However one might wish to define them, the otaku form one of the more interesting social groups to emerge out of recent Japanese cultural history. At once a product of Japan’s heady economic prowess of the late 1980s (otaku continue to be defined in part by hyper-consumerist knowledge and behaviour), and yet also of the collapse of that same economy (so that people also see the otaku as forming an alternative to—or even a critique of—contemporary capitalist social formations), there seem to be contradictions built into the very idea of the otaku as a new social form. This is a contradiction, then, that would seem to have clear relevance for anyone interested in the social implications of late modern capitalist life. Much more simply, otaku are also the latest marker for Japan as a place of creative cultural difference—a “weirdness,” in Patrick Galbraith’s terms, that only enhances a now decades-long global fascination with them.
Galbraith knows this world well. He has been impressively prolific in his writing about otaku culture, and this book brings together much of his work in a coherent, broader picture. It presents to us Galbraith’s deep commitment to, and detailed understanding of, this world; in many ways, it is an otaku’s book on the otaku. Galbraith is careful to reference his points with frequent citation of related scholarly works—but he typically does not pursue those related arguments in great depth, choosing instead to stick to his own careful descriptive approach. It is thus of relevance to academic concerns, but it is also a book that will be easily accessible to a more popular readership.
The book is structured in part as a history, and in part as an ethnography of otaku life in contemporary Japan (and to an extent, across the globe). As a history, the focus is on some of the contexts within which “otaku” traits and interests emerge. Here, too, there is an insider’s fascination with detail, that nonetheless is important for an understanding of a bigger picture. We see, for example, Miyazaki Hayao deciding at one point that he hates the otaku; this small moment points to a much larger set of distinctions developing within Japanese popular culture that would be worth pursuing. The book also gives emphasis to the terms and conditions of desire that appear typical of mass culture anywhere, but that in these cases are more strictly definitive of the otaku world. In particular, ideas of gendered relations point to a unique conception of gender, that does not easily translate across markets or cultures. At the same time, Galbraith openly states that he’s approaching this world principally from a male otaku’s perspective (even while he then interestingly complicates what a “male” otaku is)—this might reinforce the questionable idea that otaku culture is mostly masculine. I’d be very interested to hear more from the women involved, but perhaps that will come from Galbraith’s next work.
For this reader, the book most fully comes to life in its more ethnographic sections (which, it should be noted, seem to derive from fieldwork done especially around the early 2000s). Reading carefully, one can see in Galbraith’s descriptions some of the truly fundamental change Japan has undergone since the 1980s bubble economy, with (arguably) maid cafes displacing the whole “salaryman” world of after-work hostess bars that were so central to an earlier social era. And the depiction of maid cafe regulars is deeply instructive—showing social relations based simply on “qualities” derived from well-known fictional characters (so that a cafe regular might simply desire that quality, and seek out anyone with that quality, regardless of age, gender, etc.). Reading passages like these, one truly starts to feel the deep-set differences in sociality that therefore do seem to define a truly unique, distinct social world.
The book is framed as an anthropology of imagination, and in particular the ability to imagine a new world. There are real, effective glimpses of some of the multitude of ways in which this does happen. But at times it’s not really clear where the boundaries of something like an otaku identity might lie. Is it only men? And is it a Japanese or a global social identity? National, international, or transnational? It seems to be all of these, but with boundaries of difference at each level—and so it would be helpful to hear more on what these differences might be.
More generally, Galbraith tends to return to a basic set of binaries that run through each of his arguments: almost everything is depicted as an opposition of the fictional vs. the real; 2-dimensional vs. 3-dimensional; “weird” vs. normative (or “Cool”); and national vs. non-national. Although these thus seem to be organizing ideas, they remain at times somewhat elusive (what’s really at stake in calling something “2D”?). And Galbraith himself seems to want to escape these binary sets—hinting at ways in which the performative quality of otaku life, for example, means that their playful characters are neither simply fictional nor crudely “real.” Or, by the last chapter, that the otaku world is neither simply national nor transnational. But the book shows how difficult it is to escape these modes of social thought, and for the most part tends to return to a reliance on them.
Ultimately, the book is very effective in raising the more fundamental question that seems to be begged by this world, as to how different the difference of otaku life really is. Are otaku types in fact the harbingers of a kind of sociality that is genuinely new and unseen, even within other hyper-consumerist mass cultural societies? Similarly, does the category of “subculture” need to be fundamentally rethought in view of this world? Galbraith at least points us in the direction of some possible answers, in his vivid description of differently-imagined lives that are certainly not just imaginary. In the process he has produced a book that is replete with elements of interest for scholarly and non-scholarly readers alike.
Thomas Looser
New York University, New York