Manga (漫画?)
are comics
created in Japan, or by
Japanese creators in the
Japanese language, conforming to a style developed in Japan in the
late 19th century.[1]
They have a long, complex pre-history in earlier
Japanese art.[2]
In Japan, people of all ages read manga. The medium includes works in
a broad range of genres: action-adventure, romance, sports and games,
historical drama, comedy, science fiction and fantasy, mystery,
suspense, detective, horror, sexuality, and business/commerce, among
others.[3]
Since the 1950s, manga has steadily become a major part of the Japanese
publishing industry,[4]
representing a
¥406 billion market in Japan in 2007 (approximately
$3.6 billion) and
¥420 billion ($5.5
billion) in 2009.[5]
Manga have also gained a significant worldwide audience.[6]
In Europe and the Middle East the market is worth $250 million.[7]
In 2008, in the U.S. and Canada, the manga market was valued at $175
million. The markets in France and the United States are about the same
size. Manga stories are typically printed in
black-and-white,[8]
although some full-color manga exist (e.g.
Colorful). In Japan, manga are usually serialized in large manga
magazines, often containing many stories, each presented in a single
episode to be continued in the next issue. If the series is successful,
collected chapters may be republished in
paperback books called
tankōbon.[9]
A manga artist (mangaka
in Japanese) typically works with a few assistants in a small studio and
is associated with a creative editor from a commercial publishing
company.[10]
If a manga series is popular enough, it may be
animated
after or even during its run.[11]
Sometimes manga are drawn centering on previously existing live-action
or animated films.[12]
The term manga (kanji:
漫画;
hiragana: まんが;
katakana: マンガ;
listen (help·info);
English
/ˈmɑːŋɡə/
or
/ˈmæŋɡə/)
is a Japanese word referring both to comics and
cartooning. "Manga" as a term used outside Japan refers specifically
to comics originally published in Japan.[13]
Manga-influenced comics, among original works, exist in other parts
of the world, particularly in
Taiwan
("manhua"),
South Korea ("manhwa"),[14]
and China, notably Hong Kong ("manhua").[15]
In France, "la
nouvelle manga" has developed as a form of
bande dessinée comics drawn in styles influenced by manga.
Etymology
The
Chinese characters used to write the word manga in Japanese
can be translated as "whimsical drawings". The word first came into
common usage in the late 18th century with the publication of such works
as
Santō Kyōden's picturebook Shiji no yukikai (1798), and in
the early 19th century with such works as Aikawa Minwa's Manga
hyakujo (1814) and the celebrated
Hokusai Manga books (1814–1834) containing assorted drawings
from the sketchbooks of the famous
ukiyo-e
artist
Hokusai.[16]
Rakuten Kitazawa (1876–1955) first used the word "manga" in the
modern sense.[17]
History
and characteristics
Modern manga originated in the Occupation (1945–1952) and
post-Occupation years (1952–early 1960s), while a previously
militaristic and ultra-nationalist Japan rebuilt its political and
economic infrastructure.
Writers on manga history have described two broad and complementary
processes shaping modern manga. One view emphasizes events occurring
during and after the
U.S. Occupation of Japan (1945–1952), and stresses U.S. cultural
influences, including U.S. comics (brought to Japan by the
GIs) and images and themes from U.S. television, film, and cartoons
(especially
Disney).[18]
Alternately, other writers such as
Frederik L. Schodt, Kinko Ito, and Adam L. Kern stress continuity of
Japanese cultural and aesthetic traditions, including pre-war,
Meiji, and
pre-Meiji culture and art.[19]
Regardless of its source, an explosion of artistic creativity
certainly occurred in the post-war period,[20]
involving manga artists such as
Osamu Tezuka (Astro
Boy) and
Machiko Hasegawa (Sazae-san).
Astro Boy quickly became (and remains) immensely popular in Japan
and elsewhere,[21]
and the anime
adaptation of Sazae-san drawing more viewers than any other anime
on Japanese television in 2011[citation
needed]. Tezuka and Hasegawa both made stylistic
innovations. In Tezuka's "cinematographic" technique, the panels are
like a motion picture that reveals details of action bordering on slow
motion as well as rapid zooms from distance to close-up shots. This kind
of visual dynamism was widely adopted by later manga artists.[22]
Hasegawa's focus on daily life and on women's experience also came to
characterize later
shōjo manga.[23]
Between 1950 and 1969, an increasingly large readership for manga
emerged in Japan with the solidification of its two main marketing
genres,
shōnen manga aimed at boys and shōjo manga aimed at
girls.[24]
In 1969 a group of female manga artists (later called the
Year 24 Group, also known as Magnificent 24s) made their
shōjo manga debut ("year 24" comes from the Japanese name for the
year 1949, the birth-year of many of these artists).[25]
The group included
Hagio Moto,
Riyoko Ikeda,
Yumiko Oshima,
Keiko Takemiya, and
Ryoko Yamagishi, and they marked the first major entry of female
artists into manga.[9]
Thereafter, primarily female manga artists would draw shōjo for a
readership of girls and young women.[26]
In the following decades (1975–present), shōjo manga continued to
develop stylistically while simultaneously evolving different but
overlapping subgenres.[27]
Major subgenres include romance, superheroines, and "Ladies Comics" (in
Japanese, redisu レディース,
redikomi レディコミ, and josei
女性).[28]
Modern shōjo manga romance features love as a major theme set
into emotionally intense narratives of
self-realization.[29]
With the superheroines, shōjo manga saw releases such as
Pink Hanamori's
Mermaid Melody Pichi Pichi Pitch
Reiko Yoshida's
Tokyo Mew Mew, And,
Naoko Takeuchi's
Pretty Soldier Sailor Moon, which became internationally popular
in both manga and anime formats.[30]
Groups (or
sentais)
of girls working together have also been popular within this genre. Like
Lucia, Hanon, and Rina singing together, and Sailor Moon, Sailor
Mercury, Sailor Mars, Sailor Jupiter, and Sailor Venus working together.[31]
Manga for male readers sub-divides according to the age of its
intended readership: boys up to 18 years old (shōnen manga) and
young men 18- to 30-years old (seinen
manga);[32]
as well as by content, including action-adventure often involving male
heroes, slapstick humor, themes of honor, and sometimes explicit
sexuality.[33]
The Japanese use different kanji for two closely allied meanings of
"seinen"—青年 for "youth, young man"
and 成年 for "adult, majority"—the
second referring to sexually overt manga aimed at grown men and also
called seijin ("adult" 成人)
manga.[34]
Shōnen, seinen, and seijin manga share many
features in common.
Boys and young men became some of the earliest readers of manga after
World War II. From the 1950s on, shōnen manga focused on topics
thought to interest the archetypal boy, including subjects like robots,
space-travel, and heroic action-adventure.[35]
Popular themes include
science fiction, technology, sports, and supernatural settings.
Manga with solitary costumed superheroes like
Superman,
Batman,
and
Spider-Man generally did not become as popular.[36]
The role of girls and women in manga produced for male readers has
evolved considerably over time to include those featuring single pretty
girls (bishōjo)[37]
such as
Belldandy from
Oh My Goddess!, stories where such girls and women surround the
hero, as in
Negima and
Hanaukyo Maid Team, or groups of heavily armed female warriors (sentō
bishōjo)[38]
With the relaxation of censorship in Japan in the 1990s, a wide
variety of explicit sexual themes appeared in manga intended for male
readers, and correspondingly occur in English translations.[39]
However, in 2010 the
Tokyo Metropolitan Government passed a bill to restrict harmful
content.[40]
The
gekiga style of drawing—emotionally dark, often starkly
realistic, sometimes very violent—focuses on the day-in, day-out grim
realities of life, often drawn in gritty and unpretty fashions.[41]
Gekiga such as
Sampei Shirato's 1959–1962 Chronicles of a Ninja's Military
Accomplishments (Ninja Bugeichō) arose in the late 1950s and
1960s partly from left-wing student and working-class political activism[42]
and partly from the aesthetic dissatisfaction of young manga artists
like
Yoshihiro Tatsumi with existing manga.[43]
Publications
In Japan, manga constituted an annual 406 billion yen (approximately
$3.6 billion USD) publication-industry by 2007.[44]
Recently, the manga industry has expanded worldwide, where distribution
companies license and reprint manga into their native languages.
After a series has run for a while, publishers often collect the
stories together and print them in dedicated book-sized volumes, called
tankōbon. These are the equivalent of U.S.
trade paperbacks or
graphic novels. These volumes use higher-quality paper, and are
useful to those who want to "catch up" with a series so they can follow
it in the magazines or if they find the cost of the weeklies or
monthlies to be prohibitive. Recently, "deluxe" versions have also been
printed as readers have gotten older and the need for something special
grew. Old manga have also been reprinted using somewhat lesser quality
paper and sold for 100 yen (about $1 U.S. dollar) each to compete with
the
used book market.
Marketeers primarily classify manga by the age and gender of the
target readership.[45]
In particular, books and magazines sold to boys (shōnen) and
girls (shōjo) have distinctive cover art and are placed on
different shelves in most bookstores. Due to cross-readership, consumer
response is not limited by demographics. For example, male readers
subscribing to a series intended for female readers and so on.
Japan also has
manga cafés, or manga kissa (kissa is an abbreviation
of
kissaten). At a manga kissa, people drink
coffee and read manga, and sometimes stay there overnight.
There has been an increase in the amount of publications of original
webmanga. It is internationally drawn by enthusiasts of all levels
of experience, and is intended for online viewing. It can be ordered in
graphic novel form if available in print.
The
Kyoto International Manga Museum maintains a very large website
listing manga published in Japanese.[46]
Magazines
Eshinbun Nipponchi; credited as the first manga
magazine ever made.
Manga magazines usually have many series running concurrently with
approximately 20–40 pages allocated to each series per issue. Other
magazines such as the anime fandom magazine
Newtype featured single chapters within their monthly
periodicals. Other magazines like
Nakayoshi feature many stories written by many different
artists; these magazines, or "anthology magazines", as they are also
known (colloquially "phone books"), are usually printed on low-quality
newsprint and can be anywhere from 200 to more than 850 pages thick.
Manga magazines also contain
one-shot comics and various four-panel
yonkoma
(equivalent to
comic strips). Manga series can run for many years if they are
successful. Manga artists sometimes start out with a few "one-shot"
manga projects just to try to get their name out. If these are
successful and receive good reviews, they are continued. Magazines often
have a short life.[47]
History
Kanagaki Robun and Kawanabe Kyosai created the first manga magazine
in 1874: Eshinbun Nipponchi. The magazine was heavily influenced
by
Japan Punch, founded in 1862 by
Charles Wirgman, a British cartoonist. Eshinbun Nipponchi had
a very simple style of drawings and did not become popular with many
people. Eshinbun Nipponchi ended after three issues. The magazine
Kisho Shimbun in 1875 was inspired by Eshinbun Nipponchi,
which was followed by Marumaru Chinbun in 1877, and then
Garakuta Chinpo in 1879.[48]
Shōnen Sekai was the first
shōnen
magazine created in 1895 by Iwaya Sazanami, a famous writer of Japanese
children's literature back then. Shōnen Sekai had a strong focus
on the
First Sino-Japanese War.[49]
In 1905 the manga-magazine publishing boom started with the
Russo-Japanese War,[50]
Tokyo Pakku was created and became a huge hit.[51]
After Tokyo Pakku in 1905, a female version of Shōnen Sekai
was created and named
Shōjo Sekai, considered the first shōjo magazine.[52]
Shōnen Pakku was made and is considered the first
children's manga magazine. The children's demographic was in an
early stage of development in the
Meiji period. Shōnen Pakku was influenced from foreign
children's magazines such as Puck which an employee of Jitsugyō
no Nihon (publisher of the magazine) saw and decided to emulate. In
1924, Kodomo Pakku was launched as another children's manga
magazine after Shōnen Pakku.[51]
During the boom, Poten (derived from the French "potin") was
published in 1908. All the pages were in full color with influences from
Tokyo Pakku and Osaka Pakku. It is unknown if there were
any more issues besides the first one.[50]
Kodomo Pakku was launched May 1924 by Tokyosha and featured
high-quality art by many members of the manga artistry like Takei Takeo,
Takehisa Yumeji and Aso Yutaka. Some of the manga featured
speech balloons, where other manga from the previous eras did not
use speech balloons and were silent.[51]
Published from May 1935 to January 1941, Manga no Kuni
coincided with the period of the
Second Sino-Japanese War. Manga no Kuni featured information
on becoming a
mangaka
and on other comics industries around the world. Manga no Kuni
handed its title to Sashie Manga Kenkyū in August 1940.[53]
Dōjinshi
Dōjinshi, produced by small publishers outside of the
mainstream commercial market, resemble in their publishing
small-press independently published
comic books in the United States.
Comiket,
the largest comic book
convention in the world with around 500,000 visitors gathering over
three days, is devoted to dōjinshi. While they most often contain
original stories, many are parodies of or include
characters from popular manga and anime series. Some dōjinshi
continue with a series' story or write an entirely new one using its
characters, much like
fan fiction. In 2007, dōjinshi sold for 27.73 billion yen
(245 million USD).[44]
International
markets
By 2007 the influence of manga on international comics had grown
considerably over the past two decades.[54]
"Influence" is used here to refer to effects on the comics markets
outside of Japan and to
aesthetic effects on comics artists internationally.
The reading direction in a traditional manga
Traditionally, manga stories flow from top to bottom and from
right to left. Some publishers of translated manga keep to this
original format. Other publishers mirror the pages horizontally before
printing the translation, changing the reading direction to a more
"Western" left to right, so as not to confuse foreign readers or
traditional comics-consumers. This practice is known as "flipping".[55]
For the most part, criticism suggests that flipping goes against the
original intentions of the creator (for example, if a person wears a
shirt that reads "MAY" on it, and gets flipped, then the word is altered
to "YAM"), who may be ignorant of how awkward it is to read comics when
the eyes must flow through the pages and text in opposite directions,
resulting in an experience that's quite distinct from reading something
that flows homogeneously. Flipping may also cause oddities with familiar
asymmetrical objects or layouts, such as a car being depicted with the
gas pedal on the left and the brake on the right, or a shirt with the
buttons on the wrong side, but these issues are minor when compared to
the unnatural reading flow, and some of them could be solved with an
adaptation work that goes beyond just translation and blind flipping.[56]
United States
Manga made their way only gradually into U.S. markets, first in
association with anime and then independently.[57]
Some U.S.
fans became aware of manga in the 1970s and early 1980s.[58]
However, anime was initially more accessible than manga to U.S. fans,[59]
many of whom were college-age young people who found it easier to
obtain, subtitle, and exhibit video tapes of anime than translate,
reproduce, and distribute tankōbon-style manga books.[60]
One of the first manga translated into English and marketed in the U.S.
was
Keiji Nakazawa's
Barefoot Gen, an autobiographical story of the atomic bombing of
Hiroshima issued by Leonard Rifas and Educomics (1980–1982).[61]
More manga were translated between the mid-1980s and 1990s, including
Golgo
13 in 1986,
Lone Wolf and Cub from
First Comics in 1987, and
Kamui,
Area 88,
and
Mai the Psychic Girl, also in 1987 and all from
Viz
Media-Eclipse
Comics.[62]
Others soon followed, including
Akira from
Marvel Comics'
Epic Comics imprint and
Appleseed from Eclipse Comics in 1988, and later Iczer-1
(Antarctic
Press, 1994) and
Ippongi Bang's F-111 Bandit (Antarctic Press, 1995).
In the 1980s to the mid-1990s, Japanese animation, like
Akira,
Dragon Ball,
Neon Genesis Evangelion, and
Pokémon, made a bigger impact on the fan experience and in the
market than manga.[63]
Matters changed when translator-entrepreneur
Toren Smith founded
Studio Proteus in 1986. Smith and Studio Proteus acted as an agent
and translator of many Japanese manga, including
Masamune Shirow's Appleseed and
Kōsuke Fujishima's
Oh My Goddess!, for
Dark Horse and
Eros Comix, eliminating the need for these publishers to seek their
own contacts in Japan.[64]
Simultaneously, the Japanese publisher
Shogakukan opened a U.S. market initiative with their U.S.
subsidiary Viz, enabling Viz to draw directly on Shogakukan's catalogue
and translation skills.[55]
A young boy reading
Black Cat in a Barnes & Noble bookstore
Japanese publishers began pursuing a U.S. market in the mid-1990s due
to a stagnation in the domestic market for manga.[65]
The U.S. manga market took an upturn with mid-1990s anime and manga
versions of Masamune Shirow's
Ghost in the Shell (translated by
Frederik L. Schodt and
Toren Smith) becoming very popular among fans.[66]
An extremely successful manga and anime translated and dubbed in English
in the mid-1990s was
Sailor Moon.[67]
By 1995–1998, the
Sailor Moon manga had been exported to over 23 countries,
including China, Brazil, Mexico, Australia, North America and most of
Europe.[68]
In 1997, Mixx Entertainment began publishing Sailor Moon, along
with
CLAMP's
Magic Knight Rayearth,
Hitoshi Iwaaki's
Parasyte and
Tsutomu Takahashi's
Ice
Blade in the monthly manga magazine
MixxZine. Two years later, MixxZine was renamed to
Tokyopop before discontinuing in 2000. Mixx Entertainment, later
renamed
Tokyopop, also published manga in
trade paperbacks and, like Viz, began aggressive marketing of manga
to both young male and young female demographics.[69]
In the following years, manga became increasingly popular, and new
publishers entered the field while the established publishers greatly
expanded their catalogues.[70]
and by 2008, the U.S. and Canadian manga market generated $175 million
in annual sales.[71]
Simultaneously, mainstream U.S. media began to discuss manga, with
articles in
The New York Times,
Time magazine,
The Wall Street Journal, and
Wired magazine.[72]
Europe
Manga has influenced European cartooning in a way that is somewhat
different than in the U.S. Broadcast anime in Italy and France opened
the European market to manga during the 1970s.[73]
French art has borrowed from Japan since the 19th century (Japonisme),[74]
and has its own highly developed tradition of
bande dessinée cartooning.[75]
In France, beginning in the mid-1990s,[76]
manga has proven very popular to a wide readership, accounting for about
one-third of comics sales in France since 2004.[77]
According to the Japan External Trade Organization, sales of manga
reached $212.6 million within France and Germany alone in 2006.[73]
France represents about 50% of the European market and is the second
worldwide market, behind Japan.[7]
European publishers marketing manga translated into French include
Glénat, Asuka,
Casterman,
Kana, and
Pika Édition, among others.
European publishers also translate manga into German, Italian, Dutch,
and other languages. In 2007, about 70% of all comics sold in Germany
were manga.[78]
Manga publishers based in the United Kingdom include
Gollancz and Titan Books. Manga publishers from the United States
have a strong marketing presence in the United Kingdom: for example, the
Tanoshimi line from
Random House.
Localized manga
A number of artists in the United States have drawn comics and
cartoons influenced by manga. As an early example,
Vernon Grant drew manga-influenced comics while living in Japan in
the late 1960s and early 1970s.[79]
Others include
Frank Miller's mid-1980s
Ronin,
Adam Warren and Toren Smith's 1988
The Dirty Pair,[80]
Ben
Dunn's 1987
Ninja High School and Manga Shi 2000 from
Crusade Comics (1997).
By the 21st century several U.S. manga publishers had begun to
produce work by U.S. artists under the broad marketing-label of manga.[81]
In 2002 I.C. Entertainment, formerly
Studio Ironcat and now out of business, launched a series of manga
by U.S. artists called
Amerimanga.[82]
In 2004
eigoMANGA launched the
Rumble Pak and
Sakura Pakk
anthology series.
Seven Seas Entertainment followed suit with
World Manga.[83]
Simultaneously, TokyoPop introduced
original English-language manga (OEL manga) later renamed Global
Manga.[84]
As of 2013 TokyoPop is the largest U.S. publisher of original
English-language manga.[85]
Francophone artists have also developed their own versions of manga,
like
Frédéric Boilet's
la nouvelle manga. Boilet has worked in France and in Japan,
sometimes collaborating with Japanese artists.[86]
Awards
The Japanese manga industry grants a large number of awards, mostly
sponsored by publishers, with the winning prize usually including
publication of the winning stories in magazines released by the
sponsoring publisher. Examples of these awards include:
The
Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has awarded the
International Manga Award annually since May 2007.[87]
See also