Can you even begin to imagine what this is like?
I have to say that between Angel Beats and Yojouhan Shinwa Taikei last season, I had my share of both heated discussions and intellectual thought. This season I’ll be dabbling here and there, trying to find a show I’ll end up consistently blogging, but I thought to start off I’d write up an editorial for a show from last season that I found interesting, Rainbow – Nisha Rokubou no Shichinin, which will be abbreviated as Rainbow for my sanity. I’ll be picking this show up after this episode as a series I’ll regularly do an episodic blog for as well, but I couldn’t resist writing a kind of “catch up” editorial so…
To me at least, the strongest messages that Rainbow has got across since the members of Cell 6, hereafter referred to the Protagonists to save my sanity, escaped from prison is just how radically the Japanese culture changed post World War II. While the protagonists were still in the reformatory, I thought that the primary goal of this anime would be to show just how strong ties of brotherhood are, and although this latest episode clearly showed that, there’s something more going on in the setting behind the scenes.
Now I’m not really a big history or culture person, but there is a really interesting variety of ways that the Japanese culture is presented in modern anime. On the one hand you have shows like Sengoku Basara or Rurouni Kenshin, which emphasize the traditional Japanese ideal of honor. Yet on the other, you have shows like Higashi no Eden, which emphasize the changing Japanese ideal in the modern age. There are two major events in Japanese history that precipitated a large cultural shift: The Opening of Ports by Commodore Perry, and the Japanese defeat in World War II. While the former incident was the first social shift for Japan, they soon regained their lost honor, and they rapidly industrialized. Soon they were strong enough to build an empire spanning the Pacific, and even defeated Russia and China. Japanese honor was alive and well, and this ideal continued onwards through World War II.
That all changed after Japan’s defeat. Traditional Japan was shattered by the American presence. For the first time in practically all of Japanese history, Japan was actually occupied by a foreign power. For a country where the tradition was suicide instead of capture, this time was one of great disillusionment by Japan. Rainbow takes place during the time period of this great cultural shift in Japan, and it certainly shows. The colors are drab, there’s this really crazy grain filter put on the show, and the mood is generally somber. Of course, that may be part of the fundamental conflict between Ishihara/Sasaki and the protagonists, but I see it also as the mood of Japan during that time period.
War changes people… Changes countries.
I see Rainbow as a story that tells of Japan moving on from its militaristic and honor-bound past. It’s a show of reform. The setting for the entire first half of the series is set in a reformatory, and the main characters are all reforming or repenting for something they’ve done. At the same time, the show also emphasizes accepting the past and also moving beyond the past. We have to acknowledge our pasts, but we can’t let it take us over like Ishihara, nor can we shut it away. After all, there’s a reason why Sakuragi is in the reformatory despite not really perpetrating a crime. We can’t forget our roots, but nor can we let it consume us. The times are changing, and we have to change with them.
It’s not until Sakuragi, Mario, and Suppon are out of the reformatory does the message emphasized inside the reformatory get applied to the greater picture. It’s highly appropriate that Mario ends up fighting at an American military base. In many regards, those would have been considered a blight on Japanese land. They were and still are the embodiment of Japanese shame. He fights as a representative of Japan in the place where American honor and spirit is at its greatest. As Lilly (the woman at the American base) said, she’s sick of seeing the Japanese roll over and lose. Where are the fearless kamikaze pilots that were the embodiment of Japanese honor? Where are those string willed people? Have they disappeared? Has the fact that the Japanese refused to surrender despite the firebombings of Japan during World War II killed millions upon millions of people disappeared? Lilly’s words are highly indicative of just how changed the Japanese were. But as Mario shows, the Japanese are not down for the count. Through sheer willpower, he comes back again and is able to defeat the American GI.
Yet there is this juxtaposition between Mario’s fight with the American GI and Sakuragi’s fight with Ishihara. While the story of the Japanese winning one small victory against the American goes on, the scummy past of Japanese society rears its ugly head. Despite the message of change and encouragement that the show puts forward, there’s just no escaping the past. When I first watched these episodes, I thought that Sakuragi was just the most retarded character in the world for not killing Ishihara and for giving him the letter. Yet the thematic implications are clear. Why can’t we just forgive our pasts? We acknowledge that this terrible stuff happened, but we shouldn’t need to destroy those responsible. Can’t we just move on? It’s the message that Angel Beats! tried to tell, but came out garbled instead.
Must we keep old hatreds and old grudges?
As the series progresses, the view of Sakuragi in terms of forgiving the past is challenged by the protagonists, who present a different view of how to deal with the past. When Sasaki runs for mayor, instead of letting it go, the protagonists swear to stop him from becoming mayor. This arc suggests that we need to stop the bad elements in our past from continuing to permeate in our society, rather than leaving them alone as Sakuragi did.
After the storyline concerning Ishihara and Sasaki closed, I was wondering where the show was going to go from here. The end of the 15th episode demonstrated that the series wasn’t going to stop concerning itself with Japanese national identity, and the prosecutor’s message at the end of the episode was certainly an interesting echo of the message that the protagonists espoused when they took down Sasaki. We certainly can’t let the scum of our society run around amok. Japan’s national image cannot be tarnished by such filth, especially when they’re struggling to find themselves in this new period of uncertainty. In many ways, it certainly reminds me of the minorigate affair, but that’s a whole different discussion.
Also because of shit like Ishihara and Sasaki I would hope…
Interestingly enough, Rainbow is actually turning out to be one of the most interesting shows I’ve watched, mostly because of just how startling down to earth it is. After such a promising first half, I can’t wait to see where the series will go from here.
5 Comments
Definitely an interesting post on the context of Rainbow. I ended up putting the show on hold last season when I had to triage all the good shows that came out due to being pressed for time, but I’m definitely going to have to pick it back up.
It definitely was an interesting period in Japan, and it had a lot of contradictions to it as well. Japan had lost and was occupied, but because they were useful to quickly setting up a bulwark against Communist China and the Soviet Union a lot of the war-era bureaucrats, politicians, and industrial leaders were reinstated by the US if they hadn’t committed any war crimes (and even some who had were given immunity if they were particularly useful to the US, such as the biological and chemical warfare scientists of Unit 731. Which makes me wonder a bit what role the doctor and warden had during the war.) So on the one hand the old order was defeated and people held them responsible for the destruction (along with the Americans), but that old order was also back in power fairly quickly.
Though I think Rainbow is a bit revisionist in regards to the US bases during that time. The pride/shame thing seemed to largely rest upon the members of the old military while the civilians at least respected the US presence because it provided jobs when there were few and it was the only thing standing between them and millions of very (rightfully) angry Chinese and Russians who now had the upper hand. There even was a strange, almost cult-like following for Gen. MacArthur while he was the governor-general (and with as big an ego as his, he didn’t really discourage it.) The Korean War also helped Japan recover quickly because the US needed parts and vehicles and contracted their manufacture out to Japanese companies since they were close and the bases needed to ship them were already there. Resentment of US bases is something that I think is more recent and still kind of exaggerated in the media. Nationalistic pride has kind of made a comeback in regards to that as the previous LDP administration tried to expand Japan’s powers to deploy outside the country, partly fueled by hawkish conservative Japanese wanting to have their own policy towards China and North Korea instead of the (in their view) more conciliatory US policy. I also think that the nationalistic pride that’s developed since the Koizumi administration is a least partly a response to going on three decades of poor economic performance, Japan becoming overshadowed by China, and worry over societal decline due to the economy and low birth rates. Back in the 1950’s I don’t think that such issues of pride, especially in opposition to US bases and policy leadership, were at the top of most people’s priorities unless they were ex-military or ex-regime.
I sense a very revisionist feel coming off of your comment… In any case, yes, the post-war period in Japan was certainly very interesting, especially considering just how much was going on in that time. I actually realize now that I probably should have wrote something in that post too about how the character’s personalities in the prison reflect that same post-war feeling, but ah well. Totally slipped my mind.
Anyway, the representation of the US bases in Rainbow were probably fairly revisionist. They were presented as the hotbed of American culture and pride. A bunch of rowdy Americans beating down most Japanese that dared to stand up against them… On the topic of national pride, I’m sure that Japan certainly experienced a period of great disillusionment when they actually lost the war following Emperor Hirohito’s repeated broadcasts that the war would be fine, and this sentiment probably permeated throughout the 1950s as there were still a lot of problems continuing in Japan throughout that time. I would certainly expect Rainbow to depict a rather biased view of Japan during that time, but I’d say it’s rather balanced. After all, there seems to be nothing but problems in Japanese society. Grown adults raping children, rowdy drinkers, black markets, etc.
The occupation and times immediately afterwards weren’t all roses or anything, but the way you described the fight at the base (again, I have to get around to catching up with the series and see for myself) makes it sound like the issue at the heart of it is not something from that time period. The way Lilly talked about standing up and having the pride that they did during the war doesn’t feel authentic to me for the time period, especially coming from an American (she is, right?) From what I know conflicts on that level at the time didn’t really contain such idealistic talk and were more about a crime that a soldier or a civilian perpetrated on the other. Given how worn out and devastated the population was because of the war they seemed to take a much more practical (and sometimes even cynical) view of the short term. What idealism I did see in the era seemed to come more from the left than the right, sick of war and encouraged by the ideals of Article 7 to try and find a peaceful, non-aligned future for Japan.
Why I call revisionism on that scene is because it seems too much like the more modern national myth that the LDP and modern conservatives try to spin about Japan. I guess it makes for a powerful narrative to have Mario fighting a GI in the context of Japan not continuing to lose or give up, but it doesn’t strike me as authentic to the time period (again, except for perhaps some ex-military and ex-regime people who were heavily invested in those ideas.) The wording almost sounds more modern too, such as with the “Japan that can say no” essay that the ultra-rightist governor of Tokyo, Ishihara, wrote in 1989. The language and sentiment of it just seems too recent to me and not in line with what I know of the 1950’s-1960’s.
Yes, Lily is an American. Mario’s fight against the American GI has to be taken in the context that he is fighting for money to survive in this new world that he’s escaped into. That’s all it is. Japan in that time period was characterized by a great amount of escapism from the disillusionment at the time. Prostitution immediately after the war was at an all time high (until MacArthur banned it of course), but alcohol and drug usage was prevalent in the 1950s. While Mario’s fight is a fight for Japanese honor, it’s more of a fight to demonstrate that the Japanese can still stand up, and that they haven’t just completely given up as a result of the war.
That being said, the exact time when this series takes place is around 1957, which is the time when the Japanese economy really started to take off, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a much more optimistic tone.
If you ever run across the few translations there are of the Kindaichi mysteries (not the kid detective – the original, the adult one), you’ll find a very interesting contemporary portrayal of post-war Japan. Mystery novels are often wonderful windows on a time.