David Jacobson of Japan Media Review quoted me earlier this month regarding the launch of the Technorati Japan beta site. Sorry I've waited so long to post this.
This is my quoted part:
Anonymity is valued more highly in Japan than in the U.S. (for comparison's sake.) That has been the culture on the Japanese Internet in the past and it is clear that this trend will continue with Japanese weblogs. Many Japanese Internet users have pointed to a strong diary ('nikki') culture that has been a strong part of Japanese written culture for many hundreds of years. Some Japanese believe that "blogs" are an extension of Japanese diaries, which may be the cause of many personal diary-type blogs in Japan.
What do I think of Manbe Kawori being the "most popular" blogger in Japan? I think she's pretty Internet-savvy and was an early adopter. I do hope to see more than just "chomeijin" blogs ("famous" people, usually media-related) in the Technorati Japan Top 100. I hope there will be more Japanese bloggers who blog under their own name, instead of anonymously. That's the key to reputation. Instead of being scared about what anonymous people may be saying about you on 2ch.net, if you have your own blog, your own voice, your own control over your own "online persona," then you can control what is said about you vs. the other way around. That's a key point that I may expand upon in the future. Being proactive instead of reactive, essentially.
And Japan's Most Quoted Blogger Is ... [japanmediareview.com]
Technorati Tags: blogs, Japan, Technorati
Many hundreds of years? If you count Sei Shonagon, make that "over a millennium"...
Fazal, very true indeed.
One of my friends in Tokyo last year was a UC Boulder PhD candidate who was finishing up her doctorate dissertation on a Japanese female diarist from many hundreds of years ago (I'm ashamed to say that I forgot the time period.) So that's my point of reference.
I agree with you to a point about establishing an online persona instead of being anonymous, but I don't think you have to use your own name or go into details about your life to do so.
Take Wikipedia. I value Wikipedia so much even though I have no idea who writes the articles, what their job is, where they went to university, what their credentials are and so on.
Or online forums (even 2ch). Some of the stuff on them would never be written if it weren't for the freedom of anonymity, and it's really not difficult to separate the nonsense from the sensible stuff.
Or take my case. I couldn't write my blog if I used my real name because my employers mightn't understand that me writing the blog is actually beneficial to them too.
For me the content, not the identity, is the important thing, and pushing to restrict anonymity could as easily be seen as reactionary as proactive.