For context this an essay that is an expansion of my first discovery alongside close reading on the blue humanities.
Humanity has an obsession with power, and this perception has not changed since people were able to tell stories. It comes in different forms such as control, when early American Christians rewrote the earlier concept of mermaids. From winged humanoids offering knowledge, to sinful temptresses as a way of controlling women. However, mankind has a unique yet complicated relationship with nature and the environment when it comes to power. Nowhere is this more strong than with the ocean. Because they cannot control it, this leads to reverence and fascination. In many cultures, like Greek mythology’s Poseidon, people created these mythical stories to explain natural disasters and phenomena. A modern incarnation of this is the work of Ao Hatesaka’s one-shot manga, ‘Galaxias’. Where dragon attacks are the stand-ins for natural disasters, but more importantly, they are the stand-ins for the human desire to know more about the ocean. This shows even to the modern age people are still trying to make sense of the ocean through human-based understanding. That there was and always has been a burning desire to understand the deep sea. Not just in the modern age.
Some explanation is in order. In The Ocean Reader: Theory, Culture, Politics, “It has always been difficult for humans to think of the Ocean as a place. Those who have considered the watery majority of the planet on its own terms have often seen it as a changeless space, one without a history. Because the Ocean can’t be plowed, paved, or shaped in ways the eye is able to discern, it has seemed to be a constant, while the land has changed drastically over the centuries” (Roorda 1).
This comes from human perception in a similar manner to how we determine who is guilty of a crime and who is innocent. Visual evidence. There were limited methods to explore under the surface of the deep sea, and any attempt before the modern age was met with failure. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The same applies with the ocean but more so since humans themselves cannot affect it. The reason we’re so focused on land is not solely because the ocean is more dangerous to explore compared to land. Land exploration while ‘mastered’ and mapped out was still difficult and risky for early humans. So why do we have a hard time thinking about the ocean as a place back then? Because humanity wasn’t able to project their power onto the ocean in a way that we understand. More specifically, we couldn’t do anything to change it. Land became divided up and labeled as territories for many countries, people were able to assert their power over others but more importantly over the land. Taking resources, building on top of it, and expanding. They couldn’t do that with the sea until centuries later during the modern age. Territorial waters have only become a concept created by humanity since at least the 17th century. Which was further developed and contextualized in the proceeding centuries (as recent as the Geneva convention and sometime in 1988).
Expanding on the idea of resources, the sea offered very little in terms of what it could be used to benefit people. On land one would have the wood and rock needed to craft tools, build homes and farms. Mine the metals needed to create weapons for defence and conquest. In a way all of this was more easily accessible on land than anything the ocean could’ve provided besides food. That’s to say if a community happened to be near an ocean.
In the article “The Blue Humanities” by John R. Gillies, “Before the nineteenth century, attitudes toward the oceans were more utilitarian than aesthetic. The sea was portrayed as dangerous and repellant, ugly and unfit for literary or artistic representation. Oceans were explored as a means to reach distant lands, and little attention was paid to the waters themselves. It has been said that “the deep sea made hardly any impression. . . . Even oceangoing explorers were more land than ocean oriented; they used the sea merely as a highway to get to the next landfall.” This was a discovery more by sea than of the sea”.
The article continues to push the idea that early humans didn’t think much of the ocean for two main reasons. We couldn’t affect the ocean directly AND it didn’t have much to give in terms of benefits. When a literary author did make their piece about the deep sea, it was in pursuit of unknown knowledge, like in Odysseus and the Sirens. Or written in a way that is still land and human bias, Hans Christain Andersen’s The Little Mermaid for example. However, these stories and myths exist because of a curiosity with the ocean. While back then the ocean was deemed unfit for literary or artistic representation, it did not stop the curiosity and attempts for writers to do so. All of this was based on what understanding they knew about the land. Thus they projected what power of understanding they had onto the ocean to try and make sense of it. Because, all this uncertainty the ocean has over humans is a form of power in of itself. This brought fascination and reverence but also a clear desire to understand that power. In the same article, “Beginning in the late eighteenth century, people began to come back to the sea in search for a quality they felt to be missing in the new industrial environment, that something called wilderness. The desire for an experience of untamed nature originated in the eighteenth century among a small group of European aesthetes, for whom the awesome power of the sea, as witnessed from the safety of land, was a powerful emotional and mental stimulant”.
Even in the modern age where interest in the ocean has exploded, the ocean’s possible benefits and uses have been greatly expanded upon. From just being seen as a way to get from point A to B. It has become a place where we’re able to learn more about humanity’s ancient past. The environment’s history contained within the vault called the sea, and so much more. The perspective here is now that everything’s been mapped out on land, we can now fully turn our attention to the waters that surround our planet. The ocean has been an untamed environment for centuries. The two stories I’ve mentioned earlier have been small cinders of desire used as kindling for the bigger flame of curiosity that ignited in the modern age. Serving as inspiration for modern incarnations to come into play.
That these stories may have been human attempts to both satisfy the always present curiosity. They could’ve been a way to cope with the power nature and therefore the ocean has over humanity. Recycled curiosities that we don’t have the answers to but are made again and again to remind us of it. Stories like Ao Hatesaka’s one-shot manga, ‘Galaxias’
GALAXIAS is a Japanese one-shot manga illustrated and written by Hatesaka Ao. It was published in Kodansha’s shōnen manga magazine Weekly Shōnen Magazine on June 22, 2022. The one-shot version of their work follows protagonist Neraid, a recently made orphan who lives on an island nation plagued by commonly occurring dragon attacks. Creatures he has come to loathe for the power they possess.
The setting of ‘Galaxias’ was inspired by Japanese culture. Within the setting, dragons exist and attack the island nation on which the story takes place regularly. Similarly, tsunamis and earthquakes often hit Japan, where it has become a part of life for the people living there. Like in Japan, the people of Galaxias’s setting have formed countermeasures in dealing with them. Displaying the need for control over this immense force. But also has a way to assert power over this natural force. Humans have reasons for their power as discussed earlier. For the sea? There is no reason it can give us that we as humans can use to understand.
In real life, natural disasters aren’t inherently malicious or target humans specifically. But back then, that wasn’t the mentality; natural disasters were often interpreted as humans somehow angering local deities, spirits, or mythical creatures. This was seen as them being punished for some misgiving. Already showing the desire to know ‘why’. Something about the ocean just invokes this feeling. It may be why as John R. Gillis puts it in his article, “They turned it, as never before, into a place of spiritual and physical recreation”. Paving the way that people project human understood values onto the ocean. Making something like a tsunami: that’s destructive and randomly occurring, have meaning.
Meaning that will lead to understanding able to satisfy human curiosity. In the above panel, Neraid is angry but displays the desire to know why. He questions the logic behind the attacks. Displaying the reason for stories like this to be created—to make sense of the power difference and imbalance nature possesses. When there’s no true answer. The dragon being represented in this way as an unresponsive, mysterious being that does things with no rhyme or reason perfectly represents how we feel about the ocean. It allows the reader to feel the same way Neraid does, making them also question it. It reminds the reader there is still a ton about the world we still don’t know. But also how humans continue to separate themselves from nature, yet are unable to. All because of a lingering curiosity able to give birth to various interpretations that leaves us fascinated. With the need to know more because the ocean (and by extension the greater ability of nature and the environment) is able to have us reflect on ourselves on a deeper spiritual level.
Neraid’s statements about the dragons being powerful to the point, logically, they shouldn’t have any need to bother and interfere with humanity. But this couldn’t be any more false. As stated all the way at the beginning of the essay, humans are obsessed with power. Power that is often more or less used in various ways. We want to use and know about nature’s power in some shape or form. Every story and myth, modern and ancient, uses the ocean’s power in some way to create a meaning we’re able to digest and understand what we’re feeling. Neraid is not just angry at the dragon for literally causing him pain and suffering in life. It’s also a representation of how he would’ve used the power the dragon possesses. To not interfere or bother with what he considers ‘bugs’. It’s in a similar manner to how a lot of people don’t bother themselves with actual insects. Unless they become a problem. Again. That ancient reason why various deities, spirits, and monsters are born. To punish humans in some way. To just know why.
Stories like Galaxias still being made are a testament to humanity’s still lingering curiosity. The possible reason why we can’t truly connect ourselves with nature, yet at the same time we can’t separate from it fully. There’s the constant power clash between humans and nature when it comes from our desire to influence and display it against the natural force that helped give birth to us. That humans may be trying to become equal to nature/the ocean.
Sources
Eric Paul Roorda, The Ocean Reader: Theory, Culture, Politics (Duke UP, 2020). ‘Introduction” (pgs. 1-4)
John Gillis, “The Blue Humanities” (Humanities: The Journal of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Web. 2013)
Ao Hatesaka, “GALAXIAS”
