ABSTRACT
Selecting manga from train platform kiosks and introducing it to the roll call of official Japanese national culture required the complicity of a large number of unconnected institutions and companies. Cultural assimilation during the 1990s was a broad social process which involved and connected individuals and organizations with no specific relationship to the manga industry. These individuals and institutions had their own reasons for observing and participating in the promotion of manga. Government agents engaged in cultural policy, in particular Ministry of Education and Culture (Monhushō) officials, began to work closely with the manga publishing industry to develop new channels of cultural growth. Media other than manga became crucial to communicating the fact of its new direction and social status. The new power of manga was spread in articles and books written by manga critics, reports and reviews in national newspapers, advertisements placed in newspapers and on trains and billboards, and in television documentary programmes and radio broadcasts. The promotion of manga by other media demonstrated how critical the cooperative relationship between the different branches of the media is to allowing the fluid development of each.
