THE JAPANESE NOUVELLE MANGA
I discovered manga at the beginning of the '90s, in Japan, where I had access to the entire local production rather than simply the limited range of French translations, which was sporadic at the time but a little more extensive today, although still extremely fragmentary and aimed at niche markets.
What immediately struck me was the number of manga dealing with DAILY LIFE. Manga, its works, its authors, its readers, all proved me that, like literature or cinema, graphic stories could speak about men and women, daily life, and still attract many readers. Better yet, I discovered that it was precisely THANKS TO THIS TOPIC that the Japanese manga readership was so varied and so vast : that it WASN'T LIMITED ONLY TO THE OTAKU, as opposed to the readership of BD in France, which is mainly made up of « fans » of the medium.
I realized what I had wanted to do for years in BD had existed from the start in manga, so not only has it become for me an almost inexhaustible source of inspiration but Japan is now also a favourable basis for me to create and publish my stories...
That's why, when a Japanese reader or journalist tells me that I make « Nouvelle Manga », I feel like replying that I am not the only one, since my work is inspired, or has affinities with, other manga by authors like Yoshiharu Tsuge, Naito Yamada, Kiriko Nananan, Yoshitomo Yoshimoto and many others...
But these authors are precisely the ones that FRENCH TRANSLATORS IGNORE ! It seems to me that the term « Nouvelle Manga » could help respond to this need in France through a communication strategy designed to promote adult, daily-life manga.
Having only been used in the French media for a few years, « le manga » is unfortunately already perceived in a very stereotypical way by both the public and the media. Manga in its masculine form is shorthand for a CHEAP JAPANESE COMIC BOOK FOR CHILDREN AND TEENAGERS, that is simultaneously VIOLENT AND PORNOGRAPHIC (7) : the Japanese equivalent of the sleazy imported Italian comic books of the past...
We're well placed with our own « BDs » and « comics » (8) to know that stereotypes die hard once they've become associated with a word.
That's why I propose to CIRCUMVENT them ! Using the historical and sociological roots of the feminized version of the word « manga » (9), I think it would be possible to change its public perception.
Beyond « le » manga, essentially Japanese comics for a public mostly composed of teenagers, there is « la » manga, referring to JAPANESE COMICS D'AUTEUR that are ADULT and UNIVERSAL, that speak of men and women and their DAILY LIVES : a manga closer, for example, to the films of Yasujiro^ Ozu and Jacques Doillon or to the novels of Yasushi Inoue than to « Sailor Moon » or Luc Besson.
The term « Nouvelle Manga » will appear in France next September through a collection on which I am now working with publishers Ego comme X.
It will be inaugurated by one of my own « BD-manga », « l'E'pinard de Yukiko » (« Yukiko's Spinach »), which will then be followed, I hope, by translations of Japanese authors such as Naito Yamada or Kiriko Nananan... The Nouvelle Manga will also welcome any FRENCH AUTHOR acquainted with Franco-Japanese trends whose work is inspired by Japanese comics, an inspiration which would not only be graphic, as is too often the case, but above all NARRATIVE.
boilet.net
who do you think??
Im very interested in a such manga
any suggestions?
What does "BD" mean?
"band dessines" or something. comic.
I beleive they are called 'TPB' in English.
Ah. Trade Paperback...
ed2k://|file|BD.FR.-.Tokyo.est.mon.jardin.-.One.Shot.-.(Boilet-Peeters).zip|41694694|79C2C286710A6D89FD2BDA6CE99CA9BB|/
Another independent manga artist:
Yoshiharu Tsuge(b. 1937)
this is article about film based on Tsuge manga
But it's give a good information about Tsuge works
"
Foreign manga fans are always praising manga's scope as compared with that of American comics stuck in a narrow superhero groove. What those fans mainly buy, however, are science-fiction, fantasy and sex, in various combinations, targeted at the younger end of the male demographic. No wonder the first manga magazine to be published regularly in English is Shonen Jump, whose core readers in Japan are preteen boys.
Meanwhile, Yoshiharu Tsuge -- who occupies somewhat the same cultural niche in Japan that Robert Crumb does in the United States -- remains all but untranslated into English. This is sad, but in commercial publishing terms, understandable. Tsuge's work, which often concerns the wanderings of struggling artist types in the stranger reaches of Japan, would probably baffle and bore the boy fans who are into cool mecha and voluptuous babes. In Japan, however, his comics have achieved classic status since he began publishing in Garo magazine in 1965. Several have been made into films and Tsuge himself appeared as a character in Jun Ichikawa's "Tokiwaso no Seishun (Tokiwa: The Manga Apartment)."
The latest director to explore Tsuge's world is Nobuhiro Yamashita with "Realism no Yado (Ramblers)." A selection of the 2003 Toronto Film Festival, "Realism no Yado" is less a Tsuge homage than Yamashita's own contemporary interpretation of his work. Tsuge's world may resemble the Japan of his own youth (he was born in Tokyo in 1937), but with its preference for odd backwaters and its flashes of surrealism, it has a timeless, dreamlike quality. Also, it is no easier in 2003 for unknown filmmakers -- the job description of Yamashita's two protagonists -- than it was for unknown manga artists in the 1960s, especially if they lack anything resembling ambition or the simplest of survival skills.
Yamashita's heroes -- the hulking, boyish Kinoshita (Hiroshi Yamamoto) and skinny, nerdish Tsuboi (Keishi Nagatsuka) -- are still young enough to think of themselves as having a future -- but are old enough to doubt what, if anything, that future might hold. Where other films based on Tsuge's manga laid on the coy pathos (Naoto Takenaka's "Muno no Hito") or erotic weirdness (Teruo Ishii's "Gensenkan Shujin"), Yamashita emphasizes the comedy, particularly the way the boys discover they are the punchlines of a cosmic joke.
Based on Tsuge's close, personal observations of how this joke unfolds in real life, the film may not build wacky momentum in the usual Hollywood style ("Dumb and Dumber Do Japan" it is not), but it is so spot on, if so understated, that by the third act, in which the boys land in the minshuku from hell, I was choking on my spit.
At the same time, true to Tsuge's spirit, "Realism no Yado" suggests the essential loneliness of human beings and the deep strangeness of the world. There is something very Japanese about its outlook, which is less nihilistic than humanistic, in the we-are-flawed-but-lovable-creatures sense. Though Tsuboi and Kinoshita find themselves down to their last yen, they do not give in to rage or despair. Wary of each other at first, they become brothers in defeat and misery -- and come to laugh at the cracked hopelessness of their situation.
more:
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?ff20040421a4.htm
An English translation of Nejishiki (Screw-Style), a radically surrealistic manga by Yoshiharu Tsuge, was printed in the 250th issue of U.S. monthly The Comics Journal. It was the first time that the magazine, which usually contains only writings about comics, had carried a manga.
The Comics Journal is a long-standing periodical that has been providing information and criticism on comics for more than 20 years. The magazine is highly esteemed as a vehicle for a new aspect of U.S. journalism. For example, it carried a feature story focusing on cartoonists' reactions to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001.
But this was not the first time that Tsuge's manga had been translated into English. In 1985, his Akai Hana (Red Flowers) was carried in issue No. 7 of RAW, an avant-garde comics magazine edited by New York-based cartoonist Art Spiegelman, who later won a Pulitzer Prize for his book-length comics Maus.
At that time, I acted as a go-between for the magazine and Tsuge. Spiegelman was highly impressed with Akai Hana, saying he had never seen such a sensational manga before. He went on to print Tsuge's short manga Oba Denki Tokin Kogyosho (Oba's Electroplate Factory) in the same magazine. I recall receiving a letter from an Australian reader of RAW who asked what kind of cartoonist Yoshiharu Tsuge was.
RAW has since ceased publication, but perhaps a seed sown 18 years ago bore fruit last September, when I received a letter from Milo George, managing editor of The Comics Journal. He wrote that he wished to have the honor of carrying Tsuge's masterpiece Nejishiki in English for the first time.
"He first came to my attention about 10 years ago, with the Oba Electroplate short story that ran in RAW magazine. Around the same time, a manga-animephile friend of mine showed me a Tsuge collection that had Nejishiki. I read the story, with my friend's translation on a tissue paper overlay, and it stayed with me for years and years," George wrote.
He went on to say that one of the first things he wanted to do as editor of The Comics Journal magazine was to launch a smart, literate column on manga, and apparently he was very happy that the first article the column's writer pitched to him was on Tsuge and the gekiga serious manga movement.
Nejishiki, in which a boy's experiences become increasingly curious after he is stung by a jellyfish at a beach, caused a sensation among manga readers in Japan when it first appeared in 1968. It and Akai Hana are regarded as two of Tsuge's most important works. As dream imagery is evident throughout, Nejishiki can be appreciated on various levels. That, I thought, would cause difficulties in translating it into English.
At the end of last year, George sent me a copy of the translation for check. The person who worked on the translation is well-versed in Japanese manga, but, at that stage, the translation contained mistakes such as misinterpretations of the images and the treating of the boy's spoken words as an inner voice. I told George my views, while also consulting Tsuge.
After the publication, George wrote to me: "I think Tsuge's work, at its best, transcends the limitations of the comics medium (not to mention national and cultural barriers) while (remaining) so quintessentially comics that one can't imagine it existing in any other medium."
He also informed me about readers' reaction to the manga. A few of them apparently bought complete eight-volume sets of Tsuge's works in Japanese via the Internet after seeing it. Many readers sent the magazine their own interpretations of the dream images, and it is interesting that none of them overlapped. Tsuge's controversial work, Nejishiki, has thus puzzled overseas readers in a most enjoyable way, just like it did Japanese readers.
more:
http://www.neo-anime.org/forums/showpost.php?p=51149&postcount=1
z0mg torrent plz?
I have recently bought a big fat compendium that lists about 140 of the most prolific manga artists. (http://www.taschen.com/pages/en/catalogue/books/design/all/facts/03822.htm)
I will list some of them that could be labeled "underground" or "independent" later when I have time.
I also believe there were some related posts on http://wakaba.c3.cx/soc/index.html but I cannot find them right now.
I read the issue of RAW that has Oba's Electroplate Factory in it. It's pretty good, for a true-life story, although that isn't really my favourite genre.
>>9
Good book, but entries are generally a little light, alas. Not much text, not enough images.
wow!
new Kiriko Nananan manga in english!
PALE PINK VOLUME 1 GN
by Kiriko Nananan
Pale Pink is a "documentary" about young women living in Tokyo. Although they seem to be content on the outside, they have issues such as bulimia, jealousy, lack of self-esteem, and love problems. This comic book gives the readers insight into a woman's mind, focusing on the kinds of thoughts they have as they live in Tokyo and try to make it in a difficult world.
MATURE THEMES
SC, 5x7, 344pgs, B&W SRP: $9.99
buy it@amazon if you want
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Garo
This article is about the manga anthology magazine. Garo was a monthly manga anthology magazine in Japan, founded in 1964 by Katsuichi Nagai. It specialized in alternative, underground, and avant-garde manga.
History
Katsuichi Nagai founded Garo in July 1964 with the help of Sanpei Shirato, naming it after one of Shirato's ninja characters. The first series published in Garo was Shirato's ninja drama Kamui, which with its themes of class struggle and anti-authoritarianism was a hit with college students. Garo attracted several influential gekiga artists such as Yoshihiro Tatsumi and Yoshiharu Tsuge, and discovered and promoted many new artists.
Garo's circulation at the peak of its popularity in 1971 was over eighty thousand. However, during the 1970s and 1980s its popularity declined—at some points in the 80s, by 150 copies per year. By the mid-80s its circulation was barely over five thousand, and its demise was rumored to be imminent. Nagai managed to keep it going independently until 1991, when it was bought out by a game software company. Although a new, young president was installed and advertisements for computer games (based on stories featured in Garo) started to run in the magazine, Nagai was kept on board as chairman until his death in 1996.
After being bought out, there were allegations of the anthology taking a more commercial path. Eventually authors who were regular to Garo went their own ways and founded other anthologies like Ax. Garo is currently no longer published though its influence on underground and even mainstream cartooning in Japan is immense.
Styles and Influence
For much of its existence, Garo was the premiere showcase for "art" manga in Japan. It was popular enough during its heyday to inspire several imitators, including COM, founded by manga legend Osamu Tezuka, and Comic Baku.
Over the years, Garo went through many artistic phases, including Shirato's leftist samurai dramas, abstract art and surrealism, erotic/grotesque, and punk. Unlike many of the popular anthology titles, the magazine never had a set theme to which the stories contained within it were required to conform; the only requirements were that they were interesting, and that their content was more important than their surface form.
Although it was never considered a "major" magazine, Garo's influence both within the manga business and in Japanese society as a whole has been considerable. Many mangaka who got their start in Garo went on to do much higher-profile work elsewhere, and several films have been produced based on stories that originally ran in Garo. Contemporary graphic design in Japan owes much to Garo artists, particularly King Terry, Seiichi Hayashi, and Shigeru Tamura. Retrospectives on the magazine have appeared in mainstream non-manga magazines, and in 1994 the Kawasaki city museum had a special exhibit of work by Garo alumni.
Garo in English
For the most part, most manga translation publishers have passed over the offbeat works showcased in Garo in favor of more mainstream, action/adventure and romance stories from the major publishers. Similarly, scanlation translators have mostly overlooked experimental fare. However, some Garo comics are available in English.
In the early 1990s, Viz Comics (now VIZ Media) published some of Sanpei Shirato's Kamui under the title Legend of Kamui. More recently, Blast Books has published books of avant-garde manga, including many pieces from the pages of Garo. Even more reciently The Comics Journal published Yoshiharu Tsuge's work Screw Style in issue #250.
Mangaka associated with Garo
* Carol Shimoda
* Hinako Sugiura
* Muddy Wehara
* Sanpei Shirato
* Shoichi Sakurai
* Tadao Tsuge
* Suehiro Maruo
* Suzy Amekane
* Shungicu Uchida
* Seiichi Hayashi
* Shigeru Tamura
* King Terry
* Yoshiharu Tsuge
* Yoshiharu Ebisu
* Yoshihiro Tatsumi - 三
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>>16
ASCII ART of 15 is from Tsuge's short comic"Gensenkan-syujin(A master of Gensenkan-inn)".He puts on a mask of Tengu(Japanese traditional monster having red face and long nose).
http://www.d2.dion.ne.jp/~pagoda/LOVELOG_IMG/20041018d1e3e98f.JPG
>>8
Seeing Screw Style in English was a wonderful surprise. I'd been dying to read that story for years ever since I first saw a few panels of it in Frederick Schodt's MANGA MANGA! I also picked up the TCJ 2005 Super Special and I gotta say it was kinda weird seeing Tsuge's early stuff drawn in a Tezuka-esque style.
Too bad Garo is long gone. I really wish more experimental manga would make it's way to the US. The anthology stuff (Secret Comics Tokyo, Bete Noire, etc...) is a good start but it's just not enough.
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Different from ASCII Board, ASCII ART picture is not shown in order with Win2000+IE here.
>>19 picture is the first scene of Mr.Tsuge's famous work 「ネジ式（neji shiki＝screw system)」.
The hero has been bitten by Meme Medusa(Meme jelly fish＝メメクラゲ) in the sea.
The vein blood vessel of his arm has cut. Ofcause Meme Medusa is imaginally creature.
At the manuscript stage of this Manga, he did not dicided to name this new dangerous creature.
Then he add a check marks（ｘ ｘ） before クラゲ（Medusa） in speach bubbles.
「××クラに噛まれてしまった」 ＝ “I have been bitten by X X Medusa”
And he pased the manuscript to the publisher ,with forgot to change X X to new name.
Pubulisher mistook to think, ××is メメ in Katakana, then the printed as メメクラゲ（Meme Medusa）
Therfore Godfather of メメクラゲ(Meme Medusa)is not Mr.Tuge but a someone in first publisher.
After WW.Ⅱ,Japanese Story Manga Culture was started from Kashihon Manga(貸本=Rental book shop 漫画=Comics).
At that time we could read the story Manga from Rental Book shop(\5/day or week.I foｒgot)、or Monthly Shounen/
Shoujyo(Boys/Girls)Magazin. The ｆirst Weekly Manga Magazin was started at May 1959(Shounen Magazin,) and April
1959(ShounenSunday) .started price were \40_ and \30_ . Both I bought when I was a child.
http://homepage1.nifty.com/nekocame/60s70s/manga/manga.htm
Osamu Tezuka（手塚 治虫） starts from Kashihon Manga writer when he was Osaka Unniv.Medical course student.
As you know main stream of Japanese story manga after WW.Ⅱ is Osamu Tezuka and his Group peoples, but there
were another streams, one of which is continuation since old times Kashihon Manga writers.
Shigeru MIzuki (水木 しげる） is one of famous name. He changed from Kamishibai(紙芝居）writer to Kashihon
Manga writer. He is handicaped man. He lost one hand at small Pashific Ocean Island at WW.Ⅱ.(He was a soldier)
http://www.japro.com/mizuki/index2.html
http://www.edo-tokyo-museum.or.jp/kikaku/page/2004/200411.html
At first stage of Mizuki Production, there were some assistants. some of their names are
Yoshiharu Tsuge（つげ 義春） , Ryouichi Ikegami（池上 遼一)
http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~qq3y-nkdo/irdb/index.html
It's very interesting to compare with there touch and Mizuki's Touch .
IMO. Reiji Matsumoto(松本 零士）is a Tezuka's group. but his touch and story are much influenced from old 絵本（ehon=
picture book) auther and painter Shigeru Komatsuzaki（小松崎 茂).
http://www.s-roman.com/index.html
http://www.artcafe.co.jp/artist_index/komatsuzaki_1.html#
And all the early Shoujyo manga(少女漫画） writer is influenced from Junichi Nakahara's (中原 淳一) touch.
http://www.junichi-nakahara.com/
http://www.fujisan.ne.jp/nakahara/
http://www1.ocn.ne.jp/~akage/soleil/soleil01.html
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TIME.COM :
Browse through any bookstore's graphic novel section and it will look like a tsunami has passed through, blasting the shelves with reams of indistinguishable Japanese manga. Like a red tide, most of it stinks. But some interesting manga flotsam has also washed ashore, strangely, by way of France, Spain and England. Since 2003 a Spanish publisher, Ponent Mon, in collaboration with a U.K. outfit named Fanfare, has published five books in the U.S. as part of a line they call nouvelle manga. They mean to start a new genre and the latest two, "Doing Time" by Kazuichi Hanawa and "The Walking Man," by Jiro Taniguchi, are two of the most peculiar comix of the year.
Nouvelle Manga has its champion in Frederic Boilet, a French artist living in Japan. Being French he naturally had to write a "Nouvelle Manga Manifesto." In it he explains how Japan came to see the French style of comix, called bandes dessinees or "clear line," as too graphically focused, while the French saw Japanese Manga as little more than near-endless volumes about robots and monsters. In spite of this disconnect, Boilet writes, both cultures share a mutual fascination with slice of life stories, as evidenced by the popularity of French cinema in Japan. (The name nouvelle manga deliberately echoes nouvelle vague, the French name for the New Wave cinema of the 1960s.) "Nouvelle manga" refers to any comic that taps into this mutual appreciation. To that end Fanfare/Ponent Mon's first book was Boilet's own "Yukiko's Spinach," an erotic amuse bouche done in a photo-realist style about the author's brief affair with a Japanese woman.
Fanfare/Ponent Mon's two latest releases are by Japanese artists, but couldn't be further from the kind of manga most people get exposed to. Jiro Taniguchi's "The Walking Man" ($17; 155 pages) perfectly embodies the precepts of nouvelle manga, taking the low-key activities of everyday life and depicting them in the highly detailed drawing style more commonly associated with European comix. Each of the book's 18 chapters depicts a nameless salaryman on a different stroll through the city and countryside. The first chapter sets the formula for ones following. The man pops out to take a break from moving into a new house. Amidst tableaus of sunning housecats, tall trees and fish swimming under bridges the man happens upon a bird watcher. They look at birds together. By the time the man returns home a dog has appeared from under the house. Rather than build drama from outsized events, Taniguchi instead dramatizes the small moments of our lives.
A man, a dog, a walk in Jiro Taniguchi's "The Walking Man"
So the chapters go, each walk in a different place, with emphasis placed on the weather, the changes of season, encounters with animals and brief, mostly silent exchanges with people. One sequence has the man engage in an unspoken race with a fellow perambulator; in another he climbs a small-scale Mt. Fuji replica. With few words spoken you must piece together the "story," such as it is, almost entirely from the visuals. In its emphasis on quiet, low-key activities and cutaways to environmental details, "The Walking Man" evokes the atmosphere of the films of Yasujiro Ozu ("Tokyo Story," "Early Spring," etc.) But the comparison goes no further than the work's mutual tone. Ozu's movies involve rich characters struggling with complex conflicts. Taniguchi's walking man stays a cipher, exhibiting only the barest hint of complexity. The pleasures of "The Walking Man" are principally in the form of Taniguchi's careful compositions, which acheive a contemplative beauty. Like a short walk of the mind, they refresh and provide exercise.
"Doing Time" ($20; 240 pages) by Kazuichi Hanawa, also focuses on environmental details, but inside instead of out. As Fanfare/Ponent Mon's most interesting nouvelle manga book, it stands out mostly through the originality of its subject: an autobiography of the author's three years spent in the Japanese prison system. A manga artist who ran afoul of Japan's strict gun laws, Hanawa began serving time in 1995. Far from being a self-righteous polemic about injustice or the cruelty of incarceration, "Doing Time" instead seems to delight in recounting the details of life behind bars.
Prisoner Hanawa must ask permision to pick up the eraser in "Doing Time"
The book opens with Hanawa in jail, awaiting transfer to the larger prison. There he ponders the mystery of the dust that accumulates overnight and imagines himself as a fat pig, penned up with nothing to do but eat. Once in prison, Hanawa shares a cell with four others and goes about the regimented routine of a factory prisoner who works on carving wooden tissue boxes. Recreated with a meticulousness rarely found in comix, the book includes floor plans, daily schedules and sartorial options. Food turns into a fascinating preoccupation throughout the book, with frequent asides on the exact menu of prison meals, as well as coveted snacks and sweets. Hanawa also introduces memorable characters, such as the Momma's boy, a neatnick who "holds the soap dish with his pinky extended." Hanawa recreates this alien world with laser-like detail, bringing us right into the very mindset of a prisoner. Astonishingly, he has done so completely from memory, having been prevented from drawing while in prison. Displaying the greatest artistic versatility of the nouvelle manga group, Hanawa moves from sharp realism to dramatic expressionism. In one sequence, Hanawa's face darkens with panic at the prospect of retrieving a dropped eraser. The end result is a fascinating anthropology of a culture that would seem foreign even to the Japanese.
It remains to be seen whether nouvelle manga will amount to a real movement. It would help if two or more masterworks appeared under such a label. Neither Jiro Taniguchi's "The Walking Man" nor Kazuichi Hanawa's "Doing Time" have quiet enough depth to justify calling them "masterworks." Even so, these Franco-Japanese creations are some of the most unusual, fascinating comix published this year.
Based on experience, I can guess why "The Walking Man" would be interesting, but he makes it sound like the most boring manga ever. What's the point of preaching to the choir?
Should we start a thread about alternative/underground manga/mangaka (that haven't been translated/published in the west, yet)?
>>26
write here
I was thinking about something the other day. Now I know there's a pretty big self-publishing scene in Japan, but most of those comics deal with the usual manga genres. Parodies/homages of other titles, tie-ins to popular movies, etc. I was wondering are there any DIY manga people out there who's work is more focussed on a personal/artistic vision?
There are doujinshi artists doing original work. yohsitoshi ABe comes to mind - Haibane Renmei started its life as a doujinshi. Kaoru Mori also started out writing original doujinshi - Shirley is actually a collection of her earlier doujinshi stories. There is, of course, a tendency for those who hit it big to concentrate on the more commercial channels once they get that far. ABe still publishes lots of stuff as doujinshi, though.
>Naito Yamada
At least two of her manga have already been released in french. I hate France now.
There is exactly one publisher in Germany, who would translate Manga like that - Reprodukt. But chances are slim, IMO after they startet their Manga niche with "Mr. Arashis amazing Freak Show" and "The laughing Vampire".
Is any stuff of this relation still in print in English?
I have been looking for things, especially Kiriko Nananan, for a while but have had no luck.
