Acid Japonisme
Visionary Japanese sci-fi author Izumi Suzuki anticipated our present malaise decades ago, in writing that combines melancholy for the failure of sixties radicalism with scepticism about a world of ubiquitous screens.
Students clashing with the police during a demonstration against the construction of a giant new airport at Narita, 30 miles east of Tokyo on 26 February 1968. Students claimed the new airport would be used as a US military air base. Farmers, whose land was being used for the airport, joined the students against the police.
‘You want to go ask people what’s going on, don’t you?’ a character says to another in Izumi Suzuki’s 1982 story ‘Hey, It’s a Love Psychedelic!’, as time spins out of joint. ‘There’s no point. You can’t go around telling people the world isn’t what it’s supposed to be. Nobody’s gonna listen.’ A decade and […]
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