Comiket (コミックマーケット, often shortened to Comike) is the world's largest doujin convention, held twice a year at Tokyo Big Sight (Tokyo International Exhibition Center). Founded in 1975 by Yoshihiro Yonezawa and a small group of fan-zine producers, it has grown from a few hundred participants in its first edition to a regular attendance of over half a million across three days. The event is the principal anchor of the Japanese doujin economy.
Founding
Comiket was founded by Yoshihiro Yonezawa, Teruo Harada, and several collaborators at the Tokyo Toshokan Bunko Center on 21 December 1975. The first event had 32 participating circles and approximately 700 attendees. From the second event onward the event moved to a series of larger venues, settling at Tokyo Big Sight in 1996.
Scale and organisation
Modern Comiket runs across three or four days twice a year — Winter Comiket in late December, Summer Comiket in mid-August. The event hosts approximately 35,000 doujin circles per edition and several hundred thousand attendees. The administrative body, Comic Market Preparatory Committee (準備会), is a volunteer organisation that has maintained editorial independence from the major publishers across the event's history — a structural decision that has shaped the doujin economy substantially.
The doujin economy
Doujin works sold at Comiket fall into two principal categories: original work (oriji-doujin) and parody of commercial properties (niji-sōsaku, 'secondary creation'). The legal status of parody doujinshi is tolerated rather than formally licensed: most publishers do not pursue takedowns of small-scale doujin work, on the understanding that doujin participation feeds the talent pipeline that eventually produces commercial mangaka. The arrangement is well-established and stable, though sometimes tested by individual rights holders.