From Science Fictional Japan to Japanese Science Fiction

RESEARCH Science fiction provides us with more than a glimpse of futurist visions, it allows us to probe questions of cultural history, politics and socio-economic change in societies. Chris Goto-Jones reveals his fascination for this sub-culture and Japan’s long and mutating relations with ‘weird-science’. From science fictional Japan to Japanese science fiction Chris Goto-Jones ers established and consolidated imperial fictive futures of Europe and the US. In rule across the globe. It is interesting to other words, whilst the fictions had slip- he term ‘science fiction’ is of relatively reflect that one of the other central, the- Gojira (1954) movie frame. streamed from negative to positive, Japan Trecent origin, apparently coined by the matic concerns of sci-fi is often considered remained science fictional. genre-legend Hugo Gernsback in an edi- to be the encounter with difference, and torial to his new magazine, Science Won- occasionally with either the mystification Science fictional Japan in the der Stories, in 1929. Nine years later the or the demonisation of difference. In other post-war world: magazine changed its name to Astounding words, sci-fi can be read as a thread in the specific race. In many ways, Heinlein’s In the years immediately following the end Science-Fiction, and thus the name entered weaves of colonialism and orientalism. novel is an intriguing window into Ameri- of the Second World War, anxiety about the history. However, throughout the 1920s Indeed, in recent years much of the most can fears about Japan’s imperial expansion emerging Cold War was clear in the so- and 1930s there were a plethora of com- sophisticated work on sci-fi has come from and its proposed Co-Prosperity Sphere. called ‘Golden Age of Science Fiction.’ In peting terms: pseudo-scientific, weird- the standpoint of post-colonialism. From 1949, George Orwell’s masterpiece Nine- science, and Gernsback’s own early favour- this perspective, we see the beginnings of As one of the most influential voices in teen Eighty-Four was published, in which ite ‘scientifiction.’ the creation of a science fictional Japan, as American sci-fi, Heinlein’s portrayal of the the fictional nation of Eastasia is identi- well as the coincident birth of science fic- ‘PanAsiatics’ has been extremely contro- fied as one of the three superpowers of Fiction that would eventually become tion in Japan. versial, variously condemned and praised the dystopian future. In general the 1950s labelled as ‘science fiction’ (or ‘sci-fi’) for its engagement with the volatile race- and 1960s are marked by intense political had been in existence for at least a cen- The engagement of Western sci-fi with the politics of the time. On the one hand, activism and by scepticism about the abil- tury before. Convention dictates that the East Asian ‘other’ in the first half of the critics have accused Heinlein himself of ity of technology to solve all problems, and first piece of sci-fi was Mary Shelley’s 20th century (and then again during the buying into American chauvinism and this agenda is played out in the sci-fi of the gothic masterpiece, Frankenstein (1818), years around the Vietnam War) is clearly anti-Japanese propaganda during the early time. although the reasons for this origination informed by a kind of reactionary and anx- 1940s. On the other hand, Heinlein and are far from uncontested. For some, it is ious frontier-spirit. Classic comic-strips others have argued that his purpose was Central to these problematics was the enough to say that Frankenstein is the earli- such as Philip Francis Nowlan’s Buck Rog- anti-racist, and that his text was an attack horror of wartime technology, culminat- est text that still exists within what Damien ers in 25th Century (the first US sci-fi comic on Japanese and US racism at the time. ing in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima Broderick (Reading by Starlight, 1995) has strip, starting on 7 January 1929) and Alex Whatever the actual force of this book, the and Nagasaki in August 1945. A common called the ‘megatext’ of modern sci-fi (that Raymond’s Flash Gordon (beginning 7 historical interest of Sixth Column vastly theme in Anglo-American sci-fi became is, within the set of stories that define lit- January 1934) show America being over- outweighs its literary quality, which even anxiety over a loss of humanity and the eracy in the genre). For others, the issue run by the Red Mongols, and pit the all- Heinlein himself lamented. potential collapse of civilisation triggered is not conventional but thematic: sci-fi American hero (Flash Gordon is quarter- by the pursuit of technological advance- is about technology and mechanisation, back of the New York Jets) against an evil These sci-fi classics from the early 20th ment. Three of the most acclaimed sci-fi necessarily a product of modernity and of (Chinese) Emperor Ming the Merciless of century illustrate very well the ways in novels of all time, Isaac Asimov’s Founda- the industrial revolution. Accordingly, the planet Mongo. However, perhaps the most which science fiction was a symbolic tion (1951), Frank Herbert’s Dune (1965), 19th century works of Shelley, HG Wells remarkable of these pre-war texts is the depicts the invasion of the US by a force of genre or a metaphorical discourse from and Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land and Jules Verne should be read along side Sixth Column (1949) by Robert Heinlein, ‘PanAsians,’ whom he identifies as a mix its inception. Heinlein’s transparency in (1961), all appeared in this period. As we Nietzsche’s proclamations about the death which was originally serialised in Astound- of Japanese and Chinese. The Americans his depiction of the Japanese as Japanese, will see, the a-bombs also played a central of god, Max Weber’s account of the ‘iron ing Science-Fiction in January, February defend themselves through recourse to a rather than as aliens from another galaxy role in the development of sci-fi in post-war cage’ of modern bureaucratic machinery and March of 1941 (nine months before special ‘ray weapon’ that could be adjusted with suspiciously Japanese or Chinese Japan, albeit in a radically different way; and Martin Heidegger’s stand against the Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor). Heinlein so that it would only damage people of a sounding names, was actually rather unu- the classic monster film, Gojira (1954) by self-alienation of Being in the face of the sual. The tendency in sci-fi is to re-figure Honda Ishirô, will become emblematic. imperialism of technology. the encounter with the ‘other’ in terms of the encounter with the literally alien. By the end of the 1960s and into the 1970s, Science fictional Japan: Of course, the question of race politics however, there was a real turning of the In other words, sci-fi is the literature of the within sci-fi has attracted a wide critical tide. The so-called ‘New Wave’ of sci-fi hopes and anxieties of industrial moderni- literature. In the post-war period, Samuel shifted the attention of authors and read- ty, and it should come as no surprise that R. Delany would become a leading figure ers away from the technology-driven glo- other industrial societies have produced in this field, using his own science fiction ries (and anxieties) of ‘outer-space’ and their own ‘weird-science.’ Indeed, Japan’s (and sci-fi criticism) to explore and chal- towards the complex, human concerns of relationship with sci-fi began in its so-called lenge questions of identity and difference, ‘inner-space.’ During this period there was ‘age of machines’ (kikai jidai) in the early of exploration and conquest, of autonomy a real focus on challenging social and cul- 20th century with the work of writers such and assimilation. His 1967 Nebula Award tural taboos, on radical political stances, as Mizushima Niou and Yumeno Kyûsaku, winning novel, The Einstein Connection, and on heightened literary quality. Leading who were writing contemporaneously has become a classic of its kind. lights in the UK and the US were Michael with social critics and philosophers strug- Moorcock, Brian Aldiss, Roger Zelazny, gling with the problematics of modernity In the post-war period, however, it gradu- and of course Samuel R. Delany (although and its overcoming (kindai no chôkoku). ally became clear that the representation some of these figures rejected the label). Already in the late 1920s, Japanese writ- of Japan in science fiction did not have to ers (and scientists) were envisioning orbit around negative racial stereotypes. One of the intriguing aspects of the New robots or jinzô ningen (artificial people), No longer a military threat, Japan began Wave was the way in which it re-appropri- and stories about them (including some to recapture some of the romantic mys- ated and re-signified Asia; like many of claims to have invented them) appeared tery that it had once enjoyed in European the other cultural movements of the time, in popular science magazines in the 1920s eyes, such as in the work of Jonathan Swift the New Wave was fascinated by spiritual and 1930s; at this time, such stories would (Gulliver’s Travels, 1826), whose archetypal aspects of Asian culture, such as Zen (DT have been labelled as kûsô kagaku (imagi- explorer, Gulliver, famously travelled to the Suzuki established his Zen Centre in Cali- nary science). It was not until the post-war mystical land of Japan with a special letter fornia during the 1960s), Indian mysticism period that the English terms ‘SF’ or ‘sci-fi’ of introduction from the king of Luggnagg, (just as the Beatles travelled to India in entered popular usage.

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