Manga:War and propaganda
- Apr 22, 2018
- 5 min read
Manga and comics are more than just illustrations on paper, they actually have the power to change the world. They possess the power to generate ideas, change how we perceive ourselves and the world around us and inspire revolutions.
According to scholars stories have a strong influence on how children understand culture and gender roles. They not only help develop a child’s literacy, but also help mould their beliefs, attitudes and social norms.
Before the inventions of media, such as photography, television, films and the internet, illustrations were the primary visual way to convey history Manga which literally means "whimsical picture" -like most comics originally started as a simple caricature. The origin of manga can be traced back to the 12th century, "Chōjū-jinbutsu-giga, (the Animal Scrolls)" - "humorous pictures of birds and animals" which was depicted by an artist-priest Kakuyu, or Toba. Manga developed as a graphic narrative in the Edo period through the works of Hokusai Katsushika (1760-1849).
When the Japanese policy of seclusion under the shoguns of the Edo period came to an end with the country open to trade by American intervention in 1854, Japan systematically began its transformation from a feudal state to a modern industrial state and set its sight on extending its influence on nearby Asian countries such as Korea and China( then called the Qing empire). Primarily focusing on the coals and iron ore deposits in Korea, that could greatly help Japan’s growing industrial base.
.Manga being used as a tool of influence or a medium to promote war propaganda, can be traced back to the Sino-Japanese wars in the 1890s when the pro-war sentiments swept through Japan, when martial and the manly values it fostered were embedded and normalized within the very fabric of Japanese society.
In the pre-world war Japan, magazines inspired by western comics such as Shounen Kurabu or Shounen Club and Shoujo Kurabu or Shoujo Clubs that featured illustrated humorous stories for young adolescent readers began publishing heroic tales of Japanese soldiers and popular manga characters armed to the teeth, locked in battles with deceitful and murderous foreign enemies.
Stories such as Suiho Tagawa’s Norakuro (Black dog) gained popularity during the Sino-Japanese wars, featuring an anthropomorphic black and white dog that served in an army of dogs that fought valiantly against the pigs (which here represented the Chinese) and ‘hot blooded’ novels of heroic deeds of the Japanese army by Miyazaki Ichiu published in the Shounen Club magazine enthralled the minds of the Japanese children, instilling values of sacrifice in the homefront as war was tough on the economy and valour in the battlefield, preparing the young minds for the wars and sacrifices ahead.
When Japan joined the WWII, the government cracked down on artists, writers and magazine publication that was counter to the party guidelines. Many separate groups and organizations were unified under large umbrella terms and all mangakas were required to join a government-supported trade organization called Shin Nippon Mangaka Kyokai (The New Cartoonists Association Of Japan) to publish their work in a magazine, simply titled Manga, inaugurated in October, 1940 which defined its maiden issue,“ A National Magazine: A New Order Issue”.
As quoted by Deb Aoki, a manga expert,”Manga’s ability to transcend language and cultural barriers also made it a perfect medium for propaganda” As Tokyo Rose, an all female english-speaking radio broadcasters of Japanese propaganda that operated in the South Pacific gained popularity, illustrated leaflets and comics were created by Japanese cartoonists and dropped on the allied forces in the South Pacific region in order to undermine their morale.
Mangakas such as Ryuichi Yokoyama, the creator of Fuku-chan was sent to the front lines to create comics in service of the Japanese Army in order to boost the morale of the soldiers and it was also targeted families that supported the government’s domestic propaganda.
The purpose of these leaflets and comic were targeted at foreign troops and civilians in order to demoralize them and intensify the antagonism between the Asians and their western oppressors. Those that were targeted to the Japanese troops showed the strength of the Japanese troops and the weakness of the allied troops and were designed to make them feel like they had morals on their side and were fighting against evil forces, dehumanizing the foreign soldiers so that it would be easier to justify killing them.
Aoki also notes that the Allied forces turned this practice against the Japanese soldiers,using manga to fight the battle of images to spread anti-Japanese propaganda with a little help from artists such as Atsushi Iwamatsu, who wrote under the pseudonym Taro Yashima and had deflected to the US in 1939 after he and his wife Tomoe faced imprisonment for opposition against the militaristic government. Yashima who believed that the Japanese soldiers should not be sent off far away in a hopeless war, lent his talent to the allied forces.
His comic Unga Naizō or The Unlucky Soldier which depicted a peasant who became a soldier and died fighting for corrupt leaders, the story of how a homesick soldier whose final journey home is in the form of ashes in a small wooden box resonated with the Japanese Soldiers. According to Saburo Lenega, a Japanese historian, this comic was found in the pockets of the corpses of Japanese soldiers in the battlefield, a grim indication of its popularity and its ability to affect the reader. It had enough influence on the Japanese soldiers, striking a chord within them that they found it important to hold on to a copy.
After Japan’s surrender in 1945, and when the country began rebuilding itself again several restrictions on artistic expressions. And humourous Yonkoma or Four panel comic strips saw a revival. Due to the shortages and hardship in the economy of the post-world war Japan buying manga was a luxury not many could afford, but however with kamishibai or paper plays, a portable street theatre that was usually set up in street corners, manga was still enjoyed by the masses
In Osaka, small books of manga cheaply printed on rough newspaper with red ink on known as akabon (red books) were sold for a very cheap prices from 10-50 yen by street vendors. In 1947 Tezuka Osamu,who is rightly called ‘ the Godfather of manga’, published Shin Takarajima (New Treasure Island) in the akabon format which gained massive popularity and sold about 40,000 copies which created a national craze for akabon books. The akabon period was known as the ‘incubator’ period for the modern manga.
Post WWII, extensive efforts carried out by Japan to repair its image through various soft cultural diplomacy which included tools such as manga and anime were successful and attracted positive responses internationally, when the manga and anime portrayed positive images of the country and focusing on the culture of the Japanese, the common man’s life and away from the violence of war.
References:
Kinsella, S. (2000) Adult Manga: Culture and Power in Contemporary Japanese Society,
Routledge
Knopf, C. M. (2015). The comic art of war: A critical study of military cartoons, 1805-2014, with a guide to artists. McFarland.
Ingulsrud, J.E, Allen, K. (2009) Reading Japan Cool: Patterns of Manga Literacy and Discourse, Rowman & Littlefield
Griffiths, O.(2007, Sep.3) Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, and Children's Print Media, 1894-1925, [accessed on: 22.4.2018]
Aoki, D. (2016, May 31). History of manga – Manga goes to war: Comics in pre-war, World War II and post-war Japan. [accessed on:22.4.2018]
Safafa, S. (2017), The Effort of Japan To Rebuild The Image Post World War II By Using Manga and Anime. [accessed on:22.4.2018]
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