Among the many reasons advanced for Miyazaki's crimes, including mental illness and a breakdown of the family (Treat 1993: 354–355), one that gained traction was media effects and confusion about the line between fiction and reality. The evidence seemed to be in order: Photographs of Miyazaki's room, which was filled with 5,763 videotapes, including a series of horror/slasher/gore films upon which he allegedly based some of his crimes and recordings of those crimes. Responding to Miyazaki, cultural theorist Yoshimi Shun'ya argues, "For him, the sense of reality, or the reality of killing, was already virtual" (quoted in Galbraith 2019: 67). There are at least three ways to read this statement: One, Miyazaki had seen so much sex, violence and crime in virtual worlds that it no longer seemed real to him; two, he had rehearsed his crimes virtually and acted them out in reality; and three, even after committing the crimes, they appeared virtual to him. Related are three points about media effects: One, media had reduced Miyazaki's resistance to committing violent sexual crimes; two, the line between media and reality was blurred for him; and three, he committed crimes based on media and returned them to media through recording and placing them in his videotape collection.38 While media and material consumption is normal in contemporary Japan, the sheer volume of Miyazaki's collection was enough to convince many of pathology, and the confusion of fiction and reality made him a limit figure for a society struggling to negotiate boundaries. A distinction between normal and abnormal media and material consumption was formalized by describing Miyazaki as an "otaku," which became a label associated with the excesses and perversions of fandom in the early 1980s (Galbraith 2019: 51–63). In this way, fans of a certain stripe, who were already perceived as abnormal and labeled "otaku," came to be associated with a serial killer who was also a pedophile.

Despite allegations that they were used as models for some of his crimes (this has been disputed), it was not exclusively or even necessarily the horror/slasher/gore films in Miyazaki's collection that were mobilized to explain his dangerous break from reality, but rather manga/anime. Photographs of Miyazaki's room show adult manga in the foreground, which insinuate that the piles of boxes behind them must contain more manga and that the videotapes must be anime, although neither of those assumptions, often repeated as facts, are accurate. Based on the testimony of journalists who were in the room at the time of photographing, the few adult manga that Miyazaki owned were placed in the foreground to make it appear as if his collection was primarily manga and anime (Nagaoka 2010: 151–152). This was made more convincing by adding that Miyazaki had attended the Comic Market – that den of imaginary sex crimes involving cute girl characters. As "*lolicon*," or "Lolita complex," became a keyword in describing the problem of manga, sexuality and youth, the message of the photographs became that Miyazaki was attracted to fictional girls and acted out his perverse desires in reality.39 The story became not only that Miyazaki was a man who blurred the line between fiction and reality, as would apparently follow if he watched ultra-realistic violence in horror/slasher/gore films and then enacted ghoulish violence to record and add to his collection, but also, and more importantly, that his attraction to the unrealistic worlds of manga/anime had warped his sense of reality and sexuality. The cute girl characters of manga/anime were warped objects of desire that turned Miyazaki toward sexual violence and crime.  As critics such as Ōtsuka Eiji and Nakamori Akio debated whether or not Miyazaki was an "otaku" and creative types such as Miyazaki Hayao (no relation to the criminal) and Murakami Ryū discussed the need for manga/ anime fans to escape their "closed rooms," a perceived connection – affirmed or denied – between manga/anime images, the pedophile predator and "otaku" was established in the popular imaginary.41

Although it began with feminist and new religious groups in Western Japan (Nagaoka 2010: 154–155, 161–164), what came to be known as the "harmful manga movement" (*yūgai manga undō* or *yūgai komikku sōdō*) found support amid the anxiety gripping Japan in the 1990s. Responding to reports coming out of the harmful manga movement, on September 4, 1990, the *Asahi Shimbun* newspaper ran an editorial wondering what kind of human beings children exposed to such manga will become. What is at stake, the editors explain, is no less than "the future of our culture." Politicians began to receive letters from citizens, which they forwarded to police, concerning "abnormal," "unhealthy" and "perverse" sex and "grotesque eroticism" in manga, which "surely lead to sexual crimes" (Anime Comic Tone 2009). At its most hyperbolic, the claim was made that, if left unchecked, the effect of harmful manga was such that "the youth of Japan have no future." This discourse of youth as vulnerable and at risk sits alongside the millennial monsters discourse of youth as dangerous; in Japan in the 1990s, after the arrest of Miyazaki, youth were potentially perverse and the perverse imaginary of manga might be what pushed them over the edge. In the halls of government, the issue of harmful manga was raised on five separate occasions between October 1990 and June 1991 (Kinsella 2000: 146). On one such occasion, in February 1991, Asō Tarō, a future Prime Minister of Japan, led a group of politicians in asking for more responsibility from the manga industry. Resolutions were jammed through amid open bullying of opponents for allegedly forcing pornography on children (Nagaoka 2010: 177–179).

Despite not having solid statistical evidence that manga was harmful to society, tougher ordinances were passed and arrests "increased dramatically" (Schodt 1996: 56; also Nagaoka 2010: 248–249). In April 1991, for example, police questioned 74 people, arrested 40 and confiscated 4,040 manga books (Kinsella 2000: 132; also Nagaoka 2010: 173). Ordinances were amended in 1993 and again in 1997 to tighten regulation of adult manga (Kinsella 2000: 142). When publishers of adult manga for men began to regulate themselves by labeling works as for adults, shrink wrapping them and encouraging sellers to place them in dedicated sections, scrutiny shifted to adult manga for women and eventually to general manga for young people considered to be "pornographic" or "harmful" (Nagaoka 2010: 36–37, 142–143, 146–147, 233). There was notable focus on manga featuring *bishōjo* (Nagaoka 2010: 181–182, 196), or cute girl characters, which was perceived to be "anti-social" (Kinsella 2000: 152) in appealing to adult perverts and perverting the minds of youth, who would not become "normal grown-ups" (Cather 2012: 241). Such manga also put youth at risk in relation to adult perverts, imagined in the image of Miyazaki. Global norms were applied in crackdowns, for example using international laws concerning anti-child trafficking, prostitution and pornography against adult manga (Cather 2012: 242, 267–272; for comparison, see Leheny 2006: 4, 24, 90–91, 95, 104–106, 186–187).42 In the process, as media scholar Kirsten Cather points out, the law expanded from protecting real children to preventing "*potential* harm done to *real* children by readers and viewers who consume […] sexualized images" (Cather 2012: 270). And so too did crime expand from the actual to the virtual.

### **1.4** *Bishōjo* **Games and "Virtual Reality"**

While the emphasis of the discourse about harmful media effects in the 1990s was unmistakably on manga, *bishōjo* games are perhaps even more associated with anxiety about "virtual reality" (*kasō genjitsu* or *kyozō riaru*). According to Ōtsuka, "the virtual reality age" began in 1983 (Ōtsuka 2004: 17–20). That year, the Nintendo Family Computer, a home gaming console better known as the Famicom, went on the market. The label "otaku" was also coined in 1983 in response to the perceived perversion of men oriented toward *bishōjo* characters from manga and anime (Galbraith 2019). Adult computer games existed in Japan since at least as early as Kōei's *Night Life* (Naito raifu, 1982), appeared as part of the booming interest in cute girl characters in the form of Enix' *Lolita Syndrome* (Roriita shindorōmu, 1983) and evolved into more story-based character interactions with Jast's *Angels' Afternoon*  (Tenshi-tachi no gogo, 1985). *Angels' Afternoon* is remembered for its manga/anime-style characters and setting in a school, which would become hallmarks of *bishōjo* games. Concerns about adult computer games began soon after. In 1986, *177* (Ichinananana, dB-SOFT, 1986) – the title comes from Article 177 of the Penal Code concerning rape, which players simulate in the game – was taken up in the Diet and criticized.43 This brought the existence of adult computer games to public attention and sparked outrage (see Pelletier-Gagnon and Picard 2015).

Virtual reality was a growing concern by the end of the 1980s. For example, Itō Seikō's novel *No Life King* (Nō raifu kingu, 1988), nominated for the Mishima Yukio Award, tells of gradeschoolers who interact with the world as if it were a game. That same year, photographer and writer Fujiwara Shin'ya argued that games lead to confusing or "mixing fact and fiction" (*kyojitsu kongō*), which has come to be known as the "harmful game theory" (Tomita 1989: 2).44 Critics suggested that games also contribute to a lack of empathy, antisocial behavior and even a loss of humanity in youth, which crystallized in discourse of the "terror of the game brain" (Mori 2002: 6–7, 25, 28; also Allison 2006: 81; for a comparison in the United States, see Turkle 2011: 293; Zimbardo and Coulombe 2015: xviii–xix, 20–23, 107–112, 130–131).45 In March 1989, *Shūkan Spa!* magazine ran an article with the sensational title, "Spirited Psychiatrist Noda Masa'aki's Analysis! Murder of a Fourth Grader at Tokyo's Kōjimachi Elementary School, the Game Generation is on the Rise, the 'Perverted Murderer' who was After All from the 'Otaku Tribe'" (Kagami 2010: 157). In other words, there was concern in Japan about games turning a generation of youth into "otaku" and "perverted murderers" even before the arrest of Miyazaki Tsutomu later that year. Even as "otaku" are associated with perverted murderers, the discourse about the "otaku generation" is deeply inflected with anxiety about computer users and the "game generation," with both converging in the image of the man dangerously absorbed in virtual reality and cut off from society.46

Not surprisingly, *bishōjo* games were caught up in calls for increased regulation of harmful media in the early 1990s. In 1991, the same year as a major crackdown on manga, a boy in junior highschool shoplifted the game *Saori: The House of Bishōjo* (Saori: Bishōjo-tachi no yakata, Fairytale, 1991). The content of the game was such that once it came to the attention of police during the investigation, it was not the boy who shoplifted, but rather the production company behind *Saori* that was punished for seducing the boy into crime, if not also perverse desires. *Saori* is the story of a young girl haunted by sex. After seeing a couple

**Image 4.** Cover of *Saori: The House of Bishōjo*. Photo by the author. License: CC BY 4.0.

having sex in the park, the girl goes home to masturbate, falls asleep and dreams that she has been abducted by two masked men and taken to a mansion where she witnesses incest, torture, homosexual coupling, gang rape and more. The girl awakens to find that it was only a dream, but it is clear that her sexual imagination has been awakened – and that her awakened imagination is perverse. *Saori* almost reads like a nightmare of Japan in the 1990s, when the nation was swept with intense concern about the awakening perverse sexuality of (and for) youth. Despite the fact that the game was not meant for people under the age of 18 – hence the boy's shoplifting – *Saori* ran afoul of police for not blurring out genitals, which had become the standard for obscenity in Japanese courts (Allison 2000: 149; also Cather 2012). On November 25, 1991, the president of Fairytale, the production company behind *Saori*, was arrested; the four games named in his indictment were *Saori*, *Dragon City Designation X* (Doragon shiti x shitei, 1991), *Angels' Afternoon 3: Side Story* (Tenshi-tachi no gogo 3 bangai hen, 1990) and *Angels' Afternoon 4: Yūko* (Tenshi-tachi no gogo 4: Yūko, 1991). The result of the so-called "*Saori* Incident" was *bishōjo* game producers banding together to establish the Ethics Organization of Computer Software. An industry self-regulatory body founded in 1992, the Ethics Organization insists on genital blurring, labeling works as adult and zoning content, which is very similar to the manga industry.

Self-imposed and enforced industry regulations were largely successful in keeping outside authorities from introducing new regulations, which critics continued to demand, bolstered by media linking crimes such as the Aum Shinrikyō cult releasing poison gas on the Tokyo subway to the "otaku generation" raised on a steady diet of "virtual reality."47 The fact that computer/console gaming was undergoing massive growth and popularization in the 1990s – when Nintendo, Sega and Sony, three Japanese companies, competed for control of the domestic and international market for console games, and Konami, Elf and Leaf were transforming *bishōjo* games and attracting hordes of fans in Japan – only made the sense of urgency that much more acute. Crucial was how "the burgeoning interest of youth in computer games" was imaginatively tied to "the rising incidence of youth violence" (Gardner 2008: 210, 214–215).48 Like manga, computer games came to be "regarded as potentially dangerous or as emblems of what is wrong with Japan" (Gardner 2008: 200). Indeed, the record of a year 2000 meeting of the National Commission on Educational Reform, which is archived on the website of the Prime Minister of Japan and His Cabinet, includes the remarkable decision to, "Clearly state that virtual reality is bad" (*bācharu riariti wa aku dearu*).49 The document strikes a concerned tone about children and the future, which is cause for this strong statement on virtual reality and other potentially disruptive things that must be dealt with, if not "removed" (*haijo*). In this climate, it was all too easy for neurologist Mori Akio to point to the "social problem" of computer/console games, which allegedly confuse youth about reality, disconnect them from others and lead to out-of-control behavior (Mori 2002: 4, 19). For Mori, these games pose a problem for "the future of Japan" (Mori 2002: 5). If mainstream console games were a threat, then adult computer games were even more so; console games went on to become "normal" entertainment, while adult computer games absorbed apprehensions about the "abnormal." Further emboldened by global reactions against *bishōjo* games, which are increasingly out of synch with global norms of imaginary sex and violence, critics in Japan continue to call them "harmful to society" (Nakasatomi 2013: 5) and demand that the government ban them outright.

The issue becomes more complex when we consider that manga, anime and computer/console games were integrated into robust franchises that spread characters across media and material forms in the 1990s. If, as media scholar Marc Steinberg suggests, the tendency was to create a "total media environment," where characters could be encountered "*anytime, anywhere*" (Steinberg 2012: 79, 166), then this also created media worlds centered on characters and subjects in affective relations with them. In his historical research, Steinberg reveals that, since the 1960s, manga/anime franchises have made characters part of the social worlds of children in Japan. This is considered, to a large extent, to be "normal," but the growing number of adult manga/ anime fans, and adult manga/anime, from the 1970s planted the seeds of the "otaku" problem and the "abnormal." Specifically, by the early 1980s, there were concerns about men being sexually attracted to cute girl characters in manga and anime. Even as Miyazaki Tsutomu was being held up to demonstrate the dangers of "otaku" media, manga, anime and computer/console games featuring *bishōjo* characters exploded in successive booms around *Sailor Moon*, *Neon Genesis Evangelion*  and more; indeed, in the 1990s, *bishōjo* characters were an increasingly notable part of the mainstream media landscape in Japan (Akagi 1993: 231). Affection for these cute girl characters was burgeoning alongside concern about *lolicon*. Even as the Comic Market, where fanzines featuring manga/anime characters in explicit sex scenes could be found, was pushed out of its venue and subject to criticism, attendance skyrocketed in the 1990s (Comic Market Committee 2014: 26). And *bishōjo* games, which center on affective relations with cute girl characters, also surged in the 1990s and provided new content to be franchised across manga, anime and related media and material forms (Azuma 2009: 75–79). Sexually explicit content was part of this media ecology, going from 17.7 percent of the total computer game market in April 1993 to 35 percent in April 1994 (Pelletier-Gagnon and Picard 2015: 35). The very prevalence of *bishōjo* games specifically and *bishōjo*-oriented men or "otaku" generally in the 1990s does much to explain why they came to represent a social problem for critics.

The discourse about "virtual reality," associated with manga/anime worlds and made overt in criticism of computer/console games, raises some important points about freedom and regulation of imagination. First, men drawn to virtual reality are labeled "otaku" and perceived to be on a flight from "reality" (Kam 2013a: 45, 55, 59). Second, "otaku" imagine and create alternative worlds and realities, which often center on *bishōjo* characters, encourage fan affection toward them and veer into sexually suggestive and/or explicit territory. For critics, this is a perversion of the imagination and its productive capacities (Kam 2015: 183–187, 190). Third, as media theorist Thomas Lamarre argues, "otaku" move in relation to manga/anime characters, and this movement "generates a world, a reality" (Lamarre 2006: 383). *Bishōjo* games, for example, center on affective relations with cute girl characters and move players to bodily response and movement beyond the game, which generates new social worlds and realities. In this way, "virtual reality" has the potential to shift perceptions of "reality" and generate competing realities, which threaten what religious studies scholar Joseph P. Laycock calls "commonsense reality" (Laycock 2015: 10–14). As Laycock emphasizes, games and play in imaginary worlds are perceived to be "dangerous" – or, to borrow from the debate in Japan, "harmful" – when they risk destabilizing commonsense reality. Common sense, which is related to hegemony (Hall 1987). Part of the maintenance of hegemony is controlling imagination and play, especially in youth, who are crucial to social reproduction (Laycock 2015: 8–9, 27, 240). The struggle over youth, sex and imagination is thus also a struggle over reality and the future. In sum, *bishōjo* manga, anime and games are problematic because they: first, orient men toward cute girl characters and, even as the content crosses into adult territory, it contributes to perceived perversion and failure to achieve reproductive maturity; second, are associated with a rejection of reality or escape from it; and third, pervert the productive capacities of imagination to generate worlds and realities, potentially shift perceptions of reality and threaten commonsense reality.

### **1.5 "Otaku" and Ethics: Ōtsuka Eiji and Miyazaki Tsutomu**

Affection for manga/anime characters is a longstanding part of the discourse on "otaku," which both preceded and continued after the arrest of Miyazaki Tsutomu and the "otaku panic." Growing up in Japan, where manga is ubiquitous enough to be compared to "air" (Gravett 2004: 17), manga/anime characters are an intimate part of everyday life. As adult manga/anime fans emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, clubs, special events and niche magazines reproduced images of characters as shared objects of affection and desire. When fans wanted more from characters than the producers would provide, they produced fanzines. Sharing affection and desire for manga/anime characters, fictional bodies became real objects of human desire (Yoshimoto 2009: 168–170; Nagayama 2014: 83–87). Not confused about the difference between fiction and reality, manga/anime fans tend to insist on it. Manga/anime fans regularly speak of "the two-dimensional" (*nijigen*), which is associated with manga/anime and opposed to the human or "three-dimensional" (*sanjigen*). The manga/anime aesthetic is sometimes described as "non-photorealism" (Minotti 2016), and it clearly differs from "reality." Fans of manga/anime are attracted to this aesthetic, or the two-dimensional, despite it offering things that are unrealistic – or precisely for that reason. In the 1980s, those oriented toward manga/anime characters were said to suffer from a "two-dimensional complex" (*nijigen konpurekkusu*), "two-dimensional fetishism" (*nijikon fechi*) and the "two-dimensional syndrome" (*nijikon shōkōgun*) (Tsuchimoto 1989: 102; Schodt 1996: 48; Yamanaka 2010: 17). Others referred to this as the "cute girl syndrome" (*bishōjo shōkōgun*), "Lolita complex" (*roriita konpurekkusu*) or simply "sickness" (*byōki*). Strikingly, in clubs and at special events, in niche magazines and fanzines, manga/anime fans claimed their complex, syndrome or sickness as a shared orientation of desire.

It is not without significance that the first people labeled "otaku" in Japan in the early 1980s were part of the perceived problem of orientation toward manga/anime characters, specifically cute girl characters, as opposed to "the real thing." At the time, during the so-called "Lolita complex boom" (*rorikon būmu*), specialty magazine *Manga Burikko* was publishing realistic drawings of girls beside photographs of young women, which suggests a permeable boundary between fiction and reality. However, from 1983, readers of the magazine began to request that the magazine publish only drawings of cute girl characters; some readers even self-reflexively identified as people with "two-dimensional complexes" (Galbraith 2019: 51–57). Ōtsuka Eiji, who was editor of *Manga Burikko* at the time, recalls that his magazine responded to fans by dropping realistic drawings and photographs, which speaks to the broader moment of growing desire for fiction as such (Ōtsuka 2004: 18–19, 126, 128). This orientation toward fiction is indicated in the title of the magazine – *Manga Burikko*, meaning "comic fake girl/child" – and was underscored during its transformation in 1983 with subtitles such as "Two-Dimensional Idol Comic Magazine." This emergent orientation of desire was perceived by critics to be a rejection of reality, which was abnormal. So it was that, in 1983, critic Nakamori Akio wrote a series of articles published in *Manga Burikko* denouncing "otaku" as socially and sexually immature men with a "two-dimensional complex" and "Lolita complex." In this context, the abnormality of the Lolita complex, or *lolicon*, was tied to attraction to and affection for manga/anime-style cute girl characters as opposed to real women.

Recognition of an orientation toward fiction, or the cute girl characters of manga and anime as distinct from "reality," was foundational to the discourse of "otaku" before the arrest of Miyazaki Tsutomu, and it continued as a substantial counter-narrative after. Nevertheless, imagined connections with Miyazaki during the "otaku panic" deeply compromised the term in the 1990s. This was all the more so when it was associated with *lolicon*, which blurred the meaning of two-dimensional orientation in the 1980s with sexual crime in the 1990s. If the discourse about "otaku" in the early 1980s was that perverse men know the difference between fiction and reality, insist on the former and are thus socially and sexually immature, then the discourse about "otaku" in the early 1990s was that pedophiles and predators do not know the difference between fiction and reality or might make their perverse fictional desires into harmful reality. Both of these strands of discourse are tangled together in contemporary debates about the imagined excesses and perversions, if not crimes, of *bishōjo*-oriented men.

While many manga/anime fans understandably invested a great deal of energy into refuting that Miyazaki was an "otaku" or had anything to do with them, or insisting that he was unlike them and "entirely exceptional" (Saitō 2011: 30), some responded in the opposite way. Despite his deep knowledge of the fandom surrounding manga/anime-style cute girl characters and an orientation toward two-dimensional idols, which he cultivated in *Manga Burikko* and other publications, Ōtsuka nevertheless did not reject Miyazaki as an outsider or total other after his arrest. The English-language literature underscores that Ōtsuka saw books and magazines he had worked on in Miyazaki's room (Kinsella 2000: 127), called the man a friend (Treat 1993: 355) and continues to think of him when speaking the word "otaku" (Ōtsuka 2015: xxii, xxvi), but he goes much, much further in his initial response to the news coverage in 1989. Granted, this was before Miyazaki's guilt for the crimes was widely known and thoroughly confirmed, and some even suspected a setup by police and media. In this moment of uncertainty, Ōtsuka claimed Miyazaki as "my reader" (*boku no dokusha*) and said they were "connected" (*tsunagatteiru*). Such statements attracted journalists to him for commentary, and eventually led to a two-part dialogue with Nakamori Akio published in the volume *The Generation of M: Miyazaki and Us* (M no sedai: Bokura to Miyazaki-kun, 1989). As the title indicates, Ōtsuka sees Miyazaki as part of his same generation, or a person reared in the same environment. The two of them and their peers were essentially raised by media, or were cut adrift to become children of media, orphans or "the abandoned" (*sutego*). They had no strong authority figures or rolemodels, leaving them to the whims of media and to fend for themselves. Gleaning that it was not only Miyazaki's crimes that were on trial, but also his interests as an "otaku," Ōtsuka vows to stand with him. As someone involved in producing media, including some that Miyazaki consumed, Ōtsuka determines that this is his "responsibility," but the stakes are made more personal.50

Recognizing that the media and court of public opinion were judging a "way of life" (*ikikata*), "interests" (*shumi*) and "sensitivity" (*kanjusei*), Ōtsuka asserts that *lolicon* is "my own problem" (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 24). Indeed, using the word as slang for someone with a Lolita Complex, Ōtsuka states outright that, "I am a *lolicon*" (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 73). In his attraction to cuteness and cute girl characters, Ōtsuka perceives something of himself in Miyazaki, who appeared before him "as if showing me a mirror" and forced him into self-reflection, including on his own "self-image" (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 68–70). In raw exposure, Ōtsuka goes on to say:

To a fair extent, what appears to my eyes is the figure of someone hugging a doll as they go to pieces. This includes me. […] Like, I can't live unless I can hug "something cute" (*kawaii mono*).  […] For Miyazaki, those girls were cute dolls. It was like he needed to hug them, excessively. Excessively hugging, he by mistake put too much force into it and killed them. I sense that this is the core of his actions. It is an extremely shameful figure, but, after all, we must fix our gaze on that grotesque boy hugging his doll as he goes to pieces. We must see him as part of our own self-image. This is considerably draining, and we may be held in contempt, but I think we have to do it. (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 68–70)

This is a lot to absorb, but suffice it to say that Ōtsuka, who carried a doll with him as a child and keeps a larger one at home today (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 70–72), is facing something difficult in the mirror of Miyazaki. Indeed, his interactions with journalists and critics came from a moment of feeling "strangely synchronized" (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 17). That is, the distance between Miyazaki and himself felt "overly close to the point of being abnormal."

Rather than being a sense of victimization, as if an attack on Miyazaki was also an attack on him, Ōtsuka seems to have a "sense of the perpetrator" (*kagaisha no ishiki*).51 As a producer of "otaku" media and living in an environment associated with "otaku," Ōtsuka presents himself as having a sense of Miyazaki. Like many of those he spoke with, Ōtsuka apparently gazed at his own living space in Miyazaki's room and wondered, "How are he and I any different?" (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 20). So not only is Miyazaki not a "monster" as pundits would have it and instead a "human," but he is also a human like me and us (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 42–43). The difference is whether or not one commits criminal acts, of which we are all capable (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 44). This leads to revelations such as "I have lived holding a Miyazaki-like something in me" and "he and I are in a relationship of positive and negative." Ōtsuka: "I just by chance happened to live as the positive" (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 47).52 Things could have been different. He bristles at those involved with *lolicon* trying to distance themselves from Miyazaki (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 47–48). Instead, Ōtsuka advocates, on the one hand, appreciating the power of the media as a blade that can cut and even kill (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 61, 79), and, on the other, those of his generation seeing themselves in Miyazaki's room and taking action "as my own individual problem" (*boku kojin no mondai toshite*). Individual, but also shared, as there is a whole generation of Miyazaki and hundreds of thousands who share a way of life, interests and sensitivity associated with "otaku."53 This is my own and our problem.

For his part, Ōtsuka introduces a number of perspectives on himself as a *lolicon*, including that "the girl is myself, as well as a doll for my immature self to hug" (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 70), but he reaches an impasse.54 "That isn't sexual, is it?" he asks. "It's not about sex" (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 70). Thus cutting sex off, Ōtsuka can identify as a *lolicon* and acknowledge resonance with Miyazaki, but the final moment of strange synchronicity is evaded. This is a missed opportunity, as Ōtsuka does much to highlight how girls and children are commoditized and turned into dolls by parents, corporations and the media, including sexualization of and violence toward girls and children, which is something he calls on feminists to criticize (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 39–40, 71–73). One can detect here the beginnings of an ethical position that recognizes one's own desires and capacity for harm, however disturbing that recognition may be, and thus takes responsibility for them and commits to act with care. If Ōtsuka had finished his thought, he might have said *lolicon* in the sense of the orientation toward cute girl characters that he oversaw in *Manga Burikko* and his own past and present affection for dolls is acceptable, however "pathetic" and "shameful," but treating girls and women as media or material objects to be used and abused is wrong and criminal. A human being, we must insist, is not a "cute thing." This then would be an articulation of something like an ethics of affect and drawing lines in relation to fictional and real others, or as it is phrased in Ōtsuka's dialogue, "an ethics of the abandoned" (*sutego no rinri*) (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989b: 216).55 This is an ethics that comes not from a transcendental authority or system, but rather interactions with media and others of the abandoned generation. These ethics would become far more pronounced in the 1990s, even as the abandoned became much more prevalent during "the lost decade."

#### **1.6 "***Moe***" and Ethics: Nagayama Kaoru and Sasakibara Gō**

In 1989, Ōtsuka Eiji, who helped define an orientation of desire toward fiction in *Manga Burikko* earlier in the decade, refused to disidentify with Miyazaki Tsutomu, which frees people of the ethical responsibility to face the potential criminal among us and in us: "the otaku generation;" "the generation of M;" "Miyazaki and us." By not denying the potential for harm, which is real, Ōtsuka opens the door for ethical reflection on our objects and orientation of desire in action and practice. Such ethics came into sharper focus in the following decade. Significantly, in the 1990s, manga/anime fans began to more outspokenly and persistently discuss their affection for *bishōjo* characters. Specifically, on online bulletin boards at the beginning of the decade, there emerged among manga/anime fans a discourse of *moe*, or an affective response to fictional characters (Galbraith 2019: 81–82, 133–135). This sharing of affection reinvigorated the discussion of a two-dimensional orientation. As manga critic Nagayama Kaoru writes, the celebratory and festive aspect of what came to be known as the *moe* boom shares much with the *lolicon* boom in the early 1980s (Nagayama 2014: 115–116). One of the keys to *moe*, as Nagayama sees the phenomenon, is the vagary of the object and one's relationship to it. By using this term, one indicates the object, but is not too specific about desires or feelings. With the tacit rule being you do not interrogate those desires or feelings or step too far into someone else's interiority, communication can occur smoothly. "*Moe* is a euphemistic expression that, while indicating the object, is deftly made to hold the connotation that in fact it might not be the actual object" (Nagayama 2014: 115). Furthermore, while indicating a response to an object (or something), the feelings surrounding that response are unknown and should not be interrogated. In his analysis of *moe* works such as *Strawberry Marshmallow* (Ichigo mashimaro, 2002–), Nagayama further notes how the viewing subject becomes transparent and distant from an eroticism observed in characters, or how eroticism becomes detached from the subject, buried under *moe*  elements and made "unconscious" (Nagayama 2014: 301–303).

By Nagayama's estimation, the *moe* phenomenon has both positive and negative aspects. On the one hand, it marks an increasing awareness of interactions with "fiction as fiction" (Nagayama 2014: 158, 198). To read the elements of character design, story setting and so on at a meta-level, one needs to understand it as a fictional construct and to develop sufficient media literacy. On the other hand, the erasure of one's subject position and effacement of desire makes reflection difficult. This leads to a confusing situation where *moe* works are said to be desexualized, or to be purely about "the feels," but responses are teeming with sexual undertones that go unquestioned. For example, one character often said to have inspired the original online discourse is Moe from *Dinosaur Planet* (Kyōryū wakusei, 1993–1994) (Morikawa 2003: 17). Aired on NHK Educational Television, this show was intended for younger audiences, but attracted adult male fans as well. The character named Moe appears to be about 10 years old, so affection for her might be described as *lolicon*. This is important to note, given the arrest of Miyazaki Tsutomu just a few years prior to the advent of *moe*  discourse. The mainstream understanding of *lolicon*, along with new taboos to openly discussing sexuality in the wake of Miyazaki, encourages distancing and hiding. This is all the more problematic because *Dinosaur Planet* also features a human girl named Yamaguchi Misa (born in 1984), who explores the virtual world with a character avatar based on her and going by the handle name "Moe." That is, there is a live-action portion of the program, which features a human child actress, as well as an animated part where she becomes the cute girl character Moe. There is a potential blurring of fictional and real here that could be discussed, but more often is instead left vague.

For his part, Nagayama advocates confronting and working through desires in the open with others, which is to say self-reflection and social learning.  Indeed, Nagayama explains pornographic comics or *eromanga* as a mirror to reflect on desires:

Without papering over or whitewashing them, we must recognize the fact that there are dark desires in us. Even if they are disguised and suppressed, those dark desires exist. The brutes appearing in these works indulge in depravity as our surrogates. From a position of absolute safety, we simulate and enjoy "evil" (*aku*). If one asks if that is really all there is to it, however, then the answer is no. The human mind is much more complicated and much stranger. When reading brutish disgrace fantasy in *eromanga*, what we feel is not just the pleasure of an evil that smashes through and is in the first place impossible in reality, but also an unmistakable horror and disgust. We are supposed to be in a position of absolute safety, so why feel this way? For one thing, there is horror and disgust in response to oneself – that is, the realization of a monster inside taking pleasure in such evil. Furthermore, our antenna of imagination picks up feelings on the side of the receiver, whether we like it or not. In such a position, subjected to this, how would I feel? If one possesses enough imagination to read manga at all, then they probably cannot help but imagine things – even when they do not want to imagine them. (Nagayama 2014: 226–228).

Better to face these desires than deny them or, worse, project them onto a deviant and dangerous "other." One can learn a lot about the self, its relation to the other and society more broadly by thus confronting sex. Certainly Nagayama is not the first to say this, either.56 His ethical principle is that we must face ourselves, face the worst in us and what we might be capable of, rather than deny all that or project it onto a deviant and dangerous "other." That is, Nagayama does not believe that the potential problems of *lolicon* are limited to one man or to men of the past any more than deviant and dangerous desires are limited to "otaku" or "Japan."

The making conscious of one's relation to fictional and real others is the beginning of an ethics of *moe*, or an ethics of affective relations with characters. The media literacy associated with *moe* is learned informally in peer networks, and ethics seem to follow a similar process of emergence. Talking about *moe*, fans can be socialized into relations with fictional characters. While *moe* is by no means limited to fans of *bishōjo* (see for example Galbraith 2015), the slang originated among men responding affectively to cute girl characters. Furthermore, because men interacting with *bishōjo* characters raise the most concern about potential harm and are key to calls for increased regulation, the importance of the distinction between fiction and reality is clearest and most vigorously insisted on, which allows for exploring an ethics of *moe* in action and practice.

The orientation toward fiction reflexively and publically shared among manga/anime fans has consequences for how we understand *bishōjo* games. Undergoing a renaissance in the 1990s (Galbraith 2019: 114), *bishōjo* games focus on interactions with cute girl characters, affect players and are deeply tied to the discourse of *moe*. Interactions with *bishōjo* characters can involve explicit, extreme sex that would be criminal if it involved human actors. These cute girl characters appear young, and are often indicated to be below the age of 18 – even children. A good deal of content, then, might be associated with *lolicon*, which has been a keyword in global criticism of child pornography in Japan. However, when I spoke with Kagami Hiroyuki, a scenario writer for *bishōjo* games and respected figure in the industry, he firmly insisted that, "*Lolicon* games are not child pornography."57 While it might be seen as a predictable defensive posture, the assertion makes sense in a context where desire for the cute girl characters in *bishōjo* games, even when they are indicated to be children, is made explicitly and deliberately separate from desire for children. More broadly, Ōtsuka suggests that, "The virtual idols in *bishōjo* games" speak to "desire for simulation, where the bodies of women have come to be unnecessary" (Ōtsuka 2004: 129). Coming from someone such as Ōtsuka, who was witness to the emergence of an orientation of desire toward fiction and also to the trial of a man who blurred the line between fiction and reality to deadly effect, we would do well to understand statements about "the bodies of women" as "unnecessary" to be claims to a normative desire for fiction that is explicitly and deliberately separated from reality. In a way, Ōtsuka is educating fans about an orientation toward fiction as part of their informal learning, which reduces the potential for confusion and harm.58

This leads directly to the position of men such as Sasakibara Gō, an editor and cultural critic who has worked with Ōtsuka on various books and developed into an expert on cute girl characters, *moe* and *bishōjo* games, which he began playing in the 1990s. Clearly influenced by Ōtsuka, who is slightly his senior, Sasakibara began thinking about media effects and affects in the aftermath of the actions of Miyazaki Tsutomu, Aum Shinrikyō and others. "I started thinking about the role of human imagination," Sasakibara tells me over coffee in Shinjuku.59 Why did he start thinking?  Soon after we meet, Sasakibara, author of books such as *A Contemporary History of "Bishōjo:" "Moe" and Characters* ("Bishōjo" no gendai shi: "Moe" to kyarakutā, 2004), produces folders of print outs, tables and charts to explain things to me. Over the course of our conversation, Sasakibara tells me how he grew up with manga and anime, was attracted to cute girl characters from the late 1970s and worked in the manga/anime industry from the 1980s. He is, quite simply, among those who might be called an "otaku." Sasakibara is also a father, and he worries about how media will affect his children and whether or not they will be safe. Taking the affect of media as a given, Sasakibara takes issue with those who repudiate it. "We know that manga and anime have an effect on people," he informs me, shaking his head furiously. "Of course they do. People claim the influence when it is good and deny it when it is bad. I think that's dishonest." Such people might, for example, observe that a generation of young men became interested in soccer because of the manga/anime *Captain Tsubasa* (Kyaputen Tsubasa, 1981–), but then reject that media has any power to influence or impact reality after the arrest of Miyazaki.

As someone whose life was changed by manga/anime, Sasakibara advocates recognizing its power, even when that takes one into uncomfortable territory. If manga/anime and cute girl characters impacted Sasakibara, then he is in a similar category as Miyazaki. This is not to say that Sasakibara is in any way a criminal, but he nevertheless recognizes a shared "problem of the heart" (*kokoro no mondai*). Stated simply, the problem is that imaginary sex, violence and crime could potentially lead to harming others. There are three important aspects to this recognition: first, media moves people; second, there is potential for blurring the line between fiction and reality; and third, people have the capacity to harm others. It is not increased regulation that Sasakibara favors, but rather personal and shared understanding and respect for the affect of media:

Humans are affected by all the things around them, including media. The question is how do humans think about this affect? What do we do about it? […] We are greatly affected by media, which is part of our environment. The question is how do we live and not commit crimes? We need to look at how so many people are affected by media and do not commit crimes.

This call to think and live with media that affects is also a call to act responsibly without harming others. This is, I argue, a crucial aspect of manga/anime fandom in contemporary Japan. In it I see emergent forms of media literacy and ethics. Part of this ethics of affect is drawing and insisting on a line between fiction and reality, which is learned in informal, peer networks and maintained through collective activity and practice (see Chapters 2 and 4). *Moe* is not only an affective response to fictional characters, but also shared movement, which supports life (see Chapters 3 and 5). This, too, resonates with Ōtsuka, who understood that the media and material objects symbolized by Miyazaki's room are necessary for some people's "spiritual stability," or as a resource for survival for those "going to pieces" (Ōtsuka and Nakamori 1989a: 24–25). Indeed, this is one of the primary reasons that he committed himself to defending media and material interests as part of a way of life after the arrest of Miyazaki in 1989.60 These things are necessary for many to live and move on.

The politics of life around *moe* articulates with the crisis of hegemony and reproduction in Japan since the 1990s, when an increasingly large population of young people was set adrift by economic unrest and disintegrating institutions. Facing a so-called "love gap" (*ren'ai kakusa*), people began to imagine and create alternatives. Even as Allison observed the creation of virtual worlds, pets and friends as a major trend in Japan in the 1990s (Allison 2006: 14, 91, 201), so too was the creation of virtual lovers. Consider that Sasakibara was at the time planning on producing an elaborate virtual reality and social gaming system, whereby a virtual girlfriend would be loaded on one's computer and talk with the player while he was at home, stay in contact by cellphone while he was out and wait for him to return. Sasakibara conveys to me that he anticipated that having a virtual girlfriend would contribute to "psychological wellbeing," which comes from caring and being cared for. "It almost worked," Sasakibara says, wryly. "But the technology wasn't quite there." (It is now, in fact, in the form of Gatebox [Galbraith 2019: 1–4].) Instead, the 1990s saw the explosion of *bishōjo* characters in manga and anime, the rise of *bishōjo* games simulating intimate relationships and the discourse of *moe*, which points toward affective relations with fictional characters that are real and socially recognized.

In this way, just as virtual idols and girlfriends were imagined and created in *bishōjo* games, a new reality of life and love with fictional characters was imagined and created in Japan in the 1990s. These characters not only addressed the "love gap," but also encouraged imagining and creating new forms of life and love. Even as these alternatives become more common, they are imagined as problems. So it is that sociologist Yamada Masahiro, who gained notoriety in the 1990s by identifying problems such as "parasite singles," came to be concerned about men finding "pseudo partners" in "virtual worlds" (Yamada 2014: 18, 152). In the perceived flight from reality, critics see problems for the nation and its welfare and future. In addition to alarm about imaginary sex, violence and crime, which are threats that might be realized, a serious problem for Japan and its future is posed by the explosive growth on manga, anime and computer/console games featuring *bishōjo* characters and dedicated to triggering affective responses in fans, and the seemingly endless expansion of events such as the Comic Market, where fans express and share their affection for such characters. The fact that manga/ anime fans generally and *bishōjo* game players specifically are moved by fictional characters to the extent that they claim to be married to them – even as the marriage rate plummets; virtual families on the rise even as actual families decline – is taken to be paradigmatic of the perversity of the contemporary moment. In any case, the situation is abnormal and something needs to be done. There is growing tension between those imagining and creating virtual reality and worlds in and around manga, anime and computer/console games and those seeking to re-establish and maintain the hegemonic socio-political order in Japan. Along the way, imagined perversity has become a serious problem.

#### **1.7 Imagined Perversion in Japan**

Rising during the crisis of hegemony and reproduction, in 1999, Ishihara Shin'tarō, co-author of *The Japan That Can Say No* ("No" to ieru Nihon, 1989) and a political firebrand known for apprehensions about the abnormal nation, became the Governor of Tokyo. Resonating with national politics, Ishihara campaigned against "harmful environments" (*yūgai kankyō*), which effectively expanded the scope of "harm" (Nagaoka 2010: 223).61 With characteristic confidence in his positions, Ishihara called for revision of the Tokyo Metropolitan Ordinance Regarding the Healthy Development of Youths, which would target manga crossing certain sexual lines as harmful and remove them from the environment. Famously, the proposed revision included the novel concept of "non-existent youth" (*hijitsuzai seishōnen*), or characters that could be recognized as underage and so should not be involved in sex acts. Receiving significant resistance from promoters of freedom of expression, industry organizations and manga/anime fans, who percieved the revision to be overrearch by authorities wanting to dictate morality (McLelland 2011: 355–361), Ishihara found himself having to answer to critics. At a press conference on December 17, 2010, Ishihara was asked by a reporter to explain the need for increased regulation. Unhappy to be questioned, Ishihara responded bluntly:

There are after all perverts in the world. Unfortunate people with messed up DNA. People like that, with thoughts like that… Well, feeling ecstasy from reading and writing this stuff is fine, after all. But I don't think that it would be allowed in Western society. Japan is too open. After all, it's abnormal, right? […] A man can't marry a 7- or 8-year-old girl or rape an innocent child, but somehow this should be allowed if the stories are drawings? Such things serve no purpose. I think that there is harm and not a single benefit from them.62

Note five things: First, while the Tokyo Ordinance was meant to ensure the healthy development of youth, who should not see certain kinds of manga, the reason for its revision shifts here to adults who want to produce and consume such manga; second, these adults are perverts and a threat to youth (who might also become such adults); third, the problem is the thoughts that they think, which are perverse enough to suggest that they might be genetically damaged; fourth, such perversion might be tolerable, but it is too open in Japan at present and would not be allowed in "the West," which becomes a normative and aspirational model (despite Ishihara's own writing suggesting the need to refuse foreign pressure); and fifth, this manga caters to perverts and is nothing but harmful. On this last point, there is a subtle blurring of various strands of discourse about "otaku," where virtual rape raises the specter of the potential pedophile and predator, while imagining marriage to a child character suggests other perversions. Indeed, when Ishihara's subordinate, Vice Governor Inose Naoki, provided a specific example in his own explanation of the necessity for new regulation, he chose *My Wife is an Elementary Student* (Oku-sama wa shōgakusei, 2006–), which does not contain explicit sex scenes, but no doubt brings to mind vague anxieties about the perverts producing and consuming such manga (Nagayama 2014: 321–322). When the reporter pressed the issue of harm, Ishihara snapped that, "It's obvious that we should regulate this stuff." Just looking at the images is enough to know that they cross a line. Those who resist this commonsense position are perverts, sympathizers or enablers.63

Employing familiar strategies of smearing and silencing opponents as "porn politicians" and "the enemy of children" (Fujimoto 2011: 37; recall the actions of Asō Tarō and comments by Yamada Tarō), Ishihara succeeded in pushing through revisions to the Tokyo Ordinance in December 2010.64 The language of the revised ordinance targets manga, anime and games depicting "sexual or pseudo sexual acts that would be illegal in real life" and "sexual or pseudo sexual acts between close relatives whose marriage would be illegal in real life" (see McLelland 2011). Despite the mass resistance it met, the revised ordinance expands the scope of harm to depictions of any sex act that would be illegal in "real life." Essentially, Ishihara's position is that it is better to err on the side of protecting children from perversion and perverts, and it finds supporters in unexpected places. For example, Maeda Toshio, an artist known for adult manga depicting ultra-violent sex with tentacled monsters, explains the need to regulate certain manga:

But the point is, it looks pedophilic. In some manga, the female, you know, the victim, looks six or seven years old. I hate it. The Tokyo governor tried to propose a strict law against such pedophile manga, and many famous manga artists were so against it because it is against freedom of speech or such crap.  It would be so bad, right? So before something happens, we should do something about it. My manga, I think, as far as I'm concerned, is just designed for grownups. It's completely 18 plus. It's completely different from *moe* style, with, you know, the little girls as victims. (Quoted in O'Mara and Schley 2015)

Again, it is not the youth, but the perverted adults who might prey on them that are under scrutiny. The message could not be any clearer: Perverts are putting our "baby girls" and "daughters" in danger. "So before something happens, we should do something about it" – a perfect summation of pre-emptive policing.

While coming out of situated local debates in Japan since the 1990s, it is crucial to note that these positions resonate with global debates that have been building in other parts of the world since the 1970s, which contributes to a growing consensus that something must be done about manga/anime forms that cross the line. Since the 1970s, concerns about children led to campaigns against sexual abuse and pornography and new laws in North America, Europe and beyond (Adler 2001: 211–212, 218, 221; also Ost 2009). More important than the specifics of these laws is the direction they broadly pointed. In a public dialogue in France in 1978, philosopher Michel Foucault elucidated:

[T]he legislator will not justify the measures that he is proposing by saying the universal decency of mankind must be defended. What he will say is there are people for whom others' sexuality may become a permanent danger. In this category, of course, are children, who may find themselves at the mercy of an adult sexuality that is alien to them and may well be harmful to them. Hence there is a legislation that appeals to this notion of the vulnerable population, a "high-risk population." (Foucault 1988: 276)

An issue for Foucault is how sexuality becomes a risk to be managed, or what he calls a "roaming danger" or "omnipresent phantom" (Foucault 1988: 281). Managing the risk of sexuality has consequences. As philosopher Guy Hocquenghem, one of Foucault's interlocutors in the public dialogue in 1978, puts it:

What we are doing is constructing an entirely new type of criminal, a criminal so inconceivably horrible that his crime goes beyond any explanation, any victim. […] In the case of *attentat sans violence*, the offense in which the police have been unable to find anything, nothing at all, in that case, the criminal is simply a criminal because he is a criminal, because he has those tastes. […] In a way the movement feeds upon itself. The crime vanishes, nobody is concerned any longer to know whether in fact a crime was committed or not, whether someone has been hurt or not. No one is even concerned any more whether there was actually a victim. The crime feeds totally upon itself in a manhunt, by the identification, the isolation of the category of individuals regarded as pedophiles.  Sex "is organized into systems of power, which reward and encourage some individuals and activities, while punishing and suppressing others" (Rubin 2011: 180). Put simply, sex is organized into "good" and "bad" forms, with the latter tied in many ways to risk and danger, so it is not surprising that "eroticism [that] transgresses generational boundaries [… is] the lowliest of all" (Rubin 2011: 149). As Rubin highlights, "For over a century, no tactic for stirring up erotic hysteria has been as reliable as the appeal to protect children. The current wave of erotic terror has reached its deepest in those areas bordered in some way, if only symbolically, by the sexuality of the young" (Rubin 2011: 141).  Rubin argues that "some sex acts are considered to be so intrinsically vile that no one should be allowed under any circumstances to perform them" (Rubin 2011: 162), but it also turns out that no one should be allowed to imagine them. Even if no crime is committed in imagining, it might "lead to crimes and should therefore be prevented" (Rubin 2011: 165). If this is "victimless crime," then victims are imagined and created. "They draw on the pre-existing discursive structure which invents victims in order to justify treating 'vices' as crimes," Rubin writes. "Even when activity is acknowledged to be harmless, it may be banned because it is alleged to 'lead' to something ostensibly worse (another manifestation of the domino theory). Great and mighty edifices have been built on the basis of such phantasms" (Rubin 2011: 168–169). Just as the threat posed by "bad sex" is often "imaginary," what divides good and bad sex is "an imaginary line" (Rubin 2011: 151). There is a ceaseless struggle over "where to draw the line" (Rubin 2011: 151). In managing the risk of sexuality, "police, media, and public hysteria have targeted strangers and weirdos […] real and imagined" (Rubin 2011: 185). Even as victims are imagined and created, so too are criminals, and all are caught up in regimes of policing imaginary sex, violence and crime.

What Foucault, Rubin and others – notably Hall, writing in the United Kingdom at around the same time – drew attention to in the late 1970s has only become more pronounced in recent years. In the United Kingdom, media and sexuality scholars Feona Attwood and Clarissa Smith argue that many lawmakers operate with the assumption that "arousal – particularly sexual arousal – is potentially risky," and that such risk should "be managed through legislation" (Attwood and Smith 2010: 187). The identification of risky sexuality, Attwood and Smith continue, "enables accusations or identification of possible 'harm' to translate into calls for more and more legislation against the imagination" (Attwood and Smith 2010: 187). As Foucault suggested, it is potential sexual arousal in relation to children that is considered to be the riskiest and is thus most subject to legislation, even when, as sexuality scholar Mark McLelland points out in the context of contemporary Australia, the sex in question involves "*fantasy alone*" (McLelland 2005: 75). Writing in the context of the United Kingdom, legal scholar Suzanne Ost adds:

Contemporary child pornography law is not limiting itself towards the main harm of visual depictions that exploit real children, but is now directed towards exploitation of the non-existent child, possible future harm that could be caused to other children, and non-exploitative relationships involving sixteen- and seventeen-year-olds. It would seem that the original legislative purpose of preventing the exploitation of real children has gradually metamorphosed into a more all-encompassing construction of harm. Any behaviour related to child pornography, whether real, potential, remote or virtual, is thought to give rise to a risk of "harm." (Ost 2009: 89)

Among the relationships that are cause for concern are those between perverted men and cute girl characters in manga, anime and computer/ console games, which might be harmful. Even as Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada take legal stances against sexual depictions of underage cartoon characters (McLelland 2017: 11–13), this is not a case of panicked lawmakers "losing the capacity to understand the distinction between fantasy and reality" (Furedi 2015: 9). Rather, fantasy is being translated into reality by law (Hall et al 1978: 42). Encounters with certain media, critics worry, will lead to the realization of potential victims and criminals (Attwood and Smith 2010: 185–187; also Mazzarella 2013). Aiming to reduce encounters with certain media, the law translates fantasy into reality. Erasing the distinction between "virtual" and "actual" forms of child pornography (McLelland 2005: 63– 64; also Ost 2009), for example, makes certain comics, cartoons and computer/console games equivalent to photographic records of child abuse.65 To prevent harm that may potentially arise from production and consumption, the cartoon character is translated into a child, the producers and consumers into child abusers and production and consumption into crimes punishable by law.66

The resonance between Ost's discussion of the shift toward non-existent youth and potential harm and what happened in Japan in 2010 should not go unnoticed, because we are seeing a convergence that allows for regulators to act on local concerns about manga/anime and its fans and global concerns about the safety of children. These concerns do not always or necessarily overlap, but they are coming together in the new moral position against manga/anime and forms that are "harmful," if not criminal. In recent years, advocates of increased regulation of imaginary sex, violence and crime in Japan are gaining support from international organizations that argue that the nation does not do enough to regulate child pornography, despite legally banning its production, sale and distribution in 1999 (Leheny 2006: 110–111).67

The current issue is not recordings of sex acts involving children, but rather "virtual child pornography," which does not include an actual child in its production, but rather is "text and images that are purely imaginary and fictional" (McLelland 2005: 63). To root out virtual child pornography, countries such as Australia, the United Kingdom and Canada have already expanded the legal definition of "person" to include fictional characters. This raises questions – writer Neil Gaiman opines "it's nonsensical in every way that it could possibly be nonsensical" (Gaiman 2008) – but it is nevertheless expected that Japan will fall in line for the sake of protecting children.68 In the United States, obscenity law and other regulations limit virtual child pornography while still protecting freedom of expression, but case law in Japan has narrowly defined obscenity in terms of genital exposure (Allison 2000: 149–150; also Cather 2012), thus missing the content and context of sex acts in adult manga, anime and computer/console games, which can involve underage characters.69

In Japan, activism for increased regulation has been slowed by robust resistance to any form of censorship and "thought policing," which reduces the ability to pass broad measures. So it was, in June 2014, that the Japanese government passed new legislation against child pornography, which outlawed so-called "simple possession." International critics were outraged, however, that Japanese legislators did not take the opportunity to stand against virtual child pornography as well. In a widely circulated segment for CNN, a reporter enters a store in Akihabara, picks up a manga book and describes its content as "so graphic, so sexually explicit, [that] we turned our undercover cameras off" (Ripley et al 2014). The lurid details are left to the imagination, but the implications are not. The reporter interviews Japanese activists drawing connections between adult manga and the molestation of children. In the end, one wonders, along with the reporter, if "cartoons might be fueling the darkest desires of criminals" (Ripley et al 2014). Note the emphasis on potentiality: Cartoons *might* be fueling the darkest of desires, which *might* lead to sex crimes; adults *might* be criminals, and children *might* be harmed. The potential of harm is enough to be incredulous about the Japanese government not doing more to protect children. Because of its paucity in regulating virtual child pornography, Japan has been shamed by the United Nations, UNICEF, ECPAT and the US Department of State, among others, as an "international hub for the production and trafficking of child pornography" (Hellmann 2014). Notice how virtual has dropped out here, which demonstrates the collapsing together of virtual and actual forms in condemnation of Japan. This in turn emboldens politicians such as Ishihara. While the concerns are not necessarily the same, domestic and international criticism of the perversity and perceived problems of "otaku" and desire for cute girl characters converge in calls for increased regulation. The result has been more campaigning for and against manga/anime expression, especially adult works that cross all kinds of lines. At stake here is no less than what social theorist Michael Warner calls "the imaginary rules of sex" (Warner 2000: 26–27), and a tendency toward expansion and densification of law that McLelland dubs the "juridification of the imagination" (McLelland 2012: 473). The scope of potentially harmful or risky sexuality mutates as analysts and activists slam manga and anime in general as "subliminal child porn" (Kumi 2016) and politicians around the world see erotic but not explicitly sexual series such as *Eromanga Sensei* (2017) and demand outright bans because of scenes "so disturbing I won't, I just can't, describe them" (Coughlan 2020). The details are left to the imagination, even as one shudders to imagine the perverts producing and consuming such disturbing content.70

# **1.8 Conclusion**

The year is 2113. Japan is a stable, safe and prosperous island nation in a world that has descended into chaos. The secret to Japan's success is the Sibyl System, a central computer that constantly monitors the populace.  If a person's "crime coefficient" exceeds a certain level, authorities are dispatched and the person is pursued, apprehended or killed. These so-called "latent criminals" are put into specific places and occupations where their freedom is limited. It does not matter that they have not committed a crime and have no intention of doing so. Latent criminals are arrested and neutralized so that the crime never happens. This is the world of *Psycho-Pass* (Saiko pasu), a hit media franchise in Japan that began in 2012. *Psycho-Pass* harkens back to Philip K. Dick's "The Minority Report" (1956), which, fittingly for its subject matter, predicted the phenomenon of "preemptive policing" that would come in the 1970s (Hall et al 1978: 42). Similarly, *Psycho-Pass* predicts a future of policing virtual crimes, which is to say crimes that have yet to be actualized. It predicts a future of virtual regulation, which turns virtual criminals into actual targets of the law. The author of *Psycho-Pass* is Urobuchi Gen, who got his start as a scenario writer for *bishōjo* games.

**Image 5.** Cover of *The Song of Saya* by Nitroplus. Used with permission from rightsholder. License: CC BY 4.0.

Like so many others in the *bishōjo* game industry, Urobuchi appears to wonder when he too will be marked as a latent criminal.

Such a future may seem unlikely. After all, Urobuchi has been heralded as a breakout talent after penning the script for *Puella Magi Madoka Magica* (Mahō shōjo Madoka magika, 2011), a television anime that won Grand Prize at the Japan Media Arts Awards. Yet Urobuchi's earlier work for *bishōjo* games such as *The Song of Saya* (Saya no uta, Nitroplus, 2003) is certainly enough to get him on many watchlists.71 *Saya* is the story of a man who sees the world covered in gore and people as hideous monsters, even as he perceives Saya, a Lovecraftian creature, as an attractive girl. The two move in together, become lovers and murder humans and consume their flesh.  *Saya* is on the darker and more disturbing side of *bishōjo* games, but it is ultimately a love story about a co-dependent and violent relationship that leads the characters, and the player, into the depths of madness. *Madoka* is less direct in this, but tells the story of magical girls who trade their souls for wishes and are doomed to fight witches until they go mad and become them. It, too, is ultimately a love story between two of these magical girls, and Urobuchi intended it to be commentary on child soldiers and the struggle for survival (Nihon Keizai Shimbun 2011). Fans fell in love with the cute girl characters – indicated to be about 14 years old – and produced fanzines imagining sex with and between them, even as companies spun out endless media and material to capitalize on fan affection. Just another day in the manga/anime world. But then why are images of *Madoka* appearing in a televised debate about the need for increased regulation of imaginary sex and violence (TV Takkuru 2014)? Why are these images being discussed in terms of *lolicon* – in the same space as questions about marrying *bishōjo* characters and actual crimes against children? Potential harm that demands preemptive action? Perhaps Urobuchi's imagination of sex and violence involving cute girl characters in *Saya* and *Madoka* is abnormal and dangerous. Perhaps we ought to do something. Perhaps the future of *Psycho-Pass*  is not so unlikely after all.

The groundwork for all of this was established in the response to "otaku" in Japan in the 1990s. This was a time when a crisis of hegemony and reproduction fed into anxiety and concern about media, youth and sexuality (Allison 2006: 75; also Leheny 2006). In Japan, as in other parts of the world, many were fearful for and of youth (boyd 2014: 17), who might become the target of abnormal "otaku" desires or develop them and target others. The massive growth of manga, anime and games, including adult forms, in the 1990s made them a cause of concern as potentially "harmful" (Kinsella 2000: 131–133). At the same time, the fact that manga/anime was a growing market during the recessionary 1990s, and increasingly spreading around the world and winning hearts and minds, caught the attention of politicians. As Cather points out in her analysis of a high-profile obscenity trial against adult manga, it was precisely because manga was considered important economically, socially and politically that regulatory intervention became necessary (Cather 2012: 246).72 A similar dynamic was at work with computer/console games in the 1990s, when Japan emerged as the global center of console gaming and games were recognized as a creative sector of national importance, which articulated with concern about their impact on youth and sexuality and a desire to police them. The imaginary sex, violence and crime of *bishōjo* games, along with their perverse and perverting imaginary, made them a target for regulation.

Against the backdrop of increased nervousness about imaginary sex, violence and crime, this chapter has shown how the 1990s also saw the emergence of discourse about *moe*, or an affective response to fictional characters. The use of this word appears to indicate emergent media literacy and ethics, which are learned in informal, peer networks. Manga/ anime fans have learned to separate fiction and reality and orient themselves toward fiction as such, which is what they respond to affectively. Aware that this distinction is not obvious and automatic, critics advocate ethical reflection and action. While affective relations with manga/anime characters became notable in the early 1980s (Galbraith 2019: 63–74), this was accelerated and amplified in the 1990s. Five factors contributed to the emergence of discourse about *moe*: First, a generation had grown up with manga, anime and computer/console games and in intimate relation to fictional characters; second, they had the legacy of adult fans, media and desires to build on; third, more manga, anime and computer/console games than ever before were being produced, and they featured more *bishōjo* characters designed to be more attractive to fans and encourage consumption across media and material forms; fourth, economic and social unrest, combined with persistent hegemonic gender ideals that made people feel like failures, contributed to seeking out alternatives in relationships with fictional characters; and fifth, the internet helped these fans find one another and events and spaces to gather and share their affection. This led to alternative social worlds and realities (Condry 2013: 203), which can be as transformative as they are perceived to be threatening (Laycock 2015: 10–14). In the late 1990s and early 2000s, *moe* moved from online discussions to Akihabara, a neighborhood in eastern Tokyo associated with computers and *bishōjo* games. So it was – under the watch of Governor Ishihara Shin'tarō, no less – that Akihabara became "the *Moe* City," where affection for cute girl characters has come to be more open and visible than anywhere else in Tokyo, Japan or the world. In the next chapter, we turn to Akihabara – where *bishōjo* game production companies, retailers and players gather – to discuss imaginary sex in public.

# **2. Coming of Age in Akihabara: Imaginary Sex in Public**

#### **2.1 Introduction**

*Bishōjo* characters are everywhere: on signboards in the street, on storefronts and packaging, in the form of figurines; their voices can be heard coming from looped video clips played on television and computer screens; women are costuming as them. Men are lined up on the street and in stores to make reservations and buy newly released adult computer games featuring cartoony cute girl characters, or what they call *bishōjo* games. They move en mass from one store to the next looking for the best price and promotional extras on specific titles.  Some wear shirts with images of *bishōjo* characters on them; the cute cartoony faces are large and gaze out at the viewer with massive, emotive eyes, drawing attention away from the faces of the men wearing them. Using their smartphones while in line, the men scroll through company websites and fan pages and scan discussion threads to decide where to walk next. A few watch live-streaming broadcasts from local reporters who describe the street, stores and swag to look out for. A car decorated with images of *bishōjo* characters drives by; in the passenger seat next to the driver is a body pillow emblazoned with a full-body image of a *bishōjo* character who is partially nude and blushing; photographs are snapped with smartphones and posted online, which invites comments about how embarrassing the display of affection is, or, in the vernacular of those assembled, how "painful" (*itai*). Clearly this is a pain that is shared and also pleasurable.

**How to cite this book chapter:**

Galbraith, P. W. 2021. *Ethics of Affect: Lines and Life in a Tokyo Neighborhood*. Pp. 77–115. Stockholm: Stockholm University Press. DOI: http://doi.org/10.16993 /bbn.c. License: CC BY 4.0.

**Image 6.** Flier for Lonely's event in Akihabara. Photo by the author. License: CC BY 4.0.

This is "the Day of Erotic Games" (*erogē no hi*), when, once a month, new *bishōjo* games go on sale at stores in the Akihabara neighborhood in eastern Tokyo.73 It is an event and experience, something to be a part of, says Lonely Fukusuke, who runs a promotion called *Bishōjo* Game Sixteen in Akihabara.74 Despite his nickname, Lonely is anything but today, as he is surrounded by dozens of *bishōjo* game players. With proof of purchase of a *bishōjo* game, Lonely provides these men with a place to sit and a discount on drinks. Lonely also organizes a show hosted by voice actresses working in the *bishōjo* game industry, and invites guests from production companies to stop by and talk to the assembled players about new and upcoming releases. Most of the guests are from production companies located in Akihabara, but others come from Nagoya, Osaka and even Hokkaidō far to the north. There is a great deal of intimate sharing about playing *bishōjo* games, what happens behind the scenes of production and more. There are also promotional giveaways, which start with the guest asking, "Does anyone want this?" Hands immediately shoot into the air and men shout, "Yes! Me! I want it!" A quick group game of rock-paper-scissors decides the winner. Inspired by the lively discussion, men start talking to one another about what games they have bought today and why. Laughter fills the air. Looking on, Lonely Fukusuke smiles.

This chapter discusses Akihabara as the center of the *bishōjo* gaming world and as a space for socializing players into it. Akihabara is a space of imagination that excites the imagination (Galbraith 2019: 131). For manga and anime fans generally, it is "the Holy Land of Otaku," but, as design theorist Morikawa Ka'ichirō points out, it is more specifically "the *Moe* City" (Morikawa 2003). Akihabara is dominated by people responding affectively to fictional characters; it is a space where affection for *bishōjo* characters has become more open and visible than anywhere else in Tokyo, Japan or the world. It is a space produced by spectacle: affection for cute girl characters, sex, media and material culture. If people, thrilled to join the crowd in spectacular spaces such as Times Square in New York City, used to think, "*Let's go and be with them and live*" (Berman 2009: xxvi), then of Akihabara they think, *"Let's go and be with bishōjo characters and bishōjo-oriented men and live*." Akihabara is also a space of imagined dangers. For critics of desire for *bishōjo* characters – who in their cartoony cuteness appear young, are often explicitly below the age of 18 and are sometimes even indicated to be children – Akihabara is a symbol of the scourge of "virtual child pornography," which is spreading from Japan like a contagious disease (Lah 2010; Nakasatomi 2013). Photographs of *bishōjo* game players in Akihabara are used to decry Japan as a nation of perverts, pedophiles and predators (see Galbraith 2019: 71). Coming in a discussion of child pornography and abuse, readers are told that stores in Akihabara "stock a profuse amount of video games where the objective is to sexually subjugate underage girls" (Adelstein and Kubo 2014), with the implication being that such content and an environment that tolerates it put children at risk. This chapter approaches Akihabara as a space of contested imaginings of media and its a/effects. Drawing on the work of literary critics and social theorists Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner (Berlant and Warner 1998; Warner 2000; Warner 2002), I look at Akihabara as a public culture where imaginary sex is played out, practiced and politicized. In my field interviews, encounters and participation in the public culture of imaginary sex, I observe an "ethics of queer life" (Warner 2000: 33) being both practiced and contested.

## **2.2** *Bishōjo* **Game Central**

Located in eastern Tokyo, Akihabara is firmly established in the popular imaginary of Japan. It is by far the most famous of the socalled "electric towns," or areas where stores selling home appliances, electronics and computers cluster together. With the rise of Japanese electronics globally since the 1980s, Akihabara has been permanently inscribed as a symbol of Japan, technology and the future. When manga and anime reached unprecedented heights of production in Japan in the 1990s, the density of stores in Akihabara selling such media and related material and merchandise brought renewed interest to the area. Locally, manga and anime were bright spots in a recessionary economy. Globally, manga and anime were part of the image of "Cool Japan," which put Akihabara back on the map. Along the stretch of Chūō Street from Kanda River to Kuramaebashi Street and in adjacent side streets and blocks are more stores specializing in manga, anime and related media and material than anywhere else in the world. Signs featuring manga/anime-style characters appear everywhere, but disappear quickly after one leaves the unofficial but surprisingly clear boundaries of the area.

The transformation of Akihabara from an "electric town" to an "otaku town" is basically stores selling home appliances and electronics transitioning to computers, the consumer base thus shifting from families to male enthusiasts and manga/anime content catering to those men changing perceptions of the area (see Morikawa 2003). Significantly, the first manga/anime content to enter the space was computer games featuring manga/anime-style characters, or what can be categorized as *bishōjo* games.75 These games appealed to a generation that had grown up with manga and anime and in intimate relation to cartoon characters designed to be increasingly attractive and appearing in adult media.

**Image 7.** Shelves packed with *bishōjo* games in Akihabara. This particular store had hundreds of different titles occupying an entire floor. They encouraged physical purchase through premiums, which were limited and exclusive to different retailers in the area. Photo by the author. License: CC BY 4.0.

Even as computers became more popular in the 1990s, adult computer games became compatible with the Windows operating system, which greatly increased their reach. Sexually explicit content nearly doubled its share of the computer game market between 1993 and 1994, reaching an estimated 35 percent (Pelletier-Gagnon and Picard 2015: 35). Further, Konami's *Tokimeki Memorial* (Heart Beat Highschool, 1994), a dating simulator game without sex scenes, became a mainstream national phenomenon and brought new players and producers to *bishōjo* games. The boom in *bishōjo* games overlapped with the boom in manga and anime in the 1990s, as well as more shared awareness among fans of the attractiveness and affect of characters. With stores such as Messe Sanoh, Gamers, Trader, Getchuya, Sofmap, Toranoana, Medio and Melon Books advertising *bishōjo* games in Akihabara in the early 2000s, it is no wonder that these accounted for the majority of images on the street at the time (Morikawa 2003: 1–2, 4–5, 95; also Kagami 2010).

At the time of my fieldwork in Akihabara in 2014 and 2015, despite advances in digital distribution online, many *bishōjo* games were still sold as software on physical disks housed in large paper boxes emblazoned with alluring cover art and placed on shelves inside brick-andmortar stores. While one could buy them through online retailers such as Amazon.co.jp, shipping was limited to Japan and there was a good deal of concern about certain titles being denied visibility for adult content that somehow or another crossed the line (Nagayama 2014: 339–340; also Kagami 2010). The more extreme, underground and fan-created stuff could more readily be found offline in limited circulation in Akihabara. Moreover, browsing was easier in dedicated stores that had multiple games on display in the same space, eye-catching advertisements and organized displays. In stores, one was a gamer among gamers, which was comforting. Further, buying at stores, one could solicit advice from staff, who were knowledgeable about the industry and offered insight and guidance. At stores in Akihabara, players expected that along with their purchase would come premiums such as limited-edition box art, swag and signed original art. For these reasons, a surprisingly large number of *bishōjo* game players still left their homes and physically visited stores, bought software packages and took them back to load on desktop computers. Some kept the boxes in collections, but, due to small living quarters and the cost of *bishōjo* games – around 10,000 yen, or US\$100 – they would often sell used games to second-hand stores. Because new releases were relatively infrequent and rigidly scheduled, players gathered in Akihabara on certain days of the month to buy and sell games. In the second decade of the new millennium, when global gaming was increasingly dominated by digital downloads and streaming, *bishōjo* games were still stubbornly material and local.

*Bishōjo* game production companies are also concentrated in Akihabara. Although there are no official numbers on geographic distribution, the vast majority of *bishōjo* game production companies that I visited were in unassuming office and apartment buildings in and around Akihabara. The concentration of production companies in the area was presented to me as common knowledge and indeed common sense. The president of Front Wing, for example, told me that his production company – one of the largest in the industry – was located just a few minutes from Akihabara Station because it is where everyone and everything is.76 Being in Akihabara makes it easier to build relationships with other companies, sellers and dedicated players, as well as to build up promotional discourse. On the other end of the spectrum, I was often told the story of Nitroplus, which, although it still produced adult computer games, was perceived to have left the tight-knit collective. Enjoying mainstream success, the company created distance from its past by literally distancing itself from Akihabara and moving to the Skytree, a national landmark in the Oshiage neighborhood of Tokyo and symbol of Japan's creative future.77 When meeting with staff from production companies in Akihabara, they often suggested we talk in spots away from the station and Chūō Street, which they saw as crawling with *bishōjo* game players who might overhear sensitive conversations. To create distance, we would meet outside of the imagined limits of Akihabara – at restaurants and cafés on the other side of Kuramaebashi Street or Shōwa Street. The boundary between inside and outside was clearly and consistently drawn.

In Akihabara, through collective activity and practice, a space of imaginary sex is created out of the built environment. This is what it means for Akihabara to be the *Moe* City: It is a space where the affective response to fictional characters has transformed the built environment, where "otaku" movement in relation to *bishōjo* "generates a world, a reality" (Lamarre 2006: 383). Some celebrate this space of "otaku," but others critique a space "overflowing with things that offer convenient gratification of sexual desire" catering to the "virtual sexuality" of men who "reject the physical" (Okada et al 2005: 170– 172).  This can and has generated friction with local authorities, who regulate the streets carefully and have more or less contained the shared movement that turned the streets into an "otaku" festival during the *moe* boom in the mid-2000s.78 Meanwhile, reports that *bishōjo* games are being distributed online – through piracy and resale, primarily – and making their way to players around the world bring journalists, critics and activists to Japan and Akihabara.79 These games, we are told, "feature girlish looking characters," "some are violent" and they are stepping "closer and closer to reality" (Lah 2010). Even as there are fears of the boundaries of Akihabara becoming permeable, *bishōjo* game producers and players are increasingly concerned about the world outside leaking into Akihabara.

### **2.3 "Japan Only:" On Closed Circulation**

One of my first tasks in the field was to play *bishōjo* games and familiarize myself with the content. Many of these games are of dubious legal status beyond Japan, and so I could not play them until I was back in the country. Upon arrival in April 2014, I bought a cheap personal computer from the massive electronics store Yodobashi Camera in Akihabara. While in the area, I also purchased some *bishōjo* games, based on buzz and store recommendations. That evening, after returning to my rented room, I tried to load the game software onto my new computer – only to be met with warnings of compatibility errors. After trying to load every game I now owned multiple times to no avail, I finally gave up and resigned myself to seek assistance at Yodobashi Camera the following day. With the computer, one game and a player manual in hand, I arrived at the help desk to find two young men assisting an elderly woman in setting up her computer. Although I was tired and scowling due to my frustrated efforts the night before, the young man trying to help me was clearly amused. With the elderly woman next to us, we tried to discreetly discuss the problem, but he could think of no solution and so called more and more people over. Soon there was a mob of support staff, with me in the middle, and curious shoppers stealing glances. The minutes turned to an hour, then more, and boredom overtook shame. Suddenly, the diagnosis. "Japan only," the young man says, in English. "That's the problem." But I am in Japan. "No, no, no. Japanese only." But I am speaking Japanese. He switches to Japanese. "No, no, no. The computer's operating system must be set in Japanese. Japanese only. Otherwise the game will not load." After some tech wizardry, the opening screen of the game pops up. Two cartoon women are holding used condoms between pursed lips while semen spills out onto their breasts. Shame returns with a vengeance, and I quickly say my thanks and scurry away.

As deep an impression as this experience made on me, I got used to seeing the words "Japan only" on *bishōjo* game packages, in player manuals and during the loading of new software onto my computer (see Kagami 2010: 219–220). The compatibility error had been overcome, but I was still constantly reminded that the content was not for me. The fact that there had been an issue between my computer – and, perhaps, myself – and *bishōjo* games became a joke that I told producers and players for a laugh. Hayase Yayoi, a voice actress working in the *bishōjo* game industry, was among those who found the story funny and liked to spread it around. She told me so over lunch on September 19, 2014 before we made our way to Charara!!, a monthly *bishōjo* game industry event in Akihabara.80 We arrived early, because Hayase wanted to introduce me to people she worked with; although she was not appearing in the event that day, we went through the back elevator used by staff and guests and started meeting people before the event started. This seemed to irritate the organizers, and my introduction as a researcher from the United States did not smooth things over. Hayase and I left soon after, and she explained that the organizers had categorized me as someone "collecting information for foreign countries" (*gaikoku muke shuzai*), which they did not want. Charara!! is a local event for producers to build relationships with dedicated players, who make purchases and spread the word. Because many *bishōjo* games are not legally available overseas, any article that I was imagined to write would not lead to sales, and might instead encourage illegal distribution and generate negative publicity (Lah 2010; Kagami 2010; Nakasatomi 2013). When I mailed the organizers to apologize, I was not surprised that they refused me future access to the event as a member of the press and firmly reminded me that *bishōjo* games are "for sale in Japan only" (*Nihon kokunai hanbai nomi*).81

While denied access as a member of the press (I had never claimed to be that, but was certainly collecting information for a foreign publication), I returned many times to Charara!! as a player of *bishōjo* games, and was always struck by the small scale of the event. On average, around 20 production companies would gather to speak and sell to 100 dedicated, core gamers in a modest space above an arcade located on Chūō Street in Akihabara. Representatives of production companies told the players about upcoming projects, showed preview clips, brought out scenario writers and artists and voice actresses, held "mini-live" shows of music from the games and joked and laughed with the assembled men (overwhelmingly men in the audience). The intimacy of the event was immediately apparent, although most gamers focused on the speakers rather than one another and were glued to the screens of their smartphones and mobile devices when uninterested. Those who were interested spoke their thoughts aloud and interacted with the speakers, participated in group games of rock-paper-scissors. To win promotional giveaways and lined up at tables to buy products, test versions of upcoming games and make preorders, which usually came with something extra such as a handshake, signing or original artwork. Men lingered at tables to chat with the producers, who were in general tremendously generous with their time and friendly. Charara!! is an event for *bishōjo* game producers to build relationships with an inner circle of fans who buy into their work and support them during the long production process.

In light of negative press from global news outlets such as CNN (which at one point ran a survey on its website asking whether or not the Japanese industry should be regulated [Kagami 2010: 22]), the openness of *bishōjo* game events was being negotiated while I was in the field.82 Although Charara!! is free of charge to attend and screening at the door is minimal, meaning it is basically open to all, the appearance of phenotypic difference was duly noted. I crossed a line by entering Charara!! through the backdoor, appearing to be sneaking and snooping around, and this was made worse by an introduction as an American researcher. The result was a line drawn and highlighted between inside and outside. Despite being free and open to all, Charara!! is in fact a controlled and closed space, which allows for interactions between producers and players to occur. Not private, but also not public, a sort of private publicity or public privacy is key. Keeping the space open requires controlling its boundaries, which resonates with what media anthropologist Chris Kelty calls "recursive publics" that have "a shared sense of concern for the technical and legal possibility of their own association" (Kelty 2005: 192). As Kelty sees it, many groups are now concerned with their own "conditions of possibility – and the modes of manipulating them technically and legally – on and off the Internet" (Kelty 2005: 204), which is precisely what one sees at Charara!! The conditions of possibility for the event are a closed circle with clear boundaries and controlled access. The event should be offline, and not contribute to illegal distribution online, which threatens the entire industry with increased regulation. Responding to the threat of regulation from the outside, the industry regulates from the inside and insists on boundaries. Drawing lines this way is no less than "imaginative world-building practice" (Beattie 2018: 175).83

Beyond Charara!!, I was regularly warned by *bishōjo* game producers about opening up the culture, its events or even Akihabara, which was attracting too many tourists, journalists and activists. For example, Watanabe Akio, a renowned character designer with deep ties to *bishōjo* games, told me that outside interest could very well diminish the industry's "powers of imagination" (*sōzōryoku*).84 Even as some worry about *bishōjo* games slipping out of Akihabara and into the world (Lah 2010), Watanabe, like the organizers of Charara!!, worries about the world slipping into Akihabara. This in turn might intensify pressure for increased regulation, specifically *bishōjo* games in Akihabara being held to "international standards," which has been provocatively pronounced "a new form of cultural colonization" (Pelletier-Gagnon and Picard 2015: 39). One of the conditions of possibility for freedom of imagination and creation is insisting on boundaries, or drawing lines to separate inside and outside. As with Charara!! and Watanabe, so too with Akihabara, which is a space where *bishōjo* games circulate, but within boundaries that are collectively established and maintained.

Production company Minori is a good example of tensions surrounding the publicness of *bishōjo* games. In 2009, in an attempt to invigorate a *bishōjo* game industry facing declining sales and an aging and shrinking gamer population, Minori organized an event called the Denkigai Matsuri.85 Now held twice a year, *bishōjo* game production companies can participate for free – as compared to Charara!!, where producers pay to participate but players get in for free, or the Comic Market, where renting space for an industry booth is costly and highly competitive – which lowers the barriers to participation. Surprisingly, the Denkigai Matsuri is not held in Akihabara, but rather in the Shinjuku area across town. The Denkigai Matsuri shares its name with the Denkigai Matsuri in Akihabara, which is held by the powerful chamber of commerce and focuses on stores selling home appliances and electronics, which have a longer history in the area than the "otaku" stores that began to appear in the 1980s. Minori cleverly twists the "gai" in "Denkigai" from a character meaning "town" to a homonym meaning "outside," which suggests that it is not the "Electric Town Festival," but rather the "Festival for Other than Electronics" or "Festival Outside the Electric Town." Given the name, one wonders if the *bishōjo* game industry was at some point pushed out of that other and more official Denkigai Matsuri in Akihabara, but it is more likely that it is held in Shinjuku to create a dedicated space, align with other events and avoid conflict with outsiders. (For more on *bishōjo* games at the Denkigai Matsuri, see Chapter 4.)

In 2009, the same year that it first organized the Denkigai Matsuri for the *bishōjo* game industry, Minori also closed its website to international traffic (i.e., anyone with an internet protocol address that points to a location outside of Japan).86 The decision was made as a form of protest against unwanted and illegal circulation by overseas fans, which invited outside criticism. As Minori curtly elaborated in a statement, which was very pointedly in English, the decision was made to "protect our culture" (quoted in Ashcraft 2009). While the position has been relaxed somewhat, for a time Minori insisted on boundaries because it allowed them to maintain what they called their "minority spirit," which is to say their ability to imagine and create things that appeal to a small number of dedicated players but perhaps offend the majority of people in the world. As Watanabe also suggested to me, Minori feels that their culture and spirit are under attack from outsiders and critics who do not understand *bishōjo* games. The imagination and creation of spaces for *bishōjo* games – spaces with boundaries, insides and outsides – allows for their continued existence. These boundaries are often coterminous with those of the nation of Japan and the neighborhood of Akihabara, which seem under attack as elements from inside slip outside and vice versa. So it is that sociality is negotiated, and renegotiated, at the borders and the limits of circulation. Unofficial distribution by fans online has steadily transitioned into official activities such as crowd funding and direct download sales, which suggests a global subculture and shifting consciousness of *bishōjo* games as for "Japan only," but tensions on the ground remain.87

### **2.4 Coming of Age in Akihabara**

With jet-black hair, thick eyebrows and seemingly permanent dark circles under his eyes, Ataru is handsome in a brooding sort of way. Thin and perpetually dressed in muted colors, he is not the type to stand out in a crowd, but is also certainly not a wallflower. When not working as a software engineer – which, depending on the project, keeps him away many evenings and even some weekends – Ataru practices English conversation, goes to parties and rubs shoulders with people from the manga, anime and gaming industries. Quick to share an opinion and a laugh, Ataru is relatively popular at these social gatherings. He is in and out of relationships with women, but is currently a bachelor who lives alone in a spacious apartment just a two-minute walk past Kuramaebashi Street outside Akihabara. In the evening, Ataru plays pickup games of mahjong, hangs out in costume cafés and meets friends in the area. After a chance encounter on the streets of Akihabara in 2007, when Ataru was in his last year studying economics at a university in Tokyo, I have been one of those friends. I stayed with Ataru frequently over the course of my fieldwork from 2014 to 2015, because his apartment was no more than a stone's throw away from dozens of *bishōjo* game production companies, including several where I spent a good deal of time.

Dreaming of producing games when he was in highschool, Ataru did not end up in the industry, but is a dedicated player of *bishōjo*  games. He tends toward dark and disturbing content – think *The Song of Saya* (discussed in Chapter 1), written by Urobuchi Gen, one of his favorites, *Fate/Stay Night* (Feito/sutei naito, Type-Moon, 2004–) and *When They Cry* (Higurashi no naku koro ni, 07th Expansion, 2003–) – and narratives that loop back on themselves.  After summer vacation, Kurosu and the members of his broadcasting club return to school to find that everyone has vanished. Further, the world seems to be repeating the same week over and over again. Stuck in this strange, lonely but somehow comforting world, Kurosu works to restore his broken self and relationships. The story deeply moved Ataru, which is part of what he consistently calls a "god game" (*kamigē*), slang for a masterpiece as opposed to a "shit game" (*kusogē*). Ataru keeps an eye on any new releases featuring *Cross Channel*'s scenario writer, Tanaka Romeo, who he considers a "god" (*kami*). As is clear from the way he speaks about gods and shit, if Ataru feels strongly about something, he will tell you so – often, and loudly. Living in Akihabara, he finds it easy to track trends, but also goes online to the anonymous bulletin board "2ch" to check rankings of the most popular *bishōjo* games by year.88 Ataru has played almost everything in the annual top 10 since 2003. He never seems to tire of compiling lists of games that I must play, which he explains is a rite of passage.

Although I also hung out with other *bishōjo* game players, Ataru was my primary teacher and guide. After playing a recommended game, we would talk about it and share experiences. Things were often heated when discussing what choices I made, why and what routes these took me down. Ataru was animated when explicating what I had missed, especially if my route through the game did not include what he considered to be the "best," or most *moe* and moving, scenarios. These were the times when Ataru shared his own play experiences, and often very intimate details of them. When I was a little better versed in *bishōjo*  games, Ataru introduced me to other players, who I came to know and play with as well. All of these men, like Ataru and myself, spent their free time in Akihabara, which was central to our lives as *bishōjo* game players. It was the center of gravity that pulled us together and provided a common place to meet after work for dinner, events and shopping. Like Ataru, a few of these men moved to be closer to Akihabara, while others tried to recreate it at home in rooms that overflowed with media and material representations of *bishōjo* characters.

Born in Aomori Prefecture in northern Japan in 1983, Ataru seemed to see some of himself in me, born in Alaska, the northernmost of the United States of America, in 1982. Both of us had been drawn to the spectacle of Akihabara, to the density of stores dealing with *bishōjo*  games and the density of the population of gamers shopping at those stores. Although younger than me, Ataru describes himself as my spiritual older brother, because he awoke to the world of *bishōjo* games much earlier. Sitting in a café on the backstreets of Akihabara, located below the offices of a *bishōjo* game production company, I ask Ataru about his history with *bishōjo* games. "My otaku career began with games," he says between bites of curry rice. "The start was really just a simple thing. My friends were playing *Tokimeki Memorial* and so I gave it a shot."89 It was 1996, and Ataru, a sixth-grader at the time, was blown away. The combination of attractive manga/anime characters, the mechanic of interacting with them and, most of all, the inclusion of character voices was moving in ways that were new and confusing for him.

As Ataru remembers it, his formative years overlapped with the explosive growth of *bishōjo* games as a "*moe* genre" (*moe janru*). Coming of age in the 1990s amid an increasingly open culture of affection for fictional characters, Ataru recalls that, "I definitely had a sense of *moe*." Indeed, he was soon almost too moved by images of cute girl characters and interactions with them. When playing Red Entertainment's *Sakura Wars* (Sakura taisen, 1996), where the player inputs his name and the *bishōjo* characters speak it out loud in interactions, Ataru was moved enough to be embarrassed and so retreated from the family room to play in his bedroom. These were still classed as "consumer games," as opposed to "adult games," which means that they did not have explicit sex scenes in them, but hearing these cute girl characters speak his name while looking out of the screen at him was arousing enough that Ataru did not want to be with others while feeling this pleasure. In playing such games, he was pleasuring himself in a broad sense of enjoying bodily responses, but not yet masturbating. Content from the booming adult gaming industry was also filtering into the mainstream in releases for the general public, which cut out explicit sex scenes, but not the inherent mechanics that move players (for more on game design, see Chapter 3).

So it was that Ataru, still playing on gaming consoles (he thought computers were for adults), encountered the Sony PlayStation release of *To Heart* (Tu hāto, Leaf, 1999), which he describes as a "visual novel" (*bijuaru noberu*). "Nothing before that had been so emotional for me," he says. "It really moved me. I think that was probably the first game that moved me to tears." *To Heart* is a romance game where the player assumes the role of highschooler Fujita Hiroyuki and interacts with classmates before, during and after school. Depending on the circumstances and player choices, certain events are triggered; the events depend on how much cute girl characters like the player, and, depending on how much the player likes the characters, can be quite moving. (English-language sites sometimes call these "affection events.") There are 10 distinct plotlines in the branching narrative, which can lead to good and bad endings. For Ataru, almost all of the plotlines included moving scenarios and moments. "That emotion really wasn't part of the other consumer games that I was playing, which were about adventure," Ataru muses. "After I played *To Heart*, I became completely enthralled by *bishōjo* games. I would buy anything that had *bishōjo* on the cover, anything that caught my attention." One such game was the Sega Saturn release of *Welcome to Pia Carrot!!* (Pia kyarotto e yōkoso, NEC, 1998), which is a story about courting – and, in the original, bedding – café waitresses in cute costumes. The game was recommended for players age 18 and older, but staff at Ataru's local game shop in Aomori Prefecture were older male players, who sold him the game. Purchasing a game recommended for adults and popular among older male gamers, Ataru began to see himself as a young adult, a man and a gamer.

Having finished his meal at the café in Akihabara, Ataru lights a cigarette and remembers his sexual initiation in the area. He was in junior high visiting Tokyo on a school trip, and had slipped away to Akihabara during free time to search for replacement parts for his portable gaming device, which he had heard could be purchased at specialty stores. Browsing through computer and gaming stores, Ataru encountered the familiar character images of *To Heart*, which he had played as a consumer game. The box was different, however, and he went to take a look. Turning it over, in preview art on the back of the package, he saw the characters that he knew and loved naked and involved in explicit sex scenes. This was the original release (from 1997), which is to say that Ataru had in his hands an adult computer game. Unlike the consumer game release, sale was restricted (as opposed to recommended) to players over the age of 18, but Ataru wanted it desperately, and must have shown it in his behavior. Despite his being in a school uniform, staff at the store in Akihabara appreciated Ataru's excitement for *To Heart* – which was a benchmark for them, and many others, too – and sold him the game.90 This was Ataru's first computer game, and first adult computer game. While he was already attracted to the characters in *To Heart*, the explicit sex scenes affirmed his growing desire for manga/anime-style cute girl characters. While moved to emotional response and arousal before, Ataru was now moved to masturbation. What connects both is his bodily response to images of and narratives involving *bishōjo* characters, which moved him to arousal, tears and/or ejaculation. In Akihabara, seeing *bishōjo* characters on signs and talking with men attracted to them sexually, and later playing a *bishōjo*  game and masturbating, Ataru realized that he was sexually oriented toward manga/anime-style cute girl characters. Although stating that he is still attracted to flesh-and-blood women (and I knew he dated women over the years of our communication and contact; the last I met in person was a university student he became acquainted with at a cosplay event), he was nonetheless also, and at the time primarily, attracted to *bishōjo* characters.

"Akihabara is that kind of place," Ataru declares matter-of-factly, taking a long drag on his cigarette. "There is probably nowhere else in the world where virtual sex is this prevalent. Even if you searched the world, you probably wouldn't find anything on the scale of Akihabara. Just walking down the street, there is a sign board with a *bishōjo* with her breasts showing, or a figurine of her posed provocatively, just there on the shelf, or mouse pads modeled after *bishōjo* breasts, or body pillows with naked *bishōjo* on them, fanzines and adult games. It's strange for many people, I guess, but for me, and men like me who grew up in this environment, it is a taken-for-granted city. Whether that is good or bad, I don't know, but Akihabara is that kind of place. It's a city overflowing with sex."   Here one can encounter attractive *bishōjo* characters, which is not uncommon in Japan given its robust market of manga, anime and computer/console games, but there is nowhere else in Tokyo, Japan or the world where sexual desire for them is so visible and viscerally felt. There is nowhere else where it is on the scale of Akihabara, and where it is such a part of everyday reality. There is nowhere else where so many people gather and openly embrace sexual orientation toward cartoon characters. This is why Akihabara appears strange, but it is also why it attracts men such as Ataru. It is a place where the strange is normal, part of a city that is taken for granted.  Men, but, like me, strange. In Akihabara, the *Moe* City, Ataru and men like him are moved in their encounters with fictional and real others, media and material forms, virtual and actual bodies.

While many commentators are concerned with whether or not the boundaries of Akihabara are leaking – that is, whether or not a "peculiar sexual preference" will spread like a virus from Akihabara and infect the world, and, conversely, whether the world will come to Akihabara and destroy the closed circle of imaginary play – Ataru is more concerned about whether or not the boundary between fiction and reality is leaky and what should be done to maintain it. In moments of reflection, be they playing games or sitting with me in a café, Ataru wonders about the powerful affect of media. He is of course moved by his interactions with *bishōjo* in media and material form, which is, after all, the point, and concedes that manga, anime and computer/ console games probably impacted his sexuality. He is, after all, attracted to *bishōjo* characters. Some of his friends are content to say that they are sexually oriented toward the "two-dimensional" (*nijigen*) and leave it at that, but Ataru is for his part not convinced that the twoand three-dimensional worlds are clearly and cleanly separated. Rather, the two- and three-dimensional are constantly interacting with one another. This complex interaction impacts people and their movement in the world. "My life would probably have been very different if I had not played *Tokimeki Memorial*," Ataru says. "If I hadn't played it, I might not have become an otaku, and if I weren't an otaku, I wouldn't be in Akihabara or have met you, right? Taste determines your life. It determines your environment, friends and actions." Manga, anime and computer/console games brought us together, and, consuming them together has impacted our lives, actions and interactions. So to say that the two-dimensional is two-dimensional and has no effect on the three-dimensional is to obfuscate the very real fact that images move us and impact our shared world. (Note that this recognition of media effects and affect is very much in line with Sasakibara Gō [Chapter 1]. If all media has effects and can affect, then all media can do so adversely. This is precisely why Ataru, Sasakibara and other gamers reflect and act with care.)

However powerful its affect, Ataru is adamant that no media is "harmful" (*yūgai*). People are moved by it, and differentially so, depending on their experiences and environment, and it is that movement that can be harmful. "I understand the concerns of feminists and human rights activists," Ataru confides to me, pensively. "I do. But I can tell you that we are not people moved to harmful actions." With this collective

**Image 8.** Café in Akihabara where Ataru and I spoke of "harmful people." Above one sees a *bishōjo* game production company. The café was mere minutes from a gradeschool. Photo by the author. License: CC BY 4.0.

"we," Ataru moves to speak for *bishōjo* game players generally and the men gathering in Akihabara specifically, who he recognizes as his people – "men like me who grew up in this environment." These men are not, to use Ataru's memorable phrase, "harmful people" (*yūgai na hito*). That is, they are not people moved by media to harmful actions; they are moved, but not to harm others. Ataru's position hinges on how he understands movement to be shared. Brought together by a shared attraction to and affection for *bishōjo* characters, the men gathering in Akihabara have friends and a shared environment. If taste determines friends and environment, it also determines actions. Through shared movement, or collective activity and practice, these men keep fiction and reality separate, even as they coexist and impact each other. A shared orientation toward *bishōjo* determines one's friends and environment, and also one's actions: To be moved by *bishōjo* characters, but to keep *bishōjo* and women and girls separate and distinct and not allow movement in response to images to lead to actions that harm others.

As the melodic five-o-clock chime rings out on public broadcast speakers, announcing to young people that it is time to go home, I cannot help but recall that there is a gradeschool on Shōheibashi Street within the bounds of Akihabara and not far from the café where Ataru and I are now sitting. Sixth-graders, no different from how Ataru and I once were, are walking through the streets of Akihabara to the station to catch a train home. While Ataru locates his spiritual coming of age in Akihabara – from Aomori Prefecture, he still is one of the men "who grew up in this environment" – what must it be like to literally come of age in the *Moe* City? These young people are not choosing the environment as Ataru and I have chosen it. What impact will it have on them and their tastes? Might someone seeing these children walking through the streets of Akihabara – "a city overflowing with sex" – worry about them? Worry about them in relation to *bishōjo* game players such as Ataru? Am I, too, worried about these children? These men? Ataru? Is he – like Kurosu Taichi, the protagonist of his favorite *bishōjo* game – someone who looks normal but is somehow mentally ill, a danger to society and in need of institutionalization? I look at my friend and the street, wondering.

#### **2.5 Dangerously Moving Images**

"Japan has an incredible tolerance for the sexual exploitation of young girls" (Ostrovsky 2015). These are the first words in a Vice News video on the problem of underage sex in Japan. They are spoken by Jake Adelstein, a renowned crime reporter in Japan, as a voice over during a montage of images of Akihabara: Chūō Street brightly lit up at night; photographs of female idol singers; a sign with a price and a young woman suspended in the moment just before kissing a prone man's waiting lips; the legs of a woman on the street; fliers for cafés and entertainment, which feature women striking cute poses; a wall of massive images of *bishōjo* characters in various states of undress, next to an advertisement for a *bishōjo* game. After the title – "Schoolgirls for Sale in Japan" – appears onscreen, award-winning journalist Simon Ostrovsky sets the scene: "This is the Akihabara neighborhood…" He walks through the streets, disoriented, but taking it all in. Ostrovsky knows that sex is for sale here, and his intuition is that the *bishōjo* characters he sees everywhere are related to the women on the signs and in the street. He knows that there is a connection between sexual fantasy and reality. When faced with these *bishōjo* characters and women, Ostrovsky is not confused about fiction and reality. Although he speaks to none of the men on the streets or in the stores, he imagines that somewhere out there, in the night, are men, Japanese men, who are conflating sexual fantasy and reality, who are actualizing their fantasies of underage sex, who are moved to unspeakable acts. Perhaps Japan tolerates this, but we certainly will not.

Akihabara is a city of affective images, of moving images, images that trigger bodily responses from those interacting with them and move bodies to public displays of affection. The *Moe* City is the worst nightmare of right-minded people such as Adelstein and Ostrovsky, who find there hordes of men aroused by omnipresent images of sexualized cute girls, loose on the streets and in close proximity to atrisk populations such as women and children (Adelstein and Kubo 2014; Ostrovsky 2015). Such critics of Akihabara operate with certain assumptions about media a/effects. They assume that, to begin, while the journalist and activist remains unmoved by images of cute girl characters, or in control in relation to these images, the *bishōjo*  fan is dangerously open to the affect of moving images. This dynamic speaks to what media anthropologist William Mazzarella calls "the enunciator's exception" (Mazzarella 2013: 18–19).91 Working with film censors in India, Mazzarella noted a pattern whereby advocates of increased regulation, who did not need to be regulated themselves, imagined another population that was dangerous and needed to be regulated. That dangerous class was composed of men in the front row of the theater reacting bodily to moving images on screen. Such men were conceptually understood in the figure of "the pissing man" (Mazzarella 2013: 14–15), or the man who would piss in the street if told to do so, which captures his lack of public decency, inability to control himself and likelihood to act on any suggestion. What makes the pissing man dangerous is that he is moved by images and out of control, and hence the content of images must be regulated to be less likely to move him. One of Mazzarella's greatest insights is that the relationship between the pissing man and moving image is a source of anxiety and key to calls for increased regulation.

Another aspect of this fear is that a certain population cannot tell the difference between fiction or fantasy and reality. This is clearest in the activist response to pornography in North America. During the feminist debates that came to a head in the 1980s, pornography was treated as the theory of sexual violence and rape as its practice (Williams 1989: 15–29). Responding to this discourse, cultural critic Laura Kipnis points out that the conceptual figure of the masturbating man is imagined to be simple, aroused and violent (Kipnis 1996: 175–177). In retrospect, it is evident that much of the campaign against pornography was premised on the belief that the masturbating man confuses fiction and reality and is inspired to act out the sex(ual violence) he sees onscreen, which he takes to be normal and acceptable. Much like the men in the front row of theaters in India, masturbating men were understood to be a dangerous class of rapists, "the raincoat brigade," or, to borrow a phrase from Japan, a "reserve army of criminals" (*hanzaisha yobigun*) (see Chapter 1). The imagined danger should come as no surprise, because pornography has since film scholar Linda Williams' foundational book *Hard Core* been understood in terms of "moving images," which "appeal to the body," "elicit gut reactions" and "move the body" (Williams 1989: 5).92 The regulatory impulse begins with the recognition that the image in question moves the viewer, which is then quickly projected onto others, who are, or might be, moved. In scholarship that builds on Kipnis and Williams in terms of affect, pornography is theorized as images that are "dangerously effective at moving us" (Paasonen 2011: 13).93 Or, rather, images that are dangerously effective at moving *someone*, an imagined other, the pissing or masturbating man. The imagined other is grouped together as an imagined class of dangerous others. "This demonizing of particular groups of media users," porn scholar Feona Attwood explains, "is part of the operational bridge that enables accusations or identification of possible 'harms' to translate into calls for more and more legislation against the imagination" (Attwood and Smith 2010: 187). To rephrase, the imagining of dangerous others, whose relation to moving images is imagined to put others in danger, is central to a discourse of possible harm and calls for legislation against the imagination.

Insofar as *bishōjo* games feature characters designed to affect, what are known as "*moe* characters" (*moe kyara*), and explicit depictions of sex with these characters, it is not shocking that they inspire a regulatory discourse similar to film in India and pornography in North America. For their critics, *bishōjo* games are dangerously effective at moving players. *Bishōjo* game players are imagined to be men who dominate imaginary girls and women to feel like real men and may well be confused about the difference between fiction and reality (Taylor 2007: 203–206).  *Bishōjo* game players are moved to bodily response and to the street in Akihabara, where they appear to critics as a mass of potentially violent men and a dangerous movement. *Bishōjo* game scenario writer Kagami Hiroyuki argues that such concerns indicate a general

**Image 9.** Appearing on the television show *TV Takkuru* on September 1, 2014, Tsuchiya Masatada warns of a connection between cartoons and sexual violence against children. Photo by the author. License: CC BY 4.0.

understanding that "ideas can prompt mass action and invite social chaos" (Kagami 2010: 251). In this way, the regulatory gaze in Japan is not on "the pissing man" or "the masturbating man," but rather on "the *moe* man" (*moeru otoko*), who is dangerously open to the affect of moving images of manga/anime characters.94