then, STOP, and rewind. As the
times; it does. Very much so. Casually so. So ca- b-boy moves backward, left-to-right, time ac-
sually, that one suspects Watanabe is up to celerates backward as the buildings, dress, and
something else. modes of transport become older and older. In
Like Watanabe’s previous series, the very the compass of 81 frames, this two-seconds-
popular Cowboy Bebop (1998–99, Kaubōi plus sequence returns us to Tokugawa Japan.
bibappu), Champloo is episodic and centers on a Now we learn how Mugen and Jin met Fuu and
small group of misfits thrown together at the how she saved their lives.
margins of society. Mugen is an ex-pirate who Rather than either summarize the action
looks like Spike from Bebop, wears pants that or comment on miscellaneous moments, ac-
look like long baggy b-boy¹ shorts, and has a tions, themes, and motifs across the entire se-
wickedly eclectic fighting style. Jin is a rōnin ries, I will comment on two episodes only. Each
who wears Armani eyeglasses, dresses tradi- involves an anachronistic encounter between
tionally, and fights in an equally effective but Japan and America, but only one is staged that
highly traditional style. Fuu has worked as a way. Episode 18 is set in Hiroshima and is about
waitress and is searching for an unidentified graffiti, the written word, old debts, and Andy
samurai who smells like sunflowers. She saves Warhol. Episode 23 is about a baseball game
Mugen and Jin from ignominious execution in in which a Japanese pick-up team defeats the
the first episode and thereby enlists their aid in crew of an American warship visiting from the
her search. nineteenth century and captained by Alexander
Like Bebop’s, Champloo’s mise en scène is cul- Cartwright, who formalized the rules of base-
turally eclectic. But the mix is different. Bebop ball for the New York Knickerbockers. Let’s
is set in the future and in space: mostly Mars, start with 23 and finish with 18.

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 7 1
 Those of us born and raised in America know and inanimate, human and animal, and so forth.
that baseball is an American sport. It is a famil- These differences are amply displayed, or
iar part of our world, this national pastime. We made manifest, to use a phrase from Wittgen-
watch baseball games on television and in per- stein’s Tractatus (proposition 6.522), in this
son, and we play the game too, though mostly game. That one team is uniformed and the other
when young. It is not something foreign and is not makes visible the nature of teamhood
exotic. and, by extension, of collective actors such as
The odd thing is, that is also pretty much how corporations or governmental agencies. The
it is for those of us born and raised in Japan, distinction between animal and human within
where the game has been played since the late the Japanese team foregrounds the animal
nineteenth century. Sure, we know that some- within the human, a concept at once traditional
time in the dim past, before any living Japanese in both Eastern and Western cultures as well as
was born, the game came here from America. modern—think of Freud or modern neurosci-
But that knowledge is distant and remote com- ence. All of these differences, these ontological
pared to our personal experience of the game. categories, are encompassed within the game,
It is not something foreign and exotic. It is as which thus becomes a microcosm of the larger
Japanese as sailor suits for schoolgirls. world, as games are wont to do. In this context,
In episode 23, the two teams make a strik- it hardly matters just where this game was in-
ing contrast as they take the field. The Ameri- vented. That is a mere contingency irrelevant to
can team is dressed in light-grey baseball uni- the metaphysical lesson being imparted.
forms. To a first approximation, they all look The lesson in episode 18, though metaphysi-
alike. In contrast, the Japanese team is highly cal in character, is also about society and his-
individualized. Mugen, Jin, and Fuu dress as tory. On the one hand, it turns out that Mugen
they always do, as does the doddering old man, is illiterate; he spends much of the episode
the manager, Fuu’s pet flying squirrel, and an learning to read and write. On the other hand,
akita. The last two, of course, do not normally a dojo where Jin had studied has been inherited
wear clothing and do not deviate from normal- by the sons of Jin’s master after the master had
ity on this occasion. When the akita gets up to been forced into poverty and then ritual sui-
bat, holding the bat between his teeth, he gets cide by the daimyō of Hiroshima. The sons head
three balls—his strike zone is so narrow that it up gangs that compete through tagging, i.e.,
is impossible to pitch to it. Fourth time, he’s hit painting graffiti on public buildings and other
by the pitch and runs away yelping, followed by surfaces. Tagging is not, of course, a Tokugawa
the very sensible squirrel. Then the game gets activity, but it is important in the hip-hop cul-
nasty. The Americans decide to cheat, and do so ture that saturates Champloo’s contemporary
very well. But Mugen’s fierce pitching levels the ambience. While hip-hop, and tagging too,
American players one by one. At the end of the originated in America, both went international
first inning he’s the only player standing. The more than two decades ago. Although consider-
Japanese thus win by forfeit as the Americans ably newer than baseball, neither are any more
no longer have a team in the game. specifically American than baseball.
What’s the point of this anti-game of base- Fuu suggests that the feuding brothers settle
ball? The point is ontological, not in the deep their conflict through a contest: the gang that
sense of the ultimate constituents of the uni- tags the most difficult spot wins. They agree, but
verse but in a sense studied by cognitive scien- Mugen wins the contest rather than either gang.
tists such as Frank Keil² about how we perceive He’s learned to read and write and, in his enthu-
and understand differences between animate siasm for these newfound skills, tags his way up

272 revie w & c o mme n tary

the façade of Hiroshima castle and paints his do we find a representative of Western imperi-
personal symbol on the roof; it looks like the alism prompting the Japanese reflexively to as-
conventional mathematical sign for infinity. sert and elaborate a specifically Japanese iden-
Note that, in Japanese, mu means absence, and, tity? There isn’t one, but one character comes
as the infinite is without limit, Mugen’s name is tantalizingly close. Episode 18 is framed by
thus consonant with his symbol. voice-overs about fashion and the street, de-
What, then, do we make of this? I would livered by one Uhori, who is clearly modeled
like to turn to Eiko Ikegami’s recent Bonds of after Andy Warhol. Warhol was one of the best-
Civility,³ which is a study of networks of artistic known figures in the contemporary art world.
activity during the Tokugawa period. Ikegami Although he was American, that is merely a
argues that individuals who were assigned dif- matter of place of birth and residence. Cultur-
ferent stations by the shogunate would tem- ally, he was a transnational force and remains a
porarily “escape” that structure in the pursuit transnational icon.
of poetry, flower arranging, the tea ceremony, Thus in both of these episodes national
theater, painting, and so forth. Samurai, mer- origins are asserted (baseball) or implied (Andy
chants, farmers, and others were thus able to Warhol), only to be rendered irrelevant to the
meet and interact as equals in these aesthetic central action. If we read the entire series as
activities. Over the centuries, these informal in- an extended parable about the mechanisms of
stitutions forged a civil society “that generated culture and society, this parable clearly subor-
an image of aesthetic Japan as if it had been a dinates national identity to the agency of its
natural description of the geographical identity individual actors, most centrally, Fuu, Mugen,
called Japan” (375). In the late nineteenth cen- and Jin. Samurai Champloo thus goes beyond
tury, this identity coalesced around the figure subverting postmodern interventions into cul-
of the emperor when the nation in general, and ture, identity, antihegemonic subalterns, and
the shogunate in particular, was forced to adapt so forth. Watanabe renders such critical expos-
to Western imperialism (372–76). tulation irrelevant, not by ignoring the various
Now let us return to Samurai Champloo. Fuu, systems his protagonists must negotiate but by
Mugen, and Jin are all interstitial individuals recognizing that their imaginative agency is ul-
with respect to the shogunate; they have no timately more powerful than those systems.
place in that system. The series as a whole is The postmodern critic works hard to reveal
deeply concerned with artistic activities, having national identity as an ideological fiction. But,
episodes devoted to painting, kabuki, poetry paradoxically, the success of that enterprise
(rap), and music. Fuu, Mugen, Jin, and their serves only to wed it ever more firmly to the fact
activities embody the networks of aesthetic of such identity, thereby making identity one
civility that forged Japanese identity. When in fulcrum on which the postmodern critic turns
episode 18 Mugen paints his symbol on the roof an argument. By contrast, Watanabe sets his
of Hiroshima castle—the daimyō’s residence— story in a world where national identity had yet
that act symbolizes the ascendance of the infor- to coalesce in its modern form. Watanabe can
mal order of aesthetic civility over the formal then introduce national identity into his nar-
order of the shogunate’s hierarchies. This epi- rative though anachronistic gestures—such as
sode thus embodies and recapitulates the forces the baseball-playing crew of an American war-
that, in Ikegami’s analysis, underpin the ulti- ship or a pop-art figure of American descent—
mate emergence of modern Japanese identity where such identity contributes to his story as
in the late nineteenth century. but one among many attributes of individuals
But, if that is so, then where in this episode and their motives.

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 7 3
 In the context of Watanabe’s freely imag- to think about the difference between the
ined Tokugawa Japan, the social and ideological ways scholars and actors view these works
formations of nationhood do not dominate any- and their cultural context, and we were
thing. They are just another component in the interested in hearing more. In the follow-
mise en scène. Artists like Watanabe Shin’ichirō ing e-mail interview with Frenchy Lunning,
are ahead of the critical game. It is time we lis- Freeman discussed the actor’s perspective
tened to them rather than to the voices of criti- and his own ideas about superheroes, giant
cisms past. robots, and notions of the divine.

Notes frenchy lunning: Crispin, your key concept

1. “B-boy” is hip-hop slang for a devoted originated from a notion that these cultural
fan of hip-hop culture. It is a shortened form of icons—superheroes and giant robots—are
“break-boy” where “break” derives from break rooted in the religious and mythological foun-
dancing, the martial arts inflected dance style dations of the cultures that produced them. So
that arose with hip-hop. to begin, how do you understand mythological
2. Frank C. Keil, Concepts, Kinds, and Cogni- concepts when as an actor you inhabit these
tive Development (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, characters in such a deeply mysterious and
1992). profoundly intuitive way in order to deliver
3. Eiko Ikegami, Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic the psychic knowledge of a character in perfor-
Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese mance? More simply, how has your experience
Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, as the actor determined your ideas on these key
2005). icons in popular culture?

crispin freeman: That’s a big question! Let’s

start with how my experience as an actor in-
トレンド forms my understanding of mythology. Later
Torendo I can talk about how that led to my views on
Giant Robots and Superheroes: mythological storytelling and specifically giant
Manifestations of Divine robots and superheroes in animation.
Power, East and West In a lecture entitled The Way of Art, Joseph
An Interview with Crispin Freeman Campbell talks about the similarities between
the artist and the mystic: “The way of the mys-
fr en ch y lu n n in g
tic and the way of the artist are very much alike
During the 2006 session of the annual except that the mystic does not have a craft.
Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits: Culture and The craft holds the artist to the world and the
Creation in Anime and Manga (SGMS) at mystic goes off through his psyche into the
the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, transcendent. The artist is going to many of the
Crispin Freeman, the very popular and well- same places, but he is held to the world [by his
known anime voice actor, advanced some craft].” ¹
thoughtful and provocative ideas concern- The religious mystic is trying to achieve an
ing the mythic and religious roots of Ameri- experience of radical unity with the divine. He is
can comic book superheroes and the giant reaching for an ecstatic state that goes beyond
robots of anime and manga. His presenta- rational understanding. It is a state of bliss that
tion, titled “Giant Robots and Superheroes: can only be hinted at in descriptions and meta-
Manifestations of Divine Power,” inspired us phors. In the end, mystical unity with the divine

274 revie w & c o mme n tary

eludes any attempt to conceptualize it because “perfect” idea. When creating art, practice must
it must be experienced, not described, in or- trump theory in order to communicate to an
der to truly be understood. For me, the acting audience. The best way to insult an artist is to
process is very similar. As an actor, I am trying ask them what their art means. If the revelation
to embody the essence or truth of a character has to be explained, it’s not a revelation.
and become one with him. Initially, I try to con- When I was studying acting in graduate
ceptualize the character. I look to many places school, I had an artistic crisis of sorts. None
to build my idea of the character. I study the of my work seemed to be communicating. The
story, I get insight from the director and I look head of the program pulled me aside and said,
within myself to my own experiences of life to “Crispin, you look good, you speak well, and
see what part of me responds to the character you move gracefully. Why am I not always in-
and his situation. All of this conceptual work terested?” I realized that I was performing “cor-
is my craft and it helps prime the instinctive rectly,” but I wasn’t communicating. I knew the
part of me. However, conceptualizing a char- path analytically, but I wasn’t willing to walk it
acter is not enough in order to perform a role. emotionally. I had to ask myself what I cared
Once I’ve made my decisions about a character, about and what communicated to me. Luck-
I then have to switch gears and play pretend in ily, I came across Joseph Campbell’s work on
order to embody that character. When you con- comparative mythology. Campbell was able to
ceptualize a character you are holding them at articulate what I had always been attracted to
arm’s length; you are subject and the character instinctively and he gave me the tools and the
is object. In order to play a character you have to grammar to analyze story and myth. His work
close that conceptual distance and become that was a great starting point for my ongoing study
character. When I am playing a role like Alucard of mythological storytelling, from both the ana-
in Hellsing (2001–02, Herushingu), I don’t say to lytical and instinctive perspectives.
myself, “I’m now playing Alucard,” I say to my-
self, “I am Alucard.” fl: Fascinating. So how has what you learned
The mystic is also trying to go past religious from this creative process informed your par-
conceptions in order to actually experience the ticular thesis about the relationship between
divine. The primary difference between a mys- religion and mythology?
tic and myself are our goals. The mystic is at-
tempting to achieve his experience for his own cf: I’m fond of Joseph Campbell’s definition
enlightenment and bliss, which is personal and of mythology. In his lecture entitled Man and
private. He may share his insights later, but the Myth, Campbell starts his talk by saying that
mystic goes on his journey alone. As an actor, most people think of mythology as other peo-
I am attempting to share this mystical experi- ple’s religion. He counters that religion is often
ence in a public way with an audience in order to misunderstood mythology.²
communicate an artistic truth to them. In Campbell’s view, any living mythology
An actor can come up with a great “idea” can be broken into four aspects: the mystical,
about a character or scene that seems perfect the cosmological, the sociological, and the ped-
in theory but in practice falls flat. In this way, agogical. The mystical aspect of mythology is
performance becomes a great litmus test for the that sense of cosmic awe when one realizes the
validity of your analytical choices. As Duke El- scope and nature and mystery of the universe.
lington said, “If it sounds good, it is good.” The It is the feeling that overwhelms the ego when
corollary to that rule is that if it doesn’t sound viewing something of massive scale or power.
good, it isn’t good, even if it conforms to some It is the understanding and more importantly

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 7 5
 the experience of the universe as a huge and that are tied to a certain location or a certain
mysterious place. This invariably leads to the culture. I am interested in the differences in
second aspect of mythology: cosmology. This is cosmological outlook between the Abrahamic
the attempt to conceptualize and organize that traditions in America and the Shintō and Bud-
mystery of the universe into a form that the hu- dhist traditions in Japan. I find it fascinating
man conscious mind can relate to. Whether the how the different religious traditions of each
world rides on the back of a turtle, or it was cre- country manifest in their animated storytelling.
ated in six days by an omnipotent god, or the I especially find it interesting how superheroes
phenomenal world is in fact all an illusion, each seem to manifest the value systems of Abraha-
conception of the universe is the cosmology of mic traditions while giant robots tend to reveal
that mythology. their Shintō and Buddhist backgrounds.
The sociological aspect of myth offers a way
to organize the structure of society. Many times fl: So what was it that brought you to the spe-
this sociological structure mirrors the cosmo- cific conclusion that these cultural icons were
logical one. People may rest on the same day the influenced by religious traditions?
divinity rested. Rulers who are identified with
celestial phenomenon may be buried alive when cf: In January 1999, I was fortunate enough
their cosmological counterparts cycle through to attend an Anime Symposium at the Japan
the constellations. Still other cultures regard Society in New York City. It was a gathering of
their ritual sacrifices as necessary for ensuring artists, scholars and producers who had come
that the seasons will continue so that life can to discuss anime and manga, not only from a
survive. The final aspect of myth is the peda- critical and historical perspective but from a
gogical, or psychological, one. Mythology also creative standpoint as well. The guests included
imparts personal lessons and teachings about Oshii Mamoru, director of Ghost in the Shell
how to live your life. These values are harmo- (1995, Kōkaku Kidōtai), Frederick Schodt, a pro-
nized with the three other aspects of mythology lific writer and manga translator, and a producer
to create a synergistic whole. All four aspects by the name of Uchida Kenji. At the time, Mr.
work together to create a metaphor for the uni- Uchida was working for Sunrise, a division of
verse. This metaphor helps both individuals and Bandai Entertainment. During his presentation
society lead a satisfying and complete existence at the symposium he said something very in-
that is appropriate to that religious tradition. teresting: “In America, when you want to make
Campbell once summed up mythology this something stronger than a human being, you
way: “It’s an organization of symbolic forms, make a superhero. In Japan, when you want to
images, and narratives that are metaphoric of make something stronger than a human being,
the possibilities of human experience and ful- you make a giant robot.” Most of the audience
fillment in a given society at a given time.”³ chuckled at his comment but I was intrigued.
Many mythologies share certain values. The an- My hand shot up. I asked him the reason for
thropologist Adolf Bastian called these shared this difference. He answered that it was because
values “elementary ideas.” Campbell’s book The America and Japan had different concepts of
Hero with a Thousand Faces outlines some of “god.” He went on to say that in America, God
these similarities by looking at archetypal hero is anthropomorphized. The God of the Bible is
journeys from mythologies around the world. thought of as a person, and we are “made in
However, there are also some very distinct His image.” It would make sense then that an
differences between mythologies. Bastian called American superbeing would manifest itself in
these the “folk ideas,” or notions of mythology human form.

276 revie w & c o mme n tary

 In Japan, he said, the situation is quite dif- difference in intention between Greek gods and
ferent. There, the traditional concept of god superheroes. Greek gods act a lot like humans:
comes from Shintō, the indigenous, animistic, they fight, make up, get jealous, and act to sat-
and polytheistic religion of Japan. In Shintō, isfy their personal needs and desires. Greek
the concept of god or kami is much more mal- gods simply have more power at their disposal
leable. The Sun, Mount Fuji, and other natural than normal humans. Superheroes, on the
phenomenon are worshipped as kami. Ances- other hand, struggle for a common good. They
tors are also venerated as kami. Until the last have a strong sense of right and wrong. They
century, the Emperor was honored as kami. are do-gooders and they instinctively know that
Kami can be thought of both personally, as in they must vanquish evildoers. In this way, they
the case of ancestor worship, and impersonally, reflect the qualities of the divine power that
in the case of deifying natural phenomena. inspired them: the monotheistic creator God
Uchida explained that in anime, the giant described in the Bible. Superman is the iconic
robot comes from this more protean and el- example of this type.
emental notion of divine energy. Supernatural
power can manifest itself in a mechanical form fl: So let’s get to the cool stuff: how has the
that may be humanoid in shape and may even knowledge of these different origins and cul-
demonstrate some human qualities, but it is tural differences between Western superheroes
certainly not human. It is the personification of and Japanese giant robots affected your under-
a divine force that is elemental in nature. Not standing and articulation of the giant robot
only are these godlike beings in Japan distinct pilot as an actor, especially since you are creat-
from those in America; the worlds they live in ing Eastern characters from a Western point
are based on radically different views of the cos- of view? This is important, I think, as a way of
mos. These cosmologies lead heroes from each understanding how the actor merges his own
culture to struggle for different values. It is this experience and study to create characters that
contrast between both the nature and the cos- are so fully present for us.
mology of heroes that I find so fascinating.
For me, superheroes, especially those cre- cf: It’s funny you ask that since I recently had
ated in the golden age of comics in the 1930s the opportunity to play the voice of Superman
and ’40s, are manifestations of Abrahamic ide- in the Justice League: Heroes video game. My
als and values. While America has no official na- take on Superman is that he is the most sincere
tional religion, the majority of Americans look person on Earth. There isn’t a dissembling bone
to Judeo-Christian faiths for their religious and in his alien body. He displays many character-
mythological worldview. Most are Christians of istics reminiscent of the Abrahamic God. First,
one type or another and their concept of God Superman is inherently benevolent. He has an
comes from the Old and New Testament. It says unfailing sense of righteousness and always
in Genesis that “God created man in his own acts with the best of intentions. While he may
image.”⁴ The New Testament proclaims Jesus of become angry or frustrated, he is not, generally
Nazareth to be the Son of God, divinity made speaking, tortured by a “dark side” that tempts
flesh: “I and my Father are one.”⁵ Superheroes him to sin. He is resolute in his neverending bat-
embody this notion of divine power. They too tle for “Truth, Justice, and the American Way.”
are supernatural forces in human form. In Second, he possesses nearly limitless power,
many ways they resemble the ancient Greek making him almost omnipotent. Eventually,
gods, each one the physical manifestation of a Superman writers had to invent Kryptonite in
different incredible power. However, there is a order to give him any vulnerability at all. Third,

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 7 7
 Superman seems to possess vast knowledge. terms that everyone can live with. This is more
Whenever he flies to some far off destination, in keeping with a cosmology that seeks balance
he has an uncanny sense of direction, even if his rather than a victory of “good” over “evil.” Ev-
destination is another planet. He never lacks ery episode of The Big O ends with a title that
the correct solution to any crisis. His mastery tells you how the episode has been resolved:
of scientific principles and his ability to use his either “we have come to terms,” meaning that
powers to gain his desired effect on the physical an agreement has been reached, or “no side,”
world is amazing. Superman is not omniscient, meaning that there has been no clear victor.
but he exhibits many attributes that indicate he Sometimes Roger’s negotiation techniques are
is mentally superior to a terrestrial human. quite forceful and require the aid of his Mega-
When I play Superman, I do my best to cap- deus, Big O. The term “Megadeus” is a combina-
ture that purity of intention. I imagine myself tion of the Greek word mega meaning “big” and
as someone who truly believes every word that the Latin word deus meaning “god.” The giant
he is saying. My Superman has no subtext, he robot, Big O, is therefore a “Big God.” However,
says what he means and means what he says. Big O is not the monotheistic god of the Abra-
He is the embodiment of honesty. My point of hamic tradition. Big O is one god among many
view on the character came through in my audi- and is closer to the notion of Shintō kami. There
tion and greatly influenced the director’s deci- is a longstanding tradition in anime of giving
sion to cast me as the Man of Steel. Later, one of giant robots divine names, designating them
the game developers at Warner Bros. who was kami of sorts.⁶ We meet many other Mega-
working extensively on the project admitted to deuses as The Big O progresses, including Big
me that he had never really much cared for the Duo and Big Fau. Each Megadeus has its own
character of Superman. He found him trite. He pilot. The pilot of a Megadeus is referred to as
told me that my portrayal of Superman gave a Dominus, which in Latin means “Lord.” Each
him a new appreciation for the character. pilot is the “Lord” of his own “Big God.” Because
There comes a point in the game where Su- Roger Smith chooses to protect Paradigm City,
perman becomes extremely wrathful. Since Su- his Megadeus, Big O, serves much the same pur-
perman is completely benevolent, I interpreted pose that a regional guardian kami provides in
his rage as a righteous, sincere anger. In those traditional Shintō. Big O can be interpreted as
scenes I tried to portray the fury that comes a powerful kami that Roger Smith synchronizes
from a first betrayal or the loss of innocence. with in order to safeguard his home.
The focus of that anger is the villain of the In the second season of the show, I play the
game. The solution is simple: for the all-good cunning and vicious Alan Gabriel who attempts
Superman to vanquish his opponent, the com- to use Big Duo to destroy Big O and kill Roger
pletely evil supervillain, whether that villain is Smith. While acting this role, I learned first-
Lex Luthor, Brainiac, or Darkseid. hand what happens when pilot and robot do
The setup is very different in a giant robot not synchronize properly. A pilot must become
anime show like The Big O (1999–2000, The emotionally and spiritually one with a robot in
Biggu Ō), which I was also fortunate enough order to properly harness its power. Big O and
to work on. Ironically, many of the symbols in Roger are bonded so closely that Big O only re-
The Big O are very Abrahamic, but the underly- sponds when Roger calls. The character Angel in
ing structure of the show reveals a more Japa- the show even refers to Big O as Roger’s “alter
nese sensibility. The protagonist, Roger Smith, ego.” Big O and Big Duo both test their pilots for
is not a superhero trying to vanquish his en- synchronization with the phrase “Cast in the
emies, rather he is a negotiator trying to find name of god, ye not guilty.” Unfortunately for

278  revie w & c o mme n tary

Alan Gabriel, when Big Duo tests for synchroni- Big Duo does this because Alan has not ar-
zation, Alan is found “guilty.” rived at the “one truth” Schwarzwald refers to.
While the language of synchronization in While the idea of one truth also sounds bibli-
The Big O sounds biblical, the relationship be- cal, later in that episode Roger Smith questions
tween pilot and robot is certainly not. Because Schwarzwald’s interpretation of the necessary
the show is not set in a dualistic Abrahamic criteria for a Dominus. Roger says, “[Schwarz-
paradigm, there is nothing inherently good or wald] had continually made it his mission in the
evil about these Megadeuses; they are simply city to faithfully seek out the truth and report
supernatural forces in robot form. The morality it to the public. . . . I wonder if he knew, when
of their actions is determined by their pilot’s in- he was betrayed by Big Duo, did he realize then,
tentions, so long as the pilot believes his cause that there is probably more than one truth?”
to be noble. The quality of nobility is a primary Our protagonist, arguably the most successful
characteristic of kami in Shintō. Like most gi- Megadeus pilot in the story, acknowledges that
ant robots in anime, the spiritual nature of a there are many truths, not just one, just as there
Megadeus is closer to the concept of “noble are many “Big Gods” in Paradigm City.
kami” than to the completely benevolent and I was in the sound booth during one of my
omnipotent Abrahamic God. Big Duo’s original recording sessions for the Big O, when the voice
pilot, Schwarzwald, attempts to use his Mega- director, Lia Sargent, asked me about my myth-
deus to reveal a “truth.” Because this intention ological anime panel that I often do at conven-
is noble, Big Duo is willing to aid Schwarzwald tions. She was curious how I got interested in
in his efforts, even if Roger Smith thinks those the subject. I told her about my discovery of
efforts are misguided. Alan Gabriel wants only Joseph Campbell’s work, and I related to her
to destroy. I would argue that Big Duo resists my experience at the Anime Symposium. I ex-
Alan Gabriel’s attempt to kill Roger because plained how the producer, Kenji Uchida, had
there is no nobility or “truth” in Alan’s inten- helped articulate for me the religious differ-
tions. Big Duo sees nothing high-minded or ences between superheroes and giant robots.
truthful in senselessly destroying a Megadeus “Uchida?” Lia asked. “He’s sitting right next
and its Dominus. Instead, it turns on Alan Ga- to me.”
briel. As Big Duo smothers Alan in cockpit con- Everything stopped. I ran out of the booth
trol cables, Schwarzwald explains the nature of and Uchida and Lia rushed out of the control
a Megadeus: “A Megadeus chooses its Dominus. room. Uchida and I met in the hall. I thanked
. . . It chooses one who controls the power of him profusely for his insight. He looked me over
God created by Man, one who is able to arrive at and said, “I remember you!” He remembered me
one truth. That’s not the case with you!” being the precocious young man at the sympo-
In an inversion of Abrahamic tradition sium from four years ago who had pressed him
where God creates humanity, Megadeuses like to explain his comment about gods.
Big Duo are manifestations of the “power of “You know,” he continued, “there’s a lot of
God” but are man-made. However, one cannot mythology in The Big O.”
dismiss a Megadeus as being nothing more than “Yes!” I replied. “I’m well aware!” We talked
a powerful man-made machine. Schwarzwald’s briefly about some of the symbolism in the
statement that a Megadeus chooses its Domi- show, but unfortunately, before we could get
nus implies that, even though they are not hu- too in-depth, we had to get back to work. I’m
man, Megadeuses are sentient on some level. planning to finish our discussion in the future.
Big Duo demonstrates that sentience when it
decides not to obey Alan Gabriel. Ostensibly, fl: Let’s talk more about that Japanese

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 7 9
 mythology. The religious traditions you men- of as the offspring or progeny of kami. This con-
tioned, Buddhism and Shintō, both have com- cept comes from the Shintō story of creation.
plicated histories, full of national and transna- Unlike Abrahamic traditions, Shintō cos-
tional interventions. How do you understand mology considers the world and everything in
these religions, and how would you say the gi- it to be manifestations of kami, not something
ant robots of anime reflect their religio-mythic separate from them. For followers of Shintō,
structure? creator and creation are one and the same. This
means that the mystery and majesty of the
cf: Japan’s religious tradition contrasts greatly universe can be found in one’s own personal
with America’s. Buddhism and Shintō are the existence. People themselves are kami, they just
two dominant religious influences. Shintō is don’t always realize their own divine nature.
Japan’s indigenous nature-worship religion; it “Man is a child of kami. . . . there is no clear line
dates back to prehistoric times. Buddhism came of distinction between himself and the kami. In
to Japan via China during the sixth century CE. one sense men are kami, in another they will be-
Unlike Christianity, which requires its adher- come kami.” ⁷
ents to reject other religions, Buddhism tends In Abrahamic traditions, the spiritual goal is
to synchronize with the local religious tradi- to achieve a special relationship with the divine
tions of any country to which it is introduced. and thereby achieve salvation. In Shintō and
This was certainly the case in Japan, and, by Buddhism, the goal is to achieve identification
the eighth century CE, Shintō and Buddhism with the divine and thereby gain enlighten-
had found a way to coexist harmoniously. Over ment: the realization of one’s own divinity and
the last 1200 years, the two religious traditions oneness with the universe. This idea of being
have adapted to complement one another. It “one with God” is heresy in Abrahamic faiths;
is not uncommon for Buddhist temples to be it was one of the reasons why Jesus was per-
constructed as additions onto existing Shintō secuted. In Christianity, only Jesus Christ is
shrines. While there have been times in Japa- accepted as both true God and true man. This
nese history when both political and ecclesi- status is considered a miracle unique to Christ,
astical powers have tried to promote one of since to his followers He is the only Son of God.
these religions over the other, every attempt In Shintō, however, everyone is both divine and
to permanently divide the two traditions has human. In Buddhism, anyone is capable of be-
ultimately failed. They are inextricably linked in coming a Buddha.
Japanese culture. Giant robot storytelling owes The way I understand it, one of the purposes
much of its intention and cosmology to this of Shintō rituals is to realign human beings
synthesis of Buddhism and Shintō. This is espe- with kami. Rituals that venerate majestic natu-
cially evident in how the giant robot embodies ral phenomenon or honor ancestral spirits help
the Shintō concept of god. participants attain this realignment. This rec-
Shintō literally means the “Way of the onciles the worshipper not only with external
Gods.” Shintō kami are radically different from kami but also puts one in touch with one’s own
the Abrahamic God. Kami are divine manifesta- divine essence. Similarly, the goal of Buddhist
tions of aspects of nature. Sometimes these nat- practice is to align oneself with Buddha-con-
ural forces are personified, as in the case of the sciousness, achieve enlightenment, and become
sun goddess Amaterasu. At other times, they a Buddha. This also fosters a sense of unity with
may take animal forms. Kami may also be wor- the cosmos. What is fascinating is that in the
shipped in the form of sacred trees or rocks. In world of anime, a protagonist who pilots a giant
fact, nature and the world itself can be thought robot can attain the same goal!

28 0  revie w & c o mme n tary

 The teachings of the Buddha are often story: the authority figure must recede in order
thought of as a vehicle or “ferryboat” that a for the young hero to become the authority for
practitioner uses to carry themselves to the his own life. After a period of experimentation
shores of enlightenment. From a Buddhist per- and/or training, the son eventually learns what
spective, a giant robot can also be interpreted the robot requires from him as a pilot, as well as
as a vehicle to enlightenment. Over the course his own purpose for using the robot. By under-
of a story, a giant robot supports its pilot and standing his father’s creation and putting him-
helps guide him from a state of confusion and self in alignment with it, the pilot becomes “at
turmoil to a state of spiritual and emotional un- one” with his father’s legacy. This helps the son
derstanding. Learning how to control the robot achieve not only a sense of personal fulfillment
is an important part of that journey toward en- but also allows him to unify and/or reconcile
lightenment. The pilot must internalize the ro- with the spirit of his father. Piloting a giant ro-
bot’s logic and develop identification with it in bot satisfies the requirements of an archetypal
order to have the complete range of the robot’s father-atonement journey: one in which the son
abilities at his disposal. Over time, pilot and ro- can resolve his relationship with his father and
bot begin to work synergistically together. The move forward into adulthood with a new iden-
robot’s power then becomes the pilot’s power, tity and purpose.
and the two become inextricably linked. Be- Aligning with a robot’s elemental power,
cause the robot is also a manifestation of divine while at the same time coming to terms with
energy, the pilot who learns how to control his the legacy of the father who built it, is a two-
robot is not only striving toward a sense of en- fold ritual essential to the mythology of giant
lightenment, he is also putting himself at one robots. It seems to be a prerequisite for most
with the forces of the cosmos. This unity with stories in the genre. This archetypal structure
the robot is not only an alignment with divine appears in seminal giant robot anime beginning
elemental forces, it is also an alignment with with Gigantor (1963–65, Tetsujin 28-gō) and is
the pilot’s own ancestral kami. The kami in ques- repeated in titles like Mazinger Z, Mobile Suit
tion is usually the pilot’s father. Gundam (1979–80, Kidō Senshi Gandamu) and
Neon Genesis Evangelion. The rules of the giant
fl: Ah yes, what is this thing with the father? In robot genre were so well established by the time
many giant robot anime, the father’s role in the Evangelion was produced in the mid-1990’s that
creation of the giant robot is in a contentious, or Eva not only follows these rules but is able to
at least ambiguous, cross-purpose with his pa- use the conventions of giant robot storytelling
rental role in helping the son toward achieving to subvert its audience’s expectations!
adulthood. How do you see that Shintō and Bud-
dhism inform this example of bad parenting? fl: Thank you, Crispin, for fascinating insight
into the unique form of knowledge that can
cf: One could argue that building a giant robot emerge through the creative process. Mech-
for your son is the best way to parent them and ademia is dedicated to exploring the many ways
help them toward adulthood. Traditionally in of seeing and the many knowledge systems that
anime, a giant robot is constructed by a scien- have formed around these exquisite narratives.
tist whose son (or grandson) eventually pilots You have given us a wonderful look into one of
it. The father often dies or becomes inconse- them.
quential to the story, leaving his son to figure
out the logic and meaning of his creation. This cf: You’re very welcome! Thanks for giving me
is usually a necessary step in any coming-of-age the opportunity to speak with you.

r e v i e w & co m m e n ta ry  2 8 1
 Notes maryū Gaikingu (1976–77, Great sky demon
1. Joseph Campbell, The Way of Art, audio lec- dragon Gaiking); Densetsu kyojin Ideon (1980–81,
ture (Mystic Fire Audio, 1990). Legendary Giant God Ideon; also known as Space
2. Joseph Campbell, Man and Myth, audio lec- Runaway Ideon); Rokushin gattai Goddomaazu
ture, abridged ed. (Highbridge Audio, 2002). (1981–82, Six God Combination Godmars); Goddo
3. Campbell, The Way of Art. Majingaa (1984, God Mazinger); Chōjū kishin
4. Gen. 1:27 (King James Version). Dankūga (1985, Dancougar—Super Beast Machine
5. John 10:30 (King James Version). God); and Shinseiki Evangerion (1995–96, Neon
6. Majingaa Z (1972–74, Mazinger Z; also Genesis Evangelion), to name just a few.
known in its edited English version as Tranzor 7. Sokyo Ono, Shinto: The Kami Way (Rutland,
Z), which connotes the name Demon God; Daikū Vt.: Tuttle, 1979), 103.

28 2 rev ie w & c o mme n tary

 CONTRIBUTORS

WILLIAM L. BENZON has published extensively University. His articles can be found in After
on literature and cultural evolution. He is the Orientalism: Critical Entanglements, Productive
author of Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Looks (Thmyris/Intersecting), Japanese Journal
Culture. of American Studies, Review of American and
Pacific Studies, Lesbian and Gay Studies: A Criti-
has been an adjunct professor
L AW R E N C E B I R D cal Introduction (coauthored with Lynda Hart),
at McGill University and an instructor of studio and the Michigan Journal of Feminist Studies. His
arts at Kanazawa International Design Insti- research interests include theories of sexuality,
tute, Japan. He has also worked as an architec- gender, and performance studies; Lacanian psy-
tural and urban designer in Canada, the United choanalysis; and transnational cultural studies.
States, and the United Kingdom. He holds de- He is writing a book on the role of the exotic in
grees in architecture (McGill) and urban design/ cross-cultural encounters.
social sciences (London), and was a Monbusho
research student in architecture and urban Editor, writer, and cultural critic, Ō T S U K A E I J I
studies at Kanazawa Institute of Technology. has published influential books on manga, an-
He is a doctoral candidate in history and theory ime, and popular culture in Japan, among them
of architecture at McGill University, where his Atomu no meidai (Theses on Atom), Kyarakutaa
research into the imagery of urban destruction shōsetsu no tsukurikata (Constructing character
in the Metropolis films is funded by Canada’s So- novels), Monogatari shōhiron (The consump-
cial Sciences and Humanities Research Council. tion of narrative), Monogatari shōmetsuron (The
extinction of narrative), Otaku no seishinron
C H R I S T O P H E R B O L T O N teaches Japanese lit- (The otaku mentality), Shōjo-tachi no “kawaii”
erature and comparative literature at Williams tennō (The “cute” emperor of girls). He has also
College. He is coeditor of Robot Ghosts and Wired penned the story for a number of manga, includ-
Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to ing Hokushin denki, Kurosagi, Leviathan, Madara,
Anime (Minnesota, 2007). MPD Psycho, Octagonian, and Unlucky Young Men.
He is editor of the journal Shingenjitsu.
S T E V E N T . B R O W N teaches Japanese litera-
ture, popular culture, and critical theory at the M I C H A E L D Y L A N F O S T E R is assistant profes-
University of Oregon. He is author of Theatri- sor in the Department of Folklore and Ethno-
calities of Power: The Cultural Politics of Noh, edi- musicology and the Department of East Asian
tor of Cinema Anime: Critical Engagements with Languages and Cultures at Indiana University.
Japanese Animation, and coeditor of Performing He is author of Pandemonium and Parade: Japa-
Japanese Women, a special issue of the feminist nese Monsters and the Culture of Yōkai, forthcom-
journal Women & Performance. He is currently ing from the University of California Press.
completing a book on cyberpunk anime and an-
other on Japanese horror cinema. C R I S P I N F R E E M A N is a prolific voice actor, di-
rector, and script adapter who has portrayed
is a full-time lecturer in
J O S H U A PA U L DA L E characters in animation and video games for
the English Department of Tokyo Gakugei ten years. He acted in such famous anime series

283
 as Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Howl’s is a recent university graduate
PA U L J A C K S O N
Moving Castle, Hellsing, Final Fantasy: Advent and freelance writer based in England.
Children, and Naruto. He has run seminars on
mythological storytelling in anime at conven- T H O M A S L a M A R R E teaches in the departments
tions around the world, including a presenta- of East Asian Studies and Art History and Com-
tion at the SGMS: Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits munications Studies at McGill University. His
conference in 2006 called “Mythological Anime: books include Shadows on the Screen: Tanizaki
Eastern and Western Divinities in Animation.” Jun’ichirō on Cinema and Oriental Aesthetics and
Uncovering Heian Japan: An Archeology of Sensa-
N A T S U M E F U S A N O S U K E is the author of nu- tion and Inscription.
merous volumes of manga, essays, and manga
criticism, including What Makes Manga Enter- ANTONIA LEVI is a retired professor of Japa-
taining? He will join the faculty of Gakushuin nese history and popular culture. She is the au-
University in Tokyo in 2008. In addition to his thor of Samurai from Outer Space, the first book
frequent media appearances, he has lectured on to address the rise of Japanese animation in
manga in Japan and abroad, and more recently the United States. She is working on an edited
has conducted field research into the reception volume about boys’-love manga and anime in
of manga around the world. In 1999 he was the West.
awarded the prestigious Tezuka Osamu Cultural
Prize (Special Prize) in recognition of his contri- M A R G H E R I T A L O N G is assistant professor in
butions to the development of manga criticism. the Department of Comparative Literature and
The same year, he curated the large-scale exhi- Foreign Languages at the University of Califor-
bition on manga The World of Japanese Com- nia, Riverside. She is completing a manuscript
ics, sponsored by the Japan Foundation, which called “This Perversion Called Love: Tanizaki,
traveled in Europe. Natsume Soseki, the great Feminist Theory, Japan.”
Meiji-era novelist, is his grandfather.
FRENCHY LUNNING is a professor at the Min-
MARC HAIRSTON is a professional space physi- neapolis College of Art and Design and codi-
cist at the University of Texas at Dallas who has rector of SGMS: Schoolgirls and Mobilesuits, a
turned his hobby into a second academic career. weekend workshop there.
He has taught numerous courses about anime at
UT Dallas, is a former contributor to Animerica L A U R A M I L L E R is professor of anthropology at
magazine, is a regular speaker at the Schoolgirls Loyola University Chicago. She is the author of
and Mobilesuits workshops at Minneapolis Col- Beauty Up: Exploring Contemporary Japanese Body
lege of Art and Design, and is a member of the Aesthetics and coeditor of Bad Girls of Japan.
editorial board of Mechademia.
is assistant professor in
H A J I M E N A K ATA N I
Y O M O T A I N U H I K O is a professor at Meiji Gakuin the departments of East Asian Studies and Art
University, Tokyo, where he teaches film history History and Communication Studies at McGill
and comparative literature. He has published University.
many books on Japanese cinema and literature
and is known as a translator of Edward Said and S U S A N N A P I E R is professor of Japanese studies
Pier Paolo Pasolini. at Tufts University. She is author of four books,
including Anime from “Akira” to “Howl’s Moving
Castle” and the forthcoming From Impressionism

28 4 co n t rib u to rs
to Anime: Japan as Fantasy and Fan Cult in the THERESA WINGE is assistant professor of fash-
Western Imagination. ion design and theory at Indiana University,
Bloomington, where she teaches both fashion
S H A R A LY N O R B A U G H is associate professor of design studios and CAD (computer-aided de-
Asian studies and women’s and gender stud- sign) labs. Her research focuses on the unique
ies at the University of British Columbia. She representations and meanings of dress within
is working on a book about machine–human various subcultures, such as extreme (subcul-
hybrids in Japanese cultural production from tural) body modifications, Japanese zokus and
1850 to 2005. street fashions, handcraft circles and products,
eco-fashions, and roller derby dress. As a de-
A D È L E - E L I S E P R É V O S T is a PhD student at signer, she draws on her diverse research ar-
McGill University in Montreal and cofounder eas to inform her fashion and graphic designs,
and lead writer of MUSEbasement, a comics which she displays at public exhibitions and in-
and manga studio. ternational competitions.

is assistant research fellow at the

T E R I S I LV I O CARY WOLFE, Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie
Institute of Ethnology, Academia Sinica, Tai- Professor of English at Rice University, is com-
pei. She is an anthropologist whose research pleting the book What Is Posthumanism? (forth-
interests include media technologies and social coming from the University of Minnesota Press)
change, gender and sexuality, and the historical and (with Branka Arsic) working on an edited
relationship between popular culture and in- collection, The Other Emerson. Founding editor
tellectual culture in Taiwan. Her recent ethno- of the series Posthumanities at the University
graphic projects focus on the ongoing transfor- of Minnesota Press, his recent books include
mations of local performance genres, including Animal Rites: American Culture, the Discourse of
opera and puppetry. Species, and Posthumanist Theory and the edited
collection Zoontologies: The Question of the Ani-
is professor of English at
T A K AY U K I T A T S U M I mal (Minnesota, 2003).
Keio University and author of Full Metal Apache:
Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and Avant- W E N D Y S I U Y I W O N G is chair of the Depart-

Pop America, Cyberpunk America, and New Ameri- ment of Design, Faculty of Fine Art at York Uni-
canist Poetics, as well as editor of Science Fiction versity. Her research/creation topics include
Controversies in Japan, 1957–1997. Chinese visual cultural history and studies, de-
sign and identity, design and public awareness,
is a philosopher of religion
M A R K C . T AY L O R consumer society, cross-cultural/hybrid design,
and cultural critic who has published more than globalization, and transnational studies. She
twenty books on theology, philosophy, art and is the author of Hong Kong Comics: A History
architecture, media, technology, economics, of Manhua and four books for Chinese readers.
and the natural sciences. He chairs the Depart- She was the 2000 Lubalin Curatorial Fellow at
ment of Religion at Columbia University. the Cooper Union School of Art.

co n t r i bu to r s  2 8 5
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 CALL FOR PAPERS

The goal of Mechademia is to promote temporary Asian popular cultures. This list in no
critical thinking, writing, and creative way exhausts the potential subjects for this series.
activity to bridge the current gap
between professional, academic, and Manga and anime are catalysts for the emergence
fan communities and discourses. This series rec- of networks, fan groups, and communities of knowl-
ognizes the increasing and enriching merger in the edge fascinated by and extending the depth and in-
artistic and cultural exchange between Asian and fluence of these works. This series intends to create
Western cultures. We seek contributions to Mech- new links between these different communities, to
ademia by artists and authors from a wide range challenge the hegemonic flows of information, and
of backgrounds. Contributors endeavor to write to acknowledge the broader range of professional,
across disciplinary boundaries, presenting unique academic, and fan communities of knowledge
knowledge in all its sophistication but with a broad rather than accept their current isolation.
audience in mind.
Our most essential goal is to produce and promote
The focus of Mechademia is manga and anime, but new possibilities for critical thinking: forms of writ-
we do not see these just as objects. Rather, their ing and graphic design inside as well as outside the
production, distribution, and reception continue anime and manga communities of knowledge. We
to generate connective networks manifest in an encourage authors not only to write across disci-
expanding spiral of art, aesthetics, history, culture, plinary boundaries but also to address readers in
and society. Our subject area extends from anime allied communities of knowledge. All writers must
and manga into game design, fan/subcultural/con- present cogent and rigorous work to a broader au-
spicuous fashion, graphic design, commercial pack- dience, which will allow Mechademia to connect
aging, and character design as well as fan-based wider interdisciplinary interests and reinforce
global practices influenced by and influencing con- them with stronger theoretical grounding.

January 1, 2009 “Fanthropologies”

Each essay should be no longer than five thousand words and may include up to five black-and-white im-
ages. Color illustrations may be possible but require special permission from the publisher. Use the docu-
mentation style of the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition. Copyright permissions will be sought by the
editorial staff of Mechademia.

Submissions should be in the form of a Word document attached to an e-mail message sent to Frenchy Lun-
ning, editor of Mechademia, at [email protected]. Mechademia is published annually in the fall.

287