Manga’s First Century: How Creators and Fans Made Japanese Comics, 1905–1989

In this expansive debut history, Horbinski, a submissions editor for Mechademia, upends conventional Western narratives about manga, arguing that Japan’s foremost popular art form is an expression of modernization and social change. She rejects the two most common historical framings—that manga is rooted in ancient Japanese art or emerged fully formed with Osamu Tezuka’s Astro Boy—and instead begins the account with ponchi-e, turn-of-the-20th-century satirical cartoons inspired by British humor magazines. From there, she depicts the art form as both a transnational and uniquely Japanese attempt to “get to the heart of contemporary customs and behavior,” as manga artist Okamoto Ippei wrote in 1928. (For example, 1930s “proletarian manga” offended fascist government censors and alternative manga of the 1960s was embraced by the antiwar youth movement.) Manga became part of global culture, sometimes in bittersweet ways; in one of the book’s regrettably rare photos, a harmonica band comprised of prisoners in a WWII Japanese American incarceration camp play a tribute to Norakuro, the canine star of a popular early manga. It’s a shame the book has so few illustrations, as Horbinski’s descriptions of older manga, many still unavailable in English translation, will leave readers eager to take a peek. Still, it’s a vivid ode to the variety and depth of an enduringly popular art form. (Oct.)