ABSTRACT
The early 1970s were a golden age for tokusatsu (live-action) superhero television programs in Japan as the genre became political and morally complex. Since the debut of the prototypical tokusatsu superhero franchise Moonlight Mask (Gekkō Kamen) in 1958, the genre had centered on invincible superheroes and had portrayed justice in absolutist terms. However, the sociopolitical flux from the 1960s to the early 1970s upset the superhero’s identity, and these programs began to depict the possibility of justice with more ambivalence. This trend emerged in the Ultraman series in 1966 and was central to the rise of the 1970s igyō (grotesque and monstrous) superheroes. Through analysis of Android Kikaider (Jinzō Ningen Kikaidā, 1972–1973) as a paradigmatic series, this chapter explores how the portrayal of justice in the tokusatsu superhero genre reacted to the sociopolitical transition in the 1970s. Analysis of 1970s tokusatsu programs provides insight into themes of relativized justice and self-uncertainty that continue to appear in Japanese popular culture today.
