Maid Cafes: The Affect of Fictional Characters in Akihabara, Japan 2013 PDF

This article was downloaded by: [Patrick Galbraith] On: 12 November 2013, At: 11:03 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Asian Anthropology Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/raan20 Maid cafés: The affect of fictional characters in Akihabara, Japan Patrick W. Galbraith a a Cultural Anthropology, 205 Friedl Building, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA Published online: 11 Nov 2013. To cite this article: Patrick W. Galbraith , Asian Anthropology (2013): Maid cafés: The affect of fictional characters in Akihabara, Japan, Asian Anthropology, DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2013.854882 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2013.854882 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Taylor & Francis makes every effort to ensure the accuracy of all the information (the “Content”) contained in the publications on our platform. However, Taylor & Francis, our agents, and our licensors make no representations or warranties whatsoever as to the accuracy, completeness, or suitability for any purpose of the Content. Any opinions and views expressed in this publication are the opinions and views of the authors, and are not the views of or endorsed by Taylor & Francis. The accuracy of the Content should not be relied upon and should be independently verified with primary sources of information. 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Galbraith* Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 Cultural Anthropology, 205 Friedl Building, Duke University, Durham, NC 27708, USA Maid 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 cafés; Japan; affect; characters; relationships “It’s a nice bit of sexual utopia not to be yourself, and to love more in the beloved than only her... ” – Theodor W. Adorno1 Introduction This paper explores affective relations in maid cafés in Akihabara, Japan. In these cafés, waitresses costumed as maids serve food, pose for pictures and play tabletop games with customers. When not filling orders, the waitresses, called “maids” (meido), wander around the café and engage customers in conversation. Despite a huge amount of media exposure and a subsequent tourism boom in the mid-2000s, most maid cafés rely on devoted patrons, or so-called “regulars” ( jōren). This article focuses on the relationships that develop between regulars and maids in maid cafés, which are commoditized spaces. Regulars purchase time in a café, along with food, drink, and services, and these purchases allow for interactions with the maids. For their part, maids are paid to attract customers, ensure a fun and memorable experience, and keep regulars coming back. What occurs in maid cafés seems to be part of the larger phenomenon that Henry Jenkins calls “affective economics,” where desires, connections, and commitments are measured and commoditized (Jenkins 2006, 61– 62). In Japan, Akiko Takeyama points out that the *Email: [email protected] q 2013 The Department of Anthropology, The Chinese University of Hong Kong Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 2 P.W. Galbraith affect economy is nestled in the entertainment industry, which capitalizes on attachments to satisfy multiple players in mutual yet asymmetrical ways (Takeyama 2010, 238). While one could critique a system of unequal power relations and exploitation, this paper follows the lead of Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, who see potential in affective labor, or “labor that produces or manipulates affects” (Hardt and Negri 2004, 108). Contrary to Jenkins’ market-side analysis, Negri argues that affect cannot be measured, and that it remains always unruly (Negri 1999, 88). Affective labor, and more broadly the affect economy, is productive of affective relations, a dense and interconnected meshwork that cannot fully be translated or reduced to wage or commodity relations. This paper seeks to understand the affective relations between regulars and maids in maid cafés, which are sites of alternative sociality in contemporary Japan. It is important to note from the outset that affective relations such as those found in maid cafés are not entirely new or unique to Japan. A comparative historical perspective is offered by John D’Emilio, who argues that the shift to a culture of mass production and consumption in the United States undermined the family as a self-sufficient unit of production, at which time it took on new significance as an “affective unit” (D’Emilio 2007, 252). However, D’Emilio continues, capitalism created the conditions for the decline of this affective unit with the growth of factories, rise of wage labor, and migration to urban industrial centers. D’Emilio points out that new identities and orientations of desire emerged “based on the ability to remain outside the heterosexual family” (D’Emilio 2007, 253). Important here is not only that people were alone in the city, but also that they had money to spend and were open to new encounters, for example in commercial districts. Alongside this trend emerged a strident ideological defense of the family, which identified scapegoats for social instability. D’Emilio notes that scapegoats included homosexuals and feminists in the United States in the 1970s (D’Emilio 2007, 255–256), while in Japan at the same time social instability was blamed on individualistic youth and indulgent consumers (Kinsella 1998, 291–292). Aware of the potential for an ideological order to sanction abuse and abandonment of outsiders, D’Emilio advocates for affective units that go beyond the private concerns of family. The erosion of family as a support system in capitalist societies since D’Emilio’s writing only makes his argument more relevant. While atomization and alienation are common conditions under neoliberalism, in Japan, family ideology remains remarkably strong (Allison 2009), which has led to much criticism of isolated and unstable youth as immature failures. For D’Emilio, the solution, necessary for survival, is “affectional community,” or networks of support that do not depend on bonds of blood or the state (D’Emilio 2007, 257). Inspired by D’Emilio’s discussion of commercial districts and establishments fostering such communities in the United States, this paper argues that maid cafés are one example of how networks of support have emerged since the bursting of the economic bubble and decline of family and work groups in Japan since the 1990s. While D’Emilio focuses on gay identity and maid café regulars are primarily men attracted to the waitresses, in both cases new identities and orientations of desire emerged outside of the heterosexual family. Maid café regulars overlap with otaku, or fans of manga, anime, and games, who in Japan in the 1990s were considered to be sexually immature, socially irresponsible, and potentially dangerous (Kinsella 1998, 308 –311). Applying a labeling approach, Kam Thiam Huat convincingly shows that “otaku” are those who are thought to take consumption and play beyond the limits of “social common sense” (shakai-teki na jōshiki) (Kam 2013a, 152; Kam 2013b). In Japan, common sense demands that people fulfill socially productive roles and responsibilities. For Kam, “‘Otaku’ is... a label for those who fail... by engaging in play that detaches them from their roles and responsibilities” (Kam 2013a: 160). This is compounded by the common Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 Asian Anthropology 3 sense of masculinity, which has it that men should consume and play in ways that are gender appropriate and do not interfere with (reproductive) relationships with women (Kam 2013a, 160– 161; Kam 2013b, 58– 59). If, as Kam suggests, otaku are considered to be “failed men,” then this description also applies to maid café regulars, whose frequent visits to maid cafés and affective relations with maids are seen as an escape from the roles and responsibilities of adult society. While some forms of entertainment are designed to make a man “feel like a man” (Allison 1994, 8), maid cafés do not offer sexual services and prohibit physical and verbal harassment of staff.2 Even regulars never “get” the girl, which contributes to an image of them as passive or failed men. Resonating with Kam’s work on Japan, Judith Halberstam argues that the common sense notion of success in capitalist society includes the achievement of “reproductive maturity” (Halberstam 2011, 2). Essentially heteronormative, such common sense forces intimacy into the couple and family, the most socially recognized and valorized relationships. Maid café regulars challenge common sense notions of success by deferring and denying sexual arousal, which allows affectively charged relations with maids to continue indefinitely. These “unconsummated erotics” are part of what Elizabeth Freeman calls “queer life” (Freeman 2002, xv). Relations with maids are not private or exclusive, which allows for the formation of affectional community around them in maid cafés. The affective charge experienced in interactions with maids is called moe, a keyword among otaku. One maid explains the concept of moe as follows: “It’s like, the inside of your heart is pink.... When your heart is a bright, warm color, maybe that feeling is moe” (Galbraith 2009a, 136). Though used incessantly in maid cafés, the word moe has its roots in online discussions among otaku in the 1990s, where it was slang for an affective response to fictional characters (Galbraith 2009b). Japan is by no means unique in realizing the affect of virtual contact (Hardt 1999, 96; Pettman 2009), but the prevalence and quality of manga, anime, and games has meant that more people enter into affective relations with purely fictional entities (Steinberg 2009; Condry 2013, Chapter 7). As affective relations with fictional characters became more visible, moe was described as a “phenomenon” in Japan, and the phenomenon overlaps with the emergence of maid cafés in Akihabara in the late 1990s and early 2000s.3 Not only are maid cafés inspired by dating simulation games (Galbraith 2011), but also waitresses working in maid cafés develop their own “characters,” which they perform when interacting with customers. Maid café regulars often adopt handle names and perform alternative versions of themselves while interacting with maids and one another, which contributes to an atmosphere of role-play. Details of who the maid and regular are outside of the café are withheld – one is not allowed to ask for a maid’s real name or any other personal information beyond her hobbies – and yet relations are affectionate and remarkably durable. That is, a real relationship develops with a fictional character, who is also real. Taking relationships with fictional characters too seriously is an aspect of otaku culture that is considered to be antisocial, but it is more accurate to say that maid café regulars are social in different ways. Even if common sense has it that maid café regulars are failed men, Halberstam reminds us that in failure we imagine “other goals for life, for love, for art, and for being” (Halberstam 2011, 88). This paper focuses on those other ways of living and loving, but further argues that they are not necessarily goal oriented. The maid café, described as “moe space” (moeru kūkan) (Galbraith 2009a, 136; Aida 2006) allows for interaction with fictional characters, whose affect disrupts common sense and allows for imagining and relating otherwise. For Honda Tōru, the maid café is a space for fantasies to enter reality: “Let’s call it a world positioned on the border of the twodimensional and three-dimensional.... A vague 2.5-dimensional space like a maid café is P.W. Galbraith Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 4 Figure 1. This flier, announcing an event at St Grace’s Court in Akihabara, shows the maid as both a costumed waitress and a character. Note that the character is running along a line from “threedimensional” (sanjigen) toward “two-dimensional” (nijigen). Photograph by the author. Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 Asian Anthropology 5 a place where the two-dimensional concepts and delusions lingering in my soul can easily be brought into the three-dimensional world” (Honda 2005, 19) (Figure 1). This intriguing concept of “2.5-dimensional space” (nitengo jigen kūkan), or a space between the “two-dimensional” world of manga, anime, and games and the “threedimensional” world as we know it, is crucial to understanding the maid café. Honda sees relations between and with fictional characters as “thought experiments” (shisō jikken) (Honda 2005, 145), which spill out into the maid café (i.e., experimental relations with the maid where human relations are imagined otherwise). For Honda, the maid as fictional character simulates love in familiar forms, but ultimately challenges the common sense of love: “For a long time, everyone expected that the common sense belief that ‘love ¼ three-dimensional world’ would continue, but it has begun to be destroyed by the appearance of the moe phenomenon” (Honda cited in Condry 2013, 194). Positioned between the two- and three-dimensional worlds, the maid café is a space where “delusions” (mōsō) inspired by manga, anime, and games can impact relations between regulars and maids. If, as Ian Condry suggests, sharing affective responses and attachments to fictional characters contributes to the “emergence of alternative social worlds” (Condry 2013, 203), then the maid café is where those worlds most dramatically intersect with and impact the world of everyday human relations. For this paper, I draw on fieldwork conducted in five maid cafés in Akihabara between 2004 and 2009.4 Akihabara is an area of Tokyo associated with stores selling electronics, computers, and, since the 1990s, manga, anime, games, and related merchandise. The first maid cafés appeared in Akihabara in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and the majority are still located there. My main site was @home café, which I frequented from 2004, shortly after it opened, until 2009, by which time it had five locations and had served over one million customers.5 Though I also interviewed maids and café owners, the bulk of my time was spent hanging out with 50 regulars, who visited a maid café at least once a week. Though there were male and female regulars, I focused on the former for the simple reason that they were by far the majority. My focus on Japanese, male, regular customers means that I do not spend time on female, casual, or international customers. This bias both constrains and enables my analysis of maid cafés. I thus refer to regulars as men (he, his, master), while at the same time arguing that interactions in the maid café trouble the form of masculinity that has become hegemonic in postwar Japan. Regulars come from a variety of backgrounds, ranging in age from late teens to early forties. They tend to be students and working men with enough economic security to come to cafés regularly and spend money. Some live alone, others with family, but the majority of regulars do not have to support dependents.6 Most are not married, though some have girlfriends. Given their social positioning, maid café regulars might be seen as what Lawrence Eng calls “reluctant insiders” (Eng 2012, 99–100), who are both included in and alienated from the mainstream (majoritarian, masculine) and actively seek alternatives to it. Like the otaku in the United States that Eng discusses, the maid café regulars that I encountered in Akihabara were all fans of manga, anime, and games. It is important to note that not all maid cafés display this same bias in clientele. Further, not all customers are as aware of the origin of maid cafés or are as attracted to fictional characters as the regulars that I spent time with in Akihabara between 2004 and 2009. Having noted the necessary limitations of fieldwork, I now turn to describing my fieldsite. What is a maid café? Maid cafés are a representative form of “concept cafés” (konseputo kissa), in which decorations and services transform normal cafés into something special. For the sake of Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 6 P.W. Galbraith simplicity, and following local conventions, I generally refer to all concept cafés in Akihabara as maid cafés. Early maid cafés attempted to capture the grandeur of a Victorian mansion, but later shifted to colorful décor and costumes, saccharine music and cute, talkative maids. Often called “entertainment style” or “moe style,” maid cafés like @home are by far the most popular in Akihabara. While male managers and kitchen staff are on the premises, in most cases only costumed waitresses, called maids, appear on the floor of a café. To ensure rapid turnover, a customer’s stay is limited to 60 or 90 minutes; there is a seating charge of about 500 yen (100 yen equals approximately one US dollar). When the time is up, regular customers may leave, immediately line up to wait outside the café and re-enter once it is their turn (again paying the seating charge). Before a customer enters the café, a maid appears at the door and asks him, “Is this your first time coming home?” (gokitaku hajimete desu ka). The question, as awkward in the original Japanese as it is in translation, captures the ambiguity of interaction in a rational, commercial space designed to simulate and foster affective relations. If it is indeed one’s first time, the maid explains the café rules, of which there are many: no photography with a personal camera; no touching; do not ask the maids personal questions or make sexual advances; each customer must order at least one drink; and so on. @home café has these rules printed in three languages on a laminated card that the maid asks the uninitiated to read. After this, the maid ushers in the customer, rings a bell and announces the “return” of the “master” (goshujin-sama) and/or “young miss” (ojō-sama).7 All the maids on the café floor turn, bow and say in unison, “Welcome home, master” (okaerinasaimase, goshujin-sama), and/or, “Welcome home, young miss” (okaerinasaimase, ojō-sama). After the master and/or young miss is seated, the maid presents a menu and says, “Thank you for coming home today” (gokitaku arigatō gozaimasu). In a maid café, one does not designate a preferred server, and can expect service from whichever maid on the floor is available. The maid serving any given table may change over the course of the visit, especially during peak business hours. Regulars, however, have favorite maids and expect to be able to talk to them during visits to the café, if not also to be served by them. This is not an official designation and maids and masters negotiate this among themselves. In practice, each maid has a number of regulars who come to the café to see her. Tipping or gift giving to procure service or establish a relationship is not allowed. In maid cafés, maids do not sit down next to masters, even when engaging in conversation, but rather stand across from them, often separated by a counter or table. Though bodies may be in close proximity – for example, when the maid leans across the counter so that the regular can hear her over the cacophony of music and chatter that is characteristic of the space – conversations are short, because the maid cannot neglect her duties as a waitress. The maid moves around the café bussing tables, serving, and chatting with customers and other maids. Regulars typically come alone specifically to interact with maids, and when not talking to maids, they patiently wait, watching maids and other customers. While some maid cafés offer extensive menus, representative meals include omelet rice, Japanese curry, and hamburger steak, and for dessert parfaits, sweet beverages, and cakes. All of these menu items are easy and cheap to make; despite the mediocre quality, prices are notably inflated. The higher prices for food and drink in the café reflect the value of service, which is to say the affective labor of the maids as they interact with customers. Service includes an element of fantasy role-play, which impacts how food is presented and received. The narrative of the café is that the maids make the dishes offered on the menu, which are said to “have heart” (kokoro wo kometa) or be “filled with love” (aijō tsumatta). (Everyone is fully aware that the part-time kitchen staff, mostly male, make the food, but there is a willing suspension of disbelief.) When bringing an order to the table, maids kneel Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 Asian Anthropology 7 down to eye level so as not to look down when addressing a master. Formalized and ritual interactions such as pouring tea or allowing the master to choose the color of his straw are ways to keep the maid at the table and get the customer talking to her. The service facilitates interaction between the master and maid. In the case of @home café, service is elaborate. When a master orders omelet rice, the maid asks him to think of a word or image for her to write on the food using ketchup (contained in a special bottle with a narrow nozzle to allow for drawing). Once the preparation is complete, the maid asks the master to join her in an incantation to make the food taste better. The most basic incantation is the chant “moe moe kyun,” where kyun is onomatopoeia for a movement of the heart and moe means an affective response (to a fictional character). Reinforcing the words of the incantation, both the maid and master make heart shapes with their hands, which each holds over his or her left breast and then moves toward the food as if a beam of energy is being emitted. If prompted, the maid will explain that love (from two hearts, the maid and the master) has been injected into the food. Having completed the ritual, the maid and master both clap in celebration. This ritual is repeated, with small variations, every time the maid delivers an order to the master. While the service is repetitive and may be boring to those unfamiliar with maid cafés, regulars enjoy this structured, familiar interaction with the maid. There is a rhythm to it, and a pleasure to synchronized bodily movement (and bodily proximity), which can be observed in the moe moe kyun ritual. Further, the service itself is a touchstone to the maid fantasy, which at @home café is inextricably tied to moe and what is called “moe moe service.” The repetition of key phrases and actions invokes the maid character, a fiction inspired by the compound movements of manga, anime and game characters. In other words, service in a maid café is productive of interaction with the maid as fictional character, embodied and captured in gestures. In addition to service based on food and drink orders, interaction can be purchased with the entertainment menu, which includes options such as playing a tabletop or card game with the maid (500 yen for three minutes) or taking an instant photograph with her (500 yen per shot). Each of these entertainment options allows for interaction in a specific form. For example, when the master purchases a photograph (called a cheki, a material object produced by an instant camera), he is asked to go to a special spot at the center of the café and pose with a maid while another maid operates the camera. Though no bodily contact is allowed, there is a palpable excitement to being in such close proximity to the maid. This is amplified by the to-be-seen-ness of the interaction between master and maid, which is witnessed by the maid operating the camera, other customers in the café at the time the photograph is taken, the maid who poses with the master and later looks at the photograph as she personalizes the material object with a written message, the master who receives the photograph and gazes at it, and others to whom he shows it. Some regulars maximize interaction with the maid by ordering multiple photographs over the course of a single visit. As seen with the photograph, interaction with maids can involve everyone in the café. Approximately once every hour at @home café, there is an event called “fun time” (otanoshimikai). (The name also implies anticipation, which is palpable among regulars who know about the event and look forward to it.) During fun time, maids challenge everyone in the café to a game of rock-paper-scissors. Like the moe moe kyun ritual, this game has special gestures and vocalizations that go with it, which everyone learns and performs together. The competition continues until only one master remains; the winner joins the maids at the center of the room, answers a few questions and receives a small prize (for example, a paper coaster signed by the maid). What is valued is time to interact with the maids, to talk to them and have them respond in certain ways.8 Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 8 P.W. Galbraith Proscribed and rule-bound interactions with the maid are productive of a relationship between master and maid, which is key to the affect of the café. If there is a goal to visiting the maid café, it is not getting the girl or achieving sexual release. Masturbation, and even visible erection, would be cause for expulsion from the café. There is not an explicit rule against it, however, because such behavior is absolutely unthinkable. In the maid café, one is excited, but needs to control bodily urges, which contributes to a dispersed and openended erotic charge (for comparison, see Frank 2002, 121 – 122, 135 –138). Maintaining the distance between bodies and not attempting to realize the fantasy of intercourse with the maid allows for continuous stimulation. This masochistic deferral brings to mind BDSM (bondage, domination, sadism, and masochism) as described by Margot Weiss, who sees the rules governing interaction between players as productive of “circuits and exchanges” (Weiss 2011, 62, 79, 82). Along with rules, Weiss points out that the use of “toys” contributes to the development of techniques of pleasure (Weiss 2011, 127). In the maid café, costumes and controlled gestures transform waitresses into maids. Further, tabletop games, cameras, and the presentation of food all produce controlled scenes that index fantasy relations. Skillful players use objects to set up a circuit, where material connects bodies, as well as reality and fantasy, and channels energy between them. As Weiss astutely notes, the circuit depends on commodities, but is nevertheless productive of intimacy: “Mediated through commodities, such play creates intimate connections between people; the toy as prosthetic becomes a social prosthesis – a way to produce connection and intimacy” (Weiss 2011, 135). However, unlike BDSM, maid café regulars do not make a distinction between “role-playing” and “authentic energy sharing or intimate connection” (Weiss 2011, 66). Rather, masters and maids share energy and forge intimate connections while role-playing, and this is no less authentic or real for the fictional aspects of it. Purchasing commodities and services allows for the formation of a circuit between masters and maids. Each purchase in the maid café provides an opportunity for interaction. The more a regular comes to the café and consumes, the more time he spends with the maids, interacts with them and is recognized, which further facilitates interaction. Regulars very seldom mention the cost of visiting a maid café, a minimum of 1000 yen (seating charge plus one drink), even if they come multiple times a week or day. Regulars continued to frequent their favorite cafés over the five years that I conducted fieldwork in Akihabara. Lest their devotion be doubted, many @home café regulars I encountered carried a “black” membership card, which indicates that they visited the establishment 2000 times or more. Repeat visits to maid cafés and getting to know maids and be known by them contribute to affective relations. Affective relations with the maid, Part 1: The circle To better understand affective relations in the maid café, it is helpful to contrast it with another form of entertainment that at first appears similar: the hostess club. At a hostess club, like at a maid café, women are paid to talk with men. More specifically, as related by Anne Allison in her ethnographic account of a Tokyo hostess club based on fieldwork conducted in 1981, women are paid to sit with groups of men, attentively listen, light cigarettes, pour drinks and facilitate conversation (Allison 1994). By Allison’s estimation, most of the customers in her club were “salary men,” or white-collar workers, who visited at company expense (Allison 1994, 36). These men’s employers budgeted for such entertainment not only as a reward for hard work, but also as a way to extend workplace relations into leisure time. Participation in these outings was semi-mandatory. By sharing time and activity with one another, men bonded as a group, an affective unit framed by and Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 Asian Anthropology 9 in the service of the company (Allison 1994, 14). Allison notes that the group is defined not merely by corporate belonging, but also by gender performance. In the hostess club, one is a workingman among workingmen gazed upon by a beautiful woman, who affirms the value of men’s work. Being flattered and attended to by the hostess pumps up the male ego; men act lecherously, which is said to be in their nature as men (Allison 1994, 19). Despite heavy flirtation and light petting, interactions with the hostess do not end in sex and are not supposed to contribute to a lasting relationship with her (i.e., as friends or lovers). Men do not spend too much time at any one club, which limits the potential for getting to know any particular hostess (Allison 1994, 16). The visit to the hostess club is meant to contribute to the strengthening of bonds among a group of workingmen, who come to the establishment together, experience it together and leave together to find the next place. A respectable man does not come back to a hostess club alone or see a particular hostess. Interactions with the hostess do not take men away from roles and responsibilities at work and home; the hostess is meant to recognize the good man, who is productive at work and a provider at home. A visit to the hostess club replenishes the man and props up “corporate masculinity.” If high-end hostess clubs in the 1980s were places for successful men, then maid cafés in the 2000s, separated by the tumultuous socioeconomic flux of the 1990s, are places for men who fail to achieve reproductive maturity. Where the hostess club keeps men away from home and connected to work (Allison 1994, 103), the maid café seems to keep them away from both. In the maid café, there is no work cohort with which to bond inside the café and no one imagined to be waiting at home outside the café. Rather than strengthening bonds forged outside the café, regulars develop bonds with maids inside the café. While visiting a hostess club alone and regularly might be seen as a sign of failure to perform social roles and responsibilities, this is the norm at maid cafés. Indeed, one spends an hour in the maid café, about the same amount of time on average that one spends in the hostess club, but then returns to the café again and again to spend more time with maids. In some cases, regulars leave the café after the time limit only to immediately line up outside and return to the café. In contrast to hostess clubs, regulars do not come to maid cafés to talk to other men, but rather to talk to maids. More fundamentally, in a maid café, one is not recognized as a man fulfilling social roles and responsibilities, and is not made to “feel like a man” (Allison 1994, 8). Maid café regulars are not the “good men” of Allison’s hostess club, the hegemonic ideal of the salary man. Discussions between maid and regular center on hobbies, and seldom veer into the territory of work and home life; these real world or social concerns would ruin the fantasy of the exchange. Tellingly, windows in the maid café are blocked with curtains to create a contained fantasy space, and reflective surfaces such as mirrors are absent. Not only does the maid not prop up corporate masculinity, but she is also not a target for “natural” male advances. Physical and verbal harassment, including touching and even words that make maids uncomfortable, are explicitly banned in the maid café. The master must master his own bodily urges. Further, as a master, he engages in a kind of fantasy role-play as opposed to the self-exposure seen in hostess clubs (Allison 1994, 24). In short, the maid café is not productive of durable and respectable social identity. (This is why hostess clubs are “normal” [Kam 2013a, 160] and maid cafes are for “otaku.”) Despite the apparent applicability of the otaku label with its connotations of antisociality, maid café regulars are social in different ways. To rephrase this, the maid is at the center of emergent alternative social worlds. An example from the field will help ground this discussion. Dragon, age 34, is an audio technician from suburban Tokyo.9 He does fairly well for himself, but tells me that he feels like he has given up on his dream of becoming a musician. He is single and plays the guitar. Dragon recalls that he started Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 10 P.W. Galbraith coming to @home café in 2005. On his first visit, Dragon met Ringo, a maid who wants to be a singer and is part of @home’s idol group, Kanzen Maid Sengen. Dragon was soon coming to the café whenever he could. Dragon is fiercely loyal, saying of @home café, “This isn’t just a place I eat. It’s a place I belong. That is why I always come back here. I don’t go to other cafés. This is where I want to spend my time.” More specifically, Dragon wants to spend his time in the café with Ringo, whose work schedule he has memorized. In addition to regular café visits, Dragon also buys tickets to Kanzen Maid Sengen concerts, which take place in small live houses around Tokyo, and boasts that he has never missed one of Ringo’s shows. During Kanzen Maid Sengen concerts, Ringo’s fans, Dragon included, know the parts of each song where she is featured, at which time they call out and praise her. This support is vital to Ringo’s success. Dragon tells me that he wants to help Ringo fulfill her dream to become a singer. He is overjoyed at her growing recognition – he tells me that one can sing Kanzen Maid Sengen songs at certain karaoke establishments – which in some ways translates to his status as one of her regulars and supporters (for a comparison, see Takeyama 2005, 208). Dragon reports feeling rewarded when he can use his skills to help set up sound equipment for Kanzen Maid Sengen (he does this for free). In the café, Dragon and Ringo speak of shared experiences at concerts and as musicians (a mutual recognition of dreams), which makes their relationship seem special. Dragon tells me that he loves Ringo, but he never confesses to her; he is content to skip the drama and be near her in a continuation of their relationship as master and maid. As master and maid, the relationship between Dragon and Ringo is both comfortable and exciting; there are limits, but nothing is settled. With this ambiguous distance between them, there is enough room to move and be moved, for an exchange of energy and affection that invigorates life. At first glance, Dragon seems like a stereotype of the maid café regular: failed dream, no girlfriend, paying for and fantasizing a compensatory relationship with a maid, cannot (or will not) make a move, a failed man. However, Dragon is only a failure if we evaluate his relationship with Ringo by a common sense measure of success based on reaching a goal (often tied to achieving reproductive maturity). The relationship between Dragon and Ringo was open-ended and ongoing. If their relationship starts at some point (i.e., boy meets girl), then any line drawn from that point is not vectored toward a point of termination (i.e., getting the girl); the line is not at all straight, but zigzags unpredictably; and that movement, the line itself, is the relationship. Dragon loves Ringo, but his love is not corralled into the socially recognized and valued forms of the couple or family. Rather, Dragon is part of what he calls a “circle” (sākuru) of regulars that has formed around Ringo. The circle is a loose association of people who support someone or something. Relations between any given member of the circle and what they support are not private or exclusive, because others are also in relations with the person or thing and with one another. A promiscuous affective charge moves through the circle. Not an imagined community or feeling of belonging to an abstract and homogeneous collective, the circle is a concrete, joyful encounter of heterogeneous bodies. In refusing to confess to Ringo and change their relationship, Dragon maintained his affective relations with Ringo in the circle. This is not a failed relationship between man and woman, but a different one. As Michael Warner notes, alternative forms of intimacy, including what he calls a “circle,” often go unnoticed in a world that only recognizes and values intimacy in the couple or family (Warner 1999, 134). A world fixated on achieving these “normal” relations can only see Dragon as a failure, a label that glosses over the texture and experience of intensity that gives shape to a life. Though not all of the relations between Ringo and her regulars were commoditized, especially those surrounding her solo live performances post @home café, affective Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 Asian Anthropology 11 relations with maids can and do occur in commoditized space. Regulars pay to occupy a space near the maid, which they co-occupy with others, but that fact does not make relations any less authentic, real, or affective. Indeed, just as capitalism generally has the potential to support the growth of affectional communities (D’Emilio 2007), maid cafés support forms of connection and attachment that go beyond what one might expect of commodity-exchange relations. Maid cafés encourage regulars to spend their special days with the maids in the café. For example, if a regular comes to @home on his birthday, the maids will at no extra charge sing to him, present a free dessert and invite him to pose for a commemorative photograph with the maids. It is easy to dismiss this as a strategy to build customer loyalty, which it most certainly is, but what is its meaning for someone who has few chances to feel special and wants to spend the day with his favorite maid, if not also a more loosely defined circle of @home café maids and regulars? Having spent years with regulars as I conducted fieldwork in Akihabara, I personally cannot diminish what I observed to be very real and significant relationships in maid cafés. Maids, like regulars, celebrate their birthdays in the café. On these special days, regulars come together to be near the maid and engage her in conversation. At times, the energy and excitement of the conversation draws others in, with more than one person talking to the maid, and then talking to other regulars. Friendships develop; the circle expands. Some special days generate so much interest and energy that they become events planned and advertised by the café, which sells tickets that cost around 3500 yen. Acknowledging the apparatus that captures some of the value of affective relations between regulars and maids does not, however, diminish the relations themselves, which go beyond the café (i.e., Dragon loves Ringo all the time; she is part of his life). Consider Ringo’s “graduation” (sotsugyō) from @home café in 2006. Graduation is a euphemism for leaving the café, which comes after quitting or being fired. At the time of my fieldwork, maids earned about 850 yen an hour (close to the national minimum wage) and did not have contracts, but they tended to stay at their jobs for extended periods due to affective attachments to the café, other maids, and regulars (Galbraith 2011, paragraphs 32 and 33). The word “graduation” is affectively charged in Japan, where it indicates institutional and life transition. In the context of the maid café, graduation means transitioning to another life in the “real” world. The graduation event is often the maid’s last time to be seen as a maid – in costume, in character, in the café – which serves to intensify interactions. Tickets are sold, and regulars line up for a seat. In such a way, on the night of Ringo’s graduation, I find myself lined up next to Dragon. After waiting for over an hour, we join the capacity crowd crammed inside @home café. Ringo is there, teary eyed, talking to all the regulars and graciously thanking them for the good times. She has one last performance, where she sings a solo. I see Dragon sitting and watching her, arms folded across his chest, nodding in approval. The maid café regulars in the room with Ringo that night are connected – to the place, to the moment, to one another. Recalling the experience in a later conversation, Dragon summarizes what we felt as “a sense of unity” (ittaikan). As an example of how affective relations are enabled by the maid café but also exceed it, Dragon met Ringo at @home café, which framed their interactions, but even after Ringo left @home, Dragon continued to follow her blog, visit other cafés where she sporadically works, and attend her solo live performances. These performances are so small that in effect only her circle attends. At one particularly intimate live show, held in a spare room in an office building across the street from @home café in Akihabara, Ringo sings for her regulars, and Dragon, beaming with pride, accompanies her on the guitar. At this time, Dragon is not only with Ringo, but also part of her circle, which persists in its support. Ian Condry describes how shared attachments can become “platforms” for social 12 P.W. Galbraith Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 activity (Condry 2013, 63, 71, 203), which seems like an apt description of the circle. However, Condry’s example, shared affective relations with fictional characters, raises questions about the status of the maids as characters. Affective relations with the maid, Part 2: The character You cannot have a maid café without maids, or waitresses in costumes performing characters. In order to ensure privacy and safety, maids are strictly forbidden from giving personal information to customers. Customers cannot ask for such information. While working in the café, women take on maid names and develop characters. Maids share some elements of character setting, for example being “eternally 17” (eien no 17-sai) and born from flowers or dreams. (Note that maids celebrate their birthdays every year, but are still 17 years old. For regulars who know the maids for years, this age is part of the fictional roleplay, which does not make the celebration of maids’ birthdays any less meaningful.) Distinct from the broader practice of cosplay (costume play; for a review of the scene in Japan, see Okabe 2012), maids, produce their own characters, which are inspired by manga, anime,, and game characters, but are not meant to be any one specific character from such media. In cosplay, mostly practiced by fans, one costumes as an established entity from a favorite series, for example Goku from Dragon Ball Z or Serena from Sailor Moon. In contrast, in a maid café, one articulates a performance as a maid, which is an amorphous character inspired by manga, anime and games, but also reflects one’s own character. That is, the maid is both a fictional character and a form of self-expression (Galbraith 2011, paragraphs 32 and 33). The line between fiction and reality blurs even more when we note that costumed waitresses and maids are often seen in manga, anime, and games, and that maid cafés historically emerged out of experiments to allow for interaction with these characters. While origins are always tricky, perhaps the first appearance of the maid character in Japanese media is Black Cat Mansion (1986), an installment of the Cream Lemon series of erotic animation (Azuma 2009, 42). Having spread in manga and anime, the maid began to appear in erotic computer games such as Forbidden Blood Relatives (1993). As erotic computer games transitioned into dating simulation games and reached larger audiences in the 1990s, computer stores in Akihabara carrying these games became destinations for players. The direct inspiration for maid cafés comes from a dating simulation game called Welcome to Pia Carrot!! 2 (1997). In this game, the player negotiates relationships with costumed waitresses – not identified as “maids,” though the costumes worn by the characters resemble those in maid cafés today – in hopes of finding true love. In August 1998, a temporary café with costumed waitresses appeared at an event called Tokyo Character Collection as a promotion for Welcome to Pia Carrot!! 2. Young women were paid to wear costumes from the game and serve customers. The promotion was so popular that by July 1999 a store in Akihabara called Gamers was hosting a Pia Carrot Restaurant, which continued sporadically until 2000. The first permanent establishment, Cure Maid Café, opened in Akihabara in 2001. The founder, a fan of the erotic computer games Bird in the Cage (1996) and Song of the Chick (1999), adopted the Victorian-style maid costumes and mansion setting from these games to Cure Maid Café.10 In many ways, the sexual subtext of the maid fantasy, beginning with Black Cat Mansion and continuing to Song of the Chick, contributes to the “unconsummated erotics” (Freeman 2002, xv) of the maid café, just as the goal of dating (and bedding) the costumed waitresses in Welcome to Pia Carrot!! 2 is derailed in the actual maid café. Associated as they are with manga, anime, and games, maid cafés might seem to provide the perfect target for criticisms of otaku losing touch with reality and escaping into Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 Asian Anthropology 13 fantasy (Kinsella 1998; Kam 2013a, 2013b), but such judgments are hasty and not entirely correct. Writing in defense of otaku, practicing psychologist Saitō Tamaki argues that, contrary to popular stereotypes, prolonged engagement with media makes otaku acutely aware of and sensitive to the difference between reality and fiction (Saitō 2011). Indeed, otaku insist on this difference in their attraction to fiction as such. Otaku are notable for their attraction to “fictional contexts” (kyokō no kontekusuto), which are separate and distinct from reality, but can be related to it (Saitō 2011, 16– 18) (Figure 2). In his clinical and personal interactions with otaku, Saitō notices not only detailed knowledge of the fictional worlds of manga, anime, and games, but also the actual people involved in production (directors, character designers, voice actresses), actual places used for settings, commentary on actual social issues, and so on. Saitō suggests that otaku enjoy “straddling... layered contexts” (Saitō 2011, 25 – 27), which are both fictional and real. A fictional character, for example, has its own reality, which intersects and overlaps with ours when it takes the material form of a figurine or a human wears its costume and produces its voice. Interacting with the character in the real world does not mean that one is confused about the difference between fiction and reality, but rather that one enjoys playing across the boundary and calling it into question. The maid café makes explicit what Saitō calls the otaku “orientation of desire” (Saitō 2011, 30), in that regulars are attracted to the fictional context of manga, anime, and games, but are also aware of how the café operates and the actual people who work there. (Recall the willing suspension of disbelief when buying into the food service provided by maids and ignoring the kitchen staff.) Regulars enjoy straddling layered contexts to become multiply oriented to the maid as both a fictional character and a real person; they work through these layers of fiction and reality when interacting with the maid. Given the origins of maid cafés in dating simulation games, it is not surprising that they appeared in Akihabara, known for stores selling these games, or that the majority of customers in the early days were gamers, who followed the fantasy from the stores to the cafés. Morikawa Ka’ichirō suggests that the appeal of maid cafés for these customers was that the costumed waitresses were part of the fantasy, which alleviated the fear of being judged as perverts or losers by real women and outsiders (Morikawa 2008, 266). No doubt being surrounded by other men who also played dating simulation games further alleviated the fear of judgment. However, the success of the maid café is not as simple as men uncomfortable with women fictionalizing them in order to facilitate interaction, which implies that otaku are somehow pathologically socially awkward. Rather, it is more accurate to say that regulars enjoy layering fiction and reality, which allows for a different range of interactions with maids. What sort of interactions are these? Maid cafés can and do routinize interaction into a basic set of prompts and responses, which resemble a dating simulation game. Predictable interactions and familiarity with the fictional context and the rules of the café allow one to know how the interaction works and to master the system. For example, one regular told me that the maid café had a “game-like feeling” (gēmu mitai na kanji) to it. Using the terminology of gaming, this man said that he would “grind,” doing simple repetitive activities in the café to “level up” and receive the reward of recognition from maids and other regulars. This recognition of effort and achievement is not always part of workaday life outside of the café, which offers an experience that feels like a game. While this regular was interacting with a costumed waitress, he did not feel intimidated, because he already knew the maid character and the parameters of interaction with her. To explain this, he adopted the language of gaming, in effect reading the maid café as a dating simulation game, which provided both the fictional context and the basic underlying structure of interaction. While this may sound like Morikawa’s argument, a key difference P.W. Galbraith Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 14 Figure 2. This book, introducing the culture of “maids,” places an image of a fictional character next to the image of a costumed waitress. The catch copy on the cover promises to impart knowledge on “representative maid anime” as well as maid cafés. Image courtesy of Nihon Shuppansha. is that the regular interacts with the costumed waitress as a maid, which is both a fictional character and a real person, and becomes comfortable interacting with her as such. To be clear, the argument is not that the maid is not a human, a woman, or a real person, or that all interactions with her are routinized so as to become a game played with a fictional character. As is clear from the case of Dragon and Ringo, affective relations between regular and maid do involve aspects of reality (for example, the shared desire to become a Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 Asian Anthropology 15 musician), and interactions are not predictable or contained within the enclosed fantasy space of the maid café (for example, live performances where Ringo sang for her regulars, even after graduating in 2006). What is crucial here is that the master and maid relationship establishes limits to interaction, or establishes a role to play, which is not to say that relations are not affectionate or long term. The point is that the affectional community of the circle and café was possible because Ringo was a maid character, both fictional and real, but in any case in relation to her regulars. While the case of Dragon and Ringo emphasizes relations with the maid as a real person, other relations emphasize the fictional character, and not even that of a single maid. An example from the field will help clarify. King, age 32, is a massive Japanese man who claims to be a professional wrestler. A regular at @home café, he attends special events and live performances, but is not a regular in the same way as Dragon and others in Ringo’s circle. King goes to many different cafés, and often. A jovial individual, King has no problem spending money – sometimes lots of money – in pursuit of a good time. When I ask about his splurging behavior, King replies, “I am not so old or weak. Things will work out.” In a position where he apparently does not have to worry about money, King is able to pursue his passions, chief among which is a particular character type called tsundere (icy-hot). Widely recognized in manga, anime, and games, tsundere indicates a character that is typically cold, distant, or aloof, but at certain moments reveals her soft, sweet, and caring side. There is often an added expectation of deep affection that cannot be directly expressed and remains hidden behind the mean exterior. King tells me that “little sister” (imōto) and “young miss” (ojō-sama) characters are often tsundere. In addition to watching anime and playing dating simulation games that feature such characters, King pursues his passion for tsundere in maid cafés in Akihabara. For example, King frequents a café called Nagomi, where costumed waitresses take on the role of little sisters. The brother – sister relationship is suggested by the waitresses speaking in plain or casual Japanese, which is reserved for members of one’s ingroup (and is not widely used in the service industry in Japan), as well as the rule that all male customers are called “big brother” (onı̄-chan). For his part, King comes to Nagomi for the “tsundere service,” which comes as part of the “arrangement” or “promise” (yakusoku) of brother – sister relations. When King comes to Nagomi, the little sisters immediately ask, “Why are you here? Don’t you have somewhere else to be?” Deflecting the implied criticism that he is a grown man and ought to be at work, King says he is here to see his little sister, and can think of no better place to be. The little sisters mutter, sigh and call him hopeless. Finally allowed over the threshold, King has to find his own seat as one of the little sisters grabs some bagged snack food and tosses it at him. King did not order these snacks, though he will be charged for them. He does not want the snacks, but nibbles on some seaweed-flavored chips to avoid invoking the wrath of his little sister, who is already put out by his unexpected visit and is not in the mood to cater to his tastes. During the visit to Nagomi, King is relentlessly bullied and belittled, up to the point of being called “gross” (kimoi). (It is hard to imagine something further from Allison’s hostess stroking the ego of the corporate workingman.) However, when King gets up to leave, the little sister says, “Are you going already? It’s too soon! Don’t leave! Stay and talk to me.” The shift from “icy” (tsun) to “hot” (dere) reveals her “true” feelings, namely love for her brother and a desire to be with him. In a later discussion, King explains the scenario to me as follows. Because his visit was unexpected – the middle of the afternoon on a weekday – his little sister was not prepared. This, in addition to being at home alone with her brother, contributed to embarrassment; though she was pleased that he wanted to be with her, she ended up acting “bratty,” which she regrets. Reality check: any visit by a customer to a café is to some extent unexpected Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 16 P.W. Galbraith for waitresses, though King came to this establishment enough that his appearance was somewhat predictable; the waitresses were in fact prepared for customers like King to visit; King is not related to the waitress; they are not at home together, and in any case are not alone in the café. King interprets the events of his visit in terms of fantasy role-play. Based on this, harsh words are for him a sign of how much his little sister cares for him (i.e., two people have to be close to be so candid). Certainly not everyone who is called gross by a costumed waitress will respond that the experience is “moe,” but King did, because he interpreted it as tsundere character interaction. Mei, who worked at Nagomi, notes that tsundere service is not on the menu and is something that little sisters only do for regulars who are attuned to the fantasy. King does not stop at Nagomi and explicit tsundere service, however. He also goes to a maid café called Cos-cha, where maids pour cayenne pepper on his food, mix fermented soy beans into his drink and slap him on the face when he cannot choke it down. King explains that the maids slap him because he does not appreciate the food and drink that they work so hard to make. (While this is mostly a reference to fantasy role-play, the maids that treat King this way know him as a regular and do put special effort into torturing him.) Despite King’s romantic explanation for the slap, he in fact ordered it as part of a “punishment game” (batsu gēmu) that cost 2500 yen. King is attracted to the game, and willing to pay for it, because it is evocative of tsundere character interactions. At more standard maid cafés, King gravitates toward what he calls tsundere-type maids, who are bratty and usually have pigtails. King does not call them pigtails, but rather “twin tails” (tsuin tēru), a term originally used to refer to an aspect of character design in manga, anime, and games. King informs me that characters with twin tails are typically tsundere, as well as characters voiced by the actress Kugimiya Rie, including Shana from Shakugan no Shana (2005 – 2006), Louise from The Familiar of Zero (2006) and Nagi from Hayate the Combat Butler (2007 –2008). It is fascinating that King, in pursuit of tsundere, reads hairstyle in a maid café in terms of the visual language of character design, which he explains by referring to an actress who voices characters for popular anime. (This is a great example of knowledge of fictional and real contexts and the ability to relate them, which Saitō attributes to otaku.) Maids are not only aware of character types from manga, anime, and games, but in fact rely on them when producing their own characters. Mei, for example, is an only child and by her own estimation not at all bratty, but when working at Nagomi she put her hair up in twin tails and performed tsundere as a little sister. When I ask about her inspirations for her maid character, Mei answers that she is a fan of manga, anime, and games, where she picked up her “basic knowledge.” This knowledge is shared by regulars such as King, who seek tsundere in the café and read it in the look and mien of maids such as Mei. In the reading of twin tails, we see King, a maid café regular, engaged in a form of cognitive labor that entails making connections to manga, anime, and games that animate the maid character and contribute to the affective force of her movement. Just as with Dragon’s relationship with Ringo going beyond @home café, King’s love of tsundere characters begins before he enters the café and continues after he leaves. While some of the value of his affective relations is captured by Nagomi or Cos-cha, it is certainly not contained, as this love is part of his life. Unlike Dragon, King is not affectively attached to the character of a single maid (Ringo), but rather to a character type (tsundere). To put it another way, his affective relations are with a type of fictional character called tsundere, which is seen in manga, anime, and games; Mei’s physical body is another medium to express the character (Figure 3). The case of King and tsundere provides an example of what Dominic Pettman calls a “love vector,” where “distributed qualities [are] splashed across a multitude of people, characters, images, and avatars” 17 Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 Asian Anthropology Figure 3. A fanbook introducing Schatz Kiste, a maid café in Akihabara. The catch copy reads, “This is not a maid café. It’s a work of three-dimensional animation” (koko wa meido kissa dewanai, sanjigen anime sakuhin da). Following from this example, one might say, “Mei is not a maid. She is a three-dimensional tsundere character.” Image courtesy of Tomoshibi no Tomodachi. (Pettman 2009, 201). The other way around, the maid character is always in excess of the individual; when King interacts with maids such as Mei, his affective relations are with a multitude of fictional characters (all those that are tsundere, which extends across manga, anime, games, and more). As a “2.5-dimensional space” (Honda 2005, 19), the maid café allows the fantasy of manga, anime, and games to enter into everyday reality and impact performances and Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 18 P.W. Galbraith relationships. The maid’s performance is inspired by fictional characters, and regulars cannot be masters without maids. This relational role-play, based on overlapping fictional and real contexts, does not always or necessarily map onto gendered difference.11 Tellingly, one maid explains that she does not look at regulars as “men” when interacting with them in the maid café, but rather always as “masters” (Galbraith 2009a, 134). Ironically, as a master in the maid café, the regular is freed from the expectations of male mastery, which opens up different possibilities for living and loving outside the demand for reproductive maturity embodied in the company or family man. Glossing the work of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Ronald Bogue calls the maid an antifamilial or anticonjugal type that offers “new passages of movement, new lines of flight” (Bogue 1989, 114). Applying this insight to a relationship like the one between Dragon and Ringo proves revealing. First, though the relationship took place in a maid café called @home, it was antifamilial, which is to say that it took place outside of the family and was not oriented toward the goal of “long-term domestic couplehood recognized by the state” (Freeman 2002, xi). Further, the relationship was anticonjugal, which is to say that it was not oriented towards the sexual union of the couple. Instead, the relationship between Dragon and Ringo was characterized by the “unconsummated erotics” (Freeman 2002, xv) that are part of queer life, a relationship that is also a zigzagging line of flight. Affective relations that were not private or exclusive (for example, the circle) opened new passages of movement. Finally, Dragon was in a relationship with Ringo as a maid – both a real person and a fictional character. Dragon loved Ringo as a maid, which is to say that he loved both her and something more than her. While the focus of this paper is maid café regulars, a final note about affective labor is in order. The maid character is key to affective relations in the maid café, and it is the job of the costumed waitress to articulate and perform her character. While Amy Flowers, writing about phone sex workers, comments on the fraught relationship between character and self (Flowers 1998, especially Chapter 5), and Arlie Russell Hochschild raises the issue of alienation of flight attendants from their own emotions (Hochschild 1983, 13, 19), the maid café offers a slightly different picture. To begin, maids do not consider what they do to be sex work, and in any case, unlike Flowers’ informants, do not doubt their own decency or that of customers. Further, working as a maid is a part-time job that young women choose not because the money is great – maids only earn 850 yen an hour, which is equivalent to working at McDonald’s – but rather because the work intersects with their interests. Ringo wanted to be a singer and saw an opportunity with Kanzen Maid Sengen at @home café; she achieved great success, and remained a singer to her circle of regulars and supporters even after she left the café. Unlike Hochschild’s informants, maids are not trained and disciplined by corporate employers to control themselves and their relations with customers. Rather, the maid articulates her own character and interacts with customers in her own way based on her own understanding of the maid character. Maids do perform standardized affective gestures (the moe moe kyun ritual, for example), and this is part of a strategy by café owners to attract men and keep them coming back, but in fact no one completely owns the character and can control its movements. The maid café attempts to capture the value of affective relations, but calling this exploitation of laborers and customers overestimates the power of café owners and underestimates the agency of maids and regulars, who are involved in complex affective relations with and through characters. It is to my mind unnecessary and also impossible to disentangle Ringo from her maid character, and we should not discount her affective relations with Dragon – himself a bit of a character, right down to his choice of a fantastic, un-Japanese sounding name – the circle of regulars and indeed her own character. The maid café is an alternative social world for not only Asian Anthropology 19 Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 regulars, but also maids. Mei, a graduate student pursuing a degree in chemistry, referred to working at Nagomi as a time outside of the reality of work, school, and home. Note that although Mei is working part time (baito) at the café, she does not consider it “work” (shigoto), which in Japan can imply an occupation that defines social identity. In this alternative social world, which Mei calls the “maid world” (meido no sekai), she feels that she has gained access to another life with, through, and as her character. Maids are paid for their work in the café, and regulars pay to spend time with them in the café, but the exchange of money is only the beginning of affective relations that are mutually fulfilling, though not always symmetrically so (Takeyama 2010, 238). Conclusion In this paper, I have argued that maid cafés are one example of the “affectional communities” (D’Emilio 2007, 257) emerging as an alternative to family and work groups in contemporary Japan. Where Anne Allison draws attention to social alienation leading to intimacy with “constructed realities” (Allison 2006, 83-88), I have argued that the maid café provides a frame for affective relations that depend on sharing constructed realities or fictional contexts.12 The maid café evolved out of affective relations with fictional characters in the 1990s, described as the moe phenomenon and emblazoned in dating simulation games, which inspired maid cafés. It is telling that maid cafés are referred to as “moe space” (Aida 2006; Galbraith 2009a, 136), where moe means an affective response to fictional characters. In maid cafés, waitresses not only wear costumes, but also perform characters inspired by manga, anime, and games. As a “2.5-dimensional space” associated with manga, anime, and games, the maid café allows “delusions” to open into everyday reality and disrupt common sense (Honda 2005, 19, 142, 145 –152). Affective relations with the maid are not private or exclusive, or even limited to the human, but instead expand out into alternative formations such as the circle (in the case of Dragon and Ringo) or love vector (King and tsundere). Insofar as they are not oriented toward gaining sexual access or release, relationships between maids and regulars are characterized by “unconsummated erotics” (Freeman 2002, xv). Maid café regulars are considered by critics to be highly irregular men, even failures, but this paper has argued that maid café regulars are imagining other ways of living and loving (Halberstam 2011, 88) that are not oriented toward achieving reproductive maturity and are not limited to the couple or family. In maid cafés and affective relations with maid characters, we can observe the emergence of alternative social worlds. Notes 1. 2. 3. 4. Adorno 1998, 75. 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. 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 2011, 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. 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 Downloaded by [Patrick Galbraith] at 11:03 12 November 2013 20 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. P.W. Galbraith 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. 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.. 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. Ojō-sama, translated here as “young miss,” actually means “a daughter from a decent family” (Inoue 2006, 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. 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 2011, 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. “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. This information comes from a personal conversation (August 14, 2010) with Nakamura Jin, who knows the founder of Cure Maid Café. 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 2007, 256). 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 2006, 91; see also Honda 2005). 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 2013, 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 2009 and Saitō 2011. Notes on contributor Patrick 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. 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