Love and Courage Are the Only Friends: The Justice March of the Lone Brave Anpanman

Japan­ese man­ga artist, pic­ture book writer, and poet Yanase Takashi (やなせ たかし，1919–2013) and his cre­ation, Anpan­man, are unique fig­ures in the world of chil­dren’s books. These works have brought warmth and moved gen­er­a­tions, and their sto­ries reveal the mov­ing life of a cre­ator deeply trau­ma­tized by war and a pur­suit of love and jus­tice. For read­ers both young and old, his works and his life are worth savor­ing.

The “Anpan­man” series cur­rent­ly avail­able to Chi­nese read­ers includes three sub-series: Anpan­man Adven­ture Pic­ture Book, Anpan­man Pic­ture Sto­ries, and Anpan­man Clas­sic Sto­ry­book, total­ing 25 vol­umes. How­ev­er, this rep­re­sents only a small por­tion of the com­plete Anpan­man uni­verse. The full ros­ter includes over 500 books alone, as well as numer­ous spin-offs such as ani­ma­tion, movies, and games. There are even five “Anpan­man Chil­dren’s Muse­ums” in Japan! The “Anpan­man” ani­mat­ed series, which pre­miered in 1988 and remains incred­i­bly pop­u­lar, has count­less fans in main­land Chi­na, Hong Kong, and Tai­wan. In 2009, when it sur­passed 1,000 episodes, it even broke the Guin­ness World Record for the most char­ac­ters in an ani­mat­ed series, with 1,768 char­ac­ters appear­ing!

The slight­ly weird “Anpan­man”

For many adult read­ers, it’s unde­ni­able that at first glance, Anpan­man appears a bit pecu­liar. In hun­dreds of pic­ture books and ani­me sto­ries, and across over 1,600 episodes, Anpan­man, a man with a round, red bean-cov­ered face and a patched cape, flies about. How­ev­er, his abil­i­ties are lim­it­ed, or often lim­it­ed, because he unhesi­tat­ing­ly offers a help­ing hand to those in need and hunger. His method is straight­for­ward: he tears off a piece of his own face and feeds it to them. While this sac­ri­fice can be debil­i­tat­ing, he nev­er regrets it, always wel­com­ing every oppor­tu­ni­ty to help oth­ers with a smile. A torn face, wet, or dirty face can weak­en Anpan­man’s pow­ers, and in severe cas­es, even cause him to fall from the sky. He often needs to wait for the res­cue of Uncle Jam and his com­pan­ions, who craft and attach a new face, before he can regain his pow­er­ful pow­ers and defeat his arch-neme­sis, the Germs. What’s more inter­est­ing is that the vil­lain Bac­te­ria Man can only be defeat­ed but nev­er killed. He can always escape safe­ly after say­ing “Bye-bye Bac­te­ria”, and he will grad­u­al­ly have more helpers like the Red Elf and the Elves who are keen on play­ing pranks.

Yanase Takashi’s con­cept of Anpan­man “tear­ing off his face and eat­ing it” has irked some adult read­ers and view­ers, and this has often been the sub­ject of crit­i­cism on Chi­nese social media. In fact, as ear­ly as the 1970s, when the first Anpan­man pic­ture book was pub­lished, Japan­ese adult read­ers and book review­ers also received a num­ber of sim­i­lar neg­a­tive com­ments, say­ing that “the plot is too gory.” Some “experts” also crit­i­cized the plot as vul­gar and unsuit­able for library shelves, fear­ing it would cor­rupt chil­dren. For a while, even the edi­tors at the pub­lish­ing house begged Yanase to stop includ­ing Anpan­man with a torn face in his pic­ture books. How­ev­er, it grad­u­al­ly became appar­ent that young read­ers were enam­ored with Anpan­man, and Anpan­man became so pop­u­lar in kinder­gartens and libraries that a fren­zy of demand for copies of the book devel­oped. One father told Yanase Takashi that his son loved Anpan­man so much that he read it over and over again, and he could recite it by heart! Yanase Takashi lament­ed that “chil­dren are the most unfor­giv­ing crit­ics,” and he con­tin­ued to write new Anpan­man books. By the time it was adapt­ed into an ani­mat­ed series in 1988, this some­what eccen­tric Anpan­man had already become pop­u­lar.

The core sto­ry of Anpan­man

Some peo­ple force­ful­ly link the con­cept of “giv­ing away body parts for oth­ers to eat” to Japan­ese cul­ture, but this is com­plete­ly unnec­es­sary. Aren’t Chi­nese peo­ple also famil­iar with Bud­dhist sto­ries like “giv­ing one­self to feed the tiger” and “cut­ting flesh to feed the eagle”? The bor­row­ing of this con­cept in the plot of Mas­ter Yideng res­cu­ing Huang Rong in Jin Yong’s mar­tial arts nov­el “The Leg­end of the Con­dor Heroes” was read­i­ly accept­ed by read­ers, right? In anoth­er cul­tur­al con­text, the rit­u­al of break­ing bread for believ­ers also sym­bol­izes sac­ri­fice for the sal­va­tion of human­i­ty. There­fore, Anpan­man’s tear­ing off his face for oth­ers to eat is also a con­tin­u­a­tion of a great ide­al, the spir­i­tu­al core of which lies in:The ulti­mate in com­pas­sion, self-sac­ri­fice, and self­less devo­tion.

Anpan­man is the embod­i­ment of jus­tice and warmth. His bread-faced face not only sym­bol­izes shar­ing and giv­ing, but also serves as the source of his strength. Even when his own face is giv­en to some­one in need, he can regain his strength with a new bread-face made by Uncle Jam. This cycle is more than just a sto­ry set­ting; it also con­veys an impor­tant con­cept:Self­less giv­ing and the cycle of love can bring infi­nite vital­i­ty and kind­ness. ​

Take “Anpan­man and the Prick­ly Man” for exam­ple. While Anpan­man is out help­ing oth­ers, a strange old man arrives at the bak­ery. See­ing the old man unable to walk due to hunger, Cream Sis­ter offers him a fresh­ly baked loaf of bread, and the old man returns the favor with a small cac­tus. It turns out that the Prick­ly Man, trans­formed from the small cac­tus, is a spy plant­ed by the Bac­te­ria Man. After wreak­ing hav­oc in the bak­ery, he packs up the secret flour used to make Anpan­man. The sto­ry con­tin­ues as usu­al: Anpan­man returns to the bak­ery, don­ning a new face, tracks down the Bac­te­ria Man’s lair, and engages in a life-and-death duel with the fake Anpan­man. Inter­est­ing­ly, it’s the Prick­ly Man who ulti­mate­ly pierces the fake Anpan­man, caus­ing the explo­sion. While this was­n’t inten­tion­al, the Prick­ly Man still man­ages to pierce the fake Anpan­man’s face. The explo­sion pierces the thick clouds, allow­ing sun­light to dis­perse the Bac­te­ria Man and the Mold Imp.

Yanase Takashi cre­ates an end­less cycle of self­less giv­ing, self-sac­ri­fice, and heart­warm­ing love in his sto­ries. All those who side with Anpan­man are “infect­ed” by his naivety, becom­ing some­what fool­ish­ly, indis­crim­i­nate­ly, and unre­quit­ed­ly help­ful, even if it means falling prey to his ene­mies. How­ev­er, this fool­ish, self­less sac­ri­fice always leads to a kind of “res­ur­rec­tion” when their super­pow­ers are regained, mak­ing them even more pow­er­ful. Ene­mies, on the oth­er hand, become less for­mi­da­ble, their mis­chief more like pure pranks, even cre­at­ing endear­ing and hilar­i­ous side effects. For exam­ple, the mis­chie­vous Spiky Man ulti­mate­ly per­forms a sig­nif­i­cant deed, help­ing to dis­in­fect the sun­light. The end­less cre­ativ­i­ty of Bac­te­ria Man’s “evil deeds” cre­ates sus­pense and intrigue in the plot, giv­ing Anpan­man more oppor­tu­ni­ties to demon­strate his strength. Con­se­quent­ly, Yanase Takashi is reluc­tant to see Bac­te­ria Man elim­i­nat­ed, con­stant­ly recruit­ing helpers to esca­late his mis­chief.

As Laozi said, “When all in the world under­stand beau­ty to be beau­ti­ful, then ugli­ness exists. When all under­stand good­ness to be good, then evil exists.” In this sense, bac­te­ria peo­ple, as rep­re­sen­ta­tives of “neg­a­tive ener­gy”, are so impor­tant!

Diverse char­ac­ters present a rich world of human beings

If Anpan­man and Bac­te­riaman are the two most oppos­ing pos­i­tive and neg­a­tive poles in the sto­ry, then the var­i­ous com­plex char­ac­ters in the “Anpan­man” series are the sup­port­ers of these two poles, or the diverse exis­tences that wan­der between the two poles. They make the world of Anpan­man more three-dimen­sion­al and full, and more warm and touch­able.

“The Birth of Anpan­man” traces the ori­gins of this pecu­liar super­man, whose pow­ers range from the “weak” to the “super­pow­ered,” pri­mar­i­ly due to the lov­ing bread face made for him by Uncle Jam and Sis­ter Cream. Anpan­man may have been a mete­or from out­er space, arriv­ing on Earth with a strange egg, who hap­pened to crash-land on a bac­te­r­i­al island and became a bac­te­r­i­al man. They’re a pair of nat­ur­al ene­mies.

In addi­tion to the fam­i­ly-like team of Uncle Jam, Sis­ter Cream, and Pup­py Cheese, Anpan­man also has allies such as Toast Man, Cur­ry Bread Man, Mel­on Man, Cream Bread Broth­er, Rice Ball Man, Fried Shrimp Rice Man, Fried Pork Cut­let Man, and Mixed Pot Man. It is obvi­ous that they are all nec­es­sary for the diver­si­ty to enrich the food cul­ture, and these dai­ly del­i­ca­cies are obvi­ous­ly good. They also have the sup­port of many small ani­mal char­ac­ters.

On the Bac­te­ria Man’s side, besides his con­stant com­pan­ions, the moldy imps, he also boasts dis­tinc­tive vil­lains, such as the Red Elf, who con­stant­ly plays mis­chief with him, and his sis­ter, the Blue Elf. These vil­lains like­ly hail from the Bac­te­ria Plan­et and have come to Earth with a mis­sion to cause trou­ble, pre­sum­ably to make food like Anpan­man moldy. There­fore, their train­er, the Bac­te­ria Sage (see “Anpan­man and the Mag­ic Brush”), is rel­a­tive­ly neu­tral. He seems to har­bor no ill will towards Anpan­man and even urges the Bac­te­ria Man to study with the brush, rather than “mak­ing trou­ble.”

The Red Elf is a most intrigu­ing crea­ture. She’s incred­i­bly head­strong and prone to mis­chief, yet she also pos­sess­es a remark­ably gen­tle and endear­ing side. The Bac­te­ria Man is devot­ed to her and obeys her every com­mand, but she’s obsessed with the right­eous Toast Man and won’t tol­er­ate him even slight­ly harm­ing her idol. So, is the Red Elf good or evil? In fact, there are even more com­plex char­ac­ters in the ani­me, such as Spi­ral Anpan­man and Black Spi­ral Anpan­man, who pos­sess dual per­son­al­i­ties of both good and evil. Under cer­tain cir­cum­stances, they can be seduced by the Bac­te­ria Man and tem­porar­i­ly become accom­plices of evil. Does­n’t this also mir­ror the com­plex­i­ties of human nature?

The Birth of Anpan­man

The first “Anpan­man” pic­ture book appeared in 1973, but the char­ac­ter actu­al­ly appeared ear­li­er in Yanase Takashi’s col­lec­tion of short fairy tales for adult read­ers, “Twelve Pearls” (pub­lished in 1970), and first in his radio dra­mas. Yanase Takashi was 54 when he drew this seem­ing­ly “weak” Super­man into the pic­ture book, and most of the sub­se­quent Anpan­man sto­ries were writ­ten after he entered his six­ties and sev­en­ties. Since he and his wife had no chil­dren, they treat­ed Anpan­man as their own child, pre­fer­ring to be known as “Anpan­man Grand­pa.” In these sim­ple and cheer­ful sto­ries, drawn in a seem­ing­ly “old-fash­ioned” man­ga style, this sto­ry­telling grand­fa­ther imbues him­self with the pro­found insights of his life.

In his youth, he served in the mil­i­tary and endured star­va­tion. After retir­ing, he worked as a design­er, drew comics, wrote poet­ry, and edit­ed radio dra­mas. By chance, ani­me mas­ter Osamu Tezu­ka asked him to be the art direc­tor for the ani­mat­ed film “One Thou­sand and One Nights.” Fol­low­ing its huge suc­cess, Tezu­ka per­son­al­ly fund­ed the adap­ta­tion of a recent radio dra­ma, “The Gen­tle Lion,” into an ani­mat­ed film. After the award-win­ning ani­ma­tion, Yanase Takashi adapt­ed it into his debut pic­ture book.

“The Gen­tle Lion” was trans­lat­ed and intro­duced to Chi­na in 2003. I was deeply impressed by it. It tells the sto­ry of a lion raised by a moth­er dog, report­ed­ly inspired by a true sto­ry at a Ger­man zoo. How­ev­er, Yanase Takashi’s focus is on the lion, who grows up to become a super­star, escapes his cage, returns to his aging moth­er dog, and trag­i­cal­ly dies at the hands of a human gun. Although the author offers an imag­ined hap­py end­ing, the trag­ic scene is tru­ly more shock­ing. Yanase Takashi does not shy away from con­flict and vio­lence in his pic­ture books, but he uses extreme­ly exag­ger­at­ed car­toon tech­niques to high­light the fol­ly and absur­di­ty of vio­lence. Read­ers are deeply moved by the inter­species warmth and kind­ness expressed in this sto­ry.

​Inspired by the suc­cess of “The Gen­tle Lion”, Yanase Takashi began to cre­ate the “next” sto­ry at the strong invi­ta­tion of his edi­tor, and this sto­ry he was going to tell for him­self, to tell his own sto­ry. At that time, the whole world was pop­u­lar with the “super­man” cul­ture, and Japan was also deeply influ­enced. “Astro Boy” cre­at­ed by Osamu Tezu­ka was a more sci-fi image of a young super­man. Yanase Takashi was obvi­ous­ly also affect­ed and inspired by some­thing, but the “super­man” in his mind was not proud of his super­pow­ers, and his con­cept of jus­tice was not so “high-end”, but very sim­ple, sim­ple, straight­for­ward, and its uni­ver­sal­i­ty could even be applied to the so-called “ene­my”. In Yanase Takashi’s view, “Jus­tice is not about talk­ing big, but about hand­ing a piece of bread to some­one who is starv­ing.This is the true mean­ing of the Anpan­man spir­it, and it is also the pro­found under­stand­ing that Yanase Takashi gained from the twists and turns of his first half of life.

Insights from com­plex life expe­ri­ences

Born in 1919, Yanase Takashi (柳濑嵩) came from a well-off fam­i­ly. Both his par­ents came from promi­nent fam­i­lies in Kochi Pre­fec­ture, and the Yanase fam­i­ly had been hered­i­tary local offi­cials with a 300-year-old tra­di­tion. His father, Yanase Kiyoshi, was a jour­nal­ist with a pas­sion for lit­er­a­ture and art. In his youth, he trav­eled exten­sive­ly through­out Chi­na and fell in love with Mount Song (嵩) in Henan, hence the name “Song” (嵩) for his eldest son. How­ev­er, life is unpre­dictable, and when Yanase Takashi was five years old, his father died en route to Xia­men, where he was serv­ing as a clerk.

The moth­er had no choice but to first adopt her youngest son, Chi­hi­ro, to her late hus­band’s old­er broth­er, and lat­er sent Yanase Takashi to fos­ter care. This uncle was a rur­al doc­tor and also loved lit­er­a­ture. He and his wife loved the two lit­tle broth­ers very much and treat­ed them as their own chil­dren. How­ev­er, the pain of sep­a­ra­tion from his moth­er was always lin­ger­ing. Yanase Takashi lat­er wrote a poem “The Day Mom Left”, in which he wrote:

One day

We were sep­a­rat­ed from our moth­er.

Mom said our health is not good

I want to be treat­ed at my uncle’s house who is a doc­tor 

​……

Yanase Takashi, who final­ly did not wait for his moth­er, reached ado­les­cence and once ran away from home and even attempt­ed sui­cide by lying on the rail­way tracks, but for­tu­nate­ly he escaped before the gates of death.

Yanase Takashi strug­gled aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly, but his pas­sion for draw­ing led him to strive for admis­sion to the Tokyo High­er School of Tech­nol­o­gy, where he found a sat­is­fy­ing job as a graph­ic design­er. How­ev­er, his good for­tune did­n’t last long. He soon received his draft notice. After endur­ing a gru­el­ing boot camp and two years of ser­vice in Japan, he was assigned to an artillery reg­i­ment, tasked with cre­at­ing and deci­pher­ing cipher codes. He was then uncer­e­mo­ni­ous­ly sta­tioned in a rur­al area of Fuzhou, Chi­na.

Dur­ing Chi­na’s War of Resis­tance Against Japan­ese Aggres­sion, Yanase Takashi’s reg­i­ment remained idle for two years, per­haps due to mis­judg­ment and poor sched­ul­ing by his supe­ri­ors. Due to the iso­lat­ed region, the locals were unaware of the war unfold­ing out­side. Bored, Yanase Takashi applied for a pro­mo­tion­al role, con­nect­ing with the locals through comics and sto­ry­telling. The suc­cess was remark­able, and it paved the way for his future career as a man­ga artist.

It was only as the Pacif­ic War neared its end that Yanase Takashi tru­ly felt the bru­tal­i­ty of war. His artillery reg­i­ment was ordered to the Shang­hai front. They car­ried their bag­gage on foot for near­ly six months, near­ly dying of ill­ness along the way. Even more hor­rif­ic was the hunger, which kept him on the brink of death for months. Per­haps it was this expe­ri­ence that made him think deeply about the pro­found con­nec­tion between hunger and jus­tice. Halfway through his unit’s jour­ney, they learned of Japan’s sur­ren­der, and he thought, “Final­ly, I can go home.” And so, the young man was unknow­ing­ly sent back to Japan. Upon return­ing home, he learned that his younger broth­er, Chi­hi­ro, a top stu­dent at a pres­ti­gious uni­ver­si­ty, had been killed in action. In real­i­ty, his broth­er had been aboard a war­ship that had been sunk by bombs.

Such a painful and absurd expe­ri­ence left Yanase Takashi deeply con­fused: What were he and his broth­er fight­ing for? Was it jus­tice? What exact­ly is jus­tice? He lat­er wrote in “Anpan­man’s Last Let­ter”: “There is no such thing as ‘fight­ing for jus­tice.’ ‘Jus­tice’ can sud­den­ly change, even be com­plete­ly reversed. ‘Jus­tice’ is unbe­liev­able.” Life expe­ri­ence has made me ful­ly under­stand this truth, and it has become the foun­da­tion of my post­war think­ing.The true and unchang­ing jus­tice is love and sac­ri­fice.”——This is exact­ly the start­ing point of “Anpan­man”.

Anpan­man March

Here, I would like to express my spe­cial thanks to the pic­ture book cre­ators and trans­la­tors from Tai­wan -Xu Shun­ing.The con­tent intro­duced above refers to her long arti­cle- Anpan­man’s Song of Jus­tice (seri­al­ized in Cos­mic Light Mag­a­zine from Sep­tem­ber to Novem­ber 2022).What I ben­e­fit­ed most from this long arti­cle were the quo­ta­tions from orig­i­nal works that don’t yet have Chi­nese trans­la­tions. For exam­ple, I learned that Yanase Takashi’s theme song, “Anpan­man March,” actu­al­ly has a first sec­tion, which is usu­al­ly omit­ted in the cur­rent ver­sions of the ani­me. Here’s Xu Shun­ing’s “ten­ta­tive trans­la­tion”:

Yeah, how hap­py.

Liv­ing is joy even if there is pain in the heart

Why live and what to do

Nev­er live your life in igno­rance

Live this moment with a burn­ing heart

Please go for­ward with a smile

…

Whether it is the Can­tonese or Man­darin ver­sion of the car­toon, only the lat­ter part is retained. For exam­ple, in the Can­tonese ver­sion, the main part of the open­ing song is as fol­lows:

What is your hap­pi­ness?

What do you need to do to be hap­py?

It’s over with­out me know­ing it

I don’t want to be like this.

Don’t for­get your dreams

Don’t shed tears

So you have to fly high

Even if you are at the ends of the earth

Yeah, don’t be afraid.

For every­one

Only with love and courage 

Ah Anpan­man

You are so gen­tle

​To pro­tect every­one’s dreams!

The Man­darin ver­sion has some minor trans­la­tion changes, and its core sen­tence is:

Come on, for every­one

Don’t be afraid any­more

Love and courage are your friends

Per­haps, from the adult per­spec­tive of some direc­tors and edi­tors, state­ments like “To live is joy, even if one’s heart is wound­ed” and “Why live, what to do” seem too heavy for young chil­dren and too con­fus­ing for adults accus­tomed to peace and qui­et. Yet, these are indeed the strongest insights and ques­tions Yanase Takashi brings to the sto­ry of Anpan­man. It’s worth not­ing that after the Great East Japan Earth­quake in March 2011, some­one request­ed a song for those hard­est hit by the dis­as­ter. Amidst the dev­as­tat­ed ruins, the full ver­sion of “Anpan­man March” came over the radio. The bright melody and pro­found lyrics instant­ly bright­ened the hearts of count­less peo­ple. Those who had expe­ri­enced this dev­as­tat­ing change sud­den­ly under­stood Yanase Takashi’s mes­sage: to smile and regain the courage to “live in the moment.”

There is also a Japan­ese schol­ar, Kazuo Kuma­da, who pub­lished an aca­d­e­m­ic paper in 2014, “The Lone­li­ness of Anpan­man: Love, Courage and Male Alliance” (アンパンマンの孤塵－愛と勇気とホモソーシャル－, pub­lished in “Human Cul­ture: Bul­letin of the Insti­tute of Human Cul­ture, Aichi Gakuin Uni­ver­si­ty”, Sep­tem­ber 2014), dis­cussing the deep soci­o­log­i­cal sig­nif­i­cance of this march. He specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned that this song might have been writ­ten by Yanase Takashi for his younger broth­er who died in vain in the war. Because the younger broth­er did not want to join the Kamikaze Spe­cial Attack Force, which was like com­mit­ting sui­cide, but was forced to sign up as a “vol­un­teer” under pres­sure from his male “com­rades”. There­fore, this schol­ar believes that,The “Anpan­man” cre­at­ed by Takashi Yanase is actu­al­ly a lone­ly brave man. His self­less and fear­less choice does not come from any exter­nal pres­sure, but belongs only to him­self and comes only from his deep under­stand­ing of jus­tice.The most impor­tant line in the lyrics, the core mean­ing is:Love and courage are your only friends.This may be the most cru­cial point of Anpanman’s “val­ues of jus­tice”.

Half a cen­tu­ry has passed since the first Anpan­man pic­ture book was pub­lished, and this less-than-super­pow­ered “super­man” seems even more endur­ing. Its sto­ries are uni­ver­sal­ly appeal­ing and heart­warm­ing, writ­ten in sim­ple, acces­si­ble lan­guage and illus­trat­ed in a vibrant and engag­ing style. For chil­dren, it’s an intro­duc­tion to love and courage; for adults, it’s a pro­found alle­go­ry for reflect­ing on the mean­ing of life. Yanase Takashi nev­er neglects the wis­dom of child­hood in his work, firm­ly believ­ing in chil­dren’s capac­i­ty for pro­found under­stand­ing. It’s for this rea­son that the seem­ing­ly sim­ple Anpan­man sto­ry touch­es upon the deep­est aspects of human nature.

How­ev­er, a good sto­ry is one that you just enjoy. As Yanase Takashi said in the after­word of Anpan­man and the Prick­ly Man, “Please don’t delve into the rea­sons, just read it and enjoy it.”

Ajia, Writ­ten in Bei­jing on Feb­ru­ary 12, 2025