User:1TWO3Writer/Rikao Yanagita

Rikao Yanagita (柳田 理科雄, Yanagita Rikao, born June 21, 1961) is a Japanese writer, manga author, radio personality, and adjunct lecturer at the Faculty of Science and Engineering, Meiji University. He is also a senior researcher at the Institute of Fantastic Science Inc. He is most known for the Kūsō Kagaku Dokuhon series.

Biography
Yanagita was born in Minamitane, Kumage, Kagoshima Prefecture. His father is Haseo Yanagita, who served as mayor of Minamitane until 2007. Two months before he was born, Yuri Gagarin was the first person to successfully achieve spaceflight. His father thereby named his son Rikao, rika being Japanese for science, believing that the era of science was upon them. When registering his son's name, the town clerk had thought there was a mistake due to how unusual the name was. Yanagita's grandfather even complained that he should give his son a more "human name." However, Yanagita himself says that this unusual name has made it easier for others to remember him and helped him gain a wider circle of friends.

From a young age, Yanagita wanted to be a scientist, but also had a deep love for science fiction shows such as Ultraman and Kamen Rider. After attending the Kagoshima City Jо̄sei Junior High School and Kagoshima Prefectural Tsurumaru High School, he took the entrance exam for the Faculty of Science at Kyoto University, but failed the exam. After waiting a year for another chance to enter university, Yanagita entered University of Tokyo as a first year.

Originally, he intended to major in astrophysics due to his strong interest in space, but contrary to his expectations, he grew to dislike the curriculum and how it did not allow him to freely study what he found interest in, so he stopped showing up for class. He had started working part-time as a tutor at a cram school while he was still in school and became fascinated by the job, so he decided to become a tutor in earnest and dropped out of university. After working at several cram schools and studying for a year in the People's Republic of China, he opened his own private cram school, "Tenka Muteki Juku" in 1991, but as he said, "I had no talent as a manager," and the school quickly fell into financial difficulties.

Under such circumstances, in order to raise funds to rebuild the cram school's business, at the suggestion of Takashi Kondo, a friend from his junior high school days who was working as an editor at Takarajima at the time, he published "Kukan Kagaku Yomihon" (Imaginary Science Reader) in 1996, a scientific study of depictions in science fiction anime and special effects programs, in the form of a book based on the discussions he had in junior high school. The book was originally planned to have a circulation of 10,000 copies, but eventually became a bestseller with over 600,000 copies sold. However, the cram school that Yanagita was running went bankrupt before the royalties from "The Fantastic Science Reader" were deposited. After that, he continued to write the sequel to "The Fantastic Science Reader" while working as an instructor at a cram school run by a friend from his high school days, and became a full-time writer in 2000. At the same time, in 1999, he and Takashi Kondo jointly established a limited company, the "Imaginary Science Research Institute" (which became a joint-stock company in July 2016), with Yanagita himself calling himself the chief researcher of the institute (Kondo is the director).

In addition to writing, he also teaches part-time at Meiji University, which he describes in his book as a rather challenging job, given his past history of dropping out of college. In his lectures, he discusses topics such as the calculation of the energy generated during a collision between Ultraman and a monster in a fight scene.

According to him, the total amount of money he has spent on alcohol up to the 1990s is over 10 million yen. In "Fantastic Science Reader 2," he writes, "I like bourbon among whiskeys. If I had to pick a favorite sake in general, it would be the sweet potato shochu "Nansen" (Uezuma Shuzo). He is also an unparalleled fan of professional wrestling, to the extent that when he stayed in the People's Republic of China for a year from 1990 for business reasons, he was anxious to see what was going on in the Japanese professional wrestling world. In the "Fantastic Science Reader" series, Giant Baba frequently appears as a representative of a large and powerful person.

He is a keen observer of battle scenes and secret weapon settings in science fiction comics and special effects shows, but has a clear aversion to real war, as his own grandfather was killed in the Pacific War, and defines war as "the worst policy that an incompetent authority chooses, saying, 'This is the only way. It is the worst policy, and the people of the countries involved suffer a great deal of inconvenience regardless of whether they win or lose. As for the former French president Jacques Chirac, who conducted six nuclear tests by January 1996, he wrote in the "Imaginary Science Reader 2" published in 1997, "Don't aim for a 'strong France' now, you idiot, no matter how much you are a former de Gaulle! He also strongly criticized Chirac in the 1997 issue of "Imaginary Science Reader 2" with such expressions as "Don't aim for a 'strong France' now, fool!

As for professional baseball, he is a fan of the Saitama Seibu Lions. He has been a fan of the Saitama Seibu Lions since the days of their predecessor, the Nishitetsu Lions, as he says he is from Kyushu.

Since 2008, he has been posting commentary videos on YouTube called "KUSOLAB, the Imaginary Science Laboratory. In these videos, he is sometimes joined by Takashi Kondo, but Kondo only refers to himself as "Director" and never uses his real name.

Writing
Before Yanagita, there were many books that examined science fiction works from a scientific point of view, but the style of his books, mainly for children, was to develop his own hypotheses and draw funny conclusions by mixing scientific research with the descriptions in the plays (often focusing only on the descriptions and not on the settings of the works). The latest volume of "Kousou Kagaku Yomihon", "Kousou Kagaku Yomihon 17", was released in March 2016. The most recent paperback edition was published in July 2018, and is called "The Fantastic Science Reader: A Spell of Perdition That Will Destroy You! (Based on manuscripts that have appeared not only in "Kukan Kagaku Yomihon" but also in related books, with significant revisions and new writing added)[9].

In addition, as part of the Kūsō Kagaku series, he has published Kūsō Kagaku Manga Dokuhon, which analyzes manga under a scientific lens, Kūsō Kagaku Eiga Dokuhon, which examines the depiction of live-action movies, mainly science fiction, and Kūsō Kagaku Nihon Mukashibanashi Dokuhon, which analyzes classic Japanese folktales. He also has a dedicated series analyzing Pokémon called Pokemon Kūsō Kagaku. The Jyunia Kūsō Kagaku series for children surpassed a cumulative total of 1 million copies in the summer of 2018, and the Pokemon Kūsō Kagaku series has published a cumulative total of 150,000 copies as of 2017. The entire Kūsō Kagaku series is estimated to have sold over 5 million copies as of 2018.

In addition, Yanagita is the author of several original manga and novels, scientific examination being a major theme within his works.

Criticism
Hiroshi Yamamoto, a science fiction author himself, and others have pointed out that Yanagita's works contain errors, such as a failure to recognize the setting of a particular work (a lack of research in regards to the official setting of the works he criticizes, making up his own setting to justify his own observations, etc.) to the application of physical laws (how rocket propulsion actually works, confusing photon-force rockets with photon rockets in regards to rocket punch, a type of weaponary found within Go Nagai's Mazinger Z). Hiroshi Yamamoto detailed his criticism in his book ''Konnani Hendazo! Kūsō Kagaku Dokuhon.''

Yanagita, in response to these criticisms, has rereleased books with reworked content, usually with an afterword or with annotations apologizing for the mistakes present within the previous edition of said work.

Media Apperances

 * ドコでモ空想科学（テレビ静岡）
 * ラジオ空想科学研究所（ニッポン放送、パーソナリティ）
 * 全国こども電話相談室（TBSラジオ、回答者）
 * 森田一義アワー 笑っていいとも!（フジテレビ、水曜日・「確率王者　キセキング」）
 * 一文字弥太郎の週末ナチュラリスト 朝ナマ!（中国放送、番組内コーナー「空想科学ラジオ読本」コメンテーター）
 * ゴー傑P（MBSラジオ、ゲスト、2006年8月5日）
 * 溜池Now（GyaO、「第1回溜池天下一武道会」）
 * FNSソフト工場『とびだせ! 空想科学』（テレビ静岡、2007年12月30日）
 * 漫画やアニメの名場面が現実に!?とびだせ!空想科学（フジテレビ、2008年8月3日）
 * さんタク（フジテレビ、2010年1月3日）
 * 世界一受けたい授業（日本テレビ、ゲスト、2010年6月12日）
 * 水曜日のダウンタウン（TBS、科学検証、2014年8月6日、2017年8月2日）
 * すっぴん!（NHKラジオ第一、ゲスト、2015年2月26日）