Shueisha, the Japanese publishing giant behind some of the world’s most influential manga and magazines, including Weekly Shonen Jump, Japan’s top-selling and record-setting manga magazine, turns 100 this year. While the centenary celebration demonstrates how far the company has come, the anniversary is not just about looking backward.
Shueisha’s most representative 100th anniversary activities are not historical retrospectives in museums but new multimedia projects for readers, such as digitized manga and audio books, and streamlined support for aspiring manga artists including advice on registering intellectual property and invoicing.
The most expansive of these is Shueisha Manga Expo, a website that dives into the publisher’s archives and is scheduled to operate for a full year. Its centerpiece feature, “This Month’s 100 Recommended Manga,” refreshes monthly, with 100 selected titles from Shueisha’s vast catalog available for free as well as related volumes at promotional prices of ¥100. Instead of pushing only its biggest international hits, Shueisha is using the centenary to bring renewed attention to its older titles, making this project less about marketing and more about curation.
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