JAPONSKO

Manga

You could hardly find anyone, who does not know the Japanese animated series called Pokemon. Nevertheless, few people know that dozens of other animated series are made in Japan every year, which are very popular among both children and adults.

And it is not just movies - comics account for about forty per cent of sold issues of the Japanese publishing industry. It is called manga.

COMICS TRADITION

The Japanese comics are significantly different from both the European and American comics despite the fact that they are based on them. For like anything else adopted from the West, Japanese also adapted comics to a great extent. The animal scrolls from the 12-th century from the legendary Toby bishop can be regarded as a predecessor of manga. There were more such scrolls from Buddhist monks, mostly they were several meters long rolls, on which one scene turned into another one while unrolling. Sometimes also a text was written on them. Same as any other artistic pieces of that time these scrolls were only available to Buddhist monks and Japanese aristocracy. Unlike that, the wood printed images called ukiyo-e, which were popular in the 19-th century were available to much broader audience. Ghostly, adventure and erotic drawings accompanying popular stories are another source of inspiration for the Japanese comics. Also the political caricature, which was brought to Japan in the second half of 19-th century by Englishman Charles Wirgman and French George Bigot, was the important element at the birth of manga, which should not be omitted. Japanese artists found the critics of the government, which had been impossible in Japan till that time, as courageous and something, which should be followed. So, in the beginning of the 20-th century the development of the comics in Japan just imitated the situation in America and Europe to the great extent. The magazine Shónen Club for children, which mainly consisted of comics, was enormously popular. However, as the influence of the militaristic regime as well as the censorship strengthened the comics ended up as a mouthpiece of the militaristic propaganda. The Donald Duck fighting in the U.S. army against the fascism would have found a lot of friends in the Japanese islands, who were fighting on the other side of the barricade though - such as the lost dog Norakuro, who was promoted to an officer's position in the Japanese army ultimately.

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MODERN MANGA

Manga in the form, as it is understood today, appeared after the World War II. In the situation of the economically and morally shaken Japan the star personified by Osama Tezuka called manga no kamisama, which means the God of the Comics, by Japanese, appeared. Tezuka created entirely new way of writing - inspired by French and German movies, introduced so called movie techniques in the comics. He found the way comics had been drawn till that time and which had reminded of the theatre performance due to its statical concept unsatisfactory. He started to split the movements and the expression of faces to significantly higher number of frames, used various approaches to the drawn objects and other techniques, which enabled him to attain psychological and dramatic effects, which had not been possible before. Also the characters and the purpose of influencing a reader changed - Tezuka believed, that the comics can do more than just make laugh and embedded his strong humanistic belief in it. He turned comics in something more than just grotesques or simple adventure stories and thus the generation of Japanese, who grown up with tales of Tezuka, continued to read manga even in their adulthood. Tezuka has had many enthusiastic followers, who further developed his way art. Step by step, various taboos disappeared, the stories became more complex and the range of themes, which could be included in the comics, extended.

COMICS FOR GIRLS

The development of shoyo manga (comics for girls) is a nice example. A first comic for girls was Ribon no Kishi (Knight with ribbon) by Tezuka - the story of a girl, who was the only offspring of the royal family and was brought up as a prince due to the succession. Most pioneering authors of comics for girls were men and their works can be divided into three groups: comedy, horror and weepie. The situation changed in the mid sixties, when the period of comics magazines changed - they started to be published weekly rather than monthly and existing authors simply were not able to draw enough pages for them. Most beginning authors were the girls at the age between sixteen and twenty, who began to try new kinds of stories, including the depiction of love stories and brought also traditional boys' comics genres to shoyo manga, such as sci-fi. Nevertheless, basic difference between manga for girls and boys even increased - unlike the comics for boys, where the action is important, in shoyo manga the careful depiction of emotions and subtle details of relations between characters are stressed. Also the style of a drawing corresponds to it, where the double page is composed as a whole, frames flow freely across the page and have various shapes. Flowers are often used as a background - the objective is to evoke certain mood rather than to depict the reality. At the end of seventieth shoyo manga splitted up to individual directions and subgenres with their specialized magazines. Further changes arrived together with the end of the twentieth century. The borders between the manga for girls and boys have started to disappear. Romance first love stories have become one of the most popular comics for boys and generally the psychology of characters has become more important in them. On the other side, new comics for girls are full of brave heroines, who use supernatural powers, fighting arts or political intrigues to save the Earth and whose hands are often stained with blood.

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MANGA IN JAPAN TODAY

Manga today offers big variety of genres; even nonfictions, educational or popular scientific literature is published in the form of comics. There are many distinct drawing styles, however comics are generally black and white and use the film techniques introduced by Tezuka. Most popular stories have around two thousand pages, but even much longer comics are not the exception. Great extent enables complex structure of the story as well as detailed depiction of the psyche of all characters. Even the heroes of the adventure manga tend not to be strictly divided into good guys and bad guys; they are usually ordinary people, who just have to fight against each other due to their duties or ideals. These long continued stories are published in one of two hundred fifty comics magazines. Such a magazine has between two hundred fifty and five hundred pages, a reader reads it during twenty minutes while in metro and than throws it into waste basket. In addition, popular comics are published separately as series of books for readers, who want to keep them. The most popular mangas have been remade in the form of cartoon series or serve as a model for the PC game, radio or theatre drama, musical, movie or novel. Movie made by comics can be an inspiration for a new manga and this process goes on and on till fans are willing to spend money on it. Best manga writers earn a lot of money and belong to celebrities. Thus being the author of manga is a dream job of many young Japanese. Some of them try to draw manga since the primary school and visit mass organized meetings of comics fans, where they can sell their works. The biggest meeting attracts dozens of thousands of amateur manga authors and several hundred thousands of Japanese, who come to buy their comics there.

MANGA OUTSIDE JAPAN

Manga starts to discover new territories outside Japan, it is popular in Asia and many comics are also published in Western Europe. Especially in France and Germany it is not difficult to get the most popular mangas published by specialized publishing companies, sometimes even in the form, in which they were published in Japan, which means they read from right to left. In the Czech Republic, no manga has been published yet, except Gona, which is actually not typical manga. In spite of that there are admirers of Japanese comics in our country, who have founded the Czecho-Slovak club of friends of manga (www.manga.cz) and thanks to the internet shops it is not difficult for them to buy manga.

JOURNEY INTO THE KINGDOM OF FANTASY

On April 3, 2003 the most successful Japanese movie of all times - Journey into the Kingdom of Fantasy appeared in our movie theatres. Do not hesitate to go there even with your parents. The movie was made by authors of the cartoon movie called Mononoke Princess, which is also available in video rentals.

the material has bee prepared by the article of Michal Vokoun (ABC magazine, July 28, 2003)

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