Ok, so, everyone, presenting this! Volume 1! Of a new series! Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku!

I’m just gonna do a little introduction here to explain to those that don’t know anything about this series. Which is most people reading this, probably. The Shima Kо̄saku series is a series by Hirokane Kenshi that has been running in Kodansha’s Weekly Morning magazine since 1983 and it is still going to this day (Though it doesn’t run in every issue. Like this volume 1 here is made up of chapters that came out from 1983, 1984, and 1985. In Part 2, 0-2 chapters a year were released from 1992 to 1998, then it started running weekly again in 1999.) Also it’s got 46 million copies in circulation, apparently. It’s a manga known for its realistic depiction of life as a salaryman (which is sort of a slang term for a male office worker) working at a major Japanese company and its office culture and that sort of thing. It’s a slice of life drama about making one’s way in the corporate world and the emotions he experiences involved with that. It also has themes of management strategy, the main character’s relationships with women, mysteries, and office politics. Also all kinds of crazy weird shit happens.

This series is kind of the archetypical seinen manga. And it’s one of the series a lot of Japanese readers will think of immediately when thinking about manga for adults. The main character, Shima Kо̄saku, starts out at age 34. It’s a series well known for its realistic depiction of office life and about the things actually going on in Japan at the time. Since it’s so long running it has a fairly dedicated following. Also there was a movie, a TV drama, a bunch of parodies, a Super Famicom game, and a bunch of other adaptations (There’s no full adaptation of the whole series as a drama or anime or anything, rather a bunch of short ones or parodies.) I know his face was on a bus once… There’s just a lot of things.

The series breaks down into parts. They go something like this:
(Part 1) Section Chief (Kachō) Shima Kōsaku 1983–1992: 17 volumes
(Part 2) Division Chief (Buchō) Shima Kōsaku 1992–2002: 13 volumes
(Part 3) Managing Director (Torishimariyaku) Shima Kōsaku 2002–2005: 8 volumes
(Part 4) Executive Managing Director (Jōmu) Shima Kōsaku 2005–2006: 6 volumes
(Part 5) Senior Managing Director (Senmu) Shima Kōsaku 2006–2008: 5 volumes
(Part 6) President (Shachō) Shima Kōsaku 2008–2013: 16 volumes
(Part 7) Chairman (Kaichō) Shima Kōsaku 2013–2019: 13 volumes
(Part 8) Senior Advisor (Sōdan’yaku) Shima Kōsaku 2019–present: 4 volumes (Ongoing)

So that makes 82 volumes in total so far. There’s also a number of short prequel series that ran in monthly Evening magazine (Which eventually finished and “caught up” to where the series started) which total 21 volumes, so if you count those the series has a total of 103 volumes right now. They’re all written by the author and as far as I know those are also considered canon, but they’re not what came out first and are kind of “extra” (A group called Manga:Code scanlated 2 volumes of the first prequel a long time ago). Also there’s some spinoff series which are written by other authors (Including “The Time I Got Reincarnated as Shima Kōsaku”). (Also the author has done and continues to do another series called “Tasogare Ryuuseigun” or “Like Shooting Stars in the Twilight” which is 64 volumes long, because this guy is insane. Someone should translate that, too.)

My current plan is to just do the first part, which is probably the most famous one, which is Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku. I’m not sure how long it’ll take because this series is QUITE hard to translate. And at the moment I’m focusing on finishing the end of Seikimatsu Leader Den Takeshi. But I wanted to get volume 1 out just to get started. Though if I do finish it and I’m not dead or sick of it, I’ll consider moving on to the second part. I’m probably not going to “catch up” to the ones coming out in Morning barring me eliminating the entire rest of my life to work only on this series. So if other groups want to work on later parts of the series, go right ahead. Despite it being quite a famous series, nobody’s scanlated it and there’s no official English volumes out (They did a few “bilingual editions” of Part 2 and part 6 for some reason which I’m fairly sure are out of print and only did a couple volumes of each. But they write in oddly-lettered English with Japanese in the margins and the panels spread out so it’s not really the ideal way of reading the manga. They’re mainly a language-learning tool.) I’m gonna use macrons for the long vowels because I think it sorta fits this manga somehow. And I’m gonna release it in volumes for now, I might change my mind at some point, who knows. Also the corporate titles don’t really have consistent or official ways to be translated into English, mainly the middle ones with “director” in the name, so I’m choosing ones that are clear that I think work best there. (They don’t really have one-to-one equivalents in the English-speaking world.) So I hope folks are okay with what I went with. Also I’m not gonna try to track down the color pages for this series as they don’t seem to be archived anywhere and there’d be a LOT Of old manga magazines to buy if I wanted to go that route (Which are much harder to find than Jump). I’m including some color pages that were included in the bunkobans though.

Uhh, and also I should mention that this series is probably an 18+ series and give a content warning that it contains depictions of nudity, sex, prostitution, infidelity, blackmail, suicide, racism, and probably a lot of other stuff in that vein (I haven’t read all of it). Also keep in mind that at least this part was made in the 80’s and so has things in it that may not be considered proper today. It’s also a story about complicated figures that don’t always do the right thing. Just figured I’d mention that up front.

Anyhow, I wrote a whole lot here. I hope you all check this out and enjoy it!
(P.S. I still can’t upload this to Mangadex because they still don’t allow new series to be added and this one wasn’t on there before it went down.)

Section Chief Shima Kо̄saku Volume 1 (Ch1-8)
Mega
Online Reader (Mangadex)