Content Theory

In the 1980s, when the word “content” was beginning to spread, I worked for a time at Company F, a personal computer maker. Hardware alone was becoming hard to profit from, and I experienced on the ground the mood in which value was shifting toward the software that ran on PCs (personal computers) and the information that flowed through them. It was said that the word “content” was born at IBM, the giant of the PC industry in those days, and spread from there. ...

The word ukeru has no single kanji that captures its full meaning. The character 受ける means to receive or to hand over an object, but when we say a manga or anime uketa or ukenai, the word becomes an indicator of whether something has reached the hearts of the audience – those who watch, those who listen. One day, Master Tezuka invited me out. “Tsuki-san, I’m heading to Ginza today. Want to come along?” ...