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Depth of Japanese Mangas - Preface

Last week or so, I showed Ed (naniwa) some essays from a column titled Kedalaman Dunia Komik Jepang (The Depth of Japanese Comic World) and he thought you all might be interested to read them in English, so at his request, here I am translating them for you. And please thank him for proofreading this.

First, let me introduce the writer. He is ISHIZAWA Takeshi, a Japanese native, who had spent a lot of time in Indonesia researching the culture and wrote all his essays in Indonesian (His Indonesian is way better than my Japanese. ^^;). Unfortunately, I cannot contact him via email, thus this should be thought of as an unauthorized translation. ;-) If you find any errors, email me: reapea@gmail.com

Even if you don't know Indonesian, you can see how writing in Japanese has influenced his Indonesian essays, as the paragraphs in the page are very long. If you know Indonesian, you can see his personality in the writing is very humble and nice.

I am going to quote his original writing at the bottom. The arrangement of the original essays might be a little hard to read, so I had to edit it here and subsequently added extra sub-headers as well.

Some of the translation would be awkward to read, but it was like that in Indonesian. We should always bear in mind that he's not a native speaker. I do not want to make assumption on what he is trying to say, so I'll try to leave it as it is.

Preface

In this new column, I would like to introduce to you the depth of manga world (manga = Japanese comic).

Of all Japanese culture, the most popular and unique right now would be comics (manga), cartoons (anime), and computer games. From these three, manga has the biggest role in book publishing in Japan. A average weekly manga magazine consists of 400 pages per publication, quite thick.

In Japan, comic magazines are grouped by readers' age and gender. For example: Shonen Jump and Shonen Magazine. Both ranked as the biggest weekly magazine in Japan, proven by the number of distributed copies each publications, each in the millions. Shonen means boys, so shonen manga means manga for boys in elementary and secondary (junior high) schools.

As for girls, examples include Nakayoshi (literally the title means friends) and Shojo Comic. These magazines' target readers are girls in elementary and secondary schools. Shojo means girls.

Teen readers have their share of magazines like Young Jump and Young Magazine. Magazines' title that starts with the word Young is usually for the Teen market.

There are other classifications like ladies comic. This category is for ladies in the 20's-30's age group. Some even contain erotic scenes, like You or Be Love.

Apart from those, there are also magazines for general adults, for example Big Comic Original and Comic Afternoon. Despite the erotic content (not found in every title, though), these magazines should not be classified as porn magazines.

The last one is pure porn comic (eromanga) magazine, like Kairakuten, Penguin Comic, and many others. Non-Japanese would probably categorize this as hentai. All teens under 18 are not allowed to purchase these. When one compare these magazines with Western standards, the eromanga can only be considered as soft core.

The problem in Japan is, despite the soft core content, those magazines are sold in convenience store. Therefore, it's not surpising that even kids could pick up a magazine from the shelves and read it. Somehow, we need to tackle and fix this situation.

Who and what influences manga?

In Japan, imported comics are rare compared to the local ones. Of course, American comic style was among the many sources for manga style. For example, TORIYAMA Akira drawing style—he's the author of Dragon Ball.

Everybody is familiar with names like Superman, Batman, and Spiderman, but you cannot find the those superheroes comic in Japanese book stores. Among American comics sold in Japan, the only best-seller is the Peanuts series (the one that features Snoopy).

Meanwhile French comic, or bande dessinée (BD), especially works by Moebius or Enki Bilal had a great impact on Japanese comic author, like OTOMO Katsuhiro (author of Akira). Unfortunately, in Japan, BD is sold as a work of art, which is why it's very expensive.

These days, comic author from these three countries—Japan, France, and US—influence each other immensely.

La Femme Piege by Enki Bilal. Unquestionably impressive! No wonder it influences manga.

Comic and Manga in Indonesia

In Indonesia, it was told that PT Elex Media Komputindo—Gramedia's subsidiary—had published around 2,000 titles of translated mangas since 1990. That figure means around 200 titles per year. 90% of the comic market consists of imported (and translated) comics, around 80% of them are manga. Despite the large number of titles, most of those published in Indonesia is only a fraction of Japanese comic market and mostly of the books published are for kids.

I've read an Islamic Comic Magazine, named Cosmic, sadly the quality is subpar. In the magazine there's a letter from a reader that wrote: "I'm fed up with import comics." That kind of attitude may well be considered like a frog trapped inside a coconut shell^[1]. Interestingly enough, there's a similar proverb in Japan: I no naka no kawazu taikai wo sirazu (井の中の蛙大海を知らず。)^[2] which means a frog in a well does not know the great sea.

The variety of Japanese comic is difficult to comprehend by people who never lived in Japan.. But an article in Pikiran Rakyat titled Three Million Comic Titles Every Year is a bit bombastic. Probably thousands of new titles every year, but it is impossible to have 3 million titles.

In Indonesia, mangas are often criticized; they considered inappropriate with Indonesian culture. That is absolutely correct. But the bottom line is, if Japanese comic has been a bad influence, Indonesians should try their best to produce an Indonesian comic that can be a good role model. It is very easy to criticize other people works, but it is very hard to create something that children would cherish.

If I may debate over the critics about Japanese comic, especially Crayon Shin-chan, like "it has pornographic scene", I would ask the critics, what is your definition of porn? Shin-chan does like to show his "birdie", but is there anyone getting aroused after looking a kid's birdie like Shin-chan's? Michaelangelo's David has his birdie area exposed, yet does anyone claim that it is porn? Mothers in Japan also highly criticize the Shin-chan character, but it is due to his delinquent behavour. No one considers it pornographic.

I am sincerely hoping for a unique Indonesian comic to emerge. But to create a unique work, one has to learn from the existing superior work. At the beginning, Japanese comic was copying Walt Disney's style, this was evident in TEZUKA Osamu works. The late TEZUKA Osamu (1928-1989) is highly influenced by Disney animation and he in turn influenced the movements of Japanese comic scene. His post-WW2 works opens a new era for Japanese comic.

It might be hard for a foreigner to understand the process of Japanese comic development. Japanese comic authors, for a simple matter such as to draw an underwear in a panel, they will think hard and try to find a unique way to draw it. Such measures might be considered useless, but, without this spirit, there might be there might neither be advancement nor prosperity in the current Japanese comic world.

I do not mean that Indonesian comic artist should experiment on drawing an underwear in their panels. What I meant was, Indonesian artist should learn from the variety of Japanese comic and their persistent spirit. South Korea and Taiwan had long been influenced by the Japanese comic. Both countries comic world has been established, even invaded Japan and top the comic sales charts.

As a comic fan, I would love to read any interesting comic made by anyone. I do not care where does it come from, the only requirement is that it has to be interesting. If Indonesian comic author learn a thing or two from the Japanese comics, I am sure in the near future, a unique Indonesian comic will stand out, as has occured in Taiwan and South Korea. I shall wait for that emergence of a unique and intriguing Indonesian comic.

Last Notes

I would like to make a note—I am not a manga author; purely a fan. And I am an adult so I don't know much about manga for kids like Doraemon, Crayon Shin-chan, Sailor Moon, Pokemon, and the others. I would discuss manga as an art, kind of like a work of literature or other means of art expression which has its own values such as moral, religion, economy, or politics.

The manga I will introduce in this column are not familiar to Indonesian. All the works here are from manga that I love. I do not care whether or not the manga that I introduce here are popular or not. Most are from a legendary manga magazine Garo, or alternative comic.

Garo Manga Magazine

(Saturday, October 18th,2003)

Translation Footnotes

[1] Like a frog trapped inside a coconut shell = Indonesian proverb, means shallow-minded or narrow-minded
[2] A frog in a well does not know the great sea = Japanese proverb, means people are satisfied to judge things by their own narrow experience, never knowing of the wide world outside.