Hello and welcome to the history of Japan podcast episode 619, The Manga Revolution Part 1.

I've never done a scientific survey of my classes on Asian or Japanese history, but I strongly

suspect, and I'm not the only teacher of the subject who feels this way, that if I asked

the question, how many of you are here because of manga, the numbers,

frankly, would be pretty high.

And again, based on my discussions with other history and language teachers, I wouldn't

be alone in that expectation.

Thirty years ago, what drove people in large part to take Japanese history classes or language

courses in college was business. Today, it's mostly pop culture, and manga in particular is one

of the biggest drivers there is. Which is very interesting because on the one hand, manga as an

export for Japan is relatively modern.

The international market didn't really start to pick up until the 1990s.

But on the other hand, at least from a certain type of interpretation,

manga has a long history in Japan going back to the earliest printed materials in Japanese history.

manga in the sense that you would recognize today, what you would see if you go to your

local neighborhood bookstore, for example, is primarily, though not entirely, an invention

of post-World War II Japan, when two series in particular set the mold for how the form

would work.

Tetsuan Atomu, or Mighty Adam, known in the

U.S. as Astro Boy for Shonen manga, targeted at boys, and the Slice of Life series

Sazai San for Shoguljol manga, targeted at girls. But manga itself is far older. The word

manga has roots going back much further in Japanese

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