This is a series about a Japanese woman teaching Japanese as a foreign language to study abroad students who come to Japan.Īs the title suggests, I think the original impetus behind this series is that sometimes students of Japanese learn various forms of the language that are either archaic, obscure, overpolite, out of context, or what-have-you, that the author thought it would be amusing to share her experience with the Japanese public. Nihonjin no shiranai Nihongo II (The Japanese the Japanese don’t know II, Volume 2) Nihonjin no shiranai Nihongo (The Japanese the Japanese don’t know) You can get the first two volumes (in Japanese only) on This series has 3 volumes, one of which was just released very recently. Series 1: Nihonjin no Shiranai Nihongo ・日本人の知らない日本語・Japanese the Japanese Don’t Know In this post I’ll talk about two series that I’ve really enjoyed (that have 3 and 2 volumes each, thus far), and in the next post I’ll talk about a much more prolific series that is somewhat of a cultural phenomenon. So here I would like to introduce to you three Essay Manga series that I have read some and liked.
As a personal fan of non-fiction over fiction books in the first place, I find essay manga generally to be a lot more interesting personally than regular manga. I had no idea what Essay Manga was at the time…but now I do! So I want to share it with you all.Įssay Manga is basically non-fiction manga, where the writer/artist writes and draws about his/her own life. In one scene, a character (pictured above) named Miwako (which is an adorable name, by the way) mentions that her mother writes Essay Manga while traveling around the world with Miwako’s father, who is a photographer. I first heard the term Essay Manga (エッセイ漫画) in one of my favorite anime of all time, Paradise Kiss.