One of the most interesting phenomena in the Japanese manga world is the existence of doujinshi. Doujin is the term for a group of people with the same interest, and is used to indicate a group of amateurs self-publishing creative work, or sometimes professionals self-publishing works outside of the publishers they are contracted to.  Doujinshi refers specifically to published materials such as manga and novels while the term doujin also covers amateur art collections, games, animation, and so on. 

Doujinshi are generally created by the aforementioned groups of amateur mangaka, which are known as doujinshi circles.  This tradition of circles manga have grown out of Japanese literary circles of the 19^th century, whose members met and published literary magazines.  After World War II, as manga began to take hold of the national imagination, artists clubbed together into doujinshi circles to publish manga and to establish themselves professionally, but over time circles became composed more of amateur mangaka, created in schools as after-school activity clubs or as groups of friends.

Despite the general perception of doujinshi as works of fanfiction, not all doujinshi are created using someone else’s characters.  The majority of it is, but doujinshi refers to anything, including original works, that is self-published.  Original doujinshi is known as orijinaru, while derivative works are ani-paro, or “anime parody.” In this case, “parody” does not carry the same meaning as it does in English, which means a funny or satirical take on an established work, and refers simply to fan works based on an already-published manga or anime.  Doujinshi is also not all pornographic in nature, although a lot of it is. 

A circle will write and draw a manga, then contract with a printer and pay the printing costs themselves. Japan has many small print shops that specialize in short-run (100 to 500 copies) of small books and manga and circles can often afford to produce manga of a technical quality that approaches professional manga.

The finished doujinshi is then sold in numerous ways, including over the Internet, via mail order, through commercial manga stores such as Mandarake, and at conventions around Japan. Many of these doujinshi conventions exist, of which the largest is Comiket, short for “Comic Market.”  Comiket is held twice a year in August and December and as of 2003, had over 350,000 attendees during its 3-day run, with 30,000 doujinshi circles participating.

As it is so large, Comiket is carefully structured.  Each circle that participates has a table to sell their works for only one day, in a section of the convention floor with other, similar, works, and while there is no entrance fee, attendees have to buy a program book that contains maps of the convention floor in order to find the kinds of doujinshi they are interested in. 

Cosplay is common at these conventions, but is also strictly controlled: the Comiket rules state that all cosplayers have to sign up if they wish to wear costumes, and cannot arrive at or leave the convention in one.  Rooms are provided for cosplayers to change into their costumes, and special areas are set up for photography.  Photographers are not allowed to take pictures of cosplayers without their consent, and cannot take photos outside of the areas marked off for photography (and as someone who’s seen many, many photographers block traffic in artist alleys and dealers’ rooms at US conventions, I have to say this sounds very appealing).

In general, most doujinshi circles stick to small print runs and don’t make a profit, but some popular circles print 5000 or 6000 copies of their books.  The doujinshi industry has also been estimated as an $800 million dollar business, so someone in there is making a profit, although a large chunk of that is probably the bookstores who sell doujinshi.

Doujinshi has had a fairly big influence on the manga industry.  In the 1970s, the genres of boys- love and yaoi developed from the doujinshi market.  The yaoi magazine June hired young mangaka who had a closer relationship to the doujinshi world and who produced the sort of work that the fans wanted to read.  Some professional mangaka choose to publish non-canon versions of their works, or to publish original works as doujinshi.  Murakami Maki, the creator of Gravitation, is one of these, publishing a doujinshi with several short non-canon (read: NC-17) stories involving Gravitation characters.  Yet other professional mangaka, such as Takahashi Rumiko, started their manga career by publishing doujinshi.  Minekura Kazuya originally created her manga Saiyuki as a doujinshi before she signed a contract with a professional publisher.

The legality of doujinshi, which obviously violates copyright, is another subject altogether, and next week’s column is going to focus on doujinshi, copyright, and the question of why on earth does the Japanese manga industry tolerate its existence.  Until then, feel free to email questions, possible topics for future columns, and incoherent ranting to me at manga@magatsu.net. 

The official Comiket website, in Japanese with a little bit of English: http://www.comiket.co.jp/