CULTURAL ASSETS AND LIABILITIES

Around the middle of the 1990s, manga and anime joined Japanese cars, cameras, and electronics as some of the hottest-selling imports in the West. Manga had already made a splash in other East and Southeast Asian countries, such as China, South Korea, Thailand, and Vietnam, but it was only about a decade ago that sales began to soar in North America and Europe as well. The English edition of the popular Japanese manga magazine Shônen Jump now has a circulation of several hundred thousand in the United States, and virtually every major US bookstore boasts a rapidly expanding manga section. The situation is much the same in France, where the bookstores’ manga departments are typically jammed with young enthusiasts. Moreover, a growing number of these manga fans, unwilling to wait for translations to appear, are buying the Japanese editions and studying Japanese so that they can read them.

Anime has had a devoted Western following for many years now, but here, too, the number of fans has grown exponentially over the past decade. Countless Japanese animated films and television series have captured the hearts of young people all over the world, including such high-profile masterpieces as Miyazaki Hayao’s Academy Award–winning Spirited Away. Today Japan controls 60% of the world anime market.

Needless to say, Japan is by no means the only country that produces comic books and animated films. But the worldwide popularity of Japanese manga and anime is a phenomenon that demands some explanation. One reason for their widespread appeal is that they offer much more than illustrated stories for children, generating unique and original worlds that engage adults as well with their fascinating plot lines and psychological complexity. This is one reason so many Japanese who enjoyed comic books as children have continued to read them as adults. The medium of distribution has also played a major role, as Matt Thorn points out in his article in this section.

In his lucid survey of manga, Thorn traces the history of the full-length Japanese comic with emphasis on the period after World War II, illuminating the social background as he goes. He notes, for example, that in the period closely following the end of World War II, when good-quality paper was rationed and very expensive, the debut of Tezuka Osamu’s full-length manga—a major turning point in the history of the genre—was made possible by the use of poor-quality recycled paper, which was exempt from government regulation. He points also to the Japanese phenomenon of the weekly magazine and the key role it played in bringing manga to a wider readership. Another contributing factor was doubtless the popularity of children’s educational monthly magazines, which continue to be published for each age group at the elementary and middle school levels. Children raised on these publications easily made the transition to weekly magazines, and the popularity of the latter—especially those that featured plenty of manga—led in turn to mass-circulation manga magazines.

It must also be noted that Japan has a long and illustrious tradition of using sequential images to illustrate or narrate stories, historical events, Buddhist scriptures, and so forth. The emakimono, or narrative handscroll, came into its own as early as the twelfth century, when the famous Shigisan engi emaki and Ban Dainagon ekotoba scrolls were painted. To “read” such scrolls one unrolls only a narrow section—about the width of two hands—simultaneously unrolling the scroll from the left and rolling up the part already viewed from the right (reading right to left). Thus, the scroll is seen in successive sections that function like a series of manga panels. Thanks to this format, moreover, the viewer can freely adjust the width of the frame while following the narrative as it unfolds. In the majority of scrolls, written narrative, characters’ “lines,” and so forth appear in parts called kotobagaki inserted between the illustrated sections. In a substantial number of works, however—the Kegon engi emaki is a well-known example—the characters’ names and some of their lines are written directly on the painting. In the Edo period, moreover, we see the development of popular pictorial books (kibyôshi) in which the writing is fully integrated with the pictures. In other words, the key expressive elements of manga—the use of successive segments and the integration of words with images—can already be found in Japan’s own distinctive artistic traditions.

It seems reasonable to surmise that the ability to appreciate and make sense of this mode of expression comprises a major current in traditional Japanese culture, and it also seems highly probably that this current has some bearing on the diverse and impressive accomplishments of Japanese manga.

Can the global phenomena of manga and anime lead to a broader transmission of Japanese culture and aesthetic sensibilities throughout the world? Kusaka Kimindo argues that it can in a discussion with Richard Koo, also featured in this section. Their dialogue provides an insightful interchange as the two attempt to define the “essence” of the Japanese aesthetic and its relationship—and disconnect—with various contemporary cultural and economic phenomena. Although both of them bemoan the loss of native sensibilities in many spheres, they also see signs of a resurgence and are optimistic about the growth of Japanese “cultural power” in the years ahead.

Sakurai Yoshiko and Fujiwara Masahiko adopt a more pessimistic tone in their discussion of education, which plays a key role in the transmission of culture. They are of one mind as to the deplorable state of school education in Japan as well as the lack of discipline within the family. Their call for schools to provide better instruction in Japanese as the basis for all other studies, and for society to foster in children a reverence for those things that transcend the individual, is profoundly relevant for today’s families and professional educators alike. (Takashina Shûji, Professor Emeritus, University of Tokyo)

© 2006 Japan Echo Inc.