Do you mock the hyphen, sir?

I've really had quite enough of western manga and anime freaks giving Japanese Studies students a bad name... and not just the males...

Quite harmeless you might think, but their huge number serves to reinforce a quite tedious stereoytype. If I were gay, I'd feel the same resentment for Larry Grayson, I'm sure.

Hyphens - it's all about placement.

You're kidding, right? Is it hyphenated that way throughout the book?

It's only hyphenated that way when he explains the supposed etymology.

I kinda feel like a Japanese language "ota-ku" for pointing out the error.

I... um... seriously, is that what he says in the book?

Did he... did he do any research, and does he know anything at all?

I do not lie.

So besides the hyphen fiasco, I'm curious to hear what the problem is here. His explanation seems to essentially jibe with Wikipedia's take on the etymology, and Wikipedia knows all.

The hyphen usage alone raises a lot of questions about awareness.

"In 1983, when Japan's economy was beginning its monumental rise"

This is also problematic seeing that the Japanese economy had been on a monumental rise for about 20 years or more before 1983. If "monumental rise" means the Bubble, then it has to be post-Plaza, which is 1985.

Oh, Ok. A "big picture" thing.

Yes, the hyphen usage is perplexing.

Maybe Mr. Kelts himself can enlighten us. Yo Roland, what gives with the hyphenated ota-ku on page 157?

"In 1983, when Japan's economy was beginning its monumental rise"

That also caught my attention.

Hyphenating "o-taku" would be perfectly acceptable and I guess this is what he was after.

Sorry I am so late to the table and have so little time right now to respond, but thank you very much for inviting me in, Duffy, and big thanks to you, David, for reading the book with such care and critical intelligence. The feedback comes at an ideal time for me, as I am just now wrapping revised proofs for the paperback edition, out this fall.

First, the "ota-ku" error is entirely mine and is keenly embarrassing--especially so since it would make my Japanese mother shake her head in wonder and shame. I appreciate the catch, accept the blame, and will have it corrected in the paperback. I think I was trying to approximate the syllabic rhythm of an English, "Hey, you," but that's unnecessary, and the results unacceptable. Fortunately my mother and other relatives from Japan are currently reading the translated Japanese edition, which likely gets it right.

Unfortunately, as I discovered as soon as I received my first copy, there are plenty of typographical errors in the book, most of which appeared after the proofing process in New York (i.e., after I had submitted the cleaned-up final copy). I found them so galling I couldn't look at the pages for the first week or so. On one page, Miyazaki Hayao's first name is spelled: "Hiyao."

They have assigned to me a new editor for the paperback, and I and others, including bilingual Japanese readers, have been vetting the text very carefully, hoping we can release a relatively 'clean' version in a few months.

I completely agree that the economic/cultural analysis posted yesterday is excellent. Again, I wish I had more time right now; I just discussed the very same topic last evening with Professor Anne Allison, author of Millennial Monsters, in the context of neoliberalism, affective labor and so on--lots that I'm just now learning about--because she will participate in an upcoming conference hosted by Temple University, Japan campus on July 21-22 called "Youth and Imaginative Labor," and featuring not only professors, but young artists and students from Japan, Korea, the US and China.
I do believe one can take a slightly more balanced view--accepting that the shift in the target of consumer spending to more aesthetic-oriented products occurred simultaneously with a transformation in the labor market, and at least a perceived sense of a Japan in a recessionary free-fall, whatever the actual conditions on the streets. To defend Haruki here, I don't think he was using the word "poor" in a literal sense; in the context of the conversation, I believe he meant that what he saw in his peers as an egomaniacal and single-minded pursuit of economic success (Japan as No. 1) receded somewhat, and that this enabled many Japanese to pause, take a breath, look around at other options, even if only as consumers or tourists. So many of my sources, Japanese and foreign or expat, perceived and/or wrote about this shift in sensibility--which doesn't at all deny the more fundamental infrastructural shifts caused by economic conditions and consumer behavior assayed so thoroughly in yesterday's post. (I only wish I could have interviewed David Marxy *and* David d'Heilly for the book.)

We (Leo and I) used 1983 as a marker to indicate the years when Japan's National Wealth or Net Worth rose from 5.8 times GDP to 8 times GDP at the end of 1990, but as I look at the sentence in question, I agree that it is misleading and needs to be rewritten. We were also thinking of the broader awareness of Japan's economic juggernaut, resulting in the American paranoia over Japanese real estate purchases (Rockefeller Center, et cetera) and the sledgehammering of Japanese automobiles. But it's quite true that the Japanese economy began its ascent long before the 1980s. I will work on that sentence for clarity--and any suggestions are most welcome.

Finally: Leo and I have been invited to give a presentation based on the book tomorrow evening as part of the Foreign Correspondent's Club's "Book Break" series. We hope to foster this very kind of intelligent, critical exchange during discussions at these events, so if you are in Tokyo, please do join us if you can. The relevant information is at the FCCJ web site here:
http://www.fccj.or.jp/~fccjyod2/node/2272

Thanks again.

1983 has some minor significance. The stock market saw it's biggest annual gain since 1972 that year and it was the first time that shares related to the domestic economy really began to move. Up until that point, exporters had been almost the entire focus. Bank shares, for instance, had largely traded by appointment only and were pretty much unavailable to the general buyer.

I suspect that isn't what Kelts has in mind, however.

That was pretty awesome.

Having been involved in the production of books myself, I, too, know the white-noise horror of finding a typo or other error (and they're always there). You just pray for enough sales to enable a re-print.

So... how is this etymology supposed to work? I can guess "o" from "osu" and "ku" from "-kun", but my Japanese is too rusty and un-colloquial to come make sense of the middle syllable.

Thanks for joining the discussion.

That's the hard part about books - the stone cannot be so easily chiseled. I edit out all my blog typos when you people aren't watching.

"accepting that the shift in the target of consumer spending to more aesthetic-oriented products occurred simultaneously with a transformation in the labor market"

I still see this shift starting with the Shibuya-kei generation - upper middle-class kids who rejected nouveau riche Bubble value - and they began this move before the Bubble ended. The crash of the economy may have made these values more attractive, but the mechanics were already in place.

Also, suicide rates apparently jumped amongst old men in 98 due to heavy restructuring. Was the restructuring or reduction in recruitment before that year obvious enough to the labor pool to make them stop dreaming of the Tokyo Gas management track and form rock bands?

Okay, that makes a lot more sense; I'm glad to hear it was a typo... somehow that misplaced hyphen made me misparse the entire statement, and the notion of "ota-ku" meaning "hey, you" seemed like a the truth as passed down fourth- or fifth-hand, each time passing through someone who knew less than the previous, but I now see what you were getting at; thanks for stopping by to clarify your writing.

I lack the background to speak to the economic analysis, but it seems to follow, I guess.

Also, Belengazi -- I don't have a problem with anime/manga as a topic or inspiration for study (like it or not, it's going to be a force in western-originating Japanese studies for a while), it's just bad scholarship I can't abide -- the one guy who argued that the Japanese were so into manga because reading kanji made them more visual as a culture springs to mind...

@David Moles: The "o" in "o-taku" is the honorofic (like "o-miso"), and "taku" is "宅 household", like in "takuhaibin". It's a very formal way to address someone you don't know -- although it's dead or dying. Some older people still use it.

As for this particular usage, I haven't read the article that popularised the term, but I assume RK has, since he cites the author's name and all. For what it's worth: according to the paraphrase of it that I've heard, Nakamori called these people "otakuzoku" because their only social relationships were through formal written corresondence, so they ended up acting obsequious and distant (eg addressing each other as "o-taku") on the rare occasions they met face to face.

This 80s stuff is seriously old-school, though: the "otaku" image doesn't really resonate with the current internet-enabled generation anymore, so they have adopted the spelling ヲタク (or even ｦﾀ -- after all, it's a subculture without spoken language!) to emphasize the generation gap. (I guess an eloquent romanised equivalent of that would be "0taku"?)

This cross-border subculture remarketing stuff is interesting though. Every once in a while some piece of "japanese pop culture" drifts from the West back into Japan, and puzzlement and furrowing of brows result. If someone cared to study this, it would be interesting to find out whether "Japanese pop culture invading the US" isn't actually, to a large extent, domestically produced ("authenticity" as agreement with readers' preconceptions, emergence of independent codes and structures, etc). I have the feeling that the language gap/culture gap is so wide that "cool Japan" as product is fairly independent of Japan itself -- which may explain how hard it is for Japanese foreign policy to wring some usefulness out of it.

Haikara - the Japanese version of the Powerpuff Girls is supposed to go on Cartoon Network soon. It's only a matter of time before the Japanese version of the US version of this new Japanese version.

To be fair, Japanese perceptions of the US are equally inaccurate. http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy/archives/000418.html not to mention http://japundit.com/archives/2006/10/25/3924/ come to mind.

Haikara - the Japanese version of the Powerpuff Girls is supposed to go on Cartoon Network soon. It's only a matter of time before the Japanese version of the US version of this new Japanese version.

To be fair, Japanese perceptions of the US are equally inaccurate. http://www.pliink.com/mt/marxy/archives/000418.html not to mention http://japundit.com/archives/2006/10/25/3924/ come to mind.

bhauth: Absolutely, it works both ways.

Thanks, Haikara. Amazing how much more sense the idea makes when the hyphen's in its proper place. (And I love the idea of otaku-to-otaku communication being completely stilted and formal; makes total sense but doesn't mesh at all with the western idea of otaku. Though I suppose the western idea's based on, and closer to, the younger generation.)

Haidara,

Thanks for that. Your explanation was what I remembered but couldnt bring the kanji to mind so I refrained from saying anything.

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