Games

There's a reading of FF8 that is internal politics of Japan during the lost decades that is pro-Japanese rearmament and militarism and prop Japanese imperialism.

This is a scorching hot take and it's not going to go over well. If you haven't played the game yet, go do it - it's a rough diamond of an RPG and it's one of my favorites. Come back to this comment once you've had a chance to enjoy the game all the way through. Trust me on this.

So, first to defend the argument I'm going to lay out:

Final Fantasy is very capable of making self-conscious self inserts of Japan into its games. In 7 there us Wutai - the island nation on the edge of the world which lost the great war with the large industrial and military superpower and now they are demilitarized and they are depicted as a cultural and economic backwater. While it's not purely Japan, the signs are all written in Japanese, the architecture is heavily Japanese and Chinese inspired, and the internal room designs just scream out Washitsu. Yuffie is a ninja. Their sacred mountain is heavily volcano-coded. Etc. etc.

I know that Mount Wutai is in China but it's a very conscious reference here - Mount Wutai is sacred to Buddhism and it's closely associated with the Buddha Manjushri, being Manjushri's seat in the world according to Chinese Buddhism. When you fight Godo in his pavilion he takes on the form of a deva-inspired character who wields a blade similar to the one that is closely associated with Manjushri and he also wields a staff that is immediately recognizable as being inspired by the vajra. So it's obvious that they are being very explicit about their references and the extension of that is that they are comfortable with inserting a stand-in for Japan in FF games.

But 7's Wutai is very heavy-handed in its references and it takes a more outsider's perspective on Japan as it consciously represents itself as (mostly) Japan in the way that the world sees it. Every country knows those tropes and aspects of its culture that it is internationally recognized for, and that's mostly what you see in Wutai. But there's the internal experience and represention that insiders will recognize that aren't necessarily as direct and they aren't nearly as closely associated with the obvious symbols.

This is where FF8 sits. Here's my thesis: Balamb is very heavily Japan-coded and the role it plays in the world and the way that the story develops is very much a response to and critique of Japan's demilitarization

Balamb is a small, isolated island nation. It's central in the map because this is a story about Japan in the way that the devs see Japan, not as Japan is represented in the world.

This upstart nation of Balamb with a band of plucky mercenaries travels to neighboring continents to intervene in primarily military situations. FF8 is a very conscious representation of mostly the interwar period, with some WWII and cold war elements woven in.

To the immediate west is a large continent. They vastly outnumber Balamb, the island nation. They serve as the primary antagonist for the first and second acts. This continent is the only one shown to use intercontinental ballistic missiles in the game and they threaten to destroy Balamb itself. This is a very conscious representation of the Japanese experience of the DPRK and the constant fear of Chinese military capacity; the DPRK often will test missiles near Japan or over Japan to tell them to fuck off in diplomatic slapfights (based, btw.) To a Japanese person, the idea of a nearby continent just to the west that fires missiles at them and that could some day destroy their cities is about as obvious as a northern icy part of the continent, just over the border, that has moose would be to citizens of the burgerreich (George RR Martin, anyone?)

Far to the East of the island nation is a mysterious, isolationist continent that is extremely technologically advanced. This represents America in the interwar period. They are the only nation that has a satellite program and a space station (admittedly a little later than the interwar period, specifically the cold war space race era but it's blended just like how FF7's Wutai is a blend of Chinese and Japanese cultures.) Of course westerners tend to see Japan as being very technologically advanced but from the view of the Edo period through to the majority of the Showa period, the US was comparatively much more technologically advanced and Japan was very conscious of this fact. The eastern continent also has the ability to take over the world, essentially, but it keeps to itself until it eventually gets dragged into the present conflict (WWII reference.)

So in terms of geopolitical representation, it's pretty obvious from my perspective what's being discussed in this setting.

Now Balamb with its small but powerful military strength manages to punch well above its weight and it serves mostly to protect, stabilize and (critically) to subdue the threats to peace. They are duty-bound to travel to the western continent to fight and subdue it for the good of the world and to protect their own nation. They even go to provide support to the insurgent paramilitary liberation force in the region. (Does this sound like imperialist propaganda yet? Lol. You know this playbook because we see it all the damn time in the real world.)

But what really clinches it for me is the discourse around Fisherman's Horizon. Japan is a fishing nation and always has been. The theme song of FH is a melody that is recognizable to every Japanese person Ue O Muite Aruko, c.f. the centerpiece of the FH theme song.

Fisherman's Horizon is a sleepy, technologically advanced settlement caught between two worlds, literally finding itself at an infrastructural and geopolitical crossroads, and filled with peaceniks. They are explicitly pacifist. In my view, they represent the postwar malaise in Japan from the view of the writers. This is a representation of then-contemporary demilitarized Japan during the lost decades era, an era when there was rising political sentiment in Japan against its pacifist policy.

Where it gets really interesting is when the settlement (also itself something of an island nation) is faced by a military threat. How the story handles this is really despicable. The settlement itself faces an existential military threat of occupation and destruction at the hands of the western continent's empire. How this is resolved is by the plucky mercenaries from the island nation using military strength to defend peace and justice; pacifism makes you a sitting duck and, when it comes down to it, the only viable response to that problem is to develop military capacity and to engage in armed conflict.

It's literally saying that modern postwar Japan risks military occupation and being annexed into empire unless it disregards its dogmatic pacifism and remilitarizes, despite the objections of the peaceniks. It's saying that the only way for Japan to protect itself is to return to its interwar policy of expansionism and reestablishing itself as "benevolent" empire or it risks being destroyed by existential threats that are snapping at its heels.

If you know a bit about the history of the Japanese empire then you know how vile a commentary this is because it's akin to creating an interwar Germany self-insert nation whose narrative arc justifies the "necessity" of remilitarizing the Rheinland and of establishing revanchist lebensraum in order to "rescue" Germany from its ultimate destruction by failing in its "duty" to become the imperial superpower that it is destined to be. It's genuinely on that same level.

Enjoy FF8 game but remember that its narrative is one long exercise in apologetics for Japanese imperialism from the perspective of internal Japanese cultural discourse of the era and always remember that no matter how incomplete Germany's denazification was, Japan never underwent any denazification efforts at all and it shows even in the vidya they produce.

Happy gaming!