What is Isekai?
Isekai (異世界 in Japanese) literally translates to "other world." In its simplest form, a piece of isekai media therefore features a character (or characters) being transported to another world. The character transported vary wildly, from a little British girl (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) to a Connecticut man (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court) to an English globetrotter (Gulliver's Travels) to schoolchildren (The Chronicles of Narnia) to Japanese otaku (Log Horizon). The worlds the characters are transported to also differ wildly from one another. In the broadest possible interpretation of isekai, a story that involves time travel of any kind (from Golf in the Year 2000 to Rip Van Winkle to Back to the Future) could be considered isekai. One could even argue that Encino Man constitutes a sort of "reverse-isekai."
But to place any story in which a character is transported into an unfamiliar situation ("another world") into the genre of isekai would be to balloon the genre to unmanageable proportions. Joseph Campbell literally postulates leaving the familiar world (and, therefore, traveling to "another world") as a major step in the hero's journey. If we are to restrict isekai to something more meaningful than almost everything, we are going to have to specify what we are talking about.
First, isekai, as a genre, involves the literal relocation of a character into another world. The character, therefore, does not possess the ability to return to his home via normal means. Thus, something like Star Wars, as foreign as the Death Star might seem to Luke, does not count. However, even restricting isekai to this sort of "accidental travel" story leaves it covering an immense amount of literature. From Futurama to Tom's Midnight Garden to A Princess of Mars. For this reason, "isekai" is typically taken to refer to a movement in Japanese media taking place in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. While certain texts such as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court fulfill many of the characteristics of isekai, we disclude them simply due to the circumstances of their origin. This is not to say that a discussion of isekai that includes such works as A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court or Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or The Chronicles of Narnia would not be valuable, but only that these works do not fall under the commonly accepted definition of "isekai." Simply put, try walking into an anime convention dressed as Hank Morgan and see how many people recognize you.
A discussion of where isekai comes from would necessarily include the above mentioned texts. Such stories of characters (usually children or young adults) being transported into fantasy worlds are isekai's obvious precursors. In addition, Japanese literature itself has a long tradition of "other world" tales, the most famous being the story of Urashima Taro, recorded in both the Nihongi and the Man'yōshū.
The modern genre of isekai arguably came into being in the 1980s and matured in the 1990s. It was during the 1990s that some of the best-known isekai emerged, including The Twelve Kingdoms, Magic Knight Rayearth, and Inuyasha. While these stories vary wildly, they share certain fundamental qualities. They all tell the story of a character (or characters) that are unwittingly transported into a fantastical world they are unfamiliar with. The character/s must utilize all their power and wits to survive in the world, earn the respect of the world's inhabitants, and fight off the forces of evil.
In 2001, Studio Ghibli released Spirited Away, which brought the genre of isekai (if not the term) to international attention. The film, like much early isekai, features a young girl who is suddenly transported to a strange world and must learn and grow and possibly return home. Interestingly, all of these four examples feature women as their protagonists. The Twelve Kingdoms, while it ultimately follows many characters, centers around Youko Nakajima. Spirited Away follows Chihiro, Inuyasha follows 15-year-old Kagome Higurashi, while Magic Knight Rayearth actually follows three eighth-grade girls. However, while the most famous isekai of the 1990s follow girls, the proto-isekai of the 1980s, such as NG Knight Lamune & 40 (also an early example of the "fantasy world" being a video game) and Aura Battler Dunbine feature boys. The pendulum-esque trends of isekai protagonists is a topic almost as fraught as their imperialist tendencies. And it becomes ever more complicated when one adds in the "gender-swap" stories, in which a male protagonist finds himself as a young girl in the parallel world (see The Saga of Tanya the Evil, Sword Art Online II, and, in a sense, OreTwi). Other papers will attempt to address these complications, as well as some of the still-to-be-addressed gender dynamics implicit in any discussion of imperialism.
The subgenre of "stuck in a video game" isekai began to emerge in the 2000s. .hack//Sign, released in 2002, was one of the first major anime to feature this concept. Other anime, such as NG Knight Lamune & 40, had featured similar plots as early as the 1980s, and American media (notably Tron) had also explored these themes, but it was with the release of the .hack franchise that the subgenre began growing in Japan. Then, in 2012, Sword Art Online, first a web novel, then a light novel, and finally an anime series, rocketed the subgenre into the limelight. Many novels, manga, games, and shows in which characters are trapped inside a video game popped up in the 2010s, the most popular being, in addition to the aforementioned Sword Art Online, Overlord and Log Horizon. Many other isekai, even if they do not take place inside a video game, borrow heavily from games to construct their worlds. In fact, some isekai shows such as Re:Zero and The Rising of the Shield Hero attempt (with varying degrees of success) to subvert this trope. Another popular (satire) isekai, KonoSuba, makes constant reference to this subgenre as well.
Now, in 2020, isekai is very well established. Isekai shows and manga are released constantly. The tricks and tropes are well known. Spoofs and satires and subversions and deconstructions are popping up. And anyone familiar with light novels and web novels will know of the droves of isekai released within those mediums. Often the only thing distinguishing one novel from the others is the changing of a slight factor in the premise. The character is strong, but he's too cautious. This character retained the use of his cell phone in the fantasy world. This character has a gun. Etc. and etc.
So, with a history laid out, we might start working to identify isekai's "common traits." Simply, a young Japanese man of average ability is transported into a fantasy world in which he can now excel. Perhaps the character is granted a unique power upon his transportation, perhaps something from his background (knowledge of modern science, for example) helps him, perhaps he retains an item (cell phone) that gives him an advantage. In this world he will probably meet many attractive young women, and partake in any number of exciting adventures. Much modern isekai peddles in wish-fulfillment. The things that made the protagonist a loser in real life (like being a lame nerd) give him an advantage in the new world. Thus, the audience (themselves, and I say this as one, lame nerds) can feel for a moment the satisfaction of being transplanted into a world that makes as much sense to them as their games and anime, in which their obsession with virtual novels somehow translates into womanizing, in which their ability to grind MMOs makes them a hero in something other than their own minds. To put it simply, this, like so much humans do, is escapism. And in this escapism, among these power-fantasies, among these dubious harems and social lunacies, imperialism can flourish.
What is Imperialism?
Imperialism is actually a swirly term. Most people know imperialism when they see it (the European powers in the 19th/20th centuries; the USSR in eastern Europe; America in the Pacific, Carribean, and Middle East; the Empire of Japan in east Asia) but they have a surprisingly hard time defining it. The chief issue is that imperialism is often confused and conflated with related (but importantly different) concepts like conquest and colonialism. Conquest can be imperialist, but it doesn't necessarily have to be, while colonialism, though often a mechanism of empire, is different from imperialism. Edward Said, perhaps the leading academic authority on the modes and theory of empire, argues that imperialism involves a center dominating a periphery (such as the British in India) while colonialism involves constructing colonies and injecting people into territories (such as the British in North America). The British in North America had no real intention of subjugating the natives, but pursued a broad policy of tolerating their (outside) presence if they did not interfere with the colonial project. If the natives began to interfere (including inhabiting land the British coveted) then the British would move to tricking them off it, paying them to leave it, or exterminating them outright. The British did not, however, make any real moves to conquer or subjugate the natives directly. They wanted the land, the resources, but (with some exceptions) did not seek to actually assert sovereignty (at least in practice) over the native people.
For contrast, the French in North America sought not to conquer nor to colonize. The French instead focused on setting up a trade network focused on the Mississippi River where they could exert their economic power to extract wealth from the region. This is similar to the policy taken by the British early on in India, as well as in China much later. The British had no intention of conquering China, nor did they mean to exterminate the people and settle it themselves. They simply wanted to establish outposts from which they could leverage their superior economic position to extract via largely commercial means as much wealth as possible. When the mechanisms of trade broke down (or began to not favor the British) they would move to employ martial force (the Opium Wars, for instance). However, this martial force was always in pursuit of economic goals.
In India, during the 19th and 20th centuries, Britain began what is perhaps the stereotypical imperial program. India was divided and conquered, and Britain (the metropolitan center, to borrow from Said) began to exert control over India (the periphery). And while the British set up something resembling a colonial infrastructure, they did not seek to supplant the Indian people directly. It was never the intention to kick the Indians off their land or exterminate it, but to extract their wealth via other means.
Given these examples, we can construct definitions of colonialism and imperialism. Simply, colonialism is the subjugation and subsequent assimilation or extermination of a native group for the purpose of establishing a permanent settlement of other people. The establishment of this settlement is brought about by importing people from the mother country, or by assimilating the natives so completely that they, themselves, become the mother country's "own people." The British in North America practiced textbook colonialism. The same is also true of the British in Australia and New Zealand. Imperialism involves the subjugation of another group in order to benefit the mother country, but does not involve the complete erasure of what makes those people others. Imperialism does not require extermination or complete assimilation. It usually involves a level of cultural assimilation, but not to the level where the native population becomes analogous to those of the mother country. Therefore, the British in India, the British in China, and the French in North America can all be said to have been imperialist, albeit in dramatically different ways. Furthermore, we should not confuse the level of conquest (as colonialism could be argued to constitute a more "complete" conquest) with brutality or horror. These factors arise more from specific programs and policies, and are not dependent on whether a power is engaging in colonialism or imperialism. Finally, we should keep in mind that these definitions allow for something of a spectrum between them. Nothing about this is (nor should it be) absolutely clear.
The Scramble
During the so-called Age of Imperialism, spanning roughly the 19th and early 20th centuries, the European powers (Spain, Italy, Portugal, Belgium, France, Germany, and, above all, the British) engaged in a rampant scramble of conquest and annexation, culminating in the late 19th-century "Scramble for Africa." During the Scramble for Africa, the vast majority of the continent fell under European control, and the European powers began often brutal (such as in the Belgain Congo) programs of imperial extraction. Simultaneously, the Europeans continued to bicker for economic predominance in Asia, and the United States began engaging in imperial projects throughout the Pacific. Taking after the example of the Europeans, Japan also began building an empire, taking the Ryukyu archipelago, Taiwan, and Korea.
The Europeans during this time, despite often calling their overseas possessions "colonies," were not engaging in the sort of colonialism they had earlier. Simply put, things now were less explicit. The Euro-American slave trade was extinct, the days of Jamestown were long gone. The Europeans instead operated via a logic of informal control. They would only assume formal political control over a region if it became strictly necessary. The Belgian Congo, during its most profitable (and most brutal) period was a private enterprise operating under a capitalist plantation model. While it was owned by the Belgian monarch, Leopold II, it was not an official possession of the Belgain state until 1908, when the other European powers forced Belgium to assume formal possession of it. A similar picture emerges when looking at India. The so-called British Raj, even when it came under the direct authority of Queen Victoria, was much less directly controlled than one might assume. Instead, the British maintained power through an intricate system of local officials and economic means, only resorting to direct displays of power when necessary.
The logic of this imperialism held that a people need not be subjugated all the time, but must, when the mother country sees it as advantageous, ultimately bow to her whims. One might look at a map of Africa in 1910 and be astounded by the degree of control Europe seems to exert over it. While it is true that Europe extracted an immense amount of wealth from Africa during this time, it was not via the methods one might expect. The political map of Africa in 1910 is, simply, a formal representation of a very informal situation. The Europeans operated according to a complex logic that, while they understood it, would have baffled more traditional imperial wannabes. What is most important, however, is to acknowledge that this method does not lead to a more "benign" type of conquest. In fact, some of the world's worst horrors took place under these programs. But assuming that large columns of British troops marched through every inch of Africa and, thus, claimed it for queen and country is misguided at best.
Cultural Imperialism
Cultural imperialism (not to be confused with post-modern, bisexual cultural Marxism) is closely related both to concepts of traditional imperialism and colonialism. Cultural imperialism, often practiced simultaneously with both imperial and colonial programs, is the process by which one group imposes their culture on another group. Cultural imperialism can be differentiated from other notions of cultural exchange due to the fact that it involves an imbalance of power. Some of the clearest examples of cultural imperialism involve programs to kidnap and "reeducate" members of other cultures. The United States' treatment of its indigenous people well into the 20th-century and China's ongoing treatment of its Muslim populations constitute two clear and brutal examples of cultural imperialism.
However, cultural imperialism does not have to be so overt. Nor does it necessarily need to be backed by state mandate. To illuminate the murky nature of cultural imperialism, we can refer to Foucault's notion of governmentality. Foucault interprets governmentality very broadly, locating methods of governance not only within official policy and legislation but also within families, education, religions, and interpersonal relationships. This relates closely to the concepts of imperialism already discussed. Informal power structures, as opposed to formal, clearly defined power structures, can be just as effective in maintaining subservience. To illustrate how this informal structure operates in our current age of imperialism, let us turn again to Said. Said, in investigating modern methods of cultural imperialism, suggests that the cultural legacy of the more formal age of imperialism has not disappeared. The unequal power balance between the imperialists and the victims that was inaugurated during the initial scrambles has been retained, and thus a more informal (but still powerful) system of cultural imperialism has remained.
At the risk of being reductive, we might trace the European imperial program from the extremely overt colonialism of the 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries through the less overt, informal imperialism of the 19th and early 20th centuries, and still through the even less overt, informal cultural imperialism of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This general trend can be observed in many different moments throughout history. After the American Civil War, with slavery completely abolished, the holders of wealth in the South nevertheless remained the plantation owners. Much of the wealth in the contemporary South can be traced back to these sources. If these slavers lost the source of their wealth, then why do their descendents remain wealthy into the modern day? Part of it is indeed due to passive incomes generated by existing capital, but a fair amount of their wealth was extracted from the African American population after the Civil War. Just because the overt, legally sanctioned practice of slavery ended doesn't mean that a more informal, but also effective, method of wealth extraction did not take its place.
Cultural imperialism, though it might not elicit thoughts of sparkling bayonets and angry gunboats, is not a force to be ignored. Whether it is the relatively overt practice of placing people into reeducation centers or Disney attempting to maintain the international supremacy of English or McDonald's installing itself on every street corner or the United States portraying itself as the world's hero in every action film or clothing companies attempting to portray western fashion as "regular" fashion, cultural imperialism is a real force with real consequences.
Why is Isekai Imperialist?
It is probably already obvious what pitfalls exist for isekai. A tale of someone being transported to another world needs to be careful that it does not begin justifying programs of imperialism. It is unfortunate that, to put it lightly, isekai has, thus far, not done a great job of this.
The chief issue is that, on the whole, isekai tends to reinforce imperialist stereotypes and myths that arose originally from imperialist programs. In a broader sense, isekai usually portrays the otherworldly protagonist as having an intrinsic advantage over the native population due, in some way, to his status as an outsider. It is not difficult to understand why somebody transported into a middle ages stand-in with a fully functioning cell phone would have a technological advantage. It is equally reasonable to assume that a modern military force transported to a time of knights and archers would enjoy a similarly massive advantage. The trouble is that these narratives of technological advantage, however loopy they may seem at first, do fall into a general imperialistic narrative of technological subjugation. A conqueror's superior technology, particularly military technology, is often what enables them to conquer in the first place. However, imperialists will often use their technological advantage not only as a mechanism to subjugate, but also as the justification for said subjugation. The America of the 19th-century, as it made its way westward, constantly argued that it deserved the westlands more than the natives because, due to their superior farming technology, they would be able to extract more material value from that land. The idea that the natives were not properly utilizing the natural resources they had access to, and thus the land should be taken from them and given to someone who would properly utilize them, fueled much of the so-called manifest destiny.
Technology, and technological sophistication, is often conflated with cultural advancement. While contemporary relativists will argue that such a thing as cultural superiority does not really exist, the notion of "advanced" cultures versus "primitive" cultures fueled an immense amount of imperialism in the past. Indeed, it continues to do so today. Often hand-in-hand with imperialist programs is the idea that the native populations are culturally incapable of effectively governing themselves. The lack of certain types of technology (what an imperialist might dub "advanced" technology) is seen as indicative of cultural incompetence. Thus, the thing that enables the conquest is the same thing that justifies it. Really, this mode of thinking can be boiled down to "might makes right." If someone gets conquered, they must have deserved it, or else they wouldn't have been conquered.
Not all isekai reinforces these notions. Not all isekai is imperialist. Some do subvert the imperialist expectations enough to be considered something else. And a good amount of isekai is not blatantly imperialist, but only imperialist insofar as it utilizes a set of genre conventions originally molded by imperialist assumptions . Very little anime is explicit enough to be condemned on its own for being vehemently imperialist. A good deal of isekai peddles in enough problematic tropes to be irksome, but not enough to be considered obvious propaganda. But much like how the Hollywood action genre is the de facto lapdog of the DoD, isekai, when taken as a whole, features enough worrying elements to raise concerns for the genre as a whole.
One show that does serve as an explicit endorsement of imperialism (cultural, military, technological, etc.) as well as a recruitment vehicle for the JSDF is Gate. Gate begins with a literal gate to another world popping up in central Tokyo. A large force of fantasy monsters emerge and begin rampaging through the city but are eventually contained. The JSDF make their way through the gate and find a fantasy world reminiscent of medieval Europe. An army moves to meet them but the JSDF annihilates them with their superior firepower. A ridiculous series of escapades commence, including the JSDF gunning down medieval bandits with attack helicopters and blowing a dragon out of the sky with jets. Gate, as a show, gets its kicks from depicting fantasy fools quaking at the sight of modern Japan. It is this massive imbalance of power, and the subsequent reveling in it, that makes Gate so disgustingly imperialist. While the vast majority of shows in the genre are nowhere near as blatant with their reveling, most of them feature troublesome tropes that gesture in this direction. Among the most prominent are the following isekai cliches:
- the protagonist brings with him something from our world that gives him a clear advantage over the native population.
- the protagonist is imbued with a special power that makes him especially powerful in the new world.
- the protagonist institutes a program of cultural or technological conversion in the new world.
- the male protagonist acts as a savior/protector to a primarily female native population.
A huge number of very popular isekai shows feature these elements. Gate has the JSDF embarking on a mission of martial conquest. The Rising of the Shield Hero features a protagonist protecting a harem of girls from the barbaric practices of their land. How Not to Summon a Demon Lord features a similar premise. In Another World with My Smartphone is more or less what it says on the tin. Those Who Hunt Elves has a party stomping around the fantasy landscape hunting elves with a tank. Outbreak Company has an otaku tasked by the Japanese government to spread his culture into a new world. That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime features a protagonist who is turned into a slime but imbued with abilities powerful enough to remake the new world.
These shows don't scratch the surface of everything that exists within isekai. The focus, point of view, framing, stories, and implicit morality within these shows almost always tend towards imperialist assumptions. Thus, it is fair to say that isekai, as a genre, is more imperialist than it is not.
However, the imperialist tendencies of isekai do not end with military/cultural/technological imperialism. Other aspects of imperialism, such as gender, play a critical role. For a discussion of how gender dynamics factor into this discussion, see "The Gender Dynamics of Isekai" and its accompanying piece, "The Gender Dynamics of Isekai - Data," both by American Oneironautics.
Why Does it Matter if Isekai is Imperialist?
Though this might be difficult for the pulp-producers to fathom, media matters. One piece of media may not matter, but media as a collective undoubtedly does. If media didn't matter, the actions of almost everyone over the last several hundred years would make no sense. Why would Goebbels pour such immense resources into film and radio production? Why would the USSR and China so closely dictate what kind of media their producers are allowed to output? Why would the CIA and the Department of Defense dump millions of American dollars into bribing Hollywood into portraying them favorably? Why have we all been subject to endless hours of corporate advertisements, planted news stories, sponsored content, media campaigns, talk show appearances, and general American apologism?
What some seem to miss is, as I've already stated, one piece of media doesn't necessarily matter. The same principle behind corporate advertising also applies here. Coca-Cola does not advertise because they are afraid that you haven't heard of them. They don't want to convince you that their soda tastes good. They certainly don't intend to entice you to drop whatever you're doing and rush to the store to buy a case. They simply intend to bombard you. They realize that if they bombard you with enough advertising, they can make it so that when you hear "soda" or "soft-drink," it is a can of Coke that pops up in your mind. They want Coca-Cola to become the default soda. Then, when you walk into a store unsure of exactly what you want but sure you want a soda, you'll absentmindedly reach for a Coke.
Furthermore, this type of advertising is focused just as much on raising consumers as it is on maintaining consumers. The idea here is simply that, if you grow up in a society inundated with Coca-Cola advertisements, the effect becomes all the more powerful. And if you're wondering why Coca-Cola continues to advertise even though, surely, their soda is already considered the "default" by most of America, it is because they want to indoctrinate the children (who might not yet have the conception of Coke as the default) as it is to force the rest of us to maintain our existing perceptions.
The truth is, Coca-Cola could afford to advertise less. They would likely still achieve their goals. However, they have decided that, given their practically infinite monetary reserves, the safest bet is to simply brute force their way into the American mind. If they inundate daily life with so much advertising, then they make it impossible to escape.
If it isn't clear by now, this strategy works. Thus, you can understand why "trends" in certain media, even if they appear relatively innocent, can become cause for concern. The goal of the ideology expressed in such trends is (much like Coca-Cola) to become self-evident. Coca-Cola is self-evident. It does not have to justify itself as a soda. It simply is a soda. It is the soda. So if, say, the police want to make it self-evident that they are the good guys, that they are necessary for our safety, and that they might need to step on a few civil liberties along the way, they just bombard the public with depictions of them doing just that and it working. This is not to say that the police are directly responsible for every piece of media involving cops. However, if, through years and years of persistent copaganda, they can dump enough such shows into the scene, or influence such shows to be made, or even push otherwise unrelated shows slightly in this direction, they can achieve for their ideology the status self-evidence.
For an example of how this works, consider the following. Let's say that, as of tomorrow, every piece of media you consumed routinely portrayed the sky as green. Every movie you watched had a green sky, every book described the sky as green, the sky was always green on the news, etc. and etc. Maybe one of every fifty or so texts you consumed showed the sky as blue, but in the rest it was always green. But when you looked outside, the sky would look blue. You'd talk to people around you, and they'd confirm that it was blue. But every time you turned on the television, whenever you opened a magazine, or looked at a newspaper, it would always be green. While this is somewhat of a ridiculous example, it illustrates how, given such pervasive media presence, you become the problem for thinking the sky is blue. You would begin to question your sanity. You are thus left with two explanations. Either you are misperceiving the color of the sky (and so are those close to you, evidently) or the media is embroiled in a vast conspiracy to trick you. You either start to believe the media despite yourself or become convinced of the conspiracy.
So what does this have to do with imperialism in isekai? Simply put, if enough isekai is imperialist, or espouses imperialism (that is to say, is imperialism becomes a dominant ideology within isekai), then imperialism (at least as far as isekai is concerned) becomes self-evident. From there, imperialism risks becoming self-evident not only in isekai but to the people who consume it. Now, quite without ever intending it, we have a bunch of overt imperialists running around. They might not know that they are imperialists, but if they're side-eying Africa in the same way they'd look at their fantasy cat-girl harem, is there really a difference? At the very least, imperialism would see an uptick in its support, and do we really need that right now?
I still might not have convinced you that poorly animated Japanese shows are somehow major cultural forces capable of warping the national ideology. And I never will, because they aren't. Isekai alone isn't the problem. But it can be part of the problem. And if it is part of the problem, then it is a problem.
Japan, much like the United States (and a healthy chunk of the rest of the world) has its own imperialist past it still needs to work on coming to terms with. Releasing things like Gate (a show heavily supported by the JSDF, shockingly), in which badass Japanese jets merc dumb dragons, and with the surprisingly explicit promise that, if you join the JSDF, you too can have a harem of elves and cat-girls, is, to say the least, a little tone-deaf. Wish fulfillment and stupid Apocalypse Now spoofs are all well and good, but these things can give way to a slippery slope, and should thus be, at the very least, thought about. In conclusion, before you run off to join America's next dessert-trot, just consider whether or not you're really going to find a fun fantasy world in which you'll prosper. Also, if there were any cat-girls (there aren't), Dick Cheney would've stolen them all a long time ago. There wouldn't be any left for you.
If you find that this piece did not go into enough specifics to prove it's argument (specifically, if you found the section "Why is Isekai Imperialist?" lacking), then you should look for "The Imperialism of Isekai - Three Case Studies," by American Oneironautics. That piece goes into more detail on how the focus, point of view, framing, stories, and implicit morality of isekai lend themselves to imperialist assumptions. Furthermore, it features more specific examples and in-depth analysis of three popular shows.