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The popularity of Japanese comics or better known as manga had reach worldwide. The production of the manga had also led to the creation of derivative products such as animated series and doujinshi. However, most readers outside Japan accessed these media in a translated format that is published independently from the original publisher. As such, many of the readers might not know the distribution system of the original media. In this paper, we discussed the distribution of manga and doujinshi in Japan. These include discussions regarding the general overview of the manga industry, the different types of published manga and doujinshi, as well as their distribution system. Lastly, this paper also discussed briefly what is the unique characteristic of the Japanese manga and doujinshi industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how changes in the social environment of print media have affected the history of the Japanese publishing industry in the postwar period. Data on the circulation of books, magazines, and newspapers are analysed on a population basis. The results of these analyses show that per-capita circulation of these media increased almost monotonically until the 1980s, but then began to decrease after peaking in the 1990s. After conducting statistical correlation analyses, we conclude that per-capita circulation was affected by economic trends indicated by the GDP growth rate. Our analyses also show a positive correlation between the pace of change in per-capita book and magazine circulation, and this reciprocal relationship is investigated in detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]