The Touhou Project (Japanese: 東方Project, Hepburn: Tōhō Purojekuto), also known simply as Touhou (東方, meaning "Eastern" or "Oriental"), is a bullet hell shoot 'em up video game series created by independent Japanese doujin soft developer Team Shanghai Alice.

The team's sole member, Jun'ya "ZUN" Ōta, has independently developed programming, graphics, writing, and music for the series, publishing 19 mainline games and 13 spin-offs since 1997.

ZUN has also produced related print works and music albums, and collaborated with doujin developer Twilight Frontier on seven of the official spin-offs, six of which are fighting games.

[1] The first five games were developed for the Japanese NEC PC-9800 computer, with the first, Highly Responsive to Prayers, released in August 1997; the series' signature danmaku (弾幕, lit.

The Touhou Project is set in Gensokyo,[a] a land sealed from the outside world and primarily inhabited by humans and yōkai, legendary creatures from Japanese folklore that are personified as bishōjo in an anthropomorphic moe style.

The graze counter (missing from Mountain of Faith, Story of Eastern Wonderland, and Unconnected Marketeers) tracks how many bullets entered the character sprite but avoided the hitbox, rewarding the player with a score bonus for taking risks.

With some exceptions, use of a bomb will make the user temporarily invulnerable, clear many of the bullets, and cause heavy damage to any enemies on screen.

Each individual game of the main series from Perfect Cherry Blossom to Wily Beast and Weakest Creature has additional items that affect some aspect of gameplay, such as scoring or gaining extra lives/bombs.

Each main Touhou Project game has four difficulty levels ("easy", "normal", "hard", and "lunatic") with each one being harder than the previous.

Some species include magicians, beasts, therianthropes, vampires, bōrei, tengu, mermaids, kappa, and yōkai (a kind of miscellaneous group).

There are others species that could be yōkai depending on definition, like fairies, spirits, yūrei, onryō, poltergeists, hermits, oni, and gods which are all portrayed in human female form.

The spell card rules were also established to keep up the relationship between humans and yōkai in a mock style, which was necessary for the preservation of the balance of Gensokyo.

[3]The Touhou Project mainly focuses on incidents that affects the entirety of Gensokyo in its stories, but there are also works like Mountain of Faith that are centered on lesser-scale events.

Frequently, incidents are due to a yōkai's whim or curiosity, and usually Reimu Hakurei would go to investigate it and find and chastise the perpetrator.

According to ZUN, the Windows games represent a "clean slate" for the series canon, albeit with many carry-overs and references from the PC-98 era.

Each album contains arrangements of music from the games as well as new compositions: Each album (except Dolls in Pseudo Paradise, Unknown Flower, Mesmerizing Journey, and Rainbow-Colored Septentrion) includes a booklet written by ZUN documenting the activities of the "Secret Sealing Club" (秘封倶楽部, Hifū Kurabu), a self-described "club of necromancers" in Kyoto, Japan.

In 2006 and 2007, ZUN released Akyu's Untouched Score (幺樂団の歴史, Yōgakudan no Rekishi, "History of Yougakudan"), a five-volume collection of PC-98 soundtracks that includes several unused themes.

In addition, the day time music in Immaterial and Missing Power are scored by NKZ, and Urban Legend in Limbo and Antinomy of Common Flowers feature guest arrangements by several dōjin creators: ZUN's Music Collection, Akyu's Untouched Score, and the fighting game soundtracks have been released for digital download on Google Play and the iTunes Store (Japan, US).

The fighting games, Immaterial and Missing Power, Scarlet Weather Rhapsody, Touhou Hisōtensoku, Hopeless Masquerade, Urban Legend in Limbo, and Antinomy of Common Flowers, were dual efforts with Twilight Frontier, in which ZUN wrote the music and story, and Twilight Frontier created the art and gameplay.

He went to college, hoping to compose music for fighting games, since they were popular at the time due to Street Fighter II.

[47] ZUN remarked how the general theme and direction of Touhou only started coming together in the sixth game, Embodiment of Scarlet Devil.

[48] ZUN develops his games with Visual Studio, Adobe Photoshop, and Cubase, according to his interview in Bohemian Archive in Japanese Red.

[1] The major restrictions are on unauthorized commercial distribution (as opposed to dōjin) and the spoiling of endings; proper attribution to Team Shanghai Alice is a requirement;[52] creators of derivative works are asked to refrain from crowdfunding their projects.

Yuyuko Saigyouji and Reimu Hakurei also made cameo character appearances in Square Enix's game Lord of Vermilion Re:2.

Albeit created by amateur studios, the projects have sometimes included appearance by professional voice actors, such as Rie Tanaka.

This meme originated from a crude attempt to draw the main characters Reimu and Marisa with Shift JIS art.

One such song, Marisa Stole the Precious Thing, has been heavily referenced and parodied in derivative anime music videos and Internet memes.

It first started in 2004 as a way for Team Shanghai Alice to publicly distribute the trial version for their upcoming games, Imperishable Night and Immaterial and Missing Power.

The 2011 Reitaisai was originally cancelled due to safety concerns after the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami,[84] and the release of Ten Desires was also postponed.