Happy Manga Day!

Manga Day celebrates the art of Japanese comics.

For the first time ever, many US manga publishers, along with organizations like EveryLibrary, are coming together this November to celebrate Manga Day 2024! As a consultant who works with publishers and libraries to advocate for this amazing medium, EveryLibrary reached out to me with a few questions about what manga is, why we celebrate it, and how it reaches shelves across the country and worldwide. I hope this brief overview will inspire you to pick up some new titles and celebrate Manga Day along with us!

What Is Manga?

The shortest answer to this question is that manga is simply the Japanese word for comics, comic books, or graphic novels. 

But the slightly more nuanced answer is that when we say “manga” in English, we usually mean comics from a Japanese creator or comics that use some of the visual style, storytelling modes, or other tropes we associate with Japanese comics.

It’s a word that can be useful for categorizing these works within the very broad, global field of comics. But it’s important to remember that at its heart, manga has a lot in common with other types of graphic novels, from Superman to The Adventures of Tintin and even Calvin & Hobbes.

When Is Manga Day?

Manga Day is celebrated in Japan on November 3 each year, a date which is significant for two reasons. First, it’s Japan’s official Culture Day, a holiday that celebrates culture, the arts, and academic achievement. Of course, manga is a vibrant Japanese art form incorporated into those celebrations. 

November 3 is also a perfect day to celebrate manga, as it is the birthday of Osamu Tezuka (1928–89), a Japanese cartoonist often called “The God of Manga.” Making his professional debut in 1947 following World War II, Tezuka is well known overseas as the creator of Astro Boy.

However, he worked across many genres and produced an enormous body of manga that is still read and loved today, like the fantastical samurai-era revenge story Dororo, the harrowing and heartbreaking meditation on love and humanity Apollo’s Song, and the groundbreaking biography Buddha, all available in print from Kodansha.

What Is the Origin of Manga?

In many ways, manga’s origins are similar to those of other comics traditions. Pairing images with the written word to tell stories is an ancient art form stretching back to the age of the Pyramids.

Japan, of course, has a rich visual culture that contemporary artists still draw from, including the Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga, a famous set of twelfth-century picture scrolls depicting anthropomorphized animals; Edo-era woodblock prints or ukiyo-e; and the illustration+performance art form kamishibai.

While these antecedents show a deep cultural appreciation for visual storytelling in Japan, they don’t directly trace a path toward manga, according to many scholars. Comics in Japan grew out of reproducible illustration and political cartooning for newspapers and magazines, influenced by both British and American cartooning. 

Manga as we know it today really came into its own after the Second World War, when American comic books became readily available in Japan. This influenced the creation of serialized long-form comic stories in magazines and even original stand-alone books available in rental shops called kashi-hon. Though we often think of manga as a distinctly Japanese medium, international influences were a major factor in the development of the manga we know today.

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What Is the History of Manga in the US? 

Manga has been making its way onto US shelves for the past forty years or so. Many of the first big successes were buoyed in popularity by animated films or TV, which explains why titles like Akira or Sailor Moon have such a foothold in the American imagination. In fact, Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy was the first Japanese animation dubbed into English and released for American television back in 1963, making it a huge influence on generations of fans!

While anime based on manga gained steam, manga began as a slow trickle of content releases in the ’80s and ’90s, but there have been a few big turning points as manga grew from a niche interest to a mainstream cultural force. In the early 2000s, manga really started to take off, and there were a few factors at play in that “manga boom.”

In some ways, it was a big moment for all kinds of graphic novels, which started to win mainstream book awards and make their way into “respectable” venues like classrooms, libraries, and even the reviews section of the New York Times. Manga stood out in this new graphic novel landscape for several reasons, not the least of which was the presence of a large proportion of titles by and about women. A generation of readers were introduced to a treasure trove of Japanese comics in all sorts of genres, often supported by anime series.

Fast-forward to the age of streaming and binge-worthy content. With anime becoming a staple of services like Netflix, a second manga boom has occurred. Nowadays, in bookstores, libraries, and homes across the US, manga is fully mainstream. And for anyone who hasn’t yet been hooked by manga, there are more titles and more kinds of manga stories being published in English than ever before! It’s truly a great time to be a manga reader in the US.  

What Is the Basic Process for Having a Manga Series Localized for an International Audience?

Each translated volume of manga represents thousands of small but significant decisions made by the translator, editor, letter, and other localizers to bring the book to English readers.

The most obvious process that manga undergoes on its way to publication in the US is translation from Japanese into English. This is not always as straightforward as it might seem, as editors and translators have to consider not only remaining faithful to the original work but also ensuring that the vocabulary, dialect, and other choices made will get across the right contexts or even subtexts for English readers.

There are often important details like levels of linguistic formality in Japanese, sound effects, and Japanese terms that might require extra explanation, all of which need special consideration to ensure that the resulting English-language edition honors the source material while remaining readable and enjoyable. And on top of that, the English text needs to physically fit into the artwork, given the sizes and shapes of the word balloons designed for the Japanese text!

A wonderful thing about reading manga in English is that, even though we may not be able to read the original Japanese, there is no language gap in appreciating the visual art. That direct, visual, cross-cultural access is something that we can’t get from translated text alone and is a really key part of the manga-reading experience.

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Is Manga Being Challenged or Censored in Schools and Libraries in the US?

The recent wave of book banning across the US has not focused specifically on manga. However, there is some self-censorship and soft-censorship that may affect access to manga titles in schools and libraries, especially for young people.

The good news is that professional knowledge gaps around manga for library workers and educators are closing, and more and more institutions feel confident and empowered to build great manga collections for all age groups.

The fact that manga is thriving in library contexts now doesn’t mean it won’t be susceptible to challenges in the future. Recognizing the value of manga as legitimate and rewarding reading material today is an important step in inoculating manga against broader censorship.

What Can Manga Offer Readers?

Readers are drawn to manga because of its rich depictions of emotions, anxieties, and interiorities, integrated into stories full of action, romance, humor, or adventure. . . . For current fans and readers, no argument for manga is really necessary. But if you haven’t yet found the right manga for you—and I fully believe there is a manga for every reader—I would encourage you to keep exploring.

This is a diverse medium with stories in dozens of genres. I would encourage anyone looking to broaden their appreciation of manga to tune into the Mangasplaining podcast, a book-club-format discussion of various manga titles designed specifically for folks who haven’t read much manga before.

You can also check out the first chapters of hundreds of manga volumes on Kodansha.us, including titles like Sailor Moon, Blue Lock, and works by Osamu Tezuka! There’s a great world of visual literature out there for you to discover and enjoy!

Andrew Woodrow-Butcher is an editor, critic, and consultant specializing in comics in schools and libraries. After decades as a bookseller, international arts festival programmer, and comics curator in Toronto, he is now based in Taipei, where he edits manga at MSX: Mangasplaining Extra and consults for Kodansha USA.