This course serves the dual purpose of introducing students to key issues and themes arising out of the history of Japanese science fiction and providing a space to critically engage with the imbrication of science fiction with empire. It is premised on the understanding that the inter-textually circulated motifs, images, and narratives of science fiction form a coherent and historically situated discourse indebted to the language and logic of colonialism. In light of the fact that, on the one hand, Japan has become a fetishized site in Anglo-American texts such that "Japan" itself is often imagined as signifying a science fictional space as such, and on the other hand, the emergence of the SF genre in Japan in the first half of the twentieth century is intertwined with the ideological deployments of science and discourses of "civilization" embedded in the nation's historical position as the only non-Western colonial empire, this course will take up "Japan" as a specific locus of analysis from which standpoint we will track the overlaps and interactions between the emergence and subsequent development of the genre of science fiction and the histories of empire.
Through the course of the term, we will examine a range of texts (literature, film, and animation) from the history of science fiction in Japan. Our goal will be to highlight the formative effects of colonial histories on our understanding of the history of the genre and how particular science-fictional tropes and themes - from future war stories, to time travel narratives, to representations of post-human bodies, and others - work to produce our collective imaginations of the future. By the end of the semester, students are expected to have both gained a familiarity with key themes and issues that permeate the science-fictional stories coming out of Japan, as well as developed a sense of the larger stakes of science-fictionality as a site of critical thought and practice.
As all the texts will be made available in English translation, no prior Japanese language proficiency is required.