This presentation is a brief exploration into the world of the Japanese cinematic extraordinary with three main objectives. First, I want to promote Japanese kaiki eiga as an umbrella term under which it is possible to analyze works that contain both the supernatural and the scientific. I will then shed light on two previously overlooked aspects within Japanese film studies: the study of men in weird cinema, and the study of films that deal with scientific narratives.

At the very root of this study is the assumption that mediations of national anxieties are represented in kaiki cinema as embodiments of scientific masculinity. Science and technology, kagaku gijutsu, enabled Japan’s industrialization, its economic growth and its emergence into the world as a technological superpower. It is closely intertwined with the nation’s history, prevalent in the images projected by the nation.

I will demonstrate how fictional portrayals intersect with real-life policies, incidents and the general history of science. Scientific masculinity allows for the exploration of the shift from soldiers to demobilized soldiers to corporate soldiers. This shift is representative of particular images of nationhood: militarist, pacifist, economically and technologically superior, or “Lost”. I argue that in kaiki eiga these images are actively highlighted, dissected and subverted, many a time contrasting within one film. The fantastic and the weird provide a framework within which a role of Japan in the world can be questioned and gender roles reconsidered.