“Only a country that lost the war could produce such a work of art.”

The “true meaning” of remarks by ardent Yamato fan Hideaki Anno

by Hiroyuki Ota

Published at Bunshun Online, March 4. See the original article here.

Leiji Matsumoto, a manga artist who created magnificent science-fiction works such as Space Battleship Yamato, Galaxy Express 999, and Space Pirate Captain Harlock, passed away on February 13 from acute heart failure. He was 85 years old.

Despite the involvement of other writers, he always insisted that he created Yamato almost from scratch. Why was he so obsessed with Yamato? The Asahi Shimbun‘s Hiroyuki Ota, a well-known subculture writer, approaches the heart of Matsumoto’s work, which is shrouded in sadness.

Why is he so obsessed with Yamato?

When Leiji Matsumoto passed away, Space Battleship Yamato was often mentioned in the general media as one of his representative works, along with Galaxy Express 999. However, starting with the live-action Yamato movie (2010) starring Takuya Kimura, and the remakes that begin with Yamato 2199 (which aired on TV in 2013), Mr. Matsumoto’s name is nowhere to be found in the credits.

When Executive Producer Yoshinobu Nishizaki was arrested in 1999 for possession of narcotics and violation of the Firearms Control Law, Mr. Matsumoto began to repeat the claim that, “I’m the real author of Yamato.” However, as a result of a legal battle with Mr. Nishizaki while he was incarcerated, Matsumoto’s claims were completely dismissed. Today, the judgment that “Mr. Nishizaki is the original author” has been legally confirmed.

At the time, I was a reporter for Weekly Asahi and AERA. As a reporter, I covered the inside story of Mr. Nishizaki’s arrest and subsequent trial. As a long-time Yamato fan, I had to say that Mr. Matsumoto’s claims were unreasonable. Although there is no doubt that Matsumoto contributed greatly to the creation of Yamato, the basic structure of the work was already in place before he joined the production staff.

[This can be tracked in the Yamato Origins article series, starting here.]

However, even after losing the lawsuit, Matsumoto never changed his claim that he had created Yamato almost from scratch. Even in his later years, he produced a ship that looked exactly like the Yamato, the Super Dimension Battleship Mahoroba. However, the project never came to fruition.

Why was Matsumoto so obsessed with Yamato throughout his life? Mr. Nishizaki asked during litigation, “Why is he so particular about Yamato when he has so many other hit works?” I myself thought, “Mr. Matsumoto’s forceful assertion lacks respect for the many people involved in the creation of Yamato.”

From 2014 to 2018, I wrote a series of 31 articles on the Battleship Yamato and Space Battleship Yamato for the evening edition of the Asahi Shimbun newspaper. In the course of thinking about the relationship between Yamato and the war, I have gradually come to understand the importance and irreplaceability of Yamato for Mr. Matsumoto.

Yamato is a work that could only have been created in a country that lost a war

Director Hideaki Anno, who has been an ardent fan of Yamato since its first broadcast in 1974, once wrote in a special book about Yamato, “I think Space Battleship Yamato is a work that could only have been created in a country that lost the war. I think this work is filled with the regret, emptiness, sorrow, resentment, and desire of the people who endured World War II.”

Feelings about war and grief for the young men who died in battle are at the heart of Yamato, and in particular, Matsumoto’s lifework, the Battlefield manga. He also has feelings for his father, who suffered bitterly as a captain in the Army Air Corps. The reason Yamato triggered a social movement in the late 1970s is because it is inseparably linked to the greatest theme that postwar Japan experienced: overcoming the trauma of defeat and finding spiritual independence.

I can’t face those who died

The story of Yamato begins with a desperate situation. In the year 2199, Earth is under invasion from the mysterious Gamilas aliens. Earth’s mainland was burned red by indiscriminate nuclear bombardment by Gamilas’ Planetary Bombs, All life on the surface has been destroyed. Humans are surviving in underground cities, but radioactive contamination is penetrating deep underground. If nothing is done, the human race will be extinct within a year.

Needless to say, this overlaps with the situation in Japan at the end of the Pacific War, when the country was scorched by the indiscriminate bombing of B-29s in a decisive battle for the mainland.

Matsumoto himself storyboarded a symbolic battle from the past at the beginning of the first episode, in which the Earth Defense Fleet fights the Gamilas Fleet near Pluto. It is the same as the Battle of Mariana Gulf and the Battle of Leyte Gulf in the Pacific War. Earth is forced to fight an uphill battle due to the overwhelming difference in strength between the two sides and the performance of individual vessels. Juzo Okita, who later becomes the captain of Yamato, says, “We will be annihilated if we continue like this.”

However, Mamoru Kodai, captain of the missile ship Yukikaze and brother of the main character Susumu Kodai, is not convinced.

“I can’t surrender,” he insists. “If I run away, I won’t be able to show my face to those who died. If you’re a man, shouldn’t you fight and kill as many enemies as you can and then die?”

Okita says, “Endure today’s humiliation for the sake of tomorrow. That’s what a man does!”

But Kodai is not persuaded.

“Captain Okita, I can’t retreat from this. Please let me go.”

With these words, the Yukikaze plunges into a reckless suicide attack on the enemy fleet. It is subjected to a barrage of fire, falls away from the battle line, and explodes.

The real-life experience of his father, Major Tsuyoshi Matsumoto, a pilot in the Japanese Army

In fact, this scene closely resembles the real-life experience of Matsumoto’s father, Major Tsuyoshi Matsumoto, who was a pilot in the Japanese Army. In 1944, he was appointed as the commander of the 32nd Training Squadron, which trained fighter pilots on Negros Island in the Philippines.

Due to fuel shortages on the mainland, the training of new pilots, which should have been conducted away from the war, was carried out on the front lines. The thinking was, “Even an old-fashioned plane flown by a half-trained pilot will at least be intimidating to the locals.” This was the plight of the Japanese army at the time.

From September 12-14, 1944, the Japanese Army and Navy in the Philippines were bombed by a total of 2,000 U.S. planes. They suffered heavy losses, losing 30 to 40% of their aircraft. The 32nd Training Squadron, commanded by Tsuyoshi, intercepted the September 12 raid with 22 Type 97 fighter planes and other aircraft, but 12 of them were immediately shot down.

He told his son, Leiji Matsumoto, about his memories of that day.

“I told my men, ‘You’re not good enough yet, so even if enemy planes come, don’t intercept them.’ Then the siren sounded and they started to take off. I was so panicked that I rode there on my motorcycle at full speed, but I couldn’t make it in time. About two-thirds of the planes were shot down.”

He said he regretted this incident for the rest of his life.

The Type 97s that he and his men flew were old and useless on the front lines at the time. On the other hand, the F6F “Hellcat” fighters of the U.S. Army, which they fought against, had engines with more than twice the power and three times as many machine guns.

The young men who fought recklessly for blood, and the commanding officer who could not stop them…

In the story, Okita calls to Mamoru Kodai, who is charging the enemy. As if to speak for Tsuyoshi Matsumoto, he says, “Don’t die, Kodai!” as if vomiting blood.

In Tiger of the Rhine (1974), a Battlefield manga that Matsumoto created in parallel with the production of Yamato, a German tank commander who looks exactly like Juzo Okita radios the main character, a German tanker who is in a hopeless situation.

“Don’t die,” he says. “No matter what happens, no matter what you have to do, don’t die!

In the same year, a Battlefield manga titled Zero features fighter pilot Juzo Atsugi, who has has the same first name as Okita. After seeing off his subordinate’s aircraft, which is destroyed, he speaks with regret to his surviving men.

“As long as the propeller is spinning, fly even if you die! When the propeller stops, keep flying even if you have to turn it by hand! And make sure you get home alive!”

The same situation is repeated over and over again in different works from the same period. The exchange between Juzo Okita and Mamoru Kodai in Yamato is a case in point. Mr. Matsumoto’s strong feelings and commitments can be seen in this.

If you slightly change Mamoru Kodai’s line from “If you’re a man” to “If you were Japanese, shouldn’t you fight and kill as many enemies as you can and then die?” his seemingly reckless actions would symbolize the feelings of the young people of that time who were indoctrinated into the “100 million crushers” and “100 million kamikazes” propaganda. “I’m willing to give my life for my country and my fellow countrymen.”

The Battleship Yamato also went on a suicide mission to Okinawa, in accordance with the words of a high official of the Allied Fleet, who said, “I want you to be the first of a hundred million suicide attacks.”

The Battleship Yamato is resurrected as the Space Battleship Yamato as if the souls of the young men who died in vain still reside within it, and sets off for the planet Iscandar to save Earth from extinction. Converting the sunken Battleship Yamato into the Space Battleship Yamato is very likely to have been Matsumoto’s idea. This concept is a decisive factor in the connection between the war and this work.

On the bridge of the revived Yamato, Okita emphatically declares, “148,000 light-years is hopelessly far away. But I will go. I will go and come back.”

While inheriting the dead’s desire to “protect the Earth” (Japan), Okita chagnes the “departure for death” into a “departure for survival.” It is in this context that I can understand the true meaning of Hideaki Anno’s words: “Yamato is filled with the regret, emptiness, sorrow, resentment, and desire of the people who endured World War II.”

On the other hand, the live-action version and the anime remake were made without Mr. Matsumoto. There, the reason Mamoru Kodai does not withdraw from the battlefield is described as “an act of calm judgment to shield Okita’s ship.” The image of “desperation” and “suicide attack” is dispelled.

Yamato itself is not described as “a sunken battleship onverted into a space battleship” but instead “a state-of-the-art space battleship disguised as the wreckage of the Battleship Yamato”

The story may have become more consistent and more complete in its entertainment value, but the compelling theme of “How can we inherit the thoughts of the war dead and use them as a source of strength for our future?” from the original series was lost. Anno says he “loves” Yamato 2199 itself, but adds, “What it lacks is a sense of tragedy.”

Matsumoto drew about 150 episodes of his Battlefield manga, depicting young Japanese and Germans (the defeated side) fighting and dying. The underlying theme is deep sorrow for the lost “infinite possibilities” of the young people who gave their lives for nothing. Mamoru Kodai is also a direct link to the protagonists of the Battlefield manga.

In the manga version of Space Battleship Yamato, which Matsumoto drew simultaneously with production of the anime, Mamoru Kodai was seriously wounded but survived, taking the name “Captain Harlock.” He saves Captain Okita and his brother Susumu on board the Yamato. He also appears in the movie version of Galaxy Express 999 and saves Tetsuro’s life.

He lives freely, not for the state, but under his own flag (his own beliefs). Harlock protects the spirited young people on the battlefield. He is the reincarnated form of the young men Matsumoto’s father could not save. In this light, Harlock’s words in 999 are a reminder that, “If you’re a man, you must take risks. There are times when a man must act even if he knows he’s going to die. There are times when you have to fight even if you know you will lose. Tetsuro knows that. Don’t you even give him a scratch!”

The weight of these words comes even closer to our hearts. When Harlock sees Tetsuro, who is prepared to die in order to destroy the machine empire, he recalls the war dead that he himself carried on his back. He is determined, “I will not let you die this time.”

Matsumoto said of his many works, “Each work and character has a connection that transcends time and space, and as a whole they constitute a single world.” This is not only true of his stories. I think it was based on an “existential necessity” that Matsumoto himself may not have been explicitly aware of.

The dead reincarnate into Harlock and become “Guardians”

Matsumoto’s manga Otoko Oidon (1971-73) was a story of a young man in an unfavorable situation who struggles to believe in “a better tomorrow.” The Battlefield manga depicted the sorrow of young people whose “tomorrow” was stolen from them. For Matsumoto, Space Battleship Yamato inherits the thoughts of the young people who died in the Battlefield manga, and the fiction of SF turns it into a story of “returning alive” to create “a new tomorrow.”

The dead are reincarnated as Harlock, and in works such as Galaxy Express 999 they become the guardians of young people like Tetsuro, who “believe in tomorrow” and strive for independence. When seen as part of this circle, Yamato becomes Matsumoto’s “own work that can never be lost.” It is not a matter of “copyright and original author,” but resides in the realm of the soul.

For Mr. Matsumoto, the dead of the Battleship Yamato are representative of the Japanese people. In order to inherit the thoughts those who died in the war, he desperately needed the “fictional intermediary” of going from the Battleship Yamato to the Space Battleship Yamato.

The reason for this should be obvious. How can we inherit the thoughts of the dead, especially the young men who died in suicide attacks? Even now, 80 years after the war, we still don’t have a clear answer. We cannot understand the true nature of their deaths if we only see them as “victims of war.” They believed in Japan’s tomorrow, and gave their lives for those “infinite possibilities.” How should we respond to their trust?

Those who can’t properly inherit the thoughts of those who died for them can never imagine a positive tomorrow or independence. Therefore, the answer to this question is of decisive importance for “Japanese independence.” Mr. Matsumoto wove his answer through the fiction of Space Battleship Yamato. It was not a perfect answer, but for the youth of that time, including myself, it was a valuable lesson for living proudly and independently. Those of us who inherited Yamato‘s spirit are responsible for weaving the answers that go beyond that.

Special thanks to Mr. Ota for providing the full text. Read more of his work here:

Following Space Battleship Yamato (2014)

Following the history of Battleship Yamato and Space Battleship Yamato (2015)

Space Battleship Yamato and Galaxy Express 999…
How did the “anime boom” of Leiji Matsumoto’s works come about?

Ryota Fujitsu’s Anime Gate (V) Episode 92

Published by Anime Anime, March 10. See the original article here.

Manga artist Leiji Matsumoto has passed away. In this issue, I will look back at the “Matsumoto anime” boom that began in the late 1970s and consider what it meant.

In the anime boom that lasted from 1977 to the end of 1984, the flow is often considered to be Space Battleship Yamato (1977 movie) to Mobile Suit Gundam (1979 series) to Super Dimension Fortress Macross (1984 movie), but there were two parallel currents to this flow. One was the “Matsumoto anime” trend, in which Leiji Matsumoto was involved and wrote the original story. The other was the “Fujiko anime” trend, starting with Doraemon (1979), which was mainly popular among baby-boom junior high school students. Let’s take a look at how many “Matsumoto anime” were being quickly released in that time:

1977　
Space Battleship Yamato (movie),
Planet Robot Danguard Ace

1978
Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato, Soldiers of Love (film)
Yamato 2 (series)
SF Journey to the West: Starzinger (series)
Space Pirate Captain Harlock (series)
Galaxy Express 999 (series)

1979　
Space Battleship Yamato, The New Voyage (TV special)
Galaxy Express 999 (film)

1980
The Legend of Marine Snow (TV special)
Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird (series)
Be Forever Yamato (film)

1981
Queen Millennia (series)
Adieu Galaxy Express 999 (film)

1982
Queen Millennia (film)　
My Youth in Arcadia (film)
Endless Road SSX (series)

1983
Final Yamato (film)

He had different levels of involvement, from deep commitment to providing ideas to simply producing character designs, but all this was released in only six years. Even counting from the Space Battleship Yamato TV series, it is still less than 10 years. From the perspective of an elementary or junior high school student, this was a very long period of time. I had the impression that a new work was released about once every six months.

Why was there such an increase in the number of “Matsumoto anime”? Of course, production companies may have been looking for a “second arrow” or “third arrow” after Yamato and Galaxy Express hit the market. On the other hand, Matsumoto’s strong interest in anime cannot be ignored. He had long wanted to create anime of his own. Though he didn’t start his own studio, his obsession with anime was similar to that of Osamu Tezuka. This stance was also shared by Shotaro Ishinomori, who was born on January 25, 1938, and Go Nagai, from a slightly younger generation.

According to his autobiography, The Faraway Place Where the Circle of Time Meets (Tokyo Shoseki), Matsumoto’s first encounter with anime was The Spider and the Tulip (directed by Kenzo Masaoka), which was released in April 1943. The young Matsumoto was living in Akashi City, Hyogo Prefecture, at the time because of his father’s job (pilot in the Army Air Corps), and saw the film at a theater there. It made an impression on him, as seen in his manga The Adventures of a Honeybee, drawn in his first year of high school. Osamu Tezuka, who also saw the film at the same movie theater, pointed this out to him.

Later, after moving to Kokura City (now Kitakyushu City), Fukuoka Prefecture, he saw Gulliver’s Travels by the Fleischer Brothers (first released in 1939) in his early elementary school years, which also made a strong impression on him.

Even after moving to Tokyo as a manga artist, he continued to have an interest in anime. In his autobiography, he wrote about the Western book The Art of Animation (probably Bob Thomas’s Walt Disney, the Art of Animation). When he borrowed it from a library, he found the names of Osamu Tezuka, Fujiko Fujio, and Shotaro Ishinomori in the reservation list.

Like Tezuka and Ishinomori, he also bought films from a junk shop. The three were once raided by police on the same day in a story now referred to as “The three self-proclaimed anime maniac incidents.” The most impressive of these anime-related episodes is one in which he purchased a Bellhowell 16mm camera and built his own shooting stand, completing it on October 23, 1959.

“However, after making a few animation cels, I realized that this was a tremendous job. I made about 15 seconds of film, but I couldn’t afford any more. Even with 8mm and 16mm, I knew it was no good at all. I realized that it costs money to make animation. Until then, I had thought I could make it all by myself. I was stunned to realize that this was such a huge undertaking.”

But Matsumoto did not let this discourage him, and when he later became unemployed, he cashed in the items in his room at a pawn shop to make a second shooting stand. This time, however, he blew a fuse in his boarding house during a trial run.

With Osamu Tezuka

Matsumoto had such a strong interest in anime, it’s no wonder he was eager to get involved when he was approached to work on the Space Battleship Yamato project as an art director (production design in general).

In 1976, he received an offer from Toei Doga for Danguard Ace. Toei began by approaching Tezuka for Journey to the West, then Ishinomori, and then Go Nagai to create the big hits Devilman and Mazinger Z. The idea was to create attractive works by inviting manga artists to be the creative pillars. Matsumoto’s Danguard Ace was a follow-up to UFO Robo Grendaizer in which Go Nagai was involved.

Matsumoto did not let go of his dream of creating his own anime. In response to the request for Danguard Ace, he conversely proposed Galaxy Express 999 and Space Pirate Captain Harlock. However, these projects did not go through, and both were serialized as manga beginning in 1977.

The Yamato movie hit theaters that year, which encouraged the anime adaptations of both 999 and Harlock. Then came the worldwide visual SF boom with the hits of Star Wars and Close Encounters. With this tailwind, “Matsumoto anime” quickly rose to major status. This was the result of Matsumoto’s persistence in creating his own anime in his own way.

When we look back from the present, what place does “Matsumoto anime” occupy in the history of anime?

The characteristic of “Matsumoto anime” is the “roman” depicted in it. Each work has its own character and subject matter, and each work has its own charm. The degree of his involvement on the staff each work is also significant. But what these “Matsumoto anime” all have in common is the existence of “roman” that envelops the individual elements.

What is “roman”? I would like to define it as an emotion that one feels when he or she surrenders himself or herself to such big concepts as love, death, infinity, and ideals. There are two conditions for the existence of “roman” in anime.

First, anime itself must have a certain level of expressive power. Art that speaks silently. The characters must be sensitive to the audience’s feelings. Without this kind of expression, “roman” cannot be conveyed to the audience. Second is the sensitivity of the recipient of the work. No matter how much “roman” a work throws at us, the audience must be able to catch such expressions and surrender to them.

The late 1970s was a time when the “deepening of expression” and “teenage audiences” overlapped. In other words, three elements aligned perfectly: what Matsumoto wanted to depict, the maturity of expression to convey it, and the audience that accepted it.

This was not limited to “Matsumoto anime.” At a similar time, Tadao Nagahama directed Combattler V (1976), Voltes V (1976), and Daimos (1977). These three works were later referred to as the “Nagahama Romantic Robot series.” The reason the word “roman” was chosen for this work is because the director had his own “roman” in mind.

However, the “roman” period did not last very long. The history of anime expression did not stop moving forward. Soon, a restrained style of storytelling based on realism began to spread. Mobile Suit Gundam (1979) is representative of this trend. When one becomes accustomed to realism, “roman” appears somewhat faded because of its sweetness. Thus, “roman” gradually faded away over the next few years. This was the beginning of the 1980s, when things became subjected to a “colder gaze.”

In other words, “Matsumoto anime” arrived when anime broke away from its “elementary school age” status and became “our anime” to a certain generation before realism became commonplace. If realism had come later, would “Matsumoto anime” have become the basis of today’s anime? I don’t think that would be possible. As you can see from his manga, Matsumoto’s works are quite unique. It is not something that can be imitated by anyone (even as parody). In that sense, its appeal is essentially oriented toward minors.

It resulted from a combination of several conditions. Anime works gained overwhelming popularity for several years after 1977. However, when the boom subsided, the works naturally settled into the position of “fringe” again. In this way, “Matsumoto anime” became a strong encounter for a certain generation, and then quietly parted ways with them. It was a “phantom of youth” like Maetel in Galaxy Express 999.

The news of Mr. Matsumoto’s passing brought back both sweet and bitter memories of my first love.

Ryota Fujitsu Profile

Born in Shizuoka Prefecture, 1968. Anime critic. The latest of his many books is Anime and War. He teaches anime courses and delivers lectures at various culture centers, and broadcasts live on Anime-no-Mon Channel every month.