My discipline is research on art and I use anatomy and brain science as methodology in art research.

 I have written several books on manga. Last year, I wrote Manga wo kaibo suru (Dissecting Manga), before that No no naka no bijutsukan (Art Gallery in the Brain), Tetsuwan Atomu 55 no nazo (55 Mysteries of Astro Boy), and Tetsuwan Atomu wa denki hitsuji no yume wo miruka? (Does Astro Boy Have Dreams about Electronic Sheep?) Today I would like to talk about manga from the viewpoint of my field of specialization-what kind of media manga is when we see it as art, and what kind of art manga is, from the perspective of the body and the brain.

 I think one of the points we have been discussing until the last session was about how manga has managed to attract so many readers. But today I want to leave that point for the time being and talk about what it means for manga to be art.

 I have been listening to accounts of Yanagida Kunio's folklore studies and popular culture in the Edo period, and I think the key word in these studies is 'amateurism'. It is generally thought that professionals uphold the world of arts and classics. I happened to read a discussion between Fujimori Terunobu and Ito Toyoo on the 'power of amateurs'. Fujimori says he is conscious of the perception of the amateur when creating his works, and Ito replies that he has also at last become aware of the 'power of the amateur'.

 Ito presents a self criticism when he says that until now when he produced a work of architecture it would only be evaluated by people in the architectural world and only such people paid any attention. On the other hand, Fujimori aims to create architectural works that amateurs would turn around to look at.

 I think this kind of discussion is also necessary in the case of manga, since it is not just a world of professionals and there is an enormous power of amateurs involved.

 However, for the time being, my talk today might seem rather professional. I will discuss the realistic aspect of the manga media from the three perspectives of language, space/form, and light.

　

Language

 First let me talk about language. What I mean by language is speeches in the manga, story of the manga, and words that are written on the pictures of the manga. I will give a brief account, avoiding repetition of what I have already mentioned in the discussions so far as much as possible.

 The first material is a painting by Chagall and manga (illustration) by Otomo Katsuhiro. What I want to discuss here is the 'speech balloon'. A speech balloon is a technique particular to manga and there are no such things in paintings. If we drew a balloon next to the face of Mona Lisa's portrait, I think it would become a manga. It is not a matter of what speeches are inserted into the speech balloon. If a speech balloon is inserted into a picture, it would become a media called manga.

 Speech balloons are not usually found anywhere other than in manga drawn on paper. Obviously, we cannot see a speech balloon coming out of a person in the seat in front of us on a train, no matter how hard we look. Manga readers do not think that these speech balloons, which do not exist in the real world, are strange in any way. They grasp the meaning and enjoy them without being taught by anyone about them.

 So, let us begin by thinking about what these speech balloons actually are. The first material (no. 1) is a painting called Birthday by Chagall. This gave me a hint when I was thinking about speech balloons. It is a painting of a kiss scene between a man floating in air and a woman. The woman is also floating a little in air. The woman has a bouquet of flowers in her hand, wishing the man a happy birthday. If we see just this, we get a feeling of a heart floating in love. However, if we see this painting after reading a manga, for example, the figure seems almost like a speech balloon. This technique of having floating people is very fundamental in Chagall's works.

 The technique of signifying people floating in air is also used in religious paintings as representations of visions of saintly people. These appear to me like speech balloons. Let me explain why. The scene depicted in the picture below by Otomo Katsuhiro is not a speech balloon but a scene of a girl blowing a chewing gum. But when it is drawn by Otomo Katsuhiro, a manga author, it looks like a speech balloon.

 When we see these examples, we get a sense of the embodiedness that the speech balloons possess: the act of a kiss when one mouth touches another, or breathing out to make a chewing gum balloon. I think that the significance of speech balloons is that speeches are inserted in them and, not only that, they are related to physiological movements, mainly breathing, of the mouth as an anatomical organ. Breathing relates to voice and when one is saying something one is obviously breathing out from the mouth. Manga can depict this as visual expression. I think this is an invention unique to manga.

 Breathing not only has the physiological function of taking in oxygen into the lungs and exchanging it with carbon dioxide. It also has a function related to the mind and spirit. We take a deep breath when we relax. This is not just to breathe in and out deeply to take in a lot of oxygen and exchange a lot of gases but to calm the mind. I would say that a lot of speech balloons are found in manga to somehow function as deep breathing or breathing out.

 In other words, manga is a media of breathing. It is related to stopping of breath or to breathing out when we laugh. It can be said to be a media that presents breathing visually. I have already discussed this in the last session so I will not go into it in detail. (See his statements below in Excerpts from the minutes of 'Seminars on Academic Research of Manga and Anime Part 3' regarding speech balloon, speech, sound, breathing).

 Next, I want to talk about onomatopoeia, which is also about language. In a scene in Otomo Katsuhiro's Warabeyume (Dream of a Child) there is a series of onomatopoeias. First there is a sound of a radio being placed on a bench ('kata'), then there is a speech, and then a sound of a radio breaking ('ban'). I think onomatopoeia very much belongs to manga media. For example, if we write 'kon' next to a picture of a cup, it would become more manga like.

 There are all sorts of media and if we get really into or immersed in a particular media, we become imbued by it. I suspect some of you have also had various experiences of this kind. The media could be video or games, for instance. If one gets imbued by manga, one begins to hear sounds and voices−which one is really supposed to hear with the ears−with the eyes. There are all sorts of media and if we get immersed in a particular media, we can get imbued by it.

 When I was a university student, the video appeared on the market, and I came to watch a lot of videos in my daily life. As I was watching just videos day in and day out, I became imbued by videos. Even when I was watching television, if I missed hearing something, I would unconsciously have the urge to press the reverse button of the video machine to try to listen to it again.

 Today's version of this kind of media is games. My primary school son is getting imbued by games, and once something happened that I thought was a bit scary. One morning when he woke up he said to me, 'Dad, I saw a dream' and told me that he saw a dream of a game. It was not a simple dream, like he become the main character of the game. The dreams went like this. When he tried to say something, he couldn't. Then when he forced himself to say something 'umm', his words flashed out in letters under the screen. When he heard what his friend was saying, the friend's voice also appeared as letters.

 I think there are instances when one becomes imbued by a specifically manga world, and onomatopoeias constitute an aspect of this. These onomatopoeias are written in letters and drawn inside pictures. There was a time when I myself was imbued by manga, but fortunately so far I have not seen sounds as letters in space in everyday life. I think manga has its own way of 'drawing words' whereby one hears sounds and voices with the eyes.

 This is the Chinese version of Dragon Ball. It is probably a pirate version. It was sold in some square and I bought it when I went to China. I don't understand Chinese at all, but I do understand the nuances very well. For example, where something is flying ('hyuuuuuuuttsu'), words are written with an elongation and the last letter is 'ttsu' which is written in Japanese writing. The sense of speed when something is flying and cry of the heart are expressed very well. The letters not only function as letters but also as pictures. Speeches inside the speech balloons are usually in print style, but the ones outside are sometimes in handwritten style. In other words, they illustrate in pictures subtle nuances that cannot be expressed in printed letters.

 Another example is Munch's The Scream. This is a painting so there are no speech balloons or onomatopoeias, but there is a feeling that we can hear extremely life like screams ('kyaaa', 'hiii' or 'aaagh'). There is breathing since someone is screaming. I think this painting illustrates the very threshold between the media of painting and manga.

 So this is what I have to say about language in manga, though it was a little brief.