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The Otaku Condition through Superflat
by Lou Amistoso
Art imitates life - Life imitates art. Anime and manga comprise a subculture of art. Viewed broadly, they and by extension the whole of otaku culture can be construed as a postmodern movement: not just artistically, but as a transnational social phenomenon with its own values and norms, its own customs, language, music, and level of consumerism. Otaku culture's aesthetic and narrative schools of thought are diverse and broad-ranging, with varying perspectives on human nature, heroism, sexuality, and civilization. On both sides of the ocean Japanese and Western otaku have borrowed from each other's tongues, employing foreign words as slang in common conversation; this is the language of otaku. Many Japanese musicians provide themes and even voice talent for anime productions, while on the other end many seiyuu (voice actors) pursue music careers, blending two industries together in a symbiotic circle; J-pop has become the anthem of otaku. And who can doubt that being otaku is a money-intensive and highly consumer-driven subculture? As an industry, it's a powerful economic force and a significant export for Japan. This is a cultural movement, a postmodern product that has transcended boundaries of nationality and attracted a certain sort from many countries and backgrounds.
In America, anime is mainstream. Older American otaku can testify that the U.S. anime industry has become decidedly so. Whence in the early 1990s one would be lucky to find bootlegs at your local comic book store, today we can go to Wal-Mart and pick up some of the most recent anime titles; or, less legally, go online and download off of BitTorrent episodes mere hours after they've aired on Japanese TV. Faux anime-styled characters can be seen on TV commercials for cell phones and bank loans, bumper stickers, and even opera flyers. Respectable publishing companies that before dismissed manga are now jumping on the bandwagon to release their own. A slew of U.S. cartoons today attempt to emulate an anime look and feel. If that is not mainstream, I don't know what is. So preponderant has anime become that some seemingly dislike it simply because it's so widespread. What modern media has effects so far-reaching?
All of these points, however, only scratch the surface. Many otaku do not realize what anime and manga speaks of the land and culture they so represent. For we western fans of 'Japanese cartoons,' it is merely exotic entertainment, something unlike that found in our domestic television or movies. It holds little cultural relevance beyond influencing the aesthetics of our pop culture. Despite some unquantifiable, universal appeal contributing to its success overseas, all things Otaku are traced back to one culture: Japanese culture. Western otaku-ism is not the same as Japanese otaku-ism, because we are importing snippets of a faraway culture, not producing something ourselves. Most attempts to imitate after that fact are innately shallow- we're but trying to recreate the look, yet it doesn't reflect upon who we are.
The postmodernity of the otaku subculture is largely lost on the west, where in Japan it takes on a different significance and expounds the circular relationship between western and Japanese culture. The thread that ties all otaku passions together- be they anime, movies, military, models, or technology- is that they originate in the postwar society of Japan, the mid-late 20th century. In this era of occupation following World War II, a flood of American pop culture swept in along with U.S. troops. This is the beginning of why western Otaku is not the same as Japanese Otaku. Now, many years later, this subculture of Japan has flooded back the other way as anime and manga.
Japanese cultural critic and associate professor Hiroki Azuma, in an essay on "Superflat and otaku nationalism," states that: "Otaku is now thought to be one of the most important factors in any analysis of Japanese contemporary culture ...otaku culture could not have existed at all without the influence of American subcultures." Takashi Murakami, father of Superflat, acknowledges this in his work.
Superflat. Postmodernism. Pop art, but not quite. When lined up next to otaku culture, Superflat inevitably seems a critique on its cultural bandwidth. Much of its source material is drawn from anime and manga: stylized anime characters, cute mascots, and trademark large eyes. In a lecture at the Royal Institution in London, Takashi Murakami says of Superflat: "This is the response to the question 'What is Japan's own post (WWII) pop culture?' Or else, to the question 'Is an original and typically Japanese concept still possible while the Japanese, quote, unquote, became so 'sadly westernized?'"
To explore this answer, Murakami uses otaku culture as the primary venue for oft disparaging connotations. For what distinguishes Japan's post-World War II culture, and American pop culture's influences on it, better than anime and manga?
Like its source material, Superflat is a term that encompasses broad themes and is difficult to rightly pin down in a few words. Among its sweep of definitions is most simply referring to the planar, two-dimensionality of Japanese art that discards depth and singular perspective. Delving deeper, it is a postmodern art philosophy- the 'flattening' of hierarchy between high art and low culture, commenting on contemporary aesthetics, consumerism, the difference between art and illustration. 'Superflat' as originally coined by Takashi Murakami began with the former, the drawing of a line between premodern classical painting and postmodern anime and manga. He uses this characteristic flatness in his own work, a technique that yields an ephemeral, surrealistic quality he considers distinctly Japanesque, as an ironic vehicle for messages about 'hopelessness' and 'struggle.' This flatness of Superflat strikes obvious similarities with pop art, as does the critical portrayal of common elements in pop culture.
Murakami also enjoys as much exposure as Andy Warhol; his Superflat has spread far and wide beyond Japan's borders: from Tokyo to Seattle, Boston, New York, and Paris, exhibiting at reputable galleries and museums. His works range from larger than life sculpture to Louis Vuitton handbags to toy figures packaged with chewing gum. Many young and contemporary artists work for and exhibit under him, including some in the anime industry; the renowned Bome has sculpted several models for him. He's been both criticized and praised by those within otaku culture.
Murakami was himself a 'first generation' otaku (born in the 1960s) and at one point an aspiring animator, like many inspired by the work of Yoshinori Kanada (Galaxy Express 999, Harmagedon). By high school, however, he found he did not possess the requisite artistic talent to succeed, and instead pursued fine arts purely out of compromise. At the Tokyo National University of Fine Arts, he studied the far more traditional Japanese painting method of nihon-ga, in which today he holds a PhD. It was here he bore witness to a commonality of sensibilities between the pre-modern Japanese art tradition and postmodern products of otaku subculture. Further influences from both contemporary western and historical Japanese art caused a radical shift in Murakami's philosophy. Superflat was born after his perceptions of art were overturned.
Azuma writes: "The word 'postmodern' or 'postmodernity' has been widely used to analyze the cultural phenomena after 1970s... French philosopher, Jean-Francois Lyotard... argued that in the postmodern era 'the grand Narrative' which had unified the entire system of knowledge disappears, and that the unity of society is broken up into a lot of various 'small narratives' or cultural communities. Jean Baudrillard, a French sociologist... argued that the modern distinction between the original and the copy, the real and the image, is already lost, and that everything becomes simulacrum in the postmodern era... In the postmodern era, after the 1960s or 1970s, our society is little by little losing the value of 'Depth,' the value of something behind the visible or perceptible things we are confronted with in our dairy lives. It may be God, Truth, Justice, Nation, Ideology or Subject depending on the cultural context and all such 'grand' things are now losing its credibility --- so say postmodernists. Therefore, we can say that the concept of superflat is exactly and typically postmodernist."
Otaku culture is one of these 'small narratives,' an upshot of postwar Japanese society. It is assumed Superflat dismantles its roots in otaku culture in order to make a point about its progenitors. Now, finally, we come to the question: What does Superflat say about otaku? Murakami has been quoted as saying that Japanese culture is all subculture; of all Japanese subcultures I can see no 'small narrative' more pertinent to this postmodern thought than the otaku community, a Japanized simulacrum formed after an influx of western pop culture which, in turn, is now being so rampantly imitated in the west.
Attempting to bridge the divider between fine art and pop subculture is a tricky affair, and Superflat seems to do it by ignoring the difference entirely. As stated, Murakami implies a tie of artistic sensibility between modern anime, something highly commercialized, and the fine artistry of the Edo period. In the same lecture at the Royal Institution, he presents fourteen guidelines to help define Superflat, intentionally paralleling the eleven 'rules of pop art' (Odd, considering Murakami has been quoted as saying Superflat is "not pop art," yet also saying it is "a direct successor" of it.):
"Childish (irresponsible)
Introverted
Shabby
Amateurish
Cute
Ambiguous
Full of contradictions
Anti-western
Multi-focal
Improvised
Absence of hierarchy
Plane and flat
Ephemeral
Erotic"
Murakami goes on to state that these definitions may be relevant to many phenomena outside the artistic realm. But clearly, many of these descriptors seem meant to sift material from anime and manga. In the sphere of otaku, with its diverse genres and followings, the applicability of these words takes on multiple levels of significance. Most obviously, 'plane and flat' and 'ephemeral' refer to the literal definition of Superflat, the pervading two-dimensionality commonly seen in Japanese art. 'Childish' and 'cute' might fall in with "lolicon" and ""kawaii," which Superflat takes every opportunity to twist and distort into unsettling imagery, as a prod coated in juvenility at some unspoken phobia of growing up. Anime and manga are renowned for being 'improvised,' storytelling on a budget, but who can deny the abundance of banal, low-quality productions filled with formulaic characters and premises? It is these shows which aim only for profit that Superflat targets by looking purposefully 'amateurish' and 'shabby,' along with all anime and manga that lack message. There exists anime that possesses little to no redeeming value, yet there are otaku who eat it up blindly regardless. Several anime take jabs at America, from the underlying implications of Jin-Roh's setting to the brazen pants-wetting U.S. president of ROD. 'Anti-western'... but in this cyclical exchange, where today American pop culture's influences are still felt in Japan, the descriptor becomes tongue in cheek. 'Erotic' is so completely explored in anime and manga that fetish-terms exist which hardly apply anywhere else: "futanari," "eroguro," tentacle-sex, and others. It's this aspect that stands out most in the eyes of 'outsiders,' the general public and the media. 'Multi-focal,' 'ambiguous,' 'introverted,' and 'full of contradictions' describe many issues within anime, manga, and Superflat.
Superflat works are lauded using words like rebellious, fantastical, and visually arresting, but pretty and beautiful are rarely included among them. Like pop art, these images tend not to be so aesthetically pleasing, but warped. Scenes of innocence, childish or feminine purity, and anime norms are perverted by subtle spite, indignity, or guilt. Murakami's sculpture, "My Lonesome Cowboy," depicts a hot-blooded, youthful, spiky-haired anime hero. But this hero, dynamically posed, is also naked and masturbating, with the most bizarre, abstract ejaculate like a spiraling stream twisting around and overhead- a comment on a self-gratifying quality of stereotypical anime protagonists, or a summation of otaku sexuality and their identification with these heroes? On the opposite end there is "Hiropon," a sculpted female anime character with grossly exaggerated mammaries, nude save for a pitifully small bikini top. From her left nipple is secreted a long rope of milk that circles around her back to her other breast, like a jump rope. This sort of imagery would not be out of place in the H genre, be it anime, manga or doujinshi form. Yet, "Hiropon" and "My Lonesome Cowboy" are not pornographic per se, but stand as glaring appraisals of distorted sexuality in otaku culture.
Murakami's Kaikai Kiki Co. staff follow suit. Aya Takano depicts waiflike, frequently nude adolescent girls whose sexual context is off-balanced by decidedly creepy facial expressions. Chiho Aoshima vividly engages female vanity in "The Red Eyed Tribe." Mahomi Kunikata's "Wakame-chan with Fish Towel" is a sketch of an anime girl in the shower whose body is covered with eyes; the towel is transparent, and we can see that they extend all over. Do they represent the eyes of otaku wishing to see her naked, emphasizing her vulnerable position and the potential for perversion? The artist with the simple moniker of 'Mr.' tackles subjects from dirty, middle-aged pedophiles to DBZ to architecture. Artists who have exhibited in Murakami's shows incorporate similar themes, such as the controversial Henmaru Machino whose "Teddy Bear 2" manages to consolidate lolicon, S&M, and eroguro in one, effectively distasteful illustration. All these seem to concentrate on flaunting the dirty underbelly of otaku culture not heard of in civil conversation, nor seen in light of day.
Murakami presents these oft-unsightly works as mass-produced and with an intentionally commercial focus. It exemplifies kitschy entertainment and its affects not just on otaku aesthetics, but sexuality and morality as well. Yet while he is blatantly commercial himself, Murakami purportedly encourages Japanese youth to look beyond their own consumer obsessions. He pursues and enjoys commercial success, but claims that he's different from how he was in the past when that was all he wanted. He produces art, but claims art is unnecessary to Japanese culture. He is both businessman and artist, combining high and low in his products and selling them to a wide audience. And while claiming a tie to old artistic tradition, he adopts an anti-western stance, denouncing any outside influence. But this is fallacy, for he tours in the west and draws undeniable influence from western artistic culture. Can we call this hypocrisy? Murakami is 'full of contradictions.'
Anime and manga comprise a subculture of art. Otaku culture is a postmodern movement. But it is dominated by media entertainment, mired by consumerism. And as popular as otaku culture becomes, all its aspects are wrought from history. The otaku culture is older than most otaku today. Murakami's "Little Boy" exhibition (named after the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima) last year sets it into perspective with allegorical icons from Japanese pop culture over the years: like many aspects of the greater Japanese culture, otaku subculture is one current spawned from the great wave of World War II. After the atomic bombs, the fire bombings, and U.S. occupation, the previous grand narrative of Japanese culture was destroyed; western pop culture was introduced, integrated and Japanized; and out of all these factors was formed otaku culture. Its followers are those who have generally shifted their faith to smaller, material, mundane things: this is what Superflat seems to be saying.
Postmodernity in Japan begins with the end of the Second World War. Since then, Japan and America's relationship has been complex, but one of constant cultural exchange- pop culture in particular has been a hot commodity. This dual interplay continues today in the societies of both, with American pop culture still leaking into Japan, and in turn Japanese anime settling into niches in western mainstream. The two reflections strike an interesting dichotomy: Art imitates life; otaku culture is an illustration of something "original and typically Japanese." Many western otaku develop a strong attachment to Japan, though it goes so deep when their knowledge comes solely from anime and manga. Though most have never been there, American otaku try their damnedest to affiliate themselves with Japan and the otaku culture; life imitates art. Once more, Japanese and western Otaku-ism is fundamentally different, though they center around the same intuition.
Much more insightful and learned individuals have delved the underlying issues behind these subjects, grand issues that look back at history and cut to the heart of an entire nation. Alas, I amf merely recanting echoes of their thoughts. To give this broad and deep subject a more just exploration requires a deeper understanding of Japan in all its varied aspects, which I cannot provide. But as an otaku, I will be first to admit that this subculture is at times superficial, distorted, and cloistered; but it is also a source of inspiration, a reservoir of great imagination and talent, and highly contagious. Otaku culture remains one of the most important factors in analysis of Japanese contemporary culture; Superflat recognizes this, and I predict otaku will hold further significance for westerners in the future, and become an innate mixing ground between cultures.
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About the writer (Lou Amistoso):
Lou Amistoso started on the path of otaku in the early '80s with Mobile Suit Gundam... at less than five years old. He currently lives in the U.S.A. on the east coast, and might be more or less complex than your usual poor otaku and strange hermit. He is also an obsessive-compulsive writer and habitual procrastinator, and would have you believe his skill amounts to more than the sum of all these words. He also prefers a certain degree of anonymity, and cannot be trusted to describe himself with accuracy, so readers are invited to think and judge for themselves.
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