Real ID

by liberal japonicus

I was discussing this article with some other people here in Japan, and I thought it might interesting for the great umatched wash here. It’s a substack article entitled The Digital Shadow: Why Half of Japan’s Youth Are Living Double Lives Online and I think it betrays a Western thinking about identity. A few grafs

The rise of “ura-aka“ accounts represents a structural shift in which Japanese social media users are no longer merely posting content; they are creating separate, sanitized identities to protect their psychological well-being. By maintaining multiple digital “homes,” they are actively fighting against the monolithic, interconnected ecosystems that platforms like Meta try to enforce.

The Chinese character or kanji 垢 (aka) is an example of Japanese internet slang that uses phonetic wordplay to imply a negative connotation about how an account is being used. The Japanese word for “account” is written in katakana as “akaunto” (アカウント). Japanese speakers frequently abbreviate words, so “akaunto“ was naturally shortened to “aka“ (アカ). As internet slang evolved, users began using the kanji 垢 as an ateji (当て字・a phonetic substitute) for “account” because its pronunciation is exactly the same as “aka.” However, the literal meaning of the kanji 垢 is “dirt” (よごれ) or “filth/impurity” (けがれ). This double meaning creates a highly specific psychological and visual image. When paired with 裏 (ura), meaning “hidden” or “private,” to form 裏垢 (ura-aka), the combination literally translates to “hidden dirt.” Because of this inherent association with filth, the term “ura-aka“ carries a negative connotation, implying that the account is not used for entirely wholesome, public-facing purposes. This aligns perfectly with the nature of these accounts, which are often used for venting dark feelings, complaining, or hiding specific hobbies from real-life acquaintances. Due to the somewhat “dirty” or unwholesome implications of the term “ura-aka,” if a user creates a secondary account for healthy, positive, or innocent purposes, it is more appropriate to call it a サブアカウント (sabu- akaunto), meaning “sub-account,” or simply サブアカ (sabu-aka).

While the author suggests that aka means dirt, I feel it actually has more of the meaning of buildup. Aka-suri is basically a Korean massage that focusses on exfoliation (which became popular with the Japanese name, go figure), while yuaka is limescale/hardwater buildup and akanukeru means to become sophisticated i.e. shed the country bumpkin image. Not exactly positive, but certainly not the negativity that the author wants to assign to it.There are some negative meanings, but I have to think he wants to assign a negative meaning to aka because it is obvious to him that having a second identity is somehow unclean.

He does this despite noting that sub-aka is simply sub account, and I’d point out that you have a range of ‘aka‘, including hon-aka (Main account), sute-aka (throwaway account, like a burner), shumi-aka (a hobby account where you wax on about whatever it is you like to do) and a nichijou-aka (an everyday account, just to log thoughts and observations). There are a couple of others, confined to Twitter/X I think, which include torihiki-aka (sell-buy account, used solely for buying/selling/trading anime/fan merch) and a guchi-aka (a mouth account, solely used for venting one’s displeasure at work, life or society) So any ‘dirt’ that aka represents isn’t because youth are sneaking around only recently with multiple accounts, it is more a self deprecating way to talk about the digital detritus one accumulates.

I’d argue that Japanese are much more at home with multiple identities or ‘faces’ and they resist accepting in a ‘Western’ take on identity where it is unitary. The fact that the author wants to ascribe something ‘dirty’ to the idea of having a second account tells me he’s bringing that Western frame to this.

There are a number of other points I’d make to support this idea that Japanese don’t really buy into this whole ‘I am the same person regardless of wherever I find myself’. Japanese often speak of omote/ura, which is roughly equivalent to a public face and one’s ‘real’ hidden feelings. A second cultural construct is the uchi/soto, which is roughly out vs in group, which it is not rigid. (In Korea, age is a much stronger determiner of respect/politeness, but in Japan, that falls by the wayside) So at my university, when I’m in a situation where I’m with teachers from another department meeting with someone from outside my university, the teachers and I are uchi, the person we are meeting is soto and our language will reflect that. But if I’m in a situation with those same teachers, but we are discussing aspects of my department vs theirs, they would be soto and there would be linguistic clues to indicate that. It extends to the honorific language that you use, where you elevate someone who is soto and deprecate someone (or yourself) who is uchi.

All of this contributes to and supports a culture where making second accounts is not a big deal. In fact, Facebook had a hard time making inroads in Japan precisely because of the ‘real name’ policy and I think it is pretty much not really used by younger people. There has recently been a big push for people to opt-in to a national identity card (called a mynumber card) and it has been done the usual way, with assurances that it is not required, but slowly and surely, it becomes incredibly difficult to do things without it. In addition to that, there were a number of carrots offered, with people who get their card, link it to their health insurance and then link it to a bank account for remittances getting 20,000 yen. The government is making a big push to attach them to smartphones. The government has stopped issuing physical health insurance cards, but the uptake rate is still rather low.

I got in a kerfluffle with another foreigner who was appalled by the fact that they had to go thru a whole rigamarole, and the whole process was rather confusing, especially if you weren’t a native Japanese speaker. I said yes, that’s true, but it’s pretty much the nature of the beast, this kind of digitalization of identity offers the quickest route to savings through economies of scale and planning. They weren’t impressed, though I’m happy I’m experiencing this here. I went to get my card renewed and there was a really old guy getting his renewed. They had tasked a person to take him through the process and they were walking them through each of the stations. I have to think that if this happened in the US, the idea of hiring people to do this would be an anathema.

A similar thing has happened with self-service checkouts. I’ve read that a lot of US stores basically just installed them so they would reduce their labor costs and were unpleasantly surprised when they found they were losing money because of “inventory shrinkage” (link) Japan continues to expand them, in part because the labor shortage does not give them the option of hiring more people. But in addition to the tech they are employing (link), stores are also having a person to help people through the process. I imagine this will allow japanese retailers to continue to expand in this area, while the social system in place for helping people is underdeveloped in the US, so they lose out.

I’d love to hear what the experience of people has been with dealing with identity/identities and how it may be changing.