The third and final installment of Matt Alt’s interview with popular author, academic, and super-fan Patrick W. Galbraith on the key controversies in otaku culture and his new book, Otaku Spaces.

Otaku Spaces Chin Music Press (2012) Buy on Amazon

In Part One and Part Two of our interview with Patrick W. Galbraith, author of Otaku Spaces, we talked about how the otaku fit into “Cool Japan” and 21st century society, the pitfalls of “otakology,” and the fact that lolicon is not a new aberration but has always been part of the subculture. This time we go deeper into that final point — why is there more social anxiety about otaku obsessed with little girls than ones obsessed with robots? And while we’re at it, why do anime companies push their fans to buy so much stuff?

OTAKU SPACES © 2012 by Patrick W. Galbraith and Androniki Christodoulou. Photographs reproduced by permission of the publisher, Chin Music Press

I get that modern day otaku have the same passion as before, but this argument avoids the issue that obsessing over robots and manga fits better with general consumerism in Japan than the moe otaku’s use of money and time on a pursuit that links more directly to their sexual needs. Isn’t this the root of the discrimination?

If I am understanding correctly, you think that interest in robots and technology is more normal?

It’s less about normalcy and more about attainability. A fascination with robots and spaceships is a fascination with things that we can’t have because they don’t exist. Moe involves a fascination with the lives and happenings of girls and young women, who, last time I checked, are real.

Robots and spaceships don’t exist? I think what you mean to say is that there are robots and spaceships that only exist in manga and anime. The fiction in science fiction. OK, the same way, robot maids, magical girls, angels, cat girls, and so on exist only in manga and anime. They are no more attainable than super robots, and exist only as fiction. I’m prepared to go even further. I don’t think that girls and young women exist in the same form in reality and fiction. We cannot forget that these are fictional characters, drawn and animated. No one is confused about the fictionality of bishōjo characters. They are attracted to fiction as such. We have to date had far too many misunderstandings about otaku because we assume that what they desire in the so-called two-dimensional world is the same what they want in actual reality, or the three-dimensional world. There is not a one-to-one relation between these things, so we need to understand the complexity of engagement with images on their own terms.

Let me get back to your point about attainability. In a country like Japan, where there are government slogans such as “living together with robots” (robotto tono kyōsei), technology is extremely close to everyday life. That is why I thought you meant that desire for robots is more normal than desire for bishōjo characters, which often have no basis in reality. At the same time, with robots, there is a gap between what people dream of and what’s available. This might inspire work in engineering or robotics to make the dream a reality, or consume enthusiastically to feel closer to the dream, to feed it. I have met some people who seem to support a theory that this is productive of actual engagements in the world. Ishizaki-san, who I interviewed for Otaku Spaces, is totally into robots and ended up working as a mechanical designer. But, then again, Ishizaki-san is also an avid player of bishōjo games! It isn’t easy to separate interests and oppose them.

For what it’s worth, I don’t think that bishōjo media fulfills the “sexual needs,” immediate or otherwise, of fans. Pornography does that, and we should not confuse the two. I’m not sure that we can categorize it as bishōjo or moe anime, but in any case Haruhi Suzumiya is not pornography. It is a complex, character-driven story. Yes, she is cute, but let’s not stop the analysis at the level of the surface image. I thought that was the problem with moe fans! “They aren’t deep enough.” As critics, I hope that we don’t become that which we criticize.

Anyway, Haruhi is not a porn star — not even a human being. She is a drawing, a fictional character. A desire for Haruhi is not the same as wanking to a skin magazine, in that there is no body, no “money shot,” no climax, no sex — only the continuous movement of desire. Rather than fulfilling sexual needs, bishōjo media accelerates and intensifies desire for something other, something that does not exist. Bishōjo fans are romantics, perhaps even more devoted to their ideals than fans of giant robots. Unlike someone how can try to build a robot or mobile suit in physical, material reality, bishōjo fans can’t ever realize the ideal or dream. And I suspect that most don’t want to. Remember Honda and the two-dimensional character/wife, which can act as an alternative to human relationships.

Okay, sure. But if you take it to the logical extreme, doesn’t this essentially put relationships with a fellow human being on the same level of fantasy as, say, piloting a giant robot? I think that’s what rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

I see what you’re saying, but there’s no need to take things to the extreme. Manga and anime already offer us enough such scenarios! So, for the sake of argument, let me be more specific. I think that a series like Chobits, which depicts a romantic relationship between a boy and his computer, anthropomorphized as a bishōjo, is every bit as fanciful as piloting a giant robot. You could say that Chobits is at its core just about young love (boy meets girl) or is a parody of intimacy with technology, meaning that it is about “real life,” but that is really reductive. If we equate a robot girl or a bishōjo with an actual girl we are doing both a disservice. They are not the same, and we should not treat them as such. What rubs people the wrong way is not respecting the distinction.

I agree with you that the root of some of the discrimination against so-called moe otaku is likely the fact that their pursuit of pleasure in the two-dimensional world is “unproductive,” though it fuels consumption of media and material. Perhaps it is not “productive” for Japan and its future to have moe otaku around, as they disrupt the social reproduction of the nation/family. But saying that the mainstream, majority, or politically powerful in Japan are anxious about moe otaku is not the same as explaining why other fans have a problem with them. That’s a tough one, and we all have to think long and hard on it.

I’d like to pick at the idea of normativity a little more. Who is to say that it is more appropriate to dream of super robots than fighting girls? To dream of martial artists than magical girls? It seems that we may be drawn to violence a little too much. When we talk about a director such as Oshii Mamoru, for example, why do we always end up praising Ghost in the Shell and trivializing Urusei Yatsura?

I think it’s about relevance. For whatever it’s worth, I think Beautiful Dreamer is a great film, but Ghost in the Shell just felt more relevant to our times.

Beautiful Dreamer is a great film! For me, on a meta level, it draws attention to the endless loop and inescapablity of the “school festival” or pleasure space that is anime. Haruhi also did this during the brilliant “endless eight” arc. But more than his films, I was thinking about Oshii Mamoru’s work on the Urusei Yatsura TV series, which was a big hit with otaku.

On the surface, Urusei Yatsura is a bawdy comedy, but for those who care to watch the whole series carefully, the real appeal is the complexity, conflicts, and emotional depth of Lum in her tumultuous relationship with Ataru. More than the tiger skin bikini, I suspect that it was the appeal of Lum as a character that attracted fans and held their attention over the course of months, years and decades. That Oshii was able to adapt Takahashi Rumiko’s manga and reach so many people on an emotional level with the Urusei Yatsura TV series is every bit as much of an achievement as the realism and philosophical posturing of the Ghost in the Shell films. Preferences for film over TV in critical and academic circles aside, the valuation of Ghost in the Shell over Urusei Yatsura inside and outside the otaku community is telling, and speaks to the divisions between sci-fi and bishōjo fans I mentioned earlier.

We also seem to demand conflict in our stories. Consider the fact that the world of Magical Princess Minky Momo is one without enemies or bad people. The entire story is nothing more than a girl helping people find their dreams. What’s wrong with that? Think about when the protagonist of the film version of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind saves her world from the “god-warrior” instead of, say, piloting it to defeat the enemy. I find this incredibly satisfying, if a little ham-fisted with the religious iconography.

So why insist on putting kids in the cockpit of war machines? Minmay sings for peace, though her song is perverted and used as a weapon, so why are we supposed to be more interested in dogfights and war than love and peace? By focusing only on the machines and confrontations in space, we seem to be missing so much of the internal struggles of the characters and the melodrama — it’s a soap opera, really — of their interpersonal relationships on the ground.

I will confess to fast-forwarding through Minmay’s concerts and Hikaru’s dithering over girlfriends to get to the battle scenes.

And that’s fine. But what I’m getting it is that some fans might be more interested in the concerts and human conflicts, and that’s fine, too. For those who say that representative works of anime today have “no story,” think of Miyazaki Hayao’s My Neighbor Totoro. Acclaimed as the “best last film of the Shōwa era” by Kinema Junpō magazine — and it has no story to speak of. Or at least no “grand narrative.” The director says that he would have been satisfied to depict nothing more than the excitement of a typhoon — nothing more than a child’s emotional response to a meteorological phenomenon. Imagine what kind of a film that would have been! Instead, he ended up focusing on what Thomas LaMarre calls “girl energies.” By minimizing the boy’s role in his stories, Miyazaki imagines “a series of minor adventures without grand design or teleology.” Are small adventures involving girls exploring the world and struggling emotionally somehow less valuable than grand adventures of boys saving the world or struggling against enemies? Totoro is moving in its depictions of small things — the joy of discovery, the power of imagination, the pang of loneliness. You become attuned to the characters and their moods. In this sense it is something like moe anime. Nothing happens. In this sense it is something like “atmosphere anime” (kūki-kei anime). And that is not to diminish it.

Why do we prefer robots destroying things? As LaMarre points out, it seems that male characters experience technology as a problem to be solved, something to be mastered or optimized. This leads to fetishism of technology and ultimate destruction. Female characters experience technology as a condition to be understood. This leads to salvation. Rather than fighting with and against technology, living with technology seems much more productive to me.

One of my favorite anime is Mahoromatic, which juxtaposes the everyday life of a robot maid with scenes of horrific violence from her past as a military weapon. I don’t think I’m alone in wishing she didn’t have to fight and finding myself shedding a tear as she is brutally beaten by her enemies. I wish that those quiet days in her idealized home didn’t have to end, which is why the anime works so well.

I won’t deny having a techno-fetishistic streak myself, but I question whether a fascination with giant robots equates into a fascination with destruction per se. It’s more about strength, protection, and becoming a hero.

Right. I don’t mean to imply that all giant robots or mecha shows are necessarily about war and destruction. It just seems that all too often technology is mastered and optimized to deal with problems, which results in violent conflict. LaMarre is suggesting that Miyazaki Hayao realized this in the early 1980s, which accounts for his shift to female leads as a way to imagine some other type of narrative and resolution. Maybe bishōjo media is rife with the “girl energies” that LaMarre speaks of, which is one reason to consider seriously its alternatives.

Another criticism of otaku culture has been that the companies are now just making money by forcing fans to buy lots and lots of products instead of focusing on making high quality series.

We hear a lot about this, don’t we? Especially since the figure boom in the late 1990s. But maybe we need some historical perspective. Marc Steinberg’s new book Anime’s Media Mix: Franchising Toys and Characters in Japan is a really good place to start.

Steinberg takes us back to 1963, when Tezuka Osamu’s Astro Boy first aired on Japanese television. This was the first weekly 30-minute animated TV show in Japan. It established the super-limited animation style that we recognize as “anime,” which is distinct from Disney, Toei, and Ghibli’s full animation. (Miyazaki Hayao, by the way, hates it when people call his stuff anime, and he blames Tezuka for the degradation of the moving image in Japan.) Tezuka’s curse, as people call it, was underselling his anime to make it attractive to broadcasters — who did not think anime in this form would be profitable, if even possible — and to pre-emptively undercut his competitors. Tezuka could do this because he was already a successful manga artist.

Steinberg estimates that Tezuka sold each episode of Astro Boy in Japan for ¥750,000, even though the actual cost of production of each was ¥2,500,000. This is why, from the beginning, the anime model that Tezuka established in Japan was dependent on licensing — both to foreign markets and for merchandising. Astro Boy became a hit, and was possible to produce, because of the national craze for Astro Boy stickers given away with Meiji Seika candies.

Sponsors and merchandising are crucial in anime. As you yourself have noted, Matt, robot shows in the 1970s were dependent on toy sponsors and, dare I say, sales. Yes, Mobile Suit Gundam changed the paradigm of robot narratives, but it only succeeded in shifting toy sales from children to adults. Today, with fewer children in Japan and less money to be made from foreign licensing due to digital piracy, anime depends on merchandise targeting adults.

The Japanese government estimated in a 2005 report that the market for licensed merchandise based on fictional characters is 10 times that of anime itself. But, in reality, this too is becoming less profitable for Japanese animators. Kubo Masakazu surveyed the anime scene for the 2005 government report, and notes that there were 72 weekly anime TV series in April, with 37.5 percent being new while only three series crossed the two-year threshold, which is in some ways crucial to success. A one season (13-episode) anime makes it very difficult for companies to release merchandise, because they might find themselves overstocked with unknown and unpopular character goods. It takes time to gauge the market and produce things. The high volume and fast turnover of series also limits the appeal of DVDs and Blu-ray Discs, because series are quickly forgotten amid a torrent of new material.

Kubo calls the shortening length of anime series and fast turnover a “death spiral.” He waxes nostalgic about Sailor Moon and Dragon Ball Z, but we do see similar long-run hits like Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece. The problem is the other 70 series that are on air. Can we really blame the producers of those series for targeting Japanese who actually do purchase merchandise and physical media? Maybe this is a death spiral of a different kind, as things become more insular — otaku targeting otaku in an accelerated and intense circuit that confuses and alienates mainstream and foreign audiences.

Yet if there is no money to be made from other markets anyway then we really don’t have a leg to stand on for criticism. So maybe digital piracy is yet another death spiral — foreign fans loving anime too much to wait for a localization and too up-to-speed thanks to the Internet to care about buying old series, circling the anime studios they love faster and faster and draining the life from them.

It sounds funny, but perhaps this is the perfect time to encourage otaku consumption! Of course you can be an otaku without consuming anything, which seems to be the source of many problems for the industry today. This is also another reason why Okada Toshio is fed up with fans today, who do not seem to be invested enough in the industry and the community to take responsibility for it. If you don’t pay for anime, it disappears. How much do you want it?

Maybe the trend toward digital consumption of disposable series and characters is one reason why it was so refreshing for me to meet the people I interviewed for Otaku Spaces. They were just so into their fandoms and devoted so much time and energy to them! If there is a criticism to be made, it is that they loved certain characters, series and media too much, buying into their fantasies to a fault, but that’s not a criticism that I want to make. I think that they are awesome! Their hobbies seemed to be a huge part of their lives, colonizing their inner spaces and personal spaces, and spilling out into public spaces.

This is another point that Steinberg makes, but he draws our attention to the mono komi, or “thing communication” that occurs in the anime media mix. Manga, anime, stickers, and toys all gave Astro Boy different movements and made him an intimate part of kids’ lives. “Thing communication” refers to the ways that people communicate with and through commodities, which is to say person-thing and person-thing-person communication, but — and this is Steinberg’s point — also thing-thing communication. These things were in dialogue with one another, creating a space of Astro Boy, each image and object acting as a tiny opening into that world. The fans of Astro Boy shared that world with the character and with one another. They actively “stickered” their physical surroundings to provide openings and to expand that world. That kind of intimacy with the character, series and between people just seems like what being a fan is all about. There are multiple overlapping and resonating worlds of consumption open to otaku these days. It is in hopes of inspiring readers to explore these other worlds that I wrote Otaku Spaces.

In case you missed them: Part One and Part Two of the interview.

Manga sales were down in 2010, but Japan’s ubiquitous graphic novels are still as widely read as ever. There may well be more manga readers than ever before with manga coffee shops and internet cafes offering tens of thousands of titles, free browsing at used book mega chain Bookoff, a giant market for used manga now thoroughly incorporated into the Yahoo! Auctions economy, and titles passed from friend to friend. While there are fewer true blockbusters than in the Golden Age of Shonen Jump hits between 1985 and 1995, current sales champion One Piece has sold over 200 million copies in Japan alone and new volumes break 2 million within a week of hitting bookstores. With a legion of talented artists and a diverse manga buying public, the industry looks in good shape to reconsolidate even as Japanese publishing continues to contract, tapping the otaku niche, but offering a range of different titles as well.

The following is not necessarily a “best list”, but rather presents some highlights of 2010 that speak to different directions in contemporary manga.

Berserk and Sangatsu no Lion (March Comes in Like a Lion)

For years, manga digests have been mixing titles with shonen/seinen (boy/youth) and shojo/josei (girl/lady) market appeal to win as broad a readership as possible. Seldom, however, have there been two series with such different styles as Miura Kentarou’s Berserk and Umino Chika’s Sangatsu no Lion hitting the heights of manga craftsmanship while running together in what is effectively a second-tier seinen monthly: Hakusensha’s Young Animal.

Prior to recent releases, Berserk had taken a decade-long sojourn through aimless plot arcs and endlessly proliferating characters including tween witches and swordswomen who do little but repeat the thematic role played by heroine Casca earlier in the series. The new arcs, referred to as “The Kingdom of the Falcon” and “Fantasia,” are a refreshing break. The stories show creatures of nightmare and imagination assaulting the often realistically depicted Renaissance-inspired world of the manga, ripping empires apart and providing a drama that has long been absent from the series. The result is like something out of Paradise Lost or at least a return to the same 1980s graphic imagery that seeded Miura’s fantasy debut as well as the Warhammer art of John Blanche and the best of heavy metal album covers. Miura also seems to channel artwork contemporary to his story world such as Hieronymus Bosch’s famed “Triptych of Garden of Earthly Delights”, just as he had drawn on high Renaissance battlefield visions like Albrecht Altdorfer’s “The Battle of Alexander at Issus” in the more military-minded early chapters. In bringing Berserk back to the often aberrant but always gripping fantasyscapes that characterized the opening chapters of the series, Miura is also taking the series to a new level of artistry.

John Kenneth Galbraith once quipped, “The Metropolis should have been aborted long before it became New York, London, or Tokyo” and Sangatsu no Lion’s vision of urban alienation certainly does little to refute that. Umino Chika’s strong follow up to her hit Hachimitsu to Clover (Honey and Clover) ostensibly belongs in the professional shogi (“Japanese chess”) micro genre. The series, however, is a diverse one and also works as a nuanced psychological portrait of young protagonist Kiriyama Rei, a child prodigy of the game whose difficult adolescence has brought oscillating success and a feeling that his human connections are being swallowed up by the pressures of the tournament scene as well as the metropolis around him. Throughout, author Umino sets Sangatsu no Lion apart with poignant depictions of Tokyo. The night skies or water of the city’s canals, soaring above or looming below, are consistently used as visual cues for Kiriyama’s emotional state. From the point of view of foreign readers, the focus on the world of the game and emotional lives of the players rather than the minutiae of strategy makes Sangatsu no Lion refreshingly accessible and prevents the typical shonen manga pattern of ever escalating competition with antagonists and rivals from squeezing out character development. It also skirts the premier shojo pitfall — endlessly repeated affective moments — in favor of a more serious look at how people build networks of friends and households, sustaining relationships that offer an oasis from relentless demands to achieve. In essence, both Berserk and Sangatsu no Lion show the continued vitality of the manga mainstream.

Mabui (Soul) and Suna no Tsurugi (The Sword of Sand)

While they are not new releases, the 2010 publication of Okinawan manga artist Higa Susumu’s stories of war and postwar Mabui (“soul” in the Okinawan dialect) and Suna no Tsurugi in complied volumes is part of a larger trend whereby more ambitious, difficult, or experimental manga are being rereleased for collectors or new generations of readers.

Higa’s Mabui was first published in the aftermath of the rape and brutalization of an Okinawan 12 year-old by three US servicemen in 1995. The 1945 Battle of Okinawa had been taken up by a number of manga artists including Higa himself in the Suna no Tsurugi stories, but serious looks at Okinawa’s postwar experience are rare. Here Okinawan Higa deals with the subject matter with notable sensitivity, looking critically at the American presence without lapsing into simple anti-Americanism.

Individual shorts are deftly plotted, never relying on melodrama or stock narratives. The series examines different angles of intersection between Okianwans and the bases that dominate the most populous parts of the island. In a work with clear political relevance, this approach risks coming off as overly didactic, but Higa never lets his characters slip into stereotype, balancing character development with fascinating and sometimes disturbing snapshots of postwar Okinawa.

The coverage goes beyond the usual talking points: Who are the thousands of landlords who have reaped billions in base rents since the 1970s? How do locals see the clash of their beautiful beaches and the concrete of the bases that nonetheless roots a major employer in one of Japan’s most economically depressed regions? One theme frequently approached in Higa’s narratives is the warmth of the relationships between individual Americans and Okinawans contrasted with the operational callousness of the military organization as helicopters are carelessly landed on farmers’ fields and homes requisitioned, seemingly at random, in the first postwar years.

In both Mabui and the war-focused Suna no Tsurugi, Higa uses a pared-down art style reminiscent of North American “art house” graphic novels. The absence of typical manga conventions is effective. Many readers have been numbed to “normal” manga violence. Just about every atrocity imaginable has been turned into a commodity. When Higa’s simply drawn everyday is interrupted by violence, however, the effect can be paralyzing. Coming at a time of heightened debate over the American base presence and the place of Okinawa in the Japanese state, the rereleases of Higa’s manga show the relevance of the manga medium to discussion of issues often sketched over by TV talk or twisted by the often crass alarmism of weekly magazines and mass market non-fiction.

Thermae Romae and Saint Young Men

The sight of foreigners fawning over ordinary Japanese things is an annoyingly common TV trope, but it remains that there are many things (ramen and the world of “b-rate gourmet,” hot springs, saké) that not only continue to stoke domestic passions but are fetishized by visitors and foreign residents of all kinds as well. There are also the difficult to describe but not infrequently unforgettable charms of shotengai (urban shopping arcades), game centers, summer festivals, and rural vistas. Two current manga hits, bathhouse time travel epic Thermae Romae and Saint Young Men, which follows Jesus and Buddha as they do their best to take it easy in the contemporary freeter mode, bring unusual outsiders into contact with the charms of everyday Japan.

In Yamazaki Mari’s Thermae Romae, Lucius, a Roman bath house master who undergoes periodic and inexplicable time slips, encounters the most jimi (rustic) that Japan has to offer and blends in the ludicrous and plainly self-deprecating. The Roman’s dazed encounters with ramune (a type of soda and ultimate nostalgia icon) and onsen tamago (hard boiled eggs cooked in the hot springs themselves) are both a fun tour through Japanese bathing culture and a constant source of effective visual gags. For readers sick of the normal gladiators and political machinations, Thermae Romae presents a very well-researched look at the Roman baths — how they were built and how they were enjoyed — to serve as a counterpoint to the temporal jaunts into present day Japan. The essays which punctuate the manga chapters alternate between details of Roman bath culture and stories such as the author’s accompanying of a dozen Italian seniors on a contemporary Japanese hot springs tour.

Saint Young Men follows the adventures of divine slackers Jesus and Buddha, taking a well deserved break from the holy. Scenes of school girls mistaking Jesus for Johnny Depp set the tone, and the series continues as a silly and laid back paean to everyday routine. As decline narratives proliferate inside and outside Japan, these two series offer a charming look at the rich patchwork of plebian culture that Japan can still count on.

Seraphim

Seraphim is a collaboration between two auteurs known more for their anime work. The series features art by the late Kon Satoshi of Perfect Blue and Paprika fame and a story plan by Oshii Mamoru, best known for Patlabor and Ghost in the Shell. While it never reaches the level of their famous anime films, Seraphim, released in a compiled volume for the first time in 2010, is a visually inventive, often striking manga that echoes Otomo Katsuhiro’s 1980s work on Akira while showcasing Kon’s dynamic and original visual sense. It also serves as a memorial to Kon who died in August and includes a series of essays and interviews.

Seraphim originally ran in flagship anime magazine Animage between 1994 and 1995. Oshii’s favorite symbols (birds, basset hounds, biblical references) are sprinkled liberally throughout but never quite come together like they do in his best film works. The story centers on the World Health Organization’s attempts to unravel the mystery of birds multiplying as humans are afflicted with “Angel Disease,” warping their forms into the “seraphim” of the title. The manga is unfinished and the plot is lacking in momentum and even coherence, but Kon’s artwork is more than enough to recommend the whole. The future director’s attempts to replicate cinematic lighting are often breathtaking and seem to foreshadow his screen ambitions. Even before the release of the first Ghost in the Shell film, Kon put to page Oshii’s vision of continental Asian cityscapes hovering between squalor and futurist exuberance. Kon will be missed as a filmmaker, but a string of 2010 rereleases will give many fans a chance to discover his manga work for the first time.

Imomushi (Caterpillar)

Novelist Edogawa Rampo and manga horror master Maruo Suehiro are a natural pairing. In late 2009 (cheating a bit on the 2010 theme here), Maruo produced Imomushi, his second Edogawa adaption. The story tracks a veteran, left a quadruple amputee, deaf and dumb, by a Russo-Japanese War shell, as he returns from the front to his horrified wife. The pair are thrown into a vortex of mental anguish, sadism, and masochism. This is obviously not easy material, but Maruo has developed his own take on the Taisho erotic-grotesque milieu in which Edogawa thrived. Most manga adaptations of literature seek to simplify. Maruo, however, adds something of his own. The sex scenes between the tragic pair are twisted enough to allow Mauro to maintain his reputation for the daringly transgressive, but here the artist doubles down with a form of artistic animism: insects, weeds, blades of grass, snaking vines, the environment is alive with a creeping power that mirrors the traumas and strange energies of the characters. This is Maruo’s art at its best, serving out visual horrors and doses of the morbidly fascinating while never sacrificing fidelity to Edogawa’s original. Whether he is working in his own gruesome worlds or adapting the classics of strange fiction, Maruo continues to be the master of manga grotesque.

Taboo Nihon Zankokushi (“Taboo” Cruel History of Japan)

I am neither of the target audience for josei (women’s) manga, nor am I a particularly ardent follower. One series that has grabbed my attention, however, is Bunkasha’s Manga Grimm Dowa (Manga Grimm Fairytales). The series began as a line of manga adaptations of the “real” bloody and explicit originals behind fairytale classics sanitized by Christian puritanism and Disneyfication. Running out of gore soaked Sleeping Beauties and Big Bad Wolves, the series has since sought other tales of cruelty — everything from serial killers, to Edo torture, to the racier classics of the European canon — and has made them into manga with varying degrees of success. Ichikawa Miu’s recent installment Taboo Nihon Zankokushi is not the most visually inventive, but it has considerable thematic strengths and reads like a contemporary manga take on the postwar Nihon Zankoku Monogatari (Cruel Stories of Japan) project. There, noted anthropologists and cultural critics outlined the starvation, torture, exploitation, and other horrors that characterized much of Japanese historical experience and in doing so sought to overturn the sanitized and banal boosterism of wartime propaganda versions of the past. In the manga, Ichikawa does the same for a Japanese past now often subject to the lame framing of TV trivia or yaoi-bait samurai boys.

Taboo Nihon Zankokushi looks at the historical suffering of the Ainu people, wartime violence, the forced internment of leprosy sufferers, and most interestingly, the seldom discussed sanka. This is a name given by Japanese folklorists and anthropologists to a group of nomadic mountain people who resisted the registration, compulsory education, and conscription that came with Japanese modernity.

2010 has seen the release of a number of interesting non-fiction titles on how Japanese culture and national cohesion are not “natural” in their 20th century forms but rather were created as part of the Meiji modernization. Even what is considered to be Japanese body language was selected from among countless regional and class variants, codified, and taught to the population, effectively becoming the new “normal.” Amid a rush of writing about other possibilities in Japan’s past, Ichikawa’s look at the sanka is, for manga, a fascinating link with what have typically been pigeonholed as academic debates. The manga, complete with explanatory essays, probes the history of this group and the social and political forces that snuffed them out of existence, often with considerable violence.