Abstract
The final chapter begins by bringing the theme of manga to a larger context, using a recent surge in manga sales in the United States as an example. It then stresses that non-blockbuster comics like tōjisha manga can be an agent for social change and a tool for mental health education. The chapter reiterates the author’s thesis that tōjisha manga is a unique subgenre of autobiographical manga with the ability to humanize the storyteller’s lived experience as its first-person narrative makes the story relatable and authentic. It ends by putting the spotlight back on the book’s other theme, the importance of our brain and mental health, especially during and after the pandemic.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Notes
- 1.
The voice belongs to Jim Zarroli, a former correspondent of the National Public Radio (NPR) covering business and economics. Writing a piece about manga sales for NPR, he called me on February 10, 2022.
- 2.
NPD is a business that provides business data and analysis in various industries including books, apparel, footwear, and fashion. NPD BookScan (https://www.npd.com/industry-expertise/books/) publishes sales data and market analysis for the books industry. According to their website, their data covers approximately 85% of the US trade print book market, ranking best sellers per piece sales.
- 3.
Asahi Newspaper EduA (2020), an online news site that provides education-related news and interviews, identifies Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba, as the manga title most contributive to the spike and states that the manga’s popularity brought a recent boom for kendo (sword martial art) practice and kanji characters studying among young manga readers.
- 4.
Cool Japan is a slogan representing the Japanese government’s efforts to promote overseas the recognition and popularity of cultural commodities such as film, manga, anime, video games, fashion, music, and cuisine. The efforts were spearheaded by the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1980. In 2010, the Creative Industries Promotion Office was established as its “strategy” sector within the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI). The chief minister responsible for the operation of the sector was selected in 2012, generating a series of strategic plans and initiatives from 2015 to 2018 with the collaboration of businesses in the private sector (Cabinet Office 2019). The governing body of the Cool Japan efforts involved not only METI but also several other ministries, including the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). Simultaneously, a public-private fund, Cool Japan Fund Inc., was also founded in 2013 and began to execute “soft power” efforts (Cabinet Office 2019). Interestingly, the Fund invested USD 30 million in a licensor company to increase the presence of anime in the US market in 2019 (Anime News Network 2019).
- 5.
Anime News Network is an online anime news site that reports news about anime, manga, J-pop, and other Japanese pop culture icons found in North America, Australia, and Japan.
- 6.
ICv2 is an online trade magazine covering geek culture news and sales analyses about popular culture including anime, comics, and games.
- 7.
I have been using manga in my course, Gender and Disability in Manga, at the University of Hawaii at Hilo for more than ten years. My American students who grew up reading manga and watching anime enjoy reading about disability through the perspectives of manga’s protagonists. Many of them have confided in me that it was an eye-opening experience as they read beyond “entertainment” manga like Hunter x Hunter.
- 8.
In comparison, celebrity admission of mental illness may be more likely to be taken positively because of the person’s star status. When Naomi Osaka, one of the world-class, female tennis players, recently revealed her “long bouts of depression” (The New Yorker, June 1, 2021), many of her fans and colleagues responded with sympathy and support. Her brave disclosure appeared to have helped break the mold and lower the stigma of mental disability in the international athletic world. However, the stakes are probably much higher when such a private matter is divulged by less famous individuals, especially in a country like Japan where depression is incorrectly associated with the loss of the person’s mental self-control (The Lancet 2002).
References
Asahi Newspaper EduA. 2020. Manga’s influences on children. December 24, 2020. https://www.asahi.com/edua/article/14031290 (retrieved February 19, 2022).
Anime News Network. August 1, 2019. “Cool Japan Fund Invests in North American Anime Group Led by Sentai Holdings.” https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/press-release/2019-08-01/cool-japan-fund-invests-in-north-american-anime-group-led-by-sentai-holdings/.149602 (retrieved February 10, 2022).
Anime News Network. May 30, 2021. Cited in “Why is Manga So Dominant in American Graphic Novel Sales?” https://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2021-05-30/jujutsu-kaisen-manga-circulation-jumps-590-percent-to-50-million-copies-since-anime-debut/.173399 (retrieved February 12, 2022).
BBC (British Broadcasting Company). November 11, 2019. “Is Japanese anime going mainstream?” https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20191127-the-spirited-world-of-japanese-anime (retrieved February 19, 2022).
Brienza, Casey. 2016. Manga in America: Transnational Book Publishing and the Domestication of Japanese Comics. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
CBR. June 12, 2021. “Japanese Media Is More Popular Than Ever—So Why Are Manga & Anime Still ‘Niche’?” https://www.cbr.com/japanese-media-anime-popular-niche/ (retrieved February 12, 2022).
Chute, Hillary. 2017. Why Comics?: From Underground to Everywhere. New York: HarperCollins.
El Refaie, Elisabeth. 2019. Visual Metaphor and Embodiment in Graphic Illness Narratives. New York: Oxford University Press.
Hot Movies News. August 11, 2021. “Why the US Manga Market is Booming.” https://hotmoviesnews.com/2021/08/01/why-the-us-manga-market-is-booming/ (retrieved February 15, 2022).
ICv2. July 29, 2019. “Big Split in Graphic Novel Sales in 2018: Kids and Manga Up, Superheroes and Author Titles Down.” https://icv2.com/articles/news/view/43718/big-split-graphic-novel-sales-2018 (retrieved February 19, 2022).
Japan Cartoonists Association (homepage). n.d. https://nihonmangakakyokai.or.jp/about/about07.
Kunka, Andrew J. 2018. Autobiographical Comics. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
The Lancet. 2002. “Stigma of Mental Illness in Japan.” Vol. 359: 1866.
Maekawa, Osamu, and Hiroshi Okumura. 2020. Manga/Manga/Manga: Jinbungaku no Shiten kara (Manga/Manga/Manga: From the Field of Humanities). Kobe University Press: Kobe, Japan.
The New Yorker. 2011. “Naomi Osaka’s Complicated Withdrawal from the French Open.” (written by Louisa Thomas) June 1, 2021. https://www.newyorker.com/sports/sporting-scene/naomi-osaka-takes-a-complicated-stand (retrieved December 1, 2021).
Ookubo, Noriichiro, Hirokazu Wada, Shunichi Kubo, and Ryuya Horida. 2020. “Shōgaku kōgakunen jidō ni okeru manga dokusho (Manga Reading Attitudes by Grade 4–6 Students).” Japanese Journal of Educational Media Research 27(1), 13–29.
TV Fandom Lounge, December 24, 2021. “Top 25 Best-Selling Manga of 2021; Jujutsu Kaisen, Tokyo Revengers & More.” https://www.tvfandomlounge.com/2021/12/24/top-25-best-selling-manga-2021-jujutsu-kaisen-tokyo-revengers-more/ (retrieved February 12, 2022).
Saito, Satoru. 2019. “Why are manga outselling superhero comics?: Rutgers professor explores varying themes in Japanese and American comics.” (An interview by Cynthia Medina at Rutgers University). Faculty Excellence. https://www.rutgers.edu/news/why-are-manga-outselling-superhero-comics (retrieved February 17, 2022).
Samuels, Ellen. 2015. “Picturing Mental Disability in the Classroom.” Disability Studies Quarterly, vol. 35, no. 2. https://dsq-sds.org/article/view/4865/3949 (retrieved December 8, 2021.)
Shigemura, Jun, and Mie Kurosawa. 2020. “Mental Health Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic Japan.” Psychological Trauma: Theory, Research, Practice, and Policy, 12 (5): 478–479.
Yahoo! Japan News. “‘Kimetsu no yaiba’ dokuryō no Kishida Fumio shinsosai” (The new prime minister Kishida Fumio’s completion of reading ‘Demon Slayer’). September 2021. https://news.yahoo.co.jp/articles/e01a26d3ac7ae29a058813e59ad8eff5a60031ff (retrieved February 14, 2022).
Ueda, Michiko, Rober Nordstrom, and Tetsuya Matsubayashi. 2020. “Suicide and mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic in Japan.” Journal of Public Health: 1–8.
Worldwide. May 24, 2021. “Worldwide, manga is outselling American comics.” https://ultramunch.com/worldwide-manga-is-outselling-american-comics/ (retrieved February 13, 2022).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Okuyama, Y. (2022). Afterword. In: Tōjisha Manga. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00840-5_10
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-00840-5_10
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-031-00839-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-031-00840-5
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)