Volume: 19  Number: 4  Page: 265–280

Reading Manga: Patterns of Personal Literacies Among Adolescents

Kate Allen1 and John E. Ingulsrud2 1Department of British and American Language, Kanda University of International Studies, 1–4–1 Wakaba, Mihama-ku, Chiba-shi 261–0014, Japan and 2Department of English Language and Literature, College of Humanities, Meisei University, 2-2-1 Hodokubo, Hino-shi, Tokyo 191-8506, Japan

Sales of manga or Japanese comics dominate the publishing market in Japan. Manga cater for a wide variety of readers, ranging from children’s comics to adult pornography. In this paper, we focus on adolescent readers and describe patterns of learning to read manga. The findings demonstrate the importance of belonging to a community of readers since this community enables readers to share ideas and provides a resource for developing reading skills. These skills are self-taught, developed outside the classroom, since the reading of manga is generally frowned upon in most schools. Being aware of how actively adolescents read manga as well as of the kinds of skills needed to understand these texts would provide teachers with a deeper understanding of their students’ reading skills.

Keywords: adolescent literacies, reading communities, manga

© 2005 K. Allen & J.E. Ingulsrud

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