Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Pig Gourd: The Meaning Of Tezuka’S Playing Around With Form, Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Taking an arguably minor character from Tezuka Osamu’s oeuvre, Natsume Fusanosuke argues how the Pig Gourd’s cameos even in the artist’s most serious works demonstrate a bifurcated sense of play and high-brow artistry in his manga. Natsume employs an early version of his ‘manga-expression theory’ (manga hyōgen-ron) manga-analysis approach, which he began to develop in this, his first manga-studies monograph and seminal study of the ‘god of manga’ Tezuka Osamu. This translation of a chapter essay from Where Is Tezuka Osamu? (Citation1992) demonstrates Natsume’s versatility in isolating thematic patterns or formal experimentations in an artist’s style, including …

“The Power Of Onomatopoeia In Manga” An Essay By Natsume Fusanosuke With Translators’ Introduction, Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Natsume Fusanosuke is one of the founding critics of manga that pioneered a style of formal analysis of manga in the 1990s. Natsume’s first important foray into his “theory of expression” (hyōgenron) was seen in the collaborate work, Manga no yomikata (How to read manga) in 1995. He later streamlined those ideas in a twelve-episode series Manga wa naze omoshiroi no ka: sono bunpō to hyōgen (Why is manga so interesting?: Its grammar and expression) for NHK television in 1996. The accompanying expanded book (1997) consists of well-ordered, individual essays on elements of manga such as …

Remembering Two Titans Of Manga: Shirato Sanpei And Saitō Takao, Natsume Fusanosuke, Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

What follows is a pair of recent tributes Natsume Fusanosuke wrote for Japanese newspapers, concerning the pioneering cartoonists Saitō Takao and Shirato Sanpei, who died, respectively, on September 24, 2021, and October 8, 2021. The two articles are here presented in English for the first time.

Translated by Jon Holt & Teppei Fukuda

Takahashi Rumiko And The Turning Point In The History Of Manga And Anime, Natsume Fusanosuke, Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Takahashi Rumiko’s entry onto the manga scene represented the turning point in the history of manga and anime. This turning point signifies the emergence of the genre of romantic comedy (rabukome = “love comedy”)—a romantic relationship-centered genre certainly common to shōjo (girls’) comics category at the time—now beginning to appear in shōnen (boys’) comics, too.

Translated by Jon Holt & Teppei Fukuda

Charlie Brown And Me, Natsume Fusanosuke, Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Charles Schulz’s Peanuts turned 71 years old on October 2, and we celebrate the anniversary of this world-famous comic strip with a love letter from Japan. Natsume Fusanosuke originally wrote this essay[1] about his connection to Peanuts in 1999 for a supplement issue of Bungei Shunjū magazine: a special on one of the gods of comics, Tezuka Osamu, with whom Charles Schulz stands in great company. Natsume is a voracious reader and a global observer of both manga and world comics. Here, he describes the appeal of Peanuts for Japanese readers and how it compares to a similarly beloved Japanese …

Making It Just In Time: Author-Creator Matsumoto Taiyō, Natsume Fusanosuke, Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Translated by Jon Holt and Teppei Fukuda

The first time I can remember encountering Matsumoto Taiyō’s work was probably when he released his short story collection, Blue Spring (Aoi haru - Matsumoto Taiyō tanpenshū [stories published from 1990 to 1993; Shōgakukan, 1993]). All of the stories concern a bunch of young dudes -- full of desires, frustrations, and violent tendencies -- and no chance they can ever get past those things. I thought to myself at that time, “Ah, I bet this stuff means a lot to readers in their teens, but they don’t really do anything for me.” …

Time To Re-Evaluate Taniguchi Jiro's Pace In Manga, Natsume Fusanosuke, Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Natsume Fusanosuke is Emeritus Professor of the Graduate Program of Cultural Studies in Corporeal and Visual Representation, Gakushūin University. Despite his recent retirement from Gakushūin in March, he is still very active in manga criticism and scholarship. Originally a manga artist himself in the 1980s, by the 1990s he began doing more writing about manga, although he often still employs his cartooning skills to assist in his analysis and explanation of his subjects, much like his American contemporary Scott McCloud. It is not a stretch to compare the latter’s Understanding Comics to Natsume's work in the classic How to Read …

The Functions Of Panels (Koma) In Manga: An Essay By Natsume Fusanosuke, Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Natsume Fusanosuke presents in this essay the core ideas of his formal ‘theory of expression’ (manga hyōgen-ron) that focuses on three basic elements of manga: words, pictures, and frames. In the 1990s, Natsume emerged as a seminal scholar of Manga Studies, whose influential works include Manga no yomikata (coauthored, 1995) and Manga wa naze omoshiroi no ka: sono hyōgen to bunpō (1997), where the present essay is found. Here, Natsume describes the central aspects of panel constructions in manga: creating a sense of order for the reader by segmenting time; shaping the reader’s mental perceptions by panel compression (asshuku) and …

The Construction Of Panels (Koma) In Manga: By Natsume Fusanosuke From Why Is Manga So Interesting?: Its Grammar And Expression (Manga Wa Naze Omoshiroi No Ka: Sono Hyōgen To Bunpō, 1997), Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

“We are not alone!” (“Ui aa natto aroon!”) was the shared response of Natsume Fusanosuke and his colleague Takekuma Kentarō when, as if visited by extraterrestrials, they encountered a kindred spirit in Scott McCloud’s Understanding Comics (first published in Japanese as Mangagaku in 1998; retranslated in 2020).1 Natsume and his fellow critics and scholars had published their own definitive study of how to understand comics in 1995: the now out-of-print co-authored How to Read Manga (Manga no yomikata, Takarajima), for which Natsume made a considerable contribution. Like McCloud, Natsume trailblazed a long-lasting path about how to understand …

Aatj’S Role In Diversity And Inclusion: An Opportunity To Transform Into A Well-Integrated Organization, Suwako Watanabe

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

According to the survey results, 57% of the survey respondents said no to the question, “Is the Japanese language educator community in North America diverse one?” (Mori, Hasegawa, Park, and Suzuki, this volume). This result suggests that the American Association of Teachers of Japanese (AATJ) as a professional organization needs to improve diversity within the field. What is a more important question is whether or not our organization and its membership as a whole embrace the value of diversity and put it into practice in every aspect of their profession on a daily basis. The survey results make it clear …

Book Review Of, Japanese Kanji Power: A Workbook For Mastering Japanese Characters, Karen Curtin

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Book review of Japanese Kanji Power: A Workbook for Mastering Japanese Characters, by John Millen

Book Review Of, Beneath The Sleepless Tossing Of The Planets: Selected Poems Of Makoto Ōoka, Jon Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Book review of Beneath the Sleepless Tossing of the Planets: Selected Poems ofcMakoto Ōoka.

The Characteristics Of Japanese Manga, Jon Holt, Teppei Fukuda

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

In the field of manga studies, Natsume Fusanosuke is widely known as an important critic and scholar. Not only does he maintain a brutally prolific publication record, but one must keep in mind he was of a new wave of manga commentators, critics, and scholars that made their impact on Japanese culture by bringing public acceptance to manga in the 1990s. Many scholars in comics studies are aware of Manga no yomikata (How to Read Manga [Takarajima, 1995]), a co-authored book that consists of a considerable contribution by Natsume, and of its importance in establishing certain types of approaches to …

X-Rated And Excessively Long: Ji-Amari In Hayashi Amari's Tanka, Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

As a fixed 31-syllable form of short poetry, Japan's tanka is one of the world's oldest forms of still-practiced poetry, with examples perhaps dating back to the fifth century. In the modern periods of Meiji (1868-1912) and Taishō (1912-1926), poets radically reformed the genre, expanding diction beyond millennium-old classical limits, thereby allowing poets to write not only about cherry blossoms and tragic love but also about things like steam trains and baseball games; although today many tanka poets in practicing circles still employ classical Japanese, many modern masters innovated the genre by skillfully blending in colloquial language. Like their modern …

Discovering The Lotus On This Shore: A Reading Of Kenji Miyazawa's "Okhotsk Elegy", Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Miyazawa wrote stories and poems in order to help others understand, venerate, and propagate the Lotus. In doing so, he created works that are both very Japanese and very worldly.

Manga History As A Manga Character: The Gekiga Movement's Role In Tatsumi Yoshihiro's A Drifting Life, Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Why is manga history so important in Tatsumi's manga biography? Is A Drifting Life an autobiography, or, is it a history of the Japanese comic books, particularly the "mature-audience" gekiga sub-genre? Both? Neither? How do the narratives of history and self intertwine? How should we read the gekiga (dramatic pictures) in this manga?

Ticket To Salvation: Nichiren Buddhism In Miyazawa Kenji’S Ginga Tetsudō No Yoru, Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Miyazawa Kenji’s Ginga tetsudō no yoru is a children’s story that explores what heaven is like with very visible Christian themes and images, but the logic and vision underneath is more Buddhist than Christian. In Kenji’s prose masterpiece, the author ultimately subsumed Christianity and science into a greater spiritual cosmic vision—Nichiren’s all-encompassing principle of three-thousand-realms-in-a-single-thought (ichinen sanzen). Among the possible interpretations of Ginga tetsudō no yoru, one must consider that it is an expression of the author’s Nichiren Buddhist beliefs, which he long held and explicitly articulated elsewhere in other works and correspondence. Reframing both the scholarship on Kenji’s ties …

In A Senchimentaru Mood: Japanese Sentimentalism In Modern Poetry And Art, Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Sentimentalism (senchimentarizumu) for Meiji poet Takamura Kōtarō 高 村光太郎, and others of his generation, was not a practice to be cultivated—not in one’s personal life, where it connoted emotional weakness, and certainly not in one’s artistic creations, where the concept suggested a sycophantic appropriation of Western trends. By the Taishō period (1912–1926), however, the term senchimentarizumu appeared with greater and greater regularity in the works of such luminaries as Akutagawa Ryūnosuke and Hagiwara Sakutarō. What did they mean by it? And why had the term taken on such noticeable cachet? In the article that follows I trace the formation and …

Ticket To Salvation: Nichiren Buddhism In Miyazawa Kenji’S 'Night On The Galactic Railroad' (Ginga Tetsudō No Yoru), Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Presentation focuses on the Night on the Galactic Railroad, a classic Japanese novel written by Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933).

Peaceful Warrior-Demons In Japan: From Empress Kōmyō’S Red Repentant Asura To Miyazawa Kenji’S Melancholic Blue Asura, Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

Strife, and the violence begotten from it, has long been a concern of Buddhism. Anger, ignorance, and greed, namely the three great evils, must be understood and overcome in order to advance towards enlightenment. Buddhism, as a syncretic religion, incorporated other religious figures from the Asian continent into it as a part of the process of appealing to new converts. The Asura embodies all three of these vices and yet in the process of being adopted into Buddhism, he was able to change from a violent demon into a peaceful guardian of the Buddha.

The Asura devas battled Indra in …

Lost In Seattle: What Does Nagai Kafū’S Encounter With The American Northwest Tell Us About Japanese Travel And Immigration Accounts Of The Early 1900s?, Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Clanging Bells, Clanging Words: Iwate Dialect In Miyazawa Kenji's "Changa Chaga Umako" Tanka Series, Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This presentation examines the inspirational works of writer Miyazawa Kenji (1896 - 1933).

Thus Have I Heard: The Auditory Hallucination Poems Of Miyazawa Kenji, Jon P. Holt

World Languages and Literatures Faculty Publications and Presentations

This presentation examines the works of writer Miyazawa Kenji (1896-1933).