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I've been wondering about that for a long time, and it turns out (after cursory googling) that a lot of the hentai mangas that get translated into English are drawn by female mangakas, according to their fans and sometimes the artists' personal pages (which not all of them have).

One thing to remember is that usually only higher quality works make the cut and get translated into English and posted on English-speaking hentai manga sharing sites, where the total ratio of male/female mangakas is not representative of the total number of hentai artists.

As I don't expect there to be enough info out there on the artists who don't make the cut, I'm more interested in the ones that do. But if there are surveys/statistics on the total number, that would be interesting to learn too.


As for what I've tried before asking: I found a couple of big torrents which list files starting with the mangaka's name (or pseudonym), but without ability to read Japanese, I'm unable to research any of them to find out their gender. That, and there being several thousand of unique artist names, is a massive undertaking. So unless there are already some statistics out there, I guess it's gonna take a while to get an answer.

Hakase
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    I believe the results may be skewed since plenty of Mangaka's especially who draw Hentai prefer to use Pen Names, to keep the bias from their other works. – Arcane May 30 '17 at 11:13
  • Yes, this isn't gonna be simple to figure out. I've read that some artists publish under multiple pen names, to distinguish between topics and art style. I'd like to bring to light all the possible biases like that too. – Hakase May 30 '17 at 11:14
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    Does this also includes artists on doujin circle (self-publish), or only on published/serialized adult manga magazine (that get into the tankoubon)? – Aki Tanaka May 30 '17 at 13:25
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    Also, a partial (notable?) list of adult mangaka on [Japanese Wikipedia](https://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%97%A5%E6%9C%AC%E3%81%AE%E6%88%90%E4%BA%BA%E5%90%91%E3%81%91%E6%BC%AB%E7%94%BB%E5%AE%B6%E3%81%AE%E4%B8%80%E8%A6%A7) (SFW, no image). Probably you can start from there, although some don't mention the gender (but can be inferred by the name), and it'll certainly take time to do it manually. – Aki Tanaka May 30 '17 at 13:32
  • Great starting point! Unfortunately I can't read Japanese, so hopefully someone will come along who can :p – Hakase May 30 '17 at 14:40
  • If we are to believe Eromanga Sensei, then most hentai is drawn by pre/pubescent girls. O.O – YetAnotherRandomUser Mar 23 '18 at 01:47
  • I believe a simple reason for the high percentage is that female drawers have it easier to get correct anatomy on women, since they usually have free access to a nude model if needed (themselves). Most anatomy parts are shared by men and women, but getting breasts right in all their angles and positions seems to be much more difficult than male genitalia, in my opinion. – SK19 May 12 '18 at 06:37
  • @SK19 I'd think it's because of the social expectations in japan for men to be office workers and less so for women, but that's just a guess – Hakase May 12 '18 at 20:27

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The answer is "we do not know".

Now, as others have pointed out, there is the issue of Mangaka using (multiple) pen names for their erotic stuff, but the other half of the story is that Mangaka like to stay anonymous even in a more general sense. Most of them don't like attention, which is why we don't even know who wrote, for example, Death Note. Could be a guy, could be a gal.

For erotic Manga things just get more secretive.

If I had to guess, I would look at the number of erotic Manga aimed at guys (~22.500) and the number of erotic Manga aimed at gals (~2.300) to get a rough estimate of at least 1:10.

Ocean
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Comiket is the largest fan convention in the world where many of those hentai artists sell their doujinshis. From the official introduction to Comiket (PDF, updated 2014),

Conventional wisdom tends to portray doujinshi as male dominated, but in fact, women comprise the majority at Comic Market.

A diagram showing 57% of the circle participants are women

The public, on the other hand, is around 60% male.

This doesn't mean that most hentai artists are female, but at least a good portion of them should be. Some artists are confirmed male or female while others remain a secret.

Aki Tanaka
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I am a hentai manga researcher. Although there are no exact statistics, the unanimous view of Japanese subculture researchers is that the percentage of female HETAI artists is about 30%. This figure is the percentage of women working in the male-oriented commercial hentai manga genre. There are many adult manga genres for women in Japan, and if female authors active in Yaoi, Yuri, and Teens' Love are included, the figure could exceed 60%. It is therefore possible for female writers to be active in sexual genres in Japan.

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    Welcome to Anime & Manga Stack Exchange. This could be a starting point for a great answer. Could you [edit] and try to back up the answer by providing supporting sources/references? Thank you! – Aki Tanaka Aug 27 '22 at 04:04