When it comes to my hobbies — namely music, movies, and manga — I have strong opinions about what I like and don’t; God help the well-meaning gift-giver who mistakenly believes that one Shostakovich symphony is as good as another (he wrote fifteen, didn’t he?), or assumes that my interest in screwball comedies predisposes me to look favorably on the oeuvre of Kate Hudson. One gift that I never mind receiving, however, is a book or film that enriches my understanding of favorite passtimes — say, a documentary exploring the work of Preston Sturges, or a coffee table book celebrating the art of Hayao Miyazaki. If you’re shopping for a similarly fussy manga lover, you might find such a strategy helpful for avoiding the vexing issue of taste. Below are six gift ideas for the otaku on your Chrismukkah shopping list.

FOR THE MANGA SCHOLAR

If you have a manga-reading friend who peppers his conversation with words like “paratexts,” “phenomenology,” and “hermeutics,” why not give him a subscription to Mechademia? This three-year-old journal is the only English-language publication dedicated to exploring Japanese popular culture through the lenses of anthropology, sociology, film studies, gender studies, and art history (to name just a few of the disciplines represented in its first issues). Moreover, Mechademia is one of the few academic journals that actively attempts to bridge the gap between the ivory tower and the “real world”; you won’t find many scholarly publications whose websites proudly cite favorable notices at Active Anime and Manga Worth Reading alongside kudos from The Library Journal, or who devote serious attention to such neglected areas as fan communities, cosplay, and toys. Though the prevailing tone is serious (and occasionally jargon-heavy), it’s an unusually accessible publication that offers arm-chair manga scholars a chance to engage with the broader social, cultural, and political issues raised by series as utterly different as Astro Boy, Blood: The Last Vampire, Grave of the Fireflies, Neon Genesis Evagelion, Porco Rosso, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Ranma 1/2, and Voices of a Distant Star.

Mechademia • Edited by Frenchy Lunning • University of Minnesota Press • $19.95 per volume (current and back issues available through Amazon and the University of Minnesota Press website)

FOR THE HISTORY BUFF

Written by artist Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama, The Four Immigrants Manga offers a unique window into the Asian-American experience, documenting Kiyama’s life as a new arrival in fin-de-siecle San Francisco — the Great Earthquake of 1906, the Panama Pacific International Exposition of 1915 — as well as the racism and economic hardships that he and his friends encountered on a daily basis. What makes these autobiographical comics truly extraordinary, however, was that they were originally published in 1931… in a bilingual edition… in America. As Frederick Schodt notes in the foreword to the 1999 edition, Kiyama’s work was aimed at other first-generation immigrants who, like him, were caught between two worlds, trying hard to make sense of their place in both. The visual style and the subject matter may not strike contemporary readers as manga-esque (Schodt notes the influence of American cartoonist George McManus on Kiyama), but the intimate quality of the stories will leave as lasting an impression as Barefoot Gen and Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms.

The Four Immigrants Manga: A Japanese Experience in San Francisco, 1904 – 1924 • By Henry (Yoshitaka) Kiyama, Translated, with an introduction and notes, by Frederick L. Schodt • Stone Bridge Press • 1999 • $14.95

FOR THE CLAMP FANATIC

In honor of CLAMP’s fifteenth anniversary, Kodansha commissioned CLAMP no Kiseki, an elaborately packaged, twelve-issue retrospective of the quartet’s work from RG Veda to Tsubasa: Reservoir Chronicles. Equal parts coffee table book, Otaku USA article, and Cracker Jack box, each volume features full-color pin-up art, artist interviews, publication histories, and bonus comics, as well as three plastic chess pieces based on favorite CLAMP characters: Mokona (pawn), Kamui Shiro (bishop). Some volumes focus exclusively on one title, while others examine two or three of CLAMP’s shorter works. A word to the wise: do some comparison shopping to find the best deals, as the list price varies from $19.99 (volumes 7-12) to $29.99 (volumes 1-6). Amazon and Buy.com are both excellent places to begin your search, as is eBay, where enterprising gift-givers can find new volumes priced as low as $5.99 (or complete chess sets for as much as $550). For more information on the chess pieces and manga associated with each volume, consult the Wikipedia article on CLAMP no Kiseki.

CLAMP no Kiseki • By CLAMP • Tokyopop • 2005 – 2008 • 12 volumes • $19.99 – $29.99

FOR THE SAMURAI WARRIOR

Most otaku are familiar with Akira Kurosawa’s much-imitated Seven Samurai (if only through its mecha-licious anime adaptation) but Yojimbo is arguably the movie that paved the way for the lone wolves, samurai executioners, and vagabonds gracing the pages of Kazuo Koike and Takehiko Inoue’s best-loved manga. Toshiro Mifune turns in a masterful performance as a ronin who wanders into a town beset by two criminal gangs. Though Mifune initially appears to profit from the situation by offering his services to the highest bidder, it gradually becomes clear that Mifune has, in fact, been pitting the two families against one another, leading to a dramatic showdown that makes High Noon look like an episode of Sesame Street. With a great, funky score that marries traditional Japanese instruments with Birth of the Cool-era jazz, a bleakly funny script, and a terrific supporting cast that includes such Kurosawa regulars as Tatsuya Nakadai (High and Low, Kagemusha), Yojimbo is a must for any gekiga fan’s collection. As an added bonus, the Criterion Collection edition includes a 45-minute making-of documentary and a beautifully remastered soundtrack.

Yojimbo • Directed by Akira Kurosawa • The Criterion Collection • 1961 • $39.99

FOR THE ART HISTORIAN

Long before the distinctive prints of Katsushika Hokusai (1760 – 1849) excited the imagination of European artists such as Claude Monet and Pierre-August Renoir, this celebrated Japanese artist made a name for himself by publishing the Hokusai Manga (1814), a fifteen-volume collection of sketches. The nearly 4,000 images contained within this extraordinary series ran the gamut from the mundane — common household objects, fish, native plants — to the fantastic — demons with three eyes, mice balancing a ledger book, an octopus swallowing a fisherman whole. (Shades of tentacle porn?) Art historians Jocelyn Bouquillard and Christophe Marquet have assembled sixty of the most striking images from the Manga, accompanied by brief essays describing the plates and placing them in artistic context. Though Bouquillard and Marquet make no attempt to connect these early prints with the modern comic form, contemporary manga lovers can see how Hokusai’s caricatures and mythological creatures have inspired countless sequential artists in the twentieth century.

Hokusai: First Manga Master • Text by Jocelyn Bouquillard and Christophe Marquet • Harry N. Abrams, Inc. • 2007 • $19.95

FOR THE FOLKLORIST

If the manga lover on your shopping list has read Dororo, InuYasha, Kekkaishi, Mushishi, xxxHolic, or Yokaiden (just to name a few series with supernatural elements), consider buying her a copy of Lafcadio Hearn’s indispensible Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things. First published in 1904, this slim volume collects some of Japan’s best-known ghost stories, many of which have been re-worked and incorporated into manga from GeGeGe no Kitaro to Shirahime-Syo. Hearn’s book features a variety of demons and ghosts familiar to contemporary readers, from kitsune to yuki-onna, beautiful snow devils that lure men to their deaths. Kwaidan also includes three essays exploring Chinese and Japanese superstitions about insects that, while not as famous as “Hoichi the Earless” or “The Story of O-Tei,” are equally fascinating. Though several inexpensive paperback editions are readily available online, you might also explore used bookstores for older hardcover editions, some of which are exceptionally elegant in their presentation.

Kwaidan: Stories and Studies of Strange Things • By Lafcadio Hearn • Tuttle Publishing • 2005 • $16.95