Ask John: Why Are Sons & Fathers So Antagonistic in Anime?

Question:
What’s up with all the father-son relationships in anime? One of the subtle themes in anime is the father/son relationship. I recognized that in most anime this relationship tends to be more negative or in other words, traumatized for the hero. For example the famous Evangelion anime shows us how the protagonist Shinji Ikari developed his hate for his father Gendo Ikari and how this influenced Shinji’s character. In Code Geass our (anti-)hero is fighting against the Empire from his own father for personal reasons. In Clannad the main-character Okazaki Tomoya also hates his father and if you think about it everything he does is somehow influenced by this fact. In “Kimi ga Aruji de Shitsuji ga Ore de” this theme is also present. Although being very funny, this anime also tries to explain how the main-character developed his personality due his problematic family background.

So my question simply is, does this mirrors Japan’s society and families? If not, why do the creators include this theme? Or is it just to make the hero more believable and sympathetic?

Answer:
Foreigners should always remember that fundamental themes present in anime are a representation of concerns and philosophies present in Japanese society, but anime exaggerates since it is, by nature, a fictionalized depiction of reality. The literature of every country – whether written or visual – reflects some aspect of the society from which it came. Artists are inextricably influenced by their surroundings and the social influences of their culture. So observers have to assume that some degree of thematic prevalence within anime surfaces because it springs forth from the minds and pens of Japanese artists.

In American culture, men are indoctrinated to be emotionally distant in order to express their masculine independence. Fathers in Asian countries, and especially Japan, may exhibit a similar sort of emotional detachment, but not for the same reason. Particularly in Japanese families, the mother is the centeral figure in the home, and children are often deemed the mother’s responsibility while the father’s duty is to provide for the household. I only intend to make an observation when I say that traditionally post-war Japan seems to have adopted the familial attitudes of 1950’s America. While America has since outgrown the notion of the housewife and the bread-winning husband, for the past decade or more, Japan has been wrestling with a similar burgeoning social revolution of women resisting the traditional housewife role. The result in Japan has been declining marriage and birth rates. Traditionally the Japanese salaryman father is away at work for long hours, then spends the evenings fraternizing with co-workers, leaving little time to develop intimate, familial relationships with children. Furthermore, the traditional Japanese philosophy of self-responsibility and strictly delineated personal privacy has resulted in grown men who are simply not experienced with expressing their emotions. Serial Experiments Lain springs to mind as a prime illustration of a father who throws himself into one-way communication with his computers while practically ignoring his daughter who is desperate for personal relationship. In countless anime, the father is merely a household presence, often seen silently reading a newspaper, or an emotionally distant authority figure rather than a compassionate, involved figure in his children’s life. In most cases, the father isn’t spiteful or resentful; the father simply doesn’t know how to intimately communicate with his children, and he leaves the majority of the parenting to the mother. If this depiction wasn’t stereotypical of Japanese families, the depiction wouldn’t appear so frequently and naturally in anime.

I don’t believe that Japanese society is typified by a sense of resentment and opposition toward father figures. I don’t think that most Japanese children grow up hating their father. Rather, in typical Asian families, I think that children, particularly boys, primarily develop a sense of respect and familial affection for their fathers, but not a deep, compassionate love. The outright resentment and antagonism between sons and fathers periodically depicted in anime is a hyperbolic exaggeration for dramatic impact. Certain boys may develop a resentment of their fathers stemming from feelings of emotional abandonment, but I suspect that most Japanese boys simply adapt to and accept their relationship with their fathers as natural and typical. Sons in anime that adore their fathers are often sons like Gon in Hunter x Hunter and Negi Springfield in Negima who respect their father’s reputations and legacies but don’t really know their fathers. Sons in anime like Shinrei Tantei Yakumo and Ao no Exorcist that oppose their fathers do so for dramatic effect. In both cases, anime sons with strong emotions toward their fathers are exceptions. In most anime, sons rarely speak of their fathers or don’t have close relationships with their fathers because they’ve probably never had strong relationships with their fathers. In anime including Kodomo no Jikan, Happy Lesson, Hajime no Ippo, and Yagami-kun no Katei no Jijou, to name a few, sons have much stronger personal relationships with their mothers than their fathers. Distance and antagonism between fathers and sons in modern Japanese society isn’t as extreme or pronounced as anime suggests, but if that distance and sometimes antagonism didn’t exist at all as a widely recognized characteristic of Japanese society, it wouldn’t appear in anime as frequently and prominently as it does.