Akihabara's Future: Morikawa Kaichiro

23.11.2008 by Patrick W. Galbraith

The New Japan Society for Future Research (新日本未来学会), a venerable organization founded in 1968, came off of hiatus to meet in the Dai-biru on November 23 and discuss Morikawa Kaichiro's theories of futurity and Akihabara.

"I was born in a generation when people didn't go to the moon," Morikawa said. "For me, the future is a thing of the past. ... Those without future put those hopes and dreams into science fiction anime, which then became just anime."

Morikawa (second from the right in this picture) placed the shift from worship of past to belief in future on the French Revolution, but then said that was derailed by wars and environmental and technological chaos after WWII. In accordance with his well known hypothesis from his book "Learning from Akihabara," Morikawa stated Akihabara was transformed into a city of otaku by youth who poured all their energies into hobbies rather than future.

From both architectural and social stances, he criticized the Redevelopment Zone of Akihabara as "a place like any other in the world" in contrast to Chuo-dori and "Japanese subculture, which is always in contrast to the mainstream culture adopted from foreign nations."

He drew an example from Bruno Taut, an architect who visited Japan between 1933 and 1936 and said offhandedly that Katsurarikyuu was "real" Japanese taste and Nikko was gaudy and "false." Before his visit, Nikko, where shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu is enshrined, was by far more beloved than the wabi/sabi of Katsura, but after Taut the government pushed Japan as home of subdued modern design.

Just so is the government picking up on Cool Japan to reassert gaudy pop-culture as the new Japan chic. Morikawa suggested that as Murakami Takashi pushes otaku as "Japan" overseas, it might be possible that in another five years Chuo-dori will be more supported than the Redevelopment Zone, which he sees as a remnant of unnecessary technology pushed on Japan by too much foreign influence.

Morikawa showed a composite image of the Dai-biru and UDX Building both plastered with drooling moe characters, rising sun designs and the words "welcome to Japan."

Patrick W. Galbraith, who was invited as a commentator, questioned whether Japan would ever be willing brand itself with a 50-foot-tall "Ichigo Marshmallow" image.

"When visitors come to Akihabara from overseas, they are expecting that kind of freedom, but what they get is police chasing cosplayers off the streets to make way for shoppers," he said. "It is a fact that JNTO surveys show Japan as a more anticipated tourist spot than Tokyo Disneyland, but it is also true that it now voted the most disappointing place in Japan."

He suggested that Japan doesn't seem to want to be considered a nation of otaku; for all the talk of otaku as a "revolutionary" social movement, they certainly aren't treated as such.

Indeed, Morikawa spoke of his advertisement for the otaku exhibit at the 2004 Venezia Biennale being banned in Ebisu - near the center of Tokyo.

Another commentator just thought all this pressure on Akihabara was unnecessary.

"Maybe Japan would be better off if it returned to its period of national isolation and ignored foreign pressure," said commentator Endo Satoshi, the former editor of doujinshi "Otona no Club" which ran Nakamori Akio's article "Otaku Kenkyuu" as a special to "Manga Burriko."

Morikawa seemed to agree.

"Otaku are escaping from mainstream society [imported foreign culture] and creating [Japanese] subculture," he said. "I think that in otaku lies one possible model for the future."