Fantasies of Europe, fantasies of Japan: Isekai and the narrative logic of Japanese Occidentalism

Abstract

This article uses the framework of literary Occidentalism to study how an unequal power relationship is staged between Japan and Europe within isekai, a popular genre of contemporary Japanese fiction. Within the standard isekai plot, a teenage Japanese boy is suddenly transferred into a fantasy version of medieval Europe. There, the protagonist is bestowed superpowers that let him exert great agency over this second world, where he embarks on an exciting adventure and generally acts as he pleases. This superpower mediates and assures the protagonist’s introduction of western modernity, under the mantle of Japanese custom, back to the West. By negating medieval Europe, ‘Japan’ thereby becomes its own fantasy, a site at once more modern than the West and yet identifiably Japanese. Engaging in close readings of two key isekai light novels, Yamaguchi Noboru’s The Familiar of Zero and Nagatsuki Tappei’s Re:Zero: Starting Life in Another World, this article specifies and identifies common narrative tropes within isekai such as an identification with Japan, a dismissal of Europe as irrational and misguided, a moralized rescue of Europeans with the protagonist’s superpower, and a dismissal of potential counterarguments to the protagonist’s moral presumptions.