Number of Selected Educational Manga Reaches 200!50 works added in November 2017 amid growing interest from libraries

The 200 works are divided into 11 genres, with the largest number categorized as “professions” (with 26 titles), followed by “society” (24), “history” (21), “life and the world” (20), and “art” and “diversity” (18 each). The artist with the most selections is Osamu Tezuka, with three titles including “Phoenix.”

Yasuhiro Yamauchi, founding member of the Manganight initiative to promote manga, is director of the Manga Edutainment administrative office and a member of the selection panel. He pointed out that with the selection of a series of educational manga, interest among libraries has been growing as libraries give increased attention to manga as a way of offsetting the shift away from reading books. He also commented that in recent years, libraries are playing a greater role as “third places” that are neither the home nor school, where children can spend their free time, and that this is appears to be leading to a gradual increase in demand for manga. As the number of manga being printed increases, the handbook published by The Nippon Foundation is becoming a valuable guide, and the Foundation is receiving many requests for the handbook from libraries. In particular, there has been a sharp increase in inquiries regarding educational manga from high school libraries, which accounted for roughly half of all inquiries in fiscal 2016. Mr. Yamauchi conjectures that this is because high school students who are considering careers read manga to learn about different types of work and the values of people who work in various jobs.

Mr. Yamauchi added that educational manga play a role in raising awareness of social issues, commenting, “Thousands of manga are published every year, so I think we should review the list of 200 in the future. In the interest of timeliness, it would be good to revise the list every five years.”