Maid Cafés: The Affect of Fictional Characters in Akihabara, Japan
2013; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 12; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/1683478x.2013.854882
ISSN2168-4227
Autores Tópico(s)Asian Culture and Media Studies
ResumoAbstractMaid cafés are establishments where waitresses wear costumes and talk to customers. Inspired by dating simulation games, maid cafés first appeared in the late 1990s in Akihabara, Japan, an area where dating simulation games were sold and players gathered. Maid cafés extended relations with fictional characters from media to physical reality, allowing players to interact with fictional characters in human form, while at the same time interacting with humans who perform characters. Having proliferated in the 2000s, maid cafés depend on dedicated customers, or "regulars." Because physical and personal contact is strictly prohibited, maids only interact with customers "in character," but regulars nevertheless form long-term, affectionate relationships with them. Maids are paid to perform affective labor in the café, and regulars pay to be there, but affective relations cannot be reduced to money relations. Based on five years of ethnographic fieldwork, this article shows how relationships are both enabled by the maid café and in excess of it. Interactions with the maid are not oriented toward the goal of "getting the girl," and relations are not private or exclusive. Instead, the maid character – both fictional and real, always more than the individual – allows for affective relations that go beyond the common sense of human relations.Keywords:: Maid cafésJapanaffectcharactersrelationships Notes 1. Adorno Citation1998, 75. 2. While acknowledging the adoption of the maid uniform in pornography and the sex industry, I found no evidence of sexual services being offered at maid cafés in Akihabara, Japan, between 2004 and 2009. 3. Uno Tsunehiro notes that the late 1990s, following the bursting of the economic bubble, was a time when people in Japan were seeking "unconditional approval that does not rely on social self-realization" (Uno Citation2011, 19). The rise of anime and games focusing on romantic relationships and downplaying society seems to have been a part of this trend. However, relationships with fictional characters, I will argue, is not antisocial, but rather a different form of social realization. 4. This research was conducted while I was a graduate student at Sophia University and the University of Tokyo. These Japanese institutions did not require special procedures to work with human subjects. Instead of external review, I found that I needed to be personally reflective about the ethics of my practice while negotiating relationships in the field. Spending a great deal of time in five cafés, I naturally introduced myself to other regulars, gave them my name card, explained my research and asked if they would allow me to hang out with and learn from them. Only those who agreed are included in this write-up. When conducting interviews, I used a digital recorder to ensure accuracy. Before recording, I again explained my project to informants and asked if I could quote them. Only those who agreed are included here. I also asked informants how they would like to be identified, and they provided me with pseudonyms, which I use throughout. In most cases, regulars exclusively used handles while in the café, and preferred to be identified this way in everyday interactions and in my write-up. All interactions were conducted in Japanese, and translations are my own. When I was unsure of my understanding, in terms of either translation or interpretation, I would share my notes or show the transcript to the informant concerned ask for clarification. Happy to oblige, informants sometimes went further to change their statements or ask that certain things be struck from the record. I respected their wishes, with the understanding that this also was a negotiation of ethics that limits what can be included in my write-up. 5. This number was reported in a press release from LiNK-UP, the company behind @home café. They estimate that the number of visitors had swelled to 1.5 million in 2010. See < http://animeanime.jp/release/archives/2010/04/homecafé150.html>. 6. One regular called himself a "single aristocrat" (dokushin kizoku), which he explained as someone with a decent income that does not have to be spent on family, who thus can indulge personal interests. 7.Ojō-sama, translated here as "young miss," actually means "a daughter from a decent family" (Inoue Citation2006, 202). While "master" perhaps implies a higher social status, a comparison of the scripting of female fantasy in maid cafés falls outside the scope of this paper. 8. The formula of the maid café is made alarmingly explicit, almost parodic, in what Royal Milk calls "soul care" (kokoro no kea), where customers pay 6000 yen for 30 minutes of uninterrupted talk time with a maid. Mikan, who works at Royal Milk, explains that most customers who pay for soul care want to share their hobbies, or rather to have someone listen and show interest (see also Saitō Citation2011, 40-41). Soul care is a condensation of the pattern of multiple visits and short conversations with a maid, who gets to know the customer over time and, perhaps, comes to care about them. 9. "Dragon" and all other names used to refer to informants are pseudonyms. In most cases, informants already exclusively used handles when in the maid café. For example, Dragon called himself "Doragon," a phonetic sounding out of the English word Dragon, and all the maids and regulars used this name when interacting with him. Though, Dragon, like many other regulars, used a rather fantastic and un-Japanese sounding name, it was his "real" name in the context of the maid café, and he asked me to refer to him this way in everyday interactions and in my write-up.10. This information comes from a personal conversation (August 14, 2010) with Nakamura Jin, who knows the founder of Cure Maid Café.11. In this approach to role-play, I intend to draw parallels to John D'Emilio, who argues for "sexual expression as a form of play" (D'Emilio Citation2007, 256).12. In her discussion of Pokémon, Anne Allison points out that the social and economic unrest of millennial Japan has led to the "character therapy age," where people become intimate with fictional characters and derive from this a sense of wellbeing (Allison Citation2006, 91; see also Honda Citation2005). While one might question how "real" intimacy can be with fictional characters, Ian Condry argues that "It makes more sense to think of media's reality (or actualization) in terms of an emotional response than in terms of a physical object" (Condry Citation2013, 71). Here I would like to suggest that the maid character, like media, is real based on affective relations with her. For a fundamental questioning of the "reality" of human relations, see Pettman Citation2009 and Saitō Citation2011.Additional informationNotes on contributorsPatrick W. GalbraithPatrick W. Galbraith received a PhD in Information Studies from the University of Tokyo, and is currently pursuing a second PhD in Cultural Anthropology at Duke University. He is the author of The Otaku Encyclopedia (Kodansha International, 2009), among other books. He can be reached at patrick.galbraith@duke.edu
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