The Eastern Edge

I had some very interesting comments from readers - all of whom I thank very much for sharing their thoughts - about the Japanese weeklies and the industry in general.
Obviously you're going to get various reactions when you state that an up-to-now successful status quo has now got a choke hold on creativity - especially when you're talking to fans – but it’s really interesting to see what people think.

I think that the current serial formats, especially the weeklies, and the lack of collaboration among creators is slowly choking the life out of Japanese comics. What I wrote previously and the comments from readers who were kind enough to share their thoughts are here
and here and here. Please check those out - especially the comments.

I agree that there are still some great weeklies and the format isn't going anywhere yet, especially not as long as the successful ones continue and creators feel that they need to release content on a regular basis to stay relevant in the minds of a fickle, and increasingly fragmented fan base.
Whether the weekly serial format is the problem or not may be debatable (I still think it’s a major problem because only a few creators can really do it well and do it consistently), but there is no debating the fact that the Japanese comics industry overall has seen its sales decline for over a decade with no end in sight. Yes, I realize that Weekly Shonen Jump's circulation increased slightly last year, but it's by far the biggest and boasts cross-over mega hits like One Piece. Jump is the exception to the rule, and even it only saw a small increase and remains well below the circulation numbers of the 80’s glory days.

Comics are still in trouble over here and I think fans and creators alike need to talk about what the problems might be, not pretend it’s not happening, cry about it, or get defiant and retract into ever more insular otaku turtle shells and wait for the second coming of Tezuka to usher in a new golden age of manga. The comics industry must win back the readers they alienated when they started making comics more for themselves and the nerdy sub-groups they identify with, and less for regular people. Like I mentioned before, I think comics need to broaden their appeal like Nintendo has done with games. There's nothing wrong with catering to hardcore fans, but they alone cannot sustain the industry. It’s time to start looking outside Akihabara and "otaku" and ask regular people what comics they read and why.

Almost all of my Japanese friends currently read at least one comic. That sounds promising until you also learn that not one of them follows the serial. This is just my own little survey, but I asked a bunch of friends who are currently reading an ongoing comic, or have read a comic in the last few years that was serialized at the time they were reading it, if they followed the serials. The serials were 0 for 40! Another thing my friends have in common is they are not considered "comic fans" and they are far from being anything close to "otaku". In fact all of them (except one!) would be offended at the term "otaku" being used to describe them. They are "normal" readers who just enjoy a good story. Most of them also used to read more comics than they do now, and none of them - yes, that's zero again! - learned about the comics they do currently read by picking up the serial anthologies. They are the type of reader the industry seems to have forgotten about while they continue to desperately fight for a larger piece of the dwindling, and ever weirder, hardcore fringe.

Part of the reason, as I mentioned before when I wrote that creators should have a life instead of 24/7 comics to meet a weekly deadline, is that too many comic creators are in their own little world and have lost touch with the rest of us. Creators and publishers don't just cater to the fringe, they are the fringe and they seem to think that they have to be the hardest of the hardcore to survive.
The gaming industry was plagued by the same type of thinking until Nintendo slapped everyone around by showing us all that you can make games for non-gamers and they're good they will sell like crazy. We learned that it wasn't that non-gamers didn't like games; it was just that there weren't many that appealed to them. I think the same goes for comics. There will always be a hardcore fan base, and that’s all well and good. But it's the so-called "cross-over hits" that make the money and ensure that the self-indulgent nerdy stuff gets made too. Nerds will call it a sell out, but if you don't branch out you risk going bust. When that happens no one gets what they want.

The nerdier and more insular you get, the less likely you'll be able to create something with broad appeal. That makes the industry even more fragmented and will cause readership to continue to fall, major hit titles become fewer and farther between, and the door is opened for the Third Horsemen of the Apocalypse; "Famine". There just won't be anything big left.
It's time to take the milk from the cash cows now, while they are still producing, and do something with it other than just make more nerd cheese!

It doesn't matter how many teenage girl "ambassadors" the Japanese government dresses up in bunny ears, school uniforms, or creepy goth-loli costumes and sends overseas, the industry will live and die on quality content with wide appeal, not fad and fetish. Japan has to quit looking deeper inward for new ideas and start looking around and thinking in new ways. That's why I think Japan needs more collaboration. I think creators need outlets to focus on their strengths, hone their craft and learn the industry without their careers hanging in the balance right from the get go. You shouldn't have to serve time as an uncredited slave at another artists' studio just to get experience, or have to have your own comic idea and be able to do it all yourself in order to launch your career. Creator should get together more and brainstorm, experiment, and do joint and collective projects. I think that will open the floodgates and a ton of suppressed, pent up creativity and innovation will just pour out. That's one reason I will never be fully against publisher owned properties, like the Marvel and DC model. They offer creators a chance to showcase their skills, try new things, get full credit for their work and get paid for it. It doesn't matter if you don't hold the copyrights to everything you do, sometimes it's worth it to do work for hire, get experience, get exposure, and most of all get paid so you can afford to keep on creating!
Having said that, though, I do not think Japan should go to the American publisher owned superhero model necessarily. Superheroes won't save Japanese comics, but alternative platforms to work from might be all some creators need and I think it would improve the overall quality and originality of Japanese comics.

Maybe more groups similar to CLAMP is the answer? They came from outside the industry and were never assistants to published creators. CLAMP members focus on their strengths, collaborate, and create together. Maybe that's the answer. I’m surprised that more young creators aren't trying that model, but I’m not at all surprised that it has taken independent female creators to give us a glimpse of what an alternative Japanese creative collective might look like. Women have been leaders in creative endeavors in Japan ever since Heian times. While the upper-class men of the era compared literary penis sizes with each other by writing pompous showoff pieces in Chinese, the women, whom not much was expected of, wrote Japanese phonetically. Women of the Heian courts didn't have to impress anyone with how many Chinese characters they could write and were free to write how they felt. The result was that the women of the era produced the most beautifully poetic and historically important writing Japan has ever known - including some of the only literature using pure Japanese vocabulary instead of the Kango (Sino-Japanese language) that was so prevalent in the upper classes at the time. (Incidentally, many Japanese today have trouble communicating without using foreign loan words, and most couldn’t complete a sentence without using Sino-Japanese vocabulary).

The problem with collaboration, I think, is that putting a bunch of creators in a room together, male or female, won't change the social structure of Japan. Here there is still a very ridged top-down societal hierarchy, which in comics terms means that creators are called "sensei", assistants get little pay and no credit for their work, and social etiquette, customs, bureaucracy and red tape are so intrusive that most established creators can only get together professionally at arms length, if at all. Underlings rarely dare to express ideas even if they are encouraged to do so. CLAMP creators are different because they came from the independent scene and were never assistants on the sweatshop assembly line of another creator. But CLAMP’s success should at least hint at other possibilities for people. There should be more groups of a similar structure in the mainstream backed up by industry resources, organizational muscle and a little cash, where creators can pool their talents to create new things in new ways.

While I would personally like to see more international team-ups in Japan, too, creators don't have to team up with Stan Lee to collaborate. Even without international collaboration, all it'll take is a few successful mainstream creators to go maverick and unCLAMP themselves from the status quo to show everyone that there are other ways to make comics and other formats they can be successful in. If the big companies were smart they would start experimenting now before creators take it upon themselves and while they still have the money and resources to do so. Someone’s got to at least try and be the next Nintendo, or get the next CLAMP under their wing, otherwise they’ll all continue their downward slide together.

This is going to sound nutty, but what if, for example, Disney, with all their resources and muscle, can dream up a way to make Marvel a force in Japan? I bet many manga fans are snickering at the thought and wondering what I’ve been smoking, but just try and entertain the thought. Imagine the ramifications, because it’s not that far fetched. Who would have thought a few years ago that the iPod could come to Japan and immediately make Sony’s Walkman it’s bitch, or that the iPhone would become one of the top and still fastest growing mobile smart phones in the ultra high-tech and brutally competitive Japanese cell phone market where all other foreign products failed? Most Japanese didn’t thik so. (Sony sure as hell didn’t!)

On the flipside, I doubt very many people foresaw the sudden and massive impact that Japanese comics and cartoons would have overseas in the last decade, either.
What I'm trying to say is that if Japanese comic publishers keep running on hamster wheels at home, who’s to say they aren’t the next ones in line to be slapped around by a foreign competitor like Apple, or by an innovative domestic one like Nintendo, who has new ideas that capture the attention of the average consumer? Is it really that hard to imagine that the comics establishment may become vulnerable in the near future too?

Whatever happens, comics will change in Japan sooner or later. And just like with literature so long ago, don't be surprised if women lead the way again, too!