National History as Otaku Fantasy: Kon Satoshi’s Millennium Actress
Even given the broad range of anime genres, Millennium Actress (Sennen joyû, 2001) fits clearly into no single category. Best described as “a movie about movies,” this animated film is replete with references to the “golden age” of Japanese cinema, stretching from the 1930s to the 1960s – realistically rendered and obsessively detailed. This loving attention to mainstream Japanese media history is probably what won the film the Grand Prize at the 5th Media Arts Festival held by Japan’s Agency of Cultural Affairs. Yet, it presents this palatable historical overview in a subversive narrative format. The documentarian and his subject, an aging film star, the two main characters in the film, also represent more culturally marginalized figures: a fan (or otaku) and his idol. This dynamic, and particularly the otaku (him)self, has been popularized in media culture and examined by social critics and scholars alike. But in this film the otaku, so commonly fetishized as a negative symbol of Japan’s contemporary culture, is literally the savior and archivist of Japan’s disappearing past. This paper will examine Millennium Actress in the context of the conflicting discourse on the otaku – and his complex relationship to cultural production in contemporary Japan.