In recent years, cyberpunk works have suddenly become popular again. From the movie version of "Ghost in the Shell" to "Cyberpunk 2077", there will be "The Matrix 4" and the further "Neuromancer" movie. It seems that this cultural proposition that originated in the 1980s has become more and more fragrant with age.
Friends who have just started to get into cyberpunk are usually attracted by the mechanical prosthetics under the neon lights, the strange world where AI controls humans, and the awakening and rebellion of lonely hackers. Indeed, the sharpness of these images is unique, and it makes sense that they capture audiences.
But when you look at it, you may find something strange: Why do every cyberpunk work have some Japanese elements? The mechanical girl suddenly pulls out a samurai sword; the hacker finds a stall to eat ramen after escaping from death; when the protagonist enters the virtual world and starts having stream-of-consciousness convulsions, there is always a geisha who comes out to enhance the atmosphere. Seeing these pictures too much will make people curious, isn’t it true that Japanese companies are not good enough? Why is there so much advertising budget?
In "Cyberpunk 2077", the main plot revolves around the Japanese company Arasaka. The NPC inside will make up settings for you whenever possible, telling you that "the Japanese have everything in Night City."
If we say, cyberpunk is a special taste of chowder. Neon lights, haze, thought control, artificial intelligence, urban jungles, mechanical prosthetics, virtual reality, and the deprivation of human beings by big companies. These ingredients are all necessities. Weird Japanese and Asian elements seem to have become an irreplaceable seasoning.
How did this “recipe” come to be? In fact, the relationship between Japan and cyberpunk has been discussed by many authors. But this is a technology account. Therefore, we can focus the discussion on the technological background that has received less attention.
The Japanese elements in cyberpunk can be said to be the cultural reflection washed away by the technological explosion and national technological competition in the 1980s.
First layer of implantation:
Cultural transmission in the 1980s
Cyberpunk contains two meanings. Cyber refers to control, electronics, and computers, and is extended to the control of the human body and humanity by technology; Punk refers to punk spirit and resistance, and is extended to the independent will that is useless but still exists in the explosion of technology.
In the world of cyberpunk, technology implants ideas and abilities into humans, and ultimately completes control. This is an eternal proposition. Japan, a peculiar country, has also cleverly implanted its own cultural will into the rise of cyberpunk. If we forcibly break down this implantation into a structure, Japanese culture’s entry into cyberpunk first came from a global cultural transmission in the 1980s.
William Ford Gibson, known as the "Father of Cyberpunk", launched the highly prestigious "Neuromancer" in 1984, which not only won all the awards in the science fiction field, but also pioneered this unique genre. Cultural genre. This work inspired the emergence of "The Matrix" and "Ghost in the Shell" and influenced various fields of music, fashion, games, and literature.
Although "Neuromancer" is not necessarily the first cyberpunk work, it is certainly the most representative in its early stages. The name actually comes from an album "Neuromantic" by Yukihiro Takahashi, a member of the Japanese band YMO.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, YMO, composed of three musicians: Haruomi Hosono, Yukihiro Takahashi, and Ryuichi Sakamoto, became very popular. They inherited punk music from the United Kingdom and merged it with electronic music and psychedelic styles. Expressing the unique concept of "yellow people's musical magic", it shocked the European and American music circles.
A large part of the inspiration for YMO's creations at that time came from the technological boom that had just begun in Japan. The national enthusiasm for robots, bionic devices, and computers has created a unique kind of technological obsession. This atmosphere was imported to Europe and the United States through music, comics, movies, etc., forming a cultural confrontation beyond the economic and technological confrontation between the United States and Japan.
William Gibson, who drew a lot of inspiration from YMO music and Japanese culture, did not hesitate to express his familiarity with Japanese culture and fear of Japanese technology in his works. In 1988, the board game "Cyberpunk" appeared, which borrowed a lot of William Gibson's creativity and imagery. This board game worldview depicting the collapse of the U.S. government, the rise of large corporations, and the full penetration of the United States by the Japanese company Arasaka is the original IP of "Cyberpunk 2077."
In "Cyberpunk 2077", Takemura said that his hometown is Chiba, Japan, which is a tribute to the first chapter of "Neuromancer", "Sad Chiba City".
Chiba City is the seaport of Tokyo. It was the place where Japan had the most developed international trade and the most concentrated technology industry in the 1980s. Perhaps because it often appeared in international news, it was fantasized by writers as a representative of Japanese-style dark night cities and technological jungles. Inexplicably, it became a "holy place" for later cyberpunk enthusiasts.
Having said that, I am still a little curious, what will Shenzhen be imagined in the minds of European and American authors in the future?
Second layer implantation:
The golden age of Japanese cyberspace
The popularity of some Japanese artists and works in Europe and the United States may be just the beginning of Japanese culture implanting cyberpunk. Later, if we want to continuously strengthen our presence in this field, we still need continuous cultural output.
When it comes to such a sad cultural symbol as cyberpunk, Japanese cartoonists are not sleepy.
The Japanese society in the 1980s, especially the Japanese technology industry, also provided countless nutrients to these painters who were "lost in human nature".
In October 1981, Japan announced the launch of the development of the fifth-generation computer with a total investment of 100 billion yen, saying it would be a great change in the history of human computers. This incident was called the "Pearl Harbor of science and technology" by the American media at the time, and naturally caused thousands of waves in Japan. Coupled with Japan's success in a series of industries such as robotics, bionic technology, and semiconductors, a society in which humans are dominated by high technology, terrifying and confusing seems to be just around the corner.
AI is coming, robots are coming, and the will of big companies will monitor everything. All kinds of fantasies filled the Japanese cultural world at that time. Then combined with the loneliness and annihilation tendencies in Japanese culture, a series of very hard-core Japanese cyberpunks were born.
In 1973, Sakyo Komatsu's "The Sinking of Japan" kicked off the creative process of technological destruction and the shadow of nuclear war. In 1988, the animated film "Akira" with time-honored significance was released. The theme of cities after the nuclear explosion and technology dominating human nature reflected Katsuhiro Otomo's philosophical speculation and deep concerns about the explosion of technology.
In 1989, "Ghost in the Shell" began to be serialized, and was later adapted to the big screen in 1995 by the geeky director Mamoru Oshii. This well-known work discusses various topics such as electronic brains, mechanical prosthetics, AI, and souls. It can be said that not a single thing that can be cyberpunk is left out. Paired with the ethereal and mysterious Japanese music, text and visual expression, it has realized the golden age of Japanese cyberspace and has become a milestone that cannot be bypassed when talking about cyberpunk.
Along with the rapid development of Japanese animation, these unique expressions of wasteland fear, electronic fear, and totalitarian panic were fully infiltrated into animation works. They were very successful in that special period, and then became the original canon for cyberpunk to move into games and movies.
However, in Japan itself, the Miyazaki Tsutomu incident occurred in 1988. Four girls were abducted and killed, and a large number of alienated and horrific comics were found in the perpetrators' homes. This has caused a huge blow to Japanese animation, and cyberpunk works that promote alienation and terror are the first to bear the brunt. Core cyber anime has never recovered since then.
It wasn't until 1995 that Hideaki Anno's "Neon Genesis Evangelion" was released, directly pointing the core of the work to theology and doomsday: it not only developed cyberpunk, but also emerged from cyberpunk.
Third layer of implants: Eastern Shadows
Looking back at the subculture circle after World War II, we will find that the confrontation between countries and the advancement of globalization, these two naturally contradictory things have become cultural hotbeds time and time again.
The struggle for hegemony between the United States and the Soviet Union and the Cold War Iron Curtain promoted the rise of a large number of science fiction, espionage, and ideology-related works in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of them have been passed down to this day without the imprint of the times.
Japan's rise in economy, technology, and multinational corporations in the 1980s also provided such a contradictory and bizarre "cultural power." At that time, the European and American cultural circles were filled with fear of failure in technological competition and Japan's dominance of the global economy. Especially at that time, the United States was experiencing economic stagflation, and Japanese multinational companies penetrated into everything from automobiles, home appliances, and electronics. The ubiquitous "Japan tax" continues to amplify this psychological collapse effect.
On the side of Japanese creators, there is a deep-rooted mentality of carnival and alienation towards the inevitable explosion of technology. People began to look at everything from the perspective of technological development, and then there was prediction and panic about AI, robots, and electronic biology. Of course, 996 is inevitable in large companies, and it is also the nature of workers to hate large companies.
The intertwining of these two emotions has allowed cyberpunk to gain cultural consensus and recognition from both sides of the technological competition. High technology, low life, and people being controlled by technology and society. These themes have become the distinct legacy of the era of technological explosion. In addition to Japanese elements, the most common oriental element in cyberpunk is the Kowloon Walled City in Hong Kong, China. The imagination of people being squeezed by buildings, trapped by neon lights in the sky, and living in dirty corners of bustling cities has been deepened again and again in the context of global technological competition. The Kowloon Walled City has become a "projector".
The explosion of technology and the globalized economy gave birth to cyberpunk, and the technological competition between the United States and Japan has been deeply embedded in the genes of cyberpunk. Finally, in some works that seem to have no need for Japanese culture, we will also see rather confusing Japanese elements. That said, the author is used to it.
The Japanese gene of cyberpunk includes the sense of alienation from Orientalism from a Western perspective, the deep fear of human beings losing control of high technology, and the social indifference brought about by the hugeness of cities. Western authors firmly believe that Japan will inevitably follow this path in the future. And many Japanese seem convinced. Unfortunately, the development of science and technology later was not so scary, but the bursting of the economic bubble was really fatal. The prediction that cyberpunk will inevitably happen in Japan has not come true. It is true that the Chinese dubbing of "Cyberpunk 2077" is good.
In fact, if you think about it from another angle, the time quadrant we are in includes a series of factors such as the post-epidemic, Sino-US technological competition, entertainment globalization, new energy transformation, etc. It is actually a good cultural hotbed.
It's a bit of a pity. Come on.
