Like any art form, manga has a history, but there is no consensus on how and when manga first appeared. Dr. Sharon Kinsella, who teaches at Manchester University, for example, believes that manga owes its origins to American comics that came to Japan after the 1945-1952 occupation. It is impossible not to agree with this opinion, at least in part, because after so many years of isolation the Japanese greedily absorbed everything new. Modern manga was also influenced by American films, television and – among others – animation studio Disney. But what about the Japanese themselves? In all the years of isolation from the West, has the land of the rising sun not produced its own “whimsical pictures”?
According to Mark McWilliams, the first Japanese comic strip appeared as early as the 12th century. Its author was a Buddhist monk, Toba Shozo, who drew four scrolls called teojugiga, “funny pictures of animal life.” What is so remarkable about these drawings? Each scroll tells a story that must be read from right to left (like a manga). The largest scroll – as much as 11 meters in length – shows the life of Japanese people in the 12th century, depicted in the form of animals. The scrolls are a national treasure of Japan and are kept in museums in Tokyo and Kyoto. Later, in the mid-seventeenth century, two new trends in art became popular: otsu-e and ukiyo-e. Otsu-e – folk art, pictures, most often depicting simple satirical subjects, with explanatory captions. Ukiyo-e were well-known prints that showed monsters, sumo wrestlers or beautiful geisha. As time went by, stories began to be decorated with such pictures, calling them “ehon” – “book of pictures”. It wasn’t long before the term “manga” was coined in 1798.
Everything flows, everything changes. No matter how deep the roots of manga were in the Japanese tradition, it was only in the 1950s that this form of art found its modern form. Advances in economics and printing gave artists the opportunity to create something new and allowed them to tell delightful stories to the whole country. Every unusual work that came out at the time created a new genre, becoming a breakthrough.
While a special committee on censorship in comics known as the Comics Code Authority stymied the development of comics in the United States for decades, turning them into entertainment exclusively for children, in Japan manga flourished and felt quite free. Now it is a whole industry that has become a symbol of Japan on a par with samurai, sakurai and anime. In her homeland, manga is read by everyone, from the young to the old. This demand has spawned a huge variety of genres; you can find anything in manga from giant robot fighters and pirates to witches and catgirls. Sports, comedy, drama, romance, martial arts, horror, science fiction, detectives and fantasy are just some of the genres represented in manga.