‘Gundam’ Manga Publisher Kadokawa Now Recruiting Overseas Talent Due To Japan’s Population Crisis
In seeking to keep their heads above water at a time of stark economic uncertainty, noted Mobile Suit Gundam manga publisher Kadokawa has moved to combat the dwindling talent and audience pools resulting from Japan’s ongoing population crisis by turning their production attentions outside of their national borders, beginning with a noted investment in overseas artists and writers.
This insight into the publisher’s forward-facing plans was provided to the public courtesy of its Shou Segawa, its Director of the Global Comic Department, and Risa Tomizaki, a member of its Global E-Book Office and Overseas Manga Editorial Department, who did so during a recent interview given to Japanese news outlet Oricon News regarding the publisher’s inaugural Wordless Manga Contest.
Open to any and all creators, said compeititon invites entrants to submit a personally-created manga “without speech bubbles or letterings”, as based on either an original idea or a specified ‘theme’ and awards the winners with a cash prize and the opportunity to work with in-house manga editors to create either “a comicalized work or an original work”.
(For those curious, this year’s theme was Spanish writer Miguel de Cervantes’ seminal novel Don Quixote.)
Speaking to the contest’s debut outing, which saw “1,126 submissions from 104 countries and regions” and had its winners announced this past April, Tomizaki explained that the overall event was created in response to the fact that “with the recent proliferation of digital comics, the supply of manga has skyrocketed,” but “the number of manga artists has not kept pace, making the discovery of talented new talent a pressing issue for each editorial department.”
“What’s particularly lacking is talent for comic book adaptations,” added Segawa, as machine translated by DeepL. “While there’s an abundance of original works, particularly light novels and other worlds, there’s an overwhelming lack of manga artists capable of adapting them, leading to a fierce scramble among companies to secure them.”
“However, simply joining the race to acquire talent won’t broaden the pool, and it won’t be a fundamental solution. Discovering and nurturing the next generation of popular artists is an essential mission for manga editors. So, we focused on discovering aspiring manga artists from overseas, who are currently an untapped market.”
To this end, Sagawa then explained that the while the manga style of sequential art was wholly a Japanese invention, Kadokawa had opened their doors to international creators in order to head off the company’s ever-shrinking local market potential, itself a side-effect of the country’s aforementioned birth crisis – Per data collected by the United Nations, Japan’s ‘births per women’ have fallen from roughly 3.43 in 1950 (the first year the organization began to record such data) to an abysmal 1.37 in 2024 due to major factors like poor job market prospects, the rising costs of living against stagnant wages based on a declining currency, and a disconnect between Japan’s highly-rigid workplace culture and a rise in parents wanting to spend more time with their families.
“We will do our utmost to support their dreams of debuting as manga artists in Japan by applying KADOKAWA’s editorial expertise. However, we do not necessarily believe that the starting point for their works must be in Japan.
“In Japan, where the population is increasingly aging and birthrates are declining, creating manga targeted at Japanese audiences presents significant commercial challenges, especially for works aimed at younger audiences. However, countries in Southeast Asia, for example, have populations where over 50% are young people, making it possible to compete with works aimed at younger audiences.
“To this end, Segawa noted that more than just recruiting overseas talent, the Wordless Manga Contest was part of a larger effort by Kadokawa to expand their presence on the international scene.
“In the long term, we are preparing to establish local development editorial departments at overseas bases to create works [at present, Kadokawa has distinct offices in 19 different countries, including Italy and the United States]. We aim to connect overseas bases seamlessly and establish a global editorial system that breaks through language barriers within a few years.”
As the interview drew to an end, Segawa ultimately asserted, “It is truly appreciated that the winners respect Japanese manga. However, we hope that in the future, each of them will target not only Japanese readers but also readers worldwide when creating their works.”
“If global hit works emerge from this, the global manga culture will develop even more positively,” he posited. “We aim for the Overseas Manga Editorial Department and the global editorial framework we envision beyond it to become a hub for such initiatives, and we will deepen communication with outstanding creators worldwide.”
