The Future Is Japanese - 13 stories: A web browser that threatens to conquer the world. The longest, loneliest railroad on Earth. A North Korean nuke hitting Tokyo, a hollow asteroid full of automated rice paddies, and a specialist in breaking up “virtual” marriages

The Future Is Japanese, Nick Mamatas, Masumi Washington, Haikasoru, eds., Haikasoru, 2012.


A web browser that threatens to conquer the world. The longest, loneliest railroad on Earth. A North Korean nuke hitting Tokyo, a hollow asteroid full of automated rice paddies, and a specialist in breaking up “virtual” marriages. And yes, giant robots. These thirteen stories from and about the Land of the Rising Sun run the gamut from fantasy to cyberpunk, and will leave you knowing that the future is Japanese!

Pat Cadigan
Toh EnJoe
Project Itoh
Hideyuki Kikuchi
Ken Liu
David Moles
Issui Ogawa
Felicity Savage
Ekaterina Sedia
Bruce Sterling
Rachel Swirsky
TOBI Hirotaka
Catherynne M. Valente

VIZ Media’s Haikasoru imprint announces the release of THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE, a new fiction anthology featuring science fiction and fantasy stories from some of today’s greatest writers from both Japan and the English-speaking world.
Haikasoru publishes some of the most compelling contemporary Japanese science fiction and fantasy stories for English-speaking audiences, and is the first imprint based in the U.S. dedicated to Japanese science fiction and fantasy in translation.
THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE offers a selection of original and classic science fiction about Japan from some of the greatest writers in the world. Stories include a web browser that threatens to conquer the world, the longest, loneliest railroad on Earth, a North Korean nuke hitting Tokyo, a hollow asteroid full of automated rice paddies, and a specialist in breaking up “virtual” marriages. And yes, giant robots. These thirteen stories from and about the Land of the Rising Sun run the gamut from fantasy to cyberpunk, and will leave readers knowing that the future is Japanese!
“THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE is a stirring new anthology and the first release of original prose fiction by Haikasoru,” says Nick Mamatas, Haikasoru Editor. “Japan is a nation long renowned for its futuristic worldview, and THE FUTURE IS JAPANESE will engross readers with short stories by authors such as cyberpunk legends Pat Cadigan and Bruce Sterling, New York Times bestselling author Catherynne Valente, the enormously popular and prolific Japanese writer Hideyuki Kikuchi, and hot new writers Rachel Swirsky, David Moles, and Ken Liu, who have all already won or been nominated for the Nebula and Hugo awards. We look forward to readers discovering and enjoying this new collection!”

"Since the debut of Viz's Haikasoru ("high castle") imprint in 2009, it has imported and translated the best of Japanese speculative fiction, earning Haikasoru editor Mamatas a Hugo nomination in 2011. This anthology, an attempt to link Japanese and American SF, continues that tradition of greatness. Eleven original stories and two reprints by notable authors both Japanese (Hideyuki Kikuchi, Toh EnJoe) and not (Catherynne M. Valente, Bruce Sterling) posit a diverse array of futures that may await Japan and the world. The bitter pessimism of the late Project Itoh's "The Indifference Engine" is balanced by the essential optimism of Issui Ogawa's "The Golden Bread"; the heroic sacrifice in Ken Liu's "Mono no Aware" contrasts with the examination of malevolent genius in TOBI Hirotaka's "Autogenic Dreaming." Mamatas and Washington, Haikasoru's editor-in-chief, have created a uniformly excellent anthology that will appeal to English-reading speculative fiction fans all over the world." - Publishers Weekly


"In his introduction to The Future is Japanese, co-editor Nick Mamatas notes that Japanese Science Fiction is just like "Western Science Fiction, in that it is hard and soft, dark and whimsical, rigorous and fantastical." And Mamatas' new book, coedited with Masumi Washington, serves as a fantastic bridge between Western and Japanese SF. The anthology brings over some authors who aren't well known in the West and takes some well-known Western authors over. The Future is Japanese collects a bunch of short stories that look at the present and far future of Japan. The result is an utterly gripping collection of authors across thirteen stories, all relating to Japan or Japanese culture. For someone like me who's never been to Japan, this anthology presents a vivid, diverse and very interesting take on Japan and its future.
There's nary a story in here that doesn't capture the imagination. The book starts off with a bang in "Mono No Aware" by Ken Liu, a great story about nationality, after Earth is struck by the Hammer, a massive, planet-killing asteroid. (Disclaimer - I read a copy of this story when it was in draft form). This story sets the tone for the anthology: What's covered here isn't just the physical location of Japan, (although that figures in heavily for most stories), but the culture of Japan.
Recently, there seems to be a collective desire for science fiction that isn't about a future United States, and The Future is Japanese is a great move in that direction.
Full sizeOther stories rapidly follow suit: "The Sound of Breaking Up" by Felicity Savage takes on an increasingly isolated, internet based culture, while mixing in a good dose of time travel and an end-of-civilization vibe that would work well as a Fringe episode. "The Indifference Engine" by Project Itoh is an incredibly difficult and emotional story about ethnic warfare, and the lengths that people will go to 'solve' the problem. Bruce Sterling's "Goddess of Mercy" is a fascinating take on piracy in a post-apocalyptic Japan. "The Sea of Trees" by Rachel Swirsky is a break from the science fiction and into contemporary fantasy with an off-kilter ghost story.
The highlight of the entire anthology, however, is saved until the end, with "Autogenic Dreaming: Interview with the Columns of Clouds" by TOBI Hirotaka, which presents a wonderfully complex and beautiful story about a serial killer, cloud computing and the future of creativity.
I can't speak for how much of an 'authentic' view of the future of Japan this is: There's a wide mix of authors and ethnic backgrounds here, and this has been something on my mind as I went through the book: speculation aside, does this really present an authentic view of Japan and its culture? But by the end of the volume, I came away with the great feeling that this was an excellent anthology of speculative fiction, with a collection of stories that are genuinely unique, interesting and relevant." - Andrew Liptak


    Excerpt:

From “Autogenic Dreaming: Interview with the Columns of Clouds” by TOBI Hirotaka

“I didn’t kill her. She did it herself,” Jundo says.

“She used your knife to stab herself in the throat.”

“That’s right. Mrs. Tsuge used my knife. Thank you—I hadn’t thought of that name for a long time. Yukiko Tsuge.”

“Your teacher had no reason to kill herself, of course. She had a warm family life with a husband, a daughter in fourth grade, and a son in kindergarten. She was happy.”

“She had her reasons. We all do. I just gave her a little encouragement.”

“You manipulated her. No threats, no hypnosis, just conversation—”

Jundo had the ability to drive people to suicide with nothing more than conversation. This he confirmed in writing before his death. If it struck his fancy, he could make you take your own life, no matter who you were.

Seventy-three victims. His final testament bore a list of their names.



Each one had proved to be a real person. They each had had a relationship with Jundo, just as he stated. He knew the time and manner of each death. Yukiko Tsuge was his eighth victim, which meant Jundo had already wielded this power as a child. His first victim was the father of a classmate, a man widely known for making violent threats. On his way to work, he jumped the center divider and plowed head-on into several other cars, dying instantly. The evening before he was killed, he had been talking to Jundo.

Some victims took their own lives on the spot, others committed suicide months or years after their conversation with Jundo. According to his testament, he found it amusing to force people to recall long-forgotten personal secrets and sins. Then he would bore in and finish them off.

Jundo’s testament reproduced an example, a fragment, of one of these exchanges. It ended in the suicide by poison of a fellow writer his age. Everyone who read the account was struck by a physical conviction that it was genuine. It was as if the letters Jundo used to record the conversation began to move like insects on the page, crawling under the nails of the hand holding the document. The quiet abuse he unleashed on his victims is still under analysis by more than one organization.

“—just conversation.”

“Not always.” Jundo looks annoyed. “Words weren’t enough for Mrs. Tsuge. She was obstinate. She wouldn’t go over the edge until I gave her my ear. It was never that difficult before. That was my biggest disgrace. The worst stain on my record. I made up my mind never to repeat such a blunder. So you see, my missing ear is the core of my identity. But you’ve grown it back. You mock my dignity.”

He doesn’t look as angry as he sounds. His eyes are a mix of boredom and irritation with a trace of interest. A viscous look, something slowly mixed together and congealed, like the film on a bowl of porridge gone cold. That disturbing gaze, the one that comes to mind when anyone hears the name Jundo Mamiya.

“The ear of a child on an adult’s head. The technology to do that without the slightest effort is the core of what I am. You regard yourself very highly, but you can’t even escape this room with no locks. From where I sit, you’re a nonentity.”

Jundo’s eyes smolder. “I want this ear gone.”

“Then maybe you’d like to do it again? I can’t give you a razor, but you can always tear it off.”

“Tell me to tear it off. I’ll probably use all my strength to do it.”

This surprises me, frankly. Jundo is nearing the core. No, he’s already there.

“I’m sure you would. You are completely in our power.”

“‘Our power’? I see.” Jundo never misses a detail. A man who can kill with a few words. Superhuman profiling ability. “This is some sort of project, isn’t it? And I’m one of the inputs.”

“Exactly.”

“You regenerated my ear. You control me completely. Dress me in clothes I can’t take off. How can such technology be?”

“You yourself are the proof its existence.” I manage to force that one out.

“At minimum, I seem to have no physical existence. Are you using some kind of emulator?”

“In a sense. But you know that simulating a real person’s body and their mind and actions would be impossible. It’s far too complex. Especially when the person you want to simulate has been dead for thirty years.”

My function is to draw Jundo’s attention to the fact that he’s dead. That he is not of this world. That nevertheless, our literal technology has given him a brief resurrection.

We agents—thousands of us deployed throughout GEB—are each delineating thousands of Jundo Mamiyas. I am speaking to one of them. I speak to spark awareness.

You are one of the dead.

A patchwork monster.

A botched Ahab.

Then—

“And what if I’m not a simulation?”

The dead man, the monster, the Ahab, gets out of his chair and faces me. Small and tough. He stands relaxed, like a veteran judoka. The tall, narrow window behind him is turning the color of boiled pine pitch. Night is flowing in. Night air seems to rise from Jundo’s body. I try to speak, but I only mumble. Is he controlling my will? Jundo takes a step forward.

“In that case, what are you doing?”

“I—”

I sense that Jundo has already reached this conclusion, but I speak anyway.

“I am ‘writing’ you.”

#The Letter

Those happy hours we all spent together will never return

I have been praying to God to reunite us

I have prayed every day since we parted in the civil war

In this remote village

Where Fernando, the girls and I struggle to survive

Except for the walls, this house has changed completely

What could have happened to all the wonderful things we had

I say this not out of nostalgia

That is something I have not been capable of feeling for years

So much that we knew was lost, so much has been destroyed

Only sadness remains

Along with the things we lost,

I think we have also lost the strength to live life fully

I don’t know if this letter will reach you

The news from outside is so sparse, so confusing

Please let me know that you are alive

All my love

—Teresa