All that means is that Japanese young people are getting married later than was customary 30 years ago. For the eldest son, it's still expected in some families that he will never move out, even after getting married (my brother-in-law was roped into this, after having moved away to Kanagawa. He gave up his job and moved back into his parents home because his father more-or-less ordered him to). It's cultural as much as economic.
Which is the chicken and which is the egg? Are they moving out later because they're getting married later, or are they getting married later because they're moving out later?
I think that definitely depends on where you live. Here in Shizuoka, in the 90s, pretty much all big public works projects came to a standstill. Roads they were building just stopped being built partway through construction. A few years into the 2000s, and they revved things up again, at a pace that makes it look like they were trying to catch up on all the projects that were abandoned in the 90s. A few years ago, the papers announced that rent downtown had bounced back up to Bubble-era rates, and construction downtown has been particularly active.
Isn't it weird that this article is trying to squash the myth of the "lost decade"--the 1990's--by Japan's affluence since 2000? Big screen TVs, advanced cellphones, high-speed internet, etc etc.
There's a lot of diversity in North American comics, just not in their sales. All the diversity gets shoved into the back corner of the store, where only those already "in the know" would dare venture. Check out Fantagraphics and Drawn & Quarterly and their decades-long output of original, reprint and translated material, on about as many different subjects as you can name.
I'm well familiar with the non-mainstream American comic market and literary scene; said as much in the post. But as you said, demographically it is very small, though it does poke through here and there in the mainstream awareness.
Frankly, I find more diversity in the comics/graphic novel section at Barnes and Noble than I do at the local comic book shops. And I'd say about half of that was manga and manga oriented material.
Something I didn't touch on in my previous post, which is kind of ironic considering our current venue, is the diversity found in U.S. web based comics. (The 800 pound gorilla there is Penny Arcade, which is a sort of sympathetic deconstruction of gaming culture.) But since the barrier to entry is essentially zero, there's a lot of diversity in web comics; diversity in style, themes, maturity, ... and quality.
Without really trying I've had the opportunity to meet dozens of web comic creators. Their fan bases range from dozens to thousands; with the largest rivaling mass media audiences. There is certainly much more exploration of specialized interests in this arena than in any other western, English language comics.
There doesn't seem to be a lot of commerce involved. Only a few are able to make a full time living at it. In some ways that's healthy for an art form. In others it can be very limiting. We can hope this aspect will change over time.
I hate it when I don't know why I'm being downvoted---did I make some kind of error? did I word things wrong? or do people just disagree with me?
What if there were a separate "flag" that people could click for trolls and spam, but when you downvoted someone, you were forced to post a reply explaining why?
