“Even if it Means Our Battles to Date are Meaningless” The Anime Gundam Wing and Postwar History, Memory, and Identity in Japan

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“Even if it Means Our Battles to Date are Meaningless” The Anime “Even if it Means Our Battles to Date are Meaningless” The Anime

Gundam Wing and Postwar History, Memory, and Identity in Japan Gundam Wing and Postwar History, Memory, and Identity in Japan

Genevieve R. Peterson

University of Massachusetts Boston

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“EVEN IF IT MEANS OUR BATTLES TO DATE ARE MEANINGLESS”

THE ANIME GUNDAM WING AND POSTWAR HISTORY, MEMORY, AND

IDENTITY IN JAPAN

A Thesis Presented

GENEVIEVE R. PETERSON

Submitted to the Office of Graduate Studies,

University of Massachusetts Boston,

in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

August 2020

History Program

“EVEN IF IT MEANS OUR BATTLES TO DATE ARE MEANINGLESS”

THE ANIME GUNDAM WING AND POSTWAR HISTORY, MEMORY, AND

IDENTITY IN JAPAN

A Thesis Presented

GENEVIEVE R. PETERSON

Approved as to style and content by:

________________________________________________

Timothy Hacsi, Associate Professor

Chairperson of Committee

________________________________________________

Pamela Lee Novick, Associate Lecturer

Member

________________________________________________

Heidi Gengenbach, Associate Professor

Member

________________________________________________

Professor Elizabeth McCahill, Program Director

History Program

________________________________________________

Professor Timothy Hacsi, Chairperson

Department of History

ABSTRACT

“EVEN IF IT MEANS OUR BATTLES TO DATE ARE MEANINGLESS”

THE ANIME GUNDAM WING AND POSTWAR HISTORY, MEMORY, AND

IDENTITY IN JAPAN

August 2020

Genevieve R. Peterson, B.A., Gordon College

M.A., University of Massachusetts Boston

Directed by Professor Timothy Hacsi

Since 1945, three narratives have dominated Japan’s postwar memory landscape: the

heroic narrative, the victim narrative, and the perpetrator narrative. There are few places in

Japanese public discourse demonstrating an engagement with the gray areas between the

narratives. What makes a hero? What kinds of visions do victims cast? How evil are

perpetrators? While often absent in public discourse, these questions are frequently explored

in Japanese popular media, including anime. When the 50th anniversary of the end of the

Asia-Pacific War occurred in 1995, Japan’s public figures attempted to lay its memory to

rest. In the same year, on April 7th, an anime aired on Japanese television that dove into the

depths of war memory. This thesis analyzes the anime Mobile Suit Gundam Wing as a probe

into postwar memories about the Asia-Pacific War and what those memories reveal about

Japanese attitudes towards their history and identity in the late twentieth century.

DEDICATION & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This thesis is dedicated to John A. Peterson, Preston Steinbar, and Bob Haas in honor of their

example of hard work. Ecclesiastes 3: 9-14.

This thesis has been made possible by readers like you. A few are named here.

First, to Yatate Hajime and Tomino Yoshiyuki. For Gundam.

To my loving family. Special thanks to Rachele, my first Gundam Wing watching

companion, and Dad, who taped the midnight run when I missed it during the afterschool

block. I’m so grateful I didn’t have to wait to watch Episode 30: Reunion with Relena.

To Mrs. Leveson, for whose class I first wrote an assignment about Gundam Wing. In

response to a writing prompt about leadership I wrote about Treize. To Mr. Hewitt, for whose

class I wrote my first assignment about Heero Yuy.

To the following academics who took me seriously as an academic (although I am sure there

are others): Steve Alter, Nicholas Cole, Simon Lancaster, Hiromu Nagahara, and Luman

Wang. Special thanks to David Wick, who told me my work was meaningful and encouraged

my submissions to the Athens Institute for Education and Research.

To my professors at UMB for the opportunities they provided to continue my education in

local, public, and Asian history: Vincent Cannato, Monica Pelayo, Marilyn Morgan, Jane

Becker, Roberta Wollons, and Liza McCahill. Thanks also to Heidi Genganbach for serving

on my thesis committee. Special thanks to Tim Hacsi, a great believer in the historical value

of popular media and a great champion of this thesis.

To Bill and Aida Spencer who suggested I write about what I love. To Pam Novick who

affirmed my love of Japanese media. I can’t wait to write about it more.

To Gwen and Grammy, Bob and Dawn, and Bill and Peg whose generosity made this thesis

possible.

To Nina and Thom of Mobile Suit Breakdown, a weekly Gundam podcast for new fans, old

fans, and not yet fans. In addition to fascinating information, you brought me so much

laughter.

To Maggie and Jennalyn, of course. Special thanks as well to Elizabeth, Katie Joy, and Kratz,

most excellent proofreaders.

And to ヒーロ。For fiction that is truer than fact.

 
vii 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
DEDICATION & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.......................................................................... vi 
AUTHOR’S NOTES ............................................................................................................... ix 
CHAPTER   PAGE 
INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................... 1 
Collective Memory, Cultural Trauma, and Japanese Identity ........................................... 4 
Building on Historiographical Patterns in Modern Japanese History Studies ................... 7 
Methodology--Analyzing Visual Media to Explicate Japanese History, Memory, and 
Identity ........................................................................................................................ 10 
Mobile Suit Gundam ........................................................................................................ 12 
Gundam Wing’s Universe and Storyline ......................................................................... 17 
Chapter Overview ............................................................................................................ 21 
CHAPTER ONE: TREIZE KHUSHRENADA and  EMPEROR SHOWA .......................... 23 
Treize Khushrenada: Chivalrous Antagonist, Heroic Perpetrator ................................... 25 
Treize and Emperor Showa: Fallen Heroes ..................................................................... 35 
Emperor Showa’s Life and Heroic Legacy .............................................................. 36 
Treize as Analog to Emperor Showa’s Life and Heroic Legacy .............................. 41 
Treize and Emperor Showa’s Silenced Legacies: A Stillborn Japanese Identity ............ 44 
Becoming a Heroic Perpetrator ................................................................................ 45 
The Difficulty of Facing One’s Perpetrator Identity ................................................ 48 
CHAPTER TWO: ZECHS MERQUISE and JAPAN  as PREWAR AND POSTWAR 
VICTIM ......................................................................................................................... 54 
Zechs Merquise: The Making of a Victim Perpetrator .................................................... 56 
Victims of Circumstances, Perpetrators of Choices: Zechs and Modern Japan’s Spiral 
from Tragic Victims to Perpetrators of Military Violence ......................................... 65 
Six Year-old Zechs as Analog to Japanese War Orphan .......................................... 66 
Modern Japan’s Spiral towards War ........................................................................ 67 
Zechs as Analog to Modern Japan’s Spiral towards War ......................................... 70 
Failed Victims’ Visions: A Bitter Japanese Identity ....................................................... 74 
A Cycle of Victimization: The Victim Perpetrator’s Bloodstained Vision for     
Peace ......................................................................................................................... 75 
A Failure to Face Trauma ......................................................................................... 77 
CHAPTER THREE: HEERO YUY & the HEITAI, IMPERIAL JAPAN’S “EVERYMAN 
SOLDIER” ..................................................................................................................... 81 
Heero Yuy: Humanity Lost, Humanity Regained ........................................................... 83 
Traumatized by Killing: The Interior Narratives of Soldiers .......................................... 97 
The Testimony of Tominaga Shouzou, Former Imperial Japanese Soldier ............. 98 

 
viii 
 
CHAPTER ........................................................................................................................ PAGE 
 
Heero Yuy as Analog to the Testimony of Tominaga Shouzou ............................. 101 
The Final Victors: Perpetrators as the Cornerstone of Post-postwar Japanese Identity 108 
Heero, Treize, and Zechs: Empathetic Rejection ................................................... 109 
Heero and Relena: The Realist and the Idealist ...................................................... 113 
CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................... 119 
BIBLIOGRAPHY ................................................................................................................. 126 
 
   

AUTHOR’S NOTES

A note on Japanese names: The names of Japanese people discussed in the text follow the

Japanese convention of giving the last name followed by the first name. Citations in

footnotes and the bibliography, however, follow the conventions of western names in the

Chicago Manual of Style.

A note on language: The textual analysis of Gundam Wing in this thesis is based on the

direct English translation by Paul Baldwin. The English adaptation was produced by Bandai

Entertainment Inc. in association with The Ocean Group.

Disclaimer: The author is well aware that being unable to access Gundam Wing in its

original Japanese will result in some limitations to the following analysis; she looks forward

to surpassing those limitations someday.

INTRODUCTION

The task of making a coherent story for the vanquished is...a painful probe into the meaning

of being Japanese.

-- Akiko Hashimoto, The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and

Identity in Japan

In Episode 25, the halfway point of the anime series Gundam Wing, its heroes come

to a horrible reckoning: the colonies they swore to protect have embraced their enemies, the

OZ organization. Further maddened by his father’s tragic death, one of the series’

eponymous Gundam pilots, Quatre, builds a new massive-scale humanoid machine, called a

mobile suit. Its unusual mind-warping side-effects quickly cause him to target the colonies.

Trowa, another Gundam pilot, blocks a laser beam from Quatre with his own mobile suit,

defending a third Gundam pilot, Heero, and a nearby colony. Pulling away from them before

his damaged suit explodes, Trowa tells Quatre, who has returned to his senses, that the

Gundam pilots have become redundant soldiers. They should accept it. The most important

battles we fight, he says, are “with[in] ourselves, within our hearts. And we have to be strict

to come to the right conclusions. Even if it means our battles to date are meaningless.”

---

On April 7, 1995, Gundam Wing aired on Japanese television. It was four months

before the 50th anniversary of the end of the Asia-Pacific War. At that time, official

Akiko Hashimoto, The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan (New

York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2015), 2.

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, created by Hajime Yatate and Yoshiyuki Tomino, directed by Masashi Ikeda, first

aired in Japan April 7, 1995-March 29, 1996 on TV Asahi; first aired in the United States March 6, 2000 on

Cartoon Network. DVD set. Ep. 25.

commemorations abounded. Emperor Showa’s death just six years earlier had inspired

dialogue around the thorniest issues of war guilt and apologies.

Despite thereflection and the

ubiquity of commemoration, critics labeled most of these efforts as “unfocused,” failing to

“engender any sharp images”

of the country fifty years after war’s end.

If speeches like Abe Shinzo’s highly anticipated 2015 Statement can be taken as a

template, the 75th anniversary commemorations of 2020 will be as dull-edged as those in

1995. As Tanaka Akihiko, an international politics scholar, stated in an op-ed about Abe’s

2015 Statement, it was not so much that it “satisfied nobody perfectly” but that “no one was

extremely dissatisfied.”

The sharp edges war memories actually have are there;

unfortunately, they have not yet been engaged to a successful resolution, a resolution that

could positively impact Japan’s relationships with its nearest geographic neighbors,

especially China, the Republic of Korea, North Korea, and many Southeast Asian nations.

While the memory wars of Japan have enormous geo-political ramifications, they are, as

Gundam Wing’s Trowa suggests, issues that must be dealt with at a fundamentally internal

level. Rekishi nonshiki mondai or Japan’s history consciousness problem is a term often used

to express the ambivalence of Japanese society’s engagement with its postwar memory.

That it does engage with its wartime memories is an important observation; western

media often accuses Japan of wartime amnesia. Not only does Japan engage its war memory,

Jane W. Yamazaki, Japanese Apologies for World War II: A Rhetorical Study, (London: Routledge,

2006), 10.

Morio Watanabe, “Imagery and War in Japan 1995”, in Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s), eds. T.

Fujitani, Geoffrey M. White, and Lisa Yoneyama (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), 129.

Akihiko Tanaka, “Abe Well-Suited to Uplift Japan’s Asia Diplomacy,” Daily Yomiuri, October 26, 2015.

Cited in Mike Mochizuki, “Japan: Contested History and Identity Conflict,” in Memory, Identity, and

Commemorations of World War II: Anniversary Politics in Asia Pacific, eds. Daqing Yang and Mike

Mochizuki (New York: Lexington Books, 2018), 46.

sociologist Hashimoto Akiko states, it does so in the form of a “fierce, multivocal struggle”

that has no end in sight.

From 1945 to the present, three dominant postwar narratives have

vied against each other, their calcification producing a stalemate emblematic of the history

consciousness problem. Each reflects an absorption with Japanese identity--past, present, and

future. The heroic narrative asks if the Japanese can still be viewed as heroes, focusing on

Japan’s ‘heroic’ wartime soldiers and leadership. A frequent narrative for public war

commemorations, it is generally associated with nationalist politicians like Abe who, by

reclaiming the heroism of Imperial Japanese soldiers, seek to project a Japanese future of

heroic possibilities. The victim narrative asks what can be learned from the victims of war,

amplifying the voices of Japanese civilians who survived fire-bombing, the dropping of the

atomic bombs, and other wartime violence. Its pacifist imperative demands healing and

human security. Its lack of focus on identifying victimizers has made it an even more

palatable narrative in Japan and it is, undoubtedly, the most widely accepted.

Finally, the

perpetrator narrative seeks to understand the humanity of perpetrators, laying bare the

violence of Japan’s imperial era, acknowledging the suffering of other Asians during the war.

Adopting a message of reconciliation usually mixed with pacifism, proponents argue this

leads towards recovering Japan’s “moral backbone.”

There are few places where these distinct, intractable, and competing postwar

narratives integrate in contemporary Japanese culture. Anime is one of the few. Flexible,

imaginative, and far more inscrutable than the traditional forms of the narratives, Shin Kidou

Hashimoto, 9.

Ibid., 127-129.

Ibid., 8-13; 2.

Senki Gandamu Uingu or Mobile Suit Gundam Wing is one such anime.

Within a science

fiction setting, the themes of each of these postwar narratives are represented and

problematized. Transcending the judgmental and traumatic referential work of reviewing the

actions of real Japanese people, the postwar-generation creators of Gundam Wing created a

space in which it was safe to engage the gray areas between the three dominant narratives,

probing Japanese memories about the Asia-Pacific War and what those memories reveal

about Japanese attitudes towards their history and collective identity in the late twentieth

century. This thesis analyzes what the integration of narratives in Gundam Wing suggests

about how the Japanese remember the war in terms of their collective identity as heroes,

victims, and perpetrators, and the real and complex overlap between those identities.

Collective Memory, Cultural Trauma, and Japanese Identity

Studying a visual media that originally appeared in a foreign language in order to

understand postwar memory is naturally a transdisciplinary undertaking and must be

grounded in several theories. Foremost among these are collective memory and trauma.

Collective memory is the concept of categorizing narratives as definitive

representations of large groups of people. Though dated by more than a half century, this

sociological theory has nevertheless endured and continues to prove especially useful in

understanding the war era of the 1930s and 40s of which Maurice Halbwachs, the theory’s

Gundam Wing’s English-dubbed version was aired in the US from 2000-2001 on the Cartoon Network’s after-

school programming, Toonami. The author first saw the series at that time. For an overview of Toonami’s

impact on anime’s dissemination into American youth culture, see Bonsai Pop’s Youtube video “Toonami’s

Lasting Legacy,” posted March 7, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u4sNeFFkv0U.

originator, was a casualty.

Specifically, Halbwachs refined the concepts of

autobiographical memory, or memories based on lived experience, and historical memory, or

memories based on written or other kinds of records. Halbwachs asked “[h]ow can currents

of collective thought whose impetus lies in the past be recreated, when we can grasp only the

present?” The hope of remembering, Halbwachs asserts, is in commemorative gatherings of

groups of living generations who engage in, as editor and translator Lewis Coser

summarizes, “imaginatively reenacting a past that would otherwise slowly disappear in the

haze of time.”

Gundam Wing, created by a generation with historical war memories

reflecting on the autobiographical memories of the preceding generation, will be analyzed in

this thesis as an ‘imaginative reenactment’ of Japan’s wartime and prewar past.

The theory of cultural trauma similarly affirms the role of imagination in constructing

narratives from collective memories. Moving away from prescriptive theories of trauma,

Jeffrey Alexander writes in “Towards a Theory of Cultural Trauma” (2003) that the

experience of trauma and its victims’ attempts to express it thereafter are deeply subjective.

While this implies endless narrative possibilities, Alexander argues--as Halbwachs also

implies--that these possibilities do not preclude the emergence of a coherent story.

“Imagination,” Alexander states, “is intrinsic to the very process of representation. It seizes

upon an inchoate experience from life, and forms it, through association, condensation, and

After protesting the arrest of his Jewish father-in-law, Halbwachs was deported to Buchenwald. He died there

in February 1945. See Lewis Coser’s 1992 introduction to Halbwachs’ On Collective Memory, 6-7. Maurice

Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, edited, translated, and with an Introduction by Lewis A. Coser, (Chicago:

The University of Chicago Press, 1992), 23-24.

Ibid., 23-24.

Jeffrey C. Alexander, “Towards a Theory of Cultural Trauma,” in Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity,

ed. Jeffrey C. Alexander et al. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004).

aesthetic creation, into some specific shape.”

As a result, the theory of cultural trauma, far

from distancing traumatized persons from the ability to express their experience, affirms that

“memory is not only social and fluid but deeply connected to the contemporary sense of the

self.”

Whereas this belief in the power of imagination is instinct to artists, historians have

had a much more difficult relationship with it, particularly since the ascendance of

empiricism in the nineteenth century. Relating responses to trauma--which are initially

inchoate, usually messy, and always subjective--requires a kind of listening that presumes a

release from certain vestiges of objectivity. An integration of the theory of cultural trauma

into historical practice provides a framework for this approach. For example, the kinds of

sources needed for the “aesthetic creation” Alexander describes above need not always be

strictly factual. As he makes clear, the imaginative or creative element does not reduce the

legitimacy of the representation, it simply reflects how others understand, interpret, and

record trauma. Historians may realize some traditional sources lack certain kinds of

information about a traumatic experience, and choose to use the lens of culture trauma to

search out sources that provide information the traditional sources lacked. This thesis is an

exercise in doing precisely that--elevating a fictional medium as a source in order to learn

more information about the character of Japanese memory that is otherwise absent from more

traditional non-fiction historical interpretations of Japanese history.

Ibid., 9.

Ibid., 22.

Another work that informed the author’s general understanding of abuse is Steven R. Tracy’s Mending the

Soul: Understanding and Healing Abuse, (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2005).

In other words, analyzing the anime Gundam Wing is another way of listening to the

Japanese.

Building on Historiographical Patterns in Modern Japanese History Studies

Studying Gundam Wing as a popular product of Japan’s culture exhibiting postwar

memory adheres to current trends in historical inquiry. It also meets the challenges of

studying modern Japanese history in English by accessing Japanese postwar memory in new

and enlightening ways. This is made possible by an evolution within the discipline to be

more inclusive regarding what are deemed legitimate sources, a trend historians like Mikiso

Hane, John Dower, and others began in the mid-20th century. It is also made possible by the

extent to which Asia-Pacific war memories, in addition to facts, have become subjects of

historical inquiry.

Major forerunners of the effort to explore Japanese history through its indigenous

voices expressed in vernacular memory include Mikiso Hane, a first-generation Japanese-

American interned during WWII and later a professor of history at Knox College, and John

Dower, now professor emeritus at MIT. Hane and Dower tenaciously practiced citing non-

traditional sources such as first person accounts by common Japanese people and analyzed

products of material popular culture like cartoons and lyrics of songs.

In Dower’s

estimation, no Japan scholar had done more than Hane to “enable Westerners to understand

what Japan's modern history has really meant to the Japanese people.”

Dower’s own

See Hane’s Peasants, Rebels, and Outcastes: The Underside of Modern Japan, (New York: Rowman and

Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 1982) and Dower’s, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, (New

York: Pantheon Books, 1986).

scholarship represents a commitment to “letting the Japanese speak in their own numerous

and varied voices."

This thesis builds on their legacy by elevating an anime series as its

major primary source for the purpose of listening more closely to the voices of its Japanese

creators.

This thesis also continues discussions of collective memory in a post-Cold War Asian

context, contributing to the effort of sifting layers of experience, memory, and identity. In the

years following the end of the Cold War era and the marking of the 50th anniversary of the

end of the Asia-Pacific War, focus on the subjectivity of postwar memory emerged as a more

prominent topic in the field of modern Asian history. Contributors to collected works like

Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s) (2001) concluded that the dominant narratives

girding 50th Anniversary commemorations were insufficient insofar as they rang hollow and

did not meaningfully contribute to healing between, and therefore better relations among, the

Asian nations of the Pacific Rim. Contributors identified and legitimized alternative spaces

for memory production, including anime.

Six years later another collection, Ruptured

Memories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in Asia (2007), demonstrated a technical

conversation about postwar memory and its implications, codifying at the same time a

growing sense of a post-Cold War historiography.

Both of these edited volumes evinced a

self-consciousness about the ‘use’ of any and all narratives produced on war topics as a result

of Asia’s contentious political climate. As John Dower says, “we use history in many ways:

John Dower wrote about Hane’s books in 1992. Quoted from obituary for Mikiso Hane, December 10, 2003,

posted by Knox College, https://departments.knox.edu/newsarchive/news_events/2003/x6196.html.

T. Fujitani, Geoffrey M. White, and Lisa Yoneyama, eds., Perilous Memories: The Asia-Pacific War(s),

(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001).

Sheila Miyoshi Jager and Rana Mitter, eds., Ruptured Histories: War, Memory, and the Post-Cold War in

Asia, (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2007).

consciously and subjectively, idealistically and perversely, to educate and to indoctrinate.”

This thesis is itself couched as a self-conscious contribution towards generating narratives

that would help instead of hinder progress in geo-political relations.

The framework of three dominant postwar narratives in Japan--heroic, victim, and

perpetrator--is relatively new, outlined by sociologist Akiko Hashimoto in The Long Defeat:

Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan (2015). Prior to this reframing, concepts

such as “victim consciousness” and “victimizer consciousness” were primarily used to

illustrate the tension inherent within Japanese society about postwar memory, including in

Perilous Memories and Ruptured Memories.

Hashimoto’s narrative concept expands the

earlier binary--and therefore limited--framework. Additionally, discussing narratives instead

of consciousness lends to more specific, focused, and concrete discussions. Scholars agree

Hashimoto’s framework is “highly logical and effective” in representing Japanese postwar

memory.

John W. Dower, Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World, (New York: New

Press, 2012), viii.

See also Takashi Yoshida’s The Making of the “Rape of Nanking:” History and Memory in Japan, China,

and the United States, (Columbia University. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006).

Ethan Mark, "Resituating Modern Japan in Empire, Fascism, and Defeat: A Review Essay," review of The

Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan, by Akiko Hashimoto, The Journal of Asian

Studies 76, no. 4 (11, 2017): 1110. See also Philip Seaton, "The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and

Identity in Japan," review of The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan, by Akiko

Hashimoto, Pacific Affairs 90, no. 1 (2017): 147. Franziska Seraphim, "The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma,

Memory, and Identity in Japan by Akiko Hashimoto, And: Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s

Unending Postwar by Akiko Takenaka," review of The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in

Japan, by Akiko Hashimoto, Monumenta Nipponica 71, no. 2 (2016): 469-72.

Methodology--Analyzing Visual Media to Explicate Japanese History, Memory, and

Identity

Although the legitimacy of audiovisual media as a source of historical inquiry has

not yet reached the vaunted heights of the written word, it would be misleading to suggest it

has not achieved increasing legitimacy in the past several decades. One of the major voices in

historical analysis of audiovisual media is Robert A. Rosenstone. In his book History on

Film/ Film on History, Rosenstone argues for the validity of films as “new form[s] of doing

history.”

While Gundam Wing is not a “historical film” (Rosenstone studies films like

Glory and Schindler’s List), Rosenstone’s validation of historians analyzing audiovisual

content is another crucial foundation of this thesis, as is his assertion that we “should read all

works of history, whatever the medium, for what they say about both past and present.”

Despite the increasing prevalence of works that seriously analyze media sources for

the purpose of historical inquiry, there is currently no historiographical body of literature

about fictional anime stories for the purpose of explicating historical events or memory.

American consumption of popular Japanese media like anime and manga markedly grew

beginning in the 1990s when shows like Sailor Moon and Pokemon began airing in English

Rosentstone claims “[History on Film/Film on History] is the first book, in short, to investigate the

dimensions and implications that lie behind Hayden White’s neologism ‘historiophoty,’ coined in a response to

one of my essays and defined as ‘the representation of history and our thought about it in visual images and

filmic discourse’.” Robert A. Rosenstone, History on Film; Film on History, 2nd ed. (New York: Routledge,

2012), xi.

Ibid., xvi.

However, as the existence of this thesis and the dissertations cited here may attest, it is likely such a body of

literature will emerge.

on American television (1995, 1998 respectively).

It has since seen exponential growth

throughout the 2000s and 2010s.

Quasi-academic interest in manga and anime first

emerged in the form of layman’s introductions functioning as cultural bridges rather than

scholarly analysis, for example Frederik Schodt’s Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese

Comics, which was published in 1983, and Patrick Drazen’s Anime Explosion: The What?

Why? and Wow! Of Japanese Animation in 2002.

Scholarly works emerged in the late

2000s and 2010s, primarily from Japanese and Media Studies scholars like Susan Napier,

Christopher Bolton, and Ian Condry. Reflecting an American society still broadly unfamiliar

with anime, even these works are usually introductory in nature; moreover, with their more

anthropological/ethnographic emphases, they often do not focus on how anime reflects

Japanese history, memory, and identity.

It is perhaps unsurprising that one of the few sources available in English that

explicitly makes connections between anime and Japanese history, memory, and identity is

written by a Japanese author. In his chapter “Imagery and War in Japan 1995” Watanabe

Morio points out that for its young Japanese audience of the mid-1990s, war-themed anime

Gilles Poitras, Anime Essentials: Everything a Fan Needs to Know, (Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press,

2001). Sailor Moon was the author’s first introduction to anime. It was absolutely captivating as a seven year-

old.

Reflecting a second generation of anime devotees, students in the anime club I supervised for three and a half

years at Match Public High School in Boston include: Black Butler, Fairy Tale, Blue Exorcist, Erased, Akame

Ga Kill, Dragon Ball Super, Yuri on Ice, etc.

Professor of History at Oneonta College William Ashbaugh posits Schodt’s title as a seminal work in his

2016 article for The Diplomat, “Gundam: Japan’s Top Pop Culture Phenomenon,”

https://thediplomat.com/2016/03/gundam-japans-top-pop-culture-phenomenon/. Drazen’s Anime Explosion was

the first published source that suggested to this author that anime, specifically Gundam Wing, is meaningful

commentary on Japanese history, memory, and identity. About Gundam Wing Drazen writes, “...this conflicted

series about the future may be the best commentary on Japan’s conflicted past and present regarding warfare.”

Anime Explosion! The What? Why? And Wow! Of Japanese Animation, (Stone Bridge Press, 2014), 130.

served as “the dominant source of learning about wars.”

Of even greater relevance here,

Watanabe posited that anime was a safe place for young Japanese to explore, explode and

sometimes integrate the identities they were offered in response to national war memories.

This thesis agrees with Watanabe and builds upon his arguments.

Mobile Suit Gundam

In order to analyze Gundam Wing (1995), it is necessary to place it in the context of

its franchise. In 1979 Kidou Senshi Gandamu or Mobile Suit Gundam, now known as First

Gundam,

appeared on Japanese television.

Today the name Gundam and its franchise are

as well-known in Japan as Batman or Superman are in the US. The name is a portmanteau of

the series’ working name, Freedom Fighter Gunboy.

When referred to within a series, “a

Gundam” is a non-sentient, large humanoid robot piloted in combat situations usually by the

series’ hero or heroes.

When Gundam aired in 1979 it was a big risk. Previously, Japanese robot shows

called “super robot” featured sentient, heroic humanoid robots, generally producing lighter

entertainment fare. First Gundam took a consciously darker turn. “We struggled to make a

Watanabe, 129.

Ibid., 148-149.

As a result of more than twenty series that include “Mobile Suit Gundam” in their titles.

Mobile Suit Gundam, created by Hajime Yatate and Yoshiyuki Tomino, first aired April 7, 1979-January 26,

1980 on Nagoya TV, DVD set.

Atsushi Tokuda, director, Making Gundam--The Inside Story, aired July 2019 on Japan’s Broadcasting

Corporation (NHK), Accessed via YouTube in November 2019. Video has since been removed.

There is no consistent definition of what “Gundam” means or refers to--the number of series and series’

producers has led to pushing definitional boundaries. Thanks to Thom of Mobile Suit Breakdown: The Gundam

Anime Podcast, who offered the basis for the description here. Thom of Mobile Suit Breakdown podcast, email

message to author, June 17, 2020.

show that rid itself of the kinds of lies (usoppoi) that characterized hero programs up to that

point,” says Ueda Masao, a producer on First Gundam. This included making the robots,

designed to be 50-65 feet tall, more realistic, non-sentient “weapons of battle” and striving to

demonstrate the fear and even cowardice pilots experienced while piloting from the suit’s

cockpit, which was usually situated in the suit’s chest area.

Initially cancelled for poor

ratings and poor toy sales, the show gained a cult following among Japanese teens, including

many girls even though boys were its target audience. The second series, Zeta Gundam, aired

in 1985. By the late 1980s several other successful series and films had cemented Gundam in

Japanese cultural memory. As of 2020 there are more than twenty Gundam series.

Gundam’s focus on humans, their conflicts, and the complexity of both have become

hallmarks of the franchise. Illustrative of its opacity on difficult issues is the ongoing

discussion of whether Gundam glorifies or condemns war. Instead of providing answers,

Gundam suggests questions. It achieves this, as John Moore notes in his 2017 dissertation

“Inside the Boy Inside the Robot: Mobile Suit Gundam and Interiority,” by maintaining an

“exterior orientation--[of] violence and victories,” common to the “super robot” genre, with

“interiority-inflected visual and narrative language,” the combination of which produced

Gundam’s groundbreaking “real robot” genre.

While it shies away from offering moral platitudes about war, Gundam is “effective

in portraying the consequences of [wartime] violence,” as John Tennant concludes in his

Ian Condry, The Soul of Anime: Collaborative Creativity and Japan’s Media Success Story, (Durham, NC:

Duke University Press, 2013), 123-124.

John D. Moore, “Inside the Boy Inside the Robot: Mobile Suit Gundam and Interiority,” (Master of Arts

thesis, University of Oregon, 2017), 42-43, ProQuest Dissertations and Theses. For an excellent reflection on

these complexities in First Gundam, listen to Mobile Suit Breakdown: The Gundam Anime Podcast, Episode

1.35: Aftermath, https://gundampodcast.com/episode/e1dbb0b605e44176/1-35-aftermath.

dissertation Mobile Suit Gundam and the Japanese Memory of War (2006).

In particular,

Gundam constantly exposes its audience to the impact committing acts of violence has on its

characters, perpetrators and victims alike, whether “good, bad, or gray.”

First Gundam (1979) and Gundam Wing (1995) reflect two distinct generations in

Japan. Much of First Gundam’s story elements were originated by Tomino Yoshiyuki, the

creative genius behind Gundam and its director. Tomino went on to direct several other

Gundam series, films, and even wrote Gundam novels. As a result of his creative significance

he is credited in every Gundam series for the “Original Story;”

however, he did not

contribute directly to series like Gundam Wing. Tomino was born in 1941 and grew up in

bombed-out Tokyo. He has autobiographical memories of the war and the onerous rebuilding

period that followed, which was overshadowed by the US Occupation. While the memory of

the war was real and persistent at that time, the space to deal with it was limited in the face of

survival and the tasks of proverbially getting back on one’s feet.

Sixteen years after First Gundam aired, Gundam Wing appeared on Japanese

television directed by Ikeda Masashi. It is the sixth series in the Gundam franchise. Besides

Ikeda, Wing’s major creative contributor was story supervisor Sumizawa Katsuyuki.

Both

John Tennant, “Mobile Suit Gundam and the Japanese Memory of War,” (PhD diss., University Sheffield,

2006), 80,

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272484323_Mobile_Suit_Gundam_and_the_Japanese_Memory_of_

War.

Ashbaugh, “Gundam: Japan’s Top Pop Culture Phenomenon.”

Also credited is Yatate Hajime. The name is a pseudonym that acknowledges the animation staff’s

contributions to any original work the studio Sunrise produces.

Tomino is the same generation as animation director Hayao Miyazaki (b. 1941) who directed the

internationally recognized films Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, and

others.

See interviews with Sumizawa and Gundam Wing’s producer Hideyuki Tomioka: “Interview: Gundam Wing

screenwriter Katsuyuki Sumisawa,” Zac Bertschy, Anime News Network, August 29, 2017,

were born in 1961. In the 1970s the famous textbook activist Ienaga Saburo won a lawsuit

against the Japanese Ministry of Education and many materials, including information about

Japan’s nefarious wartime acts, became widely available, ranging from school textbooks to

novels to documentaries. Such materials effectively “reproduc[ed] the cultural trauma of the

war,” touching off further need to reckon with Japan’s history and Japanese identity.

Many of the similarities seen in First Gundam and Wing derive from the familiarity

each series’ creators had with the facts and traumatizing nature of the Asia-Pacific War.

For

example, both series’ cosmic conflicts between Earth and its orbital colonies consciously

reflect a reckoning with the Asia-Pacific War more so than the proxy wars of the Cold War

period, such as those in Korea and Vietnam.

Their representation of futuristic colonization

evokes a two-pronged meditation on prewar colonization, that is, of the threat from western

powers in the mid-late 1800s and its adoption by the Japanese as a means of asserting power

and control from the 1860s to 1940s. Unsurprisingly, both series represent the problem of

militarism. More uniquely, both series posit serious questions about the feasibility of

pacifism. Finally, both series’ protagonists are young people from common backgrounds

thrust into extraordinary and complex circumstances. This likely reflects, as Morio Watanabe

suggests, young teens serve as “potent metaphors” for the national self-image in Japan.

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2017-08-29/gundam-wing-screenwriter-katsuyuki-

sumisawa/.120652; Jordan Ramee and Zac Bertschy, “Interview: Gundam Wing Producer Hideyuki Tomioka,”

Anime News Network, May 11, 2018, https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/interview/2018-05-11/gundam-

wing-executive-producer-hideyuki-tomioka/.131472; Full series credits including script writers for individual

episodes can be found at “Mobile Suit Gundam Wing (TV),” Anime News Network,

https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=26.

Hashimoto, 13.

In addition to the mimicry one expects in a series with self-conscious ties to an original series.

Later shows like Zeta Gundam, the second Gundam series, are more analogous to conflicts of the 1960s, 70s,

and early 80s.

Becoming an adult is a “crossroads” of human development and a time at which society is

more willing to recognize that individuals can be both victims and aggressors.

The Gundam

pilots of both First Gundam and Wing are all fifteen.

The two series’ differences illustrate how the two generations of its creators have

internalized, examined, and expressed postwar memory. Where First Gundam is preoccupied

with the internal crises of individuals, Wing’s characters are more clearly representations of

the larger debate around postwar narratives. For instance, while both series present questions

about war, justice, and peace, John Moore argues in his dissertation that in First Gundam

such questions “are not nearly as prevalent onscreen as [its protagonist Amuro Rey’s]

emotional experience.”

The opposite is true in Wing. While the interior life of characters

like protagonist Heero Yuy is very significant, it is his representation of overarching themes

that the creators of Wing appear most eager to represent.

This lends a certain coherent thematic significance to Wing that First Gundam seems

to intentionally lack. Like the contemporary Japanese art of a recent exhibit in Osaka, if First

Gundam “can function as the mirror of an age, then [the one it portrays] is broken and its

fragments kaleidoscopic.”

First Gundam conveys the internalized chaos of the

autobiographical memory of a wartime survivor (re: Tomino). In contrast, Wing conveys the

contemplative sifting of historical memory made possible in the postwar context of a

generation who never experienced war but is nonetheless well-acquainted with cultural

trauma (re: Ikeda and Sumizawa).

Watanabe, 148.

Moore, “Inside the Boy Inside the Robot,” 51.

Matthew Larking, “Japan's Postwar Aesthetics: Compelling if Not Confusing,” Japan Times, February 12,

2020, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2020/02/12/arts/aesthetics-contemporary-japan/#.Xp3GfP1KjFh.

Gundam Wing’s Universe and Storyline

Wing’s absorption with meditating on war memory specifically is reinforced by the

absence of themes common in other anime of the mid-1990s such as environmental

degradation, critiques of Japanese affluence of the 1980s, and post-boom economic woes.

Despite the absence of these, the After Colony Universe is visually and philosophically

recognizable in the ways it represents the past, the present, and the future. For example,

Wing’s military elite wear uniforms reminiscent of nineteenth century Prussia’s, from which

the Japanese military modeled their modern military uniforms. When wearing civilian

clothing, Wing’s characters look to have walked out of the early 1990s, contemporary to the

series’ airing. While the colonies in outer space are certainly beyond the capabilities of

technology today, their designs are likely based on the work of physicist Gerard K. O’Neill.

Noticeably distinct from First Gundam’s storyline is Wing’s lack of the psycho-fantastical

element of the Newtype, or the development of telepathy as the result of spending extended

periods in outer space. Even more so than First Gundam and its “real robots,” Wing is truly

about plain old humans and their existential war with the reality of their violent and warlike

natures.

The storyline of Gundam Wing is told in After Colony (AC) years, that is, in how

many years have passed since the first colony was built. The events of Wing occur within a

single year, from April AC 195 to April AC 196. There are few flashbacks--the action

https://space.nss.org/o-neill-cylinder-space-settlement/. Directed to information by Nina and Thom on Mobile

Suit Breakdown podcast.

remains rooted in the present moment of its participants. The setting is the Earth Sphere, the

term used in Gundam to denote Earth and its orbital colonies.

The plot of Wing is both loved and hated for being intricate.

It revolves around

many characters whose allegiances frequently change or simply become unclear; their

personal beliefs are constantly forming and reforming. When we are first introduced to the

Earth Sphere, the United Earth Sphere Alliance holds oppressive power over the space

colonies. It becomes clear the Alliance is a well-established military organization that

asserted itself in the past to quell previous conflicts, similar to a militarized United Nations.

Within the Alliance is a special unit called OZ. Early in the series OZ, led by an aristocratic

young officer named Treize Khushrenada, stages a coup d’etat and ends the Alliance’s

hegemony. It soon becomes clear that even OZ is beholden to higher powers, an aristocratic

organization called the Romefeller Foundation, which is deeply invested in mobile suit

production. Yet even the Foundation is itself later transformed into a new entity called the

World Nation, this time by a young leader with pacifist convictions named Relena

Peacecraft. Her leadership, however, is short-lived when she steps down before a final series

of space battles known as the Eve Wars break out between the World Nation and a new rebel

group called the White Fang, which claims to represent the colonies’ desires for sovereignty

The editors of Animerica’s 2002 Gundam: Official Guide reflect this perspective--“While it leans heavily on

stock footage of the invincible heroes trashing legions of disposable enemies, and sometimes bogs down in

extended speechifying about peace and human destiny, Gundam Wing’s nifty gadgetry and the enigmatic

charisma of its heroes make for an engaging romantic adventure. Attentive viewers can also occupy themselves

by attempting to decipher its incredibly convoluted plot, rife with conspiracies, coups, and sudden reversals,”

77. The author of this thesis disagrees with the characterization of Wing’s speeches as ‘bogging down’ the

action and its description of its plot as “convoluted.”

and peace. After the war ends a diplomatic organization with no standing military is formed,

named the Earth Sphere Unified Nation.

The numerous conflicts these shifts in power bring to the After Colony universe are

poignantly experienced through multiple characters, foremost among them five fifteen year-

old male Gundam pilots from the space colonies: Heero Yuy, Duo Maxwell, Trowa Barton,

Quatre Raberba Winner, and Wufei Chang. As Dr. J, one of the men sending missions to the

pilots, says of Heero, “He understands the emotional pains that the colony residents have

endured over the years. ”

Convicted by their own experiences and those of other colonists,

the pilots, unknown to each other, set out at the beginning of the series on similar missions to

attack the Alliance’s OZ organization. Their missions become far more complicated and

eventually self-motivated when their superiors are captured and the colonies’ public opinion

is turned against them. Filmic wrestling of the purpose of soldiers, the meaning of fighting,

and the warrior’s role in obtaining peace ensues.

Wing has two major antagonists. Treize Khushrenada is slowly introduced in the

show as the aristocratic founder and leader of OZ. At first, Treize is presented as a fairly

unproblematized villain, ordering assassinations, orchestrating coups, and leading the

organization the Gundam pilots are ordered to destroy. However, a closer watch of the series

results in a more ambivalent understanding of Treize’s villainy. Halfway through the show,

Treize voluntarily steps down from OZ, making statements of support for the Gundam pilots.

In the series final episodes Treize assumes leadership of the World Nation when Earth is

Ep. 5.

faced with the colonial rebel group White Fang. His strong leadership is uneasily paired with

his own impenetrability, encountered by viewers in his public and private philosophizing.

Wing’s other major antagonist is Zechs Merquise, a high-ranking, trustworthy

subordinate of Treize. Despite some leadership ability, he is obviously most comfortable in a

mobile suit on the battlefield. Eventually the series reveals one of its biggest secrets--Zechs

was born Milliardo Peacecraft, prince of the Sanq Kingdom and heir to a pacifist royal family

who were deposed when he was a child. We are led to believe Zechs, a name he is either

given or assumes, eventually joins the Alliance in order to take revenge on his nation’s

attackers, a plan which dovetails with the schemes of Treize and OZ. Even after taking his

revenge, however, Zechs never truly regains freedom. Convinced he cannot take

responsibility for leading the Sanq Kingdom because of his now-bloodstained history, Zechs

eventually takes on the leadership of the White Fang rebel organization that defies the World

Nation. Pushed past hope, Zechs attempts to gain peace by destroying Earth--which he now

deems a breeding ground for battles--by dropping an enormous spaceship onto it. This

apocalyptic act is averted by the Gundam pilots.

The last character of note is Relena Darlian, also known as Relena Peacecraft. Relena

is a major foil to the characters of Treize Khushrenada, Zechs Merquise, and the Gundam

pilot Heero Yuy. Relena Darlian is first introduced as the daughter of an Alliance diplomat

whose advocacy for peace is dangerous enough to warrant assassination per Treize’s orders.

On his deathbed, her father reveals she is in fact Relena Peacecraft of the ruined Sanq

Kingdom. Inspired by the rebellious example of Heero, whom she meets in Wing’s first

episode, Relena attempts to shoot her adopted father’s assassin but ultimately eschews

revenge to take up leadership of the freed Sanq Kingdom. After a brief but formative time

immersing herself in the pacifist legacy of her birth parents, Relena surrenders the kingdom

when it becomes the object of the established powers’ wrath again, this time Romefeller’s.

Relena is pressured into taking a symbolic leadership role in Romefeller where, much to the

surprise of the organization’s scheming leaders, she begins effectively mobilizing for peace.

She is soon removed from the position by Treize. In doing so, he obviates an otherwise

bizarre confrontation between Relena and Zechs, who by this point know they are siblings.

Although she spends the vast majority of the series professing pacifism, Relena appears in

the series’ final episode as Vice Foreign Minister Darlian of the newly formed Earth Sphere

Unified Nation, signaling a profound grappling with her legacy and the experiences of her

contemporaries.

Chapter Overview

The following three chapters analyze three major characters in Gundam Wing as they

reflect and problematize the three dominant postwar narratives in Japan. In the first, Treize

Khushrenada’s heroic leadership is considered alongside his perpetration of violence via his

leadership roles. The connections between him and Emperor Showa are explored,

specifically the ways in which Treize represents a wishful re-imagining of the emperor’s

ability to contend with his war responsibility. The second chapter discusses Zechs Merquise

and the painful dynamics of his double identity as victim and perpetrator in Wing. The

connections between his story arc and Japan’s prewar and postwar victim identity will be

explored, which elevates the complicated and long-standing nature of Japan’s self-

identification as a victim of the west. Finally, the third chapter examines Heero Yuy and the

battle between his internalization of being a perpetrator and his ascendance to embodying the

ultimate hero. His grappling with the reality of killing people while wanting to save people is

explored in the context of the heitai or ‘everyman soldier’ of the Imperial Japanese Army and

the possibility of a post-postwar Japanese identity.

CHAPTER ONE: TREIZE KHUSHRENADA and EMPEROR SHOWA

The first category of narratives emphasizes the stories of fallen national heroes. These

narratives embrace a “fortunate fall” argument, which justifies the war and national sacrifices

in hindsight by claiming that the peace and prosperity of today are built on those sacrifices of

the past. These heroic narratives tend to promote a discourse of indebtedness that is heard

often in official speeches at commemorations. It is an ameliorative narrative intended to

cultivate pride in national belonging...

-- Hashimoto, The Long Defeat

Japan’s postwar heroic narrative focuses on Japan’s war dead, specifically its

soldiers. In the heroic narrative, unlike in the victim and perpetrator narrative, its subjects are

not able to tell their story. Instead, the heroic narrative has most frequently and vehemently

been formulated by Japan’s postwar leaders, beginning with Emperor Showa

in his

surrender speech on August 15, 1945. Attempting to ameliorate the cultural trauma of his

nation, the emperor forwarded the belief that Japan’s defeat was fortunate. While Japan had

fallen, it could, at least, demonstrate its true nature by picking itself back up. That was how

to honor the fallen dead. The imperative of the heroic narrative ties the commemoration of

the war dead to a commitment to moving forward.

The heroic narrative is, perhaps, the one that eschews complexity the most. Let the

dead be venerated, and may whatever they did during the war be buried along with them. The

legacy of Emperor Showa was similarly regarded in the first four decades of the postwar era.

After all, according to Japan’s 1947 Constitution, the emperor was “the symbol of the State

Hashimoto, 8.

Emperor Showa is the posthumous name conferred to Emperor Hirohito upon his death. His posthumous

name will be used here.

Hashimoto, 125-127.

and the unity of the people.”

His looming death in the late 1980s, however, unearthed

doubts about his exoneration from war responsibility. As housewife Hakoto Atsuko wrote in

a letter to the Asahi Shimbun at that time

Each year newspapers and television stations produce special reports on the War.

Although these evoke the tragedy of war for the viewers, they do not often touch

upon the Emperor, who must have been at the root of this War...no matter how many

times one reads history books, it is clear that this War could not have been carried out

without the Emperor’s orders. He held supreme command.

These were difficult doubts to raise. Since the emperor was the symbol of Japan and

the unity of its people, the possibility of the emperor being labeled a war criminal even forty

years later implied a national depravity that might reflexively imply a personal one. Yet, as

Hakoto wrote, that the war could not have been carried out without his orders was “clear.”

The issue of regaining respect and experiencing belonging not only after defeat but

especially after committing massive wartime violence is a major theme in the Gundam

franchise. The main characters are always pilots of mobile suits, which, as a result of their

size and advanced technology, are capable of mass destruction. Gundam’s most famous and

popular characters are individuals who not only battle their enemies but often participate in

the uglier high-level machinations of war. Sometimes these characters are antagonists;

however, Gundam has consciously blurred the line between its ‘good guys’ and ‘bad guys’

since 1979.

The Constitution of Japan (1947),

https://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html.

Atsuko Hakoto, “He Flung the Flag Onto the Ground,” in Sensou: The Japanese Remember the Pacific War:

Letters to the Editor of Asahi Shimbun, edited by Frank Gibney; translated by Beth Cary (Armonk, NY: Sharpe,

2007), 285.

In Gundam Wing, the heroic narrative’s interaction with these issues is explored

through the character and story arc of Treize Khushrenada, the show’s aristocratic antagonist.

Like Emperor Showa, Treize is a major wartime leader in Gundam Wing’s universe. Steeped

in ideologies about war, peace, and progress similar to those that fueled Emperor Showa and

Japan’s other wartime leaders, Treize represents a heroically-styled figure. Arising from

these ideals, Treize frequently evokes a heroic narrative to explain his actions to himself and

others.

Treize also represents a contention with the heroic narrative, specifically Emperor

Showa’s legacy. As Wing repeatedly shows its audience, Treize is a heroic perpetrator,

earnest, perhaps, but deeply misguided insofar as his vision includes manipulation, massacre,

and intentional orchestration of ‘fortunate falls.’ Unable to ever fully transcend the traditional

ideals that underlay his heroic narrative, Treize’s character represents a stillborn Japan

postwar identity.

Treize Khushrenada: Chivalrous Antagonist, Heroic Perpetrator

Wufei Chang, Gundam pilot: You’re only capable of looking down on people like this!

You’re only fighting to satisfy your ego. How many people do you think have died for you?!

Treize: Shall I tell you? As of yesterday, 99,822 people...I remember everyone who’s

sacrificed their lives in battle. Noventa, Septem, Ventei, Darlian, Walker, Otto, Bunt. How

could I forget them? -- Episode 48

The creators of Gundam Wing complicate the heroic narrative’s concept of a fortunate

fall and the moral pass this affords figures such as Emperor Showa through their portrayal of

Treize Khushrenada. His heroic posture is shadowed by what Wing’s audience is clearly

meant to identify as problematic moral leadership. While emphasizing his identity as a

perpetrator, however, the series never dismisses Treize as pure evil. Instead of forfeiting his

heroic attributes, Wing ultimately emphasizes the necessity of comprehending the complexity

of Treize’s identity, however unpalatable.

The first half of the series is when Wing’s audience most frequently sees Treize act

like a perpetrator. However, he does not usually enact violence personally. By putting its

audience in the room when Treize gives orders as well as allowing us to hear his interior

thoughts, Wing makes it clear Treize is directly responsible for perpetrating acts of violence.

When we are first introduced to the series’ universe, the major power-holder is the United

Earth Sphere Alliance and its military. While claiming to restore “Justice and Peace” to the

Earth Sphere, the Alliance actually seizes control of space colonies, limiting communication

between colonies and with Earth.

We learn that OZ, which Treize founded and leads in the

first half of Wing, originated as a supplier of Alliance mobile suits. By the time of the events

in Wing, the Alliance has allowed OZ to act independently for some time.

Ironically, this

freedom affords Treize the opportunity to carefully engineer a coup d’etat against the

Alliance.

In Episode 7, Treize and his trusted subordinate, Lady Une, attend a large gathering at

New Edwards Base, along with every major military leader of the Alliance, in which

discussions about unilateral disarmament are voiced. Contrasting these public conversations

are Treize and Une’s quiet dialogs, which reveal their secret intentions to Wing’s audience.

Ep. 1.

Ep. 3.

Une has circulated a rumor indicating the conference is a gathering of only OZ officials, it

having been established that OZ is the primary target of the Gundam pilots. The rumor is

meant to entice their arrival at New Edwards and to harness their destructive power to kill the

top Alliance leaders, doing OZ’s dirty work for them. To further secure the elimination of the

Alliance leaders, upon departure from the conference, Treize personally invites them to use

his shuttle while he himself boards a different one. When the Alliance leaders’ shuttle lifts

off from the base, the Gundam pilots’ intelligence indicates it belongs to OZ. Heero, one of

the Gundam pilots, slices through it with a beam saber. It explodes in midair.

Treize and Une’s manipulation goes one step further. They divert Alliance military

General Septem, who expressed uncertainty during the conference peace talks, to the shuttle

they board. Informed of the deaths of his fellow Alliance leaders and believing the Gundams

were sent as representatives of the colonies’ collective malcontent toward the Earth, Septem

declares in a public broadcast to both Earth and the colonies, “We will not yield to the

colonies! We must fight them to the bitter end!” With the General’s proclamation

legitimizing a renewal of outright conflict in the Earth Sphere, he has served his final

purpose. Lady Une ejects him in-flight, shooting him in the head with a pistol as he falls

through the air. The scene shifts to elsewhere on the plane where Treize sits alone and

comfortable, his eyes closed. “The second act has just begun,” he murmurs.

In addition to asserting Treize’s perpetrator identity, Wing simultaneously anchors

him as a recognizably heroic figure, arguably more so than any other character in the series.

Ep. 7.

Ibid.

Treize has the visuals of a western knight, tall and handsome with the trappings of his

culture’s warrior class--military uniform, sword, even, occasionally, a cape.

Treize is first

introduced in the series while attending an opera,

casting him as an enlightened warrior.

While Gundam Wing explicitly tells its audience that Romefeller emerged from the

European aristocracy,

it is possible this is a technique to obfuscate its true historical

referents. Taken as a whole, Treize is more likely styled from the appearance of Japanese

aristocrats in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who adopted western clothes and customs

in addition to maintaining many attributes of bushido, the way of the learned warrior or

samurai. Otherwise out-of-place scenes of Treize releasing songbirds from a cage

and

putting scenes of nature onto the screens of a subordinate’s mobile suit to calm them

would

fit that context.

Moreover, Treize’s demeanor has a zen-like quality to it. His focus and

purpose are obviously refined to a point, resulting in his consummate leadership and evoking

unusual devotion in the soldiers he commands. All of these attributes--and others that will be

The English subbing and dubbing even uses the word “knight” in a speech by Duke Dermail to describe

Treize’s role in Romefeller: “This gentleman is a brave knight fighting for us…” Episode 14.

Ep. 1.

Ep. 3.

Ep. 14.

Ep. 6.

Ep. 8.

See Sachiko Koyama, “History of Bird-Keeping and the Teaching of Tricks to Using Cyanistes Varius

(varied tit) in Japan,” Archives of Natural History, (October 2015).

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/271525088_History_of_bird-

keeping_and_the_teaching_of_tricks_using_Cyanistes_varius_varied_tit_in_Japan. “The novels and poems

written about varied tits during the Kamakura Era were all by or about aristocrats and other noble people (for

example, Taiheiki (Anonymous 1361), Kokonchomonju (Tachibana 1254), Fubokuwakasho (Fujiwara c.

1310)), which suggests that the keeping of pet birds was confined to people of high social status, and was a

status symbol or luxury.” However, this source goes on to say, “From the seventeenth century, records of

keeping birds included many written by commoners…” 213-214.

examined in the next section--serve to anchor Treize as a heroic eastern figure and reinforce

that Wing is absorbed with questions of the nature of the Japanese hero.

After establishing Treize as a heroic perpetrator, Wing eventually creates two

instances in which Treize “falls” or loses. The losses follow major soul-searching on Treize’s

part, although the impenetrability of his philosophical musings have led many viewers of

Wing, not unlike various characters in the series, to dislike Treize a great deal.

After the

massacre of the Alliance leaders, it quickly becomes clear Treize is not as supremely

powerful as he first appeared; instead, he is a member of the Romefeller Foundation,

characterized as a “brave knight” by Duke Dermail, a man who appears to be his superior. In

Episode 14, for the first time we see a gathering of Romefeller’s members as the narrator

tells us the Foundation was formed from European royalty who “with their enormous

financial power and connections [] poured their energy into weapons development,”

eventually becoming powerful enough to back the coup d’etat led by Treize. In a speech to

the assembled group Duke Dermail clarifies the foundation’s philosophy and values, stating,

“The world was corrupted with imperfect ideas like equality and freedom. The time’s arrived

where we must once again take control.”

Treize appears to have no qualms with these

principles.

William Scott Wilson, translator, editor, Ideals of the Samurai: Writings of Japanese Warriors, (Black Belt

Books, A Division of Ohara Publications, Inc.), 1982.

Eric Vilas Boas, “How Treize Manipulated Everyone in ‘Gundam Wing:’ Meet the Gundam franchise’s Dick

Cheney. Or Lyndon B. Johnson. Or Stringer Bell. Really, take your pick,” Dot + Line, April 29, 2019,

https://dotandline.net/treize-khushrenada-gundam-wing-essay/. See also Alyssa Gonzalez, “Treize Khushrenada

You Beautiful Asshole: Gundam Wing in the Age of Fascism,” The Orbit, February 17, 2017, https://the-

orbit.net/alyssa/2017/02/17/treize-khushrenada-beautiful-asshole-gundam-wing-age-fascism/.

Ep. 14.

In the meantime, the Gundam pilots are silenced by OZ’s threat to target the colonies,

unbeknownst to the colonies themselves.

As a result of this, when Lady Une goes to space

as a diplomat claiming intentions of peace-making, the colony's representatives prove open to

OZ’s overtures and explicitly reject further efforts by the Gundams to defend and protect

them. Elsewhere, Treize’s other most trusted subordinate, Zechs, defects from OZ.

Romefeller tests a new technology called the mobile doll, mobile suits operated by artificial

intelligence.

By the midpoint of the show, Treize, ever-attempting to follow the zeitgeist of the

times, which he believes to be embodied by the Gundam pilots, voluntarily steps down from

his leadership in Romefeller. In a scene in a large hall lined with raised seats of

aristocratically-dressed all-male members, Duke Dermail announces the organization’s plans

to harness the imminent mass-production of mobile dolls in space by positioning them in

“dispute-ridden regions in each country” on Earth. Such efforts will “show the entire world

how powerful we are, and bring order to the world.”

As he finishes, Treize walks down the middle of the hall toward Dermail’s podium.

He begins bluntly: “I can’t support the Romefeller Foundation’s current path.” He continues

at length, describing his disgust at the use of mobile dolls instead of human pilots and his

growing admiration for the Gundam pilots’ resistance to OZ in the face of demoralizing

defeat. After several minutes of speaking, Duke Dermail tersely queries, “[W]hat are you

getting at?” “I want to be a loser,” responds Treize. Dermail confirms Treize’s intention to

Ep. 10.

Eps. 17-24.

Ep. 25.

step down from OZ’s leadership, places a gold-detailed pistol on the podium while

acknowledging Treize’s service, and orders him confined to Romefeller’s headquarters.

This speech, conspicuous at the series's midpoint, reminds us of Treize’s

philosophical moorings and how those sensibilities contribute to a heroic narrative he tells

himself and Romefeller. Early in the speech, Treize states a phrase that may well be one of

the most recognizable word-for-word evocations of the heroic narrative: “I’d also like to

express my regret over the lost souls [in recent battles]…” He also indicates the root of his

disagreement with Romefeller--“I believe what mankind needs is not absolute victory but a

certain demeanor in fighting, an attitude towards it.” This aesthetic of war is arguably the

most characteristic and identifiable element of Treize’s philosophy. His embrace of the fallen

hero, however, is new, motivated by an admiration of the Gundam pilots. Highlighting their

actions (which are visually reinforced by flashbacks to the last several episodes), Treize’s

admiration for them is clear when he observes, “Tradition appears blurred alongside their

pure feelings...Winners of war will eventually decline in history to be losers; only then can

they cultivate a new energy.” With this last statement he establishes his concept of the

“fortunate fall.” He, like the Gundam pilots, can lose now in order to “cultivate a new

energy” later--so he chooses to be a loser now.

Choosing to lose weighs heavily on Treize despite his ownership of it. In a fateful

meeting with Gundam pilot Heero Yuy in Episode 34, Treize repeatedly gives the younger

pilot the opportunity to kill him, holding out what appears to be the same golden pistol

Ibid.

Dermail gave him. Heero refuses and Treize shows him the elite mobile suit, Epyon, he has

created during his time in confinement. Epyon is a red suit with a scorpion-like whip and

claws whose cockpit system pushes its pilots to psychological breaking points. After

entrusting this seeming devil into Heero’s possession, Treize largely disappears from the

storyline until Zechs, his former friend, appears in space as the leader of White Fang.

Assuming the leadership of Earth’s World Nation from Relena Peacecraft in Episode 41,

Treize’s motivations are revealed in a monologue to an unconscious Lady Une, who is

recovering from a bullet wound:

I want you to see how I handle things now. A fantastic battle will commence between

Space and Earth and will end the pathetic history mankind has created. A star role in

this final scene would be too big a burden for Relena Peacecraft. I must take on the

role as leader. I must. She can establish the new history we’ll lay out for her.

What this burden is and how Treize will lay out the future for another person’s

leadership becomes clear in his final scene in Wing where he exits the Earth Sphere’s stage

by suicide. In the penultimate episode, Treize appears in the refitted mobile suit Tallgeese

and fights the Gundam pilot Wufei Chang.

This encounter echoes an earlier one in Episode

8 when Treize and Wufei face off in a sword duel, which Treize deftly wins. A close watch

of their mobile suit battle in Episode 48 suggests a similar superiority on Treize’s part; it

even appears Treize is baiting Wufei. It soon becomes clear, however, that he is baiting him

Ep. 41.

In addition to having a conspicuously Chinese name, Wufei Chang is overtly portrayed as culturally Chinese.

In Wing we are told he is descended from the Long clan, which was forced to go to outer space (Ep. 35). Wufei

calls his Gundam “Nataku,” the name of a being in Chinese mythology that was created in the Kunlun

mountains and can take human form. In the canonical Gundam Wing manga Episode Zero we learn his colony

was once targeted with a biological weapon. In light of Japan and China’s shared wartime history, the inclusion

of Wufei, especially as Treize’s rival, is very intriguing. Story by Katsuyuki Sumizawa, Mobile Suit Gundam

Wing: Episode Zero, art by Akira Kanbe, (San Francisco, CA: VIZ, LLC, 2003).

not with the aim of killing Wufei, but to bait Wufei into killing him. Talking throughout their

battle, Treize winds his enemy into such a frenzy that Wufei fails to realize Treize does not

defend himself when he makes his final charge. The beam trident of Wufei’s Gundam stabs

deep into the Tallgeese’s left side, the redness of the area of the damaged white mobile suit

evoking the mortal wound of a human. As Treize floats away in a haze of portentous static,

he calmly says, “That was beautiful, Wufei,” calling him his “eternal friend,” and stating

“I’m honored I could fight with you pilots.” Moments later his suit explodes, confirming his

death.

This scene underlines the evolution in Treize’s perception of his identity as a

perpetrator while continuing to express major aspects of the heroic narrative. Immediately

prior to Treize’s death, Wufei, angry and disgusted with what he knows about Treize’s

actions throughout the series’ ongoing conflicts, accuses Treize of arrogance, yelling “You’re

only capable of looking down on people like this! You’re only fighting to satisfy your own

ego!” Visibly breathing hard not only from the exertion of fighting but from the emotional

charge of his accusations, Wufei finally shouts “How many people do you think have died

for you?!” Treize’s bizarre response underlines his internalization of his perpetrator identity.

Speaking calmly, as he has throughout the encounter, Treize tells a shocked Wufei “As of

yesterday, 99,822 people,” and inquires of Lady Une via a communication system between

his suit and the World Nation’s base of operations how many more people had died in battle

Ep. 48.

that day. She reports back to him numbers for both the White Fang (82) and the World

Nation’s forces (105).

Treize goes on, his calm demeanor finally beginning to crack with emotion. “I

remember everyone who’s sacrificed their lives in battle. Noventa, Septem, Ventei, Darlian,

Walker, Otto, Bunt. How could I forget them?” While the last three are OZ soldiers who

served under Treize, the first four are targets Treize specifically ordered killed, including

three Alliance leaders who died at the New Edwards Base. In naming those three men in

response to Wufei’s question, he takes responsibility for their deaths.

While he accepts his identity as a perpetrator, even in his last moments Treize

articulates a heroic narrative. After giving the names of his subordinates and the victims of

the military violence for which he is directly responsible, Treize’s emotions shift from

sadness to passion. Possibly alluding to regret, Treize tells Wufei, “I can only grieve over the

lives lost by those who fought.” Unwilling, however, to accept a helpless stance, Treize

declares, “But at least try and understand this. Not one of those people died in vain!” He then

charges towards Wufei to embrace the deadly destiny of the fallen hero. His death

precipitates a “fortunate fall”--informed of his death, Lady Une announces the immediate

surrender of the World Nation, effectively ending the Eve Wars.

Ibid.

Treize and Emperor Showa: Fallen Heroes

It is according to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a

grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the [unavoidable] and suffering what

is unsufferable...Unite your total strength to be devoted to the construction for the future. --

Emperor Showa’s surrender speech to the people of Japan, Radio Broadcast, August 15,

1945

Treize: I want you to see how I handle things now...I must take on the role as leader. I must.

[Relena Peacecraft] can establish the new history we’ll lay out for her.

-- Episode 41.

The character of Treize Khushrenada demonstrates many of the defining

characteristics as well as the prewar and wartime experiences of Emperor Showa. Treize’s

aristocratic and militarized background, the loyalty he receives, his uneasy existence between

ancient and modern values, and his complicated perpetrator identity all reflect historical

aspects seen in Emperor Showa’s life, times, and war responsibility. Emperor Showa, like

Treize in Wing, felt compelled to account for Japan’s defeat not only to himself but to the

collectivity he led, most notably through his August 15th surrender speech in 1945. His

desire to ameliorate the collective trauma of massive wartime chaos and violence led to his

articulating a heroic narrative arising from his cultural and wartime ideologies. Officially

falling from godlike status to mere human in 1946,

Emperor Showa serves as Japan’s

ultimate fallen hero, representative of the many fallen heroes who served in the Japanese

military during the Asia-Pacific War.

“Emperor Hirohito, Accepting the Potsdam Declaration, Radio Broadcast,” Transmitted by Domei and

Recorded by the Federal Communications Commission, 14 August 1945,

https://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/hirohito.htm.

Ep. 41.

“Imperial Rescript Denying His Divinity (Professing His Humanity),” Issued January 1, 1946,

https://www.ndl.go.jp/constitution/e/shiryo/03/056shoshi.html.

Emperor Showa’s Life and Heroic Legacy

In 1901 Emperor Showa was born heir apparent to the imperial throne of Japan. The

country was still establishing its emergence into the industrial modern period, an emergence

characterized by a sense of national survival and an intense focus on Japan’s national

identity--past, present, and future. He became regent of Japan when he was seventeen and

emperor when he was twenty-four. He was commissioned in the army and navy as a young

man and studied military science. The modernizing world he grew up in often affected the

semblance of westernization, including both western-style military uniforms and the frock

coat, necktie, and white-collared shirt of the European “dandy.” Japanese elites at the time

also engaged in western leisure activities like formal dances, banquets, and recitals.

Historians agree Emperor Showa was a smart, self-motivated man who took his

responsibilities seriously, responsibilities which were often contradictory.

In his ceremonial

roles he was taught to “be generous and think of the people as his treasure...he should labor

to heighten his augustness and high virtues, yet also try to be gentle.”

As Japan’s divine

sovereign he was, after all, “sacred and inviolable.”

Yet he was also taught to recognize his

capacity for more direct participation in Japan’s affairs. To that end he was instructed to be

shrewd, even to lay aside ethics in order to be driven utmost by a single question: Is it in the

Jason G. Karlin, "The Gender of Nationalism: Competing Masculinities in Meiji Japan," Journal of Japanese

Studies 28, no. 1 (2002): 41-77.

In addition to Bix’s extensive research on this, see also John Dower’s pithy summary in Embracing Defeat:

Japan in the Wake of World War II, (New York: W. W. Norton & Co. 1999), 289-290.

Herbert P. Bix, Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, (New York: Harper Collins, 2000),

132-133.

“The Constitution of the Empire of Japan,” 1889, https://history.hanover.edu/texts/1889con.html.

national interest?

Complicating his leadership role even further was his often-ambiguous

relationship with Japan’s Imperial Diet, which was led by the prime minister.

Emperor Showa’s agency has long been downplayed and misrepresented, particularly

by the Occupation’s American leaders, who consciously de-emphasized their portrayal of the

emperor’s role in Japan’s wartime actions in order to keep him on the throne to pacify and

stabilize Japan’s immediate postwar society.

However, since Emperor Showa’s death,

many historians have contested the image of the emperor as a “mousy and passive

figurehead.”

According to Herbert Bix, author of Hirohito and the Making of Modern

Japan (2000), Emperor Showa was usually well-informed of current events and proactive in

directing the course of events when possible. Of the Manchuria Incident in 1931, considered

to be the beginning of Japan’s fifteen years of protracted conflict, Bix states the emperor

“knew that the incident had been staged...knew who had planned it, who had ordered it, and

who had carried it out... [he was] was totally aware that several senior officers had violated

the army’s own penal law.”

Despite this, by early 1932 he had issued an imperial rescript

praising the branch of the Japanese military responsible for the incident, admiring how they

Bix, 133.

See Dower, Embracing Defeat, 319-330. “Despite the charge to do so, neither SCAP nor the IPS ever

conducted a serious investigation of the emperor’s involvement in promoting aggression,” 325.

Excerpt from Los Angeles Times review of Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, back cover of

Hirohito. See also New York Times opinion article from January 7, 1989, date of Emperor Showa’s death. “The

modesty of this shy, scholarly man became, in the postwar era, a blessing to his nation as it reinvented itself

from amid the ashes of a devastating defeat. But his passive acquiescence to militaristic politicians was no

blessing during the 1930's. In his exalted position, he might have helped spare the world limitless tragedy.

Instead, war became inevitable.” “Japan’s Emperor: A Mortal Man,” New York Times archive,

https://www.nytimes.com/1989/01/07/opinion/japan-s-emperor-a-mortal-man.html.

Bix, 240.

fought in “self-defense” against Chinese “bandits” as well as for having “strengthened the

authority of the emperor’s army.”

From 1931 to 1945, his eagerness to enable whatever actions were required to “force

the Chinese to reflect on their actions”

burgeoned into increasingly proactive, direct

imperial orders. After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in July 1937, another instance of the

Japanese military’s manipulative instigation of conflict, Emperor Showa encouraged his navy

officers, according to Bix, to “accept [] the position of his admirals not reluctantly but

actively, pressing his generals to move with decisiveness” to undertake several major

maneuvers against China that would in five short months lead to the notorious Rape of

Nanjing.

Furthermore, the emperor bore direct responsibility along with the Army Department

for sanctioning the use of poison gas against Chinese and Mongolians, including both

combatants and non-combatants. Chemical warfare had been explicitly banned after World

War 1 in the Versailles Peace Treaty, which Japan signed and ratified in 1919. Nevertheless,

beginning in July 1937 following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, the emperor issued a

directive stating “[Y]ou may use tear gas at suitable times.” This time he did not rubber-

stamp a previous action--he opened the door for something new. According to Bix and

Japanese historians Yoshimi Yoshiaki and Matsuno Seiya,

Gas was the one weapon over which Hirohito, the Imperial Headquarters, and the

high command retained close, effective control throughout the entire China war…Gas

could be employed only after explicit authorization had been requested and received

Ibid., 247.

Ibid., 324.

Ibid., 325.

from Imperial Headquarters-Army Department, usually in the form of “directives”

issued by the chief of staff after having first obtained the emperor’s permission.

In light of such research, it is possible to conclude that Emperor Showa, like his

prime ministers, his generals, his industrialists, and his millions of Imperial soldiers, was a

perpetrator in the Asia-Pacific War.

The resistance to accepting this within Japan, even today, is grounded in the narrative

created about the emperor after the war, as well as the relationship the Japanese were

exhorted to adopt towards him during it. Considered the direct descendant in a 2,000 year

lineage from Japan’s sun goddess, Amaterasu, the image of a divine emperor was ripe for

wartime propaganda. Emperor Showa was the aspirational hero of all fighting men and every

sacrificing civilian in Japan: everyone was called upon to emulate his virtues. This

propaganda was so effective at mobilizing Japan’s loyal population it led to non-combatants

who jumped off of cliffs and killed their own children before enemy troops arrived, rather

than disgracing their emperor’s honor with their perceived failures. Beginning in 1943, when

the war was already taking a desperate turn for the worst, his soldiers became nikudan or

“human bullets” for him. In Japan’s final hour they became his kamikaze or “divine wind.”

Banzai was their cry: “Long Live his Majesty the Emperor.”

Ibid., 361. Based on research by Japanese historians Yoshimi Yoshiaki and Matsuno Seiya (1997). Research

is still emerging on the topic of Japan’s use of chemical warfare during the Asia-Pacific War. In 2019, Matsuno

Seiya unearthed a report detailing the Japanese army's use of poison gases. It is the first such Japanese military

document to be published. It is generally assumed similar materials were destroyed in 1945. “Report discovered

detailing Japan's wartime use of nerve agents,” Kyodo News, July 7, 2019,

https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2019/07/1454a917df00-report-discovered-detailing-japans-wartime-use-of-

nerve-agents.html.

See David C. Earhart’s chapter “Dying Honorably, From Attu to Iwo Jima” in Certain Victory: Images of

World War II in the Japanese Media for an overview of the propagandistic depiction in Japanese media of mass

suicide attacks initiated in 1943 with Colonel Yamazaki’s last stand on Attu.

While the emperor proved hard-pressed to end the war, once he agreed to do so it was

his responsibility to literally break the silence, which would end the war in the minds of his

people. On August 15th, a day after the Japanese notified their acceptance of the Potsdam

Declaration, his voice crackled through the radio in arguably the most important narrative

moment in Japanese collective memory in the 20th century. The voice, which almost no

common Japanese person had ever heard, told them the war was over; mired in court

language that was indecipherable to many Japanese and phrases that avoided bluntly stating

the facts of Japan’s disastrous failure, Emperor Showa attempted to lessen the moment’s

bleakness and his people’s despair, stating:

We are keenly aware of the inmost feelings of all of you, our subjects. It is according

to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a grand

peace for all the generations to come by enduring the [unavoidable] and suffering

what is unsufferable...Unite your total strength to be devoted to the construction for

the future.

Their suffering had purpose, he gently told his “treasured” masses.

Japan’s

sacrifices had paved a way for a “grand peace.” He exhorted them to look forward, not

backwards. Although the heroic narrative had been articulated at times earlier in the war,

was with this last colossal and final defeat, with its utterance by the symbol of Japan itself,

that it became established among Japan’s postwar narratives.

“Emperor Hirohito, Accepting the Potsdam Declaration, Radio Broadcast.”

Bix, 132.

In The Long Defeat Akiko Hashimoto cites Captain Iwao Usubuchi’s words immediately preceding the

sinking of the battleship Yamato on April 7, 1945: “We will lead the way. We will die as harbingers of Japan’s

new life. That’s where our real satisfaction lies, isn’t it?” 10.

Treize as Analog to Emperor Showa’s Life and Heroic Legacy

The similarities between Emperor Showa and the character of Treize Khushrenada

are myriad, ranging from the superficial to the ponderously significant. Treize’s appearance

reflects western influences on Japanese military and civilian fashion. Canon information

about Treize’s age indicates he is twenty-four years old during Wing, the same age as

Emperor Showa when he ascended the Chrysanthemum Throne.

100

Mired in an aristocratic,

militarized culture, Treize demonstrates many distinctive attributes of the emperor including

his formality, self-possession, and aloofness, underlining the symbolic as well as active

leadership of each.

Of particular relevance are the similarities between the two leaders as objects of

intense loyalty, their complex relationship with other powerholders, their identities as

wartime perpetrators, and finally their identities as fallen heroes who offer a heroic narrative

about their collectivities’ wartime experiences. In Gundam Wing, the loyalty Treize inspires

in his subordinates is shocking to the point of bizarre, similar to the loyalty demonstrated on

the emperor’s behalf during the Asia-Pacific War. In several scenes throughout the series,

unnamed soldiers are depicted crying “Long Live Treize Khushrenada” before charging into

death

101

or begging survivors to continue protecting him.

102

Echoing the dynamic between

100

Information about Treize’s age comes from “Treize Khushrenada,” GundamOfficial.com, Copyright Sotsu

Agency and 1999 Bandai America, Inc.,

https://web.archive.org/web/20120917000344/http://www.gundamofficial.com/www_ac/gw/characters/char_tre

ize.html.

101

Ep. 42 An unnamed OZ soldier turned Treize Faction turned White Fang who then abandons the White Fang

when Treize becomes leader of the World Nation. Pursued by White Fang as a traitor he is incidentally saved by

a Gundam pilot, Wufei Chang, who is bent on destroying all mobile suits in space. After admiring the

Gundam’s efforts (similar to Treize), the soldier aids the Gundam pilot with his own suicide attack. The image

is very reminiscent of the acts and purported philosophy of Japan’s kamikaze pilots.

the emperor and Japan’s primary governing bodies, the relationship between power brokers

of seemingly equal but different statuses in Wing plays out between Treize and the

Romefeller Foundation, particularly Duke Dermail, who is arguably a stand-in for the war-

mongering Tojo Hideki.

Treize mirrors Emperor Showa as a perpetrator, engaging in what are widely

considered to be illegal acts of war and violence. In the coup d’etat Treize leads against the

Alliance, we see how secretive his efforts are, a hallmark of the actions of Japan’s Kwantung

Army that instigated both the Manchuria and Marco Polo Bridge Incidents. The directness of

Treize’s role in causing the massacre at New Edwards while maintaining a distance from its

bloody nature can be seen reflected in the emperor’s active and even direct roles at various

times throughout the Asia-Pacific War, including his directives to use chemical warfare

against the Chinese.

103

The clouded responsibility of each leader enabled them to maintain a

superficial purity that promoted the heroic image their followers worshipped, compelling

those followers to greater acts of violence on their leaders’ behalf.

Finally, Treize and Emperor Showa identified themselves as fallen heroes and banner

bearers of heroic narratives, though the analogy here is less exact because of Treize’s

decision to commit suicide. In Episode 25, Treize steps down from Romefeller, identifying

himself with the Gundam pilots he perceives as fallen heroes. In Episode 48, having

concluded his role in past events obviates his ability to participate in the future he believes

the pilots are harbingers of, he precipitates his own “fall” by committing suicide, declaring

102

Ep. 34.

103

Ep. 10.

beforehand the value of the lives lost in the past year’s conflicts and his hopes for a better

future laid out, in part, by his own actions, heroic and perpetrator alike. In the summer of

1945, Emperor Showa pushed the war forward even when counseled to do otherwise,

104

but

eventually decided to end the war before the Allies set foot on Japan’s home islands,

choosing loss. Moreover, when he and his government decided to do so, he took the

unprecedented step of issuing his own voice into the public spaces of Japan, taking on the

role of Japan’s symbolic fallen hero.

105

Aspects of the way they choose to frame and articulate their own heroic narrative are

also similar. Treize’s speech to an unconscious Lady Une, though different from the

emperor’s surrender speech in being a private communication, is similar in expressing

Treize’s complicated vision for the future. “I want you to see how I handle things now,” he

tells her, indicating his resumption of leadership before the final battle in Wing. His

leadership, however, will only occur as long as a certain “burden” exists, which he must

contend with in order to leave Relena Peacecraft in a position to “establish the new history

we’ll lay out for her.”

106

In his repetition of “I must take on the role as leader. I must,” we

hear his resignation.

Emperor Showa sets a similar tone of hopeful fatalism during his surrender speech in

August 1945. “We are keenly aware of the inmost feelings of all of you,” he states, aligning

himself with the experiences of his subjects. Focusing on the hope of the future, he goes on,

“It is according to the dictates of time and fate that we have resolved to pave the way for a

104

Fumimaro Konoe met with Emperor Showa on February 14, 1945. Bix, 489.

105

See Bix, Chapter 13 “Delayed Surrender,” 487-530.

106

Ep. 41.

grand peace for all generations to come.” His burden, and that of the wartime generation he

implies along with himself, has been extraordinary, “suffering what is insufferable…” Yet

he, like Treize, commits himself and his people to “the construction [of] the future.” Like

Treize, the time of opportunity for him to shape and form that narrative would close abruptly.

Treize and Emperor Showa’s Silenced Legacies: A Stillborn Japanese Identity

Lady Une: Treize is hoping we’ll put up a fight...Without fighting nothing can be created.

107

- Episode 22.

In a fictionalized version of the first meeting between Emperor Showa and US

General George MacArthur, the 2012 film Emperor depicts the emperor kneeling down

before MacArthur, willing to take responsibility for Japan’s defeat, willing even to die.

MacArthur, gruff but human, extends mercy.

108

This scene, representing a common and

popular narrative in the US and Japan, makes heroes out of both MacArthur and the Emperor

and alludes to the reality that together the two perpetuated Japan’s heroic narrative. If

Emperor Showa was not guilty of war crimes, how then could his people, of whom he was

the symbolic representative, be guilty?

Gundam Wing’s portrayal of Treize Khushrenada as an analogy to Emperor Showa

returns to questions about not making men like the emperor accountable for their war

responsibility. Specifically it raises questions about the extent to which silencing the emperor

from admitting war guilt was a disservice to the man himself and the people he was taught to

“treasure”. Failing to contend with this legacy publicly may have acted as an impediment to

107

Ep. 22.

108

Emperor, directed by Peter Webber (2012; Lionsgate, 2013), film.

the reasonable and logical self-reflection necessary to Japan acknowledging its perpetrator

role in the Asia-Pacific War, an acknowledgment necessary to moving past this identity,

especially by other Asian nations. As the Tokyo housewife Hakoto Atsuko implied at the

beginning of this chapter, not doing so produced a certain stasis to questions surrounding

Japanese identity.

109

Treize’s own deeply complicated road to recognizing his identity as a

perpetrator strongly suggests that confronting these difficult realities is painful and perhaps

even deadly. It does, at least, help people move forward.

While Treize represents the heroic narrative in many ways, his arc through the story

of Gundam Wing ultimately sees him deviate from it in ways Emperor Showa was unable to

do, taking action to acknowledge his perpetrator identity where Emperor Showa did not.

Through Treize, Wing also explores the gray areas between the heroic and perpetrator

narratives by demonstrating how the values underlying the heroic narrative can lead to

becoming a perpetrator and, moreover, make it extremely difficult to acknowledge or

contend with one’s perpetrator identity.

Becoming a Heroic Perpetrator

Throughout Wing Treize consistently adheres to his heroic values. He accepts war as

a valuable mode of human progress and defines peace as order and control. From Treize’s

109

“There is something that I have doubts about. Each year newspapers and television stations produce special

reports on the War. Although these evoke the tragedy of war for the viewers, they do not often touch upon the

Emperor, who must have been at the root of this War...no matter how many times one reads history books, it is

clear that this War could not have been carried out without the Emperor’s orders. He held supreme command.”

Sensou: The Japanese Remember the Pacific War, 285.

point of view, wars and the soldiers who fight them are glorious.

110

Treize’s admiration for

the Gundam pilots, while significant in his decision to step down from OZ, nevertheless

seems to fit within his value system. His attempts to do this, however, are meant to be

jarring. From Treize’s conversation with Heero Yuy in Episode 34 it is clear the Gundam

pilots do not share Treize’s values.

An early sign that Treize’s values are inherently problematic is the confusion evident

in his subordinates as they try to interpret his wishes. Several times in Wing Zechs Merquise,

Lady Une, and OZ Lieutenant Lucrezia Noin disagree amongst themselves regarding

Treize’s orders. For example, in Ep. 10 Treize authorizes a mission to eliminate the

Gundams, leaving its planning and execution to Lady Une. Ever eager to please him, when

her first plan fails she threatens the Gundams into surrendering by aiming missiles at the

space colonies. Zechs, dueling in his mobile suit with Heero Yuy, tersely comments, “Hell of

a time for tasteless tactics!” before arguing with Une through a communication line, “That

isn’t what His Excellency wants!” When she refuses to listen, he bluntly tells her, “You

clearly don’t understand His Excellency.” She ends their communication. Noin, who is

serving in the command center with Une, starts in where Zechs left off, explaining “His

Excellency doesn’t want battles that involve civilians.” In response, Une slaps her, yelling,

“The colonies can be flattened with the most minute of attacks. They’re insignificant worlds

for the pathetic!” Shortly thereafter Noin receives a call-in from Treize. Refusing to hand

110

Ep. 14.

over the phone, Noin relates to Une, “He says for you to be more graceful. About

everything.”

111

Wing demonstrates that Une, Zechs, and Noin all correctly interpreted Treize’s values

in this scene. In Episode 8 Treize tells Lady Une she needs to “learn more about OZ,”

reinforcing Zechs and Noin’s position that Une has grievously misunderstood Treize’s

wishes. However, Une’s interpretation that large scale violence was a viable option also had

a precedent by this point in Wing, as seen in OZ’s coup d’etat in Episode 7. Moreover, Treize

is clearly willing to accept civilian fatalities in pursuit of a cause--in Episode 5 he explicitly

orders Une to kill Relena after she witnesses her father’s assassination. OZ’s derisive view of

the colonies is reflected in Episode 28 when Treize muses to himself, “The living

environment of the colonies is bogus.” The lack of clarity among his subordinates is all the

more significant as it results in them ordering atrocities. As a leader responsible for the

actions of his soldiers, Treize bears the blame for these acts.

112

Treize’s complicated and impenetrable ideologies and the puzzlement he causes those

around him mirror both what is well-known and what remains mysterious about Emperor

Showa and Japan’s parliamentary wartime leaders. In his surrender speech, the emperor

perceived himself as the fountainhead of Japan’s national identity and ideology. He was, of

course, taught to ascribe to and promote these ideals since childhood, and historians

generally accept that he endeavored to live up to the aspirational legacies of his

111

Ep. 10.

112

There are several examples of Lady Une misunderstanding Treize. Eventually this persists to the point

where she develops a split personality, which itself is likely a manifestation of the dissonance in Treize’s own

thought. Treize himself alludes to this in Episode 22: “[T]here’s one other person who understands me. Her

feelings towards me have given her split personalities.”

predecessors.

113

His fervent commitment could not expunge the moral complications inherent

in his role, however. Since his death, many histories have shed light on the nature of these

complexities, many of which return to the issue of his wartime responsibility. While his death

opened up the examination of these issues, the long-standing gaps about the nature of

Emperor Showa’s involvement continue to cause controversy.

114

Unresolved questions about

the emperor’s war responsibility allow the heroic narrative to persist, a narrative in which

Japan’s responsibility for the war becomes fine print at best.

The Difficulty of Facing One’s Perpetrator Identity

In Wing, Treize experiences a growing awareness of his perpetrator identity. Unlike

the emperor, who was silenced by his own exoneration and the subsequent Occupation

policies based on that exoneration, Treize eventually confronts his guilt. However, Wing

makes it clear that doing so is not easy, simple, or painless. For Treize it proves to be the

opposite--difficult, complicated, and painful.

Wing’s first wishful rewriting of the emperor's life appears in Treize’s difficult and

apparently futile confrontations with Romefeller’s militarists (re: Imperial Japanese Army)

led by Duke Dermail (read Tojo Hideki). Attempting to demonstrate the value of the human

pilot inside mobile suits, Treize interrupts a mobile doll simulation by piloting a mobile suit,

113

Ref. Bix and Dower, who despite being extremely critical of his role in the war nonetheless characterize him

as an intellectually competent and earnest leader.

114

In his review of Bix’s Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan, Ben-Ami Shillony cites several works

written between 1990 and 2000 that also contested the dominant narrative of the emperor being a pawn of

Japan’s military leaders; however, the works clearly lack a consensus on the nature of the emperor’s

responsibility. Bix takes the hardest stance, writing the emperor is not only responsible but more responsible

than his cronies. Despite what historians have said, Japanese society has not broadly dealt with his wartime

responsibility. The issue, however, remains. Shillony, Ben-Ami. "Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan

(Book Review)." Journal of Japanese Studies 28, no. 1 (2002): 141-46.

destroying the mobile doll test suits, then approaching the control room in which Duke

Dermail and the engineer responsible for the dolls’ invention stand. Looming over the

facility, he orders the subordinate soldiers within to target the engineer. Demonstrating the

zealous loyalty Treize inspires in his soldiers, they unhesitatingly turn their guns on men who

are Treize’s equals or possibly even superiors in Romefeller. Treize says, “Wars are about

more than fighting with mobile suits...Mobile dolls and soldiers both take their orders from

humans. I ask that you place more value on humans and learn to love them.” He calls off his

order to kill the engineer.

115

Despite making his point, the mobile dolls prove too attractive to abandon. Not long

after this confrontation, Romefeller moves ahead with the mobile dolls’ mass production.

Unable to accept the new status quo, Treize steps down from leading OZ.

116

This too is a

fanciful insertion, the historical conceit being Treize premeditating a “fortunate fall.” In its

own defeat, Japan did no such thing. Treize’s proactivity contrasts sharply with Emperor

Showa’s known support for the war until the atomic bombs were dropped.

117

Treize’s defection from OZ, however, does not signal his recognition of being a

perpetrator. Treize himself and the psychological process of identifying as a perpetrator are

far more complicated. In his speech in Episode 25, he does not comment on his past actions.

What he is able to articulate at this point is that he “wants to be a loser.” In Episode 28 we

see him brought to a remote castle and placed under house arrest. In an interior monologue

he explicitly defends his past actions, stating “By appearing on the center stage of history we

115

Ep. 18.

116

Ep. 25.

117

Bix, 511.

directed the times in the right direction.” While his defection signifies a major shift in his

ability to influence the future, it becomes clear how little his mindset has changed. “As long

as mankind exists in this world there will always be battles. And denouncing battles will

never lead to peace,” he muses. Still absorbed with the beauty of battle and its central figure--

the soldier--Treize concludes, “It is because one faces an enemy that amid all the sorrow, a

warrior’s soul shines nobly.”

118

Emperor Showa’s surrender speech similarly distanced himself and his forces from

the appearance of failure, and even more so from the appearance of any criminal wartime

activity. He praised the efforts of “the gallant fighting of our military and naval forces” and

called out Japan’s enemies for using “a new and most cruel bomb” that would, if used

continually, “result in an ultimate collapse and obliteration of the Japanese nation.”

119

When Treize finally reappears six episodes later, he remains unable to recognize

himself as a perpetrator. However, it is clear he is increasingly burdened by some

psychological weight. Crushed under a painful sense of purposelessness, he repeatedly asks

Heero Yuy to kill him during their encounter. Heero refuses, which forces Treize to continue

living with his past, his present, and the question of what to do with his future.

120

After Treize assumes leadership of the World Nation in Episode 41, we receive only a

flicker of an indication that Treize has finally internalized his responsibility for some of the

violence swirling around him. Responding to a subordinate’s incomprehension about his

decision to personally lead the World Nation’s forces against Zechs’ White Fang, Treize

118

Ep. 25.

119

“Emperor Hirohito, Accepting the Potsdam Declaration, Radio Broadcast.”

120

Ep. 34. While in Wing Treize lives in this tension for fourteen more episodes, Emperor Showa contended

with a similar reality for over four decades (1945-1989; the end of the war to his death).

says, “A war with no civility only gives rise to massacres. That’s why past wars on Earth

were so tragic.” For a moment after he says this, the scene focuses on his face. His

expression is uncharacteristic--brows together, his gaze falling, he looks almost uncertain,

even repentant. If he is referring to the massacre he himself engineered at the New Edwards

Base, it could be the latter.

121

Treize does not explicitly articulate his war responsibility until moments before his

death. “How many people have died for you?” Wufei screams at him through the

communicator between their cockpits. Treize gives numbers and names. The names include

members of the Alliance who died at the New Edwards Base. While he says this, his head

bows and his fingers cover his face. His eyes close and his eyebrows quiver, clearly meaning

to convey the onset of strong emotion, likely sadness or, again, regret. Finally, his hand drops

from his face, his eyes grow wide, and his voice fills with emotion, the first time Treize’s

mask of calm and poise falls away. He asserts his heroic narrative one last time--“Not one of

those people died in vain!”--and charges towards Wufei in his mobile suit. Treize follows

this admission of war guilt with suicide, a highly significant sequence of events.

122

Wing

shows that Treize’s internalization of being a perpetrator leads to his wishing to die. At the

same time, Wing also shows that Treize believes his death is a contribution to the future, an

ideal that traces directly to his wartime ideologies of valorous sacrifice.

Intriguingly, Wing’s depiction of Treize’s eventual acceptance of his war

responsibility shares resemblances with the posthumous glimpses we now have of Emperor

121

Ep. 46.

122

Ep. 48.

Showa’s own inner struggle. In 2003 a draft of a 1948 speech written in the hand of the

emperor’s Imperial Head of Household, Tajima Michiji, was released for the first time. In it

Emperor Showa said, “When I consider the dead and their families, I cannot repress my

mental agony.” On consideration of the “unprecedented national disaster” of the immediate

postwar period,” which caused “countless [Japanese] people to be in great misery...the flame

of anxiety burns my body. Towards the public, I am deeply ashamed of my lack of

discretion." He went on to admit his “deep shame” due to “my fault,” indicating, according to

commentators who found the document, that he may have been planning to claim

responsibility for the war and apologize to his people. Another 1952 draft speech found in

2019 reflects similar sentiments.

123

The issue of war responsibility, according to Kobayashi Shinobu, Imperial Chamberlain from

1974-2000, haunted Emperor Showa until his death. In 2018, Kobayashi quoted the emperor

saying in his final years “There is no point in living a longer life by reducing my workload. It

would only increase my chances of seeing or hearing things that are agonizing.”

124

In light of such sentiments, Wing’s representation of Treize’s death may not be a

judgment of Emperor Showa; at least, not a judgment only. Wing’s portrayal of Treize is

ultimately a sympathetic, if perpetually complicated, one. Though it is not easy to identify

123

“Apologetic Hirohito prepared for his sorry day but he never kept the date,” Sydney Morning Herald

(Sydney, Australia), June 11, 2003, https://www.smh.com.au/world/apologetic-hirohito-prepared-for-his-sorry-

day-but-he-never-kept-the-date-20030611-gdgwsu.html. It is interesting to note that these documents give no

indication of his wanting to apologize to other Asian peoples. His greatest concern here appears to be for his

nation’s own. Also see “Emperor Showa prevented from expressing remorse over war in '52, newly disclosed

documents reveal” Japan Times, (Tokyo, Japan), August 19, 2019,

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2019/08/19/national/history/emperor-showa-prevented-expressing-remorse-

war-52-newly-disclosed-documents-reveal/#.XrlCJURKjFh.

124

Ibid. Diary entry April 7, 1987. Interestingly, April 7 is the anniversary of the sinking of the battleship

Yamato in 1945, which became a major media referent of postwar memory e.g. Space Battleship Yamato anime

(1974-1975).

with Treize or the emperor as a result of their privilege, ideologies, and extended

unawareness of their perpetrator identities, their deaths did ultimately make space for future

generations to move on from the wars. Treize’s death creates space for the Gundam pilots’

and Relena Peacecraft’s legacies. His diminishment (ideologically) and disappearance

(physically) from the After Colony world does contribute to creating a path towards peace.

The death of Emperor Showa similarly created space to move past the war era.

Yet, as Wataru Kurita said in an editorial following the emperor’s death in 1989, the

emperor’s legacy “exemplifie[d] the unresolved contradictions” of the past, a stillborn

legacy.

125

Even after his death, Emperor Showa’s legacy has contributed to the current

intractability of Japanese war memory.

126

Despite Treize’s deviations from the heroic

narrative--his desiring to be a “loser” and his acceptance of his perpetrator identity--his final

action, honorable suicide, is still rooted in traditional values analogous to Japan’s code of

bushido. Treize chooses to die. The heroes of Gundam Wing, the Gundam pilots, choose to

live.

125

Wataru Kurita, “Making Peace with Hirohito and a Militaristic Past,” Japan Quarterly 36, no. 2 (April-June

1989), 191-192. Cited from Modern Japan: A History in Documents, 2nd ed. by James L. Huffman (New York:

Oxford University Press, 2011), 188-189.

126

Naomi Hirakawa, "Divine Right," Japan Times, Weekly international edition ed., Aug 1995, ProQuest.

CHAPTER TWO: ZECHS MERQUISE and JAPAN

as PREWAR AND POSTWAR VICTIM

A second narrative promotes empathy and identification with the tragic victims of defeat.

Here a vision of “catastrophe” prevails--an unmitigated tragedy of epic proportions--

accentuating the total carnage and destruction wrought by ferocious military

violence

127

...What emerged over time was an antiwar pacifism based on a desire for human

security, regret for a violent past, and a promise to be model global citizens in the future.”

128

- Hashimoto, The Long Defeat

Japan’s postwar victim narrative focuses on Japan’s civilian population who endured

the ravaging demands total war inflicts on a defeated homefront. Its subjects are often

perceived simply as “tragic victims of defeat,” blameless of the shameful acts of soldiers

abroad and the deadly decision-making of leaders in distant halls of power. Especially

compelling is the “catastrophic” nature of the event that traumatized them--the devastating

carpet firebombing and the atomic blasts at the end of the war. Perhaps in part because of the

scale of this destruction, the victim narrative does not linger on identifying victimizers. The

narrative’s imperative of pacifism envisions a demilitarized future that precludes eruptions of

violence.

129

The postwar image of the blameless or ‘pure’ victim

130

emerged later than the heroic,

memorialized soldier, perhaps because soldiers were propagandized during the war. In

127

Hashimoto, 8.

128

Ibid., 129.

129

Hashimoto, 127-129.

130

The term pure victim derives from Hashimoto’s Long Defeat, which references James Joseph Orr’s term

“popular piety” in Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan.

contrast, many victims of the war were initially ignored or discriminated against, as is the

case with the hibakusha or atomic bomb survivors, and with war orphans.

131

By the 1970s

and 80s, however, several famous media had elevated victims’ stories. Significant among

these are Barefoot Gen (1973), the fictionalized autobiographical account of Nakazawa Keiji,

who was a child survivor of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, and Grave of the Fireflies

(1988), whose depiction of firebombing was informed by the childhood experiences of

Studio Ghibli’s co-founder Takahata Isao. Today the victim narrative is ubiquitous in

Japanese media, its protagonists often standing in as plaintive messengers of peace to the

future.

War orphans are a major motif in the Gundam franchise; many characters are war

orphans. In Wing, we see the parents of only two major characters.

132

However, unlike the

orphaned protagonists of films like Grave of the Fireflies and other Japanese postwar media,

the Gundam franchise and Wing in particular offer a critical analysis of the cycle of

victimization that often follows conflict. In the franchise’s many series, including Wing, there

are no pure victims.

More often than not there are victim perpetrators. In Wing the most prominent of

these is Zechs Merquise. Born Milliardo Peacecraft, a prince and heir to a pacifist legacy, his

life is torn apart when the Sanq Kingdom, ruled by his pacifist father, is attacked by the

Alliance military when he is six years old. Milliardo’s story, however, does not end in his

131

Caren Stelson, Sachiko: A Nagasaki Bomb Survivor’s Story, (Minneapolis: CarolrhodaBooks, 2016); Mariko

Asano Tamanoi “The Origins and Plight of Sensō Koji (War Orphans) in Postwar Japan,” The Asia-Pacific

Journal: Japan Focus, 18, no. 13 (June 25, 2020), https://apjjf.org/2020/13/Tamanoi.html.

132

Incidentally, both those parents--the fathers of Relena Darlian and Quatre Raberba Winner--are killed during

the series.

childhood. We are first introduced to him thirteen years later as Zechs Merquise, elite soldier

of the OZ organization and thus, by extension, one of the series's main antagonists. Zechs’

attempts to envision peace propel him further into acts of perpetration, eventually

engineering an “unmitigated tragedy of epic proportions.” By depicting Zechs’ early adult

years following his victimization as a child, Gundam Wing illustrates how an otherwise pure

victim can become a heinous, embittered perpetrator offering a twisted victim’s vision of

peace.

Zechs Merquise: The Making of a Victim Perpetrator

Thousands of families were broken up by the War and its aftermath. Their anguish

remains.

133

-- From the introduction to the chapter “The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity

Sphere”in Sensou: The Japanese Remember the Pacific War.

Zechs Merquise: May you rest in peace, the betrayed and outraged Milliardo Peacecraft. --

Episode 8

The creators of Gundam Wing complicate the typical narrative of victimhood in Japan

by portraying a character, Zechs Merquise, whose story is rooted in a victimizing event but

whose story arc explores his choices as a young adult. As such, Wing represents Zechs as

both a victim and perpetrator of wartime violence. Unable to heal, he deals with his

unresolved trauma by lashing out through corporate violence, perpetuating a cycle of

victimization and sabotaging his own pursuit of authentic purpose and identity. As Cathy

Caruth states in Unclaimed Experienced: Trauma, Narrative, and History, “the story of

trauma...far from telling of an escape from reality--the escape from a death, or from its

133

Frank Gibney, editor, Sensou: The Japanese Remember the Pacific War: Letters to the Editor of

Asahi Shimbun, translated by Beth Cary (Armonk, NY: Sharpe, 2007), 100.

referential force--rather attests to its endless impact on a life.”

134

Zechs, easily the most

complicated and internally tortured character in Gundam Wing, manifests these realities to

painfully unresolved conclusions.

Zechs Merquise is born into the After Colony universe of Gundam Wing as Milliardo

Peacecraft of the Sanq Kingdom, a pacifist nation of whose royal family he is the eldest son

and heir. Unfortunately, the ideals of Zechs’ father attract the ire of the Alliance. In one of

the few flashbacks in Wing, we see images of fire consuming a portrait of the royal court and

the palace. This occurs when Zechs is six years old.

135

As such, we can assume he is old

enough to know he was the heir to his family’s pacifist legacy and remember the attack itself.

Moreover, he is old enough to comprehend the basic consequences of the kingdom’s ruin--

the loss of his family and his inheritance.

Gundam Wing insinuates that both Zechs and his then-two year-old sister Relena

were secretly saved; neither grows up as Peacecraft. Too young to remember the event at the

time, Relena is not even told about her true identity until she is fifteen.

136

Although it is

unconfirmed where and how Zechs grew up, Wing implies he was taken in by a member of

134

Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History, 20th anniversary

ed. (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016), 7.

135

Ep. 9.

136

Ep. 5.

the Romefeller family.

137

This would explain why he takes on a new name and why he is

deeply immersed in military life by the age of nineteen.

138

Wing’s audience is first introduced to him by his assumed name and persona, Zechs

Merquise, a high-ranking officer within OZ. Wing immediately hints that he has something to

hide by depicting him wearing a mask; however, his birth identity is not fully revealed until

Episode 9. In Episode 1 Zechs calls himself “a true soldier.” In the following episodes, it

becomes clear he genuinely feels most alive, excited, and purposeful in the cockpit of a

mobile suit, underlined by his striving and succeeding to master the most advanced mobile

suit technology.

139

With his adeptness at fighting and personal resonance with what he calls an “aesthetic

sense [of] war,”

140

Zechs is set up in the first several episodes as a war-mongering antagonist,

akin to Treize, making it easy to vilify him. However, Wing quickly erodes this perception by

dropping information about him that leads to the revelation of his birth identity. Wing further

elicits sympathy for Zechs by revealing this information through Lucrezia Noin, a young

woman who trained with him in military academy and eventually confesses to being in love

with him.

141

Noin consistently serves to humanize Zechs’ actions, reminding the audience

137

Ep. 22. Meeting “Ambassador Milliardo Peacecraft,” Lady Une says “His Excellency has had ties with the

Sanq Kingdom since his youth.” See also Ep. 42. Dorothy Catalonia, requesting to board Libra, asks Zechs,

“Remember playing with Treize when we were kids?”

138

In Episode 16 Zechs says he has been with OZ for “many years.” In the manga Episode Zero, Zechs appears

as a sixteen year-old soldier in OZ. His mobile suit combat abilities have already earned him the moniker

“Lightning.”

139

Eps. 1-9.

140

Ep. 16.

141

Ibid.

what his goals are: to protect Relena, his blood sister; to protect the Sanq Kingdom, his

homeland; and to fight for peace.

Zechs’ true motivations for allying himself with OZ are fully revealed in Episode 8 in

which he is able to exact revenge against the man responsible for the Sanq Kingdom’s ruin.

After attacking a base in Nairobi as part of OZ’s coup d’etat against the Alliance,

142

Zechs

finds the Alliance general responsible for the attack on the Sanq Kingdom thirteen years

prior. After identifying himself as Milliardo Peacecraft, Zechs shoots the man with an ornate

pistol at point-blank range.

143

In the following episode, he frees his homeland from Alliance

control. However, despite meting out his long-held revenge and liberating the Sanq

Kingdom, Zechs believes he cannot dismantle his current identity and resume leadership of

the kingdom as Milliardo Peacecraft. In a poignant scene in which he removes his mask for

the first time, Zechs walks into the still-ruined halls of the old palace. Standing before a

portrait of his father, he says,

Please forgive me, Father. There’s been much bloodshed along the way and I’ve only

been able to live a lifestyle that counters your pacifist teachings. My hands are too

stained with blood. I’m completely unfit to head the Peacecraft monarchy...I’ve failed

you. Please forgive me.

144

While Zechs remains in OZ for several episodes thereafter, his loyalty begins to

dissolve as his conscience leads him away from Treize, Une, and Romefeller’s attempts to

subjugate the colonies. Zechs’ soul-searching pushes him towards better understanding his

identity as a soldier, which feels most authentic to him. In a bizarre turn of events, he

142

Ep. 7.

143

Ep. 8.

144

Ep. 9.

rebuilds a Gundam pilot’s mobile suit, which had been exploded by self-detonation in Siberia

after Lady Une secretly threatened to fire missiles at the colonies.

145

Convinced the pilot

Heero Yuy is still alive and obsessed with the experience of fighting him again, Zechs

rebuilds the suit, despite being ordered to destroy it, brings it to Antarctica where a battle can

go unnoticed, and finds the pilot, who agrees to resuming their duel.

146

The peculiarity of Zechs’ action is highlighted by the way Heero responds to it. Zechs

and Noin may perceive the rebuilding of the Gundam as an act of generosity within their

aesthetic of war,

147

but Heero cuts through the philosophizing by bluntly telling them both

“I’ll thank him, but in my own way. I’ll kill Zechs.”

148

Fortunately, the duel is interrupted by a Romefeller search party looking for Zechs.

His suspected treason is confirmed when he breaks away from the fight and begins attacking

the search party yelling “Glory to the colonies!”

149

After he surrenders and is taken into

custody, he tells Treize he is prepared to face a court martial; however, Treize has plans.

Zechs is told he will be pitted against 70 mobile suits piloted by former Alliance members

seeking to ingratiate themselves with Romefeller. If he can survive the battle, he will be free.

Zechs destroys all the suits and their pilots, but, as per Treize’s plan, is reported dead.

145

Ep. 10.

146

Eps. 11-16.

147

Given Heero’s attitude toward the Gundam, it seems altogether likely he is not pleased to have the Gundam

returned. After being shot down in Episode 1 and separated from it, Heero attempts to destroy rather than

retrieve it in Episode 2. Given that another Gundam pilot is able to successfully bring it to the surface of the bay

it sank in, it seems clear Heero was not incapable of retrieving it but that he did not want to continue piloting it.

148

Ep. 16.

149

Ibid.

However, he survives, and is symbolically freed from his past when his mask shatters and

drops from his face in the course of the battle.

150

Zechs embraces his new independence by traveling to space and appearing in public

as Ambassador Milliardo Peacecraft. Despite this, Zechs dons his mask, apparently re-

formed, and jumps back into his mobile suit as frequently as he meets with colony leaders to

discuss peace and self-sovereignty. Although it may be apparent to the audience that this

exhibits a continued crisis of identity, Zechs exhibits no cognitive dissonance, likely because

it is the first time in the series he is able to act of his own free will. He experiments with

merging his identities--Peacecraft and Merquise, pacifist and soldier--while attempting to

influence events in a more peaceful direction. “I think I understand the implications of war,”

he says to Lady Une in his first appearance as Ambassador Peacecraft, “So I thought I could

give advice to the colonies desiring military power.”

151

While Zechs appears in space as Ambassador Peacecraft, the audience knows he is

not actually representing the Sanq Kingdom, though he refers to it explicitly.

152

However, his

sister Relena’s appearance in Sanq and her resumption of royal duties clearly traces back to

him through Noin, who initially brings Relena to the kingdom after Relena learns of her birth

identity. Noin thereafter acts as her imperial guard.

153

With Noin as proxy, Zechs keeps an

eye on the Sanq Kingdom from afar, still distancing his blood-stained hands from its rule.

Ironically, the nation’s burgeoning influence under Relena’s leadership again makes it a

150

Ep. 18.

151

Eps. 22-37. Quote from Ep. 22.

152

Ibid.

153

Eps. 11, 14.

target, this time to Romefeller. When Zechs learns of the all-out assault on the Sanq

Kingdom, he immediately leaves space for Earth;

154

however, he arrives well after Relena

surrenders the kingdom in order to avoid the conflict her pacifistic philosophy eschews.

155

chance, Zechs encounters Heero, who by chance had ended up in the Sanq Kingdom.

Coming upon each other in mobile suits newly enhanced with mind-warping capabilities,

Zechs and Heero engage in a futile battle, externalizing their despair at failing to protect the

Sanq Kingdom by fighting until their bodies and mobile suits reach a point of exhaustion.

The fight--ending in a draw--underlines Zechs’ search for meaning and the persistent futility

of his efforts.

156

When Zechs next appears, his dejection is evident. Up to this point he was motivated

by the search for his purpose and identity. Sitting at a bar somewhere on Earth, however,

Zechs tells the barkeeper, “For me, the war is over. My own country’s destroyed, so I have

nothing to protect. Once again I’ve lost any reason to fight.” Although the scene is brief, the

fact that Zechs has failed at precisely what was most important to him is extremely

significant. As a traumatized victim, Zechs, like many victims of trauma, essentially swore

never to allow his trauma to repeat.

157

Yet he failed at exactly that--failed to protect Relena

154

Ep. 37.

155

Eps. 31-36.

156

Ep. 37.

157

Revictimization is frequently discussed in academic literature in the context of sexual abuse; nevertheless,

statements like the following are applicable to Zechs: “The first time an individual is victimized, they often take

on the responsibility for the abuse. This can be a way for a victim to reclaim control. It is reassuring to believe

that changing habits, behaviors, or interactions will ensure that the abuse will not reoccur. When someone is

victimized a second or third time (or more), research shows they are even more likely to feel guilt and shame

and to judge themselves harshly.” Keith Fadelici, “Revictimization: How Can This Keep Happening?”

Psychology Today online, (Posted May 4, 2020), https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/fostering-

freedom/202005/revictimization-how-can-keep-happening.

and the Sanq Kingdom, and failed to establish the peace he believed his legacy demanded. At

this vulnerable moment Zechs is approached by a man named Quinze and invited to lead the

White Fang rebel group in space, not as Zechs Merquise, but as Milliardo Peacecraft, with

mobile suit in tow. Eager to merge his identities once again, Zechs agrees.

158

Zechs’ response to the trauma of the Sanq Kingdom’s first fall was to take revenge on

the Alliance. His response the second time runs along the same lines, but on a larger scale--

he attempts to destroy the Earth itself.

159

In Episode 40, Zechs announces his leadership of

White Fang to the Earth Sphere. He identifies himself as Milliardo Peacecraft, appears

unmasked, and states, “We will eliminate Earth.”

160

Thus begins Zechs’ catastrophic

downward spiral towards genocidal perpetration against the very Earth where his ruined

nation remains. The shock of his assumption of this patently incompatible role is expressed

by Relena and Noin. Listening to his announcement, their eyes widen, confusion evident in

their voices. In the following episodes both characters--who care deeply about Zechs--have

to contend with the dissonance of this final choice. Meeting him for the first time in Episode

44, Relena confronts him directly, saying, “I don’t know if I’m in the arms of my beloved

brother or the bloodstained hands of Zechs Merquise.”

161

Zechs responds to his re-traumatization by exploding it a thousand-fold, entrenching

himself as a perpetrator while desperately attempting to bring about some greater good. This

is manifested in Wing’s final episodes. In a longer speech conveyed once again to the whole

158

Ep. 39.

159

Ibid.

160

Ep. 40.

161

Ep. 44.

Earth Sphere, Zechs lays out his understanding of history, his ideologies on war and human

nature, and his objectives as leader of the White Fang. Reflecting the power shifts of the last

year and identifying his own initial victimizer, Zechs begins his speech railing against the

Alliance: “Did that ridiculous organization eliminate wars and make world peace a reality?

Of course it didn’t! Under the guise of “Peace and Justice” the Alliance came to the colonies

with its overwhelming military force.” His second indictment, however, appears to include

Relena’s actions. After her surrender of the Sanq Kingdom and ascendance to chief

representative of Romefeller, Relena sought to end conflict by uniting the world’s nations

into one single entity, the World Nation. In response to this Zechs states, “The eradication of

wars cannot be achieved simply by uniting nations.” Betraying his soldiers’ sensibilities,

Zechs declares, “fighting is human nature!” Revealing his dissonant internal reality, he goes

on to say that people on Earth have proved violent, whereas colonists have not because they

are “a new breed of humans with the ability to gain true peace by controlling their instincts to

battle.” He concludes the speech with the radical demand “that the Earth be eliminated from

the universe. If you [meaning Treize Khushrenada, now leading the World Nation] cannot

abide by this demand then we’ll have no choice but to start a war to end all wars!”

162

Before giving this speech Zechs puts words to his ongoing internal dissonance, saying

to himself, “Our actions don’t reflect our personalities, do they Treize?” In a later

conversation with Noin, Zechs describes himself as a professional in combat, just like the

Gundam pilots, and self-identifies as Zechs Merquise.

163

This suggests that while he has

162

Ep. 42.

163

Ep. 48.

chosen to lead White Fang as Milliardo Peacecraft, he still does not truly identify with either

that name or what it represents to him or to the Earth Sphere.

In Episode 49, it finally becomes extremely clear Zechs has not been able to resolve

his competing identities; as a result, he wants to die. Fighting Heero in their final mobile suit

battle, Zechs, like Treize in his duel with Wufei, makes a final charge. When Heero only

slices off the left arm of Zechs’ mobile suit he angrily asks him, “Why don’t you kill me?”

clarifying that Zechs’ charge, like Treize’s, was suicidal. Heero, set up in Wing as a foil to

Zechs’ character, anticipates Zech’s suicidality and chooses to extend mercy to him. Unable

to follow through with any of his plans, including killing himself, Zechs finally accepts he is

fated to live. This realization does not bring him joy. Fully aware of his perpetrator identity,

Zechs is convinced his destiny is “smeared with blood” and that if he must live it will be

“right to the bitter end!”

164

Thus Zechs exits Wing’s final episode as a devastatingly tragic

character, a failed victim visionary become horrifying perpetrator in response to his own

trauma and irreconcilable identities.

Victims of Circumstances, Perpetrators of Choices: Zechs and Modern Japan’s Spiral

from Tragic Victims to Perpetrators of Military Violence

The United States of America and the British Empire have in seeking their own prosperity

oppressed other nations and peoples. Especially in East Asia, they indulged in insatiable

aggression and exploitation, and sought to satisfy their inordinate ambition of enslaving the

entire region, and finally they came to menace seriously the stability of East Asia. Herein lies

164

Ep. 49.

the cause of the recent war.

165

-- Joint Declaration of the Greater East Asia Conference,

November 5, 1943

Then why did we stand up on [the space colonies’] behalf? Because the old breed of mankind

that loves to battle remains on their comfortable Earth and tries to conquer those of us who

are defenseless. It has been 200 years since our people began living in space. Isn’t it time that

we end this history filled with disputes?..We demand that the Earth be eliminated from the

universe. If you cannot abide by this demand then we’ll have no choice but to start a war to

end all wars!

166

-- Zechs Merquise, Final Announcement to Earth

The character of Zechs Merquise personifies two moments in modern history when

the Japanese collectively internalized a victim consciousness. As a child Zechs assumes the

image of one of Japan’s most recognizable and potent depictions of Japanese victim

consciousness produced and reproduced in the postwar period--the war orphan. Zechs’

experiences throughout the series as an adult character struggling with his identity and

purpose in response to repeated victimization is analogous to Japan’s collective perception of

being forced to join a globalizing world already shaped by western nations’ conquering,

colonizing, and imperialistic efforts. Eventually, Japan’s responses to these pressures

culminated in its embrace of total empire and total war in the 1930s and 1940s, efforts

alternately marked by power and desperation similar to Zechs in the final episodes of Wing.

Six Year-old Zechs as Analog to Japanese War Orphan

Japan’s postwar victim consciousness derives primarily from the experiences of

nameless civilians. Among these were war orphans. According to its Ministry of Health and

Welfare in 1948 the number of orphaned and homeless children in Japan was around

123,000, a very conservative number when accounting for the chaos of the era. The report

165

“Greater East Asia Conference,” World Heritage Encyclopedia, accessed July 2020,

http://worldheritage.org/article/WHEBN0016881276/Greater%20East%20Asia%20Conference.

166

Ep. 42.

stated that the number who had lost their parents through air raids was 28,248; the number of

those who lost a parent in the chaos that followed the war’s end was 81,266.

167

Zechs and

Relena’s experience of the first fall of the Sanq Kingdom evokes this image of the helpless

war orphan subjected to circumstance and fate.

Modern Japan’s Spiral towards War

Japan’s first experience of collective victim consciousness in the modern period

emerged when after over 200 years of sakoku or isolation Japan was forced to trade with

western powers by the United States in 1854. By all accounts the 1850s and 1860s were a

traumatizing period for Japan as it wrestled internally with the need to respond to the external

pressure from the United States, Britain, and other western imperial powers. Japan’s long-

internalized identity, founded in national myths about its elevated place in the world, was

challenged by this new exposure. The power western nations wielded, manifested in the

unequal treaties brokered with Japan in the 1850s,

168

brought all that glory and splendor into

question. Propelled by a fear of losing its sovereignty and dignity, which it saw playing out

elsewhere in Asia, Japan committed to assimilating western influences.

169

Japan exceeded expectations. By 1910 Hokkaido, Taiwan, Okinawa, and Korea were

Japanese colonies and wars had been won against China (1894-1895) and Russia (1904-

1905). In observance of these attainments, by 1911 all western nations conceded to end their

167

Dower, Embracing Defeat, 63.

168

Convention of Kanagawa (1854); Harris Treaty (1858).

169

See Japanese intellectual Fukuzawa Yukichi’s 1885 essay “Datsua ron” or “Cast-Off Asia.” Ironically,

Fukuzawa’s argument at this time was to “simply erase from our minds our bad friends in Asia,” a perspective

quite opposite the Pan-Asianism promoted by the GEA. Cited from Modern Japan: A History in Documents, by

Huffman, 76-77.

unequal treaties with Japan by recognizing Japan’s tariff autonomy and equalizing relations.

For a time, Japan appeared to have achieved equality with the west. Thereafter it pursued

opportunities to act as a major player on the world stage. In 1914 Japan declared war on

Germany, honoring an Alliance made in 1902 with Great Britain. After the Entente Powers

won the war, Japan became a charter member of the League of Nations in 1920 and served as

one of four permanent members of the League Council.

170

However, any sense of progress diminished, then died altogether as discrimination

and exclusion by western powers persisted, albeit in different forms. In 1919 the League of

Nations rejected Japan’s request for a racial equality clause in the Treaty of Versailles. In

1924 the US passed the Asian Exclusion Act of the US’s Immigration Act.

171

These bitter

reminders of Japan’s perceived inferiority by the west, in combination with the global

recession of the 1930s, reinforced Japan’s feelings of alienation and oppression. Eventually

Japan began breaking ties with western powers. In 1933 it left the League of Nations in

dramatic fashion.

172

With the outbreak of war against China in 1937, Japan broke decisively

from the post-WWI vision of liberal internationalism that the west, led by American

170

See Jeremy A. Yellen, The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War,

(Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2019), 1-22.

171

Browne, 31-34. Tojo Hideki, who had traveled in the US in 1922, was struck by the movements by

American politicians to include the Japanese in new immigration laws that would exclude Asians generally

from immigrating to the US. These plans were solidified in 1924, leading to indignation on the part of many

Japanese. It is important to note that part of this indignation was the result of being put in the same category as

other Asians, such as Chinese workers, who the Japanese saw as inferior to themselves

172

British Movietone, “Japan Walks Out of Geneva Assembly,” YouTube video, 2:28, July 21, 2015,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hStmrz3N46U.

President Woodrow Wilson, had laid out. Instead Japan committed to a vision for a

shinchitsujo or “new order” that would eventually lead Japan to total war.

173

The name this new order would eventually take was the Greater East Asia Co-

Prosperity Sphere (GEA). In the 1930s, Japanese intellectuals and politicians began racking

their brains to generate a vision significant enough, palpable enough, and big enough to

contain everything Japan hoped for and desired. Following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident

of 1937, public intellectuals like Kiyoshi Miki began advocating for Toua Kyoudoutai or

“East Asian Cooperative Community”.

174

The concept was taken up by Foreign Minister

Arita Hachirou and later his successor Matsuoka Yousuke, who would formally declare the

Sphere’s existence in an August 1940 radio address.

The GEA concept emerged as a belief in the power of Asian cultural and economic

unity. It was formed in opposition to Asia’s dominance by western powers in the preceding

century. The language of the GEA declared it brought member nations together for the

benefit of all, with one major caveat--that Japan would be its de facto leader. However, when

the GEA was announced in 1940 it was still a very abstract concept. When Japan gave the

name Greater East Asia War to its newly-defined conflict against not only China but the US,

the UK, and their allies on December 10, 1941, the GEA became Japan’s national policy and

central war aim.

175

In 1943 Japan held the first Greater East Asia Conference in Tokyo,

bringing together the heads of its six member nations to reaffirm their commitment to

“liberating their region from the yoke of British-American domination, and ensuring their

173

Yellen, 4.

174

Ibid., 17.

175

Yellen, 4.

self-existence and self-defense, and in constructing a Greater East Asia...” By 1945 the

Sphere comprised ten nations being Japan, China, Manchuria, Vietnam, Thailand, the

Philippines, India, Burma, Kampuchea, and Luang Phrabang.

176

The GEA was Japan’s victim vision of a pro-Asian future, but it was rife with flaws.

Perhaps fortunate among them was its persistent lack of definition; what the GEA was and

what it meant was never fully fleshed out. By the time the 1943 conference formalized the

GEA’s goals, the war had already turned against Japan. The GEA’s far more notorious flaw

was the stark contrast between its high-flown language of “world peace...prosperity...and

mutual aid and assistance...” and its brutal implementation.

177

The “grotesque realities of

pan-Asian brotherhood,” as historian James McClain writes, included laser-focused

economic exploitation, systemic acts of physical brutality perceived as necessary to control

native populations, and death on a massive scale.

178

When Japan lost the war, its dream of the

GEA evaporated. The bitter memory of it, however, was not quickly forgotten in Asia.

Zechs as Analog to Modern Japan’s Spiral towards War

Japan’s struggle to define its identity in response to its perceived victimization by the

west by ultimately fighting a total war is represented in the story of Zechs Merquise. Japan’s

struggle between a modern, western-influenced identity and an ancient Asian one is reflected

176

“Greater East Asia Conference,” World Heritage Encyclopedia.

177

Ibid.

178

In Vietnam, the confiscation of the 1944 rice harvest for Japanese soldiers in the Philippines led directly to

famine and nearly 1 million deaths by 1945; on Java and its neighboring offshore islands, 4 million natives were

killed by the Japanese or died from starvation, disease, and lack of basic medical care; like many estimates of

this kind, it is difficult to know how many Korean, Chinese, Filipina, Indonesian, and other women died

servicing Japanese soldiers as sex slaves. James L. McClain, Japan: A Modern History, (New York: W.W.

Norton & Company, 2002), 494-498. Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to

the Present, 3rd ed. (New York, Oxford University Press, 2014), 209.

in Zechs’ constant pursuit of purpose, vacillating between his inherited pacifist identity and

his assumed soldierly one. Japan’s attempts to assimilate to the west in the late 19th and early

20th centuries are mirrored in Zechs’ acculturation to the world he was raised in after he was

spirited away from the Sanq Kingdom, culminating in his military service with OZ. Japan’s

successful participation in WWI reflects Zechs’ participation in Treize’s coup d’etat--through

its participation, Japan was seemingly able to achieve its own personal goal of establishing

equal standing with the west, thereby anchoring its popular sovereignty in the face of

continued western imperialism throughout the rest of Asia. Similarly, Zechs’s role in OZ

would seemingly bring about his own personal goals--revenge for and liberation of the Sanq

Kingdom. For Japan, participation in the war seemed to open the door to even greater power

and freedom to do as it pleased, signified by its role in the League of Nations. For Zechs, the

coup eventually led him to defect from OZ altogether, enabling him to appear in space as

Ambassador Peacecraft.

Zechs’ eventual failure to transcend his victim consciousness reflects Japan’s own

prewar and postwar experience. The incredible vulnerability of Japan’s national identity in

the 1920s and 30s was revealed when Japan faced blunt reminders from the west that Japan--

and Asia--remained in a category other than the powerfully superior one the US and UK

maintained when they denied Japan’s proposal for a racial equality clause in the Versailles

Treaty and enacted anti-Asian immigration policies at home. After pushing against this

categorization for nearly 100 years, Japan resolved to find a wholly different path from the

assimilation it had pursued up to that point. This path seemed portentous, a dai tenkanki or

“great turning point.”

179

It would lead to the Greater East Asia War, with the establishment of

the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere as its objective.

Japan’s renewed sense of victimization followed by its resolve to pursue the GEA is

mirrored in Zechs’ response to the second fall of the Sanq Kingdom and his leadership of

White Fang. At first he is miserably disappointed. Later, he resolves to fully commit to a

wholly new plan of action. Japan’s efforts would devolve into the subjugation, suffering, and

deaths of innumerable Asian people. Zechs’ leadership of White Fang would put him at the

helm of an apocalypse.

It is worth repeating that Wing portrays Zechs’ final genocidal actions as rooted in

victimization and his sincere desire--however misguided--for peace. This portrayal draws out

similar complicated realities and desires for prewar and wartime Japan; apparent in the

disparate origins of the GEA itself. Kiyoshi was the concept’s philosophical originator, Arita

and Matsuoka were its foreign policy advocates, and Prime Minister Tojo was its political

champion. Kiyoshi was a nationalist but abhorred Japan’s 1940s militarism (he died as a

Japanese political prisoner in 1945); Arita advocated for improved relations with the US;

Matsuoka and Tojo arguably co-opted the idea of the GEA for the purpose of war, which led

to incredible suffering, but nevertheless did so, as Jeremy Yellen argues in his recent research

on the GEA, as “a sincere attempt to envision a new type of political and economic order for

the region during a time of global crisis.”

180

Zechs represents aspects of all of these

individuals--from philosophizing soldier to pragmatic diplomat to catastrophically

179

Yellen, 4.

180

Yellen, 5.

destructive captain at the helm of a war juggernaut. In other words, Zechs’ trajectory through

Wing represents the devolution of the GEA into an ultimately brutal form. However, it also

represents the GEA’s idealism and tragedy.

The extent to which Zechs’ experiences and vision are reflective of the GEA is

apparent in the similarities between the Joint Declaration of the Greater East Asia

Conference and Zechs’ final announcement to Earth as White Fang’s leader. In 1943 the

Joint Declaration accused the US and UK of “seeking their own prosperity [by] oppress[ing]

other nations and peoples.” Reinforcing the perception of the region’s victimization, the

declaration highlighted how Anglo-Americans had “indulged in insatiable aggression…”

which eventually led to their “menac[ing] seriously the stability of East Asia.” These

aggressions were “the cause of the recent war.” Similarly, in Episode 42 Zechs accuses the

Earth--identifying both the deposed Alliance and the current World Nation--of “conquering

those of us who are defenseless,” meaning the colonies (re: Greater East Asia). He derides

earthlings as an “old breed of mankind that loves to battle” and who are, moreover,

“comfortable” with the status quo (re: US and UK). “Isn’t it time that we end this history

filled with disputes?” he asks. Having already taken this task into his own hands, he

challenges anyone who opposes him: “If you cannot abide by this demand [to eliminate the

Earth] then we’ll have no choice but to start a war to end all wars!”

181

The phrase “war to end

all wars” is an allusion to the phrase popularized during WWI that, as a result of proving

untrue, took on a deeply cynical meaning through the rest of the twentieth century.

182

181

Ep. 42.

182

William Safire, Safire's Political Dictionary, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 792–793.

In the end, Japan’s and Zechs’ visions were not realized. While Wing’s portrayal of

Zechs’ failed attempt to drop a spaceship on Earth illustrates how fortunate the failure of

victims’ visions is, it serves to powerfully underline three interrelated realities of the GEA.

First, that the emergence of the GEA was rooted in Japan’s internalization of a victim

identity from the 1850s to the 1930s. Second, that the duality of its high-minded idealism and

cruel implementation in the 1940s reflects Japan’s crisis of identity and purpose that

culminated at that time. Third, that the Japanese undeniably descended down a road of

perpetration that would sear the minds of its victims for generations to come. All of these

realities currently remain absent from Japan’s postwar victim narrative.

Failed Victims’ Visions: A Bitter Japanese Identity

The work of diplomats is to avoid conflict as much as possible. War represents bankruptcy to

diplomats. However, if you carry on, thinking only, “We must prevent war,” you may end up

inviting war.” Kase Toshikazu, Chief Secretary to Japan’s foreign ministers from 1940-

1945.

183

Zechs: I’m going to live right to the bitter end!

184

-- Episode 49.

Gundam Wing subverts a major aspect of the victim narrative--its current absorption

with only Japanese victims. Wing does this by portraying its analogous Japanese victim--

Zechs--as a profoundly heinous perpetrator who creates victims. This highlights the

sometimes problematic nature of the visions victims have. When such visions emerge from

inflicted hurt, the result can be a high-flown and self-serving vision, similar to the GEA. This

183

Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore F. Cook, Japan at War: An Oral History, (New York: The New Press,

1992), 90.

184

Ep. 49.

misplaced vision, based in distrust, produces a cycle of victimization that hinders the healing

and reintegration of defeated societies, both within themselves and in relation to their wider

communities.

A Cycle of Victimization: The Victim Perpetrator’s Bloodstained Vision for Peace

While Wing’s portrayal of Zechs is sympathetic, the focus on his identity as a

perpetrator clarifies Zechs’ role in perpetuating a cycle of victimization. Zechs’ portrayal

represents and engages war memory issues between Japan and its Asian neighbors. On one

hand, it recalls how Japan’s attempts to cast a vision for Greater Asia descended into acts of

perpetration unprecedented in the history of the modern world. At the same time, Zechs’

humane characterization acknowledges Japan’s recognition of Asian interdependence.

Recently, a growing number of historians have explored the formation and influence

of the GEA, and highlighted some of its positive results.

185

The infrastructure built so

frenetically and often injuriously during the war laid the groundwork for economic

development from which GEA member countries benefited in the postwar period.

186

Additionally, various independence movements were able to manifest despite resistance by

former western occupiers. These gains, specifically in non-Communist Asian countries,

185

Yellen’s The Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere: When Total Empire Met Total War; ALSO Jessamyn

Abel, The International Minimum: Creativity and Contradiction in Japan’s Global Engagement, 1933-1964.

Honolulu, HA: University of Hawai'i Press, 2015; ALSO Aaron Stephen Moore’s Constructing East Asia,

reference in Footnote 167.

186

Gordon, 222. See also Aaron Stephen Moore, Constructing East Asia: Technology, Ideology, and Empire in

Japan's Wartime Era, 1931-1945, (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013)-- “We should not therefore

simply dismiss the technological imaginary’s transformative, participatory messages that appealed to people’s

hopes and desires for a better life as empty ideology, as it also created powerful modernist development

initiatives and an array of institutions that called for innumerable sacrifices to be made in its name while

entrenching the interests of the elites who articulated that ideology. It is this new mode of power and

mobilization that survived relatively intact after the war, pushed by many of the same bureaucrats, engineers,

and intellectuals as the recipe for postwar prosperity and development throughout Asia.” 20.

continued for decades into the postwar period. Ironically, they were often supported or even

enabled by Japan, which benefited massively from its Cold War era alliance with the US. In

1989 Japan was buying 21 percent of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation’s (ASEAN)

exports, provided 64 percent of nonmilitary aid, and owned between one fifth and one half of

foreign investment in every ASEAN country at the time,

187

excepting oil-rich Brunei and the

US-supported Philippines.

188

Despite these demonstrations of economic benefit between Japan and the former

GEA members, the postwar years leading up to Wing’s release continued to see the residual

distrust Japan’s unresolved wartime victimization caused. For Japan’s neighbors, these

benefits could not cover over the memory of grinding labor, cultural discrimination, and

death the GEA era inflicted. “Even though there is a new generation,” Rafael Ileto, national

security advisor to the Filipino president, said in 1989, “the fathers know the Japanese and

remember the brutalities, and they worry it could happen again.” Moreover, the evident

hegemony of Japanese economic soft power felt too familiar, fueling fears of the renewal of

Japanese militarism in spite of its pacifist constitution. In a 1988 poll conducted by Japan’s

own government, 37 percent of respondents from ASEAN countries viewed Japan as a

military threat. In a poll conducted of Thai people in 1987, 46 percent said Japan was “not a

true friend;” and 70 percent felt Japan’s economic relationship with Thailand was “of an

imperialistic nature.”

189

187

Indonesia, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei. As of 2020 ASEAN has 10 member

countries.

188

Steven Erlanger, "The World: In Southeast Asia, Japan Dominates in Aid, Trade and Old Resentments,"

New York Times archive, July 2 1989, ProQuest.

189

Ibid.

For Japan, the ability to face its victim perpetrator identity remained difficult if not

impossible in public discourse. In the early 1990s Takashima Nobuyoshi, a teacher and

textbook writer in Tokyo, attempted to record in a Japanese high school history textbook that

the GEA victimized other Asians during the Asia-Pacific War. However, he also described

how these “atrocities” and other forms of victimization were the result of Japan’s

modernization efforts, which were themselves a response to the pressures of the west during

the Meiji Restoration. Despite the implied contextualization of Japan’s prewar victimization,

the statement was deleted in a screening by Japan’s Education Ministry in 1993.

190

That Japan and its Asian neighbors remain at an impasse of war memory that deeply

affects every aspect of their interdependence is as evident in 2020 as it was in 1995, if not

more so. It is an extended failure, an unresolved issue harkening back to the GEA. As Yellen

remarks about Japan’s attempts at pan-Asian unity in the 1930s and 1940s, “Ultimately, it is

a history of failure. The [Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity] Sphere, after all, was the stillborn

intellectual child of Japan's revolt against the old order.”

191

Still unable and unwilling to deal

with that failure, Japan’s relationship with its neighbors remains static as it resists

acknowledging and facing its victim perpetrator identity.

A Failure to Face Trauma

Through its fictional format, Gundam Wing explores these extremely complicated

issues that currently exist in a state of gridlocked tension between Japan and its Asian

190

Tai Kawabata, "Screening Deleted Section on Japan's Victimization of Asia," Japan Times, Weekly

international edition ed., May 1993, ProQuest.

191

Yellen, 21.

neighbors. As a meditation on Japanese identity, Zechs’ character highlights the challenges

of admitting and facing one’s victim perpetrator identity. Both identities must be faced,

together and in their toxic combination. Zechs, like Treize, is never fully able to do this.

However, when Zechs’ suicide attempt fails, his frustration manifests in bitterness. When

Zechs says he is going to live “to the bitter end” in Episode 49, it is a revealing expression of

his authentic interior life. Zechs is resigned to living. Death was going to free him from his

failure to heal his victim wounds. Death was also going to free him from his guilt. Heero’s

mercy precludes both results. Unwilling and unable to accept the gift, Zechs sits in bitterness.

Bitterness is a rarely-discussed but ever-present aspect of Japan’s postwar memory

experience. Describing the Japanese victim narrative of Barefoot Gen, about a child atomic

bomb survivor, Akiko Hashimoto puts it this way, “Thus, even as the story progresses from

obliteration to rebuilding new life, [Gen’s story] carries a bitter undertone, since nothing can

really undo the permanent damage to people’s lives…”

192

However, this only addresses

Japan’s victim experience. Japan may also experience bitterness regarding the attempts it has

made to address its perpetrating past. For instance, Japan has made dozens of official

apologies regarding its wartime actions in the postwar period.

193

Variance in earnestness and

action notwithstanding, Japan has made some attempt at making amends.

The most surprising implication of Zechs’ story arc is that Japan’s pacifist response to

its wartime behavior, arguably its primary attempt to avoid becoming a perpetrator again,

will fail. Zechs’ attempts to bring about total pacifism results in total war. Moreover, at the

192

Hashimoto, 11.

193

See Yamazaki’s Japanese Apologies for World War II: A Rhetorical Study.

end of the series he identifies as Merquise, not Peacecraft; his soldier’s identity proves more

authentic to him than his pacifist one. Finally, his sister Relena, who has more accurately

embodied the non-violence typically associated with pacifism, is not successful in bringing

about total peace either. Although both Treize and Zechs claim their actions pave the way for

Relena as a symbol and banner bearer of pacifism, she ultimately rejects that identity. In the

final scene of Wing she is addressed as Vice Foreign Minister Darlian, the same name and

title of her adoptive father who worked within the Alliance to advocate an imperfect but

workable interdependence between Earth and the colonies.

194

Both siblings serve to underline

the same point: they discard their victim identities and its pacifist imperative in order to

move forward.

Zechs ultimately does move forward, although his bitterness underlines his

reluctance. Much earlier in the series, Noin identifies another way he could have dealt with

his trauma. In Episode 5 Zechs and Noin watch a news broadcast about Relena’s return to

Earth after her adopted father’s assassination. “Still worried aren’t you, Zechs?” Noin asks

him, aware Relena is his sister. “Worried about what?” Zechs replies. Avoiding any further

inquiry, he walks out of the room. Heard only by Wing’s audience, Noin quietly says, “Open

up your heart. You’re hiding too many secrets.”

195

Her entreaty, unheard and ignored, is in

fact the first step to dealing with trauma: facing it.

196

Over and over in Wing, Zechs chooses

194

Ep. 49.

195

Ep. 5.

196

“In order to regain control over your self, you need to revisit the trauma: Sooner or later you need to

confront what has happened to you…People cannot put traumatic events behind until they are able to

acknowledge what has happened and start to recognize the invisible demons they’re struggling with.” Kolk,

204, 219.

not to face his trauma. Zechs’ rival, Heero Yuy, also a victim and perpetrator, does. This

ultimately makes Heero the hero of Gundam Wing.

CHAPTER THREE: HEERO YUY & the HEITAI, IMPERIAL JAPAN’S

“EVERYMAN SOLDIER”

Japanese perpetrator narratives [] expose malevolent acts committed by their own people,

based on the belief that uncovering and facing your own people’s dreadful past is

intrinsically important for individuals and society alike. Moving forward, turning a new page,

and making a clean break from the past call for self-examination of one’s moral failures.

When it comes to recovery and healing from military violence in particular, this approach

presumes the necessity of facing squarely the darkest and least acceptable aspects of the

self.

197

-- Hashimoto, The Long Defeat

Japan’s postwar perpetrator narrative focuses on the widespread and wide-ranging

acts of wartime violence the Imperial Japanese Army committed during the Asia-Pacific

War. More so than the others, the imperative of the perpetrator narrative is essential to its

definition. After one’s “descent” into hellish behavior is confessed, “recovery and healing” is

possible, not only with oneself but with one’s former victims. As a result, a narrative that

would otherwise be unbearable becomes one of profound hope.

198

It may be that the perpetrator narrative is in fact the most forward-facing narrative of

the three, despite ardent claims to the contrary by many of Japan’s current politicians (re:

heroic narrative) and its pacifists (re: victim narrative). Wing’s creators may have considered

this when the issue of the impact of militarized violence on its participants reared its head in

Japan for the first time since 1945. A few years before Wing was produced an amendment

was proposed to the Japanese Self Defense Force law that would allow Japan’s de facto

197

Hashimoto, 12-13.

198

Ibid., 130-133.

military to participate in United Nations Peacekeeping Operations.

199

Would Self Defense

Force (SDF)

200

members be allowed to harm others and/or be put in harm’s way? The

amendment was passed in 1992.

201

While Wing represents all three of Japan’s dominant postwar narratives, it is

undeniably the perpetrator narrative it most nearly aligns with in its final episodes. However,

by interacting with and ultimately incorporating elements of the other narratives, Wing posits

a post-postwar Japanese identity by elevating a sympathetic perpetrating character to hero

status, who not only accomplishes the series’ final heroic act but embodies the integration of

the three narratives.

Wing’s Gundam pilot Heero Yuy is simultaneously portrayed as hero, victim, and

perpetrator. His characterization is analogous to the experiences and testimony of former

soldiers of the Imperial Japanese Army (IJA), specifically those who confessed to wartime

atrocities. The character of Heero represents how the narratives might be integrated through

his interactions with Treize and Zechs, who represent major aspects of the heroic and victim

narratives, and Relena Darlian, who like Heero is set up as one of the true heroes of Wing. It

199

Passed in 1992, it is called the Law Concerning Cooperation in U.N. Peacekeeping and Other Operations

(Peacekeeping Law). For an overview, see Akiho Shibata, “Japanese Peacekeeping Legislation and Recent

Developments in U.N. Operations,” The Yale Journal of International Law, 19, no. 307, (1994),

https://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=https://www.google.com/&httpsredir=1&artic

le=1648&context=yjil.

200

Lucretzia Noin’s formation of a self defense force in the Sanq Kingdom is analogous to the SDF. See Eps.

31-36.

201

Hashimoto, 15. As of 2018 when Atsushi Yasutomi’s article (below) was published, no Japanese had died in

UN Peacekeeping Operations in combat-related deaths (https://peacekeeping.un.org/en/fatalities). By 2020, six

were reported; however, it is unclear from this information if any were combat-related; fatalities listed also

include accidents and illness. For more information on the continuing concern within Japan regarding this issue,

see Yasutomi’s incisive article “Combat-Related Death of Soldiers and Public Support for Military Missions

Abroad: The Case of Japan” in Comparative Culture: The Journal of Miyazaki International College, 23

(2018), 48-56 https://www.mic.ac.jp/files/uploads/Comparative_Culture2018.pdf#page=48.

is Heero alone, however, who embodies all three narratives and thus emerges as the

embodiment of a hopeful post-postwar Japanese identity.

Heero Yuy: Humanity Lost, Humanity Regained

Trowa Barton, Gundam pilot: I’ve fought all this time. And with each battle, I’ve been killing

my own heart. My heart’s been completely void of feelings for a long time. Maybe my life

doesn’t have value anymore. But I have to keep on living.

Dorothy Catalonia: Why?

Trowa: I have a home to return to.

202

-- Episode 49

Critical to Wing’s integration of the three narratives is its collapse of the distinction

between perpetrators and soldiers while still strongly asserting the humanity of soldiers.

Gundam Wing achieves this by elevating the interiority of main character Heero Yuy. Doing

so underlines that the suicidality he exhibits from Episode 1 to Episode 49 is the result of his

own wartime victimization, as well as the revulsion he feels for himself as a perpetrator of

wartime violence. Due in part to his interactions with Relena throughout the series, these

feelings eventually coalesce into an empathy that enables him to understand and show mercy

to his fellow perpetrators, Treize and Zechs, and eventually drives him to protect his former

victims, specifically Relena. These actions posit him as Wing’s ultimate hero.

202

Although the other Gundam pilots are not discussed at length here, Heero is in many ways representative of

them. Together the five Gundam pilots convey the hope of a future collective Japanese identity. As such, Trowa

Barton is quoted here as a proxy for Heero’s sentiments, specifically what Trowa says about his heart being

“completely void of feelings for a long time” but deciding to live anyway. Heero himself rarely says such things

explicitly as a result of his quiet albeit thoughtful characterization. That Trowa in particular lends voice to

Heero’s thoughts is especially likely since they have the most in common among the five pilots--raised as

soldiers from childhood; orphans; officially nameless (both have codenames), etc. They are also the two pilots

who appear to die committing sacrificial acts, only to reappear later in the show.

In the ninety second opening sequence of the series, Heero is visually positioned as

the main character and likely hero of Gundam Wing. In the series’ first scenes, however,

Heero acts nothing like the heroic archetype. If it is not obvious that he is a perpetrator, it is

evident that he is extremely dangerous. Immediately after Heero first appears in a capsule

heading towards Earth from space, he notices that a civilian shuttle is blocking his trajectory.

Without hesitation, he targets the shuttle and says, “Ready to shoot down obstacles.”

The civilian shuttle and its passengers are unwittingly saved by the appearance of an

OZ mobile suit carrier captained by Zechs Merquise. Unbeknownst to either Zechs or Heero,

whose relationship eventually becomes the series’ major rivalry, they have just crossed paths

for the first time. In the following incursion, Zechs leads a spontaneous attack on Heero’s

capsule. Heero’s mission is clearly meant to be secret, a fact reinforced by comments both

Zechs and Heero make. Once Heero arrives in Earth’s atmosphere, the nature of his mission

becomes somewhat clearer to us. Initially intent on escaping, Heero receives a message to

“Alter mission” and is informed that the carrier pursuing him is not just the Alliance but OZ,

which at this point is still a special unit within the Alliance forces. Heero goes on the

offensive. He initiates the transformation of his entry capsule into the Gundam’s humanoid

form. When two OZ mobile suits approach, we get the first sense of how powerful his

Gundam is as his buster rifle incinerates the two suits in a single blast. Realizing that he and

his crew are outmatched, Zechs tackles the Gundam in another mobile suit, immobilizing it.

As Zechs floats away in a parachute after jumping from his own suit’s cockpit, he watches

the suits crash into the ocean below.

203

It seems that after five minutes, the hero is dead. Moreover, Zechs’ subordinates

ominously mention suicide several times. Zechs, however, is unconvinced. He blithely

responds, “He won’t commit suicide before setting foot on [Earth].”

204

The audience is led to believe otherwise. When Heero is discovered washed up on a

beach later in Episode 1, he pushes a button on the front of his pilot suit that explodes,

propelling him backwards. Looking aggrieved, as if the initiated action has malfunctioned, he

runs away.

205

In the following episode he attempts to destroy his Gundam when it is raised to

the surface. Manually activating torpedoes, he jumps off them as they shoot towards the

Gundam. Falling towards the ocean waves below, Heero says, “Finally, everything is over.

Mission complete.”

206

Pulled from the water, he ends up recuperating in a hospital in Episode

3. When another Gundam pilot breaks him out of the hospital, the two leap from a hole

blasted in the tall building. Although given a parachute, Heero falls once again, this time

towards the solid ground below. Shouts from the other pilot do not arouse him. Heero only

pulls the parachute cord after he hears his name yelled by another voice, the voice of Relena

Darlian.

207

203

Ep. 1.

204

Ibid.

205

Ibid. A scene in the manga Episode Zero device confirms this to be a self-detonation device. When Dr. J,

who sends Heero missions, discovers Heero has installed the device before leaving for Earth, he has it altered so

it will not be fatal when activated.

206

Ep. 2.

207

Ep. 3.

Relena’s voice is an extremely significant one in Wing--to Heero specifically and to

the After Colony world generally when she becomes princess of the pacifist Sanq Kingdom

and later Queen Relena, chief representative of Romefeller and the World Nation. Before all

these, however, Relena is introduced to Wing’s audience as a passenger on board the civilian

shuttle Heero almost shoots down in Episode 1.

208

The first time Heero hears Relena’s voice is when he washes up on the beach. Relena,

having called an ambulance then returned to his body, removes his helmet, which revives

him. Angry he’s still being alive and seriously displeased about being seen, Heero covers his

face, realizes she has seen it already, attempts to initialize the self-destruct device in his suit

(which fails), and finally runs away from her. In this first meeting he does not attempt to hurt

her; however, he makes it clear to her that he is a dangerous person when, in the process of

running away, he knocks three medical responders off a stairway leading down to the beach,

kicks through the glass of the ambulance’s passenger side door, shoves the driver out, and

drives away. Relena, obviously fascinated, runs up the stairs to watch him flee, momentarily

unaware of the four first responders strewn about the ground off-screen.

209

Heero meets Relena again when, by chance, the school at which he has enrolled as a

cover for his missions turns out to be her school. When she recognizes and approaches him in

an attempt at friendliness, despite knowing how dangerous he is, Heero reminds the audience

how willing he is to eliminate obstacles. “I will kill you,” he threatens her.

210

208

Ep. 1.

209

Ibid.

210

Ibid.

To Heero’s annoyance, confusion, and eventual salvation, however, Relena does not

respond to threats the way that most people would. In Episode 2, she follows him to a base,

where he activates torpedoes to destroy his Gundam. The scene offers our first glimpse of a

part of Heero that is unlike the dangerous, taciturn, and isolated image Wing consistently

portrays. When Relena approaches him, he looks over his shoulder toward her and says her

name softly, his gaze absent its usual glare. When he fully turns around, however, he points a

gun at her. In his usual monotone voice he says, “You’re in over your head.” His finger

closes in on the trigger. For the second time in two episodes, he almost kills her.

211

He is stopped short by another character, who shoots and injures him. To his shock,

Relena puts her body between himself and the shooter, arms outstretched, yelling, “What do

you want to shoot him for?” Initially, the question seems absurd. The audience has been

given every reason to believe that Heero was actually going to shoot her.

212

And yet,

Relena’s act of valuing his life reverberates through the rest of the series. Although

completely flummoxed, Heero is immediately impacted by her actions. In the following

episode when he plummets headfirst towards the ground, her voice alone causes him to pull

his parachute. He had not wanted; this is clear when he survives the fall and slowly stands

up. Fist clenched and brows furrowed in anger, Heero says under his breath, “I shouldn’t

have released my parachute!” Thus it becomes undeniably clear his intent was suicide.

213

In these early episodes, the root cause of Heero’s suicidal behavior is unclear. His

externalized responses to being a perpetrator vacillate. On one hand, these are the only

211

Ep. 2.

212

Ibid.

213

Ep. 3.

episodes in which we see him laugh. In both instances it is clearly bravado, laughing wildly

after he kills Zechs’ subordinates in Episode 1, after shooting down a military transport plane

in Episode 4, and after appearing to threaten another Gundam pilot in Episode 5.

214

On the

other hand, by Episode 2 Heero attempts to destroy his Gundam, then declares his mission is

over. In the following episode he blatantly tries to commit suicide. Moreover, Heero’s affect

is cold, from his monotone voice to his loner behavior.

215

These all suggest his interior world

is cold, harsh, and bleak, a reality that continually manifests in further suicide attempts as

well as a generalized lack of interest in living expressed throughout the series.

In Episode 5, it becomes clear that some of Heero’s affect is the result of trauma.

Like Zechs and Relena, he is a victim of wartime violence. As with Zechs and Noin, we

learn this and largely sympathize with him through a female character, Relena. Everything

the audience learns about Heero’s past is disclosed to her in a conversation she has with one

of the men who trained him, the Gundam engineer, Dr. J. In this conversation we learn that

the colonial rebellion group Dr. J works within “brought [Heero] up as a professional

assassin.” This suggests that Heero is either an orphan or was kidnapped, after which he was

raised as a child soldier (he is only fifteen in Wing).

216

Looking visibly angry, Relena retorts,

“Why do that?!” a statement likely to be intuitive to Wing’s audience and thus more

214

Ep. 1,4,5.

215

In the apt words of Duo Maxwell, another Gundam pilot, “He’s anti-social, thinks he’s Evel Knievel, and

hardly speaks. You’re so gloomy! Why not stop pretending to be human?” Ep. 4.

216

In the manga Episode Zero Heero is explicitly portrayed as a child soldier, eg. he is shown being taught how

to hold a handgun. He looks to be about five years old.

sympathetic than Dr. J’s rationalization that Heero serves to “attack the dangerous, evil

people responsible for starting wars.”

217

Compounding this trauma, Wing portrays Heero as being further victimized

throughout the series’ conflicts. Most notably, he is manipulated by Treize into killing the

Alliance leaders who, just prior to their deaths, had been sincerely discussing demilitarization

and improved relations with the colonies. After realizing his mistake, Heero is initially

catatonic inside his Gundam, even as mobile suits attack him. Eventually galvanized into

action, Heero concludes the episode yelling “I totally screwed up!” into a darkening sky.

218

In the episodes that follow, he and the other Gundam pilots are stymied again, this

time by Lady Une’s over-the-top tactics in Siberia. Targeting the colonies and threatening to

fire a missile, Heero responds to her threat by self-detonating his Gundam. Lying face-up on

the ground, blood pouring from the back of his head, it appears once again that the story’s

hero is dead.

219

After being unconscious for a month, Heero finally wakes up, nursed back to health

by another Gundam pilot, Trowa Barton. He learns from Trowa that the pilots are no longer

getting orders since the Siberia incident. In the following episodes, Heero seeks out judgment

against himself from the members of the Noventa family, whose patriarch he mistakenly

killed at New Edwards. Despite his own victimization at the hands of Treize, he fully faces

the reality that the deaths were his responsibility. Each family member refuses the chance to

take revenge against him. In a letter that falls into Relena’s hands, Mrs. Noventa, the wife of

217

Ep. 5.

218

Eps. 7-8.

219

Ep. 10.

General Noventa, encourages Heero to stop suffering from his mistakes and move forward.

“My husband and [General] Ventei died trying to build a world where genuine young men

like yourselves could live happily,” she writes. Projecting a vision of his humanity like that

of Relena’s, she concludes, “Our family is honored to have met with you.”

220

After fighting Zechs in Antarctica, Heero and Trowa separately head for outer space,

but eventually end up working together when Heero is captured by OZ’s space forces, which

Trowa has infiltrated as a spy. Heero experiences another major trauma when a fellow

Gundam pilot, Quatre Raberba Winner--who is suffering from the mind-warping effects of a

new Gundam called Wing Zero--confronts him and Trowa in space. Trowa, the closest thing

to a friend Heero has in Wing, sacrifices himself to block Quatre’s attack on a colony and is

thrown out of his mobile suit, presumed dead.

221

The next twelve episodes reflect a chaotic period in the After Colony world.

Romefeller emerges from the shadow of OZ as the Earth Sphere’s new power. Its key

leadership of military industrialists begins to take over the world by force, specifically

through the mass production of mobile dolls. While conflict in the colonies temporarily dies

down with OZ’s ascendance and tacit acceptance by colony representatives, wars break out

on Earth between the new OZ and the Treize Faction, which has splintered from OZ

following Treize’s defection. Execution orders are issued for the Gundam pilots. In the midst

220

Ep. 15.

221

Eps. 17-25.

of this chaos, the Sanq Kingdom emerges as a rallying point for nations on Earth longing for

an end to conflict. Its growing influence attracts Romefeller’s attention.

222

In the midst of this, Heero returns to Earth with the Gundam pilot Quatre, who has

regained his sanity and who, like Heero, is burdened by enormous mistakes and a gnawing

sense of purposelessness in the new global climate. Through these episodes Heero remains

inclined toward suicide; however, reflecting the kindness he has received from Relena,

Trowa, and the Noventa family, this predisposition has become more latent. Instead of

blatant attempts to end his life like the parachute incident, in these episodes Heero

consistently puts himself in danger even though the purpose of doing so is questionable. As

Quatre tells him after Heero joins the Treize Faction rebels’ guerilla operations, “This is

totally absurd, Heero...Getting involved only makes you a target.” Heero replies blandly, “A

target? Fine with me....”

223

In the previous episode Heero’s viewpoint is even clearer-- “As

long as Earth’s a warzone, I’m gonna fight. You have no choice but to fight either. Because

we’re Gundam pilots.” Although his commitment to fighting can be construed as a will to

live, therefore marking some kind of evolution in his interior development, it is clear in this

scene and throughout the ones following that Heero’s efforts to continue fighting are rooted

in resignation. “The battlefield is the only place we’re allowed to live,” he tells Quatre. “For

us, I guess the meaning of life is to survive battles.”

224

In the context of this resignation and, for Quatre at least, a continued sense of

searching for greater purpose, the two pilots end up at the Sanq Kingdom from Episodes 30-

222

Eps. 26-37.

223

Ep. 30.

224

Ep. 29.

36. This is in part a result of the Sanq Kingdom’s search for Heero, and also Quatre’s

decision to go there after hearing about the Kingdom’s influential power and its need for

protection from Romefeller. Resigned to the fate that brings him there and exhausted from

his recent participation in guerilla warfare, Heero nevertheless makes it extremely clear he

does not want to stay. Despite this, Relena, demonstrating her brilliance for negotiation,

persuades him to stay by telling him that she is putting resources into finding Trowa.

Looking Heero directly in the eye she simply says, “Noin tells me he’s an important

person.”

225

Heero waits for an opportunity to pay back the favor, after which he plans to leave.

He gets his chance when the Romefeller Foundation pushes a Treize Faction unit into the

Sanq Kingdom. Pretending it is defending the Kingdom against the Faction, Romefeller

pushes its attack towards the Kingdom’s capital. Heero approaches the Faction’s leader and

organizes them to fight back. Heero leads them in his Gundam.

226

Afterward, when Relena confronts Noin, Heero, and Quatre about the incident, Heero

tells her that he has paid back the favor and is leaving. Momentarily vulnerable she asks him

“Is my idea just a dream? Or even a mistake?” Heero’s answer is practical--that Romefeller

obviously eliminates anything it finds “inconvenient”--including himself, the other Gundam

pilots, and now her and the Sanq Kingdom. As he turns away towards his Gundam she asks,

“If you were me, how would you lead the Sanq Kingdom?” He replies that he would create a

defense force, like Noin. Defying everyone’s expectations, Relena relents, approving Noin’s

225

Ep. 31.

226

Ibid.

creation of the defense force and its continued existence despite its existential clash with the

total pacifism she is trying to promote. Her reason for doing so, however, is perhaps as

sensible as Heero’s response to her query about pacifism being a dream or a mistake. She

says, “How can I expect to come up with a position the world agrees to if I can’t even agree

with the people closest to me?”

227

Relena’s willingness to be malleable appears to evoke the same from Heero. After she

speaks he turns away from the Gundam back towards her. In the following episodes he

remains in the Sanq Kingdom and acts to defend it. However, we continue to see him

struggling internally. In a later scene Relena comes across Heero sitting on a bench reading.

She sits down next to him and proceeds to ask why he has chosen to stay. Continuing without

a response, Relena narrates her perception of the events of Heero’s life in the past months,

how in the past he would have left. However, as Relena is well aware, the colonies rejected

the Gundam pilots’ return in favor of OZ’s deceitful overtures. Relena sympathizes, “It

must’ve been hard.” Still, Relena presses on, “you keep on fighting. You’ve still got an

intensity in your eyes that hasn’t changed since I first met you.”

228

When Relena initially sits on the bench, Heero barely makes eye contact with her. As

she begins speaking, he simply stares at the book, the image of the interrupted, annoyed

reader. As she continues, he looks at her out of the corner of his eye. When she comes to the

end of what she has to say, he finally meets her eyes but his face leans away from her in a

227

Ibid.

228

Ep. 33.

posture of shock. He begins to say, “I just…” suggesting that he is about to protest, when

they are interrupted by a messenger bringing Relena an invitation to meet with Romefeller.

229

Before Relena departs in the following scene, she asks him to promise that he will tell

her before he leaves. He nods. She leaves. Heero immediately gets in his Gundam and leaves

without telling her. When Noin joins Quatre watching Heero’s departure, he tells her “Heero

has made a decision to fight a battle with the least chance of survival.” Heero’s rejection of

how Relena sees him manifests in this last intentional attempt to kill himself.

230

Heero arrives at Luxembourg Base, where he attempts to take on hundreds of mobile

dolls sent there to destroy the Treize Faction’s headquarters. After being saved by a Treize

Faction soldier, Heero learns Treize is in a building near the base. When he finds and

confronts him, they share an oddly empathetic moment in which both divulge their feelings

of purposelessness. Ironically, they are able to see purpose in each other’s lives. Heero

refuses to kill Treize; Treize chooses not to kill Heero. In the end, Treize gives him a new

Gundam, Epyon, which he designed while in confinement--a monstrous suit whose mind-

warping side effects are reminiscent of the Gundam in which Quatre went berserk in Episode

25.

231

One of Heero’s most obvious and terrifying incidences of perpetration occurs when

Heero succumbs to the suit’s indication that anyone fighting at the base is his enemy. He

229

Ibid.

230

Ibid.

231

Ep. 33-34.

proceeds to destroy everyone and everything regardless of whose ‘side’ they are on--mobile

suits, their pilots, and the infrastructure of the base itself.

232

After surviving this gauntlet experience, Heero returns to the Sanq Kingdom in time

for it to be attacked again. Fearing the mind-warping effects of Epyon, Heero attacks mobile

dolls far away from the capital. At one point, hallucinating, he sees Relena being killed by

beam cannon fire. Relena, however, is in fact still alive and resigns to dissolve the Kingdom

and surrender herself to Romefeller.

233

His efforts proving futile once again, Heero gives full sway to his cockpit’s mind-

altering system and his own destructive potential and rages against the enormous mobile doll

force for hours after Relena announces her surrender. When Zechs finally arrives from space,

he finds Heero possessed by battle rage fueled by his helplessness. They clash for the first

time since Antarctica, battling until they are exhausted, but without real purpose, both having

failed to protect Relena and the Sanq Kingdom. When they leave, Heero takes Zechs’ mobile

suit, and Zechs takes Epyon.

234

The battle seems to exorcise something out of Heero. In the final arc of the series,

other characters consistently remark that he has changed. When, for instance, he does not

refuse another character’s help in returning to space, she says, “He seems kind of different

this time.”

235

When the five Gundam pilots--including Trowa who reemerges in Episode 36--

232

Ep. 34.

233

Eps. 35-36.

234

Ep. 37.

235

Ep. 41.

assemble on Peacemillion to confront Zechs’ White Fang and Treize’s World Nation

together, Heero clearly emerges as their leader.

236

In particular, Heero chooses to take one highly uncharacteristic action--telling no one

on Peacemillion where he is going, he infiltrates the spaceship Libra in order to find Relena,

confront Zechs, and get Relena off the battleship. Even Relena is surprised, exclaiming, “I

never would’ve expected you to come for me.” Heero’s response that “Noin and the others

are uneasy with you still here,” only serves to highlight the fact that if the others were so

concerned about her, they could have come themselves.

237

Although his acceptance of his role on Peacemillion suggests he has made some

peace with his perpetrator identity by the end of the series, Heero’s sense of worthlessness

persists to the final episode, a fact which once again becomes clear in direct response to

interacting with Relena. When she tells him on Libra how he has given her “hope and

strength to live” he simply responds, “I’m nothing compared to you.” In a later scene when,

convinced that he is on a suicide mission to end the final conflict, Relena attempts to contact

him in his Gundam, he clicks off the transceiver and roughly says, “Life is cheap. Especially

mine.”

238

In the final episode, Heero finds Zechs and they duel in their mobile suits. Able to

speak to each other through their mobile suit communication systems, they also spar

verbally. In response to Zechs’ assertion that “the strong make [the weak],” Heero argues

“everyone is weak, and that includes you and me.” That Heero is trying to make a bigger

236

Eps. 43-49.

237

Ep. 46.

238

Ep. 48.

point to Zechs finally comes full circle when in their final charge he spares Zechs’ life. When

Zechs, voice filled with quiet anger, asks Heero why he won’t just kill him, Heero only says,

“Relena would be sad.”

239

Having demonstrated mercy to Zechs and empathy with Relena, Heero is finally

tasked with using his buster rifle, an unrivaled weapon capable of mass destruction, to blow

up a piece of the spaceship Libra. Flying in front of the piece, his mobile suit shaking from

the effort of simultaneously staying in front of it and attempting to stabilize for a precise shot

as he enters Earth’s atmosphere, Heero finally yells, “I will...I will…I will survive!” With his

final statement, we realize his victory is double--the external victory of catastrophic damage

avoided and the internal victory of accepting one’s self worth.

240

Traumatized by Killing: The Interior Narratives of Soldiers

Without paying close attention to the actions of individuals in creating their sense and

experience of selfhood, we will have considerable difficulty discussing the ethical

responsibility for their behavior, which is a dangerous road to go down when it comes to the

study of war.

241

-- Aaron William Moore, Writing War: Soldiers Record the Japanese

Empire

For the first time, I understood the mind of those prisoners. Up to that moment, I’d excused

myself from responsibility on the grounds that I was myself ordered to commit such acts by

regimental commanders. From the point of view of those murdered, though, it didn’t matter

whether the act of killing was a voluntary one or done under orders. I now realized that first I

had to take responsibility myself...

242

-- Tominaga Shouzou, former Imperial Japanese soldier

in China.

239

Ep. 49.

240

Ibid.

241

Aaron William Moore, Writing War: Soldiers Record the Japanese Empire, (Cambridge, MA:

Harvard University Press, 2013), 11-12.

242

Cook & Cook, 466.

As Aaron William Moore states in his research on soldiers’ diaries in the Asia-Pacific

War, understanding soldiers’ sense of self necessarily precedes questions of the responsibility

of perpetrators in wartime. This section delves into the interior landscape of Imperial

Japanese Army (IJA) soldiers represented by a member of the war veterans association

Chuukiren,

243

Tominaga Shouzou, and his postwar reflections on his wartime actions in an

interview conducted with Haruko Taya Cook and Theodore Cook in the 1980s. Many of his

experiences are consistent with Heero’s, including the experience of dehumanization through

military training and combat experience, its impact on soldiers’ interactions with those

experiences through memory, and a successful reckoning with complex perpetrator identities

that enable former soldiers to reconnect with their humanity.

The Testimony of Tominaga Shouzou, Former Imperial Japanese Soldier

Tominaga Shouzou was twenty-six years old when he was drafted and sent to China

in 1941. Early in his training, Tominaga and his fellow candidate officers were brought to a

detention center where Chinese prisoners were being held. “We were astonished at how thin

and emaciated they looked,” he recalled to an interviewer in the late 1980s. An officer told

him “These are the raw materials for your trial of courage.” The following day Tominaga

was placed in a line of candidate officers who were to prove their courage. One by one each

candidate was directed to chop off the head of a prisoner with his sword. Tominaga begins,

243

Chuukiren is an abbreviation of Chuugoku Kikansha Renrakukai, The Association of Returnees from China.

Chuukiren’s members served in China during the war and were detained there afterward for several years while

they underwent “thought reform.” The effort, which involved intense self-reflection on their wartime actions,

resulted in written affidavits regarding their war guilt. All were returned to Japan by 1964; none were executed.

They are the only war veterans association whose members have spoken out about wartime atrocities; they

consistently characterize the war as “aggressive” and raise the issue of Emperor Showa’s war responsibility.

They hope their testimonies contribute to peace between China and Japan. Cook & Cook, 44.

“The scene was so appalling that I felt I couldn’t breathe...When my turn came, the only

thought I had was “Don’t do anything unseemly!” I didn’t want to disgrace myself…”

244

In these comments Tominaga relates his physiological response to the situation. His

assessment of the situation as “appalling” suggests a moral aversion that appears here more

as a simple, gut-level response. Further highlighting the unconsciousness of his reaction, he

relates how his body responded physically by restricting his breathing. Despite these

sensations, Tominaga pressured himself to follow through by aspiring to his own constructed

self image, one in which he would not “disgrace” himself. He continues:

Contrary to my expectations, my feet firmly met the ground...I unsheathed my

sword...I took a deep breath and recovered my composure. I steadied myself, holding

the sword at a point above my right shoulder, and swung down with one breath.

245

Tominaga’s comments reinforce the banality of his actions: after taking normal

measures to focus--feet firmly on ground, steadying breath--he was able to pressure himself

into becoming an active participant in the “appalling” scene. “At that moment,” he

concludes, “I felt something inside me. I don’t know how to put it, but I gained strength

somewhere in my gut...”

246

This scene illustrates what Aaron William Moore calls “creating [a] sense and

experience of selfhood,” which participating in wartime acts necessarily elicits.

247

Tominaga

had tremendous pressure to behead the Chinese prisoner in the authoritative presence of his

commanding officer and the peer pressure of his fellow candidate officers; however, it was

244

Ibid., 41

245

Ibid., 41-42.

246

Ibid., 42.

247

Moore, Writing War, 11-12.

100

he who swung the blade. As a result, the “strength” he found within himself he internalized

as his own.

Tominaga became an officer and served until the war ended. In 1945 he was captured

by the Soviet Union and brought to a work camp. In 1950, the Soviets returned him to China,

where he assumed he would trade brutal labor for war trials under China’s new communist

regime.

What he and the other prisoners experienced, however, was not what he expected.

248

Over the next five years, he and the others underwent a process of “thought reform” in which

they questioned their basic assumptions about their participation in the war. To their surprise,

this did not involve beatings or torture. Instead, prisoners were continually urged to reflect--

on paper, in isolation, in conversations with one another, and finally in response to listening

to the anger of Chinese who had survived the war. “Most of us thought then that murdering,

raping, and setting fire to villages were unavoidable acts in war, nothing particularly wrong,”

he states in his interview.

249

“Good soldiers were those who were able to kill...Everyone

became a demon within three months. Men were able to fight courageously only when their

human characteristics were suppressed.”

250

Over the course of his time in China, however, he

began to understand the minds of his victims better. During one particular incident he was

thrown into isolation in a former Japanese prison, whose walls bore the bloody epithets of

Chinese prisoners. Here, Tominaga had a revelation. In the days following he wrote his

248

Ibid., 462-464.

249

Ibid., 462.

250

Ibid., 41. For another fictional meditation on physical violence in samurai culture, see Tsukamoto Shinya’s

Killing (2018). See also film review by Mark Schilling, “‘Killing’: A Modern Take on a Samurai Staple,” Japan

Times, November 27, 2018, https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2018/11/27/films/film-reviews/killing-

modern-take-samurai-staple/.

101

thought reform assignments “from the viewpoint of the persons whose houses we burnt down

and whom we killed...I wrote my self-examination based on the results of my acts...I now

realized that first I had to take responsibility myself.”

251

Tominaga’s postwar experience from 1945-1956 is notable for several reasons. First,

unlike the vast majority of soldiers who returned to Japan immediately after the war and who

did not begin to wrestle publicly with its legacies until the 1980s (if at all), Tominaga

confronted his actions sooner than later. More importantly, he was forced to do so. During

several years in China, he was directly and repeatedly exposed to his victims’ pain through

the memories of deceased or unknown victims as well as from contact with survivors. Over

and over he was required to reflect on these now shared memories. For Tominaga, as well as

for many other members of Chuukiren, this thought reform experience eventually caused him

to accept the nature of his wartime actions as “malevolent.” Moreover, it precipitated his

“facing squarely the darkest and least acceptable aspects” of himself.

252

Finally, in response

to all this, he internalized a desire for peace between China and Japan and contributed to such

efforts by acknowledging and sharing his experiences when he returned to Japan.

253

Heero Yuy as Analog to the Testimony of Tominaga Shouzou

Though there is no postwar period in Gundam Wing, Heero’s character mirrors many

of Tominaga’s thoughts and experiences. There are differences as well, for instance between

the representation of Heero’s suicidality and Tominaga’s seeming wartime acceptance of his

251

Ibid., 466.

252

Hashimoto, 12-13.

253

Cook & Cook, 145.

102

actions. This difference, however, points to the silences in many veteran’s narratives

which, through increased research on the psychological effects of wartime trauma on

soldiers, are now better understood.

Similar to the Imperial Japanese Army’s deadly presence in China from 1937-1945,

Heero and the other Gundam pilots kill hundreds if not thousands of people in the course of

the series. This fact alone is one of the major ways in which Wing and the Gundam franchise

have explored the gray area between the heroic and perpetrator narratives. Heero is

particularly destructive. In a stark departure from protagonists in the original Gundam series,

who are thrown into warfare after otherwise ‘normal’ childhoods, Heero is highly trained and

extremely good at what he does from the series’ first scenes.

254

Within the first seven

episodes he kills several mobile suit pilots in combat, shoots down a mobile suit transport

carrier, and significantly damages several military bases.

255

This reflects the incalculable

damage the Imperial Japanese Army wrought in China. Highlighting the difficulty of even

calculating the damage in terms of Chinese deaths, John Dower wrote, “So great was the

devastation and suffering in China that in the end it is necessary to speak of uncertain

254

In stark contrast, Amuro Ray, protagonist of First Gundam, is literally reading the Gundam’s manual when

he pilots it in combat for the first time. Mobile Suit Gundam, Episode 1.

255

This is also possible because, in addition to his personal destructive power, Heero’s Gundam is equipped

with the most destructive weapons. His buster rifle, a beam weapon, has a radius of 150 meters and a range of

tens of kilometres. In the course of the series, it incinerates groups of mobile suits and blows up battleships and

large military aircraft, each with a single shot.Consistent with its intent to be a more realistic representation of

war and its effects, Gundam creators have paid significant attention to actual military technology and other

scientific innovations in order to inform the capabilities of the technology that is portrayed in the Gundam

universes. Additionally, the technical information noted here is the result of the franchise’s symbiotic

relationship with model kits. These kits, whose production essentially launched the original series out of

commercial failure and has played a major role in its success ever since, are extremely detailed. They are

marketed towards older teens and adults. See Condry, The Soul of Anime, 123-127. The information about the

buster rifle itself comes from the Gundam Wiki page on Heero’s mobile suit, “XXXG-01W Wing Gundam,”

https://gundam.fandom.com/wiki/XXXG-01W_Wing_Gundam.

103

'millions' of deaths.”

256

John McClain asserts the official figure for Chinese soldiers killed

between 1937 and 1945 is 1.3 million. The figure for civilian deaths ranges from 9 to 12

million, the highest for any single country during the war.

257

Heero’s attitude to destroy “any obstacle” is also noteworthy. The mindset that any

obstacle to a mission is forfeit, including non-military targets, could be perceived as more

akin to terrorism than what national militaries officially espouse as wartime policy; however,

this describes the behavior for which the IJA remains notorious, including, as Tominaga

describes, chopping off prisoners’ heads as a macabre hazing ritual for officers and

“[m]assacres of [Chinese] civilians were routine...”

258

In portraying its heroes acting from the

same kind of mindset, Wing blurs the line between atrocities and otherwise tacitly approved

wartime violence.

Wing also makes the point that Heero’s response to being an elite soldier is to

perceive himself as less than human. This emerges throughout the series as Heero identifies

certain human traits which he believes he and the other pilots cannot afford to exhibit. For

instance, when Quatre asks him, “Is kindness necessary in a war?” he bluntly replies, “No.

Not while you’re fighting.”

259

Gundam pilot Trowa Barton puts it most plainly when in a

conversation that likely speaks for all the pilots, he says, “I’ve fought all this time. And with

each battle, I’ve been killing my own heart. My heart’s been completely void of feelings for a

256

Dower, War Without Mercy, 295.

257

McClain, 498.

258

Cook & Cook, 44. Victimization of civilians is ubiquitous in Gundam series, if not always thematic. See

Tennant’s dissertation for statistical information on Gundam series’ representation of violence against

combatants and non-combatants, 69.

259

Ep. 29.

104

long time. Maybe my life doesn’t have value anymore.”

260

These sentiments echo

Tominaga’s when he summarizes the essential nature of “good soldiers” in the IJA: “Good

soldiers were those who were able to kill...Everyone became a demon within three months.

Men were able to fight courageously only when their human characteristics were

suppressed.”

261

These realities also underline how problematic it can be to ascribe to the

perpetrator narrative. Identifying oneself as a “demon” can produce, as Wing illustrates,

extremely negative and potentially destructive self-perceptions. Treize succumbs to this by

committing suicide at the end of Gundam Wing.

262

When Zechs is unable to do the same, he

becomes bitter.

263

The perceived worthlessness that fuels Heero’s suicidality is sustained

throughout the entire series.

Just as Tominaga was reluctant to behead the Chinese prisoner, Heero frequently

hesitates and even avoids killing.

264

In addition to the especially significant scenes in which

he hesitates to kill Relena, as well as his outright refusal to kill Treize and Zechs, Heero

frequently opts out of various killing missions, both ordered and self-directed. In Episode 19

upon hearing that Duo, a fellow Gundam pilot, has been caught and imprisoned, Heero

determines to kill him before OZ can continue using him as a propaganda tool to turn the

colonies against the Gundams. When he reaches Duo, however, he chooses to help him

escape. Heero’s aversion to involving civilians is highlighted in Episode 30 when, while

260

Ep. 49.

261

Cook & Cook, 43.

262

Ep. 48.

263

Ep. 49.

264

This is a running theme in the Gundam franchise and is, in fact, much more overt in the first two series.

Amuro Ray, the protagonist of First Gundam (15 years old) and Kamille Bidan, protagonist of Zeta Gundam

(17 years old) both frequently yell at their enemies from within their mobile suit cockpits that they do not want

to kill anyone, often accusing their foes of “making” them do so by attacking in the first place.

105

fighting with the Treize Faction rebels, he realizes that a town center has not been evacuated.

He flagrantly disobeys orders and alters the mission until he confirms that all civilians have

fled.

The major differences between testimonies like Tominaga’s and story arcs like

Heero’s highlight some of the silences that remain in many veterans’ testimonies. In

Tominaga’s, for instance, it is unclear if he continued to experience reluctance when hurting

others. Moreover, he does not allude to a sense of worthlessness or suicidality. Although in

his testimony he described experiences like chopping off the heads of Chinese prisoners as

the beginnings of becoming a “demon,” there is no indication from his testimony that he felt

self-loathing either during his deployment or during his five years in Russia as a prisoner of

war. In fact, when Tominaga was brought to China in 1950, he and his fellow inmates at first

complained of a sign reading “Japanese Military War Criminal Management,” claiming that

“the Emperor, the cabinet ministers, and the military commanders...were the ones who had

led us into the war...Small fish and hooligans like us weren’t war criminals.”

265

By contrast,

Heero, the other Gundam pilots, and arguably Treize and Zechs feel the burden of their

perpetrator identities throughout the series.

There is, however, good reason to believe soldiers like Tominaga struggled

enormously with the trauma of participating in wartime violence, which for many included

killing. Acknowledging the real effect of war on its frontline soldiers has long been

unpopular to the point of being taboo. For example, when shell shock began to compromise

the efficiency of fighting forces in Britain during WWI, an order was issued stating “In no

265

Cook & Cook, 464.

106

circumstances whatever will the expression ‘shell shock’ be used verbally or be recorded in

any regimental or other casualty report, or any hospital or other medical document.” In

Germany it was treated as a character defect managed by painful treatments including

electroshock.

266

As trauma researcher Bessel van der Kolk puts plainly, “Nobody wants to

remember trauma. In that regard society is no different from the victims themselves.”

267

In Japan, this desire to avoid facing trauma goes even deeper, since addressing war-

related cultural trauma requires dealing with Japan’s defeat. As much of postwar media that

references the Asia-Pacific War--like Gundam Wing--suggests, the process is extremely

complicated. Furthermore, as Akiko Hashimoto concludes in her research on cultural trauma

and Japan’s defeat, “The task of making a coherent story for the vanquished is...a painful

probe into the meaning of being Japanese.”

268

Tominaga’s silence regarding any internal

contention with his humanity may reflect this.

269

Even Gundam Wing’s postwar-generation

creators explored these issues at the safe distance of fiction.

In Gundam Wing, Heero faces his trauma; specifically, he confronts his internalized

perpetrator identity and the worthlessness he feels as a result of it. He is able to do this by

encountering his victims, listening to their experiences, and building mutual respect and trust

with them. This is especially apparent in his relationship with Relena. Relena initiates this

266

Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma, (New

York: Viking, 2014), 185.

267

Ibid., 194-195.

268

Hashimoto, 2.

269

In the epilogue to his major work on comfort women, Tanaka Yuki wrote “This book is an initial step in the

journey of research, which, I hope, will eventually lead Japanese men (and here I include myself)--the sons and

grandsons of Japanese Imperial soldiers--to critically and productively re-examine our own history and culture.”

These are the final words of his book. The first words, which follow his title page, are “What our fathers did not

tell us.” Japan's Comfort Women: Sexual Slavery and Prostitution during World War II and the US Occupation,

(New York: Routledge, 2002), 182.

107

process by giving him opportunities to return the respect and trust she extends to him, despite

having been threatened by him several times.

270

She is only able to do so based on a

recognition that their relationship is not wholly defined by victimization, which belies the

recognition of his humanity, particularly the more positive aspects of it.

This process is similar to Tominaga’s thought reform experience. Before being told to

self-reflect, Tominaga details how, when he first returned to China, he and the other

prisoners were put on a passenger train instead of a freight train and fed white bread instead

of a presumably coarser black bread. He feared the Chinese were treating them kindly at first

only to “kill us suddenly” later. In the years that followed, when prisoners became ill, they

were taken care of “even in the middle of the night.” At that point, Tominaga recounts, “We

began to realize that human beings should be treated this way and [we] began to reflect on

our treatment of Chinese during the war.”

271

The process Tominaga and the others went

through thereafter brought them to a place where they were able not only to accept their war

responsibility and their humanity, but also to desire peace between themselves, their former

victims, and their societies.

Heero ultimately aligns himself with the suffering of his victims as well as current

and former enemies, choosing to support and engage with the world around him while fully

acknowledging his participation as a perpetrator during the war. As an analogy to a fringe

group such as Chuukiren, the elevation of Heero as Gundam Wing’s hero reinforces its

creators’ willingness to engage unpopular and difficult wartime memories.

270

Disclaimer: Gundam Wing is fictional; it is by no means a textbook for how to deal with trauma. While

Relena’s actions in the series ultimately lead to a productive end, many of her actions, particularly at the

beginning of the series, are highly imprudent and dangerous.

271

Cook & Cook, 463-464.

108

The Final Victors: Perpetrators as the Cornerstone of a Post-postwar Japanese Identity

Heero: If anything has ended, or rather, if anything should end, then it’s my own miserable

and useless resistance. -- Episode 34.

Heero: I will...I will...I will survive! -- Episode 49.

The idea of “living” being enough to bring Japan into a post-postwar world resonates

throughout the anime world. “The wind is rising...we must try to live!” may well have been

the final message from internationally famous filmmaker Miyazaki Hayao in his last film,

The Wind Rises (2013). Similarly in Gundam Wing, Heero’s final statement--“I will...I will...I

will survive!”--is more than a statement of physical survival. It is a profound decision both to

live with trauma and to move beyond it.

272

Gundam Wing’s portrayal of Heero Yuy as an analogy to the heitai or “everyman

soldier,” men like Tominaga Shouzou, demonstrates an effort to integrate the worst and the

potential best of modern Japanese history. Sent off as heroes, returning as failures, former

Imperial Japanese soldiers did what many people impacted by war did in order to reintegrate

into postwar society--they attempted to suppress their memories. This silence was possible in

Japan, unlike in Germany where a broader sense of public and private culpability for the war

and the Holocaust eventually emerged. However, as the memory wars of Asia now underline,

full reintegration has not happened. Some war wounds are not healed; so they fester. As

Tominaga’s testimony and Wing’s story show, perpetrators of wartime violence hold a

272

Ep. 49.

109

unique role in supporting Japan’s efforts “to heal, bring justice, and regain moral status in the

world.”

273

While Heero embodies the perpetrator narrative, his character also moves beyond it,

which suggests potential ways of engaging the heroic and victim narratives that remain

absent or infrequent in Japan. His interactions with Wing’s two major antagonists as well as

its other major hero demonstrate this integration while reflecting the value Wing places on

each narrative--the heroic narrative is the most problematic; the victim narrative is more

legitimate but deeply flawed; the perpetrator narrative, though most difficult to embrace,

holds the most hope for a holistic Japanese identity going forward. In Heero’s final

confrontation with Zechs and Treize, his perpetrating enemies, and Relena, his former victim,

and finally with his victimized but perpetrating self, he emerges as a hopeful projection of a

future Japanese national identity.

Heero, Treize, and Zechs: Empathetic Rejection

Heero is the obvious hero of Wing; however, from the beginning of the story Heero’s

suicidal behavior suggests he perceives himself as a perpetrator. This stands in stark contrast

to Treize and Zechs, who are eager to be considered heroes and resistant to recognizing their

perpetrator identities. Heero’s interactions with both Treize and Zechs serve to highlight the

complicated nature of the perpetrator identity through the empathy that Heero, despite being

an enemy of both, nevertheless extends to them.

273

Hashimoto, 5.

110

The gray area between Heero’s and Treize’s hero and perpetrator identities is

illustrated in Episode 34, the only time they come face to face. By this point Heero has been

victimized by Treize’s manipulative scheming, when Treize tricked him into killing the

Alliance leaders at the New Edwards Base. However, by Episode 34 much has changed--

Treize has left Romefeller; Heero has just arrived from supporting the Treize Faction rebels.

The scene plays with their similarities and differences, establishing through dialogue how

they perceive themselves, each other, their roles in the current conflict, and their futures.

Their conversation, however, is almost pathetic, each convinced their own life has become

meaningless. When Heero enters the estate’s library and finds Treize, he immediately invites

Heero to kill him, saying, “Now go ahead and shoot me. End this battle.” He closes his eyes,

waiting. Insisting that Treize’s purpose lies in the soldiers still fighting for him, Heero

demonstrates a level of honesty he has not shared with anyone--“If anything has ended, or

rather, if anything should end, then it’s my own miserable and useless resistance.” Mired in

this perspective, neither is able to summon the conviction to kill the other.

274

In many ways, Heero’s final face to face confrontation with Zechs mirrors the one

with Treize. In both Heero is pointing a gun and seems more interested in understanding his

enemies, a departure from his usual willingness to shoot first and never ask questions.

However, the scene with Zechs departs from the one with Treize in significant ways. Relena

is present. Also, Zechs’ appearance is a hologram. If Heero is aware of this, then he knows

his gun-pointing is unnecessary; it is solely the answers to Heero’s questions that are at stake.

Similar to the scene with Treize, Heero asks open-ended questions in a tone that is firm but

274

Ep. 34.

111

not angry, which contrasts Relena’s raw shock and confusion. “How about explaining what

you meant when you said this battle has meaning?” Heero asks, referring to the enormous

battle Zechs and Treize have staged at the end of the series. Zechs replies, “Unless we fight

no one will learn how foolish fighting is! We must make all of mankind realize that!” Given

Heero’s rejection of Zechs’ offer to join White Fang moments before, we know Heero does

not think this is a great idea. Instead of trying to convince Zechs otherwise, however, he

simply asks, “Why’d you take on the job?” Zechs explains, which sets Relena off again.

Heero, however, reaches some sort of satisfaction with the conversation. His simple, “I

understand,” suggests that, as with Treize, he is able to empathize with Zechs, regardless of

his own opinions.

275

This empathy is critical in establishing that Heero’s character embodies

the integration of the three narratives, not an outright rejection of the heroic and victim

narratives.

However, it is also clear through Heero’s character that Wing does reject some

elements of those narratives. When Heero faces Zechs in their final mobile suit duel, he

directly argues with Zechs’s plan to destroy Earth. “The people who’ve lost Earth will

despise you,” he yells at Zechs as they continue fighting, “and the colonies will rely on you.

The same mistakes will be repeated endlessly as long as you live!” He goes on to include

Treize in his critique. “You’re the same as Treize, claiming to fight for justice to protect the

weak! But in fact you’re not helping the weak at all!” This evolves into a back and forth on

the nature of weakness. Zechs says the strong create the weak. Heero, on one hand, seems to

agree. “I can’t tolerate such people!” to which Zechs rejoins, “Strong people make them that

275

Ep. 46.

112

way!” Heero cannot, however, agree with this. “Zechs,” he says, “nobody is strong. All of

humanity is weak. And that includes you and me!”

276

This statement flies in the face of Treize and Zechs’ wartime ideologies. Several

times throughout the series, both Treize and Zechs, as well as Lady Une

277

and Noin,

describe Heero and the other Gundam pilots as “pure.” Noin does in Antarctica.

278

Treize

does in his defection speech to Romefeller.

279

Zechs asserts it even at his own “bitter end,”

calling Heero “pure and kind” after their duel. Treize and Zechs’ conceptualization of purity

resonates with themes Japan tirelessly messaged during its wartime period, much of which

had a basis in premodern Japanese thought. Purity was (and is) highly valued in Japan. The

idea that warriors could attain purity was not at odds with the reality that warriors kill people.

This ideology arguably saw its purest and most terrible form in the kamikaze.

280

With Heero’s final declaration that “All of humanity is weak,” he utterly refutes this

ideology.

281

At the same time, Heero’s words do not seem to imply the self-hatred he has

experienced through much of the series. This appears to be in large part the result of

continually being confronted by Relena’s perception of him. Her admiration is not rooted in

his identity as a soldier but as a person, which serves as a conduit for Heero to perceive

himself as a human instead of--in Tominaga’s words--a “demon.”

276

Ep. 49.

277

Ep. 25.

278

Ep. 15.

279

Ep. 25.

280

To many young American viewers of Gundam Wing (including myself), this language of “purity” may have

seemed distinctly odd; however, after learning about the ubiquitousness of the value of purity in Japanese

culture and its use in propaganda, especially applied to Japanese soldiers during the Asia-Pacific War, these

characters’ statements take on significant cultural meaning. See “Chapter Eight: The Pure Self” of War Without

Mercy by John Dower, 203-233.

281

Ep. 49.

113

Heero and Relena: The Realist and the Idealist

Like many stories Japanese and otherwise, Wing illustrates the dynamism of

philosophical give and take through a male and female character. In Wing, these two

characters are Heero and Relena. Heero--cold, taciturn, yet the hero of Wing--ultimately

represents imperatives of the perpetrator narrative: he reckons with the truth of the

destruction he has committed but chooses not to be defined by it, instead contributing to

reconciliation with his victims and peace generally. Relena--orphaned at two years old,

innocent of hurting others, and as pure in her intentions to bring about peace as any character

in the show--embodies the pacifist imperative of the victim narrative during the majority of

the series.

282

Unlike his limited interactions with Treize and Zechs, Heero and Relena spend

significant time with each other throughout the series, developing an undeniable if unusual

connection as a result of their initial victim-perpetrator relationship. Moreover, where

Heero’s character represents a meditation on the purpose of fighting, Relena’s represents a

meditation on the nature of peace.

Wing sustains the tension between Heero and Relena through their perpetrator and

victim identities, their soldier and pacifist roles, as well as through Relena’s unreciprocated

curiosity about Heero. By Episode 46 Heero finally settles on how to interact with her--

instead of killing her, he will protect her. Episodes 46, 47, and 48 show Heero infiltrating

Libra in order to find her, speak to Zechs, and bring her to safety on his and the other pilots’

base of operations, the spaceship Peacemillion. Yet even these episodes sustain the friction

282

Eps. 14-49. In Episode 14 she appears as Princess Relena Peacecraft for the first time. During her time as

Queen Relena of the World Nation and even after she steps down and appears in space to dissuade Zechs from

his final plans, it remains clear that she identifies as Peacecraft and espouses pacifism.

114

between their assumed identities and the narratives they represent. Although aware they are

essentially ‘on the same side,’ their decisions about what to do next differ drastically.

Following their joint confrontation of Zechs on Libra, Relena insists through two more

episodes and four more scenes that speaking to Zechs can and will result in his abandoning

his apocalyptic plans. Heero bluntly disagrees.

283

While Relena’s agitation about their disagreement appears to grow, Heero’s

acceptance of the situation and his role in it settles even further. Finally, the tension between

their perspectives reaches its climax in Episode 48. Having returned to Peacemillion with

Relena, Heero prepares to leave and fight Zechs in his Gundam. Relena believes the war is

over since the spaceship Peacemillion rammed Libra, destroying its main cannon. Still deeply

committed to her pacifist ideology, she confronts Heero as he sits in the Gundam’s cockpit

making final preparations to depart. Standing at the cockpit’s opening, brows furrowed in

what increasingly appears to be anger, Relena finally bursts out, “You think if you go, the

war will come to an end?!”

284

The significance of what happens next is underlined visually, auditorily, as well as

contextually. Heero stands up and, reaching behind her helmeted head, brings their faces

close together. With a calm, even tone he tells her, “I’ll go get Zechs, then Treize. Then the

war will be over. If you survive, there will be peace. This is the only thing I can do for you.”

Momentarily lulled by the unexpectedness of Heero’s demeanor, Relena returns to her earlier

combativeness when he reiterates his decision to fight, even asking her to allow him to do so.

283

Eps. 46-48.

284

Ep. 48.

115

Relena’s “No” is quick and adamant. The last thing Heero says before gently pushing her

away to close the cockpit hatch is: “Trust me.”

285

She floats through the hangar in zero

gravity, eventually grasping the railing of a perimeter walkway. Relegated to the position of

bystander, a role she endures to the end of the series, she watches him leave.

In some ways this scene is symbolic of the discussion between the perpetrator and

victim narratives as they are currently defined. With Heero as former perpetrator and Relena

his former victim, the scene represents the “mutual respect and, ultimately, mutual trust”

Hashimoto says are the hallmarks of the imperative of the perpetrator narrative.

286

That

Heero and Relena mutually respect each other is established in an earlier scene on Libra

where Relena tells him, “You really are amazing” to which he replies, “Look who’s talking,”

their tones of voice reflecting their sincerity.

287

The cockpit scene in Episode 48 cements

their trust when, after being pushed out of the Gundam by Heero, Relena finally says into the

communicator in her helmet, “Heero, I do trust you,” before he leaves.

288

However, situating this story in the context of Heero’s departure to fight in a battle

subverts other imperatives of the perpetrator narrative, for instance, that many of its present-

day advocates in Japan assume pacifism as a legitimate and workable national policy. Wing’s

deviation away from an overt antiwar stance is set up through Relena when she asks Heero if

he really thinks his leaving (and fighting) will help end the war. She obviously thinks the

answer is ‘no.’ Heero leaves, indicating he believes the answer is ‘yes.’

289

In this one

285

Ibid.

286

Hashimoto, 130.

287

Ep. 46.

288

Ep. 48.

289

Ibid.

116

instance Heero’s stance functionally aligns with Treize and Zechs’ basic belief that fighting

is sometimes necessary.

It is hard to imagine Wing’s creators suggesting something more sensational and

unexpected than that Japan should remilitarize and that doing so could be based on the

premise of ‘being realistic.’ Japan has effectively been a pacifist country for seventy-five

years; while it is easy to argue that this has not been perfectly manifested,

290

its legacy has

deeply impacted Japanese national self-perception. A pure, pacifist postwar identity would

appear to be the opposite of an ugly, perpetrating wartime one.

Yet as the deeply graven fault lines between the three narratives indicate, not all

Japanese feel this way about Japan’s pacifist identity. Although the perpetrator narrative has

long been overshadowed by the victim narrative, it may be that as the passage of time dulls

the vivid pain felt by Japan’s domestic wartime victims, the country may see the victim

narrative’s pacifist imperative erode. As a college student stated when contingency laws were

proposed to Japan’s Article 9 in 2002,

291

Sentimental chants of “Peace! Peace!” alone can’t bring any peace...around the world

[] there are nations that will violate the peace of others. If Japan is invaded, how are

we going to confront it? [The contingency law] is important...in order to realize the

ideal of peace and to maintain Japan's sovereignty.”

292

290

Critics point to Japan's longtime postwar relationship with the US beginning with the Korean War. Japanese

soil has served as a launchpad for US military operations up to the present day. See “About USFJ,” U.S. Forces,

Japan: The Cornerstone of Peace and Security in the Pacific, https://www.usfj.mil/. Critics also point to

legislation that has increased the powers of Japan’s Self Defense Forces (SDF), see Kanako Takahara, “SDF

Emerging as the Military It Truly Is,” Japan Times, April 17, 2007,

https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2007/04/17/reference/sdf-emerging-as-the-military-it-truly-

is/#.XrDAPp5KjFh

291

“Japan: Interpretations of Article 9 of the Constitution,” Library of Congress, last updated August 18, 2015,

https://www.loc.gov/law/help/japan-constitution/interpretations-article9.php. See also Shibata Akiho’s article

referenced earlier.

292

Hashimoto, 117.

117

Commenting on the student’s remarks, Akiko Hashimoto notes how “the moral

framework that consigns war to the category of “absolute evil [can undermine] an

understanding of the vastly complicated world of human animosity, greed, conformity, and

self-preservation,” which Wing willingly engages in its fictional narrative. Similar to the

college student, Heero’s acceptance of a plan involving military action does not mean

rejecting peace outright; in fact, when he tells Relena, “if you survive, there will finally be

peace,” it is clear he believes in pursuing peace by peaceful means, which she has done

throughout Wing.

293

Once again, it is important to highlight the significance of the subversive decision to

raise Heero’s voice over Relena’s, considering Japanese postwar memory. As Daqing Yang

says in his article “Living Soldiers, Re-lived Memories?” “Veteran’s voices never became

prominent in postwar Japanese society, for they always had to coexist or compete with voices

of A-bomb victims, bereaved families, and others,” whose stories were more palatable

because of their focus on Japan’s victimization and their absence of a clear perpetrator.

294

The opening of Hashimoto’s Long Defeat reinforces this image of the ignored veteran.

Hashimoto recalls traversing a walkway in downtown Tokyo in the 1960s lined with

“amputated middle-aged men wearing tattered cotton military uniforms.”

295

Yet both these

293

Ep. 49. That the peaceful future envisioned by Gundam Wing’s creators is not necessarily a pacifist one is

further underlined in the final moments of the series. Three months after the war ends, we see Relena about to

depart on a space shuttle. When she is addressed by her new title it is not “Princess” or “Peacecraft,” but “Vice

Foreign Minister Darlian.” The role change and reversion to her adopted father’s name strongly suggest she

eventually submitted to Heero’s perspective. Additionally, the narrator’s final statement simply states that when

the Eve Wars end, a new organization called the Earth Sphere United Nation is formed between the Earth and

the colonies. Nothing is mentioned about disarmament or wars ending forever.

294

Daqing Yang, “Living Soldiers, Re-lived Memories? Japanese Veterans and Postwar Testimony of War

Atrocities,” in Ruptured Memories, 82.

295

Hashimoto, 1.

118

men and the aforementioned A-bomb and other civilian Japanese victims were invisible for

the first three decades of the postwar period, waiting to see themselves represented

sympathetically in the media, fictional or otherwise. Thus as Yang says, the victims’ and

perpetrators’ narratives were set up to compete with each other. Given that both narratives

were rooted in silenced trauma, such competition was bound to be especially difficult and

painful, as the creation of space for one might appear to take space from the other. To date,

attempts at sustained discourse between the two perspectives have largely proved

unsuccessful.

296

How then does Wing attempt to elevate Heero as its ultimate messenger of peace?

How does Heero, a perpetrator, successfully confront his former victim’s idealistic and futile

vision, which arose in part from her traumatic experiences? By finally acknowledging the

respect he has been offered, and returning it. By accepting the fact that, at that moment,

fighting is “the only thing” he can do for her individually and for the Earth Sphere

corporately. By sharing her hope for peace. By admitting that, despite all odds, their

relationship has become one of mutual respect and trust.

297

296

Ibid., 127-133.

297

Ep. 48.

119

CONCLUSION

But we can also read the address of the voice here, not as the story of the individual in

relation to the events of his own past, but as the story of the way in which one’s own trauma

is tied up with the trauma of another, the way in which trauma may lead, therefore, to the

encounter with another, through the very possibility and surprise of listening to another’s

wound.

298

Cathy Caruth, Unclaimed Experience: Trauma, Narrative, and History

A final large piece of the spaceship Libra fell towards Earth, the red haze of

atmospheric entry surrounding it in an apocalyptic glow. The piece was still big enough for

its impact with the planet to produce enough dust to block the sun’s rays and cause a never-

ending winter on Earth. Like much science fiction media in Japan, Gundam Wing’s final

episode features the possibility of incomprehensible annihilation.

When Heero Yuy’s Gundam is displayed flying ahead of the piece on a monitor in the

control room of the resource satellite Lady Une, Noin, Relena, and have gathered in, an

unnamed soldier yells, “He’s not gonna make it!” as the red haze envelopes Heero’s

Gundam. Lady Une disagrees-- “From what I’ve seen, the Gundams have overcome all

difficulties.” For Une, this is both a fact and a belief: the Gundams thwarted every attempt

she made to destroy them at the beginning of the series. Now, like Treize, she has come to

believe in the righteousness of their cause. Relena, standing next to her and having forgiven

Une moments before for her father’s assassination, reinforces this statement. “That’s true,”

she says, “We can believe in him! Because Heero can give everyone hope!”

299

298

Caruth, 8.

299

Ep. 49.

120

And he does, of course. He even manages to survive. Flying through the bright light

emanating from the piece’s explosion, Heero flies towards the other Gundam pilots. While

they all comment on this final, incredible act, Quatre’s words stand out. With the white light

from the blast streaming into his cockpit from his vidscreens, Quatre exclaims, “Heero

himself is the heart of outer space!”

300

---

As Morio Watanabe states in his article “Imagery and War in Japan 1995,” heroes of

popular Japanese media are often conceived of as aspirational metaphors of Japanese national

identity in the context of Japan’s fraught memory wars.

301

In the preceding chapters, the

characters Treize Khushrenada, Zechs Merquise, and Heero Yuy were analyzed as analogs of

Japanese history, narrative, and identity. As representatives of the currently dominant

postwar narratives, their portrayals reflect sincere, sympathetic, and ultimately empathetic

grappling with a problematized Japanese national self-image, one which can at times be

heroic, vulnerable to victimization, and capable of perpetrating terrible acts.

In Treize, we see how difficult and perhaps impossible it was for Emperor Showa and

the war generation to confront their perpetrating past, rooted in and inculcated as they were

in a prewar and wartime identity of heroism based in kokutai, a perceived uniqueness of

being Japanese that was directly linked Japan’s ancient culture, including the emperor and

the values of bushido. Wing may even be subtly suggesting that only after the passing of that

generation--and the resultant space for public discourse--will the Japanese be able to

300

Ep. 49.

301

Watanabe, 148-149.

121

successfully address and move beyond the consequences of that generation’s initial silence

about the war.

In Zechs Merquise we see Japan’s multiple victim identities--first, the widely

acknowledged postwar identity embodied in war orphans; and second, the prewar one in

which Japan responded to western imperialism and discrimination by casting a devastating

vision premised on peace for all Asians. By highlighting the connection between Zechs’

victimization and his eventual spiral towards destructive actions, Wing hints at a need to

refocus on the reasons for Japan’s own spiral into warfare--rooted not only in its blatant

descent into militarism of the 1930s but also in its dogged pursuit of national survival,

precipitated by the US military’s arrival in Edo Bay in 1853. Zechs’ downward spiral, the

result of his own victimization and his eventual victimization of others, is perhaps Wing’s

cautionary warning to a postwar Japan whose attachment to pacifism is as ardent as Zechs’.

As for Heero Yuy, I have wondered for years what Quatre can possibly mean when

he calls Heero “the heart of outer space” or, as a different translation reads, “the soul of the

universe,”

302

Wing consistently stays within the realm of realistic science fiction, avoiding

the fantastical elements that many other science fiction anime exhibit, including earlier

Gundam series. Nevertheless, the odd phrase may be an allusion to a critical element of the

302

The phrase Quatre says is Uchuyu no Kokoro wa kare dattandesune. It is in the past positive tense.

“The phrase implies a concept called “the soul of the universe” (or heart of space), and that the speaker and

listener are familiar with its meaning of the concept. The phrase is spoken as a revelation: ... “so HIIRO was the

soul of the universe!” (Emphasis on the HIIRO).” Anna Novick, email message to Pamela Lee Novick, July 20,

2020. Forwarded from P. L. Novick to Genevieve Peterson, July 21, 2020. The variance between this translation

and Paul Baldwin’s may reflect the difficulty of expressing the phrase’s cultural potency into English. The

author is highlighting the difference here because it seems to her that the phrase is meant to identify Heero as a

symbolic unifier of space and Earth, which is more apparent in Novick’s translation of uchuyu as “universe.”

122

original series that is wholly absent in Wing: the Newtype. Newtypes are humans who have

become psychically powerful due to spending extended periods of time in space. In the most

powerful moment in First Gundam in which this is on display, two enemies’ minds meet.

What results is a transcendent moment of connection underscored by a profound sense of

empathy. “People are changing. They’re becoming like us,” Lalah, a mobile suit pilot, tells

Amuro, First Gundam’s protagonist. He agrees. “Do you really believe that, Amuro?” she

asks. “I do,” he responds, “ Because you and I were able to understand each other.”

303

In a much more grounded way, Heero embodies this empathy in Gundam Wing. His

empathy is rooted in his experience of being victimized as a child and adolescent soldier, his

perpetration of wartime violence, and finally his decision to enact good for himself and those

around him. Moreover, his empathy demonstrates an integration of his own experiences with

the victim and perpetrator experiences of others. Symbolically, this is what Une may mean

when she says the Gundams “have overcome all difficulties.” In the same vein, it is the basis

for Relena’s assertion that “Heero can give everyone hope.” Heero is the soul of the

universe.

304

Therefore, in Heero Yuy we see not only the “everyman soldier” of the Imperial

Japanese Army sacrificing their humanity to become demons on the battlefields of China,

Southeast Asia, and the Pacific Islands, but also the aspirational postwar “everyman” and

“everywoman” for which each of the three narratives ultimately seeks to make a path. By

acknowledging the hero, victim, and perpetrator in their national identity, such men and

303

Mobile Suit Gundam, Ep. 40: Cosmic Glow.

304

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing, Ep. 49.

123

women would be able to develop, as Hashimoto says, “a clear, expressive vocabulary to

articulate feelings and understandings of moral conscience, guilt, responsibility, and injustice

that lie in the gray zone between the binary formula [of good and evil].”

305

Heero himself

acknowledges that “everyone is weak,” including himself. Yet his empathy for the weakness

of all mankind makes him the “soul of the universe.” Living with such complexities, Wing

suggests, is the only way to truly moving forward.

306

This thesis has focused on the heroic, victim, and perpetrator narratives as they were

constructed, articulated, and used by the Japanese. It has also explored the Japanese’

responsibility for creating these narratives. Yet, the Japanese are not the only ones who

contributed to their distinctiveness and intractability. Much remains to be researched about

how these narratives were formed and impacted by western powers, particularly the United

States.

An analysis of Gundam Wing makes these inquiries possible from the Japanese

viewpoint. It subversively suggests that Japan’s rekishi nonshiki mondai or “historical

consciousness problem,” is not solely Japan’s. This is represented, for instance, in Wing’s

depiction of colonization, which could equally reflect the threat of western imperialism in the

nineteenth century and Japan’s own imperialist efforts from 1868-1945. Even more

intriguing, it could reflect a sense of Japan’s quasi-colonization during the Occupation period

(1945-1952), as well as Japan’s current dependence on the US for its national security. As

Rana and Mitter assert in the introduction to the edited volume Ruptured Memories, “The

305

Hashimoto, 117.

306

Ep. 49.

124

U.S.-Japan and the U.S.-South Korea security relationships [] represent one of the longest-

standing restraints on war memory throughout the Cold War period.”

307

In her article

“Imperial Army Betrayed,” Yingzhen Chen bluntly spells out the consequences of these

restraints: “In its status as the most beloved child of the United States, Japan has been able to

prudently insist on withholding apologies and compensation for war crimes committed and

damage inflicted on Asian peoples.”

308

In 1995 Gundam Wing created a space to consider broadly the loser’s narrative.

However, as both Wing and the title of Hashimoto’s research--The Long Defeat--suggest,

losing is a nuanced and complicated endeavor; it can be difficult even to distinguish who the

winners and losers are. In its representation of multifaceted heroes, victims, and perpetrators,

Wing suggests not only that the Japanese were, are, and can be heroes, victims, and

perpetrators, but that their enemies in the Asia-Pacific War were, are, and can be all of these,

as well. The US, for instance, has long been upheld as a hero not only of the war but of

Japan’s postwar survival. American soldiers--ambushed, imprisoned, and tortured--are

considered victims. In addition to these dominant narratives, the US could be seen as

perpetrators--detonating the only nuclear weapons ever used in armed combat, killing

hundreds of thousands of Japanese civilians by carpet firebombing,

309

overlooking the

307

“Introduction,” Ruptured Memories, 7.

308

Chen Yingzhen, “Imperial Army Betrayed,” in Perilous Memories, 197.

309

This number is disputed. The bombing of Tokyo on 9-10 March 1945 alone is traditionally estimated at

100,000 civilian deaths; however, many historians put the number much higher for this single event, as well as

the total for all firebombing in Japan. See Mark Selden, “A Forgotten Holocaust: US Bombing Strategy, the

Destruction of Japanese Cities & the American Way of War from World War II to Iraq,” The Asia-Pacific

Journal: Japan Focus, 5, no. 5 (May 2, 2007), https://apjjf.org/-Mark-Selden/2414/article.html.

125

existence of Unit 731,

310

stating that comfort women were “nothing more

than...prostitute[s],”

311

and “[coming] close to turning the entire issue of ‘war responsibility’

into a joke” by exonerating Emperor Showa from war responsibility.

312

Despite these implications, Gundam Wing’s primary focus is not one of blame. It

serves instead to complicate the binaries humans cling to after experiencing wartime

violence. Created by a postwar generation deeply affected by the cultural trauma of Asia-

Pacific War memories, Gundam Wing reminds its viewers of the gray areas between good

and bad, loser and victor, and hero, victim and perpetrator.

310

Cook & Cook, 158-159.

311

Erin Blakemore, “Comfort Woman” Statue Stokes Old Tensions Between Japan and South Korea,”

Smithsonianmag.com, January 3, 2017, https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/comfort-woman-statue-

stokes-old-tensions-between-japan-and-south-korea-180961628/.

312

Dower, Embracing Defeat, 27-28.

 
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