Preface: War/Time

In advanced consumer societies, we are used to thinking of war as a disruption of the normal state of aff airs, as an irruption of irrational violence and destruction into an otherwise peaceful condition. Because we associate our peace with exhausting yet safety-enhanced cycles of production and consumption, we have become accustomed to thinking of war as the opposite of productivity—war as destruction in opposition to production, war as something diff erent from the everyday violence of our workaday lives, which happens at a distance, in other places and times, seen on screens. We are liable to acknowledge that war makes for profi ts, that there are and always have been war profi teers, but we are unlikely to grasp how the increasingly fragile prosperity of the United States and its client states might be predicated upon war, because we still think war in opposition to peace, prosperity, productivity. But there are arguments for, and demonstrations of, a state of aff airs in which war constitutes the very ground of our productivity and prosperity. Chalmers Johnson, for instance, argues that the United States economy (and thus that of its client states) has become a form of military Keynesianism, in which “the making and selling of weaponry has become our way of life.”1 Simply put, war-related technologies and military bases are a major worldwide employer and growth industry, and a highly regulated one at that. On a related tack, Naomi Klein’s discussions of disaster capitalism have shown how contemporary American-articulated global capitalism deliberately builds thoMas laMarre Preface

Monsters at War: The Great Yōkai Wars, 1968–2005

Miike Takashi, the Japanese director of infamous films such as Koroshiya Ichi (2001, Ichi the Killer) and Zehuraaman (2004, Zebraman), surprised audiences by directing the 2005 remake of the 1968 horror/fantasy Sim, Yokai daisenso (The Great Yoked War).1 With its cast of cute folkloric monsters (generically referred to in Japanese as yokai), this was the first child-friendly movie produced by Miike, whose work is better known for excessive Tarantino-like violence, gangster stories, and blood spilled on screen. But, despite their association with simple and straightforward horror tales and family entertainment, both the 1968 classic and Miike's 2005 remake use yokai to communicate strong, if also strongly differing, political messages. This essay compares the two films and also traces the evolution of the Yokai daisenso story through several manga, anime, and live-action versions produced over the past forty years. The emergence of yokai-themed films in Japan dates from the 1960s and coincides with the television broadcast of Mizuki Shigeru's 1968-69 Gegege no Kitard animation series, based in turn on Mizuki's hugely popular manga. The series traced the adventures of the yokai boy Kitard and his monster companions, particularly their battles with various other malevolent yokai entities. Following the success of the television series, the film production company

War by Metaphor in <i>Densha otoko</i>

otoko (Train Man) was nothing less than a national sensation in Japan. Emerging from a discussion forum on Japan’s reputed 2channel (ni channeru) subculture otaku Web site, Densha otoko concerns a virtual otaku community that coalesces around a supposedly true romance involving a young woman and an otaku sparked by an incident on a train.1 As an event and topic of discussion, Densha otoko drew its currency from a popular discourse on otaku practices with origins in the media and academia.2 Marketed as a “pure love story” (jun’ai monogatari)—a genre that was extremely popular at the time—the story derived its particular novelty from the assumption that an otaku is incapable of developing normal relations with a woman, let alone an attractive one.3 Part of what contributed to the identification of Densha otoko as an otaku expression is the appearance in the story of numerous military metaphors. The metaphors escalate as the story progresses, threatening at times to overwhelm the central romantic narrative. In the following discussion I look at these metaphors not only as instantiations of an otaku culture but, moreover, in terms of their effect in creating the sense of a shared and embodied scene. The latter, I suggest, emerges via the capacity of metaphor to War by Metaphor in Densha otoko m i C h a e l F i s C h

From Jusuheru to Jannu: Girl Knights and Christian Witches in the Work of Miuchi Suzue

the domain of shōnen manga, or boys’ comics, while shōjo manga, or manga for girls, are perceived as primarily concerned with romance. As Kotani Mari and Saitō Tamaki note, love and war merge in the sentō bishōjo or “battling beauty” motif, in which these traditionally separate themes are combined, allowing identification on the part of different readers and making it a particularly popular and increasingly visible figure in contemporary Japanese popular culture.1 The sentō bishōjo is a productive trope that spans different genres and appears in boys’ and girls’ manga alike, as well as in their animated versions and related merchandising. In this article, I want to look at the uses and implications of another figure that, by contrast, appears almost exclusively in shōjo works: the “girl knight.” While battling beauties and girl knights share a number of traits, including their challenge to traditional notions of femininity, they differ in some significant aspects, most importantly, as I will try to demonstrate, in their epistemological approach to, and use of, war/time. I therefore propose to study the peculiar combination of themes of war, time, and cultural and From Jusuheru to Jannu: Girl Knights and Christian Witches in the Work of Miuchi Suzue r e b e C C a s u t e r

Theorizing Manga: Nationalism and Discourse on the Role of Wartime Manga

of its modern institutions. A mass culture emerged and media consumption expanded. As Japan’s total war system intensified in the 1930s, the field of manga, one of the emerging visual media of the time, witnessed the rise and fall of the proletarian movement, the dominance of “nansensu” (nonsense) as a popular genre, and the increasing presence of war, whether physically or ideologically. This was also the period when cartoonists began theorizing about the nature of manga. After the Japan–China War broke out in 1937, discourse on the role of manga and cartoonists appeared as a response to Japan’s wartime mobilization. A close study of the discourse on the status of manga as expressed by cartoonists themselves reveals that, by defining manga as an ideal medium for conveying nationalism, cartoonists played an active role as agents of the war. They did not simply submit to state thought control in order to continue drawing manga. Rather, in the course of this theorization, they attempted to “recover” the artistic quality of manga from being merely a commodity of consumerism, as was the case with nansensu manga. This recovery was articulated by, for instance, the former proletarian cartoonist Katō Etsurō. This Theorizing Manga: Nationalism and Discourse on the Role of Wartime Manga

The Army, Newsreel, and <i>The Army Film</i>

ERIC BREITBART have entailed a level of personal courage and moral commitment that, quite frankly, I didn’t have. Moreover, the Vietnam War wasn’t more than a blip on the radar for most Americans, myself included, so the idea that I might be sent into combat never entered my mind. As for the Army itself, I thought that I could just tough it out. Nevertheless, nothing I had ever done prepared me for the culture shock I experienced during eight weeks of basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Learning how to fire an M-14 rifle, march in formation, and keep a neat foot locker was only part of the Army’s game plan for transforming civilians into soldiers. There was also K.P., bayonet training, and making a bed with the blanket so tight that a dime would bounce on it. In addition, we were given weekly sessions of what was called “character guidance,” which usually consisted of a short film and a lecture on any subject from the proper way to brush your teeth or why you shouldn’t curse, to the reasons for the war in Vietnam. I soon realized that the main purpose of these sessions was not to guide me in a particular direction, stiffen my moral character, or even to teach me anything, but simply to make certain that I didn’t spend too much time thinking about anything outside the confines of Fort Jackson. I was amazed at how quickly the Army was able to socialize me into thinking like a soldier, someone who could see the military and nonmilitary worlds as entirely separate entities. And if they could do it to me, a sophisticated college graduate fresh from two years in Paris, they could do it to anyone. Most of the draftees in my basic training company were sent to the 25th Infantry, based in Honolulu, and eventually ended up in Vietnam. Through the luck of the draw I was sent to Dugway, Utah, a test facility for chemical and biological weapons in the middle of the Utah desert, and while I still couldn’t find an antiwar Eric Breitbart, U.S. Army, Dugway Proving Ground, Utah, 1965. Courtesy of the author.

Carl Marzani and Union Films: Making Left-Wing Documentaries during the Cold War, 1946–53

An Ohio Republican Stirs Up the House: The Blake Resolution of 1860 and the Politics of the Sectional Crisis in Congress

On March 26, 1860, Republican congressman Harrison Blake of Ohio introduced a resolution into the U.S. House of Representatives, a resolution that resurrected in the minds of every House faction something from which Republicans had attempted to distance themselves in the run-up to the presidential election of 1860: the Democratic accusations of Republican complicity in John Brown’s raid. What follows here is the first detailed account of Blake, his resolution, the extraordinary reaction to it, and its contribution to the escalating sectional crisis leading to the Civil War. The first session of the 36th Congress began under the portentous cloud of John Brown’s raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, in October 1859. John Brown and his small band had planned to use the arsenal’s weapons to arm the slaves and foment a slave rebellion. U.S. forces had regained control of the arsenal after two days, and nearly all of Brown’s men died. Courageous old Brown himself was captured, tried for his crimes, and sent to the gallows on December 2, 1859, only three days before the congressional session opened in Washington. John Brown may have failed to achieve his intended goal, but he had nonetheless succeeded in transferring the national political focus in the sectional crisis from the issue of slavery’s potential expansion into faraway western territories to the more basic issue that had always lain just beneath the veil of the territorial issue: the fate of slavery

Mennonites, Amish, and the American Civil War (review)

Old-Time Breweries: Academic and Breweriana Historians

In the years between the Civil War and National Prohibition, Ohio brewed more beer than almost any other state. In 1880 it ranked third, behind only New York and Pennsylvania. Although by 1915 it had fallen to fifth place, it still brewed more beer than Anheuser-Busch’s home state of Missouri. But while Ohio’s breweries flourished, temperance and saloon cultures clashed in the Buckeye State, a result of a volatile mixture of “Yankee” and immigrant ethnicities. For instance, in 1872 when Cleveland authorities tried to impose Sunday closing of all businesses that sold alcohol, “the flag was hauled down to half-mast and wrapped in mourning” at Lied’s Garden, a favorite drinking place for German Americans.1 Historians have shown how Ohio played an important role in the temperance agitation from the 1870s to the 1930s. In 1874, Ohio villages and small towns constituted the stronghold of the women’s temperance crusade. Cleveland was the site of the national convention that organized the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union in 1874. The headquarters of the Anti-Saloon League of America was located at Westerville, near Columbus, and Akron was the birthplace of Alcoholics Anonymous. In the mid-1980s academic historians published several well-known books that describe and analyze