Reading Manga and Comics

   Read Hayashi Sei'ichi's Sekishoku Ereji today and then listened to the song Agata Morio wrote based on the manga.  I like the song a lot more than the manga, but here are some of my favorite images from the manga.  Nice contrast between Ichiro and Sachiko.

The greatest charge I get when reading comics is when the two-dimensional, flat characters have the spark of inner life and their thoughts, not their actions, take over the narrative.  Panel by panel, I’m witnessing a flat character become even more static and frozen, yet the words spilling out from his brain (or sometimes, his mouth, if it’s a soliloquy) belie that inert body and instead show the potential for the most amazing change of all:  mental growth.  I suppose I’m a product of Marvel comics produced in the 1960s and 1970s with their style of broken, anguished and anxious superheroes who struggle more to cope with their inner demons than their actual super-villain antagonists.  Over time, I’ve gravitated to the subgenre of Japanese girls’ comics (shôjo manga) for the kind of exploration of interiority I once enjoyed in American (boys) superhero comics but now cannot find there.

  For a new project, I went back and re-read Ditko and Lee’s Amazing Spider-Man, issues #32 and #33 (the wrap-up of the “Master Planner” storyline; 1966) and I was struck by the contrast between it and a scene and one in the more recent shônen manga,  Attack on Titan (Shingeki no kyôjin), Isayama Hajime’s runaway hit both in Japan and the United States. 

  What struck me was now inner-voice sequences in both comics are given the form of soliloquy, but whereas one clearly reflects the protagonist wrestling with his

  psychological demons (and overcoming them), the other simply shows the protagonist speaking out to his enemies, somewhat indirectly challenging them with internal thoughts rather than direct address (in one case, Eren is in the belly of his interlocutor, who thus is capable of digesting Eren, not listening to him).  In other words, there is a clearly

  visible shift in American and Japanese comics where protagonists have stopped thinking to themselves.  As this short look at Attack on Titan reveals, in fact even when contemporary manga characters speak to themselves, they are actually speaking to an imagined other addressee, even if that addressee is not present.  I’m arguing that comics were much better when they had interior monologues rather than fake ones.  (Sorry, Attack on Titan.)

  The Spider-Man issues discussed here represent a true peak not only in Marvel’s output of original comics but also Steve Ditko’s creative work.  Issues #32 and #33, published in 1966, number among the last Ditko would create as his last issue (#38) hit the stands in July of that year.  Issue #33, “The Final Chapter,” features the now-famous image of Spider-Man trying to rise out from under a “locomotive”-size piece of rubble. 

In this two-issue closing act, Spider-Man has to overcome not only a number of impossible of obstacles but Failure itself.  As editor and narrator for issue #32, Lee pitches the contents in his typical hyperbolic fashion:  “You and Spidey are about to meet one of his most powerful former foes…with every tick of the clock bringing him closer to DEFEAT!” (ASM, 4: 23).  Issue #32 ends with a long, third-tier panel of Spidey talking to himself:  “I’ve FAILED!!  Just now – when it counted the most – I’ve FAILED!!” (42)  If Spider-Man fails to escape from the crushing piece of roof (in Doctor Octopus’ underwater lair), not only will he die, but his Aunt May also dies because the anti-radiation serum she needs to live would also perish.

Spider-Man’s “trapped” soliloquy actually spans the ending of #32 and the opening of #33, running for more than seven pages.  It is perhaps one of the most truly representative scenes that distinguishes Marvel’s superheroes from those of their competitors at DC Comics.  In these seven-plus pages, Spider-Man is trapped like a bug, squirming under an obstacle that would challenge even a stronger superhero like the Incredible Hulk.  He does more than lift the impossibly-heavy rubble, he lifts himself.  “Within my body is the strength of many man..!” reads the character’s spoken inner voice.  Panel 2:  “And now, I’ve got to call on ALL that strength – all the power – that I possess!”  With a twist on the classic and original theme of the series that with great power comes responsibility, Spider-Man says to himself in panel 3:  “I must prove EQUAL to the task – I must be WORTHY of that strength –“ and in panel 4, “—or else, I don’t DESERVE IT!” 

  The conclusion Spider-Man, one that will enable him to transcend defeat and death, is that with great power, a hero must not only be responsible but also deserving of the gift.  It’s a thrilling, perfect sequence of comic-book art and story where the closure between each set of panels stimulates the reader to become imaginatively vested, making decisions about how much time elapses from panel to panel, and at the same time, the time it takes Spider-Man to leap from each part of his stunning resolution even though the physical action depicted across the panels is what would Scott McCloud would call “Moment-to-Moment” closure, typically one of the most basic and boring comic-book panel layouts.  It’s a breakthrough moment in American comics where Ditko uses a straightforward panel layout to create a densely imaginative and tense portrayal of character growth.

  This sequence is also a crucial moment in Ditko’s oeuvre.  What Ditko articulates here (and surely it is Ditko’s writing, not Lee’s) is an important part of his developing worldview, call it Objectivist, that a true individual has talent and that “power” that makes him individual.  Spider-Man emancipates himself from agonizing gloom of failure (crushed into obscurity) to a triumphant individual.  “I DID it!  I’m FREE!” he claims at the sequence’s end, a full-page panel (49). At the top of the panel, Lee summarizes the entire seven-page “ordeal” unnecessarily; moreover, he fails to reach the right conclusion. 

    Ditko would have his readers know that Spider-Man is more than simply liberated from a deathly episode, he has overcome his hangups and feelings of insecurity.  The final pages of the issue make it clear that Ditko closed the “Final Chapter” on a weak-minded Peter as Ditko (as the “plotter”) depicts Peter Parker finally standing up to his swindling boss J. Jonah Jameson, deciding to end his relationship with Betty Brant, and finally making up for his “failure” to Aunt May (his proxy for Uncle Ben).

Ditko wrote about this “lifting scene” in a letter to Comic Book Marketplace (#63):

In your Comic Book Marketplace #61, July 1998. page 45, Stan Lee talks about “…a very famous scene…” of a trapped Spider-Man lifting heavy machinery over his head. The drama of that sequence was first commented on and popularized by Gil Kane. Stan says “I just mentioned the idea…I hadn’t thought of devoting that many pages to it…” I was publicly credited as the plotter only starting with issue #26. The lifting sequence is in issue #33. The fact is we had no story or idea discussion about Spider-Man books even before issue #26 up to when I left the book. Stan never knew what was in my plotted stories until I took in the penciled story, the cover, my script and Sol Brodsky took the material from me and took it all into Stan’s office, so I had to leave without seeing or talking to Stan.  (Reprinted from a comment on The Comics Journal website.)

Ditko’s comments on this story serve to remind us of two things:  first, Ditko (not Lee) created this important sequence in the narrative, attesting to his skills as a sequential-art master; second, for Ditko (not Lee), a sustained inner-voice sequence (here, a soliloquy), was quite important both for the story as well as his own sense of self-worth as a comic-book artist.  The special care Ditko took to have Spider-Man’s talk to himself mattered to Ditko.  It’s an important moment for Spider-Man, but also for Ditko and American comics.

Now let’s look at a similar sequence in Japanese comics today from the 2010 hit-manga and anime series Attack on Titan, where the protagonist Eren has a flashback to when he was trapped in the belly of a Titan.  His soliloquy, which starts in the past moment,

  threads him back to the present moment, reinforcing his will not to be defeated by his oppressors.  Although the content of Spider-Man and Eren’s soliloquies are quite similar, the tone of each is very different.  Whereas Ditko uses inner-speech (spoken thoughts) to dramatically advance both the story and the character’s development, Isayama uses spoken thoughts to simply move the story forward.  Inner thoughts in Amazing Spider-Man show the protagonist wrestling with his inner demons, but those in Attack on Titan are used to simply repeatedly articulate the protagonist’s hatred for his enemy.  Like the Attack on Titan series itself, Eren is lifeless, lacking the possibility for a complex worldview.  The theme of Attack on Titan is predictable:  kill or be killed.  The way Isayama uses soliloquies in the work illuminates the false complexity of this boring, one-note story.

  Eren does not think in the comic.  He always speaks to others.  Even when he seems to be ruminating and reconsidering himself (allowing for possible complex thinking), he is simply voicing variations on his moe character trait, the desire to beat the superior Titans.  Those moments that resemble inner speech are actually articulations of this obsessive personality characteristic.  In volume 3 of the series, the reader has access to Eren’s mind in one of his darkest moments, when he was trapped in the belly of a giant and would soon emerge transformed into a Titan.  Episode 10 (“Where’s the Left Arm?”) opens with a replay of events from the previous episode as Isayama shares with his audience just how did Eren survive being consumed by and later transformed into a Titan.  “This can’t…This can’t be happening…We’ve strategized desperately…to beat these bastards” (Attack on Titan, Vol. 3:  28).  In English, “these bastards” reads as though Eren is talking about his enemies in the third person, however the original Japanese “koitsu” could easily be interpreted also as “you bastards.”  I would argue that Eren actually is not

  speaking about the Titans, but to them.  It is not “they” he is speaking of, contrasting them to his fellow humans, but an implied but unarticulated “you” that often occurs in Japanese language, even when an interlocutor uses a person’s name although one is essentially addressing the other in second-person.  Sheldon Drzka’s translation is quite good and I am not faulting him, but I simply want to raise the possibility for another interpretation of Isayama’s writing that would allow for us to understand this sequence not as true inner speech but an articulation of second-person address.  It would be a mistake to attribute interiority to Eren’s character.  Repeatedly throughout the series, he has shown he is capable of only ranting about his obsession to kill the Titans.  He is incapable of thoughts that would allow him to imagine himself ontologically.  For me, this is why the story is so disappointing.  A narrative about human beings faced with other creatures, who are extremely humanlike but actually are extremely animalistic in their cannibalistic habits, should tell us more about Japan today, Japanese youth in the 2010s, and Japan’s shrinking position in the global economy.

  For this fourteen-page sequence, the reader travels back with Eren when he was trapped to the present moment when he emerges from his flashback (and his former Titan state) and realizes he is surrounded by his fellow soldiers who view him as a threat.  Eren is changed physically, but not mentally.  He has metamorphosed from a human into a Titan and back into a human.  He was consumed, and thus changed from the top-of-the-food-chain human consumer to the bottom, the consumed.  He changed from predator to prey, and now back to prey who possibly can become predator.  Nonetheless, his thoughts are inanely simple.  “Gonna…destroy them.” “Every last one of these animals../that’s on this earth!”  And finally,  Eren says “I’ll kill you all…” as he emerges from his memory.  His words are inconveniently timed as the “you” can be heard by his former human allies as referring to them, not the Titans.  Isayama plays on the audience of Eren’s soliloquy, switching it from the intended addressee of the Titans to the unintended humans.  Eren is dangerous, but inept.  Reading Amazing Spider-Man’s prolonged inner-voice epiphany, I respond with an encouraging “Go on!”  There is something encouraging about Spider-Man’s struggling to achieve a stronger sense of self. At this point in Attack on Titan, Armin, Erin’s friend who is close by and listening to his friend’s inner thoughts, should tell him, “Shut up!”

  Attack on Titan is an impressive epic saga for its imaginative setting and fast-paced action sequences, but it is disappointing as a manga.  The panel layout and failed use of interiority ultimately deny the reader ability to create closure for the text.  Unlike Ditko’s ground-breaking Amazing Spider-Man, Attack on Titan is a text that is already closed to the reader, repeatedly denying one the possibility to imagine a complex reader and instead it constantly distracts the reader with crumbs, forcing one to march through a disappointingly barren world.

Comments?  Questions?  jonhulkholt AT gmail.com

I ran across this section in a later cross-talk where Hagio discusses how you interrupt the reader's gaze and force them to stop.  If you ever wondered about Scott McCloud's idea of aspect-to-aspect panels, this is a good example.  (Keep in mind that his panel types can overlap -- so what's being discussed at the end of the interview is aspect-to-aspect and scene-to-scene>).  

My apologies to fans of Umino, Honey and Clover, etc., for not including more Umino parts.  I have yet to track down the date of this interview, but I'm guessing it occurred in the late 2000s.

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Umino Chika x Hagio Moto (with Yamada Tomoko)

METHODS TO HALT YOUR READERS' GAZE AND CHANGE THEIR SPEED

Yamada:  Hagio-sensei, what is generally more difficult for you:  the storyboards (neemu) or the production (sakuga) of the pages?

Hagio:    Neemu.  I generally have a solid pace of turning out 2-3 pages a day, but when you go back before that stage, you have to reach the point before production where you’re finishing up the storyboards.  With the storyboard phase, the more time I have the better – even if it’s just an extra day or two.  Because I’ll go back and re-read what I have.  In order to produce a 40-page story, the actual finished drawing time is roughly 10 days, with 10 days to final-proof things, and I’ll spend 20 days usually doing the storyboards.

Umino:  That’s true for me, too.  There are many more days spent on neemu.  For neemu, do you do all the panel breakdowns (komawari) from the story’s start?  Or do you make a scripted plot?

Hagio:    I guess I write the plot out first.  Assuming I can get the final part of the story done.  Generally I write out the plot’s first part.  But there are many different situations.  Sometimes I get the beginning, the middle, and the end all figured out, but then I bury the connections (ma), you know?

Umino:  Do you feel you often re-draw things?

Hagio:    I’m always, always redo my drawings.  For example, I’ll get together 10 episodes.  Let’s say the last part is number 10, ok?  I’ll get 1, 2, and 3 figured out, but then 4 won’t come to me.

Umino:  Yes.

Hagio:    But then I have number 5, 6, and 7.  A lot of times it’s like that.

Umino:  I know, I know.

Hagio:    That’s why I’m always going back and trying to re-work first three parts of the story with the plot.  Once I do that, then I’ll finally get number #4 to come to me.

Umino:  I know what you mean.

Hagio:    But then I’ll get number 4, but something about it won’t seem right.  So then I’ll start over with number 1.  When I do this, sometimes I might get a rebound and a new 4 will come to me.  I’ll do this any number of times, going back and forth repeatedly.  At some point I get the 4 I exactly wanted and I think, “Whew, glad I made it” and tell myself to get going again.  That’s why when I don’t get my part fours, I end up taking the whole day just thinking about the stuff in 4.  Should I go that way?  Maybe take it this way?  Constant vacillation.

Umino:  From the point of view of the person who draws, doesn’t it have to be that way?  You gotta do it your way.  Since you can do the story in all kinds of ways, the toughest part is choosing which one to go with.  The options are limitless, so I guess it all comes down to how one chooses.

Hagio:    So true.  I might suddenly get my 4 and as soon as I think, “Ok, that’s good,” I’ll go, “But what if?  What if it wasn’t 4 then 5?  Maybe 5 then 4 would be better.”

Umino:  Yes.

Hagio:    So once I start doing that, I go back and forth thinking about which one would be better, and I will end up mulling it over for nearly three days with nothing to show for it.  Three days I worry like this and, poof, I’ll suddenly stop knowing why I did it.

Umino:  (Laughs.)

Hagio:    What then happens is that I end up drawing the story now thinking, “Gosh either way will be okay,” and then a year passes and I go back and read it again.  Then I can’t understand what it was I fixed in the first place!

Umino:  No way!  (Laughs.)

Hagio:    I’ll end up completely in the dark:  which part was the one that made me worry?  All that pain and anguish:  where did it come from? (Laughs.)

Umino:  So I have to tell you, when I was a child, I bought Suzuki Mitsuaki’s book Introduction to Shôjo Manga (Shôjo manga nyûmon; 1979).  It was a reference work for me.  For example, there’s one part in it that I often saw about your work.

Hagio:    What was that?

Yamada:  It was Suzuki’s most famous book, very popular.

Umino:  There’s one part where he wrote, “Hagio-sensei creates a timetable (nenpyô) for each of her characters.

[IMAGE:  “Edith” from The Poe Clan.]

Hagio:    Actually, I am quite weak when it comes to math.  I do that because even as I draw I try to keep in mind the boy is ten and the girl is eight, I later have to make an effort not to screw that up.  That’s why there are timetables for them.

Umino:  After I read that, I tried to make timetables for my characters, too.  Since I have them for all the characters up until they die, I think to myself I am the only person who knows their whole lives.  Makes me really wonder how weird that is.

Hagio:    Well, the reader only understands the parts that are drawn, not the ones that aren’t, right?  That’s actually pretty neat.

Umino:  In [Suzuki’s] handbook, he uses a story with Edgar [from The Poe Clan] as an example of how to change the speed at which the reader moves through the manga.  Edgar is standing on top of a car that has sunken under the water.  Suddenly the panel cuts to looking in the opposite direction.  Edgar's looking down, but the water is above him (the opposite direction of the flow of his vision).  The reader’s line of sight gets halted at this point.  I think.  I wonder if this is something you calculate as you draw?  Or is it unconscious?

Hagio:    I carefully plan those out.  What you’re talking about is common when I read someone else’s manga.  I would get manipulated by the artist.

Umino:  Right.

Hagio:    At first you, as the the reader, are unaware of it.  Then, as you come to get swung around more and more, at some point after reading the story a few times, you think, “Ah!  The protagonist’s line of sight here suddenly shifts up, so here is where it shifts up to, right?   I really learned a lot from those times.  At one point I said to myself, “All right, I’ll use that trick!”

A current project has had me looking into the illustrations of Hayashi Seiichi over the 1970s through the early 1990s as a kind of side project.  Lately I've greatly benefited from the work of Ryan Holmberg who has done more than anyone to introduce Hayashi's manga to the English-speaking audiences.  His two translated books, Red-Colored Elegy and Gold Pollen are wonderfully produced and help us realize the importance of this early manga master.  I look forward to reading the latest translation, Flowering Harbour (Breakdown, 2014).

My own interest in Hayashi Seiichi currently is the collaborative work he did with tanka poet Hayashi Amari (b. 1963-; no relation to Seiichi):  SHORTCUT (Sanrio, 1992) and NEE, KISSU SHITE (Hey, Kiss me; Endeishon, 1996).  Like Sanrio's earlier JAPANESE WOMAN (Japaniizu uuman, 1989), these two collections reveal Hayashi's obsession with Japanese femininity, although the Hayashi Amari poem-illustration collections tend to feature more mature women than the "musume" or shôjo (girls or unmarried young women) type we see in Seiichi's work when it is targeted for younger audiences.  Looking at the colophons of all three books, the images of JAPANESE WOMAN were mostly compiled from illustrations Seiichi made for Sanrio's magazine Shi to meruhen (Poetry and Children's Stories) and published mainly in the magazine from 1977 to 1981.  In SHORTCUT, there is no list of previous publication for these images, leading me to believe that indeed the artist Seiichi and the poet Amari "collaborated" to make SHORTCUT an original book of art and poetry that organically wedded their two sensibilities.

What is their shared sensibility as seen in SHORTCUT?

What did Hayashi Amari contribute to the senior Seiichi's view of women?  Did she in some way shape his artistic direction and did that hold?

Why did the two Hayashis come together to make these two collections of poetry and art?

I plan on answering these questions in the upcoming months, but for now, here are a couple of images that interest and have stirred me to see how SHORTCUT indicates a shift in Seiichi's artistic vision.

In "Life Partner" (Raifu paatonaa; 1981 Junon) in the "Lady Doll" section of Japanese Woman, we see one of Seiichi's most modern-looking women.  In both this and the next image, the subjects are not young girls dressed in Taisho- (1912-1926) or early-Showa era (1930s) fashions.  They wear 1980s or 1990s panties and lingerie.  They have short, cropped and angular hair styles.  The only thing perhaps traditionally Japanese here in this intimate scene are the zabuton floor cushion over which our two sexually-sated bodies lie.  What is very interesting here in terms of composition is the inclusion of the Japanese Woman's male partner, metonymically presented with just his arm, reaching out for her (and she, slightly disinterested, ignoring his touch).  Typically in Seiichi's illustrations from these collections, there is no male figure.  The male is generally only determined as the person gazing at the "Japanese Woman", invisible to us, but certainly felt by us and by her, who will be pensive and incomplete.

The next image is from SHORTCUT.

This is one of the "REIKO" pictures.  In SHORTCUT, there are four divisions:  Reiko, Miki, Kaoru, and Woman.  The last of the four allows for some various images (mature women, young girls, and one teenager), otherwise Seiichi develops a kind of loosely linked narrative for each of his named principal characters.  In this Reiko image, like the "Life Partner" seen above, we see our female character lingering, lost in thought, but most importantly doing it in her lingerie.  Lingerie makes the woman feel attractive, for Seiichi one supposes, and makes the waiting more bearable (perhaps for her; definitely for the image's viewers).  Seiichi's SHORTCUT women have far more detail in their faces and clothes.  The eyes and the lace of lingerie have great detail, making it a more realistic illustration.  In the earlier "Life Partner" image, the figures are flattened to near two-dimensionality as Seiichi applies colors in a more uniform fashion to clothing and bedding.  The skin of the "Life Partner" image seems as white as the background of the image only demarcated by the strong solid outline.

By contrast, this "Reiko" image does have a soft flesh-color tone with parts of her body having ruddy splashes (perhaps showing her skin alive and warmed by the champagne she has half consumed).  Although Seiichi's treatment of Reiko's hair is uniformly black (as are almost of the women in SHORTCUT), somewhat restraining her from achieving three-dimensional depth, she seems to emerge more from the picture than the woman in "Life Partner".  Moreover, Reiko is alive.  Her eyes are open; she focuses on her champagne.  And through her intent gaze, she shows her dissatisfaction or boredom not with her absent man, but with their affluent lifestyle.  There is also a nice balance of green color throughout the illustration with the plant leaves, the lighter green of her garment, the greenish champagne, and finally the green parts supports of the rattan chair.  Green is also the color of the text of Hayashi Amari's tanka:

忘れたいことさえなくて

　休日はチェリーの茎をむすぶだけの舌

He’s not really something I want to forget --

   A day off spent tying cherry stems with my tongue

I'm working on translating an interview of Hagio Moto by Saito Tamaki.  Here is the opening part that talks about Hagio's difficult relationship with her mother.  I think it sheds a lot of light on why her characters are usually cut off from their parents in her manga.  There is a big discussion of Hagio's gem of a story "Iguana Girl".

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Saito:    …First, I can’t say it enough, but I just can’t put down Iguana Girl (Iguana no musume; [See Matt Thorn’s excellent translation of this story in A Drunken Dream; Fantagraphics, 2010]).  There’s really nothing else to say about it except it is a true masterpiece, especially the idea how a person ends up being seen as an iguana.  There’s something so visually exciting about that, and I think it’s really effective in the way you symbolically draw certain types of relationships.  Well, I wonder why you chose “iguana” of all things?

Hagio:   Thank you very much.  I have a fairly strong reptilian side to me.  (Laughs.)  Their color doesn’t seem at all bad to me.  I like lizards.  A long time ago I would occasionally watch videos with images of iguanas from the Galapagos islands.  When I looked at them, I noticed they had these bodies that would stomp around on all four and stare into the sun –– it seemed like all they were doing was sunbathing, but — one seemed to have a face saying, “Ah!  I ended up becoming an iguana, but I really wanted to be human!”  You probably know this but the human fetus while it’s developing in the womb has a tail, the eyes are on the side not the front of face, and they even have faces like lizards.  It’s only over time that the fetus will become more human-like.  Looking at those iguana faces, I thought, gosh, they have faces like a human fetus.  I then started thinking how interesting it would be to have a story where an iguana wants to become a human.  That’s how Iguana Girl was born.

              An iguana princess living near the sea wishes “I want to be a human” and with the power of magic, she becomes one, grows up, and gives birth to two daughters.  However, the eldest of the two girls ends up looking like an iguana.  The mother ends up hating her own child, thinking, “It’s because she looks like me” but since the mother is the one who gave birth to an “iguana” then she thinks there must be something iguana-like quality even in me.  That’s how this fantastic story goes.

Saito:    You’re right in that when it comes to mother-daughter relationships, the body has an important element.  So now I would like to ask you something because I was wondering if you thought the problem of development is tied up in that.  In your work Alternate World Barbara (Barubara ikai, 2003-2005), why does your character Kiriya read Stephen Jay Gould’s Ontogeny and Phylogeny [Translated into Japanese by Watanabe Masataka in 1988].  How did things come to get tied up to those questions?

Hagio:   I’ve long been a fan of books on heredity and evolution.  Because I often wonder how did humans come to human.

Saito:    I see.  So then we have a character who is compensated for having failed to become a human.  In a sense, you’re stressing our similarities when you have the mother hate her daughter Rika for looking like an iguana.  The younger sister Mami is the one who is showered with affection by the mother.  Is it because they don’t look alike?

Hagio:   That’s correct.  It’s because Mami was born looking exactly like the mother thinks a human should look.

Saito:    So it’s because the younger sister looks human, right?  Only when the mother dies do we get the shock that even the mother had an iguana face.  Did the mother then have a sense that she herself looked like an iguana?

Hagio:   We learn from Rika’ aunt, that every time her mother was told by her sister, Rika’s aunt, “Rika-chan looks just like you,” the mother would become enraged.  However the mother herself has the memories of her being an iguana locked away, and she has forgotten it all.  But we do see her viewpoint of her daughter change bit by bit as she gets more objective.

Saito:    As long as her self-awareness that they look alike is weak, it stays unconscious and only comes out in her action, so she has fewer and fewer chances of her fixing her behavior.

Hagio:   That’s why when the mother is asked, “Why do you hate your daughter?” she herself doesn’t know the answer.  Even so, there is this very thing part of her that notices how her daughter carries on the parts of that self she so dislikes.  If only she could see things clearly and realize that well, she is my daughter so I guess we just live with it.  But because she doesn’t want to acknowledge that, she goes on just seeing things she doesn’t like.

Saito:    Could it not be the opposite?  The daughter looks at the mother and goes, “I don’t want to become like her”?  I think there are cases like that.

Hagio:   I think you’re right, there are a lot of those cases.

  Saito:    So the possibility for the opposite situation is common?

Hagio:   Yes, you’re right.  When I was little, I long thought that if there is one thing I don’t want to become it’s my mother. (Laughs.)

Saito:    Why was that?

Hagio:   Well, you see, my mother is like an active volcano.  (Laughs.)  She’s a high-tension person, who for 365 days of the year is angry all 365 days.

Saito:    Constantly erupting?

Hagio:   Oh yes.  She’s one who constantly erupts.  As a child, I once asked my mother, “Why are you mad everyday?”  But my mother said, “I am easygoing,” telling me, “It’s my mother [my grandmother] who was extraordinarily strict, and because I suffered that, now I want to be nice to my own daughter.”  She then said, “That’s why this anger of mine is a result from you not listening to what I say.”

  Saito:    I see, I guess your mother has this strong side to her that wants to control things.

Hagio:   She doesn’t admit it, and what’s more she is, I think, a person who really demands we [children] do things exactly the way she wants.             

Saito:    Even so, it’s not that it was an unreasonable kind of anger, a kind of abuse, right?  She had her reasons.

Hagio:   Hmm…I think she might have had them.  Still, it was the kind of thing where all day long she would violently slam open the doors ga-shin ga-shin!

Saito:    But she would have a reason every time, right?

Hagio:   She would have a reason, sure enough, but she’d also take it out on people.

Saito:    She would have no realization she was taking it out on others?

Hagio:   Not really.  I think my mother is not the type of person who could be aware of her own actions like that.

Saito:    Nonetheless she seems to have this recognition that she was at least better [to you] than her own mother was to her.

Hagio:   I was only in 2nd grade when my grandmother passed away, so I really don’t have a memory of her, yet there were times [I recall] she would come visit us, and, oh yes, I do remember she was a person who could easily get angry right away.

              My grandmother ran a general store.  Among my friends, “KenKen” [Hopscotch] was popular game and when my stone split and I couldn’t use it anymore, I went up to her and asked her, “I would like this kind of rock,” and she told me, “Next time you come, I’ll have one ready for you.”  That was nice.  So I said, “Bring me a big one!”  But then when I saw her next, she brought me a small rock so I asked, “Granny, I told you didn’t I to bring a big one.  This one is just too small!”  When she heard that, she flew into a rage.  (Laughs.)

Saito:    She got mad at her granddaughter!  (Laughs.)  She never did anything like raise her hand to you?

Hagio:   That she never did, no, but even so, she might really surprise me and so I always ran off crying to my mother, who would be angry.  (Laughs.)

Saito:    But she seemed to be justified being angry, right?  Let me ask you – does a part of you understand now that your mother was a person who she was because she was raised by this kind of person [your grandmother]?

Hagio:   Now as we talk about it, yes, I do.

Saito:    What about the idea that maybe your mother was a bit better than your grandmother?

Hagio:   My mother also has this tough side to her, so these days when I go home to visit, I’ll try asking her, “Mom, were there times when you’d fight with Grandma and cry?”  There are a lot of things I want to ask her about.

Saito:    These days does your mother still get angry?

Hagio:   Right.  Well, I take extra precautions not to burn her fuse, but suddenly her tension level will just go up.  For example, let’s pretend my mother, who’s in high-tension mode, is here with us.  She will get irritated at the unopened water bottle there next you, Saito-san, and she will go, “Saito-san, why don’t you drink it up?  It’s right there, drink it!” (Laughs.)  “But right now I’m not thirsty, so give me time.  I’ll drink my water,” you say to her knowing you have to restrain yourself with all your might.  But she will seem to suddenly get annoyed with that water.

Saito:    She has these quick escalations where you don’t know why it happens.  In one sense, I guess she is a treasure-trove of story ideas.  (Laughs.)

              So let me ask you, Ms. Hagio:  you come from a family where there is 4 kids.  Among them, there are 3 girls.  Was there no discrimination among you like we see in Iguana Girl?  Did you mother equally get angry at you all?

Hagio:   Yes, she spread her anger out equally to us all, but my eldest sister was a daddy’s girl with a quiet disposition, so when my mother would go on a rant, she would burst out crying.  At those times, my mother would complain to other ladies in the neighborhood, “That cries at no matter what I say, so I can’t do anything.”

Saito:    Did her crying have a pacifying effect?

Hagio:   She would calm down then, yes.  But that’s why most of her anger would turn to me, my youngest sister, and my little brother.

Saito:    Did you often cry?

Hagio:   Yes, I did.  And if I did cry, mother would tease me about it, and that would hurt.

Saito:    Were there times when things would escalate beyond that?

Hagio:   Sometimes my younger sister would hurl complaints back at her and she would cry.

Saito:    The three of you each had their own way of coping.  Until about when did that go on?

Hagio:   Well, my mother really hasn’t changed over the years, so…

Saito:    Ms. Hagio, didn’t you at one point leave home?

Hagio:   That’s right, I did.  I was around 20 when things got to the point where I left home and tried to live as a manga artist in Tokyo.  After that, I was able to have some distance, both physical and emotional from my mother.  She was living down in Kyushu, so I finally could relax being up in Tokyo.

Saito:    I imagine you had quite a sense of liberation then.

Hagio:  I didn’t really notice it myself, but sometimes when Mother would come visit me in Tokyo, I seemed to get fidgety.  Friends would ask me, “Hagio, why do you fidget around your mother?”

Saito:    Someone on the outside could clearly sense it, right?

Hagio:   I would deal with her visits by always, always trying not have her get mad.

Saito:    Would it go well then?

Hagio:   I guess so.  Because I was always on the lookout.  But it really wore me out.

Saito:    “Mother, please go home without getting mad.” (Laughs.)  I understand that drawing manga was very important for you, but do you think perhaps you really ran away to escape your mother?  Was that part of the reason why you went to live in Tokyo?

Hagio:   That’s definitely true.  Ever since I was a third-grader I had been thinking I’ve got to run away.  At night I’d bury myself under the covers and think things like, “To run away, where would I have to go?” 

Saito:    I see, so from that time there was that kind of atmosphere in the house.

Hagio:   Right, because my mother could be just so uptight about things.  I wanted “anywhere but here”.

Saito:    People often talk about a “family romance” where a child goes, “What if I am not really from this family?”  Did you ever think that?

Hagio:   Yes, my younger sister often had this competition over “Which of us is not really from this family?”

Saito:    Since she would get scolded so harshly, your younger sister too often had those ideas?

Hagio:   That’s right.  But if one of us said, “Ok, then you were the one they picked up under the bridge?” then we’d have to make concede to each other and remind us that it wasn’t true.

Saito:    But your older sister didn’t factor into those talks.

Hagio:   Right.

Saito:    Your older sister then must have gotten along well with your father, right?

Hagio:   She did, quite well.  My father is basically a gentle person, so he was easy to get along with for everybody.

Next:

Modern art, comics, and some words with Seiichi Hayashi.

   On my way back from Florida, where I did not see Man-Thing by the way, I finished the last half of Hagio Moto's adaptation of Mitsuse Ryu's 10 BILLION DAYS AND 100 BILLION NIGHTS (Hyaku oku no hiru to sen oku no yoru, originally published in 1967, updated by the author in 1973).  I'd say it's my least favorite Hagio Moto work I've read thus far, and most of the blame I think is on Mitsuse.  The novel, which I've also read, is extremely talky, relying a lot on dialogue to tell you what's going on while the characters phase in and out of one part of space and time to the next.  If you read my translation of Hagio's interview with Tezuka, you know that her publisher had prompted Hagio to adapt this work and it appeared for about a year from June 1977 through 1978 in Weekly Boys' Champion.  It really works more as a girls' comic than a boys' comic.  Yes, it has characters with wrist-mounted lasers and incredible tech that only bearded old men can jimmy and config.  Lots of explosions, oh, and yes, a bearded evil Jesus who is always trying to blast Siddartha, quasi-female Asura, and old man Plato to bits.  But most of the time Hagio's "adaptation" focuses on the philosophical questions.  Similar to, but not quite like the standard "Who am I?" question found in a girls' comic, we have a bigger question:  "Who made us and why did they screw us over?"

I'm posting a couple of pics of the two different versions I have of the comic.  Petit Comics (Shogakukan) put out a tankobon version in two volumes in 1985.  It's a nice copy to have.  Each volume has about 200 pages, very easy to read and because it is tankbon, it's a bit larger.  You also get more initial color illustrations.  Originally sold for 580 yen, but I was able to get a copy from amazon.com (sent from Japan for about $13).

Here are some of the color illustrations/plates you get with this edition.  I would imagine that they opened the first few episodes in Weekly Champion.

An illustration of the Asura King (Ashura-oo), undoubtedly the main character in Hagio's adaptation.  Hagio draws her definitely feminine (Hagio's contribution), but she is lithe and still has a boyish quality as well.

Another plate (#3) from volume 1 of the Petit Comics edition.

For comparison's sake, I'll show a few images of the other, more recent edition from Akita Bunko (1994).  This smaller edition lacks the color plates, but it does begin the epic with the same limited-color pages of the story as in the Petit Comics' edition -- the creation story and the first part of Plato's episode.

You can see the size difference here.

Notice how the coloration of the initial pages of the Akita edition is of the same quality as the Petit Comics' one.

Finally, back to the Petit Comics' edition we get a nice color plate of a Buddhist guardian Kubanda (Kumbhanda), a lieutenant to Asura.

Tezuka had expressed great interest in Hagio's project, wondering how Buddhist iconography would appear in the manga of this artist, who had previously drawn more Christian imagery.  (Again, check out the interview).

A Conversation with Hagio Moto and Miuchi Suzue (1978)

“To My Dear Ms. Moh!”

(Published in the 1978 special magazine Glass Mask Festival (Gurasu no kamen fesutyibaru.)

[Moderator’s Note:  Today, I asked our two guests for their precious time even though they both battled to meet their deadlines, so I express my thanks to them both.  Actually, since I already knew that Hagio-sensei and Miuchi-sensei had long been friends, I had planned for this conversation, hoping they would kindly share their memories of each other.  First I’d like to ask my guests to talk about how they met.  Given that their published magazine work activities and artistic efforts were different, how did you meet each other?  How did you become friends?  How about starting with that?]

Miuchi:      Where we first met, well, it was at the Canned Soup Inn, which a lot of manga artists used, right?

Hagio:      Yes, I think so.  That was when I was helping our Ms. Takemiya [Keiko].  Oh yes, Ms. Itō Aiko was also there.

Miuchi:      It was at that time I was working in the room next to Takemiya.  That was the exact same time I was a big fan of [your] Poe Clan (Pō no ichizoku) so much that I had learned by heart all of the dialogue of the first episode.

Hagio:      Whoa!

Miuchi:      I had heard that the manga artist Hagio Moto was in the next-door room.  For me, who was so in love with The Poe Clan, I was dying to know, “Wow I wonder what kind of mystic aura a person like that has.”  That’s how I worked up my courage for a meeting and knocked on your door.  And when I went into your room, what I saw was a cluttered work room and within that was Ms. Takemiya quietly drawing her manga.  Next to her was a person sleeping with her futon pulled up, one that covered with dust.  Who is this person?  So this is the Hagio Moto.  After I got to know her I soon felt very close to her.

Moderator:      So that’s how you first met.  Up until then you just knew of each other through your works?

Hagio:      That’s right.  Actually, I thought Miuchi was much older.  I guess it’s because she had such an early manga debut.  Around her debut, it was uncommon for storytellers to get much space, but she came swaggering onto the scene with 16 whole pages [for her story “Mountain Moon and Badger Girl”, 1967].

Miuchi:      That was the time when we had to learn our craft with 16-page episodes.  I also felt a great shock when I read Moh’s “November Gymnasium” (“Jūichigatsu no jimunajiumu”).  I hadn’t seen an artist who possessed such a fresh sensibility.  Then I read The Poe Clan, and it had a big impact on me.  It made me almost want to quit being an manga artist!

  ASSISTANT WITH THE MOST GORGEOUS ART IN ALL OF JAPAN

Moderator:      So after your days at the Canned Soup Inn, I take it that you both kept up your friendship?

Hagio:      No, that’s not right.  For one thing, the magazine we were drawing for were very different, and so we didn’t communicate for a while.  Even so at random times we would suddenly meet.  There were a lot of those.  At gatherings of manga artists, it was like “Oh, you came!” kind of things.

Miuchi:      That’s true.  Actually last year Moh came over and worked as an assistant for me.  I really have to thank her.  She was more like a meshi-sistant (a meal-assistant), massaging my shoulders, even drawing in the most amazing backgrounds…She was the best-ever assistant.

From Miuchi's Glass Mask.  Hagio helped with the backgrounds for this story.  Fans of her They Were Eleven! will notice Hagio's favorite character Frol in the lower right.

Hagio:      Oh no, it was so much more relaxing to help you than draw my own stuff.

Miuchi:      Next time, I’ll do it for you…

Hagio:      Please!  Once my stuff stop selling, please use me as an assistant!

Miuchi:      No, no!  I should do it!  I’m really good at “beta” [beta or bettato heavy inking].  (Laughs.)

Moderator:      Around the time you first knew each other, what would you talk about?

Hagio:      Let’s see.  We’d talk about manga and about books.  Later as our interests overlapped even more, we’d discuss things related to mysticism.  Speaking of that, Miuchi’s clothes today are positively mystical, don’t you think?

Miuchi:      A lot of times we’d discuss UFOs, ancient civilizations, black magic, time travel…I think we’ve talked each other out on those topics by now.  I would point that when we’d discuss these things, the talk would be shaped by Moh’s powerful sense of imagination and we’d soon end up on these outrageous flights.  For example, we’d be talking about Close Encounters of the Third Kind [J. Michi to no sōgū] and the next it would be about the look of this shop in Akihabara.

Moderator:      Whoa!  What’s that?

Miuchi:      OK, it seemed to her that the UFO leader looked like a chandelier.  So this is the way it went:  Close Encounters gets you to UFO leader which gets you to this shop in Akihabara…Those freewheelings leaps in our discussing were just amazingly fascinating for me.  Also, our discussions were just limited to topics about weird things.

Moderator:      That’s what you found so appealing about Hagio.

Miuchi:      Yes.  This has nothing to do with our previous discussion of [the days of] Canned Soup Inn, but what I find to alluring about her work is the violent rupture between real forms and the mystical, that’s the image I get from her works.  She’s a very interesting person filled with these flights (hishō).  Another thing I admire about her work is its strong sense of self-reflection.

Moderator:      Ms. Hagio, what would say is the appeal of Ms. Miuchi’s work?

Hagio:      It has this warm richness (fukkura shita tokoro).

Moderator:      Um…

Hagio:      What I mean is her characters are warm people, they have affable natures, plus, they have this naiveté.  The feeling I immediately get from her manga is this image of big, burly people, but really at heart they are extremely naïve.

Miuchi:      But your term, “warm richness” is something that lately I haven’t been able to hold to because of pressure from work, so I wonder if that might have started to fade from my style…

Moderator:      Now I think I understand how you two love each other so much.  (Laughs.)  Yet, when it comes to work, don’t you both also have an intense rivalry?

Miuchi:      No, not really.  Mainly because I consider myself a fan of Moh.

Hagio:      That’s true.  What draws us to each other work is the vast difference of our approaches to manga.

NEXT: 

HOW WE LOVE HISTORICAL PERIODS OF FERMENT AND CHANGE

   Some days when you go to Powell's bookstore, you get lucky.  More often than not, even if you are lucky at Powell's in finding a book that's hard to come by, you still pay through the nose for it.  I love Powell's, but as a used-book store, I'm always nonplussed by how much they charge for older books.  So I was very surprised to see a small paperback edition of Saito Takao's GOLGO 13 (Gorugo 13) selling for $3.95 each.  I got lucky and found volumes 1 and 2 of the "Special Choice" edition of the series, ending up with very early stories in this long-running adventure series about Japan's most famous fictional assassin.  Volume 1 is nice because it mostly features written by Koike Kazuo (Lone Wolf and Cub, etc.) and drawn by Saito.  In my manga class this summer, I am working with a lot of girls' comics and, for boys' or men's comics less standard representatives, so I felt the need to read some full-on testosterone narratives.  The first few pages of GOLGO 13:  SPECIAL CHOICE begin with a series of panels featuring women in bras and panties and then another series of panels with Golgo wearing only underpants, presumedly looking out a window at said women.  I found my comic.

  Reading a Golgo 13 comic is a bit of an uneven experience.  There are nice, sustained sequences of action where you just let your eye wander of the page spreads.  Then, you end up with incredibly dense narrative passages of exposition (a trademark of Koike's storytelling style), filling you in on international politics, French geography, etc.  My favorite part of this story are the bits when we see Golgo thinking.  He's not much of a thinking-man's hero, but when he does emote thought balloons, it's quite interesting.  How does Saito work in passages of Saito expressing his doubts, fears, and ideas?  My guess is that Koike and Saito consciously tried to limit these aspects of the narrative in order to create a narrative that relies entirely on action.  If our protagonist thinks, it is done quietly and the only reason why Saito might draw a singular panel or multiple panel sequence of a quiet figure is in order to show not the braininess of the character but to highlight the pacing of the action sequence.  If Golgo 13 thinks too much, he dies.  And Golgo 13 will not die.

   In the following sequences from the May 1969 story "Booby Trap" ("Buubii torappu"), we need Golgo 13 moving through Paris "on the day [the city] died", when there was a massive labor strike in 1968.  Golgo 13 owns the city, but soon the hunter becomes the hunted as the Rose Cross League (an assassin guild) uses a series of decoys to try to trap and kill their formidable competitor from Japan.  In the opening pages, Golgo strolls through the empty city.  Small talk from a helpful policeman turns deadly -- he's no gendarme!

There is no time for Golgo 13 to think -- instead, his eyes flash to the side of the policeman as they catch the sight of his firearm, allowing Golgo 13 to react defensively.  It's a good thing he has no interiority -- if he had even paused to think, "Wait, he's carrying a gun!", well, Golgo 13 would be dead.  But Golgo 13 does not let superfluous thoughts get in the way of surviving an enemy attack.

   In the next page's sequence, the two dueling humans are only drawn for their action body parts.  It's interesting how, due to the perspective of the sequence, their heads vanish from the page.  Only after Golgo 13 has successfully defended himself (showing us the dead policeman's head) does he have the leisure to think.  The thought bubble simply reads "A Policeman!  But why!?"

What follows his interior question are not words, but actions.  There is no answer.  The only thing Golgo 13 can do is collect clues.  The answer is yet to come after more clues, so Golgo 13 (and Satio/Koike) do not waste time on speculation.

Part 1 ends on a spectacular sequence that again emphasis action over speech (or thoughts) as Golgo 13 continues to flee from his hunters though tunnels and stairs of the labyrinthine Paris.  Notice how Saito uses the mirror effect of Golgo 13's eyes from the left then to the right.  These close-ups on his eyes do not give the reader the feeling Golgo is thinking more, or more critically (from another point of view).  Instead the pacing of action is intensified.  Another artist might have used this space to have the character think, then do a double-take on his thoughts as he races not only through the streets but also his mind on how to escape his pursuers.  No, Golgo 13's thoughts, if he has any, are buried deep inside and we clearly understand we will not have access to them.  In fact, we could say Golgo 13's portrayal here is of total paranoia.  If he believes the whole world is out to get him, then the best way to portray that is to simply show the whole world trying to get him.  In this case, it really is paranoia if the world really is out to get you.

The sound effects here are particularly effective in rendering the intense sense of panic Golgo 13 has.  Daa! as he leaps across a large distance, Bish(i) bish(i) bish(i) as his shoes do a fast-step across the brick pavement, ta-ta-ta-ta! more fast running, kan-kan-kan the sound of his shoes as they descend a staircase.  No thoughts, just the sound of running across a varied and dangerous landscape.  This breath-taking sequence ends part 1.

   Part 2 opens with a much quieter scene as Golgo 13 has found a safe spot to wait a contact, in this case a possible employer.  Notice the aspect-to-aspect transitions (McCloud), so typical of Japanese comics, and here quiet common in Saito's work where he has Golgo 13 remain stationary through 1 scene as day passes to night and then night passes to day.  Yet notice how this is a scene-to-scene sequence as well -- Golgo 13 remains the same, no matter his switching of his locations.  This guy is a rock!  Time creeps by, but Golgo 13 is unnerved.  It's more unsettling for us than Golgo 13, his lack of movement means not only is he not panicing but also he is not even thinking about his problem, his life, or how great a city Paris is.

   Over the next few pages, Golgo 13 meets his contact, who wants Golgo 13 to kill a public official.  There is a lot of talking here.  Golgo 13 changes the discussion by asking his employer why he wants him to do the assassination.  Golgo 13 then tells his employer he can guess the answer anyway based on his behavioral reactions to the French anthem as it plays in their meeting place of a nearly deserted theatre.  Originally Golgo was asked to explain himself, now Golgo 13 asks the other man to confirm his suspicions.  What happens in his extremely macho comic is that now man thinks.  They only speak (or speak for each other).  If there is any thought happening, it occurs utterly devoid of content.  Simple ellipsis markers show the characters are quietly ruminating about how correct Golgo 13 is in his guesses.

In the final sequence I'll look at (from Part 4), there is actually interior speech as we are allowed access into Golgo 13's mind as he makes one final connection about his dilemma, but we should keep in mind that the thinking subject in Golgo 13 is not the human protagonist as much as it is a series of objects, proxies that far more show the power of this action-oriented character than an intellect.

The following is a translation of a conversation between Tezuka Osamu and Hagio Moto, two giants of manga, which was published originally in 1977 in Special Issue New Review (Bessatsu shinhyo).  It's rather long, so I'm publishing just the first part of it here.  I need to go back and do some cleanup of the English, but I'd like to get it out for a while.  Let me know if you find any troubling passages, typos, etc at jonhulkholt AT gmail.com.  Enjoy!

---

Interview with Hagio Moto and Tezuka Osamu

 “Let’s Talk about SF Manga”

-- Shôjo Manga and SF Manga –

Tezuka:    You know, coming up I have a trip to Easter Island.

Hagio:    Whoa!  Neat!  That’s neat, but what’s going to happen with your serials?

Tezuka:    I’ll take a break and go.  This trip just might be the thing that saves me.  Yet, I might get over there, fall in love, and stretch my wings, but once I do, the serials will determined and I end up having to draw them on the island.  Have you yourself ever drawn your manuscripts while living abroad?

Hagio:    I have.  I drew some in Paris.  But somehow the job doesn’t get done, you know?

Tezuka:    Paris figures most into your illustrations, huh?  I thought so – it’s Paris I see when I look at your drawings.  Where else though?  South America?  Brazil?

Hagio:   No, I haven’t been to those places.  I’ve often thought I’d like to go there though.

Tezuka:    Even Greece?

Hagio:   Oh yes.  I’ve planned a trip there next spring [1978].

Tezuka:    This year won’t you go somewhere?

Hagio:    This year’s work is pretty much set…last year I often took off, you know.

Tezuka:    Right.  It seems like you’re already into your series.  Mitsuse Ryû’s piece and…

Hagio:   Into Weekly Boys’ Champion it goes, together in the same book as Tezuka Osamu Sensei’s work will appear.  It’s like a dream… The story is Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights (Hyaku oku no hiru to sen oku no yoru).

Tezuka:    Will it follow Mitsuse's original?  Or will it be a Hagio adaptation?

Hagio:   I’ve made some modifications, but the plot is the same.

Tezuka: I think even when you drew Bradbury’s short stories [her U wa uchûsen no u collection of adapted stories such as “R is for Rocket”], you make little changes.  I guess certain things you change, right?

Hagio:    More than a little – ultimately you do change them, don’t you agree?  For those stories, Jesus Christ became a villain for the most part.  Even so, I rather like Christ, so it made things quite difficult.  But then you go, I gotta do this, and I made Christ the villain after all, and it was Judas who came alive.  You know, speaking of that, a few days ago I was making a little tour of Nara and Kyoto, and I thought, wow, Teishakuten, Bonten, the four divine guardians and the twelve dieties, well, they are all pretty neat.  So now I’m thinking about doing a manga with them in it next time.

Tezuka:    Wow, that would be unusual for you.  Normally we don’t see Buddhist elements in your work.

Hagio:   What happened was that I was reading Mitsuse’s book and I thought, Ok, if I don’t try it once…When I was a high school student, I saw them all on a trip but it’s different when you look at [Buddhist art] at the age I am now.

Tezuka:    Wait, are you saying you’re really going to put a Buddhist image in your manga?

Hagio:    Certain arrangements will have to be made…

Tezuka:    Writing [sentences] is not so hard, but you can’t make them work with manga pictures.  Mitsuse and other writers like Komatsu [Sakyo, author of Japan Sinks!] usually put [Buddhist] things in their works, you know.  It really seems like Komatsu looks at Buddhist imagery a lot.  If you are a SF writer, on a certain level I think they generally have a connection to religious systems of like like Buddhism and so lately you get a lot of writers who have taken it as a second point of departure.

Hagio:   I think so.  We have this new home that is rather close to the back of the Tenmangû of Dazai-fu, then there is the Anraku-ji temple close to that.  My mother now goes to Anraku-ji to copy sutras.  Plus, Mom and Dad get up every morning and chant the Kannon Sutra, so I live in that kind of atmosphere.  When I return home, Dad’s reading Umehara Takeshi’s Stupa.  “Hey this is pretty interesting, give a read.”  He’s right, it’s pretty good.

Tezuka:    That’s what I’ve heard.  So I guess you’re saying that from here on out, with you drawing those kind of [Buddhist] things, your stories might change with that influence?

Hagio:   I don’t know.

Tezuka:    What is the reason that you picked up Mitsuse’s novel?

Hagio:   It started because the editor of Weekly Young Boys’ Champion was a fan of Mitsuse and when I told him that I had no experience with his novels, the editor kindly lent me all of Mitsuse’s books.  Once I borrowed them, I had to read them, so…Well, we talked about how great his Ten Billion Days and One Hundred Billion Nights was, so he said, “If you’ll draw it, then I will ask Mitsuse for you.”  And that’s how it happened.

Tezuka:    See, I have been wondering how it is you converted from Bradbury to Mitsuse.  Was it a change in your opinion about them, I wondered, how you could go from something fantastic to, well, the other way, to serious SF?

Hagio:    It’s nothing like that.  After all, you Mr. Tezuka and Mr. Ishi[no]mori Shôtarô have drawn quite a bit of girls’ comics, and in just one panel you both have tightly drawn layouts, so that the manga page has great breadth.  Since I was little, I grew up reading your work, so I think I can’t get away from your dual influences in my manga.

Tezuka:    OK, but how is that connected to Mitsuse?

Hagio:   Right, there is a connection to boys’ comics.  What I’m saying is I want to try to draw for boys’ comics.  Something with a big, wide space like SF.  With girls’ comics you don’t get to develop any depth (okuyuki ga dasenai).  Now that I’m working in this new area, I keenly feel [the chance to make something profound].

Tezuka:    Oh, come on!  If you say something like that, well there’s no hope [for girls’ comics].  It’s girls’ comics that probably has more of that potential, what do you call it?  A profound view of human life.  The kind of character description that has depth.

Hagio:   Right, but I only do that because I cannot take a simple scene of a wasted desert and make it stretch across 5 or 6 pages.

Tezuka:    Oh ho, you’re talking about how lazy I am in my work. (Laughs.)  Don’t you think artists draw those [big, atmospheric] pages for people who like exactly that kind of thing?  Or is it that the artist takes 1 page of art and spreads it over 2 or 3 pages in order to rake in more page fees?

Hagio:    Really?  You’re being modest.   When I read your work, I feel intensely stimulated.

Tezuka:    Oh no, it’s a terribly cheap technique.  I guess you can’t do that in girls’ comics.  We’re still at a stage where one shouldn’t do Oryaa or Dya.  Speaking of that, in girls’ comics artists waste so much of their energy, taking so trouble to do things.  With girls’ comics, so much details goes into the frills and flare of the characters’ costumes.  I think the reason why it’s so hard to do girls’ comics is that you lose so much energy there.  Guys [in boys’ comics] just trick the reader with lots of diagonal scratches.

Hagio:   I wonder if that’s true… (laughs).

Tezuka:    Even in my Black Jack, I get readers who say, “I think Black Jack is really mean to his own daughter.  Why does she have the same dress story after story?!?”  If my female readers think that way, then I’ve come to realize, gosh, I’m going to have to learn how to make vibrant costumes and scenery from the girls’ comics.

WHY ARE THERE SO FEW FEMALE SF AUTHORS?

Tezuka:    When you think about most SF interviews or discussions, the most serious discussions become big messes.  That’s why I’d like us to have a talk today on women’s SF today.  I realize I’ll probably beat you up on this, Ms. Hagio.

Hagio:   Oh no!  Don’t scare me!

Tezuka: In the world of SF today, most the writers are men, but if you think about the really famous women of SF, there’s Judith Merrill – she’s one famous editor for the field – but I guess not many women write, are there?

Hagio:   What about Ursula K Le Guin?  Henderson?

Tezuka:    Ok, I can’t come up with anyone I’d put on the same level with Asimov, Clarke, or Bradbury.  So, with women, you might have many of them you become SF fans after reading male authors, and they then go on to write their own SF stories or draw their own SF manga.  Instead of asking why there aren’t a lot of women SF fans, I really want to know why is it there are so few women who write it.  At the same time I wonder if these women fans don’t feel the depictions of women and femininity by the male SF authors as being strange?

Hagio:   Wow, I haven’t really thought about that topic too much.

Tezuka: For example, don’t you think a male hero drawn by a women, like Northwest Smith, is pretty good?  But we really don’t have SF with a female, Barbarella-like heroine becoming a series.

Hagio:    Not at all.

Tezuka: That’s why I think when a woman writes a SF story, a SF masterpiece can get created with a powerful, well-rendered heroine that even entices male readers.  In SF we get depictions of a hero seeking the love of a woman in the far-future or among the stars, but that’s because it’s often the depiction of love, romance, etc., from the view of a man.  Don’t you ever feel dissatisfied reading those stories?

Hagio:   Sure, but I also don’t feel that much dissatisfied either.

Tezuka:    For me, you know.

Hagio:   They are dissatisfying?

Tezuka:    Well, no.  I think it’s the opposite.  For example, look at the girls’ comics in the SF vein like yours or Takemiya Keiko – certainly we’ve seen an increase in them.  So when I read SF girls’ comics, I think, “A man like me can’t draw that way,” and I really admire what you do.  So it’s not that woman have a special female way of [visual] expression, but when you add up the themes, plot and descriptions in those comics, I strongly believe that you all have an extremely special power when it comes to SF.  Maybe it’s natural and that men too will get pulled in those stories, but there just aren’t that many women out there doing SF.  You are writing really unique stories, you know, and short-story were are common.  Hmm.

Hagio:    Mr. Oscar was one character who caused quite a sensation for his being a hero in a feminine mold.

Tezuka:    OK, but that [Hagio’s The Poe Clan, 1972-1976] is not SF.  In your case, when you’re drawing your Edgar and your Alan, do you do it feeling like a man?  I’d love to hear more about this today from you.  Even in Takemiya’s case, even for you, I wonder why do you enjoy drawing men?

Hagio:   No, you don’t get it:  I like [drawing] kids.

Tezuka: If that’s the case, is that your characters look androgynous (chûsei-teki)?  Ôshima Yumiko also is like this, you know, she draws a lot of men.  Is it androgyny?

Hagio:   I guess so.  How should I put it?  Maybe they are ideal forms…?

Tezuka:    If you put it that way, are you saying they don’t feel to you like sexual people?

Hagio:   For me, I don’t feel they are that sexual.

Tezuka:    What you’re saying is that inside the adrogny there is something like affection (aijô), right?  So then you are consciously drawing the protagonist as a male character, aren’t you?

Hagio:    Even in love there is the platonic kind, after all, they are children.

Tezuka:   Don’t tell me things like it’s because they are children.  Come on, I’ve drawn my share of children’s comics.   When a man like me looks at your work, [it seems] that you are drawing your comics as a man.  That’s why if the characters are kids, then you can feel their sexiness as kids.  This leads us to our topic of SF.  The SF a man writes, from my point of view, has a kind of inorganic feeling to it.  Mr. Mitsuse’s is just one example, but his and other male SF doesn’t have that worldly smell (namakusasa ga nai:  not fishy, not smelling of blood).  Even in a work like Tomita Yuukô’s Himiko [queen-figure of pre-historical Japan], you have male and female interactions but they are colorless, watery depictions of love.

Hagio:   That’s exactly right.  They are ideal.

Tezuka:   You say that, but from the way I look at it, that is so different from your work and that of Takemiya’s in which I feel has this sex appeal (iroke).  So when a woman draws a story that comes off as truly sexy SF story, it doesn’t work for me.  In that sense then I wonder we should have a lot more female SF writers coming out, but why not?

Hagio:   Gosh, I wonder that too.

Next: 

Kansai and Kanto Authors and their SF

and

(Reposted from June 21, 2009 - http://matasaburo.livejournal.com/3033.html)

I started reading Hagio's The Poe Clan (Poh no ichizoku、ポーの一一族), which was tough to get into, but after the first 20-30 pages or so, I found to be quite fun.  Still reading Volume 1 (of 3).  My goal is to finish volume 1 by the end of June.  I typically read one of the stories over 1-2 days in downtime.  Sometimes the stories are long, like the most recent one I read, called "Penny Lane."  The same-sex love element or (doosei-ai, 同性愛) of course is intriguing all the more because a young girl, named Maribel, also plays an important role in the first volume's emphasis on Edgar (vampire) and Alan (human).  Maribel forms a third point in their love, making it a love triangle.  Even after she is dead (sorry, SPOILERS), she continues to haunt Edgar.  "Penny Lane" is interesting because while Alan is gestating as a vampire (sorry, SPOILERS), Edgar immediately turns to his feelings for Maribel, thus, the wrinkle in the story at this point is that Alan may function as a kind of replacement (or:  upgrade) for Maribel.  I never understood Edgar's feelings for Maribel in the first story, the origin story "The Poe Clan" until I reached this point.  In the first story, Maribel seems too childish to be of any real interest to Edgar, who, although his body is 14 it is clear that he is much older:  why would a mature man indulge in a fantasy of love with pure, innocent Maribel.  Is he merely going through the motions as Maribel's "guardian"?  By "Penny Lane," I think it is clear that Edgar has trauma associated with Maribel -- not only his connection with her as a fellow locked-inside-a-child's-body frustration -- but that Edgar was the one who initiated her into the Clan, and at that, poorly.  He is somehow responsible for her weakened state as a vampire.  The clues in "Penny Lane" suggest (to Edgar) that it is his being "different" (--> homosexual?).  So, in this story, it is crucial that Alan awaken from his sleep.  If Alan dies, then Edgar knows that his foster father's claim is right.  He is damaged goods.

And for some reason I cannot understand, Edgar ravages another family and adopts a little girl, Liddell.  Probably fodder for a new story...

I'll post an image or two of the striking layouts from "Penny Lane" that demonstrate Hagio's skill at portraying the struggles for interiority.

  (The first:  Edgar blames himself for what he's done...twice.)