I don't express otaku culture," says Tomotaka Yasui at the Megumi Ogita gallery in Ginza, where he is having a solo exhibition of three new works. "Now in foreign countries, all people hear about is otaku culture. I want to introduce other aspects of Japanese culture to other countries — Japanese style, Japanese atmosphere."
Yasui is pointing to a major fault line that is developing in contemporary Japanese art: the distinction between those who do embrace the otaku ethos and those who don't.
On the negative side, the word "otaku" — usually translated as "geek" or "obsessive" in English — suggests pathetic loners living asocial lives with fixations that seem juvenile and contemptible to the rest of us. On the plus side, the otaku idea also has enormous artistic appeal, as a critique of alienation and commoditization in society and because it links to anime, manga, and computer technology, greatly enlarging the techniques and vocabulary available to artists.