{"product_id":"otaku-japans-database-animals-9780816653522","title":"Otaku: Japan's Database Animals","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cp\u003e A publishing event--the highly influential best seller in Japan translated into English \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e In Japan, obsessive adult fans and collectors of manga and anime are known as \u003ci\u003eotaku\u003c\/i\u003e. When the underground otaku subculture first emerged in the 1970s, participants were looked down on by mainstream Japanese society as strange, antisocial loners. Today otaku have had a huge impact on popular culture not only in Japan but also throughout Asia, Europe, and the United States.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eHiroki Azuma's \u003ci\u003eOtaku \u003c\/i\u003eoffers a critical, philosophical, and historical inquiry into the characteristics and consequences of this consumer subculture. For Azuma, one of Japan's leading public intellectuals, otaku culture mirrors the transformations of postwar Japanese society and the nature of human behavior in the postmodern era. He traces otaku's ascendancy to the distorted conditions created in Japan by the country's phenomenal postwar modernization, its inability to come to terms with its defeat in the Second World War, and America's subsequent cultural invasion. More broadly, Azuma argues that the consumption behavior of otaku is representative of the postmodern consumption of culture in general, which sacrifices the search for greater significance to almost animalistic instant gratification. In this context, culture becomes simply a database of plots and characters and its consumers mere \"database animals.\" \u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003eA vital non-Western intervention in postmodern culture and theory, \u003ci\u003eOtaku \u003c\/i\u003eis also an appealing and perceptive account of Japanese popular culture.\u003cp\u003e\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAbout the Author\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eHiroki Azuma is codirector of the Academy of Humanities in the Center for the Study of World Civilizations at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. A leading cultural critic in Japan, he is the author of seven books, including Ontological, Postal, which won the 2000 Suntory Literary Prize.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"University of Minnesota Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50413442760978,"sku":"9780816653522","price":12.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_bed831b1-c04e-4bfd-bf7e-29be4f9d5da9.jpg?v=1729353760","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/otaku-japans-database-animals-9780816653522","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}