COD Library: Hokusai Research Guide : Manga

Library

Introduction

While manga today commonly refers to a style of comics from Japan, its meaning has evolved over time.

Historically, the term has encompassed a wide range of visual forms, including sketches, caricatures, multi-panel cartoons and even foreign comics and graphic novels.

Exner, E. (2022) Comics and the Origins of Manga: a revisionist history. Rutgers University Press

The Hokusai Manga (1814-1878)

The Hokusai Manga comprises thousands of images in ten volumes from 1814 to 1819, with five volumes added from 1834 to 1878. The word manga in the title does not refer to the contemporary story-telling manga, as the sketches in the work are not connected to each other. While manga has come to mean "comics" in modern Japanese, the word was used in the Edo period to mean informal drawings, possibly preparatory sketches for paintings.

In the preface to Vol. 1, Hokusai uses the word manga in an uncommon way, translated as "brush gone wild."

Additional Readings

Hokusai: The Father of Manga?
Tim Clark discusses the origins of manga, and debates whether Hokusai could actually be said to be the father of modern day manga.
Random Sketches by Hokusai, Volumes 1 to 11
The series Hokusai manga had fifteen volumes. The first volume was published in 1814 and the tenth, which was supposed to be the final volume, in 1819. The series was so popular that the publishers added several more books, finally ending with volume 15 in 1878, long after Hokusai's death in1849. These drawings demonstrate Hokusai's remarkable ability to capture the essence of the body in motion.
“Pictures that Come to Life: The Hokusai Manga” (2017)

Manga (1898-1923)

Imaizumi Ippyo popularized the term manga to describe multi-panel cartoons he imported from the United States and published in the Japanese newspaper Jiji Shinpo.

Jiji Shinpo (1890)

In 1902, chief cartoonist Kitzazawa Rakuten started a regular cartoon and graphic narrative column called Jiji Manga. The supplement's popularity helped establish the word "manga" as a more specialized term for humorous and narrative cartoons, rather than sketches.

Additional Readings

Laying the Groundwork for Japanese Comics: Imaizumi Ippyō’s Establishment of Euro-American Narrative Cartoons in the Jiji Shinpō between 1890 and 1899
One of the actors most directly responsible for the introduction of pantomime cartoons to Japan was a man by the name of Imaizumi Hidetarō, later better known under his pen name Imaizumi Ippyō. Imaizumi’s contribution to the history of manga may be the second-most underappreciated in mainstream histories of manga, next to George McManus.

Manga (1923-1939)

In 1923, Japanese tabloid Asahi Graph started publishing George McManus’s popular American cartoon Bringing Up Father in translation. These translations of Bringing Up Father and other American comics are referred to as “American manga.”

The immense popularity of imported comics encouraged Japanese artists to create similar works. One of the earliest examples was Suiho Tagawa’s Norakuro (1931), a manga inspired by Felix the Cat.

Additional Readings

A Brief History of the Translation of American Comic Strips in Pre-World War II Japan and the Origins of Contemporary Narrative Manga

Post-War Manga

Influenced by foreign and domestic comics as well as animation, Osamu Tezuka starts publishing narrative manga in 1946. He is often referred to as “the god of manga.”

Tezuka's Astro Boy, serialized in Shonen Magazine from 1952 to 1968, significantly shaped the development of manga with its foundational style and storytelling approach.