Resurgence of Angry Manga

In a recent column for “Through Otaku Eyes” for the Daily Yomiuri, Kanta Ishida wrote about a NY Times review for Yoshihiro Tatsumi’s work.  Here is an excerpt from the column.

Yoshihiro Tatsumi, a “forgotten” mangaka of the gekiga style, which uses realistic pictures, has emerged in the international spotlight.

The New York Times reviewed an autobiographical work by Tatsumi in its April 15 Arts section. The long work is Gekiga Hyoryu, which was originally published by Seirin Kogeisha Co. last year and was translated and issued by the Canadian publishing house Drawn & Quarterly as A Drifting Life.

Times reviewer Dwight Garner wrote: “It’s a big, fat, greasy tub of salty popcorn for anyone interested (as Americans increasingly are) in the theory and practice of Japanese comics. It’s among this genre’s signal achievements.”

The review concluded: “A book like A Drifting Life is fairly easy to pick apart on a drawing-by-drawing or line-by-line basis. Don’t make that mistake. Its pleasures are cumulative; the book has a rolling, rumbling grandeur. It’s as if someone had taken a Haruki Murakami novel and drawn, beautifully and comprehensively, in its margins.”

The newspaper certainly gave the mangaka great acclaim. Given the popularity or name recognition Tatsumi has in Japan, however, I cannot deny I was somewhat surprised by the Times’ rave review. Most of Tatsumi’s past works now are difficult to obtain, and there must be a considerable number of people, even among avid manga fans, who do not know his name.

“Death Note” creators are back with “Bakuman”

In a recent column of “Through Otaku Eyes” by Kanta Ishida for the Daily Yomiuri, Ishida wrote about the return of Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Oba, known for “Death Note” who are now working on “Bakuman”.  Here is an excerpt from the column:

Takeshi Obata and Tsugumi Oba, the team of manga artist and writer who made Death Note a blockbuster, have returned to the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump magazine with Bakuman.

They depicted a dark world in Death Note, but this time they are running a surprisingly cheerful manga with a youthful spirit. Bakuman, a manga about two boys who jointly aspire to become mangaka, may be regarded today’s version of Mangamichi, an autobiographical masterpiece by Fujio Fujiko A.

Still, Bakuman has novel features. While treading the high road of boys’ manga by depicting both first love and friendship, it also gets the lowdown on the manga industry in a very realistic manner. It is the real-life editorial department of Shonen Jump at Shueisha Inc. to which Moritaka Mashiro and Akito Takagi–Bakuman’s protagonists–bring their manga for the first time.

Although an editor appearing in the manga seems to be fictitious, his explanation of the magazine’s renowned readers’ vote system and his advice to the two that they can use some unrighteous means to get their work serialized in the magazine have the ring of authenticity. The manga is the first to reveal in detail how the magazine nurtures young talent. Bakuman can be regarded as a very practical manual for would-be mangaka, as well as entertainment for the rest of us.

Partly because this is the 50th anniversary of the launch of the magazines Weekly Shonen Sunday and Weekly Shonen Magazine, a series of excellent manga works about mangaka have been produced of late. Seishun Shonen Magazine (Kodansha Ltd.) by Makoto Kobayashi, who is known for his Ichi Ni no Sanshiro, is one such work. It displays the young figure of Kobayashi, who debuted as a mangaka in 1978 in a publication simply titled Magazine, and the enthusiasm of the publication’s editorial department at that time with a lots of humor, Kobayashi’s specialty, in a true-to-life style.

But Seishun Shonen Magazine gradually becomes depressing in its latter half. Two of Kobayashi’s close friends, Natsuki Owada and Shinji Ono, who both developed their talent at Magazine, die. Owada breaks down under the pressure of serializing his work in Magazine and kills himself. Ono becomes sick and dies.

Kobayashi, also devastated by round-the-clock work and stress, prays, saying: “God, I don’t care when I die. But, please, let me finish the work for this week’s issue!”

Yamada finds new approach to Tokiwa-so mangaka

In a recent “Through Otaku Eyes”, Kanta Ishida wrote:

Beatitude, the latest manga by Naito Yamada, is a shocking work for people like me who are in their late 40s and avid fans of the legendary Tokiwa-so group–so-called because they lived in the same apartment building, called Tokiwa-so, in their early years and developed a ground breaking new aesthetic.

Beatitude is set in 1955 when 18-year-old Shotaro Hananomori comes to Tokyo from the Tohoku region to become a mangaka. He settles in his dream place–the Tokio-so apartment–with his close friend Fujio Kubozuka. The wooden apartment, where Tezuka-sensei used to live, is inhabited by poor but young and ambitious people who are developing through friendly competition and forming the mangaka group Manga Ryozanpaku.

It is clear that Tokio-so is based on Tokiwa-so, in Toshima Ward, Tokyo, where such manga giants as Osamu Tezuka, Shotaro Ishinomori, Fujio Akatsuka, Fujio Fujiko and Hideko Mizuno resided in the 1950s. It is also apparent that mop-haired Hananomori and girlie Kubozuka are modeled after Shotaro Ishinomori and Fujio Akatsuka, respectively.

But what surprises me is that Beatitude is not a fact-based manga like Mangamichi drawn by Fujio Fujiko A (the duo originally known as Fujio Fujiko disbanded and became Fujio F. Fujiko and Fujio Fujiko A in the 1980s). Despite its similarity to that story, it has totally different aims.

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Rumiko Takahashi’s popularity worldwide

In a recent column of “Through Otaku Eyes”, Kanta Ishida wrote about the worldwide popularity of Rumiko Takahashi.

Ishida wrote, “Who is the artist who played the greatest role in the “globalization” of Japanese manga?”

“It might be Akira Toriyama, whose Dragon Ball became synonymous with manga. Or it might be Katsuhiro Otomo, who showed his skill at precise description in Akira, or Naoko Takeuchi, who excited enthusiasm among girls across Europe and the United States with her Pretty Guardian Sailor Moon. Or maybe it’s Fujio F. Fujiko, as there can hardly be a child in Asia who doesn’t know Doraemon.”

“All these names are necessary when talking about Japanese manga’s foreign expansion.”

“But I’m beginning to think it may be the works of Rumiko Takahashi that showed the world the essence of manga more widely and deeply in and after the 1980s.”

“I am sometimes surprised by how widely her works are known while talking with people in the manga industry abroad. Pascal Lafine, editor in chief of Tonkam, a publishing company in France, told me about his considerable feeling for Takahashi’s hit manga series, Urusei Yatsura and Maison Ikkoku. Lau Wan Kit, a Hong Kong cartoonist who won the top prize in the second annual International Manga Award contest hosted by the Japanese Foreign Ministry for artists based overseas last month, said Takahashi is one of the mangaka he respects. Russian Japanologist Ivan Sergeevich Logachov loved Takahashi’s Ranma 1/2 so much that he finally translated it into Russian.”

“There may be mangaka who have sold more copies abroad than Takahashi has, but in many cases a certain title or artist is especially popular in one area and not so much so in others. Takahashi is a rare case in that her works are evenly popular over many parts of the world.”

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[FRANCE] Manga Fever in France

In a recent column by Ishida Kanta for the Daily Yomiuri, Ishida wrote, “Japanese pop culture, manga in particular, is enjoying a boom in France. A recent event showed how much young people in France are learning about Japanese culture through manga and developing a longing for their “dream country.”

“The ninth Japan Expo was held July 3-6 at Paris-Nord Villepinte Convention and Exhibition Center. The venue, more than twice as big as Tokyo Dome, was packed with a variety of manga and related items and thronged with cosplayers, as if to reflect the strong yearnings for Japan among manga lovers in France.”

“The bulk of the exhibition was given over to booths operated by publishers dealing with French editions of Japanese manga. But I was more amazed by other booths handling a great variety of items, ranging from kimono, swords and character figures to calligraphy items, round-headed kokeshi dolls and origami.”

“As I walked among the exhibition visitors, most of whom were participating in cosplay, I felt a mild culture shock at the chaotic and extraordinary space.”

“Two middle school girls, clad in “Gosu-rori” outfits–a colloquial abbreviation of the terms Gothic and Lolita–they bought from a Japanese mail-order company, told me they like One Piece most among Japanese manga. The also said they find Japanese culture very interesting as it is “modern.”

“Through this event we hope to introduce Japanese lifestyles into our own through manga culture,” said event staffer Thomas Sirdey, 28

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[JAPAN] THROUGH OTAKU EYES / First and last manga exhibition answers important question

In the latest column for “Through Otaku Eyes” for the Daily Yomiuri, Ishida Kanta writes, “Although it will end Sunday, Inoue Takehiko: The Last Manga Exhibition, which is being held at the Ueno Royal Museum in Ueno, Tokyo, is an unprecedented event in the study of the relationship between museum and manga.”

“Museum exhibitions of work by mangaka are now somewhat commonplace, but they do not have a long history. Until about 20 years ago, there were few people in the world of art who considered postwar manga “art.” It might have been possible to hold such a show at a department store gallery, but displaying manga at an art museum was out of the question.”

“The exhibition of the works of Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astroboy, in 1990 at the National Museum of Modern Art in Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo, was a turning point for such perceptions. The event, held about one year after the death of the manga giant, was a large-scale retrospective with about 1,500 original drawings. The event drew headlines along the lines of, “Public museum opens its doors to manga.”

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