The 2chan.us blog (formerly welcome datacomp) wrote a quick post about the reopening of the pedestrian mall (hokoten, a colloquial abbreviation for 歩行者天国) in Akihabara, saying, “I find it slightly absurd that no English blog reported on this,” so I took that as a challenge to finally get something of substance up on the blog. Not much of the ideas presented below are my own: instead, this post represents a synthesis of a lot of the theoretical analysis about Akihabara with recent social and cultural developments. Perhaps the best resource in English is Patrick Galbraith’s recent article in Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies, “Akihabara: Conditioning a Public “Otaku” Image” (p. 210 – 230). This essay builds off of Galbraith’s foundations in response to the reopening of Akihabara Hokoten.

Akihabara has always been discussed as the “otaku mecca,” but not many speak of its importance as part of “the city.” The most relevant scholar to tackle this topic is Kaichiro Morikawa, famous for his book, 趣都の誕生 萌える都市アキハバラ (also known as “Learning from Akihabara: The Birth of a Personapolis”). His argument basically follows that the power of otaku desires have made them manifest in public space. This is an interesting concept, because no where else in the world has subculture or media impacted the physical space so much compared to Akihabara. A side-note, though: Morikawa notes in an updated edition of his text that due to Akihabara’s fame, it has attracted the media and politics, pushing out real, authentic otaku in favor of those who wish to perform “otaku-ness,” boosting the district’s image as otaku mecca (Galbraith 212).

Akihabara is known as the Electric Town of Tokyo: the technical capital of the city, where you can buy spare mechanical parts in addition to the latest computers, games, and electronics. The growth of Akihabara as an otaku-centric locale occurred after the economic bubble popped in Japan in the late ’80s, which the otaku’s conspicuous consumption survived. Otaku consumption within Akihabara steadily grew throughout the late ’90s, creating the “otaku mecca” as it stands today, teeming with anime-related media stores and speckled with maid cafes.

I won’t get into the cultural politics over the image of the otaku from the ’80s (Akio Nakamori and Tsutomu Miyazaki) through today, since I’ve talked about it in various anime con panels and Galbraith does an excellent job covering that ground in his article. Instead, we’ll work off the some generalist assumptions about Akihabara, namely that 1) otaku became a buzzword in the early ’00s after much negative media throughout the ’90s (negativity displaced in part due to media about otaku and politics directed toward them), 2) Akihabara’s image as a popular destination for foreign travelers solidified also in the early ’00s, and 3) the live population of visitors to Akihabara via the pedestrian mall, where streets were closed down to allow performers and extra pedestrians, fueled much of the district’s culture throughout the ’00s. However, on 8 June 2008 (ironically on my birthday), Tomohiro Katou ran his vehicle through Akihabara, exiting to stab people, killing seven and injuring 10 others.

Many feared that Katou’s actions would hurt Akihabara’s culture and the positivist otaku image. In reaction to the killings, Miyazaki (Tsutomu) — having received a life sentence in prison — was executed. The pedestrian mall, where much of otaku culture was making its impressions (such as the success of the Hare Haru Yukai dance from “The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya”), was officially closed, ending its 35-year history (Galbraith 225).

Galbraith ends his article at this temporal point, asking like many other Japanese and worldwide fans, “If this is Akihabara, where are the otaku?” Well, two and a half years later, the Akihabara Hokoten has finally reopened. The event made national news for evening television viewers (hit the link for video in Japanese for those interested). And while the event garnered thousands of returning visitors, not much seems to be different. Otaku culture within Japan in the past two years hasn’t changed drastically; the Katou/Akihabara murders don’t seem to have made a large impact on the identity of otaku within Japan: those who like them like them, and the majority that still frown down upon them still do. But in the midst of the “pedestrian paradise” closing, while other otaku-related location-based fads have popped up — most notably Washinomiya Shrine and the Odaiba Gundam — nothing in comparison to Akihabara has necessarily mobilized otaku.

So if otaku have not been mobilized, does that mean that the Akihabara Hokoten still may have influence on the propagation of otaku culture within Tokyo, as well as throughout the world as Akihabara’s culture grows more strong with this renewed potential for 3D performance and antics? Perhaps. We cannot dismiss that over the past few years, otaku-centric fads are diminishing: see for example the closing of various maid cafes throughout the district. However, we are also seeing other novel businesses pop up, such as the much-heralded Gundam Cafe.

The most interesting development that could occur may be related to the development of the visual industry itself. With Tokyo’s new Bill 156 in place and the anime industry losing a bit of steam, how will the revelries of the pedestrian paradise influence these developments? Or vice versa? We may perhaps see anime-related projects that tie some part of the media mix strategy into further mobilizing otaku, at least within Akihabara itself. Or the government may crack down on — or at least monitor — the activities within Akihabara. We’ll just have to see how it plays out over the next year.

We at the Department of Alchemy (aka. Alex) would like to thank everyone who decided to come out for our/my panels this weekend at Anime Expo 2009. All two of our panels (as well as the two academic panels in which the Department participated) were thoroughly attended! The Problem with Otaku (photographed above) purportedly held more con-goers than the Crunchyroll panel in the previous one-hour time slot! Sorry that the panel had to be cut off; the presentation held a bit too much information. Also, after being featured in AnimeEXPOSURE (Anime Expo’s official newsletter) on Friday as a highlighted panel to attend, Without Watching the Anime: Opening & Ending Themes featured a full panel room, with a line extending around the bend in the hallway! Rumor has it that about two dozen people were even turned away, since as we neared about 400 members in the audience the fire code seemed about to be breached (though we still had a good number of people lining the back wall and even sitting on the floor in front). Unfortunately, our camera equipment wasn’t working during the panel, so we couldn’t nab a cool snapshot.

For those who attended the OP/ED panel, the list of videos shown is listed below. Thanks again for coming to see us! Remember, we’ll be speaking again at Otakon in two weeks! Check out our three panels:

1) Without Watching the Anime: Opening and Ending Themes – Sunday at 10:15 am in Panel 3
2) The Impact of Evangelion – Saturday at 9:00 am in Panel 1
3) Anime & Manga Studies – Saturday at 11:30 am in Panel 1

So, on to that list:

- Astro Boy 1963, English & Japanese versions [opening]
- Space Battleship Yamato, Japanese [opening]
- Mazinger Z, Japanese & English [opening]
- Big O, Japanese [opening]
- Serial Experiments Lain, Japanese [opening]
- Cutie Honey 1973, Japanese [opening]
- Cutie Honey: Flash, Japanese [opening]
- RE: Cutie Honey, Japanese [opening]
- Honey & Clover, Japanese [ending]
- Mobile Suit Gundam 0083, Japanese [opening]
- Lucky Star, Japanese [ending, episode 14]
- Neon Genesis Evangelion, Japanese [opening & opening during end of episode 26]
- Daicon 4, Japanese
- The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, Japanese [opening & dancing to the opening in Akihabara]
- NANA, Japanese [ad promoting opening/ending music]
- Cowboy Bebop, English [opening]
- Gurren Lagann, Japanese [opening, episode 4 & 24]
- Macross: Do You Remember Love, Japanese [ending]
- One Piece, Japanese & English [opening]
- Honey & Clover, Japanese [opening]
- Nodame Cantabile, Japanese [opening]
- Eden of the East, Japanese [closing & opening]

Last Thursday and Friday, I got the opportunity to attend two lectures (one detailed here) by Shibata Motoyuki, who is a professor of American literature at the University of Tokyo and who has translated over fifty English-language texts into Japanese. There’s a good (and humorous) article over at NeoJaponisme that discusses a panel he spoke on in 2006 about translation. Shibata is also known as an associate of Murakami Haruki (the popular author), and the two have consulted each other frequently for a number of translations.

The Thursday lecture, which I believe to be the exceptional talk of the two, dealt with the reception of translations of English-language literature in Japan. Shibata designated two periods of reception in Japan: the first, instructive, the second, aesthetic.

In the first period, from the late nineteenth century through the war and up to 1975, the translations of American and English literature were seen as instructive. At first, it seemed that Shibata meant used to instruct Japanese in the English language; however, he meant that Japanese readers wanted to learn about foreign ideas and philosophy. For instance, Shibata explained that the 1884 translation and publication of Benjamin Franklin’s “Autobiography” was read mainly as a self-help book. These books could been seen as educating a generation of Japanese on inventing an autonomous self. Reading English literature as instructive media, according to Shibata, changed in 1975, when these translations were finally read mainly in appreciation of the literature’s style and aesthetics. However, he inferred that contemporary American fiction tends to be read for its ideologies rather than its artistic merits.

Shibata’s lecture was supplemented by a response dictated by Prof. Robert Chodat, of the Boston University English department, who explained the same general principle — literature as instructive in its initial reception — related to the receipt of English literature (denoting the country, not the language) in America at the time when the colonies were just beginning to seek independence from England (which then extended into the later periods of American literature). The comparison was drawn between William Faulkner and Soseki Natsume, the former whose self was torn between Southern and Northern values, and the latter between conservative Japanese and new Western values.

What I want to preserve from this lecture is the concept of viewing media across cultures. More specifically, I would like to apply that concept to thoughts on the progression of the anime fandom in the United States. If we consider the initial reception of Japanese animation in the United States, do we see more viewers flocking to the media because of an attraction to new ideas (narrative structures, characterization, novel concepts/approaches to genres) or because they’re hooked on the aesthetics of the new medium (character designs, color schemes, animation styles). Shibata interpreted the frequent, post-war trend that translations of American literature would be published close to the original publication date in America as an effect of the Japanese interest in emulating the United States after 1955, meaning that the reception still depended on a magnetism toward ideas and not aesthetics. I wonder, then, looking at the contemporary trend of streaming anime online on the same day the episode premiers in Japan, if part of the cause, ignoring the major incentive of business, is Americans’ persistent attraction (continued from the 1970s) to the appealing ideas of anime.

One Day Later: More thoughts…

Reflecting on the reception of anime early on in the United States, I assume that it became popular not because of the theatrical releases of movies like Alakazam the Great but when ex-pats or Japanese friends of Americans sent VHS-recorded episodes back to America. Because most of the material was not subtitled, the translations were (to my knowledge) written in America, but a number of fans ended up seeing footage straight from Japan in the original Japanese, without any English-language aids. Because of this method of reception — watching ordinary Japanese-language anime — it would seem that fan reception in the United States would have highlighted the aesthetics of the medium. But from numerous interviews I have read and listened to, it seems quite the contrary: fans dealing with the language barrier would attempt to either analyze the existing plot without knowledge of the dialogue or would make up their own story based on the visuals. Therefore, I would say that the initial reception of anime in America was in fact based on the ideas in the anime (to reiterate: narrative structures, characterization, novel concepts/approaches to genres, etc.) instead of the animations’ styles or designs. This would make sense too, because older anime from the 1960s and 1970s clearly was not making many strides, steeped in forms of limited animation among many other shortcomings.

But I also wonder: At what point did the change from ideas to aesthetics take place? Or has it at all? Even today Japanese animation is praised for taking a step beyond American cartoons in terms of plot and characters.

If the change has already taken place, and the artistic elements of anime attract as many fans to the medium as its stories, I would pin the cause on digitization and higher budgets for anime films, imported to America as theatrical releases. In 2008, Scott from the Anime Almanac made a claim that the Matrix marks a turning point in the focus of production studios in Hollywood. The Matrix (1999) did, in fact, win four Oscars for film editing, sound effects editing, visual effects, and sound, and Scott affirms that the Wachowski brothers’ novel presentation of special effects showed directors what could be done with films influenced by or directly depicting works of popular culture (eg., comic books, anime, kung-fu films, etc.). Could we say, then, that films such as Ghost in the Shell created many fans of Japanese animation not because of its story but because of its beauty? While it’s true that Spirited Away won an Oscar in 2002 because it showed so many Americans in local theaters that Japanese animation illustrates sensational adventures and incredible dreams, perhaps it also drew viewers in because of its fluid integration of hand-drawn and digital animation: something never before seen by such a wide audience in the United States. Perhaps it is also true that anime is still sensationalized in the U.S. due to the releases of films like Paprika, which make monumental use of computer graphics and integrate them elegantly into the animated style (while of course at the same time depicting fantastic stories to intrigue potential ticket buyers).

If the change has not occurred, then I wonder what strides animators must take to create a visual masterpiece. There have surely been attempts: look at Steamboy, released in 2004, which held a budget of over twenty-five million U.S. dollars ($25,000,000), but at the same time did not draw in enough American fans to the medium as expected. Instead, we see the evolution from limited animation to ordinary animation to hyperfluid* animation (the most prominent example being the works of the animation studio Kyoto Animation), the latter of which currently draws in thousands of fans in Japan as well as abroad and keeps them on the edge of their seats waiting for more (ie., the second season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya).

I do not believe that computer graphics will push Japanese anime to a new level of acceptance in America. The use of 3D and CG has been tried (and has not impressed in certain instances). But how will the aesthetics of anime evolve in the coming years? And will it attract a new wave of fans?

• Will talk about this more (read: explain) in the near future. Look for the related articles.