The Power of Girls’ Comics:
The Value and Contribution to Visual Culture and Society
This paper is presented at a forum of “Visual Culture of Childhood:
Child Art after Modernism (November 11 - 13, 2004)” at Pennsylvania
State University and published at the 2nd Asian-Pacific Art
Education Conference (December 28 - 30, 2004) at Hong Kong Institute
of Education.
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A super robot, Atom, from “Astro
Boy” (originally created by Osamu Tezuka in 1953)
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Masami Toku
Department of Art and Art History
California State University, Chico
Chico, CA 95929-0820
Introduction
The issue of visual culture has become a big issue in the area
of art education in the USA, especially in the last 5 years
(For example, Freedman, 2003, Smith-Shank, 2004, Tavin, 2003,
Wilson, 1999). Many educators and scholars have discussed the
power of visual culture historically and conceptually; however,
not many educators have succeeded in showing the possibility
of implementing the lesson plans in schools which support the
development of children’s visual literacy. One reason is that
there are more complicated and diverse issues in visual pop-culture
than in traditional art. It is not so simple to define what
visual pop culture is based on a traditional art educational
approach. Therefore, it is difficult to create effective art
educational curricula to support children’s visual literacy
and artistic ability. As a result, art educators are forced
to develop interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary art educational
curricula in conjunction with the theme of visual culture. Now
is a good time to analyze the quality and diversity of visual
pop culture. For example, Japanese manga (comics) is no longer
just a phenomenon of visual pop-culture in Japan. It has become
a world phenomenon. It may not be an exaggeration to say that
manga is the center of Japanese visual culture with the proliferation
of manga related animation, toys, TV series, computer games,
and film. There is no doubt at the beginning of the 21st century
that the popularity of Japanese manga has spread all over the
world through comic books, animation, and merchandise However,
not many people really understand how and why Japanese manga
became so popular in the world and why children are so attracted
to Japanese visual popular products. It may be worthwhile to
explore the role of visual pop-culture that impacts US society
through the phenomenon of manga in Japan.
There are two purposes of this significant visual pop-culture
project, Power of Girl’s Manga: the value and contribution
to visual culture and society. One is to examine
the worldwide phenomenon of Japanese comics (Manga) not only
in Japan but also other countries (including the US). The second
purpose is to enlighten audiences - teachers, students, and
community- to develop their media and visual literacy. These
purposes will be accomplished through cross-cultral research,
a related touring exhibition, and a symposium examining the
cultural and historical backgrounds of the Japanese visual popular
culture that exerts such an influence on US society. The
significant goal of these exhibitions is to examine
the treatment of gender roles in Shojo manga (girls’ comics)
and how female mangaka (cartoon artists) have been contributing
to the development of a unique style of visual expression in
their narratives, which have seldom been discussed in the world
of Japanese comics. There have been many worldwide manga exhibitions
due to the popularity of manga; however, there has been no manga
exhibition focusing on girl’s manga in spite of the fact that
shojo manga contributed highly to the development of an original
Japanese manga graphic style. Also, the influences appear often
in mass media including TV animation, and toy products. In brief,
there has been no manga exhibition focusing on the value of
girl’s manga which is a unique of characteristic Japanese manga,
not found in other countries. This will be the first significant
touring exhibition of girls’ manga and discussion of the gender
issue in manga as a visual popular culture in the world. The
exhibition will travel to California State University, Chico,
Pennsylvania State University, The School of the Art Institute
of Chicago, and possibly The SF Cartoon Art Museum during the
academic year of 2005 - 2006.
The Power of Japanese Manga
The popularity of manga is more significant in Japan than it
is in any other culture, appealing to all ages and demographics.
In contrast to the US, where comic books are only for children
or collectors, in Japan manga has a popular status, which influences
the entire Japanese society. Manga's readers cover a wide range
of ages from preschoolers to adults. The influence of manga
appears in visual culture throughout Japan in commercials on
TV, advertisements, billboards, and even at bank ATMs.
One proof of this popularity is that manga comprises nearly
forty-percent of all publications in Japan. It is still fresh
in our memory that the circulation of one of the weekly boy's
manga magazine of about 500 pages, The Shonen Jump, finally
reached six million in 1994. In responding to the diversity
of manga readers' expectations, the contents have also developed
from simple to complex stories in diverse subjects, both fiction
and non-fiction. Furthermore, anime (pronounced "ahneemay")
- animated films - and video, are frequently created based on
manga. It is well known that anime have spread worldwide, as
have Japanese video games. Wilson (2000) calls the phenomenon
of manga's influence rhizomatic, or a complex relationship of
non-hierarchical systems.
Likewise, the phenomenon of Japanese visual pop-culture is
no longer restricted to Japan. It is now a worldwide phenomenon.
At first, Japanese popular culture became a phenomenon in Asian
countries in the 1980s through pirated versions of manga. Even
in the US, Japanese animation like Astro boy has long been popular
as children’s entertainment since 1970s; however, few knew that
they were made in Japan and no one seemed to care in those days.
However, this is changing, with a Pokemon (Pocket monsters)
center across the street from Rockefeller Center in Manhattan,
and the TV guide announcing in 2002 that the most popular cartoon
among 9 to 14 year old boys was Yu-Gi-Oh, which was created
based on the manga. Japanese animated series and their connected
merchandising is a powerful influence in US children’s world
at the beginning of the 21st century. For example, in the US
about 300 million dollars worth of Pokemon related products
were sold in 1998, while about 500 million dollars worth of
Yu-Gi-Oh merchandise was sold in 2002. The US is also not free
from the power of the phenomenon of Japanese visual-pop culture
(TV guide, Feb. 1-7, 2003).
Regarding the phenomenon of Japanese manga in the world, many
questions arise. For example, what are the differences between
Japanese manga and American comics? What are the characteristics
of manga? Why are children attracted to manga? What are the
advantages and disadvantages of manga for children? Why has
manga become part of popular culture in Japan and elsewhere?
What is the origin of manga? Where is manga going in the future?
Japanese manga has become one of the most attractive research
themes not only for cross-cultural studies but also in art history,
economics, psychology, and education.
The History of Japanese Manga: Traditional to Contemporary
Manga
There are still many controversies over the origin of Japanese
manga. The general belief is that Manga began with “Chojyu-giga
(literally, “humorous pictures of birds and animals”)” depicted
by a monk, Kakuyu (1053 - 1140), also called Toba-sojo, in the
12th century. The hierarchical aristocratic society was ironically
depicted in contrast to the common world as personalized animals
(animal caricatures) in these four traditional scrolls (Akiyama,1990).
The term “Manga” was originally used in the printed illustration
books of “Hokusai Manga” depicted by Hokusai Katsushika (Ukiyoe-shi,
1760 - 1849) at the beginning of the 19th century. This “Hokusai
Manga (literally, “Hokusai’s humorous pictures of everyday life”)”
was comprised of 15 chapters (1814 - 1878), and was published
from 1814 to 1878 even after his death due to its popularity.
“Hokusai Manga” had a purpose as an illustrated textbook which
indicated picture examples of everyday life for his students.
Thus, the contemporary meaning of the word manga, which is now
used in Japan to describe graphic novels, is different from
the meaning of Hokusai’s manga, which was simple script and/or
caricature.
Then when did Japanese manga develop into its contemporary
form of graphic novels? It took almost one millennium until
manga became contemporary Japanese Manga in the middle of the
20th century. Contemporary Japanese manga developed with the
strong influence of American pop culture including American
comics and Disney animation after World War II. In those days,
manga was only an inexpensive entertainment for children, dreams
that made it easier to live in the devastated post war society
in Japan. Thus, manga has been publishing healthy entertainment
for children to support their dreams. It gradually developed
from simple script and/or caricature to complicated stories
in response to readers’ expectations.
In the 1960s, Gekiga (“Visual Novels’) were developed, story
manga with diverse fiction and non-fiction themes including:
SF, sport, love story, history, and so on. The first boy’s weekly
magazine was published (the syounen magazine) in 1959 and the
first girl’s weekly magazine was published in 1962 (Yonezawa,
1991). Children who supported the manga market were born around
1947 - 1950. When the first weekly magazine was published, those
children reached the end of elementary school. In the past,
children had stopped buying and reading manga when they graduated
from elementary school. However, this generation of children
did not stop even after high school, because manga was more
attractive than other media, such as TV and movies. As a result,
the number of magazines published grew in response to readers’
diverse expectations so that the age of manga readers spread
from children to adults regardless of gender during 1960s -
1970s. As a result, after the 1970s, diverse manga was aimed
at different ages, genders, and addressed favorite themes and
subjects. Likewise, after the 70s, Manga was no longer a sub-culture,
but rather became a part of popular culture for the entire Japanese
society, a part of popular culture that thrived with the development
of the economy. Manga still has the power to impact the entire
society in Japan, and this phenomenon has spread from Japan
to the rest of the world at the beginning of the 21st century.
Characteristics of Manga: The gender role in composition
What are the characteristics of Japanese manga that are different
from that of, for example, American comics? One of the main
differences is the usage of the basic elements in manga that
compose comics in general. Like American comic books, Manga
has a language of composition in it called the elements of manga
which is composed of three elements: 1) Picture, 2) Word, and
3) Frame (Natsume, 1995). At first, manga was a simple combination
of picture, word, and frame to tell a simple story. However,
with the reader’s expectations, the story of manga has developed
to express more human drama as graphic novels than caricatures
or simple comic strips. As a result, the usage of composition
is quite original in Manga.
1) Picture: The picture is the content of manga’s expression
and basically consists of lines, similar to American comics.
However, manga has created semiotic graphics to indicate particular
meanings and signs with limited color usage. Unlike most American
comics which are depicted in color, manga in general is depicted
in black and white except for the front page. For example, black
hair indicates Japanese people and white hair outlined by black
lines indicates foreigners, especially Westerners.
2) Word with and without Balloons (including onomatopoeia):
It appears in the picture and it also appears independently
outside of the frame with or without balloons. It has a function
as a paste that connects frames in the story. It can also support
the expression of manga at the meta-level, which means it can
be the inside or the outside voice/thought of the subject/object.
The different shapes of balloons have functions which also indicate
the speaker’s emotion regardless of the words in it.
3) Frame (“koma”): It has a role as a container which includes
the picture as the content and the word, which is namely “format.”
It also has a function which integrates time and place. Especially,
the usage of frames of different shapes, sizes, and directions
is significant in girl’s magna to depict the psychology (e.g.
conflict) of a character in their favorite theme of the conflict
of love. This girl’s manga characteristic has also influenced
boy’s manga.
The Power of Shojo Manga: The value and contribution
to visual culture and society
Many different kinds of manga have been published for different
ages, genders, and fans’ favorite themes since the 1970s. One
of the major characteristics of Japanese manga is that manga
has split into Boy’s (Shonen) and Girl’s (Shojo) manga, each
developing in its own way. Based on readers’ expectations, each
boy’s and girl’s manga has its own theme. Regardless of the
subject, the main theme in boy’s manga is competitive fighting,
how the hero(s) become men by protecting women, family, country,
or the earth from enemies. Girl’s manga’s theme is simply love.
In brief, the most important thing for girls is how to find
love through a process of overcoming obstacles.
As I mentioned earlier under the characteristics of manga,
the grammar of Japanese manga was highly developed with semiotic
and semantic usage of composition which seldom appeared in US
comics after the 1960s. Furthermore, the role and the value
of Shojo manga became significant in Japan. What is the cultural
and historical background behind the development of Shojo manga?
The history and role of shojo manga is mainly divided into four
major generations since World War II.
1. The first period of Shojo manga: Dawn of shojo manga
A Girl's Mangaka(cartoonists) is a comic artist who creates
manga for girls and women in general; however, girl's mangaka
are not always female. Some male mangaka also create girl's
manga. Right before, during, and after World War II, most girl’s
manga was depicted by male’s mangaka. In other words, in most
cases male mangaka started as girl's managaka early in their
careers in the early 1950s and then switched to boy's manga
with the development of their career .The following four male
mangaka (Tezuka, Chiba, Ishinomori, and Matsumoto) are well
known as great mangaka for boy's and male manga with their big
successes with hit manga and animation, but Chiba and Matsumoto
started their careers as girl's mangaka. Tezuka and Ishinomori
also created great girl’s manga.
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Ribbon
no Kishi (1953)
by Osamu Tezuka |
Ryujinnuma
(1961)
by Shotaro Ishinomori |
Shimmakko
(1964)
by Tetsuya Chiba |
Gin no
Kinoko (1961)
by Reiji Akira & Miyako Maki |
2. The second period of girl’s manga: Love and tears
in shojo manga
Girl's manga were first depicted by female mangaka in the 1950s.
Watanabe, Maki, and Mizuno are the most successful girl's mangaka
who visualized girls' dreams and desires in their graphic novels.
The major theme of girl’s manga in those days was how girls
grow up under severe circumstances, fight obstacles, and finally
get happiness. The themes and gorgeous visual images encouraged
Japanese girls to live in the harsh post war world and gave
them dreams and hopes for their future.
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Garasu
no Shiso (1969 - 1971)
by Masako Watanabe |
Maki
no Kuchibue (1960 - 1963)
by Miyako Maki |
Honey
Honey no Stekina Bouken (1966 - 67)
by Hideko Mizuno |
3. The third and the forth period of girl’s manga:
The diversity of girl’s manga and the new generation
Many female managaka followed after their successes as girl's
mangaka. With the arrival of 24-gumi (female mangaka who were
born around 1949 and contributed the development of the style
of girl's manga), the world of girl's mangaka flourished with
diverse sub genres of Sci-Fi, Love, History, Adventure, and
so on with visual inventions as graphic novels in 1970s. Satonaka,
Ikeda, Takemiya, Hagio, Yamgishi, and Oshima are the major contributors
to the diversity of shojo manga and the high quality of themes
and content. These female mangaka continue to depict and develop
manga in response to readers' expectations and their own aesthetics
as graphic/visual novelists. In response to the aging of readers,
shojo manga split into girl’s and lady’s in the 1980s. If this
trend continues, we may soon see senior’s manga.
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Akiko
(1986)
by Machiko Satonaka |
Versailles
no Bara (1972 - 73)
by Riyoko Ikeda |
Versailles
no Bara (1972 - 73)
by Riyoko Ikeda |
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Hyakuoku
no Hiru to Senoku no Yoru (1977 - 78)
by Moto Hagio |
Hiizuru
tokoro no Tenshi (1980 - 84) |
Amagaeru
(1996)
By Yumiko Oshima |
Another trend in Shojo manga is the influence of the amateur
mangaka of the Comic Market. The comic market, which started
as a communicative place for amateur mangaka (comic artists)
to sell their own original manga, has become a worldwide phenomenon,
appearing not only in Japan and other Asian countries but also
in the US. The original Tokyo comic market, which started in
1975, has grown at the beginning of the 21st century to be a
biannual event with 25,000 dojinshi (fanzine) groups and 350,000
participants over 3 days (Toku, 2001). One of the significant
phenomena of comic markets is the parody of boy’s love between
men and men in manga and novels called YAOI, which is depicted
by female manga fans as their fantasy (Wilson and Toku, 2004).
When this phenomenon appeared in the 1980s, major publications
totally ignored the popularity. However, the theme of boy’s
love became a major theme in the world of shojo and lady’s manga.
Boy’s love has begun to appear in mainstream Japanese visual
culture (such as TV series) at the beginning of the 21st century.
The influence of the manga movement continues to spread as translated
comics and animation and other merchandise. Likewise, Shojo
manga is also growing in popularity.
Conclusion
Popular visual culture is a global phenomenon. Perhaps there
is no society with a visual culture quite as complex as contemporary
Japan. It provides its young people with an amazingly vivid
array of options both to consume and to create. Almost 15 years
ago it was discovered that Japanese children’s drawings were
strongly influenced by the visual pop culture of Manga (comics)
in Japan (Wilson, 1998). In response to the power of this Japanese
visual pop culture, which has affected children’s artistic and
cognitive developments, the Ministry of Education and Science
mandated the adaptation of visual culture into the national
curriculum of art education in 1998. The purpose of this was
“adapting visual pop culture (manga, illustration, photo, video,
computers) to express students’ thought and ideas of what they
think and what they want to be” (Toku, 2001). Art educators
created art educational lessons theoretically and practically
incorporating the issue of visual culture to support children’s
visual literacy skills, and those lessons were introduced in
national textbooks in 2002. However, even Japanese art educators
do not know about the value and the contribution of Japanese
manga to the entire visual cultural world. It is urgent to examine
the mechanism of visual culture that impacts children’s artistic
and cognitive developments.
Looking at the phenomenon of manga in Japan leads not only
to an understanding of contemporary society in Japan, but also
leads to an understanding of the mechanism of the relationship
between the influence of visual pop-culture and children’s artistic
and cognitive developments in general. I highly believe that
US audiences will be visually enlightened as to the role and
the diversity of visual pop culture through this cross-cultural
research and touring exhibition.
References
Akiyama, T (1990). Japanese Painting. New
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Freedman, K, (2003, Ed.). Teaching Visual Culture: Curriculum,
Aesthetics, and the Social Life of Art. Reston, VA: National
Art Education Association
Natsume, F. (1995). Manga no Yomikata [How to read manga]. Tokyo:
Takarajimasya
Schodt, F. (1983). The World of Japanese Comics. New York: Kodansha
America, Inc.
Schodt, F. (1996). Dreamland Japan: Writings on Modern Manga.
Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge Press.
Smith-Shank, D (2004, Ed.). Semiotics and Visual Culture: Sights,
Signs, and Siginificance. Reston, VA: National Art Education
Association
Tavin, K (2003). Wrestling with Angels, Searching for Ghosts:
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Wilson, B. (2000). Of Diagrams and Rhizomes: Disrupting the
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Wison, B. and Toku, M. (2004). “Boy’s Love,” Yaoi, and Art Education:
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Manga]. Tokyo: Heibonsya
Note:
• The total twenty major girl's mangaka (comic artists)
from Japan including the above fourteen mangaka are involved
in this touring exhibition, and the following are examples from
the show.
• Those visuals are all from the front page of the manga
and/or cover page from the book form.
• The actual exhibition will be organized with front
cover visuals (color) and content pages in sequential frames
(black/white) to introduce the innovations in visual composition
that were invented in girl's manga to depict psychological expression.
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