Nation, War, and Japan’s Future in the Science Fiction Anime Film Patlabor II

Oshii Mamoru’s film Parlabor II engages questions of Japan’s future and its involvement in United Nations peacekeeping forces within a science fiction narrative that allegorically reflects—and critiques—the politics and society of postwar Japan. In addition, the film muses upon the nation’s experience in World War II and the nature of the ensuing peace under the American treaty. What is at stake in Patlabor II is nothing less than Japan’s current and future international position: while the film represents the country’s dominant pacifist mood as well as recent debates over participation in regular UN peacekeeping operations, what finally emerges is a nationalist voice supporting the idea that Japan take responsibility for its own self-defense and expand its role in international affairs. This voice often employs a strong, if implicit, anti-American rhetoric, evoking the imperative for national unity by situating the US as a potential threat. These rhetorical postures and ideological viewpoints are weighed and analyzed in the context of Andrew Tudor’s influential distinction between the “secure” and the “paranoid” subgenres of the sf-horror film

Anime · Archaeology · Art · Art history · Linguistics · Literature · Media studies · Sociology · World War II · Asian Culture and Media Studies · History · Hong Kong and Taiwan Politics · Japanese History and Culture · Philosophy

• Memory and forgetting

  Alistair Swale•Japan Forum•2017

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