Opinion | When Toys Trigger Nationalism, Outrage, And Spooky Geopolitical Games
The latest edition of the video game Assassin’s Creed, ‘Shadows’, has rocked Japan. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has lambasted the game, calling it an insult to the country
Toys open up a child to new worlds. In the hands of adults, the same toys can overturn old worlds and even shake up nations.
The latest edition of the video game Assassin’s Creed, Shadows, has rocked Japan. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has lambasted the game, calling it an insult to the country. More than 100,000 people have signed a petition accusing French company Ubisoft of historical inaccuracies and a lack of respect for Japan’s past and traditions.
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Shadows is set in 16th-century feudal Japan, draws from historical events, and depicts the samurai. Set to hip-hop, the game shows a samurai character destroying the interior of a Shinto shrine. Shinto is Japan’s main religion. A scene shows the character firing a bow towards priests and destroying a traditional drum and an altar. Many Japanese are riled up by this disrespect to their culture, and there is talk that the game may be banned.
Just a couple of seas away, Vietnam is pulling popular Chinese-made children’s dolls from shops. It is outraged over a facial mark on one of the doll models, Town Rabbit V2, resembling Beijing’s “nine-dash line" claims in the geopolitical flashpoint South China Sea.
The Chinese Baby Three dolls became a hit among Vietnamese children and Generation Z earlier this year, until online users started flagging Town Rabbit V2’s fluffy cheeks.
Beijing uses the “nine-dash line" on maps to justify its claims over resource-rich marine territory. It does so ignoring protestations of neighbouring nations like Taiwan, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the Philippines.
Toys and games have long been used as subliminal geopolitical weapons.
“The late 19th and first half of the 20th century was the heyday of war toys due to three developments: the increasingly close connection between military and society in European countries; the new importance accorded to children and their education in European culture; and the advent of mass production during the last decades of the 19th century," states the International Encyclopaedia.
“In 1914 and 1915, the production and consumption of military toys all over Europe reached heights never seen before. Manufacturers produced toy soldiers, cannons, aeroplanes, battleships, tanks (after 1916), and a wide range of board games directly relating to specific battles. Children in this war became, more than in any previous war, the target of propaganda; apart from children’s books and journals, toys were seen as one means to strengthen their identification with the nation’s war effort. War toys were gendered objects and primarily produced for boys, but autobiographical evidence suggests that girls played with their brothers’ toy soldiers, and not only with dolls clad as nurses," it says.
Until World War I, Germany led the world production of children’s toys, exporting military and non-military toys to most European countries and the US. After the war, France and Britain hastily caught up.
Little less than a century later, the CIA in 2005 began secretly developing a custom-made Osama bin Laden action figure for Afghan children. The face paint of the figure was designed to peel off under heat and show a red-faced bin Laden who looked like a monster with piercing green eyes and black face markings. The aim was to scare away children and their parents in Afghanistan from the globally wanted terrorist.
In the politically turbulent Hong Kong of the last decade, activists used games to organise protests and pass on information during the 2019 anti-extradition movement. There are examples of video game protest genres in Mainland China and Taiwan.
Online games and toys are also used by nations to decolonise and manifest a nationalistic spirit. Nusantara Online, a multiplayer role-playing game based on the history and potential of Nusantara, the Indonesian archipelago, seeks to redeem the place’s pre-colonial history and create a post-colonial outcome. The game “imaginatively reconstructs the history of the archipelago", according to Indonesian researcher Iskander Zulkarnain.
The game development was indeed self-consciously patriotic, “made by Indonesians for Indonesians". The local developers kept global industry players like the Korean game companies at bay. As resistance against globalised gaming companies reinforces the established world economic order, the creators of Nusantara Online promised to release the source code of the game engine to the Indonesian public for free.
In India, the toy industry has curiously joined the march of the new nationalism and civilisational revival. Once a net importer of toys, Bharat has made a stunning turnaround from exporting just $134 million worth of toys, sports gear, and festive items in FY10 to hitting $523 million in FY24.
The Indian government came up with a National Action Plan for Toys in 2020 to boost local manufacturing and incentivise toy and handicraft producers. The plan was to promote trade and investment, design and make batches locally, create indigenous toys, and use them as learning resources. Free trade agreements (FTAs) with the UAE and Australia with zero-duty exports helped Indian toy makers to swiftly scale up.
It has also been a decolonisation project, much bigger than Indonesia’s. India has a rich history in toy-making, dating back 5,000 years. The excavated toys and dolls found in Rakhigarhi, Harappa, and Mohenjo-Daro included small carts and dancing women.
The government is also encouraging toymakers to tap into the rich culture of storytelling through toys. Our new, homemade objects of play are even capturing, like in ancient times, the great epics, Ramayana and Mahabharata.
As if time’s full circle were a toy, today’s India is playfully twirling it like a hoop around the waist.
Abhijit Majumder is a senior journalist. Views expressed in the above piece are personal and solely those of the author. They do not necessarily reflect News18’s views.
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