The Purehearted Major: On Innocence

Translators’ Introduction

Born in Toyama Prefecture, Japan, in 1958, Kotani Mari is a major science fiction and fantasy author and critic, who taught cultural studies as a visiting professor of the School of Information and Communication at Meiji University from 2013 through 2015. She served as vice president of SFWJ (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan) from 1999 through 2001; and also as Chair of the Women Writers Committee of Japan PEN Club from 2003 through 2011. Deeply influenced by the theories of Donna Haraway’s cyborg feminism and Marleen Barr’s feminist fabulation, Kotani’s first book Joseijo muishiki: Techno-gynesis josei SF-ron josetsu (Techno-Gynesis: The Political Unconscious of Feminist Science Fiction) (Keiso shobo, 1994), was a collection of provocative articles on Ursula K. LeGuin, James Tiptree Jr., Tanith Lee, Connie Willis, Octavia Butler, and even K/S (aka slash) fiction. She consequently won the 15th Japan SF Grand Prize (SFWJ), the Japanese equivalent of the Nebula Award in 1994. Her second book Evangelion as the Immaculate Virgin (Magazine House, 1997) sold more than 80,000 copies and popularized the author as an authority on anime and feminism. What is more, she was involved with the case of “sexual / textual harassment,” the civil suit #1182, which she won in December 2001. Kotani translated Joanna Russ’s How to Suppress Women’s Writing (originally published in 1983; reprinted in Japan by Inscript in February 2001). This case and her collaborations with other feminist scholar-critics established Kotani as an important feminist activist.¹

Kotani has regularly published reviews and essays in Nihon-Keizai Shimbun (the Japanese equivalent of the Wall Street Journal), Hayakawa’s S-F Magazine, and S-F Studies. Her collaborations include Blood Read, edited by Joan Gordon and Veronica Hollinger (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997). She is also well-known for translating Donna Haraway’s “The Cyborg Manifesto,” included in Takayuki Tatsumi’s edited Cyborg Feminism: Haraway, Delany and Salmonson (Treville, 1991), the winner of the 2nd Japan Translation Award. In 2001, Kotani also helped found the Japanese Association for Gender Fantasy and Science Fiction and the Sense of Gender Award, as the Japanese equivalent of the Tiptree Award (currently called the Otherwise Award).

Being widely recognized as the legendary first cosplayer in Japan and elsewhere— a case of mistaken identity— nonetheless, she was the initial impetus for what became cosplaying anime and manga characters through her performance of Tavia in A Fighting Man of Mars at ASHINOCON, the 17th Japanese National SF Convention held at Hakone Ashinoko (Lake Ashi), Kanagawa Prefecture in August 1978. Kotani also established in 2003 the annual Kotani Cup for celebrating the best cosplayer at Japanese national SF conventions held every summer.

Kotani’s major article, “The Purehearted Major: On Innocence,” reprinted here, is the last chapter of her seventh monograph Tekuno goshikku (Techno-Gothic) (Homusha Publishers, 2005). Inspired by the techno-goth style of her admired British fantasy author, Storm Constantine, Kotani collected essays on Bram Stoker’s Dracula, Ōhara Mariko’s Ephemera the Vampire, Riche Tanker-sley Cusick’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the Wachowskis’ The Matrix, and other works, paving the way for gender-bending poetics.

The Haunted Castle’s Case File

The hyper-city teems with evil spirits.

It is a megalopolis portrayed like the grand edifice of a temple, a castle filled with monsters, demons, and ghosts. As an urban portrait otherwise drawn with scrupulous, scientifically framed realism, why is it filled with such inexplicable demonic figures?

This thought came to me as I read Shirow Masamune’s manga Ghost in the Shell 2 (2001), finding supernatural elements like ghosts, spirits, and sorcery amid its detailed portrayal of the bureaucratic structures within a hyper-informatic society. The blithe, lively surface of the text seems to hide a murky undertow of unease beneath it. Looking at the style of Oshii Mamoru’s adaptation of it into anime, which seems to critique the original by excessively reading into these unsettling elements within high-tech society, I came up with a term for the resulting aesthetic: the techno...