MIZUKI REIMAGINED Japanese-To-English Manga for The
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MIZUKI REIMAGINED Japanese-to-English Manga for the Young North American Reader by Alice Fleerackers B.A., University of British Columbia, 2014 Project submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Publishing In the Faculty of Communication, Art and Technology © Alice Fleerackers, 2016 Simon Fraser University Fall 2016 All images © Mizuki Productions, 2016 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License All rights reserved. This work may not be reproduced in whole or in part, by photocopy or other means, without permission of the author. APPROVAL name: Alice Fleerackers degree: Master of Publishing title of project: Mizuki Reimagined: Japanese-to-English Manga for the Young North American Reader supervisory Mauve Pagé committee: Senior Supervisor Lecturer Publishing Program Simon Fraser University Hannah McGregor Supervisor Assistant Professor Publishing Program Simon Fraser University Marcela Huerta Industry Supervisor Assistant Editor Drawn & Quarterly Montreal, Quebec date approved: December 14, 2016 ii ABSTRACT With growing interest in visual literacy from parents, librarians, and educators, the North American kids manga industry is booming, and more and more publishers are trying their hand at Japanese-to-English manga translations to meet the growing the demand. But such projects pose unique publishing challenges that are influenced by manga’s history, readers’ expectations, the receptivity of the North American book market, and a publisher’s man- date. This report examines the process of bringing Japanese manga to a North American audience through a case study of one publisher, Drawn & Quarterly, and its translation of Shigeru Mizuki’s Kitaro series. Throughout, this report emphasizes the translation and production challenges involved, and also offers historical and cultural information about manga publishing, Drawn & Quarterly, Mizuki, and the growing educational market for kids’ comics in North America. iii DEDICATION To everyone who kept me laughing. iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I was lucky to have the support of many incredible people throughout my degree. I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to: Jade, Marcela, and Tracy, for your patience, wisdom, and good humour. To Mauve, Hannah, and Marcela again (you deserve thanks twice), for reading this thing—multiple times!—and providing such expert criticism. To Peggy, Tom, Julia, Allison, Sruti, Ann, Courtney, and, of course, the one-and- only Tubby, for being such amazing hosts. To the wonderful instructors at SFU, for teaching me the ropes, talking me through the not-so-fun times, and putting up with some very bad puns along the way. To Mike and Carol, Sirish and Lara, Katie and Michelle, and Zoe G., for introducing me to the strange and fascinating world of publishing. And thank you, Jo-Anne, for helping me out in any state, no matter how scattered. v TABLE OF CONTENTS pages contents ii Approval iii Abstract iv Dedication v Acknowledgements vi Table of Contents vii List of Figures 1 1. Introduction 1 2. The Rise of Manga 1 2.1 Manga Defined 2 2.2 Manga in Japan 3 2.3 Early Manga in North America 4 2.4 A New Era in North American Manga 6 2.5 Manga and Visual Literacy 8 3. History of the Kitaro Project 8 3.1 A Brief History of Drawn & Quarterly 10 3.2 Drawn & Quarterly and Shigeru Mizuki 12 4. Publishing Kitaro 12 4.1 Publishing Challenges 14 4.2 Translation 19 4.3 Production 20 4.3.1 Publishing Format 22 4.3.2 Onomatopoeia 23 4.3.3 Reading Direction 24 4.3.4 Text Orientation 25 4.3.5 Straightening and Cleaning Images 27 4.3.6 Editing Sound Effects 29 4.3.7 Layout 30 4.4 Outcomes 31 5. Conclusion 34 Bibliography vi LIST OF FIGURES pages figures name of figure 15 Figure 1 Examples of Onomatopoeia in Kitaro Meets Nurarihyon 18 Figure 2 Treatment of “Ge ge ge” in Kitaro 19 Figure 3 Treatment of “Ge ge ge” in Kitaro Meets Nurarihyon 21 Figure 4 Mizkuki’s Showa (2013) vs Kitaro Meets Nurarihyon (2016) 22 Figure 5 A sample page from Kitaro Meets Nurarihyon: original Japanese sound effects vs D+Q’s translation 24 Figure 6 Reading direction explanation, from Kitaro Meets Nurarihyon 25 Figure 7 A difficult text placement, from Kitaro Meets Nurarihyon 26 Figure 8 One of the original files received from Mizuki Productions 28 Figure 9 A panel in which sound effect and image were closely intertwined, requiring extensive patching 28 Figure 10 A Japanese sound effect for which the translation had to be placed differently than the original vii 1. INTRODUCTION What does it take to bring a Japanese manga series to a North American audience? And how does a publisher’s translation and production strategy contribute to the publishing process, public reception, and ultimate success of the series? Montreal-based graphic novel publisher Drawn & Quarterly (D+Q) faced both of these questions in the summer of 2016, as it prepared to publish volumes II and III of its seven-volume Kitaro series. The series was a translation project that aimed to bring a number of best-selling Japanese manga stories by acclaimed artist Shigeru Mizuki to English-speaking young readers. With reviews from the first volume (The Birth of Kitaro, May 2016) just out, and production for the second (Kitaro Meets Nurarihyon, October 2016) in full swing, much of my summer internship with D+Q included working on the series. This report will outline and analyze the process of bringing this Japanese classic to a North American audience, with emphasis on the translation and production challenges involved. It will also offer some historical and cultural context about manga publishing, D+Q, Shigeru Mizuki, and the growing educational market for kids’ comics in North America. 2. THE RISE OF MANGA “Two major developments have changed the comics market in the United States over the past fifteen years: the huge and still expanding popularity of manga and the spread of graphic novels into American bookstores” (Couch, 2010, p. 212). 2.1 MANGA DEFINED What is manga? The Japanese word translates roughly to “whimsical” (Wilmot, 2008, p. 7) or “irresponsible pictures” (Brienza, 2009b, p. 102), but finding a suitable definition is difficult, because manga can come in all shapes and sizes. It is published as single-panel cartoons, syndicated comic strips, and hefty tomes; can be light and funny or violent and action-packed; and may appeal to readers of all genders, ages, occupations, and social classes (Ito & Crutcher, 2014). But for the purpose of this report, manga can be defined as 1 a form of comic art originating in Japan that uses frames, illustrations, and text balloons to depict a story. Unlike many North American comics, manga’s protagonists are usually everyday people, not superheroes. That said, graphic novels and manga do share many characteristics. For example, as with all comic art, enjoying manga requires some interpretive activity; readers have to “read between the lines” to infer the passing of time and to understand the flow of the narrative. For this and other reasons, graphic novels and manga are not always treated as separate categories within the library and publishing communities.1 Thus, although this report’s primary focus is manga, it will draw from research about graphic novels and comics in cases where the current literature on the subject is limited. 2.2 MANGA IN JAPAN Manga’s origins extend to a long tradition of visual storytelling in Japan, reaching back as far as the eleventh century, according to some scholars (e.g. Ito & Crutcher, 2014). The form was heavily influenced by the urban art and literature that became popular during the Edo period (1603 to 1876), when many artists started to experiment with traditional techniques such as woodblock printing to depict nontraditional topics like city life and everyday citizens. These prints of ukiyo-e (the “floating world”) are often cited as “the beginning of comic art in Japan” (Couch, 2010, p. 210). But what we recognize as manga today began much later, with woodblock printer Hokusai Katsushika in the early- to mid- nineteenth century. At a loss for how to describe his illustrated narratives, Katsushika called them “manga”—the first documented use of the word (Brienza,2009 b). Manga came into its own during the massive economic and social changes that overtook Japan following the Second World War (Davisson, 2016c). During the 1950s, weekly and monthly magazines had started to circulate short, serialized manga stories. These magazines initially served a narrow, specialized market, but their readership eventually grew and diversified as the manga movement gained momentum. Many artists began experimenting with visual stories that, although intended for children, were attractive to 1 For example, the Vancouver Public Library shelves manga and graphic novels together (D. Dunbar & B. Walls, personal communication, September 13, 2016), and BookNet Canada’s annual sales reports classify manga as “Graphic Novels”. 2 adults as well—the first “all-ages” manga (Couch,2010 , p. 211). The most popular of these serialized stories were then collected and reprinted as stand-alone, single-author books called tankōbon. Tankōbon were typically about 200 pages long and could either be sold or rented from shops called kashi-hon. The rental system thrived because it offered citizens light, affordable entertainment at a time when distractions were sorely needed but money was difficult to come by. To stay in business, these stores relied on repeat customers; hence, they tended to favour series manga over stand-alone titles, in the hopes of keeping readers coming back for more. Although early manga publishing was heavily influenced by the economic strain of the postwar years, many of its defining features remain true in twenty-first-century Japan.