紀要論文

紀要論文

text

Osaka Human Sciences. 2026, 12, p. 103-128

From Nostalgia for the Present to the Unrememberable Future : How could F. Jameson discuss Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, or Jujutsu Kaisen?

Nojiri, Eiichi

Graduate School of Human Sciences, The University of Osaka

英語

text

2026-03

This article series is the English translation of the original one Nojiri, E. (2024). “From Nostalgia for the Present to the Unrememberable Future: How could F. Jameson discuss Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, or Jujutsu Kaisen?” Social Theory Studies No. 25, International Society of Social Theory, 5–23 (in Japanese). https://cir.nii.ac.jp/crid/1520867211499528704

This paper applies Fredric Jameson’s theory, particularly his concept of “nostalgia for the present,” to analyze the political unconscious expressed in contemporary Japanese popular culture, including time-loop stories, otherworldly reincarnation (isekai), and narratives of external assault (Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen). The study argues that these genres function as imaginative solutions to the structural contradictions and historical blockage experienced in late-capitalist Japan, often referred to as the “lost 30 years.” The analysis begins by situating Japanese time-loop narratives (STEINS;GATE, Puella Magi Madoka Magica) as a variation of Jameson’s “Dick stage,” reflecting a stagnation of historical sense in post-bubble Japan. These narratives offer a fictional resolution that symbolically avoids grand historical narratives. This is followed by the rise of isekai stories (That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime), which represent a desire for spatial escape into a timeless world with clear, game-like ethics, a move prefiguring the “Demme/Lynch stage.” This cultural shift reflects the “misery of happiness”—a closed, seemingly secure present— that became the default political unconscious. The paper emphasizes that the seeds for these motifs were sown around 1970, when Japan entered the late-capitalist stage. Specifically, it notes that Yamada Futaro’s Makai Tensho (1964/1967), Mishima Yukio’s The Sea of Fertility (1965–1971), and Tsutsui Yasutaka’s The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (1965/1967)—all dealing with reincarnation or temporal loops—emerged simultaneously at this historical turning point. The focus then shifts to works where an external enemy assaults and dismantles the closed everyday (Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, Jujutsu Kaisen). These narratives directly fulfill the ethical and political desire to confront a historical crisis that flows back into the present. Crucially, Attack on Titan’s revelation that the enemy is a product of human civilization suggests the “other” resides within one’s own forgotten history and physical body. This internal enemy is theorized using habitus (Bourdieu), which acts as an unconscious, inherited “imaginative corporeality.” The success of Jujutsu Kaisen, dealing with “curses,” is interpreted as resonating with the contemporary issue of obsolete habitus inheritance inducing melancholy and a double bind in the subject. Ultimately, the paper aims to complete the Jamesonian project by seeking a “historical future” that is non-representational. By contrasting “mourning” (representational) with “melancholy” (non-representational/historical, as per Traverso), the study advocates for a future derived not from utopian impulse/imagination but from the higher cognitive function of judgment. To derive this “future poetry” and break from the tyranny of the present, the paper proposes connecting post-Kantian philosophical theories of imagination and judgment with modern neuroscience (specifically Hebb’s “phase sequences”) to reverse-engineer the self-evident nature of the “body schema” and historicity itself. This paper is intended only as a prelude to the comprehensive research scheduled to follow.

10.18910/104200

104200

From Nostalgia for the Present to the Unrememberable Future : How could F. Jameson discuss Demon Slayer, Attack on Titan, or Jujutsu Kaisen?

Nojiri, Eiichi

Graduate School of Human Sciences, The University of Osaka

英語

2026-03

Osaka Human Sciences

12

103

128

https://hdl.handle.net/11094/104200

10.18910/104200

https://doi.org/10.18910/104200