What conclusions we can draw from Mr. Hiiragi's Homeroom and what took place on Oct. 7
Comparing an atrocious genocide to an edgelord Japanese drama series might not be the best choice of cover, but seems to be the only way to combat conflicting evidence
What psychopathic obsession does the IDF have with shooting innocent Palestinians/protesters in the head? Is it because they want them dead--with very slim chance of survival, because the real reason they are doing it is because they want to eradicate the entire Palestinian population--by force if necessary? On what grounds do they think starving an entire population is okay, and how they consider it merely a pure accident if dropping drone strikes on a woman, identified as Jewish, is distributing food to displaced families via World Central Kitchen? How will they justify Palestinian families in Gaza with very little time to evacuate from their homes and find shelter based on measly three-hour intervals before they clutch their rifles and bombs like pearls and begin shooting again? To quote synonymous independent journo Popular Front, ‘I’ve never seen such psychopathy in my life’.
Forgive me for talking only about Gaza. I would not be so adamant on talking about them and them alone if the media, particularly the Murdoch (may I say Murder?) media, who pride themselves on "free and balanced reporting" did a better job of covering both sides of the conflict. But I digress...
It is here that I want to discuss Mr. Hiiragi's Homeroom, or 3nen A Kumi as it is known by its Japanese name, starring Suda Masaki, Nagano Mei, and Kamishiraishi Moka as its main characters. It is not the newest j drama, or dorama as they call it, by any means (it came out in the final year of the 2010s), but I am realising distinct parallels between the two shows that must be discussed regarding audacious lies told about Israeli hostages on Oct. 7 that have since been debunked by multiple verified sources.
In Mr. Hiiragi’s Homeroom, we follow the lives of students in, literally, Mr. Hiiragi’s homeroom of San-nen-A Kumi, or Class 3A at a senior high school. Mr. Hiiragi, played by Suda Masaki, who is an art teacher, stands in front of his class ten days before his class is set to graduate, and tells them, “From now on, you are my hostages.” The main reason he has locked them in the classroom is to uncover the reason why Kageyama Reina, played by Kamishiraishi Moka, a talented artist and painter, commit suicide. Together with his star student and Reina’s ex-best friend, Kayano Sakura, played by Nagano Mei, Mr. Hiiragi tries to get to the bottom of it whilst time is running out. The show, which only ran for one season, went to widespread critical acclaim in Japan and was nominated for a Tokyo Drama Award, to which it won; and was even remade by a film production group in Turkiye under the name ‘The Teacher’. Suicide, especially among young people, continues to be a huge problem in Japan. I was told the day before schools started in Japan after summer break, an 18-year-old girl caught the train from Chiba to Yokohama Station and jumped to her death, to which she killed a thirty-two-year-old woman walking down the street who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time. Sept. 1st, or late August, continues to be the most common time for students to jump to their deaths.
Mr. Hiiragi’s Homeroom is Breaking Bad meets Heathers meets Die Hard. I won’t give away too many details, but there are many parallel conclusions that can be drawn from Mr. Hiiragi’s kidnapping of his students to the hostages taken on Oct. 7th. To this day I still can’t quite figure out what the show wants us to think, whether Hiiragi is rightfully the saviour of the series or not, sure to be a divisive topic among dorama forums online, but the thing with the show was that it never set out to be political; certainly not mirror, that of the tragedies that would be coming afterwards. Of course, you could say that about anything from Ed Zwick’s The Siege to System of A Down’s second album to The Simpsons’ predicting the Trump Presidency. I still remember being appalled, however, when I saw a commenter on a video of the independent media channel I used to watch, have their username read as, “HAMAS ARE HEROES”. I feared to ask, fearing he’d/she’d/they come at me with some rightful argument that I was not prepared to take on. But, I could not deny that there was a part about the statement itself that needed to be wholly agreed upon.
I am not saying what Hamas is doing is correct. Far from it. They are terrorists and martyr-istic traitors depriving their own people of food and shelter by extending this conflict. They deserve all the bloodshed and lethal force the IDF can get to take them down. But if the IDF justifies this by killing Palestinians—the majority of them women and children—I have to wonder as much as the next sensible human being. Am I a Hamas sympathiser for saying I want the Palestinians to survive as much as I want the Israelis to be freed? Because that’s certainly not what I'm getting from the Australian's so called "free, fair and balanced" reporting.
As much as I can’t imagine how terrified they must feel, a lot of those Israelis are still alive, safely under bunkers as hostages, whilst thousands of Palestinians continue to die every hour. Sure, too many Israelis have been killed and not just killed, massacred in horrific ways, because of Hamas on Oct. 7. But not only because of Hamas, their own people too. Its very much happening on both sides—Hamas and the IDF are two sides of the same coin. And don’t call me a proponent of both-siderism — although it was the images released of the hostages that made me skeptical. Up until then, thanks to the mainstream media i was very much convinced on what was happening was in fact rapes and numerous sexual assaults against women and children, but instead I saw hostages, looking calm if not level-headed, as their cheeks were bloodied. I’m no expert, nor am I not pretending to be one, and they were definitely punched in the eye which is totally inhumane and unconscionable. That is not to say that is there a possibility that the blood could have been deliberately smeared on the girls face by the terrorists? Does not make it any less OK, but it definitely looked like it.
One such girl, Naama Levy, sitting next to a girl without any blood on her face, was the living proof of it. So when righttard columnists like Gemma Tognini whinge and moan about the rapes going on when ironically the very publication she is writing for is taking charge of misinformation, you’d almost have to feel sorry for her ignorance. But ignorance is never a pardon for lies and we should know better.
As the saying goes, I'll know it when I see it. That does not mean I want to see dreadful footage being played over and over of a body being dismembered, one reference you will surely get if you watch Mr. Hiiragi’s Homeroom, but if it did not happen, philosophically, there would be no footage, would there?
Toggers talks all the time about women and girls being shot in their lady parts. But she says nothing, absolutely FUCK ALL, about women being shot in the head for simply protesting, like what happened to activist Aseynur Ezgi Eygi. If you want to look at it with fairness (even though there is nothing fair about any of this at all), this occurred on the day the Weekend Australian goes to print, after Togg's article was published. But she still will not talk about it for her life. How do I know? She ran out of things to talk about about women being raped on Oct. 7th (maybe because it did not happen and there is not enough evidence to back up her claims) so she started talking about her electric vehicle instead. (Cue the white second-wave feminist speaking in dramatic tones about the women in Israel and the violence committed against them that there was never any proof of happening, bla bla bla. I’ll wait...) She made a whole article denouncing a conspiracy theorist despite making no effort to understand why he might be making those claims, before spreading false lies about our PM Anthony Albanese.
In an increasingly divided world that sometimes wants us to do little but curl up into a ball and cry, we must rely on shows like Mr. Hiiragi’s Homeroom to hopefully come to assist us in times of need. These shows may not have any explicit meaning that ties in with global politics, but it is through fiction and television dramas that we start to see things with a clearer, nuanced perspective. I am seeing this right now as I watch Dopesick, an excellent TV show that was released on Hulu in 2021. Although the time may have passed for my ‘j-drama’ phase, anyone whether absorbed in the world of doramas can watch this and no doubt take something from it, even if you are on different sides of the aisle when it comes to Israel/Gaza. If you’re going to watch a journo blurt on about something fictional and nonsensical, you may as well watch a drama that does a way better job of explaining it: whose story it really was to tell, as it unfolds.