日本財団 図書館


Seminars on Academic Research of Manga and Anime Part 7
8th November 2005
Mangatic Japan
Takahashi Hidemoto
 
 In this presentation which I have entitled 'Mangatic Japan', I will talk about the ideas and editorial stages on which present manga is based. Many manga-type representations have existed in Japan since ancient times, and various kinds of visual media have been developed.
 The main reasons why many media which have appeared in Japanese history have outstanding visual effects are as follows: 1) a combination of visual communication and narratives were effective in Japan because Japan did not have its own system of writing for a long time and kanji was not widely used; 2) ban on realism, comedy, satire and so on were lifted early because Japan was under a comparatively moderate rule of the emperor system; 3) Mahayana Buddhism and esoteric Buddhism transmitted to Japan developed visual media for propagation by employing iconography in enterprising ways and explaining the contents of the sutras in a series of pictures; 4) the samurai government in the early modern period encouraged publications of illustrated encyclopedias and technical manuals for the promotion of economic activities, and this raised the standard of art among the public.
 Picture editing technology gradually developed as they were tried out playfully in conditions where restrictions on visual media were loose. However, examples of comprehensive media employing writing and logic were rare compared with Europe and China. Instead, many media methods were developed that tried to facilitate understanding by using pictures and making the readers laugh. Let me discuss how contemporary manga and animation are based on historically accumulated picture editing technology in Japan.
 
Appearance of framing in Jomon earthenware
 Jomon earthenware is said to be the oldest in the world at present. Earthenware decorated with pea-sized balls dated approximately 12,000 years ago has been excavated from Senpukuji cave in Nagasaki prefecture. Earthenware of the early period is not like the typical Jomon earthenware. Professor Kobayashi Tatsuo of Kokugakuin University has put forward an interesting hypothesis about the emergence of Jomon earthenware. For example, when plastic appeared and buckets began to be made in plastic, tree grain patterns and pictures of hoops binding the wooden bucket were engraved on them. These engravings were not necessary, but somehow it did not seem right without them. But when people became aware and accustomed to the fact that plastic was a new kind of material, buckets with a smooth surface came to be accepted. Plastic buckets were made in rounded shapes in contrast to wooden buckets, and decorated with pictures of ducks and anime characters that suited plastic.
 In the same way, when earthenware was first invented, textures of bags woven in vines and leather bags that existed before earthenware were printed on them. The oldest earthenware decorated with pea-sized balls also apparently copied the form of a pre-existing woven basket. In time, when people began to see that earthenware was earthenware and different from vessels of the past, smooth earthenware decorated with just horizontal strips of clay on the mouth of vessel spread all over the country and patterns unique to earthenware were put on them.
 These patterns were made by turning and pressing a rope woven for this purpose on to the surface of the earthenware. This came to be known as Jomon (rope pattern), and unique methods of weaving the rope were developed in each region of Jomon culture. In this way, Jomon earthenware became a symbol of regional culture, competed with neighboring cultural regions, and a world of images was created at the same time. This was a process of invention and development of materials which had the potential of becoming media. Such a process occurred in the Jomon period and continues to take place today.
 Creation of images flourished in the middle of the Jomon period. Global warming progressed around this time, and people escaped with their cultures to Shinshu and the north where the altitudes were high. Earthenware with flame patterns appeared during this period. The patterns around the mouth of the vessel of this earthenware are said to be flames, waves or dragons. Whatever they may be, we can see that the flame pattern earthenware developed in four sides and were divided into four compartments. The patterns in these four compartments are surprisingly similar, and the idea seems to be to balance all four sides.
 However, some Jomon cultural regions came up with the idea of using these compartments for representing a series of scenes. Katsuzaka style earthenware preserved by the Gunma Prefectural Research Agency on Buried Cultural Treasures has snake-like patterns. Katsuzaka culture spread to Kanto region from Shinshu via Koshu. The pattern of this earthenware is said to represent a narrative shared by the Katsuzaka cultural region. The pictures in series are divided by vertical lines and the compartments appear to be further divided into uneven frames. It has been pointed out that the small circles and wave patterns in the frames may possibly indicate some meanings. The order in which the frames should be read and understood is not clear, but it is possible that a narrative-like memory could have been reproduced by looking at the frames in order.
 I employ a rather awkward term 'network of meanings' to refer to the way in which a narrative comprised of a network of meanings can be summarized into a collection of key words which can recall meaning. If characters and phenomena equivalent to these key words are converted into diagrammatic symbols or shorthand signs and recorded together as a cluster, they are very useful for reproducing a series of scenes of a narrative. Hence, though it may be stretching the argument a little, we can say that here we find the appearance of the idea of framing that group signs together.
 In this period, human beings gradually began to be able to represent contours. Cave paintings appeared in Europe approximately 30,000 to 10,000 years ago. This was the period when the first revolution occurred as human beings became aware of and represented contours for the first time. Representation of images slowly began to emerge around this time.
 
Discovery of stories on bell-shaped bronze (dotaku)
 There are several theories about why bell-shaped bronzes were made. The most popular theory is that they were made for rituals concerning water. The bell-shaped bronze excavated in Kehi has swirling patterns on the surface, depicting abundant water rushing in streams. The handle part seems to represent the heaven worlds, and is decorated with patterns of the weather such as rain and thunder. The front and back of the bell-shaped bronze said to be excavated in Sanuki (preserved in the Tokyo National Museum) are divided into 6 sections and cartoon-like pictures are depicted in them.
 The sections mainly contain pictures of waterborne animals such as soft-shelled turtles and newts, pictures of women husking rice, dragonflies, men hunting with arrows and spears, grain store, and so on. We get the feeling that the people of the Yayoi period who made this bronze tried to recount in these frames a story of human life based on the flow of water.
 This bronze is about 40 centimeters and handy for carrying around. However, the bronzes grow in size in the late Yayoi period to about 2 meters. By then, the pictures disappear and only the frames remain. It seems that since they have been recounting the same story for hundreds of years, everyone became familiar with it and sought for impact in size rather than the pictures representing a narrative.
 Let me also mention the example of the iron vessel treasured by Suwa Shrine. This is a sacred vessel belonging to a clan called Moritani who resided in the region before the conquest of Suwa by Takeminakata, the tutelary deity of Suwa. According to oral history of the Moritani clan, this vessel was used for rituals worshipping water source. The head of the clan carrying this iron vessel together with a pike, visited the sources of water, recounted the story of men and water, and worshipped the god of water. If we consider this iron vessel ritual as a descendent of bronze vessel ritual, it is highly likely that the pictures in the frames on the bronze vessels depicted stories regarding water.
 There are few peoples who have depicted myth-like stories with line drawings in series of sections like those in the Yayoi period around the beginning of Christian era. We can say that the Japanese tried to construct stories in the form of series of scenes, discover narratives in them and reproduce them through pictures from very early on in history.
 
Wall paintings in decorative kofun tumulus as animations
 When a kofun tumulus was created, narratives were embedded into its spatial structure. Huge graves like tumuli are found all over the world and some have developed into spaces that communicate narratives, such as temples and cathedrals. The passage leading from the entrance of a tumulus to the room where the coffin is placed can be seen as a path from this world to the other world. Decorative tumulus represents this by using colors, patterns and pictures. A typical example of this is Ozukakofun in Fukuoka prefecture. If you arrange the wall decorations according to the order they are found as you walk inside the tumulus, symbolic patterns appear one after another and a sense of narrative emerges.
 If you imagine the internal structure of the tumulus and walk from the entrance through the vermilion painted passage, you come to the front room where huge stones are placed on your right and left with a long stone placed above them. On the huge stones on your left, rolling waves are drawn in white and green on a red surface with three horses crossing the rough waves. On the huge stone on your right, a picture of two horses is drawn on a background of somber patterns such as concentric circles, even-sized curved patterns based on curling bracken shoots and scale patterns also in white and green on a red surface. On the long stone placed across the two huge stones, scrawling curved patterns are drawn, and the top part is scattered with round white patterns resembling stars.
 Waves and horses may not seem to go together, but if we look at it we can imagine that the scene is about going to the other world by crossing the sea on a horse. There is a story in Odin myths about taking dead heroes with their horses on a ship to the island of eternity. If we consider the paintings on the huge stones on the right, top and left in series, we can imagine that the picture on the right depicts the soul of person buried in the tumulus crossing the sea on a horse, the picture on the top represents the chaos in the transition from this world to the other world, and the picture on the left illustrates the series of scenes depicting arrival in the other world. In the Chintsuka tumulus nearby, there is a picture of a ship with a bird perched on the prow crossing a sea to the world of chaos, reminding us of practically the same story.
 When you pass this gate and go into the room at the back where the coffin is, you come to the other world. The place where the coffin rests is covered in psychedelic scale patterns, and in front of this there are low pillars on the left and right with shield-like symbols blocking something and warning you not to enter. The vermillion-colored room with a high ceiling represents the canopy of the other world with shining stars, but a boundary is created to show that this place does not belong to this world. Thus, paintings in the decorative tumuli present a series of narrative scenes by employing spatial divisions and appear like animation to be seen while walking.


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