home
***
CD-ROM
|
disk
|
FTP
|
other
***
search
/
Software Vault: The Sapphire Collection
/
Software Vault (Sapphire Collection) (Digital Impact).ISO
/
cdr16
/
wired1_1.zip
/
OTAKU
< prev
next >
Wrap
Text File
|
1994-09-18
|
19KB
|
322 lines
***************************************************************************
********************* Wired InfoBot Copyright Notice **********************
***************************************************************************
************ All material retrieved from the Wired InfoBot is *************
***************** Copyright 1993 Wired, Rights Reserved. ******************
***************************************************************************
Requesting information from the Wired InfoBot (other than the help file)
indicates your acceptance of the following terms and conditions:
(1) These articles and the contents thereof may be reposted, remailed,
or redistributed to any publicly accessible electronic forum provi-
ded that this notice remains attached and intact.
(2) These articles may not under any circumstances be resold or redis-
tributed for compensation without prior written agreement of Wired.
(3) Wired keeps an archive of all electronic address of those requesting
information from the Wired InfoBot. An electronic mailing list will
be compiled from this archive. This list may from time to time be
used by the staff of Wired Online Services for the purpose of dis-
tributing information deemed relevant to Wired's online readers.
If you wish to have your name removed from this mailing list,
please notify us by sending an electronic mail message to
infoman@wired.com.
If you have any questions about these terms, or would like information
about licensing materials from Wired, please contact us via telephone
(+1.415.904.0660), fax (+1.415.904.0669), or email (info@wired.com).
***************************************************************************
**************************** G*E*T**W*I*R*E*D*! ***************************
The Incredibly Strange Mutant Creatures who Rule the Universe of
Alienated Japanese Zombie Computer Nerds (Otaku to You)
By Karl Taro Greenfeld
Three years ago, the serene Tokyo bedroom community of Hanna was shaken
by a series of grisly crimes. Four pre- teen girls were abducted,
molested and mutilated in a serial killing-spree The New York Times
described as so "un-Japanese." But the perpetrator, who had sent bone
and teeth fragments to the grieving families, couldn't have been more
Japanese. The murderer enticed the children to his six-mat in Saitama,
then molested and murdered them, recording the gruesome details of his
deeds on the hard-drive of his computer. When police finally caught up
with Tsutomu Miyazaki, they found the 27-year-old living in two
realities. By day he was a sullen apprentice at a local print shop. By
night he lived out the fantasies he had internalized from avidly
watching his collection of more than 6,000 slasher videos and
pornographic manga, or Japanese comic books. In defense of his warped
client, Miyazaki's attorney claimed that video and reality had merged;
Miyazaki couldn't tell gory fact from gory fiction. After Miyazaki's
much-publicized trial, one thing was clear: A new generation of anti-
social, nihilistic whiz-kids had arrived. Dubbed the otaku-zoku, or
otaku for short, these are Japan's socially inept but often brilliant
technological shut-ins. Their name derives from the highly formal way
of saying "you" in Japanese, much like calling a friend "Sir." First
identified by SPA! magazine in 1986, the otaku are Tokyo's newest
information-age product. These were the kids "educated" to memorize
reams of context-less information in preparation for filling in bubbles
on multiple-choice entrance exams. Now in their late teens and
twenties, most are either cramming for college exams or stuck in
cramming mode. They relax with sexy manga or violent computer games.
They shun society's complex web of social obligations and loyalties.
The result: a burgeoning young generation of at least 100,000 hard-core
otaku (estimates of up to 1 million have been bandied about in the
Tokyo press) who are too uptight to talk to a telephone operator, but
who can kick ass on the keyboard of a PC. Zero, 25, is a self-proclaimed
otaku who flunked out of Keio University's math department because he
didn't like being ordered around by teachers to whom he felt superior.
"They couldn't deal with someone like me," he recalled. "Now I'm
independent and I don't need to deal with anyone like them." Zero's
life now revolves around computer games. He only ventures out of his
six-mat in Kawagoe to acquire new game-boards, the green, maze-like
"minds" taken from commercial arcade games like Galaga or Space
Invaders. At home, he plugs these circuit boards into a special
adapter on his own console, analyzes and dissects them for bugs and
flaws that allow one, for example, to glimpse a Space Invader's after-
image as it scuttles across the screen or to change the color of a
yellow Ms. Pac-Man to purple. Zero often dresses in a plain white T-
shirt and ill- fitting jeans rolled up about six inches. He doesn't
look you in the eyes when he talks; he answers quietly with his face to
the floor. His face possesses gentle features, but it is sickly pale.
He makes his living as a software trouble-shooter, looking for problems
in new software before it hits the market, earning 350,000 yen (about
$2,800) a month. He works in his murky home, where the windows are
permanently covered with yellowing newspaper to block out the sunlight.
"I've always liked playing games. As a boy, I preferred video games to
other kids," Zero offered. "So I understand technology. I'm more
comfortable with computers than human beings. "Finding the malfunction
of a computer program or game is thrilling because I'm basically
exposing the phony computer experts who invented the game in the first
place," Zero says. he threads his way over the tatami floor, which is a
high-tech junkyard of old computer circuit-boards, obsolete monitors,
archaic disc drives and a spluttering coffee-maker. He strips down to a
white T-shirt and striped boxer shorts - dressed for company, though
you wouldn't know it. Zero sits on a swivel office chair and clicks on
his Quadra 900 Macintosh PC with 240 megabytes of storage attached to
a keyboard which Zero has remodeled to conform to his own idea of how a
keyboard "should have been laid-out in the first place." As he waits
for the computer to boot, he scans the rolls of newly arrived faxes.
The first is from his "buddy" Kojack. It's a chart of a mid-seventies
Bay City Roller tour of Japan, including tour dates, attendance and
play lists. Zero is impressed. Another, from Piman in Aomori, announces
he is selling a rare 1978 edition of "Be Bop High School" for 50,000
yen ($400). Zero thinks it's overpriced. Zero casts them aside to read
one from Batman in Nagoya who claims that the Thunder Dragon and Metal
Black video games employ the same game-matrix with different graphics
and scoring systems. Seventeen pages of notes support this hypothesis.
Zero is not impressed. He's known this since Metal Black hit the market
way back last Tuesday. Zero gets busy. He disseminates a warning
through his computer modem that flashes on terminals from Hokkaido to
Kyushu. He warns other otaku on the Eye Net computer network to be on
the lookout for some poser named Batman pushing stale info. For those
few moments - as Zero's invisible brethren attentively scan and store
his transmitted data - he is no longer a wimp. He's a big gun, a macho
man in the world of the otaku. Information is the fuel that feeds the
otaku's worshiped dissemination systems - computer bulletin-boards,
modems, faxes. For otaku, the only thing that matters is the accuracy
of the answer, not its relevance. No piece of information is too
trivial for consideration: For instance, for a monster otaku - an otaku
into TV and manga monsters - the names of the various actors who wore
the rubber suits in an Ultraman episode where Ultraman is conspicuously
shorter than in other shows is precious currency. For military otaku,
it's the name of the manufacturer of 55mm armor-piercing ammunition for
the PzkIII Tank. For idol otaku - fanatics who follow the endless
parade of cute girl pop singers - it's the specific university the
father of darling idol Hikaru Nishida attended. Anything qualifies, as
long is it was not previously known. Although Zero spends most of his
waking hours exchanging information with fellow otaku-zoku, Zero only
knows his tribe through the computer bulletin board. He has never met
any of them. He doesn't even know their real names. Zero speaks of
Kojack, who he has also never met in their five-year, fax-driven
"friendship." Besides being a computer-game otaku, Kojack is an idol
otaku. Idols, those interchangeable performers, are the bread and
butter of the music business. Every year, 40 or 50 idols appear from
nowhere to satiate pre-teen musical tastes. Some, like singer Seiko
Matsuda, become fantastically successful. Others quickly vanish. But
Kojack isn't interested in the successful idols. Nor does he care that
idol music sucks. All he really wants is all the information he can get
about Miho Nakayama - a cute-as-a-button, up-and-coming idol. Of course
he needs to know the obvious data like her star-sign, blood- type,
favorite foods and what her father does for a living. But he will delve
much further for arcane and perverse factoids like her bra-size (75A -
relatively small), any childhood diseases she may have had (Chicken
Pox), or which assistant sound engineer would have been used on the
"Sugar Plum" single if he had been available. Kojack scours celebrity
magazines, he accesses a "Nifty Serve" bulletin board which may carry
idol information deposited there by other otaku and he desperately
seeks a way to hack into the mainframe of Nakayama's record company
with a code-cracking program he designed himself. There, in the company
computer, he imagines he will find tons of choice tidbits such as
upcoming record store appearances or release dates for new singles.
These will make him a real idol-otaku king after he transmits them over
the computer networks to other idol- loving otaku. The point for Kojack
will not be the relevance of the information, nor the nature of it, but
merely that he got it and others didn't. That's what makes the
information valuable and will elevate Kojack's status as a computer
stud. Their obsession with gathering may, at first glance, seem no
different than the fanaticism of collectors of rare books or ukiyoe
woodblock prints. But it is as if instead of trading actual items, book
collectors were to trade only information about a particular novel.
("Did you know that Hemingway's original manuscript of For Whom the
Bell Tolls was returned because of insufficient postage?") The objects
themselves are meaningless to otaku - you can't send Ultraman or a
German tank through a modem. But you can send every piece of
information about them. "The otaku are an underground (subculture), but
they are not opposed to the system per se," observed sociologist and
University of Tokyo fellow Volker Grassmuck, who has studied the otaku
extensively. "They change, manipulate and subvert ready-made products,
but at the same time they are the apotheosis of consumerism and an
ideal workforce for contemporary capitalism. "The parents of otaku are
>from the sixties generation, very democratic and tolerant. They want to
understand their children," Grassmuck continued. "But the kids
purposely look for things their parents can't understand. In a sense,
the parents themselves are immature and childish. In Japan there is
probably no obvious image of what a grownup is." Grassmuck believes
that this communication barrier between parents and children led to a
series of killings of parents by their sons. The Kinzoku Bat Murderer,
for instance, bludgeoned his mother and father to death with a
baseball bat in the early eighties. Five or six other kids - who,
Grassmuck said, would probably be called otaku today - carried out
copycat crimes in the following months. Then there's the murderous
Miyazaki, but he had communication problems of a different sort. He was
an outcast of the otaku community as well as with his own family.
Every otaku emphasizes that Miyazaki is the strange exception to an
otherwise peaceful, constructive movement. "Miyazaki was not really
even an otaku," says Taku Hachiro, a 29-year-old otaku and author of
Otaku Heaven, who appeared on the scene to offset the negative otaku
image which the Miyazaki case had created. "If he was a real otaku he
wouldn't have left the house and driven around looking for victims.
That's just not otaku behavior. "Because of his case, people still
have a bad feeling about us. They shouldn't. They should realize that
we are the future - more comfortable with things than people," Hachiro
said. "That's definitely the direction we're heading as a society."
Many otaku make their living in technology-related fields, as software
designers, computer engineers, computer graphics artists or computer
magazine editors. Leading high-technology corporations say they are
actively recruiting otaku types because they are in the vanguard of
personal computing and software design. And some otaku-entrepreneurs
have already made it big. Self- proclaimed "Otaku Mogul" Kazuhiku Nishi
is the founder of the ASCII corp., a software firm worth a half-billion
dollars. "Many of our best workers are what you might call otaku,"
explained an ASCII corp. spokesman. "We have over 2,000 employees in
this office and more than 60 percent might call themselves otaku. You
couldn't want more commitment." However, Abiko Seigo, a manager with
the same corporation, complains that while they excel in front of the
computer, otaku-types easily loose sight of company goals beyond the
project before them. They can also be lousy team-players, unable to
communicate verbally with their non-otaku co-workers - and in the
corporate world, the team mentality still pervades. If Taku Hachiro is
right, and the otaku are the men of the future, how will these
chronically shy people reproduce? What about the sex-lives of people
who admit their terror of physical contact with another human being?
"Masturbation is better than conventional sex," claimed Hachiro, a
self-admitted virgin. "I guess I'm frightened of sex. I watch a lot of
videos and read manga, and that's about as far as I want to go. "I
don't know if it's fear so much as a matter of getting along with
objects better than people," hachiro said. "If it were possible to have
sex with objects, then that would be a different matter." It is
therefore unsurprising that otaku are fascinated with new technology
such as virtual reality or digital compression as it connects to
pornography. The sales potential for techno-driven, ultra-real
pornographic and violent experiences via the computer is so great that
computer engineers - freelance otaku as well as corporate programmers -
are furiously designing software that will satisfy an otaku's "sexual"
needs. Although some otaku wait - no doubt breathlessly - for the
development of sexy technology they can plug into their underwear,
black-market programmers already sell "seduction" and "rape" fantasy
games through otaku networks. In December, a software company in Osaka,
whose product was deemed "obscene" by the powers that be, was raided
and their stock of ultra-graphic pornographic "games" was confiscated.
Perhaps police have good reason to worry. International computer
networks like CompuServe are already online as efficient and low-risk
international smuggling routes for sexually explicit pornographic
images - showing pubic hair is illegal under Japanese obscenity laws.
The police are only now beginning to crack down on this type of
smuggling. A spokesman at the Osaka Police Department says plans are on
the board to increase monitoring of computer bulletin boards used to
distribute and sell illegal pornography. But he is not optimistic.
"Much obscene material is already being transmitted by facsimile over
phone-lines and is therefore virtually impossible to monitor," the
spokesman explained. "However, we believe that we can choke
distribution of some pornography if we can censor the bulletin boards."
The Osaka police department has considered one strategy to clamp down
on otaku porn networks: hire otaku policemen. "We would probably be
more effective in combating crime if we could train reformed otaku,"
the spokesman said. "But unfortunately we don't have the budget right
now." The police believe the Tsutomu Miyazaki case was an exception,
not an omen for the future. But, for the time being, the case has
ensured that the growing ranks of the otaku will likely remain a fringe
group perceived by the public as anti-social computer kooks, or worse
yet, potential serial killers. But as things stand, the otaku are
indeed making their mark as work-loving employees in high-technology
industries. And, as the constant stream of new hardware and software
becomes crucial to competitiveness in all business fields, the
ascension of otaku may be inevitable. Or, as Zero confidently predicts
>from his gloomy lair in Kawagoe: "One day, everyone will be an otaku."
Sidebar
*******
the different flavors of otaku fetishism:
manga otaku
***********
specialize in collecting and trading underground, hard-to-find manga
like angel, uncolored, cupid or blind logic. hangout: the haga bookstore
in kanda.
monster otaku
*************
love everything about godzilla, the smog monster, gamara, rodan,
ultraman and that one with three heads, green scales and wings. most
elusive factoid: who or what exactly godzilla mated with to produce baby
godzilla.
military otaku
**************
construct models of everything from f-15 fighter planes to WWI british
infantry issue chipped-beef rations. special treat: surrounding
themselves with plastic ship models and watching videos of "tora! tora!
tora!"
tropical fish otaku
*******************
can distinguish between the life-span of an angel fish in captivity in
the northern and southern hemispheres. Favorite pastime: memorizing the
latin names of 150 fish species, without ever owning a goldfish.
imperial otaku
**************
debate the lengths of the meiji and showa reigns down to the second.
most coveted item: a fax of princess michiko with a blemish on her
forehead.
cartoon otaku
*************
believe that somehow, somewhere, the "hello kitty" cartoon character has
a mouth. raging debate: chibi maruko-chan's favorite foods.
idol otaku
**********
believe that it really matters who was the assistant sound engineer on
harumi inoue's b-side "you me and taro." wildest dream: to see all the
way up miho nakayama's skirt.===
Copyright (c) 1993 Wired Magazine