Blade Runner 2049‘s official US release is this Friday, October 6. As not all of us can see the movie in its opening weekend, I’m offering a distraction from the wait.
Director Denis Villeneuve said the Blade Runner sequel “definitely has its roots in the first movie.” Nerdist agrees:
Blade Runner 2049 seems to take the look of the original and expand upon it.
What was the look?
The future version of Los Angeles in the original Blade Runner movie was a big part of its aesthetic. Rumor is that the mix of Chinese and Western design elements was inspired by Hong Kong’s former Kowloon Walled City.
From Wong Kin Yuen’s “On the Edge of Spaces” essay:
It is now widely acknowledged that Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner (1982/ 1992) initiated a whole tradition of cult movies later grouped under the label “cyberpunk.” Blade Runner‘s style draws its images from urban spaces all over the world, including such Asian cities as Tokyo and Hong Kong.
While the label is relatively old these days, new works continue to develop from the most iconic examples of cyberpunk. That got me thinking about how common Asian influences are in the English-speaking areas of the genre.
Here are several other works I’ve noticed mixing Western and Asian cultures in their near future worlds.
Novels by William Gibson
Many of the American-Canadian author’s novels from the 1980s to today blend Western and Asian cultures, with Japanese elements the most common in the background.
For example, Gibson‘s well-known Neuromancer opens in an expatriates bar in an real-life Japanese prefecture, and it quickly drops a reference to Kirin (the Japanese beer), compares fictional Japanese and Chinese technology, then introduces New Yen as “the old paper currency that circulated endlessly through the closed circuit of the world’s black markets”.
The Kowloon Walled City that influenced LA’s appearance in Blade Runner? It also appears as a virtual reality environment in Gibson’s Bridge trilogy.
Johnny Mnemonic
The Canadian-American movie is based on William Gibson’s short story of the same name. What sticks out to me the most is that the bad guys are Yakuza against a title character played by Keanu Reeves of mixed ethnicity (Chinese and Hawaiian on his father’s side).
Snow Crash (novel)
This novel by American author Neal Stephenson is what I first think of whenever the genre is mentioned.
Hiro Protagonist (whose role is exactly you’d assume from a name like that) is a Japanese-American hacker who fights with katanas in both Real Life and virtual reality. His family’s war history, representing the clash of Japan and The Allied Nations, plays a part in the main storyline, as well.
Much of the story takes place in Mr. Lee’s Greater Hong Kong–within former Los Angeles, because apparently, LA survives earthquakes but not government buyouts in this genre.
The Matrix series
Though Neuromancer features The Matrix, the movies followed another hacker in a different system–but not the same hacker Keanu Reeves played in 1995.
The Wachowskis famously stated their directing intentions for the first movie of The Matrix series by showing the producer Mamoru Oshii’s Ghost in the Shell animated movie (see below) and saying,
We wanna do that for real.
Predictably, The Wachowskis’ movies blended cultures and genre tropes to make their gritty mindbenders.
Serenity
“Can’t stop the signal,” said the hacker with an android lover to a rebel fighter.
The culture of this cyberpunk-esque movie sequel to the Space Western show, Firefly, is based on the believable premise that China dominated space development in our future. When the characters have cause to swear, they do it in Chinese. The psychic warrior fights with kung fu. Meanwhile, the urban backgrounds and costume incorporate pan-Asian elements.
Popular works originating from Japan
Western creators have obviously been inspired by something other than real human cultures these past forty years. The most popular cyberpunk works from Japan are nearly impossible to summarize here, so you get a simple list for illustration.
- Akira (1980s) manga (graphic novels) and anime (animated shows)
- Armitage III (1995) anime
- Bubblegum Crisis / A.D. Police (1980s and ’90s)
- Ghost in the Shell
(mostly 1990s to today) manga and anime–which also based its main city’s design on Hong Kong - More in manga and anime…
- More in films…
What else?
While I’ve seen mention of French science fiction that might belong here as mentions, I’m not familiar enough with any of them to include with any confidence. What am I missing? Go ahead and comment below.
Not Done Reading About These Influences?
Choose your white rabbit:
When Did Japan Stop Being the Future? (2009) on io9
Why is the future LA full of chinese in Blade Runner? (2011) on SciFi & Fantasy Stack Exchange
Why are so many ‘cyberpunk cities’ Asian? (2012) on reddit
Also, Cyberpunk Reddit members answered, Why is cyberpunk so heavily influenced by Japanese culture? (2015)
Art of Kowloon Walled City on Hong Kong Free Press
Shadow Fals 
OMG you listed Armitage III! I feel like even w/in the Anime culture, not a lot of people know of that movie. She was my first anime cosplay (to a LARGE anime convention) and no one knew who I was. Thank you for this! Great post!
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