- Convenor:
-
Yuki Ohsawa
(Otaru University of Commerce)
Send message to Convenor
- Format:
- Panel
- Section:
- Media Studies
Short Abstract
This panel examines how Japanese media depicted the Pacific War during and after the conflict, focusing on propaganda, normalization, empathy, and reception. Through diverse media and periods, this panel explores how creators shaped meanings of war and how these works have been interpreted.
Long Abstract
This panel examines how Japanese media have depicted war during and after the Asia-Pacific War, and how the experience and memory of that conflict have shaped postwar/contemporary representations of war. Bringing together four papers on kamishibai and animation, the panel traces changing visual, narrative, and affective strategies through which war has been framed, as well as how these representations have been received and evaluated.
The first paper analyzes propaganda kamishibai produced between 1937 and 1945, focusing on images of a war in progress. Unlike retrospective narratives shaped by later ideological frameworks, these works needed to remain plausible to audiences with direct experience of the conflict while mobilizing them. By foregrounding love, sacrifice, and the tragic deaths of Japanese soldiers—rather than dehumanizing the enemy—the paper challenges dominant theories of wartime propaganda and proposes an alternative understanding of affective mobilization.
The second paper shifts to postwar animation, examining Ōtomo Katsuhiro’s Cannon Fodder (1995). Although it does not depict a specific historical war, the film is analyzed as a product of postwar Japan in which the legacy of total war is transformed into war as a normalized, impersonal social system embedded in everyday life. Drawing on theories of discipline, biopolitics, and integrative propaganda, the paper argues that war is rendered ethically invisible and sustained through routine rather than ideology.
The third paper focuses on contemporary Japanese animation produced in a society without firsthand experience of war. Using the concept of “technology of empathy,” it analyzes works by Miyazaki Hayao, Katabuchi Sunao, and Kuji Gorō to show how narrative and visual techniques enable engagement with war through representations of death and loss, demonstrating how empathy is constructed in the absence of lived memory.
The final paper addresses the reception of war anime, challenging the assumption that emphasizing Japanese victimhood necessarily denies Japanese perpetratorship. It reassesses how Japanese war animation has been evaluated in anglophone scholarship.
Taken together, the panel shows that Japanese media representations of war cannot be reduced to a single ideological function, but instead reflect historically contingent strategies of mobilization, normalization, empathy, and critique, all shaped by changing social conditions.
| Abstract in Japanese (if needed) |
Accepted papers
Paper short abstract
Otomo Katsuhiro’s Cannon Fodder (1995) is read as an anti-war animation that portrays war not as spectacle or tragedy but as an ordinary condition embedded in daily life. By showing normalized militarism and limited agency, the film questions why war becomes difficult to recognize and criticize.
Paper long abstract
This paper analyzes Cannon Fodder (1995), directed by Katsuhiro Otomo, as a form of anti-war animation that departs from representations centered on fear, emotional suffering, or the spectacle of combat. In this film, war is not depicted as an exceptional event to be opposed or morally judged, but as an ordinary condition embedded in education, labor, media, and the physical organization of the city. As a result, war becomes difficult to recognize and loses its ethical urgency.
Through analysis of narrative structure, animation style, and spatial design, this study argues that Otomo presents war as an impersonal social system that continues without clear purpose or individual responsibility. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concepts of discipline and biopolitics, the paper examines how bodies and daily routines are shaped by militarized practices that no longer rely on visible coercion. Jacques Ellul’s theory of integrative propaganda further explains how militarism operates through everyday habits and environments rather than through explicit ideological messages, making critical distance increasingly difficult to maintain.
Particular attention is given to the film’s long takes and continuous camera movement. Rather than functioning as a surveillant or moralizing gaze, the camera operates as a gaze that observes a world in which social control has already been completed. By calmly following ordinary activities and avoiding emotional emphasis, this visual approach presents violence as routine and unavoidable rather than dramatic or exceptional.
The figure of the child is interpreted not as a symbol of hope or the future, but as a mechanism through which the same social order is repeatedly reproduced. This emphasizes the closed nature of the society depicted in the film, where alternatives to perpetual war cannot be imagined.
By foregrounding normalization and repetition, Cannon Fodder can be understood as an anti-war film. It can also be seen as a work that highlights the lack of agency of most participants in a war, unable to imagine a different reality than their normal one.
Paper short abstract
This presentation contests criticism of the absence of depictions of Japanese perpetratorship in anime discussing events associated with WW2, examining and comparing relevant films and questioning the criticism’s motivations.
Paper long abstract
This presentation seeks to contest criticism of the absence of depictions of Japanese perpetratorship in Japanese cartoon animation (anime) discussing events associated with WW2. While anime by now are acknowledged as potentially the most influential piece of Japanese media, and despite a diverse corpus of over 60 different works (1971 – 2025), research on their depiction of World War 2 as a historical event remains scarce. Additionally, the few publications that can be found on the topic (e.g. Napier 2005, Dudok de Wit 2021) generally make the assumption that any such anime would inevitably show Japan in the role of a victim of foreign aggression, while willfully ignoring Japanese aggression and perpetratorship. However, this assumption stems from an insufficient review of the ‘sub-genre’ of ‘war anime,’ which, at least in published discussions, is commonly reduced to 1983’s Barefoot Gen and 1988’s Grave of the Fireflies. Thus, academia appears to be ignorant of the majority of relevant works and their developmental discourse, particularly after the 1980s.
While an extensive review of war anime indeed shows an emphasis on Japanese victimhood, this may, as proclaimed, aim to create anti-war sentiments through the relatability of in-group suffering. I argue that seeing this approach as a denial of Japanese perpetratoship is partially a result of the misconception of Germany more actively addressing its war-time atrocities. Furthermore, the anime adaptations of Barefoot Gen and Grave of the Fireflies were released at a time when Japanese economic expansion led to widespread “Japan bashing” (Igarashi 2007) in Western media, which can be believed to have influenced the academic discourse. Additionally, the fact that criticism originates primarily from anglophone scholars, or scholars with an academic background in an anglophone country, possibly also relates to the circumstance that the major anglophone powers were opponents of Japan during WW2. Accordingly, anglophone societies are likely to harbor biased sentiments focused on settling accounts of their own victimhood, valuing reactionary repentence over societal progress and the fostering of a discourse oriented on a pacifist identity through the relatability of in-group suffering.
Paper short abstract
This presentation analyzes three Japanese animated works using the concept of “Technology of Empathy,” focusing on how animation depicts war, death, and loss to evoke empathy in contemporary Japan.
Paper long abstract
This presentation analyzes three works—Hayao Miyazaki's The Wind Rises (2013), Sunao Katabuchi's In This Corner of the World (2016), and Goro Kuji's Peleliu: Gernika of Paradise (2025)—using the concept of “Technology of Empathy.”
The reason for selecting these three works is that Miyazaki's depicts engineers, Katabuchi's portrays women on the home front, and Kuji's shows soldiers on the front lines, making them well-suited for capturing the phenomenon of war from multiple angles.
“Technology of Empathy” is an analytical framework proposed by Yamamoto, the presenter, referring to characteristics manifested in cinematographic techniques and narrative structures. In contemporary Japan, where neither creators nor audiences have experienced war firsthand, animations dealing with war employ various ingenious approaches. The term “Technology of Empathy” refers to such approaches: the use of special effects photography, VFX, and AI; narrative structures evident in screenplays; (in adaptations) the selection of scenes; and interpretations of war.
This presentation specifically focuses on scenes depicting the pain and changes in humanity brought about by war—essentially, scenes of death. Miyazaki avoids directly depicting death scenes, Katabuchi portrays loss through air raids, and Kuji depicts soldiers dying on the battlefield. By examining these death scenes through the lens of “technology of empathy,” I aim to present a perspective for understanding the relationship between war and animation in contemporary Japan.
Paper short abstract
This paper analyzes propaganda kamishibai produced in Japan during during WWII, showing how graphic images of Japanese soldiers' death in battle were used in efforts to mobilize both military and homefront audiences. Such depictions challenge dominant theories of effective wartime propaganda.
Paper long abstract
This presentation examines popular culture images of the Second Sino-Japanese War and the Asia Pacific War as they were happening, 1937-1945, as curated for use by creators of propaganda intended to mobilize the Japanese empire. In contrast to retrospective narratives of war intended to reframe history to suit subsequent ideological needs, the images of a war in progress must be accurate enough to appear plausible to a viewer who has immediate daily experience of that war, but must also be manipulated and aesthesticized to suit the needs of the propagandist. Propaganda kamishibai plays for viewers of all ages were one of the most widely distributed and frequently viewed forms of persuasive media across the Japanese home islands, colonies, and occupied lands. An examination of the ways they framed the war both visually and narratively reveals strategies of persuasion that defy commonly accepted arguments about effective wartime propaganda. While most scholars contend that effective mobilization propaganda relies on creating a hateful and dehumanized image of the enemy, kamishibai virtually ignores the enemy in image and story to concentrate on love as the compelling affective force. Additionally, it is extremely rare in mobilization propaganda to depict the deaths of domestic soldiers, but kamishibai plays frequently pictorialize the painful and agonized death of Japanese soldiers. This presentation will introduce the images of frontline battle presented in kamishibai plays with the twofold purpose of: 1) demonstrating how they work as mobilization propaganda despite the seeming truthfulness of their content, and 2) revealing a new theory of effective propaganda strategy.