The Descent of Peace

War. Huh, what is it good for? You know, other than absolutely nothing. In Japan after the Second World War, that kind of question was asked as the constitution drafted completely erased Japan’s ability to wage war (Other than their rather sizable Self Defense Force). Needless to say, one of the powers that a sovereign nation gets to enjoy is the power to wage war over the pettiest of circumstances, for instance half of all the wars in Europe. But here, a Nation, whether they wanted to or not, had to renounce war. The reactions to this sudden change are varied and show their faces in all forms of media. I personally believe, that while the texts and stories we have read in class have many of these themes, I don’t believe that some of them enjoyed just as much widespread distribution as the films that we have covered, thus I will take an in depth view over the course of films as the decades pass by chronicled in the class.

The earliest films released after the war, were released in the fifties. Of course I *must* make it clear, that I will only be focusing on the films produced in Japan, making a certain potent documentary moot to my research. Well, back on track, in the fifties Akira Kurosawa is one of the few directors who begin releasing massive amounts of work in the fifties, he released nine, two in 1950. The story of the film Rashomon, is almost in its entirety, the story of war. In my allegoric reading of Rashomon, the various actors can be described as a different persona for each side of Japan. During the court case: the Samurai is not a power hungry elite, he is the representation of the Japanese people; the Bandit is not a power hungry elite, he is the representation of Japan’s Military and Government; the Wife is the power hungry elite, not an innocent person as her and the bandit’s stories say. In the Bandit’s story, and as no one says otherwise, he (the Military/Government) offered to sell to the Samurai (the People) a cache of swords (Power, Glory, Honor). As the Samurai is tricked and beaten into submission, as the People were forced to follow or be ostracized, and the wife (The Elites) is brought in, she is raped. Figuratively, this is the Military and the Government’s joining with the elites, and it is done in a sordid improper way.

As the stories go off in their own directions, we see just how the views of war were handled during World War II. The Military (Bandit) believed it fought Valiantly for what it thought was right, The People gave themselves up for the sake of the elites (A view seconded in a later work), and the elites were all the while pretending to be victims as well. If we take the Lumberjack’s story to be the true story, The Military and people were terrified of what was happening, being the puppet of the rich man trying to secure more wealth and power for themselves, as either her Husband died and she was free, or the Bandit was killed and everything could continue as if nothing happened. The Gate Scene is a much more condensed view of the aftermath of War. The Lumberjack (government) wanted to take the baby (Japan) to care for it, while the Monk (the People) was weary of the Lumberjack’s intentions, After all, the Traveler (The elite) were cruel enough to steal the clothe wrapping the baby (Figuratively showing that the Elite had taken all that Japan had), and much like the traveler, the Lumberjack stole the jeweled dagger in greed like the Traveler with the clothes. In the end, the People (Monk) were willing to entrust Japan (the Baby) back to the Government (Lumberjack). I think that this film is perhaps the best to purely encapsulate the meaning people sought to give Japan in the War and in this new age Post-War.

In the life of post war, Tokyo Story offers a rather sorrowful view of just how Japan was going to evolve from there on out. While the film covers a family coping with the change of Japan post-war, an allegory could be made of the final moments of the film. While Tomi was a bit out of it for a while, using Sensei’s words, Shukichi was one thousand percent in need of her in his life up until her death. In a way, you can see an effect of the very end of the Second World War, Japan (Shukichi) had lost its way (Tomi), and was utterly devastated. In the real world, Japan’s people were just told that what they had been taught all along, the Emperor’s Divinity, was a lie, they also suffered catastrophic damage all across the island chain from the fire bombing. In the end of Tokyo story, Shukichi was left a broken man, having nothing to do with his life other than sit there fanning himself and gardening. He didn’t have the one thing that held him together that I believe, even more than Shige’s holding the family together by being the authority figure for a half checked out Mother and a drunkard father. For him, Tomi wasn’t just the person he loved. He mentions it to the passerby woman at his window in the end that he would have been kinder had he known. In a sort of personal way, I see the relationship that he had with Tomi, the sort of playful prodding and picking on her was his way of showing affection, but I think he truly regretted not being able to express his feelings in a way other than that, leaving his teary eyes in the end of the movie looking out of the window to the bay, not seeing the future, but wanting to see the past. In that vein of things, Japan at the time is staring not at the future, but at the devastation at what once was. The movie shows the decline of the traditional family structure, a feature that the new Japan was going to lament. However, Tokyo Story moves in a different direction with Noriko. After the War, she lost her loved one. Yet at the end of the Movie, she is moving on the tracks to the future, interesting enough also facing the past. As Japan moved to the future, now without War, there is only the future to come, even as they stare at the past.

Now for less of a stretch, In the Sixties we are given two films (one was a book but we watched the short film during class). The first, The Cruel Story of Youth, is primarily about the wild vagabond lifestyle of the teens. However, the pivotal moment in the film happens when the two are arrested for extortion. The Detective looks at Kiyoshi and reprimands him. Not because of what he was doing, but because he was doing it. Since Kiyoshi’s idea was to get back at the adults for flaunting their Salaryman nice cars, lording over everyone with their money, The Detective berated Kiyoshi for being controlled by that same money. At the end, Kiyoshi is killed for his incredibly stupid involvement with the Yakuza. In a way, Kiyoshi is buying into Militarism. He was violent, aggressive, and wanted power/money above all else. And it was that same militaristic attitude that got Japan into World War II. And it was that same Militarist ideal set Kiyoshi had that strangled him in the end. The movie is a Cautionary tale, trying to provoke the audience to be so disgusted by what happened, to force them to change. To force people who though fighting was the best way, like Kiyoshi, to give it up before they end up dead in the back of an alley. Of course the only alternative to actively searching for fights, is to no look for them, and because of the constitution, Japan was just like that, unable to go looking for a fight.

Now, in a twistedly simple way, the second work in the sixties I will be working with was done by the avidly open Militarist Mishima Yukio. My reasoning behind believing Yukoku was a work that promoted peace is quite simple, so simple it seems asinine. While the film glorifies the masculine, both in ravaging women and the gruesome seppuku, the film unexpectedly brings a story to light that Mishima most definitely wasn’t stressing. The Lieutenant who committed seppuku did so because he didn’t want to either kill his friends or join them and go against the Emperor. Now, while this seems like a no-brainer for a militarist, it isn’t. The Rebellion that he was ordered to stop, the one his friends started with their little coup, was done in order to install a Showa Restoration. A Showa Restoration was put forth by Kita Ikki as the first step to a total militarist state once more, by doing away with Taisho democracy. The entire 2-26 Incident Yuuko is based on is the idea of starting this new militarist state. Mishima could have portrayed these men as heroes of Japan. But he didn’t. Instead he took the story of a man who was torn between the Emperor and his friends who wanted Militarism under direct control of the Emperor. The Lieutenant had two choices to pick from, and he chose the third path. He chooses a path with no conflict by ending his life. In a way, he picked neither side, even though either is militaristic. In a way, this promotes the choice of peace, saying that you don’t need to choose between the lesser of two evils. You can choose to break free of the cycle of war, just hopefully there’s a way for you that doesn’t involve belly slicing.

Undeniably, Barefoot Gen illustrates a family that just doesn’t want anything to do with the war anymore. The father wants peace, totally rejecting the war propaganda, correctly identifying this war not as one of necessity, but one of greed. Because of this, all neighbors near them condemn them, having totally bought into the war entirely. I believe one of the most prominent moments in the first volume is when the older brother in the youth corps tries to tell a couple that their son had hanged himself. They say he is lying, and that he died in a valiant manner in a training exercise. The couple needs to buy into the lie. Every militaristic character, from the Chairman to the teachers, is depicted as liars and heinous people, further demonizing the love of war. Of course more can be said about this series as a whole, but the anti-war pro-peace argument is so clearly depicted in the manga that it doesn’t need to be analyzed to look for the meaning. It’s plain as day.

Moving from the Seventies into the Eighties, we have reached a point that is at least 30 years after the first reactions to the war. However, instead of the anti-war banner dying down in all this time, there is now a continuation in a media that not only stretches across Japan but also across the globe. The medium of Anime has become one of the biggest transmitters of the peace-message since the days of Gigantor in the 60’s. Yet the biggest franchise to adopt this attitude is one we very very briefly discussed in class. While Mizenko-Sensei is right in saying that it is a boy’s anime, one with Giant Robots that kill each other and explosions with all that military lingo. One would expect the series to progress as a staple of a Militarist re-emergence. To reach the degree of how wrong that idea is would require me to break the English Language to just to get a glimpse of the magnitude. While the story first starts as a rather basic story, one land (Well, Space) Invades another (Earth) and war continues with the magnitude of atrocities increasing more and more with each passing moment of the war. However, it isn’t as cut and dry as an Eastwood movie (For those uninitiated, White hat means hero, Black means baddie).

I’m going to take a bit of a diversion through the rest of the Gundam Series, but needless to say it paints things in a better context than what we got to see. Just looking at the original Mobile Suit Gundam, as the series continues, you see the effects of war on the civilian Amuro. After years living in the Space Colonies, he comes home to meet his mother, but the war has changed him. Changed him from the dopey kid we meet in his boxers on the first episode into a soldier with a chip on his shoulder. However, Amuro continues on into the first series and begins questioning why they are even fighting the war in the first place. To give a bit more of back story, I’ll just present the information plainly (no need to watch the series here folks!). The Reason the Principality of Zeon (the ‘Bad Guys’) have attacked the Earth Federation is because of inequalities forced upon the colonies by the Federation. The Colonies strike back in revolt to become independent, forming the Principality of Zeon based on Zeon Deikun’s dream to unify space into a nation of its own. The people who took over Zeon after needless to say got a little over zealous in their pursuit of retribution, bringing us to the beginning of the series with half the Earth occupied by Zeon.

The story takes a tragic turn as Amuro becomes close to a character on the Zeon’s side. Needless to say, he kills her by accident. While he gains a bitter hatred for the other notable pilot from the first series, Char, who he believed dragged the girl into the war. As the series continues, the war spirals out of control until Zeon is defeated, with Amuro fighting char to the death in the end of the series. While this still is in line with the original idea that the series is just a glorification of war, it goes to great lengths to show just what people lose in war. And as the series continues, more people like Amuro appear, people who don’t want war, but fight because they have to. This new race of people are eventually (in one of the series in the same timeline) given a robot that allows them to better understand their opponent, not just fighting style but also their feelings. Other Series in Gundam are much faster at getting to this point, though, and show that the series as a whole tries to show that peace is the better option. What I’m trying to say with this series is that it doesn’t justify war, it shows that war is rather stupid, as there is no right or wrong in it, just needless loss of life.

The final bit of Media we’ve looked at in class was in the Nineties, pretty much bringing our class up to date. Miyazaki is very heavy handed at his messages. Mononoke Hime shares some characteristics with Gundam, being that it shows with ‘unclouded eyes’ that there are multiple sides to war, and in turn, there are multiple reasons to abandon War as a good way to solve problems. I believe one of the characters that best emphasize this is not only the Deer god, but also eventually Madaro, who comes to understand the shishigami. Fighting between the two sides is pointless. The humans just want iron, the Animals just want their home. They could live in harmony without all the bloodshed, but no one other than these two beings could see that. Unless you count the Mr. Audience (I’m calling Ashitaka that because I hate just how much of an omnipotent thirdparty he is. He’s like what would happen if you gave a person in the audience the chance to act in the movie). Well, Mr. Audience manages to stop the war, only after pretty much every one is dead except for the few people he managed to tell to get out of the way. In the end, Ashitaka is parting with San in a way that tells the very basic idea of the movie that would have solved all the problems in the movie before Ashitaka ever arrived. That is, he tells her that he’ll stay in the Village, while she stays in the forest. Not that we’ll live in harmony, or that everything is fine now. But “I’ll keep to my things. You keep to your’s and we’ll be fine.”

Well, it was a bit longer than I had planned, but I believe I have quite clearly shown a timeline of Japan, one that shows the evolution and relative acceptance of Peace, and the need to be anti-war in the heaviest form. While many of the films I discussed aren’t focused upon this message, the words are there, it’s just up to us, the audience, to find them. And more importantly it’s up to us to live up to these messages of peace.