Manga about contact between Portuguese, Japanese in Tanegashima launched on April 20
This year’s ninth issue of Shogakukan’s Big Comic Original magazine launched a new manga by Taiyo Matsumoto and French comic book artist Cyril Pedrosa titled Nanbanjin (Foreign Outsider) on Monday.
Image via Big Comic Original’s X/Twitter account
© Shogakukan
The manga is set during the Muromachi period, during the waning years of the Ashikaga shogunate’s reign leading to the Sengoku period. A large man washes up on the shores of Tanegashima, helped by an old former fisherman named Shōbē.
The manga was already announced in November 2025, with more details. The earlier announcement notes that a two-volume supplementary material for the manga launched in France in January, compiling the first pages of the manga as well as material about the production of the manga. The first supplementary volume focuses on Pedrosa, and the second volume on Matsumoto.
The earlier announcement places the setting of the manga specifically at 1543, when the first Portuguese arrived at Tanegashima in Japan and introduced matchlock firearms to Japan’s military world (marking the origin of the colloquial “tangeshima” name to Japan’s first matchlocks).
Matsumoto (Ping Pong, Sunny, Tekkonkinkreet, Cats of the Louvre) launched the Tokyo These Days (Tōkyō Higoro) manga in Big Comic Original in June 2019, and ended it in June 2023. Shogakukan published three compiled book volumes for the manga. Viz Media releases the manga in English, and published the third volume in September 2024. The manga won the Graphic Novel/Comics category of LA Times Book Prize, and also won the award for the Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia category in the Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards.
Matsumoto’s Tekkonkinkreet manga inspired an anime film in 2006, and Sunny is also inspiring an upcoming animated film from dwarf studios, slated for completion in 2029.
Source: Big Comic Original’s X/Twitter account
