Application Details

Yes

'Manga', a comic art form that originated in Japan, names its worldwide industry: verified creators, publishers, distributors, licensors and rights-holders of manga, delineated by industry-body standards-not readership.

The .manga community is categorized as an established professional industry community: the manga industry - the organized economic and cultural sector that creates, publishes, distributes, licenses, and protects manga. Manga is a comic art form that originated in Japan - a fact recognized in Japanese law, where the Culture and Arts Basic Act (Article 9) enumerates manga among Japan's official "Media Arts," and reflected in the major English dictionaries (Oxford, Cambridge, Collins, Merriam-Webster), which define it as the Japanese form of comics. Everyone working in the manga industry works with manga, and that shared subject is the community's natural anchor. Membership is delineated by proof of contribution to the industry, measured against the objective standards of the sector's established representative bodies - not by self-identification. The community is bounded, pre-existing, and externally verifiable, yet open to everyone who genuinely contributes: Industry entities (publishers, distributors, licensors, rights-holders) qualify by demonstrating that they meet the same objective qualification standards the sector's representative bodies apply for membership or certification - the Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ) anti-piracy certification scheme (267 certified operators across 1,028 verified services as of 2026-05-29; ~90 member corporations), Digital Publishers Federation of Japan (DPFJ), the Japan Magazine Publishers Association (JMPA) and Japan Book Publishers Association (JBPA). This is an objective, contribution-based test that any qualifying entity worldwide can meet and be vetted against. Creators (mangaka) qualify by demonstrating either a published manga, or that the work is an original work of their own authorship - not a copied or pirated work. The Japan Cartoonists Association (JCA) - approximately 4,000 professional creators - is the organized body of such creators; individual creators self-certify their authorship against these objective tests. Membership is therefore a matter of record and verification, not declaration. A person or entity is inside the community because it has met an objective, body-aligned standard of contribution - admitted, certified, or demonstrably qualified - not because it asserts an affinity with manga. This proof-of-contribution threshold also serves the community's anti-piracy purpose at the door: because a creator must show original authorship, pirated or copied works cannot enter the namespace through the front gate. For the same reason, the audience for manga - readers and fans - is outside the registrant community. Readers are the beneficiaries the industry serves, not members of the industry that produces and protects the work. Defining the community as its readership would make it unbounded and self-identified - the failure mode that disqualifies an application - whereas defining it as the verified industry makes it delineated, pre-existing, and externally verifiable, while remaining open and non-discriminatory. The chain from the string to a governed community is explicit and continuous: the term manga names this industry; the industry is organized by the recognized bodies above; and those bodies, through the .manga governance structure, hold the policy authority that defines eligibility and use. The string names the community, the standards of its institutions constitute and bound it, and governance delegates from them. In summary, .manga's community is the organized manga industry - delineated by objective, body-aligned proof of contribution (not self-identification), distinct from the general audience that consumes manga, and structured so that only verified contributors of original, legitimate manga work hold .manga names.

Kodansha Ltd. is connected to the Japan Manga Industry Community in two distinct capacities: as a long-standing core member of the industry, and as the neutral steward that will operate .manga on the community's behalf. As a member, Kodansha is one of the foundational publishing houses of the manga industry. Founded in 1909, Kodansha has for over a century created, serialized, published, licensed, and defended manga, and it sustains the creator-publisher relationships from which the industry's output originates. Its serialization of works by professional manga creators - for example, Tetsuya Chiba's *Ashita no Joe: Fighting for Tomorrow* in Kodansha's *Weekly Shonen Magazine* beginning in 1967 - is one of countless creator-publisher partnerships, spanning generations, through which Kodansha has carried the works of Japan Cartoonists Association artists for over half a century. Kodansha's role is not merely commercial: it is one of the six founding members of Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ), the industry's central anti-piracy certification body, incorporated on July 1, 2020, alongside KADOKAWA Corporation, Shueisha Inc., Shogakukan Inc., MediaDo Inc., and the Japan Cartoonists Association. Kodansha has held a seat on the ABJ board continuously since ABJ's founding, and Kodansha's Executive Vice President and Board Member Hiroaki Morita, has served as ABJ Representative Director since June 2024. Kodansha thus sits inside every layer of the community the application defines - creation (through its authors), authorized publishing and rights management, distribution and licensing, and rights protection. This membership is evidenced by formal, third-party instruments rather than self-assertion. The Japan Cartoonists Association (founded 1964; 4,236 members as of May 31, 2026), through its Board of Directors' unanimous resolution of April 24, 2026, has issued a letter of endorsement attesting to its half-century working relationship with Kodansha. ABJ, on behalf of its membership, has likewise resolved to endorse the application. These endorsements, together with Kodansha's documented ABJ founding membership and directorship, constitute contractual and institutional evidence of Kodansha's place within the community. Critically, Kodansha applies not as the owner of .manga but as its steward. The application does not treat .manga as a single company's brand. Instead, final decision authority over the registry is vested in a neutral Steering Committee composed of the community's representative parties - the Japan Cartoonists Association, ABJ, participating manga publishers among them. The Committee holds ten governance functions across policy-making, control and oversight, external/community representation, and overall governance; Kodansha, as the ICANN contracting party, executes what the Committee decides. The application establishes no registration priority favoring Kodansha: every verified registrant receives a fair and equal opportunity, and the Steering Committee supervises the operation of the registration policy. This separation of contracting role from decision authority is the structural guarantee that Kodansha's connection to the community is that of a representative member acting on the community's behalf, not a proprietor appropriating a shared word. In summary, Kodansha is connected to the community as a century-old core industry member with documented, endorsed relationships across every layer of the manga industry, and as the neutral operator that will administer .manga under the community's own collective governance.

The Japan Manga Industry Community is organized around a set of pre-existing, formally incorporated representative bodies, each governing a defined layer of the industry and operating its own membership and certification machinery. The community is not an informal affinity group; it is a structured ecosystem in which finished work travels along a documented chain - creation, authorized publishing and rights management, distribution and licensing, and rights protection - and a recognized institution stands at each stage. Creation - the Japan Cartoonists Association (JCA, a Public Interest Incorporated Association). JCA is the professional body of the people who actually draw manga. Founded in 1964 - more than six decades before this application - it is a Public Interest Incorporated Association under Japanese law with a total membership of 4,236 (4,181 full professional members, 51 supporting corporate members, 4 honorary members) as of May 31, 2026. For over sixty years it has administered the matters that define professional manga authorship: copyright and fair contracts, working conditions, the standing of manga as an art form, and the Japan Cartoonists Association Awards (since 1972). Its Chairman is Tetsuya Chiba; its President is Machiko Satonaka; its Managing Director, Ban Ippongi, sits on the ABJ Board of Directors - all three of whom are themselves distinguished manga creators. Authorized publishing and rights management - the publishing houses and their associations. The major publishers - KADOKAWA, Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, and Square Enix among them - produce and manage the rights to the industry's authorized output. They are organized industry-wide through the Japan Book Publishers Association (JBPA) and, in the magazine/serialization context, the Japan Magazine Publishers Association (JMPA). Rights protection and certification - Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ, a General Incorporated Association). ABJ is the industry's central anti-piracy certification body, established July 1, 2020 by six founding entities at the center of the industry (KADOKAWA, Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, MediaDo, and the Japan Cartoonists Association). It comprises approximately 90 member corporations (91 roster entries) and 10 supporting organizations as of April 1, 2026, spanning publishers, digital distribution platforms, content distributors, and creator organizations. ABJ operates the ABJ Mark, the industry-standard certification identifying legitimate digital manga distribution services - currently issued to 1,028 services operated by 267 businesses (as of June 29, 2026). Kodansha's Executive Vice President and Board Member Hiroaki Morita serves as ABJ Representative Director (since June 2024). The Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA) additionally supports cross-border rights enforcement. What makes this a single organized community rather than four separate groups is interdependence and overlapping institutional membership. ABJ's own membership is a cross-section of the whole community - publishers, distributors, platforms, and the creator association sit on one roster, admitted under the same published criteria. The Japan Cartoonists Association and Kodansha are both ABJ founding members. ABJ's certification categories (publisher / content distributor / digital platform / creator organization) are the working divisions of a live certification registry, not drafting conventions. The bodies share leadership (e.g., JCA's Managing Director on ABJ's board) and a common purpose - delivering authorized, high-quality manga to readers while excluding piracy. Evidence of this organization is documentary and externally verifiable: each body's incorporation records, ABJ's membership roster (as of April 1, 2026) and ABJ Mark licensing register (as of June 29, 2026), JCA's published membership figures, and the formal endorsement letters issued by ABJ (on behalf of its membership) and JCA (by Board resolution of April 24, 2026).

Membership in this community rests on defined, verifiable qualification rather than on self-identification. A person or entity is inside the community because it has met an objective, body-aligned standard of contribution - admitted, certified, or demonstrably qualified - rather than by asserting an affinity with manga. The same threshold drives the proposed .manga registration model: three tiers, each with a specific verification procedure, excluding parties outside the industry. The community's representative bodies are its defining institutions, and they organize the large majority of industry participants, so most registrants qualify through an existing membership or certification. Membership is not, however, the only route to eligibility: a qualifying contributor who belongs to no body - or an individual creator in no association - can register by confirming its registered address and company registration number together with a representation of its manga engagement or, for a creator, a published or original manga work. Tier 1 - Priority registration (core, objectively pre-verified). Eligibility is established by membership or certification already held in the community's representative bodies, checked against their own published criteria: holders of the Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ) Mark (operators in the ABJ Mark licensing register), members of the Japan Cartoonists Association, and members of the Digital Publishers Federation of Japan (DPFJ). Verification is by ABJ Mark number and member-registration number - an external, machine-checkable credential. These parties are, by definition, already inside the community's certified boundary. Tier 2 - General registration (industry contribution). Eligibility extends to any legal entity or individual engaged in manga publishing, distribution, or production - explicitly excluding mere fans and end-users. A legal entity is verified before activation by confirming its registered address and company registration number (no portfolio or other documentary proof is required); the entity additionally represents that it creates, publishes, distributes, licenses, or holds rights in manga, which the registry may audit and on which a false representation is grounds for suspension or cancellation; an individual qualifies by the good-faith self-declaration described below. It admits qualifying contributors worldwide on the same contribution-based test, while keeping the boundary at genuine industry activity - the tier that makes the community worldwide and non-discriminatory. For individual contributors - mangaka and individual publishers - qualification is by good-faith self-declaration backed by an objective test: the applicant affirms either a published manga, or that the work is an original work of their own authorship - not a pirated or copied work. This is self-declaration of a verifiable fact (published or original authorship), not self-identification of community affinity - and it is the front gate that keeps pirated and copied work out of the namespace. Tier 3 - Expanded registration (manga education and research). Eligibility extends to manga educators and researchers, verified by proof of affiliation or accreditation, or - absent such proof - a binding, auditable representation of manga-education or research activity, serving cultural promotion and education. Exclusion. Businesses unrelated to manga and speculative/abusive registrants are excluded; registration in violation of policy is subject to cancellation. The application establishes no registration priority favoring the applicant; the Steering Committee (JCA, ABJ, participating manga publishers) supervises the registration policy so the standard is applied neutrally. In every case, eligibility rests on record and verification - not on affiliation by assertion. Readers and fans, who hold no such qualification, are the beneficiaries the industry serves and are outside the registrant community.

Originated in Japan - home of manga and its core publishers, creators and rights bodies - and now worldwide, with licensees, distributors and partners across North America, Europe, Asia and other regions.

~4,236 creators (JCA); ~90 ABJ member corporations (267 certified operators); 380 book publishers (JBPA); 87 magazine publishers (JMPA); 67 digital publishers (DPFJ). Region: Japanese core plus licensees worldwide (North America, Europe, Asia, beyond).

JCA ~4,236 professional creators; ABJ ~90 member corporations (267 certified operators, 1,028 services); JBPA 380 book publishers; JMPA 87 magazine publishers; DPFJ 67 digital publishers; the founding publishers - the bulk of market output.

The organizing bodies of the manga community - principally Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ), the Japan Cartoonists Association (JCA), and the Japan Magazine Publishers Association (JMPA) - demonstrate active and consistent engagement with the community, evidenced by dated, institutionally recorded activity over the past two years and by infrastructure these bodies operate continuously. The unifying purpose across all four engagement dimensions is the defense of authorized manga against piracy. (a) Support provided. ABJ operates the ABJ Mark, the industry-standard certification identifying legitimate digital manga distribution services. As of June 29, 2026, the Mark was issued to 1,028 services operated by 267 businesses (source: ABJ Mark licensing register), giving authorized distributors a verifiable badge that distinguishes their services from pirate sites - direct operational support to the community's commercial members. JCA provides career-long support to working artists: copyright and fair-contract advocacy, working-condition representation, and, continuously since 1972, the Japan Cartoonists Association Awards honoring outstanding work by peers (source: JCA). JMPA operates and publishes its print-certified circulation disclosure system quarterly, giving member publishers verifiable circulation data. (b) Information sharing. ABJ collects and reports pirate-site intelligence to its membership and the public. Its 2025 comprehensive investigation identified 913 piracy websites and estimated the value of publications read without payment at approximately JPY 8.5 trillion per year (source: ABJ, *Survey Report on All 913 Publication Piracy Sites*, released November 18, 2025). On February 4, 2026, ABJ announced that unpaid reading on Japan-facing piracy sites reached JPY 688.8 billion for calendar 2025. These ABJ data are relied upon by the Government of Japan: the *Intellectual Property Strategic Program 2026* (adopted June 12, 2026) cites ABJ's "Status of Illegal Publication Sites," and the inter-ministerial *Comprehensive Countermeasures Menu and Roadmap against Online Piracy* (May 30, 2025) references ABJ's annual damage estimation - demonstrating that the bodies' information-sharing reaches both members and national policymakers. (c) Needs-response. The community's bodies respond directly to the existential need their members face - piracy. ABJ was incorporated on July 1, 2020 as the industry's central anti-piracy body, and the "STOP! Piracy" campaign was launched in earnest alongside the amended Copyright Act that took effect October 1, 2020. The ABJ Mark program operationalizes this response daily by drawing a published, objective line between authorized and unauthorized services. The manga publishing industry addresses a pre-publication threat facing serialized works: spoiler ("netabare") sites obtain manga magazines ahead of their official on-sale date and immediately post artwork and dialogue, a harm documented by the Shuppan Koho Center. (d) Relationship-strengthening. The bodies are structurally interlocked, not parallel. JCA is one of the six founding members of ABJ, and JCA's Managing Director, Ms. Ban Ippongi, serves on the ABJ Board of Directors (source: JCA letter). The five principal manga publishers - Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, KADOKAWA, and Square Enix - are simultaneously members of DPFJ (67 companies as of June 2026, per the DPFJ membership register) and participants in ABJ, while JCA's 4,000+ creators are the counterparties to those same publishers' serialization contracts. This overlapping membership - creators, publishers, and distributors bound together through shared bodies and the common ABJ Mark boundary - is itself ongoing relationship maintenance across the whole community.

Kodansha participates in the community's engagement efforts as one long-standing contributor among many - never as the sole or controlling actor. Its role is documented across all three organizing bodies and spans more than half a century, but in each case Kodansha acts inside a body governed by the wider membership, which is precisely why the community's engagement reads as community-wide rather than applicant-manufactured. Role in anti-piracy infrastructure (ABJ). Kodansha is one of the six founding members of Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ), the industry's central anti-piracy body, alongside KADOKAWA, Shueisha, Shogakukan, MediaDo, and the Japan Cartoonists Association (JCA), at ABJ's establishment on July 1, 2020 (source: ABJ letter). Kodansha's senior officer has served as an ABJ director continuously since the association's founding and Hiroaki Morita (Executive Vice President and Board Member, Kodansha) has served as Representative Director since June 2024 (source: ABJ letter). Kodansha therefore contributes to the operation of the ABJ Mark certification program and the collection and reporting of pirate-site intelligence - but does so as one member's officer within a board, and ABJ's conflict-of-interest procedures apply to the representative directorship so that decisions reflect the membership as a whole (source: ABJ letter). Role toward creators (JCA / serialization). For over half a century Kodansha has serialized, published, and defended the works of JCA artists, across generations of the Association's membership. The relationship is concretely datable: JCA Chairman Tetsuya Chiba created *Ashita no Joe: Fighting for Tomorrow* in the pages of Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine beginning in 1967 - one of countless creator-publisher partnerships through which Kodansha has carried the work of JCA members to readers (source: JCA letter). This is the support-provision dimension of engagement (Q141a) seen from the applicant's side: Kodansha is the publishing counterparty that turns an artist's drawing into a serialized, distributed, and defended work. Role in magazine publishing (JMPA). Kodansha is a core member of the Japan Magazine Publishers Association (JMPA) and has published manga magazines continuously for more than half a century, most notably Weekly Shonen Magazine (first issued 1959) (source: Kodansha publishing record). Through JMPA, Kodansha participates in the magazine sector's collective infrastructure, including the print-certified circulation disclosure system. Neutrality of role. Kodansha's participation is deliberately bounded. Where engagement is community-led - ABJ's certification decisions, JCA's awards and advocacy, JMPA's disclosure system - Kodansha acts as one participant subject to each body's governance, not as the directing entity. This is consistent with the application's design, in which registry policy is set by a multi-stakeholder body rather than by the applicant, and the community's representative bodies endorse that role.

Community members are demonstrably aware of the community as a defined whole and of each other as fellow members. This awareness is structural - it is built into the bodies and contracts that constitute the community - and is evidenced below across (a) the bodies' sustained, public, co-branded joint activity and (b) the records of multi-body participation and overlapping membership. Mutual awareness is not abstract: in the manga industry the same parties meet repeatedly across creation, magazine serialization, distribution, and anti-piracy enforcement. (b) Multi-body participation and overlapping membership. The most direct evidence of mutual awareness is that the community's members are formally and simultaneously members of multiple shared bodies: - Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ) comprises 90 member corporations (91 full-member entries, with Rakuten Group participating through two divisions) and 10 supporting organizations, spanning publishers, digital distribution platforms, content distributors, and creator organizations (source: ABJ Membership Roster, as of April 1, 2026). ABJ's six founding members - KADOKAWA, Kodansha, Shueisha, Shogakukan, MediaDo, and the Japan Cartoonists Association (JCA) - cross the creator/publisher/distributor lines, demonstrating that these parties know one another and act jointly. - JCA's Managing Director sits on the ABJ Board, directly linking the 4,000+ creator body to the anti-piracy body (source: JCA letter). - The Japan Magazine Publishers Association (JMPA) has 87 member companies (as of March 2026) including all five principal manga publishers, who are simultaneously ABJ participants. - The serialization (rensai) pipeline itself - author and assigned editor working in close partnership, with reader surveys feeding back weekly to the editorial floor - means creators (JCA) and publishers (JMPA) are in continuous, named contact (source: Kodansha editorial record). This dense overlap is documented evidence that members are aware of the community and of one another. (a) Sustained, co-branded joint activity. The members also act together in public, named, dated campaigns - the most direct proof that they recognize one another as fellow members. The Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ) is itself a standing coalition of more than sixty member companies spanning publishers, author organizations, bookstores, distributors, and telecommunications and IT firms, founded in July 2020 to operate the "ABJ Mark" certification and the industry's anti-piracy programme (source: ABJ-Safer Internet Association joint announcement, November 25, 2020). Through the Publication Public Relations Center, ABJ, and the Content Overseas Distribution Association (CODA), members jointly run the long-standing "STOP! Piracy" campaign, co-branded across shared official channels and major search platforms. The coordination is recurring and dated: a publishers-telecommunications-information-technology practitioners' forum has convened since 2018; on July 17, 2024 ("Manga Day") the publishers mounted a synchronized global campaign - "Thank you for your love of manga" - placing advertisements simultaneously in The New York Times, Le Monde, EL PAIS and la Repubblica (United States, France, Spain and Italy); and in December 2024 ABJ and TikTok launched a joint "STOP! Piracy + TikTok" awareness campaign. Members do not merely coexist in a sector - they appear together, by name, in common campaigns and a common certification scheme, which is concrete evidence that each is aware of the others as fellow members of one manga community. Government and media recognition corroborate that this community is externally recognized as an organized sector - Japan's Intellectual Property Strategic Program 2026 relies on ABJ's piracy data, and the Culture and Arts Basic Act (Article 9) names manga among Japan's "Media Arts" - but the mutual-awareness showing rests on the members' own coordinated action, not on outside recognition.

Community members are aware both of the applying entity, Kodansha, and of its intent in applying for .manga on the community's behalf. This is evidenced by documented notification-and-consultation processes conducted by the organizing bodies before they resolved to endorse the application, and by the absence of any objection arising from those processes. JCA - member notification and board resolution. On March 30, 2026, representatives of Kodansha presented the .manga generic top-level domain (gTLD) initiative to the Japan Cartoonists Association (JCA) Secretariat, explaining how registration would be limited to verified manga-industry parties, how the TLD would be run, and the provisions written specifically for artists. Before the Board acted, a summary of the .manga initiative and the proposed endorsement was communicated to the JCA membership, with an open invitation to raise concerns or objections; none were raised. On April 24, 2026, the JCA Board of Directors deliberated and resolved - unanimously, in accordance with its Articles of Incorporation - to endorse the application. The resolution and its rationale will additionally be published in the members' newsletter (source: JCA letter). This is direct evidence that the largest body of working manga creators was informed of Kodansha as applicant and of its application intent, and consented. ABJ - member consultation. The endorsement by Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ) was adopted through its own deliberative procedure: the secretariat reviewed the application's community definition, eligibility rules, and governance design against ABJ's certification criteria; the matter was then circulated to the membership for consultation; and the deciding body adopted a resolution of endorsement in accordance with ABJ's Articles of Incorporation. Because Kodansha holds ABJ's representative directorship, ABJ's conflict-of-interest procedures were applied so the endorsement reflects the membership as a whole. The member consultation placed this application before every ABJ member corporation, and no member corporation registered opposition; further, as of the date of its letter, ABJ's secretariat had received no objection from any organization in the manga industry, domestic or international (source: ABJ letter). JMPA - secretariat examination after member sharing. After Kodansha (a member company) shared the outline of the application, the Japan Magazine Publishers Association (JMPA) secretariat examined its substance - the community definition, the bona-fide-role registration requirement, and the industry-oversight arrangements - against the Association's purposes and members' interests, before support was formally resolved. Endorsement letters as awareness evidence. The written endorsements themselves are evidence of informed awareness: each body could not have resolved to endorse without first being informed of the applicant's identity and intent. The endorsements therefore double as proof that the community's representative bodies - and, through their notification-and-consultation steps, their members - are aware of Kodansha and its application intent and have not objected.

Yes

Manga, and the industry that produces it, is recognized far beyond its own membership - across continents, markets, and reference works that have no connection to the applicant. (a) Media and market recognition. Manga is tracked as a distinct, named category by the systems that run the world's book trade. In the United States - the largest English-language market - Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, and Amazon classify "Manga" separately from "Comics" and "Graphic Novels," and Circana BookScan, the definitive U.S. book-sales source, tracks "Manga" as its own category. In the Full Year 2025 Circana BookScan data, VIZ Media published 15 of the Top 20 manga graphic novels (Circana BookScan, FY2025, as reported by ICv2, February 2026). In France - the largest manga market outside Japan - manga accounted for 35.9 million of 68.3 million comics copies sold in 2024, roughly 52.6% of comics volume (GfK Market Intelligence, Bilan BD-Manga 2024, presented at FIBD Angouleme, January 2025). (b) External discussion and institutional reliance. The community's data and standing are relied upon by parties outside it, including governments. The Government of Japan's Intellectual Property Strategy Headquarters cites Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ)'s piracy-site analysis as a source in its Intellectual Property Strategic Program 2026 (adopted June 12, 2026), and the inter-ministerial Comprehensive Countermeasures Menu and Roadmap against Online Piracy (May 30, 2025) references ABJ's annual damage estimation throughout. ABJ's 2025 comprehensive investigation - identifying 913 piracy sites and an estimated JPY 8.5 trillion (approximately US$53 billion; JPY 160/US$1, 06/2026) in annual worldwide losses (released November 18, 2025) - is itself widely reported external evidence of the industry's economic weight. The same external standing registers at the level of national industrial policy: the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), in its Entertainment and Creative Industries Strategy (June 2025), treats the content sector - anime, manga, and games - as a key national industry with a JPY 20 trillion overseas-sales target by 2033, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs maintains manga as a documented field of the national cultural record in its Media Arts Database (744,820 manga records as of the end of FY2024). (c) External and cross-border partnerships. The industry operates a worldwide licensing chain whose participants sit entirely outside Japan and have endorsed this community in their own right: VIZ Media (San Francisco, est. 1986) in North America; Glenat Editions (Grenoble, est. 1969) in France. Glenat brought Kodansha's AKIRA to French readers in 1990; VIZ and Kodansha jointly expanded legal manga access in North America (e.g., the MyAnimeList.net manga store launch with VIZ and Kodansha Comics, March 2018). These are independent commercial actors - Glenat holds no Japanese ownership - confirming the community's reach is genuinely international, not a Japan-only assertion. (d) Founding and documentary record. The community's existence is documented in dated, public founding records - Kodansha (1909), Weekly Shonen Magazine (1959), the Japan Cartoonists Association (JCA, 1964), VIZ Media (1986), ABJ (incorporated 2020) - and in the membership rosters, certification registers, and award histories those bodies publish. (e) Cultural and lexical contribution. Manga's standing as a recognized cultural form is registered in the English language itself: "manga" appears in major English dictionaries - defined as the Japanese comic form. Manga circulates in more than 100 countries and in over 60 languages, a footprint that reference works, retailers, and overseas publishers independently corroborate. Across media tracking, government reliance, cross-border partnerships, public founding records, and lexical recognition, awareness of this community plainly extends well beyond its own membership.

The manga community is enduring in the strict sense the panel requires: it sustains regular, scheduled activities; it carries traditions measured in decades; and its institutions are designed to outlast any single participant, including the applicant. (a) Regular and scheduled activities. The community's defining activities are continuous and recurring, not occasional. Weekly Shonen Magazine has published on a fixed schedule since 1959 - sixty-seven years of weekly issues - and Nakayoshi since 1954. The Japan Cartoonists Association (JCA) has conferred its Awards annually since 1972, honoring the medium's most acclaimed professional creators and evidencing a recognized, self-governing creator community. Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ) produces recurring industry outputs - the ABJ Mark certification program (1,028 services across 267 businesses as of June 29, 2026), annual piracy investigations (the 2025 all-913-site report released November 18, 2025), and ongoing anti-piracy campaigning since its STOP! Piracy work began in earnest with the amended Copyright Act effective October 1, 2020. (b) Long-standing traditions. The community's traditions are not recent. Professional creator organization dates to the JCA's founding in 1964; the creator-publisher serialization model that defines the industry runs back through generations - the JCA Chairman Tetsuya Chiba created Ashita no Joe: Fighting for Tomorrow in Kodansha's Weekly Shonen Magazine from 1967 - and the international licensing tradition is itself decades deep: Glenat published Kodansha's AKIRA in France in 1990 and Dragon Ball in 1993, with the Kodansha-Glenat relationship now in its fourth decade. (c) Permanence and cultural significance. This is a culturally significant, economically permanent sector, not a transient interest. The market is valued at JPY 693.7 billion (approximately US$4.3 billion; JPY 160/US$1, 06/2026) and reaches more than 100 countries in over 60 languages (Research Institute for Publications, 2023). Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, in its 2025 Entertainment and Creative Industries Strategy, treats the content sector - anime, manga, and games - as a key national industry, underscoring the sector's enduring economic significance. Its product is exported and shelved as its own category in the world's largest book markets, and its terminology is registered in the English language. Crucially, the community's permanence is institutionalised: representative bodies founded in 1964 (JCA) and 2020 (ABJ) administer membership, certification, and standards independently of any one company, and the proposed .manga governance is built to match - a neutral Steering Committee, drawing on these representative bodies, sets and maintains eligibility and policy in perpetuity, so the namespace remains a shared community asset rather than the asset of a single applicant. A community whose flagship activities have run weekly since 1959, whose awards have run annually since 1972, whose representative institutions span 1964 to the present, and whose governance is designed to outlive its founders, is enduring and sustainable on every dimension the criterion measures. That endurance now extends into global mainstream culture: Kodansha-origin works have anchored major Hollywood live-action adaptations - Ghost in the Shell (2017) and Alita: Battle Angel (2019) - verifiable evidence that the community's creative output sustains worldwide commercial and cultural engagement beyond publishing itself.

The string "manga" is not merely descriptive of, or associated with, this community - it is the community's own name. The applied-for string and the recognized name of the community are the same word. The string is the name. The community defined in this application is the manga industry. "Manga" is the exact, exclusive word by which that industry, its product, its professional bodies, and the world's book trade name it. There is no separate label for this community to which "manga" merely points; the industry is called the manga industry because manga is what it makes. This is the same fact pattern that produced the only two "match" (full Nexus) scores in the 2012 round - .osaka and .spa - where the string WAS the community's literal name, and the pattern by which the European Broadcasting Union won .radio: a single word that is the recognized name of an entire industry. The name is fixed and externally verified, not an applicant assertion. "Manga" is a defined lexical term in the major English dictionaries - Oxford, Cambridge, Collins, and Merriam-Webster - each defining it as the Japanese form of comics/graphic narrative. It is a cultural loanword (in the family of "sushi," "karate," "anime"), not a generic English descriptor like "shop" or "music." That dictionary status is decisive for Nexus: it shows the name "manga" is recognized by authorities entirely independent of the applicant, so the string-to-name match rests on external evidence rather than on the application's own framing. The name carries Japanese-government recognition. Beyond the dictionaries, the Government of Japan recognizes manga as a defined cultural form by statute: the Culture and Arts Basic Act, Article 9, names manga as one of Japan's "Media Arts," alongside film and animation. The Agency for Cultural Affairs administers this recognition - through the Media Arts Database, which catalogs manga as one of its four named fields, and the Japan Media Arts Festival's Manga Division (held since 1997). This is the highest order of external, non-applicant authority: the name "manga" denotes a cultural-art form recognized in Japanese law and administered by the national cultural agency. The Agency's own usage confirms the bound: in its classifications and copyright-policy materials the term "manga" denotes the Japanese tradition of comic works specifically, and is not conflated with Korean manhwa, Chinese manhua, the Franco-Belgian bande dessinee, or the American comic book. The name is precisely bounded - it does not over-reach. Critically, "manga" names this community and only this community. It is not a broad umbrella over all comics or all sequential art. Korean manhwa and Chinese manhua are distinct, separately-named forms; Western comics and graphic novels are a different, separately-shelved category. Indeed, the U.S. and French book trades formally classify "Manga" as its own category, distinct from "Comics" and "Graphic Novels." Because the word denotes the Japanese comic form specifically - and a different comic tradition is, by the very meaning of the word, not manga - the string captures the manga industry without sweeping in adjacent communities. This is the exact discipline the 2012 round rewarded and whose absence was fatal elsewhere: where .gay's string was read to identify a population broader than its defined community (Nexus 0), "manga" identifies the manga industry and nothing wider. Conclusion. The string is the literal, dictionary-recognized, externally-verified, and precisely-bounded name of the community it will serve. On the 2026 Nexus scale this is a full string-to-name match: the string identifies the community, it has no other significant meaning that would identify a broader population, and the community's name and the string are one and the same word.

Asked what "manga" means, a member of the public anywhere in the world will answer, almost without hesitation, "Japanese comics." That instinctive association is the foundation of the Nexus here - and the applicant addresses it candidly, including where the association is not perfectly aligned with the formal community definition. The dominant, near-universal association. In English and across the more than 60 languages in which manga circulates, the word "manga" instinctively denotes Japanese comics. The association is so settled that the world's book retailers and the definitive sales-tracking services classify "Manga" as a distinct named category, and the major English dictionaries define the word in exactly these terms: Merriam-Webster, "Japanese comic books and graphic novels considered collectively as a genre"; the Oxford dictionary, "a Japanese style of comic strip, which may be aimed at either adults or children"; Cambridge, "Japanese comic books that tell stories in pictures"; and Collins, "a type of Japanese comic book." That four independent lexicographic authorities - with no connection to the applicant - record the same settled meaning is itself a direct measure of public awareness: the everyday sense of the word is fixed in the very reference works the public consults. The instinctive public meaning of the string is therefore tightly tied to the very subject the community is built around - manga itself - and to its makers, the creators (mangaka) and publishers the public knows produce it. The honest bridge - from "Japanese comics" to the community that makes them. The applicant does not overstate. The public first associates "manga" with the art form and its Japanese origin, then its creators; few would instinctively say "the manga industry." But the gap is one of phrasing, not of substance. "Manga" is a Japanese word naming a Japanese-born cultural form; the instinctive association runs directly from that form to the people and institutions who create, publish, and protect it. The community this application defines is exactly that body of creators and industry participants. There is no rival group the public associates with "manga" instead - no other "manga community" competes for the word - so the instinctive association, though most often voiced as "Japanese comics," points to this community and to no other. This is the same bridge the European Broadcasting Union relied on for .radio, where the public's instinctive association with a medium-word resolved to the industry that produces it. That bridge is reinforced at the highest official level: the Culture and Arts Basic Act, Article 9, and the Agency for Cultural Affairs classify manga as a recognized cultural-art form, mapping the instinctive sense onto a form the Japanese state names and administers. Disclosure of other meanings (per the Guidebook), and why they are immaterial. In candour the applicant discloses that the string has other, unrelated senses: in Portuguese, "manga" means "sleeve" and, separately, "mango" (the fruit). The applicant does not hide them. They are immaterial to the Nexus for two reasons. First, in the language of this application and of the dominant global usage, "manga" instinctively denotes the comic form, not a sleeve or a fruit. Second, those senses do not identify any community at all - there is no "sleeve community" or "mango community" using the string - so they create no competing association and no risk of identifying a broader population than the one defined here. Manga is also distinct, in the public mind, from Western comics and from Korean/Chinese webtoons (manhwa/manhua), which the public names differently. Conclusion. The public's instinctive association with "manga" - Japanese comics and those who make them - leads to this community and to no other; competing meanings exist in other languages but identify no community and are immaterial in usage. The association supports a strong string-to-community Nexus.

Yes

Restriction to the manga community Registry Operator shall restrict eligibility to register or hold a domain name in the TLD to verified members of the worldwide manga industry - namely entities and individuals that create, publish, distribute, license, or hold rights in manga - determined solely against the objective standards of the community's representative bodies and the criteria in this Specification.

Tier 1 (Priority) eligibility Registry Operator shall admit as Tier 1 (Priority) registrants those entities and individuals whose membership in the manga community is established by a body-issued credential - namely operators holding an Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ) mark (the 267 ABJ-mark certified operators as of 29 May 2026), members of the Japan Cartoonists Association (JCA), and members of the Digital Publishers Federation of Japan (DPFJ) or a comparable representative body - as evidenced by ABJ mark number, membership number, or equivalent body-issued credential.

Tier 2 (General) eligibility Registry Operator shall admit as Tier 2 (General) registrants legal entities engaged in the publishing, distribution, or production of manga who are not within Tier 1 and who are not mere fans or end-users (readers), and shall verify each such entity's identity before activation by confirming its registered business address and company registration number, requiring no portfolio, production record, or other documentary proof.

Tier 2 manga-engagement representation Registry Operator shall require each Tier 2 registrant, as a condition of registration, to represent that it creates, publishes, distributes, licenses, or holds rights in manga, and shall retain that representation.

Verification, audit, and challenge of representations Registry Operator shall reserve the right to verify any registrant's eligibility representation, and shall suspend or cancel any registration whose eligibility representation is false or cannot be substantiated upon audit or challenge.

Tier 3 (Extended) eligibility Registry Operator shall admit as Tier 3 (Extended) registrants manga-related educational institutions, educators, and researchers, in support of the community's cultural-promotion and educational purposes, as evidenced by proof of institutional affiliation or accreditation, or - absent such proof - a binding representation of the registrant's manga-education or research activity, subject to the same verification, audit, and challenge provisions as other eligibility representations.

Individual-contributor good-faith self-declaration Registry Operator shall require each individual registrant who is a manga creator (mangaka) or an individual manga publisher to provide, as a condition of registration, a good-faith self-declaration affirming that the registrant is engaged in manga as a creator or individual publisher and that the registrant's manga is either a published manga or an original work of the registrant's own authorship and not a pirated or copied work, and shall retain that declaration on record; Registry Operator accepts the individual's self-declaration in good faith and shall not require documentary proof for this individual-contributor route, while legal entities qualify through the credential and entity-verification means specified for their tier.

Exclusion of unrelated registrants Registry Operator shall not register any business that is unrelated to manga. Exclusion of speculative registrants Registry Operator shall not register any speculative or warehousing registrant. Pre-registration verification of eligibility Registry Operator shall verify each registrant's eligibility before activation of the domain name and shall maintain a record of the verification supporting each registration. Ongoing eligibility Registry Operator shall require that each registrant continue to satisfy the eligibility criteria for the duration of the registration. Refusal of ineligible registrations Registry Operator shall refuse any registration sought by a party that is not an eligible member of the manga community or that is sought in breach of these eligibility policies. Revocation of ineligible registrations Registry Operator shall revoke any registration that is held by a party which is not, or which ceases to be, an eligible member of the manga community, or that was obtained in breach of these eligibility policies.

Registrar eligibility verification (RRA) Registry Operator will include the following provisions in its Registry-Registrar Agreement: Registrar shall verify each registrant's eligibility under these eligibility policies before submitting a registration to Registry Operator. Registrar evidence retention (RRA) Registry Operator will include the following provisions in its Registry-Registrar Agreement: Registrar shall collect and retain the credential, registered address and company registration number, or self-declaration on which each registrant's eligibility is based and provide it to Registry Operator on request. Registrar shall not register ineligible parties (RRA) Registry Operator will include the following provisions in its Registry-Registrar Agreement: Registrar shall not submit a registration for any party that the Registrar has not verified to be an eligible member of the manga community. Registrant eligibility representation (Registration Agreement) Registry Operator will include a provision in its Registry-Registrar Agreement that requires Registrars to include in their Registration Agreements a provision requiring that the registrant represent and warrant that it is an eligible, verified member of the manga community as defined in these eligibility policies. Registrant ongoing-eligibility and notification (Registration Agreement) Registry Operator will include a provision in its Registry-Registrar Agreement that requires Registrars to include in their Registration Agreements a provision requiring that the registrant maintain its eligibility for the duration of the registration and promptly notify the Registrar if it ceases to be eligible.

Publish eligibility policy Registry Operator shall develop and implement a registration-eligibility policy and publish this policy on its website no later than the date on which the TLD is delegated in the DNS. Annual review and publication Registry Operator shall review the registration-eligibility policy at least once per year and publish the results of such review (including any updates to the policy) on its website within thirty (30) days following the anniversary of the Effective Date. Verification records as compliance evidence Registry Operator shall retain the pre-registration verification records described above and make them available to ICANN upon request as evidence of compliance with these eligibility policies. Lifetime of the TLD Registry Operator shall apply these eligibility policies for the lifetime of the TLD; they are not limited in time, duration, or scope.

Purpose-consistency of domain names Registry Operator shall require that every domain name registered in the TLD be consistent with the purpose of the manga community - namely legitimate distribution of manga, exclusion of piracy, and cultural promotion.

Reserved-names list: maintenance Registry Operator shall maintain, under the oversight of the multi-stakeholder Steering Committee, a reserved-names list comprising the names of well-known manga works and characters as determined by the Committee.

Reserved-names list: withholding Registry Operator shall withhold the names on the reserved-names list from general registration in order to protect the relevant rights-holders.

Reserved-name release Registry Operator shall release a reserved name only to the verified rights-holder or with that rights-holder's authorisation.

Prohibition of piracy-confusable / misdirecting names Registry Operator shall not register any domain name that is confusable with, or likely to misdirect users to, a piracy site, or that otherwise deceptively suggests an association with the unauthorised distribution of manga.

Creator pen-name authentication Registry Operator shall permit the registration of a domain name corresponding to a manga creator's pen-name only after authenticating the registrant as that creator or as a party authorised by that creator, through the Authorized Books of Japan (ABJ) / Japan Cartoonists Association (JCA) or equivalent verification.

Neutrality / no applicant priority Registry Operator shall not grant the applicant (Kodansha) any preferential registration priority over other eligible registrants, and shall afford all accredited registrants a fair and equal opportunity to register names.

Steering-Committee oversight of name selection Registry Operator shall subject the operation of these name-selection rules to the oversight of the multi-stakeholder Steering Committee (comprising JCA, ABJ, participating manga publishers).

Record of reserved-list changes Registry Operator shall record the basis for each addition to or removal from the reserved-names list.

Registrar enforcement of name rules (RRA) Registry Operator will include the following provisions in its Registry-Registrar Agreement: Registrar shall enforce these name-selection rules and shall reject any requested domain name that does not comply with them. Registrar shall not register reserved or piracy-confusable names (RRA) Registry Operator will include the following provisions in its Registry-Registrar Agreement: Registrar shall not submit a registration for any name on the reserved-names list (absent rights-holder authorisation) or for any name prohibited under the piracy-confusable / misdirecting-name rule. Registrant name-compliance warranty (Registration Agreement) Registry Operator will include a provision in its Registry-Registrar Agreement that requires Registrars to include in their Registration Agreements a provision requiring that the registrant warrant that its domain name complies with these name-selection rules. Registrant prohibited-name provision (Registration Agreement) Registry Operator will include a provision in its Registry-Registrar Agreement that requires Registrars to include in their Registration Agreements a provision prohibiting the registrant from registering or using a domain name that is confusable with, or likely to misdirect users to, a piracy site. Publish name-selection rules and reserved list Registry Operator shall develop and implement the name-selection rules and the reserved-names list and publish them on its website no later than the date on which the TLD is delegated in the DNS. Annual review and publication Registry Operator shall review the name-selection rules and the reserved-names list at least once per year and publish the results of such review (including any updates) on its website within thirty (30) days following the anniversary of the Effective Date. Lifetime of the TLD Registry Operator shall apply these name-selection rules for the lifetime of the TLD; they are not limited in time, duration, or scope.

Multi-stakeholder Steering-Committee governance Registry Operator shall vest the setting and review of Community Registration Policies in a multi-stakeholder Steering Committee representing the manga community's bodies (the Japan Cartoonists Association (JCA), ABJ, participating manga publishers), so that policy is community-led rather than applicant-led.

No applicant-favouring priority (governance-level) Registry Operator shall not adopt any policy, fee, or allocation procedure that confers a preference on the applicant or any single member over other eligible members of the community.

Pre-registration verification system Registry Operator shall operate a pre-registration verification system that authenticates each applicant's eligibility tier and, where applicable, rights or affiliation before a domain name is activated, and shall register the verification reference against the domain.

Abuse point of contact receives piracy reports Registry Operator shall ensure that the abuse point of contact and public abuse-reporting mechanism maintained for the TLD receive and process reports of manga piracy among the forms of abuse they handle, relying on the baseline prohibition-and-suspension framework of Registry Agreement Specification 11 Section 3(b), which already names copyright infringement / piracy.

No content monitoring or adjudication Registry Operator shall not monitor or adjudicate the content of registrants' works.

Registrar acknowledgement of verification system (RRA) Registry Operator will include the following provisions in its Registry-Registrar Agreement: Registrar shall submit each registration through Registry Operator's pre-registration verification system and shall not activate or cause activation of a domain name that has not passed that verification.

Registrant abuse-reporting acknowledgement (Registration Agreement) Registry Operator will include a provision in its Registry-Registrar Agreement that requires Registrars to include in their Registration Agreements a provision requiring that the registrant acknowledge that the domain name is subject to the abuse-reporting mechanism and the prohibition-and-suspension framework of Specification 11 Section 3(b).

Publish governance and verification policy Registry Operator shall publish the Steering-Committee governance arrangements and the pre-registration verification policy on its website no later than the date on which the TLD is delegated in the DNS.

Publish Steering-Committee review results Registry Operator shall publish the results of the Steering Committee's review of the Community Registration Policies on its website within thirty (30) days following the anniversary of the Effective Date.

Lifetime of the TLD Registry Operator shall apply these commitments for the lifetime of the TLD; they are not limited in time, duration, or scope.

The limitations imposed in Q151-Q153 are each justified by, and proportionate to, the protection of the manga community and the realisation of its purpose. Eligibility tiers and the unrelated/speculative exclusion (Q151): restrict the namespace to verified industry members so that the TLD serves the community rather than the open market; this is the structural mechanism that keeps piracy operators out at the door, since a pirate cannot register in the first place. The June-2024 Board resolution expressly treats registration-eligibility restrictions as NOT content-restrictive. Individual-contributor good-faith self-declaration (Q151): lets individual creators and individual publishers worldwide qualify on a trust-based self-declaration - giving genuine contributors the benefit of the doubt rather than demanding documentary proof - with the declaration's own published-or-original affirmation discouraging pirated or copied works. Pre-registration verification of entities (Q151): legal entities are verified before activation because the community's anti-piracy purpose depends on excluding non-members at the door; verifying entity eligibility at the point of registration, rather than after the fact, is the minimum measure necessary to keep the namespace limited to genuine industry members and is proportionate to that purpose. Reserved list and piracy-confusable-name prohibition (Q152): protect the intellectual-property rights of manga rights-holders and prevent the TLD's namespace from being used to misdirect users to piracy sites - directly serving the community's anti-piracy purpose. Neutrality / no-priority and Steering-Committee oversight (Q152-Q153): ensure Kodansha acts as a neutral steward, not an owner, and prevent the namespace from becoming a single-company asset. Registrar and registrant flow-down (Q151-Q153): the obligation to verify eligibility and enforce the name rules is carried through the Registry-Registrar Agreement to the Registrar (which verifies at the point of sale) and through the Registration Agreement to the registrant (which represents its eligibility and name-compliance); this flow-down is the minimum necessary to make the eligibility and name policies enforceable at every level, and adds no content-restrictive obligation. Proportionate Tier 2 verification (Q151): legal entities are admitted on identity verification (registered address and company registration number) plus a binding representation of manga engagement (identifying the work, title, or right relied on), subject to registry audit, challenge, suspension, and cancellation - deliberately imposing no documentary or portfolio burden at registration while keeping eligibility objective, measurable, and verifiable. This calibrates the entity gate to the minimum necessary to confine the namespace to genuine manga-industry members. No limitation is imposed beyond what these community-protection purposes require. Compatibility with the ICANN Bylaws (per instruction). In the applicant's view, none of these limitations is incompatible with the ICANN Bylaws. The policies are eligibility- and name-selection-based and impose no content-restrictive obligation, so they sit within the Mission and the content limit at Bylaws Section 1.1(c). This view is consistent with the ICANN Board resolution of 8 June 2024 (2024.06.08.08-2024.06.08.10), which determined that Registry Agreement commitments restricting registration eligibility should not be considered content-restrictive. Additional Registry Service (per instruction). The proposed Community Registration Policies require no additional Registry Service beyond standard registry functions; eligibility verification, reserved-name handling, and the abuse point of contact are administrative or already-required functions. Should ICANN determine otherwise for any element, the applicant will engage its selected RSP to implement it through the RSP Program's evaluation and approval.

The proposed Community Registration Policies satisfy Registry Commitments Evaluation (RCE) Criteria 4 and 5. (a) No duplication with applicable law or existing ICANN rules (Criterion 4). The policies neither restate nor duplicate applicable law or existing ICANN consensus policy. The anti-piracy outcome is delivered structurally - through who may register (eligibility) - and through reliance on the baseline prohibition-and-suspension framework already present in Registry Agreement Specification 11 Section 3(b), which names copyright infringement / piracy explicitly. The applicant does not propose any new content-monitoring or content-takedown obligation that would replicate the 2024 Domain Name System (DNS)-Abuse amendments (those reach only the five technical abuse categories - malware, botnets, phishing, pharming, spam - and do not, and need not, reach piracy content). The eligibility, name-selection, and governance commitments are additive and specific to the manga community; they do not duplicate any existing rule. (b) No conflict with applicable law (Criterion 4/5). The policies impose no obligation that conflicts with applicable law. The reserved-names and pen-name rules protect - and do not override - third-party intellectual-property and personal rights, releasing reserved names to verified rights-holders. The registry relies on Spec 11's prohibition-and-suspension mechanism and its abuse point of contact (which receives reports of piracy among the forms of abuse it handles) rather than acting as an adjudicator of copyright, so no determination of legal liability is assumed by the registry. (c) Consistency with the ICANN Bylaws (Criterion 5). The policies are consistent with the ICANN Bylaws, including the Mission and the content limit at Bylaws Section 1.1(c). They do not ask ICANN to regulate the content of services using the DNS. Registration-eligibility restrictions are expressly permitted: in its 8 June 2024 resolution the ICANN Board determined that Registry Agreement (RA) commitments restricting registration eligibility should NOT be considered content-restrictive, while bespoke content-restrictive RVCs are excluded from Next-Round RAs. The applicant's policies are eligibility- and name-selection-based - squarely within the permitted category - and contain no bespoke content-policing commitment. Baseline anti-abuse obligations are inherited from Specification 11 and sit within ICANN's picket-fence Mission, not outside it.

The .manga community application is endorsed by the representative bodies of the manga industry itself, across the value chain from creation through publishing, distribution, public policy, and overseas markets - organized by function, because Criterion 4 weights support by the relevance and representativeness of the endorsing institution, not by volume of letters. 1. Creators. The Japan Cartoonists Association (JCA, founded 1964) is the professional body of manga artists - 4,236 members (4,181 full professional, 51 supporting corporate, 4 honorary; as of 31 May 2026). JCA endorses on creator-protection grounds - copyright, fair contracts, and artist standing in a verified namespace - and is a founding member of ABJ, on whose board its Managing Director sits. As the voice of the community's primary constituency, this is the highest-weight endorsement. 2. Publishers. The leading manga publishers - Shueisha, Shogakukan, KADOKAWA, and Square Enix - together representing the substantial majority of Japanese manga output, each endorse with an experience-grounded rationale: Shueisha, securing the namespace for legitimate participants rather than piracy; KADOKAWA, its June 2024 ransomware incident (254,241 individuals' data leaked); Shogakukan, a near-century rivalry with the applicant alongside repeated joint industry-building (ConanxKindaichi 2008, PubteX 2022, joint anti-piracy litigation); Square Enix, IP running continuously across the games-manga boundary. All endorse because registration is open on equal terms to every vetted participant, themselves included. 3. Industry and trade bodies. ABJ (est. 1 July 2020), the anti-piracy certification body - 90 member corporations, 10 supporting organizations, operating the ABJ Mark (1,028 services across 267 businesses) - endorses as the community's verification institution. The Japan Magazine Publishers Association (JMPA) endorses for the serialization (rensai) pipeline in which manga is born; the Japan Book Publishers Association (JBPA; 380 publishers plus 6 supporting members) as the principal body of Japanese book publishing; the Digital Publishers Federation of Japan (DPFJ; 63 companies, April 2026) for the digital channel - over 60% of the comic market (approximately JPY 6,840 billion digital comic sales, 2023, Research Institute for Publications) - where piracy concentrates. 4. Distribution. MediaDo Co., Ltd., Japan's largest e-book distribution platform (approximately JPY 193 billion gross distribution value, FY Feb 2026; approximately 30% of Japan's e-book market; 2,200+ publishers to 150+ stores), endorses on data-grounded terms: legitimate distribution must be distinguishable from piracy at scale. 5. Public-policy support (weighted below representative endorsement). Four organs of the Government of Japan provide letters from their jurisdictional nexus to manga: METI (content policy), MIC (piracy access-suppression, building on the 2018 study group), the Agency for Cultural Affairs (copyright; manga as a core Media Arts category), and the Cabinet Office (IP Strategic Program 2026). These constitute governmental policy recognition of the anti-piracy purpose, deliberately not presented as community endorsement. 6. Worldwide breadth. VIZ Media, LLC (San Francisco), Yen Press, LLC (New York), Glenat Editions SAS (Grenoble - introduced serialized manga to France with AKIRA in 1990), and the Alliance pour le Manga & Webtoon (AMW, Paris) establish that the community is worldwide and that support crosses North America, Europe and Asia-Pacific, and further regions across the world. Conclusion. Support comes from the recognized representative institutions of every segment of the value chain - highest-weight from the creator body (JCA) and industry bodies (ABJ, JMPA, JBPA, DPFJ) - reinforced by the leading publishers, the largest distributor, governmental recognition, and overseas publishers on three continents: majority support from the community as defined.

The applicant is aware of no relevant opposition to this application. The applicant's position rests on three structural facts. 1. The parties who would be the most natural objectors are endorsers, not opponents. In any industry application, the obvious source of opposition is the applicant's direct commercial rivals. Here, the leading rival manga publishers - Shueisha, Shogakukan, KADOKAWA, and Square Enix - do not oppose the application; each has provided a written endorsement of it (see Q156). The entities with the standing and incentive to object have instead affirmatively supported it. Shogakukan's endorsement is explicit on the point - it recounts that the applicant and Shogakukan "have competed with each other, for authors, for readers, for shelf space, for the better part of a century," and endorses nonetheless, placing the act in the established industry tradition of rivals pooling effort to build shared infrastructure. KADOKAWA states its endorsement was decided by deliberation of its Board of Directors. The absence of opposition from the natural objectors is therefore not a silence to be explained away - it is documented affirmative support from the rivals themselves. 2. The governance design removes any rival's structural reason to object. A community generic top-level domain (gTLD) operated by one publisher could, in principle, be feared as a tool for that publisher to advantage itself against competitors. This application is designed to eliminate that fear at the structural level. The applicant does not own the namespace as a private asset; it acts as a neutral steward, with registry policy set and overseen by a multi-stakeholder Steering Committee whose membership includes multiple publishers. Registration eligibility is open on equal, objective terms to every verified participant in the manga industry - the applicant included, with no registration priority for the applicant - so no rival is disadvantaged relative to the applicant. Because the design confers no competitive advantage on the applicant over any other industry participant, rivals have no rational basis to object. 3. No opposition has been registered from any community segment. Across the creator body (Japan Cartoonists Association, JCA), the trade and industry bodies (Authorized Books of Japan, ABJ; Japan Magazine Publishers Association, JMPA; Japan Book Publishers Association, JBPA; Digital Publishers' Federation of Japan, DPFJ), the largest distributor (MediaDo), and the overseas publishers (VIZ, Yen Press, Glenat), the applicant is aware of no statement of opposition; the materials on file reflect endorsement or support across these segments. JCA, representing the creator constituency most sensitive to any restriction on manga naming, supports rather than opposes. Honest disclosure and residual exposure. In the interest of full disclosure, the applicant notes: (a) the public new-gTLD comment and objection windows had not closed at the time of drafting, so this answer reflects opposition known as of the application date and will be supplemented if any relevant opposition arises; and (b) the term "manga" is also used, in some markets, to describe non-Japanese comics, and broader-usage parties could in principle raise a relevance argument - the applicant addresses this through inclusive, objective eligibility tied to verified manga-industry participation, so that no legitimate industry participant is excluded on that basis. Neither item constitutes opposition presently known to the applicant. Conclusion. No relevant opposition is known to the applicant: the natural objectors - the major rival publishers - instead endorse the application, and the neutral multi-stakeholder governance design removes the structural basis for objection. The applicant will supplement this answer should any opposition arise before evaluation.