Can Cool Japan be the Next Hot (Academic) Thing? : The State of Manga Studies in North America

The Japanese government’s Cool Japan campaign may have helped boost the global sales of manga, but its nationalistic undertone may have also rendered manga a less attractive subject in North American academia, which has, under the recent waves of globalization, pivoted away from nation-centered topics toward broader, more transnational themes. Reflecting this trend, recent works of manga studies in North America tend to highlight the transnational characteristics of manga while deemphasizing the medium’s historical connections to Japan. What has been largely missing in the field is an effort to analyze individual manga texts against the historical conditions that produced them.