[Summary]

This is a book about Japanese Otaku history. Okada categorizes Otakus into three generations from a historical point of view. According to his analysis, the 1st generation Otaku has a noble attribute, the 2nd generation Otaku has an elitist attribute, and the 3rd generation Otaku has an "independent personality (like me-ism)" attribute. Although Otaku culture was confined to a very small community in the 1st generation Otaku era, Otaku culture slowly spread into the mainstream Japanese society. Otaku's image was at its lowest in the late 80's, but slowly recovered from the bottom.

In the 21th century, Otaku for the first time became a hero in the popular drama "Train Man"（電車男), Densha-otoko）released in 2005. Then, Aso Taro the minister of foreign affairs in a visit to Akihabara, gave a speech about Cool Japan while proclaiming that he is an Otaku. Today, famous otaku idol singer Shokotan appeals not only to Otaku but to the masses as well.

Therefore, Otaku culture of the 1st generation has become diminished, thus leading to the book title "Otaku is already dead". Now, we're experiencing the culture of the 3rd generation Otaku.

[My thoughts]

This is a fairly good book, recommendable for understanding Japanese Otaku's spiritual history. The 1st and 2nd generation Otaku characteristic was especially well written, and I felt sympathetic towards his analysis. I think, the relationship between 1st Otaku generation and 3rd Otaku generation is like "server centric computing" to "distributed computing" in the computer world.

However, I felt that his description for the current situation or the 3rd generation is rather inadequate. It's regrettable that he shows no firm answer to living in the 3rd generation Otaku culture. I wonder if he is still struggling how to cope with the current situation.

[Readability for non-Japanese natives]

Fairly good (I suppose(^^;). Although there's no visual aid (illustration), Okada's sentences are all written in plain Japanese. However, some knowledge of Japanese contemporary history (from 60's to present) is essential for in-depth understanding.

[Afterthoughts: So... Who am I as Otaku ??]

As I wrote in the previous article, according to Okada's analysis, I belong to the 1st generation Otaku. 1st generation Otakus are generally treated like social minorities and sometimes face discrimination. So 1st generation Otakus have suffered ordeals in history. The worst era for 1st Otakus was the late 80's.

But why was Otaku's image in Japan so bad? The answer is in its history. Okada wrote this in the book very briefly, so readers need to do some prior research for a better understanding of the matter. I'll try to fill up this gap. Here's the supplemental information for non-Japanese readers.

When I talk about this, It's inevitable to mention about a serial killing case which happened in the late 80's. During this period, A (paedophilic) child serial killer appeared. After massive police hunting, a male suspect in his 20s was arrested. His name was Miyazaki Tsutomu (宮崎 勤). His case is sometimes called the Miyazaki case (宮崎事件) Miyazaki case in Japan; Okada abbreviates it as the M-case (Ｍ事件). The M-case is so notorious for its bizarreness in Japanese contemporary crime history. Details of the case is vividly described in Wikipedia [EN-LINK, JP-LINK1, JP-LINK2].

The M-case gave a huge negative impact to Otakus in those days because Miyazaki's Otaku hobbies were gradually revealed to the public during police's grilling investigation and the public came to associate all Otakus with Miyazaki. The police revealed that there were four female victims altogether and they were under seven years old. He apparently had a fetish for young girls and was a massive anime/tokusatsu video collector and his collection was really enormous. One of the most boastful collection was the video of Ultraseven episode #12(*1). Yes, He's what you call today, Otaku. In those days, The word "Otaku" was not common among the ordinary people or so called ippanjin (一般人）. Ironically, the M-case made the word "Otaku" so popular quickly. The media revealed his Otakish room(*2) sensationally, and the pictures of his room shocked the public. As a result, a massive Otaku witch-hunt campaign had begun by the Japanese mass media. It's like a scaled-down version of McCarthyism in the US in the 50's (Can It be called "Otaku Scare" ?). In those days, Otaku coming out was a high risk act. Otaku coming out sometimes even meant his social death during the worst times.

At the end of everything, the M-case left a deep wound amongst many innocent Otakus. As for me, I'm 99.9% recovered from the traumatic event after some time. But sometimes the old wound aches again when I see a similar case happening.

So this is the reason why 1st generation Otakus tends to hide his personality (distinguishable photo/real name/birth date/education background/company name) carefully, and always uses a screen name on the Internet. Yes, It's all good for me, too...

NOTE:
*1) ウルトラセブン[Ultraseven] episode #12「遊星より愛をこめて[yusei yori ai wo komete, (From a planet with love)]」is the so-called 封印作品[fu-in-sakuhin(*3),(sealed works)]. Episode #12 was aired only once during the original airtime(1967). The 1st VHS was released in 1976, and SONY's 1st Betamax[JP-LINK] was released one year earlier (i.e. 1975) so no one could make a home video archive for this episode #12.

*2) Eventually, the memorable 1st article of my other blog "Don's blog" is a review of Otaku-related academic exhibition「おたく：人格＝空間＝都市」[Otaku: jinkaku = kukan = toshi (Otaku: persona = space = city)] , which was held in Feb/2005 at Tokyo/Ebisu. This exhibition had many snapshot photo collections of Otakus' rooms.

*3) In Japan, there are not a lot of 封印作品[fu-in-sakuhin] in anime/tokusatsu works. Wikipedia-JP has a good summary on it. For further information, there are two good guide books you can refer to,「封印作品の謎」(2004, fu-in-sakuhin no nazo, [An enigma of sealed works]), and 「封印作品の謎２」(2006, fu-in-sakuhin no nazo 2))

[BOOK DATA]