Interest
Comiket Questionnaire Implies Possible Move Westward in 2020
posted on by Eric Stimson
A recent questionnaire distributed to dōjin circles that attend Comic Market (Comiket), Japan's largest dōjinshi convention, implied that the 2020 Comiket events might move out of the Tokyo region. The question is, "If Comic Market cannot be held in the capital region due to the 2020 Olympics, would you participate if it was held in Osaka or Nagoya?" The questionnaire then allowed respondents to choose Osaka, Nagoya, both, or neither.
As the Tokyo metropolitan area is by far Japan's biggest with about 38 million inhabitants (the Kansai metropolitan area, by contrast, has 19 million), online reaction to the question was generally critical. Comiket goers complained that lodging and transport expenses would be too high for them to afford going, and claimed that facilities in Nagoya would be inadequate to handle the volume of attendees. In a poll on the Japanese pop culture blog Hachima Kikō, 1,684 of 3,463 respondents (or about 48.6%) claimed they would choose neither city. 785 people (22.7%) chose Osaka, 503 (14.5%) chose Nagoya, and 492 (14.2%) chose either.
Tokyo Big Sight
The question came as little surprise, however. Tokyo Big Sight, the convention center where Comiket is usually held, announced earlier that it would not be able to hold the convention between April 2019 and October 2020. Event spaces have been closing throughout the Tokyo area for the past decade. Tokyo Big Sight has also announced that industry booths at this summer's Comiket would close after two days (instead of the usual three) to accommodate construction work to expand the building for the upcoming Olympics.
[Via Hachima Kikō (Link 2), Kai-You]
