Japanese industry denounces pirated comics as a threat to innovation, with annual losses exceeding total sales

Today, December 30, according to Japanese media reports, the Japanese comics industry once again protested against the repeated bans on pirated comics, which directly endangers the creation of outstanding comic works in the future. Moreover, the estimated amount of losses caused by piracy has far exceeded the total sales of comics in 2020 by more than 200 billion yen.

•According to statistics, the domestic Japanese genuine comics market reached its peak in 2020 due to the outbreak of "Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba", with total sales of approximately 612.6 billion yen. However, due to the epidemic, more and more people are staying at home, and the pirated comics industry has also grown wildly. According to statistics as of October this year, the amount of losses caused by piracy is as high as 780 billion yen, which is three times the 210 billion yen last year, and it has exceeded the income from genuine comics.

•Although the previous leading pirated comics website "Manga Village" has been banned and its people have been imprisoned and heavily fined, it has not prevented more pirated comics sites from emerging rapidly. According to statistics from the Japan Anti-Piracy Association ABJ (Authorized Books of Japan) last month, about 400 large and small pirated comics sites have been tracked. Among them, the "Manga Bank" site established in December 2019 has accumulated more than 1 billion visits, causing losses of more than 200 billion yen to the legitimate comics market.

•Cartoonist Ken Akamatsu said that today’s pirated comics have almost the same high-definition quality as genuine electronic comics, and are released almost simultaneously, taking over the market share of countless genuine comics. If the government does not impose strict controls, authors’ desire to create will completely disappear in the future.