Manga de Dokuha

Published by East Press and later Gakken, the aim of the series is to introduce average manga readers to important literary works they would otherwise not be aware of or willing to read.

East Press published best-selling versions of the communist novel Kanikōsen, Karl Marx's Das Kapital and Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf.

Written from a left-wing political perspective, the book follows the crew of a crab fishing ship living under oppressive conditions while being exploited by capitalists.

[3][5][6] According to Waseda University literature professor Hirokazu Toeda, "Kanikōsen is discussed and analyzed every time a critical social issue occurs – the disparity society, severe labor conditions, consumer product falsification, random killings.

[5] Anti-poverty activist Kosuke Hashimoto responded to the books' popularity, saying: "I think many young people in Japan are afraid of the future, and that fear is sometimes turning to anger.

The Financial Ministry of Bavaria which owns the copyright to the book and has refused to publish it in Germany issued a statement saying that manga was an inappropriate medium for Hitler's writing.

[8] Bavaria's former Japanese representative Toshio Obata stated: "Even 60 years after the end of war, Nazism remains a sensitive issue in Germany.

[1] Between November 2011 and November 2012,[9][10] JManga made available online 14 Manga de Dokuha titles in English, namely No Longer Human, Das Kapital, The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, Night on the Galactic Railroad, The Book of Five Rings, I Am a Cat, Seton's Wild Animals, Sutta Nipata, One Thousand and One Nights, The Metamorphosis, Journey to the West, In Search of Lost Time, The Art of War and The Narrow Road to the Deep North.

[11] One Peace Books also released Don Quixote, The Great Gatsby, Moby-Dick, Ulysses and The War of the Worlds as part of its "Manga Classic Readers" series on 1 September 2012.