The Old School Otaku Lounge

I've recently spoken with Curtis H. Hoffman, and through our conversation, he claims—based only on his memory of over 40 years ago—the western slang term 'Hentai' was already an established identifier on Usenet and rec.arts.anime when he joined in 1988~1989. However, searching for 'Hentai' turns up only a single result for 'Hentai' on sci.lang.japan before 1990 (Oct 12th, 1989) (Link (H)).

There are zero threads dating before 1990 on rec.arts.anime for 'Hentai'. The first one is this one regarding the Ranma 1/2 anime character, Happosai (Link).

Does anyone have a knowledge about the state of the Usenet archive on Google Groups?
Is a substantial chunk of history missing from it?

From what I understand, Google Groups inherited Deja News in 1995, and the older archives came from elsewhere. I checked Usenet Archives, an independent project, and their archive for rec.arts.anime is worse than Google Groups (Link); its results only has a single thread from 1988 and 7 threads from 1989. I haven't found an archive for rec.arts.anime on Internet Archive, though someone uploaded archives of some groups tertiarily related to rec.arts.anime (Link), and someone uploaded a a backup of recent posts from 2020.

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I've been going through every single thing archived on Google Groups and Internet Archive for various terms to build a timeline, and based on the existing evidence, Hentai wasn't an established identifier before 1990. Rather, users were using Etchi as far back as 1989 in magazines like Animag as a soft identifier for ero-anime, and it wasn't until Ryo Shiroma created a guide at an unknown date, which was updated by Iain Sinclair in June of 1992 (Link) and later adopted into Steve Pearl's primer in September of 1992 (Link) of there being clear evidence of the western slang 'Hentai' being used as a genre. There's cases previously of 'Hentai' being used as an adjective, but most users were using Hentai to refer to characters and people, and the first time it was used to refer to someone outside the Ranma 1/2 fandom was in October 5th of 1990 in relation to a poster's friend looking at gifs for the ero-anime Pop Chaser (Link).

If it's possible, does anyone have contact information for Ryo Shiroma or Iain Sinclair?

I personally wish to speak with Ryo because when Curtis H. Hoffman wrote his guide in 1993, Ryo Shiroma commented on it, and from my investigation of Ryo Shiroma on Usenet, he exhibited a knowledge of Japanese magazines that far outshone all other users back then. Iain Sinclair was responsible for rec.arts.manga being rec.arts.manga, not rec.arts.comics.manga (he didn't like the idea of manga being a subset of comics). But aside from his association with Ryo Shiroma and Steve Pearl, I doubt I'll learn anything useful from Iain about the exact reasoning behind Ryo Shiroma's adoption of H as a genre.

Ryo "W2/JH1CUV" Shiroma ( RSHIROMA@drew.edu)
Iain Sinclair (axolotl@socs.uts.edu.au)

Steve Pearl passed away in 2007 when he was still in his 40s (Link), so I believe I'm working against the clock before all of this history gets buried away and all that's left are simply theories and anecdotes.

I'm collaborating with several native Japanese researchers, and the origin of the western slang term 'Hentai' is very important to them. There's already a bunch of casual theories in regards to its origin, but no one has done the dirty work of digging through archives for hard evidence. So I would like to know if there's a substantial chunk of history missing from Google Groups, or hard evidence that would suggest users were referring to manga and anime as Hentai before 1990. All of the magazines and conversations I've read before 1990 doesn't paint this sort of picture; users were using proper terms like x-rated, adult, and so on. And Animag was the first one I found to use 'Etchi', and like the above post from sci.lang.japan about 'H', westerners wanted to know what 'H' meant, and the adoption of the western slang 'Hentai' as a genre slowly manifested itself. Animag didn't adopt the use of Hentai as an identifier.

Right now, this is the earliest evidence I have of what H/Etchi being used as an identifier in English (I have much older sources in Japanese of H-<whatever> being a genre): Thank you for your time!

Taruby wrote: ↑Thu Dec 26, 2024 3:38 pm Does anyone have a knowledge about the state of the Usenet archive on Google Groups?
Is a substantial chunk of history missing from it?

I don't have any direct knowledge, but I would be surprised if Google had a complete archive of Usenet. Where are the scanned dot-matrix printouts, for instance? I was too young to really understand, but floppies did not seem like a storage medium that handled neglect or heavy usage well, and digital space was still expensive. I would expect that older Usenet posts that survived did so the old-fashioned way on printed sheets of paper, but I've never seen Google Groups host old Usenet articles the way that Google Books hosts old books.

Taruby wrote: ↑Thu Dec 26, 2024 3:38 pm I've been going through every single thing archived on Google Groups and Internet Archive for various terms to build a timeline, and based on the existing evidence, Hentai wasn't an established identifier before 1990. Rather, users were using Etchi as far back as 1989 in magazines like Animag as a soft identifier for ero-anime, and it wasn't until Ryo Shiroma created a guide at an unknown date, which was updated by Iain Sinclair in June of 1992 (Link) and later adopted into Steve Pearl's primer in September of 1992 (Link) of there being clear evidence of the western slang 'Hentai' being used as a genre.

It might help here to look more into offline U.S. anime fandom. In 1989, very few American anime fans had modems, and fewer still used Usenet. That was its own hobby a bit like ham radio still is today. So it would be a bit like trying to find out when American anime fans stopped using the term "Japanimation" by just listening to recordings of old ham radio broadcasts.

One area to look into might be "Amateur Press Associations" (APAs). These were a popular way anime fans communicated with one another if they were too far away to meet in person regularly, but they weren't professional magazines or formal newsletters. So, if there was slang that was developing, my guess is you would find it there.

Hopefully someone with more knowledge can help (I'm not old-school, just middle-school) -- good luck in your efforts!

I have no idea whether or not there are missing parts to the rec.arts.anime archive. What I DO know is that there was a substantial part of anime fandom that wasn't on rec.arts.anime at all, and many conversations about anime and anime fandom were happening outside of the internet, which at the time was limited to a relatively small percentage of fans, and of people in general.

Taruby wrote: ↑Thu Dec 26, 2024 3:38 pm I've recently spoken with Curtis H. Hoffman, and through our conversation, he claims—based only on his memory of over 40 years ago—the western slang term 'Hentai' was already an established identifier on Usenet and rec.arts.anime when he joined in 1988~1989. However, searching for 'Hentai' turns up only a single result for 'Hentai' on sci.lang.japan before 1990 (Oct 12th, 1989) (Link (H)).

There are zero threads dating before 1990 on rec.arts.anime for 'Hentai'. The first one is this one regarding the Ranma 1/2 anime character, Happosai (Link).

Does anyone have a knowledge about the state of the Usenet archive on Google Groups?
Is a substantial chunk of history missing from it?

From what I understand, Google Groups inherited Deja News in 1995, and the older archives came from elsewhere. I checked Usenet Archives, an independent project, and their archive for rec.arts.anime is worse than Google Groups (Link); its results only has a single thread from 1988 and 7 threads from 1989. I haven't found an archive for rec.arts.anime on Internet Archive, though someone uploaded archives of some groups tertiarily related to rec.arts.anime (Link), and someone uploaded a a backup of recent posts from 2020.

Point 1 - the acquisition of the Deja News newserver(s) and archives is inaccurate, maybe you mean 2005? It couldn't have been 1995 as the company was not founded until 1998 and the research paper Page and Brin wrote at Stanford leading to the founding of the company was in 1996.

Point 2 - Due to UseNet's decentralized nature, yes, it is entirely possible gaps exist if newservers experienced hardware failures (causing them to miss messages being sent) or older files were overwritten to save space or backups crashed or otherwise became unreadable or individual readers did not make their own local copies and those copies did not suffer the same fates. The Web and the Internet of the 1990s, while some people did save things, was VERY transactional, especially the earlier in the 1990s you go, where things like UseNet was made up of lots of college/university students and certain professions (i.e., fixed time with access to the news servers, either by your student career or condition of employment).

Point 3 - And this is entirely speculation: the shift in usage from the admittedly very narrow sample of posts moves from adjective in 1990 to noun (as a genre) in 1991. Fans, at least on r.a.a were using it as it is more in Japan before it taking on it's own term within fandom. Not to say other fans were using it the same way and that UseNet usage may have been influenced by other, offline, groups. All speculation again.

Taruby wrote:
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I've been going through every single thing archived on Google Groups and Internet Archive for various terms to build a timeline, and based on the existing evidence, Hentai wasn't an established identifier before 1990. Rather, users were using Etchi as far back as 1989 in magazines like Animag as a soft identifier for ero-anime, and it wasn't until Ryo Shiroma created a guide at an unknown date, which was updated by Iain Sinclair in June of 1992 (Link) and later adopted into Steve Pearl's primer in September of 1992 (Link) of there being clear evidence of the western slang 'Hentai' being used as a genre. There's cases previously of 'Hentai' being used as an adjective, but most users were using Hentai to refer to characters and people, and the first time it was used to refer to someone outside the Ranma 1/2 fandom was in October 5th of 1990 in relation to a poster's friend looking at gifs for the ero-anime Pop Chaser (Link).

If it's possible, does anyone have contact information for Ryo Shiroma or Iain Sinclair?

I personally wish to speak with Ryo because when Curtis H. Hoffman wrote his guide in 1993, Ryo Shiroma commented on it, and from my investigation of Ryo Shiroma on Usenet, he exhibited a knowledge of Japanese magazines that far outshone all other users back then. Iain Sinclair was responsible for rec.arts.manga being rec.arts.manga, not rec.arts.comics.manga (he didn't like the idea of manga being a subset of comics). But aside from his association with Ryo Shiroma and Steve Pearl, I doubt I'll learn anything useful from Iain about the exact reasoning behind Ryo Shiroma's adoption of H as a genre.

Ryo "W2/JH1CUV" Shiroma ( RSHIROMA@drew.edu)
Iain Sinclair (axolotl@socs.uts.edu.au)

Sorry, I can't be of any help as I don't know either of them. Given they both have EDU email domains, have you reached out to the alumni associations of Drew University (Link) or the University of Technology Syndey (Link)? Even better if you can bookend their UseNet postings with those addresses to get an idea how long their tenure was or graduation dates. Ryo Shiroma also looks like he might have a ham radio handle in his name - handles are supposed to be unique, I think. Might only go back to his name and making this whole thing circular but who knows? (Not me, clearly, as I am not a ham)

Taruby wrote: I'm collaborating with several native Japanese researchers, and the origin of the western slang term 'Hentai' is very important to them. There's already a bunch of casual theories in regards to its origin, but no one has done the dirty work of digging through archives for hard evidence. So I would like to know if there's a substantial chunk of history missing from Google Groups, or hard evidence that would suggest users were referring to manga and anime as Hentai before 1990. All of the magazines and conversations I've read before 1990 doesn't paint this sort of picture; users were using proper terms like x-rated, adult, and so on. And Animag was the first one I found to use 'Etchi', and like the above post from sci.lang.japan about 'H', westerners wanted to know what 'H' meant, and the adoption of the western slang 'Hentai' as a genre slowly manifested itself. Animag didn't adopt the use of Hentai as an identifier.

Right now, this is the earliest evidence I have of what H/Etchi being used as an identifier in English (I have much older sources in Japanese of H-<whatever> being a genre):
Msg6_Animag_11_08_89_Ecchi_Lolita_Anime.png

Thank you for your time!

And for the record, I went through some of my old Animag magazines from 1988/89 (Issues 1-6, missing #3), they don't mention 'etchi' or 'H' either, even in passing.

davemerrill wrote: I have no idea whether or not there are missing parts to the rec.arts.anime archive. What I DO know is that there was a substantial part of anime fandom that wasn't on rec.arts.anime at all, and many conversations about anime and anime fandom were happening outside of the internet, which at the time was limited to a relatively small percentage of fans, and of people in general.

Do you know or remember when you started hearing the term bandied about or used?

Hello Drew_Sutton,

I haven't tried reaching out to the alumni associations of Drew University or the University of Technology Syndey. I'm not familiar with how things work with American or Australian universities, so if you—or someone you can recommend—can help in this regard, I would greatly appreciate your generous help for all the curious individuals living in Japan. My skill-set is translating old Japanese, articles from magazines, books, and doujinshi, not researching the proper protocols and etiquette to contact and interview people; my biggest accomplishment last year was going through a book publisher so I could help a young native Japanese researcher contact Jonathan Clements about the entry on Suzumi-bune (すヾみ舟) in Jonathan's 2015 book.

Ryo Shiroma often signs his posts as 'W2/JH1CUV', and his first archived post with that handle was on March 16th of 1992 and his last post was on March 1st of 1995. Ryo Shiroma was selling some of his imported goods on Usenet, but unlike Steve Pearl, he didn't provide any sort of address (he wanted people to communicate with him through e-mail).

Iain Sinclair seems to be roughly the same: 1992~1996. His name is shared with another notable figure, so my understanding of the date between his first post and final post is fuzzier; he's frequently credited in guides and primers, and websites hosting said guides.

Once again, if you can help me with this, it would save me a great deal of time and effort trying to figure this sort of stuff out on my own.

Drew_Sutton wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 7:10 pmPoint 1 - the acquisition of the Deja News newserver(s) and archives is inaccurate, maybe you mean 2005?

I cannot edit my posts on this BBS, so I couldn't improve the clarity of that sentence afterwards. Is this something meant for new users, or is everyone here expected to submit posts without the ability to edit them for mistakes/clarity afterwards?

From what I understand, Deja News began its archive on March of 1995, and later Google inherited Deja News (Source). If there's an error with this source, please let me know.

Drew_Sutton wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 7:10 pmAnd for the record, I went through some of my old Animag magazines from 1988/89 (Issues 1-6, missing #3), they don't mention 'etchi' or 'H' either, even in passing.

There's an instance of 'etchi' in the 4th (p2), 5th (p33), and 11th (p49) issues of Animag.

While I probably wasn't being particularly clear to mbanu, I searched through the entirety of Internet Archive for any printed material submitted that has been run through their OCR. So if there's something hosted there mbanu or anyone else believes I would need to download to investigate in the future, please share a link! As a funny note, when I searched for 'hentai' and 'anime', apparently their OCR generated false positives from very, ve~ery old French Bibles. Unfortunately, there were no actual letter combinations that spelt out hentai or anime in those Bibles, but it would've been funny if those words were penned by ancient monks.

I would also be interested in anyone having archives of old BBS like the one mbanu mentioned here: viewtopic.php?t=1094

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Drew_Sutton wrote: ↑Sat Feb 01, 2025 7:10 pmPoint 2 - Due to UseNet's decentralized nature, yes, it is entirely possible gaps exist if newservers experienced hardware failures (causing them to miss messages being sent) or older files were overwritten to save space or backups crashed or otherwise became unreadable or individual readers did not make their own local copies and those copies did not suffer the same fates. The Web and the Internet of the 1990s, while some people did save things, was VERY transactional, especially the earlier in the 1990s you go, where things like UseNet was made up of lots of college/university students and certain professions (i.e., fixed time with access to the news servers, either by your student career or condition of employment).

It would be quite vexing a substantial amount of posts were removed that would garner a completely different understanding from future researchers examining the available evidence. Google has also committed a lot of evil with their 'erase heresy' instead of 'preserve history' policy with everything they've touched; so many discussion groups are completely removed from their system for heresy. I saw one researcher who visited this BBS earlier wanted to study sexism in the anime fandom on Usenet, but with how many groups have been entirely removed from Google Groups, I doubt they would ever acquire a sufficiently accurate picture of what was posted back then.

Ehoba, who is friends with one of the younger native Japanese researchers I'm working with, shared an archive of alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.anime's website with their FAQs, though nothing with dates stretching back as far as I would want to research, but it's interesting to read how they went about sharing image files (Link). Personally, I would've liked an archived list of headers for all of these binaries; I would've liked to know when users on those started to adopt H-anime, H-manga, or Hentai as tags for their files. Examining the manga marketplace, most of the people selling their imported manga collections took a while before hentai as a genre entered their vocabulary. Most of the western internet was 'hentai' crazy by 1997 (Okada Toshio commented on this in his book ’Toudai Otaku Lectures' when he found out about westerners referring to their ロリコンコミック as Hentai), but some of these sellers resisted even into the early 2000s.

Hello. First post. I don't know why, but I was thinking of my very close friend Ryo Shiroma earlier tonight, and I googled his name to see if there was anything new about him on the internets.

What a coincidence, that just 2 months ago, you opened this thread.

Unfortunately, Ryo Shiroma passed away back in 2008 or 2009.

I think maybe you want to DM me. I knew both Steve and Ryo very well and spent tons of time with them during the 90s.