The History of Commercial Development of Touhou (early 2000-2025)

[vanyk]

The History of Commercial Development of Touhou (early 2000-2025)
Chinese version of the article​

Touhou Project is a popular series. There are a lot of Touhou goods, there are Touhou-only doujin event in Japan, China and Korea, there are Touhou conventions in the West and a lot of online activities. Touhou emerged in doujin sphere as a series of doujin games and CDs, but since then Touhou became much bigger and more developed. In addition, commercial projects and collaborations related to Touhou appeared.
For a long time Touhou-related commercial activities were only including official printworks, commercial activities by doujin stores and some commercial products by other companies. Since then more different Touhou goods appeared, collaborations with other games appeared (during these collaborations Touhou-related content was added to these games), semi-official group began to form (some of them were responsible for publishing games on consoles or Steam, the others were responsible for other kinds of commercial activities), commercial games began to appear (like mobile Touhou gacha games or some PC games) and big commercial exhibitions and conventions started to be hosted. In recent years such activities became more widespread outside of Japan. Some doujin stores still organize Touhou fairs (during which Touhou works become cheaper, additional bonuses appear for buying Touhou works or Touhou-related goods are gifted for buying a certain amount of goods of other genres). Still the majority of Touhou commercial collaborations are related to selling Touhou goods (like can badges, acrylic stands, figures and T-shirts)
Similar projects can be seen in other otaku series. Touhou is not the first series which met such development. There were several doujin circles (07th Expansion and TYPE MOON) which began such development before Touhou. But as Touhou was viewed mostly only as a doujin series for a long time (especially outside of Japan), such development became a sensitive topic for some people.
In early days ZUN was responsible for controlling commercial activities related to Touhou. Since then the amount of commercial proposals increased and the amount of unauthorized commercial works increased, so Ruw and Twilight Frontiers began to help ZUN with this and later several groups (like Mediascape and Touhou Doujin Music Distribution) formed to control the situation. In addition, Hakurei Shrine Worship Association was formed responsible for the organization of commercial collaborations, Touhou Yomoyama News to announce commercial collaborations. Touhou Station is responsible for covering information about most Touhou-related activities (uncommercial and commercial ones). And Unknown X is responsible for supporting different projects (mostly collaborations nowadays).
Several articles about commercial development of Touhou were published before. This article will show important commercial activities from each period, relations between them and how the activities changed.

In this article commercialization is viewed as a combination of different commercial activities including distribution, production of commercial goods and digital works, commercial collaborations, platform expansion, offline commercial events and other related activities. These sphere developed together and affected each other intertwining in an unified commercialization process. In some cases it resulted in activities which combined different spheres.

Looking at how activities developed, we can split the history of Touhou commercial development into:
2002-2008 Early commercial development: a lot of forms of commercialization appeared back then. Companies were finding out about the existence of Touhou.
2008-2013 Rapid commercial expansion: more and more companies became interested into Touhou and a lot of commercial collaborations happened.
2014-2017 Commercial expansion of TSA: Touhou games began to appear not only on PC, different groups formed helping to expand commercial activities
2017-2020 Formation of commercial network coordination: many semi-official commercial groups formed and commercial activities became more centralized.
2020-2025 Post-COVID commercial development: commercialization became more spread and a lot of big projects appeared.


CAUTION!!
As it was noted this topic is sensitive for some people. If you don't wan't to read about this don't read this thread.
There are links to Japanese sites which may have sensitive content.
Several R18 works are mentioned in this article, but there are no links to them and not much details are given about them not to break forum rules.
For this article only publicly available information was used and information saved on Web Archive.
There may be mistakes and errors in this article. I would glad if you point out them.
CAUTION!!


Early commercial development
After the release of EoSD on Comiket 62, ZUN decided to distribute it not only on doujin sales events but also in doujin stores. Even though Touhou EoSD got some popularity, doujin stores didn't pay much attention to Touhou. Touhou PCB was also distributed on doujin stores, but this time White Canvas noticed it and placed it on the store recommendation page. The same year Touhou fanworks began to appear in doujin stores too (by the way, Seihou appeared there too). But these stores still looked at Touhou like at any other doujin work.

Touhou fans planned to hold Reitaisai, the first Touhou-only sales event, and decided to cohost it with a Fate-only event as they didn't expect too much attention. The organizers of these events decided to distribute fliers and posters in different doujin stores and other places (it looks like it was mostly Fate-only event's staff idea). But there were much more circles than expected and the organizers were surprised. The catalogs were sold in different stores and even though Reitaisai staff had no plans about mailorder, White Canvas organized it. After the end of the 1st Reitaisai Toranoana added EoSD on the store recommendation page and White Canvas added Team Shanghai Alice on main page. Official Touhou works began to appear in more stores: Messe-Sanoh, Mandarake and D-Stage. In addition Touhou fanworks began to appear in different stores.
At the end of 2004 a special page for Touhou IaMP appeared on Messe-Sanoh site. IaMP was created by Twilight Frontiers with ZUN. By the way, they also distributed Touhou IaMP mobile phone wallpapers with Chara-moe-tai help and were responsible for controllers on the 2nd Reitaisai.

Back to doujin stores. In 2005, Toranoana and White Canvas created Touhou-related pages on their sites. Grep store also began distributing official Touhou works. And more Touhou doujin works were distributed. There were two stores which decided to take the next step, but in different directions: Toranoana and White Canvas.

Toranoana decided to collaborate directly with ZUN and Reitaisai. They wanted to publish their own Touhou book which they sold later in their doujin stores. ZUN approved this project and even wrote a novel and made an arrangement for this book. Later they collaborated with Reitaisai and had their commercial booth there, it was the first commercial booth on Reitaisai. They made a collab in 2007 and another one in 2008 with additional goods (they even made a page for doujin works from Reitaisai and announced that they would sell works from Reiraisai before the event was over).

But Toranoana wasn't the first company who made a collaboration with ZUN. In October 2003, ZUN gave an interview to Colorful PUREGIRL (which was owned by BIBLOS). In December, ZUN began to write Curiosities of Lotus Asia for Colorful PUREGIRL. And later CoLA appeared in MAGAZINE elfics which was published by BIBLOS too. Around that time Studio DNA, which already collaborated with TYPE-MOON (even made a strategy book) and 07th Expansion, decided to collaborate with ZUN too. As a result, they published Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red. Later Touhou Bougetsushou was made (with goods).
Talking about elfics, it was one of the earliest doujin download sites. Later they created elnavi, an information site about doujin. And they decided to distribute CoLA online and created a Touhou page later.
After this you may think that if ZUN distributes something online it will be okay to distribute Touhou fanworks online too. Some doujin circles thought about that too, so in 2006 doujin download works began to appear on elfics, a lot of Touhou fanworks on DLsite (and they were quite popular), Dejipare, E-Doujinshop.com, Surfers Paradise and later DiGiket. By the way that year also the first R18 Touhou doujin download work appeared.

Back to ordinary doujin stores. Toranoana and White Canvas chose different paths of commercialization. So what did White Canvas do? White Canvas was really interested in Touhou doujin. The person in charge of White Canvas participated in the 2nd Reitaisai. They also distributed Touhou fanworks from the 1st Kouroumu. And they decided to sell commercial goods made by doujin circles for them. They started with dakimakuras, which were created by dakimakura.net, and dakimakura.net sold some of them on the 3rd Reitaisai (by way, they had contacts with Reitaisai staff). They also sold other goods like Touhou hologram cards and T-shirts. They had their commercial booth on a small Touhou-only event: Lunatic Festival; they sold fanworks from the 2nd Kouroumu, made a special page for the 4th Reitaisai and some participating circles (and later pages for next events).
There was also a more direct collaboration and support of Touhou. They advertised Touhou-only events by dakimakura.net (and had a commercial booth there). They put a link to Coolier on the main page in 2007 and later made a special reservation page for them. In 2007, they began to sell their own Touhou goods. They gave Reitaisai trading cards for purchases and Touhou-related gifts for purchasing commercial magazines.

In 2007 the first commercial Touhou figures appeared, made by Pink Company. They also made Touhou Keychains and other goods. Some of these goods were made together with Parthenon Production, which sold some Touhou goods on Comiket and later on Reitaisai. And they sold most of such goods in White Canvas.

You could notice that many companies sold commercial goods in doujin stores. ZUN noticed that too and he gave his comment about this:

4Gamer:
When you think about the future of Touhou, what do you think about the fact that Touhou is doujin-based? For example, "Touhou Bunkachou" (2005, Ichijinsha) is a commercially-based publication.
ZUN:
I've been asked to do a book for a long time, and I've been indebted to them, so I decided to try publishing one. But if I was going to publish one anyway, I thought I'd publish something new and different. That was a big problem. There was too much to write, and I couldn't keep up... (laughs).
But I've actually been writing novels for commercial publications for a while now, so in the end it didn't feel that strange. From the perspective of the fans, I think it's probably fine no matter where it's published. If I was going to be put out commercially, it would be because the publishing company seemed to be trying to make a profit from it.
Strangely, that book is a commercial line, but it's only sold in doujin shops. It makes me wonder if it's really commercially distributed. It's not sold in regular bookstores at all, but it's selling quite well. It's interesting, and I thought that things like that do happen.

So he didn't see that as a problem and was okay with that. Such an attitude was good for companies. If we read the first Touhou guidelines we can see why Touhou was convenient for companies for commercialization:

8. If you wish to distribute derivative works by companies other than doujin circles, or through general distribution channels other than doujin shops, please be sure to obtain my permission.
Please also be sure to notify me if you wish to write about them in general magazines or books.
(It is okay to introduce derivative works in doujin magazines, etc.)

So it was okay for companies to produce such works and to advertise them, the only thing they needed to do is notify ZUN about this.

And now we reached a questionable topic: participation of companies in doujin events as doujin circles. Doujin sphere got used to companies participating as commercial booths, but even nowadays participation of companies as doujin circles is a no-no. But such things happened at Touhou-only sales events in the 00s. White Canvas in 2008 participated in Kenousai 3rd as a doujin circle. The next year Parthenon Production participated in Kenousai 4th with White Canvas. And Pink Company participated as a doujin circle in Tsuki no Utage (and in some other doujin events). It is important to note that in 10s these companies didn't do things like this anymore.

In 2007-2008 more and more doujin stores began to sell Touhou doujin works. MESSE-SANOH made the page for all original Touhou works. Later they created a page for all Touhou doujin works and began to sell their own Touhou goods. They also made a special page for goods by circles and sold fanworks from Reitaisai. D-STAGE sold many Touhou doujin goods too and they collaborated with Touhou-only events. Surfers Paradise began to sell Touhou goods, sell their own Touhou goods and they collaborated with TSA. Grep also sold quite a lot of Touhou doujin works and sold their own goods. And other stores like Akibao (they sold Touhou goods since its opening), O-TRAP, Gamers and Mangaoh. Even some printing companies began to sell Touhou stuff. Meanwhile stores which already sold some Touhou goods like MelonBooks began to sell even more goods
At the same time ZUN began to work more with Kadokawa. Eastern and Little Nature Deity was published (with some mistakes). SSiB was published by Ichijinsha and on Toranoana it was shown as primary copyright owned by Ichijinsha and only after that went ZUN. At the same time there was no such problems with Strange and Bright Nature Deity, another Touhou manga created by ZUN and Kadokawa. By the way, Toranoana continued to make their own Touhou-related goods, for example, they published the album with Touhou tracks.

Around that time gacha machines with Touhou goods began to emerge. In 2006, the first such machine created by MiuMyu circle and White Canvas was announced and began its operation on January 1, 2007. This circle also made dakimakuras for White Canvas. By the way, ZUN participated in one of the MiuMyu projects before. In 2007, Kawamuraya circle began to distribute gacha on Comiket. dakimakura.net also had their gachapon on Reitaisai 4 and on later events. Later Akaneya Gutara Mise circle began to create their gacha too and their gacha appeared at D-STAGE store. And more Touhou gacha machines began to appear. And Touhou food by MESSE-SANOH and by Toranoana appeared around that time too.

Touhou was becoming developed from the commercial side. Many doujin stores had Touhou content. Companies produced and sold different Touhou goods and there were already some collaborations with TSA. It wasn't difficult for companies to work with Touhou. And after these first steps were made, Touhou began to commercialize even more.

Rapid commercial expansion
Touhou became very popular during this period. And at the same time a lot of new commercial forms appeared and companies began to produce even more different Touhou goods.

Some more Touhou food appeared around that time. Surfers Paradise began to produce Touhou cookies, candies and chocolate. Touhou Cancanmusume, which was created with the help of PINK COMPANY. It could be found in many different places and was sold online. Even ZUN had it. And there were two more editions later. And Eirin's medicine bottle was distributed by Melon Books. GUN-ZO distributed Touhou Omiotsuke, cans with miso soup. You could get it at doujin stores and Niconico Market. It was also distributed at Reitaisai. In 2014 they made the second edition which was distributed at Reitaisai. After that they distributed ordinary Touhou goods.

Melon Books also sold some other Touhou goods and sold some Touhou goods by Ichijinsha. In 2012, AKIBA-HOBBY began to actively distribute Touhou goods. MESSE-SANOH made some more Touhou goods and placed stalls for Touhou games in their store (and yes, alphes drew for them schoolgirl Sanae). Bookmate started to sell Touhou goods in 2008. And in 2010 they started to use Touhou for advertisement. By the way, they still do it.
Grep placed Touhou on the main pages. They began to participate mostly in Touhou-only events, supported Touhou-only events and organized a tournament. And in 2013, Grep created a Touhou Youtube channel for demos.

During this period, Toranoana was one of the doujin stores which paid a lot of attention to Touhou. They began to publish their own Touhou manga (sometimes with CDs) and Touhou web comic, a lot of their own Touhou figures, some Touhou arrange albums, Touhou calendars every year, Touhou hoihoi, sake set, clocks, keyboards and many other kinds of Touhou goods which manufacturer was Toranoana. They also hosted several Touhou fairs in their stores (during those fairs people who bought Touhou goods got some bonuses (for example discounts)).

Surfers Paradise paid even more attention to Touhou. Touhou goods were popular in Surfers Paradise. As it was said before they collaborated with ZUN and they did that to publish their own Touhou card game Touhou Gaka Ranbu. They also published figures, zippo, a book and other goods too. Surpara Paradise also participated in Reitaisai and they organized Touhou tournaments. In addition, in 2009 they opened Touhou Hatengu Surfers Paradise Shop in Akihabara where they sold Touhou doujin works (even though this store remained its name until its close, they began focussing on other series from 2012-2013). The Touhou store wasn't the only Touhou-specific thing they created. They also opened Touhou SNS Fantastic Hidden Village, a social network for Touhou fans, which was active in 2009-2012. Its banner could appear on the front page of the main site until its close on December 20, 2012. In 2010, Surpara Paradise organized a collaboration with Terebiasahi umu to open a Touhou cafe for around 20 days (some related photos).

Talking about Touhou cafes, there were some other Touhou cafe collabs during this period, though they stopped in around 2013. There were several Touhou collabs organized by MAGIC STAR！ with Touhou food. There was a Touhou cafe collaboration by Cafe Matsuri, a Chinese cafe.
But those Touhou cafes were not the first ones. The first one was Riauta! / Touhou Utautagegou opened in 2009. This cafe had Touhou and Niconico themes. This cafe had Hisouten Tournament, had Fumo, had Touhou goods, had Touhou food and drinks, got their Touhou album snd had some Touhou game machines. And as they said they did it purely out of enthusiasm. But this cafe was closed in 2012. In 2013, this cafe was reopened and was renamed to Pandemonium, but it only had the Niconico theme and they removed Touhou-related elements.
By the way Riauta had a big banner of Touhou Project Fanfiction Posting Mobile Melmaga (東方Project 二次創作投稿ケータイめるまが) on their site. There is not much information about this project, but there are several tweets saying that there were ADs of this project on Nicovideo.
By the way, in 2011 Touhou portal was opened on Nicovideo and Dwango began to sell Touhou goods. Dwango also organized "What the Touhou Project has made possible - Touhou as a platform" broadcast where different people told about their interaction with Touhou. Around that time Kadokawa began actively advertising Touhou manga. In 2013, there was a Touhou fair in their office (and there was Touhou food). That year there was also a collaboration between Dwango and Reitaisai and Dwango began to hold Nicodosai.

 

[vanyk]

Around that time there was another Touhou cafe collaboration by Good Smile Cafe with Touhou gacha.
Good Smile Company decided to produce Touhou figures in 2008 and they began to produce them in 2009. Around that time Griffon Enterprises began to produce Touhou figures, sold them in MESSE SANOH, participated in Reitaisai and supported some Touhou-only events. There were some other Touhou figures producers like quesQ (キューズＱ), VOLKS INC. and AQUAMARINE. Pink Company continued to produce Touhou figures (in addition Pink Company collaborated with Mandarake to produce Touhou figures)
In 2008, LIQUID STONE (a company which also produced adult figures) began to produce a lot of different Touhou figures. And in 2011 there were a lot of Touhou figures on the main page. By the way, they used children's cosplay of Touhou characters to promote their products.
In 2008, Gift company began to produce Touhou goods (and collaborated with Pink Company on C74). Around that time the first Fumo plushes appeared. In 2009 more Touhou figures were produced. They also made Fumo itasha. Later they opened a new site (and it looks like it was advertised on Nicovideo) and Touhou goods were very popular. They sold Touhou goods in Toranoana, Amiami and later Gamers, and collaborated with Good Smile Company. More Fumos (and not only Fumo) began to appear and a Touhou Fumo page was created. Gift began to participate in Reitaisai and hold Gift Plush Toy Festival (several times). In 2011 they also began to make gacha.

During this period other kinds of Touhou goods began to emerge. In 2008, MOVE company began to produce Touhou glass. In 2010, Nefacy Co., Ltd. (株式会社ネファシー) began to produce Touhou clothes. In 2012, eyemirror began to produce Touhou eyeglasses (by the way, in 2020 they opened a new store and had Touhou cardboard cutouts). MOVIC produced different kinds of Touhou goods. Curtain Soul (カーテン魂) began to partcipate on Reitaisai in 2011, and made an announcement about Touhou curtains. They also sold some other goods.
But the goods above are normal things, but there were more questionable Touhou goods. In 2012 one company decided to produce adult goods with "shrine maiden" and "black and white witch" which looked like Touhou characters (in addition there were goods with Tewi). But in 2013 they stopped selling them.


Touhou gacha became much more widespread during this period and appeared in more stores. Punittogacha circle brought a lot of Touhou gacha on Touhou-only events. In 2012, there was a big collaboration project 「東方projectご当地缶バッジ」(Touhou Project local can badges) which goal was to distribute Touhou can badges via gacha machines all over Japan with help of Toranoana and it was successful.

But not only offline gacha machines appeared. In 2009, Touhou Pocket Warevo (東方ポケット戦争) was released and this fangame had gacha elements. 3 years later, Touhou Complete Gacha Simulator, an online Touhou fangame with gacha elements, was published. And the next year, Touhou Card Quest Offline was released. It was a mobile Touhou fangame with gacha elements (fun fact about this fangame: Australian government paid attention to this "computer" game and gave it a G rating).
But there were some other mobile Touhou apps before. In 2011, Touhou Kireiyoru, mobile version of Touhou Imperishable Night, was released. This game was criticized for using ZUN sprites and having paid content. Susi reported this to ZUN and TSA paid attention to this game, and they began to search and remove such apps. Later a new version of this game was released which fixed those problems.
Who is Susi? This is a fan who has hosted Touhou radio broadcasts since 2003 and they were active in the Touhou community since then. Their site has a lot of useful information about Touhou events that happened back then. They also got permission from ZUN to use Touhou music in their broadcasts and had threads about that.

In 2012, Apricot, a paid mobile app to read RSS feeds, was released for IOS and Windows Phone and it had Touhou characters. By the way, the developer of this app participated in Reitaisai.
There were much more fanmade Touhou mobile apps those days but most of them were free and didn't have serious problems with guidelines. ZUN was okay about these apps and wasn't against an idea of publishing one himself too.

But there were also commercial Touhou apps. In 2011, Toho Project Alarm, a paid mobile app by Dwango, was released. It was an alarm app with Touhou music and you could play some minigames in case you would turn off the alarm.
Dwango also got the allowance from TSA to use Touhou characters in another of their projects. In 2010, there was a collaboration between Ai Sp@ce and Touhou (Ai Sp@ce is an MMO social game for PC). You could buy the package which would add Touhou skins to the game. There was also an event related to Yukkuri; an event where you could get Cirno skin, but at first you had to get a postcard on Reitaisai SP on Dwango commercial booth; they participated in 4Gamer's project and people could get Touhou skins. These skins remained until Ai Sp@ce was closed in 2011.
In 2011, there was another collaboration like this with Nendoroid Generation (published by Bandai Namco), a RPG game for PSP. They added several Touhou characters in this game.
Since 2010, several paid Touhou themes have been added to Anime Kisekai Kingdom, a commercial mobile application by BIGLOBE. This company also released paid TouhouCirnoAlarm.
There was also a mobile game which used characters which looked like Touhou ones. It was GREE and they had many characters like this.

In 2010, there was a commercial mobile free gacha collaboration with Touhou. Ani Uta Kakumei (アニうた革命) by Animate added a lot of Touhou songs which you could get daily for free.
Speaking about Animate, they began to sell Touhou doujin goods in 2008. Later they sold official manga, Reitaisai catalogs, and Touhou figures by Gift. In 2010 they opened an online store, where they also sold Touhou doujin works. They also had Touhou gacha and advertised Touhou sake.
And now we will move to the famous Anime Tenchou × Touhou Project collaboration. It looks like this project started in 2008. In 2010 Animate hosted an event in Ufotable cafe and used Touhou posters. Later they made an announcement about the anime. In November they announced Ufotable cafe collab with a special Touhou menu and special anime related Touhou goods and later some of them appeared in their store. There was a preview of this anime in January 2011. ZUN was somewhat okay with this anime, but it was criticized by Ruw, but not many people know that there were 2 more previews of this anime: one in March 2012 and another one in May 2012, but not much info about these ones was saved. Later, in 2016, there was 15th Anniversary Exhibition Cafe event where some materials related to this anime were shown. In addition, that cafe had some Touhou drinks. After this some more related works were released.

Before Riauta (a Touhou cafe with Touhou arcade machines) was mentioned, but there was also another special venue where you could play Touhou on arcade machines. But before we start, it is important to note that in 2006 there already was a Western custom Touhou arcade machine and in 2010 a Japanese one was made. In 2011, Touhou arcade machines were installed in Trytower, a game centre. These Touhou arcade machines operated for many years. They collaborated with organizers of one of Touhou tournaments and Trytower held their own Touhou tournaments. And since 2016 they used Touhou goods as prizes.

But Touhou also appeared in other arcade games. The first game was MUSIC GUNGUN! and Touhou tracks were there since 2010 and ZUNTATA made an arrangement of Touhou song for this game in 2011. By the way, Taito invited ZUN and he played this game. Later MUSIC GUNGUN! 2 came out and it had Touhou tracks too. In addition they organized a Touhou tournament.
KONAMI collaborated with Touhou too. In 2012, Touhou songs were added to SOUND VOLTEX. Since 2013, they have been participating in Reitaisai. In addition, they organized several Touhou remix contests and published their Touhou album. There was also EXIT TUNES×東方アレンジ楽曲×BEMANI REMIX collab and many other collabs. By the way, ZUN played this game in 2016 and the next year there was a collaboration with Reitaisai.

What did ZUN think about such collabs?
He wasn't against such things:

Permission has been given. The condition is that permission must be obtained from the arranger. However, although it is commercial, our stance is the same as other doujin, and we do not dictate the content or anything like that. Personally, I think it's good that there are more opportunities for arrangers to shine (and if it leads to more excitement at arcades, that's even better).

SQUARE ENIX collaborated with Touhou too. In 2012, they announced that Touhou characters would appear in Lord of Vermilion Re: 2 and ZUN wrote the text for cards. Later Touhou cards were added to Lord of Vermilion 3.
During this period commercial Touhou board games appeared too. For example, In 2010, SILVER BLITZ released Touhou Ginfuritsu. They also organized tournaments. Another Touhou game was Touhou Chaos by AXIA. Toranoana collaborated with D.N.A. Softwares to distibute a Touhou mahjong board game. HobbyJAPAN distributed several Touhou board games and to create one of them HobbyJAPAN collaborated with Rio Grande Games.

Finally, we can move to the most controversial company from this period: White Canvas. They sold a lot of Touhou goods; Touhou gacha appeared. They sold their own Touhou plushes, dakimakuras (and asked circles to make designs), sold goods on Reitaisai
At the end of 2008 there was an anonymous report about getting a copyright claim from White Canvas for selling Touhou goods. Due to this report White Canvas stated that only they can sell Touhou doujin works. But no serious proof was given. In April 2009 there was a conflict between White Canvas and D.D.D. (former dakimakura.net). As D.D.D. stated, White Canvas didn't pay, return inventory or send sales reports many time, even though D.D.D. reminded those to them. After this White Canvas tried to not to let D.D.D. in one of Taiwanese Touhou-only events. There was a blog which covered this incident (full version), but their post was removed later because of a legal threat from White Canvas.
In 2011, Ten Desires was released and White Canvas sold it too. But at the end of the year the number of sold works by TSA was reducing. But the TSA corner remained in stores, so it was a temporary problem, right? But later ZUN's post about White Canvas was released, all works by ZUN were removed and the reply by White Canvas was released. And all of these revealed a lot of things.

So, ZUN said that Twilight Frontiers were responsible for Touhou-related commercial activities with doujin stores. Twilight Frontiers accused White Canvas for not sending payment and after checking ZUN in addition accused White Canvas for selling Touhoh goods which were not allowed by ZUN.
What did White Canvas reply? So at first they revealed that ZUN is CEO of Korindo Co., Ltd and Tomohiko Nakajima is a representative director of Sunfish LLC and one of directors of Korindo Co., Ltd. And they said that they had a legal dispute with Sunfish LLC.
Next they named some agreements which are impossible to check as they were not published online.
Exclusive Product Sales Agreement (2004.08.13): "a broad agreement stipulating that our company [White Canvas] has exclusive sales rights to all products produced by Junya Ota, both in Japan and overseas".
Merchandising License Agreement (2007.06.23): "under this agreement, we [White Canvas] hold the merchandising rights to produce and sell merchandise featuring characters created by Junya Ota".
And later it becomes more interesting.

However, in October 2010, we [White Canvas] received notice that Mr. Fumio Oyamada (currently a director at Korindo Co., Ltd.) would be in charge of managing the copyrights of Team Shanghai Alice. Mr. Oyamada stated, "Since the copyright and merchandising rights for Shanghai Alice Illusionary Orchestra's works have been transferred to Korindo Co., Ltd., we would like to enter into a new contract." However, the terms of the new merchandising contract that Korindo Co., Ltd. subsequently presented to us were far removed from the merchandising license agreement we had previously concluded with Mr. Junya Ota, and were simply not something we could accept.
Furthermore, while Korindo Co., Ltd. claims that "management of the copyright and merchandising rights for Team Shanghai Alice works held by Junya Ota has been transferred from Junya Ota to Korindo Co., Ltd.", they have not provided us with any copyright management agreements or other documents that serve as the basis for this assertion. From our perspective, if a new agreement cannot be concluded, the previous agreement (the "Merchandising License Agreement" dated June 23, 2007) remains in effect, so we can simply proceed with merchandising based on that agreement. Whether or not Junya Ota's copyright management rights have truly been transferred to Korindo Co., Ltd. does not affect the validity of the Merchandising License Agreement between our company and Junya Ota. It appears that Korindo Co., Ltd. does not understand this. Furthermore, it appears that Junya Ota and Korindo Co., Ltd. hold different views from ours regarding the scope of the above-mentioned merchandising license agreement, and we are currently in repeated discussions regarding this point through our respective attorneys.
The unilateral announcement of a suspension of business on this official blog appears to be an attempt to intervene in the legal dispute between our company and the third party (Twilight Frontier = SUNFISH LLC), and to forcibly resolve the issue of the interpretation of the contract between Junya Ota and/or Korindo Co., Ltd. and our company (the scope of the merchandising license agreement) by making comments that damage our reputation and inciting rumors, rather than relying on legal resolution. We find this extremely regrettable.
...
Our company has always strived to create products that respect the guidelines published by Junya Ota, and we have never produced any products that are desecrative of the Touhou Project, nor have we produced or sold any products that are rated 18+ (adult products).
We are deeply sorry that the above-mentioned dispute has arisen between our company, Junya Ota, and Korindo Co., Ltd., who should be working together to promote the Touhou Project genre, and that it has become public in this way. We offer our deepest apologies for the great concern and inconvenience caused to our trading circles, franchise stores, business partners, and financial institutions. We would also like to take this opportunity to offer our deepest apologies to all end users who have patronized our stores, mail order, and franchise stores. We will continue to make every effort to provide and sell new Team Shanghai Alice titles in the future.

So, who are all these people? Let's begin with Twilight Frontiers (Tasofro). This is quite an old doujin circle which created official Touhou fightings (I think you already know this). There were 4 main representatives: Unabara Iruka (planning and coordination) (by the way, he published Hisouten teaser on Youtube in 2007), NKZ (circle representative) (he also composed music), Nonotaro (programmer) and KuMA (support) (he also drank with ZUN and gave allowance to use Tasofro music. As you know, Tasofro published not only Touhou games. And they ported their Higurashi fangame on PSP. But they also did other products. They distributed several Touhou board games: Hisoutenfuroku WEATHER LIGHT in 2009, Hisoutenfuroku Hisoudasoku 20 Keitai in 2010. Later they collaborated with HydraGP to organize a Hisoutensoku tournament in 2011. The next year there was a Touhou tournament on Chokaigi organized by Niconico, Tougeki (which published an article about IaMP in their magazine), Twilight Frontiers and HydraGP. By the way, ZUN visited them.
Who is Tomohiko Nakajima? There are two theories: he is NKZ or he is Unabara Iruka. Sadly, there is not enough information to say who is. About SUNFISH LLC, it was established in 2003, but it was not active publicly.

Now, who is Fumio Oyamada? He is Ruw. Who is Ruw? The earliest records of his online activities are from 2002. Back then his nickname was ふーやん (Fuuyan). He had his own site which was named Diamond Station. That year he also published a browser version of one of Konami's board games. In 2002, he found out about Touhou. In 2003, he founded a doujin circle and its name was Studio Ramble and he changed his nickname to ルー (Ruw, sometimes he used Ruw-Van). The first game of his circle was ぽっぷる☆まじっく (POPPLE☆MAGIC!!). This game was sold on Melonbooks and White Canvas. He met with doujin circle D.N.A. Softwares in December 2003 and got closer to them in 2004 (+ he read their blog). Ruw participated in the first Reitaisai. On Winter Comiket Studio Ramble had a joint distribution with D.N.A. Softwares and distributed a collaborative book by Coolier Ruw also worked with Ooedo circle, for some time he was responsible for Disaster site. In 2004 he also got interested in politics and got a full-time job.
In 2004, Moedan project by D.N.A. Softwares (producer), Studio Ramble (programmer), Quarter Iceshop (art) and Chronicle Station (design) started. (By the way, ZUN asked DNA to make this game moe) That was a game which goal was helping learning how to play danmaku games. The banner of this game appeared on doujin stores pages, and there was a preorder of this game on Toranoana. They participated at Fastfood Festival as D.N.A. Softwares circle. In 2005 this game was released and it was successful.
In 2005, Ruw opened a site for file sharing (he still uses it). Ruw participated in another Touhou fanwork, helped Ooedo and Ruw's site was used for logs from Ooedo (but it looks like it didn't work perfectly). In 2006, he participated in some projects by Ooedo and the last one was in December, where he participated as vocalist. After that he stopped working with Ooedo, but they remained friends.
Around that time he became a member of D.N.A. Softwares. He opened amatukami.com, but sadly, not much information was saved, but it was Ruw's site. Later Uwabami Breakers was released. He also was a DJ on one of Susi's radio streams. In 2007, he participated on Comiket as a member of D.N.A. Softwares. Around that time, he opened his Hatena blog where he mostly discussed doujin and legal topics. He also participated in discussions at the University of Tokyo about trends in doujin games. In 2008 he organized a radio broadcast with ZUN and he paid attention to illegal reuploads
In 2007, D.N.A. Softwares began to develop the first mahjong game: The Pongjong Master. Ruw was responsible for online mode. After that he began to develop Touhou Genso Mahjong. And Ruw (not DNA) was the producer (or chief culprit) of this game. Since then many other Touhou mahjong games were released and Ruw was the producer of each of these games. Only a few games by D.N.A. Softwares were not mahjong games, and Ruw was one of team leaders. But most of these releases happened after 2011.
In 2009, Ruw organized Group of Doujin Game Developers event. That was an event where famous doujin circles shared information about developing doujin games, gave tips and other information. ZUN participated there too. The next year there was the second event. ZUN was there too:

After the lectures, all the panelists came out for a panel discussion, where the general audience and the panelists exchanged questions. A variety of humorous topics were discussed, but seriously, mobile games for mobile platforms like Android and iPhone, social games like Mixi apps, and browser games seem to be becoming a significant force in the doujin gaming world. At the same time, many people expressed interest in creating games for these platforms (even Priest [ZUN] raised his hand in a survey), demonstrating the high level of interest. When a panelist asked, "How many of you are interested in creating a derivative work of Touhou?", Priest [ZUN] was among the attendees who raised their hands.
All things considered, I stayed until almost the end of the event, and left when the call to leave came. According to an announcement by Ruw from D.N.A. Softwares just before the closing, GDGD plans to alternate between a laid-back atmosphere like the first event and a more serious approach like this one, and hopes to shorten the event period in the future. The next event is scheduled for September or October, and they briefly mentioned that they would like to invite people who create materials.

But the third event wasn't held, but Ruw joined Korindo Co., Ltd. I think after reading his biography it is not surprising how he did that.

Talking about Korindo Co., Ltd. there is not much information about it. The earliest mention of this company is from 2009, it is known that ZUN and Ruw (and possibly someone from Twilight Frontiers) are directors. But what about THBWiki and hater wikis? Well, this information is based on a post from BBS. There are quite a lot of claims which are difficult to check, but this is not the first version. Previous version is here. And there are some small differences. But no new information about this appeared since 2012.


After this incident White Canvas removed their document and they continued to sell Touhou fanworks (and even official printworks like SoPM) and commercial works. They participated in Reitaisai and sold the catalog. In July the official works returned. In 2013 they began to sell official Touhou works on Amazon. In 2014 they sold the Reitaisai catalog without allowance. And later in 2019 the manager was arrested and White Canvas was closed.

 

[vanyk]

But there were other incidents related to ZUN. In early 2011, Kousikibakat (カネコトレーディング) registered trademarks for Touhou Project (東方プロジェクト) and Team Shanghai Alice (上海アリス幻樂団). Their site was empty, and there was no good public information about their activities. Some people accused them to be related to White Canvas. So for what goals Kousikibakat wanted to use those trademarks? From that image we can see that Touhou Project was registered for a lot of kinds of computer things (like video game machines, CD-ROM programs, videos, music, etc.) (Category 9) and different kind of clothes (Category 25); they wanted to use "Team Shanghai Alice" for the same things and different kinds of toys and board games (Category 28) and for offline performances and book production (Category 41). Mostly things that could be used by a store.
You can read about trademark categories here. For the next applications information I will refer to J-PlatPat.
ZUN tried to solve this legal problem. At first he registered trademarks for Touhou Project (東方プロジェクト) and Team Shanghai Alice (上海アリス幻樂団) and he used them for Touhou games:

9 Computer programs
41 Providing online games and information related to them

But that didn't fully solve the problem, so he tried to challenge traderights in court, but the judge said

However, as with the above, even if the words "Touhou Project" (東方プロジェクト) or "Touhou Project" (東方Project) appear in some of these works, these characters cannot be deemed to be used as trademarks indicating the source of individual products.
Furthermore, the submitted evidence does not show that the words "Touhou Project" are widely recognized among consumers as a trademark to be used in connection with games, music, manga, and other products related to "Shanghai Alice Illusion Orchestra" or the applicant.
Therefore, the subject trademark, which consists of the words "Touhou Project," cannot be recognized as a trademark widely recognized among consumers in Japan or overseas as indicating products related to the business of "Shanghai Alice Illusion Orchestra" or the applicant at the time of filing the application for registration of the subject trademark.
...
However, as stated above, the words "Touhou Project" are a collective term for games, music, manga, etc., and individual works are marked with "Touhou XX" and do not use the words "Touhou Project" as a trademark. Therefore, the Complainant's argument cannot be accepted.

So the trademark remained but then that wasn't a big problem for ZUN. After that ZUN registered another trademark for Touhou Project and he used it for paper products (paper banners, paper flags, paper towels, etc.) (Category 16) and Categories 28 (toys) and 41 (performances and books) for the same things Kousikibakat did. It looks like that was made not for official games or manga but for companies TSA collaborated with. In March-April 2014 Pink Company managed to get trademarks from Kousikibakat and after that ZUN announced that the trademark problems were resolved. And in 2015, ZUN got those trademarks from Pink Company. So all trademark problems were resolved.

There was also another copyright incident. On Niconico Commons there were some images uploaded with "Commercial use available". There was yukkuri (fixed later), an image from Double Spoiler (removed later) and other stuff like this. As a result most of such images were removed.

So, during this period old ways of commercialization developed and new ones appeared. Companies were more active during this period and TSA wasn't very active. But at the end of this period some very questionable activities stopped and TSA and close companies were preparing to expand Touhou commercially.


Commercial expansion of TSA

During this period TSA began to expand Touhou games on other platforms and sell them overseas. Mediascape was formed and it became the publisher of many Touhou games and fangames.

Even though Touhou and Mediascape helped doujin games to enter console gaming, they were not the first ones in this sphere. For example, in the second session of Group of Doujin Games Developers there was a lecture "The Road to Xbox LIVE Indie Games" about the experience of developing doujin games for Xbox and Windows Phone and limitations.

Before that, in 2009, Rockin' Android appeared. It was a Western company which goal was localizing doujin games. Later they announced that they had plans for porting doujin games to consoles and said that they had talks with ZUN hoping to work with him in future, but ZUN refused

We actually get along really well, but the thing about ZUN is that ZUN is really not prepared for a US market just yet. He definitely has had many offers in the past both from France and some different countries. He’s definitely content with the Japanese market and he does not need it to grow any larger than it is, because he does have a daytime job and it would only make more work for him.

In 2010, they began to work with Sony and ported doujin games to PSN and PS3. And in 2011 they started selling doujin games on Steam (and a year later on Desura).

Back to Touhou Project. In 2013, Playism got interested in ZUN and they were interested in ZUN's claim that he is between doujin and indie. After that there was a meeting with ZUN. In March, ZUN announced about publishing Touhou overseas via Playism and had another meeting with people from Playism. Playism was interested in Touhou and asked ZUN about publishing games on Playism. And after that the online distribution of Touhou Double Dealing Character started and in 2015 the Western distribution started. Around that time Touhou fangames began to appear on Playism and Playism presented them on BitSummit2015.

And now we will talk about Mediascape. As their site says, it was founded in 2009 but public activities began only in 2014. In 2014, ZUNxPlayStation project was announced. This project allowed Touhou fangames to be published on Playstation. In December this project was turned into Play,Doujin! to allow not only Touhou fangames participate in this project:

Oyamada: Mediascape has launched a project called "Play, Doujin!" to support circles releasing doujin games on PlayStation, including derivative works of "Touhou". This is because a project called "ZUN x PlayStation" would only refer to derivative works of "Touhou". Our goal is to make people aware that there is a way to release doujin in the PlayStation format, regardless of whether it is "Touhou" or not.

By the way that interview revealed some interesting things. Even though Ezaki Nozomu (D.N.A.) is the representative director of Mediascape and he planned "Play, Doujin!" and negotiated with doujin circles, the actual director of Mediascape is Ruw. It also revealed that it was Mediascape idea to collaborate with Playstation and Sony was interested in that project too:

Playstation was interested in working with Touhou. ZUN agreed to work with them:

Ito: Our company also wanted to create a place where developers of independent games and doujin games could easily participate on a platform like PlayStation. To this end, we thought that the development of the "Touhou Project", which is extremely popular among doujin games, was essential . So, we had the opportunity to talk with Mr. Esaki and Mr. Oyamada of Mediascape, who knew Mr. ZUN well, and we realized that we were working towards the same direction.
...
ZUN: I now want to actively develop on other platforms. I think the turning point for me was when I experienced the "Indie Game Fes 2013" held at the Tokyo Game Show in 2013. After being exposed to that event, to be honest, I felt that "the popularity of independent games will not last long", but on the other hand, I also painfully realized that if I don't follow this trend well, "doujin games themselves have no future" . Therefore, I was also thinking about ways to promote doujin games, and at this time I heard about "Play, Doujin!" and felt that it should be very interesting.
...
Oyamada: Doujinshi can be read the moment you get them, but CDs and DVDs require playback equipment. This is a barrier to entry. In this sense, by securing a channel for releasing software in the PlayStation format, we can open up a path to the future for developers. For this reason, "Play, Doujin!" must also exist , and we talked about this with each other.
...
—— So, have you ever worried that the advantage of being able to create fan works freely will be lost by cooperating with a large company like SCEJA?
Esaki: Rather, we want to discuss with SCEJA and decide "how can we be free?" Of course, there will be some restrictions, but we will tell them that "we want to create freely" and see how they respond. By the way, this "restriction" is similar to the restrictions in fan creation. There is no need to think about "restrictions unique to home game consoles".
Ito: How can we not lose the advantages of free creation? Like this, we attach great importance to creating an environment where "you can make and publish what you like ." Of course, we abide by the general restrictions.
Oyamada: We are very grateful to SCEJA for providing the development environment support for "Play, Doujin!". Many people in the fan club are new to home game console development equipment, so they can get in touch with the development environment first before deciding whether to participate in "Play, Doujin!".
—— What if there is content that is difficult to develop on a home console?
Ito: Currently, the only thing that allows secondary creation on "Play, Doujin!" is the "Touhou Project". As long as it is content that we really want to release, we will provide support as much as possible.
ZUN: In fact, after seeing the trend of "Play, Doujin!", it would be ideal if the companies of each work could give permission for secondary creation.
Oyamada: In the future, we will develop a Wiki-like service for clubs participating in "Play, Doujin!" and strive to establish a system for sharing information.
—— What was the reaction within SCEJA regarding the start of the doujin game?
Ito: The characteristic of doujinshi is that the secondary creation aspect is very prominent, and some people feel uneasy because it is a field they have never set foot in. However, what doujinshi producers do is to enthusiastically pursue the free creation of content and game categories that they like. In order to do this, even if they are a minority, they will start to act. The gathering of everyone with this enthusiasm is the actual state of doujinshi. I think this enthusiasm is the same whether it is doujinshi or independent . What I explained in the company is "there is no need to distinguish it from independent development." Rather, as an independent work with personality that Japan can appeal to the world, doujinshi games will be more eye-catching . This is what I think.

Who is Ito? Akinari Ito is a person from Sony who led Play,Doujin! project.

Talking about D.N.A., you may know that he has been active since mid 90s and since 2003 D.N.A. Softwares has been publishing Touhou fangames. He didn't have much money in mid 00, but he continued to make doujin games. In the 10s he gave some lectures and on one of them he raised an idea of raising money for doujin games. In 2013 he started Digigame Expo, where he was a representative director:

The turning point was in 2013, when I heard that "We're going to hold BitSummit to introduce indie games to foreigners, " and I thought I had been beaten to it. I thought that I had to start a doujin event. The organizer of another event at Ota Ward Industrial Plaza said, "We have some spare space, so how about using part of it?", so I rented it and held the first event.
...
When indie games started to get popular, I somehow felt that doujin and indie games should not be separated.
Digital games include both, so "Digigame Expo" became a place that includes doujin and indie games.

By the way D.N.A. Softwares participated there as a circle. Many other circles including TSA (+ they distributed PC98 Touhou games) participated there too. By the way Unity became interested in this event and DNA made a doujin game on Unity (and in 2018 he made another one). Unity was also interested in Play,Doujin!.

After we know about all leaders of Play,Doujin! project we can go back to the project itself. Since the beginning of this project there were some problems. As you may know doujin games are not very legal, especially the ones which have elements from other games. And as I said in one of my previous articles, as long as doujin works remain on doujin events (and in some cases doujin stores) companies have no serious problems with such games. But when such games leave doujin sphere, problems may emerge. And that is what happened.
One of the circles participated in Play,Doujin! was CUBE TYPE and they published Genso no Rondo, a Touhou fangame which was inspired by Senko no Rondo by G.rev. That is why they sent a trademark infringement claim to Mediascape in December 2014. In result the game was temporarily removed, but G.rev got interested in Play,Doujin! so they gave a license to this game and this game became available again. G.rev and ZUN helped with this release. There was also a small incident related to poor cooperation and misunderstanding between Mediascape and AQUASTYLE circle and it was quickly resolved.

Mediascape not only published doujin games to console devices, but they also released special Touhou themes for Playstation Vita. Later Touhou avatars were released. Mediascape supported Playstation × Indies project. Since 2015, Mediascape has been participating in Reitaisai. In 2016, Mediascape began to sell their games in Amiami store. And Play,Doujin! Summer Fair 2016 was held. In addition, Sony and Mediascape published a special Touhou article on Dengeki PlayStation. They also organized "Play,Doujin! presents Touhou Project new release event" (Play,Doujin! presents 東方Project新作発表会) where new releases of new Touhou games were presented (and yes, those photos of ZUN with Aya cosplayer are from this event. And no, she isn't ZUN's wife).
And talking about ZUN after the release of ULiL on PlayStation he was asked if he had any plans about promoting Play,Doujin! in the future. He said "I don't care about Play,Doujin. I have no intention of releasing anything like that [new work]". On one of broadcasts he expressed some thought about this project:

Ito: "At first, ZUN thought Play, Doujin wouldn't work."
ZUN: "The idea of releasing it for a consumer device didn't seem right, but since it was a completely doujin game for consumer hardware, I thought it wouldn't be that different."
Ito: "With doujin games becoming more and more PC-based, where ROMs don't play on CDs or DVDs, ZUN was also wondering if there was an environment where more people could play doujin games, and the timing was just right."
ZUN: "I especially wanted an environment where we could be close to the creators in the game industry. That's what I was thinking."

In 2017, he was asked if he gets money from Play,Doujin! and he replied with something like "somewhat".

And talking about ULiL, yes, it was released on PlayStation and it was released under SUNFISH Co., Ltd.. They also collaborated with HORI Co., Ltd. to sell controllers for PlayStation with Touhou characters. And ULiL was greatly promoted in Gamers store. By the way, for AoCF the goods were more ordinary. In 2017, KADOKAWA (and Dengeki) published "Touhou Electronic Games Illustrated" which introduced Touhou characters and official games, PS4 fangames and rhythm games with Touhou tracks. Unabara (from Twilight Frontiers) supported this book and SUNFISH was one of copyright owners of this book.

Talking about rhythm games, Taiko no Tatsujin wanted to add Touhou tracks since 2012. They realized they could do it, so at first they made an announcement about adding Touhou tracks and an announcement about their participation on Reitaisai and teasered that they would add Touhou tracks and characters. After that they collabed with Reitaisai on Niconico Chokaigi and participated on Reitaisai. Taiko no Tatsujin collaborated with Reitaisai on the following Reitaisai's too. By the way, ZUN played this game; and there are Touhou tracks in the PS4 version.
Taiko no Tatsujin was produced by BANDAI NAMCO Amusement. There is another rhythm game by them, which has Touhou tracks: Synchronica. And this game was presented at Bandai Namco's commercial booth on Reitaisai too.

Talking about other rhythm games, Nexcade added Touhou tracks to Pump It Up. CAPCOM added Touhou content to crossbeats REV. SUNRISE.

Taito added Touhou tracks in Groove Coaster, their rhythm game, too and ZUN played it. After that they added more tracks, published a CD with Touhou tracks and organized a Touhou tournament with prizes. And in 2017 they let ZUN play with a new Touhou track before the update.
Konami added Touhou tracks in many their rhythm games: Pop'n music, Pop'n Music éclale, BeatStream (it had many Touhou tracks and BeatMARIO and ARM (from IOSYS) made a track for this game), REFLEC BEAT, REFLEC BEAT plus (by the way IOSYS made a music pack for them), MÚSECA, GITADORA, Nostalgia. With this Konami organized BEMANI×東方Project collab.

Sega added Touhou tracks too. Touhou tracks were added in maimai GreeN. There was also a digital distribution of some of these tracks on iTunes. Later Touhou tracks were added in Chunithm. This game was presented on Reitaisai. In 2016 a collaboration CD with BeatMARIO was presented on Reitaisai and BeatMARIO played this game. In addition in 2017 there was a collaborative event with Touho. Sega also produced some Touhou goods since 2016: different Touhou keychains, bath towels and many different Touhou figures.

And Nintendo added Touhou tracks. They were added to "Daigasso! Band Brothers P". ZUN didn't mind that. Nintendo organized a remix contest for Touhou songs and after that they sold their Touhou album on Reitaisai and later it was sold in doujin stores. Also ZUN was invited as a guest on one of their broadcasts. Later more Touhou (Hifuu) tracks were added.
Nintendo was interested on adding Touhou games to Nintendo Switch. Nintendo contacted Mediascape in November 2016 and after that it was announced that Touhou fangames would appear on Nintendo Switch and demos were presented on Reitaisai. Only after that Mediascape announced that Play,Doujin! expended on Nintendo Switch and Touhou Kobuto V was released there and it was sold in stores.

Talking about older companies, Kadokawa published Touhou Project Character Database in September 2015 edition of Comptiq and as it was claimed: "This book is an independent work by the editorial department of ... (omitted) ... and does not represent the official views of Team Shanghai Alice". In 2015, Dwango organized 20th Touhou anniversary celebration broadcast and invited ZUN. In 2016 they organized "Cho ZUN Beer" project on Niconico Chokaigi 2016.
By the way, ZUN Beer was presented on Chokaigi for the first time in 2012. ZUN made a comment about ZUN Beer for Chokaigi Newspaper in 2014. In 2016 there was a broadcast from Chokaigi. There was ZUN's booth and Reitaisai's booth. In 2018 ZUN and Reitaisai collaborated to present ZUN Beer.

The activities of doujin stores didn't change much. In 2014, Toranoana began to hold many Touhou LIVE events. In 2016 they collaborated with Uta-matsuri (a LIVE event by Reitaisai). And in 2017 Toranoana held a Touhou fair event in their store.
MelonBooks held Touhou fairs since 2014 and Touhou LIVE events later. In 2016, MelonBooks collaborated with AQUASTYLE circle to hold a Touhou fair.
Animate began to sell more official goods and fan made goods. Touhou cosplay was featured in Animate magazine. For the 20th Touhou anniversary Animate made a Touhou corner. Since 2015 Touhou fairs have been held.

There was also a full scale Touhou orchestra organized by JAGMO (a subsidiary of Kayac Inc.). Organizers already knew ZUN for a long time when they decided to organize this and after talking with ZUN they decided to hold an orchestral concert. And in 2016 they held the first concert. It was successful so they held the second one that year and it continued to be held till COVID. By the way, in 2019 they participated in Reitaisai (yes, as a doujin circle. At the beginning of 2020 they managed to hold one concert, but the next one was cancelled, but they sold Touhou albums. In 2024, they tried to revive this project, but it hasn't been revived yet.

During this period some more different Touhou goods appeared. Since mid 10s Updraft in collaboration with many other companies (unicom, cheero, OJAGA DESIGN and GILD design) made a lot of different Touhou goods: Touhou laptops, a lot of Touhou iPhones models (yes, many different ones), Touhou earphones, Wall Clocks, Touhou mobile batteries, Touhou leather keycaps and Touhou card holders. Updraft even participated at Reitaisai.
GENKOSHA Co. produced several collections of Touhou illustrations and techniques.
AMNIBUS made some Touhou goods and participated at Reitaisai too. COPIC (G-Too company) collaborated with Touhou to publish markers. COPIC also published Touhou Illustration Techniques book. In 2017, Break Co., Ltd. distributed Touhou bags.

Talking about gachas, some more Touhou gacha machines appeared. Talking about gacha games, in 2014 Cookie☆Stroria appeared, an online RPG game with free gacha. Somebody made "Touhou Gacha" (東方ガチャ), a simple "gacha" "game" based on Shindan Maker. In this game you pressed a button and got an image of a random character in a random costume. And this game was somewhat popular. In 2014, Puzzles & Gensokyo mobile fangame was released. This game was something like Puzzles & Dragons but with Touhou characters. And this game had a gacha system which gave you new characters. By the way, at the end of 2014, the same dev released Touhou Gyokureihime, a Pokemon-like Touhou fangame which didn't have any gacha. In 2016, Touhou speed tapping idle RPG,a simple mobile fangame with gacha elements, was released. The same year, Touhou Marble Puzzle, a puzzle fangame where you could get items via gacha, was released. Also, Touhou Isoana, a big RPG fangame with gacha elements, was released. In 2017 a few more Touhou mobile fangames with gacha elements were released: Touhou Tenjiden and Touhou Genso Clicker. As you can see all these mobile Touhou games were fanmade and free, and gacha was free too. Gacha was for characters or ingame items. And TSA didn't have problems with them.

Talking about commercial apps, in 2016, TSA began to collaborate with LINE, a commercial mobile messager. Before 2015 LINE didn't have a theme store, so there were some fanmade Touhou custom themes. At the beginning of 2016, paid Cookie stickers were released. As they were very controversial they were removed. At the end of 2016, TSA and LINE collaborated to add licenced paid Touhou themes. But there were also unofficial themes. In addition, official paid Touhou stickers were released.

TSA also collaborated with a mobile game: Dandy Dungeon - Legend of Brave Yamada - (Brave Yamada-kun). ZUN was a friend of this game's developer: Kimura Yoshiro. After Brave Yamada-kun was released Kimura had some talks with ZUN about derivative works and Touhou and a collaboration with Touhou was announced. And this game also appeared on Digigame Expo. Later there was a stream related to this collaboration where ZUN said that he wrote the lines, helped with other elements and had a lot of fun. Later there was another stream, where it was revealed that Kimura Yoshiro met ZUN for the first time at Poripori club (ZUN is a regular visitor there) and some time later he discussed with different people (including DNA) if he could do a collaboration with Touhou. After that he drank beer with ZUN and ZUN asked what he wanted because ZUN "thought he [Kimura] wasn't getting to the main point, but I [ZUN] could roughly imagine what Kimura wanted to say. When Kimura talks like this, it's definitely work, and when I [ZUN] say work, it has to be Touhou". In 2017 another interview was published in SCoOW. By the way, some time later this game was closed and it was rereleased on Steam and Touhou content was there.

But there was also a controversial mobile fangame during this period: Touhou Genreimu. That was quite a popular STG fangame, but all characters except Marisa were paid and continues were paid too and other copyright problems. After sending complaints to TSA, the creator got a copyright claim, which was sent by Ruw.

Talking about Ruw, he was mostly responsible for legal things, but he also organized ski tours and recruited people to help on Reitaisai. In addition he found out about DMCA and he began to send first DMCAs.

Even though during this period there were not so many different changes in commercial development comparing to previous periods, some changes were serious and they prepared the foundation for the groups emerged during the next period. The scale of Touhou Doujin was reducing while some people began to notice the commercialization of Touhou. In such an environment Touhou Project began to extend the commercial development even more.

 

[vanyk]

Formation of commercial network coordination

During this period many semi-official groups were formed and all of them were related to commercial activities. In addition some commercial gacha mobile games began to emerge.

The first group was Touhou Station. It was formed in 2017 and was operated by Dengeki (Dwango) and Studio Onsite Co., Ltd. The Representative Director and President of Studio Onsite is Hyakka Ryouran. He knew about Touhou at least since 2010. In 2022 he was already a ZUN friend and ZUN helped him. Dwango was the main organizer of Touhou Station and invited ZUN to Touhou Station and helped him to distribute HSiFS demo on Reitaisai. The MC of early sessions of Touhou Station was BeatMARIO.

As there are questions in Western and Chinese Touhou communities about who BeatMARIO is and what his role is in semi-official groups, I will introduce his doujin biography. In 2000 and 2001 he was producing Leaf&Key arrangements. In 2002 he switched to RAGNAROK ONLINE. In 2003 he became a Touhou fan and made some Touhou arrangements. On the 1st Reitaisai he met ZUN and JYUNYA and later made BGM for JYUNYA. In 2004 he released his first Touhou arrangements CD. In 2005 BeatMARIO participated in the first Touhou Carnival and later on Flowering Night 2006 and ZUN was there too. He was ZUN's friend and in 2007 he got an allowance from ZUN to distribute Touhou remixes on commercial karaoke. He also hosted a sudden Touhou mini LiVE on AKIBA Space 6.0. BeatMARIO began to participate in many LIVE events. In 2009, BeatMARIO organized a big tour where he hosted a lot of LIVE events in different places. In 2009 he began to participate in events organized by Dwango and he made music for Dengeki. And he made some music for Animate. In 2012 he participated in Chokaigi. He advertised SOUND VOLTEX, made music for Ragnarok Online and goods for Reitaisai. In 2013, BeatMARIO became close with SEGA. And in 2014-2019 he performed for SEGA (mostly for maimai and Phantasy Star Online 2 and other games). For one of Mediascape themes for PS Vita he made the BGM. He was MC of Touhou Project 20th Anniversary Drinking Party hosted by Dwango. In 2016, A-One, Butaotome and COOL&CREATE organized 東方ＡＢＣ project, the goal of this project was to travel to different places and hold LIVE events. By the way, BeatMARIO's music was added to ULiL's bonus CD and ZUN visited BeatMARIO's wedding party. In 2016, BeatMARIO offered to add Cave games on Steam and Cave said that they liked BeatMARIO's albums. So BeatMARIO began to make music for Cave. By the way, a few months before Touhou Station he participated in some broadcasts by Dwango.

And now we can move to Touhou Station. BeatMARIO was the MC of early Touhou Station broadcasts. By the way, here you can see how minute to minute script for broadcasts looked like. There are some other Touhou fans who work for Touhou Station as writers or editors or presented their projects. So even though it is a commercial project it helps to introduce some fan works and fan activities.

In late June 2017, a sudden collaboration between Atre store and Touhou was declared. As it was declared, the organizer of this collaboration was Hakurei Shrine Worship Association (HSWA). So it is time to discuss what Reitaisai was doing during previous periods.
Since 2009, Reitaisai has become more active in organizing collaborations. They got their own CDs, figures, Reitaisai rice and other goods. There were also goods by companies on commercial booths. Reitaisai began to organize LIVE events. In 2009 Reitaisai started to hold cosplay events And as the main page of the second event says it is organized by WOOD BELL whose representative was Ryudo Suzuki (the first representative of Reitaisai). WOOD BELL also organized Vocafes. Ryudo also founded his own company in 2010. In 2011, Pixiv and WOOD BELL organized a collaboration project, where fans could present their fanarts for fliers. Reitaisai had a lot of their own goods. But at the end of 2011, Ryudo decided to dissolute Ryudo Co., Ltd. and Masataka Arase, Masahiro Sato and Takahiro Hojo became the representatives of Reitaisai, but Takahiro Hojo became the actual representative.
He was responsible for commercial things for Reitaisai SP 2. He was on Chokaigi 2014 and had gacha on Reitaisai booth in 2015. In 2016 he had a big booth. By the way, he shared a photo of Hakurei Shrine Office and he wasn't invited to Touhou Station. In addition, in 2011 he founded ASH LLC (but the site was opened only in 2016). As their site says their capital is 1 million yen and annual sales are 100 million yen. And yes, this company is responsible for Reitaisai and also has a trademark for Doujin Japan. By the way, Hojo advertised Cybozu Live, a program for organizing business chats.

By the way, not only Reitaisai has a company. D.D.D. (the circle which produces dakimakuras) is also the organizer of Dai⑨shu Touhousai and some other events. In 2017, a site of Masuda Shokai company was opened and as this site reveals this company existed even before the first Touhou-only event by D.D.D. was organized and this company organizes those Touhou-only events. This company works with other companies. The representative of the company and the events is the same person: Manabu Masuda. By the way, Manabu Masuda has contacts with ZUN and Ruw.

Back to Reitaisai. There was another collab with Pixiv in 2013. That year, Reitaisai also had their own sake. Reitaisai also had a booth on Chokaigi. In 2014, Reitaisai presented Gensou Mahjong on Chokaigi. They also made a collab with Taiko no Tatsujin and later they presented it on Chokaigi. In 2015, Reitaisai participated in Otaku Expo where Reitaisai presented Touhou doujin. There were posters of commercial collabs on Reitaisai. In 2016 there was another Touhou sake.

After knowing the activities aside from holding doujin events by Reitaisai staff we can move to Hakurei Shrine Worship Association (博麗神社崇敬会). Even though it became active only in 2017, we can find mentions of this group since the early 10s. By the way there are some mentions of Hakurei Shrine Parishioners Association (博麗神社氏子会) from 2010-2011, but it is hard to say what they were doing actually but it looks like their activities intercepted, and that could be a former name of HSWA. People who mentioned these groups were Reitaisai staff members or worked with Reitaisai. There is not enough information but we may assume that this group could be responsible for commercial activities of Reitaisai. By the way there was an interesting comment by one of the Reitaisai staff members:

The organizing group, Hakurei Shrine Office, is itself a non-profit volunteer organization (lol). There are front companies that act as venue managers and handle corporate negotiations and contracts, but I myself am merely a volunteer staff member for the volunteer organization.

In modern HSWA there is one representative: Zeku Tooru (Zekuyan). This person had a doujin circle in 1992-2001. Later he established AXIA company. In 2010 AXIA began to produce Touhou card games and Touhou towels. AXIA had a commercial booth on Reitaisai. Zeku was Ruw's friend at least since 2010 and he drank with ZUN and spent some time with ZUN after Reitaisai. By the way, it looks like HSWA's Twitter account is run by Zeku

And now we can move to the first HSWA collabs. As there wasn't a site for HSWA or a Twitter account, so Reitaisai's Twitter account was used for advertisement of these collabs (and they made a broadcast of construction). Hojo posted information about these collabs too (and he participated in preparations). And BeatMARIO participated in these collabs.
So why did this collaboration happen? That is what Zeku said in 2017:

BeatMARIO: Well, what was the trigger for the Touhou collaboration at Atre in the first place?
Zeku: Originally, it was at Atre, when I was planning it, because Atre had done official collaborations with various anime, game, and manga artists, many of which were large-scale.
There were a lot of people on the ground who wanted to do something more interesting, so after thinking about it, I casually suggested the Touhou Project.
Many of the people on the other side were working adults, so they were like, 'It's a commercial facility, have you heard of it?' and the people behind the scenes were like, "Can you even do that?" I thought this was a dangerous development, so I immediately contacted Hojo and got involved.

And in 2020 he gave even more details:

--But after you entered the Touhou world with ChaosTCG, you spent about six years sleeping as a grounder without doing anything in particular, right?
Zeku: I was allowed to make Touhou Project card games, but other than that I just helped out with ZUN Beer. The beer company thought I was a Dwango employee (laughs). I also enjoyed drinking with ZUN and everyone else, so I would show up at those events.
The first time ZUN said to me, "We have no choice but to acknowledge you," was at the "Super Touhou LIVE Stage 2018" at Nico Nico Chokaigi.
We were originally supposed to do a Touhou live stage at Chokaigi in April 2018, but it seems that it couldn't be held just before the event, around January or February, due to a lack of preparation funds. So, while we were all drinking together, we started talking about what we should do. At first, Beat Mario and Comp from Butaotome were talking about pooling money together as a music club. Then Mario suddenly said, "There's someone there who might be able to put up the money!" (laughs).
--Over the course of about six years, you'd become drinking buddies with ZUN and others, and it was when the incident occurred in 2018 that they first asked you for help, right?
Zeku: Yes. Of course, I was also working on other things, and we had held the event at Akihabara Atre shortly before that.
At the end of 2016, I asked ZUN, "What do you think about doing a Touhou project at a facility like Atre?" He replied, "If that's what you want to do, then sure," so I thought that maybe that's when we'd built up a level of trust, having previously enjoyed drinking ZUN beer together. Of course, I did consider the weight of what ZUN meant when he said, "Yes, sure."
So in the summer of 2017, when we suddenly needed to hold an event at Atre Akihabara, Touhou was chosen and we did "Touhou Project x Atre Akihabara Hakurei Shrine ~ Summer Festival." It became incredibly popular.
The success of this event was purely coincidental. ZUN stopped by Atre Akihabara on his way to get some drinks for a serialization project in Comptiq. He signed autographs at the venue and tweeted about it on his own account, so that's when fans first realized, "Atre's project is a commercial event, but ZUN is supporting it." Without that, I think the event would have flopped.
——Is that so?
Zeku: That's how difficult commercial Touhou events are. First of all, there's little cooperation between commercial manufacturers, and fans go in with the attitude that "They're here to make money off Touhou." ...Well, since it's a commercial event, they have to make a profit, so it's true that they're here to make money, but I hope they also understand that "They're here to promote Touhou."
As for the Atre Akihabara event, I felt that if it was hosted by a commercial manufacturer it would lack the official feel, so I went to ask the Hakurei Shrine Reitaisai if they could host it. However, the Reitaisai also said, "We have no intention of making money from a commercial event," so they said, "We can help, but we can't host it." However, if Axia were to host it, it would seem like Axia was claiming to be the representative of Touhou Commerce, which would clearly stand out in a bad light, so I created a new, "mysterious" organization called the Hakurei Shrine Worship Association.
Rather than one company standing out in a bad light, we wanted to make sure that everyone benefited. To that end, we approached manufacturers one by one who handled commercial items for Team Shanghai Alice. We approached 10 or 20 companies and formed a large alliance, and decided to stock products from each manufacturer. The participating manufacturers were surprised, saying, "Products that stopped selling around 2012 are still selling."
--So it wasn't widely known that such products existed.
Zeku: That's true, but we also had customers who said they found it difficult to enter doujin shops. The venue is directly connected to Akihabara Station, and we only sell commercial products, so parents can feel at ease.
That's how I was able to achieve success at Atre, so as a way of giving back, I said, "Then I'll do the Cho Touhou LIVE stage in 2018." At the time, I didn't know anything about music circles, so I got help from the staff of the Hakurei Shrine Song Festival. It was like saying, "I'll just take care of the money and the responsibility, so please take care of it."
After the "Super Touhou LIVE Stage" was a success, I heard ZUN say at the after-party, "I guess I should be grateful to Zekuu-san," and I thought, "Here he comes, the people-pleaser!" (laughs). It was the moment when the tsundere finally becomes dere.

But that long interview had some other interesting parts:

--Hearing about your career so far, I understand that you've always stood on the border between doujin and commercial work, and that you've always been involved in creating rules for how to distinguish between the two. Of those, Touhou Project in particular has an incredibly wide gray area.
Zeku: From my perspective as someone who's worked commercially up until now, what's amazing about Touhou Project is that it doesn't have any sort of royalties or copyright management in place. Normally, you'd set up a committee system and decide what to do to sell this product, or hold a fair at this store at this time, and then at that store the next. But Touhou basically has no such system. So each manufacturer is trying to do this, and that, and all of this is happening at the same time.
--Is that just the way it is? Or is it intentionally not organized?
Zeku: My personal opinion is that by consciously avoiding that, they're making things equal. They're trying not to make exceptions. Exceptions mean special. That's also what it means. I too would love to be an exception, but if I were allowed to do so, then everything else would be allowed too, so I can't.
First of all, because Touhou Project is a doujin work, I think they don't think about "managing" it. I think that's fine, but there are people who come along later and make flashy mistakes, so I think it's a hassle when it's not managed.
This may be a very rough way of putting it, but when it comes to Touhou, doujin is more advantageous than commercial works in some ways. With commercial products, you apply for approval, undergo inspections, and pay royalties based on distribution restrictions. With doujin, these things don't exist, and things often slip through the cracks.
Also, the "first-mover advantage" that is spoken of in commercial works doesn't work as well in some ways. Late-comer commercial manufacturers can easily ignore the "unspoken rules" that have been established over the long history of their predecessors. When you think about it that way, it's precisely because Touhou Project isn't managed that it can accept all kinds of cutting-edge works. I think that's what's so great about Touhou, and also what's so scary about it.
Well, I guess I'm just one of those people who came here to make products and is now scared of them!
Personally, I'd like to break down the invisible wall between commerce and doujin. Creating the Hakurei Shrine Worship Association and setting up the Touhou Yaoyorozu Shop may be an antithesis to that. For example, ZUN and many others use major doujin distribution companies to sell their doujinshi, doujin CDs, and doujin software, but in reality, doujin stores are commercial facilities. In other words, they all make a living by using commerce. To put it more broadly, "all means other than directly participating in doujin sales events are just profits made by developing the Touhou Project product on a commercial stage."
I'm often told, "Are you here to make money from commerce?" But without commerce, doujin wouldn't exist, so I want to step forward and say, "commerce is a good thing, too," and work to help people understand our activities.
Of course, I understand that what ZUN and his team have built up to this point must remain sacred. But I also think that various events, including the Reitaisai, are running in part because various businesses sell Touhou Project merchandise and introduce the Touhou Project itself.
--In normal times, doujin might have been able to do well on its own, but when a crisis like the one brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 occurs, it's become very clear that help from commercial distribution and commercial media is needed. Since doujin sales events can't be held, people have no choice but to rely on distribution methods such as mail order and download sales. The strength of commerce is that it can cover losses for a short time in times like these.
Zeku: So, I would like to say to everyone, including those reading this article, "Please be kind to the commercial world." It may sound vulgar, but since it's a commercial world, it has to make a profit. If we didn't make a profit, we wouldn't be able to pay everyone's salaries and we wouldn't be able to carry out our activities. Some people might say, "Why are you messing with people who are doing what they want in the doujin world?", but we in the commercial world absolutely exist to support doujin activities, so I would like everyone to recognize that.

Another detail about these collabs is that Zeku asked Ruw for the allowance for setting up a PC to play the older games during one of the later collabs, but COVID didn't let them. He also wanted to make money from old Touhou games

ZUN: "To tell you the truth, when we remake old things, if there's too much work on my part, we can't do it. It's a practical matter. So... if (the porting staff) are going to copy (the old games) by eye... I'll do it."
Mario: "In that case, it has to be M2, M2 for sure!"
Zeku: "So, based on that discussion, I'm talking about whether I'll make any money (in terms of the broadcast time slot)."
Mario: "Mr. Horii (director of M2)! I hope you'll be watching the broadcast..."
ZUN: "In the end, it would be quickest for me to do it (porting old games) and I should release the source code, but..."
Mario: "That's impossible."
ZUN: "I don't have the source code. I make a lot of stuff and throw it away... I'm the kind of person who makes stuff and throws it away, so there's nothing left. There's no need to leave anything behind. I'm not interested in things from the past." (Omitted)
Zeku: "We (the Hakurei Shrine Worship Association or the merchandise vendors) will make a proper profit from it, so if you're not interested, please stand in the back."
Mario: "All we need to do is get Zeku, Ruw, and M2 to release a properly copied Touhou mini (lol)."
Ruw: "Hehe (lol)"

As Zeku said, he also organized Touhou Yaoyorozu Shop. It didn't just sell commercial Touhou products but it also announced some commercial collaborations. It was hosted on AKIBA-HOBBY domain but later it was moved to their own domain. By the way, in 2020, HSWA placed big ADs on buildings.
In 2019, Reitaisai organized a collaboration with Nexmedia Co., Ltd. to make Reitaisai AR and as they say it was successful.
ASH LLC also organized Tohootome in 2018 (and introduced it on Touhou Station) to distribute Touhou clothes and accessories. By the way, ZUN took a photo with them. And in 2019, ASH LLC changed their name to ASH Co., Ltd.

Mediascape developed their activities too. HSiFS was announced to be released on Steam in 2017 and Mediascape (this initiative was a part of Play,Doujin!) was the distributor. Mediascape is responsible for releases, not ZUN. In addition, guidelines were released. As ZUN said, he had been thinking about this for several years. On the other hand, Ruw was against publishing Touhou fanworks on Steam, in 2015. But in March 2017, Ruw wanted to "manage my [Ruw's] Touhou derivative works save data on Steam". By the way, he knew that Steam releases are considered non-doujin.
Twilight Frontiers announced the Steam release of AoCF too. In 2018 SUNFISH LLC and Mediascape announced their collaboration to promote Play,Doujin! project. By the way, Mediascape promoted not only Touhou games but also other games.
In 2018, Mediascape collaborated with Sega to translate Genso Wanderer - Reloaded in Chinese to distribute in China. There were also English releases by Nintendo. In 2018, Nintendo also announced "UNTIES Hakurei Shrine Autumn Festival Commemorative Sale".
UNTIES is a subsidiary of Sony, which joined Play,Doujin! at the end of 2017. UNTIES joined this project as publisher. In 2019 UNTIES separated from Sony and formed Phoenixx. Phoenixx publishes Touhou games on Steam and gaming consoles.

Talking about other companies, Konami added Touhou tracks to DanceDanceRevolution.
Sega collaborated with Touhou too. In 2018, Touhou tracks and cards were added to Ongeki (not only on arcade but also mobile version which has a paid gacha system). By the way, Touhou Genso Mahjong has been collaborating with Ongeki since 2020 (yes Ruw and D.N.A. are fans of this game). Sega participated at Autumn Reitaisai 2018 and distributed Reimu cards. In 2019, Touhou content was added to Initial D Zero and in 2020 even more Touhou content was added. In 2021 Touhou-related content was added to Initial D THE ARCADE. And there were some more collabs later. In 2020, Touhou tracks were added to D4DJ Groovy Mix too.

Back to official groups. In October 2018, Touhou Doujin Music Distribution was announced which was operated by Bandai Co., Ltd (run by Ryuichiro Ban). A year before Ruw said that such project was possible. In 2019, TDMD began to collaborate with Booth. And Buta (Pig) (Comp) (from Butaotome) became the MC of TDMD's broadcasts. TDMD organized a karaoke competition on Autumn Reitaisai. TDMD also appeared on Touhou Station. And BeatMARIO appeared on TDMD's broadcasts. By the way, in 2018 there was an interview with ZUN about this project, but he didn't say much about it. By the way, Rightsscale, Inc. is responsible for the legal side of this project.
Ryuichiro Ban knew ZUN for a long time. He drank beer with ZUN, BeatMARIO and Zeku in 2014. He also appeared on Play,Doujin! broadcast and Chokaigi. In 2018, he participated in Touhou doujinshi (including R18 ones) distribution on Nico Nico Books (in future BookWalker) (by the way, in 2019 Kadokawa started Touhou Gairai (Strange Creators of Outer World) on Niconico Seiga and was moved to ComicWalker later). In 2020, he distributed ZUN Beer with ZUN. By the way, he is interested not only in Touhou but also in other series
And some words about commercial activities of Buta. He had already worked with MelonBooks for several times and organized a tour, participated in 東方ABC project, and he worked with Taito.

And around times TDMD was announced the first commercial Japanese Touhou mobile gacha game was announced, which planning began in 2016 by Aniplex as there already were a lot of commercial Touhou projects by other companies (and gachas and mobile games became more common that ZUN "felt that [he] should approve it from the moment [he] heard about it"). And they decided to make it look like a "board game". And that was Touhou Cannon Ball, this title was given by ZUN. As ZUN also said he wanted to let people make mobile games as "according to the guidelines for derivative works, they couldn't be released unless I [ZUN] was the one releasing them". But he was afraid of a big boom of social games, so he waited till better times. Later Minabe from Aniplex came to ZUN to drink beer and to offer the idea of a mobile game and ZUN approved that. Even though he didn't like some elements of this derivative gacha game and comments by people were rough, as that was a fanwork it was okay for ZUN (and Ruw). This game was developed by Quatro A. OP was made by CloverWorks. This game was shown on Autumn Reitaisai and ZUN presented it too. By the way, IOSYS was in charge of sound direction and BGM and many other circles helped too. Also Cannon Ball participated in HSWA collabs. In 2019 Cannon Ball participated in Reitaisai and presented some goods. This game was also presented on AnimeJapan and in Anime Guide. Cannon Ball staff regularly invited Zeku and Ryuichiro Ban to Cannon Ball broadcasts. After the release in 2019, this game operated for around a year and terminated the service in October 2020. A possible reason is the bad financial situation of Quatro A, though Quatro A paid for the gold mark of Cannon Ball Twitter account.

In 2019, a more successful gacha was announced: Lost Word by NextNinja and Good Smile Company. This game was presented at different events (including Reitaisai), participated in HSWA collabs, Touhou Station and in magazines. Good Smile Company organized a live broadcast where Lost Word was shown. Around the game release the distribution of Touhou Lost World goods began (including Touhou figures). Since 2020, Touhou Lost Word has collaborated with DMM Scratch to distribute scratch cards, which allows you to get prizes.

Talking about mobile apps LINE decided to do an interesting collaboration with TSA in 2018. Fans were allowed to distribute fan made paid stamps for around a year. During this collaboration a lot of different Touhou stamps appeared. After this collaboration ended, distributing fanmade Touhou stamps on LINE was prohibited. By the way, some more official stamps appeared later.

Back to official groups. July 2019 was the first time Unidentified Sponsor X was mentioned. Later it supported Touhou Station. This organization began to reveal itself in July 2020. It supported Flowering Night LIVE event. Later its site revealed that it supported Touhou Garakuta and WePlay Game Expo 2019. But many other things were revealed only during the next period. By the way, the site is owned by Ryu's Office Co., Ltd..
Some words about the mentioned titles. WePlay Game Expo 2019 was a Chinese event which included Meizhi Fantasy Expo, a Touhou-only event with doujin sales, which was supported by MediaScape, WhySoSerious?, Playsim and Unties, while WePlay was also supported by Unidentified Sponsor X and AQUASTYLE. ZUN and other semi-officials visited that event.
AQUASTYLE is quite an old doujin circle which participated in the first Reitaisai. Later they founded Aqualia Co., Ltd. and registered AQUASTYLE as a trademark. By the way, in 2019 AQUASTYLE participated as a part of UNTIES commercial booth on Reitaisai.

In September 2019, Touhou Garakuta (Strange Articles of the Outer World) was announced by Daichi Saito on Touhou Station (by the way, ZUN gave the title to it). It was launched on October 4 and Unidentified Sponsor X was its sponsor. As you know, this site is used for posting official and officially-approved manga, novels, interviews, doujinshi, reviews, fan games and other things. So this site is quite useful for finding information about Touhou. Garakuta has English, Chinese and Korean branches but they are not very active. Most editors on Garakuta are active Touhou fans, and some of them have their own circles, but there are also some editors who are related to companies which own Touhou Garakuta and Touhou Station. Even though Touhou Garakuta and Touhou Station have strong relations, there is a division between them.
So, who is Daichi Saito? He knew about Touhou at least since 2010. In 2015, he contacted Unabara to sell Touhou IaMP on Tokaigi organized by Dwango. In 2016, he made an interview with BeatMARIO and the next year with a Touhou cosplayer. In 2018, he was a representative director of vaka, Inc., which participated in development of Touhou Luna Nights. Saito presented this game on Touhou Station. He also invited guests to Touhou Station. And in 2019 vaka was turned into Why so serious, Inc. (WSS).

 

[vanyk]

During this period other companies made Touhou-related products too. For example SuperGroupies began to sell Touhou watches, backpacks and other things. Doujin stores continued to sell Touhou goods. Toranoana opened a Touhou portal on the site. Akiba Hobby was selling a lot of Touhou works and placed Lost Word goods on the main page. Grep continued to support Touhou-only events (including Reitaisai and Kouroumu) In addition, Grep started to organize auctions and appeared on ZenMarket. Eikoh began to distribute Touhou goods. In 2020, Eikoh organized a collaboration between Touhou and Sanrio Characters. There were also plans for Touhou and Sanrio Characters cafe collab, but it was cancelled.
Surfers Paradise began to collaborate with other doujin stores to sell Touhou goods. Surfers Paradise also collabed with BUNKYODO (that store sold Touhou goods since the early 10s, later they sold Touhou Hatengu). Since 2018, Surfers Paradise has hosted several Touhou fairs. But in 2019 Surfers Paradise closed the store and rights for Touhou Hatengu were transferred to SOL International which has been working with Surfers Paradise since 2012.

PLAYISM became the publisher of Touhou Luna Nights and presented it on WePlay (with ZUN). PLAYISM was also the publisher of Gensokyo Night Festival and presented it at different events. Both these games were related to WSS and PLAYISM worked with WSS. In 2020, PLAYISM helped with INDIELiveExpo (which was supported by Unidentified Sponsor X too) and helped ZUN and Toby Fox meet there.
Marvelous Inc. added Touhou tracks to WACCA and this game was presented on Reitaisai, after that more content was added.

Taito made some Touhou goods. Taito and ZUN announced Rakugaki Kingdom and the next year a collaboration was announced: Hakurei no Miko by ZUN was added. This collaboration was announced again when the game was released. This game also had Touhou tracks. Later there was another collaboration which added more Touhou content in gacha. In addition, Taito organized Doodle Contest Touhou Festival.
Touhou tracks were also added to Tetote Connect.
Taito added a lot of Touhou tracks in Groove Coaster. There was also a collaboration with BeatMARIO. In 2019 there was a collaboration with Touhou (and Undertale). There were Touhou tracks on Steam and Nintendo Switch versions too.
In 2020, Taito announced Touhou Spell Bubble and IOSYS was responsible for music. In addition, they used many ads. After the release Taito invited BeatMARIO to the Spell Bubble tournament. After the game was released, suddenly a lot of VTubers played this game, while Touhou Spell Bubble account published arts for them. Later there was an interview, which explained why it happened. At first Taito wanted to make another game but later Taito decided to add Touhou characters and turn it into a social competitive puzzle game. They invited ZUN and he approved this game. And later Taito revealed that Taito had already used VTubers for promoting Groove Coaster. So Taito decided to use the same strategy for Touhou Spell Bubble. And as Taito already had Touhou arrangements by VTubers in Groove Coaster, Taito decided to do the same thing for Spell Bubble. This game also has additional paid content. By the way, ZUN played this game. And this game had collabs with Groove Coaster.

Talking about BeatMARIO, he continued to do LIVE performances. In 2019, there was a small incident and it was revealed that BeatMARIO can print ZUN's games. After Spell Bubble collaborated with VTubers, BeatMARIO organized a stream with ZUN and VTubers. It was his idea to invite VTubers to Touhou Station. Later he made some content for VTubers. BeatMARIO decided to make a VTuber model for himself and it was used in VTuber stores during collaborations with VTubers and later there was an interview about that.

And in late 2020 the last semi-official group was formed: Touhou Yomoyama News. This site was created by Ryu's Office too. The formal chairman is ZUN and Ruw is also related to this site ([email protected]). Yomoyama Committee is responsible for copyright checks and giving permissions for different things (including exhibitions and newspaper articles. It has some relations with Spell Bubble and TDMD. The site of Touhou Yomoyama News mostly posts information about different collaborations and officially approved works and sometimes announcements by ZUN.

So during this period all modern semi-official groups were formed. They became responsible for many commercial things. After that even more well-known commercial works appeared.


Post-COVID commercial development

In the second half of 2020 limitations related to COVID began to be reduced and later it became possible to hold offline events, so some semi-official groups began to hold them. At the same time the number of commercial gacha games increased and some other online activities were held. In addition, semi-official groups began to spread their activities outside of Japan.

COVID had a serious impact on offline activities, including Reitaisai. As I showed in one of my previous articles there were some government programs to support doujin circles. But there were also some programs for organizers. In 2020, the Japanese government started a project to reduce taxes for companies which organize public events and ASH Co., Ltd. (company of Hakurei Shrine Office) applied for this program and the taxes were reduced. In 2021, the Japanese government started a project to subsidize cultural activities suffered during the pandemic and ASH Co., Ltd. got 6 million yen. The next year there was another similar project and ASH Co., Ltd. got another 6 million yen.
You may wonder, how a company, responsible for organizing doujin events (which are considered to be in a grey, dark-grey area from the legal side), may get money from the government? But as I showed in the article about the Touhou bar incident Shizuoka city council agreed to hold Reitaisai in 2020 and in another article that the Japanese government is somewhat tolerant towards doujin events and doujin works (on doujin events).
The Japanese government noticed Touhou long ago. In 2007, Touhou was recommended for the 11th Japan Media Arts Festival. Later, in 2010, there was a government supported survey by the Sports and Youth Bureau which goal was to "combat harmful environments for youth". The details are unknown but there is the result:

We conducted a survey of subcultures and were able to understand the current state of youth culture and the distribution of materials that cause social problems such as copyright infringement, secondhand goods sales, kayako (buyers), 18+ content, NEETs, hikikomori, suicide, etc. We learned of the existence of the "Touhou Project", which has set guidelines to address these issues and is working on the problems of "expression regulation and doujin", and were able to build a cooperative relationship with them in carrying out this project.

So, the Japanese government learned about Touhou and got interested in Touhou in the late 00s. At the beginning of 2014, DSC (Defense forces Support Club) was founded. Actually, there was a related magazine since 2012. Its purpose was "to contribute to the peace and development of our country by raising awareness of the role and activities of the Self-Defense Forces among the general public and by aiming to serve as a bridge between the Self-Defense Forces and the general public, especially young people, and the Self-Defense Forces, as well as to contribute to the strengthening and development of our defense base and to increasing opportunities for former Self-Defense Force members to be active". And DSC participated in Reitaisai as a commercial booth. And later DSC began to hold their own fairs (yes, Comiket was the co-organizer). That is a coincidence, but in 2016 Reitaisai and Imperial Capital Military Banquet (a military-only doujinshi sale event, which seems to have no relations with DSC) participated in Chokaigi.
Until 2019 Touhou was mentioned occasionally, Comiket could mention it, or somebody could ask for support of Touhou-related events. But later Touhou was mentioned more frequently. Touhou guidelines and copyrights, its popularity, official groups (mostly TDMD related to Bandai) and increase of circles outside of Japan was discussed in 2019. In addition, Japan Net Creators Association (JNCA) had plans to handle claims regarding secondary broadcasting royalties on its behalf (by the way Bandai is a supporting member of the JNCA). And Touhou had an obstacle for these companies: "the barrier to use remains high, and it's difficult for the general public to understand where the rights lie. This means that requests for recordings, broadcasting, and performance use, let alone recordings, have not been met". There was another meeting later and Touhou copyright was discussed again and the conclusion was: 'there are no general issues with the use of "Vocaloid Music", "Cover Songs", and "Touhou Music"'. There were also some other discussions.
What is Japan Net Creators Association (JNCA)? Well, that is how they introduced themselves on one of these meetings:

JNCA is a general incorporated association established in 2013 with the aim of providing support for copyrights, creative work, tax matters, national health insurance, and everyday life to creators active primarily online in a variety of fields.
Currently, over 1,200 creators are members.
The following companies participate in JNCA as regular members:
Animate Co., Ltd., XING Co., Ltd., KADOKAWA Corporation, Crypton Future Media, Inc., Dwango Co., Ltd.
[supporting members:]
MOE Group Holdings Co., Ltd., OCA Osaka Design & IT College, Sotokanda Shoji Co., Ltd., CSTax / Fujii Management Co., Ltd., Tokyo School of Music & Dance College, Japan Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC), NextTone Inc. (formerly eLicense Co., Ltd.), Vantan Co., Ltd., Bandai Co., Ltd., VRM Consortium (General Incorporated Association), Mashup Entertainment Inc.
(1) Tax return support, national health insurance (NHI) referrals, and asset management support
- Matching tax accountants to creators' needs
- Providing practical tax return information that takes online activities into consideration (online broadcasts and individual consultations)
- Matching NHI associations favorable to creators (e.g., the National Health Insurance Association for Literature and Art)
- Asset management support utilizing financial planners and other experts
(2) Copyright dispute resolution support
- Copyright infringement lawsuit support
- Copyright infringement consultation sessions
(3) Collection of Master Recording Secondary Usage Royalties
- Contracted with the Recording Industry Association of Japan to collect the record producer's share
- Contracted with the Audiovisual Association of Japan to collect the performer's share
(4) Music Copyright Information Education
- Conducted copyright study sessions in collaboration with JASRAC and JASRAC membership registration sessions.
- Conducted copyright study sessions in collaboration with Nextone and YouTube Content ID registration.
- Supported individual creators in obtaining ISRCs in collaboration with Japan Music Data.

So, this is a company group which is responsible for legal side and copyrights and some of these companies (for example Dwango) have a lot of experience of working with Touhou. So they could share their experience with other companies and the government.

There was also some interaction between semi-officials and the government. For example BeatMARIO made the BGM for a VTuber of Ogino Minori from Ota Ward Assembly and people wanted more VTubers like that (though this is not a first project like that, for example Ibaraki Prefecture has their own official VTubber since 2018). By the way, the local government supported an event with doujin sales in 2018 where ZUN was invited.
In 2023, Saitama Prefectural Police began to publish videos with Touhou Yukkuris. In 2024, Saitama Prefectural Police collaborated with Touhou Station to guard Touhou events by Touhou Station. In 2025, they collabed again. In addition, Tokorozawa Police Station collaborated too.
In 2025 there was another collaboration. In July, to bring more people to elections the local government of Ueda city decided to distribute cards with Yukkuri Touhou characters, so it would increase the attention of school students who would tell their parents about it. TSA allowed this. Advertisements were also put outdoors.
So as we can see, the Japanese government collaborates with Touhou too.

Now we will move to semi-official groups. Unidentified Sponsor X announced that it would show its true identity in October 2020 during "Touhou Danmaku Festival" broadcast. The Touhou 25 Anniversary site was opened and the broadcast was teasered, ZUN was invited and it was teasered that JYUNYA (from AQUASTYLE) was related. During the broadcast it was revealed that Unidentified Sponsor X is a team of AQUASTYLE (AQUALIA), DeNA and xeen and that the new name of this team is Unknown X (and later the logo was revealed). Finally, Touhou Danmaku Kagura (Dankagu) was teasered.
So, AQUASTYLE was responsible for the draft plan and played a big role in forming the team. AQUALIA asked several companies to make art for Dankagu. Xeen was responsible for development of this game.
DeNA was responsible for planning and management. Before that DeNA worked with AKIBAHOBBY and sold Touhou goods. By the way, Ruw knew about collabs with DeNA, but he never was a fan of this company because of pirate products. Anyway D.N.A. Softwares worked with DeNA. In 2020, DeNA registered a trademark for Dankagu and a domain name. DeNA also let ZUN to drive on DeNA's car.
About the game itself. The project started in 2016, before Cannonball was announced. But Play,Doujin! had developed and JYUNYA (who participated in that project) hoped that mobile doujin games would be allowed later too. At one of the drinks parties he met with people from DeNA and they discussed Touhou a lot and people from DeNA said that they also produced mobile games. They told Tanaka Shota (a person from DeNA) about that and later there was a meeting between Tanaka and JYUNYA to discuss the idea of a Touhou mobile game. Tanaka made a survey in DeNA company to form a team for such a game (by the way, before that survey DeNA didn't know that there were so many Touhou fans among their workers) and Ueda P was chosen as a producer (by the way, he sometimes appeared on Unknown X broadcasts). They quickly decided that it would be a rhythm game. There were some obstacles during the development, and while Tanaka communicated softly, Ueda P as he "was also in charge of representing DeNA" was harsh, but later JYUNYA and Ueda P managed to become friends. That is how Unidentified Sponsor X team was formed by 2019 (well, it took some time to explain to DeNA company that engaging with Touhou under this title was better than under DeNA title). As JYUNYA said, ZUN's reaction to such a project was "That's interesting, isn't it?". Tanaka also wanted to make ZUN interact with Touhou fans outside of Japan, that is why the collaboration with Chinese WePlay happened.

There were some other people and companies who participated in development of this game. For example, Takeda Wakano and Jin Fujisawa (from storynote) were responsible for the scenario and Jan Taro assisted with flavor text. G-Angle helped with arts (this company also helped other Touhou gacha games with music and sound and also made a music video for BEMANI x Touhou collab). RYU'S OFFICE Inc. made the site for Unknown X, played a big role in promoting Dankagu and planned many projects organized by Unknown X. RYU'S OFFICE also held a recruitment event related to Dankagu. By the way, this company provided publishing support for "NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE" and also met with ZUN and BeatMARIO.

Danmaku Kagura was released in 2021 (and by the way, ZUN and BeatMARIO played this game). But this game had a serious problem as a gacha "free-to-play" game: this game was "cheap" for most players and for them there was no point to pay. As JYUNYA said, DeNA chose such police because they expected a lot of young fans would play this game, so they wouldn't have to pay much and this game would be loved for a long time. I think you know the result: the service was terminated at the end of 2022 and after sponsoring INDIE Live Expo Awards 2022 and putting many advertisements outdoors it looks like not much money left (that even Saito Daichi (from Touhou Garakuta, which was supported by Unknown X before) began to support Unknown X). So Unknown X started a crowdfunding project to create Touhou Danmaku Kagura Fantasy Lost and gathered more than 150 million yen. Even though Unknown X stopped mentioning DeNA and xeen, DeNA is still behind Unknown X and Ueda P is still the producer. By the way, ZUN thanked him for being "able to use DeNA's money to promote Touhou". In addition some other companies began to support Unknown X, for example One or Eight INC. which became responsible for promoting Fantasy Lost. Alliance Arts Co., Ltd. became the publisher of games by Unknown X. This company supports the games and events and helps with recruiting developers.
By the way, Ueda P formed his own doujin circle which is working on Touhou Dungeon Making, a game by Unknown X. It may sound strange, but this interview reveals that Unknown X is split into three independent teams: "Phantasia Lost" team, "Touhou Dungeon Maker" team and "Marisa of Liartop Mountain" team. That was the idea by Ryu's Office to make more Touhou games (not only Dankagu). Even though DeNA participated in development of Phantasia Lost, Ueda P didn't participate in development of that game so, he formed his team to make "Touhou Dungeon Maker". And all money gathered via crowdfunding was used only for Phantasia Lost, other teams had to use their own money.
Unknown X also made some collabs: collabs with Sega, Mystia's Izakaya, Camera Kitamura and some other companies. In addition, Unknown X sometimes invited ZUN and BeatMARIO. But the most well-known collabs by Unknown X were collabs with ZUN and Toby Fox. By the way, as Unknown X says, Toby Fox agreed to write music for the mobile version of Dankagu, but he wanted to make it with someone else. So Unknown X asked ZUN and he agreed.
By the way, it looks like BeatMARIO has some strong ties with Unknown X. During one of the broadcasts there was a favorite music choice section and Unknown X chose the track too, but there was a note that it was BeatMARIO (but on later broadcasts BeatMARIO was called a guest (like Dangaku development director)). Later BeatMARIO was responsible for presenting Phatasia Lost on Ryu's Office event. It looks like Toby Fox can have such relations too as in another image there was a note that it was his choice. In addition, when Deltarune was released on Nintendo Switch 2, the account of Unknown X posted "We did it".

Talking about other gacha games Touhou Lost Word was mostly only participating in different collaborations, but nothing special, and sometimes invited ZUN. In 2025, Lost Word invited a Western VTuber. In 2020 another Touhou gacha game was released: Dungeon Dive which was made by STAR FACTORY, Inc. and SEVEN VOLT (and the site was made by Quroco). It was a roguelite action game and there were many tracks by different circles. But this game was closed in 2024.

In 2021, a controversial Touhou gacha game was announced in Japan: Touhou Arcadia Records. But this game was controversial even before its announcement in Japan. In 2015, a Beijing company registered copyright for Flying Little Witch (飞天小魔女). In 2018 it was released and that was a mobile runner with Touhou characters by several Beijing companies, a Hangzhou company and possibly a Shanghai company (the company which is officially related to this game doesn't exist). In addition this game used similar sprites from similar games. One of such game is Rampage Vanguard (暴走先锋) which is officially related to the same suspicious Shanghai company. This game was criticized by Chinese Touhou fans because of all of these. It looks like in 2019, rights for these games were gotten by Dobala and after that Energetic Rush (元气冲冲冲) (another version of Rampage Vanguard) was released. Around that time other versions of Flying Little Witch appeared: The Little Witch (百变小魔女), Energetic Girl (元气少女) and Bullet Hell Fantasy (弾幕幻想 / 弹幕幻想) (which had several different versions). In 2021, a group of companies from South China (DAMO GAMES (DAMO NETWORK LIMITED) and 37 Interactive Entertainment) and KLabGames (a Japanese company) announced Touhou Arcadia Records, a mobile Touhou gacha runner game which official Chinese version was Bullet Hell Fantasy. This game is co-developed by DOBALA GAMES (this game's id is com.dobala.mtarja.android (mtarja can mean "Mobile Touhou Arcadia Records JApan")) and KLabGames and distributed by DAMO Games (in 2024, DAMO was renamed to ISLUD GAMES LIMITED). Dobala doesn't mention any Touhou-related projects on the site, but they have the register number for this game (2022SR0334268), which is confirmed by KLabGames report in 2022 and in an apology letter (about this later) in 2021. That later also mentions GaveGame (but only the Shanghai section, but there is also the Beijing section which also had its version of Bullet Hell Fantasy and organized a closed beta of the Chinese version of Arcadia Records. Both KLab and DAMO (until 2025) are members of JOGA (Japan Online Game Association). And that is not all, there were some other companies which participated in the development of this game. In addition, there are reports that DAMO tried to contact Chinese Touhou content creators to work with them. Even without this questionable development cycle Touhou fans pointed out that this game used materials by other creators without their allowance. ZUN found out about this and as he said he talked with KLab about all these things. ZUN was satisfied with their response and gave them another chance. As he said, it is okay to make mistakes. And the developers published the apology letter. And this game with some fixes was released in Japan in 2022. The same year they organized Touhou Arcadia Records Summer Festival; that was a LIVE event with doujinshi sales and other activities in VR. Nowadays, the Japanese version of this game has regular server maintenance while the Chinese version is planned to be closed at the end of January 2026. By the way, one Japanese company greatly helped this game: Elefante Co., Ltd. This company wrote some flavor text and episodes for Touhou Danmaku Kagura before. But for Arcadia Records this company was responsible for "world view, main scenario, event scenario, character introduction, and creating the beginner's guide". Tsukihi Aki (a member of Elefante Co., Ltd.) (who knows about Touhou for a long time) was responsible for the text for both these games. He was responsible for the scenario for the 1st anniversary event. And he also offered help for companies which had troubles with scenarios for Touhou Project works.

The next announced Touhou gacha was a mobile game by CAVE: Touhou Gensou Eclipse. Before that, CAVE's speakers played Touhou games. Around that time CAVE and ZUN appeared on the same event related to vertical shooters. And in 2021, CAVE announced its Touhou mobile game. ZUN reacted to this game as it is just another derivative game while Touhou Station paid a little more attention. CAVE made several surveys to understand what interested Touhou fans. CAVE had some financial problems and hoped that this game would improve the situation. The announcement of this game somewhat helped CAVE. The financial state of CAVE was described in this document in more details: the revenue from the previous games wasn't as high as CAVE expected, so CAVE decided to expand its business and to get Touhou Project IP licence as CAVE hoped this game would help to recover. But the situation was getting only worse, CAVE had to ask help from other companies and CAVE really wanted to make money from this game. But the game couldn't be finished on time and had to be postponed and was released only at the end of 2023. In 2023, this game was displayed on Autumn Reitaisai and later there was a stream with ZUN. It seemed that the financial situation got better and better, but actually things were more complicated. Later this game was presented on the next Reitaisais. CAVE organized some offline events for Gensou Eclipse fans, and sent gifts to fans. CAVE also organized collabs between Gensou Eclipse and other gacha games by CAVE. By the way,, CAVE put Gensou Eclipse in play to earn apps.

And the last announced commercial Touhou gacha game was Touhou Cronicle Zero, which was announced in 2024. This game was officially made by YUクリエイティブスタジオ and also had quite a questionable production process. First we should talk about KNOCKNOTE Co., Ltd.. This company participated at some conferences and in production of some games before 2020. In 2020 this company announced that it was making a big game and later it was revealed that it was a Touhou e-sport game. There were a lot of speculations and concerns about this games. After that the game was cancelled and an apology was published. Around that time there was another incident related to Hypnosis Mic related project by KNOCKNOTE Before the incident this company it was making profit, after the cancellation of the Touhou game it lost some money in 2022 there was a big profit. In late 2020, KNOCKNOTE was splitted and Ignom (a subsidiary of Drecom Co., Ltd.) absorbed a big part of it and it was renamed to BlasTrain as Drecom planned to produce new titles with them and wanted to increase their efficiency. As Drecom posted, KNOCKNOTE participated in production of Boku & Dragons (a mobile gacha game) from 2019 and Drecom supported KNOCKNOTE from 2018 (and supported BlasTrain from 2021) and worked with KNOCKNOTE. KNOCKNOTE continued its activities and participated in FamiCareer! project in 2021.
In 2021, JAQUA Co., Ltd. was founded and it was renamed to Star Platinum Co., Ltd in 2024. This company was the distributor of Touhou Cronicle Zero. The sales manager of this game, the leader of YUクリエイティブスタジオ (a circle which officially develop this game) and the director of KNOCKNOTE are the same person: Nohara Yutaro. So the rights transfer was formal. After the game was announced a lot of questionable things about this game were found, including gacha before release, copypasting Wuthering Waves Terms of Use and Privacy Policy and wrong characters' names. After many complaints the project stopped and official accounts were deleted. KNOCKNOTE still recruits people, so this company continued to operate after this incident.

By the way, Hypnosis Mic (mentioned above) is developed by Idea Factory Plus Co., Ltd, a business alliance of Idea Factory Co., Ltd and AltPlus Inc. Compile Heart is a subsidiary of Idea Factory Co., Ltd. And this company developed Neptunia where Team Shanghai Alice was added in 2022. In 2023, Touhou Spell Carnival was announced by Compile Heart and STING. This game was displayed on Autumn Reitaisai and was released in 2024.

 

[vanyk]

Talking about other Touhou collaborations BANDAI NAMCO added Touhou tracks to Ultra Kaiju Monster Rancher; Touhou tracks appeared in Arcaea. Phoenixx published AoCF on Nintendo Switch and distributed a special Touhou controller, published Touhou Gouyoku Ibun, supported Unknown X.
Playism continued to publish Touhou games on consoles. In addition, Valkyrie of Phantasm, a Touhou fangame which at first worked with Mediascape and later became independent, began to work with Playism in 2022.
Konami added Touhou tracks to jubeat and Polaris Chord. In 2024, Konami organized BEMANI×Touhou Project collab in which different games by Konami participated and Touhou goods were distributed. In addition there were some prizes.
Marvelous Inc. helped with distribution of Touhou: New World and presented this game on Reitaisai and BitSummit and made an in-store trial event (and made a survey). By the way, after the release BeatMARIO and Fubuki (a VTuber which streamed with ZUN and BeatMARIO in 2020) played this game.
In 2023, Taito added Touhou tracks to MUSIC DIVER. In 2025, Taito released QQQbeats!!!, a game which gameplay is similar to Touhou Spell Bubble. This game collaborated with VTubers who made collaboration streams. This game also had a collaboration with Touhou; Reimu and Marisa were added to this game. In addition, there is a character who is a Reimu fan. By the way, IOSYS was responsible for the scenario. Later more Touhou tracks were added.
In 2024, SEGA organized a collaboration between Project Sekai and Touhou Project and Touhou tracks were added. In 2025, there was another collaboration , more Touhou tracks were added and Touhou gacha was added and BeatMARIO made several PVs for this (SEGA chose the title for this song and BeatMARIO had to remake text). SEGA also organized a collaboration between Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis and Touhou which added some new Touhou-related content to PSO2.

During this period a lot of new Touhou goods appeared. FUEGO began to produce Touhou shoes. Sunokotan (Marudai Co., Ltd.) started selling Touhou boards and plates and participated in some Touhou-only doujin sales events. Charama produced some Touhou tapestry. G-Too (COPIC) published Touhou coloring books, pens and other goods. In 2022, primaniacs began to sell Touhou fragrances. Wacom had already appeared on Reitaisai before, during this period it worked with Touhou Lost Word and in 2023 organized a seminar where it was demonstrated how to color Marisa Kirisame. HoshibakoWorks began to produce Touhou clothes. Apleberute started selling Touhou umbrellas. Kurand started selling Good Apple, Touhou fruit alcohol. REC Co., Ltd. organized Guromont PREMIUM x Touhou Project collabs.

In 2022 there was a collaboration organized by Eizan Electric Railway Co., Ltd and planned by ARKPROJECT LLC: Eiden x Touhou Project. During this collaboration you could go to different rail stations and visit a place related to a Touhou character near it to collect stamps by using an AR app and after collecting them you could get a prize. Touhou characters were placed on different stations and trains were decorated too. At the end, there was a lottery where it was possible to get a giant Touhou acrylic stand.

Around time there was also a VR project. In 2022, Gugenka provided a VR venue for the Great Touhou Project Exhibition, so it was possible to enjoy it both offline and online. The next year, a digital stamp rally was organized by Gugenka for the Great Touhou Project Exhibition. Gugenka also sold some Touhou models for VR.
Talking about the Great Touhou Project Exhibition, it was organized by Dai Nippon Printing and supported by HSWA. There were also some sponsors including Unknown X and GoodSmile (both stopped supporting it in 2023). This event used VR and XR technologies to improve the experience of visitors. In 2022 there was a crowdfunding campaign (ZUN approved it) which wasn't very successful (by the way Hojo revealed that Reitaisai got an allowance for crowdfunding in 2021 from ZUN (he made an exception)). In 2023 there was another Exhibition and this time many more companies supported it. There was a booth on Reitaisai to promote this event and later Reitaisai goods appeared at this event. This time a stamp rally and a lottery was organized for the event. There were also exa-Arcadia's game machines with Touhou FDF. By the way, there was Needy Girl Exhibition near it. The last Great Touhou Project Exhibition was held in 2024 and information about it appeared on the Reitaisai page before official announcement. After each event there was the Great Touhou Project Exhibition POP UP SHOP (organized with Marui Anime): Touhou goods appeared in some stores. By the way, at the end of 2025 Marui Anime distributed their own Touhou goods on Comiket.

Talking about HSWA, Zeku's company (Axia Co., Ltd.) was dissolved and its business was transferred to COSPA Co., Ltd. COSPA has been making Touhou goods since 2012 and collaborated with Axia since 2014. Since 2020 COSPA has worked with HSWA. COSPA also appeared on Reitaisai. COSPA has a subsidiary: TABLIER MARKETING inc. This company became responsible for Touhou Yaoyorozu Shop (and yes, Gee!STORE is owned by TABLIER MARKETING inc.).
By the way Hojo became a representative director of Distant Nova Japan. This company is a part of Moaideas Game Design, a company which makes board games including Touhou-related ones and is supported by ASH Co., Ltd.
Meanwhile, Reitaisai joined DOUJIN JAPAN2020 to solve the different issues related to hosting doujin events. In 2022, Reitaisai distributed Hakurei Shrine Ale on Niigata Reitaisai and sold it near stores. The next year Reitaisai distributed amazake which later was sold in stores too. Around that time Reitaisai Kids Illustration Contest collaborated with Lost Word and later the arts appeared in the game. Later Reitaisai participated in Board Game Business Expo Japan 2024 and later its booth appeared on Reitaisai. In 2025, Reitaisai placed advertisements of the event in public transport.

There was also another exhibition during this period: Gather! Touhou Station. It is a big Touhou exhibition by Touhou Station where ZUN, semi-officials and big Touhou circles are invited. There are different kinds of activities on these events and there is a broadcast by Touhou Station. This event was held three times. For the first time it was held in 2023, the second one in 2024 and the last one in 2025. Even though the third event was called the final event there will be the fourth event in 2026 and collaborated with Reitaisai (Touhou Station and Reitaisai collaborated before).
By the way in 2020, Touhou Station hosted Rhythm Game Special broadcast in collaboration with KONAMI, SEGA, TAITO, and Bandai Namco Amusement. The same year there was an attempt to contact McDonald's to get allowance to use the famous otoMAD. There was the second attempt in 2022, but McDonald's didn't grant the permission as the video wasn't produced by McDonald's and because "the word 'ranranru' is sometimes used as a bullying slang term". Eventually, McDonald's granted permission for using some videos in 2025 after the collaboration with Touhou.
In 2024 there was the first collaboration between McDonald's and Touhou when McDonald's published a McDonald's-themed clip based on "Marisa Stole the Precious Thing" by IOSYS. This new clip was sung by Miko, the same singer as the original clip. This collaboration was approved by ZUN. During this collaboration there were related arts in trays. After that IOSYS participated in some other ADs by McDonald's. In December 2025, there was another collaboration and this time it was a clip based on "Cirno's Perfect Math Class" and it used Touhou characters. In addition, McDonald's used Touhou characters in other promotion materials. By the way, the same day a new Cirno version was added to Lost Word.
Meanwhile WSS collaborated with Danmaku Kagura in 2021. Daichi Saito participated in development of Needy Girl Overdose and he introduced other developers of NGO to Touhou content creators. Later IOSYS helped to make a song for NGO and Nyalra (the creator of NGO) wanted to add Touhou songs to the game, but producers were against that. Eventually, NGO collaborated with Touhou in 2025 and a song based on "Marisa Stole The Precious Thing" was made. It was released, but the next day for some reason it was removed.

There were some more collabs with stores during this period. For example, BOOKOFF organized several collabs with Touhou. eeo Store online began to distribute Touhou goods too. Grep began to sell Touhou works on Amazon (by the way AKIBA-HOBBY sells Touhou goods on Amazon too). Later Grep created a new site and a lot of doujin works there were Touhou ones. Since 2025, Grep has been a sponsor of Kagatohosai (a Touhou-only event supported by Reitaisai) and later Grep said that their store may be called "a Touhou store".
Karaoke no Tetsujin, which operates karaoke stores, decided to collaborate with Touhou. It was a Touhou cafe collaboration with special food and with karaoke.

In 2021, some members of JAGMO (which stopped doing performances in 2020) formed YHIAISM which started Opeta Dots project for organizing opera performances with game music. And the first performance was about Touhou Project. In addition, IlluCalab (a doujin circle which created Gensou Skydrift (and the leader is the representative of Kuma System Co., Ltd.)) was involved in this project. The tickets were sold out quickly. The performance was successful.

Around that time exA-Arcadia got a licence for a Touhou arcade and this game was presented on Reitaisai. That was the arcade version of Fantastic Danmaku Festival 2. This game was also presented at the second Great Touhou Project Exhibition. Later the arcade version of FDF 1 was announced.

In 2025, YURINAN began to distribute Yukkuri Touhou cookies at different events. For the first time, they were distributed on Chokaigi 2025. Later they appeared at a local event. And after that the Touhou food appeared on Touhou Harajuku and Escape from the Fantasy Divination Hall.

Touhou Harajuku was organized by Marl Co., Ltd./CAM Co., Ltd. and co-organized by stamps Co., Ltd. (which already organized an online Touhou puzzle game for Autumn Reitaisai in 2019). That was an exhibition about "hugely popular Touhou Project, known for Yukkuri commentary [videos]". Such a strange note was criticized by Japanese fans, but it wasn't fixed. Anyway this exhibition was successful. It also had a related puzzle game. Later they sold some Touhou goods and organized a collaboration with a store to sell Touhou goods. In November and December, Escape from the Fantasy Divination Hall was hosted, a Touhou puzzle event.

In 2024 there was a much bigger Touhou collaboration organized by HSWA: Touhou Project x Yomiuriland. Yomiuriland is a Japanese amusement park with different attractions. During the collaboration there were Touhou goods, Touhou food (including official works), Touhou music and other things. This collaboration was so successful that the park decided to prolong it. Some goods from this collaboration are still distributed. By the way, Lost Word participated in this collaboration too. The next year there was the second collaboration

There were some more online collaborations in 2025. Nippon Ichi Software, Inc. collaborated with Touhou and added Touhou characters and Hakurei Shrine to Cladun X3.
Later infiniteloop Co., Ltd. collaborated with Touhou and added Reimu and Marisa to Desktop Mate. Before that this company created a Touhou club where they played Touhou games. There are normal and yukkuri versions. In addition, special clear files were distributed on Kamuisai, on Kouroumu and on Autumn Reitaisai. Reimu was released in December and Marisa will be released in January 2026. In December, Kujibikido started an online lottery with goods related to Touhou Lotus Eaters

Pixiv collaborated with Touhou too. During this collaboration artists could choose the Touhou arts and works they wanted to print and sell and Pixiv staff chose the ones which didn't break the rules. For that Pixiv made some points from Touhou guidelines more concrete. In addition, there was an art contest with prizes.
About the rules Pixiv is not the only company which made Touhou guidelines more concrete. For example, Phoenixx could also do that. Touhou Mystia's Izakaya couldn't use "Touhou" as kanji (東方 (or 东方 in Chinese)) in the title of Nintendo Switch release. Instead of that they use とうほう ("Touhou" as hiragana). The publisher of this game is Phoenixx and other games published by Phoenixx don't have 東方 in their title; they either use とうほう or don't use "Touhou" at all. There is a rumour that this is because it is prohibited to use title starting with 東方. Sadly, there were no comments from 幽紫kk (the creator of the game) about this topic. But as we already know from the judge reply in 2012, there is no copyright or trademark for 東方 (and ZUN still hasn't made one; the only new trademarks are for Genso Wanderer, Danmaku Heroines (the former name of DanKagu before it was announced), Touhou Doujin Music, Hakurei Shrine and Touhou Arcadia Records). In addition, the releases by Mediascape don't have this problem. One of the possible reasons why releases of Touhou games by Phoenixx cannot have 東方 in the title is their way of the interpretation the prohibition of "anything that means to mistake your Fan Content as one of the official Touhou Project titles". Later there will be an example of a company which did the same thing. There are several reasons why companies may interpret the guidelines in different ways. They are not prohibited to do that as long as it contradicts the guidelines. Next, they want to be careful to avoid possible legal problems. Finally it is difficult for them to contact TSA, as some of them may not have contacts with TSA. There are several examples of this. In 2020 one of the Japanese fans wanted to do a Touhou crowdfunding campaign for his Touhou card game. He contacted TSA, but he didn't get a reply. When Yatabe wanted to open a Touhou bar, he couldn't get a reply from TSA if such cafes were allowed (he only got the reply after the bar was opened). There was also a recent case, when one Western fan contacted PLAYISM about some legal questions and PLAYISM offered to contact TSA directly about them, but after the question about contacts they replied that publicly available TSA email isn't active anymore they and offered to contact Mediascape, but he didn't get any reply from Mediascape.

Back to semi-official groups. Touhou Doujin Music Distribution was very active. They worked with LostWord, with BeatMARIO, and organized Summer Three-Week Release Festival in 2021. In 2022, they presented ZUN Beer on Chokaigi. The next year, they collaborated with topia (a karaoke application) to stream Touhou music. In 2024 they started Wawon, a commercial manga about a doujin circle which makes Touhou music and participates in doujin events. In addition they decided to expand overseas and work in China (and as Chinese fans say since then some popular tracks which were available for free began to require a VIP registration on Chinese streaming services) and Korea.

During this period Touhou-related commercial activities began to expand overseas. In 2020, the Korean version of Touhou Spell Bubble was announced. In addition, Touhou Spell Bubble cafe collaboration was announced. Animate began to distribute Touhou goods in Korea. Meanwhile, Unknown X (Why So Serious? + AQUASTYLE) supported Meizhi Fantasy Expo in China. Good Smile Company already distributed some Touhou figures and they decided to open a Chinese version of Touhou Lost Word. Later Touhou Lost Word appeared as a commercial booth on some all-genre doujinshi sales events. SuperGroupies supported shipping to China and to the West. Kadokawa started to distribute official Touhou books in China too. Amiami already distributed some Touhou figures in Korea and in 2021 Amiami (and Gift) began to distribute Fumo. The next year they began to distribute Fumo in the West. In 2023, Gift began to distribute Fumo in China. There were also several other companies which sold Touhou figures in China: ALTER, FuRyu and Solarain. Starlike (a Korean company) added Touhou tracks to Sixtar Gate: STARGAZER (a rhythm game).
In 2024 more collaborations began to emerge. Amiami opened a Pop-up store in Seoul where they sold Fumo and collaborated with Toonique (Korean cafe). The menu was Touhou themed and there were Fumos. There were several collabs in China. Hakurei Shrine Office collaborated with iPass during Reitaisai in Taiwan. In 2025, Animate decided to organize a Touhou cafe collaboration which was prolonged later. In addition, Animate collaborated with Shanghai THO. Meanwhile there was a collaboration between LAWSON and Touhou in South China. There was a lot of Touhou food and Touhou goods. Around that time Touhou Genso Eclipse collaborated with Taiwan Beer. Later Good Smile Cafe made a collaboration with Touhou Lost Word. Meanwhile AniAmi participated in AGF 2025 in Korea where they distributed Fumo and other goods. In addition, there was a Hakurei Shrine. Kujibikido started a Touhou Lotus Eaters lottery in Korea too.

In 2024, there was an incident in China. Unknown X (Touhou Danmaku Kagura) with the help of local organizers planned Meizhi Fantasy Expo - Hakurei Priest Special Event. Unknown X (+ Alliance Arts) and ZUN arrived to present Danmaku Kagura Fantasy Lost and to do some collabs. Meanwhile Chinese organizers prepared a special lunch with ZUN but to access it people had to pay for VIP tickets (but they promised that other visitors would be able to see him too). The event was poorly organized, many people couldn't see ZUN, VIP tickets were expensive and there were other problems. So this event was criticized. The problems were clear and it was clear who caused them. Later the Chinese organizer published the whole story behind this event and its problems.

 

[vanyk]

But there was a much more complicated incident related to commercial activities. The next year the 4th Houraisai (a Korean Touhou-only event) was held. Since 2023 Houraisai was openly supported by Doujin Co. but as the crowdfunding page for the third event says Doujin Company also supported the first and the second Houraisai. Later Doujin Company supported Invitation from Gensokyo (a Korean Touhou orchestra concert). Around that time, Houraisai collaborated with Illustar Fes (owned by Starlike Inc.) and Touhou zone appeared on Illustar Fes. In October, Doujin Company presented Touhou and Houraisai on JISEF, another event related to Illustar Fes. And after that a collaboration between Houraisai and Illustar Fes was announced: Houraisai and Illustar Fes became cohosted events and Doujin Company began to work with Starlike. That wasn't the first collaboration as Houraisai collaborated with Piapro Stars (a predecessor of Illustar Fes) in 2020. By 2024, Illustar Fes became a big event and Starlike became interested in commercialization of doujin and explained other companies why collaborating with it was a good idea. In addition Illustar Fes organized some regular contests, but this time there was also TSA's copyright. Meanwhile Japanese Touhou semi-officials began to pay more attention to Houraisai. It was announced that Unknown X would participate on this event. Later Reitaisai, Amiami, Kouroumu and TDMD announced its participation. Even ZUN was invited (to present Danmaku Kagura (which was translated in Korean by Doujin Company and CFK Co., Ltd. (which translated a Touhou game before and had some relations with Starlike)) and to perform with Unknown X) with other semi-officials. There were some organization problems with this event (this article covers them) but long story short Illustar Fes participants had more conveniences than Houraisai participants, most of these problems were somewhat solved but the inconveniences related to venues planning remained.
When it was announced that ZUN would visit Houraisai, on Houraisai page on Illustar Fes site appeared information about VIP tickets: the visitors who had them could have a dinner with ZUN. However, on the day of the event one of VIPs said that ZUN had problems with health and couldn't participate. But later ZUN published a photo where he had dinner with other people. Some VIPs said that problems with health were an excuse and the real reason is that one of the participants said something really rude. There was a VIP who doubted that the reason was a rude remark and there were VIPs who claimed that this rude remark was about an anime adaptation. The next day ZUN gave a lecture so it became obvious that ZUN didn't have problems with health. Meanwhile the organizers published an apology about this incident, abolished VIP tickets and promised to give bonuses to VIPs on the next event, but they didn't mention the details of the incident. Later VIPs received additional information about benefits and possibility of partial refunds (50% but later it was increased up to around 75%) for ones who didn't want the bonuses. After that Houraisai organizers posted more detailed information and mentioned that one of the staff members was rude, but in addition an NDA was enforced. It is difficult to say who enforced it as there are claims that it was an Illustar Fes staff member, there are claims that Houraisai staff or even somebody from Japan did that. During the broadcast on the 24th of February, Korean fans heard that ZUN didn't get any money from this. And this led to more speculations.
During this incident the representative of Illustar Fes made several harsh comments towards Korean fans who wanted to ask ZUN about this incident (these comments were deleted in a few hours). On the 20th of February the Korean branch of HSWA was formed, it was called after Houraisai, but this branch was also supported by Starlike Inc (they mentioned the collaboration and organized payment during the collaboration). A Touhou Pop-up store was announced, but it wasn't well organized and Touhou goods arrived only on the third day, so they posted an apology. In addition people noticed Illustar Fes equipment. The remaining Touhou stuff was later used in Illustar Cafe. Meanwhile Doujin Company continued to work with Illustar.
After this controversial Touhou-only event, new Korean Touhou-only events began to emerge. But the organizers were worried about the incident happened on Houraisai so they decided to contact Doujin Company. Doujin Company made meetings with organizers of Gensou Expo 2026 (later it would be turned to Invitation to the Future Century (a Hifuu-only event) with help of Houraisai) and Airdefence. Doujin Company confirmed that Touhou semi-officials began to pay much more attention to Korea that is why guidelines became more strict. From the side of guidelines, events hosted by Airdefence (Cirno Cafe, The Whole Neighborhood is Gensokyo and Makkori Gori Banquet) (they were not related to Doujin Company) broke the rules. Such events needed to be approved by Touhou officials (via Doujin Company):

Examples that fall under these guidelines are as follows:
1. Doujin events held with the cooperation of shops, local governments, or companies.
2. One-day cafe-style events that does not only rent a venue but also sells collaboration menus/goods sets in conjunction with a doujin event
3. Offering out products that are not personally produced goods such as FUMO or figures as prizes.
4. Demonstrating doujin games from other companies that are not the original or personally produced games.
5. Including PPL (Product PLacement) for specific companies/products in events (such as Sei x Doujin).
6. Titles that could be mistaken for Toujin originals such as 'Touhou xxx'.
7. Large-scale sponsorship/funding plans that are carried out when individuals cannot raise funds.
All of these plans must be approved by ZUN.

Some of these topics were covered in my previous articles. Even though there are many events in Japan and China which do at least one of these things, it seems like Doujin Company wanted to avoid possible incidents in the future, so they had to enforce such rules. And it looks like all Korean Touhou-only events follow these rules now.
After this there was Houraisai 4.5, which was the last Houraisai event and the tickets were free. As there was the NDA there wasn't much new information about this incident.
There are two versions of this incident: by Illustar Fes (semi-official) and by some Korean fans from forums (unofficial). Neither Doujin Company nor Houraisai explained what actually happened that day, so there is no official version.
Unofficial version from forums (it was the first one): Houraisai (Doujin Company) became heavily dependent on Illustar Fes (Starlike), which was interested in Touhou, that is why they continued to work together even after the incident. The VIP tickets idea was Starlike's idea. Even though they had problems with VIP tickets themselves before, they paid attention to the profitability of VIP tickets. In addition, Houraisai staff should know about the incident with VIP tickets in China. ZUN (and possibly the Japanese side) didn't know about VIP tickets. The Touhou Pop-up store was Starlike's idea as it was held in one of the venues of Hyundai Department Store which already collaborated with Starlike. During the incident a person from Starlike discussed an idea of an anime adaptation of Touhou (as staff members from Starlike visited Toonimotion, a Korean animation company). In addition, somebody could raise the topic of VIP tickets. Those are reasons why ZUN left (he didn't want to talk about an anime adaptation of Touhou and he didn't want to repeat the incident in China). Problems with health (it was said to save Houraisai's face) or communication problems are not enough reasons for NDA, so NDA was used to hide the actual content of the dialog. The only question is why ZUN gave the lecture the next day, while he didn't attend the dinner. Doujin Company isn't a good company either, as it could avoid most of the problems and it controls Korean Touhou-only events. As the incident happened it is hard to say how good they will be in controlling the situation. Most of these are speculations by Korean fans which are nearly impossible to check as there is (or was) NDA, some things are not well documented and there is a lot of contradicting information (some articles tried to find out which information is true or false and which posts could be intentional misinformation)
Semi-official version (after NDA was lifted (as Illustar Fes claimed)) (and it was hidden later): Illustar Fes had no contacts with ZUN before his visit was announced. The only thing they did was collaboration with Indie Live Expo (which is related to D.N.A.). During the incident the representative of Illustar Fes was informed about the cancellation of the dinner with VIPs because of the communication issues between a Korean staff member related to Touhou and ZUN (and claims about problems with health appeared here). ZUN quickly came up with a workaround and Illustar Fes staff helped him. The next day they realized how serious that incident was and that it would damage the commercial development of Touhou in Korea especially when they were preparing the Touhou Pop-up store (yes, they confirmed their involvement). The organizers of Houraisai were "mentally unstable" and as tickets were sold via Illustar Fes website the organizers of Illustar Fes knew the financial situation of Houraisai and that they couldn't refund all tickets and remain viable. NDA was Illustar Fes idea to save the situation. In addition, the representative of Illustar Fes claimed that they are in dispute with Doujin Company and that there is also an NDA with the Japanese side, but Illustar Fes doesn't know its details. As some VIPs say in the VIP chat they said similar things. After that post the Japanese translator said that she didn't say anything about problems with health. So it seems like Houraisai staff were the ones who claimed that. Later the organizer of Illustar Fes said that Doujin Company were the ones who lied to them. There were also claims that the whole story about this incident was made up or the story is partly true.
It looks like in general Korean fans think that both Doujin Company and Starlike are responsible for this incident and both participated in Touhou-related commercial activities. They don't trust Doujin Company and don't fully trust Illustar Fes. In addition some actions by both sides look strange for them.
Anyway, this incident and events related to it show the specifics of commercial development of Touhou in Korea. Touhou officials and Japanese companies became interested in Korea and the Korean side wanted to use it. The Korean branch of HSWA was formed and there is some more official control over events in Korea. But the distrust to the Korean organizers by Korean fans slowed the possible further commercial development.

Around that time TouhouFest appeared at Reitaisai for the first time. Touhou officials became more interested in the West. Reitaisai announced its participation at TouhouFest, Idea Factory which already sold Touhou Spell Carnival in the West participated at TouhouFest too. In addition Ruw visited this event. Even though there were some problems with the organization of this event, they had nearly no effect on visitors from Japan, and it was mostly a successful event. For now the only new collaboration was by SuperGroupies which already sold Touhou goods in the West. It is hard to say if Japanese companies would begin to pay more attention to Touhou activities in the West and if there would be bigger collaborations in the future.



Conclusion

Since the 00s Touhou has greatly expanded not only in the sphere of fan activities but also in the sphere of commercial activities. Many things changed during this. A lot of commercial products and events appeared. Different groups appeared to support such activities. In addition, commercial activities began to spread outside of Japan. Even though there were some incidents, they didn't change the general trend.
Fans' attitude to these activities are various. Some of them are tolerant to such things and consider them as derivative works. For the others such activities are unacceptable. Anyway this sphere is very developed now and it seems like it will develop further.

 

[vanyk]

2026 Update

The original article studied commercial development from the early 00s to the end of 2025 and it was finished in early 2026. There were some new related updates in the first half of 2026. Even though they don't change the trend they are still noteworthy. So there is an overview.

There are some new goods. For example, plushes by Ichibankuji and by Fukuya. There are also some Lego-like Touhou constructors by Mitacle Block. Touhou cards were added to Weiß Schwarz board game. Weiß Schwarz distributed Touhou cards on Reitaisai. They also put ADs in Tokyo Metro Ikebukuro Station. In addition, they organized a beginner's workshop for newcomers in different stores. As a gift newcomers also got a deck set with Touhou Lost Word cards. Meanwhile, Touhou Lost Word staff distributed a deck set during Touhou Lost Word Live.

Lost Word made some more collaborations. They collaborated with HEART CO.,Ltd. to produce candies with Touhou Lost Word stickers. Nendroids were announced, Huggy Good Smile figures appeared and clothes were distributed. Lost Word collaborated with JOYSOUND to add Touhou music to JOYSOUND karaoke. With HSWA help they (with Bushiroad) published Touhou Lost Word Visual Fanbook. Lost Word collaborated with Touhou Kasouten (a fan exhibition where costumes by different cosplayers are presented) to present several costumes from Lost Word. Lost Word had a collaboration with Grand Summoners, which is another gacha game by NextNinja Co., Ltd. / GOOD SMILE COMPANY, Inc. They had a collaboration stream. Touhou characters and music were added to Grand Summoners. Also some players could get exclusive QUO cards with Touhou characters. During the collaboration, Lost Word players only got additional "prayers" and 4 new tracks.

Meanwhile, Gensou Eclipse had a similar collaboration with Gothic wa Mahou Otome. There was a collaborative stream, new Touhou music and shottypes with costumes were added. In June, Arcadia Records stopped some Japanese servers and even though they say it was a temporary closure it seems like all servers will be closed soon. Anyway, there was a small update at the end of June, but since the 11th of June there were no updates on official socials.

Flandre was added to QQQbeats!!! in March. In May, a commercial game about Yukkuries was released. Later more Yukkuries were added. Phantasy Star Online 2 organized the second collaboration with Touhou.

In 2026, there were some more collaborations between Touhou and McDonald's. There are some noteworthy peculiarities about collaborations related to McDonald's: for some reason they delete related posts after a short time. The same thing they also do with collaborations with other franchises, for example Vocaloids (there were some collabs with them this year and last year). In addition, ZUN didn't comment anything about these collabs. The collabs with Touhou in 2026 were strange too. At first there was a Bad Apple!! collab which included the famous Ronald McDonald meme even though McDonald's staff were against using this meme before. In February there was another collaboration which used Yukkuries. And they didn't notify the right owner about this commercial collaboration. And it seems like in general this AD itself wasn't liked by some Japanese fans. A month later McDonald's staff posted an apology (which was deleted later). After that there have been no new collaborations with Touhou.

Around the same time Yukkuries were used in an announcement published by Acquisition, Technology & Logistics Agency and the right owners were credited properly
Talking about government related activities, Chichibu City government collaborated with Touhou for "Gather! Touhou Station in Chichibu". Chichibu City's mascot characters were used for promotion and they appeared on event. Promotional material was placed on SL Paleo Express train, there were collaborative goods and food. By the way, Weiß Schwarz distributed new cards related to "Gather! Touhou Station in Chichibu".

This year HSWA collaborated with HANA・BIYORI, a flower park. ROUND1 collaborated with Touhou too and had Touhou karaoke, bowling and other activities.
This year Touhou Project joined FANBOX Print project. Touhou artists who participate in this project can get revenue for allowing to print their artworks. If somebody prints their art in a store the artist gets 25% of the price. Later it was allowed to sell works this way for Taiwan.
Touhou arrangement by BeatMARIO was used in Kobayashi Pharmaceutical AD.

The most notable update was the announcement of Touhou New Classic by Shanghai Alice Reprice. This project started in September 2025. Its goal is to remake and publish old Touhou games. For now only EoSD New Classic was released, but it seems like PCB an IN will be remade too. This project was mostly done by Unknown X (AQUASTYLE) and Alliance Arts. AQUASTYLE was responsible for coding (main programmers are Ruttaku (lltcggie) and Kago (和田) (kakkou)) and UI, ZUN rearranged all tracks and adjusted some attack timing, Unabara was responsible for boss sprites, Ki-san for player sprites and Curee (AQUASTYLE) for character sprites in dialogs. There were some new people: Moyashi (もやし) (who was responsible for UI and some graphics, he is a friend of Miko from IOSYS), Warashina (わらしな) (AQUASTYLE). RYU'S OFFICE Inc. also participated in this project and was responsible for marketing. ALunalia Co., Ltd. (a newform company) participated in this project, but it is difficult to say the scale of their involvement. During the first stream JYUNYA and ZUN revealed a lot of information. JYUNYA confirmed that AQUASTYLE made most of the work. He had an idea about making the remake for 10 years. At first they tried to do some bug fixes and add some small features. Later they decided to remake the game engine and add support for consoles. The game was mostly done before they showed it to ZUN (later ZUN reconfirmed that). After rearranging all the music ZUN decided to adjust some stages. The new release has old and new versions of stages. By the way, JYUNYA contacted Unabara (it happened after UDoALG release) and Ki-san (ZUN's wife) directly about participating in this project without telling ZUN about that. JYUNYA told ZUN about this only after Unabara and Ki-san joined the team. Later Curee joined. Curee began to draw sprites for characters two months before the Nintendo Direct announcement. His full-body arts were based on old illustrations ZUN found (those were the backup ("backup DVD" and "papers") ZUN was talking about, not the code), but sadly, some illustrations were lost with a hard drive. In addition, JYANYA was in charge of the localization, and HakusinX (はくしん) (an old ZUN's friend who moved from China to Japan) was responsible for contacts with Chinese translators. According to the inteview with Western translators, Japanese side contacted brliron via IceFairy and brliron recruited THPatch translators. But it is unknown who organized these contacts with Western side (it could be AQUASTYLE or Alliance Arts). Later one of the translators claimed that some THPatch materials were used. There were also claims that the new release is based on GensokyoClub decompilation project before and after release but there is no official confirmation. It is interesting that Ruw's opinion about decompilation changed even though he says it is illegal. After the announcement of New Classic a few more recompiled versions of EoSD for MacOS appeared made by generative models. It seems like the model just added emulator wrappers to the exe file or used the code from the GensokyoClub repository. Anyway such projects catched Ruw's interest and he wasn't against them. Ruw already had some ideas about using Linux+WINE wrapper to run EoSD on modern devices. And he works with Reprise. In addition, ZUN became more tolerant to patches (at least to V-patch), so it looks like such projects are less unthinkable nowadays. So it is not that surprising that AQUASTYLE could actually use some decompiled code. There were also some claims that AI was used for sidebar images, but it looks like there are no proves that AI was used for any other images. The last things to note is that Taito could be also involved in this project but that is not confirmed, in any case it won't be surprising if a lot of VTubers will play the game after the release. In addition, an article about Touhou EoSD was published in Nintendo Dream.

Since the beginning of September 2026 several Touhou commercial collaborations have been organized in China. A Touhou cafe collaboration was organized with SudCroix Southern Cross Cafe. There was Touhou food and Touhou-related decorations. Touhou transportation cards were released in collaboration with Shanghai City Tourism Card. In addition, there was a Touhou collaboration bus in Shanghai which promoted EoSD New Classic release. TSA approved this collaborations and ZUN mentioned them in Chinese announcement.
Meanwhile, Weiß Schwarz Touhou cards were released in Korea. In addition, Weiß Schwarz tournament limited to Touhou decks was organized for Korea. (There was a similar tournament in Japan)

Those are all notable events that happened during the first half of 2026.