Over the last few decades, the reading of Japanese comics has been considered in several contexts of reading literacy; and different studies have been developed that consider the didactic potential of this medium, in proposals on artistic creativity based on the literacy practices of young readers, or even as a didactic resource for literary education. Based on a qualitative approach, this work aims at studying the possibilities of Tomoji, by Jiro Taniguchi, as a paradigmatic example of manga for the training of readers, from an intercultural perspective and considering thematic linking options on diversity which this work offers. A reading motivation proposal has thus been designed, based on certain methodological keys typical of didactic sequences, with the aim of providing a replicable model of literary education which promotes, from the Japanese comics, discussion around cultural aspects such as the social role of women, the appreciation of nature or the concept of family.
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How to Cite
Méndez-Cabrera, J., & Rodrigo-Segura, F. (2023). Literary education, cultural diversity and manga: A proposal for the training of readers. Ocnos. Journal of reading research, 22(1). https://doi.org/10.18239/ocnos_2023.22.1.335
Méndez-Cabrera and Rodrigo-Segura: Literary education, cultural diversity and manga: a proposal for the training of readers
Introduction: Japanese comics in the context of reading and literacy education
In recent decades, and in different contexts, the reading of Japanese comics or manga
has been considered as a resource for reading literacy in children and adolescents
(; ), and different studies have been conducted and consider the didactic potential of
this medium (), both as a cultural phenomenon () and in proposals on artistic creativity (), as a resource for teaching social sciences () and also for literary education (; ). There have also been approaches to the multiple possibilities of reading the most
representative themes and subgenres of Japanese comics from the perspective of cultural
studies (, ). However, this has not prevented different attempts to configure a more or less
broad canon (; ).
Taking into account the hybrid discursivity of comics as a “mutant” medium (), with a sense of reading that arises from the interaction between written text,
image and sequentiality (despite the limitations pointed out by ), as a discourse that embraces both what happens inside the cartoons and what happens
between them, thanks to the active participation of the reader in the interpretation,
this paper aims to offer a representative case to study what reading manga means in
the framework of current reading and literary education, especially if we consider
the opportunities for the promotion of intercultural communication in favour of diversity.
In this vein, the consolidation of the reading habit and the development of literary
competence () based on the reading pleasure that manga arouses in the literary practices of young
people provides a good pretext. The inclusion of comics, and by extension manga, among
the reading proposals contributes to the purpose of configuring a necessarily plural
canon (; ), capable of attending to the growing complexity of readers in formation. However,
it should be noted that research in literary education preferably involves the development
of didactic proposals that give formative meaning to the reading experiences that
the teacher selects as an object of study ().
First, however, we would like to stress the particularity of manga as a reading experience.
Both in Spain and in Europe, the first theoretical approaches already point out that
Japanese comics involve the activation of certain mechanisms of interpretation that
affect cultural and encyclopaedic knowledge in a specific way, while manga involves
a reading process that assumes somewhat different codes (due to its iconicity, conventions
of representation and visual language), relatively distant from those of European
and American comics. “Reading Japanese comics requires a new apprenticeship, getting
used to new tones, registers and accents that are not used in the West” (). It could be said that manga is a sign system that does not refer to any iconic
realism ().
We can speak of a specific narrative of Japanese comics and, thus, of a somewhat particular
reading experience, with differential features that establish a certain reading process
as an exercise in cognition. This predominant style of Japanese comics supports both
a certain conventionality and iconicity and represents patterns no less cognitive
than any other linguistic form of sequential communication. This narrative code of
manga involves a specific visual language constructed from certain iconic, emotional,
pragmatic and graphic conventions that are specific to Japanese culture (). Therefore, the link between word and image as a sequential narrative is somewhat
different from Western comics (; ). In addition to the reverse sense of reading, which affects the text and page layout,
reading Japanese comics implies an intercultural experience, by virtue of formal characteristics
such as the acceptance of narrative emptiness and frenetic or paroxysmal rhythms,
the aesthetic game in black and white (and the immense range of greys); and also intradiegetic
characteristics of content: stereotypical characters marked by gestures, reactions
and behaviours typical of Japanese culture, as well as media references and socio-cultural
issues specific to the context of production that constitute certain anthropological
and cultural structures of the narration.
If we start from the premise that reading takes place in a social context and that
the reading process involves a communicative purpose through reader-text dialogue,
reading Japanese comics favours certain processes of understanding and construction
of cultural thought, as it allows us to share artistic and literary references and
at the same time establish a differential contrast between other elements that may
be alien to the Western reader. Moreover, because of their textual component in a
narrative framework with numerous dialogical representations, comics have a positive
impact on linguistic and pragmatic knowledge. In this sense, it should be noted that
reading and literary education takes as its main axis the reader’s activity in the
process of reception, integrating the links between social and cultural systems, rhetorical
systems and discourse strategies, as well as the systems of ritualisation and symbolisation
of the imaginary (). We thus consider Japanese comics as a type of reading that, following appropriate
selection criteria, can become an interesting intercultural and multimodal experience.
In this sense, although manga has its origins in print, manga characters are the first
to move across television screens in the 1990s and on mobile phones, the Internet
and gaming devices from the 2000s onwards, forming part of teenagers’ media practices
(; ) and setting significant precedents for what has subsequently come to be known as
transmedia narratives (). In any case, the multimodality of manga extends the traditional notions of text
and literacy, as the meaning of reading is conveyed on different levels, such as page
layout, illustrations, dialogues and text balloons, as well as all the paratextual
elements that accompany the different types of editions, serialised in specialised
magazines or in volumes or tomes called tankoubon (). Reading promotion through manga involves understanding and responding to the multiple
modes used in the construction of meaning, most of which come from Japanese culture
but which converge, however, with those of our own culture in an aspect that will
allow us to take on Japanese comics as a formative reading experience: the selection
of themes of interest in accordance with the different genre conventions.
Thus, reading manga can be an interesting bridge between cultures and assume the function
of cognitive construction of reality through the recognition, understanding and critical
appraisal of cultural similarities and differences. Beyond the concept of the otaku reader (), Japanese comics, through the configuration of characters, historical frameworks
and themes, can bring us closer to other traditions, social uses, rituals, knowledge,
etc., allowing for the notion of cultural diversity from an inclusive perspective.
In this sense, from an intercultural approach, stories (literary or under the form
of vignettes) facilitate the dialogue and communication necessary to understand one’s
own and other people’s experiences through reading, thus affirming reciprocity in
the construction of meaning (; ).
Objectives of the research
With this in mind, this paper presents the following research objectives: firstly,
to consider and value manga as a reading proposal for literary education today, taking
into account its particularities as a reading experience and its potential for the
promotion of reading from an intercultural perspective; secondly, to carry out a textual
analysis of Jiro Taniguchi’s Tomoji, as a representative case of Japanese comics that allows us to establish significant
thematic links between Western culture and Japanese culture (from both identity and
otherness), promoting the notion of cultural diversity through certain categories
of analysis of the story; thirdly, based on the results of this analysis, and taking
into account the possibilities of the selected work, the paradigm of literary education
and the methodological strategies that are most interesting for including the reading
of comics in the classroom, we intend to make a proposal for the training of readers
that allows for reflection on certain cultural aspects raised in the reading of Tomoji.
Tomoji: approach to the subject matter
In this section, we will make a contextual approach to the work selected as the subject
matter, both extradiegetically and intradiegetically. Tomoji is a comic book drawn by Jiro Taniguchi (1947-2017), with a script co-written by
Miwako Ogihara, a television scriptwriter. The title in question was originally published
in Japan in 2014 by Futabasha, then published in French in 2015 by Rue de Sèvres.
In Spanish, it is published by Ponent Mont in 2016, in a western reading sense and
with translation by Víctor Illera Kanaya, in a 176-page volume that includes a final
interview with Taniguchi on the origin and gestation of the work, something peculiar
in the author's production as a whole. This is a comic where we can appreciate the
narrative mastery of the last Taniguchi: The story has a restrained rhythm, sobriety
in the expression of the characters, with few but effective peaks of drama, in a leisurely
tone, far removed from previous action manga such as Blanco (1984-1986), The Summit of the Gods (2000-2003), or Un ciel radieux in French (2004), although with numerous detailed backgrounds and landscapes, surely
due to the Franco-Belgian influence of the author (who went on to publish Icarus with Moebius in 1997) and his typically Japanese insistence on an appreciation of
the ephemeral (though dazzling) beauty of the natural environment.
On an intradiegetic level, the story of the comic book begins in 1925 and continues
in six chapters where, in a continuous game of flashbacks, we are told the life story
of a young girl born in the spring of 1916 in a small village of peasants in the Yamanashi
region, in a valley next to the Yatsugatake mountain range, in rural Japan in the
1920s. It is about a young girl who, after the premature death of her father and the
abandonment of her mother, will have to face, together with her siblings and grandmother,
the harsh routine of the countryside and the different family, historical and social
vicissitudes of that time; and who seems to embody a certain archetype of a simple,
brave and virtuous heroine. It is not until the last page of the book that we discover
that the reading is in fact a biography made to order. Although, as Taniguchi himself
states in the interview that accompanies the Spanish edition, conducted in August
2014, it is a fictionalised biography. The author recreates the childhood and adolescence
of Tomoji Uchida, who was the first spiritual leader of the Shinnyo-en Buddhist temple,
where the cartoonist’s wife used to go. “I decided to favour a narrative angle that
would show the life journey that shaped Tomoji’s personality and that finally led
him to choose the path of spirituality” (), where the dramatisation elements of the biographical account are clear.
Study method
Following a qualitative procedure and using the critical reading method, we conducted
a textual analysis (thematic and narratological) of the work as a case study, focusing
on the thematic cores, character and space configuration, as well as the narrative
time and intradiegetic elements that refer to genres and literary intertexts in the
Spanish version of Tomoji (). Subsequently, we have carried out an exploratory research work to adapt the reading
of comics as a proposal for literary education; taking into account, at a theoretical
level, the objectives and characteristics of this teaching model for the training
of readers () and the methodological model of didactic sequences (, ), considering its adaptation for the teaching of literature and the promotion of
reading ().
Results
In this section, we include the results obtained from the thematic and narratological
analysis of the work. For reasons of space and relevance, we will present the results
of the following categories of analysis only: themes, sub-themes, literary and discursive
genres, intradiegetic discourse and intertexts of the work. It should be said that
some of the central themes detected (family relationships, the importance of memory
for the interpretation of the world and the love of nature from a certain contemplative
approach) also appear in Taniguchi’s previous works, such as A Journal of my Father (1994), Quartier lontain in French (1998) and The Walking Man (1992). In any case, if we take a critical approach to the object of study, we can
see what aspects the reading of this manga can contribute to literary education and
what aspects are useful for the promotion of reading from an intercultural perspective.
Through the description of the didactic proposal designed, we assess the suitability
of the reading and indicate how we can work on these aspects in educational contexts.
Themes and
sub-themes of the work
Nature (the beauty of mountains, forests and valleys), life in the countryside (difficult
but simple and peaceful), together with the contextual importance of orography and
the contrast with life in the big city, make up one of the most important thematic
cores of the work. In fact, the comic begins with some vignettes that tell us about
the rural context in which the story is set and is a characteristic way of introducing
the main character. The Yatsugatake mountain range and its eight peaks (as well as
the repeated appearance of birds such as the kite) will form a symbolic background
throughout all the chapters of the manga, associated with Tomoji’s life development.
The joy of childhood, the challenges of adolescence, the nostalgia of youth, or the
memories of early maturity are visually related to the small corner of the world where
the young woman is born and raised and are configured as stages of progression in
the character's personality that facilitate the reader's identification with the main
character.
As a woman’s life story, it is worth highlighting the conception of the different
stages of life understood as a path not without difficulties (Tomoji, although originally a male anthroponym, includes a play on the Japanese words tomo, ‘friend’ and ji, ‘path’). The attitude towards adversity, the will to learn and the acceptance of
loss in the process of individual maturation are another thematic core of the work,
which is developed through the different roles and conventions assumed by the main
character as a woman in Japanese society at the beginning of the 20th century, which allows for a comparative exercise with the reality of young Western
female readers.
Closely linked to the above is the theme of the family, in a rural setting and not
far removed from the Western model of the time: Tomoji is born from a second marriage;
she has to take care of the house and the family business; she lives with her siblings
in her paternal grandparents’ house, as tradition dictates; later, the mother abandons
the children when her husband dies; and her grandmother is a protective figure. The
work exemplifies certain Japanese lifestyles and includes, with a historical perspective,
the incipient art of photography as something unusual and extraordinary linked to
the idea of family, death and memory.
Love, in a non-romantic concept, is also thematically significant in the work. In
the family context, Tomoji’s sibling relationship with his younger sister and grandmother,
both female characters of narrative importance in the story, is noteworthy. On the
other hand, the romantic awakening of Tomoji, who will end up happily engaged to Fumiaki,
the male main character (presented in parallel to the young woman), does not escape
the protocols and strict social conventions of the time, such as the traditional custom
of arranged marriages.
Other secondary themes, although decisive in the tone and content of the work, and
which also allow for intercultural contrast and the notion of diversity conditioned
by historical, social and religious factors, are: Eastern philosophy, specifically
Buddhism and Taoism (albeit from a secular and exoteric perspective), in its approach
to the observation of nature and the conception of human relations in a chain of causes
and consequences; school, specifically the Japanese rural school, with its ceremonies,
moments, readings and excursions; and also the history of the 20th century, with some vicissitudes of Japan in the 1920s, such as the cultural influence
of the West, typical of the Taisho era, or the processes of industrialisation and
technical advances, the Tokyo earthquake of 1923, and even a slight approach to the
temporary emancipation of women in their professional training (Tomoji, after her
studies, will enter a dressmaking school as an apprentice).
Literary genres and intertexts in the work
Within the narrative framework of the work, this manga has the enriching peculiarity
of including different literary genres and intertextual references, something that
can be beneficial from an educational perspective. Popular song is by far the genre
that appears most frequently in the work: in the different chapters and performed
by different characters, there are various farm, seasonal, religious and school songs,
which are intended to form a soundtrack to the main character’s childhood and adolescence.
At some point, the recitation of a Buddhist prayer in honour of Kannon (in the Japanese
tradition) or Avalokiteshvara (in Sanskrit), the bodhisattva of compassion, one of the most widely revered in mainstream Mahayana Buddhism is
added to these songs.
As we said and continuing with Eastern religion and philosophy, there is also a clear
reference to Taoism in this comic, when in chapter 6, Fumiaki, the male main character,
is studying the I-Ching, the oracular book of reference of Taoism, together with the Tao Te Ching.
As for the configuration of literary intertexts (; ), it is worth highlighting the significant appearance in chapter 4 of the story “The
Spider’s Thread” by Ryonosuke Akutagawa (published in 1918 in the Japanese children’s
magazine Akai Tori or Red Bird), which is read in the school Tomoji attends as shared reading in the classroom.
We can also see how Tomoji questions herself about the text and wonders about the
ending of the story, in a representative example of dialogue with the literary work.
We also find the inclusion in the narrative of discursive genres such as the letter,
when Tomoji and Fumiaki exchange letters about the arranged marriage they both accept;
and also the interview, in a metafictional addition to the story, as the Spanish edition
of the manga has a final conversation with Taniguchi, through which he adds a perspective
of metatextual reflection. In it, an approach is made to the novelised biography as
a genre, it talks about historical contextualisation, about the decisions and difficulties
in adapting it to vignettes, etc.
Didactic proposal
Our proposal is based on three basic methodological keys of the paradigm of literary
education. The first is to strengthen the link between reading education and interculturality
as a valuable tool for fostering critical citizenship that respects social, cultural
and gender differences (). state that intercultural literary education fosters the construction of an active
and conscious citizenship and defend the importance of approaching reading from an
inclusive perspective. Therefore, in addition to cultural diversity, certain social
issues (the contrast between the countryside and the city or forced migration) and
gender roles can be addressed when reading Tomoji.
As a second methodological key, we propose the need to start from a broad conception
of the concept of reading and literary competence that includes, for its development,
the diversity of literary genres and other multimodal media in order to make it consistent
with the characteristics of communication in today’s society. Thus, the factors that
modify and condition the notion of literary reading must be considered: the impact
of the new digital media and social networks on the reading practices of young people,
the diversity of subjects and reading practices and the relationship with the academic
institutional fabric. According to , these elements revolutionise the traditional concept of reading, create a new book
ecosystem and shape elements of reading motivation.
The third key argues that literary education should be based on forced methodological
pluralism, should be developed through use of active methodologies and should involve
a major change in the conception of assessment, including the interpretative and creative
skills of the learner. Therefore, the current paradigm of reading and literary education
must be based on a communicative approach that relates the development of literary
competence to the integrated work of basic linguistic skills, in favour of the diverse
experiential possibilities of reading.
This communicative approach to literary-reading teaching can only be developed through
the use of active methodologies, such as teaching sequences, literature projects or
text creation workshops, which make it possible to integrate the specific skills of
literary training and other basic skills such as teamwork, ethical or digital competence.
In this sense, as for the typology of activities to work on comics, we propose reading
comprehension exercises, text analysis and commentary, reflection and personal evaluation,
as well as literary and artistic creation activities, articulated around the moment
of reading, with the aim of didactically exploiting Japanese comics from an interdisciplinary
point of view. To that end, we based ourselves on the didactic sequences proposed
by Camps (, ) and . The following is a brief description of each of the phases of this approach to reader
training.
Firstly, the planning phase corresponds to the motivation for the act of learning.
It sets out the purpose of the intended task and makes explicit the learning objectives
to be pursued. The discursive situation to which the work will respond is also explained,
so that the students represent the activity to be carried out, for example: reading
reviews, researching the context of the work, writing an opinion article or making
an anthology of thematically related texts, etc.
In the development phase of the project, two types of activities are distinguished:
those related to production (aimed at learning the characteristics and conditions
of use of the genre or medium) and those activities which involve an approach to the
conceptual contents (linguistic, literary, cultural) which are being worked on and
which have to be used in the discursive task. It should be added that this whole process
of textual production, which involves the operations of planning, textualisation and
revision, is developed in interrelation with other tasks or reflections which help
the progressive construction of know-how on the part of the students. Before reading
(special attention being paid to paratexts), during reading (such as conducting an
interview with the grandmother or female family member from a previous generation,
relevant characters in the manga analysed), and after reading, such as synthesising
the relevant information of each chapter (figure 1) or carrying out an analysis of the work (figure 2).
CHAPTER
SUMMARY
TIME FRAME
SPACE FRAME
CHARACTERS
THEMES
1. Tomoji
2. The happy days
3. The farewell
4. Distant skies
5. The departure
6. Spring arrives
Figure 1Basic worksheet for narrative content analysis
FORMAL FEATURES
Size and format of the comic.
Number of vignettes per page.
Types of vignettes and page layout (vertical, horizontal, etc.).
Relationship between the elements (text, drawing, vignettes, page layout).
Technique used (colour, black and white, grey) and line (fine, thick, detailed, rough).
Relationship between the plastic resources and the tone and rhythm of the work.
COMMUNICATION FEATURES
Rhetorical (metaphors, hyperbole, similes, metonymy, etc.) and stylistic procedures.
Do the vignettes maintain stylistic and expressive coherence?
Character creation: is the main character easily recognisable? Are Secondary characters
stereotypical or do they show feelings and emotions?
Are the depiction of the settings and the period well defined in the play, providing
cultural significance?
Relationships and oppositions activated or read in the image (visual tour).
Value system derived from the location of the characters in the planes, angles and
directionalities.
Social and ideological representations (beliefs, opinions, prejudices and stereotypes).
Do the images provide more information than the text, or the other way around, or
do they complement each other?
Emotional reaction triggered in the reader by each vignette or page.
Figure 2Worksheet to analyse a comic, based on Duran (, ) and
Thirdly, the evaluation phase is seen as part of the learning process. In projects,
formative assessment is concerned with the products achieved as a result of a complex
process, which is itself the object of learning and evaluation. Formative assessment
is thus a dynamic reality, which develops in parallel to the learning process. From
this point of view, it will need various instruments (guidelines, textual models,
evaluative comments, etc.) adapted to the characteristics of the project and the working
group. At the final moment when the task is assessed, the resulting assessment contributes
to the metacognitive retrieval of the procedures followed, their conceptual results
and the strategies used, something that encourages, in this case, reflection on manga
and Japanese culture. In this same vein, some creation and assessment activities may
be the following: drawing a timeline with the most important moments in Tomoji’s life;
or with the most important moments in the reader’s life and writing an autobiography
(where the differences and similarities with the main character of the manga can be
identified); produce a comic strip of one of the most important sequences in the life
or a female member of the reader’s family (given the importance of this theme in the
work); write a theatrical scene from one of the chapters of the work and perform it
in the classroom; produce argumentative texts and a book trailer of the work, with
subsequent publication on social networks, blog or school website (see Appendix).
Finally, for the overall assessment of the work, proposes adding a series of final questions that will enable young readers to achieve
a higher degree of reading comprehension and help them to acquire the habit of critical
reading. The aim is to propose global interpretative tasks that allow students to
give their opinions, evaluate and relate the elements of the work to their own personal
reality and to their knowledge of the world, thus promoting significant learning.
These questions, which should be included in any worksheets, questionnaires or debates,
are of a general nature and also allow for working on emotional education in relation
to the reality of another cultural context, the interpretative assessment of reading
and the promotion of the reading intertext.
Conclusions
Considering its most defining particularities (linked to Japanese culture and mentality)
and its publishing framework in Spanish, manga is a type of comic where we can find
interesting opportunities for intercultural literary education, understood as a teaching
model that conceives the reading experience as an act of communication and a process
of dialogue capable of assuming different cultural realities in an inclusive way.
On the other hand, it favours the knowledge of shared meanings with the readers’ intertext;
and, at the same time, it fosters cognitive abilities that optimise the development
of skills and attitudes for the valuation of cultural diversity as a richness.
Reading of a manga such as Tomoji is thus a paradigmatic example, since, thanks to its subject matter and the intradiegetic
elements that make up its narrative framework, it makes it possible to structure an
educational proposal in the form of a didactic sequence based on an interdisciplinary
approach (where the curricular contents of literature, history or philosophy can be
combined on the basis of the manga story). The didactic approach to Taniguchi’s work
also makes it possible to promote the development of the different components of literary
competence (), both linguistic, cultural and encyclopaedic, discursive, pragmatic and intertextual
knowledge, through reading and writing tasks, the development of different textual
typologies, activities relating to other works and contexts, proposals for literary
creativity and reflective evaluation of the content and form of manga as a reading
experience.
The foregoing is approached from an intercultural point of view, through a deliberate
exchange between the reader’s previous knowledge and experiences and the elements
of Japanese culture that we find in the work analysed, thus allowing for the possibility
of relating Taniguchi’s biographical fiction to life, society and the family history
of the Western reader, taking as the main point of connection and reflection the thematic
nuclei relating to the social role of women, the vicissitudes of rural life, the characteristics
of family organisation, the conception of love according to contextual conditioning
factors or the appreciation of the beauty of the natural environment. In this sense,
we hope this paper will provide grounds for claiming a place for Japanese comics in
the necessarily plural reading selection for current literary education and the training
of readers in favour of cultural diversity.
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Appendices
Appendix
1. PLANNING
2. IMPLEMENTATION
3. ASSESSMENT
PREVIOUS MOTIVATIONAL ACTIVITIES
1.1 Read reviews of the book.
CONTEXTUALISATION ACTIVITIES
1.2. Research the work, its author and the main character.
1.3. Search for information about comics in general and Japanese comics or manga in
particular.
1.4. Familiarisation with the basics of Zen Buddhism.
1.5. Activity: Produce an expository text introducing the author, the actual main
character of the work and the manga genre.
ACTIVITIES ON READING
Before reading:
2.1. What do paratexts about the content reveal? (cover title, back cover synopsis,
final interview). Activity: Class discussion.
On reading:
2.2. Elaboration of the description of the characters: what are they like, what are
their origins, what problems have they experienced, what are their desires, their
dreams, their concerns?
Activity: Description of each character.
2.3. Identification of other literary genres contained in the work. What is their
function?
2.4. Content analysis. (Complete the Narrative Content Analysis Worksheet).
After reading:
2.5. Formal analysis: narrative structure, language, visual resources, etc. (Complete
the Comic Analysis Worksheet).
LITERARY AND ARTISTIC CREATION
3.1. Timeline with the most important moments in Tomoji’s life.
3.2. Timeline of the most important moments in your life. Based thereon, write your
own autobiography.
3.3. Comic book out of one of the most important sequences of your life.
3.4. Write a theatrical scene from one of the chapters of the play and perform it
in a classroom.
MULTIMODAL PRODUCTIONS
3.5. Team production of a booktrailer about the work.
3.6. Viewing and selection for inclusion in social networks, blog or school website.
ARGUMENTATIVE TEXTS
3.7. Drafting of a review of the work for publication.
3.8. Preparation of the bibliographic record for the library.
3.9. Twitter or Instagram post about the work.
3.10. Conclusions:
3.11. Writing a final individual text of global evaluation of the work.
3.12. Final class discussion based on individual conclusions.
INTERDISCIPLINARY WORK
Social Science (Geography and History)
1.
Enquiry into the situation of women in Asian cultures. Description of the living conditions
of the manga’s main character in relation to those of the reader.
2.
Contrastive work on rural life in Japan and Spain. Why do people migrate from the
countryside to the city? Interview your older relatives and find out where they came
from (did they live in the countryside or in the city?). What is the empty Spain? How do you relate it to manga?
3.
Japanese history and culture. Timeline of the main events in its history. Places the
space of Tomoji’s life in the timeline. What do we know about their culture? What
products do we consume: literature, gastronomy, martial arts, cinema, etc.?
ETHICS
Topics for discussion: life in Japan, Buddhism/Christianity, rural/urban, respect
for nature and the environment (climate change), gender roles, the role of women in
different cultures and historical contexts, the role of older people in the family
and social framework.
ASSESSMENT TOOLS
1.
Digital portfolio (shared folder) where each work team collects its productions.
2.
Booktrailer of the work.
3.
Literary creation activities.
4.
Group evaluation and self-evaluation questionnaire.
