Science fiction is an important genre of modern Japanese literature
that has strongly influenced aspects of contemporary Japanese pop
culture, including anime, manga, video games, tokusatsu, and
cinema.Both Japan's history of technology and mythology play a role in
the development of its science fiction. Some early Japanese
literature, for example, contain elements of proto-science fiction.
The early Japanese tale of "Urashima TarÅ " involves traveling
forwards in time to a distant future, and was first described in the
Nihongi (720). It was about a young fisherman named Urashima Taro who
visits an undersea palace and stays there for three days. After
returning home to his village, he finds himself three hundred years in
the future, where he is long forgotten, his house in ruins, and his
family long dead. The 10th-century Japanese narrative The Tale of the
Bamboo Cutter may also be considered proto-science fiction. The
protagonist of the story, Kaguya-hime, is a princess from the Moon who
is sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war, and is found and
raised by a bamboo cutter in Japan. She is later taken back to the
Moon by her real extraterrestrial family. A manuscript illustration
depicts a round flying machine similar to a flying saucer.Science
fiction in the standard modern sense began with the Meiji Restoration
and the importation of Western ideas. The first science fiction of any
influence to be translated into Japanese were the novels of Jules
Verne. The translation of Around the World in Eighty Days was
published in 1878-1880, followed by his other works with immense
popularity. The word kagaku shÅ setsu (ç§'å¦å° 説) was coined as a
translation of "scientific novel" as early as 1886.ShunrÅ Oshikawa is
generally considered as the ancestor of Japanese science fiction. His
debut work Kaitei Gunkan (Undersea warship), published in 1900,
described submarines and predicted a coming Russo-Japanese war.
that has strongly influenced aspects of contemporary Japanese pop
culture, including anime, manga, video games, tokusatsu, and
cinema.Both Japan's history of technology and mythology play a role in
the development of its science fiction. Some early Japanese
literature, for example, contain elements of proto-science fiction.
The early Japanese tale of "Urashima TarÅ " involves traveling
forwards in time to a distant future, and was first described in the
Nihongi (720). It was about a young fisherman named Urashima Taro who
visits an undersea palace and stays there for three days. After
returning home to his village, he finds himself three hundred years in
the future, where he is long forgotten, his house in ruins, and his
family long dead. The 10th-century Japanese narrative The Tale of the
Bamboo Cutter may also be considered proto-science fiction. The
protagonist of the story, Kaguya-hime, is a princess from the Moon who
is sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war, and is found and
raised by a bamboo cutter in Japan. She is later taken back to the
Moon by her real extraterrestrial family. A manuscript illustration
depicts a round flying machine similar to a flying saucer.Science
fiction in the standard modern sense began with the Meiji Restoration
and the importation of Western ideas. The first science fiction of any
influence to be translated into Japanese were the novels of Jules
Verne. The translation of Around the World in Eighty Days was
published in 1878-1880, followed by his other works with immense
popularity. The word kagaku shÅ setsu (ç§'å¦å° 説) was coined as a
translation of "scientific novel" as early as 1886.ShunrÅ Oshikawa is
generally considered as the ancestor of Japanese science fiction. His
debut work Kaitei Gunkan (Undersea warship), published in 1900,
described submarines and predicted a coming Russo-Japanese war.
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