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The article discusses the intertextuality in Japanese mangas as a bridge between Europe and Asia, with recognizing this literary device as a literary strategy and a path towards the understanding between cultures. The intertextual references present in mangas can be a way to connect different bodies, spaces and times, uniting the East with the West and understanding the meaning of World Literature.

The article presents a critical discourse analysis of the masculinities of male characters in Doraemon, Japanese manga series, and explores the masculinities in Doraemon from three perspectives such as text, process, and society. The study discusses the masculine traits rooted in Japanese culture and the male characters in Japanese artworks. It provides insights into the gender characteristics of Doraemon comics and animation works, from the text to the process and social context.

This paper outlines the historical development of the US manga (Japanese comics) industry from the 1980s through the present in order to address the question why foreign cultural products become popular in offshore markets in spite of cultural difference. This paper focuses on local publishers as "gatekeepers" in the introduction of foreign culture. Using complete data on manga titles published in the US market from 1980 to 2006 (n=1,058), this paper shows what kinds of manga have been translated, published, and distributed for over twenty years and how the competition between the two market leaders, Viz and Tokyopop, created the rapid market growth. This case analysis finds two main reasons for the growth of the manga market in the US. First is the path dependency of market growth: without Viz's pioneering effort in the localization of manga in the 1980s, Tokyopop's standardization in the 2000s would not have boosted the market expansion, and vice versa. The second is stigma management by publishers. By selecting proper titles, censoring them, and establishing age rating systems, publishers sought to avoid the stigma attached to American mainstream comics and establish the legitimacy of manga as acceptable entertainment. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the changing discourse of gender and sexuality in Chinese youth culture by looking into the newly-emerged Boy's Love culture. The term Boy's Love (BL) originally referred to a popular manga[1] genre imported from Japan, featuring the love or sex story between "beautiful boys," and is created and consumed by females, especially young girls. By exploring China's largest BL fan community online, scrutinizing fan fictions, and interviewing with the fans, the research should contribute to a better understanding on why this seemingly male homosexuality genre attracts so many young girls, and the changing discourse of gender and sexuality in contemporary China youth culture in the process of globalization. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study will examine the portrayal of womanhood in Japanese anime and manga (comics) texts to better understand the Japanese female's concept of womanhood. With the increasing amount of anime imported into the U.S., American viewers are exposed to images and narratives that are ridden with Japanese cultural values that may sometimes conflict with the western gender politic. Within the Japanese societal framework, the public sphere has been dominated by the male's voice, including that of popular culture. However, since the emergence of the shojo (girls) manga industry during the 1960s-1970s, the female manga artists and readers seemed to have created a sphere where they could possibly resist, subvert, and reappropriate the existing patriarchal ideology that constricted them within limited social participatory roles. Depiction of womanhood in manga and anime is important not only because of the breadth of its readership and viewership in Japan, but also because they may function as an Althusserian ideological state apparatus. Manga and anime as media can function as a vehicle in maintaining the Japanese's own sense of womanhood, which may then become important tools into the insight into Japanese gender culture. I have selected the Japanese Fruits Basket television animation series because of its significance as a U.S. imported series that will be aired on Toonami in the near future. Through examining the female portrayals in anime texts, American viewers may develop a better understanding of the emerging cultural borderland of Japanese anime to the U.S. media. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the development process of one of our MANGA case based on our motivation to design an educational material to bridge their latent, unconscious, and tacit knowledge to practical and operational ones. Generally, MANGA has been used for beginners to help their understandings with a simplified story, however, we focused on its complexity to express embed multiple contexts, even unconsciously, reflecting our real-life situations. Along with the manner of narratives and case methods, we have organized the MANGA case for the classes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]