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Abstract:

Research into fan communities and the media they produce (fanwork) is no longer a rarity in European and American academia. Similar sociological and literary inquiry into the activities of Japanese fan communities has remained limited up until now. Japanese fans' chief medium of expression, the amateur manga (Japanese comics) called dōjinshi, which feature characters from commercial titles, have enjoyed very little scholarly attention. Research into dōjinshi has focused mainly on their legal status, not their contents. For this reason dōjinshi remain a blind spot both in fan studies and manga studies, in spite of their importance for these fields as a medium of amateur manga expression online and in print. The value of the dōjinshi market is estimated at up to one ninth of the total value of the commercial manga market in Japan, making dōjinshi a very significant part of manga culture that cannot be neglected. Also, the particular system of dōjinshi production employed by Japanese fan authors may be an important model of publication for fanwork worldwide, making dōjinshi of particular interest to fan studies scholars.This project unlocks dōjinshi for research by manga and fan studies scholars by establishing the position of dōjinshi as a medium within Japan's contemporary system of cultural production. I describe the history and current state of the dōjinshi market, analyze it as a hybrid economy that straddles gift and market economies, and situate dōjinshi within the current trend towards "open" production of goods and services. All research data and results are published online on a dedicated website, and the final dissertation will be published in both English and Japanese to heighten accessibility for as many manga and fan studies scholars as possible.