The new manga book set in the British Museum has an uncanny plot resemblance (entirely coincidentally), to MP Andrew George’s failed April 1st EDM from 2009.

From:
Londonist

Manga Preview: Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure
By M@ · November 21, 2011 at 15:30 pm

We’re not going to pretend some deep-seated knowledge of manga that we don’t possess, but this new release looks intriguing whether you’re a fan of the artform or not. Hoshino Yukinobu’s latest Professor Munakata adventure has the eponymous ethnologist unravelling the ‘mystery of the missing Stonehenge megaliths and the threats to the British Museum’s treasured holdings’.

This Friday (25 November) the Museum holds a special event to mark the novel’s release in English. Nicole Rousmaniere will describe the Museum’s role in the creation of the story (excerpts were displayed there two years ago), while Paul Gravett, Director of Comica Festival, places the book into a wider context.

The discussion about Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure takes place at 6.30pm on 25 November at the British Museum. Tickets are £5/£3. The story can be purchased here.

More coverage of the new Manga comic book, with a storyline involving the Elgin Marbles in the British Museum.

From:
New Scientist

British Museum gets the manga treatment
17:17 1 November 2011
Cian O’Luanaigh, contributor

Missing artefacts, a 200-year-old conspiracy, and a mysterious airship over London. Oh, and someone’s nicked Stonehenge…

Folklore and ethnology expert Professor Munakata Tadakusa certainly has his work cut out in Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure, the latest collection of comics from acclaimed manga artist Hoshino Yukinobu. Invited to give a talk at London’s British Museum, he soon finds himself investigating a plot to steal museum artefacts and return them to their “rightful” owners.
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More coverage of the publication of the English language version of the Manga book set in the British Museum.

From:
The Bookseller

British Museum to publish first manga title
03.10.11 | Charlotte Williams

The British Museum Press is teaming up with Japanese star Hoshino Yukinobu to publish its first manga book, featuring the artist’s most famous character, Professor Munakata.

Marketing and publicity executive Sarah Morgan said the book came about after Yukinobu visited an exhibition of his work held at the museum in 2009, and was inspired by his surroundings. The story was first published in Japan as a 10-part serial in Big Comic magazine. The British Museum Press will publish one single volume as a £14.99 paperback on 31st October.
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The new Manga book about the British Museum (& also involving the Parthenon Marbles) has now been published in English.

From:
Guardian

The British Museum: marbles, murals… and manga!
Meet Professor Munakata, the crime-fighting archaeologist who saves one of London’s best-loved institutions from looters
Mike Pitts
Sunday 14 August 2011 19.59 BST

With its crumbling pillars and fading frescoes, the British Museum isn’t the first thing you’d associate with Japanese graphic novels. So it’s a slight surprise to learn that the museum will soon publish its own manga-based book.

Professor Munakata’s British Museum Adventure was serialised last year in Japan and has now been now translated into English. Its star – a portly ethnographer-cum-archaeologist who solves crimes and explains civilisations – is already well known to millions of Japanese readers, who follow his exploits in a series of Hoshino Yukinobu-penned comics. Hoshino’s work is blend of science fiction and thriller, layered with a rich mix of western and Asian myth and history.
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In a story that has uncanny parallels to the (rejected) April 1st EDM by Andrew George MP in 2009, a Japanese Manga comic is serialising a story based on the repatriation of treasures from the British Museum – in exchange for other British artefacts that are held hostage.

From:
Economist

The professor to the rescue
A cartoon strip takes on the repatriation of treasures from the British Museum
Aug 26th 2010 | tokyo

“THE Stonehenge megaliths have been stolen!?” So exclaims Professor Munakata at the outset of a rollicking adventure set at the British Museum, in the form of a manga, or Japanese cartoon. Over the past five months, readers of Big Comic, a Japanese fortnightly magazine, have followed the exploits of the fictitious ethnographer as he gets embroiled in a bizarre plot to force the repatriation of the museum’s prized objects.

The strip, called “The Case Records of Professor Munakata”, was introduced 15 years ago by Yukinobu Hoshino, one of Japan’s most notable manga artists. Portly, bald and impeccably dressed with cap, cape and cane, the professor is Japan’s anti-Indiana Jones. He does not invite danger but bumbles into it. The strip does not follow any set formula but takes on serious issues.
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For many years, certain elements of the British Press liked to suggest that Greece was incapable of looking after the Parthenon Marbles if they ever were returned. During the construction of the New Acropolis Museum, questions were again raised about every possible aspect of the way the museum was being built & the way the artefacts would be displayed. The New Acropolis Museum does however have many parallels with the proposed Stone henge Visitor Centre.

Both Stone Henge & The Athenian Acropolis are iconic examples of their historical epochs. For a long time, both sites had planned on building new visitor centres, but the projects were plagued by delays lasting decades that stopped any meaningful progress. Now however, Greece has a brand new Acropolis Museum, while visitors to Stone Henge still have to make do with distinctly lacklustre visitor facilities that mainly consist of a tunnel around the road containing a gift shop & some information boards. The British Museum makes much of how the Parthenon Marbles can be seen in their institution for free, but on the other hand, Stone Henge (with or without visitor centre) charges an admission centre except to National Trust or English Heritage members.

From:
New York Times

The Age of Austerity Challenges Stonehenge
By JULIA WERDIGIER
Published: August 11, 2010

STONEHENGE, England — The prehistoric monument of Stonehenge stands tall in the British countryside as one of the last remnants of the Neolithic Age. Recently it has also become the latest symbol of another era: the new fiscal austerity.

Renovations — including a plan to replace the site’s run-down visitors center with one almost five times bigger and to close a busy road that runs along the 5,000-year-old monument — had to be mothballed in June. The British government had suddenly withdrawn £10 million, or $16 million, in financing for the project as part of a budget squeeze.
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For Dimitrios Pantermalis who has overseen the New Acropolis Museum project, his goal has been simple – to have the best museum in the world. Whether or not it will truly be the best is a hard question to judge, but there can be littel disputing that it will be the best museum in which to display the sculptures from the Parthenon & Acropolis monuments.

From:
Guardian

‘Our goal is to have the best museum in the world’
Ancient Athens lies at the root of western culture, yet the battles over the marbles that once adorned the Parthenon have been far from civilised. Could the city’s new Acropolis Museum offer a fresh beginning? Stephen Moss gets an exclusive preview
Stephen Moss
The Guardian, Tuesday 16 June 2009

“Forgive me, it is crazy,” says Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, president of the Organisation for the Construction of the New Acropolis Museum, explaining why he has kept me waiting for almost half an hour in the museum’s spacious reception. Pandermalis is the elderly, dignified archaeologist at the centre of the latest – and the Greek government hopes concluding – chapter in the saga of the Parthenon/Elgin Marbles, and the pressure is beginning to tell. “I hate all this publicity,” he says. “This is not my job, but I have to manage it.”

Beware Greeks bearing gifts. An adage I should have borne in mind before accepting an invitation to be the first journalist to be allowed to see the museum’s completed galleries, and the first person to photograph the inside of the airy glass box at the top of the museum which will house the part of the Parthenon Marbles held by the Greeks. This is a rare privilege, but it also means being drawn into the seemingly endless controversy that has raged since Lord Byron savaged the seventh earl of Elgin for removing large chunks of the statuary from the Parthenon in the first decade of the 19th century – a cache that ended up in the British Museum a decade later and has been a source of resentment in Greece ever since. The Greeks may hope their splendid new museum – which has been almost 40 years in the planning (twice as long as it took for their ancient forebears to build the Parthenon) and cost €130m – will bring the issue to a head, but the portents are not good.
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Following being the first website to cover Andrew George’s Early Day motion on the Stonehenge megaliths in Greece, it appears that the motion could not be tabled because it did not meet the requirement to have a “reasonable factual basis”.

The press release from Andrew George’s office explains this in more detail.

ANDREW GEORGE MP
HOUSE OF COMMONS
LONDON SW1A 0AA

PRESS RELEASE
Wednesday 1st April 2009
For immediate release

COMMONS HAS SENSE OF HUMOUR BYPASS

Andrew George, MP for the West Cornwall and Isle of Scilly Constituency of St. Ives, has expressed disappointment that parliamentary rules disallowed his proposed Commons motion as tabled last night to be published this morning, Wednesday 1st April 2009. The motion read:
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The recent discovery of what are thought to be some of the missing megaliths from Stone Henge has been covered extensively in the Greek media during the last week. The stones were found at a site (the location of which is being kept secret whilst a full archaeological study is being carried out) in the Peloponnese. It is thought that they were taken from Britain during Roman times, whilst Greece was also part of the Roman Empire.

What has caused particular controversy in the UK, is the Greeks current refusal to consider returning these stones which are believed to have been an integral part of Britain’s most important historic monument.

Andrew George MP has today tabled an Early Day Motion to gauge the opinions of other MPs on the issue. Previous posts on EDMs explain the purpose of Early Day Motions in the House of Commons.

From:
Parliamentary Information Management Web Site

The Return of the Stonehenge Megaliths from Greece

That this House is euphoric about the news of the discovery of many of the missing megaliths from Stonehenge in a remote and mountainous area of the Peloponnese Peninsula in Greece to where they were taken to build an amphitheatre; considers this to be the single most important discovery in British archaeology for more than a century; yet is astounded at the brazen effrontery of the Greek authorities who have scandalously refused their return to Britain where they rightly belong; believes the Greeks have attempted to defend their decision with the kind of shameless and preposterous poppycock of an ancient colonial power; calls on the Greeks to put right the wrongs of their forefathers during that shameful period of ancient Greek imperial history; and asks HM Government on the day of the announcement of this find, April 1st 2009, to answer the extraordinary Greek claim that there is no difference between this and the holding by the British Museum of the Parthenon Marbles.

This follow-up article has more details.