Japan trains several thousand manga artists a year in vocational schools. Almost none of them are visible to a publisher outside Japan.
Students finish a two- or three-year professional programme, build a portfolio, and then enter a domestic market that is crowded and slow to open.
Publishers abroad, meanwhile, are no longer only importing translation rights for manga made in Japan. More of them want to originate and publish work themselves, and more want to make that work together with Japanese artists. A publisher who decides to try and turns toward the schools finds no shared list, no common vocabulary, and no obvious person to write to.
G-MAP is the list. Participating schools submit their graduating artists to a single index; the secretariat verifies each entry and keeps it current. Overseas publishers, editors and agents apply once for access and can then contact artists — or their schools — directly.
A list on its own is not enough. Work across borders is no longer unusual — publishers abroad commissioning artists based in Japan, artists based abroad drawing for Japanese publishers — and it asks for things Japanese manga schools have not systematically taught. So G-MAP also runs a training programme, and what it learns there goes back into the curricula of the schools that submit to the index.
G-MAP is a programme run by ASO Pop Culture College with support from the Japan Creator Support Fund, established at the Japan Arts Council under a subsidy from the Agency for Cultural Affairs.
- Established
- 2025
- Secretariat
- ASO Pop Culture College
- Schools
- 5
- Index access
- Publishers, editors, agents, licensors
- Languages
- English / 日本語
- Contact
- Contact form
What the index holds
Each entry carries the artist’s name and school, their genre, graduating year, any publication or award history, and a portfolio.
Schools submit the entries and supply the portfolios. The secretariat checks each one before it goes live.
Real names and contact details are not held here. An enquiry reaches the artist through the school.
The index is not open to the public. Access is granted to publishers, editors, agents and licensors after the secretariat has confirmed the application.
What G-MAP does not do
The secretariat does not hold rights, does not sign on an artist’s behalf, and takes no commission on anything that follows from an introduction. We are not a party to the deal.
What we run is the index, the introduction, and the training behind it. Terms are settled between the publisher and the artist, or the publisher and the school. Some artists are represented by an agent and some schools have staff who handle overseas enquiries; where that is the case, the entry or the school will tell you who to write to.
Who runs it
G-MAP is operated by a secretariat drawn from the participating schools and the manga industry. ASO Pop Culture College serves as the lead school, joined by four committee schools since 2025.
The five sit in five prefectures: Fukuoka, Osaka, Tokyo, Fukushima and Niigata. Manga is taught across the country rather than in any one city, and each school has its own way of training an artist. The index carries that spread with it.