Depictions of Firearms and Other Projectile Weapons in Top-Selling Japanese Manga

Abstract

Firearm violence is a pressing public health issue in the United States and becoming increasingly so worldwide. This concern has prompted researchers to examine the prevalence of such violence in media entertainment. Japanese manga have a large youth readership in the U.S., yet research on their depictions of firearms is presently lacking. We randomly selected 50 chapters from each of ten top-selling manga series worldwide (N = 500) to identify dialogue, action, and other illustrations involving handguns, rifles, machine guns, other projectile weapons, and bombs. Of the 500 chapters, 129 (25.8%) had at least one depiction of a firearm or other projectile weapon, with 684 instances of characters handling (e.g., carrying, holding, firing, reloading) such a weapon. Of the 384 unique characters so depicted, the vast majority were males (88.3%), adults (92.2%), and “good” characters (73.4%). Manga readers, especially male adolescents and preteens, are frequently exposed to storylines in which one or more characters are using a firearm or other projectile weapon. Working collaboratively, manga publishers and distributors should act to develop and implement a comprehensive rating system to flag content that may be harmful to youth so that parents can more easily monitor what their children are reading.