Victory Manual

When someone says “comic book” in English, I’m guessing most people, like me, think of Superman, Spiderman, Batman, X-Men, or some other super-hero (powerful-sounding-word+man) based storyline. The Japanese version of comics (manga) are completely different, though.

I found a compact series called 「マンガ、日本の歴史がわかる本」 (Which is hard to translate as it comes out as something like “Manga: The book [with] which you can understand Japanese History”, so I’ll just make a new English title: Japanese History, the Manga!) that has 3 parts. I started from the beginning with, 「古代～南北朝時代」 (From Ancient Times to the Era of Northern and Southern Dynasties [1392]).

These are definitely not substitutes for actual history books, but they’re good primers that give you the general outline of historical progress and the major players. They’re fun and educational!