User:Timothy Perper/SandboxHistManga

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Sandbox for History of Manga article

Please do not make changes directly on the draft text. It causes chaos -- and I speak from experience. Instead, put comments, criticisms, and suggestions below the text under a separate heading. Thanks. Timothy Perper 10:25, 27 September 2008 (CDT)

History of Manga Article

This is a highly modified version of an article I wrote for Wikipedia. It has new material and has been edited substantially.


Introduction

Manga is a Japanese word meaning "comics" or "cartoon." The word itself dates to the late 18th century[1] and was used by the great 18-19th century Japanese artist Katsushika Hokusai for some of his drawings and sketches[2] but stories told in pictures and sometimes words date back to 13th century Japan.[3] This article outlines debates and events in the history of manga.

Debates about the Origins of Manga

Historians of manga see two broad processes shaping modern manga. Their views differ in how much importance is assigned to events after World War II versus events before the war and in Meiji and pre-Meiji Japanese culture and art. These differences of opinion are, in part, arguments over the role of non-Japanese influences, e.g., of the United States, compared to older and far more purely Japanese influences in shaping the art of Japan. Because these issues deal with Japanese national pride, they can become quite heated.

Japanese writers like Takashi Murakami stress events after World War II as crucial for shaping modern manga. Murakami 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 his view, lost its previously virile confidence in itself and sought solace in harmless and cute (kawaii) images.[4][5][6] Takayumi Tatsumi also sees a major role for events after World War II, but instead of war, for him a special role exists 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. For Tatsumi, the crucible in which modern manga have developed is post-modernism, not bitter memories of war, immense destruction, and ultimate defeat.[7]

For Murakami and Tatsumi, transnationalism (or globalization) refers specifically to the flow of cultural and subcultural material from one nation to another and to how artistic, aesthetic, and intellectual traditions influence each other across national boundaries.[4][5][7] 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.[8] Another example is the transfer of hip-hop culture from the United States to Japan.[9] Wong also sees a major role for transnationalism in the recent history of manga.[10]

Nonetheless, other writers stress continuity of Japanese cultural and aesthetic traditions as central to the history of manga. They include Frederik L. Schodt,[3][11] Kinko Ito,[12] and Adam L. Kern.[1][13] Schodt points to the existence in the 1200s of illustrated picture scrolls like the Toba-e scrolls that told stories in sequential images with humor and wit.[3] Schodt also stresses continuities of aesthetic style and vision between ukiyo-e and shunga woodblock prints and modern manga (all three fulfill Will Eisner's criteria for sequential art.[14]

Schodt also sees a particularly significant role for kamishibai, a form of street theater where itinerant artists displayed pictures in a light box while narrating the story to audiences in the street.[3] Richard Torrance 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.[15] Kinko Ito 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 describes how this tradition has steadily produced new genres and markets, e.g., for girls' (shōjo) manga in the late 1960s and for Ladies Comics (also called redisu, redikomi, and josei manga) in the 1980s.[12]

Kern has suggested that kibyōshi, illustrated picture books from the late 1700s, may have been the world's first comic books.[1] These graphical narratives share with modern manga humorous, satirical, and romantic themes.[1] Although Kern does not believe that kibyōshi were a direct forerunner of manga, for Kern the existence of kibyōshi nonetheless points to a Japanese willingness to mix words and pictures in a popular story-telling medium.[13] The first recorded use of the term "manga" to mean "whimsical or impromptu pictures" comes from this tradition in 1798, which, Kern points out, predates Katsushika Hokusai's better known usage by several decades.[2]

Similarly, Charles Shirō Inoue sees manga as being a mixture of image- and word-centered elements, each pre-dating the U.S. occupation of Japan. In his view, Japanese image-centered or "pictocentric" art ultimately derives from Japan's long history of engagement with Chinese graphic art, whereas word-centered or "logocentric" art, like the novel, was stimulated by social and economic needs of Meiji and pre-War Japanese nationalism to create a populace unified by a common written language. Both fuse in what Inoue sees as a symbiosis in manga.[16]

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.

After World War II

Modern manga originates in the Occupation (1945-1952) and post-Occupation years (1952-early 1960s), when a previously militaristic and ultranationalist Japan was rebuilding its political and economic infrastructure.[3][17] Although U.S. Occupation censorship policies specifically prohibited art and writing that glorified war and Japanese militarism,[3] those policies did not prevent the publication of other kinds of material, including manga. Furthermore, the 1947 Constitution of Japan|Japanese Constitution (Article 21) prohibited all forms of censorship.[18] One result was an explosion of artistic creativity in this period.[3]

In the forefront of this period are two manga series and characters that influenced much of the future history of manga. These are Osamu Tezuka's Mighty Atom (Astro Boy in the United States; begun in 1951) and Machiko Hasegawa's Sazae-san (begun in 1946).

Astro Boy was both a superpowered robot and a naive little boy.[19] Tezuka never explained why Astro Boy had such a highly developed social conscience nor what kind of robot programming could make him so deeply affiliative.[19] Both seem innate to Astro Boy, and represent a Japanese sociality and community-oriented masculinity differing very much from the Emperor-worship and militaristic obedience enforced during the previous period of Japanese imperialism.[19] Astro Boy quickly became (and remains) immensely popular in Japan and elsewhere as an icon and hero of a new world of peace and the renunciation of war, as also seen in Article 9 of the Japanese constitution.[18][19] Similar themes occur in Tezuka's New World and Metropolis.[3][19]

By contrast, Sazae-san (meaning "Ms. Sazae") was drawn starting in 1946 by Machiko Hasegawa, a young woman artist who made her heroine a stand-in for millions of Japanese men and especially women rendered homeless by the war.[3][20] Sazae-san does not face an easy or simple life, but, like Astro Boy, she too is highly affiliative and is deeply involved with her immediate and extended family. She is also a very strong character, in striking contrast to the officially sanctioned Neo-Confucianist principles of feminine meekness and obedience to the "good wife, wise mother" (ryōsai kenbo, りょうさいけんぼ; 良妻賢母) ideal taught by the previous military regime.[21][22][23] Sazae-san faces the world with cheerful resilience,[20][24] what Hayao Kawai calls a "woman of endurance."[25] Sazae-san sold more than 62 million copies over the next half century.[26]

Although Tezuka and Hasegawa both drew extensively from prior illustrative and cartoon traditions in Japan, they were also both stylistic innovators. In particular, Tezuka's "cinematographic" technique became very well known. In this kind of drawing, which has precedents in earlier Japanese art, the panels are like a motion picture that reveals details of action bordering on slow motion as well as rapid zooms from distance to close-up shots.[3] Cinematic dynamism occurs widely in later manga[3] and is especially clear when manga is made into animated film. Hasegawa's focus on daily life and on women's experience also came to characterize later shōjo manga.[20][27][28]

Between 1950 and 1969, increasingly large audiences for manga emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing genres, shōnen manga aimed at boys and shōjo manga aimed at girls.[3][29][30] Up to 1969, shōjo manga was drawn primarily by adult men for young female readers.[3][29]

Two very popular and influential male-authored manga for girls from this period were Tezuka's 1953-1956 Ribon no Kishi (Princess Knight or Knight in Ribbons) and Matsuteru Yokoyama's 1966 Mahōtsukai Sarii (Little Witch Sally).[3] Ribon no Kishi dealt with the adventures of Princess Sapphire of a fantasy kingdom who had been born with male and female souls, and whose sword-swinging battles and romances blurred the boundaries of otherwise rigid gender roles.[3] Sarii, the pre-teen princess heroine of Mahōtsukai Sarii,[31] came from her home in the magical lands to live on Earth, go to school, and perform a variety of magical good deeds for her friends and schoolmates.[32] Some U.S. writers feel that Yokoyama's Mahōtsukai Sarii was influenced by the U.S. TV sitcom Bewitched[33] but Sarii is a very different character than Samantha, the protagonist of Bewitched. Samantha is married woman with her own daughter, but Sarii is a pre-teenager who faces the problems of growing up and mastering the responsibilities of forthcoming adulthood. Mahōtsukai Sarii helped create the now very popular mahō shōjo or "magical girl" subgenre of later manga.[32] Both series were and still are very popular.[3][32]

Shōjo manga

In 1969, a group of women manga artists later called the Year 24 Group (also known as Magnificent 24s) made their shōjo manga debut (year 24 comes from the Japanese name for 1949, when many of these artists were born).[34][35] The group included Hagio Moto, Riyoko Ikeda, Yumiko Oshima, Keiko Takemiya, and Ryoko Yamagishi[20] and they marked the first major entry of women artists into manga.[3][20] Thereafter, shōjo manga would be drawn primarily by women artists for an audience of girls and young women.[3][29][30]

In 1971, Ikeda began her immensely popular shōjo manga Berusaiyu no Bara (The Rose of Versailles), a story of Oscar François de Jarjayes, a cross-dressing woman who was a Captain in Marie Antoinette's Palace Guards in pre-Revolutionary France.[3][17][20][36] In the end, Oscar dies as a revolutionary leading a charge of her troops against the Bastille. Likewise, Hagio Moto's work challenged Neo-Confucianist limits on women's roles and activities [21][22][23] as in her 1975 They Were Eleven, a shōjo science fiction story about a young woman cadet in a future space academy.[37]

These women artists also created considerable stylistic innovations. In its focus on the heroine's inner experiences and feelings, shōjo manga are "picture poems"[38] with delicate and complex designs that often eliminate panel borders completely to create prolonged, non-narrative extensions of time.[3][20][29][30][39] All of these innovations – strong and independent female characters, intense emotionality, and complex design – remain characteristic of shōjo manga up to the present day.[17][28]



References and Notes

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  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Kern, Adam. 2006. Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and the Kibyoshi of Edo Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0674022661.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 Bouquillard, Jocelyn and Christophe Marquet. 2007. Hokusai: First Manga Master. New York: Abrams.
  3. ↑ 3.00 3.01 3.02 3.03 3.04 3.05 3.06 3.07 3.08 3.09 3.10 3.11 3.12 3.13 3.14 3.15 3.16 3.17 3.18 3.19 Schodt, Frederik L. 1986. Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo: Kodansha. ISBN 978-0870117527.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Murakami, Takashi, Curator. 2005. Museum Exhibition: "Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture." Japan Society. New York, New York, April 9 to July 24, 2005.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 Murakami, Takashi, Editor. 2005. Little Boy: The Arts of Japan’s Exploding Subculture. New Haven: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-10285-2 and NY:Japan Society. ISBN 0-913304-57-3.
  6. ↑ Benzon, William. 2007. "Review: Godzilla’s Children: Murakami Takes Manhattan." Mechademia: An Academic Forum for Anime, Manga, and the Fan Arts, 2:283-287.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 Tatsumi, Takayumi. 2006. Full Metal Apache: Transactions between Cyberpunk Japan and Avant-Pop America. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3774-6.
  8. ↑ Star Wars manga: http://www.darkhorse.com/Search/Browse/Star+Wars+Manga/PpwNwkt8 (Accessed September 28, 2008).
  9. ↑ Condry, Ian. 2006. Hip-Hop Japan: Rap and the Path of Cultural Globalization. Durham, NC:Duke University Press. ISBN 0-8223-3892-0.
  10. ↑ Wong, Wendy Siuyi. 2006. "Globalizing manga: From Japan to Hong Kong and beyond." Mechademia: An Academic Forum for Anime, Manga, and the Fan Arts, 1:23-45.
  11. ↑ Schodt, Frederik L. 1996. Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 978-1880656235.
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Ito, Kinko. 2004. "Growing up Japanese reading manga." International Journal of Comic Art, 6:392-401.
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Kern, Adam. 2007. "Symposium: Kibyoshi: The World's First Comicbook?" International Journal of Comic Art, 9:1-486.
  14. ↑ Eisner, Will. 1985. Comics & Sequential Art. Tamarac, Fl: Poorhouse Press. ISBN 0-9614728-0-2.}
  15. ↑ Torrance, Richard. 2005. "Literacy and literature in Osaka, 1890-1940." Journal of Japanese Studies, 31(1):27-60. Web version: http://muse.jhu.edu/login?uri=/journals/journal_of_japanese_studies/v031/31.1torrance.html (Accessed September 16, 2007
  16. ↑ Inoue, Charles Shirō. 1996. "Pictocentrism—China as a source of Japanese modernity." In Sumie Jones, editor. 1996. Imaging/Reading Eros. Bloomington, IN: East Asian Studies Center, Indiana University. pp. 148-152. ISBN 0965328104.
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Tchiei, Go. 1998. Shojo Manga: A Unique Genre. http://www.dnp.co.jp/museum/nmp/nmp_i/articles/manga/manga6-1.html (Accessed September 22, 2007.)
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 "Japan: Profile of a Nation, Revised Edition" 1999. Tokyo: Kodansha. Article 9: page 695; article 21: page 697. ISBN 4-7700-2384-7.
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 19.2 19.3 19.4 Schodt, Frederik L. 2007. The Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press. ISBN 978-1933330549.
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 20.2 20.3 20.4 20.5 20.6 Gravett ref to come
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 Uno, Kathleen S. 1993. "The death of 'Good Wife, Wise Mother'." In: Andrew Gordon (editor) Postwar Japan as History. Berkeley, CA: University of California. pp. 293-322. ISBN 0520074750.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Ohinata, Masami 1995 "The mystique of motherhood: A key to understanding social change and family problems in Japan." In: Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda (editors) Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future. New York: The Feminist Press at The City University of New York. pp. 199-211. ISBN 978-1558610941.
  23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 Yoshizumi, Kyoko 1995 "Marriage and family: Past and present." In: Kumiko Fujimura-Fanselow and Atsuko Kameda (editors) Japanese Women: New Feminist Perspectives on the Past, Present, and Future. New York: The Feminist Press at The City University of New York. pp. 183-197. ISBN 978-1558610941.
  24. ↑ Lee, William (2000). "From Sazae-san to Crayon Shin-Chan." In: Timothy J. Craig (editor) Japan Pop!: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-0765605610.
  25. ↑ Kawai, Hayao. 1996. The Japanese Psyche: Major Motifs in the Fairy Tales of Japan. Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications. Chapter 7, pp. 125-142.
  26. ↑ Schodt, Frederik L. 1997. "Forward: The Wonderful World of Sazae-San." In: Machiko Hasegawa 1997. Sazae-san Volume 1. ***need pages*** Tokyo: Kodansha International. ISBN 978-4770020758.
  27. ↑ Lee, William 2000. "From Sazae-san to Crayon Shin-Chan." In: Timothy J. Craig (editor) Japan Pop!: Inside the World of Japanese Popular Culture. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe. ISBN 978-0765605610.
  28. ↑ 28.0 28.1 Sanchez, Frank 1997-2003. "Hist 102: History of Manga." http://www.animeinfo.org/animeu/hist102.html. (Accessed on September 11, 2007.)
  29. ↑ 29.0 29.1 29.2 29.3 Thorn, Matt 2001. "Shôjo Manga—Something for the Girls." http://matt-thorn.com/shoujo_manga/japan_quarterly/index.html (Accessed September 22, 2007.)
  30. ↑ 30.0 30.1 30.2 Toku, Masami, editor. 2005. Shojo Manga: Girl Power! Chico, CA: Flume Press/California State University Press. ISBN 1-886226-10-5. See also http://www.csuchico.edu/pub/cs/spring_06/feature_03.html (Accessed September 22, 2007.)
  31. ↑ Sarii is the Japanese spelling and pronunciation of the English-language name "Sally." The word mahōtsukai literally means "magic operator," someone who can use and control magic. It does not mean "witch" or "magical girl" (which is mahō shōjo in Japanese), because tsukai is not a gendered word in Japanese. This use of an English-language name with a Japanese descriptive word is an example of transnationalism in Tatsumi's sense.
  32. ↑ 32.0 32.1 32.2 Yoshida, Kaori 2002. Evolution of Female Heroes: Carnival Mode of Gender Representation in Anime. http://journals2.iranscience.net:800/mcel.pacificu.edu/mcel.pacificu.edu/aspac/home/papers/scholars/yoshida/yoshida.php3 (Accessed September 22, 2007.)
  33. ↑ Melissa, Johnson June 27, 2006. "Bewitched by Magical Girls." http://www.fpsmagazine.com/feature/060627magicalgirls.php (Accessed September 22, 2007)
  34. ↑ Gravett, 2004, op. cit., pp.78-80.
  35. ↑ Lent, 2001, op. cit., pp. 9-10.
  36. ↑ Shamoon, Deborah. 2007. "Revolutionary romance: The Rose of Versailles and the transformation of shojo manga." Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga, and Fan Arts. 2:3-17.
  37. ↑ Hagio Moto 1975/1996 "They Were Eleven." In: Matt Thorn (editor) Four Shojo Stories. San Francisco: Viz Media. ISBN 1569310556. Original story published 1975; U.S. edition 1996.
  38. ↑ Schodt, 1986, op. cit., p 88.
  39. ↑ McCloud, Scott. 1993. Understanding Comics. New York: Paradox Press. pp. 77-82.


Comments and Suggestions

This page is for writing the history manga article starting from the Wikipedia article most of which I wrote and referenced. It needs some major work, including the addition of an entirely new section on manga before WW2 (Meiji and Tokugawa periods, including kibyōshi). The text is my own, stripped-down, de-Wikified, and rewritten version of the original article. Timothy Perper 10:25, 27 September 2008 (CDT)

From John Stephenson, Talk:Manga:

if you are the sole author of all the material you import from Wikipedia, then the fact that it originally appeared over there is irrelevant - it can appear on Citizendium with no credit to Wikipedia and under the CZ creative commons licence rather than the Wikipedia one. The only thing you have to do, apart from perhaps writing more to cover gaps left by removing Wikipedians' contributions, is put the {{WPauthor}} tag at the top of the Talk page, below {{subpages}}, including a declaration that the material is yours. Something like: {{WPauthor|WP credit does not apply - material on WP written by me|[[User:Timothy Perper|Timothy Perper]] 04:03, 28 September 2008 (CDT)}}In cases of articles written on WP by other people, you can import them as well, but there must always be a credit to Wikipedia (by checking the 'Content is from Wikipedia?' box) and you have to commit to substantively improving the article, as otherwise it would be a candidate for deletion. John Stephenson 23:29, 27 September 2008 (CDT)

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