In my last post, I introduced some figures from the most recent Mainichi Newspaper survey of Japanese reading habits. I presented a couple of bar graphs showing the percentage of adults, by sex and age bracket, who read one or more “manga books” per month on average. Today I offer a bunch of pie charts showing more detailed data. These charts might not make any sense if you didn’t read the last post, so be sure to check that one out first. One thing I didn’t note last time is that a manga book (in most cases, a paperback) is not the kind of 22-page stapled leaflet that most people think of when they hear “comic book”: the standard length of the typical manga paperback is 200 pages. Most Japanese readers can read such a book in about 20 to 45 minutes. So when someone says they read seven or more manga books per month, that means they are reading a minimum of some 1400 pages of manga per month.
Ladies first:
Three things strike me about these charts. First, the biggest drop from late teens to women and their thirties is in those who report reading an average of two manga books per month. Second, compared with the drop in casual readers, the decline of heavy users–those who read at least five manga books per month–seems less pronounced. Third, if you compare these graphs with the graph I posted yesterday about the percentage of women who read manga magazines, you will see that younger women readers report reading manga books far more than manga magazines, but by the time they reach their forties, there’s not much difference between reported readership of manga books and magazines. What these things mean is anybody’s guess. I have my own ideas, but I’ll save that for a future post.
And now the gentlemen:
What’s striking about the men’s response is that it is in a way the reverse of the women’s. The most dramatic decline is in the percentage who report reading seven or more manga books per month. The decline in those who read between one and six is fairly proportional. You will also notice that within an age bracket, there is not much difference between reported readership of manga books and manga magazines. Again, what these things mean is anbody’s guess.
And there remains the puzzling problem I mentioned yesterday of older respondents being less likely to answer this question. Those gray wedges in my pie charts are a big question mark. Do those people not read manga books? If not, why didn’t they choose “zero”? My hunch is that they do read manga, but did not feel that the choices offered (or the whole idea of “average number per month”) were adequate to describe their manga reading practices. They may go months without reading a manga, then spend weeks reading (or re-reading) some long series. They may read portions of manga laying around the house (belonging to a child or spouse), but not read them to the end. They may read those thick, magazine-like reprints of old manga that are sold in convenience stores, and are not sure if such books count as “magazines” or “books.”
Hmm. Maybe I can convince Mainichi or some other newspaper to let me design a survey on manga-reading practices.
NOTE: If you enjoyed these statistics, you might also be interested in Paul Gravett’s overview of comics-reading around the world. (Thanks to The Comics Reporter both for bringing Paul’s article to my attention and linking to my own.)
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Fascinating stuff, Matt! Thanks for sharing it.
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Pingback from Tuesday links « Precocious Curmudgeon on September 30, 2008 at 10:11 pm
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Really interesting stuff, Matt. I’d love to read your survey of manga-reading practices, and I suspect it might produce a different result than Mainichi’s.
I wonder how much of the drop in manga reading with age reflects a drop in other activities women enjoy when younger, and how much it owes to the fact that women tend to take on more of the family’s domestic and societal commitments, especially for children and elders. Then there’s the couple effect – throughout the developed world, a woman in an established pair often drops or reduces activities not shared with her partner or spouse.
When I see Western leisure-time surveys, I’m always inclined to compare figures for time spent on hobbies with those reflecting time spent on various household tasks and on childcare. In Japan many women with school age children don’t work outside the home, but many also have responsibility for elders either in the home or outside it, and for tasks like condo committees or litter cleaning, which don’t stop when the children get older. So although we might think they have more control over their time than a British or American woman working to help keep the family afloat or get ahead in a career, that’s not necessarily the case.
Paul Gravett gave a talk in London yesterday in which he highlighted that the Japanese market for women’s and girls’ comics was much smaller than for boys. It’s still far larger than the English-language market for women’s material, but I suspect that the reason why it’s smaller than the male comic market are pretty similar.
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Hi, Helen. There are so many factors that come into play, and that are not reflected in these surveys, that they always need to be taken with a generous fistful of salt. The results of even the most solid surveys are ballpark figures at best. This is true of my own surveys, too. Although I think they are about the best-worded questionnaires on the subject, the vast majority of respondents were younger readers from the Kansai region, and the figures I got for older readers are unreliable because 1) the sample wasn’t large enough, and 2) my adult respondents were more “self-selected” than my high-school respondents, and therefore not representative of adults in general. Also, the bulk of my responses were gathered between 1994 and 2000, so they are now quite out of date.
I think all the possible factors you mentioned play a role, except perhaps for the “couple effect.” Among Japanese married couples, husbands and wives tend to be far more independent of each other, and influence each other’s leisure activities far less, than is the case in more “couple oriented” societies such as the U.S. and the U.K..
I don’t know where Paul got his data, but reliable figures for shôjo and women’s manga are very hard to come by. The most common source of such data gives figures for magazine sales by genre, but does not give sales figures of paperbacks by genre. Women and girls still tend to prefer paperbacks over magazines, and they also tend–more so than males–to read magazines in the bookstore and put them back on the shelf without buying them. Then there’s the fact that many so-called boys’ or men’s manga magazines (and paperbacks) actually have a very large female readership, though publishers would prefer to keep that fact quiet, for fear of alienating male readers. A lot of male readers of Shônen Jump have still not caught on to the fact that half the material in the magazine is specifically designed to appeal to female readers, so much so that it is often jokingly referred to as “Shôjo Jump.” So just looking at those charts of magazine sales by genre can be quite deceptive. You can get a better idea by just looking at the amount of shelf space alloted to male- and female-oriented manga magazines and paperbacks in a typical bookstore. It’s pretty much 50-50.
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I think Paul mentioned that he got his data from the Mainichi survey, though I wasn’t taking notes so I’ll have to get him to confirm that! (He also pointed out that women read men’s magazines too.)
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Just like there are Women reads Shounen manga,There are Men who do read Shoujo Manga as well…..
Card Captor Sakura influenced Negima in some elements as Akamatsu said one character is even designed like Tomoyo of CCS.
I remember that CLAMP promotes their work regardless of their original target audience you will see news about their series that ran in nakayoshi at the back of tsubasa and in X tankoubon you will see ads for CLAMP’s series that are serialized in newtype and newtype 100% comics magazine at the back of their asuka tankoubon like on X and also they have CLAMP no Kiseki that advertizes all their work.
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