Let me give you an example of animation from an age when animations did not exist. 'Jewel Beetle Miniature Shrine' in Horyuji uses a method of representing different times simultaneously in one picture. The Bodhisattva in a palace at the top of the miniature shrine looks at the world to help people in trouble. Pictures are drawn on the four sides of the base supporting it. On the right hand side, there is a picture called 'Bodhisattva Offering Himself to the Tiger' in which Buddha in his past life took compassion on a starving tiger and cub, saved them by jumping off a cliff and letting them eat him. This is a pictorial representation of one of the Jatakas, stories of the Buddha's past lives.

 'Bodhisattva Offering Himself to the Tiger' is a single picture which serially depicts the Buddha taking off his clothes on the top of a cliff, jumping off the cliff and being eaten by the tiger. It would be easy to divide these into three frames and turn them into a three frame manga. This method of representing different time simultaneously in one picture did not divide the scenes into frames but made the observer shift his/her gaze and see them as moving pictures. The Japanese liked this method very much and applied it to the Mandala of Kumano Pilgrimage and different kinds of picture scrolls.

 Mandala of Kumano Pilgrimage is a large picture measuring approximately 2 meters by 2 meters depicting the area around the Three Sacred Mountains of Kumano. Groups of pilgrims are represented along the pilgrimage route. At first glance, you see the same group of pilgrims drawn everywhere, but if you move along the route inside the mandala while reading the history of each place where the pilgrims are represented, you get a feeling that you are visiting Kumano. Thus it is an excellent guide map of Kumano. The pilgrims hence function as avatars of the viewers.

 Past incidents are also depicted on this mandala. For example, there is a scene of Retired Emperor Shirakawa's visit to the main shrine of Kumano; he had visited Kumano many times and given huge donations. There is also a scene of Saint Mongaku who had fallen unconscious while doing his spiritual practices under the waterfall of Nachi being rescued by a child messenger of Acala. A scene of crossing the sea to reach Potalaka is represented too. Kumano nuns hang these pictures up along the roadside, recounted the history of Kumano and the merit of making a pilgrimage there, thus advertising visits to Kumano. These commercial tools made use of the technique of representing different time simultaneously in one picture, and many picture scrolls also tried to represent movements of humans and gods and scenes in memory by using this technique.

　

 We find the use of frames that are like those of today's manga in a work of the Nara period called the 'Taima Mandala' kept in Taima temple in Nara prefecture. The center of this mandala represents paradise where the Amitabha Trinity reside. On the right hand side as you face the picture, there is a series of pictures in frames illustrating the procedure by which you contemplate on the images of paradise. On the left hand side, the tragedy of King Bimbisara of Magadha, Buddha's patron, and Prince Ajatasattu is depicted in dramatic form in a series of frames.

 The contents of both these representations are mentioned in a sutra called Jodosanbukyo (Three main Sanskrit scriptures of Pure Land Buddhism). It is written that there was a revolution in which King Bimbisara was imprisoned by Ajatasattu, dethroned and killed. The Buddha told the imprisoned king not to despair as He would save him even after death and taught him the way to contemplate on paradise. The Jodo (Pure Land) sect originated from this, and the core of the original text is represented here in frames.

 In Japan, manga-like representations were used not only in Buddhist but also Christian propagation. In the 'Illustration of the Fifteen Mysteries of Mary' of the Momoyama period representing the worship of Mary, the Madonna holding Baby Jesus is drawn on the top center and Ignatius de Loyola and Francisco de Xavier are depicted below extolling the mother and child. What is remarkable is the series of frames drawn around these images. The sequence of events leading to Mary's ascension to heaven is vividly depicted in a series of frames containing pictures of Mary after she married Joseph on the left, and pictures of her after Christ's death on the right. I don't think you will find this type of representation in the West.

　

 Scenes in the 'Tale of Genji Picture Scroll' are like girls' manga. Picture scrolls of the Heian period were media created for court women. Girls' manga contain many frames representing mental pictures scattered with comments such as 'What will happen to the lover!' without dialogues. The scene 'Takekawa' in the 'Tale of Genji Picture Scroll' preserved in Tokugawa Art Gallery minutely depicts the gaze of Major General Kuroudo peeking at beautiful women gathered in a courtyard garden full of cherry blossoms.

 The subject of the gaze in the 'Takekawa' scene is the major general who is drawn as a small figure behind a bamboo screen in the right hand corner of the picture. The commentary simply mentions as follows: 'Major General Kuroudo came to his friend Chamberlain Fuji's room, but the Chamberlain had gone out. The door of a corridor was open, so he took a peek・・・' We get a sense of the thrill of stealing a forbidden glance.

 This scene employs an unusual perspective. The angle of view shifts from one place to another which the major general wants to see. The face of Ookimi whom the general admires is hidden by a screen and the scene around her white hand playing a game of go is emphasized by inverse perspective. A woman looking at the scene from outside imagines herself as the woman being watched in the picture and virtually senses the stealing glance of the major general. She experiences shame and pleasure and reads a message of forbidden love in Ookimi's hand which is emphasized by the major general's mental representation.

 A picture scroll aptly illustrates the characteristics of Japanese people's gaze. It does not attempt to represent the gaze of a transcendental god by the use of a converging perspective. It follows the changing mental representations of the characters watching the scenes and depicts them like a camera moving and shooting the scenes. It employs a very complex multi-focal psychological perspective.

 Professor Nakamura Hideki of Tsukuba University discusses the 'Kashiwagi' scene in the 'Tale of Genji Picture Scroll' in Art Jungle. He presents an analysis of the unfolding of the scene and its structure by imagining a fixed camera focused on Kashiwagi holding her child and a camera moving in space. The complex and moving angle of vision affects the mental representations of the people who see the picture scroll from the outside and turns the picture into a convincing one.

 The scenes in these picture scrolls weave the context of a gaze into a single frame. A reader of the scroll senses the narrative as her glance shifts from one place to another and feels the context of the gaze. In fact, men find difficulties with this kind of representation, and it is the origin of the method used frequently in girls' manga today. Incidentally, boys' manga divides the context of mental representations and serializes frames in logical order, so to speak. The serialization of frames in Tezuka Osamu's mangas is a typical example of this. 80% of Tezuka's fans are said to be male. Women seem to find difficulties with this kind of representation. There is a rather extraordinary gender difference in picture recognition.

　

 Next, let me talk about the example of the famous 'Dojoji Picture Scrolls'. A very charming and beautiful woman falls in love with a trainee monk who is like a wild mountain monk. But he runs away because he is training to be a monk and should not be attracted to women. The woman chases him. As she goes on chasing him, she gradually turns into a form of a snake.

 A commentary is added in the picture each time the woman's form changes, 'I will never let you escape.' The parts with speeches very closely resemble speech balloons in manga. Finally, the trainee monk hides inside the bell of Dojoji. The woman transformed into a dragon-snake wraps herself around the bell, the monk dies an unnatural death, and the snake drowns in Hidaka River embracing the bell. However, they attain salvation by the virtue of the Buddha of Dojoji, and the story ends as the monk and the woman come to thank the Buddha. The Japanese like this kind of serial representation in animation style very much.

　

 Picture scrolls created dynamic images by prompting the serialization of movements of the vision within a scene. This, however, would be difficult to grasp if the grammar of movements of the vision were not understood. Hence a method developed in which the scenes of the picture scrolls were evened out, made into columns, and edited according to columns.

 'Pictorial Account of Prince Shotoku' (Hontoji) drawn in the Muromachi period is a visual media consisting of picture scroll paintings edited into columns and made into hanging scrolls to promote the cult of Prince Shotoku. There are 10 scrolls in this set. This is easy to understand since it is read from top to bottom in 4 steps of introduction, development, turn and conclusion in accordance with the narrative. 'Illustration of Hell' made in a folding screen style consists of pictures of various types of hell drawn flat like picture stories and placed on a screen that folds into two. If this were made into pages, it would be like today's manga with frames. This type of media arranged in columns appeared in the process of transformation of media seen by aristocrats alone to media seen by common men and women as they gathered together and listened to a story. This visual media made up of columns continued to exist from the medieval period to the end of the Tokugawa period.

 'Folding screen of Tales of Ise' (Suntory Museum) is a collection of pictures from picture scrolls made into columns, edited into illustrations and arranged on a background of pictures of hedges of morning glory blossoms on a folding screen. It depicts each part of Tales of Ise in condensed and representative scenes, arranges them at random so that the viewer can see it freely in any order. Tales of Ise is reproduced in the numerous scenes pasted on to the folding screen, and the owner of the screen can boast that you can narrate almost all of Tales of Ise with this folding screen. During the Gion festival in Kyoto, you find all kinds of folding screens with pictures pasted on them. There is also a folding screen of the Tale of Genji on which scenes of all the episodes are pasted at random.