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• The connection between artwork and childhood memories
Okamoto: As the key visual for the British Museum's manga exhibition, you used an image from Golden Kamuy, which is set in Sakhalin, an island north of Hokkaido. Many Japanese manga works feature connections to the land and the climate. Takao Yaguchi depicts his birthplace in Fisherman Sanpei and in his other works. In terms of works published by Shueisha, Mr. Oda also maintains a deep connection with his hometown in Kumamoto with his series One Piece. I think the connection between an artist's hometown and the work that they create is an important point.
(Left: The main visual for The Citi Exhibition: Manga / Right: The front entrance of the British Museum)
Nicole: I really think that the birthplace of an artist is important. For the manga exhibition at the British Museum, we displayed works from a total of 50 artists. On the panel introducing the artists, we included a map of Japan and indicated where each artist was from.
From Kyoto to Tokyo to Kyushu to Aomori, every location in Japan is completely different. For example, Akita has spectacular mountains, snow, and rice paddies, which create a special atmosphere. I think that these encounters with nature have a great influence on the art.
Okamoto: Japan a unique country with a long north to south divide, four seasons, and a variety of environments.
(© Yaguchi Pro)
Oishi: I'm sure in every region, there are artists that create works that depict the features of that region or some connection to their birthplace. It's not just Akita.
In fact, as one of the main goals of the Archive Center, we hope to preserve original artwork from all around Japan. I'd be very happy if museums across the country opened up some of their storage space, even just a little, for original manga artwork made by artists from that specific region. "Birthplace" is the important keyword here.
Yoshihiro Takahashi, who is known for Ginga, a manga about dogs, is from the village next to our museum. The backdrop for the dogs' exploits is the Ouu Mountains, and the landscape where the artist was born and raised is sometimes their main battleground.
Mr. Yaguchi has also left us a very realistic picture of the nature and life in Akita during his time, and in that way, the material is also valuable for studying folklore.
That's why I think that if the people from the prefecture can work together to protect the works of artists in their hometowns and consider them a source of pride for all the people of the prefecture, these efforts will spread and bear fruit.
Okamoto: The possibilities will certainly expand if there were more places to store and exhibit these collections.
Nicole: I think that this can resonate with heritage tourism. I hope that many people from both Japan and abroad will come to see the artwork. Traveling is difficult these days, but this will ease eventually. Older historical sites such as the Jomon period excavations and World Heritage sites in general are important, but contemporary culture, culture of the 20th to 21st centuries, is also important. It would be great to see this kind of artwork inspire people to visit various regions in the country.
(© Yaguchi Pro)
• What led to the difference in size between magazines and manga books?
Okamoto: At the British Museum's manga exhibition, there were illustrations from the 1800s, pictures of picture book shops, and other relics of the culture from the Edo period, but I feel that research on Japanese manga has only just begun.
Until now, there have been many studies that delve into the works and artists, but I feel there hasn't been much research that explores the industrial and manufacturing aspects and their place in the history of Japanese culture. With regard to typesetting and platemaking, all we have are the house rules of a handful of companies, and there are almost no books out there that document these processes.
This topic is actually very fascinating, and when I spoke about it with Nicole the other day, it turned into a discussion about format. While A size is a standard format for overseas, the B size originates from traditional Japanese sizes in the Edo period, and Japanese manga magazines are generally made in B size. Manga manuscript paper is B4. I think that the modern manga style started with Osamu Tezuka after World War II, but the formats haven't changed since the days of ukiyo-e. The word "plate" used by Japanese publishers in reference to format is also completely different from what is used by publishers overseas.
There's also the paperback pocket edition size, which is a basic format for Japanese manga volumes. It's actually said that Japan's paperback pocket edition format is based on the proportions used by Penguin Books in the UK. Those proportions were applied to manga books, and then became the standard. It's also very interesting to note how the products are distributed across the country in large quantities in the same way Penguin Books publications are in the UK, even though the actual sizes of the original artwork and magazines are traditional Japanese sizes.
Oishi: Research in this field may have only just begun, but I have a feeling that the industrious nature of the Japanese people has something to do with the factors that have allowed manga to thrive. Japan is a small island nation, but you can buy Jump every Monday in any corner of the country.
I feel that research from that angle, including the industrial framework, will prove to be very interesting.
(The first issue of Weekly Shonen Jump, published in 1968.)
• As the digital publishing market continues to expand, what impact does digitization have on the art?
Okamoto: Part of me feels that Japan is a strange country when viewed from abroad. I've been working on digital comics for a long time, so I've seen the data on the size of the market and the percentage of manga, novels, and magazines published electronically, and manga accounts for about 90% of the Japanese electronic publishing market. Plus, it just keeps growing. If you look at the electronic publishing market overseas, it's completely different. Romance, science fiction, and other reading material are at the top of the list. I think that people from overseas may be surprised to hear that 90% of the e-books sold in Japan are manga. They might think, "Isn't manga for kids?" or "Are the adults over there reading kids' manga all the time?" What do you think about that?
Nicole: I don't have the data with me, but I saw some publication statistics from the US the other day, and the percentage of manga sales has been significantly rising. The rise is recorded just in paper form, rather than electronic. The consumers appear to want to hold the manga in their hands and read them on paper. It's a bit conservative, or perhaps it's an American tradition. It's different in the UK. There, it's appears to be about half and half. Many people do think manga is for children, but with electronic publications, no one can see what's on your smartphone, and it's easy to buy. That might be part of the reason. But one thing I think about is how the format of manga will change when electronic books become the main medium for manga. What do you think?
Okamoto: I think the medium defines the art, and when the medium changes, it has a big impact. Right now, the market for digital comics known as "Webtoons," which started in Korea, is growing around the world. It's growing in a context completely different from Japanese manga. It's something completely different from what we've seen in the past, because the format is specialized for vertical scrolling.
In Japanese manga, the technology for creating two-page spreads, where the left and right pages are combined into one, has evolved greatly, but it is sometimes difficult to understand what's happening when reading one page at a time on a digital device. Also, paper books enable a technique known as mekuri, where the bottom-left panel makes the reader imagine what will happen next and flip the page. This is also difficult to achieve without being able to see the whole spread. When I think about these aspects, I wonder if the way we look at manga is changing as we transition to digital mediums. As digital mediums become mainstream, I believe that the way the pages are divided will become simplified.
• Striving to create an archive for the next 100 years
Okamoto: At the same time, the techniques used by artists are evolving in various ways. I recently covered a science fiction work called Ex-Arm, and the artist in charge of illustrations, Shinya Furumi, is a fascinating person. The final product is made digitally, but he has his assistants draw the backgrounds and small objects by hand. You know the effect lines used in manga? They don't look as good when drawn using digital tools, so he goes through the trouble of scanning analog drawings and using them. There's a technique for drawing effect lines using round glass rods, and if you roll the rods as you draw, you can draw parallel lines efficiently. The technique allows you to draw radiating lines by holding a point and shifting the angle little by little. I was told that there's an assistant who can use this technique, which was said to be lost, so I took photographs.
From Ex-Arm Volume 1, by Shin-ya Komi & HiRock (2015,Shueisha inc.)
Nicole: I've heard that the number of people who hand-draw manga to high standard is declining, because much of the work is currently being completed digitally. Using digital applications is of course perfectly acceptable, but an increasing number of young people do not seem to be drawing on paper.
Okamoto: It's not just about presenting the completed works and illustrations. It's also about how they were created, what kind of people created them, and what their intentions were. I think it's very important to talk with the artists and the people around them and to write accounts about them to leave to future generations.
Nicole: What I noticed when organizing the manga exhibition was that each artist and their editor has a personalized working relationship, and that each publisher has different stances regarding manga production. There are many different ways to create manga, and I found that fascinating.
Okamoto: It might be a good idea to understand what the whole manga production process looks like at this point in time. If you're documenting how manga is created, from the creation of the artist's manuscript to the time it reaches the reader's hands, it would be interesting to include how Shueisha does it, how Kodansha does it, and so on.
We're also surrounded by a lot of people who love manga, and that's a big part of it.
Oishi: I believe that each of us living in this age has a mission to see what we can pass on to the next generation, though each person may be involved in a different field. For me, that field just happened to be original manga artwork, but I think that if everyone can find something like that to work on, no matter how small or large, we will be able to pass on a variety of things to the next generation.
Preserving the incredible amount of original artwork out there sometimes seems like a daunting prospect. But while I'm still alive, all I can do is protect, or rather secure, as many manuscripts as possible, and leave them behind for the next generation. For this reason, we should be talking about this process in terms of a hundred or two hundred years. I want my work to give me the sense of purpose to preserve as much as possible so that materials will be left behind for future historians to study.
(The process of preserving original artwork at Yokote Masuda Manga Museum)
