A collage of Jiji Manga covers retrieved from the University Libraries’ Digital Collections
Inspired by American-style newspaper comic supplements, Jiji Manga was one of Japan’s first modern comic strips. It featured cartoons by Kitazawa Rakuten (北澤楽天) and his contemporaries, translations of foreign comics, as well as puzzles, photographs, and editorial articles. The Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum holds 476 of the 504 published volumes—making it one of the most complete runs in the world.
To help make this remarkable resource more discoverable, our library launched the Jiji Manga Wiki over fifteen years ago (a project still in progress). This past summer, thanks to the dedicated efforts of student workers Anqi Chen and Joseph Santiago, many gaps in the Wiki were finally filled. Their careful reading of prewar, non-standardized Japanese texts has allowed us to add complete contents transcriptions for almost every volume of the magazine—bringing us closer than ever to completion.
Jiji Manga Video Tutorial Transcription
So what exactly is the Jiji Manga Wiki? For starters, it is a rich database that provides detailed metadata, including the dates and thumbnail issues of every issue ever published of Jiji Manga. In addition to the transcription of contents, the database provides a list of keywords in Japanese and English, and on many pages there are references to related research materials. In addition to the Wiki, another great resource for viewing select pages of Jiji Manga is the OSU Libraries’ Digital Collections, which offers over 50 high definition pictures of the newspapers’ covers and internal pages .
To help researchers navigate the Wiki, the short video above introduces the Wiki and shows users how to navigate its search functions.
For those who wish to read along with the video, I’ve uploaded a transcript in PDF format for reference.
Four volumes (nos. 411-414) from the extensive run of Jiji Manga serials at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum.
