This treatise deals with popular heroic archetypes. It differs from previous research, because by exploring narrative structures of (anti)heroic fiction, it shows that essential parallels exist in transgressive heroic myths in Japan and the West. This is important since in recent decades we register general decline of moral perfectionism in contemporary popular fiction at the expense of morally ambiguous but charismatic “transgressive heroes”. These characters are honorable and “culturally permitted” despite their antisocial inclinations, extralegal violence, or motivation by vendetta (e.g. Robin Hood versus Nezumi Kōzō, or Al Pacino in Godfather versus Kitano Takeshi in Brother). Various culture-specific heroic archetypes are analyzed (cowboy, samurai, yakuza, gangster, social bandit, a military hero) as they appear in popular mainstream narratives (predominantly film) of Japan, United States and Europe. I offer an interdisciplinary methodological framework. While scrutinizing the production/consumption patterns of transgressive heroes and their narratives, I conflate Japanese philology, media studies, and semiotics of film. Furthermore, this research represents a significant departure from the perspective of Friedrich Nietzsche (the dichotomy of Dionysian versus Apollonian ideal of conduct, and the notion of overman) in order to illuminate the fascination by heroes that are located beyond the conventional categories of good and evil. My analysis found that elements of transgression, disorder, and tragic heroism are inculcated into popular narratives in a “hegemonic” manner, i.e. via the transgressive hero. This facilitates social order and relaxes frustrations of everydayness by leaping beyond conventions that usually bind people in society. KEYWORDS hero theory, antihero, transgressive fiction, Japanese heroes, Western heroes, good versus evil

This thesis examines and categorizes the distinct, primarily negative, portrayals of law enforcement in Japanese literature and media, beginning with its roots in kabuki drama, courtroom narratives and samurai codes and tracing it through modern anime and manga. Portrayals of police characters are divided into three distinct categories: incompetents used as a source of comedy; bland and consistently unsuccessful nemeses to charismatic criminals, used to encourage the audience to support and favor these criminals; or cold antagonists fanatically devoted to their personal definition of ‘justice’, who cause audiences to question the system that created them. This paper also examines Western influences, such as Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes and Victor Hugo’s Inspector Javert, on these modern media portrayals. It also examines the contradictions between these negative, antagonistic characters and existing facts and statistics – Japan’s low crime rate and generally high reports of ...

This paper presents and discusses the work of a teacher who is actively encouraging his 13-14 year-old students to reimagine the nation-state as cosmopolitan and inclusive of diverse people, cultures, and perspectives (Osler & Starkey, 2005; Appiah, 2006) by deconstructing national myths and revealing the fluid nature of both national borders and political allegiances. He engages the students by drawing on a popular TV series Ultraman, and the superhero Ultra Seven. Ultra Seven fights to protect humans but is not fully accepted by them. Like the students, he has multiple identities. Drawing also on contemporary events (an anti-terror demonstration) and on a historical character, Anne Frank, the teacher engages students in exploring identity and difference and challenges prevailing discourses of hatred and intolerance.

"The Media and Politics of Japanese Popular History: The Case of the Akō Gishi." In James C. Baxter, ed., Historical Consciousness, Historiography, and Modern Japanese Values (Kyoto: International Research Center for Japanese Studies, 2006), pp. 75-97. All cultures, from ancient to contemporary, retell tales of heroes of the past, over and over again. Modern Japan seems especially inundated with this kind of popular history, as such stock characters as Yoshitsune, Hideyoshi, Musashi, and Ryōma are endlessly recycled in plays, films, TV specials, and historical novels. How did this pattern come to pass? Why have certain stories persisted and flourished so much longer than others? This essay examines the single case of the 47 Rōnin—known more widely in Japanese as the " Gishi " 義士 ('Righteous Samurai') and still more broadly as " Chūshingura " 忠臣蔵 (after the kabuki tradition)—in an effort to probe the historical dynamics of the way in which certain stories have thrived, while others have fallen by the way.

Mythopoesis is the term used to understand the ‘myth-making’ condition. This term, borrowed from Tolkien’s iconic poem ‘mythopoeia’ arises from myth creation in the contemporary mode through the media of films, novels and other indicators of ‘pop’ culture. The use of Campbell’s and Propp’s models for the mythic plot structure has been appropriated to forms of mythopoesis, and finds its base primarily in literary studies, rather than myth studies. Using modern scholarship on myth (William Doty, Bruce Lincoln and Donniger, among others), this paper seeks to go beyond the surface understanding of mythopoesis and integrate it into the contemporary myth making mode. Anime is a textual-visual medium, combining the facets to emerge as the largest cultural export that Japan has ever consciously disseminated. Using Japanese mythology as a base for general myth-making, we will trace mythopoeia as myth and narrative intertwine. Hence, while it remains a medium of entertainment for many consumers, this paper argues that it is indeed a modern mode of myth-making without conformation to literary embellishments. The first section examines literature on myth, and definitions in order to understand the role of myth in our contemporary society. Section two utilizes this definition and examines various facets of Japanese mythology as they appear in the anime medium. The third section correlates several concerns of the Japanese population as they are expressed in anime AND myth – be it in terms of etiological concerns, or explanations of the ‘unintelligible’ cosmos that are derived, thus stressing on the fact that mythopoesis does exist, and myth studies need not be characterized by nostalgia – the mechanisms of dissemination may change, but myth-making remains essential.