Part 2 about Japaneseness – and some scenarios for Nico Nico Douga in the West

Triggered of by the launch of Nico Nico Douga’s German and Spanish version, I asked myself in the last post (“Wunderbar – Nico Nico Douga goes German….”) two questions that I evaded up to this point: How Japanese is Nico Nico Douga? And what does this mean for its fate in the West? This is part two of my try to address these questions.

It turned out that I had good reasons to evade them. Both the last and this post became rather long and arbitrary lists of potential candidates for Japanesness. I am not really happy with this. Not only because Japaneseness is a highly problematic term, loaded and at the same time imprecise. It is simply beyond my (and maybe anyone’s) capability, to give satisfying answers.

So why do I still post it? Well, I still think that it is braver to address these questions head on, instead of evading them, or hiding them in many different posts. Plus it enabled me to develop some scenarios for a potential success or non-success of Nico Nico Douga in the West – and I will write about this at the end of this post. So lets start now, with part two of the long list.

The potential Japaneseness of tags doomed to me in a drunk conversation with Nico Nico Bu members in Tokyo. As mentioned several times before, tags do not only describe videos. Tags take a lead role in user-lead generation of new genres. On Nico Nico Douga, tags compress complex terms into a combination of only a few signs. There are three Japanese alphabets, and one of them, Kanji, resembles the Chinese alphabet. It not only enables the expression of much more content in much less space. It also connects words into one combination of signs. In a visual sense, sentences are internally more connected, almost as if they would be one word.

Some of my Japanese conversation partners have told me, that the condensation of the tags is not only a result of writing in the three Japanese alphabets. It has an equivalent in a passion in Japanese culture for condensation as such. If you believe this, you can see this passion for condensation everywhere: In architecture, as in painting, in Haikus ... Once again, stereotypes all over the place.

However, one thing is for sure: Tags on Nico Nico Douga are so effective, because they are often highly complex, and Nico Nico Douga would not be what it is, without its effective tags. When you look at the German translation of the interface of Nico Nico Douga, you can see already, where one of the difficulties of the adaption of Nico Nico Douga will lie: Obviously it is a challenge to translate the condensed Japanese terms into similarly short and condensed German words. And this is not ony a question of translation. It is simply hard to imagine generic German tags that enable equivalent degrees of complexity.

A next candidate for Japaneseness is the combination of writing and image. I am not an art historian, but you do not have to be one, to know that there is an old tradition of combining text and image in Japanese paintings and prints. Indeed, you just have to watch an hour of Japanese mainstream TV. If you flip through the channels of broadcast TV, you will hardly ever find a TV image that does not show some kind of writing on it. This is by no means a reaction to Nico Nico Douga, I am told. The abundance of written text on TV became popular in the 80ties.

A random example of writing on Japanese TV - here in the lower right corner

The next points are so obvious that it might be important to write them down, merely to not forget them: Without Manga and Anime, which seem to be especially suited for re-editing (see the post Hikawa-san for his further-leading ideas on that); without the cult of 2D characters, who often take a larger than life importance; without the obsession with artificial life, that goes beyond Otaku culture, even though it is especially prevalent there; without Otako culture itself, which provided the blueprint for a hyper-consumerist yet subversive fandom; without the comic market, where fans offer and buy self-made variations of existing commercial products, without the blueprint for toleration of copyright infringement, that comes with that … without all that, much of Nico Nico Douga would not look like it does today. Some of this has long arrived in the West, but still, let’s not forget: Japan is where it comes from, where it has the longest, and often also the strongest traditions.

It is probably no coincidence that all this emerged in Japan. Manga and Anime culture, for example, have roots in older levels of Japaneseness. This seemed apparent to me, when I visited six weeks ago a Kabuki theatre in Tokyo: The codified expressions of the actors did indeed look to me like the codified set of expressions in anime.

Kabuki on Nico Nico Douga. The uploader titled this video “Aitsu koso ga Kabuki no Oujisama” (“He is the prince of Kabuki”): A pun on "Aitsu koso ga tennis no oujisama" (= “He is the prince of tennis”), a manga and camp musical, which is highly popular with the Nico Chuu.

Kabuki is a good starting point for more speculation on Japanesness. Originated in the 17th century, it already contains many of the elements that make Nico Nico Douga so unique: The high level of transtextual clues can be tracked to Kabuki; just as the active audience, which often shouts, when actors come on stage; or the obsession with gender swap (in Kabuki, either female actors play both male and female roles, or, more often, male actors play female as well as female roles).

You think things become quite un-analytic at this point? You think that this is stereotyping too much? Then how about this one: One afternoon I walked through a crowded road full of pedestrians in Ikebukuro, and I saw a woman, riding on a bike single-handedly, while she was texting on her mobile. So, here I was, thinking immediately: This is an ability to multitask that goes far beyond what we have in the West – at least far beyond my abilities. So what do you think? Do we have to look at the interface of Nico Nico Douga against the background of a visual culture that seems to be overloaded and crowded from a Western point of view?

Ok, now I have definitely taken it far enough. The question of Japaneseness cannot be answered, nor can it be evaded. Meanwhile, there is at least some strong support that it is no coincidence that Nico nico Douga emerged in Japan, and not in the West. Based on this, I want to now try to answer the second question: If you agree at least partly with me and most of the Nico Chuu, and share the perception that there is to some degree something specifically Japanese about Nico Nico Douga, will Nico Nico Douga be successful in the West?

An answer about future is best made in scenarios, and I think you can at least make four of them. First scenario: Nico Nico Douga will fail in the West, because it does not make sense. Second: Nico Nico Douga will become a playground for Western Japanophiles, who will use Nico nio Douga to play to be Japanese in their spare time. It remains a niche offer. The third scenario goes further: Nico Nico Douga might transform itself and become something different in West. How this will look like, remains to be seen.

The fourth scenario is the most far reaching: Not so much Nico Nico Douga will transform itself, but it will become part of a transformation of the West. Nico Nico Douga might become one driver of a long-term process of Easternasation. I have put this hypothesis forward at another place in a short article written together with Scott Lash. Easternasation is a speculative hypothesis, and I am not really sure whether I really believe in it. But if there is something to it, Nico Nico Douga could be a key diver of Easternasation: It might promote, for example, new ideas of playfulness, collective creativity and creative evolution, a different relationship between content holders and users, and maybe even the introduction of kuuki itself.

As I said: Time will tell. The new German and Spanish version will teach us, whether one of the first three scenarios will realise itself – the fourth one operates on a longer time frame. In the last days, we in London (Foo-san, Takashiro-san, Zimmer-san, Lash-san and me) started to dream up an offspring project of the metadata project, which might look for answers by a quantitative analysis of Nico Nico Douga’s data. Not sure whether we will really be able to do this – but it seems to me a project worthwhile pursuing.

And as much as I get excited about the data on the German and the Spanish version of Nico Nico Douga, it is the Taiwanese version, which might turn out to be the most interesting. It might give us some ideas, how much of Nico Nico Douga is Japanese, and how much is East Asian. This question is just as relevant as the ones that are based on the dichotomy Western versus Japanese, indeed maybe even more so. You will of course not get straight answers – other factors such as the national business environment or the IPR policy are probably just as important as cultural factors. But it will give hints, and much material for even further questions without answers.

Wunderbar! Nico Nico Douga goes German – and some hesitant reflections on Japaneseness (pt 1)

Nico Nico Douga has now released a Spanish (http://es.nicovideo.jp/) and a German version (http://de.nicovideo.jp/). The German translation of the interface is still a bit shaky, but hey, who would complain? This makes life so much easier for non-Japanese-speakers such as me. The German interface gives you access to all Japanese videos, including the Japanese comments. Japanese tags are not included. Instead you will find the first German tags. You have on each language version the possibility to put up 10 tags per video.

On the start page you find videos uploaded by German-speakers (e.g. German cosplayers), as well as Japanese videos, where German-speakers make their first and often slightly awkward steps into the world of commenting. It will come to no surprise that most of the first users seem to be German Japanophiles (of which there are quite many).

Of course I am very curious how this will take up, not the least because it will give us some information about one of the big questions: How Japanese / East Asian is Nico Nico Douga? Behind this lurks a second question: Will Nico Nico Douga be successful in the West? Both questions are always among the first that get asked by Japanese as well as by non-Japanese. And since quite a while I wanted to address them. But before I address them now, I have to make some remarks about why I was evading them for such a long time.

As someone with some background in anthropology, I have the typical mix of obsession and hesitance, when it come to analyse Nico Nico Douga as something uniquely Japanese. I am obsessed by it, because I constantly meet concepts, which I can only understand, if I learn more about their specific Japanese background. At the same time I am hesitant, because an explanation by “Japaneseness” can be easily crude and often superficial (check out the seminal works of Shunya Yoshimi for a critique of thinking Japaneseness). But, of course, I cannot help it. I have the gaze of the gaijin. And many Nico Chuus seem to feel the same: They explain Nico Nico Douga’s characteristics by Japaneseness. But again: The fact that Nico Chuu explain Nico Nico Douga to me by Japaneseness is of course a result of my presence.

What to do in this situation? Well, I think, keep in mind that Japaneseness is only one side of Nico Nico Douga, and, more importantly, it should never be the only explanation. On the other hand it is something that I have to tackle. And indeed, on this blog I reached again and again a point where I had to reference to Japanesness. So enough of worried preambles, and forward, into the material! Oh, no, one more thing needs to be said: To not overcomplicate things, I make in this post no difference between Japaneseness and East-Asianness. Of course, I know that there is a huge difference. But taking it into account is unfortunately even more beyond my gaijin insight.

The most obvious candidate for Japaneseness is “kuuki” – the shared atmosphere of appreciation that one needs to catch, if one wants to comment appropriately, and to understand the joy of being a Nico Chuu. If you look at Kuuki against the background of Japaneseness, you arrive quickly at a list that includes conformity, a high value of group, a sensitivity for atmosphere, non-confrontative communication, friendliness for friendliness’ sake … here you have about half of the stereotypes that the West has generated, when it tried to pin down Japaneseness. I leave it to you, how much you want to actually apply. But to understand kuuki fully without them will be probably impossible.

It gets even more problematic, if you look at a second group of stereotypes. Whether you look at the videos or the comment: Nico Nico Douga obviously lives to a high extend of duplication. Nico Chuu comment the same as their predecessors. Videos are often deal with the same topics and similar icons. Duplication and mutation: Here we have two concepts that take us right back to the 60ties and 70ties of the last century, when the West started to get scared of the industrial power of Japan, and read it as a nation of copycats (which was, as we know now, hugely mistaken – but this does not prevent many Western as well as Japanese commentors to repeat the same mistake, when they read China now).

However, it is not only stereotypes. There is something to it. Of course, duplication and anonymity exists in the West as well. But in the West, such forms of mass behaviour are often the tabooed undercurrent of the behaviour of seemingly single subjects, which have the self-perception and self-staging of making up their mind all by themselves. In Japan, this seems to be less of a concern. Duplication and mutation seem to not threaten the self-perception of the Nico Chuu. Can you imagine a platform in the West with similar traits? If you cannot, a Western version of Nico Nico Douga is in trouble, as duplication and mutation are so essential to its workings – they are the key to its evolutionary character, which will soon be a topic in one of my next posts.

And it gets more complicated. Sometimes, the Japaneseness of Nico Nico Douga can take inversed forms: Some of the traits of Nico Nico Douga might have to be explained as specifically Japanese forms of Anti-Japanesness. The most obvious example for this is anonymity. Anonymity is anti-Japanese, because it provides freedom for the user, which they might lack in their sometimes pretty restricted social life offline : The freedom to express, the freedom to be controversial (especially on 2channel), the freedom to act irresponsible. Anonymity enabled the success of 2channel and partly of Nico Nico Douga as well. Many Nico Chuu told me that it has a special significance in Japan. In the West, we might simply need it less.

It does not stop here. There is more potential Japanesenss in Nico Nico Douga's version of anonymity. Videos, comments and tags on Nico Nico Douga are not only non-trackable to a real offline person. Their anonymity goes further. Comments, tags and also most videos are also not trackable to any kind of online identity. It is difficult to find out, which other comments a user has made (however, you can block all comments by a person). Is such an absence of a unified subject Japanese? The speaking subject seems to be less a central concept. An opinion is not an expression of a single judging subject, not even a virtual one. At least I have some gut feeling that Western users would miss this consistency of a subject.

Let’s stay for one more paragraph with the anonymity. From what I have heard from the Nico Chuu, it is good manners for uploaders and producers of videos to not name themselves. However it is a high honour if you get named. Other Nico Chuu recognise a style and give its producer a nickname. So you do not name yourselves, but you can get named. Is that Japanese? Hm…, at least it is another one of this rather foreign, yet fascinating concepts for me as a gaijin.

To summarise the three elements of anonymity: Firstly there might be more need for anonymity in Japan than in the West. Secondly the depth of the anonymity in Japan might be irritating for Western users. Thirdly, the game of getting named by others might be something that relates to Japanese traditions. All three factors strengthen anonymity in a way they might not do in the West. And this might be result in a further stumbling point for Nico Nico Douga in the West. Nico Nico Douga probably needs anonymity. The inconsistency of a single speaking subject is one of the key elements of its success. It enables the comments to melt with each other, as well as to melt with the video.

But not all is lost. The recent success of 4chan in the US might indicate that there is just as much need for anonymity in the West as in Japon. This could be a very good sign for Nico Nico Douga, and a good starting point for a community of early adapters.

Ok. There is more, but I better save it for the next post in some days. For now you might see, what the problems are, if you start to address the question of Japaneseness. In the next post I will reflect on more of these Japaneseness-traps. From there I will then develop some scenarios for the success or non-success of Nico Nico Douga in the West. But even if Japaneseness turns out to be a stumbling block for the success of Nico Nico Douga in the West, I would always argue that Japaneseness is in itself, of course, a good thing. Not only for Nico Nico Douga, not only for Japan, but also, maybe, for the West as well.

Beyond Sklavenmoral - Kanamaru Toshiyuki and Harry Graf Kessler

Kanamaru-san (id:kana0355) is a pragmatic linguist based in the languages department of Kyoto University. The same Kanamaru-san is also a deep Nico Chuu, who has not one, but two Nico Nico Douga premium accounts, so that both he and his wife can log in at the same time as premium users. Recently, Kanamaru-san has started to bring his two sides together: He started to look at Nico Nico Douga as a linguist. What will come out of it, is not yet fully clear, but bound to become exciting. When finished, his project will give us a comparative analysis of the forms of speech on Nico Nico Douga on the one hand, and on Japanese Youtube on the other.

Kanamaru-san joined our focus group in Kyoto, and was so kind to meet with us for lunch on the next day. We had planned just a quick follow-up, but our conversation lasted for hours. Kanamura-san speaks fluently English, crafts his words carefully and thinks precisely. His new research project asks how the basic difference of the comments' placement – on Youtube, comments are placed underneath, whereas on Nico Nico Douga they are on the video – creates the specific speech situations of commenting on Nico Nico Douga and Youtube.

For Kanamaru-san, a fundamental difference of Nico Nico Douga is the direction of speech in relation to other speakers. On Youtube most comments are single comments. This might be visualised as "|". As a whole, the comments form this structure: "|+|+|". Sometimes they relate to each other as comments about comments, and if they do, they create this: "-|". Nico Nico Douga is different. Its fundamental communication structure can be visualised as "|||". Its comments react to each other, even though they hardly ever comment each other. Instead, they form a joint attitude: The Kuuki. The comments look together in the same way in the same direction, and as such, they melt, and become a collective attitude.

While we talked in Kyoto, I could not really clarify, why this is so fascinating for me. Some weeks later, in Tokyo, it became already a bit clearer: There I talked to Nakano-san, who is one of the inventors of Nico Nico Douga: I learned from him that Nico Nico Douga came out of the idea to create an experience of audience for music videos on mobile phones (more about this here in a week or two). Last week, things began to clarify even further. In the South of France, where I retreated for a week of writing, my friend Graf Tati placed a book on the table in the front of me, while we were sitting in the shade to survive the French heat.

Harry Graf Kessler

The book was a biography of Harry Graf Kessler, a German diplomat, writer, art collector, and traveller. Graf Kessler was born 1868 into an upper class background – "Graf" translates into "Count" -, and epitomises the transformation from Europe's 19th to its 20th century: A bisexual party king, who assisted to prepare Nietzsche's death mask; a diplomat for the German Kaiserreich (think: Meji period), who sympathised with the communists; a critic of modernist art, who discussed it with everyone from George Grosz to Bert Brecht; a defender and supporter of the radical avantgarde, who personally preferred classical Greek and Japanese culture. But what has Harry Graf Kessler to do with the work of Kanamaru-san?

We have to go to London for this, and back to the early years of the 20th century. Whenever in London, Graf Kessler visited the boxing matches in Whitechapel, which was then, and too a smaller extend still is, one of London's poorest areas. The beauty of the boxers, the brutality and the blood, but most importantly, the audience, which "shouted, whistled, stormed, as if possessed" fascinated the posh German Count. Harry Graf Kessler saw in this mass an alternative blueprint to what Nietzsche had described some years earlier as the "Sklavenmoral" (slave morality) of the judgement by the masses.

Friedrich Nietzsche, giving Sklavenmoral a dirty look

Nietzsche despised the Sklavenmoral. It judges the world on the criteria of good and evil intentions. Therefore it associates 'good' with niceness and usability for the largest possible amount of people. Against this, Nietzsche celebrated the lonely judgement of the single few. Only they have the strength to develop a Herrenmoral (= master morality), which devides the world into good and bad. The resulting idea of 'good' is freed of any niceness. But it is neither critical. Indeed, Sklavenmoral is at its basis critical (because the week despise the masters). Herrenmoral is at its basis affirmative. This is, according to Nietzsche, the starting point to create anything of significance.

Back to Kessler. Even though Kessler was deeply influenced by Nietzsche, he was not so convinced by what he called Nietzsche's "culte de moi". For Kessler, the collective judgement of "greater individualities" – that is groups of people, who judge as one - had a higher value than the judgement of the singular individual. And here, in these boxing fights in Whitechapel, he saw it realised.

A boxing match in Whitechapel - one of Harry Graf Kessler's favorite hang outs

So now you might already get, what I am hinting at. Nico Nico Douga is another form of what Harry Graf Kessler had observed in Whitechapel more than one hundred years ago. In this context it is interesting that 11 years before Graf Kessler attended the boxing matches in Whitechapel, he had travelled to Japan as part of his world trip in 1892. There he lived for a significant time in Kamakura, which is, as Kyoto, one of the former capitals of Japan.

Kamakura, another one of Harry Graf Kessler's favorite places

I am not sure whether Kessler's Nietzsche critique was inspired by his Japanese experience. In any case, I think Graf Kessler's remarks catch something essential about Nico Nico Douga. Both the boxing match and Nico Nico Douga form a communication structure of collective attitude (|||), which provides an alternative to single judgements (|), comments about comments (-|), or, indeed, the accumulation of single judgements (|+|+|).

Nietzsche's mistake was to identify a common attitude (|||) with the accumulation of single judgements (|+|+|). Nietzsche is only right, if you identify collective judgement with the latter, and indeed, Nietzsche’s furore against the Sklavenmoral can still be translated into a damning critique of mainstream consumerism: Its judgements are nothing else than the accumulation of many mediocre singular judgements (|+|+|). So: Yes, as "|+|+|", you remain a slave. But as "|||", you have the ability to develop a Herrenmoral - and even more so than when you are only "|".

If we follow Graf Kessler, we can expect that this new form of "|||"-speech might be more intelligent, more valid, and might indeed lead us to new forms of art. The plurality of comments ceases to be an accumulation of different opinions. Nor is it a negotiation of opinions. It resembles the audience in a concert. Fans in a concert do not look at each other as well, but at the same time applause is more than an accumulation of many pairs of clapping hands. Applause is a collective that speaks.

So far, so good. And indeed, one could say, a bit over the top. Why should a clapping and shouting audience in a boxing fight enable us to move beyond Sklavenmoral? Isn't Kessler taking his enthusiasm for boxing crowds a bit too far? To address this, we obviously have push to the analysis further. Let’s try. In a diary entry of October 22nd 1903, Kessler elaborates on his ideas and applies them to art (sorry, but I have to give this quote in German):

"Jeder Mensch ist schoen, wenn man ihn einzeln und fuer sich betrachtet: Aber die Menge ergibt die Haesslichkeit. Um eine `schoene´ Kultur zu schaffen, kommt es nicht darauf an, den Einzelnen zu kultivieren, sondern die Beziehungen der Einzelnen untereinander harmonisch zu machen, wie man ein Klavier stimmt auf ein Verhaeltnis der Seiten untereinander, nicht auf einen schoenen Klang der einzelnen Seite; denn von den Beziehungen kommt die Haesslichkeit. (…) Der Deutsche operiert bei der Kultur immer mit der falschen Abstraktion: Persoenlichkeit. Er schafft sich eine Sammetjacke oder gruene Weste an. Die Beziehung zu den anderen uebersieht er ganz. Aber fuer die Kultur kommt es viel weniger darauf an, wie die Einzelnen sind, als wie sie sich zueinander verhalten. Die Beziehung ist hier Alles, wie bei den Farben in einem Bilde."

It is beyond my capabilities to give you an exact translation of this quote, but here is a quick summary: Kessler first argues that while humans are beautiful as singulars, the mass is ugly. However, and in a way contradicting this starting point, he then says that if you want to create a 'beautiful' culture, you should not cultivate the singular. In opposite, you have to change the relationships between the singulars. He compares this to tuning a piano: Here you don't tune a single string, but harmonise their relationships. Wrong and typical German is, according to the German Kessler, if you aim for 'personality', which he calls a wrong abstraction. Decisive is how the singulars relate to each other, just like colors relate to each other in a painting.

It is quite interesting, how he uses his two metaphors: piano and painting. When he talks about the piano, it is about tuning, which he sees as forming relationships of strings. This might be the equivalent of setting up the basic communication structure of Nico Nico Douga: The "|||" - a largely affirmative kuuki. In his second metaphor, paintings, it is the relationships between colours that create meaning. And this is what Nico Nico Douga does as well. The kuuki of the comment is not only applause. It is like applause, but more. It is applause that speaks. It is the collective speaking, and speaking not only with the limited vocabulary of clapping, whistling, booing, silence, or leaving the event. What we can here observe are collective sentences, attitudes, complex commentary.

It is this, which is new about Nico Nico Douga, and which goes beyond the boxing match in Whitechapel 100 years ago. Nico Nico Douga elaborates collective speaking, and while it does so, it enters new territory. I would go so far as to say: It has created a speech situation that humanity experiences for the first time. And you can go even one step further: It is a speech situation that indeed might enable humanity to move beyond the alternative between what Nietzsche has described as Sklavenmoral of the masses and the judgement of the single chosen few. Kessler saw only the first glimpse of that. What we might now see, is Harry Graf Kessler's enthusiastic vision becoming reality.

So if you are willing to follow the argument to this point, the next question is: Are we seeing a Herrenmoral of the collective, or is this something beyond the alternative of Sklavenmoral and Herrenmoral altogether. Of course, it is too early to give a final answer for that. However, one trait of Nico Nico Douga would support the former (a new Herrenmoral of the collective): Its largely affirmative nature. In this view, the affirmative nature of Nico Nico Douga is not so much a return to Japanese politeness after the rough wild west days of 2channel, but the second step of a development of a collective voice. The first step was the largely critical 2channel: The collective united, but knew no better than to critisize. Nico Nico Douga is the second step, where the new collective starts to realise its true potential.

Nietzsche's 'On the Genealogy of Morales' - read through Kessler maybe a good starting point for speculation?

Now I really have entered highly speculative territory. To finish this post, I want to make one step back and return to safer grounds. What we can see there is already spectacular enough. I think we can already say for sure that we see a new speech situation. In this, Nico Nico Douga is maybe only comparable to Wikis in general and Wikipedia in particular. Just like Nico Nico Douga, Wikis and Wikipedia provided us with a new form of collective speech: In the case of Wikis, it is a non-confrontative form of accumulative negotiation, in the case of Nico Nico Douga it is a non-confrontative form of collective speech. Indeed, the newness of Nico Nico Douga is even more basic: Whereas Wikipedia has a direct trajectory in the negotiation of documents, Nico Nico Douga has created something that humanity did not know before: A collective form of speech that has the ability to express more than the alternative like it/like it not.

It is this new form of collective, affirmative and complex feedback that excited me so much, when Kanamaru-san told me about his research project, five weeks ago in his office in Kyoto university. I have described here only the start of Kanamaru-sans analysis. After all, he is a linguist. He will dive into computer-aided empirical analysis of the forms of speech in Nico Nico Douga. His research will look into how individual speech acts are formed so that they can enter this process of melting into a collective sentence. And that is, of course, an absolutely crucial point for analysis. Bringing his two sides – linguist and Nico Chuu – together, Kanamura-san has boarded on a truly thrilling intellectual adventure.

Matsuri! Talking to Nico Nico Bu members in Kyoto

We didn't really plan to do a focus group in Kyoto. I wanted to see temples, eat, sit at the river, do all the classical Kyoto things, before the research would continue in Osaka. However, Takashiro-san soon found out that many Nico Nico Bu members – the expert community of bloggers, who write about Nico Nico Douga on Hatena – are based in Kyoto. So it was only logical to organise a group in Kyoto. This turned out to be a really good idea. Our discussions lasted from the early afternoon until late at night. In the following days we did several follow up interviews – with Sikii-san, Kanamaru-san and Taitoku-san – and if we would have had more time, we would have done even more.

The Kyoto research has been fruitful in many ways, and I will need several posts to describe it. One of the most important findings came quite early, in the focus group itself: Next to “Kuuki”, there are two more central terms that one needs to understand if one wants to understand Nico Nico Douga: “Matsuri” and “Moriagari”. As we talked in this focus group mainly about Matsuri, I want to concentrate here on this (and postpone an analysis of the relationship of Matsuri and Moriagari for a later post). “Matsuri” can be translated as “Festival” or “Carnival”. It is a special moment, a festive event, normally caused by an external stimulus.

We discussed several different examples of Matsuri on Nico Nico Douga: Matsuri can happen, when a video reaches a certain number of views or comments. In that case, it is desirable to watch this video in exactly that moment, when this happens. Many people are synchronously online and comments go wild. Sometimes such moments are celebrated with a piece of Asci-comment-art. Again, it is desirable to be there at that moment. However, in this case it would show bad manners to comment, as new comments might destroy the art piece. The reason to be here in that moment is to enjoy this piece of art, before someone with worse manners destroys it.

But this is not the only example of a Matsuri. Here is another example: Taitoku-san, one of the members of this focus group and a prominent blogger, is a baseball fan. When a favourite player of his makes a spectacular successful move, he would later on search on Nico Nico Douga for uploaded videos of this move. Often he finds not only these, but also quickly edited mad movies, which celebrate the achievement of the player. And he would, of course, communicate though comments and share his excitement with thousands of other Nico Chuu, who are also baseball fans.

One more example I want to mention: Recently, a Nico Chu mentioned on 2channel that there are hardly no music videos of a band called Bizu uploaded on Nico Nico Douga. On the next day, different Nico Chu uploaded more than 50 music videos of this band. They created a Matsuri that celebrated this band. This Matsuri is also particularly interesting, because it did not have, as usual, an external stimulus in the form of a date, a special event, or a round number of comments.

So what do we learn from this? Apart form Kuuki, there is a second form of creating an imagined community. Kuuki is most of the time a form of collective appreciation (less often, there can also be a negative kuuki, which flames the video or what is depicted on the video). A Matsuri takes this appreciation one step further: It is a celebration that is so strong that it does not only happen on one video, but on many videos. The second difference: It does not happen through comments but also through uploading videos. A third difference: A matsuri has often a strong cross-platform element: They start on TV or on 2channel. Fourthly, a Matsuri can be described as a Kuuki that is at the same time time-based: You have to be there, when it happens, to fully enjoy it.

There is much more to be said about Matsuris, and I will come back to this. For now I want to conclude with one very important fifth trait of Matsuri: Matsuri makes Nico Chuu leave their islands. What does that means? Nico Nico Douga has undergone a process of differentiation in the last year. Many Nico Chuu have now specialised interests. They describe these interests as islands. There is, for example, the island of Imas mad, the island of Tohou, or the island of baseball. Nico Chu spend most of their time on Nico Nico Douga on these islands. But a matsuri makes them leave the island.

A Matsuri can be island-specific. Such a Matsuri would only interest, say, Idolmaster-fans. Other Matsuri generate more attention. In such a case, a Nico Chuu, who is not really interested in Idolmaster would still “travel” to this island for the sake of the Matsuri. Matsuris have value in themselves – this is an interesting contradiction to the other trait that Matsuri: They need an external stimulus, and normally do not happen for their own sake. Matsuri do not happen for their own sake, but if they happen, you join for their sake, even though you do not care about the stimulus.

So how do you notice that a Matsuri happens? Normally, you notice it when you visit the daily raking. Many Nico Chuu visit this daily ranking as the first thing. However, not all do. In this focus group in Kyoto, most members do not. They are very deep Nico Chuu, and get their infomation about the videos mostly through blogs and twitter. Both provide them with concentrated information about what is happening on their islands. Nico Chu would normally collide the new blog posts in a RSS reader (usually the “Livedoor”-reader), and the posts on Twitter on a Twitter reader.

So there is a danger, when you are a very deep Nico Chuu: You might miss a Matsuri on another island. The member of our focs group in Kyoto are well aware of that. Even though they do not use the daily ranking anymore the access the video, they still check it in a later stage of their daily Nico Nico Douga Routine. Ranking has gained here a different function. It is not anymore the first point of access. It is a specialised tool for finding Matsuri. This shows, how important the idea of Matsuri is.

Nico Nico Douga Version upgrade

Nico Nico Douga is taking another major step. On July the 2rd Dwango announced an agreement with three associations of film and video industry, to delete all videos that infringe copyright, including MAD movies. Then, after the release show on the 4th which gathered 2,000 users in a big concert hall and more than 10,000 users via live webcast, Nico Nico Douga has been upgraded today to what is called the "Summer" version. New services include:

• Niconi community: community function that enables upload, view and comment only among certain community members.

• Niconi commons: a web site to share images, videos or sounds that are available for secondary use. The copyright holders of materials may choose the extent of licensing. Release scheduled for mid-August.

Also, new functions are coming: e.g. watching Nicovideo as an avater in Second Life-ish virtual space, "ai sp@ce"; the real-time online survey that stops video all at once and let the viewing users to answer the questionnaire, etc.

virtual concerinside ai sp@ce

New Nicoscript functions are released as well: @BGM to use the sound of some other video for his own video; @Pause to stop video temporarily and play again by simply clicking on the image or hitting the enter key.

For those who don't speak Japanese, German (thanks to an Honorary Mention, Prix Ars Elecronica 2008) and Spanish (due to the second largest speaking population after Chinese) language versions will be available sometime this summer!

Clubbing in the afternoon: Dancing on a Nico Nico Caravan in Osaka

Later on I learned that the pre-party had started at 9.30 … 9.30 AM that is! We arrived at 3PM, but even then it was a surprising sight, as I would normally associate dance ecstasy in a club with nighttime, but not with Sunday afternoons. But here we were, in a club in Osaka in the middle of 250 Nico Chuu, who danced frenetically, while two screens showed a constant stream of videos, which originally emerged on Nico Nico Douga. This was less a Karaoke-, but a club-event, though there were Karaoke elements in it. Dancing, and not singing was at the centre, and the atmosphere was ecstatic.

What about this event was specifically Nico Nico Douga? In this post I try to answer this question by conducting a little thought experiment: I want to extract everything that is not Nico Nico Douga, and see what is left. First I extract the amount of euphoria, which you encounter in any good club night. This is quite easy, but it is not enough. There is still euphoria left. What I saw was an unusual amount of euphoria. So as a next thing one might have to extract the energy of any fan movement on the rise. I have not been there at the early days of soul, punk, techno or whatever you might think of, but I guess the atmosphere was more electric than on any normal club night, and as electric as here.

However, almost all of the examples above would use some sort of intoxication to reach this euphoria. Here, hardly anyone drank alcohol, let alone take any other drugs. The drug of choice seemed to be the combination of video and dance. Thus the next thing that I have to look at more closely is the relationship of dance and video. First I have to extract VJing, which is nowadays a pretty standard ingredient of many club events. What is left after VJing is substracted is the peculiar relationship of the Nico Chuu to the screen. I am still not sure how to read this, but one thing struck me especially: Nico Chuu dance with the screen in a particular way. When the avatar character on the screen moves to the right, the fan, who copies the moves of the character, would move to the left. So from their subjective point of view, both parties – the fan and the avatar - move to the same direction, which then, as they are standing opposite to each other, results in moving into the opposite directions.

I remember that in German clubs in the 80ties it was quite a common thing to dance in front of mirrors (where, of course, the mirror image would move always in the same direction as oneself). This is definitely something different (and we should all be glad about it, as mirror-dancing encapsulated all that was bad about the 80ties). So in a way, this might give the avatar more of a position of their own. The avatar is not a mirror image of the dancer. But the dancer is not a mirror image of the avatar either. Even though the dancer copies the avatar, he or she does so not as a mirror image. So is this really dancing together with the avatar?

But again, one has to be careful to assign all this directly to Nico Nico Douga. Dancing with screens has another important trajectory in the arcade dance games, where you compete by copying the choreographies on screen as exactly as possible. The close and intimate, almost dialogical, yet still immersive relationship with the screen has also a tradition in karaoke, where the singers directly address the screen, while they read the lyrics and sing along.

Most of the dances were collective – that is: all Nico Chuu move alike, whilst they line up looking in the same direction. The moves are often theatrical: Big gestures, hands stretched out, a bit like the moves of cheerleaders. Boys and girls do the same moves, which sometimes results in boys dancing in quite a camp way, and at other times in girls doing some pretty martially looking theatrical moves. So I guess, once more I have to see how much I can extract when it comes to this form of collective dancing. I was told that this form of theatrical collective dancing is part of the Japanese club culture in a much bigger way as it is in the West. Whilst the majority of dances are fully collective, there is at least one dance, which puts one girl in the centre. At the end of this dance, all other dancers kneel down, so that only one girl is still posing in their middle. I am not sure whether this girl is selected in advance, or while the Nico Chuu dance the dance. In any case, we have here a combination of collective dancing and star cult of the amateur.

What else should we extract? I guess the next thing would have to be cosplay culture. At least one third of the Nico Chuu on this event was cosplaying. However, this subtraction is especially tricky. A lot of the cosplayers were playing characters that emerged or changed on Nico Nico Douga. I later in did an interview with a cosplayers that I met at this event, and I want to write about this in a separate post, but so much I can see here: Nico Nico Douga seems to have brought about some major changes to the cosplay culture, it has become on the one hand more popular, and on the other hand has changed its quality. In this interview I also learned that cosplayers enter the stage when the video relates to their character – especially of course, when their own character is shown on the video, but also, when their own character has a positive relationship with the character, the music or the dance moves on screen. So we have a double influence here. On the one hand Nico Nico Douga has changed cosplay, so if you would extract Nico Nico Douga out of cosplay, you would get cosplay as it was 2 years ago, but not as it is now. On the other hand, if you extract cosplay from Nico Nico Douga, you still have the fact that the Nico Chuu directly react to the characters on screen, even if they would not turn themselves into ones themselves.

Last but not least I need to mention the music. The beat was situated somewhere between Eurobeat and Eurotechno. Quite simple stuff, high girl voices, fast melodies, sometimes anime theme songs. However, in between there were other elements. One moment was especially memorable: A keyboard-crusher-themed-video collapsed into several minutes of pure noise. Another moment was a sentimental song, produced by an Otaku. Then there were 20 Minutes, when the music shifted once more: An amateur singer took the stage and sang in rock style, while the Nico Chuu surrounded him. He was obviously quite popular, a local Nico Nico Douga star. All in all, when it comes to music, the special thing here seems to me the highly eclectic mix. Or could you imagine Eurobeat, noise and rock all in the same club night in the West?

So what can we learn from this? A.) If you extract the elements that are not unique to Nico Nico Douga, what is left is a new combination of formerly existing but disparate fan culture elements. Each time the Nico Chuu meet, they will combine some new fan culture elements into it. B.) The offline ecstasy of the Nico Chuu is generated in the online world. I am not sure that I can think of some other ecstatic offline events that emerge in the online world. C.) Resulting out of that, a specific trait of these Nico Nico Douga offline events might be the way that Nico Chuu react collectively, but also immediately and physically to the characters on the videos. D.) The videos are user-made, so this is still an almost fully decentralised form of fan culture – also offline. There are not so much other examples that I can think of, which do the same.

My favourite translaters and my favourite video

Today is my last day in Japan. I will keep on posting about the amazing encounters that I had in the last weeks (I mentioned the time delay on this blog before). There is good stuff to come: Encounters with the likes of Shikii-san, Taitoku-san, Kanamaru-san, Nakano-san, Toda-san, Ozaki-san, Maria-san, Nagai-san, Nishizawa-san, Ito-san, Kosmo-san, Konsome-san, Takuma-san, Wakamura-P, plus three more focus groups and several Nico Chuu parties … lots of interesting stuff. And then there will be the time of analysis, and also of developing further forms of research about Nico Nico Douga – all this will be posted first here.

For now, I just quickly post my favourite video for today. Nothing particularly outstanding, I guess, I just smile each time, I watch it.

The characters you see stem from the Idolmaster universe, the drawings are fan-produced, as is the singing. The lyrics go on about the gorgeousness of Sushi, the refrain is: “I am hungry. I want to have a special offer”. Have fun!

One more thing to say: Two members are leaving our team now: Graham and Mark, our fantastic translators. Graham Carpenter, who was a deep, deep Nico Chuu before we started our collaboration, was not only an absolutely fantastic translator, but also an essential advisor and expert, and a friend of sorts. His brother Mark showed an incredible ability to work himself into the Nico Chuu universe, which was totally new for him. Takashiro-san will stay in Japan for another 4 weeks, and will do more research, so I will rave about her contribution at another time.