The Future of the Invisible and its Mediatization–'Deadly Germs' in the Imagination of Infectious Disease Experts, the State, and Popular Culture in Japan, 1918-1958

The imagination of bacteria and viruses – invisible to the naked eye – was ubiquitous in popular culture from the Interwar Period onwards. State actors such as politicians, bureaucrats involved in the rapidly growing public health sector and military officers, as well as medical experts working on infectious diseases, let their imagination run free on the hunt for ‘deadly germs’. Future visions of pandemics after the ‘Spanish Flu’ of 1918-1920 enhanced the circulation of science fiction and forms of speculative writing, but also contributed to a rising interest in medical science. This unique project combines the expertise of historians at University of Edinburgh and KU Leuven, supported by colleagues at Waseda and Kyushu University in Japan. It aims at surpassing the still existing ‘Western’ bias by focusing on Japan as a case, and at uncovering the function of ‘mediatization’ that fueled a reciprocal relation of medical research, infectious disease-related policies and of the imagination of ‘deadly germs’ in popular culture. It argues, that a new dynamic between these fields was born after the First World War, which further rapidly evolved through the Interwar Period, the Second World War and into the postwar era until the following influenza pandemic of 1957-58. ‘Mediatization’, the steady encroachment of media logic and condensed intertextuality between hard science, (public health) policies and military research on the one hand and popular culture on the other, which then in return often inspired the next generation of researchers, public health experts, politicians, and the popular culture production, was the catalyst.

Keywords:Infectious diseases, Speculative Science Writing, Japan

Disciplines:History and philosophy of media and communication, Media and communication theory, Asian history, Modern and contemporary history, Political history, World history, History of medicine