Borderless Silent Manga
Cultivating Japan’s Manga Culture Worldwide
by Nobi Oda
Manga, as we know it, consists of illustrations and characters’ dialogue in speech bubbles. But an international public competition for Manga without any dailogue, titled Silent Manga Audition, has been in the spotlight since its start a few years ago. The competition was started by Nobuhiko Horie, the former editor in chief of Shonen Jump, a Japanese weekly Manga magazine, and now a founder and CEO of COAMIX which concentrates on Manga editing and anime production. Horie aims to promote the language of Manga so that everyone in the world will be able to share in the experience, as well as to revitalize the industry.
The biggest hurdle for overseas expansion are the language barriers
Manga is often referred to as a representation of Japanese subculture. Lots of Manga fans are from outside Japan, and many Mangas have gained attention worldwide. Cosplay (people wearing costumes of certain Manga characters) used to be unique to Japan, but now can be seen in different countries. Also, there are quite a few people who admit Manga motivated them to first study Japanese.
Horie, however, believes that the volume of Manga read overseas is not as large as it might seem despite the positive media reports in Japan.
“Accounting for the royalties from the translated Manga books sold overseas, and even the profit from some of the most talked about anime films or shows, total revenue is much lower comparatively than in Japan.”
In other words, Japanese Manga is not as widely read in other countries as Japanese people may think. Horie realized this for the first time when he tried to expand his business into the US Market. Seeing how popular Japanese Manga was in Japan, Horie started publishing a weekly Manga magazine, but it failed.
“I strongly felt that the Americans don’t think of reading as a major form of entertainment. I was reminded that America is the land of movies.”
He also struggled with the translations. Some detailed nuances weren’t translated thoroughly, and much of the fun spirit of the Manga could not reach the reader.
But even so, Manga was originally picture-oriented and supposed to go beyond language barriers. So what happened?
“In Japan, as Manga grew and developed, they started to contain more words. Basically, they started to become more like novels,” explains Horie.
Looking into the post-war Japanese Manga industry should help understand this theory.
Manga as “a Movie Drawn on Paper”
Osamu Tezuka is one of the founders and pioneers of modern Japanese Manga culture. Tezuka transformed traditional Manga, which only showed stage-like pictures, into a new medium by using movie-like depictions.
“Tezuka’s first long comic New Treasure Island (Shin Takarajima) was the dawning of the modern Manga. He showed the story shot by shot as if it was camera work and didn’t rely on text.”
His Manga had the bare minimum of text, but showed a scene from different angles, from far and close-up, and illustrated the emotion of the characters through their actions and facial expressions. Manga was like a story board of a film at its beginning.
Later, budding Manga artists gathered at Tezuka’s apartment “Tokiwa-so” in Toshima Ward, Tokyo, and improved and expanded the modern Japanese Manga together through friendly rivalry. This is a very famous story in Japan and has been made into a movie. Those artists, including Tezuka, originally wanted to make films and animation. But the time they lived in made it impossible financially and technically. They had to seek out a way to express the moving picture by using only paper and pencil. As a result they were able to transform Tezuka’s cultivated style of Manga into a complete language of Manga.
Horie explains that the language of Manga was born out of the limitations of expressing ideas and thoughts on paper.
“Just like there are rules and regulations in playing sports, there are limitations in making Manga and that limitation was paper. They had to allot frames and it became the set form of Manga, pushed for new techniques, and made Manga very enjoyable.”
But as the numbers of readers grew, and as the Manga industry started to mature, more and more Manga came out in different styles. One of the biggest reasons is the aging of the original audience for Manga. The content of Manga had to mature as the readers focused on more complicated events that adults encounter. As these types of Manga increased, the content started to require more text information, and Manga became more like novels.
Considerable numbers of Manga with stories focusing on particular professions also came out. The various fields of focus included business, cooking, music, Japanese board games of go or shogi, construction, gambling, school entrance exams, etc. These types of Manga needed to have more text information to describe and show the detailed knowledge in the specific profession so that it could hold the readers’ interest.
“But these Manga that evolved in Japan are not easily exported outside Japan. Except for some foreign readers with specific interests, the Manga became reader-unfriendly for the general public. For the Manga to go overseas, it has to be able to attract boys and girls and consist of the original language of Manga. It has to have a universal story line that anybody can relate to and show the dynamics with film-like directing. Manga which were internationally successful in the past had those elements.”
Raise Manga artists who know about the language of Manga
Believing strongly in his own theory, in 2011, on the monthly Manga magazine Comic Zenon, Horie conducted a Silent Manga competition; Manga without text.
“I was always looking at how the Manga artists managed to control their work similarly to film production. In Shonen Jump, there’s a 31-page limit for a new artist submissions. Most people tend to focus on the page limit too much and fail to enrich the content of their work. But what the editors, myself included, were looking for were well-directed scenes, not the a total of 31 pages. Truly amazing work always has scenes with five different points of view as if five different cameras shot them. So for the silent Manga competition, we invited entries that could compete against each other with this kind of directing skill. The outcome exceeded our expectations.”
Pleased with the results of the competition, Horie opened an international competition in 2012 called Silent Manga Audition. There were 514 entries from 53 countries and regions.
“We set the theme for the competition. The first year’s theme was ‘A Manga Love Letter.’ We later realized that young people these days don’t write love letters any more. They shifted to emails. But still, the youngsters used their imaginations and submitted their hard work.”
In 2013, the second year of Silent Manga Audition consisted of the theme “The Finest Smile.” The number of entries exceeded the previous year, and 609 entries were submitted from 64 countries and regions.
Horie was surprised after looking at the submitted works because there was no way to tell where the artists were from by just looking at their Manga. Manga was born in Japan, and yet people around the world have acquired the language of Manga.
“What we’re aiming at is to raise people like Osamu Tezuka all over the world. We’d like to spread the language of Manga, and we hope that Manga artists in the making will be able to make Manga that reflects their own countries or regions, cultures and trends”
Silent Manga Audition 2013 Award Winning Manga
[Grand Prix]
[List of Award Winning Manga]
Some of the winners’ works are available on YouTube as motion pictures titled “Silent Manga in Motion.” The videos make it clear why Horie calls manga “a movie drawn on paper.”
For Manga to spread abroad, there are still huge barriers when it comes to language, culture, and religion. Some non-problematic expressions in Japan could violate the religious taboos in other countries and it can be easily missed unless you’re well immersed in the culture.
Therefore, Horie adds, Japan should work towards spreading and cultivating the language of Manga across the globe, not to translate and export it. Just like soccer or football born in England and spread around the world, people in different countries can play under the same rules but with their own styles.
What Horie is planning on now is to create an international “Tokiwa-so.” He wants to invite promising individuals to Japan, and give them the opportunity to learn the language of Manga in Japan. “It’s our dream that one day, some artists coming out of this project will become the Osamu Tezuka of their countries. Don’t you think that would be amazing?”
(translation: Japan Visualmedia Translation Academy)
Originally published at ignition.co
