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“Hey Jed, I’ve been reading manga recently and am really enjoying it, but all manga is originally Japanese, isn’t it!? Even if I read them and love them, there’s no way that I, someone who lives outside of Japan and can’t write in Japanese, would be able to make my own manga series... What’s the point of obsessing over this medium if I can’t ever contribute to it? ¯\(ツ)/¯”
Hi fellow manga-consumer 👋 I get what you mean and often feel the same way. After all, art is much more stimulating and gratifying when you are inspired to create something of your own✨
Fortunately, there are ways for fans of manga to publish and even potentially make a living from their inspired works.
This page contains my investigations into self-published works and manga produced beyond the borders of Japan.
The four headings below (in gray font on a black background, sorry…) act as a table of contents for this page since I ended up researching and writing quite a bit and needed to organise the material into topics. Click one one of the headings for the webpage to automatically scroll to it. Unfortunately, you’ll have to manually scroll around after that (sorry again, I’m still trying to figure out Notion’s quirks and features).
Manga is recognisably Japanese, which is largely due to the right-to-left ←← page layout that comes from the traditional reading direction (start at the top of a vertical line then read down to the bottom, then proceed to the next line from right to left) of handwritten Japanese calligraphy on scrolls, especially emakimono handscrolls. The beginning of stories that were printed on emakimono started from the rightmost side of the scroll, which was then gradually unrolled to the left by the reader as the story progressed (Japanese are usually right-handed b/c of cultural factors too). See some examples of emakimono below.
^Facsimile version of the ‘Tale of Genji’ printed on an emakimono handscroll, from https://www.facsimiles.com/facsimiles/tale-of-genji-scroll
^Unknown handscroll displayed at the New York Metropolitan Museum, from https://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2011/12/storytelling-in-japanese-art-at-the-met.html
(Above) ‘Potato-washing Woman at Yoshino’, by the poet and artist Matsuo Basho, from the Hail Haiku wordpress blog
(Right) ‘Emakimono painted on paper representing characters and customs of the various populations of the world, Edo period Japan’, image #2, from Invaluable Auction
Going ahead several hundred years after printing became widespread, this right-to-left ←← text layout is present on modern typeset formats too, such as newspapers and novels (websites and digital media, however, are typically typeset western-style with left-to-right →→ text).
^A few pages of the Japanese translation of ‘Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix’, book #5 in the Harry Potter series originally written in English by JK Rowling, from https://hereandtherejapan.blogspot.com/2006/11/harry-potter-in-japanese.html
^Excerpt from the Nikkei Shinbun newspaper, from https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/388240435720?srsltid=AfmBOop33k1z_yODQ9pNCntP-EaXXoF2Xb68OEWQXhhxGOmDU_HzPXaw
^A photo of one of the ‘Two Mimeographed Japanese Language Textbooks from the Tule Lake Internment Camp’ (yes, that is indeed Benjamin Franklin pictured on the right side page), from https://www.downtownbrown.com/pages/books/308117/two-mimeographed-japanese-language-textbooks-from-the-tule-lake-internment-camp
People in Japan are absolutely bonkers about manga. Remember the picture on the previous page from ‘Culture in Japan’ which mentioned that “over 6 million manga are read in Japan every week”? Well, ‘Culture in Japan’ was published in 2004, and the popularity of manga has only soared even higher since then.
Naturally, such a gargantuan fanbase is sure to contain numerous talented artists and creative writers, so what would happen if they were able to create works of their own without having to go to the trouble and financial outlay of official publication?
Doujinshi (同人誌) is the term for 'self-published works'. Any creations inspired by manga which are not published or distributed by a dedicated publishing company, yet are still sold to consumers, qualify as doujinshi. Plenty of doujinshi are sold at comic conventions and markets such as Comiket (held twice a year in Tokyo), and creators can also choose to self-publish on digital platforms such as Twitter/X or Bluesky, Webtoons, pixiv, etc. Many of these self-published creators can make decent money from their works. In fact, quite a few prolific manga artists started out as doujinshi creators by themselves or in groups called ‘circles’. (MENTION TOUHOU HERE TOO)
Click each image below to see an enlarged version in greater detail.
^Held twice per year, in winter and in summer, the attendance at Comiket is massive, and so is the exhibition space [from https://cocomootravel.com/2020/10/31/japans-largest-self-publication-market-comiket-in-tokyo/]
^Youtuber ‘Bob’s Japan’ made a great summary video of Comiket from the perspective of a tourist. Watch the video on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-1KVvMxwEo
^Webtoon is a platform where creators can self-publish (freely upload) their works and receive revenue from views. It’s the manga/graphic novel counterpart to YouTube, and can be integrated with crowdfunding platforms like patreon.
(If this blog was somehow printed on paper and bound into volumes, it could probably be considered as a non-manga doujinshi… or maybe not since it is just for the purpose of research or study rather than commercial benefit.)
Over time, the global consumption of manga has inspired many talented people and around the whole world to create works of their own in manga-style. For publishers, this represented emerging markets of artists and readers outside of Japan, and eventually led to non-Japanese manga being picked up (licenced?) and officially published by major publishing companies.
The term 'Original English Language' (OEL) manga is often used for titles which are created by English-speaking authors yet are illustrated in manga-style (other terms such as Amerimanga, global manga, western manga, etc. may be used too). Perhaps OEL may also be considered as graphic novels but GNs are usually illustrated in colour whereas OEL are typically monochrome.
The following titles of OEL are quite famous, and I’ve seen at least three (Bizenghast, Maximum Ride, and Cirque Du Freak) stocked in my local libraries. Most of these OEL works have been published by Tokyopop, which is evident in the left hand area of the cover. Publishers other than Tokyopop have been specified.
I have also included the nationalities of the creators of these titles to emphasize that talented manga creators do not only come from Japan. A question mark (?) instead of a flag means that I was unable to find info about a creator’s nationality. Click or double-click the picture of each cover to enlarge it.
The Dreaming, by Queenie Chan (Hong Kong🇭🇰-Australian🇦🇺), published by ifwg Publishing International
Bizenghast, by M. Alice Legrow (American🇺🇸)