William Gibson’s “moves” and “apparent realities” in Neuromancer are laced with colonial thought, which are essential to understanding Gibson’s colonialist thought through his usage of Japan as a setting in his novel. Writer Julie Ha Tran explores Gibson’s perception of bodies, souls, and race in his Bridge trilogy, writing, “Japan serves as little more than an exotic backdrop for this narrative about cyber cowboys, cyborg assassins, and sentient machines” (3). Japanese and Western characters in this world serve purposes and fall into respective roles as cowboys who skirt the law–the westerners–and those who hold up unjust laws and scheme for any money they can in a world overtaken by industrialization and late stage capitalism–the Japanese, reflective of worries about production overseas in China and Japan, and worries about the replacement of Western values and the Western workplace which were common in the 1980s. Techno-Orientalism, a collection of essays on speculative fiction centered on East Asia, touches upon this American eighties perception of East Asia, stating in the introduction: [China and Japan] are constructed as competitors and therefore threats to the U.S. economy; but while Japan competes with the United States for dominance in technological innovation, China competes with the United States in labor and production. To put it in starker terms, Japan creates technology, but China is the technology. In the eyes of the West, both are crucial engines of the future: Japan innovates and China manufacturers. (3)
Neuromancer epitomizes the concern around Japan as a company of innovation first and foremost. This concern takes a feminized edge in part in the second book of Gibson’s trilogy, Idoru, through the character of Rei Toei, but she is merely one example of the myriad of East Asian represented characters within the world of the Bridge trilogy who seem to fit more into a racial stereotype akin to those from popular films, video games, and other science fiction, rather than an original and thoughtful representation of a fleshed out character. Daniel Punday brings up Lisa Nakamura’s critique of how cyberspace in Neuromancer, as well as in actuality in the context of an MMORPG, LambdaMOO, rather than creating a space where truly new identities are invented, creates a space where “identity tourism” occurs:
The choice to enact oneself as a samurai warrior in LambdaMOO constitutes a form of identity tourism which allows a player to appropriate an Asian racial identity without any of the risks associated with being a racial minority in real life. While this might seem to offer a promising venue for non-Asian characters to see through the eyes of the Other by performing themselves as Asian through online textual interaction, in fact the personae chosen are overwhelmingly Asian stereotypes blocks this possibility by reinforcing these stereotypes. (2)
Similar parallels are drawn within the realm of gender, pointing out that in order to be easily perceived as a woman online one must display pronouns and “craft a description that falls within the realm of what is considered attractive” (2). Assuming avatars online, when being forced to use tools such as pre-fabricated costumes and facial features in games for example, forces users to co-opt some type of pre-existing trope at least in part to proceed into cyberspace, bringing with them the notions of that appearance. “Identity tourism” gives name to the online practice of assuming stereotype-based identities to the detriment of other groups in the name of propagating one's own simulation and pushing out the reality of the others’ lived experiences.