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In November 2003, the publishing mega-company Kodansha launched Faust (ファウスト) , a “fighting illustrated story novel magazine” (闘うイラストーリー・ ノベルスマガジン) . Faust had an antecedent in two prior publications. The first, Mephisto (メフィスト), a monthly mystery magazine published by Kodansha and briefly edited by Katsushi Ōta. Alongside Ōta, authors who had won the Mephisto Prize, such as Ryūsui Seiryōin and Nisio Isin, would later play a prominent role at Faust. The second, Tandem Rotor’s Methodology (タンデムローターの方法論), a doujin anthology sold at the 2002 Literary Flea Market (文学フリマ). Tandem Rotor’s Methodology also saw Ōta in the role of editor with the other writers including Isin, Yuuya Satō, and Ōtarō Maijō, who likewise, would join the ranks of Faust.
Faust would be more than just another mystery rag, turning its focus instead to the particular otaku subcultures of light novels and visual novels, both mediums which had already been around since the 1990s. In its content then, the magazine was seemingly far from new, having been preceded by the likes of Kadokawa Shoten’s light novel magazine The Sneaker (ザ・スニーカー) and computer magazine Comptiq (コンプティーク).
Yet, Faust would differ in multiple ways. First, Ōta sought to create a platform for a new generation of writers. As he would explain in an interview with About.com, “Over the past five years, I noticed that there were a lot of young writers emerging who are influenced by entertainment media such as manga, anime and games. I wanted to create a venue for those types of writers, so that’s why I came up with Faust” (Aoki 2008). In other words, Ōta was gathering writers who themselves were influenced by otaku culture and could appeal to the rapidly growing otaku market—a demographic Ōta described as largely male, single, broke, and with an inferiority complex (Aoki 2008).
Far from Ōta denigrating Faust’s reader base, he instead understood the particular social, cultural, and economic context that the majority of Faust’s readers—who were male—were coming from. In a different interview with Publisher’s Weekly, Ōta described the style of Faust as, “…address[ing] the consciousness of adolescence, the self-consciousness” (Cha 2007). A year later, Del Rey’s editor, Tricia Narwani, echoed a similar sentiment, telling Publisher’s Weekly of Faust:
I see a serious attempt to address the emotional state of somebody who feels disaffected and outside of society. There are a couple of stories about the hikikimori phenomenon. They are fantastical but address it in a serious way: Why would somebody live like this? You will find a commonality about the stories in Faust: They are about unhappy, disaffected loners and the predicaments, magical or otherwise, that they find themselves in often proceed from where they are in life (Alverson 2008).
Faust was thereby a magazine for and by otaku within the “age of fiction,” what Azuma describes as a new time period wherein the loss of grand narratives in reality has led to a turn towards a “fabricated fiction” (Azuma 2009, p.115).
Elsewhere, Ōta also emphasized Faust’s literary appeal, explaining to Publisher’s Weekly that not only were the particular stories being published in Faust sophisticated but also that Faust tended to publish writers who had won literary awards—he takes the time to point out that two of Faust’s writers had won Yukio Mishima awards (Cha 2007).[♧]Through such literary aspirations, Ōta eschewed strict hierarchical categorization of light novels. As Susan Napier underscores in her 2003 monograph, Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke, although anime had been part of mass culture, it had slowly become seen as, “an intellectually challenging art form” (p.4). The same rhetoric rings true for light novels which alongside anime was part of broader otaku culture. It was not the case that Ōta was attempting to court the traditional literary market and have light novels be accepted as “intellectual,” but rather, Ōta had keyed in on the changing landscape of Japanese literature and the globalization of Japanese culture. When asked by About.com whether Faust played a role in changing the perception of light novels in Japan, Ōta answered:
Yes, exactly. It’s not clear that Faust is the sole reason for this change, but I think it will take at least 10 or 20 years to define Faust’s impact on the publishing industry. Haruki Murakami declared 10 years ago that he would have nothing to do with traditional literature publishing I Japan. He wanted to have a connection with readers around the world. All the Japanese editors and critics thought he was a little bit crazy to say that. But after 15 years, people know that Haruki Murakami was right after all (Aoki 2008).
Faust was thereby arriving at a watershed moment for both Japanese literary culture and otaku culture, the latter which was slowly entering the mainstream. The publication of the magazine was only one year before Densha Otoko (Nakano Hitori); two years before Toshio Okada’s appearance on Terebi Champion and his disillusionment with changing otaku attitudes as a result of the subculture’s growth; and three years before Japanese politician and future Prime Minister Taro Aso revealed himself as an otaku. In light novels, the business savvy Ōta correctly saw the emergence of a corner of the otaku market that could be cultivated.