is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Kaiji Kawaguchi. It was serialized in Kodansha's manga magazine Morning from 2000 to 2009, with its chapters collected in forty-three volumes. It follows a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer and its crew being transported back in time more than 60 years to the Pacific theatre of World War II. The struggle of the crew from a peaceful future Japan to resist the nationalistic appeal of altering history and defending their country, knowing that in this time it is ruled by totalitarian militarists, is the central theme of Zipang.
A twenty-six episode anime television series by Studio Deen and directed by Kazuhiro Furuhashi was broadcast on TBS from 2004 to 2005. It was licensed for English release in North America by Geneon Entertainment.
In the 2000s, the newest, most advanced helicopter destroyer in the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force, the , sets sail from Japan on a naval exercise with the United States Navy off Ecuador. En route, they encounter a strange meteorological anomaly, causing the Mirai to lose contact with her sister ships. Soon, the crew detects a fleet approaching, and are shocked to see it includes the , a battleship that was sunk in 1945. When more naval vessels, including a , are sighted, the crew realizes these are Imperial Japanese Navy vessels and that they have somehow gone through a time slip to June 4, 1942, the first day of the Battle of Midway. Knowing that an American attack will soon devastate the four aircraft carriers of the 1st Air Fleet, some Mirai crew members believe that they should intervene to save the carriers and the 3,000 Japanese lives that will be lost. With the Mirais advanced technology and weaponry, which is far superior to anything possessed by the United States (or any other nation) in this era, the crew realizes that they could potentially alter the course of the Pacific War. However, they agree that their top priority is to return home, and to ensure that they have a home to which to return, they opt to do nothing that will change history.
However, despite their initial intentions not to alter history, the Mirai<nowiki/>'s crew soon finds themselves gradually drawn into the war, though they continue to refuse to choose one side over another. These actions, alongside the Mirai<nowiki/>'s rescue of IJN Lt. Commander Kusaka, a staunch militarist seeking to create a stronger Japan named "Zipang", who would have perished in the normal timeline, causes major changes in history. Among the changes in history, Executive Officer YÃ Âsuke Kadomatsu's father is killed in a car accident as a child, turning Kadomatsu into a man who does not exist in the future. After obtaining information that Kusaka is traveling to Manchuria to secure oil supplies, Kadomatsu leaves the Mirai to try and stop Kusaka. Kadomatsu arrives in Manchukuo and links up with a lieutenant of Mitsumasa Yonai at a military parade in Changchun, where Emperor Puyi is making an appearance; Kusaka and his subordinates, who are taking part in the parade, plan to assassinate Puyi to spark chaos and claim Manchuria as part of Zipang. Kadomatsu saves Puyi from an assassin fighter pilot, but Kusaka shoots Kadomatsu and Yonai's lieutenant and kills Puyi; Kusaka, not intending for the former two to die, orders one of his doctors to treat Kadomatsu and the lieutenant's injuries. From then on, Kadomatsu enacts a plan to use the Mirai and whatever information he possesses to save as many lives as possible that would otherwise have been lost during the war.
While Mirai is at Yokosuka Naval Arsenal for repairs, Gunnery Officer Masayuki Kikuchi begins to wonder if changing the past is inevitable and whether Zipang is the superior future. Kadomatsu returns to Japan and returns to Mirai, which sets off from Yokosuka during a nighttime blackout drill. While trying to escort a transport ship evacuating 4,000 Imperial Japanese Army soldiers from Kiska during the Aleutian Islands campaign, the Mirai is met by and forced to engage and sink the battleship USS North Carolina, and fights off light cruisers, but successfully saves the transport ship, which the IJN formally celebrates when they return to Japan. Meanwhile, Kusaka sends Tsuda on a secret mission to meet and assassinate Adolf Hitler; in reality, the assassination plot (which fails at the last second, resulting in Tsuda's death) is used by Kusaka as a distraction for him to steal uranium from the Nazi nuclear program. As the Mirai fares with a hunt by American submarines and helps evacuate New Guinea, during which VTOL pilot Mamoru Satake is killed defending the withdrawal, Kikuchi launches a mutiny and seizes control of Mirai to take part in the South-East Asian theatre and attack India. Kadomatsu boards the ship to retake it from Kikuchi and is aided by Kà Âhei Oguri, Sachiko Momoi, and Kisaragi. Kikuchi is injured during the Japanese withdrawal at the Battle of Tarawa and takes refuge in Palau with Momoi and Kisaragi. Captain Saburà  Umezu, hospitalized in Yokosuka, learns that Kusaka plans to build the atomic bomb and travels to Nanjing to stop him, but fails and is killed.
In 1944, the Yamato, fighting for Kusaka with him on board, is sunk by the Mirai, killing Kusaka in a vortex, but a nuclear explosion from the Yamato reveals it had an atomic bomb on board; while the explosion causes no significant damage, the Americans are alerted to the apparent success of the Japanese nuclear weapons program. The Mirai is ultimately sunk with all hands after a single stray hit by a shell fired from the American ships, with the entire crew lost at sea and deliberately not rescued by either the Japanese or Americans, except a crippled Kadomatsu, who is picked up by the Americans. Aware he is unable to return to his own time due to the altered history killing his father, and having been convinced by Kusaka to create "Zipang" on his behalf before he died, Kadomatsu offers his knowledge of the European theatre to the Allies and is flown to Washington, D.C..
From there, the lasting alterations to history due to the actions of the Mirai begin to occur. In 1944, the U.S. and Japan sign a peace treaty, and in 1945, the militarist factions in the Japanese government and military are ousted in a coup d'état, allowing the country to democratize. In 1947, the Pan-Pacific Treaty Organization is formed, and Japan sheds its imperial-era colonial holdings. By 1957, postwar Japan is economically prosperous, having been spared from severe attacks on the mainland. Kadomatsu, now a wealthy man in Nantucket after having advised the U.S. government during and after the war, moves back to Japan in 1970. When the 2000s arrive again, Kadomatsu attends the christening of a more advanced brand-new JDS Mirai and has his staff gather information about the crew members of the new Mirai, who all happen to be almost the same people from the old Mirai, except for himself. Kadomatsu finally realizes why only he survived from the original Mirai: it is impossible to have two of the same person existing at the same time; his father died as a child and his "original" self was not born in this alternate timeline, meaning he was allowed to live on, while the rest of the "original" Mirai crew died during the war so they could be born again later as history intended. Though the new Mirai crew members have never known Kadomatsu, they all feel the odd sensation they are missing someone among them. The Mirai departs for its scheduled naval exercise with the U.S. Navy, but this time it does not suffer any mishaps and reaches EcuadorâÂÂonly Kadomatsu knows how things could have turned out.
JDS Mirai (DDH-182) is the fictional helicopter defense destroyer of the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF), created for the manga. Mirai is transported back sixty years through time to 1942 on the eve of the Battle of Midway. The ship's weapons alone are enough to change the course of World War II, but equally potent are the advanced technology and knowledge of future events on board. The name of the ship is a homophone for the Japanese word meaning "future" and is often the basis of double entendres in the anime. The phrase , often repeated in the anime, for example, can mean "Japanese people of the ship Mirai" or "Japanese people of the future."
The Mirai is a ship of a fictional Yukinami-class of helicopter defense destroyer, which was created specifically for the story. The fictional ships are essentially an improved version of the actual Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force . All these ships are equipped with the Aegis Combat System that provides the vessels possessing it the capability to locate, track and target a large number of enemy vessels, aircraft and even missiles at ranges and with accuracy that was unimaginable in World War II.
The JDS Mirai is sometimes described as a cruiser rather than a destroyer. This is because a modern guided missile destroyer is about the size of a World War II light cruiser (the Mirai is actually longer than the and broader than the Takao-class heavy cruisers) and, in the context of the story, the WW II era characters misidentify the Mirai as a cruiser. Some sources have picked up this misidentification and reported it as factual.
The MV/SA-32J Umidori (English: Seagull) is a fictional aircraft created for the series. In it, it is a twin turboshaft engine, multi-mission Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force VTOL tilt-wing armed reconnaissance aircraft deployed aboard the destroyer Mirai.
The MV/SA-32J has two large, five-bladed propellers mounted on nacelles in its wings. The wings both tilt, for vertical take-off and landing (VTOL), and fold, for storage within the MiraiâÂÂs hangar. It appears that its engines are not in the wing nacelles, which are too small and do not have any air intakes. Air intakes and engine exhausts in the lower part of the fuselage indicate that the engines are located there, presumably connected to the propellers by some complicated mechanical linkage.
The design of the Umidori appears to be influenced by the Canadair CL-84 Dynavert Tiltwing, which was intended for projected Sea Control Ships of the 1970s The modern design of the Umidori incorporates features of the Bell XV-15 in terms of aerodynamic form and size, and in turn of the later, larger V-22 Osprey.
Other historical characters depicted include Gunichi Mikawa, Kiyonao Ichiki, Kanji Ishiwara, Matome Ugaki, Leigh Noyes, and Mitsumasa Yonai.
Written and illustrated by Kaiji Kawaguchi, Zipang was serialized in Kodansha's manga magazine Weekly Morning from July 2000 to November 2009. Kodansha collected its chapters in forty-three volumes, released from January 23, 2001, to December 22, 2009.
An anime adaptation of Zipang was produced by Studio Deen and directed by Kazuhiro Furuhashi. Tokyo Broadcasting System Television broadcast the anime series in Japan from October 7, 2004, to March 31, 2005. Since a Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force official on active service was involved in the production, some unrealistic scenes were cut from the anime version. In 2017, scholar Takayoshi Yamamura noted that anime was produced in the collaboration with the JMSDF.
At the 2006 Anime Expo, the company Geneon announced that it has licensed Zipang for distribution in North America. The first DVD was released in September of that year.
Zipang was licensed for release in North America by Geneon Entertainment with DVD release starting in September 2006.
A video game version of Zipang for PlayStation 2 was released by Bandai in Japan on May 26, 2005.
Zipang won the 26th Kodansha Manga Award for general manga category in 2002.
Some foreign readers and viewers were uncomfortable with the storyline. There were many arguments among the South Korean critics that the series was promoting Imperial Japan.