Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams: Japanese Science Fiction from Origins to Anime

by Christopher Bolton (Editor), Istvan Jr. Csicsery-Ronay (Editor), Takayuki Tatsumi (Editor)

Since the end of the Second World War—and particularly over the last decade—Japanese science fiction has strongly influenced global popular culture. Unlike American and British science fiction, its most popular examples have been visual—from Gojira (Godzilla) and Astro Boy in the 1950s and 1960s to the anime masterpieces Akira and Ghost in the Shell of the 1980s and 1990s—while little attention has been paid to a vibrant tradition of prose science fiction in Japan.   Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams remedies this neglect with a rich exploration of the genre that connects prose science fiction to contemporary anime. Bringing together Western scholars and leading Japanese critics, this groundbreaking work traces the beginnings, evolution, and future direction of science fiction in Japan, its major schools and authors, cultural origins and relationship to its Western counterparts, the role of the genre in the formation of Japan’s national and political identity, and its unique fan culture.   Covering a remarkable range of texts—from the 1930s fantastic detective fiction of Yumeno Kyûsaku to the cross-culturally produced and marketed film and video game franchise Final Fantasy—this book firmly establishes Japanese science fiction as a vital and exciting genre.   Hiroki Azuma; Hiroko Chiba, DePauw U; Naoki Chiba; William O. Gardner, Swarthmore College; Mari Kotani; Livia Monnet, U of Montreal; Miri Nakamura, Stanford U; Susan Napier, Tufts U; Sharalyn Orbaugh, U of British Columbia; Tamaki Saitô; Thomas Schnellbächer, Berlin Free U.   Christopher Bolton is assistant professor of Japanese at Williams College.   Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr. is professor of English at DePauw University.   Takayuki Tatsumi is professor of English at Keio University.

Genres: Nonfiction, Japan, Anime, History, Essays, Japanese Literature, Theory

292 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2007

About the author

I teach comparative and Japanese literature at Williams College. My research and teaching center on the postwar Japanese novel and contemporary Japanese visual culture, especially anime.

Reviews

[Hosein · Rating 3 out of 5]

نیمه‌ی اول کتاب تاریخ ادبیات علمی تخیلی توی ژاپنه، به نظرم خیلی تاثیرگذار و جالبه. نزدیک ده‌تا اسم (که جدید بودن)‌رو یادداشت کردم و حدس می‌زنم چیزهای خوبی ازشون پیدا کنم. تاثیر مانگا و انیمه به علمی تخیلی رو خوب توضیح داده و مهم‌تر از همه، وارد بحثِ علمی‌ تخیلی توی آثار نویسنده‌های جریان اصلی ژاپن مثل موراکامی و آبه می‌شه که همیشه برام جالب بود.

بعد یک بخش دومی داره که کاملا بی‌ربطه، بر اساس نظریه‌های فروید داره بخش جنسی اوتاکوها و انیمه‌ها رو بررسی می‌کنه. یعنی یک دیدِ بالا به پایین رو داره و اصولا همه رو مشکل جنسی دار تصور می‌کنه و کاملا مطمئنم پایه‌ی علمی یا تحقیقاتی درستی نداره. پیشنهاد میکنم اصلا بخش دوم رو نخونین، همون تاریخِ اول کتاب کافیه.

[Sean O'Hara · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first half of this book, focusing on written Japanese SF, is really good, but for some reason the anime section displays the worst traits of cultural and lit studies -- authors citing Freud like anybody takes him seriously these days (including one chapter that discusses penis envy in relation to yaoi!), and western writers who assume that every piece of Japanese SF must be reflecting on WWII/Hiroshima. There's one chapter that I skipped because the author deployed academic jargon the way Napoleon deployed his cavalry -- and on the topic of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

[Dave · Rating 5 out of 5]

“Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams” is a collection of essays written about Japanese Science Fiction edited by Christopher Bolton, Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., and Takayuki Tatsumi. These essays are split into two sections, the first one is “Prose Science Fiction”, and the second section is “Science Fiction Animation”. These essays discuss Japanese Science Fiction from its origins (oddly enough in detective fiction) to the anime of today, which has produced some extraordinary innovative storylines. The editors provide an interesting introduction to the book which discusses the organization and provides a good overview. Most of the essays were published elsewhere first. Only Chapter five appears to be original, but that doesn’t mean that this book is not worthwhile.

The first section of this book covers the written form of Japanese Science Fiction, though the essays don’t necessarily fit completely into the categories where they are placed. The first essay is by Miri Nakamura and is titled “Horror and Machines in Prewar Japan: The Mechanical Uncanny in Yumeno Kyusaku’s ‘Dogura Magura’”. This is an interesting chapter and provides insight into the use of machines in the fiction of the era. She has a wonderful discussion of how science fiction developed from detective fiction in Japan. This chapter is extremely important in seeing the origins of the genre in Japan, and one can easily see how key themes, such as the man-machine type stories have always played an important role in Japanese Science Fiction.

Chapter two is “Has the Empire Sunk Yet? The Pacific in Japanese Science Fiction” by Thomas Schnellbacher. This chapter helps build on the first chapter, and discusses the important theme of identity of the Japanese people in the storylines in Japanese science fiction. This chapter is a good example of how the essays don’t really fit into the sections of the book, as it discusses prose, movies, and anime and how this theme has appeared in many important works in all three. The link between this era and the loss of prestige due to the war is significant, and important in the discussion.

Chapter three is “Alien Spaces and Alien Bodies in Japanese Women’s Science Fiction” by Kotani Mari. This essay includes an interesting discussion on the rise of women’s science fiction in Japan and how it differed from the women’s movement in the west. Kotani Mari uses the transformation of the physical self as a running theme in this area of science fiction. Discussed are works like Kurimoto Kaoru’s “Guin Saaga”, Sato Aki’s Barutazaaru No Henreki”, and Takano Fumio’s “Vasurafu”.

Chapter four is “SF as Hamlet: Science Fiction and Philosophy” by Azuma Hiroki is an unusual choice for this book, as a good portion of this essay is looking at western works both in the SF arena as well as philosophy. However, Azuma Hiroki does bring the discussion back to Japanese science fiction and the shifts which took place in the genre in Japan during that time such as the shift from literature to anime and manga.

Chapter five is “Tsutsui Yasutaka and the Multimedia Performance of Authorship” by William O. Gardner. This is my personal favorite of the essays. I found the discussion of the innovative use of multimedia in the telling of a science fiction story to be incredibly interesting. Tsutsui’s “Gaspard of the Morning was a newspaper-serialized novel, which incorporating feedback from the readers into the text, altering the story as it went, or so it appeared.

Chapter six is “When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality, and Terminal Identity in “neon Genesis Evangelion” and “Serial Experiments: Lain” by Susan J. Napier. This chapter opens the second section of the book on anime, and it is anime which is the focus of the majority of the book, including several examples in the first section. While clearly anime is the dominant form of Japanese science fiction, I would have thought there would have been more to say about the movies and manga as well. Susan Napier takes an in depth look at the anime films mentioned in the title of the essay, and it is interesting to see how they fit in with the themes which have developed over time in the genre.

Chapter seven is “The Mecha’s Blind Spot: “Patlabor 2” and the Phenomenology of Anime” by Christopher Bolton. This is another outstanding essay. Christopher Bolton clearly knows anime as well as “Patlabor”, “Ghost in the Shell”, and other works which he takes a deep dive look at some of the techniques used by the creators of these films.

Chapter eight is “Words of Alienation, Words of Flight: Loanwords in Science Fiction Anime” by Naoki Chiba and Hiroko Chiba. Yet again, a wonderful look at an entirely different view of techniques used in anime, that is to say the language and what the sub-context is that goes along with the choice of words. Not being someone who speaks Japanese or has been exposed to Japanese culture to any great extent, I am not sure I would ever have picked up on this aspect by watching the anime films, and that makes this chapter one of the best for me personally.

Chapter nine is “Sex and the Single Cyborg: Japanese Popular Culture Experiments in Subjectivity” by Sharalyn Orbaugh. This is another good chapter, as it takes a broader look at the subject, including providing references to Star Wars, Frankenstein, etc., which help the reader understand the topic and the comparisons being drawn. Sharalyn Orbaugh also looks at “Neon Genesis Evangelion” and “Ghost in the Shell” to help illustrate the discussion of sexuality and singularity which are important in these films.

Chapter 10 is “Invasion of the Woman Snatchers: The Problem of A-Life and the Uncanny in “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within” by Livia Monnet. This essay takes an in depth look at the first fully computer-animated “photorealistic” feature film, and presents the view that it represents a turning point in the industry. It is an interesting discussion, though I am not sure I buy into the premise.

The last chapter is titled “Otaku Sexuality” by Saito Tamaki. This chapter looks at a type of fan which is unique to Japan and Japanese Science Fiction, and so it isn’t directly about Anime even though it is placed in that section of the book. The otaku are shunned by some Japanese, for some reasons which Saito Tamaki discusses, and also discussed in great detail is the reality behind this group and myths are laid to rest. This is an interesting psychological analysis of a type of Science Fiction fan (though not all otaku are fans of science fiction), but I am not sure it tells us much about the genre any more than a study of types of fans in the U.S. would tell us about American Science Fiction. At the same time, it does provide a different perspective from which to view the genre.

Takayuki Tatsumi provides a nice afterword titled “A Very Soft Time Machine: From Translation to Transfiguration” in which he discusses the essays and how they relate as well as his own personal reflections on the subject.

Ultimately this is a very good book, and I am rounding up to five stars for the rating. I would have liked to see a few more essays, taking a look at some additional areas, such as manga and the non-anime movies in particular. However, what information is provided is excellent, and it is nice that they were able to bring this series of essays from different sources together in one place.

[John Ohno · Rating 3 out of 5]

Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams, an essay collection about japanese science fiction media, is sort of a mixed bag. It had some really great stuff – digging up obscure, forgotten, but weirdly influential works from the “irregular detective” genre and early SF, talking about translation issues and the special way loan words modulate tone, covering the ways that in the wake of the second world war, SF detourned existing bits of media in order to modulate and criticize nationalistic sentiments. On the other hand, it had some groaners: one essay tries to describe an episode of Evangelion but accidentally combines the plot of two different episodes and then goes on to attribute to the Ghost in the Shell manga some philosophical ideas introduced into the movie by Oshii and studiously avoided by Shirow; another essay fails to convincingly argue that the real message of the technical and animation failures of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within is erasure of feminine agency; another tries to use a freudian model to distinguish between the sexual hangups of male otaku and those of fujoshi in order to explain porn trends. I don’t regret reading it, and even the worse essays at least had some interesting ideas, but it was really rough at times.

[Robert · Rating 3 out of 5]

The topicality and subject matter of this edited volume are a fantastic way to begin exploring the variegated nature of science fiction in Japan. The broad span covered, both historical and modern, attempts to bridge numerous disciplinary boundaries, and in some cases manages it. With most of the content being well over 15 years old now (drawn mostly from vol. 31 of the Journal of Science Fiction Studies in 2005, meaning it was submitted by 2004 at the latest), what was modern at the time now can come across as outdated or even detached from current research. Nonetheless, valuable case studies abound, including contributions from authors worldwide, and works in translation for the first time.

While not every article carries the same convincing weight or even general readability as some others, every addition will have something to say to the reader that will force the reader to re-examine how they take in science fiction from Japan. Whether it be commentary on language, the body-monstrous, femininity, or sexuality, this volume covers numerous bases - ged though they may be.

[Amy ☁️ (tinycl0ud) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Chapters I particularly enjoyed:

3. Alien Spaces and Alien Bodies in Japanese Women’s Science Fiction (Kotani Mari)
A very interesting and v different take of the monstrous maternal than western literature/film.

6. When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality, and Terminal Identity in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments: Lain (Susan J. Napier)
In-depth analysis of medium/style!

9. Sex and the Single Cyborg: Japanese Popular Culture Experiments in Subjectivity (Sharalyn Orbaugh)
This was so interesting!! A reading of NGE and GitS through a rigorous psychoanalytical framework IN CONTEXT.

[Carlos · Rating 3 out of 5]

There’s a lot to like in this book. The first part, all about Japanese print SF, was incredibly interesting on a historical level. The second part, about anime and SF, was also very interesting historically but the technical jargon on some of them was almost impenetrable. Additionally, some of the views on psychology, gender, sexuality, etc… are noticeably dated both for then and now. Otherwise, a fairly good intro into the history of SciFi in Japan and the influence it had on the country’s literary and animated works.

[Luke · Rating 4 out of 5]

A really interesting series of critical perspectives on Japanese sf.
All of the essays are really informative and well researched/argued, and I particularly enjoyed the final one on Otaku sexuality and yaoi culture.
Great stuff!

[Nikhil Narain · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some of the essays were pretty good; some others, not so much.

[Layla Todd · Rating 4 out of 5]

Excellent resource for those interested in the history of science fiction and anime. Useful collection of essays organized clearly by subject.

[S.P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times very dry and other times interesting, Robot Dreams suffers from the usual malaise of media-essay type books – being a bit full of its own opinions,

the first section is a discussion of written Japanese Science Fiction - I have no point of reference for these, having not read any direct, so felt more at home in the second part, concentrating in the main on anime.

The interesting parts of this are the depiction of women as cyborgs, and of the emasculation of men. It can get all a bit Freudian in places (especially in the section in the section on Otaku and Yoai sexuality), which I found to be almost incomprehensible due to my own bias against psychoanalysis.

Prominently featured throughout is Shin Seiki Evangerion, highlighting the male inferiority in the form of Shinji, a cowardly adolescent with a distant father and surrounded by women (and girls) who are just so much better than him. There is much discussion about the representations of self, and the relationship between EVA and pilot. I'm afraid I did not pick up all of this in the Anime myself, though accept that I am more of a 'Look! Cool robots!' kind of anime-fan. I did however pick up a few more films/series from the text that I have not seen, and will be checking out to see if there is anything to the discussion, including Serial Experiments Lain, from which the rather gorgeous cover image was taken (yes I really do buy books by the cover; +1 star here for that).

The tone of the book is feminist, and I don't mean this as a criticism, the representation of women in Japanese Sci Fi is, however, described mostly in a negative way and in the case of Final Fantasy, the Spirits Within, as a necessary but subservient cog in the machine. I don't think I agree with this, since I think the exact opposite it true – it is the positive representation of women that makes Japanese Science Fiction (and Anime) so much more interesting in the usual American Sci Fi, where, before the influence of Japanese Science fiction, one rarely saw a woman in a role that was not subservient. I guess that is the beauty of interpretation – you can believe what you want!

Overall I think I am left a little disappointed by this collection of essays, mostly because people talk such bollocks about things that they can't possibly know (and provide only evidence in the form of other peoples' opinions). Evangelion excepted (I concede that there was quite a lot of thought gone into this), I just don't think that Sci Fi writers and animators spend so much time constructing theses of sociological analysis before they put pen to paper – more likely I think, they say ' yeah, lets blow some shit up', or 'wouldn't it be really cool if...'

[L.G. Estrella · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book contains a collection of essays that cover a range of topics from the origins of Japanese science fiction to how science fiction has influenced anime.

It's a little tricky to review this book. The essays, as is so often the case with such collections, vary from the very good and interesting to the very bland and boring. Of particular interest (although not necessarily correct, in my opinion) as some of the essays on the development of what might be termed the cyberpunk genre of anime and the role and depiction of women in such genres.

Another issue that should be brought to the readers attention is the heavy reference to certain anime. If one has viewed these (e.g., Evangelion), then the essays will make sense. If one has not, then the essays are likely to be a great deal less enjoyable - they simply don't recap enough of the relevant series for someone who hasn't watched them to follow along.

In any case, there aren't too many books out that look at this (at least there weren't when this book was first released), so it will make a generally interesting read. And even if one doesn't necessarily agree with their analysis, it is at least engaging enough most of the time to actually get one thinking about why that is so.

[Tamara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't read every chapter because there were a few things that I was unfamiliar with or didn't want to get spoiled because I'm in the middle of some of the anime. However, I did read about 75% of the book. It had some really interesting insights into Japanese science fiction.

Some of the most intriguing chapters were the ones that spoke about the origins of Japanese science fiction, Japanese women in scifi, cyborgs and sexuality, loan words from different languages that have infiltrated Japanese scifi, and otaku sexuality.

If you enjoy anime, manga, or any type of Japanese scifi, I suggest you give this a look because it really put some things into perspective regarding why Japanese scifi is so different from, say, American scifi. The different essay writers do a very good job with providing examples and explaining their arguments even if you aren't familiar with every single piece of work that is mentioned.

Overall, it was an interesting and fun read and I felt like I learned quite a bit about Japan's scifi origins and Japanese scifi culture.

[Priya · Rating 2 out of 5]

A book with essays about SF, not SF stories themselves---this confused me (Note to self: "read small print on front page"). Not having read many (okay, almost none) of the works referenced made this rather inaccessible to the lay reader. It also reads a bit too much like a uni text book (of which I really don't need more) as authors provide extensive references. I enjoyed the essay about the Pacific (and Japanese identity-formation) but the one on women's SF seemed a bitforced (and a bit "ticking off of the gender box").

[Squishyent · Rating 4 out of 5]

Most of the essays in this book were fascinating. I'd recommend the book to anyone who's interested in Japan's cultural development, the history of Japanese science fiction, or some of the cultural things hidden in a few of the more popular anime series. I flat out disagreed with a couple of essays, though, to the point that I had a hard time finishing them.

[kayla reed · Rating 4 out of 5]

I didn't know much about Japanese Sci-Fi literature, so I was pretty unaware of the topics discussed in the first half of the book, but it was still enjoyable. The discussion of anime in the second half was very interesting as well, and it was nice to understand and get a better perspective on the works that were being discussed.

[Yupa · Rating 3 out of 5]

Raccolta di saggi. Quindi: alti e bassi, analisi interessanti e altre più superficiali. Comunque, diversi buoni spunti e molti dati interessanti.

[Bianca · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved the organization of these essays!