Otaku become fashionable in Japan

[Iamit2900]

There is hope for us geeks. From the Times

April 27, 2005

Cover story

Revealed: the woman who made geeks sexy

Leo Lewis

A Bridget Jones-style weblog of a love affair with an unfashionable nerd is transforming Japanese women?s view of the ideal husband

USING one hand to hide her eyes from the camera, and the other to raise a slim menthol cigarette to her lips, Artesia gives her first interview from a grimy old coffee shop in a suburb of Osaka. She is glamorous, achingly bubbly and head-over-heels in love. At this point she is also possibly the most influential woman in Japan.

Occasionally the concealing hand drops away to swat at a passing mosquito or to explain a thought that is too big for words alone. When it does, there is a fleeting glimpse of something that the whole Japanese nation is desperate to learn. After her boyfriend and her publisher, I am now only the third person in the world who knows the face of the intriguing Artesia.

The pathological secrecy surrounding the 30-year-old freelance advertising consultant is all part of her extraordinary power. Nobody has a clue who she is or where she lives, so everybody believes they might know her. She could be the girl sitting opposite you on the train, or the friend you have known for years. When her blog, or online diary, is published as a book next month, the curiosity stakes will soar higher than ever.

In the dingy caf?, Artesia?s immaculate Donna Karan suit is oddly out of place; she does not explain why she has chosen this charmless dive.

She peppers her train of thought with little details about her life ? always enough to fire the curiosity, but never enough absolutely to identify herself.

We know that she attended one of the top five state universities in Japan, that she wears a lot of Gucci and that her female friends are high-flyers ? doctors, lawyers or businesswomen. When she meets them she goes drinking in Izakaya bars where she talks about her boyfriend, but never her blog. Artesia (her name comes from one of the characters in Gundam ? the manga/cartoon in which humans command giant warrior robots) reads widely, has travelled extensively and worked for an elite consulting firm for six years before going freelance.

Her parents are divorced and since leaving home at the age of 18 she has spoken only rarely to either one. Both are in the dark over the existence of Artesia. She has a twin brother who is a hikikomori ? a mysterious type of Japanese recluse who seldom leaves his bedroom.

She is, in many ways, an atypical Japanese. But to the 140,000 people who tune in regularly to her daily internet blog updates, Artesia is Everywoman ? a real-life Bridget Jones whose diaries are sparking a strange social revolution. Her chronicle comes at a time when a new generation of Japanese working women has come to despair of what the traditional dating game yields. By following the updates in her long quest for true love, Artesia?s acolytes are reaching some deeply unconventional conclusions about what to look for in a man.

The love of her life, the mysterious ?No 59?, remains equally anonymous, but also of a type that anyone in Japan can recognise. He took her to see the splatter-fest Alien vs Predator as a romantic Christmas date. His best shirt cost him ?2. He talks of robots and cartoons. For her birthday, he gave Artesia an intricately detailed plastic fish. He collects and farms stag beetles. He is, in her words, ? utterly clueless? around women and was still a virgin at 32. He is, in short, an otaku ? a word that describes the swollen Japanese ranks of geeky obsessives. Young men who become scarily focused on specialised interests such as manga comics, big-eyed dolls or complex role-playing games, and are otherwise divorced from the rest of the world.

But suddenly, under Artesia?s sway, and after years in Japan?s social shadows, the otaku have become the pinnacle of male desirability. ?Many of my past relationships soon become predictable and boring. Love became all about marketing and strategy,? she says. ?Otaku don?t live in fear of social conventions or arbitrary values, and all this is true for career-minded women as well ? we also have to reject society?s feminine ideals.?

By shunning the otaku because they are strange, Artesia writes in her blog, Japanese women have ignored, at their cost, a rich vein of potential Mr Rights. ?Basically, whatever otaku love, they love with complete passion and I?ve now learnt that that includes their women,? she says. ?When No 59 says he?s interested in something, it?s on an entirely different level from when normal people say something like ?I love snowboarding?.?

No 59 loves dinosaurs and one of his genuine dreams is to be eaten by a kronosaurus. He says the kronosaurus had the largest skull yet recorded among vertebrae, and that he?d want to see one even if that meant getting eaten alive.

She goes on to criticise suitors 1 to 58 as self-centered, and to denounce most Japanese men as utterly disinterested in their women?s lives. Once an otaku has made his choice, runs the Artesia doctrine, he is a paragon of loyalty and commitment.

The voice of Artesia?s blog is powerful because it is unique. She does not advise, she does not preach, she does not dress her language in the usual niceties of girlish Japanese. Her writings are witty and intimate, without ever straying into the overtrodden genres of bawdy or pornography.

No 59, while quite comfortable with her diary, refuses to read the blog on the basis that he would rather not know what his beloved is telling the world.

?I think my blog might be similar to Bridget Jones?s Diary because many women can emphathise with me,? Artesia says. ?But my diary isn?t fiction ? it?s based truly and entirely on what goes on between me and No 59. Also, I don?t think my diary provides any easy answers.?

Perhaps most startling of all, though, is the rarity of Artesia?s anonymity. Japan is a country with a long and colourful history of female icons ? in more recent times the domestic mass media has branded certain ?berstars ?idols? ? whose success has been all about the visual and about maximising public exposure. But while the idols? influence is vast, it affects only the material side of life. Artesia?s diaries, say her avid readers, affect the soul and so exert a far more profound influence.

The pop diva Ayu Hamasaki, for example, has dictated the exaggerated look of Japanese teenage girls for three straight years. Another idol, Seiko Komatsuda, launched her own wildly popular brand of accessories in the 1980s. But Artesia?s power is wielded only through the words in her blog, where she has faithfully recorded the ebb and flow of the romantic ordeal that has delivered her 58 Mr Wrongs before finally producing the geek of her dreams, No 59.

Artesia?s big revelation is that behind their obsessions, otaku are more fascinating than the traditional type of rock-solid salarymen that have always been presented to Japanese women as ideal husband material. ?Otaku are the polar opposite of typical, gung-ho businessmen who think work is everything and who are alienated from their families. Somewhere in their lives, I think otaku decide that life?s too short to spend on anything other than what you?re really passionate about,? she says. The otaku?s often crippling awkwardness around women, she argues, is to be cherished for its purity, rather than avoided for its cringing lack of sophistication.

?In Japan there?s an emerging generation of women who have good jobs but can?t find a good partner,? says Artesia, showing off a picture of No 59?s bare torso on the screen of her mobile. ?Then there?s a generation of otaku men. The two generations are about the same age, and would be perfect for each other. But the problem is that these women would never consider dating an otaku, and otaku would never dare asking these women out. I think if both overcame their prejudices they?d find they fit each other really well.?

Much of the action in her diary describes the way in which Artesia used the geekiness of No 59 to overcome some of the day-to-day romantic problems that her readers so readily identify with. Otaku, she has persuaded her readers, provide the only real opportunity for Japanese women to be themselves, and to avoid the misery of ?marketing themselves as some ideal that they are not?.

She quotes the author Haruki Murakami and the importance he places on kabenuke (?going through a wall?) to illustrate the complexities of love in Japan.

Her blog has struck a raw nerve because its revelations throw open big questions about the shifting structures of Japanese society. Otaku, she writes in one entry, reject images of masculinity that pervade society and so many of its institutions. Particularly critical, she says, is the way that otaku challenge the notoriously ingrained Japanese concepts of tattemae and honne ? the two words that respectively contrast one?s outward appearance and speech with one?s actual inner feelings. Otaku, says Artesia, spend so much time concentrating on their interests that they do not bother to develop the classic ability to conceal honne with tattemae.

As Artesia has uncovered the romantic potential of the otaku, their odd lives have now come in to sharper national focus. A recent report commissioned for investors by the financial giant Nomura has estimated that there are about three million otaku in Japan, and that their annual expenditure on hobbies such as manga, DIY computing and idol dolls amounts to around ?1.5 billion.

The new interest has also uncovered the curious underground network of otaku cafes ? quirky coffee shops that under Artesia?s influence are becoming the prowling grounds for women in search of the perfect catch. In them, otaku meet to compare notes and to swap vital intelligence about new shops where their hobby passions can be stoked. Many of those based around the Akihabara electronics district in Tokyo ? the undisputed otaku capital of the world ? generate their own form of geeky interest. In some, otaku collect tiny pictures of the gothic neo-peasant waitresses. In others, they can pay ?2.50 for three minutes? card-playing with a girl dressed as their favourite manga character.

Artesia has found that her time with No 59 has also uncovered her own otaku tendencies. It was, after all, the ringtone on her mobile ? the theme tune to Gundam ? that first made him notice her. Her ideal date now includes crocodile-watching at a park in Shizuoka. When she talks about the possibility of marriage, she turns strangely coy ? confirming only her wish to wear the costume of a well-known manga robot on her big day.

?No 59 has done so much research and pondering, even on a topic like beetles, that I actually find it fascinating to talk with him,? she grins. ?I think it helps that I?ve always had a bit of otaku in me, too. I love comics and I quite like beetles too ? though I would have never told any of my previous boyfriends.?

Additional reporting by Hiroko Tabuchi

Yes, I know Otaku is a very insulting word, but the report used it not me. Nice Story.

[kylejn]

WHAT?!

My god... it's begun...

THE END OF THE WORLD!!!

If only this article had come out a few years ago, when I was actually living in Japan... damn!

[Soham]

Laugh out Loud Earth is going end

[alucarD_The_Stampede]

actually now a days the word "Otaku" isnt that bad, many anime fans are proud to call themselves "Otaku", its about the same as "Computer nerd" or somehtin like that, which some people are happy to be called that...

[Iamit2900]

actually now a days the word "Otaku" isnt that bad, many anime fans are proud to call themselves "Otaku", its about the same as "Computer nerd" or somehtin like that, which some people are happy to be called that...

According to what I heard, Otaku is extremely derogatory. Wannabes call themselves Otaku, but in reality it is merely a sign of their ignorance. In addition Otaku literally means you do not have a life. If your parents are told that their child is an Otaku in Japan, it is extremely insulting. Anyway, that's what I was told.