Reframing Disability: Manga's Portrayals of Deaf Characters

Abstract

Yoshiko Okuyama, a professor of Japanese studies at the University of Hawai’i at Hilo, discusses "Reframing Disability in Manga" (University of Hawaii Press 2020), which she wrote after interviewing manga artists, conducting archival research, and visiting events and organizations serving disability communities in Japan as a Japan Foundation fellow. This event took place on October 18, 2021. It was co-sponsored by the Central NY Humanities Corridor and the East Asia+ media collective. Focusing on the book’s chapter on the deaf community in Japan, she discusses their representation in manga using comic examples such as A Silent Voice (Koe no katachi) while sharing manga images and anecdotes she did not include in her book. She concludes with a discussion of emerging issues as the pandemic continues to impact disability communities in Japan. This event had RID/NIC certified ASL interpreters throughout and was EAP's first fully bi-lingual English-ASL event.