Illusion of P Part 1 of 3 It’s Always About People

Book Report: United States of Japan by Peter Tieryas

(Full spoiler for the book United Staes of Japan. Personally, I think the so-called Spoiler Culture had spoiled the Disney of this world so rotten that they only release bland stuff like Big Hero 6 nowadays.)

The cover of United States of Japan (“USJ” for short) is quite a Rorschach test. It has a giant mecha, a night city and 2 people on the side. With marketing call the setting a mixture of Philip D Dick’s Man in the High Castle and 2013’s Pacific Rim, the city with weird flags and the mecha do tell the reader what kind of alternative history they should except from this book. But without people interacting with such setting there can be no book. Like Dr. Austin Walker liked to put it, don’t miss the oil field for the flying cars when watching Blade Runner.

Truly written by “one of us”

USJ’s author Peter Tieryas worked as a visual effect artist and game developer before he became a novelist in the 2010s and a video game narrative director in the 2020s. In his acknowledgement of Mecha Samurai Empire, the man practically listed the video game “classics” one needed to play when they want to get a job in outlets covering the interactive media form. Tieryas’ video gaming shows in his works.

Characters in science fiction had interacted with interactive media long before Mr. Tieryas started writing them. But to us regular players of video games, this type of interaction feels off more often than not when it comes to mechanics. Take the Hugo Award winning Three-body Problem for example. The titular in Chinese VR game Three-body is a very weird beast to wrap one’s mind around, even though its writer Liu the Elder is computer engineer.

In comparison, the portical games in Tieryas’ USJ feel more tangible. Once one saying that a broadline illegal cult favorite has clunkier control than some mainstream propaganda piece, any regular player of video games would get the point in a second.

Strange yet familiar

In an alternative reality where the so-called Axis force was more efficient at joint efforts to divide and conquer, the United States of America ended, ironically yet poetically enough, on July, the fourth, 1948. North America continent was separated into 2, United States of Japan on the west side and Nazi occupied east (“The German Americas” to be precise, though the name did not show up until the next book.) 40 years later, a terrorist group known as the George Washingtons (GWs for short. Yep, Mr. Tieryas is a big fan of THE video game director Hideo Kojima and “his” Metal Gear Solid series.) plotted to topple “the young united states” with the help of a rouge Japanese officer. It’s up to a portical game censor gentleman named Beniko “Ben” Ishimura and a secret police lady named Akiko Tsukino to stop them.

It would be fair to say that George Orwell’s 1984 is a dystopia classic. Not necessarily because how deep it is or how it tells people that all state powers put to extreme are inherent bad, but how fun and smooth it is to read. Orwell’s text goes down smooth like black coffee or beer as it can wash any food for thought down. Tieryas’ USJ is similar as it’s a keeping-the-readers-at-the-edges-of-their-seats thriller set in a dystopian alternative history.

The book has 5 point-of-view characters including the 2 mentioned above. The other 3 would be Mr. Ishimura’s parents and Wakana, a USJ officer desperate to keep the peace in the decade between 1978 and 1988.

Out of the fire and into the frying pan

The book opens in early July, 1948, with Ben’s mother Ruth heavily pregnant excepting to have a daughter, thus the name “Beniko”. As a Japanese American living in this only slightly more fouled up alternative timeline, Mrs. Ishimura was detained in a so-called war relocation camp. America was losing the war, yet the supposedly liberators from Japan were not necessarily nicer. The stake in those opening focused on whether a cell mate of Mrs. Ishimura looking for her husband. Turns out he was brutally murdered by the Americans, the poor woman cursed the Japanese Empire for being too late and was shot in the head by a Japanese solider. Out of the fire and into the frying pan, the poor sods went.

3 Californian cites were nuked by the Japanese force in this grim tale, not because the Americans refused to surrender but to keep the Nazi from advancing towards the West Coast. It is here the readers are first introduced to mechas, as Mr. and Mrs. Ishimura hearing tales of mushroom clouds and armored giants during their travel to some safety. Even though the book never expressively says how this world’s nuclear weapon are delivered, mechas standing in nuked cities did get me to go “Metal Gear?” since those bipedal tanks are always built to launch nuclear weapon in “Hideo Kojima Game(s)”.

Of course, Mr. Ishimura is not always an Ishimura being a Chinese American named Ezekiel Song. Daddy Ishimura would not be a pov character until the book’s rather tear-jerking epilogue, but his present does add to the Asian identity issue this book raise. China and Japan were sworn enemies in WWII’s Asian theatre, aka the Second Sino-Japan War. Their languages are fairly different from each other, as a “Chinaman” with Bachelor of Art degree in the Japanese language I would know. And that’s just comparing 2 without think about several others just at the east and south-east corners of the continent.

Strange day in 1978 and stranger days in 1988

Fast forward to late June, 1988. A 39 years old man at the time, Beniko Ishimura was a lover of food and women. He tended to share the former with any officer he met. As he was enjoying a freak show from China with his current girlfriend, an old boss of his by the name of Mutsuraga reached out through unusual channel regarding the death of the old officer’s daughter. From there, Ishimura was forced into a race against time just so that anarchy in San Diego would not engulf the whole USJ.

Chapters in USJ the book are marked as times on a clock, from witching hours on June, the thirtieth to early morning on July, the fifth. 1988. The days are packed with things one can except out of a science fiction adventure in these post cyberpunk days of ours, from new forms of cruelty enabled by advanced technology to gamified violence. Though here, death game is not deadly on its own, since it’s merely VR E-sport. It’s only after one loses in the virtual world that they would be killed in creative and painful ways in the real world.

As a winner of Seiun, a Japanese language award for speculative fiction, best translated novel, USJ is a celebration of Japanese culture, pop or otherwise. In its fictional Japanese colony on North American continent’s West Coast, “traditional” Japanese culture icons were celebrated in grander ways that the Island nation’s homeland can afford. The 3 artifacts of imperial power were enlarged and decorated a theatrical. A Buddhist temple was modeled after Miyamoto Musashi’s Five Rings in San Diego before the city went to hell in a hand basket. Even daily small things like “egg” and “paper” were not called those but instead “tamako” and “kami” respectively, though the sequel books dropped those.

Being inspired by Philp K Dick’s Man in the High Castle, USJ of course has parts in which our reality bleeds through. In the PKD novel, it’s in the form of a book. In Amazon series with the same title, that book morphed into film reels. In USJ, the alternative history closer to our reality is expressed as interactive media, a portical game titled the United State of America, USA for short.

Portical is crossover between tablet computer and smart phone decades before such devices become reality in our world. With those, citizens of USJ have access to a network called Kikkai. Polygonal video games also came decades earlier in this world, and Honor of the Dead (HOD for short. A title that would make Chinese speakers laugh when we think of the pun regarding Tencent’s mobile MOBA.), something closer to Call of Duty, is a state sanctioned blockbuster. At least in 1980s since something else became popular in the sequels to this novel.

Compared to HOD’s being COD counterpart, USA sounds more like Soulsborne. As the novel’s male lead Beniko was forced into a USA tournament in VR (Just so he and a secret police lady can get a ride.), he did express how clunky USA is compared to HOD. He only managed to win for a built-in cheat.

The business ends

In USJ, cites are paroled by 50 meters tall mechas and the rocket-pack wearing infantry aboard those. Those hulking war machines are piloted from a “bridge” instead of the usual “cockpit”, since the space is big enough for a crew of 7, usually one single pilot with navigator, officers operating in various fire-control and seats for a couple of passengers. None of USJ the book’s point-of-view characters are pilot, so when the author decided to throw in some mecha action, readers experience those through passengers. There are 2 mecha battles in the whole book, and both are about hitching rides through hairy areas.

This novel can make readers laugh in small and unexcepted places. Like how secret police Akiko was almost dragged to her doom by twin cops resembling hei bai wu chang, Grim Reaper’s counterpart in Chinese folklore. In the flashback of 1978, a GWs member calling himself Andrew Jackson was ready to talk peace with USJ. Someone suggests a duel with this individual, for the real life US president Andrew Jackson was known for killing someone during a duel.

Sad fascist blues

“Fascists with feelings as new Young Adult series” was an old joke told in Waypoint Radio, back when Dr. Austin Walker was full employee of Vice and Lady Danielle R was there to deliver some punch line. Maybe unknown to both, Peter Tieryas did write such a novel before those 2 only joked about it.

But of course, fascists should not be seen as the focus of USJ. People trying to hustle through a dystopia are the real focus. And even though the author is a happy go lucky do Californian, the research he conducted makes his work feel reliable to this fairly cynical 34 years old “Chinaman”. One likely unintentional one being how the GWs feel like nineteenth century’s Taiping rebellion, both said that Second Coming had happened after all, though the fictional GWs did not get to the point of “This messiah fucks”, just so the book does not get any darker than it already is. Still, history rhymes even in this alternative reality.

Maybe it also reminds me of my own hustle through the social labyrinth I am living in. In 2020, Tieryas himself saw 2016’s USJ as his early novel only readers entertained by his late works setting in the United States of Japan would enjoy. I see no reason in reading this one the last. The book was written and then published first, and it provides a fascinating first look into an alternative history messy in different ways than our own.

(To be continued in When in a police state, better join its police.)