Japanese Cultural Trauma and Anime of the 80s and 90s

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Japan’s Cultural Trauma and Anime of the 80s and 90s

Written by Donny van Sas

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List of Illustrations

Fig. 1 to 4 Source: The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1946) 34 Fig. 5 to 9 Source: The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1946) 35

Fig. 10 to 11 Source: Barefoot Gen (1983) 37

Fig. 12 Source: The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1946) 38

Fig. 13 Source: Barefoot Gen (1983) 38

Fig. 20 to 22 Source: The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1946) 41 Fig. 23 to 30 Source: The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1946) 42

Fig. 46 to 49 Source: Akira (1988) 51

Fig. 50 to 55 Source: Akira (1988) 52

Fig. 62 to 67 Source: Jin-Roh (1999) 60

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Acknowledgements

There is only one person I could possibly start with in thanking. Since this thesis took some time to be completed I needed the patience and understanding of my supervisor, Charles Forceville. I would like to thank him in particular, because he was so kind to invest the time and effort to manage my stubbornness and help me with some thoughtful advice of both an academic nature and of the more personal kind. Secondly I would like to thank Laurents van Twillert, dear friend and fellow student, for his relentless positivity when it came to my thesis, and for his clarifying insights of course. My sister, Roxan van Sas, needs to be mentioned also, for although we are nothing alike she knows me well and has been a great support. Lastly I would like to thank my partner, Bibiane de Graaf, in the first place for simply being there, but more importantly for believing in me. My gratitude.

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Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION

There is the strong assumption that Japan’s society even today, 70 years after the event, suffers from the effects of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki (hereafter referred to as Hiroshima). The complexity of this assumption cannot be underestimated, although common sense dictates suggests that when a country suffers from such an unthinkable act it is bound to damage the fabric of a society in unforeseeable measure and for an unforeseeable amount of time. Ian Buruma formulates the complexity of the problem as that “all of the suffering of the Japanese people is encapsulated in that almost sacred word: Hiroshima,” but he argues that in the end “it is more than a symbol of national martyrdom; Hiroshima is a symbol of absolute evil” (1994: 138). Therein lies the difficulty of the issue, because within Hiroshima is folded a large number of related, yet different, events, developments, and sentiments concerning World War II and Japanese post-war society. Symbolising Hiroshima as the ultimate evil also conveys the sense that Japan is a victim culture and it is often proclaimed that Japanese films that try to approach the subject of Hiroshima uncritically reflect that victimology. In the broadest of terms this thesis explores both the assumption that Japan still suffers from the traumatic effects of the war and that Japan’s traumatic status is readily mirrored in Japanese films.

Japan’s self-identity gained relevance in an increasingly globalized world. Firstly the economic success from the 1960s onwards offered Japan a stage in the world’s economy. Secondly, and perhaps just as important, with economic success also came cultural relevance on the international stage. The increasingly international character of Japanese society raised questions about its national identity and about how the Japanese differentiate themselves from the West in particular. This process has been double-sided in that it was not only a matter of self-definition, but also a matter of expressing that identity to others, as is evidenced in cultural exports that evoke that identity. Japan’s cultural identity is thought to be intimately related to the identity Japan constructed from the meaning of events of World War II. The argument goes that Japan in fact suffers from a cultural trauma in which its identity to a large extent follows from the defeat in the war. A so-called foundational trauma lies at the core of post-war Japanese society.

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particular deals with this issue. In a period, roughly between the 1960s and 1980s, when Hiroshima’s symbolism assumed a central role in defining the attitude and experience of the Japanese regarding World War II, anime emerged as a specific mode of expression and it became a major cultural export. Anime’s propensity towards narratives of annihilation and images of apocalypse has not gone unnoticed, and the link between Japan’s experience of war and anime’s expressions has often been made, but it has not sufficiently been fleshed out. Even today the legacy of the war is problematic with politicians openly denying any wrongdoing, the public split between fervent nationalism or nostalgia and those cautious about such sentiments, and the recurring discussion about revising the constitution implemented by the Allied forces and its Article 9 that prohibits Japan from waging war. If “Hiroshima” indeed encapsulates all that suffering at once then it runs the risk of functioning as a totalizing symbol devoid of any nuance.

In order to arrive at my concluding remarks about how anime offers a perspective on Japan’s cultural trauma1 this thesis is divided in three main chapters each of which aims to answer a number of pertinent subquestions. After the present introduction the two following chapters provide an overview of the relevant literature. Chapter 2 on animation offers just that, but with the aim to arrive at a definition of what anime is and what anime and animation

fundamentally share as their defining aspect. As the theory on the subject of trauma applied to a nation, a culture, or a collective usually departs from an understanding of what trauma means in the case of the traumatised individual, chapter 3 will follow a similar trajectory in order to clarify what is meant when one claims that a nation, or its culture, suffers from a trauma. As such it offers a description of the relevant approaches to cultural trauma. Chapter 3 will also highlight the complexity of the meaning of the war in Japan, since the insights offered by Shipilova show that, at least according to some theories, the meaning of Hiroshima and all that is associated with it is contested, fluid and far from homogeneous.

Chapter 4 contains a provisional conclusion and functions as a bridge between the sociological character of the theory on cultural trauma and the analysis of anime titles. The chapter argues for a detailed analysis of four case studies, since one should be able to locate the

1_{The
terms
cultural
trauma
and
national
trauma
are
both
used
to
refer
to
the
same}

phenomenon. Most scholars agree that the theoretical difference between the pair is minimal and negligible.

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assumption or actual existence of a cultural trauma in examples of one of Japan’s dominant modes of expression. The choice for the first case study, a documentary called The Effects of the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (1946), is given specific attention, since in terms of genre and mode of representation the film differs from the other examples in the thesis insofar it is the only live-action film in the corpus. Each following chapter focuses on a different film or makes a comparison between films regarding the structure and narration of the cinematic

examples. Although concerned with the content of the films, the analysis focuses specifically on the function and the depiction (or lack thereof) of the references to the nuclear bombing and on the way that both cinematic and animetic devices narrate these events before relating these to cultural trauma discourse.

In the conclusion I will revisit a number of key questions by means of a summary, and argue for the unique quality of Japan’s ongoing struggle with its past and for the claim that anime as such a defining product of contemporary post-war Japan is symptomatic of this struggle. As will gradually become apparent, Japan’s cultural trauma does not tick all the boxes with regards to how the current theory on cultural trauma defines and frames national traumas. More important is that anime shows its awareness of the trauma discourse within Japanese society, but it does not unequivocally accept the premise that the past alone is the dominant determinant of that discourse.

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Chapter 2. WHAT IS ANIMATION?

2.1. Covering Some Ground

What constitutes animation is debatable, but it is in most cases pragmatically identifiable. Yet in order to explore the possibilities and limitations of anime in its ability to represent traumatic experiences and events, there is an urgent need to delineate what animation is or at least how this thesis understands animation. While film studies is a well-established academic field, within the field, the study of animation takes its subject to be essentially cinematic or it is considered a significant deviation from cinema and then ignored (while still implying an identity relative to cinema). It should come as no surprise that the effort of defining animation has been focused on the similarity and contrast to live-action film. Even when animation is considered essentially different from film it has to face the common understanding that it shares features with live-action film in that animation is a(n) (audio)visual medium consisting of moving images, that it overlaps with cinema in terms of cultural practices (production, distribution and consumption) and that animation and live-action are similar in their material manifestations. Furthermore as the debate on trauma and representability within film studies predominantly focuses on live-action cinema and film as a recording medium, the question of how and what animation does differently becomes pertinent.

The purpose of this chapter is to explore anime at the level of its materiality, textual form and its position relative to live-action cinema following some of the positions taken by authors in the academic literature. Since the materiality of animation is essentially the same for anime the exploration in terms of materiality does not initially differentiate between the two for what could be considered its defining principle: the concept of movement. However as will become clear, the animetic apparatus, or rather the machine, as Thomas Lamarre (2009: XXVI) calls it, pertains to the convergence of both material and immaterial (cultural and economic) forces that limit and enable the creation of textual forms that fall under the term anime. As such it is there where the difference between anime and animation exists; not in the apparatus itself, because these are essentially the same, but rather in the way the different determinants fold into the animetic

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machine as opposed to the animatic machine.2 In other words to avoid technological determinism Lamarre uses the term machines (following Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari), instead of

apparatus (with its connotations of determinism) as a constellation of human, cultural and technological determinants.

So the aim is to arrive to a theoretical and practical definition that is adequate and

productive for the remainder of the thesis. Following Raz Greenberg, this thesis first explores the need for a specific definition of animation and the consideration of animation as “a separate category in academic research” (2011: 3). As it is the thesis position that animation at the basis is different from live-action film and that this material basis is a “determining” force that enables, guides and limits the form of the animated text, it logically follows that the second element of the research, namely the representation of trauma, cannot be considered (productively and

conclusively) without taking the defining aspects of animation into account.

2.2. Frames and Hands

As stated earlier there is no clear consensus as to what defines animation in all its forms. The purpose here is to synthesise some of the previous attempts to define animation. One of the authoritative voices on animation, Paul Wells, has dealt with this issue explicitly and implicitly in most of his work. A sign of the slipperiness at hand is found in the two working definitions Wells proposes in Understanding Animation (1998) and Animation: Genre and Authorship (2002) respectively. In the first the author argues that animation is constituted by a “film made by hand, frame by frame, providing an illusion of movement, which has not been directly recorded in the conventional photographic sense” (1998: 10). Four years later his working

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take
Lamarre’s
position
to
be
that
the
difference
between
anime
and
animation
does
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consist}

of a cultural factors alone or is found in the genius of the auteur overcoming the apparatus, because even then the materiality is significant precisely since one has to overcome the apparatus that is present in both anime and animation. Rather the difference pertains to economic, historical and political forces as well as the above.

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definition has changed to “fundamentally, to make an animated film, it is necessary to create the illusion of movement frame-by-frame through a variety of technical applications” (2002: 5). Wells acknowledges that the first definition excludes some forms of animation, and particularly those forms that are made with the help of new technologies (1998: 10), and thus the element of manual creation is replaced by a “variety” of technologies. Wells' reservations regarding his first definition pertains to the emphasis on manual labour and have led to a slightly adjusted

definition showing the importance of the technology that is involved in the making of animation. Thus a particular technology cannot be a constitutive part of all animation, but the forms of animation we come across are in part constituted by the technology that facilitates that particular form of animation.

Wells is not alone in initially focusing on the frame-by-frame construction that facilitates the manual construction of the images. Jayne Pilling argues that the only thing that the strongly heterogeneous group of animated forms unites is “the fact they are all shot frame by frame” (1998: 7). Some people might object to this common denominator. For instance it has been argued that computer-generated animation lacks the frame-by-frame condition that Wells and Pilling take as one of the defining elements of animation (Greenberg 2011: 4). Computer-generated animation requires the animator to construct the key-frames (start and end pose of the character or object) only and have the computer calculate the movement between the two poses of the object. And while this is essentially correct, the animator would still have to work in frames, albeit in fewer frames than full animation (a term that designates animation that uses at least 12 frames per second to constitute movement). Moreoverin somewhat similar fashion as computer-generated animation, limited animation also works with a limited number of frames to create movement. Perhaps the previous argument is a little disingenuous, but computer-

generated animation could still potentially work frame-by-frame if required or desired as such. And as will become clear later the decision to create motion in this or that way or the way technology facilitates the creation of movement and motion separately are more important to the essence of the animated form than to dismiss the art work as animation because its technological materiality does not allow frame-by-frame construction.

Unlike Pilling, who appears to think of the concept of motion as an unproblematic given, Charles Solomon devises a two-part “workable definition of animation: (1) the imagery is

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recorded frame-by-frame and (2) the illusion of motion is created, rather than recorded” (qtd. in Telotte 2010: 29-3). The frame-by-frame condition is once again present and like Well’s

definition the creation rather than the recording of movement makes for the second condition. Regardless of the attention given to the concept of motion a considerable amount of scholarly focus has been on the connection to or the basis of animation and fine art and craftsmanship. Those frame-by-frame constructions were initially handcrafted and much of animation's force lies in the idea that its images are or can be created from scratch, and are only limited by the boundaries of imagination. While the practices of sculpting, drawing or otherwise artistically creating objects form a huge part of the appeal and flexibility of animation, there is one element that allows us to recognise them as animation and that is the concept of movement. Without the infusion of movement the drawings in cel-animation are just drawings and could just as easy be part of a sequential manga or comic, or function as a billboard advertisement at the local bus stop. As Bill Schaffer argues:

(T)he art of animation cannot be found at the level of contents preserved on each individual frame or cell […] An animator might happen to be a good draughtsman, a good sculptor, a good manipulator of pixels – maybe even a good cinematographer – yet none of these methods for filling frames with visible stuff will ever define the art of animation (2002).

To return, once more, to the two definitions proposed by Wells, his choice of syntax is perhaps more significant than it appears to be, since the second definition highlights the illusion of movement and points to a stronger emphasis on movement. The aim is to produce movement, and while Wells still refers to the frame-by-frame condition, probably referring to the

photographic basis of early animation, it is clear that the main objective and condition is the creation of movement, where initially no movement existed.

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2.3. So What about Movement?

Like cinema, animation is an art form defined by, concerned with, and fascinated with movement. Cinema’s early fascination with movement is evidenced in the many attempts to reproduce natural phenomena in early cinema such as the wind in the trees, the waxing of waves and the flickering of flames, for these phenomena attested to the indexicality, the actuality and perfection of the reproduction of movement and therefore the reproduction of life itself.

Movement then, is an essential aspect of cinema: arguably when it is without movement it is not cinema. Cinema shares this essential aspect with animation, but the manner in which movement is conceptualised is of a different order, hence this thesis position that animation is essentially different from live-action.

Dan Torre argues that the concept of movement allows us to differentiate between cinema and animation: “(for Deleuze,) movement and its related image are inextricable in the cinematic image; they are recorded simultaneously and subsequently presented simultaneously to the viewer” (2014: 50). Yet animation, Torre claims, “requires that we consider motion and image as very distinct entities” (2014: 51). While these are philosophical considerations, indebted to Deleuze, theorists and practitioners of animation have posited similar claims. Norman McLaren most famously stated, “animation is not the art of drawings that move, but rather the movements that are drawn,” but perhaps more significantly even “what happens between each frame is more important than what happens on each frame” (Norman McLaren quoted in Chuck Jones, 1990: 180). The movement, i.e. that which happens between each frame, can be considered separate from what exists within each frame, in other words ‘distinct entities.’ Only when movement is considered from this perspective one can understand the other elements that constitute animation.

Moreover the object represented becomes “itself” strictly speaking through the

construction of movement as it “is imposed from the outside” (Torre 2014: 51) So if we return to the issue of computer-generated animation or motion capture specifically, we find that the movement, in this case, is recorded separately from the digital object on the computer and as such is imposed from the outside. The conceptualization of movement that is proposed here does diverge from earlier definitions proposed by Pilling, Solomon and Wells. The illusion of motion

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can in fact be recorded in animation as long as that movement does not emanate (inherently) from the objects that are animated. From that perspective one can see that the frame-by-frame condition proposed by Pilling, Solomon and Wells (and implicitly by McLaren) seemed to function as a barrier that allows to differentiate between the photographic materiality of most animation (until the arrival of computer animation) and the automated photographic nature of cinema. However, it is arguably an unnecessary condition. Telotte (following Brophy 2007) summarises the difference between the cinematic and the animatic apparatus as follows; cinema is concerned with the “recording and presentation of the life within objects,” whereas the animatic apparatus is involved in the “construction of motion and life” (2010: 2). Telotte’s observation points to one of the major effects of movement in animation, namely breathing life into inanimate objects.

2.4. Limitations and Affordances

So here at last I have arrived to the specifics of animation as it concerns the position of this thesis. Paul Wells concludes the following:

To animate, and the related words, animation, animated and animator all derive from the Latin verb, animare, which means ‘to give life to’, and within the context of the animated film, this largely means the artificial creation of the illusion of movement in inanimate lines and forms. (1998: 10)

As this quote by Wells suggests, the essence of animation can be found in the potential of giving life to inanimate objects and from this point of view anything in animation can potentially be considered ‘alive’, living and full of soul. This holds true for animation as a process as well as for the represented in the animated text. The lines and forms are inanimate by definition and as the resulting representations are constructed from the same inanimate elements one cannot, on a certain theoretical level, differentiate between the two. However, as Ronald Holloway writes, animation is “to give life and soul to a design, not through the copying but through the

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through the creation of movement (qtd. in Wells 1998: 10).

Of course movement cannot be equated with life, but something that does not move is difficult to conceive of as alive. And if something is inherently inanimate, imbuing it with movement is one way of imbuing it with life. Even abstract animation fills naturally still objects (or concepts) with movement and as such transforms the object into something else. Thus the ontological dimension of movement in animation also endows animation with specific meaning and possibilities on the level of representation and form. This is attested by McLaren suggestion: “How it moves is more important than what moves” (qtd. in Solomon 1987: 11). I would argue that the specificity of movement determines what the animator “seeks to express” (Wells 2002: 6): the way something moves affects whether we consider something being alive and what life means in that instance. It fundamentally affects the moving object in the sense that it clearly determines what it essentially is.

To a large degree the endowment of movement lies at the core of the often commented upon metaphysical aspect of animation. Animation, in the act of creating movement, can steer, reveal, and intensify our perception of things, rather than concerning itself merely with how something looks on the surface. In animation the transformation of the reality of lines on paper creates another reality, which Wells sees as (t)he potential reorientation of the physical and material environment” that “under these terms and conditions also re-configures the ways in which psychological, emotional and physical terrain may be explored and expressed” (2002: 7). Greenberg objects to this understanding of animation and others like it as he argues that it represents an “animation ideal from which animated texts often distance themselves” (2011: 6). But as argued previously, the element of motion can potentially transform any reality. Because Greenberg does not acknowledge the discrete elements that are used in the making of animation (regardless of what they represent these elements that are lifeless unless animated by the

animatic apparatus) or the specific element of movement, the author falls short of recognising that movement is imposed from the outside upon otherwise inanimate objects.

To summarise, the argument of the thesis is here that the important difference between cinema and animation is found in the way that object and movement are either recorded or created separately. The process of animation “considers motion and image as very distinct entities,” unlike cinema, which records them simultaneously (Torre 2014: 51). In making this

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distinction it is possible to see that the merger of movement and object in animation produces an alternative reality even if it aspires to approximate our “accepted notions of reality” (Wells 1998: 11).

2.6. From Animation to Anime

Anime is generally understood as a form of what Wells would call orthodox animation, which as a mode of expression is associated with the narrative form and a hyper-realist style not unlike the style of Disney features (1998: 35). However for the benefit of a stylistic, thematic, and

narratological analysis it is necessary to clarify a few things on the issue of movement in anime for this is potentially different from Western orthodox animation. The previous paragraph made the observation that anime is a form of cel-animation that originates in Japan. As such, frame-by-frame construction and the stacking of layers facilitate the principles of movement. Unlike Disney’s full animation, anime generally works with limited cel-animation, which entails reducing the number of cels per second that are used to constitute motion (initially on the grounds of limited time and budget). Thomas Lamarre argues that anime’s distinctiveness can be traced back to these technical changes (2002: 335). The fluency of movement associated with Disney’s full animation would have been difficult to achieve under these technical constraints; as a consequence other means and effects of movement were developed.

Lamarre draws a distinction between drawing movements and moving drawings. Anime distinctly combines both. Both are also inherent to animation in general, but the manner in which they are employed and combined is what gives anime its recognisable quality. The first, drawing movements, is what for most defines animation. In order to produce a sequence of moving images in animation movement must first be decomposed, or in the words of William Schaffer the “frames must be produced in anticipation of the equidistances imposed by the film strip” (Schaffer 2007: 458; emphasis in the original). Schaffer is also quick to point out that in terms of production there is no necessity to do so unless something similar to cinematic movement is required during projection (2007: 457). If the processes of the film camera in cinema became “the privileged model for recomposing movement with film,” limited animation offered another

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model, since achieving cinematic motion in the style of Disney became more difficult, but not impossible. The limitations imposed on the Japanese situation that led to the reduction of the number of frames used meant that the decomposition of movement changed and with it the effects on the resulting movement in projection. For instance, to achieve the fluidity of full-animation the character designs were simplified in order for the feel of fluidity to remain present, but it simultaneously opened up “new possibilities for expression” (Lamarre 2002: 333).

Although inherent in all animation, the divorce of the “effects of movement from any reference to independently existing things or integral space” is more likely to be felt in limited animation and anime specifically (Schaffer 2007: 483).

Anime’s aesthetic manifests itself in the exploration of its limitations by producing movement that at times deviates from what is considered ‘realistic’ or cinema-like. With

regularity anime avoids full motion fluidity by suppressing “intermediate movements,” which in turn results in “explosive” and abrupt changes of character stature or position (Lamarre 2002: 335). Furthermore and perhaps surprisingly, anime emphasises stillness or minimal movement that in turn accentuates the explosive quality of its movements. This tendency translates

narratively in that many anime focus on emotionally pregnant moments interspersed with bursts of action and while the still moments are often marked by objective non-movement, the

experience of these moments is filled with a type of invisible energy which is then released transforming character and environment alike. Brophy refers to these moments as marked by “extreme mannerisms” of characters in “post-atomic contemplative states” (2005: 6).

The first approach considered the drawing of movement, but the second approach to movement in animation consists of literally moving the drawings. Conventionally at least two cels, one as foreground and one as background are used to produce cel-animation, but many more can be stacked in what is called a multiplane camera. This machine allows animators to move the different layers independently from each other at different speeds in order to create movement in depth, while the camera moves in or out. Without the ability to move the layers at relative rates the effect of perspectival depth disappears and the gaps between the layers become noticeable. The overall effect of what Lamarre calls closed compositing is the experience of movement in depth according to perspectival conventions (i.e. like cinema). The alternative, open compositing, results in an ‘opening up’ of the diegetic world, so to say, in that the

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anchoring of perspective is less fixed and the world as composed of layers becomes noticeable. Different styles of drawing applied to back- and foreground also lead to multiple effects; they may impart a sense of depth when shadowing is applied correctly, but the difference between the style of drawing (detailed background versus simplified character design) makes one “aware of a gap or difference […] as if foreground and background constituted different dimensional layers rather than aspects of a single three-dimensional world (Lamarre 2002: 359-60). Furthermore, when the consequence of limited animation is the relative immobility of characters, it invites the use of camera effects – not so much movement within the diegetic world, but rather movement across the flat layers that constitute the image (Lamarre 2002: 336).

While open compositing and the subsequent multiplanarity of the image often become pronounced in anime, it remains simply an alternative to closed compositing. It does not so much define limited animation, but its employment alongside closed composting does become a

trademark in anime. There is another tendency found in anime. Takeshi Murakami has termed this tendency the superflat sensibility. In this case the experience of layering is still present, but all layers feel as if they are brought to the foreground, resulting in a depthless image. These layers can still move independently of each other, but the sense of depth will not take effect. One important effect of the flattening of the image that occurs is that narrative and visual information in these moments are de-hierarchised at the least in terms of depth. What was once in the

background and hence of little importance comes to the fore and on that condition vies for the attention of the viewer.

The salience of anime’s aesthetic as a popular product emerged when animators stopped suppressing the “awkwardness” of anime’s movement by neutralizing it through narrative continuity or by aiming for realism (or hyperrealism) according to cinematic conventions (Lamarre 2002: 339). There has then come a moment that animators see the aesthetics of anime as an addition or a quality rather as something that needs to be masked or narratively overcome. Anime’s alternative to cinematic movement and world building go some way to explaining the otherworldly quality of anime, without immediately taking recourse to explaining it away as a distinctly Japanese quality, although the coincidence cannot be fully ignored. Cultural

explanations such as identifying a lineage between traditional Japanese visual art and anime are very common, but as was explained before institutional and economic factors preceded the

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development of a distinct aesthetic. In conclusion, anime exploits and explores the limitations of its materiality and through it produces worlds and narratives that are suited to its materiality. This may sound strange as I will later discuss an autobiography that is based on the very real events that occurred in Hiroshima, but in the process it allows the animators to move beyond simply retelling the events that occurred and produce a narrative that, because of it, is imbued with the same immaterial (perhaps more appropriate here spiritual) energies that convey the complex relationship between a small boy and the broader historical forces at play.

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Chapter 3. TRAUMA - OR IS IT?

3.1. Trauma: Individual Beginnings

Before discussing the issue of trauma in culture I would like to turn the origins of trauma as a scholarly and theoretical concept, and how it is understood in the humanities and social sciences specifically. Although there are significant differences between the conceptualizations of

individual trauma and collective trauma, let alone cultural trauma, all theories of collective and cultural trauma are based on and evolved from interpretations concerning the psychological concept of individual traumatic experience. Due to my lack of knowledge of specialist

psychological theory and practice I will predominantly focus on the interpretations by scholars working in the humanities and sociological disciplines. So it is the aim of this chapter to

critically engage with these interpretations as these scholars have done in order to offer another perspective on these matters. Because the majority of trauma theory focuses on ‘authentic forms of testimony’ of the traumatized individual rather than paying attention to the concept of trauma on the level of mainstream and mass media, it is inevitable to turn to the theories of

psychological trauma first. However, ultimately, because this focus on individual psychological trauma endures, the thesis will proceed by reconsidering the concept of trauma in order to interrogate its representations on the level of mainstream anime, not least because this is a strongly debated area of scholarship.

Etymologically, trauma refers to a physical wound, but in the field of psychology and related academic disciplines, it has predominantly come to refer to a psychic wound. The theory of trauma as a psychological condition was constructed at the end of the nineteenth and

beginning of the twentieth century. Commonly associated with Sigmund Freund (who based his own theories on the practices and writing of French clinicians) and his proponents, trauma as a concept has developed considerably since its inception, even in Freud’s own theorisation of the phenomenon. Within this framework trauma is originally perceived as a form of mental shock, or a blow to the psyche. The analogy between psychic trauma and the original meaning ‘wound’ can be thought of in terms of a “traumatic event penetrating a kind of mental skin designed to

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protect a person from excessive stimulation from outside” (Brewin 2003: 4). In many theories it was thought that the inherent excessive, sudden and shattering nature of the event to which a person is exposed breaches some psychic barrier that ‘damages’ the tissues of the psyche. The actual trauma itself, or the traumatic effect, consists of a number of symptoms, elements, and processes, which I will not list exhaustively; rather I will single out the most prominent elements. These elements consist of experience, memory, the concept of self, and lastly representation. The focus lies on these elements, because they are particularly relevant to the concept of cultural trauma.

Lisa McCann and Laurie Anne Pearlman consider something to be a traumatic experience when it is “(1) sudden, unexpected, or non-normative, (2) exceeds the individual’s perceived abilities to meet its demands, and (3) disrupts the individual’s frame of reference and other central psychological needs and related schemas” (1990: 10). All of these dimensions contribute to the manner in which the experience fails to register psychically. A traumatic experience is precisely not an experience for the person exposed to the event, because s/he fails to incorporate the event within the psyche; Ernst van Alphen terms this “failed experience” (2004: 109). In other words, on an individual level the traumatic event is ‘lived’ through though not “integrated into the psychic economy of the subject” (Elsaesser 2001: 196). The breach of the

aforementioned psychic barrier means that the conventional processes of experience are disrupted.

One of the effects of trauma pertains to the memory of the event. Cathy Caruth refers to this as essential to traumatic experience, as it is the “inability fully to witness the event as it occurs, or the ability to witness the event fully only at the cost of witnessing oneself” (1995: 7, emphasis in the original). Since the experience is not cognitively processed, the resulting memory, the traumatic memory as opposed to a ‘proper’ or narrative memory, is produced by means of dissociation, lodged away where it cannot consciously called upon. Some scholars have described this type of memory as a literal imprint of the event in the psyche, unassimilated by the individual and as such unavailable for recall and narrative integration. The symptoms commonly associated with trauma, such as “repeated, intrusive hallucinations, dreams, thoughts or

behaviors,” stem from the event as it repeatedly takes possession of the traumatized individual and attest to the failure of registering the experience as part of one’s own memories (Caruth

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1995: 4.) Furthermore these ‘memories’ go underground so-to-say and go through a process of incubation, only to return with an intensity and immediacy similar to the original experience without the knowledge of having gone through the experience in the first place.

The difference between ‘traumatic’ and narrative memory has often been emphasized and related to the understanding of one’s self. Trauma and its concomitant memories are problematic for the concepts of self, subjectivity, and identity. These implications originate from the fact that proper memories rely on an understanding and cognitive processing of the experience. At the same time experience, according to Van Alphen and with reference to the Holocaust, depends on cognitive processes as well as being fundamentally discursive and therefore allow an individual through these memories of experience to construct (even though these memories are

reconstituted in the process) a narrative that in turn constitutes his or her identity (2004:107-122). Nicola King reminds us that even apart from the more literary or otherwise mediated constructions of narrative, “all narrative accounts of life stories” including “the ongoing stories which we tell ourselves and each other as part of the construction of identity … are made possible by memory” (2000: 2). The emphasis on identity rests on the “consistency of

consciousness and a sense of continuity,” but nevertheless also entails the recognition that the experiences of the past and the past selves are different from the present of the remembering self (King 2000: 2). Thus as the traumatic memory “intrudes directly and unexpectedly in the present without being situated in a linear narrative in conscious memory,” the memory cannot be related to either the present self nor situated in the past experiences of the self (Meek 2010: 8).

An aspect related to the concept of identity that can be brought to bear on the experience of the self is the concept of subjectivity. Unlike the concept of identity, which stresses unity, continuity and to certain extent core stability, subjectivity “focuses on the making of the subject” and renders the subject above all a “cultural subject” (Strozier 2002: 9). Broadly speaking, identity entails an understanding of the subject as the a priori, the originator of experiences. Yet Van Alphen disagrees with this position on the relation between subject and experiences: rather, as noted earlier, he argues, “experience constitutes subjectivity,” and “subjects are the effects of the discursive processing of their experiences” (2004: 108). Here, as with the concept of identity, the failure of experience is problematic for the constitution of one’s subjectivity, because during the traumatic experience the gap between experience and discourse causes the memories to

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“remain outside the subject” (Bal 2004: viii). So, crucially, failed experience would be problematic to “the question of identity, whether one sees the latter as unified or at least as having a core, or as radically split, fragmented, decentered, and disseminated” (LaCapra 2004: 4). And yet the notion of the subject as an effect of experience also offers the possibility of examining the production of the traumatised subject as a cultural process. In order to extend the concept of trauma beyond individual experience without losing its bearing on individual

experience, the concept of cultural trauma comes into view. As cultural (or national) trauma affects both those who have directly experienced a traumatic event as well as those who have not, the construction of trauma on that level occurs through representation. In other words certain events are represented as traumatic, but in order to have any effect on the individual narratives of national trauma often posit a unified national identity prior to the disruption by a traumatic event. As such a national subject is created where one may not have existed objectively.

3.2. Trauma and Representation: A Tandem

As the representation of trauma is often a topic of debate and this debate highlights the issues pertaining to the relation between trauma and mainstream media, this issue deserves more scope. Among others, Van Alphen re-examines the theory that posits that traumas are constituted by their unrepresentability. The focus on representation and trauma has a plethora of origins, such as the ethical dimension that the Holocaust brought to bear on the representation of genocide. It was argued that the Holocaust, in its horrific nature, was something that exceeded the means of representation available, because of its inherent uniqueness. However, many scholars have pointed out that it was more likely that it addressed a debate pertaining to the ethical dimension of representation, in that it supposedly could never do justice to the experience that the survivors had to endure. Moreover, in the context of therapy it is argued that narrative integration and retrospectively constituting traumatic memories as experience is necessary for the working through of trauma. The paradox, of course, is that the Holocaust simultaneously must be

represented, on penalty of disappearing from our collective consciousness. Therefore the issue of representability of trauma becomes a pressing one.

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Indeed one of trauma theory’s important aims is to interrogate the individual’s “ambiguous relation to an inner psychic reality and to an outer, public (or cinematic)

representation,” because of the theoretical and therapeutic difficulties it produces (Elsaesser 2001:195). Like in the specialist psychiatric field, the humanities are concerned with the inquiry in the troubled relation between trauma and representation - taking care not to essentialise and fetishize the traumatic experience to the point we cannot critically engage with it nor to trivialise traumatic experiences to the extent that all and everything can be considered a traumatic

experience. Regardless, some scholars have applied the theory of the impossibility of

representing the Holocaust to all traumatic experiences. Van Alphen rejects theories that claim the inherent unrepresentability of trauma, insofar that his work and others critical of this notion recognise the dangers and theoretical deadlocks that the assumption of the unrepresentability of trauma produces. As noted before, Van Alphen argues that all experience is fundamentally discursive and as such adds a different dimension to the debate whether or not trauma can be represented (as well as to how). Firstly, as Joan Scott argues, experience is not “confined to a fixed order of meaning,” since discourses are collective and change over time and place (1992: 34). As such a traumatic event is neither intrinsically unrepresentable nor is representation intrinsically and essentially incapable of dealing with trauma (Van Alphen 2004: 109). Rather, the impossibility of representation depends on the context of discursive possibilities and

limitations. Commensurate with that view Van Alphen concludes thus that “forms of experience do not just depend on the event or history that is being experienced, but also on the discourse in which the event is expressed /thought /conceptualized,” arguing that no traumatic event is of itself traumatic or per definition traumatic to everyone alike (2004: 107).

Since the mastery of trauma must involve processes of ‘integration’ and ‘assimilation,’ many issues regarding the relation between culture and trauma revolve around this perceived paradoxical relation between the impossibility of representation of trauma and the need for narrative representation for the working through of trauma, for the individual, but also, surely, for a society (Elsaesser 2001: 196). To assimilate the experience as part of one’s subjectivity, it needs to be integrated through narrative and narrative requires representation. Furthermore one needs to ask what exactly is represented when the media deal with trauma. It has often been attempted to draw an analogy between the human psyche and culture. Regardless of whether

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such an analogy is possible, the argument that personal experience of trauma cannot be transmitted directly is central to this thesis, for representation necessarily transforms any experience, traumatic or otherwise.

So Allen Meek argues, and not without reason, that if traumatic events and their

representations cannot be traumatic of themselves, “we need to critically examine the role media plays in reproducing traumatic effects and traumatic structures” (2010: 34). Meek suggests that in order to avoid the debate whether mainstream or mass media are appropriate to the task of representing personal trauma directly media needs to be considered in terms of its own “traumatic” logics, some of which may be usefully understood with reference to psychic trauma.” There are two options by which a productive relationship between media

representations and trauma can be built. Either the media construct events as traumatic or the media representations are experienced as traumatic, regardless of whether that which is represented is traumatic of itself, for as Meeks puts it trauma “cannot be directly transmitted through the media” (2010, 34).

The issue regarding representation often revolves around the following issue, as posed by Meek: “both the traumatic image and structural trauma has led to an exceptionalist approach to media criticism. Either the content of the image (what it shows) is related directly to some traumatic experience or the temporal relation of the image to past events is understood as

participating in the structure of traumatic memory” (Meek 2010: 32). This issue is often based on different readings, or at times selective readings, of Freud. Freud puts forward both the notion that the external event is intrinsically traumatic and the notion that trauma stems from an ‘internal assault’ of the psyche. The first notion supports Caruth’s theory that the traumatic memory is a literal imprint of the traumatic experience, while the other suggests that, like narrative memories, the traumatic is changeable and reconstituted as it “emerges into

consciousness” (Meek 2010: 34). In the case of the latter traumatic memories are essentially available for representation. Therefore, whereas one can never accurately represent trauma, one can only try to attempt to represent a construction of it and in the analysis of this construction lies its interpretative value. This line of reasoning allows Jeffrey Alexander to re-evaluate trauma on a cultural level. He too argues that events are not traumatic in and of themselves; rather they are constructed as traumatic.

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3.3. A Cultural Trauma

The position that some events are inherently traumatic is termed by Alexander as the naturalist approach, which is juxtaposed to the psychoanalytic approach. A similar opposition is found on the level of collective or cultural trauma. LaCapra mentions the split between those approaches that believe that “psychoanalytical concepts apply first and foremost to individuals and not at all … to collectivities” and those that posit a strict analogy between the individual psyche and that of the collective (2004: 73). Like LaCapra (and Allen Meek, for that matter) this thesis argues that some psychoanalytical concepts are, though not all of them are, and some more than others, applicable to culture. Further theoretical work needs to be done to understand the degree to which these concepts are applicable to culture and collectivities and where other, not necessarily psychoanalytic, concepts are needed. The phenomenon of trauma in culture is different from trauma to the psyche and LaCapra explains that Ruth Leys warns against extending the notion of trauma beyond the individual and the psyche (LaCapra, 2004: 85). Apart from the in many ways unsettled issue between the mimetic (proper psychoanalytic) and anti-mimetic (naturalist) tendencies in trauma studies, one is left with the problem of understanding if and how trauma occurs and exists among those who have not been directly subjected to a traumatic experience. Narratives of national trauma do exist and continue to exist and it would be foolish to ignore them. This is why for Alexander (2004), in order to speak of a cultural trauma, one needs to define what is meant by a cultural trauma without psychologising culture at large, and to understand the constructivist nature of cultural trauma.

Alexander, then, defines cultural trauma in terms of a collective that feels that “they have been subjected to a horrendous event that leaves indelible marks upon their group consciousness, marking their memories forever and changing their future identity in fundamental and

irrevocable ways” (2004: 1). He and his co-authors take collective trauma to be fundamentally constructed by society, maybe intuitively felt but not naturally existing. Ron Eyerman sees cultural trauma as a process that is “linked to the formation of collective identity and the

construction of collective memory” (Eyerman 2004: 60). While it has been termed a trauma, this does not mean that it affects individuals in the manner that psychological trauma does, nor does it mean that each and everyone of the culture in question is wholly affected “by a dramatic loss

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of identity and meaning” (Eyerman 2004: 61). Yet in order to establish such a dramatic loss of collective identity and meaning, the memory of some ‘disruptive’ event must be represented and mediated as being traumatic.

Mass media and their representations play an important part in allowing such a memory to persist over time and allowing it to affect individuals who cannot have experienced the traumatic event directly. At least since late modernity mass media should be considered crucial in the representation of a cultural trauma. And since “mass-mediated experience always involves selective construction and representation,” it is here where we can locate the struggle over the meaning of the cultural trauma (Eyerman 2004: 62). In this sense it is easy to grasp the political implications of the trauma process, since selection and construction will take part in the context of contemporary power structures; events, experiences, and facts can become distorted or elided. This is one of the reasons that some events develop into cultural traumas while others do not. Moreover, the terms of the cultural trauma – as in who is affected, who should be held responsible and the identification of the causes and effects of the trauma – are retrospectively constructed. Alexander argues for example that while the atrocities in Nanking, China, must have been traumatic for the thousands of the victims, the Rape of Nanking,3 to this day, has not

become a cultural trauma, either for the Chinese in general or for the Japanese perpetrators. Alexander writes that “the trauma contributed scarcely at all to the collective identity of the People’s Republic of China, let alone to the self-conception of the post-war democratic government of Japan” (2004: 26). This demonstrates that some events, considered strong

candidates for trauma, may not become cultural traumas, while other events not considered to be traumatic may be represented as traumatic nonetheless. In this understanding of cultural trauma mediation facilitates a rupture between event and experience, involving both spatial and temporal distances.

The concept of cultural trauma consists of both the postulation of a rupture of the collective identity and the need for a reconstitution of collective identity. In many ways the initial rupture of identity becomes the determining foundation of that reconstitution, also referred

3_{Also
called
the
Nanking
Massacre
when
in
1937
the
Imperial
Japanese
Army
invaded
Nanking
in}

China and carried out, according to most historians, a massacre among the people of Nanking, mostly thought to be civilians.

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to as a foundational trauma. Therefore Alexander and other sociologists try to locate or

reconstruct the reconstituted master narrative as it emerges from disruptive circumstances. Such a narrative constructs a traumatic event that “larger collectivities feel personally connected to” even if “they have not personally experienced” it (Shipilova 2014: 195). The bombing of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki and its consequences constitute a appropriate case study as they pertain to “a traumatic event that initially influenced a geographically determined minority” and was even considered to be only traumatic to that minority, but became a cultural trauma nonetheless (Shipilova 2014: 195). This was not for its inherently devastating nature, but because of what it came to stand for; its meaning within the Japanese post-war context.

3.4. Japan’s National Trauma

Identifying the trauma process4 in 20th century Japanese society and culture has been the subject of a large number of scholarly works. The concluding section of this chapter summarises this process and the outcomes of that process according to what some of the prominent writers on the subject have recently found.

Usually the line of enquiry starts with the question of how an experience such as the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which despite the large number of victims cannot naturally be regarded as a traumatic experience for the whole of the Japanese people, has nonetheless become ‘a trauma for everybody’ (Shipilova 2014: 193). Also the persistence of this narrative begs the question of how the temporal divide between the bombing of two cities and

contemporary Japanese experience is bridged. As Alexander has proposed, a cultural trauma consists of a discourse that constructs an event as being traumatic, and while this official

narrative has been part of Japanese national experience for decades this was not always so. Most scholars in fact agree that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was initially not regarded as a national experience. For one thing, due to the American occupation and the censorship that came

4_{Trauma
process
refers
to
the
shift
from
social
crisis
to
a
“a
crisis
of
meaning
and
identity”}

(Eyerman 2004: 62). This is the phase in which the terms and conditions of the trauma are defined and shared.

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with it, the occupiers did not allow such a national experience to be articulated (especially considering the fact that the Americans were the perpetrators). Other factors have contributed to the delay and incompletion of what Alexander (2004) and Eyerman have termed the trauma process (Eyerman 2004: 61-2). For instance, it remains the question whether so-called carrier groups5_{, in this case the victims in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, had the resources, even after the}

occupation ended, to consistently construct and disseminate a narrative that reached the local collective or national collective. Moreover, the actual psychological trauma that the survivors endured prevented them from speaking of or otherwise communicating their experiences (Saito 2006: 363). Significantly Shipilova found, even after the censorship was lifted, that the

hibakusha (atom bomb survivors) were perceived as “very special people whose burdens … were extraordinary” and this as such conveys the distance between the Japanese in general and those Japanese citizens who experienced the bombings themselves (Shipilova 2014: 199; my emphasis).

Like Alexander, Shipilova argues for a conception of cultural trauma that takes into account the criticism pertaining to the psyche-culture analogy and the natural fallacy present in Arthur Neal’s conception of national trauma, namely that “the harmfulness of an event itself is the natural cause that drives its evolution into a collective trauma” (Shipilova 2014: 195). According to Shipilova, for a long time Japanese society understood the trauma of Hiroshima to develop naturally out of the fact of the event; “Such studies also fail to explain why some small-scale events, which cannot be classiﬁed as fundamental or comprehensively meaningful to a larger collectivity, later evolve into collective traumas for groups that are larger than those that actually experienced such events.” Apart from the availability of mass-media resources, it becomes most important to construct a narrative that narrates the trauma in such a way that it includes “a wider collectivity” beyond those that are more or less objectively speaking directly affected. (Shipilova 2014: 196).

With regard to Japan Shipilova identifies three periods that frame the transformation of the narrative that underpins the traumatic national identity in Japan. These periods, 1945-1959,

5_{Carrier-‐groups
are
those
who
have
taken
upon
themselves
to
advance
the
idea
of
collective}

trauma and try to convince “other members of a collectivity” that they are also traumatised by the event” (Shipilova 2014, 196).

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1960-1989, and from 1990 onwards are marked by shifts in emphasis on inclusiveness of victims and the shifts in the perception on perpetrators and victims (2014: 197). Broadly speaking the local and national discourse in the first period emphasises the unique nature of the experience and focused on Hiroshima as a local experience. The narrative surrounding Hiroshima on both local and national levels did not include the Japanese people as a whole and was as such not considered a national tragedy (the war itself and the defeat were, of course).

The second period is to a large degree framed by the Cold War and the post-war

economic miracle. Both developments contributed to the concept of difference pertaining to the Japanese identity in an increasingly international climate. The new geo-political circumstances seemed to necessitate a redefining of Japan’s national identity vis-à-vis the world. Thus the combination of real political circumstances - including that Japan was constitutionally forbidden to wage war and the uneasy relationship the country developed with the United States- and the meaning assigned to these circumstances provoked a change in the meaning given to the past in order to come to terms with Japan’s contemporary position in the world. In particular the perception of “Japan as peaceful nation, with the Hiroshima tragedy at its core” became

incorporated to link Japan’s vision to the foreign perception of Japan’s “past, present, and future” (Shipilova 2014: 201).Japan’s self-perception was at the time related to the idea of a national identity in a growing globalized world. This period was also marked by the first explicit reference to the restoration of Hiroshima and the restoration of the national economy as symbolically interrelated (202). The restoration of the local and the national “bridged the post-war experiences of most Japanese people” in that the defeat and the success of the ensuing Japanese prosperity were common experiences among most Japanese and founded upon the tragic ending of World War II.

The last phase of transformation is still ongoing and heavily contested. As in the second period, political changes on an international level played a significant role. The focus on the threat of a third World War shifted with the end of the Cold War towards a preoccupation with Japan’s international position regarding the Asian region. Japan’s “positive self-identification as a ‘peaceful country’” lost its significance in a world no longer perceived to be under nuclear threat. Japan’s identity came under further pressure as a reconsideration of its position within the Asian region meant that Japan might have to face its status as an aggressor in the war. Shipilova

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argues the situation in the 90s fuelled a “crisis of identity in Japanese politics” that nevertheless only rarely found expression in the discourse surrounding the events in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (2014: 205).

Shipilova ultimately concludes that, although the method and theory proposed by

Alexander et al. is useful to reveal the inner mechanisms that contribute to the sense of a cultural trauma, the case of Japan could not be considered a cultural trauma on the terms put forward by Alexander et al.To Alexander the crucial element in a cultural trauma is the identification of perpetrator and victim as a neat binary pair, but the bomb was always perceived of itself as the “ultimate evil” (Shipilova 2014: 208). The role of the Americans was only occasionally and rarely explicitly addressed; therefore the motivation and cause for the bombings, Japan’s own transgressions, remain unacknowledged. Nevertheless, this situation did not prevent the cultivation of Japan’s national identity based on the uniqueness of the events at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, subsequently resulting in the exclusivity of the Japanese identity.

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Chapter 4. FROM TRAUMA TO ANIME

4.1. Provisional Conclusion

Cultural trauma persists in two ways. Firstly, as Alexander points out, a cultural trauma is culturally and socially constructed as a trauma. (2004: 2). That is, institutions and agents with access to the public sphere identify, define and express the terms and conditions of a national trauma that in turn may define a collective identity. The common understanding of traumatic experiences associated with the individual forecloses such linear and clearly delineated

determinations of trauma. Regardless of the constructivist nature of cultural trauma, Alexander et al understand that in most cases, indeed, the fabric of collective identity, the beliefs, norms, frames of reference, and morals have been disrupted and the people are faced with a situation in which there exists the problem of understanding the collective’s identity and one’s place within this framework with reference to what has come before.

However when this official narrative of cultural and collective trauma has been

disseminated and accepted, what happens if that narrative, as Kaplan points out, cannot absorb “the impact of an overwhelming event” (2001, 202)? Kaplan wonders whether it “returns in fictions apparently unrelated (or marginally related) to that event … insisting on keeping the event in the present” (2001, 202). Another possibility is that the trauma, or the meaning of trauma, surfaces as part of “the ongoing struggle over representations of the past” (Meek 2010, 1). If and when anime deal with the aftermath of the bomb both the direct consequences and the more oblique representations of a society formed after such a disaster, could be considered as the “struggle over representations of the past” (Meek 2010, 1). Even when anime, such as Akira, place these historical yet mediated events narratively in the present and the future such

renegotiations with past events and the meaning of past events are particularly significant for the analysis of the contemporary context. As Shipilova has shown the meaning of Hiroshima largely evolved in keeping with current needs of both those directly involved and of the nation as a whole.

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Shipilova has also argued that Japan’s difficult relationship with the past only partly follows Alexander’s explanation of a cultural trauma. To gain a different and hopefully more precise grasp on Japan’s unique circumstances I would like to turn to the case studies. As

Alexander writes from a sociological perspective, he does not incorporate the detailed discursive work that has been done elsewhere.

4.2. Methodology

This thesis presents a comparative study in two ways. In the first place, I will compare the

process of narrative, narration and conclusions pertaining to the official Hiroshima narrative with those in the films to be discussed. In the second place, the structures and meanings constructed by these structures in my corpus are compared with and contrasted to each other.

David Bordwell and other narratologists have convincingly argued that “the fine grain of the medium shapes our construal of events … so any narration must include the patterning of the film’s surface structure, its audiovisual style” (2008: 98). This point affords the thesis to explore the aesthetics specific to anime. Since anime’s audiovisual elements do overlap with the

cinematic medium, much of the methodology for the analysis relies on the film theoretical concepts and analytical tools. However the issue at stake here is to point out and explore the additional and limiting elements found in the animetic medium to understand the specific possibilities of anime when it approaches the subject of the atomic bomb and its impact on Japanese culture.

A useful starting point is Deamer’s division of his corpus into three categories. Deamer writes that he identifies three forms of reference to the atomic bomb in Japanese cinema; the direct and manifest, the indirect, and the trace (Deamer 2014: 2). The direct (manifest) pertains to images (or events) of the, or, an atomic event that in the context of the narrative refers to the actual historical bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The indirect, or the “oblique

reconfigurations in imaginary times and spaces,” refers to an image of the atomic bomb that unlike the direct depiction is narratively reconfigured and as such refers to a narrative event that within the diegesis does not reference the actual historic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki

Japanese Cultural Trauma and Anime of the 80s and 90s

Japan’s Cultural Trauma and Anime of the 80s and 90s

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Chapter 1.

INTRODUCTION

Chapter 2.

WHAT IS ANIMATION?

Chapter 3.

TRAUMA - OR IS IT?

Chapter 4.

FROM TRAUMA TO ANIME