(born May 9, 1971) is a Japanese

cultural critic A cultural critic is a critic of a given culture, usually as a whole. Cultural criticism has significant overlap with social and cultural theory. While such criticism is simply part of the self-consciousness of the culture, the social positions o ...

novelist A novelist is an author or writer of novels, though often novelists also write in other genres of both fiction and non-fiction. Some novelists are professional novelists, thus make a living wage, living writing novels and other fiction, while other ...

, and

philosopher Philosophy ('love of wisdom' in Ancient Greek) is a systematic study of general and fundamental questions concerning topics like existence, reason, knowledge, Value (ethics and social sciences), value, mind, and language. It is a rational an ...

. He is the co-founder and former director of Genron, an independent institute in Tokyo, Japan.

Biography

Azuma was born in Mitaka, Tokyo. Azuma received his

PhD A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, DPhil; or ) is a terminal degree that usually denotes the highest level of academic achievement in a given discipline and is awarded following a course of graduate study and original research. The name of the deg ...

in Culture and Representation from the

University of Tokyo The University of Tokyo (, abbreviated as in Japanese and UTokyo in English) is a public research university in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1877 as the nation's first modern university by the merger of several pre-westernisation era ins ...

in 1999 and became a professor at the International University of Japan in 2003. He was an Executive Research Fellow and Professor at the Center for Global Communications (GLOCOM) and a Research Fellow at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

's Japan Center. Since 2006, he has been working at the Center for Study of World Civilizations at the

Tokyo Institute of Technology The Tokyo Institute of Technology () was a public university in Meguro, Tokyo, Japan. It merged with Tokyo Medical and Dental University to form the Institute of Science Tokyo on 1 October 2024. The Tokyo Institute of Technology was a De ...

. Azuma is married to the writer and poet Hoshio Sanae, and they have one child together. His father-in-law is the translator, novelist, and occasional critic Kotaka Nobumitsu.

Work

Hiroki Azuma is one of the most influential young literary critics in Japan, focusing on literature and on the idea of individual liberty. He began writing inspired by the work of Kojin Karatani and Akira Asada. He is an associate of

Takashi Murakami is a Japanese contemporary artist. He works in fine arts (such as painting and sculpture) as well as commercial media (such as fashion, merchandise, and animation) and is known for blurring the line between High art, high and low arts. His wo ...

and the

Superflat Superflat is a postmodern art movement, founded by Japanese contemporary artist Takashi Murakami, which is influenced by manga and anime. However, superflat does not have an explicit definition because Takashi Murakami does not want to limit ...

movement. His publishing debut was " Solzhenitsyn Essay" in 1993. Azuma handed the work directly to Karatani during his lecture series at Hosei University which Azuma was

auditing An audit is an "independent examination of financial information of any entity, whether profit oriented or not, irrespective of its size or legal form when such an examination is conducted with a view to express an opinion thereon." Auditing al ...

. Azuma launched his career as a literary critic in 1993 with a postmodern style influenced by leading Japanese critics Kojin Karatani and Akira Asada. In the late 1990s, Azuma began examining various pop phenomena, especially the emerging

otaku is a Japanese word that describes people with consuming interests, such as anime, manga, video games, computers or other highly enthusiastic hobbies. Its contemporary use originated with a 1983 essay by Akio Nakamori in '' Manga Burikko''. ...

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

video game A video game or computer game is an electronic game that involves interaction with a user interface or input device (such as a joystick, game controller, controller, computer keyboard, keyboard, or motion sensing device) to generate visual fe ...

culture, and became widely known as an advocate of the thoughts of a new generation of Japanese. He is interested in the transformation of the Japanese literary imagination under its current “otaku-ization.” Azuma has published seven books, including ''Sonzaironteki, Yubinteki'' (''Ontological, Postal'') in 1998, which focuses on

Jacques Derrida Jacques Derrida (; ; born Jackie Élie Derrida;Peeters (2013), pp. 12–13. See also 15 July 1930 – 9 October 2004) was a French Algerian philosopher. He developed the philosophy of deconstruction, which he utilized in a number of his texts, ...

's oscillation between literature and philosophy. This work won the Suntory Literary Prize in 2000 and made Azuma the youngest writer to ever win that prize. Akira Asada stated that it is one of the best books written in the 90s; however, Hiroo Yamagata pointed out that the book is based on the misunderstanding of Gödel's incompleteness theorem. He also wrote ''Dobutsuka-suru Postmodern'' (2001, lit, ''Animalizing Postmodernity''; translated as '' Otaku: Japan's Database Animals'' in 2009), which analyzes Japanese pop culture through a postmodern lens and uses the term "

database consumption Database consumption () refers to a way of content consumption in which people do not consume a narrative itself, but rather consume the constituent elements of the narrative. The concept was coined by the Japanese critic Hiroki Azuma in the ea ...

" to describe a new paradigm of media consumption that consumes elements of a narrative rather than a narrative itself. He has also set up a

non-profit organization A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...

to encourage cutting-edge critics who might be shut out of the existing publishing world.

Works

*Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma. (2007) "The Animalization of Otaku Culture"

Mechademia ''Mechademia: Second Arc'' is a biannual (formerly annual) peer-reviewed academic journal in English about Japanese popular culture products and fan practices. It is published by the University of Minnesota Press and the editor-in-chief is Fr ...

2 175–188. *Hiroki Azuma. ''Otaku: Japan's Database Animals.'' Minneapolis
University of Minnesota Press
2009. *Hiroki Azuma. ''General Will 2.0: Rousseau, Freud, Google'', 2014. *Hiroki Azuma. ''Philosophy of the Tourist'', 2023.

Joint works

*Kiyoshi Kasai ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Masachi Osawa ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Akihiro Kitada ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Eiji Otsuka ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Shinji Miyadai ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Naoki Inose ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Ken Oyama ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Yoshinori Kobayashi ＆ Shinji, Miyadai ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Ken Oyama ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Daisuke Tsuda ＆ Junichiro Nakagawa ＆ Takeshi Natsuno ＆ Hiroyuki Nishimura ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Atsushi Sasaki ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Nozomi Omori ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Makoto Ichikawa ＆ Satoshi Osawa ＆ Ryota Fukushima ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Makoto Ichikawa ＆ Satoshi Osawa ＆ Atsushi Sasaki ＆ Sayawaka ＆ Hiroki Azuma. *Hidetaka Ishida ＆ Hiroki Azuma.

Novels

*Hiroki Azuma. *Hiroki Azuma.

References

J'Lit , Authors : Hiroki Azuma , Books from Japan

External links

Hiroki Azuma's homepage and blog

** ttps://web.archive.org/web/20090122070446/http://www.hirokiazuma.com/en/texts/superflat_en1.html "Superflat Japanese Postmodernity"br>"Anime, or something like it:
Neon Genesis Evangelion"
>Evangelion<<. Interview with Azuma Hiroki"">"Towards a cartography of Japanese anime: Anno Hideaki's >>Evangelion<<. Interview with Azuma Hiroki"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Azuma, Hiroki 1971 births Anime and manga critics Living people 21st-century Japanese philosophers Japanese novelists People from Mitaka, Tokyo Academic staff of Tokyo Institute of Technology Academic staff of Waseda University Academic staff of the University of Tokyo University of Tokyo alumni Yukio Mishima Prize winners Japanese magazine editors