Part 1: Nature vs Nurture
Now I will focus evolution, an integral part of the human nature. And nurture will be umvelt (surroundings), which is primarily a culture we live in. I will solely focus on skinship, which is a unique concept in the Japanese culture. And the American culture, where I am present now, will extensively be discussed in Section 7 “Paradise Lost: USA.”
1. Evolution
When I was a school boy in Japan, girls exclusively adored Yanki, not Soushoku-kei like me. That was the problem. Why do girls prefer carnivores? From an evolutionary point of view, we don’t need physically threatening males. They were necessary in a hunter-based society back then. They were essential to protect women and children from the wild beasts. They hunted the game and brought food to their family. But we don’t live in the wild anymore.
Yet, Japan’s youth culture used to be Yanki-dominated during the 80s and 90s. It was such an unevolved society. Yanki, DQN, and Yakuza were typical Nikushoku-kei. They were bad guys. Comedians like Takeshi Kitano, Johny’s idols like Kimutaku, and writers like Shintaro Ishihara (elder brother of Yujiro Ishihara) were symbols of Yanki culture. Now with the emergence of the Akiba culture, boys are getting more Soshoku-kei. Some of them don’t drink alcohol, don’t smoke, don’t use drugs, don’t gamble, but rather hang out at a pastry shop, drinking tea or coffee and eating cakes. That’s why I love a pastry show Yumeiro Patissiere. It is just dreamlike. Yummy. A perfect show for sōshoku-kei. They don’t do “dude’s stuff.” They’d have been beaten up during the 90s, but now they can proudly walk in the street. So, at least it’s getting a little bit better, much better than when I was in Japan.
I was a little skinny kid, utterly defenseless, and I was picked on. If only there weren’t any Yanki, my school life would have been better. The world without Yanki would have been much better. How much I had waited for a savior like Sakagami Tomoyo from Clannad? She would have driven off all these evildoers.
I didn’t like sports, especially physical contact competition like international football (soccer) and American football. I didn’t like martial arts either. I was as peaceful as Mahatma Gandhi. I didn’t like PE at all. PE teachers were very physically threatening; they were the epitome of macho men. I told myself, “I don’t want to be like them when I grew up.” Of course, physical educators were full of testosterone, pumped up with adrenaline, yelling at us with a whistle and bamboo blade, “Get Physical!” I remember the education board cut music and art classes because of the budget crisis, but why didn’t they cut PE as well? It didn’t make any sense. See, the board cut sōshoku-kei classes, but not nikushoku-kei classes. Wasn’t PE as unnecessary as art and music? No, politicians like Ishiwara Shintaro believed machismo was essential to sustain the nation. So, PE didn’t go away. And PE class was where Yanki showed off their machoness to girls. And girls cheered them. In that matter, they were nothing different from America’s varsity chicks.
Anyway, why were these girls crazy about Yanki instead of us? As Leil Lowdres writes in her book Undercover Sex Signals, because girls are evolutionarily challenged. If they were totally evolved, I would have been the source of sexiness. Probably we Otaku would have been the sexiest male on earth. We would have been dating from left to right. There would have been a lot of okkake chasing after us. They would have taken off their clothes whenever they saw us like Girls Gone Wild. But that’s not the case in the real world.
Nonetheless, today is a little bit better for us than it used to be in the 90s, since soshoku-kei are starting to get recognitions. We will not be beaten up simply because we are soshoku-kei, but girls are not really embracing this new trend. They are still madly in love with the evildoer. That’s the problem. So, evolution still has a long way to go, and I will not see them completely evolved in my life time unless I become immortal, so the picture is pretty bleak.
Thus, human beings have not evolved as it should have. Look at sexuality. One bossy alpha male will take all the women. In an extreme case, such as in the ancient China, men had to be eunuch to work for the imperial court because only the emperor was entitled to pass down the gene. Even in today’s world, it is evident that polygyny is the majority of marriage style, and even in a monogamous society like ours, an alpha male tends to get more than one woman by adultery or marrying so many times. JFK, Bill Clinton, Mark Sanford, and in Italy, Silvio Berlusconi always makes the headline. The most recent case is Tiger Woods. Historically, Henry VIII made the Church of England separate from the Roman Church to legalize divorce, so the King could get all the girls he wanted. Winner-takes-all system, which is the notorious system of the U.S. Electoral College. That’s why the American political system is unevolved. It’s nothing different from chimps. One dominant male gets to copulate with all the females in a herd, and spread his gene around. This is evident from the fact that there are almost 500,000 living people descended from Somerled, and almost 16 million living people descended from Genghis Khan today. Yes, the most violent male. The one excels the most in violence. Thus, an alpha male becomes the most powerful.
Violence is power. Might makes right. And power expands and attacks other groups to dominate. That is the very trait of chimps. According to Richard Wrangham, chimp’s society is highly machismo, male-dominated, and they raid other chimpanzee groups, expanding their territory by murder. Intergroup war is common. And rape is rampant. That sounds very human, doesn’t it? From Color Gang war in Ikebukuro to war in Darfur. The Rape of the Sabine Women. The Roman males used murder and rape to expand their territory. All roads lead to Rome? So, all roads lead to rape? All girls go for rapist? Aren’t we supposed to be more evolved than chimps? Aren’t we supposed to be more peaceful than chimps? What’s the difference between chimp and human? Lipstick? No. The amount of hair.
The more males evolve, the less aggressive they would be. Penguin don’t have flyable wings because they don’t need them. The same should go for humans too. The aggressive muscles are not necessary today, so it should go away like Penguin’s wings. So in that sense, Soshoku-kei are leading evolution since we are more adapted to today’s environment. We are not aggressive. We are very peaceful and passive. Yet, girls are still attracted to violent males. And they seem to fantasize date rape. It is evident in this Love Cosmetics lady’s comic. A rape scene from Gone With The Wind had positive reviews from the majority of females. To them, the rape was a “mutually pleasurable rough sex.” Evident in Twilight, Vampire Knight, and etc, so many teenage girls have gone crazy, craving to be violated and consumed by a violent vampire. That is just mind-boggling. So, we haven’t seen that much of evolution from girls either.
On the other hand, no girl has gone crazy over soshoku-kei boys. At least I haven’t seen any girl nose-bleeding in front of me. We’ve always been told that soshokukei boys are unfit to survive, thus we can’t pass down our genes. We have constantly been told that we are unevolved. But who is more unevolved? Violent one or peaceful one? The answer is clear, violent one. Obviously violent dudes are evolutionarily challenged. So, actually we are the leading group of evolution, not Yanki. And this fact should be self-evident to girls. So, it is natural that girls should be going out with us over dying species like Yanki.
However, girls are barely taking the initiative in dating because there are too many aggressive dudes. Why are there that many? We don’t need hunters anymore. Agriculture has long replaced hunting. Their last moment should have been a long time ago. What went wrong? Why is hunter gene still around? It should go away, and there should be more nikushoku-kei girls like Samantha Jones. If girls become more promiscuous, sex will become more available, and since males won’t need to compete for sex anymore, violent dudes will disappear and peace will arrive. And sōshoku-kei boys will be having a great time. And in the long run, according to Lamarckism, violent genes will disappear and there will be no more violence. Nothing to kill or die for. John Lennon’s Imagine will come true. Nietzsche said what made human different from beast were art, religion, and science. But, I will say anime because there are free-spirited strong girls in anime, the evolutionarily advanced girls. But sadly, we only see these girls in anime today, not in reality. These anime girls are what feminists have long been idealizing, so we are totally with feminism. And we are trying to help feminists any way we can for the empowerment of women. Thus, we Otaku are the true feminists! We’re truly with women’s cause, but ladies are still mating with violent men instead of us while thanking us for our tireless support. How can that be?
Yet, the future is bleak for us. Before evolution completely advances our civilization, before nikushoku-kei girls take over the world where there would be no more goons, we would be dead by then. We were born in the wrong time at the wrong place. Evolution is taking just too long. It’s like thousands year process. So, the only hope is Moe through anime, by having moe on 2-D girls.
But why is evolution taking so slow? What is making evolution this slow? Despite the fact that macho men are unnecessary today, why are they still dominating every corner of our lives? It has something to do with a culture. Now, we will turn a discussion from nature to nurture. And I shall talk about the Japanese culture focusing on skinship.
2. Skinship
Skinship is essential for releasing oxytocin, a romantic bonding hormone in the brain. So, low level of oxytocin leads to misery. And Japan is a culture which severely lacks skinship, thus, people are lacking oxytocin and feeling miserable all the time. Japan has the highest rate of romantically inexperienced males among the most advanced industrialized nations. Thus, Japan has been the land of suicide.
Why has Japan become a non-skinship culture? Before the Westernization, the Japanese culture was very skinship oriented. You can imagine today’s Brazil or some other Latin American cultures. Sensuality and sexuality were part of their lives. Girl’s virginity mattered only in the upper class. But after the Meiji restoration (1867), the Japanese culture drastically changed. The upper society adopted the Western sexual morality. They brought the Western educational system, and with the implementation of universal education, and single-sex education, the new category “shojo” was born. Before the Meiji period (1868 – 1912), coeducation was the mainstream among terakoya. Thus, the division of sex in school created shojo. Yet until the Taisho period (1912 – 1926), this notion of “shojo” didn’t trickle down to the bottom. It didn’t reach the mass until the Taisho era. So, the Western education took almost a half of century to spread around the country. Before that, young girls were just musume, nothing to do with Christian values. What makes shojo distinct from musume is chastity, which became the central part of “shojo.” And of course, the sailor uniform, a shojo’s ditinctive trait. The Victorian ethics became something to look up in Japan. Thus, girls and boys were divided into shojo and shonen, and skinship were discouraged. This “separation but equal” measure damaged skinship custom so badly.
Basically the government put the fence between girls and boys. And the gender roles became clear. Girls were indoctrinated to support the nation as a good wife, good mother, raising boys to be macho enough to fight for the country. And Aoi-chan from Ai yori aoshi is an embodiment of the Taisho shojo. Her outdated Taisho period hairstyle. Her hairstyle is very moga (“modern girl” appeared in the Taisho era). On the other hand, boys were expected to be soldiers and productive industrial workers to level up Japan to join the Western imperialist superpower league. Before that, both men and women engaged in farming, so there weren’t really gender split in the countryside. And the clothing was relatively unisex too. If you imagine yukata, basically the structure is the same. But school uniform has changed it all, especially when boys started wearing pants, and girls wearing skirts. And very weirdly, boy’s school uniform was based on French army, and girl’s was British sailor. It was the rise of militarism. Universal education was to prepare a nation with the total mobilization of people, corporations, and military for the total war. It was based on Prussian General Moltke’s militarism. Thus, “Sailor Moon” can be traced back to this cultural shift. So is the notorious burusera. A reminiscent of Japanese militarism which led to atrocities in Asia.
Traditionally the Japanese clothing was more relaxed. If you see Hokusai’s erotic ukiyo-e, this is evident. Thus, it was much easier to have sex. No hustle unbuttoning. All they needed to do was just untie the obi. But with the Western clothing, it was hard to have H. It wasn’t like T-shirt and jeans back then. So, the clothing also contributed to skinship restriction. That’s why I think sexual revolution in the 60s had something to do with change of young people’s clothing.
At the same time, during the Taisho period, Christian sisterhood (especially Roman Catholicism) became the shojo’s ideal in all girl’s school. This can be seen in a sisterhood anime, Maria Sama ga Miteru. And the french maids at Western restaurants started appearing in the cities. This was the time when European restaurants and cafes became very popular. Because boys had been separated from girls to have skinship, the shojo world had been mystified, and eventually moefied.
So, the Westernization, single-sex eduction, the emergence of shojo, the emergence of french maid, and the disappearance of skinship during the Taisho period, all these were precursors to the emergence of Otaku.
So, skinship-wise, the Taisho period was very significant in Japan. Steel Angel Kurumi is the best anime to observe the Taisho zeitgeist. Kurumi is a robotic french maid. And, she perfectly fits moga (modern-girl), an archetypical Taisho girl. Losing skinship with real girls opened the gate for the advent of maid robot. And the Taisho era was when the Japanese Empire became a superpower after winning WWI. Kurumi was produced by Dr. Ayanokoji as a secret weapon of the Japanese Imperial Army, almost like V2 of Dr. Von Braun or WMD of Dr. Strangelove. It was part of the arm race between the superpowers. But she ended up with a soshoku-kei boy, and protecting him from school bullies, not with the imperialist regime.
It’s been almost 100 years since the Taisho period, and even for today’s standard, girls can rely on macho men to be their arms, while soshoku-kei boys can’t rely on girls to protect themselves. The society will dictate that kind of boys is hetare (wimp) unworthy to live. These boys are referred to “pussycat” in America. In the Taisho era, all boys were expected to be a soldier, ready to dedicate their lives to the emperor. So, soshoku-kei was out of question. They were worthless in militarism. But, a robotic maid, ironically a product of Japanese military industrial complex, became a salvation for soshoku-kei. Kurumi’s personality is characterized by always hugging her master affectionately, very skinship-oriented. She is quite a hugger. That’s how a maid robot is moefied. And she is exactly Ochimono (literally “fallen object”, a kind of deus ex machina, a girl falling from the sky and save lonely Otaku). Sora no Otoshimono is the prime example.
The word “robot” also emerged in 1920 in Europe, which coincides during the Taisho era in Japan. And Fritz Lang’s Metropolis is the epitome of that, a female robot peace maker, bridge maker, and ford-maker. So, the robotic maid trend can also be traced back to the Taisho era also.
Therefore, lack of skinship led to the maid boom, and a maid robot as a substitute for a real girl, e.g., Chobits, Mahoromatic, and etc. And a substitute can be Rosen Maiden too, a Gothic Lolita doll. Yet, we claim these girls are authentic, not “sub”stitute, implying inferiority to today’s evolutionarily challenged real girls. Moekko are actually the ideal of Moe Anime and our fellow feminists. They are the Eternal Feminine, to borrow a word from Johann Wolfgang Goethe. During this time in Europe, Oskar Kokoschka, an Austrian expressionist painter, dated a female doll. He brought his life size doll to everywhere. Insanity is what expressionism was about. We see a couple number of hikikomori dating dakimakura today. They are pillow-huggers, which is far better than tree huggers (oh, Nagi is a tree spirit, so tree huggers may be as good as pillow-huggers). So, this phenomenon has been around for a long time, way before Otaku time, e.g., an ancient Greek story of Pygmalion.
And probably, I-Fairy will be the next generational maid Otaku may fall in love with. And she may replace church pastor as well. Or she can be a nun. Just like in Metropolis, Maria became the mediator between the workers and the management, I-Fairy has become the mediator officiating a marriage. Is it merely a coincidence that the Taisho year 100 is 2011, the next year? That is the year Steel Angels revive. Can Dr. Ayanokoji be one of the scientists who are working for the development of i-fairy technology? I-Fairy is a product of a skinshipless society which started in the Taisho era. Lack of oxytocin and the advent of robotic maid, that’s another correlation.
Today hikikomori lacks skinship with girls, because people don’t touch each other in Japan, especially in Tokyo, which is a society of mysophobia, which is totally a metropolitan disease. No hugging between friends of the opposite-sex. No handshake in business settings. Just exchanging business cards. How boring. Free hugs is inconceivable in Japan. What’s the use of dakimakura if we have free hugs. Free love in Japan? No way. That is why skinship is excessively emphasized in anime. Moekko pressing her breasts up against innocent boys, e.g., a succubus like Kurumu uses her oppai to suffocate a boy. Ah, what a wonderful world… But that won’t happen in such a non-skinship culture like Japan, so hikikomori will never be cured. That’s why I encourage them to get out of Japan like I did.
Well, I hear some hikikomori have been cured by a dolphin therapy. But having skipship with a dolphin? Come on! I can’t have a moe on a she-dolphin unless she shape-shifts into a girl. But, that’s impossible in reality. So, dolphins can’t save me. Watching “Spice And Wolf,” I had a moe on Holo, but at least she wasn’t in an animal form, she was in a human form. Plus, those hikikomori are well off, they can afford to play around with dolphins. I can’t. Unproductive Otaku can’t afford it.
Can Rental-oneesan cure my hikikomoriness? No. Again, we can’t afford them. Moreover, they don’t have skinship with hikikomori in the first place. They are not a sex surrogate in any manner. They just ban anime and video game and throw us out. They just force us back to a cold skinshipless world. So, what’s the point of being oneesan? They are not really oneesan, but just a young female eviction officer. They are worse than Lovely Rita meter maid. And shock therapy won’t work. Otaku are not macho. We are too sensitive to endure that shock. Come on, we are soshoku-kei. So, they are missing the point. Rental-oneesan is not a solution to our problem, but Rental-oneesan is the problem. Rather than curing us, try to cure the root of the problem which all goes back to the Taisho period. We are not the problem, but lack of skinship is the problem.
Thus, that’s how Japan has sold skinship in exchange for the Westernization. So, the Taisho period was the root of Otaku problem. Therefore, what we need is skinship. However, that is impossible for now, so we need a drastic revolution, but I don’t think non-otaku ordinary folks (ippan-jin) will fight for our civil rights. Probably we will end up being a laughing riot. So what is our option?
Virtual skinship, i.e., moe. And diet is a way to moe. Yes, diet is a key to have moe, moe, kyun!
Therefore, I shall discuss my diet plan in the next article.