Doujinshi

The doujinshi collection of Yoshihiro Yonezawa, manga critic and co-founder of Comiket, was donated to Meiji University, his former university. The university is converting a seven-storey building to house Yonezawa's collection and that of Tsuguo Iwata, another prominent doujinshika, as the Yoshihiro Yonezawa Memorial Library of Manga and Subcultures.

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topComic Market, or Comiket, is the world's largest comic convention. Currently Comiket is held twice a year, first in mid-August then late December, at the Tokyo Big Sight. Comiket 72 took place from August 17th - 19th. According to Mantan Web, over 170,000 fans attended Comiket 72 on day 1, 40,000 more than during Comiket 71 last December. The next Comiket, C74, will take place from August 15th to 17th.

Comiket is a place where doujin artists and groups gather and sell their works. While many groups hardly make any profit, Comiket is the place where they would try and make a name for themselves. Many of today's popular artists and groups began their career at Comiket. From Saimon Fumi to Rumoki Takahashi, or the mega-popular CLAMP, they all attended Comiket in the early days of their career. Some doujin groups, like Type-Moon, became so popular and made enough money to go professional.

Comiket began in 1975, and gradually grew into the world's biggest comic convention. In the last few years, each day of the convention saw an overall attendance of over 100,000, and C66 saw a total attendance of 510,000.

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Web-based company hopes to bridge gaps between fans across the world by presenting rare goods in a humorous and amusing manner.

TOKYO, JAPAN – July 24th, 2008 – Tokyogetter.com is pleased to announce the launch of our new dedicated web-store and US office. The establishment of this new E-commerce system will deliver goods into the hands of fans the world over with maximum speed and minimal hassle, all thanks to our new stateside distribution and fulfillment center. Yes, we're back in the USA!

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According to Canned Dogs, artist Ishii Meguru was arrested in Yokohama for committing "indecent acts with a 15 year old girl through November and December last year for a total of 4 times.":

The article reports that Ishii Meguru was an artist for the novelized version of Higurashi no naku koro ni (though he only did some art for Ichijinsha's novel anthologies, the artist for the official higurashi novels is Tomohi), and that he was also popular among fans of gothic lolita.

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HERNDON, VA - April 14, 2008 - DLSite.com today announced their recently added affiliate program. If you own a website, start earning some points and get some free products from DLSite.com!

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From IGN comes an article that looks at Japan's current independent manga scene:

The doujinshi market has gotten big enough in recent years that it serves as a sort of "minor league" for the professional manga ranks. Many well-known creators nowadays got their start doing amateur productions.