Japanese University Plans Massive Manga Library

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Japanese University Plans Massive Manga Library



Meiji University in Tokyo, Japan, has announced plans to open an academic library featuring more than two million manga comic books and other pieces of animation history, dating back to before World War II.

The library - tentatively named the Tokyo International Manga Library - is scheduled to open in early 2015, and will feature a collection of two million manga "comic books, animation drawings, video games and other cartoon industry artifacts" in an attempt to promote serious academic study of the industry and its history, reports the AFP [http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5gJAzSuC3AOKkfxHPbRwOEBevmQKg].

Manga has been taken lightly in the past and there has been no solid archive for serious study," said Susumi Shibao, a Meiji University library official. "We want to help academic studies on manga as part of Japanese culture."

Recently, Tokyo has been encouraging efforts to promote Japanese culture beyond the technology (and bizarre tastes) that the country is traditionally known for. Plans to build a ¥11.7bn ($128m) museum for Japanese cartoon art and pop culture were axed after the former government was ousted from power in August elections, with the new officials deriding the idea as a "state-run manga cafe" that would do nothing to benefit the country's economy.

The library in question will reportedly hold everything from Astro Boy and Doraemon to more modern series - I hear they have five shelves reserved for Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece alone. If you can name a noteworthy title, it'll probably be in there. Two million is a pretty big number, don't you think?


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Xorghul

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Jul 2, 2008
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"Recently, Tokyo has been encouraging efforts to promote Japanese culture beyond the technology (and bizarre tastes) that the country is traditionally known for."
Yeah, and a manga library with two million books isn't bizarre.

Japan, you just did it again.
 

John Funk

U.N. Owen Was Him?
Dec 20, 2005
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Xorghul said:
"Recently, Tokyo has been encouraging efforts to promote Japanese culture beyond the technology (and bizarre tastes) that the country is traditionally known for."
Yeah, and a manga library with two million books isn't bizarre.

Japan, you just did it again.
Have you heard of the Library of Congress? It has comic books, too.
 

Et3rnalLegend64

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Jan 9, 2009
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Does this include light novels? And how does taking out a book to read help your academic study? Unless you're doing a report on it maybe.
 

hansari

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May 31, 2009
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CantFaketheFunk said:
Have you heard of the Library of Congress? It has comic books, too.
There are a lot of archives like these out there, but did any of the better known ones include video games before now?
 

RavingPenguin

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Jan 20, 2009
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Et3rnalLegend64 said:
Does this include light novels? And how does taking out a book to read help your academic study? Unless you're doing a report on it maybe.
Libraries are for reading, researching is only a peice of its function. My univeristy has hundreds of comics and graphic novels, not necessarily for reseaching but for light hearted reading.
 

Amnestic

High Priest of Haruhi
Aug 22, 2008
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Et3rnalLegend64 said:
Does this include light novels? And how does taking out a book to read help your academic study? Unless you're doing a report on it maybe.
It's a form of literature/art. Watching how the medium has evolved over time could be kinda difficult, so I can see why they'd want to consolidate all the works into one 'archive' so to speak. If you were a cultural scholar I could see it being important as well, since manga is ingrained into Japanese culture.

There's probably other academic justifications for this as well, I just haven't thought of them :p
 

God's Clown

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Aug 8, 2008
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When they finish that place I am going to move into it, secretly if I must. I loves me some manga.
 

VincentX3

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Jun 30, 2009
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Bloody fu**ing awesome.

Only the japs get the interesting books =/ everyone eles is stuck with math, history, biology.....

sigh..
 

Gigaguy64

Special Zero Unit
Apr 22, 2009
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RavingPenguin said:
Et3rnalLegend64 said:
Does this include light novels? And how does taking out a book to read help your academic study? Unless you're doing a report on it maybe.
Libraries are for reading, researching is only a peice of its function. My univeristy has hundreds of comics and graphic novels, not necessarily for reseaching but for light hearted reading.
......im going to your university, now.
this is really cool.
 

neoman10

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Sep 23, 2008
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From before World War II, eh? I'd love to read something about the empire of Japan mangaized actually, and I usually stay away from manga
 

AvsJoe

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May 28, 2009
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This is a great idea. Manga is a fantastic form of art and I'm glad it's getting its own museum to reflect that. Japan may be the world's largest exporter of WTF but I applaud the person who came up with this.
 

Captain Pancake

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May 20, 2009
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CantFaketheFunk said:
Xorghul said:
"Recently, Tokyo has been encouraging efforts to promote Japanese culture beyond the technology (and bizarre tastes) that the country is traditionally known for."
Yeah, and a manga library with two million books isn't bizarre.

Japan, you just did it again.
Have you heard of the Library of Congress? It has comic books, too.
The royal library in london is required to keep one copy of every known work of literature. Even porn.