Bob Marshall
Doraemon talk
Japan Week 2004
Doraemon Notes

2004 is the 25th anniversary of Doraemon TV series
(anime first in 1979, introduced in manga form in
1969).
Fifteen minutes, two episodes, every Saturday
evening at dinner time.

coincidentally, it may be that Doraemon and I share a
common birth month and day, Sept. 3.
(2112-9-3)
Web Links
1) www.doraemon.wingsee.com/index.html
2) www.nephco.com/doraemon/
Points to start:
1) Ubiquity:
2 x 52 x 25 = 2600 episodes (2 episodes
take 15 minutes)
2) Saturday night marathon: a two-hour Doraemon
retrospective
3) “Red Feather Drive” pin has Doraemon image
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Bob Marshall
Doraemon talk
Japan Week 2004
4) Bill’s Doraemon necktie
One long, and then one short plot summary:
1) “Let’s build a subway”
Nobita, Doraemon and Mama are downtown walking
and Nobita is complaining about it.
Papa’s office.
to see them.
home.
They near
Papa comes out and is surprised
The family takes a crowded bus
Papa is used to it but Nobita and Doraemon
find it exhausting and complain.
Papa’s birthday is coming up soon and Nobita
wants to think of some way Papa won’t have to
ride the crowded bus.
He tells Doraemon he will
give Papa his own private subway for a birthday
present.
Doraemon is overwhelmed, but Nobita
wants him to do it.
Doraemon is flattered that
Nobita has so much confidence in him and his
tools, and so produces a digging machine that is
like a small submarine with treads and a big
screw tip on its front end.
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The two of them get
Bob Marshall
Doraemon talk
Japan Week 2004
in it and immediately start digging into the back
yard.
They get lost and come out in the ocean.
They keep trying.
The digging machine is
evidently hard to direct: it wanders around under
the earth like a drunken mole as the calendar
pages flutter down across the screen.
They come
out in a women’s public bath, in the lion cage at
the zoo, in a prison exercise yard.
More days
pass and Papa’s birthday gets closer, but still
no personal subway for him. Now the earth below
their house looks like an ant farm or Swiss
cheese.
At
last Doraemon believes he has the right map.
And away they go once again.
a really hard area.
But then they strike
They get out and think they
hear digging nearby, but conclude that that it’s
only their imagination.
Act 2 finishes with
Nobita telling Papa just as they are all turning
in for the night, “You’ll really like your
birthday tomorrow, Papa.
So good night.”
seems they must have pulled it off in time.
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It
Bob Marshall
Doraemon talk
Japan Week 2004
Act 3 begins with Papa waking to a present beside
his futon.
In the box is a subway commuter pass
for the “Nobita Private Subway,” good for the
“home to office” ride.
After breakfast Nobita and
Doraemon take Papa into a hole in the back yard
and Mama comes too.
Sure enough, there is one
subway car there; Doraemon is the driver and
Nobita is the conductor.
Itte kimasu from Papa,
itte ‘rasshai from Moma and off they go, Papa
sprawled out on the seat, dozing.
As they ride
along Nobita and Doraemon cheer for how fine their
subway is.
But then they see a light in their tunnel and slam
on the emergency brakes.
They stop just in time
to avoid colliding with a real construction crew
putting in a real subway.
Nobita claims that the
tunnel is his, and the crew chief accuses him of
selfishness, when there are lots and lots of
people who need to ride a public subway.
Doraemon
agrees with the crew chief.
So they try another route with their digger, but
it stalls and Papa has to start digging with a
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Bob Marshall
Doraemon talk
Japan Week 2004
pick.
Papa realizes this is impossible and Nobita
weeps bitter tears of apology.
and apologies to Papa.
Doraemon too cries
Papa forgives them,
recognizing that they meant well.
Doraemon then
spots a thin crack of light, thru which they break
into the sewer directly below Papa’s office and he
arrives at work on time, not much worse for the
wear.
The end.
2) “For once in my life I’d like to get a hundred”
Nobita is a terrible student but wants good
grades without studying.
hopeless”
Doraemon says “You’re
and gives him a “computer pencil” that
simply writes the correct answers automatically
on the homework page.
Nobita rushes over to
Shizuka’s house with it, despite Doraemon’s
misgivings.
Along the way he does Giant’s and
Suneo’s homework for them.
Then at Shizuka’s
house he blasts through the paper work mountain
her father had to bring home from the office.
Nobita wants to use the pencil on tomorrow’s
test, but Doraemon says that’s cheating.
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Nobita
Bob Marshall
Doraemon talk
Japan Week 2004
is adamant and Doraemon pulls a long face filled
with disappointment, but finally gives in.
Nobita struggles with his conscience all night,
and by the time of the test his good angel has
won.
He writes his test with his regular pencil,
one that has always earned him Ds and Fs in the
past.
When he returns the computer pencil to Doraemon,
tho, Doraemon instantly identifies it as a fake.
What happened to the authentic computer pencil?
Next day, teacher praises Giant as the only
student who got a hundred, or who even did well
on the test.
But Giant’s dad realizes that Giant
must have cheated, since he has never in his life
gotten a good grade, let alone a hundred, and so
gives him a good beating.
Giant returns the
computer pencil and is mad at Nobita and Doraemon
for getting him in trouble.
Also, “transformation cookies” and kaeru joke.
headed guest says “Ja, kaeru.”
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The frog-
Bob Marshall
Doraemon talk
Japan Week 2004
Two essays in English easily available here on campus:
1) Mark Shilling: Doraemon. In The encyclopedia of
Japanese pop culture.
1997.
2) Saya Shiraishi: Doraemon goes abroad.
In Japan Pop!
1997.
Shilling’s original article appeared in The Japan
Quarterly. Shiraishi’s essay is also revision of an earlier
essay.
They see largely eye-to-eye on Doraemon.
Shiraishi
quotes Shilling in agreement that Doraemon offers “a breath
of freedom and a glimpse of a funnier, friendlier world
where all dreams, even foolish ones, can come true.”
Shiraishi writes further:
“In Doraemon, science and
technology are intimately associated with children.
Nuclear-powered Doraemon is a symbol of the confidence and
hope people place in technology as the trustee of the
future of their children.
Technology, which once caused
total devastation, is purified by its association with and
use by an innocent child, and children are conceptually
empowered as those who are responsible for befriending and
advancing science and technology.”
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Bob Marshall
Doraemon talk
Japan Week 2004
Well, I just couldn’t disagree more.
More accurately,
Doraemon is the negation of this technological part of
present reality, a sort of reducto ad absurdum.
The
technology only seems to work; it works mechanically, but
not socially.
It doesn’t finally add anything to the world
and actually causes a lot of problems.
In the cartoon, at
least, these problems can be sorted out and life can return
to normal without the technology.
As a cartoon, of course,
there is no reference at all to the invention of
technologies of all sorts as a way for large companies to
earn profits.
Doraemon is Japanese, after all, so the cartoon is about
the paramount importance of ningen-kankei.
Social
relations are what matter and what must be preserved in the
face of the ever-appealing temptations of technological
fixes, which the cartoon demonstrates relentlessly to be
actually the road to disaster.
In every episode, Nobita wants Doraemon’s technology to
save him from himself and others, and it just makes things
worse.
It does all get sorted out, tho, and by the end
things are back to the status quo ante.
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Each episode
Bob Marshall
Doraemon talk
Japan Week 2004
traces a similar dramatic arch of elevation above the norm
by using the technology, a plunge into the depths by its
extended use, and then a return to the starting point,
accompanied by abandonment of the tools.
Such a resolution
is portrayed by the cartoon and evidently greeted by
audiences as success or triumph.
Shilling even quotes Doraemon’s creator on this exact
point, evidently without understanding the remark at all:
“When a manga hero becomes a success, the manga suddenly
stops being interesting,” said Fujimoto.
“So the hero has
to be like the stripes on a barber pole; he seems to keep
moving upward, but actually he stays in the same place.”
From the point of view of social relations vs the
inevitable changes brought on by technological innovations,
Doraemon is utterly conservative, if not actively Luddite
in its sentiments: there’s no place like home, whatever
home is like.
The self-referential and paradoxical irony of it all is
that Doraemon was sent by one of Nobita’s descendants from
the 22nd century back to our time to save Nobita, and so the
descendent, from his destiny.
But it is clear that
Doraemon has failed to change Nobita at all.
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The most he
Bob Marshall
Doraemon talk
Japan Week 2004
has done is make time stand still.
Now, the future will
not experience the effects of Nobita’s adult life if time
stands still in his childhood life, which it clearly has
for the past 25 years.
Who’s to say it won’t stay stopped
into a barber-pole-like or mobius strip-like atemporal,
indefinitely distant future?
Is this progress?
Is this
why Doraemon is funny? This paradox of self-reference,
however, encapsulates them, and so is made unavailable for
inspection or reflection by Doraemon’s young viewers.
Unfortunately, when he has the gadget, Nobita usually gets into deeper
trouble than before, despite Doraemon's best intentions and warnings.
Sometimes Nobita's friends, often Suneo or Gian, steal Doraemon's
gadgets and end up misusing them. By the end of the story, the
characters who do wrong are usually grounded.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doraemon
But it is not that the characters get grounded, but that the everyone
is returned to the status quo ante, and then grounded.
Do writers take it for granted that the changes the dogu make are
reversed?
What to make of the fact that Doraemon is defective from the start?
Defective, to save him?
cartoon?
Moses, Oedipus?
Wizard of Oz?
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Tragedy in a lighthearted