Japan’s head otaku, Foreign Minister Taro Aso, plans to use Japanese pop culture as a diplomatic tool. One major obstacle is that aside from Aso, most high-level Japanese diplomats don’t read manga or watch anime. They are making diligent efforts to catch up, however. MangaBlog applauds this initiative and calls on other foreign leaders to do the same. Perhaps we can persuade President Bush to turn his attention to the Betty and Veronica makeover that is currently rending the comics blogosphere.
Seriously, though, Aso needs to be careful what he wishes for because things like this (warning: incredibly racist image) will do more harm than good. More comment here from the same blogger, who wonders whether Viz (yes, Viz!) plans to market the offending manga in Africa.
Pata spots a manga phrase book, but I don’t think it’s what the foreign minister has in mind, either.
Meanwhile, The Star of Malaysia reports on attempts to encourage manga tourism in Japan. And check out this review of two books on Japanese toys.
Good stuff at ComiPress: A list of the top selling manga in France, excerpts from a blog about a possible predecessor to Death Note, and news of some sort of brouhaha over Rozen Maiden.
The stuffy image of librarians is forever banished by Fort Lauderdale teen librarian Arlene Garcia, who not only organized an anime convention at her library but also dressed in goth-loli garb for the event.
My previous post is a press release about SelfMadeHero, a new UK publisher that is debuting with a line of modernized versions of Shakespeare plays. David Welsh has a bit of fun with the concept and points out that one of the creators has put some samples on a LiveJournal page.
At Manga Talk, Octopedingenue has links to Megazine, a downloadable magazine for scanlators.
This week’s Manga Minute is more like a full hour as Tokopop blogger ChunHyang72 rounds up the good stuff, including how-tos (the RSoM deadline is approaching!), manga recommendations, and even grammar tips. Noted: Tokyopop editor Beedlejuice is energetically promoting his title, Kat and Mouse, vol. 2 of which is due out today. Newsarama’s comics-reading Edmunds family checks it out and finds a lot to like.
Mangacast is putting up a page a day of E’S, which comes out today. The Broccoli blog offers a peek at the cover of Disgaea 2.
Job board: Have you always dreamed of working for Viz? Speak Japanese? They’re looking for an approvals coordinator. (Via ANN) Also: ComiPress needs Japanese translators.
Reviews: At Okazu, guest reviewer Sean Gaffney posts a lengthy review of vol. 7 of High School Girls. Mangamaniaccafe liked vol. 1 of Chibi Vampire despite its boring cover. At Anime on DVD, Matthew Alexander finds vol. 1 of R.O.D. Read or Dream rather disappointing. Active Anime’s Christopher Seaman really enjoyed Project X: Seven Eleven, and Holly Ellingwood gives vol. 24 of Oh My Goddess! a rave review. Kethylia likes vol. 1 of Fushigi Yugi: Genbu Kaiden. Kurogane at The Star of Malaysia likes vol. 1 of R.O.D. Read or Dream and gives two thumbs up to Otogi Zoshi despite the profusion of American slang.
Thank you for digging up the links to Digital Femme’s websites. I’ve had a similar, why-didn’t-someone-edit-this-racist-stuff reaction to several manga I’ve read recently.
I was really troubled by the racial iconography in You Higuri’s “Gorgeous Carat.” She seems to have taken all her cues about North Africa from the pages of nineteenth century French literature and painting. After reading volume two, I felt like mailing her a copy of Edward Said’s “Orientalism” and highlighting the passages about “Salammbo” for her edification. Even Rumiko Takahashi isn’t immune. There was a racist caricature of a Mexican boxer in her “One Pound Gospel” series that made me profoundly uncomfortable, both for the way in which he was drawn and for the way he was portrayed.
For all the fuss about nudity and Christian imagery, it seems that the editorial departments at some of these publishers seem to have forgotten that manga reaches an ethnically diverse audience here in the US.
LOL, that image definitely looks Racist…. Though I doubt the mangaka(s?) have any agenda against black people, especially considering the rest of the volume, that introduces a character of a (very cool) black guy, who struggles (and eventually wins) against his team coach’s racism. I think that if the mangakas were really racist, they wouldn’t have presented a black guy is such a positive way. XP
That racist panel was just a result of ignorance and the artist’s really cartoonish style, I guess.
Thanks for linking to the recruiting message :)
Shamdu, I’d say that panel shows an agenda against Black people but a cluelessness to how these issues would come off outside of Japan. From my understanding, one doesn’t often hear from people who would be offended by images like this. That doesn’t excuse it, however, and it would be advisable for Viz to consider how this sort of images will be taken in different markets.
There’s a fascinating introductory piece in one of the early Astro Boy volumes that addresses some of the portrayals of Africans in the work and the publisher’s decision not to alter them. I’ll have to post it when I get a chance.
I’d be curious to see that publisher’s introduction. That seems like a responsible way to acknowledge the problem without making substantial cuts or alterations. Of course, with some stuff, no amount of editing will fix the problem.
I’m equally curious as ChunHyang72 to see the reaction from an American publisher’s standpoint- while displays such as this may slide under the radar in Japan, the same cultural [and somewhat culturally ignorant] mindset does not prevail across the globe. The ball is in Viz’s court; how they choose to handle it will be interesting indeed.
Here is an interesting post on how the publishers of the new version of Will Eisner’s The Spirit handled the problem of a pre-existing character. Of course, they had the luxury of being able to write the story.
With manga, the question really comes down to whether to keep the offensive caricature in order to be totally authentic, or to edit it to fit modern American sensibilities. Either way, as an editor, I don’t think I would leave it alone. I have seen reprints of older books that had an editor’s note in the beginning explaining that the book included caricatures that would be considered offensive by modern readers but that had been kept in order to produce a historically accurate book. But manga are just comics, and given that light reading from the Bobbsey Twins to the mysteries of Agatha Christie have been rewritten to eliminate racist content, I wouldn’t have any problem with doing the same with most manga.
Higashi, the book has already been published (it is vol. 7 of Eyeshield 21.) It is not in my library. Can anyone enlighten us as to whether there is an editors note?
Published…and almost 9 months ago at that? I’m amazed I didn’t hear more about this. It’s quite interesting that they chose to leave it unedited, particularly in a year where other editing moves proved to be pretty controversial. Still, I’m not quite sure if it’s the right way to go in this case…
Scans_Daily has posted the entire sequence—scroll about halfway down for the image in question. It’s supposed to represent people in Africa reacting to news as it zooms around the world on the internet. Above them is a caricature of an Indian man in a turban, a cobra off to one side, which also strikes me as pretty bad. (The Californian guy looks normal to me, but maybe I’m missing something.)
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Oh please… Most Japanese people rarely see a real black person, especially one from America; there’s more chance of them meeting a black person from Africa than US.
So where did they get all that racist imagery from? US of course. They just copied whatever images of blacks that was used in the US before the civil right movement and didn’t bother to update them, especially since the American media they saw still portray blacks as criminals or rap stars. They just didn’t know it was racist, and yes people need to tell them. They’d should probably stop watching American mainstream TV shows too. They saw the blacks as the Whites saw them, since they really don’t know much about black people.
In fact, if there’s a stereotype about blacks in Japan it’s mostly positive – hyper masculinity and sexual prowess. They didn’t really adopt all of white America’s racist stereotype toward blacks and you’ll never see a mangaka depict a black person as dumb or cowardly. Maybe they don’t draw them correctly, but the black characters are usually better presented than your average Hollywood flick. When it comes to racism against the blacks, the Japanese are merely imitators and a bad one at that. I’m sure if a black person complaint to a mangaka, they won’t be doing it anymore. For example, the manga-ka for Bleach is a famous admire of hip-hip culture and he drew a black shikigami aptain with zero stereotypical drawing or mannerism. If they knew, they won’t be doing it.
Your point about the the Sambo iconography is well taken—clearly, it was copied from American models. It’s been a mighty long time, however, since that was a socially acceptable mode of depicting African-Americans here in the US. The racist caricatures in Eyeshield 21 weren’t drawn 20 or 30 years ago; the copyright is recent. Given that there ARE manga-ka who don’t fall back on these old visual tropes (see Fee and family in Planetes), the persistance of this iconography is troubling.
I’m also not sure that the stereotypical image of black men as “hyper masculine” is positive; here in the US, that stereotype may have sold a lot of hip-hop albums, but it also has had a deletrious effect on young black men’s ability to escape the violent lifestyle depicted on those best-selling albums.
The Japanese aren’t as sensitive to racial issues as the Americans, especially given the fact that black still faces severe discrimination even NOW in the US. The Japanese basically borrow most of their views on races not present in Japan from an American/Western point of view. Those who “persist” are those who didn’t know or care since no one complaint to them. If more black American fans of manga speak up, I’m pretty sure it would fade. We are just trying to apply American sensitivity to the Japanese and it just doesn’t work that way. They 100 times more sensitive about the difference between Japanese and the Koreans than, say the difference of American blacks and Nigerians. Most Japanese (or Asians in Asia in general) really don’t know how deeply racist White mainstream America is until they’ve lived here.
Hyper-masculinity may or may not be positive per se, but it’s hellova better than cowardice or stupidity. You folks mostly complaint about the way blacks are DRAWN. Name one incident were blacks were given a special negative stereotype outside of the typical gaijin treatment. I’m saying blacks aren’t singled out and most stereotypes invented by whites didn’t carry over. The violent image for young black men unfortunately was created by the Hip-hop industry itself so the young Japanese, like young white americans, just believed the hype created by the black entrepreneur themselves. That’s another issue altogether.
What I really want to point out is please stop persisting American POV on Japanese manga or manga creators. They don’t live in the same world as you and I and their take on things are vastly different than ours. I don’t believe for a minute the Japanese copied the racism verbatim from white Americans; they just imitated everything, racist imagery included. If ASKED nicely, I’m 100% positive they would shocked at the proposition and would adopt accordingly. A few REAL racists are only openly discriminatory toward a few type of people, namely Koreans/Chinese/Burakumin (google it). Gaijin, black or white, is just another gaijin to them.
Tivome, you’re probably right that most Japanese manga artists are picking up caricatures that have been floating around for a while, with little real malice behind them. And I agree that feedback to them is a good thing—I’m a little surprised it hasn’t been happening already. That’s where the fans kicking a bit could make a difference—if a publisher realized that racist imagery could hurt sales, they might alter their editorial guidelines accordingly.
However, a Japanese manga translated into English for the American market has become an American book. The most profound change is the language, but there are often others as well—sound effects, localization, different cover. All these adapations are made to make it more acceptable to an American audience. I think at least considering altering offensive ethnic images should be part of that adaptation process. That’s not imposing our values on them—that’s being true to the values of the audience.
Bridget, I’m all for sensible editing for American publication. I just don’t want people to think that these artists are inherently racist or that they carry the same kind of racist intentions harbored by the original creators of these stereotypes. I’d say these same manga artists won’t object to the edit at all, had they know what it really represented.
I remember way back when I was looking at some of these characters and say to myself, “gosh I’m sure glad the Americans won’t get to read them.” Lo and behold, Japanese manga somehow came to these shores.
This reminded me of the Darlie Toothpaste controversy a while back. In the old days, the drug stores of HK, Taiwan, and most of SE Asia carry a brand of toothpaste called “Darkie”, and on it there’s a face of a Sambo-like character. Needless to say it offended many visiting blacks. As it turns out the original maker of the brand were British colonists and saw nothing wrong with such brand name. After numerous protest the current Asian manufacturer of the toothpaste finally understood its racist undertone and changed the name to Darlie, and the cover was changed to a racially non-descriptive person. Hopefully these manga-kas will learn and stop drawing black people in this fashion.
Thanks for your article. As a Japanese, if I wasn’t introduced the blog I would never be aware about the issue. I think Japanese should be conscious that those descriptions can be received as racist and at least, including me. I’m really sorry for that we don’t even notice their feeling. It’s not actually we don’t know the issue but haven’t had the actual feeling.
I however think, for that those images are allowed in Japan, to denounce it is as hard as to denounce eating beef in U.S. because bull are holy animal in a culture, or to denounce caricaturing a great person in U.S. because it’s serious insult in a culture.
Even if it offends some person, judging an culture’s common sense with another culture’s common sense is very difficult, I fear. I don’t mean to justify racism we hold but I somehow feel the world which fit to all culture’s morals would be the one that it is rather not comfortable to live. It may be just my imagination, but I guess BL, which often introduced here, is also a one not preferable for majority of well-behaved people in U.S. But there are people who wants it, too.
Personally I think a social system is ideal that perfectly prevents people who don’t want to see offensive material coming across it, but also allows people who want to see to access. I know it may be idealistic though. I somewhat doubt if exterminating material disgusting to majority is the best solution.
By the way, I beg pardon for my inexperienced English grammar.
Yeah.. I kind of felt the same way about Usopp from One Piece… not as bad as the Eyeshield stuff, but his character design still makes me go “…”, and start wondering if I‘m the crazy one because I’ve never seen it brought up.
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It’s kinda sad I think. People in Asia have a white American point of view on Blacks. I don’t know why this is, but my best guess is American media and its representation of Blacks. In Seoul there was a human rights short film festival and one film dealt with this issue where a Korean 9 yr old boy has a birthday party and tells his friends that he’s inviting his American friend. All the kids expect to see a blonde hair blue-eyed kid till they see a black American kid. One of them says “why isn’t she in Africa”. I think this is a problem, the majority of english speaking media received by Asia is from America and this probably has a tendency of showing Blacks in a negative stereotype. Once I saw a Korean docu about nutrition and life span and they showed a white doctor in Australia saying the Aborigines die about 30 years younger than the rest of the Australians because they are uneducated and eat a lot of fatty, sugary foods. But, in general I think blacks have a bad representation in Media. In the news Africa is seen as (at least it comes across to me as being like this)this post apocalyptic bad land with barren desserts, wars and corrupt leaders (even thought there are many prosperous stable nations in Africa).