Organizer and Chair: John A. Lent, Temple University
Oftentimes, one hears of a discipline being a stepchild or bastard child of academia, meaning it is accepted grudgingly. In that context, comic art for years must have been an unborn fetus, receiving virtually no recognition in the scholarly literature or at academic conferences.
In recent months, some of that has changed and for good reason. In Asia, comics, cartoons, and animation have become rather important in some cultural settings, with the use of more political and social commentary cartoons during democratization periods, the exportation of much Japanese anime and manga to the U. S. and elsewhere, the processing of most of the U. S. animation in Asian studios, and the increasing uses of comic art for educational and developmental purposes.
This panel looks at aspects of Asian comic art from inter-area (including Japan, Korea, China, and India) and multi-genre (animation, comic strip, comic book, social commentary cartoons, and cartoon magazine) perspectives. It deals with both historical and contemporary topics, as well as commercial, professional, and artistic areas.
The research for these papers resulted from content analyses of primary materials, interviews, historical method, and observation during visits to cartoon workshops and animation studios. Three of the papers are based on doctoral dissertations completed/being completed under the supervision of the panel chairman.
Ideological Messages in Japanese Cartoon Magazines During the Pacific War
Rei Okamoto, Temple University
This proposal recommends a historical and textual analysis of Japanese cartoon magazines created during the Pacific War in order to examine how wartime ideologies were reflected in this particular medium. Using insights from critical media studies in Cultural Studies and early propaganda studies, this project will extend the analysis of pictorial propaganda in studying a particular mass medium in depth-Japanese cartoon magazines published between 1941 and 1945.
The sample of this project will be single-panel cartoons and comic strips drawn from two monthly cartoon magazines, Sanga and Osaka Puck, with an emphasis on the former whose circulation was nationwide. Research questions to be investigated are as follows: (1) what types of propaganda techniques were used? (2) how were the enemies portrayed? (3) how were Japan and Japanese society portrayed? (4) what types of myths of Japanese culture are found? (5) were the major war events (e.g., Pearl Harbor attack, Japanese defeat at Midway) covered? If so, how were they represented? (6) what kinds of sexual innuendo and racial portrayal are observed? (7) did the emphasis change during the course of the war?
The above questions will get at the following topics: (1) degree of use; (2) types/categories; (3) portrayals; (4) direction/slant; and (5) roles.
This project will investigate the production and cultural logic (grammar) of Japanese wartime cartoon magazines through a close reading of the text, which will be supplemented by interviews with the cartoonists who took part in creating wartime cartoons.
Roses, Stars, and Pretty Boys: Symbolism in Japanese Girls' Comics
Kanako Shiokawa, University of Pennsylvania
There are numerous genres and sub-genres in Japanese comics (manga), whereas comic books for girls and women constitute one large category in the present day comic book industry of Japan. Although criteria for such genres often overlap, there are specific factors that distinguish girls' comics from genres directed at boys and men. These factors are prominent in narrative styles, page layouts, and pictorial and verbal symbols.
This paper discusses such genre markers that almost all comic book readers in Japan can recognize instantly, in order to show the persistence of the symbolism extant in Japanese girls' comics. These symbols are further analyzed historically, in terms of the contribution that girls and women made in the development of story comics in the post-World War period, and in comparison with the prominent verbal and pictorial symbols in popular literature for girls in the previous eras.
In this regard, it becomes clear that there is a distinct, unspoken tradition of the transient subculture of school girl fantasies throughout the twentieth century. The paper concludes that the tradition of school girl imageries in Japan is a persistent feature of this often unrecognized subculture, and the predominant visions of transience, fragility and ambiguity reflect the nature of the folk culture bound in time, space and gender.
Adventures in the Paradise: The Comic Strip of Ye, Qianyu
Hongying Liu-Lengyel and Alfonz Lengyel, Fudan Museum Foundation
Ye, Qianyu (1907-1995) was famous for his comic strips made in the late 1920s to the mid-1930s. In addition to his well-known comic strips, "Mr Wang" and "Little Chen at Capital City" from those years, "Adventures in the Paradise" was made in 1948, and was originally published in Xinmin News in Peking. It was the first and perhaps the only one comic in China that was based upon a cartoonist's own personal experience of visiting a foreign country, which was based upon Ye's reaction to his visit to the United States in 1946. The comics recorded their traveling by water to the USA, and what they saw and experienced in the richest country in the world that was full of surprises. Perhaps the most amazing point for American readers is that the comics-made about fifty years ago through a Chinese cartoonist's eye-describing things that happened in the US about fifty years ago can still be a mirror to today's society, a half century later.
From Self-Knowledge to Superheroes: The Story of Indian Comics
Aruna Rao, Temple University
This paper will examine the development of the Indian comic book from the 1970s to the present day.
Initially, comics were oriented to introducing middle-class children to Indian history and mythology, and inculcating a sense of pride in the country's heritage. These comics were conceived as abridged literary texts with pictures, sometimes translating from the original documents verbatim. Their value lay in their adventurous search for subjects. which ranged from little-known sections of the Mahabharata to portrayals of heroes from the independence movement. Their flaws lay in pedantic dialogue and sometimes uninspired artwork.
The development of commercial television as the medium of the middle-class led to a shift in readership, and comics became the medium of a larger audience, specifically, lower middle-class pre-teens and teenagers in urban and rural North India. The new comics-which can be categorized as mainly humor, action-adventure, and horror-depict large amounts of violence. The language is usually Hindi, and leans heavily on the conventions of Hindi film dialogue, involving pithy phrases of challenge, vows to revenge and calls to battle.
Theories of postcolonial identity in India, theoretical approaches to comics as cultural texts, portrayals of comic book characters, analyses of plot, series development, and interviews with comic book creators and publishers will be used to examine the content of Indian comics.
Korean Animation: An Analysis of the Boom Years, 1994-96
John A. Lent, Temple University
Korean animation houses have been processing the bulk of American theater and television cartoons for years; however, they have not been noted for doing much for the domestic industry. All of that changed for the better in 1994-96.
Realizing that of all its cultural products, animation represented the greatest potential money-maker on the international scene, the Korean government gave the industry a number of incentives in recent years. Among them were: a change of status for the industry that allowed for tax breaks; the inauguration of an annual cartoon and animation festival; and the encouragement of animators to find foreign markets and exhibit/screen internationally.
Out of these incentives have come a number of significant accomplishments in a very short time: (1) production of at least four full-length Korean animated movies; (2) establishment of a Korean animation association with 60 to 70 member studios; (3) the creation of at least six junior college and one university animation programs; and (4) the creation of a quarterly animation magazine, designed both for the domestic and international audiences.
This paper will explore the development and current status of the Korean animation industry. It will deal with both foreign and domestic animation done in Korea. Materials and data were gathered from 45-50 interviews with Korean animators and cartoonists in 1992, 1994, 1995, and 1996; visits to three or four studios and workshops; participation (as speaker, jury member, and curator) in both the 1995 and 1996 Seoul International Cartoon and Animation Festival, and much secondary literature.