Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

154 SESSION II
As a major arena for Otaku culture, comiket fanzine
expositions, afford a venue for amateur Manga artists
to exhibit. Largest among these is the annual summer
and winter Comic Market expositions that rent out
the entire 230,000 square meter Tokyo International
Exhibit Center (Tokyo Big Sight) at Ariake on Tokyo
Bay, for three days each time. Each day, some 12,000
interest groups or circles change places, making
three-day total of 35,000 circles selling fanzines, with
attendees numbering upwards of 500, 000. The hall
is typically laid out during commercial trade fairs in a
virtual diagram of capitalism, with the largest booths
of high-capital enterprises in rows at the centers and
smaller booths of lesser companies relegated to the
fringes—a principle replicated throughout most
contemporary architecture and urban planning. Whereas
with the Comic Market, the spread between minor fan
groups and most major sellers might differ by a scale of
thousands, all booths are equal in size and organized
in columns by genre—spatial articulation by taste, not
capital. Those circles expecting large number of
visitors are placed in separate birthday seat blocks so
their queues will not interfere with other booths, with
major visitor-drawing circles situated along the walls
and the very biggest by delivery shutter-doors so the
queues can wrap around the outside of the hall. Thus,
while nominally a market, the Comic Market is laid out
according to different spatial principles. Here, icons
and fanzines function as community currency.
Kombini
Be it Lawson, Family Mart, Sunkus, 7-Eleven, AM/
PM, or Cico Mart, any Japanese convenience store or
Kombini offers a fine selection of Manga, toys and video
games. Best of all, most locations are open twenty-four
hours a day, which means Otaku can pursue their hobby
or addiction around the clock. Along with the usual
weekly and monthly Manga periodicals, there are entire
lines of graphic novel collections distributed exclusively
in kombini. Wide selection of figyo can be found on
the display shelves from companies like Konami and
Kaiyodo. For as cheap as a 100 yen coin, one can buy a
shokugan [candy toy] and score a high-quality collectible
figure along with a tasty treat. Near the cash register,
a behind-the-counter selection of the latest videogame,
CD and DVD releases is temptingly available.
Otaku Global Phenomenon
Since the 1990’s, this peculiar subculture of Manga,
Anime and computer games spread with other Japanese
popular culture to Europe, America and East Asia. Other
countries have had their own homegrown cartoon,
animation and game fanatics, but when referring to
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows
those who favor Japanese subcultural genres it was only
natural that they too used the Japanese word Otaku.
Still, differences do exist. In Korea for instance, there
are Korean Otaku who are into Japanese, American and
European subculture and who belong to the generation
that are now the prime movers of society. These many
different Otaku make powerful use of on-line networking,
particularly via the internet.
In America where the internet first took hold, Otaku
where meeting on the net from the 1980’s. In Korea,
Otaku began on-line email networking in earnest from
around 1987-88. Likewise in Japan, Otaku began frequenting
the net from the email times, and now an
ever-expanding of worldwide internet-based Otaku
activities. Yet in Japan, even without resorting to the
internet, magazines, television programming and theater
are readily accessible everywhere; almost every medium
commercial to word-of-mouth feeds the Japanese a
steady diet of information unimaginable to foreigners
elsewhere. For however diligently the average person in
Korea or the West might seek, information from Japan
is limited.
Very likely these tendencies are not isolated to Korea.
As the internet spreads ever further around the world,
such phenomena are occurring everywhere. The online
community is definitely bringing major changes to Otaku
worldwide. And in different ways than networking has
changed non-Otaku. Just what changes lie ahead is
hard to say; the only certainty is the rate of evolution
is not slowing down.
Otaku Impact on Anime Domestic Market
A scientific survey conducted by Nomura Research
Institute, Ltd. on the market scale and actual conditions
of the Japanese enthusiasts consumer group or Otaku
showed the staggering impact of their unique consumption
behavior in five major fields: animation, comics, games,
idols and PC assembly (Table 3).
The survey showed that consumer spending for these
five fields among Otaku, which is now estimated to be
2.85 million, has reached approximately ¥290 billion.
The market scale for the overall industry in the four fields
related to content (animation, idols, comics, games) is
approximately ¥2.3 trillion, of which the share of enthusiast
consumers stood at 11% in terms of monetary amount.
The enthusiast consumer group’s impact on the market as
a whole and its scale of consumption are such that this
group can no longer be dismissed as simply hobby-induced.
Indeed, the impact of Otaku’s enormous buying
power within the domestic market is highly significant.