A Cultural History of Postwar Japan Page 6

  In addition to the picture-card show and the lending library, a third factor contributed to the unique character of modern Japanese comics. This was the emergence of women cartoonists. Before the war, Japan had virtually no female cartoonists, and immediately following the war there appeared only one, Hasegawa Machiko, whose work I shall discuss in another context in Chapter Seven. In the later period, however, they emerged one by one until by 1974 they formed a force great enough to work a change in the character of the Japanese cartoon. In the years since 1974 the most creative contributors have been women cartoonists.

  9 From Earthward bound… by Takemiya Keiko

  Takemiya Keiko and Hagio Moto each showed a fine tactical sense when they experimented in weekly girls’ mangas with long works— Hagio’s The Clan of Poe and Takemiya’s The Song of Trees and Wind—in which homosexuality featured. They were a great success. The main figures are male, and, in the interaction of these male characters, the cartoonists portrayed the attraction and repulsion between young people in a way which no male cartoonists could have done.

  A precedent for this may be found in the Takarazuka Girls’ Opera, begun in 1913. The opera was invented by an enterprising capitalist, Kobayashi Ichiz, to attract visitors to a hotsprings resort at the terminal station of his newly built private railway which extended from Osaka. His plan was to open a department store at the starting point and a weekend resort at the terminus, and to sell residential land along the line. The Girls’ Opera provided girls, who in those days were not permitted to associate with boy friends, with an imaginary association with the stage. The girl actresses played boys’ roles much better than male youths of the period, so in a way they were better, gentler and more civilized males. This Takarazuka culture has been inherited by modern female cartoonists. No wonder Ikeda Riyoko’s comic strip about the French Revolution, The Rose of Versailles, of the seventies was so appropriate to the stage of Takarazuka and made such a great hit as part of the repertoire.

  Today there exists a galaxy of women cartoonists. Those noted above are the ones whom I consider to be the most creative. We can add also the names of Kimura Minori and shima Yumiko, who are of the youngest generation, in their late twenties. The combination of humour and the women’s rights movement is interesting and promising. In view of the fact that more women will enter employment with the increase in the number of elderly people in society, this range of cartoons will prepare a new social atmosphere.

  Among the male cartoonists of the 1970s, Yamagami Tatsuhiko (1947–) is the most controversial. His cartoon creation, Gaki Deka, is an extremely fat, over-fed primary school pupil, whose only interests are money and sex. He has no interest whatever in school, but calls himself the only boy policeman and polices the other children primarily out of financial and sexual interest. Gaki

  10 From Gaki Deka, Vol. 2, by Yamagami Tatsuhiko. Gaki Deka (right): You’re sentenced to death! Man (left): What do you mean, death!

  Deka’s irresponsible and shameless pursuit of his interests seems to give us an image of Japan in relation to South-east Asia and in that way is quite indispensable.

  Manga now forms an enormous proportion (about 20 per cent in 1977) of all Japanese publications.43 There are ten weekly comics, each of which has a circulation of over one million. The most popular, The Boy Champion Weekly, sells two million copies (now four million in 1986). Companies which publish comics are thriving, while others verge on bankruptcy. Some actually went bankrupt in 1977, 1978 and 1979.

  The change which comics have brought about in the nature of publishing in Japan has been the subject of controversy. The paper of the largest labour organization, Shy, serialized a debate on the topic between Inaba Michio (1927–) and Tsumura Takashi (1948–).44 Inaba expressed total condemnation and Tsumura enthusiastic support. Inaba is a middle-aged professor of Tokyo University and Tsumura a young freelance critic who dropped out of Waseda University during the university feud. Moreover, Inaba represents the Old Left and Tsumura the New Left. Their differences are thus understandable. The issue was taken up by the national broadcasting station, and a panel discussion of 20 scholars of opposing camps was televised all over Japan in the autumn of 1978.

  Just as comics present a problem for the labour movement, they also present a problem for education, from primary school up to university. The sudden increase in university students who read comics has already brought about a radical change in the character of education. According to a statistical analysis by Tominaga Ken’ichi, in 1955, when Japan was on the threshold of high economic growth, 6.9 per cent of Japanese between the ages of 20 and 29 had completed primary school only, 46.5 per cent had completed middle school, 29.8 per cent new system high school (or old system middle school), and 16.8 per cent had been to junior college or university.45 About twenty years later, in 1975, the same classification shows the following percentages:

  Primary school—0.0%

  Middle school—23.0%

  High school—49.1%

  Junior college or university—27.3%

  Unclassified—0.6%

  Before the war, only about 5 per cent of this age group had gone to junior college and university. The change is quite extraordinary.

  Since about 1960, professors have been complaining about the students reading comics. In this regard, I personally consider that the student who has read and understood The Fighting Record of the Invisible Organizers by Shirato belongs to a very intelligent group in today’s university population in Japan. This is a defence of comics but not of university students as a whole.

  Today many universities have comic clubs, where students draw pictures and publish them in their own magazines. Even Tokyo University has one, whereas Kyoto University does not yet have one. Waseda University has produced the greatest number of successful cartoonists so far.

  Probably, the development of Japanese cartoons away from the trend set by the U.S.A. resulted from the influence of the picture-card show, of lending libraries, and of women cartoonists, as well as from differences in social history.

  4

  Vaudeville Acts

  When Tokugawa Ieyasu entered Tokyo, then known as Edo, in 1590, the place was composed of a fortress and some desolate communities. In twenty years it was transformed into such a lively city that a shipwrecked former governor of the Philippines, Don Rodrigo de Vivero, praised its city planning and wrote that although in exterior appearance houses in Spain were more beautiful, the interiors of the Japanese houses were superior in beauty.46 Edo then had a population of about 150,000, and in the following hundred years the population grew to more than one million, surpassing London (870,000), Paris (540,000), Vienna (250,000), Moscow (also 250,000) and Berlin (170,000). From the mid-seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century, Edo was the largest city in the world outside China.

  Half of the city’s population were samurai who gathered together from different regions of the country, and officials and guards of the central government. The other half were mostly merchants and artisans. There were few farmers in the city area. Since 1794, following the policy of Matsudaira Sadanobu, an emergency rice stock had been accumulated, which could feed half a million merchants and artisans for half a year. There was a relatively free labour market and also social security for citizens living in Edo.

  Terakado Seiken’s The Prosperity of Edo (1832) records a conversation in the alleys. A mendicant comes home at noon and tells a nun that because of the current inflation he had not been given much rice. He says that thanks to the rice storage they would not starve, but should try to save and economize in case of emergency. Overhearing this conversation, a neighbour shouts from beyond the wall, ‘Stop such gloomy talk. When Nakamura Shikan, the star kabuki actor, left Edo for Osaka, the patrons sent him one hundred ry in one night, and one thousand ry in ten days, didn’t they? Even if we have to eat porridge at home, we give generously to the actor we patronize. That is the spirit of the Edo citizen for you.’

  This conversation coming
from poor citizens who depended on aid from the emergency rice store sounds reckless, and it is reckless. It indicates the mentality of the working classes in Edo at that time. Their occupation might have been a poor one but they still took pride in patronizing a kabuki actor or a vaudeville storyteller. Fashions were set by the working class, not by aristocratic samurai or wealthy merchants. That was the spirit of Edo.47

  News and opinions were exchanged in the public bath houses and the barber shops, of which Shikitei Sanba (1776–1822) has left vivid records in Ukiyo Buro (1809) and Ukiyo Doko (1813).

  An urban sociologist, Isomura Eiichi, has defined the community unit in Edo as the area within which a shout can be heard. Edo was divided into such community units, each of which had a chieftain. Houses were made of wood, bamboo, paper and mortar, quite vulnerable to fire, and they were very small. Streets, accordingly, became a very important part of living quarters, especially in summertime. In particular, streets were the place for children to play and amuse themselves in all seasons. The Japanese are known not to scold their children severely as is done in Europe and the U.S.A. E.S.Morse, who came to Japan in the early Meiji Period and introduced Darwinism and anthropology to Japan, was impressed with this fact, and wondered why Japanese children remained so obedient in spite of this.48 The reason was an aspect of social life which he overlooked, that is, the self-regulating system which operated among children on the streets in each of the neighbourhood units. Elder sisters and brothers took care of younger members of their families, which tended to be very large, and within the street community elder boys took care of the younger boys and the older girls of the younger girls.

  This structure of the city has undergone a transformation. The economic growth of the 1960s has transformed the city’s structure and has created serious educational problems. Children no longer have access to small streets and have no free time to associate with one another. They are occupied at tutoring schools after school and are directly controlled by their mothers since families are now small.

  Another Western observer of the early Meiji era was impressed by the behaviour of a maid who, when instructed to buy a mackerel, bought a cheaper fish which she said, looked fresher. The observer was surprised by the maid’s independence in making a decision,49 but this, also, was not surprising in view of the fact that maids served in middle-class families for only a brief period in order to learn the art of housekeeping before they became housewives. This custom became popular in the middle of the Tokugawa Period, around the time of Kyho (1715–1735). The relationship was similar to that between artisans and their apprentices, who expected to become independent artisans after a certain period.

  The sense of a common culture shared by both lower and upper classes became prevalent from around that time. This is reflected in the fact that many samurai who rose in the post-Meiji era to the rank of marquis or prince and became elder statesmen married courtesans and prostitutes and appeared on public occasions with their wives. Examples are Prince It, many times the premier of Japan, Prince Yamagata, also many times Premier, and Chief of Staff of the army, Marquis Inoue, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and Count Yamamoto, twice Premier and many times Minister of the Navy. Such a practice was uncommon in Europe and the U.S.A., China, India, Korea and other Asian countries, and could not have existed without this sense of sharing a common culture. These elder statesmen had themselves undergone an apprenticeship, learning menial jobs. Sir Ernest Satow recounts in his memoirs his landing, in 1864, in Chsh fief, after the war between Britain and Chsh. He was served an impromptu European meal prepared by the Japanese under the direction of It, who procured the materials from war-torn towns and somehow produced recognizably European food.50 Such skill as a servant and cook must have been rare in a nineteenth-century prime minister. Japan’s rise as a modern state could be credited to such men.

  Kat Shichi (1919–) has described the salient characteristic of modern Japanese culture as the sharing by everybody of common reading material. In the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s, the president of a company and the janitor would both read the magazine King, which sold a million copies. In the 1950s and 1960s, both would read the Asahi Weekly or the Weekly Post. In the 1970s, both would watch the same NHK Great River Dramas on television every Sunday. This would not be the case in Britain, France or the U.S.A.

  The continuing stream of this common culture is a basic reason why more than 90 per cent of Japanese today label themselves as middle class. Standards of living, measured in terms of automobiles, washing machines and colour televisions, cannot alone account for this all-pervading middle-class consciousness since the 1960s. It has its roots in mid-Tokugawa city culture, and, if we trace it further back, in the self-containment of Japan for the last thousand years.

  Despite this there does exist a clearly distinguished elite. The line of demarcation does not directly correspond with wealth or class. The elite consists of graduates of the law department of Tokyo University, who tend to obtain key positions in government and industrial management. The farmers well know that they have no equipment to retain the newly given wealth. The realization of their precarious position lay behind the farmers’ resistance to the enlargement of the U.S. military base in Tachikawa and the Sanrizuka farmers’ resistance against the establishment of an international airport in Narita. Millions of yen would not guarantee a stable livelihood for those who did not have the training and information to make their capital profitable. An enormous amount of cash would dwindle in no time.

  The ruling elite also participates in the common culture. Its members, however, are able to manipulate words and ideas imported from more advanced cultures outside Japan as well as the best information gathered by the network of the bureaucracy at their command. The contrast between this elite and the masses has been a long-standing theme in the cultural history of Japan. This theme is reflected in the development of a form of vaudeville amusement called manzai, or the dialogue between the Master and the Servant.

  According to the folklorist Orikuchi Shinobu (1887–1953), linguistic arts in Japan have their origin in banquet amusements.51 The stunts performed at banquets are preserved in modern festival dances at local shrines. In these stunts the principal role is that of a guest of honour, a visitor to the house and also to the locality. A local spirit appears and tries clumsily to imitate whatever the guest says, and through this clumsy mimicry resists and contradicts the message of the main guest, which must be obeyed. The performance, however, ends with his capitulation. He becomes silent. The play ends with the wry grimace of the local spirit. This play has special masks, the guest god’s being that of an honourable old man (Okina) and the resisting local spirit’s a grimacing face (Beshimi), later transformed into the funny face called Hyottoko.

  This play took on a fixed form in the time of the establishment of central government in Japan. Officials sent from the central government to local posts gave orders written in Chinese and modelled on Chinese documents. Local people could not properly imitate these or reply in the official language. They obeyed, nevertheless, but with some feeling of grievance and remonstrance. Japan’s situation on the periphery of the great universal civilization of China and the sense of inferiority and the need to learn the more advanced ways of a superior civilization have long been a point of common understanding among its people. Even so, the officials who governed local areas by means of an imported official language could not meet the needs of local people. This pattern of representing the political situation has not been outgrown even today.

  The banquet entertainment produced specialized performers assuming fixed roles. They came to be called the ‘Tay’, who played the role of a master, and the ‘Saiz’, who played the role of the nitwit servant. At wine brewings they would enact the emergence of good wine, and at the completion of a new house they would enact the emergence of a beautiful and solid house. At New Year they would go to the Emperor’s palace, and enact the good events that were to take place that year. From the palace they would
go to other houses and repeat their performance. In the Meigetsuki of Fujiwara Sadaie, it is recorded in the entry for the sixteenth day of the eleventh month of the year 1200 that a manzai came and performed an auspicious greeting.52 They came from the outcasts and were given special protection by their affiliation with the temples. They did not intermarry with other sections of society. The groups in these quarters came to specialize in

  11 Manzai performers in the Sensh Scroll, Poetry Contest of the Thirty-two Artisans

  sending out manzai couples. As many households wanted such feliciations at New Year, the specialist quarters sent manzai performers all around the country to make their annual rounds at the beginning of the year. At other times of the year the performers worked as farmers in their own villages.53

  The heart of the performance was a simple dialogue between the serious character and the nitwit. As time went on, it attracted and assimilated new techniques from other forms of amusement. Especially after the Russo-Japanese War, the age-old custom of the summer dance festival gave a new stimulus to the growth of manzai.54 In summer villages hold communal dance parties; the whole village dances in a ring, and a certain amount of sexual licence is allowed on that night. The master of ceremonies stands on a specially erected tower in the centre of the ring and encourages the dancers, making jokes directed at the villagers. This art of extemporaneous wit was introduced to small vaudeville theatres in the cities of Osaka and Kbe, which were expanding

  12 Mikawa manzai in the closing years of the Edo Period (Tay on the right, Saiz on the left)

  rapidly with the sudden industrialization of Japan. People who in their youth had failed at higher professions such as kabuki actors, soldiers, dentists, officials and bank clerks, or later, bus drivers, movie actors, hairdressers and stewardesses, turned to the lowly beggar’s art of manzai. With such backgrounds, they introduced mimicries of these professions. Through such autobiographical fragments, they reflected Japanese society at large from the periphery, never falling into the middle-class smugness towards which Japanese society had an innate inclination. In this, the modern manzai preserves something of its ancient and medieval character, true to its origin in social stratification.