Cyberpunk is particularly widespread in East- and Southeast-Asia, site of many cyberpunk stories because of their high level of urban development. One of the pioneering cyberpunk novels, William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984), was set in one of Japan’s largest industrial areas, Chiba, and it is indeed Japan that seems most vividly exposed to the cyberpunk movement.

According to Gibson, “Modern Japan simply was cyberpunk. The Japanese themselves knew it and delighted in it. I remember my first glimpse of Shibuya, when one of the young Tokyo journalists who had taken me there, his face drenched with the light of a thousand media-suns—all that towering, animated crawl of commercial information—said, 'You see? You see? It is Blade Runner town.' And it was. It so evidently was.”

From: William Gibson, “The Future Perfect: How Did Japan Become the Favored Default Setting for So Many Cyberpunk Writers?” Time International (30 April 2001).