The term “manga” refers to Japanese comics or comics written in the Japanese language with the use of specific Japanese style. Nowadays, the manga is popular not only in Japan but also all over the world. With the growth of the international popularity, it often becomes the object of condemnation due to its sensitive content. This paper aims to study the development of manga and the roles it has played in society at different times. During its history, the manga was mostly used for political mockery, but through the years, it became more diversified and started to be the source of entertainment and knowledge and went beyond simple comics gaining more sense.
The historians argue about the days when the first manga appeared. The first scrolls that remind manga date from the twelfth century and are believed to bring the style of reading from right to left. At the same time, MacWilliams quotes Schodt and states that modern manga developed from two classical Japanese styles, kibyoshi and ukiyo-e (MacWilliams 28). Kibyoshi, or “yellow-jacket books,” were “a series of monochrome paintings with captions” drawn with satire and humor (MacWilliams 28). Ukiyo-e is a classical Japanese folk genre of illustrations that were popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. At the beginning of the nineteenth century, Katsushika Hokusai coined the term manga. From 1814 to 1878, he published his work Hokusai manga that was based on the ukiyo-e drawing techniques and caricatures aimed to mock and criticize the social failures and governmental politics of the Tempo period (1830-1844). Duus states that those days, the samurai class was one of the most popular objects of cartoons due to their high social pretensions and contribution into the weakening of the economy (Duus 971). Hokusai manga contained lots of grotesque illustrations of the samurai; it was a bestseller.
After the Meiji Restoration and the fall of the “iron curtain,” one started to import Western comics, and mangakas started to learn different painting techniques that allowed them to improve their painting styles. During the reign of Emperor Taisho, they worked side by side with American comics artists, and the characteristic feature of the manga of those days was its similarity to classical Western comics. In 1926, Hirohito became the new Emperor, and the political power came to the military leaders. Japanese mass culture of those days reflected the new social values of the country, and manga was not an exception. Mangakas were forced to create works related to military themes and aimed to mock American leaders. Furthermore, many mangakas left Japan and went to war zones. Quoting Schodt, MacWilliams writes that their main goal was to create “reports for the public back home, propaganda leaflets for the local populace, and leaflets to be dropped over enemy lines” and also erotic leaflets aimed to decrease the morale of the Western forces (MacWilliams 34).
The boom of manga and its development to the modern form go back to the end of the Second World War. Those days, Japanese society experienced poverty, dissatisfaction with politics, and fears about future. The post-war manga covered the themes of political satire. American occupants gave mangakas lots of freedom, and they got a chance to criticize and mock Japanese royal family for the first time. Furthermore, Takashi Murakami notes that the defeat of Japan in the war and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki influenced the drawing style of manga and led to the appearing of kawaii, cute images that sent the message about harmlessness and innocence of the country (Murakami 53).
With the growth of the popularity of manga, it started to be divided into two major modern genres: shonen and shojo. The characteristic features of shojo manga are the themes of romantic love, relationship, sex, and sensibility, while shonen manga relates to adventures, honor, dark humor, and also sex. In the 1980-1990s, manga gained popularity in Europe and the United States, and its themes and drawing styles that were far from the Western ones caused a social outcry. Masuchika quotes Jones and writes, “Japanese manga have an unsavory reputation of containing seemingly pornographic, or even obscene, material” (Masuchika 57). In other words, it could be recognized as child pornography. Indeed, it is normal for the manga to contain pictures of naked male and female characters, and if one adds to this the “kawaii” image of girls who often look younger than they really are, manga really becomes unusual for Western people. However, this reaction appears against the background of the difference between Japanese and Western societies and their values. Masuchika states that Japanese culture accepts nudity easily that the Western one, and it finds reflection in the manga (Masuchika 57). This refers both to the male-female relationship and family relationship between parents and their children.
Generally, shojo manga causes more discussions that the shonen one. While both manga genres cover sexual themes, shojo stories concentrate on them more often, as sex is a part of the romantic relationship. Prough writes that in shojo manga, “intimacy is produced as a gendered category, and young women artists are valued precisely because they are intimate with readers” (Prough 73). For instance, Yonetani’s manga “Make Love and Peace” contains lots of sex scenes between main characters Ayame and Koichi (Yonetani 13-18, 35-42). Mangaka does not draw reproductive organs, but the scenes are still very sensual and emotional. In Western culture, the detailed drawings of sex in manga can be recognized as immoral, but the difference in perceptions of sex again refers to the difference between Japanese and Western cultures. On the contrary with Christianity, the main Japanese religion of Shintoism does not consider sex to be godless and does not forbid it. As the result, Japanese people do not perceive sex as something shameful, and the sexual culture in Japan is open, in manga among other things.
In the midst of hard times, the manga was used either as a political weapon or as a way to support Japanese people and make them laugh. At the end of the twentieth century, when it started to gain international popularity, its plots caused lots of discussions and condemnations that appeared due to the differences between the Japanese and Western societies. Nowadays, the manga is much more than comics and goes beyond political mockeries and entertainment. It covers psychological themes and becomes the source of knowledge drawing up to “visual books” that reflect the values and history of Japanese society.
Works Cited
Duus, Peter. “Presidential Address: Weapons of the Weak, Weapons of the Strong – The Development of the Japanese Political Cartoon.“ The Journal of Asian Studies 60.4 (2001): 965-997. Print.
MacWilliams, Mark W. Japanese Visual Culture. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2008. Print.
Masuchika, “Glenn. Japanese Cartoons, Virtual Child Pornography, Academic Libraries, and the Law.” Reference & User Services Quarterly 54.4 (2015): 54-60.
Murakami, Takashi. Little Boy: the Arts of Japan's Exploding Subculture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005. Print.
Prough, Jennifer S. “Raising Readers, Rearing Artists: Fabricating Community in Shojo Manga Magazines.” Straight from the Heart: Gender, Intimacy, and the Cultural Production of Shojo Manga. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2011. 57-88. Print.
Yonetani, Takane. Make Love & Peace. Tokyo: Ohzora Publishing Co. Ltd., 2006. Print.
