Night city is just a dirty Tokyo

[The Big]

Even the red light districts look like those yakuza alleys with girls offering just like in Japan

[Actalo]

Cyberpunk as a genre is steeped in post-industrial Japanese visual style. Much of that coming from sci-fi writers who saw Asians expanding their far eastern cultural and architectural style to supercede the West. "The future is Asian and dystopian" so to speak.

See Neuromancer, Johnny Pneumonic, Bladerunner (Do Androids Dream), etc

[Micas]

Originally posted by Actalo:

Cyberpunk as a genre is steeped in post-industrial Japanese visual style. Much of that coming from sci-fi writers who saw Asians expanding their far eastern cultural and architectural style to supercede the West. "The future is Asian and dystopian" so to speak.

See Neuromancer, Johnny Pneumonic, Bladerunner (Do Androids Dream), etc

Interesting you mention that. I just finished reading Neuromancer for the first time, and now onto the next book. It's pretty great, even if it can get a bit confusing due to the author's style. It's amazing how much of the Neuromancer lexicon ended up in becoming reality, i.e., Microsoft's corporate name is literally taken from the novel.

[EJR]

In-universe, Japan became the cultural and economical superpower, allowing Japanese influence to dominate countries than the West did and leading to the hyper-corporatism and consumerism you see in-game. Not surprising that Night City looks like a "dirty Tokyo."

[EricHVela]

Originally posted by Micas:

It's pretty great, even if it can get a bit confusing due to the author's style.

Gibson just drops the reader into a world as if the reader already knows the lingo and lifestyles of the setting. It almost starts like it's supposed to be a sequel to something expecting the reader to know everything. It's artsy because it makes sense from the main character's PoV, but it's unhelpful for a reader who is seeing all of it for the first time.

[Actalo]

Yeah if you notice Gibson's Neuromancer main character's name is Henry Dorsett Case, Dorsett being the titular character in CP2077's ARG and V's famous rescue,

[EricHVela]

It's funny because Pondsmith claims he hadn't read Neuromancer before creating Cyberpunk, but Neuromancer and Blade Runner are what usually come to mind for most people thinking of Cyberpunk.

[Actalo]

Originally posted by EricHVela:

It's funny because Pondsmith claims he hadn't read Neuromancer before creating Cyberpunk, but Neuromancer and Blade Runner are what usually come to mind for most people thinking of Cyberpunk.

I think they call that "parallel thinking", lol.

[Bogmore]

There are different areas to NC just like most cities, for instance some remind me of LAs suburbs.

[Okkuas]

Originally posted by EricHVela:

It's funny because Pondsmith claims he hadn't read Neuromancer before creating Cyberpunk, but Neuromancer and Blade Runner are what usually come to mind for most people thinking of Cyberpunk.

Gibson had been writing cyberpunk stories for various sci-fi magazines since 1981 (his first published story in the genre was Johnny Mnemonic in 1981), and the other authors in the genre (Sterling, Rucker, Shirley, Shiner) were writing similar stories around the same time.

Neuromancer was published in 1984 and the Cyberpunk TTRPG was published in 1988, so even if Pondsmith hadn't read Neuromancer, he'd still had plenty of time to be influenced by other writings in the genre (Rockerboys as a class - i.e. Johnny Silverhand - seems to be heavily inspired by Lewis Shiner's works, for example).

Neuromancer was probably the first "big hit" that made the genre more well known - up to that point, cyberpunk had been a niche in an already niche genre, so it's not that surprising that it's what most people think when they think "cyberpunk". I'm also fairly sure that Blade Runner was not influenced directly by cyberpunk literature at all, but by the same sources that inspired Gibson et al, so it ended up being the visualisation of what the cyberpunk authors were writing about entirely by accident - and as a relatively successful film, it has been a convenient example when trying to explain what cyberpunk is about to people who have no knowledge of the literature.

[Paulie]

Night City has spent almost half a centuryunder the dominate control of a Japanese Corporation. its only sensible that it resembles tokyo.

[Holografix]

cyberpunk emerged as an expression of the anxieties surrounding the rise of Japanese technology, culture, and business. this was the 1980s after all. hence the spectre of japanese culture that haunts Night City.

but i would argue that Night City is an analogue to contemporary Los Angeles rather than a 'dirty' Tokyo.

[𝕮𝖔𝖗𝖛𝖚𝖘]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paTW3wOyIYw

- Are you Ur- Urinoburasaka?
- What does NC mean?
- It means Japanese City.

[Tech Enthusiast]

Pretty sure most cities will look like that by 2077 actually.
During my visit to Night City, I constantly thought to myself: "Yep,... yep I can see that being a thing in 50 years. Exactly like that...".