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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2025
As the essays in this collection suggest, representations of war are varied and memories of war are expressed in many different ways. Apart from works that seek to represent the Asia-Pacific War directly, there are also examples of popular culture that refer to the conflict obliquely or even use fantasy or science fiction scenarios as a metaphor or allegory to address the historical conflict and its postwar ramifications.
[1] Lisa Yoneyama. Hiroshima Traces: Time, Space and the Dialectics of Memory. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999) 27.
[2] Ibid, 27
[3] Ibid, 28.
[4] I am indebted to two former students for my initial interest in the Yamato series. Karline McLain's paper “Remembering the Past, Recasting Identity” linked the sinking of the Yamato to the atomic bombings while Eric Carmen's presentation on the original battleship Yamato made me aware of how accurate was the anime version of the historical event and inspired me to explore reasons behind this obsessive attention to verisimilitude.
[5] See “All Aboard to the Land of Dreams,” an interview with Ishiguro Noboru, one of the Yamato directors, for an account of the beginning of Yamato fandom. (Animerica, Vol. 3, No. 8, 1995), 7 and 9. Ironically, the Yamato series, renamed Star Blazers and edited for an American audience, is also considered to be the initial inspiration behind American anime fandom. See Robert Fenelon, “Talking about my Star Blazers Generation,” (Animerica, Vol. 3, No.8, 1995), 8 and 10, and Walter Amos, “The Star Blazers You Didn't See” (Animerica, Vol. 3, No. 8, 1995), 10.
[6] Animerica Editorial Board, “Yamato Forever,” (Animerica, Vol. 3, No. 8, 1995), 6.
[7] More so than either Star Wars or Star Trek, space itself becomes a character in the Yamato series since much of the action takes place while the ship is on interstellar voyages (beautifully rendered in lush, dreamlike imager), rather than on planets. The fascination with the element of space may connect with the modern Japanese consciousness of the Pacific Ocean, which surrounds their island nation, and more specifically, with the crucial role the Pacific in both the successes and failures of World War II. For a discussion of the Pacific in Japanese science fiction see Thomas Schnellbacher, “Has the Empire Sunk Yet? -The Pacific in Japanese Science Fiction,” in Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 29, Part 3, 2002, 382-396.
[8] Yoshida Mitsuru, “The ‘Space Cruiser Yamato’ Generation,” (Japan Echo, Vol. VI. No. 1, 1979), 82.
[9] Yoshikuni Igarashi. Bodies of Memory. (Princeton, N.J. Princeton University Press, 2000), 167.
[10] Marilyn Ivy. Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1995), 14.
[11] See the discussion by Yoshida Mitsuru, “The ‘Space Cruiser Yamato’ Generation,” op cit., 85-87.
[12] Ibid., 86.
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