AKIRA and the Hibakusha

Rating: Null/10 (1 August 2009)

Otomo Katsuhiro's AKIRA (1988) is an animated confrontation with various postwar anxieties that have remained repressed and forgotten in the midst of contemporary Japan. On a surface level it might be difficult to detect such anxieties in AKIRA; however, whence juxtaposed with a clearer understanding of "what happened" in the years following 1945, Katsuhiro's masterpiece can be realized as a vivid rendition of submerged history. AKIRA gives viewers insights into these postwar anxieties with a covert emphasis on the plight of the Hibakusha.
AKIRA opens with the destruction of Tokyo. A flashing white semicircle engulfs the city, an occurrence connected to World War Three. From the beginning of the film, war is placed at the forefront in remembrance of Hiroshima and Nagasaki preventing viewers from overlooking the destructive memory of the Atom Bomb. This powerful, lasting, and retrospective image introduces the viewer to the world of AKIRA.
The mutant children of AKIRA can be looked at in light of the fated Hibakusha (Hibakusha = "Atomic Bomb Victim"). The Hibakusha were grossly disfigured by the atomic blast and those not directly affected fell ill to latent radiation poisoning. Due to fears of infection, the Japanese masses rejected the Hibakusha as lepers, aberrations that should have died. It is interesting, though, in such a postwar environment, Japan took up the faÃ§ade of The Victim of WWII, replacing the aggressive political overtone that previously dominated the country's attitude towards war due largely in part to the incredible nature of Hiroshima/Nagasaki. As The Victim, one might think Japan would have embraced the Hibakusha since the Hibakusha were the direct victims of the bomb; but no -- the Hibakusha were sloughed aside as nothing more then monstrous ciphers.
The understanding of the Hibakusha helps the viewer wholly understand the mutant children of AKIRA. The children are grotesque in appearance with white hair and purplish-gray wrinkled skin that looks as if it is dripping, resembling the keloid scars that plagued many Hibakusha. The children wield special powers and have special insights into the entity known as Akira, similar to the "special knowledge" of the Hibakusha given their experience of first-handedly witnessing the atomic blast, an experience the bulk of humanity can never entirely comprehend. What is more, the mutant children have an ambiguous social position -- on one hand they are embraced by the government, exploited for their powers, and on the other, feared and treated as Other. In like manner, although the Hibakusha were recognized as the true Japanese victims, living representatives of war-product, they were rejected, hated.
Near the end of AKIRA, the protagonist, Tetsuo, comes across the remnants of the entity Akira in a secluded spherical laboratory beneath the Olympic Stadium finding nothing more than dissected organs kept in jars -- no body, just parts. This image of the dissected Akira reflects the fate of the Hibakusha after they died as scientists dissected their bodies to better understand the effects of radiation poisoning. Although the affiliation with the mutant children as Hibakusha might not be readily apparent, the image of the dissected Akira as Hibakusha cannot be avoided. Katsuhiro draws from historic reality in constructing these images and does not allow the viewer to overlook a realization of the Hibakusha as the shameful treatment in which postwar Japan received the Hibakusha is confronted despite a collective social desire to forget and submerge such a treatment.
Animation imbues Katsuhiro with a forum that allows him to depict a fantastical reality with impossible individuals. His statements regarding WWII and the Hibakusha would not have been as pointed if depicted absent of animation. By using the unreality of animation to translate history, Katsuhiro successfully comments on the massive human error of 1945 and the years that followed.
***The history included in this analysis, alongside the specific insight regarding the mutant children, is taken from Professor Aaron Kerner's lecture on AKIRA which took place on 4/8/8 in CINE 401 (National Cinema Japan) at San Francisco State University.