From: matsui@grebe.Stanford.EDU (Matsui Toshihiro)
Subject: Re: OTAKU
Organization: Robotics Department, Stanford University, Ca. USA
Date: Mon, 27 Jul 1992 20:23:56 GMT

In article <1992Jul27.071444.21631@uwm.edu> circuit@convex.csd.uwm.edu writes:
>	OTAKU I believe really means home, house, residence. And Otaku
>used in slang as Computer-Otaku, Techno-Otaku, Manga-Otaku etc etc..
>Probably refers to that fact that that's all these people do. IN other
>words stay HOME and do their hobby all the time. 

Interesting interpretation, and almost correct.
In fact, "OTAKU" should be used as a pronoun that refers to
a family or group to which the person you are speaking to
belongs.

"Otaku no niwa wa yoku teire sarete imasu ne."
	Your garden is well maintained, isn't it?
"Otaku no musuko-san wa sports ga yoku dekimasu ne."
	I know your son is good at sports.
"Otaku dewa dou iu shituke wo nasatte imasu ka?"
	How do you discipline your children at home?
"Otaku no kenkyuu-sho wa rippa desu ne."
	Your (company's) laboratory is excellent."

These are all correct usage.
Note that otaku(no) is translated into the plural form
of "you" or "your". 

Then, the word began to be (mis)used to refer to an individual
you are talking to.

"Otaku no iu koto wa machigatte iru."
	What you say is wrong.
"Otaku, douka shiteru n(o) ja nai?"
	You are confused, aren't you?
"Otaku-ra, ii seikatsu shite(i)ru ne."
	You guys are living good lives, aren't you.

Then maniac people in some collectors group began to
use this word in a more restricted way.

"Otaku, xxx no video soft motteru?"
	Do you have a copy of xxx video?
"Uchi no xxx to otaku no yyy wo koukan shinai?"
	How about exchanging my xxx with your yyy?

Here, otaku can only be used to call the supreme
master of the collectors. They don't call a novice
collector "otaku". One point is that the people in
these communities are not well socialized and the
only word they know to speak to an unfamiliar person
is "otaku". In fact, it is hard to find a pronoun
in Japanese when you  want to speak to a person
whose name is unknown. Anata? OUT! The only alternative
I can think of is "Shitsurei desuga, ..." (or "Osore
iri masuga, ...") which is a counter part of "Excuse me"
and not to use any pronouns.

This slangy usage of otaku became well-known through
the report of the horrible murderer, "Miyazaki", several
years ago. He called himself "video otaku", which
meant a supreme mania of video. He possessed lots of copies
of old TV animation programs that had been broadcasted when
home VCR had been unavailable.

After this report, even ordinary people began to call
maniac people "otaku". One famous example is  "Gunji-
otaku" (military critics) who frequently appeared on TV 
during the desert storm operations.

Anyway, "otaku" is a sound word when it is used as a pronoun,
especially when referring to people in a family or group.
However, it has different meaning when used as a noun or suffix,
and it usually refers to a person (or people) who finds
extraordinary values in a bizarre aspect of activities or objects
which ordinary people  do not care.

"Iya ni kuwashii ne."
	You have very deep knowledge.
"Naisho dakedo, jitsu ha otaku nan(o) da."
	Please keep this secret, but I'm actually an OTAKU.

For another example, if there were a UNIX-otaku,
he would be running system6 on PDP-11.

Toshi Matsui


-- 
--Toshihiro Matsui, $B>>0f(J $B=S9@!"(J JQ1QNW@7,21,28,144,430MHz
-- Computer Sci. Robotics Lab., Stanford CA
-- Visitor from Electrotechnical Lab., Tsukuba, Japan