Yes, Jeanne is going to talk about doujinshi sales. But boring stuff first. I can't talk about them until I've talked about a couple of basic facts that are central to Life in Tokyo.
1) Geography. We all know Tokyo is big and that it goes on forever but it's not the incomprehensible mess some think it is. Central Tokyo is easy to understand if you think of it as a clockface. In the centre of the clock is the Imperial Palace, which a sensible General Macarthur allowed to remain standing in the face of demands that it be torn down and turned into a public park or military headquarters. Had he not done so, Tokyo would be an incomprehensible mess, but now it has a focal point. The edge of the clockface is the Yamanote railway line. (We're not frightened of Japanese names, are we? They're really quite simple- they break down into syllables of consonant and vowel, or vowel alone, or 'n' alone. Ya-ma-no-te. Easy, huh? Except that 'kyo' 'myo' 'hyo' and 'ei' are also one syllable: To-kyo, Ei-ji, and so on. Don't worry, you get used to it.) The Yamanote describes a loose circle around the palace. Actually it's a circle that droops decidedly southward, like one of Dali's melting watches- the 6 o'clock station, Shinagawa, is a long long way from the centre while the 3 o'clock station, Tokyo Station itself, is a hop skip and a jump from the Imperial Residence. But this is all schematic, you know that.
Outside the Yamanote are the various residential wards of Tokyo, and outside the wards are different prefectures- like being in another state- Kanagawa and Saitama to the west and north, Chiba on the east. Kanagawa can be classy in places, but Saitama is simply dreary and Chiba- well, Americans have their Polish jokes and Canadians have their Newfie jokes and the French have their Belgian jokes and Tokyoites have Chiba jokes. Farmers with cow shit on their gum boots. Enough said.
Once upon a time, Tokyo consisted of the palace and the area around it and the Sumida River over to the east. The areas where most the Yamanote stations now are were farmland with little village centres. Over time the population around each of these little towns started to spread out and run into each other. Think of frying half a dozen eggs in a pan and you'll get the idea. The absorption into Tokyo happened at different times, with the eastern half of the Yamanote (stations like Kanda, Tokyo and Yurakucho all around the 3 o'clock point) being part of Tokyo centuries before the western ones like Shinjuku at 9 and Shibuya at 8. But nowadays most of the stations on the Yamanote are also terminals for the railway lines that feed the bedroom communities outside the downtown. (Sic. There *is* no downtown in Tokyo, or rather there a bunch of downtowns, for the reasons I've just described. There's inside the Yamanote and outside the Yamanote, and that's it.) The Yamanote stations are also linked to the ten or so subway lines that crisscross Tokyo in all directions. For instance, Shinjuku Station houses at least four JR lines, as well as the private Keio and Odakyu lines and the Marunouchi subway. (That's Ma-ru-no-u-chi, and calling it Maru-no-ouchi, while justified- it's one of the lines that **needs** subway packers- is incorrect.) Five minutes away is the Seibu Shinjuku railway line, and- technically in the same 'building', but four city blocks away if you're above ground- is the city-run Shinjuku line. Is anyone surprised that several million people wander through Shinjuku Station on any given weekday?
2) Transportation. Well, you can figure it yourself. Trains and subways. Buses sometimes. Cars are for the leisured rich who have nothing to do but sit in the parking lot that Tokyo's expressways turn into at the drop of a hat, breathing the diesel fumes of all the big rigs. The one thing a car lets you do is go out late at night and not have to pay for a cab. Basic fact of Tokyo life: the last train. The last train, if you're lucky, leaves at half past midnight, but the line I lived on had its 'shuden' at 12:01. After that it's the cabs and fares in the hundreds of dollars. Buses? The buses stop at ten. Or you can stay at a business hotel, or in an all-night coffee shop, until the first train leaves at 5 a.m.
3) Senpai-kohai. How the Japanese structure their acquaintances in schools, clubs, companies and anywhere but the family. It's a model of simplicity, like the Height Rule in yaoi: your senpai is the guy who was there (in the club, the school or the company) before you were. Your kohai is the guy who came after you. Doesn't matter if you can throw your senpai five times out of five in the judo club, he was there before you and consequently he owns your soul. Think drill sergeants and grunts and you'll have an idea how senpai treat their kohai. A senpai is forever. If he was ahead of you in grammar school, when you meet years later at the class reunion and you're a section manager at Mitsubishi and he's running a small three-man business, he talks down to you and you talk up to him. (And we mean *up*. All the keigo (respect language) bells and whistles. Someone told me that high school students use politer Japanese to their senpai than to their teachers, and having seen how high school students address their teachers, I'll believe it.)
Ok. End preliminary remarks. Now for the good stuff.
Comic sales.
Once upon a time, there was Comicate. (Yes, some people spell it Comiket on the grounds that it's the Japanese short form of Comic Market. But in Japanese that's Co-mi-kku Ma-a-kei-to turning into Co-mi-kei-to, so I spell it as it's pronounced.) Comicate is a twice yearly instance of mass insanity requiring, from organizers, dealers and fans alike, about the same amount of planning as goes into a small war. Has about the same number of casualties as well.
In recent years other organizations have put on other, smaller, and infinitely more civilized comic sales. The real go-getter is Comic City, which has sales in Tokyo once and sometimes twice a month and is spreading outside as well. Osaka, Kobe, Sendai, Hiroshima, Nagoya, Fukuoka- virtually every big Japanese city has a couple of Comic Cities throughout the year.
The first sale I ever went to was a Comic City at the old convention site in Harumi. I was lucky in my timing in Tokyo. Used to be all comic sales happened out in Chiba, at the aptly named Makuhare Messe- a giant soulless convention facility with nowhere nearby to spend the night and a first train that didn't get you there early enough for a good place in line. You camped at Makuhare. But one day a group of Chiba mothers inspected the offerings at Comicate, particularly the guys' rape and violence stuff, and the shit hit the fans (sic). Whether it was the rape and violence the mothers objected to, or the (gasp) naked penises, or what, I never learned, but they ran Comicate and Comic City out of town. The sales moved to Harumi in south-east Tokyo, reachable by bus from Tokyo Station if you live in the eastern end of the world. Since most people live in west Tokyo, the organizers ran buses from the 9 o'clock Shinjuku Station on comic sale days- Sundays usually, and weekends for Comicate- over to the facility.
At my first sale I met Jean and Mary at the Shinjuku station and we took one of the special buses- after letting two buses go without us so we could get a seat on the third. (Wanting to sit on a bus and waiting till you can do it is a peculiar gaijin quirk. The Japanese regard getting a seat as they regard sunny weather- pleasant when it happens but not to be expected every day.) At later larger sales waiting for Mary and Jean in Harumi, I used to watch bus after bus roll in and disgorge a black wave of (90% female) humanity. In those days I was spared the thirty minute bus ride because the subway line I lived on landed me a pleasant twenty minute walk from the convention site through an old part of town.
Because my first sale was a small one we came late- meaning 11 o'clock after the sale had started- and strolled up to the tables at the entrance, paid our 800 yen (drop the last two zeroes and you have approximate value in American money), got our catalogue and wandered in. Harumi consists of a number of separate buildings, any or all of which might be used depending on the size of the sale. East Building, West, South (with 2 floors), New (ditto), A, B, and C. This one was in East-kan (kan = building) only, but East-kan is still the size of a hangar.
We stopped to look at our catalogues to find where the stuff we wanted was. At the beginning of the catalogue is a schematic diagram of the layout of the tables with the genres named- general anime, general manga, Guys' stuff, June, original (meaning non-June), entertainment, etc. In later years there was an increasing number of gaming zines- dj based on computer games like Toshinden and Street Fighter. Then there were the individual series sections- the inevitable Captain Tsubasa and Troopers, and the current popular shows like Yuyu and my fave, Papuwa. Papuwa occupied the Asahi TV catbird seat, coming on at 7:30 on Saturday after Sailor Moon. Any show that does that is guaranteed a female audience, even though the 7:30 show is supposed to be shonen. The show that replaced Papuwa, Slam Dunk, eventually came to take up whole buildings at the major sales.
Most of the catalogue consisted of pages and pages of little squares with the section letter, section number, group name, and a little picture from their work usually showing both their style and genre. (Section letters BTW are either English or either of the Japanese phonetic alphabets, depending on location.) When you don't know a particular genre, you can look through the boxes and mark the ones that seem interesting- "I want to check out the guys at ka-45, they have a really pretty art style."
Old hands that they are, Mary and Jean simply looked in the index at the back to locate their favourite groups and marked them on the map at the front- East End Club is at A-24, Swastika is at E-19, and so on. The most popular groups are given the tables against the walls, and the very popular groups have a table by the wall next to an exit so that the lineup can go out of the building and not get (too much) in the way of the shoppers. But all these refinements were for the future. I located the Papuwa section in the catalogue, drooled at the pages and pages of familiar faces done in a multitude of art styles and leapt into the fray.
"You'll want to buy everything," Jean had warned me. "Don't. Half of it is crap that you'll wonder why the hell you bought later on." I took her advice, which is probably good, but I still regretted doing it. This was my first access to anything Papuwan outside the manga and anime, and the first time I'd ever had anything even remotely like enough of that somewhat parsimonious series. (Basara episodes run 25 or 35 pages a month. Papuwa runs 12. Dragon Ball appears weekly. Papuwa is once a month. Sailor Moon the anime ran five years. Papuwa ran one. And so on.)
But I shopped- little kid in the candy store- wandering up and down the long tables looking at zines. The comic sales allow you to browse, and for that privilege you get to pay comic sale prices. Time was, I hear, a dj would set you back 100 or 200 yen. Three years ago it was 300 or 400, 600 for really good stuff, 1000 for something out of this world. Last year it was 600 or 800 for run of the mill, 1500 or 2000 for good stuff, and some popular June groups as high as 35000 or 5000 yen. What the market will bear, and it'll bear a lot. (I'll mention now, the other way to buy is at used zine stores, but there the dj are in plastic bags and you take potluck.) The dj are laid out in piles, usually though not always with a sample copy or two on top marked 'mihon' to save wear and tear on the merchandise. Prices are sometimes attached to the mihon, sometimes posted on a sign on the table or- major groups only- on the wall back of the table. For fun, there are extra things like fan paper or buttons or sometimes soft-cloth dolls. The dealers can be 'salesgirls' (uriko- either friends of the artist or local people recruited to sell if the circle lives somewhere else) or the artists themselves. As you walk up and down, you'll notice at least half the people behind the tables doing sketches of the characters while they talk to friends and fans.
Oh yes, the dojinshi artists have fans. In droves. The side businesses at comic sales are, regularly, 1) people selling artistic equipment, 2) the home delivery companies packing boxes of doujinshi for weary buyers who aren't going to take it home on a train, thank you, and 3) flower stalls so fans can present flowers to their favourite doujinshika. (We're all ok with 'ka'? Written with the character for house, means the person who does something- mangaka is a manga artist, seijika is a politician etc.) It's not all business here. The sales are terribly social occasions, and if you're dodging buyers half the time, the other half you're navigating around a group of two or three fans-and-friends schmoozing with the artists. (You can tell the fans from the friends by the level of respect in the Japanese.)
Parenthetic word about crowds. You're allowed to push in Japan, or rather, you're allowed to apply gentle uninsistent pressure to the bodies in front of you or else no-one would ever get off a train here. Obviously, when gentle pressure is applied to you, you too must contract yourself out of the way ('move' is usually not an option.) It's highly impersonal and you get used to it almost immediately, but people with touch phobias are advised to stay out of the country. The pressure may not always be gentle- depends on how many bodies must be cleared- but it's virtually always without offence. (Possible exceptions may be made for small women trying to get by substantial and cow-like males in suits, but that's another matter.) At the comic sales, naturally, you ascertain if the bodies in front of you are browsing and buying, in which case you wait your turn; or if they're schmoozing, in which case you reach out a tentative hand towards the dj's, with your thumb uppermost and your hand raised at a slight angle from the wrist, and say 'Sumimasen'. The bodies then part like the Red Sea, with apologies. (This manoeuvre works in any crowd, incidentally.)
Well, and the inevitable question- how do the Japanese react to a round-eyed buyer? As the Japanese themselves say, case by case- ie, it depends. On them, incidentally, not on you. Some groups see the foreign face and become incapable of making correct change. Some of them are still incapable of making correct change even when you've been buying from them for three years, which is irksome. Some groups are friendly and some are piss-off, and that's the way it is. I've had great conversations in English with Yuyu groups and in Japanese with Seiya groups. There are gaijin circles that sell at Comicate- usually mixed English and Japanese zines so that the Japanese don't go into English shock. Mary Kennard is now a recognized presence- Comikku Boksu no Meari-san- having been a representative of Comic Box Jr. for the last three years.
Which brings me to my next avatar as a dj buyer- Comic Box slave, kaban-mochi (that's the briefcase carrier who accompanies the office bigwig) for Mary the Senpai of Us All. But that's another story.