What is Doujin? Let's Get to Know About Doujin!

 

What is Doujin?

In Japan, Doujin usually refers to activities which people with same interest get together and create things like comics(Manga), novels, games and other goods. These people are not necessary professional artists or writers. Many of doujin products are created by armatures as a hobby and often published by their own expense.

Group formed by people with common Doujin theme is often called "Circle". Within Circle, creators exchange their ideas and show works to each other. Doujinshi or software is often published by Circle.

There are hundreds of Doujin Circles in Japan. Many of the Doujin products are publicized by Circle rather than by individual.

Doujin Circle and community is becoming Japan's huge art culture and manga industry's phenomenon.

History of Doujin

Definition of "Doujin" was first acknowledged when Shotaro Ishinomori gathered artist friends and established "East Japan Comic Society" to publish a corroboration magazine "Manga-Shonen". Then Doujin Circle activities gradually started to prosper through the "reader's communication page" on a magazine "COM" (Now discontinued), which was first publicized in 1967. At that time, self publication was costing a fortune, thus one bundled comics were passed from one Circle member to another, by adding their pages and circulating among the creators for viewing.

The realm of "Doujin" has grown as the number of participating creators increased. Circles started to form within educational institutions such as high schools and universities. In that case, Circles were able to receive funds from their institution, thus it made it possible for their Doujinshi to be printed. (Offset Print)

Individual Doujin activities started to increase when the animation series, "Gatcha-Man" was televised around 1972. Yet it was still not a widely spread trend and only small group of Circles were gathering and exchanging their works. Doujin community was still a closed realm.

Comic Market held in 1975 has contributed a great deal for the general acknowledgement of Doujin culture. It begun with 32 Circles, and 700 participants, forming a place to exchange and sell each other's Doujin art works. The Comic Market gradually became as a major Doujin event from year to year.

At beginning, many of the Doujinshi were featuring animation parody, but then gradually gained more erotic components which have made an erotic Doujinshi a very popular theme.

Once a certain Doujinshi gains its popularity, the number of creators who participate to its Circle increases. Therefore, they are able to afford more costly printing method such as offset. As a result that made the quality of such Doujinshi better.
Doujin Circles which did not have enough financial resource would publish their Doujinshi by copying or printing out of a printer. In the past, printing was pretty expensive, but now days it has become cheaper.

As many animation came out on TV in the 80th, more Doujinshi featured such anime themed Parody, including Yaoi and erotic Doujinshi. Some of the popular titles featured by Doujin creators then were: "Gundum" (1981), "Urusei-Yatsura - Only You" (1983), "Macross – Remember Love" (1984). In the late 80th, titles such as "Saint Seiya" (1980) and "Top o Nerae" became a huge hit which raised excitement among Doujin creators.

Around this time, Yaoi Doujinshi started to acquire a general acknowledgement because of popular anime titles such as "Saint Seiya" and "Samurail Trooper", which featured friendship between men.

Also, "Doujin Software" started to appear around this time because PC was starting to become a popular domestic tool. Similar to "Comiket", an event "Pasoket" was formed as a place to sell and exchange PC Doujin software. NEC's PC-9801 series, Fujitsu's FM-TOWNS and Sharp's X68000 were popular hardware, thus Doujin software and CG were mainly designed to run on these platforms. Among those, X68000 especially attracted many core-users because of its high machine spec which resulting in many sophisticated Doujin software titles to be born.

In the 90th, a title such as "Sailor Moon" became a huge hit among kid and even adult. "Sailor Moon" became also a popular theme among Doujin creators. Since characters from "Sailor moon" were "Bisyoujyo Character" (Pretty Girl Character), many erotic and lesbian themed Doujinshi were created out of Sailor Moon.

In the mid 90th, Game themed Doujinshi started to gain popularity. Most of them were featuring an erotic scene and Yaoi theme of in-game characters. Number of game company that featured "Bisyoujyo Game" (Pretty Girl's Game) has increased and many Doujin creators started to focus on Bisyoujyo Game because of its demand and popularity.

Around this time, lawsuits about copyright issue between commercial and Doujin publication stared to rise. Creating Doujinshi out of copyrighted characters was considered legal because it was based on the idea that these Doujinshi were created for non-commercial purpose, but for leisure. There were no licensing fee and business agreement between the copyright holder and Doujin creator. As a result, copyright holder was not able to restrict copyrighted character themed Doujinshi even though he did not like how these characters were presented on these Doujinshi. Although this has been a continuous problematic issue in the industry and it is being said that there should be some kind of law to set a rule. (Text by: Torakichi Hayama)

Category of Doujin

Original
Doujin works which all story and characters were originally created by the creator.

Ani-Paro
Anime Parody. Featuring already existed anime characters or anime theme.

Yaoi
Doujin work which features love or sex between male. Sometime it is called Boy’s love.

Yuri
Doujin work which features love or sex between female. This word was born as an opposite of "Bara" (Rose) which features male homosexuality. The term "Yuri" was said to be originated from a film called "Yuri-zoku series" by "Nikkatu Roman Porn".

Loli-Con
Abbreviation for Lolita Complex. Doujin works featuring Child Pornography. It was said that the term was originated from a novel "Lolita" by Vladimir Nabokov, a middle age man loving an underage girl. **In the United States, Loli-con that presents child obscenity and pornography is illegal by CPPA (Child Pornography Prevention Act). Please be aware to understand the law carefully if you are planning to write Loli-con themed Doujinshi. This law applies to virtual characters as well.

Shota-Con
Doujin work which features underage boy love affair. The term originated from a character named Shota Kaneda from "Taiyou no Shisya Tetsujin 28 Gou".

Neko-Mimi
Doujin work which features female characters with cat ears. Basically, most of the main Neko-Mimi characters are female. Their personality is very similar to Neko (Cat) and act like it. On Doujinshi, these characters might talk like "~meow" at the end of their words.

Kemono
Different from Neko-Mimi, but this Doujin work features human looking character with partially animal-like.

The Rise of Japanese Manga

The Rise of Japanese Manga

Japan has become the world leader in comics. Japanese manga, as comics are called here, have been publicized the world over on television and in newspapers and the most popular works have been introduced abroad both through legal and pirate translations. But despite these efforts, they remain insufficient for foreign audiences wishing to acquire a comprehensive understanding of the genre. In the months that follow I intend to give a wide-ranging introduction to Japanese manga based on theme, but before I do I should like to begin with an overview of the basics. First I would like to provide some information on the Japanese manga industry. The manga industry in Japan is of such a massive scale as to completely overshadow the industries of the two other great comic-producing nations, the United States and France. There are a great number of magazines in Japan devoted exclusively to manga but it is difficult to give an exact accounting of their number given that it is not at all uncommon for smaller publishing houses to bring out one new magazine after another under different titles. The core of the manga publishing industry consists of some 13 weekly manga magazines published by the major publishers alone, along with 10 biweeklies, and approximately twenty influential monthlies. At any given time there are at least ten magazines which boast over one million copies of each issue. At most there is one non-manga magazine in Japan which can claim a readership of over one million. Yearly sales of manga throughout the 1990's have been in the neighborhood of 600 billion yen, including 350 billion in magazine sales and 250 billion in paperbacks. These figures do no not include sales of manga appearng in general magazines and newspapers. The total sales of published material in Japan (including magazines and books but excluding newspapers) is two trillion five-hundred billion yen, of which manga sales account for nearly one quarter. Given a total Japanese population of 120 million, we can calculate that the average Japanese spends approximately 2,000 yen per year on manga in one form or another. The three largest publishing houses producing manga are Kodansha, Shogakkan, and Shueisha. In addition there are some ten odd publishing firms which come in at a close second, including Akita Shoten, Futabasha, Shonen Gahosha, Hakusensha, Nihon Bungeisha, and Kobunsha. This is not even to mention the countless other small-scale publishing firms. The larger publishers mentioned above also publish magazines and books in areas outside of manga. It is estimated that there are around 3000 professional manga artists in Japan. All of these individuals have published at least one volume of manga, but most of them make their living as assistants to famous manga artists or have some other supplementary source of income. Only 300 of these, or ten percent of the total, are able to make an above-average living from manga alone. In addition, there are also a great number of amateur manga artists who produce small magazines intended for private circulation, called dojinshi. photos show racks and racks of manga at specialist bookstores in Tokyo

What Manga Do You Want The Most?

Manga licensing is a tricky business. There are companies that won’t work with other companies, titles that are too expensive to reasonably bring over the U.S., mangaka who are wary about having their work brought to an English-speaking audience and many other things to consider before licensing a title for the finicky U.S. market. It’s especially hard to judge demand when there are so many people reading scanlations. Is this title popular enough despite all those people who’ve already read it for free? Will fans devote their money to a manga regardless? It’s hard to judge a risky market like manga publishing sometimes. The best that can be done sometimes is to listen to their demands, but that might not always be the easiest thing to do because of all the restrictions mentioned above.
But what if we pretended to wipe the slate clean and have our own publishing companies for a moment? You’re given the opportunity to license any two manga titles that you wanted to, regardless of price, publisher politics or the relative lack of demand for the titles you pick. What would you license?
Rose of Versailles? Sailor Moon? Jungle Emperor Leo? What are you dying to publish the most?
I’ve tried to give the subject matter a lot of thought. It’s really hard to pick just two titles because there’s probably two dozen on my mental shortlist. Do I really want this one over this other one? I’m not sure, because I’d probably buy either in an instant.
But I’ve decided. I would want to bring over Osamu Tezuka’s Nana-iro Inko (Rainbow Parakeet), which I’ve mentioned wanting before, and Saint Oniisan (Saint Young Men) by Hikaru Nakamura.
Had I a chance to bring over a third title, I would have probably picked Moto Hagio’s A Cruel God Reigns, but I think the above two titles would have to be my first two picks. Nana-iro Inko because it sounds like a fun, under-estimated Tezuka title and Saint Oniisan because I read it (when I felt less guilty about scanlations) and loved it so much. (I would buy for myself in an instant and recommend it to all my friends who have a good sense of humor about religion.) It would break my heart to never ever see either title in English, in my lifetime. (Whereas I just want to see more of Moto Hagio’s work and had a hard time picking between A Cruel God Reigns and Poe no Ichizoku.)
So I’ll ask again: If you could have any two titles published in your language, regardless of any extenuating circumstances, what would those two titles be?

Tokyopop puts two new BLU titles on eManga

A spot of manga news for you folks tonight.
Digital Manga Publishing’s eManga site is now hosting a dozen different BL/yaoi titles from TOKYOPOP’s BLU imprint. Of the titles included in the release, I can confirm (because I work for them and I can look up the system that tells me when their street date is) that Secretary’s Love by Tohko Akiba and Stray Cat by Halco are being released ahead of their print street date. Secretary’s Love won’t be out until December and Stray Cat won’t hit until early November, so the wait won’t kill you if you want to hold out for a print copy.
Each title can be purchased for about $6 in points from the eManga site, but they can only be bought to “keep” instead of being “rented”, which is an option with DMP’s own titles.
Not a bad deal if you’re looking for a cheap way to get your BL fix (some of these titles sell for $14.99 in print)! Personally, and I have nothing to do with the decision to put them on eManga although I have edited some of the titles there, I’m really happy to see TOKYOPOP doing this. It’s an especially smart move considering DMP has a good platform for digital viewing and an audience that reads BL. Definitely a smart move on the company’s part.
You can see all the manga from TOKYOPOP/BLU here and enjoy a night or two of steamy, cheap, pixelated man-love.

Tokyopop Blog Discusses the FAQ of Manga on Hiatus

One of the questions publishers tend to hear the most (aside from, “when are you going to publish [insert name of manga here*]?”) is “when are you going to publish the next volume of [insert name of manga here**]?”
This tends to be one of the most aggravating for publishers to hear, actually. It’s not that publishers don’t WANT to answer it, it’s just that they’d prefer not to have to answer it 100+ times and have to disappoint fans over and over. (Not a very fun part of the job.) Sometimes there’s no answer to give people because the next volume just isn’t on the schedule yet. The typical vague and neutral statements issued in response satisfy no one because such questions are often asked in environments where a more detailed answer cannot be given.
But now, a Tokyopop blogger (presumably an employee, but I have no idea who it is, so it could be an intern) has taken to the time to give fans the lowdown on why series are put on hiatus and what you can do to pull them out of limbo.
The post is extremely thorough and well-written, answering not only why releases are put off, but how pubs get manga into bookstores, whether or not bookstores are bigger sellers than online retailers, why older titles are out-of-print, just why you SHOULD put your money where your mouth is and a lot of other insight into how book publishing works from a sales point-of-view.
Here’s a choice quote:

So sometimes we put a title on hiatus to see if fans manage to find what copies we have out there before we invest in producing more. How fast things come back from hiatus is heavily reliant on how existing stock performs, and whether we see an increased demand as people browse and pick up the early volumes and tell their friends about them, and then their friends go and pick them up. We’ve had some things reemerge from hiatus and perform well (Silver Diamond and Your & My Secret are good examples of this), and some things that in spite of their apparent popularity among the fans and buzz in the blogosphere, just don’t quite pick up enough steady business.

It’s worth checking out, which is why I’m posting about it. Bravo, TPHenshu, this is a great post.
*Quite possibly the name of something already published by another company. I’ve seen this happen.
**Quite possibly something that is already available for purchase, just had the next release date announced or is not even on hiatus.