Helen McCarthy was in Kuala Lumpur recently to give a talk about Tezuka Osamu. In KL she was interviewed by Elizabeth Tai of the Malaysia Star who wrote an article — Veteran Otaku: How did an English lady get hooked on a Japanese phenomenon some three decades ago? OCLC’s new “Worldcat Identities” provides an overview [...]

Hey! I’ll be teaching a course in spring quarter on “What is the Global Information Society?” with my colleague, Miriam Conteh-Morgan. I’ve just written a post about it on my Japanese Studies blog – Spring Qtr: What Is the Global Information Society? Syllabus is here: http://is.gd/wHrp Manga is a good example, I think, of how [...]

I will be teaching the freshman seminar again in Winter Quarter 2009.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has a front page article about Japanese anime tourists visiting the Washinomiya Shrine in Washimiya, Saitama Prefecture, because of its association with Lucky Star (らき★すた) by Yoshimizu Kagami (美水　かがみ). This caught my attention because Saitama is Ohio’s sister state in Japan!

BT No. 876 is a special issue on “Is Manga Art?”

Has anyone else been following the US Navy’s release of a manga entitled “Manga CVN 73” and commissioned from Japanese cartoonists? Here’s a news report about it– Cartoon is Navy’s envoy to anxious Japanese By Philip Ewing http://www.navytimes.com/news/2008/06/navy_comicbook_061408w/ English and Japanese versions are available at: http://www.cnfj.navy.mil/Manga.html

Last month Toshinori Egami (江上敏哲), a rare book librarian at Kyoto University Library who has been visiting and cataloging rare books at Harvard-Yenching Library for the past year, came to Ohio State to see the manga collection in the Cartoon Research Library.

The last time I wrote about Shiriagari Kotobuki there was a nice link from the Completely Futile blog (Thanks so much!!!). That kind of positive feedback is really wonderful! In the latest November ’07 issue of Bijutsu Techo Kotobuki discusses the Choju Jinbutsu Giga, the 12th century scroll of frolicking animals that is often considered [...]

The Kyoto International Manga Museum opened on November 25! Its web site is a major new resource about manga: http://www.kyotomm.com/

The Columbus Anime Convention — “Anime Punch” will be next weekend!