| Popis: |
This project explores three distinct sets of Japanese and American postwar popular culture texts to demonstrate that there is a continuum of Japanese cultural interest in pacifism through resistance narratives in speculative fiction. Through close readings of Godzilla, Mobile Suit Gundam and Akira, and Metal Gear Solid, which I compare with similar American texts, my project positions its objects of study as points of cultural resistance to hegemonic pro-American cultural products. Each text produces commentary on Japanese-American relations with specific respect to nuclear policy and military expansionism. Significant Japanese cultural producers have grown increasingly critical of Japanese-American cooperation since the end of the Second World War. These producers have conveyed a series of dire warnings to Japanese and American power-holders alike. This project broadly defines the postwar relationship between America and its sociopolitical vassal Japan as dually cooperative and oppressive by examining key points of nuclear, political, cultural, and technological convergence. |
