The Fiction of Kunst: A Re-reading of Heinlein

Kunst as the essence of science fiction (SF): An attempt to resolve the ceaseless conflict between the sciences and the humanities in order to pave a path through the so-called terra incognita of the SF genre.

— Aramaki Yoshio¹

Welcome to the Speculative Fiction of Aramaki Yoshio: Introduction to The Fiction of Kunst, by Takayuki Tatsumi²

A representative speculative fictionist in Japan, Aramaki Yoshio was born on April 12, 1933, in Otaru, Hokkaido, the northernmost of Japan’s four main islands, where his father was managing a quarrying company. The quarry in Otaru formed the primal scene of the author as is visible in his 1975 short story collection, Toki no Ashibune (Reed Boat of Time). After studying psychology at Waseda University (1954–57) and working for a publisher in Tokyo for a few years, he went back home to Sapporo, the capital of Hokkaido, in 1961, giving up the ambition of becoming a professional writer and the ideals of post-Marxist revolution. Thus, in 1962, Aramaki entered the department of civil engineering of Hokkai Gakuen University in Sapporo with the aim of taking over the family business from his father, the executive officer of several companies. An architect by training, he started running not only a construction company (Hokken Shouji) but also an art gallery (Sapporo Tokeidai [Clocktower] Gallery), patronizing quite a few talented artists in the city.

In 1965 his deep interest in science fiction led him to join the Hokkaido SF Club, in whose fanzine CORE (1965– 67) Arakami published a diversity of existentialist and psychoanalytical essays on science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, Alfred Bester, Mayumura Taku, and Tsutsui Yasutaka, the pioneer of Japanese metafiction who first discovered Aramaki’s literary and critical genius. Thus, Aramaki engaged in a heated debate in the fanzine UCHUJIN (Cosmic dust) between 1969 and 1970 with the young talent Yamano Koichi, the writer-editor of the first commercial speculative fiction quarterly NW-SF (1970– 82), who actually shared much of the same radical New Wave– oriented perspective as Aramaki, but who could not help but attack Japanese science fiction writers as imitators of their Anglo-American colleagues in his famous essay “Japanese SF: Its Originality and Possibility,” originally published in 1969 and reprinted in the March 1994 issue of Science Fiction Studies [vol. 21, no. 62] in North America (trans. Kazuko Behrens, Darko Suvin, and Takayuki Tatsumi). Now it is notable that the 1960s saw the rise of the New Wave movement promoting radical, surrealist and even countercultural “inner space”– oriented speculative fiction, with J. G. Ballard and Philip K. Dick as its champions. The New Wave radically questioned the conventional “outer space”-oriented science fiction and had a tremendous impact on Japanese science fiction writers including Tsutsui, Yamano, and Aramaki. It is this literary and cultural context of the 1960s that invited Aramaki to arm himself with cutting-edge approaches to science fiction and to make a professional debut in 1970 with his highly speculative fiction “Oinaru Shogo” (The great noon), a science fictional reinterpretation of Friedrich Nietzche’s “eternal return” theory based upon his earliest short story “Shimi” (Stain) in 1965, and his heavily theoretical science fiction manifesto “Jutsu no Shosetsu-ron” (The Fiction of Kunst: A Re-reading of Heinlein), a philosophical attempt to reread Heinlein with the help of Immanuel Kant’s The Critique of Judgment, both published in Hayakawa’s S-F Magazine. One of his earlier novellas, “Shirakabe no Moji wa Yuhi ni Haeru” (The writing on the white wall shines in the setting sun) won the 1972 Seiun Award, the Japanese equivalent of Hugo, voted and decided every summer at Japan’s National Science Fiction Convention. The year of 1972 also saw the publication of his first speculative meta-novel Shirokihi Tabidateba Fushi (Setting out on a white day leads to immortality), an expanded version of the 1971 novella “Aru Haretahi no Wiin wa Morino naka ni Tatazumu” (One fine day in Vienna in the woods) deeply influenced by the Marquis de Sade. This novel ended up...