Raising Awareness of Cassandra Syndrome through Manga: Nonami Tsuna's My Husband, Akira, Has Asperger's Syndrome / 漫画で語るカサンドラ症候群：野波ツナの「旦那（アキラ）さんはアス ペルガー」

Abstract

Abstract:This article features an interview with Nonami Tsuna, author of the popular manga series, My Husband, Akira, Has Asperger's Syndrome (Akira-san wa asuperugā). The series highlights how a woman named Tsuna's mental health is negatively affected by her husband's Asperger's syndrome. This article introduces readers to a condition known as Cassandra syndrome and discusses how Nonami decided to illustrate it in her manga. Cassandra syndrome began to attract public attention in the 2010s, around the same time as Nonami's manga was published. My article sheds light on how social expectations of "self-sacrifice" on the part of wives, mothers, and daughters make them susceptible to Cassandra syndrome if they have a close relationship with someone who has Asperger's. Thanks in part to Nonami's series, an increasing number of manga about Asperger's have raised awareness of mental health conditions. Here, I use the word "tōjisha" to refer to people who have experienced mental disorders and similarly stigmatized psychological conditions and neurological disorders. I argue that an emerging group of graphic memoirs authored by tōjisha, which I call "tōjisha manga," deserves international scholarly attention.