Twice a year, in the height of summer and the depth of winter, the largest gathering of its kind on earth fills the halls of Tokyo Big Sight in Ariake. Comic Market — Comiket — draws hundreds of thousands of people, and its currency is the self-made book.

What the circles lay out on their tables is not commercial product but self-published expression: manga, fiction, criticism, music, art — doujinshi, the works of people whose enthusiasm outgrew mere consumption and became creation. Much of it is sold hand to hand, maker to reader, in a system built on passion rather than profit. Whole careers in Japanese pop culture have begun at these tables.

Around the marketplace spreads the rest of it: the cosplay plaza where fans become their favorite characters, the corporate booths, the famous lines, the heat and density of the bayside halls in the middle of a Tokyo August. The summer session, held in the fiercest part of the season, is legendary as much for its endurance test as for its wares.

But strip away the scale and the spectacle, and what Comiket is really about is contact — the direct meeting of the person who made a thing and the person who wanted it. For two days, twice a year, the usual distance between creator and audience collapses. It is one of the truest engines of culture anywhere, and it runs on nothing but love of the work.