On March 11th, less than a month ago, the most potent earthquake that Japan has ever recorded struck off the coast of the Oshika Peninsula. The 9.0-magnitude quake generated a massive tsunami that has (as of this writing) resulted in over twelve thousand dead and over fifteen thousand still missing. Nuclear power plants at Fukushima have undergone partial meltdown, and the radiation level in Tokyo rose precipitously through March. The devastation challenges our ability to comprehend.
When the United States suffered a terrorist attack in 2001, leveling the World Trade Center, one of the frequent comments was how much the destruction felt like a movie. New York had been destroyed on film before – most recently in Jerry Bruckheimer’s CGI adventure Armageddon – so the images of collapsing skyscrapers and panicking civilians weren’t new. And yet the reality of the horror made the cinematic depiction of that horror seem almost quaint. Real explosions don’t blossom in slo-mo.
Similarly, Japan has been destroyed many times in science fiction, particularly in anime. While the future of Japan following the Tohoku Quake may be nothing like the futures depicted in fiction, it may be worth revisiting these stories anyway. Written in times of safety, these anime illustrate the fears that Japan had regarding its future.
Remaking
I’m probably the least knowledgeable on anime on the OTI staff. But I can think of at least two popular anime that were set in a Tokyo rebuilt after some epic disaster: Bubblegum Crisis and Akira.
Bubblegum Crisis, the less famous of the two, is set in 2032, seven years after a tremendous earthquake levels Tokyo. Tokyo has been rebuilt as Mega-Tokyo, a geographically and economically divided urban sprawl. Freeways wind between skyscrapers and arcologies. Corporate enclaves glitter against the night, while the poor huddle in the shadows.
Mega-Tokyo is served by Boomers, powerful androids built by the GENOM Corporation. Boomers have an unfortunate habit of going berserk – bad news for the occasional domestic servant, worse news for military models with heat rays built into their chests. Mega-Tokyo’s “AD Police” unit is hard-pressed to deal with threats of this caliber. Fortunately, there’s a team of power-armored vigilantes, the “Knight Sabers,” who have plenty of firepower.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lz2ae32lc0
Bubblegum Crisis is the child of an odd couple: Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and Walter Hill’s Streets of Fire. It blends rock-and-roll attitude with existential angst. Many of the Boomers are drones, ready to be blown up, but some of them just want to be human. There’s also exploration of how the corporate world can chew up a person’s spirit, and the destructive ambition that results when military and industrial interests unite.
Tokyo in the 80s was already becoming pretty dense. But to recreate the Blade Runner look, the producers had to add even more density. Arcologies the size of city blocks, soaring towers and wrecked slums. Hence the need to wipe the map clean. Hence the Second Kanto Quake.
The Great Kanto Quake of 1923 may not have been the most severe earthquake in Japan’s history (on the Richter scale), but it was the most deadly. Over one hundred thousand people died. Fires swept through Tokyo and the surrounding cities. In the times of hardship and deprivation that followed, suspicion fell on ethnic minorities, with hundreds of Chinese, Koreans and Okinawans being killed.
So for Bubblegum Crisis to call the disaster that levels Tokyo in 2025 “the Second Great Kanto Quake” is to open with a high bid. To a Japanese audience, such a reference would evoke death, suffering and panic. In the aftermath of such an event, it would make sense for Mega-Tokyo to be an unrecognizable metropolis.
Bubblegum Crisis never really caught on in Japan, and, due to its original run of only 8 episodes, had a pretty small following in America. Akira, on the other hand, did not have that problem. Widely considered one of the most epic animated movies ever produced – in either hemisphere, in any decade, on any subject – it was the watershed moment that made anime popular in the West.
Akira begins thirty years after Tokyo is vaporized by an atomic explosion, heralding the start of World War III. As the story unfolds – do I really need to post a SPOILER ALERT for Akira? on this site, of all sites? anyway – it turns out that the explosion was caused not by an atomic bomb, but by the psychic energy of a young boy named Akira. Akira is locked away by the government until a gang member named Tetsuo is discovered, who appears to have some psychic connection with Akira. Government scientists kidnap Tetsuo and experiment on him, giving him tremendous psychic power. The ensuing battle between Tetsuo and the army causes tremendous damage to Neo-Tokyo.
While Bubblegum Crisis touches on power and corruption, Akira treats with it in much greater detail. The destruction that necessitated the rebuilding of Tokyo into Neo-Tokyo is not the result of a natural disaster, but the result of government experiments with the mind of a young boy. It wasn’t an atomic bomb at all (which is fortunate, given the Nuclear Weapons Taboo in anime), but a frustrated child. When a similar power is unlocked in Tetsuo, his frustration causes almost as much damage to Neo-Tokyo thirty years later.
In both Bubblegum Crisis and Akira, a disaster unmakes the familiar Tokyo. A new Tokyo is built to replace it. This new Tokyo has a much larger corporate presence than the old – which, by the 80s, was already pretty corporate. In fact, visible power structures like skyscrapers, fortress-buildings and neon lights dominate the landscape. Everywhere, the message is clear. Out with the old and traditional; in with the new and glossy.
Rebuilding
The death toll following the Tohoku Quake has been substantial. The damage to Japan’s infrastructure has also been severe. The loss of several nuclear reactors has not only threatened Japan’s environment with radiation, but has limited Japan’s power supply. Streets and buildings have been wrecked from tsunami waves. The loss of life is tragic; the loss of the ability to rebuild may compound the tragedy.
Yet some people see opportunity.
“If you look, this is clearly going to add complexity to Japan’s challenge of economic recovery,” [Larry] Summers said. “It may lead to some temporary increments, ironically, to GDP, as a process of rebuilding takes place.”
After the Kobe earthquake in 1995 Japan actually gained some economic strength due to the process of reconstruction, he added.
That’s Larry Summers, former economic adviser to President Barack Obama, on CNBC. He expressed a hope that the effort of rebuilding after the Tohoku Quake and Tsunami might lead to a renewed period of economic growth. He cites Japan’s rebuilding after the 1995 Kobe quake as an example.
This kind of thinking has its roots in the economic philosophy of John Maynard Keynes.
Without putting the audience to sleep, Keynes believed that aggregate demand was what drove economic growth. Inadequate demand was what led to unemployment. Therefore, in times of high unemployment, it made sense to take artificial measures to stimulate demand. That idea was captured and expanded in the 60s by the “Neo-Keynesian” school. Their suggestions that deficit spending could help boost a nation out of an economic crisis caught fire amongst policy makers. The notion of “economic stimulus” remains popular to this day, on both the right and left wings of politics.
Sure, this looks bad now. But the GDP potential is tremendous.
Keynes wouldn’t cheer the destruction brought about by the Tohoku Quake (neither, I should note, does Summers). But he would probably say that the rebuilding phase would spur demand in Japan’s industrial base. This would lead to increased jobs, increased investment and greater economic growth.
This sounds plausible. It’s the sort of thing that’s said about lesser crises, like the 2008 credit market collapse and the resulting American bailout. The alternative – the “austerity plans” that our European readers are probably getting a taste of – are monumentally unpopular. And it has the advantage of meeting a crisis proactively and with hope.
But if spurred economic demand will result from rebuilding Japan, what might a rebuilt Japan look like?
Revisioning
Why do cities exist?
Cities exist to allow for the convenient exchange of resources – in the form of labor, intellectual property or regular ol’ goods and materials. In ancient Mesopotamia and the Indus Valley, the most important resource was water: proximity to a river or spring. As agriculture and trade began to spread, cities began to spread other resources: finished goods, imported luxuries, skilled labor, food. Walls, roads and irrigation were built as needed.
Every city in history grew to its size because people found it worth their time to move there. London gets a lot of rain and fog due to its geographic location. But its proximity to the Thames River makes it a hub of trade and industry. People have flocked to London for hundreds of years, making it one of the densest cities in the world.
Outside of games like Civilization, no one ever builds a city by picking a spot at random and saying, “There.” And when people try, the result often falls apart (see Dubai). Watch what happens to a city when its primary resource – such as manufacturing in Detroit, or credit in Las Vegas – is threatened.
Cities arise organically. People move to a city because they need what that city has to offer. They invest in a city because they think the city will be productive. This growth is not random – existing power structures will define what goes where. But that definition doesn’t always work.
It’s possible to choke off a city’s growth, or to build it in unnatural and useless directions. James Howard Kunstler gets particularly cranky about this sort of thing, as epitomized in this biting, funny, depressing and informative TED talk from 2007:
Kunstler’s talking about suburban sprawl primarily. But he also talks about some dense spots of urban misallocation, like Boston’s City Hall. Boston’s City Hall Plaza in Government Center is possibly the ugliest building in America. It’s a malformed concrete block that sits at the center of a vast, shallow plaza. It discourages lingering. Everyone who approaches it has their hackles up; everyone who exits it is in a hurry to get away.
Kunstler’s concern in this TED talk is “places not worth caring about.” He’s concerned about the language of architecture – what do the buildings in a public space say to its residents? And architecture has a language, the same way that dance, painting, music and writing do.
What happens when a bunch of foreigners take over a country whose language they don’t speak?
In order for Japan to recover from this tremendous disaster, it will need a substantial influx of foreign capital. People will need to invest in Japan. Japan cannot rebuild on its own, not with the damage it’s suffered to its infrastructure. “Buy when there’s blood on the streets,” goes the (somewhat unpleasant) saying.
But foreign investment always makes people skittish.
Americans have been leery of foreign investment for years. There was massive concern about the Japanese “buying up America” in the late 80s and early 90s, typified in the Michael Crichton novel (and Wesley Snipes / Sean Connery film) Rising Sun. When America’s net imports exceed its net exports – which is the case as of this writing – it’s always presented as a “trade deficit,” not a “credit surplus.” In reality, though, it means the same thing: America has a lot of foreign countries (such as China) willing to invest in it, not as many willing to buy its products.
Japan has always looked like a country ready to embrace Western ideals and Western investments. Ever since the Meiji Restoration, Japan’s embrace of capitalism has been almost quicker and more thorough than America’s own. But the relationship hasn’t always been fruitful. Sarari-man civilization has its discontents: cubbyhole hotels, depression and suicide, disaffected youth.
Bubblegum Crisis and Akira reflect this dissatisfaction with foreign investment. In the face of a disaster, corporations and governments step in to rebuild Tokyo and make it more productive than before. But in doing so, they replace public spaces that had centuries of tradition with monolithic buildings. These massive arcologies each have one purpose – to house and employ the workers of a particular corporation. If you’re not part of that corporate culture – if you’re a runaway “Sexaroid” Boomer, perhaps, or a motorcycle gang – where do you go? What part of the city is yours?
Does this mean that we shouldn’t send money to Japan – whether as charity or as investment? No. But it means that Japan has long been afraid of the effect that foreign investment can have on its culture. Thousands of homes, shops and public spaces were swept away by the Tohoku tsunami. Japan does not have the infrastructure, or the credit, to replace them. This means that the decision as to what goes into those vacant spaces will be made by government institutions or international corporations.
Will those monolithic powers have Japan’s best interests at heart? We must hope so. But anime fans have reason to be worried.
