Doujinshi | Otaku Culture Concepts Explained

 by Ramona Ketsuban

A few months ago, I went to one of the many anime conventions held every year here in the United States. For four days over the weekend, thousands of fans of anime, manga, video games, and more gathered together to socialize, teach, play, buy, and sell. Among those who were selling, you mostly had vendors selling the type of goods any anime fan would want to purchase: manga, anime, games, artbooks, figures, posters, and the like. Of the remaining sellers, you had fanartists, mostly selling large high quality print outs of their work, or small trinkets and doo-dads they had made from scratch. However, if you were to scan the tables of the artists for a while, every so often you'd see that some of them were selling whole books! Fanzines, as they're called, are books of fanart either made by one artist or group working together. I picked up a few of them myself, because even though I'm not the biggest fan of "Overwatch" or "Steven Universe," it's important to me to feed money into the fanzine market, so that hopefully, one day, I'll go to an event where a shiny new Kamen Rider fanzine will be waiting for me.

Incidentally, at that same time, 6,700 miles away, there WERE Kamen Rider fanzines waiting for me. Except they weren't called "fanzines," they were called "doujinshi." And they weren't being sold at an anime convention, but at a doujinshi event called Comic Market.

Simply put, the idea of fans putting together books of art and selling them is not something exclusive to any regional group of "fans." Likewise, I'm sure that regardless of where you set the region and language on YouTube, you'll be able to find someone, somewhere, making Naruto animated music videos set to Nickleback or whoever. But the fact of the matter is that Japan has an especially interesting and unique history with the concept. And that's to be expected considering the huge amount of money and cultural importance manga has, compared to comics in other countries. And of course, doujinshi is of extreme importance when we're talking about the history of otaku culture.

Before we jump into the real meat and potatoes of the topic at hand, let's make sure we have a firm grasp on the terminology we're using here. The word "doujinshi" [同​人​誌] is made of three kanji; 同 (dou), which means "same", 人 (jin), which is "person", and 誌 (shi) which is like "records" or "documents". [1] So 同人 (doujin) is basically something that's self published, and 同​人​誌 (doujinshi) refers to specifically to a self-published magazine. The modern interpretation, specifically in regards to talking about otaku culture, is that a doujin is any self-published piece, whether that be a book, a song, a computer program, or whatever. It's also used in the term "doujin circle," which is just a circle of people gathered together to self-publish whatever media they're focused on. A doujinshi, then, refers specifically to self-published books, particularly art books and manga. Generally, the concept of the indie magazine first finds it's roots in Japanese culture in the early years of the Meiji Period. In those days, doujinshi were literature anthologies like Garakuta Bunko, or, in the very beginning, journals created by high intelligence societies like Meiroku Zasshi by the Meirokusha. During World War II, the creation and consumption of doujinshi greatly decreased due to government regulations.

by JMAG NEWS

The Complete History of Doujin

The history of doujinshi as it pertains to otaku culture really starts to come into play when Japanese comics, or manga, explode in popularity in post-Occupation Japan. In this time (the 1940s specifically), manga artists, aka mangaka, like Osamu Tezuka of "Testuwan Atom" and Machiko Hasegawa of "Sazae-san" blow up into mainstream popularity. Manga, while stifled by the same doujinshi-hating wartime government mentioned before, had actually existed in pre-war Japan, but Tezuka and Hasegawa were riding the wave of the new, cool, hype manga, and the Japanese people were all the way on board with it. However, it wasn't until the second wave of mangaka came into play, with figures like Shotaro Ishinomori of "Cyborg 009" and Fujio Akatsuka of "Himitsu no Akko-chan" came into the forefront, that we started seeing the seeds of doujinshi culture appear. In this time, fans of these manga started emulating their style, setup, and substance to make their own stories. Around this time, we can also assume that school clubs for making manga started to appear in highschools and colleges around the country, and this would be the start of the modern day incarnation of the doujin circle. Now, anyone who has been on the internet long enough knows of the huge swaths of poorly written pieces of fanfiction written by middle- and high-schoolers about their favorite characters. Well, it turns out that kids across time are not so different from each other. In this time, fans of anime and manga were not only making their own stories and characters, but they were also beginning to take characters and plotlines from their favorite series and making new stories with them. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find any documentation for the earliest recorded derivative work, but I will update this section in the future if I ever find anything. This distinction between primary (original) works and secondary (derivative) works becomes more important later in the future, but for know, it's just important to know that these two types of doujinshi were being made, with most doujinshi being primary works.

The first big jump forward for doujinshi as a cultural touchpoint in otaku culture was the creation of doujinshi events. At the time, there were events for fans of anime, manga, science fiction, and other media, but doujinshi, both original and derivative, was often pushed to the side. So the legend goes, this treatment irked one doujinshi artist so much that she felt compelled to make a public complaint about it regarding a specific event, Nihon SF Taikai. Taikai will become much more important to otaku culture later on, as it is the collective name of a bunch of different conventions throughout the years, including DAICON III and DAICON IV, homes of the legendary opening animations. However, at the time, they weren't exactly showing themselves to be the otaku's best friend, as they decided to ban the artist for her comments. In reaction to this, one doujin circle founded at Meiji University, Meikyu, decided that doujinshi artists should have their own space to by and sell doujinshi without having to worry about improper treatment from those how would consider them inferior to big name mangaka, actors, and the like. And so, in 1975, the very first Comiket was held. There's not a whole lot of first hand information about this event floating around, but it's commonly said that 32 doujin circles participated, and of those, the majority were middle- or high-school clubs. Additionally, including the 700 visitors who came, about 90% of the total participants were there to buy and sell shojo manga. And again, because of what we know at the time, a very large of amount of these doujinshi would be original works, rather than derivatives.

Comiket would continually grow, change, and flourish as the idea of otaku culture evolved into a fully functioning concept over the coming years, and a deep dive into it's overall history is very much recommended. To understand the history of Comiket is to really understand the history and trends of otaku culture itself. However, despite this, to better understand the history of doujin, we have to take a detour off the path of Comiket, and into the world of Japanese personal electronics. You see, personal electronics had a strong userbase in Japan from essentially the beginning of home computing. Anyone who knows the basic history of Akihabara could probably pick up on that much. However, despite taking root in the 70s, around the same time that Comiket was getting started, home computing was in a very different place than manga then. For one thing, the amount of people with an actual home computer was quite small, so all computing software was essential on the same level. The divide between amateur software and professional software wasn't really a thing in the 70s.

by retro-type.com/PC98/

However, in the 1980s, home computers really start to take off in Japan, with NEC's PC-88 series. With the tools to make interesting software cheaper and easier to acquire, the doujin game scene started to form. The first doujin game to appear at Comiket was "Tear of the Mermaid" by doujin circle Imperial Software in 1984, the 27th Comiket. However, because of the difficulties of verifying the content of the floppy disks (remember, this was 84, CD-ROMs aren't really a thing yet), doujin software was not heavily carried at doujin events like Comiket at the time. Instead, the main way that doujin software was distributed was through the internet, or through doujin circle specific vendors, like, for example, the floppy disk vending machine service created by Soft Vendor TAKERU. Yes, software vending machines were a thing. After the explosion of the home computer, the next most important thing was getting game making software in the hands of enthusiasts. This was done through the creation of a series that many in the Angloshpere anime and game community may have heard of... the Maker series! And to be specific, I'm talking about ASCII's series of game making software like Adventure Maker in 1988 and RPG Maker in 1990, no relation to Gainax's daughter-raising simulation series Princess Maker, which began in 1991. Through the maker series, many, many doujin games were made throughout the years, for better or for worse, as some might put it. But for our purposes, it was important in giving the early generations of game fans the tools to follow in the footsteps of the creators they idolized. It was the pen and pencil for the doujin software creators, as it were.

Just like with doujinshi and Comiket, doujin games had a breakout moment, and that moment came in four parts. The first part was the introduction of the Windows 95 home computing series into Japanese households in 1996. It's impossible to understate how important the introduction of this system was, not just to doujin software, or even to Japanese home computing in general. I'll leave the research of that craze to your own time. The second part was the release of the first contemporary visual novel, Kamaitachi no Yoru, on the Super Famicom in 1994. This game, and it's predecessor, the sound novel Otogirisō for Super Famicom released in 1992, laid the foundation for all visual novels that would follow. While not including all the modern hallmarks of the genre like erotic CGs and a harem of cute girls to romance, it did set the standard for how to tell a uniquely story focused game through sound and visuals. The third part was the release of Tsukihime in 2000. This game, released by the then doujin circle TYPE-MOON at that year's Comiket, was the first doujin game to become as close as doujin  game could to becoming "mainstream." At the time, it was praised for having quality so good that it could be compared to a commercialized game. Otaku across the country quickly rallied behind the doujin game, and the effects of its popularity on the way doujin games are made can still be felt to this day. After this game, TYPE-MOON became commercialized to work on their next game, a little known title called Fate/Stay Night. The fourth and final part was the release of Touhou 6: Embodiment of Scarlet Devil in 2002. While the Touhou series had enjoyed a solid run on NEC's PC-98 hardware, the sixth game, first to be released on Windows hardware, exploded into popularity (I feel like I've used that phrase quite a lot...). After Tsukihime, this was the next big doujin game to reach extreme heights of popularity, and its position of being released right at the beginning of the modern internet era meant that it's popularity could go even farther than Tsukihime, even rivaling the Fate series in its relevance in otaku culture. Of course, the Touhou series is still being published to this day, by the same one-man doujin circle that started it, ZUN of Team Shangai Alice.

By the time Touhou 6 was released, production and distribution of doujin software was in full swing. The days of floppy disk vending machines had long been over, and now thanks to the evolution of technology, burnt CDs could be sold at doujin events like Comiket. Additionally, games and software could be bought and sold over the internet at this time, and this is how many western fans first started getting their hands on doujinshi. Lots of other sorts of doujin projects started showing up around this time as well. While Comiket had primarily started out as an event to buy and sell doujinshi, it's "accept everyone" policy meant that all sorts of projects started coming in. Of course games and other computer software started coming in, but cosplayers had began selling books and DVDs, animators could make their own films to sell, and even computer hardware parts like soundboards were being sold at Comiket! That's to say nothing of the doujin music scene, which had been going strong around the same time as doujin games and software scene thanks to the evolution of computer hardware and the introduction of the Windows systems. The voice bank synthesizer program Vocaloid was released in 2006, and that opened up a whole new generation of self-produced music by various individuals. The success of Vocaloid came at a peak time in the "wild west" era of the internet, so the program's popularity would supersedes almost all doujin projects that came before it, with songs ending up on the national news of countries like the United States of America.

by Gigazine

Doujin In The Modern Day

Since the advent of Vocaloid, there haven't really been any big changes or additions to the doujin scene as far as production capabilities. The closest thing that could be called "a new revolution" in that sense would be the Doujin Mark. First created and utilized by mangaka Ken Akamatsu (best known for Love Hina and Negima! Master Negi Magi) in his 2013 work UQ Holder!, the Doujin Mark is a symbol inserted into a manga that lets fans know that making doujinshi for that series is authorized by the mangaka. So now, doujin for certain seriesare lifted from the legally grey area they exsisted before, but of course, many series don't contain the doujin mark and still have doujin produced for them, so calling it "a new revolution" is quite a bit of a stretch. It'd probably be better to call it "a development that happened."

Most of the evolutions and changes that have happened space over the years since have been in the content. Recently, in 2016, Virtual YouTubers, or V-Tubers, have been getting really popular on YouTube and Nico Nico Douga, so lots of doujin have started to be made about those characters. But that discussion more leans into the history of otaku trends generally, rather than the history of doujin specifically. For the most part, the doujin scene today is pretty set in stone. Comiket and other doujin events run annually, growing in size with each event. Comiket 97, which was held this last December, brought in 560,000 visitors and vendors. Besides mega-events like Comiket, there are also smaller events dedicated to certain series, fetishes, and other qualifiers. For example, Reitaisai is an event held every year of Touhou series doujin. Aside from the yearly events, doujin can bought from stores like Melonbooks, Mandarake, and Toranoana. And even if you can't physically go to a doujin store, it's easy to buy doujin off the internet, either buy ordering them from the websites of physical shops, or buy buying them digitally through wesbites like DLSite.

by Mipon - Anime Tourism

What We Can Learn About Otaku History From Doujinshi

For someone who cares about otaku culture history, the importance of understanding and analyzing doujin history is probably pretty obvious; understanding what otaku are making fancontent about helps us know what series where popular with otaku in different periods of time. Of course, the farther back you go, the harder it is the compile this information. After all, there just aren't dozens and dozens of Comiket catalogs floating around in the after market. Even if there were, you'd only be able to make a surface level reading of what series were popular at the time. I'm sure you could figure out what series and genres were the most popular, but since you wouldn't have access to what circles were bringing multiple series, or the sales numbers, it would be much harder to make any super specific claims. Fortunately, these days there are people dedicated to gathering, crunching, and archiving this information. Every Comiket, a Twitter user by the the handle of myrmecoleon posts his findings about the most popular series represented, complete with a pie chart and percentages. Hopefully, with the effort of people like them, and others who care about understanding the history of otaku culture, we'll have pie charts that complete for every year, going all the way back to some sort of definitive beginning.

And that, my friends, is the history of doujin/doujinshi. I don't really know how to end this... it took me so long to write this, that I can't believe it's actually over. Three drafts, and so, so many hours of editing. Maybe writing everything in a text document wasn't the best way to go? Anyways, this is the first in a long series I'm trying to write on the history of otaku culture. This is the base point, and everything from here on out builds off of this. The idea is that the next post won't take nearly as long as this one did, so look forward to that. Thank you for reading this, I hope you'll stick around and see all the rest of what's in store here!

SOURCES
http://yabai.com/p/2197
https://thevaultpublication.com/2019/11/07/overview-of-doujinshi-part-1-the-meaning-and-history-behind-doujinshi/
https://comicbook.com/anime/2017/03/28/what-is-doujinshi-/
http://www.academia.edu/Documents/in/Doujinshi
https://www.deviantart.com/project-manga-lesson/journal/A-brief-history-of-doujinshi-446859308
https://anime.stackexchange.com/questions/33892/law-regarding-doujinshi
https://www.participations.org/Volume%2010/Issue%201/10%20Lamerichs%2010.1.pdf
http://en.cnki.com.cn/Article_en/CJFDTotal-JNSZ200901011.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2XueKgCBLs
https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/feature/the-law-of-anime/2013-02-15/2
https://www.comipress.com/article/2008/08/03/3636.html
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%90%8C%E4%BA%BA%E3%83%9E%E3%83%BC%E3%82%AF
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%90%8C%E4%BA%BA%E8%AA%8C
https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%90%8C%E4%BA%BA%E3%82%B2%E3%83%BC%E3%83%A0

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