Uncommon Courses is an occasional collection from The Conversation U.S. highlighting unconventional approaches to instructing.
Anime and Religious Identity: Cultural Aesthetics in Japanese Spiritual Worlds
As a scholar who research Japanese faith and has a lifelong love of visible storytelling, I began utilizing anime in my class to spark conversations across the Buddhist concepts of karma and Shint notions of “kami,” or spirits in nature.
When I launched the thought of karma, a scene from “Mob Psycho 100” – a Japanese manga and anime collection from 2016 to 2022 a few shy teenage boy with highly effective psychic skills – got here up in dialogue. It sparked a dialog about how our intentions and actions carry actual ethical weight. In Buddhism, karma is not only about punishment or reward in a future life. It is believed to play out within the current – shaping how we relate to others and the way we develop or get caught as individuals.
Later, once I defined kami in Shint, a quiet second from “Mushishi” helped college students suppose in another way concerning the world round them. “Mushishi” is a slow-paced, atmospheric anime a few wandering healer who helps individuals affected by mysterious spiritlike beings known as mushi. These beings should not gods or monsters however a part of nature itself – barely seen, but at all times current. The collection gave college students a visible language for imagining how non secular forces may exist in abnormal locations.
Over the years, two moments satisfied me to create a full course. First was my college students’ sturdy response to Gymei Himejima, the Pure Land Buddhist priest in “Demon Slayer.” He is a mild however highly effective guardian who refuses to hate the demons he should combat. His actions result in trustworthy and considerate conversations about compassion, worry and the boundaries of violence.
One pupil requested, “If Gymei doesn’t hate even the demons, does that mean violence can be compassionate?” Another identified that Gymei’s power doesn’t come from anger, however from grief and empathy. These sorts of insights confirmed me that anime was serving to college students suppose by way of advanced moral questions that will have been more durable to have interaction by way of summary concept alone.
The second second got here from watching “Dragon Ball Daima.” In this 2024 collection, acquainted heroes are changed into kids. This jogged my memory of Buddhist tales about being reborn and beginning over, and it prompted new questions: If somebody loses all of the power that they had constructed up over time, are they nonetheless the identical particular person? What, if something, stays fixed concerning the self, and what adjustments?
This course helps college students discover questions of which means, ethics and perception that anime brings to life. It examines themes resembling what occurs when the previous resurfaces? What does it imply to hold the burden of accountability? How ought to we act when our private wishes come into battle with what we all know is correct? And how can struggling change into a path to transformation?
We begin with “Spirited Away,” a 2001 animated movie a few younger woman who turns into trapped in a spirit world after her mother and father are remodeled into pigs. The story attracts on Shint concepts resembling purification, sacred house and kami. Students learn the way these non secular ideas are expressed by way of the movie’s visible design, soundscape and narrative construction.
Later within the semester, we watch “Your Name,” a 2016 movie by which two youngsters mysteriously start switching our bodies throughout time and house. It’s a narrative about connection, reminiscence and longing. The concept of “musubi,” a non secular thread that binds individuals and locations collectively, turns into central to understanding the movie’s emotional influence.
“Attack on Titan,” which first aired in 2013, immerses college students in a world marked by ethical battle, sacrifice and uncertainty. The collection follows a gaggle of younger troopers combating to outlive in a society below siege by big humanoid creatures often called Titans. Students are sometimes shocked to be taught that this standard collection engages with profound questions drawn from Buddhism and existential thought, such because the which means of freedom, the strain between future and particular person selection, and the deeper causes of human violence.
The characters in these tales face actual struggles. Some are spirit mediums or time vacationers. But all of them should make onerous choices about who they’re and what they imagine.
As the semester goes on, college students develop visible or written initiatives resembling brief essays, podcasts, zines or illustrated tales. These initiatives assist them discover the identical questions because the anime, however in their very own voices.
Anime has change into a worldwide phenomenon. But despite the fact that hundreds of thousands of individuals watch it, many don’t understand how deeply it attracts on Japanese non secular traditions. In this course, college students be taught to look carefully at what anime is saying about life, morality and the alternatives we make.
Through these characters’ journeys, college students be taught that faith is not only one thing present in historical texts or sacred buildings. It also can reside within the tales we inform, the artwork we create and the questions we ask about ourselves and the world.