Survive Style Cinema The aim of this paper is to look at some of the ideas proposed by the Japanese cultural

critic Uno Tsunehiro in his 2008 book Zeronendai no Sozoryoku to see how productive this is for understanding contemporary Japanese cinema. The actually translation of the book title would be something like `Imaginary of the Noughties` but I think I will continue to refer to zeronendai instead of noughties - mainly because it noughties sounds too corny. The book collects a series of magazine essays written by Uno between 2007 and 2008 in which he tried to demarcate a paradigm shift between Japanese popular culture of the 1990s (and particularly the period between 1995 and 2000) and that of the zeronendai. Although he draws on other critics such as Azuma Hiroki, I think that this is the most thorough and systematic attempt to identify such a proposed cultural shift. In creating such a strict schism between the two periods, Zeronendai no Sozoryoku is also a self-consciously polemical text taking to task those critics and cultural producers still recycling cultural ideas from the 1990s. In the first part of the paper I will simply try to illustrate some of the differences between the cultural imaginary of 1990s Japan (associated with the term sekai-kei) and that of the zeronendai (associated with the term sabibu-kei or sabibu-kan) - It should be noted, however, that although Uno mentions many films, this is not a book specifically about Japanese cinema but about trends in Japanese popular culture more generally. With so many of the films mentioned actually adaptations of earlier manga or novels, in the second part of the paper I will try to think about some of the other implications of this schism for contemporary Japanese cinema. Here I will consider the relevance of these concepts of sekai-kei and sabibu-kei for the work of directors using original material such as Aoyama Shinji and Kurosawa Kiyoshi. With Kurosawa and Aoyama, I suggest, still tending towards a sekai-kei rather than a sabibu-kei logic, I question whether this dichotomy is not based simply on a temporal shift but also a difference in philosophical approach. First Part So I will begin by trying to address the question of what is sekai-kei. It is interesting, however, that English-language texts using the concept just keep the term (sekai-kei) without offering a translation. I think you could translate it as something like worldrelation (world sekai) (kei relation) and then sabibu-kei would literally be survive-relation using the English word survive as a loan word. In the title and abstract I think I used suffix style to sound flashier. Sekai-kei is also not something invented by Uno but rather a widespread concept in contemporary Japanese sub-culture studies. The paradigmatic example of a sekai-kei text cited by Uno and indeed many other Japanese cultural critics is the animated television series Neon Genesis Evangelion which was broadcast in Japan from October 1995 to March 1996. The series was produced by Gainax studios and directed by Anno Hideaki.

SLIDE NEONGENESIS Anyone catching the first episode (or maybe even just the karaoke-friendly title music) might think this was going to be a straightforward boys science-fiction adventure series. Indeed the series begins with truculent fourteen year-old Ikari Shinji summoned to the headquarters of covert military organisation NERV. Here he finds that his father has been secretly working for the government to develop giant Evangelion robots to combat invading aliens called Angels. Shinji finds that he has now become vital to the world`s survival because he is one of only a select few able to pilot one of the Evangelion robots, all of which are dependent upon forming synapses with humans. (You will be pleased to know that we later find out that the reason Shinji is suitable is because his dead mother`s DNA is in one of the Evangelion which also turn out to be biometric organisms rather than robots) Rather than focussing on either these plot twists or battle sequences, however, most of the series is more concerned with the psychological problems of its many characters. After victory over the Angels, however, the series takes one more turn with the final two episodes focussing on Shinji`s retreat from this earlier position as `pre-destined` saviour of the world into self-absorption and withdrawal. For many critics Shinji`s introspective detachment is emblematic of the decline of socalled grand-narratives (with characters having no `special` place in the world). When the self-doubting Shinji finally decides to participate in the world again (though outside of the demands of either the government or his father) all the other characters magically appear to applaud his decision as if the final episodes or perhaps even the whole series has been an illusory, existential test. SLIDE: NEON GENESIS END What is crucial for Uno, however, is that Shinji nevertheless has a choice available to him either to participate in the world or withdraw from the world. (This kind of withdrawal is also linked to the figure of the hikikomori - those children who live at home with their parents and choose not to work or sometimes go outside). Some kind of example that Uno doesn`t mention that people might be able to relate to is the Bong Joon-Ho sequence from Tokyo! where magical parental money allows the protagonist to stay at home and never go out SLIDE - TOKYO! Now Uno, like many other cultural critics, also sees these cultural texts as expressions of external events from the 1990s, most notably 1) Japan`s failure to recover from the collapse of the bubble economy (also an example of the end of grand narratives) and 2) the Aum cult attack on the Tokyo Metro SLIDE - TIME MAGAZINE AUM Indeed for many Japanese intellectuals the Aum attack was read precisely as a fanatical attempt to find meaning in a post-grand narrative, meaningless world. I think

the Aum attack is really a big a deal in Japanese thought - as much as 9-11 is for the United States - so it turns up a lot in theoretical debates. Now the distinction that Uno wants to make between this cultural imaginary of the 1990s and that of the zeronendai is that this choice between participation and withdrawal is no longer available. Instead there is no option but to participate, or rather the only option is between fighting and dying. This fight also seems unending and also always producers victors and victims. Amongst the paradigmatic zeronendai texts discussed by Uno are Battle Royale (originally a 1999 novel by Takami Koushun before Fukusaku Kinji`s film version) as well as Death Note (originally a manga series by Ohba Tsugumi before being adapted into two films). Uno also discusses the differences between the 1990s Kamen Rider series and 2002`s Kamen Rider series (Kamen Rider - Dragon Rider) and also looks a little bit at my favourite popular culture text at the monment, Liar Game (a manga by Kaitani Shinobu before being adapted into a television series and film) SLIDE - LIAR GAME - one side manga; one side TV/film Now whereas the 1990s cultural imaginary is a response to post-bubble meaninglessness and Aum cult fanaticism, the zeronendai cultural imaginary is linked to the continuing downturn in Japan`s economy and the subsequent neo-liberal reforms enacted as part of former Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro`s so-called structural revolution begun in 2001.. SLIDE KOIZUMI This structural revolution was a long list of deregulating, decentralising and privatising initiatives which saw the sell-off of several state services including road management and the post-office as well as labour reforms greatly increasing the amount of time employees could be used as `temporary workers` before companies were forced to hire them as permanent workers (3 years). This, of course, co-incides with the growth of freetas, net cafe refugees, working poor etc. Uno`s point is that in the context of these neo-liberal economic reforms, you do not have the economic luxury of withdrawal (as in the Bong Joon-Ho sequence) and must instead compete and at the expense of others. In Battle Royale you must kill or be killed. In Liar Game you must win and inflict crippling debt on others or face crippling debt yourself. In his analysis of Death Note, Uno notes how Yagami Light`s attempts to rectify the wrongs of society increasingly become an authoritarian attempt to use the power over life and death not as a means for justice but for self-preservation in the face of police pursuit. Whilst this distinction between sekai-kei and sabibu-kei seems an overly schematic dichotomy, as mentioned at the beginning I think this is a pre-meditated provocation, with Uno also criticising those people still producing or analysing sekai-kei works as

redundantly repeating their past activities. Whilst he himself doesn`t specifically pronounce but I think is implicit in his criticisms is that sekai-kei works are turning their back on the problems of Japan`s neo-liberal reforms. Here something like Liar Game is really interesting as a form of critique of financial capitalism with losing participants effectively losing their working lives to repaying debts lost to the Liar Game Corporation. Ok so all of the films I have mentioned above are actually based on pre-existing source texts such as popular novels, or particularly, manga. So I think one question is to what degree these ideas and distinctions are evident in film productions outside of the manga system. I think we can certainly detect sekai-kei themes in films such as Aoyama Shinji`s Eureka and Eli Eli Lema Sabakutani SLIDE as well as something like Kurosawa Kiyoshi`s Kairo, There are also, of course, 1990s films which were quite obviously responding to the events of the Aum Cult such as Kore-Eda Hirokazu`s Distance and Aoyama`s EM Embalming. SLIDE - DISTANCE If we can see elements of sekai-kei in these works, then what about a Sabibu-kei logic as we move into the zeronendai? I think that we can also find some aspects resembling `survive-kei` in works such as Aoyama`s Sad Vacation, and Kore-eda`s Kuki Ningyou (the latter is a manga adaptation) with perhaps the best-fitting example Kurosawa Kiyoshi`s Tokyo Sonata. SLIDE TOKYO SONATA However, I would still question whether in these examples sabibu-kei is not only mixed-in with sekai-kei, but subordinate to sekai-kei. I`m kind of thinking about the existential endings of Kuki Ningyou and Tokyo Sonata in particular. Whilst the likes of Aoyama and Kurosawa have been known to write in the same journals as sub-cultural theorists such as Azuma Hiroki and now Uno Tsunehiro I have so far struggled to find any points of explicit dialogue between them. As is wellknown, however, both Aoyama and Kurosawa are former students of Tokyo University professor Hasumi Shigehiko whose own work, I suggest, draws more on phenomenological traditions suited to sekai-kei themes than materialist traditions suited to sabibu-kei themes. I am here making a crude distinction between the way in which phenomenology deals with issues of comportment towards the world and towards others as something that precedes ontology or ontogenesis, which are generally starting point for materialist philosophies.

I think one interesting aspect is to think about the way in which Sad Vacation articulates the issue of resistance which I think marks a little bit of a shift from Eureka. SLIDE - SAD VACATION With a narrative philosophising about the priority of singularity above familial relationships (which it shares with Eureka), Sad Vacation ends with a rag-tag bunch of characters connected to the small trucking business at the heart of the story, demonstrating some form of resistance to the threats of a local yakuza gang. In actual fact what we see as the film ends is the image of five of them squaring up to five yakuza. Whilst a resisting oppression, this resistance is framed as a contingent comingtogether of individuals for an isolated cause, rather than, say, worker solidarity against Japanese neo-liberalism (of which I would suggest organised crime is an integrated part). Even if the world in Sad Vacation is one from which it is difficult to withdraw, this presentation of politics is much more like the phenomenological approach evident in Jean-Luc Nancy`s proposal of a fragile community of singularities than a wider form of collective resistance evident, for instance, in various form of Italian thinking about multitudes. Whether this is intentional or not I also read Uno as a materialist for the way in which his text shares aspects with Frederic Jameson, who is well-known in Japan and may well be a hidden interlocutor in this book. Whilst other critics such as Azuma Hiroki propose the end of narrative-based cultural production, Uno`s approach seems to follow Jameson in reading narratives as condensations of the social totality, useful for illustrating many of the totality`s contradictions. Whereas some Japanese Marxist critics such as Karatani Kojin have seen both the proliferation of new media and the fragmentation of any national audience as preventing such a Jamesonian approach, Uno`s analysis of some of these popular multi-media texts seems to suggest that such an approach still has its value. Conclusion In conclusion then I read Zeronendai no Sozoryoku as a provocative attempt to mark a definitive shift in what cultural production should be doing in the face of the redundant repetition of sekai-kei themes. My own feeling, however, is that there is a great deal implicit in this work that Uno does not address. I think, for instance, that he is motivated predominantly by political urgency without thinking too deeply about the theoretical or philosophical questions that this raises about the tension between phenomenological and materialist philosophies. However, I also read Anglo-American versions of Culture Studies as similarly unable to adjudicate between various guises of phenomenology (Derrida, Nancy, Levinas) and various guises of materialism (Foucault, Deleuze, Negri) with no ability, likewise,

to reach any definitive conclusions. This is something that many may see as disabling political practice. Whilst Im not going to attempt to adjudicate on this issue either I think that young UK audiences may find Liar Games zeronendai critique of capitalist debt-economy of more immediate interest than a phenomenology of participation.