Noire Notes III

On Tekken, Japan & The Limitations Of Nostalgia

It’s December 1998. Underneath the Christmas tree is a present that has been on my wish-list for three years straight: a PlayStation and the latest Tekken game.

Up until this point, the only experience I had with Tekken was at a friend’s house – the second instalment being a highlight, with stories of devils and angels that fit right in with Sunday School. Vengeance may be the Lord’s but it feels better when holding a DualShock controller.

Nearly ten years later and I find myself in the country where it all came from. I catch glimpses of Mount Fuji while reading the warped poetry and patriotism of Yukio Mishima. I walk past ‘samurais’ and ‘geishas’ while visiting Shinto shrines and sliding across nightingale floors. I relive my childhood by watching ASIMO robots run and playing games in the arcades of Shibuya, wondering when the protagonist I used to practice the Lightning Uppercut with became a ruthless dictator ready to initiate World War III.

More than a decade passes and the stories I used to love no longer hit the same. Supposedly normal people suddenly become superheroes, long gone antagonists ‘somehow return’ and heroes live long enough to become the villain. The stories I once cherished have transformed into hollow husks of ‘content’, destined to be made so long as they can still turn a profit. I worry if this is all I have to look forward to and then I remember what Toni Morrison once said: that anything I want to see in the world, I have to create myself. I begin to write accordingly.

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Further Watching

[1] Tekken, Gizou Gitai

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