Characteristics of Japanese visual narratives are depicted in this book, shedding light on cultural, institutional, and industrial aspects of reproducible contents. The book consists of three parts which deal with the Japanese contents industry, the hypervariety industry revolution, and related case studies, respectively. The first part proposes points of view for organizing research on the Japanese contents industry. The authors explain characteristics of the industry from the standpoint of cultural, institutional, and industrial strata. The second part explains the system of revolution in the industry as a hypervariety industry. The Japanese contents industry implicitly predicts the next innovation system, which will be hypervarietal but not top-down or Hollywood style as in the Western economy. The third part provides case studies on phenomena such as the comics market, Akihabara: a cross-cultural town, Cool Japan, and animation.

Focuses on the industrial structure and economics of reproducible contents created by people in an environment of high cultural diversity Discusses the characteristics of the hypervariety market where innovation is achieved by collaboration among users and creators of reproducible contents Provides examples of the hypervariety market in Japanese contents industries such as manga, anime, and video games

Inhalt
Part 1 Japanese Contents Industry 1 Japanese Visual Narratives and Its Cultural Diversity (H. Deguchi).- 2 Dojin Culture and Industrial Organization (Y. Koyama).- 3 Innovation in the Stationary State (H.Tanaka)
Part 2 Hyper Variety Industry Revolution 4 Japanese Visual Narrative Movement in Video-Game Industry (Y. Koyama).- 5 Hyper Variety Service Market (H. Deguchi).- 6 Small but Sustainable Enterprises in Regional Economies (H.Tanaka)
Part 3 Case Studies 7 The Comic Market ( H.Okayasu).- 8 Akihabara: an Cross Cultural Town from Radio to Maid-Cafe (Y. Koyama, J. Nakamura).- 9 Cross Fertilization by Users (Y. Koyama).- 10 Cool Japan and Anime (R. Mihara).