In Japan’s current furor over Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s “reinterpretation” of the postwar constitution’s renunciation of war, it’s hard not to see everything here through a political prism. At a recent protest outside the National Diet Building, one of the speakers, an animator, began his speech by invoking the etymological connection between animation and “life giving” via the root anima. Although his message was garbled in the hubbub of the crowd and by the caprices of the speaker system, the man—I didn’t catch his name—seemed to be suggesting that we assembled protesters were