"What's Manga?" Book review
The book "What's Manga" focuses on the academic study of manga and the history of manga as they define it within the country of Japan. The framing is a cute story between two curators, one junior and one senior as they go through their duties of organizing exhibitions, maintaining collections and helping customers within the international manga museum. The format changes from a comic to detailed editorials from curators expanding on statements within said comic. The transition usually starts with an off-handed statement by the senior curator character talking about a contentious topic or definition within the academic study of manga such as what counts as "the first manga" in Japan or what "counts" as a genuine artifact of a particular type/genre of manga. These contentions within the study are then expanded upon within an editorial, usually occupying one page as to what the opposing views are and what they claim. They add a lot of context to what views are guiding discussions and even exhibits within the international manga musuum as the authors of these editorials are professors or curators themselves drawing on their experience managing collections and discussing these questions with other colleagues in their field.
It was a lot of fun to feel rewarded for diving into older manga as I could recognize some of the greats re-contextualized into this greater timeline of manga's development within Japan. Ozama Tezuka, for example aside from creating Astro Boy also left a catalog of great works including adaptations of Shakespearean plays in Manga form. By far the most informative aspect of the book was the well crafted diagram breaking down the payment structure that delivers the amount paid by the consumer for a certain magazine or volume of manga to the author and all the companies responsible for delivering that story to the consumer. In this case it's illustrated as a cup of wine to represent the payment and each node in the chain such as the book storefront, book wholesaler, distributor, editorial team and manga assistants and all related staff each get a portion of that payment to compensate them for their time and effort. Importantly it explains how paying for a whole volume of a particular manga or specific merchandise of that manga, goes further to supporting the author of that story than buying the magazine in which it's featured as the payment for the magazine is divided more among the various authors in said magazine but when buying the volume or even keychain related merchandise of your favorite manga, a far greater percentage goes directly to the author of said work.
Towards the end of the book, we see more discussions of foreign comics and how they draw influence and subsequently influenced manga in Japan. Examples include but are not limited to, the rise of vertical oriented webtoon comics in South Korea, anime style inspired comics in South Africa, Bande Dessinee made in France and Superhero comics in the US. An interesting sidenote is there are actually piracy sites within Japan specialized in translating and distributing foreign comics for a Japanese audience, I'm very interested to hear about those sites such as what foreign comics hold more appeal and sway than the native manga scene in Japan that holds so much sway over the rest of the world. All in all, the book was an excellent read, if you can find it on Amazon or even better, in physical form at a bookstore then I highly recommend it. Even for someone like me who's read through several manga series and surface level articles on the history and process of manga creation, there's plenty of in-depth information this book has to offer.