1. Neojaponisme – Despite the confusing, infuriating “manifesto” this project from David Marx of Neomarxisme fame (and others) is inspiring and I will be watching it closely and hopefully contributing some time soon.

2. Sweet pictures of Meiji/Taisho era Tokyo from the National Diet Library – As a recent Tokyo convert, I am struck with a healthy dose of fake nostalgia every time I look at these. A favorite:

people hanging out in Hibiya Park, Japan’s first western-style garden/park built over what used to be part of the Imperial Palace’s moat (and right next to my workplace for another two weeks until we move… I will miss it!)

3. Anti-death penalty demonstration in Kosuge/Ayase (near Tokyo Detention Center) – A testament to how well the Justice Ministry’s policy of executing prisoners with no prior public announcement whatsoever works to suppress dissent, a 60-person protest of the death penalty was held more than a week after 3 prisoners were hanged on Aug 23 as one of former Justice Minister Nagase’s final official acts before leaving office. Pictured is an elderly woman hailing all the way from Oita prefecture in Kyushu holding a sign that says “Abolish the death penalty!”:

From Mainichi:

3 death row inmates executed

Three death row inmates were executed at Tokyo and Nagoya detention centers on Thursday, Justice Ministry officials said.

Sources close to the case identified the three as Hifumi Takezawa, 69, and Yoshio Iwamoto, 63, who had been detained at the Tokyo Detention Center, and Kozo Segawa, 60, at the Nagoya Detention Center.

The executions bring the total number of convicts who have been hanged since Justice Minister Jinen Nagase assumed the post in September last year to 10. Death row convicts are executed on orders of the justice minister.

Thursday’s executions reduced the number of death row inmates in Japan to 103. (Mainichi)

Bloomberg has a timely piece covering Japan’s death penalty policy in the context of the soon-to-be-implemented lay judge system. It gives basic background on most of what I wanted to talk about:

The country’s bar association condemned the hanging of three inmates yesterday and called for a moratorium on executions until flaws in the legal system are corrected. To curb abuses, the government plans to team citizen judges with professional jurists to rule on serious criminal cases such as murder and rape.

Under the new system, to be implemented in May 2009, six lay judges chosen at random from voter roles will sit alongside three professionals. Decisions will be determined by majority vote.

``Once lay citizens start participating in trials, the conviction rate will decline,’’ Tomonao Onizawa, councilor general at the Supreme Court, told reporters earlier this year.

Critics say the proposal, coupled with plans to let crime victims and their families petition for specific punishments, may increase the number of executions.

``Victims will be able to make emotional pleas to the court, with lay judges thrust into a role to hear the most heinous crimes,’’ said Nobuto Hosaka, secretary general of the Japanese Parliamentarian League Against the Death Penalty. ``We feel they will favor the most serious punishment.’’

Emotional Rulings

At a June 3 mock trial to test the new system, many audience members wanted the defendant, accused of dangerous driving resulting in death, to receive a longer sentence than the eight years handed down.

``We should feel emotions to some degree in judging, but we shouldn’t let emotions control the ruling,’’ said Kyoko Hamada, a 48-year-old homemaker from Matsudo city, northeast of Tokyo.

Similar systems are used in some European countries, including Germany and Norway. The use of lay judges ``assures a more open and transparent process,’’ according to Norwegian Public Prosecutor Linda Myrdal.

Instead of the proposed changes, the Justice Ministry should curb abuses that occur in police cells, where suspects may be interrogated for as long as 23 days, Menda said.

`Beatings, Intimidation’

Police tactics include ``beatings, intimidation, sleep deprivation, questioning from early morning until late at night and making the suspect stand or sit in a fixed position,’’ Amnesty International said in a July 2006 report.

The cells are ``a breeding ground for further violations’’ and drive the high conviction rate because ``forced confessions’’ are rarely ruled inadmissible, Amnesty International said in a July 2006 report.

Menda said he confessed to killing a priest and his wife in 1949 after three weeks without enough food, water or sleep. He was released in 1983 after a retrial found he had been convicted with fabricated testimony and his alibi hadn’t been considered.

At the end of July, there were 105 people on death row who had exhausted all appeals. Almost all were convicted of multiple murders, or murder with another serious crime such as rape or robbery. The most notorious is Shoko Asahara, founder of the Aum Shinrikyo cult that killed 12 people in the 1995 sarin gas attacks on the Tokyo subway.

Public Support

Ten people have been executed since Justice Minister Jinen Nagase took office in October. His predecessor, Seiken Sugiura, refused to sign execution orders during his 11-month term.

The Japan Federation of Bar Associations said systemic flaws uncovered during the appeals that led to the release of Menda and three other death-row inmates in the 1980s haven’t been fixed.

``The danger that mistaken death sentences will be handed down still exists,’’ the federation said on its Web site.

The government says public support for capital punishment justifies its use. In the most recent survey by the Cabinet Office, 81 percent of 2,048 registered voters contacted by phone supported the death penalty in ``unavoidable circumstances,’’ while 6 percent wanted it abolished. The UN says public backing is misleading because of the secrecy surrounding these cases. The Justice Ministry didn’t identify the inmates executed yesterday. Their names were reported by Kyodo News, citing ``informed sources.’’

``There is an obvious inconsistency when a state invokes public opinion on the one hand, while on the other hand deliberately withholding relevant information on the use of the death penalty from the public,’’ the UN Commission on Human Rights said in a March 2006 report.

The government doesn’t inform inmates or their families about execution dates to prevent unnecessary ``mental anguish,’’ the Ministry of Foreign Affairs said on its Web site. Critics say the policy is inhumane and designed to suppress protests. For death-row inmates, it means each knock on the cell door may be the call to execution.

``Nothing has changed since the time I was arrested,’’ Menda said.

No time to outline my thoughts now, but I just want to say that Japan’s death penalty system makes me sick to my stomach, and not just because the prisoners are killed right near my house. It is really scary that the final decision of when and if these prisoners die lies solely in the hands of a political appointee (usually an elected official but not necessarily) who goes through no official vetting process, and on top of that no prior warning is given to the public, victims, or the convict or his or her family. You can debate the morality of killing criminals or the particulars of the legal process, but this absolute bare minimum of human dignity and open government could be easily rectified.

I live in Ayase, a nice little suburb on the Tokyo city limits of Adachi-ku. It is not a very well known area (neighboring Kameari is famous for the anime “Kochikame“), save for crime-related issues. First, Tokyo Detention Center is a 10 minute walk from the station. It is the successor institution to the now-closed Sugamo Prison and has hosted a cavalcade of famous prisoners, recently the fallen star and former Livedoor president Takafumi Horie and Aum Supreme Truth cult leader Shoko Asahara (who recently ran out of appeals in his death penalty case).

Also, some famously heinous crimes have taken place here:
1. A man who was convicted with a suspended sentence in Hokkaido for imprisoning a 20-year-old woman for two weeks in his home in 2001 repeated his crime in 2004 when he lured an 18-year-old Hyogo Prefecture woman he met in a chat room into his apartment in Ayase. Just as he had done in the first incident, he used a dog collar to keep the woman under wraps. She escaped after 3 months but has suffered from PTSD ever since. The man was not arrested until May 2005 (Wikipedia seems to suggest that he was able to claim psychological troubles to avoid arrest, perhaps due to being from a prominent Aomori prefecture family), at which time more than 1,000 “human pet” themed adult video games were confiscated from his apartment. I first heard about this when apartment hunting because a room was open in the same building where the crime took place. We ended up not taking it partly for the creepiness factor but mainly because it was too expensive considering its distance from the station.

2. In 1989, a group of at least 6 young men (4 of whom were successfully prosecuted; all were between 16 and 18, under the age of majority in Japan of 20) imprisoned a 19-year-old high school girl in one of the boy’s homes (located in Ayase) for 41 days, raping and abusing her until she finally died. The boys then placed the girl in a barrel, filled it with concrete, and hid the barrel in Wakasu, Koto-ku, Tokyo. The incident was only discovered after one of the boys confessed to it when police arrested him for another crime.

So as I get to know my area a little better, I plan to keep track of some of the news about town. This time up, we have an murder-attempted-suicide:

Asahi:

80-year-old man stabbed to death, wife severely injured in apparent murder-suicide attempt (Adachi Ward, Tokyo)

August 10, 2007

At approximately 8:10PM on August 9, a passerby reported to 110 (Japan’s 911) that a man had collapsed in the doorway of a hardware store in Towa, Adachi Ward 2-chome. Tokyo Metropolitan Police Ayase Precinct sped to the scene and found the 80-year-old store own stabbed in the abdomen. He died almost immediately after beeing rushed to a nearby hospital. His wife (age 75) was found in the 2nd floor bathroom with severe stab wounds to her stomach. She told police that she stabbed her husband and then tried to kill herself. The police view the incident as a non-consensual shinju (murder-suicide) and are investigating the wife’s motive.

Investigators say the man fled his house and asked passersby for help, saying his wife had stabbed him. A suicide note apparently written by the wife was found at the scene.

Quiz time! What percentage of Tokyo is non-Japanese?

Answer: 2.93% – that’s the percentage of registered foreigners in Tokyo as of January 1, 2007 (an increase of 1.8% over last year), says Shukan Toyo Keizai. That means that 3 out of every 100 people you see in Tokyo are foreign (one of whom could be a white dude staring at the Daily Yomiuri [picture courtesy STK]). There are 371,000 registered foreigners among Tokyo’s overall population of 12.69 million. The information comes from a “population movement survey” conducted by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government.

Top nationalities:
Chinese – 126,000
Korean – 109,000
Filipino – 31,000

Most foreign districts:
Shinjuku-ku (where Tokyo’s Koreatown is located): 30,000
Adachi-ku: 21,000
Edogawa-ku (home to Indiatown in Nishikasai): 21,000

Tokyo’s foreign population has surged 2.5-fold over the past 20 years, going from a mere 150,000 in 1987 to the present 371,000 (18.5% of the estimated 2 million registered foreigners, or about 1.5% of the total population).

These numbers may just be the tip of the iceberg. The ‘registered’ foreigners are merely the people in the country legally for purposes other than tourism, some of whom are temporary visitors who have no intention of making a life here. But many do plan to (there were 349,804 permanent residents that are not zainichi Koreans/Chinese as of 2005). According to Immigration Bureau statistics, there were approximately 190,000 people illegally residing in Japan (presumably concentrated mainly around Tokyo) as of 2006. Though the number of illegal immigrants has decreased as controls have gotten stricter over the years, Japanese manufacturers have no intention of turning back from their use of cheap, often illegal, foreign labor to stay competitive as the numbers of Japanese workers decrease and fewer people are willing to take such jobs. On top of that, other industries, including the medical, restaurant, and agricultural industry are eager to expand their use of foreign labor.

While many of the legal immigrants were educated at least partly in Japan (and in the cases of Chinese and Koreans, their families may have been in the country for 3 generations or more) and lead normal, middle class lives, the conditions for illegal workers in Japan can be downright dreary. A recent government-produced documentary depicting the daily activities of immigration officials features a scene in which the “Immigration G-Men” break up a textile operation in a small Tokyo apartment that was making handbags for local consumption. The workers are Korean, speak poor Japanese, and look like they rarely leave their work stations. Even among legal residents of Japan, many are “trainees” at manufacturing companies whose “training” consists of full time work on an assembly line for low pay.

The regular publication of statistics like these, and the regular, adversarial reporting of developments in this issue, should remind the public as well as the authorities that real “internationalization” based on economic interests, rather than the abstract concept of peace, cooperation, and English study that is usually associated with that term, has already arrived in parts of Japan, making it necessary to adjust and respond. Recently publicized cases of some issues facing foreign laborers, such as abuse in the “trainee” system the difficulty that children of foreign residents face in getting an education, have resulted in increased attention by the authorties, and even some incremental reform. Justice Minister Nagase is heading efforts at the ministry to provide a legal framework to tap unskilled workers, a move that would give legal credibility to the current practice but at the same time would give the foreign workers rights and proper status. The Ministry of Education has begun requiring children of permanent residents to attend school.

These are necessary steps forward, but I feel like the current developments facing foreign residents in Japan have yet to receive the top spot on the agenda that they deserve. Back in 1990, Japan began a program to accept Brazilians of Japanese descent as temporary guest workers. I wasn’t around at the time, but it’s clear that the issue received very wide coverage that I think helped prepare people mentally for the small-scale but significant change in policy. Today, with the foreign population exploding (by Japanese standards), where are the public opinion polls, dramas featuring foreign laborers, rants by unqualified political commentators, etc etc?

Corporate-led Social Revolution

Generally, Japan’s immigration policies are much more liberal than the US - in the rare case that you speak Japanese fluently and have connections within the country. For the rest of the world, Japan’s immigration policies focus on attracting skilled foreign workers in areas such as computer programming where Japanese skills aren’t enough to meet demand. Some industries, meanwhile, are calling for an addition to that policy of allowing more low-skilled workers in to either fill shortages or drive wages down. The most recent victories for advocates of such policies were the “free trade agreements” signed with the Philippines and Thailand, which will allow foreign nurses and chefs, respectively, to work in Japan. However, the Japanese side insisted on language requirements that guarantee virtually no significant numbers will be let in.

This is a radical change for Japan, which has traditionally coddled its low-skilled workers with decent wages and living standards and kept out large numbers of non-Japanese foreigners. Like the US, Japan has a valuable currency and lots of industry, making it an attractive destination for low-skilled workers. Bringing in lots of foreign unskilled labor would make Japan’s immigration structure more like the US, which imports millions of unskilled laborers with poorly enforced immigration laws while making highly skilled jobs very difficult through unofficial barriers such as difficult licensing requirements and tight visa quotas. From the perspective of an average citizen who wants to see the best people in the right jobs, I would advocate opening up the books for all levels of jobs. The US situation is a nightmare for both the illegal immigrants from Mexico who have no prospects back home but must leave their families and live as an outlaw to support their families in the US, and the Americans who have seen low-skilled jobs with decent pay evaporate as a result of the immigration and outsourced manufacturing.

Japan, meanwhile, has relied almost exclusively on what the Japanese government coyly calls “international division of labor” and less on importing labor. Large Japanese corporations are major investors around the world, particularly in China and SE Asia, and employ hundreds of thousands if not millions throughout the region. This decision by the Japanese companies no doubt increases the supply of labor for the companies and allows them to save on wages. But Japan managed to avoid the US situation by maintaining stable employment in domestic industries such as service and construction, sometimes at the expense of efficiency or economic rationality.

But the business community has changed its tone over the years, and now the two top business lobbies, the Keidanren (made up of manufacturers) and Keizai Doyukai (a more brazenly neo-liberal group of top executives), are calling for massive importation of labor to avoid a drop in GDP due to the shrinking native work force that will accompany Japan’s population drop to 100 million by 2050.

No more – Economic analysts have been pointing out for years that Japanese consumer consumption is low relative to other developed countries, and that poor consumption is holding back Japan’s GDP growth. The low consumption is blamed on two factors – deflation that makes people delay large purchases, and stagnant wage growth – the latter of which Morgan Stanley economist Stephen Roach argues stems from the “powerful global labor arbitrage that continues to put unrelenting pressure on the labor-income generating capacity of high-wage industrial economies.” In other words, Japanese labor is in competition from foreigners, a prospect that means money for the global corporations but hardship for the domestic workers.

Japan’s media has been sensitive to this issue, if a bit reluctant to blame it on globalization. Economic disparity between the rich and poor (known succinctly as “kakusa” in Japanese) has been a persistent buzzword over the past 2 years. A host of phenomena – growing income disparity, the collapse of stable employment and the rise of fluid ‘temporary’ employment, a jump in the welfare rolls, the rise in prominence of a new wealthy class, the bankrupt finances of local governments, the near-collapge of the social insurance system, low economic growth for more than a decade, a shrinking/aging population, and on and on – have given average Japanese people the sense that the future looks rather dim.

Now the manufacturing interests, among others, are calling for more foreign labor to come to Japan, and as we’ve seen above it is on its way, putting perhaps more pressure on the average worker. But in my opinion this is only a problem if only labor is allowed to be fluid while corporations with stable management and shareholders reap the profits. Highly skilled laborers such as lawyers, doctors, professors, journalists, and especially corporate managers/investors should be allowed into Japan. Allowing a full spectrum of business opportunities into Japan, which with a highly educated population, peaceful society, and hyper-developed infrastructure, would allow for a wealth of more business and labor opportunities.

But of course that’s a silly proposition. The stewards of Japanese society will continue to hoard the top positions and continue making hypocritical appeals to racial harmony out of one side of their mouths when it comes to reform of corporate boardrooms while pushing for internationalization of cheap labor from the other side. Like it or not, the choice average citizens have is how to deal with the situation that’s been thrust upon us.

Where East and West meet

It’s easy to see a disconnect between, say, the interests of English teachers, IT workers, and businessmen that make up the bulk of Japan’s semi-permanent Western population, and those of the “low-skilled” world of immigrants from Asia.

But that would be wrong. Apart from entry requirements and visa stipulations, Japanese law treats all foreigners basically the same. And while perceptions of foreigners is different based on skin color and culture, the rights of foreigners and the level of their acceptance in Japan will depend on the experiences of other populations. There are already many examples of this connection. The question of whether zainichi Koreans will be accepted as a distinct “Japanese-Korean” identity or whether they will end up mostly assimilated and forgotten will decide how future populations will be dealt with. And if human rights activist Arudo Debito is successful in his campaign to get a national law passed banning racial discrimination, that legal framework will be enforceable for the entire foreign population.

At the same time, the bad deeds of a small group of people can ruin things for everyone else, fairly or not. Crimes committed by foreign nationals are often highly publicized thanks to a xenophobic police force that I suspect is in search of a scapegoat to help market security equipment and grab bigger budgets. Whatever the case, the anti-foreign crime campaign has resulted in bothersome ID checks and humiliating signs warning citizens to watch out for suspicious foreigners. And as limited as its impact was (thanks mainly to successful protests that cut its shelf life to mere months), the “Foreign Crime File” book, a despicable, short-lived multimedia diatribe against the foreign population in Japan, did not distinguish between Asians, Africans, or Westerners in its cheap attempts to cast foreigners in a negative light.

My biggest worry is that without proactive efforts to make this immigration smooth and easy, Japan will start to experience something like the US illegal immigration problem, with all the poverty, crime, and mistrust that goes with it. Occasional statements from high-level politicians, like Education Minister Bunmei Ibuki’s statement that Japan is a “homogeneous nation,” should remind people that race consciousness and nativism are not dead and work as appeals to a conservative voter base. The time to lay the groundwork is now to prevent a backlash against foreigners that would prove a major headache for the entire foreign population, and a loss of the culture of tranquil co-existence with neighbors that has defined Japanese society.

By which I’m referring to the new Suica/Narita Express deal. For 3,500 yen, you get a Suica card which provides (1) a one-way trip to anywhere in Tokyo via Narita Express and (2) 2,000 yen in Suica credit which you can spend on just about anything.

Considering that the Narita Express alone usually costs 3,000 yen just to get you to Tokyo Station, this is an incredible deal. The only catch is that you need a foreign passport to get it. (Discrimination!)

How to live cheaply in one of the world’s most expensive cities? Well, it really isn’t that expensive unless you want it to be, and I will submit that living a broke life in Tokyo is MUCH better than living a broke life anywhere in America.

Here are some ideas:

Lodging

This is the big kahuna that makes life in Tokyo expensive. If you want a swank apartment in the middle of the city, it might set you back ¥400,000 a month. Fortunately, there are cheaper ways to do things.

• Best way: seduce someone of your preferred gender who has a nice apartment. If they’re female, they’ll even make you breakfast in the morning! (And if they don’t, find one who will; Japan is a buyer’s market.)
• Stay with a host family. You get conversation, you probably get meals, and you might even get your laundry done. On the other hand, host families have their drawbacks; you can’t go out partying late at night, and they might turn out to be batshit crazy. (I never had the former problem in high school; I definitely had the latter problem.)
• Get a place in the middle of nowhere, like a ¥40,000 room in Nishi-nippori located a cool 20-minute bus ride from the Yamanote Line.
• If you insist on living in the middle of the city, you can ditch your bathroom and live in a 6-mat room 5 minutes away from Shibuya for the same price. Granted, you have to go to a sento to clean yourself up, and your toilet is shared… but still!
• By the way, Yahoo! Japan Real Estate is an excellent resource for scouting out really cheap places to stay, assuming you know enough Japanese to navigate around. If English is your only language (or if you aren’t staying for a year or so), you might be relegated to the hell that is Sakura House.

Food

• There are always noodle products, of course, and those sketchy pasta sauces they sell in foil pouches at Don Quijote. Yum!
• If you want slightly better food, you can live on a diet of convenience store bentos, gyudon and curry for under ¥2,000 a day. Pretty easy, if not all that healthy.
• If you’re into eating out, my advice would be to get used to having big lunches. Many of the smaller restaurants around the business districts of Tokyo will sell you a massive lunch prepared with good ingredients for ¥1,000 or less. Then you can make your other calories for the day more or less blank.
• One of the best money-savers out there—as much as it might pain some of you to consider it—is to avoid booze. “What you say! No drinking in Japan? Heresy!” But it’s true: consider that a beer or chuhai will cost you ¥300 even at a cheap place.

Transportation

This one is easy. Ditch the subway and get yourself a bicycle. You might still want to hop on the Metro when it’s raining, but biking around is a great way to see the city, burn some calories and save some money. (I was spending ¥5,000 a month on Metro cards before I got my bike; at ¥10,000 it paid for itself after two nice winter/spring months, although it got pretty unbearable during the summer. If you have a cheap sento near your workplace, go for it! If you work at a sento, double points!)

If you want to get a glimpse of the Weimar Republic, one way to do it is by visiting Tokyo and walking along the Sumida River. There, you can see two famous bridges inspired by German bridges that didn’t manage to outlive the Third Reich.

Eitaibashi (“Long Reign Bridge”) is one of the most famous bridges in Tokyo, and rightfully so. It crosses the Sumida River close to what would naturally be Tokyo Bay, were it not for Odaiba and all the other little islands built up there over the last few decades.

Back in the days of old Edo, Eitaibashi was a sharply arched wooden bridge, as captured in this classic woodblock print by Toyoharu Utagawa. This first bridge was built in 1698 to commemorate the 50th birthday of the fifth Tokugawa shogun, Tokugawa Tsunayoshi. It was a Big Deal at the time, because the only other way to cross the river was by ferry.

The Tokugawas planned to dismantle the bridge in 1719, but the locals on the east side (the opposite side from central Edo) were so adamant on keeping the bridge that they agreed to take over the bridge themselves. This proved to be a bad idea, because the bridge collapsed in 1807 under the weight of travellers trying to get to the Tomioka Hachimangu shrine on the east side. 1,500 people died.

Although the later Tokugawas discussed building a second Eitaibashi, the Meiji Restoration put a hold on their plans, and the new bridge was not built until 1897. It was the first iron bridge in Japan, although much of it was made of wood. This also proved to be a bad idea, because the Tokyo earthquake of 1923 tore the wood apart and ruined the second bridge.

So the third and final Eitaibashi, constructed almost immediately after the earthquake, was built entirely of iron. It was modeled after the Bridge at Remagen on the Rhine River in Germany. This wasn’t a bad idea per se, although the Bridge at Remagen was itself ill-fated: the Germans blew it up to stop Allied troops from crossing into central Germany, inspiring a Hollywood production in the process.

Anyway, the third Eitaibashi is (perhaps miraculously) still intact. Its sky-blue paint job makes it not particularly picturesque during the day, but its lighting at night is downright gorgeous. The lights turn off around midnight, much like the Tokyo Tower’s.

Kiyosubashi (“Pure Cay Bridge,” named after the adjoining districts of Kiyosumi and Nakasu), just up the river from Eitaibashi, is equally famous, although it’s more picturesque during the day thanks to its lovely blue paint job. It was also built right after the Tokyo earthquake of 1923, although it had no predecessor in that location since “central Tokyo” was not quite as big in those days.

The inspiration for Kiyosubashi was the old Mülheim Bridge in Cologne, not far from the Bridge at Remagen. Ironically, the Mülheim Bridge was also blown up, just days before the Remagen Bridge. This was only partially intentional. The Germans had set up explosive charges on the Mülheim so they could blow it up if the Allies began to cross. Then, before the Allied troops were even close to the bridge, a bomb went off near the bridge. The strengh of this bomb wasn’t enough to damage the bridge, but it was enough to set off the charges on the bridge, thus causing the Germans to suffer the ignominy of accidentally destroying their own bridge. A more modern, utilitarian Mülheim Bridge was built after the war and completed in 1951.

Since my last translation of something about the anime industry was something of a hit, I thought I’d do a little pandering and take a look at an emerging free manga in Japan as reported by Weekly Oriental Economy:

Free manga magazines: How exactly do they make money?

(2007/01/31)
People are abuzz about the free weekly manga (comic book) that is being handed out around Tokyo. The person behind it all let us know his business model (printed in Weekly Oriental Economy’s Feb. 3, 2007 edition)

The first free manga magazine in Japan, Comic Gumbo, has been released in Tokyo. Just recently, a “free paper” market has sprung up upon the success of Recruit Co.’s “R25” and “Hot Pepper” (see some of the contents of R25 at neomarxisme). In response, this manga magazine has pounded its way in.

The printer is Digima, a venture publishing firm. Company president Akihiko Kai (age 36) founded the company in Sept. 2005 after serving as an operating officer at Dentsu (Japan’s top ad agency) and Trans Cosmos (marketing/offshoring). Gumbo’s target audience is salarymen aged 20-40, and every Tuesday and Wednesday 100,000 copies are handed out at areas including major stations on JR’s Yamanote Line.

The size of Japan’s comic book market is approx. 500 billion yen (about US$4.1 billion, in annual sales I’m assuming). However, readers, who are mostly young people, have been stolen away by mobile phones and the Internet, setting the market on a downward trend. Kai explains: “To get into the market as a latecomer we needed to be bold by making our product free.”

What’s surprising is the fullness of content in the pages that wouldn’t make you think it’s free. The inaugural issue for Jan. 16-17 contained 12 series and was 230 pages long. There is also an impressive lineup of writers, including Tatsuya Egawa, author of Tokyo University Story (he’s doing a manga version of Botchan [English translation of the original novel at No-Sword]). The manuscript payments made to regular contributors are reportedly in line with other manga magazines.

Aggressive use of the Internet

So, can this be profitable? The company has not released its revenue plans, but there are only 26 pages of ads, constituting 10% of the entire book. This is far fewer than R25, which is 40% ads, indicating that they are not relying on ad revenue.

Actually, Digima allows readers to access past series on the Internet for a monthly fee of 500 yen. If membership grows healthily, then this by itself will serve as a major revenue source. In addition, the company intends to issue a trade paperback in the first half of this year. These two are what Kai envisions as the main revenue streams for his company.

The reason that Gumbo has included 12 series is simple. The more series there are, the more likely it is that one will become a hit. If a hit emerges, the trade paperback edition will become a long seller, allowing for healthy returns.

Free distribution is simply a method to lower the hurdles for entry into the market. The subsequent non-free businesses will be the main focus, making this fundamentally different from the free newspapers. The inaugural issue immediately “sold out” its 100,000 copies, succeeding in finding their way into readers’ hands. Will it be able to earn loyal fans? Gumbo’s true battle will be from here on out.

(Writer: Akihiko Fujio; Photo: Koichi Imai)

Comment: I don’t know about paying 500 yen/month just to read manga unless there were a series I was really into (or if I were into scanlations), but hey it sounds like a good enough model if the quality actually is high enough to result in hit paperbacks and TV/movie licenses.