Highlights
- Japanese work culture is often explored through a variety of different manga.
- Manga like Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san and Salaryman Kintaro provide realistic depictions of the perils of retail and the clash between brusque attitudes and reserved workplace culture.
- Works like Angel Bank and Hataraki Man explore the challenges of making career changes in Japan's traditionally one-career market and highlight the psychological differences between men and women in the workplace.
After years of remote work from home, the idea of heading back into the office via lengthy commutes has lost its charm with many employees. Whether this and other issues will change is another matter, as some places are more conservative than others. For example, Japanese work culture is particularly stuck in its ways, with its old methods, outdated tech, and hierarchical structure that makes upward mobility difficult.
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It’s been enough to drive younger Japanese workers towards international companies rather than homegrown ones. But other pieces of media go into the ins and outs of Japanese work culture more in-depth, from books and scholarly articles to movies and videos. There have even been some manga about what working at a Japanese business is like.
1 Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san
- Written & Illustrated by Honda.
Starting life as a webcomic on Pixiv, Skull-face Bookseller Honda-san caught on well enough to get printed by Media Factory and translated into English by Yen Press. That’s not to mention its anime adaptation, which made it to Crunchyroll. As the title suggests, the manga and its different media are about how Honda and her colleagues handle running a bookstore day to day. It’s an autobiographical comic too, as the titular Honda and her coworkers are real people.
Some of its chapters even talk about her newfound fame, covering how it affected her work until its conclusion in 2019. Obviously, she isn't really a living skeleton, just as her colleagues don't go around wearing gas masks or paper bags. These changes are just for the sake of privacy, legal concerns, and comic effect. But while the presentation is embellished a touch, the manga's depictions of the perils of retail are quite realistic, from dealing with quirky customers to handling publishing snafus and misplaced orders.
2 Salaryman Kintaro
- Written & Illustrated by Hiroshi Motomiya.
Hiroshi Motomiya is perhaps best known as the founder of Moto Kikaku, the manga group behind Capcom’s premier ninja Strider Hiryu. Others in the know will recognize him as the creator of Tenchi wo Kurau, his manga about China’s Three Kingdoms era, and is one of the few people who got to read Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure manga Hirohiko Araki’s first and now lost manga The Bottle.
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He also created the workplace drama manga Salaryman Kintaro, where an ex-biker gang leader follows his late wife’s wishes to go straight. At first, he tries to be a fisherman. But after he saves the life of Morinosuke Yamato, the chairman of Yamato Construction, he’s rewarded with a job at his company. His brusque attitude often clashes with the more reserved workplace culture, but he always gives 110%. It’s a sweet story that’s been adapted into an anime, a TV drama, and a Takashi Miike movie.
3 Angel Bank: Dragon Zakura Gaiden
- Written & Illustrated by Norifusa Mita.
The original Dragon Zakura by Norifusa Mita is more of an insight into Japan’s school system, as ex-biker turned lawyer Kenji takes control of Ryuzan High School in the hopes of getting at least five students into Tokyo University. It's Japan's most prestigious college, so getting the failing students of a failing school enrolled there is no small feat. Still, it's more like Dangerous Minds with Yakuza's Kazuma Kiryu rather than a story strictly about the workplace.
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But its spin-off Angel Bank focuses on a workplace issue, as Ryuzan’s English teacher Mamako is feeling unfulfilled in her work and seeks a career change. This isn't an easy thing to do in Japan as its people are traditionally encouraged to stick to one career market once they're out of college, and Mamako is in her early 30s. So, the manga highlights how she joins "occupational change agent" Yasuo in his work to help other people change the course of their careers, and show readers how it’s not only good but sometimes necessary too.
4 Hataraki Man
- Written & Illustrated by Moyoco Anno.
If the name Moyoco Anno sounds familiar, that’s because she’s the wife of Neon Genesis Evangelion creator Hideaki Anno, and she even drew a manga-based essay on what life with her husband is like. However, she’s an accomplished manga artist in her own right, often delving into the psychology of her characters. This is how she came up with Hataraki Man, as she wanted to highlight the psychological differences between men and women in the Japanese workplace.
For example, her lead Hiroko wants to make it in the world of magazine publishing, often going into "Hataraki Man" (Work Man) mode to get her tasks done, often at the cost of her personal life and to limited praise compared to her other colleagues. It's a situation women workers all over the globe found all too relatable, which gained Anno's work a devoted audience. Unfortunately, due to ill health, Anno put the series on hiatus in 2008, but its four volumes are available in English via Maiden Japan.
5 Kōsaku Shima
- Written & Illustrated by Kenshi Hirokane.
Contrasting with Honda-san, which was real but cartoonish, Kōsaku Shima is fictional but much more grounded. The series follows the titular character as he works for an electronics company. The manga was originally called Section Chief Kōsaku Shima, then the title changed as he rose through the ranks, where he recently got promoted from Senior Advisor to Outside Director in 2022.
The series is spiced up with a little political and romantic drama here and there. But it has been commended for being one of the most realistic depictions of Japanese work culture, showcasing how the usually unambitious Shima navigated its internal politics to get further than he imagined. It also helps that the series follows the present timeline, meaning it also covers how both Shima and Japanese workplaces have evolved over the past forty years.