Jay Kristoff on Japan as steampunk cultural touchstone

Jay Kristoff has a debut novel, Stormdancer coming out this month, which is the first in a planned trilogy, set in a "Japanese-inspired steampunk dystopia". Stormdancer is published byThomas Dunne Books/St. Martin’s Press in the US, Tor UK in the United Kingdom and PanMacMillan in Australia.

He was interviewed in the September Book Smugglers Newsletter, which I always enjoy reading.

During the interview, given the obvious, The Book Smugglers responsibly ask:

Why did you decide to set your series in a Japanese-inspired world? Tell us about writing a Japanese-inspired culture - were there any particular challenges, as a non-Japanese author?

And Kristoff replies:

I wanted to write a steampunk book – I find the aesthetic really interesting and I wanted to break the "rose-colored" goggles trope that a lot of SP authors are guilty of, ie looking at the advent of industrialization as something awesome, and ignoring the whole slavery/child exploitation thing it was built around. But I felt like European-based steampunk had already been done a lot, and done very well. The world had some incredible cultures in the 19th century, and I think fantasy is already shamefully guilty of a European focus, so I decided on Japan. I’ve always had a love of Japanese film and literature and culture, and it seemed an amazing cultural touchstone that no-one had really riffed on yet.

Emphasis mine.

I am totally flabbergasted. It's great that Kristoff recognises the problems with looking at industrialisation through rose-coloured goggles. But what Japanese film and literature and cultural output is Kristoff actually loving, that he can say no-one's really riffed on steampunk with Japan as a cultural touchstone? To pick the most obvious example, Studio Ghibli is hardly an easily dismissible presence in the Japanese (and international!) cultural landscape.

He then goes on to say:

I guess the biggest challenge to is avoid the big bad “appropriation” or “exoticism” labels, but truth is, some people are going to start throwing those regardless. That said, the Shima Imperium is most definitely not Japan - it’s only inspired by it. I’ve changed facets of language and religion and society – as far as I know, there weren’t many griffins or telepaths running around in feudal Japan. If you can wrap your head around the idea Shima and Japan might look a lot alike, but aren’t the same place, you’ll have fun.

Which I'm just going to leave there.

I'm sorry, I have a lot to do today and unravelling everything I find objectionable in this interview will take a lot of time and energy I don't have to spare. I'm blogging about it primarily because I think it should get wider attention than perhaps the newsletter format provides - the entire newsletter, including the complete interview, can be found here.

The book itself might be great! I have nothing to say about the book. But I am super wary of Kristoff's own words about his inspiration and process. I think they propagate and enable attitudes I find dismissive of both cultural output by Othered cultures, and of criticism resulting from Western authors attempting to use those cultures in their own work.

More on Jay Kristoff and Stormdancer

A brief follow up to my previous post, because dammit I really do have lots to do today:

From this interview:

How much research did you have to do with regards to authenticity?

Less than people seem to think. It's kinda odd - I've had people ask if I did a degree in Japanese studies, but the closest I've come is reading all six volumes of AKIRA in a week. Maybe I'd picked up a lot of detail through film and manga that I've consumed down through the years, but Wikipedia was really my go-to-guy. I have a friend who lives in Japan who I bounce ideas off too. I pay him with the promise of booze.

Good lord.

From a review that talks (among other things) about some of the misuse of Japanese language conventions, which would bounce me right out of the book even if the rest of it were superb and I had never read these interviews:

Let's start with my primary nails-on-a-chalkboard issue, the usage of the words "hai" and "sama", shall we? Here are a few examples of these words in action in Stormdancer:

Sama:
"That is more than fair." [...] "Ameterasu bless your kindness, sama."
"I want for nothing. Thank you, sama."
"He slew Boukyaku, young sama. The sea dragon who consumed the island of Takaiyama."
"Honor to you, great sama."
"What is Raijin song, sama?"
"Forgiveness, sama."
"Apologies, sama."

So. Yeah.