The history of yellow peril science fiction
This week on MangoBot—my biweekly column about Asian futurism on io9—I wrote about the yellow peril and the portrayal of Asians in science fiction:
Back in the 1920s and 30s, when Asian immigration to the US and Europe was picking up steam, prominent science fiction writers like Philip Nowlan and H.P. Lovecraft created speculative scenarios starring massive hordes of horrible, slanty-eyed, intelligent Asians who were either taking over or destroying the world.
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Lisa,
Do you work for MangoBot? Seriously...
SK
SK: "This week on MangoBot—my biweekly column about Asian futurism on io9—I wrote about "
I'm going to have to say, "No."
Point taken.
\Long day at the office
I can't believe I get to be the first to mention Dr. Seuss's connection to this.
http://www.who-sucks.com/people/dr-seuss-sucks-7-racist-cartoons-from-the-doctor
(Am I supposed to know HTML to make my words into links? Long live the dumb question.)
A lot of fantasy fiction is (not-so-)subtly race-tense. (I think there was an xkcd about this?) Like Tolkien. Although, upon rereading it recently, I was glad to find one scene when Sam and Frodo are in Mordor and they over hear two orcs talking about who the Nazgul-boss-class doesn't care about the working orc, and how they're gonna get a little place in the country one day.
oh yeah...my favorite on that page is the 'honorable 5th column'!
I think I take issue that the origins of this type of fiction stems from immigration. Perhaps the rise of Japan as a colonial power or something, but not immigration, as far as the US is concerned. Remember the Oriental Exclusion Act (1924?) and similar laws existing by the mid-20s barring Asian immigration.
All of the older yellow peril stuff is really goofy. It's extreme to the point of being humorous, and anyway, it's too old to worry about.
I'll bet even Lovecraft's stuff didn't live up to the real horror of Unit 731. Decidedly not goofy.
We were flooded with yellow peril stuff. Movies, pulps, comics, radio; all of it unrelentingly racist. My favorite was when The Green Hornet's chauffeur/sidekick, Kato, suddenly became filipino instead of Japanese — a week after Pearl Harbor.
mutual
http://www.nohmask.com/masklist/nohjpg/tengu.jpg
Don't forget the original Buck Rogers comic strip that premiered in 1928. The chief villains were the Han (later called Mongols) who swarmed over the United States and drove the defenders underground. This was what passed for SF in the good old days.
WXYZ Detroit. The home of The Lone Ranger. Mutual's founding flagship. Same bad writers, bad actors.
The writers got cute. The LR's nephew was the GH's father. both Reids, Bobby(?) and Bret.
ah, radio. Ah, humanity!
These types stories go way back before the 1920s. (you've awakened a history nerd -- this topic is actually a huge part of my forthcoming dissertation. :P )
In 1914 Jack London even wrote one called "The Unparalleled Invasion" which concerns the Chinese invading California in far-flung 1975:
http://london.sonoma.edu/Writings/StrengthStrong/invasion.html
Then there's Homer Lea, a military "speculationist" and hunchback, who in the early 1900s who rode a burro through the San Gabriel Mountains in California and mapped out possible weak points for a Japanese invasion. He was briefly hailed as a unsung genius in the days after Pearl Harbor.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer_Lea
http://www.troynovant.com/Grube/Heinlein/Sixth-Column.html
The French had this mania a couple of decades earlier. cf the works of Albert Robida. (
the expression "yellow peril" was invented by kaiser Wilhelm II, right after the russo-japanese war, when for the very first time an oriental nation beat an occidental nation. And the Lovecraft case is somewhat special : it is believed nowadays that he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.