Representations of Architecture in Japanese Anime and Manga

Representations of Architecture in Japanese Animé and Manga : Walker
Representations of Architecture in
Japanese Animé and Manga
Mike Walker
Introduction
The first half of .hack Liminality: In The Case of Mai Minase shuttles the viewer back
and forth from the streets of suburban Tokyo to a cemetery in Germany to a
virtual computer-created world and back to a small home in Japan. .hack
Liminality is an OVA (オリジナルヴィデオアニメーション, transliteration:
Orijinaru video animēshon) 1 within the broader .hack franchise of animé and
computer games. As the Liminality films appeared after the inception of several
other .hack titles—including .hack//sign, the best known example of the series—
Liminality was able to fill in some of the backstory of events that had transpired
in the series already. Most of .hack//sign is set in a virtual computer-created role-
playing environment known as “The World” while the events in Liminality take
1-An OVA or Orijinaru video animēshon is a special feature film-length (though sometimes shorter and
running only about an hour) variant of an animé series included as a special treat for purchasers of a tie-in
video game of the same series or franchise. Most often, these films are included on a DVD with the game
itself. Animé producers take advantage of the fact these films are not directly tired to the main series and
often will take liberties with animation style, adding in new characters, plot arcs, or other departures from
the main narrative at hand. That said, OVAs are also normally considered by fans and critics as canon to the
main series and the events they introduce in some instances—such as .hack Liminality—are important to
the rest of the series and help explain previous events.
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place in the real, present-day, lives of those who play this The World.2 In both the
“real world” and the virtual world of the computer game, physical environment
is a key aspect of narrative device and the creation of setting and atmosphere for
plot and character development. Expectedly, like many animé, the producers
of .hack have taken astute care to ensure that physical details are nuanced and
convincing. Architecture is certainly one of the foremost of such physical details
and the development and treatment of architectural aesthetics in the .hack
franchise 3 is extensive and engrossing.
The fields of architectural history and theory have by convention expectedly
focused on the evolution of built and paper architecture 4 and the sociocultural
interactions of physical culture with an emphasis on architecture and associated
creative disciplines. For architectural history to examine the portrayal of
architecture in various media is a novel concept to an extent, but one that
extrapolates from the type of scholarly work architectural history has been
engaged in for years. The current time is one where entertainment media is more
present, more sophisticated, and more nuanced than ever before: books, films,
television, video games, and animation are all parts of our contemporary lives
and while the mechanisms and narrative trajectories these media apply to
2-“The World”, as presented in .hack//sign, appears to be much like such multi-player online role playing
games (MMORPGs) as GuildWars and World of Warcraft. The World, however, also appears to be highly
immersive and addictive to the point of serious mental and even physiological injury to some players. This
aspect of the plot is explored in depth in the Liminality OVA.
3-The term “franchise” is applied here as is commonplace with animé and video games to indicate a group
of related films, games, or other narrative forms to revolve around the same set of themes and carry the
same title but possibly share little direct relation to one and the other. Another example would be the Star
Trek family of television series and films, where events happen within the same “worlds” and institutions
yet characters and time periods vary greatly.
4-“Paper architecture” meaning works designed by an architect and extant as plans and drawings but never
built. In many cases, with leading postmodern architects such as Zaha Hadid and Peter Eisenman, many
projects are never even intended to be realized as actual structures but instead exist mainly as
demonstrative and experimental forays into the architect’s ideals of what architecture should be and thus
are considered as much if not more works of theory over works of praxis.
2
represent our lives in fiction have been investigated by cinema studies, language
studies, and arts historical scholars their collective foci have mainly been the
representation of society and culture with an emphasis on character development
and plot. The built environment in a fictional work is not just represented, but in
fact created. This is nowhere more true than with animé, manga, and other
animation as every aspect of such works must be drawn and thereby all “sets”
are directly created by animators.
This thesis paper investigates how architecture is represented in current Japanese
animé and manga5 . The goals of this exploration are to examine animé and
manga as unique forms of “world-building narrative” 6 fictional discourse and
then to examine how animé and manga apply architecture in the service of
furthering the narrative at hand. Moreover, how do animé and manga from
Japan portray the architectural and cultural landscape history of Japan and that
of other cultures and nations when such are represented? In stories where
futuristic or fantasy worlds exist, how are such portrayed? Is there a strong and
commonplace difference or apparent disconnect between contemporary Japan
and the West when it comes to how future worlds are considered in animé and
manga or do these Japanese genre for the most part follow their Western
5-Manga are Japanese comics; the term literally means comics or (non-animated) cartoons. However, in
terms of both popular Japanese and current Western application of the term, it tends to indicate a series of
comics published as books (equal to American comic books) or as part of an anthologized book of one or
more series (known as Tankōbon (単行本). A sub-genre is known as bunkoban (文庫版) and is more like a
Western novel or graphic novel in length and the attention to detail taken in the cover artwork and graphic
design elements.
6-“World-building narrative” in the sense that a consummate world-view and in many cases, an entire
fictional universe is created in the narrative. In example, the extended narratives of most sci-fi novels,
television dramas, and films would qualify as “world-building” (Star Trek and Star Wars both would be apt
examples) whereas many other dramas such as NBC’s Law and Order franchise would not thus qualify
because they use highly established real-life settings, institutions, and related aspects. With these examples,
Star Trek’s United Federation of Planets is a fictional institution, many of the planets and societies in the
franchise are fictional, as are many of the races. Most animé, even when they include elements of real-life
Earth, depart (as does Star Trek despite its inclusion of Earth and humans) from reality enough that entire
new “worlds” and basal constructs for the narrative are required.
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counterparts in novels, film, and comics? 7 The key premise here is, that as other
scholars have established in general of the genre of animé and manga
themselves,8 the application and representation of the built environment in these
genre do differ from Western contemporary narrative forms.9
When Western influences are apparent in animé and manga, most often they are
literary ones and not contemporary film, television, or animation-based
influences. While there is certainly cross-influence in both directions between
animé and Western animation, as animé has become an international
entertainment form, it has retained a large portion of its interest and character
germane to Japanese culture and environment. To understand this trait, it is
useful to explore the history of Japanese culture in general beyond the specific
history of animé or Japanese film. The important distinction here is that in Japan,
film was originally very much a modality that was technologically developed in-
country but which received high degrees of aesthetic influence from the West.
7-There is no doubt that Japanese cinema has been greatly influenced, as have all non-Western cinematic
traditions, by the Western film traditions of Hollywood and Europe. However, aside from early
technological advances, Japanese film and animation have mainly grown up as their own creatures external
to the currents of Western film. In the case of animé, the lines are less clear because even when narrative
and visual aesthetics may be distinct from Western animation, the approaches and topical matter for stories
do in cases seem to draw more heavily on Western conventions and this situation is explored in depth in the
present paper.
8-Philip Brophy, Introduction, in: 100 Animé: BFI Screen Guide, (London: British Film Institute. 2005).
Brophy addresses the unique aspects of animé that as a mega-genre of film make it separate from Western
animation and then proceeds to define some sub-genre of the form. His main concern though is to define as
best as possible how, aside from being created in Japan, all animé share certain traits rarely found (except
where inspired by animé) in Western film media.
9-Other critics and scholars have approached the music of animé in a manner similar to how this paper
approaches architectural representation. See in example Ridwan Khan’s analysis of the .hack//sign Original
Soundtrack (Volume 1) in AniméFringe magazine. Yuki Kajiura’s score for .hack//Sign displays, as Khan
notes, extensive incorporation of Celtic themes and also an astute attention to conventions of game music.
By blending together the denotative function of game music to indicate the presence of the characters in a
virtual world within a massive game and the connotative application of Celtic music to recall that the
game’s (The World) visual influence of the European Middle Ages, Kajiura is able to place the viewer
within a setting that is otherwise very obtuse and aesthetically confusing. (Khan, Ridwan, .Hack//sign OST
1 Review. AniméFringe. September, 2003. Accessed online on 2 October 2007 at URL: http://
www.animefringe.com/magazine/2003/09/reviews/10/ )
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However, it did not take long for aspects of Japanese culture, literature, and
visual arts to make their way into Japanese film.10 Animé evolved into a distinct
style of animation over the 1980s with its formative origins in the 1970s, but has
suffered to an extent from being not studied until rather recently alongside live-
action Japanese film by scholars. For example, Hideaki Anno (庵野秀明) is often
cited as a pioneering animé director and an important director in general for
Japanese cinema due to his epic series Neon Genesis Evangelion (新世紀エヴァンゲ
リオン) but his inclusion in academic works surveying film seems to be as much
due to the press reaction and fiscal success of Neon Genesis Evangelion over its
aesthetics.11
While animé has over the course of the 1990s ascended to international
popularity, the study of animé by academics has both been very deep in scope
and detail and at once removed from film studies and further relationship to
other Japanese arts and entertainment topics. This is mainly due to two aspects:
the unique nature of animé and the fact that many cultural investigations of
animé have focused more on its sociocultural role as a force in youth culture than
its aesthetic, literary, and narrative attributes. Western scholars have by and large
examined animé in tandem with its extended international viewership, as is
evidenced by Mark McLelland’s article on yaoi in the Franco-African
sociocultural journal Mots Pluriels.12 This approach as indicated the ”exotic”
nature of animé as it was imported into Western consumption and also the
10-Joan Mellen, The Waves At Genji's Door: Japan Through Its Cinema, (New York: Pantheon. 1976).
11-Donald Richie, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, with a Selective Guide to DVDs
and Videos, (New York: Kodansha America. 2005).
12-Mark McLelland, “Local Meanings in Global Space: A Case Study of Women's 'Boy Love' Web Sites in
Japanese and English” Mots Pluriels, 19 : October (2001).
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insular nature of animé as a fandom—at least prior to the huge success of a
variety of animé that were dubbed or redone for American and other English-
language markets. In addition, animé is divided (as is manga) into a variety of
essential sub-genre and a broader swath of the Japanese population consume
animé than most likely consume American or Western cartoons: in example,
there are animé primarily for boys and young men (Shōnen [少年]) and those
mainly geared towards young girls (shoujo (少女]) while there are others targeted
towards adults (seinen [青年]).13
It should also be noted that the animé craze that has swept American and
European youth culture has, to a degree, been viewed within Japan with some
amusement and even disgust: While Japan consumes overall more animé and
manga (especially in terms of adult viewers/readers) than international markets
do, the term ”otaku (オタク)” in Japan is used as a derisive term to indicate a
young man or teenage boy overly interested and involved in animé and manga
to the point of exclusion of other age-appropriate interests, but in American
popular usage the term has taken a positive denotative meaning. Many animé
fans have dubbed themselves ”otaku” and it it appears in countless forums,
screen-names for internet message boards, and other locations of animé/manga
fan bases. The sci-fi writer William Gibson has expressed his own admiration for
otaku, stating, ”the otaku, the passionate obsessive, the information age's
embodiment of the connoisseur, more concerned with the accumulation of data
than of objects, seems a natural crossover figure in today's interface of British and
Japanese cultures” yet even this opinion betrays a Western vantage point on the
13 -Sophie
Kinsella, Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society, (Richmond:
Curzon Press, 2000).
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topic.14 Despite Gibson’s acumen as a writer, his view here confounds the
Japanese convention for order and aesthetic harmony with the otaku’s desire for
escape from traditional Japanese society—surrounding himself with the fantasy-
worlds of animé and manga.
In Japan, traditionally the study of sociocultural aspects has been known as
nihonbunkaron (日本文化論), a discipline that has no exact Western counterpart
but encompasses efforts of the social sciences, literary, and arts historical
investigations into cultural trajectories. The difference between nihonbunkaron
and, say, Western sociology is that nihonbunkaron takes a philosophical approach
formulated over thousands of years and is based in essential formative texts.15
Thus, nihonbunkaron is akin to a school of thought much like, in example, the
Austrian School is one of a number of epistemological approaches to economics.
In nihonbunkaron-based scholarship, the concept of shimaguni (島国) is key:
shimaguni is the ideal that Japan, as an island nation, has a specific set of climatic
and environmental factors that bring forth unique harmony between people and
nature.16 This concept, as an aesthetic approach, extends to postulate that the best
efforts in art, music, literature, architecture and even cuisine strive to emulate the
balance and harmony of nature.17 The scholar and historian Tetsurō Watsuji’s
14-WilliamGibson, “Modern Boys and Mobile Girls”, The Observer Magazine (special issue on Japan) 1
April 2001. Viewed online on 2 October 2007 at URL: http://observer.guardian.co.uk/life/story/
0,6903,466391,00.html
15-Harumi Befu, Hegemony of Homogeneity: An Anthropological Analysis of Nihonjinron, (Los Angeles &
Tokyo: Trans-Pacific Press. 2001).
16-Ruth Benedict. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. (Boston: Houghton
Mifflin. 1946).
17-Kurt Singer, Mirror, Sword and Jewel, (London: Croom Helm. 1973), 67-72.
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work18 takes a pronounced focus on this aspect of Japanese aesthetic philosophy
and extends these concepts towards the realm of moral philosophy: the concept
of fūdo (風土)19 and the impact of climate on all aspects of life is central to
Tetsuro’s extended concepts of morality and beauty. The entire discipline of
shinfūdoron (新風土論) is based on the concept of fūdo and the relationship and
dynamism of nature, man, and climate still occupy an important role in Japanese
philosophy.20
In Japan, the ideal of tsu (通), or beauty, is a very multi-form thing. While the
creation of things of beauty even within the scope of the ordinary details and
tasks of the day such as food preparation is a focus of Japanese beliefs about tsu
and iki (いき)—the traditional approach to aesthetics in Japan—in general, the
greater, immense, beauty of nature is the leading example for most Japanese
artists and other creative persons in what they wish to emulate. In experiencing an
environment at the most consummate level, one must be in that environment and
if not within it, per se, as close to such an encompassing experience as possible.
The concept of mono no aware (物の哀れ) carries forth this need for experience of
a thing of beauty from its interior but is, in fact, most often encountered in
literary studies as something a reader may feel via literature. There is no exact
18-Tetsurō’s work is epic in scope and depth and is best viewed as a collected whole via the twenty-volume
anthology of his writings: Watsuji Tetsurō Zenshū (Complete Works of Tetsuro Watsuji) 20 volumes.
(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. 1961-1963).
19-Fūdo is the Japanese concept of Japan’s environmental climate being unique and different from all other
climes; this distinct climate is considered traditionally to have a strong impact on the artistic approach
taken in all the Japanese arts.
20 - Morimoto Tetsurō (森本哲朗), Nihongo Omote to Ura (日本語表と裏) ("Japanese inside and
outside"), (Tokyo: Shinchōsha. 1985).
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translation of mono no aware in English, but it is akin to the neoclassical-era
literary concept of the sublime excepting that instead of a thing of grandness or
subtle beauty being viewed as awe-inspiring, it is viewed as a manifestation of
such beauty that there is sadness—even pity—at the delicate nature of beauty in
the world and how quickly such true beauty often vanishes. A related concept is
that of yūgen (幽玄), or the sense of mysterious depth found in something that,
once again, Western literary scholars might describe as sublime. A core premise
related to both mono no aware and yūgen is that nothing, no matter how beautiful,
exists forever. This premise in Japanese is known as mujyou (無常). 21
Why these aesthetic and literary concepts are so crucial to understanding
architecture in its applications in animé and manga is that in the Japanese view,
architecture is one art form that is best enabled to replicate the diversity and
totality of aesthetic experience one finds in nature. In the aesthetic concept of
wabi-sabi (侘寂), beauty is expressed via the concept that transience and evolution
are natural to all things. The concepts of mujyou, wabi-sabi, and iki are sui generis
concepts to Japanese aesthetics even as they have analogs in Western and other
traditions; their origins are clearly Japanese and their manifestation is most
embodied normally in Japanese creative output that allows for their best
expression. 22 Animé, being a time-based media and being able to reduce entire
worlds into the concept of a narrative that is at once oftentimes very complex but
21 -Andrew Juniper. Wabi Sabi: The Japanese Art of Impermanence. (North Clarendon, VT: Tuttle
Publishing. 2003).
22- Morimoto Tetsurō (森本哲朗), Nihongo Omote to Ura (日本語表と裏) (Japanese Inside and Outside),
(Tokyo: Shinchōsha Tokyo. 1985).
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also by defining traits of viewership and time limits—concise and simple—is a
perfect media for a wabi-sabi approach to communication.23
The import of nihonbunkaron to contemporary Japanese cultural studies is two-
fold: firstly, the tradition of nihonbunkaron lives on in current cultural studies and
in informing many aspects of Japanese academic life and secondly, nihonbunkaron
displays a foil of sorts compared to the Western-influenced, fast-paced, nature of
contemporary Japanese life.24 However, in the case of animé, manga, and other
arts and entertainment cultural foci, the narratives, the settings, and the overall
aesthetics of these genre often show strong influence of Japanese traditional
mores and concepts over more modern ones.25 Likewise, it can be said that a
further difference is extant between how Japanese of the current younger
generation view their nation, their identity, and in relation to those who are
artists, their artistic output. Architecture, literature, visual art and entertainment
all have taken on Western influences but also have retained and often shifted
Japanese traditional conceptions into new and novel trajectories.
Animé and manga are thereby not isolated within Japanese youth culture or pop
culture in general, then, insofar as they look to traditional influences for
23-Sadly,as is often the case when a trend from one culture becomes of interest in another, there has been a
movement to explain in the West wabi-sabi as a “zen” concept of design best applied to things such as
house decoration and has thus spawned a collection of books that are half Martha Stewart-like design and
half watered-down explanations of this very old and rather complex system of aesthetics. Rather than coyly
simple home decoration, wabi-sabi is more adept at being applied in contexts such as animé, manga, and
Japanese literature in general and it is a shame that books such as Robyn Griggs-Lawerence’s The Wabi-
Sabi House: The Japanese Art of Imperfect Beauty (New York: Clarkson-Potter. 2004) are moving it in
mainly a false direction.
24-Joy Hendry, Understanding Japanese Society, (London: Routledge. 1995).
25-“Modern” here meaning post-war Japan in general, though really to an extent since communication with
the West opened up: Another means to define the chasm in Japanese cultural studies could be the line
between traditionally rural Japan and contemporary urban Japan.
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aesthetics but also delight in exploring concepts and points of departure much
further afield; moreover, the econo-cultural presence of animé and manga in a
tough and often fickle international youth market reckons better chances at
success by often borrowing patterns and programmatic trajectories from other
media influences. The fact that animé and manga have now large, established,
and loyal external (international) markets is one that Masatoshi Tominaga noted
in his study of the impact of global market trends in animé.26 Japanese youth
trends are, in media such as animé and manga, able to influence external markets
because Japan is the primary base of new ideas in these media.27 As animation
studios and producers know this, storylines that involve a good deal of Japanese
cultural or historical influence present a complex equation: if these will be
marketed externally, they may entice viewers via their portrayals of an exotic
Asian world but the opposite may happen and they may seem too insular and
distant for many international viewers to approach. To an extent, the latter seems
to have been the case with the animé Harukanaru Toki no Naka de—Hachiyō Shō (遙
かなる時空の中で—八葉抄). This Heian-period fantasy/drama presented
beautifully-rendered animation, a complex plot, and characters who should have
appealed (and did, in Japan) to a shoujo viewership but it failed to garner the
international popularity its marketers surely anticipated.28
Animé and manga can be broken down into three primary directions of influence
in the world entertainment market: the domestic (Japanese) market, the
26 -Tominaga Masatoshi, Globalization and Japanese Animation: Ethnography of American College

Students, (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2002), 36-39.
27-Therehave been successful non-Japanese produced original animé-inspired animation dramas however,
perhaps most notable of these being Avatar: The Last Air-Bender. Nonetheless, the fact is that most animé
and manga have, and will, come abroad from Japan after proving themselves popular at home.
28 - E n t r y
on Animé News Network; viewed on 3 Octboer 2007, at URL: http://
www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=4484
11
international market, and the broader influence on other forms of entertainment such
as film (e.g., Kill Bill) Western animated productions (e.g., Avatar: The Last Air-
Bender), and video games (e.g., Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy XII). When the
successful manga Gravitation (グラビテーション, transliteration: Gurabitēshon)29
was first translated for international markets then made into an animé for
Japanese and external markets, then the subject of a Western-style novel (as
opposed to a bunkoban manga or graphic novel) it might be said that the process
of evolution has come full circle for the franchise.
In the criticism and study of manga and animé, the same aspects have been
considered by scholars as would be in other forms of cinema or literature (i.e.,
plot, narrative technique, character development) and the history and cultural
leanings of traditional and contemporary Japan, as noted above, and the specific
situation of animé and manga as unique genre are also interwoven into how
animé and manga are viewed in a scholarly manner. Studies based in
nihonbunkaron even when not directly concerned at all with animé or manga have
nonetheless informed both the creative aspects of animé and manga and the
study thereof because nihonbunkaron has pointed towards a specific, Japanese,
outlook on the harmony of aesthetics that has no analog in Western arts historical
studies in large part because it is much more than just an arts historical or even
just a humanistic approach: nihonbunkaron instead encompasses most every field
29-Gravitation is somewhat unique in this popularity in that it is a Shōnen-ai (少年愛) manga, or one
concerned with homosexual relations between male characters. While shōnen-ai is very popular with
certain demographics (mainly young women, notably, moreso than gay men) in Japan, it is historically
uncommon for a shōnen-ai romance to attract such a large external following. Part of this is certainly due to
the exceptional quality of Gravitation and also due to its rock band theme and intriguing charcters.
12
that would exist in a feudal or early modern society such as Japan during the
Heian to Edo periods.30
Animé, Manga, and their Relationship:
For purposes of this paper, most examples explored are those of animé—actual
animated television shows or films—as opposed to manga or Japanese comics/
comic books. However, the relationship between manga and animé is very worth
noting in context: most animé are developed out of successful franchises that
began as manga. An important aspect of this is that manga in many cases have
details and plotlines either simplified or not explored at all in the following
animé. In some cases, especially when an animé is designed for a large and/or
international viewership, the nuances of the plot are brought into more simple
terms to allow for faster flow of the narrative in a half-hour television slot. The
Shaman King (シャーマンキング, transliteration: Shāman Kingu) animé would be a
strong example of this approach versus the manga which preceeded its creation.
For the exploration of architecture within manga and animé, the animé examples
are often of greater interest because the narrative style of an animated feature
allows for more of the architecture to be ”seen” or experienced by characters and
viewer alike. However, the manga examples are noteworthy because in some
cases, such as the aforementioned Shaman King, some very lovely and exacting
art is furnished in support of large comic panels in manga.
30-The work of fairly early (c. 1700-1800) scholars of Heian period Japan such as Hirata Atsutane (平田篤
胤) set a tone of logical examination of the history and historiography of Japan under the feudal system
from the Heian period to the Edo period. In the work of such scholars as Atsutane, concepts of how
Japanese social identity evoled became a serious concern and laid out the ground-work for further
scholarship in the Meiji period and modern times. See: Paul Akamatsu, Meiji 1868: Revolution and
Counter-Revolution in Japan, (New York: Harper & Row. 1972).
13
In addition, in some cases architectural style is changed or simplified in animé
from the orginal in manga—not surprising given the changes in general that
result when a manga is converted for an animé. In the Shaman King manga, in
example, the temple architecture displayed overt influences of the Yoshinogari (吉
野ヶ里遺跡, transliteration: Yoshinogari iseki) style of architecture dating from
around the second century, C.E. whereas the animé of the same title renders
temple architecture as a more generic pre-Heian period style but not one specific
(as in the manga) to the Yayoi period (弥生時代, transliteration: Yayoi-jidai). An
obvious question is: Is this purely an aesthetic difference or would it impact the
plot? In the case of Shaman King, given that the storyline concerns a young boy
and his friends who can see and communicate with ghosts and because many of
these ghosts and their origins seem to hail from Chinese legends, the inclusion of
Yayoi references—to a period of Japanese history greatly influenced by Korean
and Chinese origins—would seem in fact very central to the plot.31 In instances
of other manga and animé, such is expectedly less the case, but these details and
the general transition between manga and animé and then from Japanese-
language versions to international versions is very much worth studying.
Manga and animé are not as young as some would expect of these genre; in fact,
manga has a long history going back to at least to around 1775 C.E. in the form of
pictorial novels very much like today’s manga and Western graphic novels,
known as Kibyōshi (黄表紙). Kibyōshi in turn developed out of traditional
31-A leitmotif of Shaman King is the triangle of relations between Korea, China, and Japan over time. The
Yayoi Period is very much a hot topic in Japanese historical studies because of the influence of Korea and
China—as those nations were at the time—over Japanese growth and pre-feudal government. See: Fumio
Kakubayashi, A Study of the Historical Developments of the Yayoi Period: with Special Reference to
Japanese-Korean Relations, Ph.D. dissertation, University of Queensland. 1980.
14
Japanese woodblock printing techniques which had long been used to tell
sequential, linear, narratives though normally of shorter length and rather simply
plot-lines.32 Thus, manga has had a history that can be traced back at least to the
Edo period and is a cultural force very much within the broad scope of
contemporary and historical Japanese culture. Without a doubt, there are
scholars who would consider manga outside of the realm of ”proper” Japanese
studies and in contrast, many who would in fact consider it within that scope,
but the social impact of manga transects a lengthy period of Japanese cultural
history.33 Animé as we know it would not exist without manga, however, due to
the popularity of film and television, the ability of animé to expand worldwide
and garner greater sales revenue than manga is obvious and therefore major
studios will place more funding in animé projects than manga.
Obviously manga is unique as a genre because it is drawn and therefore has close
kin in Western comics and graphic novels and a history in Japanese culture tied
to Kibyōshi : aside from Western comics, it is a genre that is neither directly an
analog of literary evolution or of visual graphic or fine arts. Animé, then, we see
as evolving from manga, from film, from animation in general but sourcing not
only (in recent years) most of its narrative material but also its cultural and
narrative conventions from manga with far less influence from other sources. 34
Post-World War II introductions of American—especially Disney—animation
certainly also helped forge a path of what animé would become, but
developments were brewing in other parts of Asia also, with Korea and British
32 -AdamKern, Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and the Kibyôshi of Edo Japan,
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. 2006).
33 -Kinko Ito, "Growing up Japanese Reading Manga", International Journal of Comic Art 6 (2006) :
392-401.
34-Paul Gravett, Manga: Sixty Years of Japanese Comics, (New York: Harper Design. 2004).
15
Hong Kong making strides in the development of both comics and animation
that would later influce—and in turn be influence by—manga and animé.35
While much scholarship of manga and animé draws attention to the fact that
both genre apply a variety of traditionally Asian philosophical systems and
aspects, such as elements of Taoism and (in many cases rather trite) cultural
typologies such as ninja and ronin,36 the impact of traditional sociocultural norms
and the interface between contemporary Japan and pre-war Japan is less
examined in most cases.
Animé, Narrative, & Architecture:
Given that animé is a rather new medium that has extensive roots and sources of
influence in manga, traditions in Japan preceding manga, and Western cinematic
influeces; animé is in a very unique position to develop its own novel and
consummate approach to narrative. The wellspring of this thesis paper was
repeated awareness of the nuanced detail and import given to architecture and a
sense of place in general in animé. The first expected question was “does this
same trend happen also in manga—is that its origins?” and the short answer to
that is yes, manga also has a strong tradition of architectural representation. However,
the manner in which such representations in manga and animé are formulated
and the trajectories these take are markedly different in animé versus manga.
Some of this difference is expectedly due to the varied narrative needs and
35-Wendy Siuyi Wong, Hong Kong Comics: A History of Manhua, (New York: Princeton Architectural
Press. 2002).
36 -This is especially true of the sub-genre known as “late-night animé” (深夜アニメ , transliteration:
shin'ya anime) or (expectedly) shows broadcast on Japanese television between the hours of 11:00PM and
5:00AM. See: Tatsumi, Takayumi, Full Metal Apache: Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and Avant-
Pop America, (Durham, NC: Duke University Press. 2006).
16
operative constraints of the two media. The mere presence of a greater number of
people working on an animé over a manga can certainly seem to dictate a fair
amount of its detail and inclusion of great vantages of landscape. In contrast,
some manga, such as Shaman King, display a constant attention to architecture
seemingly brought about by the creator and principle artist of this franchise,
Hiroyuki Takei (武井宏之). In the case of the animé adaptation of Shaman King,
there was no analog to the large half-page (sometimes even larger) panels that
Takei often drew in the manga to show an exploded-view of a house, temple, or
other structure.
There are, of course, many other differences and alterations between the manga
and animé of Shaman King and other cases where a manga was later adapted as
an animé. However, some of these in the case of Shaman King are very illustrative
of the narrative function of architecture as these other changes also demonstrate
a change in narrative function. In example, the clan of shaman lead by Tao Ren
(道蓮) in the franchise are of Chinese origin and their magical powers, beliefs,
weapons, and other traits are closely tied with Chinese mythology and expressed
as such. This situation holds true in both the orginal manga and Japanese-
language animé but slightly less true in the American version of the animé—
most likely to avoid issues of confusion between Japanese and Chinese traditions
on the part of American viewers. In the Japanese-language version both of the
manga and animé the material culture surrounding Ren and his sister, Tao Jun
(道潤)—from costumes to weapons to architecture—constantly serves to identify
17
them as Chinese; 37 while slightly less true in the American manga version, this
trend is still very evident.38
The situation of architecture in manga and animé both touches on the broader
question of how the representation of the built environment is studied in fiction
in general. A number of studies of film, novels, poetry, and other fictional forms
have examined the natural and built environment in relation to narrative—often
with a certain ideological or methodological approach taken to such that makes
the environment supportive to the scholar’s thesis on the author’s work or at
least as a mechanism for fleshing out further metaphorical items tangent to the
narrative.39 Some scholars such as Gábor Bezeczky have viewed most any (and
thereby all) investigations of environment as tired both to narrative and
grounded in metaphoric theory and Bezeczky’s analysis of the theories of Max
Black and Mikhail Bakhtin are impressive, enthralling, and complete enough to
form a strong basis for further investigation of metaphor and narrative in
tandem. 40 Marie-Laurie Ryan’s scholarship has taken a similar route but is
inclusive of the concept that today’s “cyber” age (and in theory, the age or ages
yet to come, which if anything barring a revolution of Luddities should be even
37-Also, in the American animé Tao Jun and other members of her family aside from Ren himself have
British accents but are Chinese which could indicate they are from Hong Kong. The overall aesthetics of
the Tao clan though would not suggest a Cantonese origin so perhaps the older Taos were educated in Hong
Kong.
38-Also, the detail given in a typical manga such as Shaman King to as total an experience as is possible in a
linear paper-based narrative is apparent, with even sound effects suggested, rather coyly, as such (in this
case, the clinking milk bottles). Symbolism in this page, for the reader versed in Shaman King, is rife:
Ren’s Chinese clothing, his setting, his relationship with his family, and even his fondess for milk are all
suggested in one page and this type of presentation is not at all uncommon for Shaman King or manga in
general.
39-There are plenty of examples of this type of scholarship but one of the best (and one that references
others of the same type) is: Ellen Rutten. ”Mikhail Nesterov and Aleksandr Blok: Feminizing Russian
Landscape around 1900.” The Slavonic and East European Review, 84, Number 2, (2006): 237-255. Pamela
Chester’s work on feminism, Russian literature, and the role of the physical environment are also
representitive of the same type of research.
40-Gábor Bezeczky, “Metaphor and Narrative”, Neohelicon, XXVII/2: 13-48.
18
more technologicalized) has changed the trajectory of relationship between
character, technology, and place from traditional Western literature. 41 Bakhtin
was always interested in the use of dialog in the novel and it was from this—and
in conference with the work of Valentin Nikolaevich Voloshinov—that Bezeczky
started to contrast the imperative for dialog and language-use in these scholars’
works to the need for a theory of metaphor in Max Black’s scholarship.
Such relationships between narrative and setting may, in many ways, be
compared to the dialogial relationship found in sung music between lyrics and
music. However, just as there may be musical elements in a song that have no
direct association with furthering the meaning of the lyrics at hand, there can be
incidental representations of architecture and other elements of setting in a work
of literature or film that do not directly communicate with narrative intent. Some
scholars such as Bezeczky, have problems declaring that any element of a fictional
narrative can be separate from the main narrative trajectory yet it seems apparent
that many authors do in fact include side-narratives and even plenty of
incidental details that do not further plot.42 Film-makers, due to the ease of
capturing any moment that literally walks by the camera’s gaze can pursue this
opportunity for inclusion of details non-essential to plot even further; as many
techniques and epistemologies of film have informed gaming production and
animation alike, in these media also can this situation be located.43
41-MarieLaurie Ryan, "Cyberage Narratology: Computers, Metaphor, and Narrative", In: Narratologies:
New Perspectives on Narrative Analysis, (Columbus: Ohio State UP, 1999), 113-141.
42-Bezeczky appears torn at times in his essay between Bakhtin’s grounding of metaphor and dialog both in
linguistic terms and thus the exclusion of narrative and the approach Black took in considering the same
and in doing such, in considering fairly deep theory between two major theorists, he seems to lose sight of
the reality of literary works which all this combined theory do at times concern.
43-See:Marie-Laurie Ryan, Narrative as Virtual Reality, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP. 2001) for more
nuanced analysis on film, video games, and other contemporary narrative genre and the role of narrative as
a means of augmented or alternative reality.
19
Manga and animé repeat long-standing patterns of narrative procedure going
back to at least the founding efforts towards the novel, and these patterns have in
fact very early Western roots in the Middle Ages as Julia Kristeva and other
scholars have noted.44 This is due, of course, to the fact that while non-western
and while postmodern, animé and manga are still linear narrative forms like
novelistic fiction and film. Moreover, most animé and manga will attempt to
present and resolve at least one major conflict in the span of an issue of the
manga or episode of the animé—just as most television dramas and sitcoms
follow this format.45 In the Middle Ages, as developments in feudal European
lands and in the British Isles allowed for greater agency and communication
between various courts, literature moved slowly away from its post-Roman
origins of folk songs and poems and towards epic poetry that would lay the
course for the modern novel.46
44 -Julia
Kristeva, La Révolution Du Langage Poétique: L'avant-Garde À La Fin Du Xixe Siècle,
Lautréamont Et Mallarmé, (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1974).
45-Fora striking example of an exception to the rule of animé following the conflict/resolution structure of
much dramatic fiction, consider the series FLCL (pronounced and sometimes also written as: “Fooly-
Cooly”; フリクリ) where characters tend to break the fourth wall, the animation style is esoteric but
references stereotypical aesthetics of animé in many cases, and the plot can only be described as
postmodern and rarely denotative. See: B. Ruh, “The Robots from Takkun's head: Cyborg Adolescence in
FLCL”, In: Brown, S, (Ed.), Cinema Anime: Critical Engagements with Japanese Animation, (New York:
Palgrave Macmillan) pp. 139-157.
46-The actual early roots of the modern European novel are rather contested and while Kristeva’s work in
La Révolution Du Langage Poétique (see supra) has been key in examining the linguistic origins of this
transition, the social issues at hand and the craft of early would-be novelists still merit extensive
investigation. One thing that is certain, however, was that a gravity away from the form of chansons de
geste and towards a format where the plot was more important than the formulation in which it was
presented came before the modern novel. In many great works of the latter portion of the High Middle Ages
a move towards a fictional format that follows extant trouvère poetic conventions but with a slant towards a
read, rather than sung or spoken, format and with lengthy character development is found. See: Michael
Walker, "Metaphor in Old French and Its Translation: Chrétien de Troyes’ Érec et Énide", The ATA
Chronicle. May, (2002). See also: Adalbert Dessau, "L'idée de la trahison au moyen-âge et son rôle dans la
motivation de quelques chansons de geste.", CCM, 3 (1960), 23-26.
20
Aside from narrative form in animé and manga there is the distinct issue of how
manga and animé tend to engage their reader/viewer and of the presence of the
reader/viewer as a user of the media—and not just a passive audience. The
devotion of core audience demographics both in Japan and in the international
market has in many senses shaped the trajectory not only of marketing animé
and manga, but even the typologies of plot.47 Fan contributions in terms of
homespun stories (which are often published by fans on the internet), drawings
of characters and environments, and ”fan subs” or translations of non-translated
Japanese animé (normally into English) by fans are all commonplace
mechanisms for fans to be directly involved in their favorite animé and manga.
Studios take note of this interest and very rarely discourage it as a copyright/
intellectual property issue and instead in many cases encourage fan-art
competitions and other means for fans to be a part of the process of creating
animé and manga. In a society as stratified and orderly as Japan this approach on
the part of both fans and studios may seem surprising, but it has been reasoned
that much of the cause for its success is that the narratives, characters, and
encompassing situation of manga and animé are something fans feel they are part
of as a community and that sense of community is a driving force behind the
genre’s popularity.48
The relationship between animé, manga, and the narrative therefore is a rather
complex one where narrative trajectory is predicated on many diverse qualifiers.
Given the fast pace of animé and manga and the short time/space (short weekly
47-SophieKinsella, “Japanese Subculture in the 1990s: Otaku and the Amateur Manga Movement”, Journal
of Japanese Studies, 24(2) (1998), 289-316.
48-JacquelineBerndt & Steffi Richter (eds), Reading Manga: Local and Global Perceptions of Japanese
Comics, (Leipzig : Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2006). See also: Tominaga Masatoshi, Globalization and
Japanese Animation: Ethnography of American College Students, (Ph.D. dissertation, University of
Pennsylvania, 2002).
21
or monthly comics or television episodes of around half an hour in duration) the
need to tell a story in a forward-moving and understandable manner is very
high. Setting and environment are mechanisms towards this goal as they in both
metaphoric and literal terms can place the characters within a substrate for the
action of the plot and introduce the viewer to the progression of both ideas and
action. The importance of approaching the application of environment,
architecture, and setting in animé and manga via a metaphor-based vantage is
that in literary studies the attention paid to environment—as stated above—too
often has suffered from the interloping of a vested idea or critical idiom on the
part of the scholar. It is fine to say that an author’s inclusion of a pastoral setting
brings forth the female, motherly, feel of his narrative or that a film-maker has
used a utopian, futuristic, environment to make comments on progress and
technology, but this is overlooking the immediate import of the setting for its
own merits. While this view seems to apply a standing metaphorical theory, it
actually applies it in inverse, noting the setting as metaphor for other connotative
ideals. While many manga and animé do not suffer for a lack of sophistication,
these genre trace their history back to narratives mainly targeted towards young
people where the interior worlds and their details are crucial over the morality or
further agenda of the story.
Many scholars of literature for young people—and by extension film, television
and video games for the same—interrogate the moral imperative in such
narratives but often at the loss of the authors’ narrative intent.49 Not all stories
impart a precise moral lesson: In a franchise such as Transformers, in example, the
age-old tale of good versus evil is certainly apparent but looking for further,
49-Personalcommunication with Elise Earthman, Professor of English, San Francisco State University. The
author took two courses on adolescent literature and its pedagogy and theory with Dr. Earthman and she is
a noted scholar on adolescent literature and its historiography.
22
nuanced, morals could leave scholars searching far into the night.50 In much of
animé and manga, the moral imperative is one as old as time and one found in
epics going back to the Middle Ages: good versus evil, honesty versus deceit,
courage warring against fear. Given the importance of hagakure (葉隱) in even
contemporary Japanese traditional values, the fact these morals are held in high
regard should not surprise anyone.51 The difference in contemporary Japanese
mores and those of the West, especially in regard to child-rearing, is far beyond
the scope of the present study however when the matter of morals, narrative, and
the role of nihonbunkaron and nihonshakairon (日本社会論) 52 are considered, the
whole picture comes complete as one where despite the learnings from Western
sources that animé and manga do display, these genre are very much their own
creatures. Moreover, the cultural context they function within Japan is its own
arena and one that alongside the evolution of animé and manga in the global
market has been exported to that market.
Beyond the influence of traditional literary forms and contemporary
entertainment media on animé and manga and the relationships with these other
genre, animé and manga also belong to the emerging “new media” fine art
tradition. This situation is because new media artwork often meets the same
basic criteria that animé and manga as art/entertainment forms happen to meet:
50-Marsha Kinder, Playing with Power in Movies, Television, and Video Games: From Muppet Babies to
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), Note that Kinder’s work on
Transformers (along with other American cartoons) predates the recent Transformer’s live-action feature
film. Her mention of the Transformer’s film in this book concerns the 1987 animated feature. However, her
analysis of film for adolescent viewers is still very nuanced and essential in understanding criticism in this
area perhaps even more than in understanding the genre itself.
51-On hagakure, see: Yamamoto Tsunetomo, Hagakure, The Book of the Samurai, Translated by William
Scott Wilson, (Tokyo: Kondansha International. 1979). See also: Inanzo Nitobe, Bushido: The Soul of
Japan, (North Clarendon, VT: Charles Tuttle & Co. 1905).
52-Nihonshakairon : studies of Japanese society, whereas nihonbunkaron is studies of Japanese culture.
23
(1) new media tends to be more democratic than traditional fine arts, with street
culture and other “outsider” art playing a vital role in the overall scope of
identity of the genre; (2) new media art tends to make use of novel technologies
including computer-generated graphics and non-conventional printing and
animation techniques; (3) new media art also often entertains narratives in visual
capacities much as conventional sequential art and animation would, instead of
providing a static display as traditional painting and photography do in the fine
arts convention. These traits are very much shared by animé and manga as art/
entertainment media. Moreover, as Henry Jenkins notes in his book Convergence
Culture, new media has leaked out of the gallery setting and into many varied
manifestations on the Internet and even to a degree on television53. Our current
media-savvy culture values forms of entertainment media that open up a large
portion of control to the end-user beyond what traditional narrative films and
television would allow and such is found in animé, video gaming, and other
outlets.
These traits though, the concept of the user of an entertainment product having a
proactive role in the direction of that product, have early origins in new media
art. Part of the central core of work by artists such as Laurie Anderson in the
1980s was that they would blend narrative visions with novel technologies and
opportunities for their audience to have a greater role in their art.54 Even as far
back as the early 1970s, scholars were examining the role of narrative theory in
postmodern artwork while artists were in turn looking at not only how to
incorporate new materials but also new mechanisms, including electronic
53 -Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture : Where Old and New Media Collide, (New York: New York
University Press, 2006).
54-Chua Eu Jin, “Laurie Anderson's Telepresence” Postmodern Culture, 16. 2, January (2002).
24
technologies, for working with those materials in a narrative capacity.55 For many
artists, the aforementioned Laurie Anderson included, the concept of a cyborg or
robot presence is directly included in the fusion of (wo)man and machine in
performative or narrative art which also incorporates technological aspects to
promote its visuals and/or narrative, and this aspect has not been lost on
scholars, either. In his book The Dream of the Moving Statue, Ken Gross speculates
on how art based around techno-performative mechanisms must also address in
its actual narrative these same mechanisms: that is, while a traditional oil painting
may be about a pastoral scene and not comment directly on the fact that oil
paints and canvas are used in its physical composition, many new media artists
deal with emerging technologies and the sociocultural meanings of such
technologies within their art which is in turn enabled by such technologies.56
Anime and manga, even those that deal with non-modern or postmodern time
periods and settings, very often address the capacity of technology to both affect
the narrative and the telling of the same: that is, the very technologies which
allow for the sophistication of today’s animé and manga are promoted or exalted
in the stories presented in these animé and manga.
In Roy Ascott’s essay considering the application of digital technologies in
communication of an artistic nature, he muses over the place of emotion within
the scope of such communication.57 At what point does technology become
something beyond just the mechanisms that enable technique and thus a core
portion of an artistic or narrative trajectory? Ascott’s essay, however, was written
55-IhabHassan, "The New Gnosticism: Speculations on an Aspect of the Postmodern Mind" boundary, 21.3
(1973): 547-69.
56-Kenneth Gross, The Dream of the Moving Statue, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992).
57-Roy Ascott, "Is There Love in the Telematic Embrace?" 1990. Telematic Embrace: Visionary Theories of
Art, Technology, and Consciousness, Ed. Edward A. Shanken. (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2003), 232-46.
25
in 1990 and reprinted as the introduction for a book published in 2003: a lot has
changed since then, perhaps most of all in the fact that no longer is all the most
important work in “new media” being created within the scope of fine art or
street art but is in fact spreading into the arena of mass entertainment. As
technology becomes both a means to enable the production of media and a
leitmotif in such media, the very scope of what the term “technology” means
becomes more obtuse: in Shaman King, in example, as in many manga,
technologies may include those that are magical right beside those which are
contemporary and realistic and those which are futuristic and have the trappings
of traditional science fiction.
As in much science fiction including the Star Wars franchise and Star Trek: The
Next Generation, the line between fantasy-genre type magic and high (digital)
technology is oft blurred in animé and manga with some characters or races
having what might be described as “super-powers” however these powers could
also be considered as advanced, albeit unexplained, technologies.58 Some
scholars have isolated a specific, Japanese, trend towards using robots and
robust, quasi-magical, technologies in general in narrative formats though it also
seems that the fact that animé and manga came of popularity at a time when
electronic media was also becoming very popular probably is the main factor in
bringing technology into narrative content.59
In some ways, the nihonbunkaron traditions of genre such as Japanese puppet
theatre, or ningyō jōruri (人形浄瑠璃), and kibyōshi woodblock prints might be
58-SusanJ. Napier, "When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality, and Terminal Identity in Neon Genesis
Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain", Science Fiction Studies 29 (88 (2001), 418-435.
59-Mark Gilson. "A Brief History of Japanese Robophilia." Leonardo 31 (1998), 367-369.
26
able legacies for animé and manga to carry forward, and this concept has been
investigated and serves as the basis for a fair amount of scholarship on the
placement of animé and manga in the broader context of Japanese arts and
entertainment.60 It is difficult to imagine that, given the prime place of aesthetic
and narrative traditions in Japanese arts, we would not be able to locate a
trajectory of continued use of classical concepts in novel media such as animé.
However, many innovations in animé have come about independent of Japanese
traditional influences, fine art influences, or Western film and entertainment
influences. Some aspects of animé and manga have certainly sprung up on their
own accord as the fusion of new ideas by young artists and writers have been
merged with shifting sociocultural trends. In Anne Allison’s article on the effect
of Pokémon on international animation and toy trends and how such represents
Japan’s postcolonial role in a world marketplace, Allison examines Pokémon as a
trend unique to Japan, however is it really? For many viewers and fans of
Pokémon and the unrelated yet similar Digimon franchise, the point of the
aesthetics and narrative is not specific to Japanese culture, despite most of the
action being set in contemporary Japan.61 In the 1980s in the United States, the
Disney film Tron presented a cute, computer-animated character called “Bit” that
interacted with human characters and was generated as a life-form via
technology. The “monster” concept of such characters though, the idea of taking
something typically abject and making it cute, and the interrelationship between
technology and its status as a life-form may however be all narrative concepts
60 -Christopher
Bolton, "From Wooden Cyborgs to Celluloid Souls: Mechanical Bodies in Anime and
Japanese Puppet Theater", Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 10,3 (2002), 729-771.
61-Anne Allison, “Portable Monsters and Commodity Cuteness: Pokémon as Japan's New Global Power",
Postcolonial Studies 6, 3 (2003), 381-395.
27
fairly specific to Japanese film and literature, as other authors have noted on the
Pokémon craze.62
To recap, the overwhelming narrative function of animé and manga in many
instances appears to be one very similar to that of epic poetry and novels, the
Japanese sense of morality and also of aesthetics can be traced via nihonbunkaron
to a variety of unique Asian roots, and these traits are all manifest via plot,
character, and setting in animé and manga. When manga and animé reached a
point of high saturation in the international market, it brought with it a cultural
construct of Japanese traditional and popular values and aspects and, in most
cases, instead of broadening its cultural basis to encompass the external cultures
it was attempting to garner as fan-bases, it retained its distinct character which in
fact probably generated a larger international fan interest than would have any
overt attempt to modify to these other cultures.63 While on occasion, an animé or
manga for export will be less nuanced in its expression of Asian cultural aspects,
in general, there is a high level of fidelity to original concepts in translations—
including unofficial “fan-sub” translations, such as those for Last Exile, where the
translators take great pains to explain possibly remote or arcane terms (whether
or not these hailed from Japanese or elsewhere).
Tadao Ando and Wabi Architecture:
62-Tim Jordan. "The Pleasures and Pains of Pikachu." European Journal of Cultural Studies 7 (2004),
461-480.
63-SophieKinsella, “Japanese Subculture in the 1990s: Otaku and the Amateur Manga Movement”, Journal
of Japanese Studies, 24; 2 (1998), 289-316. See also: Jacqueline Berndt & Steffi Richter (eds). Reading
Manga: Local and Global Perceptions of Japanese Comics, (Leipzig : Leipziger Universitätsverlag, 2006).
28
In Catherine Slessor’s book Concrete Regionalism, Slessor examines how concrete
and other contemporary building materials play a role in the aesthetics of
regional architecture and echo previous traditions in such aesthetics: Slessor
looks at Tadao Ando, the well-known Japanese architect, and how wabi premises
have influenced Ando and how his work, though spartan and modern, continues
a convention of Japanese style going back centuries.64 Slessor cites minka (民家 :
farmhouses, farm buildings and other rural structures) and sukiya (数寄屋造り :
teahouse) design as core influences on Ando’s approach to design while she
views his application of concrete, rebar, and other other modern materials most
commonly found in industrial or commercial architecture as not only pragmatic
but as providing a new means of obtaining the same wabi precepts sought by
rural creators of vernacular architecture. Therefore, Slessor sees Ando not as part
of a post-International Style trajectory as much as an innovative architect
concerned mainly with the interactions between native geography and
architecture and, in respect to his native Japan, the history of architectural praxis
where such has been primarily concerned with interactions with nature. When
Ando designs buildings for locations outside of Japan, he retains his trademark
style but looks with great care at the setting of such sites. In Japan, though, such
nuanced attention is perhaps easier for him and more immediate.
Tadao Ando is certainly one of the best-known of contemporary Japanese
architects but his association with his nation is not just one of origin but in fact
one of design approach: unlike, in example, Zaha Hadid who is Iranian but
London-trained and who has carried out most of her career in Europe, Ando’s
work has had a strong impact in his native land and has, as Slessor notes, been
64-Catherine Slesslor, Concrete Regionalism. (London: Thames & Hudson. 2000), 50-55.
29
highly influenced by Japanese traditions in architecture and material design.
Ando also works with explorations of typology and thereby the role of a building
in society, something we find very much reflected in how architecture is applied
in animé and manga. Typology, in Japan, touches on premises far beyond
architecture and the function of space: minka architecture is seemingly tied with
the Edo period’s concept of shinōkōshō (士農工商), or “four divisions of society”.
In minka construction, one finds the basal premises of rural, farm-based, life in
contrast to the machiya (町屋/町家) of urban dwellers (known as chōnin, 町人).
That Ando sought out inspiration from minka forms over machiya speaks volumes
about his placement of aesthetics and tradition: historically, urban architecture
would have held pride of place in society, but the relationship between minkya
forms and nature are, expectedly, closer. Nature, and relationship to site as well
as to history, have been prime concepts for Ando.
What Tadao Ando has attempted in praxis and what we find in the view of
architecture represented in most animé and manga are much the same: a core
desire to portray aspects of society via physical space. While Ando, the architect,
designs such spaces for the real world, the writers and artists of animé and
manga design such spaces to convey the visual keys to understanding society as
they portray such in their media. Architecture is, of course, not alone in
providing setting in animé and manga, but as most plots evolve in urban settings
and to some extent within interior spaces, architecture is the main stage of these
stories. Ando has spent much of his career designing public spaces, therefore
ones that are also in effect stages for performances whether formal or informal.
30
With Ando, creating spaces is about creating, or replicating, collective memory of
historical legacy while doing such indirectly and also creating a functional and
pragmatic arena for given events. In working with typologies, Ando speaks to
the notion of architecture representing pre-architectural aspects of society,
defining such aspects and making them tangible. Visual media, especially those
that are narrative, have the task of telling a story while also having the
responsibility to define in some part how society currently views itself, even if
the stories told are historical or futuristic or otherwise set outside contemporary
location and time. 65 None of this is to say that Ando planned a trajectory akin to
that of animé and manga for his architecture but it is clear that he is an architect
keenly interested in his culture’s approach to design aesthetics and includes the
concept of memory and performativity in a nearly narrative respect in his work.
In contrast, Japanese architect Kenzo Tange, while having completed a number of
high-profile projects in Japan appears much more influenced by currents in the
worldwide International Style—especially as such was expressed by Le
Corbusier. Part of this is the difference in ages and the decades where these two
Japanese architects were most active but there is also an element certainly of
gravitas towards the International Style and thereby towards broad global
currents in architecture on the part of Tange in contrast to a desire to embody the
local, national, and ethnocultural on the part of Ando.66 Still, the age of
architecture most exactingly represented by the work of Tange is the age of
architecture often portrayed in animé and manga: the large, strong, sweeping
65-DanielF Abawi, Silvan Reinhold, and Ralf Dörner, “A Toolkit for Authoring Non-linear Storytelling
Environments Using Mixed Reality”. in: Technologies for Interactive Digital Storytelling and
Entertainment, Stefan Gobël, ed. (Berlin: Springer. 2004),113-118.
66-JoséRafael Moneo & Kenzo Tange, The Solitude of Buildings : Kenzo Tange Lecture, March 9, 1985,
George Gund Hall, (Cambridge, MA. : Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, 1986), 18-22.
31
office towers and massive public structures of Tokyo and other leading cities.
These are the buildings of Japan that say “city” and “contemporary”; these are
the buildings that identify the bustle and growth of a massive urban area. Ando,
in contrast, clearly sees himself as an architect of peace and solitude: he desires to
provide a space that is calming in the midst of urban life.67 The city itself, it
seems, is one of the main “problems” that Ando seeks to solve in his work
beyond other immediate challenges specific to each site.
Building Post-Modern Worlds with Pre-Modern Influences:
How architecture is represented in manga and animé—the core of this study—is
not a secondary matter to narrative but part and parcel of the narrative
modalities applied in these genre. Moreover, the representation of architecture is
a manifestation of yamato (大和), or the “spirit” or “unity” of all things Japanese
and the concept of essence—or iki (いき)—of the aesthetics (visual, aural, and
otherwise) of a situation or idea being refined into a consummate representation.
As iki is normally considered as a refined perfection of aesthetic traits, the
tandem perfection of programmatic or performative traits—including the
manner in which one approaches something of beauty—is known as tsū (通).68
Another means of looking at this concept is the ideal of sui (粋) which also relates
to aesthetic perfection but moreover in regard to a real-time event or place than
to a work of art or other static object. In architecture, there is the most immediate,
67-Philip Jodidio, Ando: Complete Works, (London: Taschen. 2007).

68-LesliePincus, Authenticating Culture in Imperial Japan: Kuki Shúzö and the Rise of National Aesthetics,
(Berkeley: University of California Press. 1996), 43-44.
32
obvious, and crucial aspect of human-designed improvement on the natural
environment.
As Karsten Harries noted in his seminal work on ethics and architecture,
architecture in any refined and developed society has, alongside other other arts
and modalities of communication, an obligation to bring a sense of beauty and
order to the general sitaution of that society.69 Much as Walter Benjamin has
noted and is echoed in the work of a number of other theorists, Harries also
references the need for order to be expressed in architecture on a level that will
further the ethics and harmony of society but not always in a programmatic or
directed manner. That is, as Benjamin observed in his Arcades Project
(Passagenwerk) the natural situation of an urban space is often over time modeled
via the specific and evolving ethos of those who inhabit that space.70 It can be
argued that the situation of human interaction mediated by the built
environment developed over time that Benjamin describes in Arcades Project
cannot really exist in an atmosphere such as the fictional ones of animé and
manga but of course, as that atmosphere of evolved development is the goal of
fiction in a realistic representation, efforts are made towards a replica that is
convincing to viewers/readers.71
69 -Karsten Harries, The Ethical Function of Architecture, (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 1998),
270-273.
70 -Susan
Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Studies in
Contemporary German Social Thought), (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 1991).
71-There are, as mentioned previously in the text, exceptions to the desire of animé and manga to present a
realistic narrative—some examples such as FLCL go to lengths to present a more postmodern narrative
where the fourth wall is broken and while settings and circumstances have real-world foils, these are not
verbatim as they would be in contemporary real-life. This is a notable distinction from animé and manga
where a futuristic or historical reality is presented that differs markedly from real-life or where characters
such as demons or aliens are introduced which differ from reality.
33
If we contrast these aspects of animé and manga—the fact that fans play a
highly-acute role in the trajectory of the narratives and other aspects of creativity,
the role of traditional Japanese thought as manifest in nihonbunkaron and
nihonshakairon and the role of yamato in aesthetics, coupled with the ability of
animation to create consummate, total, environments, we find the exact locus of
architecture to be one with high potential in these genre. How is that potential
realized and how are narratives made integral with metaphoric and directive
practices? From research in the history of the epic form and the novel in the West,
we know that in fact there appears to be a high level of response between
narrative and use of metaphor and this points to material aspects including
setting as key in the formation of both connotative and denotative narrative. As
Benjamin noted, there is a political language in seeing—there is a visual acuity in
the environment and with the high degree of placement of contemporary
entertainment media, that acuity may be located in fictional representations as
much as ”real” ones. Indeed, what is a real representation? If we see a
documentary on, in example, Venice, Italy, we may be viewing reality as
recorded by a camera but still we are subject to the director’s point of view and
his/her desire to be inclusive of certain content. How different is a representation
of Venice—or at least a Venice-like city—found in an animé such as .Hack//
Liminality?
At the core of the concept, as Bezeczky noted, is that metaphor can be as lucent
as reality—at least in its association with greater narrative. Yet when we see an
architectural representation in animé, how high can its non-metaphorical
veracity be? That is, when a setting is devised for an animé by the show’s
producers and animators, how much detail and real aspects can be—or at least
will be—added to support the veracity of a certain architecture? Moreover, when
34
dealing with everyday buildings, how will the viewer even know? If the building
represented is well-known, there can be an expected comparison of details
between the representation and the real structure, but when the building is
somewhat generic, where is the real/true ontology of its form?
Two good examples of this situation come from .Hack//Liminality. In the first
example, we have an external scene where a modern-looking office or apartment
building displaying a motif of the international style as interpreted circa
1980-1990 is demonstrated. While the shot of this structure is very clear, the
movement of the camera (a fade and dissolve effect) into the building’s interior is
rapid enough that we are not as viewers introduced to other external aspects of
the building. Once inside the structure, we are confronted with a teenager
apparently passed out before her computer with some type of virtual-reality
headset on; the construction of this scene is to establish that the person in
question is young, keeps a messy desk which is denotative of her engrossment in
the game she was playing online, and despite her young age, she seems to be at
work in an office rather than at home. Her cluttered desk contains some toy
plastic animals and other personal items but also a number of folders, in/out
boxes, and other devices of the contemporary office. The computer where she has
been online, with its screen glowing a somber blue-green, is the focal point of the
scene as much or even more so as the character herself.
In both these examples—especially when taken together in context of the
narrative—we locate an effort on the part of the creator of this narrative to
present a great wealth of character information about this character via the
environment around her. The external shot sets up her location in a small office
building and this action helps define her work environment: she probably works
35
for a smaller firm or freelance—an important distinction in contemporary Japan.
She is not at a huge office tower of a major corporation. Also, the time appears to
be evening so she’s working at night or else is using company resources to play
the game, The World. Her untidy desk and work-area suggest that she’s highly
engrossed in this game and gives little care to other matters, and when we see
her slumped over her desk with the virtual-reality headset still on, we fear the
worst for her rather than assume she’s simply fallen asleep. It is difficult to make
out much about the character herself, aside from the fact she’s female (by
clothing and hair) and appears fairly young. Everything we know about her at
the onset of this episode is garnered via environmental details in context and yet
these details really provide a wealth of information useful in furthering the plot.
In a scene further into this same episode we follow a young woman and her male
friend through a school library where, between their classes, they are having a
conversation. The use of the library stacks to at times obscure these two
characters and add an aura of both mystery and implied intellectual gravitas to
their conversation is a method employed by other films but which works very
smartly in this application. In other scenes from this same episode, we encounter
the same girl in her home, leaning back in a chair and reflecting on events that
have transpired—and thus providing the viewer with needed backstory
regarding these events—and an image of the streets of Tokyo’s suburbs at the
start of a busy weekday. This latter scene is especially astute in its evolving
transition from a residential area to a more business-oriented district. In these
two scenes, like the scenes mentioned above of the office and the library, the
viewer is provided with powerful connotative information and also necessary
denotative information.
36
In Max Black’s model of metaphor and narration72, this procedure levels out the
variants of the plot and focuses the viewer on the immediate action while also
creating the illusion of reality in that these institutions, we may only presume,
existed long before the characters who are currently associated with them. In this
regard, the office does not only mandate the young lady as an office worker, the
library does not only validate the characters in it our students, but these impose
themselves on the viewer as institutions with bearing beyond those characters
whose actions have taken the veiwer to visit them.
In the intricate, seminal, animé Last Exile an even more evident and continued
version of this use of metaphor can be located. Last Exile is aesthetically
considered to be a “steampunk”73 animé in that it embodies the steampunk
aesthetic of altered Victorian-era styles in architecture, fashion, and engineering
although the technological aspects of the society it represents, like most
steampunk sci-fi novels and films is more advanced by far than the Victorians
were. Beyond the overall leitmotif of steampunk styling in this animé, architecture
is used to represent different political factions at nearly every turn. The opening
credits make strong use of this trait and portray the main character, Claus Valca
(クラウスヴァルカ), standing on a cliff with a sprawling city laying below where
he stands and surveys this land. In addition, at the pre-credit opening of the Last
Exile episode “Calculating Alex”, the estate of a prominent political leader in the
animé is presented in a rapid sequence of scenes that establish which political
72-Max Black, Models and metaphors: Studies in Language and Philosophy, (Ithaca: Cornell University
Press. 1962). 29-32, 50-56.
73 -Steampunk is a recognized aesthetic and literary genre of science fiction that bases its aesthetic
presentation on conventions of Victorian-era style and often considers how technology emerging of this era
such as steam-powered devices and airships would have continued to evolve if other competitive
technologies did not leave these by the wayside (such as jet engines triumphing over airships for military
and air-travel purposes. See: George Slusser and Tom Shippey, Fiction 2000: Cyberpunk and the Future of
Narrative, (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press. 1992).
37
faction (via the architecture, which by this ninth episode of the show is known to
the viewer who has followed the animé to this point from its inception) is being
represented and while the character is only shown in profile and by his hands
resting in his lap, his association and identity are conveyed mainly via the
architecture involved.
The use of architecture in tandem with other aspects of setting is crucial to Last
Exile, and .hack//SIGN. In these two franchises (Last Exile and the .hack franchise),
the concept of uchronia—or the idea that real-world history could have evolved in
very different trajectories or that an alternate world runs in tandem with the
known one and echoes but does not duplicate outright the events of our world—
is very central to construction of plot. Architecture, moreover than
representations of the natural environment, allows for an association with
collective cognition of places, things, and events. We all know that if we see Big
Ben there is a connection to London; the White House, a connection to
Washington, D.C. Through selecting specific architectural styles, a producer/
animator may be able to interpolate a sense of difference between rival or non-
associated groups in a narrative (various political factions, nations, or ethnic
groups) plus, they may introduce a sense of the exotic to their narrative.
In actual architectural practice, we see something very similar happen in
instances such as the importation of Asian-inspired garden design and
architectural elements in nineteenth-century England, in Indo-Saracenic designs
fusing Indian traditional influences and British Gothic-revival ideals together,
38
and in the Scottish Baronial style.74 The anthropologist Micaela di Leonardo has
noted at length that industrialized nations such as England, the United States,
and Japan have long desired to import other cultural aspects as items of exotic
aesthetics and sophistication and such can be seen in even how films and
animation portray settings—including architecture. Certainly, in a James Bond
film, we find our hero chasing the bad guys all around China, Caribbean islands,
and French beaches . . . seemingly, the spies in James Bond movies never wind
up in Columbus, Ohio or Odessa, Texas.75 The readership/viewership of action-
adventure , sci-fi, and fantasy genre expect to be entertained with a degree of
exoticism and intrigue and animé/magna is no different in this aspect but there
is a difference in how such exoticism and intrigue work their way into manga
and animé.
In animé and manga, foremost, the West—especially America—is also considered
”the other” and exotic. Moreover, anything rural can take on a metaphoric
meaning of otherness as most Japanese young people have more association with
urban or suburban environments. More so than in Western culture,
demonstration of a rural environment can bring about metaphors of historical
periods, nature, harmony, honor, and other ”valued” traits; In extension,
74-A major reason for the importation of exotic architectural styles for external and interior architecture and
for garden design in England during the nineteenth century was that these styles, even when interpreted in
manners that were less than faithful to their sources (which was in fact probably more often than not)
brought forth a connotative power of the exotic, the bizarre, the never-seen-before and added an air of
urbane mystique to their owner’s homes and gardens. Hence, the popularity of follies designed in an exotic
style. On the gothic revival and associated styles, see: David Irwin, Neoclassicism, (London: Phaidon.
1997).
75 -diLeonardo blames foremost her own profession of anthropology, especially under the popular
leadership of Margaret Mead, for being “guardians of the offbeat” and encouraging the “other” to be seen
only for their otherness and trotted about as an oddity. While modern society may celebrate “diversity”, di
Leonardo is wary of the automatic sense of otherness expressed when dealing with any society or culture
further afield than typical Western ones. See: Micaela di Leonardo, Exotics at Home: Anthropologies,
Others, and American Modernity, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 2000).
39
aesthetics play a greater role in Japanese pedagogy for youth than in the West.76
The concept of Japan as an isolated, cloistered, island nation as expressed in the
traditional philosophy of shimaguni (島国) brings about a higher acuity of
metaphoric association with nature and natural elements and thereby, with
aspects such as the environment and connections created by human intervention
in the natural world—architecture most certainly included.77 Japanese
traditional architecture has not only a metaphorical meaning but also a strong
denotative presence in many animé and manga: conventions such as the
traditional town-house, or machiya (町家) have historical legacies yet remain in
modified form part of contemporary rural architecture.78
The machiya is also a central item in the metaphorical, collective, memory of
Japanese history and culture. Much like the nostalgic and therefore not very
accurate view of ”merry olde England” found in some variants of British history,
the machiya and its position in the mythical history of the Heian and Edo periods
of Japan history is more one of how literature and folk history have rendered the
concept of this house-type than the reality of its application in history.79 As,
alongside the rural home style of nōka (農家), or farm houses, the machiya are the
76-D. Buckingham & J. Sefton-Green, “Structure, Agency, and Pedagogy in Children's Media Culture”, In:
J. Tobin (Ed.), The Rise and Fall of Pokémon. (Durham: Duke University Press. 2004).
77 -Nozomu Kawamura (河村望), Nihonbunkaron no Shûhen (日本文化論の周辺, The Ambiance of
Japanese Culture Theory), (Tokyo: Ningen no Kagakusha. 1982).
78-For a broad and in-depth background on the role of the home in traditional and modern Japan, see:
Jordan Sand, House and Home in Modern Japan, (Cambridge, MA: The Harvard University Press. 2005).
79-Roy Judge, "May Day and Merrie England" Folklore 102.2 (1991, pp. 131-148). Note in Judge’s article
the concept of “Merrie England” is as much one that formed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as
any form of accurate historiography of the Middle Ages. The popular imagination’s concept of the machiya
follows similar lines. Also, for more on the actual historiography of British vernacular architecture and
village design in the Middle Ages, see: R.A. Dodgshon and R.A. Butlin. A Historical Geography of
England and Wales. (London: Academic Press. 1978, pp. 141-143). Dodgshon and Butlin’s work can be
contrasted with how Judge explicates a lack of real awareness of historical structures and more of a reliance
on folk tales and vague ideas in popular culture to construct how the early English lived.
40
pre-eminent typology of long-lasting domestic vernacular architecture in Japan
and thus have established a place in the history and folk history of the nation.80
The concept of the rural Japanese family gathered around on a snowy winter’s
eve at the irori (囲炉裏), or hearth, is not too distant from the image of the English
or early American lady of the house cooking at her own hearth or the greeting
card standard of a cat sleeping near a lit fireplace: the only applied difference
really is an architectural one as the irori is an open hearth located in the center of
a room versus the Western-style hearth with a fireplace and flue. In both cases—
and all cases with folk history—there is a lot of truth in both renditions but there
is also a good deal of romance.
When the above is considered in relation to how architecture is used in manga
and animé, and to the situation of exporting views of Japanese culture to external
markets, we find a legacy of mythos extant that architecture builds upon in
manga and animé because this same mythos latently exists in society as a whole.
An example of note is that in the manga/animé Bleach (ブリーチ, transliteration:
Burīchi) the Soul Society (尸魂界) is—though not expressly Japanese as it is a
”spirit world”—depicted as having mainly a combination of traditional, modern,
and post-modern contemporary architecture. The center of this otherworldly
community is the Seireitei ( 霊廷) which, aside from the scale and materials of
some of its architecture, more or less resembles a high-Edo city. The replication of
Japanese traditional architecture in this application could indicate several things:
first, the fact the primary viewership is Japanese so it would only be natural to
use an architectural style that they would recognize. However, in such service,
most any style of modern architecture could be employed. The second reasoning
80-Atsushi Ueda, The Inner Harmony of the Japanese House, (Tokyo: Kodansha International. 1998).
41
could be that a style with connotative meaning as refined and even holy would
be in the best service of representing a divine city. This would be in keeping with
shimaguni practices, certainly.
In numerous animé and manga we find the supernatural and the spirit world,
especially, to be a popular theme. Certainly, Bleach, Shaman King, and Yu Yu
Hakusho (ぼたん)81 all focus on interaction between the underworld/spirit-world
and the living, human, realm. To further accredit this aspect of fantasy genre to
its viewers, two things are done: the replication of traditional Japanese
architecture, costume, and other material culture within depictions of the spirit
world itself to further adhere this fictional universe with the known universe and
secondly, the location of markers of real spiritual interaction both historical and
contemporary within representations of the “real” world, such as butsudan (仏壇),
or traditional Buddhist shrines found in private homes. As Margit Maria Nagy
noted in her scholarship of Japanese women’s roles, the home was an epicenter
for the woman’s further influence in family and community matters prior to and
through World War II.82 After the war, women found greater social agency in the
changing world of a Japanese society reforming itself from failed imperial
ambitions, however, the discourse of home life remained strong in the conception
of what womanhood meant in Japan. The focus on butsudan and other personal
and familial shrines were tandem with the focus on women and family in the
home. Where the church (as a building) in Christian, Western, societies played
the leading physical role as a representation of God, the role of a temple was very
81-YuYu Hakusho is a popular manga and animé concerning “spirit detectives” who trace demons who have
invaded the human world. It has been marketed in both serial magna and half-hour animé versions in
English in the United States and the United Kingdom. Like Bleach, it incorporates aspects of Shinto, Taoist,
and Christian views of the afterlife and demonology into its narrative.
82-MargitMaria Nagy, 'How Shall We Live?': Social Change, The Family Institution and Feminism in
Prewar Japan, (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Washington, 1981). 52-53.
42
much augmented in Japan due to differences in belief-systems by the home
shrine.
This association with spirituality, women, and home may seem very broad, but in
understanding the Japanese approach to all these concepts one can see that a
connection between them would be useful in narrative construction for animé
and manga and that by locating a gateway between the spirit-world and the real
world at the home as much as a temple or other holy structure, a transfer of
meaning takes place. The home, just as the butsudan shrine intones, is a locus of
the holy and the departed spirits of the family and thus there is real, personal,
tangible, connection between the spirit world and home world. If spirits were to
cross over to the real world, they would find any home where they held a
personal connection to serve for this gateway. On a more metaphorical level,
young viewers could identify with the teens such as the lead character of Bleach,
Ichigo Kurosaki (黒崎一護), who lead normal lives until otherworldly beings
invade their lives and the location of this invasion is, of course, the home.
When the young student Ichigo returns home from school one day he discovers
an odd woman—a Shinigami (死神) which in the storyline of Bleach is a type of
”death god”—in his family’s home. As he confronts her, she is attacked by
another otherworldly being—a type of ghost known as a horō (虚)—and she is
wounded to the extent she is forced to transfer her supernatural powers over to
Ichigo.
A continued leitmotif throughout this introduction to the story and later plot
developments centers around Ichigo’s sense of duty because all these events
43
transpired in his own home and the connections foster between him, his home,
and these otherworldly beings. Ichigo’s home is in Karakura-chō (空座町) , a
fictional suburb of Tokyo. His high school friends live in this same district and
most of the action of Bleach takes place here excepting scenes in the other-world
of the Soul Society. The detail lavished upon Karakura, like that provided to the
Soul Society as discussed above, spares few expenses and no less than twelve
sub-divisions of Karakura are mentioned in Bleach. Every effort is taken to create
this fictional district in keeping with real-life suburbs of Tokyo and to provide
details that are not only convincing but that illuminate a veritas of place. In
interviews and official art-books related to Bleach, its creator/artist Tite Kubo (久
保宣章) has noted that his intent in providing this level of detail was to produce
a world that seemed just like real-life excepting the presence of so many
supernatural elements.83
The concept of Karakura is the concept of a typical Tokyo suburb, an urban
environment akin to that which many Japanese young people would inhabit. It
also, through the level of detail furnished it and the fact that its own (fictional)
evolution is back-chronicled over the course of the Bleach animé, revealed to be
one of the formerly rural areas outside of Tokyo that grew into busy metro
regions of the city’s outskirts in the post-war years. Such a situation of an actual
town is noted in the book Toshié: A Story of Village Life in Twentieth-Century Japan84
and this portrayal in Bleach adds yet another facet of realism to an otherwise
rather unreal narrative. In this sense, realism is offered in: a lead character that
primary viewers can identify with, the connection between person and home, the
83-Tite Kubo, Bleach Official Character Book SOULs, (Tokyo: Shueisha. 2006).
84-Simon Partner, Toshié: A Story of Village Life in Twentieth-Century Japan, (Berkeley: University of
California Press. 2004).
44
extended connection between primary characters and their location, and the
creation in the Soul Society of an alternate/foil world that contains both
contrasting and similar aspects as the “real” world of the district of Karakura. By
the time—a number of episodes into the animé—the characters find themselves
in Soul Society, enough aspects of a realistic environment have already been
established to encourage a very willing belief in this spirit world while the
connections made on a metaphoric level between the spirit world and the actual
world of contemporary Tokyo are also very strong.
Contrasting the above examples, we find that in .hack//SIGN architecture is
provided in the context of real-world environment to denote places where action
takes place but also to suggest via metaphor the import of such action and to
give clues to character and plot development while in Bleach the metaphoric
function is not to reveal information about characters as much as it is to expose
the connections between core ideas in the narrative. This may seem very much
like the function of architecture touched on already in Shaman King, but a crucial
difference is found in that in Shaman King, architecture functions to associate
characters with legacies and cultural meaning while in Bleach architecture is
used to establish sociocultural loci but also to extend characters beyond those loci
as how in the case of Ichigo the surroundings of Karakura position him as a
typical Japanese schoolboy but the contrast in his newfound mission in life is
foiled by this condition. Ichigo’s own disbelief at his new supernatural powers
and mission is made more apparent via the fact his surroundings have not
changed at all. Whereas, in Shaman King, the use of temple architecture and
moreover the inclusion of Chinese motifs for Ren and his family work as forces
of identification much as a military uniform would function to identify those
who wear it as not only military in profession but of what military they serve.
45
In her engrossingly deep study of À la recherche du temps perdu and Marcel
Proust’s writing, Julia Kristeva examined how Proust interpreted space—
including the built environment—and translocated this into his approach to
linguistic transmission of sensation.85 The senses, Kristeva argued, are central to
À la recherche du temps perdu and the work is a tribute to sense and time (hence
the title of Kristeva’s own book) as much as an exploration of character and plot.
Metaphoric meaning is a central construct that Kristeva addresses in great detail
and following her reasoning (and also that of Max Black) that metaphor is useful
in a variety of ways in literature but is perhaps most tangent in that metaphor is
one mechanism for bridging the divide between real and unreal and thus the
difference between literature and other forms of writing.
Differing from the Western tradition of literature evolving from oral concepts
into written ones, in Japan there was a more blended tradition of storytelling in
ukiyo-e (浮世絵) or wood-block prints and especially with kibyoshi that allows for
more of a free flow of visual and oral/textural narrative. Thus, the concept of
metaphor is more present in the nuances of Japanese visual culture as noted by
the scholar of Japanese fine arts, Gian Carlos Calza.86
As Kristeva explains visual metaphor, she addresses it in context of the author’s
interpolation of visual and material culture into the representation of altered
85-Julia Kristea, Time and Sense: Proust and the Experience of Literature : Le temps sensible: Proust et
l'expérience littéraire; translated by Ross Guberman, (New York: Columbia University Press. 1996).
86-Calza notes in his recent overview of Japanese traditional visual culture that to Western eyes many
mechanisms of non-verbal communication are so subtle in Japanese society that they are overlooked, yet
these very signs are essential to a feeling of community on a broad level. Certainly, here he is repeating a
view found in nihonbunkaron-based scholarship for decades. See: Gian Carlos Calza, Japan Style,
(London: Phaidon. 2007).
46
meaning in a literary context, however, while this makes sense for textural
narrative and also illuminates the difficult task of the author to ”make” his
narrative ”real”, it avoids the condition of a graphic narrative such as manga or
animé. Proust did not have film, much less animation, though he was in the heart
of a virbant visual culture in Paris. Scholars such as Susan Sontag have certainly
explored the impact of film on narrative and also the role of metaphor in such,87
but still this gaze is very much formulated by Western standards. Where
Kristeva’s work on Proust is of note—despite being that of a Bulgarian/French
scholar on a French author—is that it explicates the necessary function of
environment in metaphor and due to Proust’s upper-class lifestyle and position
in Paris, most of this environment is a built one.88
Last Exile, in the context of the quest seemingly towards metaphor (and through
metaphor) perhaps presents the most crucial use of architecture of any animé.
The architecture, as already noted, in Last Exile serves as the primary mechanism
for setting a steampunk tone and also is a very important means of identifying
the many different factions involved in the story. Thus, the denotative and
connotative worth of architecture is very high in Last Exile and the series also has,
like the .hack franchise, to create and pro-offer greater exposition on environment
than would most animé as it forces so much of its aesthetics and overall tone to
be set on these qualifiers. Whereas Bleach, Shaman King, and other manga and
animé have the natural advantage of representing environments that truly do
exist, the environment—the very planetary system—in Last Exile is fictional. (In
the .hack// franchise, the real-world environments are true-to-life while the
87-Susan Sontag, Under the Sign of Saturn, (New York: FSG/Picador. 2002).
88 -Thefact that Kristeva is a pioneering lingusitic theorist on the concepts of dialog, semiotics, and
metaphor in literature also helps her deal with the position of environment more adroitly than many
scholars would have and without the myopic view of only the Western canon at hand.
47
environment of the computer-mediated The World is fictional, but a fiction that
the franchise in plot admits openly.) While Bleach has the challenge of creating a
suburb of Tokyo that is concurrent with real suburban districts but unique
enough to bend to the plans and devices of the show’s writers (an important
aspect for later plot developments), Last Exile has to create from scratch a world
that viewers can believe in and care about.
What Last Exile does with architecture is a departure from the Japanese-centric
issue of architecture found in Bleach and other manga and animé: instead, Last
Exile creates typologies from multiform sources but with an eye towards
Victorian England (expected, given the show’s overall steampunk aesthetics) and
earlier periods of British and European architecture. Costume design for
uniforms varies between steampunk-Victorian and what appears to be inspired
by World War II-era military uniforms, but architecture by and large follows
much earlier conventions. Why is this? In a drama where futuristic airships and a
number of very advanced technologies are central to the plot, why not introduce
more contemporary if not futuristic architectural forms?
What is the meaning of this? In actual real-world chronology at least, the
Ashdown House and Coleshill both predate the Victorian era by several
centuries. Why not exhibit a neoclassical house style closer to the Victorian age to
add fuel to the steampunk aesthetic? The most rational reasoning is that the
writers and illustrators of Last Exile were more concerned with creating a staged,
evolved, sense of history in their fictional universe. Instead of placing everything
from one era or vintage, it was far more realistic and intelligent to indicate an
evolution of styles, tastes, technologies, and political factions. In doing this, when
the steampunk vanship is contrasted with the stately home it is clear that while
48
the vanship indicates both retro and futuristic technologies, the manor house
indicates a longstanding seat of power and wealth.
Such was certainly also an intention of actual British country homes of the upper
class—from the era in the seventeenth century onward to the Victorian age when
British power was at its greatest. The designs of these homes displayed the
wealth, advances in building technology, and agency for mid-level noblemen and
untitled but wealthy families to show off their power via material means.89 Given
the gravity of attention furnished to costume, techno-mechanical aesthetics, and
other aspects that result in the overall steampunk look of Last Exile, it seems that
the designers of the show did not in the least pluck out a manor house type in
random. Moreover, the steampunk aesthetics of Last Exile are not just a visual
approach, but an approach of sub-genre that places the animé firmly into a
certain niche where aesthetic details are as expected and important as other
mechanisms of plot and development.
Photographs of Henry W. Taunt of Coleshill and Hall Barn in Beconsfield
indicate that these buildings, with their rather box-like foot-print and their
imposing façades would serve well as models for the types of estates seen most
often in Last Exile. The premise of metaphor is called into question in part here,
recalling Max Black’s work on narrative, in that the ontological purpose of a
manor house is in fact a display of wealth to some extent. Certainly, any
governor’s mansion or other official home of a political leader is not only a
metaphor of power secondary to its primary purpose as a dwelling but part of
that primary purpose is in fact one of an official show of power. In the context of
89-Alison Maguire, “A Collection of Seventeenth-Century Architectural Plans” Architectural History, 35.

(1992): 140-182.
49
narrative, the metaphor is not simply in the application of architecture or
architectural style but in the contrast between the vanship airship carriers, and
other technologies to the stately homes that often appear.
These buildings are always in Last Exile associated with older, established leaders
while the commanding officers of the military ships portrayed tend to be rather
young and the lead characters, Claus and Lavie, even younger (probably in their
mid to late teens in fact). With a fictional world, the goal appears here to be one
of creating a realistic evolution of society and polity and the architecture
involved both in directive means and metaphorical ones furthers the narrative in
this manner. While in animé and manga it is not uncommon to portray central
characters as younger than they would be in real life (e.g., the commanding
military officers in their mid-twenties), Last Exile seems to take upon itself the
mission of providing a world that is realistic in terms of a social/political reality
and inclusive in this is the use of aesthetic ”props” such as the manor houses of
the elite.
Victorian and Edwardian houses were often robust, solid, and imposing in their
size and outfitted with the trappings of classical Greek and Roman architecture.
In this approach, a statement of not only the wealth to build such large, complex,
structures on the part of the owner but of taste and a background in the classics
was also provided. Later Edwardian architects such as Sir Giles Gilbert Scott
moved into the novel territory of industrial architecture and started to
incorporate elements of mechanical design into such projects. For the steampunk
world of Last Exile, which has its aesthetic roots in the Edwardian era, the
influence of designs such as Scott’s are evident but just as in Scott’s own time the
leading homes of scions of industry would still have been older, more
50
conventional, houses along the lines of Victorian design, and the same approach
is reflected in Last Exile.
Certainly, in the time of Giles Gilbert Scott there was a division in private and
public space even within large British cities such as London and Manchester
where homes would compose neat, traditional, neighborhoods whereas the new
industrial architecture of the modern age would be found near the Thames, in
docklands, in reaches of the city that had always been those of business and thus
filled with wholesalers and warehouses. Only now, they also were the real estate
of power plants and factories. Giles Gilbert Scott’s Battersea Power Station is a
perfect example of this trend in terms both of location and style: its design is one
of exalted mechanics and sympathy towards its function.
The modern, technological, trajectories of the power plant are denoted by its
architecture—not hidden in the language of tradition but celebrated in the argot
of progress. In Last Exile, we find much the same division between the
traditional, domestic, world and the cutting-edge, military, industrial one.
However, Last Exile takes matters a step further and positions the traditional on
the firm ground of a planet and the modern in the clouds where military airships
patrol. When Claus and Lavie have missions that take them to visit the
impressive homes of political leaders, they must literally come down from the
clouds to make these visits. Much like a sea captain of the nineteenth century
returning home from the Royal Navy, these characters return to a place of origin
that is still the seat of power yet is not where the real action takes place.
Architecture, alongside other incidental details, makes this point clear to the
viewer of Last Exile.
51
Later British architects such as Sir Basil Spence would, interestingly enough, take
the origins of techno-mechanical reference in architectural aesthetics and take
such a leap forward and incorporate more robust variations in design both
looking forward to a space-race influence future and backwards to the classics.
The British Embassy in Rome, designed by Spence, is an example of the latter
approach while his building at 50 Queen Anne’s Gate displays the former
trajectory. In Last Exile, we can isolate this type of aesthetics in the design of the
airships and vanships and overall steampunk approach. The previous generation
of architects and their work is consigned to, expectedly, the previous generation
of power.90
If Bleach dealt with the creation of realism via replicating a suburb of Tokyo and
the associated visual and spatial relations necessary for viewers to believe that
the lead characters who are ordinary humans do in fact seem ordinary and
people the viewer can feel empathy for, and if Last Exile through stunning
aesthetics and saavy employment of detail and visual representations of power
structures suggests reality in a fictional world, then .hack//SIGN takes up the
challenge of creating a proxy world of a virtual environment. We have already
seen how the special OVA, .hack//Liminality dealt with real-world architecture in
the service of providing useful character exposition but where .hack//SIGN really
takes off with its employment of architecture is in the virtual environment that in
the animé is known as The World and represents a comprehensive multiplayer
role-playing game. The opening sequence of .hack//SIGN focuses on the
90 -More on the career and works of Sir Basil Spence is availible online at a recent exhibit website
dedicated to this architect: http://www.basilspence.org.uk/
52
introduction of characters and their involvement—literally—in The World.
Characters—both main and supporting—in The World portion of .hack//SIGN
appear as manifestations of supposed ”real-world” players of these avatars in the
online game and like many such (actual) online multiplayer games, they inhabit
a psuedo-medieval world and express themselves concurrently as different
character classes appropriate to such a world. The visual appearance of these
characters is bright and distinctive but also in keeping with the medieval theme
of the game.
The landscape of the The World varies but normally replicates typical,
subtropical, environs of no distinct origin. In some instances, though, bizarre
manifestations of The World betray both its artifice and the fact that something
may even be amiss in its programming as Alice in Wonderland-like landscapes of
huge toadstools appear and energy storms appear throughout the computer-
mediated landscape. Given the medieval setting, most open countryside is very
rural and aside from occassional battles, most action takes place in small towns
and larger cities. The latter are of interest because while the open countryside
appears subtropical yet influenced probably by England (in terms of appearance,
rural interior and exterior architecture, and botany) the larger cities in The World
appear to have taken Venice, Italy, as their main point of inspiration. Like Venice,
there is a cityscape of canals, bridges, community squares framed by grand
churches and palazzi. In fact a central building in one un-named city has a spire—
rather than square tower—at first suggesting it may be a church, but given its
squat, square, form and the amount of space it takes up, moreover resembles a
palazzo along the lines of the Palazzo Senatorio on the Paizza del Compidoglio.
The manner in which the camera moves around the scenes of the cities, when
53
action takes place in them, is such as to portray these cities as busy, even
confusing places yet much of the architecture is clearly evident.
The canals in this un-named city and in other, large, cities in .hack//SIGN tend to
serve as broad waterways to transport a variety of watercraft around the cities
and are also often the sites of personal introspection for characters. While the
streets and squares of the cities seem busy to the point of distraction, the areas
around the canals seem to offer characters solace and the possibility to sit alone,
talk with one and the other, and reflect on the strange world they are in. In
addition, balconies and patios offer the advantage of a literal higher vantage
point over the canals and the rest of the city—which allow characters to take to
these positions and gain new perspectives over the landscape. The late-
medieval/early modern Italian aesthetics continue with catacombs much akin to
those of the San Sebastiano fuori le mura of Rome; characters explore these spaces
and often—as is something of a long-standing film and video-game tradition—
encounter monsters and treasure in them. Where .hack//SIGN goes beyond other
conventions though is in interfacing these catacombs with other architectural and
historical legacies in the cities involved; although the original purposes of the
catacombs are not clearly defined the periods of history they date from—in the
game of The World at least—are noted and characters comment on the fact
they’ve been used for storage and other purposes over time, much like their real-
world analogs.
The design of The World in .hack//SIGN does seem to share some traits with the
design of Bleach and many other manga and animé in that there is a directive
trajectory of literal representation planned to further the narrative via denotating
54
what type of environment the characters explore and how these explorations take
place. Also, this type of denotative representation of architecture is useful in
explaining to viewers what relationship the characters and setting of the
narrative have to real-life, present-day, experiences.
In all the animé/manga examples that have been explored in this study, there are
some relationships at hand: in Shaman King it is one of a setting contemporary to
the present-day but with the added aspect of supernatural powers and
supernatural beings. In Bleach, the situation is much the same but while as in
Shaman King, Tokyo is the epicenter of activity, in Bleach an even more nuanced
portrait of Tokyo is provided complete with an entire fictional suburb. In Last
Exile, a world totally apart from the present day and Earth is offered, but with
analogs to contemporary Earth that help the viewer understand the situation of
the complex narrative. In an actual alien world, we could hardly expect
important homes and other buildings to replicate anything akin to Earth’s
architecture yet in such replication in Last Exile a sense of familiarity is created
and metaphorically, the viewer becomes accustomed to intricate plot
developments in part because the architectural representations make it easier to
associate certain characters, factions, and even basic ideas (i.e., seats of wealth
and power) with each other.
.hack//SIGN and the other animé in the .hack// extended franchise provide the
most sophisticated use of architecture in creating setting of all the animé and
manga here considered. In .hack//SIGN, we find two different trajectories taking
place: one is the creation of elaborate, consummate, representations of setting via
architecture as found in The World whereas the other is the use of architecture in a
denoative manner when the ”real-life” world of modern-day Tokyo and other
55
locations is presented. In her study of Proust, Julia Kristeva took the path-finding
route of insisting on the inter-related importance of time and sense in
determinations of narrative. While tending to present these two concepts as the
twin bastions of her thesis, Kristeva notes that to inter-relate the two together,
another quality must be present: space. Sense, in Kristeva’s use thereof, is the
experience of the invididual and he or she feels and realizes that experience
whereas time, of course, is the duration of such experience. Both qualities are
crucial to the fuctioning of anyone in any society and even, in fact, in any
environment. However, space is quite literally the physical setting for such
functions and is therefore also crucial in literary representations. As stated before,
in an animé or manga the use of visual representation allows—demands, even—
for a far greater acuity and presence of the visual and environmental than
textural literature would allow.
Conclusions:
The great architect Louis I. Kahn once noted that architecture was, to him, like art
you could walk around in and that it was this facet of architecture which lead the
young Kahn as a college student to study architecture over visual art or music—
both of which he was also very adept at and encouraged to pursue
professionally. 91 In animé and manga we find this concept carried out in another
manner: by moving the world of architecture inside another world, the world(s)
of fictional beings, fictional lands and some places that are in fact very real yet
represented—as everything must be in animation and drawn comics—by pen
and ink instead of film and camera. The opportunity provided by this stark
situation of having to render all aspects of an environment more or less from
91-Robert McCarter, Louis I. Kahn, (London: Phaidon. 2005).
56
scratch is an opportunity to present these in either loose detail or very nuanced
form depending on the desire of the production’s creators. In the case of the
Japanese tradition which we have here noted to have evolved from kibyoshi into
manga into animé—all the time while carrying forth the core aesthetic values of
clear and ordered presentation, beautiful detail, and refined use of space found at
the heart of Japanese cultural views on fine and graphic arts.
As manga in a sense begat animé and although the two genre are in fact different
animals, they still inter-influence one and the other greatly, there is no doubt that
what we find in one we will most commonly find in the other. Manga, probably
simply due to its closer ties to textural literature and therefore the association it
has with literary studies has been investigated more than animé by scholars, but
the findings from such scholarship also apply broadly to animé. 92 In the present
study, the role of animé is simply more nuanced due to its ability to present a
varied view in motion of setting and architecture. However, without manga not
only would animé not exist in its current form but it would lack many of the
great stories and characters it has over time brought to the world of film and
television.
In the representations of architecture in animé and manga we find the duplicity
of the real, actual, environment as known as such in contemporary Japan but also
we locate expressions based on idealized variants of other historical periods and
architectural forms, such as the use of cityscapes clearly inspired by Italian city-
states from the early-modern period in .hack//SIGN. Architecture and material
culture in general can inform how a viewer understands action in an animé and
92-Kinko Ito, "A history of manga in the context of Japanese culture and society", The Journal of Popular
Culture, 38, 3 (2008): 456-475.
57
how that viewer gains their non-direct backstory on characters and entire plot
trajectories. These are often-overlooked but very crucial aspects of the overall
world-building situation of animé and science-fiction/fantasy genre in general.
While comprehensive studies of the use of architectural styles and details in film
or even regulated to animation could be taken on and these would cover a far
broader range than this study on animé, or, conversely, studies could focus on
graphic novels and sequential art in general and not just manga, the limitations
of the present study were not just based on genre as a mechanism of focusing
scholarly attention. The unique combination of the history of manga and animé,
their Japanese roots and the impact of traditional views of Japanese aesthetics on
how they are interpreted and the fact that animation is involved and thereby
everything seen is in essence drawn—thus created—make animé and manga
totally their own creatures. Architecture falls into a rare area where both Western
and Asian precedents govern and guide the influence that architecture and the
built environment have over how these conditions are portrayed in manga and
animé.
58

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Representations of Architecture in Japanese Animé and Manga : Walker

and forth from the streets of suburban Tokyo to a cemetery in Germany to a

virtual computer-created world and back to a small home in Japan. .hack

Liminality is an OVA (オリジナル ヴィデオ アニメーション, transliteration:

in the series already. Most of .hack//sign is set in a virtual computer-created role-

convincing. Architecture is certainly one of the foremost of such physical details

and the development and treatment of architectural aesthetics in the .hack

franchise 3 is extensive and engrossing.

The fields of architectural history and theory have by convention expectedly

interactions of physical culture with an emphasis on architecture and associated

creative disciplines. For architectural history to examine the portrayal of

architecture in various media is a novel concept to an extent, but one that

representation of society and culture with an emphasis on character development

are directly created by animators.

This thesis paper investigates how architecture is represented in current Japanese

manga as unique forms of “world-building narrative” 6 fictional discourse and

commonplace difference or apparent disconnect between contemporary Japan

scholars have established in general of the genre of animé and manga

themselves,8 the application and representation of the built environment in these

genre do differ from Western contemporary narrative forms.9

literary ones and not contemporary film, television, or animation-based

influences. While there is certainly cross-influence in both directions between

animé and Western animation, as animé has become an international

germane to Japanese culture and environment. To understand this trait, it is

cited as a pioneering animé director and an important director in general for

examined animé in tandem with its extended international viewership, as is

evidenced by Mark McLelland’s article on yaoi in the Franco-African

sociocultural journal Mots Pluriels.12 This approach as indicated the ”exotic”

insular nature of animé as a fandom—at least prior to the huge success of a

language markets. In addition, animé is divided (as is manga) into a variety of

essential sub-genre and a broader swath of the Japanese population consume

animé than most likely consume American or Western cartoons: in example,

towards adults (seinen [青年]).13

manga (especially in terms of adult viewers/readers) than international markets

to the point of exclusion of other age-appropriate interests, but in American

fans have dubbed themselves ”otaku” and it it appears in countless forums,

screen-names for internet message boards, and other locations of animé/manga

embodiment of the connoisseur, more concerned with the accumulation of data

escape from traditional Japanese society—surrounding himself with the fantasy-

worlds of animé and manga.

In Japan, traditionally the study of sociocultural aspects has been known as

nihonbunkaron (日本文化論), a discipline that has no exact Western counterpart

investigations into cultural trajectories. The difference between nihonbunkaron

and, say, Western sociology is that nihonbunkaron takes a philosophical approach

formulated over thousands of years and is based in essential formative texts.15

Thus, nihonbunkaron is akin to a school of thought much like, in example, the

Austrian School is one of a number of epistemological approaches to economics.

In nihonbunkaron-based scholarship, the concept of shimaguni (島国) is key:

work18 takes a pronounced focus on this aspect of Japanese aesthetic philosophy

Tetsuro’s extended concepts of morality and beauty. The entire discipline of

and iki (いき)—the traditional approach to aesthetics in Japan—in general, the

translation of mono no aware in English, but it is akin to the neoclassical-era

literary concept of the sublime excepting that instead of a thing of grandness or

subtle beauty being viewed as awe-inspiring, it is viewed as a manifestation of

exists forever. This premise in Japanese is known as mujyou (無常). 21

Why these aesthetic and literary concepts are so crucial to understanding

totality of aesthetic experience one finds in nature. In the aesthetic concept of

also by defining traits of viewership and time limits—concise and simple—is a

perfect media for a wabi-sabi approach to communication.23

The import of nihonbunkaron to contemporary Japanese cultural studies is two-

in informing many aspects of Japanese academic life and secondly, nihonbunkaron

displays a foil of sorts compared to the Western-influenced, fast-paced, nature of

aesthetics of these genre often show strong influence of Japanese traditional

further difference is extant between how Japanese of the current younger

Liminality is an OVA (オリジナルヴィデオアニメーション, transliteration:

野ヶ里遺跡, transliteration: Yoshinogari iseki) style of architecture dating from

(道潤)—from costumes to weapons to architecture—constantly serves to identify