MANGA: Okinawa Ch. 08: Military Landlord (Free Chapter)

By Susumu Higa

Hello and welcome readers new and old to this free manga chapter, which is both the eighth chapter of our Okinawa project, as well as the very first chapter of Susumu Higa’s Mabui. Flashing forward to present day, more or less, we see visit the islands of Okinawa and get to know their spirit, their Mabui.

I won’t do too much blathering on this week, other than to say that the next seven chapters of Mabui make somewhat liberal use of Okinawan dialect, as well as Ryukyu/Okinawan words. For example, the titular Mabui, as well as the yuta or spiritual medium or shaman, Mrs. Asato, who is featured in this chapter, or the idea of monchu, or the concept of a larger ‘one family’ that includes more than just blood relatives. For the most part, these words are not explained or defined in the Japanese edition of Mabui, but we have added definitions of certain words to help illuminate the story a bit for Western readers. In the print edition, many of these notes will be moved to a glossary as part of the end notes.

For paid subscribers, the PDF and CBZ files are at the end of this email this week. For everyone else, please enjoy reading, either in your email, on the Mangasplaining Extra Substack website, or via the handy new Substack iOS app.

Welcome to the second half of Okinawa, by Susumu Higa. We hope you enjoy it.

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Thanks for reading this week’s installment of Okinawa, “Military Landlord.” If you’re not already, please consider becoming a subscriber of our newsletter. Paid subscribers get access to a new chapter of manga each week, lots of bonus articles, plus you’re supporting us while we make something cool. :-)