All translations of Japanese manga into Finnish are listed in http://www.tokio.fi where they can be easily found and followed.

The subject of manga in general in Finland was reviewed in four blog articles in the spring of 2024 inspired by one certain manga series that had started being published already in 2023 and continued through 2024. It was Bird ihmemaassa (Fushigi no kuni no Bird, Isabella Bird in Wonderland) by Taiga Sassa, translated by Antti Valkama. It tells about Isabella Bird (1831–1904), a British explorer and adventurer, who travelled in Japan in 1878, ten years after Meiji restoration. Being based on real events and a book written by Isabella herself (Unbeaten Tracks in Japan, 1880) it has strong historical and cultural interest. She is travelling through northern Japan with her interpreter Itō in regions never seen by a foreigner and in conditions even Japanese wanted to avoid. She starts her trip from Yokohama and Tokyo (Yedo, Edo) and goes as far as Hokkaidō (Yezo, Ezo). It is really interesting to see how travel experiences and observations of a western lady from the 19th century are interpreted and visualized by a present day Japanese manga artist.

The second article sheds some light on the roots of manga in Japan and the next two, written by the manga translator Antti Valkama, are titled Manga in Finland and Manga and myself. We learn that the first manga ever in Finnish was published in 1985 (Hiroshiman poika, Hadashi no Gen by Keiji Nakazawa). The actual manga boom started in 2003 when the first books of Dragon Ball series by Akira Toriyama were published in Finnish. The translators were the brothers Antti and Heikki Valkama. Soon many other series saw daylight and new translators appeared.

In the second article Antti Valkama tells about his relationship with manga, how he started reading it as a child in Japan and how he later in Finland started doing the translations. May it be mentioned here that he also translates novels from Japanese e.g. Haruki Murakami. Below, Antti at work!