Lost Pasts

[steepholm]

I've long been interested in stories that take place in futures that were anticipated (by author and characters alike) but never came to pass in reality. Indeed, a couple of years ago I wrote what I think quite a good article on the subject. There, I concentrated on the First World War and its relationship to Golden Age children's fiction, because it's a rich source of such instances, but of course it's not unique. Around the same time I enjoyed reading my friend and colleague Christopher Hood's thriller, Tokyo 2020, topically set at the Olympic games that (at the time of original publication) were set to take place imminently. I think Chris may have since published a slightly amended version that moves the events of Tokyo 2020 to 2021, much as the IOC itself did, but I'll always have a fondness for the story as it was set in that liminal lost future, caught between anticipation and reality.

Lost futures are always fascinating, but I've recently noticed a complementary phenomenon, namely lost pasts. For example, I've just started watching Why Didn't I Tell You a Million Times? on Netflix, a series set partly in 2023 Japan, but with numerous flashbacks to 2021 and 2022 (as well as other times). But this isn't 2021-3 as they actually existed. This is a version of the very recent past in which Coronavirus is simply not a thing. No one wears masks, for one thing - even though pretty much everyone in Japan was wearing masks in reality (and most still are).

It would have been very easy to set the story just a few years earlier, to a point where this would not have been an issue, but the makers have decided to make it ultra-contemporary. They presumably did this with the intention of accentuating its relevance - but it's relevance to a life that Japanese people would like to have been living, not the one they actually did live.

I've noticed the same phenomenon in a few other programmes, such as The Makanai: Cooking for the Maiko House - but this is the first one where they've been so emphatic about the dates, with the constant flashbacks and flashforwards necessitating precise dates being displayed on screen every few minutes.

Have you noticed any other examples of this phenomenon, perhaps outside a Japanese context?

Comments

[ethelmay]

Simon says that Jacob Wrestling was "one of the forerunners of post-war literature," and that "other writers have gone far ahead of him on rather similar lines: James Joyce, for instance." I think I assumed Simon was referring to Finnegans Wake, which I had actually tried to read in middle school, but he can't have been if that was published in 1939.

Oh, and Simon has to have been born by World War I, because he remembers his uncles from when he was seven. So if they were killed sometime between 1914 and 1918 he has to be born before 1911, probably closer to 1907 or even earlier. Cassandra thinks he's under thirty, but if it's 1935 or before he could be 28 or so easily. Of course that would mean he was in a Wall Street office in 1929, which must have been interesting (the Cottons don't seem much affected by the Great Depression).

[sovay]

Simon says that Jacob Wrestling was "one of the forerunners of post-war literature," and that "other writers have gone far ahead of him on rather similar lines: James Joyce, for instance."

(a) I said my copy was in storage!

(b) Okay, since my memory seems to have smashed two different statements together, does that mean that Jacob Wrestling was published pre- or during the war, in that sense a forerunner of post-war developments, and I should be thinking of it more coeval with the Imagists?

(the Cottons don't seem much affected by the Great Depression)

Hey, speaking of things which may or may not turn up in books or movies depending on the level of escapism.