● Answers to Yuji Nozaki's questions

 What Mr. Nozaki is telling is probably that the relation between the explosive firing of neurons of Japanese and the explosive disseminative capability of meme is similar to when a nerve cell inside the brain is ignited suddenly and then it spreads leading to an intense awareness. Therefore, this relationship between neuron and meme - meme as I said earlier is the cultural gene - might be able to explain the current Japanese manga boom (the spread of manga culture across the world) phenomenon.

　

(1) Cultural gene and a ray of light

 The theory that a cultural gene in Japanese was responsible for manga culture reaching the present level is understandable to a certain extent. I feel that the cultural gene that was created inside Japanese in the Edo period has become the base for creation of not only the manga boom but also other booms and that is why I made such an analysis.

 I'm a product of the manga phenomenon, and therefore would like to answer from the perspective of production side. When doing creative work, the question was what are the points of observation and imagination that are uniquely your own or unique to Japanese or what makes you instinctively realize it's going to work, it's going to be universal. My point of observation is that I constantly think of manga-ish laughter and what is antithetical to it. They are pathos and catharsis. My mangas have pathos and catharsis as the basic tenets and I feel I draw mangas with that at the core. What I meant by the instinctive feel that it's going to work and it's going to be universal is that whatever sorry backdrop your manga is based on, there is going to be a ray of hope appearing at the end and you'll have to accept it. One of my works Ningen Kosaten had quite a gloomy subject matter and I remember how hard I had to work to incorporate this (ray of hope) into the last panel of the final page.

　

(2) "Mono no Aware (pathos of things)," "Those that survived the onslaught of foreign culture"

 Regarding the relationship with the unique development of Motoori Norinaga's kokugaku (Japanology) and manga philosophy in Japan, my understanding is that through his studies of Kojiki, he discovered that through the use of Kanji characters people protected Japanese language, that is Japanese spirit, made up of Japanese pronunciations and hiragana and katakana scripts. He also discovered the aesthetic sense that existed in Japanese even before the arrival of foreign cultures through his study of Genji Monogatari.

 I'm not sure whether the aesthetic sense known as "Mono no aware," or the pathos of things, is there in mangas, but the three scripts of kana characters, kanji and katakana are there inside the speech balloons in mangas and this is something entirely different from languages in other countries. I feel that these three types of characters give a certain picture-like and easy-to-read quality to them. Manga has to be read rather quickly. If there were hiragana, kanji or katakana alone in a speech balloon, it'd be hard to read. For it to be grasped in one shot the combination of these three types of characters makes it easy to read and has the characteristic that facilitates understanding of the dialogue as a single block.

 In fact, according to an editor of a boy's magazine, in order to have it read as a single block the number of vertical characters shouldn't be too long in the case of such magazines. About seven characters are ideal. The block just pops in. Therefore, when you consider that the speech balloon itself has picture-like qualities, I feel that the presence of these three scripts in Japan has in a sense made it easier to grab one's attention and made it easy to read as a single block of picture.

　

(3) "Landscape," "fonts," "panels" and "onomatopoeia"

 You might have heard about it as the principle of Japanese manga but it's why we have landscape panels and why we change the fonts in the speech balloons with the three scripts.

 Landscape panels are unique to mangas with storylines. If there are eight panels in a page, three won't have faces of characters in them. On top of that scenery, you just place layers of speech balloons or maybe cigarette butts piling up when whiling away the time, etc., which have a theatric effect.

 Why do we change the fonts inside the speech balloons? Antique font is used for normal conversations while we use Nar, Maru-gothic or Mincho for monologues. Different fonts are also used for descriptions or captions. When showing the voice of demons or gay people we tend to use weird fonts or soft and mealy characters. Fonts are switched for specific reasons.

 To explain the panel layout, it is decided based on the flow of the page spread. First we look at the flow in which one reads when opening a magazine. In Japan's case, first of all we decide the position of the speech balloon so that it traces an S curve. I'm sure the speech balloons are arranged in an S curve to firmly catch the reader's eyes. If you continue with the same kind of panel arrangement it becomes monotonous, and therefore, if we put a big panel at a certain position in one spread, it'll be put in a different position in another spread. So, the design of panels is first of all conceived from the specific type of page spread. Also, if human faces keep on appearing, that's again boring. Therefore, we use something called as throwaway panels, which will have just sceneries or only speech balloons or by putting the speech balloons on the black background, etc. to make it easy to read. We think of various such forms.

 The final panel is the key. It's necessary to come up with a key point in the last panel so that it makes readers feel like turning the page. Or in other words, manga is something which has to be read smoothly and we try to be ingenuous in arranging the panels.

 I'll explain about the development of onomatopoeia. There are mimicries and sound imitations that are unique to manga in Japan and the U.S. These have become very complex and there are mimicries of emotions recently. To give examples of even typical items is a tough job, so I'm not attempting it. Recently there are people who use gibberish, anarchic expressions such as "Zumomomomo," and there're really no limits in terms of new forms. The textbooks state that there are 496 types of onomatopoeia in Japan. This means that somewhere inside there is a sense to develop new Japanese, symbols and expressions. When you look at how this compares with other fields of expressions such as movies, painting, literature and music with respect to constants, varieties and alignment, it's similar to movie and music expressions.

　

● Traditional education and folk culture helped Manga culture bloom

 Tanikawa: We'd like to discuss Mr. Takekawa's opinion that "educational standard and folk culture of Edo period is what helped manga culture bloom." I believe this is also related to the Japanese identity. Mr. Hirokane's proposal also had touched on peaceful stability and flexible minds.

　

Takekawa: Common people subconsciously possess knowledge that is impossible to grasp from the perspective of foreign culture alone. These knowledge are not only passed down from parents or ancestors but are also conveyed repeatedly over the media such as TV. I can't say whether it is meme or just commonsense but I'm constantly surprised to see that such knowledge is there inside us in plenty.

 People with flexible minds had the orally handed over culture initially and imbibed the foreign culture later. In our case, because we received a post-war education, we were forced to learn several layers of westernized cultures such as foreign culture, western culture after the Meiji Restoration and the post-war American culture. Nevertheless, without realizing it we're discovering in our minds the learning and folk culture handed down from the Edo period buried inside our mind. I feel more thought should be given to the fact that both foreign cultures and traditional culture form the base in our minds.

　

Tanikawa: As Tadao Umesao used to teach, when you consider a concave and convex shape, Japanese culture is a concave culture. A convex culture is where things go out and in that sense Chinese and Western cultures are convex and Japan being at the receiving end is a concave culture. If you take a typical example of religion, Buddhism came here in the 6^th century and is integrated with Shintoism, which already existed here. Shugendo, which caters to the belief of people across the nation, has Buddhism and Shintoism together everywhere. I feel Japanese originally have possessed an exceptional ability to accept and integrate.

 Furthermore, in reality the ability of the common people in Japan was very high. Especially, the emergence of terakoyas in the latter half of Edo period, which taught people to read, write and do the abacus, is very significant. Various kinds of textbooks were created at terakoyas. Various things were being taught such as correspondence through letters and in there amazing pictures make their appearance. The textbooks had very factual pictures in them. I felt that the common people of Japan shrewdly utilized learning things through pictures. Surprisingly, except Unkei (pictures) and Kaikei (sculpture), Japan is not much into realistic representation. I'm trying to think why it is so.

　

Nozaki: I have a question. More than the pursuit of realistic beauty and value, are we giving importance to spiritual and ideological things? By the way, not adopting realism is similar to manga, isn't it?

　

Tanikawa: In my ancestral home in my village, there are books dating back to the Edo period inside which there are always pictures of samurais fighting. Those are really manga-like.

　

Hirokane: As the historical perception that Japan was a frontier place with respect to China and the West was strong, there was this complex towards big city, leading to a lot of copying. Japan continuously brought in Chinese and Western cultures, which were considered to be sophisticated. Not only that, there was great flexibility to adopt these cultures from that age. In other words, perhaps anything that was considered good was accepted with a flexible mind and without any restrictions. However, there was this period where we shut out foreign culture through the strange system of national isolation. This could be considered an interesting period when Japanese culture developed in a kind of unique direction.

 The Japanese feature of being very weak in basic engineering but very strong in applied engineering also perhaps has its roots there. Instead of thinking about what is there at the very base, building various things by applying what is in front of you. Japan is the only place to have modernized by adeptly using expertise from the West and spirit from Japan. Japan became an export superpower through innovative industrialization and there is probably something common there with the development of Japanese-style manga/animation skills.