ABSTRACT
IN RECENT YEARS, the Japanese comic book or manga has gained remarkable popularity outside Japan, particularly in the US and Europe (Hickley 2005; Fishbein 2007; JETRO 2005, 2006; Schodt 1996; Wong 2007). Manga has been widely read in the East Asian region, including Hong Kong, Korea and Taiwan, for a long time, but the current surge of demand for manga in the US and European countries does not seem to have been predicted. As the Japan External Trade Organization’s (JETRO) report Cool Japan’s Economy Warms Up (2005) shows, Japanese cultural producers and cultural policy makers are pleasantly ‘puzzled’ about why this is happening. There might be a variety of driving forces for this phenomenon: Western society’s increasing fascination with contemporary and popular culture in Japan; Japanese governmental agencies’ support for manga-related studies and events overseas; the critical and commercial success of Japanese animation, which is often based on manga; and a variety of manga for girls (‘shoujo’ manga), which immediately created a new, rapidly growing, market (Deutsche Welle 2002, 2006; Hickley 2005; JETRO 2005; Kelts 2007; Kinsella 2000).
