MASCULINITIES in CYBERSPACE a Word in Vogue on the Internet And
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CHAPTER THREE MASCULINITIES IN CYBERSPACE A word in vogue on the Internet and among Chinese youth in recent years, zhainan, which can be literally translated as “home guy,” refers to a socially awkward young man who secludes himself in his home all day indulging in anime, computer games, and Web networking. The word originated from the Japanese term otaku and first came into the Chinese language through Taiwanese popular culture. However, the meaning of the word has under- gone significant changes in the Chinese context. Despite the association of the Japanese term with antisocial behavior, more and more young men in Chinese cities identify themselves as zhainan, and the term has taken on the connotation of a desirable form of masculinity. There are Web essays on how to woo a zhainan and love stories featuring high-school students and their zhainan teacher. The zhai lifestyle has even become a trend among urban youth. This chapter explores the differences between otaku and zhainan as well as the relationship between zhainan and the discourse of scholar masculinity in traditional Chinese culture. The zhainan type exemplifies the hybridity of masculinity in contemporary China because, on the one hand, it shows the obvious influence of a foreign culture, while on the other hand its roots can be traced back to the discourse on obsession and moral purity in premodern Chinese literature. Apart from zhainan, the chapter also describes an array of new identities constructed in cyberspace and discusses how new possibilities of gender construction were opened up by consumerism and globalization. From Otaku to Zhainan In January 2010, it was sensational news when zhainan, along with other trendy words used on the Internet, was included in the new edition of the Chinese-English Dictionary published by Shanghai Translation Publishing House. The rendition of the term as otaku, however, has aroused discus- sions on the Internet and some pointed out that, although the word is derived from the Japanese word otaku, its meaning in the Chinese context has undergone significant transformations so that “nerd” or “geek” would be a better equivalent than the Japanese form (Zhai 2010). <UN> <UN> 80 chapter three The term zhainan is in fact an abbreviation of yuzhainan, which is the Chinese pronunciation of the Japanese kanji word otaku otoko (otoko mean- ing “man”). In Japanese, otaku, the honorific form of taku (home), literally and originally means “your house,” and more generally is a very polite (distancing and unimposing, as opposed to familiar) way of saying “you” (Eng 2006, 190). The modern slang form, which is distinguished from the older usage by being written only in hiragana or katakana, or rarely in rōmaji, became popular in Japanese ACG (Animation-Comic-Game) culture in the early 1980s. How and why this second-person pronoun came to describe obsessive fans of Japanese animation is still debated (Schodt 1996, 44; Eng 2006, 190; Galbraith 2009, 171–73). One widely circulated account, however, attributes the origin of the word to Shoji Kawamori and Haruhiko Mikimoto, the creators of the anime Super Dimensional Fortress Macross (1982) at Studio Nue. They were both students at Keio University in the early 1980s: Keio is known as one of the more upstanding and relatively upper-class insti- tutes of learning in Japan. In tune with their somewhat aristocratic surround- ings, Kawamori and Mikimoto used the classical, refined second-person form of address, “otaku,” in preference to “anata,” the usual form of address. Fans of the studio’s work began using the term to show respect toward Studio Nue’s creators, and it entered common use among the fans who gathered at comic markets, fanzine meetings, and all-night line parties before anime movie releases. (Murakami 2001, 62) The use of otaku as a form of address among anime fans is also a direct imitation of Hikaru Ichijyo, the main character in the Macross anime, who frequently uses the extra-polite otaku when talking to other characters. From the series onward the polite second-person pronoun has become popular in ACG communities in Japan (such as anime clubs at various universities), probably because of the term’s implication of distance and isolation, as these people never have intimate contact with each other. According to Frederick Schodt, it was the essayist Akio Nakamori who first used the phrase otaku-zoku (zoku meaning “tribe”) to refer to hardcore fans who called each other otaku. His Otaku no Kenkyu (Studies in Otaku), a column that has appeared in the lolicon magazine Manga Burikko since 1983, is also believed to be the first stereotype of the otaku group as socially inept young men who seek refuge in a fantasy world (Schodt 1996, 44–45). This negative image has dominated in mainstream Japanese media since then.1 A typical otaku is represented as an antisocial, unkempt, and 1 Some even believe that the otaku figure is more a media invention than a representa- tive of a real “group” within Japanese society; see Bell et al. 2004, 148. <UN> <UN>.