Category: Media
Kirishima: Reflections on Humanity and Nihility
The Kirishima Thing is a 2012 Japanese film, which was awarded Excellence Film at the 67th Mainichi Film Awards as well as Best Director at the 37th Hochi Film Awards in 2012. The film won Japan Academy Prize for Picture of the Year as well as received several nominations. It has been screened worldwide, including …
The Internal Other: Abjection, Victimhood and Ideological Transformation in Post-War Japanese Film
This paper considers post-war Japanese film as a lens for understanding social conditions during this period. Invoking Kristeva’s theory of abjection, Butler’s understanding of ‘unlivable’ zones of subjectivity and Žižek’s contributions to the concepts of community and jouissance, this paper proposes that this period in Japan’s early post-war history was marked by various forms of …
Futuristic Reflection on the Aftermath of Humanity: Pluto, A Graphic Novel
Urasawa Naoki’s graphic novel Pluto (2003-2009), set in a virtual post-human world in which human and robots neighbor each other, raises questions about humanity, both ontological and epistemological. Pluto is based on and adapted from legendary Japanese cartoonist Osamu Tezuka’s manga Astro Boy series. In Pluto, 5 out of 7 ‘greatest robots on earth’ are …