Tag: Shige Suzuki

Book Review – Manga: A Critical Guide

[Ed. note: Book publishers rarely make an effort to promote new books on topics like manga. Guess leaves it up to people like me, who are interested in these kinds of books, to promote!]

Shige (CJ) Suzuki and Ronald Stewart
Bloomsbury Academic, 2022, 280 pages.
[Amazon] — [Bloomsbury USA]

This is a pre-peer review preprint of an article that has been accepted for publication in East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 9:2, 2023.

When it comes to books that can explain manga to a non-Japanese reader, Fred Schodt’s Manga Manga: The World of Japanese Comics and Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga are the ones that come to mind right away. But important as these two titles are, they are now more useful as historical artifacts – Manga Manga was first published in 1983, and Dreamland Japan last received an update in 2011. Japanese comics have changed a good deal even in the last decade, and how we understand Japanese comics has also changed quite a lot. And while several authors have recently written (or contributed to) in-depth studies such as Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture, and Community in Japan, Manga and the Representation of Japanese History, and Manga Cultures and the Female Gaze, what we haven’t had is a general survey that would try to explain, or at least summarize “Japanese comics” in a neat and comprehensive package. And this is precisely the task that Manga: A Critical Guide sets out to accomplish – the book’s goal is to serve as both an introduction to the art form of manga, and to its impact and influence around the world, and as a summary of how critics and scholars approach manga and the questions they ask. Accordingly, its focus is on “manga” (exactly what is meant by the term is itself one of the points the book addresses) as a whole, rather than not on particular titles or creators, and while this book is not aimed purely at a scholarly audience, it’s also not designed for fast and casual reading like something like the now out-of-print The Rough Guide to Manga, or the just-released (and translated from French) A History of Modern Manga.

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Highlighting Upcoming Publications – “Manga: A Critical Guide”

One of the biggest paradoxes in the way the literature of manga studies has developed since the first English-language publications on Japanese comics began appearing in the 1970’s has been a trend towards research on more and more narrow and specialized topics. In this way, Fred Schodt’s 1996 Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga is still the most recent general survey, while the kinds of books on manga that have been published just in the last several years include The Representation of Japanese Politics in Manga, Reframing Disability in Manga, and Manga Cultures and the Female Gaze. This is particularly interesting because at the same time, scholars studying Japanese animation have been publishing full-length comprehensive approaches and overviews of this “shifting, sliding category of media production”, as Rayna Denison calls it, with titles such as Anime: A Critical Introduction, Interpreting Anime, and Anime’s Identity: Performativity and Form Beyond Japan. The reasons for this situation are a separate question, but regardless, essentially until now, it has persisted, and the best that someone who was interested in learning about manga could have were shorter essays in companion and handbook-type collections, highly specific book chapters and journal articles, and entries in reference works like the recent Key Terms in Comics Studies.

A wide-ranging introductory guide for readers making their first steps into the world of manga, this book helps readers explore the full range of Japanese comic styles, forms and traditions from its earliest texts to the internationally popular comics of the 21st century.

Finally, though, it appears that Bloomsbury Publishing will be filling this gap, and bringing out exactly what the manga studies has needed for so long – a compact and accessible volume that can nonetheless serve as an authoritative source of information about the history of the medium, its role as an art form and as literature, as a commodity, and as an object of fandom and fan activity, various controversies that have surrounded manga, related to pornography, violence, nationalism, and other issues and topics, and how manga can be approached critically. Manga: A Critical Guide will also include an overview of “key texts”, a glossary, and a list of resources for manga studies. All of this – especially given a very attractive price of only $21.56 for the e-book version or $26.00 for the softcover edition make me think that this book will become an invaluable resource for anyone interested in studying or learning about Japanese comics. If not the full book, then at least some chapters from it will be an easy addition to any syllabus for a college class on comics or Japanese literature/popular culture that discusses manga to any extent. about any classes. And of course, the full book will be a perfect fit for the reading list for a full class on manga, whether in one of the Comics Studies programs that are now starting to appear at several U.S. universities, or in the many different such classes that already exist.

The book’s two co-authors are both well-known experts in the field. Shige (CJ) Suzuki is an associate professor of Japanese and comparative literature at Baruch College, City University of New York, and has published extensively on Japanese comics, including in the International Journal of Communication and the International Journal of Comic Art, and the essay collections International Perspectives on Shojo and Shojo Manga and Manga’s Cultural Crossroads. Prof. Suzuki also contributed the “manga” entry to the Routledge Companion to Cyberpunk Culture, and the chapter “Gekiga, or Japanese alternative comics” to the textbook Introducing Japanese Popular Culture. Ronald Stewart teaches in the sociology department at Daito Bunka University, in Tokyo. The focus of his research and writing, in both English and Japanese, is on cartooning in 19th and early 20th-century Japan.

When it is published later this year, Manga: A Critical Guide will be the latest addition to the Bloomsbury series Critical Guides in Comics Studies. A preview is not available yet, but the profile page for it on the Bloomsbury website at least includes a table of contents.

In any case, right now, I would like to congratulate Prof. Suzuki and Prof. Stewart for all of their hard work in putting this book together, and bringing it to readers! Bloomsbury is currently listing September 22 as the publication date, and I will be looking forward to seeing an actual copy of it then – and to sharing my impressions soon after that date!

‘Manga/Comics and Translation’ Symposium

The process of translation – and the work of translators – presents manga scholars with a wide range of questions to ask. What is translated? How do translators in different countries approach manga – Peter Howell asks this question in Strategy and style in English and French translations of Japanese comic books, and Martin de la Iglezia does in The task of manga translation: Akira in the West. Heike Jungst’s “Translating manga”, in Federico Zanettin (Ed.), Comics in translation, is a more high-level analysis. Wood-Hung Lee and Yomei Shaw, in “A textual analysis of Japanese and Chinese editions of manga: Translation as cultural hybridiziation” explore the goals and outcomes of translation as a process.

On April 6, Baruch College (City University of New York) will hold the latest in its series of public discussions on manga, with a specific focus on the challenges inherent to translating manga from Japanese and into other languages, the unique issues that comics/sequential art present for translators, and the role that translators play in the manga industry. (more…)

‘Alternative Manga’ Symposium

Alt-Manga SymposiumOn April 7, Baruch College (City University of New York) will host Alt-Manga: Alternative Manga Symposium. The full program is still in development, but it will include presentations by Shige Suzuki (Baruch College), George Tsouris (LaGuardia Community College), in conversation with manga artist Akino Kondoh, and blogger/manga industry professional Erica Friedman. The Symposium is receiving support from the Japan Foundation New York, and is open to the all interested attendees, but registration is required.

“The ‘Alt-Manga Symposium’ invites scholars, professionals, and artists in and around the city of New York to give lectures and conversations about Japanese comics (manga). One of the primary objectives of the symposium is to show the rich and diverse world of Japanese comics with a focus on Japanese alternative and non-mainstream manga, and their development in both domestic and transnational contexts.”

This is the second such event at Baruch, building on the success of last year’s Globalized Manga Culture and Fandom Shoujo Manga Symposium and the World of Shojo Manga: Mirrors of Girls’ Desires art exhibition.

Alt-Manga: Alternative Manga Symposium
Thursday, April 7 | 12:40 p.m. – 2:20 p.m.
Baruch College Vertical Campus
55 Lexington Avenue, 5th Floor, Room 165
Free – REGISTRATION FORM

Introduction to Anime & Manga Studies @ Waku Waku +NYC

Waku-Waku-LogoWaku Waku +NYC, the new “Japanese pop culture festival”, will be held this weekend (August 29-30) in New York City, in various locations in Brooklyn. More than just an anime convention, it will include screenings, talks, performances, a fashion show, interactive events, and concerts spread out several locations in Brooklyn.

I am delighted to be able to contribute to this festival by presenting the session “Introduction to anime and manga studies”. This will run on Sunday, August 30, at 11:30 a.m., at the Wythe Hotel (80 Wythe Avenue).

Introduction to Anime and Manga Studies

Mikhail Koulikov
Prof. Kathryn Hemmann
Prof. Shige (CJ) Suzuki

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