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ABSTRACT
As one of the most successful pieces of transnational popular culture, we rhetorically analyze the compelling critique of neoliberal capitalism in the 2020 anime film, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train. Alongside this criticism of neoliberal capitalism, we theorize relations of mujō (無常/impermanence) found in the film, foregrounding this Buddhist principle to advance ways of being that resist neoliberal capitalist impulses. We forward three tenets that emerge in our analysis of this film: (1) recognizing that all beings are embedded within shared entanglements; (2) holding all beings responsible to serve others; (3) transcending the bounds of death by passing the torch of omoi (想い/human feeling). We argue that Mugen Train’s protagonists, the Demon Slayers, embody mujō that demonstrates how those under capitalist subjugation can only be liberated by recognizing human community grounded in such a relational ethic. We thus situate relations of mujō as a critical rhetorical theory that releases us from the neoliberal capitalist pursuit of mugen (無限/limitless).
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this article was presented at the National Communication Association Conference, Seattle, WA, November 2022 with the Japan–U.S. Communication Association. We would like to thank Dr. Akira Miyahara for his feedback, and Ven. Ryugen of Houdouji (実験寺院寳幢) Experimental Temple for guiding us toward the idea of mujō. And finally, we are grateful for those who have contributed toward the development of this article, especially the anonymous reviewers of QJS and editor Dr. Stacey Sowards.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Notes
1 Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba the Movie: Mugen Train, directed by Haruo Sotozaki (Universal Pictures Home Entertainment, 2021), Blu-ray.
2 “2020 Worldwide Box Office,” Box Office Mojo by IMDbPro, https://www.boxofficemojo.com/year/world/2020/; “Demon Slayer—Kimestsu no Yaiba—the Movie: Mugen Train,” Rotten Tomatoes, https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/demon_slayer_kimetsu_no_yaiba_the_movie_mugen_train.
3 Fielding Montgomery and Megu Itoh, “Understanding Transnational Decontextualization–Recontextualization through Shingeki no Kyojin: The Perils and Possibilities Surrounding Japanese Manga and Anime,” Critical Studies in Media Communication 40, nos. 2–3 (2023): 163–176. See also Koichi Iwabuchi, Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002); Brian Ruh, “Adapting Anime: Transnational Media between Japan and the United States” (PhD diss., Indiana University, 2013).
4 For more on how Japan’s processes of westernization related to militarism and imperialism, see Satoshi Toyosaki and Shinsuke Eguchi, “Introduction: Intercultural Communication in Japan: Theorizing Homogenized Discourse,” in Intercultural Communication in Japan: Theorizing Homogenizing Discourse, ed. Satoshi Toyosaki and Shinsuke Eguchi (New York: Routledge, 2017), 1–23. For more on the history of Japanese colonialism and imperialism, see Michele M. Mason, Dominant Narratives of Colonial Hokkaido and Imperial Japan: Envisioning the Periphery and the Modern Nation-State (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012).
5 Matthew deTar, “Decolonizing Rhetorical History,” in Reframing Rhetorical History: Cases, Theories, and Methodologies, ed. Kathleen J. Turner and Jason Edward Black (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2022), 192.
6 Raka Shome, “The Obligation of Critical (Rhetorical) Studies to Build Theory,” Western Journal of Communication 77, no. 5 (2013): 516 (original emphasis).
7 Kundai Chirindo, “Bantu Sociolinguistics in Wangari Maathai’s Peacebuilding Rhetoric,” Women’s Studies in Communication 39, no. 4 (2016): 456.
8 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
9 Wendy Brown, Undoing the Demos: Neoliberalism’s Stealth Revolution (Brooklyn: Zone Books, 2015), 9–10.
10 Brown, Undoing the Demos, 10.
11 Brown, Undoing the Demos, 37–8.
12 Robert Asen, “Neoliberalism, the Public Sphere, and a Public Good,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 103, no. 4 (2017): 331.
13 Brown, Undoing the Demos, 39.
14 Brown, Undoing the Demos, 39.
15 Achille Mbembe, Necropolitics, trans. Steven Corcoran (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2019), 6 (original emphasis).
16 Achille Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” trans. Libby Meintjes, Public Culture 15, no. 1 (2003): 39–40; Mbembe, Necropolitics, 27.
17 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 92. For more on biopower, see Michel Foucault, Society Must Be Defended: Lectures at the College de France 1975–1976, ed. Mauro Bertani and Alessandro Fontana, trans. David Macey (New York: Picador, 2003).
18 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 92.
19 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 3.
20 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 92 (original emphasis).
21 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 92 (original emphasis).
22 For more on the applicability of Foucault’s biopolitics to rhetoric (and, by extension then, Mbembe’s necropolitical understanding of that notion), see Daniel M. Gross, “Rhetoric and the Origins of the Human Sciences: A Foucauldian Tale Untold,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 102, no. 3 (2016): 225–244.
23 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 34.
24 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 34.
25 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 38.
26 Marina Gržinić, “Exclusion and the Dead,” Parse 8 (2018).
27 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 38.
28 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 34, 47.
29 Meredith Neville-Shepard, “‘Better Never Means Better for Everyone’: White Feminist Necropolitics and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 109, no. 1 (2023): 2–25.
30 Neville-Shepard, “‘Better Never Means Better for Everyone,’” 7.
31 Neville-Shepard, “‘Better Never Means Better for Everyone,’” 3–4.
32 Asen, “Neoliberalism, the Public Sphere,” 331.
33 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 95.
34 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 104.
35 Stephen Hartnett, “Fanny Fern’s 1855 Ruth Hall, The Cheerful Brutality of Capitalism, & the Irony of Sentimental Rhetoric,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 88, no. 1 (2002): 6.
36 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 27.
37 Joanna Zylinska, The End of Man: A Feminist Counterapocalypse (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018), 9 (original emphasis).
38 Zylinska, The End of Man, 10.
39 Zylinska, The End of Man, 10.
40 Zylinska, The End of Man, 10.
41 Zylinska, The End of Man, 9, 37.
42 Zylinska, The End of Man, 9.
43 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 31.
44 William R. LaFleur, The Karma of Words: Buddhism and the Literary Arts in Medieval Japan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1983), 60.
45 Ria Taketomi, “Reading Never Let Me Go from the Mujo Perspective of Buddhism,” American, British and Canadian Studies 31, no. 1 (2018): 115.
46 Susumu Simazono, “Traditions of Japanese Spirituality and the Awareness of Death: View of Impermanence (Mujokan) and View of Transcience (Ukiyokan),” 日本トランスパーソナル心理学 / 精神医学開始「トランスパーソナル心理学 / 精神学」 8, no. 1 (2008): 32.
47 Simazono, “Traditions of Japanese Spirituality,” 32.
48 Alireza Rezaee, “Reconceptualizing Mujo: A Japanese Worldview Not in the Pursuit of Eternity,” Journal of Iran Cultural Research 10, no. 3 (2017): 27–50.
49 Yujin Nagasawa, “Evil and the Problem of Impermanence in Medieval Japanese Philosophy,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 14, no. 3 (2022): 204.
50 Taketomi, “Reading Never Let Me Go,” 115, 122.
51 Steven Heine, “From Rice Cultivation to Mind Contemplation: The Meaning of Impermanence in Japanese Religion,” History of Religions 30, no. 4 (1991): 374.
52 Simazono, “Traditions of Japanese Spirituality,” 32.
53 Mbembe, “Necropolitics,” 11.
54 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 115.
55 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 93 (original emphasis).
56 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 109 (original emphasis).
57 Zylinska, The End of Man, 27.
58 Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World: On the Possibility of Life in Capitalist Ruins (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2015), 20.
59 Zylinska, The End of Man, 17.
60 Zylinska, The End of Man, 55.
61 Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, 20.
62 Beverly Foulks McGuire, “Resilience and Interdependence: Christian and Buddhist Views of Social Responsibility Following Natural Disasters,” Buddhist–Christian Studies 39 (2019): 123.
63 Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, 20.
64 Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, 20.
65 Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, 20.
66 Zylinska, The End of Man, 55.
67 Emmanuel Levinas, Ethics and Infinity: Conversations with Philippe Nemo, trans. Richard A. Cohen (Pittsburgh, PA: Duquesne University Press, 1985), 96.
68 Levinas, Ethics and Infinity, 96 (original emphasis).
69 McGuire, “Resilience and Interdependence,” 127.
70 McGuire, “Resilience and Interdependence,” 127.
71 Ersula Ore, “Pushback: A Pedagogy of Care,” Pedagogy: Critical Approaches to Teaching Literature, Language, Composition, and Culture 17, no. 1 (2017): 23.
72 McGuire, “Resilience and Interdependence,” 127.
73 Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, 28.
74 Zylinska, The End of Man, 64.
75 Sara Ahmed, “Happy Objects,” in The Affect Theory Reader, ed. Melissa Gregg and Gregory J. Seigworth (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2010), 31.
76 Ahmed, “Happy Objects,” 33.
77 Ahmed, “Happy Objects,” 33.
78 Donna Haraway, Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2016), 35.
79 Tsing, The Mushroom at the End of the World, 20.
80 Ronald S. Green and Susan J. Bergeron, “Teaching Cultural, Historical, and Religious Landscapes,” Education About Asia 26, no. 2 (2021): 49.
81 Kamekichi Takahashi, “The Rise of Capitalism in Japan,” The Open Court, no. 3 (1933): 165.
82 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
83 Stacey Jocoy, “Kagura Dance: The Musicality of Ritualized Dance as Historical Imaginary in Kimetsu no Yaiba and Kimi no Na wa,” Transcommunication 8, no. 2 (2021): 192.
84 The fashion of Mugen Train plays a large role in depicting the cultural struggles of the era the film is set in. The visual markers of Enmu’s capitalist symbolism lie in his lavish attire: a black tailcoat, a white dress shirt, pinstriped gray dress pants, and pristine white dress shoes. Enmu’s elaborate, modern dress and fairly normal human appearance point to the subtleties with which westernized neoliberal capitalism can invade a society without much notice. Indeed, fashion choices in Demon Slayer emphasize the “clash between traditionalism and modernism,” according to Marc York, “When Demon Slayer Takes Place—and Why the Time Period Matters to the Story,” CBR, March 29, 2022, https://www.cbr.com/when-demon-slayer-takes-place-and-why-the-time-period-matters-to-the-story/#:~:text=Demon%20Slayer%20takes%20place%20in,clash%20of%20traditionalism%20and%20modernism. Further, as Jason T. Testar argues, “the introduction and assimilation of the practices of Western courts and popular fashion has had a [great] impact upon the Westernization of Japanese culture.” Jason T. Testar, “The Introduction and Contemporary Practice of Academical Dress in Japan,” Transactions of the Burgon Society 14 (2014): 48. Finally, as Naomi Ajima notes, western fashion styles were initially “worn by the privileged class, symbolizing the gilded cultural enlightenment.” However, as Japan continued to modernize in the Taishō period, western clothes became adopted by the working class participating in “capitalist production organizations … leading to a trend in adopting uniforms, or functional clothes, as fashion.” Naomi Ajima, “Working Women during the Turning Point from Japanese-Style to Western-Style Clothing,” Institut Français de la Mode (IFM) 36 quai d’Austerlitz 75013 Paris France (2011): 117. Thus, Taishō era fashion was distinctly tied to shifting economic and cultural trends in Japan, with Enmu clearly wearing ornate, western dress clothes that symbolize an elite economic status that is not to be conflated with working-class uniform fashion. This contrasts sharply with the Demon Slayer Corps’s uniform consisting of a traditional haori (羽織). These haori are where each character’s unique essence is expressed through an anime style, as each Demon Slayer has a vibrant color scheme representing their abilities and pasts.
85 Hirokazu Miyazaki, “Economy of Dreams: Hope in Global Capitalism and Its Critiques,” Cultural Anthropology 21, no. 2 (2006): 150.
86 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
87 See Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (London: George Bell & Sons, 1892).
88 Robert Asen argues that the individual focus imposed on the neoliberal subject makes visions of community action, empowerment, and care impossible. See Asen, “Neoliberalism, the Public Sphere,” 338.
89 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 34.
90 Zylinska, The End of Man, 2.
91 Brown, Undoing the Demos, 39.
92 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 31 (original emphasis).
93 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
94 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 43, 96.
95 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
96 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 91.
97 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
98 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 49.
99 For more on the role of the foreman in the panopticon of the liberal state, see Barry J. Ryan, “Becoming Montenergin: Biopower, Police Reform and Human Rights,” International Journal of Human Rights 476, no. 4 (2019): 481–2.
100 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
101 I.S. Hirst, “Perspectives of Mindfulness,” Journal of Psychiatric and Mental Health Nursing 10, no. 3 (2003): 360–1.
102 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
103 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
104 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
105 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
106 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
107 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
108 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
109 Rezaee, “Reconceptualizing Mujō” 3.
110 Charles Hampden-Turner and Fons Trompenaars, Nine Visions of Capitalism: Unlocking the Meanings of Wealth Creation (Oxford: Infinite Ideas, 2015), 19–20.
111 Hampden-Turner and Trompenaars, Nine Visions of Capitalism, 13–14.
112 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 176.
113 Asen, “Neoliberalism, the Public Sphere,” 331.
114 Asen, “Neoliberalism, the Public Sphere,” 338.
115 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
116 Frantz Fanon, Alienation and Freedom, ed. Jean Khalfa and Robert J.C. Young, trans. Haakon Chevalier (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018), 216, 219.
117 Zylinska, The End of Man, 23.
118 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
119 McGuire, “Resilience and Interdependence,” 127.
120 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
121 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 175.
122 Zylinska, The End of Man, 59.
123 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 175.
124 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
125 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
126 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
127 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
128 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.
129 Aimee Carrillo Rowe, “Be Longing: Toward a Feminist Politics of Relation,” NWSA Journal 17, no. 2 (2005): 16.
130 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 34.
131 Mbembe, Necropolitics, 3.
132 Shome, “The Obligation of Critical (Rhetorical) Studies,” 515.
133 Achille Mbembe, Out of the Dark Night: Essays on Decolonization (New York: Columbia University Press, 2021), 13.
134 Stacey K. Sowards, “#RhetoricSoEnglish Only: Decolonizing Rhetorical Studies through Multilingualism,” Quarterly Journal of Speech 105, no. 4 (2019): 478.
135 Zylinska, The End of Man, 9, 37.
136 Zylinska, The End of Man, 20.
137 Chirindo, “Bantu Sociolinguistics,” 456–7.
138 Phaedra C. Pezzullo and Catalina M. de Onís, “Rethinking Rhetorical Field Methods on a Precarious Planet,” Communication Monographs 85, no. 1 (2018): 111.
139 Asen, “Neoliberalism, the Public Sphere,” 332.
140 Asen, “Neoliberalism, the Public Sphere,” 332.
141 Asen, “Neoliberalism, the Public Sphere,” 332.
142 Mugen Train, Sotozaki.