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This post written by Clint Oishinbo
by Tetsu Kariya and Akira Hanasaki
Oishinbo is a series about food. The main character, Yamaoka Shiro, is a journalist whose father is a famous gourmet. The newspaper Shiro works for is about to celebrate its 100th birthday, and as part of the festivities, the publishers would like to create the “ultimate menu” that features the absolute finest examples of Japanese food. Somebody figures that since Shiro’s dad is a food expert, Shiro must be the perfect person for the job. Well, maybe.
There are a few potential flaws in the plan. First, Shiro and his dad hate each other. Second, Shiro is kind of lazy. Plus, he’s often a jerk. Of course, when you meet his father, you see that being a jerk runs in the family.
Fortunately, Shiro does know a lot about food, so (with the help and encouragement of some of his colleagues), he sets off to find all the pieces for the ultimate meal.
A lot of Japanese food manga are based around cooking duels, and Oishinbo has plenty. These aren’t always formal cooking competitions, but each episode usually requires Shiro to outwit, or help someone else outwit, his father. Along the way, we learn a lot about Japanese cuisine, and we get to see several of the important themes for Japanese food. Taste isn’t the only sense in Japanese cooking. The appearance, scent, and even the feel of the food in your mouth are all important. Fresh ingredients are vital. Also, local ingredients are taken very seriously – in Japan, pretty much every town has its own special ingredient that either can’t be found anywhere else or is way, way better than what you find anywhere else. There are also a couple of recipes at the start of the book, and there are a lot of notes in the back, just in case you want to know more about Japanese culture and food.
Oishinbo is a very long series in Japan, but when it was published in the United States, Viz decided not to release the whole thing. What we get instead are volumes that each focus on one specific topic. The first one looks at the fundamental ingredients of Japanese cuisine. Others focus on sake (rice wine), rice dishes, and ramen and gyoza (potstickers), among other things. This means that some of the story is missing, but the individual episodes all share a common theme.
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Where to Find It
[linkplus name=”Oishinbo” url=”http://csul.iii.com/search/X?SEARCH=t:(oishinbo)&SORT=DX&l=eng”]
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This post written by Clint Vagabond
by Takehiko Inoue
[cover name=vagabond]
Miyamoto Musashi was one of the most famous swordsmen in Japan. Modern Japan’s idea of the model samurai is based on Musashi. He was a master swordsman who invented a new way of fighting. He was involved in many famous duels, although he did not want to fight. He was also an artist, philosopher, and writer (he wrote The Book of Five Rings).
Vagabond tells a story of Musashi’s life, starting from age 17. At that point in his life, his name was Takezo, not Musashi. The story starts just after the Battle of Sekigahara. Takezo and his friend Matahachi picked the wrong side in that battle and are left for dead, but they are rescued by a young woman and her mother. Soldiers from the winning side of the battle are on the lookout for survivors, so Takezo and Matahachi have to hide. During this time, Takezo discovers that he is pretty good at fighting (something he didn’t realize as he was getting beaten up in his first battle). He seems to think that hitting people in the head with his wooden sword is a good way to solve his problems.
Soon Takezo decides to return home, but Matahachi stays with the mother and daughter. Unfortunately, Takezo is still a wanted man, and the people from his village try to capture him. Eventually a wise old priest and Otsu, Matahachi’s fiancee, manage to lure hm out of hiding and convince him that killing people isn’t the best way to solve his problems. Takezo changes his name to Musashi and sets out to travel Japan and become the best swordsman he can be. He is still looking for fights, but now he wants to learn from them rather than to kill people.
Most of the rest of the series focuses on his quest, where he becomes not only a better swordsman, but a better person. However, several volumes of the series focus on Musashi’s arch-rival, Sasaki Kojiro, and we also see a lot of several other major characters.
Musashi gets into a lot of fights, and a lot of people get maimed or killed. Also, there is some nudity and sex.
How historically accurate is Vagabond? Well, it’s rather loosely based on the novel Musashi, by Eiji Yoshikawa. Musashi is partially based on history, partially basd on the many legends about Miyamoto Musashi and partially made up, so Vagabond is a manga based on a novel based on legends. Still, it”s a good story, and it’s got at least some real history in it.
For those of you who are interested in Japanese history and culture, Vagabond starts at the beginning of the Edo period. The man who won the Battle of Sekigahara, Tokugawa Ieyasu, soon controls all of Japan. Basically, just as Musashi finds out he’s a really awesome swordsman, over 150 years of war and rebellion end and peace breaks out. People like Musashi aren’t needed anymore, and because of his skills and his reputation, the government sees him as something of a treat.
At one point in the series, Musashi goes to the city of Edo, which doesn’t look that great and is built on a marsh. Edo is just being built, though. The new government, the Tokugawa Shogunate, needs a new capital, and Edo is on its way to becoming a major city. In 1868, Edo is renamed Tokyo.
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Where to Find It
[linkplus name=”Vagabond” url=”http://csul.iii.com/search/X?SEARCH=t:(vagabond)+and+a:(Inoue%2C%20Takehiko)&SORT=DX&l=eng” series=true]
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This post written by Clint Yakitate!! Japan
by Takashi Hashiguchi
[cover name=yakitatejapan]
How can I describe Yakitate!! Japan? Take some kind of action manga like Dragonball Z or Naruto and replace all the fighting and martial arts and ninja stuff with baking. Or maybe it’s like an all-bread comedy version of Iron Chef, except where the main character is dumb. There’s action and difficult training and secret techniques and excessive drama, all focused around making bread products. There are actually a lot of manga like this in Japan, but they never seem to get translated into English. The basic plot of a lot of these manga, including Yakitate!! Japan, is that some extremely talented cook travels around and defeats many rivals in cooking contests.
Yakitate!! Japan isn’t just about cooking, though. It’s also about comedy. Everything is just over the top – people often have out-of-body experiences after eating a particularly good pastry, for example, and the characters are all a little bit crazy. There are a lot of puns. Other times there will be a parody of some other manga. There is also crude humor from time to time, just so you know.
The hero is Azuma, a sixteen-year-old who wants to invent the best bread in Japan. He calls this Ja-pan, which is a pun, since “pan” means “bread” in Japanese. He’s dumb as a post, but he’s a genius when it comes to bread.
Kawachi is Azuma’s rival/sidekick. They meet when they both apply for the same job at the start of the series. Kawachi knows more than Azuma does about almost everything (he knows what a croissant is, for example), but he is nowhere near as good at actually doing the baking. Even though they work together, he would really like to beat Azuma one of these days.
Tsukino is the manager of the store where they work. She is about Azuma’s age, but she has a talent for finding and hiring skilled people. She is actually fairly normal.
Matsuhiro works at the same store. He’s big, loud, and fond of horses. Oh, and he has an afro. He might be the craziest of the bunch, but he is also very skilled.
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Where to Find It
[linkplus name=”Yakitate!! Japan” url=”http://csul.iii.com/search/X?SEARCH=t:(yakitate)+and+a:(Hashiguchi)&SORT=DX&l=eng” series=true]
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This post written by Clarissa Japan Ai
by Aimee Major Steinberger
[cover name=japanai]
This is kind of a travel sketchbook, by a professional artist (she works on Futurama and other things you’ve seen) who’s really into Japanese stuff–costumes, anime, manga, kimono, dolls–and decides to go to Japan with two of her friends. She’s six feet tall and white, so she really stands out! Fortunately for her, and for the reader, she has a really good sense of humor. You can follow along with her as she and her friends experience Japanese trains, food, and hot springs; dress up like geisha; get lost; generally have a lot of fun. She uses her own style of drawing, which is heavily influenced by manga but still unique. The drawings are supplemented with lots of handwritten explanations about what’s happening, and you’ll learn a lot of interesting stuff about modern Japanese pop culture, because she generally knows what she’s talking about. This is really a one-of-a-kind book, giving you the feel of a trip to Japan with three fun, kind of geeky (in a good way!) girls the way a travel guide never could.
Go here for a preview, or click on “OMAKE” for 60 pages of bonus sketches and photos that weren’t included in the published book! (One page has a tiny amount of back nudity of a seated person.)
By the way, if you decide to look for this in a bookstore, it might be in the manga section, even though it’s not manga. It was published by Go!Comi, a manga publisher, so Borders puts it in manga, but a used bookstore might not. You may have to ask.
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Where to Find It
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This post written by Clarissa What’s Michael?
by Makoto Kobayashi
Early volumes may be out of print, but each volume stands alone. This is one of the few American-comic-strip-like, purely comedic manga to be translated into English. It’s well-translated and hysterically funny series, examining the lives of housecats and making fun of both cats and humans. You might like it if you like really strange comedy–it’s a lot weirder than Garfield, and being Japanese, doesn’t feel the need for a punchline at the end of a joke. Sometimes weird things (like cats dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller”) just kind of happen, and then stop happening, and then the story is over.
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Where to Find It
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[linkplus url=”http://csul.iii.com/search/X?SEARCH=t:(what%27s%20michael)+and+a:(makoto%20kobayashi)&SORT=DX&l=eng” name=”What’s Michael” cchasone=some series=true]
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