2013 768336

Japanese Studies
ISSN: 1037-1397 (Print) 1469-9338 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cjst20
The Anxieties that Make the Otaku: Capital

and the Common Sense of Consumption in
Contemporary Japan
Thiam Huat Kam
To cite this article: Thiam Huat Kam (2013) The Anxieties that Make the Otaku: Capital and the
Common Sense of Consumption in Contemporary Japan, Japanese Studies, 33:1, 39-61, DOI:
10.1080/10371397.2013.768336
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Date: 30 October 2015, At: 19:01
Japanese Studies, 2013

Vol. 33, No. 1, 3961, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10371397.2013.768336
The Anxieties that Make the Otaku: Capital and the

Common Sense of Consumption in Contemporary
Japan
Downloaded by [Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana] at 19:01 30 October 2015
THIAM HUAT KAM, National University of Singapore, Singapore
The term otaku is generally used in Japan to denote subcultures revolving around the
consumption of popular culture, such as manga, anime and games. This paper, however,
seeks to analyze otaku as a label applied to individuals whose consumption is perceived and
judged to have compromised certain values in contemporary Japan. Through analysis of interviews with a group of Japanese students, I found that the values they invoke to judge who the
otaku are, and which they construe as a form of common sense concerning consumption,
correspond to the demands of advanced capitalism: consumption should be productive of capital,
either leading to further production or fostering communication that is directly productive. At the
same time, people are labeled as otaku not merely for failing to produce capital through their
consumption, but also for actively practicing a perversion of the capacities that are necessary to
advanced capitalist Japan, most notably imagination and autonomy. Otaku labeling thus
points to capitals anxieties over capacities such as imagination, knowledge and autonomy:
these capacities, while essential to a exible and immaterial economy, could potentially become
unproductive and threaten advanced capitalism.
Introduction
The term otaku seems to have ambivalent connotations in contemporary Japan.1
Literally meaning you or your house, the term was rst used in 1983 to designate a
certain group of people when columnist Nakamori Akio employed it to deride those
participating in Comic Market, a public convention where djinshi (fan publications) are
bought and sold, and other groups of people he regarded with disdain.2 The term gained
its negative currency amongst the wider populace in Japan after the mass media
deployed it to brand Miyazaki Tsutomu, who was arrested in 1989 for the murder of
four young girls, and associated his crime with his large collection of video tapes and
shjo manga (comics targeted at girls).3 Since then, people identied as otaku have
been viewed in a negative manner. In fact, before I began my research, I was aware of
Authors who have written on otaku in English have, following the conventions of Anglophone writing,
italicized the term to indicate that it is a non-English word. However, instead of italicizing, I have placed
it within quotation marks in a bid to challenge it as a neat referent to a specic group of people.
2
tsuka, Otaku no seishinshi, 3943. Djin refers to people sharing the same interest, and shi is
magazine. Hence, djinshi is a magazine created by and for people sharing an interest. However, the
term has increasingly come to denote manga that are produced by amateur artists and are parodies of
existing manga, anime or games. Comic Market (also known as komike in Japanese) is the largest public
convention in Japan where djinshi are bought, sold and exchanged. See Kinsella, Japanese Subculture
in the 1990s, for more detailed discussions.
3
Kinsella, Japanese Subculture in the 1990s, 308311.
1
2013 Japanese Studies Association of Australia
40
Thiam Huat Kam
the notoriety of otaku even while residing outside Japan, and was wary of associating
with a person identied as one. However, 2005 seemed to be a major turning point for
otaku, when the people so identied came to be regarded as contributing benecially
to the Japanese economy and society. In April 2005, Yokohama Bank Research Institute
reported that the otaku market was worth 88.8 billion yen.4 At around the same time,
Nomura Research Institute, which was also investigating the market value of otaku
consumption, published an estimate of 411 billion yen.5 Despite the discrepancy
between the two reported gures, the reports became the basis for some people to
argue that otaku would help regenerate Japans ailing economy.6 These arguments t
in with a larger discourse that popular culture from Japan, such as manga and anime,
will boost Japans economic and diplomatic power.7
The people called otaku were further cast in a favorable light with the popularity of
Densha Otoko (Train Man), a novel which was made into a movie, a television drama, a
manga and even a musical. The storys protagonist, portrayed as an otaku, uses his
courage and sincerity to win over the affection and approval of a beautiful lady and
Japanese society in general. With Densha Otoko, the otaku became a gure of pure
love that could revitalize a society devoid of energy.8 In both economy and society,
otaku seemed to have become Japans heroes, albeit the least likely ones.9
So who exactly are the otaku? Otaku has been generally used to refer to members of
a fandom or subculture that revolves around manga, anime and pop idols. In its latest
edition, published in 2008, Kjien, one of the popular dictionaries in Japan, denes
otaku as:
People who are interested in a particular genre or object, are extraordinarily
knowledgeable about it, but are lacking in social common sense (shakaiteki na
jshiki).10
Kjiens denition is remarkably similar to the general claim by the group of Japanese
university students I interviewed for this research that otaku are people who perform
acts that normal people (futs no hito) would not, and who operate outside the boundaries of common sense. Kjiens denition and the students claim suggest that acts and
behaviors of the people identied as otaku defy common sense. In what ways are these
acts and behaviors lacking in common sense? And even more importantly: what is
common sense? To phrase the question more concretely, what kinds of acts and
behaviors are considered commonsensical in the rst place, and why is this the case?
As Geertz reminds us, while common sense is always presented as natural, as the ways
things have been and will always be, it is historically and culturally constructed.11 To
what kind of cultural context does the common sense referred to by Kjien and the
students I interviewed belong? At the same time, the students claim, as well as Kjiens
denition, suggests that, far from a shift to positive perceptions, there are ambivalent
feelings towards the people identied as otaku.
4
Morinaga, Moe keizaigaku, 2733.

Nomura Research Institute, Otaku shij no kenky, 52.
6
See for example Morinaga, Moe keizaigaku.
7
Okuno, Japan kru to jh kakumei; Sakurai, Anime bunka gaik; Sakurai, Nihon wa anime de saik suru.
8
Freedman, Train Man and the Gender Politics of Japanese Otaku Culture.
9
Leheny, A Narrow Place to Cross Swords, 219.
10
Kjien Sixth Edition, 400.
11
Geertz, Local Knowledge, 76.
5
The Anxieties that Make the Otaku
41
The ambivalence towards otaku is, I suggest, not unrelated to a general movement
by the Japanese state to tame popular culture in its own interests.12 Galbraith has
observed that while the Japan National Tourist Organization and other government
agencies have used the image of otaku to promote tourism in the district of Akihabara
in Tokyo, police and local administrators have sought to discipline the population
identied as otaku there.13 Besides conducting patrols and bag searches, they have
imposed restrictions on public performances such as cosplay (the act of dressing up as a
character from a media text), and eventually, in June 2008, ended the custom of
creating a pedestrian paradise on Sundays, which had also served as an arena for
public performances. Although the pedestrian paradise was reinstated in January
2011, local authority and police imposed rules, enforced by regular patrols, forbidding
all performances that draw crowds.14 Furthermore, while manga have been applauded
in recent years as evidence of Japanese creativity, there has been a longer-term movement by the Japanese state to regulate manga with sexual depictions, which began in the
early 1990s.15 The 2010 amendments to the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Regarding
the Wholesome Development of Youth could be seen as the latest development in this
movement. The amendments were made to regulate graphic depictions of sexual or
pseudo-sexual acts that are clearly against social rules. The Tokyo metropolitan governments rationale is that such depictions create an impression these acts are socially
accepted or usual in contemporary Japan, and would hence hinder the development of
capacity for wholesome judgment in their youthful readers.16 Although they were not
explicitly singled out, subcultures identied as otaku have been observed to be the
most obvious targets of these ofcial regulations.17
To understand the ambivalent feelings towards people identied as otaku, I propose
to look at otaku as a label rather than as a subculture. In other words, I do not posit
otaku as members of a distinctive subculture or fandom, whose acts and objects of
preference are essentially different from those of other people within society. Instead I
treat it as a label applied to people who are judged to have failed to adhere to certain
social rules, such as common sense, in a particular milieu.18 The ambivalence towards
otaku stems precisely from the fact that people are marked by this term when they are
perceived to have contravened certain social rules and requirements.
In this paper, I will argue that otaku is a label that is applied to people who are
judged to have failed to consume in ways productive of capital, as required by an
advanced capitalist Japan. At the same time, they are also labeled when their consumption is perceived to be a perversion of the forces which are critical to the maintenance of
an advanced capitalist economy, such as imagination, knowledge and autonomy. As I
will demonstrate, imagination, knowledge and autonomy are forms of immaterial labor
Daliot-Bul, Japan Brand Strategy, 257261.
Galbraith, Akihabara, 219225.
14
Akihabara hokten saikai.
15
Hiruma and Nagayama, 20072008 Manga rons boppatsu, 110115.
16
Tkyto Seishnen Chian Taisaku Honbu, Heisei 22nen Tkyto seishnen no kenzen na ikusei.
17
Kinsella, Japanese Subculture in the 1990s, 311113; Galbraith, Lolicon.
18
The examination of otaku as a label does not deny the fact that there are people, in Japan and
elsewhere, who identify themselves as otaku. But even for these people, the act of identifying as otaku
deserves critical attention, because the ways this identity is articulated reects particular political and
moral concerns over how consumption should be conducted, Furthermore, self-identication as otaku
does not correspond to any particular cultural activity. For example, while there are djinshi artists who
profess to be otaku, we cannot assume that all creators of djin goods engage in such identication.
12
13
42
Thiam Huat Kam
indispensable to the generation of capital in advanced capitalist societies,19 such as

Japan. The label otaku thus represents anxieties towards the very forces essential to
the survival of advanced capitalism, as these same forces have the potential to undermine it. The label could also be read as a culturally specic device to contain the
subversive potential of these forces in contemporary Japan.
Otaku as Label
My proposal to examine otaku as a label takes its cue from Howard S. Beckers study
of deviance in his Outsiders. Becker challenges studies of deviance that seek to explain
why certain people commit deviant acts while taking for granted that the acts themselves
are inherently qualitatively distinct and that the people who commit them do so
inevitably due to their personal characteristics.20 The value judgment that is involved
in deciding which acts are deviant in the rst place is never called into question. Becker
argues that social groups create deviance by making the rules whose infraction constitutes
deviance, and by applying those rules to particular people and labeling them as outsiders.21 An act and the person who commits it are only deviant when they are so
labeled, and this labeling in turn involves the existence of rules, formal or informal, and
the people who enforce them. And because different social groups might not share the
same rules, acts that are considered deviant vary across the groups.22
The approach and assumptions that Becker found problematic have an interesting
parallel in current studies of otaku. These treat otaku as a subculture or fandom with
distinctive behaviors and traits. Miyadai Shinji, for example, argues that otaku were the
manifestation in 1980s consumerist Japan of a personality type that deals with disappointments by withdrawing from areas where they easily arise, such as interpersonal
relationships.23 Sait Tamaki understands otaku as fans of anime and games characters, whose sexuality reveals the essence of gendered subjectivity inhabiting the realm
that in Lacanian psychoanalysis is called the symbolic.24 Azuma Hiroki posits otaku as
quintessential postmodern beings, who pursue affective gratications in a postmodern
world where grand narratives are dysfunctional.25 For Yoshimoto Taimatsu, otaku are
members of a subculture that emerged in the early 1980s out of discontent with the
rigidity of preceding fandoms, especially the science ction fandom, while at the same
time inheriting important cultural traits from them, such as parodying and references to
multiple genres.26
While the above studies, and many others,27 have enriched our understanding concerning the development of certain subcultures and furnished us with useful theoretical
frameworks to comprehend the behaviors of their members, they presuppose the otakuness of these subcultures. In other words, these studies assume that it is the
Lazzarato, Immaterial Labor; Hardt and Negri, Multitude.
Becker, Outsiders, 3.
21
Ibid., 9; italics in original.
22
Ibid., 15.
23
Miyadai, Seifuku shjo tachi no sentaku, 205232.
24
Sait, Sent bishjo no seishin bunseki; Sait, Kankei suru onna shoy suru otoko.
25
Azuma, Dbutsuka suru posuto modan.
26
Yoshimoto, Otaku no kigen.
27
For example, see Okada, Otakugaku nymon; Morikawa, Shuto no tanj; Honda, Moeru otoko; and
Ishikawa, Seeking the Self.
19
20
43
distinctiveness of these subcultures that caused them to be called otaku. Yet, these
studies do not adequately explain why these subcultures are designated and categorized
as otaku. Certainly, unlike the studies of deviance that Becker criticizes, these studies
of otaku do not accept the values of the people who apply the term; in fact, most of
them avoid value judgments of the subcultures they study, if not defending them from
the negativity associated with the term. However, it is precisely the view that otaku is
an objective term describing certain subcultures that is problematic, for it ignores the
value judgment involved in the act of calling, or not calling, someone an otaku.
By looking at otaku as a label, I seek to introduce the question of value28 into the
study of the otaku phenomenon. This approach calls for attention to the judgments
involved in the identication of persons as otaku, and the values and rules they are
based on. Hence, instead of attempting to explain the actions of members of particular
subcultures or fandoms, I instead focus on the people who label persons as otaku, and
their reasons for doing so. These reasons will in turn divulge their articulators sense of
values, the rules they uphold and their notions of the commonsensical, which are often
rooted in the social milieu they are living in.
The present study centers on a group of Japanese university students and their
reasons for labeling persons as otaku. I conducted semi-structured interviews with
51 Japanese students between 2005 and 2008 in Tokyo, Kanagawa, Kyoto and
Singapore, primarily in cafes and on university campuses.29 I met these students
through the snowball method, beginning with my personal acquaintances and getting
them to introduce me to their friends and acquaintances. These students were selected
because it is highly possible that they had grown up with the term, as they were born
around 1983 when it was rst used by Nakamori to designate particular subcultures,
and had their formative years after 1989 when the arrest of Miyazaki Tsutomu popularized this usage. In addition to asking them to outline general characteristics of otaku,
the key component of the interview required the students to look at their social circle
and a list of people with certain hobbies and preferences (representing a spectrum in
terms of the frequency of their appearances in reports and literature on otaku), and
discuss their reasons for calling, or not calling, any of them otaku. I also asked them to
draw upon examples from their daily lives to illustrate these reasons. By collating the
interviews, I could distill a number of reasoning patterns that may be read as these
students sense of values with regards to consumption and play.
Howard Beckers insights are relevant to the study and analysis of these students
reasoning patterns. The question of value is especially signicant in the study of what
Becker would consider as informal rules,30 such as those articulated as common sense
about consumption, making otaku labeling possible. The intricacies concerning the
invocation of informal rules in labeling, however, have been eclipsed in Beckers work by
a focus on formal rules or laws, for example the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act in the United
States, and the actions of interest groups in creating and enforcing them. This focus on
the actions and objectives of certain interest groups has been adopted by later studies on
28
These students comprised 27 women and 24 men, who studied at the following universities: Keio
University, Waseda University, Chuo University, Digital Hollywood University, Tokyo University,
Tokyo University of Technology, Sophia University, Kyoto University, Doshisha University,
Ritsumeikan University, Kansai University of Foreign Studies, Kyushu University and Hokkaido
University.
30
29
44
Thiam Huat Kam
the construction of social problems and moral panics.31 The constructionist approach to
social problems has been applied to the study of youth categories in Japan, such as
hikikomori (socially withdrawn people) and NEETs (Not in Education, Employment or
Training).32
My examination of otaku as a label shares with these studies the standpoint that the
meanings of a label are uid and contested, as well as a critical attention to the social
context in which an action becomes regarded as problematic. However, I do not follow
these more recent approaches to social labeling, while retaining Beckers insights, due to
the specicities of the otaku label. Firstly, while the people labeled as otaku are
treated with contempt and condescension, they are not construed as a problem that
requires intervention (through policies or legislation) or an evil that has to be exterminated. What concerns then does the label otaku symbolize? I will suggest that there is
much more ambivalence involved because the people labeled as otaku represent not
simply a problem or an evil, but rather a distortion of what is considered essential and
valuable. Secondly, while prominent writers on otaku can be identied, it is difcult to
assess the extent to which their discussions are shaping otaku labeling in contemporary
Japan. The students I interviewed judge who the otaku are in ways that do not
correspond to the denitions of the prominent writers. The Japanese media might be
a key forum for identifying certain subcultures as otaku and propagating images about
them, but it is difcult to discern in it the logic that allows some students to differentiate
among members of the same subcultures, for example, distinguishing those djinshi
artists who are otaku from those who are not. Thirdly, while it is important to examine
key agents and institutions in the formation and application of a label, I contend that it is
signicant to look at the articulation of the label at the level of the everyday, by people
who would usually not be considered as key claim-makers. While the students I interviewed do not constitute a group with discernible interests, it is still important to ask
what or whose interests they are echoing when they judge which persons are otaku.
I would also like to emphasize here that what these students say about the behaviors
and thoughts of certain consumers, such as djinshi artists, railway enthusiasts, stampcollectors and cosplayers, might not correspond to the actual behaviors and thoughts of
these consumers. The rhetoric made about a form of play is not the same as the process
by which that play is played.33 When these students say djinshi artists and cosplayers are
not productive and communicative, they are merely stating their perceptions and not the
actual situations of these groups of consumers; djinshi artists and cosplayers could be
productive and engage in a rich form of sociality. However, my objective is to unveil not
the actual situations of these consumers but the rules and values that inform the
students judgments of them.
Self-contained Individuals, Mere Self-satisfaction

For a number of students, one reason for calling a person an otaku is his or her high
degree of absorption in imagination or fantasy:
31
For a discussion of these studies, see Goode and Ben-Yehuda, Moral Panics.
For an overview of the constructionist approach to youth categories in Japan, see Toivonen and Imoto,
Making Sense of Youth Problems. For specic studies, see Horiguchi, Hikikomori, and Toivonen,
NEETs.
33
Sutton-Smith, The Ambiguity of Play, 62.
32
45
People who constantly write based only on their imagination (sz) are
otaku Otaku inate wild fantasies (ms) in their heads and write to gain
satisfaction (manzoku). (Hisashi, 20 years old)34
[Djinshi artists] are not satised simply to read manga the original authors
created. They fantasize about the characters as if they really exist, to the extent
they make their own stories in order to have these characters perform all sorts
of activities. (Namie, 21)
To put it simply, cosplayers are living in an unreal world (higenjitsuteki na
sekai). In a world of pure fantasy (ks no sekai) that does not exist in the real
world (jissai no sekai), they become the characters completely by donning their
clothes. Hence they are not living in reality (genjitsu). (Rimi, 21)
These students conceive of imagination and fantasy as a realm separate from reality,
or genjitsu. What then is reality? To these students, reality includes school, work,
social life, social phenomena and responsibilities. People are hence labeled when
they pursue hobbies that are perceived to lead them to prioritize imagination over
reality, or escape from reality by engaging with imagination:
Even when people are really enthusiastic fans and chase their [pop-idols],
many of them return to daily life (nichij seikatsu), and go to school, or to
work. However, recently there are many people who dont. They live entirely
in the virtual world, and they become engrossed (hamatte iku) in what they like.
This is probably otaku culture. (Kyko, 21)
The above students comment is reective of a more general sentiment that hobbies
and leisure activities, and the imagination they stimulate, should be treated as means of
relaxation (ikinuki) rather than objectives (mokuteki) in themselves. Relaxation is a break
from reality but also presupposes a return to it. As the above student implies, people
who return to their daily life and responsibilities in reality are not labeled as otaku. On
the other hand, recreation that hinders work and study is the basis for labeling. Hence,
for one student, a djinshi artist who studies normally is not an otaku but one who
draws in the middle of a lesson is. Another student differentiates fans from otaku by
stating that the former will work and study, even if both share the same passion.
In addition to viewing hobbies as activities from which people have to return, these
students also believe that nothing is accomplished in reality during these activities.
This belief informs for example the following students reasons for labeling gurine
(gyua) collectors as otaku:
What can they do just by collecting? They cant do anything. All they do is
possess. They look and think, Ah theyre so cute! They fantasize (ks suru).
Theres something about it thats off-putting (iyarashii). (Rimi, 21 years old)
Evident in the above reasoning is the implied claim that gurine collection is just an
extended act of pure fantasizing. Figurine collection and all hobbies that are regarded as
manifestations of idle fantasizing are activities with no real benet (jitsueki). In a sense
34
Pseudonyms are used to protect the students condentiality.
46
Thiam Huat Kam
then, otaku is a label applied to people whose play and consumption are conceived as
useless in reality.
The evaluation based on use value is similarly applied to knowledge engendered by
play and consumption. This application could be observed, for example, in these
students discussions about the detailed knowledge of trains and railway schedules
that is associated with train enthusiasts:
Its a matter of whether the knowledge is wholesome (kenzen), whether it is
benecial (yeki) or good for ones health (kenk) Knowledge of trains is petty
knowledge (mame chishiki), trivial (toribiappoi) and, in a certain sense, insignicant
(kudaranai). This sort of knowledge is characteristic of otaku. (Rumiko, 19)
Knowledge of trains and train schedules is seen as not necessary to life (seikatsu ni
hitsuy janai) and pointless (muda ni shitteru). Here, people are labeled as otaku when
their knowledge is regarded as useless or without practical purpose.
On the other hand, individuals are not identied as otaku when their imagination and
knowledge are perceived to produce nancial gain. This is especially evident when the
students differentiated between djinshi artists and cosplayers they considered as otaku
and those they did not, even while they associated the two groups with an immersion in
fantasy, or the delusion that ctional characters exist in reality. For instance, the following
students thought that djinshi artists are otaku but made certain qualications:
If my friends at my university say theyre producing djinshi, I will think of them
as otaku. But its different if theyre doing them as a job (shigoto). (Haruka, 21)
I cant say that all people who make djinshi are otaku without exception, since
djinshi-creation is denitely a business (bijinesu). Djinshi arent necessarily
made only by otaku. But usually when I think of djinshi there are no prots
(sheki). Taking this into consideration, people draw djinshi because they
like to do so, rather than for business. They draw because they like djinshi and
their content. (Tsukasa, 22)
Apparent in the above comments is the logic that if people produce djinshi as work or
to generate monetary rewards, they will not be otaku. Similarly, people who perform
cosplay for work or part-time work (baito) are not considered as otaku:
If they work or perform baito at maid cafe because they want money, then
maybe they are not really stubbornly sticking to that world.35 If they cosplay for
work, then they are not otaku. (Misaki, 23)
There are girls who are not otaku but cosplay as maids in maid cafe. But if they
cosplay because they want to, theyre otaku. They arent cosplaying for the sake
of money and they arent being asked to do so. They cosplay because they feel
moe towards the characters.36 (Kaoru, 22)
35
Maid cafes are cosplay cafes where waitresses dress up as French maids.
Moe is a term that is generally associated with the subculture revolving around characters (especially female
ones). The denition of the term, however, has been the subject of debate. For example, Azuma Hiroki, in
Dbutsuka suru posuto modan, sees moe as a form of pleasurable sensation obtained from characters. Honda
Tru, in Moeru otoko, and Morinaga Takur, in Moe keizaigaku, dene it as romantic love towards the
characters. For this student, it appears that moe is a form of affective feelings for characters.
36
47
If cosplay is done as baito, its ne. But to cosplay because of ones own
preference means that one wants to become an anime or manga character,
and doing that is stupid (baka). (Miki, 20)
While djinshi creation and cosplay are associated with imagination, people who do
them for an income are not viewed as otaku. Conversely, people who take them up
primarily out of personal preference (wanting to become certain characters, for example,
or to live out affective feelings for them), with no pursuit of monetary benet, are judged
with disdain as otaku. In other words, the exercise of imagination purely for personal
pleasure is perceived as nothing more than fantasizing, and invites the label of otaku.
The logic here is that imagination performed for work or money is normal while that
employed for mere gratication is not. Similarly, there is a value placed on knowledge
and collection which generate some form of prot. For example, one student saw the
application of knowledge to commercial enterprise as the key factor that differentiates
the people who are otaku from those who are not:
Otaku possess an immense amount of knowledge, but they dont know what
use to put it to. People who know the ways to use knowledge are different.
People who have information but speak for the sake of self-satisfaction (jiko
manzoku) are otaku. People who are not otaku trade (eigy) on their information. (Yutaka, 19)
Another student refers to the objective of collection in her differentiation between
stamp collectors who are otaku and those who are not:
People who collect stamps arent doing so for a practical purpose (jitsuy).
Collection costs money. It takes effort too because care is required in handling
the stamps If they are collecting objects because they are thinking of putting
them on Yahoo auction after they acquire a premium after some years, they are
not otaku. If they collect because they really like them, and they want to have
them by their side, they are otaku. Its the same with stamps. After some years,
their value will rise. If these collectors intend to sell their collection, they are
not otaku. (Erika, 21)
For this student, people who collect stamps merely out of personal gratication are
otaku but those who collect to benet monetarily are not. This students comment
suggests a view that expenditure and efforts should produce monetary prot, and should
not be undertaken for the sake of mere enjoyment a view which also serves as an
interesting parallel to the aforementioned sentiment that hobbies, and the imagination
they arouse, should be means of relaxation and not objectives in themselves. This view is
indicative of a notion these students embrace as commonsensical. By labeling certain
people as otaku, these students are invoking a value or rule that, since imagination,
knowledge and collection require an immense amount of effort, they should only be
performed to generate monetary rewards, which are presumed as the real benets.
Imagining, collecting and knowing for the purpose of self-satisfaction are disparaged
and dismissed as worthless, and hence rendered problematic.
Another group of people who are labeled otaku are those who are presumed unable
or unwilling to communicate with others. These include the people who are perceived to
be withdrawn from society, shutting themselves at home or metaphorically into their
48
Thiam Huat Kam
own shells (jibun no kara). Some students even equate otaku with hikikomori, the
people who are dened as socially withdrawn, usually into their room. In general, the
lack of communication is deemed problematic, as reected in the way the following
student denes otaku:
Otaku rst and foremost have no communication ability (komyunikeshon
nryoku). They prefer to be alone and, when alone, are always connected to
the Internet. They have extensive knowledge of computers and the Internet. In
my opinion, basically when people have no communication ability, they are
otaku. Even if they prefer to be alone, even if they have immense knowledge
about the Internet, as long as they are friendly and have sociability (shaksei),
they are not otaku But if I see people who are not adept in talking with
others then I would think of them as otaku. (Keita, 21)
For some students, the lack of communication is more specically an inability to
communicate about their interests and hobbies:
Otaku basically have difculties in communication. Since they are so
engrossed in one thing, they have no communication skills. I want to talk to
the people who like anime. I want them to explain to me why they like anime.
There should be some degree of attraction I really want to know, so I would
like to talk to them. People who are not otaku would like to talk but I wonder if
otaku possess the communication ability to talk. I really want to talk [to them].
I really want to hear about their world. (Takur, 20)
This student posits himself, and probably all people who are not otaku, as people who
would like to communicate, and know more about the interests of other people. He is
articulating a notion that otaku are people who could not share their hobbies with others.
Other students describe this lack of communication as an unwillingness to share
interests and all related information. The unwillingness to share is a factor that one
student uses to differentiate otaku from fans:
Otaku think they can enjoy what they like on their own, so they wouldnt think
of interacting with or disseminating their knowledge to others. Fans will
actively tell one another that they have this or that information, but otaku
wont do that. (Mai, 21)
Conversely, people who display an ability or willingness to communicate are not
labeled, as evident in the same students view on djinshi artists:
My image of otaku is that they dont show others (soto ni das to shinai) what
they have. In contrast, people who draw djinshi are transmitting (hasshin
shiteru) something not only to their friends, but also to complete strangers.
So they arent otaku Otaku think that they can enjoy what they like on their
own so they cannot think of interacting with or disseminating their knowledge
to others.
In these students reasoning, some importance attaches to the ability and willingness
to propagate ones own interest or knowledge to a wider circle of people.
49
As evident in the comments of the above students, enjoying a hobby on ones own is
also considered by them as constituting a lack of communication with others. One
student differentiates himself from manga readers he regards as otaku by emphasizing
that he shares the pleasure of manga reading with his friends:
I often go to manga cafes to read manga, and I usually go with my friends. So I

dont spend my manga-reading time privately (kojinteki) but share it with
friends. In that respect, Im not an otaku. (Hiroki, 21)
Another student speaks of otaku culture as one which fosters enjoyment on ones
own, without a need for communication:
[Otaku] shut themselves inside a comfortable space. They dont feel the
need to talk with other people, so they dont enjoy talking and being alone is a
pleasure for them (hitori de iru koto ga tanoshii). Otaku culture is a culture
where one can enjoy without relating to others (hito to kakawaranakute tanoshimeru bunka). (Keita, 21)
Other students articulate the self-enjoyment without communication as a form of selfcontainment, where there is no relationship other than that between a person and his or
her objects of consumption. For example, one student explains why he feels that players
of romance simulation games37 are disgusting and identies them as otaku:
They dont go out and they are self-contained (jiko kanketsu). There is no
communication with people. There is only communication between oneself
and the characters on the screen. (Tomoya, 22)
This student also characterizes the manga fans he considers to be otaku as selfcentered (jiko chshin).
Another student employs a similar vocabulary of self-containment in his reasons for
identifying novel (shsetsu) readers as otaku:
Readers of novels read alone, making their own worlds, and imagining on their
own. Basically, the reading of novels is self-contained. (Ichir, 22)
Why do these students label as otaku those whom they perceive to lack an ability or
willingness to communicate, especially about their hobbies and consumption? It seems
that these students are invoking a value which places importance on the sharing of
interests, and all related information. This value is also discernible in these students
concerns over the capacity to enjoy oneself without the need for others.
Consumption Unproductive of Capital

In raising reasons to justify why they identify (or do not identify) certain people as
otaku, the students are invoking certain social values on consumption which appear to
37
Romance simulation games (renai shimyureshon) are games where the players objective is to engage in
romance (for example, dating) with one of the available characters.
50
Thiam Huat Kam
them as common sense. I will argue that these values on consumption in turn correspond to the requirements of advanced capitalist Japan. As a country experiencing the
advanced stage of capitalism, Japan has an economy that is increasingly grounded on
exible and immaterial production.38 Immaterial production refers to the production of
commodities informational and cultural content, as well as communication and affects
in general, and the labor involved in such production is immaterial labor.39 Production
is exible because cycles of production are initiated and dissolved according to the
demands of capital.40
The labeling of individuals and subcultures as otaku has to be understood within
the social context of advanced capitalist Japan. Individuals are labeled as otaku
when they are judged to be unable (or worse, unwilling) to return from their
imagination to reality or daily life. The common sense on consumption revealed
here is that indulgence in imagination, or consumption or leisure activities in general, should lead back to productive activities such as work and study. Hence, people
who do not seem to return to production because of their indulgence in imagination
are judged as problematic and labeled as otaku. This social value or rule is unique
neither to Japan nor to advanced capitalism. It is what Jock Young calls the ethos of
productivity in modern industrial societies: people can only consume justiably if
they have worked productively, and consumption has to lead back to the reality of
the workaday world, that is, to more productive work.41 Consumption which does
not feed back into productive work is condemned. The ethos of productivity is
endorsed by the state in capitalist societies such as Japan. As Anne Allison has
pointed out, Japans government encourages the consumption of sexual recreation
when it contributes to productivity by fostering and maintaining work and business
relations as well as relieving the stress of workers, but nds it dangerous when it
induces a ceaseless pursuit of pleasure that could be antithetical to work and home,
which are the main institutions of production and reproduction in Japan.42 While the
ethos of productivity had been present in earlier stages of capitalism based on
industrial production, its articulation in advanced capitalist Japan emphasizes a
concern over capacities such as imagination which, as I will argue later, are essential
to the production of capital in an increasingly immaterial economy.
While the labeling of people who have seemingly taken ight from production due to
their consumption could be located in capitals general demand for productivity, the
labeling of those who do not communicate has to be understood in relation to the
increasing importance of immaterial labor in advanced capitalist Japan. People who
seem to avoid human interaction are labeled because they are perceived to lack the most
important form of immaterial labor skills: communications skills. In an advanced
capitalist economy, organizations have to complete a set of immediate and small tasks
within a short time, and move on to another set of tasks.43 Hence, they value workers
who have the capabilities to form working relationships quickly with different groups of
workers contractually hired to complete the relevant tasks.44 In addition, since the
execution of tasks involves coordination and cooperation, workers are expected to be
Allison, The Cool Brand, Affective Activism and Japanese Youth, 9091.
Lazzarato, Immaterial Labor, 133; Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 108.
40
Lazzarato, Immaterial Labor, 137.
41
Young, The Drugtakers, 128137.
42
Allison, Permitted and Prohibited Desires, 154155.
43
Sennett, The Culture of the New Capitalism, 4849.
44
Ibid., 5051.
38
39
51
competent in communication.45 Social communication is in fact a directly productive

process as it produces a subjectivity that can provide immaterial labor for further
production.46 Here, I would suggest that people who are perceived to display an
inability or unwillingness to communicate are labeled because they are seen as unproductive: by not communicating, they are not helping to produce the form of subjectivity
useful to a late capitalist economy.
In particular, the concern over communication in consumption is related to the fact
that it is the communicative consumers who create the value of products in advanced
capitalism. As Adam Arvidsson has argued, branded goods acquire value only in a
common framework (such as shared experiences or identity), which is created by
consumers through their productive communication.47 Similarly, Robert J. Foster has
observed that the economic value of brands is heavily contingent on the everyday
practices in which consumers use branded goods to create social relations and shared
meanings and affects.48 Marketers and academics have also recognized the importance
of consumers who co-create values of products with companies through their communicative activities.49 This recognition is no less present in Japan, an advanced capitalist
society where popular culture industries are promoted by state and businesses. For
example, Nomura Research Institute posits otaku as an ideal type of consumer for their
communicative role: they pass on information to other consumers, and hence inuence
the entire market.50 Okuno Takuji has also pointed out that Japanese media products
are attracting an increasing number of consumers, even from beyond Japan, primarily
because their fans communicate actively about these products, for example, through
discussion on Internet forums and uploading videos onto le-sharing websites such as
YouTube.51 The Dents Consumer Research Institute has also identied people who
are sociable and adept at communication as key to the propagation of a product to the
general consumer.52 Yet, as critical studies of consumption have highlighted, communicative consumers are highly valued because their social communication are acts of
production that can be appropriated and exploited by capital.53
The labeling of non-communicative individuals as otaku then has to be situated in
capitals desire to capture consumers social communication. As I have demonstrated,
people who are perceived to be sharing their interests and information with complete
strangers are not labeled as otaku by some of the students I interviewed. I would
suggest that they are not so labeled because they are functioning as the ideal consumers
celebrated by marketers and academics in contemporary Japan, propagating their consumption to the people who did not originally share their interests, and hence augmenting the value of the products they are consuming. When there is a discourse celebrating
communication as productive of value, those consumers who do not propagate their
interests and attract new consumers are considered unproductive. These are the people
whom some students labeled as otaku those who are unable to communicate about,
Ibid., 143.
47
Arvidsson, Brands, 242.
48
Foster, The Work of the New Economy, 717.
49
Zwick, Bonsu and Darmody, Putting Consumers to Work, 164166.
50
51
Okuno, Japan kru to jh kakumei, 102103.
52
Suzuki and Dents, Watashitachi shhi, 154.
53
Foster, The Work of the New Economy, 715719; Zwick, Bonsu and Darmody, Putting Consumers
to Work, 177179.
45
46
52
Thiam Huat Kam
or unwilling to share, their interests. Otaku labeling follows the demands of advanced
capitalism.
The values the students invoke correspond closely to the demands of advanced
capitalist Japan: consumption should lead people to further production and it should
involve a process of communication that is directly productive of capital. Hence, in this
context people are labeled as otaku when they are perceived to be indulging in
unproductive consumption consumption that causes them to stray from productive
work or consumption that does not produce capital because it does not involve communication. In a more general sense, people are labeled for appearing to be threatening
unproductive subjects in the eyes of capital because they are already not in production
or because they lack the potential for production since they do not undertake the most
important form of immaterial labor.
Masturbatory Consumption: Perversion of the Capacities Vital to Advanced
Capitalism
While the students tend to label as otaku the people whose imagination, collection and
knowledge they perceive to be excessive, they would not label those whose imagination,
collection and knowledge result in monetary rewards, such as those who sell djinshi for
prot, perform cosplay as part of paid work, or who apply their knowledge for the
purpose of business. Only those who imagine, collect and know for the purpose of selfsatisfaction are labeled. The value invoked here is closely tied to capitals reliance on
immaterial labor in the production of value, but it also seems to represent a deeper
anxiety towards this form of labor. To elucidate this anxiety further, I now turn to a
personal episode.
In the summer of 2010, I attended a conference in Tokyo and I had a conversation
with one of the audience, who was a media professional. He lamented that the acts of the
otaku are masturbatory. I was struck by his usage of the word masturbatory. As the
conversation proceeded, I realized that he made this comment based on his experiences
with the djinshi artists at the Comic Market. Part of his work involved the scouting of
talents for media companies, and on several occasions, he had put offers to impressive
djinshi artists to deploy their skills for commercial purposes, only to have his offers
turned down. He was frustrated, and found it unimaginable that they would refuse
ventures that were protable and instead remain content in djinshi production, where
they made losses. It was almost as if these artists loved to make losses. He felt that in an
age when Japan was actively exporting its creative products, these artists were hiding
their excellent work and would eventually miss the opportunity to make good use of
their talents.54
The media professionals characterization of activities undertaken by the djinshi
artists, whom he labeled otaku, as masturbatory is intriguing and illuminating. To
this professional, djinshi production which is not for prot and undertaken for personal
contentment despite the losses incurred was akin to masturbation. His comments in fact
echo those of the students I interviewed, who frown upon imagination, collection and
knowledge for the sake of self-satisfaction. What exactly is disturbing about activities
54
Given the fact that many djinshi contain sexual depictions, and are possibly used for masturbation, it is
possible to read the media professionals comment more literally. I maintain however that he was
speaking of masturbatory in the metaphorical sense because the conversation centered on his frustration
over the djinshi artists refusal to turn their skills into prots, and their apparent contentment to make
losses.
53
that are (perceived to be) masturbatory, to the extent that those who pursue them are
labeled as otaku?
Thomas Laqueurs account of why masturbation is disconcerting in modernity helps
to explain the anxieties underlying the disparagement of activities seen as masturbatory.
According to Laqueur, masturbation became problematic, even feared, in western
Europe from the eighteenth century.55 Masturbation was considered a problem because
of three features: it was a product of imagination; it was private; and it was an excessive
pursuit of pleasure.56 Yet, as Laqueur points out, imagination, privacy and pleasure
were also valued and extolled as virtues because they were capacities and possibilities
that were necessary to the modern social order civil society and the commercial
economy (i.e., the capitalist economy) that came to dominate the world since the
eighteenth century: culture depended on the imagination of individuals; the economy
thrived on excessive desire; and privacy was a respite from the public arena to gain
spiritual refreshment.57 Masturbation was reviled because it represented the wrong
forms, or even a perversion, of these capacities and possibilities. In masturbation,
imagination was mobilized to produce nothing at all, or worse, nothing but bottomless
self-absorption at the expense of any possible social good when it should be used to
produce art or poetry or compassion.58 Privacy degenerated into autarky, where the
individual was free from the need for anything or anybody, hence undermining
society.59 Masturbation represented the deepest tensions in the modern social
order, where imagination and privacy were its foundation but also had the potential to
threaten it.60 These tensions arose because civilization depended on what it also
feared.61
Drawing upon Laqueurs discussion, I will argue that the people who produce
djinshi, or engage in any consumption practices, for the sake of self-satisfaction are
seen as masturbatory, problematic and hence labeled as otaku because they are
judged to be distorting the capacities necessary to advanced capitalist Japan into
forms antithetical to it. Imagination, knowledge, and the desire to collect are capacities fundamental to an advanced capitalist economy, especially the popular culture
industries revolving around media content, which have been celebrated as Japans
future. Japans culture industries thrive on the success of media-mix strategy, where
a franchise is produced and promoted by linking various media and cultural forms
such as manga, anime, games and other merchandise, which in turn depends on the
mobilization of the imagination in the everyday life of young people.62 The critical
role of imagination in the immaterial production of the culture industries is even
more pronounced when media-mix strategy is considered as an example of what
Henry Jenkins called transmedia storytelling, where media producers create a
narrative that unfolds over multiple media platforms, such as lms, television,
novels, comics, games and websites.63 Since the created narrative is large, it leaves
55
Laqueur, Solitary Sex, 186.

Ibid., 210, 248.
57
Ibid., 210, 268, 276278.
58
Ibid., 221.
59
Ibid., 224.
60
Ibid., 249.
61
Ibid., 303.
62
Ito, Mobilizing the Imagination in Everyday Play, 398.
63
Jenkins, Convergence Culture, 95.
56
54
Thiam Huat Kam
gaps, or parts of the narrative that are only partially explained and explored, or not at
all. Consumers are invited to speculate and make connections between parts.64
Media producers are aware that when consumers perform work for a narrative,
they will value it more emotionally.65 Hence, transmedia storytelling promotes
intense feelings of afliation with and immersion in the narratives created, allowing
the media industry to market ancillary goods that promise a deeper level of involvement in these narratives.66 Communities formed around the knowledge of narratives
could also foster a sense of brand loyalty that ensures the longevity of related product
lines.67 It is evident here that transmedia franchises require consumers to possess
knowledge of the existing narratives and other fans speculation, exercise their
imagination to ll up the gaps and collect all related goods to satisfy a sense of
involvement.
The importance attributed to imagination, knowledge and collection could also be
gleaned from the discourses celebrating the otaku market and Cool Japan. Economist
Morinaga Takur claims that the consumers of manga, anime, games and other character goods who experience romantic feelings for particular characters will never tire of
spending on related goods. Hence, the characters market is an ideal form of market
where there is no saturation of demand, which avoids price competition and ensures
prot in an economy where protective regulations are no longer possible, that is, a
neoliberal economy.68 This market is in fact a model that would revolutionize Japans
economic structure.69 The unspoken premise in Morinagas discussion is clearly consumers ability to imagine themselves in a romantic relationship with the characters.
Adopting a line of argument similar to Morinagas, Okuno Takuji argues that manufacturing industry is now unable to achieve cost efciency and attract new consumption,
and hence advocates a shift of Japan from a society that produce things (mono) to one
that produces narratives (monogatari), or media content which has been celebrated as
Japan Cool.70 In this society, appealing media content would induce consumers to
produce and propagate derivative works, which promote communication and the formation of a consumer community that in turn create new consumers and industries.71 It
should be noted that key to the new economic and social model Okuno proposes is
consumers ability to create new narratives (i.e., derivative works) from the original
works, through reading the original in a new light, or placing the characters in new
contexts.72 In other words, success of the narrative-producing society depends on the
imagination of the consumers. Nomura Research Institute also observes that the 411
billion yen otaku market is founded on these consumers desires to collect and
create.73 These marketers and academics are concerned about how capacities such as
imagination should best be channeled to produce value for Japans economy.
Consumers mobilization of their imagination, knowledge and collection, for example, in fans speculation and creation of djinshi, plays an integral role in the production
64
Ibid., 119.
Ibid., 103.
66
Jenkins, Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers, 147.
67
Ibid., 148.
68
Morinaga, Moe keizaigaku, 116119.
69
Ibid., 1415.
70
Okuno, Japan kru to jh kakumei, 26, 44.
71
Ibid., 401.
72
Ibid., 146.
73
65
55
of capital in contemporary Japan. The imagination and knowledge that are involved in
active consumption could in fact be considered as forms of immaterial labor.74 And
because they also produce ease (of belonging to communities that share narratives)75
and excitement (stimulated by characters attributes),76 imagination and knowledge are
affective labor, a form of immaterial labor that is at the very pinnacle of the hierarchy of
laboring forms.77 The affects produced in turn make consumers attached to the
product (for example a manga) to the extent that they are willing to pay more and
repeatedly. Imagination and knowledge do not generate capital merely by augmenting
the value of products. The products of imagination and knowledge, similar to other
products of immaterial labor, transform the people who consume them;78 the speculation, collage and creations that are produced by imagination and knowledge induce their
consumers to imagine and communicate in particular ways.79 In other words, in an
advanced capitalist society, imagination and knowledge are expected to be productive of
a subjectivity that could become a form of xed capital.80 In sum, an advanced capitalist
society demands that the imagination, knowledge and collection involved in consumption should also be productive of capital.81
In a society where individuals are required to cultivate and transform their imagination, knowledge and collection into immaterial labor that could be productive of capital,
the mobilization of the same capacities not to produce capital is nothing less than a
threat. Such mobilization signals the fact (which capital doubtless fears) that the capacities advanced capitalism requires for its maintenance have the potential to undermine
it. As I have shown, the students I interviewed condemn as distasteful and unhealthy,
and hence label as otaku, those people whom they perceive to be engaging in idle
fantasy or possessing trivial knowledge the forms of imagination and knowledge that
are not productive of capital. On the other hand, the people these students do not label
are precisely those whose imagination, knowledge and collection are productive: they
are wage laborers (e.g., cosplayers who work as maids in maid cafes) or entrepreneurs
(e.g., collectors who intend to make a prot from their collections). Otaku is hence a
label for the people who represent the disturbing possibility of imagination, knowledge
and desire to collect being mobilized to produce nothing (but self-satisfaction) when
they could otherwise be used to generate capital. In advanced capitalist Japan, the
people who engage in idle fantasy or possess trivial knowledge the targets of the
otaku label are considered a problem not merely because they channel their imagination and knowledge in ways that are unproductive of capital but also because they
provoke capitals anxieties over the capacities it relies on. The discourses of the students
and the discourses of the marketers and academics converge on the concern over the
productive use of imagination and knowledge: while the celebration of imagination and
knowledge reveals the dependence of advanced capitalist Japan on these capacities, the
students decision on whom to label as otaku speaks to the anxieties underlying such a
dependence.
Lazzarato, Immaterial Labor, 133; Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 108.

See tsuka, Teihon monogatari shhi ron.
76
See Azuma, Dbutsuka suru posuto modan.
77
Hardt, Affective Labor, 90. See also Hardt and Negri, Multitude, 108; Allison, The Cool Brand, 91.
78
79
tsuka, Teihon monogatari shhi ron, 324325.
80
Read, The Micro-politics of Capital, 123.
81
74
75
56
Thiam Huat Kam
Just as I have argued that otaku labeling is partially based on the anxiety that
imagination could be twisted and distorted into idle fantasizing unproductive of capital,
I would also suggest that the lack of communication skills the immaterial labor which
is directly productive of capital is at the same time a perversion of another virtue in an
advanced capitalist economy: autonomy. In an advanced capitalist society, workers are
required to possess an ability to choose among different alternatives and shoulder a
degree of responsibility regarding decision-making.82 They are even responsible for their
own motivation within the work group.83 The ideal workers are those who are able to
work autonomously to produce quick and exible results, especially if they are far away
from rms decision-making centers.84 In rms where operations are fragmented and
many unconnected activities are performed at the same time, self-management is
celebrated as workers have to achieve targets and respond to commands on their
own.85 The autonomy of workers frees rms from the necessity to think critically
about its responsibilities to those whom they control.86 Similarly, consumer autonomy
is also critical to advanced capitalism. Brand value, as Arvidsson points out, is created
by the autonomous activities of consumers, which help to diffuse the brand or serve as
free sources of innovation.87 In an advanced capitalist society, the ideal individual would
eschew dependency on others.88
The celebration of autonomy has been occurring in Japan at sites of both production
and consumption since the 1970s. The Japanese state has come to adopt as a norm the
expectation that Japanese should exercise their autonomy in becoming competent and
innovative agents of production, and coping with the risks in everyday life.89 The
Japanese government enacted education reforms in 2002 with the intention to cultivate
individuals who are independent and capable of accepting responsibility for their
choices.90 Marketers and media in Japan have also been actively promoting the image
of the autonomous consumer. In the 1980s, major advertising companies such as
Dents and Hakuhd contributed to a discourse that characterized consumers as
ones who followed their individuality (kosei) and sensibility (kansei) in choosing commodities.91 This discourse is at the same time a prescription for Japanese to make
consumption choices based on their personal desires.92 Television dramas in the
1990s also advocated the importance of self-centeredness in consumption and individualism at work, and hence resonated with the demands of an advanced capitalist
Japan.93 Contemporary Japan, like other advanced capitalist societies, requires individuals to make autonomous choices in accordance with their private desires, without
needing to depend on others.
The labeling of people who consume without interacting with others should be
understood in the light of capitals dependence on autonomy: they are labeled as
otaku because they are demonstrating a perverse form of autonomy that is detrimental
82
Ibid., 134.
Ibid., 136.
84
85
Ibid., 6061.
86
Ibid., 61.
87
Arvidsson, Brands, 249.
88
89
Takeda, The Political Economy of Reproduction in Japan, 153187.
90
Arai, The Neo-Liberal Subject of Lack and Potential.
91
Suzuki and Dents, Watashitachi shhi, 6567.
92
Ibid., 82.
93
Lukacs, Scripted Affects, Branded Selves, 148149.
83
57
to an advanced capitalist society an autonomy without communication. While autonomy is valued and dependency is disparaged, individuals are expected to possess the
capability to establish relationships with others, since it is this capability that is productive of capital. People who gain pleasure on their own without relating to others, and
who can afford to be self-centered and self-contained, are practicing a form of autonomy
that, from the point of view of their detractors, has degenerated into autarky and
solipsism. Autarky undermines the foundation of advanced capitalism, as the production of capital is built upon the process of communication. In advanced capitalist Japan,
the capability to indulge in pleasure without the need for others in the absolute sense is a
perturbing parody of the ability to make choices and shoulder risks in production and
consumption, raising the anxieties that autonomy could be practiced in manners subversive to capital.
Incidentally, solipsism and autarky have been seen as characteristic of the people
identied as otaku. Azuma Hiroki has drawn on the theory of Alexandre Kojve to
describe otaku as animals, beings who pursue moments of affective gratication
solitarily without the need for others.94 While Azuma does not relate this solitary pursuit
to capitalism or the immaterial economy, other writers conceive of otaku as autonomous and separate from the operations and demands of capitalism. Morikawa Kaiichir,
in discussing the development of Akihabara into an otaku space, has remarked that
otaku constitute a market system that remains beyond the control of marketers and
major corporations.95 Morikawa even argues that the Japanese media have been circulating discriminatory discourses on otaku because their sponsors the huge corporations do not prot from the independent system of otaku. Honda Tru also attributes
to otaku a sense of self-sufciency, an ability to consummate romance merely through
imagination, and hence an independence from what he calls romance capitalism (renai
shihon shugi), where love and sex are commodied for consumption.96 And it is this selfsufciency that causes otaku to be attacked by mainstream society immersed in
romance capitalism.97 I do not think the people these writers identify as otaku,
which include participants of Comic Market, are necessarily autarkic or solipsistic
(and since I see otaku as a label, I do not identify these people as otaku). I would
like to point out, however, that writers such as Honda are making an observation similar
to mine: that autarky does not match the interests of capital. Where I depart from these
writers is in observing that autarky, detrimental to advanced capitalist Japan and a
distortion of autonomy on which capitalism is reliant, is a cause of anxiety (for example
articulated as a disdain against self-contained enjoyment by some students) and hence
a criterion for the otaku label.
Conclusion: Excess and Anxieties in Advanced Capitalist Japan

By locating the reasons a group of students have for calling, and not calling, certain
people otaku, within the social context of contemporary Japan, I have demonstrated
that otaku is a label that is applied to people perceived to be unproductive: they have
abandoned production due to their consumption, or they are not engaging in
94
Azuma, Dbutsukasuru posuto modan, 125141.

Morikawa, Shuto no tanj, 3435.
96
Honda, Moeru otoko.
97
Ibid., 80.
95
58
Thiam Huat Kam
communication which is productive. Just as those who are labeled as deviants have been
perceived to fail certain social rules, the people labeled as otaku are those who are
perceived to have failed the requirements of an advanced capitalist society, which
demands that individuals consume in a productive manner. In such a society, these
requirements are taken as norms or ideals, in other words, as common sense. The
students I interviewed are articulating as common sense the requirements of an
advanced capitalist Japan a common sense that consumption should lead one back
to production and that it should also foster communication which is productive of
capital.
Yet at the same time, I have suggested that people are labeled not merely for what
they do not do (i.e., produce), but also for what they do actively: practicing a perversion
of the capacities that are necessary to advanced capitalist Japan, most notably imagination and autonomy. Imagination is certainly a capacity that is valuable to advanced
capitalist Japan. An individuals imagination fuels voracious consumption of immaterial
products, such as media content, and it is itself productive, since it stimulates the
imagination, and hence the consumption, of others. On the other hand, imagination
could become idle fantasy, bringing about a state of ultimate unproductiveness, a state
of masturbation guratively and sometimes even literally. The advanced capitalist
economy of Japan also depends on the private desire and autonomy of individuals.
However, when the practice of these capacities turns into an ability to subsist in a
solipsistic state, without communication a vital process that produces capital and
the only relationship involved is a seemingly self-sufcient one with virtual characters,
the same economy would be undermined. Otaku in this case is a label for the people
who are judged to have practiced imagination and autonomy in forms that are detrimental to Japan in its advanced capitalist stage. In other words, people are labeled as
otaku because they are perceived to have turned the very forces vital to an advanced
capitalist economy against it.
The label otaku thus represents the deep anxieties advanced capitalist Japan has
towards the capacities it relies on. These anxieties are in turn reective of a reality of
capitalism: the capitalist mode of production continually produces and relies on subjective potentials that it necessarily cannot control.98 Capacities such as imagination,
knowledge, private desire and autonomy, while essential to the functioning of advanced
capitalism, are excessive to the extent they cannot be fully controlled, managed and
contained. Robert J. Foster has also noted that consumer agency is simultaneously a
source of surplus value for rms and a source of disruption, of unruly overowings that
escape capture and can even destroy value.99 While Foster locates the source of
disruption in consumers capacity to communicate and assemble, the otaku label
seems to point to capitals fear of another way value could be destroyed: the practice
of imagination and autonomy only to produce self-pleasure. Media industries might
stimulate imagination in people, hoping that the stimulated imagination would become
immaterial labor that could be exploited, but this imagination might also potentially lead
people away from laboring altogether; instead of producing capital, imagination might
produce nothing (or nothing that produces capital). Imagination and the other capacities have the potential to threaten advanced capitalism by becoming unproductive.
Against this reality of capitalism, the label otaku could be read as an attempt to
control and contain the excessive nature of the capacities essential to advanced
98
Read, The Micro-politics of Capital, 155.

Foster, The Work of the New Economy, 726.
99
59
capitalism. Through the labeling of people as otaku, the demand that capacities of
imagination, knowledge, private desire and autonomy should be mobilized through play
to be productive becomes articulated as common sense, in other words, as the natural,
appropriate and good ways to consume. As Judith Butler has noted:
[T]he law remains a governing law only for those who would afrm it on the
basis of religious faith the citation of the law is the very mechanism of its
production and articulation.100
When such demands are invoked as common sense, a standard to judge peoples
behaviors, their legitimacy as common sense is reinforced. In order to arrest the development (or, from its perspective, degeneration) of capacities, such as imagination and
autonomy, into forms that are antagonistic and detrimental to it, advanced capitalist
Japan has to present certain ways of consumption as inappropriate and problematic, and
the people who engage in them as pathological (byteki), abnormal (ij) or simply weird
(okashii). Besides governments regulatory policies on popular culture and rms techniques of managing consumers, the invocation of a common sense on consumption in
otaku labeling could perhaps be read as a pervasive and persuasive attempt by capital to
shape the capacities it requires. Nevertheless, such invocation always betrays a sense of
anxiety that advanced capitalist Japan depends on what it also fears.
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The Anxieties that Make the Otaku: Capital

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The Anxieties that Make the Otaku: Capital and the

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THIAM HUAT KAM, National University of Singapore, Singapore

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Pseudonyms are used to protect the students condentiality.

Thiam Huat Kam

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I often go to manga cafes to read manga, and I usually go with my friends. So I

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competent in communication.45 Social communication is in fact a directly productive

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