Spreading the Wealth

Earlier this month, an 86-year-old Japanese man named Tomoyuki Tanaka died of a stroke. He was none other than the creator of Godzilla, and his legacy is surviving beyond him.

Godzilla, however, is a special case. When one thinks of Japanese exports, one generally thinks of cars or electronics. Maybe sushi. But definitely not popular culture. There is one growing exception to this trend: Japanese animation, more commonly referred to as anime, from a children's series called Doraemon.

Throughout Asia, anime has been extremely popular for decades. Some anime exports, such as Astroboy, Star Blazers and Transformers, have come to the West in the form of television programs and have been around since the 1960s. The mass exportation of anime, however, is very much a mid-to late-80s phenomenon, marked by the apocalyptic 1988 movie "Akira."

Recently, Japanese anime has included a heavy amount of extreme and meaningless violence and mysoginistic pornography. However, the variety in anime has demonstrated the wide-ranging potential of the animated medium. As such, with the Japanese film industry struggling, I believe that anime has emerged as the new medium through which Japanese creative talents can be expressed.

What exactly is anime? The first animated films in Japan date from the 1910s and were strongly influenced by French animators such as Emile Cohl. But in 1963, anime was catapulted into popular Japanese consciousness when comic strip artist Tezuka Osamu released for television an animated version of his comic character, Astroboy.

Since then, it has become an established tradition to bring manga, or comic magazines, to animation. Anime includes science-fiction like mecha (space sagas with robot war machines), dungeons-and-dragons-type fantasy, police/detective series, high school dramas and comedies.

But much anime cannot be placed in any sort of genre. The ultimate reason anime has gained an international crowd is its ability to transcend cultural and linguistic barriers. For example, the vast majority of anime characters don't look very Japanese. Often, the names of the main characters are distinctly Japanese but their physical features are distinctly Caucasian. Or, an anime plot can unfold in a non-Japanese country but with Japanese protagonists. This more easily allows a broader, non-Japanese audience to appreciate and identify with anime characters and stories. Ironically, the anime that winds up being marketed overseas may not necessarily be the most popular in Japan.

This illustrates the fact that anime is a valuable channel through which one can decipher how the Japanese view themselves and the world beyond their islands.

The very best anime deal with human uncertainties that are universal in scope. One prominent theme is concern about the deterioration of the environment. For example, anime great Isao Takahata, recently released the film "Heisei Gassen Tanuki Ponpoko", which revolves around the superficially hilarious attempts of anthropomorphized raccoons to survive and adjust to a world where their natural habitat is being destroyed.

Another theme deals with defining humanity in a world where capitalism has gone amuck and the distinction between humans and machines is blurred.

Throughout all of anime, one senses a dark current coupled with lightness and comedy. There is a frustration with the progress of capitalism, but at the same time, fantasies portray its benefits. For instance, one finds a cautionary note about the human search for utopia in the movie "Appleseed", where a world programmed to be perfect through scientific advances becomes as much of a prison as the pre-utopia world of toil and strife.

Much of science-fiction/fantasy anime is marked by charming anachronisms, such as people having swordfights in the most technologically advanced armor. Perhaps this is a Japanese attempt to have things both ways--to be technologically advanced but still maintain a soul.

Anime masterpieces are known and loved throughout the Japanese population. Toys, silverware, stationery and T-shirts of the most popular anime characters abound in Japanese stores. Reading manga, the telephone-book-sized comic strips which anime is based on, is a national preoccupation. The anime which is not yet accepted in Japan is just a reflection of its avant-garde nature. The times will probably catch up with anime, not the other way around.

Nanaho Sawano '98 of Dunster House, is the former president of Harvard Japan Society.