arakawa's reversal of the usual

[kaigou]

note: uncharacteristically, I wasn't inclined to or wasn't up to or whatever other lack o' motivation, thus in writing this I found myself without the energy to spell everything out as I might normally do -- so if there are any blanks for you (history-wise, mostly), please refer to the comments, where others have taken the time to carefully delineate what I let pass with vague implication. I know, unlike me! But still. I can't always be writing 10-page posts at the drop of a hat.

If you've watched your share of mecha (and related) anime, you've probably seen this trope several times, maybe even enough to know it by heart: madman acting out of self-proclaimed altruistic means, which usually amounts to, "if I destroy the world by (a) dropping a big honking meteor/planet/space-colony (b) launching a massive mushroom-bomb of horrendous power (c) whipping up the entire world against me so it stops fighting each other and instead fights only me whereupon I crush everyone (d) ending the world as we know it by some other means (e) pretty much killing everyone and blaming it all on the two-step maneuver of war and peace because anyone with a clue knows "rebellion" is just a self-justified synonym for war, you morons who can't count..."

...and that by doing so, WE GET PEACE.

Because, apparently, if you're a self-proclaimed lover-of-humanity with psychotic but ultimately altruistic intentions, of course it's perfectly logical to you that if you burn everyone's retinas with the ultimate war, that they'll all immediately come to their senses and want peace at any cost. And that of course, humanity has always become immediately pacifist upon surviving a horrendous war of attrition. I mean, look at World War I -- boy, Europe and the Americas were just swept by a craze of pacifism as a result!

Not.

This is not logic that resembles my earth logic, but then, a lot of anime doesn't resemble my culture earth, either.

Anyway. That's the basic logic: you've got your Gundams drop-the-colony versions, you've got your "I'm so depressed the whole world should suffer along with me" variation a la Eureka Seven, hell, even Naruto's gotten into the act with a combination of both of the above. In the end, it's all different harmonies to the same melody, that if one achieves peace through war, ergo a really BIG war should bring about a really BIG peace.

That was in my head, with some amusement at the lack of parallel, when reading the FMA manga (and then seeing it replayed in the second anime; the first anime varied, obviously, in some intriguing ways but that's for another post). That is: Arakawa does not do the fuck-for-virginity war-for-peace routine of so many others in the animanga world. She does ask, seems to me, whether a science (such as that of war) can be neutral in and of itself, and evil or good dependent on intentions, but she doesn't play the game of having some power-hungry madman claim god's light and altruism blah blah blah with the goal of achieving peace. No, her madmen are most definitely using the people's sacrifice as tools, and nothing more.

Tangent: what I find most interesting, actually, about Arakawa's apparent stance that alchemy (read: science) is a neutral art is that she doesn't disregard the origins of the science. If a science were truly neutral, then intentions would not only rule but might even rule out previous negative intentions -- which is the usual justification for using what had been a negative item/act but instead using it for good. (Gundam does this all the time, flipping the "massive weapon built for warfare" into "massive weapon that's now good by virtue -- pun intended -- of being piloted by one whose heart is pure AND who uses it only to protect the people, etc, etc.")

Arakawa doesn't take that route; if she had, Edward's lesson in the end would've been that he could use either a freely-gifted philosopher's stone (someone else's, or his own father's), because Edward's own intention-for-good outweighs the means by which the stone was created. Arakawa stops short of total neutrality for science, even when the intention is about as pure as you can get and the once-destructive force is even potentially willing to be re-used. I find it intriguing that Edward's position is that something once made via evil/sacrificial/destructive means cannot be rendered positive/constructive simply by a later user's intentions. This position is seen as counter-productive, even self-defeating by the rest of the characters, but the text seems pretty clear about Edward and Alphonse being in the 'right' on this.

Awful lot of science fiction stories (anime and elsewhere), and no few fantasy stories, too, would find their resolutions cut out from under them if everyone were so strict about the entire process as were Edward and Alphonse.

Back to what I was saying: in every anime I can think of in which we have this big-war-big-peace argument, god is mentioned at some point, if not several times. Now, I'm going with translated texts here, it's true, but I can still recognize "kami" when I hear it spoken, and I've been told by many people (Japanese and students of the same) that this isn't really a word that's thrown around in the culture. In comparison to Western, that is, where you'll frequently hear people toss off variations and slang-cousins of 'god', 'jesus', 'holymothermaryofgod'. English is a language that uses such expressions as a matter of course, and a lot of that has to do with a long history of being judeo-christian, and you can fill in the blanks on the rest of this so I don't have to, right.

In contrast, I'm told the average Japanese person seems to be more likely to lean towards a state of areligiousity, not as people per se but in terms of how they define their culture: a place or way of being in which "god" is not really the crucial centerpoint of their lives as it is in the judeo-christian West. Or to put it this way: even when we Westerners, as individuals, consider ourselves somewhat less religious (or not at all), we can't deny we're living in cultures that remain strongly religious in many ways, such that it permeates our lives in spite of us, even despite us. That makes a Japanese animanga character spouting off about god rather... well, let's just say I've learned it's a kind of dogwhistle for 'western concepts' or 'western culture' or 'western perspective'.

I'm not saying that's bad or good, only that it seems meant to indicate that the culture represented in the anime is more influenced by Western notions than by Japanese -- which is why it's of particular interest, I think, that when I can recall characters going on and on about "god is on my side" and "this is god's way" and all that dreck, it's also invariably the justification used by the same madman who's about to unleash total war on the unsuspecting and unwitting sacrificial victims.

Note, too, that this is another major element in the "drop a space-colony on you to teach you a lesson" trope: that the thus western-implied god-talking self-proclaimed altruistic madman is also, thus, setting up the soon-to-be-pulverized regular citizens as the victims. That despite the seemingly benevolent (in the sense of benevolent dictatorship, but that's just semantics when it's thirty seconds to impact) intentions, we almost always see the citizens as desperately attempting to flee, and we're supposed to feel for their terror and horror at this world-sized larning about to be dropped on their collective heads. We don't see them as warmongering monsters who need this lesson before they'll be stopped; the stories are almost always set up to see the people as helpless, harmless, essentially good humans who are peaceful at heart.

Hello, victim-trope, good to see you again!

There's no doubt that Arakawa plays the victim-trope in that sense, because with each instance of genocide, her text makes it clear that there's no excuse nor rationalization for decimating an entire population. But, and I think this is very important, she never puts a madman front and center to proclaim he (or more rarely, she) is doing this for "the world's good" -- no, Arakawa's madmen don't give a rat's ass about the world's good, or ill, or anything.

So, first deviation: the madmen may be mad, but the average citizen is completely clueless. Leading off that, the madmen are planning world destruction (or at least their half) but it's not to teach anyone a lesson, nor to lead the world into a better tomorrow. It's purely selfish; it's destruction and sacrifice of many for the sake of a few.

But this is where the god-issue comes into it, because there's one area I do recall well enough from my studies (which if you don't recall, were originally in 20th European Theology, and two of the biggest shapers of European judeo-christian theology were world war the first and world war the second). And it's something you can't miss if you've spent any time delving into the history between the wars and leading into the second, if you ever happen to sidestep into discussions of who enabled Hitler's regime -- scratch a little, and you'll find the Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church, although the Lutheran Church underwent the biggest changes in its liturgy to amalgamate itself with Nazi policies.

Not that this is such a shock, seeing how xtianity (and islam, too) frequently merged the religious with secular to present an argument of "god is on our side". It's a frequent refrain, over and over in Western civilization, justifying this, rationalizing that. I bring that up because if Amestris were an analogue to Germany, then it would fit perfectly to have Amestris' leaders spout lines not unlike Cornello's in the first two chapters. It would match the analogue: that it's right to massacre Ishval on religious grounds, that it's right to follow Amestrian leaders because god-is-on-our-side... yet I don't recall either of those. Hell, I recall vaguely some of the justifications for the Ishval massacre but I don't recall that it was necessarily because Amestris-god-is-bigger-than-Ishval-god. For that matter, I don't recall if the stated reasons were even religious, so much as general-culture.

In other words: the analogue of Germany stops short when you get to the religious elements, though you could say it comes through loud and clear on racial terms.

However, there's only two instances I can think of where Arakawa mentions any kind of religion at all. The first is with the Church of Cornello, which shows the trappings of quasi-Western judeo-christian design (Cornello's jacket is a mix of a Nehru jacket and a truncated Jesuit cassock, complete with stole; the church design is definitely Western cathedral despite the Poseidon-looking statue of Leto). No bones are made about the fact that this monotheistic religion is total crock, created solely for Cornello's own glorification -- and it's of note, I think, that Cornello meets his end at the hands of the Sins, but more on that in a bit.

The other major religion with any play in the story is Ishbal, Ishval, Ishvar, however we're saying it this week. Not only does it have strong desert-religion trappings reminiscent of early Islam (or possibly ancient Judaism, considering that once or twice I could've sworn some of the coat/drapings could've passed for the design usually used to illustrate the proverbial coat-of-many-colors) -- but it's also anti-alchemy, maybe anti-scientific, but also -- and this is important -- predominantly pacifist or at least peace-loving, and less technologically advanced. It's also monotheistic, though I can't recall there being a great deal of exposition on the exact nature of the Ishvallan religion, only that it's used as a contrast to the generally agnostic/areligious Amestris.

Take all that together, stir well, and you might be starting to get a taste of the pie I think I might be making: if the corollary here is some kind of vague Germany-analogue of a mix-up of WWI and WWII, yet told through the lens of someone whose culture puts a hell of a lot through the lens of Japan's own experiences of the first half of the 20th century, then I think Amestris is a stand-in for Germany is a stand-in for Japan. That's how you get the destruction of its own citizens, but without the historical enabling of the god-on-our-side proposed in pulpits as rationalization for actions (admittedly on the side of the Axis and the side of the Allies, it's a thing we do in the West, it seems).

Instead... in Arakawa's mash-up analogue: the military is sacrificing its own citizens for the glory of the military and its leader and no other -- something that might've passed by me without much comment a month ago but after the history-sink of Senkou no Night Raid it's suddenly in sharp focus. The military's own goals, for the military's own glory, done at the cost of the citizenry and possibly with full knowledge of the costs the citizenry might eventually bear, but who cares? The military certainly doesn't.

And if that's not enough, consider that it's Ishval's unexpected eleventh-hour cooperation that makes it possible to overturn and defeat these plans of genocide. In other words, what I'm seeing is this: the monotheistic pacifist culture is not the one justifying the destruction but the one preventing it, and it's the country's own military -- and the Sins, in the shape of military secret intelligence? -- who are driving the country towards such destruction.

Now that's a flip on the usual... especially when you add in that if the Sins are the analogue for military secret police/intelligence, they're the ones who not only take out Cornello (after Edward walks away), but also create unrest in Liore and are the ones who ostensibly set match to fuse to light up the Ishbal massacre. In other words, a police/intelligence with absolutely no regard for the people, but even more pointedly, a force that wipes out all competing religions (other than jingoism), regardless of whether they're true or false.

Something for contemplation, but curious -- and neatly parallel -- all the same.

Wah. It just makes me wish all the more I had at least a smattering of Japanese, to be able to write Arakawa and tell her about how I've got a little shrine to her brain, right here beside me in my office, because what a brain it is. Man, I've not thought this much about a series after it's ended since, uhm... never Gundam. Okay, since Gundam, but I defend that on the grounds that Gundam was my first introduction to the madman-says-BIG-war-makes-BIG-peace trope, so I guess an evolution to the next level naturally gets me going all over again.

Comments

[mikkeneko]

of course it's perfectly logical to you that if you burn everyone's retinas with the ultimate war, that they'll all immediately come to their senses and want peace at any cost. And that of course, humanity has always become immediately pacifist upon surviving a horrendous war of attrition. I mean, look at World War I -- boy, Europe and the Americas were just swept by a craze of pacifism as a result!

Not.

This is not logic that resembles my earth logic

No, but it does resemble post-Hiroshima Japan logic. I strongly got the impression that the Japanese have adopted the belief that the horror of Hiroshima was a good thing, because it shocked the Japanese into ending the war and becoming the pacifistic nation they like to think they are today -- because the alternative, accepting that such a horrible thing happened to them and they will never, ever get justice for it, is too hard to bear.

[kaigou]

Yes, but I was trying to avoid putting too fine a point on it -- which was why in the subsequent clause I crossed out 'culture' and replace with 'earth', for that implication. Not like I didn't go the step further regardless, in mentioning that the Japanese culture has also turned the horrors of the bomb on its head by making themselves into the sacrificial victims, which is what gets replayed and replayed and replayed in every freaking mecha (and other) anime in which big-war-makes-big-peace. It's not a matter of getting justice -- or not only a matter of that -- but also a matter of recognizing their own cultural/historical guilt in the events leading up to that point. Among other things. The animanga/cultural representation of our-pacifism-is-pasted-on-yey is simplistic; not that pop culture usually wanders outside the realm of simplistic treatments, just that this particular strain of bald-faced simplicity seems to be rooted deep.

It's almost a breath of fresh air to come across someone of that cultural background doing something different with genocide as literary trope, for once.

[chibidrunksanzo]

And on top of all that, she also wrote a kick-ass story. She totally deserves that shrine.

[kaigou]

Absolutely, but I think the additional depth takes an otherwise very-good story and makes it one-of-a-kind.

[mishalak]

Not just Anime, western comics too. Watchment for example.

[kaigou]

I'm only vaguely familiar with the more popular Western comics, but I wonder if the bizarro-land element of the big-war-big-peace (or, less facetiously, the radically different culture/history/experience that engendered such a concept) possibly made for good fodder for the comic in the same way that I found my first introduction (Gundam) to be such a powerful imagination-capturer. Hrmm, that is: such a concept/conflict was totally off the scale of any conflict I'm used to seeing in (western) literature, so this logic was so different that it couldn't help but be fascinating in a mildly train-wreck WTFover kind of logic.

If I'd been writing comics in the mid-80s and been introduced to the Japanese/animanga logic, I probably would've adapted it to make for a new and startling conflict for American readers, too -- but I still don't think it's a logic that we can argue is grounded in Western experience/history. It can make for a great import... at least until you start deconstructing it to see the logic that isn't.

[leorising]

Arakawa stops short of total neutrality for science, even when the intention is about as pure as you can get and the once-destructive force is even potentially willing to be re-used. I find it intriguing that Edward's position is that something once made via evil/sacrificial/destructive means cannot be rendered positive/constructive simply by a later user's intentions. This position is seen as counter-productive, even self-defeating by the rest of the characters, but the text seems pretty clear about Edward and Alphonse being in the 'right' on this.

This is a really interesting thought. It seems to me that Arakawa gives the non-purists a decent out, though, in that they pledge to use the lives stored in the Philosopher's Stone for good. Ed does it with Envy's stone, Al does it with the stone stolen from Kimberley, Hohenheim does it with his own stone, and Mustang does it with the doctor's stone, to get his sight back. This comes back to your using-the-negative-thing-for-good trope, dunnit? *grins*

The military's own goals, for the military's own glory, done at the cost of the citizenry and possibly with full knowledge of the costs the citizenry might eventually bear, but who cares? The military certainly doesn't.

Isn't this what WWII Japan experienced? All suffering was for the glory of the Emperor and "Japan", which in practical terms turned out to be the military, as the enactor's of the Emperor's and "Japan"'s will. It's true of feudal societies in general, I would think (but then you know I don't think too hard.) Seems to me like Arakawa created Amestris to be a feudal state masquerading as a democracy -- now that's effing deep, don't you think? Wow.

I saw a post somewhere that had a link to a Japanese site, possible at Shounen GanGan, where you could leave a message for Arakawa-sensei. Dunno if the comments are still open, but I could try to dig up the link, if you like.

And FWIW, I normally detest analysis. Somehow you make it interesting. :D

[starlady]

Isn't this what WWII Japan experienced? All suffering was for the glory of the Emperor and "Japan", which in practical terms turned out to be the military, as the enactor's of the Emperor's and "Japan"'s will.

Yeah, from the Meiji Restoration until 1945 the emperor was the center of a cult-of-the-nation, explicitly based in Shinto, and a Shinto that became more and more...not imperialistic, precisely, though it was used for imperialism in Asia, but--the Japanese phrase is 八紘一宇, the eight corners of the world under one roof: the emperor had the right and the (moral, ethical) imperative to bring the world under the Japanese state Shinto banner. And going along with the ratcheting up in state Shinto after the Showa emperor came to the throne was a concomitant emphasis on the national subject's duty owed to the emperor, whether in the form of soldiering or raising the children in the home islands or working for the railway company in Manchukuo, with an increasing emphasis on sacrificing oneself for the emperor--schoolbooks talked about regarding life as lightly as a cherry blossom, and by the end a good part of that duty did consist of simply enduring--when the emperor spoke to the nation announcing the surrender he told them that they had to endure the unendurable.

[leorising]

Thanks for this, and for the comment below as well. The "eight corners of the world" concept is so foreign to me as an American, I think it gives me another valuable insight into Japanese culture. (I don't think the American "let's make the world into a giant democracy" has the same kind of politico-religious punch that the eight-corners concept has.)

My history stinks, pretty much. Thanks for fleshing out my sketchy grip on the facts!

[starlady]

We-e-ell, I don't know that I would really say it's part of Japanese culture--it was an imperialist slogan for an imperialist period, and all the explicitly expansionist ideology was swept away with the surrender. State Shinto as a whole was a very deliberate creation, and most people in Japan would tell you that it didn't have much to do with actual Shinto as it was practiced then or is now.

That said, you're welcome. It's kind of my specialty, and I do love the chance to blather about it. ^^

[leorising]

I was more thinking that anything that significant and ultimately traumatic will have a huge impact on a culture, and will therefore contribute to shaping it. We could say that Germany was never impacted by Nazism, but that's clearly disingenuous.

Perhaps I mean society instead of culture? I dunno.

[starlady]

Ah, gotcha. And yeah, both postwar Japan and Germany have definitely been shaped by the reaction to what went on during the wars.

And yeah, that society/culture distinction is hard to draw too.

[kaigou]

(I don't think the American "let's make the world into a giant democracy" has the same kind of politico-religious punch that the eight-corners concept has.)

Maybe that's because we're American, so we don't find the "giant democracy" thing all that earth-shattering -- it's not a significant change for us, since we're already there.

That "make the world" trend/drive is one that's always intrigued me, since studying Native American cultures and the anthro professor noting that the three major impacts on the New World -- Spain, France, and England -- had radically different understandings of what one does with such a resource-rich land.

Spain wanted to strip it of all resources (animal, vegetable, mineral, and human, by way of military only) and ditch the country when done; France saw it as a business deal (send traders to purchase resources, priests to record but not necessarily to convert, and keep families at home). England's policy is best summed up from a throwaway line in an otherwise throwaway movie (Last of the Mohicans) when one of the British officers complains of special allowances granted to settlers that, "I thought Britain's policy was to make the world British."

I've always remembered that line, when anyone mentions the "communism spreads, Vietnam, Cuba, blah blah blah" argument, or the idea of making the world a big honking democracy. Nutshell: "our policy is to make the world us." When this is your socio-cultural motivation, then you're more likely to assume that it's the same for others, much like a dishonest person is more likely to suspect and expect dishonesty from others.

On the face of it (as I understand it) Russia was definitely doing the expansion thing, and China was on guard against it (as it always had been, for danger from that northwestern corner), and so was Japan. Perhaps somewhere in there Japan incorporated this consume/absorb-everything mindset into its own perceptions, which is of curiosity (and outside this post's scope and certainly outside my expertise or even general knowledge!) seeing how for centuries Japan doesn't seem to have really had any significant externally-directed colonization goals outside, perhaps, the capture/control of all its islands. But to stretch forth into Korea, China, and Russia? That's very much a 20th-century thing, it seems.

[kaigou]

Isn't this what WWII Japan experienced? All suffering was for the glory of the Emperor and "Japan"

Ayup. I was pretty much trying to say that without saying it, since it's a difficult and complex issue anyway, and a lot of people have a lot of different feelings (not just facts) about what led up to, what happened, and what resulted. I wasn't really up to a hornet's nest of one way or the other, so I left it wide-open for anyone reading to connect the dots on their own.

I'm not sure I make analysis interesting... maybe you just like the round-about question-raising version instead of the kind that delivers all the answers?

[starlady]

Take all that together, stir well, and you might be starting to get a taste of the pie I think I might be making: if the corollary here is some kind of vague Germany-analogue of a mix-up of WWI and WWII, yet told through the lens of someone whose culture puts a hell of a lot through the lens of Japan's own experiences of the first half of the 20th century, then I think Amestris is a stand-in for Germany is a stand-in for Japan. That's how you get the destruction of its own citizens, but without the historical enabling of the god-on-our-side proposed in pulpits as rationalization for actions (admittedly on the side of the Axis and the side of the Allies, it's a thing we do in the West, it seems).

I've read interviews with Arakawa in which she explicitly disavows allegory, but I do think that she knows her history and knows what she's doing when she collapses the distinction between Germany in World War II and Japan in the Asia-Pacific Wars in the representation of Amestris--the Amestran campaigns in Ishval read just as well as Japan invading China (with the fifth laboratory and the philosopher's stone experiments offering a neat analogue for the exploits of Unit 731 in Manchuria and others elsewhere) as it does the Holocaust. And what I like about her doing that (well, one of many things) is that it explodes the myth of Japan as the victim in the war. Amestrans die, but Amestrans are the villains of the piece.

(And the fact that Amestris was founded for a reason, that as a country it has a teleological purpose, is straight out of state Shinto.)

To circle back around to an earlier point, religion and religious institutions used to be a lot more prominent in Japanese society than they are today, and part of this is due to the fact that both Shinto and Buddhism were thoroughly coopted by the state in the imperial period; Shinto explicitly, and Buddhism mostly through the actions of its own prelates in an attempt to curry the government favour they'd lost after the Meiji Restoration--from what I know, the situation with Lutheranism in Nazi Germany is pretty comparable to Buddhism in imperial Japan, actually.

In the end, it's all different harmonies to the same melody, that if one achieves peace through war, ergo a really BIG war should bring about a really BIG peace.

To be fair, this is the myth or the founding idea of postwar Japan, and it's not surprising that it would get animated over and over again. In some ways Arakawa's story is a creation of the zero-growth, post-9/11 world, in which the postwar order has been exposed as bankrupt and untenable--not that someone other than a lefty Hokkaidou type would think to revisit it, though.

[kaigou]

I've read interviews with Arakawa in which she explicitly disavows allegory, but I do think that she knows her history and knows what she's doing when she collapses the distinction between Germany in World War II and Japan in the Asia-Pacific Wars in the representation of Amestris

I don't think it's necessarily an allegory, though, not in the literary sense as I understand it, because her story doesn't map quite that closely. It's more an echo, if you will, and nearly any culture I can think of will produce popular fiction/entertainment that echoes the culture's history/experience. That's why it's no surprise that animanga after animanga has large bombs that invariably look like mushroom clouds, and the whole war-versus-pacifism thing comes up in everything from mecha to ninjas: these are issues of major import for the Japanese culture, it seems, and they use pop-culture just like any other socio-cultural group: to work through one's understanding and awareness of the shared history/experience. The US does the same thing when every decade or so, someone coming out with play, radio-show, movie, or television miniseries about the Revolutionary War or one of its main players: it's revisiting that shared history and trying to see it through a lens of what-we-currently-know. Like, frex, the miniseries that played out Jefferson's long-time affair with one of his slaves, a story that would've been unthinkable only a generation previously, because raising the question also raises questions of how American perceive that history and all that derives from it.

So, allegory... not necessarily. A good writer might not even be intentional, just perceptive enough to remix and mashup existing pop-culture storylines and assumptions and turn them around into something new. That's what (IMO) a good artist/storyteller does, after all: shifts our paradigm. Puts some parallax into our myths.

What stands out in this case is that Arakawa's parallax acts as a kind of exception to the rule, showing how rare it is, otherwise, for pop-culture animanga to question those wartime/post-war myths. For that matter, it was only in the wake of watching Senkou no Night Raid that I even started looking around for what other stories had pulled back the covers on that part of history; I'd come to take it for granted that the mythos is so pervasive that no one bothers to refute it. I don't say "no one dares" because I think some might, if it occurred to them that it's something to even question.

Or maybe I should just look to the newest creations from any other lefty Hokkaidou-types I can find? (Wait, I thought Arakawa was from Osaka...)

[starlady]

Nope, Hokkaidou. Her parents are dairy farmers (hence her cow avatar).

What stands out in this case is that Arakawa's parallax acts as a kind of exception to the rule, showing how rare it is, otherwise, for pop-culture animanga to question those wartime/post-war myths.

Yes, exactly. Which I think is where your example of the Jefferson/Hemmings miniseries is inexact--there are precious few anime and manga that deal directly with the war (Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies stand out, but those don't question the received view of the war), and FMA is notable because it does take a nuanced, realistic view of war and because it does question the received views. But because that nuanced view is set in a secondary world, the issue of allegory does crop up--I don't think it's an allegory, but I've read a few interviews in which people do raise that question. (I'm kind of reminded of JRR Tolkien being asked and denying that LotR was an allegory for the Great War.)

[kaigou]

I knew she was raised in a rural area (and has like three sisters? four?) and that was the basis for the in-jokes about milk & cows, but I didn't realize it was northern.

The analogy of Jefferson series wasn't because it's allegory, but as an example of a piece of mythic-history that a lot of people don't like having questioned, because for them that questioning raises other questions. In the US, a big question has always been (and will probably be for a long time) anything related to race, so the Jefferson history hits a lot of buttons/racial issues that many people would rather not face.

The only analogy there is in the sense that every culture (in this case, Japan, post-war) has something it'd rather not poke at, or has some kind of mythos that on some level everyone knows ain't necessarily so, but the myth of what-was plays such a huge role in how we understand what-is that deconstructing the myth is tantamount (for those who believe in the myth) to taking out the current socio-cultural self-definition at the knees. A lot of the Southern mythos (in the US) seems to get the same unquestioning romance as the Japanese big-war-makes-big-peace; at the same time, books/movies that put the lie to, say, MLK being a loving and faithful family man who'd never evah cheat on his wife... those mythic deconstructions fare no better, and are no more welcomed than Jefferson+black-slave had been welcomed in the previous generations. That's what I meant, not that it's analogy, only that each culture has its mythos and woe be to those who try to question, let alone topple, those myths directly.

Which is why stories like FMA can be incredibly powerful, if done right (but rarely backfire if wrong, because then they're just dismissed as grade-D stories of no consequence). They provide just enough distance for people to not feel as though their precious socio-cultural myths are being whacked with a large stick, but just enough closeness (usually by dint of sympathizing with the characters and being caught up in an otherwise damn good storyline) that there's the hope (intentional or not) that the viewer might start to say, "y'know, that's awfully similar..."

Actually, the first Star Trek did the same sort of thing, a number of times, by using aliens as analogues for various groups: people of color, women, immigrants, military-vs-government, science-versus-religion, and so on. The later series weren't quite so ground-breaking (or maybe it's just the metaphor had been done to death by then), but even ST:TNG had its episodes where it played a similar game (one that sticks in my head is the two-parter that debates what is sentience, whether a machine can be sentient -- and how would we know? -- and what divides human from animal from machine, all to determine whether Data, a machine, can "own" himself). In that sense, not really allegory, but definitely taking a familiar myth or assumption and cloaking it just enough different to make us parallax like crazy to a good storyteller's tune.

My understanding of allegory is that it's mapping a one-to-one with a purpose of a moral, and Arakawa makes no moralizing. For that matter, she very clearly outlines at the end that there are scapegoats, but that the truth of what went on -- the intended sacrifice, the Fuhrer being one of the destructive powers, etc -- is kept almost entirely from the general population. It's simply all swept under the rug, a few bad eggs plucked out as scapegoats, and the people get to believe their Fuhrer was a good man who died in defense of his beloved country, blah blah blah. That's the impression I got from the final-chapter-tag; there's no major war crimes tribunal on a level with, say, the Hague in WWII, there's no prying back the covers on every secret and forcing anyone to apologize, let alone make amends. The ones who take over do exactly that, as though the transfer of power was both intentional and seamless, and this seems to be a good thing.

In that sense, FMA would fail utterly in terms of how allegory most often uses its symbolism to present a moralistic interpretation because the lesson is, well, non-apology, some-scapegoating, and otherwise-seamless-transfer is the proper ending: that if this maps to Japan's behavior before/during war (at least insofar as the military) then its conclusion is that Japan's hush-up at the end was the proper thing to do. The tone in the manga/anime seems entirely unironic, delivered straight-up, so I don't think it's meant as a criticism of the new administration's choices, but as a rather Japanese presentation (as I understand the socio-cultural motivations/psychology) that just letting bygones be bygones is the best and fastest method to return to harmony, which is more important than truth.

Or perhaps that's my own Western overlay, which does not believe that truth can be sacrificed for the sake of harmony without the sole result being a false harmony. In that sense, I would look for an allegorical/ironic reading to the final pages of the manga, but I suspect to a Japanese reader, perhaps there would be none, and the value of harmony over truth-revealing is more important.

Either way, no, Arakawa's story isn't really allegory per se, because she doesn't rely on rehashed symbols from this world (outside the historical alchemical symbols); she does actually write multi-faceted and complexly-motivated characters who are not simply cardboard symbols. Allegory fits better in the realm of true myth, where you don't need motivation or conflict so much as just to know "what things mean" (or "what things represent") and her story definitely has a life far beyond any simplistic symbolism.

That doesn't mean it can't map to actual history, but that's only because a good artist/storyteller takes the stories of our time and makes them unique all over again, and that's precisely what Arakawa seems to have achieved.

Incidentally, related to the sub-thread on your post, I realized this afternoon: it wasn't FMA that made me realize the parallel, but Gundam 00, with its emphasis on the Middle East as the origins of the story's main conflicts. In reading about 00's backstory development, that was when I was exposed to contemporary reports about Japan's involvement in the Afghanistan conflict, in Japan's support role, and the internal debates that sprang up among the Diet et al about whether Japan was violating its pacifist position to be support (in any way) to military action, or if it should go a step further and argue that military action can be justified when done in conjunction... there were a lot of questions being raised, and a lot of Japanese soldiers coming back with PTSD from Afghanistan, as well, even if they weren't front lines per se.

That entire situation, in the year or so after 9/11, seems to have had a major, if unexpected, impact on Japan's cultural self-assumptions, and I guess reading about its impact on the pop culture made me more sensitive to seeing those questions raised, if subtly, in other pop-culture stories, as well.

[starlady]

In that sense, FMA would fail utterly in terms of how allegory most often uses its symbolism to present a moralistic interpretation because the lesson is, well, non-apology, some-scapegoating, and otherwise-seamless-transfer is the proper ending: that if this maps to Japan's behavior before/during war (at least insofar as the military) then its conclusion is that Japan's hush-up at the end was the proper thing to do. The tone in the manga/anime seems entirely unironic, delivered straight-up, so I don't think it's meant as a criticism of the new administration's choices, but as a rather Japanese presentation (as I understand the socio-cultural motivations/psychology) that just letting bygones be bygones is the best and fastest method to return to harmony, which is more important than truth.

That scene in volume 16 where Hawkeye says that they'd all be liable to be brought to trial for war crimes if they left the military still brings me up short every time.

I actually wrote a paper on the Tokyo Tribunals, and if anything I think the fact that there are no reconciliation commissions in FMA is a sign of the fact that essentially no one was satisfied with the Tribunals' outcome.

That entire situation, in the year or so after 9/11, seems to have had a major, if unexpected, impact on Japan's cultural self-assumptions, and I guess reading about its impact on the pop culture made me more sensitive to seeing those questions raised, if subtly, in other pop-culture stories, as well.

Thinking about it more now, it seems even more obvious that you're right; and this has to be part of why the manga was so popular in Japan, because ultimately as Arakawa says the manga is in part an exploration of what going to war means, for the people who fight and for those who don't, on both sides. And the desire for peace is real in Japan--as much as the "victim mentality" phrase gets tossed around, it would be wrong to overlook the fact that the end of the war did produce a sincere desire for peace in a good many people, and that history still does, and that the Koizumi and Abe governments' logistical and manpower assistance to the U.S. military, as well as other incidents (particularly the Japanese journalists who were kidnapped in Baghdad) were strongly opposed, particularly at the urban grassroots level. It didn't escape the notice of people that many of the people bringing Japan back into war and talking about dismantling the peace constitution were the same people, or descendants of people, who'd taken the country to war in the C20th, too--particularly Abe, whose grandfather Kishi pushed the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty with automatic renewal through the Diet in 1960 (quite literally pushed--he had to be carried to the podium by Diet security through the crowd of rioting lawmakers, while thousands of people protested outside; and the deciding vote was technically out of order) and who was himself a former Class A war criminal. So the generals in Amestris knowingly provoking conflicts with their neighbors has multiple resonances.

Anyway, yeah. Such a great manga, so many layers.

[kaigou]

DUDE. Stop this! Bwah. (No, wait, I take that back, DON'T! STOP! repeat really fast ten times.) I just spent about an hour with CP discussing Japanese postwar behaviors versus German and then segue'd into US debates post Obama-election about whether we should (or should not) try political leaders of the previous administration who may've condoned breaking the Geneva Conventions. And so on.

(And then with a slightly chilling side note -- CP actually was there during those riots during the Security Treaty votes -- he could see the crowds from the American consul. Man. I'm telling you, he was in Japan for those riots, he was in Hong Kong during the Cultural Revolution... so far he's not brought down any riots or ethnic cleansings since I've been with him, but believe you me, when he says he wants to move somewhere, I check the place verrrrrry carefully...)

[pseudo_tsuga]

Hmmmm. I really like your analysis but I'm not sure I agree with it. Most of the time I've seen the "create war to make peace" trope in manga or video games produced in Japan, it's never tied with religion. It has also has several different variations that I've seen much more commonly. One is that the threat of war unites the people so that the dastardly villain can take over it by presenting himself as a public protector, concealing the fact that they caused the conflict in the first place like in 20th Century Boys. Often the public who buys it is portrayed as unthinking sheep, ready to be caught up in the idealistic promises of the fraud. Another is that with everyone dead, there will be ultimate peace because you can't fight if there's no one to be soldiers such as in Final Fantasy X or, in a weird way, Neon Genesis Evangelion. The only straightforward use of this trope I've seen was in Skies of Arcadia and even then it wasn't "a BIG war will produce a BIG peace" but rather "If we rule the whole world, there will be no more war because there will only be no one to war with" and that was just a sympathetic minion not the main bad guy.

I think I'm missing some of your argument, though, so feel free to set me straight. Finals are not good for one's brainpower.

[kaigou]

Err, I didn't mean to imply that religion is the justification for the logic, only that where I've seen the logic introduced, I've also seen concurrent references to god (not necessarily religion, just "god" and often simply as "this is what god wants" or "god is on our side" -- a very vague kind of religious reference, really). And, too, most often when you get the dogwhistles (godwhistles?) it's also a quasi-European setting, like in the various Gundam series, which also do the whole big-war-big-peace thing, but with their own mecha twist.

One is that the threat of war unites the people so that the dastardly villain can take over it by presenting himself as a public protector, concealing the fact that they caused the conflict in the first place like in 20th Century Boys.

Incidentally, a favorite method of military coup -- if it weren't for the fact that Mustang and his cohorts really are the good guys, they'd match that route perfectly, of presenting themselves as good guys who are, in fact, not. For that matter, from the POV of the bad guys, that's exactly what Mustang does when his group turns the tables by presenting themselves as fighting in the Fuhrer's name.

There are variations on the war-to-peace action, but the bottom line is pretty much this: somehow, by virtue of a massive nearly scorched-earth action, the final result is that the people will embrace pacifism. I mentioned some of the variations, like Eureka Seven's (slightly hyperbolic here) version of "I'm so depressed, the whole WORLD should feel my PAIN!" blah blah blah white man's burden (koffkoff), or Gundam00's next-generation variation in which the intent is to make oneself the bad guy to focus everyone else (and get them to stop fighting each other). Eureka Seven does do the argument that peace comes from, well, everyone being dead, but other series -- like Naruto -- are going with the notion (which I've seen more often) that basically and bluntly, it takes a truly horrendous and horrific experience to scare the everloving crap out of everyone such that they all wise up and realize they never ever want to come within a hundred miles of any such horrific experience like that again. In other words: if you could teach the lesson that embarking on war has the inevitable result of a Hiroshima, who the hell would ever be insane enough after that lesson to even remotely contemplate the thought of military action?

However, while the godwhistle isn't always consistent (and it's most prevalent in those animanga, from what I've seen at least, that have futuristic and/or global or quasi-global storylines, most often with mecha), one thing that is somewhat consistent is the fact that the civilians are supposed to have our sympathy. Whether they've been duped, or they're genuinely convinced whomever leads them into war is righteous (ignorant of the end the viewer knows is coming), or whether their eyes have been opened (or were always open) to the mad logic of big-war-makes-big-peace, the representation still almost always posits the citizens as the victims, helpless to some degree, definitely wanting to live but at definite risk of not doing so if Our Hero doesn't get his ass in gear. Or his mecha fired up in time.

Although granted that that last bit -- Our Hero must get there in time -- is not because it's a socio-cultural detail to stand around and wait for someone else to rescue your ass, but because of the nature of many of these stories: the hero is supposed to be our Everyman, our in-story stand-in who saves the day. We sympathize with the sheeople about to be pulverized by the madman's plans, but our sympathy is most often a kind of pitying protectiveness, because this kind of world-will-end story most often revolves around a singular hero who wants to "protect the helpless". That's a major major theme in Japanese pop culture that I see over and over and over ("protect those precious to me" and "a warrior gains true strength from having something to protect" and so on) and it's a good thing to promote the protect-others value, but it's also a double-edge, because that posits that those you protect must be helpless, to show your strength in contrast.

(Not that I'm saying this is always true in fiction or in life, only that in the hands of bad writers -- who can't write a truly strong character -- the lack of strength means other characters have to be undercut. (For an excellent discussion of this, see snarp's discussions of how Bleach treats its female characters, wherein "female characters" are that story's version of "helpless citizens". A good writer, like Arakawa, has no fear of the main characters being strong enough even when supporting characters are strong, which is how you can have kick-ass characters like Izumi, Gen Armstrong, Hawkeye, and even Rebecca Catalina and Maria Ross -- Arakawa writes strong enough main characters that her female characters don't have to end up helpless lumps of wet bread dough just so the main guys look good in contrast. Kishimoto, with Naruto, does seem to try to have female characters show some strength, but he's not quite as secure with it as Arakawa, though admittedly he's nowhere near as bad as Tito. Or Tibo. Or whatever that mangaka's name is.)

Anyway, even when the public is shown as unthinking sheep, or even completely unaware of the risks, they're still effectively victims, with no real agency of their own -- they don't really get a say in the matter. In FMA, they all simply come to the point of destruction and pass out. Eureka Seven, the public's not even sure what's going on; in the various Gundam series I've seen, the public is a mass critter of wild panic (when it's not just an uncaring and unseeing lump of humanity). They're still just victims: either they're gonna get dead, or the hero will save them in time and they won't be dead, but they don't even rate as a greek chorus, and they're certainly almost never seen as colluding or knowingly participating in any way with what's about to destroy them.