1/29/24 "Onward to Our Noble Deaths" JPT3702
This weeks reading were shocking, and very depressing to say the least. Where do I even start? Mizuki's "Onward to Our Noble Deaths" is a comic about the frailty of war. Despite the schema surrounding war being serious, valiant, and tragic, this manga showed the harsh truth - nobody knew what they were really fighting for, nobody really wanted to fight, and people were only there because they felt like they had to be. It was... depressingly awkward.
Throughout the manga, characters consistently DIED. That was probably the most prominent theme of this manga. Death, death, and death again. Yet, it simultaneously carried a generally lighthearted tone for a large portion (Post writing note: Could it be that the men already were "dead"? They knew they were on a suicide mission. Most people mope when they think they are about to die. It seems that the men were already... "spiritually" dead, so the lightheartedness comes from a sense of resignation to the situation). The soldiers knew they would end up dying, and they knew it would be soon. They quietly, peacefully, and somewhat lazily allowed themselves that defeat. This recurring event shines a light on the idea of honor culture during the war; Japanese infantrymen felt as if dying in battle was more valiant than coming back alive. Even though now it seems like a bizarre mindset, it was so widespread that soldiers routinely committed suicide when captured, and generally preferred their own deaths over return. This honor-code plagued their lives, leading to the untimely and generally UNNECESSARY death of almost every single soldier in the manga.
Death is what the soldiers thought was needed to do to satiate their superiors and their families, so they resigned themselves to their fate and let it happen, finding various useless ways to die in battle. It's ironic, however, that the commander that ordered so many deaths but could not even carry out his own suicide, a scene that I found incredibly impactful because for once in the manga, death was portrayed as a scary, avoidable end rather than an end that most calmly resign themselves to.
What was most shocking to me in this manga is how casually death was treated. In most anime, manga, books, and movies, death is considered a low-point of the work, sacrifices are considered incredibly noble. It motivates characters to try harder, and can break people. However, as pictured below, a soldier casually talks about the way in which he'd rather die, knowing that this is in fact a decision he'd have to make eventually. It's hounding how further soldiers are discarded as quickly as cigarettes, their lives left behind in an instant. In one of the final death scenes, a soldier laments how his death feels forgotten, like he is fading into the wind.
This manga truly changed my opinion on war.
The next and much shorter manga was equally as disturbing to me- Tatsumi's "Goodbye" shows the fallout of many aspects of Japanese society after the war, including rampant prostitution, alcoholism, mental health issues, and sexism. The main character feels emotionally neglected by her father, going as far as to rape(?) him in order to mentally separate her familial relationship to her, showcasing a true destruction of the postwar Japanese family unit. The manga also illustrated how Japan's women were treated after the war. Ultimately, I considered both Mary and her father victims.
I really liked your interpretation of the first reading and I feel that most people can generally agree that most did those deaths were pointless. Another unfortunate aspect of the noble death is that it is also essentialized back to Japanese loyalty. Indeed war brings nothing but suffering for all.
