Riotous Works of Manga Burst Into Life at the British Museum
Marvellous range of Japan’s diverse art form shown off in latest catalogue
By David Pilling
Kozanji temple in Kyoto, Japan’s ancient capital, is the owner of a set of rust-coloured 12th-century scrolls drawn in beautiful, expressively simple lines by an artist-monk. Often referred to in English as the Scrolls of Frolicking Animals, they depict, among other things, the antics of a mischievous rabbit, frog and monkey larking around in a river. There is an anthropomorphic playfulness about the characters and a quiet satirical tone. Some scholars regard it as the oldest example of manga in the world.
In the west, manga has often been seen as a comic-book form, prompting slight bemusement as to why adults from a sophisticated nation with obvious cultural depth should devote so much time to thumbing through picture books. Some 2bn manga volumes are sold in Japan each year, more than 15 for every man, woman and child. The view of Japan as frozen in childhood is not just a western imposition. Takashi Murakami, a Japanese pop culture artist, in Little Boy, his 2005 exhibition on Japanese subculture, explored the idea of a postwar nation bombed into a state not only of submission but also of “little boy” naïveté, even infantilism. Little Boy was, of…
