Japanese Religion, Mythology, and the Supernatural in

Anime and Manga

Amy Plumb, Macquarie University, NSW, Australia

Abstract: The world of anime and manga, Japanese animation and comics respectively, has developed
into a pop-culture phenomenon with a rising popularity worldwide, triggering a shift from a niche
market into the mainstream. Anime and manga are strongly hybrid texts which incorporate diverse
pretexts, thus, this paper will focus on the pretexts of Japanese religion, mythology, and the supernat-
ural in anime and manga, and an analysis of how these pretexts have constructed this mediums
pictorial representation of such ideas. This paper will also examine how artists intertextualise recognised
images as a form of symbolic shorthand to create new narratives via the retelling (or re-envisioning)
of a vast accumulation of well-known stories, characters and settings for modern audiences. This paper
draws heavily on the works of Miyazaki Hayao, who is greatly influenced by Shintō notions of purific-
ation and pollution. Other notable anime and manga included are: Watase Yuu’s Ayashi no Ceres and
Kishimoto Masashi’s Naruto, both of which use Japan’s rich mythological database within their works
as central components for their series; and the horror filled Hundred Stories which intertextualises
traditional folktales and superstition, based in already recognised images and meanings.

Keywords: Anime, Manga, Japanese Religion, Japanese Mythology, Miyazaki Hayao, Watase Yū’s
Ayashi no Ceres, Kishimoto Masashi’s Naruto

E
VERY COUNTRY HAS its own religion, mythology and supernatural world. These
beliefs, echoed worldwide, hold great significance to their people for they are more
than just rituals or stories. They speak of creation, a fundamental element in the
construction of early nations. They answer questions that minds before science and
technology could comprehend, bringing order to a world of perceived chaos. They guide
society and its actions, whether morally or ethically. Furthermore, they are embedded in the
psyches of all people since birth, growing as the people do. In Japan, religion, mythology,
and the supernatural world are core aspects of Japanese culture and the construction of self,
for the relationship between the Japanese and these worlds account for their beliefs concerning
origin, their customs, household and national practices, superstitions, and rituals, just to
name a few. The very foundation of Japan’s Imperial Court is intrinsically linked to the
mythic claiming that the first human emperor was a descendant of the gods, similar to ancient
Egypt, whose emperor was seen as a demigod born from the sun god, Ra. Religion, mytho-
logy, and the supernatural are important because they are a part of what makes a Japanese
person Japanese, whether it be celebrating a youths coming-of-age at a Shintō shrine or
mourning the passing of a loved-one at a Buddhist home altar.
Religion, mythology, and the supernatural world are not only core aspects of Japanese
culture but are also a major force in the world of anime and manga – Japanese animation
and comics respectively – becoming a source of inspiration for artists and writers alike in
this equally significant medium of Japanese society, as a pop culture phenomenon with rising

The International Journal of the Humanities

Volume 8, Number 5, 2010, http://www.Humanities-Journal.com, ISSN 1447-9508
© Common Ground, Amy Plumb, All Rights Reserved, Permissions:
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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE HUMANITIES

popularity worldwide triggering a shift from a niche market into the mainstream, manifesting
into global commodities and playing a pivotal role in the Japanese export market and even
extending into the non-Japanese commercial field. Anime and manga are strongly hybrid
texts which incorporate diverse pretexts and the vast accumulation of stories, characters and
settings of religious, mythological and supernatural importance, bestowing these mediums
avenues to exploit this familiarity to further develop their works, or simply breathe new life
into stories of old.
The fundamental aspects of exploration in this paper is the pretexts of Japanese religion,
mythology, and the supernatural in anime and manga, and a analysis of how these pretexts
have constructed this mediums pictorial representation of such ideas. It would be useful to
understand how religious, mythological, and supernatural pretexts are constructed and
manage a range of established stories, characters, and settings that have been integrated into
the world of anime and manga. If we look at these diverse genres, we discover that the im-
agery, motifs and ideology utilised and constructed create meanings and context for the
works themselves, and avenues for the reader to interpret an artist’s works on a plethora of
levels. Furthermore, this paper will examine how artists encode their works and intertextualise
established images as a form of symbolic shorthand to create new narratives via the retelling
or re-envisioning of this vast reservoir of all things religious, mythological, and supernatural
for modern audiences.
As elucidated by Sturken and Cartwright (2001), the ‘capacity of images to affect us as
viewers and consumers is dependent on the larger cultural meanings they invoke’ and that
we ‘decode images by interpreting clues to intended, unintended, and even merely suggested
meanings’ which is evident in the reading of anime and manga in regards to the aforemen-
tioned ideas. Thus, artists and writers draw on the capacity of images and audiences use this
information to decode the images. These pretexts and images are often lost to Western
viewers due to a lack of knowledge about the religion, mythology, supernatural world, and
culture of Japan, which can greatly affect the audiences understanding and reception of
anime and manga and even the Japanese people as a whole.
This paper will draw heavily on the works of Miyazaki Hayao1, whom is greatly influenced
by Shintō and its notions of purification and pollution; also including, Watase Yū’s Ayashi
no Ceres and Kishimoto Masashi’s Naruto which both employ Japan’s rich mythological
database within their works as central components for their series, and the horror filled
Hundred Stories which intertextualises traditional folktales and superstition, based in already
recognised images and meanings.
One theme of religious imagery saturated in anime and manga is Shintō, Japan’s native
religion, where the pretexts derived from this inborn religion, directly affect the motifs and
representations present in these mediums. Shintō is inherently linked to the Japanese people
since birth, and it is for this reason that it is not uncommon to see a character visiting a shrine
on New Years or to pick up a lucky charm, or a sacred rope with shimenawa (paper pendants)
attached in anime or manga. Shintō, is estimated to have begun thousands of years ago as a
form of primitive animism, nature and ancestor worship. Translated as ‘The Way of the
Gods,’ Shintō remains the national religion of Japan and continues to be strongly integrated
into the Japanese way of life as ‘neither a set of beliefs formalized into a creed nor an iden-

1
Throughout this paper, the Japanese names have been written in the traditional surname first given name second
format.

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tifiable act of faith’ (Kasulis, 2004). It is difficult to offer an clarification of Shintō, not only
for scholars but for native Japanese people alike, due to the sheer magnitude and complexity
of this faith. However, a very basic explanation is that Shintō is a polytheistic religion ven-
erating a pantheon of gods which are found in practically anything, from natural phenomena
to humans themselves. Kami, meaning ‘god/s’ or ‘sacred entity,’ are ‘the object of worship
in Shinto … Fundamentally, the term is an honorific for noble, sacred spirits, which implies
a sense of adoration for their virtues and authority’ (Ono, 1962). Motoori Norinaga (1730-
1801), a scholar of the Tokugawa Period, lists what could be thought of as kami: all the gods
of Heaven and Earth and their mitama (spirits), human beings, birds, animals, plants, trees,
seas, mountains, anything that has an extraordinary or eminent character, the entities which
have to be feared, Emperors, ‘distant Deities’ (tohotsu-kami), thunder, dragons, Tengu, foxes,
peaches, rocks, tree-trunks and leaves (Herbert, 1967).
Miko, female shrine attendants2, for example, have become an archetypal character in
anime and manga due to their prominence within Shintō and their interpretive potential and
visual attributes, such as miko traditional clothing. Regardless of the humble origins of miko
as post-war replacements for male religious positions, whose everyday activities include
menial tasks like cleaning and clerical work, the dominant character conventions for miko
in anime and manga has developed them into mystical beings that perform exorcisms, have
shamanistic or magical powers, and fight evil. A prime example is Hino Rei from Takeuchi
Naoko’s Sailor Moon, who is both a schoolgirl and a miko. When she transforms into her
superhero counterpart, Sailor Mars, her powers are Shintō based and her miko status amplifies
her spiritual abilities. Rei, in both forms, is capable of exorcism and does so by throwing an
ofuda (talisman) onto the enemies forehead and chanting ‘Akuryo taisan!’ translated as ‘Evil
spirits of the dead, depart!’ (Drazen, 2003). Miko are generally recognised by their distinct
traditional dress of a white kimono, red divided skirt, white socks and sandals. An interesting
side-note, Sailor Mars’s battle outfit is a white blouse and red skirt, similar to a school uni-
form, matching the colours of miko attire. Popular imagery linked with the anime or manga
miko and Shintō purification is the gohei, a wooden staff with zigzagged white paper
streamers attached. Gohei are used by miko for purification rituals by waving the wand ho-
rizontally in front of the person or thing that needs cleansing or exorcism. The anime Rental
Magica, based on the light novels of Sanda Mikoto, concerns a magical dispatch service
called Astral, where one can hire a spiritual human or magician to assist them with their su-
pernatural needs. Rental Magica features primary school girl Katsuragi Mikan as one of the
company’s employees, a miko from the Katsuragi clan who are an age-old family of Shintō
practitioners. Her role during the series is to perform purification ceremonies and other
Shintō practices like writing charms. In episode nineteen (The Medium’s Hometown) and
continuing into episode twenty (Demonic Festival), Mikan returns to her family home to
participate in a ritual to eliminate an oni (demon) from the mountains surrounding the estate.
Although there is much more to the plotline for these episodes, the imagery of the gohei is
present as Mikan and her sister Kaori complete the rite with this Shintō device as well as
ritualistic chanting. Yet, why did the miko develop into an archetypal character within anime
and manga? The most self-evident of possibilities include (1) the attire of the miko, seen as
a uniform, is recognisable and readers can interpret the situation with this knowledge, (2)
the traditional duties of the miko can be either left as is, or augmented into a myriad of ma-

2
A miko is frequently referred to as a ‘shrine maiden’ or ‘priestess’ in English anime and manga translations.

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gical abilities, and (3) the purity of the miko can also be overtly sexualised. Besides the ob-
vious, the actual values and attitudes of the Japanese towards the miko can be said to have
directly affected its foray into an archetype. The miko is a mode of purification, a quintessen-
tial aspect of Shintō, which is directly linked to the Japanese perspective of how the world
is perceived with regards to purity and pollution. All of these ideas lend to this characters
transformation into a character trope.
When discussing Shintō in anime or manga, one is inevitably led to the animations of
Miyazaki Hayao, a prominent director and co-founder of Studio Ghibli. Many of Miyazaki’s
films include Shintō motifs and imagery, or the plotline is directly intertwined with the religion
itself, utilising Shintō tradition intertextually. Wright (2005) describes Miyazaki’s works as
a transformation and reinvigoration of Shintō and Japanese myth, and that he:

Juxtaposes these with global culture … His films do not rework specific stories – rather
he draws from these sources to create a hybrid Japanese “modern myth” that is accessible
(in different ways) to post-industrialised audiences all over the world.

Out of Miyazaki’s animated films, Spirited Away is the most ‘Japanese’ in content, using
pretexts of Shintō belief, the mythological, and the supernatural, whilst containing images
and motifs of these themes. The very title of the movie in its original Japanese – Sen to
Chihiro no Kamikakushi – is indicative of the importance of Shintō belief for the construction
of the story. The term kamikakushi, literally translated as ‘hidden by kami,’ refers to the
‘folk designation of incidents when someone is inexplicably missing for some time’ (Boyd
and Nishimura, 2004).
This is the premise of the movie, an adolescent girl being ‘spirited away’ by the gods.
One of the first motifs seen in the movie is a small torii surrounded by little house-like
shrines, iconic within Shintō, which subtly enlightens the audience of the supernatural realm
the protagonist, Chihiro, will be entering. Torii are Shintō gateways to shrines and ‘symbol-
ically marks off the mundane world from the world of the kami, the secular from the spiritual’
(Ono, 1962). Suffice to say, this torii is symbolically marking off the real world from the
spirit world, especially the main setting of the bathhouse.
The central locale is an bathhouse for the spiritual world, run by an elderly woman witch
called Yubaaba (yu = hot water, baaba = old woman) who gives Chihiro a job under the
proviso that she can ‘have’ her name, thus gaining power over her workers, renaming her
Sen. The magical power that resides in words or names, kotodama, is a central concept in
Shintō belief and Japanese mythology, with a compound of characters of ‘word’ or ‘language,’
koto (言), and ‘spirit’ or ‘soul,’ dama (霊). This notion is also seen in the CLAMP collective’s
xxxHoLiC when the central character, Watanuki, gives his real name (including which
characters in which to write it) and date of birth to the Dimension Witch Yūko, who scolds
him for such an action because names have power and she could theoretically use this against
him if she wished.
The bathhouse, named Aburaya, is a place of refreshment where gods and the like can
soak in a hot bath, mimicking Japanese people’s tendency to visit bathhouses in real-life for
the same reason. Aburaya also functions as a place of purification, a dominant theme in
Shintō. When one is ‘polluted’ they become self-centred and do things poorly so the act of
bathing can be seen as a cleansing of mind, body and spirit. A particular scene echoing this
concept is when an oozing brown ‘stink spirit’ enters the bathhouse and is revealed to be a

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heavily polluted river god, the hot water cleaning him of the accumulated garbage of the
river, and once refreshed we see his true form. Inspiration for the movie’s setting was derived
from the common solstice ritual of calling forth local kami to cleanse in the baths of villagers,
and Miyazaki expressed a ‘very warm appreciation for the various, very humble rural Shintō
rituals that continue to this day throughout rural Japan’ (Boyd and Nishimura, 2004).
Throughout Spirited Away viewers see a plethora of anthropomorphised kami, giving
human characteristics, such as wearing traditional and/or religious Japanese clothing, to
these otherwise invisible gods. According to Ono (1962), the few texts we have on Shintō
‘acknowledge the existence of eight (or eighty) hundred ‘myriads’ of Kami,’ or
yao-yorozu-no-kami, ever-increasing myriad deities. Thus, the image capabilities in Spirited
Away were limitless and it is no coincidence that Chihiro encounters countless different
spiritual entities, one of the weirdest being a fat, sumo-like spirit of a radish. The hybrid
nature of Japanese religion incorporating imagery and motifs from various countries is also
seen with the character of Haku who in his true form is a river dragon of an Oriental-style
heavily influenced from Chinese mythology. Additionally, there is Kaonashi, or No Face,
a melancholy spirit with a wispy black body and white face mask similar to those within
Noh theatre who is indebted to Chihiro for letting him into the bathhouse on a rainy night.
Kaonashi, in an effort to gain Chihiro’s affection produces piles of gold which she politely
declines, turning him into a ‘monster’ with a voracious appetite, reminiscent of the Christian
sin of Gluttony. In the end he is scolded by Chihiro and returns to his regular form and helps
her on a final journey, and his heart which was closed (kokoro o tojiru) becomes purified
and he can act with genuine sincerity, or makoto (Boyd and Nishimura, 2004). Interestingly,
while Kaonashi is being purified we see that his gold turns into sand, a concept seen with
kitsune (fox) and tanuki myths, where similarly their gold would turn into sticks, leaf litter,
and/or faeces.
The pretexts of purification and pollution are prominent in anime and manga, due to them
being fundamental Shintō concepts. Miyazaki’s film Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is
a key example of the employment of these pretexts in the sphere of anime and manga. The
character of Nausicaä is seen as an ‘embodiment of purification’ as she makes amends for
the defilement of humanity against the Ohmu and the environment (Wright, 2005). Nausicaä
discovers that if the poisonous spores of the Fukai are grown in fresh dirt and clean water
that the toxins are no longer harmful to humans, this is directly linked to the importance of
water as a mode of purification in Shintō. A typical purification, called temizu (hand-water),
is accomplished by ‘symbolically rinsing out the mouth and pouring clear water over the
fingertips,’ (Wright, 2005) while purification by bathing, mentioned earlier, is called misogi.
Nausicaä discovers that the Fukai ‘operates as a purifying organism; the trees absorb the
poison from the soil, crystalise and neutralise them, before eventually dissolving into sand’
(Wright, 2005). Pollution denotes something offensive or defiled, thus requiring purification.
Pollution can occur from a variety of things: contact with death and blood outside of the
body (i.e. menstruation) are the most common, and pollution in Nausicaä comes from humans
disregard for the significance of nature and humanity’s ability to be cruel to fellow humans
and other forms of life. For instance, the abduction and physical abuse of an Ohmu pupa,
used to provoke the adult Ohmu into a murderous rage to eradicate the Torumekian forces
inhabiting the people of Nausicaä’s homeland, The Valley. According to Miyazaki, a major
inspiration for the film was an ecological disaster during the 1950s and 60s when Minamata
Bay was polluted with mercury, yet the fish population increased dramatically and he ‘admired

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the resilience of other living creatures, that they could absorb such poisons and survive’
(Wright, 2005).
The dominant theme of Shintō purification and pollution is recurrent in anime and manga,
and can be attributed to various causes. Such as the universal recognisability of these concepts,
and the notion of purification and/or pollution being present in a variety of world religions.
For the ancient Greeks, it was ‘miasma,’ a noxious foul-smelling mist attributable to the
spread of diseases, such as cholera. People of the Orthodox Jewish faith refrain from eating
pork products, for the pig is an impure creature and by eating this meat they are essentially
imbibing this impurity onto themselves. In India, millions of people, the Dalits, are perceived
as ‘untouchable’ due to their position in the caste system via Hindu concepts of reincarnation,
deemed less than human, and are relegated to the most impure of jobs such as sanitation.
As mentioned earlier, viewers are dependent on the cultural meanings that images invoke,
this is evident in the series Hundred Stories, a horror genre anime that intertextualises the
supernatural world of Japan with each episode filled with references to mythical creatures,
supernatural humans, and aspects of Japanese culture, all of which would be lost to the Ja-
panese people if these images were not based in already recognised images and meanings.
The use of the supernatural is repeated in anime and manga, owing to the abundance of
stories waiting to be re-told, or re-envisioned, for modern audiences. Identification of the
imagery and symbolism of the supernatural world and the creatures within it means that a
well-informed viewer can garner a superior level of understanding of the plotline and the
nuances of the creator, enhancing the overall experience. When one sees an image of a kitsune,
for example, they also see the myths behind the creature and use this knowledge to establish
ideas about the fox within the context of what they are viewing. The novels of Kyogoku
Natsuhiko, which the Hundred Stories anime is taken from, can be said to have two pretexts,
although they are both inevitably linked with their content. The first pretext is a book of
prints by Takehara Shunsen published c.1841 called the Ehon Hyaku Monogatari (Picture
Book of a Hundred Stories), a five volume supernatural bestiary. The second pretext is Japan’s
ghost story telling sessions called Hyaku Monogatari Kaidankai (A Gathering of One Hundred
Supernatural Tales), where on summer nights participants gather in a room lit with a hundred
candles and as each story is told a candle is extinguished making the room progressively
darker, and it is believed that at the end of this frightful session when the room is pitch-black
something supernatural will happen.3 Hundred Stories uses the imagery within this picture
book and joint narratives, the animation itself having an almost ukiyo-e print quality, and
each episode deals with a certain story or creature contained in one of these volumes. The
plotline of the anime details the story of a young man, Momosuke, and his journey to ‘collect’
one hundred stories of the unknown in the hopes of witnessing something supernatural, an
idea correlating with the Hyaku Monogatari. Along the way he meets with three spiritual
beings and is thrown into a series of horrifying situations with a host of mythical beings and
terrifying tales. The use of ghost storytelling session is also found in xxxHoLiC (Episode
10, Lamplight, or Tomoshibi), where the main characters gather in a traditional Japanese
room and each tell a story, and by the end they are faced with an unidentifiable shadowy
creature they must eradicate.

3
This idea inspired many artworks of the Meiji Era (1868-1912), thus ghoulish ukiyo-e (woodblock prints) detailing
a hundred stories became popular. For example, Hokusai Katsushika’s (1760-1849) One Hundred Tales and
Kawanabe Kyōsai’s (1831-1889) Pictorial Record of One Hundred Goblins.

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Numerous anime and manga draw on the Japanese people’s common understanding of
their mythological and folk traditions, supplying symbolic shorthand, as a form of pretext.
Through the use of intertextuality, embedded mythological knowledge is placed into new
works, re-envisioned, yet the basic meaning of the reference transcends the story, so the
meaning is still visible but is left to multiple interpretations by the author and the audience.
Storylines and settings are enhanced through references to legends, or a character’s name
can be shared with heroes of the past to establish aspects of their personality. Thus, mythology
encourages the proliferation of fantastical anime and manga.
For instance, Watase Yū’s Ayashi no Ceres manga turned anime adopts the traditional
legend of the hagoromo 4, a ‘robe of feathers’ worn by Buddhist female deities called tennyo
(heavenly maiden) who roam the sky wingless playing celestial music and scattering flowers
(Anesaki, 1928). Watase re-envisions the hagoromo legend for her plotline, successfully
highlighting the myths universality and adapting it for a modern Japan. In Watase’s work,
the importance of the hagoromo is altered from a mode of transport into the heavens to the
life force or mana of the tennyo, made from her and a source of their eternal life. We also
find out that the love interest, Toya, was created by Ceres hagoromo, which Mikagi dumped
into the ocean to stop her from leaving him in his power-hungry madness, so that one day
it could be returned to her. This is a perfect example of re-envisioning a time old tale for a
modern audience while incorporating all the elements of a typical shōjo manga (girl’s comic)
that Watase is known for and using elements of other genres, such as sci-fi and horror, and
the common vengeful female spirit tale as Ceres is resentful of being ill-used by a mortal
whom she in fact loved (Drazen, 2003).
Another case in point is Kishimoto Masashi’s Naruto, which makes myriad references to
Japanese mythology throughout this ongoing series. By using these references Kishimoto
alludes to cultural common knowledge, eliminating the need to explicitly explain everything,
creating layers to his work. For Kishimoto, the audience decodes his imagery to elaborate
the storyline and character development, interpreting his suggested meanings through already
established knowledge of Japanese cultural and mythological history.
Naruto is the tale of twelve year old wannabe ninja Uzumaki Naruto, the protagonist, who
had a type of youkai (demon) called a Kyuubi no Youko (Nine-tailed Fox) sealed inside him
at birth, stopping its rampage of the village. The Kyuubi no Youko is a major aspect of the
overall plotline of this manga and the characterisation of Naruto himself. Kishimoto uses
the mythology of the kitsune to create personality and physical traits for Naruto’s character,
using the Kyuubi sealed within him as a catalyst. For example, kitsune are known tricksters
and Naruto is quite the prankster and within the first volume/episode he defaces a mountain
with the images of the village leaders carved into it, similar to America’s Mount Rushmore.
The idea of a Kyuubi being sealed within Naruto echoes the myths of fox possession, Kitsune
Tsuki (Fox Lunacy), where a kitsune would take over a humans body, and it can be assumed
that Kishimoto is intertexualising these tales for the purpose of creating another layer to the

4
There is upwards of thirty variants of the hagoromo legend spanning across Japan. A basic synopsis of the myth
offered by Drazen (2003) is a number of tennyo descend to Earth to bathe and during this time a fisherman, Hakuryo,
sees a hagoromo hanging from a branch, entranced with its beauty he takes it home. The hagoromo’s owner comes
to Hakuryo as a beautiful maiden and begs him to give it back otherwise she cannot return to Heaven. Hakuryo
uses the hagoromo as leverage, forcing the tennyo to marry him and bear his children. Year pass, and it is not until
the tennyo hears her child singing the whereabouts of her robe, that she runs off (depending on the version, with
child in tow) and ascends back to Heaven.

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personality of Naruto. Shape-shifting abilities of the kitsune are one of the most widespread
of superstitions, and the ‘favorite shape assumed by the wild fox is that of a pretty girl, and
there are innumerable stories about the wiles of these fox women’ (Krappe, 1944). Kishimoto
is alluding to this fact with one of Naruto’s signature ninja techniques, Sexy-no-Jutsu, where
he turns himself into a teenaged blonde girl with pigtails, big breasts and completely naked
besides wisps of smoke covering her private parts.
An interesting observation can be seen between Naruto and his teammate Uchiha Sasuke,
whose clan heraldry is a red and white fan called an uchiwa (stiff fan). Casal (1960) states
that this type of fan ‘plays a major part in many exorcising ceremonies, whether as a symbol
of superior power or simply because it can blow away “evil”.’ Sasuke, with his clan’s
bloodline ability the Sharingan, discovers much later in the series that he in fact can dispel
the Kyuubi from over-taking Naruto when he utilises his power, as if Sasuke was exorcising
or blowing away its evil. The red and white colouration of the symbol is also worth noting
for its link to the traditional dress of a miko, mentioned earlier in this paper, which also has
exorcising abilities.
Using mythological as a pretext, the character of Uchiha Itachi has three powerful ninja
techniques that are actually the names of three important Shintō deities: Tsukiyomi the moon
god or goddess, Amaterasu the sun goddess, and Susano-o the storm god, all born from the
primordial god, Izanagi. After chasing his dead wife into the underworld, Izanagi returns to
the land of the living and bathes to rid himself of impurities. From his left eye sprung
Amatersu, from his right Tsukiyomi, and Susano-o from his nose. The ninja technique
Tsukiyomi is a type of illusion, with a large red moon reminiscent of the moon god/dess’s
status, where the target is drawn into the world of the wielder and feels seventy-two hours
worth of torment in a matter of minutes. Amaterasu is a black flame that continues to burn
until the target is turned to ashes, this technique is a contradiction to the goddess’s innate
goodness as a bringer of light and the idea of an all encompassing fire, which can be con-
sidered evil with it destructive capabilities, being attributed to her name is a confusing allusion
by Kishimoto. Finally there is Susano-o, an ethereal samurai who fights on the behalf of the
caster and shields them from attacks which is a contradiction to his character, making the
volatile god an image of honour attributed to the samurai with this image. This demonstrates
how given imagery can be altered to create new meaning, or even twist meanings.
The relationship between anime and manga and its pretext is evident, especially in the
case of religious, mythological, and supernatural genres, and these pretexts have made the
world of anime and manga richer, multifaceted, and overflowing with interpretive possibil-
ities. The vast repertoire of plotlines, settings, character tropes, and characterisations, means
that artists can encode their works with symbolic shorthand that religion, mythology and the
supernatural grants, even re-inventing beliefs and legends with modern day interpretations,
creating an new era of Japanese mythology and the supernatural in commercial media. The
innate semiology of religion, mythology, and the supernatural, imbedded in the psyches of
the Japanese people, provides anime and manga with an avenue in which to exploit this
knowledge to create a sub-textuality to their works. The plethora of pretexts have directly
affected and constructed the imagery, motifs and ideology utilised in anime and manga of
these diverse genres, and that pretexts encode these media and intertextualise pictorial rep-
resentations of Japan’s religious, mythological, and supernatural spheres. Although knowledge
of the above does not detract from watching and enjoyment of anime and manga, the rela-
tionship between the pretexts and the content are important for the overall comprehension

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of the works, for they are interweaving texts that rely on the Japanese ability to decode these
images and themes with the larger cultural meanings they invoke.

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About the Author

Amy Plumb
I’m a PhD candidate at Macquarie University, Australia. My thesis topic is Japanese religion,
mythology, and the world of the supernatural in anime and manga (Japanese animations and
comics). I’ve always loved classical mythology and when my interest in Japan began, it felt
only logical to follow my love of mythology into a new culture. I hope to begin a Asian
mythology class at my university in the future. I’m a Japanophile, so I love practically
everything Japanese. I’m also a cat person.

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