japan is dying/japan is dead
My mother commented recently that I really like the whole theme of extinction, don't I. She's right, I am oddly preoccupied with it. I sent a long, hasty email in explanation, but in the days since I've been thinking a lot about that. One of my pipe dreams is publishing a short story collection that is strictly apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic. I would call it If Only Tonight We Could Sleep, after an Explosions in the Sky song.
My favorite movies used to be far more adventurous and overtly political - no, that's a lie. I didn't use to have favorite movies. I would like a lot of movies. I liked Traffic, I liked Men in Black, I liked Little Miss Sunshine, I liked The Constant Gardener, I liked Batman Begins. I liked a lot of things. But I loved Akira. It was the first movie that I soulfully loved, not as a member of a particular group or as a representative of my past - i.e., one of the reasons I like Contact is the scene where Ellie meets the alien in the form of her dead, idolized father - it was a movie I loved as a maturing individual. Lindsey asked me why it was my favorite movie, and I think the answer to that ties into my mother's remark. Because it really shows Japan as a model - and possibly the only model, because it was the only country to receive an atomic bomb, let alone two - of what a post-apocalyptic society on Earth might look like. We destroyed Japan in World War II. With pardon to Holocaust victims, Japan experienced "destruction of the world in miniature form". I don't think anybody would argue that Akira is a response to that. In Akira, the atomic bombs are replaced with this boy-wonder, Akira, whose mental and psychic powers spiralled out of the control of his military programmers and resulted in a blast that wiped out Tokyo - thus the movie takes place in Neo-Tokyo. So, too, Japan survived, almost inexplicably. But it can't return to the status quo, never.
If you have fears, like I do, that the world is moving toward some kind of self-decimation, Japan is the forecast for the future, at least in terms of its people. I can see aspects of it emerging already, even outside Japan.
Thus Japanese youths are still being force-fed the anachronistic ideologies of modernization - taught to compete for the monolithic postwar Japanese middle-class goals of good diploma, good job at a big company, and good marriages (for girls) - centered on institutions such as homes, schools, and corporations that used to socialize individuals into national subjects. Yet the validity of this message is constantly undermined by images in the media and everyday experiences surrounding the youths. They cannot help but notice the deterioration of these once-unquestioned institutions and their creeds, and they see the unhappiness and self-destructive conducts of adults still tethered to them. The violence and moral paralysis of youths today, according to Murakami, is symptomatic of the profound and widespread confusion they suffer as the result of this contradiction. The adult Japanese, on the other hand, are wallowing in an acute sense of desolation; middle-aged Japanese men, for example, continue to cling to the corporate collective even though it no longer offers them a sense of larger purpose and meaning, as it did during the era of national modernization. (Japan After Japan, p. 39)
Interestingly, this can also be applied to the dynamics of Ilium, another post-apocalyptic "state". Also applicable to Ilium, I think, are Japan's ensuing conflict of guilt and shame over past bad acts, and the ensuing resentment at having to apologize for everything, especially during the Okinawa rape case - the feeling that they are the victims, why do they have to apologize? I don't agree with them, just like I don't agree with the fundamentalists in Ilium, but I'm starting to think it might be a recurring theme in the (speculated) post-apocalyptic world.
My favorite movies used to be far more adventurous and overtly political - no, that's a lie. I didn't use to have favorite movies. I would like a lot of movies. I liked Traffic, I liked Men in Black, I liked Little Miss Sunshine, I liked The Constant Gardener, I liked Batman Begins. I liked a lot of things. But I loved Akira. It was the first movie that I soulfully loved, not as a member of a particular group or as a representative of my past - i.e., one of the reasons I like Contact is the scene where Ellie meets the alien in the form of her dead, idolized father - it was a movie I loved as a maturing individual. Lindsey asked me why it was my favorite movie, and I think the answer to that ties into my mother's remark. Because it really shows Japan as a model - and possibly the only model, because it was the only country to receive an atomic bomb, let alone two - of what a post-apocalyptic society on Earth might look like. We destroyed Japan in World War II. With pardon to Holocaust victims, Japan experienced "destruction of the world in miniature form". I don't think anybody would argue that Akira is a response to that. In Akira, the atomic bombs are replaced with this boy-wonder, Akira, whose mental and psychic powers spiralled out of the control of his military programmers and resulted in a blast that wiped out Tokyo - thus the movie takes place in Neo-Tokyo. So, too, Japan survived, almost inexplicably. But it can't return to the status quo, never.
If you have fears, like I do, that the world is moving toward some kind of self-decimation, Japan is the forecast for the future, at least in terms of its people. I can see aspects of it emerging already, even outside Japan.
Thus Japanese youths are still being force-fed the anachronistic ideologies of modernization - taught to compete for the monolithic postwar Japanese middle-class goals of good diploma, good job at a big company, and good marriages (for girls) - centered on institutions such as homes, schools, and corporations that used to socialize individuals into national subjects. Yet the validity of this message is constantly undermined by images in the media and everyday experiences surrounding the youths. They cannot help but notice the deterioration of these once-unquestioned institutions and their creeds, and they see the unhappiness and self-destructive conducts of adults still tethered to them. The violence and moral paralysis of youths today, according to Murakami, is symptomatic of the profound and widespread confusion they suffer as the result of this contradiction. The adult Japanese, on the other hand, are wallowing in an acute sense of desolation; middle-aged Japanese men, for example, continue to cling to the corporate collective even though it no longer offers them a sense of larger purpose and meaning, as it did during the era of national modernization. (Japan After Japan, p. 39)
Interestingly, this can also be applied to the dynamics of Ilium, another post-apocalyptic "state". Also applicable to Ilium, I think, are Japan's ensuing conflict of guilt and shame over past bad acts, and the ensuing resentment at having to apologize for everything, especially during the Okinawa rape case - the feeling that they are the victims, why do they have to apologize? I don't agree with them, just like I don't agree with the fundamentalists in Ilium, but I'm starting to think it might be a recurring theme in the (speculated) post-apocalyptic world.