This is the first in a new weekly series from SBP where we collect important and exciting news related to Japan, publishing, and anything else that catches our eye.
Manga creators go international
MINT (Manga International Network Team) is an initiative under the Japan Arts Council with the goal of fostering up-and-coming manga creators with unique styles and perspectives.
The program aims to guide these manga authors to international markets, especially in North America, by connecting them to editors, publishers, and other foreign-language participants.
Itaru Kinoshita (@kurinosukeboy), author of Dinosaur Sanctuary, is one of the artists in the program.
Check out this great thread from Deb Aoki on X featuring all the participating creators.
Japan top destination for Chinese tourists during Lunar New Year
Japan overtook Thailand, which had been the top destination for Chinese visitors during the previous season. This is part of an overall increase in Japanese tourism during 2024, thanks to the weak yen.
Nikkei Asia
New works by Osamu Dazai published in English
Osamu Dazai, most famous for his bleak post-war novel Ningen Shikkaku (published by SBP as A Shameful Life and otherwise known as No Longer Human), has a new translation in English from New Directions. In The Beggar Student
a fictional writer in his thirties named Osamu Dazai has just mailed his publisher an awful manuscript, filling him with dread and shame. Wandering along a river in a nearby park in suburban Tokyo, he meets a high-school dropout and the two get into an intellectual spat. Eventually, Dazai finds himself agreeing to perform in the boy’s place that very night as the live narrator of a film screening . . .
No doubt Dazai’s star is on the rise thanks to the character of the same name featured in the manga and anime Bungo Stray Dog.
New Directions
Japan’s PM Ishiba visits Trump
The second head of state to visit during the new Trump presidency (after Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu) was Ishiba Shigeru. This is a testament to the countries’ close relationship. And by all accounts the meeting went well. However, Trump’s trade-war diplomacy is sure to be a sticking point in the future, although the Biden administration also took a tough position with respect to the Japanese acquisition of US Steel.
Read Tobias Harris’s breakdown of the meeting on
.Films of Nobuhiko Obayashi being shown at the Japan Society
This week, Japan Society Film is screening the films of Nobuhiko Obayashi, the director of the cult classic House (Hausu, 1977). On view are a selection of his films from the 1980s dealing with youth and nostalgia. Obayashi’s films are idiosyncratic and moving, and it is a rare treat to have them screened in the US. If you’re in New York, you shouldn’t miss it.
Japan Society Film: Obayashi ’80s: The Onomichi Trilogy & Kadokawa Years
Have you seen Expo 2025’s official mascot?
This is Myaku-Myaku. Slightly horrifying but, of course, also cute. The character will help welcome the upcoming World Expo held in Osaka, Japan, this year.