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Paper short abstract:

This study examines how newspaper cartoons provided an original look at news related to nuclear energy in post-war period and demonstrates that various newspapers, including the one mainly distributed in the Hiroshima area (Chūgoku Shinbun), have made fun of nuclear power, both civil and military.

Paper long abstract:

In 2013, several French cartoons making fun of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster have caused public outrage in Japan. While nuclear energy is often considered as a sensitive issue in the country, a recent study published by Ronald Stewart indicates that cartoons were nevertheless published in Japan after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, and that they provided both a critical perspective on the management of the accident and ways to cope with the stress it caused. Moreover, another preliminary study (Bruno 2023) confirms that Japanese cartoonists, starting with Yokoyama Taizō 横山泰三 , were already making fun of nuclear energy in the post-war period. However, at a time when Japan focused on launching its civilian nuclear program, many victims of the atomic bomb were left behind and Japan lived in fear of radioactive fallout from American and Soviet atomic tests.

This paper aims therefore to analyze how cartoonists of the main national newspapers (Asahi Shinbun, Mainichi Shinbun and Yomiuri Shinbun) humorously sketched nuclear energy, from the return of press cartoons in the early 1950s until the launch of the Japanese nuclear industry in 1957. It will also look into Chūgoku Shinbun, the main regional daily newspaper distributed in the Hiroshima area, and in particular into the Sesō kamera 世相カメラ series by cartoonist Hasumi Tan 蓮見旦, to ascertain whether there is a possible "Hiroshima exception" and whether the first city to fall victim to atomic bombing exhibit a specific sensibility towards nuclear energy.

I will thus argue that, despite inevitable differences, the cartoons published in both the national and the regional press, contributed to setting the problems related to nuclear energy on the media agenda, while allowing a form of resilience among a population particularly concerned by nuclear risks, whether civil or military, especially through images showing the absurdity of atomic testing or the irrationality of human beings.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper examines how The Ants (2006) challenges existing approaches to the memory of World War II through the history of the Japanese presence in China after 1945. Recent contributions from Memory Studies are used to examine how the film calls into question the patterns of Perpetrator Cinema

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to re-examine the history of the Japanese military presence in China after the surrender of the Japanese Empire in World War II through Kaoru Ikeya’s The Ants (Ari no heitai, 2006). The important role that the Japanese soldiers played in the last phase of the Chinese Civil War (1945-49) has not received enough scholarly attention yet. Almost 4 million of Japanese civilian and soldiers who were stationed in China proper when the empire collapsed, including 1.5 million of Japanese troops at disposal of the Nationalists. Since they were better equipped and trained than any side of the Chinese conflict, many major cities in China were under control of the Japanese authorities even after the surrender. Having them to fight against the Communists was an offer that Chiang Kai-shek could not refuse. As a consequence, they became the main force in the Shanxi Province, where 15,000 Japanese soldiers fought alongside the warlord Yen His-shan and played a key role in battles against the Communists. By following one of them, the paper assesses how this film challenges existing approaches to the Japanese and Asian memory of World War II by questioning all previous narratives on the conflict. The analysis uses two major shifts in Memory Studies, the “perpetrator turn” and the “transcultural turn”, in order to interrogate how The Ants calls into question the patterns of “Perpetrator Cinema” and showcases a potentially new tendency to transnational memories. While the film engages in certain repetitive tropes that can be found in other “perpetrator films”, the goal of this paper is casting light into how it also distorts that genre by giving less predominance to the concepts of trauma and guilt, bringing to the fore the very problem of articulating a narrative. To that end, it will be explored how the film touches elements from the several culture memories of World War II in Japan but without fitting into any of them. Do we need to redefine concepts of “perpetrator” and “victim” in contemporary Japanese documentary? Is this a “memory film”? The paper will try to answer all these questions.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper takes an interdisciplinary approach to the topic of precarity, focusing on how Fumiyo Kōno portrays it in In This Corner of the World. The discussion is framed by an overview of the structural precarity that affects women’s endeavors and the depiction of such precarity in manga.

Paper long abstract:

This paper uses Fumiyo Kōno’s In This Corner of the World (2007-2009) as a case study to analyze the depiction of women’s precarity in manga. That said, the analysis takes into consideration the diachronic dimension of precarious social circumstances affecting Japanese women.

The main goal is to discuss how 21st-century shōjo manga (manga for girls) frequently deals with existential precarity: that is, making their characters struggle to get by, feel acknowledged, and/or find a place of belonging (ibasho). Kōno’s work provides interesting exploration grounds because it blends elements from shōjo and seinen manga (manga for men of age). The reading of such a patchwork of features, however, cannot ignore the fact that seinen is steadily being de-genderized. Thus, instead of examining seinen under the traditional categorization, it can be more useful to think about it as a genre for adult readers regardless of their gender.

The analysis wonders whether it is possible to talk about a feminization process of the kinds of existential angst mentioned above: a development that would be rather close to the feminization of, at least, part of the Japanese postwar legacy. As its background, the paper addresses the question of manga genres—some of the implications of being labeled based simultaneously on the age and gender of the readers—as well as the usage of certain tropes to depict heteronormative social roles. Hence the debate interlinks gender and media studies to offer some thoughts on women’s writing, symbolic violence, and social precarity derived from advanced capitalism.