The Silent Service

The Silent Service
沈黙の艦隊 (Chinmoku no Kantai)
Genre	Drama, Military
Manga
Written by	Kaiji Kawaguchi
Published by	Kodansha
Magazine	Weekly Morning
Demographic	Seinen
Original run	1988 – 1996
Volumes	32
Original video animation
Directed by	Ryōsuke Takahashi
Studio	Sunrise
Released	1996
Episodes	6

The Silent Service (沈黙の艦隊, Chinmoku no Kantai) is a manga series by Kaiji Kawaguchi. It was published in Kodansha's Weekly Morning manga magazine from 1988 to 1996 and collected in 32 tankōbon volumes. The series was adapted into an anime TV special and OVA series by Sunrise. The first two episodes of the anime were later spliced together and released in North America as a single volume. The rest of the series remained untranslated.

The manga won the Kodansha Manga Award for general manga in 1990.

Story

During the cold war, the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force jointly developed a nuclear submarine with the United States Navy. On its maiden voyage, the captain of the submarine declares the submarine to be an independent state, "Yamato."

Sea vessels in OVA

• Russian:
  • Romanov (Fictional Submarine)

• Japanese/JSDF:
  • Yamanami (Fictional Diesel Submarine)
  • Tatsunami (Fictional Diesel Submarine)
  • Haruna (DDH-141)
  • Kurama (DDH-144) (AKA "Ship #8")
  • Asagiri (DD-151)

• American:
  • US Navy 7th Fleet:
    • USS Sea Bat (Fictional Nuclear Submarine) (AKA "Yamato")
    • USS New York City (SSN-696)
    • USS Chicago (SSN-721)
    • USS Dallas (SSN-700)
    • USS Carl Vinson (CVN-70) (Flagship)
    • USS California (CGN-36)
    • USS Alabama (Fictional or Misnamed)
    • USS O'Brien (DD-975)
  • US Navy 3rd Fleet:
    • USS Enterprise (CVN-65) (Flagship)
    • USS Vincennes (CG-49)
    • USS Long Beach (CGN-9)
    • USS Vella Gulf (CG-72)
    • USS Lake Erie (CG-70)
    • USS Cape St. George (CG-71) (Misnamed "Cape St. John")

Reception

It was said by many Japanese conservative thinkers that the work was advocating Japanese military independence from the U.S. by way of Japan owning its own nuclear weapon. One conservative pundit even called Kawaguchi the “new Yukio Mishima”, a well known right wing Japanese novelist. However, as the story progressed, the comic became increasingly centered on the new role of the United Nations, the direction that was supported by many Japanese leftists.

The idea of a captain of an atomic submarine declaring independent sovereignty is not completely original. For example, a British man named Paddy Roy Bates declared a nation called Sealand in 1967 after occupying an abandoned navy fortification off the British coast.

The Silent Service is generally regarded as one of the rare Japanese comics that covered the unparalleled scale of realistic international geopolitics with a commercial success.