Eiji Ōtsuka
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is a Japanese social critic, folklorist, media theorist, and novelist. He is currently a professor at
International Research Center for Japanese Studies The , or Nichibunken (日文研), is an inter-university research institute in Kyoto. Along with the National Institute of Japanese Literature, the National Museum of Japanese History, and the National Museum of Ethnology (Japan), National Museum ...
,
Kyoto Kyoto ( or ; Japanese language, Japanese: , ''Kyōto'' ), officially , is the capital city of Kyoto Prefecture in the Kansai region of Japan's largest and most populous island of Honshu. , the city had a population of 1.46 million, making it t ...
. He graduated from
University of Tsukuba is a List of national universities in Japan, national research university located in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Ibaraki, Japan. The university has 28 college clusters and schools with around 16,500 students (as of 2014). The main Tsukuba ca ...
with a degree in anthropology, women's folklore, human sacrifice and post-war manga. In addition to his work with
manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conform to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term is used in Japan to refer to both comics ...
he is a critic, essayist, and author of several successful non-fiction books on Japanese popular and
otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, such as anime, manga, video games, computers or other highly enthusiastic hobbies. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in '' Manga Burikko''. ...
subcultures. He has written the ''
Multiple Personality Detective Psycho ''MPD Psycho'', short for , is a Japanese manga series written by Eiji Ōtsuka and illustrated by Shōu Tajima. ''MPD Psycho'' is a very successful series having sold more than four million copies in Japan as of 2007. It was originally publi ...
'' and ''
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is a horror manga series written by Eiji Ōtsuka and drawn by Housui Yamazaki. First published in ''Kadokawa Mystery'', the series later (October 2006) transferred to the companion publication '' Shōnen Ace'', and now published in the maga ...
'' manga series. One of his first animation script works was ''Mahō no Rouge Lipstick'', an adult
lolicon In Japanese popular culture, is a genre of fictional media which focuses on young or young-looking girl characters, particularly in a sexually suggestive or erotic manner. The term, a portmanteau of the English-language phrase " Lolita co ...
OVA , abbreviated as OVA and sometimes as OAV (original animation video), are Japanese animated films and special episodes of a series made specially for release in home video formats without prior showings on television or in theaters, though the ...
. Ōtsuka was the editor for the
bishōjo In Japanese popular culture, a , also romanized as ''bishojo'' or ''bishoujo'', is a cute girl character. characters appear ubiquitously in media including manga, anime, and computerized games (especially in the ''bishojo'' game genre), and al ...
lolicon manga series ''
Petit Apple Pie is an 18-volume ''bishōjo'' lolicon manga anthology series published by Animage Comics from November 10, 1982, to March 10, 1987. The first volume was released under the name , before the series was renamed to ''Petit Apple Pie'' with the ori ...
''. In the 1980s, Ōtsuka was editor-in-chief of ''
Manga Burikko was a lolicon hentai manga magazine published by Byakuya Shobo in Tokyo from 1982 to 1985 in Japan. The magazine was launched as a competitor to '' Lemon People'', but it only lasted three years. The manga in the magazine were generally bishōjo ...
'', a leading manga magazine where he pioneered research on otaku subcultures in modern Japan. He has published a host of books and articles about the manga industry. In July 2007, he received a doctorate in artistic engineering from Kobe Design University. His doctoral dissertation is "From Mickey's format to Proposition of Atom: the origin of postwar manga methodology in wartime years and its development".


Biography


Early life

Eiji Ōtsuka was born on 28 August 1958 in the city formerly known as Tanashi,
Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...
(currently
Nishitōkyō () is a city located in the western portion of Tokyo Metropolis, Japan. , the city had an estimated population of 206,047, and a population density of 13,000 persons per km2. The total area of the city is . Geography Nishitokyo is located at th ...
,
Tokyo Tokyo, officially the Tokyo Metropolis, is the capital of Japan, capital and List of cities in Japan, most populous city in Japan. With a population of over 14 million in the city proper in 2023, it is List of largest cities, one of the most ...
). His father, as a repatriate from
Manchuria Manchuria is a historical region in northeast Asia encompassing the entirety of present-day northeast China and parts of the modern-day Russian Far East south of the Uda (Khabarovsk Krai), Uda River and the Tukuringra-Dzhagdy Ranges. The exact ...
, suffered poor living conditions in repatriate housing prior to his acceptance into university. Ōtsuka's father was a member of the former
Japanese Communist Party The is a communist party in Japan. Founded in 1922, it is the oldest political party in the country. It has 250,000 members as of January 2024, making it one of the largest non-governing communist parties in the world. The party is chaired ...
, but he left the party due to disagreements regarding party policy. In middle school, Ōtsuka joined the
dōjin circle In Japan, a is a group of people who share an interest, activity, or hobby. The word is sometimes translated into English as " clique", "fandom", "coterie", "society", or "circle" (as in " sewing circle"). Self-published creative works pro ...
Sakuga Group is a Japanese manga ''dōjin'' group. It was active from 1962"作画グループの世界".(1981), Shinshokan. p.77. to 2016. The official name of the group is . The representative of the group is Osaka-born Yoshiaki Baba, who established the grou ...
, which lead to his employment as an assistant for manga artist Tarō Minamoto in his first year at high school. The following year, Ōtsuka, with references from Minamoto, debuted as a gag manga artist. However, he soon ended his career as a manga artist during his college entrance exams after deciding that he lacked talent as a manga artist. Ōtsuka graduated the
University of Tsukuba is a List of national universities in Japan, national research university located in Tsukuba, Ibaraki Prefecture, Ibaraki, Japan. The university has 28 college clusters and schools with around 16,500 students (as of 2014). The main Tsukuba ca ...
in March 1981. There, he studied Japanese
folkloristics Folklore studies (also known as folkloristics, tradition studies or folk life studies in the UK) is the academic discipline devoted to the study of folklore. This term, along with its synonyms, gained currency in the 1950s to distinguish the ac ...
under the guidance of professor
Tokuji Chiba was a after '' Kagen'' and before '' Enkyō.'' This period spanned the years from December 1306 through October 1308. The reigning emperor was . Change of era * 1306 : The new era name was created to timestamp events or series of events. The ...
. Ōtsuka gave up the notion of attending graduate school after he was told by instructor Noboru Miyata that his "ideas are too journalistic and not suited for academics".


Career

After graduation, Ōtsuka worked part-time as the editor of the magazines '' Ryu'' and ''
Petit Apple Pie is an 18-volume ''bishōjo'' lolicon manga anthology series published by Animage Comics from November 10, 1982, to March 10, 1987. The first volume was released under the name , before the series was renamed to ''Petit Apple Pie'' with the ori ...
'', together with manga artist Yukio Sawada. As a part-time editor, he worked with manga artist
Shōtarō Ishinomori , né , was a Japanese manga artist, cartoonist, writer and director. Known as the "King of Manga" (漫画の帝王 (''Manga no Teiou)'' or 漫画の王様 (''Manga no Ousama)''), he is regarded as one of the greatest and most influential mang ...
for about a month, where he learned how to parse manga names (a "name" refers to the rough draft of a manga page, with preliminary panel layout, dialogue and plot, which is commonly checked by an editor before the artist proceeds to the manuscript phase). Later shifting from part-time to full-time editor, Ōtsuka worked as the editor-in-chief of the manga magazine ''
Manga Burikko was a lolicon hentai manga magazine published by Byakuya Shobo in Tokyo from 1982 to 1985 in Japan. The magazine was launched as a competitor to '' Lemon People'', but it only lasted three years. The manga in the magazine were generally bishōjo ...
'' on a freelance basis. The comments he published in the magazine under a pseudonym became the basis of Ōtsuka's later career as a commentator. It was also during this time that the first official use of the term "
otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, such as anime, manga, video games, computers or other highly enthusiastic hobbies. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in '' Manga Burikko''. ...
" was published in ''Manga Burikko'' in 1983, with Ōtsuka still serving as its editor-in-chief. Late in the 1980s, Ōtsuka was involved in the trial of a serial kidnapper and murderer of young girls, active between 1988 and 1989 in Saitama, Tokyo. The suspect (and later convicted perpetrator),
Tsutomu Miyazaki was a Japanese serial killer who murdered four young girls in Tokyo and Saitama Prefecture between August 1988 and June 1989. He abducted and killed the girls, aged from 4 to 7, in his car before dismembering them and molesting their corpses. ...
, was found to have possessed a large collection of manga, which at the time meant that the manga subculture was "repeatedly" linked to Miyazaki in the press and in popular imagination, creating the image that "young people involved with amateur ''manga'' are dangerous, psychologically disturbed perverts." Ōtsuka contested this popular perception, later writing that he "became somewhat angry about how judgment of iyazaki'scrimes kept shifting onto otaku hobbies or tastes." In his 1989 book '' A Theory of Narrative Consumption'' (''Monogatari shōhiron''), Ōtsuka developed a theory of media consumption based around the consumption of multiple small narratives that fit inside a "worldview" or grand narrative. This was a large influence on Hiroki Azuma's theories of otaku, and Azuma's writing consequently helped give narrative consumption "canonical status within manga and anime criticism". Ōtsuka has gone on to lecture at various Japanese universities and colleges on the topic of manga studies. In 2007, he received his PhD from Kobe Design University, with the doctoral dissertation titled "From Mickey's format to Proposition of Atom: the origin of postwar manga methodology in wartime years and its development".


Works

Critical essays * まんがの構造――商品・テキスト・現象 ''Construction of Manga――Product・Text・Phenomenon'', Yudachisha, 1987 * 物語消費論 ''A Theory of Narrative Consumption'', Shinyousha, 1989 * システムと儀式 ''System and Ritual'', Chikumashobō, 1992 * 戦後まんがの表現空間 ''Expression space of post-war manga'', Houzoukan, 1994 * キャラクター小説の作り方 ''How to make The Character Novels'', Kōdansha, 2003 * アトムの命題 ''Proposition of Atom'', Tokumashoten, 2003 * おたくの精神史 ―― 1980年代論 ''The Intellectual History of Otaku ―― 1980's Theory'', Kōdansha, 2004 Novel * 木島日記 ijima Diary Manga * 魍魎 戦記 MADARA '' Madara'' (1987–1994) * JAPAN ''
Japan Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean off the northeast coast of the Asia, Asian mainland, it is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan and extends from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea ...
'' (1994–1995) * 多重人格探偵サイコ ''
Multiple Personality Detective Psycho ''MPD Psycho'', short for , is a Japanese manga series written by Eiji Ōtsuka and illustrated by Shōu Tajima. ''MPD Psycho'' is a very successful series having sold more than four million copies in Japan as of 2007. It was originally publi ...
'' (1997–2016) * 木島日記 ''Kijima Diary'' (1999–2003) * リヴァイアサン ''Leviathan'' (1999–2005) * 黒鷺死体宅急便 ''
The Kurosagi Corpse Delivery Service is a horror manga series written by Eiji Ōtsuka and drawn by Housui Yamazaki. First published in ''Kadokawa Mystery'', the series later (October 2006) transferred to the companion publication '' Shōnen Ace'', and now published in the maga ...
'' (2000–present) * 探偵儀式 ''Detective Ritual'' (2004–2009) Anime * (1985 OVA), Original creator


Critical Works in English Translation

*


References


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Otsuka, Eiji People from Nishitōkyō, Tokyo 20th-century Japanese novelists 21st-century Japanese novelists 1958 births Anime and manga critics Living people Manga artists from Tokyo Progressivism in Japan