ABSTRACT
This chapter reveals how in the 1960s, the international success of United Artists’ James Bond films spawned a slew of imitations around the world. Many, such as the German Kommissar X series, were campy, playful spoofs of Bond and the spy genre, but others, such as Germany’s Mister Dynamit and Japan’s Golgo 13, were presented more seriously. This chapter examines post-World War II German and Japanese spy films, focusing on their representations of German, Japanese, and American national identity and their constructions of idealized masculinity, via their respective “James Bond” archetypes. This work also explores how German and Japanese spy films present and define masculinity, not only as a means of better understanding the films’ appeal, but also in order to compare German and Japanese constructions of the “ideal man,” a concept often paired with discourses surrounding national identity. Finally, this chapter also examines the ways in which German and Japanese spy films present essentialized American characters, either as protagonists (in Kommissar X) or as antagonists (in Golgo 13). In exploring these themes, the chapter aims at achieving a better understanding of how German and Japanese spy films embodied national identity and aspirations alongside idealized representations of masculinity.
