Mainichi Shimbun reports that the preliminary round of the 16th annual Manga Koushien, also known as the National High School Manga Tournament, has begun on June 18th.

This year, Shogakukan and Kodansha will each send 3 representatives to scout for possible talents. Those scouted will received guidance from professional manga artists.

The Manga Koushien has been hosted by the city of Kouchi since 1992. This year 295 schools from 46 prefectures entered the competition.

Source: Mainichi Shimbun

A small update on Kodansha's International Manga Competition. Kodansha IMC's Ceena reminds us that although the deadline for the competition was on May 31 2007, Kodansha will accept your work as long as it's postmarked by the deadline:

Please send your manga to Kodansha as soon as possible, enclosing the original postmark. We'll accept your work as a submission if it encloses the postmark by the due date.

Thank you for your interest in our competition. We're looking forward to reading your work!

The Japanese Embassy in the U.K. will be holding an exhibition called Manga Jiman (漫画自慢) from June 11th to June 19th.

The Embassy will also host a manga seminar titled "What is Manga?" and a major manga-writing competition in conjunction with the exhibition.

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Go! Comi's contest to win an autographed copy of Shioko Mizuki's Crossroad is ending on June 7th:

Two Chances To Win a Signed Crossroad!
The final volume of Shioko Mizuki's Crossroad hits shelves this month, and we're celebrating by giving TWO lucky winners a copy of "Crossroad" signed by manga-ka Shioko Mizuki!! Click here to enter!

AnimeOnDVD has announced a new MPD Psycho Contest:

The folks at Dark Horse have been very gracious by donating to us fifteen (15) copies of their June 6th release of MPD Psycho Vol. #1 for a contest!

Currently a majority of the original Chinese manga are composed of 4-panel comics and short stories. To promote original story-oriented manga, Zhejiang Gongshang University's Japanese Anime and Manga Cultural Research Group has organized the 1st Story-Oriented Original Manga Competition.

The competition, supported by Shueisha and many Chinese anime news websites and media, accepts any original manga between 10-45 pages long. The deadline is September 9th, winners will be announced in October.

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Winners of the 1st FureComi Manga Competition are now avialable on Shonen Blood's website Web★Blood:

Grand Prize:
- Prize: 300,000 yen, serialization on Yahoo's online service Flex Comix, Fax/Scanner

None

It is regrettable that no work were able to win the grand prize, please wait for the next time!

Outstanding Performance:
Prize: 100,000 yen, Fax/Scanner

• Bloodline by Hiroshi Yanagisawa and Kouta Sakamoto

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Tokyopop has announced a Twelve Kingdom contest, the award is a free copy of The Twelve Kingdoms: Sea of Shadow volume 1 and volume 1 of the Twelve Kingdom anime DVD:

All you have to do to enter is email your name, age and email address where we can reach you to popfiction@tokyopop.com by midnight (Pacific Standard Time) on April 30th.

Nihon Ki-in (Japanese Go Association) and the Go Shogi Life Corporation has announced a new event called the "Go Original Manga Grand Prize." The award accepts any manga that focus on the amusement and depth of the game Go. The winner of the grand prize will receive 1 million yen, and the winning work will be released as a tankoubon. The deadline is November 2007, the winners will be announced in March 2008.

According to Manga Jouhou, DMP/June has announced a "Spring Cleaning Contest":

The staff members of DMP/June Manga are breaking out the mops and brooms for a little spring cleaning! We have collected a lot of stuff over the past year; and since the weather is soo nice these days, we have decided to crack open the windows and clean out our warehouse. So everything we find has got to go! Autographed goodies, character goods, advanced books, models and figurines.

Source: Manga Jouhou