Undead Return

Japanese Videogames and Nuclear Memory

Abstract

This article examines the origins of the videogame zombie by tracing their appearances in the Japanese videogames Phantom Fighter (Marionette 1988), Sweet Home (Capcom 1989) and Biohazard (Capcom 1996). The nascent versions of interactive zombies in these games offer a distinctively Japanese variation to the mediated figure of the undead. Their monsters draw upon and contribute to traditions of Japanese folklore teeming with yōkai (supernatural demons, monsters and ghouls). Through analysis of Phantom Fighter, Sweet Home and Biohazard, I demonstrate how Japan’s prototypical videogame zombies build upon their yōkai roots to reflect a public consciousness that is grappling with the jarring reanimation of long-unresolved trauma: the tragedies, crimes, and anguish of the Pacific War and its devastating conclusion. The figure of the zombie—trading in abject and uncanny forms of monstrosity, and upending sense and meaning through its impossible terrors—appears to be a natural product of this moment of rupture in Japan’s post-war history. The appearance of the zombie in these videogames invites players into the mediation and negotiation of popular cultural memorial anxieties.