From the yesterday’s Times (UK), insight into Japan’s answer to Robert Parker, Shizuku Kanzaki, the main character of Kami no Shizuku (The Drops of the Gods).

According to the Times article,

Shizuku’s adventures are read by about 500,000 Japanese each week and book collections of the comics have sold millions of copies. Wines that feature in his weekly manga activities regularly become overnight hits, particularly for Japan’s frenetic online wine markets.

The  thing here is that it doesn’t matter that it’s a comic, it’s about influence.

From Vinography’s Alder Yarrow:

• Number of subscribers to Robert Parker’s Wine Advocate: 50,000
• Estimated number of individual readers of Kami no Shizuku: 500,000

Again, from Leo Lewis’s Times article:

The sales records of Japan’s largest wine merchants have been smashed because, in a single frame of comic, the hero has uttered a dreamy sigh over a 2006 New Zealand Riesling or closed his eyes in appreciation of a Saint-Aubin Premier Cru.

Of course, comics in the west are generally for kids so probably not the right medium for marketing booze, but as we saw from Google’s Chrome browser comic, it’s not necessarily so.

Big in Japan

Manga is not just Big in Japan ♬, it’s part of the cultural fabric and most of what I’ve seen of it, is adult in nature.

Read the full Times article »