Doujinshi self-publishing a growing billion-dollar market in Japan

While often associated with manga and fan fiction, the market also includes novels, poems and photo books.

- Walter Sim

TOKYO - Coffee barista Misato Kashida, 42, sells medium dark-roast coffee by day. But she has an alter ego as Kikuichi, a prolific cosplayer who takes on different personas, from an assassin coolly walking away from a cinematic explosion, to a picture of refined elegance as she trails behind an abbot, to a cyberpunk chick sporting a fierce gaze.

Her personas have appeared in at least 160 volumes of photo books, which she has self-published since she was 17. I do a double take, half in disbelief, that these were images of the same person, let alone the quiet individual sitting before me. Her photo books are examples of doujinshi - a term that uses the kanji characters for "people of the same mind" and "publication" and broadly describes books from Japan's indie publishing underground.

She tells me: "This creative process is a distinctly Japanese way for individuals with niche interests to connect in person."

While often associated with manga and fan fiction, doujinshi can come in countless forms: full-length novels, essay compilations, magazines, neighbourhood guides, haiku collections (short-form Japanese poetry of 17 syllables), literary criticism, and photo books.

Doujinshi is a massive, growing market in Japan. The Yano Research Institute consultancy, in a study on Japan's thriving domestic otaku (nerd) subculture market, estimates that the doujinshi market reached an all-time high of 134.1 billion yen (S$1.17 billion) in the year ending March 2025, an 80 per cent increase from fiscal 2020. This figure equates to roughly 22 per cent of mainstream publishing revenues.

Doujinshi ranks behind only anime and oshikatsu (idol fandom) in the survey, coming ahead of indie games, cosplay and plastic models. What sets