psychoanalysis – Contemporary Japanese Literature

Title: Anime from Akira to Howl’s Moving Castle: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation
Author: Susan J. Napier
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Publication Year: 2005
Pages: 355

Although I consider myself a literature person, it might be better to call what I do “media studies.” I write papers about books, but I also write more than a few papers about movies, and at least half of the Japanese movies I watch and write about these days are animated. This is something I wouldn’t have dreamed that I’d be doing when I first entered graduate school. For whatever reason, however, I read the 2005 updated edition of Susan Napier’s book on anime during my first winter break and was so inspired that I decided to start writing about popular media, too.

I had taken a lot from Napier’s two earlier books on literature (Escape from the Wasteland and The Fantastic in Modern Japanese Literature) as an undergraduate, so I’m not sure why it took me so long to sit down and starting reading Anime. If I had to guess, it probably had something to do with the bad reputation the book had (has?) among anime fans. I didn’t have a particularly strong impression from the chapters on magical girls from the original 2001 edition that I had read as a freshman in college (probably because I was eighteen years old), and several people had said that the book is poorly written, gets plot points wrong, and doesn’t respect anime as a medium.

My experience of reading the book was completely the opposite of the bad rumors I had heard. The first chapter of the book (appropriately titled “Why Anime?”) explains why Japanese animation is amazing and exciting and well worth academic attention, and I feel like it conveys a great deal of appreciation and respect for the medium. Also, I’ve seen my fair share of anime, and I’m a member of the generation that is old enough to have seen most of the works Napier discusses in Anime. Upon re-reading the book this past semester, nothing jumped out at me as overtly incorrect in terms of plot or character summary (but, then again, I have never finished and do not plan to ever finish watching Ranma 1/2, so I am willing to admit that I could be wrong). Finally, I think the writing is wonderful. Napier’s prose is clear, precise, and easily understandable by anyone who has neither a long history of watching anime nor a long history of studying Japan. Her writing is also enjoyable to read, as it is occasionally augmented by clever and poetic turns of phrase and various well-placed rhetorical devices that help her make her argument.

Anime is more or less written as a textbook for university-level students. It covers about two dozen films, television series, and OVA’s, usually focusing on two or three primary works over the course of each 20-25 page chapter. The book is broadly divided into three parts according to what Napier sees as the three essential modes of Japanese animation: the apocalyptic, the carnivalesque, and the elegiac. Woven throughout these modes are the three themes of technology, the body, and history. Chapters have titles like “Ghosts and Machines: The Technological Body,” “The Enchantment of Estrangement: The Shōjo in the World of Miyazaki Hayao,” and “Waiting for the End of the World: Apocalyptic Identity.” Although many of the works she discusses could belong in multiple chapters, I feel that Napier chooses her primary works for each chapter extraordinarily well and uses representative works to make strong arguments about various trends in contemporary Japanese animation.

Is there a danger of occasional overgeneralization? You bet. But so must there be in any entry-level textbook. A casual reader might run the risk of thinking, for example, that all Japanese animated pornography is fantastically grotesque after finishing the chapter “Controlling Bodies: The Body in Pornographic Anime” (which discusses such classics as Legend of the Overfiend and La Blue Girl), but Napier is always careful to qualify her argument and choice of texts not only within her main discussion but also in her footnotes, which document the sources from which Napier is drawing her conclusions, alternate texts for consideration, and interpretations that are at odds with her own.

Napier reads animation like a literature scholar would read a book, although her focus, understandably, seems to fall on visual imagery. Her readings of the texts follow two lines: psychoanalytic and socio-historic. Since Anime is targeted at undergraduates, neither line of interpretation is ever allowed to become too esoteric. A standard knowledge of Freudian psychology and basic sociology should suffice for the reader, who runs no danger of being confronted with Lacan’s objet petit a or the superstructures of Frederic Jameson. Nevertheless, Anime is far from mindless, and anime fans looking for extended plot summary followed by commentary, insights provided by interviews with directors, or viewing recommendations would probably best be served elsewhere.

I firmly believe that Anime works very well as an introductory textbook. It’s filled with interesting general ideas, and Napier’s clear language and precise structuring make these ideas easy to understand and debate. You don’t have to take my word for it, though, since there are plenty of other opinions floating around the internet. William Gardner (a scholar of science fiction) is happy that the book doesn’t seem like it’s written for otaku; Adam Arnold (a reviewer on Animefringe) is unhappy that the book doesn’t seem like it’s written for otaku. A reviewer for the Anime News Network claims that the book can be enjoyed as long as one is willing to accept the academic context; a reviewer for Hofstra Papers in Anthropology claims that the book can be enjoyed as long as one accepts that the academic context is not rigorous enough. Wherever you fall along this spectrum, Anime is a fun and inspiring book, and it contains a lovely ten-page bibliography that’s good to browse through for further reading on both the fun end and the serious end of writing on Japanese animation.

outlet

Title: Outlet
Japanese Title: コンセント
Author: Taguchi Randy (田口ランディ)
Translator: Glynne Walley
Publication Year: 2003 (America); 2000 (Japan)
Publisher: Vertical
Pages: 269

First of all, I would like to say that Vertical does not publish crap. If you pick up one of their books, you can rest assured that your money has been well spent. Second, I do not review crap. This is a public forum, and I don’t want any authors or translators sending me nasty e-mails. Also, if the book I’m reading turns out to be crap, I tend to put it down and go do something else with my time. Graduate students are very busy and important, you see.

That being said, Outlet is pretty crappy. I was on an airplane and stupidly didn’t bring anything with me that wasn’t an academic text, besides Outlet, so I ended up reading the novel from cover to cover. Thankfully, my effort was rewarded, as the novel isn’t consistently crappy, and its crappiness is good-hearted and quite amusing. At one point, I had to quickly excuse myself to go to the bathroom so that I could laugh out loud for sixty seconds or so. In the end, I have to say that I recommend this book, perhaps because of its very crappiness. Also, the translation is excellent.

The blurb on the front flap of the book states, “A brisk, bristling story of survivor’s guilt, treacherous sex, and unexpected redemption, Outlet opens the door to a spiritual dimension that is both new and age-old.” Well, I can’t agree with most of that, but at least they got the “sex” part right. There is a lot of sex in this novel. If there is a male character in the book, the protagonist has sex with him. The majority of this sex is a hot, dirty, leaning over the sink in a public restroom, fingers up the anus type of sex, and it goes on for pages. This sex is too smutty to be erotic, and, in all honesty, it made me giggle, flip to the author photograph on the back flap, and giggle some more. Oh, Randy.

Don’t let the sex distract you from the plot, however. Outlet’s protagonist, Yuki Asakura, works as a freelance writer and editor for a business magazine and follows the stock market (and has lots of sex) in her free time. When her brother is found dead in his apartment, however, her life takes a turn for the weird, as she keeps seeing the phantom of her dead brother (with whom she had lots of sex maybe) and smelling the death smell of his apartment at inopportune moments. In order to cure herself of this malady, she goes to her old psychology department advisor from college (with whom she had lots of sex) in order to receive counseling (so that she can continue to have lots of sex). On campus, she runs into an old acquaintance, who introduces her to the concept of shamanism and to her psychiatrist husband (with whom the protagonist has lots of sex). In the end, Yuki learns that she is not crazy but rather a type of shamaness who can tune into the vibrations of the universe and heal people (by – get this – having lots of sex with them). Spoiler alert: an “outlet” is something you plug something else into.

If we can ignore the sex scenes for a moment, this novel has some extremely interesting and informative passages on psychology, neurology, Japanese funerals, shamanism, and what happens to an apartment after someone has died in it. In fact, I think this novel is worth reading for its description of the Okinawan yuta (spirit mediums) alone. Although Taguchi’s thesis that schizophrenic people and hikikomori are merely shamans and shamanesses who have not yet learned to control their powers is somewhat silly, it’s an interesting proposition. Especially if you’re into “Eastern mysticism” like Zen or Daoism – or pot brownies; it really doesn’t matter here.

In any case, Outlet is a trashy yet intellectually engrossing novel, and it has a bright and shiny cover featuring a naked Asian woman. It’s good reading for a plane ride and can double as a good conversation starter if left on your coffee table. I will chalk this book up to another solid editorial decision at Vertical. They have not failed me yet.