Reassessing Manga History, Resituating Manga in History

Abstract

In the past three decades, the public perception of manga has undergone very significant transformations. In a relatively short time span, the medium acquired several different and new facets, from an object of public concern for its supposed promotion of violence and bad morals, to an important instrument to promote Cool Japan, to a legitimate object of academic study. Throughout the twentieth century, like in most parts of the world, comics in Japan were perceived as a superficial form of popular entertainment, aimed mostly at an audience of children. This changed significantly after the so-called Miyazaki incident of 1989, in which a young man, Miyazaki Tsutomu, accused of the serial murder of schoolchildren (of which he was subsequently convicted and executed), upon arrest was found to be in possession of a large number of manga, anime videotapes, and related merchandising. The media hype around Miyazaki’s obsession with manga resulted in a broader perception of comic authors and fans as socially deviant individuals, and manga and the related subcultures became the source of a veritable moral panic (Kinsella 1998: 308–311).