Comicate Hell

-Jeanne

The time has come, the Walrus said, to talk of-- Comicate. Ah, Comicate. Jean and Mary told me all the Comicate horror stories- the line-up from daybreak to get in to the sale, the 60 minute line-ups to look at popular circles' zines, the 90 minute lineups to use the washroom. As if that wasn't enough, the line- up ordeal followed another feat of endurance- camping out overnight so as to secure a reasonable spot in the lineup at daybreak. (Day breaks at 4:30 am for the summer sale.) There's a treatise waiting to be written about lineups and the Japanese fan. They take it to lengths which seem to us insane, like lining up for a week, night and day, to get a good seat to see a singer they've seen hundreds of times before. (Well, actually, five or six of them take turns lining up, but even so. This isn't for the Stones' once a decade tour, it's for someone who tours six times a year.)

Even when Comicate was at Harumi it was necessary to camp out on the grounds the night before. In summer one could sleep in a nearby park, but in winter they put the campers in an unused (and of course, unheated) building at the site. Jean and Mary sat huddled in sleeping bags, clutching cans of vending machine coffee, among the Japanese who somehow thought nothing of sitting out all night in dresses and stockings and coats with maybe a piece of cardboard between themselves and the concrete, complaining of the cold. Jean and Mary of course had come down to the site a day or two in advance and secured a coin locker or three in which to stash stuff after- deposit the $3, take the key and keep it. (Do this at a railway station and you'll find next day that you must deposit another $3 to make your key work, but Harumi is lax.) Even with sleeping bags and pocket hand warmers the nights were uncomfortable, and were made more so by the persistent anxious rumours floating amongst the campers. Camping overnight is discouraged by the Comicate officials, and there were always stories that this time the campers would be let into the sale last, after all the early morning arrivals. This would mean not merely a noon hour entry, but more importantly that all the major June groups would have sold out their new publication hours before. Myself, I never quite saw what the big deal was with the June dj's, but I was insistently told that certain groups only sold at Comicate, and if you missed the winter 'shinkan' (new edition) you'd have to wait until August to get it. "Why bother to buy them if they're gonna be so exclusive?" I said sensibly, and was told I didn't understand these things. Perhaps not. The hardest part of Comicate for me was the frenzied 'gotta have it gotta have it' atmosphere- the true fannish obsession. Didn't help that all the most popular circles were ones with what I thought was immensely indifferent artwork.

Then after the camp-out, you got to line up from 6 a.m., about the time the earliest train and bus arrivals came, and stay lined up in winter rain or summer sun until the thing opened at 10, and then move slowly- very slowly- as the lines were funneled in. Lucky me, I never had to do any of this.

By the time of my first Comicate, Mary was working at Comic Box Jr and needed assistant buyers. Used to be the staff alone could work a Comicate, scanning the new stuff and doing 'aisatsu' (literally, greetings: going around to the groups you'd dealt with, saying hello, schmoozing, saying 'Please consider us favourably in future' and trusting they'd give you their dj free.) But by the mid-90's not only was Comicate growing like a mushroom, but a horde of publishing companies had seen the money to be made in doing dj anthologies and had their buyers out scouting good stories as well. Reinforcements were needed, and Jean and I were it. Buying for CB had the definite plus of getting you in on a press pass. Press passes let you jump the queue for the ten o'clock opening. You go the head of the line, wave your pass and walk on into the site. For my first Comicate there weren't enough press passes for staff and special assistants, so Mary went one better and got us circle passes.

The circle passes are for the groups who sell at Comicate and mean you get into the site and the buildings before 9. That is, you must be in the site by 9 and inside your building, setting up your table. After nine circle members not on site have to wait outside the gates with the press types. There's always a mad dash just around nine, women jumping off the buses and running for the gates dragging their carriers. (How to tell a circle member: aluminum carrier with two or three cardboard boxes strapped to it with bungie cord. Major circles with seven djs for sale have theirs delivered to the site by that peerless Japanese institution, the home delivery services. Forget micro-circuitry; the pearl of Japanese civilization is the delivery company. It's how people live without cars.) At nine they also lock the doors of each building, so if you're not inside you find yourself waiting outside the building- but you're still on the site and ahead of the line-ups.

The circle passes came courtesy of Chris Swett, a U.S.Navy type who draws doujinshi. The Comicate organizers put him on the Comicate board as the token gaijin, and he wangled passes for a number of gaijin who'd come to Tokyo especially to go to Comicate. Chris argued that people who've come from New Jersey shouldn't have to line up for twelve hours in the blistering heat, and the organizers agreed. We met Chris early in the morning at the nearby Hotel Urashima. It was the record-breaking August of 1994 and the air was hot, heavy and unmoving even at 8 am. Chris went to get our passes from the main building and came back much much later, muttering something about being a salmon swimming upstream. We saw what he meant when we headed to the site. I thought I'd seen crowds in Tokyo: I used to commute in rush hour and I'd been in Shinjuku Station when it must have held at least a million of those six million Tokyoites that pass through it every day; but this concentrated one-direction movement was new to me. No wonder it took Chris half an hour to go half a block and come back.

The crowds were headed for the lineup area at the back of the site. We went through the front gate in elite isolation, meaning only about fifty people went with us. As an object lesson, Chris took us to view the back of the site: half a football field covered with people standing in patient lines under a blistering grey sky, like an illustration for Dante's Inferno. Shuddering, we went to put together shopping lists for circles Mary wanted. Mary herself of course was doing 'aisatsu' all morning. Jean and I would grab the first June shinkan for her, grab the shinkan in our own fields, and then rather more leisurely, complete our Comic Box shopping. I believe we were part of the team covering YuuYuuHakusho. It took a team in those days: YuuYuu had its own building.

Then there was the nerve-wracking wait inside the building for Comicate to start. It's nerve-wracking because in theory you're part of a circle and should be setting up your table, but half the people there were like me: waiting to get first crack at the limited June djs. Comicate staff patrol the buildings, especially the June building, breaking up the vaguely milling crowds that hover casually near the major circle tables. 'Please return to your tables.' 'Please return to your tables.' The mob disperses here and there, comes back when the staff has gone, and then repeats the whole performance again a few minutes later when the next patrol comes around. Then the loudspeaker announces Comicate is open. There's a shriek and the mob descends on the table- not to buy, but to get into line. And yes, you can be on the spot in front of the table and still find yourself fortieth in line. I did. The much-put-upon Comicate staff herded us out of the way- the line was pushed six feet back of the table, snaked out the door and wound about itself in the parking lot outside. A sheet of cardboard was passed back from the front, listing the djs for sale and the prices, to save time when the buyers got to the front. Then there was only to wait one's turn.

As mob scenes go, it was quite orderly and polite once we'd actually got ourselves into line. No pushing, no mutters of 'Move it, already.' I'd hate to have to do anything like this anywhere but in Japan. The Japanese think inconvenience and discomfort is so ordinary as not to merit comment. Just as Inuit is supposed (mistakenly, alas) to have thirty words for snow, so the Japanese language distinguishes amongst different varieties of patience. Most common is 'gaman', stick-to-it-iveness and hanging in there exercised over a long period, and 'shinbou', short-term patience exercised under excruciating conditions. Comicate requires both.

As illustration of which, there was the long and as far as I could see unmoving line that stood in the middle of the main Harumi thoroughfare under the August sun that emerged around 11 am to fry us all. It was virtually all-male. I asked Jean who they were. 'They're the guys waiting to get into Etchi-kan.' ('Dirty building' where the guy circles sell.) First day Comicate is 90% female. The guys' stuff was all in one (small) building, and the wait just to get in was said to be several hours. The guys waited, in shifts sometimes; but they waited. Tough on them, but I preferred the arrangement to the one that was later adopted, that put all circles together by genre no matter who drew them. Hence the female Sailor Moon djs were in with the otaku SM djs, and getting to them involved close encounters with large, sweaty, undeodoranted male bodies. This is not fun. The crush at Comicate isn't as bad as the average rush hour commute, but it lasts a lot longer. And if rush hour provides the kind of contact you've only had previously with lovers, at least you're doing it with clean-shirted office workers, and neither you nor they are trying to move as you ride your sardine packed train. (It can actually be quite pleasant, believe it or not.) It's the random stop and start nature of the Comicate crowds that makes them so difficult: you're always squeezing through a semi-moving mob. At winter Comicate you're advised to wear a nylon jacket or something like that, that slides easily; sweat performs the same function in the summer. Not an experience for the fastidious, the claustrophobic, or the impatient.

One hears that all this has changed at the new Ariake facility which is in one building. Well, changed more or less. The first Comicate there saw twenty minute bottlenecks getting from level to level and an air conditioning system not equipped to handle the mobs, so the organizers turned it off. Also, in the wake of the Sarin scare eighteen months previous, no lockers in use, just in case someone left poison gas in one of them. But apparently there are enough washrooms, so that what Mary's co- worker Miyoshi dubbed 'the most popular circle' no longer requires 90 minutes to get to.

Comicate is an institution, and I suppose it's worth going to once for that reason. The circles there are admitted by lottery, and there are many circles who only come to Comicate: this is especially true of circles doing older series. You can't find these dj anywhere else. Also, Comicate is an all-volunteer event, in contrast to Comic City, which is for profit and shows it. One Comicate catalogue gets you in on both days (and weighs five pounds.) Comic City charges separate admission on both days of its Super Comic City May sales. But if I may put forth a minority opinion, I preferred Comic City. It's a comic sale, not an endurance event. I could shop in comfort after a short lineup, and it was always a manageable size. Comicate is now simply too big for one person to cover in one day. There are too many people buying, and the quality of what's sold I found to be lower than the Comic City offerings. The circles pay a lot for Comic City tables, so in general only those who know they'll be selling bother to come. Well, my five cents, for what it's worth. That's Comicate, and I'm happier than I can say that I no longer have to do it.