Manga Authorship Crisis

Manga authorship is the aesthetically and conceptually unique identity a mangaka develops, through a collaborative effort with their editor(s) and publisher(s), which exercises their right to free expression without violating any copyright law.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

If you have read the Publisher & Editor Issues page, then perhaps you may have wondered what happened to the mangaka who could not keep up with weekly publishing.

 

In her book, Adult Manga: Culture & Power in Contemporary Japanese Society, Sharon Kinsella says that in the 1960s, mangaka formed Japan’s underground manga circle. They distributed their own works outside of the norm of weekly deadlines and large publishing companies. From this circle, works that were “promoted and partially re-integrated into ‘mainstream’ manga” became known as amateur manga.

            ~ p 102

 

 

THE UNDERGROUND

Source of Distribution

Amateur or not, a mangaka is a mangaka with the same right to solidify their own sense of authorship. However, they did face multiple problems when gaining readership to help solidify their sense of individuality. This became difficult because they lacked the necessary funds to print and publish their manga.

 

According to Kinsella, “At the beginning of the 1970s cheap and portable offset printing and photocopying facilities became available to the public. Amateur manga and literature could be reproduced and distributed cheaply and easily, creating the possibility of mass participation in unregistered and unpublished forms of cultural production. [Also,] it was relatively easy for [them] to set up small publishing and printing companies.”

 

This more affordable distribution was dubbed in Japan as a form of mini commi, or mini communications, and normative publishing by large companies was a form of mass commi, or mass communications.

            ~Kinsella p 105

           

 

CRITICS OF THE AMATEUR AGE

Amateur manga can include any genre from adult to parodies of original manga within mass commi.

A few of the main problems critics have had with amateur manga was their predictable outcomes, sexual content featuring both minors and/or homosexual relationships, simplicity, slapstick humor and parodies of original manga stories as well. Even within their own community, some amateur mangaka could not stand some genres.

 

In particular, around the 1970s, “veteran artist [and mangaka from post-war Japan] Nagashima Shinji criticized the artistic standard of” parody manga saying:

Manga culture is pathetic at the moment because it is all parody . . . the only reason why everyone produces parody is because there aren’t talented enough to write original. The only characters that they can understand are those that they have been reading for years.

~qtd. in Kinsella p117

 

In agreement, “Manga critic Kure Tomofusa . . . believes that the . . . themes of parody manga represent, not a critical sensibility, so much as a return to the previous narrow themes of Japanese literature”. Tomofusa considered parody manga to be void of any intricate social drama, like in adult, mass commi manga, and disliked their slapstick comedy or monotonous romance. To him, they were underdeveloped stories with no real sense of individuality. There have been many other manga readers and critics in Japan who have said similar things about amateur manga as a whole, not just about the parodies.

 

Kinsella says that “Amateur manga, whether parody or original, is widely judged to be low-quality culture, because it lacks direct references to social and political life.”

            ~ p 119

 

Another popular opinion, even among non-manga readers of today, was quoted by anti-manga activist and Director of the National Assembly for Youth Development, Kamimuro Bunzō. He said that “Adults who read manga are like children; they should read books . . . the manga artist draws the entire scene and nothing is left to the imagination.” Besides the exceedingly common sexual images, something else that bothered Kamimuro was the range of ages of manga readers and their interests. His words were “I think it is very peculiar to see a forty year old salaryman and his wife reading manga.”

            ~Kinsella p 144

 

Another Helping Hand

The famous Comiket (abbreviation for ‘comic market’) convention which acts as a marketing venue and distribution center for amateur mangaka twice a year was founded “in 1975 by a group of manga critics, Aniwa Jun, Harade Teuo, and Yonizawa Yoshihiro.” Comiket “was established in response to the changing political orientation [of the] official manga industry” and its stricter policies. Comiket’s vendors and consumers today are as mixed as they were when the convention gained more popularity. It includes people from all around Japan, ranging in ages from students from high school to college.

            ~Kinsella p 106

 

People like Yonezawa, who are fans of parody manga, have supported the genre for the following reasons:

1. Creating a story with pre-defined characters is, at times, a more difficult task than creating a story from scratch.

2. Parodies are not just comedic effect, but for humanizing original characters so their fans may feel a more personal attachment to them.

            ~Kinsella p 120

 

 

AMATEUR SUBCULTURE

To explain amateur manga’s cultural value to Japan, Kinsella references sociologist John Fiske’s theory of subcultures. Fiske theory asserts that “subcultures [like mini commi] operate as ‘shadow cultural economies’ which provide individuals typically lacking in official cultural capital, namely education and the social status with which education is rewarded, with an alternative social world in which they can get access to a different kind for ‘cultural capital’ and social prestige.”

            ~Kinsella p 110-111

 

This is a mouthful, right?

An abridged version of Fiske’s idea is that when a normative culture like the mass commi of manga publishing casts out those who cannot, or will not abide the norm, a subculture like the mini commi of amateur publishing is born. With enough people participating and supporting this subculture a unique economic structure, like that of amateur self-publishing and Comiket, can be developed. Lastly, the cultural capital of the amateur manga, outside of the financial support they have gained, would be their community of devoted fans and mangaka

 

In American pop culture, evidence which supports this theory would be the popular Youtubers who use Patreons, websites where their fans and subscribers can donate to their creative projects freely. They may not form a typical business structure funded by sponsors or paid for by clients, but they have gained enough cultural interest to financially support their production of content. Youtubers who gain enough financial support to be able to focus on producing more of their creative projects more frequently can, in turn, gain more cultural capital of a wider fan-base or social connections from within or outside the Youtube Community.

 

 

INCOMPLETE AUTHORSHIP DEFINITION

Our definition is still incomplete!

  1. Authorship is the aesthetically and conceptually unique identity a mangaka develops, through a collaborative effort with their editor(s) and publisher(s) . . . ?

(not according to the rest of Japanese society at the time)

 

  2. Authorship allows mangaka to exercise their right to free expression without violating any copyright law.

 

Yes, amateur mangaka have gone through strains to produce and distribute their own work legally and free of the business oriented manga industry. On the other hand, can their work, which includes parodies of mass commi manga, really be considered aesthetically and conceptually unique? Even in their own subculture, some amateurs have an aversion to some manga content. Yet despite all the criticisms already made against amateur manga as it steadily gained popularity in the 1980s, their biggest trial has yet to come in this timeline.

            ~Kinsella p 102

 

 

THE OTAKU PANIC – CURSE OF THE LOLICON KIILLER

In the late 1990s, the crimes of a single man turned the term coined for avid manga and anime (Japanese cartoons) fans, otaku, meaning nerd, into a derogatory label for both the amateur manga community and the entire 1990s generation of youth in Japan.

            ~Kinsella p 128

 

The Case of Serial Infant Girl Killer Miyazaki

“Between August 1988 and July 1989, 26-year old printers’ assistant, Miyazaki Tsutomu, abducted, murdered and mutilated four small girls, before being caught, arrested, tried and imprisoned  . . . Camera crews and reporters arriving at Miyazaki’s home discovered that his bedroom was crammed with a large collection of girls’ manga, Lolico[n] manga [amateur manga featuring young, underage girls, often sexually], animation videos, a variety of soft pornographic manga, and a smaller collection of academic analyses of contemporary youth and girl’s culture”.

~qtd. in Kinsella p 126-127

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Child Killer:

Miyazaki Tsutomu

 

Despite the multiple other factors that could have contributed to Miyazaki’s crimes (neglect from his parents, death of his grandfather – the only person he had close contact, the horror films Devilish Woman Doctor (1986) & Flower of Flesh and Blood (1985) found in his room as well), it was the amateur manga that took the fault, according to Japan’s mass media.

            ~Kinsella p 127

 

The saddest part of this for amateur mangaka, is that they were blamed for leading Miyazaki to crime thanks to a hasty generalization connecting lolicon to actual accounts of abusive pedophilia. The horror films he watched were connected to him murdering people, but they did not receive nearly as much backlash as the amateur manga community. In the end, it was the fantasy world of 2D manga, not that films with live characters, that supposedly crippled his sense of reality.

 

In the debate over which manner of fiction was more at fault “it was implied that the more fantastical a cultural genre, the more likely it is to directly encourage flights of fantasy (or horror) in its readers. [In other words], the greater the stylistic approximation to reality a manga genre formally exhibited, the less likely it was to send its readers astray in the real world”.

            ~Kinsella p 128

 

Translation: The better the fantasy, the greater the disconnection from reality.

 

Case Results

My podcast video, In Oral Truth: Manga Ethics & Authorship (2016), goes into more detail about this specific case. For now I will list the following effects this murder case had on the amateur manga market.

  1. Unwanted media attention

  2. Content regulations

            one of the reasons why amateurs did not want to join large publishing companies

  3. Otaku became a derogatory term for amateur mangaka and all youth of the 1990s generation

            Many professional manga editors called it over-personal, childish, boring, horrible, poisonous and sickening

            Many professional mangaka would deny any relation they could have to amateur work

            The term was coined for a bunch of socially awkward antisocial persons  

  4. Police questionings and arrests of amateur mangaka and the confiscation of 1,880 volumes of their works

            Police said amateur mangaka were “Harboring terrorist political groups [and even] traced [small printing companies] to minor

            revolutionary groups”

  5. Content limiters & Comiket banning minors (a sizeable number of amateur mangaka)

            A 1944 brochure told mangaka that “It has become necessary for us to seek social acceptance”

  6. Professional mangaka were in the clear, but amateurs faced judgement

  7. Criticism against amateurs' lack of originality worsened and mixed with being labeled ‘weird otaku culture’

            ~Kinsella p 129-134

 

 

DO THEY HAVE AUTHORSHIP?

The 1990s, when the hostility towards amateur manga was at peak, is not too far from now. As a matter of fact, the debate over regulations of amateur manga content has been reopened by the United Nations, who want Japan to take greater control over their sex industry prostituting minors. Manga featuring sexualized images of minors is facing a ban (again, more of this information is in the podcast video).

 

With all the criticism against it, do amateur mangaka still have a chance of obtaining their own authorship at all?

 

Amateur Supporters & Renovators

Even with their reputations damaged and works stripped away after the lolicon murders, to this day, this subculture has maintained a considerable number of members both inside and outside its home country.

 

“In an article published by Nihon Keizai in 1993, an amateur girls’ manga artists confessed that his work was not an escapists activity, but something that engaged him with society in a way in which working for a publishing company (producing commercial boys and adult manga) could not.”

            ~Kinsella p 121

 

Sonoda Kenichi, amateur mangaka and critic, “helped to create and establish a more acceptable form of Loilco[n] manga . . . The addition of stronger narrative structures and erasure of all sex scenes from the Lolico[n] series published in Afternoon magazine helped to make them more publicly acceptable.” His popular series Aah! My Goddess (1988) was even complimented by one of his editors after he changed the story that seemed to be otaku manga, story so it could be “read by a wider audience.”

            ~Kinsella p 135

 

 

POST ANTI-MANGA MOVEMENT

Following 1990-1992 anti-manga movement to censor and regulate manga content, editors started to take more creative control over manga stories again (see Publisher & Editor Issues ) while mangaka began to practice self-censorship to regain control of their own content.

 

True Value of Self-Censorship: The Authorship Pursuit

Satonaka Michiko, a female mangaka, proclaims in an article for Asahi Shimbun News in 1993, that mangaka should be in charge of censoring themselves. stating:

 

“It is possible to view the control of manga as a way of concretely enforcing the idea that manga   is a low form of culture. But, just as literary figures do not expect to be challenged over their responsibility towards their work, individual manga artists can assume responsibility for judging the value of their own work – work that might later be made into films or television dramas”.

~qtd. in Kinsella 158

 

In response to the limitations set by anti-manga censorship, mangaka “fought  . . . to be seen as a reliable and respectable group in society with the right to pursue their interests beyond the arbitrary control of government.” Different organizations and companies were established to help mangaka fulfill this purpose.

            ~Kinsella p 159

 

The Society to Protect the Freedom of Expression in Manga was founded in 1992 for this reason and “To raise awareness of declining free expression in manga and counteract the accumulation of negative publicity by using manga itself to deliver the message.” The Society unified mangaka who had previously been disorganized when expressing their opinions publicly since war times.

            ~Kinsella 157 and 158

 

On another note, Manga Japan was founded in 1993 to support erotic mangaka and self-censorship, promote mangaka and their works internationally, protect their copyrights and even make drama CDs (voice actor recording of manga dialogue). In case you don’t remember my mentioning of Tezuka Osamu, he is known as the father of story manga. His assistant, Hara Takao, became the founder of Manga Japan and said in a 1994 interview with Kinsella that his “is a group designed specifically to help maintain story manga artists produce good work and maintain the quality of that work.” Manga Japan was literally formed by a mangaka – for mangaka (exclusive members) for the sake of their sense of free expression.

            ~ p 160

 

 

TRUE AMATEUR MANGA AUTHORSHIP

They have been ridiculed, banned, censored and regulated, but they were made stronger than ever. Amateur mangaka who strove to resist the rule of the anti-manga movement gained their own sense of amateur manga authorship, which I believe is best worded by Kinsella herself:

 

“[T]o be seen as a reliable and respectable group in society with the right to pursue their interests beyond the arbitrary control of government”

            ~Kinsella p 159