VOICES OF JAPAN

Manga Go Global

KÔNO MICHIKAZU Japanese manga [comics] have achieved tremendous international prominence in recent years. They’re the embodiment of Japan’s newfound global influence in pop culture—the essence of "Japanese cool," as it were. And now we have as our prime minister an outspoken manga enthusiast who has even talked of establishing a manga Nobel prize. I’ll wager it’s the first time in history that a country’s top political office has been occupied by a die-hard manga fan. Prime Minister Asô Tarô has a whole list of favorites, including Golgo 13 and Yûgo. His library contains complete sets of manga that he likes to read over and over, and he keeps tabs on manga magazines of all types.

Just the other day there was a big event in Tokyo jointly commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the first weekly manga magazines, Shônen Sandê [Boys’ Sunday; Shôgakukan] and Shônen Magajin [Boys’ Magazine; Kôdansha], both of which debuted on March 17, 1959.

FUJIMOTO YUKARI Yes, it’s been a half century now since the birth of the two publications that really laid the groundwork for today’s manga industry. Last year we marked the eightieth birthday of the late Tezuka Osamu, and this year is the twentieth anniversary of his death, so you could say we’ve reached a milestone in a number of ways.

WHAT MAKES MANGA MANGA?

KÔNO There’s no question that Japanese manga have taken the world by storm in recent years. If you compare similar forms from around the world, what’s so special about Japanese manga?

FUJIMOTO It may come as a surprise to some, but one of the key characteristics setting Japanese manga apart is the fact that they’re mostly black and white. Comic books elsewhere around the world are most often in color. Also, in Japan, magazines have always been the primary vehicle for manga. The vast majority of graphic novels you see in bookstores were initially carried in installments in magazines. Of those, only the most popular ones get published in book form. Japan is the only country that does it this way. In addition, the magazines are all narrowly targeted by gender, age, and so forth, and the manga they carry are carefully tailored to the tastes and demands of the targeted readership. That’s another important characteristic.

KÔNO It seems that the whole genre of girls’ manga has been embraced as a welcome novelty in other countries.

FUJIMOTO At one time there was a lineage of girls’ comics in the West, too, but at some point it died off, and after that comics were regarded as boys’ entertainment. When Japan’s girls’ manga started coming in, people said, "You mean, there are comic books for girls, too?" Now they’re a huge phenomenon in the West.

Japan’s manga culture developed from a large nucleus of work that was written to appeal to adolescent boys and girls. It was no accident that Shônen Sandê and Shônen Magajin both appeared in 1959. The time was ripe because a huge number of baby-boom children were about to enter middle school, and because entertainment had begun to conform to a weekly cycle with the advent of television. The boom in weekly magazines for the adult market had begun just a bit earlier, with Shûkan Shinchô making its debut in 1956. Shôgakukan, which published a number of successful educational magazines for elementary school children, decided to launch a weekly magazine for boys, with manga as one of the features. Kôdansha, which used the same printer as Shôgakukan, caught wind of the plan and decided to follow suit. That started a race, with both companies keeping tabs on the other’s progress as they rushed to get their product to the newsstand first. At some point they decided the launch couldn’t possibly be moved up any further, and in the end the magazines went on sale on the very same day. But Kôdansha’s Shônen Magajin went to the printer first, and as a result, Shôgakukan apparently found out that the newsstand price was going to be forty yen, so it set the price for Shônen Sandê at thirty yen. Those are a couple of the stories surrounding this episode, which has become one of the legends of the Japanese publishing industry. In any case, the creation of a huge market centered on adolescent readers through the maneuvering of these big publishing houses is a story unique to Japan.

The reliance on the weekly magazine as a medium has given rise to a number of features that distinguish Japanese manga in terms of story building as well as expressive technique. To begin with, because they appear in weekly installments, the most popular manga are gripping dramas that draw out the story as long as possible but make the readers anxious to know what will happen next week. Thanks to this format, the creators can construct the story as they go along, taking their cue from their readers’ response to characters and events to that point. In a sense, the creators are collaborating with their readers to build an engaging story. And because the manga are in black and white, they can be printed at relatively low cost, so they can use lots of pages. This allows presentation of the story in incremental jumps that create a sense of continuity from panel to panel and thereby effectively convey a sense of speed and movement.

Whereas Western comics tend to flesh out each picture, the Japanese method focuses on movement from one panel to the next. The result is that Japanese manga artists have developed and refined a variety of expressive cinematic techniques, such as close-ups, that encourage empathy with the protagonist. Boys’ manga are especially effective in their cinematic use of the panel layout.

Girls’ manga developed along somewhat different lines. Takahashi Makoto’s manga in the January 1958 issue of the magazine Shôjo [Girls] really set the standard. One of the typical features is the full-length drawing of the female protagonist decked out in fashionable clothes and striking a pose, an image splashed across the page from top to bottom—with very little bearing on the story. This compositional device originated in fashion plates, but it was adapted to the magazine’s two-page spread to give it a distinctive image designed to appeal to girls. While the boys’ manga make use of the panel-to-panel transitions to emphasize movement and action, the girls’ manga focus on stylish graphic effects that create an ambience, such as images that jump out in front of several panels. In addition to borrowing pictorial techniques from the fashion world, they’ve also developed compositional devices and other techniques that highlight the individual character’s inner state, including layouts that exploit the entire two-page spread. These techniques were refined and developed into the girls’ manga style familiar today by a group of artists including Hagio Moto, Ôshima Yumiko, and Takemiya Keiko, referred to as the "Hana no Nijûyo-nen-gumi" [Sweet Year-24 Group] because they were all born in Shôwa 24 [1949]. Eventually those techniques had an impact on boys’ manga, too. And techniques from boys’ manga were incorporated into girls’ manga as well. This dynamic back-and-forth between manga genres is another phenomenon unique to Japan.

KÔNO It’s also interesting that so many of the boys and girls who grew up reading these manga remained manga fans even after they reached adulthood. I think the baby-boom generation was the first to continue reading manga even as adults.

FUJIMOTO One factor was that the popular manga series just kept going on and on, and young readers continued to follow them even as they became older. But another major factor behind the maintenance of readership was the ongoing drive by publishers to launch new magazines targeted at those in their twenties and older as members of the baby-boom generation advanced into those age groups. Foreigners who visit Japan are always surprised to see white-collar workers reading manga on the commuter trains. Of course, you do see some adults reading manga like Shônen Jump [Shûeisha] that are intended for younger readers, but the main reason grown Japanese men read manga is that Japan has manga specifically targeted toward the "salaryman." A good example is Hirokane Kenshi’s President Shima Kôsaku, which focuses on the theme of how a top corporate executive should behave. There’s nothing similar in other countries. The manga designed to appeal to adult readers by focusing on their daily concerns are a Japanese phenomenon.

ANATOMY OF A BOOM

KÔNO What was the catalyst that propelled Japanese manga to popularity overseas?

FUJIMOTO Other countries in East Asia could probably be considered part of the Japanese cultural sphere where manga are concerned. In the West, though, I think the turning point came in 1991, with the international release of the hit animated film Akira [directed by Ôtomo Katsuhiro, based on his manga of the same title]. Then came others, like Dragonball [a manga series by Toriyama Akira, subsequently released in anime form]. There was a bit of a lull for a while after that, but then there came a huge explosion in popularity in France and Germany near the end of the 1990s. In the United States it took a bit longer for manga to penetrate because of hurdles like the book distribution system, but since 2002 or so the picture has changed dramatically.

In any case, just as in Japan, it was manga targeted at boys and girls that triggered the manga craze in the West. And now Western kids who have grown up reading these manga are beginning to reach adulthood. The hope among people in the industry is that the market in Europe and North America will also expand to include young adults and adults.

KÔNO So, we know Japanese manga have had an impact on Western readers, but what about creators?

FUJIMOTO More and more European and American comic book creators are adopting the "manga style" of illustration. These are people who are deliberately incorporating Japanese techniques not typically found in American comic books or French BDs [bandes dessinées]. The trend is especially pronounced among women creators.

The manga style is distinguished most obviously by the huge eyes. Most comic book writers in the West have studied figure drawing, and the sparkling saucer eyes that are a standard feature of Japanese manga strike them as bizarre and out of balance. The American manga critic Scott McCloud has written that Japanese manga combine highly iconic characters with cinematically realistic backgrounds and that this makes it easier for the reader to enter into the world of the manga via the protagonist. I would say that Japanese manga downplay objectivity and focus on presenting the story from a very subjective perspective. In the artwork, the focus is not so much on technical skill as on how well you use the conventions of manga to express something and make effective transitions. The artwork can even be clumsy in a technical sense as long as it uses the expressive language of manga effectively. That’s why some people say that the surest way to find a really good manga is to go to a bookstore and search through the piles of best-selling manga for one with really crude drawing. That’s sure to be good reading.

These days a growing number of Western comic book artists are adopting the techniques of Japanese manga, and more people are becoming interested in Japanese culture and life and the Japanese language through their encounters with manga conventions. Works by Western artists may show the protagonist living in a room with tatami mats, for example, or indicate sliding doors in the background or a returned test paper marked "0 points" in Japanese. If you ask "What country is this?" the only possible answer is "It’s Manga-land." It’s a fascinating phenomenon.

WINDS OF CHANGE

KÔNO The manga scene in Japan presents a rather different picture. Over the past ten years circulation of manga magazines has dropped by almost two-thirds, and more and more magazines are suspending publication. Some people are very pessimistic about the future of manga in Japan. They say that the creative power that’s sustained the industry is seeping away.

FUJIMOTO It’s true that the sluggish economy has cast a pall over the publishing industry as a whole. And it’s impossible to ignore the impact of mobile phones and video games, not to mention the fact that Japan’s population of young consumers is shrinking. But the use of the same content across multiple platforms has been a basic industry strategy for some time now. Manga appear first in magazines, and then they get compiled into books, which go through various editions and take a variety of forms, from pocket paperbacks to collector’s editions. Next they’re adapted as anime and live-action films and TV series and video games and spawn lines of action figures and other character goods. Some original video games, like Final Fantasy, are basically manga in a game format. When you look at the whole range of entertainment media, manga content still plays a central role, and that isn’t likely to change. In fact, I think the industry needs to work proactively to encourage even greater diversification.

If you look at what Disney has done over the years with its cartoon characters, Japanese companies still have a long way to go developing their licensing business. In Japan, if someone asks to make use of a character, the company says, "Sure, why not?" but the company rarely pursues an aggressive strategy of its own. Disney, by contrast, goes all out to maximize all the spinoff products from a given brand, while at the same time protecting the copyright vigilantly. Imagine the sort of markets the Japanese could develop by applying Disney’s savvy to Japanese manga!

KÔNO It’s only in the past few years that Japanese publishers have begun to treat licensing as an important aspect of their operations. Until recently they tended to regard it as incidental to their core business.

FUJIMOTO Licensing is going to assume a more and more important role in the publishing business, because the overseas markets are going to be such a critical component of the manga industry.

Looking at the other side of the coin, to this point, Japan’s own manga market has been the most closed in the world. Hardly anyone here—including myself—has even given any thought to what exists beyond our own borders. You’d be hard pressed to find another nation in the world that is so exclusively focused on domestic comics. In most countries, East and West alike, comics have developed through interaction with all sorts of imports. In literature this kind of interaction is taken for granted. One can’t even imagine someone here reading nothing but Japanese literature and having no contact whatever with foreign writing. But when it comes to manga, perhaps because we have a pretty big market for a relatively small country, we’ve been content just to look at the domestic scene. We can’t afford to ignore trends in the overseas markets any more, especially with more and more foreign creators adopting the manga style.

KÔNO Have you seen any concrete change in this respect?

FUJIMOTO In July last year, Kôdansha set up a new subsidiary in New York called Kôdansha USA to take charge of the US market. Around the same time, VIZ Media, a Shôgakukan-Shûeisha joint venture based in San Francisco, set up its own film production company, VIZ Productions, to make movies out of VIZ Media manga.

Meanwhile, Japanese schools and universities have begun developing courses and curricula that make use of manga and anime as examples of contemporary Japanese culture. Meiji University, where I teach, has established a School of Global Japanese Studies, where people are looking at Japanese pop culture from an international perspective.

Of course, people from all over the world are taking an unprecedented interest in this side of Japanese culture. Foreign tourists are flocking to the Kyoto International Manga Museum, and requests for information have been pouring in from around the world. But in spite of this high level of interest worldwide, there’s a lingering prejudice in libraries against holding manga. I suppose many people view comics as disposable reading matter and therefore not the kind of thing that needs to be preserved. That’s why a group of us have launched a project to create a manga library in Tokyo, taking our inspiration from the museum in Kyoto. From the standpoint of research, it’s absolutely essential to have archives, and it’s also important if we want manga to become the basis for business development on a global scale.

KÔNO Can Japan really become the "Hollywood of manga"? What’s your vision of the future?

FUJIMOTO I don’t think we can be complacent and assume that since Japanese manga are fun to read, people will keep reading them indefinitely. That would be a delusion. At one time American comic books ruled the world, but that’s ancient history now. The reader base is in constant flux, and members of the generation that was influenced by Japanese manga are beginning to generate new cultural currents in their own countries. The important thing now is to develop a global strategy that takes advantage of this moment, when the DNA of Japanese manga has spread throughout the world, and create mechanisms for dynamic development down the road. In that sense, the real test is still to come, but I believe there’s still plenty of opportunity for growth.

KÔNO Foreign creators are beginning to break into the Japanese market as well, I understand.

FUJIMOTO It’s become the dream of a lot of non- Japanese creators to have their work picked up by a Japanese manga magazine. Kôdansha’s Morning 2 has started carrying the work of Felipe Smith, who grew up in Argentina. In order to break into the Japanese manga industry he worked in a Japanese karaoke bar in Los Angeles to learn practical Japanese, because he knew that he would need to be able to communicate with Japanese editors if he wanted to publish in Japan. Now he’s a regular contributor, and he’s been known to argue with his editor into the wee hours.

Manga by South Koreans [manhwa] are also making inroads, including the popular girls’ manga Goong [Palace] by Park So-hee. This is set in a fictional version of modern Korea where the monarchy still exists, and the protagonist is a commoner who marries the crown prince. The Japanese edition has already sold more than a million copies under the title Rabu-kyon—Love in Kyonbokkun [Love in Gyeongbok Palace]. I think the trend is likely to continue.

KÔNO What about aspiring young Japanese manga creators? Some are saying that their numbers are dwindling.

FUJIMOTO I’ve heard that young people who in an earlier era would have been drawn to careers in manga are drifting toward the video game industry instead. There’s definitely a feeling that things are changing in the industry as a whole. This is why you’re seeing manga like Shônen Jump’s new series Bakuman, by the creators of Death Note [writer Obata Takeshi and illustrator Ôba Tsugumi]. This is a coming-of-age story about two teenagers who want to become manga creators. It’s sort of a twenty-first century remake of Manga michi [Manga Road] by Fujiko Fujio A, featuring appearances by actual members of the Shônen Jump editorial staff. Morning 2 is also carrying a "manga about manga" called Beatitude, about life in Tokiwa-sô [a low-rent apartment building in Tokyo that was home to future manga greats like Tezuka Osamu and the Fujiko Fujio duo]. This proliferation of manga on the subject of writing manga might be a sign that the industry as a whole is taking stock in a way.

In terms of new currents, I’ve had my eye on the monthly magazine Morning. I’ve sensed some real dynamism in the new manga they’ve been launching since last year. Morning 2, which began a few years ago as a special edition of Morning, is also showing a real willingness to try new things. In addition to Beatitude and Felipe Smith’s Peepo Choo, they’ve got a comedy series by Nakamura Hikaru titled Seinto Oniisan [Saint Young Men] that features Buddha and Jesus as young guys sharing an apartment in the Tokyo suburb of Tachikawa as they vacation in the mortal world.

Beginning last September, Morning 2 experimented by putting three successive issues on the Internet for one month at a time. On their website, they invited people to read the issues for free but requested that anyone who did so use the money they saved to buy some other magazine or manga. The text read, "There are lots of great magazines besides 2. We would like nothing better than for you to discover some great manga that you love." Their thinking is that if they can get more people hooked on manga, people will start buying them again. I think they’ve got the right attitude, and I hope they succeed.

Translated from an original interview in Japanese. Interviewer Kôno Michikazu is a former editor in chief of Chûô Kôron.

© 2009 Japan Echo Inc.