The key scene in the harbor of the New Port City of the original Ghost in the Shell anime film continues with the quotation from St Paul. Batou asks Motoko Kusanagi: “What is it you see in the water’s darkness?” As an answer suddenly the voice is heard, which is not Motoko’s: “For now we see through a glass, darkly.” It is a quotation from the First Epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 12, the King James version. In the English-speaking world this much-quoted phrase was for centuries interpreted as an image of peering through a dim windowpane. However, at the time of King James a glass was a standard word for a mirror (they were manufactured by applying a silvered coating to the back of a sheet of glass). In the Greek original the text reads dia spektrou, by means of a mirror. The point is that at the time of Paul, the mirrors were made of polished brass, so that the mirror image was very imperfect. That is why in the New Revised Standard Version the same verse reads: “For now we see in a mirror, dimly.” It would be great to use this version rather than King James translation to render this phrase in Ghost in the Shell, for Mamoru Oshii seems to be perfectly aware of the original meaning of the verse. Indeed, the scene began with the mirror imagery clearly pointing to Yata-no-kagami, the sacred mirror, one of Japan’s imperial regalia (for details see the previous post on the imperial regalia symbolism).
To grasp the idea conveyed by the quotation from St Paul, one has to read the phrase to the end. In the Bible, it continues: “...but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” As a message to early Christians, this meant that in the present life human beings can have only imperfect knowledge of the perfect world to come. As for Ghost in the Shell, it should be noted that the words are not by Motoko Kusanagi. It is the Puppet Master who managed to make them audible for Motoko and Batou. The Puppet Master intends primarily to say that soon Motoko will meet him and receive some superior knowledge.
A quotation from St Paul also serves as a final solution of the entire film. When Motoko and the Puppet Master merged into one person and Batou secured Motoko a new mechanical body (a childish one!), she/he/it says: “Do you remember the voice we heard on the boat that night? Before those words we heard come these ones: ‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.’ Here before you is neither the program called the Puppet Master, nor the woman that was called the Major.” This is actually verse 11 of the same 13th chapter of the 1st Corinthians, the verse that precedes the one quoted earlier. For Christians in Corinth it described how Paul changed when he came to believe in Christ. His whole life was transformed, he realized that he was now mature. Here, in Mamoru Oshii’s anime movie, the new Motoko means that what happened to her/him/it was deep mystical experience, a revelation, a transition into a wholly new state promising new, blessed life on an altogether different level of reality.
Finally, it should be noted that the order of events here is reversed as compared to what states the quotation: Paul says that earlier he was a child, but now he is a man. Paradoxically, Motoko, who earlier had a mature body, has now one of a child. Also the order of verses is reverse: first goes the 12th, and then the 11th. Indeed, that is what happens in a mirror. More on that later.
To grasp the idea conveyed by the quotation from St Paul, one has to read the phrase to the end. In the Bible, it continues: “...but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.” As a message to early Christians, this meant that in the present life human beings can have only imperfect knowledge of the perfect world to come. As for Ghost in the Shell, it should be noted that the words are not by Motoko Kusanagi. It is the Puppet Master who managed to make them audible for Motoko and Batou. The Puppet Master intends primarily to say that soon Motoko will meet him and receive some superior knowledge.
A quotation from St Paul also serves as a final solution of the entire film. When Motoko and the Puppet Master merged into one person and Batou secured Motoko a new mechanical body (a childish one!), she/he/it says: “Do you remember the voice we heard on the boat that night? Before those words we heard come these ones: ‘When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child. But when I became a man, I put away childish things.’ Here before you is neither the program called the Puppet Master, nor the woman that was called the Major.” This is actually verse 11 of the same 13th chapter of the 1st Corinthians, the verse that precedes the one quoted earlier. For Christians in Corinth it described how Paul changed when he came to believe in Christ. His whole life was transformed, he realized that he was now mature. Here, in Mamoru Oshii’s anime movie, the new Motoko means that what happened to her/him/it was deep mystical experience, a revelation, a transition into a wholly new state promising new, blessed life on an altogether different level of reality.
Finally, it should be noted that the order of events here is reversed as compared to what states the quotation: Paul says that earlier he was a child, but now he is a man. Paradoxically, Motoko, who earlier had a mature body, has now one of a child. Also the order of verses is reverse: first goes the 12th, and then the 11th. Indeed, that is what happens in a mirror. More on that later.
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