4 ms·
The zeitgeist of the 80s had a lot of concern about Japan becoming "number 1" - US manufacturing was falling behind and people thought that Japan was top of the
by redcap 15y ago
The zeitgeist of the 80s had a lot of concern about Japan becoming "number 1" - US manufacturing was falling behind and people thought that Japan was top of the world technologically.
So while the authors are Japanophiles, they certainly tapped into the mood of the time - that the future was strange and asian-influenced.
- mindcrime 15y agoI'm not sure it would be correct to use the word "xenophobia" here; but for those of us old enough to remember the 80's, what redcap says is very spot-on. There was a LOT of buzz in the 80's about how Japan (and Asian countries in general, to some extent) were kicking the US's arse in a lot of areas: computers, consumer electronics, cars, etc., etc. Talk about "competing with Japan" was used a motivational material to encourage students ("study hard or you won't have a job when you graduate, because you're competing against the Japanese"), and to justify various research programs, government initiatives, etc. The whole "Fifth Generation Computing" thing really lit a fire under a lot of people back in those days: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fifth_generation_computer So yeah... I don't necessarily agree that Cyberpunk as a genre is really focused on anti-asian xenophobia of any sort, but I don't think it's a stretch to say that that "80's zeitgeist" thing did influence Cyberpunk.
- rmc 15y agoJust look at Back to the Future 2 (the one where they go into the future and have flying cars and no mobile phones). The older version of main character (Marty McFly) has a japanese boss, and when talking to him on the videophone he drops japanese into the convesation (opens with japanese IIRC).