Under the Shiny, Green Skin

[talktooloose]

Occassionally, totally bizarre things leave a deep impression on me. One of these was a terrible live-action Japanese sci-fi TV movie called Kamen Rider Agito: Project G4 that I watched on a Japan airlines flight a few years ago. Apparently this tale is part of a 30-year old complex universe of Kamen Rider TV shows. The heroes are cyborgs in preposterous bug suits who ride on special magic motorcycles and do action moves against other cyborgs in ugly suits. But then there were these weird, dark plotlines. There was a video game distributed to the population on their cell phones with a puzzle that could only be solved by a small number of kids who had special psychic abilities. The game was released as part of an effort to track these people down for good or evil (it wasn't clear) and some were already in a special school. But here's the kicker: every time these special abilities were manifested, a door was opened into another dimension from which unstoppable and terrifying demons would emerge to slaughter whomever they met. There was a sense of the inevitability of tragedy to the whole show that shook me. A sense that being special necessarily lead to doom and, though our heroes were valiantly fighting the evil, they could not prevail. Death and loss were very close to the surface for a kids show. This sense of doom is one of the interesting features of Japanese entertainment. From Godzilla to 'X' (a terrific anime series I'm watching now), the endless striving -- kids taking their oh-so-serious exams to qualify for the salaryman's life -- is all happening in a quiet car of a runaway train heading down the tracks towards apocolypse. Is this the world that North Americans are starting to relate to? Is the underlying sense of doom replacing the traditional American triumph as the core myth for many youth?

Comments

Re: Deri Kui wa utareru

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Japan has the highest suicide rate of the Western world apparently.

According to http://www.uni-wuerzburg.de/IASR/suicide-figure1.htm, which admittedly is a little outdated, Lithuania is highest. Japan is 21st.

It's deru kugi, btw. Deru is rentaikei, the attributive form.

Re: Deri Kui wa utareru

[codystrum.livejournal.com]

Hate to be picky (back at ya) but it can be both kui and kugi - one is a spike and the other is a nail; I forget which is which.

You are right about the Deru. Thanks for that, I often mix up my ri and ru. This website lists the following bibliography

"Deru Kugi Wa Utareru or The Nail That Sticks Up Gets Hit: The Architecture of Japanese American Identity, 1885-1942. The Rural Environment." Journal of Architectural and Planning Research 19:4 (Winter 2002): 319-333.
http://depts.washington.edu/history/faculty/dubrow.html

I don't like the English translation however, I think a hammer has to be in there in English.

Many Japanese proverbs can be found at.
http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/afs/.cs.cmu.edu/Web/People/fgandon/miscellaneous/japan/

As for the Japanese suicide rate; I was speaking of the "developed word" -sorry if I didn't specify, I thought I had- and your site lists developing countries this is a quote that I have:

"The death rate among soldiers outstripped the national average in Japan, where suicide is the highest in the developed world. In 2003 the rate of suicide in the defence forces was 32 deaths per 100,000 soldiers. In the general population the rate of suicide was 25.2 deaths per 100,000 in 2002, the latest year for which figures are available."

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Suicides-hit-new-high-as-Japanese-troops-feel-strain/2005/02/27/1109439456321.html

However this 2004 BBC site states that "Japan already has one of the highest suicide rates in the world"
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/newsnight/4071805.stm

It discusses the recent trend of Suicide Clubs which by the way recently spawned a very interesting Japanese cult movie called Suicide Circle aka
Jisatsu Sakuru Which features a great tune by a J-Goth Band called Dead.

Because dead, because dead
Dead is the shine of your life

The web site is here:
http://www.mandiapple.com/snowblood/suicidecircle.htm

Death imagery is also prevelant in other recent J-film s Moonlight Whipsers and Chior Boys.



Ja Mata
Stephen