Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group

A Manga Canon?

By John E. Ingulsrud and Kate Allen

In a recent entry in the blog, The Manga Critic, Katherine Dacey begins a discussion on what titles to include in a manga canon.(i) She raises the questions of how to judge esthetic quality and whether a canon is appropriate for manga. These questions were also considered by cultural studies researcher, Yokota-Murakami Takayuki.(ii) He uses canonicity as a kind of litmus test to distinguish high culture works from those of low culture. He points out that few people are praised for reading manga, while many people are praised for reading canonical literary works, thus emphasizing the notion of a canon being a community’s body of valued or privileged works. In our book Reading Japan Cool, we raise the issue of authority: Who should compile a manga canon? Should it be the commentators, the researchers, or simply the readers in terms of popularity? As decisions are made on the content of the canon, the compilers have the power to include and exclude works and thus determine “good taste.”

These concerns of esthetic assessment and authority obscure the basic motive for having a canon. Historically, canons were developed from a need to teach and consequently to test. The Old Testament canon was developed for teaching and the authority was reflected in degrees of canonicity, with the Pentateuch or the Torah at the center and the Apocrypha on the periphery. The New Testament canon was compiled from a concern to maintain a correct understanding of a focal question: Who is Jesus? While these canons served to define the identities of communities, other canons served to define competencies. Beginning in 5th century China, civil service examinations were administered based on the knowledge of canonical works that spoke to the human condition, thus providing wisdom and morals. After all, successful candidates were assumed to be those who had integrity and the correct values. This idea of testing knowledge of the literary canon to select appropriate personnel was adopted widely in the 19th Century with the training of bureaucrats, such as the colonial Indian civil service.(iii) It also became the basis for centralized school curricula.

In the same way, a manga canon will develop out of a need to teach and to test. A symposium on manga in the university was held in June at the annual conference for the Japan Society for Studies in Cartoon and Comics. Speakers addressed the question of why manga should be taught as an academic subject. They also discussed how such courses could be taught. Yet no one dealt with the issue of what manga should be taught. As English literature professors could simply teach the works they liked, before testing was developed in the 19th Century,(iv) professors of manga studies also make their own personal selection. It is only when a common curriculum across institutions is sought, or when the media industry begins to demand personnel with “broad” and “conversant” knowledge of manga that the question of a manga canon will be addressed in earnest. Perhaps competing lists will be compiled, but eventually a manga canon will evolve. Already the argument has been made to teach manga and indeed several universities in Japan offer these courses, so the next logical question is the choice of manga to teach. This question opens up the knotty question of criteria. Will the manga works be chosen for their esthetic qualities? Or will the works be chosen for their capacity to speak to the human condition?

1. Katherine Dacey, The Manga Critic,(accessed September 25, 2009).
2. Yokota-Murakami Takayuki, Manga wa Yokubō Suru (Manga do desire) (Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō, 2006), 176-180.
3. Christopher O’Reilly, Post-Colonial Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 17.
4. John C. Mathews, Examinations: A Commentary (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1985), 13-14.

John E. Ingulsrud is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of International Studies at Meisei University. Kate Allen is Professor of Linguistics in the School of Global Japanese Studies at Meiji University. They are the authors of Reading Japan Cool: Patterns of Manga Literacy and Discourse.

"In the Footsteps of Marco Polo" Nominated for an Emmy ®

The documentary film In the Footsteps of Marco Polo has just received a News & Documentary Emmy ® nomination! See the announcement here.

Rowman & Littlefield publishes the widely praised companion volume to the film: In the Footsteps of Marco Polo: A Companion to the Public Television Film by Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell.

About the Book

Ardent explorers and adventurers Denis Belliveau and Francis O'Donnell followed Marco Polo's route from beginning to end—starting in Venice and trekking through Central Asia, Afghanistan, and ultimately China—traveling 33,000 miles through twenty countries over two years; in jeeps, trains and rickshaws; astride horses and camels; and on foot. The authors artfully weave their own adventures encountering corrupt Uzbek warlords, rifle-wielding Afghanis, and Tibetan monks with Marco Polo's descriptions and experiences—as fresh and relevant today as when he first narrated it. Richly illustrated with Belliveau's stunning color photographs, this compelling book documents two journeys of a lifetime, undertaken centuries apart yet joined by unbreakable bonds of shared experience.

Visit our website for more information on the book!

The Jakarta Bombings of July 17th

By Jeff Lewis and Belinda Lewis

The July 17th bombing attacks on the Marriot and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta revive the horrors of earlier assaults in Jakarta and Bali. It appears that the attacks of July 17 were perpetrated by pedestrian suicide bombers probably associated with one of the multiplying Islamist militant organizations that have appeared since the splintering of Jemaah Islamiyah since 2005. Suspicion has fallen most strongly on Noordin Top, who was one of the masterminds of the 2005 attacks in Bali. Thus, while JI's effectiveness has been severely compromised by funding problems, internal dispute and the arrest of senior members, the emergence of new militant groups continues to pose a significant threat for Indonesian security.

Moreover, the social, political and economic conditions that have contributed to the emergence of radical militancy in Indonesia have changed very little over the past decade. On July 8, 2009 Indonesia conducted its third parliamentary and presidential election since the fall of Suharto. While the election was relatively free and fair, governments remain constrained by the effects of corruption, inept civil institutions and a very uneven social infrastructure. As the ongoing legacy of the Suharto dictatorship, these institutional fallibilities also contribute to Indonesia's extreme poverty and broader problems with organized crime and extremist politics.

In the minds of many Islamist extremists, these conditions are directly linked to Indonesian secularism, and Indonesia's integration with the global economy and the impurity of western cultural values. The hotels that were attacked, as with previous targets, represent the apex of western incursions into a holy Muslim land.

Beyond this thinking, however, the July 17 bombings are clearly associated with Indonesia's complex economic, civil and cultural struggle—they are also associated with the responsibility of advanced western nations to help the Indonesian government and people to overcome these problems. It is not enough for developed world governments to rail against the perpetrators or simply deploy forensic experts to the crime scene. And it is not enough for Americans, Australians or Britons to contribute to the Indonesian tourism economy by visiting places like Bali, extract their relatively inexpensive pleasures, and return home suntanned and rejuvenated. It is, rather, our responsibility to work alongside the Indonesian people to establish effective social infrastructure and development models—and to offer our profound respect and gratitude for the Indonesian's grace and hospitality. Too often we advance on the territories and cultures of the developing world without due regard for our host's deep history and the complexity of their struggles.

The July 17 bombings are, among many other things, a symptom of our own deficiencies in this regard.

Jeff Lewis is a professorial research fellow in the Global Cities Institute, School of Applied Communications at RMIT University, Belinda Lewis is a researcher in health promotion and international health in the Faculty of Medicine at Monash University, and they are the authors of Bali’s Silent Crisis: Desire, Tragedy, and Transition.

Manga and the Yankii Economy

By John Ingulsrud and Kate Allen

Juvenile delinquency is big business in Japan. It’s not the criminal or motorcycle gang activity itself, but its representation and the attraction of media products that depict it. The origins of the term yankii, according to Patrick Galbraith’s Otaku Encyclopedia, are various. (1) Most date back to the post-World War II days and actually do relate to “Yankee,” in the sense that the delinquents emulated the styles of their American counterparts and lived in neighborhoods with shops that sold US army surplus and other American goods. We sense that it was convenient to label delinquency as something foreign, so that the young people themselves could be seen as good kids.

Yankii stories and products are not new. There has been a steady number of manga devoted to these themes. The difference, according to the tabloid Spa!, is when several kinds of media and consumer products are available at the same time, which tends to happen in times of economic hardship. (2) Yankii stories are full of defiance toward the establishment with characters flouting social norms. Their discontent is directed toward the rich and powerful that perpetuate the situation and they feel no one is going to help people who do not fit in or have trouble in school.

Two films this summer are proving to be blockbusters, Crows Zero II and Rookies. Both are based on long-running manga series by Takahashi Hiroshi and Morita Masanori respectively. Crows Zero II, a sequel to the 2007 film Crows Zero, is proving to be more successful. Rookies, made on the heels of a TV series, is also a box office success. The yankii styles, the bad-look, are also a hit. For example, there is the hip-hop look of Inoue Santa’s Tokyo Tribe series; Crows Zero II has the school uniform look with multiple permutations on the Nehru-cut jacket; Rookies offers more of the same uniform look, plus variations on baseball gear.

Spa! magazine extols the yankii trend by stressing the values of honesty, solidarity, as well as the attention to family and community. They provide examples of former yankiis who have made good. At the same time, the trend also has a troubling side, such as the attributes of violence, vigilantism, and intolerance, plus a penchant for ultra-nationalism. Topics with this kind of edge are found in manga stories. A similar kind of edge is found in works employing moe representations found most often in manga for girls and women. Is moe porn or is it simply a style that fuses the cute, seductive and the pitiful?

Fortunately, Japan has comparatively few violent and sexual crimes. Therefore most people do not see the media as causing criminal activity. As the label yankii implies, although the acts are bad, the characters are basically nice kids. In the same way, the implication includes the readers and viewers who see themselves as nice people.

John E. Ingulsrud is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of International Studies at Meisei University. Kate Allen is Professor of Linguistics in the School of Global Japanese Studies at Meiji University. They are the authors of Reading Japan Cool: Patterns of Manga Literacy and Discourse.

1. Patrick W. Galbraith, The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider’s Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan, (Tokyo: Kodansha, 2009), 238.
2. “Yankii Supirittsu Sugoi Keizai Kōka (The Yankii Spirit Huge Economic Effect)”, Spa! Business Culture and Entertainment Weekly (June 23, 2009), 38-45.

Timing is Everything!: The 100th Anniversary of The Legends of Tono

By Ronald A. Morse

In June 2010, there will be an international symposium in the small town of Tono in Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Legends of Tono published in 1910 by the founder of Japanese folklore studies, Kunio Yanagita (1875-1962).

To kick-off the 100th anniversary celebrations, there was a book party for me in Tono on February 21, 2009 to mark the publication of my translation of The Legends of Tono: 100th Anniversary Edition (Lexington Books, September 2008). The book will be a centerpiece of celebrations through 2012, the date of the 50th anniversary of Kunio Yanagita’s death.

In 1910, Yanagita paid to have 350 copies of his short collection of folk legends printed. Like Grimm's Fairy Tales (1812), which he had read, his work was in a standard literary style that any Japanese could understand.

The immediate reaction to Yanagita’s work in Tokyo literary circles in 1910 was mixed and the book was not published again until 1935. In fact, it was really only after World War II, when there was a sense that the old rural traditions of Japan were being lost, that The Legends of Tono gained new prominence as literature and historical record.

In more recent times, The Legends of Tono has generated a broad spectrum of commentary. It has been compared to the Chinese revolutionary writer Lu Xun’s collection of fables from the 1920s and 30s, Old Tales Retold. The leftist Japanese writer, Ryumei (Takaaki) Yoshimoto wrote a Freudian interpretation of the work in his The Psychic World of Shared Fantasies (1969). Yukio Mishima, the famous nationalist writer and politician, has written favorably about the eerie literary qualities of the work. And in 1976, a popular writer also from the Tono region, Hisashi Inoue, poked fun at Yanagita’s work in his A New Reading of the Tales of Tono.

Today Tono City, in part because of The Legends of Tono, but also because of the Tono material in the Lonely Planet travel book for Japan, has become a popular domestic and international tourist destination. Over the years, Tono City has designed an impressive set of cultural facilities to support its popularity – an impressive library and museum complex, a new hotel where chanters recite the legends, a historical village, and a research institute. This month, the Japanese government also issued a commemorative stamp series of Tono landmarks and customs.

The mass media has also picked up on the stories and legends. In 2007, an award-winning animated movie directed by Kenichi Hara, Summer Days with the Kappa Coo used Tono as a setting for a good part of the film. The stories in The Legends of Tono are also currently being serialized in the popular manga magazine Big Comic. The artist, Shigeru Mizuki, famous for his renderings of ghosts and goblins, will display his original drawings in Tono in 2010.

Ronald A. Morse is a leading thinker and commentator on Japan and is the translator of The Legends of Tono: 100th Anniversary Edition.

What is Manga?

By John E. Ingulsrud and Kate Allen

The film, La Maison en Petits Cubes, won the 81st Academy Award for the Best Animated Short Film. Animator and director, Kunio Kato, started honing his skills as a schoolboy in his native Kagoshima in Southern Kyushu by drawing manga (1). While many Japanese people engage in creating manga, almost all Japanese people are readers of manga or have been readers at various times in their lives.

Manga is most often defined in English as simply “Japanese comics,” an accurate label from a media point of view, since there is little or no difference between manga and comics. Essentially they are made up of panels containing graphics and print. Both refer to “comic strips,” as well as longer narrative works, which are sometimes categorized by the more specific terms of “graphic novels”. Single paneled cartoons have also been called manga. Similarly television cartoons were referred to as manga up until the 1970s, when the term anime gained currency.

Manga publishing in Japan is a US$4.5 billion market and accounts for nearly a fourth of the total publishing market (2). These publications range from manga for children to manga for adults and cover every conceivable topic from sports, romance, drama, science fiction, adventure, and mystery, to niche interests such as business enterprises, gambling, fishing, cooking, and child rearing. Japanese manga are classified into a number of categories roughly corresponding to different age and gender groups. The market is evenly balanced between manga geared toward children and those targeting adults. In addition, there is a growing market for self-published dōjinshi, manga “fanzines”, parodies, and original works with large Comiket (comic market) conventions. Successful manga generate spin-offs such as toys, costumes, and other media products like animation series, light novels, television dramatizations, movies, and video games.

Most manga titles appear first in periodicals published in weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly intervals. They are readily available in bookshops, convenience stores, and station kiosks, but are generally not available by subscription. Shōnen manga (for boys), for instance, come in volumes of over 500 pages published on a weekly basis. These manga volumes may contain up to twenty serialized stories. The stories are printed on recycled newsprint, and except for the cover and a few pages of advertisements, they are set in black, printed on white or light-colored paper. Often groups of stories are printed in different colored text, giving a rainbow effect to thick volumes. These periodicals are inexpensive and read quickly.

The origins of manga come from multiple sources. The graphic figures can be traced to traditional temple scrolls and woodblock print illustrations, as well as Western caricatures and comics. Many scholars, however, insist that manga as we know them today began in the aftermath of World War II. A variety of factors such as the demand for low-cost reading material from an impoverished literate population, the presence of talented creators, and the cultural influence from the American Occupation all contributed to the surge of interest in manga. The nature of American influence has yet to be studied in detail, particularly in terms of literacy practices (the ‘how,’ ‘when,’ and ‘where’ of reading).

John E. Ingulsrud is Professor of Applied Linguistics in the Department of International Studies at Meisei University. Kate Allen is Professor of Linguistics in the School of Global Japanese Studies at Meiji University. They are the authors of Reading Japan Cool: Patterns of Manga Literacy and Discourse.

(1) “Kato Kantoku ‘So Heavy’ Academy Shō,” Nikkan Sports, February 24, 2009,.

(2) “Japan Economic Report, October-November, 2006. Japanese Publishing Industry,” JETRO, 2006, (accessed September 12, 2007).
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