User:Timothy Perper/Manga2

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Historians and writers on manga history have described two broad and complementary processes shaping modern manga. Their views differ in the relative importance they attribute to the role of cultural and historical events following WWII versus the role of pre-War, Meiji, and pre-Meiji Japanese culture and art.


The first view emphasizes events occurring during and after the US Occupation of Japan (1945-1952), and stresses that manga was strongly shaped by United States cultural influences, including US comics brought to Japan by the GIs and by images and themes from American television, film, and animated cartoons (especially Disney) (Kinsella 2000; Schodt, 1986). Kinsella (2000) also sees a central role for how the booming post-war Japanese publishing industry helped create a consumer-oriented society in which publishing giants like Kodansha could shape popular taste.


Japanese scholars like Takashi Murakami[1] have also stressed events after WWII, but Murakami[1] sees Japan’s staggering defeat and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as having created long-lasting scars on the Japanese artistic psyche, which, in this view, lost its previously virile confidence in itself and sought solace in harmless and cute (“kawaii”) images. However, Takayumi Tatsumi[2] sees a special role for a transpacific economic and cultural transnationalism that created a postmodern and shared international youth culture of cartooning, film, television, music, and related popular arts, which was, for Tatsumi[2] the crucible in which modern manga have developed.


For Murakami[1]and Tatsumi[2], transnationalism (or globalization) refers specifically to the flow of cultural and subcultural material from one nation to another. In their usage, the term does not refer to international corporate expansion, nor to international tourism, nor to cross-border international personal friendships, but to ways in which artistic, aesthetic, and intellectual traditions influence each other across national boundaries. An example of cultural transnationalism is the creation of Star Wars films in the United States, their transformation into manga by Japanese artists, and the marketing of Star Wars manga to the United States (insert references from Sandbox2). Another example is the transfer of hip-hop culture from the United States to Japan. [3] Wong (2006) also sees a major role for transnationalism in the recent history of manga.


However, other writers stress continuity of Japanese cultural and aesthetic traditions as central to the history of manga. These scholars include Frederik L. Schodt (1986, 1996), Kinko Ito (2000, [4], and Adam L. Kern (2006, [5].


Schodt (1986) points to the existence in the 1200s of illustrated picture scrolls like the Tobae scrolls that told stories in sequential images with humor and wit. Schodt (1986) also stresses continuities of aesthetic style and vision between ukiyo-e and shunga woodblock prints and modern manga (all three fulfill Eisner’s criteria [6] for sequential art). Schodt (1986, page 62) also sees a particularly significant role for kami-shibai, a form of street theater where itinerant artists displayed pictures in a light box while narrating the story to audiences in the street. Torrance (2005) has pointed to similarities between modern manga and the Osaka popular novel between the 1890s and 1940, and argues that the development of widespread literacy in Meiji and post-Meiji Japan helped create audiences for stories told in words and pictures.[7]


Kinko Ito (2000, [4] also roots manga historically in aesthetic continuity with pre-Meiji art, but she sees its post-World War II history as driven in part by consumer enthusiasm for the rich imagery and narrative of the newly developing manga tradition. Ito (2000, [4]) describes how this tradition has steadily produced new genres and markets, e.g., for girls’ (shojo) manga in the late 1960s and for ladies comics (redisu) in the 1980s.


Kern (2006 [5]) has suggested that kibyoshi, illustrated picture books from the late 1700s, may have been the world’s first comic books. These graphical narratives share with modern manga humorous, satirical, and romantic themes. Although Kern does not believe that kibyoshi were a direct forerunner of manga, nonetheless, for Kern (2006, [5]) the existence of kibyoshi points to a Japanese willingness to mix words and pictures in a popular story-telling medium. The first recorded use of the term "manga" to mean “whimsical or impromptu pictures” comes from this tradition in 1798, which, Kern 2006 points out, predates Katsuhiko Hokusai’s better known later usage by several decades (Kern, 2006, pages 139-144; Figure 3.3).


Similarly, Inoue (1996) sees manga as being a mixture of image- and word-centered elements, each pre-dating the American occupation of Japan. In his view, Japanese image-centered (pictocentric) art ultimately derives from Japan’s long history of engagement with Chinese graphic art, whereas word-centered (logocentric) art, like the novel, was stimulated by social and economic needs of Meiji and pre-War Japanese nationalism for a populace unified by a common written language. Both fuse in what Inoue (1996) sees as a symbiosis in manga.[8]


Thus, these scholars see the history of manga as involving historical continuities and discontinuities between the aesthetic and cultural past as it interacts with post-World War II innovation and transnationalism.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b c Murakami, Takashi (2005). Little Boy: the Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture. New York: Japan Society. ISBN 0-913304-57-3. 
  2. ^ a b c Tatsumi, Takayumi (2006). Full Metal Apache: Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and Avant-Pop America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3774-6. 
  3. ^ Condry, Ian (2006). Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Path of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3892-0. 
  4. ^ a b c Ito, Kinko (2004). ""Growing up Japanese reading manga"". International Journal of Comic Art 6: 392-401. 
  5. ^ a b c Kern, Adam L. (2007). ""Symposium: Kibyoshi: The World’s First Comicbook?"". International Journal of Comic Art 9: 1-486. 
  6. ^ Eisner, Will (1985). Comics & Sequential Art. Tamarac, FL: Poorhouse Press. ISBN 0-9614728-0-2. 
  7. ^ Torrance, Richard (Winter 2005). "Richard 2005 Literacy and literature in Osaka, 1890-1940". Journal of Japanese Studies 31 (1): 27-60. 
  8. ^ Inoue, Charles Shirō (1996). Pictocentrism -- China as a source of Japanese modernity. In: Imaging/Reading Eros, Sumie Jones, editor. Bloomington, IN: East Asian Studies Center, Indiana University, 148-152. 

Condry, Ian 2006 Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Path of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3892-0.

Eisner, Will 1985 Comics & Sequential Art. Tamarac, FL: Poorhouse Press. ISBN 0-9614728-0-2.

Inoue, Charles Shirō 1996 Pictocentrism -- China as a source of Japanese modernity. In: Sumie Jones, editor Imaging/Reading Eros. Bloomington, IN: East Asian Studies Center, Indiana University. pages 148-152.

Ito, Kinko 2004 Growing up Japanese reading manga. International Journal of Comic Art, 6(2):392-403.

Kern, Adam (editor) (2007). Symposium: "Kibyoshi: The World’s First Comicbook?” International Journal of Comic Art, Volume 9, Number 1, Spring 2007, pages 1-486.

Murakami, Takashi (editor) (2005) Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture. New York: Japan Society. ISBN 0-913304-57-3

Tatsumi, Takayuki 2006 Full Metal Apache: Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and Avant-Pop America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3774-6

Torrance, Richard 2005 Literacy and literature in Osaka, 1890-1940. Journal of Japanese Studies, 31(1):27-60.

[edit] References