Books, Not Comics: Publishing Fields, Globalization, and Japanese Manga in the United States

Abstract

The market for Japanese comics, called manga, in the United States grew rapidly at the beginning of the twenty first century at a rate unprecedented in the publishing industry. Sales grew a remarkable 350% from $60 million in 2002 to $210 million in 2007 and did not begin to decline until the beginning of the recent economic downturn beginning in late 2008. No published research is yet able to account for this phenomenon in a manner that is both socially-situated and mediumspecific. In this paper, I provide such a sociological account of the rise of manga in the United States and its implications for the globalization of culture. Adapting Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical formulation of the cultural field, I argue that manga migrated from the comics field to the book field and that the ways in which industry practices, distribution networks, and target demographics differ between the two fields are directly responsible for the medium's newfound visibility. Furthermore, I argue that, despite the now-common transparency of the Japanese origin of Japanese titles, the American publishing industry's creation of manga as a category of books distinct from other comics is an ineluctable naturalizing process that ultimately erases from American consciousness the Japanese, the foreign, the other.

The Task of Manga Translation: Akira in the West

“…feels compelled to report on manga as the latest success story on the German comics market. Basically, this point in time is already the beginning of the schism in the German (as well as the whole Western) comics scene into manga fans on one side, and fans of American and European comics on the other -a schism that continues to the present day (Brienza 2009). …”

“…The problems caused by flipping are well-known (Brienza 2009): on the one hand, all characters appear to be left-handed (see e.g. Kaindl 2004: 200).…”

“…The translation practice back then, which Brienza (2009) characterises as "illogical" and "decidedly self-defeating", differed considerably from today's in which manga are usually published unflipped, in black and white, and in formats similar to those in Japan (Jüngst 2008, Brienza 2009). However, it was not the formal commonalities between translated manga and original American and European comics that seemed to attract the recipients' attention, but rather the purported differences in content.…”

The Field of American Media Sociology: Origins, Resurrection, and Consolidation

“…Furthermore, there is a certain overlap here with production of culture studies that consider mediation of popular culture in the context of globalization (Crane et al 2002;Crane 1992;Du Gay 1997;Dowd and Janssen 2011), specifically through TV (Bielby and Harrington 2008). More recently, other sociologists of culture undertook comprehensive studies of the celebrity culture industry (Gamson 1994;Rojek 2001;Van Krieken 2012), talk shows (Gamson 1998;Grindstaff 2002), and comics and manga (Brienza 2009;Brienza 2010;Brienza 2014;Brienza 2016;Kinsella 2000).…”

Early Meiji Manga: The Political Cartoons of Kanagaki Robun and Kawanabe Kyôsai

“…For example, Sharon Kinsella's work traces the continuing shift in understanding and packaging of contemporary manga in Japan from subcultures to the mainstream (Kinsella 2000 ). Casey Brienza, using a scholarly approach that focuses on the distribution and reception of Japanese manga in the United States, argues that the contemporary migration of manga from the "comics fi eld" to the "book fi eld," using Pierre Bourdieu's theoretical formulation of the "cultural fi eld," ultimately accounts for modern manga's current growing visibility in the USA (Brienza 2009 ).…”