Daijoubu

I recently read that Susan Napier has a new book coming out in November called: From Impressionism To Anime: Japan As Fantasy And Fan Cult In The Western Imagination. There are already some books out that relate to the Western fascination with Japan in the past, and its long been obvious that the current interest in anime, manga, Japanese video games, etc is just the latest aspect or reccurence of an old trend.

A few years ago, I read The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan, by Christopher Benfey. This one is mainly about New England literary types, and some of the associations of Japan with people like Melville and Emily Dickinson are a bit of a stretch, but the book shows how there was an passion for Japan among many of the old New England elite in the nineteenth century. They made pilgrimages to Japan (as Henry Adams and John La Farge did)–maybe this can be compared to modern fans of anime swarming around Akihabara? That may be too much of a stretch, but we’ll see if Napier makes it!

Kakuzo Okakura wrote the influential Book of Tea, bringing ideas about Japanese aesthetics to America. We don’t really have a Japanese ambassador of, say, the concepts of otaku or moe today–Honda Toru’s Denpa Otoko hasn’t been translated into English yet! I also don’t know if there is an otaku version of Lafcadio Hearn, who became a Japanese citizen and wrote a ton of books about Japan for an English-speaking audience. Maybe Patrick Macias is the closest to that for Japanese fan subcultures? But he certainly hasn’t been absorbed into Japanese culture like Hearn was.

Just like American movies and cartoons that are influenced by anime style, (not to mention all that so-called “Original English Language manga”–humph!), Americans in Victorian times (post Civil War nineteenth century) pursued a fad for Japanese-influenced products, as shown in The Japan Idea: Art and Life in Victorian America, (which was an exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum, in Hartford CT, home of ConnectiCon, btw). Obviously thoughts turn to Pokemon, Naruto, etc etc. There were orientalist novels, and the British had things like Gilbert and Sullivan’s the Mikado. I don’t know if today there’s an otaku version of the Japanese Exhibition in Knightsbridge that inspired Gilbert–but as I’ve pointed out before, the Japanese government has been promoting anime and manga abroad! I’m still thinking about that ultimate anime-influenced room, or even house–Japanese style influenced, for instance, the Gamble House in Pasadena.
As for fandom today, we’ll see how Napier ties it in. It could be easy to overstate the comparisons with the past–but who knows–I mean, nothing much really academic in nature has been written on the subject! I picked up Japanamerica, but its very shallow, and not really about the fans so much. Maybe Millenial Monsters is better? Both of these books seem to focus more on the corporate aspects than the fandom, but maybe that’s the biggest difference in the Western adoption of elements of Japanese culture since the nineteenth century– the growth of capitalism.