Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga / Frederik L
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ederik L. Schodt Writings On Modern Manga V Stone Bridge Press • Berkeley, California Published by Stone Bridge Press, P.O. Box 8208, Berkeley, CA 94707 510-524-8732 • [email protected] • www.stonebridge.com This 2nd printing includes several minor text corrections as well as updates as of 1998/99 for sources and contacts in the Appenidx: Manga in English. Text copyright © 1996 by Frederik L. Schodt. Cover design by Raymond Larrett incorporating an illustration by Yoshikazu Ebisu. Text design by Peter Goodman. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher. Printed in the United States of America. 10 98765432 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 1999 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA Schodt, Frederik L. Dreamland Japan: writings on modern manga / Frederik L. Schodt. p. cm. Includes index. ISBN 1 -880656-23-X (paper). 1. Comic books, strips, etc.—Japan— History and criticism. I. Title. PN6790.J3S285 1996 741,5'952—dc20 96-11375 CIP Dedicated to the memory of Kakuyu (aka Toba), A.D. 1053-1140 CONTENTS Preface 11 Enter the Id 19 What Are Manga? 21 Why Read Manga? 29 Modern Manga at the End ■ of the Millennium 33 What's in a Word? 33 The Dojinshi World 36 Otaku 43 Are Manga Dangerous? 49 Freedom of Speech vs. Regulation 53 Black and White Issues # 1 59 Black and White Issues #2 63 Do Manga Have a Future? 68 COVERS OF MANGA MAGAZINES 73 The Manga Magazine Scene 81 CoroCoro Comic 83 Weekly Boys'Jump 87 Nakayoshi 92 Big Comics 95 Morning 101 Tcike Shobo and Mahjong Manga 106 Pachinko Manga Magazines 110 Combat Comic 115 June 120 Comic Amour 124 Yan Mama Comic 127 Garo 131 Artists and Their Work 136 Hinako Sugiura 136 King Terry 140 Z-Chan (Shingo Iguchi) 144 Yoshikazu Ebisu 147 Kazuichi Hanawa 150 Murasaki Yamada 155 Suehiro Maruo 159 Silent Service (Kaiji Kawaguchi) 164 Akira Narita 168 Shungicu Uchida 173 Shigeru Mizuki 177 Emperor of the Land o f the Rising Sun 1 Criminal Defense Stories 186 Fancy Dance (Reiko Okano) 189 Tomoi (Wakuni Akisato) 193 Naniwa Financiers (Yuji Aoki) 196 Yoshiharu Tsuge 200 Banana Fish (Akimi Yoshida) 203 Milk Morizono 207 The Way of Manga (Fujiko Fujio ®) 212 Doraemon (Fujiko F. Fujio) 216 King of Editors (Seiki Tsuchida) 221 A Declaration of Arrogant-ism 224 AUM Cult Comics 228 1 Osamu Tezuka: A Tribute I to the God of Comics 233 The Human Dream Factory 233 Mighty Atom and Astro Boy 244 The Three Adolfs 248 Princess Knight and Takarazuka 253 Black Jack 257 Phoenix 261 Jungle Emperor 268 Beyond Manga 275 Nausicad and the Manga-Anime Link 275 Manga Artist as Film Director 282 The Manga-Novel Nexus 287 Information Manga 295 Manga Artists and Computers 298 Manga in the English-Speaking World 305 English-Language Manga Publishers 308 Manga Made in America 326 Fan Power 328 Networking 332 Beyond Fandom 337 Appendix: Manga in English 341 References and Recommended Readings 348 Index 357 s Jl . PREFACE NCE UPON A TIME, IN THE DISTANT DAYS OF 1983, 1 WROTE A book titled Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics. It never sold many copies, but it is now saidO to be something of a cult classic; it even has a Japan ese bistro named after it in Berkeley, California, Certainly, when it first appeared most people had never heard of Japanese comics. Japan was the land of successful man agement or meditation techniques, or of beautiful arts and crafts. If the Japanese word for comics—“manga” (pronounced “mahngha”)—evoked any sort of associa tion at all in the average English-speaking brain, it was probably mixed in with mental images of a rare metal or something that one does at an Italian restaurant. Much has changed since 1983. “Manga” and its cousin, “anime” (Japanese for animation, pronounced “ah- neemay,” sometimes also referred to as “Japanimation”), are firmly established in the lexicon of young fans of comics and animation; in due time both words will undoubtedly be listed in the standard English dictionary along with other Japanese imports like “hari-kari” and “karaoke.” Manga and anime works are now widely avail able in translated form, multiple monthly English-lan guage magazines cover both industries, and there are even conventions for non-Japanese fans held around the world several times a year. And manga themselves have changed. The industry has grown larger and fatter, and a whole new generation of younger artists has come to the fore with innovations in both style and content. I therefore am often asked, “When are you going to ll update Manga! Manga!?" As the years go by, this has become an increasingly painful question. The original Japanese publisher once asked me to do a revision, but for reasons only it knows changed its mind and at pre sent, at least, is not amenable to the idea. At the end of the 1980s, a friend and I did most of the work for a com pletely different book on manga, only to have the New York publisher temporarily self-disintegrate in one of the corporate shake-ups that periodically steamroll through the industry But enough of that. * * Dreamland Japan is not a revision of Manga! Manga! but a sequel of sorts. Like an architectural structure inspired by a predecessor, it builds upon and occasionally references the earlier work, but it isn’t necessary to have seen the original to enjoy it (although doing so may make it easier to understand). Manga! Manga! is still in print and still a comprehensive introduction to the manga field in Japan, with many pages devoted to a historical overview. Read ers of this book whose curiosity is piqued will thus find many of the answers to their questions therein. Dreamland Japan is the product of observing and writing about the manga industry in Japan over the last sixteen years. It is designed in a sort of “Whitman’s Sam pler” of commentary and criticism, and it can be read in small morsels or (although not necessarily best for the digestion) at one sitting; either way, upon completion the whole will, I hope, be far greater than the sum of the parts. Some of the material has appeared at one time or another in different formats or other places, and I have rewritten and rearranged it here. A few readers may rec ognize sections from articles written for the Atlanta-based magazine Mangajin or the San Francisco-based Animeri- ca. Some of the material is also derived from a monthly column I have written for nearly seven years in a Tokyo English-language newspaper called the Mainichi Daily News. This recycling of the newspaper column is not as shameless as it might first appear, however, for one char 12 PREFACE acteristic of the Mainichi Daily News is that, despite the valiant efforts of the hard-working editors, it is not very widely read in Japan or anywhere else. For me, this has had advantages, as it has allowed me to experiment with and develop many of the themes that I wanted to later incorporate in this book. * * Before plunging ahead, 1 need to go over a few house keeping details: Japanese comics are normally laid out in a mirror image of their English-language counterparts: the front cover is what would be the “back cover” of an American comic; the pages are turned from left-to-right instead of right-to-left; panels on a page start at the top right and are usually read from the top right across and down to the bottom left of the page; and the dialog or text in each word balloon is usually laid-out vertically, read from the far right line to the left. All manga illustrations in this book preserve the original Japanese order except where noted. Illustrations from manga translated and published in English, however, have already been arranged in English- language comics format. All photographs are by the author. Unless otherwise noted, an exchange rate of ¥ 100 to the dollar is used. In Japan, people’s names are usually listed with the family name first and the given name last. Certain acade mic types in the English-speaking world are rather finicky about this convention and insist on preserving it even in English texts; not to do so they consider a form of cultural imperialism. This book is for the general public, however, so in the interests of clarity I have listed Japanese names with first names first, and last names last, the way they’re supposed to be in English. Also, when Japanese words are transliterated into English, it is customary to romanize them according to specific rules. In almost all situations I have adhered to these rules, with the exception of manga magazine and story titles. Since many Japanese titles use English words, either phoneticized or even written in the PREFACE 13 English alphabet, for the sake of simplicity I have general ly written these English words using their standard Eng lish spellings, rather than try to phoneticize them and include a translation. Thus the Japanese borrowed word komikku may be rendered simply as “comic” in an other wise Japanese-language context, rather than as “komikku (‘comic’).” “Long signs” over vowels—as in o (pronounced “oh” as in “go”) and u (“oo” as in “moon”)—indicate that the sound of the vowel is sustained. Fans of Japanese manga (even more than acade mics) can be a rather persnickety and unforgiving lot, so before the spears are lobbed some words about what this book is about— and what it is not about—are in order.