Book Review: Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics

Book Review: Manga!  Manga!  The World of Japanese Comics by Frederik L. Schodt

Back in the early 1980s, manga and anime fandom was tiny, with almost no material being available in English save dubs heavily edited for American children’s television and expunged as much as possible of their Japanese roots.   It required a certain amount of determination, luck and a little madness to collect these foreign entertainments.  One of the first cracks in the dam was this book, published in 1983.  (The edition I am reviewing is the 1986 paperback with updated sales figures.)

The book begins with a look at the manga industry itself, the insanely high sales figures, the wide variety of genres and the demographics covered.   This is compared to the relatively tiny and narrow American comic book market.  (To be fair, Japan was going through an economic boom and the U.S. comics market would do much better in the latter half of the Eighties, but it’s still striking.)

From there we proceed to the history of manga, starting from the delightful Animal Scrolls of the 12th Century.  While there was a thriving culture of humor magazines with cartoons and political cartoons, magazines with just comics were primarily for children until after World War Two.  Then there was a phase where independent non-children’s manga were primarily made for the pay library market.  But with cheaper printing processes and especially the mass-market success of Osamu Tezuka, weekly and monthly manga anthologies sold at newsstands became the standard format.

The chapters that follow cover general themes found in manga:  The samurai spirit and Japanese tradition, often translated into modern-day sports.  Romance and emotional drama catering to girls and women.  Business comics both dramatic and silly.  And taboo-breaking manga, dealing with subjects from sex to teen rebellion against society.

There’s another chapter on the details of the industry, showing how artists, publishers and accountants work together to produce the manga everyone loves to read.

And then a chapter on the future of manga.  This is naturally the one that’s most interesting in retrospect.  Mr. Schodt predicted that manga would never become successful in America due to the difficulties of translation and resistance to foreign goods.  He thought only a handful of classics would ever be brought successfully to market, and primarily for the scholarly venues.   As it turned out, there was in fact a tremendous thirst for manga, which just needed to find the right distribution channel.

The book closes out with four manga samples.  The first is a brief interlude from Osamu Tezuka’s classic Phoenix in which a sculptor has a vision of the undying bird.  Reiji Matsumoto’s Ghost Warrior is a complete story about two Japanese soldiers separated from their units during World War Two.  (Note: sexual situations.)  Ryoko Ikeda’s The Rose of Versailles is represented by the chapter where Marie Antoinette refuses to talk to Madame DuBarry, setting off a diplomatic crisis.  Keiji Nakazawa’s searing Barefoot Gen depicts the events of August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima.  (Note:  Horrific depictions of injury and corpses.)

There’s a brief index and bibliography at the back, and plenty of illustrations throughout.

This is an excellent introduction to the subject of manga, and a snapshot of what the industry looked like in the mid-1980s.  Younger readers may be a bit disappointed by the dated material–many of today’s top creators weren’t even born when this book was published!  Still, recommended to anyone with an interest in manga as a primary text.