Abstract
In recent years, the Japanese visual entertainment industry, popularly known as anime, has been triumphant in establishing itself as a medium exploring philosophical themes, a far cry from the original perception of the industry as one catering to adolescent amusements. This paper is an exploration of the distinctive, often idiosyncratic presentation, of historical incidents through the medium of manga and anime. Through a study of Samurai Champloo, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, and Millennium Actress, to name a few, this paper will delve into three different segments, emphasizing themes centered around historical anachronism, the experience of collective sorrow, the reinterpretation of personalities from Japanese political history alongside the employment of intense storytelling through surreal landscapes. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, for example, is a sensitive understanding of the psychology behind genocides which leave space for hope in the aftermath of human tragedy. A second element found in anime is historical anachronisms. The celebrated samurai class from Japanese feudal era often emerge as the protagonists of long-running anime series. It is amusing to find the samurai fueled by codes of bushido becoming victims of anachronism. Lastly, I have analyzed the shades of surrealism interwoven in Satoshi Kon’s biographical film Millennium Actress, which is an example of the contiguity between dreams and reality.
The Japanese cinema industry continues to be deeply influenced and enthralled by the astounding, illimitable propensity of historical films since D.W. Griffith established himself as a neoteric auteur with The Birth of a Nation in 1915, despite the film being dismissed as “disgustingly racist yet titanically original” for presenting “blacks as good for little but subservient labor.”[1] A part of the sempiternal popularity of the historical genre lies in its idealized glorifications of past developments that have been canonized as a motif of humanity’s existential lore. Manga, or its visual derivative, anime, is often dubbed as Japan’s greatest cultural export to the world. In terms of its quality, style, and depth, the medium has been able to translate the artistic longing of a generation that has struggled to fit in. Anime’s plasticity lies in its triumph in being able to metamorphose from a medium of children entertainment to one entailing an eclecticism of complex adult subjects such as psychoanalysis, war, philosophical questions, sports, relationships, religion, and the struggle for identity, to name a few. Emerging as a promising academic discipline, manga and anime have the heft to boast two journals exclusively dedicated to their discourse, Mechademia and The Journal of Anime and Manga Studies.
The medium, however, often does not get enough credit for its treatment of the discipline of history. While classic films like Hotaru no Haka (Grave of the Fireflies) and Kono Sekai no Katasumi ni (In This Corner of the World) are a sensitive rendering of the human condition following the catastrophe of Hiroshima-Nagasaki, Japanese anime like Hellsing Ultimate, Black Lagoon, and Monster unabashedly exploit the popularity of the Nazi villains going berserk. (Hellsing Ultimate, Black Lagoon and Monster are Japanese productions but unlike most anime, they do not have a Japanese title). At the same time, the industry does not hesitate in showing its reverence to the Japanese conscience about their collective memory of the samurai code in the form of epic sagas like Rurouni Kenshin, Dororo, Saraiya Goyou (House of Five Leaves), and the anachronistic Afro Samurai. In this essay, through an analysis of shows such as Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Millennium Actress, Samurai Champloo, and Gintama, I will highlight anime’s representation of history through a careful reading of core themes such as genocide, the praxis of surrealism in biographical sketches, and the quintessence of anachronism in samurai odysseys.
Hagane no Renkinjutsushi or Fullmetal Alchemist, written by Hiromu Arakawa (popularly known as Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood on account of its anime nomenclature), and designated as one of the greatest manga of all time, is a timeless concoction across themes such as political intrigue, shared ambitions, military despotism, philosophical dualism, and racial genocide, among others. The manga began serialization in 2001 and ended in 2010 while its most recent anime reproduction aired from 2009 to 2010. Fullmetal Alchemist, set in the fictional country of Amestris, stands out from other shonen anime in its unorthodox apprehension of the God complex which finds embodiment in its antagonists who are self-assured, adamant and vain entities whose very existence is defined by the insecurities they seem to despise in others. The central arc of the story revolves around the Ishvalan War of Annihilation by corrupt military forces, which starts a chain of events culminating in one climactic catharsis. The fictional Ishvalan genocide has an uncanny resemblance with the Nazi extermination of European Jews, Romas, and Sinti. On scrutiny, one can deduce that the centralized organization of the military governing the country in Fullmetal Alchemist has a similitude to Nazi authoritarianism, with the head of the state being an eponymous, sinister figure called the fuehrer. The fuehrer in this case is King Bradley who justifies his diabolical actions for a depraved, idealistic vision of the world liberated from the laws of the universe and the imperfections of mankind. The Ishvalan War was a forced invasion by the corrupt state military to obtain sacrificial specimens for conjuring the philosopher’s stone, a legendary object promising immortality. While the German rancor towards the Jewish and the Roma (disparaged as ‘gypsies’ and ‘nomads’) had far more complex nuances, the animated obliteration of the Ishvalan race is nevertheless disturbing.
The structural ethnic cleansing of nomadic groups such as the Roma and Sinti on grounds of being gypsies in Nazi Europe has been designated by the scholar C. R. Sridhar as ‘historical amnesia.’[2] Between 1933 and 1945, the Roma population under the Gypsy Question faced torture, racial profiling, the grotesque experience of the concentration camps, rape, forceful sterilization, maleficent medical experimentation, and eugenics. In contrast, the justification for the extermination of the Ishvalans in the Fullmetal Alchemist universe is more of metaphysical causation treading the thin line between absurdism and nihilism. However, the Ishvalans as an ethno-religious group have a cultural and social order explicitly distinct from the rest of the country. They are distinguished by their genetic trait of scarlet eyes and mostly silver hair. Their religious discipline is rooted in pantheism with a deep faith in the earth god. However, what demarcates the Ishvalans from the dominant race in Amestris is their absolute rejection of alchemy which is akin to sacrilege, a clear defiance of the natural flow of life. Similarly, the Roma and the Jewish communities in war-torn Europe were unmistakable ethnic groups with diverse cultural practices, a far cry from the monolithic, homogenous, and domineering European social construct. Through a series of montages, the viewer is subjected to the cold-blooded murder of civilians including women and children, the false accusation and subsequent murder of Ishvalan soldiers affiliated with the militia, helpless civilians transformed into sacrificial pawns, and the dualism of soldiers blinded by the false delusion of a just war.
It must be noted that the civil war in Fullmetal Alchemist was far from being just. It follows the lines of a state-sponsored genocidal campaign. War should be the last resort when all dialogue has been exhausted. Over here, the chief priest of the Ishvalans volunteers to discuss with King Bradley, only to be shunned by the latter through his remarks about the insubstantial value of human life. Sociologist Jack Nusan Porter has defined genocide as “the deliberate destruction, in whole or in part, by a government or its agents, of a racial, sexual, religious, tribal, or political minority. It can involve not only mass murder, but also starvation, forced deportation, and political, economic, and biological subjugation. Genocide involves three major components: ideology, technology, and bureaucracy/organization.”[3] In the manga, contravention of universal limitations acts as the ideological backdrop. The state alchemists released on the battlefield as human killing machines are the epitome of technological gasconade . The third component mentioned by Porter is a prevalent bureaucracy or organization. In Fullmetal Alchemist, it is the Reich-like assemblage of the Amestris army that duly performs the role of a corrupt decaying bureaucracy.
The Nazi-inflicted Holocaust was infamous for its macabre series of human experimentations conducted by trained medical practitioners in Auschwitz. German academics, especially psychiatrists were proponents of Aryan superiority, Social Darwinism, and the genetic inheritance of mental illness long before Adolf Hitler’s ascent to power.[4] Subversion of established networks becomes inevitable when the medical field comes uncomfortably close to the state.[5] The entire medical fraternity actively participated in the nefarious goals of Hitler. The doctors were allies involved in the unethical experimentation on minority groups on account of their desire to usher in scientific advancements. The Nuremberg Trials, held from December 9, 1946, to August 20, 1947, were a testament to the fact that scientific misuse through sanctimonious individuals can lead to catastrophic consequences beyond measure. The example of the Nazi medical experiments serves as a bedrock for understanding the human sacrifices conducted by trained doctors and scientists for a greater purpose in Fullmetal Alchemist. I will illustrate this further by citing three characters in the manga, The Gold Toothed Doctor, Dr. Marcoh, and Dr. Knox. The former two among other men from the scientific field were the main researchers instrumental in conjuring the philosopher’s stones by manipulating human souls. The Gold-Toothed Doctor and Marcoh are psychologically distinct from one another, in their reception of the horrendous activities being conducted under their maneuvering. The former, a Joseph Mengele-like figure, serves as a secondary antagonist who takes pride and revels in the merciless slaughter of defenseless Ishvalans. In contrast, Dr. Tim Marcoh, remorseful of his past atrocities during the Ishvalan Civil War, is seen suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and wanting nothing more than to embrace death. The other character, Knox, was compelled to become an autopsy expert due to the accumulation of an extensive number of Ishvalan corpses as a result of the war. In one instance, Marcoh and Knox have a dismal yet existential conversation amid the war zone. Knox reminds the former that they are doctors who are flattering the authority responsible for this mindless pogrom. The chapter ends with Knox presenting a rhetorical question: why is he killing people, being a qualified doctor? His introspective dilemma is crucial if we ought to compare it with the Doctors’ Trial at Nuremberg, which revealed the absence of repentance on the part of the accused. Instead, the former Nazi doctors arrogantly justified their actions.[6] The ungodly chimera experiments, fusing humans with animals to generate enhanced biological weapons, is another example of the anime’s stance against scientific misappropriation. Both Knox and Marcoh towards the end have their respective closures but real life seldom ends in neutrality. The real face of mankind is far more complex than a work of fiction as demonstrated by the menacing potentiality of scientific and technological institutions if they are given to unwise minds.
My final argument in Fullmetal Alchemist will address the disillusionment suffered by the soldiers involved in the Ishvalan War which acts as an analogy for the countless misguided troops traumatized by the casualties surrounding them. The most startling figure in the anime representing this sense of utter disenchantment with the Ishvalan extermination is the sympathetic Major Alex Louis Armstrong. A state alchemist who was deprived of promotion on account of his cowardice in the battleground, Major Armstrong suffers from what has been described by psychologists as a moral injury. In the course of the battle, the reader finds Armstrong helplessly seeking answers for the Holocaust, only to be repeatedly confronted by the harsh reality that it is the duty of an alchemist affiliated with the army. This psychological condition is prevalent among soldiers, sometimes coexisting with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but unlike PTSD it is not associated with fear but rooted in guilt.[7] The soldiers suffering from moral bruising exhibit symptoms such as guilt, betrayal, regret, anger, shame, self-harm, and anxiety owing to their experiences such as killing unarmed civilians, shooting at children, or losing faith in the chain of command.[8] In the anime, the military was responsible for the deaths of numerous, faultless Ishvalan children which makes Major Armstrong suffer a breakdown on the battlefield, leading to his removal from the frontline. The scarring effects of PTSD on war veterans have long been established in the medical field. A study conducted by the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study (NVVRS) reveals that an estimated 30.9 percent of men and 26.9 percent of females had been suffering from lifetime PTSD.[9] The other primary characters expressing their grave doubts about the bureaucracy’s mishandling of the Ishvalan Rebellion are the war hero, Roy Mustang, Captain Maes Hughes, and Riza Hawkeye. It is Hawkeye, a sniper, who appears to be most sickened by the harrowing circumstances. It is here that the observer encounters Solf J. Kimblee, an alchemist, enlisted into the Amsterian army. He represents a sadistic philosophy that relishes the callous pleasure of destruction and adrenaline. He savors the agony of tortured souls which is like a lullaby to his ears. Kimblee is a complex character overflowing with apathy and depraved ecstasy who reminds the disgruntled soldiers that deciding to join the army was their own free will and, therefore, seeking a fair war is blatant imbecility on their part. He addresses Hawkeye not by her name or designation but simply by her role on the battlefield, that of a sniper. Riza Hawkeye’s identity henceforth is exhaustively interwoven with her military performance in the form of the number of shots she has fired. The character of Kimble can easily be shrugged off as a sociopath, but he mirrors the nature of those soldiers who are constantly in pursuit of the unfulfilled thrill long after the battle is over. German soldiers during the Second World War have been recorded to enjoy the violent manhunt.[10] It has been found that soldiers on their return from combat seek the excitement of war despite commencing their normal lives. This is owing to the mental reception of exhilaration due to the exposure to the thrill on the battlefield which fuels the soldier’s constant need for excitement of the same scale in their current mundane daily lives.[11]
Figure 1. Major Armstrong suffering a breakdown on the battlefield in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood (2009, Yasuhiro Irei). Source: Image by the courtesy of Fullmetal Alchemist wiki. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fma/images/2/2c/Nono.png/revision/latest?cb=20130809013940
An analysis of Fullmetal Alchemist would be incomplete without examining the perspectives of the victims of the civil war, the Ishvalans. Arakawa does a creditable job of exploring the condition of the unfortunate victims. Not even once does she paint them as helpless victims, dependent on sympathy. Arakawa’s genocide sufferers are dignified, often vengeful, and sometimes merciful. The character of Lieutenant Miles is a prime example of the Ishvalan sense of integrity. In his conversation with the manga’s main protagonist, Edward Elric, the lieutenant expresses his desire to be treated like an equal instead of a target of pity. The scholar Lauren Trong has rightly observed that the anime can be associated with a high modicum of overarching trauma consuming the very flow of the story.[12] The characters are in a state of constant battle with their sense of guilt and their tempestuous road to recovery, while never truly overcoming their individual trauma.
Fullmetal Alchemist is a perfect example of great storytelling which does not fail to remind viewers that mankind is always a step away from repeating the historical mistakes that have characterized past centuries. One would expect the complete collapse of the symbols of authoritarian despotism by the end of the manga after the defeat of the antagonists. Instead, the author posits Mustang as the new fuehrer of a recently liberated Amestris, thus reimposing the very fact that human civilization has not truly left behind dictatorial governments, personality cults, and insecure individuals with a God complex.
It was a crisp, cold January morning in 2014 when the veteran Bengali actress Suchitra Sen breathed her last inside the ward of Kolkata’s Belle Vue Clinic.[13] A year later, the reclusive onscreen enigma of the Golden Age of Japanese cinema, Aida Masae, would pass away after losing an intensive battle with pneumonia.[14] Two semi-contemporary actresses separated by miles but finding semblance in their decision to leave the limelight at the peak of their respective careers. A decade before her death, the late Japanese auteur, Satoshi Kon, translated Masae’s cinematic legacy through the fictional protagonist Chiyoko Fujiwara in his critically acclaimed animated film Millennium Actress released in 2002. For Kon, Fujiwara’s story would be a loose adaptation of Masae’s stage personality, the delightfully alluring Setsuko Hara of Yasujiro Ozu’s timeless Noriko Trilogy. Millennium Actress was Kon’s genius tribute to the golden era of Japanese cinema and the actresses who were the very incarnates of its overarching brilliance, particularly Setsuko Hara and Hideko Takamine. Yet, for me, the film is as much an unconscious tribute honoring the Bengali screen legend, Suchitra Sen, as a stunning visual triumph of Hara and Takamine’s careers spanning decades. Kon has brazenly employed wondrous surrealist elements in the film inaugurating the way for what can be categorized as a subtle biography within the infinite possibilities of magical realism. Before engaging with the film, it begs to be clarified that Millennium Actress is not a surrealist film. Rather, it is a careful conjunction between a documentary and surrealism. In his second production after Perfect Blue, Kon shows the life of his protagonist, Chiyoko Fujiwara, an actress who had dominated the Japanese screens till she decided to leave the glamor behind at the height of her career for a life of solitude. Flowing in parallel to Fujiwara’s captivating journey is the inseparable history of Japan across varying time periods. Fujiwara’s birth in 1923, the year of the catastrophic Great Kanto Earthquake, is in itself a historical landmark. Through the retelling of Fujiwara’s life in the form of an interview, the audience is transported to sublime landscapes showing the Meiji Restoration, the Japanese occupation of Manchuria, Japanese imperialism, post-war economic recovery, and the rise of popular culture, not necessarily maintaining a rigid chronology. As Yen-Jung Chang puts it correctly, the story of the film unfolds through the juxtaposition of the character’s consciousness and memories.[15] Japanese history was ingeniously applied as backdrops in the plot, and most of the historical scenes are presented as part of live-action films in which the protagonist, Fujiwara, plays an important role. The interrelations between the real life of the protagonist and the roles that she appears in create an ambiguity between fantasy and reality in a coherent story with a visually dazzling style. The history meditated in the film spans roughly a thousand years, as implied by the title.
The biopic is often associated with prestige in contemporary cinema which celebrates its value in lavish award ceremonies.[16] Earlier, biopics such as Ray, Lawrence of Arabia, and the recent King Richard had managed to ride the waves of Oscar invincibility. Upon its release, the biopic appeal of Millennium Actress was oblivious to the elite circles of Academy Awards and Festival De Cannes, but it has faithfully revived the legend of Hara and Takamine. For context, Millennium Actress is the story of a little girl, Fujiwara, who decides to be an actress in the hope of finding the political activist whom she sheltered during the Japanese annexation of Manchuria in 1931-32. She spends decades in her futile search, reaches stardom, and willingly renounces the screen for a life of quiet retirement. The film follows the principle of a story-within-a-story format, as the boundaries between reel and reality begin to blur revealing a series of dreamy, transcendental chase sequences where Fujiwara relives her life through the films which garnered her fame. It is difficult to know about the possibility of the director of Millennium Actress, Satoshi Kon’s familiarity with the Bengali film scene of the 1960s when Suchitra Sen’s smile would humble the neon billboards of the erstwhile Calcutta nights. The Japanese actress, Setsuko Hara, and the Bengali actress, Suchitra Sen’s, respective decisions to renounce their promising careers and disappear into a Garbosque early retirement, discover a fresh voice in the sensitive approach of Kon’s lenses. Kon does not employ an explicit retelling of Takamine and Hara’s life. He invents the romantic personal story of Fujiwara without dissociating her identity as an exemplary artist, thereby honoring the aforementioned actresses. The soul of Millennium Actress thrives on its flashback continuities as an elderly Chiyoko Fujiwara recounts her life to Genya Tachibana and Kyoji Ida, a documentarian and his assistant. What follows is her mesmerizing journey from a young girl to the theaters and finally domesticity, as she navigates across crucial conjunctures of her life.
The film is a progression from the perspective of Fujiwara herself and a documentary filmmaker, Genya Tachibana, who is an embodiment of the ardent lifelong fan. A common trait indicating a biopic is the quintessential interview between the protagonist and a journalist, where the latter is a patient listener with the exception of some occasional questions colligated with delicate expressions. Satyajit Ray’s Nayak, about a lone actor aching for release from the vanity of fame, is a classic example of the interview style of a biopic. The revaluation of the fan as a character within the cinematic frame of Fujiwara’s life is an intelligent strategy on the part of Kon. The appearance of an enduring variety of Tachibana’s dramatis personae, to further Chiyoko-san’s mission within the intertwined Fujiwara films, accurately reiterates that the fan and the celebrity do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive in artistic dimensions. According to Osmond Millennium Actress presents a visual image of “Japan’s transformation in the twentieth century; from the war-torn ruin of 1945, through the hardships of the 1950s, to the stirrings of national revival in the 1960s.’”[17] And further, “By using the symbol of the 1969 moon landing, Osmond suggests, the film shows ‘that it wasn’t just nations that were changing; our visions of the world, our place, our selves, were equally in flux.’”[18]
The start of Fujiwara’s career as a child artist in a film located in Manchuria during the days of Japanese imperialism over Greater Asia corresponds with the rise in propaganda films encouraged by Japanese studios in those tumultuous years. The medium was not limited to the mere indoctrination of the nation and military. The wartime film policy ensured that national cinema would be utilized in the construction and representation of the idea of nationhood. Combat narratives and romantic melodramas were the defining features of the country’s film industry at a time when Japan was engaged in an outright war with China that had begun with the invasion of Manchuria in 1931.[19] A film director shooting a Japanese movie in Manchuria for the purpose of uplifting the morale of their soldiers reminds Fujiwara’s mother that she has a commitment towards the nation. The mother’s retaliation is strong as she retorts that a woman settling down with children is as much a national duty as going to Manchuria. Fujiwara is deprived of the decision to make her own choice. She is torn between duty towards the country and duty towards feminine obligations. In this moment of internal dilemma in Fujiwara, the viewer discovers glimpses of Takamine’s nascent appearance as a child actor at the early age of five. Through the course of the film, Fujiwara is painted in the roles that have defined the late actresses. She is impeccable as Hara’s poignant Noriko from Ozu’s Shomin-geki domestic dramas, especially Late Spring and Tokyo Story, before being transported to the set of the 1954 classic 24 Eyes, as Takamine’s iconic Oishi Sensei.
Millennium Actress is not a luxurious delineation of a celebrity’s life. Kon deliberately isolates the intoxicating splendor of celebrity in favor of the human aspect of the stage personality. The institution of family and motherhood regained a complex eminence in the Showa period (1926-1989) of Japanese history which emphasized the contributions of women in the modern evolution of the nation.[20] This is evident in the scene where Chiyoko submits to the social norms and transitions in the role of a housewife. Fujiwara’s life carries a distinct essence of the female condition as her feminine duties come into direct conflict with her lifetime passion—to find the activist she has been in love with since childhood. The constant tension between individual goals and the pressures of family is a gesture towards Somiya Noriko from Yasujiro Ozu’s classics, Banshun (Late Spring), Bakushu (Early Summer) and Tokyo Monogatari (Tokyo Story). Setsuko Hara’s character, Noriko in these films maintains a constant smile despite the expectations of society and family. As Kelly Hansen has observed, “in early postwar films, Hara is most frequently associated with her portrayals of young, single women reluctant to make the transition to marriage, an image that earned her the nickname of no seien hojo (the eternal virgin).”[21]
The individuality of Millennium Actress rests on its nonconformity to normative genres. It behaves like a fantastical biopic but defies its very conventions by splicing surrealism with a biographical adventure. Beginning officially in 1924 with the publication of Andre Breton’s The Surrealist Manifesto, the Surrealist movement flourished following the First World War and the collapse of Dadaism as a response to strict limitations prevalent in contemporary art and society. It relied on the juxtaposition of dreams and reality, abstract motifs, illusions, symbolisms, and disoriented themes. To surrealism we owe great minds like Apollinaire, Breton, Soupault, Dali, Luis Bunuel, Artaud, and an unlikely Satoshi Kon, separated by decades. Andre Breton once wrote, “Beloved imagination, what I most like in you is your unsparing quality.”[22] It is cinema’s experimental medium that provides rein to the boundlessness of imagination and its unsparing quality. Surrealists by nature had an affinity towards the prospects of cinema as a vehicle for the transmission of their radical ideas. The epochal scene of a blade slitting across a woman’s eyes in Luis Bunuel’s paradigmatic Un Chien Andalou is profoundly imprinted in the cinema enthusiast’s mind. The rudimentary tenets of surrealism are the amalgamation of dreams and reality, which is the classic bedrock for cinema’s spectacular prowess. The Surrealists had faith in cinematic spectacle on account of its faculty in weaving dreams with reality. The movement’s members belonged to the artistic scene composed of poets, painters, and writers who found inspiration in films to continue their vocations.[23] As the philosophy of surrealism is intrinsically grounded in its liberation of the subconscious, literature, love, and the European monopoly over the arts, it is no surprise that cinema would inadvertently find its way to explore the sense of relief in surrealism’s defiance of rigid conformities. Thus, to echo Paul Hammond’s words, “the Surrealist response to cinema was passionate, poetic, Romantic.”[24]
Satoshi Kon is no stranger to surrealist concepts. He has exploited its infinite manifold adaptability in his other masterpieces Perfect Blue, Paranoia Agent, and Paprika. To confine the film within the conformities of the biographical genre would be an understatement. Millennium Actress is not merely the sketch of the painful longing of a tragic actress or an abbreviated reiteration of Japanese history, it is Kon’s homage to Japanese cinema, especially the legendary maestros Akira Kurosawa and Yasujiro Ozu. References to Throne of Blood, The Tale of Zatoichi, Seven Samurai, the pop culture icon Godzilla, the Noriko Trilogy, and Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey are scattered throughout the film’s lucid dreamscapes. It is in Chiyoko’s leaps from the sets of one classic film to the other that the viewer comes to notice Kon’s masterful play with magical realism. There is a critical misapprehension of the nature of surrealist films which is a result of a collective failure in acknowledging its naturalistic features.[25] Surrealism does not advocate fantastical films but incorporates fantasy and sublimity as constitutive parts of visual reality. The core technique in Millennium Actress rests on the presentation of Chiyoko’s life in the form of her transcendental escapades through the sets of the films. Manisha and Maitreyi Mishra have identified five elements of magic realism present within Kon’s works following the lines of Wendy Faris’ classification of magical realism.[26]
The film almost has a scent of a Giorgio de Chirico painting. Chirico, who was one of the major influences on the Surrealist Movement, created portraits of lone sequestered human figures amid archaic monumental structures of antiquity. Epitomizing a Chirico subject, Chiyoko stands aloof amongst colossal establishments like fascism, the Japanese studio system, social expectations, envious co-actors, old age, and fading memory enveloping her. The grandest allusion to surrealism is Kon’s fitting tribute to Stanley Kubrick towards the end of the film. Fujiwara’s death coincides with a young Chiyoko, within a film, inside a rocket waiting to leave the earth’s surface, before proceeding to show isolated space stations surrounded by the endless universe, evoking Dave Bowman’s powerful resplendent cosmological experience in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Back at the hospital, a frail Fujiwara admits that it was the chase for the man that she truly enjoyed although her mission ends in a debacle. As enigmatic as the scene is, it reinforces the eristic philosophical argument that life is a chase of evanescent desires which is exciting till they manifest. The final scene is an indication of the heroine’s journey reaching completion.[27] As unrealistic as Chiyoko’s romanticism might be, she shines through her courage and determination by imbibing the submissive qualities accorded to her gender.[28]
Audiences were absorbed in a frenetic debate when a Starbucks coffee cup was spotted in the final season of Game of Thrones in the episode, “The Last of the Starks.” In the language of pop culture symbolism, Starbucks behaves as the embodiment of grotesque consumerism, often a premonition for a dystopian future tainted by human vanity. The misplaced Starbucks cup in the medieval fantasy world of Game of Thrones hints at the philosophical ethos of anachronistic levity. In the third and final segment of this paper, I will take an academic glance at two Samurai-themed anime, Shinichirō Watanabe’s Samurai Champloo, released in 2004, and Sorachi Hideaki’s Gintama, which first began serialization in December 2003, to clarify the welcome absence of solemnity in modern animation chef-d’œuvre on account of the exciting application of anachronism. The absence of solemnity in anime is a relief because it is, like other forms of visual entertainment, replete with its traditional genres and sub-genres such as comedy, slice-of-life, thriller, and romance, among others. Although the genres as categories are helpful in catering to the tastes of viewers, they restrict the fluidity of unique imagination unbounded by conventional patterns. Anachronism, however, does not cater to a specific genre and its potential is, therefore, infinite in its relationship with the audience.
Samurai Champloo leans towards the tendency of prochronism—an error, intentional or otherwise, in dating that places an event earlier than it actually occurred. In Shinichirō Watanabe’s classic, formally set a few years before the Meiji Restoration, the viewer is exposed to a whirlwind of hip-hop, break dancing, sword fights in the pattern of rap battles, and beatboxing among other testimonies of prochronism. The recent scholarly consensus historicizes the Renaissance as the origin of anachronism. Often considered an academic notoriety with its root in the Greek language, the modern usage of the word anachronism dates back to Joseph Justur Scalinger’s work De Emendatione Temporum.[29] It was the Renaissance that produced magnificent works of art celebrating the epiphanic virtues of the period, but this exclusive body of art entailed an element of surprise—an anachronism. A careful study of art would reveal the randomness of historical anachronism scattered through their canvas. There are noticeable medieval influences through the incorporation of Romanesque and Gothic styles in the paintings of fifteenth-century Flemish artists.[30] Similarly, the characters in Sandro Botticelli's Primavera are dressed in contemporary festival attires with out-of-date designs.[31] Unobtrusive anachronisms can become potentially callous due to the careless melding of fact and fiction which can prevent the observer from distinguishing between mendacity and truth.[32] Anime, as a medium of entertainment, does not suffer from the rigidness of strict adherence to solemn artistic dictum. Being fluid, it can host an ensemble of myriad creative aesthetics, including anachronism, without being exposed to critique. Thus, anachronisms in anime do not feel as incongruous as they would have been in art. For example, Watanabe shows in episode nine of Samurai Champloo a Meiji era official using phrases such as “summer of love” and “purple haze.” The anime is structured around the last decades before the Meiji Restoration but Watanabe does not shy away from superimposing modern phenomena like hallucinations and psychedelics to achieve the intended comic effect. “Summer of Love” was indeed an American cultural phenomenon of the late-1960s while “Purple Haze” is deeply attached to the musical genius of Jimi Hendrix rather than the plant of the same name. Samurai Champloo is an explosion of gags and burlesque throughout its twenty-six-part episodic journey. Therefore, the appearance of concepts and songs from a later century in a story about rebel priests does not generally necessitate a sense of dissonance. This is akin to a painter intentionally applying anachronism in his work for the purpose of humor.[33]
Both Samurai Champloo and Gintama have samurai as the primary protagonists. The characters usually follow the recurrent themes of the samurai with an inflexible bushido code, a self-trained swordsman, and a wandering ronin with past trauma, or what I would identify as the “lone samurai.” The idea of the lone samurai elicits an aura of mystical detachment from the everyday humdrum life. The lone samurai, Miyamoto Musashi, is present in the epic martial arts manga series, Vagabond, in which he meditates on the way of the sword. He is evoked in Akitsu Masanosuke’s weary adrift personality in Sarai-ya Goyo (House of Five Leaves). His traces are once again found in the former Battosai, Himura Kenshin in the anime series Rurouni Kenshin as he struggles for belongingness in a time when the samurai were slowly losing relevance. (Himura Kenshin is the former Battosai, a title given to him in Rurouni Kenshin). In Samurai Champloo, Mugen (although not a samurai) and Jin are both swordsmen who have left their known world for an outlandish life. They are shown to function mostly alone without the presence of any companion until they come across Fuu and thus begins the eccentric pilgrimage of Samurai Champloo. Similarly, the vagrant samurai, Gintoki from Gintama gets himself into slapstick circumstances which unconsciously camouflage his tragic downfall in the Joui Wars.
Japanese sociologist Hiroshi Yoshioka has remarked that analogous to the Americans reinventing themselves as cowboys through the contagious impact of John Wayne westerns, the Japanese have reinvented themselves as the samurai.[34] The fervent national nostalgia for an era in history often ignores its illiberal inconveniences. The shaping of the national identity through the saga of the samurai in manga literature is a coalescence between the western Romantic/Byronic ideal and the bushido archetype that caters to the nostalgic yearning of the common Japanese.[35] Interestingly, Gintama, set in an alternate sci-fi Japan after the Meiji Restoration, features the Shinsengumi, an historically elite group of swordsmen and low rank samurai from the Bakumatsu period responsible for the protection of the Shogunate during the 1860s. The Shinsengumi, clad in western trousers, engage in asinine situations, but they do not compromise on their samurai virtues, often satirically complemented by their ludicrous declarations for seppuku (a type of ritual suicide by disembowelment, practiced in feudal Japan by the samurai class in order to protect their honor) on the occasion of threats to their sovereign principles. Following them closely, Mugen’s wayward combat skills are a rhythmic fusion between African-American break-dancing and experimental martial arts. The remembrance of feudal Japan is kept alive in the pleasantly farcical avant-garde reproduction of the stern samurai figure. Therefore, irrespective of anachronist burlesque, the popularity of the lone samurai is omnipresent in the collective memory of Japanese society.
The premise of the anime studied in this segment orbits around the context of the cinematic reproduction of the Meiji Restoration of 1 868. Samurai Champloo starts a few years before the Meiji Restoration. In the course of the narrative, one finds the older institutions of honor and martial arts fading into peripheral irrelevance. On the other hand, Gintama, located in an alternate reality, paints the picture of post-Meiji Restoration years inhabited by extraterrestrial life called Amanto, the samurai being forbidden to carry katanas and to conduct their interstellar comical exchanges. The modified Shinsengumi in Gintama is not like like their historical counterparts. This Shinsengumi destroys things with machine guns, pulls devious uproarious mischiefs on one another, indulges in lewd humor, and makes barbecues. Okita Sougo who is modeled on the real Shinsengumi’s Okita Souji wears an eye mask, reads JUMP comics, partakes in sadistic jests, and flaunts his sword, Kikuichimongi RX-78 which has an inbuilt music player. The Shinsengumi have enthralled the popular reimaginings of anime consumers in Japanese society ever since the group developed from tenanting limited space in history textbooks to become cultural icons. Owing to their reincarnation under the chisel of modern sculptors of pop culture, the Shinsengumi could represent multiple entities in the personal projection of various stakeholders as long as they unanimously agree with its symbolic ineffability.[36] The Shinsengumi in Gintama is a lighthearted caricature of their original inspirations but they retain their sense of pride, prepared to defend their unconventional crew and their leader, Isao Kondou whenever necessary.
Anachronism invokes the dualism of culture and racial historical contrasts. The primary ambivalent conflict in Samurai Champloo is the confrontation between hip-hop culture and samurai swordsmanship with an underlying clash between the Orient and western influences. The opening song of the anime, Battle Cry, is a prelude to the essentialities of prochronism that would later encompass the story. It is essentially a rap song with accompanying visuals of a disc and Mugen improvising his blade skills with break-dancing. To emphasize that the anime is not set in the modern world, Watanabe immediately juxtaposes the more conservative swordsman, Jin, exhibiting his proficiency in traditional martial arts in stunning visual images. Benzon explains that “Fuu, Mugen, and Jin are all interstitial individuals concerning the shogunate; they have no place in that system. The series as a whole is deeply concerned with artistic activities, having episodes devoted to painting, kabuki, poetry (rap), and music.” Further, “Fuu, Mugen, Jin, and their activities embody the networks of aesthetic civility that forged Japanese identity.”[37] American baseball and Graffiti art in a late feudal Bakufu Japan, governed by the Shogunate is a welcome amusement for the characters in Samurai Champloo. Despite their hilarity, the storylines have deeper underlying currents of the bushido code. Tatsu and Kazu, who are inept in martial arts, avenge their late father’s honor by painting graffiti on the walls of Hiroshima Castle. It is well known that graffiti is a later American invention of the 1970s but Watanabe judiciously supersedes martial arts with the former without disrespecting either. The prochronism in this episode behaves according to Greene’s definition of creative anachronism, as it allows Tatsu and Kazu to retain their samurai spirit notwithstanding their absence of prowess.[38] Likewise, in episode 18, a group of villagers uses American baseball to uphold their island’s sovereignty against forceful American incursion. The characters’ naivete in the sport is compensated by their teeming sportsmanship as they bravely overcome the larger threat of western corruption. Benzon asserts that Watanabe posits his story in a society where national identity is yet to be fashioned into its modern form.[39] The process of introducing anachronism thus becomes facile for him as it opens avenues for exploring national identity which now become a part of the individuals’ many motives.
The most essential factor in Watanabe’s narrative is music, specifically hip-hop, beatboxing, and rap. Hip-hop is welded into the African-American psyche as a response to the historical discrimination faced by the community. Watanabe’s intention was not to objectify hip-hop; instead, he translates the genre into an alternative language and places it in a Tokugawa-Edo setting thereby expediting its understanding within the frame of the image culture.[40] Hip-hop’s coterie existence as an expression of racial injustice against the Black minority corresponds with the anime’s rendering of Christian persecution. The mistreatment of religious minorities in the anime redirects to a more elaborate discussion of the greatest anachronism committed by Watanabe throughout the storyline. He invents a fictitious recount of the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637-1638 and situates it in the last days of the Edo period. Mugen, Jin, and Fuu’s search for the samurai—the former Christian leader Seizo Kasumi who smells of sunflowers—intersects with the legendary figure of the Shimabara Rebellion, Amakusa Shiro. Amakusa Shiro’s heroic rebellion against the daimyō, and subsequent execution, sets the stage for Watanabe to revive Japanese history through the Edo officials’ ravenous hunt for Kasumi. To better understand the resurrection of a Japanese history specifically in the anime, I reflect upon Zachary Sayre Schiffman’s ruminative essay on history and context. According to Schiffman, the humanists entailed the nostalgia of “imitiatio” in their works that relied on the reincarnation of classical Roman literary and artistic standards. “This act of resurrection created a paradox—‘a living past’ that was, at the same time, different from the present and of vital importance to it as a model.”[41] Schiffman reiterates that this paradoxical nature increasingly began to undermine the romantic repute of the Classical past.[42] This is where Watanabe digresses from the Humanist model of anachronism. He selects a dominant event from a nation’s collective past and redesigns it as a valuable addition to the story’s climax without subverting or erasing the ethos of the Shimabara Rebellion, making it comparable to the visualization of the samurai quintessence in anime. As the name suggests, Champloo is derived from Chanpurū which is an Okinawan stir-fried dish made of assorted ingredients. Therefore, it would be fair to conclude that Samurai Champloo is a concoction of miscellaneous anachronist facets which convene to form a genius opus celebrating the meaninglessness of existence.
Figure 3. Mugen’s break-dance in the opening song, Battle Cry in Samurai Champloo (2004, Shinichiro Watanabe). Source: Wallpapers.com https://wallpapers.com/wallpapers/samurai-champloo-mugen-with-roosters-coa7sewoimueb0nn.html
The two anime, discussed above, are buoyant and casual anecdotes of Japanese historical tropes. They are chaperoned by a tinge of endearing primitive purposelessness which is accentuated by the characters’ demeanor, a longing for immaterial experiences, and a lack of conformities, which allow anachronism to discover artistic freedom.
The aim of the paper was to explore the exciting acquaintance between history and anime. In today’s world of rapidly adaptable, evolving technology, history is no more confined to the school textbooks within walled classrooms. The glamorous translation of history’s most popular, ambivalent themes of war, heroism, masculinity, and sacrifice on the cinematic escapade of large screens never find a dearth in audience. The viewers are not merely mindless consumers. They are part of the action unfolding before their eyes, constantly fed by the romantic need to relive a make-believe idealism that is not achievable in the monotony of pedestrian routines. Yet, historical cinematic representation is far more nuanced than the glorification of battles and the eternal dualism of the world. The medium of anime has been instrumental in giving voice to these very nuances, going beyond fabulous costumes, colossal budgets, and idealizations.
Aisheedyuti Roy holds a postgraduate degree in History from the University of Delhi (2021). She completed her Bachelors in History from Loreto College, University of Calcutta in 2019. She has worked previously as a teacher at Maharashtra Public School, Aurangabad which was instrumental in adding to her professional growth and increasing her understanding of the education sector. At present, she is engrossed in the process of pursuing a Bachelors in Education. Her academic interests are social and political history, international relations, cultural exchanges, cinema, anime and manga studies, and the study of globalization and its effects in the modern world. She is currently working on a paper which is an in-depth analysis of the relationship between India and Japan through the colonial lens.
[1] Richard Brody, “The Worst Thing About ‘Birth of a Nation’ is How Good it is,” The New Yorker, February 1, 2013.
[2] C. R. Sridhar, “Historical Amnesia: The Romani Holocaust,” Economic and Political Weekly 41, no. 33 (August 2006): 3569.
[3] Jack Nusan Porter, quoted in Iain Morley, “What is Genocide?,” (paper presented at the Conference of Learned Friends, London, September 23, 2016), 14.
[4] M. Burleigh, Death and Deliverance: “Euthanasia” in Germany c.1900-1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press,1994), quoted in “The Nazi Doctors and Nuremberg: Some Moral Lessons Revisited,” Famous Trials, accessed December 28, 2022, https://famous-trials.com/nuremberg/1945-news8-15-97
[5] E.D. Pellegrino, “Guarding the Integrity of Medical Ethics. Some Lessons from Soviet Russia,” Journal of the American Medical Association 273, no. 20, 1995, quoted in Famous Trials, “The Nazi Doctors.”
[6] Andrew Korda, “The Nazi medical experiments,” ADF Health 7 (April 2006): 37.
[7] Maggie Puniewska, “Healing a Wounded Sense of Morality,” The Atlantic, July 3, 2015, https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/07/healing-a-wounded-sense-of-morality/396770/
[8] Puniewska, “Healing.”
[9] Matthew J. Friedman et. al., “Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in the Military Veteran,” The Psychiatric Clinics of North America, 17 (2), 266.
[10] Tony Paterson, “Secret tapes of ‘professional sadists’ reveal true story of German soldiers’ war brutality,” The Independent, April 6, 2011,
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/secret-tapes-of-professional-sadists-reveal-true-story-of-german-soldiers-war-brutality-2263579.html
[11] See Morten Brænder, “Adrenalin Junkies: Why Soldiers Return from War Wanting More,” Armed Forces & Society 42, no. 1 (2016): 13-16.
[12] Lauren Tong, “Progression, Regression, and Equivalent Exchange: How Fullmetal Alchemist Addresses Coping with Trauma” (Honors diss., Texas Christian University, 2021), 1-8.
[13] “Legendary Bengali actress Suchitra Sen dies in Kolkata hospital,” Hindustan Times, January 18, 2014, https://www.hindustantimes.com/entertainment/legendary-bengali-actress-suchitra-sen-dies-in-kolkata-hospital/story-e2NitbjBEA8A7SNppwTLHM.html
[14] William Grimes, “Setsuko Hara, Japanese Star of Films by Ozu and Kurosawa, Is Dead at 95,” New York Times, November 27, 2015, https://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/28/arts/television/setsuko-hara-japanese-star-of-films-by-ozu-and-kurosawa-is-dead-at-95.html
[15] Yen-Jung Chang, “Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress: A Feminine Journey with Dream-like Qualities,” Animation 8, no. 1 (2013): 86,
https://doi.org/10.1177/1746847712467571
[16] Tom Brown, and Belén Vidal, “Introduction: The Biopic and its Critical Contexts,” in The Biopic in Contemporary Film Culture (Routledge, 2013), 1-32.
[17] Andrew Osmond, Satoshi Kon: The Illusionist (Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press, 2009), quoted in Manisha Mishra and Maitreyee Mishra, “Animated Worlds of Magical Realism: An Exploration of Satoshi Kon’s Millennium Actress and Paprika,” Animation: An Interdisciplinary Journal 9, no. 3 (2014): 301, DOI: 10.1177/1746847714545939
[18] Ibid.
[19] David Desser, “From the Opium War to the Pacific War: Japanese Propaganda Films of World War II,” Film History 7, no. 1 (1995): 36-37.
[20] Óscar Ramos, and Pilar Garcés, “Japanese Women’s Role. Past and Present,” Bulletin of Portuguese-Japanese Studies 10 (2005): 227.
[21] Kelly Hansen, “Shifting Gender Roles in Postwar Japan: The On-Screen Life of Actress Hara Setsuko,” Education About Asia 20, no. 2 (2015): 2.
[22] Andre Breton, Manifestoes of Surrealism, trans. Richard Seaver, and Helen R. Lane (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1969), 4.
[23] Stephen Sharot, “Dreams in Films and Films as Dreams: Surrealism and Popular American Cinema,” Revue Canadienne d’Études Cinématographiques / Canadian Journal of Film Studies 24, no. 1 (2015): 71.
[24] Hammond, “Available Light,” 1.
[25] Wendy Everett, “Screen as Threshold: The Disorientating Topographies of Surrealist Film,” Screen 39, no. 2 (1998): 149.
[26] Mishra and Mishra, “Animated Worlds,” 300-301.
[27] See Maureen Murdock’s The Heroine’s Journey.
[28] Chang, “Satoshi,” 96.
[29] Herman L. Ebeling, “The Word Anachronism,” Modern Language Notes 52, no. 2 (1937): 120, https://doi.org/10.2307/2911579.
[30] Erwin Panofsky, Early Netherlandish Painting (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 131-48, quoted in Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, “Toward a New Model of Renaissance Anachronism,” The Art Bulletin 87, no. 3 (2005): 403, https://doi.org/10.1080/00043079.2005.10786249.
[31] Charles Dempsey, The Portrayal of Love: Botticelli’s “Primavera” and Humanist Culture at the Time of Lorenzo the Magnificent (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), 65-78, quoted in Alexander Nagel and Christopher S. Wood, “Toward a New Model of Renaissance Anachronism,” The Art Bulletin 87, no.3 (2005): 403.
[32] Annette Barnes, and Jonathan Barnes. “Time out of Joint: Some Reflections on Anachronism.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 47, no. 3 (1989): 259, https://doi.org/10.2307/431005.
[33] Barnes and Barnes, “Time Out,” 258-259.
[34] Hiroshi Yoshioka, “Samurai and Self-Colonization in Japan,” quoted in Stephen Chan, “The Oriental Martial Arts as Hybrid Totems, Together with Orientalized Avatars,” Martial Arts as Embodied Knowledge: Asian Traditions in a Transnational World (New York: State University of New York Press, 2011), 188.
[35] Maria Rankin-Brown and Morris Brown, Jr, “From Samurai to Manga: The Function of Manga to Shape and Reflect Japanese Identity,” Japan Studies Review 16 (2012): 89-90.
[36] Rosa Lee, “Becoming-minor through Shinsengumi: A Sociology of Popular Culture as a People’s Culture,” (paper presented at the 18th Biennial Conference of the Japanese Studies Association of Australia, Australian National University, July 8-11, 2013), 11-12.
[37] William L. Benzon, “Postmodern Is Old Hat: Samurai Champloo,” Mechademia 3 (2008): 273, Project MUSE.
[38] T. M. Greene, The Vulnerable Text: Essays in Renaissance Literature (New York: Cambridge University Press), quoted in Louise D’Arcens, “You had to be there: Anachronism and the Limits of Laughing at the Middle Ages,” Postmedieval: A Journal of Medieval Cultural Studies 5, no. 2 (June 2014): 145-146, https://doi.org/10.1057/pmed.2014.7.
[39] Benzon, “Postmodern,” 273.
[40] Po-Lung Huang, “Japanese Street Dance Culture in Manga and Anime: Hip hop
Transcription in Samurai Champloo and Tokyo Tribe-2,” East Asian Journal of Popular Culture EAJPC 7, no. 1 (April 2021): 12,
https://doi.org/10.1386/eapc_00039_1.
[41] Zachary Sayre Schiffman, “Historicizing History/Contextualizing Context,” New Literary History 42, no. 3 (2011): 487,
http://www.jstor.org/stable/41328978.
[42] Schiffman, “Historicizing,” 486-487.
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