Taking Futuristic Selfies With Julie Watai
All photos courtesy Julie Watai

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Taking Futuristic Selfies With Julie Watai

We sat down to talk about the photographer's book of technicolor, otaku-obsessed selfies.

This article originally appeared on VICE Japan.

Japanese artist Julie Watai got her start as a failed illustrator. When the dōjinshi she used to draw of popular characters failed to sell she turned to photography to capture the futuristic otaku fever dreams in her head. The resulting photos, which were recently collected in the book Tokyo Future Classic, play with the tropes and style of manga, anime, and video games to create a body of work that embraces otaku culture while shattering the stereotypes about otaku as a smelly, insular culture of body pillow-loving nerds.

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VICE's Japan office sat down with Julie Watai to discuss what it was like to turn the camera on herself.

VICE: How did you end up doing photography?
Julie Watai: I've been drawing parodies of famous anime and other dōjinshi works since I was in grade school. I would make tons of copies to sell at events, but sales were terrible [laughs]. I deliberately worked on popular genres to attract buyers, but it was no good. Because I made my own work, I paid attention to things like the customers' reaction and the sales of other booths at the events, and by doing so I drew the conclusion that my drawings had no mass appeal. I love drawing so it was hard to quit at first, but I was practically forced to explore other forms of expression.

When I was in high school, I took pictures of cosplayers at events like Comiket, but just as a hobby. I learned photography on my own simply because I wanted the female cosplayers to look cute in my pictures. Surprisingly, people praised my pictures, so I kept shooting. I eventually started using photography as an appropriate medium through which I can express manga-like fantasies.

When you say you're expressing manga-like fantasies through photography, what sort of manga do you have in mind?
I like full-page illustrations typically found in manga, and that's the sort of microcosm I would like to create through photography. Full-page illustrations differ from one manga artist to another, but I prefer ones with detailed backgrounds and a lot of depth. Although his works is not exactly related to manga or anime, Yoshitaka Amano of the Final Fantasy series is a good example. I think he stands on the boundary between manga as drawings and as pure art.

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Are you inspired by the women you photograph? Your female subjects leave such a strong impression…
No, I don't draw inspiration from the subjects at all. And from the clothes neither. I draw inspiration from places and objects first and foremost, then I conceptualize the characters to suit the places and objects. It usually starts from, 'Oh, this place is cool, I'd like to shoot here.' It's the same thing with objects like gadgets or musical instrument. These days it's not just locations within the city. Something like internet culture is quite inspiring too. For example, the cover for my newest photo collection is inspired by glitches.

Glitches?
A glitch is computer error screen, kind of like a bug I guess? Glitch art became somewhat viral on Tumblr, and it's quite popular in the United States. It never occurred to me that something like error screen would spawn a whole genre of art. Though, to be honest, I sort of 'manufacture' the error screen myself using graphic design tools. There's also seapunk, which was also a fad in the US a while back. The design patterns are basically re-imaginations of Christian Lassen's works. One of the pictures in my newest collection was taken at an apparel shop called Galaxy. The interior of the shop screams seapunk, and that's why I decided that I will shoot there. Maybe it's hard to tell, but it's somewhat ocean-like inside.

So, for that picture, you settled on the location because it screamed 'seapunk,' but then from there, how do you figure out who makes a suitable subject?
The model must blend in with the environment. A dissonance between the model and the background location will result in a discombobulated picture. If the background is flashy, then the subject must not lose out in terms of flashiness, so we dress the models in clothing with flamboyant colors and with a gaudy hairstyle. It's the same thing with makeup and posing—everything is conceptualized to match the location even before the actual photoshoot, so that the only potential changes left once we're on location is perhaps minute adjustments to the model's pose.

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You use a lot of unusual props. Are they hard to find?
Indeed. I scour the internet to find the props. But, interestingly, most of the props are things initially designed to tackle real social problems. The robotic prop I used was developed for elderly care. You see, if I stroll outside, there would be elderly ladies on a robot-like contraption, moving around very quickly. It's electric wheelchair, and I know this sounds a bit crass but I think it's cool looking. From there I arrived at the concept of power suit. After a bit of Googling, I found a company that manufactures a commercial-grade power amplification device. I was hesitant at first, but I finally mustered enough courage to contact the company and they were surprisingly receptive to my ideas.

The power amplification device is not mobile, so I just went to the company's office to do the photoshoot. I went ahead and borrowed the toilet to change into the costume, and just started shooting on the spot, in the middle of a typical office floor full of desks. The cropping and editing afterward was a bit tricky because of that.

What about the android arms?
I wanted to include an android, and somehow it became the character setting for this series. It's about Asuna-chan, an old high-class android. I'm also wearing android-like costume, but I play the role of a scientist. That's the characters I came up with, but I asked a science fiction author named Marco to write the story for me.

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The interpretation is mostly left to the viewers' imagination, but in Japan androids are firmly correlated with certain things—like sexiness. So, it's about how to shoot in ways that leverages those correlations. Like, there are people who love dolls, right? Katan Amano's luxury bisque dolls for example—that's how I want the android in my work to be perceived. Not as monstrosities, but more as something that captivates a wider audience.

There's a pretty obvious lesbian undercurrent to your work as well, correct?
I wanted to avoid being too graphic about it, though. Within the otaku community, we have a genre called yuri, which is devoted to depicting pure love between girls in comic book form, but with none of the graphic or vulgar details. I want to girls to see that same beautiful, dream-like illusion from my works.

Yeah, in Japan stories of women sending love letters to their seniors at work or school is pretty common.
I believe most people had, at some point in life, a female senior they admired. Also, the increasing acceptance towards androgyny or gender-neutrality may be crucial. Society is now more open to females who instinctively feel a certain level of affinity towards yuri-ism—which I believe a lot of women have. Lesbianism is a slightly different world though.

These feelings of love between women and girls, does it dissipate with age? It does for most. But some cherish those feelings even as they age—and that's why, for example, they become absorbed with Takarazuka Revue, an all-female musical theater troupe.

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By building on the concepts derived from the world of yuri, are you are striving to challenge the existing convention towards androids? Yes. I want to somehow shed some positive light toward things that are often misunderstood or looked down upon—it is an ongoing theme for all my works to date. Before Tokyo Future Classic, I released a photo collection titled Hardware Girls depicting cute models clad in swimwear—in sexy poses, no less—having their pictures taken in rooms typical of otaku. It quickly became a collectible item among otaku, but more importantly, I somehow felt that it lifted otaku's social standing. Otaku's rooms are often looked down upon as the rooms of maniacs. They are un-ladylike, smelly, and so on. But by capturing scenes where cute girls are juxtaposed against those rooms, a visual expression which says something like, 'Hey, those rooms aren't so lame after all!' comes out and that alone was quite satisfying for me.

People's perception towards otaku is gradually changing these days, isn't it?
During my puberty years, girls around me weren't preoccupied with internet. But nowadays everyone uses internet, and among the people who grew up with Niconico (a Japanese video streaming service), it's pretty uncommon to find someone who isn't at least familiar with otaku culture.

There are different types of otaku nowadays too, and it could be anyone—fashionistas, cute girls, handsome guys, people who walks around hugging R-18 body pillows… the times have changed. The word 'otaku' no longer holds negative connotation, it's becoming to mean more like "interesting person" nowadays. But when Hardware Girls (2010) and Samurai Girl (2006) were released, people still scoffed at the idea of otaku, and that certainly spurred me on.

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Well now that otaku culture enjoys a more widespread acceptance, what keeps you motivated?
It helps that I was the subject for my recent work—it keeps me motivated. I've had some experience working as a gravure model (a genre of sexy modeling common in Japan), and it strengthened my beliefs about the ephemeral nature of youth and beauty. Like, no matter how popular someone is, there will always be someone younger waiting in the wings. That experience drove me to capture this fleeting moment that is my youth and preserve it in whatever form. Every female probably has this innate desire, although mine is relatively strong, I think.

Is that why this time around you chose self-portraits?
I kept thinking, what if I suddenly look old? [laughs] There might be things I can only capture as I get older, although it's probably impossible for my present self to grasp. My sentiment towards the fickleness of youth is quite strong, but at the same time I feel like it's easier to capture the subtle nuances if I'm modeling for myself.

What do you pay attention to most when taking these selfies?
It's not specific to self-portraits, but I always make sure that every part of the picture perfectly focused to reconstruct the feel of a two-dimensional world. To further omit the sense of reality, I try to be as detached and as emotionless as possible. I guess I'm just trying to emulate the non-vivid feel of manga illustrations.

I'm not really talking about one specific example, but the facial expressions in these pictures really stood out to me. It's as if an uninhibited sense of humanity came through more vividly. Some of the pictures seem, paradoxically, to have a prevailing sense of reality to it.
That's good to hear. I prefer my works to leave some space for alternative interpretation. This is just my opinion as an otaku, but if you compare manga and novel, the text-only format of novel is much more open to wild imagination on the reader's part—and to me, that is much more exciting. Like, we are forced to use our imagination to envision the character's looks and so on. It's similar with romance—sometimes just letting our fantasy to run wild about our love interest is gratifying enough. I think Akiba-kei types habitually tend to get absorbed in our own world because we are used to alternative realities provided by games or anime. And that is how I want my artwork to be appreciated.