R U Otaku 2?

William Gibson blogged about his Buzz Rickson's the other day, once again making reference to the 'otaku' who make those more-than-real replicas of WWII US flight jackets, fabulous reproductions of That Which No Longer Exists. 'Otaku' is a Japanese word which is creeping into the argot, but Gibson uses it in a particular way. He expands the meaning to include technological obsessives of all sorts, those with minute focus on obscure details of areas that most others find irrelevant; hence, the people who re-create in thread-level perfection those WWII jackets: trainspotters with expensive sewing machines (the British equivalent of 'otaku' is 'anorak').

In his last book, Pattern Recognition, Gibson included several gadgets and the geeks who obsess over them, including the Curta Calculator and the aforementioned Buzz Rickson's jacket. I spent the better part of an evening poring over the diagrams and photos of Curtas and reading the instructions for identifying, disassembling and repairing them. Just one evening - some people spend their lives studying them. I would love to own one*, not that I have any use for it or any connection to the history of calculation machines. It's like an alien artifact, or something from a lost continent. It's an amazing machine - a hand held, mechanical calculation device - , something that I cannot even begin to understand, let alone imagine someone designing. While a prisoner in Buchenwald, no less!

An engineer may be an otaku, may be an obsessive - but the man who invents something is not an otaku. The otaku are those who are devoted to the study of the invention. What do they get from it? Do they continually generate that buzz of amazement as they approach the object of their worship again and again? Does the giddy sensation of understanding repeat itself with every new discovery? Is the loss of self in observation a kind of meditation?

I was raised by bible-obsessives. They regarded that book as the one true work of the One True Genius, and part of their doctrine stated that nothing would ever be made to compare with it. So their inspiration is not towards creating something on the same level, but only to understanding the creation that they study. They try to understand it, disassembling it into its original languages like the Curta-otaku disassemble their tiny machines; trying to grasp the sum of all possible meanings like the Curta-philes grasp billions of possible equations when they hold the calculator in their hand. The comparison only goes so far, though, because the bible-readers have a purpose (living forever), whereas the true otaku has no purpose beyond the object itself. The bible-obsessed throw the book aside if they stop believing the promise - the otaku can only stop when he knows truly everything; and anything knowable is not worthy of obsession. Ask someone in love.

Back to the jackets. Who but Japanese would reproduce in maniacal detail the jackets worn by their conquerors, as they flew the planes that defeated them, burned their wooden cities with incendiaries, and annihilated them with atom bombs? Much has been said about the wound those bombs made in the Japanese psyche**, and I won't add to it here. But again, it reveals something about the otaku mindset, and the meditation of obsession: in making zippers and seams according to 1950's standards, in recreating the weave of the nylon of the jackets that covered the backs of the young soldiers and airmen that brought generations worth of horror to their shores, we are perhaps seeing someone seeking to confront the incomprehensible by completely understanding one of its meaningless parts. In this way, something that cannot be controlled is owned, if only in part.

Death surrounds us in a multitude of forms, and we seek to control it, to stop it - with photographs and memories; with monuments and skyscrapers; with calendars and wristwatches; with words and stories; with families and lovers; with, perhaps, replica jackets and mechanical calculators.

What about the practice of karate? Are we, the students, like the jacket-makers, slavishly reproducing replicas of something that existed long ago? Many people talk about the 'purity' of the form, and of the power of past masters; and everyone follows the patterns laid down long ago, when the peasants of Okinawa had to defend themselves, unarmed, against their Japanese occupiers. Do the movements have meaning now, in the age of handguns and tasers - and WMD? Yet many people would tell you that their motivation for practice is self-defense. I spend a lot of time thinking about and discussing martial arts, and I won't bore my readers (readers? are you still out there?) with a lot of babble about something regarding which I am only beginning to consider the outer limits of what I don't understand. What I do know is that I have never yet been attacked, and that I hope I never will have to fight for my life, or to protect someone else. Self-defense is an imaginable goal, but it is the process that is more important: submission to something larger than I am, effort beyond what I think I am capable of, slow learning of what I do not know; attention to detail, investigation of possible meaning, and recreation of my own version.

A replica finally takes on a life of its own. It is based on the vanished model, but it becomes more than the model; and in doing so, it changes the model. The replica is an act of worship, a meditation on meaning. The replica contains another level of awareness that the original can never have: an awareness of the broader meaning, and the cultural and historical significance of the original. The original is just an object designed for a purpose; when the purpose is fulfilled, it is discarded. The replica, having no purpose, survives as long as belief in its significance lasts; its value is not as an object, but as an idea. It is art.


*In case anyone is planning on buying me multi-thousand dollar gifts - I'm not a big fan of the flight jackets (girls look cute in them!), but I do like this little WW1 number.

**I hate using a phrase like 'national psyche': it's inexact to confound national identity with the analysis of individual character. A nation is not a person, people are not nations. Nevertheless, it is a generalization and a metaphor, and I can't think of another way to say it.