The word ukeru has no single kanji that captures its full meaning.
The character 受ける means to receive or to hand over an object, but when we say a manga or anime uketa or ukenai, the word becomes an indicator of whether something has reached the hearts of the audience – those who watch, those who listen.
One day, Master Tezuka invited me out.
“Tsuki-san, I’m heading to Ginza today. Want to come along?”
“Yes, yes – let’s go, let’s go!”
I agreed without a moment’s hesitation.
I went out to Ginza with the Master on two occasions. The first was to see a Walt Disney exhibition at the Mitsukoshi department store at the Ginza 4-chome intersection. The second was this outing – to meet the science fiction writer Sakyo Komatsu.
We waited about five minutes in the lounge of the Imperial Hotel, right on schedule. The man who stepped out of the elevator and walked straight toward us was unmistakably Komatsu-san.
Before he had even sat down, still approaching our table, he called out:
“Well, well! It’s been a while!”
And immediately:
“Your Atom is really uketeru, Tezuka-kun!”
The Master’s reply was:
“Your Japan Sinks is the one that’s uketeru, Komatsu-san!”
The first half of their conversation was mostly gossip about fellow writers – Shinichi Hoshi was doing good work, meaning he was uketeru, and what was causing certain writers to ukeru, and so on.
It seemed the purpose of the meeting was a preliminary get-together before a formal published dialogue they had scheduled in a magazine. Since two great authors were meeting, I had expected lofty discussions of literary theory or aesthetics, but as I recall, it was surprisingly light conversation throughout.
And yet, that opening phrase – “uketeru ne” – lingered in my mind with unusual vividness.
Both men were from the Kansai region, so I wondered at first whether it was just the language of entertainers, a kind of greeting. But I came to learn that ukeru and ukenai were in fact words used quite universally among manga artists and writers. There was even a period when the Master kept a close eye on how well Mitsuteru Yokoyama and, in later years, Shotaro Ishinomori were ukeru-ing.
Years later, I had the opportunity to work with Shotaro Ishinomori, and I visited the legendary apartment building Tokiwa-so on about three occasions.
There, too, the word that came up constantly was ukeru.
Fujio Akatsuka, Abiko, Fujimoto – at the nearby coffee shop “Den’en,” over cups of coffee, the conversation invariably turned to who was uketeru at the moment.
Veterans and newcomers alike – none of them could stop thinking about it.
Perhaps this was the influence of Master Tezuka, who had once lived in Tokiwa-so and served as its de facto leader.
At the time, Tetsuwan Atom (Astro Boy) fluctuated between fourth and eighth place in the popularity rankings.
Sitting firmly in first place was the later-arriving Tetsujin 28-go (Gigantor). But the moment Atom was adapted into a television anime, everything changed. It shot to an overwhelming first place. From that point on, the term “ratings war” was born.
Data on how well each author’s work was uketeru came from popularity ballot cards inserted into magazines. About ten titles from the magazine’s lineup would be listed, and readers would send the cards back to be tallied.
For television broadcasts, monitoring devices were installed in roughly three percent of all TV-owning households, and the data collected from these viewers was used to calculate probable rankings for popular content.
However, questions were frequently raised about the reliability of deriving total viewership from such a small original sample through probability calculations.
There is one unforgettable scene that epitomizes the Master’s obsession with media.
Atom’s hold on first place seemed unshakeable, but one threat to its high ratings did emerge: the pop singer Teruhiko Saigo. On days when Saigo, then at the peak of his popularity, appeared on a music program airing opposite Atom, the show’s ratings would drop by about seven points.
For a time, the Master was intensely conscious of Saigo as “Atom’s natural enemy.” Popularity fluctuations may be an everyday occurrence in the entertainment world. But the reality that an anime’s rival could be a singer – through that spectacle, I came to understand the weight of the fate that the word ukeru imposes on every creator.
In today’s media landscape, there is no boundary between entertainment and anime. Everything has been placed on the same playing field, “relativized,” and equally exposed to the rough waves of public judgment.
Explaining this concept of ukeru to students is a formidable and painstaking task. The essence of ukeru is far deeper and more troublesome than its casual sound might suggest.
When I speak to Chinese students, I always begin with Sun Tzu’s Art of War: “Know your enemy and know yourself, and in a hundred battles you will never be in peril.”
Here, “enemy” means the consumer, and “yourself” means you, the content creator. Know your audience, and know yourself, and you will not lose. This phrase is used in the sense of not losing as a business, either.
And then there is this. The Greek philosopher Thales said: “It is easy to know others. It is difficult to know yourself.”
The opposite argument can also be made. In either case, truly knowing people is no simple matter.
Everyone has feelings of liking one person and disliking another, but that is merely a matter of personal preference – it does not mean you actually know the other person.
Those who believe that overwhelming military force guarantees victory in war should remember that it could not win in Vietnam, could not win in Afghanistan, and arguably still has not. Everyone knows this.
We do not know the other side, and whether we truly know ourselves is equally doubtful.
I recall something the comedian Beat Takeshi once said. He spoke of performing on stage: “When you realize your gags aren’t uketeru at all, you break out in a cold sweat.” Performers on a live stage can tell in real time whether they are uketeru or not, but serialized manga and television anime are more like indirect elections – harder to read. On social media, access counts give you data immediately. But the sheer number of contributors on social media is staggering, so the context differs from television.
Ambassador Atom
There are many memorable episodes from my time working under Master Tezuka, but let me offer one from the perspective of ukeru.
When I first joined the Master’s studio, he had moved from Tokiwa-so to a combined residence and workspace – a single-family house in Hatsudai, Shibuya Ward. This was around the time Tetsuwan Atom was still in its earlier incarnation as “Ambassador Atom,” and about six magazine editors would be waiting in the reception room every day to collect manuscripts.
One day, a request for the Master to appear on Nippon Television came in to his manager, Mr. Imai. The Master wanted to accept, but getting the editors’ permission was out of the question. The reception room was right next to the entrance, and its door was always left open, so everyone knew it was impossible to leave through the front door.
Mr. Imai had apparently borrowed a long ladder from somewhere and hidden it behind the house. I felt a tap on my shoulder and was led quietly out the back door with the manager. The two of us propped the ladder up against the second floor. The Master climbed down, got into a taxi that had been called in advance, and made his successful escape. The two of us returned to our usual seats as if nothing had happened.
The television in the reception room was always on. Suddenly, the Master appeared on screen, beaming. He was enthusiastically discussing an episode of “Ambassador Atom.” The editors stared at the screen in stunned silence. What on earth?
(Television was still black-and-white at the time. There was no VTR yet.)
“Hey, hey – isn’t the sensei upstairs, Imai-san?”
Mr. Imai bowed deeply and apologetically. There was quite a commotion, but there was nothing to be done.
The Master had chosen to borrow a larger medium over the editors’ inconvenience, driven by the motivation to ukeru. He was already aware that one of the conditions for ukeru was the shift from the medium of magazines to the new medium of television. A few years later, he would establish his own production company and move forward with producing the television version of Tetsuwan Atom.
On Ukeru and Populism
Populism – pandering to the masses – is a rather dangerous thing.
Of the phrase fueki ryuko coined by the poet Matsuo Basho, ryuko (the flowing, the fashionable) resembles the tastes of the masses. But what one draws from that current – therein lies the problem.
To ukeru, does one:
Follow the masses? Exploit them? Lead them? Or, without ignoring them, simply remain aware of them?
These are the choices available.
Here I want to raise one point of caution. I am speaking of the dictator Adolf Hitler.
He was a man elected by the citizens of Germany – a nation that, at the time, was considered to have the most advanced democracy in the world.
Today, the people around the world who are called dictators are also, in fact, being elected through democratic processes.
Democracy, that seemingly beautiful word, is a system that can, if one is careless, produce results that are the exact opposite of its ideals.
On the Word Ukeru
When I give talks about ukeru at universities, international students – from China, Korea, Spain, America, and elsewhere – often tell me: “In my language, there is no word that exactly corresponds to ukeru.”
For reference, the Chinese words jieshou and shouqu strictly mean “to receive an object.”
When I gave a talk in India, I posed the same question. English is now close to a standard language in India, but they confirmed that English, too, has no equivalent word.
The closest expressions – “Interesting” or “Funny” – carry slightly different nuances.
However, according to an Indian professor, there is a word in classical Sanskrit that comes close to the essence of ukeru. It is Rasa, a concept found in the ancient Indian treatise on dramaturgy, the Natya Shastra, referring to the emotional essence that an audience “tastes.”
Theater makes audiences taste emotions – joy, anger, sadness, surprise. I felt that this concept of Rasa was the closest thing to “the emotion that ukeru with an audience.”
This is similar to sympathy, but the Japanese ukeru encompasses a broader range, extending all the way to kando – the deep emotional impact that is the highest achievement any piece of content can aspire to.
Originally, the word spread from the world of manzai (comic dialogue), but Osamu Tezuka and Sakyo Komatsu used it in reference to their own works, and today it is applied to phenomena like the yuru-chara (cute mascot character) boom.
In other words, it refers to a state in which the public responds not merely to “humor” but to the personality, the ideas, and the content itself that has been created.
One reason Japan has been able to sustain its position as a content powerhouse may be precisely that it possesses ukeru – a word, and therefore a concept, for the shared emotion between creator and audience.
The Three Elements of Story + One
As we see in India’s Rasa, the elements of joy, anger, and sorrow are indispensable to ukeru.
Greek classical drama and the Chinese classics also revolve around these emotions. But in China, I believe, a fourth element is added: the tale of the supernatural – horror.
Liaozhai Zhiyi (Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio), beloved by Ryunosuke Akutagawa and Osamu Dazai, is a collection of supernatural tales compiled and re-edited during the Ming dynasty from a vast body of ancient Chinese weird fiction.
Add “fear” to “joy, anger, and sorrow,” and you arrive at what might be called the Four Elements of Emotion.
If joy, anger, and sorrow well up from within the human being, then the fourth element – fear – is something imposed from without.
It may come from external enemies, the threats of nature, or a metaphysical dread beyond human comprehension.
It is a fascinating phenomenon that horror, in our thoroughly managed modern society, experiences periodic booms.
Search the internet and you will be astonished by the sheer volume of content in the horror category.
From the haunted houses of old to The Shining (Stanley Kubrick), The Exorcist (William Friedkin), Ugetsu Monogatari (Kenji Mizoguchi), Ring (Hideo Nakata), and games like Resident Evil – the list is endless.
As the Japanese expression goes, kowai mono mitasa – “the desire to see frightening things.” Human beings seem to have an innate drive to deliberately experience fear, so long as their physical safety is assured.
The terror of Tokaido Yotsuya Kaidan, which fully depicts the resentment of the powerless. The psychological horror of The Shining, where reason disintegrates in a snowbound isolation.
These diverse forms of fear, too, serve as a powerful catalyst for ukeru, delivering intense emotions to the audience.
Human beings seek fear that does not endanger them. The act of screaming and shrieking likely serves as stress relief – a kind of purification, a catharsis.
The most profoundly ukeru – the most emotionally shaking – episode of fear I have ever witnessed was far quieter, utterly at odds with rationality, and it was a moment the Master himself revealed.
Kuma-chan’s Confession
Kumagai was from Iwate Prefecture – the same as Shohei Ohtani – and had worked as a cinematographer at Tezuka Productions on Tetsuwan Atom and numerous other works.
In November 1973, Mushi Productions, the studio Master Tezuka had built, went bankrupt with debts of a mere 350 million yen.
About two years later, I received a phone call from my friend Kumagai, who had been the chief cinematographer at Mushi Pro. He said he wanted to meet and talk.
At the time, Kumagai had joined NHK’s cinematography department after Mushi Pro’s collapse. I was also doing a lot of work at NHK myself, so we agreed to meet at the quietest cafe in the NHK building. We met there a few days later.
It was not about work. He wanted me to hear about “something troubling him.”
Listening to someone’s personal troubles was a first for me. Kuma-chan’s earnest gaze was focused with an almost unsettling intensity.
The very first thing he said was:
“Tsuki-san, the truth is – I’m the one who destroyed Mushi Pro.”
I couldn’t help but laugh.
“What kind of nonsense is that? Ha ha ha!”
But his expression did not change.
He continued.
The Mushi Pro studio was located on the east side of the Tezuka residence. The camera room faced the garden of the Tezuka home, and if you went out the emergency exit, you stepped directly into the garden.
The Tezuka residence was in Fujimidai, along the Seibu Ikebukuro Line, on land that had once been a pasture. I had accompanied the Master on an inspection visit before he acquired it.
On the south side of the garden was a tsukiyama – an artificial hill. The studio stood to its west. On the north side of the hill was a small man-made pond, and beside it stood a small shrine.
Since the land had originally been pasture, the hill, the pond, and the shrine had all been built to the Master’s specifications.
Kuma-chan had a habit of stepping out into the garden whenever he wanted a cigarette.
One night, around two in the morning, he opened the garden door to have a smoke.
He saw a glowing object circling around the shrine.
Wondering what it was, he crept along the hedge – about 1.3 meters high – moving cautiously to get a closer look. He drew nearer.
There were two glowing objects. The white shape appeared to be a person wearing a kimono. Occasionally the lights became four. Two of them seemed to be eyeglasses.
He moved closer still. The white figure was crouching.
From behind, Kuma-chan called out:
“Sensei, is that you?”
“Oh, it’s you, Kuma-chan.”
“What’s going on, Sensei?”
“Ah… it’s over. Mushi Pro is going to collapse.”
Kuma-chan said he stood there in a daze, not comprehending what had happened.
The Master said: “It’s late. Let’s go back inside, Kuma-chan.”
Back in the camera room, Kuma-chan said he could not sleep until morning.
One week after this incident, exactly as the Master had foretold, Mushi Pro’s default on its debts made newspaper headlines.
I said again:
“What kind of nonsense is that? Ha ha ha!”
And laughing, I told my deeply troubled friend:
“This isn’t the kind of thing a cameraman should feel responsible for.”
I deliberately kept my tone light for Kuma-chan’s sake.
Kuma-chan was a polite, single-minded, honest man. The Master’s words – “Ah… it’s over” – had stayed lodged in his heart ever since.
“I’m the one who destroyed it” – that sense of responsibility. He had been unable to bear the weight of that confession alone any longer.
I explained to him, as concretely as I could, the real reasons for the bankruptcy.
Let me provide some context here for today’s younger readers.
The scene Kuma-chan described was reminiscent of the ushi no koku mairi – the “ox-hour shrine visit” – that appears in Seishi Yokomizo’s mystery novel Yatsuhaka-mura (Village of Eight Graves).
The ritual involves a figure in white robes with a headband, two lit candles affixed to either side of the headband. Dressed this way, one circles a shrine a hundred times, praying for a wish to be granted.
After each circuit, one crouches and prays. If someone witnesses the ritual before it is complete, the wish is said to dissipate entirely. This is a folk belief passed down in western Kansai and beyond.
Master Tezuka’s wish would, of course, have been a prayer to avert bankruptcy.
“Ah… it’s over.”
That single utterance stayed in Kuma-chan’s heart, and for two years he suffered in silence, unable to tell a soul. I was filled with sympathy for him.
In this day and age, Kuma-chan’s purity of heart was something I could only bow before in admiration.
A few months later, when I visited NHK, I stopped by the camera room to see Kuma-chan. Unlike that day, his face looked clear and unburdened. My own heart felt lighter, too.
Years later, I told this story to Matsutani, the current president of Tezuka Productions, and to one other staff member from that era. Both of them said, “It must have been Kumagai’s imagination,” and neither believed it.
But I believe it.
Astro Boy, the very symbol of science – and the Master who created him, standing at a shrine, that most unscientific of places, on the brink of fate.
Science and the unscientific. The breadth and height of that dynamic range – this is precisely what set him apart as a creator beyond ordinary human measure.
A Classical Tale: “Atsumori”
This brings to mind something else. The story of Atsumori, the young warrior of the Heike clan.
Taira no Atsumori was a young leader of the retreating Heike forces fleeing westward – a kindachi, a noble, only sixteen years old.
Having loaded his clan onto dozens of ships, Atsumori himself mounted a horse to follow the fleet. At that moment, the Genji warrior Kumagai no Naozane called out to him, and the two faced each other in single combat.
Kumagai was thirty-six, a hardened veteran of a hundred battles. Atsumori was swiftly overpowered, and his helmet was removed.
But the face that appeared was that of a young warrior of sixteen – scarcely different in age from Kumagai’s own son, who had perished in that very battle.
Naozane must have seen the image of his own child overlaid upon that face.
Should he take the head, or not? Naozane hesitated.
But his fellow soldiers began to regard his hesitation as betrayal.
After agonizing deliberation, Naozane made his bitter decision and took Atsumori’s head.
This story was passed down as a kowakamai (a form of narrative dance-drama), and legend has it that Oda Nobunaga was fond of performing it.
From the Edo period onward, it was also staged in kabuki and became widely known as a beloved piece of popular content.
Though the title is “Atsumori,” I believe the true protagonist is Kumagai no Naozane.
The warrior’s pride and duty to take an enemy general’s head, set against the anguish of taking the life of a youth the same age as his own son.
Naozane’s wavering heart must have shaken the audience deeply.
Every member of the audience must have been confronted with the question: “What would I do?”
In the Kanto region, there is a wildflower called atsumori-so (the Atsumori orchid). I once searched for it and tried growing it myself. It is a delicate flower of quiet beauty.
If there is an atsumori-so, I thought, then surely there ought to be a kumagai-so or a naozane-so. Indignant at its apparent absence, I looked it up in a botanical reference –
And there it was. Kumagai-so.
I remember the surge of emotion I felt when I discovered this.
Someone, surely, had found a flower resembling the atsumori-so and given it the name kumagai-so.
When one becomes a parent, even the children of strangers become dear.
Naozane, tormented by having slain a boy the same age as his own son, soon renounced his life as a warrior, took Buddhist vows, and set out on a journey of penance.
This story, much like the life of the poet-monk Saigyo, has become a tale that strikes deep into the Japanese heart.
It overlaps, in a way, with the story of our Kuma-chan, who felt he had destroyed the “life” of Mushi Pro and Tezuka, suffered for two years, and was driven to his own confession.
The Master was Atsumori.
And I, having received Kumagai’s confession and helped him toward recovery – I suppose I played the role of the priest Takuan.
The Jewel of the Three Kingdoms: Hakubi
(Hakubi – literally “white eyebrow” – a metaphor for the finest among many)
There is a famous scene in Eiji Yoshikawa’s version of Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
It is the “Battle for Xu Province,” also known as the “Battle of Xiapi.” A clash between the forces of Liu Bei and Cao Cao.
As defeat closes in, Liu Bei and Guan Yu become separated.
Guan Yu attempts to flee while protecting Liu Bei’s family – his two wives and their attendants – but is ultimately captured by Cao Cao’s forces.
Cao Cao, knowing Guan Yu’s character and strength, desperately wants to bring him into his service.
Guan Yu sets conditions.
He surrenders to the Han Emperor, not to Cao Cao. The safety of Liu Bei’s wives must be guaranteed. The moment Liu Bei’s whereabouts are known, Guan Yu will leave immediately.
These extraordinary conditions Cao Cao accepted in full.
Cao Cao, enamored of Guan Yu, held banquets every three days, sent beautiful women, and ultimately presented him with the legendary steed Red Hare.
But Guan Yu said:
“With this horse, when I learn where my brother Liu Bei is, I can reach him in a single day.”
Cao Cao was disappointed, yet at the same time deeply moved by the depth of Guan Yu’s loyalty.
As repayment of his debt, Guan Yu slew the fearsome Yuan Shao general Yan Liang, fulfilling one obligation to Cao Cao.
When Liu Bei’s location was finally discovered, Guan Yu sealed away every gift he had received, left behind all the gold and silver, and departed from Xu with Liu Bei’s two wives under his protection.
To his subordinates who wanted to pursue Guan Yu, Cao Cao said:
“Do not pursue him. He serves his lord. This is a true man of honor.”
Though bearing the sorrow of losing the finest warrior he had ever known, Cao Cao respected the way Guan Yu chose to live.
This scene is among the greatest – the hakubi – of the entire Three Kingdoms.
Guan Yu’s gi (righteousness) connects to the later Japanese spirit of bushido.
In the midst of the bloody, ruthless world of the Three Kingdoms, this episode brings both beauty and tears. The sight of Guan Yu living by his sense of duty continues to ukeru across the ages precisely because it touches a universal human emotion.
And that is also why it lives on as content to this day.
Incidentally, when you visit a Chinese temple, you may be surprised to find a statue of Guan Yu standing proudly among the Buddhist images.
We feel a deep sympathy with the Chinese heart that has deified Guan Yu.
This is a story I would very much like certain graceless dictators of the world to read.
On Good and Evil
In Japan, the character for “evil” – aku – was not originally a simple moral condemnation.
Rather, it was a word that symbolized “great power” and “extraordinary ability.”
Minamoto no Yoshihira was called “Aku Genta” (the Wicked Genta), and Fujiwara no Yorinaga was feared as “Aku Safu” (the Wicked Chancellor). History is full of formidable figures who bore the name aku.
Even in more recent times, the Yomiuri Giants pitcher Tsuneo Horiuchi was nicknamed “Edokko Yokocho no Akutaro” – the “Bad Boy of Edo Alley” – an echo of this older usage.
So when did aku come to mean “evil” as the opposite of “good”?
I believe it derives from the concept of the “devil” (the fallen angel) brought to Japan by Francisco Xavier and other missionaries during the Sengoku period for the purpose of evangelization.
In Christian thought, an absolute evil exists, and from that, a goodness that saves humanity is posited.
This is the binary opposition of good and evil that Nietzsche described.
In Japan, after the Meiji era, as Western thought spread, the moral meaning of aku as the antonym of zen (good, correct) became firmly established.
Furthermore, the concept of the “devil” is not a being that has committed especially wicked acts, but one that is evil by its very nature from birth. It is, in other words, an extremely subjective and abstract concept.
It is a way of thinking that designates whatever is “not good” for humanity as absolute evil.
But Japan’s aku was not originally like this.
Strength, individuality, heterodoxy, and the contradictions, inner conflicts, and tragedies of human existence.
It was precisely there that the elements of ukeru – the things that resonated with the Japanese people – were to be found.
Among the Commandments of the World’s Four Great Religions
Looking at the commandments of the world’s four great religions, one finds interesting commonalities.
The Ten Commandments of Christianity, the four precepts of Buddhism, the commandments of Islam, the precepts of Hinduism –
Christianity and Buddhism share prohibitions such as: do not kill (non-violence), do not steal, do not lie.
Islam and Hinduism, on the other hand, contain many commandments related to daily life: fasting, cleanliness, dress, finance, prayer.
Religion is supposed to be, at its core, a pursuit of peace of mind.
And yet in reality, those who wage wars, those who build edifices of lies, those who create self-serving economic rules – so many of them have religion as their backbone.
We are confronted with this reality in the news every single day.
When we consider “good” and “evil” within content, the question of what is good and what is evil leaves us in a state of deeply troubled confusion.
Golden Bat: The Birth of the Good-Evil Binary
In the early Showa era, a story built on this “binary opposition of good and evil” was born.
Around 1930 (Showa 5), Ogon Batto (Golden Bat) appeared as a kamishibai – a paper-theater street performance.
This was eight years before Superman.
A golden skull face, a black cape, black gloves and boots – a bizarre figure. He was arguably the prototype of the Japanese hero.
In kamishibai, the villains tended to be eerie and fantastical – of unknown origin.
And Golden Bat’s most defining characteristic was that he declared himself an “ally of justice” (seigi no mikata).
The key here is the phrase “ally of justice.”
Not a practitioner of justice, but an ally of justice. In other words, a new structure was born: the weak (citizens) – the hero (agent of justice) – the great evil.
This is what Nietzsche called ressentiment – the envy of the weak.
Justice (the weak, ressentiment) = the Hero (their agent).
And a curious enemy – remnants of the Nazis.
What is fascinating is that Golden Bat’s arch-nemesis was a Nazi remnant called “Nazo.” Japan had been allied with Germany through the Tripartite Pact and fought alongside them in the war. Why, then, was Germany made the “enemy” after the war?
By making the Nazis – who had become the world’s symbol of evil after the defeat – into the enemy, Japan positioned itself on the side of justice.
This could be called a double structure of ressentiment.
It is said that the prewar kamishibai versions featured more eerie, fantastical enemies. This wartime-to-postwar reversal of values remains something of a mystery.
When Atom was born, it was announced that his brain contained an IC chip capable of distinguishing good from evil. I watched with great interest, but unfortunately I never saw an episode that explored this theme.
The Arrival of Gekko Kamen
Twenty-eight years later, in the age of television, Gekko Kamen (Moonlight Mask) appeared.
Created by Kohan Kawauchi, it too became explosively popular. This lineage continued with Ultraman and Kamen Rider.
Thus the concept of “ally of justice” became firmly embedded in Japanese popular culture.
Around the same time, another current was emerging in the world of manga: Tetsuwan Atom.
If Moonlight Mask was a religious, morally righteous hero, Atom was the “light of science” that postwar Japan dreamed of.
From a flesh-and-blood hero to a hero of science – but Atom carried a tragedy within him. A robot, not human, fighting for humanity, sometimes spurned by the very humans he protected.
Here was the turning point where Japanese content began to evolve from simple good-versus-evil into “stories of personhood.”
The Age of Robots
After Atom came Tetsujin 28-go, Mobile Suit Gundam, and Neon Genesis Evangelion – the era of giant robots. Atom was an autonomous robot, but the giant robots that followed were piloted machines.
However, before this transition to piloted robots, there is one crucial factor that must not be overlooked.
Space Battleship Yamato (1974).
Originally produced as a television series, it was cancelled mid-run due to low ratings. But when a re-edited theatrical version was released, it became an unexpected blockbuster, spawning four films in the series and igniting a major anime boom.
This work also became a template – a model – for one of the content-creation processes developed in Japan.
The story follows the Space Battleship Yamato as it sets out on a voyage to the Iscandar star system to obtain the Cosmo Cleaner, a device that can save Earth from radioactive contamination.
Along the way, the crew repeatedly battles Dessler, supreme leader of the Gamilas Empire. Here, too, there was a deliberate echo – the name Dessler evoking Hitler, a symbol of evil. The warrior Susumu Kodai and Dessler become mortal enemies, but gradually a sympathy develops between them as kindred spirits, evolving further into mutual respect.
This mirrors the relationship between the two characters in Jiro Osaragi’s Kurama Tengu: Isami Kondo and Kurama Tengu, antagonists who nonetheless hold deep respect for each other. It is also the dynamic we saw between Cao Cao and Guan Yu.
Yet the battles between Kodai and Dessler continue. Their relationship cannot be explained by a simple opposition of good and evil, and Dessler can no longer be called simply “evil.” From this point, the term shifted from “villain” (akuyaku) to “enemy character” (teki kyara).
Following Yamato’s success came Mobile Suit Gundam.
Where Yamato was a battleship, Gundam introduced the Mobile Suit – something closer to a tank. Behind this evolution was the fact that several members of the Yamato staff were involved in Gundam’s planning.
The relationship between the Earth Federation’s Amuro Ray and the enemy’s Char Aznable further solidified the dynamic established by Kodai and Dessler in Yamato.
Here again, the emotional wavering of adversaries trying to understand each other was depicted.
In this way, the simple concept of “evil” gradually disappeared from Japanese content, replaced by the “enemy character.”
The hero who had once been the champion of the weak eventually evolved, through questions of coexistence, toward the establishment of the individual.
This, I believe, can be called the legacy of “Tezuka-ism.”
Incidentally, Yoshinobu Nishizaki, the producer of Space Battleship Yamato, and Shogo Hirata, who proposed the original concept, had both served as managers for Osamu Tezuka.
Yoshiyuki Tomino, too, was a director who came out of Tezuka Productions.
As the battles became pilot versus pilot, they gradually took on the character of sport. The moral opposition of justice and evil faded, transforming into a clash of values, passing through the era of “sports guts” stories, and eventually leading to narratives of pure sport.
Ashita no Joe (Tomorrow’s Joe), Kyojin no Hoshi (Star of the Giants), Attack No. 1, Touch, Captain Tsubasa, The Prince of Tennis –
In these works, the stories of individual identity and growth are told through emotion.
It is human struggle that shakes the audience’s emotions, and that is what makes a story ukeru.
The reason these works uketa was not simply the fighting. It was because they always contained within them the emotions of solitude, inner conflict, duty, and tragedy.
Looking at this trajectory, it is clear that the influence of Tezuka-ism has been widely inherited across Japanese content.
In other words, “battle” is merely a device. What truly ukeru for the audience is the wavering of human emotion.
It is now the seventy-fourth year since the birth of Astro Boy.
I began by writing about what I learned from Shinobu Hashimoto regarding story and character. Then I wrote about what I learned from Junichi Ushiyama regarding montage and semiotics – his theory of animation.
And finally, what I received from Master Tezuka, with whom I spent the longest time, was ukeru. This has turned out to be the longest piece in this blog.
The fueki in Matsuo Basho’s fueki ryuko – the unchanging, the eternal – I now believe it referred to the wavering of emotion.
If I were to render this as a flowchart once more:
Wavering of the heart (emotion) | Sharing | Sympathy (ukeru) | Deep emotional impact (kando)
The Japanese language has an abundance of words containing the character jo (emotion/feeling).
Jogi, jogi, joi, joen, jocho, jojo, josei, joso, jowa, jijo, hijo…
Roughly thirty or more. I am grateful to the kanji-creating peoples.
In English, by contrast, there is Happy, Love, Feeling, Sympathy, Empathy – and that is about the extent of it.
Empathy, incidentally, is a relatively recent coinage from the early nineteenth century.
There are said to be more than ninety kanji containing the “heart” radical, while English has only a handful of equivalent words.
One cannot help but sense how extraordinarily refined the emotional sensitivity of people in the kanji cultural sphere has been.
Seen this way, the equation of ukeru is simple.
And yet, it has taken me ten days to explain it.
It was, after all, a rather troublesome theme.
Tsukioka Sadao