false 6405096 1 In Japan, obsessive adult fans and collectors of manga and anime are known as <i>otaku</i>. When the underground otaku subculture first emerged in the 1970s, participants were looked down on within 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. Hiroki Azuma’s <i>Otaku</i> offers 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.” <br> <br> A vital non-Western intervention in postmodern culture and theory, <i>Otaku</i> is also an appealing and perceptive account of Japanese popular culture. 6593965 25 3 2009 Otaku: Japan's Database Animals total:1|3:1| 1 3 7 0 0 0 false false Thu Oct 01 08:37:36 -0700 2009 Thu Oct 01 08:37:36 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Sun Jun 28 22:46:29 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 28 22:46:29 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri May 22 22:46:30 -0700 2009 Fri May 22 22:46:30 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Apr 26 08:59:20 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 26 08:59:20 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sat Apr 25 11:37:32 -0700 2009 Sat Apr 25 11:37:32 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Apr 19 13:41:11 -0700 2009 Sun Apr 19 13:41:11 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Fri Apr 17 15:36:45 -0700 2009 Fri Apr 17 15:36:48 -0700 2009 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=6405096