- “Study manga” is making education more engaging by combining historical accuracy with storytelling and illustrations.
- A 120-page manga explores Japan’s modernization journey, with characters personified by emotions to humanize historical figures.
- Produced by Nichibunken and partners, the manga is freely distributed to institutions and available online through open access.
"Study manga" educational comics that make academic material accessible to students are moving into new and diversified fields. Long popular for the teaching of history and biographies, they now address difficult medical, historical, and social issues, drawing readers beyond school children.
A recent case in point is "The Iwakura Mission: The Story of the Beginning Toward the Modernization of Japan", a 120-page manga published in March. Created by the International Research Center for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken), Kyoto Seika University, among others, this installment is part of a series. The first volume, published in 2023, featured historical figure Hosokawa Gracia. Instead of being commercially distributed, the manga is given to schools and educational institutions and is also available through the Nichibunken Open Access library.
The manga retells the historical 1871–1873 diplomatic mission of Tomomi Iwakura and other Meiji-era reformers to Western nations, based on actual events. Overseen by top Iwakura historian Professor Kazuhiro Takii of Nichibunken, the comic is made real with relatable storytelling.
Characters in the manga are personified through emotions: Hirobumi Ito conveys “joy,” Takayoshi Kido embodies “anger,” Iwakura expresses “sorrow,” and Toshimichi Okubo represents “pleasure.” These emotional archetypes help convey the political and cultural challenges Japan faced during its modernization journey. The manga even includes their real-life meeting with German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck.
Illustrator Sakino Hamada highlighted the richness of visual research that had been incorporated into the work, with painstaking detail given to hairstyles, attire, and even the thinking styles of the time. "More can be said through visuals," she added.
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