Episode 560 – The Otaku, Part 2

Facing Backward Podcasts

For our first episode of 2025: “otaku culture” as a phenomenon began to emerge, in part, as a reaction against the crass commercialism of postwar Japan. Yet now, it is entirely a part of the fabric of that commercialism. How did that happen? We’ll explore it by looking at two fascinating phenomena: the dojin market known as Comiket and the transformation of Tokyo’s neighborhood of Akihabara.

Sources

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

Tamagawa, Hiroaki, “Comic Market as Space for Self-Expression in Otaku Culture” and Kaichiro Morikawa “Otaku and the City: The Rebirth of Akihabara” in Fandom Unbound: Otaku Culture in a Connected World. Ed. Mizuko Ito, Daisuke Okabe, and Izumi Tsuji.

Images

Meikyu, the dojin circle that founded Comiket, in 1978.

Attendees at one of the early Comikets.

Cosplayers from Space Battleship Yamato at Comiket 8.

The entrance line for Comiket in 2016.

Comiket in 2023;.

Akihabara in the early postwar (either late 1950s or early 1960s, I think).

Akihabara in 1971

Akihabara in 2023.