Paper short abstract:

This paper examines publications directly following the Russo-Japanese War, such as Boken Sekai, that featured early Japanese science fiction and speculative writing about the future. Transformations of the body, as well as non-human bodies, featured prominently as well as the expansion of empire.

Paper long abstract:

While satirical plays concerning life in alternate worlds were a staple of early modern fiction, translations of Western science and speculative fiction encouraged Japanese authors to imagine lives transformed by modern technology. After the emergence of mass published pulp fiction following the Russo-Japanese War, Japanese authors began to discuss the possibility of non-human sentient life, radical evolution of the human body, and future wars that would utterly transform the social, political, and economic order on planet Earth. This paper will explore generic conventions that traveled largely from Britain to Japan at the end of the Meiji era, as well as how the convergence of adventure fiction and science fiction produced new forms of literary imagination at a time when the Japanese Empire was coming into existence.

Magazines such as Boken sekai, Tanken sekai, and Nihon oyobi Nihonjin did not just parrot the generic conventions of British imperial adventure fiction; they opened up a new space to discuss how technological progress might change the human body, as well as introduce non-human sentient life to the world. By popularising scientific and Materialist views of life, the magazines also encouraged the Japanese public to take part in transforming themselves for the future. As Japan's 'imperial democracy' began to take form, then, readers of pulp fiction were encouraged to think of their bodies and minds as similarly mutable.These themes would only grow in importance in the 1920s and 1930s, which will be discussed in the paper by Jacobowitz.