Pop Culture dictionary
doujinshi
or dojinshi or doujin
What does doujinshi mean?
A doujinshi is a fan-created or self-published work, sometimes in the form of erotic manga.
Where does doujinshi come from?
Doujinshi joins the Japanese words doujin, which roughly means “club” or a group with the same interests, and shi, meaning “magazine.” Commonly Anglicized as dojinshi, doujinshi are self-published magazines, novels, comics, and other content, especially of manga.
Doujinshi have a long history and active culture in Japan and increasingly in the West, including a specialized vocabulary and array of subgenres. Creators and fans have been buying and selling modern doujinshi, for instance, at Comic Market, a leading doujinshi fair in Japan, since 1975.
In the 1980s, it became increasingly common for fans to create doujinshi on existing anime and manga characters or series they enjoy or want to parody rather than original creations. Fan-created doujinshi are more familiar to the West, where there also exists a common misperception that doujinshi are always erotic or pornographic—which is true of many, but far from all subgenres. Yaoi doujinshi, as a notable example, features male same-sex relationships targeted for a female audience.
Doujinshi are often likened to fanzines, fanfiction, and fanwork, various forms of media fans create and share inspired by a specialized interest.
Examples of doujinshi
Who uses doujinshi?
Among English-speakers, doujin, irrespective of its Japanese etymology, is slang shortening for doujinshi, e.g., “The doujin I saw yesterday was really well drawn.” While doujinshi and doujin double as the usual plural forms of the words, some English users do follow native rules, and add an s to pluralize the word, e.g., “I want to draw some doujinshis.”
Note
This is not meant to be a formal definition of doujinshi like most terms we define on Dictionary.com, but is rather an informal word summary that hopefully touches upon the key aspects of the meaning and usage of doujinshi that will help our users expand their word mastery.