History of the SFWJ

Japanese science fiction is probably best known internationally for its many giant monster and robot films in the tradition of Godzilla, and for futuristic anime such as Tetsuwan Atomu (Astro Boy) and Akira. In fact, however, it represents a long and varied tradition, little known or understood in the West.

Ever since the 1960s, one organization has been central to the growth and development of SF in the Japanese archipelago: the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan (SFWJ). The Nihon SF Sakka Kurabu (SF Writers Association of Japan), as the SFWJ was originally named, was inaugurated on March 5, 1963, at the Taiwanese restaurant Sanchinkyo, located in the Nishi-Shinjuku area of Tokyo.

Present were its 11 founding fathers. Eight of these­­—Ishikawa Takashi, Kawamura Tetsurō, Saitō Morihiro, Saitō Hakukō, Hanmura Ryō, Mori Yū, Mitsuse Ryū, and Yano Tetsu—would remain at the center of Japanese SF over the coming decades as scholars, translators, editors, critics, and authors. The editor Fukushima Masami would serve as de facto chair of the group. The remaining two founders, authors Komatsu Sakyō and Hoshi Shin’ichi, would be named among the “Three Masters” of Japanese science fiction, along with Tsutsui Yasutaka, who would join the club shortly thereafter.

A Pioneering Editor Leads the Way

Histories of American science fiction usually credit certain key editors with playing a pivotal role in the formation of the genre. The most famous, perhaps, are Hugo Gernsback and John W. Campbell, who served as editors of legendary magazines from the SF golden age, Amazing Stories and Astounding Stories, respectively. These two figures are the namesakes of two of science fiction’s most prestigious awards, the Hugo and the John W. Campbell.

There is, of course, no one-to-one equivalent for either Gernsback or Campbell in Japanese SF. However, Fukushima Masami could lay claim to many analogous achievements. In 1959, he founded and became editor-in-chief of SF Magazine, Japan’s first and now longest-running sci-fi monthly, and later proposed two crucial ideas: an international SF symposium, held during Fukushima’s lifetime in 1970, and a Japan SF prize, established several years after his death in the form of the SF Grand Prix.

Fukushima was also the leading figure behind the founding of the SFWJ. His main objectives, as recorded on an open-reel tape recorder brought to the inaugural meeting at Sanchinkyo, were to distinguish professionals from amateurs and achieve recognition for a genre whose creators were often viewed as “abnormal.”

During Japan’s SF golden age in the 1960s, many authors would cut their teeth writing for Uchūjin (Cosmic Dust), Japan’s first and longest-running fanzine, debut as pros in SF Magazine, land book deals with publishers such as Hayakawa Shobō, and hopefully be inducted into the SFWJ. In this way, club membership would serve as a symbol of prestige and a crucial element in the industry for decades to come.

For some members, joining the SFWJ was life-changing.

“As a reader of SF since childhood, it was a legendary organization,” says Kusaka Sanzō, a prolific SF editor who joined in 1999. “I never imagined I would be a member myself. It was like a dream come true.”

“For people in fandom like me, interacting with our favorite authors was like having beings from heaven descend to the mundane world to hang out with us,” says Kotani Mari, a feminist SF critic and theorist who is widely credited with being the first cosplayer in history. “That’s why I was ecstatic to join the ranks of the SFWJ. I still feel that excitement now.”

For others, the personal significance of SFWJ membership has been more ambiguous.

“When I joined, the SFWJ had the character of a social club. Since I’m the sort of person who keeps few friends and has trouble getting involved in lively group conversation, I took my induction as a procedural matter,” says Tobi Hirotaka, a leading author of the so-called third generation and recipient of multiple awards, including four Seiuns and two SF Grand Prixes. “I was neither especially happy nor sad.”

The Three Masters

The Three Masters—Komatsu Sakyō, Tsutui Yasutaka, and Hoshi Shin’ichi—are the “first generation” of SF authors commonly considered most influential. A comparison with the Big Three of post–World War II anglophone sci-fi—namely Arthur C. Clarke, Robert A. Heinlein, and Isaac Asimov—is tempting, but potentially misleading, as the oeuvres of their putative counterparts are highly distinctive.

Komatsu Sakyō (1931–2011) was 10 years old when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. He cites his experiences during the war as his prime motivation for writing science fiction. He studied Italian literature at Kyoto University before starting out as a writer of literary short stories and then converting to hard science fiction after stumbling upon the first issue of SF Magazine. Komatsu is best known for his 1973 novel Japan Sinks, in which the Japanese archipelago sinks beneath the Pacific Ocean and the surviving refugees form a diaspora. The apocalyptic novel would go on to sell 4.6 million copies and to be adapted as a 2021 drama, as well as the Netflix animation Japan Sinks: 2020. Of the Three Masters, Komatsu was perhaps the most cerebral and prophetic, exploring complex ideas through scientifically informed, intricate novels and numerous short stories.

Tsutsui Yasutaka (1934–) wrote his master’s thesis at Dōshisha University in Kyoto on psychoanalysis and surrealism, traces of which can both be found throughout his sprawling corpus. A humorous, provocative, and highly prolific author known for spanning and bending multiple genres, Tsutsui’s most popular work is his 1967 juvenile novel The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which has been adapted into several films, television shows, manga works, and an anime film. He also wrote a short story that parodies Japan Sinks, titled “Everything Sinks Except Japan.” Of the Three Masters, Tsutsui is the most experimental and versatile, winning numerous SF awards before going on to garner literary recognition in the 1990s and 2000s, both within and outside of Japan.

Hoshi Shin’ichi (1926–97) was a graduate of the prestigious University of Tokyo and the son of the founder of major pharmaceutical company Hoshi Pharmaceuticals, for which he briefly did a stint as president. Hoshi, the co-founder of Uchūjin, did write several novels, but he is primarily revered as the God of “short-shorts,” eventually penning over 1,000 flash-fiction works. These run the gamut from science fiction to fantasy, horror, and fabulism. He was the only one of the Three Masters who never won an SF Grand Prix for his fiction, but he did have the distinction of writing the first Japanese SF story to appear in English. This was Bokkochan, the titular story of his most famous collection, about a robot bar hostess who proves a femme fatale despite her total lack of intelligence. Translated into English by fellow founding father Saitō Hakukō (under his legal name Noriyoshi), it appeared in the June 1963 edition of the Magazine of Science Fiction and Fantasy.

Although widely revered, the Three Masters are by no means the only significant first-generation SFWJ members. Others include authors Hanmura Ryō, Hirai Kazumasa, and Mayumura Taku, not to mention the early manga creator Osamu Tezuka, whose sci-fi series Astro Boy would give birth to anime in the same year that the club was founded.

An International SF Symposium

In 1970, at the height of the Cold War, the SFWJ hosted science fiction luminaries from both the Eastern and Western blocs for an event known as the International SF Symposium. It was specifically arranged to coincide with the World Exposition held in Osaka; both events were the first of their kind in Asia.

“British author Brian Aldiss wanted to attend the Japan World Exposition and said, why not turn my visit into a symposium?” says Tatsumi Takayuki, professor emeritus of Keiō University and the world’s leading expert on Japanese cyberpunk. “Komatsu Sakyō accepted the offer and served as organizer.”

In addition to Aldiss, overseas participants included fellow Brit Arthur C. Clarke, American author Frederick Pohl, Canadian author and anthologist Judith Merril, and a number of Soviets, including editor Vasily Zakharchenko, writer Yeremey Iudovich Parnov, and H. G. Wells scholar Yuly Kagarlitsky. Held from August 29 to September 3, the symposium joined conventions in multiple cities, beginning in Tokyo, travelling to Nagoya, Aichi, and concluding in Ōtsu, Shiga, before a final visit to the nearby Expo ’70.

This experience would leave Merril so enamored of the domestic scene, Tatsumi explains, that she would remain in the country for two years to see local works translated into English. Her efforts did not immediately succeed, but they laid the groundwork for the first ever anthology of Japanese SF in English, The Best Japanese Science Fiction stories, published in 1989.

The Japan SF Grand Prix

In 1980, the SFWJ established the Japan SF Grand Prix, an award given out annually to an SF-related work published from September 1 of the previous calendar year to August 31.

Japan’s other major SF award, the Seiun, had existed since 1970, but whereas the Seiun was essentially Japan’s equivalent of the Hugos, voted on by fans who attended the Japan SF Convention, the Grand Prix would be chosen by SF professionals—in particular by a jury formed of SFWJ members. In being a juried award it is also distinct from the older Nebula Awards, which are voted on by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association (formerly the Science Fiction Writers of America) membership.

The SF Grand Prix was funded by publisher Tokuma Shoten through a special personal arrangement between then President Tokuma Yasuyoshi and Komatsu. Not restricted to literature, works in in any medium—from criticism and nonfiction, to anime and cinema—have been eligible for Grand Prix consideration from the outset. One of the earliest recipients, for example, was Ōtomo Katsuhiro for his manga Dōmu, a first try at a story similar to his later hit Akira.

The Heyday of SF in the Bubble Era

In the 1980s, when many Americans feared that Japan would gain technological supremacy and Japan itself came to represent the future to the world, inspiring cyberpunk writers like William Gibson (in his 1984 novel Neuromancer) to use the country as a science fictional setting, Japanese readers began to devour SF works like never before.

The number of SF publications released annually reached 400 in 1980 and peaked at 447 in 1985, with SF books typically printed in editions of 30,000 copies each. The economy was booming, salaries and stock prices climbed to all-time highs, and SFWJ authors could count on lucrative book deals.

The 1980s also saw female SFWJ members rise to the fore, including Motoko Arai, credited with pioneering the light novel sub-genre in such works as her Seiun-winning short story “Green Requiem,” and Mariko Ōhara, a feminist author known for exploring cyberpunk-inspired themes of body modification and gender in such novels as Hybrid Child, another Seiun winner.

While Japan’s science seemed ready to take over the planet, its science fiction had already taken over the country. But like the economy at large, the boom times were not to last. Beginning slowly in the latter half of the decade and accelerating after the collapse of the financial bubble in 1989, Japanese SF would enter into decline for more than a decade. This would kindle fresh controversy within the industry and force the SFWJ to evolve as it moved toward the new millennium.

The Winter of Japanese SF: Decline in the 1990s

Following its launch in 1963, the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan, or SFWJ, made great strides under its 11 founding fathers, in particular the “Three Masters” of the Japanese sci-fi scene: Komatsu Sakyō and Hoshi Shin’ichi, along with Tsutsui Yasutaka, who joined the group soon after its founding. In the closing decades of the twentieth century, though, Japanese SF publishing fell on hard times in what was called the “Winter of Japanese SF.”

In 1997, an interview with the incendiary title “All SF of the Past Decade is Garbage” appeared in the March edition of book magazine Hon no zasshi. Advertised on the cover as if to intentionally provoke controversy, the feature consisted of a conversation between two author/editor/translators, Kagami Akira and SFWJ member Takahashi Ryōhei, discussing the alleged decline of SF literature.

A response article in major newspaper Nikkei titled “State of the Japanese SF Ice Age” claimed that the genre was in such decline the word winter didn’t do it justice. Soon the SFWJ and the rest of the speculative fiction world were embroiled in an argument that spanned blogs, newspapers, and six issues of SF Magazine. This furor is commonly known as the “Winter of Japanese SF Debate” or alternatively as the “Japanese SF is Garbage Debate.”

Opinions concerning the decline—or whether there was indeed a decline at all—vary widely. What is clear is that sales of publications marketed as SF had fallen off sharply since peaking in 1985. Sci-fi magazines folded one after the next throughout the 1980s, but the onset of winter is sometimes dated to the closure of SF Adventure in 1993, after which only SF Magazine survived.

“The way I see it, the Winter of Japanese SF was due to a shortage of new writers,” says the SF editor Kusaka. “There was a period of nearly a decade without any new writers’ award, which meant no fresh talent. This made the genre appear as though it had lost its spark.”

 Other causes proposed in this period include the excessive influence of visual media such as Star Wars, the increasingly esoteric preferences of fandom, and the tendency of science fiction to masquerade as other genres, such as mystery.

Reform Efforts at the Turn of the Millennium

This industry chill left many authors less financially stable than in halcyon days and forced the SFWJ to reconsider its purpose. As Keiō University Professor Emeritus Tatsumi Takayuki notes in his fiftieth-anniversary history of the SFWJ, published in the January 2013 issue of SF Magazine, while the Japan Writers Association provided everything from health insurance and copyright management to the tending of authors’ graves, and the Mystery Writers of Japan offered a safety net for its members, the SFWJ continued to function primarily as a social club. Aside from administering the Japan SF Grand Prix and organizing membership assemblies, the only SFWJ activities to speak of were parties and occasional trips to hot-spring spas. The main perquisite of membership was proximity to revered authors of yore.

In response to the publishing market woes, some members began to see the need for change. One of these was feminist cyberpunk author Ōhara Mariko, who in 1999 became the SFWJ’s first female chair, alongside the feminist critic Kotani Mari as deputy chair. According to Kotani, Ōhara was a vocal proponent of transforming the SFWJ into a corporation with a board of directors and systems of palpable support for its members, but it would be nearly 20 years before this vision was realized.

In the meantime, Ōhara’s tenure as chair spurred various efforts to reinvigorate the association and the SF community at large. To generate revenue, the SFWJ began to curate books for publication, starting with an introduction to speculative fiction and an anthology in 2001. To overcome the paucity of neophyte talent, it established the Japan SF New Writers Award (1999–2009) and the Japan SF Critic Award (2006–14), which it began to administer in addition to the Grand Prix. In 2012, it also established the web magazine SF Prologue Wave.

Nippon 2007 and International Recognition

The efforts of the Canadian author Judith Merril and others to champion Japan’s SF works abroad notwithstanding, Japanese sci-fi literature entered the new millennium still largely untranslated into English and other European languages. This would begin to change in 2007, when Japan became the first region in Asia to host the World Science Fiction Convention. Held in the city of Yokohama, Kanagawa, Nippon 2007 saw sci-fi heavyweights from both sides of the Pacific meet for the first time.

The SFWJ would play a central role in organizing the convention, Kotani recalls, after fandom experienced internal difficulties and requested the association’s help. Initially, members expressed reservations, preferring to hold a pro convention nearby rather than work alongside SF amateurs. But in the end, the opinion that the SFWJ had a duty to global SF prevailed.

“It was a miracle how everyone worked together as a team to make the event happen,” says Kotani, who considers Nippon 2007 one of the happiest times of her life.

“With many prominent creators visiting Japan and numerous vibrant events and parties, it was a very fulfilling experience,” says the award-winning author Tobi Hirotaka. “The convention was held immediately after the debuts of Toh Enjoe [Enjō Tō] and Project Itoh [Itō Satoshi], authors who would revolutionize the genre in the 2010s. Their work would soon be translated into English and both would win major awards. Particularly memorable was a chat among these two, Sakurazaka Hiroshi, author of the novel that would be adapted into the film Edge of Tomorrow, the eminent philosopher Azuma Hiroki, and the American author Ted Chiang.”

Released at Nippon 2007 was the first edition of Speculative Japan, a series of short story anthologies published by the Kyūshū-based small press Kurodahan. This first wave of new English translations was followed in 2011 by the founding of Haikasoru, an imprint of the multimedia corporation Viz dedicated to the publication of Japanese SF. Two of Haikasoru’s titles, Harmony by Itoh and Self-Reference Engine by Enjoe, would go on to win Philip K. Dick Award special citations, in 2010 and 2013, respectively. Other works published in the same period, including Tobi’s novella Autogenic Dreaming, would garner both scholarly and critical attention.

Upheaval in the 2010s

In 2012, while the nation still reeled from the 3/11 earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear disaster, publisher Tokuma Shoten decided to withdraw its support for the SF Grand Prix after 33 years as the main sponsor. It was Komatsu who had originally secured their sponsorship through a personal agreement with then company President Tokuma Yasuyoshi. But Tokuma passed away in 2000, and when Komatsu also died in 2011, the publisher decided the following year that the informal pledge no longer stood.

“There was a critical point where it didn’t look like the SF Grand Prix would survive,” says Kusaka Sanzō. 

Into this crisis stepped the author Tōno Tsukasa, who was inaugurated as SFWJ chair in 2013. Taking it as his mission to save the SF Grand Prix, he organized a secret committee to revamp the award so that it could be pitched to new sponsors and corresponded and attended in-person meetings with representatives from numerous candidate companies. Thanks to the efforts of Tōno and others, the telecommunications and media company Dwango officially agreed to sponsor the SF Grand Prix just weeks before the thirty-fourth award ceremony, ensuring in the nick of time that it could be administered without interruption.

In 2013, while the future of the award remained uncertain, the SFWJ celebrated its fiftieth anniversary with a series of special magazine issues and events. The most significant of these was the second International SF Symposium, held on July 19–29.

Although not as groundbreaking, perhaps, as its Cold War predecessor in 1970, it did achieve similar symbolic poignancy, beginning in Hiroshima, where the first atomic bomb fell, and ending in Fukushima, where the Fukushima Daiichi reactors had melted down just two years earlier, with stops along the way in Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya, and Tokyo. Participants included many big names of Japanese SF and the American authors Pat Murphy and Paolo Bacigalupi.

In a single year, the SFWJ had preserved continuity of its flagship award and successfully concluded its semicentennial celebrations. However, the relief and jubilation would not last.

Membership Policy Scandal

In the May 21, 2014, edition of the Asahi Shimbun, an article titled “Japanese SF in Dire Straits: Books Flopping at Home Despite Foreign Praise” criticized the SFWJ for its insularity. The complaint centered around the refusal to induct the prolific editor, anthologist, and translator Ōmori Nozomi. This rejection came in spite of an SFWJ jury awarding Ōmori the 2013 Grand Prix for the tenth edition of his Nova short story anthology series.

Many members resigned from the SFWJ in protest, including Azuma Hiroki, main shareholder of the Genron SF writing school (Japan’s answer to the Clarion Workshop), which employs Ōmori as a teacher.

“If you don’t want to contribute to the club’s insularity,” Azuma tweeted, “I think the only rational conclusion is to leave or decline to join.”

Although this was the most publicized case of rejection in spite of impressive SF credentials, it was not the first. The tendency seemed to stem from membership policy.

“In the period before I was accepted, new members required the unanimous agreement of the entire assembly, and in fact I was rejected several times,” says Takano Fumio, a multiple-award-winning and genre-bending author whose novel Swan Knight will be published in English in 2024 by Luna Press. “Apparently someone disliked me for very mildly critiquing the work of SFWJ members and the operation of the Grand Prix.”

Club rules were revised in 2005 so that anyone who had received three member recommendations or the Grand Prix could be put to a membership vote, with two-thirds support required for entry. However, Ōmori’s admission was nevertheless declined.

“The SFWJ was an organization that represented the genre while at the same time being a smaller group created within the genre, and this character was tolerated insofar as it was nominally a social club,” says Tobi. “However, as the central entity behind projects that carry public significance such as the Japan SF Grand Prix, the association needs to be operated according to a robust system that ensures the trust and recognition of regular people with no connection to the genre, or even those who are hostile to it.”

Incorporation and Diversification

It was the author Fujii Taiyō, winner of an SF Grand Prix and a Seiun for his novel Orbital Cloud, who came to the rescue. During his tenure as SFWJ chair in 2015 and 2016, he served as the driving force behind the push to finally incorporate on August 24, 2017. According to Fujii, who is also a member of the US-based Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers Association, or SFWA, he took hints during the reform process from several SFWA business meetings that he attended.

“The SFWA had just moved to the West Coast of America and incorporated as an NPO, so there was lots of discussion about creating new functions for the organization,” Fujii recalls. “I could see that many of their efforts would be for the benefit of writers and thought that we should imitate.”

Now admission of prospective members who receive three recommendations or a Grand Prix is decided by an elected board after consultation with membership.

Membership diversity has since increased. My application after publication of my first novel, Cash Crash Jubilee, in 2015 was rejected (although to be fair, I had zero recommendations), but I was inducted in 2020 and am now the only member who writes fiction in English. Another member, Lu Qiucha, writes in Chinese. The SFWJ has forged ties with the newly formed Science Fiction Writers Union of the Republic of Korea (SFWUK). It has also admitted an employee of the Future Affairs Administration, a brand of the Shanghai Guoyue Culture and Creative Corporation that works to expand the global reach of Chinese science fiction.

Ōmori himself was inducted in January 2021. Azuma and others have yet to rejoin.

“Some people may have fought when we were a social club, but now everyone can pursue their own objectives under the umbrella of the association,” says Takano. “What I’d like to see going forward is everyone striking out in their own direction, without interfering with those they don’t like. This is the meaning of diversity.”

The Future and Beyond

Many authors who made important contributions to Japanese SF have had little or nothing to do with the SFWJ. For some, this is because their work was classified as literary rather than as science fiction. These include Murakami Ryū, Murakami Haruki, Ogawa Yōko, Murata Sayaka, and Hirano Keiichirō. Another group of authors won the Grand Prix but never joined the association, including Furukawa Hideo, Toh Enjoe, and Morimi Tomihiko.

However, the SFWJ remains a key locus for Japanese SF talent. With over 400 members and counting, it is poised to expand its reach and importance through the twenty-first century.

This essay was original published on Nippon.com in two parts, part 1 (1963-1989) Sixty Years of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan and part 2 (1990-2020) A Science Fiction Rejuvenation in the New Era: Looking Back at 60 Years of Japanese Sci-Fi