SENSORON AND JAPANESE VIEWS ON WAR AND MASCULINITY

Japanese masculinity is polarised in popular culture in a variety of ways. In particular, there are the archetypal old school yakuza hardmen played by actors like Sugawara Bunta and Takakura Ken and then there is the wistful vagabond Tora san played by Atsumi Kiyoshi in the movie series Otoko wa Tsurai Yo which obsessed a nation from 1969 - 1995. (For those looking for alternatives to these traditional forms of masculinity there is a rich tradition to be found in the androgynous male characters in 'Boys Love' manga as well as the novels of contemporary writers like Yoshimoto Banana. The looks of British musicians like David Bowie and David Sylvian and movies like Another Country all resonated strongly with younger Japanese women in the 1980s. Then there are the evergreen worlds of female cross dressing featured in the Kansai-based Takarazuka revue and camp celebrities such as the enka star, Mikawa Kenichi).

The first kind of traditional masculinity peaked during World War Two but was buried again in the aftermath of defeat. In its place, an army of salary-men emerged to continue the drive to modernise and win glory for Japan. In this way, whilst the cult of masculinity celebrated by the military was ditched, traditional Japanese masculinity itself was rebooted. Reference to the war was limited to prayers for the victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and, to the frustration of neighbouring countries like China and Korea, Japanese right wing nationalists managed to circumvent any mention of Japanese war crimes in favour of discussion about Japan being the first victim of the Atomic Age.

In more recent times, however, it appears that young Japanese men are being encouraged to throw off the yoke of victim-hood and instead flex their muscles dressed in battle fatigues. In the manga series Senso ron they are encouraged to see their grandfather's generation as having been betrayed by the politicians. Their grandfathers, they are being told, were noble soldiers just doing their duty. And young men today are being told that they have the right to honour the memories of their grandfathers. It is a development that will fuel anti-Japanese sentiment. The re-emergence of the Japanese military as a guide to masculinity will bring back bitter memories of the war and Japanese atrocities. Denial in Japanese school textbooks is one thing, a change to the constitution and a manga series that glorifies the war is another.

Interestingly, the idea that the soldiers of World War Two were betrayed by the politicians maybe is just another version of the Japan-as-Victim story. Except foot soldiers are now the main focus rather then the nation. It is interesting that in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, movies like Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket and The Deer Hunter depicted the plight of the grunts. Sensoron serves a similar function. Kobayashi Yoshinori, the creator of Sensoron, has a much bigger agenda. he denounces the brainwashing of Japanese children at Peace Museums and clearly wants young Japanese to feel proud about wearing the uniform.

When it was first published Senso Ron posed the question, "Will you go to war, or will you stop being Japanese?" on the front cover. Whilst a manga, it features a lot of text addressing issues such as the 'comfort women', the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal, A-bombs and the Nanjing massacre. Kobayashi is a patriot. And the lens through which he views the war is one in which Japan fought a war of justice, aiming to liberate Asia from Western imperialism. He argues that the Japanese people who challenge this viewpoint today have been brainwashed by the Americans. Senso Ron is such a success that Rumi Sakamoto argues that it challenges the mainstream interpretation of history, It is, however, Sakamoto argues, focussed solely on a Japanese perspective and therefore is "closed off" and "simply unacceptable".

ISHII SOGO AND EINSTURZENDE NEUBAUTEN

In 1994 Japanese film director Ishii Sogo (now Ishii Gakuryu) made the film Angel Dust. Set in a futuristic Tokyo, it is the demented story of serial killing and religious cults. Wind back the clock to 1984 and there is the satirical film The Crazy Family in which an outwardly normal, stereotypical middle-class family are pushed to the edge and consumed by a plethora of neuroses buried just below the surface of the veneer of what passes for family life. In 1985, Ishii Sogo filmed the German industrial band Einsturzende Neubauten while they were on tour in Japan. In particular, he shot the band performing live in an industrial building that is easily accessed on youtube. Their recent performance in Melbourne show the incredible staying power of a band that, in 1985, seemed to have come from another planet. Nick Cave in his book King Ink writes that when he first saw Blixa Bargeld performing live on the television all the notions of music that he had held so precious "were obliterated". Watching this video it is easy to see why. Cave went on to describe Bargeld as "the most beautiful man in the world. He stood there in a black leotard and black rubber pants, black rubber boots. Around his neck hung a thoroughly fucked guitar. His skin cleared to the bones, his skull was an utter disaster, scabbed and hacked, and his eyes bulged out of their orbits like a blind man's..." It is easy to see why Ishii Sogo would have been attracted to this project. 

GEORGE OHSAWA: A HOPELESS IDEALIST

Nihonjinron theories of Japanese uniqueness found expression in a favourite book of mine Jack and Mitie in the West by George Ohsawa. First published in French in 1956 by the Ohsawa Foundation in Paris it was published in English by the George Ohsawa Macrobiotic Foundation in California in 1981. This book looks at the disease of the West and offers solutions that are to be found in the Orient. In this book Ohsawa casts two primitives, Jack and Mitie, whom find themselves in the jungle of civilisation. Here Jack ponders the civilised mentality and its inability to conceive of the infinite whilst Mitie is shocked by the naked cadaver on the cross that is worshiped in the Christian churches. Having taken it upon himself to enlighten the West, Jack is of the view that theory without practice is useless and practice without theory is dangerous. Throughout the book Oriental wisdom is privileged at the expense of Western science. The grandeur of the infinite and eternal universe in the East is compared to the world of the West which is enclosed by walls of lead called time and space. What is hard to believe is Ohsawa's persistence in characterising the Japanese tradition as being one that is peaceful and at harmony with the world. The battle of Sekigahara alone is testimony to the bloodletting nature of Japanese history. In more recent times there are, of course, the war crimes committed by the Japanese during World War two. Murakami Haruki has written powerfully about this in The Windup Bird Chronicle. And, presently, there is the push by the Abe government to change the constitution to rearm Japan whilst allowing the American military to override the wishes of local residents to relocate the Futenma air base in Okinawa. George Ohsawa was an eccentric with interesting views about macrobiotics but a hopeless idealist when it came to writing about the history and culture of Japan.