Manga de Dokuha

Manga de Dokuha (まんがで読破 Manga de Dokuha, lit. Reading Through with Manga) is a series of manga versions of classic literature. Published by East Press, the aim of the series is to introduce average manga readers to important literary works they would otherwise not be aware of or willing to read. The series received press coverage for its publication of often controversial political treatises. East Press published best-selling versions of the communist novel Kanikōsen and Karl Marx's Das Kapital, as well as Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Overview

Manga de Dokuha was launched by East Press in an effort to expose young Japanese people to classic works of literature in a manga format. Kasuke Maruo produces each book in the series and outlines the narrative, while artwork is created by Variety Art Works. The books in the series were often sold through easily accessible convenience stores, including 7-Eleven. Maruo said that "We thought that maybe we could get people to read well-known works perceived as tough reads by turning them into manga and selling them at convenience stores." In July 2008, the series' first 17 entries had sold over 900,000 copies. The average sales for an entry in the series were around 35,000.

Significant entries

Kanikōsen and Das Kapital

File:Kanikosen manga.jpg

First manga edition of Kanikosen, published by East Press on October 2007

Kanikōsen (蟹工船) (published in English as The Crab Canning Ship or The Crab Ship) is a 1929 Japanese novel by Takiji Kobayashi. Written from a left-wing political perspective, the book follows the crew of a crab fishing ship living under oppressive conditions while being exploited by capitalists. The novel, which typically sells around 5,000 copies a year, became an unexpected bestseller in 2008 and sold over 507,000 copies that year. The same year, East Press published its own manga version of the novel, which sold over 200,000 copies. In response to the popularity of the communist-themed Kanikōsen manga, East Press published a manga version of Karl Marx's 1867 treatise Das Kapital. This version presents the original Marxist anti-capitalist principles via the fictionalized tale of Robin, the owner of a cheese factory who experiences guilt for exploiting his workers and betraying his father's socialist principles. Maruo stated that "I think people are looking to Marx for answers to the problems with capitalist society. Obviously, the recent global crisis suggests that the system isn't working properly." East Press's edition of Das Kapital sold 6,000 copies in its first few days of publication.

The renewed success of both the novel and manga versions of Kanikōsen, as well as that of the manga Das Kapital, were often discussed in the context of the rising popularity of left-wing literature in Japan, the late-2000s recession affecting Japan, and growing membership of the Japanese Communist Party. According to Waseda University literature professor Hirokazu Toeda, "Kanikosen is discussed and analyzed every time a critical social issue occurs — the disparity society, severe labor conditions, consumer product falsification, random killings. This is a unique characteristic of the ‘Kanikosen’ boom and it now is symbolizing or mirroring all those negative aspects of current day Japan." Daisuke Asao, a senior office of the National Confederation of Trades Unions, said that "the situation of those labourers in the book is very similar to modern temporary workers: the unpredictable contracts, the working under heavy supervision, violence from supervisors, the widespread sexual harassment and the pressure against unionisation are all things that modern Japanese recognise every day." Anti-poverty activist Kosuke Hashimoto responded to the books' popularity, saying "I think many young people in Japan are afraid of the future, and that fear is sometimes turning to anger. Reading comics might only be the start." Social welfare advocate Kaori Katada said that "Poverty has been a growing and visible problem for some time, but now people are looking for answers about why it is returning. That's why they're turning to these books."

Mein Kampf

A version of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf (わが闘争 waga tōsō) was published in October 2008. The book is Hitler's autobiography, in which he outlines his Nazi political ideology. The manga version of Mein Kampf was a minor commercial success, selling 45,000 copies. However, it also proved to be controversial. The Financial Ministry of Bavaria, which owns the copyright to the book and has refused to publish it in Germany, issued a statement saying that manga was an inappropriate medium for Hitler's writing. Bavaria's former Japanese representative Toshio Obata stated, "Even 60 years after the end of war, Nazism remains a sensitive issue in Germany. Did East Press exhaust discussions before publishing it? Did it consider the difference between Japan and Germany as to how manga is viewed as a medium?" Maruo defended its publication, saying "'Mein Kampf' is a well-known book, but relatively few people have read it. We think this will provide clues about Hitler as a human being, as to his way of thinking that led to such tragedy, even though he was dismissed as a 'monster.'" The publication of the manga helped reignite the debate in Germany as to whether the ban on the book should be lifted.

List of entries

Title	Original author/editor	ISBN	Released Date
The Broken Commandment	Tōson Shimazaki	ISBN 978-4-87257-812-6	July 2007
Rashomon	Ryūnosuke Akutagawa	ISBN 978-4-87257-834-8	October 2007
Crime and Punishment	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	ISBN 978-4-87257-835-5	October 2007
Kanikōsen	Takiji Kobayashi	ISBN 978-4-87257-836-2	October 2007
Night on the Galactic Railroad	Kenji Miyazawa	ISBN 978-4-87257-866-9	November 2007
War and Peace	Leo Tolstoy	ISBN 978-4-87257-867-6	November 2007
On Decadence and The Idiot	Ango Sakaguchi	ISBN 978-4-87257-868-3	November 2007
The Brothers Karamazov	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	ISBN 978-4-87257-889-8	January 2008
The Setting Sun	Osamu Dazai	ISBN 978-4-87257-890-4	January 2008
An Encouragement of Learning	Fukuzawa Yukichi	ISBN 978-4-87257-909-3	March 2008
The Red and the Black	Stendhal	ISBN 978-4-87257-910-9	March 2008
King Lear	William Shakespeare	ISBN 978-4-87257-932-1	March 2008
Bushido: The Soul of Japan	Nitobe Inazō	ISBN 978-4-87257-908-6	April 2008
The Metamorphosis	Franz Kafka	ISBN 978-4-87257-911-6	April 2008
Light and Darkness	Natsume Sōseki	ISBN 978-4-87257-933-8	May 2008
No Longer Human	Osamu Dazai	ISBN 978-4-87257-810-2	July 2008
Kokoro	Natsume Sōseki	ISBN 978-4-87257-811-9	July 2008
Thus Spoke Zarathustra	Friedrich Nietzsche	ISBN 978-4-87257-972-2	August 2008
Night Flight	Antoine de Saint Exupéry	ISBN 978-4-87257-973-4	August 2008
Faust	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe	ISBN 978-4-87257-974-1	August 2008
Divine Comedy	Dante Alighieri	ISBN 978-4-7816-0002-4	October 2008
The Prince	Niccolò Machiavelli	ISBN 978-4-7816-0004-8	October 2008
The Dancing Girl	Mori Ōgai	ISBN 978-4-7816-0003-1	October 2008
Mein Kampf	Adolf Hitler	ISBN 978-4-7816-0011-6	October 2008
Dogra Magra	Yumeno Kyūsaku	ISBN 978-4-7816-0012-3	October 2008
Das Kapital	Karl Marx	ISBN 978-4-7816-0021-5	December 2008
The Possessed	Fyodor Dostoyevsky	ISBN 978-4-7816-0022-2	December 2008
The Sickness Unto Death	Søren Kierkegaard	ISBN 978-4-7816-0023-9	January 2009
Les Misérables	Victor Hugo	ISBN 978-4-7816-0024-6	January 2009
Moby-Dick	Herman Melville	ISBN 978-4-7816-0080-2	March 2009
The Great Gatsby	F. Scott Fitzgerald	ISBN 978-4-7816-0081-9	March 2009
Don Quixote	Miguel de Cervantes	ISBN 978-4-7816-0082-6	March 2009
The True Story of Ah Q	Lu Xun	ISBN 978-4-7816-0083-3	March 2009
Das Kapital, Volume II	Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels	ISBN 978-4-7816-0124-3	April 2009
Ulysses	James Joyce	ISBN 978-4-7816-0084-0	April 2009
In Search of Lost Time	Marcel Proust	ISBN 978-4-7816-0085-7	May 2009
Hagakure	Yamamoto Tsunetomo	ISBN 978-4-7816-0125-0	May 2009
The Merchant of Venice	William Shakespeare	ISBN 978-4-7816-0168-7	June 2009
The Origin of Species	Charles Darwin	ISBN 978-4-7816-0167-0	June 2009
And Then	Natsume Sōseki	ISBN 978-4-7816-0200-4	July 2009
Pandora's Box and Villon's Wife	Osamu Dazai	ISBN 978-4-7816-0201-1	July 2009
Water Margin	Shi Naian	ISBN 978-4-7816-0207-3	August 2009
Manifesto of the Communist Party	Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels	ISBN 978-4-7816-0208-0	August 2009
Macbeth	William Shakespeare	ISBN 978-4-7816-0221-9	September 2009
The Sorrows of Young Werther	Johann Wolfgang von Goethe	ISBN 978-4-7816-0220-2	September 2009
The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde	Robert Louis Stevenson	ISBN 978-4-7816-0241-7	October 2009
A Christmas Carol	Charles John Huffam Dickens	ISBN 978-4-7816-0242-4
Fool's Life	Ryūnosuke_Akutagawa	ISBN 978-4-7816-0275-2
The Book of Five Rings	Miyamoto Musashi	ISBN 978-4-7816-0274-5
Kojiki	Ō no Yasumaro	ISBN 978-4-7816-0276-9
Nihon Shoki	Prince Toneri	ISBN 978-4-7816-0277-6
The Life of an Amorous Man	Ihara Saikaku	ISBN 978-4-7816-0314-8
The Tale of Genji	Murasaki Shikibu	ISBN 978-4-7816-0313-1
Analects	Confucius	ISBN 978-4-7816-0313-1
One Thousand and One Nights	Complied work	ISBN 978-4-7816-0326-1
I am a Cat	Natsume Sōseki	ISBN 978-4-7816-0347-6
Byosho Rokushaku	Masaoka Shiki	ISBN 978-4-7816-0348-3
War of the Worlds	Herbert George Wells	ISBN 978-4-7816-0363-6
The Interpretation of Dreams and Introduction to Psychoanalysis	Sigmund Freud	ISBN 978-4-7816-0364-3

External links

• Official East Press Manga de Dokuha website (Japanese)