Combining stimulating stories with stylish graphic art, manga - Japanese comic books -
have for the past several decades tickled the sensibilities of readers, with ramifications
more profound than one might imagine. Not only do manga comprise a whopping 40% of
the contemporary Japanese publishing industry, their influence also extends to other
forms of mass media—anime, novels, television dramas, games, movies, merchandise—
and even to the formation of social values and practices. As a core component of the
“Cool Japan” mystique that the Japanese government has promoted to enhance its soft
power, manga have now been officially embraced as a defining element of contemporary
Japan. While traditionalist critics may dismiss them as derivative, formulaic, superficial, or
grossly commercial, the very lightness, ease of reading, and familiarity of repetition in
manga comprise part of their charm, and the bewitching effect of that appeal deserves
serious consideration.
To what should we attribute the widespread and powerful allure of manga? Does it derive
from long enduring Japanese pictorial practices, or is it a modern Japanese version of a
Western form? The answer is complicated by the fact that the term “manga” itself has had
shifting definitions since its emergence in the 1790s, and has been confusingly applied to
various types of visual materials, from pictorial miscellanies to satirical political cartoons
to comic strips. Competing histories of manga are thus shaped largely by different
interpretations of the term. For some, defining manga broadly as spontaneous, playful
drawings, the genre goes back to the Frolicking Animals scrolls of the 12th century. For
others, narrowly defining manga by their contemporary form as comic books, they are
strictly a postwar phenomenon, more directly influenced by American popular culture than
Japanese art history. While the rich background of visual narratives in Japan deserves
careful consideration as context, this exhibition focuses mainly on manga in their
contemporary form as Japanese comic books, in which American influence predominates.