Why Does All Cyberpunk Themed Worlds Have Big Japanese Influence?

[molten]

I'm not talking about just this game alone. I'm talking about the whole genre of cyberpunk.

Like in Blade Runner for example.

They all have the same concept of "Japanese Being the Dominant Culture Over American Culture".

Japanese signs, corporations etc. are everywhere.

Why is that?

[Grobut]

Yup, as many people have correctly noted, it's because Japan was the growing economy in the 80's when much of this fiction was established. So much so that for a while it looked like Japan might become a third superpower alongside the USA and USSR.

It's really that simple.

Oh, and incase anyone didn't notice, the USSR still exists in Cyberpunk 2077 too. The source material all comes from the 80's before the iron curtain fell, so people were assuming the USSR would still be a thing in the future.

[BlazeD]

Both Japanese and Chinese societies are enduring and exotic so its natural for creative projects to project them into their worlds as successful, powerful segments of society. Since America is such an inclusive society they welcome them all. Their cultures will enrich American society weather that is their goal or not.

[Mentally Unstable]

My guess is that Japan has a relatively solid reputation when it comes to electronics(notice how companies boast about having 100% "Japanese" capacitors on your motherboard?) so translating that into a futuristic technology based setting isn't surprising.

[Eupolemos]

Whereas a franchise like Fallout imagines a future as they imagined it in the '50s, Cyberpunk is the future as imagined by a few visionaries in the '80s, such as Gibson with his book "Neuromancer".

In the '80s, Japan was just ahead. Held into the '90s - their mobile phones and ecosystem was way ahead. They were a bit scary, to be honest, because their work culture seems to set aside human needs like sleep or workplace friendship.

So you have a tech driven imaginary world, where computers and willingness to set aside ones humanity set the boundaries of what we can imagine will change the world. This means that changes in the imaginary world will often have Japan as a central element.

Also, Japan is at the forefront of societal self examination. A work of art like "Ghost in the shell" is a spiritual examination of what our merge with machines and computers means for a person. Something relevant to CP77.

[talemore]

CP77 has taken inspiration from "Mute" who has taken inspiration from Blade runner and "Johnny mnemonic"

There's really not much in the game who actually take inspiration from ghost in the shell with the exception that you are a cop and then .. for reason you are now mercenary. The fishes are straight copy pasted based on the live action movie. But it takes more effort than copy pasting easter eggs to make a game a theme.

[AscendedViking7]

That's a really good question.

[pale_horse]

Автор сообщения: 77quarantine

many of the cyberpunk books were written in the 80s and during that time a lot of people thought japan would economically pass US, i don't know the answer i'm just spitballing

This is what happened.

Everything crashed, but if you go back to the 1980s:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_in_Japan#Economy

Overall real economic growth was called a "miracle", with a 4% average during the 1980s.[7] Throughout the 1970s, Japan had the world's second largest gross national product (GNP)—just behind the United States— and ranked first among major industrial nations in 1990 in per capita GNP at US$23,801, up sharply from US$9,068 in 1980.

...

Tokyo became a major financial center, home of some of the world's major banks, financial firms, insurance companies, and the world's largest stock exchange, the Tokyo Securities and Stock Exchange. Even here, however, the recession took its toll. In the decades following World War II, Japan implemented stringent tariffs and policies to encourage the people to save their income.

With more money in banks, loans and credit became easier to obtain, and with Japan running large trade surpluses, the yen appreciated against foreign currencies. This allowed local companies to invest in capital resources much more easily than their competitors overseas, which reduced the price of Japanese-made goods and widened the trade surplus further. And, with the yen appreciating, financial assets became very lucrative.

During the 1980s, the Japanese economy shifted its emphasis away from primary and secondary activities (notably agriculture, manufacturing, and mining) to processing, with telecommunications and computers becoming increasingly vital. Information became an important resource and product, central to wealth and power. The rise of an information-based economy was led by major research in highly sophisticated technology, such as advanced computers. The selling and use of information became very beneficial to the economy.

Japanese cars had a 33% hold on the American automobile market at that time and then-current U.S. President Ronald Reagan waged a price war against the new Japanese automobiles. As a result, Japanese auto manufactures took advantage of their vehicles' superior MPG (miles per gallon) rating.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JapanTakesOverTheWorld

In The '80s and the early '90s, Americans pretty much expected that Japan would be their new overlords in a decade or two. While other nations were too busy worrying about the Cold War and trying to dominate the world militarily, Japan was quietly taking over the business sector with a seemingly inhuman affinity for technology and a hive-like dedication to work. It seemed that, no matter what we did, we'd all soon wind up working for the Japanese.

As a result, a large number of media created in the 1980s and 1990s, set 20 Minutes into the Future or later, had the U.S. being dominated by Japanese companies and culture. This trope was particularly prominent in Cyberpunk of the era.

The spread of anime movies during the 80s/90s also cemented an awareness of Japanese culture in the US among people that are the most likley ones to play both RPGs and computer games.

[pale_horse]

Автор сообщения: talemore

CP77 has taken inspiration from "Mute" who has taken inspiration from Blade runner and "Johnny mnemonic"

This is completely wrong, Im not sure why you would even say that.

Cyberpunk 2077 was created directly from the Cyberpunk RPG created by Mike Pondsmith in the 1980s. The entire story for the Johnny/Arasaka/Relic story is part three of "Firestorm".

Heres the books that are still available from Cyberpunk 2013/2020:

https://talsorianstore.com/collections/cyberpunk

Heres some information about Firestorm:

https://cyberpunk2077-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Firestorm_I:_Stormfront
https://talsorianstore.com/collections/cyberpunk/products/firestorm-stormfront

https://cyberpunk2077-archive.fandom.com/wiki/Firestorm_II:_Shockwave
https://talsorianstore.com/collections/cyberpunk/products/firestorm-shockwave

Set in 2024, the second part of the Firestorm series sees Arasaka mobilize the Japanese Defense Force to take on Militech and the American military in a series of proxy conflicts (the phase dubbed the Hot War). Waves of cyberviruses corrupt databases worldwide, leaving the isolated Arasaka Towers arcology in Night City the last viable data storage mainframe in the world. Militech gathers together the surviving meta-characters and a Special Forces team played by the player characters into a "super team". Their job: to take out Arasaka's Night City arcology with a tactical nuke to deny its assets to Arasaka. Then they find out that Alt Cunningham, who was captured by Arasaka earlier, is trapped inside the mainframe. Of course, Johnny won't let Alt die a second time, so the team tries to break her out. The end result is that the meta-characters go out in a blaze of glory. Johnny Silverhand dies at the hands of Arasaka's cyborg assassin Adam Smasher in order to buy Spider Murphy enough time to break Alt into a series of datapackets and downloads her into the Net. Morgan Blackhand then takes on Adam Smasher atop Arasaka Towers while the rest of the team gets extracted out. The outcome of the duel is greatly disputed because the low-yield tactical nuke the team deployed sets off the 2-kiloton "self destruct" bomb Arasaka had placed in its data core. This destroyed much of downtown Night City and contaminated the ruins and anything downwind of it with lethal fallout.

For that matter heres the original Night City book:

https://talsorianstore.com/collections/cyberpunk/products/night-city

And the original Pacific Rim book:

https://talsorianstore.com/collections/cyberpunk/products/pacrim

[Alex_x86]

It's not only Cyberpunk, it was common across all the genres in 80th assumption that Japan would become a superpower alongside USA and USSR due to the Japan's economical and technological growth at the time was similar to China today. Another popular example of that is going to be Back to the Future (there are few episodes of that but you can notice that: for example 50th Doc was shocked to know that best electronics is made in Japan, Marty in 2016 was working in Japanese company).

[I-NOCHT]

Автор сообщения: 77quarantine

many of the cyberpunk books were written in the 80s and during that time a lot of people thought japan would economically pass US, i don't know the answer i'm just spitballing

This. Good job for being a spitball. XD

[Zero McDol]

Think about it for a sec.

What culture created the Cyberpunk theme? Japanese. How so? Look at the various anime created back during the 80's and 70's. Bladerunner was created in 1982; Hollywood was inspired by the idea, just as Star Wars was originally inspired by a Japanese movie.

So in short, it's not surprising that Japanese culture is a huge part of the Cyberpunk universe.

Edits: Date fixes.

Actually here you go, from Google:

It has roots in the Japanese punk subculture, that arose from the Japanese punk music scene in the 1970s, with Sogo Ishii's punk films of the late 1970s to early 1980s introducing this subculture to Japanese cinema and paving the way for Japanese cyberpunk.

[Dr.Abscondus]

In case you haven't noticed America is decadent and in decline, but it won't be Japan in the future but China. Japan is like the UK, few natural resources and without an empire to sustain it is completely dependent on trade to survive. It can be easily crushed by economic warfare from a big country with a huge internal economy like China. Considering how much the Chinese hate Japan I wouldn't bet on them having much of a future at all.

[Wisp Cat]

Автор сообщения: Captain Crummy

because the Japanese are a strongly homogeneous culture and society. Any history book will show you those cultures are the ones that last the longest.

Actually ... it's not "any history book", which makes that declaration.

(And, I suppose it also depends on how you determine when a culture is "lasting" and when it's "over"... the whole "learn and adapt" thing, and the "erasing history" stuff have some strange implications here. Anyways, ... it's much easier to make claims about history than it is to prove those claims.)

[Whytehawk]

I think cos in the 80s the Japanese were overtaking Manufacturing and were becoming a economic powerhouse. Most electronics, cars, etc were being made in Japan. There was also a trope in 80s movies of Japanese buisinessmen visiting to buy out or merge with western companies.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/JapanTakesOverTheWorld

[DaylightDemon]

Автор сообщения: molten

I'm not talking about just this game alone. I'm talking about the whole genre of cyberpunk.

Like in Blade Runner for example.

They all have the same concept of "Japanese Being the Dominant Culture Over American Culture".

Japanese signs, corporations etc. are everywhere.

Why is that?

cyberpunk2077 was particularely influenced by bladerunner which in turn is just one future scenario out of many cyberpunk style pieces.

so no, the cyberpunk genre is not obsessed with japanese culture, bladerunner is. and ofc there also is japanese cyberpunk material. but there also is plenty of international cyberpunk material that has very little if any asian touch.