Manga/Pasifika Research Page

Manga

My Research

Manga was first shown in scrolls in the 12th century. Manga is a translated term that can be translated as comic. Writers such as Takashi Murakami have stressed events after WWII, but Murakami sees Japan's defeat and the atomic bombing go Hiroshima and Nagasaki as having created king-lasting scars on the Japanese artistic psyche, which, in this view, lost its previously virile confidence in itself and sought solace in harmless and cute images. However, Takayuki sees a special like for a transpacific economic and cultural transnationalism that created a postmodern and scared international youth culture of cartooning, film, television, music, and related popular arts, which was, for Tatsumi the crucible in which modern manga have developed.

TEACHERS RESEARCH

It was in late 18th century Japan, when a growing middle class of merchants (sellers) had developed markets for villages (old-school malls!), that manga-like images first appeared.

Printed as books using woodblock technology, kibosh ("yellow covers") were storybooks for adults in which story and words were placed in and around ink-brush pictures.

Like modern-day manga, they dealt with a variety of subjects, including humour, drama, fantasy, and even pornography. By the mid 19th century, kibyoshi had disappeared, victims of both government censorship and the convenience of more modern publishing - like a newspaper.

Although there are certain startling resemblances, kibyoshi are not the direct ancestors of modern manga. The ancestor of the modern manga, believe it or not, is the European/American-style political cartoon of the end of the 19th century, and the multi-panel comic strips that flowered in American newspaper in the last years of the 19th century and the first years of the 20th century.

The single most important factor in the creation of the modern manga industry was the work of one artist, the late Osamu Tezuka, known in Japan as the "god of manga". Tekuza's most popular creation, Mighty Atom, is known throughout the world; an animated version was broadcasted in the U.S. in the 1960's under the name "Astro Boy"