An exhibit in Thompson Library’s Gallery on World War I includes two examples of manga sugoroku (board games) from that era (published 1915-17)! See a short video and my post on the Info-Lit Toolkit blog:
BLOG: Visual Culture: Japan & the Asiatic Theatre.
VIDEO: Sugoroku: Japanese Board Games of the World War I Era

Note: Exhibit includes reproductions of these games — come by and play!

I’ve posted about growth of the manga collection before, but had some questions about this recently.  So here’s an update!

Annual figures for volumes/issues (item records) of Japanese language manga cataloged as part of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum since 1999 are below.  Records for these works are all available in the Ohio State University Libraries catalog. A browsable search is currently available by searching on keyword=manga and location =Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.

• July 2012: 17,938 Continue reading

Ken Yasumoto-Nicolson of What Japan Thinks has posted results of a Goo Ranking survey of manga readers in Japan:

You know a manga series is coming to an end when…

The poll was conducted by goo Research monitor group, with over half of the respondents in their 30s and 40s. Also, over 60% were female.

After reading this poll I find myself wondering what series will be ending soon?

At the same time, it is good to know that future researchers will be able to test these poll results against the publications themselves, as we build up a collection of manga magazines at Ohio State! (See the new collection development policy for details.)

Manga Magazines by Nunocardoso

Change is coming for users of Ohio State’s manga collection!  

A new Manga Collection Development Policy has just been developed, creating two collections:

• Manga in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum.  Complementing the primary collecting areas of the BICL&M, the manga collection focuses on manga magazines and newspapers, original artwork by manga artists, and translated manga.
• Manga in the general circulating collections:
  1. Manga.  Broadly representative collection focusing on well-known manga titles and examples of various genres.
  2. Secondary sources on manga and anime.  History and criticism monographs, cartoonists’ biographies and autobiographies, reference works, guides to manga, and related works are collected extensively.
  3. Translations of manga into English are collected selectively as duplicates of holdings in the BICL&M.

What does this mean for users of the manga collection?  At the moment, nothing has changed.   However, wheels are starting to turn which will eventually change many of currently-non-circulating manga housed in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum into items that can be borrowed from the general Japanese language collections!   Please read the full policy for (some) details about what will become part of the circulating collection and what will stay in the special collections of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Musuem.

When the change is made,  manga available for circulation will also be available for interlibrary loan.

Important note:  This will take time……   We have a lot of other work to do in the Libraries….  Please be patient!  This is a big change for us…

Tomorrow morning I will join colleagues from CIC universities for a discussion of manga in libraries in a special session of the Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs. Below I am posting the schedule and our proposal text.

Among other things we will be discussing our engagement with students and scholars using manga for teaching, learning, research, and outreach. Here are some websites we will be introducing:

Setsuko Noguchi’s libguide: http://uiuc.libguides.com/mangaresources

Chiaki Sakai’s libguide:http://guides.lib.uiowa.edu/manga-1

This blog (with newly revised links — still needs more work; suggestions are welcome!):https://library.osu.edu/site/manga

NCC’s Image Use Protocol site: http://www.nccjapan.org/imageuse/index.html

We will also review some of the issues that Alison Raab raised in her Master’s thesis–
“Manga in Academic Library Collections: Definitions, Strategies, and Bibliography for Collecting Japanese Comics” (2005)
http://etd.ils.unc.edu/dspace/handle/1901/233

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Tomorrow will be the start of Autumn quarter at Ohio State and the first meeting of this year’s freshman seminar, “Analyzing the Appeal of Manga.” I posted the syllabus as a page on this blog.

This will be the sixth time I teach this course. This year’s seminar is quite different from the previous ones, which explored works by various mangaka in different genres, in chronological order. This time we will take up the special topic of TEZUKA Osamu’s manga, which have been heralded by many as influencing and enabling the development of Japan’s rich comics culture. We will read seven manga by Tezuka, who is often called “manga no kamisama” (god of comics). In addition we will read two manga by URASAWA Naoki, who has acknowledged the influence of Tezuka’s manga.

Here are all the reading lists, with this year’s first:

AUTUMN 2010 “Analyzing the Appeal of Manga”

Tezuka, Osamu. Metropolis (1949)
Tezuka, Osamu. Astro Boy v. 3 (1964~65)
Tezuka, Osamu. Dororo v. 1 (1967~1968)
Tezuka, Osamu. Phoenix: Karma (1969~70)
Tezuka, Osamu. Ode to Kirihito. (1970~71)
Tezuka, Osamu. Black Jack v.1 (1973)
Tezuka, Osamu. Adolf v.1 (1983)
Urasawa, Naoki. Naoki Urasawa’s Monster. v. 1 (1995)
Urasawa, Naoki. Pluto. V.1 (2004)

Helen McCarthy. The Art of Osamu Tezuka. (Abrams Comic Arts, 2009)
Scott McCloud. Understanding Comics. (Kitchen Sink Press, 1993)
Natsu Onoda Power. God of Comics. Chapter 3 (Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2009 )
Frederik Schodt. The Astro Boy Essays. Chapter 3 (Stone Bridge Press, c2007 )

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Japanese Book News No. 63 (Spring 2010) has an article, Iguana Girl Turns Manga Legend, by Kawakatsu Miki about the famous shojo mangaka, Hagio Moto.

The Ohio State University Libraries has strong holdings of Hagio Moto’s works. So far not much has been translated into English — we have A, A´ = A, A prime. Her “Hanshin” was published in No. 269 of The Comics Journal.

October 13th’s Lantern carried an article by Katie Vitek about the Analyzing the Appeal of Manga Club (AAMC): OSU Student Club Explores Graphic Novels

October 28th’s Lantern has another article by Katie Vitek about the Cosplay Club: OSU Students Play Big Roles in Cosplay Club

I serve as faculty adviser for both clubs. AAMC was initiated by students who took my first year seminar, Analyzing the Appeal of Manga. Many of the students in the Cosplay Club also are my former students. Moreover, the author of the two articles, Katie Vitek, also took the seminar in her freshman year. Congratulations to Katie for her great reporting! Also to Hillary Ash, Samantha Hall, Lea Schuffert, Sarah Smith, and everyone in AAMC, as well as to Katrina Webber, Brittany Pawlinski, Lauren Bills, and others in the Cosplay Club. You are contributing to the vibrant intellectual culture at Ohio State!

It is fun for me to watch students build on their interest in manga in different ways. Manga can be a source of inspiration for further research in many different fields. In that regard, there is a famous story that Honda’s efforts to develop a humanoid robot, Asimo, were inspired by Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy. Whatever the case, I’ll always be interested in hearing from former students who are pursuing their interest in manga in some way, even tangentially.