Manga

Are you interested in the history of cartoons and comic art in Japan? If so, you will definitely want to check out the anthology  Manga Zasshi Hakubutsukan (漫画雑誌博物館/Manga Magazine Museum), held at the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum (BICLM), as well as in our Kinokuniya Digital Library (KinoDen) online. The chief editor of this  twelve-volume set is Isao SHIMIZU (清水勲), a well-known manga historian and scholar who published over 100 books and articles during his lifetime.

Figure `1. Cover image of one of Japan’s earliest manga magazines, Tokyo pakku. Courtesy of Wikipedia.org.

Covering the history of manga at the turn of the 20th century, Manga Zasshi Hakubutsukan (漫画雑誌博物館/Manga Magazine Museum) offers select issues of some of the earliest and most innovative satirical magazines printed in Japan. To get a taste of the various titles covered in this anthology, let’s look at some of the highlights!

Volume 1 and 2 of this series is a reprint of Marumaru Chinbun (團團珍聞), a satirical journal published weekly between 1877-1907. Founded by Nomura Fumio 野村文夫 (1836-91), a former official of the Meiji government, this early periodical followed the style of British satire and humor magazines. Satirizing the government in articles, comics, haiku, and caricatures, this serial also covered pivotal events such as the Movement for Civil Rights and Freedom (自由民権運動, Jiyū Minken Undō) of the late 1800s.

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The following is Part II of a two-part essay that was published on the Spotlights blog of the The North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources (NCC) in October 2022. The essay was co-written by Jeremy Joseph (OSU Class of 2024) and Japanese Studies Librarian, Dr. Ann Marie Davis. Part I of this essay is available here.

Capturing the Mundane to the Extraordinary: Tobita’s Valuable Sketches

A trove of details, from the mundane to the extraordinary, about life at Sugamo naturally surfaced as a result of this Project. For example, extensive interviews with Tobita revealed that he began gifting his art to fellow inmates at the behest of Prince Nashimoto Morimasa, an uncle-in-law of Emperor Shōwa and Tobita’s fellow inmate and confidant at Sugamo. When Prince Nashimoto was released in April 1946, he asked Tobita to offer him one of his drawings as a parting gift.

Figure 5. In “Inmates Sleeping in a Cell,” Tokio Tobita depicts convicts suffering haunting nightmares as well as a cacophony of late-night prison sounds. The emblem “American Red Cross” is visible on the backside of a presumably rationed and donated leaf of paper. Pencil on paper, 13.8 × 21.5 cm. Fumio Fujiki and Tokio Tobita collection, The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum; SPEC.CGA.SUG.2012.

Tobita had drawn pictures for himself in private, but he had never shared his work before the prince’s request. After some thought, he drafted a cartoon-like watercolor, entitled Senpan haishoku no zu (roughly translated, “An Illustration of the Cafeteria Line for War Criminals”) in which about two dozen Class-A and Class-C suspects, including Hideki Tojo, Prince Nashimoto, and Tobita himself, stand in single file as they advance toward a meal distribution table. At the head of the line, a couple of men bow to fellow prisoners who are serving their food. An American serviceman stands by idly observing with a cigarette in his mouth.

After composing this watercolor, Tobita began drawing manically to alleviate his extreme anxiety and fear of execution as he awaited sentencing before the Tokyo Trials. Reflecting this mood, his earliest drawings took up haunting scenes, such as the routine cavity searches of naked convicts and the confiscation of shaving razors by guards at public baths. In one such troubled drawing (Figure 5), a prisoner struggles with insomnia while his cell mates sleep through an onslaught of threatening noises that breach the vent in their prison cell door. While most of the men snore, two are shown experiencing dark nightmares, as indicated by image-filled “speech” bubbles, one with a horn-headed monster and the other a knife-wielding assailant and bomber plane flying overhead.

Figure 6. The cover page of P-ko Sugamo Seikatsu, a scrapbook containing sixty-six sheets of hand-colored 4-coma (4 panels per page) “gag” manga strips by Fumio Fujiki. This serialized cartoon strip, named after the “everyman” prisoner, “Mr. P-ko” often appeared in the bi-weekly prison newspaper, “Sugamo Shimbun.” Hand painted on paper, 24.8 x 17.1 cm. Fumio Fujiki and Tokio Tobita collection, The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum; SPEC.CGA.SUG.2012.

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The following is Part I of a two-part essay that was previously published on the Spotlights blog of the The North American Coordinating Council on Japanese Library Resources (NCC). It was co-written by Jeremy Joseph (OSU Class of 2024) and Japanese Studies Librarian, Dr. Ann Marie Davis. Note: To conform with library collection titles, all Japanese names in this article follow Western conventions with given names appearing first and family names last.

Figure 1. The cover page of Sugamo Life, a sketch book containing 65 rough cartoons by convicted war criminal Fumio Fujiki. The original art cover verso has a brief handwritten description identifying the images as rough sketches from Sugamo Prison sent by request to the U.S. Department of State. Watercolor and ink, 20 × 28 cm. Fumio Fujiki and Tokio Tobita collection, The Ohio State University, Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum; SPEC.CGA.SUG.2012

Emblematic of rare and distinctive manga collection at OSU is the Fumio Fujiki and Tokio Tobita Collection, held at the University Libraries’ Billy Ireland Cartoon & Library Museum (BICLM). Stored in a full-size document box (measuring 5 inches in width), the collection is relatively small, yet offers a seismic punch. Its many files of sketches and cartoons offer first hand testimony to the daily experiences of roughly 2,000 alleged and convicted war criminals incarcerated at Sugamo Prison (巣鴨拘置所 Sugamo Kōchiso) after World War II. The sketches also reveal everyday interactions between Japanese Prisoners of War and American guards during the post-war occupation era (1945-52). The act of producing such art was, in itself, a significant gesture that not only reduced the anxieties of prison life but also served as a vehicle for meaningful exchanges between the Japanese inmates and American GIs running the prison.

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After a wee bit of a hiatus, the manga blog is back in business! Although this is a terribly busy time for many people, I’d like to bring to your attention one of the most-read Japanese books since 2000 for your possible reading pleasure. Whether you pick it up now or later, this is a great choice to cozy up with after graduation season.

Densha Otoko (電車男) by Hitori
Nakano, PL873.5.A55 D46 2005

Hitori Nakano’s (中野独人) Densha Otoko (電車男), or “Train Man,” took Japan by storm in 2004. With its unique presentation and quirky plot, it quickly became a sensation across the nation. Densha Otoko details the efforts of our main character, the eponymous “train man,” to romance a woman with whom he had but a brief meeting with after an incident on a train commute. The catch? The train man has never been on a date and has no idea where to start.

If you’ve been on the internet at all over the last 20 years, you may know of 4Channel, or “4Chan.” What you may not know is that the anonymous message board was born out of its (at the time) slightly less problematic predecessor, ２ちゃんねる (ni-channeru), or “2Chan.” Herein lies the unique element of this love story: it plays out entirely over 2Chan. After the aforementioned train incident, in which our hero takes a risk to help several middle-aged women out when an old drunkard harasses them, he acquires the phone number of the one young woman also affected. Wanting to ask her to dinner but lacking any idea how to do this, he takes to 2Chan to share his story and romantic ineptitude. Surprisingly, the people of 2Chan begin to advise him on how to get a date, which quickly snowballs as he meets success. Soon, he is giving his 2Chan helpers progress updates as they continue to aid him toward maybe, just maybe, confessing his feelings for the girl…

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