Japanese science fiction
The early Japanese tale of "Urashima Tarō" involves traveling forwards in time to a distant future,[1] and was first described in the Nihongi (720).
The protagonist of the story, Kaguya-hime, is a princess from the Moon who is sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war, and is found and raised by a bamboo cutter in Japan.
[3] Science fiction in the standard modern sense began with the Meiji Restoration and the importation of Western ideas.
[4] The translation of Around the World in Eighty Days - of which part of the plot is set in Japan - was published in 1878–1880, followed by his other works with immense popularity.
His debut work Kaitei Gunkan (Undersea warship), published in 1900, described submarines and predicted a coming Russo-Japanese war.
[7] The era of modern Japanese science fiction began with the influence of paperbacks that the US occupation army brought to Japan after World War II.
Notable authors like Sakyo Komatsu, Yasutaka Tsutsui, Taku Mayumura, Ryo Hanmura and Aritsune Toyota debuted at the Hayakawa SF Contest (1961–1992, restarted since 2012).
Other notable authors, such as Shinichi Hoshi, Ryu Mitsuse, Kazumasa Hirai, Aran Kyodomari and Yoshio Aramaki, were also published.
The change in the nature of the science fiction genre in Japan that resulted from these events is often called "Infiltration and Diffusion" (浸透と拡散 Shintō to Kakusan).
A number of notable authors debuted in either SF Magazine or one of these new publications: Akira Hori, Jun'ya Yokota, Koji Tanaka, Masaki Yamada, Musashi Kanbe, Azusa Noa, Chōhei Kanbayashi, Kōshū Tani, Mariko Ohara, Ko Hiura, Hitoshi Kusakami, Motoko Arai, Baku Yumemakura, Yoshiki Tanaka and Hiroe Suga.
On TV, real robot anime series, starting with Mobile Suit Gundam, were aired, and the science fiction artist group Studio Nue joined the staff of The Super Dimension Fortress Macross.
Literary science fiction magazines started to disappear in the late 1980s when public attention increasingly switched to audio-visual media.
A number of science fiction and space opera writers, including Hosuke Nojiri, Hiroshi Yamamoto, Ryuji Kasamine, and Yuichi Sasamoto, began writing "light novel" genre paperback science fiction and fantasy novels, which are primarily marketed to teenagers.
This period, during which literary science fiction declined, has been labeled "the Wintery Age" (冬の時代 Fuyu no Jidai).
Among the finalists for the Komatsu Sakyō Award and debuting from J Collection, Project Itoh left a strong impression in his short career before dying of cancer in 2009.
Other authors from the Sogen SF Short Story Prize include the 2010 runner-up Haneko Takayama and the 2011 winner Dempow Torishima.
In visual media, Your Name (2016) and Weathering with You (2019), written and directed by Makoto Shinkai, were the top-grossing films of the respective years.
Kamishibai is a form of street theater where oral storytellers illustrate their stories with painted art, which was popular in 1930s Japan.
Tokusatsu has several sub-genres: Mecha (Japanese: メカ, Hepburn: meka) refers to science fiction genres that center on giant robots or machines (mechs) controlled by people.
Akira inspired a wave of Japanese cyberpunk works, including manga and anime series such as Ghost in the Shell (1989), Battle Angel Alita (1990), Cowboy Bebop (1997) and Serial Experiments Lain (1998).
"[21] The success of Laputa inspired a wave of Japanese steampunk works, such as Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990),[20][22] Porco Rosso (1992),[19] Sakura Wars (1996),[20] Fullmetal Alchemist (2001),[19] Howl's Moving Castle (2004)[20] and Steamboy (2004).
[22] Examples of Japanese dieselpunk include Hayao Miyazaki's manga Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1982) and its 1984 anime film adaptation, the anime film Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986) by Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli,[23] and Squaresoft's Japanese role-playing game Final Fantasy VII (1997).
"different world") is a subgenre of Japanese light novels, manga, anime and video games that revolve around a normal person from Earth being transported to, reborn or trapped in a parallel universe.
