Manga and Japanese Culture Week

From 19 to 26 February, it’s Manga and Japanese Culture Week in Neude Library in Utrecht. The library’s brand new Manga collection will be on display in the main hall, for you to browse and borrow. Besides that, MangaKissa will present a beautiful pop-up collection of Manga books for you to look into on the spot, Himawari no kai has organized a lecture and the Japan Fans will perform Japanese music!

Manga and Japanese Culture Week in Neude Library - Japan Fans
The beautiful Neude library, where the Manga and Japanese Culture Week will take place. Photo by Erfgoedbekeken.nl

Lecture by Yu Ito

A special event in this week is the lecture by Yu Ito, curator of the Kyoto International Manga Museum (a dream for manga lovers, as can be seen in the video below).

On Saturday, 26 February at 1 p.m. – 2.30 p.m., Yu Ito will give a lecture on Japanese culture and Manga characters as you have never seen them before. We will speak to Yu Ito from the theatre in the Neude library via Zoom. The lecture will be translated live into Dutch. If you want to be there, book a ticket quickly! You can also follow the lecture via livestream. Keep an eye on the website and our socials for more information.

Mr Ito is a prominent Japanese manga scholar, who was also involved in the involved in the preparation of “The Citi exhibition Manga マンガ” at the British Museum in 2019. In this lecture, organized by Himawari, he will discuss manga characters on the basis of “anthropomorphism” and thereby exposes a deeper meaning. He will show how manga characters relate to Japanese culture and society. Discover the hidden layers of Japanese manga culture.

From 19 to 26 February, it's Manga and Japanese Culture Week in Neude Library in Utrecht.
Photo by Miika Laaksonen

If you like to learn more about manga from a scholarly point of view, you can visit the websites of the Kyoto International Manga Museum and the Kyoto Seika University International Manga Research Center. Via the latter, you can for example read Ito Yu’s article “Practical Manga Research: Difficulties and Possibilities of Manga Exhibitions and Manga Museums” (translated by Jaqueline Berndt) as well.

Hope to see you all at the lecture and at the many other events this week! ^_^

From 19 to 26 February, it's Manga and Japanese Culture Week in Neude Library in Utrecht.
Photo by Moujib Aghrout

Music at the Manga and Japanese Culture Week

As icing on the cake, the Japan Fans will perform Japanese music at various pop-up concerts in and around the Neude library. Keep an eye on our socials for the exact dates and times!

Japan Fans’ founding member Martine is preparing for the concerts in and around Neude library.

UPDATE: if you like, you can read a review of this event by the Dutch journalist Luqué van Wijngaarden: “Utrecht is crazy about Japan: Manga and Japanese Culture Week a success“. Some of the Dutch screenshots about the Japan Fans Utrecht & this fun week:



As a result of the concerts with Japanese flute music, which Japan Fans Utrecht organised at CAMERA JAPAN festival and the Manga & Japanese Culture Week, among others, founder Martine was also interviewed by Simone Langejan for the national daily paper Algemeen Dagblad. An English translation can be found here, with many thanks to Hans.