Evolution of theoretical framework and methods methods

2. About the research

2.2. Evolution of theoretical framework and methods methods

I will briefly chart the evolution of the theoretical framework and methods used in this research. The goals of my PhD project evolved as I gained a better grasp on the current realities of dōjinshi exchange and how I could best express in what ways dōjinshi exchange relates to similar fanwork exchange systems outside of Japan. My awareness of the potential value of this research for a variety of

stakeholders, as well as my awareness of the limits posed by this time- and resource-limited PhD project, evolved as well, influencing the particular format of this thesis and its eventual embedding into a larger digital thesis.

The initial project application for this research called for a comparison of Japanese- and English-language "fanworks" within a theoretical framework based in Umberto Eco's theory of the "open work". My goal was to identify the place dōjinshi occupy in the Japanese cultural economy, a goal I intended to reach by comparing Japanese-language dōjinshi exchange with English-language fan fiction exchange, about which there existed a relatively larger and more accessible body of scholarly work. I intended to base my arguments on a comparison between the contents of dōjinshi and the contents of English-language fan fiction, and an attempted situation of fanworks in general and dōjinshi in particular as a practical contemporary

expression of the theoretical "open work" as described by Umberto Eco (Eco 1989).

In brief, Eco's "open work" is an artwork specifically designed by its creator to require active practical involvement by consumers. Eco explained the function of the open work by claiming that a work in this format alone correctly reflects the vision of the world expressed by contemporary scientific thought. Eco's open work remains somewhat utopian and has mostly been applied as a decoding tool for certain forms of avant-garde art, although several attempts have been made recently to utilize the concept of open work for the examination of online texts and

cross-cultural analysis of literature. I argued that casting fanwork as "open work" would be appropriate for various reasons (see Noppe 2010b for details). To summarize my reasoning, source texts that are used by fan authors are not intended as open works by their original creators. However, recent technological developments, particularly online social software, have radically transformed media used for the dissemination of fanwork. This change has emancipated readers to such a degree that they do not wait for the content industry to adapt the formats of its products to reflect today's

particular system of cultural relationships (Russo 2002, 7). Through the use of technology, readers now reclaim agency from authors and themselves transform closed works into open works. Although the location of agency in this new

incarnation of Eco's open work (fanwork) has shifted, the work's function in society remains as Eco articulated it. I also argued that framing dōjinshi and other fanworks as open work "encourages us to situate fanwork among other 'open' movements with similar requirements for collaboration and collective efforts, pluralism of ideas, and lack of central authority or planning. For example: open source, open access, open data, and open (notebook) research" (Noppe 2010b, no pagination).

While this proposed theoretical framework was relatively well-received and seemed to offer some promising inroads into understanding the function of dōjinshi exchange in Japan's cultural economy, I soon felt dissatisfied with it, as well as the content analysis- and semiotics-based methods I had already tested for the research (for instance in Noppe 2010a). My main concern was the broader relevance of any research results that I could reasonably expect to obtain using this approach. As I worked my way through the existing literature on dōjinshi, I came to realize that while the research I had envisioned would contribute much new and important data about the content of Japanese dōjinshi, it would not produce the kind of knowledge and analysis on dōjinshi exchange that would be most useful to various English-language academic fields for which dōjinshi exchange is relevant. Fields ranging from English-language fan studies to law, cultural economics, and media studies appeared most in need of information and detailed analysis not on the content of dōjinshi, but on their system of exchange and how it fits in with broader cultural and economic developments.

These concerns led me to search for a more practical and contemporary framework to examine the role of dōjinshi in Japan's contemporary cultural production. While surveying literature on economic models to express exchange systems around "remix" works such as dōjinshi and other fanworks, I read Lawrence Lessig's 2008 book Remix. In this work, Lessig proposes that evolving interactions between gift and market economies may be usefully conceptualized as a "hybrid economy" that has the exchange system around FLOSS (open source software) as it’s most prominent and influential incarnation. I was struck by how similar the

characteristics of a "hybrid economy" were to what I had observed of dōjinshi exchange, and how the framework's basis in FLOSS practices seemed to make it a more practical and up-to-date version of the "open work" framework I had been working in. I published an article exploring the potential of framing exchange of works as hybrid economies, with a particular focus on the implications for fanwork monetization (Noppe 2011b). That same year, I used a conference paper to make an initial assessment of the links between FLOSS practices and fanwork practices, concluding that interpreting fanworks as “open source cultural good” could be highly beneficial for stakeholders involved in constructing systems for fanwork

monetization (Noppe 2011a). FLOSS production practices and fannish production are obviously not identical. However, as I argued, because of their shared origins and characteristics, the vocabulary, problems, and solutions from one could help

stakeholders to better articulate similar problems and possible solutions in the area of the other. In this thesis, I will apply this framing of fanwork practices overlapping with FLOSS practices to dōjinshi exchange, both as a natural companion to and extension of a framing of dōjinshi exchange as a hybrid economy. I will discuss the

theoretical background of hybrid economies and FLOSS-inspired "open source cultural goods" in detail at the start of the relevant chapters.

It will be clear by now that this thesis gathers methods and input from a wide variety of fields. My background in Japanese studies had a strong influence

especially on the early stages of the research, which played an important role in developing early knowledge about dōjinshi and other fan practices that are common in Japan. One of the earliest thorough descriptions of dōjin culture in English, Sharon Kinsella's Japanese Subculture in the 1990s: Otaku and the Amateur Manga

Movement, appeared in the Journal of Japanese Studies (Kinsella 1998), and many of the scholars who would add their own contributions through anime and manga studies in the following years were trained in Japanese studies. Japanese studies continues to play an important role in teaching future scholars of Japanese pop and fan culture, as it attracts large numbers of students with a fascination for Japanese popular media and fan practices and gives them the language training and cultural awareness that some will use to go on and study dōjin culture. A survey of Japanese language students at two American universities revealed that the majority of them point to "interest in anime and manga as one of the primary reasons they (are) studying the language" (Ito 2012a, 181), and I have observed the same tendency in three informal surveys of Japanese studies first-year students that I conducted at the University of Leuven in Belgium between 2009 and 2013. A thorough knowledge of Japan is in fact necessary to grasp the significance of dōjinshi-related practices and infrastructures, because dōjinshi exchange is in some ways a highly localized

phenomenon. Much of the key infrastructure of contemporary dōjin culture, from the particular convention format centered on sales of amateur works to dōjin shops and

dōjinshi printers, was developed in Japan from the middle of the 1970s onward and mostly did not expand beyond the country's national borders for the next two decades.

However, the strongly localized focus of some Japanese studies-inspired research into dōjinshi sometimes also exposes the weaknesses that come with an emphasis on the "Japaneseness" of dōjin culture, or its highly localized aspects like dōjinshi conventions and dōjin shops. Patrick Galbraith and Thomas Lamarre, both schooled in anime and manga studies, have concisely articulated why a narrow focus on Japan can harm research into fannish practices:

Scholars working on Japanese popular culture are only distinguished by the quantity of their publications and the novelty of their topics, which

conditions a preference for niche subjects, which are analyzed by applying simplified superstructures. The result is a tendency toward exoticizing and essentializing. This tendency often reflects or even reproduces

sensationalist journalism about Japan. This is very clear in the context of otaku. Definitions are set up on the basis of “otaku” in Japan, but often with little or no contact with these imagined others, and there is a critical lack of engagement with experts in Japan. Thus discussions of otaku repeat

assumptions about unique, even bizarre habits and practices. And such assumptions go unquestioned, because Japanese uniqueness is the last remaining rationale for continued study of Japan itself. Japan appears as the quintessential “non-Western” example." (Galbraith and Lamarre 2010, 362)

A narrow focus like this often can result in fan practices related to dōjinshi being misconstrued as uniquely "Japanese", similar to the Mihara example given earlier. This can happen not only because a focus on Japan almost precludes

researchers from discovering the multitudes of fan practices that exist outside Japan and have flourished there for decades with little influence from Japan; it can also happen because the very act of focusing on Japan can cause scholars to over-emphasize the "Japaneseness" of practices:

Some critics stress the Japaneseness or Japanese origins of otaku culture (Okada Toshio, Morikawa Kaichirō, Ōtsuka Eiji). Others (Azuma Hiroki, Sawaragi Noi) argue that, on the contrary, the Japaneseness of otaku culture is “fake” rather than authentic and that it has developed in response to the insurgency of American pop culture in postwar Japan. Nonetheless, across these debates, the nation typically appears as the frame of reference for discussing otaku." (Galbraith and Lamarre 2010, 365-366)

Regardless of whether otaku culture is "authentically Japanese" or influenced by American pop culture to a larger degree, the globalized nature of all fan practices mandates that scholars go beyond explanations of fan culture as simply expressions of something local. For that reason, I looked beyond Japanese studies for approaches that could explain dōjinshi exchange as more than an expression of "Japanese"

practices, while using my background in Japanese studies to stay aware of the localized aspects of dōjinshi exchange and the Japanese cultural contexts - law, economy, politics, and so on - in which dōjinshi exchange is still mostly embedded.

My strongest influence outside of Japanese studies came from

English-language fan studies, a field that developed out of media studies in the 1990s and has now branched out to include a multitude of approaches and topics investigated by scholars of many nationalities. Fan studies incorporates (among others) research on the gendered aspects of fan culture, on media creation by fans, on copyright

concerns, and so on. The inter- and multi-disciplinary approach that characterizes fan studies echoes some of the strengths and weaknesses of Japanese studies, in the sense that "there is a lack of boundaries in fan studies that is both freeing (being able to draw from multiple disciplines/methodologies and encouraging interdisciplinary collaboration) and constraining (a lack of shared vocabulary, etc.)" (Sam Ford, speaking in Jenkins 2011).

I found that combining the concerns of fan studies and Japanese/area studies was not just enjoyable, but also highly useful in illuminating some aspects of dōjinshi exchange that have remained relatively unexamined up until now. For instance, joining considerations from Japanese studies and English-language fan studies highlights the problems inherent in the ways in which both fields handle the localized characteristics of the fan practices they examine. I mentioned earlier that studies of Japanese fan practices, often inspired by Japanese studies, have sometimes ascribed an excess of "Japaneseness" to those practices. English-language fan studies has sometimes suffered from the reverse problem: it often makes pronouncements and generalizations about "fans" and their practices without specifying that the practices they describe may not be shared among all fans globally. In many cases, it is the practices of a specific group of English-speaking online media fans that are held up as universal. Key to resolving both of these issues is a more refined

understanding of how fans form groups, how these groups can be distinguished, and how these distinctions can be adequately described when speaking about them in a scholarly context. These are of course multi-faceted and complex goals that no single thesis could solve, and regardless, my goals for this research do not include

determining to what extent dōjinshi exchange is "Japanese". What I can do, and what I suggest other scholars could also do, is adapt the terms I use to speak about fans and their practices in order to avoid accidentally ascribing them a "Japaneseness" or lack of it.

Let us take a step back and consider how groups of fans seem to be the most easily or meaningfully distinguished in the context of dōjinshi exchange. When speaking of the practices of groups of fans, it is common to use location-based markers like "Japanese fans" or "American fans". However, given the ways in which groups of fans are composed in real life and the difficulty of discerning nationalities in such groups, I would argue that such location- or nationality-based markers are very difficult to use accurately. Perhaps such groups of fans are more usefully delineated by the language shared by participants, not by a location or nationality.

The reason for this is not just that language has been shown to be a powerful unifying or defining characteristic in the kind of (online) communities that often form the subject of research on fans (Herring 2007, 1; Noppe 2013b, 156). It is also that when one observes a group of fans, the language they are using to communicate can be accurately ascertained, but their nationalities often remain unclear. Groups of fans that share a language may very well not consist of people who share a

nationality. One, native speakers of a single language may be residents of many different countries. Two, groups of fans that share an "important" international

language will almost certainly include participants for whom the community's language is not their mother tongue. This is especially true for groups whose conversations and practices take place mostly online, where it is often virtually impossible to determine the nationalities or native languages of participants, many of whom use pseudonyms and may write close to perfect English even when they are not native speakers. When discussing groups of fans, then, it may be much more accurate to speak of "Japanese-speaking fans" or "English-speaking fans" rather than

"Japanese" or "American" fans, which I will do throughout this thesis.

One may be tempted to think that compared to this varied mass of English-speaking fans, "Japanese-English-speaking fans" are more easily identified by one particular geographical location and one particular set of fan practices, not in the least because dōjinshi exchange and its infrastructure seems so localized. This is misleading.

Today, fan practices are rarely purely offline, and we will see that dōjinshi exchange is also a strongly online practice in various ways. Additionally, even offline dōjinshi exchange can and does involve non-Japanese participants. The percentage of

Japanese nationals among participants in Japanese-language fan practices is no doubt higher than the percentage of nationals from English-speaking countries that engage in practices where the lingua franca is English. However, even if numbers are impossible to come by, it is still clear from even the most casual of observations that participants in Japanese-language fan practices include a significant minority of non-Japanese individuals (Lamerichs 2013; Noppe et al. 2013). Even in the case of very locality-based fan practices such as dōjinshi conventions that take place in Tokyo, there will be participants present who are not Japanese. Spaces used for fan practices in Japan, from websites to some large conventions, explicitly acknowledge the

presence of non-Japanese participants, and I have personally met or observed numerous non-Japanese participants in various "Japanese" fan practices. In short, when it comes to research on fan practices, nationalities, localities, and languages are characteristics that are very complex and easily misconstrued. Fan studies and

Japanese studies can both help identify and avoid the pitfalls involved.

Another way in which fan studies and Japanese studies can usefully cooperate is by helping us avoid facile "culture"-based explanations of dōjinshi exchange. One thing I will never claim in this thesis, consciously so, is the possibility that dōjinshi exchange in Japan would not work in non-Japanese settings because of "cultural differences". Readers who are completely unfamiliar with Japan may be tempted to wonder about the "cultural differences" explanation, because this trope is still very beloved by the contemporary mass media that is many people's only source of information about Japan. Much reporting about Japan, and other non-Western countries for that matter, relies on over-emphasizing old and widely known

preconceptions about the aspects those countries' cultures that are thought to set them apart from "Western" culture. This leads to easy explanations about "differences"

that rely on supposedly-established notions of cultural factors while neglecting ever-changing social, political, and cultural circumstances (Marx 2009).

In the context of research on fan cultures, it is important to keep in mind Mizuko Ito's admonition that "variations in otaku culture between Japan and the United States stem not from irreducible differences in national culture but from specific historical, social, and infrastructural conditions" (Ito 2012a, 284). For all intents and purposes, dōjinshi exchange "looks" very different from fanworks exchange in many "Western" countries. It is, in fact, different in many respects.

However, these differences are not a consequence of the innate nature of Japanese stakeholders or the "culturally" determined ways they interact with each other.

Actors involved in dōjinshi exchange generally want the same things as actors

involved in fanworks exchange anywhere else. As I emphasize repeatedly throughout this text, Japanese fans create fanworks for the exact same reasons that English-speaking fans create fanworks. Japanese fans, too, are primarily motivated by the desire to share their creativity and their love for a source work with their fellow fans;

earning money with their fanworks is only a remote concern for most. Media companies in Japan, like media companies in Western countries, are motivated primarily by the desire to maximize their profits. If they thought that it would increase their profits in the long or short run to enforce their legal rights to forbid creation or sale of non-authorized derivative works, they would be doing so, just like

In document De culturele economie van fanwerk in Japan: de handel in dojinshi als een hybride economie van open source culturele goederen (Page 53-72)