Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan by Patrick W. Galbraith

Abstract

Reviewed by: Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan by Patrick W. Galbraith Jonathan E. Abel (bio) Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan. By Patrick W. Galbraith. Duke University Press, Durham NC, 2019. x, 325 pages. $104.95, cloth; $27.95, paper; $27.95, E-book. Great scholarly books are often the most problematic because they engage in important debate-worthy issues; these contentious books force us to rethink our assumptions and inspire us to embark on new research. On these terms, Patrick W. Galbraith's Otaku and the Struggle for Imagination in Japan is a great scholarly book. In many ways, it is a book the field of Japan studies has been waiting for—a concise, readable, teachable, authoritative guide to the subject of primary interest for many of our students. It provides a deeply researched anthropological account of the die-hard Japanese fans of manga, anime, and videogame cultures, and of the producers, academics, and politicians who orbit this popular culture. Along the way, it narrates the history of primarily male fans of bishōjo comics (whom it defines as otaku) as a story of a culturally, socially, and politically constructed and contested identity through examination of several topics: the rise of "otaku research" in fan magazines, the origins and development of moé (a "budding" fetishistic desire or "burning" for particular traits in anime characters), street performances and protests in Akihabara, maid café patrons, and the effects of art exhibitions promoted by government and national institutions. In coverage and clarity, the book does everything it should. It even grapples with the difficult tangle of capital, labor, gender, sex, and longing that pervades and undergirds otaku existence. Yet on this last thorny issue, I find the book troubling. The introduction begins with an advertisement for the Gatebox digital companion Azuma Hikari, an automated fictional character who is marketed as providing a love relationship for its/her consumers. This beginning [End Page 437] challenges readers to transcend what Galbraith calls the "wacky Japan" press paradigm and work to understand the logic and legitimacy of male love for a "two dimensional" (nijigen, meaning fictional) character. Galbraith adopts the term otaku to describe such men: "I present 'otaku' as a label that is applied in response to the imagined excesses and perversions of 'male' fans of manga and anime, namely an attraction to and affection for cute girl characters" (p. 6). Though he discusses the presence of female otaku and feminist voices in the discourse (citing Kotani Mari and Ueno Chizuko), the focus of the book, even as it problematizes gender binaries around the cultural materials and their reception, is clearly on male voices. Galbraith aims for readers to cultivate empathy for the subjects of inquiry, hence the book's title and Philip Boehm epigram: "imagination is the key to empathy, and if we're not able to imagine peoples' lives, then our empathy diminishes" (p. v). Chapter 1 gives a prehistory of male fans of shōjo comics forming communities through fan groups and magazines and introduces their impact on the cultivation of a particular aesthetic within what has become known as the bishōjo (beautiful girl) genre, especially in the genre- and genderbending work of Hagio Moto. Galbraith argues that the imagination of these early readers—their willingness to engage with and see something in the work other than what producers had intended—is what he wishes readers to respect and even emulate, by using their own imagination to understand these men's feelings. The chapter demonstrates how the "bishōjo manga allowed for an opening into a mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances, and resonances where gender/sex no longer signifies monolithically" (p. 46), citing as proof not only the voices of men whom Galbraith tells us might otherwise have been labeled "gay" but also the 15 per cent of readership identified as female. The primary motivating example of this early chapter (if not the entire book) rests on the distinction between "2D" (fiction) and "3D" (real). Galbraith presents otaku desire for 2D manga over 3D photographic (or realistic) representations of young girls as evidence of a desire to dwell in imaginative and fictive worlds. For...