Issues in archiving manga, anime, games and related cultures
Abstract
Kaichiro Morikawa
School of Global Japanese Studies
Meiji University
4-21-1 Nakano, Nakano-ku, TokyoJapan
GFH04434@nifty.ne.jp

KEYWORDS
manga, anime, video game, fanzine

1INHERENT ISSUES

When viewed as subjects of preservation, manga (comics), anime(animated cartoons), and video games are totally different animals.
Mangas were -- and to a large extent still are -- printed and boundmedia. Animes are mostly shot and distributed in digital nowadays,
but piles of films and videotapes are left from the last century.
Video games require obsolete (or to-be-obsolete) devices such as
consoles and arcade cabinets if they are to be playable in their
original state, and the emergence of online games further
complicates the challenges of preservation. The one thing incommon is that they are mostly commercially produced and arecopyrighted, making archival digitization by public or academic
sectors nearly impossible. Plus there are multitudes of to-bearchived materials other than the end product, such as hand-drawn
original drawings, preliminary manuscripts and documents,
advertising materials, all sorts of related merchandise, andfanzines, just to name a few. Institutions and communities such as
manga libraries and preservation circles of video games do exist,
but most of them dedicate themselves to a single and not multiple
medium.
Yet, in Japan, in the past few years, new situations have emerged
at a political level, which may encourage the interconnection andintegration of archival efforts concerning these mediums, with apotential solution to overcome the copyright issue.

2RECENT TOPICS

In late 2014, an all-party parliamentary group on manga, anime,
and video games was established, dubbing itself as the MANGA
Giren (MANGA: acronym of Manga, ANime, GAmes; Giren:APPG in Japanese). Core members include former prime minister
Taro Aso and former cabinet member Keiji Furuya, who got
involved back in 2009 with the governmental plan to erect anational center to house manga, anime, and video games together
with media art. After becoming a subject of political attacks

against the then prime minister Aso, the plan was shortly
terminated due to the change of government. Such is the contextof one of the founding purposes of the APPG; to reboot the plan,
revamped under the name of MANGA National Center.
With political efforts by the APPG, the following lines were
included in the Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal
Management and Reform of 2017, a major governmental policy
which guidelines Japan's fiscal budget:... plans will be made to preserve, utilize, and transmit
cultural properties by putting in place central functions
pertaining to opening up and utilizingcultural properties,
and measures for a digital archive will be promoted.
Moreover, information hubs will be put in place for themedia arts, such as manga, anime, and computer games, ofwhich our nation is justly proud [1].
Furthermore, the Basic Act for the Promotion of Culture and theArts was amended in 2017 to address the preservation ofproduction materials of media arts (a term used by the Agency for
Cultural Affairs of Japan to address manga, anime, video games
together with media art) [2].
One of the core concepts of the MANGA National Center, which
the APPG aims to secure its execution, is to establish the Centeras a branch of the National Diet Library of Japan. The NDL is thelegal deposit library of Japan, as well as the institute that holds
exceptional legal rights to digitize copyrighted materials for thepurpose of preservation.
The presentation shall elaborate on the issues in archiving andpreserving manga, anime, and video games, as well as on therecent situation that is brought about by the APPG.

REFERENCES[1] Cabinet Office of Japan. 2017. Basic Policy on Economic and Fiscal Management
and Reform 2017 (provisional translation). http:// www5.cao.go.jp/keizaishimon/kaigi/cabinet/2017/2017_basicpolicies_en.pdf[2] http://www.sangiin.go.jp/japanese/joho1/kousei/gian/193/meisai/m19305193018.htm (Japanese)