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New Professor Munakata Exhibition at British Museum

The British Museum in London is now running a free exhibition of manga by Yukinobu Hoshino, creator of Professor Munakata (Munakata Kyōju) and 2001 Nights. The exhibition, which continues until April 8 2012, consists of original drawings from Hoshino's strip Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure. Hoshino came to the museum in October 2009 to draw the adventure.

According to the British Museum page, "Hoshino has lent the Museum his finished drawings (genga) and sketches and even two of his fude brush pens which he used to draw this adventure. In this display you can see the development of Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure from conception to finished work. This is an exceptionally rare opportunity to uncover the process of how the first British Museum manga was created."

The British Museum Press plans to publish the translated ten-part series as a book. Its launch will be marked by a discussion of the manga in the Stevenson Lecture Theatre, on Friday November 25 at 6.30 p.m. The event features Nicole Rousmaniere of the British Museum, and will be introduced by comics critic Paul Gravett. The price is £5 (£3 for members and concessions).

Within the manga, Professor Munakata is a widowed scholar of folklore and history who travels the world on one adventure after another. In Japan, his British Museum adventure was serialised over five months in the fortnightly manga magazine Big Comic.

The Professor Munakata manga series began under the name Munakata Kyōju Denkikō (The Legendary Musings of Professor Munakata) in Ushio Shuppansha's Monthy Comic Tom and Monthly Comic Tom Plus magazine from 1995 to 1999. The manga later relaunched in 2004 under the name Munakata Kyōju Ikōroku (The Case Records of Professor Munakata) in Shogakukan's Big Comic magazine, where it continues to this day.

The British museum previously ran an exhibition of Hoshino's work from November 2009 to January 2010.

Via Helen McCarthy's twitter feed.

Image: Hoshino Yukinobu, Professor Munakata's British Museum adventure, 2009.
The Case Records of Professor Munakata are published in Big Comic.
© Hoshino Yukinobu/Shogakukan, Inc.