Translator's Journal - Miraculina Entry 4

[hypericum]

Marunouchi Magical Translator Journalina

Week two, entry one: “Female Otaku Rage”

I met with my advisor last Thursday! He hasn’t had a chance to look over my work, but I think that I’m going to get a pass done as soon as I can and then have him edit and comment on the full text from there. For the time being, he asked me to put together a bibliography to help guide my reading and translation process, so that’s what I’m working on today. I’ve been feeling pretty sick and upset recently, and haven’t been as productive as I hoped, but I’m going to try to get myself back on track. I had my JET interview last Friday and had a horrible headache this past weekend, so I’ve been very lethargic and not getting much done. I think the winter weather is having an adverse effect on my body, generally. This is sort of a combination of a translator’s journal and a real journal here, but it’s always helpful to know what state you were in when you’re working, especially when you’re working on something as personally involved and embodied as translation. 

As I’m doing research, I’m seeing that the English language sphere completely conflates “female otaku” with “fujoshi.” Someone has to tell these men that these are two entirely different concepts—or at least, that fujoshi is just one small identity under the vast umbrella of female otaku. In spite of the fact that there is no shortage of joseimuke media, academics seem to only acknowledge female otaku as perverts who exist as an alternative look into concepts of desire and sexualization in the otaku sphere. Don’t get me wrong, I am a fujoshi, and I have nothing against them, but the Western world, by and large, thinks of otaku as sexual deviants or total outcasts. This is completely incomprehensible for me, and it’s impossible for me to detach a little bit of anger from my perspective on this here. The first thing that you risk by conflating these two terms is appearing completely ignorant of the vast possibilities that exist for female otaku. Women who enjoy male idols? Otaku. Women who consume shoujo and seijo anime and manga? Otaku. Women who are attached to childhood anime? Otaku. Women who read yuri? Otaku. Women who consume male-dominated media or participate in male-dominated hobbies? Otaku! Otaku is not synonymous with sexual deviant; your average Harry Styles or Taylor Swift fan is the Western equivalent of an otaku. It’s just a complete and embarrassing show of ignorance, and I’d argue it’s orientalizing—taking a Japanese word and immediately associating it with things that are deviant or weird, or acting like they’re incomprehensible.

The second thing that you risk is demonstrating that you only acknowledge women through the context of men, and only as mirrors for male desire. If men are sexual deviants when they are fans of anime, manga, and idols, then women must be as well. You search for the mirror to male desire, you claim that the female equivalent to rorikon is shotakon (when those works are more often consumed by men to begin with), and when you find a subculture of women who you consider “perverted,” you claim that this is all it means to be a female otaku. What’s more, these women are contextualized entirely through men in their fandom; female otaku who are fans of lesbian erotica are completely ignored. I would argue that the biggest and most omnipresent form of the female otaku in Japan is the janiwota and not the fujoshi, anyway; though they’re neck-and-neck and often overlap. Anyway, I’m really struggling to find perspectives on female otaku (especially in English) that mention women who enjoy magical girl media. There are plenty of women in the English speaking world who grow up watching Powerpuff Girls and other cartoons aimed towards girls and hold onto their fandom. In any case, maybe I’m so angry because it feels weird to be “studied,” especially by ignorant people. Can you imagine if every paper on geometry in the English language claimed that all rectangles were squares?

In any case, since I don’t have much translation progress on this text to show at the moment, here’s a collection of translations of a few tanka that I did for another course:

A thousand strands

of black, black hair 

tangled,

Like our bodies tangled

Like my feelings tangle

• Yosano Akiko

Now that I’m 

a part of this town

I’ll buy myself 

a pair of slippers,

in buttercup yellow

• Tawara Machi, Salad Anniversary

On a night

where it feels like the world

has forgotten me,

The doorbell next door

Rings again and again

• Tawara Machi, Salad Anniversary

“Take care of yourself,”

I write

in my last letter to you,

huddled in the corner

of a McDonalds

• Tawara Machi, Salad Anniversary

Making inari-zushi 

with my mother, I bite down 

into 

a small black hemp seed,

a period at the end of this summer

• Tawara Machi, Salad Anniversary