Some more photographs; crowded places deserted; in-between things.

All photographs posted today are my own.

This is what I'm thinking on.

In order of appearance: first two photographs, my own; Jenny Holzer; promotional poster for the film Still the Waters; statuary from the AIC collection (the Americas, I believe), photo my own.

For this week, a little essay on translation (and non-translation) in the manga that appear in English on the internet these days. That is...well, better just to read it if you're interested in
a) in-between things
b) how on earth you've come to understand what you're reading whenever you're reading manga, and/or
c) manga, scanlation, the internet, the Japanese language, the English language...

Having promised to touch on all of these vast territories-


(J. Murray 2014)

Manga in (Selective) Translation: the Floating World of Cultural Normativity and Cultural Commentary

This paper will address the phenomenon of the dissemination (and continuous discussion and regeneration) of Japanese cultural norms through translated manga. This task will be accomplished by means of an examination of several instances of language use (both JVL and Japanese text in translation, henceforth JTT) in manga. One part of the thesis here is essentially that language use in manga, and thus the cultural commentary and value production accomplished through it, is dependent on, or rather more articulately exists within the frame of Japanese culture. The in-depth analysis of pages from several manga subsequently offered in this paper is offered to the end of demonstrating the inseparability of a Japanese cultural frame of reference from the reading of manga, even manga in translation. The implications of this reality will be discussed insofar as they relate to the existence of a culturally in-between space in which manga are consumed by non-Japanese readers. 

I should note that my own position relative to the world of manga is that of a seasoned reader of translated manga, as well as other translated material heavy in cultural content, both specifically Japanese and more generally East Asian. Many of the linguistic features and cultural tropes present in manga are therefore common knowledge for me. In the course of explaining the communication taking place in manga, I have largely referenced my own understanding of these elements of the form. It is true, however, that there may be variant understandings of the cultural and linguistic lexicon of Japanese graphic novels. It is also true that there are various levels at which readers of manga, and especially readers of manga in translation, may understand these texts. All of this is best kept in mind while reading this paper. There is certainly room for future research evaluating the extent to which readers’ understandings of common themes and styles of communication in manga overlap. Due to constraints of time and scope in research, this paper is greatly reliant on my own knowledge and interpretation of manga, JVL and the Japanese language. The terms with which I refer to the stylistic phenomena present in manga are drawn from Toni Johnson-Woods’ Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives as well as from the ocean of reader commentary on manga-hosting websites. Terms which are likely to be new to the reader of this paper will be defined wherever possible. 

In approaching this subject through research, I have looked to the diverse examples of  metalinguistic discourse found in the work of Asif Agha, Keith H. Basso, and Norma Mendoza-Denton. From Agha’s Language and Social Relations I carry into my analysis of manga the idea of the centrality to social processes of the dialectic of norm and trope. This is, in fact, precisely the area in which most social commentary in manga locates itself, and I have found Agha’s articulation of the concept useful in my own attempts to describe manga as a site for the active examination and formation of culture, both in Japan and among English-speaking readers. With reference to the idea that “...cultural models...can be manipulated through tropes performed by persons acquainted with such models to yield variant versions,” (Agha 2007: 5), I have attempted to illustrate the peculiar territory of manga, within which Japanese culture can be an “open project” in which individuals, through conscious manipulation of norms and tropes, examine culture and form counter-culture, even if these actions cannot be replicated as openly in a non-fantasy context. 

From Basso’s Wisdom Sits In Places I have drawn an awareness of the cohesive social properties of storytelling. Basso’s theory of place-names and the narratives that accompany them as the material that binds one generation of Western Apache to another, and all Western Apache to the land they inhabit, proved useful as a model to adopt in my own treatment of these very universal Japanese narratives. Although the two narrative cultures may differ in their particulars, Basso’s rationale for the repetition inherent in the Western Apache mode of storytelling and teaching through place-names- summarized in his quotation of Dudley Patterson, his Western Apache teacher and friend- “You must think about [what happened at the places long ago] and keep thinking about it. Then your mind will become smoother and smoother.” (Basso 1996: 127)- provided an important starting-point for my own attempt to understand the reading of manga as a practice, its wider importance and effect on its readers and the populations and cultures they constitute. Although the theme of storytelling as a practice through which community is generated is not treated extensively within this paper, it has informed the manner in which I perceive manga as capable of generating and binding together communities, a perspective which proved crucial to my articulation of a theory of enculturation through manga. 

Finally, I have taken inspiration from Mendoza-Denton’s semiotic analysis of signifiers of gang allegiance in Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice among Latina Youth Gangs. In a very practical sense, her manner of arranging analytical text and accompanying illustrative images has informed my own organization of these same elements in this paper. I have imitated her decision, in particular, to re-describe in verbal terms phenomena which were originally visual- for the purpose of fostering reader understanding of these phenomena, and because it often proves necessary to render visual phenomena verbal in order to analyze them verbally.

Most of this paper will be taken up in describing phenomena within JVL and JTT. The manga genres sampled include shoujo and shoujo ai (girls’ manga and manga treating romance between girls or women), shounen ai and yaoi (manga depicting innocent and sensual love between males, respectively), and josei (manga directed at women more broadly, which may address any number of themes). It is important to understand that the genres sampled here do not represent the entire vast spectrum of JVL and JTT present in the many distinct genres of manga in circulation today. I have limited the scope of the study in the hope of fostering in the reader a nuanced understanding of the visual and linguistic conventions of one part of this spectrum, in order that this in turn may facilitate future academic ventures into the broader world of manga. It will prove useful to the reader of this paper to understand that any manga may fall under several descriptive categories simultaneously. The manga images in this paper will be grouped for analysis by theme or motif, with the objective of isolating and analyzing areas in which translation is incomplete or complete but inadequate on its own for producing in the uninitiated reader an understanding of the proceedings in a manga. Of necessity, we’ll enter this this complex linguistic milieu by way of a short introduction to honorifics in the Japanese language, and their presence in manga.

(Note: the separation of one complete utterance into several speech bubbles is significant because it affords the dialogue of manga a rhythm. This separation will be acknowledged in quotations by the introduction of parentheses between parts of an utterance separated in the original image by speech bubbles. Please also be aware that the manga sampled in this paper are arranged such that events proceed from top to bottom and from right to left, and names of Japanese authors and characters are cited in the following order: [Family name] [Given name].)

HONORIFICS

Readers may or may not be familiar with the basic conventions of address in Japanese. The briefest explanation would consist in the statement that there are various levels of politeness with which one can address another person in the Japanese language. The level of formality with which a person is speaking would, in Japanese, be notable not only in prefixes and suffixes attached to common and proper nouns, but also in verb conjugation. Importantly, there is often no easy way to translate the exactitude of formality as indicated by verb conjugation and sentence structure within manga. It is for this reason that suffixes and prefixes, as well as titles (such as those indicating family membership or otherwise denoting closeness) indicating the relationship of one character to another, are often merely transliterated during the scanlation process. This convention circumvents the problematic alternative options of removing prefixes, suffixes and titles from translated text altogether, or attempting to translate them into the most similar terms available in the English language. Either of the aforementioned options would be problematic for various reasons. First of all (and perhaps most urgently for the translator), manga  are often dependent on linguistic markers of formality and relationship for characterization or plot development. Below we will take a look at a two-page sequence from the manga Hanaya no Nikai de (Above the Florist’s Shop). 

In this sequence, Aki addresses a woman he has never met before. They are both standing outside the flower shop owned by Ryuu, a friend of Aki’s family and someone with whom he’s recently begun a slow-moving romantic dalliance. Aki suspects that this woman might be Ryuu’s ex-girlfriend. To confirm his suspicion, he asks whether she has any business with Ryuu. The way in which he asks, in itself, tells us several things. Aki’s question is phrased, “Do you have business/ with Ryuu...san?” First, we should take note of the fact that Aki readily uses the name Ryuu (the given name of the character to whom he is referring) rather than Ryuu’s family name. The formulation [family name]-san would be the normal choice if Aki were conscious of propriety and addressing a person known, for the purposes of the question, neither to himself nor to Ryuu. In this case, Aki, who is characterized as an exceedingly polite young man, is conscious of propriety (hence the san, a moderately formal gender-neutral suffix most closely comparable with Ms. or Mr. in English). Aki most likely uses Ryuu’s given name because of his suspicion that it is this name by which the woman would know him if they had previously been romantically involved. Amongst close friends, family and long-term lovers, the informality of a given name may be the preferred mode of address. By using san (which, we can see given the ellipse, has also been added on after a moment of hesitation over which suffix to use), Aki contrives to conceal from the woman the exactitude of his own closeness to Ryuu. However, on the following page, Aki relinquishes the distance from Ryuu he has affected through the use of san when he says, “It’s about/ Ryuu-chan”. Having decided suddenly to address Ryuu’s suffering as he perceives it to this woman, who he believes may be able to offer Ryuu some kind of absolution, he indicates his own closeness to Ryuu (hence making a claim to the kind of authority that would allow him to make a request such as he is about to make) with the substitution of the more informal suffix chan for san. Chan is a suffix with a connotation of affection often added to children’s names, especially girls’, but in this case the informality of the use of chan in conjunction with Ryuu’s given name would merely indicate to the woman some kind of long-standing relationship between Aki and Ryuu, most likely semi-familial. 

As readers have hopefully seen, the decision of translators to transliterate rather than omit or culturally approximate honorific language in manga is in many ways a decision of convenience- it would be incredibly difficult for a translator to make available to a reader all of the information present in the two small speech events just examined without the inclusion of transliterated honorific suffixes. The retention of honorific language out of convenience, however, has cultural consequences. Often, no explanation is given in scanlated manga of such ‘basics’ of the Japanese language as honorific suffixes and family titles. This supposes a significant repository of knowledge in any and every reader of such manga; knowledge which is culturally specific to Japan. 

TROPES

The linguistic form of this cultural knowledge is sometimes particular and at other times approximate. Understanding a transliterated title- okaa-san (mother), for example- or being familiar with suffixes such as chan, san, and sama- these specific comprehensions are distinct from comprehension of tropes which may appear in manga both visually and verbally in a wide array of applications. Below are several manga sequences in which body language has been used to allude to or portray overtly a certain cultural trope. The first page shown comes from Ashita no Ousama (Tomorrow’s King), a manga by Yachi Emiko mapping the life of a budding playwright and theatre director. In the sequence of action shown on this page, Fujinosuke, a famous kabuki

 actor, demonstrates for a clumsy actor the proper way to come to a sudden stop while spinning. He is then shown walking neatly back to the corner of the rehearsal space (accompanied by sound notation TAP TAP TAP TAP) and seating himself, ankles tucked underneath him and hands pressed together on his lap. The phrase ‘prim ly’ hangs in the air above his seated body. The members of the theatre company, as well as its director, are shown looking on in delighted quiescence. The background in the actors’ panel is black, one conventional indication of surprise. Speech bubbles filled with ellipses overhang the gaggle of actors, as does the descriptor ‘silence’. The cheeks of the actors and the director are lightly dusted with blushlines, which in this case, together with their eyebrows, slightly arched in surprise, and the absence of many of their mouths, connote their awed pleasure at Fujinosuke’s display. 

In one page, then, we have information presented to us in several layers. First, we see a few simple motions made by a character. We are then shown his audience’s reaction to these motions. Embedded in these images (which themselves are visual descriptions, containing indicators of meaning such as complexity and scale of drawing, facial expression and body language) are verbal descriptors such as ‘prim ly’ and ‘silence’; descriptors that take the form of acoustic approximations, such as ‘TAP TAP TAP TAP’; backgrounds (also known as screen tones) which function as conveyors of the emotional state of the characters drawn over them (the bubbles of light in the tone behind the girl in the panel at the page’s upper left); and even the positioning of the panels composing the page (the tilting of the top two panels toward one another suggests an off-balanced moment, and mirrors Fujinosuke’s spin, while the three panels comprising the bottom half of the page are neatly lined up and fitted together, echoing and emphasizing the manner in which Fujinosuke is moving as he returns to the corner and sits. 

Now that the layers of the page have been identified, it is time to address the trope in use here, which is itself multilayered. When Fujinosuke stops suddenly, this is taken as a mark of his kinesic genius. When he then walks primly over to the corner and tucks his legs beneath himself to sit, this serves as further evidence of his status within the manga, which is that of the socially awkward genius artist who, moreover, belongs to the elite, elegant and somewhat unattainable world of traditional theatre. The skillfulness of Fujinosuke’s movements and their ‘primness’- these are two markers of separate tropes which come together in his character. The reactions of his onlookers serve to give credence to both these tropes, telling the reader that what has long been considered admirable is still admirable, that what is traditional is not only polite but aesthetically pleasing and worthy of respect. More than any other single visual representation of tradition, the image of Fujinosuke sitting with legs tucked under him and hands together in his lap is the image of traditional Japan. It is an image that recurs with extreme frequency in Japanese visual material of all kinds, and carries many different specific meanings in distinct contexts. Here, Fujinosuke’s return to this sitting position after his demonstration illustrates for us not only the kinetic good breeding of the traditional artist, but also his modesty and shyness. After doing something brilliant, he returns to a corner and sits in a posture that makes his body as compact as possible while simultaneously indicating that he has returned to politely paying attention to the theatre company (this sitting posture and more formal variants of it are used in many learning situations in Japan, including tea ceremony and many different martial arts; the posture itself therefore signifies by association and formalized tradition the position of one who is respectful and attentive to his hosts, or surroundings). 

The second page we’ll be referencing in our exploration of tropes comes from a series called Nodame Cantabile, a josei manga drawn and written by Ninomiya Tomoko. The series chronicles the music and romantic foibles of an eccentric young pianist (Noda Megumi, an affectionate combination of whose first and last names appears in the title of the series) and an orderly and determined aspiring conductor (Chiaki Shinichi). In the first panel of the page below, Nodame kneels, nightgown-clad, in a seemingly demure pose on the bed which, through some plot contrivance, she and Chiaki will be sharing that night. This panel is drawn with a perspective that intimates that the scene is being viewed by another character from a distance, and indeed in the next panel we see Chiaki, blushing slightly, and the free-floating thought, embellished with radiating line segments indicating surprise, ‘Kneeling?’. We then move down to the larger image of Nodame, also blushing, overlaid with a screen tone filled with hearts, saying, ‘Sempai...’. Finally- this is a comedic manga after all- the punchline comes when it is revealed that Nodame has three large books spread out before her on the bed, and she entreats Chiaki to read them to her. 

The interaction depicted on this page uses the trope of the kneeling position shown in the page from Ashita no Ousama, but with a different emphasis, and to different effect. Here the position clearly alludes to the more specific sub-category trope of the Japanese housewife kneeling before her husband. This particular scenario typically occurs either upon the return home of the husband after a day’s work, or somewhere around bedtime. Here, the kneeling pose exemplifies the subtle duality that characterizes much of Japanese culture as it is portrayed in manga. It is simultaneously submissive and seductive, either a calculated way for the wife to entice while appearing innocent, or a genuinely innocent act which, in its intimation of a desire to please, entices. Nodame’s use of the term sempai to address Chiaki is a continuation of the same theme- the term is used in Japanese to refer to a person older or more experienced than the speaker, and furthers the submissive tone of the sequence. Here the trope is played upon for the purpose of a humorous characterization of Nodame; after seeing Chiaki’s surprise and embarrassment or pleasure at the seductive innocence of the tropic pose, we are shown the true extent of Nodame’s innocence: she is not aiming to please in any sense, nor even thinking of Chiaki romantically despite the shared bed, but rather imploring him to help her with her studies. The reader can only pity Chiaki and laugh at this typically Nodame-like move. Again, the translator has made no attempt to annotate either the visual language of this page or Nodame’s use of the respectful term sempai, assuming that the reader will be familiar enough with the visual and transliterated language of submissiveness present not only to understand the cultural reference, but also to understand that it is being manipulated to humorous effect. 

The third appearance of the kneeling trope that I would like to explore here occurs in Pochamani, a manga by Hirama Kaname, which portrays a deviant version of the tropic relationship of an overweight girl with a handsome and popular boy (a trope particular to manga and other similar media). The title refers to the obsession with chubbiness that characterizes the male protagonist of the series, pochama being a slangy term in Japanese for a person who enjoys soft or squishy things. In the page from the series that appears below, its female protagonist, Hashimoto Tsumugi, is receiving a lecture on Tagami Yukiya, the male protagonist of the series, from the leader of his fan club. She and several friends, as well as the fan club leader, sit before a table serving as a miniature shrine to Tagami. In this panel (at the bottom right of the page), Tsumugi is the one adopting the refined kneeling posture, which is visually and verbally contrasted with the sitting poses of the other girls, particularly her friend Mami and the fan club leader. The leader of the fan club sits in an elevated position, perching on a chair next to the table with her legs crossed and one hand to her glasses, next to which there appears a little distorted diamond meant to convey the glinting of the glasses, itself a trope often used in the depiction of obsessed types meant to be understood as slightly threatening or off-putting, especially in their feverish or persistent invasion of the privacy of others. The fan club leader is clearly portrayed here in the role of instructor, due to her elevated positioning more than to any other single visual element of her depiction. As for Mami, who is characterized as a martial-arts obsessed tomboy, she sits on the floor before the shrine with both arms and legs crossed, such that it is possible to see beneath her skirt. The artist has added shadowing here so that the line of Mami’s underwear is only just visible. Another of the girls, of whom we can see no more than the back of her head (featuring a sweat droplet, another stylized symbol conveying anxiety or discomfort), says in the subtext of the panel (that is, the text which appears outside of the speech bubbles but which, depending on the context, can be understood as either characters’ secondary thought or commentary, and which helps to establish the situation presented), ‘Mami, your undies are showing’. Within this multilayered context, which draws on several tropes simultaneously to set up a contrast between Tsumugi and the other girls, we are being assured by the author of Tsumugi’s ladylike demeanor, which, together with her kindness and self-confidence, serves within the manga to offset the cultural undesirability of excess fat on the body and make Tsumugi’s chubbiness permissible. In order to subvert one trope (the trope of the unequal and doubt-riddled relationship between a very handsome boy and an overweight girl), Hirama employs several other tropes normatively. 

Again here, the reader is expected to understand the nuanced operation of the mangaka- and it can be assumed, furthermore, that most readers of manga read principally for entertainment, not for edification, the implication of this assumption being that most readers of manga do not have to process JVL and JTT in an overly conscious manner. Given the rhythm of reading online (where it is possible to move from one page of a scanlated manga to the next simply by depressing the arrow key of one’s keyboard, which can be accomplished in a fraction of a second), readers might spend as little as several seconds on a single page of manga. The ability of readers of scanlated manga to smoothly process the complex layers of cultural information it often contains points at a certain level of enculturation. It is my hypothesis that this familiarity with Japanese culture, which may not be employed or applied in any context but that of consuming such entertainment-based media as manga and anime, contributes to the existence of a kind of in-between place of cultural affiliation for the readers of manga in translation. The fact is that readers of manga in translation possess culturally specific knowledge. This knowledge is knowledge both in and out of translation, and can also exist more vaguely in some state in between translation and origin (as does transliterated Japanese phrasing). It is shared, furthermore, by other members of a community of readers who may or may not interact with one another directly, if at all, but are defined by this knowledge and its application to the particular pastime of reading manga. 

I would like to advance the related hypothesis that readers of manga in translation are effectively participating in a process of enculturation which- although circumscribed by the specific topics from the Japanese life-world to which manga confines its discourse; the treatment of these topics, often through tropes; and the limited extent to which these topics and their treatment by mangaka can be translated into English- mimics the enculturation process through which individuals living in Japan might come to understand their own language and culture. Particularly formative of the parallel nature of the enculturation process represented by the reading of manga is the tendency of mangaka to embed plot developments in a specifically Japanese seasonal calendar of events- especially common in the shoujo, shounen-ai or yaoi and josei genres. Often, the relationships between manga characters are developed in conjunction with the passing of important events in this calendar, which comprises a combination of traditional and modern occasions. These frequently include spring and the beginning of a new school term, the pairing of Valentine’s Day with White Day (a Japanese holiday on which men who have received chocolate on Valentine’s Day return the favor), and the Japanese celebration of Christmas, which idiosyncratically is focused on lovers rather than family; equally often included are cherry-blossom viewing, the Japanese celebration of the new year by temple-visiting, and specifically Japanese festival events such as Golden Week and Obon. In this manner, readers of manga are often called upon to pay close attention to the details of the observation of these events, which may include culturally specific behaviors such as the wearing of certain clothing, the eating of certain foods, and the visiting of certain places, as well as linguistic patterns associated with all of these behaviors. 

In conclusion, I have suggested the following in this paper, citing examples from scanlated manga texts: first, that manga translated and made available online by scanlation teams  present readers with a complex combination of translated and non-translated material, many elements of which are specific to Japanese culture; second, that the readers of such manga display, even simply in their manner of reading, a familiarity with complex issues, including Japanese cultural tropes and norms; and third, that this familiarity can be attributed to the fact that the reading of manga constitutes in itself a kind of enculturation- that, much like living, reading in this case conditions readers into certain responses and comprehensions, which they circularly apply to continuous reading and comprehension of manga, which is simultaneously a visual and verbal discourse on Japanese culture, and serves both to propagate and question social norms, often through manipulation of tropes. 

References Cited

Agha, Asif. 

2007 Language and Social Relations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Basso, Keith H. 

1996 Wisdom Sits in Places: Landscape and Language among the Western Apache. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.

Hirama, Kaname. 

2012 Pochamani, vol. 1. Tokyo: Hakusensha. 12.

(accessed at “Mangahere”, http://www.mangahere.co/manga/pochamani/c001/12.html)

Koyama-Richard, Brigitte. 

2007 One Thousand Years of Manga. Paris: Flammarion. 

Johnson-Woods, Toni.

2010 Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives. Continuum International Publishing. E-book edition.

Mendoza-Denton, Norma. 

2008 Homegirls: Language and Cultural Practice among Latina Youth Gangs. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub.

Ninomiya, Etsumi, and Akira Sugano. 

2007 Hanaya No Nikai De, vol. 8. Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten. 36-37.

(accessed at “Mangahere”, http://www.mangahere.co/manga/hanaya_no_nikai_de/v02/c008/36.html)

Ninomiya, Tomoko, and David Walsh. 

2005 Nodame Cantabile, vol. 15 ch. 85. New York, N.Y.: Del Rey/Ballantine Books. 21.

(accessed at “Mangahere”, http://www.mangahere.co/manga/nodame_cantabile/v15/c085/21.html)

Schodt, Frederik L.

1996 Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Kodansha.

Schodt, Frederik L. 

1997 Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press. 

Takahata, Isao. 

1999 Juuni seiki no anime-shon, kokuhou emakimono ni miru eigateki narumono [Cartoons in the Twelfth Century, Aspects Evocative of the Cinema and Animation in Twelfth-century Painting Scrolls Listed as National Treasures]. Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten. 

Yachi, Emiko. 

2006 Ashita No Ousama, vol. 5. ch. 43. Tokyo: Bunkoban. 5. 

(accessed at “Mangahere”, http://www.mangahere.co/manga/ashita_no_ousama/v05/c036/5.html)

Putting to the side for the moment the talk about scanlation that was mentioned in the last post, here are some nice manga for you all, should you wish to peruse. They are scanned and translated by fans in most cases because they have not yet been licensed/not yet become widely available/gone out of print in the good old U.S. of A.. If you feel any compunction about reading them in this fan-translated and posted form, I suppose it is always possible to send the mangaka or publisher a check for the amount  consistent with the extent to which you have benefited from their work...

Anyhow, the following are some of the few (out of the thousands) which I love most, accompanied by short writings to recommend them. There will be a few others forthcoming. The majority of these you can find online pretty easily by searching using the title of the manga and the words 'manga scans' or something of that persuasion. I would recommend looking specifically on the website mangapark if you have trouble finding a manga, as for some reason they tend to offer a lot of pleasantly weird and less-known manga. For some other reason I seem to have misplaced the names of the authors that correspond to all of these series, so please allow me to post them later as well. Enjoy!

1. Shinya Shokudou

A manga focused on a small café which runs from midnight until seven in the morning. The owner of this café cooks for each guest what he or she is really craving at the moment, mostly japanese home cooking, whether traditional dishes or japanese-style modifications of western food. The stories, told from the perspective of the cook, touch lightly on the guests' lives  as they come in and out of the café. The characters are pulled from the japanese night. Depending on how much japanese pop-culture you've absorbed through media, you may be able to identify in this story some staple stereotype characters from modern japanese storytelling and especially from the manga world; the hostess, the yakuza, the boxer, the traditional singer, the 'mama' from the gay bar. This set of stories may leave you with a sweet feeling and strong cravings for strange foods you've never eaten. It is also a good choice if you only want to read a little bit at a time, because it isn't as much of a black hole as some other series. It's a bit more mature, somehow. Ah, and the drawing is very pleasing to look at. 

2. Nodame Cantabile

Drawn in a somewhat simpler, cleaner and more angular style than the many romance manga in the world featuring sparkly-eyed heroines, Nodame Cantabile is the lengthy and hilarious story of two extremely gifted pianists attending the same university, one a wealthy and uptight young man whose dreams of becoming a composer are hampered by his intense fear of airplanes, the other a disgustingly messy girl from a family of seaweed-processors with a stunning memory for music and aspirations of becoming an elementary school teacher. Many other, more minor characters will wander across the story and into your affections while Nodame and Chiaki battle it out with themselves and one another. This is also the rare romancemanga that doesn't bother much with the details of the characters' physical relationships, there being no more than a few kisses throughout the one hundred and thirty-six chapters. It doesn't suffer at all for this.

3. The Embalmer

Drawn with a tendency toward gothic-lolita style, this manga focuses on a relative rarity in the japanese funereal world- an embalmer. The embalmer in question is a youngish japanese-american man with a pseudo-disorder compelling him to get into immediate contact with warm skin after finishing each job. Each story is built around a different episode in the embalmer's work life, and each explores a different possible reason for embalming rather than cremating a corpse. The story returns often to the idea of the human need to see in order to grieve, and to grieve in order to continue with life. 

4. Chihayafuru

This is another long series, not yet completed, which focuses on Chihaya, a high-school girl obsessed with the competitive version of the strategic japanese card game known as karuta. It is similar to a sports manga in the sense that most of the action occurs during or in the periphery of competition and preparation for competition, and the characters as team members learn from one another how to be complete human beings. It differs from a sports manga in the sense that the subject it takes as its point of departure is deeply rooted in japanese poetry and other aspects of traditional japanese culture. What this means is that the series is, among many other things, a very enjoyable exploration of the way in which we become attached to inanimate- or even intangible- objects as symbols of those things in life we have found important.

5. NANA

This series takes as its starting place the chance relationship of two girls named Nana who move to Tokyo at the same time to pursue very distinct dreams. The artist, Ai Yazawa, has a very skinny and punky style of drawing (another of her popular series, Paradise Kiss, is about a rebellious group of fashion students), and somehow unsurprisingly this series focuses eventually on a group of artists and musicians who are entangled in an increasingly complex web of desire, repulsion and greed. The idea of the organically created family of originally unrelated individuals who become necessary to one another through coincidence and time is central to this series. This is a manga with dramatic emotional high and low points. One piece of the perspective it creates that I particularly enjoy is the idea that hate and love, fate and absurdity are two sides of the same coin, and the coin doesn't necessarily come to rest. This manga is somewhat sexually explicit and it may make you cry.

6. Gokusen

This is definitely a manga at which you should be prepared to laugh until your stomach hurts, but it also has some quite tender moments of the sort that can make you smile while you're walking down the street months after reading it. The main character is the daughter of a yakuza (japanese mafia) boss AND a new teacher at the local school for delinquent boys. From the lascivious little-old-man principal of the school and his scheming brother to the good-looking son of a high-ranking police official who takes an interest in the contradiction-packing new homeroom teacher, the story is full of nobility, stupidity, good and downright bad intentions, rivalry and family, of one sort or another. This is my favorite yakuza manga. The drawings themselves are unusual and humorous, and the steamrollering one-character girl-power message certainly doesn't hurt, either.

7. Ashita no Ousama

A manga about a country bumpkin college girl who is pulled into the world of theatre and eventually becomes a playwright. This is one of the older manga in the list in terms of year of publication. I read this one quite a long time ago, so I don't remember too many of its details, but I can recommend it enthusiastically based merely on the echoes of my happiness at reading it at that time.

8. Natsuyuki Rendezvous

The main character of this series is a young man with bad eyesight and an unrequited love for his boss, the widowed owner of a flower shop. Even just the covers of the volumes are beautiful, but the author has provided a twist to the story in the form of the ghost of the flower-shop owner's husband, who lurks around making things difficult for Hazuki (our main character). This series, too, is not without its sadnesses, but there is something very special about some of the words which accompany its images; it's quite poetic. In fact, many manga are, in part due to the layout of the pages, which cause phrases to be fractured and to float in between images and characters, as well as to sum up in few and precise words some very grand or particular sentiments and situations.

9. Oishii Kankei/ A Delicious Relationship

Oishii Kankei is a story about restaurants and chefs, narrated by the ambitious, energetic and lighthearted daughter of a defunct gourmand who has decided to make a life for herself in the world of cuisine. The story explores many of the practical aspects of cooking and running a restaurant, as well as some of the more whimsical, making the point that both are deeply necessary to a chef. With some very nice characters, including the cantankerous aging grande dame of the japanese cooking world and her two brightest protégées (rivals) as well as the main character's pampered family and friends, restaurant regulars, restaurants sponsors, restaurant designers, a host of psychologically damaged chefs, and a few random but crucial others, this series is also one you may want to read all at once. 

10. Fukuyadou Honpo

This is not really a manga to revere for its drawings. Rather, it should be appreciated for the way it makes you want to eat japanese confectionery and, of course and probably more importantly, its revelation of the culture of the traditional business world of Kyoto. Even the insults exchanged by the characters are art, and all the lacquered relationships in the story have to be scraped at layer by layer before the characters can get their most serious feelings across to one another. The main characters are the female owner of the oldest existing vendor of traditional japanese sweets and her three very different daughters. This is one of the stories during which all of the characters grow up, although their growing-up takes longer and comes in a different order than you may expect.

11. Nononono

A sports manga focused on a ski jumper who disguises herself as her brother in order to fulfill her family's dreams of a medal in the olympics. This one is for you if, however much you may not want to admit it, you enjoy stories in which the characters are revealed to be overpoweringly brilliant at something and an indispensable part of the story is devoted to the awe that is felt toward them. This is the sort of story classified in the manga world as "gender-bender", which often involves brushes with danger as the character who is, for whatever reason, in disguise as a member of the opposite gender attempts to carry out his or her mission without being discovered by those around him or her, even those with whom he or she becomes close throughout the story. This of course produces a certain psychological atmosphere, which is heightened by the background stories of the various characters vying for a position on the world stage of ski jumping in this particular series. This story does include a certain amount of nudity and some other mature content.

12. Kimi wa Petto/ Kimi wa Pet

Another sincerely funny story, taking as its main characters a homeless dancer and an overachieving career woman who come together as pet and owner. This series, like so many manga, introduces a special perspective in the exploration of the difficulty of being intimate with others, and the related but not identical problem of being true to oneself, or being one's true self.

13. Bara no Tameni

A beautifully drawn relic of the eighties, or at least eighties style, revolving around a hard-working girl of twenty or so with overefficient fat storage who is left alone after the death of her grandmother and must go to live with her heretofore unknown family, a set of beautiful and cold half-siblings with flower-themed names, the children of a famous actress. As this main character cleans the mansion inhabited by her lazy siblings and attempts to piece together her previously unexplored origins, the story caresses the borders between different kinds of love. This series is something like a comedy-mystery-love-story-tragedy with some pretty noble themes and outrageous characters that you may well find yourself becoming sincerely attached to just as the main character does.