McCarty The Harp of Batman

As I sit here watching my friend Jagger play Batman: Arkham City, I'm thinking of the way the Batman universe handles death, and realizing just how incredibly American it is. Batman treats death very, very seriously. He refuses to kill even the guiltiest, most heinous criminals, and goes to great lengths to save every life he can and greatly regrets and mourns those that he can not. While these concepts aren't in any way unique to American heroes, the last one I mentioned, regretting and mourning the dead, is rather indicative of the way in which we tend to handle death as a taboo, particularly when contrasted with Japanese ideals on the same subject.

As we have learned in class, Japanese people tend to have a great respect for life born out of an understanding of the inevitability death; consider the whole ideology of 'mono no aware', the idea that everything is sacred simply because it does not last. This stems largely from Shinto ideals, particularly the religion's grim depiction of the afterlife and therein its implication of the amorality of the universe. Japanese people aren't as afraid of death as much as they are having not lived. They understand and accept that one day they will die and that will be that and they use this as motivation to do good in the world. They are not prompted by any sort of interest in the afterlife, but rather an interest in the lives of themselves and others.

Consider the films we watched this week, both Harp of Burma and the scenes from Letters From Iwo Jima. These films both deal heavily in Japanese involvement in World War II, resulting deaths, and the Japanese way of responding to them. In Harp of Burma we see a celebration of the lives and sacrifices of the dead through the actions of Mizushima. He dedicates his life to honoring theirs by giving them a proper burial. Letters From Iwo Jima addresses the incredibly Japanese concept of dignified, honorable suicide. We see not one, but two men take their own lives in an effort to improve the lives of others. Recognizing that dying would be of more benefit than staying alive just for the sake of living, they choose suicide.

Really, I don't see how anyone could think these philosophies on death could make anything less than perfect sense. They really just try to take what is an unfortunate certainty for all of us and turn it into something not so grim but rather something commonplace and motivating. Perhaps a Japanese Batman could exist, but his motivations would be entirely different. He would remember his parents fondly, thinking often of their life rather than their untimely death, he would find comfort in remembering the details of the great life they lead, and he would know and share love with the criminal scum of Gotham, rather than so much pain.