Dreams in Japanese Animation
Anime are not just Japanese "cartoons."
Anime, or Japanese animation, is an integral form of media that reflects and mirrors the perspectives and issues of the Japanese culture and society. The way that the Japanese feel about a certain subject is conveyed through anime's graphic format. One specific aspect that anime reflects is the current conflicting approaches to dream theory--that is the “interpretive” and “scientific” approaches. Kelly Bulkeley, one of the leading theorists on spiritual and religious dreams, simplifies the interpretive approach as an attempt to understand dreams in their meaning for human life on a grand scale. The "interpretive" approach is almost "spiritual" in nature, not specifically aimed toward religion but what is important in life. The "scientific" approach, or "physical" approach, sees dreams as a result of material causes. The way J. Allan Hobson sees it, dreams are the random activation of our brains firing neurons during sleep.
Two recent animes, Shounen Onmyouji and Ghost Hunt, show in their portrayal of dreams that there is an intertwining of the "scientific" and "interpretive" dream theory approaches that make them hard to separate. A dream may seem to fall into one dream theory approach and in actuality fall into the other classification, or vice versa. Or perhaps the dream fits into both approaches and there's no way to classify it. It is that very inability to be understood, without context, that mirrors a very important quality of the Japanese culture. Context is very important to the Japanese, because it is extremely difficult to understand many things in the language and the culture without it.
Read more:
Dreams in Japanese Animation
Dreams in Anime - Shounen Onmyouji
Dreams in Anime - Ghost Hunt
The Eternal Debate: Spiritual vs Physical
Japanese Language, Culture & Lore
Suggested Readings and Links
About the Author