Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics is a 1983 book by Frederik L. Schodt

Frederik L. Schodt

Frederik L. Schodt is an American translator, interpreter and writer.Schodt's father was in the US foreign service, and he grew up in Norway, Australia, and Japan. The family first went to Japan in 1965 when Schodt was fifteen. They left in 1967 but Schodt remained to graduate from Tokyo's American...

. Published by the Japanese

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

 publisher Kodansha

Kodansha

, the largest Japanese publisher, produces the manga magazines Nakayoshi, Afternoon, Evening, and Weekly Shonen Magazine, as well as more literary magazines such as Gunzō, Shūkan Gendai, and the Japanese dictionary Nihongo Daijiten. The company has its headquarters in Bunkyō, Tokyo...

, it was the first substantial English language

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 work on Japanese comics

Comics

Comics denotes a hybrid medium having verbal side of its vocabulary tightly tied to its visual side in order to convey narrative or information only, the latter in case of non-fiction comics, seeking synergy by using both visual and verbal side in...

, or manga

Manga

Manga is the Japanese word for "comics" and consists of comics and print cartoons . In the West, the term "manga" has been appropriated to refer specifically to comics created in Japan, or by Japanese authors, in the Japanese language and conforming to the style developed in Japan in the late 19th...

, as an art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

istic, literary

Literature

Literature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...

, commercial

Commerce

While business refers to the value-creating activities of an organization for profit, commerce means the whole system of an economy that constitutes an environment for business. The system includes legal, economic, political, social, cultural, and technological systems that are in operation in any...

 and sociological

Sociology

Sociology is the study of society. It is a social science—a term with which it is sometimes synonymous—which uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about human social activity...

 phenomenon . Part of Schodt's motivation for writing it was to introduce manga to English speakers.http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/445880-Discovering_Manga_with_Frederik_Schodt.php?rssid=20803 The book is copiously illustrated and features a foreword

Foreword

A foreword is a piece of writing sometimes placed at the beginning of a book or other piece of literature. Written by someone other than the primary author of the work, it often tells of some interaction between the writer of the foreword and the book's primary author or the story the book tells...

 by Osamu Tezuka

Osamu Tezuka

was a Japanese cartoonist, manga artist, animator, producer, activist and medical doctor, although he never practiced medicine. Born in Osaka Prefecture, he is best known as the creator of Astro Boy, Kimba the White Lion and Black Jack...

. It also includes translated excerpts from Tezuka's Phoenix

Phoenix (manga)

is a manga series by Osamu Tezuka. Tezuka considered Phoenix his "life's work"; it consists of 12 books, each of which tells a separate, self-contained story and takes place in a different era. The plots go back and forth from the remote future to prehistoric times. The cycle remains unfinished...

, Keiji Nakazawa

Keiji Nakazawa

is a Japanese manga artist and writer.He was born in Hiroshima and was in the city when it was destroyed by an atomic bomb in 1945. All of his family members who had not been evacuated died in the bombing except for his mother, and an infant sister who died several weeks after the bombing...

's Barefoot Gen

Barefoot Gen

is a Japanese manga series by Keiji Nakazawa. Loosely based on Nakazawa's own experiences as a Hiroshima survivor, the series begins in 1945 in and around Hiroshima, Japan, where the six-year-old boy Gen lives with his family...

and Riyoko Ikeda

Riyoko Ikeda

is a Japanese manga artist and singer. She is included in the Year 24 Group. She was one of the most popular Japanese comic artists in the 1970s, being best known for The Rose of Versailles.- Biography :...

's The Rose of Versailles

The Rose of Versailles

, also known as Lady Oscar or La Rose de Versailles, is one of the best-known titles in shōjo manga and a media franchise created by Riyoko Ikeda. It has been adapted into several Takarazuka Revue musicals, as well an anime television series, produced by Tokyo Movie Shinsha and broadcast by the...

, and the Reiji Matsumoto short story

Short story

A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...

 "Ghost Warrior".

Manga! Manga! was enthusiastically reviewed in the mainstream and comics press and received a prominent endorsement from Stan Lee

Stan Lee

Stan Lee is an American comic book writer, editor, actor, producer, publisher, television personality, and the former president and chairman of Marvel Comics....

.

In 1996, Stone Bridge Press published Schodt's "sequel" to Manga! Manga!, Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga

Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga

Dreamland Japan is a 1996 book by Frederik L. Schodt published by Stone Bridge Press that was intended as a "sequel" to Schodt's 1983 book Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. It includes information on several major manga magazines and manga writers and artists, including many who are...

. In the introduction to this book, Schodt states that a Japanese bistro in Berkeley, California

Berkeley, California

Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...

took its name from Manga! Manga!

Contents

1. Foreword by Osamu Tezuka
2. A Thousand Million Manga
   1. Themes and Readers
   2. Reading, and the Structure of Narrative Comics
   3. Why Japan?
3. A Thousand Years of Manga
   1. The Comic Art Tradition
   2. Western Styles
   3. Safe and Unsafe Art
   4. Comics and the War Machine
   5. The Phoenix Becomes a Godzilla
4. The Spirit of Japan
   1. Paladins of the Past
   2. Modern-Day Warriors
   3. Samurai Sports
5. Flowers and Dreams
   1. Picture Poems
   2. Women Artists Take Over
   3. Sophisticated Ladies
6. The Economic Animal at Work and at Play
   1. Pride and Craftsmanship
   2. Mr. Lifetime Salary-Man
   3. Mah Jongg Wizards
7. Regulation versus Fantasy
   1. Is There Nothing Sacred?
   2. Social and Legal Restraints
   3. Erotic Comics
8. The Comics Industry
   1. Artists
   2. Publishers
   3. Profits
9. The Future
   1. The New Visual Generation
   2. Challenges for the Industry
   3. First Japan, Then the World?

External links

• Frederik L. Schodt on Manga! Manga!