Tokyo’s Manga Man does live manga reading

In Japan, comic books are as common as rice. They’re everywhere, anytime.

A sweaty salaryman on on overcrowded train with no oxygen barely finds any space to flip through the pages of the latest issue of Reluctant Soldier Princess Nami. A uniformed schoolgirl hypnotically follows Naruto’s adventures on the screen of her cell phone. A culturally-shocked tourist wanders around the maze of a six-floor specialized comic book store with thousands and thousands of titles. Manga cafés. Manga rental shops. Comic book fairs and conventions.

And then there is Rikimaru Toho who reads manga — the Japanese comic books — to the audience on the street.

Toho is a professional manga reader — also known as Manga Man — who had already become some sort of a celebrity here in Tokyo and has even been featured on MTV Japan and other TV stations.

Rikimaru Toho reads manga to audience in Shimokitazawa, Tokyo. (Source: http://sc.4connection.org/file/people.html)

Rikimaru Toho, with a towel wrapped around his head, every Saturday at 10 o’clock at night enthusiastically reads manga aloud to listeners in front of the South Exit of Shimokitazawa Station in Tokyo. On Sunday afternoons you can find him in the nearby Inokashira Park, just a few stations away. He’s been doing this for the past five years.

Before he was picked up by the media, Toho was unemployed. Now he gets offers to perform in theaters and clubs.

The audience can choose any of the manga from the wide selection he puts on the sidewalk, donate a few hundred Yen and the show can begin. For Toho, no character is out of bounds. A performance lasts about 10 or 15 minutes on average.

“The best thing about my manga performances is when audience members are sweating when they thank me after a reading. I’m the one who performed — but they’re the ones sweating,” says Toho. (Source)

By now, you’re probably wondering what it all sounds like. We dug up a couple of videos below:

Rikimaru Toho’s web site can be found here (in Japanese only).