The Angry Cat isn’t the only famous cat on the Internet. Cats have overtaken dogs as the most popular pet in Japan within the last few years (Yamamura, 2016). Each year, Yokohama features Neko-Break, an exhibition of cat-themed photography and merchandise. As Japan often does, there’s a market for cat-otaku. Otaku, in the Japanese sense…
Author: Chris Kincaid
A Brief History of Japanese Paper Fans
Paper fans symbolize Japan, right up there with giant robots, sushi, geisha, and kimono. While a humble part of fashion and summer, the fan has a history of its own. Japan isn’t unique in having fans. It’s the most convenient way to cool off, after all. A leaf or anything flexible can become a fan,…
Understanding Anime Fan Service
I get it, some of you like fan-service, but fan-service has become a blight on anime as a whole. It’s fine when it appears in genres you fully expect to see it in: ecchi and hentai. Let it remain there. However, the mentality behind fan-service has leeched most categories of anime. Breast jokes have no…