“Editorial 2.1” by Amanda Weiss Dear Reader, Welcome to HIVEMIND Volume 2 Issue 1: The Anthropocene. Our third issue explores the Anthropocene, our current geological age and the era in which humans are the dominant force impacting the environment. We began the process of creating this issue by reaching out to our editorial board for…
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by Amanda Weiss Dear Reader, Welcome to HIVEMIND Volume 1 Issue 2: Japan x Future. Our second issue explores Japanese visions of the future, American visions of Japan, and all of the intersections, homages, and cross-cultural flows between. As with our last issue, we began with a reading list. Our team of graduate students (assistant…
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by Rebecca Seippel We spoke with Masahiko Inoue about his short story, But First, a Toast (Shukuhai wo mae ni shite). Toast is a fictionalized account of Inoue’s experiences visiting the 1995 Son of Famous Monsters of Filmland world convention held in Universal City, California. Read the story here, published in our Japan x Future issue. In the following interview, we include both the original Japanese and the English translation. Seippel: You first began your career as a writer…
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By Will Slater This conceptual piece explores the cross-cultural flow of cyberpunk by imagining a pen pal exchange between canonical Japanese and American cyberpunk works. March 13, 1982 Friends in America, Ugh, I’m so sick of everything right now! The class divide in Japan is something that cannot be tolerated! The Yakuza crime syndicate runs our communities unimpeded! On top…
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by Sofi Sanders From Godzilla and Mothra to Rodan and Gamera, many of Japanese science fiction’s most recognizable characters belong to the kaijū or monster, film genre. Godzilla (1954), the inimitable grandfather of the kaijū genre, is still recognized worldwide both as a pioneer of Japanese mass entertainment and ambassador for Japan itself (Tsutsui and Ito 2006). But what exactly are kaijū? And how did…
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