The institutionalization of Japanese comics in US public libraries (2000–2010)

Abstract

In the past ten years, Japanese comics, known as ‘manga’, have become institutionalized within key cultural sites in US culture – specifically the public library and local chain bookstore. In this article, I examine how this popular Japanese culture has become embedded within the everyday lives of Americans – particularly American teens – through its increased visibility and availability in US public and high-school libraries. To chart the increasingly prominent presence of manga books in public libraries since the year 2000, I draw on data I collected through conducting in-depth interviews with and administering online surveys to librarians located all over the United States. Importantly, I also examine the question of what it means to incorporate international cultures into mainstream American consumer and print culture. What does the process of Americanization (or ‘localization’) of manga mean for how this visual culture is received by its readers? If manga becomes embedded in these domestic cultural sites, is it received as an ‘international’ culture, and is it marked as ‘Japanese’ or even ‘foreign’ in certain ways? Finally, I examine how the material object, the manga book itself, has troubled easy classification and categorization in local libraries in productive ways.