🎤 Can cheering for your favorite idol or anime character count as serious academic research? At Konan Women's University in Kobe, the answer is a definitive yes. With Japan's "oshi-katsu" economy now worth an estimated $23 billion and 14 million active fans nationwide, this university is launching an entirely new faculty dedicated to studying fan culture through the lens of sociology, business, and lifestyle sciences.

When "Stan Culture" Meets the Lecture Hall

In Japan, the word "oshi" — roughly meaning "the one I support" — has become as common in everyday conversation as asking someone their name. "Who's your oshi?" is how friendships begin among young people in the Reiwa era (2019–present). Whether it's an idol group member, an anime character, a voice actor, or even a professional athlete, openly declaring your devotion to a favorite figure carries no stigma whatsoever. In fact, it's practically expected.

This cultural shift hasn't gone unnoticed by academia. In April 2026, Konan Women's University — a well-regarded private institution in the Kansai region — will open its new Faculty of Sociology, with a significant focus on what might be called "fan studies." The faculty is being formed by merging the existing Department of Cultural Sociology and the Department of Living Environment Studies, while adding a brand-new Business and Society major. The result is a three-pronged academic program where students can study media sociology, business strategy, and lifestyle sciences — all through the lens of their personal passions.

Leading this initiative is Professor Ikeda, a cultural sociologist who has spent nearly two decades researching otaku culture and fan behavior. His academic journey began after joining the university in 2005, when he noticed that the prevailing scholarship on otaku culture was overwhelmingly male-focused. He turned his attention to female fans and the distinct ways they engage with their interests, eventually publishing his findings in a 2012 book titled The Era of Girls (Joshi no Jidai). Since then, he has been working to connect Japan's unique fan culture with the broader framework of fan studies that has developed in English-speaking academia since the 1990s.

From Underground Hobby to Economic Powerhouse

To understand why a university would dedicate serious academic resources to studying fans, you need to understand just how big "oshi-katsu" has become in Japan.

The term "oshi" originally emerged about 30 years ago among fans of female idol groups. As Professor Ikeda explains, the word spread organically between fan communities before being adopted by entertainment management companies themselves, who began using the phrase "oshi-men" (short for "oshi member," meaning your favorite group member) in official communications. When one particular idol group's popularity exploded from small theater performances to national television, the concept of "oshi" went mainstream.

What makes "oshi-katsu" different from the older term "otaku" is its neutrality. While "otaku" once carried connotations of social awkwardness and obsessiveness, "oshi-katsu" sounds positive and proactive — it literally means "activities to support your favorite." This rebranding has made it much easier for companies and media to embrace the concept, creating a positive feedback loop that has further destigmatized fan culture.

The numbers tell a striking story. According to a large-scale survey conducted in January 2025, approximately 13.84 million people in Japan — roughly 10% of the total population — actively engage in oshi-katsu. That's an increase of about 2.5 million from the previous year. These fans spend an average of approximately $1,700 per year on their oshi-related activities, bringing the total market to an estimated $23 billion annually. This figure includes merchandise purchases, concert and event tickets, travel expenses for "pilgrimages" to locations connected with their oshi, fashion and beauty spending to look their best at events, and even home decor to display collections.

Perhaps most notably, oshi-katsu spending has proven remarkably resilient against inflation. While Japanese consumers have generally tightened their wallets in response to rising prices, the Bank of Japan's regional economic report (the "Sakura Report") specifically highlighted young people's oshi-katsu spending as a factor supporting personal consumption.

The Curriculum: Where Passion Meets Methodology

Professor Ikeda's course "Popular Culture Studies" is structured in three parts: first, understanding fans from a marketing perspective; second, learning from the tradition of English-language fan studies (a field that has existed as a formal academic discipline since the early 1990s, pioneered by scholars like Henry Jenkins); and third, exploring contemporary topics in fan behavior.

But the goal isn't simply to study fans as a subject — it's to help students understand themselves. As Professor Ikeda puts it, the key is learning to draw a line between your fan self and your analytical self, so you can observe your own behavior from a third-person perspective. This kind of self-awareness can serve as a healthy check: sometimes fans recognize they've gone a bit overboard and can consciously dial it back. Moving beyond simply enjoying fan activities to understanding what they reveal about society and about yourself — that's where the real academic value lies.

The distinction between sociology and literary studies is important here. Literature works with texts — novels, poems, stories that already exist in written form. But sociology deals with human behavior that hasn't been written down yet. That behavior needs to be converted into data before it can be analyzed. This is where social research methodology comes in: how to conduct interviews, how to design survey questionnaires, how to interpret data. Students can even earn a "Social Research Specialist" certification, learning the entire process from research design through execution and analysis.

Past graduation theses from the program offer a fascinating glimpse into what this looks like in practice. Students have researched topics including female baseball fans and their unique fan culture, K-pop "homepage masters" (fans who photograph idols and share the images online) and how they're perceived, the changing portrayal of "otaku" in Japanese newspaper articles over the decades, and the physical development of Osaka's Nipponbashi otaku district, traced through historical residential maps. Each of these started from a personal interest and grew into legitimate sociological inquiry.

Breaking Down Academic Walls

The new Faculty of Sociology's most distinctive feature is its interdisciplinary structure. Three majors — Media Sociology, Business and Society, and Living Environment Studies — exist within a single department, and students can freely take courses across all three.

The university describes the philosophy behind this as recognizing that no single academic discipline can adequately explain the complexities of modern society. Consider a concrete example: a student who loves visiting trendy cafés could learn in sociology class that cafés function as "third places" (spaces that are neither home nor workplace, a concept developed by sociologist Ray Oldenburg). If that student then thinks "I want to open my own café someday," they can study business planning and entrepreneurship in the Business and Society track. Through Living Environment Studies, they could learn about menu development, interior design, and even staff uniform design. One phenomenon, approached from multiple angles.

What makes this even more unusual is the inclusion of Living Environment Studies — essentially a home economics-derived field — within a sociology faculty. As Professor Ikeda points out, you almost never see a former home economics department housed within a sociology faculty at other universities. He considers this a unique advantage of being a women's university. The practical applications are creative: imagine a student who regularly takes overnight buses to attend her oshi's concerts in distant cities. She could combine her fan research from the sociology track with nutritional knowledge from the living environment track to figure out the optimal late-night snack for long bus rides.

Real-World Projects and Industry Collaboration

The faculty isn't just about classroom learning. Each major features extensive collaborations with companies and local governments. The Media Sociology major continues existing partnerships, including a product collaboration with lingerie maker Wacoal and joint projects with Furyu, a company known for its photo sticker booths (called "purikura" in Japan — a cultural institution among young women). The Business and Society major offers projects like developing new products that support stray cat rescue efforts, bringing them to market through crowdfunding. The Living Environment Studies major partners with Japan's Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries on Japanese food education projects, organizes circular fashion shows using upcycled vintage clothing, and develops disaster-preparedness clothing and emergency food products.

The university also maintains a "Common Room" — a shared space equipped with specialized books, computers, DVDs, and large-screen TVs — designed to encourage interaction between students and faculty across all three majors.

From "Likes" to Careers

Konan Women's University has long been recognized in the Kansai region for its strong employment track record. Professor Ikeda says the goal for graduates of the new faculty is to develop the ability to view any single phenomenon from multiple angles, and from that comprehensive understanding, determine what action they should take. In a social media-driven world where passive consumption is the default, many young people nonetheless show remarkable ability to dive deep when it comes to their "oshi." The new faculty aims to channel that energy into developing both broad sociological perspective and practical skills.

The message is clear: loving anime, idols, or cafés isn't a frivolous distraction from serious study — it can be the very starting point for meaningful academic inquiry. When you dig deep into what you love, you end up learning about society and about yourself.

Fan Studies: A Growing Global Field

It's worth noting that Konan Women's University isn't operating in a vacuum. Fan studies has been recognized as a legitimate academic discipline internationally since the early 1990s. Henry Jenkins' landmark 1992 book Textual Poachers is generally considered the founding work of the field, and dedicated journals like Transformative Works and Cultures and The Journal of Fandom Studies publish peer-reviewed research on everything from fan fiction communities to the economics of cosplay. The Fan Studies Network, founded in 2012, connects researchers globally.

What makes the Japanese approach distinctive is the sheer scale and cultural acceptance of fan activity. While Western fan studies often emerged from analyzing relatively niche communities, Japan's oshi-katsu culture is thoroughly mainstream — involving one in ten people and generating economic activity comparable to major industries. The academic challenge isn't to legitimize fan behavior (as early Western fan scholars had to do) but to develop frameworks sophisticated enough to analyze a phenomenon that has already reshaped consumer behavior, urban geography, and social relationships across the country.

In Japan, passionately supporting your favorite idol, anime character, or sports team isn't just acceptable — it's a $23 billion cultural force that's now being studied with the same rigor applied to any other social phenomenon. What about in your country? Is fan culture taken seriously, or is it still seen as just a hobby? Do universities in your country offer courses on fandom or pop culture? We'd love to hear your perspective.

References

• https://univ-journal.jp/column/2026993972/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_studies
• https://fanstudies.org/
• https://prtimes.jp/main/html/rd/p/000000069.000025413.html