May 15 Incident - in Popular Culture

In Popular Culture

The May 15 Incident, while studied in western history at a High School Level and University Level for examining the causes of the Second World War with respect to the Axis Powers and the rise of Militarism in Japan, generally truncate the history as merely one critical event that ensured the rise of the Militarists.

However, the significance of the May 15 Incident has gained greater prominence and interest around the world thanks in large part to the acclaimed anime TV series, Ghost in the Shell: 2nd GiG of 2005, where the events of the incident are a major plot point.

Within the series story, An unscrupulous civil servant named Kazundo Gouda, of the Japanese Cabinet Intelligence Agency (acronym of CIA - an allusion that is ultimately revealed to be a significant plot point at the conclusion of the series) seeks to re-establish a Cold War scenario for Japan, despite the events of the Nuclear 3rd World War, and conventional 4th World War (known within this series chronology as the 2nd Vietnam War) having resolved any potential for this political environment. To do so, it is critical that the Prime Minister be assassinated, as that would then allow a series of dominoes to fall and permit Gouda's goal to be achieved.

Gouda uses the May 15 Incident as the basis of a fictitious book, The Individual Eleven by equally fictitious author Patrick Sylvestre. The 'book' discusses 11 examples of successful coup d'etat. Of the 11, only the May 15 Incident is called into question, as the author (within the story) could not prove that the events of the Incident constituted a true Coup, but perhaps rather a trigger for the rise of Militarism in Japan prior to World War II.

The 'book', however, is in fact a type of cyber virus, afflicting people equipped with cyber-brains (a type of fictional brain-computer interface within the stories of Ghost in the Shell) only. The actual book does not exist - it is a series of fragments distributed throughout the fictional pervasive wireless internet of Japan to which people equipped with cyberbrains connect. Assembly of all the fragments activates the virus. The virus is meme driven - those infected by its consciousness-altering software suddenly express great interest in the non-existent book, as well as a desire to read the 'unfinished' last chapter. The phrase of 'The Individual Eleven' is thought, within the story, to evoke other memes pervading the net, latent in all people within the population with cyber brains (which by 2030 is 90% of the Japanese populace), and foster a desire to seek the virus source files out. Part of the meme is the belief that the book is real, and that the infected person actually owns a copy. Curiosity quickly defeats the meme, however - the virus is identified as such on a search for the actual book, and the discovery that it does not actually exist.

Events of the incident are recounted in the series, as major plot points:

• The Individual Eleven - taking their name, and number, from the 11 young officers responsible for the Prime Minister's assassination.
• The attempted assassination of a sitting Prime Minister.
• As a protest against possible prosecution, the grisly delivery of 11 severed fingers (robotic prosthetic parts, in this case, but gory nonetheless) to the Prime Minister as a dissuasion by parties unknown not to proceed with prosecution.

Today, fans of the Anime series have increased interest in this historical event. Patrick Sylvestre's book does not exist, but within the anime, the various revolutionary events have been listed:

• The American Revolution
• The French Revolution
• The Russian Revolution
• The Cuban Revolution
• The Rise of Mussolini
• The Rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis
• The May 15 Incident
• The Rise of Militarism in Japan
• The Chinese Revolution and the Rise of Chairman Mao
• The Romanian Revolution (Which the fictional Sylvestre is supposed to have invested himself into)
• Unfinished final essay - the Cyberbrain virus.