Along with the journal Mechademia (also published by the University of Minnesota Press) and the 2008 anthology entitled Japanese Visual Culture (Mark MacWilliams, ed., Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2008), Robots Ghosts and Wired Dreams constitutes a significant English-language contribution to the intellectual analysis of contemporary Japanese science fiction and otaku (obsessive fan) culture centering around manga, anime, and video games. This volume brings together essays by noted scholars working in Japan (e.g., Kotani Mari, Azuma Hiroki, Tatsumi Takayuki), in addition to works by researchers of Japanese science fiction and anime who are based in Northern American academe (Susan Napier, Sharalyn Orbaugh, and Livia Monnet, among others). This collection of essays considers a wide scope of fiction texts and contemporary topics (from the 1930s fiction of Yumeno Kyûsaku, to science fiction by women writers, to the relationship between the subcultures of otaku and yaoi (“Boys’ Love,” or male-male homoerotic romances created mainly for female audiences), and seeks to “range over much of the history of Japanese science fiction . . . its beginnings, development and future directions; its major schools and authors; and its national origins and relationship to Western genres” (x). Though any claim toward comprehensive coverage implying a kind of “canonicity” or delineation by national boundaries is particularly treacherous when dealing with texts that often call such overarching hierarchical narratives into question (the editors themselves rightfully acknowledge that Japanese science fiction has complicated non-unitary origins and borders that are “fractally complex” (xi)), this inquiry is intriguing precisely because it gives voice to a multitude of conflicting stakes and allegiances, thereby engaging the reader in a critical redefinition of terms such as “Japanese science fiction,” “anime,” “otaku,” and so on. Thus, Robots Ghosts and Wired Dreams is best read as a preliminary foray into contemporary science fiction and anime, rather than as a complete survey of the field; as such, it has much to offer for the anime aficionado and the fledgling student encountering Japanese science fiction and anime pop culture for the first time, as well as the seasoned scholar seeking to reacquaint herself or himself with what is at stake in cultural studies analyses of contemporary cultural products.

The volume is structured into parts 1 and 2: part 1, entitled “Prose Science Fiction,” is intended to fill in heretofore overlooked aspects of Japanese science fiction prose narrative such as contemporary works by women writers (discussed by Mari Kotani), the topos of the maritime pacific (with a contribution by Thomas Schnellbacher), and the nexus between crime fiction and sci-fi as demonstrated in the portrayal of the uncanny in Yumeno Kyûsaku’s 1935 novel, Dogura Magura (analyzed by Miri Nakamura). Part 2, “Science Fiction Animation,” includes in-depth studies of particular cultural products such as Neon Genesis Evangelion (1995–96), Patlabor 2 (1993), and the video-game inspired CG film Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within (2001), in addition to more general theorizations on otaku culture and the significance of the gendered cyborg in Japanese pop culture. This organization suggests that Japanese science fiction has its roots squarely planted in more traditional literary, written forms, and that contemporary manifestations of science fiction are mostly in the form of anime. One wonders, however, where genres such as science fiction manga and visual art, as well as non-animated science fiction in time-based media such as theater and performance arts, live-action film, video art, and television, might fit into this implied trajectory. Schnellbacher’s article addresses the pivotal importance of Honda Ishirô’s 1954 Godzilla (Gojira) film, but refrains from analyzing the visual vocabulary of, or even mentioning, the film versions (1973 and 2006) of Komatsu Sakyô’s 1973 work Nippon Chinbotsu (Japan Sinks), a novel that constitutes the bulk of the argument toward the end of the article. One particularly notes the relative absence of articles devoted to works of live-action film and television, given the position of science fiction works such as “monster movies” (kaijû eiga), Ultraman, and Tsukamoto Shin’ya’s Tetsuo the Iron Man (1989) in the Japanese pop cultural imaginarium and their penetration abroad. Indeed, the contributions to the book tend to focus on literary and/or narrative forms of science fiction, and as such, the present volume would be better understood as a study of Japanese sci-fi narrativity (see for example, Azuma Hiroki’s provocative thesis that Japanese sci-fi is haunted by the ghost of the totalizing grand narratives of Western philosophy) as opposed to how Japanese sci-fi manifests itself in visual representations. The shortcomings of this approach include a certain uneasy relationship to questions of canonicity and multi-media (see, for instance, Azuma’s concern on page 81 about the fate of science fiction as it transitions away from literature and toward manga and anime), as well as certain blind spots for visual and film studies’ analyses.

One of the major tensions underlying and enlivening this collection is that of science fiction in literature versus other media (film, manga, internet discussion websites, video games, etc.). In fact, one of the main unifying narratives told about Japanese science fiction in this volume is that Japanese sci-fi entered the world-cultural stage mostly through new media, and less through incarnations in more prosaic bound forms. Japanese science fiction, in other words, is both globalized and always already multi-mediated. Nevertheless, the editors and contributors repeatedly emphasize that while Japanese sci-fi’s main constituency is global youth, it also simultaneously speaks to domestic Japanese concerns and should thus be interpreted with at least two intertwined cultural contexts in mind. Japanese science fiction is often a realm in which nationalizing narratives are both critiqued and re-inscribed, and one might well wonder what specifically qualifies a given text or multimedia work as “Japanese.” As the editors concede, “all of these chapters . . . explore how Japanese science fiction and its subjects lack clear borders. Both cross time, space, and media” (xvi). Therefore, the compendium could certainly have been enriched with a chapter that directly interrogates the issue of national borders, in particular with regards to the placement of Japanese science fiction vis-à-vis similar works produced in nearby Asian countries or former colonies in addition to citations of intertextuality with Euro-American precedents (xvi). A portion of Nakamura’s essay, in which she exposes Yumeno’s critique of the empire of Western logos and rationalism (11), contains the germ of such an exploration of national identity and its boundaries, as does Schnellbacher’s connection of the locus of the Pacific with lingering concerns of the Japanese empire in post-war narratives. Takayuki’s afterword implies that postwar translation and cultural creolization contributed to cyborgian elements in Japanese science fiction, again suggesting that the “Japan” in “Japanese Science Fiction” ought to be written in scare quotes to some extent. In addition, the chapter “Words of Alienation, Words of Flight” by Chiba Naoki and Hiroko, which deals with the significance of the prevalence of loanwords (gairaigo) in scif-fi anime, certainly opens the possibility of a dialogue examining cultural imperialism as well as the difficulties of delineating nationhood by interrogating the relation between linguistic hybridity and national identity. Perhaps a future volume on Japanese science fiction study might expand in more depth upon these questions of discursive power, hybridity, and the cyborg—the current anthology usefully brings these tensions to light without answering or conclusively resolving them.

Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams would certainly be strengthened by a more explicit propaedeutic consideration of what specifically constitutes the newer visual media of manga and anime, for example, and how the legacy of science fiction in Japan overlaps with and diverges from these arenas. A reader primarily interested in science fiction in visual culture and media might consider reading the current book alongside the sections on manga in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (New York: Harper, 1994), as well as Thomas LaMarre’s The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009). The most intriguing and intellectually provocative passages in Robot Ghosts and Wired Dreams are precisely those moments such as in William O. Gardner’s essay on Tsutsui Yasutaka’s metamedia sci-fi narratives where Gardner lays bare how these complex texts sound a clarion call to scholars and critics to go beyond the chrysalis of the printed book in order to understand the full field of play, fantasy, and fear in a multi-mediated world.