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Abstract
Abstract
Contemporary Japanese popular culture is particularly rich in representations of utopian social imaginations that often reveal dystopian scenarios. The anime series Psycho-Pass (2012–2013), especially, is overtly aware of its everyday utopia, and of its inscription in the history of utopian/dystopian representations, in and outside Japan. In 22nd-century Japan, citizens live in a ‘perfect’, stable society, where a powerful government-managed network called ‘Sibyl System’ measures each person’s characteristics and assigns them to their appropriate job and social role. In a system where Japan has reached autarchy, crime rates have plummeted, as Sibyl can calculate the probability of individuals committing crimes, allowing for pre-emptive police apprehension and termination. However, the promise of this utopian society guaranteeing happiness and security is actualised on the citizens’ uncritical acceptance of the roles assigned to them. This suspension of critical thought, concomitant with a general presentism where the characters only concentrate on their repetitive present routines, is at the core of Psycho-Pass. The article investigates how these elements illuminate the anime’s dystopian side, finally highlighting its critical relevance vis-à-vis contemporary Japan.
Introduction
Utopia has been a staple in Western culture since 1516, when Thomas More used the term to indicate the paradisiacal island described by the Portuguese sailor Raphael Hythloday. Traversing shifting definitions, utopia has fashioned its own bountiful genre, including narrative representations of the perfect societies that exist nowhere (drawing on the word’s Greek etymology). Concomitantly, such representations often show the other side of utopia’s coin, dystopia, articulating hellish visions of societies in which ‘evil, or negative social and political developments, have the upper hand’ (Claeys 2010, 107). While a society may seem ideally constructed on one side, it may result in a dystopia when contemplated from another perspective.
Japanese culture is no exception to these social postulations. As Yiu (2009, 57) chronicles, utopian/dystopian literary visions, often connected to futurological fiction showing visions of the ‘future in order to serve as a warning or critique of existing reality’, had their heyday in the Meiji era. After the 1880s, they lost prestige and popularity to literary realism, then deemed superior by theorists such as Tsubouchi Shōyō. After a few decades of silence, this form of fiction thrived again in the 1920s and onwards, following two main strands: one, with a satirical vein, can be seen in Akutagawa Ryūnosuke’s Kappa (1969 [1927]), the other developed into a kind of mass literature with futuristic settings, as in Jō Masayuki’s ‘Jamaika shi no jikken’ (The Experiment of Mr Jamaica, 1971 [1928]). Yiu (2009, 58–59) maintains that this return to popularity was encouraged by the rise of mass culture, which ushered in the proliferation of futuristic and science-fiction imaginations, and by the strength of utopian and dystopian imagination in the 1910s and 1920s. While separate from the then declining futurological inspiration, these visions took various forms, ranging from the literary medium in Natsume Sōseki’s Kusamakura (1990 [1906]), to the formation of communes and egalitarian agrarian establishments, such as Arishima Takeo’s Kaributo cooperative farming community.1
In recent years, numerous works have portrayed supposedly ideal societies and their dystopian sides. Together with near-future dystopian animation since the 1980s, which will be mentioned specifically later on, famous examples in popular culture are the light novels Shin sekai yori (From the New World, 2008), by Kishi Yūsuke, a futuristic dark fantasy where humans develop superhuman abilities and live in idyllic agrarian villages, and Hāmonī (Harmony, 2008) by Itō Keikaku, where a future world devastated by nuclear warfare has been divided into smaller states. Both novels generated multi-media franchises, with the former being adapted into an anime series aired in 2012–2013, and the latter transposed into an animated film (<harmony/>), released in 2015. Both visual adaptations contributed greatly to the works’ success worldwide.
The popular original anime series Psycho-Pass (2012–2013), in particular, is overtly conscious of the role of utopia at the everyday level and of its divide from the resulting nightmarish dystopia, while manifesting its inscription in the history of utopian/dystopian fiction. Psycho-Pass portrays a future Japan where all aspects of life are regulated by a governmental system that assesses people’s capacities, and assigns them an appropriate role, so as to create a perfectly stable society where characters do not need to question their roles and can go about their predetermined life. The series has had remarkable success both in and outside Japan, generating two additional anime seasons (2014, 2019), manga adaptations, spin-off novels and three anime films released in 2015, 2019 (in three parts) and 2020.2 Psycho-Pass’ resonance worldwide is also attested by the swiftness of its American release, with Funimation broadcasting episodes closely following the Japanese release in late 2012, and its subsequent distribution in partnership with the popular streaming service Crunchyroll.3
This study proposes a close reading of the conflicting utopia and dystopia portrayed in Psycho-Pass’ first season. It analyses its utopian features, which coincide with the perfect society seen from the perspective of the happy elite citizens whose lives are controlled by the government. Then, it considers the series’ dystopian traits, manifested by the contrasting visions of potential criminals and enforcers, and saliently characterised by a presentist emphasis on the immediate, predicated on a crisis of perceptions of orders of time. Introduced by François Hartog, presentism indicates a distinctive condition of the contemporary age where the present has stretched indefinitely, to the detriment of demarcated notions of past and future. Within presentism, people live in a sort of never-ending present, where they deal with analogous situations repeatedly, without achieving permanent solutions. In Psycho-Pass, presentism is combined with a disinterest in the population to think critically about their society. In their utopia, the Japanese live by fulfilling their pre-assigned roles again and again, without questioning any of the directives of the dominant system. They only focus on what pertains to their individual sphere, privileging what is of immediate concern. Thus, this society is dystopian because the citizens sacrifice their capacity for critical enquiry in exchange for a happy and stable life; the Japanese are isolated, all caught up in constantly upholding their circumscribed realities. A solution to escape the repetitive cycles of the present and its intrinsic isolation may be achieved through re-establishing personal ties and forging a community based on critical thinking.
The theoretical framework highlighting Psycho-Pass’ utopia/dystopia largely includes Foucault, Kristeva and other Western theorists; while this approach may bring up the question of the validity of applying Western ideas of utopia to the Japanese case, this study aligns itself with Cornyetz in considering that the hesitation to use Western theory in the case of Japan ‘reflects what must be identified as a basically Orientalist insistence that Japan is not subject to similar terms and convolutions of modernity that inform the West’ (1999, 3). Whilst a comparative analysis of Japanese and Western visions of utopia is a research avenue worth pursuing, the focus of this study is to let Psycho-Pass’ particular treatment lead the theory, nuanced by the anime’s specific cultural and historical context, thus showing that the series’ utopian and dystopian portrayals explicitly address issues of Western theory and culture, such as utopian control and intertextual relations with notable dystopian visions, while engaging with Japanese history, media theory, and animation.
Alongside the study of the series as a relevant contemporary utopian articulation, the reflection on Psycho-Pass underscores the significance of understanding representations of utopia/dystopia as a way to engage with the present-day world, because it is exactly through these narratives that the anime manifests its connection with contemporary utopian experiences, for example the disaster utopias in the aftermath of 11 March 2011, and its usefulness as a critical framework to address issues of censorship and thought control in contemporary Japan.
Intertextual utopia and dystopia
In Psycho-Pass’ society discipline rules, and irregularities are contained.4 Life in 22nd-century Japan is regulated by the government’s Sibyl System, a powerful network of psychometric scans that measure the minds, personalities and inclinations of all citizens, assigning them to the most appropriate job and position. This assessment is the titular ‘Psycho-Pass.’ Having thus achieved a stable society, Japan has become self-sufficient also economically, thanks to machines producing genetically modified corn, the ‘hyper-oats’, and a new energy source called ‘metan dehydrate’ in the countryside. Consequently, most citizens need to live cramped in towns, while the general population has decreased to 1/10 of what it was in the twenty-first century. Japan is now autarchic, but also isolated. Relations with foreign countries are practically non-existent, as defence drones deployed along national borders prevent intrusions.
Psycho-Pass is a crime story, revolving around Sibyl’s most prominent invention, the Crime Coefficient (hanzai keisū). By measuring Psycho-Passes, Sibyl System can also calculate the probability of an individual to break the law. When the Crime Coefficient exceeds a set numeric level, police forces can apprehend the future perpetrator, even using lethal force. The law-upholding teams are comprised of enforcers (shikkōkan), assembled from individuals with innately high crime coefficients, and by inspectors (kanshikan) who are in charge of overseeing them. Both teams are equipped with special handguns called ‘Dominators’ which, connected to Sibyl System, activate only when facing latent criminals.
In the eyes of its architects and the blissful citizens that feel safe in a well-ordered society, this Japan where crime rates have plummeted is an ideal world. On the other hand, this system reveals a dystopian nightmare for those at the other end of the social and judicial spectrum, in particular criminals and enforcers, entailing crucial issues on freedom and the nature of justice. To construct this double-edged world, the series plays with inspirations from notable works in utopian and dystopian fiction. The references are numerous. One example is George Orwell’s novel Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949), where a ubiquitous surveillance system spies on citizens to maintain order. Similarly, Sibyl penetrates every aspect of the citizens’ private lives. Furthermore, the series follows in the footsteps of near-future dystopian science fiction, often cyberpunk, ranging from American films such as Blade Runner (1982; dir. Ridley Scott), to Japanese anime films such as Ghost in the Shell (Kōkaku kidōtai, 1995; dir. Oshii Mamoru).5 Common traits are the dichotomy between resistance groups and oppressive governments or corporations, who often use technology to determine the lives of lowly people. Similarities continue at the visual level, since these dystopias often portray dark urban sceneries. In particular, Psycho-Pass’ first episode immediately underscores its kinship with Ghost in the Shell, as both features open with nightly views of tall buildings and of police forces being deployed (helicopters, drones), then closing in on the protagonists, the enforcer Kōgami in the series, Major Kusanagi Motoko atop a tower in the film.
Other references involve the nature of control to establish order. Takami Kōshun’s novel Batoru rowaiaru (Battle Royale, 1999) comes to mind with its dystopian portrayal of an alternative Japan, the totalitarian Republic of Greater East Asia, enforcing a military programme randomly selecting middle-school students and forcing them to kill each other until only one survives. The purpose behind this is to maintain order and suppress rebellion through coercion and the persuasion that the government can penetrate every side of life. In an apparently less brutal way, Psycho-Pass’ Sibyl must maintain control and keep human categories well demarcated, to avoid insurgences. This approach resonates with the structural divisions described by Michel Foucault regarding the medieval plague-stricken town, a utopian example of the perfect society. In Discipline and Punish (1977), Foucault describes that in the town an identified source of higher control, a continuous hierarchical figure, is necessary to eradicate confusion. This chief assesses people and coercively assigns them a place and a social function, to avoid mingling with the sick and the subsequent outburst of an epidemic. To do so, the hierarchical figure must establish binary divisions and branding, clearly dividing the inhabitants into opposing categories such as mad or sane, infected and healthy. To rule chaos, the source of power must exert pervasive control and categorisation: ‘Against the plague, which is a mixture, discipline brings into play its power, which is one of analysis’ (1977, 197).
Sibyl System functions collectively as Foucault’s continuous hierarchical figure, in that it aims to obliterate any uncertainty by following the principle of the right man for the right job. With a policy akin to socialism, eliminating competition and assuring full employment, the government’s utopian society has achieved safety and stability. This state of affairs is redolent of Aldous Huxley’s famous dystopian novel Brave New World (1994 [1955]), where a similar process is achieved through genetic manipulation. In a future London, people are engineered through artificial wombs and indoctrinated from childhood to fit into predetermined classes based on their intelligence and skills. The purpose is the same as in Psycho-Pass: to create and maintain a stable society.
Psycho-Pass draws also on dystopian science-fiction literature by Philip K. Dick.6 In particular, Sibyl’s pre-emptive crime operations harken back to those described in the 1956 short story ‘The Minority Report’, where three clairvoyant mutants foresee crimes in the form of visions, and feed information to the police’s Precrime unit to catch the perpetrators before they commit the felony.
Psycho-Pass engages in an intertextual play with previous sources. Intertextuality as a critical term was coined in 1966 by Julia Kristeva in her study on Mikhail Bakhtin’s theory of dialogue and carnival. Intertextuality does not consider texts as self-sufficient, self-contained units, but as a constellation of references to and quotations from other existing texts, which can exist across various media. A text is never isolated, but dialogues with other texts and documents (paratexts), building a deep relation involving one another. Intertextuality is ‘a mosaic of quotations; any text is the absorption and transformation of another. The notion of intertextuality replaces that of intersubjectivity, and poetic language is read at least double’ (Kristeva 1986, 37).
Through overt connections with celebrated precedents, the series inscribes itself in the history of utopian/dystopian representations, in the form of a new product that, aware of what has been produced, combines elements in the formation of its own utopian and dystopian perspectives. Thus, Psycho-Pass also nods to its audience, presuming it is attentive, by stimulating viewers to identify this new construction.
Psycho-Pass’ animation techniques too share significant traits with other near-future dystopian anime. Like the majority of contemporary TV anime, the series uses limited cel animation, a technique dehierarchising layers of images and stressing the structuration of elements instead of relations of movement. This technique is brought to its fullest in the introspective dystopian anime Shin seiki Evangerion (Neon Genesis Evangelion, 1995–1996; dir. Anno Hideaki). One prime example of this is the last episode of the series, where the young protagonist Ikari Shinji’s psyche is in existential crisis, with different characters’ dehierarchised faces superimposed on his outline, and his frame of reference dissolved in long lines that recombine (Lamarre 2009, 110–182). This kind of animation (referred to as ‘hyperlimited animation’ in Anno’s case), focuses on expressions and emotions in characters, therefore ‘increasingly stress[ing] character design, and the degree of detail and the density of information [become] as important as line, implied depth, and implied mass’ (Lamarre 2009, 204). In fact, the work of Evangelion’s character design artist, Sadamoto Yoshiyuki, is crucial in discourses on the series’ popularity and animation. Similarly, Psycho-Pass’ recognisable character design by popular manga artist Amano Akira highlights the attention on the characters’ emotional motions. One prime example is the conversation between two main characters, Tsunemori and Kōgami, in episode 17. The animation slides planes between the two to instil a sense of slow movement, while emphasis is placed on both characters’ expressions, with limited movements of eyes and mouth suggesting their distressed state or deadpan acceptance of the dystopian reality of the current justice system.
Psycho-Pass implements limited animation, dialogue and narrative to portray a utopian world on one side, that shows its dystopian face in the restricted temporal dimension, dominated by the present, in which its characters live. The analysis of presentism illuminates this emphasis on the immediate limiting the Japanese to the uncritical acceptance of their realities. Before explaining this theory, it is necessary to briefly sketch the main events in Psycho-Pass.
One hundred years from the date of the anime broadcast, in 2112, inspector Tsunemori Akane has recently been appointed to Unit 1 of the Public Safety Bureau’s Criminal Investigation Division, where she starts supervising the enforcer Kōgami Shin’ya. Their close relationship becomes central to the narrative, as they tackle the crimes of the main antagonist, the criminal mastermind Makishima Shōgo. A system anomaly, a criminally asymptomatic (menzai taishitsu) person who could never raise his Psycho-Pass (regardless of his actions), Makishima aims to destroy Sibyl’s perfect Japan by instigating others to commit his carefully planned crimes. Years before, one such crime had caused the death of a policeman close to Kōgami who, unable to face the emotional crisis, had seen his crime coefficient skyrocket, causing his demotion from inspector to enforcer. Eventually, after learning the shocking secret that Sibyl is composed by the brains of asymptomatic individuals like him, Makishima decides to attack Japan’s economy by uploading a virus into the system. In the final confrontation, although Sibyl wants Makishima alive (so that he may be convinced to join them), Kōgami decides to administer his individual justice, motivated also by his personal grudge. Once the police have tracked Makishima down, despite Akane’s efforts Kōgami kills him and disappears.
The tyranny of the present
The Western theory of presentism adds an essential temporal reflection to the study of Psycho-Pass. It recontextualises its dystopian problematics through the end of temporality and within the dimension of an inescapable present. Presentism describes a contemporary crisis in the perceptions of orders of time, where it has become difficult to see the past as a repository of common memory, or to see the future as optimistic progress.
French historian François Hartog articulates this theory in Regimes of Historicity (2015),7 where he argues that the current age is shaped by a sense of short-terminism, or ‘presentism’ (coined in contrast to futurism), where time is experienced as a never-ending present, and where only the immediate counts. Now, politics and the economy exist in their own time, mired in a cycle of repetition where every moment resembles the other:
Political leaders are required to ‘rescue’ the euro, for instance – or the whole financial system, for that matter – every month or so, or at least to declare they are doing so. And this raises an even more fundamental problem: our old representative democracies are beginning to realize that they don’t really know how to adapt their methods and rhythms of decision making to this tyranny of the immediate without sacrificing precisely what made them democratic in the first place. (Hartog 2015, xiv)
According to Hartog, this condition has emerged also as a consequence of perceptions of rifts in time and questioning of its orders, which has intensified after ground-breaking events such as the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the collapse of the communist ideal, and the rise of fundamentalist movements that have shattered suddenly and irreversibly people’s relations of time. It has now become difficult to demarcate past, present and future effectively. The result is an expansion of the present, which now functions like the tota simul advocated by St. Augustine, and by Plotinus before him, to define eternity: ‘Nothing passes away but the whole is simultaneously present’ (Hartog 2015, 203). The past and the future thus conflate into an ‘omnipresent present’, becoming indistinguishable from one another.
The philosopher Sakon Takeshi has also used the term ‘presentism’ (genzaishugi) in his studies. Unlike Hartog’s focus on regimes of historicity and perceptions of orders of time, in Jikan ni totte jūbunna kono sekai: genzaishugi no tetsugaku to sono kanōsei (This World is Enough for Time: The Philosophy of Presentism and its Possibilities, 2015), Sakon concentrates on the philosophy of the passage of time, indicating presentism as the theory according to which existing things exhaust reality through their present state, albeit entailing changes in properties, formation or dissolution. Although this emphasis on the present dimension of things does bear points of contact with the actions in Psycho-Pass, the latter are usually characterised by a repetitive structure, devoid of a critical confrontation with the possibility of change, which makes them resonate with Hartog’s view of presentism, which is the one referred to throughout the article.
Building on Hartog’s argument arising in the aftermath of events in the late 80s, an analogous background in the Japanese experience can be situated approximately in the mid-90s, demarcated by epochal events and changes that shifted the general perception of reality and time from stability and hope to one of instability and fear for the future.8 Such events range from the growing economic recession that led to widespread precariat and non-regular employment, to natural and man-made disasters such as the Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake and the sarin gas attack on the Tokyo underground in 1995 perpetrated by the cult organisation Aum Shinrikyō.
The above events have generated numerous theories in Japan on how life and its general perception would not continue as before. Sociologist Ōsawa Masachi, for example, has termed the age after 1995 as an ‘age of impossibility’ (fukanōsei no jidai), where it has become impossible for people to participate in shared ideologies, or to distinguish what is right or wrong. Caught in this numbing impossibility, they seek refuge in experiences of immediately perceivable reality, of which ‘a most basic example is the trend of self-harm, seen in wrist-cutting’ (Ōsawa 2008, 4).9
Another example, akin to presentism, is the concept of ‘endless everyday’ (owari naki nichijō). Introduced by sociologist Miyadai Shinji (1995), the endless everyday refers to the post-Aum social landscape in Japan where people, especially the youth, can no longer assert their identity or find specific meaning in a society that has inexorably become ‘fluid’, where values are no longer backed by common ideals, and where earth-shattering events such as mass-murder may happen at any time. To survive in this ‘flattened’ dimension, Miyadai suggests, people can enjoy everyday activities that gratify them (for example, the phenomenon of enjo kōsai, referring to young women dating older men in exchange for monetary benefits) on a repeated basis.
While Miyadai’s endless everyday tackles repetitive action, which is also seen in Psycho-Pass, this is posited against the background of a decline of commonly identified ideologies, or grand narratives in Lyotard’s terms. In the anime series the repetition is instead determined by common policies that are explicit, emanating from an omnipresent system regulating every aspect of daily life, a strategy intrinsic to the construction of a social utopia. This is also why presentism proves particularly useful, in that it frames the anime’s dystopian world in an endless present dimension, where only the immediate matters, and the grand narrative of Sibyl represents the epochal events shattering people’s perceptions of orders of time.
Dystopian suspension of thought
The presentism pervading life in Psycho-Pass is interwoven with the general suspension of critical thought, enabling the happy citizens’ utopia to function. They abandon their critical enquiries into their life purpose and beliefs, accepting the immediate solace of their predetermined roles, both at the professional and personal level. For them only the present, in which they repeatedly perform their roles, has any real value.
Sibyl has obliterated any other consequential temporal notion by preventing the Japanese from envisioning future possibilities of change, or from having notions of a shared past. This is exemplified by the governmental ban on the study of history. Purged historical records can only be accessed through digital databases.10 As history is the repository of collective memory informing the present, this policy creates presentism by discouraging critical thought that might question the validity and benefits of Sibyl System.11 On the other hand, the people do not question the government’s practices for the sake of the utopian happiness of a system providing all the answers.
The suspension of critical thought under the government’s strict surveillance underscores Psycho-Pass’ responses to historical precedents. Sibyl harkens back to the implementations of thought control in interwar Japan. To counter the spread of destabilising leftist radicals, by 1911 the government had created the Special Higher Police unit (Tokubetsu kōtō keisatsu), the so-called ‘thought police’, to ‘control social movements, and to suppress radicals spreading dangerous foreign ideologies’ (Mitchell 1976, 25). Concerns that foreign ideas were corrupting the citizens’ observance of the kokutai ideology (national unity around the emperor) led to the enactment of the Peace Preservation Law (chian iji hō) in 1925, which sanctioned ideological limits for individuals and organisations, undermining free speech and association. In 1927 a Thought Section was created by the Justice Ministry as an all-out effort to prosecute ideological offenders. These practices escalated on 15 March 1928, when the Justice Ministry and the thought procurators led a mass arrest of about 1,600 suspects associated with the Japanese Communist Party. Policies of thought control extended also to education, with a Student Section created in the Bureau of Special Education in 1928 to monitor students and teachers, ensuring that emphasis was placed on the kokutai vision (Mitchell 1976, 25–92). This nationalistic focus correlates with the wartime propaganda of the 1930s spreading ideas that Japan’s modernity led to a superior empire in Asia. Kushner writes that ‘wartime Japanese society envisioned the empire, with Japan at its pinnacle, as hygienic, progressive, scientific, the harbinger of civilization that Asia should strive to emulate’ (2006, 11). This is at the base of the ‘thought war’ (shisō sen), the fight for ideological supremacy in Asia (and then against the West), which Japan used to convince China of its benevolent mission to liberate Asia in the wake of its mass dispatch of armed forces to the country in 1932 and 1937, and when the Pacific War erupted in 1941 (Kushner 2006, 15).
Propaganda could also be promoted through media. Ōtsuka Eiji’s edited book Dōin no media mikkusu (Media Mix Mobilisation 2017) analyses the effectiveness of wartime and postwar propaganda through connected works and the ideological potential they conveyed through their pervasiveness in the citizenry’s daily lives. One prime example is the wartime media mix (avant la lettre) of Yokusan ikka Yamato san (The Yamatos: The [government] Supporting Family), promoted by the government’s Imperial Rule Assistance Association (Taisei yokusan kai). It revolved around manga series written by multiple authors and serialised across various publications, which then evolved into derivative products such as records, novels and children’s stories. Ōtsuka maintains that, while the tales of this exemplary family were not explicitly political, they contributed to the propaganda because through their depictions of neighbourhood (chōnai) life, they promoted the image of the tonarigumi, the ‘neighbourhood associations’, the smallest units of mobilisation in World War II Japan, consisting of households united for internal security: ‘By rearranging this “family” as a “tonarigumi” called “neighbourhood”, Yokusan ikka showed the structure of wartime daily life. Thus, fascism was established through the masses’ participation as active audience or, in Ian Condry’s words, their “collaboration”’ (Ōtsuka 2017, 50).
Whether for propaganda or for suppression of insurgencies, government-implemented thought control is part of Japan’s recent history in dystopian animation too. Oshii Mamoru’s works may be seen as critiques of thought control practices. In the futuristic Ghost in the Shell Major Kusanagi of Section 9, a branch of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs countering technological terrorism, is embroiled in an intricate plot where the Ministry plans a collaborative technological project with US researchers to hack citizens in order to make them commit illegal actions on their behalf.12 Moreover, the dystopian alternative postwar history of Jin-Roh (1999; dir. Okiura Hiroyuki; written by Oshii), focuses on the elite counter-terrorist Capital police unit ‘Kerberos’, caught amidst brutal urban warfare to suppress the rebellious guerrillas called ‘The Sect.’ Through the portrayal of forces policing the streets, including special units and the secret dissident organisation within them (the Wolf Brigade), Oshii is criticising the police as an institutionalised tool of governmental authority. The main character Fuse, a member of Kerberos, desperately tries to justify his mission as an enforcer of state authority (Cavallaro 2006, 158). Further, Ruh (2004) stresses the film’s critique of Japan’s postwar peace politics. As Japan’s Self Defence Forces cannot quell urban riots (as that would breach Article 9 of the constitution), Oshii ‘critiques a constitution that allows for the creation of such a paramilitary police force […] He is attacking the hypocrisy that allows for the existence of the Wolf Brigade, a group that violates the spirit but not the letter of Article 9’ (153). In Oshii’s dystopias criticising governmental control, as in Psycho-Pass, central characters are members of the police or the military. From their positions as enforcers of repressive, thought-controlling policies, they offer insightful perspectives to assess the validity of these systems from within.
Thought control in Psycho-Pass deprives citizens of the critical room for personal choices (Sibyl also coordinates love relationships and marriages); in the government’s comfortable embrace the ‘happy’ citizens conveniently stop thinking about whether it is safe to live in this Japan, for the benefit of a utopian safety. Even if some have doubts, eventually they choose individual stability. This is what Kōgami refers to when, citing German sociologist Ulrich Beck’s Risk Society (Risikogesellschaft 1992), he states that Japan depends on something convenient, and yet dangerous:
Kōgami: A safe and perfect society is just an illusion. The society we live in now is still a dangerous society.
Tsunemori Akane (henceforth Akane): Dangerous?
Kōgami: It’s a society depending on things that are convenient, but also dangerous. Our government made us take risks. But the risks were dispersed and distributed so cleverly that no one was able to notice it. No, they did notice, but pretended that they hadn’t. Everyone might have been looking the other way. Precisely because there was danger, they had to act as if there wasn’t, in order to keep their sanity. (Motohiro and Shiotani 2012–2013, Ep. 17)
This mechanism flips over the coin of the supposedly utopian society, showing its dystopian colours. Davina Cooper writes that both utopia and dystopia offer polarised images of what could be, but they differ in conceptual lines:
Utopia conventionally depends on stimulating desire and hope in order to inspire and motivate change. Dystopias, by contrast, aim to stimulate action in order to resist or halt what is feared to be emerging. Dystopic narratives assume change, that the world is not a static or stable place but moving toward, indeed in some cases already enacting, its own ruin. (2014, 31)
The change that Kōgami denounces is the dangerous practice whereby people willingly divert their attention from crucial matters, thus contributing to the ruin of their own society, which is only pretending to be perfect. Psycho-Pass portrays a dystopia where each person has decided to silence their critical efforts, harbouring a danger that will destroy Japan.
The consequences of minimal critical thinking are crucial in the portrayal of justice and crime. Similar to the three clairvoyants in ‘The Minority Report’, Sibyl’s justice does not allow debates about the nature of crime, or the legitimacy of pre-emptive arrests. On the other side, law enforcers submit their critical capacities to the Dominators, which substitute their ability to discern crime. Any doubts, let alone the revelation that system anomalies form Sibyl’s core and cooperate for the eradication of crime, would destabilise a world where, in the words of Psycho-Pass’ main writer Urobuchi Gen, ‘indirect thought control is all over. […] I created everything as a “world where peace is kept by not making people think”’ (Urobuchi and Kusaka 2014, 67).
Against the general suspension of thought, the three main characters Makishima Shōgo, Kōgami Shin’ya and Tsunemori Akane offer critical reactions to the dystopian ruin of their society, situating themselves in different ways in relation to its presentism. Examining their cases closely to see how citizens live in this Japan, and how they may find an escape from the never-ending cycles of presentism, allows to understand Psycho-Pass’ dystopia further, thus ultimately highlighting how the apprehension of these inherent problematics, and possible solutions, speaks to comparable situations of thought control in the contemporary context.
Makishima is an anomaly, his Psycho-Pass always being at zero level. From this liminal perspective, he preaches living according to his free will, without indulging in the solace of a predetermined life. Makishima’s priority is to destroy the system. He loathes his fellow Japanese, cattle that obey Sibyl’s orders, lulled by the immediate comfort it offers:
Makishima: By analysing an organism’s force field read by a cymatic scan [sic], they [the system] figure out how a person’s mind works…The intelligence of science finally uncovered the secret of souls, and this society changed drastically…. But people’s wills are not a part of that assessment. I wonder what sort of criteria you use to separate good from evil. […] I want to see the radiance of people’s souls. I want to check if it really is precious. However, when men simply base their lives around Sibyl’s oracle, without ever questioning their own will, do they really have any value? (Motohiro and Shiotani 2012–2013, Ep. 11)
Makishima lives for the stimuli provided by bursts of anti-Sibyl violence, what he calls the ‘radiance of people’s souls’ (hito no tamashii no kagayaki). In a way, these stimuli remind of the repeated pleasures craved to survive in Miyadai’s endless everyday. By instigating violence, the criminal’s ego is gratified instantly with the pleasure of witnessing extreme manifestations of free will that challenge Sibyl’s unbending categories of right and wrong. Thus, Makishima is reacting to Sibyl also by creating his own everyday utopian domain. Cooper defines everyday utopias as concrete practices that do not aim to take over dominant social structures, but instead ‘work by creating the change they wish to encounter, building and forging new ways of experiencing social and political life. […] Their focus is on building alternatives to dominant practices’ (2014, 2). Makishima operates gradually to concretely affirm his envisioned change through the free will explicated by crimes, thus contrasting the mind-numbing directives of Sibyl (the dominant practice).13
One telling example of this is when Makishima tests Akane’s free will in episode 11, challenging her to kill him with a rifle while he holds her friend Yuki hostage in front of her. Here, he is reacting to a double stimulation: on the one hand, he sees Akane debate whether she should obey the Dominator, which does not recognise Makishima as a criminal, or whether she should follow her instincts and stop him; on the other, he relishes the pleasure of killing Yuki without being arrested, thus stating his truth and Sibyl’s falsehood:
Makishima: My Psycho-Pass has always been pure white. It never got clouded, not even once. All sorts of vital reactions in my body must be affirming me, judging that my actions are those of a good and sound man. […] You can’t measure my sins. If there is someone who can judge me, it’d be only those…who choose to become murderers of their own free will. […]
Akane: (picking up the rifle, shaking) Let Yuki go now! Or…
Makishima: Or I’ll be killed, by your murderous intent. That’d be a grand ending in its own way. Now, you feel the weight of life on your index finger, don’t you? As long as you’re Sibyl’s puppet, you can never experience that. That’s the weight of decision and [free] will.
Incapable of disobeying Sibyl, Akane lets her friend die horribly. Although Makishima enacts his rebellious counter-utopia for his gratification, he also encourages fundamental questions about people’s free will aimed at destabilising the dystopia of the suspension of thought. By testing Akane, he casts moral doubts about the essence of justice: whether it should follow one’s own judgement, or whether it should adhere uncritically to a superimposed ideal.
Makishima’s utopian-aimed change is symptomatic of a lack of community. His opposition may stem also from the absence of communal ties with other human beings, mindlessly conforming to Sibyl’s utopia/dystopia. As an anomaly, he experienced isolation from his childhood because he did not belong to the society of normal people with pre-assigned roles. Therefore, unable to be part of Sibyl he decided to destroy it.14
It is relevant to bear the above in mind when reading Makishima’s statements that inter-personal connections do not matter anymore as a foundation of individual identity, because ‘in a world where everybody is surveilled by the system, and lives by the system’s norms, a circle of people is worthless. Everybody is just domesticated to his own personal peace of mind, in his small prison cell’ (Ep. 21). This is reminiscent of Foucault’s theory of the ‘Panopticon’, a centralised structure of constant surveillance, usually a prison, where the ever-visible inmate, under the gaze of the authorities, inscribes himself in its relation of power, adapting to a new form of discipline from above.15 This vision evokes the Japanese media theory context too, namely Azuma Hiroki’s ‘environmental control power’ (kankyō kanrigata kenryoku). Unlike the Foucauldian Panopticon, which makes the subject internalise power by discipline, Azuma describes a power that is based on systematic control, typical of a pervasive information network and management that control people’s privacy, determining whether citizens are legitimate without the subjective internalisation of laws. Kadobayashi explains that the ‘transition from disciplinary power to environmental control power, for Azuma, signals the end of the modern subject formed by the internalisation of the external gaze, and thus corresponds to the broader social context of the transition from the modern to the postmodern’ (2017, 91).16 Therefore, Makishima’s interpretation is enmeshed in both theoretical contexts, since it denounces the isolation of the citizens, disciplined to mindless bliss, and the control of a system monitoring every aspect of their lives, determining their legitimacy.
Furthermore, Makishima’s words lend themselves to a double reading: first, he exposes the isolation of those finding happiness in the comfortable suspension of thought. Second, he might be resenting Japan for preventing him from experiencing any sense of belonging. Even though it is a presentist system where only the immediate counts, and which discourages critical thinking, even being a subservient citizen like the others entails human connections. Not being a part of Sibyl System’s dystopia prevented Makishima from feeling kinship with anyone, possibly provoking his homicidal intent.
Makishima is relevant to understand Kōgami by contrast. The two characters appear antithetical both in their motivations and their visual representations. Makishima has long white hair, and is normally dressed in white or pale colours, giving away an ethereal aura suggesting lack of emotional engagement with others; conversely, Kōgami has jet-black spiky hair and always wears black. He rarely smiles, and frequently bears expressions of anger or sadness, as if to show that, regardless of his intentions, he is caught up in emotions.
Nevertheless, the criminal and the enforcer are not that dissimilar, as they both challenge the system’s presentist dystopia: where Makishima attempts to destroy it from the outside, Kōgami opposes it from within. Since his critical sense of justice clashes with Sibyl’s standards that would prevent him to arrest Makishima, he rejects the unbending notion of good embodied by the Dominator, embarking on a solo rogue mission. His relationship with Makishima comes then full circle because, by chasing someone who is not officially a criminal, Kōgami is expressing his free will, thereby producing that ‘radiance of the soul’ that Makishima seeks, as noted by Fujitsu (2014, 75–76). Makishima’s worst enemy brings about the greatest change for his everyday utopia.
Despite promoting change against the dystopia, Kōgami and Makishima’s methods are based on individual acts with homicidal purposes. They do not involve rebuilding ties with a community that would transform the system from within. It is either total destruction or following one’s personal justice to eliminate a destructive factor, knowing that afterwards they will not be able to return to function in society. Hence, both men must necessarily disappear.
To bring about definitive change, to rebuild inter-personal connections, another approach is necessary, one operating from the inside while still alert to the dangers posed by the system. Tsunemori Akane represents this anti-dystopian solution. As Fujitsu (2013, 69) remarks, by instigating crime Makishima aims to recreate another form of submission and control over individuals, similar to the practices of the system he wants to destroy. Akane, on the other hand, contrasts this view and pursues Makishima, while still disapproving of Kōgami’s maverick abandonment of the system. She maintains a separate critical stance opposing the two men’s excesses, while still being close to both of them. She is not absorbed into Sibyl, because she critiques it, but at the same time she is not removed from it either, because that would prevent her from monitoring it.
This solution resonates with Azuma’s ‘human route’, the possibility to find freedom in a postmodern society surrounded by environmental control power. Azuma posits a ‘human’ breakaway from animalistic consumption, referring here to Alexandre Kojève’s description of a return to animality in US postwar society, characterised by consumers’ tendencies to satisfy their needs immediately in close want-satisfaction cycles (Kojève 1980, 160–162). For Azuma, in present-day society environmental control power deprives people of their subjectivity by emphasising such animalistic activities. However, he identifies a middle ground between the reduction to animal cycles (relishing in the thoughtless presentism, in Psycho-Pass’ case), wont in an information network, and a complete rejection of the system. This freedom is located in the human ‘right not to be connected to networks’ (Azuma 2005a, 2005b). In Psycho-Pass, it is the possibility to momentarily suspend being absorbed into the presentism of Sibyl, and exercise critical thought.
Further, through this in-between stance, Akane can eventually perform the structural change required to connect people and to envision a way outside of presentism. By finding her own voice within the system, she is confident that with her change she will be able to rebuild a community that thinks and upholds ideals that will bring Sibyl’s control to an end: ‘The law doesn’t protect people. People protect the law! The law is built on the hopes of all those who hated evil and sought a righteous way of living. […] People have prayed for a better world throughout time…To make those prayers still meaningful, we have to try our best to protect it to the very end’ (Ep. 22). Akane chooses to bet on people’s capacity to think and be brave to achieve the ideals of a free society that can change and learn from its experiences, opposing Sibyl’s endless present.
She envisions a future change, signifying an opposition to presentism’s inability to see the future optimistically. Re-establishing a critical community creates a ‘concrete utopia’, as outlined by Ruth Levitas building on the work of the utopian Marxist Ernst Bloch, who underscored concrete utopias, striving for a real possible future, as opposed to abstract utopias, fantasies for surviving daily reality. Levitas elaborates that ‘concrete utopia can be understood both as latency and tendency. It is present historically, as an element in human culture which Bloch seeks to recover; and it refers forward to the emergent future…a praxis-oriented category characterized by “militant optimism”’ (1997, 70). In Psycho-Pass, Akane believes there is a tendency for critical thinking in human nature; she decides to encourage this concrete utopia by betting optimistically on the future:
Akane: It’s also true that current society can’t hold without Sibyl.
Sibyl: We feel we can confide in your judgment based on your respect for the law.
Akane: Do you know the most demeaning thing you can do to the law you should respect? That’s creating and applying a law that is unworthy of protection. You shouldn’t underestimate humans. We’re always aiming for a better society. Some day, someone is going to come to turn off the power in this room. We will find a new path for sure. Sibyl System, you guys have no future! (Ep. 22)
Conclusion
Psycho-Pass establishes an intertextual dialogue highlighting the anime series’ inscription in the history of utopian/dystopian imaginations. Inspired by, and referring more or less explicitly to such works, both Japanese and non-Japanese, the images it offers have the potential to motivate a global audience to identify these connections and see how the series builds on them, creating its distinctive utopian/dystopian treatment.17
Merged with considerations on Japanese media theory and animation, the Western perspective of presentism adds a crucial temporal reflection to further the understanding of Psycho-Pass’ dystopian world, where the citizens privilege activities of immediate concern in an all-encompassing present submerging the search for a common past and foreclosing optimistic prospects of future change. Combined with the general suspension of thought, in which citizens indulge for the promise of safety, presentism underscores how Psycho-Pass represents a society that, while purporting a utopian perfection, is actually enacting its own ruin. While the endless present and uncritical thought isolate citizens, a solution to escape the dystopian cycles is found in rebuilding inter-personal ties: a concrete utopia militantly optimistic for the future. Psycho-Pass stresses the importance of critically re-evaluating human beliefs and experiences to create a new community based on shared sensibilities. This transformation does not attempt to destroy the system; rather, it aims to change it collectively from within.
More broadly, analysing the series’ articulations signifies the importance of understanding utopia/dystopia’s potential to engage with momentous present-day issues. Through its portrayals of an uncritical present and of thought control, Psycho-Pass emerges as a critical response to contemporary Japan. The anime series was broadcast in 2012, one year after the triple disaster of 11 March 2011, which caused the production team to change the setting from that of a post-disaster world (Otaku News 2016). While this changes Psycho-Pass’ immediate identification as a post-disaster anime, it correlates it with the ‘disaster utopias’ which, as Morris-Suzuki (2017) argues, in the aftermath of the 3/11 calamities manifested a utopian longing for rebirth, mainly in the currents of a ‘national vision of a resurgent Japan, united internally by the kizuna [bonds] of family and love of homeland, and protected externally by its kizuna to the US alliance’ (187), and of nationwide protests that later took the form of smaller local experiments of solidarity. These small initiatives constitute an ‘informal life politics, which probes the cracks in the existing order, without a perfect finished blueprint of a world to come, but only with a sense of discomfort with the present and desire to grope toward something better’ (187). Similarly, by exposing the cracks seen in Japan’s historical precedents of centralised thought control, fictional and theoretical dystopias, Psycho-Pass articulates a futurological vision that challenges viewers’ ways of thinking, providing a critical framework to question related contemporary issues of governmental control on citizens’ lives and thoughts. These real-world problematics range from Abe Shinzō’s (2006) ‘beautiful Japan’ rhetoric of nationalistic nostalgia and the need to strengthen Japan’s security, questions of historical truth, as seen in the textbook controversies, to post-3/11 sloganeering promoting a swift national recovery, while leaving behind those who, deeply affected by the disaster, could not partake in the optimistic recovery enthusiasm (Kayama 2011). A study of Psycho-Pass’ dystopia expands the understanding of the dangerous consequences of a country where citizens submit their critical capacities to an oppressive government that does not represent them or promotes freedom. Even after ten years since the anime’s release, its articulation acquires renewed relevance vis-à-vis recent cases of rising government mistrust, for example against prime minister Suga’s threats to academic and intellectual freedom.18
Psycho-Pass is an imaginative reflection attentive to both real-world and fictional histories. While set in Japan, the dangers of thought control portrayed may happen in comparable circumstances elsewhere too; in this light, the hope for change through a community based on critical thinking has great impact also on a global scale. While the final lessons it suggests are still in progress, and a perfect society is yet far to achieve, the series’ depictions remain relevant in the contemporary world. This is Psycho-Pass’ true concrete utopia.
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the Tanaka Foundation and Pembroke College, University of Oxford, for funding and hosting the 2018 Symposium on Utopia in Modern Japanese Literature, of which this article was a part; Linda Flores and Thomas Garcin for organising and editing this special issue. The author would also like to extend his heartfelt thanks to the editorial team at Japan Forum, and to the peer reviewers for their invaluable contribution to the article.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1 See also: Yiu 2008.
2 Psycho-Pass is an example of media mix (media mikkusu), a business and production strategy releasing interconnected works across different established media platforms, creating a culture of amalgamation. This strategy, which rose to popularity in Japan in the mid-1970s, is most notably associated with the then president of Kadokawa publishing company, Kadokawa Haruki. Kadokawa ‘marketed the concept of the media mix itself as part of the Kadokawa brand, introducing a new level of self-reflexivity that is one of the most significant aspects of late 1970s and early 1980s media culture in Japan’ (Zahlten 2017, 208). Psycho-Pass is one of the rarer cases of media mix where the manga adaptation follows the anime release: Kanshikan Tsunemori Akane (Inspector Tsunemori Akane), retelling the main story from the perspective of the eponymous character, began publication in 2012 shortly after the anime had started airing. Another manga, detailing the past of another main character, Kōgami, was published in late 2014, before the airing of the anime’s second season. The first two novels, adapting the contents of the anime, were published in early 2013. Around the same time, a spin-off novel focusing on a case sparsely mentioned in the anime was published with the title Saikopasu zero/namae no nai kaibutsu (Psycho-pass Zero/ A Monster without a Name).
3 The distribution on Crunchyroll was later cancelled. Season 3 of the anime is currently licensed by Amazon Video.
4 The present analysis is based on the anime’s first season (22 episodes), written by Urobuchi Gen, Fukami Makoto and Takaha Aya, and animated by Production I.G.
5 Oshii’s work plays an important role in Psycho-Pass’ genesis. Since 2009, the directors Motohiro Katsuyuki and Shiotani Naoyoshi, had been developing a futuristic police robot anime. They were evidently inspired by the Kidō keisatsu Patoreibā (Mobile Police Patlabor) franchise which, started in 1988, includes anime films and TV episodes directed and/or written by Oshii. Patlabor had also been influential for the police-comedy drama series Odoru daisōsasen (Bayside Shakedown), first aired in 1997, for which Motohiro had been the producer and director of the theatrical releases. In 2011 the screenwriter Urobuchi Gen joined the project with the task of writing a futuristic police anime. At this point, the clear inspiration was no longer Patlabor, but Ghost in the Shell (produced by Production I.G, the same studio as Psycho-Pass), yet without the obvious cyberpunk elements and international incidents (Fujitsu 2014, 71–72). Urobuchi’s previous anime hit Puella Magi Madoka Magica (Miyamoto and Shinbō 2011) shares similarities with Psycho-Pass in the grim portrayal of existential issues, in this case subverting the light-hearted magical girl anime conventions.
6 Psycho-Pass’ director Shiotani chose to portray internal lights filtered by rotating fans as a homage to Blade Runner, which was in turn based on Dick’s 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Fujitsu 2014, 72).
7 The volume was originally published in French as Régimes d’historicité in 2003, by Éditions de Seuil.
8 As a counterpoint to the blurring of orders of time, among Japanese intellectuals Karatani Kōjin has notably written of the cyclical nature of history and its repetitions. In History and Repetition (2012), Karatani maintains that history repeats itself in terms of recurring structures, rather than single events. Repetition can refer to the cyclical moments of crisis surrounding transformations in the development of capital. This repetition does not separate Japanese history from the rest of the world; for example, Karatani argues that fascism in Japan and in Europe was a dynamic process born out of representative democracies which, in times of crisis, cyclically require the figure of the absolutist monarch. For this reason, he does not separate the Japanese birth of fascism from Taishō democracy from the rise of Nazi-fascism in Germany. Thus, by identifying the recurrent structural patterns in history, one can learn tangentially about future repetitions: ‘This is not something that predicts future events. However, at least there can be no doubt that the repetitive structure inherent in state and capital will continue. If we do not pay attention to this, we will indeed be fated to repeat history’ (Karatani 2012, xiii).
9 Unless otherwise stated in the bibliography, all translations from Japanese, including those from Psycho-Pass, are the author’s own.
10 This trait touches on issues of historical truth and memory in education that have been the object of controversies in Japan involving the Ministry of Education’s attempts to whitewash history textbooks, particularly in relation to wartime crimes perpetrated by the Japanese army, such as the Nanking massacre or the issue of Korean comfort women. Between 1965 and 1993 the historian Ienaga Saburō filed several lawsuits after the Ministry had failed to approve his textbook judging it unconstitutional because of its critical language and depiction of the dark side of the war. More recently, the publication in 2001 of a nationalist textbook by the Japanese Society for History Textbook Reform (Atarashii rekishi kyōkasho wo tsukuru kai, or ‘Tsukuru kai’), caused heated polemics, especially in China and South Korea. See also: Guex 2015.
11 As does extensively Sibyl’s abolition of universities in favour of a school system comprised of six years of primary school and four years of both middle and high school.
12 The Asian country in which the film is set is never specified.
13 Makishima’s actions fit Cooper’s definition of everyday utopias for most of the series, until he attempts to demolish the dominant social system.
14 Kōgami learns this from Professor Saiga, a former clinical psychology academic who retreated to the mountains when Sibyl abolished universities (Ep. 19).
15 Foucault expressed his theory of the Panopticon, building on the concept by Jeremy Bentham, in Discipline and Punish.
16 Azuma posits this theory in the serial article ‘Jōhō jiyū ron: data no kenryoku, angō no rinri’ (On Information and Freedom: The Power of Data, the Ethics of Code), serialised in Chūō kōron (2002–2003), and later republished on his website Hajō genron in response to requests for easy access. His theory builds on Gilles Deleuze’s short essay ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’ (1992), where he proposes the eponymous societies as a counterpoint to the power by discipline model of Foucault’s Panopticon.
17 Discussions of these connections are found across platforms, for example in magazine articles (Fujitsu 2014), online reviews and discussion boards (Anikore 2012; Reddit 2016).
18 See: Normille 2020.