Yoshiko Okuyama, "Tōjisha Manga: Japan’s Graphic Memoirs of Brain and Mental Health" (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022)

New Books in Japanese Studies · Jun 10, 2023 · 34m

Yoshiko Okuyama's book Tōjisha Manga: Japan’s Graphic Memoirs of Brain and Mental Health (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022) defines tōjisha manga as Japan’s autobiographical comics in which the author recounts the experience of a mental or neurological condition in a unique medium of text and image. Yoshiko Okuyama argues that tōjisha manga illuminate otherwise “faceless” individuals and humanize their invisible tribulations because the first-person narrative makes their lived experience more authentic and relatable to the reader. Part I introduces the evolution of the term tōjisha, the tōjisha…