From the October 2002 issue of Shousetsu Gendai
An In-depth Conversation between Yoshiyuki Tomino and Harutoshi Fukui

“What it Means to Write About War Today”

VIEWING HISTORY THROUGH A NEUTRAL LENS

Tomino: I’m currently reading The Conscription System and Modern Japan published by Yoshikawa Kobunkan. It’s written by Yoko Kato, and I recently happened to pick up her latest work Modern Japanese History of War from Kodansha. It’s absolutely fascinating. It examines how military systems were established after the Meiji period, covering politics, diplomacy, and military affairs comprehensively. It’s been incredibly educational. Her approach to historical sources is completely fresh, and her perspective is remarkably neutral.

Fukui: What kind of person is she?

Tomino: The Yomiuri newspaper review referred to her as a “young scholar.” She might be the next big thing in historical studies. She’s a female associate professor at Tokyo University.

Fukui: (Looking at her profile) She is quite young.

Tomino: Writers like you, Fukui, should read her work quickly. She shows no bias toward military matters, offers no criticism. She demonstrates how one should approach historical analysis. You know what really opened my eyes in “The Conscription System and Modern Japan”? Do you know what percentage of healthy Japanese men were actually drafted after the conscription system was established?

Fukui: Around 40% during that period, perhaps?

Tomino: Ah, that’s a good guess. It was actually just over 30%. There were apparently far more legal loopholes to avoid conscription than we imagine, which surprised me. When discussing the Meiji era’s adoption of conscription, she methodically arranges historical sources to demonstrate that the samurai class of the Edo period represented the ultimate form of a volunteer system. She explains how everyone, not just the Satsuma and Choshu domains, began to realize that maintaining a volunteer force would bankrupt the nation if they had to provide lifelong care for the soldiers. That’s what led to the shift from a volunteer system to conscription.

Fukui: So they kept the volunteer system just for officer training at military academies, while gathering temporary recruits for the main fighting force.

Tomino: Exactly. With conscription, you just need to maintain the numbers, replacing troops every five or six years, avoiding cumulative salary payments. It’s been a while since I’ve read such lucid writing. It showed me what it really means to properly arrange historical sources. Instead of starting with preconceptions, she maintains an impressively detached view of history.

Fukui: I’ve spent this past year immersed in writing a novel set during the Pacific War, which should be published by year’s end. Gathering historical materials was incredibly challenging. There’s plenty of material, but finding sources written from a neutral perspective is difficult. People tend to see what they want to see, and sometimes their accounts are colored by deep resentment.

Tomino: That’s why, to be honest, I’m a bit concerned about young people reading your novels right away (laughs). I feel they might find it easier to approach if they started from a more neutral perspective.

Fukui: Haha. But that’s probably impossible. Sometimes you need to get your hands dirty first before you can appreciate that kind of perspective. While personal bias in historical sources can be problematic, creative writing actually needs the author’s perspective and convictions to come alive. Don’t you think you need to go through the process of encountering various materials and opinions, deciding what to believe and what to question, before you can truly appreciate the value of a neutral perspective?

Tomino: Hmm, you might be right about that.

THE ABSENCE OF LANGUAGE FOR WAR DISCOURSE

Fukui: We invited you to this interview to discuss the theme of “war.” To be honest, I thought you might have already expressed all your thoughts on this topic, especially given the publication of War and Peace (Tokuma Shoten), which contains interviews with you and various critics.

Tomino: Readers of that book might have sensed this, but I never actively shaped or structured that content, so I haven’t really expressed everything. Initially, it was meant to be just a small booklet in “Animage” magazine about anime and war. It evolved into a book after we talked for nearly ten hours, and someone suggested making it a full publication with a title like War and Peace. But partway through, it felt like we weren’t really discussing war at all, and I could only speak to what I was asked about. So there’s some frustration there. I regret that it became something that seemed to cater too much to the anime generation’s sensibilities.

Fukui: Ah, I see. I thought it was a shame that the target audience seemed too narrow.

Tomino: I feel that because we rarely engage in war discourse from a neutral perspective like Yoko Kato’s, we all end up lacking the proper vocabulary and become unsure of what to say. Perhaps this inability to know what questions to ask when discussing war is a behavior we’ve acquired in the post-war era. Despite being called a democratic era, it seems post-war education taught us it was okay to be self-centered. The moment students grasp certain values or ideologies in high school or university, they tend to cling to them exclusively. And those who received post-war education don’t call this “bias.”

Fukui: They call it “individuality.”

Tomino: Yes. Individuality, identity, and then it leads to egotism. I wonder if we’re truly conscious of or disciplining ourselves about whether we’re positioning ego neutrally or as individuality. Moreover, we’ve reached a point where we must question whether we’ve provided proper education or vocabulary to younger generations about controlling issues of individuality and egotism. And then when “war” becomes the topic…

Fukui: We get extreme, simplistic nationalism on one side and impractical liberal arguments that might just be excuses for continued self-indulgence on the other. Both right and left get packaged as “individuality” and are broadcast by media without proper verification. Especially now, with the post-war half-century pendulum swing, we’re hearing more comments like “maybe conscription would be better after all.” It’s problematic when people accept this as fashion, and equally troubling when weak liberals either overreact or ignore it without providing substantial counter-arguments. There seem to be very few people who can discuss these issues without completely rejecting or accepting the post-war half-century, who can instead use it as a foundation to gain new understanding and reconstruct our perspective.

Tomino: Yes, there are very few indeed.

Fukui: And so, while we’re flooded with curses against the current situation and nostalgia, we still haven’t achieved an integrated discourse on war that’s unique to Japan’s historical experience. I came to meet you today because you’re one of the rare individuals who has portrayed these issues through your work.

POST 9/11 EPISTEMOLOGY

Tomino: But it’s difficult. It might be easier to stick to talking about anime, though that would be nonsensical for a publication like Shosetsu Gendai (laughs). Still, having worked on robot anime for over 20 years, I’ve been forced to think about war, and I believe I instinctively understand where many of the issues lie. Today’s wars are fundamentally different from past conflicts. I consider the current state of the global economy a form of war in a broad sense, but in Japanese, “war” typically refers to armed conflict between nation-states on a battlefield. The question is, why can’t we switch our thinking to recognize that post-9/11, the concept of war between nations has become impossible? When I started planning Turn A Gundam, this was my primary concern. When asking what kind of combat situations could exist in a world where interstate warfare isn’t viable, terrorism first came to mind. I imagined internal conflicts, civil unrest, or coups like those that might arise from Aum-like groups. I couldn’t imagine other battlefields. And I believe this situation will continue for 100, 200 years, while we vaguely drag along the old concept of war.

Fukui: From my perspective, the transformation of war into terrorism post-9/11 is like shifting from straightforward fistfights to insidious bullying. Imagine America as the classroom’s big shot. Not inherently bad, but too fixated on keeping everyone in line, quick to punch those who don’t listen, claiming they’re “disrupting order.” But recently, with international opinion acting like a watchful teacher and their own distaste for bloodshed, they’ve developed methods of slow strangulation through terrorism-like bullying – hiding lunches, placing thumbtacks in shoes (laughs). Like their irregular warfare against Colombian drug cartels or stirring up dissent within enemy states. But then someone realized, “Hey, I could do that too.” Maybe they couldn’t win in a fistfight, but they could certainly manage subtle harassment. So they tried it. This threw America into panic – they didn’t know who did it, but staying quiet would make them look weak. Having been the bully for so long, they feared that ignoring it once would lead to endless harassment, maybe even getting ganged up on. So they had no choice but to start punching suspicious characters, even while thinking “it probably wasn’t you,” like with Afghanistan, to show the whole classroom what happens to those who try such things.

Japanese media talks about Bush being a hawk or nationalism being the issue, but considering America’s foundation – from Native American genocide through the Revolutionary and Civil Wars – and their identity built on the necessity of continuing to win, the Afghanistan invasion was probably their only choice. They felt they had no alternative. This isn’t something we can carelessly judge through simple good-versus-evil logic. Especially since post-war Japan has thoroughly enjoyed American benefits without establishing any alternative political or military thesis. If anyone deserves condemnation, it’s the terrorists who deliberately avoided claiming responsibility for the airplane attacks. Their logic was immediately apparent: “If America takes military action, this could become a religious war, World War III – you can’t risk that, can you?” Even after America invaded Afghanistan, knowingly accepting criticism, they maintained their silence. I think it’s cowardly to stay hidden and pretend ignorance while watching Afghanistan get beaten, and it really undermines their supposed “holy war.”

Tomino: I thought the initial response was appropriate. Though after three months, things started to seem a bit questionable.

Fukui: Indeed. America’s actions after Afghanistan went too far, like they’d lost their restraint, and that deserves criticism.

Tomino: The initial response to terrorism through force is unavoidable because without immediate action, the damage could spread. Even if carried out by a small number of people, with today’s technology, terrorism can quickly reach dangerous levels – as proven by Aum’s sarin attack. So there’s no choice but to strike quickly. Speaking of terrorist technology and “tools,” if we compare the civilian passenger jets used in 9/11 with the one-ton and two-ton bombs of World War II, it’s clear which has more destructive power – it’s all about how things are used.

Fukui: That’s true.

Tomino: Just as we’re being too casual with the word “war,” we’re also being careless about “tools” – accepting anything that’s convenient. Do we have an epistemological framework to properly categorize and control various concepts like “tools,” “knowledge,” “desire,” “pleasure”? And we need not just categorization but integration. With global economic activity, we’ve reached a point where communities themselves could be destroyed if we don’t have the intellectual capacity to instantly grasp both epistemological and integration theories. To put it urgently, if we think about things properly, war discourse must immediately extend to environmental issues. We need intelligence that can move at that speed. That’s why I’m starting to think we don’t have time for terrorism now, but I’m puzzled why discussions don’t seem to go in that direction.

TWO PROPHETS

Fukui: Still, I think we need to go through many more stages before reaching that level of understanding. But speaking of predictions, among storytellers at least – I can’t speak for researchers – you and Tom Clancy were the only ones I know who foresaw how advanced tools and technology could lead to this kind of warfare. Both of you predicted these events a decade ago. Tom Clancy depicted aircraft terrorism in Debt of Honor and in Clear and Present Danger he meticulously described how America waged a terror war against South American drug cartels. He declared that the future would bring “twilight battlefields” where specialized small groups would strike at enemy centers using technology as weapons. The era of “industrial-scale warfare” with tanks and warships lined up in position battles was over. However, Clancy focuses solely on handling these situations within American ethical frameworks – he addresses management but doesn’t delve into deterrence. On the other hand, you – whether intentionally or not – created mobile suits in Mobile Suit Gundam. What’s remarkable about them is that beyond being tanks or fighters, they’re more like “infantry” – highly flexible weapons that individuals can operate. Because mobile suits multiply an individual infantry soldier’s power ten or twentyfold, even small nations can match major powers in military strength. Gundam begins with this hell where a space colony acquires this new technology and launches an independence war, and before anyone can adapt to this new form of warfare, half of humanity dies within a week.

Tomino: Regarding mobile suits, there’s another crucial aspect. They originally started as civilian machines, just like jumbo jets.

Fukui: That’s right. They were work machines needed to build space colonies, which is why the Earth Federation government failed to properly monitor their production and overlooked the colonies’ mass production of mobile suits for independence.

Tomino: They weren’t originally weapons. That’s what makes them frightening – something I’ve always tried to emphasize. That’s why I can’t separate the issue of tools from human epistemology. Modern humans are far too careless about acquiring high-performance tools. To put it simply, there’s a thesis questioning whether we should so easily travel by jumbo jet. It’s fine to do so – people who understand can develop the sensibility and recognition to simultaneously consider both sides of Earth within this convenience. However, being able to reach the other side of Earth in dozen-plus hours can make people forget, unless they have exceptional imagination, that countless communities exist within that distance. It creates carelessness where entirely different issues are considered equivalent. I want to emphasize whether we truly have an epistemology that can grasp this instantaneously. Even with the Palestine-Israel issue, we and Western civilizations just repeat discussions thinking we understand by connecting logical dots, when in reality we haven’t approached understanding at all. The truly unfortunate thing is modern human understanding. 21st-century humans should be able to expand their sensibility and recognition to digest and elaborate, and still present different views or arguments, but we rarely hear such perspectives.

Fukui: Yes. I think it takes many accumulated experiences just to notice these issues you’ve mentioned.

Tomino: Talking about this makes me really think about it (laughs). I can only have these discussions now at 60 – I definitely wasn’t having them in my forties…

THE UNIQUE VALUE OF JAPAN’S PERSPECTIVE

Fukui: When incidents like this happen, some say it will become harder to create stories about war, but I completely disagree. I actually think we’re entering an era with more meaningful opportunities. I have a feeling that Japan, with its unique geographical and political position, is entering an era where it will be best positioned to create war dramas and develop theories of war deterrence that could be truly meaningful to me personally.

Tomino: I agree. We might be able to do this precisely because of our outsider’s perspective. The problem is that Japanese people don’t think positively enough about this advantage. If we play our cards right, we might be able to present a new, intelligent, global worldview.

Fukui: I recently read The Japanese and the Jews (Kadokawa Bunko) by Isaiah Bendasan, where he says that while Japan had what’s called the Warring States period, from a Jewish perspective, it was merely a series of skirmishes. Indeed, when we Japanese look at the wars that went on for hundreds of years in China and Europe, there’s something incomprehensible about it. We have this simple amazement: “How could they keep fighting for so long?”

Tomino: Yes, absolutely.

Fukui: Previously, when you read Invincible Shield of a Ruined Country, you commented that I might be too sensitive to human death. I wonder if that might also be a Japanese characteristic.

Tomino: No, I don’t think that’s a Japanese characteristic. It’s more likely a post-war characteristic.

Fukui: I felt there was a tendency to dwell on death even before that.

Tomino: No, that’s different. While we were sensitive to death, when it came to seppuku or ritual suicide, there was an aesthetic about death but no aversion to it. I think people were quite accustomed to viewing death accurately. This might be something modern people can’t imagine.

Fukui: Then should we say that Japan has a relatively strong sensibility for respecting death? In The Japanese and the Jews, it explains that Japanese people advocated for total national suicide because they were thoroughly sheltered and earnest. They take things to extremes. The ability to become so fixated on saving face comes from being sheltered from warfare, and I found that quite insightful.

Tomino: For Japan, which experienced isolation, that’s absolutely true.

Fukui: The right-wing or nostalgic arguments for rearmament over the past decade seem to stem from this sheltered sensibility – self-loathing about our vulnerability and feeling we need to be stronger. Perhaps this just shows how “fortunate” we are. Of course, we should prepare countermeasures for all possible situations. If we’re talking about Self-Defense Forces, to make them true to their name, we first need to change their current status as essentially part of the U.S. military. Without addressing this, any discussion about dealing with new kinds of warfare seems premature even to an amateur. We weren’t even prepared for old-style warfare. However, there might be strength in being sheltered – not being worn down by hundred-year wars or wars of independence. The sensibility that allowed us to maintain peace throughout the Edo period for hundreds of years might enable us to create an ideological leadership model that can rise cleanly from today’s chaos. At least, I’ve come to think we have that potential.

THE NECESSITY OF ENTERTAINMENT

Tomino: To add to that point, I think it’s crucial for these “sheltered ones” to first recognize they need to go out into the world to get their hands dirty. For Japanese people, taking “the world” seriously typically means working hard, but equally important – though this might be hard to believe – is entertainment and performing arts. In other words, enjoyment. We need to cultivate more appreciation that life is meant to be enjoyable.

Fukui: Yes, I agree.

Tomino: It’s a bit difficult to explain where this comes from, but simply put, if you look at how Europeans casually approach entertainment – they have shows and comedies right next to war zones, they’re not uptight like Japanese people. They have small theater groups and playhouses consistently operating everywhere. They receive considerable state funding, and you often see them prominently featured in general newspapers. Essentially, the foundation of entertainment is completely different. It’s not like in Japan where entertainment and theater-going are expensive, special-occasion events – it’s more natural and casual. In Japan, everything becomes an “event,” a major production. I’ve been peeking into small theater groups and playhouses recently, but they’re still too formal, trying to look cool, focused on making money. Business concerns come first. It seems hard for Japanese people to embrace this naturally. We need to develop a sense that can better handle entertainment and performing arts as part of daily life. Only when human sensibility and emotional cultivation mature through this process can Japan establish the kind of community that could open up the new perspectives you mentioned. If we only think about this as cultural theory without this aspect, we’ll just push through with earnestness alone, and people from other cultures will find it too intense, too much to handle.

Fukui: That’s probably true (laughs).

Tomino: Europe, being a multi-ethnic region, especially after World War II, consciously cultivated this environment as part of their culture. It was considered in national policy. Japan’s government lacks this, so there’s less cultural funding. Perhaps the next 100 years will be about developing this refinement. But I’m not pessimistic about this. While I just praised certain good aspects of Europeans, I’m convinced Japanese people inherently possess similar qualities. The hints might lie in the sensibilities of Japanese people in the early modern period, particularly the Edo period’s remarkably frank attitude toward sexuality. There wasn’t such rigid compartmentalization – young women could bathe in public view, that kind of tolerance. With such a relaxed attitude, you wouldn’t have things like stalkers (laughs). Japanese people inherently possess this quality, and I think it’s a kind of sensibility we should recall now that Western civilization is showing signs of strain.

PHYSICALITY IN VISUAL MEDIA

Fukui: In that sense, I feel your new work Overman King Gainer has the potential to communicate with various communities worldwide. Your previous works, like Gundam, had Japanese indigenous sensibilities underlying them, but appeared to center on Western cultural perspectives. After the stepping stones of recent works like Brain Powerd and Turn A Gundam, it feels like you’ve finally started running with a truly global sensibility.

Tomino: I still feel it’s not flexible enough. However, precisely because it’s television, because it’s for children, because it’s a robot show, I can say that we never compromise on the fundamental epistemological aspects – we don’t create ambiguously. I think expression comes with that kind of responsibility.

Fukui: What’s remarkable about King Gainer is how dynamic everyone is, brilliantly achieving the new physicality essential for depicting action. There’s no hesitation in any action – speaking, running, fighting. Forgive me, but it’s amazing that you could create something so energetic at your age…

Tomino: It’s actually somewhat easier to create things that don’t move. But the foundation of visual expression is logical work – it’s primarily completed in your head. Even when expressing physicality in visuals, constructing images requires extremely logical and intellectual operations. You can’t see this at first glance in movies or anime. Then theatrical and musical elements are added, which makes it interesting. For me, making things move that much is basically a matter of from the neck up, so it’s not particularly challenging.

Fukui: I see. But since getting nutrients to the brain requires physicality, I still think it’s impressive.

Tomino: Roughly speaking, whether it’s animals, robots, or humans, when you depict a story maximizing the character’s dynamism, their physical nature suddenly emerges and the story itself starts running. It’s a big mistake to think you can convey everything just by having characters talk. With King Gainer, I might have managed to better align the three core elements – story, characters, and visuals – from a slightly different perspective than before.

TOWARDS A COMMUNITY OF HEROES

Fukui: While preparing for this interview, I reflected on something. Setting aside whether my stories can be called war stories, I’ve been writing such things for a while. When I wondered why I’m drawn to this genre, I remembered something you wrote. It was in the liner notes for the BGM collection of Mobile Suit Gundam II: Soldiers of Sorrow. There was this tagline from what I think was the Toho film Combined Fleet that went something like “Men died abandoning love for their country,” and you were furious about it (laughs), saying “Why can’t you see that there once was a nation that was defeated precisely because it abandoned love?” I read that in middle school, and I still remember it.

Tomino: You have quite a memory (laughs).

Fukui: There was another unforgettable line in your novelization of Mobile Suit Gundam F91. Just as war was about to begin, you wrote, “In the ensuing chaos, humanity is poised to rediscover its innate virtues.” These virtues being positive cooperation, unity, and altruism. If people showed these during peacetime, war might not occur and the world might be more livable, but people tend to become lazy in peace. This led to the next line: “demonstrating that humans have not evolved to sustain their noblest qualities in everlasting peace; our nature is not so resilient.” Those who were lackluster in peacetime suddenly become disciplined. Perhaps this cycle is like a heartbeat, and while it might be inappropriate to call it a pressure valve, perhaps war exists from this perspective. For my generation, who were taught that our country won’t wage war, that war is bad and should be neither seen nor contemplated, this was incredibly fresh. Rather than turning this into an argument for war, I think war dramas are still valuable for considering how to manifest in peacetime the virtues that emerge in the extreme conditions of war.

Tomino: Though it’s somewhat unfortunate, I think that perspective is useful. For the average person, put simply, without opportunities to feel like a hero, there’s no catharsis. The question then becomes what we consider heroic. We need to recognize the need to find acts and situations where we can experience this in daily life. Actually, we’re surrounded by such heroes. Like Ichiro.

Fukui: Indeed.

Tomino: In terms of environmental issues, it’s about having the mindset to see someone who says “I’ll plant trees across this entire desert” as a hero. We need to train ourselves mentally to revere people like Inō Tadataka, who mapped Japan on foot, as heroes. This requires expanding and elevating our epistemological framework. To use a simple example related to war, I think we should raise social awareness that the Self-Defense Forces might be heroes protecting our country and citizens from terrorism. This is actually quite urgent. Just like the privatization of the Highway Corporation, we need to take political action to socially acknowledge and give pride to Self-Defense Force members. This applies to teachers and bureaucrats too. Without discourse about heroes and pride, I think we’ve all become foolish in this age of abundance, everyone being equal, everyone being democratic. I consider this the biggest issue as a matter of national policy.

Fukui: There’s this Japanese Teachers’ Union mentality that hero worship might lead directly to creating dictators.

Tomino: Right. But if each community has its own small heroes, they won’t allow a dictator to emerge.

Fukui: Currently, there’s this attitude of rejecting heroes, a kind of exclusion theory. It’s gotten to the point where just mentioning “patriotism” labels you as right-wing. It’s an issue of different perceptions of words. If we’re talking about an imperial state centered on the Emperor, that kind of patriotism is pointless to discuss now. But we should be conscious of your words that “there was a nation that was defeated because it abandoned love.” While “love” is often easily connected with “ego,” I don’t think it’s such a narrow term. When you want to live with someone you love, what do you need first? A home to live in together, markets to buy and sell food and clothes, and workplaces to earn money. If society and nation are the systems necessary for these to function, then it’s clear that we absolutely need the nation and community as a place to nurture love, and naturally develop fondness for it. I think this kind of patriotic consciousness is appropriate.

Tomino: Yes, it’s necessary. If we can think about such things while viewing history neutrally, perhaps a new Japanese mentality will emerge.