The Problem With the Steampunk Alphabet

While the images and short poems accompanying them in Iwata's little board book for kids is completely endearing, it does bring an underlying problem about children's steampunk to the surface. While I would argue that while the justification for the goggles is entirely valid in this book, the justification Iwata offers for other images as belonging in the steampunk world are not entirely convincing. 

For example, the letter D is for Dumpster...which is not a steampunk object at all. The poem that accompanies the image also struggles to make this fit into the steampunk world. Like other objects in the book, the dumpster is given an imagined history and a story for the children, which reads,

"These on-rail dumpters were compactors too

Deployed to the North city-states as they grew

Lined up and emptied on every Tuesday

'Here comes the trash train,' the children would say"

The little blurb that accompanies the picture also says, "To better deal with an ever-growing population and the problems of pestilence and disease that can come as the result of the garbage produced, a public system of waste removal was designed. Building upon the existing trolly tracks that ran through many of the cities, the dumpsters could easily be moved and returned regularly" , which is an admirable attempt at making something so far from steampunk fit into the genre, but it still raises questions. 

One of the problems with the growing culture of steampunk seems to be that the 'punk' element is disappearing or becoming less important with the rise of mass-produced apparel, decoration, and the essential fear that anyone can make something steampunk by just 'gluing a few gears on'. This example of the dumpster seems to fall into that category, manifesting that very fear and turning an ordinary trash receptical into a steampunk necessity by simply turning it into a machine. Even the picture provided shows an ordinary dumpster that has been 'steampunked' by adding pipes, steam, clocks, and wheels. Therefore, while it is still an encouraging effort to include children in the world of steampunk, it exemplifies a bigger problem surrounding the genre. Several other examples of this are present in the book, such as "I is for Instrument", "J is for Jar", and "P is for Purse", which are all ordinary objects that have been deemed necessary to the steampunk world by adding gears, clockwork, and steam-power. Perhaps if the author had created an entirely new object to represent the letter D or any of the other letters, that fit the needs of the revolutionary steampunkers, the book would be less problematic and more fitting. 

However, I would still argue that despite this problem of becoming less 'punk' through the lens offered for children, the Steampunk Alphabet book is still an encouraging step towards the effort to include younger generations in the growing culture of steampunk. The quality of imagination and invention is still a major element of this book, and I think that is what is most important for children's steampunk because it encourages children to think outside the limitations that society places on their thoughts and to plant the seeds for individuals to be intelligent, open-minded beings that are not afraid to question the politics and media of their world, which is what steampunk essentially allows us to accomplish.