Artikel über Japan

[Ianus]

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Versucht auch mal jemand die Telefonclubs in einen größeren Kontext zu stellen? Ich habe momentan die Literatur nicht zur Hand, welche das System genauer erklärt, also mache ich besonders die Herren darauf aufmerksam das hinter dieser Einrichtung vielleicht mehr steckt, als Blos tierische Sexlust und versteckte Pädophilie.

Japan ist kein glückliches Land, es haben sich im Nippon-Biotop einige interessante Formen geistiger Krankheiten entwickelt. Eine sehr alte und auch in China nicht unbekannte ist die Angst der Männer, das sich ihr Penis in den Bauchraum zurückziehen könnte und sie kastriert und verweiblicht zurücklässt. Diese Ausformung der Kastrationsangst ist mir aus Europa gänzlich unbekannt. Ein weiteres zunehmend verbreitendes Phänomen ist die "hikikomori", die krankhafte Isolation von der Öffentlichkeit:



Deep pessimism infecting many aspects of Japanese society

By Michael Zielenziger

Knight Ridder Newspapers



TOKYO - Kenji has seldom left his bedroom in five years. On a good day, when he forces himself, he can almost get to the front door of his mother's small Tokyo apartment before fear overtakes him.

"It requires a lot of courage just to go downstairs and get the mail," said the 34-year-old shut-in, who is thin as a twig and nearly as fragile. "I have two personalities: One who doesn't want to go out and one who does. They are fighting with each other constantly."

Kenji's self-imposed confinement is surprisingly common in Japan today, after a decade of economic decline that has produced many worrisome effects. At least 1 million young Japanese adults, the vast majority men, imprison themselves in their rooms for months or even years at a time, according to Tamaki Saito, the first therapist to write a book on the subject. They sleep during the daytime and pace their rooms at night, hardly ever leaving except for a quick run to the 7-Eleven, if they can manage that.

Counselors and psychiatrists say Kenji's reclusiveness, known here as "hikikomori," is an illness that exists only in Japan and was unknown even there until a decade ago. Hikikomori sufferers shut themselves off from siblings and friends, even parents, whom they sometimes attack in violent outbursts.

Kenji's behavior is a symptom of Japan's decline. A growing number of professional counselors and other experts worry that the nation itself is becoming a lot like Kenji: isolated, apprehensive and unable to interact with the outside word. More than 10 years after the country's economic bubble burst, there is little prospect of a rebound.

"I fear that Japan, as a nation itself, is becoming hikikomori," said psychiatrist Satoru Saito, who treats shut-ins and counsels families in his Tokyo clinic. "It is a nation that does not like to communicate. It is a nation that does not like to take risks. So what these young adults are doing is a mirror of what they see around them in adult society."

The United States and other wealthy industrial nations are also being buffeted by rapid economic, technological and social change. But few nations are as wedded to conformity and resistant to change as contemporary Japan.

In the past year, Knight Ridder has interviewed dozens of counselors, psychiatrists, sociologists and social thinkers; attended group therapy sessions with hikikomori patients; visited clinics; and interviewed families to document Japan's splintering social structure. Most of the patients did not want their full names used, to protect their privacy.

These conversations suggest that the same forces that helped Japan achieve decades of strong economic growth after it was defeated in World War II - social coherence, shared goals and group conformity - now prevent it from moving forward, and its people are seeking social and psychological escape.

Japan's decline eventually will affect the United States. Japan is America's closest ally in Asia, the fulcrum of American security policy in the region and home to a number of important U.S. air and naval bases. Japan's usefulness as an ally will decline as its more dynamic neighbors outpace it.

Japan's trains still run on time, its streets are safe and most people live comfortably. Handguns are illegal, drug problems do not permeate schools or streets, and random violence is virtually unknown.

Still, deep pessimism has infected many aspects of Japanese society:

- Japanese are killing themselves in record numbers, more than 31,000 per year, three times the number who die in traffic accidents. Their suicide rate is the highest among industrialized nations and is steadily climbing. The rate among workers in their 30s has risen nearly 45 percent since 1996.

- Japan's birthrate is among the lowest in the industrial world and still declining, because young women are avoiding marriage and refusing to bear children. By 2005, Japan's population will begin to shrink, a trend that demographers say will be nearly impossible to reverse. The labor force, likewise, will dwindle drastically.

- Alcohol consumption is declining across the globe, but not here. Though alcoholism is rampant and accepted as a release from work and social pressure, it is almost never discussed by opinion leaders or at the workplace.

- Japanese workers are increasingly dissatisfied with their lives, stressed out and depressed, and modern antidepressants have become legal only recently. A survey of 43 nations by the Pew Research Center, released this month, found that Japanese are far more pessimistic about themselves and their children's future than the people of any other relatively prosperous nation.

- The demise of Japan's extended family structure is causing unprecedented strains. While divorce rates are low, couples are growing apart, living in sexless marriages, often in separate bedrooms. Stressed-out mothers force their children to study and go to "cram school" in order to pass competitive entrance exams to high school and college, while absentee fathers spend their time and energy at work.

"Whether it's hikikomori, alcoholism or sexless couples, these are all different manifestations of the same problem," said Masahiro Yamada, a prominent sociologist. "These are all symptomatic of the social and psychological deadlock of Japanese society.

"When you look around at Japanese society, you see that more and more people have just given up."

Men such as Kenji appear desperate to fit into society. Yet when they pursue even modest individuality, they generate friction that leaves them burned out or too weak to cope.

Though Kenji seldom leaves home, he agreed to speak about his condition after twice begging off, tearfully explaining on the telephone, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I just can't come." When he finally did agree to talk, he said it was the first time in five years that he had left his apartment or spoken to anyone except his mother.

After just two trips outside their apartment, he became angry and "unstable," his mother said. He since has retreated to his room again, and his mother refuses to let him come to the phone, speak to outsiders or be photographed.

Kenji once was a mischievous child who loved playing third base. But he remembers being suddenly "frozen out" by classmates at his Tokyo grade school at age 12, when they inexplicably stopped talking to him.


"First it was just the boys, but within a week it was the girls, too," he said. "I thought it would pass after the winter school vacation, but it didn't change at all. Since I wasn't a student who studied hard, without having any friends I couldn't find a reason to go to school. It was too painful."

Today, some 20 years later, he talks about those events as if they had happened yesterday.

Articulate and thoughtful, he managed to graduate from a nighttime high school, then took correspondence courses and passed the exam to enter university. But he found himself paralyzed, unable to leave his family's small apartment to attend classes.

Now he spends his days reading newspapers, watching sports and thinking.

"Maybe I think too much," Kenji admitted, his thin eyebrows fluttering nervously, a large old bruise visible on his left eyebrow as he rubbed his thinning hair. "After 21 years of being different, I don't mean to sound arrogant . . . but maybe I think more deeply than others."


Psychiatrists describe hikikomori as a syndrome in which young adults, usually men in their 20s and 30s, shut themselves off from the world, away from friends, school or work, for six months or more. These individuals do not suffer from other known psychiatric illnesses such as schizophrenia, autism or panic disorder. Hikikomori is different from agoraphobia, which occurs in the United States, whose victims fear leaving home to visit an unsettled social environment but can mix with friends or relatives in their homes.

Counselors and sociologists said Kenji's behavior was an extreme effort to escape the suffocating pressure for conformity that was preventing Japan from coping with global changes and devising a new future for itself.

"We were raised in a culture that didn't teach us to think for ourselves," said Dr. Hiroko Mizushima, a psychiatrist who specializes in eating disorders and also serves in Japan's parliament. "We were trained to fit in. But now we need to find a path that permits variable values," and allows more diverse thought and action.


Many Japanese children wear identical uniforms to school. They are taught the same lessons on the same day from a government-mandated textbook, and they're trained to regurgitate facts, not to think for themselves. From early childhood, they're trained to fit into the group and to stomp out diversity, often through the cruelest kinds of social pressure.


"This culture does not permit you to express your own individual feelings or thoughts, so you must hide them," said Yuichi Hattori, a California-trained counselor who treats hikikomori patients in his suburban Tokyo clinic.


Brutal coercion to conform in school, along with pressure to attend cram school, or juku, often pushes young adults to the breaking point. "Japan is like a cult, and those who deviate get bullied," Hattori said.

Many hikikomori sufferers said they lived in constant fear of judgment.

"If I left my home during the day, my neighbor would just give me that look," said Nori, a 26-year-old shut-in who fell off the rails after he failed a university entrance examination. "It was as if they were staring right through me, like I wasn't a person. I just couldn't stand it." Eventually Nori responded by going out only after midnight, when he was sure no one else in his parents' apartment block would see him.

Stress and fatigue also trigger the social isolation. Dai Hasebe dropped out of junior high school after his parents enrolled him in a juku designed to help him pass the competitive high school entrance exams. In elementary school, the 12-year-old hadn't gotten home until after 10 at night.

"After a while, I just got tired," said Hasebe, now 19, who has spent most of the past six years secluded in his parent's three-room Tokyo apartment. "There was no particular incident," such as bullying or a harsh conversation with a teacher, that made him stop going to school, he said. "I was just relieved not to have a schedule."

Hasebe now wears shoulder-length hair and a moustache and whiles away each afternoon building scale models in his bedroom. He constructs Japanese Zero fighter planes and French helicopters, draws precise diagrams of military equipment and designed a sort of 21st-century fantasy gladiator, a silvery pterodactyl with a rocket launcher that stands sentry in the entryway of his family's home. Hasebe hardly eats; his pants barely stay on his hips even when they're tightly belted.

He said he would love to work in computer graphics or design airplanes. About once a month, he ventures out to a so-called "free space," an alternative school he has visited regularly during the past five years for a trace of social interaction. At the center, he uses a desktop computer to churn out new computer-assisted designs of futuristic aircraft.

In some ways, Hasebe seems lucky, because he has found a social outlet. Many other shut-ins, such as Kenji, nurse psychic injuries 15 or 20 years after they first occurred. "Patients with hikikomori become totally isolated from human communities," counselor Hattori said. "The issues just fester."

"All my 16 hikikomori patients have more than two personality states," Hattori said. "Their personalities get split by traumatic stress." Unlike classic schizophrenics, however, hikikomori patients don't lose touch with reality.


Dr. Kosuke Yamazaki, a professor of child psychiatry at the Tokai University School of Medicine, thinks hikikomori reflects quintessential Japanese social values. "In Western societies, you suffer from antisocial behavior," such as slashing tires or shoplifting, he explained one afternoon in his hospital office. "Here in Japan, people suffer from nonsocial behavior," such as withdrawing from society


Yamazaki thinks hikikomori patients' frustration is the leading cause of domestic violence in Japan, as lonely, isolated and troubled adult children lash out in a cry for help. "They behave like brutal tyrants," he said.

Hattori said many of his patients often expressed fear that they would kill their parents by accident. "They say they have a personality that sometimes rages out of control," Hattori said.

To demonstrate the way patients suffer, he introduced Mariko, a 22-year-old graduate of a two-year college who, he said, suffers from a mild form of hikikomori.

She can hold down an occasional job, and went to some of her university classes. But she is unable to form emotional relationships, is frequently depressed and says social conversation completely fatigues her. She usually stays closeted in her bedroom.

Sprawled on a red couch in Hattori's suburban clinic, the young woman was transformed during a counseling session from an intelligent young adult into a whimpering 5-year-old who kicked her legs peevishly. Sometimes she seemed torpid and tranquil, a needy child in search of love. At other moments she lashed out, saying she wanted to kill her father.

"He's a coward. He's not respectable. I can never understand what he's thinking," Mariko said, speaking in a trance-like state. "I never see his emotions. He never played with me. I don't want to become like him."

With Hattori's prompting, she vividly recalled a time when, as a small child, her father put ugly cicada bugs on her arm, frightening her as she watched television.

During the three-hour session, Mariko often compressed her shoulders, narrowed her eyes and became flush-faced as she turned into a grade-school child and described trying to fit in without being bullied. "I wasn't allowed to make mistakes. I wanted to express myself, but I couldn't," she whimpered. "I played a role so I wouldn't be bullied by others, but I got very tired trying to keep up appearances.

"When kids get bullied, the parents should understand, but they don't," Mariko explained through tears. "They yell at their kids and tell them to fit in. I only wanted to be regarded as a normal person."

Mariko's violent anxieties are well understood by parents in the community center of Higashi-Omiya, a suburb north of Tokyo. One Sunday each month, more than 120 parents of hikikomori patients gather to discuss the illness and how they are coping with their angry, isolated children.


Masahisa Okuyama, whose son suffers from hikikomori, founded the KHJ support network, which now has 31 chapters across Japan. Its name is formed from the initials in Japanese for obsessive neurosis, persecution mania and personality disorder.

"Parents are also victims of this disease," explained Okuyama, a former advertising executive, who was beaten by his 27-year-old shut-in son. He abandoned the family's suburban home for a small apartment out of fear that his son would kill him.


"He hates me, but the relationship between parent and child is so strong," Okuyama said. "He can kill me or I could kill him. Let's face it, we've been dissolved as a family."

More than half the parents in the group said they'd been attacked by their children. One woman pulled up her sleeve and revealed an ugly black-and-blue mark, the result of being assaulted by her son. Another woman sleeps in her car for fear that her son will beat her.

Around one table, a group of 11 parents discussed how best to reach out to their children. Most cooked dinner for their children and left food outside their bedroom doors. Some said their children left their rooms only when their parents went to bed. With tinges of guilt, many admitted that they found it difficult to communicate with their children when they were younger.

Some fathers said they devoted so much time and energy to work that they had no choice but to neglect their domestic lives. "If I leave my work early, I would inconvenience my customers," one father said without apology.

Some psychiatrists think that only "tough love" will cure hikikomori patients, and that if parents stop feeding and supporting their adult children they will be forced to abandon the sanctuary of their rooms. But these parents said it wasn't that simple.

"If I don't feed my son, he'd just starve to death," one woman said. "I doubt I could let that happen."


Kenji desperately wanted to find a way to rejoin society. "I sometimes look back and say, `How did I become like this?'" he said.

Earlier this year, he wrote a letter to Okuyama, the head of the counseling group for parents, begging for help. "I just don't know what to do," he said in his letter. "I'm looking for a single ray of light."

Okuyama responded with a friendly note describing the work of KHJ and inviting him to attend a meeting. But Kenji never went. Okuyama later admitted that "maybe it was too far a step" to suggest that Kenji leave his house and go to a meeting with hundreds of strangers.

Psychiatrist Hattori said men such as Kenji weren't at fault, but were fighting a social order that created their illness. Japan, he said, "is like a community without escape. There is no way out. To survive here, you must conform to the will of the powerful. So all you can do is avoid conflict with other people by staying in your own room."

"When you are raised by a wolf you grow up a wolf," Kenji said. "You can't go back into normal society. That's how I feel. Teachers tell you, `You are free to grow up and become what you want.' But adults can't show us any example where that's true."

[Ianus]

Scheint, als könnte ich dem Fluch der Doppelposts nicht entkommen.

Uuups, they did it again:

Japan adopts history textbook that justifies its invasion of Asia

On Thursday the Tokyo Education Board adopted a new public school history textbook filled with nationalistic bias involving distortions of historical facts and exoneration of the Japanese invasion of Asian countries and the rounding-up of women in occupied areas for use as sex slaves for its military personnel.

(...)

The newly adopted textbook describes a distorted historical perspective as the following:

1) By describing myths as historical facts, it encourages Japan to worship its emperors.

2) It refers to the Pacific War as a “great war to unify Asia” in militaristic terms.

3) It beautifies the Japanese invasion of Asian countries and interprets its cause as a war to liberate Asian people.

4) It glosses over its invasion and colonial governing history of Asian countries that it occupied.

...

Natürlich sind die Nachbarn sehr erfreut darüber. Deswegen verbrennen sie in Südkorea auch diese Koizumi-Püppchen, wie man hier kurz vermeldet. Ich bin mir sicher, in China führt man gerade dieselben Szenen vor Japans Botschaften auf, und in Thailand, auf den Philipinen, in Nordkorea und auch in allen anderen Südostasiatischen Ländern, welche im Zweiten Weltkrieg von Japan besetzt waren. Und das schon seit 1982, als das Erziehungsministerium forderte, das verschiedene Passus in den Gechichtebüchern umgeschrieben werden, um die Kaiserliche Armee in besserem Licht erscheinen zu lassen. Dieser Artikel fasst die Geschichte ganz gut zusammen, und erwähnt sogar die Ienaga-Prozesse. Ienaga Saburo prozessierte von 1965 an dreißig Jahre lang gegen das Recht des Erziehungsministeriums, Schulbücher im Zuge des Zulassungsverfahrens umzuschreiben, und 1997 erhielt er teilweise recht zugesprochen.
Sein wirklicher Erfolg liegt aber darin, das der größere Teil der japanischen Schulbücher um 1990 herum die Verbrechen des japanischen Heeres im zweiten Weltkrieg erwähnte. Anscheinend will das Erziehungsministerium den verlorenen Boden nun wieder zurückerobern, oder aber kein einziger Beamter Japans liest internationale Zeitungen.

In diesem Sinne gibt es wieder einmal ein Musikvideo, von Iijima Ai's Lied 'Secret' von 1993 das die Japaner im gegebenen Kontext als kriegslüsterne Perverse erscheinen lässt. Es lebe das Editing!

[Ianus]

Ja, ich weiß, das es auf den ersten Blick wenig mit Japan zu tun hat, aber ich will verdammt sein wenn dies früher oder später nicht die gesamte Außenpolitik Japans verändert:

Kim Jong Il ist nicht mehr der "geliebte Führer"
Das ist gerade so, als würden es die KPC aufgeben sich "Komunistisch" zu nennen.

China verlegt 30.000 Soldaten an die Nordkoreanische Grenze
Mann, wenn Nordkorea wirklich zusammenbricht, wird sich zeigen, ob die "Pufferstaaten"-Theorie wirklich Chinas Außenpolitik bestimmt, wie manch ein Schreiberling behauptet. Man wird dann nämlich einmarschieren müssen und einen von Kims Söhnen an die Stelle seinen Vaters setzen, um zu verhindern das die Demokratischen Staaten zu nahe an China heranrücken.

Wenn es wirklich eine Krise in Nordkorea gibt, kommt diese zusätzlich zu einem wundervollen Zeitpunkt. In Japan sind die Rechten kräftigst dabei die Kanonenboote wieder in die Außenpolitik einzuführen. Es wird interessant zu sehen auf welche Seite Koizumi sich stellt, sollte es zum Einmarsch kommen. Innenpolitsch ließe sich mit einer Wiedervereinigung Punkten, da man mit den Entführungsfälle endlich reinen Tisch machen könnte, aber Außenpolitisch ist es eine sehr schlechte Idee, sich gegen China zu stellen.

Ein Bericht über die seit mehreren Jahren herrschende Hungersnot (es gab schon mehr als einen Fall von Kanibalismus deswegen, berichten Flüchtlinge) und verschiedene Aufstände innerhalb Koreas von denen wir so gut wie nichts mitbekommen haben:
http://service.spiegel.de/cache/inte...325971,00.html

Lest auch das noch, es scheint als ob es wirklich so etwas wie ein "Ablaufdatum" für die Führerdiktaturen gibt:
http://www.rogerlsimon.com/mt-archiv...rth_korean.php

Und der ist gerade so, als ob Jörg Haider anfangen würde, die Ränge seiner Partei mit homosexuellen Polen zu füllen:
http://www.indiadaily.com/editorial/11-18b-04.asp

Ich freue mich immer mehr auf den 13. Dezember, dann werde ich Herrn Frank (Prof. der Koreanologie, Vertreter der Theorie das sich korea nur dann Demokratisieren wird, wenn man die Bevölkerung ausreichend füttert) mit Fragen löchern können. Er war im September dieses Jahres in Nordkorea, es verspricht also interessant zu werden.

[Ianus]

Koizumi hat seine Kampangen mit Yakuzageldern finanziert., weniger verwunderlich, wenn man bedenkt das die Bauindustrie von der ehemaligen Glücksspielern mit Arbeitskräften beliefert wird und die Kreditfirmen größtenteils ebenfalls in den Händen der Yaks sind.
Außerdem kann ein ehemaliger Student der Waseda Universität, dem Heimatort des Super-Free Rape Clubs sicherlich jede Form der Protektion gebrauchen, die es bekommen kann. Auf die beiden Sexualverbrechen, die man dem Löwen zur Last legt will ich mal nicht näher eingehen. Sehr verwunderlich, das er nichts mehr zu fürchten scheint, als wegen seiner Scheidung der Homosexualität verdächtigt zu werden.

[Ianus]

Es ist wieder soweit .... Die Sterne ordnen sich in einer Weise am Firmament, wie nur einmal in tausend Jahren. Die Alten Götter werden wiedererwachen und die SEXTHEMEN wiederauferstehen.

Jaa, ich kann der Hassliebe nicht entkommen, deswegen poste ich diesen kleinen Artikel zur Gescnhichte der Pornographie in Japan aus der Wikipedia:

Pornography in Japan
Vermutlich werde ich mich später dafür noch aufhängen, aber der Text gehört zum besten zu dem Thema, was ich bisher gelesen habe.

[Ianus]

Die Textbuchkontroverse zwischen Japan und dem Festland bietet mir doch immer wieder Material. Allerdings kann ich mich nicht erinnern, bisher die undankbaren Chinesen ins Visier genommen zu haben, die Vergessen, das es die Amerikaner waren, welche den chinesischen Widerstand mit Materialflügen über den Himalaya unterstützten.

Genauso wie die Idee, das China niemals in dreitausend Jahren Geschichte Eroberungskrieg geführt hat - das kann man doch wohl nur schlucken, wenn man keine zwei historischen Karten des Landes betrachtet hat. Vielleicht würde es den Schülerchen sonst auffallen, das es Zeiten gab in denen China den Kontinent bis nach Vietnam hinunter besetzt hielt.

In 214 B.C.E. the newly unified Qin empire of China sent a military expedition south to conquer northern Vietnam. The ruler there, fearing devastation, submitted to the Qin, and the north was divided into three commandaries, much like Korea was under the Han. With the decline of the Qin, the governor of one commandery in 208 B.C.E. conquered Au Lac and renamed the new entity under him Nam Viêt. During the Han dynasty, Nam Viêt became part of the Chinese tributary system. This relationship continued through the end of the 2nd century B.C.E., but in 111 B.C.E. Chinese troops attacked and captured Nam Viêt on the order of Emperor Wu of the Han. The country was renamed Giao-chi (Jiaozhi in Chinese) and was incorporated into the Han empire. There it remained for more than a millennium.

[...]

When China was reunified under the Sui and Tang dynasties, Vietnam fell again under Chinese control. The Tang set up the Protectorate of An-nam (literally, the ?pacified south?) in the northern part of the country in the 7th and 8th centuries, typical of Chinese regional control structures at the time. When the central control of the Tang waned in the 9th century, control in the extremities waned as well and gave rise to instability. During the Tang, the political center of what was then Vietnam became Hanoi.

von: http://www.bartleby.com/67/397.html

...

[Ianus]

Die E-Bay Katana-Fakes werden immer besser. Die Herstellung von Damaststahl haben chinesische Fälscher seit etwas über einem Jahr so weit gemeistert, das die Katana mit einer gewissen Regelmäßigkeit zumindest aus dem korrekten Stahltyp gemacht sind.

Inzwischen bekommen sie sogar die Form halbwegs hin, sieht mann von solch kleineren Mängeln wie vollkommen falsch geschliffenen Spitze, der zu sauber polierten Angel (und dem dreitage-Rost ) und der falschen Politur ab.



Ich wünschte, sie hätten diesem Schwert die Qin-Dynastie inspirierten Beschläge verpasst, dann hätte man zumindest ein schönes Sammlerstück.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...291678065&rd=1

http://www.ksky.ne.jp/~sumie99/ - Wenn ihr dieses chinesische Stück mit einem Haufen japanischer Arbeiten vergleichen möchtet.



Mehr zu hikikomori - Dr Henry Grubb, welcher Behaptet, das diese Krankheit in anderen Staaten nicht vorkommt, ist schlecht informiert. Mir ist ein Fall hier in Wien bekannt, der abgesehen davon, das die Krankheit vor der Pupertät auftrat und bis nach der Pupertät anscheinend durch Therapie beseitigt war alle Symptome von hikikomori aufweist. Das Leiden mag bei uns extrem Selten auftreten, aber frei davon sind wir nicht.

[Ianus]

Paris is an expensive place to die in.

- Oscar Wilde


In Amerika entwickeln einige Schizophrenie, in Frankreich Depressionen, Verfolgungsangst und Selbstmordgedanken. Und in Israel gesellen sie sich zu denen mit Jesus Syndrom?

Was können wir von diesen Unglücksraben lernen? Das Missinformation in manchen Fällen Gesundheitsschädlich ist?

[Ianus]

Ich werde am Montag mal nachsehen, ob wir dieses Buch in der Fachbibliothek haben, vielleicht finde ich auch noch die Quelle für dieser ziemlich schrägen Geschichte...

But he does have some interesting things to say. Perhaps the strangest and most startling thing I ever read about Japanese culture was in his book "NTC Dictionary of Cultural Codewords" which was mercifully renamed and republished under the title "The Japanese Have A Word For It." It's a loose collection of essays rather than a dictionary, it's a catalog of nihonjinron (amongst other topics). There's an entry under the keyword "eigozukai" (english-user) that I'll never forget. He asserted that Japanese believe that Japanese should speak only Japanese, and by learning English, it was believed that their minds would be ruined by foreign and unnatural thinking processes. So eigozukai is an insult, a label for someone who is contaminated and doesn't think like a Japanese. Then he cited an incident from the 1970s in Tokyo, a workman was coming back from his job carrying his toolbox, when he encountered two nihonjin college students speaking English to each other. He took out his axe and murdered one of the eigozukai students on the spot. His defense was that he was driven temporarily insane by hearing nihonjin speaking English to each other..

...

Naja, es stimmt, das momentan von Idioten ein ganzer Haufen Theorien vorgebracht und positiv aufgenommen wurden, welche behaupten das die Gehirnstruktur von Japanern wegen ihrer Sprache anders sei UND das "echte Japaner" deswegen unmöglich noch zusätzlich eine andere Sprache lernen könnten. Allerdings werden diese Theorien eher wertlos, wenn man sich einige der Erfahrungsberichte von Englischlehrern und ein paar Zeitungsartikel zum Thema Englischunterricht durchliest.

[Saturo]

Ja ! ES LEBEN DIE VORURTEILE, was würden wir nur ohne sie tun.

[Ianus]

Ja ! ES LEBEN DIE VORURTEILE, was würden wir nur ohne sie tun.

...

Vorurteile, wie:

Edit:
Missverständniss durch Mangel am Selbstvertrauen des Moderators ausgelöst.

Entschuldige noch einmal, Saturo

[Ianus]

Ich mag "Disinfotainment", und der Bericht zum Thema Toilettenrenovierung in öffentlichen Schulen (mit Quicktimevideo) war wieder einmal sehr interessant.

[Ianus]

Chinoiserie - ein Trend, welcher im späten 17. Jahrhundert zum vermehrten Import chinesischer und japanischer Kunstgegenstände führte. Einige interessante Stücke entstanden in dieser Zeit, wie dieses Euro-Katana:


(http://www.catsdiablopage.com/saebel.htm)

Das Schwert wird in Dresten ausgestellt, und ist 1674 in Klausenburg/Siebenbürgen vom Schmied Thomas Kapustrian gebaut worden.

Andere unterhaltsame Seltsamkeiten sind gelegetlich in Portraits auftauchende japanische Rüstungen, wie jene links unten auf diesem Portrait des Iren Sir Neill O'Neill, gemalt im Jahre 1680 von John Michael Wright.

[Ianus]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article...6073_1,00.html

http://www.japantimes.com/cgi-bin/ge...20050421ks.htm

ich emnpfehle, die beiden Artikel mit einer großen Prise Salz zu nehmen, solange niemand das Blog zum Times-Artikel findet.

[Ianus]

Vielleicht seid ihr über die Verbrechen des Japanischen Heeres im Bilde und mit hoher Wahrscheinlichkeit habt ihr die Sache mit der Textbuchkontroverse inzwischen Mitbekommen. Weitere Streitpunkte zwischen Japan und seinen Nachbarländer wären auch noch ein paar Inseln, die nicht vorhandene Entschuldigung für die Kriegsverbrechen und die nie erfolgten Reparationszahlungen.

Hier geht es allerdings mal wieder um eine der Inseln, ein baumloses Stück Fels gerade mal groß genug für ein paar hundert Leute:

http://uqmgp.hp.infoseek.co.jp/

[Ianus]

..zumindest nicht in Japan.

The Tokyo High Court on Wednesday dismissed an appeal filed by former smokers, some now deceased, who were each demanding 10 million yen in compensation from Japan Tobacco Inc. and the government for tobacco-induced illnesses.

(...)

Presiding Judge Toshinobu Akiyama said Wednesday that he supports the Tokyo District Court's ruling in July 2004 that the court "cannot affirm the causal relationship between smoking and the diseases of the plaintiffs and the deceased plaintiffs."

In Wednesday's ruling, Akiyama noted that while smoking does endanger one's health, there are other substances in the environment that can lead to cancer.

Such factors must be considered comprehensively when referring to the dangers brought about by smoking, the judge said, adding that the effects of tobacco on the human body have not yet been thoroughly clarified.

...

ganzer Artikel

Besonders liebenwert ist IMHO "there are other substances in the environment that can lead to cancer.", geradezu eine Aufforderung sie sollen doch gefälligst irgend eine nichtstaatliche Firma wegen Gesundheitsschäden durch Umweltverschmutzung verklagen.

[Ianus]

Ein äußerst interessanter Quote aus dem Swordforum bezüglich des beliebten "ZOMG! SAMURAI MIT ZWEI SCHWERTERN!!111 Musashi Myamoto": Der Übersetzer hat Scheiße gebaut.

Although I don’t have any particular interests in this thread, I would still to toss my two yen in (just to stir things up)

quoteriginally posted by JD Charles
Let me refer you all to the book of Five Rings by Musashi himself.

...

Yes. As I am typing this, I am holding “Gorin no Sho” written by Miyamoto Musashi himself in the original classical Japanese (originally reprinted in 1963 and re-published in Japan in 2001), and reading the section in question (i.e., “Chi no Maki. Ichi. Kore ichi ryu ni-to to nazukeru koto.”).

quoteriginally posted by JD Charles
It appears that he preferred two longswords, probably Tachis or Nodachis, considerin that Musashi was considered to be very tall.

...

Uhmmm... I am sorry..., but from what I can read in Musashi’s original writing in classical Japanese, it does not appear that he preferred two long swords to one regular size katana and one wakizashi...

quote: Originally posted by Jeff Ellis
http://www.samurai.com/5rings/

more specifically

http://www.samurai.com/5rings/ground/

under "The Name Ichi Ryu Ni To (One school - Two swords)"

"... However, when it is difficult to cut an enemy down eith one hand, you must use both hands. It is not difficult to wield a sword in one hand; the Way to learn this is to train with two long swords, one in each hand. ..."

...

With all due respect to the translator, I am afraid that the English translation in this part is not correct... And I can say this with confidence (because I am one of the very few native speakers of Japanese on this forum who can read, write and understand classical Japanese pretty well...). In the original Musashi’s writing (again, in classical Japanese), it reads ...

“... Moshi katate nite uchi koroshi gataki toki wa, ryote nite mo utomu beshi. Tema no irukoto nite mo arubekarazu. Mazu katate nite tachi wo furi narawasen tame ni, ni-to to shite, tachi wo katate nite furi oboeru michi nari. ...” (Miyamoto, 1963/2001 p.52)

This paragraph, if it is translated correctly into English, should read ...

“... If it is difficult to kill [your enemy] with one hand[ed cuts], then [one] should also use two hands. That [i.e., to kill with two handed cuts] should not be such a trouble. In order to be accustomed to wielding a “tachi*” with one hand, it should be the Way to learn to wield a “tachi*” in one hand [and a companion sword in the other] as in the two swords method. ...”

[*Note. The translator’s interpretation of the word “tachi” to mean “a sword” in this section is correct. By “tachi” in this context, Musashi simply meant “a long sword” as he liked to use old fashion usage of the term. (See Miyamoto, 1963/2001 p. 51)]

To ensure the accuracy of my English translation of Musashi’s original writing, it was also cross-checked with the modern Japanese language annotations provided in this book. As expected, they are in very close correspondence to each other...


Reference:

Miyamoto, Musashi. (reprinted 1963/2001). Gorin no Sho. (Annotated by Kamiko, Tadashi in modern Japanese language.) Tokyo, Japan: Tokuma Shoten. ISBN4-19242143-7.

...

Das verneint natürlich nur den gleichzeitigen Gebrauch von zwei Katana/Tachi in Musashis System.

[Ianus]

Eine dreiteilige Diskussion über Otaku-Kultur und die neueren Entwicklungen in dieser, aus dem Buch "Little Boy: the art of Japans exploding subculture" mit Takashi Murakami, dem Erfinder von Superflat und zwei weiteren Herren, die ich vom Namen her nicht zuordnen kann.

Teil zwei und drei werden folgen.

Takashi Murakami: Okada-san, Morikawa-san, thank you for coming. Our Topic today is the culture of Otaku. After Japan experienced defeat in World War II, it gave birth to a distinct phenomenon, which has gradually degenerated into a uniquely Japanese culture. Both of you are at the very center of this otaku culture. Let us begin with a big topic, the definition of otaku. Okada-san, please start off.

Toshio Okada: Well, a few years ago, I declared, "I quit otaku studies," because i thought there were no longer any otaku to speak of.
Back then [during the 1980s and eraly 1990s], there were a hundred thousand or even a million people who were pure otaku-100-proof otaku, if you will. Now, we have close to ten million otaku, but they are no more than 10- or 20-proof otaku. Of course, some otaku are still very otaku, perhaps 80 or 90 proof. Still we can't call tnhe rest of them faux otaku. The otaku mentality and otaku taste are so wiedespread and diverse thoday that otaku no longer form what you might call a "tribe".

Kaichiro Morikawa: Okada-san's definition of otaku sounds positiv, as if they're quiet respectable.
In my opinion, otaku are people with a certain dispositin towards being dame ["no good" or "hopeless"]. Mind you, I don't use the word negatively here.
To some extend, people born in the 1960s are saddled with the baggage of an "anti-establishment vision". In contrast, otaku, especially the first generation, have increasingly shed this anti-establishment sensibility.
It's important to understand, that although otaku flaunt their dame-orientation - an orientation toward things that are no good - it's not an anti-establishment strategy. This is where otaku culture differs from counterculture and subculture.

TM: Indeed, otaku are somewhat different from the mainstream. They have an unique otaku perspective, even on natural disasters. For exapmle, the reaction of Kaiyoudou's executive, Miyawako Shouichi, to witness the destruction of the great Hanshin Earthquake in 1995 was "I know it's insensitive to say this [after such a terrible desaster], but I think Gamera got it wrong." You know, the aftermath of a real earthquake was used as a criterion in otaku criticism.

TO: At the time of the earthquake, I raced to Kobe from Osaka, hopping on whatever trains were still running, taking lots of pictures. I agree, Gamera got it wrong. to create a realistic effect of destruction, you need to drape thin, grey noodles over a miniature set of rubble. Otherwise you can't even approach the reality of twisted, buckled steel frames. It was like, "If you call yourself a monster filmmaker, get here now!"
When Mt. Mihara erupted in 1986, the production team of the 1984 Godzilla film went there to see it. They were true filmmakers.

Wabi-Sabi-Moe

TM: Moriwaka-san will present an exhibition about otaku and moe [literally, "bursting into bud"] at the architekture biennale in Venice in 2004. your association of otaku with architekture is unique. Please tell us about it.

TO: I was most impressed by your phrase, wabi-sabi-moe, in the exhibition thesis.
Moe is not an easy concept to comprehend, but when you linked the three ideas lingustically, it made a lot more sense.
Those who are unfamilliar with the concept of wabi and sabi [meaning "the beauty and elegance of modest simplicity"] must s••••ly wonder what's appealing about feigning poverty.
Likewise, about moe, until you get the concept, I'm s•••• people question the origins of this seeming obsession with beautiful little girls, bishoujo. But once you get it, you start to feel moe might become a megaconcept, exportable like wabi and sabi.

KM: The truth is, I made up that phraseto pitch the show. Bud suddenly it was a headline in the Yomiuri newspaper.

TO: that's so awesome. The fact that it became a headline means everybody can understand it.

KM: It's a play on something the arhitect Arata Isozaki did in his exhibition, Ma, in Paris in 1978. He provided logical English explanations for such traditional concepts as wabi and suki [meaning "sophisticated tastes"] on exhibition panels.
[...]
i decided to do the same with moe.
There is a hughe gap between people who know about moe and those who don't. Every otaku person knows moe. for them, it's so basic. Buth it's not like all young people know the term. While at graduate school, I asked my colleagues about moe but amost none of them knew it.
It dawned on me that most mainstream people just din't know it.

TM: That disparity is really intruging.

KM: It clearly corresponds with another gap between those who know that Akihabara os now an otaku town and those who don't.
Those who do know couldn't care less that others are finally catching up, while those woh don't know still think of Akihabara the way it's been portrayed in commercials for household-appicane stores. this gap reflects the state of Japanese culture and society today.
Those who are unfamilliar with moe, I only half-jokingly explained: "In the past, we introduced foreigners to such indigenous Japanese aestethic concepts as wabi and suki. These days, people abroad want to know about moe." A lot of people respond, "Oh, is that so..."

KM: Otaku are self-consciouse about being condenscended to, when they go to fashionable places like Shibuya.
but they feel safe in Akihabara, because they know they'll be surrounded by people who share their quirks and tastes.
Over time, the focus of otaku taste shifted from science fiction to anime to eroge, as young boys who once embraced the bright future promised by science gradually erode by the increasingly grim reality around them. I think they needed an alternative.

TO: I think kawaii si the concept Murakami-san exported throughout the world.
Granted, Murakami-san's kawaii is alarming enough. But I wonder why i was further alarmed by Morikawa-san's formulation of wabi-sabi-moe. In a previous converastion we had for a magazine article, you said "Otaku is about the vector towards dame".
As a way of expanding on that, when otaku choose this orientation, they head into the direction of becoming more and more pathetic. At the time, they enjoy watching themselves becoming increasingly unacceptable. If you think about it, in a very, very loose sense, this is wabi and sabi.
i suspect this orientation is inherent in Japanese aestethics. If you look for a western equivalent, it would be Deadence, or the Baroque, though theirs is a tendencey towards decorativeness. I imagine such people think of themselves not in terms of "See what we've doned. We're amazing," but more like, "See what we've done! How pathetic we are!"

TM: I have said this many times, but i am a "derailed" otaku.
Neither of your situations apply to me.
When I am talking to Okada-san, I remember feeling like I could never keep up with the distinct climate of the otaku world.
So, I now want to explore the reasons why I escaped being an otaku.

TO: Probably because otaku standards were so high when you tried to join them. Besides, i bet you wanted to go right to the heart of otaku, didn't you?
The closer you tried to get to the heart of the otaku world, the farther you had to go.

TM: That's not just true with otaku, though. The world of contmporary art is exactly the same. If you can't discuss its history, you won't be taken seriously and you won't be accepted on their turf. I kept being reminded of this while listening to you two talk.

TO: In other words, just as you once had to know the history of contemporary art, now you have to understand moe, right?

...

[Ianus]

Teil zwei

Otaku vs. Mania

TM: This may be a frewuent question, but what is the difference betwaeen otaku and mania?

KM: In otaku studies, we often argued about this distinction. Generally speaking, three differences have been articulated.
First of all, mania are "obsessives" who are socially well adjusted. They hold down jobs and love their hobbies. In contrast, otaku are socially inept. Tnheir obsessions are self-indulgent. This point is raised mainly by the self-procliamed mania, critical of otaku.
The second point concerns what they love. Mania tend to be obsessed with, for example, cameras and railroads, which have some sort of materiality (jittai), while otaku tend to focus on virtual things such as manga and anime. In ohter words, the object of their obsessions are different.
The third point relates to the second one. A mania tends to concentrate on a singe subject - say, railroads - whereas otaku had a broader range of interests, which may encompass "figures", manga, and anime.
Taken together, I would say - although Okada-san may disagree with me - that someone who is obsessive about anime likes anime despite the fact that it's no good, dame. That's mania. But otaku love anime because it's no good.

TO: Mania is an analouge of otaku. Obsessives are adults who enjoy their hobbies, while otaku don't want to grow up, although financially, they are adults. These days, you're not welcome in Akihabara if you're not into moe.
I was already a science-fiction mania when otaku culture kicked in. i can understand it, but I can neither become an otaku myself nor understand moe. [laughs]

TM: And I'm nowhere near Okada-san's level. I failed to become an otaku. Period. [laughs]

TO: I believe otaku culture has laready lots its power. What you find in akihabara today is only sexual desire. They all go to Akihabara, which is overflowing with things that offer convenient gratification of sexual desire, made possible by the power of technology and media.

KM: but I think the sexual desire in Akihabara is different from that in Kabuchi-cho.

TO: Kabuchi-cho is about physical sex.
Because the heart of otaku culture shuns the physical, it has renamed seiyoku [sexual desire] as moe. Sexual fantasies are becoming more and more virtual and "virtual sex" profileraties in Akhhabara.

KM: Many otaku think they like what they like even though they know these things are objectionable, when infact they like them precisely because they are objectionable. The gap between their own perception and reality has made it difficult to distinguish otaku from mania.
If we define otaku through this orientation towards the unacceptable, it's easy to explain the three differences between otaku and mania Because if you like something that's socially unacceptable, you will appear antisocial.
Another consideration is that material things are considered superior to the immaterial. So if you are interested in the debase, you naturally gravitate towards the virtual.
In addition, otaku don't just purely love anime or manga, they choose to love these things in part as a means of making themselves unacceptable. That is why their interests are so broad.
This dame-orientation is evidenced by the history of otaku favourites. Up until the 1980s, people who watched anime - any kind of anime, be it Hayao Miyazaki or Mamoru Oshii or whatever - were all considered otaku. Today, Japanese anime is so accomplished that one film even won the Academy Award. As a result, grownups can safely watch Miyazaki's anime without being despised as otaku.
Theupshot of this is, as soon as anime and games earned respectability in society, otaku dreated more repugnant genres, such as bishoujo games and moe anime and moved on to them.

TM: Morikawa-san, you're saying the essence of otaku is their orientation towards dame, the unacceptable.

KM: Yes, yes. But dame does not define something as bad or low quality. It's the self-indulgent fixation of otaku on certain things that is socially unacceptable.

TO: I totaly disagree. Morikawa-san and I have two vastly different conceptions of who are the core tribe of otaku.
Morikawa-san, your otaku are "urban-centric"; they are the hopeless otaku who roam about Akihabara. That's why you say otaku are dame-oriented. You have to remember that only about fifty thousand people buy Weekly Dearest my Brother. It's wrong to define them as the core otaku.
In my experience, otaku like science fiction and anime not because these things are worthless, but because they are good. Otaku are attracted by things of high quality.
Some otaku obsessions become hits, others don't. But according to Morikawa-san's definition, these questions of quality become irrelevant in otaku culture. But what's survived in otaku culture hasn't become unacceptable. It's survived the competition because its quality has been recognized.
Once something like a bishoujo game achieves a certain level of quality, you buy it even though you don't actually like bishoujo games. I feel otaku are tough customers who demand high standards. As a producer of videos and manga magazines, i was keenly aware of their standards and thought, "They make me work really hard because they won't fall for cheap tricks."

...

[Ianus]

Teil Drei

Generational Debat

TM: I have to confess, I don't think I fully understand the moe sensibility.

TO: The moe generation is mostly made up of otaku thirty-five or younger.
I myself belogn to the previous otaku generation, so frankly I don't understand moe.
The generational shift is aprubt. Some people below a certain age know what moe is about. but those of us above that age can't figure out why they like bishoujo so much. It seems to us that they like anything involving beautiful young girls.
There is a generational debate. The liveliest topic in the otaku world these past few years has been this debate.
Amongst themselves, otaku refer to belonging to this generation or that.

KM: I'm not that interested in the generational debate. Once youhave a clear definition of otaku, then you can have a generational debate. But there is no generally accepted frameworkfor understanding otaku. So it's futile to subdivide otaku.

TO: Morikawa-san, what is your definition of otaku?

KM: If you track the central focus of so-called otaku through the generations, Okada-san's generation focused on sicence fiction, followed by a generation that favoured anime, which in turn followed by another interested in moe anime and bishujo games. How did this evolution take place? Manga provided a handy example. Before I was born [in 1972], colledge students reading manga on the trains were considered a social problem.
Back then, manga were for children. Grown-ups were supposed to watch TV dramas. Foreign TV drama were batter than domestic ones, and films were even bether than that. And European films were considered more sophisticated than Hollywood movies. There was a clear cultural hierarchy, and manga were at the bottom. The spiteful label otaku was attatched to grownups who had unacceptable tastes and still ennjoyed kids' stuff.
Sa far as society is concerned, today's otaku taste for moe is more repugnant than watching porn. Eroticism is not the only motivation that informs their fasciantion with moe. They have a strong urge for what is unacceptable.
Otaku who buy Weelky Dearest My Brother not only feel affection for toy figures, but also enjoy being the kind of people who "buy emparassing, tasteless things."

TO: Otaku are bashful. They are intelligent but so bashful that they're more comfortable with children's anime than wo regular movies.
They can shed their reserve if a serious idea is filtered through a "Made for Children" lavel. I suspect that people who love thys and figures, manga, and anime love them because they can see the world throughthisfilter of reticence.
Otaku consume this stuff because of the twists that indulge their shyness.
At any rate, I have never seen an orientation towards the unacceptable among otaku.
For example, Space Battleship Yamato dates from the first half of the 1970s, followed by Mobile Suit Gundam. Now, Morikawa-san, would you say Gundam was more unacceptable than Yamato? I dont think so.
the more examples you show, the less solid your theory becomes.

KM: Well, let me repeate myself. Being no godd, dame, doesn't mean the quality is poor. On the contrary...the quality is very high, but it's a matter of self-consciousness on the part of the otaku.They are concerned that their self-indulgence appears socially unacceptable.

TO: Well, then. do you mean from the mid- to late 1970s, things got progressively more unacceptable from Yamato, to Gundam and then to Nausicaä? I dont think so.
an inclination for dame appears to exist because otaku have shifted to bishoujo these past few years. within this limited context, you may have a point, but veteran otaku have to disagree.

KM: Generally speaking, I see a downwards spiral.
Aum Shinrikyou was influenced by Genma Wars. In the 1980s, otaku dreamet of Armageddon; they fantasized about employing supernatural powers to create a new world after the end of the world.
But Aum's subway attack in 1995 throughoutly shattered the post-apocalyptic otaku dream of creating a new world in which they would be heroes.
After their apocalyptical fantasies collapsed, they stadily shifted to moe. Before theri Armageddon obsession, there was science fiction, which provided otaku with an alternative to the actual future. In the broadest terms, moe has replaced "future".

TO: But your definition of "science fiction" is narrow. In Japan, science fiction was viable as a literature of alternative futures only through the 1930s. From the 1960s onwards, science fiction became socially conscious, a lens into alternative societies.
In Japan science fiction was associated with the future only during the brief periode between Word War I and II. As you know, Japan sinks by Sankyou Komatsu, a blockbuster in 1973, wasn't a story about the future. Futuristic science fiction never took off here.

TM: Morikawa-san, how do you define the "future"?

KM: Teh future is not merely a time yet to come. It's a vision of the world based on sicentific understanding.

TO: Again, that is true only through the 1940s. Even the vision of the future presented by Robert A. Heinlein and Isaac Asimov were discredited by the harsh attacks from the New Wave movement.
Whether we're talking about science fiction or anime, our views are so divergent. I don't see things the way sou do, Morikawa-san. Not at all.

KM: You mean, we have an unbridgeable gap?

TO: Not necessarily. I am sympathic to your observaton that Expo 70 prefigured an otaku landscape, and that today's otaku are fascinated with moe. But as far as your definition of otaku is concerned, I think you are wrong. Because we are reading different "texts".

TM: I'm beginning to see a crucial generation gap between Okada-san and Morikawa-san. Speaking from my generation, I, too, find otaku more compelling than moe.

TO: Murakami-san, i know you are preoccupied with otaku, but I don't think that otaku will generate anything more interesting than moe.
I belong to a group of model-tank makers. When I meet with them, I can't tell them appart from the guys who are obsessed with moe. They carry backpacks and wear sweatsuits. They look like stereotypical moe enthuasiasts, but you never know, which toy figure - bishoujo or model tank - they're going to pull out of their backpacks.
If we refer to them as a "tribe", they all belong to the same tribe, but model-tank guys are never into bishoujo. Actually they hate bishoujo.

(hiermit meint er, dass sie von Kleidung und Verhalten in dieselbe Gruppe eingeordnet werden könnten. "zoku", jap. Gruppe, Stamm wurde ursprünglich verwendet, um die Gruppe jugendlicher Motorradganger mit spezifischer Kleidung und Verhaltensweisen zu bezeichnen.)

KM: How are they different from mania?

TO: To answer your question, I have to go back ti my own definition of otaku. The sole differnece between mania and otaku is their social acceptabilitiy. Otaku are mania who are socially rejected. Conversely, the hobbies of mania are those that are socially acepted.
For example, the moment girls decide that motorbikes aren't cool, motorbike mania become motorbike otaku. It's just a matter of societal labeling. That's the difference between otaku and mania.

KM: Doesn't that mean they are oriented toward the unacceptable?

TO: No, it doesn't. Even if a motorbike mania suddenly becomes a motorbike otaku, he doesn't become an otaku because he is unacceptable. He only becomes unacceptable because society says he is.
Let's use an extreme example. It's possible that one day the Japanese people will suddenly become the enemie of the world for some reason.
Would you then say we Japanese are inheretly unacceptable? I don't think so. It boils down to the question of societal labeling.

KM: In that case, let's suppose that one day anime is legitimized and enters school text books. Would otaku obsessed with anime toady still love anime then? I think not. That's not plausible.
Okada-san, if we accept your definition, otakushould love anime regardless of how society values it. If anime became so wonderful that schooteachers recommend it to their students, would otaku still seek out anmie? I seriously doubt it.

TO: I can prove you wrong. Some otaku works are socially accepted, others are not. Anime films by, say, Hayao Miyazaki or Mamoru Oshii are respected. Have otaku lost interest and quit watching them? No.
I dont think societabl labelings affect what they are attracted to. In fact, many otaku support Mamoru Oshii's latest animated film, Ghost in the Shell 2:Innocence.
Moriwaka-san, when you talk about dame, the unacceptable, aren't you talking about "literature" (bungaku)? For practicioners of jun-bungaku [literally, "pure literature"], literature was about ecoming unacceptable. After Evangelion came out as a TV serie in 1995, everybody fell in love with dame.
Until then, literature was only relevant within the realms of pure literature. Some rock musicians may have liked it a bit. But, thanks to Evangelion, ordinary people, young people enthuasiastically embraced it. Eva made it OK for the main character to be pathetic. By the standards of conventional anime, it's inconceivalbe that Eva's main character diesn't try harder. But that's precisely what makes him so appealing today. While literature used to shock and suprise us in the past, anime shocks and suprises us today. A dame-orientation was called literature.

(Er spricht hier von Zwischenkriegs- und Nachkriegsliteratur, Autoren wie Kawabata und Mishima, die Dekadenz und Schönheit trotz moralischem Verfall feierten und von der Konfessionsliteratur, wie z.b. Mishimas "Geständnis einer Maske" und noch einige ander Bücher in diese Richtung.)

KM: Don't you think Gundam got a similar reception? The main character was a computer geek.

TO: In Gundam, one thrust of the story was the main character's desire to be recognized by others. so Gundam and Eva are completely different.

KM: As I said before, the 1980s-era fascination with the apocaliptic was shattered by Aum. I think moe emerged as an alternative, to fill that void.

TO: I see. To me, Eva was all about "Since I can't do anything about changing the world, I will do soemthing about myself." Don't you think robot anime is all about "trying to change the world"?
Morikawa-san, you talked about the apocalyptic. One step before that is "social reform" (yo-naoshi). One of the key concepts for understanding otaku is "a child#s sense of justice". The reason grown-ups are enthuasiastic about Kamen rider and the "warrior team" genre (sentai mono) is because thas basic sense of justice, which was abandoned in society long ago, is still meaningful in the world of these TV shows.
Of course, there's also the terrific monster design and panchira, but that's not enough to keep the boys interested. That basic sense of justice worked until Eva. But with Eva, it became clear that no one could save the world. And Eva complicated the whole thing, raising issues such as "Maybe I should at least ave myself" and "What's wrong with me, thinking only about saving myself?" Eva marked the turning point. Whatever we duscuss today, we cannot avoid Eva.

KM: After Eva, a genre called Sekai-kei [literally, "world type"] emerged, and it's very popular now. In this genre, private feelings and emotions are directly linked to the fate of the world.

TO: She, the Ultimate Weapon is the definitive sekai-kei.

KM: And Eva.

TO: Reading just a couple of volumen of Saikao will give you a sense of the sekai-kei sensibility.
In the tylica logic of sekai-kei, the same weight is assigned to one's private emotions and the end of the world. In She, the world comes to an end, The main character witnesses the annihilation of the world, which happens to be caused by his girlfirend. His love for her and his despair over the destroyed planet are expressed through the same emotion.
But making a sekai-kei einds artist's careers.

KM: You mean, like Hideaki Anno, who created Eva?

TO: That's right. Anno-san had been in rehabilitation ever since [by getting away from anime and working on live-action films.]

...