ABSTRACT
From the mid-1980s large corporations, cultural institutions, and government agencies reached out towards the manga medium and attempted to draw it closer to the state. This happened through two superficially antithetical trends – a censorship movement and an active process of cultural assimilation. The general process of assimilation by educational and cultural institutions has been aptly described as granting 'cultural citizenship' to manga, after a long period of 'outsider' or 'immigrant' status (Kure 1990 208–217). Tezuka Osamu's pedagogical manga stories, avant garde gekiga, new genres of political and economic adult manga, and information manga were positioned in the centre of this official promotion. The selective assimilation of specific genres of manga continued alongside a powerful trend, between 1990 and 1992, towards closer government regulation of the contents of all categories of manga.
