There is an excellent feature article over on Wired about Hiroyuki Nishimura, a self-made millionaire who has captured the escapist urges of the Japanese culture and put them on display.

More specifically, he's allowed them to put themselves on display. YouTube is old hat compared to Nico Nico Douga (translated as Smiley Smiley Video,) a new site created by Hiroyuki that allows users to post their comments directly to a layered version of user-submitted videos. There is quite purposefully no censorship and very little recourse when it comes to removing videos.

Hiroyuki is the superstar bad boy of the Japanese internet. He has just stopped showing up in court for the myriad lawsuits that have been lobbed at him and he owes millions of dollars in fines and restitution that he has decided he will never pay.

So, hop on over and read up on him. He's quite an interesting dude.

wired.com: Meet Hiroyuki Nishimura, the Bad Boy of the Japanese Internet