<h1>This article is written by Wang Dingjie</h1>
What if Japan had an atomic bomb in World War II?
Maybe you will find it funny and think it is a young YY. But after reading it, you don't necessarily have to laugh.
The feature-length manga "Dimensional Fleet" created by Kaiji Kawaguchi has been serialized for ten years since 2000. In his third year, he received the Kodansha Manga Award. The cumulative sales volume of single books exceeded the 10 million book mark in just five years. If you think about Japan's total population, you know what that number means.
When we were still thinking that manga was Happy Goat and Bald Head Strong, Japan's Shengdou Komin and Cabinet Ministers all began to look after this in-depth manga that critics believed to be comparable to pure literature. Aso Taro, a former Liberal Democratic Party cadre who served as Japan's prime minister, has publicly stated that Japanese politicians can learn a lot from it.
Taro Aso
Because of its popularity, in the fourth year of the series, the first six and a half volumes of the content were adapted and filmed into an animated series of 26 episodes.
Let's take a look at what the comic is all about.
The story begins in early June of 200X. Because of the unrest in Latin America, which endangered the safety of the Japanese diaspora, the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force decided to send an Aegis ship "Mirai" to Ecuador to protect the overseas Chinese.
On the way across the Pacific, the warship encountered the turbulence of time and space, crossed back to World War II, just in time for the Battle of Midway, and mistakenly saved an old Japanese naval intelligence officer Who had fallen into the water, Sakusa Katokai.
In the real world, Japan and the United States are allies. But historically, Japan and the United States have been enemies. Which side should I help?
The answer is that no one helps.
The reason why no one helps is very simple, if history is changed, the "future" of their lives will no longer exist. The people on this ship will become completely timeless wanderers, losing their families and worlds forever.
However, history has changed. Because the Future can no longer travel back in time, it has to learn to live in the Era of World War II. Its very existence has become a major variable in the course of history.
At the same time, the Kusaka Shosa, who should have been killed at the Battle of Midway, not only survived now, but also read a large number of historical materials in the library of the future, predicting the fiasco of Guadalcanal, the sinking of the Yamato, the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the final complete defeat.
"Now that we know the future, we can't and can't escape it."
It is not difficult to imagine that The Grass Adder decided to change the course of history. But to change the course of history is to indirectly destroy the world in which the people of the future live.
The co-captain of the Mirai, Yosuke Nagato Matsumoto, resolutely defends the world in which he lives. But in order to survive in the Era of World War II, it had to rely on Grass Plus. And because of Kusaka, I have seen giants such as Isoroku Yamamoto and Mitsumasa Minouchi.
Mitsumasa Minouchi also personally boarded the Mirai.
In the face of Minnet, the captain of the Mirai, Umezu Saburo, made an important decision: as a Japanese, although from the 21st century, I still can't sit idly by and watch the death of my compatriots. Therefore, the decision to go forward will help Japan in the twentieth century, even if it loses its future.
Unexpectedly, Mine said: There is no need for this. The Future only needs to be quietly moored until it decays.
It turned out that Minet believed that Japan was far from ready to dominate the Asia-Pacific region. The whole country, looking out at the mirage, wearing an ill-fitting militarist coat, dancing mechanically like a toddler, is why it has come to this step.
"The people lack a strong will, and they cannot cut their own bones and scrape their bones to remove poison." Failures and setbacks can make them reflect calmly. Winning the war with the help of the new technology of the Future is too opportunistic obsession. In the end, it will be harmful to Japan and to the world. "I hope that the lives lost in this war will make Japan reborn a hundred years later."
It seems that the lines in the manga are not strong enough, and the lines in the cartoon are used with greater strength.
"The Japanese people are still a hundred years away from imperialism."
Until the fundamental problems are solved, helping the military to win the war is a disaster for Japan and a disaster for the world.
So what Japan really needs is not the Future, but everyone on the Future. Your value is not to win the war, but to build a better Japan after the war.
As a result, Mine and Kakumatsu form an alliance to work together to stop Kusaka's opportunist agitation.
However, the cursory plan is not to rely on new technologies or precognitive information to cheat, win several battles, and engage in an opportunistic victory. What he wants to do is to find a new path that does not need to be cut and broken, but also very difficult, so difficult that some people can introspect themselves.
As an intelligence staff officer, Kusaka believes that the most important thing is to match the most important information to the most important people.
There are two important people in Kusaka's heart.
One is yamamoto, the reigning god of war of the navy.
One is the Army's wild ghost Ishihara Guan'er.
Kusaka passed through Yamamoto to promote strategic contraction, take the initiative to retreat, and exchange space for time. Then, he docked with Ishihara Guan'er, using Ishihara's super brain to make the time gained come into play.
Ishihara quickly came up with a new strategic plan:
The Chinese front was comprehensively shrunk, and the territory abandoned was not given to Wang Jingwei or Chiang Kai-shek, but to a third party. In this way, China could fall into a new civil war, which in turn would lead to contradictions between the Soviet Union and the United States.
Next, we will make every effort to build a puppet state of Manchukuo. Carry out internal system reform, use people's selfish desires to achieve public welfare goals, rely on market forces and human driving forces, restart the mainland colonial plan, with the Daqing oilfield project as the core, and promote a new process of re-industrialization.
The ultimate goal is to fully develop the atomic bomb.
With the Daqing oil field, we are not afraid of the resource blockade of the United States. With the atomic bomb, it is possible to freeze the hot war of the great powers and jump out of the protracted overall war that Japan is not good at.
In this way, Japan could secure its supremacy in the western Pacific and Southeast Asia.
However, a large-scale withdrawal from Chinese mainland requires a suitable reason. Therefore, the first step in the plan was to assassinate Puyi, the son emperor of the puppet state of Manchukuo, and create unrest.
In this way, the main force of the army can be reduced back to puppet Manchukuo on the pretext of quelling the chaos.
Cao Jia flew to Changchun with this new plan and personally assassinated Puyi. Yosuke Kakumatsu tracks all the way to stop Kusaka.
However, in the process of tracking, Kakumatsu witnessed the funeral of his childhood father.
It was the Navy personnel who tracked the adult Horn pine to the death of the father of the horn pine.
Is a future that no longer has itself worth defending?
Kakumatsu, with all sorts of confusion, continued to track down Kusaka.
Since then, after countless open and dark battles, showdowns have been compromised. From the military to the palace, from the civilian to the government, the elites of various factions gradually reached a consensus and decided to work together to prevent the destruction of Japan and jointly shape a new future.
However, this future is not easy to shape. Circumventing the known is only ushering in more unknowns.
Yamamoto is still dead, just more than two hours longer than in history.
The fates of Yamato and Musashi have not fundamentally changed.
Kusaka, along with all the crew of the Mirai except Kakumatsu, died in the fierce battle. Although Horned Pine survived, he lost the ability to walk on his legs and could only sit in a wheelchair forever.
However, a new era has arrived. With an atomic bomb detonated in a demonstration on the high seas, a reconciliation between Japan and the United States was reached.
However, this is not without cost. Because neither the Tokyo air raid nor the atomic bombardment occurred, it is not difficult to imagine that many people in Japan do not buy this peace.
"People are very dissatisfied with the Japan-U.S. reconciliation, believing that the losses outweigh the gains. Many have criticized the government for not fighting U.S. imperialism to the end. Those who have not experienced war, who have not had a tragic experience, the criticism is particularly poisonous. ”
Naturally, there is no deep reflection on failure, no post-war economic leaps and bounds, no deep changes in the system. There are still undercurrents surging in the Pacific Ocean. It is only because Japan and the United States have nuclear weapons that the major powers will no longer use force easily for the time being.
The whole country is struggling to survive by the survivors who ended the war. As for how long it will last, no one can say for sure.
Before I knew it, it was June of 200X again. Japan sent four Aegis ships to participate in the joint military exercise organized by the Pacific Convention. One of them is the Future. Miraculously, all the crew of the Mirai were gathered again. Just missing horn pine.
At this time, Kakumatsu understood that only he had survived. It's because in this world, only you die.
Sure enough, two identical people cannot exist in a world at the same time.
The warships faded away, and the elderly Hornsong hid in the crowd, giving them the Navy's hat-off ceremony until everyone had left, until the warship was gone.
"None of the ships that set sail that day were missing, and all arrived at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on time."
Two worlds, which is better?
What does it really mean to lose, to win, to reconcile?
No solution, or is there a solution?
Everyone has an answer in their heart. So, what is the answer that the author is looking for?
In this regard, Kawaguchi said in the monograph: "Between the changes of the times, where has human nature changed? What's the same? It's a topic I'm interested in exploring. ”
As in the book Yamamoto Fifty-Six saw the new aircraft, he asked about the pilot's training cycle. When he learned that it would take four to five years, Yamamoto said: "Although the technology of aircraft can be advanced, people will not change." ”
We can disagree with the author's view of history, but we have to pay attention to the author's expressive approach and depth of thinking. After the one-line book, there is often a lot of professional historical knowledge of science.
Sometimes, in the form of answering reporters' questions, I also think about the following questions.
Including the aesthetic treatment of various details in the book.
Look at the main references at the end of the book.
I know that behind this comic, there is a lot of thinking and research.
More notably, the author also says in the monograph:
Exactly sixty years ago, the Japanese provoked a war against the United States and the nations of the world. It was a war in which the whole country was thrown into the killing, and in retrospect, it is difficult to understand why such a cruel thing happened, but for the people of the time, this cruel look back on history is the years they have personally spent. I began to paint this work, hoping to explore the gulf between people in different eras. ”
This passage can be said to represent the mainstream Japanese view of history. Japan has never considered itself a loser to China. It was the United States that brought down Japan. The Sino-Japanese War was only a small part of the Sino-American War.
What's even more interesting is that at the beginning of the comic series, the 911 incident occurred. In this regard, the author says:
On September 11, 2001, in Manhattan, New York, the Landmark World Trade Center, a symbol of America's economic leap, disappeared. In the past, whether it was World War II, Vietnam, or the Persian Gulf War, the U.S. military always fought overseas, and the U.S. mainland was never affected by war, but when the Gemini Tower collapsed one after another, the U.S. mainland has become a battlefield, and the shock is indescribable, and I sincerely mourn for those who died. But on the other hand, it is also hoped that the American people will recognize the fact that the country has become a battlefield and understand the cruel face of war. ”
In the middle of this, there is also a condemnation of the indiscriminate bombing of Japan by the United States in World War II. The image of the Japanese victims is back.
Small fresh meat, idol dramas, comic books, cartoons, all countries, but the content of expression can be far away. Although technology and capital are important, the most important thing is people's cognition and human efforts.
It's also about drawing comics, and you can draw very different things. Also looking at the manga, you can also see very different content.
There is no absolute distinction between form and form itself. But the content can be vastly different.
Many people are dismissive of comics, but forget that the more seemingly childish the form, the more profoundly they can shape the spirit of the next generation.
When other people's cannons come to the door, we don't just have to be funny and funny.