Interviewing a Japanese Cosplayer [RAW Interviews]

These interviews were conducted in 2010 and 2011, the first was a face to face interview, where as later ones had to be done via e-mail because she moved away.

The difficult thing about interviewing a Japanese person compared to a Westerner is that they're a lot more reluctant to talk about themselves and their opinions, especially if you don't know them too well. A lot of the time I got one word answers and when we were doing the face to face interview I had to prob her further to get more detailed responses.

You can see a summary of the interviews and an analysis on Japanese Cosplayers on Interviewing a Japanese Cosplayer

Cosplay Interview with Reiko 1

Me: 始めてコスプレをすることはいつですか。

[When was the first time you cosplayed?]

Reiko: 始めて？えっと。。。大学二年生のとき。二十歳の時かな。

[The first time? Erm…the second year of university. When I was 20.

M:どうやって興味がありましたか。

[How did you become interested?]

R:大学の一年生の時同人誌のイベントに行ってそこにコスプレヤさんがいってかこよかったからやりたいと思った。

[In my first year of university I went to a doujinshi event where there were cosplayers. There were so cool I wanted to try it.]

M: その同人誌イベントは友達の紹介で見つけましたか。

[Did your friends introduce you to that doujinshi event?

R: 自分で見つけて行きました。

[I found it by myself]

M: その前に同人誌の興味がありましたか。

[Before that event did you have an interest in doujinshi?]

Interviewing a Japanese Cosplayer -Article

This was a result of an interview with a Japanese cosplayer back in 2011 for an essay for a class at University in Japan. I haven't used her real name.

If you're interested in Japanese geek culture I also wrote an article after interviewing a Japanese Otaku.

Or if you'd like to read the raw interview with Reiko I have put the transcript on Interviewing a Japanese Cosplayer [RAW Interviews].

Cosplayers in Japan: People Who Are Close but Not Close

Kosupure (or cosplay), is a combination of ‘costume’ and ‘play’ and consists of the practice of expressing ones fandom through the dressing up of fictional characters from various medias; mainly anime, manga and games. It’s seen within Japan as a sub-genre of the otaku subculture, which describes people who are avid fans and consumers of various mediums but mostly linked to the consumers of “useless things” such as anime, manga and games (Grassmuck 1990). There is an argument as to whether cosplay started with costumed role-play in American in the 60s and taken to Japan, or whether it was important from Japan along with the practice of anime and manga fan clubs (Winge 2006). Either way it is now a common practice in Japan especially among the young female otaku, such as 22 year old Reiko (for the purpose of anonymity this is not her real name). This essay will look at Reiko’s involvement within the cosplay community, her consumption practices, how it fits in with her social life, and how it contributes to her self identity.

You wouldn’t expect Reiko to be more then an average young Japanese woman but she is an avid cosplayer who was first interested in cosplay at 17 when she went to her first doujinshi (self published fan comics) event. She said that she had an interest in doujinshi before and when she went to her first event in Osaka there were a group of people doing cosplay. “I thought they looked cool and wanted to try”, but it wasn’t until a year later at the age of 18 when she was in university and was able to try cosplay for the first time. Her interest in doujinshi and cosplay developed on their own but when she got to University she was able to go to cosplay events for the first time with a group of friends. These university friends have stopped cosplaying now but she has formed a new group of cosplaying friends through the cosplay community.

Reiko decides which cosplay to do based on her favourite characters from anime, manga and games, but if a friend wants to do a group cosplay (all characters from the same show or game) then they will do that. Hers and her friend’s interests in the latest anime, manga and games is the fuel for their creative cosplaying passion. She said that, like many cosplayers, she normally buys her cosplay and then adjusts it to fit her body shape. She will normally spend about 8000yen on a single cosplay including the costume, wig, and accessories. I asked her if she bought a new cosplay every time; “Sometimes, but I use the same favourite cosplay a lot. There are people who buy new cosplay each time, but I don’t”. Aside from buying anime, manga and games which fuel her love of cosplay, and the cosplay itself, Reiko also spends time and money on dieting, skin products, but more importantly saves money from her part time job, which is based around the events at the weekend.

Reiko will go cosplaying about three times a month, normally at “ATC” a shopping store in Osaka which holds weekly cosplay events. There are normally normal people doing their shopping at the store, so they will often get stared at a lot. The cosplayers go to have photo shoots which are shot inside and outside the building itself, but they don’t just go to have the photos as keepsakes. What I found particularly interesting was the way the cosplayers interact at events like these: Reiko told me that a cosplayer will have a meishi, a business card, with their “cos-name”, photo, mail address, and cosplay website etc. People use these cards to look up the cosplayer or photographer on sites like an SNS (Social Network Service) and they normally keep in contact via the internet and sites like these. “You can make lots of friends” she said, but when I asked if she was close with her cosplay friends she said “Hmm, sort of. Real life names, where they live, contact details and personal information you normally don’t know”. To keep their identity there is a social taboo to asked or give out personal information, as a result Reiko knows the people by their ‘cos-names’ and characters, and is close to them as cosplayers, but outside of the events and cosplay community she knows nothing about them. Cosplayers who meet in the cosplay event normally don’t meet outside of it. There is anonymity within the cosplay circles due to its links with the otaku image, which is normally perceived as being very strange, and has very negative connotations linked with it (Grassmuck 1990), not only that but people prefer to keep their normal and cosplay lives separate for fear of what their friends and family might think of them.

Reiko is an unusual case, I think. She uses a cos-name which is the same as her real life name, but she uses different kanji so that when people say her name she doesn’t get confused. Not only that but most of her friends and her family knows that she cosplays. I asked her what her family thought and she said that at first they thought it was strange but now it’s normal. The only people who don’t know are her friends from high school, before she started cosplay. When I probed her to see why she doesn’t tell them she replied “It would be troublesome, embarrassing, because they might think I'm otaku and maybe that characters image is bad.”

Thinking up questions related to identity I figured that asking ‘how does cosplay make your identity’ would give me an answer from Reiko that she would think I wanted. Instead I asked her “If you’d never got into cosplay, do you think you’d be the same person?” She paused for a moment and replied “Different, defiantly different. When I cosplay I make myself, I become myself. For example, when I do cosplay and a man comes and asks me ‘Can I take a photo’ and he makes really good photo it makes me. My level of cosplay increases.” I pushed the question if she’d never done cosplay then what would she be doing now; “I don’t know…but long ago I was also interested…I can’t think of not doing it.” So I asked why she cosplays; “At first I saw a lot of cool people who did it, so I wanted to do it too. I like those characters and when peoples faces change to become those characters, it’s fun. When I see photos it’s interesting, fun. I’m young now and I have a lot of good photos of when I’m young. When I get older…because now it’s a hobby, but it’ll be impossible to do when I’m older.”

From what I understood cosplay gives Reiko her confidence in her image as a young woman. She is able to ‘make herself’ and at the same time create new persona and ‘new faces’ through the acting of the characters she enjoys. Cosplay is a central aspect of her life that she can’t imagine being without. Her part-time job funds her passion and is scheduled around events. She not only buys cosplay and the necessary accessories, but also anime, manga and games which inspires her cosplay. She socialises with her friends in real life, who know she cosplays as well as with her friends online, whom she always makes new ones through the introduction of events. Ironically, although she’s close to a lot of people who cosplay, she is only close as a cosplayer to them as cosplayers and none of them know who they are or what they are like outside of the cosplaying world. It is a practice which is done in the open with a lot of interaction between cosplayers, but is a closed circle where real identities are kept private. As Winge (2006) states “Japanese culture values community above the individual, cosplayers exist as a subculture, outside the acceptable norms of the dominant culture…[a]s a result, Japanese cosplayers have a negative reputation as individuals”. Because of this discrimination, areas for ‘safe cosplay’, such at official events like the ones held at ATC.

Interview with a Japanese Otaku

Something which might interest people some is an essay I wrote while I was studying at University in Japan. I was thinking its a shame to have these actually interesting essays and no one to see them apart from my professors. SO here you go! This is for anyone who's interested in otaku and has time, or is just a masochist and wants to kill time. Enjoy!


An Otaku in 2010
– The new generation of ‘otakuness’ -

Within this interview I wanted to look at a normal Japanese person and find out ‘what makes them otaku’, how they think other people view this identify and how it is expressed in their everyday life.

A "collection of useless things"

The term otaku originated from the word meaning ‘your home’ which was used to refer to someone whose position to oneself was unclear. It carries the connotation of being equal but also being distant from them. In the 1980s the term began to be used largely between fans of anime, manga and computer games. The media then began to use this term to describe people (mostly teenage men) who were socially inept, who did not care about their looks and who were into “collecting useless things” such as anime, manga and computer games (Grassmuck 1990); a negative image which grew to be connected to an incident, know as “The Miyazaki incident”, in 1989 where a man whom the media labelled as being otaku killed 3 little girls in horrific ways (Grassmuck 1990; Schodt 1996, p.45). This negative image was predominant in the 1990s and so I was particularly interested in seeing how things have changed in the last decade from the perspective of a modern day otaku.

Yuuki (for the sake of anonymity this is not her real name) was hardly the unclean anti-social image associated to otaku when I met up with her one lunch time. She seemed like an average 19 year old Japanese girl with her tights, short shirt, smart top and a big grin across her face, although she looked quite nervous she seemed happy to talk to me. When I first met her she appeared to be an average Japanese girl but after a few months she mentioned off hand that she was an otaku. This had caught me completely off-guard because her outward image was not what I had expected, and considering she was the first otaku to ‘come out’ to me, I asked her if I could interview her. She agreed and we met a few days later. I told her that the interview was anonymous and she seemed to relax a bit.


At the beginning of the interview I wanted to know what she thought made her otaku and how it was different to other people. She said that she was familiar with otaku culture and knew that otaku are otaku to their fandom’s, such as train-otaku, computer-otaku, and in her case she was an anime-otaku. There are people who just watch anime but otaku get involved more, and in her case she does so by going to events and enjoys watching cosplay (although she herself does not partake in cosplay). Other otaku also spend a lot of time on the internet browsing sites of their interests such as anime sites, but she said she does too sometimes but hasn’t had much time for recently. Considering that the image of otaku is associated with men I found it interesting that she made the comment that a while ago otaku is only men, but now it’s also women. “There are many woman but they don’t say as much as men. Women take care of their fashion, but boys don’t, so it’s hard to tell if woman is otaku”. But when I asked her why it was now also women she did not know.

Typical image of "typical" otaku in Japanese popular media

I then wanted to know how she became an otaku. When she was in elementary school she got into anime that was on TV such as Sailor Moon, Ranma ½, Cardcaptor Sakura, and Mezon Ikoku. It was an interest she developed on her own, which was normal among elementary school children. What was not normal was that she maintained her interest in anime through junior and high school until the present day. It was not normal for her to be interested in anime after elementary school and that was when she knew she was otaku.

She had one friend who was otaku in high school, who did not appear to be otaku and she knew her for a long time in junior high before she found out. One day after they had graduated from junior high her friend went up to her one day and said “why don’t you go to an event with me?” and since then she has gone to events in Osaka every year and one time she and her friend wrote a manga and tried to sell it as Comiket (a large doujinshi event in Tokyo). Although her friend has now moved away they still sometimes talk online. I asked if she had any other friends online and she said that although many otaku might because it is easier to be yourself online, she does not and prefers to talk to people face to face.

Her other friends in high school were not otaku though, and although they knew in high school that she was an otaku her university friends do not. I asked her why not and she said was embarrassing and that there’s a ‘bad feeling’ associated with being otaku. In general anime-otaku are seen as being very anti-social and get this bad impression. Although there are some ‘good’ impressions of otaku such as history-otaku or animal-otaku, where being otaku is a profession. I asked if she was ever bullied for being otaku and she said although there is a bad feeling she was never bullied. If people were not interested in the same things they either tended to not get to know that person or can get along despite different interests.

The "typical" fashionable girl in Japan

As she had mentioned her university friends did not know she was otaku I decided to expand on why that was. She said that Kansai Gaidai was famous for its fashionable girls, and her friends here are all fashionable. She thinks that they would not be surprised and would understand if she told them she was otaku, but “real otaku don’t say they are otaku”. This statement I found interesting and when I asked her why that was she replied that “if people go round telling everyone they are otaku then people don’t think they are otaku. Otaku are shy and quiet and don’t say they are otaku. That is why it is difficult to know if a person is otaku.” She said that she did not think there were any otaku at Kansai Gaidai because of this.

I asked her why clothes were linked with otaku. She said that a person who is not interested in fashion shows that they are not interested in sanjiken or the 3D. They prefer 2D girls and are not interested in attracting real girls, so they do not need to pay attention to their looks. She said that personally she is not as fashionable as her friends and usually wears Uniqulo clothes (a brand of cheap clothes) and because of that her friends sometimes joke that she is otaku (that is why they would not be surprised if she told them she was an otaku). She prefers cheap and reasonable clothes where her friends prefer expensive fashion. This is because she likes to save money to spend on anime and manga, although she will also spend her money on trips, music and concerts.

TV Drama of Densha Otoko

I wanted to gauge her experience of the media and otaku. She said that before 2005 otaku did not appear in the media but since Densha Otoko became popular then the image of otaku has been one that is strange but acceptable. Densha Otoko or “Train Man” was a drama based on a manga which revolves around the story of an otaku trying to fit in with society and his love story with a normal woman (Pena 2006 p.12-14). It portrays otaku as being the socially inept anime obsessed image that people are used to seeing in the media, but also as being harmless people who have friends and can get girlfriends. Although Yuuki did say that the show portrayed a good image to some people, other people still think the obsession with anime, manga and game characters as being too weird. The media now broadcast otaku as being strange all the time, but at the same time show that many Japanese people are otaku so it is not unusual. I asked her what she thought of this ‘bad’ image of otaku, to which she replied “it can’t be helped if people think that way”.

My final question was if she would stop being otaku when she started full time work. She said that she didn’t know. If she stops being interested in anime and manga then she would give up on being otaku, but now, although she’s very busy she still spends her free time watching anime, and she’s been drawing manga since junior school, so she doesn’t think she will ever give that up. She said that although people have bad impressions being otaku is always fun. When she sold her comics in high school she got a lot of good feedback and the event was a lot of fun. “Almost all otaku are quiet, not energetic, but if they gather they can be energetic, excited, crazy.”

Miyazaki of the "Miyazaki Incident"

One thing which struck me in my conversation with Yuuki was that she never mentioned the Miyazaki incident from 1989 and when I asked her if there had been anything about otaku in the media before 2005 she said “not really” and that she had never heard of Miyazaki. Although most of the definitions linked to otaku mention this incident as being a key aspect in the negative images of otaku, I think I can understand why she did not make the connection. Yuuki was, like most of current teenager otaku generation, born in the late 80s/early 90s, so they would not have been conscious of the increasingly negative image associated with otaku. Their parents and the elder generation would and this negative feeling seems to have been passed down into the generation without any context. I think this is why shows like Densha Otoko and the modern media are able to portray the image of otaku as being ‘strange’ but overall harmless, because it is directed to a generation outside of the ‘dangerous otaku’ image.

Overall the interview went well. At the beginning I explained to her that she could speak in Japanese if she felt more comfortable doing so and to ask me any questions if she didn’t understand anything. I asked her to explain her details in as much detail as she could and to tell me about her experiences and feelings. As the conversation went on I adjusted my questions to fit in with what she was telling and now and then had to probe to get her to expand on a previous statement. She was fine for the most part apart from seeming very nervous, which I found out was due to the fact that she had never spoken about her otakuness in as much detail to anyone before. One problem I had with the interview was that she spoke mostly in English, and although this was helpful for me I felt like she could not explain herself as well in English. There were times where I asked her to explain it in Japanese but she would slip back in to English again.

In conclusion Yuuki’s ‘otakuness’ derives from her love of anime since a young age and had carried on through school, expressed through her hobby of drawing manga. She is a female otaku, showing that otaku does not necessarily equal men. Her identity as otaku is a central part to her and although she does not appear to be otaku in the way the media portrays them to be, she still hides this aspect of her from her friends. She is a generation born outside of the Miyazaki incident yet the negative connotations giving people a ‘bad feeling’ of otaku remain. I think hiding their identity is common among many modern day otaku who do not want to be associated with the negative images of being unclean, anti-social and strange, despite the fact that they are also portrayed as being common and harmless. Due to this many otaku do not know about other otaku that might be close to them which is why, as Yuuki explained, “when otaku gather at events they become different to how they are on their own”.