Jaqueline Berndt Bücher

Manga sind in den letzten Jahrzehnten zu einem wichtigen Element der japanischen Gegenwartsliteratur geworden. Welchen Platz sie sich erobert haben und welche Entwicklungen dem voraus gingen, ist Thema des vorliegenden Buches - der ersten Darstellung über Manga im deutschsprachigen Raum. »Die sorgfältig recherchierte Studie zeichnet nicht nur die Entwicklungsgeschichte dieses modernen japanischen Ausdrucksmediums nach, sie beleuchtet auch kritisch seine aktuellen Untergattungen: Jungenmanga, Mädchenmanga, Sachcomic und Pornomanga.« Neue Zürcher Zeitung »Längst hat die Manga-Welle auch Deutschland überrollt. Da ist es besonders zu begrüßen, daß nun endlich auch eine erste ernsthafte Analyse aus der Feder einer Japanologin vorliegt.« Comicmaganzin RRAAH!

Manga encompasses various aspects: it serves as a culture industry and a component of the 'media mix,' acts as a tool for 'Cool Japan' campaigns by the Japanese state, represents a visual language for a global fan culture, and provides a source of cute characters. Importantly, manga also consists of comics, primarily serial graphic narratives, where the media specificity influences the representational capacities that interest historians and gender studies scholars. This volume compiles German and English-language essays from a decade of manga studies, derived from book chapters and conference papers in non-comics-specific contexts. The essays do not merely utilize manga as cultural or Japan-related material; instead, they critically examine the aesthetic and cultural conditions and discourses relevant to such usage. Here, the focus is squarely on manga itself.

Since the late 1990s, Japanese comics, or manga, have become established as a globally-successful print medium. Striving for the transcultural and transdisciplinary exchange between Japanese manga researchers, European comics experts, and japanologists, this anthology addresses itself to readers who take an interest in cultural, historical, and theoretical reflections on reading manga. Its first part focuses on the case study of Nakazawa Keiji's Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen, 1973-1987), paying special attention to its reception in different cultures. Because of its subject matter Barefoot Gen provokes exploratons of comics' potential to narrate history realistically which is the object of attention in the second part. Finally, the third part highlights a variety of topics related to the impact of manga on other comics cultures. In accordance with the fact that Comics Studies can be conceptualized only as a multidisziplinary field research, the contributors to this anthology deploy a variety of angles: from Media History and Cultural Studies to Linguistics and Social Sciences as well as Gender Studies and Aesthetics.

Throughout East Asia, people use the same word to talk about comics. Its pronunciation differs slightly from language to language though. Western script conveys it as manhwa for Korean, manhua for Chinese, and manga for Japanese. This volume takes a close look at the influences comics from Japan have had on comics from Korea and China and points out differences and similarities along with cultural questions related to the problem.