Japan certainly has the power to confuse us with strange and wonderful things, and Japanese popular culture can be very perplexing. One of the best examples of this is Touhou, a complex world of subculture centered around a series of indie shooting games first released in 1998 by a guy named ZUN. It’s hard to explain why Touhou — no relation to the Toho Movie company, though it’s fun seeing people try to figure where Godzilla comes in — went from being a mild-mannered “bullet hell” style scrolling shooter to one of the primary engines for creative doujin culture today, but I’ll try my best. First of all, the Touhou shooting games are of outstanding quality, with great music and graphics, and this got people’s attention early on. There’s a huge cast of characters who appear in the games as protagonists or level bosses, and no matter how hard you try, a few will start to appeal to you for different reasons — I fell in love with Patchouli Knowledgebecause smart girls who read a lot are hot. Many of the inhabitants of Gensyoko (as the Touhou world is called) are youkai, a kind of Japanese folk spirit/ghost/monster, and the Touhouverse benefited from the general “youkai boom” Japan has experienced over the past decade or so. Another theory about how Touhou became so popular: “It’s the hats.” Most characters feature extremely cute headgear that becomes hard for fans to resist, try as they might. (Of course J-List stocks many Touhou products, including all the popular shooting games for Windows including the new game for 2011 which you can preorder, the official Touhou manga, and many other awesome products.)Who’s your favorite Touhou character? I also like Cirno (naturally), Remilla, and Marisa/Reimu.
Touhou is a complex world of Japanese subculture.
