The Early Days
As an art form and medium, few have reached as many people but have had as little recognition (until the last few decades) as manga. For a majority of children growing up in the 90’s, Pokemon and Dragon Ball Z formed an unforgettable part of their childhood. Since then, manga has only become more influential – albeit indirectly – in the lives of children, and increasingly, of adults as well. The reason this effect is indirect is because of a medium closely associated with manga, but which often overshadows it – anime.
The term Manga, literally translating to “irresponsible pictures”, has its roots in the 12th century scrolls, which are believed to have been the earliest use of the right-to-left reading style. However, its more direct ancestor is the art form known as Ukiyo-e (lit. “pictures of the floating world”), a genre of Japanese art which peaked during the 18th and 19th centuries. This consisted of woodblock prints and paintings of Kabuki (a dance-drama art form) actors, historical scenes, sumo wrestlers, and erotica. As Western influence in Japan grew, woodblock printing became increasingly used for journalism. Along with this, ukiyo-e also found itself losing to photography, which eventually usurped its place in mainstream culture.
While the word manga came into common parlance by 1798, it gained popularity in 1815, due to the artist Hokusai, who was primarily a ukiyo-e artist. Manga of that era were little more than collections of individual sketches, with no overarching thread connecting them. It was only in the late 19th century, when the concepts of narratives and in-frame dialogues were introduced, that manga, in its modern sense, was realised, ironically, by two foreigners in Yokohama. Charles Wirgman started the Japan Punch, featuring political cartoons, mainly about the foreign expat community. Georges Bigot, also based in Yokohama, published the Toba-e, satirizing everyday life and the excesses of Japan’s Westernization process. With this impetus, the manga industry exploded, and by the end of the decade, there were already a few manga in serialisation.
Post-war Japan and Westernization
Japan’s loss during the Second World War and their subsequent occupation by the Allied Forces left a lasting impression on their collective consciousness. Nowhere is this more visible than in the changes in manga that came along with their loss. This manifested itself in the formation of two antipodal forms of thought, both of which significantly influenced manga. One view stressed the continuity of Japanese culture and history, especially the pre-war, Meiji, and pre-Meiji cultures. The other view emphasised the events leading to, and after the Allied occupation and clearly showed American cultural influences.
Astro Boy, and the establishment of a new age of manga
This post-war period saw an immense surge in the creativity of manga artists, none more so than Osamu Tezuka, the creator of Astro Boy. His works were stylistically different from any that had yet been produced, the major innovation being in the construction of panels. By not limiting himself to the box-like, static panels, Tezuka was able to create a much better visual effect on the reader. It was this style that was soon adopted by the vast majority of manga artists, and remains in vogue to this day.
On the other end of the gender demographic was Machiko Hasegawa, the creator of Sazae-san. His focus on the daily life of women laid the foundations for what would later become shoujo manga.
Thus already manga was diversifying itself based on gender – with Tezuka’s Astro Boy being the pallbearer of the shonen (lit. “young boy”) manga, and Hasegawa’s Sazae-san representing the shoujo (lit. “young girl”) manga.
This eventually led to a further classification of manga based on age group – seinen (usually for young men, about 18-25 years old), seijin (for adult men), and josei (for young adult women).
On hentai, tentacles, and the outreach of manga
With the increasing readership of manga, the content generated by most artists grew more and more towards addressing the tastes of their primary readership base – young boys. One of the most popular genres that grew out of this was what the soon came to know as hentai (lit. “pervert”).
Depictions of sex, and of abnormal sex long predate the term hentai. It had been common since circa 800 A.D, during which time it was called Shunga (erotic art). Possibly the most well-known piece of art of its kind was Tako to ama (Octopuses and the shell diver), which was, unsurprisingly, a work of ukiyo-e art created by Hokusai (link to the image at the end of the article, for the more interested readers).
In manga of the post-Tezuka era, mature themes have been commonplace since the 1940s, albeit in a much more realistic form than we see today. The graphic shift in style from realistic characters to cartoonish ones, is credited to Azuma Hideo, better known by the sobriquet “The Father of Lolicon”. This style, clearly illustrated in the first work of its kind (Cybele) was what started the pornographic manga movement – something which almost equalled Tezuka’s revolution – and the subsequent lolicon “boom” of the 1980s.
The rise of cyberpunk – Akira
Cyberpunk is characterised as a genre of science fiction depicting an oppressive society dominated by computer technology and big corporations. It focuses on how the quality of life of the majority decreases, often resulting in a complete breakdown of social order, as technology plays a larger part in human life. Initially conceived in the minds of pioneering authors like Philip K. Dick and William Gibson, the genre resonated with the Japanese populace of the 70s and the 80s, who found the dark settings and commentaries on societal breakdown akin to their own situation during the “Lost Decades”.
One of the earliest manga of this genre was Masamune Shirow’s (who later went on to create Ghost in the Shell) Appleseed, which was an immediate sensation. However, it was only in the following year, with the release of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Akira that the cyberpunk genre exploded. The scenes described in these manga influenced subsequent cyberpunk works like the Wachowski brothers’ (sisters, to be more accurate) cult movie The Matrix (yes, there is only one), and even last year’s famous addition to this genre – Westworld.
The End?
The sphere of influence of manga seems to be increasing steadily, as can be evinced by the public attention given to movie adaptations of popular manga like Ghost in the Shell and Death Note. Yet, in an almost paradoxical way, the future of the industry looks bleak. With the meteoric rise of the internet, and the violations of copyright laws that have come with it, manga artists are finding it exceedingly difficult to earn their daily cup of ramen. This, combined with the large amounts of pressure they are under to churn out chapter after chapter often leads to nervous breakdowns and early retirement.
The only reason the industry has not crashed is because of the large number of up and coming artists ready to replace each that throw in the towel. This is clearly not a sustainable model and we might soon see the day when Shonen Jump prints its last magazine.
Supplementary material for the interested reader
1. Picture of Tako to ama (Octopuses and the shell diver) –
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Tako_to_ama_retouched.jpg
2. Lolicon –
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/subcultures/lolicon
3. List of top cyberpunk anime –
http://www.anime-planet.com/manga/tags/cyberpunk