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A review by mildcurry
Manga! Manga!: The World of Japanese Comics by Frederik L. Schodt
informative
medium-paced
2.0
I picked this book up for $5 at my local vintage shop. I'm an avid reader of manga, so I’m always interested in any academic treatments of it that I can find in English.
Its author, Frederick L. Schodt, seems to have been something of a pioneer in bringing manga to an American audience. He has been translating manga since the 70s, and is responsible for the translation of more than one classic series into English (notably Astro Boy and Rose of Versailles). In a 2010 interview with Publishers Weekly, he says that one of his motivations for writing Manga! Manga! was to bring more attention to Japanese pop culture.
His dream has largely been realized. In my lifetime, I’ve watched manga in English go from a niche hobby available only through fan-produced bootlegs to one of the largest sections at the local Barnes and Noble. I currently check out most of the manga I read as ebooks from my local library; a luxurious ease of access that would have been completely unfathomable in 1983, when this book was first published.
Schodt’s book, often referred to as the bible of manga, is a comprehensive and extensively researched treatment. It traces the history of manga from early Japanese picture scrolls, through war time political cartoons, to the ambitious storytelling in Osamu Tezuka and his successors. The pages are bursting with quality pictures, meticulously annotated for the understanding of an English speaking audience. The book offers an accessible introduction to the world of manga to the uninitiated, and a full and juicy history to fans.
Unfortunately, the experience of reading is brought down by Schodt’s inane commentary. When venturing into any exploration of the social and cultural forces that shape manga, Schodt will invariably write something overly simplistic or stereotypical. He uncritically repeats tired ideas like men wanting action stories and women wanting romance stories. He often falls back on stale descriptions of Japanese society that focus on an obsession with hard work and honor. Twice he mentions that Japan’s constitution bans war as evidence for the Japanese people being inherently peaceful, while neglecting to mention that their constitution was imposed on them by the United States after World War II. In the section on women’s comics, he mentions that Japanese characters are often depicted with blonde hair and blue eyes when drawn in color. His explanation for this is merely “mental gymnastics” on the part of the women artists and readers. He also seems completely ill-equipped to handle the themes of queerness that have been present throughout manga’s history. He liberally applies the term “bisexual” to anything outside of gender or sexuality norms, bafflingly using it for both the stories of Nobuko Yoshiya (arguably the progenitor of modern yuri) and the dual gendered protagonist of Tezuka’s Princess Knight.
I can see how a book like this was an instrumental part of paving the way for manga’s popularity in the United States. I can see how it reigned as a “bible” when there wasn’t much else to go on. I think that the comprehensive amount of information it contains about important authors and works in manga’s history can still be quite valuable. But the modern scholar of manga should take advantage of living in a world that Schodt could only dream of, one where there is a wider availability of scholarship on manga in English, and we no longer have to rely on this book.
Its author, Frederick L. Schodt, seems to have been something of a pioneer in bringing manga to an American audience. He has been translating manga since the 70s, and is responsible for the translation of more than one classic series into English (notably Astro Boy and Rose of Versailles). In a 2010 interview with Publishers Weekly, he says that one of his motivations for writing Manga! Manga! was to bring more attention to Japanese pop culture.
His dream has largely been realized. In my lifetime, I’ve watched manga in English go from a niche hobby available only through fan-produced bootlegs to one of the largest sections at the local Barnes and Noble. I currently check out most of the manga I read as ebooks from my local library; a luxurious ease of access that would have been completely unfathomable in 1983, when this book was first published.
Schodt’s book, often referred to as the bible of manga, is a comprehensive and extensively researched treatment. It traces the history of manga from early Japanese picture scrolls, through war time political cartoons, to the ambitious storytelling in Osamu Tezuka and his successors. The pages are bursting with quality pictures, meticulously annotated for the understanding of an English speaking audience. The book offers an accessible introduction to the world of manga to the uninitiated, and a full and juicy history to fans.
Unfortunately, the experience of reading is brought down by Schodt’s inane commentary. When venturing into any exploration of the social and cultural forces that shape manga, Schodt will invariably write something overly simplistic or stereotypical. He uncritically repeats tired ideas like men wanting action stories and women wanting romance stories. He often falls back on stale descriptions of Japanese society that focus on an obsession with hard work and honor. Twice he mentions that Japan’s constitution bans war as evidence for the Japanese people being inherently peaceful, while neglecting to mention that their constitution was imposed on them by the United States after World War II. In the section on women’s comics, he mentions that Japanese characters are often depicted with blonde hair and blue eyes when drawn in color. His explanation for this is merely “mental gymnastics” on the part of the women artists and readers. He also seems completely ill-equipped to handle the themes of queerness that have been present throughout manga’s history. He liberally applies the term “bisexual” to anything outside of gender or sexuality norms, bafflingly using it for both the stories of Nobuko Yoshiya (arguably the progenitor of modern yuri) and the dual gendered protagonist of Tezuka’s Princess Knight.
I can see how a book like this was an instrumental part of paving the way for manga’s popularity in the United States. I can see how it reigned as a “bible” when there wasn’t much else to go on. I think that the comprehensive amount of information it contains about important authors and works in manga’s history can still be quite valuable. But the modern scholar of manga should take advantage of living in a world that Schodt could only dream of, one where there is a wider availability of scholarship on manga in English, and we no longer have to rely on this book.