Manga

In the 1950s cheap rental-library manga and children's magazines spread nationwide. In 1957 Tatsumi Yoshihiro coined the term gekiga, 'dramatic pictures', for darker, realistic manga aimed at older readers. The weekly boys' magazines Shōnen Magazine and Shōnen Sunday were launched in 1959, followed by Shōnen Jump in 1968, which became the best-selling manga magazine.

In the 1970s a generation of women artists, often called the Year 24 Group after their birth year of Shōwa 24 (1949), transformed shōjo manga with psychological depth and new visual styles. From the 1980s manga expanded into every subject and age group and began to spread abroad, with translations in many languages from the 1990s onwards.

Manga is classified less by genre than by the readership of the magazine in which it appears. Within each category, stories cover sports, romance, fantasy, science fiction, horror, history, mystery, work life, food and much more.

Most manga is first serialised, a chapter at a time, in weekly or monthly magazines printed on cheap paper, and popular series are then collected in paperback volumes (tankōbon). Reader surveys in the magazines strongly influence which series continue. Increasingly, manga appears first on smartphone apps and web platforms, and digital sales have become a major part of the market.

A manga artist (mangaka) usually writes and draws the work with a team of assistants and in close collaboration with an editor from the publisher. Manga is typically black and white, uses screentone patterns for shading, and is read from right to left, top to bottom.

Manga is sold everywhere in Japan, from convenience stores to multi-storey bookshops, and manga cafés (manga kissa) let customers read for hours. Several museums are devoted to manga and individual artists, many in their home towns.