Abstract
This chapter discusses online manga that responded to the Japan’s triple disaster—the massive earthquake on March 11, 2011, that caused the tsunami, and the subsequent nuclear meltdown—created by non-professional cartoonists who published their works on social media. Focuses are on Misukoso’s Field of Cole: Remember the Great East Japan Earthquake (Itsuka nanohana batake-de) and Kizuki Sae’s Seven Days in the Disaster (Shinsai nanoka-kan). Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s theory on the nature of ‘storytelling’ that conveys lived experiences of the people, my chapter attempts to evaluate the powerful function of graphic storytelling, its resilience to the mass media(ted) images and information, and its ability to maintain human empathy toward the disaster victims.
Prose writers, of course, can be very evocative, and I appreciate what they do, but I find there is nothing like thrusting someone right there. And, that’s what I think a cartoonist can do.
—Comics journalist Joe Sacco (Joe Sacco, “Joe Sacco: Presentation from the 2002 UF Comics Conference,”ImageText, 1, no. 1 (2002): n.p. Accessed November 3, 2013,http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v1_1/sacco)
There is, or used to be, this concept of the “objective reporter” who goes out and records the facts. But that’s bullshit.
—Sarah Glidden, creator of graphic novel: How to Understand Israel in 60 Days or Less (Sarah Glidden, ‘Meanwhile... Comics Journalism and Sarah Glidden.’ Bad at Sports: Contemporary Art Talk. May 12, 2013. Accessed October 13, 2013,http://badatsports.com/2013/meanwhile-on-comics-journalism-and-an-interview-with-sarah-glidden)
In this chapter, Japanese names are in the Japanese order, with the family name preceding the first name.
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Notes
- 1.
Masao Miyoshi and Harry Harootunian, ‘Introduction,’ in Postmodernism and Japan, eds. Masao Miyoshi and Harry Harootunian (Durham: Duke University Press, 1989), x.
- 2.
For the post-disaster anti-nuclear demonstration, see Williamson, ‘Largest Demonstrations.’
- 3.
In her essay for Women’s Studies Quarterly, Akiko Mizoguchi introduces eight Japanese artists, including novelists, painters, and filmmakers, who created artwork as a response to Japan’s triple disaster.
- 4.
Ethnomusicologist Noriko Manabe documented how music was utilized in the anti-nuclear demonstration after 3/11. In addition, Jon Mitchell discusses an anonymous graffiti artist ‘281_Anti Nuke’ who has been active around Tokyo.
- 5.
I use Japanese names in this chapter in Japanese order—family names followed by given names, except when authors prefer Western rendering of their names in their essays in English.
- 6.
It should be noted here that we also witnessed the swift rise of international responses and alliances made through this popular medium. Within six months of the disaster, French artist/editor Jean-David Moravan started a comics anthology project, Magnitude 9: Des Images pour le Japon, which includes both Japanese and American cartoonists’ works and illustrations. In the UK, the Comics Alliance also initiated a comics anthology, Spirit of Hope, in which domestic and international artists contributed their short comics/manga works. Within Japan, cartoonist Adam Pasion, who lives in Nagoya, started a similar comics project, Aftershock: Artists Respond to Disaster in Japan, through the online fundraising website Kickstarter. The project was successfully funded for publication, collecting about $3800, over $1000 more than the goal. These comics publishing projects, initiated by a few individuals located in geographically different places, were connected and developed into a collective project, demonstrating domestic and international cooperation through comics production beyond linguistic and national borders. These domestic and international examples testify again to the fact that comics exist not only as a form of entertainment or of individual expression but also as a medium for communication as well as one that shapes solidarity and cooperation.
- 7.
The word ‘amateur’ might be generally associated with ‘unskilled,’ it does not necessarily apply to these two artists. The term ‘non-commercial’ might be more precise, but as I shall discuss later, Kizuki (and possibly Misukoso, too) have produced and sold their works at manga/fanzine events, which can be considered as a commercial activity. For this reason, I use ‘amateur’ or ‘non-professional cartoonist’ in this chapter.
- 8.
Manga scholar Jaqueline Berndt discusses the importance of exploring ‘manga’s sociocritical potential,’ stating that Japan’s triple disaster ‘suggest[s] the need to reconsider what role manga may play in contemporary Japanese society besides serving short-sighted economic and national purposes, or affective interest of (sub)cultural groups.’ After pointing out some methodological problems of manga criticism, she claims that ‘the real task (of manga criticism)’ is ‘not only to foreground the affective aspects of manga culture as such but also to highlight their fundamental relationality, involving creators, editors, and readers, generic genealogies, and sites of media consumption.’ My chapter partially responds to this assertion by examining the alternative, non-traditional way of manga production and circulation.
- 9.
Henry Jenkins, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New York: New York University Press, 2006), 3.
- 10.
The English translation of Misukoso’sField of Cole is available on Amazon Kindle. When a publisher asked to publish her manga, she proposed the condition that her manga would be translated and published in English with the hope that non-Japanese readers would also remember the disaster victims.
- 11.
Susan Sontag, Regarding the Pain of Others (New York: Picador, 2004), 101.
- 12.
Chris Cooper, ‘Japan’s Tsunami, Quake Spurs Manga Novel,’ Bloomberg Businessweek, May 27, 2012, accessed October 8, 2013, http://www.businessweek.com/news/2012-05-27/japan-s-tsunami-quake-spurs-manga-novel-for-forgotten-victims
- 13.
As of 15 December 2013.
- 14.
Sae Kizuki, Shinsai nanoka-kan (Tokyo: Prevision, 2011), 112.
- 15.
Fan-yim Lam, ‘Comic Market: How the World’s Largest Amateur Comic Fair Shaped Japanese Dōjinshi Culture,’ Mechademia, vol. 5 (2010): 232.
- 16.
Sharon Kinsella, Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000),140.
- 17.
By social media, I refer to the Internet-based interactive and communication websites or applications through which users can exchange and share information and self-created contents.
- 18.
Several professional manga artists to emerge from this participatory culture include the popular cartoonists Togashi Yoshihiro, Kōga Yun, CLAMP, Yoshinaga Fumi, Ono Natsume.
- 19.
According to Kinsella, until 1988, ‘approximately 80 per cent of dōjinshi artist attending Comic Market were female, and only 20 percent male.... During the 1990s, however, male participation in Comic Market increased to 35 per cent.’ See Kinsella, Adult Manga, 112. From a more recent statistic from ‘Comic Market 35th Year Survey: A Report,’ as of August 2010, the number of staff and attendees is more than half of the total number, and among the category of manga creator groups, 34.8 percent are male creators, while 65.2 percent are female creators.
- 20.
Shimotsuki Takanaka, Komikku māketto soōseiki (Asahi Shinbun Shuppan, 2008), 16.
- 21.
Yoshimura Kazuma, ‘Essei manga no tokuchō,’ in Manga no kyōkasho, ed. Shimizu Isao and et al., (Kyoto: Rinsen shoten, 2008), 197. While as a genre essay manga has been cultivated mainly by female cartoonists, in recent years several male cartoonists have produced highly acclaimed works such as Azuma Hideo’s Disappearance Diary and Fukumitsu Shigeyuki’s Uchi no tsumatte dō desho? (What Do You Think of My Wife?).
- 22.
Japanese popular culture scholar Sugawa-Shimada claims the socio-critical aspect of some essay manga by saying that, through the humor and comedic trope, essay manga can address ‘taboos themes, such as alcoholism, divorce, and death.’ See Sugawa-Shimada, ‘Rebel with Causes,’ 172.
- 23.
David Slater, Keiko Nishimura, and Love Kindstrand, ‘Social Media in Disaster Japan,’ in Natural Disaster and Nuclear Crisis in Japan: Response and Recovery after Japan’s 3/11, ed. Jeff Kingston (New York: Routledge, 2012), 94.
- 24.
Shayne Bowman and Chris Willis, We Media: How Audiences Are Shaping the Future of News and Information (Reston, VA: The American Press Institute, 2003), 9.
- 25.
Sharon Kinsella, Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000), 6.
- 26.
For the censorship of Japanese manga, see Nagaoka, Manga wa naze kisei sareruno ka?
- 27.
Sharon Kinsella, Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000), 6.
- 28.
As for gekiga and its social and political criticism, see Suzuki, ‘Tatsumi Yoshihiro’s Gekiga and the Global Sixties: Aspiring for an Alternative.’
- 29.
Sharon Kinsella, Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society, (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2000), 10.
- 30.
Marc Steinberg, Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2012), viii.
- 31.
See Inoue’s tweet on 13 March 2011, accessed on 5 May 2012, https://twitter.com/inotomo2009/status/47143200196009984
- 32.
There was no official statement about the anime series after the cancellation until 2013. In October 2013, the anime series was (re-)planned and broadcast on NHK-BS.
- 33.
See the publisher’s official announcement. Available at: http://www.nihonbungeisha.co.jp/info/20110317/index.html
- 34.
In his book, Japanese media studies scholar Itō Mamoru analyzes the mass media discourse and claimed that the TV media shaped the ‘optimistic view’ immediately after the nuclear accident in Fukushima. See Itō, Terebi wa genpatsu jiko wo dō tsutaeta no ka, 65–67.
- 35.
Kayama Rica, 3 11 go no kokoro o tatenaosu (Tokyo: Besutoserāzu, 2011), 113.
- 36.
Walter Benjamin, ‘The Storyteller: Reflection on the Works of Nikolai Leskov,’ in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume 3 1935–1938, eds. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 143.
- 37.
Ibid., 148.
- 38.
Marshall McLuhan, ‘Comics: Madvestibule to TV,’ in Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium, eds. Jeet Heer and Kent Worcester (Jackson, MS: The University Press of Mississippi, 2004), 107.
- 39.
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art (New York: Harper Paperbacks, 1994), 66–68.
- 40.
Joe Sacco, ‘Joe Sacco: Presentation from the 2002 UF Comics Conference,’ ImageText, 1, no. 1 (2002): n.p. Accessed November 3, 2013, http://www.english.ufl.edu/imagetext/archives/v1_1/sacco
- 41.
Walter Benjamin, ‘The Storyteller: Reflection on the Works of Nikolai Leskov,’ in Walter Benjamin: Selected Writings Volume 3 1935–1938, eds. Howard Eiland and Michael W. Jennings, (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002), 156.
- 42.
Another example is the one by Ōtsuka Hisashi, an elementary school teacher in Fukushima, who produced a manga about the high school students who have gone through life-changing experiences due to the disaster. It was scripted by his colleague Satō Shigeki. Available from: http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/feature/eq2011/information/20120926-OYT8T00685.htm
- 43.
The manga was first posted on the website managed by Nakayama for free access. See her website, http://www.kozakana3.justhpbs.jp
- 44.
Currently, the booklet format of the manga is available on the site: http://www.kozakana3.justhpbs.jp/index.html. Nakayama’s interview was taken from an English-language news article in The Japan Times. See Kosaka. ‘Mom Who Boggled,’ n.p.
- 45.
This ‘declaration’ was retracted by the next ruling party in March 2013.
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This chapter was originally published in The Japan Studies Review XX (2016). I am grateful to Dr. Steven Heine, the editor-in-chief of the journal, for granting permission to reprint it here.
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Shige (CJ) Suzuki (2019). Reviving the Power of Storytelling: Post-3/11 Online ‘Amateur’ Manga. In: Ogi, F., Suter, R., Nagaike, K., Lent, J.A. (eds) Women’s Manga in Asia and Beyond. Palgrave Studies in Comics and Graphic Novels. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97229-9_19
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