Writing Comics Into Art History in Contemporary Japan

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

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