Manga
 

For manga fans, this book celebrates the excitement of manga’s cross-cultural appeal and its long history of breaking barriers. For those new to manga, it offers the chance to acquire literacy in what is fast becoming a universal visual grammar for our globalized age.

Arranged into six thematic chapters, with essays by leading scholars, this volume showcases the work of Japan’s most influential mangaka (manga creators) past and present, with printed manga extracts, original drawings, manga magazines, theatre, film, digital technologies and exclusive interviews with artists, editors and publishers.

Published in conjunction with a landmark exhibition at the British Museum, this is manga as Western audiences have never before seen it: diverse yet universally familiar, traditional yet intensely modern, rooted in the 2D printed page but effortlessly leaping out of it.

“I’ve rarely seen a show whose catalogue is so much more interesting than the display in the gallery. Not only are the drawings in the book dirtier, but there are far more illustrations of classic Japanese art. Surely this is what the exhibition should have been.”
Jonathan Jones, The Guardian

Published by The British Museum
and Thames&Hudson

First published in 2019
English
Paperback with jacket
260 x 190 mm
352pp
Over 324 images

Editors:
Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, Matsuba Ryoko