Tokyo Sympathy Tower by Qudan Rie: The Tower of Babel of our days and the birth of the “new human”

Abstract

The article examines the novel by Japanese writer Qudan Rie Tokyo Sympathy Tower, which was awarded the prestigious Akutagawa Literary Prize in 2024. The award sparked a wide discussion due to the writer’s use of generative artificial intelligence in her work, which not only suggested some ideas, but also became a prototype for one of the novel’s characters, the AI-built chatbot, and generated its lines. The plot revolves around the construction of an unusual structure by a female architect named Makina Sara, the so-called “Sympathy Tower,” which is essentially a new type of prison and embodies a new sociological theory about “Homo miserabilis.” The term “criminal” in the world of the novel is recognized as outdated and discriminatory, and the concept of “a person worthy of sympathy” is introduced instead. Makina is inspired by the deconstructivist architectural projects of Zaha Hadid, namely the National Stadium in Tokyo, an object that was never built in reality. Gradually, the destinies of the novel’s characters intertwine around the Tower, which ultimately becomes destructive for each of them: one is killed by a Homo miserabilis, another finds himself forever locked in the Tower, while Makina Sara, cut off from society, which did not approve the appearance of the Tower, and immersed in the world of “words” and her own feelings, loses her identity. Of interest is also the image of the Other created in the work — a scandalous American journalist Max Klein, whose statements make it possible to demonstrate not only the vicious nature of the Tower, but also the loss of humanity by the main character. The novel is a philosophical statement about the gradual loss of natural and national languages; about universal tolerance; about the emergence of a new ethics; about the relationship between man and artificial intelligence. To embody these ideas, techniques characteristic of contemporary Japanese literature are used, including uneventful narration, wordplay, and sociophobic characters.