postapocalyptic – Contemporary Japanese Literature

Two hundred years after the end of a devastating global conflict, Yokohama Station has expanded to cover almost all of Honshu, Japan’s central island. Once governed by artificial intelligence, the station now grows uncontrollably through ceaseless self-perpetuation. Most of what remains of Japan’s population lives inside the structure, where order is maintained by patrolling robots and automated systems that manufacture necessities.

Hiroto was born and raised in one of the small coastal communities of people who live outside the station. Since this village is able to subsist on the excess food and goods discarded from the station, Hiroto’s vague dreams of making something of his life have no target, especially since people who don’t a possess Suikanet registration are quickly ejected from the Yokohama Station structure by robotic constructs known as Automated Turnstiles.

This changes when an exile from inside the station washes up at Hiroto’s settlement. Before passing away, the man gives Hiroto an 18 Ticket, a digital pass that will allow him to remain inside the station for five days. He asks Hiroto to find and rescue the leader of the Dodger Alliance, a group of hackers that aims to shut down what remains of the artificial intelligence that governs Yokohama Station.

Another exile, an elderly man suffering from dementia known only as “the professor,” adds to the mystery by telling Hiroto to search for Exit 42, where all questions about the station’s history will be answered. Hiroto, who’s happy to have an excuse for adventure, wastes no time in leaving, assuming that he’ll simply see what he can see in the five days before his 18 Ticket expires.

With no access to digital currency or knowledge of the rules and customs that govern life inside the station, Hiroto quickly finds himself in trouble. Thankfully, luck is on his side, and he’s aided in his journey by Shamai, an android sent to gather intelligence from Hokkaido, which is still free from the station’s growth. Hiroto also crosses paths with a beautiful otaku techno-wizard named Keiha, who turns out to be the very resistance leader he was sent to rescue. Keiha is fine, as it turns out, and she remotely assists Hiroto’s journey to Exit 42 while mining Shamai for information about the ultimate goal of the organization that governs Hokkaido.

Hokkaido isn’t the only independent territory; and, about a third of the way through the novel, the perspective switches to a weapons specialist named Toshiru who is employed by the military government defending the island of Kyushu from the station’s encroachment. Toshiru is a lone wolf who isn’t suited for military bureaucracy, so his commanding officer gives him implicit permission to take a ferry to the island of Shikoku, which is partially occupied by the station.

On Shikoku, Toshiru meets a Hokkaido android named Haikunterke (whose name, like Shamai’s, is taken from the language of the Ainu people who once lived in northern Japan). Together they navigate the lawless territory on the fringes of Yokohama Station, where people who were unable to flee to Kyushu live in constant fear of starvation and roving gangs of brigands.

The horrors that Toshiru witnesses raise a moral dilemma. If the central A.I. core of Yokohama Station is shut down, and if the station loses its ability to maintain itself, what authority will rise to fill the power vacuum? And how will humans produce food on land that’s been so utterly destroyed?

Once Hiroto finds Exit 42, he’ll have to make a decision. In one of the most interesting scenes of the novel, it turns out that what remains of the original station A.I. has thoughts of its own, and the message it shares with Hiroto is kind, wise, and refreshingly unexpected.

For such an intriguing setting and premise, Yokohama Station SF contains surprisingly little worldbuilding, and its exposition is delivered in short conversations that are frequently interrupted by the hazards the characters encounter as they travel. A full-color illustrated insert at the beginning of the book helps to fill in some of the gaps, as does a short glossary at the end, but most of the information the reader picks up will be through osmosis.

Speaking personally, I appreciate that the steady clip of the plot progression isn’t unduly interrupted by lore, and I feel that the character-focused narration serves the story well. At the same time, though the writing and translation are both excellent, Yokohama Station SF feels a bit like Dark Souls in the way it obfuscates its background story in favor of immediate action. Even as the characters navigate an unmapped maze of corridors, the reader must find their own way through a labyrinth of words.

Yuba Isukari writes that Yokohama Station SF began as something akin to fanfiction based on the manga (specifically Blame!) of Tsutomu Nihei, who sets his stories in the interiors of infinitely sprawling sci-fi megastructures the size of small planets. Though the novel’s chapter-opening character illustrations by Tatsuyuki Tanaka are lovely and filled with charm and personality, they don’t really convey a sense of the setting.

Along with the novel itself, I might therefore also recommend the three-volume manga adaptation drawn by Gonbe Shinkawa, which contains a number of fun architectural illustrations that convey the absurdity (and dead-mall liminality) of the station’s growth. The person who translated the novel, Stephen Paul, also translated the manga, and his notes at the end of each manga volume are extremely insightful.

As someone fascinated by the experience of navigating Japan’s monstrous urban train stations, I had a great time with Yokohama Station SF and its manga adaptation. Though the more technical details of Isukari’s writing may come off as opaque to readers who aren’t veterans of hard science fiction, the human stories at the center of the labyrinth make the journey worthwhile.

Hiromi Kawakami’s Under the Eye of the Big Bird is a book about the quiet end of the world. Despite its postapocalyptic setting, the story is gentle. The author’s background as a biology teacher shines through her writing as she imagines the diverse forms that humans and their societies might take in the far distant future.

Under the Eye of the Big Bird is structured as a collection of fourteen stand-alone stories that gradually form a larger narrative, and the reader is encouraged to put together a history from bits and pieces of individual lives. We never see the full picture, however, and I imagine that assembling a concrete timeline would take careful detective work.

This isn’t a plot-driven story that can have “spoilers,” necessarily, but any description of the book’s premise is going to contain analysis and speculation. Under the Eye of the Big Bird is one of the most intriguing works of speculative fiction that I’ve read in years, and this is partially due to its fragmented structure. You may want to venture into the collection on your own before reading any reviews, this one included.

Still with me? Let’s go!

Over the millennia, the number of people on the planet has steadily decreased, and the last remaining humans live in isolated settlements of various sizes. In order to ensure harmony, the settlements are discretely managed by “watchers” who have been cloned and genetically engineered to fulfil their duty. Unlike regular humans, watchers grow up in small communities with “mothers” that are all physical manifestations of the same AI.

Everyone takes this arrangement for granted, but their “normal” is not the same as ours. Whether a story is told from a first-person or third-person point of view, the reader can only see the world from a limited perspective. It can be difficult to understand what’s going on at first, but the opportunity to surf successive waves of strangeness is a major part of this book’s charm.

My favorite story is “Testimony,” which is delivered as a statement to a watcher by one of the new phenotypes of humans to emerge from centuries of genetic isolation. A small number of people are born with the ability to photosynthesize, and the joy they take from the sunlight and changing seasons affects their behavior in surprising ways. If enlightenment exists, these people have attained it; and honestly, it sounds really nice.

Not all of the future human phenotypes are so peaceful or self-assured, however, and other stories have a bit more conflict. Still, with one notable exception, there’s no violence in this book. If there are wars and explosions, they happen entirely offscreen. Like the watchers and mothers, it’s the reader’s job simply to observe the biology, ecology, and culture of the future.

On the front cover of the American edition, Kawakami is billed as the author of People from My Neighborhood, a loosely connected series of magical realist flash fiction that’s an excellent comparison for Under the Eye of the Big Bird. To me, Under the Eye of the Big Bird also feels like a natural development of Kawakami’s debut short story, Kamisama, in which the narrator has a lovely afternoon picnic with a literal bear. The bear, being a bear, is clearly nonhuman, but no one seems to be bothered by this. The same casual acceptance of difference pervades Under the Eye of the Big Bird, which invites the reader to imagine the mundane everyday reality of the final days of the human race.

I’ll admit that I felt the chilling touch of existential dread at a few points during the book; but, as in any encounter with real difference, this initial sense of discomfort is important. The gentle strangeness of Under the Eye of the Big Bird encourages the reader to confront their biases, and it also lends weight to the narrative theme of human extinction. Instead of presenting the apocalypse as a standard dystopian superhero story, Kawakami allows the reader to take all the time and space they need to consider whether it would really be so horrible if the people we currently think of as “human” were to slowly disappear from the earth.

Under the Eye of the Big Bird is a book about the end of the world, but it’s also one of the kindest and most hopeful works of speculative fiction I’ve had the pleasure to read. Reading this book for the first time was a unique experience, but the impact of its stories linger even after their novelty fades.