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Twenty-five years after the idea of otaku began poking through like a sly worm from the apple of Japanese materialism, there are geek-culture wormholes everywhere.

Otaku is not what they do, it's the way they do it; an attitude and style associated with compulsive acquisition of popular culture objects and experiences and saturated in IT, especially interactive technology, a field in which otaku are increasingly influential.

Still, some popular journalism in Japan persists in casting otaku as a slur on society. Some sociologists still warn they are a hazard to themselves. Some foreign commentators keep using them to witter on about existential isolation in contemporary Japan.

And therein lies the rub. The image of girls getting out of hand is hard for some to swallow.

Experts predict that Japan’s population will shrink to 108 million by 2030, and critics of the otaku phenomenon blame men and women who can now live meaningful lives without human companionship. One analyst says that the rampant creativity of otaku is rivaled only by their stunted emotional growth. Journalist Yumiko Sugiura, who literally wrote the book on fujoshi (2006’s The Fujoshi-izing World: The Female Otaku of East Ikebukuro), says women who indulge fantasies of queer love rather than finding boyfriends face an even greater backlash than their male counterparts. She believes that, via yaoi, fujoshi demonstrate dissatisfaction with traditional Japanese expectations of what a woman’s life should be.

As a result, when media attention eventually turned to actual fujoshi, the elevator pitch — “They’re otaku, except girls!” — was more or less accurate (granting a broad reading of “otaku”), but the implications were misunderstood. If fujoshi were girl otaku, they must be the girls usually appearing alongside otaku in those TV specials and magazine articles, right? You know — the maids. But no.

Media treatment of the fujoshi concept has always been problematic.

At last count, there were more than 20 manga museums in its home country, including The Kyoto International Manga Museum, and now there is talk of creating a National Center for Media Arts to include manga and anime. Bound for glory: Manga being readied for Tokyo's upcoming Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subcultures. YOSHIHIRO YONEZAWA MEMORIAL LIBRARY OF MANGA AND SUBCULTURES window.google_render_ad(); But as the national government swings belatedly into action, some experts are saying it is time to shift the focus from manga itself onto the fans' subculture that has fed its success.

In another indication of the new library's focus on the fan subculture surrounding manga, it will be the first facility of its kind in Japan to house a substantial collection of doujinshi,