Otaku is a word which almost everyone interested in contemporary Japan has heard, but despite the pervasiveness of this term, academically critical studies in English seeking to explain, situate, and engage the myriad connotations behind it have been remarkably slow to emerge. Books and articles which have dealt with this term typically focus on the anime and manga series, artists, and characters for which otaku―people, predominantly young, predominantly male, who devote tremendous amounts of time, energy, and money to pursue the objects of their obsessions―have conceived an enduring passion. While there is certainly validity in examining the role of animated film or print media in Japan as a consumer product capable of attracting fervent fans, as demonstrated by, for example, the work of Sharon Kinsella or Susan Napier, these studies miss out on the underlying implications of otaku culture and its influence on, and reflection of, Japanese social conditions in general. That there is both influence and reflection is difficult to deny, while also being difficult to qualify and measure. This, of course, accounts for the relative scarcity in English of works examining otaku in any particular depth―simply conceptualising the parameters for such a study is a daunting task, given the potential for the term to spill into a seemingly boundless critique of contemporary Japan. Precisely for this reason, however, and understanding that to study otaku is to study Japan from a vibrant, evolving, and vital perspective, is the arrival of this translation of Azuma's work so welcome.

Azuma himself is well aware of the inextricable overlap between the otaku world and that of Japan proper. As he has it,'At this juncture'any attempt to consider seriously the contemporary conditions of Japanese culture must include an investigation of otaku culture'(p. 4). This is because'the investigation of otaku culture in Japan amounts to more than a mere account of a subculture. In fact, it involves reflection on the issues of Japan's inability to come to terms with war defeat, the American cultural invasion of Japan, and the distorted conditions brought about through modernisation and postmodernisation'(p. 24). The potential for a study of otaku to exceed its bounds becomes immediately apparent here, but so too do the rich possibilities implicit in this particular aspect of contemporary Japan. Otaku history is the history of a technologically and economically mature Japan. Azuma states boldly that he is' interested'in viewing a cross-section of this history, pulling out the relations between transformations in otaku culture and changes experienced in the rest of society'(p. 6).