What I have been talking about so far is a preparation for what I now want to suggest. As the manga space evolved in various directions, at last some patterns have emerged that fit psychiatric analysis. I am not talking about perversion being good or bad. We need to understand that virtual space has an inevitable tendency to include perverse aspects.

 I want to leave the topic of sexuality here now, and talk about cases which are closer to 'illnesses'.

 Kontaro's manga 'Ichi ni no aho!!' (One two dunce), though it is quite hard to get hold of today, was an epoch making manga in one sense. This manga was the first to establish a style in which a character performs a funny stunt and a cynical character stands next to it giving a commentary. The characters provoke the readers from inside the picture. There have been some 'meta-mangas' where the author himself/herself appears in the pictures, which can be said to be close to this. Kontaro was the first to take it to this extreme. This format has been used by Tori Miki, Eguchi Hisashi and others since then, and so it quickly became a regular style and its true origin has become difficult to ascertain. Since then, characters aware of performing funny stunts inside a funny stunt manga began to emerge. Neurosis is about having internal conflicts, and neurotic characters were thus established.

 Tsuge Yoshiharu was an expert at presenting psychological conflicts in the form of scenic description, and metaphorically representing the character's mind in a series of scenes in the story, which seem to break down in terms of narrative at first glance. He depicted such representations in long remembered classics, such as 'Umibe no jokei' (Scenes of the Seashore), 'Numa' (Marsh) and 'Nejisiki' (Screw Style). So in this sense, he is also one kind of neurotic author. This is not directly related to what we are discussing, but he himself is said to have suffered from anxiety and nervous breakdowns.

 There is an illness known as 'borderline case' in the sense that it is between neurosis and psychiatric disorder. Manga also has what we could call borderline cases. This type of manga involves aspects of identity affirmation and performativity. Works of Uchida Shungiku and animations of Anno Hideaki are like autobiographical novels in one sense. Their everyday lives and manga representation become one. On the one hand, what happens in real life emerges in an exaggerated form in representation. On the other, what they have written in manga sometimes provides feed back into their every day lives. It is a destructive way of life in one sense. Nevertheless, we can say that this kind of representation has created a situation in which life itself becomes an art.

　

 Lastly, I want to talk about pathology and the schizophrenic nature of manga. Here I use the term schizophrenia which is a name of an illness but I would like to differentiate the schizophrenic nature of manga from the actual pathology. I don't want to give a detailed explanation here but I presume that when most of you think about 'madness' this is the kind of illness that would first come to mind. It is a type of mental illness where hallucinations and fantasies frequently appear.

 In general, Tsuge Yoshiharu's works are said to be schizophrenic in terms of pathology, but I actually have a different view on this.

 Tsuge's manga appears bizarre because if often employs the grammar of dreams. Dreams and schizophrenia are totally different. In order to explain the differences in the disorders, I want to take up the manga of Yoshida Sensha. Yoshida Sensha's works are the most schizophrenic type of all mangas we find today. Of course, the author himself is very healthy and sociable, and does not have that kind of problem at all. What was surprising to us in psychiatric terms was that whereas it was understandable that strange people could create strange works, when Yoshida Sensha came along, it was proved that normal people could create very strange works too. This was really epoch making and when I presented this case in the meeting of association of psychoanalysis it was very well received. Such matters, however, are not easily understood. But, I was extremely encouraged to discover that in the variety and freedom of the genre of manga today, even normal people can create such eccentric representations.

 In a work by Yoshida Sensha, a boy in bandages goes up to his school teacher, shows him a word written on paper and says, 'Sir, I've invented a new letter.' When the puzzled teacher says, 'How do you read it?' The boy replies but the speech balloon contains the same written letter.

 This is a part of 'Utsurundesu' (It's Infectious), a philosophically profound manga said to be one of the greatest masterpieces of its genre. It shows symptoms very similar to 'neologism' in schizophrenia. People with neologism create languages that only they can understand, but talk to others in those languages so those around them find it very strange. There is a decisive chasm that cannot just be dismissed as a communication gap. This is similar to the sense of chasm in Yoshida's manga.

 The other manga I take up here has no story. It says 'shop' but you don't know what kind of shop it is. A woman comes to the shop and says, 'I want to buy' and 'Please give me that'. The shopkeeper attends and replies, 'Oh yes, that' and 'That'll be about 40 yen please.' It is a very weird manga and you really cannot tell what is going on. This shows precisely the symptoms of 'object experience' in schizophrenia. Object experience is a condition in which the name, function, meaning, and so on that cover the surface of an object are torn away and the existence of the object itself is projected. It is an experience apparently felt by schizophrenics in the primary stages of the illness. It is also very close to the sense of nausea and feeling of vividness felt by Roquentin, the main character in Sartre's novel Nausea, at the sight of the root of a horse chestnut tree. This work was also epoch making in the sense that it created an eerie and uncanny touch.

 Such representations may seem to be easy to create, but in fact it is quite difficult. It is rather like a Columbus' egg. That is to say, it's easy once some else has done it. This sense of eeriness would be hardly communicated if the manga were drawn in ordinary pictures. They must be in the particular style depicted by Yoshida.

 The example I am showing you next is from 'Enomoto' by Enomoto Shunji, a young manga artist I like. This manga is difficult to understand at first glance with gag style picture designs and it also proceeds according to a bizarre grammar. I will not explain in detail, but this also contains a schizophrenic aspect in a different sense from Yoshida's works.

 I have presented many seemingly random examples, but I hope you understood the gist of what I am trying to say. I think Japanese manga culture constitutes a very peculiar space of representations. It is also a versatile contextual space for substantially representing style and authors' characteristics, though I would not say it is completely free. One of the characteristics of this space is the reality of manga character icons. Since this acquires a reality distinct from the real world, it can become a basis for creation of an even richer fiction. I think this is one of the uniqueness of manga culture.

 As I showed you in my final examples, in such space, representations circulate that can be interpreted as borderline psychiatric cases at first sight. But this is evidence of the kind of freedom and plurality manga has, and these seemingly pathological phenomena do not become pathological representations. Rather, they fashion fresh and very interesting works in terms of genres and generate more creative works.

 From the point of view of our profession, we say that people usually become ill, or mental illnesses occur, when they are forced to turn themselves into something negative rather than positive or creative. But I think when such forms are used for the purposes of representation, they open up new spheres of possibilities in expression. This would be the conclusion of my talk today for the time being. Thank you very much for your kind attention.