Is There a Backlash Again Yuzuru Hanyu
Beijing – Casual fans of Yuzuru Hanyu know what to wait when the figure skating star steps onto the ice.
There will exist grace, technique, no shortage of gravity-defying jumps and — of course, under normal circumstances — hundreds of Winnie the Pooh toys and bouquets thrown out to be collected and eventually donated to local hospitals and charities.
But what the average Television receiver viewer may not be enlightened of is the vast global fandom that has developed around the Miyagi Prefecture native, with supporters cheering on their hero and muse with thousands of social media posts consisting of everything from strings of eye emojis to exquisitely detailed fan art.
Known as "Fanyus," the 27-year-erstwhile'due south almost fervent supporters have forever changed the mode figure skating is appreciated in the internet era, just as Hanyu himself continues to redefine the sport with his artistry and athletic ability.
Yet the diverse nature of the community centered around Hanyu — formed at the confluence of sports and popular culture — also gives rise to unique conflicts that highlight the challenges of fandom in the cyberspace era, when disparate communities can all of a sudden be brought together past the most unlikely of forces.
"The thing that sets him apart from other skaters is his skill, but (too) in terms of popular cultural cachet," fandom studies expert Dr. Lori Morimoto told the Japan Times. "The fact that he plays with popular civilization in his performances, and his routines tend to be very stylized."
According to Morimoto, Hanyu's "Seimei" programme — featuring a costume inspired by natural philosopher Abe no Seimei and with music taken from the soundtrack of the motion-picture show "Onmyoji" — struck a chord among not just figure skating fans but those of Asian popular civilisation when he debuted it in the 2015-16 season.
"There's this kind of plow towards a sort of indigenous identity that we've seen with unlike skaters," Morimoto said. "Just that specific fan cultural matter — that would be recognized by a very sort of select slice of water ice skating aficionados — I had never seen that earlier.
"And I only thought, my first reaction was 'this is the best thing I've always seen.'"
Hanyu's long period atop the earth rankings between 2012 and 2018 resulted in near-constant exposure in Japanese media, drawing those with even just a passing interest in figure skating into his orbit and creating legions of new fans.
"Seeing him on TV shows and commercials and also all the magazines, that kind of introduced me into this figure skating fandom," Tokyo-based writer and translator Maria-Laura Mitsuoka said.
I year after "Seimei" rocked fans, another shockwave arrived in the form of "Yuri On Ice," the figure-skating anime that became a global awareness and attracted a new community of fans to the sport.
Not simply were the testify'south fans able to transfer their interest in fictional skater Yuri Katsuki to real-life skaters such as Hanyu (whose resemblance to Katsuki has not gone unnoticed), but they also brought their own methods of participatory fandom such as fine art, written fiction and short videos known as fan edits.
"No other figure skater earlier had then many people who painted them or who produced other kinds of fine art," Mitsuoka said. "I retrieve that Yuzuru's managed non just to rule the sports earth inside his fandom, merely also other parts of the fandom similar fine art and literature."
The mid-2010s rising of Yard-Popular fandom, whose demographics overlap with that of anime fandom, farther influenced the manner Hanyu'southward fans interacted with each other and the figure skating community at large — especially every bit boy band BTS rose to global superstardom and inspired its infamous "army" of loyal superfans.
Tweets featuring photos or videos of the skater, which ofttimes include hashtags of his name in English and Japanese, are liked and retweeted hundreds or even thousands of times. But the number of fans participating in this activity isn't e'er clear: Similar K-Pop fans who coordinate intricate campaigns to drive up views and plays of their favorite artists' content, some Fanyus are known to create multiple accounts in order to increase the engagement of tweets and generate excitement among their peers.
"I think this is ane kind of back up they effort to show," Mitsuoka said. "It's fun. And you can kind of swoop into your own fan earth and be with other people who remember the same and kind of cutting out all the other things … and all the other problems."
But if retweeting Fanyu-centered content is an act of devotion and purification — not unlike a Buddhist monk reciting a sutra — there is as well a darker side of the community that tin manifest in problematic outbursts.
While the majority of Fanyus adhere to a policy of positive back up for their idol, a vocal minority has become infamous for disruptive activity online, whether directed toward fans of other skaters, journalists who they believe have unfairly criticized Hanyu'southward performances or even each other.
"There are clashes betwixt existent figure skating fans who are kind of objective, and other people who are kind of admiring Yuzu as a god," Mitsuoka said. "Because at that place are those who say, 'No, everything he'south doing is 120% perfect,' and other people who are saying 'No, if you lot're objective, then this time, Nathan Chen was ameliorate.'"
Another frequent target of Fanyu ire is the International Skating Union, which is oftentimes accused of stacking the deck against Hanyu by underscoring his routines and boosting the scores of American rival Chen.
"If ane of (the skaters) is sort of being perceived to be promoted or exalted above the others, and the fans think that their skater is being shortchanged, it invokes those feelings of protectiveness," Morimoto said.
As social media users mounted a boycott of the federation's 2020 honour ceremony, Hanyu himself urged viewers to watch the result in a video posted by the ISU, a rare — if indirect — acknowledgement of his fandom's activities.
Mitsuoka says she's amidst a growing number of fans who are both frustrated past the level of aggression within the community and enlightened of how difficult it volition be to dial back.
"I feel very sorry, as a fan of Yuzu, because I don't have the feeling that we're supporting him," she said. "I just take a feeling that there are fifty-fifty more problems, or that he has to accept responsibility for bug that are caused by his fans. I don't really like that and I know many other people who retrieve the same.
"I was (in the) BTS Regular army, I was very passionate. But as I became older, I became more than objective. I think this clashing is very exhausting, and I want to put my energy into unlike things, but try telling that to a xiii year old."
In explaining the roots of conflicts inside the Fanyu community, Morimoto invokes the concept of "contact zones" — spaces where "cultures come across, clash, and grapple with each other" — first introduced in 1991 by scholar Mary Louise Pratt.
"Somebody coming from American effigy skating fandom, and somebody coming from Japanese figure skating fandom to the contact zone are oftentimes bringing quite different cultural baggage to the table," Morimoto said. "But because we share something in common, just because we take this shared involvement, does non hateful we empathise it in the same way."
Ironically, it is Hanyu's ability to draw fans from a broad variety of backgrounds — from different cultures, societies and communities — that results in such a contact zone, amplified by the immediacy of the internet and imperfect tools of advice such equally automatic translation features found on many websites and platforms.
"The more interesting story to me is the fact that it's non merely fandom that'south communicating this way," Morimoto said. "Globally, in every attribute of our lives, if nosotros're online, this is how we're agreement the rest of the world imperfectly, and nosotros don't have the space to larn almost other cultures before nosotros're engaging with them.
"On the one paw, (social media) brings you into contact with people you might never have engaged with otherwise. Simply the flip side of that is ever going to be you're coming into contact with people you lot might never have engaged with, and you don't know how to practise it."
But while contact zones can seem — and often are — messy at times, Morimoto sees signs of hope in a growing generation of fans who are increasingly aware of — if not literate in — transculturalism, and subsequently more willing to listen.
"There's more of an understanding that 'In that location are things going on here that I don't get.' Non everybody, only I think specially people who are acting in adept faith, are more quick to recognize that than they used to be," she said.
"I think the best we can exercise is but tell people (that) you don't know everything. You may call up you lot empathize what'south going on, simply yous're missing things. And hopefully it'll trickle downward to younger people at some betoken."
Mitsuoka, for her part, says she's more cautious about who she shares her honey of Hanyu with — dialing dorsum her passion when she encounters someone with extreme views of the skater — but is determined to keep supporting him through thick and thin.
"I don't desire like 10% of the fandom to destroy my passion for figure skating and for Yuzuru," she said. "I hope that the fandom will be more than peaceful, just for Yuzuru, considering he's such a wonderful person and he deserves to accept a wonderful fandom."
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Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/sports/2022/02/06/olympics/winter-olympics/olympics-figure-skating/yuzuru-hanyu-fandom/
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