Volume 3: Original Introduction and Editorial Guidance

English translation

AI-assisted English translation. The Japanese original remains authoritative.

Originally published: 13 January 2020.

This is the preface and editorial policy for Volume 3, “Questions for People of the Future,” published in 2020. Early membership invitations, calls for work, and contact details are preserved as historical text, not as current submission guidelines.

Volume 3: Questions for People of the Future

Toward an uncertain future

Modern scientific civilization, including AI, is at a level that ordinary people cannot attain without effort, whether five hundred or a thousand years from now. It represents magnificent progress, yet we can imagine people of the future living with science so advanced that they laugh at it. The problem is the possibility of human regression. More coldhearted and unfriendly than people today, they may foolishly compete only over relative ability, while remaining as powerless as ever before the fear of death. Will the calamity of nuclear war persist as in the past, five hundred or a thousand years hence? We want to sound a warning that they will hear.

Poems

Tanka, haiku, lyrics, short poems, English poems, and other forms are welcome if they express social conditions emblematic of an age; an enka idiom is also acceptable. Write about the warmth and passion with which people of the past and present live. That can save future people from coldheartedness and self-destruction.

Stories

Original works by members. Please keep them to approximately 8,000 Japanese characters at most.

From The Terminator onward, people of the future seem invariably to be a robotic tribe lacking humanity. Our community, however, still has warm blood and tears. We are not asking you to write futuristic fiction. There is little point in producing an imitation of Verne’s science fiction. Rather, we want to show that we people of science possess science far superior to that of ordinary future people, together with far warmer humanity, living daily in a spirit of mutual help. Let us show future people the full measure of our affection, just as Chikamatsu Monzaemon’s tragic love stories still move so many readers and spectators to tears.

Criticism

With that approach, we encourage a contemporary treatment not only of literary criticism but also of film and images, social conditions, international comparisons, war, disasters, values, information, transport, and other subjects.

Essay

Original essays by members. Teach people of the future the essence of what makes life worth living, as you wish to convey it now.

Thesis

Please follow the separately stated instructions for research papers.

We look forward to arguments that will astonish future people. As stated before, the Society does not accept papers whose only strength is accumulating data. Such work disregards romanticism’s sensuous sensibility, which is more a matter of feeling than logic.

Prospects

Past experience shows that calls for contributions to publishing projects of this kind receive a very slow response at first. At a certain point, however, submissions rise sharply and eventually arrive in a flood. Excellent works may then fail to be selected. We therefore ask you to join and submit as early as possible. The editors want to place many substantial works in a romantic idiom, conveying the outpouring of Japanese passion, at the beginning of each volume. Please join and submit at least your résumé early, so that we can establish a provisional chapter structure. Telephone inquiries: 090-2735-7495.

Apply for membership by email attachment. Our email address is [email protected].

Begin by sending tanka, haiku, poems, short stories, or essays. An essay such as “What I Want to Tell Future Generations” would also be interesting. Why not write in the spirit of Yamanoue no Okura, who composed long poems as though telling his life story to people of the future? Once you feel the desire, join at once. Be an early member. Exciting work awaits you in proportion to that early commitment.