00:02:00 John Daub: Greetings everybody, hello! How do you do? I'm just giving like five seconds before everybody gets on. Hey! So this is my own premiere. This is the way I like to show off the work on the main channel. This is the newest episode on the Only in Japan main channel. I am John Daub. This is Only in Japan Go.

00:23:00 John Daub: And I'm going to talk about the video that I just uploaded. It's called Japanese Otaku Mind Decodes Vermeer. If you don't know Vermeer, he's a Dutch artist from the mid-17th century, around the middle of the 1600s, who painted with an amazing amount of detail and light. Some of the paintings that are famous include The Milkmaid, where a woman is pouring milk into a container. She's got bread on the table. It's a very delicious painting, by the way. And then there's also The Girl with the Pearl Earring, which is very famous. They call that the Mona Lisa of the North. Meaning, you know, if Da Vinci is from Italy, which is the south, up in the north, which is Holland, that's their beautiful woman. That's just an iconic masterpiece.

01:19:00 John Daub: So when I was approached by Google Culture & Arts Department to work with the Mauritshuis Museum (Mauritsuhuis Museum) in Holland, I'm like, whoa, this is bigger than I can even imagine. Working with a big corporation and a world-renowned museum was just an amazing opportunity. The campaign is called Meet Vermeer, hashtag Meet Vermeer. And I couldn't really talk about it until now. But now I can.

01:50:00 John Daub: And this video, it might not seem like it fits for a lot of people into the channel, but it very much does because it's an examination into the mind of an otaku. And a real otaku does not have to be somebody who likes anime and manga. A real otaku is somebody who has just this extra level of passion, whether it's a tech otaku, manga or anime otaku, movie otaku, camera otaku. They just live surrounded by cameras—that's a tech or camera otaku. Professor Fukuoka in this video is a science and art otaku at an extreme. He is so much in his bubble that if you watch the video, you can kind of get a sense of it. So what I'm going to be doing in this video is breaking it down. Yeah, you have those kinds of otaku too. I'm going to break down this video and then we're going to talk about it and see some of the points that I learned from making this video. There were a ton.

02:55:00 John Daub: Hello, Cheesecake Sim. I see a lot of people are coming online. Thanks for joining me. You might not have gotten a notification because this is the second live stream of the day, and I'm thinking about doing another one right after this because I'm only in Oita City. I'm actually on location, which is why there's a hairdryer on the table. This is a business hotel in Japan. I'm on location shoots right now. Without further ado, I'm going to give you a director's cut or my premiere. So this is the start of the show: Vermeer's Japan's Vermeer obsession—inside the otaku mind.

03:32:00 John Daub: I'm going to stop this as the video goes on, and you can watch this as well if you haven't already. It's a pretty cool video. Here in Tokyo, like many of Japan's national museums, and where are you going to find from here—known as Perumeru (Vermeer) in Japanese. Now the exhibit is only taking place until February. It's an exhibit where if you go to Ueno Park, you're going to see a line that is just so long—it's ridiculously long. And that's one of the reasons why it's been in the news a lot. Like, why are people waiting to get in to see Vermeer? And it has to do with the way it's structured like Fast Pass. Everyone's waiting in line for one o'clock to enter, and the line gets super long. Sometimes it's only like 30 minutes to one hour to get in, but people will wait for two hours for that next time slot to open.

04:28:00 John Daub: That's actually very much true. Ueno is a peaceful park with six exceptional museums and a zoo, and where you'll find Saigo Takamori, the last samurai. I was standing in front of this statue about two years ago celebrating 250,000 subscribers. Do you guys remember that video? It's not a very popular video, but it's kind of an important place to me because that's where I filmed it. Now probably next month we're going to be passing 1 million subscribers, so we've come a long way. This channel's come a long way. It was fun to go back here and film this scene knowing that we're on the cusp of peaking to 1 million.

05:08:00 John Daub: Standing tall, he's pretty big here in Ueno. But who's big in Japan these days? It's hard not to say Tommy Lee Jones. He's the pitch man for a canned coffee brand, Boss Coffee. And yet who does not love Tommy Lee Jones? And there's going to be a couple of people because the internet's a very big place. But Tommy Lee Jones, I think it's for at least 10 years, maybe a little bit less, he's been consistently on the commercials. I don't think he asks a lot of money like the other Hollywood actors that do commercials. He's a very smart man. He's always on commercials in Japan, meaning his work always does well in Japan because he's a known person. So you gotta love Tommy Lee Jones. He's everywhere in Japan.

05:52:00 John Daub: Yes, Boss. He loves Japanese coffee. Product marketing is a way to see who's big. Johnny Depp, Leonardo DiCaprio did Jim Beam commercials in Japan—a lot of people don't know. Johnny Depp was doing a beer commercial for Asahi. He did a brand new beer commercial. They got paid a massive amount of money to do this, but a lot of people don't know that. Arnold Schwarzenegger also did commercials for Suntory beer. Bruce Willis did gasoline commercials. Al Pacino did a love scene in a bed for a credit card company, I believe. And DiCaprio was doing credit card commercials after the Titanic here in Japan for Orico Card, which I remember very vividly. Like, what, a Hollywood actor doing commercials in Japan? That's crazy. And yet it's so cool.

06:44:00 John Daub: And recently I saw the painting of the Milkmaid on an ad for a Tokyo soup chain, Tokyo Soup Stock. It's a chain that you can find all over the city. You have to give them credit for innovating. Go in, if you are in Japan in the next couple of months, go in and try this soup because it's not going to be around for much longer. It's only available at Ueno, inside of Ueno Station. And they've actually taken, like you see broken pieces of bread on the table and she's pouring milk into the canister. This is a very famous artwork. They've put that essence into their soup. It's a milk-based soup with broken pieces of bread.

07:30:00 John Daub: Sorry, we're losing the gimbal here. And that was just super cool. Okay, let me see if I can get this gimbal back on. All right, let's continue.

07:45:00 John Daub: This is fun. How did an artist's years work? They do. He's very popular here. I was surprised by that too. Vermeer is so popular. He's so popular in Japan that people line up for hours to see his work at the museum. You can get museum tickets at a convenience store. The line is this long. Attendance is the highest in the world. It's crazy. He even has his own brand of otaku, the Vermeer otaku, one of which we're going to be meeting today. So the question is, what makes Vermeer so popular in Japan? The answer on how Vermeer's art is interpreted here also gives good insight into Japanese culture.

08:24:00 John Daub: I found that sometimes, even though it's not related, when you look for an answer, you can find the answer to a question, but it's not related to the reason of something. You learn a lot about the mind and the country on the whole. It's extremely important to notice that, although the title and the topic may not seem something relevant to the channel, the actual information inside of it is very relevant. So if you're reading manga and anime and you want to figure out the basis of a lot of these things, you have to understand the mind of the people that live here. And although this has to do with Vermeer's art, understanding why the people love Vermeer is such a look inside of the mind of otaku, which is a big subculture here in Japan, and people in general.

09:15:00 John Daub: This is Professor Shinichi Fukuoka. You got to love this guy. You have to really love this guy. He's written a few books on Vermeer, and you can get this in English. When you get to his office, you realize he's more than an expert. He's a genius. He's a Vermeer otaku. Is that the original 1672 Lady Seated at a Virginal? My first thought was, whoa! There's at least $25 million worth of masterpieces here. That frame. The original Milkmaid on the floor? And that one too? Professor Fukuoka is such an otaku. This is important. Every single little detail was scrutinized to the most minute detail, and he even created the frames exactly the same. Everything. It's Professor Fukuoka, the biggest Vermeer otaku in the world. And he has a thing for the Mona Lisa of the North. You can find the original Girl with the Pearl Earring at the Mauritshuis in the Netherlands. And the professor is quite familiar with that.

10:23:00 John Daub: He had a perfect recreation in his house in New York when he was a post-grad student there. Very cool campaign. The Mauritshuis invited him for a visit. But the professor didn't know they'd completely recreated his New York City apartment inside the museum. I love this story. A dream come true. Afternoon with the original at home, sort of. This is the actual Mauritshuis Museum. This museum is hundreds of years old. And they've recreated his living room just like at home with the original cut out in the wall. You have to wrap that around your mind, okay? That's just crazy.

11:02:00 John Daub: Before I lose some people here, one note: I cut a scene out of this that's 90 seconds. It's a big discovery that Professor Fukuoka has made using his otaku brain. It's a huge discovery. I cannot reveal that secret until December 15th. I will show you that in this video. So watch this video again on December 15th. Please keep that in mind. December 15th you're going to see this video get longer, and a secret's going to be revealed.

12:07:00 John Daub: He's a very, very shy guy. He lives within himself. This is a thing from otaku, and he admits it. And I like that. He knows who he is because he's an author now. He's older now. And the fact that he admits it and he's cool with it made this a really interesting episode, I think. My otaku obsession. Obsession. Very humble. So that means that you are an otaku. Yeah. Obsession. Or a nerd. Geek. I'm trying not to judge. It's an otaku mind. Obsession mind is a kind of talent. It's a kind of talent to be a scientist. He loved butterflies and microscopes. You have to be obsessed with your work in order to get to another level. You have to take it that seriously. You have to just continuously pore over and over something. Sometimes it's not a good thing. But if you're a scientist and you're going to make a discovery, that's an important thing.

13:16:00 John Daub: One second, guys. And I learned this about the otaku mind. You have to have that obsession in order to make discoveries. And scientists, more or less, are very introverted. They're kind of into their own world. We're back on with the gimbal. And that kind of next-level obsession is where discoveries are found. We can't add otaku to the English dictionary. A lot of people think of it as a derogatory word. And it sort of was a long time ago. But now I think the people that are otaku are pretty cool with it. Because what I want to show you is that you can be an otaku and you can still be pretty cool. I think Professor Fukuoka is pretty cool. He has discovered something that experts have been looking at for hundreds of years, and he found something that they missed. And he didn't go to school for art. But he found these things out using his science. There's hope for us otaku.

14:26:00 John Daub: The original microscope. Page by page exactly. This is a replica of a journal. I first thought Leeuwenhoek had very skillful artistic talent. But in fact it's not true. Leeuwenhoek said in his notebook something like this: I, Leeuwenhoek, was not good at drawing. So he, Leeuwenhoek, asked someone skillful to draw pictures for him. Who could it be? An artist who lived near him perhaps? In the city of Delft in the mid-1600s? Vermeer. Vermeer. He had an otaku mind that's very analytical. You see things like in an extreme. So this otaku mind led to some amazing discovery.

15:28:00 John Daub: There were some well-drawn images and also childlike drawings. Although scientifically accurate, but they didn't match. All of a sudden the touch has been changed completely. First part very artistic. But a later part is scientifically precise, but no more artistic. The claw-like drawing here was a big clue. It's just too well drawn. Nobody ever questioned this. They had looked over Leeuwenhoek's journal and they didn't even notice that the drawings had changed from super artistic masterpieces to like childlike stick figures. And nobody questioned that except for him. He goes, how come it changed? And it was his otaku mind. His obsession. This doesn't make sense. And he came up with the answer. And those artistic drawings vanished in an important year: 1675, Vermeer. So it's all circumstantial evidence. But I believe personally Leeuwenhoek and Vermeer were buddies. They're like best friends. Basically. And best friends share things. Which means Vermeer shared his artistic talents in the journal. And the microscopic talents. See Vermeer. From Leeuwenhoek.

17:04:00 John Daub: Vermeer's work has some science into it. You see the way that he projected, you can see the light in his work. It's very detailed on a microscopic level. The father of microscopy is Leeuwenhoek. And Leeuwenhoek and Vermeer were best friends, like very good friends. They didn't have telephones. They didn't have to write letters. They would just knock on their door. They lived in the city of Delft in Holland. They knew each other and they actually helped each other in their work. Leeuwenhoek in his journal for putting his scientific discoveries in better detail in his drawings. And then Leeuwenhoek giving a science aspect to Vermeer. And this leads his otaku mind to make the connection. And that's pretty cool. And no real document like letters or some written material has been found. Because they're best friends. But they lived in very close distance. And nobody had made this connection before. That's my original finding. So this is the discovery of an otaku mind.

18:41:00 John Daub: All right, guys, this is a special note only for the people watching right here. I cut a scene out of this and you're gonna see this secret scene on the 15th of December. So you're gonna watch this video again in about 11 or 12 days from now. There's a secret scene that's cut that's gonna be coming back on. It's gonna be right in that spot. There is more. A secret. Yeah. He's got a brand new discovery. Um, there's a brand new discovery. It's a pretty interesting discovery and he won't reveal it until the 15th. It's newsworthy and I'm really happy to have been able to bring this story to you.

19:37:00 John Daub: We're gonna see this a little bit more. This is fun. All right. I gotta put one out. I guess we have to answer what exactly is an otaku? I asked my friend Patrick W. Galbraith. I love Patrick. And the study of the otaku mind, like in his book Otaku Spaces. Is this Professor Fukuoka? Very good book. Yeah. He's a textbook definition. So according to the Kojien, the Japanese dictionary, an otaku is someone who's interested in a particular object or genre, extraordinarily knowledgeable about it. And the last part of the definition is lacking in social common sense. So take your fandom, take your interest in an object or genre or a painting or a painter one step further. That makes you into an otaku according to the Japanese definition. That also means that my friend Patrick is an otaku in the study of otaku. Once he starts talking, better bring popcorn.

20:55:00 John Daub: Now the question, what do Japanese see in Vermeer's work? I like this part. Let's ask the professor. I was told that we would be able to get access to film inside of the Ueno Royal Museum at some of the works. And at the last minute they rejected the proposal. I don't know why. They had done media events there. It was just a weird situation. And so what I did was I got a light and I recreated sort of like we were in a museum or something and I had printed out the photos and I put them up on the wall and I said, Professor Fukuoka, let's just pretend like we're looking at these and talk about it. And he goes, okay. So I wanted to get that kind of a feeling for you. So we had to pretend.

21:40:00 John Daub: Uh, I can see a microscopic universe inside of the Vermeer painting. It's a small world that contains everything. That's sort of the passion that he has. He's talking on another level. Universe and Vermeer painting always very fair, no ego and very precise. That's the reason Japanese people love Vermeer stuff because we love small things without ego and we see universe inside of it. Right. It's realistic. He didn't put himself too much into what he sees. He used it from more of a scientific point of view. And I mean like Van Gogh, he kind of puts his style into the work. There's no real style. It's just beautifully lit everyday life. So there's a difference between Van Gogh's work and Vermeer's work, and Japanese like Vermeer's work because he didn't put himself into it, which makes it pretty unique. Very scientific mind. Leeuwenhoek in Vermeer paintings.

23:17:00 John Daub: So now we're looking at the Lady with the Pearl Earring. Actually there's no painting there. This is just between you and me. We're just pretending. I put it here. What do Japanese people see in this painting? What makes it so special? I don't know. I think we share same kind of experience, special experience. When you look at her, her look at you. You look at the original right now, but your recreations are different. Right. It's not just a copy, not just a replica. We just reconstruct the original color and brush stroke in almost three years, 360 years ago, with computer graphic design technique. He's made the original better than the original because he fixed the colors to make it look like it was painted 360 years ago. Basically he white balanced it. So all the centuries sitting in the museum where the colors might have diminished, he made them vibrant again in his version because he's an otaku and he wanted the details to be just a little bit different. These pictures are more vibrant and look better than the originals. Even though it's the original frame, it's the original painting. Every single stroke by computer recreated all the brush strokes exactly the same, except the color is better in his version. He wanted something better than what was in the museum. And we restore everything to the point when Vermeer created. Oh, it's more beautiful, more precise than the original. It's more than a high level of passion.

25:17:00 John Daub: The ramblings of a madman or just an otaku who's very, very passionate about his work. I think that's it. It's the highest level of otakuism. I wanted to get another point of view, so I asked a former art student who studied in Japan about her thoughts. If you ask me what I like about Vermeer, I think that he has a mysterious atmosphere in his daily life. It's part of his daily life, but it's something you don't see much in Japan. Vermeer makes everyday life look better. Yuki's view doesn't go into microscopic detail as the professor's, but it explains a lot. Vermeer's painting makes everyday life seem nicer.

26:22:00 John Daub: Back in Ueno, I discovered that Vermeer has a cocktail. There's also a drink dedicated to Vermeer. It matches the colors of the Milkmaid. That's crazy. And it's made of milk. Deep, like the blue in this drink. Kanpai.

26:54:00 John Daub: Click the subscribe button. And there you have it. I'm on an angle, but the point is that this was a really important episode for me to do, and a fun one, and took a lot of time, and I couldn't talk about it until now. And now that I can talk about it, it's pretty cool. It's the Meet Vermeer campaign, hashtag Meet Vermeer, so you're going to see a lot of work. And it's all coming from Google Arts & Culture and the Mauritshuis Museum in Holland. And it was pretty cool to work together with a really professional team of people and get access to talk with Professor Fukuoka. A really amazing experience.

27:36:00 John Daub: I'm looking forward to celebrating the release of this episode. And Professor Fukuoka's secret, which is coming out on December 15th. When I come back to Japan, I'm going to be meeting with him and having dinner, and we're going to have a really fun time. My wife is going out with all of us too, and maybe I'm going to get Patrick with us, and we're going to talk about Vermeer. Some people might not like this episode, but I don't always do travel stuff introducing Japan to you. I don't do vlogs about me like, oh, look, we're in Shibuya. I do that sometimes, but I want to do work like this that leaves an impression on you to see something in a different way. And I think it requires a little bit of journalistic research and diving into something, but that's what makes this job so fascinating to me. It's the ability to learn something new, making a video about a topic that I'm interested in, and following a road that takes me to a completely different area that I didn't expect.

28:40:00 John Daub: And that's what I think I'm hoping that people who click and watch this video go down a road that they didn't expect and learn something really new about Japan, about otaku, about Professor Fukuoka, about Vermeer, about art in Japan, about how Japanese take a product and make food and drinks out of it, about how foreigners can be celebrated and become big in Japan. There's so many different little themes inside this. I took away as a producer of this content that this is the kind of stuff that I'm gonna keep making every now and then, besides the regular street food episode, which is a lot of fun. I love street food, but Japan is a lot more than just food. And I think that for many people who are watching the Only in Japan series and these live streams, they kind of get that.

29:29:00 John Daub: Today we talked about the history of a building that survived World War II. These are the kind of things that are in the back of the minds of a lot of people. I think that about 50% of the people are doing all the other stuff on street food and on tourism. I want to do stuff on that 1% that is about history, that's about culture, about things that people don't know about yet, and things that have a story behind it. I'm looking for stories, and that's the Only in Japan channel. So hope you enjoyed it. Leave a comment below. Hit that like button if you like these premieres. And if you like the dying gimbal, like that too.

30:10:00 John Daub: But I'm going to be in Oita City for one more day. I'm filming a main channel episode here in Oita. I'm in a hotel right now, you can see, spending the night in Oita. It's a pretty nice city. So leave a comment on the main channel episode, and I will pin the best one tomorrow morning. See you guys. Have a good day, good night. I'll see you in the next live stream, maybe tomorrow. Thanks, RamseyLint and everybody. Bye-bye.