Mechademia 10

Mechademia 10 revolves around a maelstrom of events: the devastation of 3/11-the earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear reactor crises-and the ongoing environmental disasters that have recently overtaken Japan. Because anime and manga have long proposed (and illustrated) alternative worlds-some created after catastrophes-it is fitting that this volume should consider this propensity for “world renewal.”

Individual essays range widely, from a poetic and personal reflection on the ritual of tÔrÔ nagashi (the lighting of floating paper lanterns that has traditionally commemorated souls lost in great public cataclysms, such as war) to a study of the various counterfactual histories written about the historical figure of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, a former peasant farmer who became a military dictator of feudal Japan. The book also includes an original manga, Nanohana, from the popular artist Hagio Moto, who is quoted as saying: “I want to think together with everyone else about Fukushima and Chernobyl, about the future of the Earth, about the future of humankind, and to keep thinking moving forward.”