Reading the Literary Canon through Manga in the Twenty-First Century

Abstract

This special section of Japanese Language and Literature, “Heian Literature in Manga,” attempts to offer tools for understanding the multiple functions that manga appropriations of literary texts written over a millennium ago perform in present-day Japan. Focusing on manga adaptations of six Heian-period (794-1185) works, the contributors examine how and why these classical writings have been rewritten for readers in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. They present six international perspectives on the influence manga has had in popularizing Heian classics by exploring modern interpretations as well as which aspects of the ancient texts have been promoted for readers in Japan today.