Ishihara Fujio
Entry updated 31 July 2023. Tagged: Author.
(1933- ) Japanese sf author, science writer, inventor and bibliographer, who chronicled the publishing history of the genre in Japan in the days before the internet. A graduate in electronics from Waseda University, Ishihara initially worked in telecommunications for the Japanese phone company NTT, before becoming a professor at Tamagawa University. His debut work "Kōsoku Dōro" ["Highway"] (August 1965 S-F Magazine; fixup as Highway Wakusei 1967) features investigators from Earth who land on a planet where a departed Alien race has apparently constructed and then abandoned a global highway system (see Transportation), to which local lifeforms have adapted. It became the first of his Kōseiki Sekai [Light Century] series, a Future History exploring star systems and Life on Other Worlds in a notional sphere within a fifty light-year radius of our own. Ishihara also took an early interest in Computers and their likely implications for human society. Computer ga Shinda Hi ["The Day the Computers Died"] (1972), is a Disaster novel that prefigures similar real-world panic about the Millennium Bug.
His main impact is in nonfiction, as the archivist of the postwar genre in Japan, and a popularizer of science concepts in a wide range of books, spanning the science of the Manga Doraemon, serious accounts of Space Flight and the history of Communications. He received a Seiun Award for Kōseiki Sekai ["The Light Century"] (1984), the first of several guides to the milieu of his best-known fiction, loaded with astronomical data. In his meticulous detailing of likely conditions in nearby star systems, he provided strong foundations for later Hard SF authors, and has been cited by Hōsuke Nojiri and Yasumi Kobayashi as an influence on their own world-building. He revisited the topic in several other books, and was also one of the Japanese translators of Islands in the Sky: Bold New Ideas for Colonizing Space (1996; trans 1997) by Stanley Schmidt and Robert Zubrin.
His greatest work is the mammoth bibliography SF Tosho Kaisetsu Sōmokushiroku ["SF Grand Annotated Catalogue"] (1982, 1989-91), a multivolume list of all science fiction, domestic and foreign, published in Japan since 1946. An accretion of lesser magazine indices, it was seized upon in the academic community yet is almost entirely unknown in general fandom. During the data enclosures of the late 1990s, large parts of its content appear to have migrated to the internet, and form the uncredited basis for much online information on Japanese sf. Ishihara received Japan's SF Grand Prix in 1991 in recognition of his bibliographic work. In later life, he served on the board of Tokyo's controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where the spirits of Japan's military dead, including the perpetrators of several World War Two atrocities, are enshrined as Shintō deities. This led to his authorship of a book explaining the shrine's policies and history, which failed to lessen his estrangement from the liberal faction in Japanese fandom. [JonC]
Fujio Ishihara
born Tokyo: 1 April 1933
works
series
Kōseiki Sekai
- Highway Wakusei ["Highway Planet"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1967) [fixup: Kōseiki Sekai: binding unknown/]
- Antenna Wakusei ["Antenna Planet"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1967) [Kōseiki Sekai: binding unknown/]
- Struldbrugg Wakusei ["Struldbrugg Planet"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1975) [Kōseiki Sekai: binding unknown/]
- Black Hole Wakusei ["Black Hole Planet"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1979) [Kōseiki Sekai: binding unknown/]
- Time Machine Wakusei ["Time Machine Planet"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1981) [Kōseiki Sekai: binding unknown/]
- Hinioshio-go no Bōken ["Adventure of the Hinoshio"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1982) [Kōseiki Sekai: binding unknown/]
individual titles
- Ginga o Yobu Koe ["The Voice Calling the Galaxy"] (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1981) [binding unknown/]
- Gazō Bunmei ["The Artistic Enlightenment"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1968) [binding unknown/]
- Ikiteiru Umi ["The Living Sea"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1970) [binding unknown/]
- Shin Denki Mirai Monogatari ["Tales of the New Electronic Future"] (Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 1971) [binding unknown/]
- Computer ga Shinda Hi ["The Day the Computers Died"] (Tokyo: Kōbunsha, 1972) [binding unknown/]
- Kōseiki Patrol: Landau Genshisei ["Light Century Patrol: Landau Planet of Illusion"] (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1981) [binding unknown/]
- Uchūsen Orōmolf-go no Boken ["Adventure of the Starship Oromolf"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 1982) [binding unknown/]
- Yokosuka Catapult (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1982) [binding unknown/]
- Chikyū no Kora ["Children of Earth"] (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1984) [binding unknown/]
- Kaiyō Mirai Monogatari ["Tales of the Marine Future"] (Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten, 1987) [published in two volumes: binding unknown/]
nonfiction (selected)
- SF Tosho Kaisetsu Sōmokushiroku 1946-1970 ["SF Grand Annotated Catalogue 1946-1970"] (Tokyo: SF Shiryō Kenkyūkai, 1982) [nonfiction: pb/]
- Doraemon-shiki no Science: Technology Nyūmon ["Doraemon Style Science: An Introduction to Technology"] (Tokyo: Sōtakusha, 1983) [nonfiction: binding unknown/]
- Kōseiki Sekai ["The Light Century"] (Tokyo: Shōkabo, 1984) [nonfiction: binding unknown/]
- Ginga Ryokō to Ippansōtai-ron: Black Hole de Nani ga Mieru ka ["Galactic Travel and General Relativity: Can Anything Be Seen Inside a Black Hole?"] (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1984) [binding unknown/]
- SF Tosho Kaisetsu Sōmokushiroku 1971-1980 ["SF Grand Annotated Catalogue 1971-1980"] (Tokyo: SF Shiryō Kenkyūkai, 1989-91) [nonfiction: published in five volumes: pb/]
- Kōseiki Sekai e no Shōtai: Kinkyori no Kōsei o Saguru ["Invitation to the Light Century: Exploring Nearby Stars"] (Tokyo: Shōkabo, 1994) [nonfiction: binding unknown/]
- Kokusai Tsūshin no Nippon-shi: Shokuminchika Kaishō e Kudō no Kyūjūkyū-nen ["The International Communications History of Japan: 99 Years of the Agonies of Decolonization"] (Tokyo: Tōkai Daigaku Shuppansha, 1999) [nonfiction: hb/]
- Kōseiki Sekai Arukikata: Kinkyori Kōsei no 3D Guide Map ["Wandering in the Light Century: A 3D Guide to Nearby Stars"] (Tokyo: Shōkabo, 2002) [nonfiction: binding unknown/]
- Yasukuni Jinja Ichimon Ittō ["The Yasukuni Shrine: One Question at a Time"] (Tokyo: Tendensha, 2002) [nonfiction: binding unknown/]
- Hatsumei Tokkyo no Nippon-shi: Soseki o Oita Takahashi Korekiyo to Takamine Yuichi no Jinsei ["A History of Japan Through Patents and Discoveries: The Lives of Korekiyo Takahashi and Yuichi Takamine"] (Tokyo: Eikō Shuppansha, 2008) [nonfiction: binding unknown/]
- Kidō Elevator: Uchū e Kakeru Hashi ["The Orbital Elevator: Building a Bridge to the Stars"] (Tokyo: Hayakawa Shobō, 2009) [nonfiction: with Ryūichi Kaneko: binding unknown/]
- Kokusai Tsūshin no Nippon-shi: Shokuminchika Kaishō e Kutō no 99-nen ["A History of Japan Through International Communications: The 99-Year Struggle to Resolve Colonization"] (Tokyo: Eikō Shuppansha, 2010) [nonfiction: binding unknown/]
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