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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.