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There are several Mamoru Oshii book lists on the Internet, but they do not provide detailed descriptions of their contents. My collection of Mamoru Oshii books is not yet complete, but I would like to write a short summary for each of those books.
I apologize in advance for any grammatical errors or incorrect information.
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title: 創造元年 1968
(1968: The Roots)
release: 10/02/2016
publisher: Sakuhinsha
[contents]
Let's Talk About "1968" Now: We Could Have Been Executed
Parents: Rebelling Against The Old Generation and Passing On The Memories
Chronology of "Revolution of 1968"
Impulse: An Earnest Motive For Expression
Physicality: Don't Forget The Sense Of Danger
God, Angels and Vampires: The Meaning Of The Images For The "Not-Independent, Not-Transcendent People
Auteurism And Texts: Apocalypse And A Summary of 2000 Texts
Japan's National Identity: Postwar Democracy, Institutions, and Narratives
Marginal Life: What It Means To Be Creators In This Country
der Einzelne and Undtagelsen
[review]
This is an interview with Mamoru Oshii and Kiyoshi Kasai.
Both of them experienced the New Left movement in the late 60s and early 70s. Oshii participated in the protests as a non-sect radical activist. Kasai was a member of a sect called the Communist Workers Party. Both quit the protests in the early 70s and began working in the field of fiction. Oshii became an animation creator and Kasai became a mystery and science fiction writer/ critic.
In 1984, Kasai wrote a book on the internal violence of the 70s leftist activists. The title of the book was "Phenomenology of Terror". Oshii was greatly influenced by that book.
The first encounter between Oshii and Kasai was in an interview book titled "Thus Spoke Tachiguishi". There was not enough time at that time, but in this book, they talk about deeper themes.
There is a common thread in their thought. The themes of the interview are too diverse to summarize here, so I've picked out some interesting parts at random below.
*Oshii always portrays main characters as authority figures such as a police officers. However, Oshii himself is very anti-authoritarian and leftist. Oshii explains that contradiction as follows:
When I try to portray my resentment like a non-fiction, I end up sounding like a nostalgist. It's like those old men who brag about having fought with the riot police. I am very reluctant to do so. Nevertheless, I wanted to express the "sublimity" of my own actual experience.
I always portray police officers. Terrorists are usually the villains. People say that such portrayals are against my ideology, but anime's main characters should be soldiers and police officers. As Godard said, detectives are very useful for filmmakers. They can go to any place, and it is very easy to write stories about them. Compared to detectives, it is very difficult to write stories about terrorists.
For me, terrorists are a kind of absolute. That's why Tsuge and Hoba in Patlabor shouldn't appear as ordinary anime characters. They died or didn't appear until the end. I think it's impossible to portray their human side. Therefore, I cannot write stories about terrorists.
Oshii connects the theme of terrorists with angels.
I have often used the angel symbols since the time of "Angel's Egg". For me, angels are frightening entities. In a way, angels are terrorists. Motoko originally fought against terrorists, but after jumping into the network world, she became a "terrorist". Batou called her a guardian angel in "Innocence". To me, that concept is consistent with terrorists.
Angels are monsters. In Japan, we imagine them like Cupid, but in the Old Testament, they are very inhuman. They are very frightening. They bring misfortune to people at God's command. That's why they are terrorists. They are more demonic than the devil.
Angels look like birds, and that's why birds are scary too. Look at their claws. They are not pretty at all. They are covered with beautiful feathers, but they are actually more like reptiles. I don't get why people get afraid of snakes more than birds. Birds are beautiful and frightening creatures at the same time. Four-legged animals are much friendlier. Even ferocious animals like lions and tigers can be understood. No matter how dangerous they are, we live with them in the same environment. But reptiles are outside our realm of understanding. That is very frightening. The image of a bird is not a metaphor for an angel. Quite the opposite. The angelic image has to do with the way we look at birds. It is similar to the case of fish. They live in a different environment than we do. We don't know what they are thinking.
