It's a very interesting point, that's for sure. I approached it admittedly from a very Western/universalist standpoint, with the assumption that due to the view of "adult" society on the manga and otaku cultures, and the creators, it would be a natural breeding ground for counter-culturals in the manner comics have always been in the West due to their status as "unclean non-art."
That's the kind of prejudices one must leave behind while researching, probably the hardest thing to do. Stating that otaku society has devolved into a circlejerking gettho without understanding the reasons why no one breaks said circle was a mistake I was blindly following... it also helps to think that perhaps their gettho will never die, it's the only place they have left, and any threat to it will probably result in a even tighter society, hardly into deconstruction, for they will have no interest in expanding or exploring new ways, only surviving.
You should try to engage in active participant observation in Japan then.
Humm, so you're saying that while otaku are considered rebelious and childish at the eyes of proper society, they can't manage to rebel agains their own "otaku society", that would be going too far, becoming a lawless animal with no connection to any society... Interesting, it does shed some new light on why the status quo is so unchallenged, a person that defies proper society by delving into mangas cannot also defy the otaku culture and do a subversive work, deconstructing standards like Alan Moore did... there can be no such wild animals.
More or less, that also explains why it was so hard for me to find anyone attacking otaku culture "from inside", a "it was good but it's declining" approach would both displease proper and otaku society... no serious researcher would research that unless he was an otaku, and no otaku would attack it's own society. Oh man, what a mess I am getting into, baka gaijin FTW!
That was very insightfull BC, thank you.
I don't think that was her main point -- it is that the whole structure of Japanese society extends even to otaku culture. To take her example of subversion in criminal cultures for example, yakuza gangs still have a very rigid hierarchy with their own rituals and so on, even if they are not part of mainstream Japanese society. Similar examples exist in Chinese gangs.
Earlier in East Asian history, this might explain why tantric Buddhism, especially the higher tantras, never really caught on in China. By the time the tantras got to Indian monasteries they were actually already stripped of many of the outright antinomian elements (originally directed against Brahmanic concepts of morality and cleanliness), which were more-or-less interpreted symbolically, but the Chinese still largely rejected them besides some elements of yoga tantra, which is actually very strict on purity, diet etc. Yoga tantra as transmitted to the Chinese currently survives only in Japan, where they candidates to undergo years of training to receive empowerments.
Today, a lot of Chinese who practise Vajrayana still are reluctant to eat meat and drink alcohol even in ganapujas, where it is actually a requirement. In Tibet, a famous lama called Shabkar who was a strong proponent of vegetarianism in a time when it was pretty much impossible still ate meat in ganapujas.
There are other examples from how Buddhism was transmitted to the Chinese dating back further in history. The concept of monasticism for example went against many Confucian tenets and monks were regarded as immoral originally. Over time, the Chinese adapted Buddhism to fit in with their culture and today there are many practices and unspoken rules in Chinese Buddhist organizations influenced by Confucianism. There is an excellent book called
How Buddhism acquired a soul on the way to China which analyses the early adaptation of Buddhism to fit in with the Chinese worldview.
I think it's interesting to note that even before the Meiji reforms, Japanese Buddhism already had a lot of married Buddhist clergy (with shaven heads).
There is a book by Nakamura Hajime called
The Ways of Thinking of Eastern Peoples that might be interesting for you. It is of course dated, and coloured with Orientalism prevalent at the era as well as his own Japanese biases on the sections dealing with other cultures, but it presents a Japanese scholar's view of his own culture. In themselves, his presentations on other cultures are not very useful especially with modern scholarship (Tibetans were historically rather more prudish than Indians for example, though not as much as Sinosphere cultures), but they do reveal the general Japanese view on some aspects of foreign cultures.
Of course, I don't know how far this extends to otaku culture.
