Otaku-culture on public display

Last week, subculture made news in Japan, when an exhibition of subculture art at the Seibu department store in Shibuya (Tokyo) was suddenly cancelled in reaction to claims from customers. According to NHK and JCAST, several visitors found the displayed artworks to be improper for a department store. Although the organizers have not made the claims public, it seems that they were not related to any particular works. Since the problem could not be identified, Seibu decided to cancel the exhibition, which was originally scheduled to be on display until the 6th of February, on February 1st.
This seems odd, as Japanese subculture, especially the so-called otaku-culture, which is associated with the works displayed in the exhibition, is more popular than ever before. During the past years, Japanese manga, anime, videogames, etc. have gained increasing attention around the world and especially in Japan itself, where today, their global popularity attracts the economy, politicians, and academics.
According to Nihon University professor and subculture expert Nakagawa Hideki, who is quoted in the JCAST article, the otaku-culture is not a subculture any more, but rather part of the mainstream. He argues that the claims are motivated by an understanding of subculture, that is shaped by the experience of "anti-social elements" in the 1960s. This seems to suggest that it was not the content of the exhibition itself, that caused the problem, but a general caution against everything that is associated with subculture.
While acknowledging the strong impact the aftermath of 1968 had in Japan, I would still suggest that this is only part of the problem, the other part of which is hidden by the terms mainstream and subculture. I do not want to get into discussions about the various definitions of these concepts, but I think that the example above shows that the acceptance of art forms and contents is not only a question of popularity or economic success within a society (as mainstream vs. subculture might easily suggest). Rather, it might be helpful to think about the situation in the old-fashioned terms of high culture and low culture and their hierarchical relation in specific spaces. While the case of the Seibu exhibition indicates that the otaku-culture moves towards public awareness and maybe even partial acceptance, it also suggests that figures, cosplay fashion, and the wide variety of illustrations, amateur manga and other elements of the otaku-culture are still the "uncanny" in the sense of the German word "das Unheimliche" introduced by Freud, literaly meaning something that is not homely. In other words, I would argue that the reaction to the exhibition can be read as an indicator of the anxiety such artworks trigger in some people (with a certain power or status that allows them to speak up in this environment) due to their difference from the familiar in a particular environment, in this case a prestigious department store that has a long history as host for cultural exhibitions.
While the otaku-culture may be one mainstream or part of a certain mainstream in Japan (I have doubts about the analytic viability of these concepts today), it seems striking that, given the volume of this culture today, it’s display is still strongly confined to certain areas (like Akihabara and Ikebukuro, the private spaces at home, rental video stores, pachinko and slot machines) and temporal events. One might argue that this is partly the source of its attractiveness (individuality, temporal, non-binding engagements). But it also means that such “mainstream” culture can go unnoticed if one chooses to stay away, or at least be received very selectively - until it "goes public". It might be interesting to look at these processes of private and public selection and their effects more closely and to understand the power relations and evaluations at work in the case of manga, anime, and the otaku-culture in general.