Appropriating Japanese Manga: Disability, Pop Culture, and New Ways of Articulating Experiences

Abstract

Theorisation of disability has remained limited to Western or South Asian countries, creating a substantial gap in popular academic understanding of how other Asian countries imagine and create the ideas of non-normative bodies. Looking further east, towards Japanese manga(s), this paper seeks to understand how its popularity with younger generations articulate experiences of disability and circulate the shaping of popular opinions. Briefly, this paper also examines manga’s focus on high-school narratives, which undercuts the dialectics of completeness that biographies offer. Primarily, it argues that the format of this relatively recent genre (combining images and prose) can work against the ableist hegemony of language that prevent enunciation of disabled experiences, thereby proving to be a fertile reactionary ground. In order to facilitate a holistic understand the politics of ‘Othering’ of people with disabilities, East Asian works must be studied in their contexts. This shift can substantiate the diversity of models of life that shape socio-cultural engagements with disability worldwide. Lastly, the paper makes a case for the propensity of manga format to being made tactile, which can subvert our understanding of what it means to ‘read’ a text and interact with it.