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.
