Comic side of Japanese art

There may be more to Japanese popular culture than manga, yet the hugely successful comic strip phenomenon remains one of Japan's biggest cultural influences on Western youth. Read by schoolkids and businessmen alike in its native country, manga has also connected with the popular consciousness of urban Japan like nothing before it - even accounting for as much as two fifths of new publications in Japan.

By emphasising its stylistic links to traditional Japanese art such as scroll painting, this comprehensive exhibition is eager to play down manga's reputation for depicting violence and sexually explicit imagery. Featuring more than 90 drawing panels (including Tamura Shigeru's An Antique Moon, right), with English translations to allow visitors to follow the dialogue, the diverse themes and narratives of manga are explored.

But, with characters who keep penises in goldfish bowls and men in suits who encounter grotesque creatures as they venture through trippy, dream-like sequences, there's certainly no getting away from manga's reputation for weirdness. One paranoiac character, called The Man, tells how: 'Every 24 hours another one of me appeared. It began to get on my nerves ... But what a hassle to strangle them one by one.'

It's this surreal vision, mixed with the depiction of Japanese people's everyday lives, which seems to give manga its winning edge. And, if you still can't make any sense out of it, leading manga experts, including exhibition curator Fusanosuke Natsume, will be hosting a one-day symposium at the London Institute on February 1 (£35, £20 concs. Tel: 020 7514 6313).

Until Feb 8, The London Institute Gallery, 65 Davies Street W1, Mon to Fri 10am to 8pm, free.

Tel: 020 7514 6127
Tube: Bond Street/Oxford Circus

Other exhibitions now on:
Ruth Orkin: A Woman Of The World
Celebrate!
The Carnegie Art Award 2001