Mechademia 4: War/Time

353 Pages·2009·6.24 MB·English

by  Lunning

4
m e c h a d e m i a
War/Time
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 manifested 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 1 Emerging Worlds of Anime and Manga
Mechademia 2 Networks of Desire
Mechademia 3 Limits of the Human
Mechademia 4 War/Time
4
m e c h a d e m i a
War/Time
Frenchy Lunning, Editor
university of Minnesota press minneapolis • london
http://www.mechademia.org
Spot illustrations by Joshua Eull
“Ninja, Hidden Christians, and the Two Ferreiras: On Endō Shūsaku and Yamada Fūtarō” was
previously published as “Futari no Fereira: Yamada Fūtarō ron,” in Takayuki Tatsumi, Nihon henryū­
bungaku (Japanese slipstream literature) (Tokyo: Shinchōsha, 1998).
Copyright 2009 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system,
or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or
otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
111 Third Avenue South, Suite 290
Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
http://www.upress.umn.edu
ISSN: 1934-2489
ISBN: 978-0-8166-6749-9
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal-opportunity educator and employer.
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09     10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3  2  1
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
Brian Ruh, Research Editor
Editorial Board Nora Paul
Brent Allison Gilles Poitras
C. B. Cebulski Toshiya Ueno
Patrick Drazen Theresa Winge
Wendy Goldberg Mark J. P. Wolf
Pamela Gossin Wendy Siuyi Wong
Marc Hairston
Trish Ledoux Production
John A. Lent Michael Baxter
Tom Looser Yuriko Furuhata
Hajime Nakatani Andrea Horbinski
Susan Napier Ursula Husted
Abé Mark Nornes Yasuko Nakaegawa
Contents
ix Preface: War/Time
THOMAS LAMARRE
Legacies of Sovereignty
3 The Filmic Time of Coloniality: On Shinkai Makoto’s
The Place Promised in Our Early Days
GAVIN WALKER
20 Theorizing Manga: Nationalism and Discourse on the Role
of Wartime Manga
REI OKAMOTO INOUYE
39 Transcending the Victim’s History: Takahata Isao’s
Grave of the Fireflies
WENDY GOLDBERG
Control Room
55 Gothic Politics: Oshii, War, and Life without Death
TOM LOOSER
75 Oshii Mamoru’s Patlabor 2: Terror, Theatricality,
and Exceptions That Prove the Rule
MARK ANDERSON
111 Waiting for the Messiah: The Becoming-Myth of Evangelion
and Densha otoko
Christophe thouny
131 War by Metaphor in Densha otoko
MiChael FisCh
history/Memory
149 Imagined History, Fading Memory: Mastering Narrative
in Final Fantasy X
Dennis Washburn
164 Haunted Travelogue: Hometowns, Ghost Towns,
and Memories of War
MiChael Dylan Foster
183 Three Views of the Rising Sun, Obliquely: Keiji Nakazawa’s A-bomb,
Osamu Tezuka’s Adolf, and Yoshinori Kobayashi’s Apologia
sheng-Mei Ma
198 Virtual Creation, Simulated Destruction, and Manufactured
Memory at the Art Mecho Museum in Second Life
Christopher bolton
genre Violence
213 Ninja, Hidden Christians, and the Two Ferreiras: On Endō Shūsaku
and Yamada Fūtarō
takayuki tatsuMi
TRAnslATEd By sETh JACoBowiTz
225 Monsters at War: The Great Yōkai Wars, 1968–2005
Zília papp
241 From Jusuheru to Jannu: Girl Knights and Christian Witches
in the Work of Miuchi Suzue
rebeCCa suter
Mobilization/Domestication
259 Empire through the Eyes of a Yapoo: Male Abjection in the
Cult Classic Beast Yapoo
Christine Marran
275 Nippon ex Machina: Japanese Postwar Identity in Robot Anime
and the Case of UFO Robo Grendizer
MarCo pellitteri
290 Kobayashi Yoshinori Is Dead: Imperial War / Sick Liberal Peace /
Neoliberal Class War
Mark DrisColl
305 Manga: A Comic Interlude from Darumasan­ga­koronda,
“Land Mine in Central Park”
yoji sakate
TRAnslATEd By MAnAMi shiMA
ART By ChinAMi sAngo
Review and Commentary
313 Two Phases of Japanese Illustrated Fiction 323 If Casshern Doesn’t Do It, Who Will?
Charles shiro inouye Deborah shaMoon
315 Paradise Lost . . . and Found? 326 Psychoanalytic Cyberpunk Midsummer-
paul jaCkson Night’s Dreamtime: Kon Satoshi’s Paprika
tiMothy perper anD Martha Cornog
318 Molten Hot: Japanese Gal Subcultures and
Fashions トレンド torendo
theresa M. Winge
3 29 Interview with Murase Shūkō and Satō Dai
321 Monstrous Toys of Capitalism Deborah sCally, angela DruMMonD-
brent allison MatheWs, anD MarC hairston
335 Contributors
3 38 Call for Papers
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Preface
thoMas laMarre
wAr/tiMe
In advanced consumer societies, we are used to thinking of war as a disrup-
tion of the normal state of aff airs, as an irruption of irrational violence and
destruction into an otherwise peaceful condition. Because we associate our
peace with exhausting yet safety-enhanced cycles of production and con-
sumption, we have become accustomed to thinking of war as the opposite of
productivity—war as destruction in opposition to production, war as some-
thing diff erent from the everyday violence of our workaday lives, which hap-
pens at a distance, in other places and times, seen on screens. We are liable to
acknowledge that war makes for profi ts, that there are and always have been
war profi teers, but we are unlikely to grasp how the increasingly fragile pros-
perity of the United States and its client states might be predicated upon war,
because we still think war in opposition to peace, prosperity, productivity.
But there are arguments for, and demonstrations of, a state of aff airs in
which war constitutes the very ground of our productivity and prosperity.
Chalmers Johnson, for instance, argues that the United States economy (and
thus that of its client states) has become a form of military Keynesianism,
in which “the making and selling of weaponry has become our way of life.”1
Simply put, war-related technologies and military bases are a major world-
wide employer and growth industry, and a highly regulated one at that. On
a related tack, Naomi Klein’s discussions of disaster capitalism have shown
how contemporary American-articulated global capitalism deliberately builds
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