Otakuology thread

A lot of literature has been written about Otaku over the last few decades, anyone wanna discuss it? Also I'm uploading the three books in this niche I'm the most interested in.

The Japanese Government has been packaging the countries culture to be more digestible for foreigners since over a decade now. It started with the "Cool Japan" initiative to change the perception of Otaku, and has spread into making Japan (at least look like) a diverse and inclusive country. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60Pkf_ekZ0k The stylized Japanese flag at the end of the is common in all these propaganda pieces, even the government reports on "Cool Japan" have been updated to feature this logo. Honda Toru has been a critic of how Government and Media have changed the perception of Otaku into a more harmless image, this is an English paper that talks about him generally.

>>6462 I'm interested in the topic. I'm interested in general Japanlogy too.

https://denpapentateuch.blogspot.com/2021/08/essay-on-mechanism-of-moe-in-otaku.html

It's amazing how poor the literature can be outside of the sciences. Comparing these articles to computer science papers is an eye opener.

>>7560 You are just indoctrinated into a mode of thinking. The same kind of people who call Meillassoux non-sense because they can't imagine any other method of cognitivity. Try reading some classical novels for a start I guess.

>>7561 >You are just indoctrinated into a mode of thinking of demanding clarity and substance! You expect him to take this as something other than praise?

>>7565 I don't expect anything just shared my opinion, even before Gödel people thought that logic was capable of proving literally anything, some still even go as far as to consider themselves information realists like Tegmark so I don't really expect much when even such people can be so naive about "clarity and substance".

>>7566 >It's not MY fault I won't say anything of significance. Godel won't let me! You and everybody else, pal.

>>7567 lol I guess there's a reason I rarely visit this site of clowns.

>>7555 All this for marketing? Tourism? Are they trying to avoid changing their culture, so they change its perception? Is this another instance of the Japanese refusing to accept their faults (like the Hikkimori problem caused by school life/job life issues)?

One reason I've always wanted to study Japanology is because I notice this disturbing trend in Japanese media where "God" (whatever the reigning deity is, this may or may not have Christian elements) is this powerful, alien being and it offers peace but this peace does not have your best interests at heart and so you need to overthrow it. Any time Japanese media includes a religion (again, this may have Christian elements), it's either displayed with imperfections or it's talked about from a Gnostic position, otherwise, it's outright absent. I want to know why? Why are they like this? Can Japanology help me understand the answer to this question? Has this aspect of Japan been discussed? The Xenosaga series I believe has Gnostic elements Darling in the Franx and the recent Kirby game have the alien God. The Drakengard series. Just giving examples.

>>6462 This is an older work, but Hiroki Azuma's "Otaku: Japan's Database Animals is a good start. It does go a little dense with postmodern theory, but if you have even a vague understanding of the ideas it's not too bad. I also heard good things about "Beautiful Fighting Girl" but I haven't read it so I can't comment on that.

>>7586 >Any time Japanese media includes a religion (again, this may have Christian elements), it's either displayed with imperfections or it's talked about from a Gnostic position, otherwise, it's outright absent. >I want to know why? Why are they like this? As a history Lain I would probably say at least part of it comes from the ending result of WWII and the traumatic changing of the view of Gov't and religion for most common Japanese since especially during the Meiji+Showa era those two were very closely interlinked

You might want to check out Kojeve's take on Japan that is also mentioned in the Database Animals. https://prism.ucalgary.ca/server/api/core/bitstreams/1ebedb4c-bb24-47a2-9801-55f4985a0817/content

Damn it, this is really fascinating. I just don't know how to find time for it outside of the academy. I have to go back. Whatever the cost.

>>7586 I have no answer for that, but I would suggest looking into the history of their emperors. They are treated like holy people to this day and lead their actions during ww2. Look at the backlash of Yukio Mishima's poem Voices of the heroic dead. He criticized the emperor's choice to accept defeat and called him out to lower himself to be merely human. I would say their emperors play a much bigger role than the religion created beings.

>>7569 It's an instance of Japan realizing it's a small country with few resources next to an aggressive juggernaut only kept alive by another country (the US) that's rapidly deteriorating. Japan can be very forward-thinking at times, specifically to be conservative in action because foresight gives time for small, incremental changes rather than revolutions. The amount of hard power Japan can get is limited, so it must have soft power to stay alive. And man, has it ever managed to acquire it. If China fuarrrks with Japan, Japan has a large amount of people all over the west heavily invested in helping them to keep the culture flowing. The export income is nice too, especially as their society ages and has less internal consumption. >>7586 Consider Christian morality from a pagan viewpoint - especially the Japanese - rather than the reverse. The Japanese native religions aren't particularly hung up on sexual morals, for example. Sleeping with a prostitute isn't even seen as strange, and it's not unheard of for the wife to be the one arranging one for her husband, or son. So from their point of view, they see the Christian God giving people peace... but at the price of constant fear of hell unless they follow arbitrary rules - which makes sense to a certain extent, because their native kami have plenty strange rules you're supposed to follow too, but they're ritualistic and easy, unlike the all-encompassing Christian rules. To a non-Christian, the Christian God really can't look anything but oppressive, unless they get the entire reasoning behind the rules explained in detail, do the work to understand it by themselves or direct revelation.

>>8763 By this I mean to suggest about the whole God thing that Kojeve had this theory about Japanese snobbery that while in the west when enlightenment came things like old religious traditions became less prevalent since people couldn't believe that they were true anymore and the west set out to find new sources of truth to believe in, but according to Kojeve the Japanese snobbed this whole search for truth and just kept the traditions. It's a widely disputed idea but I like to think there's some flavor of meaning in it, related to this idea of pure form, form over content.