Episode 559 – The Otaku, Part 1

Facing Backward Podcasts

Our last episode of 2024 is also the first episode in a series on one of Japan’s most distinctive cultural phenomenons: otaku culture. This week: is the idea of being an “otaku” older than we think?

Sources

Azuma, Hiroki. Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. Trans. Jonathan E. Abel and Shion Kono.

Ito, Mizuko. “Introduction” and Izumi Tsuji, “Why Study Train Otaku? A Social History of Imagination” in Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World. Ed. Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Izumi Tsuji.

Images

An issue of the magazine “Kagaku Kurabu/Science Club” from 1949.

A blue “sleeper” train on the Tokaido train line.

A Japanese train fan takes a photo of a Shinkansen train passing in front of Mt. Fuji. All it’s missing is a rising sun in the background!

A 1980 model train fan magazine.

A JR steam locomotive, c. late 1970s.