Chapters in this Volume

As the first of its kind, this volume aims to provide an overview of manga medievalism and the ways in which elements and imaginaries from the medieval North are received, reimaged, and combined with those drawn from other literary traditions in the manga media. More importantly, in doing so, we also present a group of manga titles as samples of a larger medievalist corpus which we hope will enrich and inform the field. In this, we hope to promote what Martin Lund has stated in his recent studies on Old Norse/Viking comics: ‘Fantastical and “inaccurate” versions of Viking/Norse pasts are equally valid as sources as sagas, epics, or eddas; they belong in reception research, and their ideas should be taken just as seriously’.2 Martin Lund, ‘Viking and Old Norse Memoryscape in Comics’, in Sara Ellis Nilsson and Stefan Nyzell (eds), Viking Heritage and History in Europe: Practices and Re-creations (London, 2024), pp. 126–41, at p. 131. We also agree with Lund that such research should extend beyond the ‘rhetorics of authenticity’ that scholarship on medievalist comics tends to focus on.3 Ibid., p. 128. While the Old Norse and other medieval(ist) elements are compared to their ‘originals’ in many chapters, they are discussed within the context of the manga work in question: after all, the manga works are the ‘primary sources’ this volume deals with: if not more important than, at least on a par with, the medieval texts we compare them to. We aim to present through these ‘sources’, albeit small in size, the manga media as an interrelated corpus constantly in meaningful dialogues with and in response to each other, to other stories (medieval/ist or not), and to the time and place in which they are created and enjoyed.

While the Introduction, as we mentioned above, is deliberately broad in scope and aims to offer an overview of manga medievalisms, Minoru Ozawa’s chapter, entitled ‘The Translation Movement of Medieval Icelandic Literature in Post-war Japan: From Shizuka Yamamuro to the Present’, maps the translation movement of Old Norse materials and the development of medieval Nordic studies as an academic discipline in Japan. In particular, he focuses on two key figures, Shizuka Yamamuro and Yukio Taniguchi, who were pioneers in introducing Old Norse literature in Japan, on the one hand laying foundations for Japanese academia’s active engagement with the medieval North, on the other hand nurturing a general fascination and familiarity with Old Norse imageries among the Japanese public. In this sense, Ozawa’s chapter functions as an Old Norse counterpart as well as a companion to Masako Takagi’s impactful article on the reception of Malory and the influence of Arthurian literature in Japan, as the introduction of both corpora can be traced back to the same political and cultural initiatives.4 Takagi, ‘Malory in Japan’. More importantly, as Ozawa also extends his discussion to the situation after the 1980s, his chapter also offers a timely update on Kunishiro Sugawara’s ‘A Report on Japanese Translations of Old Icelandic Literature’, published in 1976 (cited above), and the database of translated sagas published by the National Library of Iceland.5 ‘A Bibliography of Saga Translations’, <https://sagas.landsbokasafn.is/?ui-lang=en> [accessed 12 May 2025].

The remaining chapters in this volume are marked by a gradual shift from stories where Old Norse elements occupy a central position to those that incorporate and assimilate isolated Old Norse motifs into a much larger narrative setting. After Ozawa, the next three chapters form what can be called a ‘Vinland Saga group’, as they all use Vinland Saga as case studies to discuss and demonstrate on the one hand the presentation of the Viking ethos as perceived in popular culture in the manga media, on the other how the stereotypical violent Viking can be used to convey a pacificist message. This group begins with Sayaka Matsumoto’s chapter, ‘Rewriting Norse Myths and Culture in Japanese Manga: The Viking’s Violence in ONE PIECE and Vinland Saga’, which is also meant to lay some groundwork for the whole volume, through its database of fifty-six manga (exclusively those in printed forms) that feature elements from Old Norse mythology and literature, further divided into four groups based on the modes in which they are adopted and adapted: A. Historical Fiction; B. Influenced by Wagner’s Ring cycle; C. Rewriting the Myth; D. Borrowing Names. In addition to offering an invaluable starting point for any future works on Old Norse manga, Matsumoto’s database also provides an interesting point of reference for the chapters following hers, for, as the volume proceeds, the case studies also gradually shift from Group A (of which Vinland Saga is perhaps the best representative) to Group D, by far the largest group in which the borrowed names are ‘completely decontextualised and put instead in entirely new, unrelated, environs’. Intriguingly, however, many of these ‘names’ analysed in the chapters turn out, at their core, to hark back to their Old Norse original, despite their complete makeover. This comes back to Lund’s criticism of the obsession with ‘accuracy’, as it questions the very definitions of ‘accurate-ness’ and ‘original-ness’ by showcasing how these concepts and entities can be perceived, interpreted, and reimagined through essence rather than appearance.6 Lund, ‘Viking and Old Norse Memoryscape in Comics’, p. 128.

The bulk of Matsumoto’s chapter analyses and compares the four different depictions of Valhalla in Vinland Saga, which are used to map the gradual disillusion of Thorfinn, the manga’s protagonist, of the toxic warrior culture he was brought up in. Matsumoto also observes the disavowal of Christian or any other religious motivations in the manga characters’ decision-making process: King Canute, for instance, vows to create a powerful kingdom precisely because he has lost faith in God; his rise to power is thus read as a defiant move against God, contrary to the famous anecdote recounted by Henry of Huntingdon, the twelfth-century historian, in which Canute demonstrates the supremacy of divine power by commanding the tide in vain.7 Henry of Huntingdon, Historia Anglorum: The History of the English People, ed. and trans. Diana Greenway (Oxford, 1996), vi. 17, pp. 366–9. Thorfinn, too, learns to question the bloodshed caused in the name of either Valhalla or the Christian God.

Following Matsumoto’s investigations, Þórdís Edda Jóhannesdóttir’s ‘War, Peace, and Performance in Jómsvíkinga saga and Vinland Saga’ approaches Yukimura’s use of Viking violence for pacifist purposes from a different angle: comparing the portrayals of the Jómsvikings in Vinland Saga and Jómsvíkinga saga, Þórdís Edda Jóhannesdóttir traces Thorfinn’s changing attitudes towards the core values, such as revenge and personal reputation, in Jómsvíkinga saga and in the Sagas of Icelanders in general. This allows the Jómsvikings, who are famous for their jocose ‘last words’ in the face of death, to be interpreted in a new light, resulting in the subversion of the glorification of violence and the kind of Viking masculinity so commonly propagated in modern popular culture. But what were the thoughts and ideas that led to such artistic decisions? And what messages do these decisions hope to convey?

These questions are answered by the artist himself in the following chapter: a translated article by Makoto Yukimura, the author of Vinland Saga, in which he explicates his inspirations and the reasons why he transforms what is usually used as a selling point in Viking-themed popular works into an anti-war, anti-violence message, thus allowing us a rare glimpse of the ‘behind the scenes’ of Vinland Saga.

Then, Maxime Danesin’s chapter, ‘The Valkyries and Fenrir in the Mangaesque Imaginationscape’, shifts the focus on to the adaptation of key elements in Old Norse mythology in a selection of titles from the manga media and showcases the diverse ways in which these elements are ‘patchworked’ into stories that are not necessarily medievalist and/or Norse-inspired. In particular, Danesin investigates the surprising reincarnations of two preeminent figures in Old Norse mythology, the Valkyrie and Fenrir. Having taken hold in the Japanese imagination primarily through Wagner, the Valkyries are perceived to be the daughters of Óðinn and angelic beings; they could not be more different from Fenrir, a gigantic wolf who is destined to swallow Óðinn at Ragnarǫk. Yet, through the prisms of neo-medievalist codes and the so-called Otaku database, a transmedia data cluster within which cultural fragments are turned into moe yōso, ‘elements of attraction’, the Valkyries and Fenrir meet each other in the form of beautiful otherworldly girls imbued with extraordinary fighting abilities. Moreover, although the majority of the works discussed here fall or would fall into Matsumoto’s Groups C and D, Danesin argues that their ties to their Old Norse original are nevertheless discernible and have a bearing on both their narrative function and the audience’s perception of the story.

In her chapter, ‘“Ymir’s Wicked Blood:” About the Uses of Nordic Medievalism in Attack on Titan’, Gaïa Perreaut continues the mythical focus by analysing the reimaging of Ymir, the ancestor of all jǫtunn from whose slayed body the world is shaped, as the progenitor of titans in a manga that, at first glance, does not look medievalist at all. However, as Perreaut argues, subtle references to Old Norse mythological elements are golden threads that hold this highly complicated narrative together, while the appropriation of the past within the story mirrors the appropriation of medieval Nordic imaginaries in the rise and proliferation of fascism in our world. This chapter thus reminds us of Grewell’s statement about medievalism’s continuing doubling of itself and demonstrates that the associatively medieval(ist) imagery can be just as impactful.8 Grewell, ‘Neomedievalism’, p. 40. Issues central to Vinland Saga, such as the cycle of vengeance and violence, resurface here; yet contrary to Yukimura who foregrounds his hope for peace via Thorfinn’s reflection and growth, Attack on Titan paints a far gloomier picture: an alternative Thorfinn whose personal experience and trauma have driven him onto a starkly different path.

The next two chapters, Minjie Su’s ‘A Berserkr in Shining Armour: Berserk Fury, Werewolf, and Mental Trauma in Kentaro Miura’s Manga Berserk’ and John Lance Griffith’s ‘Berserker Knights and the Problem of Anger in Fate’, complete each other, as they investigate the re-interpretation and reimaging of the Old Norse berserkr in the manga series Berserk (Group D) and the light novel series Fate. While the Old Norse berserkr is popularly believed to be a warrior who, more akin to beast than man, fights in a frenzy without armour, in both works the berserk becomes strangely associated with chivalric imagery and, as such, takes on an entirely new layer of meaning. In Berserk, the berserkr appears as a suit of armour with a wolf-shaped helmet, which, as Su demonstrates, draws on the werewolf skin in Old Norse literature and functions therapeutically, as it identifies and externalises the protagonist’s mental issues in a piece of clothing that can be taken off, and the berserkr’s battle frenzy is used to reflect the mental struggle against traumatic memories and pain. In other words, by temporarily becoming a beast, the protagonist is expected to learn to navigate intimate human relationships and to redefine himself as a human, all the while performing chivalric quests in a romance-like setting. The manga’s merging of the berserkr and the symbols of chivalry, Su further argues, offers an intriguing parallel to the characterisation of Bǫðvarr in Hrólfs saga kraka, who is both a berserkr and a knight ‘of sorts’, and thereby to the fusion of indigenous and imported elements – especially from the Arthurian corpus – in medieval Icelandic romances. Such parallels invite comparisons between artistic creative processes in different periods and cultures, potentially expanding the parameters of medievalism in a globalised context.

Boundaries are further broken down in the Fate series, where legendary figures from all kinds of historical, literary, and cultural background are brought together to fight in the Holy Grail War in an urban Japan filled with wizards. Here, Lancelot is reincarnated as a berserkr, enabled by the disruptive force of his anger as described in Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur; and Arthur, or Artoria, rendered now as a ‘beautiful fighting girl’ through the mangaesque code which however, as Griffith demonstrates, is merely a superficial deviation. Comparing medieval discourses on anger and justice (notably in Aristotle, Chaucer, and Malory) with the Fate Lancelot’s excessive anger and Artoria’s lack of anger (i.e., excessive stoicism), Griffith invites us to compare both the medieval society and the society in which the Fate series is created: both ‘celebrate balance, moderation, and control, values to which the violence of anger poses an existential threat’. Here, as in the world of Berserk, the berserker fury becomes a point of reference, a sort of speculum principum, mirrors for princes, for both Lancelot and Artoria to reflect on themselves and their relationship to others, as well as pointing to a way to cope with memories of pain, suffering, and regrets. In doing so, Griffith positions Fate within the long tradition of Arthuriana and assesses its value in both medievalist research and the (Southeast-Asian) classroom.

Another figure whose unrelenting anger is as responsible as Lancelot’s for Camelot’s downfall is Gawain. How would he fare in Japan? This question is addressed in Hiroki Okamoto’s ‘Arthurian Legends and Gawain’s Reception in Japan’, in which Okamoto uses Gawain as a case study to map out the early translations and dissemination of Le Morte d’Arthur and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. Gawain’s berserkr-like rage and its negative impact in Malory were not lost on early Japanese readers, as is evidenced by Gawain’s total omission in both Kairo-kō and Moero Arthur (1979–80), the first Arthurian-themed anime series in Japan. However, redactions and translations of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight gradually change Gawain’s image, as they reframe Gawain’s hatred in terms of moral obligations towards his kinsmen and king, and foreground Gawain’s superb fighting ability through his duel with Lancelot, who has already been accepted as the best knight of the Round Table. These factors endear Gawain to the Japanese readers and open up the possibility of reading Gawain as a Samurai and his behaviour as abiding by the Samurai codes recorded in Hagakure.

However, that an Arthurian knight should become a Samurai is not surprising, considering the profound influences of chivalry on the development of bushidō in Meiji Japan. This point is expanded in Chiharu Hasegawa’s chapter, ‘Die Like a Warrior in Vain? The Limits of Medievalisation, Counter-Gentlemanification, and the Reinscription of Bushidō Baseball in Samurai Giants’. Having delineated the highly malleable and medievalist nature of bushidō as a concept, Hasegawa uses the sport manga series Samurai Giants to discuss and assess the dynamic relationship between bushidō and gentleman (as a mild, more civilised, version of knight) as can be paralleled in the history of Japanese baseball, which, analogous to the European Middle Ages, is another imported item re-interpreted and reframed in local culture and history. Whereas Gawain is a successful case of cultural assimilation and reconciliation, Bamba, the manga’s protagonist, foregrounds a paradox that is also applicable to manga medievalism and modern manga itself: can and how can something that has absorbed so many foreign elements be essentially Japanese? More importantly, is it still possible and, indeed, meaningful to claim to be ‘essentially’ anything in a world marked by constant cultural exchange and hybridisation, especially now in the context of globalisation? Bamba attempts to defy the chivalric influences on modern baseball by ‘medievalising’ himself as a ‘pure’ Samurai, which does not exist in the first place. Thus trapped in this paradox, what options does Bamba have but to follow the path of Fate’s Lancelot: to become a berserkr – or die?

With Hasegawa’s chapter, this volume also reaches a full circle, as we both start and end with the translation and transmission of the European Middle Ages, the developments of medievalism and medievalist ideologies, and their socio-political impact in Japan from the nineteenth century onward. It is thus a kind of ‘there and back again’, to borrow from The Hobbit. However, as is the case of Bildungsroman to which many of the manga works discussed in this volume belong, it does not mean that we would return to where we started unchanged; nor would we perceive our starting point in the same light. While we begin with Ozawa’s investigation into the introduction, development, and dissemination of Old Norse studies in Japan, the following chapters show that the ubiquity of Old Norse and, more generally, medieval elements that so many of our colleagues have observed in the manga media and wondered about is only the tip of the iceberg. It is an integral part of a much larger, still ongoing, cultural movement, in which boundaries – be they cultural, generic, temporal, or geographical – are constantly challenged, traversed, and re-adjusted. As a result, Old Norse imaginaries easily merge with or morph into those from other historical and cultural spheres, and multiple pasts – historically or ideologically constructed – meet each other in surprising ways, blend with the present, and take on new meanings. The chapters below thus showcase a world of boundless possibilities, thereby echoing the British Museum’s choice to translate manga as ‘pictures run riot’ and to greet its visitors with Alice down the rabbit hole.9 Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, ‘A Manga for Everyone’, in Rousmaniere and Ryoko (eds), The Citi Exhibition, pp. 20–33, at p. 22. For a description of the exhibition’s overall organisation, see Malene Wagner, ‘The Citi Exhibition Manga マンガ: The British Museum (23 May–26 August 2019)’, The Japan Society Review, 81, 14:3 (2019), 7–8, <https://www.japansociety.org.uk/review?review=613> [accessed 6 Feb. 2025]. Admittedly, ‘pictures run riot’ is a somewhat romanticised rendering, but it does a wonderful job of capturing the infinite, unpredictable, sometimes even bizarre, encounters in the manga media, all becoming curiouser and curiouser. To investigate such a world, as we mentioned above, could expand the current parameters of the studies of medievalism and afford exciting opportunities for academic, artistic, and creative inspirations. It is therefore also our hope and goal that, having ‘travelled’ through the chapters below, our readers will also perceive the main topics we listed at the beginning of this introduction – medieval, medievalism, and manga – in a new light.