Historically speaking, otaku was first heard on Japan TV network in 1982, when the fictional anime character Lynn Minmay from The Super Dimension Fortress Macross mentioned the word as a honorific term. Thats the first time the word otaku was heard outside of the anime subculture. And before that, around the 1960~70, the word otaku/おたく was derived from the Japanese word ota/お宅, which means your home in English. The term was mainly used by Japanese amateur radio/ham radio society in the 1970s as a sort of greeting like what kind of radio equipment you have in your home(お宅), or is that radio your home(お宅)-made radio? Once the number of amateur radio fans in Japan grew into a community, thats when the term お宅 became おたく, where ku/く means a tribe, a community. This , and with the fact that amateur radio fans sat up their equipments at their homes, gave meaning to the word otaku/おたくas a honorific term which means those who stay at home due to their hobby. When this radio community begone interacting with the technological specialists of the first generation anime fan in the late 1970s, who grew up watching anime since childhood, at the then Akihabara Electric Town/秋葉原電気街, the term otaku/おたく got migrated to the anime community. Since then, otaku was a honorific term used by anime maniacs to address one another. - from crunchy roll forums crunchyroll/forumtopic-401422/when-is-an-otaku-too-otaku?pg=7
Posted on: Tue, 26 Nov 2013 09:16:04 +0000