Otaku : Japan's database animals / Hiroki Azuma ; translated by Jonathan E. Abel and Shion Kono.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Azuma, Hiroki, 1971-

Standardized Title:

Dōbutsukasuru posutomodan. English

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Subculture--Japan.

Subculture.

Popular culture--Japan.

Popular culture.

Japan--Civilization--1945-.

Japan.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (176 pages)

Edition:

[English ed.].

Place of Publication:

Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

In Japan, obsessive adult fans and collectors of manga and anime are known as otaku. When the underground otaku subculture first emerged in the 1970's, participants were looked down on within mainstream Japanese society as strange, antisocial loners. Today otaku have had a huge impact on popular culture not only in Japan but also throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States. Hiroki Azuma's Otaku offers a critical, philosophical, and historical inquiry into the characteristics and consequences of this consumer subculture. For Azuma, one of Japan's leading public intellectuals, otaku culture...

Contents:

Preface to the English edition / Hiroki Azuma

Translators' introduction

What is otaku culture?

The otaku's pseudo-Japan

The pseudo-Japan manufactured from U.S.-mode material

Otaku and postmodernity

Narrative consumption

The grand nonnarrative

Moe-elements

Database consumption

The simulacra and the database

Snobbery and the fictional age

The dissociated human

The animal age

Hyperflatness and hypervisuality

Multiple personality.

Notes:

"Originally published in Japanese as Dobutsuka suru posutomodan: otaku kara mita nihon shakai (Tokyo: Kodansha Gendai Shinsho, 2001)"--T.p. verso.

Translated from the Japanese.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 117-139) and index.

Other Format:

Print version :

ISBN:

9780816668007

0816668000

OCLC:

527737445