The Chinoiserie Genre

Readers familiar with the Pulp Revolution have certainly by now heard that with the death of the pulps, many genres fell out of favor. Hero pulps, sword and sorcery, and planetary romance have all declined from the heyday of the 1930s, often replaced entirely by other expressions of fantasy and science fiction. Yet as we return to reading the pulps instead of what people say about the pulps, whispers of other genres appear. For instance, hidden among the three proud pillars of weird fiction – horror, science fiction, and fantasy – is a fourth genre, one as exotic as its name: chinoiserie.

Chinoiserie first started in the 18th century in the visual arts. European artists impressed by Chinese artistry began to imitate the Eastern designs, incorporating them into pottery, furniture, decor, gardening, and even music. The appetite for chinoiserie grew with the perception of China as a highly civilized culture, even beyond the European norms. The artistic movement continues to the present day, with many works of chinoiserie available online. As with many artistic movements, this fascination with exotic cultures made a jump into literature.

Literary chinoiserie began as an exploration of unfamiliar Oriental cultures as perceived by Western writers.  While the visual arts quickly distinguished between Chinese-influenced chinoiserie and Japanese-influenced japonisme, no such distinction was made in the literary world, with chinoiserie describing Persian, Byzantine, Japanese, Tibetan, and Chinese stories. (Despite convention, I will be using chinoiserie and japonisme to differentiate the two flavors of literary chinoiserie.) However, the term quickly narrowed to Pacific Asian cultures, with the Chinese association dominating. Literary chinoiserie expresses itself in three major forms; the exploration of Chinese lands, the exploration of Western ideas of Chinese culture in both its homeland and its diaspora settlements, and the exploration of an idealized China that never was. Occasionally, Western culture would dress up in chinoiserie robes for the purpose of satire, as in Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. But common to all expressions is the idea of the outsider looking into another culture not his own, and not always understanding what is seen. One does not write chinoiserie of their own culture. The Chinese author of the Three Body Problem, Cixin Liu, writes Chinese science fiction, while Peter Grant writes chinoiserie science fiction dealing with Chinese triads in space in his Maxwell Saga.

Perhaps the most sensationalized version of chinoiserie, yellow peril is the tendency of pulp writers to use Chinese as villains, as popularized by the Lord of Strange Deaths himself, Fu Manchu. Hidden in every shadow were copycat secret societies led by cunning occult mentalists and sensuous deceitful dragon ladies. This was primarily a staple of weird menace, a sensationalist genre of lurid stories where a dreadful and mysterious terror, usually occult or supernatural, threatens to overtake the hero unless he acts. This Chinese threat was not the only staple of the genre, as fantastic, mythological, and scientific terrors would also loom in the pulps, however the trope was common enough to have its subversions and aversions, with the honorable and heroic detective Charlie Chan as the most famous antithesis to yellow peril villains.

Chinoiserie’s fascination with exotic China found a home in the pulps. The Shadow’s first adventure, The Living Shadow, found the Knight of Darkness playing master of disguise in Chinatown to root out a hidden killer. Counter to convention, this killer, Diamond Bert, only posed as a Chinese mastermind. Among the imitators of the Shadow, the Green Lama featured an American student of the Tibetan Lamas using Eastern secrets to defeat Western criminals. Sidney Herschel Small wrote adventures of Asia and American Chinatowns. E. Hoffman Price led the parade of writers of Weird Tales who would use chinoserie, many of which would claim that their stories had been discovered in the markets of China and Istanbul. Clark Aston Smith wrote a prose poem describing two lovers separated by centuries in his “Chinoiserie.” Manly Wade Wellman’s occult investigator, John Thunstone, would test his metal and that of a holy blade against a cursed Gurka honor sword in “The Dai Sword.”

As the pulp age faded, so did literary chinoiserie. But the fascination with China lived on. Robert van Gulik found a copy of The Celebrated Cases of Judge Dee in a second-hand store and translated the fictional account of Tang dynasty judge Di Renjie into English. Van Gulik then wrote an entire series of new adventures for Judge Dee, starting with The Chinese Maze Murders. The adventures of the Sinanju master assassin Chuin and his worthless assistant Remo Williams filled book after book of the men’s adventure series The Destroyer. Andre Norton brought a taste of China to gothic romance in The White Jade Fox, where an antebellum governess must keep her charge’s Chinese treasures safe from her stepmother. E. Hoffman Price would return to chinoiserie in The Devil Wives of Li Fong with the tale of the serpent Mei Ling as she protects her family from Taoist magic. Finally, in perhaps the brightest gem of the chinoiserie crown, Barry Hughart’s Bridge of Birds chronicles the adventures of the sage Master Li and the villager Number Ten Ox as they face off against crooked peddlers, rabbity tax assessors, exalted lords, and the machinations of the gods themselves in search of a cure for the kuu poison affecting their village’s children.

Inspired by Bruce Lee’s fame and Hong Kong cinema, movies such as John Carpenter’s cult-classic Chinatown misadventure Big Trouble in Little China and Disney’s Mulan took the torch of chinoiserie from literature, created beloved classics of the silver screen in the process. Chinoiserie also moved to video games with the gory martial-arts fighting series Mortal Kombat and Bioware’s  Jade Empire, an RPG homage to the Shaw Brothers‘ kung-fu movies, while the short-lived Firefly television series added a Chinese voice to the strange conversation between Japanese samurai films, American westerns, and science fiction as a whole. More recently, the martial arts cartoon Avatar: The Last Airbender explored a fantasy version of China, mixing Western alchemical elements with Chinese martial arts. The tradition continues into this decade, with Wu-Tang Clan’s RZA starring in The Man with the Iron Fists, a loving tribute to the grindhouse days of blacksploitation and the Shaw Brothers’ cinema.

As China moved from the written page into the theaters and small screens, Japan took over the written word. James Clavell’s Shogun and Jessica Amanda Salmonson’s fantasy adventures of female samurai Tomoe Gozen are among the first novels reflecting the shift from chinoiserie to japonisme. As Japan rose again to become an economic power and a media giant in the 1980s, American fascination with the Land of the Rising Sun grew, spilling over into its stories. Perceptions of present day Japan are explored in thrillers like Michael Crichton’s Rising Sun, lost-in-translation misadventures like Isaac Adamson’s Tokyo Suckerpunch, and lost to reality gamer webcomics such as Megatokyo. Continuing the tradition created by Lafcadio Hearn’s Kwaidan, the folklore and mythology of Japan are explored in novels such as Kij Johnson’s The Fox Woman and Lian Hearn’s Tale of Shikanoko series. Japanese history from the Heian court to the Warring States forms the backdrop for I. J. Parker’s Akitada mysteries, the Yamada Monogatari series of Richard Parks, and the classic Tales of the Otori. Japanese elements flavor John Wright’s Daughter of Danger, Neil Gaiman‘s Sandman and American Gods, and indie works such as Rawle Nyanzi’s Sword & Flower and countless others. And the thirst for all things Japanese (and japonisme) has yet to be quenched.

Perhaps the reason why chinoiserie and japonisme do not get the recognition that other genres do is because they combine so well with other genres. Chinoiserie rarely stands alone in a story, but crosses with action, with detective mystery, with noir, with fantasy, and even with science fiction to bring a exotic flavor to those genres. It has been easy to lose sight of the influence of chinoiserie as this weird fiction genre has drifted into the historical fiction and literature shelves. However, the influence of the East upon weird fiction is unmistakable, and chinoiserie is as much a founding genre as fantasy, science fiction, and horror.

Review - The Living Shadow: Chapter 1

Out of the darkness came a being of the night to give Harry Vincent another chance; a chance to live his life with enjoyment, danger and excitement; a chance to risk it for an honorable cause in the service of the mysterious character known only as The Shadow!

*****

Far be it to me to add one jot to the advertisement for the very first novel of The Shadow, 1931's The Living Shadow, especially when it sums up the events so well. Written by Walter Gibson under the house name of Maxwell Grant, this novel would create new genres, from the hero pulps to superhero comics, and usher in the media empire that was The Shadow.

Yet for how ubiquitous the Knight of Darkness would become, his first case begins not with the narrative eye on Kent Allard, Lamont Cranston, or whatever nom de guerre The Shadow claims as he fights his war against crime. Instead, we are introduced to Harry Vincent, a man who had just received a "Dear John" letter from the woman who used to be his girl back home. Overtaken by a pity party, he heads out to a bridge and jumps. But his suicide is not to be...

Something clamped upon his shoulder. An iron grip held him − balanced between life and death. Then, as though his body possessed no weight whatever, the man felt himself pulled around in a sweeping circle. He staggered as his feet struck the sidewalk of the bridge.

He turned to confront the person who had interfered. He swung his fist angrily, but a hand caught his wrist and twisted it behind his back with irresistible power.

It was as though the man's strength had been wrested from him when he faced a tall, black−cloaked figure that might have represented death itself. For he could not have sworn that he was looking at a human being. 

The stranger's face was entirely obscured by a broad−brimmed felt hat bent downward over his features; and the long, black cloak looked like part of the thickening fog.

This mysterious stranger demands a price for Harry's rescue:

"Your life," said the stranger's voice slowly, "is no longer your own. It belongs to me now. But you are still free to destroy it. Shall we return to the bridge?" 

"I don't know," blurted Vincent. "This is all like a dream; I don't understand it. Perhaps I did fall from the bridge, and this is death that I am now experiencing. Yet it seems real, after all. What good is my life to any one? What will you do with it?" 

"I shall improve it," replied the voice from the darkness. "I shall make it useful. But I shall risk it, too. Perhaps I shall lose it, for I have lost lives, just as I have saved them. This is my promise: life, with enjoyment, with danger, with excitement, and − with money. Life, above all, with honor. If I give it, I demand obedience. Absolute obedience. You may accept my terms, or you may refuse. I shall wait for you to choose."

Harry instantly agrees, and the man ushers him into a taxi which will take him to a hotel that will provide him food, lodging, and clothing--and a way to recieve this man's future orders. Along the way, though, some highwaymen force the cab off the road. They attempt to rob him, but get only lead from the mysterious man's pistol

***** 

So far, The Living Shadow is relatively straightforward, using Harry's plight to hook the reader on who this mysterious rescuer might be. It even ends with a quick action sequence, that, from Harry's perspective, is akin to a thriller movie where a person can hear fighting outside, but only occasionally sees the combatants when they crash against the glass. This fight is both suspenseful and economical, accomplishing its mission in four paragraphs. 

Already the difference in story telling fashion is apparent. With the success of Star Wars, the monomyth structure known as The Hero's Journey has become ubiquitous. Certain beats, like the Call to Adventure and Refusing the Call are now expected and expected to fill the first quarter of the adventure. The Living Shadow breezes through this phase in the first 1200 words, tossing the idea of Refusing the Call out the window in the process. Not only is The Shadow that convincing, his adventures were written in a time where writers were relatively unconcerned with delving into the motivations and reasoning of making a decision. Instead, they focused instead on exploring the consequences of a decision, as was expected in a morality play. Good intentions could lead to bad results, and bad results were the effect of a poor decision. Thus Harry leaped at the opportunity given to him. We will see if he made the right choice in the next 36 chapters.

But it is also important to remember that Harry Vincent is not the hero of The Shadow. He's just the protagonist and occasional viewpoint character. At the dawn of the hero pulp, Walter Gibson introduced the idea of a proxy hero. And while The Shadow's methods, agents, mysteries, and stories were copied by his imitators in both the hero pulps and superhero comics, few copied this device. Walter Gibson explains more in "A Million Words a Year For Ten Straight Years":

You must treat your character as a discovery, rather than your own creation. Treat him, not just seriously, but profoundly. Picture him as real, and beyond you, in mind as well as prowess. Feel that however much you have learned about him, you can never uncover all. This mental attitude gives you a deeper knowledge of the character than the story itself discloses. 

The plot induced by this process will normally require a lesser character who may be termed the "proxy hero." He is the person, along with others like him, who is matched against the villains of the piece, in a theme which is really the personal saga of that all-important lead character, who is developed through his influence and action towards the lesser figures. 

The proxy can be replaced by another, even from the wrong camp. The unity lies in the lead character's identity with the plot. When incidents and situation are fed to him, they are used or rejected, according to how they rebound to the writer.

Harry is but one of The Shadow's agents, and is here used to start filling in the mystery of just who The Shadow is. A similar demonstration can be seen in Tim Burton's Batman, where Vicki Vale is used to introduce and then explore who Bruce Wayne is--and who is the Batman. The Living Shadow keeps the focus tight on Harry Vincent, though. And when perspective jumps to The Shadow, he is just as reticent to reveal anything about himself as any other time.

***** 

Who had been wounded − the shadowy stranger or the assailant who had tried to enter the limousine? Vincent could not guess; he only knew that in the brief struggle the man who had found him on the bridge had left the automobile − unseen and unheard − and the door had closed behind him. 

The mysterious stranger had vanished − like a shadow! 

Nelson Bond's "The First Thousand Words"

Earlier, we took a look at Nelson Bond's 5,000 word pulp formula, where the old pulpster split the story into five 1,000 word sections, and gave advice for each. (Originally posted over at StoryHack, and mirrored here.) Bond would elaborate further on "The First Thousand Words" in Writer's Digest, focusing on the openings to pulp stories.

As a point of comparison, here is Bond's advice from "It's All a Matter of Timing: A Foolproof Fiction Formula":

First 1000 Words. Ends on Page 5. 

Get going with a bang! Remember, you’re writing a short story, not Gone With the Wind. You can’t waste words, nor will the editor permit you to waste his or the readers’ time. Your first thousand words must tell who are to be the central characters of this work-of-art, when the story takes place, where the scene is set, what the problem is, and set the question as to how the hero expects to take care of it. 

Get me straight! I don’t mean you should start off anything like this- 

“John Marmaduke Frasier, tall, blonde and handsome Sheriff of Burp’s Crossing, Arizona, strode down Main Street wondering what he should do about saving the property of his fiancée, sweet Hildegarde Phlewzy, from the clutches of rich bank president, Phineas Gelt, who threatened to foreclose the mortgage on August 19th, 1904, twenty days hence . . .” 

You think I’m crazy, eh? Nobody ever introduced a story that way? Guess again! I sat beside Harry Widmer of Ace Publications for a full hour one afternoon, reading over his shoulder unsolicited manuscripts that opened in exactly that fashion. Needless to say, the stories were not offered by “regulars,” nor did they come in the folders of an agent. They were the “unrush” mail, i.e., the free-lance offerings that earn pale blue slips reading, 

“We regret to say-” 

But get the thing moving. Start with something happening to somebody; not with mental maunderings, Grab your hero by the neck and shove him smack into a mess of trouble. Then show who started that trouble-and why. Introduce the other persons involved in the problem, make their opening speeches depict their characters. As you write, keep an eye on your page numbers. Remember that this phase of the story must be finished by the middle of page 5. 

End the opening sections with the implication that Our Hero recognizes his difficulty and knows what he’s going to do about it.

And now, Nelson Bond expounds on this advice:

*****

 The First Thousand Words

By Nelson Bond

(Writer's Digest, November 1940)

One of the great faults of the writing profession is that, like any other trade, it tends to get formularized. We within in develop a language peculiarly our own; we start to talk a jargon of catch phrases and keywords which are, or can be, completely meaningless to the outsider and sometimes, worse luck, to ourselves.

Writers get together. They talk glibly of "tagging characters," "the narrative hook," "timing the pace"...

Mumbo-jumbo! Miss Dorothy Dase, presumably a young writer (though I may in my ignorance, do her an injustice with this hazard) wrote a letter to the editor of Writer's Digest. It appeared in the September issue. It asked: "Will you explain just what is meant by the 'narrative hook'? So many writers refer to it--and so help me--I don't know what it means!"

The editor's answer was clear and concise an explanation as, in my humble opinion, can be given:

A "narrative hook" is a literary device employed by many professional short story writers to "hook" the reader immediately into reading the author's story. The trick consists of plunging the lead character into a difficult situation, with definite promised action to come in the first 200 words of the story.

Thus was Miss Dase inducted to the Inner Circle; so she became proud possessor of a Trade Secret. It is now her privilege to use the phrase "narrative hook" whensoever she chooses, to mystify lay friends with the catch-verbiage of the writing profession.

But take down your hair with me, pals! Does Miss Dase know any more than she did before? Does she know how to go about handling the "narrative hook"? Do you? Do I? Or do we just hopelessly confuse ourselves by accepting the premise that a narrative hook is the best way to get the reader's ear?

X Minus One: The Vital Factor - Nelson Bond

While I'm typing up another writing lesson from Nelson Bond, here's a radio drama of one of his stories:

50 YEARS OF LUPIN III: The Fuma Conspiracy

Well, if it ain't the smell of villain.--Lupin III

In 1987's direct-to-video movie The Fuma Conspiracy, the utterly unthinkable has happened: Goemon Ishikawa, famed ronin of the underworld, is getting married. The Lupin gang reunites to attend his wedding to Murasaki Suminawa, the daughter of his martial arts instructor. The wedding ceremony is interrupted by ninjas of the Fuma clan who try to steal a Suminawa heirloom vase but make off with the bride instead. Over the objections of his in-laws, and trusting in Lupin's skills as a thief to retrieve it, Goemon trades the vase to the Fuma clan for Murasaki, unaware that the vase is a map to the hidden treasure of the Suminawa clan. Now the bride and groom must race to the family treasure to keep it from the Fuma clan's clutches, aided by the master treasure hunter Lupin III.

If Dead or Alive was the Lupin III franchise's take on a James Bond movie, The Fuma Conspiracy is its Indiana Jones, paying lip-service to thievery while sending Goemon, Lupin, and company through an underground maze of lethal traps to keep a legendary treasure out of the hands of a historical group of villains. For just like the Nazis, the Fuma clan of ninjas actually existed, and were feared for their strength, their murderous methods, and their utter lack of honor in battle. And, just like Raiders of the Lost Ark, an anti-hero must take on the mantle of a true hero to defeat them. On the Miyazaki to Monkey Punch scale of heroism to villainy, The Fuma Conspiracy is the most Miyazaki-like of any Lupin film to follow his Castle of Cagliostro.

Moral Panic at the Dragons

So the Dragon Award nominees have been announced. Since the Dragons draw from a wider population of voters than just a small coterie of industry insiders, the selection represents a broad spectrum of works, including tradpub stalwarts like John Scalzi, a heavy leavening of books published by Baen, releases from small presses like Castalia House, and a growing segments of independent writers, such as Richard Fox, B. V. Larson, David vanDyke, and newcomer Mark Wandrey. This is what should be expected at any award claiming to be a fan award, as a quick look at what is selling at Amazon reflects the diversity of authors and publishers that people are actually reading.

Cosplay of "2B" from Nier: Automata

Well. mostly. I'm not sure how the utterly panned and ridiculed Mass Effect: Andromeda--a game whose poor sales caused the closure of its development studio--got on the ballot for video games. But I think that little aberration will settle itself out in the voting process. It's a flip of the coin if Nintendo nostaglia or Nier: Automata's cosplay hotness will take that category. But one thing is clear about ME: Andromeda's chances: the guys don't want to play it and the girls don't want to dress up as it.

What is also clear about the Dragons is that the moral panic that has seized tradpub science fiction and fantasy, and thus the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, the laughably named Worldcon, and the Hugo Awards, has swept into the Dragon Awards. This shouldn't be a surprise as the industry insiders that make up the traditional publishing houses, SFWA and Worldcon have, since the late 2000s, acted as an inquisition looking for a witch to burn. But tradpub's moral panic is a microcosm of the greater moral panic sweeping through the West, which Styxhexenhammer666 describes in detail in his video:



In quick summary, a moral panic arises when a false consensus of society is challenged, usually during the rise of a new communications technology, by the existence of people that contradict it. Styx details how this worked during the Red Scare and the Satanic Panic. He also how today's current false consensus that everyone in the West is Progressive and fascinated with ideas of equality. He also reminds us that those who stood up and fought against the moral panic are remembered fondly when it is over.

The cry of the current group of witch hunters is to label their opponents as "racist", "sexist", or "fascist", labels that the tradpub mob use incessantly to maintain their false consensus even as challenges such as Baen, Sad Puppies, and indie show the cracks in their reality. Not only are there some people who actively oppose the false consensus on the grounds that it does not describe reality, there's an even more sizable portion who just don't care and fail to include in their stories the concessions to the false that the witch hunters demand must be included. And, most damningly to the tradpub consensus is that these rebels make more money and sell more stories than the tradpub favorites. But the cry of "heresy" still holds some power, so some authors who want to court the favor of the tradpub group attempt to disavow connection with rebel thought so that the witch hunters will pass them by.

This has led three writers to try to pull their nominations from the Dragon Awards, acts that have brought the usual witch hunters in the media running. And the same old lies are spouted in the hopes of dusting off that old scarlet letter and perhaps even burning a witch. Meanwhile, the cracks in the false image of reality continue to show. Among the amusements this time around is that a black author claims racism in a convention hosted in Atlanta, America's Black Mecca, and one certainly racially more diverse in attendance than the collection of lily white authors at Worldcon.

So far, the Dragon Con administrators have tried their best to walk a middle road through the battlefield made by the witch hunters, albeit with a few missteps. What they should do is open the floodgates wide. Use a little convention money to advertise, especially with such actual celebrities that attend Dragon*Con as an Adam Savage or Austin Creed/Xavier Woods. Get a Pewdiepie or other prominent YouTubers to shill for the Awards. And then sit back and watch as the loud voices screaming against heresy get deluged by the greater fandom who only wants to have fun and reward the books, movies, and games that they enjoy.

Audiobook Wednesday: Rappaccini's Daughter

"Rappaccini's Daughter", by Nathaniel Hawthorne, represents one of the earliest science fiction stories. Adapting an explorer's tale from India, it gave birth to a number of "Poisoned Garden" stories, where literary naturalists would use the poisoned garden as a vehicle to investigate the scientific progress of the age. Fans of weird fiction and science fiction will also see the influence of "Rappaccini's Daughter" in C. L. Moore's Northwest Smith stories. As foundational to science fiction as Frankenstein and The Castle of Otranto are, Hawthorne's novelette is a key to understanding not only weird fiction, but the American tradition of the short story.

The complete text can be found here, hosted by Columbia University.