Doujinshi have evolved incredibly since their emergence as amateur “literary coterie magazines” in the 1970s. What was once a near equivalent to the English term fanzine has now become, in many cases, a word that describes product distribution methods more than the nature of the product itself. Read on for a brief overview of the current doujin environment, followed by a look at a few specific cases at work in the brave new world of professional doujinshi.
I started thinking about this recently when looking into procurement options for a few items related to doujin soft maker Lilith. I was trying to figure out why it is that no online shop (other than Mandarake Edit: and Nippon Export, thanks Ialda) will ship Lilith’s Kagami artbook Nuye internationally, and secondly, why Lilith’s doujin game Uchuu Kaizoku Sara is available for mail order at Getchu.com, while Crepe’s similar Kaizoku Ouki Alfiana is not.
To answer these questions takes a new understanding of what the word “doujinshi” means, so I set about looking over the recent history of the term to find out.
What is Doujinshi?
The word doujinshi (同人誌) translates roughly as “publication of liked-minded people”. I’m not going to bother tracing the etymology of the term or its emergence in common otaku parlance (more information is available at Wikipedia); instead I want to identify what consensus has determined the salient characteristics of doujinshi to be, and how they have changed over the years.
In its most basic form, a doujinshi is:
- Made of paper / printed material. this is the “shi” part of doujinshi.
- Produced by a group of people with similar interests, known as a circle. this is the “doujin” part of doujinshi.
- Produced by individuals outside their official line of employment - in other words, as an amateur hobby.
- Sold / distributed directly by the creator at special events designed for the purpose (doujinshi sales conventions, 同人誌即売会).
Topically doujinshi can cover any area imaginable - from academic essays to novels, parody manga, pornography, art, games, music, and more - virtually no arena of human endeavor is not somehow reflected in the doujin world. That said the most commercially successful doujinshi tend to carry erotic themes, and among those the most popular are often parodic.
Technological innovations and cultural changes in the late ’90s began to alter the nature of doujinshi in several important ways that broadened its initial definition, both in terms of media and distribution.
- The internet emerged, allowing niche cultures to proliferate. This increased doujin artist exposure online and provided a new vehicle for mail order sales directly from the artists.
- Otaku goods shops (Toranoana, Messe Sanoh, Melon Books, etc.) were founded and began to sell doujinshi via consignment from the circles.
- The availability of cheap digital media (CD-Rs) allowed for new genres of doujin to emerge, including doujin soft (software) and doujin music.
Over the first years of the new millennium these trends continued, with a robust market emerging that combined improved distribution with wider interest to generate revenue for some circles that could no longer be termed “amateur” in any meaningful sense.
- The doujinshi market grew steadily via promulgation through the internet and pop culture media.
- This resulted in the viability of the doujin as a means of part time and increasingly full time employment.
- “Kojin circles” emerged, consisting of a sole creator (kojin) who handled all aspects of production and received all the benefits of income from publications.
- Larger circles formed semi-professional units to produce doujin software that would compete with professional releases.
- Otaku goods shops expanded their scope as doujin vendors, acting as proxy sellers for hundreds of circles both via brick and mortar outlets and via online mail order.
- Online-only doujin shops such as DLsite emerged, selling digital copies of doujinshi via download.
- Advances in printing technology and cheap, high quality labor (mostly Chinese) allowed for the proliferation of doujin items to media beyond the traditional books (and less tradtional CD-Rs), including towels, pillowcases, fans, cups, trinkets, and figures.
It is this progression that brings us the breadth of doujin culture we have today; one that has come a long way from its roots in the amateur fanzines of the 1970s. While there are still circles that exist in much the same amateur capacity as those that populated the first Comic Market in 1975, the expansion of the market as well as the explosion of diversity in media, ease of production and distribution have enabled a new class of semi-pro and professional creators who nonetheless operate under the banner of “doujinshi”.
The Kojin Parody Model
The profile of the professional doujinka (doujin creator) is as diverse as the media landscape that doujin now covers. While individual authors who make their living entirely from self-published doujinshi are few and far between, an increasingly large class of professional creators uses doujin sales as a substantial segment of their income, acting as freelance illustrators, mangaka, and designers when they’re not doing doujin work (and vice versa). Examples of such creators include:
- Erect Sawaru
- Happoubi Jin
- Harthnir
- Kei
- Mitsumi Misato
- Range Murata
- Rebis
- Taka Tony
- TANA
- Tsukasa Jun
- Yoshitoshi ABe
The list goes on and on. Perhaps the biggest issue raised by the emergence of this group of professional and semi-pro doujinka is that of intellectual property rights and copyright infringement. Many of these authors do original creative work when they’re freelancing on a project (doing game designs, book illustrations, etc.), but turn to their kojin circles when they want to produce parody material based on popular anime or games. Parody books from famous authors often sell several thousand copies over the course of a day at Comiket, profiting in a very grey market from the creative work of others and the popularity of the franchise being parodied.
While the increased commercialization of parody doujinshi would make it seem that a confrontation with copyright holders is inevitable, it’s important to note that in many instances the people producing the doujinshi are the same as those producing the original works being parodied. The doujin scene is so interbred with that of professional anime, manga, and game creators that it would be impractical for all but the largest IP holders to crack down on the parody doujin scene.
The Soft Circle Model
The second class of professional doujinka operates not as individuals but in groups, and is perhaps the most divorced from the traditional definition of the term. These are the groups that form to produce certain types of doujin software. When doujin soft first emerged in the mid-90s it was primarily conceived as a digital offshoot of paper doujinshi, allowing amateur creators to play around with new media that was formerly inaccessible.
However in the early 2000’s several groups were formed that were more production houses than amateur circles, operating on a wider scale with more professionalism and efficiency than that typically associated with the doujin world. These were the “soft circles”, including such units as:
It is the case of Lilith Soft in particular that illustrates just how far the term “doujin” is being stretched. They produce roughly a game a month, fully voiced with high production values given their price point (2,100 yen per game, a price they nearly singlehandedly proved was viable) and sell their games right alongside major professional releases. They register their games with the CSA, one of the two computer software ratings groups that are the gatekeepers to sale via mainstream eroge shops (as opposed to doujin shops). Unlike the majority of eroge brands however Lilith distributes its games directly, doujin style, not via a distribution company or wholesaler. This allows them much greater flexibility in their distribution options, which combined with their choice to register with the CSA grants them unprecedented market saturation. Lilith products can be purchased online, via mail order from shops that sell other mainstream eroge, in brick and mortar doujin shops, eroge shops, and ero bookstores. One could possibly go as far as saying that Lilith’s business model is the culmination of doujinshi as commerce - small, versatile, ubiquitous, and high quality.
If this is the case, then returning to the initial questions that informed this piece, why is it so blasted hard to get ahold of Nuye outside of Japan? The answer is simply that for whatever reason, companies that export books from Japan have not entered a direct relationship with Lilith. While an international retailer can usually just dial up their distributor and order a stack of artbooks from its wholesale warehouse, Nuye will not be among them.
The answer to the second question can be found in the following images:
Images censored because I was originally planning to make this a non-ero post… hah.
As we can see, both Lilith’s Uchuu Kaizoku Sara and Crepe’s Kaizoku Ouki Alfiana are available for sale via download from Getchu’s new doujin download division, and according to their descriptions they are nearly identical in terms of content. Only the former is available in a package version from Getchu’s standard eroge side, however, and the reason is the shiny CSA sticker on the box, the sticker that definitively puts the lie to any pretense of amateur doujin quality the software might otherwise possess.
In conclusion (if there is any point to this rambling piece), the world of doujinshi is no longer truly encompassed by the term’s literal meaning. It is not the exclusive province of coterie groups (”doujin”), as the monad kojin circle unit has risen to prominence over the past several years. Nor is it exclusively composed of printed material (”shi”), with the rise of the soft circle as a unit of doujin software production. The doujin world now spans works from the rank amateur to the polished professional and everything in between, and has become a market within the otaku sphere that is a potent force to be reckoned with.
As Comiket approaches I’m hoping to have the time to write specifically on how the the current doujin market works in relationship to what is now known as the biannual “manga matsuri”, the doujin world’s focal point and single most important event.
Shingo is a wannabe doujin artist who realizes that he is yet another unintentional byproduct of the internet age now blighting Japan’s doujin landscape. He hopes he doesn’t spoil its carefully manicured lawns when he makes his Comiket debut this December.
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Damn good article. Thanks.
Interesting article, thankyou for taking the time to write it. I came into doujinshis at a time when they weren’t the thing that most western fans highly sought. These days my interest lies purely in the doujinshi artbook aspects.
Looking forward to your write up of how the current doujin market works.
Shingo: The crackdown is as easy as driving an explosives-laden truck through the doors of Tokyo Big Sight and blowing that truck up. Or you could use a high-caliber machinegun and blow them away. Or maybe a flamethrower would do the job, plus it gets rid of the offending material.
Thing is, this shifts from crackdown to cold-blooded murder, and if anyone wants to uphold their copyrights, it will eventually boil down to this. Because the offenders are people, and they won;t change their opinions regardless of death threats, money or whatever.
Thankfully, the few people who have the balls to do this either are not paid to do so (Iraq pays more, much more) or really don’t want to go down this path. But greed can and will turn destructive.
If the Akiba Liberation Front were willing to kill and pretty much disrupt Comiket to free Akiba, a much baser reason to kill otherwise harmless people would not just happen if not nipped in the bud, but will also have devastating effects on the doujin industry, otaku human rights and Japan as a whole.
>I was trying to figure out why it is that no online shop (other than Mandarake) will ship Lilith’s Kagami artbook Nuye internationally
Got mine at Nippon-Export.
>>MK
Glad you found it interesting! I’d be happy if you let me know if there’s anything else I can try to address on the topic.
>>Zeb
Thanks, I’m glad you got something out of it. I hope to have the time to write more on the subject before too long.
>>DrmChsr0
This piece has nothing to do with the crackdown, actually (other than perhaps helping to explain why the doujin market has finally grown to the size where authorities are taking notice).
>>Ialda
Awesome! I hadn’t heard of Nippon Export until you mentioned it, but that’s a superb find. Post edited to suit, and I’ve added them to the list of online shops in the blogroll.
Shingo, did you read this month’s Wired’s take on the relationship between the doujin world and the publishing houses? It’s definitely an outsider’s view of the subject, but the writer gets into issues with read-culture and write-culture friction.
The high point is definitely when the writer takes some CCS doujinshi with him to an interview with CLAMP.
>>lostdog
I did not; I tend to forget that there’s a media environment out there beyond the one I’m immediately obsessed with on a day to day basis. I’m also out of touch with terms such as “read-culture” and “write-culture”; perhaps I need to go back to school for awhile to brush up on my pomo communications studies lingo.
Part of the reason I’ve been writing fewer articles that take a distanced view of the doujin scene, moe, and whatnot, is that it’s hard to get a good distanced perspective when one is right smack in the middle of things. All I can really speak to are the day to day practicalities of existence in this environment, so I suppose it’s up to outfits like Wired to look at it from the outside and tell us what’s going on from a meta perspective.
I do intend to keep on relaying what impressions I can muster from my position in the trenches, and hopefully some will find them of interest.
One thing I’ve been realizing of late is that none of this is permanent; the foundation upon which doujin culture rests is constantly shifting, and there never really was a status quo (perhaps for stretches of time prior to the emergence of the internet as a serious influence, but I don’t have any firsthand knowledge of that). Events we took for granted yesterday (ABC, Futaket) may no longer exist tomorrow, but they didn’t exist five years ago either; who knows what will come next?
>>Shingo
Don’t worry about your circle’s eye view of things. I can count on one finger the number of gaijin I know of who have gotten deep into the production side of Japanese fan culture. Your efforts are doubling that number!
You keep writing, I’ll keep reading.
Now, if we can just needle some artwork samples out of you. :3
Very interresting article. Thank you!
The question for me was, what is the point of your writing. Are dojinshi circles bad or what? But you gave the answer in your second comment. The dojinshi market is steadily moving. It is growing and chaning and will do so further. It has its good sides and its bad sides. It has changed to a point where it has moved to a point far away from the original meaning. The amateurs compete with professionals. And some of the dojinshi circles move in a gray area. They bow law how they need it.
But isn’t that typical for the dojinshi market? When I think about the whole eroge industry in Japan then I think they try their best to maximize the posible. I think of the wacky censorship and the lolicon. I think dojinshis tested how far they can go in countless situations in the past. They marked the spot for mainstream productions.
Since dojinshi circles consist mainly of young people with few capital they risk more. They know the newest technologies and try to use them for production or distribution. Big publisher don’t want to risk money. They hire lawyers to not interfere with the law. New distributions or media cost money and might have sideeffects not known yet. They will only use it if it proofed to be profitable. Some dojinshi circles might take the risk. But its easy to colide with the law that way. I see the CSA sticker case that way.
I have got the Nuye artbook from nippon export too. I think at the time I ordered it JList had it too. I hope you value the new link its a great source for imports. Very fair prizes, great support and a lot of items not easily found by other online stores. Only thing is you have to be fast. If it’s gone it’s gone. But that is a curse everyone should know already.
If you ask me; I’m still wondering if there’s any teamwork left between the doujinshi circles, the people who turn it into anime, and the people in America who license it.
Meanwhile the translation between less censorable doujin towards anime is smoother than ever. Plus, we all know that the internet is still a difficult monster to deal with.
So yeah. Slow-going is better than nothing at all. But I wish for one day to experience the hentai anime versions of works like “Secret Plot,” “Take On Me,” and “Wereslut.” Uncensored, and (hopefully) with English dubbing. (SHUT UP. WE’RE IMPROVING.)
>>lostdog
I’ll try to get something worth showing up over the weekend (if I don’t have something finished by then I’ll be in trouble)…
>>uncensored
I think you may be reading a bit more into this than I intended. The stance I have on the development presented here is neutral to generally positive; more artists able to create 2D art professionally is a good thing in my book, though it potentially comes at the cost of draining talent from the “official” creator’s pool.
I was more interested in simply presenting what has happened without passing judgment; I’m glad that despite how high the stakes have become for some doujin creators us small fry are still able to get in at ground zero and exist in the same arena they do. The doujin world is one of the most artistically democratic spaces I know, and as long as it stays that way I’ll be one of its most fervent cheerleaders.
As an aside, I’m positive that J-List never carried Nuye (despite the best efforts of our book guy, alas).
>>Tyrenol
I don’t know much of anything about the American licensing situation, but Lilith is another case in point when it comes to the synthesis of doujinshi and eroanime (thanks to their Pixy brand). They’ve managed to prove that high quality eroanime doesn’t have to cost an arm and a leg, and I’m pretty sure their sales have been doing incredibly well.
There is also the case of Soft Circle Courreges’ Discode doujin games, which were made into an eroanime trilogy by WHITE BEAR. I expect we’ll see similar cases in the future as doujin software becomes a wider segment of the eroge market.
Regarding the eromanga titles you mention, it’s significant to note that they’re not doujinshi (Secret Plot and Take On Me were both serialized eromanga, I’m not familiar with Wereslut). The publishing companies that serialized them are likely to have bigger clout when dealing with anime makers in terms of seeing them through to eroanime adaptation, and the recent rise in eromanga to eroanime adaptations (Hatsuinu, Aneki, etc.) is certainly encouraging in this regard.
Off topic: Shingo, don’t forget to vote next weekend. I’m off to Christchurch next weekend, so I have voted early, voted often.
Damn good article, Shingo. Covers every aspect of the “doujinshi evolution” from its humble roots.
Just wondering though, how come “proliferation of doujin items to media beyond the traditional books” is considered within the domain of the so-called “doujin”? Curious rat I am.
>>Sydney2K
I’m not really on the Saimoe scene, if that’s what you’re referring to… otherwise I hope there aren’t any other elections I’m missing. ^^;;
>>Ronin
The term “doujin” reflects the nature of a project as a group endeavor, but doesn’t speak to the media involved (”shi” designates the media as printed, hence “doujinshi”).
Doujin software, doujin music, and other doujin items can be seen as very much in the original doujin tradition provided they’re produced with a “by fans for fans” mentality, by amateurs, though the market has grown to the point where some of the more successful are able to support themselves full time on their doujin work (and others, like Lilith, are professionals who merely take advantage of doujin distribution methods).
Oh, a little something called Australia’s Federal Election…
>>Sydney2K
Not being Australian I think my options there are rather limited. :(