japanese religion, etc

Japanese Religion, Mythology, and the Supernatural inAnime and MangaAmy Plumb, Macquarie University, NSW, Australia

Abstract: The world of anime and manga, Japanese animation and comics respectively, has developedinto a pop-culture phenomenon with a rising popularity worldwide, triggering a shift from a nichemarket into the mainstream. Anime and manga are strongly hybrid texts which incorporate diversepretexts, thus, this paper will focus on the pretexts of Japanese religion, mythology, and the supernat-ural in anime and manga, and an analysis of how these pretexts have constructed this mediumspictorial representation of such ideas. This paper will also examine how artists intertextualise recognisedimages as a form of symbolic shorthand to create new narratives via the retelling (or re-envisioning)of a vast accumulation of well-known stories, characters and settings for modern audiences. This paperdraws heavily on the works of Miyazaki Hayao, who is greatly influenced by Shintō notions of purific-ation and pollution. Other notable anime and manga included are: Watase Yuu’s Ayashi no Ceres andKishimoto Masashi’s Naruto, both of which use Japan’s rich mythological database within their worksas central components for their series;; and the horror filled Hundred Stories which intertextualisestraditional folktales and superstition, based in already recognised images and meanings.

Keywords: Anime, Manga, Japanese Religion, Japanese Mythology, Miyazaki Hayao, Watase Yū’sAyashi no Ceres, Kishimoto Masashi’s Naruto

EVERYCOUNTRYHAS its own religion, mythology and supernatural world. Thesebeliefs, echoed worldwide, hold great significance to their people for they are morethan just rituals or stories. They speak of creation, a fundamental element in theconstruction of early nations. They answer questions that minds before science and

technology could comprehend, bringing order to a world of perceived chaos. They guidesociety and its actions, whether morally or ethically. Furthermore, they are embedded in thepsyches of all people since birth, growing as the people do. In Japan, religion, mythology,and the supernatural world are core aspects of Japanese culture and the construction of self,for the relationship between the Japanese and these worlds account for their beliefs concerningorigin, their customs, household and national practices, superstitions, and rituals, just toname a few. The very foundation of Japan’s Imperial Court is intrinsically linked to themythic claiming that the first human emperor was a descendant of the gods, similar to ancientEgypt, whose emperor was seen as a demigod born from the sun god, Ra. Religion, mytho-logy, and the supernatural are important because they are a part of what makes a Japaneseperson Japanese, whether it be celebrating a youths coming-of-age at a Shintō shrine ormourning the passing of a loved-one at a Buddhist home altar.Religion, mythology, and the supernatural world are not only core aspects of Japanese

culture but are also a major force in the world of anime and manga – Japanese animationand comics respectively – becoming a source of inspiration for artists and writers alike inthis equally significant medium of Japanese society, as a pop culture phenomenon with rising

The International Journal of the HumanitiesVolume 8, Number 5, 2010, http://www.Humanities-Journal.com, ISSN 1447-9508© Common Ground, Amy Plumb, All Rights Reserved, Permissions:cg-[email protected]

popularity worldwide triggering a shift from a niche market into the mainstream, manifestinginto global commodities and playing a pivotal role in the Japanese export market and evenextending into the non-Japanese commercial field. Anime and manga are strongly hybridtexts which incorporate diverse pretexts and the vast accumulation of stories, characters andsettings of religious, mythological and supernatural importance, bestowing these mediumsavenues to exploit this familiarity to further develop their works, or simply breathe new lifeinto stories of old.The fundamental aspects of exploration in this paper is the pretexts of Japanese religion,

mythology, and the supernatural in anime and manga, and a analysis of how these pretextshave constructed this mediums pictorial representation of such ideas. It would be useful tounderstand how religious, mythological, and supernatural pretexts are constructed andmanage a range of established stories, characters, and settings that have been integrated intothe world of anime and manga. If we look at these diverse genres, we discover that the im-agery, motifs and ideology utilised and constructed create meanings and context for theworks themselves, and avenues for the reader to interpret an artist’s works on a plethora oflevels. Furthermore, this paper will examine how artists encode their works and intertextualiseestablished images as a form of symbolic shorthand to create new narratives via the retellingor re-envisioning of this vast reservoir of all things religious, mythological, and supernaturalfor modern audiences.As elucidated by Sturken and Cartwright (2001), the ‘capacity of images to affect us as

viewers and consumers is dependent on the larger cultural meanings they invoke’ and thatwe ‘decode images by interpreting clues to intended, unintended, and evenmerely suggestedmeanings’ which is evident in the reading of anime and manga in regards to the aforemen-tioned ideas. Thus, artists and writers draw on the capacity of images and audiences use thisinformation to decode the images. These pretexts and images are often lost to Westernviewers due to a lack of knowledge about the religion, mythology, supernatural world, andculture of Japan, which can greatly affect the audiences understanding and reception ofanime and manga and even the Japanese people as a whole.This paper will draw heavily on the works ofMiyazaki Hayao1, whom is greatly influenced

by Shintō and its notions of purification and pollution;; also including, Watase Yū’s Ayashino Ceres and Kishimoto Masashi’s Naruto which both employ Japan’s rich mythologicaldatabase within their works as central components for their series, and the horror filledHundred Storieswhich intertextualises traditional folktales and superstition, based in alreadyrecognised images and meanings.One theme of religious imagery saturated in anime and manga is Shintō, Japan’s native

religion, where the pretexts derived from this inborn religion, directly affect the motifs andrepresentations present in these mediums. Shintō is inherently linked to the Japanese peoplesince birth, and it is for this reason that it is not uncommon to see a character visiting a shrineon NewYears or to pick up a lucky charm, or a sacred rope with shimenawa (paper pendants)attached in anime or manga. Shintō, is estimated to have begun thousands of years ago as aform of primitive animism, nature and ancestor worship. Translated as ‘The Way of theGods,’ Shintō remains the national religion of Japan and continues to be strongly integratedinto the Japanese way of life as ‘neither a set of beliefs formalized into a creed nor an iden-

1 Throughout this paper, the Japanese names have been written in the traditional surname first given name secondformat.

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tifiable act of faith’ (Kasulis, 2004). It is difficult to offer an clarification of Shintō, not onlyfor scholars but for native Japanese people alike, due to the sheer magnitude and complexityof this faith. However, a very basic explanation is that Shintō is a polytheistic religion ven-erating a pantheon of gods which are found in practically anything, from natural phenomenato humans themselves. Kami, meaning ‘god/s’ or ‘sacred entity,’ are ‘the object of worshipin Shinto … Fundamentally, the term is an honorific for noble, sacred spirits, which impliesa sense of adoration for their virtues and authority’ (Ono, 1962). Motoori Norinaga (1730-1801), a scholar of the Tokugawa Period, lists what could be thought of as kami: all the godsof Heaven and Earth and their mitama (spirits), human beings, birds, animals, plants, trees,seas, mountains, anything that has an extraordinary or eminent character, the entities whichhave to be feared, Emperors, ‘distant Deities’ (tohotsu-kami), thunder, dragons, Tengu, foxes,peaches, rocks, tree-trunks and leaves (Herbert, 1967).Miko, female shrine attendants2, for example, have become an archetypal character in

anime and manga due to their prominence within Shintō and their interpretive potential andvisual attributes, such asmiko traditional clothing. Regardless of the humble origins ofmikoas post-war replacements for male religious positions, whose everyday activities includemenial tasks like cleaning and clerical work, the dominant character conventions for mikoin anime and manga has developed them into mystical beings that perform exorcisms, haveshamanistic or magical powers, and fight evil. A prime example is Hino Rei from TakeuchiNaoko’s Sailor Moon, who is both a schoolgirl and a miko. When she transforms into hersuperhero counterpart, SailorMars, her powers are Shintō based and hermiko status amplifiesher spiritual abilities. Rei, in both forms, is capable of exorcism and does so by throwing anofuda (talisman) onto the enemies forehead and chanting ‘Akuryo taisan!’ translated as ‘Evilspirits of the dead, depart!’ (Drazen, 2003). Miko are generally recognised by their distincttraditional dress of a white kimono, red divided skirt, white socks and sandals. An interestingside-note, Sailor Mars’s battle outfit is a white blouse and red skirt, similar to a school uni-form, matching the colours of miko attire. Popular imagery linked with the anime or mangamiko and Shintō purification is the gohei, a wooden staff with zigzagged white paperstreamers attached. Gohei are used by miko for purification rituals by waving the wand ho-rizontally in front of the person or thing that needs cleansing or exorcism. The anime RentalMagica, based on the light novels of Sanda Mikoto, concerns a magical dispatch servicecalled Astral, where one can hire a spiritual human or magician to assist them with their su-pernatural needs. Rental Magica features primary school girl Katsuragi Mikan as one of thecompany’s employees, a miko from the Katsuragi clan who are an age-old family of Shintōpractitioners. Her role during the series is to perform purification ceremonies and otherShintō practices like writing charms. In episode nineteen (The Medium’s Hometown) andcontinuing into episode twenty (Demonic Festival), Mikan returns to her family home toparticipate in a ritual to eliminate an oni (demon) from the mountains surrounding the estate.Although there is much more to the plotline for these episodes, the imagery of the gohei ispresent as Mikan and her sister Kaori complete the rite with this Shintō device as well asritualistic chanting. Yet, why did themiko develop into an archetypal character within animeand manga? The most self-evident of possibilities include (1) the attire of the miko, seen asa uniform, is recognisable and readers can interpret the situation with this knowledge, (2)the traditional duties of the miko can be either left as is, or augmented into a myriad of ma-

2 A miko is frequently referred to as a ‘shrine maiden’ or ‘priestess’ in English anime and manga translations.

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gical abilities, and (3) the purity of the miko can also be overtly sexualised. Besides the ob-vious, the actual values and attitudes of the Japanese towards the miko can be said to havedirectly affected its foray into an archetype. Themiko is a mode of purification, a quintessen-tial aspect of Shintō, which is directly linked to the Japanese perspective of how the worldis perceived with regards to purity and pollution. All of these ideas lend to this characterstransformation into a character trope.When discussing Shintō in anime or manga, one is inevitably led to the animations of

Miyazaki Hayao, a prominent director and co-founder of Studio Ghibli. Many ofMiyazaki’sfilms include Shintōmotifs and imagery, or the plotline is directly intertwinedwith the religionitself, utilising Shintō tradition intertextually. Wright (2005) describes Miyazaki’s works asa transformation and reinvigoration of Shintō and Japanese myth, and that he:

Juxtaposes these with global culture…His films do not rework specific stories – ratherhe draws from these sources to create a hybrid Japanese “modernmyth” that is accessible(in different ways) to post-industrialised audiences all over the world.

Out of Miyazaki’s animated films, Spirited Away is the most ‘Japanese’ in content, usingpretexts of Shintō belief, the mythological, and the supernatural, whilst containing imagesand motifs of these themes. The very title of the movie in its original Japanese – Sen toChihiro no Kamikakushi – is indicative of the importance of Shintō belief for the constructionof the story. The term kamikakushi, literally translated as ‘hidden by kami,’ refers to the‘folk designation of incidents when someone is inexplicably missing for some time’ (Boydand Nishimura, 2004).This is the premise of the movie, an adolescent girl being ‘spirited away’ by the gods.

One of the first motifs seen in the movie is a small torii surrounded by little house-likeshrines, iconic within Shintō, which subtly enlightens the audience of the supernatural realmthe protagonist, Chihiro, will be entering. Torii are Shintō gateways to shrines and ‘symbol-ically marks off the mundane world from the world of the kami, the secular from the spiritual’(Ono, 1962). Suffice to say, this torii is symbolically marking off the real world from thespirit world, especially the main setting of the bathhouse.The central locale is an bathhouse for the spiritual world, run by an elderly woman witch

called Yubaaba (yu = hot water, baaba = old woman) who gives Chihiro a job under theproviso that she can ‘have’ her name, thus gaining power over her workers, renaming herSen. The magical power that resides in words or names, kotodama, is a central concept inShintō belief and Japanesemythology, with a compound of characters of ‘word’ or ‘language,’koto (言), and ‘spirit’ or ‘soul,’ dama (霊). This notion is also seen in the CLAMP collective’sxxxHoLiC when the central character, Watanuki, gives his real name (including whichcharacters in which to write it) and date of birth to the Dimension Witch Yūko, who scoldshim for such an action because names have power and she could theoretically use this againsthim if she wished.The bathhouse, named Aburaya, is a place of refreshment where gods and the like can

soak in a hot bath, mimicking Japanese people’s tendency to visit bathhouses in real-life forthe same reason. Aburaya also functions as a place of purification, a dominant theme inShintō. When one is ‘polluted’ they become self-centred and do things poorly so the act ofbathing can be seen as a cleansing of mind, body and spirit. A particular scene echoing thisconcept is when an oozing brown ‘stink spirit’ enters the bathhouse and is revealed to be a

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heavily polluted river god, the hot water cleaning him of the accumulated garbage of theriver, and once refreshed we see his true form. Inspiration for the movie’s setting was derivedfrom the common solstice ritual of calling forth local kami to cleanse in the baths of villagers,andMiyazaki expressed a ‘very warm appreciation for the various, very humble rural Shintōrituals that continue to this day throughout rural Japan’ (Boyd and Nishimura, 2004).Throughout Spirited Away viewers see a plethora of anthropomorphised kami, giving

human characteristics, such as wearing traditional and/or religious Japanese clothing, tothese otherwise invisible gods. According to Ono (1962), the few texts we have on Shintō‘acknowledge the existence of eight (or eighty) hundred ‘myriads’ of Kami,’ oryao-yorozu-no-kami, ever-increasing myriad deities. Thus, the image capabilities in SpiritedAway were limitless and it is no coincidence that Chihiro encounters countless differentspiritual entities, one of the weirdest being a fat, sumo-like spirit of a radish. The hybridnature of Japanese religion incorporating imagery and motifs from various countries is alsoseen with the character of Haku who in his true form is a river dragon of an Oriental-styleheavily influenced from Chinese mythology. Additionally, there is Kaonashi, or No Face,a melancholy spirit with a wispy black body and white face mask similar to those withinNoh theatre who is indebted to Chihiro for letting him into the bathhouse on a rainy night.Kaonashi, in an effort to gain Chihiro’s affection produces piles of gold which she politelydeclines, turning him into a ‘monster’ with a voracious appetite, reminiscent of the Christiansin of Gluttony. In the end he is scolded by Chihiro and returns to his regular form and helpsher on a final journey, and his heart which was closed (kokoro o tojiru) becomes purifiedand he can act with genuine sincerity, ormakoto (Boyd and Nishimura, 2004). Interestingly,while Kaonashi is being purified we see that his gold turns into sand, a concept seen withkitsune (fox) and tanuki myths, where similarly their gold would turn into sticks, leaf litter,and/or faeces.The pretexts of purification and pollution are prominent in anime andmanga, due to them

being fundamental Shintō concepts. Miyazaki’s film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind isa key example of the employment of these pretexts in the sphere of anime and manga. Thecharacter of Nausicaä is seen as an ‘embodiment of purification’ as she makes amends forthe defilement of humanity against the Ohmu and the environment (Wright, 2005). Nausicaädiscovers that if the poisonous spores of the Fukai are grown in fresh dirt and clean waterthat the toxins are no longer harmful to humans, this is directly linked to the importance ofwater as a mode of purification in Shintō. A typical purification, called temizu (hand-water),is accomplished by ‘symbolically rinsing out the mouth and pouring clear water over thefingertips,’ (Wright, 2005) while purification by bathing, mentioned earlier, is calledmisogi.Nausicaä discovers that the Fukai ‘operates as a purifying organism;; the trees absorb thepoison from the soil, crystalise and neutralise them, before eventually dissolving into sand’(Wright, 2005). Pollution denotes something offensive or defiled, thus requiring purification.Pollution can occur from a variety of things: contact with death and blood outside of thebody (i.e. menstruation) are themost common, and pollution inNausicaä comes from humansdisregard for the significance of nature and humanity’s ability to be cruel to fellow humansand other forms of life. For instance, the abduction and physical abuse of an Ohmu pupa,used to provoke the adult Ohmu into a murderous rage to eradicate the Torumekian forcesinhabiting the people of Nausicaä’s homeland, The Valley. According to Miyazaki, a majorinspiration for the film was an ecological disaster during the 1950s and 60s when MinamataBaywas pollutedwithmercury, yet the fish population increased dramatically and he ‘admired

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the resilience of other living creatures, that they could absorb such poisons and survive’(Wright, 2005).The dominant theme of Shintō purification and pollution is recurrent in anime andmanga,

and can be attributed to various causes. Such as the universal recognisability of these concepts,and the notion of purification and/or pollution being present in a variety of world religions.For the ancient Greeks, it was ‘miasma,’ a noxious foul-smelling mist attributable to thespread of diseases, such as cholera. People of the Orthodox Jewish faith refrain from eatingpork products, for the pig is an impure creature and by eating this meat they are essentiallyimbibing this impurity onto themselves. In India, millions of people, the Dalits, are perceivedas ‘untouchable’ due to their position in the caste system via Hindu concepts of reincarnation,deemed less than human, and are relegated to the most impure of jobs such as sanitation.As mentioned earlier, viewers are dependent on the cultural meanings that images invoke,

this is evident in the series Hundred Stories, a horror genre anime that intertextualises thesupernatural world of Japan with each episode filled with references to mythical creatures,supernatural humans, and aspects of Japanese culture, all of which would be lost to the Ja-panese people if these images were not based in already recognised images and meanings.The use of the supernatural is repeated in anime and manga, owing to the abundance ofstories waiting to be re-told, or re-envisioned, for modern audiences. Identification of theimagery and symbolism of the supernatural world and the creatures within it means that awell-informed viewer can garner a superior level of understanding of the plotline and thenuances of the creator, enhancing the overall experience.When one sees an image of a kitsune,for example, they also see the myths behind the creature and use this knowledge to establishideas about the fox within the context of what they are viewing. The novels of KyogokuNatsuhiko, which theHundred Stories anime is taken from, can be said to have two pretexts,although they are both inevitably linked with their content. The first pretext is a book ofprints by Takehara Shunsen published c.1841 called the Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (PictureBook of a Hundred Stories), a five volume supernatural bestiary. The second pretext is Japan’sghost story telling sessions calledHyakuMonogatari Kaidankai (AGathering of OneHundredSupernatural Tales), where on summer nights participants gather in a room lit with a hundredcandles and as each story is told a candle is extinguished making the room progressivelydarker, and it is believed that at the end of this frightful session when the room is pitch-blacksomething supernatural will happen.3 Hundred Stories uses the imagery within this picturebook and joint narratives, the animation itself having an almost ukiyo-e print quality, andeach episode deals with a certain story or creature contained in one of these volumes. Theplotline of the anime details the story of a youngman,Momosuke, and his journey to ‘collect’one hundred stories of the unknown in the hopes of witnessing something supernatural, anidea correlating with the Hyaku Monogatari. Along the way he meets with three spiritualbeings and is thrown into a series of horrifying situations with a host of mythical beings andterrifying tales. The use of ghost storytelling session is also found in xxxHoLiC (Episode10, Lamplight, or Tomoshibi), where the main characters gather in a traditional Japaneseroom and each tell a story, and by the end they are faced with an unidentifiable shadowycreature they must eradicate.

3 This idea inspired many artworks of theMeiji Era (1868-1912), thus ghoulish ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) detailinga hundred stories became popular. For example, Hokusai Katsushika’s (1760-1849) One Hundred Tales andKawanabe Kyōsai’s (1831-1889) Pictorial Record of One Hundred Goblins.

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Numerous anime and manga draw on the Japanese people’s common understanding oftheir mythological and folk traditions, supplying symbolic shorthand, as a form of pretext.Through the use of intertextuality, embedded mythological knowledge is placed into newworks, re-envisioned, yet the basic meaning of the reference transcends the story, so themeaning is still visible but is left to multiple interpretations by the author and the audience.Storylines and settings are enhanced through references to legends, or a character’s namecan be shared with heroes of the past to establish aspects of their personality. Thus, mythologyencourages the proliferation of fantastical anime and manga.For instance, Watase Yū’s Ayashi no Ceres manga turned anime adopts the traditional

legend of the hagoromo 4, a ‘robe of feathers’ worn by Buddhist female deities called tennyo(heavenlymaiden) who roam the sky wingless playing celestial music and scattering flowers(Anesaki, 1928). Watase re-envisions the hagoromo legend for her plotline, successfullyhighlighting the myths universality and adapting it for a modern Japan. In Watase’s work,the importance of the hagoromo is altered from a mode of transport into the heavens to thelife force or mana of the tennyo, made from her and a source of their eternal life. We alsofind out that the love interest, Toya, was created by Ceres hagoromo, which Mikagi dumpedinto the ocean to stop her from leaving him in his power-hungry madness, so that one dayit could be returned to her. This is a perfect example of re-envisioning a time old tale for amodern audience while incorporating all the elements of a typical shōjo manga (girl’s comic)that Watase is known for and using elements of other genres, such as sci-fi and horror, andthe common vengeful female spirit tale as Ceres is resentful of being ill-used by a mortalwhom she in fact loved (Drazen, 2003).Another case in point is Kishimoto Masashi’s Naruto, which makes myriad references to

Japanese mythology throughout this ongoing series. By using these references Kishimotoalludes to cultural common knowledge, eliminating the need to explicitly explain everything,creating layers to his work. For Kishimoto, the audience decodes his imagery to elaboratethe storyline and character development, interpreting his suggestedmeanings through alreadyestablished knowledge of Japanese cultural and mythological history.Naruto is the tale of twelve year old wannabe ninjaUzumaki Naruto, the protagonist, who

had a type of youkai (demon) called a Kyuubi no Youko (Nine-tailed Fox) sealed inside himat birth, stopping its rampage of the village. The Kyuubi no Youko is a major aspect of theoverall plotline of this manga and the characterisation of Naruto himself. Kishimoto usesthe mythology of the kitsune to create personality and physical traits for Naruto’s character,using the Kyuubi sealed within him as a catalyst. For example, kitsune are known trickstersand Naruto is quite the prankster and within the first volume/episode he defaces a mountainwith the images of the village leaders carved into it, similar to America’s Mount Rushmore.The idea of aKyuubi being sealed within Naruto echoes the myths of fox possession,KitsuneTsuki (Fox Lunacy), where a kitsune would take over a humans body, and it can be assumedthat Kishimoto is intertexualising these tales for the purpose of creating another layer to the

4 There is upwards of thirty variants of the hagoromo legend spanning across Japan. A basic synopsis of the mythoffered by Drazen (2003) is a number of tennyo descend to Earth to bathe and during this time a fisherman, Hakuryo,sees a hagoromo hanging from a branch, entranced with its beauty he takes it home. The hagoromo’s owner comesto Hakuryo as a beautiful maiden and begs him to give it back otherwise she cannot return to Heaven. Hakuryouses the hagoromo as leverage, forcing the tennyo to marry him and bear his children. Year pass, and it is not untilthe tennyo hears her child singing the whereabouts of her robe, that she runs off (depending on the version, withchild in tow) and ascends back to Heaven.

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personality of Naruto. Shape-shifting abilities of the kitsune are one of the most widespreadof superstitions, and the ‘favorite shape assumed by the wild fox is that of a pretty girl, andthere are innumerable stories about the wiles of these fox women’ (Krappe, 1944). Kishimotois alluding to this fact with one of Naruto’s signature ninja techniques, Sexy-no-Jutsu, wherehe turns himself into a teenaged blonde girl with pigtails, big breasts and completely nakedbesides wisps of smoke covering her private parts.An interesting observation can be seen between Naruto and his teammate Uchiha Sasuke,

whose clan heraldry is a red and white fan called an uchiwa (stiff fan). Casal (1960) statesthat this type of fan ‘plays a major part in many exorcising ceremonies, whether as a symbolof superior power or simply because it can blow away “evil”.’ Sasuke, with his clan’sbloodline ability the Sharingan, discovers much later in the series that he in fact can dispelthe Kyuubi from over-taking Naruto when he utilises his power, as if Sasuke was exorcisingor blowing away its evil. The red and white colouration of the symbol is also worth notingfor its link to the traditional dress of a miko, mentioned earlier in this paper, which also hasexorcising abilities.Using mythological as a pretext, the character of Uchiha Itachi has three powerful ninja

techniques that are actually the names of three important Shintō deities: Tsukiyomi the moongod or goddess, Amaterasu the sun goddess, and Susano-o the storm god, all born from theprimordial god, Izanagi. After chasing his dead wife into the underworld, Izanagi returns tothe land of the living and bathes to rid himself of impurities. From his left eye sprungAmatersu, from his right Tsukiyomi, and Susano-o from his nose. The ninja techniqueTsukiyomi is a type of illusion, with a large red moon reminiscent of the moon god/dess’sstatus, where the target is drawn into the world of the wielder and feels seventy-two hoursworth of torment in a matter of minutes. Amaterasu is a black flame that continues to burnuntil the target is turned to ashes, this technique is a contradiction to the goddess’s innategoodness as a bringer of light and the idea of an all encompassing fire, which can be con-sidered evil with it destructive capabilities, being attributed to her name is a confusing allusionby Kishimoto. Finally there is Susano-o, an ethereal samuraiwho fights on the behalf of thecaster and shields them from attacks which is a contradiction to his character, making thevolatile god an image of honour attributed to the samuraiwith this image. This demonstrateshow given imagery can be altered to create new meaning, or even twist meanings.The relationship between anime and manga and its pretext is evident, especially in the

case of religious, mythological, and supernatural genres, and these pretexts have made theworld of anime and manga richer, multifaceted, and overflowing with interpretive possibil-ities. The vast repertoire of plotlines, settings, character tropes, and characterisations, meansthat artists can encode their works with symbolic shorthand that religion, mythology and thesupernatural grants, even re-inventing beliefs and legends with modern day interpretations,creating an new era of Japanese mythology and the supernatural in commercial media. Theinnate semiology of religion, mythology, and the supernatural, imbedded in the psyches ofthe Japanese people, provides anime and manga with an avenue in which to exploit thisknowledge to create a sub-textuality to their works. The plethora of pretexts have directlyaffected and constructed the imagery, motifs and ideology utilised in anime and manga ofthese diverse genres, and that pretexts encode these media and intertextualise pictorial rep-resentations of Japan’s religious, mythological, and supernatural spheres. Although knowledgeof the above does not detract from watching and enjoyment of anime and manga, the rela-tionship between the pretexts and the content are important for the overall comprehension

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of the works, for they are interweaving texts that rely on the Japanese ability to decode theseimages and themes with the larger cultural meanings they invoke.

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Practices in Fiction. London & New York, Longman.WRIGHT, L. (2005) Forest Spirits, Giant Insects and World Trees: The Nature Vision of Hayao

Miyazaki. Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, vol. X: Summer.

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AMY PLUMB

About the AuthorAmy PlumbI’m a PhD candidate at Macquarie University, Australia. My thesis topic is Japanese religion,mythology, and the world of the supernatural in anime and manga (Japanese animations andcomics). I’ve always loved classical mythology and when my interest in Japan began, it feltonly logical to follow my love of mythology into a new culture. I hope to begin a Asianmythology class at my university in the future. I’m a Japanophile, so I love practicallyeverything Japanese. I’m also a cat person.

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