Michael Crichton: A Foreigner Who Visited Keio University

2017/03/03

At the G-SEC Lab

Did you know that in a corner of the G-SEC Lab, which spans the 6th and 7th floors of the East Building on the Mita Campus of this Juku, there is a place commonly known as the "Crichton Cafe"? Of course, it does not operate regularly like the Faculty Club or the Bankoraisha. Furthermore, because it is hidden in a blind spot for visitors, one rarely encounters the cafe. However, if you step into the G-SEC Lab, head toward the far left—or the far right when facing the front from the floor's seating area—and open a movable sliding door that looks like a wall, a stylish space resembling a cafe-bar will appear. On the right wall, the signature left by American author Michael Crichton (1942–2008) at the request of the Juku authorities when he visited in 2000 to commemorate the completion of the East Building is still clearly visible. Even now, it is often used for light social gatherings when symposia are held.

To be precise regarding the timeline, this organization, which has long been familiar as G-SEC (Global Security Research Institute) and was decided to be reorganized into KGRI (Keio University Global Research Institute) late last year, was officially launched in 2004. This means he visited Japan four years before its official inception.

Crichton became an overnight sensation while still a student at Harvard Medical School at the age of 26, when his early work "The Andromeda Strain" (1969), depicting the terror of a pathogen from space and total nuclear war, became a bestseller with 100,000 copies. His career progressed steadily thereafter. From "Jurassic Park" (1990), which became a global bestseller set in a theme park utilizing dinosaur DNA and permeated culture through multimedia adaptations including Steven Spielberg's film, to his later work "State of Fear" (2004), which satirized global warming policy and predicted the possibility of eco-terrorism, he is widely known as a scientist-author who busily traversed the "two cultures" of science and literature, as described by C.P. Snow.

His sci-fi imagination, which freely remixes scientific truths instilled by a rigorous medical sciences education with speculative scientific truths created by extrapolating from that data toward a possible future, has long attracted readers worldwide. The intellectual frontier woven by the dialogue between jitsugaku (science) as the study of kyuri (truth) mentioned by Yukichi Fukuzawa and the speculative power to apply it is precisely the world Crichton mastered. In the present day, where post-truth and disinformation (rather than mere misinformation) run rampant, his works themselves hold critical significance. Therefore, there could be no more fitting speaker for the East Building, centered on G-SEC/KGRI, which was founded with the aim of contributing to interdisciplinary collaboration, cooperation with academic and professional institutions, and the development of basic and applied research at an international level within today's global society.

The events of that time were reported in the frontispiece of the November 2000 issue of this magazine under the title "Dr. Michael Crichton Commemorative Lecture in Japan." According to the report, he gave two commemorative lectures at this Juku. First, on October 4 of that year, he gave a lecture titled "From 'The Andromeda Strain' to 'Timeline'" at Building β of SFC, attended by 640 people. The lecture was reportedly broadcast simultaneously to Room J12 on the Hiyoshi Campus. Two days later, on October 6, he finally gave a lecture titled "Reality and Imagination" at the newly completed G-SEC Lab in the East Building. 130 people, including business leaders and cultural figures, gathered, and the event was broadcast on a large screen in the East Hall, which was packed with students and general participants. At this time, Crichton spoke of an experience from his early 20s at Harvard University when he successfully deceived a professor. He seems to have been quite fond of this episode, as he reused it in multiple lectures and many may find it familiar, but since it captures the spirit of the genius author's rebellious youth, I will quote the main points. He prefaced by saying that he did not initially intend to pursue medical sciences and entered Harvard to become a writer, then stated the following:

"In the English department at Harvard, my writing was harshly criticized, and no matter how many papers I submitted, I only received grades of C or C+. As an 18-year-old, I thought my writing was pretty good, so I figured the university was wrong, not me, and decided to conduct an experiment. When I heard the theme for the next paper was Jonathan Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels,' I remembered an essay George Orwell had written about it and thought it would be perfect. Of course, I felt a bit guilty, but I typed out Orwell's essay on Swift exactly as it was and submitted it under my own name. I felt guilty because if the plagiarism were discovered, I would surely be expelled. But I was confident that the instructor didn't understand writing and hadn't read much literature. In any case, the paper I submitted to Harvard, which was a plagiarized work of George Orwell, received a grade of B. That was the moment I decided I couldn't make it in the English department."

"So I decided to major in anthropology. Even then, I wasn't sure if I wanted to pursue anthropology in graduate school, so just in case, I entered the pre-medical course." ("Travels," 1988 first edition, Vintage, 2014)

The reason I used colloquial language is that I have a strong impression of Crichton's gestures when he exaggeratedly said, "Even George Orwell gets a B at the great Harvard University!" Nowadays, with the prevalence of citations and copy-pasting from Wikipedia in graduation and master's theses, this episode might not be something that should be introduced without reservation given its potential negative influence. However, the fact that a Harvard professor gave a grade of B to an unmistakable piece of plagiarism instead of rejecting it is proof that they failed to see through the plagiarism and proof of their own poor literary cultivation. It is truly interesting that Crichton, in his early 20s, chose Orwell—known for the dystopian masterpiece "1984"—considering the background of his later publication of the dystopian sci-fi masterpiece "Jurassic Park."

Regarding his literary activities, he not only promoted the appeal of sci-fi imagination from a standpoint not confined to narrow genres, but also excelled in mystery. In 1969, while still a student—the same year as the aforementioned "The Andromeda Strain"—his work "A Case of Need," published under the pseudonym Jeffery Hudson, won the Edgar Award, the highest honor of that year from the Mystery Writers of America. Later, in 1975, his historical novel "The Great Train Robbery," set in 19th-century London, was adapted into a film directed by Crichton himself and won the Edgar Award for Best Motion Picture. He was a pioneer in multimedia talent spanning both novels and film.

Thus, the March 1996 issue of this magazine featured a small special titled "The Michael Crichton Phenomenon." Four contributors, including myself, analyzed works such as the aforementioned "Jurassic Park" and its sequel "The Lost World" (1995), as well as "Rising Sun" (1992), which focused on Japan-bashing during the bubble era, and "Disclosure" (1993), which addressed sexual harassment early on. This was a period when the author himself was at his peak, and in Japan, the student author Hideaki Sena was creating a buzz with "Parasite Eve" (1995), which fully utilized knowledge of genetic engineering. The "dialogue between science and literature" was suddenly in the spotlight.

In fact, Keio University was deeply involved in the origins of how such sci-fi imagination came to be widely accepted in Japan. Hayakawa Publishing, which has actively produced most Japanese translations and Japanese lectures for authors like Crichton, Daniel Keyes, and Kazuo Ishiguro, has been widely known as a pioneer of sci-fi publishing in Japan since its founding in 1945. In particular, the second president, Hiroshi Hayakawa, is an internationalist who, after graduating from the Faculty of Business and Commerce at this Juku in 1965, studied at Columbia University and has strong ties to the overseas publishing world, cultivating long and close friendships with Western authors.

Despite the jinx that "Sci-fi and Westerns don't sell," Hayakawa Publishing launched the "Hayakawa SF Series" in 1957 and Japan's first monthly sci-fi magazine, "SF Magazine," in 1959, making them successful. They nurtured authors from the first generation of Japanese sci-fi like Shinichi Hoshi, Sakyo Komatsu, Yasutaka Tsutsui, Aritsune Toyota, and Musashi Kosa, to the second generation like Chiaki Kawamata (a graduate of the Faculty of Letters at this Juku), and the new 21st-century generation like Keikaku Itoh, EnJoe Toh, and Taiyo Fujii, successfully rooting this emerging genre in the Japanese literary market. In the early 1960s, when the magazine was founded, this new movement was passionately supported by literary critic Junichiro Kida (a graduate of the Faculty of Economics at this Juku) and film critic Shoji Otomo (a graduate of the Faculty of Letters and the second Executive Officer of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Japan). Hiroshi Hayakawa himself served as the fifth editor-in-chief of "SF Magazine" in the mid-1970s, started the Hayakawa International Forum to invite overseas authors in 1988, and after becoming president in 1989, actively promoted media mixes with film in addition to new paperback series, and established the Hayakawa Kiyoshi Foundation for the Promotion of Literature in 2011. In 1998, he received the Ellery Queen Award, a special Edgar Award like Crichton, and currently serves as a Councilor for Keio University.

Behind the realization of Crichton's visit to this Juku, a history of international dialogue promoting the dialogue between science and literature was intervening around Keio University, building a piece of post-war cultural history.