Michael Crichton: A Foreigner Who Visited Keio University

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 Keio University, there is a place commonly known as the "Crichton Cafe"? Of course, it does not operate regularly like the Faculty Club or the Banraisha. 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 back left—or the far right when facing the front from the floor's seating area—and open a 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 remains clearly visible. Even now, it is often used for light social gatherings when symposia are held.

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

Crichton became an overnight sensation and a bestseller with 100,000 copies of his early work "The Andromeda Strain" (1969), published at age 26 while he was still a student at Harvard Medical School, which depicted the horrors of a pathogen from space and total nuclear war. His career developed steadily thereafter. He is widely known as a scientist-writer who busily traversed what Lord C.P. Snow called the "Two Cultures" of science and literature—from the global bestseller "Jurassic Park" (1990), which 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.

His sci-fi imagination, which freely remixes scientific truths instilled by a rigorous medical education with speculative scientific truths created by extrapolating data toward a possible future, has long attracted readers worldwide. The intellectual frontier woven by the dialogue between jitsugaku (science) as the study of truth (kyuri) advocated by Yukichi Fukuzawa and the speculative power to apply it is precisely the world Crichton mastered. In the current era 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 for the purpose 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 "Commemorative Lecture for Dr. Michael Crichton's Visit to Japan." According to the report, he gave two commemorative lectures at Keio University. 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 event 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 the large screen in the East Hall, which was packed with students and general participants. At this time, Crichton shared an experience from his Harvard days in his early 20s when he was still full of vigor, successfully deceiving a professor. Since he seemed to like this episode very much and reused it in multiple lectures, many may find it familiar, but as it captures the "bad boy" days of a genius writer, I will quote the main points. He began by stating that he did not initially intend to pursue medical sciences; he entered Harvard to become a writer.

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+. Since I was 18 and thought my writing was pretty good, I figured the university was wrong, not me, and decided to conduct an experiment. Hearing that 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 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, plagiarizing 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)

I have rendered this in colloquial language because Crichton's gestures when he exaggeratedly exclaimed, "Even George Orwell gets a B at the great Harvard University!" left a powerful impression on me. Nowadays, with graduation and master's theses often flooded with citations and copy-pasting from Wikipedia, the above episode might not be something to introduce unconditionally given its potential negative influence. However, the fact that a Harvard professor gave a grade of B instead of rejecting an unmistakable piece of plagiarism is evidence that they failed to spot the theft—evidence of their own poor literary grounding. It is truly interesting that Crichton, in his early 20s, chose Orwell—known for the dystopian masterpiece "1984"—considering 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 unfettered by narrow genres but also excelled in mystery. In 1969, during his student days—the same year as the aforementioned "The Andromeda Strain"—his work "A Case of Need," published under the pseudonym Jeffrey Hudson, won the Edgar Award, the highest honor chosen by the Mystery Writers of America. Later, his 1975 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, student writer Hideaki Sena was making waves with "Parasite Eve" (1995), which utilized full knowledge of genetic engineering, bringing the "dialogue between science and literature" into 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 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 studied at Columbia University after graduating from the Faculty of Business and Commerce at Keio University in 1965, maintaining strong ties with the overseas publishing world and cultivating long, 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 successes. They nurtured authors from the first generation of Japanese sci-fi like Shinichi Hoshi, Sakyo Komatsu, Yasutaka Tsutsui, Aritsune Toyota, and Tadashi Kohsai, to the second generation including Chiaki Kawamata (a graduate of the Faculty of Letters at Keio University), and the 21st-century new 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 Keio University) and film critic Shoji Otomo (a graduate of the Faculty of Letters and the second Secretary Officer of the Science Fiction & 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 alongside new paperback series, establishing the Sei Hayakawa Foundation for the Promotion of Literature in 2011. In 1998, he received the Ellery Queen Award, a special Edgar Award like Crichton's, and currently serves as a Councilor for Keio University.

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