日本文が後ろに続きます。
The town of Nerima, Tokyo, where I live for seven years, is home to Japanese animation, or anime. Nerima has had one of the biggest anime studios, Toei Animation Company, as well as more than 90 intensive anime-related companies since Japan’s first anime film was aired in 1958. World’s famous animes such as Dragon Ball series, One Piece, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and Sailor Moon series, has been created in this place.
The Nerima Ward government hosted today an anime festival, Neritan Anime Project in Oizumi, around Oizumi Gakuen station of Seibu Railway, to which Toei Animation Company is close. Leiji Matsumoto, one of Japan’s famous manga-anime artists and a resident of the Oizumi neighborhood, was invited to the festival. One of his works, the Galaxy Express 999, was a great anime series popular among many Japanese kids in 1980s. For those of you who don’t know this manga, the story of it is set in a space-faring, high-tech future, where mechanized people with “machine bodies” are pushing humanity towards irrelevance and extinction. A street urchin, Tetsuro, wants an indestructible machine body, giving him the ability to live forever. While machine bodies are expensive, they are supposedly given away for free on the planet Andromeda, the end of the line for the space train Galaxy Express 999. He meets up with a beautiful woman, Maetel, who is the spitting image of his dead mother. Maetel offers him passage on 999 if he will be her traveling companion. Tetsuro agrees. Another notable character is the strict, mysterious alien conductor, that sometimes gets involved in Tetsuro and Maetel’s adventures. (See Wikipedia) The Galaxy Express 999 was first published in 1978, so this year is the 30th anniversary.
Today Matsumoto was appointed a “one-day station master” of Oizumi Gakuen station. He settled near the station when he was 25 years old, and created the wonderful manga and anime works in Oizumi. The ward government and the Seibu Railway company granted such a honorary position on him for his long-year contribution to this neighborhood.
He said through his speech, that his habitation in the Oizumi neighborhood was destiny. When he came to Tokyo from his birthplace, Fukuoka, he just “happened to” start living there. One day when he walked around his house he found a former resident of Tomitaro Makino, a Japan’s well-known botanist. At that time he began his manga artist career through his first work focusing on entomology. Matsumoto felt as if he had been lead to live near Makino, as a person working with wildlife.
When it comes to destiny, I happened to begin reading his Galaxy Express 999 comic books just two weeks ago as well as Emma, when I did not know about this festival. I think that perhaps it is also destiny that I read this comic these days and come to the festival today.
Anime is now not only a maniac hobby by otakus, geeks or nerds, but is one of Japan’s important industries today. As Japan’s economy has been in recession for many decades and its technology is becoming less cost-effective, anime industry may be a great messiah for the future Japanese people.
Some of the pictures are uploaded on Flickr.
私の住んでいる練馬区はアニメの発祥の地とのことで、日本初のアニメ映画が1958年に出て以来ずっと、有名な東映アニメーションをはじめ、90社以上のアニメ関連会社が集積した場所だそうです。ドラゴンボール、ワンピース、ニンジャタートルズ、セーラームーンなどはここで制作されています。
練馬区主催で、「ねりたんアニメプロジェクト in 大泉」というのが今日、大泉在住の漫画家・松本零士氏を招いて西武線の大泉学園の駅近くで行われています。松本零士氏は「銀河鉄道999」で有名な漫画家で、「銀河鉄道999」は80年代の子供ならこの漫画を知らない人はいないというぐらい有名な作品です。若い人たちのために説明すると、「銀河鉄道999」は高度技術文明が栄え、「機械の身体」を持った人々が人間性を失っていっている未来の宇宙を舞台にした作品で、星野鉄郎という少年が不滅の機械の身体を手に入れることで永遠の命を求めていますが、機械の身体は高価で、ただ惑星アンドロメダに行けばそれをタダで手に入れられるといわれています。惑星アンドロメダは銀河鉄道999の終着駅であり、そのため鉄郎は銀河鉄道に乗りたいと思っています。鉄郎は、亡き母の面影を残した美しい女性メーテルと出会います。メーテルは、鉄郎にもし自分と一緒に来てくれるなら999のパスをあげると言い、鉄郎は同意して、999での旅が始まります。999では、鉄郎とメーテルの旅にかかわる厳格で不思議な車掌さんを交え、物語が展開していきます。
「銀河鉄道999」の初出は1978年で、今年がちょうど30周年にあたります。
式典では松本氏が西武鉄道から大泉学園の一日駅長に任命され、「銀河鉄道999」の「車掌さん」が名誉駅長に任命されました。
任命式のあと松本氏がスピーチをし、自分が大泉に住む事になったのは運命だと語りました。福岡から上京時、ほんとに「たまたま」この地に住み始めたそうですが、ある日近くを散歩していると、牧野庭園（植物学者・牧野富太郎の邸宅跡）を見つけ、ちょうどそのとき処女作である昆虫をテーマにした漫画を描いていたところで、同じ生物を取り扱うということで、牧野富太郎が自分をここに呼んでくれたんじゃないかと感じたということです。
運命ということなら、私も「たまたま」銀河鉄道999の原作をほんの2週間ほど前から「エマ」といっしょに読み始めていたところなのでした。読み始めた頃はこんなイベントをやることなどつゆ知らず。きっと銀河鉄道999を読んだのも、このイベントに出たのも、運命といえるかもしれません。
アニメは今やヲタのマニアックな趣味にとどまらず、今日の日本の重要な産業の一つとなっています。日本経済が長らく停滞し、日本のテクノロジーも稼げなくなってきている今、アニメが将来の日本人にとっての大きな救世主となるのかもしれません。
関連する写真をFlickrにアップロードしました。