Present Encounters : Papers from the conference of the Second Asia-Pacific Triennial of Contemporary Art, Brisbane, 1996

SESSION 9 : POPULAR CULTURE : METAPHORS FOR CHANGE Takashi Murakami Discussion of the artist's work in the Second APT There a re a few things I need to explain to you before I talk about my work. First of these is the animation movement in Japan which started when I was in high school. The movement has contin ued to g row having overcome several turning points. This movement has in fact created a group of people called "Otaku" - a sub-cu lture i n Japa n . We call the movement "Anime Boom". The boom encompasses not just simply watchi ng and enjoying animation but also col lecting merchandise, studying the production p rocess, collecting or trad i ng original pictures and cell-pictures. The intensity of the hobby was recognised as pecu liar from the beginning. There are instances when production houses were broken i nto and special cel l-pictures were stolen, those pictures were traded at very hig h prices, a n d i nformation was tapped or traded . Those maniacs [involved with "Anime Boom"] were often autistic and found it extremely difficult to commun icate with people outside their group. In addition , they were the main force behind the animation market and manipulated information . In the early 1 980s a big an imation boom a rrived , and the width and depth of the fans and their obsession expanded. They used a coded language among themselves which people outside their movement cou ld not understand. They referred to each other as "Otaku", which is a very polite word , instead of usi ng names or other common forms of greeti ng . The word "Otaku" has become a genera l term for those people and i t is used in a derogatory way. I t implies weird kinds o f people who cannot commun icate with people outside the group yet understand each other tacitly. The first incident when the Otaku was branded as an anti-social element was the kidnappings and murders by Tsutomu Miyazaki . Miyazaki had a 'Lolita' complex and a strong incli nation towards an imation and SFX; he kidnapped a number of little g i rls and mu rdered them . When he was a rrested a picture of his room on TV screens astonished everybody in Japan i n two ways. F i rstly, those who had had no personal contact with Otaku were frightened by piles of video tapes, comic books and animation magazines which suggested a perverted i ncli nation and no i ntelligence whatsoever. The rest of the population was taken by surprise that a person who had a similar sort of room to themselves or their family members was treated by the media as an abnormal person. At that time in the mid 1 980s, it was estimated that there were a bout 700, 000 Otaku i n Japan . Since this incident, some Oktaku have attempted to break away from being Otaku and became submerged Otaku . Others took an affirmative attitude by stressing their difference from Miyazaki by saying, 'The person in the TV screen was mad , but I am not and I do not kill people'. This time coincides with the introduction of personal computers. Otaku used computers to sort or trade their Otaku goods through a personal computer network. Tools on computers enabled them to entertain themselves on thei r own and they sank deeper and deeper in their indulgence . At the same time the demand for skills in the use of personal computers emerged . Therefore, Otaku started to rejoin society by taking those jobs. The introverted young people finally found a way to escape their own two-di mensional fantasy world without knowi ng it. They held hostile emotions towards a society which discriminated against them. They hoped that one day they could start an action against society. This frustration was often manifested by the fact that many animation Otaku were also crazy about the military and professional wrestling fields. One such example is that there were many fans of Nazi styl e in Otaku circles. As you can see, since the Miyazaki case, Otaku have followed two streams, one submerged and the other agg ressive . 1 1 8