In November 2025, the Japanese government made a startling announcement. It named the content industry – which includes music, video games, film, manga, and anime – one of 17 ‘strategic sectors,’ alongside critical fields such as aerospace, AI, and national defense. By 2033, leaders declared, exports of content – including video games, manga (comic books), and anime (animated shows and films) – would outstrip those of the semiconductor and automotive industries. Japan may well be the first country in history to frame cartoons as being as important to national survival as its defense industry. This is surprising, perhaps most of all to the Japanese. It represents an incredible turnaround for a medium that authorities long dismissed as kids’ stuff – or vilified as subversive trash.

Manga is the Japanese term for illustrated narrative entertainment. In modern usage it encompasses everything from the equivalent of funnies for children to dramatic graphic novels to political cartoons and beyond. The medium emerged from a rich domestic tradition of illustrated storytelling, cross-pollinated with the influence of newspaper cartoon strips and animated films imported from the West in the early 20th century. After World War II, manga works, which were cheap to produce and distribute, flourished as an escape for the young. By the 21st century, manga had evolved into a sophisticated form of storytelling appealing to a mind-bogglingly wide array of demographics (Demon Slayer fans run the gamut). Today, exports of Japan’s beloved manga (and the closely intertwined medium of anime) fuel the rise of global fandoms; create fortunes for publishers, platforms, and lucky creators; and even nourish diplomacy, as government officials employ cartoon characters in official outreach efforts. Manga has grown into a cultural and financial juggernaut, one that even museums and galleries are now eager to claim.

A medium at the museum door

The museum embrace obscures an unresolved argument. For all its ubiquity, manga still struggles to be taken seriously as art. Is it art? The Wall Street Journal declares that illustration doesn’t qualify as art, while simultaneously touting it as ‘Japan’s global champion.’ On the surface, the debate seems absurd. Manga is the product of personal expression, channeled through skill and craft. Why wouldn’t it be art? Foreign curators and museumgoers seem to agree; a number of manga exhibitions have been held with great success at major institutions outside of Japan. One of the earliest was the ‘Manga’ exhibition at the British Museum in 2019. More recently, in 2025, the de Young Museum in San Francisco presented ‘Art of Manga’ – a traveling show now on view at the Brooklyn Museum. In Hong Kong, ‘Myths and Monsters: The Art of Fantasy in Asia’ at M+, which runs from October 17, 2026, to April 4, 2027, shines another spotlight on the form, including the work of Japan’s ‘god of manga,’ Osamu Tezuka. And the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which opened in September 2026, has announced plans to showcase manga in future exhibitions. Regardless of what critics think, it seems certain that we will be seeing more rather than less manga in art institutions around the world.

That settles that – or perhaps not.

The medium that refused to be tamed

No such thing happened in Japan. Artists continued to enjoy the freedom to express themselves, and they penned stories that not only thrilled readers, but also critiqued society. By the late 1960s, manga had emerged as the undisputed voice of the counterculture in Japan. It was so popular with student radicals that protesters boasted of marching with ‘Asahi Journal in our right hands, Shōnen Magazine in our left’ – Shōnen Magazine then being the nation’s most popular manga weekly. In the West, folk and rock music provided the sonic backdrop to student protest movements, but in Japan, it was manga that nourished the New Left.

Significant institutional distrust of, even antipathy toward, manga persisted until the turn of the millennium, and even occasionally beyond. A child murder case in the late 1980s shone a spotlight on erotically charged manga, leading to calls to ban them outright. In 2010, the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, then led by the ultranationalist politician Shintaro Ishihara, rekindled the debate. After declaring adult manga fit only for ‘perverts’ in a theatrical press conference, Ishihara proposed adding ‘nonexistent youth,’ meaning depictions of young-seeming characters in manga, to child pornography laws. Many manga authors, joined by the Writers Guild of Japan and the Japan Federation of Bar Associations, united to oppose the bill. The furor caused then-Prime Minister Naoto Kan to weigh in – this time on the side of the artists, a sign of how things had changed in the half-century since the ‘Ban Bad Publications’ push.

A heavily revised version, shorn of the ‘nonexistent youth’ verbiage, passed in 2010. Yet the effect on the industry continues to be negligible to nonexistent. Among creators and consumers, the sense is that while adult manga are not everyone’s cup of tea, their anything-goes freedom of expression encourages inventiveness and experimentation in the manga industry as a whole. If you look carefully around Japan, you can still spot boxes for the collection of ‘harmful’ publications, including manga – the last physical remnants of the push to regulate that began in the 1950s. It is precisely this sense of transgressiveness that empowers manga creators of all kinds to push their individual boundaries – it is the engine of what makes manga feel so vibrant. As rights to free speech are curtailed around the world, manga’s freewheeling nature makes it a natural draw for those who feel oppressed. Manga imagery has appeared again and again in modern-day struggles against authorities: Thai pro-democracy protests in 2020; and anti-government protests in Indonesia, Nepal, and Madagascar in 2025.

Manga in the digital age

The question of whether manga is art may be moot; whether it will continue to be displayed in art spaces is another matter. Exhibitions generally showcase pen-and-ink manga pages, but the majority of today’s manga artists have long transitioned to using digital tools, including specialized apps, to create their work. With manga is enjoying more mindshare than ever, there is more potential for creating popular shows and even more exhibitions in art institutions, perhaps highlighting manga’s digital evolution. The medium’s strength is, after all, its ability to adapt to and weather change. It has survived and thrived for close to a century – and will undoubtedly continue to do so, in new forms, for even longer.