The first volume of Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tokyo These Days manga series was awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Graphic Novel/Comics category last weekend. The 45th annual awards ceremony was held at the University of Southern California’s Bovard Auditorium.
Tokyo These Days was one of five titles nominated in the Graphic Novel/Comics category. Matsumoto’s 2000 manga GoGo Monster was also nominated for the same award in 2009.
Here we go! The Book Prize for Graphic Novel/Comics is awarded to…
“Tokyo These Days, Vol. 1” by Taiyo Matsumoto!
Congratulations @VIZMedia! #bookprizes pic.twitter.com/6P2Ki9dwH2
— LA Times Festival of Books (@latimesfob) April 26, 2025
VIZ Media posted a celebratory message and drawing from Matsumoto himself on its Twitter/X account this week. Matsumoto expressed his surprise at winning the award and thanked readers outside Japan for enjoying his work. He went on to say that creating the manga was an “enjoyable and wonderful experience” and thanked the LA Times Book Prize, VIZ, Shogakukan, his editors, and the manga’s English translator, director Michael Arias.
VIZ congratulates Matsumoto Sensei on receiving the @latimes Book Prizes award for Tokyo These Days, Vol. 1 in Graphic Novel/Comics!
Sensei shared a drawing and short note to accept the honor which we are happy to share with you. pic.twitter.com/dykisSvUts
— VIZ Media (@VIZMedia) April 29, 2025
Other manga titles to be nominated as finalists for the award include Rokudenashiko’s What Is Obscenity: The Story of a Good for Nothing Artist and Her Pussy in 2016, Kaito’s Blue Flag (Volumes 1-4) in 2020, and Yamada Murasaki’s Talk to My Back in 2022.
Matsumoto serialized Tokyo These Days in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Original Zokan from June 12, 2019 to June 12, 2023. A total of three tankobon volumes were released.
The manga was also nominated for the 27th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2023 and again in 2024 for the 28th edition of the prize.
VIZ released Tokyo These Days in English under its VIZ Signature line, describing the main synopsis of the first volume as:
On his final day as an editor, Shiozawa takes a train he’s ridden hundreds of times to impart some last advice to a manga creator whose work he used to edit. Later, he is drawn to return to a bookshop at the request of a junior editor who wants his help dealing with an incorrigible manga creator who used to be edited by Shiozawa and now refuses to work with anyone else. For Shiozawa, Tokyo these days is full of memory and is cocooned in the inescapable bonds among manga creators, their editors, art, and life itself.
The LA Times Book Prizes are part of the LA Times Festival of Books event that ran from April 26-27, 2025. The awards recognize outstanding literary achievements from authors at all stages of their careers. Winners were announced in 13 categories for works published in 2024.
Source: LA Times Festival of Books Official Twitter, Official Website, press release
