Imperial Pokemon

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

JC Helary says:

>the hierarchies here are unnaturally strong, they are inhuman and 
>they are very explicit

Explicit, because Japan experienced neither the Jacobin Revolution 
(the Meiji Restoration was a classic instance of the "passive 
revolution" that Gramsci discussed with regard to Italy) nor the 
homegrown Enlightenment (= philosophical struggles between science 
and religion -- pre-modern Japan was not religious in the sense that 
Europe & the Americas were -- hence no significant clerical or 
peasant resistance to _Yosai_ imposed from above).

Cruelty expressed in _ijime_ in Japan combines the worst of 
homosocial public school culture of hierarchy in England (explored in 
_Another Country_ [1984], directed by Marek Kanievska) and the worst 
of American school culture of cliquishness (portrayed in _Welcome to 
the Dollhouse_ [1995], directed by Todd Solondz; _Heathers_ [1989], 
directed by Michael Lehmann; etc.).

Yoshie