Science Fiction
"Science Fiction uses as its point of departure anxiety. And when you start with anxiety, you usually just back yourself into a corner. This does not jibe with our overall approach to making movies for children. And also, reality is always much more complex and stimulating than science fiction. If you came to Tokyo, I could show you places much more alarming than anything in Blade Runner. I don't plan on taking you there, but you could discover it on your own."
- Hayao Miyazake, interviewed after Princess Mononoke was released in the USA.
Not seven minutes after this photograph was taken in our traditional Tokyo hotel (ryokan), I was on the top floor of and suddenly: an earthquake. Anxiety? You betcha. Especially when I had already read in my guide book that the really "big ones" come every seventy-odd years, and that the last Big One was in 1923, killing 140,000 people. The Japanese were thereby several years overdue for the next Big One. Was I just a little bit worried I had chosen a bad time to come? Oh, I can't say it didn't cross my mind...
Happily, we looked down from our sixth floor window and noticed that no one in the street was alarmed, and no one was running. The building stopped shaking a few seconds later, and we stopped shaking a few moments after that. And then -- bah -- the rest of the trip was earthquake-free. But it was definitely the kind of welcome that makes you reset your expectations clock to zero.
This set me to thinking. By the end of our two weeks I had more fully developed my hunch into a full-blown theory about all of Japanese civilization, in all its ancient and modern technological glory, beauty, and weirdness. It results essentially from a dual combination of zero predictability and control (esp the history of earthquakes and nuclear bombs there) added to the already known characteristic behaviors that come out of proximity theory -- about which more later. Subsequent posts will explore various dimensions of the hunch-turned-theory.
- Hayao Miyazake, interviewed after Princess Mononoke was released in the USA.
Not seven minutes after this photograph was taken in our traditional Tokyo hotel (ryokan), I was on the top floor of and suddenly: an earthquake. Anxiety? You betcha. Especially when I had already read in my guide book that the really "big ones" come every seventy-odd years, and that the last Big One was in 1923, killing 140,000 people. The Japanese were thereby several years overdue for the next Big One. Was I just a little bit worried I had chosen a bad time to come? Oh, I can't say it didn't cross my mind...
Happily, we looked down from our sixth floor window and noticed that no one in the street was alarmed, and no one was running. The building stopped shaking a few seconds later, and we stopped shaking a few moments after that. And then -- bah -- the rest of the trip was earthquake-free. But it was definitely the kind of welcome that makes you reset your expectations clock to zero.
This set me to thinking. By the end of our two weeks I had more fully developed my hunch into a full-blown theory about all of Japanese civilization, in all its ancient and modern technological glory, beauty, and weirdness. It results essentially from a dual combination of zero predictability and control (esp the history of earthquakes and nuclear bombs there) added to the already known characteristic behaviors that come out of proximity theory -- about which more later. Subsequent posts will explore various dimensions of the hunch-turned-theory.
posted by RMS at 8:45 AM
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