Japan for the Uninvited

The term “otaku”, literally meaning “your house”, is used to describe Japan’s legion of obsessive young men. Comparable to “geek” in English, the word carries mostly negative connotations of social ineptitude, unkemptness and lack of popularity.

The otaku image was dealt a serious blow in 1989, when 26-year-old Tsutomu Miyazaki raped, killed and ate 4 young children. The police found a massive collection of (partly pornographic) anime and manga in his apartment, and the Japanese media went crazy.

In the US, where the pressure to “fit in” is slightly different, the word has been proudly reappropriated by anime enthusiasts.

• Otaku (Wikipedia)
  
• The Politics of Otaku
  (aka: “There’s nothing wrong with being an otaku!”)
  
• ‘I’m alone, but not lonely’
  Japanese Otaku-Kids colonize the Realm of Information and Media
  
• Amateur manga subculture and the otaku panic
  Detailed paper published in the Journal of Japanese Studies (1998)
  
• F*ckin’ Otaku