Japanese cyberpunk

Japanese cyberpunk is a unique phenomenon that, unlike its Western counterpart, draws inspiration not so much from science fiction as from deep cultural, philosophical, and social processes rooted in Japanese history and mentality. I would even say that it, like all of Japan, is inherently unusual and, at the same time, vividly descriptive of the history of cities in Asia.

Its origins lie in the underground counterculture of the 1970s and 1980s, as well as in traditional spiritual teachings such as Shintoism and Buddhism, which intertwine with postwar traumas and rapid technological development. To understand the precursors of Japanese cyberpunk, it is worth examining its key elements: countercultural rebellion, spiritual traditions, and historical context.

In the 1970s, an underground scene began to form in Japan, fueled by the energy of punk rock and cinema that rejected the mainstream. The rigid, vertical, traditional Japanese society was experiencing a turbulent boom and development, slowly but surely transforming into an Asian dragon. But progress also brings contradictions. Punk rock, imported from the West, was adapted by Japanese musicians who infused it with local flavor, expressing protest against conformism and rapid Westernization. This music, with its aggressive energy and anti-authoritarian spirit, became the soundtrack to the rebellious sentiments of youth disillusioned with the postwar economic miracle and its social consequences.

Cinema also played a significant role. Director Sogo Ishii, known for his films Panic High School (1978) and Crazy Thunder Road (1980), laid the visual and thematic foundation for Japanese cyberpunk. His works, shot in a low-budget, almost documentary style, depicted marginalized youth rebelling against the system amidst the backdrop of urban chaos.

In fact, if you’ve seen anime from the 90s, this trope of a person from the slums originated precisely from here.

These films, filled with the energy of punk rock and a grim aesthetic, foreshadowed cyberpunk motifs of alienation, technological rebellion, and dystopia. Ishii portrayed a world where youth, rejected by society, seek meaning in a chaotic, technology-saturated reality.

European philosophical ideas also served as an important backdrop. In postwar Japan (particularly within the Kyoto School), thinkers like Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Heidegger were seriously discussed. Schopenhauer’s ideas about “will” and nihilism gave rise to Nietzsche’s concepts of the “will to power” and the “death of God,” which, in Japanese culture, were extrapolated onto a world devoid of higher values. These motifs easily align with the plots of cyberpunk stories: the deconstruction of traditional values and the search for a new “self” permeate the imagery of its heroes. Heidegger’s critique of technocracy (the concept of Gestell – “enframing”) resonates with the pessimism of many Japanese authors about humanity’s subjugation to machines.

But what is their connection to Shintoism and Buddhism? Why do we so often encounter the concept of a spirit within a machine in the works of Japanese authors? Shintoism and Buddhism, as two key systems of worldview in Japan, provide the philosophical foundation for the genre.

Shintoism introduces the idea of kami—a spiritual essence present in natural objects, people, and even man-made items—into cyberpunk. In the cyberpunk context, kami transforms into the “spirit” of machines or digital systems, endowing them with an almost mystical aura. This concept manifests, for example, in the idea that artificial intelligence or a cybernetic body might possess a soul, which is particularly vividly expressed in works like Ghost in the Shell. The Shintoist belief in the animacy of the world makes Japanese cyberpunk less materialistic than its Western counterpart and more focused on metaphysical questions.

Buddhism, in turn, brings the concept of impermanence (mujō), which emphasizes the transience and changeability of all existence. In cyberpunk, this manifests in themes of destruction and rebirth, as well as the idea that human consciousness, even when transferred into a machine, remains vulnerable and temporary. Buddhist philosophy enhances the melancholic atmosphere of the genre, where heroes often face existential crises, contemplating the nature of their “self” in a world where the boundaries between human and machine blur.

Yet, we also see traces of Westernization, which imbues the entire genre with both Western influences and models as well as Eastern ones, creating a unique synthesis that highlights the core theme—humanity’s fear of the ultimate stage of the industrial era. This fear is resolved either through acceptance of the inevitable or through underground rebellion.

Japanese authors absorb Western phenomenology of consciousness and ideas of an unstable “self,” combining them with the traditional perspective of impermanence. Thus, European nihilism and Japanese philosophy organically intertwine: the cyberpunk hero often engages in an “existential hack” of reality, liberating themselves from illusory norms and rethinking the role of the individual.

In the Japanese version of cyberpunk, the focus shifts from computer logic to raw physiology and surrealism. Instead of chips and megacorporations, we often see monstrous bodily metamorphoses and industrial landscapes. According to M. Shaidullina, Japanese cyberpunk is “surrealistic stories of monstrous metamorphoses of the human body, where flesh merges with metal against the backdrop of a grim industrial landscape.”

Long, abstract episodes, symbolism, and shock content (fried brains, mechanisms instead of flesh) align more closely with experimental cinema than with linear storytelling. These traits sharply contrast with Western cyberpunk: there, artificial intelligence, global corporations, and virtual reality take center stage. Japanese directors adapt the “European” techno-theme to their cultural language—a tendency toward the irrational and a philosophical perspective on the world, aestheticizing even cruelty.

But what accounts for this Japanese detachment, one might say, spiritual distortion under the pressure of a harsh corporate culture? Is it about technology, the underground, or history?

The historical context of postwar Japan played a decisive role in shaping the cyberpunk aesthetic. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 left a deep mark on collective memory, fostering a fear of the destructive power of technology. This fear was amplified by the rapid modernization of the 1960s–1980s, when Japan transformed into a technological superpower. The economic miracle was accompanied by urbanization, alienation, and a reevaluation of traditional values, which caused many to feel a loss of identity.

Postwar modernization led to a generational divide and heightened feelings of loneliness in overcrowded cities. The youth of the 1970s–1980s, surrounded by technological abundance, often felt disconnected from society, which was reflected in cyberpunk heroes—hackers, loners, cybernetic ronins who oppose the system. These characters typically exist on the fringes of society, rejecting corporate control and seeking meaning in digital or underground worlds.

Cyberpunk became a reflection of these anxieties and an attempt at realization through hyper-individualization, depicting dystopian cities of the future—neon megapolises like Tokyo in Akira or Blade Runner (though the latter is a Western work, its aesthetic was inspired by Japanese megacities). These cities, oversaturated with technology and advertising, symbolize both progress and dehumanization. The theme of the “end of the world,” pervasive in Japanese cyberpunk, is rooted in collective trauma and fear of a new technological apocalypse.

Neon lights, overcrowded streets, and cold skyscrapers create a sense of oppression and claustrophobia, amplifying themes of alienation and the loss of human connection. This aesthetic, first embodied in underground films and music, became the hallmark of the genre, distinguishing it from the more optimistic Western fantasies, Soviet ideological materialism and futurism, and dystopias about the future, which were more about state totalitarianism than loss within corporate cities.

In 1986, Hideo Goto directed Death Powder—one of the first Japanese films to explicitly mark the transition from cybernetics to bodily transformation. The surreal, fragmented style of the film and its disturbing images of human mutation under the influence of technology foreshadowed the emergence of the “body horror cyberpunk” subgenre.

This direction culminated in the films of Shinya Tsukamoto: Tetsuo: The Iron Man (1989) and Tetsuo II: Body Hammer (1992). These works explore the theme of invasive fusion of flesh and metal, turning the body into an arena of fear, pain, and alienation. Tsukamoto created a truly iconic visual language, blending elements of horror, avant-garde, and punk aggression, thereby establishing a standard for Japanese cyberpunk aesthetics.

This direction also includes 964 Pinocchio (1991) by Shinsuke Sato—a film about a fugitive cybernetic android suffering from memory loss and identity crisis. His unstable personality and deteriorating body metaphorically express the crisis of subjectivity in the posthuman era. In Electric Dragon 80,000V (2001), Sogo Ishii returned to the synthesis of punk culture and experimental cinema: the hero, endowed with bioelectric abilities, becomes a kind of avatar of anarchy in an oversaturated urban space.

But when comparing Western and Eastern cyberpunk, things get even more interesting...

Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott) and Akira (1988, Katsuhiro Otomo) are key works that, despite their different origins, intersect in themes of posthumanity, alienation, and philosophical questions about the nature of consciousness and identity. At the same time, the former is American and, one might say, somewhat European.

Blade Runner establishes the image of a neon megapolis inspired by Asian cities, particularly Tokyo. Dark streets bathed in neon light, skyscrapers, and omnipresent advertising create an atmosphere of alienation and technological oversaturation. This visual style became a benchmark for cyberpunk, and Japanese culture embraced it as a reflection of its own urban future, as evidenced by a Japanese journalist comparing Tokyo’s Shibuya to the city in the film. The film poses the question: what does it mean to be human if you are an artificially created replicant? Replicants fight for their right to life and memory, experiencing fear, love, and existential crises. Their “disputed” existence is the central philosophical problem of the film, where the line between human and machine becomes blurred.

Here, one can observe some interesting influence of ideas of freedom, characteristic of American society.

Blade Runner focuses on the existential struggle for identity. Replicants seek meaning in life despite their artificial origins, which resonates with Japanese cyberpunk motifs of searching for a soul in a technogenic world.

As for the Japanese...

Akira presents Neo-Tokyo as a post-apocalyptic megapolis where neon and decay coexist. The film’s visual style—detailed urban landscapes, explosions, and chaotic transformation scenes—conveys a sense of uncontrollable technological progress. Tetsuo, whose body mutates into a mass of metal and wires, visually symbolizes the fusion of human and machine, amplifying themes of physical and metaphysical decay. The anime develops the idea of posthumanity through transhumanism. Tetsuo Shima, gaining superhuman abilities, becomes an uncontrollable cyborg whose body transforms into a chaotic mass of technology. His transformation symbolizes transcending the human but leads to destruction. Akira, an “atomic-like” child, serves as a sacrificial figure whose death brings rebirth to the city, adding an almost mystical subtext to the theme of transhumanism.

Notice the difference? Identity versus absorption by progress. Some seek to form a new face, a spirit free from the collective, through progress, while others see progress as a source of fear—fusion, loss, and exclusion of the spirit from the system.

Akira raises questions about power and its consequences within the framework of corporate ethics. Tetsuo and Akira are products of technological experiments that spiral out of control, symbolizing the irrationality of humanity’s pursuit of superiority. The film combines transhumanism with social critique, showing how technology breeds apocalypse, whereas replicants are merely humans without their own self or identity, which they strive to reclaim.

The evolution of Japanese cyberpunk through cinema and anime provides a unique opportunity to analyze which of the genre’s predictions came true, which remained fantasies, why it gradually lost its original form, and how this relates to postmodernism and Noam Chomsky’s concept of “Manufacturing Consent.” Additionally, we can assess how much the Japanese fears about technology have materialized in reality.

Cyberpunk foresaw the development of artificial intelligence, cybernetics, and digital networks. Today, AI is firmly entrenched in our lives—from social media algorithms to automated production. Cybernetic prosthetics and medical implants already exist, though they haven’t reached the level depicted in anime like Ghost in the Shell.

Neon, densely populated megacities like Tokyo or Osaka resemble the cyberpunk aesthetic. The Shibuya district, with its bright signs and crowds, has become almost a living embodiment of dystopias like Blade Runner, even blending with gray brutalism. The theme of isolation in a hyper-technological world has found reflection in reality.

But...

Although technology has advanced significantly, we have not yet reached the point where the boundaries between human and machine are fully erased, as in the case of Motoko Kusanagi from Ghost in the Shell. Consciousness and identity remain purely human domains for now.

On the other hand, cyberpunk introduced, or rather demonstrated, a new idea—the idea of the Dark Enlightenment. Cyberpunk depicted a world where corporations become de facto rulers, displacing states. This is something not so much the Japanese, who are deeply tied to the state, but Americans, with their ideas of freedom for entrepreneurs on both global and national scales, aspire to.

As a genre, cyberpunk has lost its original edge. Its visual and thematic elements—neon lights, hackers, dystopian cities—have become so widespread that they’ve lost their novelty. From a subcultural phenomenon, cyberpunk has turned into mainstream, losing its rebellious energy. What once seemed futuristic (the internet, mobile devices, AI) has become commonplace. The awe and fear of technology have given way to habit, weakening the genre’s emotional impact.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg; a more frightening phenomenon has emerged.

Postmodernism, with its emphasis on fragmentation, the absence of a unified narrative, and the “loss of meaning,” played a key role. Cyberpunk, which initially offered a cohesive vision of the future, splintered into subgenres (biopunk, solarpunk, etc.), reflecting a cultural shift toward multiplicity and relativity. This process can be interpreted as the loss of a “grand idea,” which weakened the genre as a monolithic phenomenon. Postmodernism introduced irony and self-awareness, making cyberpunk less serious.

Cyberpunk transformed from an underground protest into the very corporate, market-driven, broken, and absorbed entity depicted in Akira. This aligns with the postmodernist principle of “surface,” where style dominates over substance, stripping the genre of its original rebellious power.

Noam Chomsky, in his book Manufacturing Consent (co-authored with Edward S. Herman), describes how media and power institutions shape public opinion, creating an illusion of freedom of choice to uphold the interests of elites. This concept parallels the themes of Japanese cyberpunk, but postmodernism adds an additional layer of complexity.

Chomsky, like early cyberpunk, describes a centralized system of control, whereas postmodernism in cyberpunk emphasizes decentralization and chaos. In Serial Experiments Lain, reality fragments within digital networks, where there is no single center of power, contrasting with Chomsky’s model, which assumes a clear hierarchy. Postmodernism blurs the lines between control and freedom, making resistance less obvious than in classic cyberpunk, where rebellion against corporations was explicit.

The postmodern commercialization of cyberpunk, where its visual elements became part of pop culture, can be seen as a form of “manufacturing consent.” The neon aesthetic, originally symbolizing alienation, is now used in advertising and entertainment to sell products, masking the genre’s critical potential. This aligns with Chomsky’s idea of how protest ideas are co-opted by the system to maintain the status quo.

Cyberpunk, thus, became a victim of its own aesthetic.

From a cognitive perspective, the human brain seeks to minimize cognitive load by processing information through simplified schemas and stereotypes. Japanese cyberpunk, in works like Akira (1988) or Ghost in the Shell (1995), offered complex philosophical questions about the nature of consciousness, identity, and technological alienation. These themes demanded a high level of cognitive engagement from audiences: grappling with metaphysical concepts (such as Buddhist impermanence or Shintoist kami), analyzing moral dilemmas, and reflecting on dystopian scenarios.

However, postmodern culture, with its emphasis on fragmentation and instant consumption, amplified the cognitive tendency toward simplification. The brain, faced with information overload in the era of globalization and digital media, preferred to highlight and remember the most vivid, easily recognizable elements of cyberpunk—neon aesthetics, hacker archetypes, futuristic cities—over its complex philosophical ideas. This phenomenon, known as the “attention economy,” led to cyberpunk being perceived through superficial visual codes rather than its deeper themes. Postmodern cyberpunk, thus, became a product of cognitive simplification, where complex narratives were reduced to stylistic clichés like neon and cyber-implants to match the limited attention span of audiences.

Initially, cyberpunk shocked with its depictions of technological dystopias and mutations, as in Tetsuo: The Iron Man or Akira, where Tetsuo’s body transforms into a mass of metal. These images evoked strong emotions, prompting reflection. However, as technology—from the internet to AI—became integrated into everyday life, it ceased to be perceived as a threat. The mind adapted, and what once seemed radical became mundane.

In postmodern cyberpunk, this process was amplified by an emphasis on aesthetics for aesthetics’ sake. Neon cities and cybernetic bodies, instead of provoking questions about dehumanization, became a familiar backdrop. The contradiction between shocking novelty and habituation resolved in favor of the latter: cyberpunk lost its ability to surprise, becoming a victim of its own visual allure.

The viewer’s mind, oriented toward easy perception and categorization, prioritized the genre’s vivid imagery, ignoring its philosophical depth. At the same time, the dynamics of cultural development transformed cyberpunk from an underground protest into a stylized product of mass culture, where neon and hackers became decorative elements stripped of their original meaning.

Such is the fascinating journey from rebellion to reality.

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