Tokyo Cyberpunk

267 Pages·2010·4.43 MB·English

by  Brown, Steven T.;

Tokyo Cyberpunk
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Tokyo Cyberpunk
Posthumanism in
Japanese Visual Culture
Steven T. Brown
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tokyo cyberpunk
Copyright © Steven T. Brown, 2010.
All rights reserved.
First published in 2010 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a
division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe, and the rest of the world, this is
by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in
England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21
6XS.
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the above companies
and has companies and representatives throughout the world.
Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United
Kingdom, Europe and other countries.
ISBN (hardcover): 978-0-230-10359-7
ISBN (paperback): 978-0-230-10360-3
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Brown, Steven T.
Tokyo cyberpunk : posthumanism in Japanese visual culture / Steven T. Brown.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-230-10360-3 (alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-230-10359-7 (alk. paper) 1.
Animated films—Japan—History and criticism. 2. Science fiction films—Japan—
History and criticism. 3. Cyberpunk culture—Japan. 4. Literature and technology—
Japan. 5. Comic books, strips, etc.—Japan—History and criticism. I. Title.
NC1766.J3 BPN
700.952'090511—dc22 2009046776
A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library.
Design by Scribe Inc.
First edition: August 2010
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
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Contents
List of Illustrations vii
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Posthumanism after AKIRA 1
Reading Rhizomatically 3
Machinic Desires, Desiring Machines,
and Consensual Hallucinations 10
Part I: Machinic Desires: Hans Bellmer’s Dolls and the
Technological Uncanny in Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence 13
An Overview of Innocence 14
“Once their strings are cut, they easily crumble” 23
From Puppets to Automata 29
The Uncanny Mansion 32
The Dolls of Hans Bellmer 36
Bellmer/Oshii 44
On the Innocence of Dolls, Angels, and Becoming-Animal 50
Part II: Desiring Machines: Biomechanoid Eros and Other
Techno-Fetishes in Tetsuo: The Iron Man and Its Precursors 55
The Birth of Sexy Robots 56
After Metropolis, Before Tetsuo: Un chien andalou 60
Giger’s Biomechanoids, Erotomechanics, and Metal Fetishists 64
The “Regular-Size” Monsters of Matango 71
Mutating from the Inside Out: The Fly 72
“Long Live the New Flesh”: Videodrome 79
The Tentacle Motif from Hokusai to Tetsuo 93
Envisioning the Machine-City after Blade Runner 99
Confrontations with the Salaryman Model: Resisting
Hegemonic Masculinity and State-Sponsored Capitalism 105
Coda: Co-opting Tetsuo in Tetsuo II: Body Hammer 109
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vi CONTENTS
Part III: Consensual Hallucinations and the Phantoms
of Electronic Presence in Kairo and Avalon 111
Letting In Ghosts, Shutting Out the Sun 113
Into the Mise en Abyme: Spectral Flows and the Forbidden Room 120
The Human Stain: Suicide in the Shadow of Hiroshima 127
Avalon and “Borderline Cinema” 132
The Society of the Spectacle 137
The Surrealism of (Virtually) Everyday Life 140
“Welcome to Class Real” 143
Conclusion: Software in a Body: Critical Posthumanism
and Serial Experiments Lain 157
A Shōjo Named Lain 161
E-mail from the Dead 162
Doppelgängers in Cyberspace 167
Desiring Disembodiment 176
The Question of Resistance 181
Notes 187
Bibliography 229
Index 247
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Illustrations
Figure I.1 As the Colonel stares in disbelief, Tetsuo emerges
rhizomatically from a tangle of cords and technological
debris in a constant state of becoming (AKIRA) 4
Figure 1.1 A tea-serving karakuri ningyō encountered in
Kim’s mansion (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) 32
Figure 1.2 Kim’s mechanical body, which is reminiscent of
the life-sized butai karakuri designed for Takeda Ōmi’s
theater (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) 33
Figure 1.3 The assembly of a ball-jointed gynoid
(Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) 44
Figure 1.4 The doubling of the gynoid’s body
(Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) 45
Figure 1.5 A gynoid attempting to commit suicide
(Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) 47
Figure 1.6 Batou holds a copy of Hans Bellmer’s The Doll
(Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence) 48
Figure 2.1 The multiplied male gaze of the audience focusing on robot
Maria’s erotic dance, as reimagined by Freder (Metropolis) 57
Figure 2.2 The salaryman’s erotomechanical girlfriend in Tetsuo 69
Figure 2.3 Seth Brundle discovers an enlarged fly hair
growing out of his cheek while shaving (The Fly) 76
Figure 2.4 The salaryman discovers a metal whisker sticking out of
his cheek in a scene that pays homage to The Fly (Tetsuo) 77
Figure 2.5 Max fondles his television’s erogenous zones (Videodrome) 83
Figure 2.6 The tentacle motif in Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within 95
Figure 2.7 The salaryman’s vision of his she-male girlfriend
during a nightmare sequence (Tetsuo) 96
Figure 2.8 Stop-motion animated cords, cables, and
assorted ligatures visualizing the rhizome in Tetsuo 99
Figure 2.9 The Iron Man phallic assemblage (Tetsuo) 108
Figure 3.1 Yabe discovers a black stain on the wall
where Taguchi killed himself (Kairo) 129
Figure 3.2 Michi witnesses her friend Kawashima
turn into a black shadow (Kairo) 131
Figure 3.3 Ash gazes upon 2D explosion-planes in a virtual
battlefield within the Avalon game (Avalon) 135
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viii ILLUSTRATIONS
Figure 3.4 The Game Master addresses Ash (Avalon) 138
Figure 3.5 The Magrittean juxtaposition of night and
day at Ash’s apartment building (Avalon) 142
Figure 3.6 Ash disintegrates into 2D strips and
is enveloped by data (Avalon) 145
Figure 3.7 Ash awakens in Class Real (Avalon) 146
Figure 3.8 An advertisement for West cigarettes in Class Real (Avalon) 148
Figure 3.9 Ash dons her own “Crown of Oblivion” (Avalon) 154
Figure 4.1 Power lines reflected on the eye of Lain
(Serial Experiments Lain) 165
Figure 4.2 Against the backdrop of high-tension wires, Chisa dissolves
into an Escheresque helix (Serial Experiments Lain) 166
Figure 4.3 Lain’s eyes reflect back her computer screen
(Serial Experiments Lain) 169
Figure 4.4 Lain the machinic junkie (Serial Experiments Lain) 169
Figure 4.5 Lain enjoying the warm electronic embrace of the
techno-womb (Serial Experiments Lain) 170
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Acknowledgments
I wish to thank the many colleagues and friends who have encouraged me
during the long genesis of this project, providing constructive feedback and
inspiration when I most needed it, especially Daisuke Miyao, Susan Napier,
Sharalyn Orbaugh, Tom Mes, Tom Looser, Christopher Bolton, Brian Ruh,
Gerald Figal, Paul Young, Paul Atkins, Davinder Bhowmik, Ted Mack,
Graham Parkes, Michael Stern, Ken Calhoon, and David Browne. Special
thanks to Director Tsukamoto Shin’ya for taking the time to respond to my
questions about his work.
I would also like to express my gratitude to Brigitte Shull, Lee Norton,
and Erin Ivy at Palgrave Macmillan for their strong support and gener-
ous assistance, to Sarah Breeding and the copyeditors at Scribe for their
keen-eyed corrections, and to the external reviewers for their helpful com-
ments and suggestions. Thanks are also due to Frenchy Lunning and the
University of Minnesota Press for permission to reprint portions of Part I,
an earlier, much abridged version of which was published in Mechademia
3: Limits of the Human, ed. Frenchy Lunning (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2008), 222–53.
To my family, especially Katya, Gabriel, and Guinness, I owe a debt of
gratitude for tolerating my rhizomatic engagements more than they should!
This book is dedicated to all the students who have taken my Tokyo
Cyberpunk seminar at the University of Oregon over the years.
Note on Japanese Names and Words. In the text, Japanese names are typi-
cally given in Japanese word order (unless they have been Anglicized)—
that is, surname first and given name second. All Japanese words have been
transliterated according to the modified Hepburn system of romanization
used in Kenkyūsha’s New Japanese-English Dictionary, except in cases in
which there are already accepted English spellings.
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