Summer Comic Market, 2005

helpme!-s
Originally uploaded by benkei242.

On this sweltering day, I squeezed into Tokyo Big Sight with a multitude of other sweaty people to. . . mingle through warehouse-sized rooms of dojinshi (fan-drawn comic books) booths. What can I say? I got to rub shoulders with real-live cosplayers, including (unfortunately unphotographed) Queen Amidala of Naboo and her entourage.
But it's been years since I've tried to follow this particular subculture, and I didn't recognize most of the characters being so lovingly reproduced by the fans. Four hours was enough, but click on the photo to see more pics.

By the way, the sign was a 'Comikke' exclusive for the first-aid station, offering the kind-hearted advice to get enough sleep, and try not to collapse (from the heat?).

Otaku, sweaty but always polite.

On another less humorous note, I just finished watching a documentary on Yasukuni Shrine on NHK. It's fascinating that the 'problem' of the shrine developed smoothly out of a post-war contradiction about two things:
1. state intervention in 'religion'
2. the state's official stance on the Tokyo War Crimes Trial.

I divide the issue into two frames: 1) the specific problems of the Yasukuni Shrine, including its enshrinement of 'class-A war criminals'. 2) the general problem of war commemoration, and state responsibility. The documentary lays out details for the first issue very clearly; three days after sovereignty returned to Japan (the end of the US-led occupation, 1952), the government determined that all war criminals would not be considered criminals under domestic law, and their families should be compensated with state money. In the international arena, however, they would accept the legitimacy of the court's judgement. From this legal basis, (and the Japanese government is a very legal-minded entity) developed the argument that they should thus be enshrined as national heroes just like all others who have died at war. Or at least, there should be no legal reason to block their enshrinement, since they are not considered criminals under domestic law.
The second, wider issue of a government's responsibility for its past, and how it commemorates its military. I have little to add to this discussion (as an American, we've done plenty of celebrating our military history), except to mention that Japan's post-war constitution maintains a separation of religion and state. So why the official visits to a Shinto shrine where Buddhists and Christians object to being enshrined?

Let's do this, like Buddhists

. . .