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Jose Cruz
Joined: 20 Nov 2012
Posts: 1796
Location: South America
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Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 12:54 am
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So comiket attendance has been going down since 2013. I guess Japan's collapsing young population is to blame. People 25 to 29 years old the biggest demographic among participants of the comiket we're 7 million in 2013 now they are only 6.3 million, a 10% decline in 5 years. Japan's young population is indeed collapsing at a very fast rate.
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samuelp
Industry Insider
Joined: 25 Nov 2007
Posts: 2247
Location: San Antonio, USA
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Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 3:06 am
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Jose Cruz wrote: | So comiket attendance has been going down since 2013. I guess Japan's collapsing young population is to blame. People 25 to 29 years old the biggest demographic among participants of the comiket we're 7 million in 2013 now they are only 6.3 million, a 10% decline in 5 years. Japan's young population is indeed collapsing at a very fast rate. |
I wouldn't be so sure that's the root cause at all.
I would posit that the greater availability of doujinshi at online stores and shops immediately after the event is making it less necessary for people to attend and get the books they want.
It's also perhaps a factor of the aging population.... of circles themselves, in comparison to the audience. Comiket has a bit of a nepotism (ish) problem where circles are grandfathered in and new younger groups have a hard time getting tables, so I bet the average age of the groups is rising while the age of attendees is stable or growing more slowly.
I don't believe that an event like comiket, even with 100,000+ people a day, would show the effects of the aging population, especially when it's located in Tokyo, the one place in Japan where the population is still growing thanks to everyone moving into the city. I suspect the trend is much more specific to the event.
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S0crates
Joined: 06 Jul 2018
Posts: 227
Location: Banned - Noticed our poor ethics
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Posted: Mon Aug 13, 2018 8:18 am
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samuelp wrote: |
Jose Cruz wrote: | So comiket attendance has been going down since 2013. I guess Japan's collapsing young population is to blame. People 25 to 29 years old the biggest demographic among participants of the comiket we're 7 million in 2013 now they are only 6.3 million, a 10% decline in 5 years. Japan's young population is indeed collapsing at a very fast rate. |
I wouldn't be so sure that's the root cause at all.
I would posit that the greater availability of doujinshi at online stores and shops immediately after the event is making it less necessary for people to attend and get the books they want.
It's also perhaps a factor of the aging population.... of circles themselves, in comparison to the audience. Comiket has a bit of a nepotism (ish) problem where circles are grandfathered in and new younger groups have a hard time getting tables, so I bet the average age of the groups is rising while the age of attendees is stable or growing more slowly.
I don't believe that an event like comiket, even with 100,000+ people a day, would show the effects of the aging population, especially when it's located in Tokyo, the one place in Japan where the population is still growing thanks to everyone moving into the city. I suspect the trend is much more specific to the event. |
The availability on the web is indeed a game changer where the fandom is probably bigger than ever, but where meeting up physically to share in it has a higher degree of difficulty, as I believe people are more pressed on time these days than before.
However, if what you state is true about artists having a hard time getting room, then I'm surprised they didn't expand to 4 days earlier. This might also make it so less people stand in lines everywhere, meaning more people view it as a worthwhile experience, and as a result more people will show up in total (this is just me speculating though).
Also, foreigners might show up to these things to a greater degree than before, meaning that even if the local population goes down, the overall market probably won't. Further on, as less people are available in the work force they'll get higher salaries, at least for the working class and middle class, meaning they'd be able to afford such events. Not to mention the production chain of doujinshi has gone down and you'll be able to have more artists producing high quality art at the fraction of the cost (drawing on their pads, making corrections in photoshop, using new tools to speed up the process, etc.) meaning it would require less people to make higher quality and quantity. If you got more to show, then you'll potentially got more people attending as well.
Also, as time goes by, evolution will pick those guys and girls that genuinely want kids to a greater degree, and nature will correct itself in regards to the birth rate. There has been ups and downs in the population of countries before, for various reasons. Many old Japanese today got born as a result of the post war era, where it was "their duty to the country" to repopulate. This sense of duty is not as strong today as it was before, not to mention that in Japan's case they would probably benefit from becoming a little less people in the long run, as the isle actually doesn't have enough resources to sustain itself and they are dependent upon foreign trade for the essentials.
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