Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics

A survey of manga covering its history, its major genres, its industrial structure and its social role, written for an English-language readership that had essentially no exposure to the medium.

It includes extended sample chapters from four manga in translation, which at the time was almost the only such material available.

The book that explained manga to English readers before any of it had been translated.

Devmark’s reading — not a quotation from the book

When it appeared, virtually no manga had been published in English and the medium was unknown outside a small circle.

The book is therefore a founding document, and a substantial proportion of the English-speaking manga readership can trace its existence to this book or to people who read it.

Osamu Tezuka contributed an introduction, and Schodt had worked as his translator and interpreter.

The access is evident throughout. Schodt was inside the industry rather than observing it from outside, and the book carries first-hand material that later surveys cannot. Schodt had also translated Phoenix for an edition that was prepared but not published at the time, and his working relationship with Tezuka lasted until the artist's death.

The historical chapters cover scroll painting, Edo woodblock work, the influence of Western cartooning, the wartime period and the post-war explosion.

The long-view framing — that manga has antecedents in Japanese visual tradition — has been contested by later scholars but remains the standard popular account.

Schodt covers boys' comics, girls' comics, adult work, gekiga and economic manga, explaining the market segmentation that English readers found surprising.

The account of manga for adult professional audiences was particularly startling for a readership accustomed to comics as children's material. He also covers manga produced for specific professions and for corporate training, which remains the detail English readers find hardest to believe about the medium.

Translated excerpts from Phoenix, Ghost Warrior, The Rose of Versailles and Barefoot Gen were included, presented right-to-left in some cases.

For many readers these were the first manga pages they had seen, and the selection is notably ambitious rather than commercial. The inclusion of Barefoot Gen in particular signalled that the book was not treating manga as light entertainment, and that selection did a great deal to set expectations.

Schodt is interested in why manga occupies the cultural position it does: readership demographics, circulation figures, commuting habits and the absence of the disposability stigma Western comics carried.

The sociological material is what makes the book more than an introduction. He is also attentive to the physical economics of the magazines: cheap paper, enormous print runs, and an object designed to be read once and discarded.

Written in 1983, it predates the digital era, the international market, and most of what readers now think of as manga.

Its statistics are historical and several of its predictions were wrong. Readers should treat it as a document of its moment rather than as a current survey.

Dreamland Japan updates the account for the 1990s, and The Astro Boy Essays is his study of Tezuka.

The three together form a substantial body of work by the person most responsible for manga's English-language reception. He has also translated a substantial amount of manga professionally, including Astro Boy and Ghost in the Shell, and the translation work informs the criticism throughout.

The writing is enthusiastic, clear and free of both academic apparatus and fan defensiveness.

Schodt writes as someone explaining something he finds genuinely interesting to people who have not heard of it, and the register has aged well. There is also no attempt to claim the medium is uniformly excellent, and Schodt is straightforward that most of what is published is disposable by design.

It has been credited by numerous translators, publishers and creators as their introduction to the medium, and its role in establishing the English market is difficult to overstate.

It won an Eisner award decades after publication in recognition of that role. Several of the people who built the English-language manga publishing industry have described reading it as students, which is about as direct a line of influence as a book can have.

Readers interested in how manga arrived in English, and readers who want the medium's history from someone who was present for a great deal of it.

It is no longer a useful current survey and remains a genuinely important book. Readers wanting an introduction to contemporary manga should look elsewhere.