Now let’s time-slip back two hundred and twenty years (like in a manga such as Olympia Kyklos by Yamazaki Mari, which slips between the Tokyo Olympics of 1964 and ancient Greece), to 1799. The artists and their characters are superstars, talked about in playgrounds, offices and homes throughout Japan. They’re published by Kōdansha, Shūeisha, Shōgakukan, Hakusensha, and many other firms. Walk into a bookshop in Tokyo today and the shelves are packed to bursting with manga books by Tezuka Osamu, Hagio Moto, Inoue Takehiko, Yamazaki Mari, et al.
