Manga

Among the many unique manga serials held at OSU’s Billy Ireland Cartoon Library & Museum (BICLM) are three original issues of Tokyo Puck (東京パック), an early Japanese satirical comic newspaper launched by Kitazawa Rakuten (北沢楽天, 1876-1955) and published from 1905 to 1923 (with a 5-year interruption circa the First World War). This Japanese manga newspaper was inspired by the American magazine Puck (published from 1877 to 1918), one of the earliest humor magazines in the US to solely feature cartoons, caricatures, and political satire.

The cover page of an issue of Tokyo Puck (Volume 2, Number 11, published June 1, 1906), held at the BICLM. PN6790.J32 T65 v.2:no.11

Recently I had the opportunity to click some pictures of two of our Tokyo Puck issues during a class visit with students from “The Art of Colonial Taiwan,” (ArtHist 5002). In addition to our Tokyo Puck samples, the students in this class browsed a variety of materials depicting Taiwan and other Japanese colonies in historical cartoon maps, water colors, and artist scrolls created by famous manga artists of the early 20th century.

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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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By Chase Conner

Some of you may have already noticed that our Manga Studies library resource guide has gotten a facelift. If you haven’t checked it out lately, now is the time for a fresh visit! With the recent updates, we wanted our manga guide to better reflect the diversity of our collection and simplify access for researchers and students.

 The most notable change to this guide is its visual overhaul. Upon opening the page, you will be greeted with a lovely assortment of photos of some of our rare and distinctive manga materials stored at The OSU Libraries’ Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. On the right panel, you will now find a navigation box for searching our online library catalog for any piece or title that catches your interest. We’ve also added links to a key word search and a list of manga genre terms to help narrow your online catalog search.

Also on this refreshed guide, you’ll find a showcase of selected manga titles that are available in circulation at OSU. From time to time, we will update this showcase, so please visit us regularly to learn about the latest additions to the collections!

Another change to this guide is a panel of links to manga and anime journals, other relevant OSU library resources, and a small showcase of circulating materials in manga studies. These showcases are by no means a comprehensive but serve as a launching point for helping you find what you need. 

Whether for leisure or research purposes, we hope our new layout will make searching for manga more appealing and approachable. Please check it out sometime and let us know if you have any questions or suggestions for further improvements!

Last month, our manga collection was featured at the 2020 Ohayocon, and then, as a result, in the student-run newspaper, The Lantern. We have been so very proud and grateful for this unique opportunity to share information about our wonderful collection!

Thanks to a lovely invitation to participate from the Japan-American Society of Central Ohio (JASCO), we were able to offer a table display in the Yuki Matsuri room at the Con, and we also held a well-attended panel presentation (full of cosplayers in the audience) on Manga at Ohio State University Libraries. If you check out the video, you’ll see that the members of our panel were me (Ann Marie Davis, Japanese Studies Librarian); Kapil Vasudev, Education Librarian; and Kay Clopton, Mary P. Key Cultural Diversity Inquiry Resident Librarian. Covering our activities at this event was student journalist, Aaron Lien, who in turn published the following video article about our work: 

Thank you so much, Aaron!

Ohio State Manga Collection at Ohayocon

By Nick Castle

As Halloween draws nearer, so does our fanatical obsession with all things spooky and scary, peeking their heads around the corner like ghosts behind a gravestone. Why not indulge in some vintage scares at the OSU Libraries?

Japanese Studies invites you to learn about the mythology and artistic culture of Meiji Japan (1868-1912) through the newly acquired Kyōsai Hyakki Gadan (暁斎百鬼画談), a color woodblock print by eccentric painter and manga forerunner, Kawanabe Kyōsai (河鍋 暁斎, 1831-1889). The long, accordion book (orihon) depicts a parade of all manner of weird and wicked yōkai (妖怪), spirits and demons from Japanese mythology. This particular scene is evocative of the hyakki yagyō (百鬼夜行) idiom, a historic theme in Japanese visual representation wherein a procession of legendary creatures sets foot upon the communities of mortal men and women.

A view of the book’s cover with title
Kyōsai hyakki gadan

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