Posts Tagged ‘Japan’

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Tuesday, October 27, 2009


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Verbeek’s Japanese Roots


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Tuesday, September 29, 2009


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Readers of Art Out of Time will remember the pages devoted to the eery art of Gustave Verbeek, an early 20th century master of imaginative freakiness. Now more of Verbeek’s work is available in a beautiful new book from Sunday Press Books: The Upside-Down World of Gustave Verbeek: Comics and Art 1900-1915, which has just hit bookstores this week. As with all the other books from Sunday Press, this volume is lovingly designed, with long moldering art restored nearly to their pristine perfection. Hitherto, very little was known about Verbeek so editor Peter Maresca has done amazing work in digging up his paintings and illustrations, which immeasurably deepen our understanding of the context from which he emerged. Along with Chris Ware and Seth, Maresca has raised the bar for reprinting classic comics.

In an essay I wrote that is part of the book, I argue that Verbeek’s work owes much to its Japanese roots. Here is an excerpt:

Verbeek’s life and art emerged from a unique historical moment. In 1854, Commodore Matthew Perry forced the isolationist Tokugawa shogunate to open up Japan to the West, thereby initiating a new era of international relations and also, unexpectedly, creating the groundwork for an artistic revolution. For the next century, Japan fired up the imagination of countless artists, influencing everything from Vincent van Gogh’s shimmering color to Frank Lloyd Wright’s airy sense of space.

Japan runs like a thread through Verbeek’s life. Born only slightly more than a dozen years after Perry’s famous exercise in gunboat diplomacy and belonging to the European nationality (the Dutch) that had the richest history of interacting with the Japanese, Verbeek was in a perfect position to absorb his native land’s artistic heritage. He first studied art in Tokyo. As poet Hildegarde Hawthorne (granddaughter of the famous novelist) noted in 1916, Verbeek’s “inerrant capacity for leaving out the inessential owes something to his Japanese masters.”

For those who think the connection between Western comics and Japan started with manga, The Upside-Down World of Gustave Verbeek will be an eye-opener.

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Fish Fry


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Friday, June 26, 2009


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A Conversation with Yuichi Yokoyama.

One fine day in Lucerne, Switzerland I gathered Frank Santoro, Lauren Weinstein and CF around a table to interview Yuichi Yokoyama. Via his translator he responded to all of our various questions. What we didn’t know was that later, after a few beers, his English got a lot better! Alas, we didn’t record his musings on soccer, baseball, fishing, and Donald Judd. Next time. For now, herewith a conversation with some of the best bugged out minds of my generation and one doofus (me).

April 2, 2009

Dan Nadel: Maybe we could talk for a few minutes about adventure and motion, since everyone here does adventure comics, often involving action — approaches to action.

[Everybody stops to think]

Yuichi Yokoyama: Being here at this moment, at this table, with the publisher, Dan Nadel, this is an adventure. I am surrounded by foreigners, this is also an adventure. I cannot speak your language, that is also an adventure. I have never thought about it before, why it’s an adventure… I don’t think I’m going to draw any so-called “actions.” Not anymore. I’d like to draw an impression of something very quiet, philosophical.

CF: Well, it’s hard to think about what action is, because anything that’s moving is in action, or is an adventure. And everything’s some kind of quest of the will, even if it’s a very unimportant thing. And at some point, it becomes adventure or it becomes action, but it’s always that way. So, in some ways I feel like the hardest thing to do in comics is to make nothing happen, because the panels are always moving forward, so you always have that energy of action, and you always have that energy of adventure, and it’s very hard to “still” that. I think I’ve been trying to do that. The way you show pacing, how fast you make a fight move, is a really strange thing. How the time between panels can be so many different things — it could be like a half second or a number of seconds and the only way you can tell is by the drawing itself. So it’s very weird . . . it’s not rational.

YY: What you have said is very interesting. It’s rather human, very human. After forming actions with rapidity, then you have to read from one panel to the other, quickly — that is very exciting, but you like to go back to another side of humanistic . . . you like to think about “quiet”.

CF: I like to think about everything, but the problem is that, I think, some things are harder to get than others, harder to achieve. I think one of the hardest things to achieve is a sense of stillness. Let’s not say that, even, let’s say a sense of non-action. And quietness is action, too, in a lot of ways.

YY: In my case, I do not have any “stories,” as such. There are no stories in my manga–just the impressions in each panel, that is what I want to consider. In a Hemingway story two friends of Nick Adams get out of a train somewhere in a very humble, dirty, small, coal mining town and they go to the bar. It’s a very rough bar, and they are treated very badly, and they plot their revenge. But don’t take revenge; there’s no story. They go back to the train. Such a simple thing, there’s no story, but there is something lurking in the background anyway. That is what I want to take out of the story. I want to express this sort of thing without words, so readers have to “read between the lines,” between the panels.

CF: And why do you want to not draw action anymore? Because of that?

YY: No, I wouldn’t say that I want to stop completely 100%. For instance, I would like to draw a war for 1000-2000 pages. From the beginning, only scenes of fighting, and the end, the last page, after 1000 pages, they’re still fighting. For that, I need a tremendous amount of time. With my present technique, it takes an enormous amount of time. If I find out I can employ a special technique within a very limited amount of time, I might start action manga again. If I use a magic marker, like in Baby Boom [A new book he’s drawing in a different style], maybe it’ll happen. I’d like to make my own technique to draw faster for this special idea of the 1000 page war comic. I’m very ambitious, I always want to compete with time.

DN: Do you want to compete with other artists or just yourself?

YY: I don’t want to compete with others, I want to draw for myself.

Lauren Weinstein: With the war comic, would you re-enact a battle that’s already been fought, or is it your own war?

YY: It would blend what I have seen in the past through movies, on television, the newspaper, and in photos. I don’t want to describe any humanistic feeling, but at the same time I don’t want to describe any death scenes. For instance: Take an empty town, but the person in the manga thinks that there must be a lot of enemies in this dead town. In this case, nobody can be dead, there are no enemies there. I’m trying to think of how I can avoid a scene of dead bodies lying on the floor. So many things I have to solve technically. If I figure out a technique for that kind of scene, then I can start drawing it.

CF: Why are you avoiding the human? Why is the deleting of human concerns in the work important?

YY: I’d like to read such a manga myself, nobody else writes such manga, that’s why I write, so basically the purpose is to draw manga for me, not for others. Self-contemplation.

CF: Are there any artists working today that you feel connected to, in any way, any kind of artist, contemporary artists?

YY: I mostly feel kinship with Japanese artists.

CF: Who?

Y: Tadashi Kawamata, he lives in France. He used to he used to make oil paintings. Now he’ll use a a piece of a tree, a broken board, or other scraps to create a new building. He’s always invited by art festivals all over the world, he’s considered one of the top artists in Japan.

CF: I realize this might be an impossible question to ask, but why is it that the manga that you want to read has those aspects, no story or anything, like that war comic?

YY: It’s very difficult to describe, but in my personal life I don’t respect human feelings. I’m very far from human society, I’d rather appreciate natural phenomena. I’m very interested in understanding how a bird might see things. I want to delete the human feelings because the reader wants to emotionally take sides with one particular person and I’d prefer they remain neutral. That’s why I don’t want to produce a scene where people feel sympathy with a particular person.

CF: I feel like I’m trying to do the same thing: Creating these situations where people would feel drawn to root for, or side with certain elements, but in the end hopefully there’s no one to side with. Hopefully there’s no one to say “this is good,” or “this is bad,” but still have those human elements in there, and draw people out.

YY: Not to be obnoxious, but I’d like to go up even higher than the human consciousness. What we all can do, as humans, is sort of very limited.

CF: That’s true, but I’m young and I think that’s where I have to begin. That’s how I feel right now.

YY: If we have another ten days, maybe we can go into more details, but I have to go back to Japan tomorrow.

DN: You started manga when you were 31, how did you first learn to make it, was there anyone you were looking at to help you learn to tell stories?

YY: 12 years ago, I switched from oil painting to making manga. I went to a second-hand bookshop and I bought this manga techniques book with a little money and started to train myself.

Frank Santoro: Well your style seems to have come fully-formed. It doesn’t bloom, it just… arrived. It’s just so unique that that’s, I think what we’re trying to…

YY: The first panels I drew, they’re not in a book. Of course, you didn’t see the original drawings, from when I was starting 12 years ago. I still have them but they’re so terrible that nobody would want to buy it or make it a manga. So you only saw the first book, that’s why you think it’s the way you described

FS: I think I’m speaking for everyone, but I speak for myself too, but I don’t see any influence from another style. I see you taking things from modern art, but not necessarily from other manga. So the synthesis of modern art and manga is very unique, and that’s what I think it’s fully formed.

YY: I believe you.

FS: Thank you!

DN: The thing about the Hemingway stories is that most people would say that those have a lot of emotional content because it’s all in the subtle interactions between the two men. Do you see those as having emotional content, or do you only see them as plotless sequences of actions?

YY: Yeah, from the beginning, I delete or disguise this emotion. I don’t see it.

CF: He just likes the grilling of the fish.

YY: All of the conversations in the Hemingway stories, I don’t find them to be very humanistic conversations. I don’t see the humanity. I feel they’re very cold and inhuman. There is something sticking behind the conversation which has nothing to with the warmth of human interaction. There are a lot of short stories with scenes of just people talking in a restaurant, and then I can’t detect any meaning behind those conversations; they’re meaningless. There is one scene in a Hemingway story, this one station scene: Tourists arrive in the station and they decide to go into the local bar and they sit and they encounter three or four local people from the city. They start to talk to each other. The tourists, this group of people, have ordered a very very expensive gorgeous champagne that they give to everybody. One of them explains, “I have just divorced, that’s why I’ve taken this journey” and he talks to the local people about married life. Then he leaves because the train comes, but before he leaves the bar, he tells the locals that they have to share the champagne that is left. But instead the locals bring the half-drank champagne bottle back to the counter and ask for money back. It’s a very humanistic story but it’s also very cold, extreme coldness.

CF: This is a fascination in your work that you’re actively pursuing at all times, and maybe this is inappropriate, but in your personal life I know you have a girlfriend or something. How does it relate to personal human relationships with your family, for instance?

YY: My daily life with girlfriend and with my mother and with my friends, it’s an absolutely normal human relationship, I respect my friends, I feel very warm feelings towards my friends, my girlfriends, and my mother, I eat regularly….

CF: I know that!

YY: So you’re suspicious that I’m also a very cold person

CF: No. I just think that when you’re doing something creative, when you’re exploring things that you’re fascinated by, it’s because you have questions about them; questions are inspiration. I have a desire, I think, to merge what I’m doing in my work and my personal life to some extent. If you’re always in your work trying to get to these higher levels that are beyond humans, to me sometimes it’s kind of sad that you can’t achieve them in your normal life.

YY: Have you ever been to Japan? I think the Japanese are very very emotional people. If you ever watch Japanese television, you will encounter every second, such a scene of appreciation, emotional extremes, emotional expressions. Always crying and uh, emotional. That is our national character. This emotionality disturbs me and I think that that I would say that within me there is an unconscious protest against this tendency.

CF: And you’re making art to reflect that.

YY: I think I do that very unconsciously, but I have to admit that it reflects in my work, as you’ve pointed out. Our emotionality is not like yours in America. It’s so shadowy; even if we express ourselves with joy, appreciation, excitement, somehow a shadow is behind it all. This is not like your emotional life, you express joy, sadness, pathos, enjoyment very differently.

CF: What’s the shadow, the shadow is infinity?

YY: It’s very ghostly. Our emotional environment in Japan doesn’t go up and down so much. It’s relatively balanced. Anyway, I think that geographically Japan is also a nice place to live. Very pleasant place. Under these circumstances, in time, humans become lazy, unambitious, very comfortable. Too comfortable. That weakens us. Like you, in America, when you laugh you open their mouth and the laugh comes out from here. Our laughing is not like that, but I find that your style is more healthy. It explodes. That’s much healthier than ours.

CF: But what’s funny is that “healthy” does not get results that are interesting or tell you things that are new. I think that being healthy or maintaining vitality doesn’t necessarily, or in most cases doesn’t give you results that are interesting or answers that you weren’t aware of, new information, I think, comes out of sickness and out of imbalance.

LW: You’re talking about asceticism though.

CF: It’s just an extreme, it could be decadence.

LW: A search for purity doesn’t mean decadence.

CF: I’m just saying limits of human ability just to survive, I just wanted to make the point that healthy is maybe a little bit beside the point, in creative work.

YY: “Mentally and physically,” this is very important to my creativity.

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Incomplete


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Friday, April 17, 2009


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I do not have the proper mindset for decent comics bloggery this week, but I still thought I’d quickly post a link to this fascinating essay by Kentaro Takekuma (co-creator of one of my favorite books of comics meta-criticism, Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga) writing on Osamu Tezuka and Hayao Miyazaki.

One of the most interesting parts of this essay, I think, is where Kentaro describes why he feels that Miyazaki’s Nausicaä manga series is “hard to read”, including this bit:

The individual panels are too “complete” as illustrations. This is only true for each singular frame (panel), and there isn’t enough of an attempt to connect one frame to the next, or to guide the reader in following the flow of the manga.

This probably has something to do with why people so often describe Nausicaä as aesthetically “Western”. The whole thing is worth reading, especially for Miyazaki or Tezuka fans.

Oh, and for the record, I personally didn’t find Nausicaä hard to read at all.

[H/t to J.O.G. McCullochuddy]

Ok. And while I was writing this, Chris Butcher linked to it, so this meager post is even more superfluous now. I’ll put it up anyway.

[And apparently D. Deppey posted it yesterday. Whatever. I’m done.]

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What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal


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Thursday, June 28, 2007


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Henry Darger isn’t really a comics artist, I suppose, but his work is at least somewhat related. Close enough, anyway, to justify showing this creepy (and inappropriate?) dessert version of one of his hermaphroditic Vivian Girls.

These cakes are currently being sold at the Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, to commemorate a Darger exhibit there.

I’d like to see more cakes like this—Jim Woodring would work well, I think. Even better: Rory Hayes.

(Via Serious Eats.)

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Comics Enriched Their Lives! #5


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Wednesday, February 21, 2007


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As Japan sheds its postwar pacifism and gears up to take a higher military profile in the world, it is enlisting cadres of cute characters and adorable mascots to put a gentle, harmless sheen to its Self-Defense Forces deployments.

“Prince Pickles is our image character because he’s very endearing, which is what Japan’s military stands for,” said Defense Ministry official Shotaro Yanagi. “He’s our mascot and appears in our pamphlets and stationery.”

Such characters have long been used in Japan to win hearts and minds and to soften the image of authority.

–Hiroko Tabuchi, The Associated Press

(via Making Light)

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On and On


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Tuesday, November 7, 2006


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I’ve just returned from Tokyo, where I had a whirlwind adventure in Manga and art. I’ll have some very special related announcements soon. In the meantime, as Tim has noted, Comics Comics 2 is out and about. Look for it in a store near you, and in the Diamond catalog for February shipping along with issue 1. Also, I’m proud to announce the release of Cold Heat 2, which will be available through Diamond in January, and monthly thereafter.

Anyhow, Cold Heat remains a 12-issue series by Ben Jones and Frank Santoro about Castle, an 18-year old Ninja. It features truly groundbreaking concepts in story and art, and also every issue contains a one-page piece of fiction by Tim. Below is an excellent description by Bill Boichel, CC 1 contributor and the owner of our favorite comic book store. Copacetic Comics. Cold Heat is available from PictureBox Inc.

Cold Heat #2
By Ben Jones and Frank Santoro
Picking up where the first issue left off, Cold Heat #2 revs it up a few notches and takes us on a whirlwind ride through the dis-united states of the disturbed American psyche. Series artist, Frank Santoro once again refuses to play it safe. This time around he pulls out all the stops and takes the chances that most other artists wouldn’t take even if they could. Leaping into the artistic no man’s land between the well established borders of pre-existent genres, Santoro combines the propulsive narratives of mainstream American heroic adventure
comics, the exaggerated expressiveness of Japanese manga, and the naivete of self-published autobiographical comics with his own experimental ideas to create a totally unique comics cocktail that will knock you for a loop. Cold Heat takes the outside in and then brings the inside out—demonstrating how our internalization of international affairs creates monsters in our minds that are every bit as dangerous as anything we’ll meet on the street—and by so doing helps us see our place in and find our way through the mess of our world.

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