vanyk

Only recently I realized HOW difficult it is to research doujin. This might be useful for anyone who will try to research doujin.

I wanted to find participation fees for Comiket during latest 10 years (well, I needed info about it). I checked their website (it had only info about fees for C102 and C103 and about fees for renting changing rooms), checked circle.ms (it seems like pages about Comikets before around C89 have been removed), checked both sites using web archive (Comiket's site said to check circle.ms, but pages for old Comikets were not saved). Only randomly googling I found some old news articles which had info about it...
And this is a major doujin event, there are more than 3000 organizers. And the only actual info we have about it is statistics they published for C81, statistics about foreign participants for C96, statistics they publish about number of circles for each category, number of visitors, several small surveys, list of circles (good luck checking all >20000 circles) and that is all.
If there are such problems with Comiket, what about other events? (for example I have seen some medium sized events for all genres, where to find the number of participated circles is a problem)
The problem is that nearly each Touhou Doujin event (big, medium and small ones) have much more info (+ to check fees you just need to open a site and find page for circles), there are convenient databases by THBWiki and TESC about all events.

There is another problem which researchers of Touhou noticed (in around 2016): major Touhou Doujin events are not representative enough, they do not show the state of whole Touhou Doujin scene.
Some circles which research doujin scene in different regions of Japan noticed that in different regions (and different cities) different series may be popular and there may be different trends. And it is not often when one genre/series is spread among doujin circles and events in most regions of Japan.

So just researching Touhou Doujin and seeing some example in Doujin we can make a conclusion: major Doujin events are not representative enough to show the state of WHOLE Doujin scene. But there are around 1000 events yearly, some (or many, because it is hard to check) of them do not have good statistics, some of them may be missed. And we don't have a database of ALL doujin events. Why? Because nearly everyone who tries to research doujin mostly pays attention only to Comiket or some other big events or series they like (and in many cases those are popular series) or Touhou.
Touhou is very convenient to research, there are not THAT many events, they are arranged all over the country, there is good statistics. But Touhou Doujin is not the whole Doujin, it cannot show the whole situation, and Touhou Doujin is somewhat different.
It is nearly impossible to check the state of WHOLE doujin now. We have to rely on info we have and reports and notices by non-indifferent circles.
[Do not take the next thing very serious] Looking at Comiket I have a theory that it entered a period which Touhou Doujin had 11-12 years ago. But it is hard (and too early) to say if this theory is correct and if it covers the whole Doujin scene. (but I have seen a doujinshi which covered discussions about this topic)
 

I think I will cover info I found about Doujin and Touhou Doujin in different posts. One of books I read lately really motivated me to split them. I will try to make a post about Doujin next week when it is ready.