Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tokyo These Days, Vol. 1 has been awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize in the Graphic Novel/Comics category. The Los Angeles Times announced the winners of its 45th annual Book Prizes at a ceremony held at USC’s Bovard Auditorium on April 25, 2025. The awards recognize outstanding literary achievements and celebrate authors at all stages of their careers.
Celebrating Literary Excellence
The LA Times Book Prizes, founded in 1980, honor books published in English the prior year. Prizes were presented in 13 categories. The judges come from diverse backgrounds, including authors, librarians, journalists, and academics.
This year, alongside Matsumoto, other winners included:
- Achievement in Audiobook Production: Dominic Hoffman (narrator) and Linda Korn (producer), James
- Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction: Jiaming Tang, Cinema Love: A Novel
- Biography: Laura Beers, Orwell’s Ghosts: Wisdom and Warnings for the Twenty-First Century
- Christopher Isherwood Prize for Autobiographical Prose: Emily Witt, Health and Safety: A Breakdown
- Current Interest: Jesse Katz, The Rent Collectors: Exploitation, Murder, and Redemption in Immigrant LA
- Fiction: Jennine Capó Crucet, Say Hello to My Little Friend: A Novel
- History: Andrea Freeman, Ruin Their Crops on the Ground: The Politics of Food in the United States, From the Trail of Tears to School Lunch
- Mystery/Thriller: Danielle Trussoni, The Puzzle Box: A Novel
- Poetry: Remica Bingham-Risher, Room Swept Home
- Science Fiction, Fantasy & Speculative Fiction: Kelly Link, The Book of Love: A Novel
- Science & Technology: Rebecca Boyle, Our Moon: How Earth’s Celestial Companion Transformed the Planet, Guided Evolution, and Made Us Who We Are
- Young Adult Literature: Kim Johnson, The Color of a Lie
In addition to the category awards, Pico Iyer received the Robert Kirsch Award for lifetime achievement, and Amanda Gorman received the Innovator’s Award.
Taiyo Matsumoto’s Tokyo These Days
Tokyo These Days is a manga series written and illustrated by Taiyo Matsumoto. Matsumoto launched the manga in Shogakukan’s Big Comic Original Zōkan magazine in June 2019 and concluded it in June 2023. Shogakukan published three compiled book volumes for the manga. Viz Media releases the manga in English.
Viz Media describes the story: 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.
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.
Other Works by Taiyo Matsumoto
Viz Media has also published Matsumoto’s Tekkonkinkreet (Black & White), Blue Spring, GoGo Monster, No. 5, Sunny, and Cats of the Louvre manga in North America. Viz also released Fumihiko Sori’s live-action film adaptation of Matsumoto’s Ping Pong manga, while Funimation released Masaaki Yuasa’s Ping Pong anime series, and Sony Pictures Home Entertainment released the Tekkonkinkreet anime film. Michael Arias is directing an animated adaptation of Sunny, with GKIDS producing.
Matsumoto’s 2000 manga GoGo Monster was also nominated for the same award in 2009. Tokyo These Days was also nominated for the 27th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize in 2023 and again in 2024 for the 28th edition of the prize.
Other Nominees
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.
About the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books
The Book Prizes ceremony is a prologue to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, the nation’s largest literary festival, which brings together more than 650 writers, experts, and storytellers, hundreds of exhibitors, and an estimated 155,000 attendees. The 30th annual Festival of Books is presented in association with USC.
