In Part Two of “Otaku Research,” Nakamori Akio breaks down (or reinforces, depending on your view) stereotypes involving the mating habits of the otaku. Even more bombastic than his original missive, this column is an intriguing window into contemporary views of the subculture during the early 1980s.

A few definitions for the uninitiated: Minky Momo and Nanako are both examples of a proto-”moe” genre of anime based around super-cute girls with magical powers. And “Gekisha” is the name of a long-running series of cheesecake photos of young women in swimsuits that proved incredibly popular among the otaku in the mid-Eighties.

Last time, we got as far as naming the hordes of gloomy, obsessive boys you see everywhere these days as “otaku.” I think most of you can figure out the origins of the word, but it’s like this: don’t you think it’s a little creepy to see junior high school kids addressing each other with “otaku” [「お宅」] at manga and anime conventions?

The minute these twerps hit puberty, some of ‘em are inevitably gonna turn into stone-cold pervs. But you know what? With the way they dress, the way they talk, the way they act, they don’t stand a chance with a woman. See, these otaku are definitely lacking something in the masculine behavior department. Most of them leer over cutouts of Minky Momo and Nanako they’ve got stuffed into their commuter-pass holders — you could call it a 2D complex, or something — yet can’t bring themselves to speak to an actual woman. Those with milder cases tend towards androgynous idol girls without much feminine appeal or obsess over lolicon. A nude photo of a normal young woman does absolutely nothing for guys like this. There’s this one dude I know who flips out — “get that away from me! It’s dirty!” — if someone kindly offers him a porn magazine, but then again, this he’s the editor of [dojinshi anthology magazine] Comic Box, so I guess it comes with the territory.

Anyway. The one thing these guys are into is Kishin [Shinoyama’s] “Gekisha” series [gravure idol photos], which runs in the otaku magazine Goro. You know what I’m talking about — they always run stuff like “Write Kumiko a letter! She’ll reply to the ones that catch her fancy!” Now that I think about it, I bet you anything the editor’s mailbox is packed with tens of thousands of letters from otaku. Gag me. Just take a look at the readers’ column in any recent Gekisha compilation — it’s filled with love letters from the otaku! The guys writing about how they couldn’t wait for the next issue to come out so they went to the bookstore in the next town over; the 26 year-old salaryman who cuts out the pics of his favorite babes and saves them, and this is the real otaku part, only to get in hot water with his wife after she stumbles across the file; the guys who write poems devoted to miss-so-and-so, and so on and so on until you start getting a headache. But they’re out there, the guys who have mint-condition copies of every back number of Goro lining the bookshelf of their filthy, four-tatami-square hovels. There are even some who buy two copies apiece, one to preserve and one to use for… whatever.

Maybe it’s because they’re lacking in the male performance department or something, but these guys all seem kinda effeminate to me. These are people well into their twenties who, upon getting a new poster or something with their favorite anime character on it, get so happy and excited that their legs come together, their knees bend, and they start to bounce (this legs-coming-together-and-hopping thing being a peculiar characteristic of theirs). And whenever they screw up, they make these exaggerated fake boo-hoo sounds. It really makes me sick. There’s no way the majority of these guys will ever get a woman.

Then again, you know what they say: there’s a marriage partner out there for everyone. I’ve always sort of wondered what kind of woman an otaku might marry, but recently I had a scary thought. If an otaku marries an otaku woman, their child will be an otaku kid. And so it goes.

While neither long, in-depth, nor politically correct, the following 1983 article by essayist Nakamori Akio represents a watershed moment in subcultural journalism: the official debut of the word “otaku” as the definition of a then-new social demographic. Prior to its introduction, this anime- and manga-obsessed group was known under a variety of names, including mania (“maniacs”), nekura-zoku (loosely, “the gloomy tribe”), and even byōki (a play on the word “sick”), but none captured the diverse crowd’s distinctive esprit de corps — or lack thereof — symbolized by the word “otaku.”

When this first installment of “Otaku no Kenkyu” (『おたく』の研究,　“Otaku Research”) first appeared in the pages of an obscure weekly soft-core porno comic magazine called Manga Burikko, Nakamori probably had little idea that the word would eventually take a life of its own. It’s important to note that he didn’t coin the actual word, which is nothing more than a politer-than-polite way of saying “you” in Japanese. Perhaps because of this, “otaku” wouldn’t gain widespread popularity until 1989, after a one-two PR punch of Nakamori using the term in his biography of notorious serial killer Miyazaki Tsutomu, combined with the publication of pop-culture commentator Machiyama Tomohiro’s bestselling book Otaku no Hon (“The Otaku Book”) the same year.

From humble roots, “otaku” flowered to become the de facto term for individuals who pursue their hobbies with a single-minded passion bordering on obsession. As part of a series, here is our original translation of Nakamori’s first column in “Otaku no Kenkyu” — which we believe has never before appeared in English.

Ever heard of “Comiket” (also abbreviated as “Comike”)? I only went for the first time myself last year, at the ripe old age of 23, and let me tell you: it was a trip. It’s like a festival for manga freaks. More to the point, it’s a place to sell amateur comic books and fanzines. As to what was so surprising, it wasn’t so much that over ten-thousand young men and women gathered from all over Tokyo, but rather their eccentricities. How can I put this? They’re like those kids — every class has one — who never got enough exercise, who spent recess holed up in the classroom, lurking in the shadows obsessing over a shogi board or whatever. That’s them. Rumpled long hair parted on one side, or a classic kiddie bowl-cut look. Smartly clad in shirts and slacks their mothers bought off the “all ¥980/1980” rack at Ito Yokado or Seiyu [discount retailers], their feet shod in knock-offs of the “R”-branded Regal sneakers that were popular several seasons ago, their shoulder bags bulging and sagging — you know them. The boys were all either skin and bones as if borderline malnourished, or squealing piggies with faces so chubby the arms of their silver-plated eyeglasses were in danger of disappearing into the sides of their brow; all of the girls sported bobbed hair and most were overweight, their tubby, tree-like legs stuffed into long white socks. Now these unassuming classroom corner-dwellers with their perpetually downcast expressions have come out of the woodwork and swelled their ranks into a really rather surprising TEN THOUSAND PEOPLE. And just because they’re here, they’re channeling all of their normal gloominess into freaking out. Some are dressed in costumes of anime characters, others look like a shady character from a Azuma Hideo comic, still others constantly try foisting off their “lolicon” fanzines on unsuspecting girls, the shit-eating grins never leaving their faces all the while. Others just run around aimlessly… Man, it’s enough to make your head explode. The vast majority are in their teens, mostly junior and senior high school students.

Come to think of it, manga freaks and Comiket are only the start of it. There’s those guys who camp out before the opening day of anime movies, dudes who nearly get themselves run over trying to capture photos of the “blue train” as it comes down the tracks, guys with every back issue of SF Magazine and the Hayakawa science-fiction novels lining their bookshelves, science fair types with coke-bottle glasses who station themselves at the local computer shop, guys who get up early to secure space in line for idol singer and actress autograph sessions, boys who spent their childhoods going to the best cram-schools but turn into timid fish-eyed losers, guys who won’t shut up when the topic of audio gear comes around. These people are normally called “maniacs” or “fanatics,” or at best “nekura-zoku” (“the gloomy tribe”), but none of these terms really hit the mark. For whatever reason, it seems like a single umbrella term that covers these people, or the general phenomenon, hasn’t been formally established. So we’ve decided to designate them as the “otaku,” and that’s what we’ll be calling them from now on.

The question of why we’re calling them “otaku,” and the debate over exactly what “otaku” means, we’d like to explore in leisurely detail over subsequent installments. But in the meantime, take a good look around yourself, and we think you’ll see them — that’s right, there they are — the o…ta…ku….

So, what kind of otaku are you?