“It’s Eat or Be Eaten,” An Exploration of Cannibalism in Modern Japanese Manga

Abstract

Over the past two decades, Japanese manga has become a worldwide sensation. In that same timeframe, the medium has seen a surprising increase in depictions of cannibalism. What is most surprising, however, is that the protagonists are the cannibals, not the villains. This paper sets out to answer why Japan is producing so much art featuring cannibalism, when and why this trend began, why it is so prevalent in the medium of manga, specifically, and finally, why cannibalism is most often included as a method of increasing power. As there is no previous scholarly analysis of this trend, this analysis is largely grounded in the history and culture of Japan, its art, and its post-war social and economic situation. By tracking the development of manga this paper reads the medium itself as being created through the process of cultural anthropophagy, with its latent cannibalistic tendencies becoming more explicit following economic trouble. First with the bursting of the bubble economy in the early 1990s and then with the global recession of 2008. The alienation created by these troubles caused a reactionary nationalism which has manifested in a reclamation of cannibalism as a method of decolonial resistance. That these economic crises have disproportionately affected men is reflected in the appearance of so many of these cannibal characters being in Shōnen manga [manga aimed at young men] specifically, which is itself a hotbed of cannibalistic competition.