Facism in Koushun Takami's Battle Royale

the governmental system of the Republic of Greater East Asia

Abstract

In the 20th Century, there was a meaningful change regarding utopian literature: an ironic and questioning spirit concerning utopian ideals have put not only the possibility of utopia at stake, but also its desirability. Thus, the rise of the dystopia fiction was noticed, a kind of narrative that portrays an absolutely undesirable setting, in which there are many kinds of political and ideological oppressions, exactly as seen in Huxley´s Brave New World (1931), and in Orwell´s 1984 (1947). The genre has become notorious throughout the 20th Century, reaching Japan. In this essay, an analysis of the Japanese novel Battle Royale (1999), by Koushun Takami (1969), based on how the text envisages an undesirable reality built on Fascism according to Passamore (2002) is presented.