Debating Otaku in Contemporary Japan: Historical Perspectives and New Horizons (SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan) - Hardcover

Bloomsbury

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1472594975 ISBN 13: 9781472594976

Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015

Synopsis

With the spread of manga (Japanese comics) and anime (Japanese cartoons) around the world, many have adopted the Japanese term 'otaku to identify fans of such media. The connection to manga and anime may seem straightforward, but, when taken for granted, often serves to obscure the debates within and around media fandom in Japan since the term 'otaku appeared in the niche publication Manga Burikko in 1983.

About this title

Review:

"Debating Otaku sets a high bar for quality and is strongly recommended for grasping the historical evolution of the term, its perception in Japan, and the various discourses that shaped and continue to shape its legacy. With a wealth of Japanese-language material available for the first time in English and new scholarly texts, this volume's significance lies not only in its new insights into a category many may take for granted, but also in the tensions and elisions it exposes within key theoretical works about otaku." - Journal of Japanese Studies

"Debating Otaku offers a cogent introduction and a well-conceived series of essays that bring into focus not only the various socio-historical strands contributing to the discursive construction of otaku, but also the polemical stances that have made the term otaku central to debates about media and society in Japan. This collection succeeds beautifully in its central mission: to introduce a pause, a moment of hesitation, into the headlong rush of statements in circulation about Japanese youth, consumption, and pop culture. It will make you think again about otaku, and again." --Thomas Lamarre, James McGill Professor in East Asian Studies, McGill University, Canada

About the Author:

Patrick W. Galbraith has a Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo, Japan and is currently pursuing a second Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, USA. He is the author of The Otaku Encyclopedia (2009), Tokyo Realtime: Akihabara (2010), Otaku Spaces (2012) and The Moe Manifesto (2014), as well as the co-editor of Idols and Celebrity in Japanese Media Culture (2012). Thiam Huat Kam is a Ph.D. candidate in Media Studies at Rutgers University, USA. Bjoern-Ole Kamm is a researcher and lecturer at the Graduate School of Letters, Kyoto University, Japan.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1472594975
• ISBN 13: 9781472594976
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 288