Coming of age in Japan

Saturday night in Centre-gai, the main drag in Shibuya, Tokyo's youth district. It is early, barely seven o'clock, though the street is already full of pleasure-seekers. I am with friends, fresh from England, who are shocked to see, just behind us, a group of young women staggering about. They are little more than schoolgirls, plump, in short skirts and ankle socks. And they are either drunk or high. One crouches over a drain and vomits copiously. Another supports her, giggling, as the group reel into a bar.

Worse is to come. A group of thugs descends upon us. They are big, well-built and mean. They loom over us. "We're fucking Japs!" they sneer. "We're fucking Japs!"

In ten years in Japan, I have never before felt afraid. I have come across gangs of leatherclad bike boys. In fact, I have deliberately sought them out just to prove that they offer no threat to me. True, they dress like Hells' Angels; but, in the usual Japanese style, it is merely a fashion statement. Or perhaps I am not threatened because I am a foreigner; and foreigners do not exist. Just as the Chinese Triads don't waste bullets on ghosts (us), Japanese bikers don't waste a swing of the chain.



But these thugs are different. For a start, they speak English-not stilted "book English" but real street English. They are a new breed-international thugs.

So what is happening to Japan? Has it joined the real world? Until now Japan has been a charmed Disneyland, where the trains run on time and people are cheerful and polite. There is no mugging; you can walk down the darkest street in the small hours of the morning without fear. But all that, it seems, is changing. Recently I have heard talk of fights and drugs in Roppongi, the clubland of the city. Perhaps Japan has finally come of age.

It took the Aum nerve gas attacks, which began in March this year, to alert the Japanese public to the fact that something in their social foundations was shifting. The problem was not Shoko Asahara, the mad individual who led the Aum cult. It was the people who had chosen to follow him. After the first outrage, as the Aum followers went public, it became apparent that these were not social failures or the dregs of society but its elite-young men and women in their 20s and 30s who had graduated from Japan's best universities, mainly in science or computer studies. They were physicists, chemists, doctors, lawyers-people who could have been earning high salaries in leading positions. What had happened to Japan's youth? Why had the brightest and best chosen to devote themselves to a half-blind madman with plans to overthrow the government and bring about Armageddon?

While the media and the government engaged in anguished soul searching, a sizeable element of the younger generation saw the whole thing rather differently. To students-particularly those at Waseda, the prestigious university from which many of the Aum members had graduated-Aum was in the vanguard of a generational struggle. Its spokesman, a handsome 32-year-old named Fumihiro Joyu, became a heartthrob, seen about town with an ex-model who was his driver. Aum, in fact, was chic-though, like all fashions, it quickly faded.

As is often reported, Japan is the world's most rapidly ageing society-which means that it is top heavy with people born before the war. As in China, following the Confucian model, people rise through seniority rather than merit. No matter how brilliant you are, you will probably have to wait until you are old to achieve responsibility or power.

For the young, crushed at the bottom of the heap, there are few choices. And with the economy slowing down, the choices have become even fewer. There used to be more jobs than people. Now there is some unemployment, though by western standards very little; but students graduating from university often have difficulty finding a job. For the older generation, brought up according to traditional mores, the proper response in times of hardship is gaman, the very Japanese attitude of "bearing it," keeping a stiff upper lip. Many of today's young people are different.

The people who joined the Aum cult were not prepared to wait for anything. Two things characterise them: excellent minds and vacant souls. The carrot dangled before them was Aum's labs, its unbeatable research opportunities and unlimited research funds. Had they entered traditional companies, they would have had to wait years to be allowed to engage in the same level of research; and few companies had the facilities which Aum boasted. The Aum leaders made lists of science students at Tokyo and Waseda, Japan's top universities. They lured them with games-survival games, war games. And somehow, when the scheme turned to mass destruction, the recruits had no qualms. It was, after all, just another technological puzzle to be worked out.

So who were these young people, so expert at gathering information yet emotionally stunted; who, despite their brilliance, could be so easily manipulated that they were prepared to give all their wealth to their guru, to kiss his toe and buy bottles of his blood? In Japan they are a familiar breed; they go by the generic name of otaku. Otaku literally means house or home, the place where otaku spend a lot of time. It is also, in Japan's stratified linguistic system, the most formal and distancing way of saying "You." In a society which generates few nonconformists, otaku strive to be exactly that.

This is not to say that all the Aum acolytes were otaku, nor that all otaku sympathised with Aum. To mainstream Japanese, otaku is synonymous with "disaffected youth." But Japan's generation X has many groupings. Perhaps 10 per cent of Japanese youth call themselves otaku: not so much a tribe as a lifestyle. On the whole, the otaku are peaceable and harmless. Indeed, at first sight the otaku are life's losers-except that there are so many of them that they are threatening to swamp Japan by sheer weight of numbers.

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Japan is a society of clean, neat, attractive people who are particularly careful about personal hygiene. It is said that the greatest torture for Japanese prisoners during the second world war was having to go without their daily bath. Today, young office women rigorously practice asa-sham, the regular morning (asa) shampoo. Everyone wears smart new clothes, freshly washed and freshly pressed, and punctiliously follow the fashion. Everyone has two wardrobes, winter and summer clothes, and they change from one to the other on a set day of the year, no matter what the weather.

"I feel really different from my parent's generation," says Ken Crane listlessly. Wan and skinny, he wears a cheap beige roll neck sweater and glasses, and rocks back and forth as he speaks. "My father's generation was poor. He's a salaryman-he had to work. With my generation-you can have anything you want." Notwithstanding his name, Ken is Japanese. Aged 27, he is a cartoonist and comic book artist. He and his two assistants sit on the floor in his small, very dirty flat, surrounded by clothes, bedding, overflowing ashtrays, drawing pads and pens. Kyo Kuwata, one of the assistants, is a pale spotty lad of 23. His coarse black hair sticks up in a crewcut. "I got confused at school trying to follow all the rules," he says, fidgeting nervously. "I hated studying. I didn't do homework. I liked being alone, drawing pictures."

In a conformist society, the otakus' physical unattractiveness is a statement in itself. And in a society in which everyone is defined as part of a group, the otaku refuse to play along. They feel uncomfortable in the company of others. They are inarticulate. Often, when they meet, they can't look each other in the eye. They are happier at home with their hobbies. The otaku define themselves by their hobbies. There are manga (comic book) otaku, animation otaku, computer otaku, martial arts otaku, video otaku, bondage otaku, motorcycle otaku. "When it's a hobby, not a job-that's otaku," says Ken. (As it happens, he makes a living from his hobby; but what is relevant is his attitude towards it.) Whatever their hobby, the otaku are obsessively expert. They may not actually be interested in it; that is not the point. In a 1991 video called Graffiti of the Otaku Generation, a plump man in a dark room piled high with videos, face blotted out, says, "I don't watch videos; I'm just making the perfect collection." An office worker confesses: "At university I belonged to the clubs otaku join: comics, animation, science fiction, mahjong, Lolita, student uniforms-especially sailor suits worn by girls-and Godzilla. Other members and I discussed animated television characters until late at night. That period was the most precious time of my life."

Otaku are the ultimate computer nerds. They buzz around the Internet and other electronic networks, or hack into corporate data vaults in search of arcane information: "What was the bra size of the actress who played Captain Scarlet's mate in the 1953 film?"; "Who or what was Gunhed and when was it produced?" They are like trainspotters except that they never go to a station, or football fans swapping information without ever going to a match. It is Trivial Pursuits, turned into a lifestyle.

Kiyoshi Okuyama, Ken's other assistant, proposes Kyo Motomasaki as a casebook otaku: an actor and television personality who, little by little, has become interested in making models of Ultraman, a comic book character akin to Superman. "Gradually he works less and less and his hobby becomes more and more important," says Kiyoshi. "He makes models and shows them to people. That's otaku-'I've got these things in my house.'"

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In many ways the otaku are not non-conformists at all, they are a logical outcome of their society. Japan's defeat in the second world war was an unimaginably devastating blow. It was not just a question of physical destruction. Defeat threw into doubt all the values the Japanese had lived by: that Japan and Japanese culture and society were inherently superior to others; belief in the Emperor's divinity, symbolising that superiority; the intricate web of obligations and assumptions which governed the smallest interaction. Added to this, the American occupying forces did their utmost to eliminate everything that had made Japan the country it is. The lynchpin of old Japan was the Emperor. When he renounced his divine status, everything began to crumble.

The result was a kind of vacuum-those fundamental values disappeared, and there was nothing to put in their place. For many years what bound the Japanese people together was the urgent need first to rebuild their country and then to get the economy on to a strong footing. That effort acquired a momentum of its own. As in war time, people were willing to endure any amount of hardship cheerfully, for the common good. "My parents' life was completely different, just after the war," says Kyo Kuwata, Ken's first assistant. "Since I was born, Japan has got rich-and busier. The young generation are starting to lose their goals and their dreams. All young people are like that. They have plenty of food, a place to live ..." But inevitably the day came when a new generation, which had grown up knowing only prosperity, began to ask "Why?"

In some ways contemporary Japan resembles the late 1960s in the west. The Japanese now take prosperity for granted. While the youthful rebels of the late 1980s, the shinjinrui (new breed of human), indulged in an orgy of spending, today's young people-the otaku-have made a cult out of Japanese introversion. Just as the flower power generation demonstrated against the Vietnam war and the capitalist system, the otaku choose not to work mindlessly at a job which will keep them busy for life and give them a nice house, a nice car and nice clothes. Like the hippies of a generation ago in the west, they are dropouts. But there the similarity ends. The otaku are not concerned with changing the world. They have no interest in politics. "All politicians are-well-boring," says Ken. "And old. They don't even speak normal Japanese." The otaku don't want to overthrow the system. They just want the world to leave them absolutely alone in order to pursue their bizarre and sometimes disturbing hobbies.

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On a fine Sunday in June, at the Harumi Trade Centre on the outskirts of Tokyo, a bizarre gathering is taking place. Harumi is a gigantic trade ground, the equivalent of Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre. Today it is swarming not with DIY buffs or computer salesmen but with women in their teens and 20s: an unsavoury crowd, dressed in the uniform of disaffected youth-dyed green or black hair, short skirts, bare fat legs, big boots, pierced ears or noses, tattoos, green or black painted fingernails, some sporting military goggles, worn backwards.

Inside, the enormous trade hall is filled with row upon row of trestle tables, each piled with comic books and tended by a young woman. Kaori Mitagaki, from Osaka, is 21, but she looks 15, with a plain round face and hair cut boyishly short. Anyone can hire a stall here for the day, she explains. It's not just for professionals, anyone can come and sell comics which they have drawn themselves. People come to sell and to buy. They like to collect the work of their favourite artists.

"Why are there only women here?," I ask. There are different types of comic, she explains-girls' comics, game comics (featuring characters from computer games), novel comics (focusing on a story). This particular hall is devoted to girls' comics. "Do you make a living from this?," I ask. "Enough to buy cake, that's all," she giggles.

Kosaka Miyuki, aged 19, stands at another stall. She is reluctant to speak. I offer to buy a comic. "Are these comics popular?," I ask. "Among these people yes, among people at large, no," she replies. I am moving away and realise that I haven't paid. "Here," I say, holding out Y600 (?4). "It's a business too." "It's not business!" she snaps. "It's a hobby!"

The comic is hand-drawn but professionally printed. Titled Heartbreak Pierrot (in English), it features a cat woman with swirling hair and clawed hands and feet who has encounters, violent and sexual, with a bat woman, a wolf man and a muscle bound male figure. Like most Japanese comics, it is a combination of cuteness and eroticism.

In another hall-huge, surreal, sparkling with lights-I find the game comics. Here there are a few men. Masashi Kurokawa, aged 21, is a classic otaku-he wears post-grunge ill-fitting jeans with a spotted bandana around his head, and glasses. He is, he declares (unlikely though it seems), a trainee policeman. He has come to buy comics by his favourite artists, and also pens, drawing pads, templates, figures to copy, so that he can draw his own.

The first comic markets were in the early 1980s. People who had grown up almost alone, scarcely socially functional, read comics, drew them, and watched animation videos. They began to realise that there were others like them. Long before the word otaku came into use, they were gathering together, shy, awkward, unable to meet each others' eyes, to perform the key otaku interactions-showing and exchanging.

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"When otaku meet," says Hachiro Taku, "they use two words a lot: 'have' and 'know.' Instead of saying 'How are you?' they say 'What do you have?' or 'What do you know?' The answer is to show what you have, or tell what you know."

Hachiro Taku (his penname; "Taku" refers to otaku) is, depending on your viewpoint, the ultimate otaku or a sellout. He is the only public otaku; he has built a thriving career out of it.

"I'm not a collector, I'm a knowledge otaku," he says. "About various things-cars at the moment." He picks me up in his brand new red Alfa Romeo at the station at 10.30 one wet Sunday night. We drive to Denny's-a tacky, satisfyingly "otaku" fast food joint-to have our interview. Taku wears baggy jeans with six inch turn-ups, a denim jacket and a tee shirt. He has long lank hair and a baseball cap. He has the trademark otaku paper carrier bag containing toys, comics, models-whatever.

Taku was a difficult child. He asked questions in class, instead of simply memorising facts as good Japanese children are supposed to do. He didn't like sports; he lacked team spirit. At university he stayed at home, read comics and watched videos-and discovered that many of his fellow students were like him. "You could spot otaku by their clothes-and even more by their faces, their way of using their eyes, their way of laughing." He got a job drawing cartoons for commercials, then one as a writer; but it was hard to make a proper living.

In 1988 a series of terrible events traumatised Japan and were to define the otaku. Over a year, four small girls, aged between four and seven, disappeared. When the killer was finally apprehended, he confessed without emotion that he had strangled the children, sexually abused and video taped their corpses, and tasted their flesh.

The Japanese were horrified that their clean, safe society could spawn such a monster. The killer, Tsutomu Miyazaki, was born on August 21st 1962 (just two days, says Taku with an almost mystical reverence, after himself). He was a small, unattractive child with deformed hands who was ridiculed by other children. He stayed alone at home, sitting in his cell-like room piled to the ceiling with comic books and videos-slash and spatter flicks and child porn. He worked as a printer, prowled around comic shops and video game centres, and only felt at ease talking to children. Others he addressed brusquely as "otaku."

The Japanese public looked, and saw a worrying number of their own young people. The young looked and saw themselves. "He had 6,000 videos," says Taku. "I have 3,000. When I saw photographs of his room, I thought: 'My room looks like his.'"

Overnight the word otaku became common currency. Just as, after the Aum gas attacks, new religions of every sort were vilified, so the Japanese blamed the otaku for Miyazaki's crimes. "In Japan, you can't be different from anyone else," says Taku. "Slightly strange people are damned. So, after Miyazaki, they condemned all otaku. People started saying 'I'm not otaku.'" It was at this point that he took the pen name Taku. He approached the editor of a magazine called Spa! and proposed an article putting the otaku point of view. The result was a special issue of Spa! entitled "Otaku moved Japan."

"Of course I wouldn't kill little girls, but newspapers and magazines were saying, 'Because he watched videos, he killed little girls.' I was the only one saying, 'No-otaku aren't all bad.' The otaku are to Japan as Japan is to the world. Aren't all Japanese otaku? We're clever but we can't communicate. Instead of inventing things, we perfect them. The English and the Germans invented cars; we make them cheap and perfect. Destroy the otaku, and we destroy ourselves."

Taku became the otaku spokesman and a television personality. He appeared on chat shows and had his own comedy series. (As we talk, some young women at the next table spot Taku and start giggling and pointing. Taku displays utter indifference.) As for Miyazaki, this year doctors declared him mentally incompetent, not responsible for his crimes, and therefore not liable for the death penalty. According to his lawyer, he lives happily in his cell, reading comic books all day.

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Undoubtedly the otaku are the product of Japan's information and technology-drenched society. The roots of that society go back to the 1950s and 1960s. In 1960 Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda brought in his income-doubling plan. He promised that-if everyone put their back into it-the national income would double within ten years. In fact it took only four. The economic boom was launched. Apart from some protests against the American bases the Japanese no longer thought about politics. They worked, made money and spent it on consumer durables and clothes. Television and the print media filled their minds with information-but not with opinions. As technology generated more and more information, it became harder and harder to keep up and people started to complain of information overload.

Meanwhile, in the 1970s, changes had been introduced in the education system. As competition became fiercer to enter the top universities-from which a direct path led to a lifetime job in the top companies-so examination results became more and more critical. Education became a matter of rote learning, of cramming information to be regurgitated in exams. Young people were effectively taught not to think for themselves.

Mao Ojima, aged 23, graduated from university this year. She is no otaku, but the outspoken child of wealthy parents-which makes her comments all the more striking. "When I go abroad, I feel that people abroad learn to think. But we don't," she says. "When I went to Belgium-they all express their own opinion. I wanted to say what I thought, but I couldn't. In Japan I'm always thinking, 'I mustn't say this,' 'I mustn't say that.' In the end I can't express my own opinion."

"Kids these days are 'manual guys,'" adds her friend, Yusuke Watanabe. "They do everything 'by the manual.'" In other words, they have to know the rules before they can do anything. Yusuke, aged 21, is also part of the wealthy Japanese elite. He coaches a local high school baseball team-and already feels a generation gap between himself and these lads in their late teens. "When we were at elementary school, there were computers, but we also did sports. Now they just play computer games."

How do you rebel when you have never been allowed to think for yourself? You may choose to opt out of society. You may reject all your social obligations. But you can only do what you have been taught to do-hide away at home, collecting more and more arcane information. And if a school teacher figure appears, who offers to tell you what to do and to guide you through life-such as Asahara, the leader of the Aum sect-you may well choose to follow him.

In the end the hippies never did change society. They grew up and got jobs. The otaku, conversely, were middle-aged to begin with. They didn't want to change society-just to be left alone.

In a sense, the otaku are Japan's nemesis. Take everything that makes Japan, put it in front of a distorting mirror, and you get the otaku-a caricature of Japaneseness. The otaku claim that, far from being an aberration from the norm, they are the advance guard. For the present they are unquestionably rebels of a kind. Japanese are expected to function as part of a group, like bees in a swarm-to put Japan or their company or their family before their individual needs and desires. To Japanese eyes, the most shocking thing about the otaku is that they put themselves first.

But although they cultivate outcast status, the otaku are gaining influence. They are highly paid computer engineers and software designers. They work in the flourishing animation industry creating comics and films to feed the demand from other otaku. They are shaping the new Japan, creating images for readers and viewers to wrap their minds around. If the otaku are indeed the future of Japan, then it will be a more decadent one than the rest of the world has been used to.