The Anime I Would Really Like to See

Remember, it wasn't so long ago that Japan looked like this.

Ghostlightning, of We Remember Love, sent his readers a challenge— write about an anime that you would like to see. Challenge accepted.

I love history. I study it full-time, spending the majority of my existence pouring over old manuscripts. I love picking apart the brains of people who no longer exist, visiting lands that manifest themselves only in my mind’s eye. The past is a different country, separated from us not by distance, but by time. I dream of Empire, a vast and bustling space at the confluence of worlds. Thus, my anime would be set in one of the world’s most fascinating (and most controversial) Imperial states.

I am speaking, of course, about Japan.

Taisho Democracy

There was a brief lull between the chaos of the Meiji Era and the belligerent militarism of the early Showa. The fourteen years of the Taisho Era (1912-1926) represented a period of opening and relaxation for the Empire of Japan. Western culture, which already rooted itself in Japanese society during the late Meiji years, continued to flourish. Japanese culture experienced a boom— with Japan now firmly cemented as one of the world’s great powers, people turned to other pursuits— literature, philosophy and politics. This is the age of the political party, the age of debate, of intellectual exchange and of leisure and relaxation.

Yet, far away from Tokyo, the heart of the Japanese Empire, a different story was unfolding.

Formosa

Let’s talk about a little (well, not-so-little, really) place called Formosa. It’s an island not too far from the Chinese mainland, populated by a mixture of Han Chinese and Formosan aborigines. In 1895, after the first Sino-Japanese War, Japan gained control over Formosa and the Pescadores as part of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, thus turning Formosa into Japan’s first real colonial possession. (One can argue, of course, that the Ryukyus and Hokkaido were also colonial in nature, but that’s a discussion for another day and another blog.)

Formosa’s acquisition was Japan’s great moment. Here was a chance to show the rest of the “developed” world that Japan could roll with the big boys. It developed Formosa into a model colony, greatly increasing literacy and decreasing mortality. The colonial administration built railroads, hospitals, schools and waterways, greatly improving the lives of regular Formosans.

As the years went on, the Imperial government back in Tokyo tried more and more to inculcate a sense of Japanese-ness into the citizens of Formosa. Official assimilation began in 1917. Japanese usage was heavily promoted and encouraged, and the Formosan administration became primarily Japanese. The goal was for Formosa to slowly change and integrate into Japan, as the fifth member of the Home Islands.

All of this, at a moment of liberalization and democratic agitation at home. A counter-intuitive picture of Taisho Democracy, no?

Imperial Democracy

1920 marks the first wave of imperial deaths. Austria-Hungary, Russia and even the once-hegemonic Ottoman Empire all collapsed after the disastrous effects of the First World War. Former Imperial subjects scrambled to find their identities. Across the world, Formosans began to think about the same issues.

My anime is the story of a people searching for their identity. I picture it as a series of shorts with a large, ensemble cast— a young, teenage girl, struggling to improve herself; a bored, disinterested colonial bureaucrat, dreaming of returning to Tokyo; a Formosan industrialist, working to improve his native land (Japan? or Formosa? Or both?); an opium dealer, an agent of the Japanese government, exploiting the addicts on the island; a freedom fighter, a man unhappy with the oppression he sees around him, willing to trade the pleasures and conveniences of modern life in exchange for self-determination.

As their lives intertwine, we slowly begin to see what it means to be Japanese. For these people, as varied as they are, are all Japanese. As Imperial subjects, they are all bound by the same laws, albeit not by the same heritage. However, does that matter? Is there a difference between one’s heritage, one’s blood, and the state to which one professes allegiance? The question of identity becomes so much more important in Empire. How do Imperial subjects interact with the Empire? Does the Empire destroy their sense of identity and replace it with something fictitious? Is it benevolent, turning a malaria-infested swamp of an island into a jewel on the edge of the Pacific?

In today’s world, it is far too easy to see Japan as a monolithic culture, comprised of Japanese and nothing more. This fiction has been perpetuated both by foreigners and by the Japanese themselves, who would like to believe that “Japanese-ness” is set in stone and determined by blood. My anime would go back to a time before the birth of the current “Japanese nation”, at a time when Japan was not just Honshu, Shikoku, Hokkaido and Kyushu. A time when Japan spanned from Sakhalin, on the edge of the Arctic Circle, all the way down to tropical Formosa. This Japan included Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Ryukyuans, Ainu, and many more “non-Japanese” ethnic groups among its subjects. I would like to ask this Japan and its subjects a very simple question—

What are you?

Do you have an anime you’d like to see? Let me know @Akirascuro on Twitter.