Abstract
“We Are the World Itself”: The Construction of “Good” Citizenship and Deviations from It in Ergo Proxy
Highlights
Immigration is an urgent issue in Japan
A search of interviews conducted with the creators has made amply clear that they were influenced by the Christian doctrine of Manicheanism and sought to construct a morality tale of dystopian proportions, but none of the interviews have made entirely clear where the inspiration for the realistic depiction of issues of immigration and citizenship came from or even whether they were intentional
A search of the existing literature in academic circles reveals nothing; most students of immigration studies remain unaware of the critical potential Ergo Proxy holds for those specialising in emergent countries of immigration, almost all of which are so-called monoethnic, monolingual states without traditions of mass immigration in modern times
Summary
Immigration is an urgent issue in Japan. Since the 1980s, a trickle of foreign workers has been entering the country on a variety of visa categories, both legal and illegal, taking advantage of Japan's "internationalisation" (kokusaika) boom. As Japan's demographic bomb exploded, leading to an implosion of the social balance due to historically low birth rates and unexpectedly high life expectancies, and the economy went into a tailspin after the housing market collapsed on the back of excessive speculation, the country became the first developed member of advanced nations to reach a post-industrial, post-capitalist stage of limbo, where neither agriculture nor manufacturing was sustaining national lifestyles, and the services sector remained underdeveloped—and more importantly, helplessly parochial, as cultural norms handicapped its viability as a regional and global services powerhouse fully integrated into the global economy Aggravating this scenario was a profound negativity towards the processes of evolution and change, resulting in a long-lasting economic depression that affected nearly every sector of the industry, along with all of society. One example of a synthesis of both genres is the science fiction anime series Ergo Proxy (2006), which will be dealt with in the following lines
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