[...]... done so far on manga literacy Having described the history of manga in terms of the de‑ velopment of graphic art and popular publishing, in chapter 3 we place the reading of manga in the history of literacy We then explore what it means to be literate in Japan and situate the study of manga literacy in relation to literacy studies in other contexts and approaches Chapter 4 focuses on manga readers themselves,... translations of manga and on Internet sites For many years, Frederik Schodt’s works, Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics and Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga, have served to introduce manga to the English-speaking world and to describe comic -manga connections More recently, Paul Gravett’s Manga: 60 Years of Japanese Comics provides a colorful and readable introduction to manga, with... Preface R eading Japan Cool: Patterns of Manga Literacy is a culmination of a project that has taken nearly eleven years to complete It began in response to the  findings from a survey to our college students on their reading habits and their reading histories Manga was repeatedly raised as something they were cur‑ rently reading and had read since childhood As teachers of reading and writing, we posed... in spite of the continual fluctuations in stylistic representation Children’s Manga Manga for children (kodomo manga) can be described as entry-level sho nen and ¯ sho jo manga. 32 Two examples of children’s manga magazines are COROCORO ¯ Figure 1.1.   COROCORO and Ciao (Covers from COROCORO and Ciao © 2007 by Shogakukan Reprinted with permission of Shogakukan.) Manga in the Discourse of Japan Cool  ... body of cultural products, practices, and sensibilities that is increasingly called “Japanese cool, ” cool Japan, ” or Japan cool. ” In our study of manga literacy, we document the connections to other media where possible, but the reason we focus on manga is that the manga characters, the stories, and indeed the literacy skills serve as a basis for these various media The poster for the 2007 annual Manga. .. not get a teacher nor go to classes Like many of our respondents, we read the manga again and again, concentrating first on works that were easy to understand Through this experience, we are convinced that manga literacy does not just happen and that reading manga is far from a mindless activity In 2000, we Manga in the Discourse of Japan Cool    began reading the weekly Morning, published by the large... avoid casting manga lit‑ eracy as particularistic, meaningful only in the context of Japan We suggest that the manga literacy practices and reading strategies resonate with those in other contexts, and that they inform us on how we understand literacy and media use in general In addition, we have provided a description of the study of manga This was uncharted territory To date we are not aware of a similar... the layout of the pages, illustrations, words, and scripts 22 A reader must process and interpret the meanings of these layers in order Manga in the Discourse of Japan Cool    to build an understanding of the text In addition, the reader acquires expectations of how the manga narrative will be organized Furthermore, the reader learns to recognize the intertextuality of past narratives and other voices... that the discourses surrounding the literacies must also be described We therefore attend to the discourse of manga The term discourse is used here in the widest sense, from attributes of media features and genres described above to controversies and representations of taste, ideology, and epistemology Our understanding of discourse is similar to Jacqueline Berndt’s explanation: Manga discourse. .. not limited to manga criticism; it also includes the ways in which social institutions—the mass media and the educational system, among others—define manga and its social relevance.”50 In the following chapter, we direct our focus to the definitions of manga, the history of manga s development and the ways it has been understood Manga in the Discourse of Japan Cool   19 Notes   1.  “Book -Reading Rate . xiii CHAPTER 1 Manga in the Discourse of Japan Cool 1 CHAPTER 2 The Nature of Manga Discourse 23 CHAPTER 3 Manga in the History of Literacy 69 CHAPTER 4 The Literacy Practices of Reading Manga 93 CHAPTER. class="bi x0 y0 w0 h1" alt="" READING JAPAN COOL READING JAPAN COOL Patterns of Manga Literacy and Discourse JOHN E. INGULSRUD AND KATE ALLEN LEXINGTON BOOKS A division of ROWMAN & LITTLEFIELD. described manga literacy in terms of the historical de- v elopment of literacy in Japan. In so doing, we provide an account of the kind of literacy skills taught in school to contrast with manga literacy. xii