Manga as an educational medium

Manga is representative of current Japanese culture and has myriad genres and varied readership. Although several genres of manga have become the object of research, these only represent a fraction of the range of genres available in Japan. This paper will analyse one of the unexplored genres of manga, educational manga. That is, manga which either overtly or covertly informs readers with valuable real-world information while entertaining them with engaging stories and characters.By combining visual and verbal texts with stories, manga is able to make difficult topics easy to understand. There are a number of publications which strategically use this merit, such as Manga Nihon Keizaigaku Nyumon (Introductory Japanese Economics through Manga). At the same time, a significant number of more entertaining manga are also published as manuals of sorts, which are able to guide and trigger the readers' important lifetime decisions, such as choice of professions. It is safely said that such manga are essentially more educational media than mere entertainment. These manga works are often based on accurate information derived from careful research, providing high literary value and intellectual stimuli to readers. This study will discuss the genre of "educational" manga by focusing on Moyashimon: Tales of Agriculture, which appeared in an adult (sēnen) manga magazine and quickly became popular, leading to a marked increase in enrolment in tertiary agriculture studies.