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Doujinshi as Unparalleled Visual Subculture

Doujinshi is made up of two words: doujin and shi, with the former referring to people who have common interests and the latter referring to a magazine. Originally, the phrase was used to describe manga fanzines, hobby magazines, and amateur comic books.

It’s an intriguing truth that most popular subcultures are usually concocted by someone who is simply interested in making money, and then fed to a ravenous young mob to อ่านการ์ตูนโป๊. However, this is not always the case in Japan. Followers of the comic book market want for art for the sake of art.

Why is it popular widely?

Yoshishiro Yonezawa, an author, critic, and ardent admirer of the popular manga subculture, devised the idea of establishing an enterprise, a market open to all non-professional manga artists who form their own doujinshis to produce manga-inspired artwork and publications (that are called doujinshis, too). The concept gained a lot of traction because Comiket, the world’s largest comic book market, is held in Japan twice a year for three days in a row in the winter and summer. More than 35 thousand circles and over half a million people are expected to attend.

It is a location where large-scale freedom of speech is preached, and the organisers never imagined such a large-scale success for their creation. Prior to Comiket, young people in high school or university participated in comic marketplaces as amateurs and stopped after they graduated. However, by the mid-1970s, this had radically changed. Because of the growing popularity of the doujinshi phenomenon, it became more than just a hobby, but a lifelong passion for many artists. Each year, over two thousand doujinshi markets take place in Japan, with Comiket being by far the most popular.

Now, comic shops have sprouted in Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong, China, and even the United States, proving that the concept has extended far beyond Japan. As markets provided enormous prospects for a big number of amateur artists and mangakas, the number of doujinshi circles exploded (manga artists).

Initially, women made up the majority of doujinshi creators, accounting for around 80% of the total. Males got more interested in the 1980s, and the ratio presently appears to favour female artists only marginally.

This is to be concluded that doujinshi is a visual cultural phenomena shaped mostly by youth, despite its worldwide significance in terms of meaning and effects.