For some time in the UK, young people have been consuming media

from Japanese subcultures. A look at the comic shelves in Borders finds multiple volumes of manga series: the cute female-centred ghost school stories of Ghost Hunt, the austere, violent samurai epic of Lone Wolf and Cub, the pseudo-scientific sci-fi battles of Mobile Suit Gundam. People outside Japan seem to find manga interesting first for the unusual quality of the graphic art, second for the intriguing coherence of the culture. Across manga titles, there are unities of graphic style, of theme, of representation, that suggest that there is a self-sustaining culture at work, able to make reference to itself more than to objective reality or to other media. To the interested fan it’s clear that manga is a significant cultural force in Japan, with numerous committed substrata that defy easy comprehension. To better understand manga and its close relative anime, it’s worth considering the otaku subculture at work in producing its self-contained worlds.

Graphic arts are incorporated into all of public life in Japan, and although antecedents to manga have been traced back to various older media, the true genesis is in the immediate post-war years of occupation. Manga production began to grow in the late 1940s arts explosion, following a long period of artistic suppression, and apparently ignored by US censorship. By 2006, domestic sales of manga had become worth ¥481 billion, (£2.2 billion), and accounted for around 40% of all books sold in Japan. The penetration of manga consumption in Japan extends to anyone born after the war, with titles to accommodate a vast range of interests and niches. Consumption is characterised by multiple distinct subgenres, including Jidaimono (historical), Meka (giant battling robots), Suiri (crime), Shôjo and Shônen (respectively, for teenage girls and teenage boys), Mahô Shôjo (female-centered magic), Dojinshi (self-published fan-manga) Moe, (asexual fetishism of characters), Shôjo-ai (lesbian romance) and Hentai (outlandish pornographic fantasy).

Perusal of some of the narrow genres on this list suggest specific obsessions, apocalyptic battles take place in ahistorical science fiction worlds, youth is fetishised in a distinctive kawaii (cute) aesthetic, and self-indulgent fantasies seem unconcerned with regulation by wider

society. The otaku subculture at work here produces manga in wilful isolation from the Japanese mainstream, and in eking out a separate expressive space that is sometimes ignored, sometimes celebrated. Otaku in Japan refers to a particular kind of obsessive: one who defines themself by his or her consumption of one or more particular media, perhaps manga, but also anime (Japanese animation), tokusatsu (special effects creatures), video games, aidoru (female pop performers), figyua (scale character models) and so on. The meaning of otaku goes far deeper than the English equivalent ‘geek’, and implies an entire and exclusive culture, with little mechanism to integrate properly with other societal strands.

The otaku subculture began with the rise of mass consumerism of the 1960s, when traditional cultural ties to locality and family were damaged. Migration to the cities was accompanied by at least a rhetorical commitment to the new corporate Japan, and was reinforced by the new homogenous mass media of TV. The word otaku is a kind of impersonal pronoun (one of many in Japanese) that literally means ‘one’s home’, implying neither family nor even blood ties, and gained currency in association with acquiring new consumer goods. As the US realised they needed Japan as a new stable Cold War ally, planned reforms were scaled back, and hopes for a new post-hierarchical society were dashed. Japan experienced both economic growth and entrenched political stagnation. Most otaku culture

Manga and otaku subculture in JapanTom Vincent

Manga on display in the Akihabara district of Tokyo, known as ‘electric town’ and the centre of otaku culture.

is analogous with widespread political apathy and disengagement in Japan, and an unwillingness or inability to participate in rigid mainstream society. It is a retreat into outsider obsessions, a self-sustaining world of furtive cultural production. Moving through various phases of derisive comment by mainstream media, otaku culture is now large and complex, and the term carries neither wholly positive or negative connotations.

By being politically silent, isolated and self-sustaining, otaku culture indicates some particular Japanese concerns. Military hardware is safely fetishised in hugely popular sf manga like Space Battleship Yamato and Mobile Suit Gundam. Space Battleship Yamato implicitly plays out an alternative World War Two scenario for Japan, in which the Yamato (the name of an actual WW2 battleship) roams the galaxies following the irradiation of the earth by aliens. The military is a great taboo in Japan, where large armed forces are maintained under the constitution-bound euphemism of ‘self-defence forces’. The removal of the military to a ‘safe’ sf scenario in Space Battleship Yamato excuses it from commenting on the

real world. A similarly empty stance can be found in the extremely pervasive kawaii aesthetic, wherein young girls in particular idealise themselves as an ahistorical ‘cute’ consumer. Within otaku culture, this becomes obsession with an artifical, wilfully exaggerated female image that constantly teeters over into self-parody. Much of the ‘cute’ manga that ends up in UK bookstore, like the comedic farce of Love Hina, is parody of the self-acknowledged pathetic-ness of the socially inept otaku boy and his obsessions.

The intense flux of Japan’s 20th century goes on, and otaku culture continues to churn out accomplished popular art on a huge scale (in Japan, everyone can draw). Meanwhile in recent years movements like the loose ‘superflat’ art collective have tried to subvert conventions through parody of both otaku obsessions and mainstream media. Otaku culture will continue to fascinate as long as subcultures remain unassimilated in Japan, and outsiders find freedom in operating beyond the pale.

(Tom Vincent lived and worked in Japan for several years)

Japanamerica: How Japanese Pop Culture Has Invaded the US, Roland Kelts, Palgrave Macmillan 2008, £9.99 256pp, ISBN-10: 140398476X (Amazon announces this book as due for release in February 2008, but has an American version available at a lower price.)The OCR email list has been full of static generated by the new A Level

specifications. Many colleagues appear to be worried by Unit 4 of OCR’s spec., which includes the possibility of looking at globalisation. Whilst the trend toward global markets probably gained momentum during the 1980s, when Reaganite and Thatcherite policies led to the loosening of financial controls, there’s no doubt that the arrival of broadband internet has made the global market (for the ‘haves’) a reality. Dealing with the challenges of both reading the internet and getting a grasp of the macroeconomics of globalisation are amongst the biggest challenges to media studies. Colleagues are right to be concerned but change, even when it’s revolutionary, is what makes studying the media so interesting.

One of the more obvious ways in which globalisation is occurring has been the dramatic increase in the number of western fans of anime and manga; particularly in the United States. In recent years Studio Ghibli’s films have made an impression on both arthouse audiences and children; however, anime has been shown on western television since the 1960s: remember Marine Boy? Early

anime were essentially ‘de-odorised’ of Japanese culture a process most obvious in the Power Rangers series which interpolated American-shot sequences into the Japanese action. However, as Kelts shows, fans started discovering the originals (and here the internet is the distribution/pirating network par excellence) and both original anime and manga has experienced exponential growth in America.

Kelts’ book is not a media textbook but a journalistic trawl through the history and business of manga/anime. It is an excellent read and gives some fascinating insights into the cultural difference between Japan and the west; for example, he interviews the creator of Pokemon to find a corporate suit and not a multi-millionaire one might expect as he didn’t benefit financially from his creation as a salaried worker.

Other cultural differences are more obvious:

Cartoons are very powerful tools because they only need minimal changes to make them localized. We’ve always had to do a little work to suit international tastes.

Resource reviews

When the Tamogotchi [virtual] pets died on the Japanese version of the game, they turned into ghosts. American kids got scared, so we had them turning into angels. (p. 99)

Dealing with the global reach of media texts is a crucial aspect of contemporary media studies. An whilst it is relatively easy to consider Hollywood’s policy of opening blockbuster movies worldwide, dealing with how other cultures are ‘infiltrating’ (i.e. get beyond the trade barriers that are informally erected to keep foreigners out of western markets) into our culture is harder. However, you’re likely to have some manga/anime experts in your class and TV series, such as Neon Genesis Evangelion, are easy to use in the classroom (well, one or two example episodes). Series such as Evangelion and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, are particularly interesting in their representation of gender (nubile male-fantasy girls v. morose and often pathetic males) and technology (the mecha genre). Kelts’ book give will the teacher a good grounding in the background from which to start teaching.Nick Lacey

Pop Japan Travel – the Essential Otaku Guide, Makoto Nakajima, Digital Manga (US) 2007, £4.95 ISBN 9781569709429If you enjoyed Tom Vincent’s article and you have students interested in manga, anime and otaku culture, this could be a very useful little book allowing you to get up to speed on the basics. Ostensibly a guide to pop culture for a tourist in Japan, it presents the story of a group of American fans visiting Tokyo in the form of a genuine manga story.

Poking gentle fun at the ignorant gaijin (foreigners) and their lack of understanding, it introduces many of the otaku traits that Tom describes. It neatly explains how to read a manga story (right-to-left, top to bottom) and offers a couple of pages of travel tips, but it is the story of the American fans and their pursuit of the otaku experience which makes it a snip at £6.19 on Amazon.co.ukRoy Stafford

These three pieces were first published in in the picture magazine, no 58, November 2007.

Tom Vincent is now a Film Programmer at the National Media Museum

Nick Lacey is Head of Media at Benton Park School, Leeds