Some time ago, VIZ Media took a look at the 100-volume manga series, OISHINBO, and decided to take highlights from it and compile them into several shorter volumes for fans to enjoy. OISHINBO is, ultimately, a manga about food, though there’s more to it than that.

The story is that the top executives at a fictional newspaper called Tozai News decide they want to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the paper’s publication by creating “The Ultimate Menu.” To this end, the powers that be summon one of the journalists at the paper, Shiro Yamaoka, who is known as a “foodie with culinary skills,” and send him out to discover what should be on the menu. He takes along a coworker, Yuko Kurita, and begins to hunt for the tastiest and most interesting food dishes to put on the menu.

To publish every single volume of the series in North America would have been rather overwhelming. But VIZ decided to choose highlights from Yamaoka’s and Kurita’s quest, compiling them together based on food themes and culinary trends. So each of the preceding volumes had a different focus: sake, sushi, vegetables, rice dishes, ramen, and so on.

The final volume concentrates on Izakaya, or pub food. Think of Greek tavernas, or Spanish tapas bars, where friends meet in a casual, sometimes boisterous atmosphere for drinks and small food dishes, and you’ll get some of the feel for Japanese Izakaya. What the journalists Yamaoka and Kurita discover in this volume is that “play” is somehow essential to enjoying good food.

“OISHINBO” means “The Gourmet.” The manga, written by Tetsu Kariya and drawn by Akira Hanasaki, began running in 1983, in Shogakukan’s “Big Comic Spirits” weekly manga magazine, and has continued publication almost uninterrupted since then. In 1987 it received the Shogakukan Manga Award for general manga.

One of the advantages of VIZ doing the compilations as they are doing is that each volume can be enjoyed separately, or the entire set can be read as a series. VIZ began publishing OISHINBO in North American in January of 2009, and this seventh volume is to be the final one in the set. It should begin appearing in stores around January 19, 2010.

Source: VIZ news release, Wikipedia “Oishinbo” article