The popularity of manga – or comic books – in Japan really is phenomenal. It doesn’t seem to matter where you are, what you’re doing, or how many people you’re surrounded by. If you take a good look around you, you might be surprised to find someone (or several people) indulging themselves in either a pocket-sized manga or ultra big digest.
I can still remember the very first comic book that I bought as a child. Back then, allowance was a scarce thing and what little I did get was always saved and put to a good purpose. Most of my friends who received an allowance from their parents immediately disposed of it at the nearest candy shop, or chased down the ice cream man with it. Candy was about all you could buy with a handful of coins. I, on the other hand, resisted the urge to buy the first thing that caught my eye and saved up good and hard until I was able to take my earnings into the neighborhood convenience store. And in those days, the convenience store was quite a walk away! I’d had my eye on this comic book for several weeks now and was afraid that it would sell out soon if I didn’t buy it. Luckily for me, there were quite a lot of copies to go around.
So, after a good deal of saving and steering clear of chocolate bars and the popular soda at the time, I was able to buy my comic book. Not many people that I’ve spoken to in Japan are familiar with the title and it did lose popularity after a while, but thinking of my very first major purchase brings back fond childhood memories.
Now, that was quite a number of years ago. Somewhere in the middle of my teenage years, it became apparent to me that reading comics just wasn’t a very ‘cool’ or mature thing to be doing. It didn’t matter how many novels or textbooks I borrowed from the public library, as soon as I was spotted with a comic book I was told by teachers and parents alike that they were not to be read by anyone other than children. Gradually, I began to stop reading comic books to appease the people around me, but did so very reluctantly.
The attitude towards comic books in Japan
Now that I’ve been in Japan for a good number of years, I can honestly say that the Japanese opinion towards manga and comic books is quite positive and encouraging. e Various types of manga circulates rather freely in a country where anime-stylistic art is considered to be a fair representation of the culture. Not only are the different types of manga very broad in their subject matter and content, but they also tend to target males and females from all age groups. This also includes adults. During my years in Japan, I’ve had the pleasure of discussing comic books with children, high school and university aged students, and both men and women of all ages. All of the people I spoke with had been very interested in manga at some point in their lives, and some of them still considered themselves to be reasonably loyal followers of one title or another.
Bringing up manga as a topic of discussion has always led to some exciting stories and insight into a multitude of reasons for why adults continue to read – and even collect – them well past an age that would have been acceptable in any western country. Needless to say, I feel absolutely comfortable picking up a Japanese comic and reading it just about anywhere when I have spare time. It’s nice to know that the restrictions of age don’t apply to reading such material over here.
Types of manga
The comics in Japan pride themselves on not being limited to superhero stories or catering to any particular style. There are many talented artists and story writers that specialize in many unique styles that are both classical and modern. To get a better image of the sheer number of styles and drawing techniques in the Japanese comics today it would probably be most productive if you took a look at some of them up close.
Aside from the mixture of styles, you might also be interested in the content of some of these comics. Whether the comic is catering to the male or female population – there are specific comic companies that only print shoujo (girl’s comics) or shounen (boy’s comics) – it’s like being able to shop for your favorite movie genre in drawn printed form. There are comics that revolve around the world of sports, Japanese favorites like baseball or basketball. And then there are the ones loaded with adventure and worlds yet explored. Quite a great deal of them tend to go in-depth into social relationships, friendships, and everyday life. If you have a good sense of humor, you might want to check out some comics that approach humor from many unusual angles. And, for those of you that do enjoy the superhero themes, there are those that contain tales of supernatural enhancement and glorious otherworldly battles. Remembering that this is Japan that we’re talking about, there are also stories that are geared more towards technology. Basically, there is a manga for everyone.
Buying manga
It might be a tad hard to believe that comic books are so widely accepted, bought, and read in Japan. However, if you ever do find yourself in this part of the world, you would be incredibly surprised to discover how easily you can get your hands on one.
Manga can be bought just about everywhere and anywhere in Japan. The most common place you might expect to find reading material would be the bookstore, and of course you won’t have any trouble picking up a recently released title there. But it might be very interesting to know that these comic books have many of their own stores that sell nothing but manga and anime-related goods. Some of these stores are so large that they have two or more floors, depending on how far back some of the titles go. If the title maintains its popularity, it’s not so strange to find it still on the shelves after a year or two has gone by. If you aren’t in the mood for going to the bookstore and just can’t be bothered to find one of those comic stores, you can simply find the nearest convenience store in order to pick up an oversized digest of all the popular titles on the market.
Usually, a lot of students and businessmen in suits can be found browsing through these massive digests while on their way home from work or school at night. The digests tend to get read on the train more than the regular manga because they publish ongoing titles in chapters in either weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly editions. The chapters are published in the digests first before being compiled into a standard sized manga. This more or less explains why they sell out so fast. Everyone wants to keep up with his/her favorite stories.
You would not believe it but…
So, why on earth would Japanese comic books need an entire store to be sold in? Wouldn’t a devoted subject corner in a regular bookstore suffice? If you knew just how many of these things were being published in a week, or a month (not to mention the stocking of previously released titles) you’d probably agree that so many outlets are necessary to keep the public supplied with their manga.
Not counting the ongoing manga titles that release a new issue every now and then (the time period for this varies because of a lot of different factors), there are plenty of new books that accumulate throughout the month to overwhelm any regular bookstore. Although it’s difficult to count the number of manga that is being sold nowadays, a previous count had the weekly number at 13, bi-weekly at 10, and 20 showing up monthly on the shelves. Those numbers really add up if you include the compilations, manga-related magazines, and back issues. In terms of profit, last year the manga industry took in nearly 407 billion yen in Japan alone.
Determining the figures for manga sales worldwide is nearly impossible because they continue to gain in popularity on an international scale. They have been so well received in other countries that they have been translated and published in other languages such as English, Chinese, Spanish, Dutch, German, Italian and French – to name a few.
Getting a taste for manga
You don’t necessarily need to buy a manga in order to enjoy the story and art. Unlike some other countries which prohibit the reading of merchandise in the store, you are free to read whatever isn’t wrapped up in shrink wrap in convenience stores, bookstores, and manga stores.
Another method for sampling the comics of the past and present is by going to a manga kissa – or manga café – and freely going through the rows and rows of bookshelves at your disposal. Manga cafes are all the rave in Japan because they remain open to all hours of the night, with some of them operating 24 hours daily. Most of them will offer you a free drink, or unlimited drink service, for as long as you stay. The price for hanging out in a manga café is relatively cheap and you aren’t limited to how much you can read. If you’re really into a series that goes on for 20 or more issues and your living space is too cramped to collect them at home, then this is the place for you. You can happily enjoy the entire story at your own reading pace, and maybe while relaxing in a massage chair that many of the larger cafes keep on hand.
The future of manga
Although comic book sales in other countries seem to have declined in recent years, the Japanese manga continues on strong. Judging by the crowds that flow in and out of the comic stores and the individuals that can be seen openly reading comics in public, it doesn’t seem like the interest in these illustrated stories is going to fizzle out anytime soon. The manga hype is as vibrant as ever, catching on and heating up in other countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, China, France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. It doesn’t seem likely that the international fame of the Japanese manga that really began to pick up in the mid 1990’s is going to let up anytime soon.
In the past it was quite a challenge to buy a manga from a Japanese store (either from an actual location or online) with the intention of having it shipped to your home country. They were all in Japanese at the time and most of them didn’t ship internationally. However, times have changed and now a lot of Japanese online sites selling manga have menus available in English and ship worldwide. You can easily buy them off of auction sites as well that are more than willing to have them delivered to your country. If you’re after a title that was published a year or more ago, an auction site is probably your best bet for getting something that is out of print. But, if you’re in Japan on vacation or business, you might just get lucky by checking out a used manga store. Yes, there are entire stores that carry only used manga for very cheap discounted prices. Some of them go back ten or twenty years, while others are sold as part of a collection – meaning that you can walk away with an entire series for a mere fraction of what it originally cost.
It’s difficult to imagine the manga market increasing anymore than it already has but it just might be possible with the way that it has spread interest and popularity worldwide. One day, a country like the United States or France might have just as many comic books in circulation as Japan does now. I greatly anticipate seeing that day.
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