Sample set of four gekiga titles used for “Group 9”
in a recent class on post-war Japanese counterculture
It’s been a while since the last blog post, but never fear, we are still working hard to build and activate our cool manga collection! Speaking of “cool” — we recently had a cool opportunity to explore our manga sub-collection of gekiga (劇画) during a class visit with Professor Keita Moore this semester. In his course “Elements of Japanese Culture” (DEALL 2231), Prof. Moore brought his students in to the BICLM to view some of our gekiga and to learn more about Japanese postwar protest and opposition.
Known for its more mature themes and cinematic flow, gekiga (often translated as “dramatic pictures” in English) is a type of avant-garde manga that departed in style from mainstream Japanese comics in the late 1950s. In contrast to the prevailing manga that were drawn for children (jidō manga or kodomo manga) by artist Tezuka Osamu, gekiga emerged with new content for adult readers, many of whom harbored doubts about the postwar status quo. In many ways, the genre of gekiga gave shape to these doubts, and spoke to societal issues of the times, ranging from economic and social inequality, Japan’s Cold War military alliance with the United States, and the threat of nuclear warfare.
