A Look At Manga and Anime
I've been investigating the history of manga and manga artists (more like dabbling at it, really) and I've started putting together a series of pages that will probably never be completed to my satisfaction simply because of the amount of time and material involved. But, I am getting enough pages amassed that it's time to create a central index for them.
--- Curtis Hoffmann
ThreeStepsOverJapan
History of Manga
I ran a series of blog entries discussing the growth of various manga artists in
magazines and newspapers, that I called "The History of Manga". They
didn't flow together well as a whole, I so created a set of HTML pages to put
things in a more chronological order, with links to the appropriate blog
entries. This then is a brief description of how Japanese illustration
went from woodblock printing in the 700's to "manga as we know it" today.
Tokiwa Manor
This page is a list of the assistants that worked for Osamu Tezuka when he was
based in an apartment building in Tokyo from 1953 to 1954, and some of the manga
artists that would consistently drop by and visit. Many of these people
went on to become major figures in manga and anime in their own right.
Anime and Manga Museums
Because anime and manga figure so prominently in modern Japanese culture, it's
understandable that various museums and galleries would open up in tribute to
the bigger names in these fields. This page lists some of the museums, and
gives links to their websites where possible.
Anime- and Manga-Related Sightseeing Spots
There are a number of places in Japan that have artwork, statues or painted
trains, intended to either commemorate a specific artist or character, or to
attract tourists. This page lists the sights that I know about, and
includes google maps of the ones I've been to.
Japan's Top Anime People
Yeah, I could have come up with a better title for this page. Actually,
it's a list of recipients of the Tokyo International Anime Fair's (TAF) Award of
Merit since 2005 to the present. The Award of Merit is given to people that were
deemed to have contributed significantly to the anime industry and includes
directors, artists, supply companies, voice actors and studio heads.
Shonen Sunday and Shonen
Magazine 50th Anniversary List
Weekly Shonen Sunday and Weekly Shonen Magazine both began
publication in 1959. To celebrate their 50th anniversaries, Kodansha and
Shueisha worked together with the Kawasaki Museum to create the "DNA" exhibit.
This page includes the history of the two magazines within the context of weekly
boys magazines as a whole, and also has the list of the 100 titles that were
featured in the "DNA" exhibit as selected by the curator. One of the
important things to note here, from a historical viewpoint, is that both
magazines signed on Tezuka and the Tokiwa Manor crew early on, and their
contributions influenced the growth of both magazines at the time.
Listing of Early Magazines
Initially, "manga" was used as part of the title of certain Ukiyo-e style
woodblock prints, in the commonly-understood sense of "whimsical pictures".
From around 1870, it was modified to mean "caricature" in the sense of political
and social cartoons ala "Puck" and "Punch" from the west. In 1900, the
first girl's/women's magazine, Myojo, was launched, starting up the whole
new trend of shojo magazines. In the shojo mags, illustrators drew
pictures to fill up blank space and to accompany the stories and articles.
Along the way, manga was added for humor, in the yonkoma (or 4-panel) format.
Eventually, shojo magazines became the primary source of what we know today as
"manga as Japanese comics". The listing here contains the start and stop
dates of various shojo, women's, boy's and children's magazines starting from
1900.
Shopping Guides
Ok, granted that a list of places to buy manga from doesn't actually belong in an index of famous manga and anime artists. But I figure that if you like these people, and you are in Japan to visit their galleries and such, that you may also be inclined to buy their works. The three major shopping districts in and around Tokyo are: Akihabara, Ikebukuro and Nakano. I've created shopping guides for the last two places. Akihabara is big and complex enough to have caused many people on the net to make their own guides, and there are a few companies that provide tours for a fee. However, if I get enough comments here requesting a dedicated shopping guide to Akihabara, I may be persuaded to write one after all.