Manga. European Images in Japanese Comics

The first study in Russia of the mechanisms of cultural transfer of verbal and graphic images from Western culture to Eastern!

Yulia Alexandrovna Magera – Japanologist, candidate of cultural studies, researcher of modern Japanese popular culture. Worked at the Japanese School of Anime and Manga – the Moscow representative office of the International Japanese University Kibi in Russia. Since 2019, a senior lecturer at the Institute of Classical East and Antiquity of HSE University and the Institute of Linguistics of RGGU. Author and compiler of a series of collections of articles "Manga in Japan and Russia" and "The World of Comics". Curator of the exhibition "Roman-ga-do: the Path of Russian Manga" (St. Petersburg, 2018). Scientific consultant for the exhibition "The Art of MANGA" (St. Petersburg, Moscow, 2023–2024). Author of a course in the additional education program "Manga: History and Theory of Japanese Comics" at HSE University. Organizer of the international conference "The World of Comics", held in Moscow since 2016.


Manga (Japanese: 漫画, Hiragana: まんが, Katakana: マンガ) – a type of comics that originated in Japan in the early 20th century. Initially, the term "manga" referred to caricatures and comedic sketches in Japanese newspapers, but soon came to denote comics in the Japanese language.
This book presents the first study in domestic Japanology of the mechanisms of sociocultural transfer of verbal and graphic images from Western literature, painting, sculpture, animation, and cinema into the Eastern variant of comics known as manga. Using examples of classic and contemporary works ("The Divine Comedy", "Crime and Punishment", "Death in Venice", etc.), it demonstrates how Japanese manga authors, using techniques of citation, stylization, or parody (irony), play with borrowed images from European artistic culture in various ways and adapt them to their creative needs. The author analyzes the comics of Osamu Tezuka ("Mighty Atom", "Princess Knight"), Shigeru Mizuki ("Kitaro's Night Stories"), Riyoko Ikeda ("The Rose of Versailles"), Moto Hagio ("Heart of Thomas"), Keiko Takemiya ("To Reach Terra"), Go Nagai ("Devilman"), Eiichiro Oda ("One Piece"), Satoru Noda ("Golden Kamuy"), Suehiro Maruo, and others. For the first time in Russian, a translation of the chapter from Shigeru Mizuki's manga "The Water Man Sampae" is presented.
This beautifully illustrated edition will make a wonderful gift for manga and comics enthusiasts, fans of Japanese and European art, as well as Japanologists, cultural scientists, art historians, and anyone interested in cross-cultural studies.


"Images of European artistic culture are organically woven into the system of Japanese comics, obeying its expressive means and genre orientation. Therefore, recognizing such images often becomes a challenging cognitive process that depends on the level of the reader's erudition and visual literacy or the hints available in the manga itself," – Y. Magera