“If you are a newbie to manga,” the authors write, “you can certainly find the perfect series to dive into.” And that’s certainly true – this is an excellent introduction to manga, especially for the curious teen.
Over at All the Anime, I review the new History of Modern Manga from Insight Editions.
The Official Schoolgirl Milky Crisis Blog 
Hello professor, I read your book “Christ’s Samurai…” and you said King Sebastian of Portugal became something of a poster boy for Japanese Christians.
Can you tell me more about that? I’m very interested in the figure of Sebastian, and I’d like to know some details of that comment from your great book.
Hello Luke.
There were several Christian tales and figures that found an enthusiastic reception in Japan, some of them apocryphal or legendary. Sebastian was particularly popular, I think, because he was a “boy king” in the time when the young students were being raised in the Shimabara seminary. The stories about his disappearance would have only been a couple of years old when the four Japanese emissaries toured Europe in the 1580s, which would have made his story more prominent in their own reminiscences about Europe. And he famously issued an edict forbidding the enslavement of Japanese people, which was sure to make him popular with the home audience. Furthermore, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if tales of this lost boy-saviour were confused among the Hidden Christians, with stories of Jesus Christ and Jerome Amakusa, giving further weight to the story.