{"id":722,"date":"2009-07-26T20:22:52","date_gmt":"2009-07-26T20:22:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/onecity\/2009\/07\/2-d-love.html"},"modified":"2009-07-26T20:22:52","modified_gmt":"2009-07-26T20:22:52","slug":"2-d-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/07\/2-d-love.html","title":{"rendered":"2-D Love?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font size=\"2\">Today&#8217;s New York Times Magazine ran a story, <\/font><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/07\/26\/magazine\/26FOB-2DLove-t.html\"><font size=\"2\">Love in 2-D<\/font><\/a><font size=\"2\">, by Lisa Katayama about Japanese men (though women do it too) who engage in relationships with imaginary characters. She writes, &#8220;These 2-D lovers, as they are called, are a subset of otaku culture- the obsessive fandom that has surrounded anime, manga and video games in the last decade.&#8221; Her piece begins by profiling a 37 year-old man named Nisan who carries around a stuffed pillow imprinted with an image of a&nbsp;video game character named Nemu, whom he considers his girlfriend. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font size=\"2\"><\/font><\/span>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font size=\"2\">Whatever your take on the social isolation spawning this phenomenon, what caught my attention was a quote by Takuro Morinaga, a Japanese behavioral economist who likened 2-D love to &#8220;enlightenment training&#8221; and even went as far as to say that it was like &#8220;becoming a Buddha.&#8221; When speaking of men who prefer 2-D lovers to human women, Morinaga says, &#8220;I understand their feelings completely. These guys don&#8217;t want to push ahead in society; they just want to create their little flower-bed world and live there peacefully.&#8221; It seems an odd (not to mention inaccurate) comparison to make and perpetuates the stereotype that Buddhism is a solitary endeavor with the sole purpose of individual enlightenment. <\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font size=\"2\">&nbsp;<\/font><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"MsoNormal\"><span><font size=\"2\">Another proponent of 2-D love featured in the article, Toru Honda, argues that these relationships are the answer to the loss of &#8220;pure love&#8221; caused by &#8220;romantic capitalism.&#8221; While I agree that capitalism has had an effect on intimacy, engaging in romantic relationships with media characters hardly seems like progress&#8230;in fact, it just seems like a strange extension of the commodification of romantic love. Did anyone else read this article? If so, any thoughts?<span>&nbsp; <\/span><\/font><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today&#8217;s New York Times Magazine ran a story, Love in 2-D, by Lisa Katayama about Japanese men (though women do it too) who engage in relationships with imaginary characters. She writes, &#8220;These 2-D lovers, as they are called, are a subset of otaku culture- the obsessive fandom that has surrounded anime, manga and video games&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":183,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-media"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>2-D Love? - One City<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/07\/2-d-love.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"2-D Love? - One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Today&#8217;s New York Times Magazine ran a story, Love in 2-D, by Lisa Katayama about Japanese men (though women do it too) who engage in relationships with imaginary characters. She writes, &#8220;These 2-D lovers, as they are called, are a subset of otaku culture- the obsessive fandom that has surrounded anime, manga and video games&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/07\/2-d-love.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"One City\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-07-26T20:22:52+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Denise M. Abatemarco\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"2-D Love? - One City","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/07\/2-d-love.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"2-D Love? - One City","og_description":"Today&#8217;s New York Times Magazine ran a story, Love in 2-D, by Lisa Katayama about Japanese men (though women do it too) who engage in relationships with imaginary characters. She writes, &#8220;These 2-D lovers, as they are called, are a subset of otaku culture- the obsessive fandom that has surrounded anime, manga and video games&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/07\/2-d-love.html","og_site_name":"One City","article_published_time":"2009-07-26T20:22:52+00:00","author":"Denise M. Abatemarco","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/07\/2-d-love.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/07\/2-d-love.html","name":"2-D Love? - One City","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-07-26T20:22:52+00:00","dateModified":"2009-07-26T20:22:52+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/410481dc46ac0882ab24d63807722338"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/07\/2-d-love.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/07\/2-d-love.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/2009\/07\/2-d-love.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"2-D Love?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/","name":"One City","description":"The Interdependence Project","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/410481dc46ac0882ab24d63807722338","name":"Denise M. Abatemarco","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/f3b\/f3b5a24aa55fd736473295ad910130d1x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/f3b\/f3b5a24aa55fd736473295ad910130d1x96.jpg","caption":"Denise M. Abatemarco"},"description":"Denise has a bachelor\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in Communications and Psychology from The College of New Rochelle and a master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in Humanities and Social Thought from The Draper Program at NYU. She is currently pursuing a second master\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s in mental health counseling from Brooklyn College and hopes to one day have her own private practice. Her primary interests include gender and queer theory, the intersections of psychoanalysis and Buddhism and the psychology of intimacy. Denise began meditating and studying Buddhism in 2005 and shortly thereafter discovered the ID Project where she has been practicing ever since.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/author\/dabatemarco"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/183"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/722\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/onecity\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}