Reflections: Writing Comics into Art History in Contemporary Japan
Jaqueline Berndt
In Japanese publisher Shogakukan com- –) and George Akiyama (Ashura, pleted a collection of lavishly illustrated coffee- –) as well as the watercolor picture table books on Japan’s art history (Nihon by Miyazaki Hayao which adorned the cover bijutsu zenshū). Each of the hard-cover of volume of his manga Nausicäa of the and boxed volumes in B size contains more Valley of the Wind (Kaze no tani no Naushika, than mostly full-page color images. ). The editor in charge was Sawaragi Noi, While collections like these are a well-estab- an art critic who had made a name for himself lished Japanese tradition dating back to the in Japan around , mainly by revisioning early s, the new edition proves to be modern Japanese art from the perspective of exceptional in a number of regards. In Murakami Takashi and others’ Neo-Pop. addition to the volumes on Japanese Art in Due to this focal point, he had also been East Asia (vol. ) and War and Art (vol. ), taking popular forms of visual art into it stands out for the inclusion of manga,as account. With respect to the recent coffee- comics are called in Japanese (Fig. ). table book, Sawaragi explicates that “we Volume , which covers the period from included manga works in the color illus- to , features eight manga works in trations of this volume to an extent beyond its main part: two double-spreads of Tezuka comparison with any other collected edition Osamu’s pioneering graphic narrative The of Japanese art so far”, framing this with the New Treasure Island (Shintakarajima, ; with Sakai Shichima), one pre-print page con- sisting of six panels from Mizuki Shigeru’s Kitarō of the Graveyard (Hakaba no Kitarō, ), one double-spread with eleven panels from Shirato Sanpei’s The Legend of Kamui (Kamui-den, ; original ink-drawing with typed dialogue lines pasted into the balloons), one frontispiece page with title and two panels from Akatsuka Fujio’s gag manga series Tensai Bakabon (), two panels from one of Tanioka Yasuji’s nonsense manga (Yasuji ō ō Fig. 1. Volumes 19 and 20 of Japanese Art (Nihon no mettametagaki d k za, ), single- bijutsu zensh¯u, Shogakukan 2015) next to some manga image illustrations by Nagai Gō (Devilman, in book format (tank ¯obon). Photo by Jaqueline Berndt.
© 2016 Konsthistoriska Sallskapet ISSN 0023-3609 KONSTHISTORISK TIDSKRIFT/JOURNAL OF ART HISTORY 2016 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00233609.2016.1259658 2 JAQUELINE BERNDT imperative “to not just do away the rise of As the major publications evince, since the manga in this era as a mere fashion, but s manga studies has considered art rather ask ourselves how to class it as one history mainly in regard to institutional legiti- form of postwar art”. mization and, if linked to aesthetic properties The above case may appear exceptional at all, premodern Japanese visual art, such as within the domain of Japanese art history, but the famous Scrolls of Frolicking Animals actually it is very much in line with contempor- (Chōjū jinbutsu giga, th century) or the ary manga discourse. Firstly, manga is con- Hokusai Manga (–). To date the ceived here – even if visually represented by art-historical perspective has still not surfaced unpanelled images – in the sense of graphic in the journal of the Japan Society for Studies narrative, not caricature or newspaper comic- in Cartoons and Comics (Nihon manga strip and neither a specific illustration style or gakkai,foundedin). In regard to carving character design. In modern Japan, the seman- out manga’s medium specificity as comics, tic spectrum of the term manga had become film studies has played the crucial role, begin- broader and broader since ,whenKita- ning with the popular characterization of zawa Rakuten launched a newspaper Sunday postwar story manga and its pioneer Tezuka supplement under that name. In the s, Osamu (–)asfilmic or cinematic. however, entertaining fiction serialized in Secondly, it is noteworthy that all manga special magazines started to predominate the works which take center stage in volume meaning. Accordingly, Japanese comics criti- of Japanese Art are by male artists. Admittedly, cism has been preoccupied with so-called Sawaragi’s explanatory essay in that volume story manga at the expense of single images. touches also upon pioneers of girls (shōjo) In contrast, the modern institution of art, and manga and acknowledges some of them by art history as one of its branches, has shown means of smaller images, namely Yamagishi an inclination to take the reverse stance. This Ryōko, Ōshima Yumiko, Takemiya Keiko, began in the late th century when image Hagio Moto, and Mutsu A-ko. But the and text, which had traditionally been entwined overall emphasis is on manga by male artists in pictorial narratives and illustrated literature, targeted at boys and male youths, attesting to saw their segregation for the sake of modern the fact that they have represented the stan- autonomy, and manga was conceptualized as dard despite the increased importance of a form of pure visual art. A century later female genres since around . Female art manga studies gained academic currency, but historians who are familiar with modern girls unlike comics studies in Europe and North media such as Sano Midori and Yamamoto America the new field did not take the route Yōko have interrelated the gender aspect of from fine art to literary studies; it has rather contemporary manga narratives with dis- been dominated by sociological media-studies tinctly female traditions of Japanese art, approaches with a special focus on publication stretching from mood-oriented visual story- modes as well as reader demographics. In telling, decorative designs and stylized, as keeping with manga’s industrial and fan-cul- opposed to individualized, visages (for tural particularities, critics interested in visual example in the illustrated scrolls of The Tale storytelling have been inclined to focus on of Prince Genji/Genji monogatari emaki, th genre conventions and widely shared topoi. century) to women as artists and recipients. WRITING COMICS INTO ART HISTORY IN JAPAN 3
Thirdly, it deserves attention that manga is Society although rarely in the same section. given prominence in the volume which The symposium was an exception in covers the so-called postwar decades, but not that regard and as such indicative of a period in the final volume titled Present and when art historians were not yet certain Future of Japanese Art –Today. In about what to address under the name of addition to the already mentioned images, manga. The talks given discussed a broad volume even includes an essay authored range of subjects, stretching from Gustave by a manga critic: Itō Gō. Itō gained Doré’s caricatures and cartoons by Japanese renown with the monograph Tezuka is dead pre-war avant-garde artists to the Belgian (), which suggested to question the comics series Yoko Tsuno (Roger Leloup, central role of Tezuka Osamu and thereby –) and s girls manga. In the s, grand narratives in manga discourse against however, magazine-based Japanese graphic the backdrop of transmedial characters and narratives took precedence. By now they rep- fannish appropriations. He drew attention resent comics’ medium specificity even for to the fact that the media usage of teenagers, Japanese specialists of modern Western art. manga’s initial readership, had changed with This inclination manifests itself in a col- respect to both favoring video games and, in lected volume whose title is best translated as regard to comics, going beyond traditional, The experience of ‘watching’ manga due to i.e. author- and meaning-oriented, forms of the exclusive reference to neither caricatures reading. Under the conditions of digitalization nor Franco-Belgian bande dessinée but con- and gamification, the manga medium as it has temporary manga and commercially success- been known – that is, print-based graphic nar- ful series at that. In a rather unusual ratives composed of still, mute, and mono- attempt, Japanese historians of Western art – chrome sequences – is aging, and with its mostly specialized in Surrealist painting – col- zenith passed (as decreasing magazine print- laborated with representative manga critics to runs indicate), it enters the realm of Japanese explore how temporality in the representation art history for good. and perception of comics differs from film, the Attempts at inclusion were made already in medium which manga has been preferably , when the Japan Art History Society held compared to. In his introduction, editor a much-noticed symposium on the matter as Suzuki Masao starts from the observation, part of their spring conference. Since then, that Surrealist painting and graphic narratives the share of discourse analysis and insti- occupy a similarly awkward position within tutional self-critique of the discipline of art the discipline of art history, and he identifies history in modern Japan has abated, making the relation between duration and moment, way for more specific investigations. These or more precisely, the favoring of discontinu- show mainly two orientations: one towards ous movement, as the main reason for that. historiographic, the other one towards con- In order to make painting and manga compar- ceptual concerns. Art history in the strict able, the emphasis is put on “watching” rather sense falls into two strands due to Japan’s par- than “reading”, at least as a point of departure. ticular modernization project: Japanese art Thus, Suzuki’s own chapter, which aims at history and Western art history. Both variants demonstrating that in manga/comics, “the are represented in the Japan Art History moment does not exist”, analyzes first a 4 JAQUELINE BERNDT number of single panels instead of sequences. To Suzuki the pleasure of constantly nego- Rather than clipping an individual moment tiating the above duality is crucial to both Sur- out of the flow of time, in comics even the realist painting and comics (in the form of single panel contains a duration, a layering of contemporary manga), and he emphasizes various moments in juxtaposition: “Pictured that this would not have been possible before in the same panel, different persons, objects, the th century, pointing to the modernity and landscapes each live their own time [and] of visuality as the pivot of comics research the different times traverse due to our [the from the side of a conceptually rather than his- reader’s] influence.” His visual examples, toriographically informed study of art. In a however, do not comply with what Scott similar way, Kajiya Kenji foregrounds McCloud called a “polyptych”, that is, a modern visuality and its consequences for single panel relating a duration of time the image. Reflecting upon comics against against a continuous background, reminiscent the backdrop of the art criticism of Abstract of a horizontal camera pan. Rather various Expressionism, he maintains that both forms points in time are layered in a way which deviated from the representation of privileged cannot be shot with a camera. This applies, moments in empirically verifiable images, for example, to cases when a speaker and the giving preference to “transcendental”, or dia- mimic responses to her utterance appear grammatic, pictures instead. As such they behind each other in one and the same panel, exhibit an “indeterminacy of the frame of or when the object at which a character gazes vision”, which goes beyond the ambiguous appears behind this very character as if the relation of panel and page in comics as intro- character could gaze with the back of her duced by Itō Gō. head. In the globally successful manga series The “indeterminacy of the frame” (frame of the early st century, this device serves no fukakuteisei) was a core concept in Itō’s further to conjoin subjective and objective per- monograph. Put simply, he explained spectives pictorially: characters are not only that comics/manga, as distinct from the given an inner voice but occasionally also an unchanging size and form of a film screen, inner (self-)image, which may differ from invite the recipient to change their frame of their outer looks to an extend that readers vision, focusing alternately on panel, page, who are not manga-literate do not even recog- and double-spread, zooming-in and nize the identity. Izumi Nobuhiko has coined zooming-out, so to say. In order to avoid the term out-of-body shot for that. But blatant generalization, Itō introduced two spe- duality is not limited to the representation of cifying terms: panel layout or composition characters and moments; it also pertains to per- (koma kōsei), and panel progression or tran- ception. According to Suzuki, the comparison sition (koma tenkai). While the first one with Surrealist painting helps to realize that it draws attention to the whole page and its is the “duality of the watching subject” which breakdown or sectioning, the latter focuses sets the manga image in motion. Like Surre- on the relation of the panels to each other, alist painting, manga/comics engage their that is, a kind of interconnection which does reader as observer and participant at the same not let the page stand out as a composition time which makes identification without in its own right. Importantly, these two ways immersion possible, as distinct from film. of framing the field of vision are not regarded WRITING COMICS INTO ART HISTORY IN JAPAN 5 as alternative, but complementary and there- binding technologies, and the general role of fore “indeterminate”. While as a matter of Westernization in Japan’s modernization. course the two variants assume different Twenty years ago, manga columnist weight in different works, the interplay Natsume Fusanosuke pointed out that between panel and page, up to the awareness “Japan’s traditional aesthetics experienced a of the double-spread as an important aesthetic break with the past” due to its collision with element, is by tendency more pronounced in a stronger foreign culture, and that “before manga than in Western comics (among long, a modern form, that is, the panel other things due to the traditional publication sequence of the Western comic-strip (in mode of magazine serialization). other words, the function of articulating dis- Applying Itō’s concept to his own field, crete moments of time in the course of Saitō Tetsuya, another contributor to the events) was imported”. Whereas Western above-mentioned edited volume, maintains art historians like Suzuki are intrigued by the that Surrealist paintings like René Magritte’s fact that “the moment doesn’t exist” in man- Man with a Newspaper () or Victor Brau- gaesque time, Natsume took the articulation ner’s The Strange Case of Monsieur K () of discrete moments for granted, thereby may exhibit panel layout (koma kōsei), but accentuating the “determinacy” of the frame. no panel progression (koma tenkai). That At the time, he maintained that the panel or is to say, even if the picture plane is divided single frame was an imported concept, which into sections – or panels, to use the non-art rendered the ambiguous pictorial time and historical term – the connection between space of traditional handscrolls (emaki), for these sections remains purely pictorial and as example, unequivocal. His claim was directed such external from a narratological perspec- against specialists of Japanese art history tive. With the sections’ sequence staying (which usually ended before the th century non-directional and as such “indeterminate”, back then), namely the inclination to pass it is up to the viewer to see the image as an over modernity and replace historic change addition of panels or a divided plane or with cultural as local, or even national, parti- both, a continuous as well as discontinuous cularity. Tsuji Nobuo, a pioneer of including entity. Although pursuing differences previously marginal subjects, who has collabo- between Surrealist painting and manga, Saitō rated frequently with Murakami Takashi also acknowledges the importance of discuss- since the s, is representative in that ing manga with respect to modern visual regard: culture, as distinct from the majority of jour- … nalists, educators, and exhibition organizers I believe there is merit in looking from a broader art historical perspective to examine who address manga, whether from the pos- transhistorical resonances when they can be ition of art history or comics criticism. discovered [ … ] we should not simply look Within scholarly manga studies, the role of at anime [or manga] as a direct import modernity has been stressed since the mid- from the West, which evolved in Japan according to postwar consumer s, mainly in regard to the emergence of tastes. newspapers and magazines as mediators of a new public sphere in the late th century, Like comics critics before him, Tsuji tried to the concurrent spread of novel printing and make manga and other undervalued forms of 6 JAQUELINE BERNDT popular art acceptable by underlining their expected from entertaining illustrated narra- Japaneseness. Admittedly, the aesthetic con- tives. Besides, this technique was too strongly cepts he brought into play were not the inter- laden with religious connotations to be taken nationally already established ones linked to lightly. Often used in hanging scrolls illustrat- Zen-Buddhism or the tea ceremony, but ing Buddhist tales or the life of famous monks rather eccentricity, playfulness, and laughter. (setsuwaga), such sequences were not targeted In part due to the early point in the develop- at an individual reader, but a group of more or ment of the field, manga’s Japanese particular- less uneducated people who would listen to a ity was emphasized at the expense of medium priest’s instructions. specificity which would call for both dis- As a historian, Yamamoto attaches impor- tinguishing comics from animation and con- tance to “reading” the artifacts in regard to sidering the role of intercultural exchange for for whom they were created and with what manga as a form of popular art. intention on part of the artists, how they circu- Over the last two decades the discussion has lated at their time and what meanings their developed much further not only with respect motifs carried. In relation to her colleagues to the conceptual, but also to the historio- she seeks to demonstrate the value of these graphic strand of art-historical engagement images as historical sources; in relation to with manga. Most noteworthy in regard to manga discourse she insists on the necessity the latter are the publications by Yamamoto of art-historical knowledge as a prerequisite Yōko. Already in , she attracted attention of any attempt at relating contemporary with an article in which she compared the rep- comics to premodern visual art. While his- resentation of time and space in traditional toricization is vital, it will however not Japanese painting with paneling in manga nar- suffice in the face of popular desires and insti- ratives. She clarified that traditions of purely tutional requirements to cater to such desires, pictorial storytelling – including expressions one example being the persistence of manga of movement in time and lines which visualize exhibitions that promote alleged origins. voices, alleged predecessors of speech balloons Against this backdrop, manga studies seems – had not only a narrative function different to be better advised to make the frequently from contemporary manga but were also dis- invoked characteristic of its subject –“indeter- continued historically: voice lines, for minacy”–its methodological motto. The con- example, disappeared in the early th tinuity or discontinuity between traditional century when dialogue text entered the visual art and contemporary manga is not image, adopting the respective functions. only a matter of historiographic evidence; it Other devices lived on but were not appreci- is also a matter of perspective: art historians ated by the popular artists of the th and may, for example, overlook the most striking th centuries. Subdividing the picture plane commonality between the famous Hokusai into panels was one of them. Viewers with Manga and today’s manga, namely the role the ability to recognize the passage of time, of pictorial reference books shared by fol- that is, sequentiality within simultaneity, lowers or recipients-turned-creators. were not in need of such a visual aid. On Instead of favoring one side against the the contrary, the resulting lack of ambiguity other, “indeterminacy” holds the potential diminished the playfulness which recipients for exploring possible interrelations. Such a WRITING COMICS INTO ART HISTORY IN JAPAN 7 mindset could help to close the gap between Othering: The Relevance of »Art« in Contemporary Japanese Manga Discourse”, in Livia Monnet, ed., historiographic and conceptual approaches Approches critiques de la pensée japonaise du XXe siécle/ and also bridge the cultural divide within Critical Readings in Twentieth Century Japanese Thought, Montréal: Les Presses de l’Université de Montréal, , comics research, where the study of manga pp. –, and “Drawing, Reading, Sharing: A Guide to (or manga-style productions) is still boxed the Manga Hokusai Manga Exhibition”,inManga off from other kinds of graphic narratives, Hokusai Manga: Approaching the Master’s Compendium from the Perspective of Contemporary Comics, exh.cat., not only in Japanese academia. The Japan Foundation, , pp. –; https://www. academia.edu//HEAVY_FILE_Drawing_ Reading_Sharing_A_Guide_to_the_Manga_Hokusai_ Manga_Exhibition_ (last accessed September ). Endnotes . Cf. Sano Midori in conversation with Tsuji Nobuo, . In his art-sociological monograph Shakai to tsunagaru “Taidan: emaki no yūgisei to tanoshimikata”, in Iwasugi bijutsushi-gaku: Kingendai academism to media, goraku Junji, ed., Emakimono no kanshō kiso chishiki, Tokyo: (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kobunkan, ), Ōta Tomoki Shibundō, ,p. [pp. –]. describes the development of these collections ū ū (pp. –). . Yamashita Y ji, ed., Nihon bijutsu zensh , dai- kan: – genzai Nihon bijutsu no genzai, mirai, Tokyo: . Following Japanese, and Japanological, custom, Japanese Shogakukan, . This volume contains manga images names are given in the form of surname preceding given from Okazaki Kyōko’s Helter Skelter (), Matsumoto name without separation by comma. For the Taiyō’s Ping Pong (Vol , ), and Araki Hirohiko’s romanization of Japanese words, the revised Hepburn JoJo’s Bizarre Adventures (JoJo no kimyōna bōken, part , system is used. Accordingly, Japanese terms are given ). without “s” in the plural form. .Itō Gō, “Manga to bijutsu no »aida«”, in Sawaragi, ed., . Nihon bijutsu zenshū, dai-kan: sengo – kakuchō , pp. –. suru sengo bijutsu, edited by Sawaragi Noi, Tokyo: ō Shogakukan, . . id., Tezuka izu deddo: Hirakareta manga hyegenron , Tokyo: NTT Publ., . . Sawaragi Noi, “Yomigaeru »sengo bijutsu«: shikashi kono ’ “ ō kuruma wa moto kita hōkō e hasshiteiru de wa nai ka”,in . Tan o Yasunori, Shinpojiumu h koku Bijutsushi kara ” id., ed., , pp. – [–]. The Japanese manga o kangaeru , Bijutsushi (Journal of the Japan Art – expression “postwar” (sengo) applies to a longer period History Society), # , Vol ,No , Oct. , pp. than the immediate years following WWII, that is, usually . from to (when the Shōwa emperor passed . Suzuki Masao, ed., Manga o ‘miru’ to iu taiken, Tokyo: away). Suiseisha, . . Cf. Ronald Stewart, “Manga as Schism: Kitazawa . Suzuki, “Shunkan wa sonzai shinai: mangateki jikan e no Rakuten’s Resistance to «Old-Fashioned» Japan”,in toi”, in id., ed., , pp. – [–]. Jaqueline Berndt & Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, eds, ’ . Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics, the Invisible Art, Manga s Cultural Crossroads, New York: Routledge, , pp. –. New York: Harper Perennial, ( ), p. . “ . Izumi Nobuyuki, Manga o meguru bōken , no place: . Miyamoto Hirohito, The Formation of an Impure Genre: – On the Origins of Manga”, transl. Jennifer Prough, Review Piano Fire Publ., , pp. . of Japanese Culture and Society,Jōsai University, Tokyo, . Suzuki, ,p.. Vol XIV, December , pp. –. . Kajiya Kenji, “Manga to bijutsu: Gendai bijutsu hihyō no . Cf. Jaqueline Berndt, “Manga Studies #: Introduction”, shiten kara”, in Suzuki, ed., , pp. –; see also Comics Forum (academic website for Comics Studies, id., “Ishiko Junzō no chikakuron-teki tenkai: Manga Leeds University), . http://comicsforum.org/// hihyō ochūshin ni”, Bijutsu Forum ,No, , /manga-studies--introduction-by-jaqueline-berndt/ pp. –. (last accessed September ). . Saitō Tetsuya, “Bunretsu suru frame: Surrealism ‘to’ . The discursive interrelation of manga and art (from manga”, in Suzuki, ed., ,p. [–]. premodern to contemporary) in manga criticism subsided . In Natsume Fusanosuke et al., Manga no yomikata, after the s. Exceptional for Japanese manga studies, Tokyo: Takarajimasha, ,p.. Sasaki Minoru traces the history of panelling from a crosscultural and aesthetic point of view in Mangashi no . Tsuji Nobuo, “Early Medieval Picture Scrolls as Ancestors kiso mondai: Hogarth, Töpffer kara Tezuka Osamu e, of Anime and Manga”, in Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere, Tokyo: Office Helia, . As for the discourse on manga ed., Births and Rebirths in Japanese Art, Leiden: Hotei, traditions, cf. Jaqueline Berndt, “Permeability and ,p. [–]. 8 JAQUELINE BERNDT
. Tsuji Nobuo, “Tanioka manga no art-sei”,inYasuji no . Cf. Berndt, , pp. –. mettametagaki dōkōza, Tokyo: Jitsugyō no Nihon-sha, , pp. – [–]. Jaqueline Berndt . Yamamoto Yōko, “Manga izen no Nihon kaiga no jikan to Department of Asian, Middle Eastern and kūkan hyōgen: Manga no koma to no taihi ni oite”, Meisei daigaku kenkyū kiyō,No, March , pp. –. Turkish Studies The article was reprinted together with others in id., Stockholm University ō “ ” ō ō Emaki no zuz gaku: E soragoto no hy gen to hass , SE- Stockholm Tokyo: Bensei shuppan, . Sweden . Yamamoto, ,p.. E-mail: [email protected] . Yamamoto, , pp. ii, iv.