Bullet Points:

• Japanese manga sales slip another 2.3% in 2007, but
• the medium is gaining currency as a tool of Soft Power diplomacy
• …and increased academic and scholarly attention.

Numbers first–

We’ll begin with My Usual Complaint: sources are hard to come by. It’s not that market research isn’t being done; oh no, it’s that if you want it you’ll have to pay for it. Would anyone care to lend me £1000? Too much? How about a mere $250? or maybe ¥12,000?

As fans we don’t need 80 page reports breaking down the industry into gorgeous full colour charts and lovely listy tables of numbers and yen — just the top line number and 20 second soundbite is fine. (That isn’t to say that I wouldn’t mind seeing a free report on this topic from one of the Japanese ministries — but until that eventuality I’m still not going to spend money on it) As I’ve discovered in the past, if all you need is a big-picture-number then you can often find it in the sales pitch; unfortunately in this case, the sales pitch is in Japanese:

雑誌の出版傾向
コミック
販売金額は2.3％減の4,699億円

From that ¥12,000 report linked above — the Research Institute for Publications helpfully provides a table of contents [Google translation] and about 5/8 of the way down there is our hidden gem

– If like me you don’t happen to read Japanese, it’s telling us that for 2007, sales of manga dipped 2.3% to a mere 469 billion yen.

About 4.5 billion dollars.

Manga sales dropped and are now only 4.5 billion dollars.

Damn.

That’s a lot of manga.

Actually, what the Japanese above (via Google Translation) is telling us is that “magazine comics” dropped, but jiving this report with numbers previously released for 2006 (481 billion yen), I think we can see that it encompasses all the manga and not just weekly/monthly anthologies. That, and someone who actually does read Japanese needs to tell Google trans. that ichioku ≠ a billion, so their decimal is in the wrong place.

##

Things look bleak; in fact, sales have been down for a few years now. Manga sales may be down in the home islands, but that doesn’t really mean a whole lot these days; oh, sure, continuous loses over the next 10 or 15 years will eventually change business models, and as a fan of course I hope that things turn around in 2-3 years rather than a decade or two from now, but manga is so much more than anthologies and collections these days: manga and anime are a lifestyle, a hobby, a passion — and increasingly, a foreign policy (we’ll get to that after an aside).

Aside: for the record, I think manga sales in Japan will continue to drop by ~5% a year until digital distribution becomes more than just a novelty, and is instead firmly established as the ‘third format’ — which will happen in Japan where the weekly/monthly ‘phone books’ are already largely considered to be disposable/recyclable media (and where everyone has a super-awesome cell phone that not only displays manga but also, in a pinch, can open an exploding Gate and be thrown at invading aliens) but not in the States where the nearest equivalent to the throw-away manga magazines are instead polybagged (don’t forget a cardboard backer) and sold at significant mark-up on e-bay — these are two completely different business models, folks, so unfortunately, no digital superheroes for you.

But back to:
Manga Diplomacy

Even without the direct advocacy of former Foreign Affairs Minister (and Prime Minister candidate) Taro Aso, the use of Japan’s collective artistic output as a means to change world opinion and policy continues unabated:

There is of course the new award program that Aso pioneered: the International Manga Award, which is already entering it’s second year. (…and here are the winners from year one, in case you didn’t already know). Aso was (in this respect, anyway) a freakin’ genius and the whole world may be poorer for his loss in the Japanese elections. I’d like to put him forward as a candidate for UN General Secretary; here’s his landmark speech to a bunch of creative professionals — you tell me: do we want leaders who bomb 3rd world countries from the neolithic even further back into the paleolithic merely because of guilt-by-association, or do we want the sort of folks who will spend government money to develop the next Hayao Miyazaki?

Peace through universal addiction to anime. makes that ‘mutually assured annihilation’ bit from the last century look like a steaming load of crap.

It’s a shame we have a frustrated wannabe Baseball Commissioner as [*cough*][quote]leader of the free world[unquote] instead of a Japanese otaku. A Damn Shame. * The official Comicsnob stance is apolitical: we just want more great comics …provided we can purchase them freely at periodic intervals at the corner store and don’t have to fight off hordes of radioactive mutant reactionist religious zealot zombies, or hold one the few remaining comic/bookstores like a medieval feifdom against all comers. I mean, we could, but that’s a lot of work and I don’t think we’d get a whole lot of new releases that way.

More from the grand glorious New Otaku Order:
Robot Cat from the future named as Japanese Ambassador… oh sure, I sound like a raving fanboy when I say it; but hey, if it was picked up by Fox it must be news, right? If NPR is your news organ of choice, then this choice piece from September might be more to the point [click on the mp3 at the link]. Manga and anime are the new weapons of mass distraction, and a lot of us are ready to be bombarded.

Roland Kelts, the guy interviewed in the NPR spot above, has both a web site for his book and a blog. Roland appears to be NPR’s go-to guy for anything Japanese, as recent reporting on the new ‘Speed Racer’ movie shows.

There hasn’t been a whole lot of analysis so far, and hell, I don’t feel like braking now; but before I resort to ripping off the Web-Japan.org site wholesale, however, I’ll toss in one more link:

Remember texting? Have you thought of the added complexity of texting in Hiragana? Have you thought of the complexity-squared of writing a whole damn novel that way? While you enjoy the latest episode of Dancing With The Stars, I hope you realise that we’ve already lost the culture wars.

And I’m learning Japanese just as fast as I can. The 21st century is an ‘American’ century just as much as the 20th was the ‘British’ century. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Next up: The 2007 Year-in-Review continues with financials and ARs and even more snark. But first:

ripping off web-japan.org:

EXPLORING THE HISTORY OF MANGA
Kyoto Museum Shares Comic Culture with the World
(January 22, 2007)
http://web-japan.org/trends/07_culture/pop070122.html

LIGHT READING
Comic-Like Novels Are All the Rage
(February 28, 2007)
http://web-japan.org/trends/07_culture/pop070228.html

SHOWCASING JAPANESE POP CULTURE
Japan International Contents Festival Set to Open
(August 31, 2007)
http://web-japan.org/trends/07_culture/pop070831.html

COMIC CORNUCOPIA
World’s Largest Comic Convention Opens Its Doors
(October 4, 2007)
http://web-japan.org/trends/07_culture/pop071003.html

WELCOME TO OTAKU TOWN
From Maid Cafes to Canned Noodles, Akihabara Is Where It’s At
(January 8, 2008)
http://web-japan.org/trends/07_culture/pop080108.html

ANIME GOES ACADEMIC
Universities Launch Animation Courses
(February 6, 2008)
yeah… not 2007, but included
http://web-japan.org/trends/07_culture/pop080206.html

but wait, there’s more

VIRTUAL SINGER TOPS THE CHARTS
Hatsune Miku Is Latest in Voice Synthesis Software
(December 21, 2007)
http://web-japan.org/trends/07_sci-tech/sci071220.html