Factbook

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    • Science Fiction

    Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein only became available in Japanese in 1953, 135 years after its publication[UPDATED: 3-11-2026]

    Mary Shelley (1797-1851) published her novella Frankenstein in 1818 during a period of revolutions – both industrial and political, thanks to the French Revolution (1789-1799) and new sciences such as galvanism. 

    By contrast, Japan at this time was still enjoying a relatively tranquil period, its Edo Period (1603-1868), and had cut itself off from almost all Western influences including Dickensian fears of rapidly deteriorating social condition from increased productivity and the mechanisation of industry.

    Mary Shelley’s book did not become widely available or known in Japan until 1953 when Nippon Shuppan Kyodo published Giichi Shihido’s (1907-1954) translation and by then Japan had developed its own monsters and fearful threats, including the likes of Godzilla, who made his debut in Japan at about the same time, in a film in 1954.

    Authors such as Kobo Abe (1924-1993), who is often called Japan’s Kafka, have written their own brilliant robot and monster tales. Abe’s 1953, R62 go no hatsumei, The Invention of R62, highlights some of the fears of the time, and Japan also has its own long and rich local history of robot and monster literature.

    The Invention of R62 tells the tale of an engineer who loses his job after new technologies from an American firm are introduced at his workplace. Desperate about his predicament, he decides to kill himself. But before doing so, he is persuaded to enter into a financial arrangement with a university researcher who is trying to develop robots capable of replacing workers and making Japanese industry more efficient. As a last act he agrees to have his brain replaced with a controllable artificial one by the researcher. 

    The procedure is successful, but the consequences are unexpected and painful, especially for the engineer’s former employer.

    Abe’s other robot stories from the period including Eijyu undo, Perpetual Motion, have similar themes echoing the times.

    Nonetheless, the Japanese lived in blissful ignorance of Luddites, steam engines, Victor Frankenstein; as well as growing international angst over the seismic changes taking place in Western society during the period of Shelly’s life and after. And the word Frankenstein doesn’t have the same cultural legacy or impact as it does in some countries in the English reading world.

    Japanese engineers have noted, often proudly, that the nation’s love affair with robots is open and easy simply because Japan does not have a so-called Frankenstein Complex, a term that was coined by Isaac Asimov (1939-1992) while the West does, a concept that Western journalists often pick up on and write about after being informed of this.

    There are several reasons cited for this – both cultural and religious; but perhaps the most convincing arguments are simply that Japan’s development cycle has been out-of-sync with the West. So it was isolated from the negative side-effects of the industrial revolution, and perhaps additionally its early puppet designers and engineers understood the concept of the ‘Uncanny Valley’ earlier than others. And thus adopted and developed less human-like automaton preferring the cute or the industrial or a combination that elicits less fear and disgust when seen in action.

    In fact, Japan’s Frankenstein exposure came late in film format and toys, many of which were made in Japan after the Second World War for export to the United States for the American “festival” known as Halloween. Japan’s industrial revolution has had its own negative environmental and social side-effects, but Victor Frankenstein or his monster haven’t been part of their narratives.
    Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein only became available in Japanese in 1953, 135 years after its publication Posted by Richard Nathan
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    In the 1960s a member of the Japanese Imperial Family started moonlighting as a science fiction author[UPDATED: 8-22-2023]

    Princess Fukuko Asaka (1941-2009) started publishing science fiction and fantasy stories in Japanese magazines in the late 1950s under the pen name Bien Fu, and had stories regularly published throughout the 1960s. 

    One of the Princess’s stories was published in the first issue of Uchujin (1957-2009), an important pioneering science fiction magazine of the period. 

    The Princess was the Emperor’s second cousin and the granddaughter of the Meiji Emperor (1852-1912), who ushered in the Meiji Era (1868-1912), opening up Japan to the West after more than 250 years of self-imposed isolation. This was a period in which Japan and the Imperial family changed beyond all recognition. In fact, all aspects of Japanese society from the way people dressed and wore their hair, to the types of books that were read and written, as well as the food eaten, were to change dramatically. 

    In 1969, while in her late 20s, the Princess invited a group of schoolchildren to a former imperial palace to discuss writing and science fiction. One of those students, Takayuki Tatsumi, went on to become a professor of American Literature at Keio University, a prestigious private university in Tokyo. She was the first science fiction writer Tatsumi had met and by all accounts made a lasting impression. 

    Princess Fukuko Asaka, who lost her official title in 1947 during the post-war occupation of Japan by Allied Forces, published numerous fantasy and science fiction stories throughout the late 1960s and also produced comic strips. 

    Her work features cyborgs and immortal imperial consorts, and she reportedly empathised with Native Americans, whose position in their country, like her own in Japan, had changed after the arrival of people from afar. She was a vocal champion of their rights and the rights of  others threatened with extinction. 

    According to literary critics and academics, this disinherited noblewoman was a pioneer of both Postmodernism and Science Fiction in Japan, and managed to reinvented herself as an author while also helping to lay the ground for others, especially women writers, and writers of new genres like Japanese Cyberpunk that has subsequently flourished in Japan.

    In the 1960s a member of the Japanese Imperial Family started moonlighting as a science fiction author Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Winning the 1987 Japan Mystery Writers Association Prize put Miyuki Miyabe on the literary map triggering a boom in female crime writing in Japan[UPDATED: 9-20-2021]

    Miyuki Miyabe’s short story Warera no rinjin wa hannin (Our Neighbour is a Criminal) won the 1987 Japan Mystery Writers Association Prize, announcing her arrival as a writer in Japan. 

    Her success, especially her 1992 novel Kasha (All She Was Worth) about loan sharks, debt and the risks of a cashless society, as well as the success of similar books written by non-Japanese female authors published in translation in Japan encouraged a new generation of Japanese women to try their hand at the genre. 

    Some went on to enjoy major success and something of a publishing boom developed in Miyabe’s wake. Such authors as Natsuo Karino and Kaoru Takamura whose profiles are now growing outside Japan. 

    Karino’s prize-winning 1997 novel Out (アウト) has been described as a “dark, feminist, horror and probably not like anything you’ve read”. The book is about a group of women working together at a factory who find themselves coming together to cover up a murder, but not everyone “handles the guilt well”. Other notable and successful Japanese female crime fiction authors include: Asa Nonami and Yoshiki Shibata. 

    Interestingly, crime fiction written in the 90s by women in the US and the UK also saw a similar surge in popularity. 

    Though there have always been female writers of whodunits finding success in translation; Agatha Christie (1890-1976) being perhaps the best known, Japanese media has tended to play up the authors’ gender to promote the books by using titles like the crime fiction “Queen”, or “Princess”, or some such moniker. 

    As the trend evolved and gained momentum, names of strong female characters started appearing in the narratives themselves and not just on the covers of the books. Books like Out would feature female detectives and criminals, as well as dark, grisly stories whose narratives included violence done by and to women. 

    As their writing careers have progressed some of these Japanese authors have followed Miyabe’s example by branching out into other genres including science fiction and historical fiction. 

    The phenomena, like other Japanese popular culture trends, has even created an opportunity for academic study with the publication of such papers as Woman uncovered: pornography and power in the detective fiction of Kirino Natsuo; and monographs such as Bodies of Evidence: Women Society, and Detective Fiction in 1990s Japan.
    Winning the 1987 Japan Mystery Writers Association Prize put Miyuki Miyabe on the literary map triggering a boom in female crime writing in Japan Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Japan’s first ‘detective story’ was published in 1889[UPDATED: 5-4-2021]

    Ruiko Kuroiwa (1862-1913), who founded a newspaper and edited several others, is widely thought and cited as having written Japan’s first ‘detective story’, a classic whodunit style short story titled Muzan (In Cold Blood), nine years after the first modern Japanese short story, Dancing Girl, by Ogai Mori, was published in 1890. 

    That said, Japan actually has a much longer and very rich history of crime fiction, the broader genre that the sub-genre detective fiction falls within, which was defined only after highly influential Western-style detective fiction started spreading in Japan in translation.

    So much so that early Western visitors to Japan sometimes pontificated on its extent and corrupting influences as well as the fact that many of these Japanese books were “coarsely” illustrated. 

    Nonetheless, some academics also cite others works by Japanese authors published at a similar time to Kuroiwa’s short story as the first authentically Japanese ‘detective story’.

    Detective stories were known then and up until World War II in Japan as tantei shosetsu (detective books) after which they were renamed suiri shosetsu (reasoning books). 

    Kuroiwa was part of the new literary class that emerged in Japan’s Meiji Era (1868-1912), a period of rapid modernisation and change when Japan was opening up to Western influence after the resignation of the Shogun and more than two hundred years of self-imposed isolation.  

    Kuroiwa initially joined others in translating European books, such as Jules Verne’s (1828-1905) Le Voyage dans la lune, before penning Japan’s first detective story. He also translated The Time Machine, by H.G. Wells (1866-1946). He reportedly translated around 100 novels from French and English into Japanese.

    However, it was Taro Hirai (1894-1965), writing under the pen name Edogawa Rampo, who established the modern genre in Japan and popularized it by combing scientific method with Japanese sentiment, as well as the suspense-type narratives that had been popular in Japan’s Edo Period (1603-1868) the period that preceded the Meiji Era.

    Several years after graduating from Wasada University, where subsequently many famous authors studied, Hirai published his debut work: The Two-Sen Copper Coin (二銭銅貨 Nisen doka) in 1923.

    Somewhat like Yukio Mishima (1925-1970) many years later after the Second World War, Hirai had the rare ability to bridge and blend the new rapidly urbanising Japan with the old Japan, helping readers of his generation deal with transitioning society through fiction.

    He was and is still highly influential and a prize (The Edogawa Rampo Prize) named after him has been awarded every year since 1955.
    Japan’s first ‘detective story’ was published in 1889 Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Two Japanese magazines, launched in the 1920s, played a critical role in the development of Science Fiction writing in Japan[UPDATED: 3-8-2018]

    Two magazines in the 1920s Shinseinen (New Youth) and Kagaku Gaho (Science Pictorial) played pivotal roles in the development and establishment of the modern Science Fiction genre in Japan. 

    New Youth, launched in 1920 was packed full of short stories targeting “urban modern men”, and quickly became an outlet and publishing platform for science-fiction-type stories and detective stories. 

    The editor of the magazine grouped these stories into two categories: 1) honkaku (classic) and 2) henkaku (irregular) stories.

    Science fiction fell into the latter and was, according to Robert Matthew in his book Japanese Science Fiction: A View of a Changing Society, initially categorized in Japan in its modern form as ‘irregular detective fiction’ 

    Science Pictorial, set up just after Amazing Stories, a science fiction magazine launched in the United States in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback’s Experimenter Publishing, also played a critical role. Gernsback is generally credited for the first use of the term Science Fiction. Both magazines were the first in each country to be devoted solely to science fiction. 

    Science Pictorial ‘s mission at launch was to “seek revolutionary works of high literary value which are purely scientific in their material and do not lapse into the detective style ”. 

    The two Japanese magazines published stories such as: Jinzo Ningen (Artificial Human) by Hatsunosuke Hirabayashi (1892-1932), which is often cited by academics as a classic example of Japan’s so-called “early Showa robot literature”, which there was lots of. Other notable examples include: Chitei Jigoku (The Animal Kingdom Under the Earth) by Juran Kuze (1901-1946); and Shindoma (The Demon of Vibration) by Juza Unno (1897-1949), who is sometimes referred to as the Father of Japanese Science Fiction. 

    Despite this early creativity, the terms Science Fiction (Saiensufikushon), SF and Sci-Fi, however, only came into use in Japan after the Second World War. 

    Nevertheless, the words Kagaku Shosetsu (科学小説), which is still occasionally used today, alongside Kuusou Kagaku Shosetsu  (空想科学小説), meaning imaginary science novel, were coined as early as 1886 for the Japanese “scientific novel”. 

    The genre’s roots, however, go back much further in Japan to stories known as Mirai-ki. Nonetheless, the genesis of today’s science fiction writing in Japan is said to be the translation into Japanese of the French author and playwright Jules Verne’s (1828-1905) novels in the 1880s. 

    Verne’s books arrived during a period of rapid modernisation and change in Japan known as the Meiji Era (1868-1912), when Japan was opening up to Western influence after the resignation of the Shogun and more than two hundred years of self-imposed isolation.  Verne’s books and others like them had a major impact on readers and budding authors. 

    New Youth and Science Pictorial provided the platforms for Japanese writers interested in science and fiction, who grew up on these Western translations, to flourish and for the genre to develop with its own Japanese characteristics. 

    Subsequently, two commercially successful magazines, launched in the 1950s, Uchujin (1957-2009) and SF Magajin (1959-) played an equally important role for the next generation of Japanese authors, who are sometimes referred to by academic as “The First Generation Writers” of modern Japanese science fiction.

    This so-called first generation of authors includes writers such as Kobo Abe (1924-1993), Shinichi Hoshii (1926-1997), Osamu Tezuka (1928-1989), Sakyo Komatsu (1931-2011) and Yasutaka Tsutsui, who was born in 1934.

    Science fiction has now become an important and popular genre in Japan that is still flourishing creatively and commercially today in all formats: book, animation, film and graphic novel.
    Two Japanese magazines, launched in the 1920s, played a critical role in the development of Science Fiction writing in Japan Posted by Richard Nathan
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    The translation of the play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) in 1923 led to a robot literature boom in Japan[UPDATED: 3-5-2018]

    The play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) by Karel Čapek (1890–1938), written in 1920 and first performed in Prague in 1921, had a major impact in Japan in the 1920s and 30s after its arrival in translation. 

    The play not only popularised the word robot worldwide, but also triggered a flurry of robot stories in Japan; sometimes described by academics as “Early Showa Robot Literature”. Jinzo Ningen (Artificial Human) by Hatsunosuke Hirabayashi (1892-1932) is often cited as a classic example of this genre. 

    The Robot and the Weight of The Bed by Sunjugo Naoki (1891-1934), who the Naoki Literary Prize – one of Japan’s most important literary awards – is named after, is another example. This story written in 1931 is about a dying man’s plan to leave a robot to look after his wife after he has departed this world. It is set in the future when Japan has electrically controlled cars (not dissimilar to the electronic and autonomous cars being developed today) that automatically avoid accidents. The story is about a robot designed to make sure a wife remains faithful to her husband after his death. Other stories from this period feature enhanced or modified humans as well as robots and dolls. 

    The rapid industrialization Japan was experiencing at the time and the arrival of new developing technologies generated creative angst as well as concerns amongst the general population. 

    Robots were not considered by these authors as merely tools to serve humans; they were also seen as potential threats to human and biological life. Japanese authors developed narratives reflecting the growing concerns about mechanization; similar to the fears often articulated in the media today, about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the current generation of robots (actual not imagined), and the prospect of so-called technological singularity, artificial super-intelligence that leads to runaway technological growth, changing our society beyond recognition, perhaps in an uncontrollable unforeseen way.
    The translation of the play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) in 1923 led to a robot literature boom in Japan Posted by Richard Nathan
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    Japan has around 500 different literary prizes[UPDATED: 2-27-2018]

    Japan has around 500 different literary prizes. Some literary prizes target new writers, others specific genres such as the Seiun Award for the best science fiction, awarded by the Federation of Science Fiction Fan Groups of Japan (FSFFGJ). Two of the most coveted awards are the Akutagawa and the Naoki prizes.
    Japan has around 500 different literary prizes Posted by Richard Nathan