Memory: Erasure, Values and SEL as a meditation on what it means to be truly Japanese
"It's a story from 20 years ago, so it can't be helped that everyone's memories are confused."
-Chiaki J Konaka, discussing SEL's plot,
Lain Anniversary blog on hatena.jp, 2018.
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SEL is a classical Japanese Kaidan story, typically told as an anthology of the strange and the mysterious. Kaidan's are not to be confused with Western ideas of "horror", and have more in common with "creepypastas" or strange , odd stories from hearsay.
From the "hyakumonogatari" blog:
" The first kanji in kaidan, 怪 (kai), means weird, strange or mysterious. Like the kanji 霊 (rei), 怪 is a kanji that makes several appearances in Japanese folklore, the most important being in the aforementioned word 妖怪 (yōkai) which combines 妖 (yō) meaning attracting or bewitching with 怪 (kai). Yōkai is the term used for Japanese folkloric monsters like the water-dwelling kappa and mountain-dwelling tengu. The second kanji in kaidan is 談 (dan), means to discuss or talk. The kanji carries the nuance of transference of information, of passing from one mouth to another, and is found in words such as 雑談 (zetsudan) meaning idle chatter.
The most literal possible interpretation of kaidan would be something like a discussion or passing down of tales of the weird, strange or mysterious. Personally, I prefer to either use the word as it stands, kaidan, or if I must put it into English I take a page from Irish author Sheridan Le Fanu, most famous for his lesbian-vampire story Carmilla (1872), and who called his stories of the supernatural and sublime weird tales. I like the term weird tales for both the nostalgia it invokes and the nuance of the type of story the reader expects, somewhat similar to kaidan."
SEL then functions as a typical "weird tale", telling a very classical Kamikakushi structure where a person, often a child, is "spirited away" out of existence, taken from the material realm apparently on the instructions of the divine, that is Kami. However, in SEL, this takes place in a modern setting, late 90's Japan, where Chisa is "spirited away" into the internet by the God of the Wired, while the story reverses this by the last episode, undoing Chisa's Kamikakushi and having Lain Iwakura herself be actually spirited away, forgotten by all near and dear into the spirit world, by the real god all along.
Presence via absence
Kamikakushi, the Japanese term for individuals who have been "spirited away" is not merely a word for description, but a cultural attitude to the resolution of stories and events.
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The core definition of kamikakushi, here as in other sources, is the sudden and mysterious disappearance of individuals due to their abduction by some supernatural being.
Yanagita adds the following details: (1) Those abducted
were often boys or young men; (2) Only if the missing person was not found during an extensive search by neighbors and relatives and did not reappear after a few days, people spoke of kamikakushi; (3) The abducting supernatural being was usually explained as some mountain dweller, deity or tengu 天狗—a large human-like creature with a beaked nose and wings and often associated with mountain ascetics;3 (4) The danger of kamikakushi was particularly high in winter and during the harvest season; (5) Typical locations for kamikakushi were areas where human civilization bordered on uninhabited forests, mountainous
regions or streams; (6) Some of those abducted returned, either as half-wits or to tell stories about wondrous journeys to strange countries.
Thus, kamikakushi was often the somewhat consoling belief that a missing family member had not met with a dreadful accident, but been taken on a long and interesting journey and might even return some day. Defining a missing person as having met with kamikakushi had the additional significant psychological effect of ending the period of anxious searching, allowing relatives to
deal with their loss and to name and blame a culprit."
- Virtual Kamikakushi: An Element of Folk Belief in Changing Times and Media, Birgit Staemmler
The idea of a "lost person" being somewhere still out there and who may return one day is an incredible point, because we have SEL make this imagery very obvious, along with nods to similar iconography from its two major religious inspirations, Buddhism and Christianity.
Layer 13, the first time we are reminded of Lain's seeming absence not completely forgotten is when her "dad" i.e Yasuo Iwakura looks at her chair and struggles to remember
Early Christian and Buddhist Art from Medieval Italy and Ancient India respectively have always depicted their respective central figures as "absent presences", most incredibly through the "Hetoimasia".
The symbol is that of an empty throne waiting to be (re)occupied by a king. In both philosophies, Christ ascended to Heaven and the Buddha to Nirvana, but they persist in the memory of their disciples and will one day return to reclaim their rightful place
Another example of aniconism in both early Buddhist and Christian art are the "BuddhaPada" and "Chi -rho" respectively. While the BuddhaPada from Early central India clearly shows Buddha's dharma persisting through his footprints despite his existence being absorbed into Nirvana, the Chi-Rho shows christ as a figurative symbol whose order will persist despite his death and will go on to do so.
In both cases, the memory of their respective teachers are remembered through their symbolic absence in the material realm.
Aniconism in artistic depction, though rare in both religions, was far more common in Buddhism than Christianity, although this trend was mostly constricted to India, the land of its origin. Here, the Buddha was originally depicted as a spectral memory sweeping the landscape through the clever use of symbols: A royal horse without a rider, a parasol caught in the wind, a Bodhi tree with nobody meditating under.
In this manner, the Buddha paradoxically exists through his non-existence and persists in doing so. This is in line with Buddhist teaching, for the future buddha, the Maitreya, is said to return the dharma to order when the teachings of the master have all but been completely forgotten.
We then see what the SEL culture war really hinges on: the mourning for a country that once was and which has all but lost its way, and yet as a ghost that haunts the landscape, may one day return to the world of the living.
Yet why does SEL make these dramatic claims? Isn't Japan still a largely proud country that cherishes its' Japanese-ness and its cultural purity?
Maybe so, but there could also be a deeper narrative running beneath this? What are the values that have been lost? What was this mysterious land once upon a time? How did they lose it?
False values among us
The "culture war" of Ueda, Konaka and Ryutaro is evident throughout the show, but only if you keep your eyes peeled.
One great example is the Japanese view of Children. In Japan, the term for children is "子宝", meaning "child treasures", or "the treasures that are our little children". In many East Asian cultures, particularly due to the not so insignificant amount of Confucian influence, children were the jewels of a community's life. Parents lovingly made little bento boxes full of treats that their children could take to school, while villagers kept a watch on them as they went to school, a practice called "koutou-anzen-sha". This is a greater derivative of the principle of Oyakoko (which translates to "parenting together") a belief that all adults in the community have a shared duty in taking care of little ones, including those that aren't their own, treasuring them for who they are and ensuring their growth to be better.
Yet the episode title Kids puts this under a microscope. Throughout SEL, we see a very intentional depiction of collective apathy to the wellbeing of children. Lain's mother Miho doesn't care about why she was in the police station in episode 2, Alice with her friends is not eating bento but fried junk and chips while discussing the Knights in episode 5, and Taro and gang are running amok since episode 2 in questionable spaces without any adult supervision.
This is surprising, until you point out that the dominant culture of the planet at the moment is American, a culture which can storm its government buildings over a "fraudulent" election but doesn't care when children are being killed by firearms in schools, eat crap for food and drink insane liters of soda and are also Kamikakushi'd to be diddled on certain Islands.
What is being depicted is obvious:
"When did we Japanese adopt these American values and stop giving a shit about our kids?"
Another throwaway is given in the scene of the Knights' in layer five, during the
Ukiyo-e painting sequence. The knights are clearly a reference to Japan's netto-uyoku, a far right nexus on 2chan, whose origins may be worth looking into.
2channel/2chan, the direct inspiration behind 4chan, is the central site for political discourse on Japanese internet, and it was so popular that many prime ministers as well as important politicians had accounts there. It was first started by a Japanese student who was studying in the University of Arkansas in 1999, named Hiroyuki Nishimura, and it then bloomed in popularity, to the point where almost the entire countries' discourse was happening on it.
Yet 2chan had a growing problem, the netto-uyoku, an ultranationalist sect of the Japanese internet, who were rabid disgruntled individuals arising from the economic blowout of the Lost decades. In Japan, societal harmony and conformity is the ultimate virtue, not freedom of expression, and the government thought to curb it. However, despite 2chan being the central node of the Japanese internet since the late 1990's, both the server and domain were hosted in San Francisco California till 2014 under Jim Watkins, a fomer US military official and QAnon conspiracy theorist. Thus the Japanese values of "communal harmony" were subsumed under the values of American "freedom of speech", and subsequently controlled by a random American guy with no connection to Japan.
Although this sort of blatant interference may be surprising, its' not uncommon in Japan. For example, many of Japan's most prized citizens (including two princesses of the Royal family, the first Japanese man in space and the head of Sony's technology divison who also created the AIBO robot dog) went to study in the "International Christian University" in Mitaka, Tokyo. So noting the fact that the university's funding mostly came from non-christians (95% according to its' website), that Christians are an exceeding minority in Japan (less than 2%), and that the primary chair of the US funding for ICU was Douglas Macarthur, the chief occupying general of Japan post WW2, the ICU states that:
"The College of Liberal Arts holds as its mission the establishment of an academic tradition of freedom and reverence based on Christian ideals, and the education of individuals of conscience, internationally cultured and with a strong sense of citizenship in a democratic society"
Now, the historical allusions become increasingly clear. Christians in Japan were always treated with deep suspicion as a force that created a ruckus in Japan's communal harmony. The Shimabara rebellion comes to mind, the largest civil conflict in Japan's Edo period during which there was normally little civil unrest, historically.
Kuniyoshi, the Japanese Ukiyo-e painter who depicted the brave suikoden, is emblematic of a deeper cultural reverence for heroes against tyranny and oppression. "Suikoden" is a Japanese translation of the Chinese novel "Water Margin", where a group of brave bandits and outlaws rebel against a tyrannical and oppressive government become clear, and the story was so popular they became ukiyo-e paintings, yakuza tattoos and samurai emblems in medieval Japan.
But now instead of outlaws, the bandits have become "knights", pathetic yet useful tools of vested foreign interests. The larger Japanese public, as well, has become completely indifferent to these very obviously alien invaders, much like how Americans are largely indifferent to child-eating pedophile billionaires lording over them and instead choose to slobber over Bad bunny Superbowl performances.
Alice spells it out in Layer 3: the incident of the Accela kid getting shot was happening right in front of them, but it didn't feel real and was like watching a movie. They were slowly, through media and consumerism, conditioned to become apathetic.
The question is clear:
"When did we lose our reverence for honour and bravery, for figures such as the Suikoden and Musashi Miyamoto fighting against injustice and tyranny, and have instead turned into apathetic Americans glued to the TV? What happened to our society?"
The symbolism of religion in SEL
Japan is 40% Buddhist and less than 2% Christian. This may seem like a throwaway statistic being inserted as an introduction to this section, but it seemed necessary to put this fact out there to examine what exactly the role of christian and buddhist symbolism in SEL is. The answers are clear when we begin to realize that SEL directly uses Christian imagery not in a manner of respect, reverence or coolness, but in an act of direct antagonization, much like Berserk, Fullmetal Alchemist 2003 and many more.
The bad guys are the Christians trying to bring us under the fold of one truth, one reality, one new world order.
In contrast, Japan's form of Buddhism, Shinbutsu-Shogo, was one that espoused a fusion of both Buddhist values and native Shinto traditions, resulting in a syncretism that preached the tolerance of the different. It's no coincidence that Japan, pre-western influence and Meiji restoration, had a completely different attitude to the Ryukyuans (now called "Okinawans") and towards nature (the Japanese diet was nearly devoid of meat at one point in history). This primarily due to Buddhism's relation to truth, where even the Buddha doesn't claim his word to be infallible, unlike Christ who proclaims eternal law under his words. One allows for diverse opinions, paths and attitudes to flourish, while other decries all but itself as impure and wrong.
So where does this leave SEL? What exactly is this media-work about?
In search of lost time
A living creature exists only as long as its body persists as an event within the material realm, after which it dies, leaving traces of its existence as debris or fossils: memory.
For a living creature to continue existing, its cells must constantly interact and engage with each other. If cells stop interacting and silo themselves off, the organism will calcify, lost steam and die.
A social organism is comprised of its social members: society. As long as social members actively talk to each other and understand what they are a part of, they will continue to exist and persist with form. However, should a social organism die and fade into memory, it should note that these memories can and will be re-written by nefarious actors with an agenda. When memories are rewritten, the form of the social organism will mutate, bearing little resemblance to its roots.
In any case however, memories persist in some shape or form and are never completely overwritten. So while it may seem that the old ways are gone, the true values may still persist spectrally and may even return at the right place and time.
In order to make that happen, to make the dead come back to life not in a Christian sense of resurrection but in a Buddhist sense of reincarnation, society's members must re-engage each other like nodes in a network to realize the greater, unresolved story that they are all a part of and connected to: An omnipresence in the wired, the true values of their social organism, lurking like a ghost just beneath the shadows.
In realizing and resurrecting true values and discarding reactionary ones, a society that lost its way and presumably died, then reincarnates and returns to its true path, its wa, its dao, its dharma.
The treasured person, thought to be spirited away, returns home from the forest, having never really left in the first place.
