Manga Madness

Travel Blog  •  Julia Ross  •  04.02.09 | 1:14 PM ET

For all you manga fans out there, here’s a round-up of breaking news from both coasts. A San Francisco-based publisher recently released seven translated volumes of the classic Oishinbo series, which follows the adventures of a young food journalist as he searches for the “ultimate menu.” (Tintin meets sashimi?) The New York-based Japan Society is running an exhibit called “Krazy! The Delirious World of Anime + Manga + Video Games” through June 14. And in Washington, D.C., the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery is showing “The Tale of Shuten Doji,” an exhibit of scrolls and screens depicting the popular Japanese folk tale as action thriller—an Edo period art form considered a forerunner to manga. 

I’m not a huge manga fan, but I saw the Sackler exhibit last weekend and thought the parallels were pretty cool. The 18th- and early 19th-century screens do indeed read like early comic books, and you find yourself rooting for the samurai as they slay a giant, flesh-eating demon and save several waifish Japanese maidens. A lot more engaging than Grimm’s Fairy Tales, for sure.

Tags: Art, Museums, Asia, Japan, North America, United States, New York, New York City, Washington, D.C., Shrinking Planet

Julia Ross is a Washington, DC-based writer and frequent contributor to World Hum. She has lived in China and Taiwan, where she was a Fulbright scholar and Mandarin student. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, Time, Christian Science Monitor, Plenty and other publications. Her essay, Six Degrees of Vietnam, was shortlisted for "The Best American Travel Writing 2009."


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