Week 3 - Doujin Highlight: Touhou Project

In the "Cosplay and Otakudom: The Draw of DIY" chapter of Japanamerica, Kelts describes his friend Levy's take on "anmoku-no-ryoukai". The first thing that came to mind was Touhou. One cannot write about the history of doujinshi without mentioning Touhou.

Sometime in high school I was exposed to the Touhou game, "Perfect Cherry Blossom". It was a single player shoot 'em up that made any western 2D shooter of the day look like a joke in terms of difficulty. While I was never able to master the game, I immensely appreciated its complexity and started investigating its background. From my pre-Wikipedia research, I learned about the history of Junya Outa, the one-man developer of the Touhou Project series of doujin games under the handle of "ZUN". What struck me the most about ZUN was the way he handled derivations of his works. While all character designs, artwork, and even sound track was entirely his, he encouraged and embraced the fan community that rose up around the Touhou phenomena. In the meanwhile, he refused to monetize the popularity of his works. All he asked for was attribution.

Had ZUN decided to actively hunt down copyright infringers like most American game developers do, while he could have made a bit more money, his works would never have become anyhow as popular as they are today. Instead, by adopting a doujin-endorsing policy, ZUN was able to reach a far greater audience of both consumers and producers. His one-man Touhou efforts have inspired a massive doujin community encompassing writers, artists, musicians, and even game developers such as myself. What started off as a single stall at Comiket in 1997 (ZUN's) turned into over a thousand doujin circles in current years as well as the annual Hakurei Shrine Reitaisai doujin convention which mostly features Touhou circles.

~Philip Peng