Jay Kristoff on Japan as steampunk cultural touchstone

[karenhealey]

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.

Comments

[fadeaccompli]

I once got several chapters into writing a YA novel that was based loosely on Chinese mythology. You know. In the "well, I read a few Wikipedia articles, and grabbed the cool bits I liked, and then made everything else up, but it's second world fantasy, so it's okay! it's not historical, so it's not really China, and getting details different is fine!" sense.

My very first beta reader looked over the first chapter, and went, no. You cannot do this. This is a bad idea. Calling it "second world fantasy" and "inspired by Chinese mythology" is not a good excuse for the lack of research and just changing whatever you don't like.

I ended up scrapping the whole project. She was right.

I have this terrible sinking feeling, based on the excerpts above, that this author did not have any beta readers willing or able to say that to him. But it would be nice to be proven wrong, and to find out that the dynamic is entirely different here.

Gngngngh..!

[drcuriosity]

This made my brain hurt. And then I went to the Goodreads page and read some of the reviews. And then my brain hurt more. So apologies for the impending rant.

I've done alt-history, post-apoc, Japanese-inspired Steampunk world building in the last couple of years. I've worried about appropriation and exoticism. Trying to craft a culture that could have arisen from historical Japanese culture that also wouldn't cause offence to modern Japanese culture. I've worried about overdone and over-romanticised tropes, and trying to make my treatment fair and detailed and interesting but also accessible to a western audience who wouldn't have been exposed to the real deal before. In the context of this Steampunk world in particular, I've also concerned myself with sociopolitical issues of class upheaval, colonialism, tensions between traditionalist and modernist sensibilities, factional rivalry within national identity, and the public and private faces of the society.

Then, armed with these concerns and goals, I did research. On language, culture, religion, history, industry, media. Fact checked. Discussed it with other writers who share my concerns. Talked with actual Japanese (and some Korean) people to see what they thought about it. Incorporated their opinions, with due humility. (Yes, your process with Guardian of the Dead did inspire me to make sure I did this.)

While I'm generally satisfied with what I've made, those concerns I started with haven't gone away. But after what I've just read, I know I could have done a whole lot worse. Seeing someone essentially throw up his hands and go "Enh, appropriation and exoticism, what can you do?" makes me genuinely angry, but at least I have something I can point to and answer: That. That's what you can do.

[ironed_orchid]

I want to write a troll comment about how Studio Ghibli don't count because they are Japanese using steampunk imagery rather than steampunk (i.e. white) using Japanese imagery, but it hurts to much to even think it.

[delux_vivens]

would you xpost this to dwdeadbro?

[karenhealey]

Absolutely - I'm not a member, but I just submitted the join application now.