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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
This essay provides a critical analysis of the aesthetic ideology of “Gomanism” in the manga of Kobayashi Yoshinori (b. 1953), particularly Yasukuniron (On Yasukuni, 2005) and Tennoron (On the Emperor, 2009), in order to flesh out the implications of the author's “revisionist” approach to Japanese religion, politics and history.
1 Parts of this essay have been previously published under the title: “‘Land of Kami, Land of the Dead’: Paligenesis and the Aesthetics of Religious Revisionism in Kobayashi Yoshinori's Neo-Gomanist Manifesto: On Yasukuni,” in Manga and the Representation of Japanese History, edited by Roman Rosenbaum, pp. 189-216. London: Routledge, 2012. Special thanks to Routledge for permission to republish this chapter in its present, significantly revised form.
2 Kobayashi Yoshinori, Shin gomanizumu sengen special: Yasukuniron. Tokyo: Gentosha, 2005, p. 12. All manga images that appear in this essay are “quoted” for purposes of analysis; all copyrights are held by the original artist and publishers.
3 Ibid., p. 7.
4 Ibid.; these facts (save the mention of the Britons) are all noted in the “overnote” to page 7.
5 Ibid., p. 5.
6 As Sharon Kinsella notes, “neo-conservative” seinen manga as a whole tend to rely on a realistic and objective narrative that effectively masks their ideological content; Sharon Kinsella, Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2000, pp. 112-113. While this applies to Kobayashi, who relies heavily on realistic (as well as photographic) images, it is important to note that Gomanism also employs caricature (Figures 4 and 5) and symbolism (Figure 6), as well as a form of kitschy sentimentalism that verges on “fantasy” (Figure 2). Also, whereas Kinsella critiques neo-conservative manga for (deceptively) striving to eliminate the authorial function, this would be hard to apply to Kobayashi, who fairly revels in making himself (as K) the hero of his own works.
7 Kobayashi, Yasukuniron, p. 12.
8 Throughout Yasukuniron, and the Gomanist oeuvre more generally, Kobayashi paints a portrait of himself as an astute, angry, but otherwise ordinary middle-aged everyman.
9 To Kobayashi's credit, he does not, like many commentators, avoid the trickier religious aspects of the Yasukuni problem; indeed, these become a centerpiece for his argument about the “criminal ignorance” (hanzaiteki muchi) of politicians, scholars and the mass media. Of course, much of what he says is either incorrect or grossly oversimplified.
10 Ibid., p. 6, emphasis in original.
11 See Matsumoto Ken'ichi, Mikuriya Takashi and Sakamoto Kazuya, “War Responsibility and Yasukuni Shrine,” Japan Echo 32:5, 2005, p. 26.
12 Quoted in Takahashi Tetsuya, Yasukuni mondai. Tokyo: Chikuma Shinsho, 2005, p. 74.
13 Kobayashi, Yasukuniron, p. 89.
14 Ibid., p. 6.
15 Ibid., pp. 13-14.
16 As shown by Takahashi Tetsuya, this way of thinking about the Japanese—as a single “we” that has lost its prior unity—continues to play a role in shaping debates about history and culture. Takahashi takes critic Kato Norihiro to task for extending this “nationalist” assumption, even while presenting himself as a “moderate.” Unsurprisingly, Kobayashi has attacked Kato from the other direction, accusing him of a “masochistic” approach to history (an accusation which is also applied to Takahashi's own Yasukuni mondai, mentioned several times within the pages of Yasukuniron); see Takahashi, Yasukuni mondai, pp. 194-197.
17 Prior to his “official” visit to Yasukuni on 15 August 1985, Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro explained that he would not follow the “traditional” Shinto practice of two bows, two claps, and one bow but would simply make a single bow before the honden. According to K, in thus bowing to left-wing media pressure, Nakasone inaugurated the sad legacy of the Prime Minister's “private” vs. “public” visits to Yasukuni; Kobayashi, Yasukuniron, pp.32-35.
18 Ibid., pp. 15-22.
19 Ibid., pp. 16-19.
20 Ibid., p. 21.
21 The idea of misunderstandings of Yasukuni based on cultural differences regarding the afterlife, particularly with respect to Chinese versus Japanese views of death, is fairly common. Prime Minister Koizumi and Foreign Minister Machimura Nobutaka both raised the same point in response to foreign criticism of Koizumi's 2004 visit to Yasukuni; see Takahashi, Yasukuni mondai, pp. 152-153.
22 See Klaus Antoni, “Yasukuni-Jinja and Folk Religion: The Problem of Vengeful Spirits.” Asian Folklore Studies 47, 1988, p. 133; also Takahashi, Yasukuni mondai, pp. 58-59.
23 See, e.g., Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanee History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002.
24 I have borrowed this term from Takahashi Tetsuya; see Takahashi Tetsuya, “Japanese Neo-Nationalism: A Critique of Kato Norihiro's ‘After the Defeat’ Discourse,” in R. Calichman, ed., Contemporary Japanese Thought. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, p. 205.
25 Roger Griffin, Roger, The Nature of Fascism. London: Pinter, 1991, p. xi.
26 Kobayashi, Yasukuniron, p. 146.
27 See Nelly Naumann, “The State Cult of the Nara and Early Heian Periods,” in J. Breen and M. Teeuwen, eds, Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami. London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 54-55.
28 The notion of death as “pollution” (kegare)-as one finds, for example, in the Kojiki—seems worlds away from Yasukuni theology, which is premised on death (for the emperor/state) as the highest act of nobility; indeed, as a virtual act of transcendence. And yet, even after the Restoration, Hirata School loyalists within the newly reconstituted Jingikanwere appalled by the Okuni faction's support for “Shinto funerals”; see Helen Hardacre, Shinto and the State, 1868-1988. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989, p. 36.
29 Brian Bocking, “Changing Images of Shinto: Sanja Takusen or the Three Oracles,” in J. Breen and M. Teeuwen, eds, Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami. London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 167-185.
30 The exception is several panels on page 177, in which K “rebuts” the misunderstanding about the emperor as a living “god,” and points out (fancifully; see Tim Barrett, “Shinto and Taoism in Early Japan,” in J. Breen and M. Teeuwen, eds, Shinto in History: Ways of the Kami. London: Routledge, 2000, pp. 13-31) that the term tenno was deliberately chosen to make the Japanese emperor equivalent to the Chinese emperor, thus asserting Japan's “independence” from the Middle Kingdom. Of note here is K's reference to the Kojiki and Nihonshoki as “fables” (monogatari) that the Japanese people have the “magnanimity” (doryo) to hold onto, despite their “marvelous” (kisekiteki) character. This is another reflection of the modernist character of Kobayashi's work.
31 Of course, “empty,” as any East Asian Buddhist would know, need not imply powerless or ineffective; see Takashi Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996, p. 24.
32 See especially chapter 17 of Tennoron: “Shina no odo, Nihon no nodo,” pp. 277-300.
33 In chapter 17, K blames the bloody legacy of Chinese imperial history on the doctrine of the Mandate of Heaven as established by Mencius, according to which “Heaven” (Ch. Tian) grants favor upon a particular Emperor—and can remove that favor if and when he is not acting with “benevolence.” This, K rightly notes, was frequently employed as a justification for “regime change,” and was not an idea that found favor in the transmission of Confucianism to ancient Japan.
34 Kobayashi, Tennoron, p. 154.
35 Ibid., pp. 154-57.
36 Ibid., p. 160.
37 Ibid., p. 161.
38 Ibid., p. 164.
39 Ibid., p. 168.
40 Ibid., p. 170.
41 Ibid., p. 173.
42 Ibid., p. 186.
43 Ibid., p. 37.
44 Ibid., p.. 195.
45 Ibid., p.. 186.
46 See Murakami Shigeyoshi, Kokka Shinto. Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 1970, pp. 216-222; also see the Jinja Honcho website: http://www.jinjahoncho.or.jp/, accessed 12 July 2012. Thanks to John Breen for bringing to my attention the different portrayals of Shinto on the English and Japanese versions of the website.
47 See Nishikawa Nagao, “Two Interpretations of Japanese Culture,” in D. Denoon, M. Hudson, G. McCormack and T. Morris-Suzuki, eds, Multicultural Japan: Palaeolithic to Postmodern. London: Cambridge University Press, 1996, p. 248. Also see Takahashi's critique of Eto's use of “culture” (bunka) to mask Yasukuni's political agenda; Takahashi, Yasukuni mondai, pp. 173-178.
48 See Kevin Doak's argument with respect to a postwar continuation of “fascism unseen”; Kevin M. Doak, “Fascism Seen and Unseen: Fascism as a Problem in Cultural Representation,” in A. Tansman, ed., The Culture of Japanese Fascism. Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2009, pp. 33-34.
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