Manga’s Cultural Crossroads 978-0415504508, 0415504503

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Preface......Page 2
Contents......Page 6
List of Figures......Page 8
List of Tables......Page 10
Acknowledgments......Page 12
Introduction......Page 14
Part 1: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Manga......Page 30
01: The View from North America......Page 32
02: Manga as Schism......Page 40
03: Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the
Global Sixties......Page 63
04: The Intercultural Challenge of the “Mangaesque”......Page 78
05: Manhua in Korea......Page 98
06: Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks......Page 113
07: Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes......Page 134
08: Social Networking Services as Platforms for Transcultural Fannish Interactions......Page 156
Part 2: "Naruto" as Cultural Crossroads......Page 174
09: "Naruto" as a Typical Weekly Magazine Manga......Page 176
10: Women in "Naruto", Women Reading "Naruto"......Page 185
11: Fanboys and "Naruto" Epics......Page 205
12: The Traditional Naruto (Maelstrom) Motif in Japanese Culture......Page 222
13: Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series......Page 233
14: Playing "Naruto"......Page 256
Editors and Contributors......Page 272
Index......Page 278

Citation preview

ROUTLEDGE ADVANCES IN ART AND VISUAL STUDIES

Manga’s Cultural Crossroads Edited By Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

Manga’s Cultural Crossroads

With a special focus on intercultural exchange and transcultural flows, this volume provides an introduction to the leading edge in manga studies (i.e., the study of Japanese comics). Alongside novel-length graphic narratives that are fundamentally shaped by their serialization in manga magazines, it considers historical cartoons and newspaper strips, alternative comics of the 1960s (gekiga), and recent fan creations. Researchers who have been involved in forming this new field of scholarship in and outside of Japan highlight both the specific media culture and the intercultural encounters that gave rise to manga’s recent border-crossing capability in the first place, while at the same time acknowledging the persistent divergences in the perception of manga between Japan, Korea, North America, and Europe, as well as between different groups within these macrocultures. This line of investigation is complemented by analyses that relate manga to non-Japanese-style comics, picturebooks, animation, and video games, together with several, mainly gendered, fandoms and their recent research. In order to intertwine this multitude of perspectives and give them a common thread, the second part of this volume concentrates on one of the most popular manga series worldwide, Kishimoto Masashi’s “Naruto,” considering its present readership, its intermedia crossovers, and its roots in collective memory. Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer is Professor in the German Department at the University of Tübingen, Germany. Jaqueline Berndt is Full Professor in Comics Theory at the Graduate School of Manga Studies, Kyoto Seika University, Japan.

Routledge Advances in Art and Visual Studies 1 Ethics and Images of Pain Edited by Asbjørn Grønstad and Henrik Gustafsson 2 Meanings of Abstract Art Between Nature and Theory Edited by Paul Crowther and Isabel Wünsche 3 Genealogy and Ontology of the Western Image and Its Digital Future John Lechte

4 Representations of Pain in Art and Visual Culture Edited by Maria Pia Di Bella and James Elkins 5 Manga’s Cultural Crossroads Edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

Manga’s Cultural Crossroads Edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

First published 2013 by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Simultaneously published in the UK by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2013 Taylor & Francis The right of the editors to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Manga’s cultural crossroads / edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer. — 1 [edition]. pages cm. — (Routledge advances in art and visual studies ; 5) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-415-50450-8 (hardback) 1. Arts and globalization—History—20th century. 2. Arts and society— History—20th century. 3. Comic books, strips, etc.—Japan—History and criticism. I. Berndt, Jaqueline, 1963- editor of compilation. II. Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina, editor of compilation. NX180.G56M36 2013 741.5'952—dc23 2012046639 ISBN: 978-0-415-50450-8 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-36619-6 (ebk) Typeset in Sabon by Apex CoVantage, LLC

Contents

List of Figures List of Tables Acknowledgments Introduction: Studying Manga across Cultures

vii ix xi 1

JAQUELINE BERNDT AND BETTINA KÜMMERLING-MEIBAUER

PART 1 Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Manga 1 The View from North America: Manga as Late-Twentieth-Century Japonisme? 19 FREDERIK L. SCHODT

2 Manga as Schism: Kitazawa Rakuten’s Resistance to “Old-Fashioned” Japan

27

RONALD STEWART

3 Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the Global Sixties: Aspiring for an Alternative

50

SHIGE (CJ) SUZUKI

4 The Intercultural Challenge of the “Mangaesque”: Reorienting Manga Studies after 3/11

65

JAQUELINE BERNDT

5 Manhwa in Korea: (Re-)Nationalizing Comics Culture

85

YAMANAKA CHIE

6 Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks BETTINA KÜMMERLING-MEIBAUER

100

vi

Contents

7 Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes: The Parodist Body in European and Japanese Erotic Comics

121

ELISABETH KLAR

8 Social Networking Services as Platforms for Transcultural Fannish Interactions: DeviantART and Pixiv

143

NELE NOPPE

PART 2 “Naruto” as Cultural Crossroads 9 “Naruto” as a Typical Weekly Magazine Manga

163

OMOTE TOMOYUKI

10 Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto”

172

FUJIMOTO YUKARI

11 Fanboys and “Naruto” Epics: Exploring New Ground in Fanfiction Studies

192

JESSICA BAUWENS-SUGIMOTO AND NORA RENKA

12 The Traditional Naruto (Maelstrom) Motif in Japanese Culture

209

FRANZISKA EHMCKE

13 Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series: An Intercultural Dialogue between Film Studies and Anime Research

220

GAN SHEUO HUI

14 Playing “Naruto”: Between Metanarrative Characters, Unit Operations, and Objects

243

MARTIN ROTH

Editors and Contributors Index

259 265

Figures

1.1 1.2 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 6.1 6.2

6.3

6.4 7.1

Cover of Gen of Hiroshima, designed by Pete Poplaski. San Francisco: Educomics, 1980. Issue No. 1. Photograph of manga/anime fans in a tableaux pose at Otakon, in Baltimore, Maryland, 2003. Jiji manga page by Kitazawa Rakuten. Published in Jiji Shinpō, March 23, 1902, 10. Two-page spread from Tokyo Puck 4.10, April 1, 1908, 4–5. Comics page from Katei Puck 1913. Artist unknown. Published in Katei Puck 2.4, April 1, 1913, 34. Photograph of a rental bookstore, 1948. Photograph of middle school graduates from Kumamoto to work in cities, taken on March 10, 1966. Page from A Drifting Life by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Montreal, Canada: Drawn & Quarterly, 2009, 827. Page from Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Tatsumi Yoshihiro. Montreal, Canada: Drawn & Quarterly, 2009, 42. Page from Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Tatsumi Yoshihiro. Montreal, Canada: Drawn & Quarterly, 2009, 64. Illustration from Flotsam by David Wiesner. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. Illustration from Struwwelpeter. Das große Buch der Störenfriede by David Füleki (text by Heinrich Hoffmann). Hamburg: Tokyopop, 2000. Illustration from Three Samurai Cats. A Story of Japan by Mordicai Gerstein (text by Eric A. Kimmel). New York: Holiday House, 2003. Illustration from The Boy of the Three-Year Nap by Allen Say (text by Dianne Snyder). New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1988. Page from “Samurai Dreams” by Chris Crielaard. Ljubljana: Forum Ljubljana, 1999.

20 25 38 39 41 52 55 57 59 61 106

109

111 115 126

viii Figures 7.2 7.3 12.1 12.2

12.3

13.1 13.2 13.3.a–b

13.4.a 13.4.b 13.5.a 13.5.b 13.6.a–h

Image from Seisō tsuidansha by Shiwasu no Okina. Tokyo: Hit Publishing, 2003. Page from Seisō tsuidansha by Shiwasu no Okina. Tokyo: Hit Publishing, 2003. “Awa no Naruto” from Hokusai Manga, vol. 7, by Katsushika Hokusai. Page from a block book, 1817. Awa Naruto no fūkei (View of the whirlpools at Naruto), by Utagawa Hiroshige. Color woodblock print triptych, 1857. Awa Naruto no fūkei (The Naruto whirlpools near Awa at rough sea), by Utagawa Hiroshige. From the series Rokujū-yoshū meisho zue (Famous views of the sixty-odd provinces). Color woodblock print, 1855. Film shot from the anime Naruto, episode 17, directed by Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru. TV Tokyo, 2002. Double-page spread of the same scene from the manga “Naruto” by Kishimoto Masashi, 1999. Vol. 3, 204–205. Film shots subsequent to Figure 13.1. From the anime Naruto, episode 17, directed by Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru. TV Tokyo, 2002. Double-page spread from the manga “Naruto” by Kishimoto Masashi, 1999. Vol. 4, 14–15. Film shot from the anime Naruto, episode 17, directed by Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru. TV Tokyo, 2002. Double-page spread from the manga “Naruto” by Kishimoto Masashi, 1999. Vol. 4, 97. Film shot from the anime Naruto, episode 17, directed by Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru. TV Tokyo, 2002. Film shots from the anime Naruto, episode 17, directed by Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru. TV Tokyo, 2002.

127 133 213

214

215 228 229

230 231 232 233 234 235

Tables

10.1 10.2 10.3 10.4 10.5

10.6 10.7 10.8

14.1

Kinokuniya POS data for “Naruto,” vol. 52. 178 Kinokuniya POS data for “One Piece,” vol. 59. 179 Kinokuniya POS data for “Prince of Tennis,” vol. 42. 180 Comparative POS data (Kinokuniya) for female consumers of “Naruto,” “One Piece,” and “Prince of Tennis.” 180 The 60th Comic Market layout plan for August 11, 2001 (second day), Tokyo Big Sight, East Hall 1, 2, and 3, according to Komikku Māketto katarogu C60 (2001, 490). 182 Change in number of “Naruto” dōjinshi circles (vertical axis), participating in the Comic Markets C60–C78. 183 Change in number of “One Piece” dōjinshi circles (vertical axis), participating in the Comic Markets C59–C78. 183 Layout of “Naruto” dōjinshi circles during the Comic Market in summer 2010, according to Comic Market Preparatory Committee (2010, 704). 186 Simplified structure of object-oriented characters in Naruto: The Broken Bond. 252

Page Intentionally Left Blank

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Cover of Gen of Hiroshima, designed by Peter Poplaski. San Francisco: Educomics, 1980. © Nakazawa Keiji. Reprinted with kind permission of Leonard Rifas (Educomics). Photograph of manga/anime fans in a tableaux pose at Otakon, in Baltimore, Maryland, 2003. © Frederik L. Schodt. Reproduced with kind permission of Frederik L. Schodt. Chapter 2: Jiji manga page by Kitazawa Rakuten. Published in Jiji Shinpō, March 23, 1902, 10. Reprinted with permission by Keio University Press. Two-page spread from Tokyo Puck 4.10, April 1, 1908, 4–5. Image from personal collection of Ronald Stewart. Reproduced with kind permission of Ronald Stewart. Comics page from Katei Puck 1913. Artist unknown. Katei Puck 2.4, April 1, 1913, 34. Image from personal collection of Ronald Stewart. Reproduced with kind permission of Ronald Stewart. Chapter 3: A rental bookstore. © Asahi Shimbun Company (April 24, 19648). Middle school graduates from Kumamoto to work in cities. The photograph was taken on March 10, 1966. Page from A Drifting Life by Tatsumi Yoshihiro. Montreal, Canada: Drawn & Quarterly, 2009, 827. Reprinted with permission by Drawn & Quarterly. Page from Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Tatsumi Yoshihiro. Montreal, Canada: Drawn & Quarterly, 2009, 42. Reprinted with permission of Drawn & Quarterly. Page from Abandon the Old in Tokyo by Yoshihiro Tatsumi. Montreal, Canada: Drawn & Quarterly, 2009, 64. Reprinted with permission of Drawn & Quarterly. Chapter 6: Illustration from Flotsam by David Wiesner. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006. © 2006 by David Wiesner. Reprinted with permission of Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Page from Struwwelpeter. Das große Buch der Störenfriede by David Füleki (text by Heinrich Hoffmann). Hamburg: Tokyopop, 2000. © 2000 David Füleki. Reprinted with kind permission of Tokyopop.

xii Acknowledgments Illustration from Three Samurai Cats. A Story of Japan by Mordicai Gerstein (text by Eric A. Kimmel). New York: Holiday House, 2003. © 2003 by Mordicai Gerstein. Reprinted with kind permission of Holiday House. Illustration from The Boy of the Three-Year Nap (1988) by Allen Say (text by Dianne Snyder). New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1988. Illustration © 1988 by Allen Say. Reprinted with permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Chapter 7: Page from “Samurai Dreams” by Chris Crielaard. Ljubljana: Forum Ljubljana, 1999. Reprinted with kind permission by Chris Crielaard. Page from Seisō tsuidansha by Shiwasu no Okina. Tokyo: Hit Publishing, 2003. Reprinted with permission of Hit Publishing Company. Image from Seisō tsuidansha by Shiwasu no Okina. Tokyo: Hit Publishing, 2003. Reprinted with permission of Hit Publishing Company. Chapter 10: Tables 10.1–10.8. Reproduced with kind permission of Fujimoto Yukari. Chapter 12: Awa no Naruto from Hokusai Manga, vol. 7, by Hokusai Katsushika. Page from a block book, 1817. © Museum of Asian Art, The State Museums of Berlin, photography: Jürgen Liepe. Reprinted with permission of the Museum of Asian Art, The State Museums of Berlin. Awa Naruto no fūkei, by Utagawa Hiroshige. Color woodblock print triptych, 1857. © Museum of Asian Art, The State Museums of Berlin, photography: Jürgen Liepe. Reprinted with permission of the Museum of Asian Art, The State Museums of Berlin. Awa Naruto no fūkei,by Utagawa Hiroshige. Color woodblock print, 1855. © Museum of Asian Art, The State Museums of Berlin, photography: Jürgen Liepe. Reprinted with permission of the Museum of Asian Art, The State Museums of Berlin. Chapter 13: Film shots from the anime Naruto, episode 17, directed by Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru. TV Tokyo, 2002. Naruto © 2002 Masahi Kishimoto/TV Tokyo. Reproduced with kind permissions by TV Tokyo (Figures 13.1, 13.3, 13.4.b, 13.5.b, 13.6.a–h). Double-page spreads from the manga “Naruto,” vols. 3 and 4, by Kishimoto Masashi. NARUTO © 1999 Masashi Kishimoto/SHUEISHA Inc. Reprinted with permission of Masashi Kishimoto/SHUEISHA Inc. (Figures 13.2, 13.4.a, 13.5.a). Chapter 14: Table with simplified structure of object-oriented characters in Naruto: The Broken Bond. Reproduced with kind permission of Martin Roth.

Introduction Studying Manga across Cultures Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

In tandem with the global proliferation of manga1—that is, Japanese comics as distinct from animated TV series and movies—a new field of research has also been emerging, manga studies. Outside of Japan, this has developed mainly within fan criticism and/or Japanese studies, media studies, and cultural studies; whereas in Japan, it has already become an institution in itself, centered around the Japan Society for Studies in Cartoons and Comics (Nihon manga gakkai, since 2001) and its annual conferences, specialized museums such as the Kyoto International Manga Museum (since 2006), and a number of university departments with briefs to foster manga artists, Kyoto Seika University’s being the most established and authoritative among these. Manga studies in the strict sense—that is, as appear in well-founded scholarly writings and engaged with currents in academia—started to gain momentum after the turn of the millennium. So far the new field has been dominated by media-historical research as well as analyses of the specific visual language and literacy characteristic of “manga proper” (hyōgenron). In addition, there has also been a strong sociological and ethnographic focus on usages, stretching from examinations of gender-specific readership to subcultural practices, with a special emphasis on globalization and media convergence. Scholarly publications on the manga industry, however, are yet to come, as are critical historical investigations of representative manga artists apart from Tezuka Osamu. This volume approaches manga from the perspective of culture and considers this kind of comics as something that serves not only as a site where different cultures meet or intermingle, but also as something that is best understood as a cultural crossroads. It goes without saying that all cultures are shaped by exchanges with others. Popular cultural practices in general and comics in particular have come to be built on appropriation and hybridization. Suffice it to mention the examples of the melting pot that gave rise to American comics, the impact of American comics—and later manga—on bande dessinée, the manga piracy rife in 1970s South Korea, and the recent transcultural success of the graphic novel. However, manga usually attracts the most attention when culture is at issue within comics studies, at least pertaining to culture defined in a geopolitical or national sense.

2 Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer The absence of the word Japan from this volume’s title is no accident. Against the widespread fixation of manga as Japanese culture, all chapters assembled here opt for historical, discursive, and institutional differentiation. Some of them point explicitly to the broad range of meanings that Japan may connote according to context and perspective: cherished or disdained premodern traditions, a desired Other or rejected colonizer, a language-wise closed realm or platform for transcultural interaction, a particular visual style or specific media format, and a business model. Although manga does not serve here as a means to study Japan’s national culture, history, society, or economy, this is not to say that the individual discussions refrain from touching on Japan at all. Most contributors are in command of the Japanese language, and they also have Japan-related expertise in their respective fields, which allows them to thoroughly contextualize their investigations. However, as can easily be confirmed by browsing through recent Englishlanguage publications, it takes not only knowledge about Japan but also familiarity with comics theory coupled with interdisciplinary methodological adeptness in order to approach manga in a truly scholarly way—in other words, making it a crossroads between divergent research areas as well as between established and new fields of scholarship. This challenge is being met here in a twofold way: on the one hand by undermining the conception of manga as an entity and on the other hand by favoring a relational notion of comics, open to congeneric media cultures such as fanfiction and fan art, TV anime, and video games. Under the name of manga, this volume addresses historical newspaper cartoons and contemporary graphic narratives serialized in specialist magazines, Noro Shinpei’s2 children’s comics of the immediate postwar period, short alternative stories by Tatsumi Yoshihiro and Shiriagari Kotobuki, gekiga published around 1970 and 2011, an erotic manga by Shiwasu no Okina, gendered genres (although without an in-depth analysis of shōjo manga, or girls’ comics), yaoi parodies in comics form, and (not necessarily sequential) fan art, official publications, scanlations, and fannish appropriations. While this range remains partial and selective, it nevertheless provides insights into the leading edge of manga studies due to the contributing authors, most of whom have been involved in forming this new field of scholarship in and outside of Japan. They highlight both the specific media culture and the intercultural encounters that gave rise to manga’s recent border-crossing ability in the first place, while at the same time acknowledging the persistent divergences in manga’s perception between Japan, Korea, North America, and Europe, as well as between different groups within these macrocultures. Altogether, the chapters suggest that focusing on manga in this specific way may very well contribute to decentering and reconceiving the notion of culture in keeping with our times. The sort of manga that dominates the worldwide perception of Japanese comics today is hardly to be characterized through intercultural relations, that is, exchanges between discrete, usually national entities that supposedly maintain their solid identities. From such a perspective, “the world can

Introduction

3

be pictured and narrated as an ‘inter’ of fixed unities: they touch, contact, influence, imitate, threaten, antagonize each other, or to rephrase, inter-act” (Richter 2012, 120). Yet, present manga are, obviously, shaped by and engaged in transcultural flows. Within the broader field of Japanese studies, the transcultural has attracted attention, on the one hand, by social anthropologists concerned with marginal ethnic groups as well as transnational spaces in Japan. Against the discourse of multiculturalism with its emphasis on bounded ethnic units, they have called for an understanding of identity as processual, situational, and multifarious identification (Willis and Murphy-Shigematsu 2008, 9). While ethnic issues remain untouched in this volume, the redefinition of identity coincides with the multiplicity of approaches to manga sketched above. On the other hand, researchers in Japanese and cultural studies have addressed the transcultural as one aspect of globalization: “The term transculturation refers to this process of globalization, in which the asymmetrical encounter of various cultures results in the transformation of an existing cultural artifact and the creation of a new style” (Iwabuchi 2002, 40). Putting aside that manga can only hardly be confined to an artifact and a style as demonstrated by several chapters in this volume, the primary focus on the nation-state, including its colonial and imperialist past, and the pursuit of transnationalism as “connected to the flows of diaspora as well as those of capital” (Iwabuchi 2006, 18) creates problems for manga studies. The subcultural position of manga outside of Japan’s mature domestic market cannot be dealt with adequately in the name of diaspora (even if a significant number of young artists have a migratory background, for example, in Germany; see Malone 2011). Furthermore, manga’s border crossing had initially not been guided by major media companies, but by fannish activities, which tend to be driven by social and cultural capital rather than economic capital. Varying in weight according to topic and methodological orientation, the contributions to this volume consider manga’s cultural crossroads with respect to both the intercultural and the transcultural. This applies, among other things, to notions of manga and comics, which are sometimes subjected to an intercultural divide, but mostly blended transculturally. The closer the discussion comes to the present time, the more it intertwines the crossing of cultures with the crossing of media foregrounding the significance of the technologies at play. Furthermore, it is noteworthy that the capacity to cross geopolitically or socially defined cultural borders by virtue of manga culture is valued but not overrated, and that some of the emerging limitations are exposed. Below, the chapters shall be briefly introduced, with a special focus on how their discussion of manga addresses the intercultural and the transcultural. The volume is divided into two parts. Part 1 opens with a quasi-prologue contributed by Frederik L. Schodt, the pioneering researcher, critic, and translator who has played a crucial part in the formation of manga studies since

4 Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer the 1980s. His survey on manga’s circulation in North America illuminates how the initially intercultural perception of Japanese comics morphed into transcultural incorporation. Once assessed as being too culturally specific to be exportable, manga eventually became localized outside of Japan. The shift from publishing translated editions in a left-to-right format to maintaining the initial Japanese reading direction, at least with respect to the succession of pages and panels, is exemplary in this regard. But Schodt does not only recall the past, he also highlights recent changes in the Japanese and international manga markets, induced by Internet piracy and scanlations, the advance of Korean manhwa and Chinese (xin-)manhua, the spread of manga-related fan creations, and the professionalization of so-called OEL (original English-language) or—in Sell’s terminology (2011)—ONJ (original non-Japanese) manga. While Schodt points to trends that affect the future of manga’s globalization, Ronald Stewart examines the past, that is to say, the historical roots of the term manga, which popular discourse in and outside of Japan is inclined to trace back directly to Hokusai Manga. Stewart’s chapter focuses on Kitazawa Rakuten, who has been given a place in manga history as the cartoonist in charge of the first newspaper Sunday supplement under the name of manga. Through an analysis of his usages of the word, Stewart is able to demonstrate that already in the early twentieth century manga was a site of negotiated meaning. Kitazawa eventually opted for manga in order to distinguish his own work from contemporary ponchi-e (Punch pictures), which he deplored for their fondness for verbal innuendo—not rarely erotic and therefore vulgar in his view—and their allegedly meaningless excess in drawings. But he could also have used “Puck pictures” for the modern, westoriented visual art he was aiming at, a universal sort of expression imbued with the power to communicate across borders. Although transcultural in its own way, Kitazawa’s notion of manga clearly differs from those graphic narratives that dominate the image of Japanese comics today. In light of his assumption that “[p]onchi laugh at form, puck and manga laugh at content”, one may even feel tempted to assume that today’s manga culture, or the globally most favored part of it, has returned to what Kitazawa was eager to overcome: intertextual play, sensual pleasures, and indifference toward political contents. The issue of political significance characteristic of modern cartoons and newspaper strips like Kitazawa’s concerns the next two chapters as well, although in relation to a different sort of comics. CJ (Shige) Suzuki draws attention to 1960s gekiga (lit. dramatic pictures) as a sort of alternative comics that countered the then child-oriented mainstream by addressing young adults with rather dark stories rendered in a more realistic style. The term itself was coined by Tatsumi Yoshihiro, and it is his short stories of the 1960s and 1970s that the chapter discusses, situating them within not only Japan’s national history but also the global counterculture of the 1960s. Thereby, Tatsumi’s gekiga and American Underground Comix appear as equivalents,

Introduction

5

beyond any hierarchy of a center influencing a periphery and regardless of the lack of actual exchange. As if confirming this transcultural configuration of the late 1960s, Suzuki also introduces Tatsumi’s recent English-language translations. Most of them have been edited by the alternative comics artist Adrian Tomine who admits to be not enthusiastic about manga in general. This indicates that Tatsumi’s short stories do not pass as “manga” with all readers. Furthermore, depending on how readers’ notions of gekiga have changed with time and place, but also on how one defines the nature of social critique, it is debatable whether Tatsumi’s works are representative of, or rather exceptions to, gekiga. However, probably one of the most intriguing tasks that this chapter prods us toward is further scrutiny of how different kinds of Japanese comics—more or less self-contained alternative works as distinct from magazine series, which invite transformative, if not derivative, participation—engage differently in crossing nationally defined cultures. Whereas the first chapters of part 1 emphasize transcultural traits of manga, Jaqueline Berndt proposes a reconsideration of intercultural relations as something that is not replaced but rather supplemented by recent transcultural flows. Her chapter calls for intercultural negotiation in regard to the study of comics on the one hand and basic presumptions about civil society and the relevance of critique on the other hand. Taking the A-bomb manga “Barefoot Gen” as its first example, and subsequently introducing three recent magazine series related to the Triple Disaster of March 11, 2011, the chapter pursues manga’s sociocritical potential and arrives at two conclusions: first, with respect to the analyzed materials, that these manga as such are sufficiently multilayered to invite multiple readings, including sociocritical ones, but that readers do not necessarily actualize the potential artists provide; and second, that any assertion of such potential, text-analytical ones included, has to take into account media-specific contexts such as publication sites, readers’ literacy, and generically framed conventions. The amalgam of texts, discourses, institutional contexts, and audiences that gives rise to notions of “manga proper”—impelled less by critics than editors, and shared widely among consumers—is allusively called “mangaesque” here, including both positive and negative connotations. Yamanaka Chie’s chapter approaches manga’s globalization from an East Asian perspective, going beyond the usual juxtaposition of Japan and Europe/ North America to analyze instead how the transcultural move of manga into South Korea has been subjected to intercultural identifications. After surveying the history of manga’s localization in the neighboring country, the focus shifts to the construal of this history under postcolonial conditions that gave rise to a discourse of domestic manhwa in opposition to foreign manga. Three different contributors to this discourse enter the stage of discussion: the state and its cultural policy at one end, comics readers at the other, and comics aficionados acting as mediators in between. Culturally different in themselves, yet united by objectives that eventually coalesce in brand nationalism, these actors constantly negotiate away the fundamental hybridity of manhwa,

6 Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer which has been shaped through exposure to Japan’s comics culture and industry in multiple ways, from pirated editions and stylistic adaptations to publication formats, genres, and Rookie of the Year awards. The encounter between comics and modern picturebooks is the topic of Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer’s chapter. While not unusual in western comics discourse, which, for example, includes discussions of Shaun Tan’s works, such a border crossing remains exceptional in contemporary Japan where The Adventures of Tintin circulates not as comics (that is, “manga” in Japanese) but as a picturebook. By addressing the conspicuous transformations in recent picturebooks through the prism of comics—the employment of panels and motion lines, as well as the integration of script into images—Kümmerling-Meibauer is able to make the fundamental complexity of this art form and its crossover appeal even more apparent. After a short historical retrospection, she introduces a new kind of picturebook, created by renowned artists such as Raymond Briggs, Eric Kimmel, and David Wiesner and characterized by a high degree of intermediality. According to her, these experimental hybrids attest to the existence of a skilled readership that is capable of processing the multiple relations between text and image on the one hand, and of deducing the allusions to comics on the other hand. In addition, the chapter also draws attention to a special intercultural case, namely, Allen Say’s involvement with Japan. The biographical fact that in his youth he was taught there by the now almost forgotten Noro Shinpei, a cartoonist who saw his heyday in the 1930s through 1950s, indicates once more that the understanding of manga is not to be limited to the manga style preponderant today and this style’s increasing presence even in picturebooks. The inclination to discern comics and manga as two different genres, which makes itself felt in the previous chapter, dovetails with critics’ earlier emphasis on the fundamental difference between erotic graphic narratives from Europe and Japan. Recalling the actual heterogeneity of erotic comics in the west, Elisabeth Klar foregrounds transcultural commonalities. By doing this, her chapter suggests, among other things, that so-called hentai manga—although at first glance often accused of spectacularizing sexual violence and promoting conservative gender roles—may very well be regarded as alternative comics in their own right even if published outside an institutionalized alternative realm. The comics-specific body and its parodist potential to relativize normative gender roles are at the center of Klar’s analysis of one hentai manga (available only in Japanese or English scanlation) in comparison with an alternative comics story made in Europe that mocks manga in general and their erotic elements in particular. Related to comics’ sociocritical capacity, Klar asserts rightly that “parody is not easily equated with effective criticism” due to its constant destabilizing of any firm standpoint, and she concludes that the actualization of critical implications depends just as much on the publication context as on reader agency. In a similar way skeptical about intercultural distinctions, including the one between comics and manga and its application to fan art, Nele Noppe

Introduction

7

conducts a comparative analysis of the two major social networking services (SNS) used by manga fans worldwide, deviantART (since 2000) and pixiv (since 2007). According to her, the first impression of cultural difference is deceptive. What appears to be typically Japanese, or typically western—for example, multipage sequential art as a major medium of fans’ expression in contrast to a preference for written fanfiction and single images—can be traced back to different technological tools for submitting and displaying works. Without denying the possibility that SNS owners accommodate existent cultural differences through technological tools, Noppe claims attention for the reverse, that is, site designs causing cultural differences or at least the impression of difference. She achieves this through a comparison of fan creations and related digital conversations based on the same source work, namely Harry Potter, by Japanese and English-speaking participants. However, her findings lead her to regard the potential of the analyzed SNS for transcultural communication with reserve. In her view, disagreements between fannish creators and users (for example, with respect to reposting works), language-induced limitations of access, and “gatekeepers” with penchants toward essentializing cultural difference, all work to constrain the degree of transcultural interaction. Altogether, the chapters of part 1 adumbrate the broad range of manga stretching geopolitically from Japan to Europe, North America, and South Korea; historically from the early twentieth century through the 1960s to the digital age; and generically from single-image cartoons to graphic narratives, including hybridized picturebooks, while at the same time considering several alternatives to the contemporary mainstream of magazine-based manga series, namely, gekiga and hentai on the publishing side, and fan creations on the other. This alone may illuminate the significant role that Japanesestyle comics play in advancing intermedial storytelling targeted at children, adolescents, and adults alike. In order to further examine the cross-cultural appeal of those manga that are held to be typical in and outside of Japan, part 2 of this volume narrows the focus down to one representative case, “Naruto”, a franchise consisting of the manga series by Kishimoto Masashi (in Weekly Shōnen Jump since 1999), three TV anime seasons (2002, 2007, and 2012) and nine animated theatrical-release movies, a radio drama (since 2007), a musical, several video games, and ten novelizations of the anime, mostly based on screenplays and published under the label JUMP jBooks. Concentrating more so on how “Naruto” works rather than on what it says (representationally) or where it belongs (culturally), the chapters delve into its initial publication mode, its readers and readings (straightforward as well as against the grain), fannish adaptations specifically in the form of fiction as well as incarnations as TV anime and video games. Yet, instead of surveying the franchise from above, which would have involved an analysis of its different marketing in Japan, Europe, and the United States, or a discussion of Japanese soft-power policies, the chapters show, on the whole, a preference for a viewpoint from below, that is, from the user’s perspective.

8 Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer Consequently, the main focus is less on authorial and representational issues than on appropriations and reworkings. Providing an introduction to part 2, just as Schodt did for part 1, Omote Tomoyuki sketches the position of “Naruto”, the manga, in Japan with regard to its original publication site and mode. That is, he turns our attention to the magazine medium whose impact on narration, style, genre, and reception habits is easily overlooked by critics when manga crosses borders. Since the late 1950s, magazines have been the backbone of the manga industry, to such an extent that for contemporary Japanese consumers, the word manga evokes primarily series in weeklies or monthlies, not the subsequent book editions (tankōbon), which are named komikkusu. “Naruto” has been serialized in the flagship of Japan’s manga magazines, Weekly Shōnen Jump, for more than a decade, and Omote demonstrates that any attempt at explaining the changes in its narrative and style has to consider this media-specific environment. Such contextual assessment includes the historically changing profile of the magazine itself (concerning genre, character types, target group, and editorial strategy), the synergetic effects caused by the concurrent publication of different series alongside each other in the same issue (especially in regard to the distribution of humor, fantasy, action, etc.), and the interplay between single installments and entire series. Fujimoto Yukari, too, ties the definition of manga to magazines, but she emphasizes the gendering that Japanese manga magazines have used to underpin their content and foregrounds this aspect in her discussion of “Naruto” as cultural crossroads. To her, one of these crossroads is the bridge “Naruto” forms between the domestic manga industry and global fandom, although with its ninja-based theme catering to western orientalism, it is not necessarily the number one manga in Asia. Yet, one more crossroad is that “Naruto” also intertwines different cultures within Japan, especially readerships informed by differently gendered genres. While Omote already intimated that the actual readership does not necessarily match the initial addressees of a specific series or magazine, Fujimoto shows how this materializes. In search of explanations for the huge female readership of the shōnen (boys’) manga “Naruto” with its exceptionally conservative representation of female characters, she turns to parodist readings, which manifest themselves in female fan-created manga, or more precisely, appropriations by mostly heterosexual women of the central male characters and their transformation into homosexual couples. Known as yaoi today, this fandom has grown into an eminently important part of manga culture since the 1980s and more recently has become one of the identity markers of Japanese comics on a global scale as well, whether in its affirmation by younger female fans or in its rejection by other readers. Offering, into the bargain, an introduction to the Comic Market, Japan’s biggest convention for fan-created manga, Fujimoto’s analysis attests from a gender-studies angle the highly interrelational nature of manga culture, whereby not only concurrently published series and surveys

Introduction

9

among straightforward readers, but also queer appropriations contribute to changes in the course of long-running series. Likewise concerned with the cross-cultural popularity of “Naruto” and its gender-specific readings, Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto and Nora Renka focus on fanfiction almost exclusively produced by male fans. Any derivative fanfiction—whether it takes the form of sequential art or novels called “epics”—is inclined to fill a perceived gap, bringing the source work as close as possible to what the reader-turned-author ideally wants it to be. In the case of “harem fics”, the genre scrutinized in this chapter, the protagonist Naruto is endowed with the female admirers and sexual encounters he lacks in the official narrative. In contrast to the majority of fandom studies, which have so far exhibited a penchant toward celebrating and thereby essentializing the predominantly female fandom for its critical bias, Bauwens-Sugimoto and Renka deliberately chose a rather marginal, sexist genre in order to reach beyond the more familiar crossroads between Japanese manga and Englishlanguage fandom, official manga and fanfiction, and male and female genres. Here, the gender divide also overrules the common distinction between yaoi as Japanese and slash as American, which is as much based on an intercultural conception as is the distinction between manga and comics. Furthermore, this chapter calls for an acknowledgment of differences among groups of fans, especially between “acafen”—more advanced in age, highly educated, and dedicated to TV series as well as genres of popular literature— and “feral” fans like those engaged in harem fics derived from manga and anime. Based on computer-mediated discourse analysis, this chapter also presents insights into the methods, rules, and etiquette used by fan authors to alter the source work and to respond to requests or critiques from fellow fans. Altogether, it addresses a number of issues hardly addressed by scholarship as of yet and suggests the necessity of further exchange between manga studies, fandom studies, and transmedia narratology. A number of chapters in this volume approach derivative and transformative fan art and fanfiction as manifestations of an interrelational kind of creativity. Although concerned more with the past than the future, Franziska Ehmcke’s chapter about intertextual appropriation—that is, the reemployment of well-known motifs in new contexts in order to generate new layers of meaning—exhibits a similar tendency to counter accusations of plagiarism. Building on an intimate knowledge of Japan’s aesthetic traditions and citing poems, plays, woodcut prints, early modern films, and traditionalist paintings, she traces the name of the manga’s protagonist back to the site called Naruto, a narrow strait in the Inland Sea where the tides in tandem with flat rocks create a rushing maelstrom (uzumaki), before proceeding to illuminate the Naruto topos. As a “famous place” (meisho) it implied allusions to uncontrolled energy, forces of nature, and beauty, but it also served as a connotation to the tragic fate of a child (or woman) left behind. The chapter leaves it open as to who actually unpacks these layers of meaning today, especially when consuming “Naruto”. Yet, by carving them out, it

10 Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer does not aim at emphasizing how much “Naruto” is rooted in traditional Japanese culture. Rather, attention is paid to the very presence of these layers, which testify to the fact that popular works are by no means to be dismissed as one-dimensional, and that creators frequently offer more than the everyday consumer may take in. Adaptations of the same narrative across popular media, or media mix as these convergences are called in Japan, run the risk of appearing unoriginal and redundant to critical outsiders. This applies, for example, to lengthy manga-based TV anime series. Gan Sheuo Hui’s chapter, however, reveals subtle reinterpretations of the initial manga narrative by focusing on how the anime renders given sequences, occasionally filling gaps and elaborating on implications. In consideration of the auteur concept developed and recently revisited in European film studies, Gan investigates authorship in the highly commercial and collaborative TV context, an issue that has so far been attributed predominantly to famous directors of feature-length animated movies such as Miyazaki Hayao and Oshii Mamoru. While not denying that sophisticated movies for theatrical release may also count as anime, Gan calls for acknowledging the diversity within this media-cultural realm by drawing attention to the multiplicity of authorial positions in the production process of long-running series. Taking the first Naruto season as her example, she illuminates the significance of the director of animation (sakuga kantoku) who may introduce a completely new visual style to the episodes he is in charge of. Thus, Gan’s chapter attends on the one hand to the media-specific crossroads between manga and TV anime, including information on the manga artist’s preferences, but on the other hand, it also blends two different kinds of scholarship—namely, film studies and anime research, the latter of which has been traveling the road to institutionalization as an academic field in Japan, led by, since 1998, the Japan Society for Animation Studies, among others. Martin Roth’s chapter takes the exploration of media convergence further by focusing on four software-based Naruto video games, which belong to different genres, and relating them not to the manga but the anime. With reference to Linda Hutcheon, Roth explicitly theorizes these games as adaptations while considering their technological conditions to an extent that resembles the weight given to technology in the arguments by Noppe as well as Bauwens-Sugimoto and Renka. Taking its point of departure from the observation that the games do not contribute anything to either the Naruto narrative or the world building around it, the chapter examines a number of other, nonnarrative possibilities for their attraction, including “metanarrative characters”, a concept developed and forwarded by Japanese critic Azuma Hiroki, and the opportunity to become one of the characters as suggested by Hutcheon, which both prove to be jejune. Consequently, Roth turns to game studies. Applying Ian Bogost’s concept of unit operations, he eventually arrives at the conclusion that the Naruto games are to be regarded as structural adaptations that invite users to operate on or play with

Introduction

11

diverse materials from the whole franchise in a unique, rule-based but not necessarily coherent, narrative-related way. Yet, Roth concedes that familiarity with the manga and anime narratives as well as their characters may enhance the experience of the games and make them even more enjoyable as sites of intersection between different media cultures. The vast majority of the chapters in this volume are revised versions of papers given at the international conference Intercultural Crossovers, Transcultural Flows: Manga/Comics held at the Cultural Institute of Japan in Cologne, Germany, in September 2010, and organized by the editors in cooperation with Franziska Ehmcke (University of Cologne) and Steffi Richter (University of Leipzig). This conference was kindly supported by the Japan Foundation (Cologne/Tokyo); the International Manga Research Center (IMRC), Kyoto Seika University; and the Center for Inter- and Transcultural Studies, University of Cologne.3 The contributions to this edited volume encompass a variety of aspects of, and a multiplicity of critical approaches toward, manga culture, stretching from discourse analysis and media history to research on comics, literature and picturebooks, film studies, game theory, and Japanese cultural history. As such, this volume attests to the general academic interest in manga. Yet, a collection like this that brings scholars working in different fields and writing in different languages4 together is always a challenge for editors. Fortunately, we could rely on our colleague Ronald Stewart (Prefectural University of Hiroshima) who meticulously proofread all chapters submitted by nonnative speakers, supported in part by Cathy Sell (Monash University). We have appreciated their suggestions and efforts very much. Moreover, we would like to thank Olga Antononoka (Kyoto Seika University) for the index.

NOTES 1. All Japanese terms used in this volume, such as manga, gekiga, and ninja, are written without s in their plural form. Japanese words are rendered in italics when mentioned the first time in each chapter. Long vowels are indicated with macrons, except in citations where they appear in Standard English. The Romanization of Japanese words follows the modified Hepburn system (http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hepburn_romanization). 2. Throughout this volume, Japanese, Chinese, and Korean names are given in the domestic order, surnames preceding given names (except in citations to authors’ works published in western languages, where they appear in the English order). However, in the bibliography at the end of each chapter, all surnames are, regardless of the original order, separated from given names by a comma. 3. Containing nine articles and an epilogue which are not included in the present volume, a first proceedings volume was published in English as vol. 2 of the IMRC’s Global Manga Studies series (Berndt 2011). 4. In the selected bibliography accompanying this introduction, we refrained from listing Japanese-language titles.

12 Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY Aldama, Frederick Luis, ed. 2010. Multicultural Comics: From ZAP to Blue Beetle. Austin: University of Texas Press. Allen, Matthew, and Rumi Sakamoto, eds. 2006. Popular Culture, Globalization and Japan. London: Routledge. Appadurai, Atjun. 2005 (1996). Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Azuma, Hiroki. 2001 (2009). Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals (Dōbutsuka suru postmodern: otaku kara mita nihonshakai. Trans. Jonathan E. Abel and Shion Kono). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Beaty, Bart. 2011. “Introduction”. Cinema Journal (SCMS, in Focus: Comics Studies—Fifty Years after Film Studies), 50.3 (Spring): 106–110. Berndt, Jaqueline. 1995. Phänomen Manga. Comic-Kultur in Japan. Berlin: edition q (El Fenómeno Manga. Barcelona: Ediciones Martínez Roca, 1996). ———. 2007. “Considering Manga Discourse: Location, Ambiguity, Historicity”. In Japanese Visual Culture, edited by Mark MacWilliams. 351–369. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. ———, ed. 2010. Comics Worlds and the World of Comics. Kyoto, Japan: International Manga Research Center. http://imrc.jp/lecture/2009/12/comics-in-the-world. html (accessed June 30, 2012). ———, ed. 2011. Intercultural Crossovers, Transcultural Flows: Manga/Comics. Kyoto Seika University International Manga Research Center. http://imrc.jp/ lecture/2010/11/2.html (accessed September 10, 2012). ———, ed. 2012. Manhwa, Manga, Manhua: East Asian Comics Studies. Leipzig, Germany: Leipzig University Press. Berndt, Jaqueline, and Steffi Richter, eds. 2006. Reading Manga: Local and Global Perceptions of Japanese Comics. Leipzig, Germany: Leipzig University Press. Berninger, Mark, Jochen Ecke, and Gideon Haberkorn, eds. 2010. Comics as a Nexus of Cultures. Essays on the Interplay of Media, Disciplines and International Perspectives. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. Bhabha, Homi K. 1994. The Location of Culture. London: Routledge. Brophy, Philip. 2005. 100 Anime. BFI Screen Guides. London: BFI Publishing. ———, ed. 2006. Tezuka. The Marvel of Manga. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria. Chua, Beng Huat. 2004. “Conceptualizing an East Asian Popular Culture”. InterAsia Cultural Studies 5.2 (August): 200–221. Deutsches Filminstitut—DIF/Deutsches Filmmuseum Frankfurt am Main & Museum für Angewandte Kunst Frankfurt, eds. 2008. Ga-netchū. The Manga-Anime Syndrome. Berlin: Henschel Verlag. Duncan, Randy, and Matthew J. Smith, eds. 2011. Critical Approaches to Comics: Theories and Methods. London: Routledge. Duus, Peter. 2001. “Presidential Address: Weapons of the Weak, Weapons of the Strong. The Development of the Japanese Political Cartoon”. The Journal of Asian Studies 60.4 (November): 965–997. Frahm, Ole. 2000. “Weird Signs: Comics as Means of Parody”. In Comics & Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics, edited by Anne Magnussen and Hans-Christian Christiansen. 177–191. Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press. Galbraith, Patrick W. 2009. The Otaku Encyclopedia: An Insider’s Guide to the Subculture of Cool Japan. New York: Kodansha International. ———. 2010. “Akihabara: Conditioning a Public ‘Otaku’ Image”. Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies: 210–231.

Introduction

13

Groensteen, Thierry. 1999. Système de la bande dessinée. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France (English trans. 2007, Japanese 2009). ———. 2010. “Challenges to International Comics Studies in the Context of Globalization”. In Berndt, Comics Worlds 15–26. Hatfield, Charles. 2006. Alternative Comics: An Emerging Literature. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Heer, Jeet, and Kent Worcester, eds. 2008. A Comics Studies Reader. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Ingulsrud, John E., and Kate Allen. 2009. Reading Japan Cool. Patterns of Manga Literacy and Discourse. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Itō, Gō. 2005. TEZUKA izu deddo—hirakareta manga hyōgenron e [TEZUKA is dead: Postmodernist and modernist approaches to Japanese manga]. Tokyo: NTT Shuppan. ———. 2011. “Tezuka Is Dead: Manga in Transformation and Its Dysfunctional Discourse”. Trans. and with an introduction by Miri Nakamura. Mechademia 6: User Enhanced: 69–83. Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2001. Transnational Japan: Asia o tsunagu popular bunka [Transnational Japan: Popular culture connecting Asia]. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. ———. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. ———. 2006. “Japanese Popular Culture and Postcolonial Desire for ‘Asia’ ”. In Allen and Sakamoto 15–35. ———. 2010. “Undoing Inter-National Fandom in the Age of Brand Nationalism”. Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies: 87–98. Johnson-Woods, Toni, ed. 2010. Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives. New York: Continuum International. Kern, Adam L. 2006. Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and Kibyōshi of Edo Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center. Kraidy, Marwan M. 2005. Hybridity, or the Cultural Logic of Globalization. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press. LaMarre, Thomas. 2009. The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation. Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press. Lee, Hye-Kyung. 2009. “Between Fan Culture and Copyright Infringement: Manga Scanlation”. Media, Culture & Society 31.6 (November 1): 1011–1022. doi:10.1177/0163443709344251. Lefèvre, Pascal. 2011. “Mise en scène and Framing. Visual Storytelling in Lone Wolf and Cub”. In Duncan and Smith 71–83. Leheny, David. 2006. “A Narrow Place to Cross Swords: Soft Power and the Politics of Japanese Popular Culture in East Asia”. In Beyond Japan: The Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism, edited by Peter Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi. 211–233. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Lent, John A., ed. 1999. Themes and Issues in Asian Cartooning: Cute, Cheap Mad, and Sexy. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. ———, ed. 2001. Illustrating Asia: Comics, Humor Magazines, and Picture Books. ConsumAsiaN book series. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. ———, ed. 2004. Comic Art in Africa, Asia, Australia, and Latin America through 2000: An International Bibliography. Bibliographies and Indexes in Popular Culture, no. 11. Westport, CT: Praeger. Leonard, Sean. 2005. “Progress against the Law. Anime and Fandom, with the Key to the Globalization of Culture”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 8.3: 281–305. MacWilliams, Mark W., ed. 2008. Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe.

14 Jaqueline Berndt and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer Malone, Paul M. 2011. “Transcultural Hybridization in Home-Grown German Manga”. In Berndt, Intercultural Crossovers 49–60. Matsui, Midori. 1993. “Little Girls Were Little Boys: Displaced Femininity in the Representation of Homosexuality in Japanese Girls’ Comics”. In Feminism and the Politics of Difference, edited by Sneja Gunew and Anna Yeatman. 177–196. St. Leonards/NSW: Allen & Unwin. Miyadai, Shinji. 2011. “Transformation of Semantics in the History of Japanese Subcultures since 1992”, trans. by Shion Kono, introduction by Thomas LaMarre. Mechademia 6: User Enhanced: 231–259. Miyamoto, Hirohito. 2002. “The Formation of an Impure Genre. On the Origins of Manga”, trans. by Jennifer Prough. Review of Japanese Culture and Society, Special Issue: Meiji Literature and Artwork, edited by the Center for Inter-Cultural Studies and Education, Jōsai University, Tōkyō, 14 (December): 39–48. Natsume, Fusanosuke. 2008. “Manga: Komatopia”, trans. by Margherita Long, introduction by Hajime Nakatani. Mechademia 3: Limits of the Human: 65–74. Nederveen Pieterse, Jan. 2009 (2003). Globalization and Culture: Global Mélange. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers. ¯ gi, Fusami. 2001a. “Beyond Shoujo, Blending Gender: Subverting the HomogenO dered World in Shoujo Manga (Japanese Comics for Girls).” International Journal of Comic Art (Fall): 151–161 (Reprinted in Herr and Worcester 244–251). ———. 2001b. “Gender Insubordination in Japanese Comics (Manga) for Girls”. In Lent, Illustrating Asia 171–186. Orbaugh, Sharalyn. 2003. “Busty Battlin’ Babes: The Evolution of the Shōjo in 1990s Visual Culture”. In Gender and Power in the Japanese Visual Field, edited by Joshua S. Mostow, Norman Bryson, and Maribeth Graybill, 201–228. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. ¯ tsuka, Eji. 2008. “Disarming Atom: Tezuka Osamu’s Manga at War and Peace”, O trans. by Thomas LaMarre. Mechademia 3: Limits of the Human: 111–126. ———. 2010. “World and Variation: The Reproduction and Consumption of Narrative”, trans. and with an introduction by Marc Steinberg. Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies: 98–117. Perper, Timothy, and Martha Cornog, eds. 2011. Mangatopia: Essays on Manga and Anime in the Modern World. Westport, CT: Libraries Unlimited. Power, Natsu Onoda. 2009. God of Comics. Osamu Tezuka and the Creation of Post-World War II Manga. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Pratt, Louise. 1992. Imperial Eyes: Travel Writing and Transculturation. London: Routledge. Prough, Jennifer S. 2011. Straight from the Heart: Gender, Intimacy, and the Cultural Production of Shojo Manga. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Richter, Steffi. 2012. “ ‘Trans’ and ‘Inter’: An Attempt at Definition”. In Berndt, Manhwa, Manga, Manhua 117–129. Schodt, Frederik L. 1983. Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo: Kodansha. ———. 1996. Dreamland Japan. Writings on Modern Manga. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press. ———. 2007. The Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, and the Manga/ Anime Revolution. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press. Saito, Tamaki. 2011. Beautiful Fighting Girl. Trans. by J. Keith Vincent and Dawn Lawson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sell, Cathy. 2011. “Manga Translation and Interculture”. Mechademia 6: User Enhanced: 93–109. doi:10.1353/mec.2011.0002. Shamoon, Deborah Michelle. 2012. Passionate Friendship: The Aesthetics of Girls’ Culture in Japan. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press.

Introduction

15

Shimizu, Isao. 2001. “Red Comic Books: The Origins of Modern Japanese Manga”. In Lent, Illustrating Asia,137–150. Steinberg, Marc. 2012. Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Welker, James. 2006. “Beautiful, Borrowed, and Bent: ‘Boys’ Love’ as Girls’ Love in Shōjo Manga”. Signs. Journal of Women in Culture & Society 31.3 (Spring): 841–870. West, Mark L., ed. 2008. The Japanification of Children’s Popular Culture. Westport, CT: Scarecrow Press. Willis, David Blake, and Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu, eds. 2008. Transcultural Japan: At the Borderlands of Race, Gender, and Identity. London: Routledge. Wong, Wendy. 2002. Hong Kong Comics. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. Yoda, Tomoko, and Harry Harootunian, eds. 2006. Japan after Japan: Social and Cultural Life from the Recessionary 1990s to the Present. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Zahlten, Alexander. 2008. “Something for Everyone: Anime and Politics”. In Deutsches Filminstitut—DIF et al. 76–85.

Page Intentionally Left Blank

Part 1

Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Manga

Page Intentionally Left Blank

1

The View from North America Manga as Late-Twentieth-Century Japonisme? Frederik L. Schodt

By my count, it has been more than thirty years since Japanese manga were first translated and published in North America. At first, they seemed rather like sushi did around that time, something so alien to the American palette they would never catch on. In 1980, a tiny San Francisco publisher named Educomics, run by Leonard Rifas, boldly ventured to issue part of Nakazawa Keiji’s long atom-bomb saga, Barefoot Gen, in American comicbook format (Figure 1.1). Rifas retitled it Gen of Hiroshima, broke the long (more than two thousand pages) story comics into short, forty-eight-page sections; flopped the pages images so they could be read left to right; and hand lettered the text in the style preferred by American readers. It was a commercial failure, ending after two issues. In 1982, Rifas published another, similar but shorter, work of Nakazawa’s called I Saw It, even colorizing it to further appeal to American tastes. While receiving good reviews, this, too, was a commercial failure. Nonetheless, these experiments set the stage for successes in 1987, when bigger publishers in San Francisco and Chicago issued more entertainment-oriented works such as Area 88, and Lone Wolf and Cub, also formatted in American comic-book style. The change in the status of Japanese manga since 1980, not only in North America but also around the world, is quite breathtaking. Manga are now published in dozens of languages and have a global fan base of tens of millions of readers outside of Japan. What was once regarded by most people in Japan as something essentially unexportable has become an export commodity, especially when piggybacked on the global popularity of Japan’s more immediate and easily accessible entertainment medium—anime, manga’s younger sister. Most remarkably, in North America now, Japanese manga are usually read by English speakers in Japanese format. In other words, while translated, they are issued in Japanese page and panel order, read from right to left, in monochrome, with sound effects often still in Japanese, and usually issued in Japanese tankōbon, or book, style. The elevated status of manga around the world in part reflects the unusual status of manga within Japan. In 1996, at the peak of the industry, the domestic market for manga was nearly saturated, and exports were one of the few areas where dramatic growth was possible. Manga represented

20 Frederik L. Schodt

Figure 1.1 1980.

Cover of Gen of Hiroshima, illustrated by Peter Poplaski, Issue No. 1,

nearly 40% of all published magazines and books, and they were read by nearly all segments of society, with the possible exception of senior citizens. Even in 2009, sales of manga paperbacks alone still represented nearly 230 billion yen, or around US$2.7 billion.1 And nothing better represented the exalted position of manga and anime than the political campaign running up to national elections. That year, the long-ruling Liberal Democratic Party still held on to its majority in parliament. The then-prime minister Aso Tarō was a self-avowed otaku, or hard-core manga fan. With his encouragement, the government had begun to take an especially active role in supporting the anime and manga industries at home and in promoting manga

The View from North America

21

and anime overseas, as part of a “Cool Japan” movement. Manga awards were established in the Foreign Ministry, cute young women called kawaii taishi (“ambassadors of cute”) were dispatched around the world as emissaries wearing anime-esque fashions, and there were plans to build a giant manga and anime museum in Tokyo. Moreover, in its campaign, the Liberal Democratic Party widely publicized a list of its top five campaign promises, and there—along with vows to oppose terrorism, protect the environment, and defeat the recession—was a vow to promote popular culture such as anime, games, and manga domestically and overseas. This emphasis on cartoons by a major political party was probably without parallel in modern politics. Unfortunately, for both the prime minister and his party, they lost. Through no fault of the government, the manga market in Japan has also subsequently struggled. It is still gargantuan, but sales are down, especially for magazines. Japan is currently experiencing the double whammy of an unprecedented population decline and a rapidly aging society, due to a declining birthrate and longer life expectancy. This means that young people, the primary consumers of both manga and anime, are shrinking in both absolute and relative number as the population ages. There is also competition for their attention from Internet and manga cafes, from discounted secondhand stores, and from other forms of entertainment such as video games and especially the Internet. And Japanese publishers, slow to adapt to the Internet age and shielded to some extent from overseas trends, have been reluctant to embrace digital publications and thus take the steps necessary to ensure their own survival. As a result, today they face challenges not only from the normal digital piracy that has plagued publishers of manga and music and movies overseas, but also from a uniquely Japanese do-it-yourself phenomenon called jisui or “home cooking”. Manga series can run up to a hundred paperback volumes, and in crowded dwellings, owners of large collections often break up their books, scan the pages, and discard the originals, keeping only the digitized images to save space (and sometimes releasing these files onto the web, thus engaging in “piracy”). To the consternation of both publishers and artists, there are more and more businesses now also offering jisui as a service to customers. Still, the problems manga have faced in Japan are nothing compared to what they have faced in North America, where I live. According to ICv2.com (which tracks pop culture and comics industry trends in North America), manga sales in the United States and Canada decreased 43% between 2007 (when they hit an estimated peak $210 million) and 2010 (when they plummeted to $120 million).2 Also, since 2007, there have been huge layoffs and reductions in manga lines at major publishers—Tokyopop went out of business, Bandai Entertainment and Del Rey stopped publishing manga, and Viz Media cut 40% of its staff. Sales of anime DVDs had already been in a steep slide for several years, but during the same period, the amount of anime being broadcast on television dropped precipitously. If the media around the world seemed somewhat confused by all this, it was no wonder. The implosion came just when manga and anime had seemed to be exploding in popularity

22 Frederik L. Schodt and conquering the world. But after the manga and anime markets had been growing exponentially for years, that they would eventually hit a wall should have surprised no one, for with every boom there is usually a bust. The reasons for the slowdown in the manga market in North America overlap only slightly with the reasons for the slowdown in Japan. In Japan, publishers lament that few artists have been able to come up with blockbuster hits, such as Kishimoto Masashi’s globally popular “Naruto”, Kubo Tite’s “Bleach”, or Oda Eiichirō’s “One Piece”, which have dominated sales in Japan for nearly a decade (“One Piece” alone is said to have sold more than 250 million paperback volumes in total, and in the last few years to have helped propped up the entire manga business).3 This lack of new domestic hits obviously affects overseas markets, which are dependent on product from Japan. But far greater contributors to the sales slump in North America are the recession and the overall shift to digital content. Bookstores in the United States have declined rapidly in number, as more and more people purchase books through Internet stores such as Amazon or simply download e-books onto their electronic devices. And the effect on manga has been particularly huge and much greater than that on ordinary books or American comic books. When the giant bookstore chain Borders went out of business in 2011, it suddenly became hard for young people in many cities to even find manga, at least in a physical format, for at one point Borders had 642 stores and was said to have controlled 40% of all manga sales.4 Even more damaging to sales of manga in the United States has been rampant Internet piracy. The Internet and the World Wide Web are agnostic technologies that transmit any information that can be digitized, and they can be a force for both good and evil, at the same time. In the United States, Europe, and China, where the World Wide Web is more heavily used by highly computer-savvy manga and anime fans, the same technologies that have helped create “Cool Japan” are thus also helping to undermine it, by facilitating not only a diffusion of questionable material but also digital piracy. Partly because Japanese publishers have been so slow to adapt to the transition to a digital world, an entire generation of manga fans has become used to “scanlation”, wherein amateurs scan and translate manga on their own and then upload their work to file-sharing websites, where it can be enjoyed by others for free. From the scanlators’ perspective, they are performing an important service, helping to popularize works often unavailable in English, unknown, or too expensive, and works that often take too long for local publishers to license and issue in English. And there is truth in their argument, but it has also created a culture of expectation that manga should be free. Japanese publishers have recently attempted to cooperate and embrace the digital world, at least as it exists outside of Japan. But as ventures such as www.jcomics.com (which targets the North American market) have illustrated, they have not been extremely successful. There are other, more subtle reasons for the manga slump in North America. I may be in a minority, but I believe there is also confusion among the public about what manga really are. In Japan, manga and anime are generic

The View from North America

23

terms for what Americans loosely call comics (or cartoons) and animation, respectively. In North America, however, both manga and anime have until recently referred to comics and animation that are specifically from Japan. Yet what are Japanese comics and animation? True fans can extol the merits of both for hours and discuss how they prefer the Japanese-style story lines and characters over American-style works. They can also explain how they like the Japanese visual style. But to many North Americans, manga and anime are still defined only by a visual style—by big eyes, big bosoms, very young-looking female characters, and a cute quality not native to America. And this visual style is easily imitated, with the result that in neighborhood comics shops there are, in addition to shelves of translated Japanese manga, now sections of translated Chinese manhua and Korean manhwa, both of which are referred to by most people simply as manga. Making matters even more complicated, there are also now what are called OEL manga, or “original English-language” manga, created by English native speakers in a Japanese style. Anime has not yet become so confusingly diversified, but with the efforts that both China and Korea are currently putting into their own domestic industries, it soon will be. The zeal of hard-core American otaku fans, who prize authenticity in manga format, has also led to a strange phenomenon. Because most Japanese manga are now published in English in Japanese format, with page and panel order in a right-to-left sequence, and onomatopoeia left in Japanese, they have in a sense become an awkward hybrid format. In Japan, the text on manga pages is read right-to-left, vertically; panels and images are also read right-to-left. Yet the Americanized versions of this are neither truly Japanese nor truly American, for they have text that is read left-to-right, horizontally, and images that are read right-to-left. In the minds of some readers, this presumably creates a certain cognitive dissonance. For mainstream readers whose only exposure is to American comic books or comic strips, having to learn to read translated manga “backwards”, or right-toleft, rather than left-to-right, must be off-putting, to say the least. As manga and anime have become more mainstream, it should not be surprising that they also have faced more criticism in North America. In the early days, criticism was often leveled at fans, who were regarded as a tad weird, or immature, but there was scant scrutiny, at least on a serious level, given to what was actually being read or viewed. Today, both manga and anime are far more visible in society, and even if someone does not like manga or anime, that individual usually at least knows someone else who does. One result is that complaints about both manga and anime have developed a more serious edge. On March 24, 2010, a state representative in New Hampshire inflamed the American manga and anime fan community by stating on his Facebook account that “anime is a prime example of why two nukes just wasn’t enough [. . .]” He may have written his comment as a type of black humor, not intending it to be widely read, but the reaction was strong enough that he soon issued a public apology and denied that it was his true opinion.5 In July of the

24 Frederik L. Schodt same year, a Florida woman, who founded an organization called Protect Our Children, also generated negative publicity when she complained to the local city council that her son had “lost his mind” after reading some more mature manga borrowed from a local public library, and that he was in a “home for extensive therapy”. It seemed laughable, but she had earlier circulated a petition with 226 signatures protesting the availability of manga in the library and asking for their banning.6 Feeding suspicion about manga among certain sectors of the public are several high-profile arrests in the United States and in Canada of fans who possess manga and anime images or works commonly seen in Japan but are deemed to be child pornography overseas. Manga are susceptible to the same forces of change as other content industries, but they also face an entirely new and different challenge. Manga, and comics in general, are an art form that until now has been developed entirely on paper. Even more than ordinary books, comic-book layouts and designs are dependent on the concept of pages, and pages are a result of using paper. As comics and manga transition to a digital format and are increasingly read on e-readers such as the iPad or Kindle, there will be no reason to retain the original paper-based format, especially for magazines. Artists will compete to add music, and movement, and may eventually create something of a hybrid between animation and comics. Some manga producers in Japan, such as Tezuka Productions, have already begun doing this with what are called “motion manga”—adding music and narration, combined with exciting camera pans and zooms, to showcase once static, older manga as new, digital works. But in the future, artists will likely take the lead, and the trend will escalate more and more. In other words, manga and comics as we know them may soon transform into something entirely different, and entirely new. Demand for traditional paper manga will not evaporate, and some may even become more sought after, especially if they have good artwork and production qualities. But the traditional flimsy, fat manga magazines—the core of manga culture in Japan, printed on cheap paper and distributed in an antiquated system—will probably slowly disappear. Will the overseas boom in manga turn out to have been ephemeral? Will manga soon come to be regarded as a late-twentieth-century equivalent of ukiyo-e, or woodblock prints that captured the fancy of European and American art collectors and creators, just when they were starting to die out in their own country, Japan? Is it all just another variation of nineteenth-century Japonisme, when the world was infatuated with a newly discovered, exotic style? One could make such an argument, except that the scale of manga and anime culture is so much greater than that of woodblock printing ever was. Despite all the tumult in the Japanese industry, it is hard to imagine people not enjoying manga, at least in some form. And in North America, an interesting phenomenon seems to have occurred. Sales of manga and anime DVDs may have plummeted, but American artists and the local comics and animation industries have absorbed many aspects of the Japanese art form into their work. Moreover, despite the crash in sales, there is yet no solid indicator that the actual number of American fans of manga and anime has decreased.

The View from North America

25

On the contrary, judging by attendance records at some conventions, now held in most large cities in North America, fans seem to be increasing.7 And North American manga and anime fandom increasingly seems to have taken on a life of its own, for at cosplay and other events young people appear to be enjoying themselves in ways quite different than fans do in Japan (Figure 1.2). And in academia, the number of people doing research into manga and anime, at both an undergraduate and graduate level, seems to be higher than ever. In North America, the next big manga/anime-related boom may well be in doctoral theses, repurposed as books for the general public. Long ago, in 1983, Tezuka Osamu penned the foreword to my first book, Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. “Having solved the problem of language”, he wrote, “animation, with its broad appeal, has in fact become Japan’s supreme goodwill ambassador, not just in the West but in the Middle East and Africa, in South America, in Southeast Asia, and even in China”. But even more importantly, he stressed, My experience convinces me that comics, regardless of what language they are printed in, are an important form of expression that crosses all national and cultural boundaries, that comics are great fun, and that they can further peace and goodwill among nations. Humor in comics can be refined and intellectual, and it has the power to raise the level of

Figure 1.2 Photograph of manga/anime fans in a tableaux pose at Otakon, in Baltimore, Maryland, 2003.

26 Frederik L. Schodt all people’s understanding. I believe that comics culture will continue to grow and develop. . .. Comics culture . . . keeps changing with the changing times [. . .]8 NOTES 1. See Schodt (2011, 20) and “[Tokush ] Manga gyōkai, kiken na urabanashi” (2011). 2. Cf. “A Second Bad Year in a Row for Manga” (2010) and “ICv2: North American Manga Sales Fell 15% in 2010” (2011). 3. See “[Tokush ] Manga gyōkai, kiken na urabanashi” (2011) and Oda Eiichirō kansh (2011). 4. See “Manga after Borders: An Opportunity for Comic Stores?” (2012). 5. “New Hampshire Legislator Apologizes for Anime Comment” (2010). 6. See Hughes (2010). 7. “Some Otakon Data by Year” (n.d.). 8. See Schodt (1983, 10f.).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Hughes, Brian. 2010, July 2. “Crestview Mom Targets Manga; Calls It ‘Shocking’ ”. Crestview News Bulletin. http://www.crestviewbulletin.com/news/crestview-10478 -genre-raised.html (accessed May 10, 2012). “ICv2: North American Manga Sales Fell 15% in 2010”. 2011, July 30. Anime News Network. http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2011–07–30/icv2/ north-american-manga-sales-fell-15-percent-in-2010 (accessed May 10, 2012). “Manga after Borders: An Opportunity for Comic Stores?” 2012, March 20. ICv2. http://www.icv2.com/articles/news/22448.html (accessed May 10, 2012). “New Hampshire Legislator Apologizes for Anime Comment”. 2010, March 27. Anime News Network. http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/2010-03-27/ new-hampshire-legislator-apologizes-for-anime-comment (accessed May 10, 2012). Oda Eiichirō kansh . 2011, December 19. “One Piece ten: Kaizoku o mezasu Rufi to nakama no monogatari” [Oda Eiichirō’s One Piece Exhibit: A story of Luffi, who wants to be a pirate, and his pals]. Asahi Shinbun, p. 35. Schodt, Frederik L. 1983. Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Schodt, Frederik L. 2011. Dreamland Japan: Writing on Modern Manga. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press. “A Second Bad Year in a Row for Manga”. 2010, April 16. ICv2. http://www.icv2. com/articles/news/17292.html (accessed May 10, 2012). “Some Otakon Data by Year”. n.d. http://otakon.com/history_stats.asp (accessed May 10, 2012). “[Tokush ] Manga gyōkai, kiken na urabanashi” [Special: Scary inside stories from the manga business]. 2011. Cyzo 185 (December): 46–49.

2

Manga as Schism Kitazawa Rakuten’s Resistance to “Old-Fashioned” Japan Ronald Stewart

And of course it’s out of the question to recount the actual history of art, from Paleolithic to Picasso, in any sensible fashion. —Elkins, Stories of Art (2002)1 [T]he concept of manga appears to be not understood at all among the people of Japan. —Yomiuri Shinbun (January 1, 1909)2

INTRODUCTION The linking of Japan’s manga culture to a premodern past is common both in and outside of Japan, and it is indicative of a widely held perception that manga developed out of centuries-old Japanese tradition(s). However, do these connections bear close examination? While one can easily point to some surface similarities, it is quite another matter to show any genuine continuity in manga development over such a lengthy timeframe. So it is not surprising that a number of manga studies scholars have in recent years sought to throw into question these overarching perceptions of Japanese manga history.3 Yet despite their efforts, the locating of manga’s roots in Japan’s distant past still maintains a strong appeal and continues unabated. The aim of this chapter is to add to the growing body of criticism of this practice by offering a more nuanced picture of the use of the word manga4 itself, a word often utilized to create links to the premodern past. In particular, this will be done through an exploration of the word’s employment by a central figure in early-twentiethcentury Japanese manga development, Kitazawa Rakuten (1876–1955). Kitazawa Rakuten, born Kitazawa Yasuji in 1876, began his career as a cartoonist and illustrator in 1895 with a weekly English-language newspaper published by an American in the foreign legation of Yokohama. Four years later, he was recruited by the major Japanese newspaper Jiji Shinpō, where he would subsequently replace his given name with the penname Rakuten (meaning “optimism”).5 He rose to prominence at this newspaper from 1902 when he began creating a Sunday comics page entitled Jiji

28 Ronald Stewart manga, which was loosely modeled after U.S. newspaper comics pages. In this weekly supplement, Rakuten pioneered the use of reoccurring comics characters in Japan; he continued to draw some of these characters, such as the hapless dandy Haikara (High-collar) Kidorō and the mischievous children Chame and Dekobō, intermittently well into the next decade. Importantly, particularly for the later discussion in this chapter, it is through his Jiji manga comics page that Rakuten is considered to have played a major role in popularizing the then little used word manga (Miyamoto 2005, 391). In 1905, Rakuten was invited to create and edit a humor magazine for the publisher Y rakusha. The resultant multicolor publication Tokyo Puck was a hit. With this magazine, Rakuten had more freedom to create and experiment with cartoons and comics, and he was also able to employ other cartoonists. His active recruiting and fostering new manga artists is a practice Rakuten would continue in various roles—as editor of publications, as the head of manga associations, and as the head of his own manga studios—throughout his career,6 and in doing so, he contributed to the prewar growth of his profession, which he initially called mangashi (manga master) in 1906, and by 1909, mangaka (manga artist), the word used today. In 1912, he moved on to other publications, but eventually returned to Jiji Shinpō in 1914, where he would later resurrect Jiji manga as a larger color supplement drawn by multiple artists, and where he stayed until retiring in 1932. After his death in 1955, he was memorialized by the city of Omiya (now Saitama), his home and studio made into a museum dedicated to him and to manga.7 Over his lifetime, Rakuten wrote a limited number of essays, mostly after 1920, which reflected on his career and on the early manga industry, and at times elaborated his conception of manga. It is his perception of manga in these essays, along with his actual use of the word manga in his publications early in his career that will be analyzed subsequently in order to complicate simple overarching historical perspectives that seek to link Japanese manga to the premodern. As we shall see, for Rakuten, manga was something to be learned from the west and not from Japan’s past; it was something universal and modern. However, before moving our attention to Rakuten’s usage of the word manga, let us firstly look at the circulation of these overarching historical perspectives and their problems, then, to frame the later analysis, look at manga historian Miyamoto Hirohito’s archeology of the word manga—its history and shifting meaning leading up to Rakuten’s use—as well as Miyamoto’s theory of the change in phenomena, from ponchi to manga. OVERARCHING JAPANESE MANGA HISTORIES IN AND OUTSIDE OF JAPAN In Japan, according to Miyamoto, Japanese manga histories can be roughly divided into two types: those that present a narrative of postwar comics development, usually with emphasis on Tezuka Osamu; and those histories that use broad definitions of manga to link “manga-like” visual expression of

Manga as Schism

29

the twelfth century, or even earlier, through to modern multipanel (comic strips) and story manga (comics or graphic novels) by presenting artifacts in a chronological flow of development (Miyamoto 2009, 97). This later type of history routinely includes, as starting points or stages, the Heian period (794–1185) picture scroll attributed to Toba Sōjō (1053–1140) commonly known as Chōjūgiga (Humorous Pictures of Birds and Animals), and the visual print culture of the Edo period (1600–1868), particularly Katsushika Hokusai’s (1760–1849) series of illustrated copy books called Hokusai Manga. Miyamoto (2009, 97) sees overarching histories of this type as having their antecedents in the second half of the Meiji period (1868–1912) but argues that in particular the publication of cartoonist Hosokibara Seiki’s 1924 book Nihon manga-shi (A History of Japanese Manga) cast the mold for subsequent comparable histories up to the present.8 Indeed, from the 1950s through to the 1980s, Matsuyama Fumio, Tagawa Suihō, Miyao Shigeo, and Suyama Kei’ichi, who had also all worked in the manga industry, published Japanese manga histories in a similar vein.9 In recent decades, it has been manga collector and prolific manga historian Shimizu Isao who has been most prominent in picking up this baton (for instance, Shimizu 1991, 2007).10 Today these overarching histories remain a strong force in shaping popular perceptions. Appearing in various forms—from relatively detailed expositions to fleeting allusions or juxtaposed images—these histories materialize not only in popular media and academic writing but also in government reports,11 exhibitions,12 library layouts,13 and even in mundane forms of everyday culture such as stamps.14 The desire to link current Japanese manga culture to a distant past is not unique to Japan. In the English-speaking world, the linking of Toba Sōjō and Chōjūgiga to contemporary Japanese caricature began as early as the 1880s (see, e.g., “Japanese Art” in the Evening Telegram 1887). By the beginning of the twentieth century, it was not uncommon to also regard Edo-period print culture, most often Hokusai Manga, as equivalents to contemporary cartoons or caricatures.15 This was then extended to comic strips. In 1921, a New York Tribune article introduced a recent four-panel comic strip by Rakuten attributing to it a lineage that had begun with Toba and that included Hokusai (Adachi 1921). Humor scholar Reginald H. Blyth in his 1959 chapter on the history of Japanese caricature appears to be the first to create a history of substantial length drawing on the previously mentioned Japanese historians Hosokibara, Suyama, and Miyao.16 In 1983, Frederik L. Schodt’s groundbreaking and influential introduction to Japanese manga drew on Suyama and Miyao as well as Blyth to connect a thousand-year history to Japan’s flourishing comics-centered postwar manga culture (Schodt 1986 (1983), 28–67). Schodt’s book became an impetus for the spread of the word manga, which would take on the specific meaning of “Japanese comics” (later also “Japanese-style comics”) outside of Japan. The growth of interest in, and consumption of, Japanese comics, particularly since the late 1990s, has in turn led to an expediential increase in academic and popular writing

30 Ronald Stewart on manga. It is quite common for these to link manga to premodern traditions. Some continue to foreground roots in satire or humor, and in cartoonlike expression, in the same way as Japanese historians Hosokibara through Shimizu.17 Others, with a more specific view of manga as graphic narrative, emphasize themes—for example monsters, sex, or violence—or point to narrative traditions to connect to the past.18 At times, the zeal to locate current Japanese culture in the past takes on distinctly orientalist exoticizing tendencies.19 On the whole, these sketchy long-view histories blur distinctions between continuity and mere chronology, and between continuity of cultural practice and plain reappropriation of the past. More often than not, relying on a limited set of secondary sources and on surface similarities, these histories are condemned to merely reiterating the same dubious links and myths, such as those that relate Hokusai Manga to current manga.20 To consider further why these histories are problematic, let us turn briefly to the field of art history, where the problems of similar types of overarching histories have been discussed. In his analysis of world art histories, art historian James Elkins (2002) has pointed out that while these histories do form attractive easy to understand narratives, in attempting to fuse disparate artifacts from different periods into seamless links in a line of development, they involve many problematic tendencies. A number of these problems indicated by Elkins are also applicable to overarching manga histories: • They rely on chronology and Hegelian ideas of progress for continuity, ignoring questions of whether artifacts are indeed linked or representative (53–55). • The drive by the authors to construct pleasing stories for their readers leads to ethnocentrism (63, 86, 94) and to a desire to create narrative starting points, or in other words, origin myths (64–65). • Their long timeframes necessitate gross oversimplification, erasing lived history (57). Elkins suggests that to avoid these problems it would be better to deal with shorter timeframes and engage in social theory. In manga studies, Miyamoto has also pointed out the superficiality of links constructed in overarching manga histories, and has called for more engagement with the complexity of lived history and of all facets of manga culture (Miyamoto 2009, 101). By examining Rakuten’s use of the word manga, this chapter hopes to, in part, answer these calls for more complexity. THE WORD MANGA, A LINK TO THE PAST? The word manga itself is used in Japanese and in English writing to link contemporary Japanese manga to premodern artifacts. This is basically done in four ways, each problematic.

Manga as Schism

31

One is to link to older traditions through the oft-repeated myth that Hokusai coined the term manga (for recent English examples, see KoyamaRichard 2007, 6, 78; Ito 2008, 29; Aoki, n.d.). This overlooks the fact that usage of the word predating Hokusai’s has been demonstrated repeatedly since 1928 (see Hosokibara and Mizushima 1928, 124; Miyamoto 2003a, 319–321; Shimizu 1991, 17–19). A second more cautious approach recognizes that the word manga was not coined by Hokusai and that modern usage of the word differs significantly, yet still seeks to imply some form of continuity with Hokusai’s Manga.21 The remaining methods assume a fixed meaning over time. One way is to define the word manga based on the meanings of its two ideographic characters, kanji, then teleologically look back over available historical artifacts for those that fit the definition. The final way is by merely looking for past artifacts that use the same characters (perhaps in a title) and assume the earlier usage of the word shares the same meaning. Unfortunately, these methods ignore the fact that despite some kanji having, in Peircean semiotic terms, iconicity (i.e., look like the thing they are intended to represent), their usage is arbitrary and their meaning dynamic. That is to say, the kanji-composed word manga, like all words, has no essential meaning.22 Rather, it is a site of negotiated meaning, and any meanings given to it are subject to change over time, between users, and contexts.23 Miyamoto (2003a) has demonstrated clearly this discursive nature of the word manga by mapping the changes in its meaning from the time this kanji compound of late-twelfth-century Chinese origin entered Japan, in the early-eighteenth century, to the beginning of the twentieth century. He shows its connotation shifting, multiplying, and stratifying over this period, with at times intermediary, overlapping, and ambiguous meanings appearing. Originally signifying a “spoonbill bird”, it would later come to mean “the act of writing or drawing randomly” (the spoonbill’s actions as metaphor) or “the act of producing pictures of all manner of things in all possible styles and the resultant massive amount of images, or the volume(s) they are collected in” (this being Hokusai’s usage as a collective noun, emphasizing a quantity rather than a specific quality, which was picked up by later ukiyo-e artists for their bound collections). Then from the 1890s, it would be applied to mean “caricature” and/or other forms of “humorous pictures drawn in a simple manner”, and accompanying this meaning was the limited, and short lived, use to connote “a form of fine art”.24 THE CHANGE FROM PONCHI TO MANGA Rakuten’s use of the word manga to represent something new is divorced from earlier usage and coincides with a gradual shift from ponchi to manga, which began in the 1890s. Miyamoto has convincingly argued this change in terms of content, form, and culture in a number of papers. His theory could be summarized as follows.

32 Ronald Stewart Beginning in the 1860s, ponchi (a corruption of the British humor magazine title Punch) became a generic label for early attempts to draw political or social humor combining pictures and words in a western mode. Though some were given a fresh look through new printing techniques—engraving and later lithography—in reality little had changed. Just as in popular Edoperiod print culture, ponchi featured large portions of text in poetic meter designed to be read aloud in groups, visualizations of verbal puns rather than likenesses, and a profusion of allusions to popular literature. As such, they were not designed to be read quickly, and pleasure was instead gained from the sound of the reading voice and from time spent solving the puzzles (puns and allusions) contained. Miyamoto argues that from the 1890s this began to change to a form more readily recognizable today as manga, or its basic building block, the koma (a panel or single frame). That is, there was a move to a greater reliance on the visual. Using easily recognizable representations and limited text (free of poetic meter and allusion), they could be consumed in an instant. Miyamoto gives three reasons for this change. One is a shift from reading aloud in groups to silent individual reading brought about by the new education system and new public reading spaces. Another is an increased separation of image and text with the emergence of western fields of literature and fine art in Japan, effectively dividing writers and artists into specialized art genres. The third reason he points to is the growth of a popular daily newspaper industry requiring smaller images that were more easily and quickly comprehended by a broader audience. Along with this change in form developed a consciousness that a new genre distinct from ponchi had emerged, leading to the need for a new label, manga (Miyamoto 2002,2003b, 2005, 2009). According to Miyamoto (2005, 391), the use of the word manga for this new form of expression was spread through Rakuten’s usage at the newspaper Jiji Shinpō, where it had been introduced by Imaizumi Ippyō (1865–1904). The word first appeared in the newspaper in 1890, soon after Ippyō began employment there on his return from the United States where he had gone to study cartooning.25 Over the next decade, however, it was used only rarely to label cartoons or strips, either drawn by Ippyō himself or reprinted from U.S. newspapers. After illness left Ippyō too weak to continue work in 1899, he was replaced by a youthful Kitazawa Yasuji (later Rakuten). With Rakuten’s use of manga in the title of his comics page Jiji manga, beginning in 1902, the word would begin to be widely applied to cartoons, comic strips, and comics. EXAMINING RAKUTEN’S WRITINGS ON MANGA AND HIS USE OF THE WORD To understand how Rakuten perceived the term manga, let us now examine his writing about, and actual use of, the word. In doing so, we can confirm

Manga as Schism

33

some of the changes described by Miyamoto, including the consciousness of a new genre. However, it will also become clear that the actual application of the terminology ponchi and manga over this period was more ambivalent, and the change from one to the other much slower and less complete, than the phenomena, the change in form from ponchi to manga, described in Miyamoto’s theory. We will begin with Rakuten’s published writings on manga. Between 1905 and 1952, Rakuten published a small number of essays, arguing his ideas regarding manga, giving advice to students of manga, and reminiscing about the world of manga and his role in it in the early decades of the twentieth century. From these we can get a glimpse of Rakuten’s changing conception of manga, but more importantly, we can see his distaste for Edoperiod visual culture and his constant assertions that he actively used the word manga to resist it. After examining these essays, we will then compare this with his actual use of the word manga at the various publications in which his work appeared.26 Lastly, we will reflect on the implications this has for Japanese manga histories. RAKUTEN’S WRITINGS ON MANGA Despite Rakuten having experimented in a variety of forms of manga throughout his career, his early conception of manga appears quite limited and focused on single-panel cartoons. In his first essay, published in 1905, he discusses cartoons but does not use the word manga. Instead he describes them as a type of kaiga (picture or painting) that is a vehicle for humor and satire and laments the tendency for Japanese cartoons to be puzzles (kangaeochi), preferring the simpler “intuitive” cartoons of Europeans (Kitazawa 1905). In his next essay, more than a decade later in 1920, while now freely using words like manga, mangaka, and manga-muki (manga-appropriate), Rakuten asserts that manga is a medium best suited to humor and caricature (Kitazawa 1920, 73). However, by 1928 Rakuten’s perception had broadened, perhaps due to the popular success of his student Asō Yutaka’s comic strip Nonki na Tō-san (Easygoing papa): At present, explaining manga has become complicated, a considerable diversity of elements are incorporated into pictures collectively labeled manga. (Kitazawa 1928, 134). Yet he continued to view comic strips as less important than satirical single-frame cartoons. For Rakuten, comic strip artists tended to put too much emphasis on story making, relegating the actual images (drawings) to an afterthought, and hence becoming a lesser form of manga (Kitazawa 1934). He preferred cartoons because he felt they not only carried political significance, but they also had the power to communicate across borders:

34 Ronald Stewart Manga have this type of potential, so in order to correct the mistaken perceptions of Japan held by the world’s powerful nations, manga can play the most influential role. (Kitazawa 1934, n.p.) From the 1920s on, when reflecting on Japanese manga of the turn of the century, Rakuten would repeatedly express his distaste for Edo-period visual culture and for the form that shared its outmoded traits, ponchi. In his eyes, these were vulgar, too wordy, incapable of direct expression, and in sum, plain old-fashioned. For Rakuten, the ideal manga should have few words, and cartoonists “should endeavor to make the pictures speak”. This thinking extended to comic strips as well; according to Rakuten, comic strips that make the reader “perceive the story without explanation are best” (Kitazawa 1934, n.p.) Rakuten did not think of manga as the outgrowth of a Japanese tradition and did not feel much of value could be learned from Japanese artists of the past. While begrudgingly acknowledging the cleverness of wordplay of latenineteenth-century and Edo-period artists, he felt that after the end of the Edo period “publishing laws became tolerant so there was no need to say things in a roundabout manner”. For this reason, he was critical of the continued use of Edo methods of expressing satire “behind words, mostly in the form of wordplay” (Kitazawa 1928, 130). Rakuten’s conception of manga was from the start rooted in foreign models. He recollected that his initial desire to draw manga arose from his excitement at seeing “Amerika no manga” (U.S. manga) in the newspaper Shōkokumin, after which he actively sought out foreign magazines from which to study manga (Kitazawa 1928, 135). In 1934, giving advice to potential cartoonists, Rakuten recommended the use of foreign manga as models when learning to draw cartoons that make minimal use of words. He admiringly pointed out apt examples by French artists Pierre Puvis de Chavannes and Honoré Daumier, as well as English cartoonist Sidney Strube and American cartoonist Giuyas William (Kitazawa 1934). Thirty years earlier, Imaizumi Ippyō had likewise looked to foreign manga for models, presenting as the frontispiece to his 1901 book a wordless four-panel comic strip by the German cartoonist Hans Schliessmann as an exemplar. Rakuten, in his reminiscences of his career, despite having spent some time in his teens studying at the “western-style” painting school Daikōkan and some time studying under a ukiyo-e artist in Yokosuka, repeatedly emphasized that he learned “western caricature”, and that his teacher, Frank A. Nankivell, an Australian cartoonist resident in Japan, had afterward become a staff cartoonist with the influential U.S. humor magazine Puck (Kitazawa 1928, 1936, 1952). By doing this, Rakuten asserted his authority over manga, which he perceived as an international visual language. Conceiving of manga not as a uniquely Japanese development, but rather as something universal and modern, he felt that its sudden rise in Japan since the turn of the century was a “natural consequence” of a “matured society” (Kitazawa 1936).

Manga as Schism

35

Particularly after reaching his fifties, when Rakuten looked back at the world of manga at the beginning of the century, he continually highlighted his efforts to resist ponchi and Edo-period expression by using manga. Apart from their excessive use of words and puns, Rakuten, saw in them two other problems, “meaningless exaggeration” in the execution of their drawings and “obscenity”. I no longer said ponchi. I said manga, manga. Who said it first, I do not know. With my manga, I wanted to go against ponchi. Ponchi laughs at form, puck and manga laugh at content. (Kitazawa 1928, 134). Rakuten perceived his own work, and that of the manga artists he fostered, as bringing about change, feeling that the launch of his magazine Tokyo Puck in 1905 was forcing out and replacing outdated ponchi magazines—such as the long-lived humor magazine Maru Maru Chinbun (1877–1907)—that were corrupting public tastes. At the time, the manga we drew were a new school. Maru Maru Chinbun was representative of an old school. I felt bitter seeing the conspicuous current of mixing humor with obscenity in the manga industry in those days. I had been planning to reform the world of manga because it was causing a decline in people’s tastes [. . .] (Kitazawa 1928, 130). With Tokyo Puck, Rakuten wanted to “cast the stone of reform at Japan’s manga circles” (Kitazawa 1928, 130). When his publisher made demands that his new magazine be called Tanuki (Raccoon dog)—a traditional trickster character of Japanese folklore—Rakuten claims he steadfastly resisted. For Rakuten, the title Tanuki had an “old style Edo-taste” feeling to it that would lead people to associate the magazine with ponchi; Rakuten, however, wanted to “wipe out ponchi” (Kitazawa 1936, n.p.). In the end, he got his way, but as a compromise, Rakuten rendered Tokyo Puck’s inaugural title border in the shape of a tanuki. According to Rakuten, he also strove to eliminate the use of the word ponchi by replacing it with manga. He recalled with much chagrin that even though by 1910 the word manga was increasingly being used instead of ponchi, the major progressive newspaper Yorozu Chōhō was still using ponchi for their regular political cartoon column Hagaki (Postcard) Ponchi (1907–1924). Thinking that the status of these cartoons could be elevated by calling them manga, Rakuten wrote to the newspaper suggesting this change. However, they ignored his request and continued using ponchi, causing Rakuten “great distress at their lack of understanding” (Kitazawa 1936, n.p.). Rakuten did not attempt to link manga to a Japanese tradition in any of his essays until 1952, a time when he was in his midseventies and popular overarching histories of Japanese manga development were well established.

36 Ronald Stewart He begins his final essay saying that manga had existed from long ago. He notes that Hokusai Manga were a particularly well-known example, but in Hokusai’s case, the word held a different meaning. He then asserts, the “real start point of the manga of modern Japan are the toba-e of Edo period” (Kitazawa 1952, 90).27 This link to the past, however, runs counter to his professed thinking throughout his career. We can see from the previous discussion that, particularly from the 1920s on, Rakuten repeatedly underscored his use of manga to resist Edo-period forms of visual expression and their remnants in ponchi, perceiving manga until his very last essay as something divorced from a Japanese visual art tradition. Nevertheless, while Rakuten no doubt expresses a form of subjective truth in these essays, he has also surely selected and shaped past events to serve a number of rhetorical functions including: to tell an entertaining story, to record and elevate his achievements, and to present himself how he would like to be remembered at the time of writing. So, before making any conclusions, let us first take a more objective view of how he perceived the word manga by now examining the use of the word between the 1890s and 1920s in the publications for which he worked.28 As we will see, his actual application of the word during this period is much less clear-cut than his reflective essays suggest. RAKUTEN’S ACTUAL USE OF THE WORD MANGA When Rakuten first began working as a cartoonist and illustrator in 1895 for the English-language weekly newspaper The Box of Curios in Yokohama, he appears not to have used the word manga. In correspondence to his parents, he describes his work there with the word ga (picture), and when describing his first political cartoon, he uses the word zu (drawing or figure).29 Even after being invited to work at Jiji Shinpō in 1899, his use of the word manga was not immediate. Manga had been applied to cartoons and comic strips at the newspaper, albeit only very occasionally, since 1890 while Imaizumi Ippyō was active there. However, Rakuten was initially introduced to readers on January 1, 1900, as a ponchi-gaka (ponchi artist). Moreover, Rakuten himself did not apply the word manga to his work during his initial two years at the newspaper. Nevertheless, he did clearly separate his early single and multipanel cartoons from Japanese tradition through limiting text and puns; by occasionally, just as Ippyō before him, introducing international iconography; and also by adding his initials or name in romanized letters, “Y K” or “Y Kitazawa”, both in western order (family name last). An examination of the pages of Jiji Shinpō shows that Rakuten only began using the word manga in print from January 12, 1902, when his first Jiji manga full-page Sunday comics supplement was published. Many years later, Rakuten recollected that Jiji Shinpō had been criticized for being too stiff and formal before his arrival, prompting a decision to introduce

Manga as Schism

37

a U.S.-style Sunday comics supplement; initially it was hoped that Ippyō would do this (Kitazawa 1952, 91). Rakuten also recalled that on replacing Ippyō at the newspaper he was assigned the task of drawing “political cartoons” (seiji manga) and of drawing U.S. “narrative-style comic strips” (monogatari-shiki renzoku manga) in four to eight panels, giving personalities to the characters (Kitazawa 1952, 91). Rakuten, while perhaps best remembered today as a political cartoonist, actually drew very few political cartoons for the newspaper. During the roughly three years that his first Jiji manga supplement ran, his work overwhelmingly consisted of multipanel cartoons, strips, or comics, ranging in length from two to well over ten panels. In these narratives, Rakuten developed, as mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, a number of reoccurring characters, including some of which he, and his later students, would continue to use for more than a decade. On the pages of Jiji manga, he called his comic strips tsuzuki-e (continuous pictures) and experimented with a variety of panel layouts, drawing styles, shading, and occasionally speech balloons. That along with these he also included celebrity caricatures, comic strips from foreign newspapers, amateur comic strips by readers, and even puzzles, all under the banner of Jiji manga, suggests that his conception of manga at the time was broader than that expressed in his essays, and broader than that of Ippyō. So while Rakuten was the first to make regular use of the word manga at Jiji Shinpō, he appears to have inherited this term, as well as the idea for the comics page, from the newspaper. In his 1936 essay, he would claim that the decision to apply the word manga to his comics supplement was his own; however, he later recounted that this decision was made only after consultation. Because it was a completely different look compared to the ponchi up to that time, after consultation with the editing department, it was labeled Jiji manga. It was the forerunner of newspaper manga. (Kitazawa 1952, 91) Yet, notwithstanding Rakuten’s later professed strong hatred of ponchi, and his apparent editorial control over the content of this supplement, he still continued to use the term ponchi. In his partly tongue-in-cheek introduction to the very first supplement, “Jiji Manga Efficacy Statement”, he enumerates the benefits of manga. Manga, he claims, cures one’s ills, and the love of manga enriches people’s lives and makes their families and their countries prosperous. Consequently, he continues, the Euro-American countries where manga can be found are all prosperous (Manga-shi 1902). Each of these mentions of manga is written in kanji ideographic characters, and all, as with kanji in many publications of this period aimed at a broad audience, have a gloss in simple kana syllabary attached above them to explain how they should be read. However, in this introduction, each of the seven appearances of manga is glossed with the reading ponchi-e (ponchi pictures). Only the appearance of manga in the title is glossed mankuwa (the

38 Ronald Stewart prewar kana spelling which is pronounced manga). After this inaugural Jiji manga comics supplement, Rakuten does not discard the term ponchi, still continuing to use it sporadically—for example, caricatures of celebrities (see Figure 2.1) called ponchi shashin (ponchi photos) and overseas comic strips

Figure 2.1 Jiji manga page featuring “photo ponchi” caricatures, a single- and double-panel cartoon, and complex multipanel strip by Kitazawa Rakuten. Jiji Shinpō, March 23, 1902, 10.

Manga as Schism

39

labeled gaikoku ponchi (foreign ponchi). Nor does Rakuten completely sever himself from the past, with some of the narrative themes in Jiji manga doubtlessly having Edo-period antecedents.30 Even so, the style and layout of his drawings are divorced from Japanese visual art traditions; that is, in terms of Miyamoto’s theory, they are distinctly manga, not ponchi. Rakuten grew frustrated with the lack of freedom to draw political cartoons at Jiji Shinpō. He later recollected that in the international political climate of the time—around the period of the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905)—the newspaper was extremely anxious about cartoons dealing with issues involving the world powers and suppressed his cartoons (Kitazawa 1936). So in 1905 when offered by the head of publisher Y rakusha, Nakamura Y jirō, the chance to create a humor magazine with control over content, Rakuten jumped at the opportunity, collaborating to produce Tokyo Puck. With Rakuten at the helm for seven years, this fullcolor magazine had a much greater focus on political cartooning than Jiji manga. That said, with more space available, it was still overflowing with many gag cartoons, comic strips, and comics, including some of Rakuten’s popular comics characters who lived on in its pages. At this magazine, he also began the practice of recruiting and fostering potential new manga artists; with this young blood, the drawing styles in Tokyo Puck became much more diverse than in Jiji manga (see Figure 2.2).

Figure 2.2 Two-page spread from Tokyo Puck showing some of the variety of styles used by the magazine’s artists. Tokyo Puck 4.10, April 1, 1908, 4–5.

40 Ronald Stewart Rakuten’s use of the word manga was not consistent in this magazine either. During the first year of publication, newspaper advertisements for Tokyo Puck appear to emphasize the word and the concept of manga, for example, “The number one manga magazine in Japan!” and “Japan’s only manga magazine!!” (Tokyo Pakku, April 17, 1905, 8). Manga here again does not mean something unique to Japan. Rather, it is used to point to something that originated in the Euro-American world, something universal and able to transcend national boundaries. For example, in 1906 the magazine was promoted as the “representative manga magazine of the east”, explaining that [t]he top ranking countries of the world all have their own representative manga magazines. England has London Punch, the U.S. has New York Puck, and with the arrival of Tokyo Puck, Japan too has at last become a first-class country. (Tokyo Pakku, March 5, 1906, 1)31 In the second year of publication, Rakuten would refer to his profession as “manga master” (mangashi) and conduct a “manga” competition. However, in the preface to the first issue, the term kaiga zasshi (picture or painting magazine) is used instead of “manga magazine”, and readers are asked to send contributions of ponchi-e (ponchi pictures). For the first three years of the magazine, the word ponchi was regularly used to indicate humor, such as in a joke column labeled ji (script) ponchi, humorous plays called haiyū (actor) ponchi, and stories labeled ponchi-banashi and ponchichindan (ponchi anecdotes). Rakuten’s magazine was even criticized for including ponchi. In 1907, reviewing the first two years of Tokyo Puck, the artist and critic Yamamoto Kanae objected to the excessive use of unnecessary text and the “low-grade wordplay pictures”—in other words, ponchi as described by Miyamoto and Rakuten—of the first issue, which was entirely drawn by Rakuten himself. The critic expressed his displeasure that the magazine had found it “difficult to escape the vulgar tastes of old”. More pleasing to Yamamoto, however, was that this type of Edo-style expression had decreased over the magazine’s first two years of publication (Yamamoto 1907, 3). Indeed, gradually over the five years after Yamamoto’s survey, it can be seen that the word ponchi too all but disappears from its pages. Nonetheless, the word manga was rarely used in Tokyo Puck itself during Rakuten’s seven-year tenure. Moreover, the word manga would also be strikingly absent from his two subsequent magazines, Rakuten Puck and Katei Puck. Between 1905 and 1914, Rakuten appears to have preferred the term puck (pakku) over manga. Making a concerted effort to spread its use, he introduced magazine mascot characters such as Professor Puck, Mr. Puck, and Crown Prince Puck. He also referred to the magazine’s cartoons, comics, and style as puck-pictures (pakku-ga) and puck-style (pakku-shiki), and he labeled the magazine’s thinking as puck philosophy (pakku tetsugaku).

Manga as Schism

41

Perhaps this was in order to distinguish this new venture from his popular Jiji manga. In 1912, Rakuten’s time at Tokyo Puck came to a bitter end after the publisher sold the publishing rights. Rakuten left, refusing to continue under the new publisher, and felt betrayed by a number of manga artists, artists he had fostered, who chose to remain at Tokyo Puck and to criticize his methods. After leaving, Rakuten published two short-lived magazines of his own: Rakuten Puck, which was similar in format to Tokyo Puck; and Katei (Family) Puck (see Figure 2.3), which was educational in intent and contained more articles and fewer comics. With these magazines, Rakuten’s preference for the word puck continued, though on occasion he used it

Figure 2.3 Comics page from Katei Puck 1913 featuring Dekobō, a character created by Kitazawa Rakuten in 1902. Artist unknown. Katei Puck 2.4, April 1, 1913, 34.

42 Ronald Stewart interchangeably with manga, and at other times he used it to distinguish a certain type of manga—sometimes referring to the international-style manga established with Tokyo Puck, and sometimes indicating wholesome, easyto-understand, and educational manga suitable for all ages. In the inaugural issue of Katei Puck (July 1, 1912, 32), Rakuten laments the lack of understanding by those who had remained at Tokyo Puck and who had accused him off heartlessness in his tireless efforts to develop and advance the “wayof-puck” (pakku-dō) and the “way-of-manga” (manga-do) during his time there. Even so, the use of ponchi still continued under Rakuten’s watch. By 1914, with his magazines struggling, unable to recapture the popularity of the early years of Tokyo Puck, Rakuten found work again with Jiji Shinpō. The New Year’s Day issue of Rakuten Puck for that year advertised (rear inner cover) Rakuten’s comics in Jiji Shinpō: “Amusing ponchi: Rakuten’s ponchi are easy to understand and amusing”. While the term ponchi is used, there is nevertheless a patently clear intention to differentiate it from the Edo-style wordplay and allusions that were difficult to understand by emphasizing the simplicity and understandability of Rakuten’s comics. In 1914, both Rakuten Puck and Katei Puck folded, and Rakuten, in addition to his Jiji Shinpō position, began working for the children’s magazine Kodomo no Tomo (Children’s friend) as art director. Children’s literature researcher Miyake Okiko points out that despite a boom in ponchi in children’s magazines in the 1910s, Kodomo no Tomo with Rakuten in charge of its artwork gradually replaced its initial use of ponchi with more refined multipanel educational comic strips, cartoons, and illustrations by some of the best artists of the day (Miyake and Kōsokabe 2009, 59, 107, 220, 231). By the mid-1910s, the use of the term manga was becoming firmly established among the cartooning profession. From 1915, cartoonist Okamoto Ippei came to play a central role in actively promoting manga publicly and in elevating the social position of manga artists through his Tokyo Manga Association and with an annual Manga Festival. Rakuten also became involved in this activity, losing his attachment to the word puck and intermittently reintroducing his Jiji manga page at Jiji Shinpō. In 1921, Rakuten restarted Jiji manga as a regular weekly comics supplement, though this time multipage and in color, and for the remainder of his career, Rakuten would stick with the word manga. CONCLUSION As we can see from the previous discussion, Rakuten’s break from ponchi was not as clear-cut as he would later recollect. However, his resistance to this earlier form of visual culture—or in his words “old fashion Edo taste” (furuki Edo shumi)—for its shallowness (“meaningless exaggeration”) and

Manga as Schism

43

excessive wordplay clearly began prior to his time at Jiji Shinpō. He sought to replace this type of expression with cartoons, comic strips, and comics based on Euro-American models, which he was attracted to and began learning in the 1890s. For Rakuten, these forms of expression were not only the signs of a “first-class country” (ittōkoku) capable of communicating across borders, but they were also easy to understand and free of crudity, and as such, more suited to modern Japan. His aversion to “old-school” Edo visual culture, and the ponchi sullied by this tradition, strengthened over time leading him to repeatedly express his abhorrence and to assert his role in resisting them. Initially, Rakuten chose manga, the word he had inherited from Jiji Shinpō, to differentiate his work from older forms and to signify something new to Japan, something that could be learned from the west. At the time, manga was a rarely used word untainted by Edo-period connotations and therefore available to fill with new meaning.32 This can be confirmed to a degree in the 1909 newspaper article quoted at the beginning of this chapter. In the article, the art critic author insists that manga is a concept that is little understood by Japanese people. While mildly criticizing Rakuten for relying on the U.S. magazine Puck as a model, making his work less refined and less interesting than the manga of France and Germany, the author nonetheless credits Rakuten with being among the earliest in Japan to take an interest in manga, praising his drawing ability and his avoidance of the smut common to other publications. The article implies that manga is something not indigenous, but drawn on foreign models, and that it is new to, and therefore not fully understood by, the average Japanese person (“Tōdai gaka-ron 37—Kitazawa Rakuten shi” [Views of Current Artists 37—Mr. Kitazawa Rakuten] 1909). However, there was no essential reason for Rakuten to employ this word to label his work, and he wavered between manga and the word puck for a time, seeming to prefer puck but eventually firming in the use of manga only after this word had taken root among other artists and had begun to spread to the wider population. In short, Rakuten played a major role in manga—a word with a long history—becoming a commonplace word in modern Japan. However, his use of the word does not imply continuity with Edo-period visual culture; rather, it indicates a severance from this past. While Rakuten and his work are, of course, not completely separable from Japan’s earlier culture, the simplistic linking of current Japanese manga culture to a long tradition by merely highlighting the premodern use of the word manga ignores this schism. Overarching histories of Japanese manga development construct and overemphasize simple seamless lines of internal Japanese development; in the process, they ignore discontinuities in cultural practice and play down more complex exchanges, both domestic and foreign, that have been more influential in shaping Japanese manga culture. So, however appealing or

44 Ronald Stewart persuasive narratives of Japanese manga history that link premodern to present may seem, skepticism is urged. NOTES 1. Emphasis in the original. (Elkins, 2002, xii) 2. From one of a series of articles on contemporary artists written by an anonymous critic under a penname (鳥瞰生), active c1908 to1911. The intended reading for the author’s penname cannot be confirmed. 3. These scholars include, in Japanese, Miyamoto Hirohito and Kure Tomofusa, and in English, Jaqueline Berndt. 4. Throughout this chapter a rough distinction has been attempted between manga, italicized, as a concept or term, and manga, unitalicized, as a phenomenon. In the few cases where the word appears to be referring to both, it is also written without italics. 5. Hereafter in this chapter, Kitazawa Rakuten will be referred to by his penname, Rakuten, the name by which he was commonly known in his time. However, in citations pointing to texts penned by him under the name Kitazawa Rakuten, academic convention will be followed and his surname, Kitazawa, will be used. 6. Manga artists who worked and/or trained under Rakuten include, Shimada Keizō (1900–1973), Asō Yutaka (1898–1961), Shimokawa Hekoten (1892– 1973), Nagasaki Batten (1904–1981) and Yokoi Fukujirō (1912–1948). 7. Now called the Saitama Municipal Cartoon Museum. 8. Hosokibara’s later history, which appeared in a popular 1928 survey of contemporary manga, also took a similar form (Hosokibara and Mizushima, 1928, 65–172). 9. Examples of their histories can be found in Matsuyama (1950, 75–159), Miyao (1967), Suyama (1972) and Tagawa (1987, 193–254). The 1000 year manga history edited by Suzuki Takuji (1975) also draws on their work. 10. Shimizu’s work has in turn informed other histories such as Kawasaki City Museum (1996), Shigematsu (1996), and Toma (2008). 11. One such instance is the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism’s recent report on using anime and manga to reinvigorate regional economies (Kokudo kōts shō 2008, 14). 12. Such as, the National Diet Library’s 1991 Dai-manga-ten (Great Manga Exhibition), Kawasaki City Museum’s 1996 Nihon no Manga 300-nen (ThreeHundred Years of Manga) exhibition, and in the Japanese manga history section of Kyoto International Manga Museum’s World Manga Exhibition 2006. 13. In the popular Hiroshima City Manga Library, adjacent to shelves overflowing with shōnen and shōjo manga can be found books on Chōjūgiga, Hokusai Manga and other pre-modern art considered part of this tradition. 14. The commemorative stamp sheet for Japan Post’s international stamp exhibition, Phila Nippon 2011, includes portions of both Chōjūgiga and a print by Hokusai, along with the postwar manga and anime characters, Hello Kitty, Pikach , Doraemon and Astro Boy—a juxtaposition of images which not only alludes to, but also reinforces and legitimizes, the perception of a Japanese manga tradition with pre-modern roots. 15. Hokusai even became somewhat of a yardstick for turn of the century western cartoonists. For example, Punch magazine’s cartoonist Charles Keene was compared to Hokusai (The Sun 1902), and the French caricature magazine Le Fofre was compared with Hokusai Manga (Morning Call 1892).

Manga as Schism

45

16. See Blyth’s chapter “The History of Japanese Caricature” (Blyth 1959, 284– 296). Although for Blyth this history ends at the beginning of the twentieth century, as if indigenous artistic expression ceases to be Japanese once tainted by western modernity. 17. A recent academic example is Ito (2008), and an example of popular writing Aoki (n.d.). 18. Some examples of linking by theme and/or narrative traditions are: monster themes in Papp (2010), and the graphic narrative tradition of picture scrolls, as well as themes of ghosts, farts, genitalia, and sexuality in Bouissou (2010, 18–21). 19. See for example the unrepresentative and excessive use of contemporary manga set in pre-modern times, effectively collapsing modern Japan into an exotic past, in Koyama-Richard (2007). 20. This common problem of linking manga to Hokusai Manga has been taken up for examination in detail in Berndt (2009). 21. Shimizu Isao links the “origins of development” of modern comics and fourpanel comic strips to Hokusai Manga (Shimizu 1999, 4; 2009, 8–11). Adam Kern implies a continuity in use of the word manga, from creators of the popular Edo period illustrated literature called kibyōshi—which he redefines as “comicbooks”—via Hokusai to the present (Kern 2006, 142). 22. Some Japanese manga creators feeling restricted by an assumed essential meaning of the kanji characters of manga (漫画) have sought to escape this by changing the first character. The cartoonist Kuroiwa Kuzu suggested manga (MAN画), “MAN” intended to mean both “humankind” and “mature,” to signify a universal expression that is not just for children. Ishinomori Shōtarō promoted the use of manga (萬画), employing a character that means “everything”, in order to escape restrictive connotations of humor and to broaden manga to encompass all forms of expression. Japanese kana syllabaries (マンガ and まんが) are also often used when writing manga to escape the connotations of these characters. While these and other forms, including alphabetic forms, are often used for purely aesthetic purposes, they are also used at times to mark difference, to hint at a target audience (for elementary school studentsまん画), and to even suggest a period or lend an air of sophistication (for example, the pre-war standard characters 漫畫 resurrected by the comics magazine Garo in the 1980s). Unfortunately, as in spoken discourse, most of these nuances are erased when reduced to a single alphabetic form, manga, in written English. 23. For example the combination of the kanji characters for hand (手) and paper (紙) means “letter” (the type one sends by post) in Japanese, whereas the same pairing in Chinese means “toilet paper.” Characters can also be used as metaphor or for their sound value only, in both cases distancing them from any original ideographic meaning. 24. The meanings indicated within quotation marks here summarize, rather than directly quote, the primary meanings described by Miyamoto (2003a, 319–321). 25. The first use was gūi-manga (allegorical manga) to label a political cartoon by Kobayashi Kiyochika on February 11, 1890 (Shimizu 2008, 58–59). 26. This examination is not comprehensive (see bibliography). Two additional short articles by Rakuten from 1939 and 1941 are cited in Okamoto Inouye (2009, 36). Rakuten’s work for Jiji Shinpō is available on microfiche, Tokyo Puck is available in a facsimile edition, and some of his correspondence and other materials can be found in museums, but most other material is scattered and not easily found. 27. Named after Toba Sōjō, toba-e are a genre of humorous pictures that were popular around the end of the eighteenth century. They featured frolicking

46 Ronald Stewart

28.

29. 30.

31. 32.

human characters with elongated limbs and were often published in book form. Their limited use of text differs from much Edo expression and the ponchi that Rakuten detested. Although the texts examined do not all carry Rakuten’s name, and though relationships at these publications between publisher, editor and cartoonist are not clear, we can nevertheless assume that Rakuten, who was in most cases in a position of editor or head artist, exerted significant influence over the use of words. The characters 画 (ga) and 図 (zu). See Kitazawa Yasuji’s correspondence at Saitama Municipal Cartoon Art Museum dated April 14, 1895, and May 1, 1895. For example, Rakuten’s humorous comics of country bumpkins unfamiliar with city life who visit Tokyo, echo a common story genre in the Edo period tradition of rakugo (comic monologues). Also, according to Rakuten, the name of his mischievous child character, Chame, was taken from a character in Edo period literature. In 1913, Rakuten also promoted Rakuten Puck as the “premiere manga magazine of Asia” (Katei Puck 2, 4, April 1, 1913, inner rear cover). That the word was indeed rarely used before Rakuten can be gauged by a search of Asahi Shinbun’s digital database (Kikuzō II Bijuaru); between 1879 and 1902 the word manga appears only five times in the newspaper. Between 1903 and 1912 it appears thirty-nine times, with more than two thirds of these in Tokyo Puck advertisements or other items related to Rakuten. From 1913 to 1926 the word appears over one thousand times, with a dramatic increase in frequency occurring in 1914 with Asahi’s cartoonist Okamoto Ippei’s adoption of the term.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources: Kitazawa Rakuten (Yasuji)’s Writings (Chronological Order) Kitazawa, Yasuji. 1895, April 14. Letter addressed to Kitazawa’s father. Saitama Municipal Cartoon Art Museum archives, Saitama. ———. 1895, May 1. Postcard addressed to his parents. Saitama Municipal Cartoon Art Museum archives, Saitama. Manga-shi [Manga-editor]. 1902, January 12. “Jiji manga nōkaki” [Jiji manga efficacy statement]. Jiji Shinpō [Current affairs newspaper], p. 10. Pakku-shi [Puck-editor]. 1905, April 15. “Tōkyō Pakku”. Tokyo Puck 1.1. Inner rear cover. “Tokyo Pakku” [Tokyo Puck]. [advertisement]. 1905, April 17. Asahi Shinbun, p. 8. Henshū-shi [editor]. 1905, April 15. Untitled editorial. Tokyo Puck 1.1. Inner front cover. Kitazawa, Rakuten. 1905, October 3. “Kokkei to e-hagaki” [Humor and postcards]. Hagaki Sekai [Postcard world] 6: 1–2. “Tokyo Pakku—zasshi-kai nokaibutsu” [Tokyo Puck—monster of magazine world]. [full-page advertisement]. 1906, March 3. Asahi Shinbun, p. 1. Pakku-sha [Puck Co.]. 1907, December 10. “Tōkyō Pakku no dai-hatten—‘Furendo’ hakkan” [Tokyo Puck’s grand developments—publication of “Friend”]. Tokyo Puck 3.34: 3. Rakuten. 1912, June 15. “Rakuten Pakku hakkan no ji” [Message on the inaugural publication of Rakuten Puck]. Rakuten Puck 1.1: 2. “Hashigaki” [Preface]. 1912, July 1. Katei Puck 1.1: 1.

Manga as Schism

47

“Rakuten-sei arawareru—Rakuten Pakku” [The Rakuten star appears—Rakuten Puck]. [advertisement]. 1912, July 1. Katei Puck 1.1: 32. Kitazawa, Rakuten. 1920, April. “Nigao-e no shikujiri” [Caricatural blunders]. Nihon ichi 6.4: 73. ———. 1928. “Manga-kai mukashi-banashi” [Old tales from the world of manga]. Chūō Bijutsu [Central art] 14.2 (February): 130–136. ———. 1934. “Manga o kokorozasu hito e” [To people who aspire to manga]. Gendai [Modern times] (July). ———. 1936. “Meiji-jidai no manga—Tōkyō Pakku o ch shin to seru” [Meiji period manga—focusing on Tokyo Puck]. Tōyō [Eastern sun] 1.7 (October). ———. 1952. “Manga Taiheiki” [Manga battle tales]. Warai no izumi [Wellspring of laughter] 53 (July): 90–99.

Secondary Sources Adachi, Kinnosuke. 1921, November 6. “The Knack of Making Japanese Laugh”. New York Tribune, p. 6. Aoki, Deb. n.d. “Early Origins of Japanese Comics”. About.com. http://manga. about.com/od/historyofmanga/a/mangahistory1.htm (accessed March 29, 2012). “Around the Galleries: Original Drawings by ‘Punch’ Artists at Keppel’s Gallery”. 1902, January 19. Sun—New York, p. 6. Berndt, Jaqueline. 2007. “Traditions of Contemporary Manga (1): Relating Comics to Premodern Art”. Signs 1.1: 33–47. ———. 2009. “Manga and ‘Manga’: Contemporary Japanese Comics and Their Dis/similarities with Hokusai’s Manga”. In Civilization of Evolution, Civilization of Revolution, Metamorphoses in Japan 1900–2000, edited by Arkadiusz Jablonski, Stanislaw Meyer, and Koji Morita. 210–222. Kraków, Poland: Manggha/ Museum of Japanese Art and Technology. Blyth, Reginald H. 1959. “The History of Japanese Caricature”. In Oriental Humour, by Reginald Blyth. 284–296. Tokyo: Hokuseido Press. Bouissou, Jean-Marie. 2010. “Manga: A Historical Overview”. In Manga: An Anthology of Global and Cultural Perspectives, edited by Toni Johnson-Wood. 18–33. New York: Continuum International. Elkins, James. 2002. Stories of Art. New York: Routledge. “French Caricaturists”. 1892, October 2. Morning Call—San Francisco, p. 9. Hosokibara, Seiki. 1924. Nihon manga-shi [A history of Japanese manga]. Tokyo: Y zankaku. Hosokibara, Seiki, and Mizushima Niō. 1928. “Nihon Manga-sh —Fujiwara jidai—Meiji jidai” [Japanese manga collection—from Fujiwara period to Meiji period]. In Tōzai manga-sh : Gendai manga taikan, 6 [East and west manga collection: General survey of contemporary manga 6], edited by Yoda Sh ichi. 65–172. Tokyo: Ch ō Bijutsu-sha. Imaizumi, Sh tarō. 1901. Ippyō zatsuwa [Ippyō’s idle chat]. Tokyo: Seinodō. Ito, Kinko. 2008. “Manga in Japanese History”. In Japanese Visual Culture, edited by Mark W. MacWilliams. 26–47. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. “Japanese Art”. 1887, July 5. Evening Telegram—New York, p. 4. Kawasaki-shi Shimin My jiamu [Kawasaki City Museum], ed. 1996. Nihon no manga 300-nen [Japanese manga’s three-hundred years]. Kawasaki, Japan: Kawasaki-shi Shimin My jiamu. Kern, Adam L. 2006. Manga from the Floating World: Comicbook Culture and Kibyōshi of Edo Japan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center.

48 Ronald Stewart Kitazawa Rakuten Kenshō-kai [Kitazawa Rakuten Appreciation Society], eds. 1974. Rakuten manga-shū taisei [The collected manga achievements of Rakuten]. 3 volumes. Tokyo: Gurafikku-sha. Kokudo kōts shō [Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism]. 2008. Nihon no anime o katsuyō shita kokusai kankō kōryū nado no kakudai ni yoru chi’iki kasseika chōsa hōkokusho [Survey report into regional invigoration through international tourism and interaction using Japanese anime]. http:// www.mlit.go.jp/kokudokeikaku/souhatu/h18seika/01anime/01anime.html (last access January 27, 2012) Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan [National Diet Library], ed. 1991. Dai-manga-ten [Great manga exhibition]. Tokyo: Kokuritsu Kokkai Toshokan. Koyama-Richard, Brigitte. 2007. One Thousand Years of Manga. Paris: Flammarion. Matsuyama Humio [sic]. 1950. Manga Gakkō [Manga school]. Kyoto, Japan: Taigadō. Miyake, Okiko, and Kōsokabe Hideyuki, eds. 2009. Taishō-ki no ehon—ezasshi no kenkyū [Taisho period picture book and pictorial magazine research]. Tokyo: Kanrin Shobō. Miyamoto, Hirohito. 2002. “The Formation of an Impure Genre—On the Origins of Manga”. Trans. Jennifer Prough. Review of Japanese Culture and Society 14: 39–48. ———. 2003a. “Manga gainen no j sōka katei” [The stratifying process of the notion of “manga”]. Bijutsushi 52.2: 319–334. ———. 2003b. “ ‘Ponchi’ to ‘manga’, sono shinbun to no kakawari” [“Ponchi” and “manga” and their relationship to newspapers]. In Shinbun manga no me—hito seiji shakai, edited by Ny sup ku. 106–109. Yokohama, Japan: Ny sup ku. ———. 2005. “ ‘Ponchi’ kara ‘manga’ e: j narizumu to ‘bijutsu’ no aida de hyōgen o migaku [From “ponchi” to “manga”: The polishing of an expression between journalism and “art”]. In Meiji jidai-kan [Meiji period pavilion], edited by Miyachi Masato. 390–391. Tokyo: Shōgakukan. ———. 2009. “Rekishi Kenky ” [Historical research]. In Manga-gaku nyūmon [Introduction to manga studies], edited by Fusanosuke Natsume and Osamu Takeuchi. 96–101. Kyoto, Japan: Mineruva Shobō. Miyao, Shigeo. 1967. Nihon no giga: rekishi to fūzoku [Japan’s comic art: History and culture]. Tokyo: Daiichi Hōki Shuppan. Ny sup ku [The Japan Newspaper Museum], eds. 2003. Shinbun manga no me—hito seiji shakai [The gaze of newspaper manga: People politics society]. Yokohama, Japan: Ny sup ku. Okamoto Inouye, Rei. 2009. “Theorizing Manga: Nationalism and Discourse on the Role of Wartime Manga”. Mechadamia 4 (War/Time): 20–37. Papp, Zilia. 2010. Traditional Monster Imagery in Manga, Anime and Japanese Cinema. Folkestone, UK: Global Oriental. “Ponchi gaka to fujin sōkisha” [Ponchi artist and female stenographer]. 1900, January 1. Jiji Shinpō, p. 14. Schodt, Frederik L. 1986 (1983). Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo: Kodansha International. Shigematsu, Kazuyoshi. 1996. Manga Kōgengaku [Study of modern social phenomena through manga]. Tokyo: Kindai Bungei-sha. Shimizu, Isao. 1991. Manga no Rekishi [A history of manga]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. ———. 1999. Zusetu Manga no Rekishi [Illustrated history of manga]. Tokyo: Kawade Shobō Shinsha. ———. 2007. Nenpyō Nihon Manga-shi [Chronology of Japanese manga history]. Kyoto, Japan: Rinsen Shoten. ———. 2008. “Manga no genry o tadoru” [Tracing the origins of manga]. In Manga no Kyōkasho [Manga textbook], edited by Yoshimura Kazuma. 11–59. Kyoto, Japan: Rinsen Shoten.

Manga as Schism

49

———. 2009. Yon-koma manga—Hokusai kara ‘moe’ made [Four-panel comic strips—from Hokusai to “moe”]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten. Smith, Sidonie, and Julia Watson. 2001. Reading Autobiography: A Guide for Interpreting Life Narratives. Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. Suyama, Kei’ichi. 1972. Manga Hakubutsushi: Nihon-hen [Manga history: Japan edition]. Tokyo: Banchō Shobō. Suzuki, Takuji, ed. 1975. Manga no 1000-nen shi: Nihon no warai [The 1000 year history of manga: Japan’s laughter]. Tokyo: Bungei Shunj . Tagawa, Suihō. 1987. Kokkei no kenkyū [A study of humor]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. “To¯dai gaka-ron 37—Kitazawa Rakuten shi” [Views of current artists 37—Mr. Kitazawa Rakuten]. 1909, January 1. Yomiuri Shinbun, morning edition, p. 5. Toma, Ulara. 2008. “Japanese Manga: Its History and Structure”. Aoyama keizairon shū 43: 75–108. Yamamoto, Kanae. 1907. “Gendai no kokkei-ga oyobi f shi-ga ni tsuite” [Regarding modern humorous and satirical pictures]. Hōsun 1.3 (July): 3–4.

3

Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the Global Sixties Aspiring for an Alternative Shige (CJ) Suzuki

If manga are the biological parents of gekiga, kashihon-ya (rental bookstores) are its foster parents. —Tatsumi Yoshihiro, Gekiga daigaku (Gekiga university; 1968, 12)

INTRODUCTION: GEKIGA REVISITED In the culture of Japanese comics (manga), gekiga, often translated into English as “dramatic pictures”, exist alongside mainstream entertainment manga.1 In today’s Japan, the term loosely refers to a type of comics with a long narrative (story manga) that is oriented toward youth or mature readers with little or no humorous content. The term itself was coined first in 1957 by Japanese cartoonist Tatsumi Yoshihiro with the intention of diverging from—if not opposing—the postwar mainstream manga, which were aimed at children (jidō manga or kodomo manga). In 1959, with other like-minded cartoonists, Tatsumi founded a group called Gekiga kōbō (the “Gekiga Workshop”), which spawned a short-lived gekiga movement producing mostly suspense and crime fiction comics.2 The Gekiga Workshop was disbanded the following year due to divided opinions about gekiga among the members and the shifting nature of the comics industry at that time. Yet, Tatsumi’s aspiration to create something different from conventional manga proved a powerful inspiration to other creators. In the sixties, gekiga became a medium through which Tatsumi and other gekiga artists sought to explore the potential of comics to express themselves artistically and to engage in social critique. This chapter begins with an investigation of the media history of gekiga, including Tatsumi’s initial conceptualization of it, the comics industry and market conditions of the time, gekiga’s initial readership, and how it was consumed when it first emerged as a distinctive form. Any examination of gekiga’s genealogy must also consider its material history and socioeconomic context so as to not reductively ascribe a new innovative form of expression to an artist’s “talent” or merely engage in a formalist discussion of comics through a close reading of content and form. This methodological approach

Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the Global Sixties

51

is also informed by recent critical reflections on manga criticism in Englishlanguage scholarship that have tended to assume a transhistorically homogenous manga readership in Japan (Berndt 2008, 296–297). To respond to this call, I will discuss the rise of gekiga in relation to its readership. Just as with other forms of popular culture, the emergence of gekiga was deeply intertwined with specific historical developments—in this case, the formation of the manga industry as well as the social, economic, and political conditions of Japan. Even so, like the trajectory of the nation, Japanese comics were to a significant degree informed, constituted, and/or constrained by the larger formation of the international cultural politics of the times as well. With this in mind, this chapter then attempts to discuss Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s works—some of his best, mainly produced in the late sixties and the early seventies—to show how his gekiga critique the rapid industrialization that alienated and repressed certain segments of the populace during the nation’s postwar period of rapid economic growth. This chapter seeks to argue that Tatsumi’s gekiga in the sixties were the combined product of his artistic passion for innovation, the domestic socioeconomic conditions of the nation, and the worldwide cultural rebellion against the establishment, known as counterculture. THE GENEALOGY OF GEKIGA: THE RENTAL BOOK INDUSTRY, OSAKA, AND READERSHIP To approach the genealogy of gekiga, it is crucial to explore a significant commercial and cultural site in Japan called kashihon-ya, the rental bookshop. Similar to a contemporary video/DVD rental store, a kashihon-ya was a store that lent books for a small charge to customers or allowed customers to read books on the spot. Although their origins can be traced back to the Edo period, rental bookstores flourished in the early- and mid-twentieth century (Figure 3.1). Typically, kashihon rental bookshops were privately- or family-owned small businesses that often combined rental book commerce with the selling of other items such as used books, snacks, or stationery products. At the height of their prosperity in the midfifties, there were at least twenty thousand kashihon rental bookshops throughout Japan (Kashihon manga kenkyūkai 2006, 13). Before the advent of television, kashihon books offered people everyday entertainment and an avocation during the recovery period. Along with samurai-period novels (jidaimono) and mass entertainment novels (taishū shōsetsu), their holdings of manga books also attracted child and young adult readers. Japanese manga critic Nakano Haruyuki states that during the late forties and early fifties, the Japanese comics market had two separate locales: the manga magazine industry and the kashihon manga industry (Nakano 2004, 48). In contemporary Japan, manga culture is centered on the manga magazine industry; typically, manga are first serialized in comics magazines and then collected and published in

52 Shige (CJ) Suzuki

Figure 3.1

A rental bookstore. Photograph from 1948.

book format (tankōbon). Until well into the sixties, however, reading comics in book format at rental bookstores was also a common way to consume them. Kashihon publishers existed not only in Tokyo but also in Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, and other cities where cartoonists under contract with local publishers contributed their works directly to them. The kashihon industry was in steady decline by the midsixties as major publishing houses located in Tokyo began to extend their comics magazine network throughout Japan. Nevertheless, the kashihon industry cultivated young, talented gekiga creators, including Tatsumi Yoshihiro, Sakurai Shōichi (a brother of Tatsumi Yoshihiro), Saitō Takao, Satō Masaaki, Hirata Hiroshi, Shirato Sanpei, and Mizuki Shigeru before they became active in comics magazines. As manga critic Ishiko Junzō remarks, kashihon rental bookstores were the “matrix and incubator” for the birth and growth of gekiga (Ishiko 1973, 178). It is also important to consider regional differences in the publication culture within Japan when examining the germination of gekiga. Along with Tokyo, Osaka also had many kashihon publishers that were very active in the industry at the height of rental bookshop popularity; in fact, many of the previously mentioned gekiga creators were originally working in Osaka. Even before Japan’s industrial modernization during the Meiji period (1868– 1912), Osaka was already famous for its rich and vibrant popular culture and entertainment. As it developed as a mercantile hub in the Edo period, Osaka became a center for the extravagant and flamboyant Genroku culture—a cultural explosion in early Edo period (Genroku period, 1688–1704)—driven

Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the Global Sixties

53

by the rise of its merchant class.3 Relatively free from the feudalistic mores of Edo (now Tokyo), Osaka merchants and townsmen had more freedom to leisurely pursue popular culture. Famously, the popular writer Ihara Saikaku produced several overtly erotic novels that became popular and were circulated in the already well-established commercial publishing system. In modern Japan, this commercial city also played a significant role in popular culture formation, particularly in relation to the development of postwar Japanese comics. As is well known, the first postwar manga boom was triggered by the publication of Tezuka’s seminal manga Shin Takarajima (New Treasure Island) (1947), originally published by the Osaka-based publisher Ikuei shuppan in a format of the time called akahon (red book).4 Tezuka’s manga quickly became a huge hit, generating an “akahon manga boom” in Osaka. This akahon manga boom can in addition be thought of as the product of the period of material shortage that immediately followed the war; this, along with the increasing number of rental bookstores, paved the way for the rapid growth of the kashihon industry. Osaka’s vigorous publishing culture also contributed to the rise of gekiga. In the early fifties, whereas the Tokyo comics industry was centered on magazine culture (zasshi bunka), the comics business in Osaka was still structured around the rental book (kashihon) industry. In his book about gekiga, Tatsumi contrasts Tokyo publishers with those of Osaka during this period: compared to the Tokyo-based publishing houses that were producing well-packaged, sophisticated comics (following the mainstream manga tradition), Osaka publishers were producing comics of varied quality but that showcased more inventive and innovative content (Tatsumi 1968, 14). After noting this contrast, Tatsumi summarizes his point by saying that “if Tokyo manga is likened to white-collar workers, Osaka manga is that of peons” (Tatsumi 1968, 14).5 Tatsumi’s remark alludes to the fact that Osaka’s publishing culture possessed an uninhibited dynamism that allowed it to create something different. Many early gekiga creators, including Tatsumi, were working within this publication culture. Tatsumi’s coinage of the term gekiga in 1957 was partly a response to the sporadic, but repeated public criticism of the content of manga at that time. By the midfifties, the content of comics, particularly in kashihon manga, began to shift from children’s entertainment to more sophisticated forms of entertainment, occasionally containing some violent and graphic elements. This shift was a response to the gradual maturing of an audience no longer satisfied with childish narratives (Tatsumi 2010, 225–227). Feeling a pressing need to differentiate his comics from children’s comics, he coined the term in 1957 and used it to label his short story work called “Ghost Taxi”.6 Two years later, in establishing the Gekiga Workshop, Tatsumi sent a letter to editors, publishers, newspapers, and other manga creators (including his admired Tezuka), which was to become the de facto manifesto of the gekiga movement. He wrote: More recently (in the mid-fifties), the story manga has been vitalized through the influence exerted by the supersonic development of other

54 Shige (CJ) Suzuki media, such as film, television, and radio. This vitalization has given birth to something new, which is gekiga. Manga and gekiga perhaps differ in methodology, but more importantly, they differ in their readerships. The demand for manga written for adolescents, that is, those readers between childhood and adulthood, has never been answered, because there has never been a forum for such works. This hitherto neglected reader segment is gekiga’s intended target. (Tatsumi 1968, 25)7 Although the term gekiga today is habitually associated with more “realistic depictions” or “dynamic drawings” in contrast to mainstream manga’s “cartoony style”, Tatsumi’s 1959 manifesto clarifies that his central concern in his conception of gekiga was its readership. Responding to the maturity of the comics readers who were no longer satisfied with comical depictions, gags, and benign narratives, gekiga broke away from child-oriented entertainment and strove toward more refined narratives and deeper themes for adolescents. When the gekiga movement was initiated in the late fifties, regular customers at rental bookstores were not only schoolchildren but also young adolescent workers. In the midfifties, the rate of students continuing their schooling into high school remained low; approximately 50% of students started working after their ninth year of obligatory schooling. This means that almost half of Japan’s youth were working by the age of fourteen or fifteen. Japan’s rush into economic growth triggered a demand for workers at small factories and businesses in the major cities. To supply the needed labor, young workers were recruited from relatively jobless rural regions and brought by chartered trains called the “mass employment trains” (shūdan shūshoku ressha) to industrial cities, including Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka (Figure 3.2). This generated a sudden increase of young people in urban areas. Nicknamed “golden eggs” (kin no tamago), these young workers were often celebrated by mass media, but many were engaged in tough manual labor in unfamiliar working environments separated from their hometowns. These adolescent workers formed an important segment of gekiga’s readership at its initial stage. As another gekiga creator, Saitō Takao, reflects, the readers at the kashihon rental bookstores were bluecollar workers, and he produced his gekiga works for them (Saitō 2009, 4). After work, they would drop by rental bookstores and enjoy gekiga comics; in answer to this demand, gekiga creators catered to these adolescent readers’ expectations. Along with Japan’s socioeconomic conditions of the time, this kind of dialogical relationship between creators and their readers resulted in a specific form of comics, that is, gekiga. TATSUMI’S GEKIGA AND THE GLOBAL SIXTIES Though many of Tatsumi’s gekiga in the late fifties were either suspense psychodrama or detective fiction, primarily targeted at adolescent readers, his

Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the Global Sixties

55

Figure 3.2 Middle school graduates from Kumamoto to work in cities. The photograph was taken on March 10, 1966.

aspiration for an alternative to mainstream manga did inspire other creators to explore even further the potential of the medium, looking for what manga could be, and not just limiting it to entertainment for children. In fact, in the next decade, gekiga flourished as a distinctive subgenre of Japanese comics, attracting even more mature audiences, including college students, artists in other fields, and cultural critics. In particular, the Japanese alternative manga magazine Garo played an important role. The magazine was founded in 1964 by the editor Nagai Katsuichi who hired gekiga artists such as Shirato Sanpei, Mizuki Shigeru, Kojima Gōseki (under the name of Suwa Sakae), Tsuge Yoshiharu, and Takita Y . These artists employed the comics medium as a means of serious artistic exploration as well as social and political critique. By the late sixties, Tatsumi himself also began to explore more serious and darker themes, such as economic hardships, social alienation, sexual perversion, and psychological complexes, often depicting marginalized people living on the fringes of society. Due to thematic similarities and historical simultaneity, several critics have been tempted to find a link between Tatsumi’s gekiga and American underground comix.8 Yet, Tatsumi disavows a direct connection between the two, stating that he was unaware of the underground comix movement on the other side of the Pacific Ocean (Tatsumi 2009a, 198). However, I would argue that the synchronic emergence of this alternative direction in comics—and, for that matter, sixties’ radical art in general—was not a mere coincidence but was both directly and indirectly triggered by the social and

56 Shige (CJ) Suzuki cultural currents of the period: the sixties’ worldwide countercultural rebellion against the establishment. Cultural theorist Christopher Connery argues for the importance of discussing the “sixties” as a global cultural and political revolution that took place in western nations as well as in Latin American and East Asian countries, extending beyond local and national context (Connery 2009, 184).9 Taking a similar stance, Japanese studies scholar Steven Ridgely warns that discussing Japanese counterculture from the “globalization-localization” model—perceiving Japanese counterculture as merely an adaptation of a cultural phenomenon of western-origin into a local Japanese context—is extremely problematic, for such an understanding naturalizes the logic of cultural imperialism (Ridgely 2011, ix). Instead, Ridgely proposes that we should “conceive counterculture as a rhizomatically structured and globally synchronic mode—a new set of ideas and methods that appeared around the world at roughly the same time” (Ridgely 2011, ix). While cultural and political struggles were varied within each differently situated national context, the youth across this broad range of countries had actively formed countercultural movements, employing street politics, demonstrations, cultural events, performance arts, music, and even comics, to raise voices of dissent against mainstream conformism. That said, Japanese counterculture was not unrelated to the global political order. In fact, one of the largest Japanese countercultural revolts in the sixties was the Anpo protest movement, against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, a struggle against American expansionism, the regimentation of Cold War logic, and the Japanese nation’s direct and indirect complicity with it. Tatsumi’s recent semiautobiographical work A Drifting Life (Gekiga hyōry ) (2009b) narrates his personal life in the form of comics memoir. He overlaps this life with various social and historical moments or events that occurred in Japan during his life, and he inserts historical figures (politicians, film stars, and popular singers) drawn with photographic realism (in contrast to the main characters who are drawn in the “cartoony” style). In doing so, throughout A Drifting Life, he merges his life with the trajectory of postwar Japan. This is most clearly exemplified by a statement made by protagonist Katsumi, the creator’s alter ego: “Japan, too, is adrift!” (Tatsumi 2009b, 825). In the last chapter, the protagonist, who has somewhat tired of the comics industry, rekindles his passion for gekiga among the frenzied crowd of protesters against the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty. While never explicitly associating himself with the new left politics or the student movements of the time, Tatsumi shares the radical, revolutionary passion of the sixties’ uprisings that attempted to break with the establishment and form a new sociopolitical force. In A Drifting Life, this kind of concurrent iconoclastic impetus is expressed through the voice of Katsumi who keeps shouting “no” with other protesters in the front of the national diet building (Figure 3.3). Witnessing the power of the crowd, the protagonist surmises that “the demonstration is a new force and it’s trying to destroy something! It’s an incredible force fueled by anger! That’s the element that gekiga has forgotten . . . Anger!”

Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the Global Sixties

Figure 3.3

57

Page from A Drifting Life (Tatsumi 2009b, 827).

(Tatsumi 2009b, 827). It is this zeitgeist (the spirit of the time), this search for an alternative to the mainstream, that Tatsumi’s gekiga synchronically shared with other countercultural movements of the global sixties. Paralleling the rise of politicized youth movements in the sixties, Tatsumi’s gekiga shifted toward social realism, thematically dealing with the social injustice and inequality imposed on everyday people.10 In the late sixties, Tatsumi was based in Tokyo, contributing his comics to both youth (seinen) and men’s magazines (both comics and noncomics magazines) such as Playboy, Big Comic, Young Comic, and Garo.11 From the late sixties, major Japanese publishers started publishing several youth manga magazines, aimed at college students and older readers. For this readership, Tatsumi created gekiga

58 Shige (CJ) Suzuki works that portray the lives of blue-collar workers, middle-aged men, or working students who toil away in underground sewers, dark factories, or junkyards. In these works, Tatsumi presents a pessimistic vision by detailing the alienated lives of people who barely made ends meet in modern, industrial Japan at a time when the nation was experiencing a series of economic booms. In Tatsumi’s depictions of these laborers, it would not be difficult to find traces of the young workers of the previous decade, the readers of earlier gekiga at rental bookstores. Regarded by Frederik L. Schodt as a “master of the short story format” (2008, 7), Tatsumi is indeed able to skillfully encapsulate a “slice of life” of lower-class people within a limited number of pages. Tatsumi narrates stories primarily by visual elements, reducing greatly the use of individual utterances, dialogues, and expository narration. His visual storytelling technique is characterized by the use of a minimalist, hard-boiled style, which is probably informed by the then-popular western and Japanese suspense horror and detective films, such as Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Les Diaboliques (1955) and the Japanese detective suspense film Get Him! (Kyatsu o nigasuna) (1956).12 In his most recently published autobiography Gekiga gurashi (Gekiga life)¸ Tatsumi confesses that, in the midfifties, he and other gekiga creators were enthusiastic about Mike Hammer, the hard-boiled detective series written by the American popular-fiction writer Mickey Spillane. Like the protagonists in hard-boiled detective fiction, some of Tatsumi’s main characters are taciturn, internalizing emotions and hiding feelings behind ostensibly undisturbed masks. Yet, readers can observe their internal struggles and frustrations through the sweat drops drawn on their faces. By means of his subdued and elliptic style, Tatsumi visually dramatizes the emotional frustration or internal torment of protagonists who are trapped in a web of familial, social, and economic obligations. Contrary to (or very much because of) the main characters’ reticence, their bodies express more. Some of Tatsumi’s protagonists are struck by fits of impulsive action or uncontrollable physical symptoms, such as a fledgling manga creator, at risk of losing his job, who on the spurof-the-moment draws obscene graffiti on the wall of a public bathroom (“Occupied”, Tatsumi 2009a, 33); a medical intern who inadvertently molests a young woman (“Test Tube”, Tatsumi 2005, 60); and a middle-aged man who suffers from uncontrollable rashes on his body (“Rash”, Tatsumi 2008, 98). All of these male characters lose the ability to express themselves, but their bodies symptomatically reveal their internal suffering and conflict. Tatsumi’s working-class male protagonists may sometimes expose their unhinged animalistic greed and (perverse) sexual desires, but they are also emasculated and impotent (for some literally). They can neither perform their masculinity nor enact agency powerfully enough to resist or break away from family and social pressures. Such a constrained condition is symbolically suggested though the numerous appearances of animals and insects in Tatsumi’s gekiga pieces. The reader constantly encounters rats, monkeys, cows, cockroaches, scorpions, eels, and dogs, all of which are caged, trapped, or misplaced in

Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the Global Sixties

59

urban, industrial environments, unable to embrace possible happiness in the surroundings of nature. Many of these protagonists cherish these captured creatures because they see themselves in them. These creatures also suggest the dehumanized environment in which they live. Just as demonstrated in A Drifting Life, Tatsumi’s gekiga works confirm his strong concern with specific social and historical conditions of the nation. The beginning of his gekiga Abandon the Old in Tokyo depicts the destruction of old buildings in Tokyo (Tatsumi 2009a, 42), which signals a specific historical moment to Japanese readers: when large areas of Tokyo underwent wholesale reconstruction in preparation for the 1964 Tokyo Olympics (Figure 3.4). As historian Igarashi Yoshikuni remarks, the Tokyo Olympics was a national project that had an important symbolic meaning to the nation: “the full

Figure 3.4 Restructured Tokyo from Abandon the Old in Tokyo (Tatsumi 2009a, 42).

60 Shige (CJ) Suzuki acceptance of Japan back into the international community” after the defeat of the war (Igarashi 2000, 143). The Tokyo Olympics was a timely opportunity for the Japanese government to “advertise” the nation to the world as a newly born, modern, technologically advanced nation, something that also prompted the rise of nationalistic fervor in Japan. For this purpose, Japanese government officials hurried to introduce the high-tech bullet train system (the Shinkansen) and install numerous street lamps in Tokyo to literally brighten up the cityscape (Igarashi 2000, 150). In addition, the Tokyo Metropolitan government forcefully “cleansed” the streets of disfigured veterans, delinquents, homeless people, and prostitutes (Igarashi 2000, 152). Contrary to such a nationalistic presentation of a bright, clean, and shiny Tokyo, Tatsumi’s gekiga constantly depict the dark side of the city by deglorifying the nation’s capital. In his gekiga, Tokyo is described as “a decrepit old man” (Tatsumi 2008, 44), and the high-tech symbol of the bullet train appears only as a cause of torment for the protagonist (Tatsumi 2009a, 64) (Figure 3.5). In addition, Tatsumi prefers to draw gloomy and disconsolate places in his gekiga such as dark alleys, underground sewers, and dingy streets beneath railroad overpasses. Through the focus on these places and the people working there, Tatsumi’s gekiga undermine the master narrative of the “high-growth period” of capitalist Japan (1955–1973), during which the nation achieved internationally growing prominence to have the world’s second largest gross domestic product. Yet, Tatsumi’s gekiga works foreground the disfranchised citizens and laborers who despite having devoted their energy to working for the nation, found their contributions went mostly unrewarded and/or unacknowledged. Tatsumi’s gekiga works point out the paradox of the nation’s “economic success”. As Paul Gravett writes, “Tatsumi’s tight, tense short stories did not hide the fact that, underneath, something was going wrong with the Japanese dream” (2010, 6). Throughout his gekiga, there is a smoldering anger against the nationalist (and capitalist) grip over the formation of the nation. As mentioned previously, Tatsumi’s dissenting voice was inspired by the sixties’ protests, but it also comes from his childhood. Born in 1935, Tatsumi experienced the last stage of World War II and the defeat of his nation as a child. His gekiga Good-bye is set in occupied Japan (1945–1952) in a red-light district where U.S. soldiers buy sex from Japanese prostitutes. In an interview attached at the end of Good-bye, Tatsumi says that he was very “upset” about Japanese adults who apathetically left social injustice untouched (2008, 209). He also adds that the boy who appears in the story is himself. This remark attests to the fact that Tatsumi is a member of the generation that Japanese writer Nosaka Akiyuki once called the yakeato-sedai, or the “generation of the burned-out ruins”. This generation witnessed the catastrophic confusion of the nation brought about by its defeat; as children, they experienced material suffering, starvation, and despair. Just as literature scholar Roman Rosenbaum has discussed, the people of this generation experienced a complete inversion of society, from the glorification of the emperor to the postwar glorification of “democracy”, an experience which

Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the Global Sixties

61

Figure 3.5: The shin-kansen bullet train causes a psychological torment from Abandon the Old in Tokyo (Tatsumi 2009a, 64).

brought about “the yakeato generation’s suspicion toward the Japanese establishment” (2007, 287). Members of this generation would also go on to take part in the sixties’ countercultural movements. CONCLUSION: REEVALUATION OF TATSUMI’S GEKIGA In conclusion, Tatsumi’s best gekiga works in the late sixties were born from the nexus of his artistic pursuit of innovation, the maturation of postwar manga readers, and the rise of counterculture. In a postwar “democratic”

62 Shige (CJ) Suzuki Japan, which was supposed to grant equality and freedom, Tatsumi’s gekiga critically exposed the illusionary nature of those ideals, at least, to lowerclass citizens. In this sense, his gekiga may be seen as diametrically opposed to Tezuka’s earlier manga that present, among other things, an atomicpowered mechanical superhero who embodies the ideals of democracy and modern humanist values. If superheroes in popular media conventionally represent perfect, idealized forms of the human subject in society, Tatsumi’s gekiga undermine such wishful thinking by exploring the sorrow and misery of the people living on the fringes of society. In 2010, Tatsumi’s magnum opus of more than eight hundred pages, A Drifting Life, won two prizes at the annual Will Eisner Comic Industry Awards in the United States: the “Best U.S. Edition of International Material—Asia” and the “Best Reality-Based Work”. The recent visibility of Tatsumi’s works in North America was promoted by the efforts of Japanese American comics artist Adrian Tomine who claims that he renewed his interest in comics when he encountered Tatsumi’s gekiga work when he was fourteen (Tomine 2005, 5). The increasing acclaim of Tatsumi’s gekiga works also corresponds with the rising prominence of “graphic novels” in North America. While being a contested term, it was best expressed—if not coined—by Will Eisner when he used it on the front cover of his work, A Contract with God (1978). With this work, Eisner cultivated a new direction, away from the conventions of the American superhero genre to one that depicted the lives of poor immigrants in 1930s New York, highlighting their sorrow and misery through stories about failed dreams, domestic violence, child abuse, and their materialistic and romantic desires. Tatsumi’s winning of the Eisner Award seems appropriate since both Eisner and Tatsumi share a similar perspective, capturing the lives of lower-class people in urban areas. Both artists completely avoid the fetishization of the bright splendor of developed industrial cities. Instead, they depict cityscapes from the darkness of alleys or underground areas, critically exposing the human struggles and suffering behind prosperity. Today, as his short gekiga works have been collected and republished, Tatsumi’s gekiga have regained their acclaim in Japan.13 This is a welcome revival in the face of Japan’s current long-lasting economic recession, from which a recurrent nostalgia for the era of Japanese economic growth (1953–1972) has emerged in the mainstream mass media.14 Against such a revisionist romanticization of the period, Tatsumi’s gekiga critically show us what past economic growth brought to certain segments of the population, revealing how they experienced social repression and alienation at the height of capitalist acceleration in postwar Japan.

NOTES 1. In this chapter, I use manga and comics almost interchangeably. Japanese names are given in Japanese order with the surname first and given name last.

Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the Global Sixties

63

2. Along with Tatsumi, the original Gekiga Workshop members were Saitō Takao, Satō Masaaki, Sakurai Shōichi, Yamamori Suzumu, Ishikawa Fumiyasu, and K. Motomitsu. Another gekiga creator, Matsumoto Masaaki, joined the group later (Tatsumi 1968, 24–26). 3. Genroku culture was centered in kamigata (Kyoto-Osaka area). 4. Akahon were cheaply made books—some of them merely bound with staples— and sold at snack shops, often without an officially licensed distribution channel. 5. Intriguingly, Tatsumi’s metaphor in this comparison foreshadows a motif in his gekiga works from late sixties and seventies that depicts the lives of bluecollar workers. 6. This “first” gekiga was published for the 1958 kashihon manga book entitled Machi (The city), a collection of short manga/gekiga. 7. The translation of his letter is taken from the English translation of A Drifting Life. I edited it slightly based on his original letter (Tatsumi 2010, 251). 8. Dwight Garner (2009) sees the similarities between Tatsumi’s gekiga and underground comix. Comic artist Adrian Tomine also asks about the influence of underground comix in his interview (Tomine 2005, n.p.). In addition, a reviewer in Paris Review observes the “kinship” between Tatsumi’s works with alternative comics (“Graphic Tokyo” 2006, 88). 9. By the “sixties,” he refers to his expansive view of the “global explosion of world making” from the midfifties to the midseventies (Connery 2009, 184). 10. Many of the recent English translations of Tatsumi’s short works—three-volume collections of his short pieces published by Drawn and Quarterly—are from this period (1969–1972). 11. The March issue of Garo (1971) was a special issue featuring Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s gekiga works. 12. In fact, his 1956 work “Watashi wa mita” (I saw the killer) follows a plot similar to that of Get Him! 13. Two collections of his gekiga short stories were published by Seirin kōgeisha: Daihakken (Great discovery) (2002) and Daihakkutsu (Great excavation) (2003). In 2009, Tatsumi’s A Drifting Life was awarded the Grand Prix of the 13th Tezuka Osamu Cultural Prize by Asahi Shinbun. 14. The NHK TV program Project X (2000–2005) celebrated the “success” of people and companies during the period of Japanese economic rise. Films such as Always: Sunset on Third Street (2005) and its sequel (2007) display a strong nostalgia for the “high growth” period, constructing an image of the past as a time of harmonious human relationships and compassion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Eisner, Will. 2000. Will Eisner’s New York: The Big City. New York: DC Comics. Tatsumi, Yoshihiro. 1968. Gekiga daigaku [Gekiga university]. Tokyo: Hiroshobō. ———. 2005. The Push-Man and Other Stories. Montreal, Canada: Drawn & Quarterly. ———. 2008. Good-bye. Montreal, Canada: Drawn & Quarterly. ———. 2009a. Abandon the Old in Tokyo. Montreal, Canada: Drawn & Quarterly. ———. 2009b. A Drifting Life. Montreal, Canada: Drawn & Quarterly. ———. 2010. Gekiga gurashi [Gekiga life]. Tokyo: Honno zasshi-sha. Tatsumi, Yoshihiro, Masahiko Matsumoto, and Saitō Takao. 2009. Kage/Machi: Kanzen fukkoku-ban. Tokyo: Shōgakkan Creative.

64 Shige (CJ) Suzuki Secondary Sources Berndt, Jaqueline. 2008. “Considering Manga Discourse: Location, Ambiguity, Historicity”. In Japanese Visual Culture: Explorations in the World of Manga and Anime, edited by Mark W. MacWilliams. 295–310. Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe. Connery, Christopher. 2009. “The End of the Sixties”. Boundary 2 (Spring 2009): 184–210. Garner, Dwight. 2009. “Manifesto of a Comic-Book Rebel”. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/15/books/15garn.html?_r=3 (accessed December 15, 2010). “Graphic Tokyo”. 2006. Paris Review 176 (Spring): 87–99. Gravett, Paul. 2010. “An Introduction”. In AX: Alternative Manga. Vol. 1, edited by Sean Michael Wilson. 6–7. Marietta, GA: Top Shelf Productions. Igarashi, Yoshikuni. 2000. Bodies of Memory: Narratives of War in Postwar Japanese Culture, 1945–1970. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Ishiko, Junzō. 1973. “Gekiga hyōgen no ronri to kōzō” [The logic and structure of gekiga]. In Gekiga no shisō [Philosophy of gekiga], edited by Ishiko Junzō, Kikuchi Asajirō, and Gondō Shin. 165–236. Tokyo: Taiheiyō shuppan. Kashihon manga kenky kai. 2006. Kashihon Manga Returns. Tokyo: Popura-sha. Nakano, Haruyuki. 2004. Manga sangyō-ron [The manga industry]. Tokyo: Chikuma shobō. Ridgely, Steven C. 2011. Japanese Counterculture: The Antiestablishment Art of Terayama Shuji. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rosenbaum, Roman. 2007. “True Survivors: The ‘Yakeato sedai’ in Contemporary Japanese Literature—toward a Definition”. Asian Studies Association of Australia, Inc. (ASAA). http://coombs.anu.edu.au/SpecialProj/ASAA/biennialconference/2006/Rosenbaum-Roman-ASAA2006.pdf (accessed December 15, 2010). Saitō, Takao. 2009. “Seinen/otona manga no r tsu wa gekiga ni ari” [The root of seinen/adult manga exists in gekiga]. In Kage/Machi: Kanzen fukkoku-ban, by Matsumoto, Masahiko; and Saitō Takao. No pagination. Tokyo: Shōgakkan Creative. Schodt, Frederik L. 2008. “Introduction”. In Good-bye, by Tatsumi Yoshihiro. No pagination. Montreal, Canada: Drawn & Quarterly. Tomine, Adrian. 2005. “Introduction”. In The Push-Man and Other Stories, by Tatsumi Yoshihiro. No pagination. Montreal, Canada: Drawn & Quarterly.

4

The Intercultural Challenge of the “Mangaesque” Reorienting Manga Studies after 3/11 Jaqueline Berndt

INTRODUCTION: SOCIAL CRITIQUE, REPRESENTATION, AND “MANGA” Since the late 1990s, globalization, the content industry, and fan culture have been prevailing thematically in Japanese comics research, while the issue of manga’s sociocritical potential has been more or less sidelined. Yet the earthquake of March 11, 2011, and its aftermath, especially the meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, suggest the need to reconsider what role manga may play in contemporary Japanese society besides serving short-sighted economic and national purposes, or affective interests of (sub) cultural groups. Pursuing manga’s engagement with the nuclear issue, which this chapter sets out to do, is not only a matter of current conditions though; it pertains also to basic methodological problems of manga studies, like the relationship between form and content, between expression (hyōgenron) and representation (hyōshōron), and between aesthetic properties and cultural mediality. As such, these problems are anything but new. Against the “emphasis on content or representation” (LaMarre in Smith 2011, 143), manga research has come to foreground two aspects in particular: the comics form with its media-cultural capacities and the actual agency of readers as users. Significantly enough, both aspects draw attention to relational meaning beyond steady, identificatory references to a certain symbolic order. However, in view of 3/11, time seems to be ripe for a reorientation—from defending manga and its users by, among other things, substantiating connections with “society”, to questioning manga culture in regard to how it may contribute to society in its entirety. Since most Japanese academics keep a low profile in this regard,1 and as answers are not easily available anyway, this chapter aims at raising methodological awareness and suggesting problems that, in the end, will have to be tackled by multidisciplinary and intercultural investigations, starting with the notion of “(civil) society” in twentieth-century modernization processes2 and its recent change vis-à-vis both globalization and subsocietal communities, through to the relevance of critique in an era that has been characterized as “postcritical” (and skeptically revisited, e.g., by Foster [2012]).

66 Jaqueline Berndt Previous attempts that consider both Japanese-language and Englishlanguage comics discourse have exhibited a strong transcultural inclination; in contrast, the subsequent discussion focuses on intercultural encounters—not with the intention to segregate “manga” from “comics”, but to interrelate the perspectives of comics-specific and nonspecific expertise, while taking into account the existence of diverging preconditions in academia and public discourse. After all, reference to society at large and a respective critical engagement are not given the same importance in recent Japanese manga discourse as in contemporary English-language comics criticism. In the search for manga’s sociocritical potential, topical endeavors are inclined to be favored, and rightly so. Whether nuclear power becomes a subject matter at all is not to be trivialized under the present Japanese situation. Moreover, the topical approach holds another potential: by catching the attention of historians, gender and ethnicity studies, or recently also disaster researchers, that is, academics who are not primarily concerned with comics, it allows for stimulation beyond the narrow circle of manga studies that chooses to avoid macropolitical claims. While the former tend to correlate single manga works to the socioeconomic or even geopolitical situation of the nation, the latter concentrate on readership— as partitioned according to gender, age, and subcultural affinity—and on literacy.3 For contemporary Japanese-language manga discourse, manga are, first and foremost, magazine-based serialized graphic narratives. Neither editorial cartoons and newspaper comic strips nor educational comics (gakushū manga, which usually do not reside in magazines) or translated graphic novels are given much thought. As such, manga attracts interest less as a container of ideology but rather as a form. Yet the attention to form is, above all, tied to specific genre conventions. These are regarded as pivotal—historical differentiation and intermediality included—whenever the purview of representational content is at issue. In short, manga studies focuses on form in a highly contextualized manner, namely, on what can be told and what can be shared among which readership. Subsequently, I shall first briefly revisit the discussion on the A-bomb manga Barefoot Gen (Hadashi no Gen, by Nakazawa Keiji, 1973–1987; hereafter abbreviated as GEN)4 focusing on its intercultural undercurrent. Then I will introduce some series that due to their nuclear power topic became themselves topics of discussion after 3/11. These are, namely, Shiriagari Kotobuki’s award-winning Manga after 3.11; the yakuza series “White Dragon-LEGEND” by Tennōji Dai and Watanabe Michio, which partially fell victim to “self-restraint” (jishuku); and Inoue Tomonori’s debut sci-fi tale “Coppelion”, which likewise due to a sudden topical sensitivity saw the cancellation of its TV anime, scheduled for broadcast in late March 2011. I focus deliberately on series addressed to adult readers that are more or

The Intercultural Challenge of the “Mangaesque”

67

less generically framed as male and approach the issue of nuclear power explicitly.5 These examples indicate that the problem lies not necessarily with manga artists’ lacking awareness of social issues. Apparently more critical is the decreasing interest in ideology-centered readings facilitated, as it is, by the manga-specific contexts of publication and reception. It is precisely these aspects that shall be highlighted subsequently through the application of the label “mangaesque”. GEN AGAIN Concerning the relationship between manga and society, some patterns of argumentation prove to be astonishingly persistent. Recent discussions of GEN are exemplary in this regard, as many stay within the opposition between representational content and manga-specific form. This has been criticized by LaMarre (2010) who argued against the alleged opposition between “serious messages” versus “light entertainment” by demonstrating that manga-specific, nonrepresentational meanings reside in the protagonist’s energy to survive, indicating a biopolitical instead of geopolitical orientation. LaMarre not only repudiated the opposition as such but also suggested complicating each pole in itself, distinguishing between “structural line” and “plastic line” for the form side, and correspondingly, signification and meaning for the content side.6 While his discussion treats Japanese-language and English-language comics critics transculturally as equal participants in the same global scholarship, I shall highlight some intercultural aspects here. GEN was, arguably, the very first Japanese comics to cross language borders, thanks to activists of the peace movement.7 In Japan, it crossed a different kind of divide, that between age groups and cultural camps: as early as the 1980s, it entered school libraries, receiving acknowledgement at a time when comics were still widely regarded as both infantile and harmful to children. Since then, GEN has taken root as “a national manga” (kokuminteki manga) according to Yoshimura (2011, 1) who stresses its exceptional domestic position and the importance of GEN being a typical manga: symptomatically, in school libraries it enjoys a much higher popularity than other manga works by the same artist. Manga researchers such as Yoshimura have traced back the traits which make GEN “manga proper” mainly to the initial publication site and its stylistically lasting impact on the work. GEN was serialized with intervals from 1973 through 1987, taking its departure from Shōnen Jump, a latecomer among the boys’ manga magazines. In 1974, Jump already had a weekly circulation of 1.65 million copies, with each copy going through the hands of approximately three readers (Fukuma 2006, 24). Yet, not ranking among the top ten series in the magazine anyway, GEN was discontinued after one year

68 Jaqueline Berndt and three months, and its serialization went on in magazines not specializing in manga.8 Whereas manga researchers attach more weight to media-specific usages than “outstanding content” (Yoshimura 2011, 1), most discussants from other fields tend to do the reverse. Such differences are, however, not due to national particularities (be it the much stronger cultural prevalence of comics than literature in present Japan, or Japan as a nonwestern modern society with a peculiar public sphere). In Japan too, GEN has been discussed critically in relation to larger social discourses, especially by literary scholars engaged in postcolonial and gender studies.9 Let us briefly recall the story that came to fill an unexpectedly successful ten-volume book edition.10 The manga’s timeline stretches from April 1945 to spring 1953. At the beginning, the daily life of elementary schoolboy Gen and his family is depicted. Since Gen’s father is against the war, the family is persecuted by police and neighbors. When the atomic bomb is dropped on Hiroshima (toward the end of vol. 1) the fire kills Gen’s father, his sister, and his younger brother. Shortly after, Gen’s mother gives birth to his baby sister who survives only a few months. In the course of events, Gen meets many other A-bomb victims (hibakusha), and he experiences numerous sad partings; his mother dies of radiation sickness in spring 1950 (at the end of vol. 7). From vol. 5 onward, the narrative relates Gen’s friendship with orphaned children who try to survive as street urchins, escape detention camps, and work for the black market. Eventually, Gen becomes the apprentice of a billboard painter, and after graduating from junior high school, he leaves for Tokyo at the end of vol. 10. Yoshimura contends that “precisely because it was an outstanding and unique ‘canonic A-bomb manga’, GEN did not connect to the issue of nuclear power” (2011, 1; trans. mine). This assessment implies both the “manga proper” aspect—the lack of political impact being due to comicsspecific qualities—and a content-related implication, namely, the fact that GEN was regarded as an A-bomb manga (genbaku manga; Fukuma 2006; Yoshimura 2012b), not as a manga about nuclear power or hibakusha and only rarely as a “Hiroshima manga” despite the attempted use of local dialect (“Manga to chiikisei dai-2 bu: zenkoku ni hirogaru chihō/jimoto manga” [Manga and locality, part 2: Local/hometown manga spreading nationally], 225). When A-bomb literature saw its canonization, GEN too entered school libraries. Nevertheless, as a story about postwar Japan told from below that also reveals hibakusha discrimination, some critics have appreciated GEN’s “resistance against the turning of A-bomb literature into a genre” (Kawaguchi 2010, 223), a process closely intertwined with the discourse of national self-victimization.11 However, some aspects spur doubt about the primary relevance of ideological content to GEN’s readers. Firstly, ultra-right-wing groups in Japan have been, on the whole, very restrained in their objections, and the often

The Intercultural Challenge of the “Mangaesque”

69

rather conservative local boards of education have not yet objected to GEN’s use at school, although the wartime responsibility of the emperor is frequently brought up by Gen’s father.12 Secondly, surveys (Itō 2006; Shikata 2006) have revealed that even within the frame of peace education, children are rather attracted by meanings beyond straightforward antiwar messages, namely, Gen’s robustness and his utopian freedom of action in devastated Hiroshima. In this regard, Yoshimura (2011, 2) has called attention to another circumstance: In school libraries, the volumes of a manga series are not necessarily read in the sequence that the author intended, but rather according to availability, which promotes the remembrance of single scenes and iconic images at the expense of the story and its historical background. And thirdly, there is the reproach of aesthetic inconsistencies. GEN has not been acknowledged unanimously, due to its vacillating between “objective” accounts on the one hand, and “mangaesque” traits, including stereotyping, on the other.13 In 1990, American comics artist Art Spiegelman noted in his introduction to the new English edition of GEN: The degree of casual violence in Japanese comics is typically far greater than in our homegrown products. Gen’s pacifist father freely wallops his kids with a frequency and force that we might easily perceive as criminal child abuse [. . .] Yet these casual small-scale brutalities pale to naturalistic proportions when compared to the enormity of dropping a nuclear weapon on a civilian population. (2004, n.p.) Indeed, GEN invites realistic readings with respect to tortured bodies and hibakusha survival, but it also deviates from realism. Nuances are not its strong point, as the G-pen-based line work and the scarcity of screen tones indicate. GEN appears “graphic”, literally, due to its drawn images firmly outlined and rendered in black and white, and figuratively, due to its drastic and as such spectacular visualizations of violence, ranging from dying people with melting skin to fierce street fights. Bringing the notion of performative imagery to the fore, Kajiya (2010) has demonstrated that GEN’s visuals are subjective not by chance or inability but by intention, a conscious effort to trigger emotions and even action. In order to support this argument from an intercultural angle, I will use the remaining part of this section to scrutinize recurring assumptions about comics’ sociocritical potential and their applicability to typical manga. Christine Hong’s pre-3/11 essay about GEN shall serve as my example for numerous reasons, namely, because it deserves attention within manga studies; because it is deliberately positioned within the context of U.S. reception, which sets it apart from the usual transcultural, often universalist, approach toward manga by many non-Japanese comics critics; and because it inadvertently reveals limitations of such transcultural discussion.

70 Jaqueline Berndt Hong takes her point of departure not from comics studies but the “flattening of historical and national difference particular to the American reception of Hiroshima representation” (2009, 144). Analyzing GEN as a testimonial in connection to the geopolitical relations between the United States and Japan, she arrives at the conclusion that GEN is “a deeply ahistorical account” (142), “far from furnishing a more balanced picture of Hiroshima” (148). With respect to the manga’s visual dimension, she acknowledges that “Nakazawa collapses the geopolitical divide between the mushroom cloud of the policy-makers and the incinerated wasteland experienced by hibakusha” but curtails that this “yields an incomplete cognitive map of US geostrategic designs for post-war Japan” (150–151). With respect to the levels of narrative and reception she asserts that the “exceptionalist thesis of an American-sponsored democracy-to-come, premised on US military intervention, is essential to Barefoot Gen’s value as a wartime lesson for the post-war peace” (128). Like other recent attempts at co-opting comics into critical scholarship, Hong’s argumentation is not simply based on an outdated “reflection paradigm”, which could be countered by a form-centered argument. Admittedly, she treats GEN as an autonomous book, or graphic novel, so to speak. But this does not mean that word-image tensions, differences between textual level and visual idiom, or spatialization, one of comics’ crucial properties, escape her attention, even if she privileges the single “testimonial comics image” over sequences of panels or pages. The consequential shortcomings of this do not simply apply to the preferencing of content over form, or text over context. Unsettling from the perspective of manga studies is rather that society as a whole and geopolitics as intersocietal or international relations outweigh media-cultural contexts such as publication formats, generic frameworks, horizons of expectations, modes of reception according to literacy, that is, familiarity with conventions, as well as other meanings, ascriptions, and discourses that precede and specify any reading of specific manga series. Short-circuiting the relationship of single texts, by assuming a universal comics aesthetics, with social discourses and national reception is unlikely to meet the approval of manga readers, critics included. Some examples shall illustrate that. Firstly, Hong analyzes GEN’s wheat motif in its link to not only the survival of the protagonist but also the rebirth of Japan as a nation (2009, 142). Although pertaining to an animated movie—namely, AKIRA, the “post-nuclear version of the apocalypse” (Freiberg 1996, 95)—the reading of the central character Tetsuo as “a national allegory of Japan” (100) as well as the assumption that the narrative “expresses certain aspects of Japan as a whole in the 1980s” (Napier 1996, 255) are equally pertinent here precisely because of their vagueness with respect to what exactly allows for such a conjunction with the national, and how far its scope reaches, generically as well as historically. Does national generalization

The Intercultural Challenge of the “Mangaesque”

71

apply only to the anime, or also to the manga, and further, to contemporary manga series such as “Coppelion” discussed in the subsequent section? Secondly, drawing heavily on Spiegelman’s foreword, critics find a capability for eyewitness accounts or reclaiming history in hand-drawn images and their purported intimacy (Hong 2009, 143; Worcester 2011, 139–140). Yet as is well known, manga images, although still basically relying on hand drawing, have been inclined to support a highly conventionalized visual language that can easily be shared. Moreover, readers’ reception of conventions is affected by a process of familiarization, in the evolution of a genre as much as in the course of a long-running series. “Coppelion”, for example, attracts the eye with a startling line work in the beginning, but this attraction wears off quickly because style does not lend itself to the “constant self-reflexive demystification of the project of representation” (Chute 2010, 10). Thirdly, many western critics expect self-reflexivity to connect to critique. Incidentally, self-reflexivity is employed as a measure of value for comics works,14 but only rarely applied to one’s own premises, which include author centrism, a predilection for alternative comics, and the tacit assumption that self-reflexivity escapes familiarization. Typical manga do not necessarily lack self-reflexivity. Fundamentally shaped by serialization—and as such at least temporarily open-ended narratives—manga too have a general (although different) disposition to “working against closure within a medium enabled by closure” (Oh 2007, 149). This has been amplified since the late 1990s by the medium’s maturation, which gave way to rampant intertextual play. As distinct from GEN, “Coppelion” exhibits its contemporaneous imprint, for example, by characters’ frequent metafictional remarks stretching from similes that mark strange situations as mangaesque to an equation of the clone protagonists with mangaesque personalities. Serving less critical discovery than knowing reconfirmation, these elements call for a consideration of a postcritical kind of self-reflexivity. One way to avoid misunderstanding could be to speak not of manga but manga culture, thereby distracting attention from what single manga works say and instead, for example, turning to what manga genres (and readers) do. Such a reorientation may also help to locate manga’s sociocritical potential in other places than those that have led mostly to negative findings so far. Leonard Rifas, involved in GEN’s English-language editions from their very beginning, is quoted by Hong with the assessment that this manga did not succeed in “raising social awareness” in the United States (2009, 128). And Kent Worcester indicates that the problem is not limited to manga when he states, “How comic artists reacted to 9/11 no doubt mattered much more inside the comics subculture than beyond” (2011, 152). Does this mean that comics are ill-equipped for contributing to social awareness? And related to Japanese comics, are we to conclude that manga has to go beyond

72 Jaqueline Berndt the mangaesque—generic convention, “commodification as cultural entertainment” (Hong 2009, 133), “easy consumption” (Chute 2010, 26)—in order to become socially relevant? MANGA AFTER 3/11 I shall now turn to three recent examples that explicitly address the dangers of nuclear power in Japan. My selection is limited by the notion of manga, which is most prevalent in Japanese discourse, that is, series carried in off-the-shelf magazines and their subsequent book editions, leaving aside the Internet as well as manga productions within the context of local protest movements, and also fan creations. In other words, I concentrate on graphic fiction, or story manga, at the expense of other genres. First of all those genres not examined here is documentary, or reportage manga, such as Suzuki Miso’s “The day Japan and I shook”,15 and Yoshimoto Kōji’s “Santetsu: Notebook on maps of Japanese railway travels—documentary of the great earthquake disaster on Sanriku railway”.16 Likewise, I refrain from discussing so-called essay manga, the genre that adult readers recently turn to with regards to social reality,17 including Fukumitsu Shigeyuki’s “What would my wife say?”,18 Torino Nanko’s bird-manga “Toripan”,19 and Kobayashi Yoshinori’s “Pulling out from nuclear energy”.20 I also pass over educational manga, for example, Yamagishi Ryōko’s thirty-eight-page one-shot “Phaeton”. Published after Chernobyl, it became famous only in the summer of 2011, due to its complimentary republication on the Internet (and a new commercial book edition).21 Of a similar vein, although consequently fictional, Hagio Moto’s twenty-four-page shōjo manga “Canola Flowers” would have to be considered as well.22 Putting the genre issue aside, I will concentrate on manga that are nonaffirmative of nuclear power. Pronuclear works commissioned by electric power companies do not fit my criteria anyway, since they took either the form of mere character design— for example, Uchida Shungiku’s Denko-chan family (since 1987) for Tepco (Tokyo Electric Power Co.)—or, if fictionalized and laid out in panel sequences, the form of educational comics, such as the Tepco PR manga by Hirokane Kenshi (b. 1947) which, between February 2007 and May 2011, featured a replica of his famous character Shima Kōsaku as a pro–nuclear power scientist.23 Within the manga industry, the Triple Disaster of 3/11 triggered actions related to charity or fund-raising, and to the consolation of children by providing complimentary manga content online. But it also caused “self-restraint” (or self-censorship, to be precise) among major manga publishers, particularly with regard to the nuclear power plant accident. The silence within manga magazines lasted until the release of the May issue of Comic Beam on April 12.24 There, Shiriagari Kotobuki (b. 1958)25 commenced a short series with the episode “Seaside Village” (Umibe no mura, 24 pp.), which

The Intercultural Challenge of the “Mangaesque”

73

anticipated consequences of the Fukushima accident for people’s life. The setting has it that in 2061 metropolitan areas do not exist on the Japanese archipelago anymore. Now people live in small villages where makeshift solar cells on hovels supply the necessary power, although in a rather flaky way. In one of these settlements, a bedridden grandfather recalls his past life in the luminous and convenient metropolis of Tokyo, which the third installment “Shaking town” (Furueru machi, June 12, 24 pp.) pictures in retrospect, focused on how the grandmother of the story had to postpone her wedding due to 3/11, before learning that her groom was killed by the Tsunami and leaving for the north together with the now grandfather. For the background to his sketchily drawn characters, Shiriagari occasionally employs photos (of an explosion, for example) emphasizing the initial gap between the actual event and its media coverage as well as the reality of the disaster’s aftermath coming closer. The future that awaits the protagonists does not look desirable. In view of the exhausted oil resources, people do not seem to have a choice but to bear the restrictions to their living standard: The grandfather tries to cheer himself up by admitting that, at least, he could now enjoy the night sky. As such, this orientation is reminiscent of postapocalyptic sci-fi manga that saw their heyday in the 1980s (Tamura 2011, 148–149). But while tomo Katsuhiro’s “Akira” (1982–1990)26 suggested the destructive power of atomic weapons via mutated human bodies, Shiriagari’s manga anthropomorphizes atoms: Episode 2 titled with the crossed-out word “Hope” (Kibō, May 15, 16 pp.) relates the accident of the Fukushima plant from the perspective of the cesium and iodine particles inside, some of which start to press outward once they find a “hopeful” crack in the wall. Turning the next-to-last page, the view zooms out into a bird’s-eye sight of the burst reactor, leaving it to the reader to imagine the consequences. Hope manifests itself in grandson Mirai (literally, “future”), a posthuman winged child who appears on the scene already in the first episode: Disobeying his parents’ ban, he flies with others of his kind to the ruin of the Fukushima power plant, now overgrown with vegetation and, on closer inspection, surrounded by dozens of wind wheels. The installment’s last double spread provides an impressive aerial view of the angelic children almost merging with nature. In the fourth and final episode “Sky and water” (Sora to mizu, July 12, 23 pp.), these children are likened to lotus flowers ascending from mud to console the ghosts of the dead. In early August 2011, Comic Beam’s publisher Enterbrain released the book Manga after 3.11 (Ano hi kara no manga). In addition to the short magazine series, it contains Shiriagari’s daily four-panel strips for the evening edition of the newspaper Asahi Shinbun27 as well as new adventures of the “Elderly Twins” (futago no oyaji), two of his stock characters. Taken over from the literary monthly Gems of the Novel (Shōsetsu hōseki), one of these episodes has the twins meet a box-like female character sitting sadly on the river bank.28 She warns them not to come closer as she is a nuclear

74 Jaqueline Berndt power plant who has fallen ill due to an earthquake. Shortly afterward, the twins realize that there are many more like her, some of them complaining about their risky location and insufficient security. Shiriagari’s book received one of the 15th Media Arts Excellency Awards from Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs in February 2012. This was effective as both a courageous public statement by manga-culture insiders29 and a booster for the book’s circulation, especially through the related exhibition, which displayed the variety of Shiriagari’s publication formats and his volunteer work in an emergency shelter of the affected region. But the award also indicates the ambiguous position of Manga after 3.11 with respect to the mangaesque. While in part derived from a magazine series, the book deviates from a typical tankōbon insofar as it crosses media that are usually poles apart, that is, a manga magazine, newspaper, and literary journal. Moreover, Comic Beam itself is not a typical manga magazine either. With a monthly print run of around 25,000 copies30 occasionally ranking among the worst manga magazines, it contains a diversity of styles and narratives addressed neither to boys or girls but mature readers regardless of gender. Suffice to recall its hit series “Emma” (Mori Kaoru, 2002–2006) and “Therma-e Roma-e” (Yamazaki Mari, since 2008), both by female artists. Not really committed to a specific genre (although in cases of doubt typically categorized as seinen),31 Comic Beam provided Shiriagari with the site for an atypical miniseries that avoids the usual developmental narrative consumers expect to get hooked on and the respective goal orientation. Readers are rather invited to contemplate and communicate on what kind of life to lead and what fundamental changes to accept. Instead of pressing apodictic points with respect to the pros and cons of nuclear power, Manga after 3.11 crosses different perspectives—not only generically but also temporarily between present and future, and spatially between the inside and the outside of the power plant. Extratextually, for example in TV interviews, Shiriagari opts for a pullout from nuclear energy. But he defines his social task as a manga artist as follows: “Scientists can produce data. Politicians can produce policies. What a mangaka can do is to draw the mood (kūki) of the moment” (trans. mine).32 Manga after 3.11 shows Shiriagari’s willingness to take chances: to accept that stylistic provisionality is inevitable in such a case of realtime response, and to face the possibility that the expressed thoughts may not hold. Recently, there are voices that claim that the nuclear plant accidents need to be exhaustively understood before they can be represented in manga—just like GEN became possible only decades after the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima. However, Shiriagari’s case suggests that manga goes beyond “understanding”, that it is a medium that may communicate many more voices than (Tepco-sponsored) newspapers or TV stations.

The Intercultural Challenge of the “Mangaesque”

75

If sheer knowledge about the dangers of nuclear power in earthquakeridden Japan was the matter at hand, regular manga readers could have gained plenty prior to 3/11, for example, from a series like “Hakuryū (White Dragon)-LEGEND” running in Manga Goraku, a weekly magazine with a circulation of approximately 500,000. On February 18, 2011, installment no. 155 opened a new chapter called “Nuclear-power mafia” (Genshiryoku mafia). In it, the protagonist, a yakuza in perpetual search of information suited for blackmailing, learns about the fictitious company Tōto Denryoku (echoing the full name of Tepco in Japanese, Tokyo Denryoku) and its power plants when he meets a former assistant manager who feels responsible for the death of one of the nuclear “nomads”: A poor farmer was contaminated due to a shortage of masks but not told. However, just when a critical (and shortly after, murdered) journalist had asked the central character about the sincerity of his intentions, the story was left hanging in midair as the editorial board notified its readers that “[i]n view of the damages caused by the earthquake on March 11, we regret to announce that this chapter will be discontinued” (“ ‘Hakury -LEGEND’ nitsuite no oshirase”, March 17, 2011). Apparently too timely and too explicit, the already published magazine episodes did not reappear in the tankōbon edition.33 Indeed, they related facts that, in retrospect, apply perfectly to the Fukushima disaster: the problematic interrelation between the regional monopolist and its ill-paid subcontractors, the concealment of cancer cases by the health administration, and the suppression of critical discourse. And so, “White Dragon-LEGEND” lived up to its genre name gekiga,34 that is to say, a sort of Japanese comics that deliberately deviated from the mangaesque (as understood in the 1950s) in favor of dark stories about adult outsiders, addressed mainly to mature male readers, and sometimes implying social critique. But despite its topicality, “White DragonLEGEND” was not very likely to gain a broader sociocritical impact in Japan, not even after 3/11. On the one hand, its clear generic framing got in the way: the yakuza setting and the character design of the protagonist with his uncool 1960s Elvis look, the bold visuals and simple page compositions, not to forget the accompanying series in the same magazine with their occasionally violent and also sexist depictions—these elements may appeal to a certain male clientele, but repel contemporary teenagers or fans of female manga genres, at least at first glance. On the other hand, the series’ regular readers cannot easily be presumed to open themselves to explosive political topics in a sociocritical way: after all, gekiga series are expected to have such settings. In this regard, “White Dragon-LEGEND” not only hints at the slightly anachronistic image of gekiga within contemporary manga culture but also suggests two mangaesque implications of genre: the privileging of certain taste communities over broader societywide communication, and the eclipsing of societal topics, or more precisely, their emergence as generic conventions.

76 Jaqueline Berndt Another series that had anticipated the Fukushima disaster with an astonishing verisimilitude since 2008 is Inoue Tomonori’s “Coppelion”, counting fourteen volumes by summer 2012.35 Although not primarily conceived as a manga about the dangers of nuclear power plants, after 3/11, it was taken as such, and the young artist revealed his awareness, when he voiced concern about an eventual stop of the manga series in view of the canceled anime (Tamura 2011, 161). The action of “Coppelion” is set in October 2036, twenty years after a fatal accident at the fictitious Odaiba nuclear power plant killed 90% of Tokyo’s population. Three female highschool students are being dispatched to the highly contaminated, now walled-in City of Death in order to detect and rescue the very last survivors. As distinct from these former inmates, or retirement-home residents, the girls do not wear protective suits; they are resistant against radiation, to such an extent that they can enter even those parts of Tokyo that private companies have turned into a giant repository site for nuclear waste from all over the world (vol. 3). On their expedition from the suburban towns Tama and Fuch to the central district of Shinjuku—for which they need eight volumes—the girls meet an array of secondary characters, among them the former chief engineer of the Odaiba plant, and the colonel of the self-defense forces who was in charge of the evacuation two decades ago. These adults spell out the causes of the disaster, namely, willful neglect of earthquakes, cost reduction at the expense of safety precautions, self-serving politicians who withhold vital information, and people’s unwillingness to change their consumerist lifestyle. Meanwhile, a summit is held in Kyoto where Australia, the new nuclear world power, thwarts the international pullout from nuclear energy using the familiar phrase “Atoms for Peace!” (vol. 6). By vol. 14, the Japanese prime minister too changes sides—and has Article Nine (which renounces war as a sovereign right) removed from the Japanese Constitution. So far, the narrative looks politically charged. Reversing the image of the “gated community” alone is provocative enough. Whereas many contemporary manga picture Tokyo as a city almost as clean, well-ordered, and convenient as Tokyo Disneyland behind its walls, the young members of the so-called Coppelion Unit bore their way through a dirty, chaotic, and irksome ghost town where the space of civilization has been reclaimed by nature. Yet soon, this nature reveals its unnaturalness. Oversized feral beasts as well as “naturalized” monster robots, which have assumed features of extinct animals, attack the girls, and the girls themselves are likened to the unnaturally bubonic zelkova trees in Fuch ’s avenue (vol. 2). But while they too are capable of coping with radiation, being products of genetic engineering, they are incapable of bearing children. Literally puppets in the hands of the state, they begin to realize and to question their status as marionettes. And this becomes the central subject, upstaging the issue of nuclear power. Accordingly, the ensemble of characters and their social specter narrows, presumably to keep the magazine readers hooked. From vol. 6 onward,

The Intercultural Challenge of the “Mangaesque”

77

the protagonists burst in less on adults than schoolmates, clones like themselves, mostly female. Due to not only the magazine’s generic profile as such but also the need to keep a long-running series attractive for the regular (assumed young male) reader, the narrative increasingly makes room for catfights, so to speak. It does not come as a surprise either that the girls allow occasional glimpses upskirt when in combat. “Phase 49”, the installment that opens vol. 14, is typical for the perky mixture of social subject and mangaesque diversion. Here, Dr. Coppelius, the creator of the Coppelion cyborgs, is about to rebuild one of the protagonists into the perfect puppet. In order to stay uninterrupted, he has locked up three of her mates who cannot escape unless they solve a riddle. While they discover that Dürer’s Melencolia (actually reproduced in “Phase 50”) is the gist of the matter, Dr. Coppelius overhears the TV news reporting on increasing orders of nuclear power plants by developing countries that wish to acquire plutonium for military purposes. Just as he thinks to himself that mankind has finally opted for its extinction, a mysterious panel, the last on this spread, presents naked feet. Upon turning the page, it becomes apparent that they belong to the Ozu twin sisters who have taken off almost all of their clothes because of the rising temperature in their prison. “Coppelion” has been published in Young Magazine, a periodical with a circulation of more than 700,000 copies weekly. Almost three decades ago, this was the site of “Akira”. The two series resemble each other insofar as they both feature young protagonists who are taken advantage of by “contaminated” authoritarian adults. This harks back to a long tradition of Japanese boys’ culture, including the idealist young pilot of war tales (senki mono) and his fight against corrupt superiors as well as the female cyborg as one of his successors. But tomo’s famous forerunner lacks the cuteness, the unconditional preference for youth, and the preponderance of manga-internal allusions that—in tandem with multipanel page layouts of short-lived resonance—render “Coppelion” a rather light narrative despite its auspicious takeoff. Thus, the series may help to confirm that the more mature the manga industry and its genres, the less politically connotative the readings of single works. Skilled readers concentrate on characters’ tangible emotional states and relations rather than on ideological interpretations. “Coppelion” has more usages to offer though. But to unpack its nonrepresentational potential sociocritically remains up to the readers. A TENTATIVE LAST WORD ON THE “MANGAESQUE” In its reference to expectations and discourses, the mangaesque may be too iridescent a term to serve positivist research. It implies all those negative connotations that modern society (Japan’s included) has been ascribing to comics, disparaging it as an infantile, lightweight, biased, overly spectacular,

78 Jaqueline Berndt and baselessly exaggerating form of narrative. At the same time, it conveys the affirmative inversion of that image: Welcoming the capacity to facilitate participation and networking, manga advocates’ emphasis is on sharing instead of distinction, on empathy and self-confirmation instead of critical questioning, on affective rather than political engagement, and, for the sake of such nonideological, relational meaning, on codification and conventionalization instead of modern realism and authenticity. In addition, it has become evident that patchwork identities matter much more for manga’s transcultural flows than national purity36 (suffice it to recall that in the previously mentioned series no one looks as Japanese as tomo’s “Akira” characters; even GEN only depicts bad guys as slit-eyed). This chapter proposes to bring the loaded image of the mangaesque (of what is assumed manga proper, or typically manga) forward as a gateway to the sociocritical potential of typical, and as such postcritical, sometimes even postsocietal, manga. While crucial notions like critique, society, and self-reflexivity stay admittedly undertheorized here, I hope that the previous discussion illuminates a number of blind spots that call for revision—for example, the indiscriminate application of traditional analytical tools and the alleged universality of comics aesthetics, which actually changes not only with time but also culture and genre. Related to the sociocritical potential of “Coppelion”, Tamura Keiko states: We all expose ourselves to a “radiation of the heart” whenever we feel frightened, uneasy and helpless in a quiet and secretive way while turning the pages of a novel, reading a manga, watching an anime. Precisely this lonely and free imaginary “exposure to radiation (hibaku)” becomes a bulwark against the “nuclear”, against incitement and regulation by a biased and oppressive ideology. (Tamura 2011, 158; trans. mine) This does not seem enough, firstly, because it stays within the familiar dystopian framework. Yet 3/11 has raised not only the question of how to resist the status quo but also of how to picture an alternative future. Being a site of imaginary worlds rather than direct depictions of social reality, manga may be expected to make important contributions in this regard. Secondly, the emotional and empathetic potential of narratives like “Coppelion”, which the quotation suggests, refers to an apparently isolated reader. The real task, however, is not only to foreground the affective aspects of manga culture as such but also to highlight their fundamental relationality, involving creators, editors, and readers, generic genealogies, and sites of media consumption. Rather than excavating hidden ideological layers for educational purposes, manga researchers, primarily based in universities, museums, and libraries, are called on to act as mediators, providing opportunities for exchange across generations, genders, and generic tastes into which the industry has been segregating so far.

The Intercultural Challenge of the “Mangaesque”

79

NOTES 1. See, for example, “Manga to chiikisei dai-1 bu: ‘chihō’ no hakken” (Manga and locality, part 1: The discovery of the “provinces”) (2012a): At the annual conference of the Japan Society for the Study of Comics and Cartoons held in June 2011, senior manga artist Hasegawa Hōsei, best-known for his “Hatakakko junjō” (Hakata kids’ pure sentiment; 1976–1983 in Manga Action), remarked that the emergence of an affirmative image of provincial towns in 1970s manga cannot be dissociated from the then-beginning flow of nuclear-power-related subsidies. This petered out with any response by a manga researcher, including moderator Miyamoto Hirohito. As for a similar example, see Makabe (2012). An exception is Takekuma (2011). 2. Avenell (2010) addresses Japan’s “civil society” in an exceptional manner, which holds potential also for manga studies. 3. Yoshimura (2006) is exemplary in that regard. 4. In English, the g of GEN is often pronounced in a voiced manner (as in gentle) which would be transcribed from Japanese into English as jen; in Japanese, however, it is pronounced as in get. 5. My choice may appear problematic—suggesting a “universalization” of male manga—but shōjo (girls’) manga or josei (women’s) manga deserve a more thorough analysis than I can offer within the limited space of this chapter. Besides, Shiriagari’s manga goes beyond the traditional gender divide regarding publication site, style, and narrative. 6. LaMarre (2010, 272–275), especially footnote 6 on p. 272. 7. On GEN’s reception in English translation, see Sabin (2006). See also Schodt’s contribution to this volume. 8. Subsequently in Shimin, Bunka hyōron, and Kyōiku hyōron. For details, see Itō and Omote (2006, 22–23), and Yoshimura and Fukuma (2006, appendix 24). 9. For example, by Kuroko (1993), Ichitani (2010), and Kawaguchi (2010). 10. Best available in Japanese today are the Chōbunsha edition (Nakazawa 1993), a partially revised paperback edition by Ch ōkōronsha (Nakazawa 1998), and the more recent Jump Comics edition for convenience stores (Nakazawa 2005) containing the installments of the first fifteen months. 11. The visibility of the Korean minority as epitomized by Gen’s neighbor Mr. Pak is also emphasized, in comparison to Kouno (2006; “Y nagi no machi, sakura no kuni”, September 2003–August 2004 in Manga Action), for example, by Kawaguchi (2010, 220–222) and Ichitani (2010, 385). Kouno’s manga deserves revisiting from a post-3/11 angle, especially in two regards: first, silence in the sense of withholding information and suppressing communication (see Kouno 2006, 16, 51, 86; Yoshimura 2012a, 389–390), and second, the manga’s strong emphasis on the prosaic everyday. Kouno deliberately refrains from addressing Japan’s war responsibility (Yoshimura 2012a, 382) and thereby avoids ex post facto “flashforwardness” of the kind that Hong (2009) detects in GEN. Kouno’s consequent distancing from ideology also complicates the interpretation of her protagonist whose humbleness may suggest a traditional, acritical woman to an ideologically formed perspective at first glance. 12. Right-wing groups and commentators have complained about GEN being used in schools. See, for example, Karasawa et al. (2007) and the recent formal petition to Hiroshima City by a group of concerned hibakusha who wanted GEN removed from the city’s school peace education program

80 Jaqueline Berndt

13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19.

20.

21.

22. 23.

24.

25. 26. 27.

because of its “incorrect” depiction of history (“ ‘GEN’ heiwa kyōzai saiyō ch shi o” [For stopping the usage of GEN in peace education] 2012). Many thanks to Ronald Stewart for pointing out these facts to me. See Luciano (1981). Köhn (2007) touches on GEN’s respective rejection by Japanese literary scholar Kuroko (1993). In addition to Chute, see, for example, Kern’s mentioning of GEN (2011, 38–39) and the survey of post-9/11 comics given by Worcester (2011). Boku to Nihon ga furueta hi, started in Monthly Comic Ryū, issue 8, August 2011 (released June 18), continued online. I would like to thank Takeuchi Miho for sharing her manga materials related to the aftermath of 3/11 with me. Santetsu: Nihon tetsudō ryokō chizuchō, Sanriku tetsudō daishinsai no kiroku, started in Monthly Comic@Bunch (a magazine launched in January 2011), December 2011 issue (released October 21). For an introduction (focused on women’s manga), see Sugawa-Shimada (2011). Uchi no tsuma tte dō deshō, serialized in Manga Action since 2007. Installments 104–109 (May–July 2011) relate the post-3/11 fears and reflections of the author (b. 1976). They reappear in vol. 4 of the book edition. Serialized in Morning since 2005, the experience of the 3/11 earthquake was related in installments no. 289 (issue 19, released April 7) and no. 290 (issue 20, released April 14), and in June 2011 added to vol. 11 of the book edition. Datsugenpatsu-ron. Under this title, Kobayashi (b. 1953) published a manga series in the general journal SAPIO, from the December 7, 2011, issue (released November 16) through to the June 27, 2012, issue (released June 6), after which he changed the title. The journal’s publisher released a book edition in August 2012. First publication under the label of “Asuka Comics” in 1988 without previous magazine serialization. The manga departs from Greek mythology— Jupiter’s son Phaeton not being able to keep his father’s horses and cart under control—and then turns to the gakush mode, but with the artist herself (b. 1947) appearing as a kind of chibi character when she shares the alarming facts she has learned with her readers. Nanohana, in Monthly Flowers, issue of August 2011 (released June 28). Audiovisual web-manga “Tōdenken ni kike” (Listen to the Tōden Institute), with a total of fifteen installments, abruptly discontinued in May 2011. The protagonist justified nuclear power with respect to global warming, stable electricity supply, and ecology. Hirokane’s trademark series “Shima Kōsaku” (in Morning since 1983) addressed the disaster in installment 104 (April 21, 2011); in numbers 105–108, the protagonist visited the affected region, and in number 109, he expressed the intention of discontinuing his company’s engagement in nuclear power. Fujimoto Yukari claimed in a discussion that Sano Mioko’s “Paradise without you” (Kimi no inai rakuen) was the first (Makabe 2012, 132). But this manga touched only indirectly on radioactivity—calling it “invisible dangerous substances”—and the respective June issue of the magazine Chorus was released on April 28, that is, later than the May issue of Comic Beam. The artist’s penname means “Bottom-up Fortunas”. In Weekly Young Magazine. Chikyū bōei-ke no hitobito (People of the earth defense family), since 2002. The earliest strip in the book is from March 14.

The Intercultural Challenge of the “Mangaesque”

81

28. Initially part of the journal’s June issue (released May 21), republished in Shiriagari (2011, 77–84). 29. This time, the jurors were manga artists Takemiya Keiko, Minamoto Tarō, and Saitō Chiho, as well as manga critics Murakami Tomohiko and Hosogaya Atsushi. 30. Less than one-tenth of Weekly Shōnen Jump (see JMPA 2012) but not as minor as AX, the successor of the alternative magazine Garo with its estimated five thousand copies. 31. In distinction to shōnen and shōjo manga traditionally designating manga for (male) “youth”. 32. See koshi (2011). 33. GEN’s first book edition was not edited by the publisher of the magazine series either. 34. The magazine self-designates as such, and artist Watanabe Michio is attributed not the “artwork” but “gekiga” of the “White Dragon-LEGEND” series. For a discussion of gekiga formed by its contemporary North American reception as alternative comics, see Suzuki’s chapter in this volume. 35. Vol. 9 was released in January, vol. 10 in May 2011. In fall 2011, the manga’s publication site was shifted from the weekly to the monthly Young Magazine. 36. Prior to this chapter, I have related the mangaesque mainly to issues of globalization. See, for example, Berndt (2010b, 32–35).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Fukumitsu, Shigeyuki. 2011. Uchi no tsuma tte dō deshō [ What would my wife say?]. Vol. 4. Tokyo: Futabasha. Hagio, Moto. 2012. Nanohana [Canola flowers]. Tokyo: Shōgakukan, 3–26. Inoue, Tomonori. 2008–2012. Coppelion. 14 vols. Tokyo: Kōdansha. Kobayashi, Yoshinori. 2012. Gōmanizumu sengen SPECIAL: Datsugenpatsu-ron [On the pull-out from nuclear energy]. Tokyo: Shōgakukan. Kouno, Fumiyo. 2006. Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry-Blossoms. Trans. Naoko Amemiya and Andy Nakatani. San Francisco, CA: Last Gasp (first Japanese book edition by Futabasha, 2004). Nakazawa, Keiji. 1993. Hadashi no Gen. 10 vols. Tokyo: Chōbunsha. ———. 1998. Hadashi no Gen. 7 vols. (Ch kō bunko). Tokyo: Ch ōkōronsha. ———. 2004–2009. Barefoot Gen. 10 vols. San Francisco, CA: Last Gasp. ———. 2005. Hadashi no Gen. 2 vols. (Jump Remix). Tokyo: Sh eisha. Sano, Mioko. 2011. Kimi no inai rakuen: Atarashii jidai [Paradise without you: A new era]. Vol. 15. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Shiriagari, Kotobuki. 2011. Ano hi kara no manga [Manga after 3.11]. Tokyo: Enterbrain. Suzuki, Miso. 2012. Boku to Nihon ga furueta hi [The day Japan and I shook]. Tokyo: Tokuma shoten. Tennōji, Dai (scen.); and Watanabe, Michio (art). 2011. “Hakury -LEGEND: Genshiryoku Mafia” [White Dragon-LEGEND: The nuclear-power mafia], installments 155–161. Shūkan Manga Goraku, issues February 18–April 1. Tokyo: Nihon bungeisha. Torino, Nanko. 2011. Toripan. Vol. 11. Tokyo: Kōdansha.

82 Jaqueline Berndt Yoshimoto, Kōji. 2012. Santetsu: Nihon tetsudō ryokō chizuchō, Sanriku tetsudō daishinsai no kiroku [Santetsu: Notebook on maps of Japanese railway travels—documentary of the great earthquake disaster on Sanriku railway]. Tokyo: Shinchōsha.

Secondary Sources Avenell, Simon Andrew. 2010. Making Japanese Citizens: Civil Society and the Mythology of the Shimin in Postwar Japan. Berkeley: University of California Press. Berndt, Jaqueline, ed. 2010a. Comics Worlds and the World of Comics. Kyoto, Japan: International Manga Research Center. http://imrc.jp/lecture/2009/12/ comics-in-the-world.html (accessed July 20, 2012). ———. 2010b. “Gurōbaru ka suru manga: sono shurui to kansei” [Globalizing manga, its kinds and aesthetics]. In Manga wa ekkyō suru [Border crossing manga], edited by gi, Fusami; Ichiki, Jun; and Motohama, Hidehiko. 19–39. Kyoto, Japan: Sekai shisōsha. Berndt, Jaqueline, and Steffi Richter, eds. 2006. Reading Manga: Local and Global Perceptions of Japanese Comics. Leipzig, Germany: Leipzig University Press. Chute, Hillary L. 2010. Graphic Women: Life Narrative and Contemporary Comics. New York: Columbia University Press. Foster, Hal. 2012. “Post-Critical”. OCTOBER 139: 3–8. Freiberg, Freda. 1996. “Akira and the Postnuclear Sublime”. In Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film, edited by Mick Broderick. 91–101. London: Kegan Paul International. Fukuma, Yoshiaki. 2006. “ ‘Genbaku manga’ no mediashi” [A media history of Abomb manga]. In Yoshimura and Fukuma 10–58. Fukuma, Yoshiaki; Yamaguchi, Makoto, and Yoshimura, Kazuma, eds. 2012. Fukusū no “Hiroshima”: Kioku no sengoshi to media no rikigaku [Multiple images of “Hiroshima”: The postwar history of memory and the dynamics of media]. Tokyo: Seiky sha. “ ‘GEN’ heiwa kyōzai saiyō ch shi o yōbō” [For stopping the usage of GEN in peace education]. 2012, July 23. The Chugoku Shimbun: Hiroshima Heiwa Media Center http://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/mediacenter/article.php?story =20120723111046932_ja (accessed January 11, 2013). “ ‘Hakury -LEGEND’ nitsuite no oshirase”. 2011, March 17. Nihonbungeisha. http://www.nihonbungeisha.co.jp/info/20110317/index.html (accessed August 20, 2012). Holmberg, Ryan. 2011. “Manga 3.11: The Tsunami, the Japanese Publishing Industry, Suzuki Miso’s Reportage, and the One Piece Lifeboat”. The Comics Journal (posted August 31). http://www.tcj.com/manga-3-11-the-tsunami-the-japanese -publishing-industry-suzuki-miso’sreportage-and-the-one-piece-lifeboat/ (accessed July 12, 2012). Hong, Christine. 2009. “Flashforward Democracy: American Exceptionalism and the Atomic Bomb in Barefoot Gen”. Comparative Literature Studies 46.1: 125–155. Ichitani, Tomoko. 2010. “Town of Evening Calm, Country of Cherry Blossoms. The Renarrativation of Hiroshima Memories”. Journal of Narrative Theory 40: 364–390. Itō, Y . 2006. “Hadashi no Gen no minzokushi: gakkō o meguru manga taiken no shosō” [Ethnography of Barefoot Gen: Facets of manga experience at school]. In Yoshimura and Fukuma 147–181. Itō, Y ; and Omote, Tomoyuki. 2006. “Barefoot Gen in Japan: An Attempt at Media History”. In Berndt and Richter 21–38

The Intercultural Challenge of the “Mangaesque”

83

JMPA (Nihon zasshi kyōkai). 2012. Insatsu busū kōhyō, dansei muke komikku-shi [Print-run numbers, comic magazines for men], April–June. http://www.j-magazine. or.jp/magadata/index.php?module=list&action=list&cat1cd=1&cat3cd=15&pe riod_cd=17 (accessed August 20, 2012). Kajiya, Kenji. 2010. “How Emotions Work: The Politics of Vision in Nakazawa Keiji’s Barefoot Gen”. In Berndt Comics Worlds 245–262. Karasawa, Shunichi; Takazawa, Sh ji; Miyajima, Tadashi; and Nakamiya, Takashi. 2007. Hannichi manga no sekai: ideorogî mamire no ayashii manga ni goyōshin! [The world of anti-Japanese manga: Beware of dubious ideological comics!]. Tokyo: Shiny sha. Kawaguchi, Takayuki. 2010. “Barefoot Gen and ‘A-bomb Literature’: Re-recollecting the Nuclear Experience”. In Berndt Comics Worlds 233–244. Kern, Adam. 2011. “Kibyōshi: Edo no jiko genky tekina manga” [Kibyōshi, Edo’s self-reflexive comics]. In Tokush : Manga to manga, soshite geijutsu [Special issue: Manga, comics and art], guest-edited by Jaqueline Berndt for Bijutsu Forum 21 24: 32–40. Köhn, Stephan. 2007 “Geschichte als Fiktion? Nakazawa Keijis ‘Barfuß durch Hiroshima’ (Hadashi no Gen) oder die Inszenierung von Realität im Medium Manga”. In Facetten der japanischen Populär- und Medienkultur 2, edited by Stephan Köhn and Martina Schönbein. 107–132. Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz. Kuroko, Kazuo. 1993. Genbaku bungaku ron: Kakujidai to sōzōryoku [Study on A-bomb literature: Nuclear age and imagination]. Tokyo: Sairy sha. ———, ed. 2011. Hiroshima Nagasaki kara Fukushima e: “Kaku” jidai o kangaeru [From Hiroshima and Nagasaki to Fukushima: Reflecting on the “nuclear” age]. Tokyo: Bensei. LaMarre, Thomas. 2010. “Manga Bomb: Between the Lines of Barefoot Gen”. In Berndt Comics Worlds 263–307. (Reprinted as “Believe in Comics: Forms of Expression in Barefoot Gen”. In Mangatopia: Essays on Manga and Anime in the Modern World, edited by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog. 191–207. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 2011.) Luciano, Dale. 1981. “Gen of Hiroshima: Two-Fisted Pacifism” (Review). The Comics Journal 69: 40–43. Makabe, Kaori, ed. 2012. Commons of Imagination: What Today’s Society Can Share through Manga and Animation. Tokyo: Agency for Cultural Affairs, Government of Japan. http://www.simul-conf.com/icomag2012/index.html (accessed July 20, 2012). “Manga to chiikisei dai-1 bu: ‘chihō’ no hakken” [Manga and locality, part 1: The discovery of the “provinces”]. 2012a. Panel discussion with Hasegawa, Hōsei; Murakami, Tomohiko; and Miyamoto, Hirohito. Manga kenkyū 18: 148–201. “Manga to chiikisei dai-2 bu: zenkoku ni hirogaru chihō/jimoto manga” [Manga and locality, part 2: Local/hometown manga spreading nationally]. 2012b. Panel discussion with Kouno, Fumiyo; Kinsui, Satoshi; Yamada, Tomoko; and Yoshimura, Kazuma. Manga kenkyū 18: 202–250. Napier, Susan. 1996. “Panic Sites: The Japanese Imagination of Disaster from Godzilla to Akira”. In Contemporary Japan and Popular Culture, edited by John Whittier Treat. 235–262. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. Oh, Sandra. 2007. “Sight Unseen: Adrian Tomine’s Optic Nerve and the Politics of Recognition”. MELUS 32.3: 129–151. ¯ Okoshi, Kensuke. 2011. “Tachi sukumi, kao o agete . . . Shiriagari Kotobuki-san” [Paralyzed, looking up . . . Shiriagari Kotobuki]. NHK Newswatch 9, caster announcer blog. http://www.nhk.or.jp/nw9-okoshi-blog/cat6311/97789.html (accessed September 1, 2012). Sabin, Roger. 2006. “Barefoot Gen in the US and UK: Activist Comic, Graphic Novel, Manga”. In Berndt and Richter 39–58.

84 Jaqueline Berndt Shikata, Toshiaki. 2006. “ ‘Kyōkai’ de deatta ‘tasha’: gakkō nitotte no ‘Hadashi no Gen’ ” [“Strangers” meeting at the “border”: What Barefoot Gen means for the school]. In Yoshimura and Fukuma 182–210. Smith, Greg M. 2011. “Surveying the World of Contemporary Comics Scholarship: A Conversation with Thomas Andrae, Scott Bukatman, Thomas LaMarre”. Cinema Journal (SCMS) 50.3: 135–147. Spiegelman, Art. 2004/1990. “Barefoot Gen: Comics after the Bomb”. In Barefoot Gen: Out of the Ashes, by Nakazawa, Keiji. Vol. 1. San Francisco, CA: Last Gasp. Sugawa-Shimada, Akiko. 2011. “Rebel with Causes and Laughter for Relief: ‘Essay Manga’ of Tenten Hosokawa and Rieko Saibara, and Japanese Female Readership”. Journal of Graphic Novels and Comics 2.2: 169–185. Takekuma, Kentarō. 2011. “ ‘Owari naki nichijō’ ga owatta hi” [The day the “endless everyday” ended]. In Shisō chizu b ta, edited by Azuma, Hiroki. Vol. 2 (Autumn), Shinsai igo [After the disaster]. 148–159. Tokyo: contectures. Tamura, Keiko. 2011. “Kaku jōkyō o kobamu sekai e/sekai kara: Nausicäa, AKIRA, Evangelion, to ‘Coppelion’ ” [Towards/from a “world” which refuses the nuclear situation: Nausicäa, AKIRA, Evangelion, and “Coppelion”]. In Kuroko, Hiroshima Nagasaki kara Fukushima e 141–162. Worcester, Kent. 2011. “New York City, 9/11, and Comics”. Radical History Review 111: 138–154. Yoshimura, Kazuma. 2006. “ ‘Hadashi no GEN’ no inpakuto: manga no zankoku byōsha o meguru hyōgenteki ichikōsatsu” [The impact of Barefoot Gen: A stylistic consideration of cruel depictions in manga]. In Yoshimura and Fukuma 246–293. ———. 2011. “Manga ni manibiuru mono: ‘Hadashi no Gen’ o rei ni” [Lessons which can be learned from manga: The example of Barefoot Gen]. In Manga no shakaisei: keizaishugi o koete [Manga and society: Beyond economism, 3rd International Manga Studies Conference, Bucheon, Korea, proceedings]. 4 pages. http://imrc.jp/lecture/2011/10/3.html (accessed July 31, 2012). ———. 2012a. “Intaby Kōno Fumiyo: Hitaiken to manga hyōgen” [Interview Kouno Fumiyo: Non-experience and manga expression]. In Fukuma, Yamaguchi, and Yoshimura 358–390. ———. 2012b. “Manga ni egakareta ‘Hiroshima’: Sono ‘f kei’ kara yomitoku” [Manga depictions of “Hiroshima”, seen from the perspective of “landscape”]. In Fukuma, Yamaguchi, and Yoshimura 140–194. Yoshimura, Kazuma; and Fukuma, Yoshiaki, eds. 2006. “Hadashi no Gen” ga ita fūkei [The landscape of Barefoot Gen: War, manga, and memory]. Matsudo, Japan: Azusa.

5

Manhwa in Korea (Re-)Nationalizing Comics Culture Yamanaka Chie

INTRODUCTION In recent years, European and American bookstores that carry manga on their shelves have come to offer an increasing number of manhwa as well. Not rarely, these Korean comics are perceived as adjunct to Japanese manga. Korean publishers, however, aim at marketing them as something special; they favor the name manhwa and also try to turn it into a distinct label. From a historical perspective, Korean manhwa appear to result from a process of localization that occurred over decades of steady manga reception. In light of the fact that Korean and Japanese comics are stylistically less different from each other than from everything else in the world of graphic narratives, one might even regard manhwa as a manifestation of manga’s diversity. Against this background, comics studies faces the problem of how to deal with the hybrid yet pointedly nationalized culture of manhwa. Is it to be approached as uniquely Korean? This chapter sets out to illuminate what factors in Korean society undergird the desire to identify manhwa by positioning it in opposition to manga. After surveying the history of manga’s reception and localization in Korea, the focus will shift to the construal of this history under postcolonial conditions, which has led to a domain of “things unspeakable”. The hope with the subsequent analysis is twofold, to introduce comics discourse in Korea and at the same time to highlight one possible way of addressing the cultural as national in transcultural comics studies. This case study may also provide a point of departure for discussing soft power and new nationalisms from an East Asian angle without clinging to the still common binarism of “the west versus Japan”. A note on wording: In Korea, comics are called manhwa.1 However, as we shall see, the existence of comics in pure manhwa style is difficult to acknowledge. Consequently, in this chapter, manhwa refers to all comics available in Korean, from domestic comics rendered in localized manga style to imports from Japan in translated editions, often distinguished as manga and manhwa in the narrow sense.

86 Yamanaka Chie APPROACHING MANGA’S GLOBALIZATION FROM AN EAST ASIAN ANGLE What kind of framework lends itself well to discussing the distribution of comics via both global media and local cultural practices, when focusing on manga and manhwa? It is plainly insufficient to regard local cultural practices solely as a form of resistance against the dominant global, assuming—as for example the critique of cultural imperialism—a unilateral sway from center to periphery (Schiller 1969, 1976). In Korea, deprecatory voices have characterized manga as “violent and lascivious”, often evoking adverse feelings which arise from the memory of the colonial era. But it would be rather simplistic to take the Korean discourse hostile to manga just as a form of resistance against the hegemony of Japanese comics. After all, capital does not eliminate cultural differences around the world, but rather employs them for its own purposes (Hall 1991, 28), as numerous phenomena concomitant with globalization suggest. American consumer capitalism, for example, which has been proliferating as a cultural symbol or subject of aspiration, facilitates diversity rather than homogenization, by permeating different locales as an invisible system. Thus, it is likewise insufficient to regard the Korean discourse on manga as the manifestation of a distorted aspiration toward Japan. In order to understand this discourse properly, the spread of Japanese manga in Asia, America, and Europe has to be taken into consideration. With their term “global-local nexus”, Morley and Robins (1995) have shown how deeply globalization is entwined with (re-)localization. According to them, local cultural practices are not to be conceived in an essentialist way as resistance against globalization, but rather as emergent from global-local relationalities, which generate new particularities and localities through negotiation with the dynamics of globalization. However, a certain caution is also due in this regard. In his book Transnational Japan, Iwabuchi (2001) pursued the wide and deep permeation of Japanese popular culture, including TV series, manga, and music, in the Asian region from the 1990s onward, and he linked this trend to a new desire by Japan to dominate Asia via shared consumer goods. Highlighting the hegemony of Japanese popular culture in Asia, he intended, among other things, to sound a warning over the narrowness of discussions of the global-local nexus that equate the global with the west, and the local with the nonwest. Hence, manga and manhwa cannot be assumed to be just manifestations of the potential of the nonwest to decentralize the hegemony of the west. Obviously, we should not only focus on intra-Asian relations and problematize disparity therein. We must also question the framework of the global-local nexus itself with respect to the dynamics that work to both break disparity and reproduce it, simultaneously toppling and preserving the schema of west versus nonwest. In order to examine Korea’s comics culture without falling back into a western-centric view, it is necessary to investigate in detail how, based on assumptions of

Manhwa in Korea

87

plural and divergent “global” forces, cultural differences and local identities of manga and manhwa have been constructed in Korea, and how these constructions relate to the reproduction (and undermining) of global disparities. Bearing this in mind, we shall now turn to the situation of comics in Korea. MANGA RECEPTION AND HYBRIDIZATION UNDER POSTCOLONIAL CONDITIONS According to Iwabuchi, Japan’s popular culture gained momentum in the Asian region in the 1990s. As for comics, it is widely known among Japanese critics that manga had already spread in East Asia by the 1960s, well before this fact entered the domestic Japanese news in the 1980s (Natsume 2001, 28). Yet, the Japanese influx into the Korean peninsula had actually a much longer history (Son 1996). This border crossing took root when, in line with globalization, power was reorganized between World War I and the Cold War era. Comics culture began to flow from Japan to the Korean peninsula during the colonial era (1910–1945). Recent histories of manhwa nationalize the occurrences of this period in a way that ignores the fact that the Republic of Korea officially came into existence only much later, that is, in 1948. Despite this, retrospective writings about the colonial era often lean on a broader notion of “Korean” identity accentuating anticolonial resistance,2 even though some of the cartoonists of this period, such as Kim Yong-hwan, had actually received their education in Japan, and the related transnational flow undeniably influenced the formation of manhwa. Artists who crossed borders in person were not the only trigger for stylistic hybridization—another was the piracy of works. The so-called picture stories that placed framed images and text side by side without employing speech balloons, flourished first in Japan, and these proto-manga appeared in Korea in form of pirated editions, the most famous early example being “Sho¯nen Kenya” (Kenya boy).3 According to Son San-ik (1998, 69), this story enjoyed such popularity that even a pirated deluxe edition was published in the late 1950s. While personal exchanges between Korea and Japan decreased, the production of pirated manga editions continued, reaching a peak in the 1970s and 1980s. Yet, only a few pirated editions were copied mechanically over this time. The Korean government put manhwa under prepublication censorship and for a certain period even demanded the submission of handdrawn pages. As a result, those “officially published pirated editions” that had passed the censors were often literally redrawn adaptations. Also noteworthy is the prevalence of a strong inclination toward regarding manhwa as trivial reading matter for children. Until the late 1980s, adults were less interested in specific comics for their aesthetic or entertainment value, but rather their potential as a commodity. What counted was selling popular

88 Yamanaka Chie works on the widest possible scale, which, ironically, resulted in a significant number of quite “creative” pirated editions.4 Thus, the comics literacy of Korean readers and authors was formed in three ways: via adaptations of Japanese manga, by the distribution of pirated “how to draw manga” books, and through the spread of comics by domestic artists who used manga style. Admittedly, not all Korean cartoonists relied on piracy, as numerous popular comics on examination suggest.5 Contemporary manhwa discourse regards these manhwa which are not merely copies or adaptions of manga as true expressions of the Korean people’s creativeness. However, the creation and consumption of manhwa, including these, were deeply related to manga, and this makes any assumption of a complete independence from manga style extremely contentious. In the spread of comics as means of expression, imitation and derivation play important roles. According to Japanese manga artist, and now university professor, Takemiya Keiko, transitions in manga style usually derive from cartoonists’ imitation of pioneers, which exposes readers concurrently to a significant number of similar works and thereby sharpens their selection skills (2003, 20). The previously mentioned “Shōnen Kenya”, for example, was imitated not only in Korea but also in Japan, and so repeatedly that even a genre named “Boys’ Tarzan” (shōnen-han tāzan) emerged. In other words, popular works are prone to stimulate the formation of derivative genres. Through these, certain techniques that readers have first sorted out and then shared become codified and widely available. In consequence, it should be asserted that manhwa artists were groping for their own expression while appropriating manga style.6 But the fact that manga style—something from Japan—spread via its imitation did not become public in Korea. Even now, proactive verification of this is rare, the silence being largely due to Korean nationalism. After the restoration of diplomatic relations in 1965, the import of Japanese popular culture to Korea remained prohibited. In 1998, a gradual liberalization of restrictions began—a process still incomplete. However, under de facto bans were the use of Japanese language in public places as well as public performances by Japanese artists, and even in these cases, regulation did not rest on a specific law that clearly prohibited “things Japanese”. Their designation as unwanted imports rather resulted from a series of administrative decisions. Translations of novels, anime, and manga—by nature unrelated to the public appearance of Japanese people in person—were available, occupying an ambiguous position. Until the early 1990s, manga and respective pirated editions thus circulated as manhwa, hiding their “Japanese” elements in order to avoid criticism, for example, by changing author names into Korean ones. Such institutional issues are not the only reason for the limitations of Korean manga discourse. The ban on Japanese popular culture had materialized in the first place out of a concern for the Korean people’s painful memory of the past. Actually, after liberation, many “things Japanese”,

Manhwa in Korea

89

which had been introduced during the colonial era, were removed as part of the promotion of a “comparative nationalism” aimed at glorifying the Korean people by emphasizing their anti-Japanese struggle in history and their final victory (Kimura 2000, 354). In other words, within the confusion of values after the liberation in 1945, the formation of Korean identity leaned heavily on the exclusion of Japanese elements (Tei 1998, 91–92). Precisely for this reason, manga could never be seen to have influenced manhwa culture; it was not even supposed to exist in Korea. This situation began to change when in 1987 democratization set in. CONCEALING MANHWA’S HYBRIDITY Prior to the 1990s, rental books were at the center of the Korean comics market. In addition, sports newspapers featured geukwha (in Japanese, gekiga) for adult readers,7 and magazines for children serialized manhwa. However, people usually did not purchase comics in book form; they instead frequented rental libraries to read or borrow graphic narratives that were produced specially for those venues and came in a variety of genres, including comics for girls (sunjeong manhwa), funnies, sports stories, and so on. Rental comics are still being produced in Korea, but today the sale of specialized magazines and monochrome tankōbon books prevails. The latter, published in almost the same physical size as in Japan, also stretch over approximately two hundred pages and are divided into genres based on target gender and age. Translations of comics from America, France, and Hong Kong, too, are available, but the biggest market share is occupied by translated Japanese manga and works by domestic Korean artists. Translated manga usually maintain the Japanese reading direction from right to left.8 In contrast, manhwa—in the sense of works by Korean artists—are to be read from left to right, following the horizontal use of Hangul script. Thus, in Korean comics magazines, Japanese manga start on the “last” page, and Korean manhwa on the “first”.9 The transition from the rental to a magazine-centered market did not happen without reference to Japan. After the proclamation of democratization in 1987, the number of publishing houses increased due to the liberalization of that sector; regulations for the sale of foreign books loosened. Against this background, it became possible to publish manga based on legal licensing contracts. Trying to equal the production and distribution methods of Japanese manga weeklies, some publishers began to acquire Japanese copyrights and secure sales by means of serialization in their newly established magazines. These licensed comics were, of course, published as Japanese manga under the name of their Japanese creators. At the same time, the liberalization of travel abroad led to an increase in the publication of pirated editions, now in the form of palm-sized mechanically reproduced copies, distributed via confectioneries and stationery shops. Thus, the series

90 Yamanaka Chie from the Japanese magazine Weekly Shōnen Jump—such as “Dragon Ball”, “Fist of the North Star” (Hokutō no ken), and “City Hunter”—gained popularity as both licensed manga appearing in magazines and book editions, and as pirated copies. Treated less as books than giveaways, the new pirated editions often did not indicate an author’s name at all, and sometimes, in line with custom, only Korean names. However, due to the emergence of the license-based magazines that specified authors, it became clear to everyone that the comics in the hands of Korean children were “things Japanese”. Since most products of Japanese popular culture were still banned, the rising popularity of these manga attracted criticism. Structurally, the prevalent discourse of that time corresponded to what Tomlinson (1991) has called a state critique of cultural imperialism. In Korea, this state discourse rested on picturing domestic culture as being threatened by Japan, an overwhelming economic power whose culture exhibited violent and sexual content, as evidenced in the following newspaper article: Among children, copied versions of Japanese manga are becoming tremendously popular [. . .] Last April there were about 40 titles, among them “Dragon Ball”. But it has been pointed out that these manga contain violent and lascivious contents throughout, and that they are not only harmful to children’s sensibility, but also invite cultural subordination from an early age because at their base they are studded with Japanese thought and culture. (“ ‘Pal iro’ Sasimnyutol Tashi bunun irubonbaram” [46th anniversary of “August 15” and again a Japanese blast] 1991) Another typical criticism voiced concern about the violation of traditional Sinocentrism, according to which Korea occupied a senior cultural position in relation to Japan: Japan’s popular culture is highly similar to our culture. If imported fullscale, our own particular culture might get buried [. . .]. Hollywood movies, although more than 100 [sic] are imported yearly, do not pose a problem as they differ greatly from our own production. [. . .] And Japan exhibits a vulgarity, which disparages, at will, oriental literary classics such as the Journey to the West, causing cultural friction. (“Keobugam gwa Chingeungam Sangbandoin Gamjung Gongzon (Hangugsoge Ilbondejungmunhwa: Jung)” [Aversion and affinity, incompatible feelings; Japanese popular culture within Korea, part 2] 1994) As the previous quotes reveal, the Korean-Japanese power structure within East Asia was, at least from the perspective of Korean critics, related not only to economic disparity but also to the traditional order of legitimacy, according to which culture flew from the Chinese center via Korea to Japan. In 1990s Korea, the Confucianist mind-set was still strong. Furthermore,

Manhwa in Korea

91

arguments against Japan, which relied on the critique of cultural imperialism and/or concern about Sinocentrism, have often been traced back to “anti-Japanese sentiments”. In Korean-Japanese culture research, this term is sometimes also used to explain how Korean nationalism found expression under postcolonial conditions.10 After democratization set in, Korean society was in need of a substitute for the previous nationalism from above practiced by the military regime. Criticizing Japan allowed for a confirmation of Korean culture as non-Japanese culture, and this was linked to the image of “pure” Korean culture in need of protection.11 Under such conditions, it became increasingly difficult to discuss the manga elements within manhwa and manhwa’s intermixture with manga style. In addition, the suspicion toward manga affected comics as such. For example, after the rating system for published material was reorganized under the 1997 Juvenile Act, the work by manhwa artist Lee Hyun-se, Mythology of the Heavens, led to his indictment for being lecherous in February 1998.12 As a result, readers saw themselves facing the issue of how to ensure the legitimacy of reading comics. At the same time, genres diversified, and readers’ age spectrum widened, with a significant amount of them remaining faithful to comics even after maturing to adulthood. As a medium, manga seems to have a strong tendency to trigger the formation of fan communities (Berndt 2010, 34). Korean readers of both manhwa and manga formed their community through the use of the then rapidly developing Internet, where they explored how to legitimize reading comics as their own culture, and how to claim that comics were worthy of being read by grown-ups as well. With respect to the former, they repeatedly stressed that they liked manga, not Japanese culture. And as for the latter, they strategically emphasized that manhwa were Korean culture and of economic value. Hereby, they tried to safeguard local comics readership from the discourse of “anti-Japanese sentiment”, but they also made it difficult to address the hybridity of manhwa, even among comics aficionados. Fabricating differences between manhwa and manga seemed to be more important.13 However, there was another current that facilitated the discursive linkage of manwha to “Korea”. During the 1990s, an increasing number of colleges and professional schools launched manhwa courses. In this connection, publications on manhwa history as well as single cartoonists mushroomed, contributing to the spread of manhwa discourse.14 The first authors on manhwa had not rarely been newspaper journalists or art historians in the 1980s. Instead of taking a dedicated reader’s stance, they tried to demonstrate that comics were worthy of discussion from the position of researcher or journalist. Inclined to regard manhwa as a homegrown medium, their writings did not touch on its stylistic hybridity. As far as piracy was concerned, manga’s influence could not be denied, but it was dismissed as a “blemish on history” (Son 1998, 71; Do 1998). The main thrust in dealing with this was to acknowledge these “embarrassing aspects” while emphasizing

92 Yamanaka Chie that they could not diminish the overall magnificent accomplishments of Korean culture, if only they were reflected on properly. During the years when this discourse flourished, Korea’s publishing world pursued the Japanese model in advancing its domestic market, in the process allowing more and more Korean artists to make their debut through domestic manga magazines and Rookie of the Year awards. The introduction of such “Japanese” elements was actively taken on by Korean publishers rather than promoted by the Japanese side. But as the role of Japanese-style magazines for comics increased, Korean artists had to supply stories that, like manga, matched weekly or monthly serialization, including appropriate characters and layouts. Considering the fact that the Japanese production and distribution system was a crucial determinant for manhwa creation, and that Japanese manga also affected the formation of domestic comics genres, it can hardly be claimed that Korean artists employed modes of expression that were completely different from manga or respective hybrids. Yet, this particularity of manhwa, from which critics could have deduced fascinating cultural differences, was not sufficiently scrutinized or even articulated, as mentioned previously. So, what was manhwa discourse aiming at by ignoring this interrelation with manga? THE RISE OF “BRAND NATIONALISM” As pointed out previously, the discourse that animated nationalism gained momentum in the mid-1990s, when the gross domestic product reached US$10,000 per person and Korea was taking pride in itself for having achieved an economy of “advanced nation” scale. But in 1997, Korea was hit by a financial crisis that threw its economy into unprecedented recession. As a countermeasure, the government opted for neoliberalism. Under these conditions, culture too was to become competitive. Starting with the Kim Dae-jung administration, political efforts were put into information technology and popular-cultural industries. As if in concert, from around 2000 onward, the term Korean Wave (hallyu) popped up in China and Taiwan. Korean pop music and TV series saw a boom throughout Asia, beginning with Chinese-language regions. This Korean Wave bestowed on Koreans the self-consciousness that they were not only receivers of culture but, at least within the Asian region, also originators. In Korea, this stirred up a hegemonic desire that was, however, initially not imagined to extend beyond Asia. Yet, around 2003 when the wave reached Japan too, the power of culture came to be regarded as exceeding the power of the economy. Attracted by the possibilities of soft power (Nye 2004), the government issued the slogan “culture is national power”. Eventually, the success story of the Korean Wave resulted in the redirecting of the discourse on popular culture toward discussions of how content made in Korea could be sold continuously worldwide, especially in Europe, North America, and Japan.

Manhwa in Korea

93

Although not to the same extent as movies and TV series, manhwa too appeared to be a promising form of content and as such was subject to various political measures. With the intent to sell licenses, publishers began to actively participate in book fairs overseas. In 2003, for example, the Korea Culture and Content Agency (KOCCA) sponsored an exhibition at the International Comics Festival in Angoulême. In this way, Korean publishers began to gain a foothold abroad. Manhwa artists, such as Youn In-wan and Yang Kyung-il, made their debuts in the Japanese manga market, receiving support, even though they employed manga style and aimed at expanding to the neighboring market. Numerous efforts were made to sell manhwa at the “centers” of global comics distribution, that is, in Europe, America, and Japan. While this policy was in motion, comics aficionados who had spent their youth during the 1990s, began to play an important role in manhwa criticism, contributing also to exhibition catalogues and government reports.15 Until the 1990s, they had been derided as “infantile”, or “children who accept Japanese culture indiscriminately”, in other words, uncritical consumers. Despite this, their expertise in regard to local manhwa and manga, accumulated within the reader community, became indispensable to the central government in its pursuit of soft power, as well as to local authorities and corporations. Regardless of their specific stance, they attracted attention as “cultural mediators” (Bourdieu 1979) who explained what comics culture was about to Korea’s government, industrial world, and all those who wanted to use comics in one way or another. As distinct from the authors of manhwa-related publications in the 1990s, these comics aficionados usually do not have a negative attitude toward the history of piracy, and they tend to acknowledge the Japanese influence up to a certain degree. Nevertheless, this does not mean that they try to promote a new image of Japan; they just know from their own comics experience that manga elements cannot be completely ignored in discussions of manhwa. Such acknowledgement, however, is limited to publications and blogs that are being read in their local community. When they act as mediators who negotiate with outsiders of that community, they are instead eager to talk up the possibility of disseminating comics culture as “Korean culture” globally, referring to the recognition of manhwa in western countries. Thus, they support the strategy of Korean publishers and sponsoring organizations in setting up Korean booths at book fairs throughout Europe and America, in clinging to the name manhwa, and in emphasizing differences from manga based on an alleged Korean originality. Even so, that is not to say that all these people regard manhwa’s originality in an essentialist way. Kim Nak-ho, the curator of the Korean exhibition in Angoulême, for example, said about the expansion of manhwa abroad that “in North America and Europe, Korean manhwa leads with a trump card as something resembling manga”, and he regarded this in a positive light (2007). In western countries where manga are already circulating, publishers have the respective know-how, and readers have a command of manga literacy,

94 Yamanaka Chie which makes the publication and reception of manhwa relatively easy. But Kim sees, in addition to the task of securing distribution, the “necessity to revisit our starting point in order to understand what features have made manhwa appealing so far”, pointing out the importance of “increasing the brand value of Korea”. According to Kim, this could be made possible by “emphasizing eastern mystery and orientalism through historical comics, which are likely to accommodate European intellectuals”. He also identifies another possible tactic in “the promotion of vivid online manhwa”. The Korean manhwa market has been seeing a sudden shrinkage of publications in recent years. Instead of books and magazines, online manhwa, or webtoons, have begun to attract attention. In line with the government’s strategy to promote Korea as a country of advanced information technologies, webtoons are expected to appeal to Europe and North America in the same way as high-tech companies like Samsung or LG (the former Lucky Goldstar). Morley and Robins (1995) have spoken of a techno-orientalism with respect to the inorganic, nonhuman high-tech image ascribed to Japan by the “west”. Those who try to sell Korean manhwa now very likely take into consideration the practical value of techno-orientalism when voicing their expectations regarding webcomics. As sketched out previously, the change in the positioning of popular culture and the handling of manhwa in Korea was accompanied by a dramatic decrease in the disparaging linkage of manga discourse to anti-Japanese sentiments.16 Yielding profits for domestic publishers, manga has become a type of publication that threatens neither the Korean mind nor economy; it is now part of the larger manhwa medium, belonging to the landscape of daily life without usually being noticed for its nationality. With respect to overseas markets, manga has come to be regarded both as the basis for the circulation of manhwa and the rival of this Korean brand. However, the hybridity of manhwa style remains unaddressed. A telling example in this regard was the exhibition 100 Years of Korean Manhwa, held at the National Museum of Contemporary Art from June 2 to August 23, 2009 (Hanguk manhwa 100junyon Wiwonhoi [100 Years of Korean Manhwa committee] 2009). This rated as a symbolic event as the medium of manhwa, once presumed to be vulgar and infantile, was now being presented in a national museum. Yet, Han Sang-jung asserted in her analysis (2011) that the organizers of the exhibition project—although it held numerous possibilities—chose the safest option, privileging a display configured according to chronology and genres and emphasizing manhwa’s relation to fine art. It is a well-known fact that Korean manhwa received a lot of influence from Japanese manga. But what has not been researched yet is which work by which artist was actually influenced by which work by which Japanese artist. And of course, there has not been any research either on whether this influence was merely confined to the level of character design, or whether it affected the whole composition (Han 2011).

Manhwa in Korea

95

As for the reasons why a new approach was not created, Han points to the lack of multifaceted research and to organizational issues, yet against the background of Korean manhwa discourse demonstrated previously, what cannot be overlooked is that these particular circumstances must have virtually impelled curators to opt for “cultural purity” and a nationalized framework related to “Korea”. In view of this situation in the 2000s, it may be said that Korean manhwa discourse reinforced brand nationalism. As confirmed at the beginning of this chapter, globalization guarantees and reinforces local diversity. This is, among other things, also suggested by the expansion of manhwa’s circulation. However, locality is not necessarily defined by national territory. It may equally refer to the culture of a certain generation or social class. Yet, in Korea today, a strong drive toward equating the culture of comics aficionados with the national is at play. It has been pointed out that globalization facilitates encounters between people and cultures in a form by which national cultures are mutually recognized as brands (Urry 2003). Further, governments encourage cultural exports and strategically adopt political measures; in other words, they pursue brand nationalism (Iwabuchi 2007, 23). This is not restricted to just Korea. Problematic about this brand nationalism is that it fixates culture within a national framework. Due to its fundamentally utilitarian focus on culture in the service, supposedly, of political and economic national interests, it distracts from the maintenance of power disparity and from the reconstruction of cultural hierarchies (Iwabuchi 2007, 24). Certainly, the strategic and tactical attempts at selling manhwa culture as a Korean brand are today pressed forward by inhabitants of the local comics culture. But their respective activities potentially impede the local diversity generated by the community of those who draw, read, and enjoy manhwa, as well as their translocal interconnectedness. Aiming at increasing Korea’s national power implies two risks: existent disparities within Asia may be preserved by means of centering the notion of “Korea”, and to guarantee this position, western orientalism may be reproduced and reinforced. Moreover, these risks originate precisely from people’s dream of “Korean cultural power” that decentralizes the hegemony of an assumed monolithic Japanese culture. CONCLUSIONS The discourse evolving around manhwa in Korea resides usually in a realm disconnected from readers’ experiences of actually enjoying comics. As a result, sometimes when the identity of comics readers does not exactly match the structure of Korean manhwa discourse, frictions occur. On Korean Internet sites, there are occasions when fans press others for confessions of “guilt for reading Japanese manga” employing the rhetoric of 1990s manga criticism. Thus, it is more than likely that comics experiences that deviate from the predominant Korean manhwa discourse get suppressed by this very discourse.

96 Yamanaka Chie As demonstrated in this chapter, in Korea, a prerequisite of manhwa discourse has always been the framework of the state, now taking the form of brand nationalism. This has throughout been accompanied by a call for forgetting the hybridity of manhwa style, which has rendered part of the comics experience of people living in the postcolonial society unspeakable. It also limits the transcultural relationalities of readers today. The reception and localization of transcultural manga, however actively pursued by media consumers, is—in face of national frameworks—occasionally shifted to another context, in which their activities are expunged due to unspeakability. Comics studies, too, is being called on to handle cultural practices without equating local contexts with the national, but considering the dynamic interplay of factors that tend to collapse these two sides into each other. One approach to this may be to attempt to find a manhwa terminology that escapes nationalism. NOTES 1. The word manhwa is written with the same Sino-Japanese characters as manga and differs from the Japanese word only in pronunciation. That is to say, the two-character compound word 漫画 was imported from Japan and, with its domestic Korean reading, used as the name for the new medium. The same applies to the later term 画 (gekiga/geukhwa); see Leem (2012). 2. It is, for example, emphasized that the supposedly first manhwa was published in a newspaper that supported the resistance movement against Japan’s colonial rule. While not concealing the Japanese influence, Son (1996) describes this influence as something completely unwanted. Others, such as the anonymous authors of the introduction to Manhwa, Another Discovery in Asian Comics (Korea Culture & Content Agency [KOCCA] 2007), keep this influence under wraps, highlighting western influence instead. 3. By Yamakawa Sōji, initially serialized in the Japanese newspaper Sangyō Keizai Shinbun, 1951–1955. 4. For a more detailed discussion, see Yamanaka (2006). 5. See, for example, Kim San-ho’s RAYPHIE (1959–1962), as well as the adventure story Fist General (Ju meok daejang) by Kim Won-bin, which was published first in book form in 1958, as a rental book in 1964, then serialized in the supplement to the magazine Okke dongmu (1973–1982), and in 1992, restarted in the magazine IQ Jump (Seoul Media Group); further, the rental manhwa The Horrific Baseball Team (Konpoeui Ouiingudan/The team of aliens) by Lee Hyun-se and Kim Min-gi, which started in 1984 and saw a total of thirty volumes. 6. I discussed this in depth in my Japanese article, Yamanaka (2010). 7. See the discussion by Leem (2012). 8. When in 1998 the import of Japanese popular culture was liberalized, it became possible to also market original Japanese manga tankōbon in Korea. Sensitive to domestic response, Korean publishers began to apply the Japanese reading direction to Korean translations of manga, as distinct from the pirated editions where diversity prevailed. 9. For an analysis of the impact that the different script, binding, and publication format have on readers, see Yoo (2012). 10. Anthropologist Tosa Masaki has called this “the habit of portraying oneself by using ‘Japan’ as a mirror” (2004, 214).

Manhwa in Korea

97

11. For further discussion in Japanese, see Yamanaka (2008a). 12. The discontinuation of this series in the sports newspaper Sports Seoul had been summoned already in 1997. 13. For an early discussion in Japanese, see Yamanaka (2003). 14. Representative of this trend were manhwa historian Son San-ik; the pioneers of manhwa criticism Lee Jae-hun and Jun Jun-young; and Lim Cheong-san, professor at Korea’s first manhwa university department, who has made significant efforts to establish manhwa as an academic topic. 15. Representative critics are Kim Nak-ho, who has been introducing western comics cultures and making proposals on Korea’s culture-industry policy; manhwa historian Park In-hwa; and Kim Sung-hoon, who has published essays on manhwa criticism. 16. At the time of this change, “Dragon Ball” which in the 1990s had been voluntarily “revised” by Korean publishers, was finally brought on the market in a complete and unrevised version. According to the publisher, there was no criticism at all. As for the remaining critical current, see Yamanaka (2008a, 2008b).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Berndt, Jaqueline. 2010. “Gurōbaru ka suru manga: sono shurui to kansei” [Globalizing manga, its kinds and aesthetics]. In Manga wa ekkyō suru [Border crossing manga], edited by gi, Fusami ; Ichiki, Jun, and Motohama, Hidehiko. 19–39. Kyoto, Japan: Sekai shisōsha. ———, ed. 2012. Manhwa Manga Manhua: East Asian Comics Studies. Leipzig, Germany: Leipzig University Press. Berndt, Jaqueline, and Steffi Richter, eds. 2006. Reading Manga: Local and Global Perceptions of Japanese Comics. Leipzig, Germany: Leipzig University Press. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1979. La Distinction: Critique Sociale du Jugement. Paris: Éditions de Minuit (Japanese edition, translated by Ishii, Yōjirō. Tokyo: Fujiwara shoten, 1990). Do, Jung-il. 1998. “Ilbon daejung munhwa bekiki gi bupeguzo” [Imitating Japanese popular culture: The structure of corruption]. In Illbon daejung munhwa bekikigi, edited by Yi, Yeon; and Yang, Yoon-mo. 53–110. Seoul: Namuwa soup. Hall, Stuart. 1991. “The Local and the Global: Globalization and Ethnicity”. In Culture, Globalization and the World System, edited by Anthony D. King. 19–41. New York: Palgrave (Japanese edition, Bunka to gurōbaru ka: Gendai shakai to aidentitî hyōgen, trans. by Yamanaka, Hiroshi. Tamagawa, Japan: Tamagawa University Press, 1999). Hanguk manhwa 100junyon Wiwonhoi [100 Years of Korean Manhwa committee], ed. 2009. Hangukmanhwa 100junyeon [Exhibition 100 Years of Korean Manhwa]. Jeju, Korea: Jeju Museum of Contemporary Art. Han, Sang-jung. 2011. “Manhwajeonsi Casebunsuk 1 Hangukmanhwa 100junyeon kinyeomjeonsi”. (in Korean). http://www.kcomics.net/Magazine/column_view.as p?CateCode=3340013&Seq=1393&Vol=95&intBnum=414_11&page=1&mod e=column_photo (accessed May 10, 2012). Itō, Kimio, ed. 2008. Manga no naka no “tasha” [The “other” in manga]. Kyoto, Japan: Rinsen shoten. Iwabuchi, Kōichi. 2001. Transnational Japan: Asia o tsunagu popular bunka [Transnational Japan: Popular culture connecting Asia]. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. ———. 2002. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

98 Yamanaka Chie ———. 2007. Bunka no taiwaryoku: sofuto pawā to burando nashonarizumu o koete [The dialogic power of culture: Going beyond soft power and brand nationalism]. Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbunsha. ———. 2010. “Undoing Inter-national Fandom in the Age of Brand Nationalism”. Mechademia 5: Fanthropologies: 87–96. “Keobugam gwa Chingeungam Sangbandoin Gamjung Gongzon (Hangugsoge Ilbondejungmunhwa: Jung)” [Aversion and affinity, incompatible feelings; Japanese popular culture within Korea, part 2]. 1994, February 5. Segye Ilbo, p. 14 (in Korean). Kim, Nak-ho. 2007. “Segeei Manhwa tukjip (sang) Hanguk manhwaeui Haewoi jinchool tooleobogi: Mikook, Ilbon, Yooreobe balpyodoin Hangukmanhwaeui baneung”. Image. Seoul Animation Center (in Korean). http://www.ani.seoul.kr/ spThemeClientViewNew.do?idx=2¤tPage=11 (accessed May 10, 2012). Kimura, Kan. 2000. Chōsen/Kankoku nashonarizumu to “shōkoku” ishiki: Chōkōkoku kara kokumin kokka e [Korean nationalism and “small country” consciousness: From tributary country to nation state]. Kyoto, Japan: Minerva shobō. Korea Culture & Content Agency (KOCCA), ed. 2003. La Dynamique de la BD coréenne. Seoul: Communication Books. ———, ed. 2007. Manhwa, Another Discovery in Asian Comics. Seoul: Communication Books. Leem, Hye-Jeong. 2012. “Koo Woo-Young’s ‘Lim Kok-Jeong’ (1972–73), a Dramatic Graphic Narrative (geukhwa) Serialized in a Newspaper”. In Berndt, Manhwa Manga Manhua 11–41. Morley, David, and Kevin Robins. 1995. Spaces of Identity. New York: Routledge. Natsume, Fusanosuke. 1996. “Kaisetsu Tezuka manga to kanji no ayashii kankei” [Explanation: The strange relation between Tezuka’s manga and Sino-Japanese characters]. In Manga no kakikata: nigaoe kara chōhen made [Drawing manga: From portraits to the long format], by Tezuka, Osamu. 244–249. Tokyo: Kōbunsha. ———. 2001. Manga sekai senryaku: kamonegi ka suru manga sangyō [Manga world strategy: The benefitting manga industry]. Tokyo: Shōgakukan. Nye, Joseph S., Jr. 2004. Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics. New York: Public Affairs (Japanese edition, Sofuto pawā: 21-seiki kokusai seiji o seisuru miezaru chikara, trans. by Yamaoka, Yōichi. Tokyo: Nihon keizai shinbunsha, 2004). “ ‘Pal iro’ Sasimnyutol Tashi bunun irubonbaram” [46th anniversary of “August 15” and again a Japanese blast]. 1991, August 12. Dong-a Ilbo, p. 3 (in Korean). Richter, Steffi, ed. 2008. Contested Views of a Common Past: Historical Revisionism in Contemporary East Asia. Frankfurt, Germany: Campus. Schiller, Herbert. 1969. Mass Communication and American Empire. New York: Beacon Press. ———. 1976. Communication and Cultural Domination. New York: M. E. Sharpe. Son, Sang-Ik. 1996. Hanguk manhwa t’ongsa (Sang) [The history of Korean comics, vol. 1]. Seoul: Prespil. ———. 1998. Hanguk manhwa t’ongsa (ha) [The history of Korean comics, vol. 2]. Seoul: Sigongsa. Takekuma, Kentarō. 1995. “Manga ni dessin wa hitsuyō ka” [Does manga need academic drawing?]. In Manga no yomikata [How to read manga] (Bessatsu Takarajima EX 1995). 64–67. Tokyo: Takarajimasha. Takemiya, Keiko. 2003. “Mohō ga sodateru sōzō no dojō” [The soil of creation provided by imitation]. In Yamada, Mohō to sōzō 17–48. Tei, Taikin. 1998. Ilbon no im ji, kankokujin no Nihonkan [The image of Japan: How Koreans view Japan]. Tokyo: Ch ōkōronsha. Tomlinson, John. 1991. Cultural Imperialism: A Critical Introduction. London: Pinter.

Manhwa in Korea

99

Tosa, Masaki. 2004. Kawaru Kankoku, kawaranai Kankoku: Gurōbaru jidai no minzokushi ni mukete [Changing Korea, unchanging Korea: Towards an ethnography for the global age]. Tokyo: Yōsensha. Urry, John. 2003. Global Complexity. Cambridge: Polity. Yamada, Shōji, ed. 2003. Mohō to sōzō no dainamizumu [The dynamism of imitation and creation]. Tokyo: Bensei shuppan. ———, ed. 2010. Kommonzu to bunka: bunka wa dare no mono ka? [Commons and culture: To whom culture belongs]. Tokyo: Tōkyōdō shuppan. Yamanaka, Chie. 2003. “Kankoku ni okeru Nihon manga juyō no ronri” [How Japanese manga is received in Korea]. In Gendai Kankoku Chōsen Kenkyū [The journal of contemporary Korean studies] 2: 34–40. ———. 2006. “Domesticating Manga? National Identity in Korean Comics Culture”. In Berndt and Richter 191–202. ———. 2008a. “Dragon Ball to deatta Kankoku” [Korea meeting “Dragon Ball”]. In Itō 96–131. ———. 2008b. “Manga, Manhwa and Historical Consciousness: Transnational Popular Media and the Narrative De/Construction of Japanese-Korean History”. In Richter 321–338. ———. 2010. “Manga hyōgen keishiki no ekkyō: Kankoku ni okeru mohō kaizokuban manga o jirei toshite” [The border-crossing of manga style: the case of imitated pirated editions in Korea]. In Yamada, Kommonzu to bunka 46–80. Yoo, Soo-Kyung. 2012. “On Differences between Japanese and Korean Comics for Female Readers: Comparing ‘Boys Over Flowers’ to ‘Goong’ ”. In Berndt, Manhwa Manga Manhua 43–78.

6

Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

Picturebooks, comics, and manga1 have much in common: they are rich and complex media, combining images and texts in different formats and playing on the interdependence of these signifying systems. They are strongly determined by a narrative form relying on a sequence of pictures, thus belonging to an art form coined as sequential art by U.S. comics artist Will Eisner. Hence, picturebooks, comics, and manga are distinguished by their multimodal character; they have verbal and visual elements seamlessly combined in multifaceted ways. Another commonality is that they are highly intertextual with their artists drawing on diverse sources from the arts and popular media. Since the end of the 1960s—with forerunners in the first half of the twentieth century—comics and manga2 have come to exert an increasing influence on modern picturebooks. Picturebook artists interested in broadening the aesthetic and narrative possibilities of picturebooks from this time started to integrate typical elements of comics, such as panels, speech bubbles, sound words, speed lines, and cartoon-like depiction of characters, into their work. The adaptation of these elements, in particular the division of the page in multiple panels, the placement of text within the pictures, and the use of lines and symbols to indicate motion or emotional impact, demonstrates that picturebook artists experiment with different pictorial and textual strategies in order to extend the artistic potential of the picturebook medium. Although some scholars, such as David Lewis (2001) and Maria Nikolajeva and Carole Scott (2001), refer to this impact in passing, this relationship has to present hardly been investigated.3 When attempting a thorough analysis of the impact of comics and manga on picturebooks, several questions come to the fore: Why do picturebook artists refer to (draw on) comics and manga? Do they intend to enhance the aesthetic and narrative quality of picturebooks? When the images in picturebooks are arranged in a panel format, what is the difference between picturebooks, comics, and manga? Finally, is the latter tendency responsible for the development of a new book form that can be characterized as a blending of picturebook and comics? While most people have an idea, albeit intuitive, of what a typical picturebook, comics, or manga is, it is not easy to draw a strict dividing line

Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks

101

between these genres. Significant differences appear to consist of the target group, the reading process and reading direction, the number of pages, the use of color, the visual style, and the dispersal of images and text on the pages. However, on closer consideration, these aspects do not really contribute to an exact demarcation between these genres. This is mainly due to the convergence of picturebooks, comics, and manga, and strengthened by the globalization of the book market and the tendency to create artworks that are characterized by transcultural and intermedial features. In general, picturebooks are considered as children’s literature, targeted at children of preschool and primary school age, while comics and manga address divergent age groups, ranging from children and adolescents up to adults. However, the increasing sophistication of modern picturebooks and a growing shift toward addressing both children and adults on different levels have led to the creation of picturebooks that transgress the borders of children’s literature. As a result, these crossover picturebooks have been responsible for the recent introduction of picturebooks for adults, an upcoming trend that started in Scandinavian countries and has quickly spread to other European countries.4 This development has far-reaching consequences for their reception and the reading process as well. Attentive looking at picturebooks by children of preschool age is guided in a joint interaction between child and adult mediator who usually reads the text aloud, prompting the child to listen to the text and to scrutinize the illustrations for additional information. This specific reading situation entices a dialogue in which adult and child comment on the text and the pictures. By contrast, comics and manga do not cater to reading aloud; they demand a skilled reader who is able to decipher the text in the speech balloons and text blocks and decode the visual symbols and signs in the pictures. Closing this gap somewhat, crossover picturebooks and picturebooks for adults elicit a change in reading process, relying on the viewer’s capacity to read the books silently. In addition, the incorporation of text into the images, a typical feature of comics and manga, also increasingly occurs in picturebooks. For this reason, the claim that the simultaneousness of seeing and reading is a unique feature of comics tends to lose validity. While these observations already indicate that the boundaries between picturebooks, comics, and manga have begun to blur, the third criterion, number of pages, still marks a certain shift between these print media. A picturebook usually consists of four octavo sheets (thirty-two pages), while comics and manga are generally not created as a single book, but as a series that comprises up to ten and even more volumes.5 Although the rise and success of the graphic novel has resulted in comics and manga that are printed in single volume(s), their length is definitely not restricted to thirty-two pages. Another important point of difference that catches the eye is the use of color. Picturebooks usually have full-color drawings or photographs, while manga and to a certain extent also western comics tend to be monochrome. Yet, even picturebooks once in a while have black-and-white drawings so that

102 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer this aspect is not adequate either to emphasize the difference between picturebooks, comics, and manga. All three appear in a vast range of visual styles, but what they nearly all have in common is that they reduce the detail of the visible world in terms of color, shape, and texture, and that they typically employ outlines to depict objects.6 Thus, cartooning is not restricted to comics and manga but also appears in picturebooks. Over the last hundred years, cartoonists as well as picturebook artists have developed an immense repertoire of visual signs that have been passed on to their successors.7 Surprisingly, these visual codes only slightly differ in picturebooks, comics, and manga. Finally, the last criterion, relationship between images and text, seemingly touches on the seminal difference between these genres at first glance. The double spreads in picturebooks generally show a single image or two images with a text printed beneath, besides, or above the illustration, whereas the images in comics and manga consist of a panel sequence, most commonly between six and twelve in number per page.8 Nevertheless, it would be wrong to imagine that reading a picturebook is a simpler operation in comparison to comics and manga. Although the text is usually short and can be read in a short space of time, the pictures need more time, if their details and meaning are to be deciphered. Whereas the picturebook text urges the reader to turn the page, the illustration interrupts this progressive reading process and requires the viewer to consider the depicted scenery. Becoming alert to the way in which a written text constantly pushes the reader on while a picture stops her in her tracks and slows down the reading process is the first requirement for the reader in her appreciation of picturebooks. On closer consideration, a lot of pleasure in reading comics, manga, and picturebooks is filling in all the blank space beyond each panel and each illustration. In fact, these genres omit far more visual information than they include. They display series of deliberately chosen visual impressions that do not present the time between or the space around illustrations and panels. One gauge of the challenge of picturebooks, comics, and manga is how much they excite the imagination—what the reader perceives beyond and between the borders of their single pictures and panels. Given the commonalities between these three genres, highlighted in this short overview, it is all the more astonishing to realize that neither picturebook research nor comics and manga research pay attention to each other,9 even though their academic interests overlap in addressing the same issue: to thoroughly investigate the narrative and visual constraints of a medium that is distinguished by a close juxtaposition of verbal and visual elements that complement each other. Indeed, the consolidation of their respective theoretical frameworks and research results would entail meaningful crossfertilization since the multimodal character of these genres begs for an interdisciplinary approach. Because of the complexity of the issues shaping picturebooks, comics, and manga, a comprehensive historical survey is beyond the scope of this chapter—this would demand a full-fledged study—but it will discuss some

Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks

103

of the representative picturebooks that reflect the gradually increasing impact of comics and manga and, thus, hopefully, trigger further exchange and exploration of this realm. SHIFTS IN PICTUREBOOK ART SINCE THE END OF THE 1960S Although single comics elements, such as speech balloons, speed lines, onomatopoeia, and arrangement of illustrations in panels, had already appeared in picturebooks in the first half of the twentieth century,10 the strict separation of picturebooks and comics as different genres began to noticeably blur in the period from the end of the 1960s to the beginning of the 1970s with the emergence of picturebooks strongly influenced by the pop art movement. Pop art is characterized by a permanent transgression of boundaries, for example, the shift between fine art and popular art/culture; the contrast (clouding of divisions) between original artwork and reproduction; the revitalization of the European avant-garde, such as surrealism and Dada; and the indebtedness to the codes and technical processes of mass media. Pop art mostly deals with materials that already exist as signs, for instance, photographs, comics, advertisements, newspapers, and other “pre-coded material” (Alloway 1997, 170). The artists were interested in extending aesthetic attention to the mass media and absorbing mass media material within the context of art. Pop art picturebooks, such as Story No 1 (1968) by Eugène Ionesco and Etienne Delessert, The Land of Yellow (1970) by Peter Max, and Maicki Astromaus (1970) by Frederic Brown and Heinz Edelmann, arrange images in different panel formats; include speech bubbles, onomatopoeia, and speed lines; and depict their main characters in a cartoon-like style, to name just a few techniques influenced by comics art.11 Nevertheless, the references to comics in pop art picturebooks are not predominant; they are combined with intertextual allusions to other art forms and media, such as film, photography, painting, and theater, thus contributing to the increasing artistic and thematic complexity of modern picturebooks.12 While allusions to comics in pop art picturebooks might be regarded as ancillary features that account for the picturebooks’ aesthetic and narrative enrichment, it is far more enthralling to investigate picturebooks that are dominated by references to comics and manga on multiple levels, thus making porous the strict border between these genres. A case in point is the British illustrator Raymond Briggs, who continuously employs a visual language that owes much to comics, film, and animated cartoons. Briggs’s The Snowman (1978) illustrates the power of the comic-strip format to express meaning, emotions, and narrative, even without supporting text. The colored pencil drawings tell the story of a young boy whose snowman comes alive at nighttime. The boy invites the snowman into the house, shows him his bedroom, decorates him with some of his father’s clothes, and feasts on a secret meal in the kitchen. As a reward, the snowman takes the boy for a ride through the

104 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer night, flying over a snowy landscape. After their return, they say farewell to each other. When the boy awakens the next morning, he runs into the garden but sadly has to accept that the snowman has melted in the morning sun. The pages in this book show picture sequences arranged in panels, ranging from four up to twelve panels. Two large pictures that cover a whole double spread highlight the story’s climax: the snowman’s flight with bird’seye view on the British coast and the pier at Brighton. The Snowman demands a skilled reader who understands the grammar of the comic, for example, an understanding that the panels are not separate images of different boys but a series of images of the same boy that should be read from left to right, and from top to bottom, unfolding over time. Since this story has no text, the comic format with the sequence of panels was used in order to close narrative gaps, illustrating the thrilling adventures of the boy and the snowman. Changes in panel size stress temporal aspects, time shifts, and the extension of time, for example, when the snowman cools his hands in the refrigerator or when both sit at the kitchen table piled with plates and dishes. Those pages that display ten to twelve panels are distinguished by depicting either repetitive action, such as going into the house to fetch some things (hat, carrot, shawl, coals) for the snowman’s decoration, or by showing a short action from different angles. Close-up scenes change with sceneries in midshot and panorama views, therefore revealing the influence of film perspectives.13 Since the encounter between snowman and boy happens at night, the viewer might be uncertain whether this fantastic adventure really happens or whether it is a dream, so that the story oscillates between two different states of mind. The second interpretation seems to be manifest because the boy is lying in bed at the beginning and the end of the inner story. If the story is interpreted as a dream, the adventures experienced by the young boy might be regarded as visualized scenes from his imagination, presenting a “mindscape”14 that is fully developed in the multiple panels. The task to depict imaginings, emotions, and psychic conditions is quite a challenge for picturebook artists. While some artists use the accompanying text to refer to the figures’ reflections and ideas, others rely first of all on the illustrations to highlight emotional and cognitive processes. To accomplish the latter, the artists have developed different visual strategies to pinpoint these individual states, for example, gradations in colorings, thought balloons, changes of scale, and contrast between foreground and background. The arrangement of events that belong to the “mindscape” in a panel sequence allows creators to more fully developing a concise and coherent story. While the oblong book format with thirty-two pages and the multicolored drawings15 argue for categorization as a picturebook, the permanent panel structure and the cartoon-like depiction of the characters, on the other hand, suggest that The Snowman could be classified as comics as well. Interestingly, both suggestions exist side by side. Picturebook researchers still characterize Briggs’s work as picturebook. Nevertheless, on different

Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks

105

websites, The Snowman and other picturebooks created by Briggs, such as Fungus the Bogeyman (1977) and The Bear (1994), are promoted as “comic books”, “cartoon books”, and “picturebooks”, respectively.16 In an interview with the journalist Rachel Cooke from The Observer, Briggs suggested “strip cartoon” as a suitable term, although he admitted that he prefers the French “bande dessinée” (Cooke 2008). He also complained that comics are still not accepted as a high-level art form in England. When he was awarded the renowned Kate Greenaway Medal in 1974 for Father Christmas (1973), he received irate letters afterward asserting that this picturebook is nothing but trash and should not be given to children.17 Nowadays Briggs is regarded as a pioneer who paved the way for other picturebook artists whose hallmarks are hybrid forms, generated by a juxtaposition of picturebook and comics. It is no wonder then that most of these artists, such as John Burningham, Shaun Tan,18 and David Wiesner, refer to Briggs’s picturebooks as their role models. The influence of comics on Wiesner’s illustrations is apparent, and some of his picturebooks use panels to tell their story.19 Even the books that do not include panels have a sense of movement and animation that explicitly show the influence of comics and film. While Briggs’s picturebooks show a tendency to symmetrically arrange the panels, almost always putting a gutter between the single panels, Wiesner goes a step further insofar as he collocates separate pictures in diverse framings and sizes with overlapping panels, sometimes even creating metapanels with inserted single panels in different sizes. Hence, he is able to create quite complex sequences that combine different perspectives and time shifts. He uses this artistic strategy to perfection in Flotsam (2006), a picturebook dealing with the topic of photography: a boy playing at the beach finds an old-fashioned camera from the turn of the century that was washed on to the shore. After the negatives of the film that was inside the camera have been developed, he makes an astonishing discovery. The photos show underwater sceneries never been seen before: an octopus family sits in a living room watching TV and looking at picturebooks, enormous starfishes with little islands on their backs slide through the ocean, and alien invaders explore the underwater world, guarded by sea horses and mermaids. In the last photo, the boy sees another boy that directly gazes at the viewer, holding a photo in his hand. On this photo, another child who also holds a photo can be seen. This mise-en-abyme strategy reveals that several children from different countries, different continents, and different time periods had made photos with the old camera. The boy follows in their steps, putting a new film into the camera, taking a photo of himself with the last photo of the other boy beside his face, and then throwing the camera into the waves. An apparent example of the sophisticated narrative structure is a double spread that shows the boy running from the beach to a photo shop where he waits for an hour to get the developed negatives and prints, after which he returns to the beach where he takes a close look at the photos (Figure 6.1).

106 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer

Figure 6.1 Illustration from Flotsam by David Wiesner. © 2006 by David Wiesner. Reprinted with permission of Clarion Books, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

While the rectangular pictures on the verso are framed by fine black lines, separated by small white gutters, the illustration on the recto displays a metapanel with an enlarged image of the boy’s right eye staring intently at a photo. Overlain on this metapanel are three single panels on the left side, increasing in size from top to bottom. The first panel shows the boy running to the beach; the second, the boy sitting on the sand and opening the envelope; and the third, the boy’s surprised expression emphasized by eyes that are wide open, lifted eyebrows, and a half-open mouth. However, the viewer is not able to see what the boy sees since the panels just show the rear side of the photo. Only after turning the page is the viewer confronted with a large image covering the whole double spread that shows the first image of the strange underwater world. In Flotsam, the arrangement of images in panels serves two functions. In general, it allows for the presentation of a complex wordless story without exceeding the usual thirty-two-page picturebook format. In particular, this pictorial strategy enables the visualization of temporal flows on the one hand and the boy’s changing cognitive and emotional states on the other. A seven-panel sequence therefore serves to illustrate the

Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks

107

time elapsed in sixty minutes, conveyed by the boy’s increasing impatience while waiting in front of the photo shop. The metapanel, however, visualizes a short time period of about three to five minutes. While the first panel shows the running boy, the subsequent panels seem to retard the progression of time, even denoting a frozen moment with the close-up on the boy’s face. Wiesner’s mastering of the picturebook format is additionally revealed by the use of camera perspectives, such as zoom, close-up, depth of field in focus, and the emphasis of diverse picture details. Therefore, Wiesner connects the book’s topic with structural and thematic references to photography, strengthening the story’s validity. These different visual strategies imply a rather sophisticated and fully developed mastery of various visual media that challenge the viewer in different respects since they presuppose a basic knowledge of the different symbolic systems raised by the juxtaposition of picturebook, comics, and photography.20 The arrangement of single images in a panel format largely contributes to an elongation of the traditional picturebook format. This page layout allows for the extension of the picturebook story in general, and for the inclusion of more information about the characters’ emotional and cognitive conditions in particular. Moreover, looking attentively at the images and text, whether alone or in a joint reading process, demands certain skills that are usually acquired over the course of many years. One might suppose that a deep engagement with these picturebooks would prepare the child viewer for a better understanding and handling of different visual media that are characterized by the juxtaposition of text and images. In a globalized world where different media ever more intricately refer to each other and where even young children are confronted with complex visual information, the demands on their acquisition and cognition of visual literacy continuously increase. A picturebook that includes elements from comics might prepare children to recognize equivalent visual codes in comics and vice versa—keeping in mind that some children might be more used to looking at comics than at picturebooks. THE IMPACT OF MANGA ON PICTUREBOOKS While the picturebooks by Briggs, Wiesner, and other renowned European and U.S. artists show the impact of western comics, they usually do not exhibit the influence of Japanese manga.21 Nevertheless, manga’s significant role in modern global children’s culture is evident if one considers merchandising products, such as “Hello Kitty” and “Pokémon”, which greatly determine western perceptions of Japanese popular culture (West 2008). These merchandising products convey reduced (simplified) and stylized images of characters that are influenced by manga and anime. Moreover, the worldwide success of How to Draw Manga books has caused a huge trend among young manga fans that has not subsided to date. What makes these books so important in the flow of manga, then, is its implication that Japanese

108 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer cultural industries are exporting not simply a product but also the process of making the product. To this extent, scholars, such as Iwabuchi (2000) and Kinsella (2000), argue that the manga’s popularity is a direct result of its emphasis on universally understood visuals.22 This understanding stresses manga’s globally recognized qualities and the ease of their absorption into any regional or domestic market. Rather than claiming that manga have a particularly resilient Japanese aesthetic, these scholars point to their modern history and the influence of American and European comics and animation styles on manga form, making manga itself a convergent media form—a Japanese adaptation of American and European practices that has come full circle and led to a backdrop of Japanese manga aesthetics in contemporary American and European comics, and even on picturebook art (Rass 2012). The growing interest of children and adolescents in manga has prompted artists to create manga versions of famous children’s classics. In this respect, they follow in the footsteps of the popular Illustrated Classics series of the 1950s and 1960s in the attempt to shed new light on traditional texts. Startling was Kinoshita Sakura’s version of Alice in Wonderland (2006), a full-color manga in a picturebook format that interpictorially refers to the animation film released by the Disney Studios in 1951 (director: Clyde Geronimi). What particularly catches the eye is the fact that Alice changes her clothes, hair color, and hairstyle in each chapter, probably an allusion to those shōjō manga that focus on a CosPlay motif. This is additionally stressed by Alice’s huge accentuated eyes, sheepish smile, and at times bemused facial expression. The background usually shows no details, often left blank, with a tendency to bifacial retouch. The text is printed in speech balloons; onomatopoetic expressions (onpos) appear outside the balloons but remain inside the panels. The panels generally concentrate on the main figures and show them from different perspectives and in different settings. Quite unusual are panels that display a story sequence, as, for example, the panel about the mock turtle: while the turtle is depicted in the panel’s foreground, her story is shown by a sequence of small pictures in the background whose correct succession is indicated by tiny arrows. The German illustrator and cartoonist David Füleki was commissioned by the publisher Tokyopop to create a newly illustrated version of Heinrich Hoffmann’s famous picturebook Der Struwwelpeter (Slovenly Peter, 1845) in commemoration of the author’s two-hundredth birthday. One condition was that the illustrations should be drawn in manga style. Füleki was so enthusiastic about this assignment that he produced two different versions. Struwwelpeter. Das große Buch der Störenfriede (Struwwelpeter. The big book of troublemakers, 2009) is a picturebook for children in which Füleki illustrated the original verses written by Hoffmann. The artist strictly kept to Hoffmann’s page layout, but he sometimes reduced the number of illustrations per page in order to emphasize the figures’ exaggerated gestures and facial expressions (Figure 6.2).

Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks

109

Figure 6.2 Illustration from Struwwelpeter. Das große Buch der Störenfriede by David Füleki (text by Heinrich Hoffmann). © 2000 David Füleki. Reprinted with permission of Tokyopop.

With this artistic strategy, Füleki succeeded in stressing the verses’ ironic undertones that had been hardly acknowledged by Hoffmann’s contemporaries and that later readers often misconstrued, thinking of the original version as a didactic manual. Füleki’s second picturebook, Struwwelpeter. Die Rückkehr (Struwwelpeter. The return, 2000), is addressed toward adolescents and young adults. It tells a completely new story, based on the figures displayed in Hoffmann’s Der Struwwelpeter: After returning from a long journey around the world, Struwwelpeter recognizes that everything has changed during his absence. The government, represented by the severe Nikolaus with the inkpot and the wild huntsman, has enacted

110 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer a law that prohibits all mischief and pranks. Struwwelpeter assembles his mates, well-known troublemakers, such as Cruel Frederick, Fidgety Philipp, Harriet with the Matches, and Soupy-Kaspar. Together they attack the government in order to reinstall the old “order”, thus giving free reign to chaos and anarchy. The harassers’ cruelty as an answer to the government’s brutality provoked negative reactions from concerned educationalists, while people already accustomed to manga aesthetics pointed out the satirical and parodist aspects of Füleki’s manga version. The numerous allusions to contemporary films, for example Clockwork Orange (United Kingdom, 1971, director: Stanley Kubrick) and Fight Club (United States, 1999, director: David Fincher), and to comics, such as X-Men (1975 ff.) and Superman (1935 ff.), explicitly refer to media popular among young people and adults. While Füleki’s picturebook for children has full-color illustrations throughout, the second version is printed in black and white; just the book cover and the first image are printed in full color. Nevertheless, Füleki adopted different strategies so that his Struwwelpeter books differ not only in content but also in style. Where the picturebook that is targeted at a child audience does not have any panels at all, the other version is characterized by continuous sequences of panels in different formats. Quite contrary to this approach, other picturebook artists consciously refrain from the remediation of popular western children’s stories and fairy tales. Instead, they frequently refer to Japanese folklore and make prevalent use of Japanese settings. A case in point is Three Samurai Cats (2003) by Eric Kimmel, which relies on an adaptation of the popular Japanese legend The Swordsman and the Cat. The captivating and witty illustrations by Mordicai Gerstein pay homage to the famed Japanese artist Hokusai and Japanese anime and manga. The main protagonists are presented as anthropomorphized animals (dogs, cats, rats) that wear typical Japanese clothing from the Edo period, such as samurai armor, the garments of a Zen Buddhist (senior monk), and the noble costume of a diamyō (feudal lord). In addition, the faces of the monk, the samurai cats, and the diamyō are painted like masks from Nō theater. The depiction of landscapes and buildings is influenced by Hokusai’s woodcuts, but the representation of the figures, their movements, gestures, and facial expressions distinctly reveal Gerstein’s close study of manga. The arrangement of the panels (3–7) on the page roughly follows the Japanese reading direction from right top to left bottom, whereas the book itself follows the western reading direction, from front cover to back cover. This controversial conceptual design largely contributes to a shift in viewing and challenges the reader’s attentiveness and reading skills (Figure 6.3). The more the organization of a page or double spread deviates from habitual reading schemata, the more demanding this process becomes (Gardner 2012, 172). Speed lines that sometimes transgress the boundaries of the panels suggest dynamics and powerful motion, culminating in multiple replications of arms and legs to emphasize exuberant furor. The impression of excessive

Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks

111

Figure 6.3 Illustration from Three Samurai Cats. A Story of Japan by Eric A. Kimmel. © 2003 by Mordicai Gerstein. Reprinted with permission of Holiday House.

action is modified by the text that is printed as a separate block beside the panels. Neither speech balloons nor sound words are employed, so that the viewer is not distracted from the figures. The presentation of the background also bears witness to the impact of manga. When a new setting is introduced, the location is shown in detail in the first image. Nonetheless, following this distinct picture, the subsequent illustrations only denote the setting by including a pattern, like the castle’s tile flooring and the shrine’s wooden planks that function as backgrounds, thus highlighting the figures and their actions.

112 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer ALLEN SAY AND THE EMERGENCE OF INTERCULTURAL PICTUREBOOK ART It remains to be noted that Three Samurai Cats is an erratic sidestep among Gerstein’s complete oeuvre, since it is the only picturebook that makes reference to Japanese art and manga. Regarding this, the pivotal question arises as to whether there are artists living in the western hemisphere whose picturebooks by and large are inspired by manga. In this regard, one of the most intriguing artists is the U.S. picturebook illustrator Allen Say. Praised for his unusual topics that most often strive for transcultural issues, and for his distinguished and artistic mastery of color, image layout, and setting, it is hardly known that Say studied the art of manga23 and cartoons in Japan when he was in his teens. Allen Say, born James Allen Kōichi Moriwaki Seii in Yokohama in 1937, was of half Japanese and half Korean descent. His Japanese grandparents immigrated to the United States, raised their daughter in California, and returned with her to Japan. There she married a Korean who grew up as an orphan adopted by a British family in Japan. After his parents’ divorce, their only son Allen lived with his mother and later with his grandmother. Although cartoons were already extremely popular in Japan, the profession of mangaka was not considered prestigious by middleclass Japanese society when Say was growing up. Nevertheless, driven by an overwhelming desire to master the art of manga, Say secretly became apprenticed to the cartoonist Noro Shinpei in 1949, when he was twelve years old. In 1953 he immigrated with his father to the United States where he spent a short time at a military school. After being expelled for smoking a cigarette, he earned his living as a sign painter and photographer. At the end of the 1980s, he was approached by the publisher Houghton Mifflin to illustrate the Japanese folktale The Boy of the Three-Year Nap, retold by Dianne Snyder. With this work, published in 1988, Say started to make his career as picturebook artist, receiving the prestigious Caldecott Medal for Grandfather’s Journey (1993) in 1994. Prominent features of his more than twenty picturebooks are the concentration on Japanese and Japanese American characters and a preference for autobiographical topics, alluding to his own life experiences, but also to his parents’ and grandparents’ biographies. However Say confessed in his autobiographical texts The Ink-keeper’s Apprentice (1979), targeted at an adult audience, and Drawing from Memory (2011), written and drawn for children, that he had burnt all of his drawings and sketchbooks (2011, 56). At first, Say interpreted his action as an act of liberation, erasing his former career as manga cartoonist. Nevertheless, Say later admitted that Shinpei24 was his “spiritual father” who supported him in his drawing experiences and opened his eyes for the beauty of nature, the human body, and art (Loer 2003). During his apprenticeship, Say devoted himself to copying Shinpei’s style and to the rendering of his pages, but he also copied modern western art, such as the paintings of Henri Matisse and Vincent van Gogh. Moreover, Shinpei encouraged him to visit

Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks

113

exhibitions and museums. This early encounter with different artistic styles definitely contributed to Say’s later achievements in picturebook art. Noro Shinpei, pen name for Tauchi Masao (1915–2002), was a manga artist and cartoonist who has more or less fallen into obscurity nowadays.25 While his early manga, created in the 1940s, display exotic adventures with ferocious dinosaurs and wild animals, he later replaced these scary characters by funny versions of so-called kappa. These are mischievous creatures from Japanese folklore, about the size of children, with scales on their arms and legs and a shell on their back like a tortoise. They live in rivers and ponds and are always making trouble. However, his most famous characters are Marumi-chan and Democracy-chan. The detective manga MarumiChan (serialized from 1957) centers on a young girl living in feudal Japan that is distinguished by her intelligence and ability to deductively solve mysterious incidents. The strip Democracy-chan appeared from 1947 in the journal Tokyo Gakudō Shinbun (Tokyo newspaper for school children). The cartoon’s extraordinary position is stressed by the protagonist’s uncommon name. The Japanese pronunciation of the English term democracy certainly sounded exotic in those days, but it also referred to the modernization of Japan after the Second World War. Say even claims that the character Ky suke introduced in this strip at the beginning of the 1950s is his own portrait (2011, 39). In memory of his “sensei”, Say included a selection of Shinpei’s manga drawings into his memoir Drawing from Memory, which combines written text with photos, maps, and drawings in black and white and full color. Say uses different narrative and artistic strategies: some pages exhibit panels that visually retell his autobiographical story, while other pages bring to mind a picturebook with huge images on each double spread, the accompanying text printed beneath or beside the illustrations. Those scenes referring to Say’s apprenticeship in Shinpei’s studio are depicted in black and white as a reference to his master in particular and to manga artistry in general. Drawing from Memory clearly shows the different artistic techniques and influences that inspire Say’s picturebook art, ranging from Japanese “manga” in the tradition of Shinpei and Hokusai’s woodcuts to European paintings from the Renaissance to early modernism and modern U.S. art (Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, and Diego Rivera). For this reason, this hybrid book, oscillating between graphic novel, sketchbook, and narrative history, might be regarded as the author’s personal bequest. But also Say’s picturebooks clearly reveal the early schooling in Shinpei’s studio that was later complemented by his experiences as sign painter and photographer. Because of his own immigrant experience, Say started to explore cross-cultural encounters in his diverse picturebooks, such as Tree of Cranes (1993), Tea with Milk (1999), and Erika-san (2009), which are all characterized by the meeting of two cultures mingled with autobiographical reminiscences. Although many picturebook artists with a multicultural and multilingual background attempt to juxtapose various artistic styles, both

114 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer from their native countries/cultures and their new home countries, Say is one of the few artists who definitely includes references to Japanese manga into their picturebooks. The influence of manga on his early picturebooks is apparent, even though it is more or less hidden in his later works.26 This is quite evident when looking carefully at The Boy of the Three-Year Nap (1988): its illustrations contrast the depiction of idyllic landscapes and living spaces with the presentation of the main protagonists whose features and crafty actions reveal the influence of cartoons. This contrast heightens the humor of the story, but most of all it demonstrates the blending and mixing of eastern and western artistic styles. The story is based on a Japanese folktale about a poor widow and her lazy son. Both use trickery to reach their goals. The boy who is in love with a rich merchant’s daughter fools the merchant into arranging the marriage, while his mother also uses trickery to convince the merchant to build her a house and give her son a good job. The pictorial paratexts and the opening pages explicitly show that Say combines traditional Japanese painting, including references to Hokusai’s well-known woodcuts, with cartoon elements, thus building up a contrast between the beautiful and harmonious settings and the exaggerated comiclike drawn characters.27 Although the story, supported by the illustration, starts with a serene mood that emphasizes the poverty of the widow and her son, the title page that shows the silhouette of a yawning boy with a funny haircut set against gentle night scenery already indicates the book’s humorous subtext. The meticulous depiction of the settings and the cartoon-like flat representation of figures are notably evident in an illustration that shows the widow’s decrepit living room with the widow situated in the middle of the image listening to the merchant’s story, while her son covers his mouth with his hand to hide his grin. The merchant’s caricatured features and his exaggerated gestures are unmistakably influenced by cartoon style (Figure 6.4). Other illustrations highlight this impact by placing the figures against a monochrome background to draw the viewer’s attention to the protagonists’ facial and gestural expressions which function as visual cues symbolizing their emotional states. Whereas the opening pages evoke a serious story about a poor widow’s struggle for wealth and esteem, the reader’s expectations are distracted by the vivid dialogues between mother and son who attempt to outwit each other, and by the unusual body language and lack of background detail. This sudden shift underlines the humorous effect, given extra emphasis by the ironic juxtaposition of text and image. The rhythm of text and illustrations swerves between lulling and harmonious passages, as well as double spreads that emphasize the comical aspects of the story. The images become more cartoonlike as the text turns into a humorous presentation of the scowling merchant, the naughty boy, and the astute widow. The climax of the story is shown in close-up scenery, showing the boy and his prospective father-in-law. The merchant’s popping eyeballs, buckteeth, and deflated cap recall the humorous

Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks

115

Figure 6.4 Illustration from The Boy of the Three-Year Nap by Dianne Snyder. Illustration © 1988 by Allen Say. Reprinted with permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.

manga depictions in Shinpei’s work, while the accompanying text with its solemn style builds up an ironic contrast to the illustrations.28 Hence, the images demonstrate Say’s capacity to reinforce the Japanese origin of the folktale. The reverence for nature is apparent in the simple and harmonious composition; the colors are subtle without gradation, thus stressing the flatness of figures and scenery. Other illustrations, however, with their tendency for details painstakingly executed, lend a note of depth to the picturebook that is distinguished by this type of meticulous combination of diverse artistic techniques. As a skilled artist, Say is able to develop an ironic relationship between text and image on the one hand, and between the idyllic mood of settings and the exaggerated depiction of characters on the other. He balances the humor with the harmony of composition and serenity of traditional Japanese paintings. Although Say firmly grounds the story in Japanese culture, he nevertheless succeeds in opening up a wider dimension. This yields toward the insinuated maturation of the boy over the course of the story, indicated not only by the tongue-in-check ending of the

116 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer picturebook’s story but also by placing the story in a majestic rural setting, thus putting the reader at a distance. Say’s artistic style undoubtedly reflects the blending of cultures that influenced his youth and his artistic training. His picturebooks in general demonstrate a mixture of three different impacts: an artistic sense of harmony and simplicity due to his close study of Japanese woodcuts and paintings; a mastery of line, action, and division into compartments, which he learnt as Shinpei’s disciple; and the western artistic tradition of realism and color scheme, acquired through his early education in museums and through his job as sign painter. The hybridity of Say’s picturebooks—where distinctive Japanese aesthetics and western cultural forms coexist—may be considered as part of a global approach to the indigenization of foreign culture. Hybridity occurs when one cultural space absorbs and transforms elements from another, as Henry Jenkins (2008) states: “a hybrid work thus exists betwixt and between two cultural traditions while providing a path that can be explored from both directions” (114). In this regard, Say’s picturebooks are distinguished by a collision between different worldviews, borrowing from different cultures, mixing cultural signs and symbols to create intercultural, even intermedial, artworks. CONCLUSION Picturebooks have undergone considerable changes since the 1980s, since their artistic effects have developed considerably due to extensive experimentation with the interplay of text and illustration. Picturebook research confirms that picturebooks are a subtle and complex art form that can communicate on many levels and leave a deep imprint on the child’s developing appreciation of multimodal media.29 This development is discernible in different respects, covering diverse aesthetic strategies. While several of these strategies have been investigated in depth over the last decade, the survey of the impact of other multimodal media, such as comics, manga, and film, on picturebooks is still just in its early stages. The picturebooks discussed in this chapter prove that the adoption of aspects of comics and manga definitely contribute to innovation in modern picturebooks insofar they require a skilled readership that is capable of recognizing the multiple relations between text and image on the one hand, and the ability to deduce the intertextual and intermedial allusions to comics and manga on the other hand. The hybrid juxtaposition of these genres shows the conspicuous dynamic changes that have occurred in the realm of picturebook design and that open them up for new ideas and concepts. Further, the picturebooks presented in this chapter deploy techniques employed by comics and manga, showing the high degree of hybridity, intertextuality, and experimentation. Though picturebooks have traditionally been associated with children, it

Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks

117

has been argued that this needs not be so, and that these forms have had their adult audiences as well. Perhaps, with the range of innovations and increased sophistication being currently witnessed, the trend toward crossover works will continue to increase.

NOTES 1. This notion refers to Japanese story manga, whereas comics is used to refer to sequential art disseminated and produced in Europe and the United States. 2. The differences and commonalities of comics and manga will not be discussed in detail here. See Groensteen (2007) and Schodt (1996, 22ff) for more detailed information. 3. It should be emphasized, though, that this relationship is more or less unidirectional, since picturebooks do not seem to have had a decisive impact on the aesthetic and narrative development of modern comics and manga as of yet. 4. The concept of crossover picturebooks has been analyzed by Beckett (2011), while the articles in Sipe and Pantaleo (2008) investigate the impact of postmodernism on the development of picturebooks that address a dual audience of children and adults. 5. Picturebook series exist as well, but these generally do not exceed five to ten volumes in number. In contrast to many comic or manga artists, picturebook artists usually do not set out from the start to create a series. 6. See, for instance, Wolk (2007 120ff). 7. Scott McCloud (1993) has developed a detailed taxonomy of the unique codes of cartooning and of visual interfaces employed in general, demonstrating how the abstraction of cartoons functions for the reader. Most of his observations could be transferred to describe the impact and functions of picturebooks in almost the same manner. 8. Special types are wordless picturebooks, comics, and manga, where the story is exclusively told by the picture sequence. 9. An exception to the rule is Spaulding’s study (1995) that focuses on storyboard picturebooks (i.e., picturebooks whose images are arranged in a panel or storyboard format). 10. For instance, Freda Derrick’s The Ark Book (1920) and Helen Sewell and Eleska’s Three Tall Tales (1947) have speech bubbles inserted into the pictures. 11. See Kümmerling-Meibauer and Meibauer (2011) for a detailed analysis of some typical pop art picturebooks. 12. This development contradicts the strict rejection of comics as suitable reading matter for children since the 1950s in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Denigrated as trash that seduces and even menaces children’s innocent minds, pedagogical concerns led to a campaign against comic magazines for children. The German “Schmutz und Schund” debate is largely responsible for the vehement repudiation of comics as a serious art form in German-speaking countries that is still prevalent nowadays. However, comics have more or less infiltrated picturebooks, thus entering an art form that has been highly regarded in pedagogy circles as suitable reading material for children of preschool and primary school age. 13. This picturebook was released as a short animated film in 1982 (director: Dianne Jackson).

118 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer 14. The notion mindscape was suggested by Nikolajeva and Scott (2001) in referring to the capacity of complex picturebooks to represent their protagonists’ inner minds and imaginations. 15. Most of the picturebooks with a panel structure have full-color illustrations. However, a rare example is Shirley Hughes’s Up and Up (1979) that uses black-and-white drawings throughout. The only concession to picturebook conventions is the consistent use of light-yellow coloring in the panels’ backgrounds. 16. See, for instance, http://www.thesnowman.co.uk (accessed July 22, 2012); http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Snowman (accessed July 22, 2012); and http://literature.britishcouncil.org/raymond-briggs (accessed July 22, 2012). 17. See Cooke (2008), http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/10/booksforchildrenandteenagers (accessed July 13, 2012). 18. Shaun Tan explicitly states that he learned from Scott McCloud and from Japanese manga (particularly on timing for silent sequences) when drawing The Arrival (2006). See Tan’s comments on The Arrival on his website at http://www.shauntan.net/books/the-arrival.html. 19. Flotsam marks a peak in Wiesner’s picturebook creation, but his interest in comics and sequential art had already started in his childhood, as he admitted in an interview in 2001. He confessed that he especially favored the comic books created by Jimi Steranko, a disciple of the famous Jack Kirby. See “Interview with David Wiesner” (2001). 20. Researchers in the realm of visual literacy claim that these different symbolic systems constitute a sort of visual “grammar”. This grammar is not innate but should be acquired in a long-term process (Kress and van Leeuwen 1996). Similar ideas inform the study of Ingulsrud and Allen (2009), which postulates this in an investigation of manga literacy. 21. The influence of Japanese art on European picturebooks is apparent in works of the second half of the nineteenth century, when picturebook artists, such as Ivan Bilibin, Carl Otto Czeschka, Walter Crane, Boutet de Monvel, and William Nicholson, all picked up on the artistic trend of Japonism. 22. However, it has to be stressed that this position is not unproblematic, since many critics have also claimed that the visuals in manga are not easily understandable for western people. Iwabuchi and Kinsella refer to a shift in perspective, considering the fact that the U.S. version of Nakazawa Keiji’s Hadashi no Gen (Barefoot Gen) had been rejected by The Comics Journal in 1981. 23. In this regard, the notion of manga refers not only to story manga but also to cartoons and comic strips that were usually published in newspapers. Allen Say’s teacher Noro Shinpei did not create manga novels as those created by Tezuka Osamu who pioneered the genre with New Treasure Island in 1947. See Berndt (2008) for further information. 24. Say always refers to his teacher as “Shinpei”. Formerly, it was common practice in Japan to name authors and artists with their first name, which was a specific indication of respect. 25. Many thanks to Jaqueline Berndt who helped me find relevant information about this artist. 26. A comparable case is the Chinese artist Chen Jianghong who immigrated to France in 1988 and studied art in Paris. His autobiographical picturebook Mao et moi (2008) combines large page-filling images with pages that display a panel structure. Interestingly, Chen includes visuals that are typical for manga, such as the visual cues for mourning, fear, and feeling embarrassment for somebody else.

Manga/Comics Hybrids in Picturebooks

119

27. Concerning the significance of Hokusai, see Brown (1988). Desai (2004) discusses different picturebooks by Allen Say, but she does not refer to the impact of manga on his works. 28. For a general discussion of the impact of irony in picturebooks and the ironic relationship between pictures and text, see Kümmerling-Meibauer (1999) and Nodelman (1988). 29. Refer to Colomer, Kümmerling-Meibauer, and Silva-Díaz (2010) for an overview on recent picturebook research.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Briggs, Raymond. 1973. Father Christmas. London: Hamish Hamilton. Briggs, Raymond. 1978. The Snowman. London: Hamish Hamilton. Briggs, Raymond. 1979. Fungus the Bogeyman. London: Hamish Hamilton. Briggs, Raymond. 1994. The Bear. London: Jonathan Cape. Brown, Frederic, and Heinz Edelmann. 1970. Maicki Astromaus. Trans. Uwe Friesel. Köln, Germany: Gertraud Middelhauve Verlag. Derrick, Freda. 1920. The Ark Book. London: Blackie & Son. Ionesco, Eugène, and Etienne Delessert. 1968. Story No 1. New York: Harlin Quvist. Jianghong, Chen. 2008. Mao et moi. Paris: L’école des loisirs. Kimmel, Eric, and Mordicai Gerstein. 2003. Three Samurai Cats. New York: Holiday House. Max, Peter. 1970. The Land of Yellow. New York: Franklin Watts. Say, Allen. 1979. The Ink-keeper’s Apprentice. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Say, Allen. 1993. Grandfather’s Journey. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Say, Allen. 1993. Tree of Cranes. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Say, Allen. 1999. Tea with Milk. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Say, Allen. 2009. Erika-san. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Say, Allen. 2011. Drawing from Memory. New York: Scholastic Press. Sewell, Helen, and Eleska. 1947. Three Tall Tales. New York: Macmillan. Synder, Dianne, and Allen Say. 1988. The Boy of the Three-Year Nap. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. Tan, Shaun. 2006. The Arrival. Sydney: Hachette Australia. Wiesner, David. 2006. Flotsam. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Secondary Sources Alloway, Lawrence. 1997. “Popular Culture and Pop Art”. In Pop Art. A Critical History, edited by Steven Henry Madoff. 167–174. Berkeley: University of California Press (first published in 1969). Beckett, Sandra. 2011. Crossover Picturebooks. New York: Routledge. Berndt, Jaqueline. 2008. “Manga and ‘Manga’ ”. http://berndt.ehoh.net/papers. de.html (accessed July 22, 2012). Brown, Yu-Ying. 1988. Japanese Book Illustration. London: The British Library. Colomer, Teresa, Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, and Cecilia Silva-Díaz, eds. 2010. New Directions in Picturebook Research. New York: Routledge. Cooke, Rachel. 2008, August 10. “Big Kid, ‘Old Grit’ and Still in the Rudest of Health”. The Observer. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2008/aug/10/ booksforchildrenandteenagers (accessed July 13, 2012).

120 Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer Desai, Christina M. 2004. “Weaving Words and Pictures: Allen Say and the Art of Illustration”. The Lion and the Unicorn 28.3: 408–428. Gardner, Jared. 2012. Projections. Comics and the History of Twenty-First-Century Storytelling. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Groensteen, Thierry. 2007. The System of Comics. Trans. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Ingulsrud, John E., and Kate Allen. 2009. Reading Japan Cool. Patterns of Manga Literacy and Discourse. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. “Interview with David Wiesner”. 2001, August 6. Teachingbooks.net. http://www. teachingbooks.net/content/Wiesner_qu.pdf (accessed July 13, 2012). Iwabuchi, Koichi. 2000. Recentering Globalization: Popular Culture and Japanese Transnationalism. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Jenkins, Henry 2008. Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Kinsella, Sharon. 2000. Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Kress, Gunter, and Theo van Leeuwen. 1996. Reading Images. The Grammar of Visual Design. London: Routledge. Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina. 1999. “Metalinguistic Awareness and the Child’s Developing Sense of Irony. The Relationship of Pictures and Texts in Ironic Picturebooks”. The Lion and the Unicorn 23: 157–183. Kümmerling-Meibauer, Bettina, and Jörg Meibauer. 2011. “The Strangeness of Pop Art Picturebooks: Pictures, Texts, Paratexts.” New Review of Children’s Literature and Librarianship 17.2: 103–121. Lewis, David. 2001. Reading Contemporary Picturebooks. Picturing Texts. London: RoutledgeFalmer. Loer, Stephanie. 2003, July 8. “An Interview with Allen Say”. Houghton Mifflin: Trade and Reference Division. http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/authors/ allensay/questions.shtml (accessed July 9, 2012). McCloud, Scott. 1993. Understanding Comics. New York: HarperCollins. Nikolajeva, Maria, and Carole Scott. 2001. How Picturebooks Work. New York: Garland. Nodelman, Perry. 1988. Words about Pictures. The Narrative Art of Children’s Picture Books. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Rass, Michaela Nicole. 2012. “Mangas: Bildtransfer von West nach Ost und zurück”. In Image Match. Visueller Transfer, ›Imagescapes‹ und Intervisualität in globalen Bildkulturen, edited by Martina Baleva, Ingeborg Reichle, and Oliver Lerone Schultz. 153–176. Munich, Germany: Wilhelm Fink. Schodt, Frederik L. 1996. Dreamland Japan. Writings on Modern Manga. Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press. Sipe, Lawrence, and Sylvia Pantaleo, eds. 2008. Postmodern Picturebooks. Play, Parody, and Self-Referentiality. New York: Routledge. Spaulding, Amy E. 1995. The Page as a Stage Set. Storyboard Picture Books. Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press. West, Mark L., ed. 2008. The Japanification of Children’s Popular Culture. Westport, CT: Scarecrow Press. Wolk, Douglas. 2007. Reading Comics. How Graphic Novels Work and What They Mean. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press. http://www.shauntan.net/books/the-arrival.html (accessed July 9, 2012).

7

Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes The Parodist Body in European and Japanese Erotic Comics Elisabeth Klar

For some years now, Japanese erotic manga have been appearing under the name of hentai (lit. “perversion”) on the European and North American markets, giving rise to both fascination and criticism. In western discourse, hentai manga was initially considered as different and as potentially dangerous or needing justification. Today, critics acknowledge hentai manga as a transnational phenomenon with diverse readerships and (sub-)genres. Yet, differences between Japanese erotic manga in opposition to European and North American erotic comics still continue to be emphasized. This chapter will demonstrate that there is at least one area of common ground shared by these different entertainment forms—the strange comics-specific body that obeys parodist1 aesthetics. How this comics-specific erotic body can be used to destabilize and mock normative gender roles will be shown subsequently through a detailed analysis of the hentai manga Seisō tsuidansha2 by Shiwasu no Okina. To contrast with this, the European alternative comics “Samurai Dreams” by Chris Crielaard will also be analyzed. This work was chosen precisely because it is significantly different from Seisō tsuidansha, not only in its cultural background but also in its publication context and presumed purpose. Despite these differences, this work shares the same comics-specific body and the parodist potential. Both examples will, however, also serve to show that the actualization of this potential, the (structural) parody being read as such, always depends on the publication context and the reader(s). THE GENRE(S) OF HENTAI MANGA Throughout this chapter, along with erotic comics, the terms erotic manga and hentai manga will be used. The field of erotic manga in Japan is diverse, encompassing varieties such as “ero manga,” “yaoi,” “ladies’ comics,” and “hentai manga.” In modern Japanese, the term hentai manga appears to be used in the context of manga to refer to “a specific genre of Japanese manga and animation that features extreme or perverse sexual

122 Elisabeth Klar content” (McLelland 2006). Hentai has, however, also become an English loanword, used to indicate anime or manga that contain “the depiction of explicit forms of sexual activity, including different types of intercourse” (Ortega-Brena 2009, 18), and it is in this meaning that the term will be used subsequently. Conventional hentai manga is not easily defined since we are, as mentioned previously, using an English loanword that connotes several genres with diverse readerships. Western publications repeatedly refer to certain common tropes, even though each one of these is not necessarily present in all hentai manga. These tropes include: lolicon (from Lolita complex; highlighting the sexual desirability of a fictional female adolescent or infant character), rape scenarios (often focused on for their theatrical aspect), tentacle sex, bondage, fetish sex, futanari (women with male primary sex characteristics), and incest.3 It is also worth mentioning that in Japanese erotica, as noted by Holger Briel (2008, 172), sex scenes are often part of a coherent and comical narrative. The combination of parody and erotic content is not only abundant in dōjinshi,4 but is also regarded as a prevalent aspect of hentai manga and anime (see Ortega-Brena 2009, 25; Shigematsu 1999, 129; Galbraith 2011, 102–103). Concerning the conventions of drawing style and page layout, it would be instructive here to consider mainstream manga, as the focus of critical essays on hentai manga lies far more on common tropes or narrative elements rather than on issues of style or form. Valérie Cools (2011) argues that Japanese comics provide an accelerated reading rhythm, facilitated by expressive backgrounds, by stylistic ruptures, and by panels that are not text heavy. She also observes, in her corpus of “contemporary popular series” (63),5 a tendency toward contrast, whereby panels with dissimilar content disrupt the flow on a visual level, as well as tendencies toward the fragmentation of bodies, and toward frequent changes in camera angles. Linked to these is the usual tabularity of the page that enhances rapid understanding at a glance (see Cools 2011).6 Hentai manga, more specifically, are often found to depict an abundance of body fluids (see Ito 2002, 80; Perper and Cornog 2002, 39), to either obscure sex organs or substitute them with symbols (see Perper and Cornog 2002, 39; Jones 2005, 98), and to focus more on the female partner—the object of lust and her orgasm—than on the male partner (see Perper and Cornog 2002, 39, King 2011, 27; Shigematsu 1999, 131). These conventions of erotic “mainstream manga” have to be distinguished particularly from the work of authors such as Maruo Suehiro (b. 1956), who does not shy away from erotic scenes but follows aesthetics that are instead “reminiscent of avant-garde or underground traditions, which often draw upon horror, pornography, and scatology” (Berndt 2006, 107). Far from encouraging an accelerated reading rhythm, the “beautifully-crafted panels and pages resist rapid consumption” (Berndt 2006, 123) and attract a western readership of alternative comics.

Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes

123

QUESTIONS OF (CULTURAL) DIFFERENCE As can be surmised from the previous discussion, editing erotic manga in the United States or Europe can prove complicated. The U.S. publishing house Eros Comix, for example, claims on the one hand that the manga it publishes, such as the third issue of Yohei Kozo’s Spunky Knight (1996, 24 pp.), have been redrawn from the Japanese original so as to include pubic hair and genitalia (see Kozo 1996).7 On the other hand, it states in some series that the depicted fictional characters are over eighteen years old (see Galbraith 2011, 109). On the Internet, legal problems of editing can of course be bypassed, and scanlations continue to gain more and more momentum, as the project “One million manga pages” shows.8 However, examples of redrawn manga and declarations of the characters’ ages reveal different (legal) conceptions what may, or may not, be shown in the two cultural sites. The western discourse on hentai manga is closely entwined with legal concepts and their boundaries. Most western critics emphasize their differences from U.S. and European traditions of erotic comics in this regard. While this is part of a discourse that generally distinguishes eastern manga from western comics in terms of style and form, content, audience, reading habits, and publication,9 the “Other” that hentai manga represent can be particularly disturbing and possibly threatening. Notably the phenomenon of lolicon and the common trope of rape and sexual violence have been considered as problematic. The question of censorship has always been an important one. As early as 1983, the renowned manga critic Frederik L. Schodt traced the prevalent symbolism, the importance of facial expression, the strange body postures, the excessive body fluids, and the depiction of prepubescent adolescents in erotic manga back to strategies that circumvent article 175 of the Japanese penal code (see Schodt 1983, 134–135). While in Japan official censorship has not existed since the end of allied occupation in 1952, the article 175, which focuses on “obscenity,” generally prevents the explicit depiction of pubic hair, genitalia, and sexual intercourse. Schodt as well as Allison suggest that this specifically Japanese form of censorship critically shaped the way hentai manga has come to be written and drawn (Allison 1996, 150; Schodt 1983, 133). In early studies, while Anne Allison emphasized cultural differences (1996, 54–60), Eva Bachmayer pursued such differences from a feminist and psychoanalytical point of view, analyzing the image of women in erotic manga (1985). Today, hentai manga is a transnational phenomenon and the western discourse has changed. Erotic parodies written and read by fans (dōjinshi) and the diversification of readership have led not only to a consideration of the reader’s agency but also to the consideration of multiple and fluid identifications (see King 2011; Ortega-Brena 2009; Jones 2005). In particular, the analysis of rape scenarios in hentai works has changed: it is now argued

124 Elisabeth Klar that in many hentai manga and anime, the identification with the pleasurefilled victim seems more probable than with the often faceless and interchangeable attacker (see Galbraith 2011, 103; Ortega-Brena 2009, 28). The discourse on lolicon is also open to new interpretations: Patrick Galbraith (2011) focuses on readers’ desire in relation to the actual and perceived fiction and reality of the depicted characters, arguing that readers desire certain characters precisely because they are “fictional” (Galbraith 2011, 106). The emphasis on the fantasy aspect of hentai works and the desirability of fantasy in a sexual context can also be found in essays by Mariana Ortega-Brena (2009) and Dinah Zank (2010, 215). However, even in recent writings there is still the tendency to set apart comics and manga, and to trace back the aesthetics of Japanese erotic manga to cultural traditions and differences (see Ortega-Brena 2009, 20; Briel 2010; Zank 2010) and censorship (see Briel 2010, 203; Galbraith 2011, 93–95; Zank 2010, 215). So then, the question remains, on what grounds a binary opposition of comics and manga can be built taking into consideration that in Europe and the United States, that is, in two important cultural sites of international comics production, the field of sexually explicit comics is far from homogeneous. To cite but three national traditions, there are the Franco-Belgian tradition of erotic bandes dessinées,10 Italian fumetti per adulti,11 and American underground comix.12 The latter were among the first to introduce explicit sexual content into the medium, though with the intention of parody and satire rather than of arousal. Furthermore, there are erotic comics artists like Guido Crepax (b. 1933) who is famous and popular enough to feature in many western comics encyclopedias (see, e.g., Horn 1999, 221–222; Feige 2001, 122–123) but whose work must be considered as a separate case since his aesthetics does not match any genre. “SAMURAI DREAMS” AND SEISŌ TSUIDANSHA Let us now turn our attention to an analysis of two comics/manga that are at first glance different not only in regard to their cultural backgrounds but also in relation to their publication contexts, and their intended purposes. “Samurai Dreams” is a European alternative comics with a limited readership, whereas Seisō tsuidansha was published in a Japanese magazine specializing on hentai manga and is also available online in an English scanlation.13 I have chosen to not use an officially translated work, instead opting for a fan-translated manga because, as Jeremy Douglass, William Huber, and Lev Manovich have pointed out, due to their popularity, “it is likely that more people outside of Japan currently encounter manga in this form, rather than through the official translations” (2011, 193). “Samurai Dreams,” by the Dutch comics artist Chris Crielaard (b. 1971), was published in the comics anthology XXXStripburger (1999, 160 pp.).

Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes

125

This series, edited in Ljubljana (Slovenia), focuses on a specific subject in each issue. It belongs to the category of alternative comics and fanzines, calling itself an “international comix zine” (see Stripburger 2011). With this international audience in view, it publishes most of its issues in English; its readership is limited, however, to the alternative comics scene. The XXXStripburger issue under scrutiny here focuses on pornography and features parodies and satires, creating a metadiscourse on pornography rather than intending to sexually arouse the reader (Stripburger 1999). The seventeenpage-long and wordless story14 called “Samurai Dreams” is easily summarized as follows: A woman is forced to sexually satisfy three Japanese warriors who eventually kill her and continue to abuse her severed head. Then a man dressed in black, probably a ninja, enters the scene, tortures, rapes, and kills the warriors and replaces the woman’s head on her shoulders. Being given a pill, the woman comes to life again and rides away with the ninja on a wild boar (Crielaard 1999, 64–80). There are obvious references to Japanese culture from food and clothing, to mise-en-scène, architecture and objects. More specifically, “Samurai Dreams” refers to erotic manga as a violent realm where women are abused and victimized, and it leans on stereotypes of Japanese culture, such as slit eyes, maki-zushi and sake, katana, and the media-formed image of the dress of a ninja (Figure 7.1). “Samurai Dreams” apparently alludes to a certain traditional way of reading erotic comics and manga. The context of the publication also suggests a reading of it as a parody, or more specifically, as a parody of a genre. The author of Seisō tsuidansha, the Japanese comics artist Shiwasu no Okina,15 publishes most of his manga in the magazine Comic Aun, which specializes in hentai works. On the website eroticcomic.info, he is described as a writer of original and funny stories, with a conventional drawing style, and his indulgence in common hentai tropes16 is also mentioned (“Shiwasu no Okina” 2012). Seisō tsuidansha (226 pp.) was published in 2003 by Hit Publishing in Tokyo. It appears that no official translation exists as yet. This hentai manga tells the story of the young boy Ry who is bullied by three girls at school. When, during one of these ordeals, the girls accidentally rip off his penis, they discover that this specific body member seems to have supernatural powers. Even when severed from the body, it leaves no wound and remains completely functional. While it cannot be reattached to the hero’s body, he is still connected to it through sensation. When the schoolgirls attach it to their own bodies, they can share his sensations. The girls thereupon set about raping Ry by using and abusing his penis in various ways. In the end, the hero’s mother who is discovered to be a witch restores the boy’s penis and creates several replicas of him. These doubles indulge in an orgy with the witch mother and the abusive girls. As time goes on, the hero’s duplicates slowly fade away whereas the hero himself grows stronger and stronger. Ry finally transforms into what appears to

126 Elisabeth Klar

Figure 7.1 Page from “Samurai Dreams” by Chris Crielaard. Ljubljana: Forum Ljubljana, 1999.

be the absolute symbol of masculinity—the popular boxer Bob “The Beast” Sapp—who cries for his mother (Figure 7.2). Eroticcomic.info considers Shiwasu no Okina’s drawing style as conventional. Considering Valérie Cools’s analysis of conventional manga style, this statement can be generally confirmed; there are expressive backgrounds and stylistic ruptures, also a tendency toward contrast, and (narrative and structural) fragmentation of bodies; in addition, there are frequent changes in camera angles and usage of tabularity in page layouts. This hentai manga is surprisingly text heavy, but it features many of the common tropes: school girls, lolicon, rape scenarios, futanari, sadomasochism, incest, and excessive

Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes

127

Figure 7.2 Page from Seisō tsuidansha by Shiwasu no Okina. Tokyo: Hit Publishing, 2003.

body fluids. In fact, the lolicon element is directly referred to in the story as an established perversion; one of the three heroines is popular among boys precisely because she has a Lolita body. This body is at the end of the story perfected by the hero’s witch mother; it becomes child-like to an absurd extreme while still allowing any size of penis to enter without pain. However, the story can also be accused of promoting obsolete gender roles: while the bullying girls may well play the active part at the beginning of the story, they are nonetheless fascinated by the power of the male penis. The roles they assume and the desires they feel are not particularly innovative: one girl is a sadist but in love with the hero, one girl loves to wear

128 Elisabeth Klar the boy’s penis but is at the same time an exhibitionist masochist, and one girl has an obsession with being penetrated. All three of them are addicted to sex. In the end, all three of them—plus a fourth girl who plays a minor role—are overpowered by the now grown-up hero, punished and exhausted in an endless orgy. The rightful owner of the penis, the male sex, wins in the end. Adding to this apparently misogynist storyline is the inexhaustible energy of all the characters, with their unbreakable ability to feel lust and their body members’ ability to come off without pain or hazard to their health. As such, Seisō tsuidansha appears to be a valid example of the type of manga Chris Crieelard parodies in “Samurai Dreams.” However, an analysis of the comics-specific body in general, and its parodist function in Seisō tsuidansha in particular, reveals that this manga is much more complex. THE BODY IN EROTIC MANGA AND COMICS In “Samurai Dreams,” a woman can come back to life after her head has been severed. In Seisō tsuidansha, a penis can fill up a girl’s body and reach almost her heart. Still, it does not injure this body significantly in the process. Both the resurrection of a body on the one hand and the unrealistic flexibility of another body on the other hand could not, though, be labeled as very unusual or rare cases in either European or U.S. erotic comics, or in Japanese hentai productions. While the unrealistic bodies in (erotic) comics and manga were often criticized and considered as an inadequacy (see Robbins 2002; Ito 2002, 71), Galbraith regards the “large eyes” of manga and anime characters rather as a proof that in manga, “fiction resembles fiction, or follows its own logic, and captures a sense of autonomous reality” (2011, 106). This includes the “body without organs” (Galbraith 2009). With respect to American animated cartoons Christian McCrea speaks of a tendency “towards resurrection” (2008, 19) and suggests that the character, Wile E. Coyote, of the Looney Tunes always comes back from death because he has a power that “is not merely his seriality and resurrection, but his planear nature” (20). The question remains whether Wile E. Coyote, who repeatedly chases after the Road Runner and repeatedly falls down an abyss, really dies and is resurrected, or even whether this fall injures him at all. In animated cartoons and comics the body tends to be relatively resistant and often more robust than its environment. While the comics-specific and the animated body admittedly share this resistance, the comics-specific body17 needs also to be considered a case apart. In comics, when a character runs into a wall, the wall will likely be left with a hole of the exact size and shape of the character; when a bomb explodes next to a comics-specific body, this body often is not torn apart but only scorched black. At the same time, the body is cut and fragmented by the panels that let isolated members act on their own (see Ault 2000,

Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes

129

135). Arms, legs, and torsos are scattered on the page, and find a common identity only in the protagonist’s name. His/her skin, that at times seems so impenetrable, can in reality be wiped away by a single eraser stroke—and often is. Guido Crepax drew, for example, in his 1975 comics adaptation of the erotic novel Histoire d’O by Pauline Réage, The Story of O (2009, 176 pp., English translation), bodies that regularly merge with the white paper. Thus, the border between the comics-specific body and its environment can be overridden as well as nullified. Another feature of the comics-specific body is its inevitability: where the literary text can afford to simply evoke a character by using his/her name, the comics/manga artist has to redraw the character’s body in almost every panel.18 Reading a text, we can forget about our hero/ines’ physical appearance. In comics/manga, we are reminded of it in every panel (see also Groensteen 2007, 124). This compelled omnipresence and materiality of the character’s body creates a competitive economy of space. The comics/ manga page works is a narrative unit as we can perceive it with one glance, whereby advancing to the next page means disrupting the reading process (Groensteen 2007, 35–37). While the stream of words of a literary text tries to make us forget the frontier we cross each time we flip a page, the architecture of a comics/manga page and the overall impression it creates is an essential part of its aesthetics. On this page though, only a certain number of signs can be arranged. Bodies compete with the words they speak, they compete with their environment, and they compete with other bodies. Ole Frahm shows in “Weird Signs” how the comics character, Old Doc Yak, is literally driven off the page as he cannot afford to pay the rent for it anymore (Frahm 2000, 181–184). Its compelled materiality also results in another essential feature of the comics-specific body. It is serialized; it is present not only once but several times, which sets it apart, particularly from the animated body. Only the convention of the reading direction transforms the many synchronous bodies into one single body present at different subsequent moments. In fact, repetition and variation19 are two essential aspects of comics aesthetics. On the one hand, protagonists are given stereotyped features so to assure their recognizability. On the other hand, the protagonists’ appearance changes in every panel. The literary text offers much more security concerning the reading process. The protagonist’s name fixes him or her as a recurrent element in the text. Each repetition of this name is different as it occurs in a different context but it does not vary highly as a sign. By contrast, while in comics too the protagonist’s name plays an important role, it is rather an additional designation, a label that can be attributed to a certain body but one that cannot supplement or become the body. Visual changes from panel to panel may be subtle, but this does not mean that they cannot be an important part of the storytelling. Guido Crepax shows on one comics page of Dr. Jekyll & Mister Hyde (1990, 80 pp., English translation) how his protagonist, Dr. Jekyll, transforms into Mr. Hyde. Dr. Jekyll in one panel

130 Elisabeth Klar strongly resembles Dr. Jekyll in the next panel. However, the gradual change is forceful enough to illustrate that eventually Dr. Jekyll transforms into a completely different person. Similarly, the structural multiplication of bodies on the page sometimes turns into a narrative multiplication: both the European erotic comics Little Ego (2006, 48 pp., English translation) by Vittorio Giardino (b. 1946)20 and the Japanese hentai manga Mirror Image (2008, 32 pp., available online in English scanlation) by Hinemosu Notari (b. unknown) use this aspect of comics aesthetics. In both comics, the body reflection steps out of the mirror into the fictional reality, thus multiplying the hero/ine’s body (Giardino 2006, 7–8; Hinemosu 2008). Even though stereotyped attributes and other comics codes help us recognize bodies as the ones we have seen in the precedent panel, we can never be sure that they are in fact the same. There are attempts to regain the stability that a linguistic sign offers by simplifying the comics signs and aligning them to symbolic signs. The French comics artist, Lewis Trondheim (b. 1964) draws in Mister I (2007, 32 pp.) and Mister O (2004, 32 pp.) the simple letters “I” and “O.” These letters are the heroes of his stories. Both mocking the genre of pornography and the nouveau roman, he creates the wordless Nouvelle Pornographie, where he pushes the sexual activities and bodies to such abstraction that “if the title wouldn’t invite us to do so, it wouldn’t even be seen/read as a metaphoric codification of the work of flesh” (Groensteen 2010, 209, my translation). Not only are they available for abstraction, but the comics-specific bodies additionally tend to act out language, and especially metaphors. They, however, always rest ambivalent in this function; they express metaphors and word plays but at the same time never lose their materiality. If what these bodies do or what happens to them is meant figuratively in one panel, this does not mean that the next panel will not take what happens very literally. Even signs that at first sight fulfill a purely symbolic function in comics, like text, are complicit with other categories. Comics respect the alphabetic character’s materiality, ascribe it a certain place in the page’s architecture, and modify it visually through lettering.21 Therefore, vacillating between recognizability and variation, the comics destabilize the reading of signs that are not identical with themselves but merely resemble each other. Possibly, this might be a reason for the virtual indestructibility of the comics-specific body. Comparable to a phoenix, the comics-specific body dies in each panel and has to recreate itself in the next—or maybe a different body is created each time the readers jump from panel to panel. PARODIST AESTHETICS IN COMICS/MANGA The comics-specific bodies thus behave in a certain way that differs from the way bodies in texts or real life behave. This chapter argues that performing

Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes

131

continuity and variation in an unstable identity, the body in comics obeys notably a “parodist aesthetics.” This notion was coined by Ole Frahm, a German comics researcher who challenges Scott McCloud’s claim that the “staccato rhythm” of comics could be transformed by the reader into a “continuous, unified reality” (1993, 67). Quite on the contrary, comics parody “the presumed relation between signs and objects” (Frahm 2000, 179). Frahm’s notion of parodist aesthetics is, in his own words: [. . .] to be found in the constellation of, on the one hand, the stabilising of a common object of reference of the signs and, on the other hand, its destabilising character because of the material heterogeneousness of the signs. Because of their one identity of “signness” which refers to nothing but further repetitions, the repetitions both confirm and diffuse one identity. (2000, 189) Comics both stabilize and destabilize the reading. The reality they present usually lacks credibility. Their protagonists do not refer to a fictional or nonfictional reality but have an existence in their own right upon the page. Whether one can talk in this context of an indestructible comics-specific body remains an open question. Itō Gō distinguishes “proto-characters (shaped by iconic drawing) from characters (shaped by narrative action)” (Itō 2007, 107) and argues that Tezuka Osamu had innovated in manga by introducing death into the world of proto-characters, and thereby giving rise to “characters.” However, some of the previous observations correspond to the idea that “fiction resembles fiction, or follows its own logic, and captures a sense of autonomous reality” (Galbraith 2011, 106); comics-specific bodies accomplish more than, or different things to, a real body because they are not restricted by what can happen, but by what can be drawn. Just as Donald Duck is not really a duck, just as he is not really half-nude, human characters are not really humans—they are nothing but differently shaped comics-specific bodies. In this light, the statement made by Eros Comix about the depicted characters having reached the age of consent seems rather futile as these bodies made of pencil strokes can have no age and “are only as old as they are imagined to be, just as sex with them is only imagined” (Galbraith 2011, 109). This argument is convincing in the context of regulation and censorship. Yet, considering the distinction between proto-character and character helps to realize that age, sex and species are actually being performed in the context of a narrative. Performance is used here in the sense of Judith Butler’s “gender parody,” a notion to which Frahm refers in his understanding of structural parody (see Frahm 2000, 180; 2010, 36). In her famous monograph, Gender Trouble, Butler considers identity as an act, a performance that has to be repeated, a copy without an original. The heterosexual norm is both a “compulsory system” and in its inevitable failure an “intrinsic comedy, a constant parody of itself” (Butler 2008, 166). Butler contrasts this with homosexual gender performances that destabilize normative heterosexuality even when using

132 Elisabeth Klar some of its elements, since these elements are “[. . .] denaturalized and mobilized through their parodic recontextualization” (Butler 2008, 188). Gender performances thus do not differ according to their distance or proximity to a certain reality or truth, but according to their (in)credibility (Butler 2008, 193). The possibility of transformation and change lies “precisely in the arbitrary relation between such acts, in the possibility of a failure to repeat, a deformity, or a parodic repetition that exposes the phantasmatic effect of abiding identity as a politically tenuous construction” (Butler 2008, 192). Frahm attributes this intrinsically parodist aesthetics to the medium of comics as a whole—comics do with the notion of the original what gender performances do with the idea of heterosexuality. Comics-specific bodies destabilize gender roles quite directly as well. Unlike text that, at least in western languages, names and thus fixes the gender of a specific character,22 the very same character can only perform his/ her gender through action, looks and clothing in comics and can at least potentially contradict the categorization made by the narrator or by other characters. Febriani Sihombing analyzes the importance of “coupling” (as “pairing” is called in Japanese) for the distinction between the seme (active) and uke (passive) role in the Boys’ Love manga genre.23 Here, gender is not only performed but is in fact mostly recognized by comparison; a specific character is “proved uke by the circumstances of the text” (Sihombing 2011, 154). The instability of the comics sign makes the assumed femininity and masculinity equally unstable. The same can possibly be said for age. Especially in a manga with a Lolita character, the character’s body, her behavior and her role in the narrative might contradict each other—Seisō tsuidansha is an example of such an incredible or at least contradictory performance of age. This specific hentai manga further shows how comics can be employed to fragment, multiply, transform and symbolize bodies and at the same time to decentralize their respective genders. THE PARODIST BODY IN SEISŌ TSUIDANSHA At first sight, Seisō tsuidansha looks like a hentai manga perpetuating traditional gender roles. At second glance, however, the story’s humor and irony cannot be overlooked. Many scenes are comical, like the one where we learn what various creative uses the girls find for the severed penis—these include disguising it as a drinking fountain and using it to prop up their books in class (Figure 7.3). Also the gender roles appear less normative. The so-called punishment of the girls consists in giving them the bodies they secretly wish for, the tools for the eventual satisfaction of their sexual desires. More significantly, the assertion of the hero’s masculinity is by no means a definite one. His penis is a mere sign that can be removed like a hat. From the beginning castrated and thus feminized, characters of the opposite gender take on

Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes

133

Figure 7.3 Page from Seisō tsuidansha by Shiwasu no Okina. Tokyo: Hit Publishing, 2003.

this masculinity. The hero is still connected to his penis through sensation, but having lost the control over it to the girls, the sensations, coming from what might be called by some the active role in sexual play, assign to him nonetheless the passive role. He only retrieves his penis due to his mother who has initiated the whole adventure in the first place. Implicitly, the hero’s mother suggests that the boy, on his own, would not have been powerful enough to perform the degree of masculinity she wished for. She lets the girls perform the role that would have been his. Finally being whole again, the hero is replicated into several copies to enable him to assert his manhood. The symbol of masculinity he is reduced to, in the end, cries out its maternal dependence, and this dependence negates his manhood yet again as it assigns him the role of a child. The male penis appears here as an arbitrary sign, similar to an honorific title, that can be attributed to any person, male or female. In comics, this is potentially true of any body member, organ or part. Since the comics signs, including those for eyes, noses, feet or indeed male or female genitals, are

134 Elisabeth Klar continually sliding along the continuum of icons and symbols, the isolation and fragmentation of these signs is readily facilitated. Moreover, the multiplication of the hero at the end of the story merely reproduces within the panel the structural multiplication that all comics perform; all characters are already scattered in copies over the panels of the page. Moreover, as they are already copies, it is much less complicated to transform them into the copy of a popular boxer. At the beginning of Seisō tsuidansha, the mother has already replaced the photo of her dead husband with Bob Sapp’s picture. In the end, she replaces her son with Bob Sapp’s clone, or counterfeit. The desired son is doubly “made” by her and never acquires more than a “planear” (McCrea 2008, 20) masculinity. Censorship adds to the irony as the hero’s penis is effaced precisely when he has reached his goal, namely masculinity and maturity. To use Bob Sapp as the ultimate symbol of manhood is an interesting choice in itself. Derek Johnson describes him as a Japanese cultural icon comparable to the Beatles, yet one with contradictory qualities: “Ferocious, introspective, witty, self-deprecating, goofy, violent, humble, charismatic, charming, and at the core—a good guy” (Johnson 2008). The magazine Time Asia puts it slightly differently: “You don’t need to be a French poststructuralist to realize that much of The Beast’s appeal in Japan is not rooted in the universalism of slapstick humor but in the fact that he is a curious and foreign specimen—a seemingly terrifying yet ultimately harmless embodiment of the Other.” (Frederick 2003). If the cultural image of Bob Sapp is one of a fearsome but controllable and essentially harmless “beast,” then the hero of Seisō tsuidansha is a double parody of male gender performance. Simultaneously becoming a drawing of the real-life Bob Sapp and being turned into a clone of the fictional character Bob Sapp, the hero is both the actual and the fictional copy of a cultural icon that already to a certain extent performs gender parody. PARODIES AND THEIR READERS: CRITICAL DISTANCE AND COMPLICITY Chris Crielaard and Shiwasu no Okina have different cultural backgrounds, are active in different genres, publish in different contexts, and thus would seem to have different target audiences. Yet a question remains as to whether this is indeed true today since genres have multiple readerships, readers enjoy multiple genres, and scanlations of hentai works are easily available on the Internet. The very publication format of Crielaard’s work suggests that he speaks to insiders rather than outsiders, to fans rather than to society in general; XXXStripburger would not be bought by readers who do not know the alternative comics scene and who do not tolerate a certain amount of sexual and violent scenes in comics. Crielaard’s readers will consequently be habitual comics readers as he himself, and it is highly likely that they will have read some hentai manga as well.

Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes

135

In A Theory of Parody, Linda Hutcheon defines parody as “imitation with critical ironic distance, whose irony can be cut both ways,” ranging from “scornful ridicule to reverential homage” (1985, 37). “Samurai Dreams” might exemplify Hutcheon’s notion of parody, speaking to a sophisticated readership and vacillating “between complicity and distance” (Hutcheon 1985, 32). Arguing that comics recuperate stereotypes by repeating them, one forgets that this kind of repetition is an unstable one, not identical with itself. The stereotypes are present, but always remain flexible. Each panel promises continuity but also transformation. The same can possibly be said about the criticism of stereotypes. “Samurai Dreams,” if it criticizes hentai stereotypes, it also potentially robs that very same criticism of its credibility. In fact, parody is not easily equated with effective criticism. Hutcheon discusses the “paradox of parody.” She argues that, parody mocks the code that it strengthens and reaffirms the code that it subverts: “Even in mocking, parody reinforces; in formal terms, it inscribes the mocked conventions onto itself, thereby guaranteeing their continued existence” (Hutcheon 1985, 75). Hutcheon adds that calling parody the “custodian of the artistic legacy” does not mean that being custodian cannot be a revolutionary position: “the point is that it need not be” (ibid., emphasis in the original). As Butler says, not every form of parody is necessarily subversive (2008, 189). To understand “what makes certain kinds of parodic repetitions effectively disruptive, truly troubling, and which repetitions become domesticated and recirculated as instruments of cultural hegemony” requires, according to her thinking, an analysis of “context and reception” (ibid.). Butler’s judgment might be valid, not only for gender parody in general but also for the structural parody in comics. Chris Crielaard’s story “Samurai Dreams” is an example of the necessity of taking the publication context into account; for while it, at first sight, seems to only mock and criticize the manga it parodies, its addressees will probably read it with a certain complicity in mind. At least some of the parodist force in Seisō tsuidansha builds on foreknowledge—the irony of using Bob Sapp as an icon of masculinity would most probably get lost in transcultural transfer. Since parodies always speak to a sophisticated readership who can decode the intertextual references, they are also, up to a certain degree, dependent on this audience. According to Frahm, the parodied original of the comics is not another comics, or another genre, or another medium. What is parodied in comics is a concept—the concept of the original. The question then remains, however, as to how the sophisticated readership constitutes itself. That is, under which circumstances and by whom will a comics or manga be effectively read as a parody of the “presumed relation between signs and objects” (Frahm 2000, 179)? In her review of Frahm’s The Language of Comics, Jaqueline Berndt suggests to consider also “concrete publication frequencies, historic contexts and everyday modes of use” (Berndt 2010). She points out the active role of the consumer in today’s East Asian comics production and concludes that

136 Elisabeth Klar [i]t is no easy task to identify potential social criticism in these new fan communities. Starting from the fact that comics are parodistic, one would then have to determine in what historical shifts this parodistic potential has been actualised and by whom in fact, and what this means for the future of comics. (ibid.) The (erotic) body certainly has a parodist potential in comics and manga, but readers can ignore it or interpret a story in a (structurally) parodist way, not taking it at face value. CONCLUSION Western erotic comics and Japanese erotic manga have, for a long time, been analyzed with regard to their differences, and Japanese hentai manga have at least been seen, to a certain degree, as a potentially dangerous “Other” that needed to be explained or justified. Today, the discourse on hentai works has diversified to include considerations of transnational flows and active readers. Erotic comics and manga, share at least one fundamental aspect, namely a body that obeys laws that differ from other media and from reality. This strange body is not only resistant to injury and capable of resurrection but is also fragmented by the panels, reproduced multiple times across the whole page, and is thus present in several places simultaneously. It is as a sign both symbolic and iconic, it vacillates between repetition and variation, and makes the reading process an unstable one. It embodies metaphors that—depending on the context—can be taken figuratively or literally. Its compelled materiality on the page, its inevitability, creates an economy of space. This strange comics-specific body conforms to structural parodist aesthetics. Comics-specific bodies also have a potential for gender parody as their gender, age, and species can only be performed, and as their body parts and sex-specific characteristics can always be fragmented and attributed to anybody or anything else. Seisō tsuidansha by Shiwasu no Okina destabilizes some of the common tropes of hentai manga (e.g., the lolicon) through the use of this strange comics-specific body. In the sense elaborated by Frahm, it also destabilizes the concept of the original. However, this parodist potential is always related to a specific publication context, with readerships that may or may not read a certain story as parodist. One can conclude that both “Samurai Dreams” and Seisō tsuidansha are parodist works that play with the foreknowledge of their readership, specifically with the stereotypes of the hentai genre. Both the structural parody of comics and manga and the strange body that they share, facilitate this parodist process. The ease with which a comics-specific body is resurrected and/ or transformed shows that in manga and comics the body made of pencil

Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes

137

strokes can make us believe in its (fictional) reality only within the narrative in which it appears. NOTES 1. While Ole Frahm uses the term parodist, Linda Hutcheon uses the adjective parodic, and the anonymous translator of Jaqueline Berndt’s review (2010) translates the German parodistisch into parodistic. In this chapter, since I refer particularly to Ole Frahm’s concept of structural parody, my preference is for the term parodist. 2. This highly figurative title means more or less “girls [sha] chasing a man [tsuidan] with a removable penis [seisō]”. 3. Tentacle sex has been judged a common trope by Holger Briel, Dinah Zank, and Mariana Ortega-Brena (Briel 2008, 172; 2010, 202; Zank 2010, 220; Ortega-Brena 2009, 20). Rape scenarios feature as common hentai tropes in a great number of essays (see Briel 2008, 173; Jones 2005, 97; Ito 2002, 77; McCrea 2008, 13; Ortega-Brena 2009, 20; Shigematsu 1999, 127; Galbraith 2011; Perper/Cornog 2002, 45–54), as does lolicon (see Galbraith 2011; Briel 2008, 174; Zank 2010; Ortega-Brena 2009, 28; Shigematsu 1999, 127) and fetish sex (Briel 2008, 174; Ito 2002, 78; Ortega-Brena 2009, 20). Incest is mentioned as a common trope by Ito Kinko (2002, 80) and indirectly by Mariana Ortega-Brena (2009, 20). Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog mention “women with penises”, more commonly referred to as futanari or shim ru (she-male), calling it a not unusual trope (2002, 30). They also cite sadomasochism scenes and bondage as common characteristics (ibid., 33). 4. Dōjinshi, comparable to slash fiction, are mainly parodist fan creations featuring characters from manga series. They often present erotic reinterpretations of the original story and/or homoerotic reinterpretations of the relationship between certain protagonists (see Noppe 2010). 5. Valérie Cools analyzed the series Bleach, Death Note, Fruits Basket, and Kitchen Princess, “selected because they represent strong generic currents within the manga flow. They are either ongoing or recently ended, and have all sold well in Japan and abroad” (2011, 65). Bleach and Death Note are shōnen manga, Fruits Basket and Kitchen Princess are shōjo manga. 6. Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog draw attention to the tabularity of the page, particularly in the context of the depiction of sexual activity (2002, 40). 7. Yohei Kozo’s series Spunky Knight was published from 1993 by Eros Comix and is part of the corpus analyzed by Timothy Perper and Martha Cornog (2002). Yohei Kozo also is mentioned by the Manga Baka-Updates website (2012) as a Japanese manga artist, but the website provides little other information about this mangaka. 8. According to Douglass, Huber, and Manovich (2011, 191), this project is the first in the digital humanities to use “digital image analysis and visualization for the study of a massive image collection” of one million scanlated manga pages. 9. For recent literature describing manga in opposition to comics, see, for example, Valérie Cools (2011), Neil Cohn (2011), and Natsume Fusanosuke (2010). 10. A famous French comics artist in this field was Georges Pichard (1920–2003) (Horn 1999, 614; Filippini 2006, 232–233). 11. See Maurice Horn’s World Encyclopedia of Comics (1999, 404–405). Another famous Italian artist is Milo Manara (b.1945) (Horn 1999, 508; Filippini 2006, 198–199). 12. See Horn (1999, 34–35). For a more detailed discussion, see Rosenkranz (2002).

138 Elisabeth Klar 13. There are two reviews to be found online, both rather positive (see “Sei So Tsui Dan Sha” 2012b; “Shiwasu no Okina” 2012). On Manga Baka-Updates and MyAnimeList.net, this hentai work also obtained a high fan rating (see “Sei So Tsui Dan Sha” 2012a, 2012b). 14. The comics feature a few utterances in Japanese that neither contribute much to the story nor make much sense. 15. Pseudonyms, especially in the Japanese dōjinshi and hentai market, do not necessarily reveal the author’s sex/gender. Both Manga Baka-Updates and eroticcomic.info agree though that Shiwasu no Okina (which could be roughly translated as “the old man of December”) is male. His birthdate, however, is not known (see “Sei So Tsui Dan Sha” 2012a; “Shiwasu no Okina” 2012). 16. The review on MyAnimeList.net agrees with this analysis insofar as it says that the manga “brings out many types of fetishes as readers would expect from a h-series” but at the same time warns readers that they might be offended by some of them (“Sei So Tsui Dan Sha” 2012b). 17. I have discussed the general role of the body in comics in Klar (2011), focusing more on the specific qualities or “powers” of the comics-specific body, its relationship to language, and the desire we feel for its performed identity. 18. An example of a successful comics short story that avoids the characters’ depiction is “Esclavage ordinaire” (Ordinary slavery; 2007, 5 pp.) by the French comics artist Brüno (2007). Thierry Groensteen mentions further strategies to avoid “the presence of a recurrent character” (2007, 13). 19. “The characters are the same and at the same time not the same. [. . .] [the series] operates with recognizable characters that are however never the same but always dated, always newly drawn; their identity constructs itself from day to day, panel to panel, in the respective constellation” (Frahm 2010, 80, my translation). Thierry Groensteen sees the phenomenon of “iconic redundancy” as a “direct consequence of the story’s organization around a central figure” (2007, 115), in other words, around a comics-specific body. 20. Giardino Vittorio is an Italian comics artist who does not specialize in erotic stories but is rather famous for his stories and his drawing style, which follows the Franco-Belgian ligne claire (clear line) style. In 1985, he created an erotic parody of Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland, namely, Little Ego. The bodies in Little Ego regularly undergo transformations and interact erotically not only with other characters but also with animals and the environment (Filippini 2006, 146–147; Horn 1999, 338). 21. For a more thorough discussion of the vacillation of comics signs between the iconic, symbolic, and referential, see Magnussen (2000). 22. There are also examples in literature of gender-ambiguous narrators and protagonists. In the novel Sphinx by the French writer Anne Garréta (1986, 157 pp.), the sex/gender of both the narrator and the other main character is unknown until the end. In Japanese, nouns are gender neutral. 23. Boys’ Love manga normally tell stories of two male protagonists who fall in love. For a more thorough discussion of the subject, see McLelland (2007).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Brüno. 2007. “Esclavage ordinaire” [Ordinary slavery]. In Paroles sans papiers [Speech without Papers], edited by Alfred, David Chauvel, and Michael Le Galli. 37–41. Tournai, Belgium: Delcourt.

Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes

139

Crepax, Guido. 1990. Dr. Jekyll & Mister Hyde. New York: NBM Publishing Company. ———. 2009. The Story of O. New York: Eurotica. Crielaard, Chris. 1999. “Samurai Dreams.” In XXXStripburger, edited by Stripburger. 64–80. Ljubljana, Slovenia: Forum Ljubljana. Garréta, Anne. 1986. Sphinx. Paris: Grasset & Fasquelle. Giardino, Vittorio. 2006. Little Ego. New York: Heavy Metal. Hinemosu, Notari. 2008. Mirror Image. Tokyo/Japan: Comic Tenma. Kozo, Yohei. 1996. Spunky Knight 3. Seattle, WA: Eros Comix. Shiwasu no Okina. 2003. Seisō tsuidansha. Tokyo: Hit Publishing. Stripburger. 2011. “Stripburger.” http://www.stripburger.org (accessed March 7, 2012). ———, ed. 1999. XXXStripburger. Ljubljana, Slovenia: Forum. Trondheim, Lewis. 2006. La nouvelle pornographie. Paris: Association. ———. 2007. Mister I. New York: NBM Publishing Company. ———. 2004. Mister O. New York: NBM Publishing Company.

Secondary Sources Allison, Anne. 1996. Permitted and Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics, and Censorship in Japan. Oxford: Westview Press. Ault, Donald. 2000. “ ‘Cutting Up’ Again Part II. Lacan on Barks on Lacan.” In Comics & Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics, edited by Anne Magnussen and Hans-Christian Christiansen. 123–140. Copenhagen, Denmark: Museum Tusculanum Press. Bachmayer, Eva. 1985. “ ‘Gequälter Engel’: Das Frauenbild in den erotischen Comics in Japan. Versuch einer psychoanalytischen und feministischen Interpretation” [“Tortured angel”: The image of women in erotic comics in Japan. Attempt at a psychoanalyst and feminist interpretation]. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria. Berndt, Jaqueline. 2006. “ ‘Adult’ Manga: Maruo Suehiro’s Historically Ambiguous Comics.” In Reading Manga: Local and Global Perceptions of Japanese Comics, edited by Jaqueline Berndt and Steffi Richter. 107–126. Leipzig, Germany: Leipziger Universitätsverlag. ———. 2010. “Comic Studies: Ole Frahm’s Die Sprache des Comics (i.e. the Language of Comics).” Review of Die Sprache des Comics [The language of comics], by Ole Frahm. http://www.goethe.de/kue/lit/prj/com/ccs/iuv/en6557565.htm (accessed March 7, 2012). “Bob Sapp Pizza Commercial.” 2011. World News. http://wn.com/bob_sapp_pizza_ commercial (accessed March 20, 2012). Briel, Holger. 2008. “Hentai. Erotik in Manga und Anime” [Hentai. Erotic manga and anime]. In Ga-netchū. Das Manga-Anime Syndrom [Ga-netchū. The mangaanime syndrome], edited by Deutsches Filmmuseum Frankfurt am Main; Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt am Main. 166–175. Frankurt am Main, Germany: Museum für angewandte Kunst. ———. 2010. “The Roving Eye Meets Traveling Pictures: The Field of Vision and the Global Rise of Adult Manga.” In Comics as a Nexus of Cultures. Essays on the Interplay of Media, Disciplines and International Perspectives, edited by Mark Berninger, Jocken Ecke, and Gideon Haberkorn. 187–210. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. Butler, Judith. 2008. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

140 Elisabeth Klar Cohn, Neil. 2011. “A Different Kind of Cultural Frame: An Analysis of Panels in American Comics and Japanese Manga.” Image & Narrative 12.1: 120–134. http://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/viewFile/128/99 (accessed March 7, 2012). Cools, Valérie. 2011. “The Phenomenology of Contemporary Mainstream Manga.” Image & Narrative 12.1: 63–82. http://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/ imagenarrative/article/viewFile/126/97 (accessed March 7, 2012). Douglass, Jeremy, William Huber, and Lev Manovich. 2011. “Understanding Scanlation: How to Read One Million Fan-Translated Manga Pages.” Image & Narrative 12.1: 190–225. http://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/ article/viewFile/133/104 (accessed March 7, 2012). Feige, Marcel. 2001. Das große Comic-Lexikon [The big comics encyclopedia]. Berlin: Schwarzkopf & Schwarzkopf. Filippini, Henri. 2006. Encyclopédie de la bande dessinée érotique [Encyclopedia of erotic comics]. Paris: La Musardine. Frahm, Ole. 2010. Die Sprache des Comics [The language of comics]. Hamburg, Germany: Philo Fine Arts. ———. 2000. “Weird Signs: Comics as Means of Parody.” In Comics & Culture: Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics, edited by Anne Magnussen and Hans-Christian Christiansen. 177–191. Copenhagen, Denmark: Museum Tusculanum Press. Frederick, Jim. 2003. “The Beast Goes East.” TIMEasia. http://www.time.com/time/ asia/2003/bob_sapp/story.html (accessed March 7, 2012). Galbraith, Patrick W. 2011. “Lolicon: The Reality of ‘Virtual Child Pornography’ in Japan.” Image & Narrative 12.1: 83–114. http://www.imageandnarrative.be/ index.php/imagenarrative/article/viewFile/127/98 (accessed March 7, 2012). ———. 2009, October 31. “Moe. Exploring Virtual Potential in Post-Millennial Japan.” The Electronic Journal of Contemporary Japanese Studies. http://www. japanesestudies.org.uk/articles/2009/Galbraith.html (accessed March 7, 2012). Groensteen, Thierry. 2010. Parodies. La bande dessinée au second degré [Parodies. The comics in the second degree]. Paris: Flammarion. ———. 2007. The System of Comics. Trans. Bart Beaty and Nick Nguyen. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. Horn, Maurice. 1999. The World Encyclopedia of Comics. Philadelphia, PA: Chelsea House. Hutcheon, Linda. 1985. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings of Twentieth-Century Art Forms. New York: Methuen. Itō, Gō. 2007. “Manga History Viewed through Proto-Characteristics.” In Tezuka. The Marvel of Manga, edited by Philip Brophy. 107–113. Melbourne: National Gallery of Victoria. Ito, Kinko. 2002. “The World of Japanese Ladies’ Comics: From Romantic Fantasy to Lustful Perversion.” Journal of Popular Culture 36.1: 68–85. doi:10.1111/1540– 5931.00031 (accessed March 20, 2012). Johnson, Derek. 2008, February 4. “Johnson Visits with Bob ‘The Beast’ Sapp.” Sports Washington. http://washington.scout.com/2/726050.html (accessed March 20, 2012). Jones, Gretchen I. 2005. “Bad Girls Like to Watch: Writing and Reading Ladies’ Comics.” In Bad Girls of Japan, edited by Laura Miller and Jan Bardsley. 97–110. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. King, Emerald. 2011. “Mazzohizumu no mon: Masochistic and Sadistic Representations of Women in Japanese Exploitation Films and Reidissu komikku.” Image & Narrative 12.1: 19–31. http://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/ article/viewFile/124/95 (accessed March 7, 2012).

Tentacles, Lolitas, and Pencil Strokes

141

Klar, Elisabeth. 2011. “Wir sind alle Superhelden! Über die Eigenart des Körpers im Comic—und über die Lust an ihm” [We are all superheroes! About the peculiarity of the body in the comics—and about the desire we feel for it]. In Theorien des Comics. Ein Reader [Theories of the comics. A reader], edited by Barbara Eder, Elisabeth Klar, and Ramon Reichert. 209–236. Bielefeld, Germany: transcript. LaMarre, Thomas. 2006. “Platonic Sex: Perversion and Shojo Anime (Part One).” Animation. An Interdisciplinary Journal 1: 45–59. doi:10.1177/1746847706065841 (accessed March 7, 2012). Madden, Matt. 2001. “About Oubapo.” Tom Hart. http://www.tomhart.net/oubapo/ about/index.html (accessed March 7, 2012). Magnussen, Anne. 2000. “The Semiotics of C.S. Peirce as a Theoretical Framework for the Understanding of Comics.” In Comics & Culture. Analytical and Theoretical Approaches to Comics, edited by Anne Magnussen and Hans-Christian Christiansen. 193–207. Copenhagen, Denmark: Museum Tusculanum Press. McCloud, Scott. 1993. Understanding Comics. The Invisible Art. New York: Harper Perennial. McCrea, Christian. 2008. “Explosive, Expulsive, Extraordinary: The Dimensional Excess of Animated Bodies.” Animation 3: 11–24. doi:10.1177/1746847708088732 (accessed March 7, 2012). McLelland, Mark. 2006. “A Short History of ‘Hentai’.” Intersections 12. http:// intersections.anu.edu.au/issue12/mclelland.html (accessed March 7, 2012). ———. 2007. “Why Are Japanese Girls’ Comics Full of Boys Bonking.” Intensities—The Journal of Cult Media 1. http://intensities.org/Essays/McLelland. pdf (accessed March 7, 2012). Natsume, Fusanosuke. 2010. “Pictotext and Panels: Commonalities and Differences in Manga, Comics and BD.” In Comics Worlds and the World of Comics, edited by Jaqueline Berndt. 37–52. Kyoto, Japan: International Manga Research Center, Kyoto Seika University. Noppe, Nele. 2010. “Dojinshii Research as a Site of Opportunity for Manga Studies.” In Comics Worlds and the World of Comics, edited by Jaqueline Berndt. 125–143. Kyoto, Japan: International Manga Research Center, Kyoto Seika University. Ortega-Brena, Mariana. 2009. “Peek-a-boo, I See You: Watching Japanese Hard-core Animation.” Sexuality & Culture 13: 17–31. doi:10.1007/s12119-008-9039-5 (accessed March 7, 2012). Perper, Timothy, and Martha Cornog. 2002. “Eroticism for the Masses: Japanese Manga Comics and Their Assimilation into the U.S.” Sexuality & Culture 6.1: 3–126. Robbins, Trina. 2002. “Gender Differences in Comics.” Image & Narrative 2.2. http://www.imageandnarrative.be/inarchive/gender/trinarobbins.htm (accessed March 20, 2012). Rosenkranz, Patrick. 2002. Rebel Visions. The Underground Comix Revolution, 1963–1975. Seattle, WA: Fantagraphics. Schodt, Frederik L. 1983. Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. Tokyo: Kodansha. “Sei So Tsui Dan Sha.” 2012a. Manga Baka-Updates. http://www.mangaupdates. com/series.html?id=19490 (accessed March 7, 2012). “Sei So Tsui Dan Sha.” 2012b. MyAnimeList.net. http://myanimelist.net/ manga/3447/Sei_So_Tsui_Dan_Sha (accessed March 20, 2012). Shigematsu, Setsu. 1999. “Dimensions of Desire: Sex, Fantasy, and Fetish in Japanese Comics.” In Themes and Issues in Asian Cartooning: Cute, Cheap Mad, and Sexy, edited by John A. Lent. 127–163. Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Popular Press.

142 Elisabeth Klar “Shiwasu no Okina.” 2012. eroticcomic.info. http://www.eroticcomic.info/ shiwasunookina.html (accessed March 7, 2012). Sihombing, Febriani. 2011. “On the Iconic Difference between Couple Characters in Boy Love Manga.” Image & Narrative 12.1: 150–165. http://www.imageandnarrative. be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/viewFile/130/101 (accessed March 7, 2012). Zank, Dinah. 2010. “Kawaii vs. Rorikon: The Reinvention of the Term Lolita in Modern Japanese Manga.” In Comics as a Nexus of Cultures. Essays on the Interplay of Media, Disciplines and International Perspectives, edited by Mark Berninger, Jocken Ecke, and Gideon Haberkorn. 211–222. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.

8

Social Networking Services as Platforms for Transcultural Fannish Interactions DeviantART and Pixiv Nele Noppe

INTRODUCTION It has become commonplace for English-language studies about Japanese- and English-speaking fans of manga to mention that the Internet in general and social media in particular play a crucial role for the functioning of contemporary fan communities (e.g., Condry 2010, 196; Galbraith and LaMarre 2010, 365; Lam 2010, 240; Orbaugh 2010, 176). The potential that online technologies have to support interactions between fans of different national, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds has garnered particular attention. While broader fan studies research is beginning to examine the concrete ways in which online technologies can in reality aid such “transcultural” (Annett 2011, 29–34; Jung 2011) fannish community-building and activities, few studies have focused on how fans of manga and other Japanese popular media use specific online technologies to interact. Without such empirical research, it is difficult to judge how effective these “multidirectional communications technologies of the Internet” (Annett 2011, 4) actually are at helping manga fans of various national, linguistic, and cultural backgrounds establish connections, and what kind of interactions these technologies encourage in reality. Perhaps the most significant of these “technologies of the Internet” are social networking services (SNSs), which fan communities of all cultural and linguistic backgrounds increasingly rely on as community-building tools and hubs for fannish activities of all sorts. SNSs can be defined as “web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other participants with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system” (boyd and Ellison 2007, n.p.). The primary aim of SNSs is to build communities of participants and encourage interactions between them. What makes SNSs particularly attractive to fans is that many SNSs are ideal platforms for a key fannish activity: exchanging and discussing fan-created works. The last decade has seen a proliferation of SNSs that are explicitly designed to help users publish and discuss their own media, instead of merely interacting with other users. Such media-sharing SNSs have become primary sites of distribution and consumption for all sorts of user-generated

144 Nele Noppe content, ranging from videos (YouTube, Nico Nico Douga, and others) to photos (Flickr, Photozou, and others) and also user-created art, comics, and manga (deviantART, pixiv, and others). Creative activity within Japanese- and English-speaking fan communities is and always has been strongly group oriented (Orbaugh 2010, 178): collaborative fanworks in all media are common, and nearly all fanworks are published with the goal of eliciting reactions from other members of the community (Hellekson and Busse 2006, location 78). It should come as no surprise, then, that many contemporary fans of all stripes have adopted media-sharing SNSs as their online platforms of choice for both community building and publishing. Such sites are not only convenient places to socialize and maintain fan communities but also act as distribution systems whose functionality is geared exactly toward what fans want to do with the media they create: share them and have them appreciated and talked about by other fans. Several recent studies that focus on the use of SNSs by fans have highlighted both how fans communicate and form communities using various SNSs (Busker 2008; Ford 2008; Dunlap and Wolf 2010; Jung 2011), and how they use them to publish fanworks online (Busker 2008; Dennis 2010). However, approaching SNSs either as communication hubs or as distribution platforms risks presenting these two functions as wholly separate, as the “Internet versions” of predigital forms of communication and distribution. Research on the nature and effects of interactions on SNSs shows that the “digital conversations” that take place on SNSs have their own particular characteristics that profoundly influence what can be said, who can say it, and what the results of the conversation can be. Failure to appreciate the particular characteristics of digital conversations may hamper understanding of how oft-mentioned Internet technologies like media-sharing SNSs actually support and influence (possibly transcultural) fan communities and their activities. Based on a set of questions for untangling the workings of “digital conversations” suggested by danah boyd and Jeffrey Heer in 2006, I propose that the following considerations are important for understanding how online communication between fans through media-sharing SNSs functions in reality (see boyd and Heer 2006). “Digital conversations” about a fanwork published on an SNS take place mostly in public, where (in theory) any fan from any cultural background and nationality can participate. “Digital conversations” happen in the primary site where the work itself resides, sometimes literally on top of the work itself, turning the digital conversations into sites of meaning-making and interpretation. “Digital conversations” are realized with a variety of technological tools provided by the SNSs, tools whose limitations and possibilities influence the conversations. “Digital conversations” on SNSs are conducted by fans whose goals may or may not coincide with those of other participating fans and may or may not coincide with the goals of the SNS on which they take place. And perhaps most importantly in the context of fanworks on SNSs, “digital conversations” about a work are not fleeting. They persist, openly visible, searchable, and leaving a lasting impression on the work that inspired them. Because of the persistence and public visibility of these digital

Social Networking Services as Platforms

145

conversations, a work that is distributed on an SNS is never just the work alone, but an indivisible whole formed by the work and reactions to it. In this chapter, I make a first attempt at clarifying the complex ways in which the particular nature of digital conversations works to influence fannish interactions on SNSs. My focus is on how these digital conversations on SNSs help or hinder “transcultural” interactions between Japanese- and English-speaking fans of manga, comics, and other media (Annett 2011), and how SNSs may encourage or perpetuate behavior that can be (mis)interpreted as culturally determined. I conduct a comparative case study of digital conversations around a particular kind of fanwork that is often distributed and discussed through SNSs: fan-created comics and manga. CONSTRUCTING DIGITAL CONVERSATIONS ON DEVIANTART AND PIXIV I examine the digital conversations that emerged around thirty samples from two different media-sharing SNSs, deviantART (http://www.deviantart.com) and pixiv (http://www.pixiv.net), which share the same aim of encouraging community- and conversation-building around user-created graphics. Neither SNS was built especially or even primarily for fans, but both have come to serve as important communication hubs for English-speaking fan communities (deviantART) and Japanese-speaking fan communities (pixiv). I will first provide a brief overview of the general characteristics of deviantART and pixiv, as well as the various tools that each of the sites offers participants to construct digital conversations, to give an idea of what form the “digital conversations” on these SNSs take in practice. DeviantART, launched in 2000, is an SNS that allows its users to upload, exchange, and discuss graphic works. The site claimed to have more than 14 million subscribed participants in December 2011 and over 100 million submitted works. English is by far the most commonly used language on the site, but participants also communicate in several other languages. DeviantART markets itself mainly as a venue for creators of “original” graphics, although it explicitly indicates that fanworks are welcome as well. In fact, many of the site’s participants publish fanworks. Pixiv describes itself as an “illustration communication service” and has the same basic functionality as deviantART. The site was launched in 2007 and claimed to have 2.7 million subscribed participants at the start of 2011 (Pixiv Ts shin Hensh bu 2011, 13). By November 2011, pixiv had 2.9 billion page views per month for 22 million submitted artworks, with 20,000 to 30,000 new works being uploaded every day (Schonfeld 2011). The vast majority of participants communicate in Japanese, but pixiv claims that about 10% of its visitors come from overseas (Pixiv Ts shin Hensh bu 2011, 13). The site contains original works as well as fanworks, but a large proportion of the site’s content are fanworks.

146 Nele Noppe Both sites offer participants a variety of tools to connect with each other, distribute works, and discover works to build digital conversations around. The result of various participants’ interactions with the sites—the persistent and publicly visible digital conversations that are the topic of this chapter—are displayed on the page of each individual work. Pixiv and deviantART have slightly different displays for visualizing digital conversations, but for the sake of simplicity, I will describe both together in general terms. The work appears as a digital image on the top left or in the center of the screen, with various kinds of additional information appearing below and to the sides of the image. Prominently displayed are the work’s title, the name of the participant who submitted it (with a link back to their user profile), and additional notes on the work by the creator. Below is a comment box that invites other participants to talk about the work, and below that are comments submitted by other participants. Also prominently displayed just above, below, or to the side of the work are invitations to add the work to one’s personal gallery of favorite works, an invitation to share a link to the work on various other online services, and thumbnails of other works by the creator. Also visible is metadata about the work, accompanied by statistics about how many times a work has received comments, been added to personal galleries, or been viewed. Both deviantART and pixiv take great pains to emphasize that works on their sites are there to be talked about, not just looked at. The works are visually presented as embedded within the conversations, conversation starters more than central exhibits. All the interactions that have taken place around the works are recorded and visible, and viewers of the works are poked and prodded to actively participate in the conversations using a wide variety of tools. In the rest of this chapter, I will put a spotlight on a few key conversation-building tools whose use helps illuminate the aforementioned questions about how fannish SNS use functions in reality, and how the potential of SNSs for enabling transcultural fannish communication should be understood. I will examine tools for creating conversation starters (works), commenting tools for reacting to works, tagging tools for categorizing works, and finally tools for moving digital conversations from deviantART and pixiv to other online locations. SAMPLE COLLECTION All samples examined here are fan-created comics or manga. For the purposes of this study, “fan-created comics or manga” on deviantART and pixiv were defined as any two-dimensional works that focus on characters or settings from an existing media property, were created without the authorization of the copyright owners of that media property, and combine text and images. The length or sequential nature of the works was not taken into account. I considered it best to choose a broad definition that reflects the

Social Networking Services as Platforms

147

fannish context in which the sample works were created, rather than impose a definition of “comics” or “manga” that might exclude works that are considered comics or manga by their creators. (For instance, across all samples from both sites, I found that creators of single-image works sometimes referred to their works as “comics” or “manga.”) Throughout this chapter, I will use the generic terms works and samples to refer to the fan-created comics and manga under examination. Many creators had taken advantage of the way SNS user profiles allow for constructed identities (Liu 2007) to craft an image of themselves that made it difficult to verify their cultural and linguistic backgrounds. For instance, nearly all used pseudonyms. Of the deviantART creators, three used names that sounded as if they might be Japanese, but the creators nevertheless communicated in English and claimed a non-Japanese country of residence. I also found that many samples from deviantART used the sort of “artistic style, character stereotypes, and common motifs (common to) Original Non-Japanese (ONJ) manga” (Sell 2011, 95–96). So in order to avoid imposing a cultural background on any sample work that may not reflect the actual circumstances in which the work was created, I will talk about “works” or “samples.” Samples and data were collected in the following manner. To narrow down the potential number of samples and simplify comparisons, I chose only works based on one media property, the Harry Potter franchise. Harry Potter enjoyed significant popularity among both English- and Japanese-speaking fans (Orbaugh 2010, 174), meaning that I could expect to find a usefully large pool of works to draw samples from on both deviantART and pixiv. In an attempt to replicate the experience of a new user, I visited both sites without logging in, entered the keywords “Harry Potter” in English and in katakana syllabary into the search boxes atop the sites, and selected the first fifteen fan-created comics or manga that appeared in the two sets of search results. For each of the thirty sample works and digital conversations, I manually recorded all publicly visible information. Data about the samples was gathered between December 19, 2011, and December 27, 2011. I did not take part in the sample digital conversations. No creators or other participants whose conversational activities are described in this study were aware that their interactions were being observed for research purposes, and to protect their privacy, I do not provide detailed descriptions of or links to works or online interactions.

COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THIRTY DIGITAL CONVERSATIONS ON DEVIANTART AND PIXIV

Submitting and Finding Works I will begin by considering some of the tools that deviantART and pixiv provide for users to create starting points for digital conversations—in the case of this study, fan-created comics and manga—and what the actual use

148 Nele Noppe of these tools indicates. There are various ways in which SNSs can influence what works can be used as conversation starters, from the technological tools they provide their users with to more “ideological” restrictions they may impose, such as content policies and age limits for participants. The technological tools that deviantART and pixiv offer to their users for creating starting points for digital conversations turned out to be excellent examples of how the technologies available to individual fan creators can influence the format and content of the works they make. Because the samples were all web comics, not bound to a publisher’s rules about formats, their creators were free to publish their works using any number of pages or page formats. I found a wide variety of different page counts and page formats among the samples, but there were some striking and consistent differences between the samples from deviantART and pixiv. Every single one of the fifteen deviantART works consisted of a single page, while thirteen out of fifteen pixiv works had two or more pages. As for page formats, twelve of the deviantART works had a very elongated vertical shape, and two were similarly elongated in horizontal fashion. None of the pages found in any of the pixiv works had such extreme proportions. At first sight, the stark differences in page counts between the two sets of sample works seem to confirm the general idea that fan-created manga are a major medium of expression for many Japanese-speaking fans, while English-speaking fans are far more likely to use written fan fiction as their main medium and use fan comics only to make short gag comics (“Fancomic,” n.d.). However, I suggest that another explanation for these differences may lie in the tools offered by the SNSs for submitting and displaying works. Pixiv offers creators an easy-to-use uploader for multipage works and also has a dedicated viewer for multipage works that allows visitors to smoothly scroll through large numbers of consecutive images/pages. By contrast, deviantART’s uploader does not allow for submitting multiple images at once, and the site does not have a dedicated viewer for multipage works. Creators who want to publish a multipage work to deviantART have to upload every image separately and then manually link uploaded pages together with the use of HTML code. Creators working on longer works meant for publication on deviantART may want to avoid this laborious process by making their work short enough to fit in a single image, and by making that single image large enough to contain the entire story they want to tell. The result would be the very elongated, single-page works that appear so numerously in the deviantART sample collection. Creators who want to publish a work too long to fit into even such an elongated image may choose not to publish on deviantART at all. In other words, the tools for uploading and displaying works that deviantART and pixiv offer seem to reinforce general perceptions about what media Japanese- and English-speaking fans prefer for their fanworks. Here is a first example of deviantART and pixiv probably not causing, but at the very least perpetuating a perceived difference between Japanese- and English-language fans. DeviantART’s uploading and display tools are also an example of how

Social Networking Services as Platforms

149

an SNS can be thoroughly unwelcoming for a particular group of fans, in this case a group of fans with a different “fannish” cultural background. Japanesespeaking fans who are accustomed to creating multipage works may very well see deviantART as more or less useless for their purposes and decide not to participate on digital conversations on this SNS at all. The technological tools offered by SNSs can influence not only what kind of works can be submitted in the first place but also which of the many works that are submitted get exposure and are therefore more likely to become starting points for digital conversations. There are various ways in which works on deviantART and pixiv can get exposure, but the most important way is arguably through the sites’ search box (which I also used to find samples). DeviantART and pixiv offer the same set of search options: search by popularity, by posting date, and so on. However, their default search settings are different: deviantART shows results from a search with the most popular works appearing first, while pixiv shows the most recent works first. Because I used the default search method to collect samples, it turned out that the fifteen samples I selected from deviantART were the most popular fifteen “Harry Potter” works on the site, posted between 2004 and 2011, while the fifteen samples from pixiv were the most recent fifteen, dated between October and December 2011. Such a difference in default search ranking that participants are presented with implies that on pixiv, a new creator may have a good chance of catching the eye of visitors, but on deviantART, creators who are already popular are likely to become more popular (Akdag Salah 2010, 18). DeviantART and pixiv make an a priori decision about what kinds of works their users most likely want to see—the most popular, or the newest—and thereby direct participants toward certain works by default, influencing what works are likely to be talked about. Here is a first example of another finding that will recur several times throughout this chapter: a technological tool may sound as if it should be functioning in a similar way across both sites (every search box looks the same) but can actually give users very different results because of some small technological quirk. As will become clear, such similar-but-different tools can cause differences between digital conversations that may easily be (mis)interpreted as rooted in the participants’ cultural backgrounds.

Commenting and Voting on Works The next tool I analyze is the functionality that allows participants to leave direct comments on works. Comments are the most obvious conversationbuilding tools embedded in nearly all media-based SNSs. DeviantART and pixiv both offer logged-in participants the ability to post textual reactions to a work via a comment box, but both SNSs differ in the way they handle the content and visibility of, and control over, comments. DeviantART’s commenting tool enables always-visible, threaded discussions (meaning that it is possible to reply to individual comments) with long comments. Pixiv only

150 Nele Noppe allows the posting of nonthreaded, tweet-length comments of which only the most recent twenty are visible. The more public and feature-rich nature of deviantART comments suggests that this tool is a very important aspect of conversational use of works on the site, and an examination of the samples appears to bear this out. Fourteen of the works examined on deviantART, many of which had been available for years, had amassed large numbers of comments: thirteen out of fifteen had several hundred comments, and four had more than a thousand. The content and especially the number of comments on a work are seen as important markers of popularity on deviantART. For the pixiv samples, I was not able to obtain reliable data about the number of comments because only the latest twenty comments are visible to anyone who is not the creator of a work. Overall, most pixiv samples appeared to have a low number of comments, and comment numbers on pixiv are clearly not as important an indicator of popularity as on deviantART. It seems that on pixiv, this function is at least partly shifted onto a voting system that allows any participant to rank a work on a scale from one to ten by clicking a row of stars above the image. This voting tool, entirely absent on deviantART, was put to heavy use on pixiv: all works had votes, many up to a hundred. The final tallies of the votes were uniformly very high, which seems to suggest that participants rarely give a work less than nine stars. Participants use the voting tool not to give a frank appraisal of any work they see but to publicly applaud works they find particularly entertaining or good. This is apparently not how pixiv intended for participants to use this tool: in a new site design for pixiv (Schonfeld 2011) that I accessed after its private alpha release in December 2011, the votes tool had been replaced with a Facebook-style “like” tool. (I should note here that site designs are often prone to rapid changes, and the functionality of the tools described here may have changed by the time this book is published.) Looking at these commenting and voting tools, a first thing to note is that the commenting tool is another example of a similar-sounding feature that actually functions very differently on both sites, like the aforementioned search box. The comment boxes on deviantART and pixiv look exactly the same, and the only way to discover the differences in their functionality is to use both tools for a long time or to dig into the sites’ help pages. At first glance, then, observers may conclude that the different ways in which deviantART and pixiv participants use the commenting tool—many comments and lively discussions on deviantART, fewer comments on pixiv—suggest that Japanese-speaking fans leave less feedback on fanworks. Indeed, I have seen this explanation be suggested multiple times in online discussions between English-speaking fans trying to figure out how pixiv works. Fans noticed the lower number of comments on pixiv and concluded that “Japanese fans” must apparently not be very conscientious about giving a work the sort of proper feedback that lubricates the exchange of fanworks. Such an interpretation seems based on a misunderstanding of the limitations of pixiv’s commenting tool and a failure to appreciate the importance of other tools like

Social Networking Services as Platforms

151

the voting tool for providing feedback on pixiv. The nonobvious technological differences between deviantART’s and pixiv’s commenting tools suggest that it can be dangerous to look exclusively for possible cultural influences when differences are observed in the way fans use outwardly similar SNS tools. Comparative studies on SNS use in various countries have found that even small differences in the technologies available to consumers in countries like the United States and Japan influence what kinds of media creative consumers will produce (Hyorth 2009, 2), but studies have also indicated that different cultural backgrounds can lead to different behavior on websites with overtly similar functionality (Choi 2007, 1; Takahashi 2010, 461). The true causes of the differences in behavior between fans on deviantART and pixiv that I observed may well lie somewhere in between technological and cultural influences. Another important aspect of digital conversations on SNSs that is hinted at by an examination of the commenting tools is the importance of who controls the content of a digital conversation, and how that control is enforced and limited. On both deviantART and pixiv, creators can disallow comments, delete them, or make them invisible. Creators seem to have a significant amount of control over what is said in the persistent, publicly visible digital conversations that are created around their works. Also, as briefly mentioned earlier, comments on deviantART and pixiv are subject to additional control by content policies imposed by the sites. However, the control that both creators and SNSs have over digital conversations seems qualified at best. Creators’ use of the technological tools for control they have been given is limited by their status in their respective fan communities as participants, not all-powerful authority figures. Many fan communities have developed unspoken rules about “the kinds of participation that are allowed and the kinds that are discouraged” (Kido Lopez 2011, 9), and a perceived equality among community members is a key idea for many Japanese- and English-speaking fan communities. A creator who uses their power over the conversation in a way that other participants consider excessive may be accused of causing “wank” (Dunlap and Wolf 2010, 268) and lose fannish social capital. In other words, creators’ control over digital conversations is tempered by the fannish context in which these digital conversations take place (and, as I will discuss later in this chapter, by the willingness and technological ability of some participants to repost “unauthorized” copies of works on different sites to construct alternative digital conversations). The control that SNSs themselves have over digital conversations is limited in a different way, namely, by their reliance on their users to police inappropriate content. Any participant who encounters a comment or work that appears to be in violation of the sites’ rules can report it with the click of a button, but site administrators themselves do not actively search for inappropriate content that needs to be removed. This system allows users to collude and “protect” works, and digital conversations on works, from deletion simply by not alerting the site administrators to their existence. I observed

152 Nele Noppe numerous examples of works on deviantART and pixiv that were in violation of the sites’ content policies but had clearly not been reported (yet). This is a first indication of how intensely SNSs rely on their users to shape all persistent, searchable content on their sites. Subsequently, I will touch on several other examples of this extensive reliance on users, particularly to explore how it can hinder a site’s accessibility for fans who do not belong to that site’s main target audience (for instance, English-language fans trying to participate in digital conversations on pixiv).

Categorizing Works through Tags, Keywords, and Categories Like the search box and commenting box, the next feature I examine is another case of a tool that sounds like it should have a similar function on either site but in reality is used very differently. Media-sharing SNSs need ways of categorizing the vast amounts of user-generated content published on the sites. DeviantART categorizes works via keywords and categories, while pixiv relies on a system of tags. While “keywords” may sound synonymous to “tags,” these two turned out to have almost completely separate functions. On deviantART, only a creator can add keywords and categories to a work. Keywords are invisible to other participants and serve no purpose beyond making a work easier to find using the site’s search engine; categories are visible, but the system is so complex and used so inconsistently that it seems to serve little useful categorization purpose for fannish participants. On pixiv, tags are visible to all participants, and both creators (whose tags are preceded with an asterisk) and other participants can add tags to any given work. The tags tool is considered essential to the categorization of works on pixiv: the site’s search system works mainly by indexing user-added tags, and in 2009, pixiv also added a user-edited online tag encyclopedia to its site. All samples from pixiv had tags, and seven of the fifteen had tags that had been added by participants besides the creator. Both creator- and other participant-added tags expressed not only the content of works but also appraisals (such as “cute,” “scary,” and “deserves more votes”). There were also several requests in tag form for creators to continue a work. As these samples show, pixiv tags are used not only for categorization but also for commentary. Like with the use of the voting tool described earlier, this use clearly does not align with what pixiv envisioned for the tool: on its Help page, pixiv explicitly asks participants to chat using the comments tool and not the tags. However, a cursory examination of pixiv shows that its users very frequently comment through tags. Like the apparently unexpected use of the votes tool described earlier, the “unauthorized” use of the tags tool suggests that while conversations must take place with use of the tools offered by the sites, participants can and do actively bend those tools to suit their own conversational purposes. Sites’ control over how tools are used is not absolute, just as their control over content is not absolute: both kinds of control rely on the cooperation of users.

Social Networking Services as Platforms

153

The function of the tags tool on pixiv is also a prime example of precisely how important the contributions of noncreator participants to digital conversations can be. Without the tags that creators and users add to works, pixiv would be unusable because no participant would ever be able to find anything on the site. Participants who add tags to others’ works instead of submitting self-created works are not merely adding some nice extras to digital conversations: they add something of great value, namely, searchability, and their task is essential to the smooth functioning of the entire site. SNSs are sites that “don’t just serve the networks of people who use them. Rather, they are constituted by them and depend on them for their existence and refinement” (Watson 2010, n.p.). Such collaborative construction of value is entirely appropriate within the context of a fannish community. Pixiv and deviantART explicitly encourage the participation of users who do not create images themselves. Pixiv claims that 30% of its registered users do not upload works (Pixiv Ts shin Hensh bu 2011, 14), and while deviantART offers no statistics, it also seems to have a sizable minority of participants who create no works but make other contributions—commenting, voting, bookmarking, and “favoriting”—that may sound insignificant, but are indispensable in the context of digital conversations. By offering such a wide variety of ways for participants to make a meaningful contribution besides direct “talking” through comments, digital conversations on SNSs may encourage the participation of fans who are uncomfortable using the language of the work’s creator. A fan who knows only English may not be able to comment, but they can probably figure out how to vote on or bookmark a work.

Reposting Works on Other Sites Finally, I will analyze how participants share works not only to their own galleries of “bookmarks” or “favorites” within the SNSs but also to sites outside of deviantART and pixiv. Above and next to works, deviantART and pixiv provide buttons that encourage participants to post links toward works on deviantART or pixiv to other networking-oriented sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Reddit, LiveJournal, StumbleUpon, mixi, or Hatena Bookmark. This is another tool to draw new participants toward a digital conversation. However, some participants do not just use the sharing tools provided by deviantART and pixiv to invite new participants to visit the SNSs. Instead or on top of linking to deviantART and pixiv, some participants also copy works entirely and repost them on a different site, with or without a link to the work’s original location, and with or without attribution to the work’s creator. Such “unauthorized” reposting is common, but hard to trace and quantify. While I cannot say for certain which samples were reposted how many times, a search using a reverse image search engine showed that at least three of the deviantART works had been reposted without the creators’ permission in other locations. One thing this practice emphasizes is that fans are certainly

154 Nele Noppe not bound to using only the tools provided to them by the SNSs; they can also take advantage of other technological tools, in this case the simple ability any Internet user has to copy an image and upload it elsewhere. Reposting is a typical expression of the fact that individuals now have the ability to “appropriate and recirculate media content” (Jung 2011, n.p.), a basic driving force behind the same participatory culture that has allowed media-sharing SNSs like deviantART and pixiv to become popular. However, it is clear that neither deviantART and pixiv nor the creators who publish works through them appreciate the loss of control that comes with reposting participants taking advantage of that particular enabling aspect of participatory culture (Jenkins 2008, 137). DeviantART and pixiv both explicitly forbid reposting. Aside from the annoyances it causes for their core user bases of creators, reposting does not benefit the SNSs because it leads to new digital conversations about works springing up in the new posting locations, instead of new users being drawn toward deviantART and pixiv to take part in the existing digital conversations. Creators themselves dislike reposting, because it has long been considered unethical among many Japanese- and English-speaking fan communities to take control over the locations where a work is published out of the creator’s hands. Reposting has even become an issue of contention among Japanese-speaking and English-speaking fans, with the former sometimes claiming that “western” fans often disrespect Japanese fans’ wish to control their works by reposting them willy-nilly. Pixiv even reinforces this general idea by placing a warning in English about unauthorized reposting at the top of both its English- and Japanese-language Help pages. However, to my knowledge, no empirical research exists on this topic, and suggestions that “western” fans in general have different culturally and historically inspired ethics on this particular point sound unconvincing to me. “Western” or English-speaking fans are not actually a distinct group whose members all subscribe to a particular list of rules of fannish etiquette, and in fact, very many English-language fan communities also consider unauthorized reposting by any other fan to be a violation of “their” fannish ethics. In the absence of real data about fannish reposting, I would like to suggest that the “no reposting” rule is often broken not because of a supposed profound difference in ethics between “Japanese” and “western” fans, but to the presence of individual fans who are willing to break “their” community’s unwritten rules, and of individual fans who function outside of the relevant communities and thus do not risk ostracism by ignoring the rules (Lee 2011, 238). Why would any fan repost works, then, instead of respecting the implied wishes of the work’s creator (a fellow fan) and supporting the original digital conversation around the work on deviantART or pixiv? While reposting for purposes of criticism is not uncommon, in the vast majority of cases, reposters make it very obvious that they are reposting the work to a new location because they like it and want to share it with a broader audience. Interestingly enough, among the samples that had been reposted to new

Social Networking Services as Platforms

155

sites, about half of the approximately fifteen separate new digital conversations that had sprung up around the three reposted works were in a language that was different from the original English-language conversations on deviantART. Based on this observation, existing research on language use on SNSs, and my own experiences as a fan, I argue that unauthorized reposting to a different-language location is a way of making works accessible to new audiences of fans who find it impractical or impossible to navigate digital conversations on SNSs that are conducted in a language they do not understand. This would make reposting not only a site of (perhaps misplaced) conflicts about fannish ethics but also a symptom that illuminates a key reason why digital conversations on SNSs may hinder rather than help transcultural interactions among fans. Prior studies on SNSs have found that language is a key determinant in how communities on SNSs are formed and limited. SNS use has a tendency to get demarcated along language lines (boyd and Ellison 2007), and even when multiple languages are used within one SNS, this tends to be within separate in-site communities that interact only infrequently (Herring 2007, 10). This implies that SNSs which are theoretically open to participation from fans all around the globe, like deviantART and pixiv, can become effectively inaccessible to participants from some linguistic backgrounds simply because of how thoroughly the participants belonging to the dominant language group arrange the content of the SNS to serve their particular needs. The sample works from Pixiv and deviantART illustrate perfectly how this can happen. Pixiv in particular makes considerable efforts to court non-Japanese users, and one of the tactics it uses is to offer its site interface in multiple languages, including English. However, the fact that the site relies entirely on its mainly Japanese-speaking user base to provide all content and categorization ensures that the site is still virtually impossible to navigate for participants who do not know Japanese, even if they are provided with a site interface they can read. Nearly all pixiv samples used in this research, for instance, only had descriptions and tags in Japanese. Since categorizing and search on pixiv rely chiefly on user-created tags, this means that most samples would have been impossible for me to discover without searching in Japanese, regardless of whether I used pixiv’s English- or Japanese-language site interface. A hypothetical Japanese-speaking Harry Potter fan who does not know how to navigate digital conversations in English would have similar difficulties finding what he or she wants on deviantART, even if that fan managed to navigate the English-language site interface. This seems to render SNSs, so open to a “transcultural” audience in theory, unwelcoming to fans of other languages in practice. The exact thing that would make the SNS attractive to new fans—categorized fanwork content—is impossible to navigate. It makes sense for fans who find digital conversations on pixiv or deviantART inaccessible to simply not participate, wait until other fans who do have the linguistic ability to access the sites bring images to them via reposting, and then participate in alternative digital conversations in a language that they understand.

156 Nele Noppe CONCLUSION This study has found that the actual digital conversations among fans that appear on SNSs are the result of a complex interplay of sometimes minute differences in functionality, the relative power and control that various groups of participants can exert, cultural and linguistic influences, and the contexts and content that participants with different goals try to create. Any answer to the question of whether digital conversations on SNSs help or hinder transcultural interactions between Japanese- and English-speaking fans of manga, comics, and other media must clearly be just as complex. Overall, it seems reasonable to say that while the technological architectures of deviantART and pixiv are geared toward maximizing participation, and the sites themselves claim to be targeting a global audience, the actual accessibility of digital conversations on these SNSs to fans who do not understand the language used by the majority of participants is limited in various ways. Quite possibly, the sites are prone to the same language segregation that has been observed in other SNSs. This suggests the possibility that only a relatively small group of bilingual “bridging individuals” (Herring 2007, 10; Jung 2011) are, realistically, capable of taking an active part in digital conversations on both deviantART and pixiv. Digital conversations may only become truly accessible to nonbilingual users when these “bridging individuals” actively attempt to bring works (the starting points of the conversations) out of the inaccessible sites and into a new context, where nonbilingual users can build new digital conversations around them. Reposting is only one way to make works accessible to nonbilingual users; other tactics employed by bilingual fans include scanlating and fansubbing of Japanese-language fanworks, activities that also tend to take place without the permission of the original fannish creator. While such “unauthorized” sharing activities are certainly a legitimate form of transcultural interaction, it may be questionable to what degree these interactions also lead to connection and exchange. Sharing activities like reposting and dōjinshi (fanzine) scanlation are very one-sided, and while the intentions of reposters and scanlators may be benign, such “interactions” may well be unwanted and unwelcome for the fannish creators whose works are made accessible to new fannish audiences in these ways. In any case, it seems that for comics and manga (fan) culture, SNSs such as deviantART and pixiv are only the latest examples in a long line of “gatekeeping” persons, institutions, and technologies that have regulated transcultural exchanges of works and words between fan communities. The influence of these “gatekeepers” is increasingly being documented, from the “sanctioned” gatekeepers such as non-Japanese and Japanese publishers, distributors, marketers, translators, localizers, and even law enforcement, to “fannish” gatekeepers such as scanlation and fansubbing groups. Studies on these gatekeepers are showing that they almost invariably play some role in establishing and strengthening narratives that present similarities and differences between works or fans as historically, nationally, or culturally determined (Lee 2009,

Social Networking Services as Platforms

157

2011; Ruh 2010; Carlson and Corliss 2011; Sell 2011). This chapter has provided some initial suggestions on how SNSs, central hubs of fannish interactions about manga and comics as they are, may contribute to the construction or maintenance of such narratives. However, more focused research is needed to clarify precisely how SNSs and their users interact to negotiate, perpetuate, or deconstruct ideas about cultural differences between the users and the works they create and discuss. While this study casts some doubts on how much mutual exchange SNS sites can enable between fans who communicate in different languages, it also suggests that the often-essentialized differences between Japanese and “western” fans (Hills 2002, 3; Galbraith and LaMarre 2010) are not as straightforward as they may seem at first glance. DeviantART and pixiv are perceived as so similar that they are often called the “western” or “Japanese” equivalents of each other, and because the digital conversations that take place on them are performed in a way that is publicly visible in great detail, they look like ideal sites for comparing different “fan cultures.” However, it should be clear by now that reducing different fannish behavior on these SNSs to cultural influences would be very simplistic. DeviantART, pixiv, and their users construct different site contexts and cultures that could easily be mistaken for linguistic or even national cultures, but that are actually constructed through the interplay of the technological tools on offer and the massive influence of the sites’ core language audiences. It may be a chicken or egg question whether the minor but significant technological differences and accents that I observed on deviantART and pixiv were put in place by the sites’ owners to accommodate existing (real or perceived) historical or cultural differences between fans of varying cultural backgrounds, or whether the sites’ designs are the actual cause of some of these (real or perceived) differences. What seems certain is that these SNS sites are capable of reinforcing and perpetuating real or perceived rifts between their participants, and there can be no guarantees about the real-world effectiveness of “multidirectional communications technologies of the Internet” (Annett 2011, 4) that claim to enable worldwide transcultural communication. BIBLIOGRAPHY Akdag Salah, Almila. 2010. “The Online Potential of Art Creation and Dissemination: DeviantArt as the Next Art Venue.” Proceedings of the 2010 international conference on Electronic Visualisation and the Arts, p. 6–22. British Computer Society Swinton. Annett, Sandra. 2011. “Animating Transcultural Communities: Animation Fandom in North America and East Asia from 1906–2010.” Doctoral dissertation, University of Winnipeg, Winnipeg, Canada. boyd, danah, and Nicole B. Ellison. 2007. “Social Network Sites: Definition, History, and Scholarship.” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication 13.1, article 11. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/boyd.ellison.html (accessed August 25, 2012).

158 Nele Noppe boyd, danah, Scott Golder, and Gilad Lotan. 2010. “Tweet, Tweet, Retweet: Conversational Aspects of Retweeting on Twitter.” HICSS-43. January 6. Kauai, HI: IEEE. boyd, danah, and Jeffrey Heer. 2006. “Profiles as Conversation: Networked Identity Performance on Friendster.” In Proceedings of the Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-39), Persistent Conversation Track. January 4–7, 2006. Kauai, HI: IEEE Computer Society. Busker, Rebecca Lucy. 2008. “On Symposia: LiveJournal and the Shape of Fannish Discourse.” Transformative Works and Cultures 1. doi:10.3983/twc.2008.0049 (accessed August 25, 2012). Carlson, Rebecca, and Jonathan Corliss. 2011. “Imagined Commodities: Video Game Localization and Mythologies of Cultural Difference.” Games and Culture 6.1 (January 1): 61–82. doi:10.1177/1555412010377322 (accessed August 25, 2012). Choi, Jaz Hee-jeong. 2007. “Approaching the Mobile Culture of East Asia.” M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 10.1 (March). http://eprints.qut.edu.au/14378/ (accessed August 25, 2012). Condry, Ian. 2010. “Dark Energy: What Fansubs Reveal about the Copyright Wars.” Mechademia 5: 193–208. Dennis, Jeffery P. 2010. “Drawing Desire: Male Youth and Homoerotic Fan Art.” Journal of LGBT Youth 7.1: 6–28. doi:10.1080/19361650903507734 (accessed August 25, 2012). deviantART. 2012. “Terms of Service.” http://about.deviantart.com/policy/service/ (accessed August 25, 2012). Dunlap, Kathryn, and Carissa Wolf. 2010. “Fans Behaving Badly: Anime Metafandom, Brutal Criticism, and the Intellectual Fan.” Mechademia 5: 267–283. “Fancomic.” n.d. Fanlore. http://fanlore.org/wiki/Fancomics (accessed April 9, 2012). Ford, Sam. 2008. “Soap Operas and the History of Fan Discussion.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 1. doi:10.3983/twc.2008.0042 (accessed August 25, 2012). Galbraith, Patrick W., and Thomas LaMarre. 2010. “Otakuology: A Dialogue.” Mechademia 5: 360–374. “Guidelines.” n.d. Pixiv. http://www.pixiv.net/guideline.php (accessed April 21, 2012). Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse. 2006. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet. Kindle edition. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. Herring, Susan C. 2007. “Language Networks on LiveJournal.” In Proceedings of the Fortieth Hawai’i International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-40). Los Alamitos, CA: IEEE Press. “Herupu.” n.d. Pixiv. http://www.pixiv.net/help.php?lang=ja (accessed April 15, 2012). Hills, Matt. 2002. “Transcultural otaku: Japanese Representations of Fandom and Representations of Japan in Anime/Manga Fan Cultures.” Presented at Mediain-Transition 2: Globalization and Convergence. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA. Hyorth, Larissa. 2009. “Digital Art in the Age of Social Media: A Case Study of the Politics of Personalization via Cute Culture.” In Breaking New Ground: Innovation in Games, Play, Practice and Theory. Proceedings of DiGRA (Authors & Digital Games Research Association) 2009. http://www.digra.org:8080/Plone/ dl/order_by_author?publication=Breaking%20New%20Ground:%20Innovation%20in%20Games,%20Play,%20Practice%20and%20Theory (accessed August 25, 2012). Jenkins, Henry. 2008. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Revised. New York: New York University Press. Jung, Sun. 2011. “K-pop, Indonesian Fandom, and Social Media.” In Race and Ethnicity in Fandom, edited by Robin Anne Reid and Sarah Gatson. Special

Social Networking Services as Platforms

159

issue, Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 8. doi:10.3983/twc.2011.0289 (accessed August 25, 2012). Kido Lopez, Lori. 2011. “Fan-Activists and the Politics of Race in The Last Airbender.” International Journal of Cultural Studies. http://ics.sagepub.com/content/early/2011/10/20/1367877911422862 (accessed January 28, 2013). Lam, Fan-Yi. 2010. “Comic Market: How the World’s Biggest Amateur Comic Fair Shaped Japanese Dōjinshi Culture.” Mechademia 5: 232–248. Lee, Hye-Kyung. 2009. “Between Fan Culture and Copyright Infringement: Manga Scanlation.” Media, Culture & Society 31.6 (November 1): 1011–1022. doi:10.1177/ 0163443709344251 (accessed August 25, 2012). ———. 2011. “Cultural Consumer and Copyright: A Case Study of Anime Fansubbing.” Creative Industries Journal 3.3: 237–252. Liu, Hugo. 2007. “Social Network Profiles as Taste Performances.” Journal of ComputerMediated Communication 13.1, article 13. http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol13/issue1/liu. html (accessed August 25, 2012). Orbaugh, Sharalyn. 2010. “Girls Reading Harry Potter, Girls Writing Desire: Amateur Manga and Shōjo Reading Practices.” In Girl Reading Girl in Japan, edited by Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley. 174–186. New York: Routledge. Pixiv Ts shin Hensh bu. 2011, April. Pixiv Kōshiki Manyuaru Bukku–Irasuto De Hirogaru Aratana Sekai. Tokyo: Enterbrain. Ruh, Brian. 2010. “Transforming U.S. Anime in the 1980s: Localization and Longevity.” Mechademia 5: 31–49. Schonfeld, Erick. 2011. “How Pixiv Built Japan’s 12th Largest Site with Manga-Girl Drawings (Redesign Sneak Peek and Invites).” TechCrunch. http://techcrunch. com/2011/12/13/pixiv-manga-girl-japan-redesign/ (accessed April 3, 2012). Sell, Cathy. 2011. “Manga Translation and Interculture.” Mechademia 6: 93–108. doi:10.1353/mec.2011.0002 (accessed August 25, 2012). Takahashi, Toshie. 2010. “MySpace or Mixi? Japanese Engagement with SNS (Social Networking Sites) in the Global Age.” New Media & Society 12.3 (May 1): 453–475. doi:10.1177/1461444809343462 (accessed August 25, 2012). Watson, Jeff. 2010. “Fandom Squared: Web 2.0 and Fannish Production.” Transformative Works and Cultures, no. 5. doi:10.3983/twc.2010.0218 (accessed August 25, 2012).

Page Intentionally Left Blank

Part 2

“Naruto” as Cultural Crossroads

Page Intentionally Left Blank

9

“Naruto” as a Typical Weekly Magazine Manga Omote Tomoyuki

INTRODUCTION It has already become common sense within the fields of literary studies and art history that the artist is not the only one who determines the meaning of a work. After all, it is not uncommon for people to make sense of an artwork in a way completely different from the artist’s initial intent. The historical significance of a work changes eminently according to whether the focus is on the intent of the artist, on the ways of reception, or on common features as well as disparities between the work in question and other artists and works. It is safe to say that attention to the artist’s intent and the positioning of the work in relation to her or his personal maturation is a rather traditional approach, although still basically important. However, manga research overwhelmingly takes a different approach. Here, the significance of a work is only exceptionally ascribed to the artist’s subjectivity—for example, by researchers who, leaning on older methods of literary studies, regard specific artists and works as “literature”. There are several reasons behind this, but certainly the most prominent is that manga works do not merely come into being by virtue of an artist’s subjectivity; rather, their creation is highly dependent on communication with others. In Japan, manga are usually published in magazines, taking the form of serialization, and therefore the orientation of a specific series is largely swayed by the editor-in-charge. It frequently happens that upon analysis of reader reactions, the work’s direction is changed midstream. In other words, the direction that a manga takes is determined by a mutual entanglement of three parties: the artist, the editorial policy of the magazine, and the readers. It goes without saying that neither the creation of literature nor visual art remains unaffected by the reaction of their audience or the trends of their times, but the importance that is attached to the autonomy of an artist’s creative ambitions varies in weight when it comes to manga. This chapter illuminates the fact that Japanese manga works are initially serialized in magazines and in the course of their creation strongly affected by the editorial policy of the respective magazine. This fact is widely shared among Japanese discussants of manga but apparently calls for explanation

164 Omote Tomoyuki when Japanese manga are analyzed from a foreign perspective because, outside of Japan, manga is rarely experienced as an initially magazine-based medium. By highlighting this aspect, the subsequent discussion aims at providing a prelude to manga research across borders. As mentioned previously, in researching Japanese manga, it is important to keep in mind that manga in Japan are usually first published in magazines, that is, weeklies or monthlies, where they appear alongside other series as well as illustrated articles. In this regard, manga’s publication pace is distinctive from, for example, bande dessinée published in book format. American comics on the other hand are, for the most part, published on a weekly basis, but they do not appear alongside works by other artists in the same issue, as is common for Japanese manga weeklies. This dissimilarity in publication media format has immensely influenced the characteristic differences between manga, bande dessinée, and American comics. Manga’s fundamentally monochrome rendering, for example, is greatly due to the magazine format. Taking Kishimoto Masashi’s “Naruto” as an example, this chapter examines the characteristics of Japanese manga magazines and investigates how such characteristics influence the nature of manga works. It is also intended to stimulate new perspectives on “Naruto” by focusing on the magazine medium. THE MANGA MAGAZINE WEEKLY SHŌNEN JUMP The serialization of “Naruto” began in issue 43, 1999, of Weekly Shōnen Jump, a weekly manga magazine targeted at boys, and it is still ongoing. In Japan, there are numerous long-running manga. Yet, there is only a limited number whose serialization continued for over a decade. From this viewpoint, “Naruto” can already be considered as a work of select status. Shōnen Jump’s targeted readership consists of boys whose age ranges from slightly younger than 10 to midteen.1 However, in reality, the magazine is also read by girls and by adult males and females who are much older than the initial target group. According to data from its publisher Sh eisha, the demographic of Shōnen Jump readers is as follows: 9 years and younger, 2.6%; 10–12 years, 12.2%; 13–15 years, 21.3%; 16–18 years, 16.3%; 19–24 years, 23.1%; 25–29 years, 11.3%; and 30 years and older, 13.2%. The gender ratio of readers is 79.8% male and 20.2% female.2 Shōnen Jump was launched as a biweekly in 1968 and turned into a weekly one year later. Although facing steep competition from the pioneers—Weekly Shōnen Sunday and Weekly Shōnen Magazine, which had been launched in 1959—Shōnen Jump grew rapidly, and by 1973, its circulation had reached the top of boys-oriented weeklies in Japan.3 It hit its peak in 1994 with a print run of 6.53 million weekly, before reaching a turning point in 1997, and as of 2012, its circulation stood at only 2.85 million. But even with such an apparent decline, it is worth highlighting that there is a gap of 1 million copies between Shōnen Jump and Shōnen Magazine, the latter

“Naruto” as a Typical Weekly Magazine Manga

165

ranking second of all manga weeklies today. Only a few magazines (nonmanga periodicals included) are able to sell beyond 1 million copies. In 1997, Shōnen Jump’s circulation was overtaken by Shōnen Magazine, and it dropped to second in the ranking. However, this did not last long, and nowadays, it is again number one. Another noteworthy aspect is that a substantial number of its readers are not reflected in the circulation numbers. These readers do not purchase their own copy. Instead, they often borrow the magazine from someone else or take advantage of the free-to-browse copies available in convenience stores and restaurants. In recent years, there are also many readers who access manga through illegal downloading from the Internet. Although print runs like that of Shōnen Jump are rare, manga magazines in general are deeply rooted in Japanese society. They are strategically displayed in bookshops and convenience stores, and borrowing among friends as well as in-store browsing while standing are both factors that contribute to extending their influence to nonregular manga readers. It is common for the manga industry to first secure a certain degree of popularity in magazines before extending its products to other media such as anime or video games. The practice of publishing multiple works in a single issue is not incidental either. In fact, it is a calculated decision to sustain the magazine’s circulation so that the popularity of some series will allow for the inclusion of manga by newcomers, to search for new talent and potential attractions while maintaining ongoing readership. Whereas the book format (tankōbon) is confined to works by a single author, manga magazines have the flexibility to explore and promote works by newcomers alongside established artists. In addition, it should be taken into consideration that as distinct from the previous mainstream practice of making manga the main source for anime adaptations and video games, in recent years, numerous light novels and video games have been adapted into manga and anime. These adaptations, too, rely on serialization in manga magazines. Thus, in the Japanese manga industry, any attempt at making a given manga into a hit has to take its departure from establishing this work’s popularity among magazine readers. There are various methods involved in this process. Shōnen Jump, which serializes “Naruto”, is wellknown for its sophisticated and formalized policy to achieve that purpose. In view of how the magazine medium influences works, it is inevitable to touch on the role that manga editors play. Manga editors perform such a crucial part in most manga productions that it is not uncommon to regard them as coauthors. They are sensitive to ongoing trends in the manga industry and attentive to readers’ feedback and suggestions. They also offer ideas, engage in discussions with manga artists at all stages, including during the preparation period before serialization, and they brainstorm on the development of the narrative in the course of its serialization. In addition, fostering new mangaka (artists) is often considered an important and challenging task for an editor. In Japan, mangaka usually affiliate with only one particular publisher. Therefore, it is extremely critical for publishing houses to scout

166 Omote Tomoyuki and raise new talent. Shōnen Jump has accumulated a rich knowledge on how to foster new manga artists. This subject matter has been interestingly woven into one of the magazine’s ongoing series, “Bakuman” by ba Tsugumi and Obata Takeshi. Much effort is involved in creating a well-received narrative and respective characters, and such efforts are required even after the serialization has started. The magazine conducts surveys on a regular basis to find out its readers’ preferences. All this feedback is then carefully examined and used to determine the future development of the serialized narratives. A popularity poll is part of every issue, and its results affect the order in which the series appear in the magazine. On top of that, unpopular works are often discontinued within a short period of time. In order to gain readers’ support and continue a series in such a highly competitive environment, the following factors are most important. First, it is crucial to produce a manga that caters toward the readership as well as the editorial policy of the magazine. Second, it is vital to attach different roles to different series in the same magazine, making them distinctive. And third, it is imperative to publish manga narratives that are not only interesting as a whole but consist of individually attractive installments in order to fascinate even casual readers instantly. In addition to this it is important to create some sort of climax at the end of each installment, which will tempt the reader to buy the next week’s magazine issue instead of waiting for the complete book edition. Such tactics are not limited to Shōnen Jump. Boys’ magazines in general are inclined to sports manga and battle manga because their narrative, which usually follows the competition at hand, makes it easy to generate climaxes. Let us turn to the first point, that is, the importance of producing a manga that caters toward the readership as well as the editorial policy of the magazine. Most manga magazines categorize their targeted readership according to gender and age, mainly children, boys, girls, male teenagers, female teenagers, adult males, and adult females. Such categorization is important since it affects the basic setting of the narrative and the main characters. This does not necessarily apply to all manga, but there is a strong tendency to employ a main character whose age and gender approximates its target readers. Accordingly, narratives addressed to boys and girls are often set in schools, while magazines that are aimed at adults tend to be set in workplaces. Within the same target group, different editorial policies are adopted by the publishers to determine the overall tendency of their respective magazine. In order to categorize manga works according to their genre, I have sorted series from the issues no. 42, 2010, of both Shōnen Jump and Shōnen Magazine into the five genre categories of sci-fi/fantasy, sports, gag, gakuen (school narratives), and others and compared their percentage. Among them, there are also school narratives that include elements of fantasy and sports, which suggests that this simple attempt at categorization alone is not sufficient to define the differences between Shōnen Jump and Shōnen Magazine. Nevertheless, it may provide an illustrative starting point for comparison.

“Naruto” as a Typical Weekly Magazine Manga

167

The most prominent genre in Shōnen Jump is sci-fi/fantasy with 36.8%, followed by gakuen stories with 31.6%. Sports covers only 10.5% here, whereas it has the most prominent percentage in Shōnen Magazine with 33.3%, while sci-fi/fantasy comprises only 18.5% there. Generally speaking, Shōnen Magazine tries to treat all genres besides sports equally, whereas Shōnen Jump shows an inclination toward sci-fi/fantasy and gakuen. But this has been subject to change. For example, in 1973, the most prominent genre in Shōnen Jump was neither sci-fi/fantasy nor gakuen (which comprised only 6.7% together), but gag manga (33.3%), while western and suspense, which do not fit the present genre categorizations, together struck 46.7%. THE POSITION OF “NARUTO” IN WEEKLY SHŌNEN JUMP Clearly, manga series have their basic setting and genre predetermined by the magazine’s readership and editorial orientation. Even so, magazines run the risk of saturating readers if similar content is repeated over and over again. Consequently, they coordinate the various series within the same issue into roles, which can change over time, while continuing to keep them distinctive, which is my second point mentioned previously. At present, “Naruto” by Kishimoto Masashi and “One Piece” by Oda Eiichirō are the two most representative works of Shōnen Jump. The main characters of both manga, with their tragic destiny and great ambition, become stronger and stronger by fighting rivals and battles. Fights are at the center of each episode, and a core element of the entertainment is in watching how enemies and friends pit their wits against each other by cleverly deploying their special abilities. Yet despite the many similarities in the two manga, the tone of “Naruto” is relatively dark. From the start, its narrative has been confined to the fight between several countries. At its center are the deep grudges and shared fates among states, organizations, and people. In contrast, the atmosphere in “One Piece” is cheerful, with the protagonist and his companions undertaking an adventurous journey, visiting one new country after another, and thus expanding the stage of the narrative outward. In many cases, former enemies become friends. It all depends on the readers’ preference as to which manga they will enjoy more, but the fact that the two works are serialized in the same magazine undoubtedly broadens the enjoyment. However, the distribution of roles is not permanent as they fluctuate with each newly introduced manga. Let us consider Shōnen Jump in 1999, when the serialization of “Naruto” first began, in order to gain a better understanding of its role in this magazine. Shōnen Jump had experienced a rapid growth since its inauguration in 1968, but in 1995, a reversal set in. The previous year, it had renewed its circulation record by achieving 6.53 million. However, following the end of the serialization of Toriyama Akira’s “Dragon Ball”, the circulation of

168 Omote Tomoyuki the magazine dropped by at least 800,000 in 1995.4 As a matter of fact, the mid-1990s were a critical period not only for Shōnen Jump, but for the whole manga industry in Japan. The total circulation of all manga magazines began to drop in 1994, followed by the circulation of tankōbon in 1996. After fifty years of continuous prosperity, the Japanese manga industry faced a huge turning point.5 Shōnen Jump in particular was going through a large-scale changeover of generations in the mid-1990s. Besides “Dragon Ball”, the serialization of Togashi Yoshihiro’s “Y y hakusho” also ended in 1994 followed by the completion of Inoue Takehiko’s “Slam Dunk” in 1996. Meanwhile the serialization of Takahashi Kazuki’s “Yu-Gi-Oh!” started in 1996, and “One Piece” began in 1997. Then Togashi Yoshihiro’s “Hunter x Hunter” and Takei Hiroyuki’s “Shaman King” were both launched in 1998. The following year 1999, saw the commencement of Hotta Yumi and Obata Takeshi’s “Hikaru no Go”, Konomi Takeshi’s “Prince of Tennis”, and our “Naruto”. By 2000, the magazine had slightly regained its strength after the continuous decline of circulation numbers since 1995,6 and thanks to some very popular serializations, it began to stabilize a little in 2000 around the commencement of “Naruto”. But no matter how popular a manga may be, all series will have to come to an end at some point. In order to keep the readers hooked, a number of core works are necessary. The very same issue that saw the introduction of “Naruto” saw also the end of Watsuki Nobuhiro’s “Rurōni Kenshin”. Incidentally, among the previously mentioned series that started between 1996 and 1999, only “Naruto” and “One Piece” have been serialized for more than a decade, accompanied intermittently by “Hunter x Hunter”, which is being continued on an irregular basis. Actually, serializations which run for more than a decade in a boys’ magazine are rather unusual. Boys’ manga, including “Naruto”, focus on their protagonist’s growing up and depict how the protagonist, who is young and immature in the beginning, becomes stronger through trials and hardship. In other words, while the protagonist is very close to the readers at first, he grows apart from them later. By design, therefore, it should be difficult for readers who join the series midway through to develop a strong affinity toward the protagonist. If boys’ magazines were supposed to serve only boys, then they would replace serializations every five to six years, that is, in tune with the cycle of boys reading boys’ manga. But Shōnen Jump has a fair number of loyal adult followers, who support its long-running series. Shōnen Jump also employs various tactics to ensure its readers are entertained regardless of when they start reading a certain series. In other words, longrunning series often grow together with their readers, shifting their narrative orientation in the process. These changes are also necessary in regard to the distribution of roles within the magazine. From 1999 to 2002, “Naruto”, for example, depicted how the protagonist, a young boy and ambitious ninja-to-be who performed poorly at school, grows up in spite of numerous failures by collaborating with his friends and overcoming trials. The depiction of the adverse destiny

“Naruto” as a Typical Weekly Magazine Manga

169

of Naruto and his rival, Sasuke, and the dismal conventions in the ninja organizations make it hard to think of “Naruto” as a cheerful manga. Even so, there are plenty of humorous moments scattered throughout the narrative, and we often see Naruto smile. But from 2002 to 2003, after going through a harsh apprenticeship, Naruto leaves behind his childlike, comical behavior and becomes more serious. From 2003 to 2004, the narrative focused on Naruto’s pursuit of Sasuke, who had betrayed their organization and taken off to another country. When the second part of “Naruto” started in 2005, two and a half years had passed in the timeline of the narrative, during which Naruto had grown into a teenager who hardly laughed anymore. It is possible to explain this transition with respect to the distribution of roles within the magazine. In 2003, the serialization of “Gintama” by Sorachi Hideaki started, followed by “Katekyō hittoman Ribōn” (Reborn!) by Amano Akira in 2004. Both are comedies with a strong element of fantasy. In 2004, the serializations of “Yu-Gi-Oh!” and “Shaman King” ended, and “JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure” by Araki Hirohiko which had been serialized in Shōnen Jump since 1987 was transferred to Ultra Jump, a monthly by the same publisher. Generally speaking, so-called dark fantasy began to gradually diminish during this period and was replaced by comedies that added a fantasy element to their stories. Consequently, “Naruto” was not supposed to provide laughter anymore. Nevertheless, it is crucial to recognize that cause and effect are intertwined in a complex manner; that is to say, it is necessary to determine carefully whether the changeover of series was the cause for the narrative shift of “Naruto”, or vice versa. In any case, the changeover as such illustrates how pivotal it is to take concurrently serialized works into consideration when trying to analyze or historically assess manga. CONCLUDING REMARKS As I have demonstrated in this chapter, Japanese manga are strongly determined by the particularities of the magazine medium. But this does not necessarily restrict manga’s potential. There are, of course, some restrictions, but Japanese manga have become multifarious and wide-ranging precisely because magazines have seen much diversification and ramification vis-à-vis a variety of readers. Recently, there are attempts at understanding manga or attaching meaning to certain works by relating them to Japan’s culture and society at large, but it is vital to consider in which magazine they were serialized and in what manner. This focus on publication mode, however, might not be necessarily functional when discussing the reception of specific works. After all, there has been a rapid growth of readers that do not read magazines anymore but only tankōbon editions. The print run of each tankōbon volume of “One Piece” alone has reached 4 million, before any reprints, exceeding the 2.8 million circulation of Shōnen Jump. In addition, under

170 Omote Tomoyuki the conditions of globalization, there is now a steady growth of readers in foreign countries who enjoy manga solely in book format. Furthermore, there are more and more readers who consume manga on the Internet. Occasionally, they might still read the whole magazine, but since it has become possible to circulate works in digitalized form, magazines as collections of works have begun to lose their previous centrality. I will leave debate of the latest trends and their implications for manga research to another time. For now, this chapter has presented the example of “Naruto” as a case for how the significance of manga works can be discussed while taking into consideration the fact that Japanese manga have so far been serialized in magazines.

NOTES 1. The editor-in-chief in addressing the characteristics of Shōnen Jump exclaimed that “all that children could want is in this one volume!” (kodomo-tachi no motomeru subete ga kono issatsu ni!) (Japan Magazine Publishers Association 2010). 2. Based on March 2011–February 2012 data (Sh eisha 2012). 3. Nakano (2004), chapter 5, “Teimei to ichiba no kakudai: 70 nendai” (Recession and market expansion: the 70s). 4. Nakano (2004), chapter 7, “Jōhō toshite manga o shōhi shita 90 nendai” (The 90s, consuming manga as information); and Nakano (2009), chapter 4, “Shōnen Jump to iu na no baburu” (A bubble called Shōnen Jump). 5. Nakano (2004, 9), based on data from the Research Institute for Publications. 6. Nakano (2004, 74), based on data from Japan Magazine Publishers Association.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Amano, Akira. 2004–. Katekyō hittoman Ribōn [Reborn!]. 40 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Araki, Hirohiko. 1986–1999. JoJo no kimyōna bōken [JoJo’s bizarre adventure]. 63 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Hotta, Yumi; and Obata, Takeshi. 1998–2003. Hikaru no Go. 23 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Inoue, Takehiko. 1990–1996. Slam Dunk. 31 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Kishimoto, Masashi. 1999–. Naruto. 61 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Konomi, Takeshi. 1999–2008. Tennis no ōjisama [Prince of Tennis]. 42 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. ba, Tsugumi; and Obata, Takeshi. 2008–2012. Bakuman. 20 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Oda, Eiichirō. 1997–. One Piece. 67 vols. by Tokyo: Sh eisha. Sorachi, Hideaki. 2003–. Gintama. 46 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Takahashi, Kazuki. 1996–2004. Yu-Gi-Oh!. 38 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Takei, Hiroyuki. 1998–2004. Shaman King. 32 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Togashi, Yoshihiro. 1990–1994. Yūyū hakusho. 19 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. ———. 1998–. Hunter x Hunter. 30 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Toriyama, Akira. 1984–1995. Dragon Ball. 42 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Watsuki, Nobuhiro. 1994–1999. Rurōni Kenshin. 28 vols. Tokyo: Sh eisha.

“Naruto” as a Typical Weekly Magazine Manga

171

Secondary Sources Japan Magazine Publishers Association (JMPA). 2010. Magajin deeta 2011 [Magazine Data 2011]. Nakano, Haruyuki. 2004. Manga sangyō-ron [On the manga industry]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō. ———. 2009. Manga shinkaron [On manga’s evolution]. Tokyo: Blues Interactions. Sh eisha. 2012. Shōnen komikku-shi, seinen komikku-shi [Boy’s and Men’s Comic Magazines]. http://adnavi.shueisha.co.jp/mediaguide/2012/pdf/boys.pdf (accessed September 1, 2012).

10 Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto” Fujimoto Yukari

INTRODUCTION Japanese manga are, for the most part, first serialized in specialized magazines before they appear in book form (tankōbon). Segmented by gender and age, these manga magazines have given rise to the genres of shōnen manga (boys’ manga), shōjo manga (girls’ manga), seinen manga (youth manga, mainly addressed to young men), ladies’ comics, and the like. As such, manga is a fundamentally gendered medium, which, with regard to its study, attributes special importance to gender issues. Nevertheless, as far as readership is concerned, it cannot easily be assumed that gendered magazines are exclusively read by those whom they make their main target. In recent years, male magazines have been seeing an expansion of female artists, and the increasing consumption of boys’ and youth manga by female readers has been striking as well.1 It goes without saying that many women enjoy “male” manga in a straightforward manner, finding them fascinating at face value. But there are also dedicated fans who prefer parodist, or more precisely, yaoi readings: they “pair” male characters from boys’ manga as same-sex lovers.2 Weekly Shōnen Jump, the magazine that serializes “Naruto”, is well known for having a large female readership engaged in this kind of reading.3 In fact, the “Naruto” manga too has given rise to a huge number of female fan publications (dōjinshi). Thus, a discussion of the female recipients of boys’ manga like “Naruto” has to consider both straightforward and yaoi readings, which can be regarded as a quasicultural crossroads not only insofar as they cross existent gendered genres but also as they do it in a twofold way. Pursuing the two ways in which women read boys’ manga, this chapter investigates first the representation of female characters in “Naruto”, and then the yaoi approach toward its male characters. The first, that is the representational focus, may appear orthodox, but it recommends itself in the case of “Naruto” because this series strengthens the general tendency of boys’ manga to not primarily target female readers with their heroines. “Naruto” has been serialized in Weekly Shōnen Jump since 1999, but despite the fact that women form a significant part of its readership, the female

Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto”

173

characters in the series are, even for a boys’ manga, conspicuously conservative. As such they stand in sharp contrast to the “equal” female companions in “One Piece”, another Jump manga (by Oda Eiichirō, since 1998), which in Japan enjoys a much higher popularity, selling more than twice as many copies as “Naruto”. At times when women are increasingly improving their position in society, “Naruto’s” female characters seem to be solely interested in romance and other allegedly “female concerns”. In contrast, “One Piece” has surprised female readers from the very beginning of its serialization with representations of women, which until then had been undreamed of in boys’ manga magazines. This situation confronts manga critics with the question of how the difference between “Naruto” and “One Piece” relates to their appreciation by female readers. After all, it might be precisely due to their divergent representations of women that more female readers support “One Piece” than “Naruto”. In order to verify this prediction, the first part of my chapter focuses on the respective differences between “Naruto” and “One Piece”, starting from a brief observation of how readers have responded to them on the Internet. I shall then introduce the ratios of female purchasers of these two manga according to age group, based on the point of sales (POS) data of a major Tokyo bookstore. While it is possible to assume that both manga series invite straightforward as well as yaoi readings, it remains to be verified which of them has more female readers, and how these readers differ. In the second half of this chapter, I shall discuss yaoi as one particular way in which women read “Naruto”. The yaoi approach calls for attention because it deviates deliberately from the initial representation. By making the narrative enjoyable through the assumption of male characters being in love with each other, yaoi readers reverse or even exclude uncomfortable elements such as unlikeable heroines. In order to illuminate the characteristics of reading “Naruto” through yaoi glasses as undertaken in Japanese fanzines, I employ the catalogues of Comic Market, the largest of all dōjinshi sales conventions (sokubaikai) held in Japan, to compare the number of fan circles dedicated to “Naruto” and “One Piece”, respectively, before analyzing the particularities of fan-made “Naruto” manga and their transition. Although limited to the gist, it is hoped that this rather rough investigation points to the possibility of more detailed analyses using the same method and data. Just the same, it suggests a much wider array of possibilities than only the study of “Naruto” or manga fanzines. Reading boys’ manga the yaoi way means that women who, by their gender, were initially excluded from the targeted readership, appropriate these works within their own context. When a cultural group, one that was not intended to be the main target, forms a fan community separate from the main addressees, it is more or less likely that the initial text will be read across the grain; that is, that there will be a deliberate collective misreading backed by the culture of this specific group. It is precisely this array of meanings that is intended to be covered by the following discussion of the image of “woman” in “Naruto” and female readings of “Naruto”.

174 Fujimoto Yukari THE POPULARITY OF “NARUTO” AND “ONE PIECE” In Europe and North America, “Naruto” is recognized, by and large, as the most popular manga made in Japan. In the United States as well as in France, Germany, and Spain, it is certainly the best-selling,4 whereas in Japan, “One Piece” stands out as the bestseller, its sales figures still continuing to accelerate even after more than sixty volumes. When volume 59 appeared in August 2010, the first print sold 3.2 million copies, but volume 64, released on November 4, 2011, saw sales of more than 4 million, making a new record for the largest initial print run ever in Japanese publishing history. According to the press, the accumulative total of copies sold exceeded 250 million at that time.5 “Naruto” holds second rank after “One Piece”, with its sales amounting to about half. Volume 55, published in April 2011, had a first print run of 1.6 million copies. In January 2011, with fifty-four volumes in total by then, a cumulative 113.03 million copies had been sold.6 But as already mentioned, abroad, especially in North America and Europe, “Naruto’s” sales far exceed those of “One Piece”.7 For Asia, exact statistics are not available, but there seems to be a lesser gap in the popularity of the two manga.8 The outstanding popularity of “Naruto” in the west can probably be traced back to the fact that it is a ninja tale, and not a traditional one, but a hyperninja tale based on a sci-fi worldview, which in addition features a protagonist with blond hair and blue eyes. In this regard, it suffices to think of “Bleach” (by Kubo Tite, in Weekly Shōnen Jump since 2001), which ranks second after “Naruto” in North America—this manga too has a tendency of exoticizing Japan, with its blond Soul Reaper (shinigami) as protagonist. Susan Napier (2001) notes that Japanese anime—most of which has been based on manga—attracts western viewers to a large extent by its exoticism. Closely related, western fandom exhibits a strong inclination to dislike works that approach Japan too realistically, at least as far as I have observed. It is, for example, telling that “Naruto” is popular while Shirato Sanpei’s classic ninja tales “Sasuke” (1961) and “Ninja bugeichō” (Band of Ninja, 1959−1961) remain untranslated, and that among samurai stories, Wazuki Nobuhiro’s “Rurōni Kenshin” (or “Rurouni Kenshin”, in Weekly Shōnen Jump 1994–1999), which has a sci-fi setting and a protagonist with long brown hair, is widely appreciated while Inoue Takehiko’s “Vagabond”, which features the historic master fencer Miyamoto Takezō (or Musashi, in Weekly Morning since 1998), has not become the kind of bestseller it has been in Japan. In other words, the popularity of certain manga in the west obviously rests on some kind of orientalism and, in connection to this, on representing “things Japanese” in a not overly realistic way. By contrast, “One Piece” meets the requirement of not appearing Japanese in a realistic way. Yet, its pirates are not exactly novel for westerners. Thus, it may provide an intriguing case of a Japanese work being attractive in itself without employing the magic stroke of orientalism.

Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto”

175

In addition to the blond, blue-eyed ninja protagonist, which appears to facilitate the popularity of “Naruto” abroad, the following characteristics of the narrative can be regarded as ensuring the appeal of this manga: First, many of the characters, beginning with Naruto himself, have inferiority complexes and must deal with serious conflicts; yet they overcome these by establishing their own fighting styles and positions. Second, “Naruto” is a kind of coming-of-age story, or bildungsroman, which exhibits a strong awareness of generational cycles—here, the grown-ups enjoy the respect of the children who mature under their tutelage, and when these children have become grown-ups themselves, they educate the next generation. Finally, “Naruto” accentuates the importance of teamwork and bonds between peers. In particular it is the second of these characteristics that makes “Naruto” diametrically opposed to “One Piece”, in which the young pirates challenge the elder generation and attempt to topple the established order. How “Naruto’s” higher popularity in the west relates to its ethical content remains to be investigated. All in all, however, there can be little doubt that it is precisely this ethical content that moves readers worldwide. “NARUTO’S” CONSERVATIVE IMAGE OF “WOMAN” However moving, it seems rather conservative to stay within the prevailing order and to succeed the generation that educated one. Yet, “Naruto’s” biggest weakness is not respect for the elders or time-honored values; rather, it is its clinging to astonishingly anachronistic gender roles: its representations suggest that men are men and women are women, and that they differ naturally in regard to aptitude and vocation. This conservatism is conspicuous when compared to other popular boys’ manga of recent years—not only “One Piece” but also “Air Gear” (by gure “Oh! Great” Ito, in Weekly Shōnen Magazine, 2002–2012) and “History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi” (Shijō saikyō no deshi Kenichi; by Matsuena Shun, in Weekly Shōnen Sunday, since 2002). It is precisely this kind of conservatism that may have led to assertions that “Naruto’s” female characters lack appeal, expressed, for example, by readers on the Internet. As a matter of fact, Sakura and the other female characters in “Naruto” appear to be molded on a surprisingly outdated stereotype. To see this, it would be suffice to turn our attention to the following examples. The young female ninja who serve as central characters—Sakura, Ino, and Hinata—make “love” their highest priority in a considerable number of scenes. The series setting has it that shy Hinata is infatuated by Naruto while Sakura and Ino rival each other in their love for Sasuke. In most cases, their battle energy is fed by romantic sentiment. As Kakashi, the teacher, is saying to himself, “[I]t sounds as though young girls … are more interested in love than ninjutsu … ” (Kishimoto 2003, 117, first panel). Permanently on their mind is what the object of their adoration may think

176 Fujimoto Yukari about them; their training as ninja comes clearly second. In the beginning, the girls achieve higher grades because they are diligent and quick-witted; Sakura, for example, surpasses Naruto. But once the boys get serious, the girls cannot keep pace with them anymore, and the difference in power becomes evident. This, however, does not seem to bother Sakura. During the ninja examination, Sakura has to confront her rival-in-love Ino, but while the fights between the other examinees, especially the males who have a command of superhuman ninjutsu abilities, are literally “battles to the death”, the duel between the two girls stays purely physical, obviously conducted on a completely different level. However, when in the second part of the series the female ninja Tsunade is appointed the fifth hokage leader, women’s activities begin to stand out.9 Being a woman in her fifties with large breasts who, on top of that, is ascribed the profession of a medical ninja, Tsunade is basically portrayed as a mother figure. Sakura—suddenly showing a new tense expression—starts to make efforts to also become a medical ninja herself, with Tsunade as her teacher. Yet, the fact remains that the site where female ninja can show their capabilities is the field of healing and not the battlefield, which leads to the impression that “Naruto” rests on outmoded gender roles. Female ninja who could overwhelm men purely through their combat skills do not make an appearance in this manga. For medical ninja, another type of skill is supposed to be important, that is, subtle control of the mysterious chakra energy. Even without intending to diminish the importance of healing, one cannot avoid noticing the correspondence of this motif with the assumption that the presence of women is not required on the battlefield, and if so, only as nurses. Fighting men, healing women: what a perfectly complementary division of roles. Admittedly, in one scene of the second part of the series, Sakura performs a splendid fight side by side with an elderly woman, the ninja Chiyo. She is a “puppeteer”, that is to say, capable of making puppets move, but this fighting skill is again traced back to the supposedly female ability to control chakra energy. What’s more, Sakura assumes the position of a daughter-like disciple: men learn from men, women from women. Throughout its narrative, “Naruto” promotes the view that men and women act out their skills in fundamentally different ways. In addition, women are sometimes portrayed in an almost politically incorrect manner, for example Mizukage, who like Tsunade serves her country as head ninja. Although a ninja leader who should resemble a director of a major corporation or an army general, this woman is turned into an object of ridicule by repeated depictions of her overreacting to even the slightest remark about marriageability or words like old maid. Thus, in the setting of female characters in “Naruto”, an old-fashioned mold is employed. Many of them act in a way that suggests women are foolish but cute when giving their utmost effort. In this view, the image of women underlying “Naruto” is eminently conservative. If all the other

Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto”

177

series in Weekly Shōnen Jump exhibited the same inclination, the image could be traced back to the editorial board’s policy. Since this is not the case, one cannot but presume that it is the artist’s personal view. But how is this image received by female readers? READER RESPONSES ON THE INTERNET On a recent list ranking “the most disliked female anime characters abroad”, Sakura stands clearly in first place, with 804 out of 3,369 votes, amounting for 22% of the poll, which was run by a North American fan site.10 Comments about her include the following: “Sakura is BIG BAKA”11 (21-year-old female from Nebraska); “When I see Sakura, I want to break things” (15-year-old female from Bulgaria); “I looked up the definition of ‘useless’ in the dictionary, and there were 12 entries. Sakura should be added as 13th. This Sakura! Everyone hates her! She should totally die! Die! Die! Die! And double-die! Shit-bitch!” (13-year-old female from the Philippines); “Really lame …, a crybaby who always gets in the way, useless character, who needs to be saved all the time” (15-year-old female form Uganda); “ … she is totally useless, just screaming and crying” (15-year-old female from the United States). It is noteworthy that all these negative comments are given by women. In fact, 65% of the poll participants who refused to support Sakura were female.12 A Google search in Japanese on “Naruto” and “josei (women)” also reveals a certain level of criticism against the female characters in the series. For example, on December 20, 2011, the four top hits showed negative remarks. The first was the previously cited North American website, and the second was the “I like ‘Naruto’ ” blog. Even there one user commented, “Somehow Sakura isn’t popular … I myself don’t like her either”.13 The third hit linked to the “ ‘Naruto’ terminology dictionary” (Naruto yōgo jiten): on this site; there is an entry about one of the female Akatsuki members (whose name had not yet been revealed at the time of the posting) saying, “I am having expectations toward many characters, but as regards the women so far, it is likely that I will be double-crossed”.14 And the fourth hit contained the remark, “Sakura looks just like a briquette girl”,15 related to episode 469 (“Sakura’s confession!!”). In passing, it may be interesting to note that one of the few popular female characters in Japan, at least according to Internet entries, is Hinata. The critical response toward “Naruto” stands in sharp contrast to “One Piece” where the female characters do not serve as objects of romantic interest but act naturally as equals. Searching Google, only popularity votes pop up, with remarks such as “I like that character”, or “ ‘One Piece’ is known for its huge number of female fans”. Especially impressive is the episode at the beginning of the series about the male character Roronoa Zoro’s female friend. As a child, Zoro is not able to win against her, but she moans that

178 Fujimoto Yukari since she is a woman, as she advances in age it would only get harder for her to compete with men. Though she dies young, the memory of her continues to be carried by Zoro who swears that he will become the strongest swordsman in the world so that his name will be heard “even in the heavens”. On the whole, the character setting seems to be deliberately balanced, including female peers such as the navigator Nami, on whose ship the male character Sanji serves as cook, or Nico Robin, an archaeologist. In recent popular boys’ manga, it has become a standard story setting that the female is by far stronger than the male protagonist who strives hard to surpass her. In long-selling manga such as “Air Gear”, “History’s Strongest Disciple Kenichi”, or “Kekkaishi” (by Tanabe Yellow, in Weekly Shōnen Sunday 2003–2011), the protagonist faces a girl who is his senior and whom he is unable to defeat for a very long time. In such an environment, female characters like those in “Naruto”, who are often supposed to lack the skills for pure battle, give a rather anachronistic impression. PROPORTION OF FEMALE READERS IN JAPAN: “NARUTO” AND “ONE PIECE” Women do in fact form a certain proportion of the “Naruto” readership, which raises the question about how large this proportion is, and how these readers receive the peculiar representation of female characters. Here, I shall turn to the POS data of Japan’s largest bookstore chain, Kinokuniya,16 for the first month of “Naruto’s” volume 52 in summer 2010 (Table 10.1). Table 10.1

Kinokuniya POS data for “Naruto”, vol. 52.

Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto”

179

At 54.5%, the ratio of female purchasers was rather high, but it should be taken into consideration that this no doubt included a significant number of mothers and grandmothers who purchased the manga for children. As distinct from the United States, for example, tankōbon editions of manga— called komikkusu (comics) in Japanese, such as in the label “Jump Comics”—are sold everywhere in Japan, including small bookshops and even convenience stores. Thus, teenagers, Jump’s main target group, usually do not turn to major stores like Kinokuniya. The Kinokuniya chain accounts for roughly 5% of all book sales,17 but its share drops to only approximately 1% in the case of “comics”, which are widely available from small shops as well, as the first print run of “Naruto’s” volume 52 (1.6 million copies) and its actual sales suggest. Hence, the data used here pertain only to a minor part of the actual readership, and because of the focus on comics purchases in bookstores, their ratio of adult and female readers comes off much higher. Among teenagers, “Naruto’s” main target group, the proportion of girls appears rather small, with 18% for purchasers under 12, and 34% for purchasers between 13 and 18 years of age. These numbers may approach the actual readership divide in Japan, although probably more female than male consumers buy “comics” in bookstores. In contrast, the sales numbers for the first month of volume 59 of “One Piece” (Table 10.2), which was published concurrently with “Naruto’s” volume 52, show a total female proportion of 56.6%, with 33% under 12, and 44% between 13 and 18 years of age, clearly exceeding “Naruto”. Noteworthy are also the sales numbers for “Prince of Tennis” (Tennis no ōjisama, by Konomi Takeshi, 1999–2008), the Jump series most distinctly aware of female readers; during the first month after its release in

Table 10.2

Kinokuniya POS data for “One Piece”, vol. 59.

180 Fujimoto Yukari Table 10.3

Kinokuniya POS data for “Prince of Tennis”, vol. 42.

June 2008, 64.5% of the consumers of volume 42 were female, with 33% under 12, and 50% between 13 and 18 years (Table 10.3).18 Table 10.4 compares the female share of these three manga according to age group. With regard to purchasers younger than 29, “Naruto” occupies the smallest portion; only in the 30–49 group, and slightly also in the over-50 group is the proportion of female purchasers higher than for “One Piece”. Altogether, the probable share of female readers increases from “Naruto” with the least, to “One Piece” to “Prince of Tennis” with the most. These numbers leave a similar impression to the one suggested by the previously cited Internet entries, that the image of “woman” in “Naruto” is quite critically received.

Table 10.4 Comparative POS data (Kinokuniya) for female consumers of “Naruto”, “One Piece”, and “Prince of Tennis”. Age Under 12 13–18 19–29 30–49 Over 50 In total

“Naruto” vol. 52

One Piece vol. 59

Prince of Tennis vol. 42

18% 34% 52% 63% 77% 54.5%

33% 44% 55% 59% 76% 56.6%

33% 50% 64% 70% 84% 64.5%

Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto”

181

AN ATTEMPT AT REVERSAL? THE YAOI WAY

“Naruto” Fanzines at the Comic Market: Change in “Circle” Numbers In the first half of this chapter, I have examined the image of “woman” in “Naruto” as well as female reader response to it. To be precise, this investigation focused on the official “Naruto” manga. Yet, there are also a significant number of female readers who enjoy the series in Weekly Shōnen Jump, although they do not empathize with the female characters. They rather concentrate on male-male relationships, reading them from a yaoi angle. That is to say, instead of receiving the story in a straightforward manner, they enjoy queering it in their own way. As mentioned previously, yaoi means to take a pair of male characters from an existing manga or anime19 and to create one’s own stories or scenes about their alleged romantic relationship in the form of literary writing or comics. Both creators and consumers of these materials are usually female. Yaoi works are mainly released in the form of self-published fanzines (dōjinshi) and sold or exchanged at amateur conventions where dōjinshi for women account for the largest percentage.20 Japan’s biggest dōjinshi convention is the Comic Market, held twice a year in summer and winter, respectively. At present, 500,000 to 550,000 people participate in this threeday event. The groups that publish dōjinshi are called “circles” (sākuru) since collaborative efforts have been common so far, although recently more and more individuals appear.21 The largest share of the Comic Market is occupied by female fan circles that deploy characters from existent popular works, mainly in the form of yaoi.22 When a specific title attracts a certain number of fan circles, it is given its own space at the convention venue as a distinct “genre”.23 Consequently, it is possible to measure the degree of fan attachment to a certain work by determining when it became a genre and how the number of respective circles has changed over time. However, it has to be taken into consideration that the Comic Market is too popular to provide enough space for all applicants, even though it takes place at Japan’s largest exhibition venue and employs a rotation system that allows for a total participation of 35,000 circles over the three days of its duration. The venue space is allotted to the specific genres by lottery; hence, the more popular a genre, the lower the ratio of success. With the number of rejected applicants rising, the amount of actual participants no longer reflects the total number of applicants or the correct proportion between the two. It is also important to note that the Comic Market was sometimes held over only two days (for example, numbers 59, 61, 67, and 69),24 which meant a shrinkage to two-thirds of the otherwise available space and, consequently, a decrease in the number of lottery winners. With this in mind, let us turn to how the number of participating “Naruto” dōjinshi circles has actually changed over the years.

182 Fujimoto Yukari “Naruto” was a debut series by a newcomer, which started in October 1999, with its first tankōbon volume released in March 2000. Already by the Comic Market in summer 2000, it had made its appearance within the genre of Jump Comics. In other words, “Naruto” became extraordinarily popular in the dōjinshi realm at a very early point in time. At the 60th Comic Market in summer 2001, “Naruto”-derived dōjinshi gained generic independence. Since applications for the summer convention are due in the preceding winter, the necessity of a genre code25 for “Naruto”-based dōjinshi must have been already recognized by late 2000. In passing, it should be noted that the popularity of the “Naruto” manga among fans preceded by far the TV anime series, the broadcast of which began in fall 2002. In order to get an idea of the Comic Market as a whole, it would be helpful to have a look at the layout plan of the East Exhibition Hall for the 2001 summer convention, when “Naruto” appeared first as a genre (Table 10.5). While almost 900 circles participated back then, the number dropped to nearly 300 in summer 2010 and to 244 in winter 2011. Table 10.6 shows that the number of circles has been declining in a zigzagging downward line since the genre code was first established in summer 2001, but this is not unusual for long-running series. Although at a different pace, “One Piece” has also been sharing this fate since its initial peak with a little more than 700 circles (Table 10.7).26 While the serialization of “One Piece” started more than two years earlier than “Naruto’s” (that is to say, in Jump’s issue 34 of 1997 compared with issue 43 of 1999), its genre code was formed only half a year earlier, that is, at the 59th Comic Market in winter 2000. This means—assuming, hypothetically, that both serializations started at the same time—that “One Piece” gained generic independence in the dōjinshi realm one and a half years later than “Naruto”. Further, the Table 10.5 The 60th Comic Market, layout plan for August 11, 2001 (second day), Tokyo Big Sight, East Halls 1, 2, and 3, according to Komikku Māketto katarogu C60 (2001, 490). The circles of the “Naruto” genre are encircled here, but the venue is actually much larger including the equally sized East Halls 4, 5, and 6, as well as the two-floor West Hall.

Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto”

183

Table 10.6 Change in number of “Naruto” dōjinshi circles (vertical axis), participating in the Comic Markets C60–C78 (summer 2001–summer 2010; horizontal axis).

“One Piece” anime began in October 1999, that is, before the establishment of its Comic Market genre, the decision for which was made in summer 2000. This differs greatly from “Naruto”, which had already triggered fans’ attention with its first tankōbon volume. The number of circles at the Comic Market does not tell the whole story though, since there are also the so-called only events, which only admit Table 10.7 Change in number of “One Piece” dōjinshi circles (vertical axis), participating in the Comic Markets C59–C78 (winter 2000–summer 2010; horizontal axis).

184 Fujimoto Yukari circles with a focus on the same work. But in view of the fact that “One Piece” sells twice as much as “Naruto” and also has a higher ratio of female readers, it is possible to reason that “Naruto” attracts more yaoi readings. Or to put it the other way round, the proportion of female readers who read the story in a straightforward manner is higher in the case of “One Piece”. After all, the total number of “Naruto” fan circles surpasses that of “One Piece”, although the latter has more than twice as many female readers in total. Previously, I have pointed out that though the image of “woman” in “Naruto” is rather conservative, and that many readers find this repellant, there are yaoi readings that concentrate on male same-sex relationships and regard female characters as unnecessary if not just a plain nuisance. One may even infer that “Naruto” prompts yaoi readings precisely because Sakura is an annoying heroine who does not really invite empathy. After all, she is comparatively easier to exclude than Hermione who has apparently been giving headaches to Harry Potter fans. Incidentally, “Prince of Tennis”, which according to the Kinokuniya POS data had the highest percentage of female readers, also held the record for the highest number of circles ever in female dōjinshi genres at the Comic Market, at least until the “Eastern Project” hit in 2010.27 In the beginning, “Prince of Tennis” featured a female character as a partner to the protagonist, but when its dōjinshi popularity went through the roof, she was relegated to the sidelines and almost completely removed from the narrative. “Naruto” does, of course, not even come close to “Prince of Tennis”, but it is definitely more popular among yaoi fans than “One Piece”. Even so, it seems that yaoi readings and likeable female characters are mutually exclusive.

Popular Pairings in “Naruto” Dōjinshi In the previous section, I have examined the popularity of “Naruto” within dōjinshi mainly by looking at the change in the number of circles, but I have not mentioned one crucial characteristic yet. When two male characters are picked up from an existent work and paired, they are given the roles of seme (dominant partner, the inserter, the one who loves) and uke (receptive partner, the insertee, the one who is loved), which is expressed in the notation “seme x uke”. Now, the most popular “Naruto” pairing is formed not, as one might expect, by the main characters Sasuke x Naruto, but by their teachers Kakashi x Iruka, two adults. Iruka was Naruto’s teacher when he acquired the basics of his profession as a child, and Kakashi became his trainer when he was about to take the ninja exam. In the beginning, when these pairings were not yet established, fans published “all-star books”, “Naruto books”, “Sasuke books”, and “Kakashi books”, but once some influential circles released books on “Kakashi x Iruka” (abbr. Kakairu), that pair took hold.28 Indicated in Table 10.8 are the circles participating in the Comic Market of summer 2010 according to

Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto”

185

pairings.29 Those dedicated to “Kakashi x Iruka” total 84 circles in section L 1–42 and 4 major circles alongside the lower left wall (62, 63). This pairing’s popularity is not only due to the power by influential circles. Engaged in yaoi are mainly women in their thirties,30 and they seem to find pairs of two adult characters attractive. In addition, the two men act almost like Naruto’s father and mother, with Iruka being the soothing type (iyashi-kei). As a matter of fact, there are also popular dōjinshi of a “family setting” sort, which portray Naruto as Kakairu’s child. In a work like “Naruto”, which contains many combat scenes and gruesome stories, a “soothing” character like Iruka, who maintains a certain distance toward fighting is highly appreciated by female fans. An additional characteristic of the Kakairu pairing is that it generates both manga and literary fanfiction because it is popular with adults. In the “Naruto” manga itself, Kakashi and Iruka barely meet, but it is precisely this lack of contact that spurs the imagination and gives rise to original fan narratives. As one circle artist pointed out to me, after the publication of the official character books Hiden Rin no sho and Hiden Hyō no sho in 2002, the details of the cast of characters’ background became known, including their birthdays and favorite food, and this charged up the fandom since, in yaoi dōjinshi, fans need only the slightest detail as a starting point in order to picture their beloved pair’s daily life. This becomes easier if they have the basic information about characters at their command. In addition to the “Kakashi x Iruka” circles, there are numerous fans who, as expected, pair Sasuke x Naruto. At the Comic Market of summer 2010, a total of 56 respective circles participated (M 1–28 in Table 10.8). Yet, in recent years, as Naruto moved further into adulthood in the series, there is an increase in circles dedicated to “Naruto x Sasuke”, that is to say, circles that put Naruto in the active position. The two most popular circles in summer 2010 were engaged in this pairing. This testifies to the fact that pairings may change due to characters’ maturation. However, more can be deduced from Table 10.8, for example, the high popularity of the Kakashi character within the fandom indicated by his interpretation as uke. While “Kakashi x Iruka” is still the most popular pairing, 28 circles are engaged in “Iruka x Kakashi” (O 1–5, N 10–18). It is also striking that many “Naruto” dōjinshi feature Naruto and Sasuke as small children and in relation to their teachers Kakashi and Iruka. Even in specialized “Kakashi x Iruka” dōjinshi these two instructors speak occasionally about Naruto as if they were his parents—Kakashi his father and Iruka his mother. Although it is not uncommon for dōjinshi to depict the childhood of characters, in the “Naruto” case, this topic seems to be linked to a crucial theme of the manga, that is, the growth of the children to adulthood and the role of adults therein. Thus, one may conclude that “Naruto’s” main narrative characteristics—such as the remarkable importance of adults, the coming-of-age motif, and the strong emphasis on upbringing and on family issues—are being reflected in dōjinshi by female fans.

186 Fujimoto Yukari Table 10.8 Layout of “Naruto” dōjinshi circles during the Comic Market in summer 2010, according to Comic Market Preparatory Committee (2010, 704).

Yaoi readings by female readers are alternative readings of boys’ manga, which open up interesting horizons for both gender studies and manga research. Manga nurtures readers’ imagination about the complexity of life by, among other things, picking up shadowy aspects that are not usually foregrounded, especially as the medium enjoys a diversity equal (if not

Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto”

187

superior) to that of literature or film in contemporary Japan. Nevertheless, even in Japan there are attempts at regulating the freedom of expression by means of biased criteria. The year 2010 saw a revision of the Tokyo Metropolitan Juvenile Act, or the “Tokyo child porn bill” in common parlance. Sexual depictions of fictional characters who appear to be under 18 years of age, and are referred to in the bill as “non-existent youths”, are now being restricted, including for the very first time yaoi materials.31 This shift calls for further analysis. NOTES 1. See panel discussion at the tenth annual conference of the Japan Society for the Study of Comics and Cartoons, recorded in “Zero nendai no manga jōkyō: tsugi no 10nen ni mukatte, Dai-1 bu: ‘Joshi’ ga yomu zero nendai” [The situation of manga in the 2000s: Toward the next decade, part 1: ‘Females’ reading the 2000s] (2011). 2. See Moonbeam’s “Fanfiction Terminology” website for the English fandom where the dominant Japanese wording, that is, coupling instead of pairing, does not surface. For introductions to yaoi (and Boys’ Love as well as shōnenai), which have become standard in manga studies, see works such as Fujimoto (2004), Galbraith (2011a), Mizoguchi (2003, 2010), Nagaike (2003), and Welker (2006) in English, and Ishida (2008) and Ishikawa (2011) in Japanese. 3. See “Media Guide 2011”, which is part of publisher Sh eisha’s official website (Japanese). 4. According to the “ICv2 Bestseller List of the Top 25 Manga Properties” for the first half of 2011, “Naruto” ranked first, and “One Piece” eleventh. See also Supein ni okeru nihon no terebi anime manga eiga shijō no jittai [Actual condition of the market for Japanese TV anime, manga and movies in Spain] (2007, 20, 26); Doitsu ni okeru kontentsu shijō no jittai [Actual situation of the contents market in Germany] (2009, 30, 31–38); Beikoku ni okeru kontentsu shijō no jittai 2010–2011 [Actual situation of the contents market in America 2010– 2011] (2011, 55–56); and Furansu o chūshin to suru shū no kontentsu shijō [The European contents market, with a special focus on France] (2011, 52–53). 5. “ONE PIECE dai-64 kan, shohan 400-man bu” (2011). 6. See “Media Guide 2011”. 7. See “ICv2 Bestseller List of the Top 25 Manga Properties”. 8. This is based on my observations in China, Korea, Singapore, and Indonesia. However, in Indonesia, the amount of “Naruto”-related publications suggests this manga’s popularity. I have been conducting interviews on the circulation of manga in China, Korea, Singapore, and Indonesia, so far, especially in Chinese towns such as Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong. In all of these cities, I found pirated magazines and fan books that suggested an equal popularity, if not a slightly higher popularity, of “One Piece”. I could also confirm the almost equal ranking of the two manga through talks with about fifty students from the Department of Japanese Language at Hangzhou University in April 2011. 9. This may have been related to the artist Kishimoto Masashi getting married. 10. See “Matome chaneru” (“Netto: Kaigai de kirawareru anime no josei kyarakutā”, n.d.) which provides the contents of the North America “Moonlight Fantasia” fan site in Japanese translation.

188 Fujimoto Yukari 11. 12. 13. 14. 15.

16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22.

23. 24. 25. 26. 27.

28.

The term baka is Japanese for “fool” or “idiot”. About 70% of all respondents revealed their gender. See Naruto suki burogu! (n.d.). “Konoha, the ninja dictionary” (Japanese). “Naruto” x Junkie Blog (n.d.). In Japan in October 2009, a woman was arrested on suspicion of using coal heating briquettes to kill three men by carbon monoxide poisoning. While awaiting, and during, her trial, the “briquette woman” appeared in public discourse from time to time. She was sentenced to death in April 2012. These data are not available to the general public but only to publishing houses who have a contract with Kinokuniya. This is common knowledge within the publishing industry where I worked as an editor for twenty-five years. This manga, which features the activities of a whole range of males, is well known for its extraordinary number of female fans, or yaoi fans, to be precise. At present, a sequel is being serialized in Jump Square. Particularly characters from boys’ manga, that is, stories with a predominantly male cast, become subjected to yaoi creations, but sometimes also real persons or anthropomorphized things. See Noppe (2010). For a discussion of the Comic Market, see Lam (2010). Dōjinshi genres are, first of all, dedicated to specific works and not limited to yaoi appropriations. So-called normal pairings between men and women, such as Naruto and Sakura, also attract attention, although the implied normativity of heterosexual love has given rise to the new name of “male-female pairings” recently. Further, one can find derivative works of simple gags and stories of daily life. Although depending on the respective genre, it is safe to presume that most derivative genres for women consist of yaoi dōjinshi. See Tables 10.5 and 10.8. See “What Is the Comic Market?” (2008), which includes data on male:female participant ratio. See Comic Market Preparatory Committee (2005) and (2000–2011), the latter indicating the catalogues for the Comic Markets C59–C81. The convention organizers issue a numeric code to categorize and give order to the huge variety of participants, similar to a library book numbering system. See Komikku Māketto nenpyō (2011). From 1999 onward, the number of circles participating in three-day conventions has held stable at 35,000, the maximum space available for exhibitions at Tokyo Big Sight. The number of fan circles dedicated to “Prince of Tennis” reached the historical record at the 66th Comic Market in summer 2004, with a total of 2,130, and was only surpassed in winter 2009 by the genre of the dōjin game Tōhō Project (Eastern Project, known abroad also as “Touhou Project” or “Project Shrine Maiden”, a shooting game with a huge male fanbase), which saw a total of 2,372 circles then. It has given rise to derivative works not only in the form of printed dōjinshi but also games and digital artwork collections, CDs with rearranged versions of the initial background music, and so on. At the winter 2010 and summer 2011 conventions, it reached 2,774 circles. However, it has not been able to overtake the position of “Prince of Tennis” as the number one genre of dōjinshi for women. I have confirmed my observations regarding the change within “Naruto” pairings through lengthy interviews with Comic Market staff members as well as with several of the key circles with the longest commitment to the “Naruto” genre.

Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto”

189

29. The distribution of tables at the Comic Market takes the form of assembling circles of the same pairing, with the uke character as main criteria. This can be deduced from the CD-ROM version of the catalogue, which provides information (unfortunately incomplete) on the pairings, in conjunction with the illustrations representing the circles in the printed catalogue where a circle’s genre affiliation can be assumed from the pairings presented in adjacent circle illustrations, even if its own illustration remains obscure. 30. As becomes evident by a simple walk through the female dōjinshi area, teenagers and women in their twenties, although present, do not form the core of yaoi dōjinshi creators. The main carriers seem to be those who were teenagers or in their twenties when yaoi in noncommercial fanzines and BL (Boys’ Love), as its equivalent in commercial magazines is called, gained momentum in the 1990s. Incidentally, in 2008, the largest age group among circle organizers was 30–34 years, followed by 25–29 years and 35–39 years, which has probably increased a little by now (“What Is the Comic Market?” 2008, 21). 31. For a historical discussion, see Galbraith (2011b).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Kishimoto, Masashi. 2000. Naruto. Vol. 1. Tokyo: Sh eisha. ———. 2002a. Naruto Hiden Hyō no sho [Official fan book]. Tokyo: Sh eisha. ———. 2002b. Naruto Hiden Rin no sho [Official fan book]. Tokyo: Sh eisha. ———. 2003. Naruto, vol. 1. San Francisco: VIZ Media.

Secondary Sources Beikoku ni okeru kontentsu shijō no jittai 2010–2011 [Actual situation of the contents market in America 2010–2011]. 2011, March. JETRO (The Japan External Trade Organization). http://www.jetro.go.jp/jfile/report/07000590/america_contents.pdf (accessed June 30, 2012). Comic Market Preparatory Committee (Comiket PC). 2000–2011. Komikku māketto katarogu [Comic Market catalogues]. C59–C81. ———. 2001. Komikku Māketto katarogu C60 [Comic Market Catalogue C60]. ———. 2005. Komikku māketto 30’s fairu 1975–2005 [30 years of Comic Market 1975–2005]. ———. 2010. Komikku Māketto katarogu C78 [Comic Market Catalogue C78]. Doitsu ni okeru kontentsu shijō no jittai [Actual situation of the contents market in Germany]. 2009, March. JETRO (The Japan External Trade Organization). http:// www.jetro.go.jp/jfile/report/07000040/05001678.pdf (accessed June 30, 2012). “Fanfiction Terminology”. n.d. Moonbeam. http://www.angelfire.com/falcon/ moonbeam/terms.html (accessed June 30, 2012). Fujimoto, Yukari. 2004. “Transgender: Female Hermaphrodites and Male Androgynes”. Trans. Linda Flores and Kazumi Nagaike. Edited by Sharlyn Orbaugh. U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal, English Supplement 24: 76–117. Furansu o chūshin to suru shū no kontentsu shijō [The European contents market, with a special focus on France]. 2011, March. JETRO (The Japan External Trade Organization). http://www.jetro.go.jp/jfile/report/07000620/france_contents.pdf (accessed June 30, 2012).

190 Fujimoto Yukari Galbraith, Patrick W. 2011a. “Fujoshi: Fantasy Play and Transgressive Intimacy among ‘Rotten Girls’ in Contemporary Japan”. Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 37.1: 211–232. doi:10.1086/660182. ———. 2011b. “Lolicon: The Reality of ‘Virtual Child Pornography’ in Japan”. Image & Narrative (Online Magazine of the Visual Narrative) 12.1: 83–119. http://www.imageandnarrative.be/index.php/imagenarrative/article/view/127 (accessed June 30, 2012). “ICv2 Bestseller List of the Top 25 Manga Properties”. n.d. ICv2. http://www.icv2. com/articles/news/20859.html (accessed June 30, 2012). Ishida, Minori. 2008. Hisoyakana kyōiku: yaoi, bōizurabu no zenshi [Secret education: The prehistory of yaoi and Boys’ Love]. Kyoto, Japan: Rakuhoku. Ishikawa, Y . 2011. “Monogatari tekusuto no saiseisei no rikigaku: ‘yaoi’ no monogatarironteki bunseki o ch shin toshite” [The dynamics of recreating narrative texts: A narratological analysis of “yaoi”]. Doctoral thesis, Graduate School of Literature and Human Sciences (Culture as Representation course), Osaka City University, Osaka, Japan. 166 pages. Kinokuniya. n.d. POS data (unpublished). Komikku Māketto nenpyō [Chronology of Comic Market]. 2011, November 1. http://www.comiket.co.jp/archives/Chronology.html (accessed June 30, 2012). “Konoha, the Ninja Dictionary” (in Japanese). n.d. http://konoha.the-ninja.jp/ dictionary.html (accessed June 30, 2012). Lam, Fan-Yi. 2010. “Comic Market: How the World’s Biggest Amateur Comic Fair Shaped Japanese Dōjinshi Culture”. Mechademia 5: 232–248. “Media Guide 2011”. 2012 Adnavi Shueisha: Kōkoku kōkoku baitai news (Japanese). http://adnavi.shueisha.co.jp/mediaguide/2011/m_comic/w_jump/index.html (accessed June 30, 2012). Mizoguchi, Akiko. 2003. “Male-Male Romance by and for Women in Japan: A History and the Subgenres of Yaoi Fictions”. U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 25: 49–75. ———. 2010. “Theorizing the Comics/Manga Genre as a Productive Forum: Yaoi and Beyond”. In Comics Worlds and the World of Comics, edited by Jaqueline Berndt. 143–168. Kyoto: International Manga Research Center, Kyoto Seika University. http://imrc.jp/lecture/2009/12/comics-in-the-world.html (accessed June 30, 2012). Nagaike, Kazumi. 2003. “Perverse Sexualities, Perversive Desires: Representations of Female Fantasies and Yaoi Manga as Pornography Directed at Women”. U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 25: 76–103. Napier, Susan. 2001. Anime from Akira to Princess Mononoke: Experiencing Contemporary Japanese Animation. New York: Palgrave Macmillan (Japanese translation, Gendai nihon no anime. Trans. Kamiyama Kyōko. Tokyo: Ch ōkōron shinsha, 2002). Naruto suki burogu! n.d. http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/konohanogenin/12053691.html (accessed June 30, 2012). “Naruto” x Junkie Blog. n.d. http://narutoxjunkie.blog107.fc2.com/blog-entry-418. html (accessed June 30, 2012). “Netto: Kaigai de kirawareru anime no josei kyarakut ”. n.d. Matome chaneru. http://matomech.com/article.aspx?aid=582188&bid=335 (based on Moonlight Fantasia’s Japanese website: http://www.moonlight.vci.vc/misc/suki_kirai5.html) (accessed June 30, 2012). Noppe, Nele. 2010. “Dōjinshi research as a site of opportunity for manga studies”. In Comics Worlds and the World of Comics, edited by Jaqueline Berndt. 123–142. Kyoto, Japan: International Manga Research Center, Kyoto Seika University. http://imrc.jp/lecture/2009/12/comics-in-the-world.html (accessed June 30, 2012).

Women in “Naruto”, Women Reading “Naruto”

191

“ONE PIECE dai-64 kan, shohan 400-man bu”. 2011, November 5. Asahi Shinbun, Tokyo morning edition, p. 37. Orbaugh, Sharalyn. 2010. “Girls Reading Harry Potter, Girls Writing Desire: Amateur Manga and Shōjo Reading Practices”. In Girl Reading Girl in Japan, edited by Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley. 174–186. New York: Routledge. Supein ni okeru nihon no terebi anime manga eiga shijō no jittai [Actual condition of the market for Japanese TV anime, manga and movies in Spain]. 2007, December. JETRO (The Japan External Trade Organization). http://www.jetro.go.jp/ jfile/report/05001517/05001517_002_BUP_0.pdf (accessed June 30, 2012). Welker, James. 2006. “Beautiful, Borrowed and Bent: ‘Boys’ Love’ as Girls Love in Shōjo Manga”. Signs. Journal of Women in Culture and Society 31.3: 841–870. “What Is the Comic Market?” 2008. Comiket: The Official Comic Market Site. http://www.comiket.co.jp/info-a/WhatIsEng080528.pdf (accessed June 30, 2012). “Zero nendai no manga jōkyō: tsugi no 10nen ni mukatte, Dai-1 bu: ‘Joshi’ ga yomu zero nendai” [The situation of manga in the 2000s: Toward the next decade, part 1: ‘Females’ reading the 2000s]. 2011. Symposium with Kawahara, Kazuko; Fukuda, Rika; Nonaka, Momo, and Fujimoto, Yukari. In Manga Kenkyū 17 (March): 136–178.

11 Fanboys and “Naruto” Epics Exploring New Ground in Fanfiction Studies Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto and Nora Renka

INTRODUCTION As one of the most popular manga and anime in the world, “Naruto” has spurred a wealth of fan activity, both analytical and creative. The Internet has enabled fans from all around the world to engage in these productive activities, writing detailed plot summaries, creating theories about the background to the story and future events, arguing about which character would win in a fight, and drawing both faithful and more radical art of, as well as writing stories about, the characters and the ninja world created by Kishimoto Masashi. In this chapter, we discuss a previously neglected genre of “Naruto” fanfiction in order to explore both how the stories engage with the original work’s ongoing plot, and how avid readers of these fan-created works engage in a give-and-take relationship with the authors to influence the course of their plots. Fanfiction studies1 is a subset of fandom studies, which in turn falls under the umbrella of popular culture studies. Fanfiction is a writing practice described by fandom critic Henry Jenkins (1992) as “poaching”: a practice where fans of certain media such as literary works, films, television series, sports teams, bands, and more—the source texts—write their own stories based on, and rendering homage to, these materials. Not all fans write or read fanfiction, but all fanfiction writers and readers are fans.2 These stories can be derivative, transformative, or both, and fans may enjoy these stories as much as, and sometimes more than, the original works. For ongoing series like “Naruto”, they fulfill the additional function of tiding fans over until the next installment of the manga or the next episode of the anime. We focus on fanfiction because we are interested in how authors and readers interact, and for this chapter, we are narrowing our focus down to a comparatively neglected category of fans: readers of the “Naruto” manga and viewers of the Naruto anime (these categories show considerable overlap) who write “harem fic” (see subsequent discussion). Readers and viewers who write fanfiction have a distinctive relationship to the author of the original work that becomes apparent in their fanfiction, which is an appropriation and reinterpretation/reproduction of the original work, and in their

Fanboys and “Naruto” Epics

193

metatexts (reviews and discussion) about this fanfiction. Although the authors of the original work, in our case Kishimoto, rarely react to fanwork, fanfiction authors enter into a dialogue with the unresponsive author and have this dialogue commented on and expanded on by their own readers. One of the lenses we apply to the texts we analyze is literary critic Wolfgang Iser’s theory on reader response, on how readers engage with texts; and since our samples are all fanfiction stories and metatext published online, we followed some of the guidelines for computer-mediated discourse analysis (CMDA) as described by Herring (2004), as a practical guideline to select and analyze them. Online fan discourse qualifies as computer-mediated discourse given that in the community built around it, it is “discourse as a site in which power and meaning are contested and negotiated” (Herring 2004, 354). In the pre-Internet age, some fanfiction was published in fanzines distributed by mail. In the Internet age, however, practices have changed, and both the publishing and consuming of fanfiction (and other fanworks like fanart, fanvids, and fandom role playing games—RPGs) has become much more accessible. It is both easier and cheaper to publish fanfiction on the Internet than to print it on paper and distribute it by post. The fanfiction demographic is very broad, ranging from precocious young elementary students to people past retirement age of all genders, nationalities, and ethnicities. On the whole, more fanfiction is produced by women (and girls) than by men (or boys). This situation is the same in Japan according to Orbaugh (2010, 177), who did research on Japanese fanworks about the Harry Potter series. It is extremely difficult to find exact numbers, since the number of fanfiction stories on the Internet increases daily, but it is estimated that the female to male ratio is between 7:3 and 8:2. Science fiction critic Camille Bacon-Smith has even claimed that 90% of Star Trek fanfiction writers are female. A possible reason for this is that the majority of characters in popular works are male. Therefore, female fans might be more motivated to either insert an avatar of themselves, a phenomenon called “Mary Sue” in fanfiction, or rewrite the source story the way they like to imagine the story developing.3 Because the majority of fanfiction writers are women and girls, the last decade has seen a surge in female-orientated research,4 in particular about two categories of fanfiction called slash and yaoi5 (the latter is also called BL, short for Boys’ Love, within Japan when talking about commercially available works).6 Both are mainly written by female authors for a chiefly female audience; thematically, they focus on same-sex romance between male characters. While older fans in English-language fandoms and critics both overseas and in Japan maintain the distinction between slash and yaoi, in English-language fandoms of Japanese media, no difference is made between the two anymore,7 and what critics might “technically” want to categorize as slash is called yaoi by both fans and those who do not like the subgenre. While the focus of this chapter is not yaoi, we did find frequent references to the genre in our samples, which we will discuss in the next part, which discusses the harem trope in anime and manga

194 Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto and Nora Renka In 2005, Sheenagh Pugh published her book The Democratic Genre, Fan Fiction in a Literary Context. As the title suggests, fanfiction is a genre where the threshold for participation is now very low and is democratic in the sense that many, if not most, people in the first world and in fast-developing nations would be able to participate if they were so inclined. Pugh, like others before her, wrote about the fanfiction she knows (i.e., fanfiction mainly written by women for mainly female readers). Orbaugh too noted that “contemporary fanfiction is anarchic, hyper-democratic in that anyone at all can participate, and feminist in its resistance to phallogocentrism” (2010, 179). Another conspicuous aspect is that many fanfiction and fan culture scholars, most notably Matt Hills in his seminal work Fan Cultures (2002), start out studying fandoms that they themselves are (or were) active in. As we, the authors of this chapter, are also scholars involved in fandom, we must be cautious of the pitfalls. Being a part of a community rather than coming from an outsider position grants unique insights and access to communities that might be hard or even impossible for outsiders to research. However, when fandom and fanfiction critics only look at what they like and what they are involved with as fans, there is a risk that they tend to reconfirm their personal beliefs. (For instance, Ika Willis asserted that fanfiction opens up queer readings via fanfiction that was written by herself.)8 Moreover, if we focus research on stories from fandoms that we “acafans” (or acafen, a plural contraction of academics who are also fans) participate in, or on fanworks we make ourselves, it can cause a large demographic, and millions of fanfiction stories, to be overlooked purely because there is no acafan who has taken a personal or hobbyist interest in them. This type of blinkered approach in turn leads to erroneous conclusions and assertions about “the nature of fandom.” Thus we have chosen for analysis below a relatively unexplored fandom in which we have no direct involvement—harem fiction. ON THE HAREM TROPE IN MANGA AND ANIME A good example of an area of fandom often neglected by academics would be the entirety of what is referred to as feral fandom. We will briefly discuss this here as the online archive from which the published harem fiction we chose for analysis is frequently labeled as feral. A feral fandom is a fandom in which many participants have not been a part of older, relatively organized, fandoms (Sugimoto 2008, 162) and therefore act accordingly, remaining largely ignorant of what more senior fans consider “fannish conventions,” the unwritten rules of fandom.9 The term is highly contested, with some fans taking pride in being labeled feral, while others see the term as offensive.10 Many acafen are more advanced in age than fans in feral fandoms, many of who are teenagers or in their early twenties (occasionally they are much older but are participating in a fandom for the first time). The majority of acafen are not active in anime or manga fandoms; instead, they are mostly

Fanboys and “Naruto” Epics

195

involved in TV series (mainly English language) or popular literature fandoms. Because of this, the study of English-language online fanfiction by fans of manga and anime has received scant attention so far (for exceptions, see Chandler-Olcott and Mahar 2003; Hahn Aquila 2007). As both long-term fanfiction readers and fandom participants (albeit often in a lurking11 capacity), we wanted to, for reasons discussed previously, reach outside of our own fannish comfort zone to concentrate on a category of fanfiction that has so far been ignored in fanfiction research. The most suitable choice proved to be a subgenre that is frequently maligned within fandom but is moderately popular (in terms of both comments and hits, or access count), and one that is almost exclusively written by male authors for male audiences: the “harem fic”.12 Many fans disparage harem fic for the same reasons as they do slash and yaoi stories; that is, relative to the source material, these genres all focus on romantic and highly sexualized story arcs. Hahn Aquila notes that many fans become more critical the more fanfiction deviates from the source text (Hahn Aquila 2007, 44). Works of harem fanfiction, however, unlike slash and yaoi, definitely do not show the resistance to phallogocentrism mentioned by Orbaugh; rather, they celebrate it. Like yaoi, they do spend a lot of time examining and expanding on the sexual liaisons of a certain character. Yet unlike most yaoi, the focus in harem fic is on the quantity of the sexual encounters rather than on romantic relationships. The harem trope is not exclusive to fanfiction; it is a subgenre of anime and manga (and also video and online games, as discussed by critic Azuma Hiroki using the term “novel games” [2009, 75–76]), in which three or more female characters are romantically attracted to a male character. The harem trope is not so prevalent that it can be called a mainstream genre. It is often used for comic relief rather than making the character out to be a paragon of virile masculinity. Mainstream manga works that contain the harem trope include for example the animated series Neon Genesis Evangelion (Shin seiki evangelion, 1995) and the manga and animated series Hayate the Combat Butler (Hayate no gotoku, manga 2004, anime 2007). Both series, like “Naruto”, enjoy considerable popularity outside of Japan. In fanfiction written by male fans, the harem trope is prevalent, not just in “Naruto” fandom, but also in fanfiction based on other series, like Harry Potter, in which the fanfiction author writes from the main character’s point of view (POV). One of the things we aimed to find out during our analysis is how authors of harem fic feel about the main character having a harem. Azuma posited that the novel games he discussed can be therapeutic,13 but this is a claim we could find no evidence for in our samples. The existence of a male character with a harem in these fanfictions often implies the threat of real or symbolic castration of other males; to put it less formally, one man monopolizes all of the girls, leaving none for the others. In our samples, the protagonist and harem owner was always Uzumaki Naruto, while his rival Uchiha Sasuke was the character most often battered, or killed, by harem

196 Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto and Nora Renka fanfiction authors, and the one who was “punished” by not being able to form a relationship with any of the female characters. Based on our preliminary reviews of the texts and metatexts for analysis, the ideas of women as commodities, as prizes to be taken and only shared with males of lesser power as an act of goodwill, and of female characters without agency, are very much alive in these stories. We should note that the concept of harem in the fanfiction we will look at below has been mostly stripped of its overt orientalist connotations, and the stories do not feature ethnically Arab characters. The harem in our samples is a generic term for a gaggle of female characters fawning over a male one. Therefore, by their detractors, these stories, and their fans are not maligned for being racist, but for being sexist.14 There is a good discussion of how the harem trope is frequently used in the BL genre in a 2009 paper by Nagaike Kazumi, in which she notes that the old colonial, orientalist, and racist overtones are preserved when BL authors use the trope. DISCUSSION OF THE HAREM TROPE IN “NARUTO” FANFICTION To stay true to the spirit of this volume, we have limited our sampling to fanfiction stories15 written by fans of, and based on, the Japanese manga and anime work “Naruto”. In English-language translation, “Naruto” is distributed by manga publisher VIZ Media Many fans, under the cover of online anonymity, admit to reading pirated scans16 and scanlations online, justifying this by listing reasons such as not wanting to wait for licensed translations, not being able or willing to pay for them, or not having access to bookstores that carry these translations. The TV series seems to be more accessible, but even so pirated clips are also available on sites where users share content, such as YouTube. “Naruto” also frequently makes the New York Times “graphic novels” bestseller list and has a very large English-speaking fan base. Not all of these English speakers are, nor do they identify necessarily as being, “western,” and not all reside in English-speaking countries. Our aim in this chapter is to determine how and why fans read and produce harem fics (the text), and how they construct both their identities as fans and their networks with other fans, through an analysis of fan reviews and author’s notes (the metatext). Part of this is, as mentioned previously, finding out how fanfiction authors relate to or feel about the protagonist Naruto. In order to do this, we first selected a workable number of texts and metatexts. As we noted earlier, the texts we looked at were all “Naruto” harem fanfiction; the metatexts we looked at were extensive discussions of these stories on review and discussion boards. As Herring has noted, “online interaction overwhelmingly takes places by means of discourse” (2004, 338), and it is the analysis of this discourse that will provide us with answers to our questions. We chose the website fanfiction.net to harvest our samples from, for the following reasons: One is that fanfiction.net is the largest online public

Fanboys and “Naruto” Epics

197

fanfiction archive. Another is that those who wish to just read the content can access all stories without signing up for an account. In the case of authors, signing up for a free account is required, and anyone who claims to be over thirteen years of age can do this. A third reason is that though fanfiction.net hosts fanfiction in thirty-one languages other than English (including Scandinavian), the overwhelming majority of the stories are in English. As of March 2012, there were almost 300,000 “Naruto” fanfiction stories in thirty-two languages available,17 this is more than twice as much as for any other anime/manga work, of which there are more than a thousand titles listed. For our purposes, reducing these down to only those in English still left us with more than 235,000 stories. Our focus is on English precisely because it is such a major presence in online fandoms, and many fans from other cultures publish their stories in English to reach the largest number of readers.18 Then, since we wanted to limit our search to harem stories with Naruto as the protagonist, we chose “Naruto U.” in the drop-down menu to select a main character, which left us with 74,184 stories. A further reason for our choice of Naruto was not only because he is the main character of the manga and anime series, but also because he is the most popular and the one harem fic authors seem to identify with most. To test this hypothesis, we looked for another popular “Naruto” character and paired it with our search for the term harem in summaries, namely, Sasuke (Sasuke U.). In yaoi fanfiction about the series, he is the one most frequently paired romantically with Naruto (in the source text, they are rivals). However, fanfiction.net’s search gave us only about thirty hits for Sasuke harem fic, and more than a few of them were at least partially Sasuke/Naruto19 and yaoi. We looked for the term harem in the summaries of these Naruto-centric stories. Many authors include it for fans seeking out these stories and also for those who wish to avoid them. Fanfiction.net has its own community for harem stories called “Naruto loved by Hinata and his Harem” (Hinata is a prominent female character from the “Naruto” series). At the time of searching, most of the 199 stories listed there ranged from a length of 1,000 to 50,000 words and did not reach the “epic” volume, or length, of fan writing we sought. We were interested in readers and authors of long, serialized stories rather than in those who prefer the quick fix of short ones (narratives) because long, continuing stories allow for more interaction between fan authors and their readers. Since the average length of a professional novel is between 60,000 and 100,000 words, for an amateur, which is what the majority of fanfiction authors are, to write a story of more than 100,000 words demonstrates a considerable amount of personal investment in, as well as a willingness to devote time and effort to, fandom and fan interaction. Novel length or longer is what we, and many seasoned fanfiction readers, qualify as epic. The option to limit searches to stories more than 100,000 words in length is also available in the website’s drop-down menu. We further limited our sample to include only stories that had not yet concluded to ensure that productive interactions between author and readers

198 Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto and Nora Renka had not ended. We also confined our sample to stories rated “M” (mature), to ensure we were dealing only with the older producers and consumers on the site, who we assumed would be more capable of sustaining a long story line and interpersonal relationships with other fans online. Narrowing down our search in this way left us initially with exactly fifty stories—already a workable number, but given the scope of this chapter still too large—to further choose from. To make sure we chose for analysis those with the maximum amount of on-site interaction between readers and authors, we calculated the ratio of the number of reviews to word count. Then, from our initial fifty, we selected ten as our final sample, those with the highest ratio of reviews to word count.20 Hahn Aquila has noted that the bonds that develop between writers and readers of fanfiction on the Internet, in other words between people who may never meet offline, are an interesting aspect of fan communities (2007, 37–38). For our purposes, they were indeed the most interesting aspect, and the intensity of their active exchanges is underscored by the fact that the word count of the metatext (discussion and reviews of the fanfiction in question) between a fan author and his readers, who had no face-to-face interaction, on occasion surpassed that of the actual story. List of Fantexts Analyzed

Author

Title

Word count Review count Number of Review/word chapters count ratio

Published

Last updated

1 Swords of twilight

Naruto the Silver Fox

130,173 24

847 0.65%

December 16, December 28, 2007 2011

2 Ravercozy

TUAOA: Naruto’s New Life

100,100 13

675 0.67%

July 26, 2008

April 12, 2011

3 SilverFang88 Naruto: The Fox with a Dog’s Fang

252,576 31

1,706 0.68%

January 20, 2008

June 20, 2011

4 Traban16

Naruto the REAL Fifth Hokage

174,730 20

1,224 0.70%

March 9, 2011

January 13, 2012

5 Ackdam

Naruto One Man Team

417,979 32

3,077 0.74%

January 15, 2010

December 2, 2011

6 Artful Lounger

Kage no Naruto

488,198 93

3,716 0.76%

June 27, 2008

June 17, 2010

7 Majin Hentai X

Naruto: Game of the Year Edition My Shinobi’s Way

148,981 17

1,295 0.87%

January 27, 2009

December 29, 2011

276,552 37

2,535 0.92%

April 1, 2011

January 28, 2012

New Life, Second Chances Shadow Of the Fox

265,323 23 126,724 43

2,559 0.96% 1,413 1.12%

August 25, 2010 March 28, 2010

November 3, 2011 June 23, 2011

8 Naruto6023 9 Kiiam 10 Reaper7

Fanboys and “Naruto” Epics

199

As we kept the sample small, nothing definitive can be said from this list, but some parts deserve elucidation. Seven out of ten authors used the protagonist’s name in the title of the story, while three of them used fox, two of those together with Naruto. In English slang, the term fox is used to describe a sexually attractive woman, but given that in the source text Naruto is a teenage ninja who has a demon fox sealed inside of him, the connotation may be unintended. Nine out of ten made a direct reference to the main character, demonstrating the centrality of the character to their story. Hokage, shinobi, and kage are all terms familiar to foreign fans of “Naruto” and directly relevant to the ninja trope of the narrative (see Omote, in this volume, for a more extensive summary of the source text). The longest story was closing in on half a million words when we started gathering data, while the shortest was just barely over 100,000 words. The two longest stories are ranked fifth and sixth for word count/review ratio, indicating that longer is not necessarily more popular with readers. The largest amount of total reviews was 3,716, for the longest story with the most chapters, but the story with the highest review/word count ratio (1.12%) was only 126,724 words long, although it had a higher number of chapters relative to other stories with a comparable word count. One of the features of the fanfiction.net archive is that registered readers following certain stories can choose to have updates for these stories sent to them. For every new chapter, an e-mail update alert is delivered to these readers, which could account for the greater reader response for stories with many chapters relative to word count. Each new chapter gives the author a chance to present his readers with more of the story, and with the author’s notes a chance to explain his motivation for writing an earlier or the present chapter, and give additional trivia, providing more material to which readers are invited to react. As mentioned previously, relative to the source material (i.e., the official “Naruto” series), the harem stories in our study have a strong focus on sexual relationships between the characters, sometimes described in graphic detail. At the moment, stories rated “M” are full of content that qualifies as obscene, something that is, strictly speaking, forbidden by the site’s terms of service (TOS).21 Many harem fics are, given that their settings are radically different from that of the source text, “A.U.” (alternative universes), and for several of the authors in our sample, their harem story was the first fanfiction they had ever written. While many did not state their exact age, some of them frequently talked about homework and school, indicating that they, according to the archive’s TOS, may be too young to read what they write. In the stories we selected, Naruto’s personality is often radically different from the Naruto in the source text, in ways the fandom author sees as “ideal.” Jenkins calls this “character dislocation” (1992, 171), and in the context of harem fic, it means that Naruto is no mere ninja youth trying to get to the next stage of ninja prowess, but he is also a ladies’ man, getting romantically and sexually involved with more female characters than he ever will in the source text.

200 Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto and Nora Renka Apart from pairing Naruto with a large number of female characters, a number of fanfictions from our sample showed interest in procreation and a sometimes near-eugenic obsession with bloodlines: ninja like Naruto carrying over their powers to the next generation by fathering as many children as possible. There were two stories in which, apparently for lack of enough likeable female characters to satisfy Naruto’s sexual appetite, two characters that are male in the source text, Haku and Pein, were rewritten as female. Given that many harem fic authors demonstrate a “homosexual panic”, as Sedgwick (1992, 83, 199–201) calls it, about their fandom being overrun with yaoi stories written by “fangirls”, we found it interesting that they do not shy away from rewriting male characters as female to achieve a quota of acceptable female characters with which to pair Naruto. The harem trope does not necessarily mean that the authors take a Pokemon-like “Gotta catch ’em all!” approach to female characters. Authors of harem fic adore some female characters, including them in the harem, and intensely dislike others, excluding them from the harem and frequently writing them into humiliating circumstances or having them play negative roles in the story. Here there is more work to be done, for example, on how the bashing, erasure, and humiliation of disliked female characters in harem fic compares to the often criticized erasure of female characters in slash and yaoi fanfiction. Another feature of Naruto’s characterization in harem fics is that he tends to be much more powerful and power hungry than he is in the source text (a casual reading of Harry Potter harem fanfiction, and other fanfiction in which the protagonist has special powers, reveals the same trend). Sometimes he goes over “to the dark side” and takes over the world. One such example is the longest story in our sample, which was almost half a million words long and had attracted several thousand reader reviews. In his notes at the end of chapter 44, the author explains what is coming up next: Meanwhile, Naruto commits the murder of a hundred Iwa ninja and the genocide of tens of thousands of people in one gigantic rampage of undead warriors. His Necromancy finally shows itself as he rapes, loots and pillages the defenseless town, enjoying every moment. Naruto’s all-powerful status in these fanfictions makes for an easy rationalization for why all the female characters fall for him, and if they do not, his leadership status removes all obstacles and grants him droit du seigneur. Since fanfiction readers do not always welcome a complete disconnect between the Naruto of the source material and the one in fanfiction, many authors find themselves compelled to go on the defensive in answering reader comments and criticisms regarding their characterization of Naruto when it is seen as deviating too far from the source text. Rationalizations for radically altered characterizations of Naruto range from using it as a criticism of “Naruto” author Kishimoto—describing him as incompetent and even unfit to continue the series—to attributing Naruto with a mental illness caused by childhood trauma.

Fanboys and “Naruto” Epics

201

These negative criticisms of Kishimoto go as far as calling him a “fanboy”. While this term may seem neutral, it is actually loaded (in the way “fangirl” is used pejoratively), carrying the nuance that Kishimoto knows less about his work than a casual reader and does not give his own work any, or sufficient, critical thought. The fact that fans who are boys call the author of the source material a fanboy, demonstrates how heavily they have invested emotionally in the source material taking the direction they want it to go. Sometimes this denouncement of the source material and its author goes beyond the fanfiction author stating them in his notes, and he may feel the need to expound on them within the story itself. Hellekson and Busse call the entirety of stories and commentary about it produced by fans the “fantext” (2006, 7). While stories and commentary may seem equally important within fandom, in our samples we found that the commentary might be more important than the stories. Nine out of the ten stories in our samples would not have proceeded in the direction they did, or even proceeded at all, if readers had not given lavish feedback, answered polls, and made continual demands on authors. We believe this is probably not the case for stories that are shorter and have been plotted out to the end before the author started posting and interacting with readers, and of much less relevance to stories that are relatively short and posted in one chapter. Most authors in our samples did not shy away from effort that exceeded the mere writing of a story to acquire more feedback from readers. These efforts ranged from begging and pleading to (mock) threats of death, dismemberment, and sexual violence. Often deals were brokered, like authors promising to write or post the next chapter as soon as they have received a certain number of reviews and offering bonus chapters to celebrate once a review count has crossed a target number. Although we limited our selection to stories that were in progress, by the time we finished our analysis, two of the stories were still incomplete and their authors had gone on hiatus, stating personal reasons, conflict with readers, a decrease of the amount of reviews, and an inability to respond to reader expectations any longer, experiencing perhaps a kind of fanfiction author existential crisis. We found that most authors (everyone in our samples) and the majority of readers of harem fic are male or male identified,22 with a minority of female readers sometimes identifying themselves as such when reviewing. We saw displays of the kind of hypermasculine humor that would not be tolerated in the nonferal fandom circles mostly populated with female fans we are familiar with, like the previously mentioned threats of (sexual) violence and blatant homophobia. An example of a typical way to solicit more reader feedback read as follows: Well that’s all so R&R [Read & Review] or I’ll hang you up in [a] room full of gay guys (or girls depending on your gender) and pedofiles [sic] who will rape that crap out of you.

202 Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto and Nora Renka In nonferal fandoms with a majority of female fans, the outrage over statements like this accompanying a fanfiction posted to a community would have the potential to end a fanfiction author’s social life in fandom. In contrast with heavy-handed soliciting for feedback, two of the authors did not use threats and apologized for something every time they wrote a note to communicate with readers (the word sorry was used two hundred times in the author’s notes of the ten stories in our sample), and they also thanked their reviewers profusely, while others used a combination of apologies, pleas, and threats, sometimes putting all of them in one author’s note. Authors displayed frequent anxiety about not being able to update fast enough to please readers and, after a certain number of chapters, anxiety about being unable to keep the story going at the high pace they started out with. In these situations, excuses about broken computers, death in their families, being hospitalized for weeks, and being caught in car wrecks or other often life-threatening calamities that prevented them from continuing stories started popping up in their author’s notes with predictable regularity. Just as other fan activities, not limited to fanfiction writing and reading, the creation and consumption of harem fic gives fans an affinity space where they can hone their writing abilities and also form new interpersonal relationships and share personal details that have nothing directly to do with the story they are sharing. Fanfic authors wrote about a desire to connect with other fans who share their feelings about the source text, how lonely and hard the writing process is, and their need for validation. They also included corrections and explanations of Japanese terms, prayers for loved ones, musings on procrastination, and stories about their pets. In this way, they used their author’s notes as an online journal or personal sounding board. The more popular the story, the more people read the author’s pleas for personal validation, and this attention paid to the author’s person rather than his story seems an important factor in his motivation for writing/publishing stories. A recurring complaint in most of our metatext samples was a denouncement of the slash/yaoi tropes prevalent in wider “Naruto” fandom. Some included an unambiguous “NO YAOI!” in their summaries. Some attacked Kishimoto for encouraging the trope.23 Others wrote short dialogues in which the fan author and the character Naruto fraternize over their hatred of yaoi in an omake (giveaway).24 And one of our authors ended each of his chapters with a variation on the closing remark, “Good night and thank you for not supporting Yaoi.” Often criticism of Naruto’s rival, Sasuke, accompanied a condemnation of yaoi. It seems that the very inclusion of Sasuke in “Naruto” by Kishimoto makes harem fanfiction authors uncomfortable. Intensely negative emotions toward and discussions of a character like Sasuke are called “bashing”, and communities on various platforms (like on livejournal.com, fanfiction.net, and other “Naruto” forums) are devoted to bashing or defending a specific character. On fanfiction.net, authors will commonly forewarn their potential readers that their story contains bashing, using an author’s note to notify the reader that if they do not like it, they should not read

Fanboys and “Naruto” Epics

203

the story.25 While most authors reported only positive reactions from, and interactions with, their readers, they were also occasionally on the receiving end of flaming (very negatively worded and offensive attacks, to which they would react defensively and at length employing varying amounts of obscenity and occasionally setting their other readers onto the flamer in question if they did not flame anonymously and could be identified). Many authors turned each chapter of their story into something more than what a story chapter would be in a book. They not only added extensive notes about themselves and their story, but would also introduce each chapter with a line like “On with the show!” as if the chapter was an episode of a radio play or TV series. One author went a lot further and turned his chapters into virtual “Naruto” newsletters, although this too violates fanfiction.net’s terms of service. He added a summary of the previous chapter each time and a review of any new manga and anime material of the source text “Naruto” that had appeared while he worked on his update, in which he would frequently bash, and sometimes praise, Kishimoto. Below the chapter, he frequently appended omake and a glossary of Japanese terms and ninja techniques. CONCLUSION While we found significant similarities in our samples that are suggestive of how fan authors build their stories through a dialogue with their readers, and how they are driven to continue writing by fandom interaction, encouraging enough to see them create stories that are several hundred thousand words in length, or epic. Nevertheless, this does not explain sufficiently why they start writing “Naruto” harem fic in the first place. While some state their dislike, or distaste, of the prevalent yaoi trope, and their desire for more stories they like, this in and of itself does not seem sufficient reason to write their own. Rather, as with other fans who write, their motivation appears to come from reading the source text “Naruto” combined with their desire that the character they most strongly identify with “deserves” something better than his lot in the source text. In harem fics, this means relationships with all the female characters the fan author likes, or as one of our authors puts it when explaining his motivation for liking the Naruto/harem “pairing”: “[. . .] he deserves some sort of bonus for his efforts.” Several authors of our sampled texts demonstrated a deepening dissatisfaction with aspects of the source text; some who had no problems with the earlier volumes of “Naruto” resented more recent developments by Kishimoto, condemning them wholesale, and dismissing the developments as of no consequence to their personal “Naruto” canon. The fanfic author identifies with and idealizes the character Naruto to such a degree that other fans of the source text may not recognize him as the same character, and to the extent that if he were written by a female author for a mainly female audience (readership), he would be labeled a “Mary Sue”. In his foundational work

204 Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto and Nora Renka on reader-response theory, Wolfgang Iser, in a chapter titled “Asymmetry between Text and Reader,” explains this as follows: The interaction [between text and reader] fails . . . if the reader’s projections superimpose themselves unimpeded upon the text. Failure, then, means filling the blank exclusively with one’s own projections. Now as the blank gives rise to the reader’s projections, but the text itself cannot change, it follows that a successful relationship between text and reader can only come about through changes in the reader’s projections. (1978, 167) Iser does go on to leave room for readers to draw very different yet still supported readings from the same text. However, his description of the frustrated reader is a valuable model for understanding the clearly expressed discontent of the fanfiction writer seeking to “fix” a text that has, to him, gone astray. Since “Naruto” is an ongoing series and fans are not privy to what author Kishimoto has planned, these regular blanks in time between each installment are filled with readers’ projections, with expectations for the character Naruto being especially high. Each new installment of the manga and the anime has the potential to, and often does, crush readers’ and viewers’ hopes. Fans who identify strongly with protagonist Naruto feel, to use Iser’s term, as if they are “being played” (1993, 273), not taken seriously, and that Kishimoto, who keeps inserting new and unexpected layers into the source text, is not playing by what some “Naruto” fans feel are, or should be, the rules of the “Naruto” universe. Fanfiction writers can then (1) accept the frustrating aspects of canon and incorporate them, (2) ignore them by deliberately not referencing them, and/or (3) explicitly repudiate them. Since fanfiction writers have such a great amount of feedback and interaction with their readers validating their interpretation, it seems difficult for them to come to terms with the fact that the author of the serialized work their fanworks are based on does not meet reader demands, not even halfway. “Naruto” fandom is not unique in the intensity of fan reaction, both positive and negative; these reactions profoundly shape fandoms and can create rifts between fans and fanfiction authors, resulting in rivaling factions that dislike each other intensely. NOTES 1. In 2005, there was an academic journal dedicated to fanfiction studies, Distraction: The Journal of Fanfiction Studies, with its own website. It has now, however, disappeared, but critical discussion of it by acafen can still be found online in communities like fanthropology on the website livejournal.com. 2. Notable exceptions are antifans, or those who write fanfiction with the sole purpose of ridiculing, satirizing, or disparaging the source texts. One could

Fanboys and “Naruto” Epics

3. 4.

5.

6.

7. 8.

9.

10.

11. 12.

205

argue that these writing practices are not strictly fanfiction, so we will not include them in this chapter. “Mary Sue” is now a well-known though contested term, see http://www. themarysue.com. Jenkins has called it a “personalization” of the source material by the fan author (1992, 171–172). There is not enough room here to present an exhaustive overview, but, starting with sci-fi critics like Camille Bacon-Smith and Joanna Russ (the latter was also a fanfiction author and a novelist), a number of critics have done significant work on English-language fanfiction. While they are not quite the same, the differences are largely cultural, and there are enough significant similarities to call them equivalents. A number of Japanese critics, like Kotani Mari (2004), Nakajima Azusa (aka Kurimoto Kaoru, 2005), and Mizuma Midori (2005) have published important insights into the yaoi genre while discussing slash as its foreign equivalent. Some critics of slash and yaoi/ Boys’ Love (BL) have been dismissive of one or the other of these genres, usually the one they are less familiar with and sometimes due to the language barrier, and at other times by erroneously assuming the other to be inferior, or by altogether ignoring it. In English-language critiques, others who have made the comparison include Salmon and Symons (2001, 73) and Orbaugh (2010, 174, 180). Fanfiction studies’ frequent focus on female-orientated genres does not mean that the discipline is necessarily gender biased; the subgenres “slash” and “yaoi” are studied by researchers not merely of fandom, but across disciplines. Scholars of literature, queer studies, evolutionary psychology, and gender theory tend to focus on the seemingly contradictory practice of women exchanging stories of male/male romance. These academics focus on what seems more controversial to them—as well as on areas in which they are also active as fans. As Hahn Aquila demonstrates in her paper on Ranma 1/2 fanfiction: “Yaoi can be loosely translated as “slash” fiction, a type of story generally involving romantic homosexual encounters” (2007, 39). Willis makes the argument that the author of the Harry Potter books denies possibilities to queer readers. She does this by quoting and analyzing two fanfiction stories she wrote herself, in which characters who in the source text start out as a preteen child and a man in his thirties, Harry Potter and his teacher Severus Snape, connect on a romantic and sexual level. These conventions would more recently prohibit use of offensive language, use of slurs, and making jokes about violence, and they would also include warnings for triggers (words or references that may trigger posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms in readers) in online discourse. Some fans see the term as racist or ethnocentric because many of the fans the label would apply to are foreign, who have stumbled upon English-language fandom without being introduced to it by an established fan who is older (in fandom years). In the age of the Internet, however, many if not most new fans may have no formal introduction, making the majority “feral”. The site Fanlore provides extensive discussion of the term and the controversy surrounding it: http://fanlore.org/wiki/Feral_Fandom#Feral_Fandom (accessed 2012/03/01). The act of “lurking” in an online context means “to see without being seen”; on Internet forums, it implies reading without commenting, without leaving public traces of having been there. One earlier paper we were able to find on the harem trope in manga and anime, by Otto F. Von Feigenblatt, reaches the questionable if not ethnocentric conclusion that the reason the harem genre in anime exists is because “[s] exuality in Japan was historically divided from the institution of matrimony

206 Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto and Nora Renka

13.

14.

15.

16. 17. 18.

19.

20.

and relegated to the dark alleys of the red light district and the geisha houses. Now that the two aspects of a romantic relationship are finally together, neither women nor men know how to deal with it in a socially appropriate way” (2010, 646). (This paper was published in The Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies, not to be confused with the other Journal of Asia-Pacific Studies that has its repository at Waseda University). “Also important here is the setting in which the protagonist can finally be reunited with his father only after successfully consummating relationships with all of the female characters. Considering the case of multiple personality disorders, this premise is an equivalent of a standard therapeutic treatment for it [. . .]” (Azuma 2001/2009, 114). On the anime blog Ask John, in a 2005 discussion of the question “Why do Americans hate harem anime?” John says that “[. . .] female American anime fans and those they influence appear to have politicized anime with a socio-sexual agenda. Female nudity in anime is now considered sexist and shameful because it reportedly fetishizes women as sexual objects ” (http:// www.animenation.net/blog/category/ask-john/, accessed 2012/03/01). We limited our study to stories and not fanart, or fan comics like in Japanese dōjinshi (fanzines), because exploring the harem trope in pictorial rather than text form would involve contact with graphic pictorial content that potentially makes it “child pornography” in certain jurisdictions, which would limit where we could present and introduce our research. Fanfiction writers are, however, very familiar with dōjinshi that are, like Japanese manga, scanned and uploaded on sites with pirated content and often also translated by fans. Based on our observations, we can also say that there is not as much fan interaction between the makers and consumers of pictorial content as there is between that of the readers and authors of fanfiction. See Noppe, in this volume, for a more nuanced discussion on fanart and contents policies. VIZ Media has recently launched Shōnen Jump Alpha online, in an attempt to undercut online piracy. The number of stories grows every day. The numbers for our data are from February 18, 2012. Based on our observations, many fans who have English as a second language claim that reading and writing fanfiction, or participating in other Englishlanguage interaction online has made their English better to the extent that they are earning better grades in school and becoming able to use their improved English ability as leverage into employment. For these fans, participation in English-language fandoms benefits them beyond being mere entertainment. They are, however, more reluctant than native speakers of English to write fanfiction and may spend years lurking and learning in English-language fandoms for fear of being made fun off for their lack of English skills. There are some “harem yaoi fics”, in which a male character has a number of male lovers; however, these stories are rare. In the majority of Sasuke/ Naruto yaoi fanfiction, as in Kakashi/Iruka stories (with a pairing made up of Naruto and Sasuke’s male teachers), the focus of the story is on the couple being the one and only true love for each other, without any additional love interests or sex partners. The few yaoi harem fics that we did find were not of epic (more than 100,000 words) volume either. Picking the stories with the highest ratio of reviews to word count means that we selected the most popular stories. That these stories are the most popular, however, does not necessarily mean that they are qualitatively better than other fanfiction stories. As Rebecca C. Moore has pointed out, “Fanfiction’s uneven literary quality remains one of its critics’ big bones of contention. Because Web publishing lacks standards and not all writers take advantage

Fanboys and “Naruto” Epics

21.

22.

23.

24.

25.

207

of learning opportunities, all too often you’ll encounter egregiously abysmal prose” (2005, 16). However, to be fair to the authors of our samples, while we did not personally enjoy their stories, only one of them had abysmal spelling and grammar, though even this improved considerably as the story progressed, proving the assertions made by other critics that fanfiction writing is educational. What a high ratio of review to word count and the popularity associated with it does mean is that the author was successful in establishing and building on interpersonal relationships with readers. Fanfiction.net forbade the posting of obscene and pornographic content since it updated its terms of service (http://www.fanfiction.net/guidelines) on September 11, 2002. Fanfiction.net administrators initially enforced this rule, but given the large amount of stories and the workload of administrators, it is now virtually impossible to police. Each chapter of a story can be reported by readers who find something that does not follow the rules, but these reports are often ignored. We found no reason to doubt their reported gender but are aware of incidents in English-language slash fandom where fan authors reinvented their online author personas as male in spite of being female or female identified to gain readers and/or access to what were seen as elite fandom communities. When found out, these fans were severely bashed but rationalized their actions based on the perception that men, especially gay men, can speak with more authority and become more popular in fandoms with mostly female fans because of their relative scarceness and because of the air of real or imagined authenticity they lend to discussions of fanfiction about male characters and their relationships. We will refrain from giving concrete examples to spare fans caught up in these debacles more upset. One of the authors in our study found proof of Kishimoto endorsing yaoi in one of the panels of the manga: “Oh, and it had this really fucking disturbing picture at the start of the chapter where Naruto and Sasuke each had a necklace with a picture of the other on it. Yeah . . . guess where Kishimoto’s mind is when you draw shit like that. Honestly it sounds like the starting picture of a yaoi doujin or something.” A tradition of adding bonus content is also found in Japanese manga, where the author adds a short metamanga at the end of a story or volume, in which his or her characters can be seen talking to the author/artist in his or her workspace or home. A quick search of fanfiction.net gives about 1,200 stories in the “Naruto” category that contain the term bashing in their summary.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Azuma, Hiroki. 2001/2009. Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals [Dōbutsuka suru postmodern—otaku kara mita nihonshakai]. Trans. Jonathan E. Abel, Shion Kono. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bacon-Smith, Camille. 1991. Enterprising Women: Television Fandom and the Creation of Popular Myth. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania. Chandler-Olcott, Kelly, and Donna Mahar. 2003. “Adolescents’ Anime-Inspired Fanfictions’: An Exploration of Multiliteracies.” Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy 46.7 (April): 556–566. Coppa, Francesca. 2006. “A Brief History of Media Fandom.” In Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse. 41–59. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.

208 Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto and Nora Renka Hahn Aquila, Meredith Suzanne. 2007. “Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction Writers: New Narrative Themes or the Same Old Story?” Mechademia: Networks of Desire 2: 34–48. Hellekson, Karen, and Kristina Busse, eds. 2006. Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company. Herring, Susan C. 2004. “Computer-Mediated Discourse Analysis: An Approach to Researching Online Behavior.” In Designing for Virtual Communities in the Service of Learning, edited by Sasha A. Barab, Rob Kling, and James H. Gray. 338–376. New York: Cambridge University Press. Hills, Matt. 2002. Fan Cultures. New York: Routledge. Hutcheon, Linda. 1985/2000. A Theory of Parody, The Teachings of TwentiethCentury Art Forms. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Iser, Wolfgang. 1991/1993. The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology [Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre: Perspektiven literarischer Anthropologie]. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. ———. 1978. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Jenkins, Henry. 1992. Textual Poachers, Television Fans and Participatory Culture. New York: Routledge. Kotani, Mari. 2004. Eirian bedoferōzu [Alien bedfellows]. Tokyo: Shōhakusha. Mizuma, Midori. 2005. Inyu to shite no shōnenai, josei to shōnenai to iu genshō [Boys love as metaphor, women and the phenomenon of boys’ love]. Tokyo: Sōgensha. Moore, Rebecca C. 2005. “All Shapes of Hunger, Teenagers and Fanfiction.” VOYA (April): 15–19. Nagaike, Kazumi. 2009. “Elegant Caucasians, Amorous Arabs, and Invisible Others: Signs and Images of Foreigners in Japanese BL Manga.” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific 20 (April): n.p. http://intersections.anu.edu. au/issue20/nagaike.htm (accessed March 16, 2012). Nakajima, Azusa. 2005. Thanatos no kodomotachi, kajōtaiō no seitaigaku [The children of Thanatos, an ecology of overcompensation]. Tokyo: Chikuma bunko. Orbaugh, Sharalyn. 2010. “Girls Reading Harry Potter, Girls Writing Desire: Amateur Manga and Shojo Reading Practices.” In Girl Reading Girl in Japan, edited by Tomoko Aoyama and Barbara Hartley. 174–186. New York: Routledge. Pugh, Sheenagh. 2005. The Democratic Genre, Fan Fiction in a Literary Context. Bridgend, Wales: Seren. Russ, Joanna. 1983. How to Suppress Women’s Writing. Austin: University of Texas Press. Salmon, Catherine, and Donald Symons. 2001. Warrior Lovers, Erotic Fiction, Evolution, and Female Sexuality. London: Weidenfeld & Nicholson. Sedgwick, Eve Kosofsky. 1992. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire. New York: Columbia University Press. Sugimoto, Jessica. 2008. “Mpreg, the Male Body as Pregnant in Female Homoerotic Fiction.” Kyoto Seika Daigaku Kiyō (Annals of Kyoto Seika University) 24: 157–173. Von Feigenblatt, Otto F. 2009. “A Socio-cultural Analysis of Romantic Love in Japanese Harem Animation: A Buddhist Monk, a Japanese Knight, and a Samurai.” Journal of Asia Pacific Studies 1.3 (2010): 636–646. Willis, Ika. 2006. “Keeping Promises to Queer Children, Making Space (for Mary Sue) at Hogwarts.” In Fan Fiction and Fan Communities in the Age of the Internet, edited by Karen Hellekson and Kristina Busse. 153–170. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company.

12 The Traditional Naruto (Maelstrom) Motif in Japanese Culture1 Franziska Ehmcke

“Naruto” by Kishimoto Masaki is one of the most popular manga series in Japan and worldwide. Although the series’ title as well as the names of the main protagonists, locations, and ninja techniques rest on intertextual references to the cultural history of Japan, this knowledge is not necessary to enjoy the series, as is evident from the global esteem and popularity it has won. Yet, quite the opposite seems to be the case; while on the one hand Japanese readers usually might be able to decipher the implied meaning of the references, and can therefore feel invited to detect the complex allusions to Japanese cultural traditions, on the other hand, the Japanese names and references to ninja culture seemingly increase the story’s exotic flair for the global audience. The wordplays and multiple references of the proper names and locations contribute to an associative network of meanings that certainly increases the story’s intricacy. Since Kishimoto consciously inserts innumerable allusions to Japanese myths, famous heroes, sites, ninja techniques, and religious ideas, enticing his readers to look for supplementary meanings, it might be interesting to analyze these references and their impact on the manga’s meaning; however, as a comprehensive examination of all these avenues of meaning would be a book-length project in itself, this chapter concentrates on the investigation of the multiple significances of the name Naruto, its origin and its importance for the cultural history of Japan. Three closely related theoretical frameworks build the basis for the following analysis. The first significant approach is derived from the field of cultural semiotics that understands culture as a system of signs and symbols (Krois 2004). The investigation of these diverse sign systems is mainly based on three concepts: process, codes, and medium (Posner 2003, 40–46). While “process” refers to a “sender” transferring a “message” to a “receiver,” “codes” circumscribe the different verbal and visual sign systems, and “medium” refers to diverse cultural products and art forms, such as plays, poems, paintings, manga, or comics. The second approach is intertextuality, a concept that saw its advent in literary criticism and refers particularly to literary texts. Considering the fact that the original Latin meaning of the notion “text” is fabric or netting, this word could also be used to refer to nonlingual

210 Franziska Ehmcke sign systems. In this context, culture could be interpreted as a type of text that comprises different sign systems (Bachmann-Medick 1996; 2003, 89f.). In this sense, intertextuality refers to the relationship between diverse cultural sign systems (Ehmcke 2005). Closely related with these approaches is the theoretical framework of collective or cultural memory (Erll 2005a, 18–32). In a collective, society, or culture, a symbol can activate a process of recollection when it alludes to “cues” (i.e., key concepts that are stored in the cultural memory). Localities and landscapes are especially potent in the recollection process and therefore often absorb cue functions (Erll 2005b, 254ff.). Based on these three frameworks, the chapter starts with an explanation of the renowned location Naruto. It will then exemplify the significance of the symbol Naruto in poetry, epic stories, theater, film, woodcut prints, and paintings. Finally, the connection with the protagonist of the manga will be emphasized. ABOUT THE LOCALITY NARUTO On hearing the word Naruto, contemporary Japanese people might think of a specific geographic location, Naruto kaikyô (the Strait of Naruto), often abbreviated as Naruto, a 1,400-m-wide strait in the Inland Sea (Seto-naikai). The strait stretches from the city of Naruto situated on the northeastern most point of the island Shikoku in the south to the island Awajishima in the north (Nihon Kokugo Daijiten Dainihan Hensh iinkai 2002, 307). Because the strait once lay in the old province of Awa, it is also referred to as Awa no Naruto (Kubota 1999, 656). The average sea level of the Inland Sea is 1.4-m higher than the Pacific, leading to powerful currents with the turning of the tides. This mass of water passes through the flat rocks of the strait producing countless whirlpools (uzumaki) of up to 15 m in diameter. The whirlpools themselves produce a thundering noise, which leads to the name Naruto, literally “roaring or thundering gate” (Nihon Kokugo Daijiten Dainihan Hensh iinkai 2002, 307; Mehling 1989, 298).2 In the past, the sight of the maelstroms of Naruto was probably even more spectacular. Today, measures have been taken to lighten the passage for ships. Additionally, a bridge over the strait was completed in 1985. Interestingly, there was an additional strait in the Japanese Inland Sea known as Naruto. It could be found in the old Province of Suō (today the Yamaguchi Prefecture) between batake, on the main island Honsh , and the small island shima. Nevertheless, if one mentions Naruto nowadays, it inevitably refers to Awa no Naruto. The ferocity and beauty of this natural spectacle are two reasons why it became a very early example of a so-called famous view (meisho). “Famous views” were canonical cultural symbols that were often used as fixed literary topoi. They can be found in poetry, art, and other cultural media, where they communicate a specific coded message.

The Traditional Naruto (Maelstrom) Motif in Japanese Culture

211

REFERENCES TO NARUTO IN JAPANESE LITERATURE, FILM, AND ART In poetry, the notion of Naruto was used as a so-called poem pillow (utamakura). “Poem pillows” are rhetorical concepts or topoi in Japanese medieval poetry that indicate feelings or incidents associated with particular Japanese locations. The topos Naruto was consistently used by poets as a motif (Kubota 1999, 656). In many older poems it is not specified which of the famous Naruto maelstroms was being alluded to. The earliest poem about the whirlpools of Naruto can be found in the Manyōshū (The collection of ten thousand leaves/words) from the eighth century, the oldest remaining Japanese poem anthology. Unfortunately, at least according to the recently published Nihon utakotoba hyōgen jiten (Japanese encyclopedia of poetic words and expressions), it does not refer to Awa no Naruto.3 Poems about Awa no Naruto can also be found outside of medieval waka anthologies. For example, the famous poetess Yosano Akiko (1878–1942) composed three poems with the symbol word (Nihon Utakotoba Hyōgen Jiten Kankōkai 2008, 628). The notion of Naruto also emerges in a haiku written by Nozawa Bonchō (c. 1640/42–1714),4 which praises the legendary and dangerous strait during the first springtide of autumn: Hatsushio ya / Naruto no nami no / hikyakubune (The first (high-) tide of autumn / on the whirlpools of Naruto / the ship of the courier dances).5 In this poem, Naruto is a code evoking a beautiful yet dangerous situation, which, either literally or metaphorically, must be overcome. Early examples of the Naruto symbol can also be found in prose. In the monumental medieval epic Heike Monogatari (The Tale of Heike),6 of which around ninety different variations have been recorded since the thirteenth century, Awa no Naruto or Naruto no oki (Naruto Sea) appear numerous times. In the episode Michimori kitanokata ni aisomuru koto (How Michimori met his wife for the first time), Taira no Michimori sees the beautiful young lady Kozaishō no Tsubone for the first time. He immediately falls in love with her, courts her, and finally wins her as his wife. In the following episode, Tsuketari dō kitanokata no minagetamau koto (Addendum to the same chapter: How his wife drowned in the sea), the wife receives the disheartening notice from a samurai that Michimori has fallen in the Battle of Ichinotani (1184). Though pregnant, she decides she can no longer live without her beloved husband and drowns herself in the whirlpools of Awa no Naruto. The depiction of the dangerous maelstrom is very clear (Kōtei Engyōbon Heike monogatari9 2003, 146). Here, Naruto serves a double purpose: It represents the dramatic external events of the sea battle in the Inland Sea as well as the inner maelstrom, which ripped the tragic protagonist to her death. There are several other passages in the multiple variations of the Heike epos where Naruto is mentioned.7 It is interesting from an intertextual point of view that many themes from the Heike epos, such as the earlier mentioned episode of Kozaishō’s suicide,

212 Franziska Ehmcke have been transferred into traditional genres of Japanese theater. Seiami (?–?), an actor of the Kanze Nō Troupe under Zeami Motokiyo (1363–1443), converted the episode into a Nō play, edited by Zeami with the title Michimori (Quinn 2005, 407, note 150). The drama Michimori belongs to the so-called shura-mono, plays focusing on the troubled ghosts of famous heroes. In reality, however, it is a love story. A fishing boat with an elderly couple nears the dock of the Strait of Naruto where a monk is praying for the salvation of the Taira warriors by reading sutras every night during the summer. A close reading reveals that the recitation refers to the unsaved souls of Taira no Michimori, who fell in the battle at sea, and his wife Kozaishō no Tsubone, who took her own life. By telling the story of their fate and through the monk’s recitations, they finally obtain salvation (Barth 1972, 103f.). As in the epic tales, Naruto became a symbol for the tragic circumstances of two lovers in Nō theater as well. In a modified form, this cue function for a tragic fate migrated into the genres of metropolitan theater, which began in the seventeenth century. Originally written for Kabuki, and later adapted for the puppet theater (Ningyō jōruri or Bunraku), the play Keisei Awa no Naruto enjoyed a rise in popularity: It tells the story of the married couple Awa no J rōbei and his wife O-Yumi who are involved in tragic circumstances and are forced to flee and leave their beloved young daughter, O-Tsuru, behind. After around ten years, a beautiful young woman appears at O-Yumi’s door. The young lady is traveling throughout the land in search of her missing parents, J rōbei and O-Yumi. Even though O-Yumi is taken aback by the sudden appearance of her daughter, she cannot tell her the truth. Because the parents are still being pursued, this would bring the daughter into a lifethreatening situation. O-Yumi sends the young woman away without revealing her identity. It was the great Japanese playwright Chikamatsu Monzaemon (1653–1725) who primarily wrote the play Keisei Awa no Naruto (1695) for the influential Kabuki-actor Sakata Tōj rō (1647–1709). Another play based on this one with the same name was written by Chikamatsu Hanji (1725–1783) and premiered at the Takemotoza puppet theater in Osaka in 1768, with an immediate and long-lasting success. Many other authors have written new interpretations of this play, and it is performed even today.8 Edo-period literature also took up the theme. Ry tei Tanehiko (1783–1842), later well known as an author of gōkan,9 made his debut in 1807 with Awa no Naruto, a yomihon10 illustrated by the woodcut print artist Hokusai (see the subsequent discussion). Although Tanehiko claimed that this novel tells a true story, the plot was in fact based on the aforementioned play for the puppet theater created by Chikamatsu Hanji (Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten 1983, 104). Though it did not receive positive acclaim from his fellow writers, the novel enjoyed a high circulation (Keene 1976, 430). The melodramatic story about O-Tsuru was also picked up by film directors during the first decades of the twentieth century. The silent film Awa no Naruto was produced by the film production company Tōyō shōkai in 1913.

The Traditional Naruto (Maelstrom) Motif in Japanese Culture

213

Another silent film version of Awa no Naruto from the director Nakagawa Shirō (1892–1958) was released in 1920. The year 1931 saw the premiere of the sound movie Awa no Naruto, directed by Yoshino Jirō (1881–1964) and produced by the film production company Akazawa Eiga (est. 1931).11 During the 1880s, in the region of Osaka the songs “Awa no Naruto” and “Awa J rōbei” were very popular. They were sung and accompanied by dance during the festivities of the Bon Festival12 in August (Kubota 1997, 293). A hit song from the enka singer13 Yonekura Masami (born 1961) carries the title “Awa no Naruto.” Manzai, a traditional folk performing art still popular today, also dabbles in the Naruto theme.14 The musical manzai group Sannin Yakko, founded in 1950, has a story entitled Awa no Naruto as part of their repertoire.15 This brief overview clearly indicates how deeply the Naruto topos is embedded within Japanese theater, film, and other performing arts. The Naruto theme has also found its way into visual arts in various ways. In woodcut prints and paintings, Naruto is a symbol that, despite its beauty, still represents the dangers posed by the forces of nature. One of the earliest examples of such woodblock prints (ukiyo-e) was created by Katsushika Hokusai (1760–1849). In volume 7 of his famous Hokusai Manga, he depicts the Naruto maelstrom under the title Awa no Naruto16 (Figure 12.1).

Figure 12.1 Awa no Naruto from Hokusai Manga, vol. 7, by Katsushika Hokusai. Page from a block book, 1817.

214 Franziska Ehmcke

Figure 12.2 Awa Naruto no fūkei (View of the whirlpools at Naruto), by Utagawa Hiroshige. Color woodblock print triptych, 1857.

The dynamic whirlpools and the steep but deep-seated rocks perfectly convey the dangerous atmosphere of the maelstrom. The large-format triptych Awa Naruto no f kei (View of the whirlpools at Naruto)17 from 1857 (Figure 12.2) is one of the most famous woodcuts by the well-known artist Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1859). Although the danger of the passage is accurately depicted, the poetic beauty of the scenic location dominates his interpretation. An earlier folio, also called Awa Naruto no f kei, can be found in the series Rokujū-yoshū meisho zue (Famous views of the sixty-odd provinces), produced between 1853 and 1856 (Figure 12.3). In this depiction, the straight seems impassable for boats. His apprentice Hiroshige II (Ichiusai Shigenobu, 1829–1869) also included an interpretation of Awa no Naruto in his series Shokoku rokujū-hakkei (Sixty-eight views of the various provinces) from 1862.18 Though whirlpools are visible, they do not appear to pose any threat for the ship on the left border of the picture. Even in contemporary art, references to the Naruto theme are apparent. One example is the artist Kawabata Ry shi (1885–1966) who painted his pair of six-panel folded screens titled Naruto in 1929. The painting accurately conveys the speed and danger of the rapids. The left screen displays a delightful contrast between the white froth of the whirlpool and the deep blue of the sea it crashes against. The danger is emphasized through the dynamic flight of a black cormorant. On the screen on the right, one can recognize a small wooden fishing boat that has been dragged onto the shore to protect it from the whirlpools and stones. The depictions of the boat and the stones are relatively realistic. Though the colors (grey, beige, and olive green) are generally more subtle, the danger of the rocks and whirlpools is emphasized by the dynamic depiction (Ibaragiken Tenshin Kinen Goura Bijutsukan 2002, 36, 105).

The Traditional Naruto (Maelstrom) Motif in Japanese Culture

215

Figure 12.3 Awa Naruto no fūkei (The Naruto whirlpools near Awa at rough sea), by Utagawa Hiroshige. From the series Rokujū-yoshū meisho zue (Famous views of the sixty-odd provinces). Color woodblock print, 1855.

Okumura Togy ’s (1889–1990) painting Naruto (1959) was created after the painter had traveled across the famous strait. The color of the sea varies between grey-blue and grey-green to olive-green stones on the upper border of the picture. White is used to accentuate the form of the whirlpool and the white froth it creates, both eventually disappearing into a deep opening at the center of the image. The picture seems almost abstract, and it successfully reproduces the threatening atmosphere of the whirlpools’ ominous depths (Ibaragiken Tenshin Kinen Goura Bijutsukan 2002, 47, 107). In woodcut prints and paintings, Naruto is a symbol that, despite its beauty,

216 Franziska Ehmcke still represents the dangers posed by the forces of nature. There is no allusion to the story of the child left behind by its parents in order to save its life. THE MANGA HERO NARUTO The above overview on the usage of the Naruto theme in Japanese art, literature, and popular culture has demonstrated that this motif played, and continues to play, a significant role in Japanese culture, thus remaining an important part of Japanese cultural memory. Against this background, the given name of the main protagonist and the title of the manga “Naruto” were not chosen haphazardly; they refer to the concept of Naruto already established in Japanese culture over the course of more than ten centuries. The hero of the manga series is an orphan named Uzumaki Naruto. The reader is left in the dark as to how Naruto got his name until the fortysecond volume of the manga. His father was the ninja master Namikaze Minato, whose surname literally translates to “waves in a storm.” His mother, also a ninja, is called Uzumaki Kushina; her surname, in a literal translation, means “whirlpool.” Both names are associated with moving water. This explanation is elaborated on in the fifty-third volume. Naruto’s mother came from the ninja village Uzushiogakure (literally “hidden whirling tide”) in the province Uzunokuni, the “land of the whirlpool.” This is also the reason why Naruto wears the symbol of a whirlpool on his back. The surname Uzumaki generally means “whirlpool,” while the first name Naruto signifies a whirlpool in a specific geographic location. When his mother Kushina was pregnant with Naruto, she asked the ninja master Jiraiya, the father’s teacher, if she could call her unborn son Naruto. Naruto is the given name of the hero from a novel written by Jiraiya. In the course of the novel, this ninja carries out many heroic feats. Kushina wishes that her son should become a great hero like the protagonist of the novel or Jiraiya himself. In the forty-second volume, Jiraiya tells the parents how he came to the decision to call the hero of his novel Naruto. He claims the name came to mind while eating ramen noodle soup. To understand this allusion, it should be stressed that ramen often contains a type of garnish called naruto or narutomaki. Narutomaki is a fish paste that has been cut into small slices. It is pink on the inside and white on the outside.19 The edges are jagged reminding one of a whirlpool’s spray. This embedded story also explains why the boy Naruto enjoys eating ramen noodle soup. It is doubtful, however, that a majority of the readers think of the fish paste garnish when they read the name Naruto. The author Kishimoto no doubt chose the name Naruto due to its association with the infamous whirlpools of the sea landscape of Awa no Naruto, but I suspect that he added this ramen noodle soup episode to achieve a humorous effect. The boy’s name emphasizes his uncontrolled energy at the beginning of the series; his behavior is compared to the whirlpools of Naruto. Over the course

The Traditional Naruto (Maelstrom) Motif in Japanese Culture

217

of time, Naruto becomes better at controlling his abilities and at visualizing their dynamic beauty in his martial arts. NARUTO—A TRADITIONAL YET PROLIFIC SYMBOL In Japanese cultural memory, Naruto is a locality that evokes the dangerous beauty of the maelstrom, but Naruto also acts as a metaphoric code connoting the tragic conflicts of beautiful women or children left behind by their parents. In a manga that centers on the ninja arts like “Naruto,” it comes as no surprise that the first meaning plays the major role. As a traditional symbol, Naruto is embedded in many cultural systems and continuously adopts new nuances. In the Naruto plays of the Kabuki and puppet theater, the motif represents the fate of a young girl whose parents left her to save her life. In the manga “Naruto,” the young girl is replaced by a young boy whose parents must leave him. In the fifty-third volume, Naruto’s deceased mother appears. She tells him that his parents sacrificed themselves for him, leaving him as an orphan. This was the only way they could save him and therefore let him fulfill his destiny to bring peace to the country. When reading the whole series, the reader is able to recognize that even the motif of the tragic fate of a child, left by its parents in order to ensure the child’s survival, is tightly connected with the hero’s name. When taking the multilayered meanings of the name Naruto into consideration, the manga series reveals an astonishing complexity that not only concerns its narrative and visual strategies, but also extends to the selection of names and their inherent and nuanced significance. In the past and continuing up to the present, there has been a common practice in Japanese culture to enrich new artworks by employing well-known motifs. The combination of already known symbols and motifs with new topics is apparent in traditional as well as in contemporary popular media and art forms. In this regard, citations, allusions, and the adoption of metaphors and narrative plots are not regarded as mere copies or frowned on as plagiarism but are distinguished as dynamic part of modern Japanese culture, which includes manga, anime, and even video games.

NOTES 1. I would like to thank Keith E. Bibergall for the translation of my German text. 2. Ekkehart May has translated Naruto as “Donnertor,” which, due to the capacity of the German language to create new compound words, could be roughly translated into English as “Thunder-Gate”; cf. SH MON II (2002, 128). 3. Also see Nihon Utakotoba Hyōgen Jiten Kankōkai (2008, 627f). The poem is found in maki 15, 3638 and 3669 (vol. 15, pp. 3638 and 3669 / vol. 15, entries 3638 and 3669). 4. For more regarding Nozawa Bonchō, refer to SH MON II (2002, 139–145).

218 Franziska Ehmcke 5. Based on the German translation by Ekkehard May in SH MON II (2002, 129). This study includes a detailed commentary of the haiku, pp. 128 and 324ff. 6. For an English translation of the Kakuichibon version, cf. The Tale of the Heike (1988). 7. In the episode Yokobue (Kakuichibon, chapter 10, section 8), Koremori reports: “Setting out from Y ki-no-ura in Awa Province aboard a small craft, he rowed across the Naruto Straits towards Kii Province”; cf. The Tale of the Heike (1988, 341). 8. http://www.glopad.org/pi/en/record/piece/1000722 (accessed February 14, 2012). 9. Donald Keene translates the term as “bound-together volumes”. “The name designated the format: as many as six pamphlets, each consisting of five double pages, bound together and sold as a unit” (Keene 1976, 428f). 10. Literally a “book for reading”, a kind of didactic novel that laid emphasis on the story and not so much on the illustrations. See Keene (1976, 423). 11. Kinema junpōsha (1988, 565). 12. For more information on the Bon Festival, see Kimura (1983, 160). 13. Enka songs are always melancholy. They usually deal with the separation of lovers (Köhn 2008, 205). 14. For the history and definition of manzai, see Weingärtner (2006, 14–29). 15. Since 1904, there have been musical manzai, dramatic manzai, and manzai of the dance (Orita 1983, 111). 16. Volume 7 was published in the first month of 1817. Cf. Nagata Seiji (2011, 241). 17. It belongs to a set of three triptychs with the title Setsugetsuka (Snow, moon, and flowers). http://www.cmoa.org/searchcollections/details.aspx?item= 1022987 (accessed February 14, 2012). 18. See Chiappa and Chiappa (2009). 19. Cf. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten Dainihan Hensh iinkai (2002, 307).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Kōtei Engyōbon Heike monogatari 9. 2003. Edited by Taniguchi, Kōichi. Tokyo: Ky ko shoin. Kubota, Jun, ed. 1997. Iwanami kōza Nihon bungakushi 16. Kōshō bungaku 1. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. ———, ed. 1999. Utakotoba Utamakura Daijiten. Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten Dainihan Hensh iinkai, ed. 2002. Nihon Kokugo Daijiten Dainihan. Vol. 10. Tokyo: Shōgakukan. Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten Hensh iinkai, ed. 1983. Nihon Koten Bungaku Daijiten. Vol. 1. Tokyo: Iwanami shoten. Nihon Utakotoba Hyōgen Jiten Kankōkai, ed.2008. Nihon utakotoba hyōgen jiten. Vol. 13. Utamakura-hen 2. Tokyo: Y shikan. SH MON II. 2002. Haiku von Bashōs Meisterschülern Jōsō, Izen, Bonchō, Kyoriku, Sampū, Shikō, Yaba. Edited and translated from Japanese by Ekkehard May. Mainz, Germany: Dieterich’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung. The Tale of the Heike. 1988. Translated with an introduction by Helen Craig McCullough. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

The Traditional Naruto (Maelstrom) Motif in Japanese Culture

219

Secondary Sources Bachmann-Medick, Doris, ed. 1996. Kultur als Text. Die anthropologische Wende in der Literaturwissenschaft. Frankfurt, Germany: Fischer. ———. 2003. “Kulturanthropologie.” In Konzepte der Kulturwissenschaften. Theoretische Grundlagen—Ansätze—Perspektiven, edited by Ansgar Nünning and Vera Nünning. 86–107. Stuttgart, Germany: Metzler. Barth, Johannes. 1972. Japans Schaukunst im Wandel der Zeiten. Wiesbaden, Germany: Franz Steiner. Chiappa, Noel, and Peter L. Chiappa. 2009. “Hiroshige II’s series ‘Sixty-eight Views of the Various Provinces (Shokoku rokuj -hakkei)’ (1862).” http://www. hiroshigeii.net/series/68Provinces.html (accessed February 14, 2012). Ehmcke, Franziska. 2005. “The Tōkaidō Woodblock Print Series as an Example of Intertextuality in the Fine Arts.” In Written Texts—Visual Texts. WoodblockPrinted Media in Early Modern Japan, edited by Susanne Formanek and Sepp Linhart. 109–139. Amsterdam: Hotei. Erll, Astrid. 2005a. Kollektives Gedächtnis und Erinnerungskulturen. Stuttgart, Germany: Metzler. ———. 2005b. “Literatur als Medium des kollektiven Gedächtnisses.” In Gedächtniskonzepte der Literaturwissenschaft, edited by Astrid Erll. 249–276. Berlin: de Gruyter. Ibaragiken Tenshin Kinen Goura Bijutsukan, ed. 2002. Kaikan goshūnen kinen— Yamatane bijutsukan korekushon: Saikō Nihonbijutsuin no gakatachi. Ibaraki, Japan: Ibarakiken Tenshin Kinen Izura Bijutsukan. Keene, Donald. 1976. World within Walls: Japanese Literature of the Pre-modern Era, 1600–1867. London: Secker & Warburg. Kimura, Kiyota. 1983. “Bon Festival.” In Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, edited by Gen Itasaka. Vol. 1. 160. Tokyo: Kodansha. Kinema junpōsha, ed. 1988. Nihon eiga—terebi kantoku zenshū. Tokyo: Kinema junpōsha. Köhn, Stephan. 2008. “Traditionelle japanische Schlager im Zeitalter des ‘J’ ”. In J-Culture, edited by Steffi Richter and Jaqueline Berndt. 204–228. Tübingen, Germany: konkursbuch. Krois, John Michael. 2004. “Kultur als Zeichensystem”. In Handbuch der Kulturwissenschaften, edited by Friedrich Jaeger and Burkhard Liebsch. Vol. 1, Grundlagen und Schlüsselbegriffe, edited by Friedrich Jaeger and Burkhard Liebsch. 106–119. Stuttgart, Germany: Metzler. Mehling, Marianne, ed.1989. Knaurs Kulturführer in Farbe Japan. München, Germany: Droemer Knaur. Nagata Seiji, ed. 2011. Hokusai. Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung. Orita, Kōji. 1983. “Manzai”. In Kodansha Encyclopedia of Japan, edited by Gen Itasaka. Vol. 5. 111. Tokyo: Kodansha. Posner, Roland. 2003. “Kultursemiotik”. In Konzepte der Kulturwissenschaften. Theoretische Grundlagen—Ansätze—Perspektiven, edited by Ansgar Nünning and Vera Nünning. 39–72. Stuttgart, Germany: Metzler. Quinn, Shelley Fenno. 2005. Developing Zeami. The Noh Actor’s Attunement in Practice. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press. Weingärtner, Till. 2006. Manzai—eine japanische Form der Stand-up-Comedy. Entstehung und Funktionsweise von Komik am Beispiel des Manzai-Duos Yumeji Itoshi-Kimi Koishi. München, Germany: Iudicium.

13 Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series An Intercultural Dialogue between Film Studies and Anime Research Gan Sheuo Hui THE RELEVANCE OF FILM STUDIES TO THE ANALYSIS OF ANIME This essay examines the relevance of adapting some features of film studies to the analysis of a long-running manga-based anime1 series. It raises questions about the production process and the complexity of authorial positions in Naruto, by concentrating on the significance of visual elements. The discussion will not focus on distinguishing the anime as “replica” from the manga as “original”. The intention here is to employ the mainstream work Naruto to explore various possibilities of anime discourse, including the possibility of a variety of authorial stances. This includes taking into consideration structural similarities among different media (i.e., “Naruto” manga and anime series), while not overlooking the specificity of each medium’s role in establishing the performance of a narrative, when it is placed in a new media environment such as the transition from manga to anime. Before considering the Naruto TV anime, a few more general reflections will be helpful to establish the interpretative framework. If animation is based on the process of creating a number of still images that trigger the impression of movement through the rapid viewing of these successive images (at a projection rate of twenty-four frames per second)2, then live-action film, which is likewise based on a series of still images that are then projected, is also a form of animation, the chief difference being the means employed for creating the still images (traditionally, hand-drawn images vs. photography). That consequentially all cinema is animation has been noted by various critics: [. . .] it is possible to argue, as new media theorist Lev Manovich does, that animation, once subsumed by cinema, has now succeeded in subsuming cinema. He writes, “Born from animation, cinema pushed animation to its periphery, only in the end to become one particular case of animation”. Japanese animation director Oshii Mamoru expresses a similar sentiment, announcing that all cinema is becoming animation. (LaMarre 2009, 35)3

Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series

221

Beyond this fundamental homogeneity between animation and live-action film, there are, of course, a large number of crucial differences between the means for producing sequential images. Until comparatively recently these differences have been used to posit animation and live-action film as two fundamentally different media, and the critical analysis of film as an art form has ordinarily been withheld from application to the study of animation. In large part, this may have been due to a tacit assumption by film critics and scholars that animation (with a few notable exceptions) is a lowbrow form of popular entertainment for children unworthy of the effort needed to make a full-scale analysis of its aesthetic significance. This attitude, although eroding due to the prominence of media studies and cultural studies approaches, is still much in evidence. The situation today of animation studies resembles in some respects the situation of film studies compared to literary analysis more than fifty years ago, at a time when cinema itself had yet to be commonly perceived as a significant form of expression of ideas, characters, and worldviews comparable in some ways to the diversity found in literature. As Cholodenko reminds us: [. . .] it is incumbent upon animation scholars to acquaint themselves with (such) film theory and its history rather than ignore it, for animation studies and Film Studies are for us inextricably commingled, despite the general lack of acknowledgement of that on the part of either. (Cholodenko 2007, 2)4

THE ROLE OF AUTHORSHIP IN THE LEGITIMIZATION OF CINEMA AS AN ART FORM In postwar France, the idea of auteur arose as a way of perceiving significant expressive meaning in the work of certain directors, some of them working in the Hollywood studio environment that had long been disparaged as a kind of production system incapable of deeper aesthetic meanings.5 French critics publishing in Cahiers du Cinéma in the 1950s often complained about what they called the “Tradition of Quality”, a label for directors who focused on creating carefully crafted films based on canonical works of literature as opposed to directors who strove to imbue their works with a more personalized aesthetic. Although this understanding of auteurism as the unique self-expression of individual directors still dominates the popular conception of the role of excellent directors, auteurist interpretations have often been eclipsed by structuralist, and poststructuralist interpretations about where and how meaning is generated in the production and reception of film. Nonetheless, there has been a resurgence of interest in aesthetic intentionality in cinema in concert with approaches based on gender studies, postcolonial and subaltern

222 Gan Sheuo Hui viewpoints. Paul Sellors, in his critical study of the auteurist tradition, points out the rise of interest in film authorship since the 1980s that included a renewed interest in the issue of intention based on literary and speech act theories: The combination of this growing evidence of film productions and the influence of analytical philosophy on film theory has enabled a shift from a textual to a communicative model of film authorship. This shift allows us to refocus our attention from the coherent picture of a film’s reception to the more complicated situation of its production. (Sellors 2010, 129) Close examination of the production circumstances has become recognized as one of the most effective ways for determining the content and location of creative intent within the work. Auteurist interpretations have occasionally also been applied to animation. Paul Wells, for example, has argued that animation is an intrinsically auteurist medium. He says: It is this sense of “style” and the notion of an expression of “feeling” which underpins even what might be regarded as the most orthodox of animated films. These elements inform the very subjectivities and personal visions that characterise the most extreme examples of more experimental film art, but their place within what has become naturalised as a mainstream corporate entertainment practice should not detract from their presence and execution, both in animation’s evolution as an art-form and as populist cinema. [. . .] ‘The liberation is inherent in the medium; the control is up to the individual director” [Joe Adamson 1974, 395]. These points begin to advance an argument for animation as an intrinsically auteurist medium, and although this is clearly complex in the light of a great deal of animation from the United States being made within an industrial context, it remains important to address the contributions of individuals in the spirit of determining their particular vision [. . .] (Wells 2002, 11) This perspective on the relevance of auteurism to the study of anime is most easily perceived in the theatrical films and series by noted directors, such as Miyazaki Hayao, Takahata Isao, Oshii Mamoru, Kon Satoshi, and Yuasa Masaaki with their consistent treatments of certain themes and visual styles. The most challenging area of anime to consider auteurism may be lengthy series of popular TV anime, such as Naruto. The task of uncovering the varied locations of intentionality and aesthetic expression within the anime episodes is complex for many reasons. Yet these complexities are also found to some degree in anime made for theatrical release by the previous directors. What is stated by Sellors previously in advocating a new auteurist approach to live-action film could be applied also to the examination

Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series

223

of the multiple expressive positions that emerge in the production process of anime. A common issue in considering the idea of authorial intention is how to distinguish it from the multiple interpretations by the audience. Sellors proposed one way of addressing this issue by stipulating a difference between meaning and significance. One of the main problems facing theories of authorship in any medium is critics will locate meanings not intended by the authors. These are often referred to as “textual meanings” and have been used to justify anti-intentionalist arguments maintaining that authors have no authority over the meaning of a work when it is in circulation. . . . Meaning refers to authorial intention, significance to other understandings and judgments that spectators bring to the process of reading. . . . Both meaning and significance accommodate plurality at the point of reception, but only by retaining a notion of authorial meaning can a theory of authorship explain authors’ ownership and accountability for their expressions. (Sellors 2010, 5) Sellors’s distinction between meaning and significance will be adopted for the discussion of Naruto subsequently.6 Due to limited space here, authorship will be examined only in two regards, the complex production of the TV anime and the process of adapting the original manga for the TV series. THE PRODUCTION PROCESS OF NARUTO AND ITS MULTIPLICITY As the anime series of Naruto was based on the earlier manga version, a brief consideration of the manga is necessary. Examining the relation between anime and manga is critical to assessing possible authorial stances in the first. “Naruto” is one of the long-running manga titles in Weekly Shōnen Jump published by Sh eisha, a magazine with a circulation of 2.8 million copies in Japan. “Naruto” has been serialized here since November 1999. Studio Pierrot7 adapted it into an ongoing TV anime that has been broadcast since 2002. The Naruto anime has two phases based on the parts of the manga. The first phase was broadcast from October 2002 to February 2007. The second phase, titled Naruto: Shippūden, started in February 2007. The new title gave a fresh atmosphere to the series, with the characters having grown up after a time span of two and a half year in the narrative. The combined Naruto anime has now continued for a total of more than 480 episodes8 and, judging from its current popularity, will continue for some time to come. Manga and anime are both image-based media, and it becomes relatively difficult to incorporate major visual changes without endangering the

224 Gan Sheuo Hui already established market for the brand image, when different forms of adaptation are launched simultaneously to boost sales. While there are niche audiences for alternate versions such as those found in dōjinshi (fanzines), their distribution will usually be limited. The media collaboration based on shared imagery allows for mutual support, yet it may constrain visual diversity due to the need to stay close to the “original”. These circumstances raise the question as to the possible significance of authors for these multiple forms of “Naruto”. The majority of contemporary anime series share an established “anime look” maintained through a rotation system that involves the oversight of several overall directors who have many directors of animation (sakuga kantoku or sakkan) working under them over the course of a long-running anime series.9 Much research on Japanese anime tends to look at series as if they were self-contained works, without paying attention to the source material.10 On a superficial level, it is easy to identify the strong influence of the initial manga. However, over a long period of time, the anime adaptation may influence the manga artist as confirmed by “Naruto” creator Kishimoto Masashi himself.11 Setting aside the episodes created uniquely for the anime, it is meaningful to see how the anime interprets the existing manga through subtle changes of layout, angle, timing, sound, movement, and color that may highlight new layers of meaning despite the familiar and overpowering presence of intense action scenes. The narrative is primarily written for younger viewers with an emphasis on loyalty among friends, and the infatuations of Sakura toward Sasuke, and Naruto toward Sakura. However there are also emotional depictions that are complex and adult, such as those between Zabusa and Haku in anime episodes 17 to 19 discussed subsequently. ADAPTATION OF “NARUTO”: THE RELATION OF THE TV ANIME SERIES TO THE MANGA The topic of anime adaptations of both literary and manga sources has yet to be examined in film studies. Although there are numerous publications that consider the relation of film adaptations to literary texts, many discussions still revolve around the polarity of fidelity to versus independence from the original text.12 This opposition can obscure the complexities of production and differences in medium, which ensure that no film can either be truly faithful to or fully independent of its literary source. Nonetheless, research concerning film adaptations of literary sources is complex and rich compared to the paucity of careful considerations of anime adaptations of literary and, more specifically, manga sources.13 Discussions of film adaptations often involve discussion of authorial intention in respect to the original text, the screenplay, and that of the completed film. As pointed out by Jack Boozer:

Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series

225

There is a reason why so many case studies look to issues of authorship for understanding. The closer one gets to a work, the more the particulars of story treatment, visual style, performance, tone, pacing, scoring, editing, and themes become recognizable as a series of decisions attributable to individuals. And this applies equally to adaptation studies. [. . .] As we step back from the aesthetic particulars of a work, it is possible to see larger circumstances and trends affecting whole groups of films. Both macro- and micro perspectives for critical interpretation are useful, and there is no need to disparage one for the other. Hence, Foucault’s ideas on author functions can be seen as his analytical distance from the daily reality and personal efforts of those caught up in the pressurized circus of adaptive screenwriting and film production, where certain decisions may breach as well as follow larger cultural norms. (Boozer 2008, 22–23) With appropriate modifications, these same arguments apply to the study of anime adaptations of manga. One of the largest differences between film adaptations of literary texts and anime adaptations of manga pertains to visual imagery: cinema creates specific images in relation to less specific verbal textual descriptions while anime creates (traditionally, drawn) images from other drawn images. Although the relation of a static image in manga to a moving image in anime is potentially much closer than that of a filmic image to a description in a novel, there remains a wide range of authorial interpretative possibilities. The well-known case of Oshii Mamoru’s adaptation of Shirow Masamune’s Ghost in the Shell manga reveals how much transformation of image, tone, and ultimate meaning can be achieved through directorial involvement.14 Oshii’s 2008 three-dimensional (3-D) computer-generated imagery (CGI) film Ghost in the Shell 2.0, a remake of his 1995 Ghost in the Shell animated movie, further illustrates his authorial role in the changes found not only in the imagery, but in the text and tone of the remake that distinguish it from its illustrious predecessor.15 Oshii’s career as an anime director is characterized by the consistency of some of his interests, themes, and motifs. At the same time his collaboration with many different animators16 gives his works a much greater stylistic variety compared to relatively consistent directors such as Miyazaki Hayao who maintain a much closer involvement in character design and actual drawing.17 When turning to adaptations of long-running manga into TV anime, the already complicated production involving a large crew becomes even more complex due to the greatly increased number of key staff members, such as the frequently alternated directors of animation mentioned in the previous section. The significance of these animation directors can be observed through an examination of several examples from the Naruto anime series.

226 Gan Sheuo Hui ANALYSIS 1: THE POTENTIAL OF THE ANIMATION DIRECTOR TO INITIATE VISUAL MODIFICATIONS To understand the relationship between the manga and anime versions of “Naruto”, it is first important to grasp certain aspects of the creation of the manga. A key factor that influenced the visual design of the manga is the speed of production necessary to meet the requirements of a weekly magazine. The first eight installments of the manga “Naruto” were planned before the very first issue appeared. Kishimoto has stated that this allowed him enough lead-time (Suzuki 2002, 197). Kishimoto’s approach in these first episodes involved creating numerous panels that illustrated overviews of Konohagakure village with its buildings and surrounding mountains. In the first installment, panels with extensive backgrounds appear frequently, up to two or three times on some pages.18 By the eighth to the tenth installments, the number of detailed backgrounds becomes gradually reduced and simplified. With installment 11 (Disembark), the characters arrive on Kirijima in the “Isle of Mists in the Land of Waves”, beginning that long story arc that continues to installment 33 (The Bridge of Heroes). To represent the “mists” of the island, the background details were either eliminated or reduced to sketchy, abstracted forms that could be drawn with great rapidity. The time-consuming effort to produce detailed backgrounds was replaced by a greater emphasis on the characters, emphatic placement within the panel of dialogue and sound effects, and multi-angled views of the faces and bodies, especially in the long action scenes. The main reason behind these design changes may have been the need to maintain the hard schedule of the weekly output that required resolution of the previous installments combined with the production of new cliffhangers for maintaining reader interest over a long period of time. Therefore, it may have been necessary to ease the workload by employing recurrent action scenes and by reducing the detailed background components of drawings that are not primary to developing the narrative. Such a choice also helps emphasize the character-centered and action-oriented narrative that is the key attraction of “Naruto”. The adaptation of the story line for the “Isle of Mists” in the manga presented a visual challenge to the anime production. Although merely graying, the previous bold colors with a transparent overlay would have been one way of suggesting the misty atmosphere of the island, instead an overall design change was introduced with episode 11 of the anime series, “Assassin of the Mists” (Kiri no ansatsusha). Color palettes that emphasize blues and greens and muted tones were also popular in other anime at the time, including the earlier 1995 Ghost in the Shell and Neo Ranga (also produced by Studio Pierrot). While the director overseeing the entire anime series is Date Hayato, the chief animation director that set the visible changes from episode seven onward was Aisaka Naoki.19 He

Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series

227

may have been the one to determine the grayed colors and different character design. In Japan, the duties of the chief animation director include being responsible for checking the layouts and standardizing the drawings by different in-betweeners (gengaman). Although the chief animation director changed for almost every episode of the Naruto series, as is common for long-running TV anime, there is an irregular repetitive pattern to their reappearances. Inserting a certain animation director as a means of introducing a new visual style as was done here with Naruto has a long history in TV anime. In fact, the distant progenitor of Naruto’s production company Studio Pierrot was Tezuka Osamu’s anime company Mushi Pro. Mushi Pro frequently introduced new creators to make distinctly different visual designs for certain scenes in its feature-length anime films One Thousand and One Nights (1969) and Belladonna (1973). In these works, creators such as Sugii Gisaburō and Hayashi Seiichi were brought in to design dramatically distinctive sequences that became some of the highlights of the finished works. If one compares the manga panels of the first installment with the beginning of the anime, several things become clear about the adaptation process. The anime starts with a highly condensed background story about the ninetailed fox that leads into the title. After that opening section, the anime version makes repeated visual references to selected panels from the manga. It looks as though certain panels of the manga have been chosen as key images for the anime and used as a visual narrative frame on which in-between images are arranged to provide smooth transmissions from one point in the story to the next. Yet the anime goes beyond simply filling in the gaps between the selected panels, as narrative and visual aspects not found in the manga are included for greater complexity, visual interest, and more dynamism in the action sequences.20 In many adaptations of literature to cinema, depending on the text employed, aspects described in the text are eliminated or simplified, but here the imagery and story line tend to be amplified beyond the manga. To examine the potential of the animation director, let us have a look at a few episodes that Kishimoto has highlighted as his favorites (Suzuki 2003, 196). The animation directors for episodes 17 and 19 were Suzuki Hirofumi (Serial Experiments Lain, 1998; Soul Eater, 2008) and Hyōdo Masaru (Tokyo Underground, 2002; Honey and Clover, 2005). On the other hand, Wakabayashi Atsushi (Stand Alone Complex, 2002; Hell Girl, 2005) was in charge of episode 30. These names are not unfamiliar to anime fans as they are all veterans of the anime industry. In fact, Kishimoto has mentioned that he was attracted to the works of Nishio Tetsuya (Innocence, 2004; Sky Crawlers, 2008) and Suzuki Hirofumi (ibid., 197). Therefore, it does not come as a surprise that Kishimoto requested Nishio to be responsible for the overall character design of the Naruto anime series in the early stages of discussing the adaptation.

228 Gan Sheuo Hui Episode 17 starts with Naruto thinking that Sasuke has been killed by Haku during their fight.21 His tremendous anger triggers the hidden energy of the nine-tailed-fox sealed inside him. Their fight sequence is shown in parallel with the fight between Naruto’s teacher Kakashi and Zabusa, a ninja villain who fights for a local group of gangsters. The flow of the anime basically keeps to the manga, yet a close comparison between the manga and anime images that picture Naruto’s escalating emotion reveals some of the key features of the transformation process. Figure 13.1 from the anime preserves the basic composition and atmosphere of one panel in the manga. However, the initial wide-angle lens effect employed in the manga is weakened, and the background is replaced with the visualization of Naruto’s burning energy. The overall sketchy and uneven lines from the manga are greatly reduced, except for those on Naruto’s face. The expected removal in anime of exclamation marks in speech bubbles as well as the replacement of dialogue and onomatopoeia for audio elements necessitate rethinking the compositions. The impact of this single frame is relatively weak when compared to the manga, especially as the drawing occupied a double spread (Figure 13.2).

Figure 13.1 The appearance of the hidden energy of the nine-tailed fox sealed inside Naruto. Film shot from the anime Naruto, episode 17, directed by Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru. TV Tokyo, 2002.

Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series

229

Figure 13.2 A double-page spread of the same scene from the manga “Naruto” by Kishimoto Masashi, 2000. Vol. 3, 204–205.

However, when combined with the subsequent close-ups of Naruto’s face where the sketchy whisker-like lines waver in the tiny shadows of the cheeks, the anime imagery induces a strong impression of Naruto on the verge of attacking Haku in revenge for the “death” of Sasuke (Figures 13.3.a and 13.3.b). In the manga, in order to suggest speed and intensify the atmosphere of the fight sequence, part of the outline of the Naruto character is depicted using rough lines similar to the surrounding motion lines (examples can be found in vol. 4, 10, 14–17, 29, 31, or the compilation in a larger paperback format vol. 1, 622–623). This kind of line work is quite common in shōnen manga and often employed by Kishimoto, but it is interestingly expanded in the anime adaptation. Instead of the medium- to small-size panels in the manga, Naruto is depicted in monochrome with dramatic manga-like closeup drawings (Figures 13.4.a and b). Further, the monochrome treatment creates a strong contrast to the rest of the anime that is in full color. Significantly, such an approach grew from the respective hint found in manga. Increasing the graphic impact of the anime while reinforcing a manga-like appearance is achieved by adopting the monochromatic black imagery as well as employing the basic look and

230 Gan Sheuo Hui

Figure 13.3.a–b Film shots subsequent to Figure 13.1 showing Naruto on the verge of attacking Haku. From the anime Naruto, episode 17, directed by Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru. TV Tokyo, 2002.

Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series

231

Figure 13.4.a A double-page spread showing an action scene of Naruto and Haku. From the manga “Naruto” by Kishimoto Masashi, 2000. Vol. 4, 14–15.

postures adopted from Kishimoto’s version. Another example can be found in episode 19 where Zabusa intends to kill his opponent (Figures 13.5.a and 13.5.b). The visualization of the demon in red with Zabusa in silhouette accompanied by a whitish outline against the black background appears to be inspired by the earlier example. The impression of the demon is intensified with a less rounded outline and finer straight lines compared to the manga drawing. These few examples typify the more subtle changes that occurred in transforming manga imagery. The changes involved alteration of the aesthetic nuances of the manga but fall short of more authorial shifts in meaning or expression. In the next section, we will see that much larger and more significant changes also appear in the anime. ANALYSIS 2: LARGER CHANGES IN THE DESIGN OF THE “NARUTO” MANGA AND ANIME A brief consideration of Kishimoto’s approach to creating his manga reveals an eclectic range of sources that can also be found in the anime adaptations of his work. In developing the imagery for his manga, Kishimoto has

232 Gan Sheuo Hui

Figure 13.4.b The manga-like monochrome insert into the color anime adaptation. Film shot from the anime Naruto, episode 17, directed by Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru. TV Tokyo, 2002.

continually received inspiration from other works in various media. Examples include not only the cliff sculptures of the heads of the four hokage masters, which are reminiscent of Mt. Rushmore in the Black Hills of South Dakota, but also the design of the markings on Konohamaru’s face (vol. 1, 62) and Haku’s mask, both of which resemble the curvilinear designs on the bodies of the main characters in Neo Ranga.22 Even the distinctive uzumaki spiral on the headbands of the Konoha ninja resembles the pattern used in the opening sequence of the Neo Ranga series. A further example from manga installment 17 (vol. 2, 132–133) that relates Zabusa’s survival of the slaughter when all his classmates had been forced to fight one another resembles the plot concept for Battle Royal (novel 1999, film 2000). Kishimoto has admitted repeatedly the influence by films: “I watch a lot of movies, and I tend to be influenced by scenes that intrigue me, that make me want to use the same effects or technique”, Kishimoto explains in an interview. “I once adopted [actor-director] Takeshi Kitano’s technique of shooting objects from a great distance to stifle the emotion in the scene. I like the way Quentin Tarantino creates a scene using a series of close-ups or showing very cool images of a person or people walking on some ordinary street in slow motion. I wish I could

Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series

233

Figure 13.5.a Zabusa at his last resort fighting his opponent. From the manga “Naruto” by Kishimoto Masashi, 2000. Vol. 4, 97.

achieve that kind of slow-motion effect in manga, but it’s rather difficult to draw; the only things we can play with are tones of black and white. I also like Michael Bay’s technique of shooting a scene against the background light. I’d like to try this in manga, but again it would be rather difficult”.(Solomon 2008, n.p.) Kishimoto also mentions his fondness for Gaara’s upright-collar costume that looks “cool” and resembles those found in one of his favorite films, The Matrix (2004, 127). Kishimoto often spends considerable effort to mimic effects of a wide-angle lens and a fisheye lens in the compositions and layouts for his covers as well as in the manga. He discusses directly his efforts to

234 Gan Sheuo Hui

Figure 13.5.b The image of the demon is intensified by a more angular outline. Film shot from the anime Naruto, episode 17, directed by Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru. TV Tokyo, 2002.

create images that resemble these lens effects in his illustrated book Uzumaki: The Art of Naruto (see examples on pp. 118, 122, 135). This practice is in line with his admiration of both the manga and the anime versions of Akira ( tomo Katsuhiro; manga, 1982–1990; anime, 1988) that are noted for their mimicry of photographic qualities. Interestingly too, many manga artists often refer to the cinematic angle, when describing the composition of their layout, as if it is a necessity rather than an option.23 However, the following look at episodes 17 and 19 overseen by Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru suggests that it is possible to add another layer of meaning in tune with the overall mood which acts as a personal flavor different from the manga. The following shots from anime episode 17 (Figures 13.6.a–h) appear in an action sequence with Naruto punching Haku’s face and breaking Haku’s mask. First, we see a leafy green wood with a group of birds taking flight the moment before Naruto punches Haku. This depiction of nature may refer to the moment in the woods when they first met and Haku affirmed the importance of taking care of one’s most important friend; it may be viewed as Naruto’s memory or perhaps simultaneous memories of both Naruto and Haku. This is reminiscent of frequently inserting views of nature in earlier Japanese cinema as

Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series

235

Figures 13.6.a–h An action sequence with Naruto punching Haku’s face. Film shots from the anime Naruto, episode 17, directed by Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru. TV Tokyo, 2002.

236 Gan Sheuo Hui a kind of visual poetry to express emotion. While Kishimoto was constrained by his tight publication schedule and the limited number of pages for each weekly issue of the manga, the additional frames found in the more expansive anime episode provide another sense of emotional and physical space that enriches through contrast the momentum and tension of the action sequence. Overall, it is easy to see why Kishimoto says he is especially fond of episode 17 (Kishimoto 2003, 196). The revelation of Haku’s early life, of how his father had killed his mother upon learning of her fearful hereditary power that had been passed on to her son, and that Haku had to kill his own father in self-defense to prevent being murdered for the same reason as his mother, followed by his solitary childhood after having been rejected by everyone until he was rescued by Zabusa, these are some of the emotional highlights of the entire manga. Such insights into his past are critical for empathizing with Haku, but they were presented on only four pages of facial close-ups in volume 4 of the manga (Kishimoto 2000d, 34–37), while they became a ten-minute narration within episode 17 of the anime. Kishimoto did an effective job given the few panels available in his weekly installment, yet the anime version in episode 17 expands both the verbal narration and visual treatment of this story of betrayal, spousal murder and patricide, discrimination against a child, and total devotion toward a savior figure. The anime provides powerful imagery not found in the manga. There are, for example, the abstract vision in red, blue, and black of the double helix of chromosomes that transmitted power from mother to son and the poetic visualizations of the snowy village of Haku’s childhood that reveal simultaneously his poverty and the beauty of the frozen landscape covered with falling snow. Only in the anime is Haku shown accidentally becoming aware of his inherited powers by discovering that he can float a ball of snow in the air. This magical scene is interrupted by his mother slapping his face, as she is appalled to discover that he has inherited her powers. The father who had witnessed the whole scene, immediately killed his wife in anger and moves to kill Haku. The scene jumps to Haku recovering his consciousness to discover that his inner power had reflexively killed his father. He is then shown befriending a wild white rabbit that suggests Haku’s gentle and loving side in sharp contrast to the assassin role that he comes to perform for Zabusa. Neither the discovery of power scene nor the rabbit motif appears in the manga. They well demonstrate how the anime version has greatly expanded the manga portrayal of this episode wherein the deaths of his mother and father are verbalized briefly (ibid., 36) without any visualization of the events. Both the manga and the anime have Haku saying, “Please kill me” (ibid., 40), yet the anime has a fuller explanation of why he has lost his reason for living. Haku is shown to be totally devoted to Zabusa as this man is the only one to recognize his existence after the death of his parents. Moreover, he feels that his role as an assassin makes him essential to Zabusa’s plan for revenge. In both the manga and anime versions Haku gives up his life in an almost ecstatic manner as he throws his body in front of Zabusa to protect him from Kakashi’s assault.

Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series

237

The way, the kind and loving Haku has become a killer for Zabusa, seems to be a didactic metaphor for how isolated and abandoned children can be manipulated to perform criminal actions out of devotion to a protecting superior that resonates with the method employed by yakuza or organized crime to recruit youthful members, although whether this meaning is Kishimoto’s intention or lies within the viewer’s apprehension of significance is less certain. The emotional complexity of this situation makes for powerfully moving scenes that manage to avoid the maudlin possibilities of the story. The animation directors Suzuki Hirofumi and Hyōdo Masaru appear to be the ones in charge of the elaborations of the imagery and narrative in episode 17. Although some of the changes were comparatively subtle reinterpretations of the manga imagery as seen in Analysis 1, the extensive addition of entirely new imagery and dialogue represents a qualitative transformation of the manga, resulting in a plausible assertion of authorial status for these directors of the anime episode. CONCLUSION A full consideration of authorial positions in the Naruto anime series would become a book-length project.24 This chapter has selected only a few aspects from near the beginning of the narrative with the aim of considering the issue of authorship drawn from the critical tradition of film studies and applied to the production and aesthetics of a major TV anime. The question of authorship is connected to the ideas of intention and expression. Often the idea of expression seems to be fused with intention, although in artistic expression some things can be performed without a clear intention. As Sellors’s words cited at the beginning suggest, intention can be seen as different from significance. This critical distinction may well relate to the study of anime. In other words, if anime (whether a particular film or a TV series) is denied an individual significance, it does not make sense to ascertain possible intention. Anime may then be located in broad structural systems and classified by genre, or psychological and sociological significance, as well as considered in terms of media and mass entertainment, and so on. Yet the validity of these considerations of significance does not necessarily remove the possibility of authorship as these concerns may merely reside at different levels of examination as pointed out by Boozer previously. In the case of long-running TV anime like Naruto, there are many possible sites of authorship. On the one hand, there is Kishimoto’s manga for which he writes the narrative and does the character and background drawings. Kishimoto has mentioned in interviews that discussions with his Shōnen Jump editors have occasionally been critical in terms of characterization or narrative direction, although this may be similar to book publishers or editors who guide their writers over a period of years (Kadokura 2010, 97–106). Nonetheless, Kishimoto seems to be in a position to wield authorial intent

238 Gan Sheuo Hui with respect to the manga. The role of Date Hayato as the overall director of the Naruto anime series is somewhat less clear. It seems that he plays the role of overall manager of the series; only in the very first episode was he directly involved in directing the drawing of the animation itself. As we have noted the overall quality, design, and treatment of the adaptation varies from episode to episode, as do many members of the staff. Thus, it would seem that much of the expressive intention resides with the animation director who supervises the details of the layout of the episode. Through careful observation and comparison with the manga and between the different episodes of the anime, it is clear that there are a multitude of “voices” at work. To fully grasp who is responsible for what expressive points would require a clear grasp of the actual working process at Studio Pierrot as well as written accounts or interviews with the staff. It is at this microlevel that the circumstances generated by the various qualities of the episodes could best be understood. That authorship is complex and may involve multiple agents does not mean that it disappears. Indeed, no matter how complex the authorial stance of TV anime may be, there is a parallel situation for the works of the major theatrical anime directors such as Miyazaki, Takahata, Oshii, Kon, and so forth. Their works are also assembled through a complex process of meetings and discussions, and critical aspects of visual expression are sometimes handled at the level of animation director. In their case, the auteur status often granted these directors seems to willfully obscure the contributions by others, in part because detailed information of the actual production circumstances is difficult to obtain. A further important question is that even if one grants authorial status to certain positions within the production process, there remains the question of what is being expressed and with what intention. It is at this point that the comparatively adult level of complex meaning found in the works of the major theatrical directors makes them more obvious candidates for an ascription of auteur status. As the production of any anime requires the involvement of many people and considerable financial investment, there is a presumption of a certain level of entertainment value for there to be hope of financial viability. In the case of such long-running manga and anime series as “Naruto”, it is often thought that the so-called entertainment value is primary or even the sole value of the production. Even if this is true, there are still many different methods and meanings to entertainment itself. “Naruto” is often considered to be a juvenile action-based series with the ever recurring confrontations leading to combat being the predominate motif. Beyond the idea of competitive fighting scenes involving fantastic “secret” techniques and development of innate abilities, Kishimoto built into the narrative a series of traditional ethical values concerning honesty, perseverance, the importance of friendship, the devotion to a cause that may require sacrifice, and so on. This same value system seems to have been adopted in the anime series. In both cases, the intention to entertain is mixed with a didactic intent to communicate various conservative values intended to lead to the positive socialization of their young protagonists. In addition, the majority of the key characters in the “Naruto” narrative perceive themselves as

Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series

239

outsiders with parents who are either missing or problematic. The main motivation of Naruto and many others is to achieve a sense of identity as well as recognition and acceptance within the larger social order. This situation resonates with the alienation found in popular anime such as Akira, Neon Genesis Evangelion and many others; although in Naruto it is overcome by reincorporation to the standard values of the surrounding society. The anime series seems to have adopted faithfully these aspects of the manga. In considering the old French critique of the “Tradition of Quality” it would seem that the anime, depending on the specific episode, goes beyond a simple, literal treatment in anime form of the narrative and visual aspects of the manga. Nonetheless, the employment of panels from the manga as key images in the anime makes some episodes closer to a literalistic rendition of the manga content. Those visual differences between the anime and the manga, that are not only stylistic but include the insertion of new motifs and scenes, suggest an authorial intention most evidently, and episode 17 of the anime discussed previously is a good example in that regard. As these differences in the treatment of episodes occur under the nominal direction of Date, it would seem that the actual “voice” may largely reside with the animation director of the episode.25 The seemingly improbable search for authorial voices within a long-running anime series has resulted in evidence that suggests such voices do indeed exist, even in this highly layered production system that aims at generating largescale profits through a multiple media promotion of a visual narrative adapted from a noted manga series. Investigations of authorship, and its companion status of auteur, can illuminate, among other things, more about the miseen-scène of TV anime. They also call for revisiting assumptions of authorship for the major directors of theatrical anime, especially in terms of their production process. Furthermore, it would seem that anime studies can benefit from employing, with appropriate changes, aspects of film criticism more directly.

NOTES 1. There is a complex distinction between the terms anime and animation in Japanese discourse. In this paper, anime is treated as an abbreviation of Japanese animation, referring to both TV series and feature-length animated movies. 2. “Full animation” often changes images every other frame, while varied forms of “selective (or limited) animation” may change images every five or six frames or even less frequently. 3. LaMarre is referring to Oshii Mamoru (2004) that contains a chapter (349– 355) in which he discusses his live-action film Avalon. Here Oshii states that he realized soon after completing Ghost in the Shell that due to the developments in digital technology, live-action film and animation had essentially become the same (349). The Australian critic Alan Cholodenko has also long advocated a similar stance when he points to “our still apparently radical notion, articulated in so many publications, that not only is animation a form of film, all film, including cinema by definition, is a form of animation” (2007, 2).

240 Gan Sheuo Hui 4. Ironically enough, Cholodenko states this in the context of a critique of authorship, yet his call for considering the history of film studies applies to the whole edifice of diverse schools of thought and practice in film studies including authorship. 5. For the early status of auteurism, see Grant (2008). 6. Often discussions of the meaning and significance of anime are focused on the plot, yet it is important to include the aesthetic and visual qualities of the work. LaMarre (2010), although focusing not on anime but manga, extends these concerns to a consideration of the line itself. 7. Formally established in 1979, Studio Pierrot’s precursors stretch back to Tezuka Osamu’s Mushi Productions (Mushi Pro). Oshii Mamoru and other prominent directors have worked with them. The studio produced such popular series as Urusei yatsura (1981–1986) and Bleach (2004–2012). 8. As of June 2012. 9. Long-running anime series often have a chief director who oversees some aspects of the general direction of the series, but placed under the chief director are a number of directors of animation working in rotation called sakuga kantoku who are in charge of directing the actual episodes and make many of the key decisions concerning the imagery and movement of the scenes. 10. Not to mention its complex relationship with the production committee system that often dominates the business model, the overall direction, and the final rights of a work. 11. In The Art of Naruto: Uzumaki (2004, 120), Kishimoto commented on the symmetrical design of Naruto rolling over Sasuke’s back that was printed on the front cover of “Naruto” vol. 17: “Basically, it was symmetry that kept me focused on the overall balance in this one. Looking at this picture now, it appears that my drawing style has changed a bit since then. Maybe I’ve been influenced by the anime?” See also the short interview with Kishimoto where he agreed that the anime version of Naruto had a positive influence on him (Kishimoto 2006, 196). 12. For an overview of some studies of book-to-film adaptations, see Corrigan (2000), Stam (2005), and Stam and Raengo (2005). 13. There have been occasional studies of live-action film adaptations of comics, some collected in Gordon, Joncovich, and McAllister (2007). 14. Oshii removed most of the humor, “fan service” imagery, and sexual situations found in Shirow Masamune’s manga; he also adopted a new character style and a darker color palette and expanded the philosophic exploration of cyborg identity. 15. Oshii’s digital remake of his earlier anime totally changed the famous opening sequence, reduced the amount of “nudity” (actually the surface exposure of Kusanagi’s prosthetic body), and enhanced the three-dimensional quality of all the imagery. Although employing impressive technique, the overall tone of the work shifted noticeably to an emphasis on the roundness of forms reducing some of the graphic impact of the original version. 16. Oshii’s anime are notable for their different visual styles that depended on his collaboration with other artists, for example, Angel’s Egg (1985), whose imagery is indebted to Amano Yoshitaka; Ghost in the Shell (1995), whose character design and animation direction was done by Okiura Hiroyuki; the greatly different imagery of Innocence (2004), developed by animation director Kise Kazuchika and others; and Sky Crawlers (2008), whose distinctive visual approach was implemented by the animation director and character designer Nishio Tetsuya (who, incidentally, also worked on most of the theatrical versions of “Naruto”).

Auteur and Anime as Seen in the Naruto TV Series

241

17. Miyazaki is noted for his heavy involvement with the visual aspects of his anime, often retouching or even redrawing completed imagery done by his staff. This great concern helped give his anime a consistency of design in his character style, facial expressions, and so on that is easily recognizable over the course of his career. 18. The high level of detail found in these backgrounds may have been inspired by his admiration for tomo Katsuhiro’s Akira (Kishimoto 2006, 196). 19. Aisaka later did the overall character design for the 2007–2009 anime series version of Hero Tales. He was also the animation director for the first episode of Naruto, which established the design pattern, and for the concluding episode of the series. 20. Although examples of these changes can be found throughout the series, there are dramatic instances appearing in episode 17 as discussed below. 21. This anime episode covers “Naruto” the manga no. 27, titled Awakenings; no. 28, Nine Tails . . . !!; no. 29, Someone Precious to You; and no. 30, Your Future Is . . . !! 22. Neo Ranga is a forty-eight-episode TV anime set in a tropical island based loosely on Bali. The original twenty-four-episode series was broadcast from April to September 1998. It was produced by Studio Pierrot, the same as Naruto. Tanaka Hiroto did the Neo Ranga character design in addition to being the chief animation director; later, he made original drawings for the Naruto Shippūden anime series. 23. Volume 5 of Tsukamoto Hiroshi’s popular Manga baiburu (Manga bible) (2007), titled “The Cinematic Method of Panel Arrangement” (komawari eiga gihō), analyzes the great many ways in which cinematic approaches have been adapted by manga, including different lens effects (104–105, passim). 24. Significant changes in aesthetics and characterization occur periodically during the course of this long series—the largest transformations appearing between the first part and the later Shippūden series. 25. To fully establish this possibility falls outside the range of this chapter.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources Adamson, J. 1974. “Suspended Animation”. In Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, edited by G. Mast and M. Cohen. 395. London and New York: OUP. Kishimoto, Masashi. 2000a. Naruto. Vol. 1. Tokyo: Sh eisha. ———. 2000b. Naruto. Vol. 2. Tokyo: Sh eisha. ———. 2000c. Naruto. Vol. 3. Tokyo: Sh eisha. ———. 2000d. Naruto. Vol. 4. Tokyo: Sh eisha. ———. 2004. The Art of Naruto: Uzumaki. San Francisco, CA: Viz Media. Suzuki, Haruhiko, ed. 2002. Naruto- hiden hei no sho- [Naruto -book of secretsbook of war]. Tokyo: Sh eisha. Suzuki, Haruhiko, ed. 2003. Naruto- hiden dōga emaki- [Naruto -book of secretsofficial animation book]. Tokyo: Sh eisha.

Secondary Sources Boozer, Jack. 2008. “Introduction: The Screenplay and Authorship in Adaptation”. In Authorship in Film Adaptation, edited by Jack Boozer. 1–30. Austin: University of Texas Press.

242 Gan Sheuo Hui Cholodenko, Alan. 2007. “(The) Death (of) the Animator, or: The Felicity of Felix Part II: A Difficulty in the Path of Animation Studies”. Animation Studies 2: 9–16. http://journal.animationstudies.org/category/volume-2/ (accessed May 20, 2012). Corrigan, Timothy. 2000. Film and Literature: An Introduction and Reader. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Gordon, Ian, Mark Joncovich, and Matthew McAllister, eds. 2007. Film and Comic Books. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press. Grant, Keith, ed. 2008. Auteurs and Authorship: A Film Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Kadokura, Shima. 2010. Manga nō no kitaekata: Shūkan shōnen jamppu 40 shūnen kinen shuppan [Method to train the manga mind: Celebrating the 40th anniversary of Weekly Shōnen Jump]. Tokyo: Sh eisha. LaMarre, Thomas. 2009. The Anime Machine: A Media Theory of Animation. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. ———. 2010. “Manga Bomb: Between the Lines of Barefoot Gen”. In Comics Words and the World of Comics, edited by Jaqueline Berndt. 262–307. International Manga Research Center, Kyoto Seika University. http://imrc.jp/lecture/2009/12/ comics-in-the-world.html (accessed May 20, 2012). Naremore, James. 2000. “Introduction: Film and the Reign of Adaptation”. In Film Adaptation, edited by James Naremore. 1–16. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Oshii, Mamoru. 2004. Subete no eiga wa anime ni naru [All film will become anime]. Tokyo: Tokuma Shoten. Sellors, Paul. 2010. Film Authorship. London: Wallflower Press. Solomon, Charles. 2008, December 17. “The Man Behind ‘Naruto’ ”. Los Angeles Times. Stam, Robert. 2005. Literature through Film: Realism, Magic, and the Art of Adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Stam, Robert, and Alessandra Raengo, eds. 2005. Literature and Film: A Guide to the Theory and Practice of Film Adaptation. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing. Tsukamoto Hiroyoshi. 2007. Manga baiburu [Manga bible]. 5 vols. Tokyo: Maar. Wells, Paul. 2002. Animation and America. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Anime Works “Haki mayu puratonikku! Boku wa shinu made anata o mamoru!!” [Bushy brow’s pledge: Undying love and protection]. 2003, April 30. Naruto, episode 31. Aired in Japan. “Haku no kako himeta omoi” [Haku’s past: Hidden ambition]. 2003, January 30. Naruto, episode 17. Aired in Japan. “Zabusa yuki ni chiru” [The demon in the snow]. 2003, February 13. Naruto, episode 19. Aired in Japan.

14 Playing “Naruto” Between Metanarrative Characters, Unit Operations, and Objects1 Martin Roth

INTRODUCTION Over the past decade, “Naruto” has evolved from a manga series into a globally successful cross-media franchise, including an ongoing animated TV series, films, a large number of video games, as well as a vast number of amateur works. “Naruto” can be thought of as a particularly striking example of convergence culture, theorized by Henri Jenkins as “the flow of content across multiple media platforms, the cooperation between multiple media industries, and the migratory behavior of media audiences who will go almost anywhere in search of the kinds of entertainment experiences they want” (Jenkins 2006, 2). Given the number of official products released, this compels one to ask how these different products are related, and in what ways they resemble, complement or contradict each other. Focusing on “Naruto” video games as adaptations of this franchise, with particular attention to their distinct structure and expressive potentials, this chapter hopes to contribute to answering these questions. While, as Linda Hutcheon remarks, “[v]ideogames derived from popular films and vice versa are clearly ways to capitalize on a ‘franchise’ and extend its market” (Hutcheon 2006, 30), it seems justified to go beyond this and to understand their lasting success as grounded in some kind of distinct experience. In order to analyze “Naruto” video games with regard to such distinct features, four selected titles will be introduced in more detail subsequently. The inquiry will refer to the anime series (Naruto Shippūden) for comparison where appropriate.2 With Naruto’s never-ending search for his best friend Sasuke ever in the background, “Naruto” provides an extensive “grand narrative” around these two characters that serves as a framework for the games. However, at the same time, the games detach the characters from their respective narratives in various ways and often provide separate game modes where the player(s) can, for example, enjoy fights without any (narrative) context. In order to deal with this multiplicity of narrative possibilities beyond a simple application of the broad concept of convergence culture, the analysis here will draw on game studies and adaptation studies, as well as discourses on media culture and Japanese popular culture. In particular,

244 Martin Roth a variety of influential perspectives on manga and anime by Japanese critics and theorists will be examined. Their various positions toward what is often referred to as the postmodern, contemporary discourses on media and popular culture challenge the status of the “narrative” or “context” by offering at times alternative central elements. This problem has been discussed in game studies for some time, with two tendencies: “ludology”, an approach to video games that focuses on the rules of play, and “narratology”, which directs attention mostly toward the narrative qualities of video games (see, e.g., Bogost 2006, 67–71). In this context of contemporary (postmodern) arguments on the changing structure and significance of the narrative, or on its overall decline, this chapter will refrain from taking on any particular position. Rather, it will attempt to show that the “Naruto” video games examined serve as striking examples of how software-based video-game adaptations go beyond textual media in that they can facilitate a wide range of ways to play with and without narrative elements by combining franchise elements in ways unique to the medium. Due to their technological structure, these games offer the player a variety of play modes to choose from, facilitating distinct experiences of the “Naruto” world. In doing so, the games go beyond the expressive and structural possibilities of manga and anime in some ways, and can be considered as “cultural crossroads” in their own right. By focusing the following analysis on games and their technological characteristics as part of a large cross-media franchise, this chapter hopes to contribute to the multiplicity of perspectives on contemporary convergence culture and adaptation studies in general, aiming in particular at a further opening of the academic discourse on Japanese popular culture beyond manga and anime so as to include video games. BACKGROUND: “NARUTO” VIDEO GAMES The range of games released in the “Naruto” franchise can be seen at a glance on the websites of the Computer Entertainment Rating Organization (CERO, Japan) and the Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB, the United States and Canada), both responsible for the assigning of age ratings for most video games released on the markets they cover. As of October 2011, as many as thirty-nine “Naruto” console games have been submitted for evaluation in Japan, and thirty-two in the United States and Canada.3 Given the limited space, this analysis focuses on four titles, namely, Naruto Narutime¯to h rō (Japan: 2003, Sony Playstation 2; United States: Naruto: Ultimate Ninja, 2006, hereafter UN1), Naruto Narutime¯to h rō 2 (Japan: 2004, Sony Playstation 2; United States: Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 2, 2007, hereafter UN2), Naruto NarutoRPG3 Reijū VS Konohashōtai (Japan: 2006, Nintendo DS; United States: Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2, 2008, hereafter PN2), and Naruto—The Broken Bond (Ubisoft 2008, Microsoft XBox 360,

Playing “Naruto”

245

not released in Japan, hereafter BB).4 This selection of various adaptations allows the examination of “Naruto” games across different genres. UN1 and UN2 are the first two in a series of fighting games. Both titles are based on the same engine (software system) and offer similar gameplay, basically a series of fights set against a rough narrative sequence. The battles in UN1 are centered around the initial episodes of the anime leading up to the chūnin exam (marking graduation from ninja school). Structurally almost identical to UN1, UN2 picks up from there and leads to Tsunade’s decision to become the Fifth Hokage (leader of the ninja village). In both games, the player is able to choose from several similar playing modes. In the “training mode”, the player can work on his or her fighting skills with the help of an instructor. In the “versus mode”, he or she can fight computer controlled adversaries or challenge another player. Here, teamwork is introduced in a limited manner through “support characters”, which cannot be controlled but do drop additional items in the fighting arena from time to time. In UN1 there is a “mission mode” in which the player can carry out a variety of missions—an element adapted from the anime—ranging significantly in difficulty. In both games, there is a shop and a section where the player can examine Naruto’s room. It is possible to equip this room with items bought in the shop using money earned in the most important mode, the “story mode”, in which the player pursues a rough version of the anime storyline. In UN1, the narrative connections between fights in the story mode are only formed by short introductory episodes that contextualize each fight, often by showing a dialogue between the opponents in a “manga-like” paneled screen. However, the player is able to “play” through this series of fights not only as one of the main characters, Naruto, Sasuke or Sakura, but can also choose to become one of the less prominent characters Shikamaru or Lee. As the opponents differ according to the character choice, this allows the player to experience Naruto’s world from a different perspective and with a different protagonist, albeit in a rather limited way. In contrast, the story mode of UN2 does not offer multiple scenarios, but instead, by incorporating the mission mode entirely in the story mode, presents a variety of ways to play. The player, represented by Naruto, finds himself or herself in Naruto’s home village and can move around freely to pursue the game in three directions: (1) following the “narrative” of the anime, fighting various evil characters along the way; (2) pursuing self-contained missions, which mostly consist of sparring with other ninja from the village; or (3) walking around the village and talking to other characters, who might offer limited conversation and challenges (e.g., Lee proposes a competition of push-ups, and Gai a handstand race). In a similar fashion, BB consists of two main parts, a story mode and a fight mode. The story mode allows the player to experience a version of Naruto’s adventures from episode 81 to episode 135 of the anime, after Orochimaru’s attack on Konoha village. The player has to complete various tasks such as finding people or items, and is occasionally ambushed by opponents, whom she or he has to fight in a temporarily closed arena. Here,

246 Martin Roth Naruto is not the protagonist through the entire game; instead, the player is transferred between different narrative threads and has to take on different perspectives. Furthermore, teamwork is quite central to the game, with some tasks requiring frequent switching between multiple characters and a skillful combination of their unique capabilities. On the other hand, the fight mode allows the player to challenge another player or the computer in self-contained fights, offering a selection of more than twenty characters, including “evil” characters like Orochimaru or Zabuza. Expanding on the notion of teamwork, BB offers the player to choose “tag teams” for the fights. While in part a sequel to the “Naruto” role-playing games for the Nintendo DS, PN2 is a “completely original story”, narrated in the genre of role-playing games with turn-based battles, as in early games in the Dragon Quest or Final Fantasy series (“Naruto NarutoRPG3 Reij VS Konohashōtai” 2006). The player controls a team of young ninja all familiar from the anime, developing their skills during mostly random encounters with nameless enemy characters (like ninja or samurai, spiders, snakes, turtles and so on). In this environment defined by the constant threat of attack, the player has to follow Hokage Tsunade’s orders to find nine mirrors. These mirrors are needed to control the socalled Reijū, an evil and powerful monster that the enemy, an anarchist ninja group called Mu (literally meaning “nothingness”), is threatening to release in an attempt to destroy the world. Each “mission” ends with a “boss fight”, meaning that the group has to face an extraordinarily powerful opponent in order to obtain one of the mirrors. During the course of the action, the player collects items such as weapons and scrolls to be used in battle. In summary, all games draw from the franchise the three main elements of adaptation enumerated by Linda Hutcheon in A Theory of Adaptation, themes, discrete story units, and characters (Hutcheon 2006, 10–11). As a starting point for a more detailed analysis, it thus seems fruitful to approach games as “adaptations”, understood according to Hutcheon as “transpositions of a recognizable other work”, as “creative and interpretive act of appropriation”, and as “extended intertextual engagement with the adapted work” (Hutcheon 2006, 8). This means to examine which elements are taken over, which parts are altered or adjusted, and how the adaptation reacts to or positions itself in relation to the franchise. However, as Hutcheon’s framework is not detailed enough for the purposes of this paper, it is necessary to refer to other sources in order to thoroughly examine some of these adapted elements in the games described previously. WHAT’S THE STORY? NARRATIVES IN “NARUTO” GAMES As narrative seems to be a common element across the “Naruto” franchise, it appears likely that some sort of additional story, or stories, will be developed in the games. In 1989, tsuka Eiji, an editor and critic of Japanese subculture, observed that “narrative consumption” has gained more and

Playing “Naruto”

247

more influence in cultural production. He argued that, through providing the consumers with “small narratives”, the industry allows them to access a part of the system or “grand narrative” hidden in the background ( tsuka 2001, 14). Using various examples, tsuka shows how such narrative systems allow for the generation of an unlimited number of products, as long as they are compatible to the system or concept ( tsuka 2001, 8–10, 15–16). Going one step further, Henry Jenkins analyzes The Matrix from the perspective of convergence culture as an example of “transmedia story telling” or “the art of world building”, which “unfolds across multiple media platforms, with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole” (Jenkins 2006, 95–96, 114). Though in slightly different ways, both authors stress the existence of a larger world or grand narrative that can only be accessed by exploring multiple works, each of which only presents a part of it through a small narrative. However, in the case of “Naruto” games, the difference between the games and the anime in terms of small narratives or the “Naruto” world is not as clear as in Jenkins’ discussion of The Matrix, in which each piece facilitates an “additive comprehension” of the Matrix world, by providing an element that suggests an alternative reading of the other parts of the franchise (Jenkins 2006, 123–124). In terms of narrative, while the anime arguably creates an extensive world, one which continues to expand, the “Naruto” games come closer to being reflections or reproductions of this world and its main narrative threads. Adherence to the adapted narrative is particularly striking in UN2, in which winning the fight against Orochimaru as Third Hokage (here, no choice between characters is given) inevitably results in the death of the Hokage, while losing merely prevents the player from proceeding in the story. Even PN2, which claims to present an original story, in fact does little more than reassemble story parts from the anime around a newly invented “mirror plot”. While the group Mu does not appear in the anime, each of the mirrors collected contains a trap that “transfers” Naruto and his friends to a place where they encountered enemies in the anime “past”, and where they “once again” have to fight these adversaries, including characters like Zabuza and Haku, Gaara and Sasuke. This last example draws attention to the fragmentary, assembled character of the narrative in some of these games. Such qualities in postmodern cultural products have been associated with the fading dominance of singular narratives by, among others, Japanese critic Azuma Hiroki. He advances the idea that in the area of pop-cultural contents, the “modern” system of story production is replaced by “meta-narrative game systems”, which lay out the rules for “players”, according to which they themselves can produce multiple narratives (Azuma 2007, 111–115, 122).5 However, Azuma restricts this concept of a game-like metanarrativity to the structural similarities between story generating tabletop role-playing games and literature, and does not provide specific tools for the analysis of video games where they go beyond narrative (Azuma 2007, 123). Although the “Naruto” franchise may be understood

248 Martin Roth as a system for story production, the games analyzed here merely follow the preexisting story and do not offer alternatives on a narrative level—although, as all games, they provide the player with a limited choice to engage with the story as she or he likes. “Naruto” games seem neither to play an active role in the world building of the franchise, nor to provide an additional perspective of this world on the level of narrative, thus they cannot be considered metanarrative machines.6 However, the choice of perspectives, play modes and characters that these games provide seem to suggest other kinds of alternative experiences arising from the fragmentary way in which they adapt ”Naruto”. In the following sections, this chapter will further examine these adaptive mechanisms and potentials of the fragmentary. METANARRATIVE CHARACTERS? In his analysis on database consumption in “postmodern” Japanese popular culture, Azuma embraces tsuka’s dual-structured consumption process (Azuma 2001, 47–54). However, he argues that, in the era of cross-media distribution of content, in which the character often remains the only link between different products, cultural production centers around characters generated from a multitude of elements and attributes stored in a “database”, which replaces the “grand non-narrative” (Azuma 2001, 71, 79). In a later work on “game-like realism”, Azuma goes one step further, claiming that characters are “meta-narrative” devices, which are free from binding narrative context and can potentially exist in multiple narratives, between narratives and outside narratives (Azuma 2007, 56–59). While, by bringing fan and amateur works into the scope of analysis, Azuma’s theorization neglects the dimension of existing licensing practices in industrially produced, officially licensed franchises like “Naruto”, it nevertheless allows for the shifting of focus to the status of the characters in their respective games. All four games in question involve character metanarrativity in more than one way. As already mentioned, the story modes of all games allow the player to control a variety of characters from the anime, thus partly leaving the choice of “protagonist” up to the player. In the UN series, the player chooses a “perspective” (UN1) or an avatar before each fight (UN2). In UN2, character development is further promoted by the system, insofar as points earned in fights can be used to develop various skills. Thus, the players can potentially strengthen their characters of choice by “training” them in missions before facing stronger enemies in the story. In PN2, this possibility is opened in another way: each player chooses up to four characters from among the “friends” that accompany Naruto on his adventure for the team with which to face enemy groups. Since each successful fight helps to raise the level of the selected characters, the system can be said to promote permanent group membership and allow the player to “develop” his or her characters of choice.

Playing “Naruto”

249

Yet, such character-centered “meta-narrativity” is not unique to these games. It also appears regularly in the anime, particularly in so-called miniepisodes, which are not related to the main narrative and in which any side-character can potentially become the protagonist. From the point where Naruto defeats the Akatsuki member Pain, the (endless) “grand narrative” around Naruto and Sasuke does continue, but is frequently interrupted and postponed by side stories. However, the games play with such metanarrativity in a distinct way, taking it further than the anime. Through character choice and the introduction of teamwork in general, and by allowing the player to replace Naruto completely in the story mode of UN1 and PN2 in particular, the alternative perspectives offered are not only side-stories; rather, they provide the player with a “real” choice among a variety of “equal” perspectives on the fixed narrative of the anime. In these games, Naruto becomes replaceable as the protagonist. Game scholar Ian Bogost argues that Harry Potter video games undermine the dominance of Harry Potter as the main hero of the franchise by offering a representation of teamwork, and thereby drawing closer attention to the system of skills and abilities of other characters that contribute to his success (Bogost 2007, 176–180). In a similar way, “Naruto” video games may be said to challenge the central role that Naruto is granted in the anime, in which the miniepisodes are merely self-contained interruptions of the overarching story framed around Naruto. Precisely by maintaining both the overall narrative and the characters (in particular Naruto himself) from the anime, and adapting or reassembling them in such ways, the video games offer the experience of an ambiguity similar to what Hutcheon describes as the “paradoxical postmodernism of complicity and critique, [. . .] that at once inscribes and subverts” (Hutcheon 2002, 11). However, while Hutcheon aims to recover some of the political potential of postmodernist artistic practice, in “Naruto” games this ambiguity facilitates little more than a choice between protagonists beyond Naruto, and thus it does not lead to new discoveries or alternatives to the given world. “CHARACTERLESSNESS” Thus far, the focus has been on the story mode of the games and the way in which characters are employed to offer alternative perspectives on the narratives these games adapt. With regard to the significance of characters for the player, Hutcheon states that “[p]sychological development (and thus receiver empathy) is part of the narrative and dramatic arc when characters are the focus of adaptations. Yet, in playing video-game adaptations of films, we can actually “become” one of the characters and act in their fictional world” (Hutcheon 2006, 11). However, in the “Naruto” games, characters and their “nature” seem to be abstracted into representations of “skill development”, “life points”, and “chakra”. Observed separately, these games in fact do not elicit strong emotional attachment to the rudimentarily adapted “nature” or psyche of the characters.7

250 Martin Roth Taking a closer look at the characters’ status across the different game modes, the next section will attempt a more detailed discussion of this abstraction. Given the dominance of “agonistic” (competitive) elements in all four games, the choice of characters is made possible in the first place because they are all standardized.8 Particularly in the fight mode, in which multiple players can compete with each other, individual differences in strength would be fatal. Here, an unevenly balanced set of characters would lead to unfair conditions. Such standardization not only targets the fighting ability and health condition of the characters, but also takes place on the level of controls. In order to reduce complexity, make the games accessible and ensure fair fights, all characters must show more or less the same reaction to the same input. Hence, in practice, the techniques of the characters are triggered by more or less the same buttons, although they may be different in graphical representation. In this sense, the requirement of homogeneity among the characters transforms them into abstract, functional, even “characterless” beings, reducing their “characteristics” to mere appearance and only a few special techniques. Further, controls differ according to the environment the player navigates his or her character in. While the X button is used for conversation with computer controlled characters during exploration of the environment, it is used for horizontal attacks during the fights. Abilities may change as well, as in BB, where characters are able to heal themselves during fights in the single-player story mode, but not in the multiplayer “fight mode”. While this might not appear particularly surprising to experienced videogame players, when taken in the context of the “Naruto” franchise, it suggests a shift from the “psychological” depth and the individually distinct characteristics and techniques the characters are granted in the anime, toward a rather superficial, standardized abstraction through which they can facilitate great flexibility in the games. In his discussion of contemporary manga, critic Itō Gō draws a distinction between two types of characters, kyara and kyarakutā, both derived from the English “character” (Itō 2005, 95–97). While the former is depicted with simple strokes and triggers only a vague feeling of something like a personality via its name and a temporal consistency across multiple panels, the latter can be read as a full representation of a (human) body with a personality with depth, evoking in the imagination a “life” beyond the moment. Itō argues that the critical or provocative potential of kyara in manga lies in their ability to express emotions without requiring a human(like) body or a modern subject due to their independence from context (Itō 2005, 273–276). Based on his distinction, the characters in “Naruto” games might be regarded as kyara, insofar as they have an appearance and names, and thus may encourage some emotional attachment. However, while the emotional attachment to the kyara may be sustained to an extent in the story mode, in which interaction between different kyara beyond the fights is depicted, in the fight modes, the degree of abstraction rather requires the player to link the kyara to the experience of other parts of the franchise

Playing “Naruto”

251

in order to retain or regain this emotional engagement. For players new to “Naruto”, these fights are merely iterations of the genre of one-on-one fighting games with a different appearance—to which the emotional reactions are very limited. Similarly, defeat (death) during the fight mode does not trigger the same emotions as the death of manga kyara may, because the player simply focuses on the next match, possibly using the same kyara again. This relates to the ontological question of the constitutive elements of characters in “Naruto” video games. Both Itō and Azuma describe the kyara or character as independent and thus refer to its flexibility with regard to media and narrative context. However, where Azuma refers to such metanarrative characters as a “bundle of potential actions, which appear in different contexts and situations”, he seems to imply an inherently limited set of possibilities, thus suggesting the existence of a “wholeness” or “finiteness”. However, observing the radical change the characters and their abilities undergo in the video-game adaptations, the abandonment of any psychological development, the standardization of their abilities and the limited emotional attachment, suggests the need to refine this statement. Rather than defining game characters as a (limited) “bundle of potential actions”, it seems more appropriate to begin from the contrary assumption that they are, beyond their appearance and names, little more than empty shells that can be filled with content or functionality as demanded, and thus become interchangeable. Such a view can be substantiated by a brief look at the practice of software development. PROGRAMMING EMPTINESS Although the actual program codes of the “Naruto” games in question are not accessible, it is possible to get a sense of the implementation of the characters in the software by reading the structure of the games according to object-oriented programming (OOP), which is the dominant concept of contemporary software development. OOP is based on the idea of independent objects, which interact with one another during program runtime and can be used in and adapted to multiple contexts. Once generated, an object may react to user input and run specified procedures, which in turn can trigger a reaction from other objects. OOP generally distinguishes between two categories: (1) classes, which are inscribed in the software code and are defined by the abstract characteristics of an object (variables, properties and methods), and (2) instances, which are the actual objects created from the predefined classes when the program is running. According to Bogost, a program has to have four main characteristics to be called object oriented (Bogost 2006, 39). First, it has to follow the principle of abstraction, meaning that objects have to be disassociated from any specific use. Second, it has to comply with the principle of inheritance, such that one class “can be used to create other classes, which adopt or inherit the parent classes’ structures, attributes, and behavior”. This allows for the creation of a hierarchical

252 Martin Roth structure of classes, with a decreasing degree of abstraction, making a class reusable and adaptable to a variety of contexts.9 Third, it has to be encapsulated, meaning that an object’s content remains hidden from other parts of the program or system. Fourth, it has to be polymorphic, which allows different instances to have different behaviors. Through these principles, contemporary programming can be said to create hierarchical structures in the sense that most classes are derived from other (more abstract) classes, while allowing for a specified amount of independence, both in the code and at runtime. This is not only because these classes can be reused and redefined in other contexts through inheritance, but also because of the amount of flexibility specified in a (polymorphic) class, which allows each instance to take on a variety of behaviors and appearances specified by data from databases or user input. According to this model, a simplified structure of the implementation of the characters in BB (and similarly in the other games) might be represented as shown in Table 14.1. While the class names are arbitrary and the actual program structure may differ, the example shows that in video games such as these, the characters are most likely derived from a common (abstract) parent class, which defines their basic, shared qualities. With the exception of UN1, in which the story is not “playable”, one might find a further specified child class for the part of the story in which the player explores the map, and a similarly specialized child class for the moments of ambush by vicious enemies. While playing, polymorphic instances of the adventurer or fighter are generated when necessary according to the database information of the selected characters (for the sake of clarity, the databases are not included). If placed into an environment (story landscape, fighting arena)—itself an instance of a class—such instances react to the input of the player, game system, and other objects according to their encapsulated methods, regardless of the shape the other Table 14.1 Simplified structure of object-oriented characters in Naruto: The Broken Bond.

Playing “Naruto”

253

objects take. For example, in the fight mode of the UN series and BB, Naruto knocks out a friend like Sakura the same way he does an enemy like Orochimaru, although the player might have different feelings about these encounters, as would the characters in the anime. Conversely, Orochimaru and Naruto can serve together in a tag team. As the structure of implementation in OOP can also be found in other elements such as fighting arenas or quests, the potentially reusable nature of the programing of video games calls for widening the view on adaptations and include technical elements, which Hutcheon only mentions briefly (Hutcheon 2006, 29). For instance, it may be noted that OOP provides designers with a means for mass-producing products differing in narrative, as seen in the UN series. Games themselves can be (re)produced or reused with considerably fewer resources once the basic game engine and structures are established. While UN2 certainly adds new elements to its predecessor UN1, it does so only through employing its predecessor’s basic structure, effectively copying it in many ways (character movements and abilities, controls, modes of play, etc.). Thus, a more game-centered approach to adaptation can be devised, widening the perspective to include technical elements in order to serve as a more flexible model for analyzing contemporary media content. OPERATING (WITH) UNITS All of these video games are adaptations of “Naruto” on a “structural” level, namely, in the sense of “games”, beyond Hutcheon’s categories of story, character, and theme. In Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds, Jesper Juul argues that games are above all rule-based systems, and while they may involve fiction, they do not require it (Juul 2005). An analytical instrument to examine such rule-based systems may be found in Ian Bogost’s concept of “unit operations”. He argues for a broadly defined analytical approach to contemporary media products that engages with them in terms of a “configurative system, an arrangement of discrete, interlocking units of expressive meaning” (Bogost 2006, ix). The strength of his approach lies in the openness of his concept of the “unit”, which can be anything from a single physical element to a complex thought or structure consisting of multiple interconnected units (Bogost 2006, 5). While Hutcheon remains vague with regard to the tools for analyzing adaptations,10 and Azuma mostly limits his discussion to characters and their fundamental role as “meta-narrative” devices, Bogost neither constrains his idea of the unit to characters or narratives, nor does his concept require a core or permanent structure. In contrast to static systems, his “unit operations” create units by spontaneously deriving meaning from the interrelations of their discrete components (Bogost 2006, 4, 8). By this definition, Bogost explicitly takes the nature of software into account, stressing the similarities the unit shares with the encapsulated (discrete), polymorphic objects of OOP. His concept

254 Martin Roth thus can facilitate discussions that merge content with the technical context of adaptation, allowing analysts to take the role of technology into account. An example of such unit operations can be found in the operation that generates the spatial-temporal experience of the game worlds within “Naruto” games. As mentioned previously, the story mode is split between the “narrative world”, which can be explored by the player, and the fighting “arenas”, in which fights take place during the story, mission, and versus modes. While some elements of the anime world appear in these contexts, what one notices throughout is the fragmentary import, the reuse of a very limited number of stages and the arbitrary spatial relation between different places.11 The instantaneous transitions between narrative world and battle arena are triggered either by the narrative or random encounters. The arbitrary location and distance, as well as the double structure of world and arena and the frequent jumps between them, cater to the rather peculiar spatiality found in the games and, by extension, their distinct senses of time. Juul categorizes fictional time (time progression in the game) into coherent or continuous time and turn-based or repeating time (Juul 2005, 142, 148).12According to this distinction, all “Naruto” games involve an interplay of various temporalities, which are mixed as required by the context. While time is coherent during the exploration of the game world, it is interrupted by another temporality as soon as the player encounters an enemy. This not only leads to a “jump” into an entirely different place (a fighting arena), but also involves a different speed of time flow. Whereas explorations are not subject to a time limit, the fights in the UN series and BB employ time as a crucial component of the challenge, while PN2 offers turn-based fights that depend on the player’s action. Moreover, fighting arenas as well as places on the map are frequently reused, and only a few alternative designs are employed across the several hours of play in the story mode, which are then reused in the training, mission, and in the versus modes. What is at work here may be understood as a particular set of unit operations, which reassemble very few fragmented elements into a meaningful unit, in which play momentarily takes place. As with the characters, this suggests a structure of production opposite to that portrayed by Azuma. Rather than drawing on a huge database of elements or, in the case of game-like metanarrativity, on the individual “player”, these games rely on a very limited selection of (altered) fragments from the franchise, but their system sets unit operations into motion, spontaneously relating diverse elements according to the required circumstances or demanded functionality, and thereby expanding the scale of the game. This abandonment of spatial or temporal coherence is, again, not unique to these games. The anime itself plays with and distorts spatial and temporal coherence in various ways, as seen in the concept of genjutsu, techniques that trap the opponent in an illusion, as well as in the never-ending flashbacks and “miniepisodes”, in which a character remembers a past event. The spatial relations are frequently bent and distorted as well. For instance, in episode 231 of Naruto Shippūden, “Tozasareta Kōro” (literally: “The closed route”, aired

Playing “Naruto”

255

October 6, 2011, in Japan), Naruto, who has been traveling on a ship for a number of episodes, suddenly gets a visit from Shikamaru and Tenten, who were sent from Konoha village by Hokage Tsunade to restock Naruto’s supplies. Their incredible speed of travel, in spite of carrying supplies and having to catch up with Naruto’s ship, seems to render any notion of linear space and time untenable, and rather seems to foreground the functional contribution of such incoherences as facilitators of the “miniepisode”. However, as with the characters, the video games represent such spatial-temporal incoherence more instantly and more centrally, as it is part of their software. With regard to games, as Juul remarks, in games coherence is demanded on the level of the rule system rather than on that of the fictional world depicted (Juul 2005, 130). Whereas the anime can play with time consistency because it is based on the assumption of temporal coherence, this loses importance in video games, particularly in the fight modes, in which players can endlessly challenge the system or each other without any of the context of the anime (which only serves to provide the reason for which Shikamaru and Tenten have been sent). Even the story mode of the games does not rely on the mechanics of the everyday world, as the previously mentioned example of the Third Hokage, who dies upon victory in the fight against Orochimaru, shows. By operating on or playing with material from the franchise in a unique, “rule-based” way that sometimes abandons the notion of coherence, these games offer the player a kind of distinct experience of the “Naruto” world. CONCLUSION This article has analyzed the contribution of four diverse video-game adaptations to the “Naruto” franchise. The analysis shows that “Naruto” video games adapt the franchise in various ways on a systematic level and, by operating on the fragmentary material they draw on, play out various alternatives by combining narrative, characters, and themes. In doing so, the games rely on the adapted material, but at the same time reassemble it in ways that go beyond the expressive possibilities of anime and manga, thereby offering the player a variety of distinct experiences. While the existing concepts and perspectives drawn on in this paper have led to a number of important insights and, considering the strong foundation which “Naruto” games have in other media, remain a valuable basis for the analysis, they nonetheless fail to address some aspects of the games. Where they aim to include video games in their perspective, adaptation studies and other narrative- or character-centered approaches to contemporary culture may benefit from a deeper inquiry into their rule-based nature, as well as their systematic or even technical features and mechanisms. In order to reveal these aspects, it is important to analyze how the system modulates or plays with its content to generate meaningful units, and in what ways this process can be influenced by the player, allowing her or

256 Martin Roth him to pursue individual preferences. In the case of the “Naruto” games, the player’s choice is located on the level of character preferences and play modes. The introduction of the structure of object-oriented programming into the analysis suggests that the characters in “Naruto” video games are all based on an abstract, empty shell, sharing structural similitude. This is not to say that there exist no differences between characters. On the contrary, the variety of (psychological) “types” employed in the anime probably contributes to its broad popularity significantly. However, given the scarcity of “personality” in these games, the reasons for choosing (“liking”) one character over another likely stem from existing attachments to specific characters established through interaction with other parts of the franchise, the experience of the story mode, or even the appearance of a character alone. Therefore, the respective games can in a sense be regarded as cultural crossroads in more than one sense. First, they generate units ranging from momentary play contexts to play modes by operating on diverse materials adapted from the franchise and, in doing so, give the players a choice to either pursue the familiar narrative in the story mode or abandon that context in the fight mode. Second, they can be understood as intersections of various fan preferences, and as such facilitate a wide range of engagements, which in turn draw on knowledge from other experiences with the franchise. One might argue that the experience throughout all play modes may be more intense to the knowing player, who, as Hutcheon puts it, enjoys a “mixture of repetition and difference, of familiarity and novelty” (Hutcheon 2006, 114). In the case of “Naruto”, it is even likely that the majority of players choose the games because they promise what she calls the intertextual pleasure of “understanding the interplay between works, of opening up a text’s possible meanings to intertextual echoing” (Hutcheon 2006, 117). At the same time, however, as Hutcheon points out, “[f]or an adaptation to be successful in its own right, it must be so for both knowing and unknowing audiences” (Hutcheon 2006, 121). In this sense it must be said that all “Naruto” video games, in part due to their abstraction, are playable without knowledge of the franchise. As a third cultural crossroad, they are thus situated between different media cultures, that of manga and anime fans, and that of gamers. Through offering various game modes, they leave the choice up to the player, allowing them to be experienced as adaptations of a narrative or as contextless play.

NOTES 1. Some of the research for this article was only possible due to a fellowship I received from the Japan Foundation, to which I would like to express my gratitude. I would also like to thank Jaqueline Berndt, Bettina KümmerlingMeibauer, Ron Stewart, Patrick Galbraith, Álex Bueno, and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments and suggestions. 2. While similar comparisons might be made with the manga as well, due to the sheer volume of material that including both would encompass, the

Playing “Naruto”

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

257

decision was made to exclude the manga, lest significant differences be potentially obscured or lost. Although rating is not compulsory in North America or Japan, it is very unlikely that “Naruto” games are released in these areas without a rating, as both publishers and retailers have respective policies for console games released for the mainstream market. The following analysis is, as indicated in the list of sources below, based on the Japanese version of the three games released in Japan and the German version of The Broken Bond. The terms used in the games have been changed to be more easily understood by a nongaming audience. Similar perspectives on narrative are widely discussed in the field of game studies. Espen Aarseth, for example, is known for his conceptualization of the “cybertext” as “a machine for the production of a variety of expression” (1997, 3). It should be noted that inasmuch as video games enable a choice of actions, they may be regarded as providing metanarrative systems, insofar as they grant the player a certain control over the experience. For example, in UN2, the story mode offers some freedom through giving the player control over Naruto. However, in the author’s view, this has to be distinguished from the possibility of producing open narratives with outcomes that are not predetermined from the start, just as those facilitated in tabletop RPGs. For example, in PN2, Naruto is depicted as simple-minded and impatient, and with these traits, he triggers more than one of the “unavoidable traps” in the narrating sequences that the player cannot control. The sporty and challenging character of Rock Lee is adapted into UN2’s story mode, where he challenges Naruto to a push-up competition whenever addressed. In his influential study on Man, Play, and Games, Roger Caillois (1961, 14) states that in games of agôn (competition) the equality of chances to win is artificially approximated through the creation of rules, sometimes even by limiting stronger participants. An example would be the structure of a database containing plants. A general class would define variables like name and average life span. This class then breaks into many new classes, as necessary to store data on different plants. A class for toxic plants might contain a description of negative effects on the human body, which is not necessary in the case of apples. In contrast to procedural programming, which requires the programmer to copy the respective module to alter it or add variables only necessary for very specific cases to a “master variable”, OOP allows the programmer to generate new classes without having to modify or copy the previously existing code. Similarly, major insufficiencies in all classes or bugs in the code need only be corrected once, making OOP more efficient, flexible, and reusable. Sharing a quite similar intuition to that of Bogost, Hutcheon mentions Richard Dawkin’s concept of “memes”, or “units of cultural transmission or units of imitation”, as a potentially fruitful approach for adaptation studies but does not actively pursue this direction (2006, 31–32). UN2 is set in Naruto’s village and employs an adapted version of the chūnin exam arena, and PN2 allows the player to travel to the Sunagakure village but almost nowhere else. Generally speaking, neither the Konoha village in UN2 nor the map in PN2 reflect the spatial setting and distances observed in the anime, with Sunagakure village only a few minutes “walk” away. This distinction may be best understood as the difference between games like soccer, where time passes regardless of the actions taken (i.e., continuously), and games like (casual) chess, where each “turn” ends only after a player has made his or her move.

258 Martin Roth BIBLIOGRAPHY Primary Sources (Video Games and Films) BB: Ubisoft. 2008. Naruto—The Broken Bond. Microsoft XBox 360. German version. PN2: TakaraTomy. 2006. Naruto NarutoRPG3 Reijū VS Konohashōtai. Nintendo DS. Japanese version. Released in the United States in 2008 as Naruto: Path of the Ninja 2. “Tozasareta Kōro” [The closed route]. 2011, October 6. Naruto Shippūden, episode 231. Aired in Japan. UN1: Bandai. 2003. Naruto Narutime¯to h rō. Sony Playstation 2. Japanese version. Released in the United States in 2006 as Naruto: Ultimate Ninja. UN2: Bandai. 2004. Naruto Narutime¯to h rō 2. Sony Playstation 2. Japanese version. Released in the United States in 2007 as Naruto: Ultimate Ninja 2.

Secondary Sources Aarseth, Espen. 1997. Cybertext. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Azuma, Hiroki. 2001. Dōbutsuka suru posutomodan. (English translation, 2009, see below). Tokyo: Kōdansha. ———. 2007. Ge¯muteki riarizumu no tanjō [The birth of a game-like realism]. Tokyo: Kōdansha. ———. 2009. Otaku: Japan’s Database Animals. Trans. J. E. Abel and S. Kono. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Bogost, Ian. 2006. Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. ______. 2007. Persuasive Games: The Expressive Power of Videogames. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Caillois, Roger. 1961. Man, Play, and Games. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Jenkins, Henry. 2006. Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. New York: New York University Press. Juul, Jesper. 2005. Half-Real: Video Games between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Hutcheon, Linda. 2002. The Politics of Postmodernism. London: Routledge (Original edition, 1989). ———. 2006. A Theory of Adaptation. New York: Routledge. Itō, Gō. 2005. TEZUKA izu deddo—hirakareta manga hyōgenron e [TEZUKA is dead: Postmodernist and modernist approaches to Japanese manga]. Tokyo: NTT Shuppan. “Naruto NarutoRPG3 Reij VS Konohashōtai”. 2006. TakaraTomy. http://www. takaratomy.co.jp/products/gamesoft/naruto_rpg_3/ (accessed December 17, 2011). tsuka, Eiji. 2001. Teihon Monogatari shōhiron [Standard Edition: On Narrative Consumption]. Tokyo: Kadokawa shoten (Original edition, 1989).

Editors and Contributors

Jessica Bauwens-Sugimoto is a postdoctoral research associate at Kyoto Seika University International Manga Research Center. She came to Japan after completing degrees in Japanese studies and anthropology at Leuven Catholic University and, in 2007, received her PhD (in humanities) from Osaka University. Her research focuses on issues of gender and ethnicity in manga, comics, and media fandoms. She is also active as a translator and teaches media studies and popular culture at several universities in the Kansai area. Jaqueline Berndt is professor in comics/manga theory at the Department of Manga, Kyoto Seika University (KSU), Japan, as well as deputy director of the KSU’s International Manga Research Center located at the Kyoto International Manga Museum. After receiving her PhD (in aesthetics) from Humboldt University Berlin, Germany, in 1991, she went to Japan where she has been teaching art theory and media studies at several Japanese universities. Her research interests include aesthetics of comics/manga, art discourse in modern Japan, and animation studies. She authored Phänomen Manga: Comic-Kultur in Japan (Berlin, 1995; Spanish trans. 1996). Her Japanese publications include a monograph on manga culture (1994), an edited essay collection on manga aesthetics (2002), and an edited special issue of an art historical journal on manga and art (2011). She edited Manhwa Manga Manhua: East Asian Comics Studies (2012) and Comics Worlds and the World of Comics (2010; http://imrc.jp/lecture/ 2009/12/comics-in-the-world.html) and coedited Reading Manga: Local and Global Perceptions of Japanese Comics (2006). Franziska Ehmcke is professor emeritus of Japanese studies. She has been director of the Japanese Department at the University of Cologne, Germany, since 1994. She studied Japanology, Sinology, and linguistics at the University of Hamburg and received a Monbusho-Fellowship at Tokoku-University, Sendai. She has published widely on different topics of the cultural history of Japan, with a focus on Japanese fine arts. She coedited saka zu byōbu. Ein Stellschirm mit Ansichten der Burgstadt

260 Editors and Contributors saka in Schloss Eggenberg (Joannea. Berichte aus den Sammlungen des Universalmuseums Joanneum. Beiträge zur Kunst-und Kulturgeschichte der Steiermark. Neue Folge Bd. 1) (Graz, 2010) and Reisen im Zwischenraum—Zur Interkulturalität von Kulturwissenschaft. Festschrift für Helmolt Vittinghoff zum 65. Geburtstag (Beiträge zur Kulturwissenschaftlichen Süd- und Ostasienforschung Bd. 2, edited by Franziska Ehmcke und Andreas Niehaus) (Würzburg, 2012). For more publications, see http://japanologie.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/publikationen1.html#c2381. Fujimoto Yukari is associate professor at the School of Global Japanese Studies, Meiji University, Tokyo, where she lectures on manga culture as well as gender and representation with a special focus on female manga genres. While working as an editor at Chikuma Shobo Publishing, her own publications since the late 1980s have made her Japan’s most renowned critic with respect to shōjo, Boys’ Love, and yaoi manga. She has published four monographs in Japanese so far. For an extract in English, see “Transgender: Female Hermaphrodites and Male Androgynes” in U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal 24 (2004). In 2008, she shifted from the publishing business to university education. Recently, she is also the representative of a movement that demands a reconsideration of the so-called nonexistent youth bill proposed by the Tokyo Metropolitan Government. Gan Sheuo Hui is visiting fellow in the Department of Japanese Studies, National University of Singapore. She came to Japan in 2004, where she obtained a PhD from Kyoto University in human and environmental studies with a dissertation reevaluating the significance of “limited animation” in Japan as “selective animation” (2008). She continued her research on animation at Kyoto University as a postdoctoral fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science until 2010. From 2010 to 2011, she was a guest researcher in the Manga Department at Kyoto Seika University. She has presented papers at conferences in Europe, North America, and Asia, and her articles have appeared in Animation Studies and elsewhere. Her research interests include questions of authorship and means of expression in animation; the Japanese-inspired forms of manga and animation in Southeast Asia; and the interrelations between manga, anime, and live-action films. Elisabeth Klar has studied comparative literature at the University of Vienna. She further studies romance studies and translation at the University of Vienna. Mainly interested in intermediality and comics, her diploma thesis focused on the body in comic adaptations of erotic novels (Vienna 2012). She has also been publishing articles on comics, for example in Comic Film Helden (Vienna 2009), and she is coeditor of the volume Theorien des Comic: Ein Reader (with Barbara Eder and Ramon Reichert, Bielefeld, 2011).

Editors and Contributors

261

Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer is professor in the German Department at the University of Tübingen, Germany. She was guest professor in memory of Astrid Lindgren at Linnaeus University Växjö/Kalmar, Sweden, and guest professor at the University of Vienna. She is author of a two-volume encyclopedia on international children’s classics (Metzler, 1999), a study on canon formation and children’s literature (Metzler, 2003), and a textbook on children’s literature (Wissenschaftl. Buchgesellschaft, 2012). She coedited several essay collections on picturebook research (with T. Colomer and C. Silva-Díaz, Routledge, 2010), Astrid Lindgren (with A. Surmatz, Routledge, 2011), emergent literacy (John Benjamins, 2011), and children’s films (with C. Exner, Schüren, 2012). She was advisory editor for The Oxford Encyclopedia of Children’s Literature (Oxford University Press, 2006). In addition, she is coeditor of the book series “Children’s Literature, Culture, and Cognition” (John Benjamins) and chair of the project “Children’s Literature and European Avant-Garde,” funded by the European Science Foundation. Her research interests are comparative children’s literature, picturebook research, interfaces between children’s literature and literature for adults, and children’s media. Nele Noppe is a PhD fellow of the Research Foundation Flanders. She works at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, where she researches the role of dōjinshi in the Japanese cultural economy as well as economic and legal issues relevant to Japanese- and English-language fanworks. Her publications and social media accounts are listed on her website at http:// www.nelenoppe.net. Omote Tomoyuki is chief curator at the Kitakyushu Manga Museum, which opened in August 2012. After receiving his PhD from Osaka University, Japan, in Japanese intellectual history, he became involved in the preparation of the Kyoto International Manga Museum and later worked as one of its senior researchers from 2006 to 2011. In his own research focusing on gekiga as well as shōnen manga and its magazines, he coauthored “Barefoot Gen in Japan: An Attempt at Media History” (in Reading Manga, edited by J. Berndt and S. Richter, Leipzig, 2006) and Manga to myūjiamu ga deau toki [When manga and museum meet] (Kyoto, 2009). Nora Renka is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Music at Yale University. Her work focuses on aspects of opera and reception history, primarily in the nineteenth century. Earlier she completed a BA in classics at the University of Chicago. She has been interested in manga for a long time, especially in its reader reception. Martin Roth received his MA in Japanese studies and communication and media studies from Leipzig University. Since 2010, he has been a PhD student at the Leiden University Institute for Area Studies, writing his

262 Editors and Contributors dissertation on the political potentials of Japanese video games. From 2011 to 2012, he was a research fellow at the University of Tokyo on a one-year fellowship by the Japan Foundation. Frederik L. Schodt is a writer, translator, and conference interpreter based in the San Francisco Bay area. Among his better-known books are Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics (1983); Inside the Robot Kingdom: Japan, Mechatronics, and the Coming Robotopia (1988); Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga (1996); and The Astro Boy Essays: Osamu Tezuka, Mighty Atom, and the Manga/Anime Revolution (2007). His writings on manga, and his translations of them, helped to trigger the current popularity of Japanese comics in the English-speaking world and, in 2000, resulted in his being awarded the Special Category of the Asahi Shimbun’s prestigious Osamu Tezuka Culture Award. In the same year, his translation of Henry Yoshitaka Kiyama’s 1931 pioneering graphic novel, The Four Immigrants Manga, was selected as a finalist in the Pen West USA translation award. In 2009, he was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette, for his work in helping to promote Japan’s popular culture in the United States. His latest book, in 2012, is Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe: How an American Acrobat Introduced Circus to Japan, and Japan to the West. Ronald Stewart is an associate professor at the Prefectural University of Hiroshima. He studied Japanese language, art, education, and literature at the University of Wollongong, Sophia University, and Tokyo University. As a Monbukagakusho Research Scholarship recipient at Nagoya University, he completed his master’s and PhD in contemporary arts and cultural studies (sentan bunka ron); both dissertations were related to manga history and representation in manga. As well as publishing and presenting a number of academic papers in both English and Japanese, Stewart has done translating work, been an editor for the comics history journal SIGNs (Studies in Graphic Narratives), and contributed manga exhibition reviews to the International Journal of Comic Art. In 2002 and 2003, he was one of the authors for the newspaper Yomiuri Shinbun’s Manga Site column on comics. Stewart is currently conducting a comparative study of recent Japanese political cartooning, sponsored by the Japanese Government’s Grants-in-Aid of Scientific Research. Shige (CJ) Suzuki is an assistant professor of modern languages and comparative literature at Baruch College–The City University of New York. He received his PhD in literature from the University of California at Santa Cruz in 2008. His research interests are comparative literature, film, critical theory, and popular culture. His recently published articles on comics include “Learning from Monsters: Mizuki Shigeru’s Yōkai and War Manga” in Image[&]Narrative and “Envisioning Alternative Communities through a

Editors and Contributors

263

Popular Medium: Speculative Imagination in Hagio Moto’s Girls’ Comics” in International Journal of Comic Art (IJOCA). Yamanaka Chie is an associate professor in the Faculty of Humanities at Jin’ai University, Echizen, Japan. Specializing in cultural studies and sociology, her research has focused on manga and popular culture in the Republic of Korea and the impact of pop-cultural experiences on public memory as well as nationalism. Her publications include “Dragonball to deatta kankoku” (South Korea meets Dragonball) in Manga no naka no ‘tasha’ (The “Other” in manga, edited by Itō Kimio, Kyoto, 2008); Posuto kanryû no media shakaigaku (Media sociology after the “Korean Wave” in Japan, Kyoto, 2007, coauthor); and “Domesticating Manga? National Identity in Korean Comics Culture” in Reading Manga (edited by J. Berndt and S. Richter, Leipzig, 2006).

Page Intentionally Left Blank

Index

Abandon the Old in Tokyo (Tatsumi), 59, 61; see also Tatsumi, Yoshihiro acafan 9, 194, 204n1; see also fan; otaku adaptation 6 – 7, 10, 56, 87 – 8, 100, 108, 110, 129, 165, 220, 223 – 7, 229, 231, 238 – 9, 240n12, 240n13, 241n23, 243 – 6, 249, 251 – 6, 257n7, 257n10, 257n11 A Drifting Life (Gekiga hyōryū) (Tatsumi) 56 – 7, 59, 62, 63n7, 63n13; see also Tatsumi, Yoshihiro aesthetics 9, 45n22, 65, 69, 70, 78, 87, 100, 103, 108, 110, 116, 117n3, 121 – 2, 124, 129 – 32, 136 – 7, 221, 222, 225, 231, 237, 240n6, 241n24, 259 “Akira” ( tomo) 70, 73, 77 – 8, 234, 239, 241n18; see also tomo, Katsuhiro alternative comics 4 – 6, 63n8, 71, 81n35, 121 – 2, 124 – 5, 134, 262 animation 1, 7, 10, 23 – 5, 70, 103, 105, 108, 112, 117n13, 121, 128, 129, 195, 220 – 2, 224 – 7, 237 – 9, 239n1, 239n2, 239n3, 240n9, 240n16, 241n19, 241n22, 243, 260 animation director 220, 225 – 7, 237 – 9, 240n16, 241n19, 241n22; see also sakuga kantoku anime 2, 7, 9 – 11, 19 – 25, 44n11, 44n14, 66, 71, 76, 78, 88, 107, 110, 122, 124, 128, 138n16, 165, 174, 177, 181 – 3, 187n4, 187n10, 192 – 7, 203 – 4, 205n12, 206n14, 217, 220 – 39, 239n1,

240n6, 240n9, 240n11, 240n15, 240n16, 241n17, 241n19, 241n21, 241n22, 243 – 50, 253 – 6, 257n11, 260, 262 auteur 10, 220 – 2, 238 – 9, 240n5 Azuma, Hiroki 10, 195, 206n13, 247 – 8, 251, 253 – 4 bande dessinée 1, 105, 124, 164 Barefoot Gen (Nakazawa) 5, 19 – 20, 67 – 71, 74, 78, 79n4, 79n7, 79n11, 79n12, 80n33, 118n22, 261; see also GEN; Hadashi no Gen; Nakazawa, Keiji Berndt, Jaqueline 5, 11n3, 44n3, 45n20, 51, 91, 118n25, 122, 135, 137n1, 256n1, 259, 261, 263 BL/boys’ love 132, 138n23, 187n2, 189n30, 193, 196, 205n5, 260; see also slash; yaoi “Bleach” (Kubo) 22, 137n5, 174, 240n7; see also Kubo, Tite Bogost, Ian 10, 244, 249, 251, 253, 257n10 boyd, danah 143 – 4, 155 Briggs, Raymond 6, 103 – 5, 108, 118n16 Butler, Judith 131 – 2, 135 cartoon 1 – 2, 4, 7, 21, 23, 27 – 30, 32 – 40, 42 – 3, 54, 56, 66, 79n1, 100, 102 – 5, 112 – 14, 117n7, 118n23, 128, 187n1, 262 cartoonist 6, 27 – 9, 34, 36 – 7, 42, 50, 52, 87 – 8, 91, 102, 109, 112 – 15 censorship 72, 87, 123 – 4, 131, 134 character/proto-character 131 – 2, 187n10, 250 – 1; see also Kyarakutā/kyara

266 Index Chōjū [jinbutsu] giga 31 Chute, Hillary 71 – 2, 80n14 Comic Beam 73 – 4, 80n24 comic market 173, 181 – 6, 188n21, 188n23, 188n24, 188n27, 188n28, 189n29, 189n30 comics 1 – 8, 11, 19, 21 – 6, 28 – 9, 32, 36 – 43, 45n21, 50 – 7, 62 – 3, 65 comic strips 23, 29, 32 – 4, 36 – 9, 42 – 3, 45n21, 45n22, 46n30, 66, 103, 105, 113, 118n23 convergence 1, 10, 101, 243 – 4, 247 “cool Japan” 21 – 2 “Coppelion” (Inoue) 66, 71, 76 – 8; see also Inoue, Tomonori counterculture 4, 51, 56, 61 coupling 132, 184 – 5, 187n2, 189n29, 200, 203, 206; see also pairing Crielaard, Chris 7, 124 – 6, 134 – 5 cultural imperialism 56, 86, 90 – 1 cultural studies 1, 3, 221, 262 – 3 derivation 5, 9, 74, 88, 182, 188n22, 188n27, 192, 243 deviantART 7, 143 – 56 digital 7, 21 – 2, 24, 137n8, 144 – 57, 170, 188n27, 239n3, 240n15 discourse 3 – 6, 9, 11, 66, 68, 70, 72, 75, 77, 85, 86, 88, 90 – 2, 94 – 6, 121, 123 – 5, 136, 193, 196, 205n9 dōjinshi 8, 122 – 3, 125, 137n4, 138n15, 156, 172 – 3, 181 – 6, 188n22, 188n27, 189n30, 193, 206n15, 224, 261; see also fan-created manga; fanzine double spread 73, 77, 102, 104 – 6, 110, 113 – 14, 228; see also spread “Dragon Ball” (Toriyama) 90, 97n16, 167 – 8; see also Toriyama, Akira editor 5, 8, 11, 28, 37, 46n28, 53, 55, 66, 75, 78, 163 – 7, 170n1, 177, 188n17, 237 Edo (period) 29, 32 – 43, 51 – 2, 110, 212 educational comics 66, 72; see also gakushū manga Eisner, Will 62, 100 Elkins, James 27, 30, 44n1 ero manga 8 – 9, 121 – 37, 137n7, 138n15; see also hentai; lolicon essay manga 72

fan 1 – 4, 6 – 9, 19 – 20, 22 – 5, 65 – 6, 72, 75, 91, 95, 98, 123, 134, 136, 143 – 57, 172, 177, 181 – 7,192 – 204, 205n3, 205n6, 205n10, 206n15, 206n18, 207n22, 227, 256; see also acafan; otaku fan-created manga 8, 143, 145, 146, 147, 148; see also dōjinshi; fanzine fan culture 65, 156 – 7, 194 fandom 8 – 9, 25, 174, 185, 187n2, 192 – 5, 197, 199 – 204, 205n6, 206n18, 207n22, 259 fanfiction 2, 7, 9, 185, 187n2, 19 – 204, 205n6, 205n8, 206n15, 206n18, 206n19, 206n20, 207n21 fanzine 125, 156, 173, 181, 189n30, 193, 206n15, 224; see also dōjinshi; fan-created manga film studies 220 – 1 Flotsam (Wiesner) 105 – 6, 118n19; see also Wiesner, David Frahm, Ole 129, 131 – 2, 135 – 6, 137n1, 138n19 franchise 7, 11, 60, 147, 243 – 4, 246 – 50, 254 – 6 Füleki, David 108 – 10 gakushū manga 66, 72; see also educational comics Galbraith, Patrick 122 – 4, 128, 131, 137n3, 143, 157, 187n2, 189n31, 256n1 game 2, 7, 10 – 11, 21, 165, 193, 195, 217, 243 – 56, 257n4, 257n5, 257n6, 257n8, 257n12; see also role-playing-game (RPG); videogame Garo 45n22, 55, 57, 63n11, 81n30 gekiga; geukwha 2, 4 – 5, 7, 11n1, 48 – 62, 63n2, 63n5, 63n6, 63n7, 63n8, 63n11, 63n13, 75, 81n34, 89, 96n1, 261 GEN (Nakazawa) 5, 19 – 20, 67 – 71, 74, 79n4, 79n7, 79n11, 79n12, 80n33, 118n22; see also Barefoot Gen; Hadashi no Gen; Nakazawa, Keiji gender 1 – 2, 6, 8 – 9, 66, 74, 78, 79n5, 89, 121, 127, 131 – 2, 134 – 6, 138n15, 138n22, 164, 166, 172 – 3, 175 – 6, 186, 193, 201, 205n6, 207n22, 221, 259 – 60

Index genre 2, 6, 8 – 9, 10, 32 – 3, 66, 69, 71 – 2, 75, 77 – 8, 88 – 9, 91 – 2, 94, 101 – 3, 116, 118n23, 121, 122, 124 – 5, 130, 132 – 6, 166 – 7, 172, 181 – 3, 188n22, 188n27, 188n28, 193 – 6, 205n5, 205n6, 205n12, 236, 245 – 6, 251, 260 Ghost in the Shell (animation) (Oshii) 225 – 6; see also Oshii, Mamoru “Ghost in the Shell” (manga) (Shirow) 225 – 6; see also Shirow, Masamune global(ization) 1, 3 – 5, 8, 11, 19, 22, 48, 54, 56 – 7, 65 – 7, 80n23, 81n36, 86 – 7, 93, 95, 101, 108, 116, 156, 170, 209, 243 grand narrative 243, 247, 249 graphic narrative 2, 4, 6–7, 32, 66, 85, 89 graphic novel 1, 29, 62, 66, 70, 101, 113, 196 Groensteen, Thierry 129 – 30, 138n18, 138n19 Hadashi no Gen (Nakazawa) 5, 19 – 20, 67 – 71, 74, 79n4, 79n7, 79n11, 79n12, 80n33, 118n22; see also Barefoot Gen; GEN; Nakazawa, Keiji Harry Potter (Rowling) 7, 147 – 9, 155, 193, 195, 200, 205n8, 249 hentai 6 – 7, 121 – 137, 137n3, 138nn13, 14; see also ero manga; lolicon Herring, Susan 155 – 6, 193, 196 hijitsuzai seishōnen 91, 187; see also Juvenile Act; nonexistent youth Hokusai Manga (Katsushika) 4, 29 – 30, 36, 44n13, 44n15, 45n20, 45n21, 213; see also Katsushika, Hokusai Hong, Christine 70 – 2, 79n11 Hosokibara, Seiki 29 – 31 How to Draw Manga 88, 108 Hutcheon, Linda 10, 135, 243, 246, 249, 253, 256, 257n10 hybridity 5 – 6, 23 – 4, 85, 89, 91 – 2, 94, 96, 101, 105, 113, 116, 117 hybridization 1, 7, 87 identification 3, 5, 65, 123 – 4, 196, 197, 201, 203 – 4, 207n22 illustration 42, 101 – 2, 104 – 6, 108, 110 – 11, 113 – 16, 118n15 Inoue, Tomonori 66, 76

267

intercultural 2 – 6, 9, 11, 65 – 7, 69, 112, 116, 220 intermediality 6 – 7, 66, 101, 116, 260 intertextuality 4, 9, 71, 100, 103, 116, 135, 209 – 11, 246, 256 Iser, Wolfgang 62, 193, 204 Ishiko, Junzō 52 Itō, Gō 31, 69, 122, 128, 131, 137n3, 175, 250 – 1 Iwabuchi, Kōichi 3, 86 – 7, 95, 108, 118n22 Japanese studies 1, 3, 56, 259 – 61 Jenkins, Henry 116, 154, 193, 199, 205, 243, 247 jishuku 67; see also self-censorship josei (women’s) manga 177, 187 Jump (Weekly Shōnen Jump; Shūkan Shōnen Jump) 7 – 8, 67, 79n10, 81n30, 90, 164 – 70, 173 – 4, 176, 179, 181 – 2, 223, 237 Juul, Jesper 253 – 5 Juvenile Act 91, 187; see also hijitsuzai seishōnen; nonexistent youth kashihon 50 – 4, 58, 89; see also rental book/rental comics kashihonya; kashihon-ya 51 – 2; see also rental bookshop Katsushika, Hokusai 4, 29 – 31, 36, 110 – 14, 212 – 13 Kimmel, Eric and Gerstein, Mordicai 6, 110 – 11 Kinokuniya 178 – 80, 184, 188n16 Kinsella, Sharon 108, 118n22 Kishimoto, Masashi 7, 22, 164, 167, 175, 192 – 3, 200 – 4, 207n23, 210, 216, 224, 226 – 7, 229, 231 – 3, 236 – 8, 240n11, 241n18 Kitazawa, Rakuten (Yasuji) 4, 27 – 8, 32 – 44; see also Rakuten Koike, Kazuo, and Kojima, Goseki 55 koma(wari) 4, 6, 19, 23, 29, 32 – 4, 36 – 8, 42, 70, 72 – 3, 77, 100, 102 – 10, 113, 118n15, 118n26, 122, 128 – 30, 134 – 6, 138, 175, 207n23, 226 – 9, 236, 239, 241n23, 250; see also panel (layout) Konomi, Takeshi 168, 179 Korean comics 85, 89; see also manhwa

268 Index Kozure ōkami (Koike, Kazuo and Kojima, Goseki) 19, 21; see also Lone Wolf and Cub; Koike, Kazuo, and Kojima, Goseki Kubo, Tite 24, 174 Kyarakutā/kyara 131 – 2, 187n10, 250 – 1; see also character/protocharacter ladies’ comics 121, 172 LaMarre, Thomas 65 – 7, 143, 157, 220, 239n3, 240n6 literacy 1, 5, 66, 70, 88, 93, 108, 118n20 local(ization) 5, 56, 85, 86, 96 lolicon 122 – 7, 136, 137n3; see also ero manga; hentai Lone Wolf and Cub (Koike and Kojima) 19, 21; see also Koike, Kazuo, and Kojima, Goseki; Kozure ōkami mangaka (manga artist) 1, 10, 28, 33, 35, 39, 41, 42, 67, 73, 112, 113, 165, 156, 224; see also cartoonist manhwa 85, 89; see also Korean comics McCloud, Scott 117n7, 118n18, 131 media studies 1, 221, 259, 261 meisho (famous site) 9, 210, 214, 215 meta-narrative 247 – 8, 253 metatext 193, 196, 198, 202 Miyamoto, Hirohito 28 – 33, 39 – 40 Miyazaki, Hayao 10, 222, 225, 238 Mizuki, Shigeru 52, 55, 262 motion lines 6, 229 multicultural(ism) 3, 113 multimodal(ity) 101 – 2, 116 Nagaike, Kazumi 187n2, 196 Nakano, Haruyuki 51 Nakazawa, Keiji 19, 66, 70, 79n10 narrative 8 – 10, 22, 28, 30, 37, 39, 54, 60, 70 – 1, 74, 76 – 78, 101 – 5, 113, 122, 126, 129 – 32, 137, 156 – 7, 165 – 9, 173, 175 – 6, 184 – 5, 220, 226 – 7, 237 – 9, 243 – 9, 251, 253 – 6, 257n5, 257n6 Naruto (character’s name) 8, 175, 185, 192, 195 – 204, 216 – 17 “Naruto” (franchise) 7, 22, 163 – 70, 172 – 87, 192, 195 – 204, 206n19, 207n23, 207n25, 216 – 17

Naruto (place name) 10, 209 – 16 nationalism 3, 5, 9, 85, 88, 89, 91 – 2, 95 – 6, 263 New Treasure Island (Shin Takarajima) (Tezuka) 53, 118n23; see also Tezuka, Osamu non-existent-youth 91, 187; see also hijitsuzai seishōnen; Juvenile Act Noppe, Nele 6 – 7, 10, 137n4, 143, 206n15, 261 Noro, Shinpei 2, 6, 112 – 13, 118n23 Oda, Eiichirō 22, 167, 173 – 4 “One Piece” (Oda), 22, 167 – 9, 173 – 86, 187n4, 187n5, 187n8; see also Oda, Eiichirō onomatopoeia 23, 100, 103, 111; see also sound word Orbaugh, Sharalyn 143 – 4, 147, 193 – 5, 205 orientalism 8, 94 – 5, 174 original English-language (OEL) manga 4, 23 original non-Japanese (ONG) manga 4, 147 Oshii, Mamoru 10, 220, 222, 225, 238, 239n3, 240n7, 240n14, 240n15, 240n16 otaku 20, 23; see also acafan; fan tomo, Katsuhiro 73, 77 – 8, 234, 241n18 tsuka, Eiji 246 – 8 pairing 45n23, 132, 184 – 5, 187n2, 188n22, 188n28, 189n29, 200, 203, 206n19; see also coupling panel (layout) 4, 6, 19, 23, 29, 32 – 4, 36 – 8, 42, 70, 72 – 3, 77, 100, 102 – 10, 113, 118n15, 118n26, 122, 128 – 30, 134 – 6, 138, 175, 187n1, 207n23, 226 – 9, 236, 239, 241n23, 250; see also koma(wari) parody 6, 121 – 5, 131, 134 – 6, 137n1, 138n20 picturebook 6 – 7, 11, 100 – 17, 117n3, 117n5, 117n7, 117n11, 117n12, 117n13, 118n14, 118n15, 118n20, 118n21, 118n26, 119n27, 119n28, 119n29, 261 piracy 1, 4, 21 – 2, 87 – 8, 91, 93, 206n16; see also scanlation pixiv 7, 143 – 57

Index ponchi-e 4, 28, 31 – 40, 42 – 3, 46n27 popular culture 21, 51 – 3, 86 – 8, 90, 92, 94, 96n8, 103, 107, 192, 216, 243 – 4, 248, 259, 262 – 3 postcolonial(ism) 5, 68, 85, 87, 91, 96, 221 postmodern(ism) 117, 244, 247 – 9 “Prince of Tennis” (Konomi) 168, 179, 180, 184, 188n27; see also Konomi, Takeshi Puck 4, 28, 34 – 5, 39 – 43, 45n26, 46n31; see also Tokyo Puck Rakuten 4, 27 – 43, 44n5, 44n6, 45n26, 46n27; see also Kitazawa, Rakuten (Yasuji) Readership 1, 6, 8, 50 – 1, 54, 57, 66, 91, 116, 121 – 5, 134 – 6, 164 – 7, 172 – 3, 178 – 9, 203 rental book; rental comics 50 – 4, 58, 89; see also kashihon rental bookshop 51 – 2; see also kashihonya (kashihon-ya) representation 7, 8, 32, 65 – 7, 70 – 1, 77, 110, 114, 172 – 3, 175, 178, 249 – 50, 260 role-playing-game (RPG) 2, 7, 10 – 11, 21, 165, 193, 195, 217, 243 – 56, 257n3, 257n4, 257n5, 257n6, 257n8, 257n12; see also game; videogame Saitō, Takao 52, 54, 63n2 sakuga kantoku 10, 222, 238; see also animation director Sakura (character in “Naruto”) 175 – 7, 224, 245, 253 sa¯kuru (circle) 173, 181 – 6, 188n26, 188n27, 188n28, 189n29, 189n30 Samurai Dreams (Crielaard, Chris) 121, 124 – 6, 128, 135 – 6; see also Crielaard, Chris Sasuke (character in “Naruto”) 169, 174 – 5, 184 – 5, 195, 197, 202, 206n19, 207n23, 224, 228 – 9, 240n11, 243, 245, 247, 249 Say, Allen 6, 112 – 16, 118n23, 118n24, 119n27 scanlation 2, 4, 6, 22, 123 – 4, 130, 134, 156, 196; see also piracy Schodt, Frederic L. 3 – 4, 29, 58, 79n7, 117n2, 123 Sci-Fi 66, 73, 166, 167, 174, 205n4

269

seinen (youth/young adult) manga 57, 74, 172 “Seisō Tsuidansha” (Shiwasu no Okina), 121, 124 – 5, 127 – 8, 132 – 6; see also Shiwasu no Okina self-censorship 67; see also jishuku Sellors, Paul 222 – 3, 237 seme 132, 184; see also uke sequence 10, 23, 34, 69, 70, 72 – 3, 100, 102, 104 – 6, 108, 110, 227 – 9, 232, 245, 257n7 serialization 68, 71, 80, 89, 92, 163 – 9, 173, 182 Shirato, Sanpei 52, 55, 174 Shirow, Masamune 225, 240n14 Shiwasu no Okina 2, 121, 125 – 6, 134, 136, 138n13, 138n15 shōjo (girls) manga 2, 44n13, 72, 79n5, 81n31, 108, 137n5, 172, 260 shōnen (boys) manga 8, 44n13, 81n30, 81n31, 172, 229 Shimizu, Isao 29 – 30, 31, 45n21, 45n25 Shinpei 2, 6, 112 – 13, 118n23, 118n24; see also Noro, Shinpei Shiriagari, Kotobuki 2, 66, 72 – 4, 79n5, 81n28 slash 9, 137n4, 193, 195, 200, 202, 205n5, 205n6, 205n7, 207n22; see also BL/boys’ love; yaoi Snowman, The (Briggs) 103 – 5; see also Briggs, Raymond social networking service (SNS) 7, 143 – 57 soft power 7, 85, 92 – 3, 98 sound word 23, 100, 103, 111; see also onomatopoeia speech balloon 37, 87, 101, 103, 108, 111 speed lines 100, 103, 110 Spiegelman, Art 69, 71 spread 73, 102, 104 – 6, 110, 113 – 14, 228; see also double spread story manga 29, 50, 53, 72, 117n1, 118n23 structuralism 10, 67, 90, 107, 121, 126, 131, 134 – 6, 137n1, 220 – 1, 237, 244 – 5, 247, 253, 256 Struwwelpeter 108 – 10 subculture 71, 246 Takahata, Isao 222, 238 Takemiya, Keiko 88

270 Index tankōbon 8, 19, 52, 74 – 5, 89, 165, 168 – 9, 172, 179, 182 – 3 Tatsumi, Yoshihiro 2, 4, 48 – 61 Tezuka, Osamu 1, 24 – 5, 28, 53, 62, 131, 227, 240n7, 262 Three Samurai Cats: A Story of Japan (Kimmel and Gerstein) 110 – 12; see also Kimmel, Eric, and Gerstein, Mordicai Tokyo Puck 4, 28, 34 – 5, 39 – 42, 45n26, 46n32; see also Puck Tomine, Adrian 5, 62, 63n8 Toriyama, Akira 167 transcultural (transnational) 1 – 8, 11, 66 – 9, 78, 85 – 7, 96, 101, 112, 121, 135 – 6, 143 – 5, 155 – 7 transformative 5, 9, 192 transmedial 9, 247 uke 132, 184, 189n29; see also seme ukiyo-e 24, 31, 34, 213 Underground Comix 4, 55, 124, 125 uzumaki 9, 195, 210, 216, 232, 234

videogame 2, 7, 10 – 11, 21, 165, 193, 195, 217, 243 – 56, 257n3, 257n4, 257n5, 257n6, 257n8, 257n12; see also game; roleplaying game webcomics (webtoon) 94 Weekly Shōnen Magazine; Shūkan shōnen Magazine; Shōnen Magazine 164, 175 White Dragon-LEGEND (HakuryūLEGEND) (Ten’ōji Dai, and Watanabe, Michio) 66, 75 Wiesner, David 6, 105 – 7, 118n19 yaoi 2, 8 – 9, 121, 172 – 3, 181, 184 – 7, 187n2, 188n18, 188n19, 188n22, 189n30, 193, 195, 197, 200, 203, 205n5, 205n6, 206n19, 207n23, 260; see also BL/boys’ love; slash Yoshimura, Kazuma 67 – 69, 79n3, 79n8, 79n11