From mourning to allegory

Since 1977, when the first movie version was premiered, Uchūsenkan Yamato (Space Battleship Yamato) has fueled the continuance of an earlier anime boom in Japan, and in the past decades, the anime text has generated multifarious interpretations. One of the most widely embraced readings contextualizes Yamato within Japan's defeat in the Second World War and this approach to the anime not only celebrated its scientific imagination but also legitimized, with a revisionist tone, the country's righteousness in the war. In the wake of the 3/11 earthquake and the subsequent Fukushima disaster, however, this line of canonical reading has declined. In turn, users of internet social media such as Twitter and 2 Channel have revamped the significance of Yamato, largely extolling the anime text as a prognosis of the Fukushima crisis. Surrounding Yamato, those clamorous voices on the internet appear to have grown into what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri call 'multitude', a social body of collaboration. Online constituents of multitudes are, though still randomly and loosely connected, gravitating to Yamato's newly discovered quality as the allegory of apocalyptic post-3/11 Japan. Whereas concrete action is yet to be taken, the internet multitudes of Yamato fans have engaged in various brainstorming conversations that concern Japan's future and its relation with nuclear technology.Keywords: Yamato3/11Fukushimanuclear technologyinternetsocial mediamultitude Notes1. The Yamato series consist of sixteen animations (including six TV versions and three original video anime versions) and a live action version, produced from 1974 to 2013 (as of December 2013). In this article, however, the author focuses on the first movie version, as, when released in 1977, it fueled the Yamato boom and thereafter became a cornerstone of the series. As this article shows, the first story of the mission-driven battleship has become the most popular subject to revisionist interpretations of the Yamato series after the Fukushima accident.2. Animerica Editorial Board (1995, p. 6).3. Numano names such examples as Ikezawa Natsuki's 'Sakura no shi – nihen' (Nihen – 2 pieces) published in Shinchō, 2011 June, and Kawakami Hiromi's Kamisama 2011, which were written before the Great Earthquake and rewritten after the Fukushima accident. See the epilogue (owarini) in Numano's Sekai wa bungaku de dekiteiru (2012).4. Beginning with the first TV series, Space Battleship Yamato (1974–75), the other major works include Farewell Space Battleship Yamato (1978), Be forever Yamato (1980), Space Battleship Yamato: the final edition (1983), Space Battleship Yamato: the revival edition (2009), and Space Battleship Yamato 2199 (Chapters 1–7, 2012–2013; the complete theatre version will be released in 2014). In addition, the live action movie Space Battleship Yamato (2010), featuring popular actor Kimura Takuya as Kodai Susumu, was also produced.5. Tetsuwan Atomu was first published as a manga, and the manga-based animation was first broadcast in 1963.6. The literal translation of the term is 'eight directions, one roof', which signifies 'the entire universe under the single roof'. The idiomatic compound became a popular political slogan during the period of 1937–45.7. The Three Antinuclear Principles are a national resolution adopted by parliament in 1967. The basic policy consists of three items: Japan (1) does not possess, (2) does not produce and (3) does not allow foreign nations to bring nuclear weapons into the sovereignty.8. The basic plot of the 2010 version of Space Battleship Yamato remains that of the first Yamato (1974–1977).9. Kanae Motoyuki briefly notes the possibility of the rise of 'empire' and 'multitude' in post-Fukushima Japan, by borrowing Hardt and Negri's terms and concepts. Kanae notes that his analysis is based on imagination and 'a feasible fiction' (ariubeki kyokō) (2011, p. 349). My discussion draws on his insight in regard to 'multitude' and expands the possibility to a concrete formation of subjectivity built around Space Battleship Yamato.10. A boisterous and creative example is a 2 Channel thread titled 'Sorosoro Uchūsenkan Yamato tsukuranaito' ('It is time to build Space Battleship Yamato', Unnamed Users, 2012).11. For example, Abe Yukiyasu (2012), the author of a web posting titled 'Gendaiban 'Uchūsenkan Yamato' wa ima, dokoni?' ('Where is the contemporary version of "Space Battleship Yamato"?'), hopes to believe the radiation cleaner is not a product of scientific imagination because the nuclear technology itself is part of human invention.Additional informationNotes on contributorsIkuho AmanoIkuho Amano is an Assistant Professor of Japanese at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her research focuses on an intersection between history and modern/contemporary literature, in particular looking through Japan's transculturation process in relation with Western Europe. She is currently working on a book, Decadent literature in twentieth-century Japanese: spectacles of idle labor, on twentieth-century Japanese Decadent literature, specifically representations of unrestricted economy as fictional trope. She may be contacted at [email protected]

Allegory · Anime · Art · Art history · Cyberspace · Fantasy · Literature · Media studies · Sociology · The Internet · Asian Culture and Media Studies · History · Japanese History and Culture · Korean Peninsula Historical and Political Studies · Philosophy

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