Otaku culture emerged within these contexts, and came to embody in the public imagination a particular section of youth who were considered the embodiment of fragmentation, individualism, and infantilism. In the mid 1980’s, a new term emerged to differentiate a new generation of affluent, consumer oriented youth – shinjinrui ( new human race). In the 1980’s, the mass media and culture industries were criticized for encouraging youth culture for its individualism.įor example, the ‘crystal tribes’ who were considered to be passionless cultural connoisseurs. In the early 1970s in parallel with the expansion of these culture industries, youth were considered to be self-consciously immature, regressive, and dysfunctional, because they emphasized individualism and a lack of affiliations with organizations. In 1960, youth were involved in radical political movements and new popular cultural activities such as manga consumption. This subculture associated strongly with antisocial fantasies and habits both violent and sexually perverted became a lightning rod in intense and histrionic public debates over social decay and the deteriorating values of Japanese youth.įor many Japanese, otaku meant an increasing number of sullen youth who would voluntarily taken leave of reality. The figure of Miyazaki still haunts the public perception of otaku.
#Anime otaku trial#
The outcome of his trial hinged on the question of his sanity, with the court concluding he understood the consequence and severity of his crime and sentencing him to death. Japanese media persistently associated Miyazaki with otaku and dubbed him ‘’The Otaku Killer’’ the image of his room-unoccupied and windowless with videotapes stacked to the ceiling around a small, rumpled bed – became the dominant impression of an entire otaku subculture. Public debates focused on Miyazaki as a socially alienated youth who was disconnected from reality and immersed within an otaku fantasy. They also found a collection of 5,763 videotapes and pornographic and pedophilic anime filled from floor to ceiling. Searching his home, police found evidence that he had murdered four young girls. Miyazaki was arrested for the abduction, murder and mutilation of young girls. The widely publicized arrest of 27-year-old Miyazaki Tsutomu in 1989 was a key marker for the negative perception of otaku in public discourses. Nekura means ‘black’ and ‘dark’ and evokes the quality of a melancholic and extremely introverted character. Nakamori chose the term otaku to describe what he identified as the particularly driven characteristics of fandom, in preference over the more conventional term, nekura ( maniac or enthusiastic fan). The first publication of the term “otaku” outside of the fan culture is generally credited to Akio Nakamori, who, in 1983, adopted the term to describe the social phenomenon of hardcore fandom in Japan during this time. How this word, generally associated in postwar Japan with the kind of scrupulously polite language housewives would use with neighbors and acquaintances, came to describe obsessive, introverted young fans of popular culture is uncertain and continues to be the subject of much speculation and debate. In English, the equivalent might be referring to someone as “sir” or “ma’am”. Otaku is a polite, almost stiffly formal way of saying “you” in Japanese.Ĭombining the honorific prefix o- with taku, meaning “house”, it literally translates as “your house” and carries connotations of detachment and impersonality. Otaku is a vernacular term used by amateur manga and anime fans and artists to refer to themselves. Generally styled as “geeks” or “nerds’”, otaku are pictured in Japan’s collective imagination as socially maladjusted young men dressed un-stylishly (often sporting backpacks and anoraks), physically unattractive (usually overweight and gawky), and unnaturally fixated on some narrow corner of mass culture. The rise of an otaku identity in Japan has inspired films, books, and art movements, that both demonize and celebrate fervent fan subculture. Since their emergence in the 1970’s and 1980’s, otaku have become a major social phenomenon, engendering widespread fascination as well as fear, disapproval and misunderstanding. A wide range of youth subcultures have appeared in Japan since World War II, many of them shocking polite sensibilities and subverting mainstream society with behaviors considered self-centered, hedonistic and deviant.Īmong the subcultures that attract the most attention, both among the public and in academic circles is the otaku, the notoriously obsessive fans of anime, manga, video games and other forms of Japanese popular culture.