‘Turning Japanese? Les Misérables from Meiji to Manga’

This chapter explores how Japanese visual culture, through the media of manga and anime, has adapted Victor Hugo's nineteenth-century novel, thereby engaging with artistic forms that remain curiously sidelined in the discourse of adaptation studies. Building on cultural practice since the Meiji period which has displayed a consistent fascination with Hugo's story through translated editions and live-action versions, recent animated and graphic adaptations continue to appropriate the novel as an allegory for self-determination and social justice. At the same time, these adaptations -- like their source material -- consciously problematise the 'domestic / foreign' binary that often informs critical approaches to multimedia adaptation (from translation studies), highlighting a shared imperative between Hugo's own artistry and these contemporary versions to transcend borders of form and nation. [Publication scheduled for Autumn 2018.]