The Four Immigrants Manga

The Four Immigrants Manga
First English edition of The Four Immigrants Manga, as published by Stone Bridge Press
漫画四人書生 (Manga Yonin Shosei)
Genre	Autobiographical, Immigrants, Comedy, Daily life
Manga
Written by	Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama
English publisher	NA Stone Bridge Press
Published	1931
Volumes	1

The Four Immigrants Manga, also known as Manga of the Four Students (漫画四人書生, Manga Yonin Shosei), is a Japanese manga written and illustrated by Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama. The manga was published as 52 "episodes", with each episode as a two-page-spread with the intention of serialization in a Japanese language newspaper. The individual episodes were self published by Kiyama as a one-shot manga in 1931. It was republished in Japan by Shimpu in August 2012. It was translated into English by Frederik L. Schodt and was published by Stone Bridge Press as The Four Immigrants Manga: A Japanese Experience in San Francisco 1904–1924 in October 1998.

The manga drew from the experiences of Kiyama and his three friends when they were college-age Japanese immigrants to San Francisco between 1904 and 1924. The year 1924 is chosen as it was when the "immigration laws stiffened and some of the protagonists elected to return to Japan". Inspired by western comic strips, Hiyama drew Four Immigrants with each episode in a two page spread, ending at 52 episodes for a year's worth of weekly newspaper comic strips.Jason Thompson notes that "each strip has sort of a punchline, but also tells a story; it's not so different from reading a yonkoma manga in which the story is broken up for gags every four panels." Kiyama tried to have Four Immigrants serialized by a Japanese-language newspaper in San Francisco, but was unsuccessful. In 1927, Kiyama exhibited the pages of the manga in a gallery of Kinmon Gakuen, with the exhibition titled "A Manga North American Immigrant History" (Manga Hokubei Iminshi). The manga covered the immigrants' arrival and quarantine on Angel Island as well as major events of the time: 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Panama–Pacific International Exposition of 1915 and the 1918 flu pandemic with criticism of "several Congressional acts designed to curtail Asian immigration." Most of the manga "concentrates on student immigrant experiences prior to the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1907".