If You Make Money Off of Your Doujinshi...?

Question

Is it still legal? The characters aren't yours, and yet you're selling it for profit?

People sell and buy it off of the Internet and in anime conventions. Are they breaking a law?

Answer 1

It actually is illegal to make Doujinshi and distribute it amongst hundreds or thousands of people -even if you aren't making a cent, as long as you are using copyrighted characters.

However, for the most part Japanese mangaka look the other way.  They do this for a couple of reasons:

1. It often helps increase the popularity of their own series.

2. Innovation and talent often comes from doujin circles.  Yaoi and boys love only gained a foothold in manga because of its popularity in doujin circles in the 70s.  And CLAMP (makers of Card Captor Sakura, Chobits, XXXHolic, and other things) started out as a doujin circle.  If they killed off doujinshi, they would lose a large source of innovation.

3. There's just too many of them.  At the yearly Comiket alone, there are over 35,000 doujin circles who produce works.  It would be almost impossible to get them all.