[Disclaimer: This post has spoilers for The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, Dragonball Z and Hana-bi]
A good friend of mine, Dan Gidion, runs a blog discussing localisation issues with games and anime when transported from Japan to the West. His last piece (link at the bottom of the post) focused on this issue of self-transformation in storytelling and narratives between Japan and the West. He uses four examples of Western transformation: Cinderella, Snow White, Spiderman and the Frog Prince. All begin with nothing and live wretched lives; in an instant their fortunes are transformed and they become royalty or superheroes. The path towards a better life here is fortuitous, granted by serendipity. Dan contrasts this with the Japanese anime Dragonball Z, where the main characters must work and train hard in order to defeat their foes. They are weak at first and no match for their opponents. With hard-work and self-sacrifice however they eventually, just, topple the obstacle before them. Whilst the Western narrative grants those troubled but with pure hearts the life they deserve; the Japanese one demands great toil to resolve ones shortcomings.
Dan concludes for the Western narrative that hope is always around the corner that something will turn things around for us. The Japanese narrative posits that one is worthless without hard-work and self-inflicted hardship to become what one desires. The Western narrative then, to use my own terminology, lets us all believe we’re unique snowflakes and beautiful no matter what and deserving of a better fate; the Japanese one that without sacrifice we are nothing.
I do not necessarily disagree with this conclusion; I merely wish to add to it. One thing I am immediately struck by with the Western narrative is the concept of placing one’s fate outside of one’s hands. Spiderman did not improve his lot through endeavour but by fortune. Cinderella became a princess through chance and lived happily ever after. Charlie’s visit to the chocolate factory is another great example. The concept of striving for a better position in life is not even considered, it is as if such a thing is not possible: all one can do is hope for lady luck.
There is also the fact that these rags-to-riches stories are not exactly humble. These characters did not just get a better life for themselves; they attained positions that it is suggested most would envy (Spiderman is perhaps an exception here). It seems to suggest that those of pure heart are worthy of the highest accolades and gifts and that merely being good will be enough to grant them to you.
I am struck here by the relation towards Christianity in my analysis. Heaven is for those of purity and those who are pure are usually portrayed as the poor. Even though their life is lived in abject misery, their prize awaits once one leaves the corporeal realm and re-enter the Kingdom of Heaven. These stories, to a large extent, make Heaven in earth and grant those who ‘deserve’ it the riches they would have to wait until their death for.
A bastardised reading of Nietzsche can be applied here. The poor for Nietzsche took Christianity to their hearts as realising they would never be able to enjoy life like the upper classes, they made the poor magnanimous and noble of heart. Whilst the rich may live their lives in pleasure today, the poor’s reward awaits beyond. Such stories then seem to serve, through this reading, the purpose of representing the attainment of happiness for the deserving subject who is free of the evils of coveting power and control (Spiderman certainly fits into this last point).
Before I deal with the Japanese then, I would like to explore the concept of the ultimate sacrifice between cultures. Let me use The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises as my examples. In both films the main characters (Tony Stark and Bruce Wayne) face the dilemma of sacrificing themselves for the greater good, which they both dutifully do. Both however survive their sacrifices to see the next day. There is a difference between the two however. Tony’s sacrifice was made with the expectation that he was to die. Bruce’s was a ruse in order to appear dead, to leave Batman as a legend and an idol: Bruce wanted out and faked his demise. The emptiness of this gesture in its transcendent sense is not explored by the somewhat overhyped director of the recent Batman trilogy. As a narrative, even Tony’s rescue after his heroic charge into death, it reveals that Western culture expects its heroes to survive to live happily ever after.
This contrasts sharply with the Japanese attitude towards sacrifice. The anime Dragonball Z features the main protagonist Goku usually die in his battles against evil only to be brought back to life to die defeating evil the next time. The film Battle Royale features the character Kawada who killed his girlfriend in the last battle royale in order to survive. Kawada proceeds to save the leading couple by placing himself in mortal danger in order to prevent them going through what he did: he subsequently succumbs to his injuries at the end of the film, happy that he has found inner peace. The film Hana-bi (another Kitano classic) features a burnt-out cop hold up a bank and murder mobsters in order to give his wife, dying of leukaemia, a few transitory moments of joy in life before her cancer and his crimes catch up with both of them: the ending of the film heavily suggests the character’s suicides. In all these cases, and there are countless more in Japanese culture, the sacrifice to find oneself or to save the day is real.
The act of placing oneself for sacrifice seems to be enough for Western audiences: the fairy-tale continues where the virtuous do not die and the pure get what they deserve, divinely if necessary. The Japanese cannot bring themselves to fake such happy endings it seems. Why though? Despite my knowledge of Japanese culture, it would be difficult to say with anything but conjecture. My conjecture however would be this. Japanese culture is wrapped up in the ephemeral, in the transitory nature of all things. Unlike, to bastardise Nietzsche again, the desire of the ancient Greeks to escape nihilism through appeal to the Apollonian, the Japanese seem to consider life as fleeting and all one’s efforts may only ever produce a moment of perfection.
Whilst in Japan I observed the cherry blossoms and wondered why the Japanese were so keen on something that has aesthetic beauty but for a few days a year. Perhaps it is this desire to create something beautiful that will soon be gone, lost like tears in rain, which leads Japanese narratives to be sombre in their storytelling; to require hard work and perhaps the ultimate sacrifice to achieve a moment’s peace in a world in a continual state of flux. Whether this is accurate or reflected within the Shinto-Buddhism which underlies Japanese morality and society is something I could not comment on. The melancholy-tinged and ephemeral nature of Japanese storytelling though perhaps does represent the antithesis of the Christian tradition which posits eternal joy for all. In this way it could be considered to defeat the life-denying tendency Nietzsche identified in the Abrahamic offshoot and leave life as the experience of the forlorn, with beauty being the few moments when one can transcend this state.
Dan’s excellent piece can be found here: http://down-the-local.blogspot.jp/2013/07/transformers-culture-in-disguise.html. His leftfield blog covers his views on how games created by and for people raised in one culture are changed and adapted for people in a different culture.
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