The Passion of Loss
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Mamoru Oshii
Director, Ghost in the Shell
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There is such a thing as passion without a focus.
And because that passion lacks a focus—precisely because its focus has been lost—it burns hotter still.
This I believe.
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I’d like to talk about another time; a time when the passion of youth was for revolution—before the word revolution itself lost its luster—when political forces such as the New Left Wing and the Zenkyoto existed in Japan.
A high school student operating in the lowest levels of this revolutionary movement (i.e. myself) in his role as reporter for the Library News—the official publication of a high school library committee in Tokyo—found himself paying a visit to author Ryu Mitsuse.
It might require a little explanation to understand the tangled series of events that led to a high school activist interviewing an SF author as a reporter for a library newspaper.
One doesn’t hear people under fifty talking about “infiltration tactics” and “parasitic tactics” much, but back in the day these were commonly enough used terms describing ways of entering an organization so as to use legal methods of information dissemination and political maneuvering to eventually take over said organization. Surrounded by the insurmountable forces of the school administration, this student and his friends followed orders from the student “war committee” (i.e. themselves) to infiltrate the school-approved student groups and were in the process of actually making that happen.
This student dared to choose (i.e. no one else wanted to join) the rather unglamorous library committee as his infiltration target, and as the person in charge of acquisitions immediately began purchasing New Left texts. But as he was an activist, so he was also a fan of SF, and began purchasing many new works in that genre as well. Eventually, he was elevated to the role of reporter for the library newspaper and, under the pretense of an interview, tried to score a meeting with one of his heroes, the SF author Ryu Mitsuse—a truly revolutionary abuse of public office for personal gain.
Of course, the school was wise to these sophomoric tactics and only overlooked them because these activities were legal within the framework of the student association. However, the combination of New Left political thought and SF must have struck the teachers in charge of student activities as very curious indeed, for the advisor of this particular student once asked him rather plainly what was wrong with his head.
Anyway, back to the subject at hand.
When this student came to visit Ryu Mitsuse at the author’s home, Mr. Mitsuse greeted him warmly and fed him dinner, after which they discussed SF, history, literature, and so on until it was time for the last train to leave—amazingly the author treated this cheeky high school lad as an individual.
Despite the fact that Mr. Mitsuse was, at the time, a card-carrying member of the faculty at a girls’ high school and thus a de facto member of the opposition.
It goes without saying that when the author invited this high school student to “visit again when you have the chance,” the student interpreted this in the most literal and favorable way possible and was at the author’s door again within the space of a few days.
Of course, the student was ecstatic to have this opportunity to not just meet but actually hold a conversation with his idol. Not that he remembers much of what was actually said—other than a discussion about Asura, king of the asura, which I will relate here.
As the Brahmins explained, Asura was driven by former karma to invade Tuṣita and had already been fighting with Śakra’s armies for four hundred million years. What, the student wondered, was this karma that motivated such a lengthy war?
The student detected the faintest trace of a smile about the author’s lips as he explained that Asura had loved a girl, and that Śakra, the girl’s father, had forbade them from marrying.
So an endless war had been waged against Śakra, king of the world, for the love of a girl.
The activist who, at the end of the day, was just a high school student in the throes of puberty, found his brain paralyzed by this new vision of Asura—a character who has since become a lifetime love.
I also remember seeing the author’s wife bringing us tea now and then, and thinking, Here is the woman upon whom all the female characters he writes are based. But I digress.
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So was Asura’s war against Śakra really the result of an unrequited, yet never abandoned love, for a girl?
Another thought occurs to the student now, forty years since that mind-numbing night:
What if Asura’s war didn’t have a reason?
I wonder if the motivation, the whole purpose of the endless war hadn’t, in fact, been lost—and in being lost, perhaps it drew even more people to its ferocious nature.
Perhaps the story the author told of unrequited love was merely what he wanted the war to be about, the symptom of a keenly felt need for meaning.
This might be why the high school activist found himself believing less and less in the goals of the “battle for Tokyo” and the “70s war” in which he was ostensibly involved. Because in addition to his student activities, he was steeped in SF, and not just any SF, but the ballad-like epic SF of destruction, or more simply put, the deep mystery that was Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights. He, too, had lost his purpose for fighting—at least, that’s how it seems to me now.
A sense of loss is capable of engendering the most passionately felt emotions.
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A sudden feeling of tremendous loss descended upon Asura. Now she must face the truth of her situation—wherever she turned, however she advanced or retreated, she would be alone. There was no way back to what had been, and in front of her stretched another ten billion days and one hundred billion nights.
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The “loss” presented to the readers at the end of this glorious tale is, to those who share these feelings, a declaration of passion like no other.
This, I believe.
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March 10, 2010
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HAIKASORU
THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE
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Japan is beset by natural disasters all the time: typhoons, earthquakes, and . . . giant monster attacks. A special anti-monster unit called the Meteorological Agency Counter Anomalous Organism Unit (MCU) has been formed to deal with natural disasters of high “monster magnitude.” The work is challenging, the public is hostile, and the monsters are hungry, but the MCU crew has science and teamwork on their side. Together, they can save Japan. From the author of The Stories of Ibis.
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