2014: Plurality Power / W. David MARX
Japan — a country that once prided itself on a “new middle mass” of “100 million middle class” — now finds its direction from passionate minority factions rather than a set of shared mainstream values. In 2014, there is no mass majority in Japan, only powerful pluralities.

The LDP won the election after no one turned out other than their solid bloc of older voters. The right-wing maintained its ruling coalition thanks to the gains of another powerful minority — Kōmeitō, a political party that mobilizes the devoted believers of its affiliated religious group. On the other side of the aisle, the minority Communists grew their numbers — enough to introduce bills to the Diet floor.

In pop culture, there were a few relics of the mass culture era — Frozen and Yokai Watch — but these shared experiences were mostly limited to children. Adults only came together to share downers: complaints about higher taxes, debates over the effectiveness of Abenomics, accusations towards imaginary STAP stem cells. (Even the year’s preordained comedy catch-phrase “dame yo, dame dame” is all about saying “no.”) Otherwise powerful pluralities own the culture. In music, the idol cults continue to dominate the music charts through an aggregation of splintered factions. Even without cable TV, top dramas struggle to pull more than a 10% rating.

So why try to force 2014 into a single story of “national culture”? In the place of any manufactured holistic narrative, here instead are some of the fragments that defined our year.

Abenomics / Noah SMITH
This was a difficult year for Abe Shinzō and his Abenomics program. The economy’s signals are mixed — investment has picked up, but consumption and exports are still anemic. The Bank of Japan continues to buy financial assets at a record pace, the so-called “first arrow” of Abenomics. But with employment at a 15-year low, it’s not clear what else the BOJ can do. Of course, the BOJ is certain to keep purchasing government debt, as this is the only way to maintain Japan’s interest rates at a level low enough for the still-rising government debt to be sustainable. But monetary policy’s effectiveness in terms of boosting the economy is probably near its limit.

Meanwhile, the “second arrow” — fiscal stimulus — is long gone, and Abe’s 3% sales tax hike is widely credited with sending the economy into a sudden recession. Abe could conceivably reverse course and choose to engage in a massive fiscal stimulus, funded by printed money, if the BOJ would go along. But this seems unlikely for political reasons, and with the unemployment rate already low, the effect would likely be minor anyway; there just aren’t that many more idle hands left to put to work. At this point, Japan’s best hope for fiscal policy is treading a wise and careful middle path and avoid derailing the fragile recovery that began in 2013.

As for the “third arrow” — structural reforms — Abe has proposed a large number of bold actions but failed to get them passed so far. His hope, and the hope of reformers in general, is that Abe’s political capital from the recent election victory will allow him to make headway on the TPP, labor reform, corporate governance reform, and other difficult, unpopular neo-liberal measures.

Womenomics / Noah SMITH
There is one way, however, in which Abe may already be sparking deep and lasting change. This is the area of gender equality in the workplace — the so-called “Womenomics” program. Westerners have, by and large, been skeptical that a renowned conservative like Abe could be serious about fighting for gender equality. But the idea seems to have permeated the consciousness of Japan’s elite, including bureaucrats, business leaders, the courts, and the media. Even if many of the women-boosting reforms being pushed by Abe fail, a sea change may have occurred in the mindset of Japan, Inc. Already, companies are announcing voluntary quotas for women in management positions, government ministries are creating plans to make bureaucratic jobs more female-friendly, and courts are ruling in favor of victims of “maternity harassment.”

Devin Stewart of the Carnegie Council has been conducting a series of interviews with Japanese female leaders and business leaders. There is a distinct sense that the change in attitude is real and spreading, although of course much more needs to be done. And the legal measures Abe intends to introduce over the following year — changing the tax system to encourage two-income families, ending incentives for long overtime hours, etc. — seem less likely to encounter resistance from vested interests than the other structural reforms he has proposed.

In other words, Womenomics is still in its infancy, but there are signs that it’s for real.

Kanji of the Year / Matt TREYVAUD
The Kanji of the Year for 2014 was 税 — “tax.” Organizers and individual voters struggled to frame the choice as a reaction to a generally taxocentric year of news, but of course it really just won because everyone’s unhappy about the consumption tax rising to 5% to 8%. Reaction online has been muted and surly, suggesting that a lot of people voted for 税 because they thought they should rather than because they actually wanted it to win. It’s certainly a big comedown after the recent string of positive winners like 絆 “bonds” and 金 “gold”; in fact, there hasn’t been such a purely negative Kanji of the Year since 2007’s 偽, “deceit” (which, incidentally, made #9 this year too; 嘘 “lie” was at #3).

Shukatsu Schedule Change / Adamu KUN
For Japanese third-year university students, December is the start of the job-hunting process (shūshoku katsudō or shūkatsu in Japanese). This commences with research on companies and innumerable “information sessions” that count as pre-pre-pre interviews.

This will change with the graduating class of 2016: Companies have agreed not to begin recruiting activities until March of a student’s third year. Corporate members of the Keidanren agreed to these changes under pressure from the Abe administration, which is interested in encouraging study abroad, internships, and other initiatives that would help Japan adapt its economic model to the modern era.

As dry and bureaucratic as that all sounds, the implications are enormous — millions of Japanese college students will now have an extra six months to study, create, and live life without having to go through an overly long job search.

But let’s be clear — these changes (like much of Abenomics) do not represent a fundamental paradigm shift. In other words, measures like this are intended to strengthen the nation-state of Japan. What has not changed is the high-stakes, one-strike-and-you’re-out nature of the hiring system itself. People who for whatever reason miss out or fail to thrive within the system are effectively shut out of the best jobs Japan has to offer. Perfectly talented individuals who just happen not to fit the mold will still be relegated to the employment underclass.

Foreign Tourists Hit New High / Adamu KUN
Back in 2003, the Japanese government set the goal of attracting 10 million tourists per year to Japan by 2010. They did not make that deadline, but finally surpassed their target. In 2013 the number of visitors from overseas suddenly skyrocketed 30% from the previous year to 10.4 million and is likely to reach 13 million in 2014. The streets of Shinjuku are now clogged with (usually confused and lost) tourists.

What explains the turnaround? To be sure it happened well before plans to create better tourism infrastructure really came to fruition. Japan over the past few years has relaxed some existing barriers to visits from neighboring countries, but the weaker yen has probably done at least as much by nudging a trip to Japan into an affordable price range.

Now that the tourists are coming, it’s up to the local community to ensure they’re having positive experiences that they will tell their friends and relatives about. That includes Anglophone foreigners who live here: One of my New Year’s resolutions will be to be more proactive in helping clearly lost groups of tourists when I’m in an area I know well.

The Olympics: The Biggest Issue that Never Was / Nick DONEGAN
In 2013, Tokyo won its long-running Olympic bid on a platform of compact scale, centralized proceedings, increased efficiency, and a small budget. This year budgets ballooned from $1.5 billion to $3 billion while construction companies found themselves faced with another bidding process. The IOC asked Tokyo for a more decentralized affair and the rather-far-away-from-Tokyo prefecture of Fukushima requested a prominent role, but all the Japanese press reported on was the possible resurrection of softball and baseball as well as plans for the entertainment lineup. In 2015, however, the Olympics may become the biggest issue of 2014 that never was.

RIP: Yakuza Film Stars Takakura Ken and Sugawara Bunta / Brett BULL
Actors Takakura Ken and Sugawara Bunta, who died this year, are among those credited with bringing the yakuza film genre to the world. Many will remember Takakura Ken from Black Rain, in which he appeared opposite Michael Douglas and Andy Garcia as assistant inspector Matsumoto (“And I do fucking speak English”). But for years before that 1987 film, Takakura had already become one of Japan’s most prominent actors. He was cast by the likes of director Yamada Yōji (The Yellow Handkerchief) and appeared in a number of hard-boiled flicks by studio Toei in the 1960s (A Fugitive From The Past). His passing in early November narrowly preceded that of Sugawara Bunta, who rose to fame in the 1970s through Toei’s post-war Battles Without Honor And Humanity series. Directed by Kinji Fukasaku, the films and Sugawara’s performances are frequently praised — notably by Quentin Tarantino — for projecting a realistic look at the underworld onto the screen.

An Obsession with Obscenity / Brett BULL
Japanese law enforcement repeatedly made headlines with its enforcement of Article 175 of the nation’s Penal Code, which restricts the sale and distribution of obscene materials (usually meaning renderings of non-obscured genitalia). On two occasions, Tokyo police arrested artist Igarashi Megumi (aka Rokudenashiko) for distributing image data of her vagina and publicly displaying a plaster replica of said organ. In Nagoya, police pressure forced an Aichi prefectural museum to cover up private parts in photographs of nude males contained in an exhibition. On the Internet, contributors to the video site FC2 Live came under scrutiny twice for streaming live porn segments without the use of a mosaic.

The End of Pink Japan / Brett BULL
1960s-era adult entertainment is in true decline. The Kantō area lost two more “pink” film theaters (one in Tokyo’s Shimbashi, another in Tochigi), leaving the number of theaters dedicated to the soft-core genre now at only 50 nationwide. Four decades ago, there were more than 1,000 venues. Things started to go downhill since the arrival of home video in the 1980s.

Another blow to anachronistic eroticism was the bankruptcy of legendary Rokku-za strip theater in Asakusa. Founded in 1947, the theater, which utilizes a stay-all-day for one price system, has hosted performances from a number of popular porn stars. News reports indicated that the theater has suffered from a substantial drop in attendance over the past decade. Given that the core demographic for both pastimes is the middle-aged male, Japan’s ageing population does not bode well for the survival of either.

Yokai vs. Yokai / Matt ALT
2014 may have been the year of the horse, but as far as the media industry was concerned it was the year of the yōkai — Yōkai Watch, to be precise. Often hailed as the “next Pokémon,” the series centers on a young boy who is able to see and harness monsters from Japanese folklore. As of December 2014, Yōkai Watch swept the worlds of video games (with five million copies sold of the latest installment “Yōkai Watch 2”), manga (it won the 38th Kodansha Manga Award), and toys (raking in 10 billion yen in sales while forcing Bandai-Namco president Ishikawa Shuko to convene a press conference to apologize for shortages.) But perhaps none of these victories was as symbolic as that of Yōkai Watch: The Movie. It opened domestically in mid-December and promptly trounced Disney’s Big Hero 6 — the antagonist of which, ironically enough, just happens to be named Yokai.

Meet The New Cool Japan, Same As The Old Cool Japan / Patrick ST. MICHEL
It was a good year for Japanese pop acts going viral through checking off all the classic “weird Japan” boxes. Idol-pop-meets-heavy-metal trio Babymetal’s “Gimme Chocolate!” racked up millions of YouTube views, and that momentum helped land shows in North America and Europe. Lady Gaga then invited the group to be the opening act during part of her North American tour, as was the Vocaloid avatar Hatsune Miku. In 2014, that holographic singer also performed on the Late Show With David Letterman, leading to a rush of tweets from confused regular viewers wondering what anime was doing on their TV.

Both achieved the same sort of gawked-at success in the West that many other Japanese media entities have managed in the YouTube age, one where the sheer WTF-ness of something (context be damned) surpasses actual appreciation. And it went the other way, too — Western artists such as Clean Bandit and Pharrell Williams used Japan and Japanese pop culture as backdrops for videos they released this year. As did Canadian singer Avril Lavigne, who found herself in hot water after her Harajuku-centric clip for “Hello Kitty” was accused of cultural appropriation.

Idols Actually Aimed At Women / Patrick ST. MICHEL
Up-and-coming idol-pop groups have appropriated nearly every subculture over the last few years. EDM club kids? Yep. Slightly chubby women? You bet. Steampunk? Sure, why not. Yet one of the year’s best selling outfits succeeded with a far more obvious theme — marketing to actual women instead of men. E-Girls, a 27-member-strong supergroup, signed to Avex, technically serving as the all-woman version of EXILE (hence the “E”). The group was a constant name on both the Oricon Charts and various digital rankings, and of course, an advertising staple.

Taking cues from the more mature-leaning groups in Korea, E-Girls presented an image and music that tried to relate to actual women rather than offer up an unsettling fantasy version of girls for male consumers. A poll late in the year found that they were the most aspirational idols for women in Japan. Nothing highlighted this better than the video for their top single of the year, “High School Love,” whereas dozens of idol units donned uniforms and played up the kawaii in a school setting, each member of E-Girls wore something different and danced confidently without infantilizing themselves.

The Year Idol Music Became Sort of Interesting / Devon FISHER
2014’s Oricon singles chart was entirely devoid of surprises, the top 50 almost wholly dominated by the trifecta of Johnny’s groups, EXILE Tribe and Yasushi Akimoto’s ridiculous girl groups, but in the margins of Japan’s idol-obsessed music culture something interesting happened. Exemplified by EXILE Tribe’s K-pop inspired E-Girls and the newly reconfigured Morning Musume ’14 (such a departure from previous generations that Hello! Project management saw fit to add the year to their name), all of a sudden the idol group sound was taking in influences from the Occidental realm of EDM; apparently the expiration date on the Onyanko Club sound has finally been reached. Yasutaka Nakata’s production for Perfume, once a dramatic departure from the ordinary, now no longer sounds all that far-off from the mainstream, and idol groups are all the better for it. If idols are going to completely dominate the realm of popular music anyways, might as well make sure that music is at least somewhat fresh.

Parupaganda / Ian LYNAM
On July 1, Prime Minister Abe announced a decision to reinterpret the Japanese constitution, allowing the Japanese military to support allied nations under attack. In short, this monumental reinterpretation legalized Japanese rearmament, outlawed by the post-war constitution. Within hours of the decision, a YouTube video featuring AKB48 Team A member Haruka “Paruru” Shimazaki (島崎 “ぱるる” 遥香) appeared online encouraging citizens to join the Japan Self-Defense Force (自衛隊).

In the Realm of a Dying Emperor / Jason G. KARLIN
Johnny Kitagawa, the founder and president of the talent agency Johnny & Associates (hereafter Johnny’s), is approaching the twilight of his control over the male idol empire he created. Since Johnny himself appears to be averse to anointing a new president, a succession dispute emerged within the organization and intensified in 2014.

Johnny’s realm is now divided between two factions. One is led by Julie Keiko Fujishima, who is Johnny’s niece. Her faction includes the groups Arashi, TOKIO, V6, and Kanjani Eight, among others. The other faction is headed by Iijima Michi, who has managed SMAP since their creation. Her faction consists of SMAP, Kis-My-Ft2, Sexy Zone, and A.B.C-Z.

In 2014, conflict between these two factions has grown so intense that is creating headaches for Japan’s networks and television program producers. Groups under Fujishima and groups under Iijima almost never appear together on the same music or variety shows. While not uncommon between rivaling labels, this degree of internal competition is unprecedented.The Japanese advertising and entertainment industries yearn for the coronation of a new empress.

Boyz Be Sexy / Jason G. KARLIN
On July 15, 2014, fans of the five-member Johnny’s idol group Sexy Zone were devastated to learn that the group would be re-organized into a three-member unit. Management split off the two youngest members to form a new group called Sexy Boyz.

Sexy Zone was born from disaster. The formation of the group originally was scheduled to be announced in May 2011, but due to the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, the group’s debut was postponed until late September 2011. At the time of their debut, they were the youngest group in the history of Johnny’s idols — the average age of the group’s members was 14.2 and the youngest was only 11. Though more than a few eyebrows were raised about the group’s naming, Johnny Kitagawa responded to criticism by explaining that he wanted “less beautiful boys (bishōnen) and more sexy.”

The two former members of Sexy Zone were combined with six members of Johnny’s Jr. to form the new eight-member idol unit called Sexy Boyz. Before the announcement of Sexy Boyz, an Internet search for the group’s name returned numerous blocked sites that would trigger browser warnings. Today, thanks to Johnny’s, a search for “Sexy Boyz” now safely leads to fan sites and news regarding the group’s activities.

Comedy Band Makes Salient Point / Patrick ST. MICHEL
Popular four-piece Golden Bomber is an “air” band (they pretend to play instruments live while a pre-recorded track plays) best summed up as the “clown princes of contemporary J-pop.” At this year’s Rock In Japan festival, they spent more time on gags and coating themselves in blue paint than performing. Yet Golden Bomber made one on-the-nose point this year — capturing the growing exhaustion with Japanese music promotions. For their August single “Rola No Kizudarake,” the physical single came with plain white cover art, and lacked any of the bonuses that have become a staple of Oricon-topping acts such as AKB48 and EXILE. It was a deliberate “specialization in music” experiment, one which found member Kiryuin lamenting how the current J-pop landscape moves the focus from the music to promotions such as handshake events. Many online agreed with him, and the single debuted at the number-two spot on Oricon… bested only by an EXILE single packaged with tickets to a “high touch” event.

Indie Music / Ian MARTIN
While 2014 was a typically dire year for J-pop in general, it was a marvelous year for brilliant Japanese music of absolutely no broader pop-cultural significance. Fukuoka quartet Hearsays’ In Our Time mini-album was seven cuts of the most gorgeous, shimmering, spine-tingling indiepop imaginable, while Oversleep Excuse’s Slowly Better was steeped in fragile, heartbreaking melodies, and Luminous Orange’s Soar, Kiss the Moon veered thrillingly between Stereolab-esque sophistipop, richly textured shoegaze, and intricate prog/math rock.

2014 also saw a blitzkrieg of raw, discordant postpunk/no-wave/skronk/junk with Panicsmile’s Informed Consent, synth-punk duo Hangaku’s raucous self-titled debut, an even more ferocious temper tantrum of a debut (also eponymous) by early Boredoms-style junk noise band Halbach, The Mornings’ Idea Pattern, Sonic Youth-influenced Nagoya band Free City Noise’s Leaving and Otori’s electrifying I Wanna Be Your Noise. On a rather more eccentric note, Tochigi-based duo Teashikuchibiru’s wonderfully titled Punch! Kick! Kiss! was easily the year’s best violin-and-acoustic-guitar-based folk/new wave/hip hop crossover album, and Umez snatched the prize for best J-pop/machine noise hybrid garage-punk (there’s more of it around than you might think).

Impressive albums also emerged from new wave old timers Convex Level, Sapporo-based indie-folk act Hasymonew, Fukuoka math rockers Macmanaman, intricately-worked Nagoya guitar pop trio Crunch, Tokyo new wave/krautrock band Buddy Girl and Mechanic, rounding off an abundant harvest of wonderful, weird, discordant, delicate and beautiful music with no commercial prospects whatsoever.

Twenty-five Years of Flipper’s Guitar / W. David MARX
In August 1989, Keigō Oyamada and Kenji Ozawa’s band Flipper’s Guitar released its first album Three Cheers for Our Side, unwittingly launching the Japanese music genre known as Shibuya-kei. I wrote in detail about four key Flipper’s Guitar songs over at Memories of Shibuya (one, two, three, four), but what is interesting to me is the degree to which Flipper’s Guitar introduced so many diverse influences to Japanese music… only to have them all be erased 25 years later. Nothing in the world of J-Pop now sounds like Shibuya-kei. The other thing is how far the bar has dropped: J-Pop is so domestically-oriented and incestual that we’re breathless when someone adds something vaguely Skrillex to the mix. We should not forget that Shibuya-kei was not just “Western music made by Japanese people” — it was obscure Western music made by Japanese people.

Shibuya-kei’s Quiet Comeback / Devon FISHER
With the scene having been kept on life support for most of the last decade, it seemed unlikely that the once-trendy sounds of Shibuya-kei would ever be making a comeback. But with Tower Records in Shibuya affecting a revival through their own T-Palette Records label, Shibuya-kei artists who had long since gotten used to irrelevance are making surprise appearances on the pop charts — penning songs for idol groups such as Negicco, granted, but nothing’s perfect. Old standbys such as Cibo Matto and Buffalo Daughter came out with albums this year, the former marking 15 years since the group’s previous full-length. A new generation of musicians are seeking credibility through posing with Maki Nomiya for instagram selfies, Yasuharu Konishi has his own idol group with the model duo Nananon, and little by little the best thing about Japanese music in the ’90s seems poised to reclaim its former glory. Perhaps Cornelius might even start writing “songs” again.

Manga of the Year / Matt TREYVAUD
Unita Yumi’s Aomiyuku Yuki 2 (「青みゆく雪」, 宇仁田ゆみ) is the long-awaited second (and final) volume of a story she began serializing in 2009. The title is an untranslatable pun on the names of the two lead characters, college students Sei (青) and Yukiko (雪子). Sei is the best and most honest representation of an adult learner of Japanese language that I’ve ever seen in a comic book. Instead of stereotypical tics or katakana “desu”s, Unita gives him a genuine, recognizable L2 Japanese of his own. Volume One ended with a cliffhanger: Can love overcome a language boundary? Volume Two adds an intra-Japonic twist to this question and then stands back and lets the characters sort it all out.

Old-Timey Album of the Year / Matt TREYVAUD
I’m not going to make any claims for its status as great art, but I didn’t run across another album all year that was as much fun to listen to as “Nee kōfun shicha iya yo”: Shōwa ero-kayō zenshū 1928-1932 (『ねえ興奮しちゃいやよ』 昭和エロ歌謡全集 1928~32), a compilation of “ero[tic] kayō” from the early Showa period. Erotic march enthusiasts especially will want to pick this one up, as it includes not only the “Ero March” but also the “Ero-ero March.”

Popular Reference Work of the Year / Matt TREYVAUD
Kinsui Satoshi (金水敏) has been working the yakuwari-go 役割語 (“role language”) beat for more than a decade now, exploring why fiction is full of old professors calling themselves washi and rich young women exclaiming yokutte yo even though no-one has said those things in real life for decades. The Kinsui-edited Yakuwari-go shōjiten 〈役割語〉小辞典 (“A small dictionary of role language”) is aimed squarely at a general audience, and as such, offers only very brief summaries of the sociolinguistics of gonsu, batten and the like, but this also allows it to fit in more citations from fiction and manga.

The End of Gyaru Magazines / W. David MARX
Last year I admitted being wrong about a “permanent gyaru dominance” in fashion. Japan’s famously gaudy women have been slowly disappearing from Shibuya, or more likely, showing up in front of 109 in completely reasonable clothing. This year, the End of Gyaru became conventional wisdom with the closing of core publications egg, Koakuma Ageha, and BLENDA.

The demise of the first two came after the publishers ran into major financial trouble. BLENDA, on the other hand, is part of more established Kadokawa Haruki, but even it went away. One can imagine that the decline of actual gyaru has gutted the advertising budgets of gyaru-targeting businesses. International luxury brands have to advertise somewhere, so the existence of LVMH guarantees that there will always be a Spur or Brutus. But subcultural magazines live and die by the health by the smaller scale businesses that cater to them. They go down with the whole ecosystem.

That being said, magazines are not necessarily required for youth culture anymore, especially for the so-called “delinquent subcultures.” The gyaru are no longer in Shibuya, but they’re out there. After merging with yankii in the late 1990s, the gyaru style is primarily a provincial one, and we can imagine strong gyaru communities, heavy make-up, and bright pink, crystal-studded tracksuits outside of the capital. And maybe things are not as dire as they look: Koakuma Ageha is coming back. Japan’s thousands of kyabajō still need style guidance.

Comme des Garçons and Frozen / Team NÉOJAPONISME
A few weeks ago, Sam Byford of The Verge tweeted this photo of Comme des Garçons’ Aoyama flagship store — with illustrations of Elsa and Anna on the window — and asked, “ummm what has happened to comme des garcons.” Yes, Kawakubo Rei’s fiercely avant-garde brand has made a Frozen collection. From the nicest, least critical, “Hey, Adrian, let’s stay friends!” perspective, CdG does these kinds of collaborations all the time with mass market brands — H&M, Speedo, Nike, Fred Perry, The Beatles, Star Wars. But Frozen? Is Kawakubo Rei trying to prove that she can place a halo of coolness on anything in the entire world? For 2015, we hope that Comme des Garçons the company — once a paragon of experimental apparel — can locate some more inspirational standards in collaboration partners. The world does not need Hypebeast pages on CdG x Duck Dynasty, CdG x AXE Body Spray, CdG x Maeda Atsuko, CdG x Liberal Democratic Party, etc., etc….

Azuma Hiroki Goes Global / Brett FUJIOKA
In the world of Japanese criticism, Azuma Hiroki’s new book, General Will 2.0: Rousseau, Freud, Google, received an English translation. The book takes a look at the ways social media could potentially reshape (or rethink) modern democracy in the near future. In Japanese, Azuma published another book on a similar subject matter — “Dark Tourism.” The work received air time on Japanese television and attracted attention from video game developer Hideo Kojima.

The second part of Matt Alt’s interview with popular author, academic, and super fan Patrick W. Galbraith on the key controversies in otaku culture and his new book, Otaku Spaces.

Otaku Spaces Chin Music Press (2012) Buy on Amazon

In the last installment, we talked to Patrick W. Galbraith, author of Otaku Spaces, about how Japanese society defines the word “otaku,” and why he decided to interview so-called otaku directly to break through the stereotypes. This time we look at some long-standing debates in the otaku discourse, including whether otaku are “cool” thanks to Cool Japan and whether recent “moe otaku” are continuous or a break from the original 1980s subculture.

OTAKU SPACES © 2012 by Patrick W. Galbraith and Androniki Christodoulou. Photographs reproduced by permission of the publisher, Chin Music Press

Both your intro and the experts you interview define otaku as “super-consumers.” When you think of the economic downturn in Japan and the decline of consumerism, that must mean that otaku really, really stand out as consumers. Has this new economic power legitimized otaku? It’s pretty ironic to see the powers that be suddenly anoint these perpetual social outcasts as “Japan cool.”

Yeah, or try to! There is no doubt that society’s revaluation of otaku is linked to shifts in capitalism and consumer society. One of the interviewees in the book, University of Tokyo professor Yoshimi Shun’ya, describes otaku as paradigmatic of “information-consumer society,” which spread in Japan in the 1970s and 1980s. Or you can see the revaluation of otaku as linked to the rise of immaterial or communicative labor and cognitive capitalism. (Thomas LaMarre has an article on this, for those who are interested.) In 1989, manga artist, editor, and cultural critic Ōtsuka Eiji voiced the zeitgeist by saying that Japan doesn’t produce anything anymore but rather just “plays with things” and produces information. This is an apt description of immaterial labor, which spread with advances in media and communication technologies. But Ōtsuka didn’t see it that way at the time. Instead, he criticized the consuming Japanese nation as a land of “shōjo” (girls), as opposed to the ideal producing salarymen of the past.

Retrospectively, people also see in the 1970s and 1980s a shift from the salaryman producer — mature and masculine — to the otaku consumer — infantile and feminine. This has been the source of endless social anxiety in Japan about youth, individualism, and the future.

The 1990s was then a turning point in this debate. On the one hand, it was a bruising decade of receding economic and political significance for Japan, and on the other, there were reports of Japanese popular culture (and, it was hoped, influence) spreading throughout Asia. As early as 2002, Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichirō made a speech to the Diet about making Japan an “intellectual property-based nation.” The high visibility and praise of manga and anime in North America and Europe bolstered such propositions, along with Douglas McGray’s “Gross National Cool” article in 2002. Not long after this, in 2004, the Nomura Research Institute released its infamous “revaluation” of otaku as “enthusiastic consumers,” who fuel hobby and pop-culture markets that remained strong despite the recession. According to this and other reports, otaku were supposed to be the engine driving innovation in media such as manga and anime, which fit well with the “intellectual property-based nation” idea.

So we have social, economic, and political reasons for the normalization of otaku. Remember that Asō Tarō served under Koizumi as Minister of Foreign Affairs. His rise to power in the Liberal Democratic Party is emblematic of larger power dynamics. As is well known, Asō touted otaku as a major wellspring of creativity and at least partially responsible for the global competitiveness of Japanese anime, manga, and games. But we have to be careful, because when Asō started to associate himself with a certain type of otaku in Akihabara, he lost some mainstream support. People can rally around works by Tezuka Osamu and Miyazaki Hayao (especially Spirited Away) as national culture, but maybe they are a little less comfortable with titles like Rozen Maiden or Strawberry Marshmallow.

Didn’t Asō specifically mention Rozen Maiden as a personal favorite? Looking back it seems like a calculated pose, but I suppose that the reality of his interest is less important than the fact that a politician even mentioned a moe manga in interviews.

Right. He actually thought that it was innocuous to say that he liked it, if not beneficial to his political career. We know how that worked out for him! (See UMSL Professor Laura Miller’s article on “pimping” pop-culture, where she specifically calls Asō out.) But anyway, what’s so interesting about “Cool Japan” is that it opened up a space for people to say and do things that they never would have before. The fact that suddenly Akihabara, otaku, and moe were on the radar along with anime and manga opened up a contested terrain where the boundaries of subculture, pop-culture, and national culture were (re)negotiated. The backlash against Asō points to a simple fact: Not all “anime” is “popular” culture or even agreeable to the mainstream inside and outside Japan. This came out most dramatically in the recent “non-existent minor” debacle, where representatives of the Tokyo metropolitan government stated that they find no artistic merit in manga and anime, which thus need to be legislated against as a threat to the normative development of “healthy youth.”

Getting back to the place of otaku in Japan today, let me return to the position of Ōtsuka Eiji, who characterized shōjo girl culture as being about consumptive pleasure suspended from (re)productive functions. The shōjo became a symbol of this herself, and otaku, oriented toward images of shōjo, were similarly seen as “unproductive.” With the contemporary nostalgia for “Japan, Inc” and the Japan that makes things, we see that otaku fit uncomfortably in “Cool Japan.”

So otaku don’t fit well into Cool Japan?

As I argued in the case of Akihabara, the idea of otaku is a lot easier to deal with than the people themselves. We can just slap a Densha Otoko bandage on it, redeem the consuming Japanese male with a new look and girlfriend and all live happily ever after. But what about people like writer of light novels and cultural criticism Honda Tōru, who instead advocate marriage to fictional characters? Those who reject the redemptive narrative and live outside acceptable norms, even intentionally, publicly mocking them? That is a problem for Japan, both in terms of internal politics and external image campaigns.

Sure. Otaku allegedly marrying pillows and videogames and whatnot was a popular soundbite among foreign media outlets for a while, but I’ve always questioned how widespread the phenomenon actually ever was.

The “phenomenon” is not widespread, but men and women who don’t fit into the Densha Otoko or “cool otaku” mould are rather common. They are invested in different sorts of networks, relations and meanings than mainstream Japan. These are the otaku who disrupt Cool Japan, because they are neither perceived as “cool” nor assisting in the (re)production of Japan. Think about all the debates surrounding people not getting married or having kids, people not curbing “childish” enthusiasms and taking on “adult” roles and responsibilities at work and home. This often translates into stock criticism of the individualism, selfishness and “antisocial” behavior of young men and women. So otaku are both revalued as an asset to the nation (for their creativity and consumption) and demonized as poisonous to its future. Academics Sharon Kinsella and Anne Allison both have great articles on this, which, though published a decade apart, show that the major anxieties and tensions surrounding otaku in Japan have not changed all that much.

The otaku that have always been seen as most problematic are those orientated toward bishōjo, or the fictional girls of manga, anime, and games, which raises issues about social and sexual development. Simon Fraser University professor Melek Ortabasi suggests that the male otaku in contemporary Japan is akin to the prewar moga, or “modern girl,” in that this lived identity and media creation crystallizes concerns about individualistic and indulgent consumption, gender and sexuality, and acceptable socialization. This extends beyond mainstream reactions. If we go back to the original articles on otaku from inside the fan community in the early 1980s (translated into English and published on this site), we see that these same concerns were crucial to the formation of the otaku discourse there, too.

There is this lingering notion that manga and anime “pervert” the mind, as we saw in the debates surrounding acceptable depictions and interactions with “non-existent minors.” We see a problematization of “otaku sexuality” and “otaku psychology,” for example in the work of clinical psychologist Saitō Tamaki. For what it’s worth, I think that there’s a politics to consuming in certain ways, which often entail rejecting (re)productive roles at work and home. In the aforementioned Honda Tōru’s critique of “love capitalism,” for example, he advocates that we escape from dating based on consumption and pairing based on income and earning potential. This leads to traditional roles and responsibilities at work and home, which he also wants to escape from. For Honda, what is preferable to this, and offers a means of escape, is idealized relationships with two-dimensional characters. (MIT’s Ian Condry wrote a book chapter on this.)

This seems like a good time to ask: Do you feel there is an inherent difference between old-school, 1.0 otaku and modern-day moetaku (moe otaku)?

I think that we need to be careful about imagining the history of otaku as a series of radical ruptures. This is endemic in “otakuology” (the study of otaku), and, unfortunately, commentators outside Japan too often follow the contours of the Japanese discourse instead of questioning it. Most of the experts in Japan like to think in terms of “generations” of otaku, which relate somewhat loosely to advances in technology — TV, VCR, computer, and so on.

In the most popular version of this narrative, otaku begin in the 1970s with people watching Space Battleship Yamato on TV. The story was complex, and demanded regular and engaged viewing, cultivating a mature fanbase. This was supported by subculture magazines about anime (the special issue of Gekkan Out in June 1977 is a landmark). Okada Toshio, arguably the most influential proponent of this narrative, adds that at the same time older fans became critically aware of stylistic differences in the continuity of Getter Robo. Then we have the taping, reviewing, and analyzing of anime using VCRs in the 1980s, not to mention the market for OVAs. This contributed to even more mature anime and fans. Finally, we have computers and games in the 1990s. We can update this with the Internet, social media, and portable linked devices, but Okada got sick of it and just declared otaku culturally dead in 2008.

Yes. I remember covering that. I assume you don’t agree.

Well, if you follow this line of thought, then there are no more otaku in Japan, be they interested in moe or not. I don’t think that is true at all. A trip to Akihabara reveals a thriving fandom. When you get down to it, Okada is interested in authenticity. One of the problems with Okada and people like him is that they can only see their version of otaku and degrees of separation from it. For Okada, that is sci-fi fans, who also got into anime. There is an original or authentic otaku against which all others can be judged. You said 1.0 otaku, but Okada tends to say otaku “elite” or even “aristocrats,” who are of a time past, his time. It would almost be comical if he wasn’t totally serious, and if his opinions did not carry as much weight as they do. When the self-proclaimed “king of otaku” (otaking) declares otaku dead, he effectively silences the younger generation, makes them invisible and leaves them to the mercy of mass-media pundits. Okada’s attitude as an “elite” fan naturally rubs a lot of younger otaku the wrong way.

There is a politics and hierarchy in the fan community that we should be aware of when evaluating the claims of otakuology. In the case of Okada, we should note the way that he saw otaku in the 1980s, which was as losers. Following Nakamori Akio’s articles, he and other sci-fi fans stopped using the word. Nonetheless, Okada popularized otakuology in the 1990s as an intervention into otaku bashing in the mass media. To create distance from the earlier subculture, Okada started using the katakana version of the word otaku (オタク). He also appealed to foreign fandom for legitimization. Ironically, due to larger social, economic, and political factors, otaku were naturalized and trivialized in the 2000s in a way that Okada could not have anticipated. The mass media and government picked up the katakana version of otaku and Okada’s strategies of creating distance from the “bad” otaku of the 1980s (those pathetic imagined beings Nakamori wrote about, and the pathological ones associated with Miyazaki Tsutomu) and showing how much foreign fans loved anime and manga and wanted to become (Japanese and) otaku. This upset Okada, of course.

About the negativity towards moe in the community these days, it’s kind of ironic that certain fans were called otaku in the early 1980s for liking bishōjo, and certain fans are now denied the moniker of otaku for liking bishōjo.

Okada wanted to set up the sci-fi, media, and technology otaku that he knew and identified with as the standard. With all due respect, his version of history misses a lot of things. For example, in emphasizing anime, it misses the importance of manga and dōjinshi, specifically certain readerships being demonized for the production and consumption of bishōjo characters and lolicon fanzines. Okada never really identified with these guys, so he tries to pretend that they weren’t around, though journalists such as Takatsuki Yasushi and Sasakibara Gō argue that mature desires for bishōjo characters and the lolicon boom were as important as the advent of mature sci-fi anime to early otaku culture. (If you want to read more about this, check out this article.) Okada is right that the emergence of otaku is a matter of changes in audience reception, but he is wrong that it was only Getter Robo and not also, for example, Magical Princess Minky Momo.

Minky Momo being a sort of proto-moe show from the ‘80s.

Well, it’s more about fans responding to it as such. Minky Momo is an important series because we see that an unintended audience of adult men is watching an anime for little girls. This crossing of gender/genre/generation boundaries is important for the emergence of otaku. Maybe even more so than older fans getting into a giant robot show for kids, given the response to bishōjo inside and outside the community.

About Minky Momo, let me just say that Satō Toshihiko, president of Production Reed and a planner on the series, told me that he was unaware of the adult male fandom until after the show was on air and a group approached him about starting up a fan club. Satō says that Minky Momo was from the start an idea to sell magical girl toys for a sponsor. He called male fans and their activities “disgusting.” It seems likely, however, that some in the company, for example animators and scriptwriters, were a little more tuned in to the lolicon boom. In Minky Momo, the protagonist’s father watches from the land of dreams and comments on how sexy she looks when she transforms (parodying the male gaze). The following year, Studio Pierrot produced another magical girl anime, Creamy Mami, the Magic Angel, which again attracted older male fans. In a personal interview, Nunokawa Yūji, representative director of Studio Pierrot, told me that he was aware of older male fans when producing Creamy Mami and was far less upset by them. So this is something of a turning point in awareness of, about, and among otaku.

The sheer pervasiveness of lolicon themes in the ‘70s and ‘80s really took me by surprise when I translated Ejisonta’s 1983 article on the topic. I’d thought it was a recent trend, but it isn’t.

Yeah, there was a massive boom in the early 1980s. Enough so that if you pick up Gekkan Out, Animec, and Animage from that time, you’re likely to encounter articles about lolicon. Of course, there were subcultural magazines such as Lemon People and Manga Burikko, but we also see work by Uchiyama Aki, the “King of Lolicon,” appearing in Shōnen Champion (specifically his Andoro Trio, circa 1982). Mainstream manga, anime, and game companies were involved in lolicon, for example Enix, which put out the erotic game Lolita Syndrome in 1983. The first erotic animation in Japan was Lolita Anime in 1984. This boom reached far beyond the confines of what we commonly imagine as “subculture.”

But I am more interested here in bishōjo characters, as in those developed in the work of Azuma Hideo, than the specific genre of lolicon. Let me just stress that bishōjo were already there at the beginning of the otaku age of anime in the 1980s. Looking at a foundational work such as The Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, what do we find? Mecha and bishōjo. War and romance. Looking at Okada’s own magnum opus, Gunbuster, what do we find? Mecha and bishōjo. War and romance. Okada himself once bragged that all you need to succeed in anime is a giant robot and a girl who goes into space. He and the Gainax team knew what otaku wanted — hell, they wanted it too! I personally just think that Okada is upset that his interests aren’t dominant anymore, in that now anime is more weighted towards girls and romance than robots and wars.

So are you saying that there were similarities between fan groups then and continuity until now?

Exactly, yes. The approach to otaku generations makes it seem like an emphasis on cute characters is something new. It’s not. It thus serves to mask the presence of fans of bishōjo characters who have always been at the center of the debate.

Further, we end up missing similarities between modes of engagement within the fan community then and now. In the good ol’ days, people noticed continuity differences in episodes of the Getter Robo anime and got fired up talking about mecha designs, battles or the Itano Circus. Well, right now people notice continuity across anime series and get fired up talking about character designs, relationships or moe elements. Otaku then and now are affectively attuned to the moving image and feel excitement when exposed to certain designs of movements, be they of mecha or characters. They still memorize information and share it. They still communicate with and through commodities.

Okada doesn’t like bishōjo. Period. Feminist sci-fi critic Kotani Mari notes that there is a sort of misogyny to the backlash against moe, in the sense that men are upset that properly masculine interests in mecha and heroism have been replaced by something else. Despite the fact that bishōjo manga, anime and games are not necessarily feminist texts (though that depends on one’s definition), I think that Kotani Mari has a point about the borderline misogyny of the red-hot rage that many express over the increased visibility of cute girls.

Along these lines, Meiji University’s Morikawa Ka’ichirō does a great summary of otaku history, which goes something like science to science fiction to science fiction anime and finally just to anime. He notes an increasing focus on the everyday and on bishōjo characters leading to the explosion in the 1990s and 2000s with the boom in bishōjo games, craze over the characters of Neon Genesis Evangelion and figurine boom. We see how these things relate to the transformation of Akihabara, a physical space that people like Okada can’t stand. But you see the problem, right? At a place where otaku are alive, Okada cannot see them, in effect saying that there is nothing going on.

The problem with otakuology as I see it is not that as a discourse it raises certain objects and people up as canonical, lionizing some while marginalizing others, but rather that it actually obscures important aspects of history and forecloses the study of otaku here and now. When talking about past generations of otaku and dismissing today as an afterthought, we make otaku into static objects of historical analysis and deny the living present of otaku. As an anthropologist, the living present is really what interests me the most.

So what has changed for otaku?

Certainly not the passion of otaku for manga and anime, or the desire to become involved in an intimate way as consumers and producers. I think that we are just looking at a different set of circumstances or a media environment that encourages different sorts of engagement. The definition of otaku that many people are working with is someone who is narrow and deep in his or her interests, but this isn’t really suited to deal with fandom today. There is so much information and media out there that no one can master everything, so they watch a little here and a little there and depend on others to fill in the blanks. We see a lot of networking and sociality emerging as a result, just as in earlier times people might have formed otaku circles to pool limited resources (art supplies, videos) and knowledge. About sociality, otaku today are going out more often and in larger numbers. Instead of staying cloistered away in a room watching anime with a closed circle, they are going out, staging events, making unexpected encounters. It’s a lot more open. Fandom moves, across boundaries and borders. Unlike Okada, who ultimately affirms an authentic otaku — older Japanese male with specific interests — we see movement across generations, geography, gender, and genre distinctions.

The critique goes that otaku today are wide and shallow in their interests. But what about, for example, the fans of Haruhi Suzumiya? Didn’t they get totally involved in working out the mysteries — writing books on the subject, by the way, not unlike Gundam fans writing encyclopedias of their chosen franchise? Watching episodes over and over to work out details and chronology? Checking against the original work? Following producers, staff, and vocal talent? Making trips to western Japan to painstakingly map and photograph location settings? I rather fondly remember when people from the States were visiting Azabu Jūban in Tokyo to track the Sailor Moon settings.

But there is a notable difference between my example of engagement with Haruhi and previous fan engagements. Instead of being devoted to a long-running and continuing series or set of works in the same universe, fans today have shorter series, faster turnover, and more works to sift through. When they do find a work like Haruhi that moves them, they have to follow the media mix across multiple platforms and piece together the franchise. It is less coherent, and in some ways even more difficult than it was when a work and its world came complete and ready to inhabit. Otaku now have to actively work through a field of relations to make meaning.

Otaku today probably consume more media — and might even devote more time and energy to reading and viewing than they did in the 1970s and 1980s, though perhaps they do not always spend a lot of time with specific series. Or pay for the media. Instead of fussing over the continuity of one show, they might produce fanworks or cosplay or write a blog about anime. How does that now show their understanding of the series and characters? Their devotion? How is their engagement not productive? Maybe otaku don’t transition into “producers” anymore, as Okada gripes, because the line between producers and consumers is so blurred.

Today, the whole process of production is much more interactive and communal. I think that otaku engagements with anime, manga, and games reflect an intense interest that continues over a long period of time, which might be a fairer approach if we want to judge whether or not someone is an otaku. This is a qualitative, not quantitative, issue. How does one measure the intensity of engagement? By testing knowledge acquired or calculating dollars spent? Maybe we aren’t looking at things the wrong way. At a time when anime, manga, and games are commonplace, otaku are people who love anime, manga, and games in an entirely uncommon way. Things are different, but not necessarily worse.

Next time: What’s truly a weirder passion for adult men — being obsessed with robots or adorable little girls?

Matt Alt interviews popular author, academic, and super-fan Patrick W. Galbraith on the key controversies in otaku culture and his new book, Otaku Spaces.

Otaku Spaces Chin Music Press (2012) Buy on Amazon

Most academics write for other academics and keep their knowledge within academic institutions. Thankfully, Patrick W. Galbraith has never subscribed to those unwritten rules, contributing quite prolifically to the popular literature on his subject of choice — Japanese otaku culture — while finishing his PhD at the University of Tokyo and now working on another Doctorate at Duke University. His 2009 The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider’s Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan worked to formally organize the key terms and key ideas inside the famed Japanese “nerd” subculture. Now his new book Otaku Spaces from Chin Music Press deepens and personalizes that knowledge through interviews with and photographs of a wide range of passionate collectors.

We talked with Galbraith over email to learn more about working on the book and to settle a few key debates within the otaku community — including whether 21st century “moe otaku” are continuous or a break from the original 1980s subculture originators.

OTAKU SPACES © 2012 by Patrick W. Galbraith and Androniki Christodoulou. Photographs reproduced by permission of the publisher, Chin Music Press

For your new book Otaku Spaces, you decided to interview actual otaku rather than just comment on them. Do you feel like there is any actual value in this? I was struck by how few of them were able to articulate why they did what they did. I sensed the passion, but it almost came across as a sort of fetishism.

I never expected the people introduced in the book to be able to explain why they’re so into something. It’s always unfair to ask fans to be reflexive in self-absent situations or when they lose themselves in the object of affection. This is the fan setup, which is usually played for laughs. Affective attachments never really translate well into rational thought and logical explanations.

Nonetheless, I think that there are multiple reasons why we should interview otaku — mostly as an act of intervention. The discourse on otaku has been almost entirely framed by the mass media in Japan, which deals in easily recognizable stereotypes. We oscillate between “good” and “bad” otaku — bad being serial killer Miyazaki Tsutomu and good being 2ch folk hero Densha Otoko. Both of these are media constructs. There’s the otaku panic versus the otaku boom, the irredeemable male pervert versus the redeemable consuming male. These images serve the interests of people other than otaku. And it’s so schizophrenic! One moment, everyone is a little bit otaku, and the next otaku are the most aberrant and horrifying outsiders. Media personality Nakagawa Shōko is allowed to be a “otadol” (otaku idol) on a variety show, which is followed by a retrospective on Miyazaki Tsutomu, the “otaku killer.” This is the situation as I found it while working on the book in Tokyo in 2008.

So it occurred to me that otaku are far too often talked about instead of talked to, and when they are talked about, it is usually in naïve behavioral and psychological terms. They are either the assumed context for textual readings of manga and anime or are themselves read like an open book.

I thought, what if there was a book that instead put otaku in dialogue with themselves and others? I felt that the best way to intervene in the otaku discourse was to focus on individuals. Not just to take a photo of someone’s room and talk over it, but allow individuals to present themselves and their spaces as they pleased. To let them take control of the narrative in long interviews and take control of the space in portraits. To have them in their element and let them interact with the objects and the camera as they saw fit.

Thanks to this format, I hope that Otaku Spaces challenges stereotypes about otaku — in at least four ways. First, these individuals are allowed to talk in the interviews directly about the otaku discourse and place themselves within and against it. Second, in the portraits, the stereotypes become too obvious to ignore. These individuals are aware of what people are saying about otaku both inside and outside Japan — hugging pillows as a “social phenomenon,” for example — and they played with and performed stereotypes. They were able to overturn things by laughing at expectations and those who buy into them.

Third, the more you get to know the people in the book, the less you see them as weird “others” who are unknowable and unapproachable. Though it may seem cliche, I am convinced that most stereotypes are based on misunderstandings, which develop through distance and become compound. I think it comes through in the interviews just how kind the people I met were, how generous they were with their time and space, how open and articulate they were about their hobbies and desires. You sense passion, yes, but I hope also shared humanity. Putting aside value judgements, those of us living in societies in the advanced stages of consumer capitalism find ourselves in similar otaku spaces. Maybe these people aren’t into the same things that you are, but once you get to know them, I hope that it will be harder to criticize and dismiss them based on received notions of “otaku.”

This leads me to my fourth and final point: We don’t know what the term “otaku” really means. The term is used generally and trivially on the one hand, but is used in very specific and meaningful ways on the other. Because we have only had models such as Miyazaki Tsutomu and Densha Otoko — and maybe also “elite” fans and “public” otaku such as former Gainax head Okada Toshio — there have been few opportunities to reflect on what otaku means to us. We just see otaku and think, that person is or is not like me — end of story. In Otaku Spaces, we meet 20 individuals who either identify as otaku or were introduced as otaku by others. Men and women of different ages with different hobbies and interests, all collected together into the same space of “otaku.” What makes one person an otaku and not another? How much of the judgment is theirs, yours and mine?

The interviews are a great way to complicate the otaku image. Someone told me that one of the interviewees, Ōno-san, is not an otaku because he collects calculators. Ōno-san is a sci-fi aficionado who would likely be categorized as a first or second generation otaku, which is to say the same generation as Okada Toshio. But someone didn’t see that in him and questioned his inclusion in the book. The question for me, then, is who counts as an otaku, when and why?

This is the debate that Otaku Spaces opens up in its pages.

I was particularly interested by the inclusion of the “underground” collector Mr. Watanabe in the book, a man who collects memorabilia from serial killers, racist organizations like the KKK, and religious cults. He doesn’t exactly fit my stereotype of an otaku. What led you to include him alongside cosplayers, doll collectors, and Gundam kit builders?

Maybe he doesn’t fit your stereotype of an otaku, but to some people he is the stereotype. The person who introduced us to Watanabe-san told me that he was the epitome of the “scary” type of otaku. As a loner who collected “junk” that no one else understands, he fit the classic image of an otaku, which was likely shaped by the “Miyazaki Incident” (the highly publicized arrest of Miyazaki Tsutomu and debate about the state of Japanese society and youth). Certain parts of Watanabe-san’s multi-room collection did visually resemble the famous police photo of Miyazaki Tsutomu’s room.

Note that in the interview Watanabe-san denies being an otaku, which he associates with consuming popular manga and anime. He says that such things are too “normal” for him, and he got bored with them as a kid.

Do you think that an American guy who collects racist paraphernalia can also be considered a harmless otaku?

First of all, whether or not a person, otaku or otherwise, is or isn’t harmless has to do with individual personality and circumstances. Let’s not jump straight to generalizations or provocative juxtapositions. Second, I am not really concerned with deciding whether or not someone is or isn’t an “otaku.” This is not about determining authenticity or providing more accurate definitions. I feel that Watanabe-san belongs in the book because he was introduced to us as an otaku. He does not recognize himself as such, and perhaps neither do we, but Watanabe-san is nonetheless located in a time and place where he can be identified as an otaku. That is to say in Tokyo in the late 2000s. This indicates a subtext and context to otaku that we would be remiss to ignore. Given the whole “Cool Japan” and “otaku boom” thing in the 2000s, Watanabe-san perhaps represents a return of the repressed, a sort of unwelcome and inconvenient “otaku” of the past appearing in the present.

Otaku experts such as Okada Toshio describe otaku as perpetual outsiders, but is that really the case anymore? We live in a era when Japanese leaders consider video games and anime to be top export properties.

I deeply respect Okada Toshio, but I have to disagree with his “otaku are dead” stance. What if instead of as outsiders we looked at otaku as insiders, at least of a fashion? Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute PhD Lawrence Eng has argued that otaku are “reluctant insiders,” or those who are part of the majority, mainstream, or middle class but feel alienated by their very inclusion in that larger group. They thus engage in unanticipated consumption and appropriation of media and technology to actively become a minority, or to find a place on the margins. Eng is talking most specifically about otaku in the United States, who, in the early days of the nascent anime fandom, consumed across geographical, generational, and gender/genre boundaries.

I can see that in my own experience, growing up obsessed with anime in the pre-Internet era of the 1980s. My friends and I were so off the radar that we weren’t even a subculture.

I love Eng’s conceptualization, too. And I think that we can also apply it to Japan, especially when talking about men consuming media and material perceived to be for or targeting kids and young girls. If we look at the original articles on otaku written by Nakamori Akio — translated into English and published on this very website (translation here) — we see that those men were called otaku in the early 1980s. Here we have a discourse of infantilizing and feminizing not only because of a alignment of consumer demographics (adult men with children and girls), but also because of the perceived “failure” of otaku to become adult men. In a similar way, fujoshi, or “rotten girls,” consume media and material meant for young boys, appropriating established male characters and transgressively imagining sexual encounters among them. Isn’t the label a reflection of a perceived “failure” to be in (re)productive relationships with men? That is what AERA journalist Sugiura Yumiko argues, anyway. These are stereotypes, but they point us to a logic that operates behind the otaku label. It has to do with the choice of objects in relation to the person, the ways that the objects are engaged with in private, and how these attachments communicate or are performed with and for others in public.

When these relations with objects are perceived to be “inappropriate” in part or in full, the person is usually labeled an otaku. Meiji University’s Morikawa Ka’ichirō was right when he said that otaku are on a “vector towards dame (no good).” But, as Okada Toshio replied to him, otaku don’t necessarily choose things because they are “bad,” but rather the things that they choose are identified as “bad” by others.

This is really starting to sound like fetishism now.

Well, let’s try a sociological approach before we get into psychoanalysis. National University of Singapore’s Kam Thiam Huat conducted interviews with Japanese university students who did not consider themselves otaku (i.e., considered themselves “normal”). He asked for their impressions of otaku, which were rather negative, and tried to zero in on the “common sense” (jōshiki) that otaku were perceived to be lacking. To put this another way, Kam is interested in the logic behind otaku labeling, and from his interviews identifies four major discourses: detachment from reality, inability to communicate, failed gender and minor interests. For Kam’s informants, otaku are those who indulge in consumption and play that detaches them from “reality,” or roles and responsibilities at home, school, and work. Otaku are unable or unwilling to relate to others as a result of indulgences in certain consumption and play activities. Among the people Kam interviewed, otaku were identified as men, specifically men who do not meet the social standards of masculinity or consume and play in ways that are inappropriate for men or appropriate only for women. (I suggest that we open this up from men to a general question of gender roles and expectations, which then allows us to discuss female otaku and fujoshi.) Finally, otaku were described as people who do not follow mainstream patterns of consumption and play. They consume what is unpopular or unknown.

Like a good sociologist, Kam codifies a set of “rules” that govern the “common sense” of consumption and play in contemporary Japan, and acknowledges that they only represent the thinking of a group of university students in Japan in the mid-2000s. But it is interesting that in the midst of the otaku boom when otaku were supposed to be “cool,” they were not for these non-otaku university students. Even if we don’t want to label otaku, we can see the truth of Kam’s “rules,” or the logic of the labeling, in Japan and elsewhere, even today. If we take only one thing away from Kam’s very interesting study, let it be that for many in Japan otaku are those who consume or play in uncommon ways. They take their engagements beyond the limits of common sense, acceptability or normativity, to what is considered the extreme or excessive.

In order to get a grip on the logic of the otaku label, and how it relates to specific people and practices, let’s take your example of video games. Yes, electronic entertainment is a massive, global market that implicates almost everyone from a young age. Playing Super Mario Bros. isn’t in and of itself “otaku” behavior. But what about someone who continues to play? Who has played it so many times that he or she can clear it blindfolded, posts time trials online, or has played every game and can talk endlessly about them? This reflects a different level of engagement and such a person might identify or be identified as an otaku. It’s a matter of intensity and duration. And pride.

What about someone who handicaps him or her self — who plays “masochistically,” as scholar Kijima Yoshimasa puts it — to get more value out of the game? For example, beating a game with one quarter or without continuing. Or mastering a crappy, glitchy game like Sega’s Fist of the North Star, sharing the experience with others and becoming a champion at Tokyo Ranking Fighters in Nakano? Even though this falls into the broad category of gaming, we recognize otaku behavior, right?

Can you expand on what you mean by “masochistic?”

It is Kijima’s term. He means that people handicap themselves when playing a game, which requires that they play more often and purposefully to develop skills. This amounts to playing so long and hard that it becomes work, or even torture. I think that some of us can recall an experience where playing a game becomes agonizing, but at the same time pleasurable. In Kijima’s example of Fist of the North Star, the glitches represent patterns to memorize through a process of trial and error. It’s about finding pleasure in unusual ways, and taking the play activity underground. Casual players see Fist of the North Star, think that its just see a crappy game, and move on.

To get back to how Kam’s insights about otaku labeling might apply to gaming, think about someone who gets so into an RPG — better yet, an MMORPG — that they hole up in their room and miss school or work. Such a person has lost control, allowing the game to take over and impact his or her life, which is something that he or she laughs about with friends. A new Final Fantasy game? Oh, there goes my social life! Again there is a masochism to this self-parody. Many people seem to consider devoted players like this to be otaku. What about someone playing a bishōjo game? Most people would say that such a person is an otaku, more so if he is so into Fujisaki Shiori (Tokimeki Memorial) or Anegasaki Nene (LovePlus) that he had an intimate gathering of friends to marry the fictional character.

Is this the same as a kid obsessing over, say, Pokemon?

That is considered to be normal, right? But what if an adult male told you that he was into Pokemon or he showed up at a Pokemon TCG tournament? What if he was up all night playing the interactive My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic game online? The uncomfortable proximity between children and adults, even when it reflects the trend of collapsing consumer demographics together (kids getting older sooner, adult children, gender ambiguity), might cause some to call such a man an otaku.

I am really just taking Kam’s findings and applying them to gaming. None of what I have said is absolutely or necessarily “true.” I just want to point out that we should not be too quick to dismiss otaku as an empty word when it does, in fact, seem to operate with a predictable logic. The word is significant to people who are into manga, anime, and games, and to people who observe them. The word is made significant, given meaning, in one’s life and in everyday interactions. Such a statement reflects my preference for an anthropological approach, as compared to a sociological one.

You discuss the “gaze” as being integral to being an otaku — that openly showing ones tastes and interests publicly so as to cement personal identity is key to the lifestyle. Certain people you interviewed seemed to promote their relationships with two-dimensional characters or dolls as a healthy thing, even going so far as to worry about “upsetting” their dolls by picking a favorite for you. How much of this is real, and how much of this is a posture?

In otaku culture, overstating one’s desires, connections, and experiences is a lot of times just for laughs, such as the “my wife” phenomenon among male otaku or the “impregnation by voice” phenomenon among female otaku who are obsessed with voice actors. It is a way to strike up and enliven conversation about one’s preferences and passions, which are affirmed by others.

Impregnation by voice?

It’s just something that female fans of voice actors, and sometimes singers, say. If they are made to go weak at the knees, swoon, or burst with moe at the sound of someone’s voice, they might express this by saying “my ears are pregnant” (mimi ga ninshin shita). It makes sense, I guess, as the sound pierces deep into their ears and leaves a bit of itself there to grow into a love child. That would be the character image burning itself into their brains.

Anyway, otaku become known as a certain type of otaku or one with a taste for certain things, images and characters, genres and narratives. This is about as deep as “identity” goes in otaku culture. Self here is performed with characters, media/material and others. There is a lot of subversive potential in “playing with one’s self,” as McGill professor Thomas LaMarre puts it, but I think that most otaku are just out to have some fun, talk about what they like, and make friends.

I guess what I’m getting at is, is it possible to be an otaku without having an audience? Publicizing it seems to be a big part of the experience, particularly for younger otaku.

I see what you mean. It does seems that otaku are becoming more public and performative in their interactions with favorite characters from manga, anime, and games. Cosplay, itasha cars, anime tattoos and shirts, a room filled with anime goods and so on are ways to express one’s interests, tastes and orientations, and to relate to an imagined self, others, and media/material.

We see performances of private connections to characters, which make those connections public. Intimacy is affirmed by others watching and the self who looks back on the performance. Often there is a component of mediation, recording, and transmission. Otaku are totally wired and seem to enjoy working through “layers” of connections. There are so many layers to anime, manga, and games. When someone says that he or she likes a character, they can be referring to the setting and narrative events that define the character, the character design, the character type, the voice (actor or actress), the creator, producer, studio, the medium in which the character exists, the world that allows the character to exist and is accessed through it, one’s own interactions with the character, the community surrounding it and interactions with it, the way one feels in relation to it, and so on.

This is why I love the Japanese term “layers” (reiyā), which started as an abbreviation of “cosplayer” (kosupureiyā). I like the way that it foregrounds the layers of fictionality involved in costume play. As Saitō Tamaki tells us, working through these layers, connections, and ambiguities is part of the pleasure for otaku. The expanding relationship with a character occurs across multiple media and material forms, across space and time and across bodies, one’s own and those of others.

Next time: Why 21st century little girl obsessed otaku should be seen as descendants of the robot war fans of the 1980s