Otakus are mainly Japanese computer nerds who live in front
of their computers and playstasions surfing the Net and playing
computer games, totally alienated and isolated from the outside
world. Otakus are usually also fixated to manga
and anime cartoons.
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."
