Because of this, Orbaugh concludes, Japanese cyborg narratives explore monstrous subjectivities from a “sympathetic, interiorized” perspective. Like the monster in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, who was rejected by his creator and all other people he encountered, people in modernizing Japan, despite successfully replicating the science, technology, economy, and military of Western nations, were repeatedly reminded of their own racial inferiority and “monstrosity” in the eyes of the West. Orbaugh relates these aspects to what she calls “Frankenstein Syndrome,” an experience faced by developing nations in which they recognize their own “monstrosity” within hegemonic Western discourse. However, this cause-and-effect relationship does not fully explain the complex and empathetic nature of Japanese cyborg representations. Orbaugh characterizes the development of this “hardware-technophilic stream of Japanese cyborg narrative” as a response to the conditions of Japan’s modernization: to avoid being colonized by more ‘advanced’ nations, Japan had to make itself in its (potential) colonizer’s image, quickly reproducing Western technological and military advancements. Verne’s confident protagonists, futuristic transportation technology, and the theme of freeing the human mind from the limitations of the body all became hallmarks of the new technophilic genre of boken shosetsu (adventure novel). One aspect of this was translating Western literature into Japanese, and the adventure novels of Jules Verne became exceptionally popular and influential in this period.

When the formerly isolated island nation was forced to open its borders in 1868, intellectuals and reformers looked to America and Europe as models for modernization. The abundance of cyborg depictions in Japanese culture, as well as Japan’s perceived “obsession” with the technological has led several scholars to note that the country seems to have a “special relationship with the cyborgian.” In her chapter on the genealogy of the cyborg in Japanese culture, Sharalyn Orbaugh begins by tracing the origin of the “mecha-suit” (giant metal fighting suit piloted by a person), which was one of the most prevalent cyborg representations in Post-WWII Japan. The modern conception of the cyborg originated in Europe, so the East Asian cyborg emerged in the country that most consciously modeled itself after Western powers since the mid-nineteenth century: Japan.

Fantastical android female