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OTAKU: Japan's Database Animals. By Hiroki Azuma; translated byjonathan E. Abel and Shion Kono. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009. xxix, 144pp. (Figures.) US$17.95, paper. ISBN 978-0-816-65352-2.
The global boom of manga, anime, video games and other products of Japanese popular culture has been subject to scientific debate since the end of the 1990s and has recently led to a number of international conferences about the subject ofjapan's cultural power. However, except for the writings of the professor of media and cultural studies, Koichi Iwabuchi - especially his discussion of the "odourlessness" of Japanese popular culture in Recentering Globalization. Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism (Durham: Duke University Press, 2002) - as well as a short article by Azuma in the annual Mechademia 2 (Frenchy Limning, ed., Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007, 175-187) comments of Japanese scholars can hardly be found in the English, German or French scientific literature to this day.
This book of the very well known Japanese philosopher and cultural critic Hiroki Azuma fills the void and is an annotated, excellent English translation of Azuma's best-selling study Dôbutsuka suru posutomodan: otaku kara mita nihon shakai (Animalizing postmodernity: depicting Japanese society through otaku) published in Japan in 2001 (Tokyo: Kôdansha Gendai...